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Tree-Hugger: Source Code Mining for Human - rcshubhadeep https://medium.com/codist-ai/introducing-tree-hugger-source-code-mining-for-human-b5fcd31bef55 ====== ManoSinkosika thanks! ~~~ rcshubhadeep Very welcome :) The original author here. If you have any comments please do share. Hope you will like this little one. We have plans to add support for other languages and more APIs soon	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Proper RFC 822 Email Address Validation (in Perl RegEx) - pooriaazimi http://www.ex-parrot.com/pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html ====== pjscott And the worst part is, it _still_ doesn't fully match the spec unless you go through and strip out comments first.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau Facing Resignation - novaRom https://www.cbsnews.com/news/justin-trudeau-brownface-photo-shows-canada-prime-minister-west-point-grey-academy-college-party-2019-09-18/ ====== novaRom Appropriate moment, Trudeau faces re-election next month. Some time ago it was an Austrian PM, now it is a Canadian. At this digital age is there anyone without digital traces that can be used against him/her?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Making My Own Glasses - olieidel https://www.eidel.io/2019/04/24/making-my-own-glasses/ ====== emptybits Fascinating hacker story in an unexpected domain. Thank you! A side note about "getting your numbers"... The author remarks, "she’s not happy to share the measurements with me as she fears I’ll run off and get my glasses made online". This will obviously vary by jurisdiction but what the author describes may be illegal in some places. e.g. where I live, there is a law since 2010 requiring opticians and optometrists "to give clients, free of charge, a copy of their prescription, sight-test assessment or contact-lens specifications — whether or not it is requested by the client — and also to give a copy, free of charge, to a third-party eyewear seller or other person if requested by the client"[1] [1] [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c- changes-...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-changes- eyewear-regulations-1.904446) ~~~ wonderwonder This did strike me as strange. Imagine going to a doctor getting a blood test and being told your numbers are good or bad but the doctor refusing to give you the actual result. They are your results, you paid for them and are part of an overall need to understand your health. ~~~ LoSboccacc > you paid for them most places that sell glasses do those for free tho. I agree they should be given out and they do in europe, or at least in the two states I lived, but being paid for is not the angle to come at it from ~~~ mikepurvis I don't think I've ever had a free exam in Ontario— my insurance covers one (up to like $200 or something) every two years, so that's about the cadence I get them on. So it's a paid-for thing; I don't feel bad about taking the prescription and buying glasses online. That said, the glasses from the shop last way, way longer than the online ones, so I really just use online for sunglasses or like to get novelty frames for a costume or something. ~~~ jblakey I'm in Ontario, too, and couldn't get my PD from Laurier Optical. So I left, went on Amazon, and bought a PD Distance Measurer for a couple of hundred bucks. Did my whole family, and now my wife feels better about ordering from Zeni. Saved enough on a single pair of glasses to pay for the meter. ------ kmm He probably saw the first result incorrectly, opticians almost exclusively use negative cylinders, it seems incredibly unlikely that he would both stumble upon a rare exception using positive cylinders, and that she'd coincidentally get his astigmatism way wrong as well. I share his, uhm, perfectionism regarding optical corrections, and it's led to quite some anxiety. I feel like eye exams here aren't done with a lot of care, and that they just aim for "good enough". I'm not sure what to do with the knowledge that you can buy such an optician kit and test yourself. It's either a great or an absolutely terrible idea. ~~~ olieidel Some good thoughts. Totally agree with all your points. ------ donjoe Everytime I read about glasses I have to think about the Luxottica-Monopoly which kind of controls most of the market and prices of glasses/lenses. [https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus- glass...](https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-glasses- lenscrafters-luxottica-monopoly-20190305-story.html) ~~~ bredren I remembered this as well. This bothers me, as I just had to get a new set and they are ridiculously expensive. I originally opened the article hoping that this was some kind of "I 3d printed my own frames" or something to that effect. I am hoping someone will figure out how to disrupt this industry. ~~~ war1025 Zenni Optical [1], EyeBuyDirect [2], VisionPros[3] among others let you buy online as long as you know the numbers. [1] [https://www.zennioptical.com/](https://www.zennioptical.com/) [2] [https://www.eyebuydirect.com/](https://www.eyebuydirect.com/) [3] [https://www.visionpros.com/](https://www.visionpros.com/) ------ atoav This is clearly a case where the sole act of him sharpening his own perception of what glases do resulted in him getting better glases. I work freelance as a colorist and re-recording mixer – both are professions which are highly based on perception. And it is certainly true: if you try to really go into the details of something, be it color, sound or anything else, it already helps a lot if you sharpen your senses to these things. I always say: you don't pay me for beeing able to use some software, you pay me for having developed my senses over years in a way that others didn't. ~~~ olieidel Totally agree. It's a cool idea that going very deep in a certain field yields benefits which were unimaginable in the beginning (or to others). ------ AdrianB1 For more than 10 years I am going to the same optician for glasses. As a sport pilot, I need to have 2 pairs at all times (one is kept as reserve in the cockpit); changing one to another, with identical "everything", produces a serious discomfort that I cannot explain. I learned to live with the idea that eye sight is complicated. Measurements at different points in time can differ slightly: in the morning just after I wake up I get some values, after staring at this monitor for 12 hours I get slightly different results. I always make the glasses from the morning measurement, but luckily the values rarely differ from one year to another (I change the lenses every year on the pair I wear on the motorcycle, riding with the visor up I get the lenses scratched in about one year from the dust in the air). ~~~ gvb I suspect the discomfort when switching glasses is that the inter-ocular distance is different between the two glasses (one is likely right or "more right"). You have the right correction, but it is off-axis WRT your pupils with one pair. When I go to my $$$ optician, the technician marks my pupils on the blanks in the frame that I've selected using a sharpie (before the glasses are made) and adds the inter-ocular measurement to the glasses information. When I put on the resulting glasses, I don't have any eye strain symptoms and my vision is good (instantly). When I went to cheap storefront glasses places (I don't do that any more) and I put on the resulting glasses, I get a "stress" signal from my eyes and then they adjust to work with the suboptimal glasses but the eye strain is always there. ~~~ AdrianB1 My optician friend is doing the inter-ocular distance right, he showed me the process while he was cutting the lenses on a high-end computerized machine. But the only difference between my glasses are the frames, there are some differences in the frames that makes a difference in the final product. I guess it is the angle between the lenses, even a small difference can be creating the discomfort. It takes me a few hours to adjust. ------ scoot Misleading title. He tested his own eyesight and ordered glasses online. He didn't make his own glasses. Still an interesting read, just not what I expected from the title and lead. ~~~ cptskippy Eh... he provided custom specifications to a manufacturer. Apple makes it's own SoCs for the iPhone, only Apple can't make semiconductors. They provide specifications to a manufacturer. Apple makes the iPhone, except it's Foxconn that manufacturers it. The APU in the Xbox One is made by Microsoft, but it's composed primarily of off the shelf designed CPU and GPU cores from AMD and manufactured by TSMC/GF/<insert foundary>. ~~~ jqadams By this logic, I am “making” my own pizza every time I tell Dominos to make me a 20cm pizza with cheese and sauce. I am “making” an IKA sofa when I order it online, telling the manufacturer the model, the size (2 seat, 3, etc). No, what the OP did was check/confirm his numbers and then bought a pair of glasses from a website. Many people buy them from websites, typing in the numbers they received from their doctor. None of these people are “making” anything. ~~~ cptskippy I don't disagree with you, and the line between ordering and making is fuzzy. Your examples of an Ikea Sofa and Pizza are great examples of either end of the spectrum. An Ikea sofa has finite configurations that could all be permuted into model numbers, the parts are interchangeable and swapped between models, and prefabricated. A pizza however is completely made to order on demand and if there's a mistake the components are nonrecoverable waste. With Apple's custom SoC, they're designing a custom circuit however that specification is sent to someone else to manufacture. At it's core, it's not unlike ordering a pizza of astronomically greater complexity. So what makes a custom pizza just an order and not a make? Is it the relative simplicity/complexity of the task? If I enlist a factory in China to manufacture custom mouse pads based on my exact specifications, did I make a mouse pad or just order it? Does it matter if the mouse pads are just press cut fabric backed neoprene in various colors and shapes? Glasses are somewhere between an Ikea Sofa and a Pizza in terms of modularity. The lenses and frames are off the shelf but once cut the lenses are spent if an error is made. Glasses however have much more exacting specifications than a pizza or a Sofa. ------ chooseaname > As a doctor I know some things about the human eye so I understand how to > use those lenses. However, I have no clue about the magic ritual of the > optician (“Do you see better with this lens?” - selects random lens and > holds it in front of my eye). >Luckily, I didn’t have to. There's a specific reason why they do this and ask you to make a decision in an instant. It's called accommodation. Your eyes will quickly try and accommodate and find focus if they're allowed to stare too long. This could explain the reason he got such different results from the exams. He was trying too hard. Just follow directions. Edit: > One more thing. Do you remember the process in which an optician makes you > wear a new pair of glasses and stares at you with this optician-look, takes > the pair of glasses away from you again, goes to the back office and starts > bending parts of it in a seemingly random manner, comes back, hands you the > pair of glasses which now suddenly fit perfectly? > Yeah, I attempted to do that with my new pair of glasses and noticed that I > suck at it. I would bend it to look similar like the glasses from the > optician only to realize that the back of my ears were hurting after a few > hours of wear. Is he really a Doctor??? He doesn't know there's a Mastoid bone there that the "bending" (aka: Adjusting) the optician is doing is to AVOID putting pressure on that bone!? ~~~ olieidel Yes, I am a doctor. As far as I remember, I studied medicine and graduated. As other comments point out, medicine is a very specialized field nowadays and I didn't specialize in any field (I got into coding healthcare software instead) - in Germany you study all disciplines at University (min. 6 years) and then specialize during something comparable to US residency in a hospital. I understand the process of accommodation. This poses the risk of e.g. over- correcting short-sightedness if you're not aware of it because, with each lens of increasing strength, you accommodate and think "geez, everything just got sharper.. again!". I was aware of this and, as you can find in my article, actually ended up using very similar values for dioptries (the spheres) as the opticians. So either all of us totally forgot about accommodation or all of us were aware of it :) My values mainly differed regarding to astigmatism, and accommodation doesn't play a significant role there. I am also aware of the bone behind my ears, thanks for reminding me :) While you do learn a lot of stuff in med school, learning how to bend those things of glasses which go behind your ears is not part of that. I suppose that's not a skill which can be taught well, anyway - it's more like craftsmanship, getting it right by having done it lots of times. ~~~ jaclaz If I may, particularly as a doctor yourself, you should call the eye doctor "ophthalmologist", as you surely know if you use "part of the body + doctor" there might be issues should you report a visit by a "proctologist" ... ~~~ patrec Why replace a good, short and clear word with a bad and long word that adds no information, but fewer people will understand? [Edit: I think I'm wrong about the adding no information, depending on country there might be other types of eye doctors than ophthalmologists] ~~~ jaclaz Come on, it was only a (good?) old joke ... ------ tyingq This article found 13 out of 30 opticians were off by a significant amount (poor or very poor): [https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/high-street- opticians...](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/high-street-opticians- giving-shocking-eye-tests-and-incorrect-prescriptions-report- reveals_uk_59e5ccf5e4b02a215b32b068) ~~~ superkuh I had great glasses for about 25 years. Then my eye doctor retired. Over the next couple years the first couple pairs I received from the same location's new doctors were bad enough to cause me to return them. The third has been marginally acceptable. It's a real shame when talent retires. ~~~ ddalex I had someone recently quit my team for a way better opportunity that my company couldn't provide. More or less jokingly we showed up with chains on the last day to bind him to the desk :) we allowed him to part after a couple of beers though. Yes its super painful to lose talent. ------ nickjj As a life long glasses wearer I don't really agree there's a problem with the "better or worse" method. It's a pretty interesting implementation of bisection search and it's a very controlled environment. It's also a great example of how constraints (time) helps you arrive at a good answer without over thinking it. If you were out wandering the streets or looking at random things with no constraints you would be overwhelmed with choice and it would be very hard to draw a conclusion. You may decide what's right is based on looking at something, only to find out after all of that something else 4 days later looks way off because you didn't see that during your real world test. You end up being individually burdened with making the decision instead of letting science do its thing. The only issue I have is frames because it's very possible to get frames that are comfortable for the few minutes you try them on in the store but they end up being horrendously uncomfortable after a day or few days of usage (even after many adjustments). I don't know how to solve that problem though because in order to wear the frames for a long test period you would need to be able to see, which means your real lenses need to be placed inside. ------ dh-g Title is a bit misleading and got my hopes of that this was about grinding down glass into perscription lenes. Interesting none the less. ------ oldandcold Wonderful read. I've been wearing glasses for 40+ years...and I agree with the generally subjective nature of the exam. "better 1 or 2". "this one or that one"... etc. Is it just a bit less blurry? Or am I guessing because I want to get out of here? At my dox, they check my Rx with a machine, then the doc does the A/B testing. They know what the answer is...but they need me to validate. Then there is time... the doc has only so much time to do the A/B testing. A few hours of A/B would statistically improve the outcome. And really, fuzzy or sharp letters on a screen is not what I look at all day...show me a monitor or a book and ask me what I see. I would love to do my own testing with a box of lenses... ------ jefftk _> Do you remember the process in which an optician makes you wear a new pair of glasses and stares at you with this optician-look, takes the pair of glasses away from you again, goes to the back office and starts bending parts of it in a seemingly random manner, comes back, hands you the pair of glasses which now suddenly fit perfectly? Yeah, I attempted to do that with my new pair of glasses and noticed that I suck at it. I would bend it to look similar like the glasses from the optician only to realize that the back of my ears were hurting after a few hours of wear. Then I would bend them differently only to have them repeatedly slip forward on my nose warranting me to push them up every few minutes. After two weeks of bending, it still fits less well than the other pair. So I guess there are some subtleties of making glasses which are not easily replaceable through an online store._ I've done this with several pairs, and the main thing is you need to heat them to get the plastic into a temperature where it will hold a new bend. I've used a hair dryer for this, though you need to be careful not to over-heat them or the plastic will blister. You can also go into a glasses shop and ask if they can adjust them, though when I tried this they wouldn't take my money and just did it for free, which I felt bad about. ~~~ jqadams Unfortunately, lots of places will refuse to fit/bend your glasses unless you got them from their stores. It’s just easier and less of a hassle for them to have a blanket ban vs worrying about breaking the person’s glasses and being charged/sued for it. ~~~ astura LensCrafters will fit/adjust any/all glasses for free without any questions. Bonus: there is usually one in most malls. I've brought probably 10 frames there multiple times over the last couple decades, only one of which I actually bought there. ------ olieidel Whoa, this is unexpected. I'm the author. Thanks for reading and for all your comments! Will reply to as many as possible. ------ alfonsodev > Optician: “Now with this lens, do you see better or worse?” > O: “Honestly, I have no clue. Maybe. Maybe not? The letters look similar but > different.” [edit] Reprahsing to make it clearer: will it be possible in the future to measure objectively? ~~~ cameronh90 Sort of. There's a device called an autorefractor which can get a pretty good estimate out of your refractive error. However traditional eyesight tests tend to provide better results. I believe wavefront guided LASIK uses some kind of automatic method of determining refractive error called an aberrometer. Some ophthalmologists have a device called an i-profiler that they use as part of their assessment which appears to be an aberrometer. Everything I've read on the matter seems to me to indicate that there is possibly some kind of hybrid automated autorefractor/aberrometer type technology that could be created to give fairly objective and accurate measurements of refractive error with no human operator, but given that legally an ophthalmologist would need to sign off the prescription anyway the upside is probably limited. ~~~ IronWolve I was excited to get lasik when wavefront came out due to one eye having astigmatism. I came out with 20:15 in one eye, 20/20 in the other. Overcorrection is normally avoided, but I jumped when wavefront lasik came out. Totally worth it. ------ Androider I wonder if the use of a lensmeter makes you fall into a local optimum while missing out on a potential global optimum? Let's say I go to a bad optician and get a pair of lenses that have something way off like the cylinder is the wrong way around, or toric lenses for astigmatism when you actually don't have it. Everything looks like crap but then you get used to it (the brain is amazing at adapting). Then a few years later you go get another pair, and they use the lensmeter reading as the baseline. I think I have astigmatism, or do I? It took me more than two months until I stopped getting headaches after getting my first glasses and I could see decently. Every glasses since then are based on that first reading. Maybe I've just become used to it, and there exists a significantly better lens that I could become used to as well. ~~~ logfromblammo You can calculate a spherical-only prescription from an astigmatism prescription. Order cheapest-possible glasses using those lenses, and wear them for a while before visiting a new optometrist. Leave them behind before you go in, and say you lost your glasses in the ocean, or they got crushed under a truck tire, or something. If you end up with a prescription that has a cylindrical component, and it has the same axis and magnitude as your previous prescription, then you have an objectively-measured, independently-repeated astigmatism. ------ diffuse_l I'm still not sure how the whole process of choosing lenses seems to work quite well, despite being so far removed from actual day to day usage. In the ~37 years I have glasses the process only failed twice. The last time I needed to order new glasses, after wearing the glasses for a day (I know from experience that it sometimes takes time to adjust to new glasses), I returned to the store and told them that the glasses weren't good enough. To make a long story short, after going back there at least three times, and after the optometrist said something along the lines of "maybe you only think you are not seeing well with those glasses", I had to start making a ruckus till they changed both lenses. Maybe the failure rate is low enough that it is not worth it to improve the process... ------ littlecosmic I’m glad that a good result was had, but none of these results are that surprising if you have experience in ophthalmic optics. The initial prescription and the final one are only a little different when you consider the change of acuity they can deliver (from a physics perspective). For a script like that, the frame choice, lens design and vertical placement of the optical centres (if the frame is a little deep) could all have a similar effect on acuity. It is also very common for there to be differences like he found between an auto-refraction and a subjective refraction. It’s possible that they are too focused in on the prescription itself and there are issues around the lens positioning/design that are involved here as well. ------ logfromblammo I were assembling a home-optometry kit, I would use adjustable oil lenses and a laser pointer. The speckle pattern of the laser dot is affected by whether the observer is myopic or hyperopic. Adjust the oil glasses until, when moving your head, the laser speckle dots do not appear to move. If they move opposite to your head motion, make the lens diopter more negative, and if they move in the same direction, make the lens diopter less negative. After determining exact spherical diopter, then test for astigmatism by spinning a set of parallel black lines on a white field, and parallel white lines on a black field. Or just look at a printout of an astigmatism dial chart. ------ ggariepy I've had nothing but terrible luck getting progressive lenses for years. I'm in the -7 diopter range, so the correction has to be pretty strong. Usually the script is dead on for some part of the visual range but hardly anything else works clearly. The single vision lenses I have for computer use are right on point. I have a pretty significant astigmatism in my left (non-dominant) eye, and that one is always jacked up. I've been going to the same ophthalmologist for several years now and over that time he's made a few mistakes in the script; twice I've had to have the glasses remade because of errors on his part. He came highly recommended, but the recommendations you get tend to be aligned with whatever hospital system you get them from, rather than true recommendations based on actual craftsmanship. I'd be interested in figuring out how to find an ophthalmologist who uses the Zeiss i.Scription tool in combination with a subjective test. I probably need to start going first thing in the morning as well; since I have to have my eyes dilated I tend to go in the afternoons after I've been hacking code most of the day; it sounds like that could be hurting the quality of the prescriptions. If anyone in the Detroit Metro knows of a good ophthalmologist with the Zeiss machine, do send me a note. ------ 77pt77 > she’s not happy to share the measurements with me as she fears I’ll run off > and get my glasses made online (I’d never do that!). This is ridiculous. Why should I not be given the value measurements that have just been made? That's why I bought my own optician test lens set and now do the measurements myself. I can also test these measurements over a long period of time looking at a screen for example. I've had people stop short of saying I should be arrested and that I'm doing something illegal. The cost, one or two visits to the optometrist. ~~~ whamlastxmas Because the measurement was free and provided with the assumption they're recovering the cost of equipment and labor when you purchase glasses through them. ------ DoctorOetker >I needed an “optician kit” consisting of: >Trial lenses: A large number of lenses with varying corrections >Trial frame: A pair of glasses without lenses into which you can insert the trial lenses >Turns out, you can order these kits online from very trustworthy Chinese resellers for around 190€. Seems like it would be nice to have these available for rent. I would rent that for 20 euros a week, and after 10 rent-outs it has payed itself back ~~~ ddalex Why not do it? ------ jakobegger If you want the absolute best possible correction, you also need to make sure the optical center of the lens is in the right spot. With my current frames it's a bit too low, so I need to lift my glasses a bit to make sure I see as sharp as possible, which is annoying. It's a small effect, but it is noticable. ------ 0x0aff374668 Funny, I've been struggling with exactly this issue. Over the past few years my eyes have worsened to the point where doctors cannot find a contact scrip that works in both eyes: we have to compromise with one eye fixing far-away and the other fixing near. I had TWO optemtrists generate an Rx and they differed in all domains, with the astigmatic axis off by 90-degrees in both eyes! I've wanted to buy a lens kit and do it myself for years, but after reading how complex a process it is to find a compromise due to all the daily fluctuations, I'm ready to accept that my eyesight is just a mess and nothing can fix it for ALL scenarios. ------ driverdan You can't wear contacts for flying or passing the exam? The best eye "hack" I've done is getting Lasik. I wore glasses and then contacts for about 20 years and got Lasik done 3 years ago. It's worth whatever it costs you. ~~~ novok There are some eyes that are somewhat risky to treat with lasik, such as having pupils that dilate to 8mm+ ~~~ kevin_thibedeau It's not worthwhile for nearsighted people beyond middle age. It also structurally weakens the eye so not a good thing depending on your occupation and hobbies. ------ m0zg And now consider that your _other_ doctors are also mostly just guessing, often poorly, at the expense of your health. This is why medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third- leading...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading- cause-of-death-in-america.html). The stats are likely to be even worse in less developed countries or ones where doctor is not as prestigious a profession. ------ umvi > and she’s not happy to share the measurements with me as she fears I’ll run > off and get my glasses made online I hate this! Are they really allowed to do this? "What's my prescription?" "Not telling" ~~~ css They are most certainly not allowed to withhold it: [https://www.ftc.gov/tips- advice/business-center/guidance/com...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips- advice/business-center/guidance/complying-eyeglass-rule) ~~~ pacaro TFA is most likely set in Germany, where different rules apply ------ bonestamp2 I went for a Lasik consult recently and they said they have to dilate my eyes to get the most accurate reading since the muscles can compensate and give variable readings. It's true, my last two prescriptions differed from the reading they got with my eyes dilated. Maybe it was just an extra money grab but if it's true and I had known that before I would have asked them to dilate my eyes when I wanted to get glasses too. ------ amingilani This is amazing, however, I have the opposite problem: how do I measure for contact lenses? I've never been able to get a good fit for my contacts although my glasses have always worked well enough. The weird thing is that when I go to get contact lenses, the retailer orders them according to my glasses prescription, but subtracts seemingly arbitrary values from it to arrive at the contact lenses' values. I live in Pakistan, btw. ~~~ vanattab Do you have a stigmatism? Contacts offten don't work well with people of stigmatism. ~~~ amingilani I do have astigmatism, actually. However, looking at the prescription of the author in the article, it appears that he does too! ~~~ olieidel Yes, I do. I had lenses with cylinders (for correcting it) in the past and didn't like them. They're larger and asymmetric - the lower side must be heavier so that they always align correctly on your eye. With not-so-bad astigmatism, you can get away with not correcting it in your contact lenses. That's what I currently do. It works okay and brings you to a good level of vision (1.0 here in Germany, probably 20/20 in the US). ~~~ amingilani Ahhh, that won't work for me. I started off like that, but getting cylinders made a huge difference in my contacts. I've tried the bottom-heavy ones, as well as the ones with a "1" that's supposed to be positioned at the bottom manually. Neither has worked too well. The shifting position isn't a problem, I think the bottom-heavy ones adjust fine with a little bit of practice, but the experience is never that good. ~~~ lovehashbrowns I have astigmatism as well and the ones I use are acuvue daily moist. They apparently use some blinking technology to keep them stable. To be honest, I didn't know they were supposed to remain stable until I saw your comments, so I guess they work well for me. There are only very specific situations where I get discomfort and they misalign for me, but a few blinks puts them back in their spot. ------ tabtab An ear-handle broke off of a pair of eyeglasses I had a few years ago, and nobody could repair it. I tried 4 shops, including a jewelry shop. Being that progressive-focus prescription lenses are expensive, I didn't want to buy a new set. (Progressive focus is similar to "bifocals".) Hopefully shops with 3D printers etc. will give consumers more repair options. ------ mschuster91 > I have a few seconds to decide whether I see some letters better and this > decision will decide which lenses I’ll have in my glasses for the next few > years? Absurd! From personal experience: don't do these tests if you're tired, have headaches or are otherwise impaired. For example if your eyes simply want to shut and you're forcing them to open the musculature will affect your vision. ------ djhworld I'm going for my regular eye test tomorrow, I'm similar to the author with toric contact lenses (for astigmatism) and glasses for all other times. I'm not looking forward to the "does this look better or worse?" dance and can totally relate to the author's frustration! ~~~ olieidel Good luck! ------ retpirato I'm generally wary of anyone who says they're a perfectionist, because I usually find them to be absurdly picky about silly things for no real reason, but this guy has a point about not being able to tell if glasses are right for you based on staring at some letters. ------ phonebucket That was a great read, but one of the summary conclusions jarred with me a bit: > Want to optimize your medication? Read up on all relevant studies and > guidelines. I am surprised to have seen this penned by a doctor. Relevant studies and guidelines are a minefield for amateurs. ------ sova Very impressed my good man. Would it be possible to automate this process a bit and get some statistically sound measurements from doing it 100 times? Can we turn this into an online business? :D ------ specialist Great read. Thanks. I've also received lenses that don't match the prescription. My ophthalmologist says that source of error is common. So now I have the doctor's office verify my lenses. ------ gherkinnn > She seems to forget the fact that I’m a doctor > As a doctor I know some things about the human eye Something about these sentences identify our author here as German. And low and behold, it turns out he is. ------ devxpy A similar incident happened with me too. Visited an optician, immediately followed by a doctor the same day. The measurements varied by 1 whole digit! ------ megous So, anyone read the manual for the measurment instruments used and investigated what is the specified error of measurement? Maybe variation can be attributed to that. ~~~ AdrianB1 Eye fatigue gives a much higher difference than the error margin of the instruments. ------ redog Good story but I'm a touch disappointed as I came in expecting a story about making the lenses. ------ moneywoes Suddenly I feel very less confident in my prescription that I just received ------ newnewpdro Wish he included a link for the kit of test lenses he purchased ~~~ olieidel It's a pretty generic kit sold on ebay from various chinese resellers. It's not too hard to find if you search for "optician kit" or so, price is around 180€ in Germany :) ------ edouard-harris I hope someone reads this and starts Stitch Fix for eyeglasses. ------ yupyupyupyup I would pay attention to what eye doctors call overcorrecting.. of course you see better but your eyes become lazier and lazier ------ Uhuhreally expected to read an article about someone 3d-printing their own glasses, was disappointed ------ edisonjoao nice ------ turk73 I wanted to be an Optometrist but went into software engineering instead. I think Optometry is fertile ground for disruption by technology. Similar to pharmacists, the only thing keeping so many employed is a cartel. ------ coldtea > _I have a few seconds to decide whether I see some letters better and this > decision will decide which lenses I’ll have in my glasses for the next few > years? Absurd!_ On the contrary, it seems totally logical. If the difference is so small that you can't assuredly decide between two options, either will do. > _How can a trustworthy decision be made in this not-real-life scenario of > staring at letters on a wall? I want to be able to decide while going about > my daily routine: Staring at computer screens, looking out of the window, > looking into space. My daily routine doesn’t include staring at the same > five letters projected onto a white wall and reading them out loud._ Yeah, so? Who told you you'll find anything more doing that, that you would looking at the projected letters? > _I went through with it and the pair of glasses arrived around two weeks > later. Putting them on for the first time, my vision was just as perfect as > with the trial lenses. Awesome! This was hands-down the best pair of glasses > I ever had. Better yet, it was the first pair of glasses with which I could > see better than with contact lenses (as those don’t have a cylinder)._ For all the skepticism at others (eye professionals at that), did he checked his enthusiasm for placebo effect? Or the IKEA effect for that matter? The guy seems eccentric in a creative way, but unbearable... ~~~ olieidel > For all the skepticism at others (eye professionals at that), did he checked > his enthusiasm for placebo effect? Yes. I have two pairs of glasses here: The optician-made ones and my self- prescribed ones. I have controlled for the frame - both have the same one. I see much better with my self-prescribed ones. If you don't believe me, feel free to drop by and we'll do a blinded (heh) test. :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Temperature monitoring with Arc + Arduino - krishna2 http://arcfn.com/2009/08/arc-arduino-arm-temperature-monitoring.html ====== joshu Seems expensive. Couldn't they just have used a USB temperature sensor? The Phidgets one is like $15. I've tinkered a bit with building a wireless temperature sensor network for my house, though... ------ defunkt So cool. Ken's posts make me want a SheevaPlug badly. Not sure what for or why - I just know I need one.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Kubernetes Security Tools Abound - bbrennan https://searchitoperations.techtarget.com/news/252475750/New-Kubernetes-security-tools-abound-as-container-deployments-grow ====== kerng I find it interesting that companies can convince auditors that security sidecars that add auth and encryption actually meet compliance requirements... it's a nice architecture but I'd argue it renders the environment non- compliant. ------ seanhunter As a (perhaps overly cynical) outside observer it feels that "kubernetes X abound" for all X. There's just such a complex ecosystem of tooling evolving here.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
IBM Acquires Butterfly Software For Data Analysis - rhufnagel http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/ibm-acquires-butterfly-software-for-data-analysis-and-advanced-storage-capabilites/ ====== sturadnidge I know one of the founders. A couple of guys working in megacorps saw an opportunity, each stumped up a smallish amount of capital to start a company which grew to ~20 full time employees at the time of acquisition. No outside investment was needed or taken. Sure there is an element of luck, like anything, but hats off to a very well executed strategy by an Enterprise focused startup.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Boolean – a service for sending single question surveys - ranjithajay Hi HN,<p>I am the founder of Boolean <a href="https://www.booleanapp.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.booleanapp.com</a><p>Boolean is a service for sending single question yes/no surveys. I built Boolean with a hope to bring companies and its customers closer. You can read more about the motivation here - <a href="https://www.booleanapp.com/about.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.booleanapp.com/about.html</a><p>Please let me know what you think. ====== 3fuh2r7326 Umm, why is this titled "Launch HN"? Launch HN is meant for YC funded startups, I'm guessing you are not funded by YC but want to showcase your startup. You should use a "Show HN" for your post. ~~~ ranjithajay Thanks for the tip. Updated.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Recommendations for a good immigration lawyer in the Bay Area? - anon0520 I've used SearchYC and read the Ask YC archives quite extensively, but I haven't run across many actual recommendations.<p>I'm exploring/trying to understand my options for working in the US. As a Canadian citizen, the easiest option by far would be a TN1 visa, but where's the fun in that ;) I want to explore startup or freelance avenues for working in the Bay Area.<p>I have a couple of possible tools available - an existing semi-established Canadian corporation, and US residents who have my absolute trust (up for starting a company together, etc.)<p>At the very least, I would want a good lawyer who fully understands and can clearly explain the options available to me. Ideally, I could find someone who has successfully found creative solutions in the past, and whose first answer won't be "you can't do that" (I guess the lawyer equivalent of a hacker). It's hard to find that on Google, and I have a lot of respect for this community's recommendations.<p>If you've successfully used an immigration lawyer in either the Bay Area or Toronto, I would really appreciate your recommendations. Thanks.<p>(posting this as anon to avoid any possible legal or employer ramifications of seeking this advice - you never know.) ====== pg Most YC startups use Chris Wright: <http://www.thewrightlawfirm.com/WrightLaw/Default.aspx> He seems really good. ------ jabrams I am a fellow Canadian living in Silicon Valley and San Francisco for many years now. I highly recommend this small San Jose firm which helped me get my green card. <http://www.schwerinandsumcadlaw.com/> ------ ojbyrne Good luck. From my experience (and I don't really mean to be snarky) you'll need it. My TN stay in the bay area was handled by this company: <http://www.jewellfirm.com/>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Melown – 3D mapping implementation in JS, smooth and silent - tomslavkovsky https://melown.com/intergeo2016 ====== nathancahill The state of the art in open source 3D mapping right now is CesiumJS[0]. From browsing their docs, it looks like it's in a similar place, capabilities-wise. Unfortunately, the limiting factor for most projects isn't the JS library, but it's the availability of high-resolution DEMs (digital elevation models). These won't become widely available until we do something about the price of lidar. Fortunately, there's a lot of interest in reducing the cost of lidar right now for self driving cars, so maybe the situation will improve soon. I've seen really high resolution scans of small areas (Boulder, Colorado had the entire town scanned a couple years ago), and it truly blows you away. Every detail down the the shape of trees is available. [0] [https://cesiumjs.org/](https://cesiumjs.org/) ~~~ dualogy DEMs: how high-res do you _really_ need the DEMs, how many petabytes will you sacrifice for sub-meter accuracy? Unless the app is for mountaineers, what's out there for free in lower-res (to be interpolated by varying to-be- experimented-with smart algos/heuristics throughout academia) and affordably handle-able on a global scale [1] should be a perfectly sufficient starting point until users actually complain about minor inaccuracies. Whether we're talking 30m or 90m resolution.. it's not "high" but for all sorts of startups but the most exacting surveying/etc pro-level b2b offerings, a fine starting point. (Of course I'm only talking DEM here, since you mentioned them, whereas Lidar _proper_ kinda covers details such as houses and other structures as 3d points.) [1] [http://viewfinderpanoramas.org/dem3.html](http://viewfinderpanoramas.org/dem3.html) seemed to be the best in the "free" (for prototypes / MVPs and such) space when I last played in this space on-and-off from 2011 through 2014~ish. ~~~ acemarke We use Cesium in a couple applications. We actually generated some imagery and terrain datasets using open-source tools in 2014. In late 2015, I spent a couple weeks researching GIS data conversion utilities, Cesium's formats, and potential improved source datasets we could use to generate higher-quality imagery and terrain data. I can't haul out the relevant writeup atm, but I concluded that the EarthEnv DEM90 dataset appeared to be highest-quality free terrain source I could find ([0]), and the TrueMarble collection was the best free imagery source ([1]). I generated our earlier terrain dataset using the Cesium-Terrain-Builder utility ([2]). It generates Cesium's "heightmap" format, but does not yet support the "quantized-mesh" format. I have seen a couple other tools that appear to deal with quantized-mesh tiles, though. On my list to dig into at some point. As a related note, using the MBTiles format ([3]) for storing and moving tile datasets around is great. Multiple gigabytes in a single SQLite database file (or possibly a few files split by zoom level), rather than trying to move around millions of individual 10KB images on disk. Highly recommended. [0] [http://www.earthenv.org/DEM.html](http://www.earthenv.org/DEM.html) [1] [http://www.unearthedoutdoors.net/global_data/true_marble/dow...](http://www.unearthedoutdoors.net/global_data/true_marble/download) [2] [https://github.com/geo-data/cesium-terrain- builder](https://github.com/geo-data/cesium-terrain-builder) [3] [https://www.mapbox.com/help/an-open- platform/](https://www.mapbox.com/help/an-open-platform/) ------ btown Their landing page and interaction model doesn't do their technology justice. Take a look here: [https://www.melown.com/intergeo2016/?pos=obj,10.740010,47.24...](https://www.melown.com/intergeo2016/?pos=obj,10.740010,47.246125,fix,881.58,-51.36,-69.21,0.00,152.72,55.00) \- you can drag around, and drag the edge of the compass disk to rotate the camera. From this press release [https://www.melown.com/blog/official- launch.html](https://www.melown.com/blog/official-launch.html) \- it seems that 3D exploration in-browser is only part of their innovation; the other is the ability to create detailed 3D maps of entire cities simply from simultaneous-localization-and-mapping of aerial imagery feeds. I'm not sure if Google's been able to do something similar, but I recall at one point that in order for buildings to appear as 3D in Google Maps/Earth, they'd need to be added manually by the community in their 3D editor. There are certainly glitches, and it's hard to know how much manual cleanup was required for these examples, but it's clear that not every building here was manually modeled. Regardless, it's quite an accomplishment to be able to do this type of thing from photographic data alone. ~~~ bri3d Google have used photogrammetry to produce 3D meshes for Earth/Maps since 2012: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Douyfa7l8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Douyfa7l8) They also use LIDAR data from street view to provide 3D data when you're in that mode as well. ~~~ btown That's awesome! I stand corrected. ------ underbluewaters Something is wrong with navigation on my machine. Mouse movements are opposite my expectation (I guess just a preference), and the movements are so sensitive it jumps around a lot and I can't really navigate where I intend to. I'm on an iMac w/magic mouse. ~~~ Raphmedia The magic mouse is really bad with maps. I get the same problem with Google Map. As for the direction of the movement, think of it as pushing a globe and not moving a camera. ~~~ badlucklottery >As for the direction of the movement, think of it as pushing a globe and not moving a camera. It's not the style of navigation that feels weird. It feels like they're doing the usual arcball but with some weird multiplier attached to rotations so it doesn't feel 1:1 but something like 1:4. It's really obvious if you zoom out enough to see the entire globe and grab one horizon then drag it 180 degrees to the other. The globe rotates almost twice in that span instead of ~1/2 rotation. Edit: or at least it does on my PC and phone. ------ ovidiup For Jollyturns ([https://jollyturns.com](https://jollyturns.com)) I'd like to overlay my users' ski tracks data, as well as various ski resort objects (lifts, runs etc) on a 3D Earth, to be displayed inside a browser. Why would I use Melown instead of CesiumJS ([https://cesiumjs.org/](https://cesiumjs.org/))? Especially since the latter appears to be free? ~~~ harwoodr It looks like their hosted solution has a cost - but the software is open source. ------ mempko Reminds me of the old HERE maps fully JS webgl implementation. (source used to work at HERE). They have since discontinued it. Glad to see others doing it. Very smooth. Good work. ------ whiskers This is, sadly, a total clunker on my Macbook Retina Pro 2015. The loading was slow, the rendering seemed to be just a couple of frames per second. Using the touchpad the actions seemed to be inverted (zooming in the opposite way to what I expected). I couldn't find any way to tilt the view, but didn't spend much time looking because the frame rate was so painfully low. ------ jeremyleach Very smooth. And it seems you can tilt the angle of the plane so you are almost at street level. I haven't seen that yet on google/apple maps etc. ------ alexmuro I am getting a 503 for all their js files hosted on the cdn.melowdown.com ~~~ chrishacken As am I. It also crashed my browser somehow. ------ Lio Works very well on my iPhone 6S+. ------ dgreensp Wow, looks and feels great! Better than Google! ~~~ bpicolo Have you tried Earth lately? Google Earth is insanely awesome. [https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Francisco,+CA/@37.8129...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Francisco,+CA/@37.8129142,-122.4335323,748a,20y,127.03h,74.63t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x80859a6d00690021:0x4a501367f076adff!8m2!3d37.7749295!4d-122.4194155) This is good too, but Google is doing it more performantly as far as I can tell. ~~~ tomslavkovsky Google has a different budget, Melown is a startup based in Prague with 10 great developers. ~~~ bpicolo And that's great and fine. It just doesn't match up with the OPs claim.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
When should startups have to start paying employees? - siegel When do you think the law should require a startup to comply with minimum wage and similar laws? I ask this question because I see far too many companies run into serious problems for not complying with these laws and being devastated by the consequences. It’s pretty overwhelmingly the case that at the earliest stages of a startup, the founders typically pay themselves nothing. They are working for equity. The same is often true for the earliest “employees.” Often time they are treated as independent contractors, even though that’s not technically legal. The law probably requires that they be paid at least minimum wage, but the company doesn’t have the money for that. Instead, again, the work for equity. It seems so unfair when a disgruntled early employee or even co-founder has a lawyer write a demand letter seeking $100,000 in unpaid wages and penalties. Everyone made an informed decision to work for equity. Everyone knew what they were doing. But the law doesn’t care. And, worse, in California, certain people in a management capacity (like directors) can have personal liability for unpaid wages. The usual response I hear to this is that the law is screwed up and way too employee friendly. These laws should be ditched and let people enter into whatever employment relationships they want. We’re all adults. I see this as a cop out. If you look more broadly at the world of employer-employee relations, there is a long, dark history of ruthless employers using the uneven power dynamic to cheat employees. I don’t think most people here would like the stories that are likely to come out if you ditched basic labor laws. The problem is it doesn’t “feel” like these laws should really apply to early-stage startups. My question is where one draws the line? And I’m curious what people think. ====== corecoder When should any company pay employees? Always and with no exception! There is a name for people in a company who share the risk of running a company, and that name is owners. There are also names for people who want all the gains for themselves and all the risks and losses for their employees, and they are not flattering names. ------ siegel I see two broad (but fuzzy) lines that can be drawn: 1) The requirement to pay at least minimum wage (i.e. not pay people in equity) should apply to anyone who is functioning in a traditional “non-exempt employee” capacity. This shouldn’t be all that controversial. People in these positions most typically earn less and for good reason have been the most protected under labor laws. Most founders and early employees are fulfilling roles that, with proper pay, would be considered exempt under labor laws. 2) Some sort of revenue or asset test. If you could pay your employees, but are not doing so, I have less sympathy for you. Investors are willing to put money into a company that will pay for reasonable salaries. So, even if your only assets come from investment (i.e. you don’t have enough revenue coming in), that’s not an excuse not to pay people. But this doesn’t seem to be enough, does it? These two factors would say that any company that can’t afford employees can simply not pay anyone who would otherwise be an exempt employee. I don’t see that as sufficient. There could be other criteria: 3) In addition to #1 and #2, the “employee” would have to own at least X% of the equity of the company 4) Or maybe just X% of the voting power of the company (even if not the economic ownership)? Those are just examples. Or maybe part of the solution is protection in terms of a liquidity preference of sorts. If a company has a less-than-stellar M&A exit, preferred shareholders (investors) typically have a liquidation preference that ensures they get their money back before anyone else shares in the merger proceeds. This seems sensible as a matter of investor protection – they put in $X million and understandably want to recoup their investment before other shareholders get a windfall. This might mean, however, that an early employee who didn’t get paid in cash and only has common stock, might get nothing while an investor who put in a bunch of money is made whole. What is the rationale for the investor being made whole, but an employee who worked for free getting nothing? The law could, for example, require that upon liquidation, employees who worked for free get a certain amount of money. (The law already provides a preference for wages in the bankruptcy context, but this is different. I’m imagining a situation where companies would be able to lawfully hire certain people for payment only in equity, rather than cash.) I’m curious to hear your ideas. How do you change the law to match the reality that startups can’t usually pay employees at the earliest stages, while not ending up in a situation where unscrupulous employers can take advantage of employees? ------ gus_massa What about not hiring someone if you can pay him/her properly? ~~~ siegel Well, let's say there are two co-founders who start a company they are bootstrapping. They don't pay themselves for the first 3, 6, 9 months or maybe even a year. Isn't that typical? Then let's say they have a dispute, with one having to leave after a year working together. The departed co-founder files a claim against the company for unpaid "wages." Now, the two co-founders had knowingly worked together for that year for equity - they were bootstrapping. But the departed co-founder has a slam-dunk case against the company for unpaid wages and probably waiting time and other penalties (as well as attorneys' fees). I think most people on here would think that's absurd. But that's the reality. And in California, not only is the company liable, but the remaining founder may be personally liable, as well. I sympathize with the idea that you shouldn't hire anyone until you can pay. But does the co-founder situation I described make clear the problem?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Two days in an underwater cave running out of oxygen - Luc http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40558067 ====== benzofuran When you're learning to cave dive, one of the first things that you learn is that you may very well die in there. Most of the training focuses on systems, skills repetition, and understanding and using redundant systems - folks getting into cave diving typically are already extremely experienced divers who if anything need only some minor skill tweaks - most cave instructors will not take on students who don't already have significant open water technical diving experience (multiple tanks, mixed gas, rebreathers, decompression, wreck, etc). A running joke is that the lost line drill (where you're placed intentionally off of the guide line and have to find it without a mask/light/visibility) is the most punctual cave task you'll ever do - you have the rest of your life to get it right. Here's a few good books on it (non-affiliate links): Caverns Measureless to Man by Sheck Exley (the father of cave diving): [https://www.amazon.com/Caverns-Measureless-Man-Sheck- Exley/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Caverns-Measureless-Man-Sheck- Exley/dp/0939748258) The Darkness Beckons by Martyn Farr: [https://www.amazon.com/Darkness-Beckons- History-Development-...](https://www.amazon.com/Darkness-Beckons-History- Development- Diving/dp/1910240745/ref=zg_bsnr_290109_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=Q1DCCDZ0MMB4N2SCBYBQ) Beyond the Deep by Bill Stone (the Tony Stark of cave diving): [https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Deep-Deadly-Descent- Treacherou...](https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Deep-Deadly-Descent- Treacherous/dp/0446527092) The Cenotes of the Riviera Maya by Steve Gerrard (patron saint / mapper of Yucatan caves): [https://www.amazon.com/Cenotes-Riviera- Maya-2016/dp/16821340...](https://www.amazon.com/Cenotes-Riviera- Maya-2016/dp/1682134016/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) This is more of a map and explanatory notes but gives great insight into the complexity of it. Currently there are 2 systems that almost all cenotes are part of in the Yucatan, and there's some really interesting work going on trying to link the two. Current work is going on at about 180m depth through a number of rooms at the back of "The Pit", and there are multi-day expeditions going on trying to find the linkage. ~~~ enimodas I would recommend this well written article: [https://www.outsideonline.com/1922711/raising- dead](https://www.outsideonline.com/1922711/raising-dead) It's the story about the diver David Shaw and his attempt to recover the body of diver Deon Dreyer in one of the deepest sweetwater caves on earth. A bit of a read but well worth it. ~~~ idlewords This is not cave diving, though. It's a very deep sinkhole, but with a clear path to the surface. The risks in these dives are related to extreme depth, not to the overhead environment. That said, it's a terrific article. ------ curtis Cave diving is one of those things that I am happy to only experience vicariously through the stories of others. ~~~ narrator Or you can watch Youtube vids like this : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtlwoX1YEmg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtlwoX1YEmg) This has got to be the scariest video on Youtube in which no harm comes to anyone. ~~~ dotancohen > This has got to be the scariest video on Youtube in which no harm comes to > anyone. Off topic, but here is a viable contender: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFMHjDqHL_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFMHjDqHL_Y) There are videos of higher towers, but I believe that this video is the most thoroughly annotated one. ~~~ freeflight That's a real classic! A not as high, but way more reckless version is this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFUcxnvAeMc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFUcxnvAeMc) Guaranteed to induce acrophobia. ~~~ arcticfox I really hope that guy practiced repressing the instinct to lunge at a bad throw when juggling. Extremely rare occurrence with such a simple pattern, but ooph! I feel like any of Alex Honnold's ropeless climbs deserves a link too, for example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phl82D57P58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phl82D57P58) ------ gregorymichael Did a sensory deprivation tank for the first time a few weeks ago. An hour was tough. Hard to imagine 60, with the added doubt of "you may never get out of here." ~~~ pmoriarty I find "sensory deprivation tanks" (aka "floatation tanks") to be rather relaxing, and would have no problem spending many hours inside. Now, being in a cold cave with a dangerous CO2/O2 ratio, exhausted, suffering from hypothermia and fearing for my life.. that doesn't sound like so much fun. ------ biggc > He realised the water at the surface of the lake was drinkable Can someone explain this phenomena? How can the water in a sea-cave become potable? ~~~ titanomachy I'm not familiar with Mallorca's hydrogeology, but I've done some cenote (cavern) diving in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. The caves are inland, but sea water infiltrates through the porous and channel-filled rock. The water nearer the surface is rainwater. The narrow region where freshwater and seawater intermingle is called the halocline, it creates a cool optical distortion which reminds me of the "oil paint" filter in photoshop. ~~~ stingraycharles This probably is a stupid question, but wouldn't the salty seawater be lighter than the rain water, and thus be at the surface ? ~~~ cr1895 Salty water is quite literally more dense than fresh water. Average seawater is 1025 kg/m^3, pure water is nominally 1000 kg/m^3. Somewhat related video: dense brine that doesn't freeze in Arctic sea ice sinks rapidly through liquid seawater below [https://youtu.be/WyWn1XJ9kTE](https://youtu.be/WyWn1XJ9kTE) ~~~ stingraycharles Oh geez, you're absolutely right, I don't know what I was thinking. I probably needed my morning coffee. ~~~ x2398dh1 It's OK, stingrays like you aren't expected to know about polar regions and super cold water. ------ fit2rule I'm quite surprised at the detail that the rescuers attempted to drill into the cave from above in order to provide supplies .. is anyone familiar with the depth of the cave pocket? This seems like a surprising choice to make given the logistics - but I guess a safer one, in the end .. assuming one has a drill system available and the depth is not too great. ~~~ avh02 to follow up on depth (not just from a difficulty point of view), if care isn't taken - i'd assume that once there's a pathway to the surface, the water pressure would push the air out and drown him. I also assume they're experts who know what they're doing, but at the same time, I guess there'd be too many unknown unless there was some established air-tight drilling technique specifically for this type of scenario? ~~~ fit2rule To be honest, its a fascinating scenario which leaves many questions. I'm going to have to ask my geology friends if there is such a thing as an air- tight drilling technique that would not have resulted in the scenario you describe - google-fu doesn't seem to produce results - but I imagine there might be some sort of air-tight sleeve that can be used at the head of the shaft, which may as well be rather thin diameter for this scenario, after all .. What I'm curious about is whether these cave-divers used this procedure, because they were prepared for it in some capacity. I mean, they managed to start - and then abandon - the idea, in a few hours. ~~~ benzofuran A lot of us cave divers work in other areas as well - I'm an engineer in Oil & Gas - a lot of other folks I know are either scientists or engineers. This sort of activity appeals to us for some reason. You described a blowout preventer ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowout_preventer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowout_preventer)) by the way :) Many cave systems are quite shallow, and while I don't know the details on the one there in Mallorca, by the size of what's described it was probably above the water table even though there likely wasn't a free-air connection to the surface. ~~~ fit2rule Thanks for the BOP reference. :) Terrific balls, you cave-divers! Definitely not for me .. though the stories do delight, and sometimes .. terrify. ------ ljf Does anyone know any more detail about their plan to drill down to him - and is similar rescues have been preformed this way? I'd be interested if the air he was breathing was 'trapped' and if drilling down would release it, and drown him, or if the air had a slow route in and out of the pocket he was in. Fascinating stuff. ------ j9461701 I might be speaking out of line, but taking on these kinds of risks with young children at home seems kind of selfish. The fact that he went back into the same cave that nearly killed him only a month later...almost as if to say: "I would rather my kids grow up without a Dad than live without my adrenaline fix" I am neither a father or a cave diver though, so I might be missing a piece of the puzzle. Would either groups of people care to comment? ~~~ aasarava Or maybe what he's saying is, "I would rather my kids learn that they should explore and enjoy the world, rather than never take any big risks." There are a lot of parents in the world. Once you start judging them (for actions other than abuse and neglect), you very quickly realize how limiting that is. Do we need to look down upon astronauts who have children? What about pilots? People who travel for work for days or weeks at a time? Someone who commutes an hour to work each way in a car that has a poor safety rating? The good news is that once you become a father, you'll get to decide (possibly with a partner) what the acceptable level of risk is for you and your family. ~~~ rdtsc Given the choice of having a father at home or have one dead in cave but famous for exploring cool places I don't think it's hard to guess what most children would pick. > The good news is that once you become a father, you'll get to decide > (possibly with a partner) what the acceptable level of risk is for you and > your family. That's a obvious. What I think is being questioned is if they made a good decision. In other I can freely decide not to strap my kid in a car seat but that doesn't mean I won't get a ticket or my child won't be seriously injured or worse in a car accident. ~~~ pragone > Given the choice of having a father at home or have one dead in cave but > famous for exploring cool places I don't think it's hard to guess what most > children would pick. In all seriousness, I do have a hard time guessing which one most children would pick. I can see reasonable arguments made on either side. Personally, I think it would be far more inspiring to have a father who died pursuing his passion, then one who gave it up to stay at home. ~~~ jonahx If you just asked them, in all their ignorance, you're undoubtedly right. If you asked the children who chose the adventurous dad _after_ he had died pursuing his passion, nearly 100% would trade the world to reverse that choice. ~~~ curun1r Your hypothetical survey method has a literal survivorship bias (and a statistical one...you're not asking the children of parents that took risks and didn't die). Looking at risk the way you're looking at it is a recipe for wasting your life. The better way to think of it is like the way that poker players look at their decision making...don't be outcome oriented. There's a logical, statistical way to do this and it's called the micromort. 1 micromort equates to a 1 in 1 million chance of death. Each activity that has been engaged in widely enough to be measured will have a micromort value and, while the math is a bit more complicated, they mostly just add up. Just because he engages in an exotic activity that carries some risk, doesn't mean he's being reckless. Put another way, would you say a father that chooses to drive a 2 hour commute (each way) per day is being reckless? No doubt you can find countless children who lost a parent in an auto accident who would tell you they would have wanted their father to have a shorter commute and still be with them. But since driving is a familiar activity, no one questions the risk that someone is incurring with that kind of decision. And yet that 2-hours to work and 2-hours back drive is, based on the stats that I've been able to find, around 1 micromort. Over the course of a year, that adds up to around 200 micromorts, or roughly 1/5000 chance of dying. I can't find the data on cave diving, which is no doubt higher than recreational diving, but SCUBA has a value of 5 micromorts per dive, so it's roughly equivalent to driving 1250 miles on a highway. Someone doing 40 dives per year is taking on roughly the same risk as that 50,000 mi/year driver. Humans are really bad about estimating risk. We do it by equating risk to the ease in which we can imagine something happening. It's why so many people are afraid of statistically safe activities like air travel while underestimating much more serious dangers. We need a framework, like micromorts, for thinking about risk logically to better determine what amount of risk to take on and then "spend" that risk budget in whatever way helps us get the most out of life. Parents can say, "I'd like a 90% chance of being alive when my kids turn 10, a 75% chance of being alive when they turn 18 and a 50% chance of being alive when they turn 30." Once you've decided on a risk threshold, you can work backwards to determine how many micromorts you're allowed to take on each year. Otherwise, you're just living your life based on irrational fears. ~~~ jamra This reads like the most sophistic argument to the point he was trying to make. The diver was a cave diver, not a regular scuba diver. It's very different and notoriously risky. He almost died in the same cave previously. His point was well taken. It doesn't mean that being risk averse is the _right_ way to live. It's a fair point and a good thing to consider when you are a parent. That's all. ~~~ BearGoesChirp >He almost died in the same cave previously. While I get the emotional impact of this, it really shouldn't be an argument either way once you begin using some framework to judge decisions. Think of it this way, if I nearly died in a car wreck on the way to work, would it be fine for me to never get in a car again? I almost died doing that once! It would make more sense to determine the risk. That he already nearly died doesn't really change the risk profile. Cave diving is extremely risky. That should be the important factor. Having nearly died should not. ------ acdanger See also this story if you want to make sure you don't really want to go diving in a subterranean cave: [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36097300](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36097300) ------ belovedeagle I wonder - did they take steps to replenish the cave's oxygen? If not, it's useless for the next person... I guess this is kind of silly and naive, but it's what I would do. ~~~ pavel_lishin I'm a little surprised there aren't caches of emergency supplies for situations like these. ~~~ manarth Cave-divers are expected (and taught) to carry reserve gas supplies with them. From the description, they had reserve supplies - enough reserves to search for an hour - but failed to recover their guideline within that time. The issue was that they lost their guide-line leading to the exit, rather than running out of gas. In such a scenario, no amount of reserve caches could really solve that problem. ------ A_Person I'd like to address the false assumption in this thread that cave diving is more dangerous than driving a car! I cave dive on a regular basis with two other guys. We've dived together as a team for nearly 10 years. I'm late 60s and single, the second guy is 50s and has a partner but no children, and the third is early 40s with a six-year-old, who he has every intention of seeing grow-up into adulthood. We often dive in a system comprising a complex maze of 8kms of underwater tunnels. Some are large, and would fit several divers across, but some are small, and you can barely squeeze through. The only entry to and exit from this system is a small pond, about 6 feet across and 4 feet deep, just big enough for one person to get in at a time. Then you scrunch yourself up, and drop down through a slot to enter the system. We'd generally go about 700m into this system, making up to 13 seperate navigational decisions (left? right? straight ahead?) which we have to reverse precisely to get back out at the end. This is all completely underwater, there's no air anywhere except for two air pockets hundreds of meters apart. As I like to say, in cave diving there is no UP – there is only OUT! It all sounds pretty dangerous, right? Wrong. NAVIGATION. The whole system is set up with fixed lines, each of which has a numbered marker every 50m or so. Before each dive, we consult the map, and plan exactly where we're going to go. I commit that plan to memory, write it down on a wrist slate, and also in a notebook which I take underwater. All three of us do this independently. Underwater, when we come to a junction, each of us checks the direction to go, then marks the exit direction with a personal marker. If anyone makes a mistake, for example, turns in the wrong direction, or forgets to leave a personal marker, the other two pick that up immediately. On the way back, when we get to each junction, each of us checks that it's the junction we expected, and we can see our personal markers. Each individual's markers can be distinguished by feel alone, so we could get the whole way back, separately, in total darkness, if we had to. So the odds of us getting lost in the system are very low. LIGHT. These caves are absolutely pitch black, so naturally you need a torch. In fact, nine torches! Each of us individually has a multi-thousand-lumen canister battery light, plus 2 backup torches, each of which would last the whole dive. I could also navigate by the light of my dive computer screen, and I'm considering carrying a cyalume chemical lightstick as well. So then I personally would have five different sources of light, and we'd need 11 sources of light to fail before the team would be left in the dark. The risk of this happening is basically zero. GAS. Each of us has two tanks in a fully redundant setup. If one side fails, we just go to the other and call the dive. In fact, our gas planning allows one diver's entire gas supply to fail, at the point of maximum penetration, and either one of the other two divers could get that guy back, plus himself, without relying on the third diver at all. However, gas is certainly a limited resource underwater, so it's always on our minds, and all three of us will turn the dive as soon as anyone hits their safety limit. There's lots more equipment involved, but let's leave it there for the moment, and turn our attention to... DRIVING! Each of us lives >400 km away from that system. So there and back is a five hour drive. During that drive, you could fall asleep and run off the road; have local fauna run out in front of your car; get head-on crashed by drunken drivers, and so on. Several of those are external risks that are not under our control. So the simple fact of the matter is this. Our cave dives are almost certainly SIGNIFICANTLY SAFER than driving to and from the dive site! The cave dives carry significant potential risks, but most of those are mitigated with proper training and equipment. Whereas there's not much I can do to stop a drunken driver running head-on into me. Certainly there are risks like tunnels collapsing and blocking the exit. But statistically, I'm sure that those are orders of magnitude less likely than having a heart attack, or falling over and breaking your neck. Hope that helps :-) ~~~ cbr [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort) has a single scuba dive as having the same risk of death as ~1700 miles in a car. And cave diving is even more dangerous. ~~~ iaw More interestingly, running a marathon is equally fatal as scuba diving. Unfortunately I think the scuba-diving in this list includes _every_ type of scuba and not the riskier types focused on in the articles linked in this thread. ------ agentgt _" I only turned it on when I went to pee or to climb down to get fresh water," he says._ I know this is really dumb question but why did he need to turn on his light to pee? I presume he is in his wet suite? ~~~ x2398dh1 I would presume that he didn't want to pee in his water supply, perhaps? So he had to aim very precisely toward a low-lying area. ------ ajarmst Reminded me of the very sad story of Peter Verhulsel: [http://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/11/12/Scuba-diver-lost- in-c...](http://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/11/12/Scuba-diver-lost-in-cave-dies- waiting-for-rescue/7366469083600/) ~~~ ajarmst I'm a qualified advanced recreational diver, and most diving by properly- trained (not 'quick tutorial at the dock' like a lot of tourists get) divers has a very manageable level of risk, even at altitude or under ice. Cave diving and mixture diving (esp. in overhead environments like the Andrea Doria) is well beyond my personal acceptable-risk horizon, but most of the people who go there are extremely experienced, well-equipped and cogniscant of the risks and how to mitigate them. (Those that aren't tend to die or learn they really shouldn't be there very fast). I would never call it safe, but thise that go there (or, say, K2) aren't being foolhardy. ~~~ stordoff What level of tuition should tourist divers be getting? I've only been diving a few times, and we were given (what felt like) a reasonable amount of safety briefings before even travelling to the dive site. IIRC the deepest we went was 12-13m (third dive with the same crew; first two were sub-10m), and I was under the impression (thought I'm __far__ from being an expert!) that it was difficult to cause any major problems at those depths unless you do it all the way the wrong way (i.e. fast/direct ascent to surface). ~~~ ajarmst From 12m, all you'd need to do is hold your breath and surface rapidly to give yourself a potentially fatal lung injury. Note that this is exactly what you would reflexively want to do in nearly any emergency or if you just got claustrophobic in the mask and reg (common) or had a sudden abyss panic (not uncommon) or even a trivial even like having your mask kicked off by a buddy. Recreational training should include a half dozen or so pool dives to practice skills. This gives you the training and confidence to cleanly handle minor emergencies, followed by three or four supervised training dives to test those skills in a real environment, and to give you a comfort level that gelps prevent panicy action later. Those first few dives to shallow depth are actually among the most dangerous you ever do, because you're a novice in an environment where your reflexes will kill you. ------ surgeryres No one has mentioned the risk subjected upon the rescue team to come get him. So there's that. ~~~ benzofuran Rescue teams for caves are usually regional volunteer groups - and usually it's body recovery. They go into it knowing what they're likely to find - very rarely (if ever) are they first responders or typical public service employees, at least as part of their job function ------ tysonrdm There should be a law against bringing in and leaving nylon ropes in the cave. If this continues, all the caves are going to be filled with nylons ropes left by previous divers. Do we want these caves, too, to eventually become a garbage dumping ground? ~~~ castis "I'm not a cave diver, have no emotional attachment to this article, and I don't have even a rudimentary understanding of the culture surrounding cave diving but I made an account just to say I think those people should have arbitrary limits placed on them." ~~~ Chris2048 With you, except for "no emotional attachment to this article" \- why is this needed? ~~~ castis They don't mention anything about the central topic of the article; the man who was stuck in the cave. If they had any sort of emotional reaction to the article, I imagine they would have said something about it. ~~~ Chris2048 I understand. My point is, why do they need an emotional reaction? ~~~ castis They don't, no one does, but any one of the three things I listed would have most likely caused someone to contribute something useful to the conversation.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What are some of the great insights that you got from your heatmaps? - cheekusm For example, I found that replacing animated user images with real user images in testimonial section has increased the attention span of the testimonial section by 3X. Looking for similar insights? ====== XCSme Using heatmaps from the [https://usertrack.net](https://usertrack.net) tool on its own landing page I usually notice: * What buttons in the header are actually needed/clicked/hovered [https://i.snipboard.io/UShRbI.jpg](https://i.snipboard.io/UShRbI.jpg) * What non-clickable elements users try to click on (eg. product images, they expect to get a lightbox, but nothing happens) * If a specific UI element is visible enough and users know it's interactable [https://i.snipboard.io/nJ7AlX.jpg](https://i.snipboard.io/nJ7AlX.jpg) I personally find the session playbacks a lot more insightful, because heatmaps don't really tell the whole story, but a session playback can show you in what order do your users read the page, what are they trying to do, what are their last actions before they leave your site, etc. ------ tarun_anand How did you arrive at this insight using a heatmap? I am curious to know. This is a problem that is there is general for any analytics feature ~~~ cheekusm We created a heatmap and did the comparative study of the same page in two different time periods. One before the changes and one after the changes. The attention heatmap clearly showed a bright red color in the testimonial section which was bluish earlier. ~~~ tarun_anand OK so it was kind of like AB Testing but using heatmaps ~~~ cheekusm Yep, but data drives because we knew that the testimonial section has low engagement.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Printing tiny, high-precision objects - rbanffy https://actu.epfl.ch/news/printing-tiny-high-precision-objects-in-a-matter-o/ ====== CosmicShadow This actually feels like the future. So much stuff comes out that's like "ok, that's cool", but it's really not that fast or great, and yes I know this isn't close to out, but even the demo is like wow! And the medical applications! It's nice to be genuinely excited once in awhile! ------ brennanpeterson Neat. These optical techniques work wonders. I have really liked the various 2-photon based techniques. [https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/nanoscribe- introduces-qu...](https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/nanoscribe-introduces- quantum-x-a-two-photon-3d-printer-for-microoptics-157656/) (for example) 2 photon techniques tend to have much higher resolution than noted here. This seems a technique for devices on the macroscale, as compared to the 100nm sorts of resolution for the 2PA based systems. ------ h2odragon > "The system is currently capable of making two-centimeter structures with a > precision of 80 micrometers, " Ok, fine and dandy but then: > "Interior design could be a potentially lucrative market for the new > printer." ... I guess these people are really into the "tiny houses" thing. ~~~ hnuser123456 Yeah. I have a standard 200mm edge-length-cube printer, and I find it just a little small for functional designs. Something around 1ft to 18" would be nice. I don't mind waiting a few days for a print if it all comes out in one solid piece. ------ sitkack This doesn't have the bed adhesion issues that SLA and DLP printers have, so much more delicate structures can be built. So it will be perfect for constructing microtubial networks that form the support structures for growing biological material. If used to make soft robots with embedded sensors, we could construct artificial coral. Measuring is affecting, is constructing. 3d printing is currently on the human scale of "can I hold it, and interact with it", while scaling up will eventually enable us to 3d print buildings and megastructures, scaling down will enable intelligent matter. ------ iamleppert My Anycubic photon has a resolution of 47 microns and can be had for less than $300. [https://www.anycubic.com/products/anycubic- photon-3d-printer](https://www.anycubic.com/products/anycubic- photon-3d-printer) I have 3 of them and regularly print objects just like the one in the article, smaller even. ------ linsomniac This is really neat, but the real breakthrough in 3D printing, to me, is: My co-worker recently got a pretty good 3D printer for under $200. ~~~ chrisco255 Which model? I'm in the market myself and interested to know what's good to buy under $500. ~~~ nickthegreek Get yourself an Ender 3. [https://www.amazon.com/Official-Creality-3D-Printer- Source/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Official-Creality-3D-Printer- Source/dp/B07D218NX3) If you want resin, check out the Elegoo Mars. [https://www.amazon.com/ELEGOO- Photocuring-Printer-Off-line-P...](https://www.amazon.com/ELEGOO-Photocuring- Printer-Off-line-Printing/dp/B07K3SH9Y7) ~~~ mcstafford $240?! The manufacturer sells it for $175. [https://www.creality3d.shop/products/creality- ender-3-3d-pri...](https://www.creality3d.shop/products/creality- ender-3-3d-printer-economic-ender-diy-kits-with-resume-printing-function-v- slot-prusa-i3-220x220x250mm) ~~~ jhomedall It seems that isn't the official website: [https://old.reddit.com/r/ender3/comments/a219ol/do_not_buy_f...](https://old.reddit.com/r/ender3/comments/a219ol/do_not_buy_from_wwwcreality3dshop_it_is_not_the/) ------ person_of_color Finally, something gamechanging around here and not blogspam about making a JS library 1% faster.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Machine Zone Having Players Revolt? - cindyb Machine Zone's popular game, "Game of War" has upset players so much that players have started a boycott against them.<p>What does a company have to do that upsets players so much that they cease to spend, after previously spending over $500k?<p>The answer?<p>- Have a game that has terrible lag<p>- Have terrible customer service<p>- Create a feature release that accounts that have spent $50K+ become obsolete with in a month.<p>Is this the new attitude/future of mobile gaming?<p>Also, with the terrible lag and customer service, how will this affect the CEO of Machine Zone's future in helping New Zealand with the transportation. If his technology can't fix lag in a mobile game, how will it hold up with a country's public transit system?<p>If anyone plays Game of War, what are your thoughts and feelings on what is going on? Leave a comment below. ====== sassypants007 I read once that GoW was so successful because in the beginning it took strategy and networking to succeed, and that brought in a different customer base than most gaming platforms. Business professionals, high earners, military veterans. The problem with having those folks as a customer base is they expect to be treated like intelligent individuals, which Mz refuses to do. The requests being made are basic, fundamental customer service issues. MZs response to push harder for more spending, even to create an entire day's worth of events around paying equal to a large mortgage was the worst possible idea, yet they continue with it. Now they have new business ventures, and in one article said they are excited to see where GoW is at in 2017. As a dedicated player of 3 years, I find it hard to believe that GoW will last that long with their current trajectory. ------ Bunny762 The amount I've spent isn't the issue. It's def significant though. MZ made me obsolete after spending 35k+. They release SO many things, in a very short period of time. To keep up and stay at a competitive level, you would need to spend several thousand dollars each week at the current rate MZ is going. It's been this way for months now. I deleted the app yesterday and walked away from this game. I've never been a gamer. This was the first (and last) game I've ever got involved with at this level. They suck you in, then keep you trapped. They are professionals at getting more money out of people. Spending isn't the problem. The problem is how MZ treats their customers. I've never seen customers treated this bad in my entire life. Email responses are nothing more than an automated response that has nothing to do with the email you sent. There is no freedom of speech in GOW. You could have a $50,000 account and if you slip up and use a word like; ban, boycott, etc.. They will lock the account and you will be out of the $50,000 you invested. Corruption at best. To try and explain the level of corruption, and shady shit they do, can't be explained in a blog. If you aren't familiar with the game, it will be impossible to understand. It's literally sickening what MZ does. It would take a book to explain everything this company has done to thousands of players. Players with accounts over $100k are quitting at an alarming rate. MZ only care about money. They don't care about their product. They are trying to milk every dollar they can out of GOW before it dries up, then they will repeat the exact same thing with Mobile Strike.. I can't wait for Karma to pay them a visit. Worst business tactics I've ever seen. It's never been about spending for the players, it's about respect and appreciation. Two words MZ knows nothing about. GREED has ruined this game and MZ. They could still be VERY profitable by listening to the players and giving the players (majority) what they want. I hope this blog spreads like a wild fire .. So many others that will chime in. Then, when it does, MZ will start in with the threats, etc etc ------ d14904 I have played the game for about 9 months and spent just under 16k. During that time 2 glitches ( which ) happen OFFTEN cost me to loose all my playing tools and have to rebuild, in turn, spend more money to rebuild. I sent messages to the customer service, and the replies were auto replies, and did NOTHING! They send out more building blocks only to get the bigger accounts to suck up the power, but to get it, yes,they must pay to buy the games packs at $99 a pop, plus fees. And when you complete the new updated challenges, you can rest a sure that new more challenges will be issued that the costs quadruple to get than the prior, and that continues throughout the time I've played. In theory that's all business runs in I'm kind of OK with it however, when these new challenges come out the cost of doing it more than 10 to 15 times cost of the prior challenges. That is the problem with the game. In between these challenges with technical problems never get fixed. The game of war is a game of two cities that battle and kill all troops and get points for that. But the problem is the game legs, shuts off, kicks you out, and leaves your city defenseless while trying to log back on and getting error messages. Constant gaming problems while trying to log back in and CAN'T!!! All while you are being zeroed by active players on the game. And when you send a message to customer service about just what happened they pretty much tell you there's nothing they can do and in the fine print of their terms and conditions say any technical problem is not their fault. Zeroed by active players on the game. And when you send a message to customer service about just what happened they pretty much tell you there's nothing they can do and in the fine print of their terms and conditions say any technical problem is not their fault. So with that being said,they pretty much tell you to bad and they know they have others that will spend the money that you don't & if you stop playing another will be there to fill your void. I hope people will take this into heart and not play the game of war or mobile strike the same game just different icons. Their customer service has to change and get more responsible and more importantly take care of the paying players. Well good luck everyone. ------ kush0420 I spent to much money on a couple of accounts in game of war and I'm just so upset with how MZ handles any problems there is, every response from their customer service is pretty much the exact same as the last! I 100% support the movement of the boycott and hope that it gets so much attention MZ will actually fix the game instead of making every upgrade impossible for the little guys to reach!!! ------ gownb Too many lags lately and a couple new releases within about a week have stopped for now. Thinking to spend few packs for only one new released item is ridiculous for the game. If players continue to spend, MZ will continue to release some other expensive and ridiculous items. It's easy money making for them, so why not to release. ------ Jesterific Please join us in posting your thoughts on how MZ can improve the game as we Boycott purchasing packs: [https://www.facebook.com/groups/255177908182731/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/255177908182731/) ------ gowlover I love this game and the boycott is dumb ~~~ sassypants007 What a worthwhile post ------ baldavin If you all recall Umpa lead a boycott to only get threatened with a lawsuit if he did not end it. For you that don't know Umpa he was king of SW after stayalive stepped down. So yes a very large spender. Not to the lvl of stay ( that spent over a million on the game ) but close. We have lost so many great players due to this players that have well over 100k in the game. To keep up to the highest lvl of play is insain now day 2 new cores in 2 weeks ( takes aleast $1k to make a brand new core) building lvl 22-23 March tree 14 this is in the last few months that is about $15-20k to max all. This is a drop in the bucket. This compiled with lag and poor customer service no wait none existent.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The five “Next Big Things” in open source - SD Times: Software Development News - hendler http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=35058&print=true ====== zhiel I'm so appalled by the design of this site that I'm not going to read this, although the topic is interesting...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Europe heatwave: record high of 45C (113F) expected in France - ForHackernews https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/25/highs-of-45c-expected-in-france-as-heatwave-scorches-europe ====== pier25 This is the video that opened my eyes on climate change 7 years ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pznsPkJy2x8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pznsPkJy2x8) It's amazing to think that humanity is still mostly clueless about what is going to happen. ------ dv_dt Ironic given the EU has just missed passing a zero carbon 2050 pledge. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/20/eu- leade...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/20/eu-leaders-to- spar-over-zero-carbon-pledge-for-2050) ~~~ chewz Well in Central Europe climate is getting pleasantly mediterranian. People spend hollidays in the country instead of going to Spain. Agriculture is booming. I do not miss cold rainy summers of my youth. ~~~ ForHackernews Will you miss not having your country swamped with hundreds of thousands of climate refugees? Because they're coming. ------ billconan this terrifies me	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Amazon announces 99c TV to own - AlexBlom http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/09/01/amazon-unveils-99-fox-and-abc-tv-show-rentals-apple-fanboys-say-wha/ ====== mhd And of course everything seems to be US only. Dang.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Discussing Tradeoffs of TLS 1.3 (via Colm MacCárthaigh on Twitter) - evv https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/978430840198742016.html ====== evv Prior discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16666057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16666057) What a contentious issue! I'm curious to see who will end up swallowing the cost of this, because it sounds like 0-rtt poses a direct tradeoff between the expense of application developers and leaf nodes like CloudFlare.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: CloudRail – API Integration Solution - gro_us https://cloudrail.com/cloudrail-api-integration-solution/ ====== cloudrail Wow, thanks for the post @gro_us. CloudRail team here... happy to answer any questions. ~~~ gregmac So on the surface, this is essentially just a library that implements an abstract interface to a bunch of "cloud services", and then provides implementations of those abstractions for some of the actual cloud services. It adds API tracking, so presumably there is some connection back to CloudRail. What happens if CloudRail goes down or is responding slowly or the connection is blocked? Does the library still work? Seeing as it's also only a library, if someone stops paying, does it continue to function? Obviously if the upstream provider(s) change their APIs in a backwards-incompatible way, it would break, which is no different than if you use the provider directly. It seems like what you're really paying for here is the work done to build the library, the updates (and monitoring for need to update), API tracking service, and support. You're not actually using CloudRail's systems for the connection, so is there a license check that disables the library if the CloudRail account goes dead? The nature of this abstraction also means lowest common denominator. The use of "interfaces" over top is a good way to handle this, but could also get messy. When you have a certain function that is only available on one provider, or is not available on only one of several providers, how do you decide when to create a new interface vs not support that function vs implement it as a "throw not implemented error" (or do you have any never do that)? ~~~ cloudrail The library sends statistical data back to CloudRail to provide statistics and notifications for required library updates. We handle this in a way that the library still works even if the CloudRail server is down or slow. The data itself flows directly between library and cloud provider. Currently we don't disable libraries because they die anyway without updates eventually. Yes, our unified interfaces are the lowest common denominator. We provide functionality which is not available among all providers in a separate interface. The only exception are functions where the developer needs to be prepared to get an empty result. E.g. some users just don't set a profile picture on social, so you have to handle it anyways. ------ jitl This reminds me of Kloudless: [https://kloudless.com/](https://kloudless.com/) It's interesting though that CloudRail is library-only; I like that you don't need to worry about CloudRail uptime. However, doesn't this mean I need to upgrade my dependency when a downstream API changes? With Kloudless or other gateways, the gateway can update independently of my application, so the strategy is a trade off ~~~ cloudrail You are right, in the end it is a trade off. CloudRail has no down times, can't touch your data and is as performant as a native implementation. But yes, in case of an API change you have to update the SDK. We have a notification system though. You will get an email if you are affected by a change. ------ aeharding Does this break anyone else's two-finder navigate back gesture on Mac w/ Chrome after scrolling down in the page? ~~~ cloudrail Just tested it and you are right. Don't ask me why, works with Safari. We'll fix that. ------ cloudrail You'll get a way better overview on the landing page [https://cloudrail.com](https://cloudrail.com). The page which was linked here provides actually more details. ------ gro_us FAQ via email: Yes we are working on a .NET SDK and will release it in the next months. If you sign up for a free account, we'll keep you in the loop. ~~~ vittore I did signed up for a free account, do I need to do anything else to be notified when .NET SDK is ready? ~~~ cloudrail Nope, we will reach out to you when it's ready ------ vittore Discovered it couple of weeks ago myself too. Anyone does have any experience with it? ~~~ cloudrail Tons of experience (CloudRail team here) :-) Happy to answer any questions you might have. ~~~ erik_p Any plans to add reddit's API under the social category? ~~~ cloudrail Also a good suggestion. We'll check if thats possible. Thanks!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Reptyr – Reparent a running program to a new terminal - pmoriarty https://github.com/nelhage/reptyr ====== justincormack There was some discussion on the NetBSD list today as to how you might do this properly, ie with OS support not some hacks [1]. Although it is not clear it is worth bothering, as you just use screen first... [1] [http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.os.netbsd.devel.kernel](http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.os.netbsd.devel.kernel) ~~~ pmoriarty This is useful for those cases where you didn't start screen first, such as when you either forgot or didn't think you'd need it but it turned out you did. ~~~ pronoiac This may be a dumb question, but wouldn't this work? * press ctrl-z to put the program in the background * start screen * run fg within screen ~~~ caipre screen (and tmux) start a new instance of the shell, which would have no knowledge of the backgrounded process. You'd just see the message "fg: no current job" ~~~ emmelaich And even if you could(1), the background process typically has the terminal open - and screen uses a separate pseudo terminal aka pty -- As suggested by the name - rePTYr (1) ^Z sends SIGSTOP; to continue you can signal SIGCONT. But then what?! ------ sciurus There is some previous discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2129726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2129726) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2571936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2571936) ------ bob917 I tried this several times and it rarely works.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
True Surprise - dmit http://www.docbastard.net/2019/05/true-surprise.html ====== killjoywashere One of my favorite ER patients was a guy who got stabbed in the chest by his girlfriend with a 10" serrated bread knife. Came in with the knife still in him, buried to the handle. Bellowing that this proved ... something about him. He was clearly pumped. But not really bleeding. After a chest CT and removing the foreign object from his chest, there was still no real bleeding. The knife had gone in at a bit of an angle, but what really saved him was the fat. 10" of steel and it never made it to the pleural cavity. First case report I'm aware of where fat was cardioprotective. ~~~ classichasclass In the bad surprise category was the 50-ish guy I admitted as an intern for uncomplicated chest pain. He got married that day but left the ceremony in an ambulance instead of a limousine. The plan was cardiac enzymes and put him on a stress test in the morning. First set was negative and the anginal pain had abated. All the right things were done. Seemed straightforward. Three hours later while I was trying to sleep I get a frantic call from the ED that he was coding. He was sitting up watching TV, suddenly turned grey and clutched his chest, and fell back in ventricular fibrillation. We shocked him into pulseless electrical activity and then did a three hour futile code because his new wife couldn't grasp the fact her new husband had died right in front of her. And really, who can? Surprise. ~~~ insulanian What does "coding" mean in this context? ~~~ Insanity Yeah because this is HN, I first read it as "the patient started programming in the middle of the night". ~~~ ak39 The irony of surprise is misunderstanding in the HN context too. I too pictured the poor bloke got up, cracked open his laptop to do some coding in a hospital bed. LOL. Thought: poor guy can't even get a break from devops on his wedding day and even after a fucking heart attack. No surprises! ------ inflatableDodo I met a soldier who had been shot in the head in Iraq. He had a scar all the way round his head from near the temple right to the back of his head where the bullet had gone under the skin and travelled round the surface of his skull before exiting. He was a very lucky bastard. ~~~ noobiemcfoob Luck seems relative. He did get shot after all ~~~ inflatableDodo True. Amend it to, 'much luckier than most other people who have been shot in the head'. ------ FearNotDaniel Is it normal in medicine to refer to a baby's physical sex as its "gender"? I'm not looking to start a debate on whether that is right or wrong, just curious to know if that's the common usage or just this particular writer's preference. ~~~ LostJourneyman In medicine, at least in my experience, the terms are used fairly interchangeably. ~~~ noobiemcfoob Similar with scientists in my experience. Though it's more easily explained as the older generation sees the terms as interchangeable or not worth arguing about. The younger generation tends to use sex specifically and might call out improper use of gender. // "MICE DON'T HAVE GENDER!!!!" <\- something I've heard at high volume too many times ~~~ FearNotDaniel Interesting the way it changes within a couple of generations, the "older generation" in my day, i.e. my dad - a linguist - would call out the then- modern interchangeable usage, by insisting " _nouns_ have a gender, _people_ have a sex!" ------ obituary_latte Great blog. Lots of cool and interesting tales. Thanks for sharing. ------ jypepin That is interesting. I don't know if I'd ever feel 100% sure that the bullet actually bounced out until the bullet is actually found. ~~~ kijin The bullet would have to be made of something really exotic in order to hide from a head-to-toe CT. ~~~ Cthulhu_ Didn't Mythbusters do an episode of that? IIRC they tried an ice bullet and one made out of frozen meat, neither really worked. ------ stared -log(probability_of_our_prediction) There are no "true" and "false" surprises, it's continuous. And it is additive.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years - anon1385 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/03/ocean-acidification-carbon-dioxide-emissions-levels ====== moultano In a bit of cosmic irony, most fossil fuel was created from mass extinctions that accompanied changes in ocean chemistry: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event) ~~~ perlpimp Very cool I guess we will have to adapt. As current Industrial Complex is too large and unwieldy to react to such thing. ~~~ ommunist The Industrial Complex is far too small to be even considered among such players as Litosphere and Biosphere. ~~~ Daishiman This is absolutely false. The entire academic world says otherwise with a fantastically high margin of confidence. ------ JumpCrisscross How credible a source is IPSO, the author of the report backing this story? From what I can tell it's a U.K. non-profit hosted by the Zoological Society of London [1], itself a U.K. non-profit [2]. Alex Rogers, IPSO's Scientific Director [1], is also a Professor in Conservation Biology at the University of Oxford [3]. Paper article is based on: [http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/Bijma-et- al-2013.pdf](http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/Bijma-et-al-2013.pdf) [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Programme_on_the_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Programme_on_the_State_of_the_Ocean) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoological_Society_of_London](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoological_Society_of_London) [3] [http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/view/rogers_ad.htm](http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/view/rogers_ad.htm) ~~~ Aloisius Well ocean acidification is real and proven. At this point all we're arguing about is how many years we have left. ~~~ noonespecial This is certainly true, but amount matters. If its 300 years then we have a problem, if its 3000, maybe not so much. Articles like this do not help give perspective. ~~~ venomsnake Not at all ... if the acidification is moving some positive feedback loops (and it seems it is) we have much less. ~~~ ars There are almost no positive feedback loops in nature, for the simple reason that they tend to get triggered by random variations and feedback on themself till they reach limit and convert to negative loops. ~~~ Daishiman Try Siberian bog swamps releasing an amount of methane with effects equal to the US yearly emissions. ~~~ kbutler "The fact that the ice core records do not seem full of methane spikes due to high-latitude sources makes it seem like the real world is not as sensitive as we were able to set the model up to be." [http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/much-a...](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/much- ado-about-methane/) ------ hcarvalhoalves The short-term scenario is not good, but from the little I know about aquatic biology/chemistry, it might not be as catastrophical as the article pictures it. Increased CO2 levels should just cause algae/cyanobacteria blooms, which will balance CO2/O2 levels back again and foster primary consumers (solving over- fishing as a bonus). Also, H2CO3 gets buffered by all the Ca/Mg content in the ocean, so I don't think it's even _possible_ for the pH to just drop forever (as in the graph someone posted in one of the comments here). ~~~ randomfool I live in Seattle and in just the past few years, beaches which used to be absolutely covered in oysters are now barren because of acidification. And by covered, I mean you need a path through them to walk (they are sharp), and the most difficult thing when picking them was to pick up a single one rather than cluster. This was on the Hood canal for anyone in the area. [http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea- change/2013/sep/11/...](http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea- change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview/?prmid=4939) It absolutely amazed me how fast everything disappeared. It really shocked me. ~~~ ommunist Local insignificant event. ~~~ Daishiman The appearance of multiple local effects is a clear indicator or a global trned. ------ colmvp The Seattle Times did an interactive article about this very subject last month: [http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea- change/2013/sep/11/...](http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea- change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview/) ~~~ wiredfool I read that just after reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Capitol trilogy. (40 days of rain, 50 degrees below, 60 days...) Yeah, it's science fiction, but it's plausible hard sf, not space opera. And the Time article sounded way too close to some of what was happening in the books. Ocean acidification was mentioned somewhat in passing in the last book as something that's very hard to reverse, partially because of the chemistry and partially because of the sheer amount of chemicals that would be required. That was in contrast to a multi hundred billion dollar salt transport to restart the thermo haline circulation. ------ SCAQTony Let's presume it is all true. Gizmag quoted a study that 15-container ships (just 15) dole out the same amount of pollution as 760-million cars. (I shit you not): [http://www.gizmag.com/shipping- pollution/11526/](http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/) God knows what coal and power plants produce but nonetheless, why does the IPSO and The Guardian have to scare the shit out of everyone instead of offering some sort of real, solution? If this is all true and this is as dire as they say, one would think or suggest that the military take over the shipping duties of these 15-container- ships and use 15-nuclear-powered vessels instead? this would remove the carbon footprint of these polluting vessels and/or 750-million cars per day with way less waste? Next, onto the power plants instead of the barbecues and lawn mowers? ~~~ nrmilstein Not all journalism or scientific reporting is about presenting solutions, and pointing out the problems (especially of this severity, if the article is to be believed) is an important step. Furthermore, as the article says, I don't think anyone knows the solution. Even if we drastically reduce carbon emissions, it probably won't help. I often find an attitude of dismissal and disdain towards environmental reporting like this on Hacker News. I think it stems from how we're so used to the optimism and can-do attitude of Silicon Valley that it's hard to digest how we may have created a problem we can't solve. It feels better to think "oh, they're just not being innovative enough in their solutions" and present oneself as above the fray. But the stark reality, if the science is to be believed, is that we're on the path towards major environmental changes in the foreseeable future, and as of right now, we don't have a solution. ~~~ 7952 I agree with the criticism of HN. The lack of understanding of basic geography and the environment is shocking. Its like listening to a bunch of non- technical sales people discuss computer security. ------ Smudge "This story has broken an embargo and will shortly be taken down. It will be relaunched to the site at 6.00am BST. Apologies" Interesting. ~~~ civilian In case they will be taking it down, here is the text: Ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years Overfishing and pollution are part of the problem, scientists say, warning that mass extinction of species may be inevitable By Fiona Harvey in Kiel The Guardian, Thursday 3 October 2013 Coral is particularly at risk from acidification and rising sea temperatures. Photograph: Paul Jarrett/PA The oceans are more acidic now than they have been for at least 300m years, due to carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, and a mass extinction of key species may already be almost inevitable as a result, leading marine scientists warned on Thursday. An international audit of the health of the oceans has found that overfishing and pollution are also contributing to the crisis, in a deadly combination of destructive forces that are imperilling marine life, on which billions of people depend for their nutrition and livelihood. In the starkest warning yet of the threat to ocean health, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) said: "This [acidification] is unprecedented in the Earth's known history. We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure. The next mass extinction may have already begun." It published its findings in the State of the Oceans report, collated every two years from global monitoring and other research studies. Alex Rogers, professor of biology at Oxford University, said: "The health of the ocean is spiralling downwards far more rapidly than we had thought. We are seeing greater change, happening faster, and the effects are more imminent than previously anticipated. The situation should be of the gravest concern to everyone since everyone will be affected by changes in the ability of the ocean to support life on Earth." Coral is particularly at risk. Increased acidity dissolves the calcium carbonate skeletons that form the structure of reefs, and increasing temperatures lead to bleaching where the corals lose symbiotic algae they rely on. The report says that world governments' current pledges to curb carbon emissions would not go far enough or fast enough to save many of the world's reefs. There is a time lag of several decades between the carbon being emitted and the effects on seas, meaning that further acidification and further warming of the oceans are inevitable, even if we drastically reduce emissions very quickly. There is as yet little sign of that, with global greenhouse gas output still rising. Corals are vital to the health of fisheries, because they act as nurseries to young fish and smaller species that provide food for bigger ones. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by the seas – at least a third of the carbon that humans have released has been dissolved in this way, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and makes them more acidic. But IPSO found the situation was even more dire than that laid out by the world's top climate scientists in their landmark report last week. In absorbing carbon and heat from the atmosphere, the world's oceans have shielded humans from the worst effects of global warming, the marine scientists said. This has slowed the rate of climate change on land, but its profound effects on marine life are only now being understood. Acidification harms marine creatures that rely on calcium carbonate to build coral reefs and shells, as well as plankton, and the fish that rely on them. Jane Lubchenco, former director of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a marine biologist, said the effects were already being felt in some oyster fisheries, where young larvae were failing to develop properly in areas where the acid rates are higher, such as on the west coast of the US. "You can actually see this happening," she said. "It's not something a long way into the future. It is a very big problem." But the chemical changes in the ocean go further, said Rogers. Marine animals use chemical signals to perceive their environment and locate prey and predators, and there is evidence that their ability to do so is being impaired in some species. Trevor Manuel, a South African government minister and co-chair of the Global Ocean Commission, called the report "a deafening alarm bell on humanity's wider impacts on the global oceans". "Unless we restore the ocean's health, we will experience the consequences on prosperity, wellbeing and development. Governments must respond as urgently as they do to national security threats – in the long run, the impacts are just as important," he said. Current rates of carbon release into the oceans are 10 times faster than those before the last major species extinction, which was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum extinction, about 55m years ago. The IPSO scientists can tell that the current ocean acidification is the highest for 300m years from geological records. They called for strong action by governments to limit carbon concentrations in the atmosphere to no more than 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent. That would require urgent and deep reductions in fossil fuel use. No country in the world is properly tackling overfishing, the report found, and almost two thirds are failing badly. At least 70 per cent of the world's fish populations are over-exploited. Giving local communities more control over their fisheries, and favouring small-scale operators over large commercial vessels would help this, the report found. Subsidies that drive overcapacity in fishing fleets should also be eliminated, marine conservation zones set up and destructive fishing equipment should be banned. There should also be better governance of the areas of ocean beyond countries' national limits. The IPSO report also found the oceans were being "deoxygenated" – their average oxygen content is likely to fall by as much as 7 per cent by 2100, partly because of the run-off of fertilisers and sewage into the seas, and also as a side-effect of global warming. The reduction of oxygen is a concern as areas of severe depletion become effectively dead. Rogers said: "People are just not aware of the massive roles that the oceans play in the Earth's systems. Phytoplankton produce 40 per cent of the oxygen in the atmosphere, for example, and 90 per cent of all life is in the oceans. Because the oceans are so vast, there are still areas we have never really seen. We have a very poor grasp of some of the biochemical processes in the world's biggest ecosystem." The five chapters of which the State of the Oceans report is a summary have been published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, a peer-reviewed journal. ------ graycat Yup, why do I suspect that this article is more of the same from the big movement to claim that humans are evil, carbon is filthy, filthy humans are ruining the planet with evil carbon, or evil humans are ruining the planet with filthy carbon, and the only hope for the planet is massive, UN directed carbon cap and trade to send massive amounts of money from the evil, rich nations to the noble, poor nations, and that humans should junk their cars and either walk or use bicycles, and the rich nations should feel ashamed and guilty for their grossly excessive use of the finite resources of our pure, precious, pristine, delicate planet, right at the tipping point of total devastation? Do I have that about right? Or we could borrow from the Mayans and kill people and pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky or, in this case, save the planet from filthy carbon from evil humans. Or, we need a boys' band complete with uniforms to counter the sin and corruption of a pool table in town. Let's have some more flim-flam, fraud scams! ------ kmfrk I hope you like jellyfish. ~~~ memracom Can humans eat jellyfish? Maybe part of the solution is to shift overfishing to the jellyfish population. ~~~ svachalek They can be a bit like rubbery noodles if they're not thoroughly dried, or crispy like shredded cabbage if they are. I don't know if the edible ones don't sting or they do something to neutralize the stingers. (Jellyfish stingers are spring loaded and generally work quite well whether the jellyfish is alive or not.) ------ IanDrake Just thinking out loud here... Can anyone think of other cases where science is used to predict the future of complex systems more than 2 years in advance? I'm not talking about moore's law, but statistical models used to predict the future. How many solar flares will there be in 2020? What will the DOW be in 2050? How many democrats will be in congress in 2021? Stuff like that. So far, the only ones I can think of are models that always spit out the same message... "The earth is dying and we're at fault." I'm just curious if anyone knows of any predictive models that weren't created to scare the shit out of people. ~~~ dragonwriter > Can anyone think of other cases where science is used to predict the future > of complex systems more than 2 years in advance? Every empirically-based plan for business, long-term policy, etc., ever. The forward-looking aspect of the science of cosmology. Lots more. > So far, the only ones I can think of are models that always spit out the > same message... "The earth is dying and we're at fault." That's more indicative of the biases through which you filter the available information (perhaps most importantly, the bias in the information sources from which you _receive_ information -- e.g., if the main place you get information about "science used to predict the future of complex systems" is the mainstream commercial media, there's a pretty heavy bias in what predictions you are going to hear about.) ~~~ IanDrake >Every empirically-based plan for business, long-term policy, etc., ever. Sure, all business do forecasting. That's pretty simple stuff. >if the main place you get information about "science used to predict the future of complex systems" is the mainstream commercial media That's true, where should I be looking? Can you link to specific examples? ~~~ dragonwriter > Sure, all business do forecasting. That's pretty simple stuff. Lots of it involves predicting the behavior of complex economic and social systems using empirically-tested (scientific) methodologies. > That's true, where should I be looking? Can you link to specific examples? If you want to know about where science is used to predict the behavior of complex systems, one place to look would be the scientific literature of fields which are concerned with the behavior of complex systems. ~~~ IanDrake Do you realize you basically just said "If you know where to look, you'll find it"? Thanks MOTO. Any links? ------ NatW some context: e.g: [http://www.sciencebuzz.org/sites/default/files/images/OA_Gra...](http://www.sciencebuzz.org/sites/default/files/images/OA_Graph_small.jpg) more context: [http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/chart.png](http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/chart.png) ..and a frightening projection: [http://oceanacidification12.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/4/2/14422...](http://oceanacidification12.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/4/2/14422224/2688836_orig.jpg?0) ------ genwin > imperilling marine life, on which billions of people depend for their > nutrition and livelihood Nature always win in the end! Hopefully the plunge in human population can be handled mostly by attrition. ~~~ jussij If things get too bad for too many, I suspect the result in an increase in war and conflict. ~~~ marcosdumay What will make things really bad, but for many less people. Confirming the GP's argument, that Nature wins in the end. Winning is easier when you are not fighting anything. ~~~ e12e Keep in mind that the last world war resulted in nuclear attacks. I don't think we have any guarantee that "mutually assured destruction" will be enough to save us if there is another truly global war between the remaining super/nuclear powers. And now we also have stuff like "depleted" uranium rounds which have pretty serious consequences on future generations. ------ j_baker They talk about the oxygen content falling by 7% by 2100. This makes me wonder: let's assume the worst and earth is headed for a mass extinction event. How long do these events usually take? Are they slow processes, or does everything just die one day? ~~~ Daishiman What would happen is that the rate of biodiversity drops drastically, and organisms that are simple and adaptable (like cockroaches, algae, jellyfich, certain classes of bacteria, small mammals, urban birds) adapt and thrive and consume the rest of the flora and fauna, and permanently adapt their environments making the situation extremely fragile for more complex and delicate birds and larger vertebrates. Also, the system goes out of the equilibrium slowly developed in the last climate age. As far as crops go, we'll see new varieties of plant illnesses appearing in places we hadn't seen them before. Unpredictable weather kills the more fragile species that depend on consistent climate. Some ecosystems become simply uninhabitable; the Siberian bog swamps which are beginning to melt and release a greater amount of methane than ever before seen by humanity will not support the current crop of bacteria and plants. However there are no mammals and complex predators that can effectively fill the niche that will be created (at least not for potentially many thousands of years). So what you'll have is the growth of tall grasses and bushes that can survive on the new climate, but lacking a sustaining ecosystem, there won't be birds or large predators. Since insects develop very rapidly they will probably thrive, but their impact on the new ecosystem will not be predictable. A lot of land probably won't be able to support crops, however the current state of industrial farming leaves the land depleted, so it will take many generations to replete the topsoil necessary for more balanced wildlife to survive. Amphibians are already at a stage of mass extinction; their porous skin allows for a very large degree of exchange with chemicals in their environment, and are already suffering the effects of pesticides and herbicides in the environment. If those things biodegrade effectively that effect will not be felt in a few decades, but the change of climate will probably be too much (it already is). ~~~ gizmo686 >organisms that are simple and adaptable I would be careful with the word simple. Adaptable is the important component, and that seems to be related more to being small and not particularly specialized. Simple sounds like a description of the amount of genetic data the species contains. It has been a while since I took biology, but if I recall correctly, even small and adaptable species have a lot of genetic data. When a mass extinction event happens, once the environment stabilizes, the doors are open for large animals again, and the small ones already have the genetic complexity needed to fill those niches relatively quickly. ~~~ j_baker If adaptability (without simplicity) is the key component, that sounds like somewhat good news for humanity, us being a versatile type, and we can eat a lot of things for food. It's not quite clear to me that survival necessarily implies smallness. Though I would imagine that a _lot_ of humans would die in the process. It would make the black plague look like child's play. ------ protomyth Can the CO2 be removed from the ocean and broken into C and O2? Is this geo- engineering we can do? ~~~ kintamanimatt There is a proposed geoengineering approach, but the authors of this page don't recommend it: [https://web.duke.edu/nicholas/bio217/spring2010/chang/GeoEng...](https://web.duke.edu/nicholas/bio217/spring2010/chang/GeoEngineering.html) [http://www.cquestrate.com/the-idea](http://www.cquestrate.com/the-idea) ~~~ protomyth Are the authors against all geo-engineering or just this plan? ~~~ kintamanimatt They seem very in favor reducing over-fishing, switching to clean energy sources, etc. They're only in favor of geoengineering if politicians can't get their shit together and we end up on the brink of a disaster. "We do not promote the use of the [geoengineering] method highlighted in this section. We merely present it here as an interesting solution proposed by the field of geoengineering, a popularly growing discipline which seeks to provide technical solutions which manipulate the earth’s climate in order to counteract the effects of global climate change." "Any solution proposed by the field of geoengineering is akin to addressing the symptoms and not the source of the problem." \-- [https://web.duke.edu/nicholas/bio217/spring2010/chang/Soluti...](https://web.duke.edu/nicholas/bio217/spring2010/chang/Solutions.html) ~~~ fleitz The symptoms are all we care about, why would anyone give a shit about CO2 levels if it didn't cause global warming? It's not like it's toxic. If it's cheaper to geoengineer the CO2 away, why not? ~~~ TillE Fossil fuels are not a long-term energy solution in any case, so it makes more sense to attack the problem from that angle. And I suspect the answer is that it's not cheaper. I'm unaware of any cheap, scalable, safe method of reducing CO2 levels. It's difficult to conceive of a practical solution to global warming that doesn't involve drastically reducing the ongoing CO2 output. How are you going to balance out 30+ billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year? ------ Demiurge Is there any reason no one is talking about terraforming seriously yet? What kind of technologies can be used to draw the CO2 out of the atmosphere, how much would it cost to make a difference? ~~~ waps Basic thermodynamics can provide a lower limit : at least 9x more energy than was gained by burning it (except for oil burned in power plants, where it'd be 6-7x, but that's not much). That seems to mean that without massive expansions in nuclear power it's just not in the cards. ~~~ Demiurge But like with nuclear power, we don't have to do all the work. We don't need to generate electricity and then run conventional a CO2 filter. Hypothetically, if we dump 1 trillion dollars into genetic engineering, why can't we design some biological chain reaction that would do all the work? ~~~ waps Actually I sort of like the medieval approach : government prizes. We want this done, why not create a competition ? If a company can solve this problem, document how you've done it (AFTER the fact) and present it to a board of government scientists. If they believe you, you get the prize money. And make the prize money something like $5 billion or so. Chump change for what you're asking for. Besides, it has to be an amount that would provide decades of comfort for a company of at least a dozen people + a nice reward for any investors. This worked for draining swamps in the late middle ages. It worked for building things like clocks and compasses, and these sorts of prizes is how ocean-capable ships were designed in the first place. I would argue that the (early) prizes were for 'allow a ship to navigate without any visible markers on the ground', about as nebulous a concept as 'lower atmospheric co2 by 50% - or at least prove you can do it' would be. ~~~ Demiurge I agree, that's probably more sensible than organizing another conglomerate. The question is, why hasn't this been done? ------ efnx It's sad to me that this is not the top post. It seems that fact is a reflection of the problem at hand. We don't care about the oceans as much as we care about Twitter. :( ~~~ aaron695 I find it incredibly sad it has made the top post. The article does not link to any peer review studies to prove it's point, which to me means it's probably bunk, taking a know issue and enlarging it to sensationalise. And it's sad people fall for this. ~~~ enraged_camel With a little bit of research on your own you can find out for yourself that this is an incredibly important issue that affects everyone on the planet, and there is nothing "sensational" about the way it is reported. ~~~ aaron695 Yet you seriously haven't included any links to this easy to find research the we are at an all time acidification high in 300 million years? Pretty sure the title might actually get it right unlike the actual article "Ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years" It is the rate of acidification, not the acidification itself that is high. ------ ommunist This is one more 'climate change' BS. It does not stop fascinate me how self important climate change advocates are. Humans are not geological factor. Besides no one really have time machine to check validity of such claims. And we know very small about actual chemistry of the oceans, especially when it is deeper than SF beaches. Disclaimer: I participated in research of lake sediments looking for insights about metal pollutant trends. ~~~ Daishiman Wait, so you're saying that despite the fact that: \- We have accurate measurements of ocean Ph and CO2 concentrations for the past 50 years \- We have a clear understanding of the emissions of CO2 from manmade sources and a record that goes back since the beginning of the industrial age \- We understand the effects of acidification on a large variety of ocean species \- We see a trend of ocean absorbtion of CO2 absolutely consistent with out knowledge of atmospheric chemistry That means that it's BS? If you had some evidence to back up the fact as to why a set of multiple thousands of studies in oceanography are flawed when they point out to a singular trend, with a margin of confidence greater than most of the so-called scientific facts that are out there, I wouldn't think what you write is plain denialism. ------ xsace It's like playing Sim Earth on my dad SE30 as a kid. I could never get it right and always ended up with a desert or icy planet :( ------ rubyalex What does 300m years mean? Is that 300 or 300 Million? ~~~ jonnathanson I was confused by this, as well. Given the scale of geologic time, I'd _assume_ they meant 300 million. But a single "M" often means thousand, especially if it's lowercase. So it's confusingly worded. ~~~ ksrm >But a single "M" often means thousand, especially if it's lowercase. Where? I can find no reference to this. ~~~ jonnathanson Most often in financial accounting, though conventionally, in other domains such as academia. Depending on the news outlet, some magazines and papers will also use "M" for thousand and "MM" for million, though that practice is probably dying out in the popular press. And of course, the "M" in "CPM" stands for thousand. "M" was originally an abbreviation for "mille," which is French for "thousand" (by way of Latin origins). Traditionally speaking, one "M" means thousand, and "MM" means thousand-thousand, or million. Example: [http://blog.accountingcoach.com/what-does-m-and-mm-stand- for...](http://blog.accountingcoach.com/what-does-m-and-mm-stand-for/) ------ shire And this might get worse because population is increasing so rapidly. ------ samstave Checkout this crazy theory: [http://thecommonsenseshow.com/2013/03/16/the-mother-of- all-c...](http://thecommonsenseshow.com/2013/03/16/the-mother-of-all- conspiracies-pt-7/) ------ ffrryuu Acidic loving species rejoice! ------ 16s The sun is going to burn out some day. When that happens, no one will care about ocean acidity. ------ eonil I think radioactive garbages in Pacific ocean from Fukushima would do better job. ~~~ eloff Are you high? What does radioactivity from Fukushima have to do with ocean acidification? ------ AsymetricCom Kind of off-topic: if ocean temperatures are increasing, isn't this the same thing as the ocean having more potential energy? If energy generation from waves was increased substantially, would this cool the ocean or act as a dampener against the earth's rotation? Perhaps both? ~~~ whatshisface Heat, ocean waves and the earth's rotation are so many orders of magnitude apart in terms of frequency that a machine designed to dampen one could not possibly have an effect on the others. ------ ancarda While I recognise this question might be abrasive, I feel compelled to ask it. Why does this belong on Hacker News? This isn't technology. This isn't legal news (i.e. software patents). This is in no way related to _Hacker_ News. I have no problem with interesting articles being upvoted, but I feel we need a place to put these or a tagging system similar to lobsters. ~~~ obstacle1 >This is in no way related to Hacker News The vast majority of "show HN: my new disruptive pseudo-plagiarized wheel- reinventing RESTful scalable .js + go single-page site framework" or "_insert_valley_startup_here_ plans to revolutionize _trivial_consumer_SaaS_niche_" posts have little to do with actual hacking, either. Few complain about those. Here we have a post that points out a _massive_ systemic problem we're facing as a species for which we have no current solution. Pretty sure we're in hacker territory. Much more so than in the case of the Yet-Another-Web- Framework or Disruptive-Instagram-For- Squirrels crap we normally get on the front page.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Which Python IDE do you use and what do you like and dislike about it? - throw98987 ====== mindcrime PyDev[1]. I like it because it leverages my existing familiarity with Eclipse. Otherwise, it falls into the "it just works" category. It does what I need, no complaints. [1]: [http://www.pydev.org/](http://www.pydev.org/) ------ phren0logy Unless you are building something very large and complicated, I'd recommend VS Code or Sublime Text. ------ royalharsh95 PyCharm ~~~ Iv Discovered it recently. Usually I am a bit suspicious of big IDE based on IntelliJ which I consider too slow and to have an annoying latency, but I really liked PyCharm. Before that, I was using Spyder or vim depending on the size of the project. ------ probinso emacs + jedi . its simple and doesn't assume too much	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
"Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem - boopsie http://motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brogrammer-culture-sexist-sxsw?page=2 ====== jacobquick I actually like seeing this development in tech because it shows we're not completely isolated from the broader social shift happening on the internet, as its culture starts to catch up with its user demographics, and the internet's brilliant information spreading capacity is being put to use by people who want to evangelize a more just and fair society. If you're managing tech and wondering what the implication of this kind of public discussion is for you: get out ahead of it. The internet is making a CS major more and more valuable as an asset, but it's also starting to squeeze people who didn't major in CS to pick up coding...and half the users on the internet now are women, so five or ten years from now when you need to pad out a project team with frontend coders, you'd better know how to hire and manage any kind of person. Brogrammer is a marketing term for recruiters, it's used as a shortcut but it's nothing but a dead end. Hiring and building a team in an environment that will be toxic to anyone else will kill you three years down the line just as surely as hiring some kid straight out of college to do all your production releng will.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Most effective way to learn a new language (not the programming kind)? - philippnagel ====== stevekemp Honestly the only way that things stuck with me was when I was forced to use the language (i.e. immersion). Previously I persuaded my wife to only speak to me in her native language every Thursday afternoon/evening. That helped a little, but only when I moved and was surrounded by the new language did I really get better. It took me months to learn to hear AND pronounce the difference between "o" and "ö", and still I get it wrong at times. ------ chowraid I'm also curious about this. To my knowledge I managed to learn a good amount of Japanese by literally studying every day for 1-2 hours, listen to a good amount of Japanese music. Rented Japanese books to see if I could recognize any symbols and try to figure out what the book was about. I hope this helps. ~~~ quickben How many hours did it take for the approach to work? ~~~ chowraid I committed to this for 6 months. Also I studied around the same time every day. What also helped me was that on the course of the day I would force myself to count in Japanese and to try to think in Japanese. Sometimes I would be so distracted that I would catch myself actually thinking in Japanese for a good amount of time. ~~~ s4vi0r How far would you say you got at the end of 6 months? I took a Japanese 101 class a couple years ago and still remember some basic phrases/verbs/etc and how to read katakana and hiragana as well as probably 50 or so kanji. Been thinking about getting back into it so that I can at least use it at some semi-basic conversational level for my trip. ~~~ chowraid I would say that I got to the point that I was able to understand the majority of the words on Japanese songs and movies. The reading part on the other hand was another story. Talking I was at a elementary level. I was able to defend myself somewhat. ------ ian0 As stevekemp mentions immersion is a surefire method. When learning Indonesian my sole company for most of the day was my korean flatmate, who had no english. We evolved through some hilarious pidgins to fluency pretty fast. Necessity is the mother of invention	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Design for a non-designer - Shankem Hello, I've been working on an app for android (game) in my spare time, learning android as I go, everything has turned out how I've wanted except the look and feel, UI, UX, I would consider all of those to fall under design. I plan on trying to build some websites/webapps eventually as well, learning as I go. I'm wondering if perhaps there's some guidelines for good design, tools that I'm just not aware of, or anything else that could help me become a better designer. Even if I can improve on my design skills though, I feel like at the end of the day I'm not a graphic artist and these things are just not possible for me.<p>I've also thought about getting another person to do design, but I feel like I really don't have a good enough understanding of what good design is and how to work with someone who just does the design. Are there any good guides and/or tools people have read/used to help in design, whether for a mobile app or website? Thanks! ====== pdenya Check out this article, I learned a ton about making things look good from it: [http://flyosity.com/tutorial/crafting-subtle-realistic- user-...](http://flyosity.com/tutorial/crafting-subtle-realistic-user- interfaces.php) I'm not sure what kind of assets you need but you might want to just buy vector stock art and customize it as needed rather than dealing with hiring a designer. ~~~ Shankem Thanks for the advice, the article was helpful. ------ revorad Design for Hackers by David Kadavy is really good - [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119998956/ref=as_li_qf_sp_...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119998956/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=pretgrap-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1119998956)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Discord Scaled Elixir to 5M Concurrent Users - b1naryth1ef https://blog.discordapp.com/scaling-elixir-f9b8e1e7c29b ====== iagooar This writeup make me even more convinced of Elixir becoming one of the large players when it comes to hugely scaling applications. If there is one thing I truly love about Elixir, it is the easiness of getting started, while standing on the shoulders of a giant that is the Erlang VM. You can start by building a simple, not very demanding application with it, yet once you hit a large scale, there is plenty of battle-proven tools to save you massive headaches and costly rewrites. Still, I feel, that using Elixir is, today, still a large bet. You need to convince your colleagues as much as your bosses / customers to take the risk. But you can rest assured it will not fail you as you need to push it to the next level. Nothing comes for free, and at the right scale, even the Erlang VM is not a silver bullet and will require your engineering team to invest their talent, time and effort to fine tune it. Yet, once you dig deep enough into it, you'll find plenty of ways to solve your problem at a lower cost as compared to other solutions. I see a bright future for Elixir, and a breath of fresh air for Erlang. It's such a great time to be alive! ~~~ janekm I read it a little differently. The whole article is about how Erlang/Elixir fails at its core reason for existence (fast message passing between distributed processes) and all the complicated work-arounds they had to implement to avoid actually using this core feature of Erlang. ~~~ josevalim People tend to forget that scalability is not a binary property. You always scale up to some users, up to some architecture, up to some amount of nodes. There is no system that will scale to infinity without requiring developer intervention once business needs and application patterns start to settle in. Distributed Erlang/Elixir _has known limitations_. For example, the network is fully meshed, which gives you about 60 to 200 nodes in a cluster. Or don't send large data over distribution, as that delays the other messages, etc. Some of those are easily solvable. For example, you can rely on your orchestration tools to break your clusters in groups. Or you can setup an out of band tcp/udp socket for large data. Others may be more complex. The important question, however, is how far you can go without having to tweak, and, once you reach those roadblocks, how well you can address them. In many platforms, writing a distributed system is a no-no or, at best, they require you to assemble and tweak from day one. In this case, the ability to start with Erlang/Elixir and tweak as you grow _is a feature_. And if you never run into those roadblocks, then you can happily continue running on the default stack. Just look at the many companies using Phoenix PubSub and Phoenix Presence, both distributed, without having to worry about fine-tuning the distribution. ~~~ majidazimi What difference does it make? Erlang/OTP distribution doesn't have pluggable architecture. Sooner or later you will reach a point that you have to modify it. Then you are diverging from the original branch which makes it even more difficult to maintain it. You have to merge your additions into every release (minor or major) and test it thoroughly. A better architecture for a distributed system has a strong composability property. It should be possible to modify every possible aspect of it on a running cluster without introducing downtime. Write your own standard well documented distribution layer and become independent of underlying technologies. ~~~ josevalim What do you mean by architecture here? If you mean the roles different nodes take and their topology, I actually doubt you can be decoupled from your architecture in a distributed system because they directly affect your design and capabilities. You can move away from fully meshed for topologies but how does this choice affect node ups and node downs? Rebalancing can affect how you store data in the cluster. How many connections should you have between nodes? A single connection makes the ordering guarantee straight-forward. Multiple connections is more performance but requires care if you need ordering and is more efficiently done along side your application. And what about process placement? On which side of CAP do you want your registries to sit? If you and your team is capable of "writing your own standard well documented distributed layer" upfront, then you are in a better position than most to take those decisions. But writing a distributed system is hard, so I will gladly start with a well-designed system, especially at the beginning of the project, when it may be unclear which patterns I will need as my application and business grow. And most times, it will be good enough. As far as OTP goes, you can plug your own discovery/topology mechanism as well as your own module for handling the connection between nodes. But, as mentioned in my previous reply, some of those issues may be better solved on the side, e.g. a different tcp/udp connection for data transmitting. ~~~ majidazimi I did also mention that for fast time to market it is indeed a good idea to use already available tools. By the way writing a distribution layer is not that difficult. Many companies/startups with scalable back-ends that are not using Erlang/OTP have already done it. The point is scalable software requires knowledge and Erlang/OTP is not going to magically solve it. But it seems many fans are trying to promote it such that it is a magic tool that is going to make a shit software become a hyper scalable one. Just look at the comments below that how people have gone crazy. ~~~ jlouis Erlang (and by extension Elixir) definitely provides a set of tools which are good for building highly concurrent distributed systems. And your systems are likely to have few errors as well as being resilient, if you know what you are doing. But indeed, you need to know your tools like every other part of computer science. Storing 9 billion elements in an array, doing linear search and then complaining your linear search is too slow and needs to run faster will be disastrous to your architecture. Likewise, assuming communication is free is equally disastrous. The problem with building a distribution layer in another language is the effort involved. Most of the companies which pull that off and get stability in addition are usually large, multinational, and has ample amounts of engineering resources to throw at the effort required. ~~~ majidazimi Consider for some reason (either technical or political), this company decides to migrate their web socket servers to Akka/Rust/Go/NodeJS. Integrating these new servers into their core cluster is going to be deadly painful. They rely heavily on Erlang/OTP internal clustering. This is not even considered as a challenge in distributed systems but still really painful to implement because of their design decision. This is what they did wrong. Clustering and message routing part of the application should be technology agnostic. ~~~ brightball That depends what you're going for. Moving web sockets elsewhere are pretty simple regardless of whether you're using Erlang/OTP or not because it's a frontal layer. If you do that all you are doing is creating another layer to hold connections that needs to relay to the rest of the application. The application behind it still has the responsibility to receive and relay everything from those web sockets, determine what message goes to who, etc. You can move it out just the same as you can elsewhere, you just add an unnecessary layer of complexity and lose a lot of the capabilities already built into the language. It boils down to a simple question of, what would be the purpose behind that decision? What improvement would you get from deciding to move any of that elsewhere? Do you gain speed at the cost of complexity? Clustering is a non-trivial problem. It can't happen naturally in any language that includes mutable data without explicit oversight and thus most of the needed tooling can't be built into the system and guaranteed to work everywhere. As soon as some part of the system goes from "send message, get response" to "send message, change variable referenced in memory on this machine, get response" you break your ability to naturally cluster. That leads to a dependency in central relay points for things like setting up web sockets and then having code behind them communicate. The code behind them in whatever language is usually going to be talking to other central relay points like load balancers or pub sub databases rather than directly to other specific servers. As soon as you have central relay points, they become something else that you have to monitor and scale even if they are very high volume. There's nothing wrong with this approach and it will certainly work but if you want to avoid that and build a distributed system in another language, you've got to invest a lot in other areas. ~~~ majidazimi > Moving web sockets elsewhere are pretty simple regardless of whether you're > using Erlang/OTP or not because it's a frontal layer. It is supposed to be easy. But they are not using language agnostic messaging. Instead they rely on Erlang distribution protocol. This is what makes it difficult to integrate. > what would be the purpose behind that decision? 1\. To achieve composability. I can replace one web socket server with a C++ implementation to see if I can handle 10 million connections per server. If I fucked it up return back to Erlang implementation otherwise fuck BEAM. I'm moving to native code. The beauty of it is that I can do it one step at a time. Even I can implement web socket layer in multiple languages and experiment all possible options in production and no one even notices it. 2\. I don't have to pay for 20 Erlang guys who are mostly senior devs. Get 5 of them to write the core and the rest of the team NodeJS guys. ~~~ mononcqc You're acting like the distribution and serialization formats of Erlang are not open or documented. If you're going for your C++ layer, try [https://github.com/saleyn/eixx](https://github.com/saleyn/eixx) for example. ------ jakebasile I'm continually impressed with Discord and their technical blogs contribute to my respect for them. I use it in both my personal life (I run a small server for online friends, plus large game centric servers) and my professional life (instead of Slack). It's a delight to use, the voice chat is extremely high quality, text chat is fast and searchable, and notifications actually work. Discord has become the de facto place for many gaming communities to organize which is a big deal considering how discriminating and exacting PC gamers can be. My only concern is their long term viability and I don't just mean money wise. I'm concerned they'll have to sacrifice the user experience to either achieve sustainability or consent to a buyout by a larger company that only wants the users and brand. I hope I'm wrong, and I bought a year of Nitro to do my part. ~~~ lordCarbonFiber A closed source walled garden chat service that survives purely on the free flow of VC capital 100% has no long term viability. No federation means as soon as the "next thing" shows up and wins way the VC dollars they'll disappear. It's so incredibly frusterating that so many companies and users make/support these closed environments even as we enter a new golden age of open sourced and federated technologies. ~~~ jakebasile If there was an open source and federated equivalent to the features Discord provides I'd use it. There is no such product. Matrix is interesting, but the experience is no where near as polished as Discord and friends and that matters for mass adoption. ~~~ aphextron >If there was an open source and federated equivalent to the features Discord provides I'd use it. But will you pay for Discord though? The features and quality Discord is able to provide are artificially propped up by VC funding. When it runs dry, we will be left with open source offerings, or the next product to take it's place and repeat the cycle. ~~~ connorcpu I already pay $5/mo for Discord. Animated avatars and cross-server custom emoji were enough to entice me ------ Cieplak I know that the JVM is a modern marvel of software engineering, so I'm always surprised when my Erlang apps consume less than 10MB of RAM, start up nearly instantaneously, respond to HTTP requests in less than 10ms and run forever, while my Java apps take 2 minutes to start up, have several hundred millisecond HTTP response latency and horde memory. Granted, it's more an issue with Spring than with Java, and Parallel Universe's Quasar is basically OTP for Java, so I know logically that Java is basically a superset of Erlang at this point, but perhaps there's an element of "less is more" going on here. Also, we're looking for Erlang folks with payments experience. cGF0cmljaytobkBmaW5peHBheW1lbnRzLmNvbQ== ~~~ kevincennis Off topic, but what's the story behind base-64 encoding your email? Is that just a spam prevention measure? ~~~ Cieplak Yes ~~~ Corrado I actually really like this idea and am going to steal it. :) ------ rdtsc Good stuff. Erlang VM FTW! > mochiglobal, a module that exploits a feature of the VM: if Erlang sees a > function that always returns the same constant data, it puts that data into > a read-only shared heap that processes can access without copying the data There is a nice new OTP 20.0 optimization - now the value doesn't get copied even on message sends on the local node. Jesper L. Andersen (jlouis) talked about it in his blog: [https://medium.com/@jlouis666/an-erlang- otp-20-0-optimizatio...](https://medium.com/@jlouis666/an-erlang- otp-20-0-optimization-efde8b20cba7) > After some research we stumbled upon :ets.update_counter/4 Might not help in this case but 20.0 adds select_replace so can do a full on CAS (compare and exchange) pattern [http://erlang.org/doc/man/ets.html#select_replace-2](http://erlang.org/doc/man/ets.html#select_replace-2) . So something like acquiring a lock would be much easier to do. > We found that the wall clock time of a single send/2 call could range from > 30μs to 70us due to Erlang de-scheduling the calling process. There are few tricks the VM uses there and it's pretty configurable. For example sending to a process with a long message queue will add a bit of a backpressure to the sender and un-schedule them. There are tons of configuration settings for the scheduler. There is to bind scheduler to physical cores to reduce the chance of scheduler threads jumping around between cores: [http://erlang.org/doc/man/erl.html#+sbt](http://erlang.org/doc/man/erl.html#+sbt) Sometimes it helps sometimes it doesn't. Another general trick is to build the VM with the lcnt feature. This will add performance counters for locks / semaphores in the VM. So then can check for the hotspots and know where to optimize: [http://erlang.org/doc/man/lcnt.html](http://erlang.org/doc/man/lcnt.html) ~~~ jlouis It isn't that likely the OTP20 optimization helps here. If the process never sends a message containing the literal value, then there is no benefit in the optimization. What `mochiglobal` and friends are good at is when you have a large set of data (A ring, say) which update rarely, so you can treat it as semi-static data in the system. But then you shouldn't really send that ring data around in the system too much, although it will now be free. [There is a nice subscription-based approach to updates which are now feasible in OTP20, but that is more for convenience] if send/2 takes 30us to 70us, I'm guessing blocking as well, either on distributed communication or something else along those lines. For local message passes to take that long, my something-is-amiss-sixth-sense is tingling. ~~~ rdtsc > It isn't that likely the OTP20 optimization helps here Ah good point. I didn't look at the code much. I was thinking of cases of passing any of those literals in gen_server calls and such and just getting extra performance from upgrading to OTP20 as a side-effect. ------ mbesto This is one of those few instances where getting the technology choice right actually has an impact on cost of operations, service reliability, and overall experience of a product. For like 80% of all the other cases, it doesn't matter what you use as long as your devs are comfortable with it. ~~~ kornish Not sure why this comment saw a couple downvotes earlier. mbesto is correct: for most startups, most of the time, competitive advantage doesn't come from the underlying tech stack. To make a general statement, most things could be done similarly on any of several platforms. However, when product requirements match exceptionally well with a specialized technology, you can see things that would simply be infeasible or extremely tough using a different stack. WhatsApp + Erlang was one of those cases (watch this talk and imagine trying to recreate that system with only a handful of server engineers using any other tech: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c12cYAUTXXs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c12cYAUTXXs)). Discord + Elixir appears to be another. Curious if anyone has any examples that spring to mind from outside the highly concurrent messaging space. ------ jlouis A fun idea is to do away with the "guild" servers in the architecture and simply run message passes from the websocket process over the Manifold system. A little bit of ETS work should make this doable and now an eager sending process is paying for the work itself, slowing it down. This is _exactly_ the behavior you want. If you are bit more sinister you also format most of the message in the sending process and makes it into a binary. This ensures data is passed by reference and not copied in the system. It ought to bring message sends down to about funcall overhead if done right. It is probably not a solution for current Discord as they rely on linearizability, but I toyed with building an IRCd in Erlang years ago, and there we managed to avoid having a process per channel in the system via the above trick. As for the "hoops you have to jump through", it is usually true in any language. When a system experiences pressure, how easy it is to deal with that pressure is usually what matters. Other languages are "phase shifts" and while certain things become simpler in that language, other things become much harder to pull off. ~~~ mononcqc The true evil approach is to send the socket around, not the message, so that there is no copying required no matter what ;) ~~~ rdtsc Wah. Easy there, Satan :-) That is cool trick though. So it's basically sending the port itself around and changing its ownership, with something like port_connect(Port,NewOwner)? And btw, thank you for writing [https://www.erlang-in- anger.com](https://www.erlang-in-anger.com) and [http://learnyousomeerlang.com](http://learnyousomeerlang.com) ! ~~~ mononcqc The trick is more commonly used when writing to sockets. A socket owner is required for reading, not for writing. The trick then is that when you need to write lots of data to a socket to just send a copy of it to the writer so they can dump all their data for cheap, but without changing ownership (which is costly). Also recently I've gotten [http://propertesting.com/](http://propertesting.com/) out, you might enjoy it :) ~~~ rdtsc Thanks for explaining. I'll have to remember the socket trick. > Also recently I've gotten > [http://propertesting.com/](http://propertesting.com/) out, you might enjoy > it :) It might be just what I need to understand and start using property tests. I've tried twice and gave up. Oh and recon! Thanks for that too. Use it almost every day. ------ danso According to Wikipedia, Discord's initial release was March 2015. Elixir hit 1.0 in September 2014 [0]. That's impressively early for adoption of a language for prototyping and for production. [0] [https://github.com/elixir- lang/elixir/releases/tag/v1.0.0](https://github.com/elixir- lang/elixir/releases/tag/v1.0.0) ~~~ quaunaut If I remember right, they were using Erlang at the beginning, and moved slowly to Elixir as they got more comfortable, and the ecosystem built up around them. ~~~ Vishnevskiy We started with Elixir, some of our engineers have used Erlang prior though. ------ didibus So, at this point, every language was scaled to very high concurrent loads. What does that tell us? Sounds to me like languages don't matter for scale. In fact, that makes sense, scale is all about parallel processes, horizontally distributing work can be achieved in all language. Scale is not like perforance, where if you need it, you are restricted to a few languages only. That's why I'd like to hear more about productivity and ease now. Is it faster and more fun to scale things in certain languages then others. Beam is modeled on actors, and offer no alternatives. Java offers all sorts of models, including actors, but if actors are the currently most fun and procudctive way to scale, that doesn't matter. Anyways, learning how team scaled is interesting, but it's clear to me now languages aren't limiting factors to scale. ~~~ dmix > So, at this point, every language was scaled to very high concurrent loads. > What does that tell us? Just like any language vs language debate each one has benefits for various particular use-cases. Any meaningful comparison of languages must be prefaced with the use-case scenario. One of the strongest use-cases of Erlang/Elixir has always been building large distributed apps that need to scale (async web apps, telecom, chat servers, messaging mobile apps, etc). The ability to build these large distributed systems are baked into the very primitive parts of the language and standard library - to a degree that few other languages can compare to it, if any. With Erlang/Elixir you design ALL applications in a way where scaling is rarely an after thought but rather a natural extension of the program. > Beam is modeled on actors, and offer no alternatives. Java offers all sorts > of models, including actors, but if actors are the currently most fun and > productive way to scale, that doesn't matter. People often make the mistake of trivializing Erlang/Elixirs as merely programming with actors. It's development not only predated the actor model but it also goes well beyond that to being the standard programming style you use when developing any program when using the language - the same way Rails embraces MVP. When this is fundamental part of every Erlang application then the means of scaling to a large distributed system are also a fundamental part of each program. This built-in scaling is gained without any significant costs in terms of development time but also provides many benefits beyond scaling, such as highly modular and extensible code. There are real benefits even if you don't plan to scale to a large distributed system. similar to Rails it creates a predictable program design which makes joining new projects easier and deters NIH syndrome that is far too common in Java/C++/etc. And ultimately, regardless of what you are building, it provides very high performance by default for the type of async style applications that are popular on the web today. So the key point here is not that the end goal was achieved (that you _can_ scale) but how you get there. ------ jmcgough Great to see more posts like this promoting Elixir. I've been really enjoying the language and how much power it gets from BEAM. Hopefully more companies see success stories like this and take the plunge - I'm working on an Elixir project right now at my startup and am loving it. ------ ShaneWilton Thanks for putting this writeup together! I use Elixir and Erlang every day at work, and the Discord blog has been incredibly useful in terms of pointing me towards the right tooling when I run into a weird performance bottleneck. FastGlobal in particular looks like it nicely solves a problem I've manually had to work around in the past. I'll probably be pulling that into our codebase soon. ~~~ pmarreck Note that Erlang 20 may have solved the problem that FastGlobal tries to fix (that of _not_ copying large amounts of data unnecessarily) ~~~ ShaneWilton Erlang 20 fixes the case where you're copying a constant literal, but unfortunately won't help if you're sharing a dynamically generated, but infrequently modified, term; like Discord does in this post. ------ joonoro Elixir was one of the reasons I started _using_ Discord in the first place. I figured if they were smart enough to use Elixir for a program like this then they would probably have a bright future ahead of them. In practice, Discord hasn't been completely reliable for my group. Lately messages have been dropping out or being sent multiple times. Voice gets messed up (robot voice) at least a couple times per week and we have to switch servers to make it work again. A few times a person's voice connection has stopped working completely for several minutes and there's nothing we can do about it. I don't know if these problems have anything to do with the Elixir backend or the server. EDIT: Grammar ~~~ Vishnevskiy The messages struggles have been sadly due to issues with Cassandra and GC pauses caused by bugs within it. We have been trying to work with the Cassandra developers to resolve these. Voice issues should not be happening. Please contact our support with more information and we will gladly investigate. ~~~ joonoro Thanks for the response, it's good to know what's causing the problems with messages and that it's being worked on. I'll try to contact support next time I have voice issues with my group. ~~~ Vishnevskiy :) np We love Cassandra, and hate it at the same time. Check out this nasty bug we got. [https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-13004](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-13004) ~~~ jjirsa Two things are true about Cassandra: It is by far the best at doing what it does It has plenty of room for improvement ~~~ Vishnevskiy You are 100% right that it is the best at what it does. And thank you again with helping us with that bug :) we really appreciate it. ~~~ tormeh I'm currently far down the database rabbit-hole and have to ask: What's so great about Cassandra that you can't get with CouchDB or other AP (yeah, I know...) databases? ~~~ jjirsa Solid ingestion story. Very very good write throughout. Linear scaling. Easy expansion / contraction. Complete flexibility in consistency vs availability tradeoff. And most importantly: It actually works at scale. Huge scale. Thousand node cluster and hundreds of thousands of instances scales. Because a good chunk of the active maintainers actually run this shit in prod. ------ ConanRus I do not see there any Elixir specific, it is all basically Erlang/Erlang VM/OTP stuff. When you using Erlang, you think in terms of actors/processes and message passing, and this is (IMHO) a natural way of thinking about distributed systems. So this article is a perfect example how simple solutions can solve scalability issues if you're using right platform for that. ~~~ nichochar You're right. Elixir doesn't pretend to do anything except make using the wonderful erlang VM/OTP stuff easier. The VM is an absolute marvel of engineering, and it's insane to me that it doesn't have more adoption yet in big tech companies. My best theory is that engineers in top engineering companies are actually not the best engineers but simply career engineers that learn one skill (python/java/C++) and then explain to every employer that this technology is the best for the problem they have, over and over again. ~~~ Anderkent Coordination problems get more difficult in larger teams/companies. Getting everyone to use a particular non-standard language is a coordination problem. Thus large companies are unlikely to experiment with languages. It makes sense too - say it's 10x easier to write something in language X than Y. If there's only 10 other people that might interact with the thing / have to read the sources, that's a great tradeoff. If there's a thousand other people that might have to at some point understand how some part of your code works, suddenly all of them have to learn the new language X. ------ majidazimi It seems awkward to me. What if Erlang/OTP team can not guarantee message serialization compatibility across a major release? How you are going to upgrade a cluster one node at a time? What if you want to communicate with other platforms? How you are going to modify distribution protocol on a running cluster without downtime? As soon as you introduce standard message format, then all nice features such as built-in distribution, automatic reconnect, ... are almost useless. You have to do all these manually. May be I'm missing something. Correct me if I'm wrong. For a fast time to market it seems quite nice approach. But for a long running maintainable back-end it not enough. ~~~ toast0 The erlang team has been through 20 major releases, I think I've run all of them since r13 or r14? Being able to upgrade your distributed system is important and they care about making it possible. Generally you upgrade one node at a time, until they're all upgraded and only then can you use new language features. Sometimes you find a build you like and stick with it until something comes up that causes you to upgrade. There are many ways to interoperate with other languages. Including libraries for other languages to claim to be erlang nodes (they will have to upgrade too when you want to upgrade to a newer version of erlang with distribution protocol changes, for example when maps we're introduced in r17). You can easily do standard dist messaging within your erlang cluster and serialize to whatever makes sense at the boarder. You can serialize to erlang term format, if you like; it's well specified, but not terribly compact. You're going to have the same questions with any other language too. Very few companies get to write clients, servers, and everything else in one language that never updates. ~~~ majidazimi > You're going to have the same questions with any other language too. Very > few companies get to write clients, servers, and everything else in one > language that never updates. Then I don't see much difference between Go, Java, ... vs Erlang except they are simpler to learn plus finding Java, NodeJS, ... devs is much easier. What was the point of using Erlang? It was supposed to solve a problem for us, but we end up of solving the problem ourselves. What I'm really trying to say is: integrating a mainstream language like Go, Java, C++, ... with a messaging layer like ZeroMQ (or something else) and adding some reliability features is going to be easier than introducing a totally new language (with a totally different paradigm) into the stack. ~~~ toast0 > Then I don't see much difference between Go, Java, ... vs Erlang except they > are simpler to learn plus finding Java, NodeJS, ... devs is much easier. For the first several years, my team of Erlang devs had zero Erlang experience prior to being hired; they were just smart and flexible developers. I was ahead of the curve because I sort of remembered seeing a Slashdot post about Ericson opening the language way back when. A lot of people end up using RabbitMQ as their distributed message queue, which is built in Erlang. If you went with that instead of ZeroMQ; and then slowly added more things, there's a reasonable path to writing more Erlang. I'm not sure if you can really bolt on messaging and reliability features and get the same results; just like bolting on security later, if it's something that you need, it works better if you have it from the beginning. But certainly, if you're happy with your stack, don't change it. ------ _ar7 Really liked the blog post. Elixir and the capabilities of the BEAM VM seems really awesome, but I can't really find an excuse to really use them in my day to day anywhere. ------ StreamBright Whatsapp's story is somewhat similar. Relevant read to this subject. [http://www.erlang- factory.com/upload/presentations/558/efsf2...](http://www.erlang- factory.com/upload/presentations/558/efsf2012-whatsapp-scaling.pdf) ------ brian_herman I love discord's posts they are very informative and easy to read. ------ OOPMan 5 million concurrent users is great and all, but it would be nice if Discord could work out how to use WebSockets without duplicating sent messages. This seems to happen a lot when you are switching between wireless networks (E.g. My home router has 2Ghz and 5Ghz wireless networks) or when you're on mobile (Seems to happen regularly, even if you're not moving around). It's terribly annoying though and makes using the app via the mobile client to be very tedious. ~~~ k__ Coming from IRC with netsplits and stuff, this seems like a first world problem to me hehe ~~~ OOPMan You know there are discord bots for bridging between IRC and Discord? Pretty funky :-) ------ sriram_malhar I really like elxir the language, but find myself strangely hamstrung by the _mix_ tool. There is only an introduction to the tool, but not a reference to all the bells and whistles of the tool. I'm not looking for extra bells and whistles, but simple stuff like pulling in a module from GitHub and incorporate it. Is there such documentation? How do you crack Mix? ~~~ amorphid The docs for Mix are decent. You can start here: [https://hexdocs.pm/mix](https://hexdocs.pm/mix). When you are trying to get help w/ a specific task, you check checkout the mix tasks docs: [https://hexdocs.pm/mix/Mix.Tasks.Deps.Get.html#content](https://hexdocs.pm/mix/Mix.Tasks.Deps.Get.html#content) And honestly, I often just look at the source code: [https://github.com/elixir- lang/elixir/tree/master/lib/mix](https://github.com/elixir- lang/elixir/tree/master/lib/mix) The Elixir Slack channel is pretty amazing, too: [https://elixir-slackin.herokuapp.com/](https://elixir-slackin.herokuapp.com/) ------ renaudg It looks like they have built an interesting, robust and scalable system which is perfectly tailored to their needs. If one didn't want to build all of that in house though, is there anything they've described here that an off the shelf system like [https://socketcluster.io](https://socketcluster.io) doesn't provide ? ~~~ lostcolony Yes. Discord is served over HTTPS. :P (your link is broken; socketcluster.io doesn't serve over HTTPS) But seriously, Discord actually benchmarked 5 million concurrent users, horizontally distributed, and having to ferry messages across the cluster, with specifically tailored fanout patterns (rather than just a global pub/sub. I.e., who a message goes to varies, rather than just "everyone"). Socketcluster.io only has benchmarks for a single machine, capped at 42k concurrent connections (though to be fair that was due to them running a single client, rather than a limitation of the server). They don't out of the box support horizontal scaling; you're required to spin up your own message queue solution for that. So, basically, you're advocating a technology that solves -the simplest part of the problem-, and nothing else. Whereas Phoenix + Elixir, even without any of the custom tweaking Discord describes, solve that AND more of the actual problem Discord had. So...yes, and no. Yes, there is plenty here they've describe that is not available in socketcluster.io, but no, nothing they've done here is no generally solved by an off the shelf system, because they're -using- an off the shelf system, Elixir + Phoenix. ~~~ jondubois Hi, main author of SocketCluster here. SC does support automatic horizontal scaling across any number of machines out of the box if you're running it on Kubernetes. There's also a CLI tool to deploy it automatically to any Kubernetes cluster: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/baasil](https://www.npmjs.com/package/baasil) See [https://github.com/SocketCluster/socketcluster/blob/master/s...](https://github.com/SocketCluster/socketcluster/blob/master/scc- guide.md#scc-guide) ~~~ lostcolony I just meant you still need a third party MQ to be spun up (per docs here - [http://socketcluster.io/#!/docs/scaling- horizontally](http://socketcluster.io/#!/docs/scaling-horizontally)). Without that, there is no distribution happening. From my understanding, you're basically saying "You can combine SocketCluster with the MQ of your choice (the installation and configuration of which is left as an exercise to the reader) and then between Docker, Kubernetes, and Baasil you can orchestrate and deploy it across a cluster". That sounds a bit more complex than just using SocketCluster, which is what the OP seemed to be indicating was all you needed, and is also including the DevOps story, which I don't think either he or I was intending to include. I was not trying to indicate that SocketCluster can't be -used- to scale websockets horizontally, but that it's not just an off the shelf solution that would have solved Discord's problem either. It requires other parts, as both the docs and you mention. I'll also reiterate from my post, SocketCluster has no benchmarks pertaining to what happens when you -do- scale horizontally (per docs here - [http://socketcluster.io/#!/performance](http://socketcluster.io/#!/performance) ). That lack alone would kill my interest in it (as would scc-state being a single instance, which would make fault tolerance a real concern to me, but it looks like you know that already). Is performing horizontal scalability tests on the roadmap? ~~~ jondubois If you use SCC, then you don't need a separate MQ - That is only if you want to do things yourself manually. I will update the docs to make that clearer. It should only take a few minutes to deploy a cluster across hundreds of machines. The only limit is the maximum number of hosts that Kubernetes itself can handle (which is I think is over 1000 now)? SCC is self-sharding and runs and scales itself automatically with no downtime. You can easily handle 5 million concurrent users with a small cluster. SC's problem isn't scalability, it's marketing. ~~~ lostcolony That's perfectly fair; fix the marketing then. :P In evaluating a solution, the marketing is the -first thing- anyone looks at. And how it currently reads, "SocketCluster only provides you the interface for synchronizing instance channels - It doesn't care what technology/implementation you use behind the scenes to make this work" definitely reads as "You need a technology/implementation behind the scene" rather than "we provide you a default one, and you can swap it out". For me to pick Socketcluster for a distributed solution (or more broadly, what I'd want for -any- technical solution) I'd want to know what else I need to pair it with (which the docs actually mislead me on), what else I can benefit from (which the docs don't tell me, but which does exist per your links), and what benefits I stand to get from using it (the docs tell me only marketing claims, but with no metrics, performance, data, etc, for what happens in a distributed context, well, I would avoid it). Ideally, set up a clustered performance test, and then make as many of the artifacts (docker images, configs, readme, etc) available so others can conduct the same performance test themselves (as well as have a reference architecture for their own solution). Heck, if you're doing it in AWS, consider making the AMIs available along with whatever modifications need to happen. -That- would be very convincing for someone looking to adopt a solution in this space, if they could literally just spin up some EC2s and immediately start throwing load at a fully configured cluster. Also, to make it clear, is this handling message passing between instances in the cluster? ~~~ jondubois Thanks for the advice. Yes, it handles message passing between instances in the cluster. That means if you publish a message on a channel whilst connected to one host, the message will also reach subscribers to that channel which are on any other host in the cluster. It shards all channels across available brokers, when you scale up the number of brokers, it will automatically migrate the shards across available brokers with no downtime. ~~~ lostcolony Okay, nice. Then yeah, given some performance benchmarks showing some numbers at increasing number of nodes, with messages being broadcast across 1-to-1 channel pairings (i.e., direct message), 1-to-100 (for groups), and 1-to-all, I think it could sell itself as a pretty compelling turnkey solution (barring the scc-state concern which you're aware of). Possibly also consider some testing and documentation around geographic distribution; what happens if the nodes are located in different datacenters with non-trivial latency between them? Is that an issue? In the event of netsplits, does it split brain (probably not, given scc-state, but addressing that might cause it to)? That might be fine, it might not, depending on the use case, and just documenting what happens (by default, at least, if it's to be tunable) would be helpful as well. ------ etblg Reading posts like this about widely distributed applications always gets me interested in it as a career path. Currently I'm working as a front-end dev with moderate non-distributed back-end experience. How would someone in my situation, with no distributed back-end experience, break in to a position working on something like Discord? ------ omeid2 I think while this is great, it is good to remember that your current tech stack maybe just fine! after all, Discord start with mongodb[0]. [1]. [https://blog.discordapp.com/how-discord-stores-billions- of-m...](https://blog.discordapp.com/how-discord-stores-billions-of- messages-7fa6ec7ee4c7) ------ alberth Is there any update on BEAMJIT? It was super promising 3 or so years ago. But I haven't seen an update. Erlang is amazing in numerous ways but raw performance is not one of them. BEAMJIT is a project to address exactly that. [https://www.sics.se/projects/beamjit](https://www.sics.se/projects/beamjit) ~~~ jlouis Still ongoing work. My personal bet is a bit more on modernizing HiPE however (by using the LLVM backend more). ~~~ alberth Amy ETA on when we can start using beamjit? ~~~ jlouis Given that it has been postponed a couple of times, no. JITs are hard to pull off and it will probably have a period of worse stability as well before it matures. Another problem is getting a JIT to be faster than the interpreter. Erlang's BEAM is threaded code and also macro-instructions, so it almost looks like a JIT internally. The big gains would be in inlining across module boundaries and type speculation. But I hold that if we could compile bundles of modules in HiPE, we would have the same gain for a fraction of the development and maintenance effort. The biggest lure of native code generation would be that we could get rid of a lot of C code in the system as the native cogen would be able to rival the C code in speed. Many Erlang programs spend shockingly little time in the emulator loop, especially if they are communication heavy. If you need speed today, don't underestimate a port-program. My test is that you can pipeline about a million requests back and forth to an OCaml program per second per core. So if your work is on the order of 1+ milliseconds, this is usually a feasible strategy. Espcially because OS isolation means you can handle exceptions in the OCaml program from the Erlang side by restarting the port. ~~~ rozap Would you say the OCaml-port-as-an-optimization-strategy only makes sense if the program is compute bound, though? The reason I ask is because we're running a Erlang+JInterface program and the performance advantage the JVM has over BEAM is less than I would have expected. Even batching requests up into big pieces, we still see it's about 30% slower than running the same stuff in Elixir, without so much copying. But the reason we're doing JVM stuff at all is so we can re-use a whole bunch of code we already had written, and I would have expected it would have been a marginal performance win as well, but it's not. Perhaps we're doing it wrong, too. ------ ramchip Very interesting article! One thing I'm curious about is how to ensure a given guild's process only runs on one node at a time, and the ring is consistent between nodes. Do you use an external system like zookeeper? Or do you have very reliable networking and consider netsplits a tolerable risk? ~~~ jhgg We use etcd. ------ myth_drannon It's interesting how on StackOverflow Jobs Elixir knowledge is required more often than Erlang. [http://www.reallyhyped.com/?keywords=erlang%2Celixir](http://www.reallyhyped.com/?keywords=erlang%2Celixir) ~~~ cutler Despite its appeal to HN geeks I doubt if Elixir will ever achieve mainstream adoption. Searching Indeed.co.uk's API by title, there are only 5 Elixir jobs in London, compared with 445 Python and 171 Ruby. I also attended a Silicon Roundabout jobs fair recently and was disappointed to find Elixir wasn't even listed in the literature. ~~~ itbeho It's still early. I've bet on the wrong horse (stack) before, so take my comments with a grain of salt, but I know several companies that are currently adopting Elixir/Phoenix with the same level of excitement that I recall from the early days of Ruby/Rails. It may never be "Rails big", but there is definitely some momentum building. ~~~ bigtunacan When Rails arrived on the scene it was very different from everything else, but also there weren't 1000 new languages/ frameworks popping up all at once. I'm not implying in anyway that Elixir is bad. I just think there are too many horses these days to know which to bet on. Elixir? Node? Go? Rust? Something else? ~~~ vertex-four Depends on what you're doing, really. Rust is lovely for security-sensitive code - I'm writing a customer identity management system with Rust+Postgres+Redis. Go is... acceptable... for "glue" code where PHP would've been used a decade ago and Perl before that - all the successes of it I've seen fall into that sort of pattern. Elixir is great when you need to think about networked, stateful systems on the scale of a rack of machines - it provides many of the components to help you design systems at that scale. So... as ever, they all do quite seriously different things. I don't think many people need to build the sorts of systems Elixir is good for - it'll always have its niche in large-scale communications systems, though. A good many webapps fall into the patterns that Go is good for - take user input, munge it, send it to some backend system. A fair bit of code that drives the foundations of what those webapps are built on will eventually be written in Rust. ~~~ bigtunacan I understand where they are supposed to fit, but the problem is there are so many existing tools to fill the same needs already. As an example Erlang and Elixir both fit essentially the same bill so it seems to me what was already a small niche is just getting fractured. ~~~ vertex-four Elixir is just alternative (Ruby-ish) syntax for Erlang, as much as people have hyped it up - Erlang code can call Elixir code and vice versa with essentially no abstraction cost. In fact, the most popular web framework for Elixir is heavily built on Erlang code. ~~~ bigtunacan That was my point exactly. Before if you really needed the benefits of running on BEAM then you would have chosen Erlang. Now that subsection will fragment between Erlang and Elixir. Today Elixir developers still will lean heavily on the interaction of Erlang libraries until someone in Elixir-land needs something that isn't supported so then they will re-invent that particular wheel in Erlang and thus the cycle continues ever on. Then as you stated yourself Go is being used in areas where PHP & Perl were used before (as were also Ruby, Python, and Lua). So now there is just one more fracture there. Of course this is especially interesting since Go was supposed to be a better C or C++ then that should have placed it pretty squarely in systems programming land, yet is has managed to gain more traction as a glue and web services languages, ergo it ends up competing in this space when it probably should have competed more with C/C++/Rust. Rust; as a systems programming language still has to compete with C/C++/ObjC in this space and considering that "all the systems" already run on these languages that is one huge challenge to change the guard there. I'm not saying that Rust is bad, rather just that I think it's long term outlook may actually be rather bleaker than other languages due to these challenges. Quite frankly D had some great concepts and improvements as a systems language over C++, but it is still barely a blip on anyone's radar. If an individual is just trying to learn and expand their horizons then any of these languages are great to pick up. If, on the other hand, they are banking their future career on one then none is a sure fire bet right now. One would honestly still have more luck with a tried and true like Java. Personally I enjoy picking up new languages just to see things from a different perspective and continue learning. Heck I spend much of my free time coding in Crystal which hasn't even hit a 1.0 launch so that adds pretty much zero improvement to my career prospects. :) ~~~ vertex-four I wouldn't bank a career on a language anyway, so. However, as Elixir is just another skin for Erlang, switching from Elixir to Erlang or LFE or whatever the next language for that runtime is will be simple - the issue is really BEAM and OTP, as few of the skills learned around them are cleanly transferrable to other runtimes and frameworks. I suspect that Go will be around for a while by sheer force of inertia at this point - we're 5 years since 1.0 now and it still seems like there's new major projects being started in it every day. Rust is... interesting, but I think it'll always have its niche. As much as people like to riff on the RIIR crowd, there's actually a somewhat decent ecosystem of reimplemented libraries and systems in Rust already, and now that Rust code is part of Firefox it seems unlikely that Mozilla will stop supporting it for a long time to come. It also seems to not be a zero-sum game - rather than stealing devs from C++, it's brought a lot of developers from "non-systems" languages into the "systems" space. ------ andy_ppp Just as an aside how would people build something like this if they were to use say Python and try to scale to these sort of user levels? Has anyone succeeded? I'd say it would be quite a struggle without some seriously clever work! ~~~ MusaTheRedGuard Yeah pretty much impossible with python. ------ neya Hi community, Let me share my experience with you. I'm a hardcore Rails guy and I've been advocating and teaching Rails to the community for years. My workflow for trying out a new language involves using the language for a small side project and gradually would try to scale it up. So, here's my summary, my experience of all the languages so far: Scala - It's a vast academic language (official book is with ~700 pages) with multiple ways of doing things and it's attractiveness for me was the JVM. It's proven, robust and highly scalable. However, the language was not quite easy to understand and the frameworks that I've tried (Play 2, Lift) weren't as easy to transition to, for a Rails developer like me. Nevertheless, I did build a simple calendar application, but it took me 2 months to learn the language and build it. GoLang - This was my next bet, although I didn't give up on Scala completely (I know it has its uses), I wanted something simple. I used Go and had the same experience as I had when I used C++. It's a fine language, but, for a simple language, I had to fight a lot with configuration to get it working for me - (For example, it has this crazy concept of GOPATH where your project should reside and if your project isn't there it'll keep complaining). Nevertheless, I build my own (simple) Rails clone in GO and realized this isn't what I was looking for. It took my about a month to conquer the language and build my (simple) side project. Elixir - Finally, I heard of Elixir on multiple HN Rails release threads and decided to give it a go. I started off with Phoenix. The transition was definitely wayy smoother from Rails, especially considering the founding member of this language was a Rails dev. himself (the author of "devise" gem). At first some concepts seemed different (like piping), but once I got used to it, for me there was no looking back. All was fine until they released Phoenix 1.3, where they introduced the concept of contexts and (re) introduced Umbrella applications. Basically they encourage you to break your application into smaller applications by business function (similar to microservices) except that you can do this however you like (unopinionated). For example, I broke down my application by business units (Finance, Marketing, etc.). This forced me to re-think my application in a way I never would have thought and by this time I had finished reading all 3 popular books on this topic (Domain Driven Design). I loved how the fact that Elixir's design choices are really well suited for DDD. If you're new to DDD I suggest you try giving it a shot, it really can force you to re-think the way you develop software. By the end of two weeks after being introduced to Elixir, I picked up the language. In a month and a half, I built a complete Salesforce clone just working on the weekends. And this includes even the UI. And I love how my application is always blazing fast, picks up errors even before it compiles and warns me if I'm no using a variable I defined somewhere. P.S there IS a small learning curve involved if you're starting out fresh: 1) IF you're used to the Rails asset pipeline, you'll need to learn some new tools like Brunch / Webpack / etc. 2) Understand about contexts & DDD (optional) if you want to better architect your application. 3) There is no return statement in Elixir! As a Ruby developer, here are my thoughts: 1\. So, will I be developing with Rails again? Probably yes, for simpler applications / API servers. 2\. Is Ruby dying? No. In fact, I can't wait for Ruby 3. Some drawbacks of Elixir: 1\. Relatively new, so sometimes you'll be on your own and that's okay. 2\. Fewer libraries as compared to the Ruby eco-system. But you can easily write your own. 3\. Fewer developers, but should be fairly to onboard Ruby developers. Cheers. ------ oldpond When have you ever read, "How Acme scaled J2EE to 5M Concurrent Users"? I became an IT architect in 1998 at IBM, the year Sun released j2ee and IBM released Websphere. I have experienced 20 years of enterprise Java and object oriented computing, and I was thrilled when Elixir came out. I was a mainframe programmer before OO became all the rage, so I never really felt at home doing objects. Functional programming feels completely natural to me though. What I like about this article is that they shared everything they learned with the community. Thank you for that excellent experience report. ------ grantwu "Discord clients depend on linearizability of events" Could this be possibly be the cause of the message reordering and dropping that I experience when I'm on a spotty connection? ------ agentgt I realize this is off topic but how does Discord make money? I can't figure out their biz model (I'm not a gamer so I didn't even know about them). ------ jaequery Anyone know if Phoenix/Elixir have something similar to Ruby's bettererror gem? I see Phoenix has a built-in error stack trace page which looks like a clone of bettererror but it doesn't have the real-time console inside of it. Also, I wish they had a ORM like Sequel. These two are really what is holding me back from going full in on Elixir. Anyone can care to comment on this? ~~~ _asummers Ecto is hands down the best "ORM" I've used. At no point has it ever gotten in the way of us dynamically creating queries on the fly, just following the Ecto internals (not recommended, but totally doable) and has an extremely expressive syntax. The team behind it has been rolling out new features and are extremely responsive to requests on the mailing list. I encourage you to give it a chance. The mental shift is that "schemas" are not objects in an ORM sense, but instead are just data, or views over data. The functions come from taking in data or a Changeset and manipulating those, versus calling a function on a class. As far as errors, Elixir 1.4.5 has much better error messages, specifically printing the args to crashes and such, and OTP 20/ Elixir 1.5 should drastically improve Dialyzer error messages. I am not a Ruby guy, so perhaps you can say what you feel is missing from Elixir's messages and how the Ruby gem improves it. Also you can literally inspect running state on the fly with the BEAM tooling, so the need for things like debuggers goes down. ~~~ denisw Could you explain which changes to Elixir 1.5 and OTP 20 should result in better Dialyzer error messages? I didn't find anything relevant to that in the respective changelogs. (For context, Dialyzer is a static analysis tool detecting type errors which is part of the core Erlang distribution.) ~~~ _asummers It's kind of cryptic, but the Erlang release notes say: OTP-14369 Application(s): compiler, dialyzer, stdlib Related Id(s): PR-1367 The format of debug information that is stored in BEAM files (when debug_info is used) has been changed. The purpose of the change is to better support other BEAM-based languages such as Elixir or LFE. All tools included in OTP (dialyzer, debugger, cover, and so on) will handle both the new format and the previous format. Tools that retrieve the debug information using beam_lib:chunk(Beam, [abstract_code]) will continue to work with both the new and old format. Tools that call beam_lib:chunk(Beam, ["Abst"]) will not work with the new format. For more information, see the description of debug_info in the documentation for beam_lib and the description of the {debug_info,{Backend,Data}} option in the documentation for compile. There aren't specific notes in the Elixir 1.5 release notes, but given that it is OTP20 compatible, I assume it would be able to leverage this, perhaps with some work by Dialyxir. [http://erlang.org/download/otp_src_20.0-rc2.readme](http://erlang.org/download/otp_src_20.0-rc2.readme) ------ zitterbewegung Compared to slack discord is a much better service for large groups . Facebook uses them for react. ~~~ btown I just wish they were more professional in their communications. Service went down hard this weekend and their response was a cat GIF. Hard to justify to anyone in business that they should take it seriously. A shame when their tech is such a great match for professional collaboration, and all it would take to grow it organically would be _less_ marketing copy not more. ~~~ notnight We take outages seriously internally, but users generally don't care about the nitty-gritty. For a full, detailed postmortem on that outage you can check out our status site: [https://status.discordapp.com/incidents/ywdwttd6b0hg](https://status.discordapp.com/incidents/ywdwttd6b0hg) ------ concatime Sad to see some people taking raw and insignificant benchmarks to evaluate a language[0]. [0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14479757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14479757) ------ framp Really lovely post! I wonder how Cloud Haskell would fare in such a scenario ------ brightball I so appreciate write ups that get into details of microsecond size performance gains at that scale. It's a huge help for the community. ~~~ _asummers Erlang and Elixir measure in microseconds, so it'd be them throwing away information if they did otherwise! ------ dandare What is the business model behind Discord? They boast about being free multiple times, how do they make money? Or plan to make money? ~~~ satsuma They currently have a Nitro service that's $5/month for little features, but I don't know how far that takes them towards profitability. ------ KrishnaHarish Scale! ------ KrishnaHarish What is Discord and Elixir? ------ marlokk "How Discord Scaled Elixir to 5M Concurrent Users" _click link_ [Error 504 Gateway time-out] only on Hacker News ------ orliesaurus Unlike Discord's design team who seem to just copy all of Slack's designs and assets, the Engineering team seems to have their shit together, it is delightful to read your Elixir blogposts. Good job! ~~~ orliesaurus yeah go on with the downvotes, you know everyone's thinking what I said! Copying your way to success is a strategy and it's not the first time either way :) ------ khanan Problem is that Discord sucks since it does not have a dedicated server. Sorry, move along. ~~~ vultour That's actually why it doesn't suck for the vast majority. Not everyone wants to pay $ every month so they could have their own voice / chat server.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
NASA Struggles Over Deep-Space Plutonium Power - known http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/within-nasa-a-plutonium-power-struggle/ ====== jtwebman It is sad we spend so much money on military yet can't give NASA more money. I hate politics! ~~~ baldfat Don't "I hate politics." Get more involved. There are people who only see positives in tax cuts and hate "BIG GOVERNMENT" means we don't have money to spend on science that benefits humanity. Best thing people can do who don't like what is happening with their tax money is to vote and be vocal. If you negate yourself into I hate politics you reinforce the need to feed the proponents your disagree with. ~~~ mikeash Get involved how, exactly? I do vote. I have a hard time convincing myself that it's even worth the time it takes to do so, but I do it. I've tried writing to my representatives to express my views. I get form letters in response, with absolutely no indication that my voice has been taken into account in even the smallest way. People say you should get involved in local party meetings and such, but there are no viable parties that I agree with even remotely, and in any case I'd rather stab myself in the eyeballs with a toothpick than attend such meetings. ~~~ NegativeK > I get form letters in response, with absolutely no indication that my voice > has been taken into account in even the smallest way. They listen; they just don't have the staffing to write an individual response to every comment. Unfortunately, they listen by having a staffer say "We had X people contact us in favor of this; Y were opposed." But they do listen. Or: Our voices have been abstracted into sort of a reverse-poll thanks, in part, to technology. As an anecdote, the only time I had a staffer actually respond to my opinion with more than "I'll pass along your comment" was during the SOPA/PIPA call ins. The staffer I spoke to was clearly (and kind of understandably) irritated with the volume of calls and was somewhat short with me. I think everyone views that whole thing as an exception, though. ~~~ jessaustin _They listen; they just don 't have the staffing to write an individual response to every comment._ The latter statement _really_ calls the first into question. Similarly, they care about my vote, except to the extent that it's completely lost in the noise of thousands of other votes. ~~~ TrevorJ I can't prove it, but I imagine we'd be surprised at how few letters they actually get during parts of the election cycle. Depending on your district your congressman may be far more accessible than you think. ~~~ jessaustin I know my _state_ representative and senator are accessible; I've had email conversations with both in the last couple of months. I've never contributed to either of their campaigns. However, there's an obvious difference when one sends letters or emails to the federal level. _When_ I've gotten responses, it's always been at least several weeks later, and sometimes several months. The messages I've received have been loosely related to my original message, but they have never addressed any actual point I might have made. I'm not feeling the love. ~~~ baldfat THIS is why local politics are so much important and yet they receive the least participation. ~~~ techdragon Politics is also a hierarchy and its worth keeping in mind that local politicians may have much better connections to people in the next tier than you do from outside. Your local state senator may have much better access to your federal senator and that level of access can turn into opportunity for them to influence them. If your state representatives know how important their behaviour with regards to federal issues is to you as a voter, you stand a much better chance of the system working how it's intended. It's systemic lack of involvement that's causing the most issues in American politics. From the top with "lifetime senators" largely immune from their constituencies, and from the bottom with voter turnouts under twenty percent. ------ drzaiusapelord This is such a non-issue (from the article): “The project is planning to produce new Pu-238 at a rate that supports currently projected NASA missions,” says Rebecca Onuschak, program director for the DOE’s plutonium infrastructure. “There is no shortfall of material projected to meeting those needs, and so no remedy or action plan has been implemented.” \--- The argument that if NASA had more RTG's laying around it would be doing more is a bit suspicious as that's not how space missions are planned. Not to mention, Charles Bolden just wrote a letter to Congress asking them why they can't fund the SLS properly. There's no extra money laying around. ~~~ sehugg I think you've got it wrong; Bolden is mad at Congress for funding SLS at the expense of Commercial Crew, which includes SpaceX and Boeing's new CST-100 vehicle: [http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/06/11/commercial-crew- spacesh...](http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/06/11/commercial-crew-spaceships- face-likely-delays/) SLS is a white elephant that currently has nothing to do. The first crewed mission is scheduled for 2021, and plans beyond that are hazy. NASA managers have looked into "how seldom" they can launch the thing while still maintaining a safe and viable program. And the article describes a chilling effect which keeps plutonium-dependent missions from being seen as viable, so of course there will be enough plutonium for all the planned missions (of which there are precious few). ~~~ drzaiusapelord Bolden very clearly stated that he's upset that there's money for all these Russian ISS launches, but not for his SLS and the CCV programs. There is no bigger cheerleader for CCV than Bolden. This SLS vs CCV "controversy" is 100% manufactured. [http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/28/9221541/NASA-Charles- Bolde...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/28/9221541/NASA-Charles-Bolden- Congress-open-letter) It costs around $81 million to send just one astronaut on the Soyuz. Bolden says it will only cost $58 million per seat to send astronauts on the Commercial Crew vehicles. "It’s as if we keep ordering expensive takeout because we haven’t yet set up our own kitchen — only, in this case, the takeout meals are costing us hundreds of millions of dollars," he writes. ~~~ Symmetry Congress keeps insisting that NASA spend more on the SLS than it wants to, and less on the CCV. Even if we were to fully fund CCV this year it wouldn't be until 2018 or so that we could stop hitching rides with the Russians so I don't think it's fair to say that the CCV and Russian ISS launches are in conflict right now. ~~~ mzs It is about 70% through 2015. ------ dghughes Why not use polonium? It's very rare but at least it's not as rare as an element that has to be actually be created. The Russians use polonium for the same purpose in their spacecraft as the US does using plutonium; heat to generate power suing thermoelectric generators. ~~~ zaphoyd Polonium 210 has a half life of 138 days vs 88 years for Plutonium 238. I believe Russia used it for short duration moon missions. For missions that last years or decades it is not an option. ------ akshayB NASA's budget is way less then what USA gives out in international aid to other countries at times which is in a way used to buy influence in that region of the world. It is a tragedy how politicians decide to use their brain in general. ~~~ Symmetry I wouldn't call it "way less." We spend $32 billion on aid compared to $18 billion for NASA. Those are large numbers but they're not so very different considering the $4 trillion total. ------ Aldo_MX Why don't they take the fuel from their nuclear missiles? ~~~ fluxquanta >Pu-238 cannot be used to make atomic bombs, nor is it particularly useful for fueling nuclear reactors, which are widely considered too controversial and expensive for practical use in space missions. Look up the difference between Pu-238 and Pu-239 (what most nuclear warheads carry) and deduce why shooting a rocket filled with Pu-239 might be a bad idea. ------ sageabilly "...maintaining it all costs upwards of $50 million per year" It's really dumb that we're going to sit in ignorance of SO MUCH STUFF because someone in the government somewhere is getting into a tiff over this tiny, tiny drop in the government budget. For some perspective, apparently the US Gov spends about $1.7 Billion annually maintaining empty or abandoned federal buildings/land [1] [1] [http://www.npr.org/2014/03/12/287349831/governments-empty- bu...](http://www.npr.org/2014/03/12/287349831/governments-empty-buildings- are-costing-taxpayers-billions) ~~~ ekianjo > about $1.7 Billion annually maintaining empty or abandoned federal building and a lot more on killing people overseas. ~~~ knieveltech Well, they weren't gonna kill themselves... Edit: Seriously? Y'all downvote the parent and upvote this blatantly inflammatory nonsense? Clearly I have no idea what motivates people. ~~~ MrZongle2 Humor is rarely permitted on HN, for fear that it would suddenly turn the site into Reddit. Somehow. ------ psswrdshmashwrd Two words: Thorium reactor. ~~~ rexignis Every time someone gets all giggly about Thorium I'm suspicious. Could you provide some documentation about why this is a viable option in space? ~~~ psswrdshmashwrd I agree thorium isn't without its problems, but the end byproduct of a lftr reactor is plutonium. ~~~ oppositelock LFTR's produce 239Pu (among a mess of other stuff), that's the stuff that goes BOOM in nuclear bombes, not 238Pu that glows warmly to make power for spacecraft. ~~~ Roodgorf As Jobu points out from Wikipedia: _he second proliferation resistant feature comes from the fact that LFTRs produce very little plutonium, around 15 kg per gigawatt-year of electricity ... This plutonium is also mostly Pu-238._ According the article this seems like quite a bit more than is currently being produced, is it not viable for use in RTGs for some reason? Or is the cost of a LFTR over the course of a year less cost effective than the current method of Np to Pu? I have very little knowledge of the science here, I'm just not sure what all I'm missing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Walking through a basic Racket web service - eatonphil http://notes.eatonphil.com/2016/29/walking-through-basic-racket-web-service.html ====== soegaard Hi Phil, A very nice article! I like that you show how to "remove the magic". I noticed you "aside" at the bottom and wanted to give you a tip. If you open a source file in DrRacket and then click the "Check Syntax" icon (the green check mark with a looking glass), then DrRacket will annotate each binding with its origin. Right clicking on say `serialize-stuffer` will give you an option to jump to the file were it is defined. It's also possible to right click on module names such as `web-server` in an require statement. ~~~ eatonphil Thanks for the tip! I just heard about this on Twitter as well. But although this what I'm looking for, I still think it would be most reasonable to link to the source on the documentation website. ~~~ notjack I think there's a tendency in the Racket community to rely much more on a thorough reading of manuals and docs than a peek at the source code. I personally can count on one hand the number of times I've had to look up implementation code for debugging or to figure out how to implement something. The Racket manuals, Scribble, DrRacket's integration with both, and the strong culture of documentation in user packages make for a wonderful development experience.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Stephen Colbert gets ahold of an iPad during the Grammys - anderzole http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/56646 ====== jsz0 Brilliant PR by Apple. Not sure how many people actually watch the Grammy's but I bet you this cost a lot less than a commercial spot. ~~~ iamwil Actually, Colbert's been asking for an iPad from Apple this whole last week. Every show, he'd work in how he wants--nay, deserves--an iPad. ~~~ m_eiman ... which might just as well be part of the PR :P ~~~ dangrossman Perhaps, but it's also part of an ongoing bit. He did the same for the iPhone. ~~~ m_eiman It might very well be authentic, but for some reason I'm a cynic when it comes to big business and advertisements. ~~~ Zilioum I'm not really sure if he really wants one or just makes fun of the hype. Apple gave him one, so they think he really wants one or they dont care. ~~~ pchristensen "I'm not really sure if he really wants one or just makes fun of the hype." Why is there an 'or' in that sentence? ------ ansonparker the surprising thing is it must be a real one -- look at that orientation sensor going nuts! ~~~ philwelch That orientation sensor is way faster than my iPhone's. ------ jrockway "Honey, does this make me look like a shill?" ~~~ sdurkin No more than during The Stephen Colbert Presidential Campaign brought to you by Doritos. Part of the beauty of Colbert's television persona is that he can shamelessly shill for products, and then pass it off as "just part of the character." ------ ighost Downvote me if you like, but it will still be Grammys. ------ Virax Holy shit his wife is hot. ~~~ sh1mmer That's his daughter, you horribly inappropriate person. ~~~ sdurkin That's a reasonable assumption, you horribly prudish person. ~~~ sh1mmer Actually my wife made me sit through the thing which is why I know. Earlier in the show he talked to her after identifying her as his daughter. ~~~ sdurkin Yeah, I just didn't think a person deserved to be insulted for what I saw as a relatively benign comment based on an assumption which was reasonable for a person who only saw the video clip. ------ chrischen To all you nay-sayers: see, the next time you host the Grammy's you'll be able to pull out your nominees list in style! How's that for a use case scenario. But seriously though, I think the iPad is going to be the next big revolution: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1091208> (I'm really desperate for readers). ~~~ ambiate As a fellow person seeking a little attention lately, just you know, for the motivation to get into something... it is a shame that the groups we mingle with (I've browsed HN for ~2 years without making account but have always felt at home here) do not support mini-adventures very much. I always viewed HN as a place where I could go for reviews or receive some advice from other people seeking the same thing. Yet, it seems the groups I once called home are showing this aura of 'elitist' instead of lending a hand. If HN is the group we associate with, why is a harmless plug after a comment on a fresh blog such a terrible thing? We want the group we associate with to give us feedback! Do I need to take out a loan, invest $30,000 in a startup, and get VC funded to be able to plug a website? I guess this is over-dramatization and full of useless e-motions; and not entirely aimed at HN, but communities in general. I participate in a few forums, but let a few years pass by and this elitist wave of old timers seems to just mock/bash the people coming up from the bottom. If plugging a site isn't the right thing to do, explain why, and give some advice for pulling in readers. If HN is your only community and you don't have some massively read site, how do you get fresh readers? edit: (I told you I was being over-dramatic), but yeah, I do tend to click the "Review my App: etc." ~~~ vaksel it's different when the person plugging the site hasn't even bothered to register a domain...and the blog only has the one blog post that the person is trying to link. ~~~ chrischen Since when does a domain equate to relevancy (in my situation here)? And doesn't everyone have to start somewhere? EDIT: Can you tell me how I should have approached this then? ~~~ kyro I don't think you were really trying to spam anyone, but your plug came off as such, to me, because: a) HN has been inundated with iPad blog posts and we've already heard opinions of all angles, so it's safe to say your post wouldn't have made any points not already made, b) Your post is somewhat irrelevant because although this submission is about the iPad, it's not about whether it's revolutionary or not, and so it seems like you were trying to shoehorn your plug in here, c) You plugged your blog by linking to the HN submission when you should've just linked directly to your blog post, and d) You admitted you desperately needed readers, which was probably meant to be taken in jest, but others might think you were being serious. HN humor is pretty hard to gauge sometimes. ~~~ chrischen There's no doubt I was trying to plug my post, but it's not as if I simply commented with that link. I linked to the submission because I was hoping it would jumpstart it so that more people could see it. If I only linked to my blog post then I couldn't potentially bump up my HN submission. It was a practical decision, and morally I don't see what's wrong with it. I could understand if people didn't bite, but I'm a little overwhelmed by the negativity. Sometimes this place can feel a little too stiff.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How can one take advantage of the rumored transition of Macs to ARM? - krtkush I have never developed software for Mac or any Apple product. However, I feel that if the rumors about Apple moving from Intel to ARM are true then there will be a huge opportunity for software developers to make new stuff and in turn make money.<p>Does the community think the same? How can a software developer take advantage of such a huge transition? ====== wmf We can get ideas from past transitions. When the iPhone came out with "Web apps only" many OS X developers got into jailbreaking because iOS was based on OS X and they could use their existing knowledge. A little later when the official iPhone SDK came out, those developers were the hottest in the world and got paid huge amounts to develop simple apps. When Quark XPress decided not to support OS X back around 2001, Adobe InDesign took many of their customers. There are Mac apps that will never be updated (or will take five years like Adobe) for 64-bit or ARM and people will be looking for replacements. ------ tlb I'm not sure it'll have a big effect on software. The vast majority of application software will work the same, only with fat binaries containing both x86 and ARM code. The few bits that are optimized for particular CPUs, like video codecs, already exist for both CPUs. The most likely opportunity is applications that are currently too sluggish except on big Mac Pros, but would be more popular if people could run them on cheap ARM macs. One might be real time video manipulation for live video conferencing. You can get your feet wet by developing for iPad, or ARM Linux. ------ jki275 There's going to be a gap made by people who don't port over their software, certainly worth looking at that gap and see if there's something you can provide. Most software should be just a recompile if it's well packaged. Of course that's a huge if and not everybody wants to support Mac anyway, and I lost a ton of my steam library (not that anybody really plays games on Mac anyway) in just the 32-64 bit transition recently. I also lost textwrangler, which was the greatest Mac text editor ever created and I refuse to pay a subscription for its 64 bit successor. ~~~ greatjack613 Not sure why you were downvoted, this is a great point. ------ PaulHoule Get good at ARM. It isn't just Apple that will be selling ARM computers. Soon we will see good workstations based on server-type ARM chips that will support absolutely insane bandwidth and number of threads. For now we have [https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded- sy...](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded- systems/jetson-agx-xavier/) The software ecosystem is ragged so there is work to be done. ARM has a bright future whether or not Apple switches macs over. ~~~ wmf What's there to get good at? C is C, Swift is Swift, and CUDA is CUDA. There's little asm out there and it has already been ported to ARM because of phones. ~~~ PaulHoule ARM is much less developed than x86 from the viewpoint of a Linux developer. In the case of x86, for instance, you can usually download Python wheels that are already built, you can find wheels that are built for various SIMD levels, with highly optimized numerics, etc. Building software on ARM that isn't phonish is more of an adventure. If your goal is "personal workstation that smokes current workstations" based on an ARM processor with a monstrous core count and memory bandwidth you are going to have to confront the problem of making a 64-core machine feel snappy, which means you need to take advantage of parallelism to a high extend, understand the very different memory consistency model, etc.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Ameelio – Free and Open Source Prison Communication Platform (Part II) - jessehorne A couple of months ago I made a post here announcing the launch of Letters, the first application developed by Ameelio (<a href="https://ameelio.org" rel="nofollow">https://ameelio.org</a>), a non-profit organization committed to making communication free between incarcerated people and their loved ones. Letters allows users to sign up, type a letter to their loved-one in prison/jail and we handle printing, packaging, stamping and shipping through USPS. It's still totally free and unlimited. We've also have went open source. (<a href="https://github.com/ameelio" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ameelio</a>)<p>When I made the post on HN (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042558" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042558</a>), announcing the launch, we received SO much support. Many of you contacted us and wanted to contribute. With your help, we were able to scale our operations, we gained several amazing teammates and we developed an amazing product that's serving over 5,500 users who've sent around 23,000 letters to their family and friends that are incarcerated. The impact we've made already has been incredible.<p>Letters has been a huge success and we've been planning some things to make it even better. We've revamped the UI with more enhancements coming soon. The next stage for Letters is to focus on scalability and extend functionality to make letters sent from our platform more personal, helpful and even entertaining. We'll be adding games that users can send to their loved ones such as Sudoku, Crossword puzzles and even potentially pop-out board games (TBD). Also, we'll be adding different formats for mail, such as Postcards.<p>In the coming months, we'll be planning and developing Connect, which will be the first-ever free platform for sending messages and having video calls with incarcerated people. We already have a pilot site!<p>We've also just launched a Kickstarter campaign to help us keep up the momentum. You can find it here...<p><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ameelio/ameelio-app" rel="nofollow">https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ameelio/ameelio-app</a><p>I hope this community has enjoyed the update on Ameelio and I look forward to hearing your response.<p>Thank you, HN! ====== gabesaruhashi Hey y'all again! I am one of the co-founders. Just wanted to highlight that our growth statistics cannot capture our impact. Countless users have reached out to thank us and describe Ameelio’s impact on their lives: I can't tell you how much difference your organization has made for me and my loved one… my LO gets one 15min call per day... how can you keep a father- child relationship strong with that? it rips families apart... you have been able to help... it means a lot... thanks again. — Steven Thank u for everything it really helps cause money is so tight and I can’t afford stamps. I'm choosing stamps to talk to my husband or my heart meds that are expensive. I don't have insurance. — Savannah I live in Australia and my husband is incarcerated in PA, so obviously communication is a massive part of our relationship, especially in written format. One factor that most USA residents doesn't have to face, is a monetary factor of sending snail mail, for me to send a card or letter from here to him, it's costs me $3.20 AUD, over $2 USD, so Ameelio is such a cost saving thing for us. I love how informed we are of the status of the letter and that I can send a pic every single time. It's helped me hold things together for us as a couple. When the facility was on total lockdown, mail was still getting thru, but letters I'd sent from early April have only just arrived, yet letters I sent via Ameelio all arrived within a week (at worst). It gave hubby peace of mind knowing I was okay out here and that I was thinking of him in there. WIthout those letters, who knows what his mental health would have been like. Thank you Ameelio, we both appreciate this wonderful service. ------ lhs__ awesome idea. makes no sense that incarcerated people & their families are paying such steep prices while the rest of us are using hangouts, zoom, facebook, whatsapp, etc for free ~~~ jessehorne I agree totally. It's wrong.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Nearly 50% of Twitter Accounts Talking about Coronavirus Might Be Bots - exogeny https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dygnwz/if-youre-talking-about-coronavirus-on-twitter-youre-probably-a-bot ====== exogeny >A spokesperson for Twitter told VICE News that they’re “prioritizing the removal of COVID-19 content when it has a call to action that could potentially cause harm,” a policy that they adopted on March 18. Since then, they’ve removed more than 2,200 tweets. LOL. Imagine thinking 2,200 is some large or notable amount. As has been discussed lots and lots in regards to Twitter's feckless and pathetic attempts to curb this problem, they're heavily incentivized _not_ to: as a public company, they live and die by vanity metrics. And if turns out a very, very large percentage of their activity is fraudulent, well..	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How to transform/distort screen in Linux Ubuntu? - autorun I have a projector, which doesn't come with horizontal keystone correction built in, only vertical correction.<p>I've seen that it is possible to do it with xrandr, using the --transform parameter, but needs matrix coordinates and I'm lost. That deserves a GUI, but ARandR doesn't support it.<p>I've also checked MapMap project, but seems that v4l2 virtual video device is not well recognized to use it as source.<p>Do you know any other alternative to transform the screen? ====== mtmail [https://askubuntu.com/](https://askubuntu.com/) seems a better match for that specific problem.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is HN wrong about timing of stories? - gudnm http://themworks.com/hacker-news-is-wrong-about-timing-of-posts/ ====== minimaxir Posts that are "rescued" have their timestamps reset, which may explain the behavior.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Recommendo – Get personalized recommendations from the people you trust - BenJammin81 https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/recommendo/id932405753?mt=8 ====== BenJammin81 Free mobile recommendation app turning your friends into your remote eyes and ears on the hunt for great brands, products and events.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New, Bigger HN RSS Feed - pg http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html#5oct2011 ====== snprbob86 > HN now gets over 120k unique ips on a weekday, and serves over 1.3 million > page views. Still off just one server? What are its specs? How up to date is the news.arc file in the Arc distribution? I'm considering using the simpler, more functional, single server, all in memory, filesystem as a database approach in an upcoming project. Would really love to see more details from PG and others who have had success with that back-to-basics simple approach. ~~~ pg One server. An Intel Xeon E5450 with 12 GB RAM. The currently available news.arc is quite out of date. Operating out of memory works very well for an application like this, where most requests are for recent stuff. ~~~ snprbob86 Thanks for the info! I hope you don't mind me asking a few more questions... > The currently available news.arc is quite out of date. Any chance of getting an updated version? > Operating out of memory works very well for an application like this, where > most requests are for recent stuff. Do you ever release cached resources? Or does the process simply die with an out-of-memory error, only to be restarted with empty caches? If the former, what is the cache invalidation strategy? If the latter, how often does the process die? What are the implications on availability and performance, particularly surrounding process initialization and warming the caches. ~~~ pg We randomly throw older items out of memory. If they're needed again they'll get reloaded from disk, but it's unlikely they'll be needed soon because older stuff is mostly visited by crawlers or random Google traffic. ------ jerrya I read HN in Google Reader in a tabbed browser, and I think I would prefer a feed that reversed the order of the two links. So that the first link goes to the HN comments, and the second link goes to the article itself. That would allow me to use Google Reader's List view which does not display the expanded, secondary link, and then go down that list of HN articles, open the intriguing HN comments in a background tab, and then when I get to the tab, click on the link in the comments that takes me to the article itself. ~~~ juxta same goes with their twitter feed. I like seeing the article but I come to HN for the comments as well (come for the articles - stay for the comments ;) ) ~~~ juxta better yet - I would be cool if they implemented a "reddit bar" for their twitter feed links so this way you can they have HN Bar which goes on top of the article ------ pasbesoin I'm one of those people who might be perceived as "crawling" against the "More" link. I use a Firefox extension to pull the next 10 pages, inline. I then convert all the links to open in new tabs. I'll slowly work my way through the resulting Frankenpage. When I first started doing this, I only pulled 5 pages, sometimes waiting a bit to then pull 5 more/deeper. I was worried about excessive use -- including triggering whatever blocking you have in place. Eventually, I tried 10 at once. I've found that 10 is about as deep as I want to go into the recent history and keeps me fairly current with daily browsing. I hope this use isn't considered excessive. It's run just once or twice in a day, and the results are simply for personal consumption. As I (somewhat vaguely) recall, I began doing this when and because a change made the "More" links expire more -- as in, rather -- quickly. That was a time when you were working to keep HN from bogging down and choking on its memory usage. I wanted to see a few pages into the history without a bunch of overlap and having to start over from the first page; and pulling the subsequent pages all at once worked well for me as a solution. I'll have a look at the revised RSS feed. ~~~ wvl Perhaps my <http://hckrnews.com> will suit you, since it archives anything that makes it onto the homepage (without crawling against the 'More' link). I've resisted putting RSS feeds on hckrnews, because I think RSS feeds are a poor match for the format. Number of points and number of comments combine with the link to provide information that you don't get with an RSS feed. Often the utility of a link is not obvious from the source and title only. ~~~ pasbesoin Well, I also enjoy finding and promoting good/relevant links that escape attention "amidst the deluge". I also take your point that the comment links and point counts are pertinent. In particular, I will often start off with the comments rather than the linked page itself. Again, I'll have to look at the revised RSS feed, but as I recall, when I looked at it in the past, I, too, found it less useful for these aspects (unless I was viewing one of the third-party feeds that I seem to recall being created, some time back). I suppose one could view my use / time on HN as high. OTOH, I pull the pages (i.e. this "Frankenpage") once and then slowly pay attention to them. I guess one could contrast that with another user hitting the top page every 15 minutes throughout the day. (I do also check the new/ and classic/ front pages a few times, often later in the day. I used to drill further into new/, but I've been trying to limit my time on HN somewhat. Also, new/ is so full of spam, these days, that it's kind of discouraging -- although people need to continue to hit it and aggressively kill off the spam and other crap.) \---- Completely aside, I'd like a comprehensive list of post links. I used to have some old favorites saved, but some of those were lost in a theft. I guess it might not be the healthiest thing for the HN ecosystem including system load, but I'd enjoy journeying back in time to the early days. Many of those discussions were incredibly informative and focused. I know there are and have been a third party archives and/or views into HN, but either I didn't take the time to learn or the interface itself didn't seem to offer a simple, time-based listing. ------ antoncohen With 120k unique IPs a day, it is really surprising how few votes stories get. Most are under 100 points, only about once a month is there one over 1000 points. Do most of the readers not have accounts? Do people with accounts not up vote? ~~~ adhipg There was a statistic on Reddit yesterday that 90% of the people on that site did not have an account - and, 90% of the people who had an account have never voted. Maybe it's a similar scene here. ------ juiceandjuice PG, how many users are there on hacker news? ~~~ pg There are 234,301 accounts, but the great majority were created by spammers. 2531 accounts have voted in the last 20 minutes. ~~~ Sukotto Do you post a stats page someplace? I would find it really interesting to watch them over time. ------ endlessvoid94 I'd love to know if HN is run on a single machine somewhere. If so, I definitely need to give Arc a try. ~~~ pg Not merely a single machine, but a single core. ~~~ endlessvoid94 Yikes. Time to get to work. ------ jcurbo Is there anything like alterslash.org for HN in an RSS feed? A link to the article plus the top 5 comments or so would be great to pull in an RSS reader for on-the-go reading. ------ krishna2 Is there a way we could also get the total points, submitted by, time submitted and no. of comments ? (essentially the second line). Thanks very much in advance. ------ ronnier PG, do you want me to close <http://api.ihackernews.com> ? ~~~ jorde I hope this doesn't happen. As a frequent Android/iPad user I have grown to love iHackernews ever since it was published. Unfortunately the lack of comments in most of the posts is really hurting the service and it would be nice to see some collaboration between HN and iHackernews. I'm already using my custom CSS for HN in Chrome but sadly this isn't possible on mobile and iHackernews fills the need perfectly. ------ ivank Any chance of getting per-user RSS feeds? I've been missing this functionality ever since SearchYC went down.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Couple hosting Tor exit node raided by cops investigating child abuse - jackgavigan https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/04/07/couple-hosting-tor-exit-node-raided-by-cops-investigating-child-abuse/ ====== joncp SPD. What a bunch of Barney Fifes. ------ 2ifrgtmypss lol tor... why even bother, you'll be lumped in with all the pedos and terrible people of the world... ~~~ falcolas A form of martyrism - making a sacrifice for a cause. You can argue if the cause of anonymity is a greater good (I think it is), but there are always those who are willing to give something up to support it. ~~~ kbenson I think it would be interesting to think about ways in which the core important benefits or anonymity could be achieved through a non-anonymous society. Anonymity is becoming fetishized in certain subgroups of western culture, but I don't think anonymity is the real goal, but what it allows. This is important, because while it may not be possible to salvage anonymity in some or all locales in the future, that doesn't _necessarily_ mean we can't salvage some of its benefits, such as protection from authority. Not that I know how we would accomplish this, but like I said, I think it would be interesting to think about. ~~~ nitrogen _Maybe_ perfect equality could be a substitite for anonymity, but as long as there are any power balances in the world, good people with minority views (say, political activists in oppressive regimes) will need to hide from powerful majorities. I think a better question is how to cure the societal and individual ills that lead to the abuses of anonymity that cause people to oppose it. ~~~ kbenson > I think a better question is how to cure the societal and individual ills > that lead to the abuses of anonymity that cause people to oppose it. And that as well _might_ only be solved by perfect equality. Actually, looking at it this way, where each spectrum has a range of positive and negative consequences, but the constrained side of the spectrum is self perpetuation and not self correcting, reminds me of freedom of speech itself, where we just accept the alternative is accepted (in some parts of the world at least) as the de-facto standard because of this. Maybe the way to frame anonymity is that anonymity _is_ freedom of speech, and there isn't truly freedom of speech without it, so we should just accept the ills that come with it. This is probably a known and accepted strategy and I'm just slow on the uptake. :/ ------ baus This is the second case in a week involving the Seattle PD raiding an exit node operator. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11431128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11431128) ~~~ ikeboy And coincidentally, the person has the same name! ~~~ baus Opps.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Promiscuous Cookies and Their Impending Death via the SameSite Policy - kkm https://www.troyhunt.com/promiscuous-cookies-and-their-impending-death-via-the-samesite-policy/ ====== AndrewDucker Firefox is planning likewise: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1604212](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1604212)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is a 4 digit password with a predictable username secure? - Nullificus There is a company I am with that has decided to keep my personal information (Full Name, Phone number, Email, DoB, Address, Full phone history, and billing information) behind a web system protected by only a 4-digit PIN.<p>They can't remove this information for 45 days. They can't disable the PIN access.<p>My complaints are met with "This is a standard and secure system"<p>I think that maybe if I show them the responses here that action may be taken.<p>I've been waiting for 2 weeks for the "Chief Privacy Officer" to respond to my email. ====== CyberFonic Probably can be brute forced within milliseconds. With that sort of design decision I would guess there would be other gaping security holes that would make even brute forcing the PIN an overkill.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GraphJet: a real-time graph processing library - emilong https://github.com/twitter/GraphJet ====== johnymontana Is this actually being used in production at Twitter? Skimming the paper it's not quite clear to me. ~~~ squarecog Yes: [https://twitter.com/aneeshs/status/773547228694589440](https://twitter.com/aneeshs/status/773547228694589440) "We use GraphJet for serving contextual, personalized content recommendations in real time, such as "You May Like", emails, notifications etc"	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What's the best referral bonus you have ever got? - pythoncloner Recently I heard from my friends that companies started giving referral bonus of $10k for eng hires. I used to get $5k per referral. Just wanted to know what's the cost of hiring today and how referrals save money to the company? ====== romanhn Referrals save money in a few ways. External recruiting agencies can cost somewhere in the range of 15-25% of the candidate's first year's salary. You can see how referrals would make a lot of sense from just a financial standpoint. There are other benefits though - for one, referrals have a higher likelihood of responding to outreach, making it through the interview process, fitting in, and sticking around. I'm sure the referrer doesn't mind the extra dough either :) In terms of referral bonus amounts, my company (PagerDuty, YC S10) offers between $5K and $20K depending on the role and priority. This includes engineering roles as well. The cool thing is we pay out for external referrals. Anyone can send a referral our way and if a hire is made, you'll get paid the full amount. Not too many companies do that :) ------ BinaryIdiot Depends on industry, location, etc. Every single time I've almost gotten a referral bonus something changes or goes wrong so I've never gotten one but I know a few folks who have received $10k for developers who are fully cleared in the Annapolis / D.C. area. Getting cleared is costly so if you can refer someone who is already cleared they'll give you nice bonuses (sometimes even higher if they're in an urgent need). ------ soham Many companies in the Valley give $10K referral bonuses, for technical, design and product roles. It's cheap for them to offer that, compared to paying 20% of first-year's salaries to external recruiting agencies. It's less for other roles. (Source: 10 years in the valley. Made several hires, set recruiting processes at my last company, and now I run a bootcamp for technical interview prep: [http://InterviewKickstart.com](http://InterviewKickstart.com)) ------ bitshepherd Referral... bonus? These are things? Seriously, though. Every referral I've made in my career has flaked out at some point. It doesn't matter if it's a person I've known for years, or someone I recently met at a meetup or over coffee. I've made it a point to refer not a single person again because I'm tired of my and my employer's time being pissed away, when we can just dispense with the bullshit and get back to doing real work. ------ g8gggu89 Where I work it's 5k for some positions (or maybe even only 3k?), and about half that for most positions. I've also worked places where the rules kept shifting and/or were always overly complex, like we were doing door to door vacuum sales instead of sw development. It's one of those things I'd probably never count on getting, like performance based bonuses. ------ eonw i worked a company that had great referral program, i referred two employees. when the topic came up of how i go about getting my fees, i was basically laughed at and told to leave HR's area. has anyone ever actually been paid out for a referral?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Marissa Mayer: The Visionary - PeterRosdahl http://www.glamour.com/women-of-the-year/2009/marissa-mayer ====== Shana You aren't going to get a good article about her aesthetic push in Google without a mention of either her upcoming marriage or her taste in ODLR. Vogue's article was worse. They post her in women's mags because she is cute, she's has designs touch, and she works for Google. I would prefer to see Caterina Fake. She has a brilliant understanding of HCI, that most of us will never top in our lifetimes. She's has doctorate from RISD. She's doing the startup thing RIGHT NOW. She's brilliant. She also has great style. You know that because no one would dare go up to her after a presentation and say:"Is that Jane Mayle you are wearing?" She just pulls it off as a professional, and that's that. (seen this in person at the New York Tech Meetup, I actually recognized the jacket she was wearing from somewhere, but she wore it perfectly, and no, I would not have dared go up to her and asked, where did you get said jacket.) Bad conde nast (though I will vogue and W forever) ------ coriander Did anyone notice she's sitting on a Swiss ball wearing stilettos and a clingy red dress? ~~~ BigZaphod Of course - but I think some of us wish that for once there could be an article about a woman in tech that didn't make a big point about her gender and include a staged, sexy picture. :/ ~~~ unalone This isn't a tech article. It's a women's fashion article. ~~~ tomjen2 Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that it is annoying that you can't have a successful women without focusing on how she looks. ~~~ unalone I've seen a lot of articles on Mayer before. She's not at all an unknown. It's just that those weren't submitted to Hacker News, and this was. ------ BigZaphod Choice quote: _“Get in a bit over your head,” she says. “That’s how you grow and learn and stretch yourself.”_ ------ physcab We need more articles about women in technology circles here on HN. Thanks for posting. ~~~ byrneseyeview "We" might, but women in technology don't. When someone writes about a successful man, people can assume that it's because he's successful; if someone writes about a successful woman, comments like yours make it seem like she's just being written about because she's a she. ~~~ physcab Wow. You are reading way too much into my statement. I was just trying to voice encouragement. Why don't you try to be more supportive? ~~~ byrneseyeview "Supportive" is not necessarily good. I am "supportive" of things I think are a good idea. I am not "supportive" of things I think are a bad idea. Maybe you meant something like "I'm glad women are succeeding in technology," rather than "I want people to lower their standards for what's worth reporting, when they report on women, so we'll hear more about women even though the technology industry is disproportionately male." But what you were saying is much closer to the last one. If you want women to achieve more, for whatever reason, that's fine, but that's not the sentiment you expressed. ~~~ physcab "Supportive" means in the sense of "supporting" reporting any type of publication that aims to increase the awareness of women or any minority in the technology sector. Whether you think the publication has to meet certain "standards" is entirely subjective and based upon your individual worldview.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Nokia to cut thousands of jobs, Google reminds it is hiring - ainsleyb http://www.techspot.com/news/42379-nokia-to-cut-thousands-of-jobs-google-reminds-it-is-hiring.html ====== tommi Positions available in Finland: Engineering Operations & Management (7) Enterprise (5) Marketing and Communications (1) Sales (6) Hardly work for the thousands. ~~~ stcredzero Realistically, Google or any smart competitor just wants the top 20% or so of the disaffected Nokia employees. ------ stcredzero Since Nokia's dropped the ball, Google should poach Nokia employees and go for an end-run around Apple, Microsoft, and the rest of the competition in the 3rd world. Find a way to deliver rich services and develop a healthy developer ecosystem on _dumb phones_. (feature phones) Right now, people in developing countries are using services like banking over SMS the way we now use web apps and smartphone apps. This tells me there's latent demand. By blurring the line between smart phones and feature phones, you can entirely undercut the smart phones. Get in there first, with less capable but cheaper phones people can actually afford, with services delivered more comfortably than SMS and with more cultural sensitivity than the usual outside company. As Moore's law continues to make processing power cheaper, the line between smart phones and dumb ones will blur, while at the same time, the citizens of the developing nations will become more affluent. Such a "blur phone" product and ecosystem will have already undercut the smartphones before they're even as real as a pipe dream and will have entrenched power of a network effect. ~~~ ZeroGravitas Google already has this plan in motion, with no need for Nokia or ex-Nokia employees. It's not really a big secret either as Schmidt is always going on about getting the next billion online. Part of the reason Nokia is hurting is that they have been severely disrupted at the low-end. The dumphone became an absolute commodity. Elop specifically name-checked MediaTek in his burning platforms memo as the designer of the standardized innards for these no-name, white-box manufacturers: _"Let’s not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets."_ Guess what MediaTek are now selling? That's right, the same thing but for Android. Here's there PR for the latest version: [http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mwc2011-mediatek- ann...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mwc2011-mediatek-announces- the-mt6573---innovative-platform-for-mainstream-smartphones-115785184.html) " _MediaTek is launching the MT6573 platform to address the accelerating demand for smartphones with features that can delight users at price points that meet the needs of operators in developed markets and consumers in emerging markets._ " ~~~ stcredzero _Part of the reason Nokia is hurting is that they have been severely disrupted at the low-end. The dumphone became an absolute commodity._ Yes. This is why they need to get out of the dumbphone business. This is precisely why having their own software ecosystem is attractive. They should take a play from Apple's playbook -- create your own product category. Instead of taking on Apple, Blackberry, Android directly, they should undercut them. Produce something which can run on cheaper hardware than iOS, WP7, or Android, and market these to provide better interfaces for developing world services now running over SMS. Do this with a software ecosystem, so that the telcos can't strangle the real software market. _"MediaTek is launching the MT6573 platform to address the accelerating demand for smartphones with features that can delight users at price points that meet the needs of operators in developed markets and consumers in emerging markets."_ Someone should take another play from Apple's playbook -- don't compete with low-cost producers overseas. Instead, position yourself higher up on the value food-chain. Note that Apple used to produce hardware domestically. Apple does the design and farms out the production to folks like Foxconn overseas. This way, instead of enemies, you gain highly capable partners instead. ~~~ jarek " _They should take a play from Apple's playbook -- create your own product category. Instead of taking on Apple, Blackberry, Android directly, they should undercut them. Produce something which can run on cheaper hardware than iOS, WP7, or Android, and market these to provide better interfaces for developing world services now running over SMS. Do this with a software ecosystem, so that the telcos can't strangle the real software market._ " That's _exactly_ what they've been doing for the past decade with Symbian and various Mae/Mee OSes and the technology commentators and the market haven't been exactly impressed lately. It takes some strength to say "this isn't going to work out, what's the next best thing we can do." ~~~ stcredzero _That's exactly what they've been doing for the past decade with Symbian and various Mae/Mee OSes and the technology commentators and the market haven't been exactly impressed lately._ AFAIK, they've been doing it for the wrong market. You do the "blur phone" strategy in markets where having a cell phone at all is still a big deal. ------ pmoehring There are no real details about how many jobs will be cut, or where. The quote "20.000 is a pretty significant number in Finland" seems to be related to the total number of Nokia jobs in Finland, not the amount to be cut. I think it's safe to say that the majority of jobs will be cut elsewhere, since Nokia will do all but severe any relationships with the government that has treated them very well. Now as for Google's announcement - easy, right? Just a short notice and piggybacking for some PR. They are pissed for obvious reasons, so it's an understandable move (although their reactions were remarkably snark). Overall, pretty sensationalist reporting, which is even more obvious when seeing how the writer dances along the fine line of using big numbers without clear language. ------ trezor Google still running its PR-stunt after having its OS rejected. But hey, it's Google so lets completely ignore that and give them credit like we wouldn't give any other company! ~~~ l0nwlf Alas, the better of the OS was rejected. ~~~ jarek Define "better." ~~~ rbanffy The one users actually want? ~~~ maukdaddy Silly hackers; users don't want an OS. Users want a product that works, is easy to understand, and looks good. ~~~ rbanffy > Users want a product that works Like WP7? ~~~ mariusmg Exactly. A OS with high usability which works. NOT a phone OS which has a frigging process explorer !!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Open Source Search with Lucene & Solr - igrigorik http://www.igvita.com/2010/10/22/open-source-search-with-lucene-solr/ ====== fizx For anyone who would like to take Solr for a spin, I invite you to check out nzadrozny's and my startup: <http://websolr.com/> We are a bootstrapped startup providing managed Solr hosting in the cloud (currently EC2). We're all about making the operational side of high performance Solr hosting as one-click easy as possible, so developers can focus their time on doing cool stuff with it. We love HN and are frequent commenters/lurkers around here, so we made a "HN10" coupon which you can use on signup to get a month of our Silver plan for free. ~~~ thorax I really like the idea of this service. The difficulty is, I'm not seeing any "Getting Started with Websolr" guide to understand how difficult it is to get working with you. Where would that be? In my ideal world you would have a demo instance or two where we could connect/query arbitrary test data to understand performance/behavior/etc before we signed-up to host real data there. ~~~ nzadrozny Yeah, great points. Thanks for your feedback! Better general documentation is pretty high on our list right now. To answer your immediate question: we started as a Heroku add-on, so you might take a glance at our documentation there (<http://docs.heroku.com/websolr>). It's targeted at Rails applications using Sunspot, so ymmv. We're working on creating and compiling similar guides for other platforms as well. Seems like it's high time for us to do a "review my startup" post… ;) ------ evilhackerdude Riak Search has been released recently. It’s got Lucene and part of the Solr HTTP API built-in. Basically you push json/xml/whatever documents into buckets. The docs will be indexed, i.e., by field names (json & xml) or simply fulltext. It is pretty cool because it’s based on Riak Core and thus has the same benefits as Riak K/V. Lucene runs transparently in the background - afaik you never even have to touch it. Read more in their wiki: <https://wiki.basho.com/display/RIAK/Riak+Search> Especially: [https://wiki.basho.com/display/RIAK/Riak+Search+-+Indexing+a...](https://wiki.basho.com/display/RIAK/Riak+Search+-+Indexing+and+Querying+Riak+KV+Data) ------ ankimal We use an Enterprise Search Platform (our biggest software acquisition) minus the support (another dumb idea). The entire thing is like a Black Box. It takes days to figure out what "Error: FS error" actually means. For a new project, we used Solr to maintain a smaller index and have never looked back since. Anybody about to start building a search index, Lucene/Solr is the way to go. ~~~ storm I've been using Solr for some pretty heavy lifting, and it's incredibly impressive. Rock solid, extremely advanced analysis and search capabilities, and the performance is amazing if it's on suitable gear. Time invested in learning it pays off big. I'm familiar with the enterprise black boxes you're talking about - I probably know the specific one you're tormented by. I've seen the licensing fees alone lead large companies to drop rows from their front-end stores to avoid going into a new pricing tier (takes balls of steel to charge by the record, I must say), and I've seen competitors fold at least in part due to the expense of paying for the thing. A lot of startup folks getting excited about NoSQL seem to have passed over Lucene/Solr completely, and I think it's worthy of much more consideration than it gets. It's mature, it's _fast_ , and the people working on it live and breathe the problem space. There are undoubtedly devs out there badly needing powerful analysis and search to execute on their vision, but who will end up suffering with half- baked solutions for lack of even _hearing_ about Solr, much less giving it a try. ~~~ ankimal I feel another issue is that management sometimes feels that paying big bucks means your rear end is covered. It takes a lot to convince them that this is free and works great at the same time. Whats more, the community is great! ------ dangrover Haystack for Django is a really nice way to integrate with these systems. You can use lucene, solr, or whoosh as backends for your search. ~~~ nzadrozny Sunspot for Ruby is another good Solr client that's popular with Rails applications. <http://github.com/outoftime/sunspot/> While Solr's API is pretty easy to work with directly, there's definitely something to be said for using a quality client for your platform. ------ akozak At Creative Commons we use Lucene/Nutch for our educational search prototype DiscoverEd: <http://wiki.creativecommons.org/DiscoverEd> It was easy enough to add in our special sauce like a triple-store for consuming and displaying semantic data (I guess I can say easy since I didn't do it myself). ~~~ sdesol I would say it's pretty easy if you are technically inclined. When I implemented the first iteration of my text search engine using Lucene, I didn't even know Java but I was able to write my own custom tokenizer and get it to index and retrieve results from the index in about 6 hours. I highly recommend you get the book "Lucene in action" as it gives solid examples that you can build upon. ------ nkurz I'm a fan and contributor to Lucy, which is mentioned briefly in the header: <http://incubator.apache.org/lucy/> While Lucy did start out as a C port of Lucene (hence the name), it's since broken any attempts at Lucene compatibility. Instead, it's aiming to be a fast and flexible standalone C core with bindings to higher level languages. Since it's growing out of Kinosearch, it's best developed bindings are in Perl, but support for all the usual suspects (Python, Ruby, etc.) is planned. Technically, the main difference from Lucene is that it gets cozier with the machine: the OS is our VM. It's mostly mmap() IO, and we're very conscious of paging and cache issues. While we're trying to maintain 32-bit back compatibility, we take full advantage of 64-bit solutions when they offer themselves. The scripted bindings are also very cool --- you can do things like make callbacks to scoring methods in your script language to truly customize your results. If for some reason you're not finding what you need in Lucene and Solr, check it out. We just became a full Apache incubator project, and are eager to get more developers involved. You'll find clean C code, decent documentation, and a low traffic but very responsive list. If you're using Perl, C or C++, you'll get a great product from the start. If you're using anything else, you'll have to help a lot on the bindings, but I think you'll be quite pleased with the end result. ------ spoondan Lucene is great but I wish schemas were an optional part of Solr. They add complexity and take away flexibility. If you have a photo database where you want searchable metadata describing the subject of the photographs, you can do this easily and naturally in Lucene. But Solr requires you either (1) prefigure available metadata or (2) expose field typing details to your users (so a field for birthday is actually "birthday_d", with the "_d" indicating it's a date). Both of these are very unattractive to me. The worst part is that I have no idea what benefits schemas are supposed to bring me. The documentation vaguely promises that schemas "can drive more intelligent processing", but I have a feeling I could get that more easily without schemas. It also tells me that "explicit types eliminate the need for guessing of types," but only, apparently, by requiring users to _understand and remember_ them. ~~~ storm Schemas are an optional part of Solr. Pretty sure that the default schema.xml has an example of a catch-all field definition, if you use that it will automatically deal with any key you want to throw at it. Of course you need to specify one field type (analysis stack) to apply to all, but I don't know how you expect to avoid that - gonna have to express that metadata _somewhere_ if you need more complex behavior. Personally I think the _d, _i approach is ok, suffixes aside - complex field analysis options w/o a schema. ------ cowmixtoo So has anyone used this combination for realtime and historical log searching (like what Splunk offers)? ~~~ igrigorik Yep, take a look at loggly.com - AFAIK, a bunch of ex-Splunk guys. They're building their system on EC2 + SolrCloud. ~~~ bobf +1 for loggly -- check out logstash <http://code.google.com/p/logstash/> ~~~ kordless Be sure to check out Jordan Sissel's Grok as well: <http://code.google.com/p/semicomplete/wiki/Grok>. It's a field extractor. ~~~ bobf Definitely. Just about anything Jordan makes is probably worth checking out, actually. ------ reinhardt Any experience on how Lucene/Solr stacks up against other search tools such as Sphinx or Xapian ? ~~~ gtani Not sure if you're asking about indexing speed/size, precision/recall and the 2 or 3 dozen config options (separator/tokenizers/analyzers, stopword, index to ASCII or Latin-1, AND/OR search terms), etc. What I recommend for precision/recall /config options is that your platform (rails, django, java, PHP) probably has plugin for SOLR and sphinx. Set up 2-4 indexes using the config options that matter most to you (for me they're AND- OR of search terms, and stopwords, which i use in lists of 0, 50, 100, 150). Then do a (sort of) A-B test where you see which records one index picks up that the other misses. (Most people recommend not using any stopwords if you're only using one index, but i never got decent results using only one index) P.S. Solr is the 800-pound gorilla, has the terrific Manning book, zillions of docs, etc. Sphinx probably covers most people's needs config-option wise(at least for European languages) lightning fast to index, and runs in 256M VPS, no tomcat/jetty. ------ known I prefer <http://aspseek.org>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
High throughput Java actors--much faster than Akka - blaforge I worked in Scala for 2 years and was constantly frustrated with the speed of the actors. So I rolled my own, in Java. Orders of magnitude faster, though the speed increase really has nothing to do with the choice of language.<p>Most of the speed gain comes from avoiding thread switching as much as possible. I developed the idea of commandeering, where an actor which sends a message to another actor that is idle can safely process the message sent on the same thread.<p>Additional speedups came from message buffering and the optional use of 2-way messages for implicit flow control.<p>Message passing between actors runs between 80 and 200 million per second on an i7, depending on the mode of delivery.<p>Currently looking for early adopters as I believe this is production ready.<p>https://github.com/laforge49/JActor ====== jakubholynet Sounds interesting, good luck! Thread switching is certainly costly and not really necessary for high- performance systems as proved by the the LMAX/Disruptor architecture. ~~~ blaforge I'll admit it, the disruptor architecture was my inspiration. I've since put together an in-memory database built on JActor that processes a million ACID transactions a second (on an i7 with ssd). <https://github.com/laforge49/JFile> What I didn't like about the disruptor pattern is that it seems to require a lot of architecture, and I like to keep things as fluid as possible. My proposal is that a high-throughput actor framwork (like JActor) is close to ideal for building vertically scalable server software. ------ factorialboy Hey Guillaume, looks nice. I'll try to benchmark it against the famous Akka Pi.scala example. Btw since, language is not important, why didn't you write this in Scala? ~~~ blaforge I had only 2 years of experience with Scala and was not always able to foresee the overhead of various language constructs. As this was my first project where I considered performance critical, I decided to stick with Java--with which I have decades of experience and a more in-depth understanding.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How to scrape Google's similar searches? (challenge) - gbachik Alrighty guys! I've been at this for about 4 hours straight with no dice!<p>I'm hoping some genius here can help me out. Open a new tab and type in a band name like: "All Time Low"<p>You'll notice a box on the righthand side with more info about the band.<p>If you click the down arrow you'll see a "People also search for" section.<p>My goal is to get those names.<p>I've tried everything I could possibly think of to do it. The only thing I got working was phantomJS and the time it took to scrape just one page was over 5 seconds. Thats way too long...<p>Anyone got a better solution than me? ====== nostrademons So, I know the folks who do DOS protection for Google, and...well, good luck. Scrapers get blocked, and the folks in charge of that are very, very good at what they do. Your best bet is probably to put up with the slow query rate and mimic ordinary user traffic. You really, really do not want to end up on Google's bad side. ~~~ Jake232 Google isn't _that_ difficult to scrape. I've worked on numerous projects doing it and it just takes a little thinking outside the box and a few proxies.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook introduces in-app subscriptions - justindocanto https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/06/19/introducing-subscriptions-and-local-currency-pricing/ ====== rdl Aka "facebook is shutting down Credits". I still don't understand why Facebook is sticking to the virtual currency/crappy online games ghetto, vs. leveraging their world-class identity and reputation position to provide a REAL alternative payment system. Facebook could extend credit more easily and safely than any other organization.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The left fold: week in review: API design, branching, and Basic - alec http://www.foldl.org/issues/2009-12-21/ ====== mkyc Great, I'm finding it readable, and pretty well-selected. I look forward to seeing the next issue.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Using Redis Pub/Sub and IRC for Error Logging with Python - alexis-d http://charlesleifer.com/blog/using-redis-pub-sub-and-irc-for-error-logging-with-python/ ====== gregr401 Why not leverage logstash: <http://logstash.net/docs/1.1.0/> ? It doesn't have an irc output at the moment, but would be easy to add one. Very flexible tool! ------ pearkes Is there any worry about user information being in the exception and being indexable?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
High Energy Electron Confinement in a Magnetic Cusp Configuration - kristianp http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.0133 ====== kristianp Discussion on talk-polywell.org here: [http://talk- polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5425](http://talk- polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5425)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: So, Bitcoins - would you still buy them? - jagermo I am fascinated by Bitcoins. I set up my wallet last year, but never bought them (yeah, I know. Idiot). But I am still fascinated by the whole concept and I'm thinking of buying one or two. The only thing is - I have no experience in trading stocks and this rapid growth looks to me like some kind of bubble. So, HN, what do you think - is the growth somehow sustainable or will this thing burst? (edit, somehow only half of my entry was posted. Sorry for that.) ====== chrislas As long as you have the funds to spare. Just don't invest anything you can't afford to loose. That's what I do. I agree, it's very fascinating to watch a digital currency come into use. I've bought two cell phones, and a video card using bitcoins. And I've hired a developer for a day with bitcoins. So I see some value besides just investing in them, which also was a bit more incentive. ~~~ jagermo Yeah, I wanted buy them and then just see what I can do with it. It just looks fun to have them and play with a digital currency. ------ gonepostal This is my whole problem with Bitcoin. Too many people see it through an "investment lens". Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency not an investment at it's heart: "Used as a medium of exchange for goods and services, currency is the basis for trade." People's perception coupled with the deflationary nature of Bitcoin makes me not want to participate. ~~~ jagermo I think I phrased myself wrong. For me it is not an investment (as in: Buy now get rich), but more a experiment or plaything. I'm just not sure if I shouldn't wait another month or to for the BTCs to get drop again. On the other hand, they are just money, so if I have BTC worth 50 USD i should be able to buy stuff worth 50 USD (using more or less BTCs). I just need to wrap my mind around it. ------ dangrossman If you were planning on buying $50 worth of BTC last year, you can buy $50 worth today. Don't think about buying "one or two". There's no benefit to having whole numbers. ~~~ jagermo Ah, good idea.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What do you use to blog? - philippnagel What does your company use? ====== andyjohnson0 Its a personal blog rather than company one, but I use Wordpress hosted on Azure [1]. Very easy to set up. [1] [https://azure.microsoft.com/en- gb/documentation/articles/web...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en- gb/documentation/articles/web-sites-php-web-site-gallery/) ------ jjude I use Olai[1] for my blogs — jjude.com & tech.jjude.com. Of course I would use it, since I developed it :-) [1]: [http://olai.in](http://olai.in) ------ bobbba wordpress with the socrates theme. [http://globalfiduciaryadvisors.com/blog/](http://globalfiduciaryadvisors.com/blog/) ------ taprun I just wrote a bit of PHP that pulls from a MYSQL table. It's not fancy, but I can do all sorts of custom stuff with it. ------ sluckxz I haven't used it for a company blog but i always recommend people try ghost. ------ alexgaribay Ghost with a custom theme I made for myself. ------ atsaloli WordPress hosted on my A2 Hosting web site ------ hathers Ghost + Roon theme. Simple, free, awesome. ------ groundCode Jekyll and Wordpress.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ajit Pai and the FCC want it to be legal for Comcast to block BitTorrent - craigc https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16691794/net-neutrality-fcc-ajit-pai-comcast-block-bittorrent ====== imglorp Oh boy, all the market forces are lined up against the consumers on this one. BT implies content holders have a teensy bit of interest: around $2 trillion annually[1]. That dwarfs by 20x the $1B cable industry[2]. Maybe we've been looking for for Ajit's daddy in the wrong place. 1\. [https://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/global/1565728/s...](https://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/global/1565728/study- global-entertainment-industry-poised-to-top-2-trillion-in) 2\. [https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-trends/market-research- re...](https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-trends/market-research- reports/information/broadcasting-telecommunications/cable-providers.html) ------ toast0 If we're going back to the past, let's go back to the 1996 Telecom act, and get unbundled last mile; but apply it to all mediums this time, instead of only telephone. I don't care if Comcast blocks BitTorrent for its direct customers, as long as it doesn't touch it for wholesale customers, and as long as wholesale prices are lower than retail prices (learning from Telco dsl pricing shenanigans) ------ sergers The foundation for the great firewall of America has been laid. Trump admires china, and promised a wall.. we just had the wrong context. But seriously this sucks... But I am sure evolution of the protocol to thwart detection will happen. Vps/seedbox usage would go up as a quick bypass... But who knows, this could allow them to block whole network segments in worst case scenario. I can see this play out like long distance plans ~~~ eqtn This wouldn't work. Only pre approved streams will be allowed. ------ thisisit I can be wrong, but something similar might happen to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies too. ~~~ shadoxx My thoughts exactly. Blocking arbitrary protocols is a slippery slope. ------ jokoon Ok, I'm really scared now... I mean if legally they can block bittorrent or other protocols, does it mean that one could create a new protocol each time it's legal to block it, rince and repeat, and force the legislator to create a new law forbidding each nez appearing protocol? Also one might implement ways to prevent protocol detection into a BEP, but if comcast ends up shutting down any traffic that is peer to peer... I wonder if legally they could forbid any traffic that is "too much peer to peer" and argue that it's illegal downloading. Hard to say if comcast could win in court, because if you do the stats, most of peer to peer traffic is indeed illegal. The internet could end up without any peer to peer traffic, and only works with servers, most users would not really complain, things would still work like they already are. It would really create pressure from users to change ISP. Some ISPs might not block peer to peer, and I wonder if subscribers would end up moving out of neighborhoods where comcast has a monopoly. ~~~ croon AFAICT it's not about making bittorrent illegal, but to make it legal for ISPs to block any specific protocol. I'm assuming you're thinking in terms of designer drug legislation? Comcast in this case would simply need to match the new protocols to block, no new legislation needed. ------ INTPenis I'm more interested in whether it will be illegal to circumvent the legal block of a protocol. ~~~ twelvedogs not immediately, they could pass extra laws though (and probably will if they get momentum) ------ unabridged The problem is you can't tell bittorrent or any other protocol from SSL if its encrypted. The only way to stop it is slow all random ip to random ip connections, basically if one of the endpoints isn't a major, known company its in the slow lane. Count on AWS creating a few Canadian regions. ~~~ svet_0 AFAIK You can still use statistical analysis to determine the app type under SSL. I'm not sure you can even eliminate that with protocol improvements. ------ ForFreedom The government does not understand that, the more they restrict, people will find alternatives. Privacy of movies/songs is still on in-spite of all laws ------ jakeogh If my ISP filters by protocol I'll get a new ISP. It should be standard to: 1\. Cancel your acct. 2\. (nd amendment) use protocol 6 port 443; emulate SSL Why ignore one's ability to apply market forces? Is acting too hard? Extra LOL on the thought of filtering BT. Who pay's who? ~~~ dmarlow I have a choice between Time warner (now spectrum) or ATT. I have zero confidence in either and my choices are slim. I'd rather have net neutrality enforced so I'm not left having to choose which of those two I'd rather use. ~~~ jakeogh Sounds like you are a prime customer for a 3rd option. Market forces are real. BTW, since you have 2, competition is still there. Zero confidence or not, one will take advantage of the other's mistake. Do you also have telco DSL avail? ------ anigbrowl Mesh networking time ~~~ ZenoArrow If you want to see that come to pass, I'd recommend trying out CJDNS and/or B.A.T.M.A.N and documenting your experiences: [https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/README.md) [https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/open-mesh/wiki](https://www.open- mesh.org/projects/open-mesh/wiki) ------ tehlike Someone will come in and give free vpn for everyone, then they are royally hosed. ~~~ glandium Until Comcast blocks VPNs, because why wouldn't they? ~~~ tzs Suppose the VPN is on port 443, 465, 993, or 995. Would the ISP be able to tell that it is a VPN and not an HTTPS, SMTP, IMAP, or POP server? ~~~ icebraining Ports are not enough, they can inspect packets. I believe most VPN protocols can be detected, although you could probably adapt one (possibly OpenVPN, which can already use TLS) to look like a regular HTTPS or IMAPS connection (assuming they don't analyze the patterns of traffic). There's still the possibility of blocking commercial VPN services by their IP addresses, making it harder for anyone who can't host one themselves on a VPS or something. ~~~ twelvedogs VPNs can and will adapt, they're only detectable if they behave a certain way, last article i read a while ago openvpn was generally being detected by the way it did the handshake. but yeah, the only permanent way to block VPNs is to get rid of encrypted traffic, otherwise they're going to be in a running battle of updating their detection methods and vpn providers obfuscating their protocol	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Coding for Entrepreneurs – Learn to Code and Build Real Projects Step by Step - Osiris30 https://www.codingforentrepreneurs.com/ ====== eble Thanks for practical youtube videos	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
[XSA-148] x86: Uncontrolled creation of large page mappings by PV guests - yuvadam http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-148.html ====== mrwizrd Here's some analysis by the Qubes team: [https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes- secpack/blob/master/QSBs/qs...](https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes- secpack/blob/master/QSBs/qsb-022-2015.txt)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Create your own programming language in JavaScript - fogus http://nathansuniversity.appspot.com/ ====== emeraldd I ran through something like this a couple of years ago and found it to be one of the most entertaining side projects I had worked on in a long while. Scheme from Scratch - [http://peter.michaux.ca/articles/scheme-from-scratch- introdu...](http://peter.michaux.ca/articles/scheme-from-scratch-introduction) ~~~ fogus I admired (and still do) your posts very much. Thank you for them. ~~~ emeraldd As a note, I just followed along with Peter, using his posts to get a handle on scheme. Mine was <https://github.com/arlaneenalra/Bootstrap-Scheme> ------ DanI-S I love the idea of offering your own mini-course. Teaching is by far the fastest way of cementing your knowledge of a subject. It would be great if someone could create a platform /'app store' for providing stuff like this, free or otherwise. ~~~ JocoProductions I believe Udemy.com does very similar to this and has a wide variety of courses. ~~~ DanI-S That's very cool, thanks. I'd heard the name before, but never checked it out. ------ spacemanaki This is also starting in 3 weeks: <http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs262> ~~~ dbh937 Thats learning about different programming languages... Not creating your own. ~~~ MaxGabriel Check the syllabus; you create a Javascript/HTML parser and learn about syntax trees, grammars, etc. So the content will be similar to creating your own programming language. ------ aoe Are there any other good tutorials on creating a toy programming language? Something that teaches about lexers, parsers, etc. ~~~ eterps These are my favorite resources: Compiler Construction: <http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/CBEAll.pdf> The Elements of Computing Systems: <http://amzn.to/GQycqj> MetaCompilers: <http://www.bayfronttechnologies.com/mc_tutorial.html> How to Create Your Own Freaking Awesome Programming Language: <http://createyourproglang.com/> Bootstrapping a simple compiler from nothing: <http://www.rano.org/bcompiler.html> ~~~ fogus Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't "How to Create Your Own Freaking Awesome Programming Language" the motivation for CoffeeScript. That alone should be enough motivation for sending your money that way. ~~~ rbxbx You're correct. That's why the first version was written in Ruby :) ------ cconroy I like his teaching style. To get a sense for yourself check out <http://nathansjslessons.appspot.com> where he covers functions as values, closures, and CSP in javascript. I dunno about you guys but I seem to spend almost all my professional time programming in javascript these days. This is perfect! ------ bliss i created a programming language of sorts in javascript, it was awful to code in (stored code as strings and used eval to run everything), but it did work - it is used for creating macros on an in-house billing system and only worked under ie6 trusted (which was the mandated browser) - more modern browsers balked at the cross site scripting exploit it took advantage of, but it was pretty useful way to deploy batch scripts as a bookmark. will share if anyone dares! ------ MatthewPhillips You can also just fork one of the many that are out there. Makes it easier than starting from scratch (although I realize for some people that eliminates the fun part). I'm liking Sibilant a lot: <http://sibilantjs.info> ------ wingspan Why redirect from nathansuniversity.com to nathansuniversity.appspot.com? Shouldn't it be the other way around? ~~~ dbh937 He might think he'll get a lot of traffic, so google's servers would help. ------ jhuni Why build a programming language in a language other then Lisp? ------ leon_ I bet he will be building some RPN language ... which is a rather boring task.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What Product Companies Can Learn From Consulting Companies - rdudekul https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/products_vs_services ====== bdunn _(I loved phrasing this as "You could certainly have your engineering team do this, if you want to write a $10,000 payroll check with the memo 'Reading free information on the Internet'.")_ This is probably one of the best arguments for niche specialization that you'll find. Say you're a Ruby developer, but you know a lot about CPA, ARPU, LTV, churn, and other terms SaaS types care a lot about. Yes, you might cost significantly more per week than a peer Ruby developer who might be employed by a prospective client of yours, but the cost of getting that employee's knowledge to around where yours is outweighs the difference. Additionally, clients want to lower the risk that a project will fail (note: this doesn't mean _technically_ fail, as in the code doesn't work.) By "leveling up" in a niche specialty, you'll lower the risk that you'll fail when a project in that niche comes your way. (Clients also have a tendency to reach deeper into their pockets when the risk of failure is lower.) ~~~ paul_f Beware that some companies calculate the cost of existing employees at zero. If someone else is paying the employee, but you come out of their budget. Find out how the money flows. ~~~ lifeisstillgood Then you are talking to someone too low down the tree. The person who signs the cheques as big as you want them to be will be the person with P&L for employees and contractors Possibly across IT and marketing or accounts or ... ------ wslh The general recommendation is to be both following a hybrid approach. Read for example "Business Models That Last: Balancing Products and Services in Software and Other Industries (2003)" [http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/197_Cusumano_ProdSr...](http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/197_Cusumano_ProdSrvcsBusMod.pdf) It can be a little bit outdated but the main points remain the same. I experienced it first hand: We realized that the "energy" to spend in selling USD 100K/yr on a specific product is one or two orders of magnitude of selling a service using/embedding that product. And there are cases where there is a dilemma and products can eat your service profits. ~~~ patio11 Thanks for that recommendation. I'm going to sit down with that paper and have time to digest it in detail, since it seems like likely the most relevant-to- my-interests link I've seen on HN this month. ------ thaumaturgy Wow. The writing here is concise, and easy to understand. Just a few paragraphs in I realized I've been doing my consulting wrong (which makes the hopeful transition to a products & services company even more challenging). In terms of benefit-per-sentence, this is right up there with the best books on business I've ever read. ~~~ patio11 Thanks, that is one of the best compliments I've ever gotten for my writing. (Since I tend to write 4,000 words at a time, my biggest worry is always that I'm fluffing up one good idea into excessive length. I aspire to always covering something in enough meaty depth to justify the length, not to have the length pre-fixed and need to pad to hit my quota.) ~~~ thaumaturgy The impact of the writing -- the frequency with which I read something and it made me sit back and go, "hmm" \-- is comparable to Rules for Revolutionaries, still my favorite book on business. I don't give out enthusiastic compliments easily. Seriously, if you enjoy doing this, you might consider turning it into a book. With your writing style, your domain expertise, and your marketing acumen, you'd probably make a mint. ------ nodally Excellent article. I've worked in product companies ranging from startups to the top 5 over the years, and also spent a few years in consulting organizations so I can really appreciate the insights here. Product companies (in general) create cost centres while consulting companies are profit centers. So the attitude toward cash flow is quite different. Consulting companies tend to "invest" their money while product companies tend to "spend". What else, product people tend to take their time to build things that they feel the customers will need, instead of building exactly what the customers need. Sense of urgency is a trait that a product company can learn from the consulting business. Consultants work with customers directly and they always possess domain knowledge learnt from experience while product people rely on research to pick up a subset of the knowledge. Imagine the power of a large product organization that can run more like a consulting organization! ------ crazygringo I wish I had something more to say, but this is phenomenally good. It may be the most genuinely informative and well-written piece I've seen on HN in months, for the startup crowd. ------ adrianhoward _" Actually call them and ask how they're doing"_ I'm amazed at the number of product companies that don't do this. Or stop doing it as soon as they think they've found product/market fit. If I had to pick between A/B testing and talking to my customers (and it would, of course, be dumb to pick only one of those options) I'd pick talking to my customers without hesitation. A/B testing let's me optimise. Talking let's me discover my customers' problems. ~~~ rgbrgb On the other hand, I am incredibly annoyed when hosting companies give me personal phone calls to ask how I'm doing or tell me about their new service. There's probably a middleground but I just don't really like talking to salespeople. ~~~ mgkimsal Agreed. Rarely has someone called me who _really_ really wanted to know my experience with something, and nothing more. I think I've had one call like that in the last year, and even it was sort of a... well, not salesy. I'd signed up for an Azure test drive. 1 month in someone called to ask what I was doing with it. Based on what I said, they assigned a support person to me, sent me that person's info, and said to contact them if I had any support/tech questions. No sales pitch, no upsell. Pretty much every other thing I sign up for, if someone calls, it's inevitably a salesperson who _does not understand the tech behind the tech they 're selling_, trying to push the latest version of something they don't know. Please - call me and ask me if I'm using it. If say 'no' \- as in, 'no, I don't use subversion, and I've not worked in an enterprise situation for 9 years' \- that should be enough to take me off your list. If I say yes, and have feedback, take it, listen, record it, say 'thanks', and get it to the right people. If I'm using something, and it sucks, and I tell you it sucks, a followup from someone telling me you'll make it better would net a customer for life. No one has yet done that for me. Wait - I did have a service company in town that was in startup mode take their site down, then proceed to call a few of the really early adopters (me included), do moderately long interviews by phone, and then tell us they're pivoting the company based on our feedback. Time will tell if that works out for them, but it was unexpected. tldr = if you're calling for feedback, call for feedback, take it, and act on it. do not try to sell me something at the same time. ~~~ lifeisstillgood Oh yes. I love the idea of actually just asking for feedback. And _then_ putting a dev in front of the ones who actually have something constructive to say. ------ ValentineC Loved the post. I just signed up for the newsletter so that I'll get more of these pushed to my inbox in the future. Patrick: do you think it's a good idea to add a date of publication to your articles? Most people wouldn't care, but I found myself trying to find it to see how current the content was. ~~~ patio11 No, in fact I think this would be a terrible idea, because if I put 6/21/2007 people would perceived it to be sharply less valuable _without changing a single word of the article or a fact about reality as it exists in 2013_. Dating it is just asking people to discount my advice after a 48 hour window from publication. ~~~ dennisgorelik No. Date of writing article adds brief, but important piece of information about that article. Date is very helpful in digesting article (by putting it in context). If you make it harder to digest your articles - you directly subtract it from your karma.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Any South African news.YC'ers? - iotal Are you from SA? If so, have you submitted an application for YC? Your thoughts on getting to Silicon Valley?! ====== markcpt Yes, I'm a fellow South African, and while we've not submitted an application, I'll be heading to Silicon Valley shortly to have a second go at launching a startup there. Feel free to get in touch. markcpt-g-m-a-i-l ------ papasmurf Does Kenya count - located in SF though and dabbling intermittently with a number of ideas ksjhalla @ g-m-a-i-l if there are any Africa based Silicon Valley meetups or anything .. :) ------ pistoriusp Haaai guys! And I thought I was completely alone... How many of you are considering doing something in RSA? Are you guys in the States? ------ markcpt Our dev team is based in Cape Town, but our head office, including sales and marketing, is moving to Silicon Valley (San Francisco to be specific). Mark Shuttleworth was the exception to the rule - if you're not in Silicon Valley you're limiting the odds of success. Anyone else here in Cape Town at the moment? ~~~ iotal Ja, UCT B.Bus.Sci first year! I agree re: Silicon Valley, everything from coding resources to VC is restricted here, and the fact that there seem to be only a few of us registered on news.YC is in itself indicative of the different environemnt here. Vinny Lingham and Eric Edelstein seem keen to start some sort of Angel Investing scheme, but I can't see anything ever really equating to the environment in California. As PG says "places that aren't startup hubs are toxic to startups. You can tell that from indirect evidence. You can tell how hard it must be to start a startup in Houston or Chicago or Miami from the microscopically small number, per capita, that succeed there." I'm going to apply to YC for Jan 2009, will hopefully have some cool stuff under the belt by then! ~~~ pistoriusp I can assure you though, that Cape Town is years ahead of Pretoria. ------ ochiba I'm also from ZA. I'll consider applying after I've finished my degree ;) ------ jamescoops It's all about the Mxit guys in SA - lightyears ahead	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
2379 of the Alexa top 10,000 sites use gzip compression - uggedal http://twitter.com/uggedal/status/1850089849 ====== uggedal Did not have the time to whip up a blog post and found the results interesting. They were obtained using 200 Python threads issuing get requests with httplib2. Took 4 and a half minute on a $20 VPS.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I Put In 5 Miles at the Office: Walking Workstations - robg http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/health/nutrition/18fitness.html?ref=fashion ====== michael_dorfman Has anyone here actually tried this? It sounds interesting, but I'd sure like to suss it out further before making the investment...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Whirlpool told to recall dryers in 'unprecedented' government move - onetimemanytime https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48603753 ====== deng From the article: > The fire report states that it's an internal wiring fault in the machine, > and all of this was caused - approximately £8,000 worth of damage - when the > machine was turned off Am I understanding this right? This dryer can catch fire while not even _running_ , just by standing there connected to the power socket? That's insane. How in the world can someone mess up some internal wiring this bad? ~~~ noonespecial You may not have looked inside a modern dryer recently but the level of chincy-ness is unreal. The wires just hang off the parts held by the flimsiest of little twist ties. I just fixed a blower fan in mine. The plastic fan was held onto the motor shaft with _tape_. The fact that this crap doesn't _instantly_ fly apart and catch fire is an admirable engineering feat in itself (in a twisted sort of way). ~~~ tunap If it was an apartment sized stacked unit, did you happen to notice the shaft not mounted in a bearing assembly, but instead turning inside a vinyl cup? Only took mine 2-3 years to fail to metal-on-metal... single male, bi-weekly usage equals <100 loads to fail. $10 part, took ~45 min to tear down, install & reassemble. Will be doing it again sometime this year. I think I can do it in 20 min next time... or I can buy the latest, cheaper built model for $600+... Hmmmm, decisions, decisions. ~~~ subculture Yup, this is what major appliances have come to: Scheduled repair expectancy of 2-3 years or several hundred to replace. My dishwasher started leaking one night - luckily I was nearby when it began. Upon researching I learned that it was caused by a failed grommet that's installed with its garter spring facing towards the water-filled tub, which causes premature failure after 2-3 years. Of course Whirlpool stopped selling the grommet as a replacement part, instead requiring people buy an entire $150 sump assembly. So I bought a few $5 grommets off a grommets-r-us site and have scheduled a triennial dishwasher disassembly song and dance. Threw a simple leak detector under the washer just in case. At least now I'm pretty knowledgable of the secret life of the dishwasher. ------ gambiting Crucially, this article provides no way to check if your dryer is affected. We have a Hotpoint dryer in the UK, I'd love to know if it's affected or not. Edit: it looks like it can be checked here: [https://safety.hotpoint.eu/match.jsp?lang=en_GB](https://safety.hotpoint.eu/match.jsp?lang=en_GB) ------ the_unknown And in other Whirlpool news - Dishwasher catches fire "You don't think the appliance filled with water is gonna catch fire". This one needed a class action lawsuit against Whirlpool but, of course, many peopole didn't know about it since the dishwasher often comes with the house they've bought. [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-man- whirlpool-d...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-man-whirlpool- dishwasher-explodes-1.5138926) ~~~ andylynch And it was a fault in a Whirlpool fridge that sparked the Grenfell fire - 72 dead and worst UK residential fire since WW II - [https://www.gov.uk/government/news/department-responds-to- po...](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/department-responds-to-police- identification-of-hotpoint-fridge-freezer-involved-in-grenfell-tower-fire) ------ zeristor Surely other countries have the same model of dangerous Whirlpool dryers? ~~~ hedora Other countries are surely impacted, and probably under other brand names. We’ve had more than our fair share of whirlpool and Frigidaire appliances under various brand names over the years. They’re mostly (universally?) awful, though some of the planned obsolescence mechanisms are ingenious. Note they think that 90% of the ones sold have already died and been thrown out for some other reason. I’d bet these fires are an intentionally sabotaged mechanism triggering an otherwise minor fault. Anyway, here is a list of North American brands presumably affected by this recall, since they all come from the same upper management chain: Admiral (Canada) Chambers Coovert (ac's) Crosley (top-load/current front-load washers) Dacor ( 13 ) Danby ( 8 ) Estate Inglis Ikea Kenmore ( see Sears ) KitchenAid ( 4 ) Kirkland Maytag Epic® Roper Speed Queen (Canada only) Sub Zero (undercounter ice makers) Whirlpool Also, this site lists who makes which brand in the US: [http://www.appliance411.com/purchase/make.shtml](http://www.appliance411.com/purchase/make.shtml) ~~~ dontbenebby I can't suss out if my model is covered by this recall but I found a lawsuit alleging it is flawed from almost 2 years ago (!) [https://www.courthousenews.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/Wh...](https://www.courthousenews.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/Whirlpool.pdf) ------ rockdiesel Anyone know how to check this in the US? Only information I can find is for UK. I have a GE Hotpoint tumble dryer from about 4 years ago and would like to see if I'm at risk. ------ tomatotomato37 The average amount of residential fires in the UK between 2017-2018 that actually required rescue services is around 83,000[0], so only 75 extra a year does seem a bit excessive to do a full recall on; I feel a stop-sale order until the problem was resolved and saving full recalls for very dangerous items would have been a better choice [0][https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/724327/Fire_and_Fire_Safety.pdf) ~~~ freeone3000 This item causes a house fire while off. What threshold do you choose for "very dangerous"? Also, it looks like they tried that, and Whirlpool was unable to do a proper repair, so here we are. ~~~ tomatotomato37 Causing more house fires? Probably 1% of products sold/in use would be a good criteria ~~~ bb123 1% would be an insane failure rate for something this dangerous. Over half the households in the UK own driers [1] and there are 27.7 million households in the UK [2]. If 1% of driers were catching fire we would be seeing 138,500 extra house fires a year! Even 0.001% is too high. [1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/289140/tumble-dryers- in-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/289140/tumble-dryers-in- households-in-the-uk/) [2] [https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families) ~~~ sbov Nevermind that your average household probably has at least 10 things hooked into their electrical system. A 1% failure rate for all of them would be rather insane.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Has the time come for a physics notation standard? - another http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2015/01/your-g-is-my-e-has-time-come-for.html ====== oddthink I doubt it, to be honest. In my experience, universities are locally consistent: the E&M class isn't going to contradict quantum, at least by much. And once you're out of undergrad, it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on, given the context. If we try to standardize, we'll end up with some awful compromise position that no one likes. For example, I still dislike the push for MKS units where CGS would work much better, such as E&M, plasma physics, and much of astrophysics. ------ esharte As an undergraduate I sit in classes being taught to use meaningful variables in code. Then I walk into one of the many math and physics lectures and wonder what meaningless single letter variables are we see scribbled on the whiteboard today. This wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have a class with a different lecturer using different notation afterwards. Should each lecturer introduce their notation the first time its used in class? Why can't they just use use proper meaningful variable names? ~~~ oddthink If you have a seminar-like class with a different lecturer every week, then, yes, it's a problem if they can't get consistent notation. I'd hope that's rare in undergraduate courses, though. And meaningful variable names would be absolutely horrible for anyone trying to calculate with them or visually comprehend them. Energy = lorentzFactor * restMass * speedOfLight^2? You'd be writing all day to get anything done, and it would be hard to see the forest for the trees. See also the brevity of notation in J, q, and APL, and the "tacit" style of J and "point-free" style of Haskell. ~~~ Retric Having seen "i" used for 3 different things on the same blackboard at the same time and 4 in a single lecture, A reasonable shorthand seems like a great idea. Limit things to 4 or 5 letters and spL, lorzF, Enrg, rtMa are all clear in context and hardly wasteful. The other option is to use 3 symbol code for common notation which might take a little effort to standardize and memorize, but could probably cover all of science, math, and engineering. ~~~ stevep98 It's also pretty difficult to google for things like 'η'. And how do you actually type a formula with an integral sign without knowing how to type ∫ Physics and math needs an alternate notation without all these 'greek' symbols which aren't on keyboards. ------ jkmcf Proper (?) writing style says the first time you introduce an acronym, such as the dreaded Three Letter Acronym (TLA), you write out the acronym the first time you use it and put the abbreviation in parentheses. It makes sense to do this for notation in all fields where the reader might become confused. I'm not sure a standard is needed, maybe only a movement of reviewers rejecting papers containing the vagaries. ~~~ Normati A table of symbols is extremely helpful. I hate reading a paper where the author defines things when they first appear. If you missed that bit, you have to spend minutes searching for it, and forget what you were thinking about. It's worse in a text book where you have to search many chapters to find where it was introduced. Complete waste of time. I don't think there can be "palletes" to choose from, because interdisciplinary work will find there's no pallete that fits. ~~~ 1971genocide I am glad someone else feels the same way. I always make sure to have a huge table of symbol just after the index page. If I am writing a 100+ page thesis I want to make sure I can "call" one of the symbols to express my idea. The trick is to give nice easy to remember names to your variables and leave as many common variable letters like a,b,c,d,x,y,z to be used as local variables if needed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Skeleton Reactjs - danilowoz http://skeletonreact.com/ ====== onion2k You can make really nice skeleton loading elements using CSS. [https://css- tricks.com/building-skeleton-screens-css-custom-...](https://css- tricks.com/building-skeleton-screens-css-custom-properties/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I work in tech and pester Jeff Bezos' inbox weekly - megamindbrian2 https://medium.com/@megamindbrian/i-annoy-jeff-bezos-weekly-and-he-still-doesnt-want-to-be-friends-ef40e6e86686 ====== indigodaddy 1) How did you get Bezos' inbox? 2) Even so, you know it's 99% likely that Jeff has never actually read even one of your emails, right? ~~~ megamindbrian2 Ha! 1) Jeff welcomes all emails to be filtered by his staff. Jeff@amazon.com. 2) yes. Some of them get routed correctly and bug reports are followed up on.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Urban heat island - onetimemanytime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island ====== gavia1 London is regularly 3-4° warmer than the towns and village that border the M25 ring road. You can genuinely feel the difference when you take a train into the city and vice versa. ~~~ quickthrower2 Is that allowing for the time difference between when you get on and get off the train affecting the temperature? ~~~ gavia1 Absolutely. If you so wish you can take the train at noon and get off at 12:30 where any temperature difference due to the sun should be minimal. ~~~ majewsky Not terribly relevant to your point, but: Noon is actually a time in the day where it is still getting warmer. Temperature usually peaks around 16:00 or 17:00 in the summer. Example: [http://wetterstationen.meteomedia.de/?station=104870&wahl=vo...](http://wetterstationen.meteomedia.de/?station=104870&wahl=vorhersage) (the forecast diagram for my local weather station) ~~~ onetimemanytime any idea why? The ground starts releasing accumulated energy or what? ~~~ gavia1 It probably reaches saturation at that time of day where it can no longer absorb anymore heat. ------ Uhhrrr From the article: 'If the urban heat island theory is correct then instruments should have recorded a bigger temperature rise for calm nights than for windy ones, because wind blows excess heat away from cities and away from the measuring instruments. There was no difference between the calm and windy nights, and one study said that "we show that, globally, temperatures over land have risen as much on windy nights as on calm nights, indicating that the observed overall warming is not a consequence of urban development."' This is really surprising to me. Not least because, on a sunny day, SF can go from pleasant to brutal as soon as a breeze kicks up. ------ Albertchrist Not only in US. This is applicable to all the major cities in the world. ------ ccheath isn't this also (at least partly) why cities are less likely to be affected by tornadoes? ~~~ eesmith Quoting the link: > Research has been done in a few areas suggesting that metropolitan areas are > less susceptible to weak tornadoes due to the turbulent mixing caused by the > warmth of the urban heat island. ------ haunter So every big city pretty much ------ quickthrower2 Sydney is one of those. ~~~ H8crilA Aren't all cities one of those? Bigger=bigger impact. ~~~ quickthrower2 I think it has quite an effect in the summer because the city is cooled by being near the ocean but the western suburbs get super hot, so a 10 degree difference might not be unusual at times, for two places about 30km away.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google Docs now runs offline with Gears - bdfh42 http://ajaxian.com/archives/google-docs-now-runs-offline-with-gears ====== mattmaroon Yeah, I've used gears (or tried to) with Google Reader many times since its inception. It doesn't work. It is probably the worst product they've yet invented. ------ prakash Zoho did it a month before: [http://blogs.zoho.com/writer/zoho-writer-extends- mobile-supp...](http://blogs.zoho.com/writer/zoho-writer-extends-mobile- support-adds-offline-capability-for-windows-mobile-using-google-gears/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Running Bitcoin uses a small city’s worth of electricity - sizzle https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/the-ridiculous-amount-of-energy-it-takes-to-run-bitcoin ====== BoiledCabbage I'll repost the same comment I made previously on an Etherium thread. I think We're really under appreciating the pandora's box we've opened. Energy is one of the most important items for societal progress. And the fact we've now designed an industry to get rich quick for throwing it away is a societal burden we'll never get rid of. > Almost all of society functions on energy, some of the largest breakthroughs > in society have been on sudden abundance of cheap energy and the machines, > vehicles products they can create. Entire economies can be crippled by rising costs in energy (oil shocks of the 70s) and boom by sudden drops in cost of energy. So we've created an "industry" where you are essentially paid by comverting energy to waste. Paid to perform extremely intense difficult (ie wasteful) operations to back a useful technology (digital currency). Assuming it catches on, energy will never be cheap, there will always be a higher floor now due to options for "mining". As we get better at it and it becomes less wasteful, the digital system will simply raise the reward so people are incentivised to once again waste it. Ignore the short term for the moment, and which ever currency you're backing. We've created a long term societal motivation/reward to harvest every joule produce by the sun and use it to calculate hashes. I'm not talking about the next decade obviously, but we have incentivised that behavior. If there is anything technologists should understand is that whatever your beautiful perfect technology is, it will instead be used based on whatever has been incentivised. Regardless of the technology it powers, this is a terrible societal incentive - and one that will be around a lot longer than people are considering. ~~~ sillysaurus3 If Bitcoin reaches a 2 trillion market cap, it will require less than 1% additional world energy output. Is less than 1% additional energy usage worth a 2 trillion cap? Well, I'm sure people can find a way to argue that it's not, but the point is that bitcoin isn't this enormous threat to energy usage that people try to argue it is. ~~~ kafkaesq _If Bitcoin reaches a 2 trillion market cap, it will require less than 1% additional world energy output._ The key question raised in the parent comment, which your own riposte artfully dodges, is once again - _who stands to benefit_ from this N% increase in global energy usage? ~~~ uncoder0 Not the poster but, I assume the beneficiaries are the users of the bitcoin network by the added security from the increases hash-rate/ energy consumption. ------ qudat The most striking statistic was that bitcoin is 5000 times more energy intensive than a VISA transaction. Maybe my naive interpretation of what VISA actually does is showing here, but I don't see how it's a valid comparison. Bitcoin doesn't simply replace credit card transactions, it replaces an entire banking system. Who confirms VISA transactions? How can you send and receive transactions through VISA? What about all the facilities that are supporting that transaction? I think it's easier to trace the cost of a bitcoin transaction, which bears the entire cost succinctly, compared to an institution like VISA, which has its tentacles in a ton of energy costing faculties. ~~~ lukev Bitcoin isn't a payment processor. It can't handle the tiniest fraction of Visa's transaction volume natively. Of course you can work around this by having third party payment processors that sit between customers and the raw blockchain. But because Visa already does much of that, you need to include the cost of those as well, in order to get an apples-to-apples comparison. ~~~ sillysaurus3 _It can 't handle the tiniest fraction of Visa's transaction volume natively._ Not actually true. See the Lightning proposal. ~~~ lawn 1\. It's not Bitcoin, it's a sidechain utilizing Bitcoin 2\. It's not certain it can work in a decentralized way ~~~ AgentME > 1\. It's not Bitcoin, it's a sidechain utilizing Bitcoin I think you're mixing lightning up with something else; lightning is not a sidechain[0]. In lightning, at every step participants create standard Bitcoin transactions that can be finalized and settled at any time by just publicly broadcasting them on the Bitcoin network. The participants hold off on broadcasting the transactions until they're done with the payment channel so that they save on transaction fees (and avoid bloating the blockchain). They're immune to counterparty risk like normal transactions are, and it doesn't rely on any central or trusted authorities. [0] [https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/greg-maxwell- lightning-...](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/greg-maxwell-lightning- network-better-than-sidechains-for-scaling-bitcoin-1461077424/) ~~~ lawn Maybe sidechain isn't the best term but I don't know a better one. You're saying it yourself, it creates standard Bitcoin transactions (not lightning transactions). They hold off on broadcasting them, but that may mean if they both go offline they loose their state. It's using Bitcoin as a settlement layer but it's still not interchangeable with Bitcoin. It still has not been shown that LN can even work in a decentralized fashion. It uses Bitcoin and it may even become the default way to transact and be better in any way. But it doesn't matter, Lightning is not, and will never be, Bitcoin. How can this distinction not be clear? ~~~ AgentME >You're saying it yourself, it creates standard Bitcoin transactions (not lightning transactions). They hold off on broadcasting them, but that may mean if they both go offline they loose their state. Yeah, the guarantees aren't exactly the same. Personally I expect that the risks will be for the most part smoothed over by things like lightning software that automatically syncs the state of payment channels between all of your devices for redundancy. >It's using Bitcoin as a settlement layer but it's still not interchangeable with Bitcoin. When a payment channel is settled by any of the participants, it's normal Bitcoin that comes out. >It uses Bitcoin and it may even become the default way to transact and be better in any way. But it doesn't matter, Lightning is not, and will never be, Bitcoin. I really think that's splitting hairs. If it becomes the standard way to send Bitcoin around, such that nearly everyone talking about making or receiving payments in Bitcoin is using Lightning, and if it does end up working very well in practice with many transactions per second, then I think it's more than fair to argue against statements like "Bitcoin can't scale up to VISA volume". Are you insisting on always explicitly referring to them as a combination ("Bitcoin/Lightning")? Kind of reminds me of the losing battle fought by some to correct all references to Linux as "GNU/Linux"... ------ matt_wulfeck I hate wasteful software. A city’s worth of energy and a max throughout of 7 transactions per second[1]. When everybody’s done trying to get rich quick we can talk about improvements. 1\. [https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/53620/what-is- th...](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/53620/what-is-the-maximum- transaction-throughput-of-the-bitcoin-network) ~~~ CyberDildonics The mistake is thinking that the energy used from mining is a direct result from the number of transactions being processed. The reality is that the two are not coupled together. Larger block sizes are obviously possible as demonstrated by bitcoin cash (and by anyone with common sense who hasn't been taken in the censorship on /r/bitcoin). More transaction throughput doesn't affect how much hash power is needed, therefore the main limiting factor is mostly just how many transactions are actually being made. ------ andrewla One of Bitcoin's biggest obstacles to widespread adoption is the utility problem -- how can Bitcoin transition to being a transactional currency. The problem is a dual one; on the one hand, if you can denominate your supply chain in Bitcoin, then that removes much volatility, because you no longer care about the cost of Bitcoin. But that requires that all of the components of your supply chain are also denominated in Bitcoin. And on the other hand, what is the "appropriate" value for Bitcoin? Is it too expensive right now, or alarmingly cheap? This relates to volatility as well; the uncertainty in how to price the asset is real. The power/Bitcoin correspondence is a way to take a crack at both of these problems. The price of Bitcoin and the price of energy are fundamentally related, once capital costs of Bitcoin mining equipment is removed from the equation. An energy provider can safely denominate their provided energy in Bitcoin because they know that they can use any unpurchased capacity to mine Bitcoin directly. Once we start to see Bitcoin appearing on commodity exchanges, which should be soonish, I think it's likely that power companies (which are already notoriously active in the securities market) will find that they can hedge against price fluctuations with Bitcoin futures; basically leveraging that correspondence. We might be a long way off from them directly billing in Bitcoin, but it would not surprise me to see correlations between energy futures and Bitcoin futures once there's a more liquid market for the latter. ------ rwcarlsen Thinking of the bitcoin network "wasting" money as a "feature" (rather than incidentally) to process transactions is not quite the right way to think about it. From a bird's-eye-view the current baking/financial system of transactions (banks+visa+federal reserve, mints, FINCEN, etc.) all are part of what makes it difficult to cheat with money like USD. Rather than use this huge network of organizations to make it difficult to cheat, bitcoin uses proof-of-work. Replacing all those big, expensive organizations is, well, _expensive_! I believe bitcoin (or technologies like it) have the potential to be more efficient at this than the current system; bitcoin just makes more explicit the cost of making it expensive to cheat. ------ csomar Isn't an Energy-Free-Bitcoin or Cryptocurrency having your lunch and eating it too? If you are going to have a cryptocurrency that consumes little energy (or energy consumption doesn't scale with transactional value), how do you secure the network? ~~~ maxerickson It depends on whether you consider distributed consensus to be fundamental to cyber coins or not. For instance, a cyber coin could publish a hash of their block chain in the New York Times everyday. A sound implementation would secure the chain up to that point. ~~~ AgentME But who is it that picks the hash to publish into the NYT? You're putting that picker in control of the whole network; it's not decentralized at all. If you're going to have a trusted authority involved, then having a globally- synchronized blockchain is unnecessary. Users could just check with the trusted authority about whether a transaction is valid (not a double-spend), or even just have the trusted authority maintain balances for them. ~~~ maxerickson They would publish a hash of a public ledger. The central authority would still choose what ended up in the ledger but they would not be able to rewrite history because of the publicized hashes locking it into place. I meant to sketch out a centralized way of finalizing a public ledger, so yeah, it isn't decentralized. ------ stephengillie How much energy does it take to run the US Mint and the US banking industry? ~~~ deadmetheny Energy used to run the mint is incidental, so lower energy usage can be an attainable target if it's prioritized. The energy wasted from Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a feature and cannot be reduced without reducing Bitcoin's core functionality. ~~~ lufte But in Bitcoin's case it's the same, even the article mentions that "doing today’s calculations would “consume way more power than is generated on the entire planet” if it were done using the CPUs available when Bitcoin launched in 2009.". Energy used when mining Bitcoin could also be considered incidental, the goal is to calculate hashes. ~~~ imtringued No it wouldn't because increasing energy efficiency of the bitcoin miners just means that the difficulty will rise until you're back to the same power consumption. The power consumption depends on the block reward and transaction fees. >Energy used when mining Bitcoin could also be considered incidental, the goal is to calculate hashes. The goal isn't to calculate hashes. That is the incidental part. The goal is to have a randomly chosen node create one block every X seconds. ------ bitL Anyone finds it silly/irresponsible to trade non-renewable resources for virtual ones? ~~~ CyberDildonics Wouldn't rendering 3D movies fall under that category? ~~~ bitL You don't make billion movies. You probably make billion transactions though; when these are energy-demanding, you are burning precious resources for very little value. If all of humanity switched to bitcoin, imagine we spent 50% of energy production to run mining and blockchain verification. It's a nice proof of concept, we need something different though to survive. ~~~ CyberDildonics That's not how bitcoin works. The mining power being spent now is not tied to the number of transactions. The price is what is dictating all the mining that is currently being done. More transaction throughput requires almost nothing more from the miners than they are doing now. ------ sboselli This is known and well understood. Bitcoin's implementation consumes lots of energy. There have been however lots of developments in the blockchain space, especially as it refers to different proof systems and algorithms. The alt- coins in general, though mostly badly viewed due to the often poor and sleazy behaviours, are a playing ground for exactly this kind of problem. I won't give specific names because I'm not an advocate for any one in particular, but there are several other coins and implementations that try to do away with the energy consumption and improve scaling. Some have even gotten to the point of eliminating mining and transaction fees altogether (yup, zero fees: transfer value anywhere in the world, instantly, and pay absolutely nothing for doing so). A quick google search should point you in the right direction if it sounds interesting. ~~~ lawn > Some have even gotten to the point of eliminating mining and transaction > fees altogether But it's not clear if they even work. ------ mooneater Putting the "trust" back in "trustless" using drm'd hardware, is antithetical to bitcoin's design. ------ xiphias Energy of a small city is still not big enough to protect from a government takeover. Also what matters more is the cost of the mining equipment (which is more than 1.5 years of electricity if the equipment is refreshed every 1.5 years). Anyways if Intel can make North Korea trust its hardware, I might take a look at their project. ------ louprado The alternatives proposed in the article are also known as Proof of Luck and Proof of Time. Both require a trusted execution environment, which is what Intel's SGX enabled processors provide. Perhaps Intel can find new blockchain applications for their technology, but it is unlikely to be adopted by a digital currency. ------ lftl Could Bitcoin just halve the difficulty and half the reward for mining a block at the same time? Wouldn't that effectively double the throughput of the system? I'm guessing there's some negative consequences to this I don't understand. ~~~ alanfalcon Then we’d get blocks twice as quickly, but the transaction capacity of each block is not related to the difficulty or reward, it’s an artificial constraint. You could, say, have blocks 8x as large and increase capcity 8x without affecting the difficulty directly. (Some argue there are other ramifications to this, of course.) ~~~ lftl Right, so speeding up blocks is roughly equivalent to increasing the block size, which is what the whole BCH vs. BTC split was over, correct? So I guess the arguments against it would be the same? And if I understand correctly the core argument is that it would make it harder for anyone to verify the entire block chain. Is there any real argument against it beyond that? ------ mrb « _But estimates by independent researchers suggest it’s around 500 megawatts_ » My work is starting to pay off. This author appears to have used estimates coming from my research: 470-540 MW as of 26 February 2017.¹ Sometimes people stumble upon and blindly trust the flawed estimate published by digiconomist of ~2000 MW.² ¹[http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-electricity- consumption/](http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-electricity-consumption/) ²[http://blog.zorinaq.com/serious-faults-in- beci/](http://blog.zorinaq.com/serious-faults-in-beci/) ~~~ antisthenes I absolutely love your blog and have used it many times to show that Bitcoin is much less wasteful than people think it is, mostly due to obsolete miners no longer being used. The data and graphs are very well presented. ~~~ mrb Thank you! I did put a lot of effort into it, eg. my energy estimate research represents 30-40 hours of work. ------ clarkmoody All of the comments in here that are saying something like, _> "well at Bitcoin's current throughput it consumes X, and $large_financial_institution does Y, Bitcoin's equivalent energy usage would be Z" _ have a fundamental misunderstanding of Bitcoin's mining. The current difficulty to a produce a block is the same, regardless of the transaction throughput of the system. The Merkle root of the block's transactions goes into the block header, and that is hashed over and over. Empty blocks or huge blocks would require approximately the same energy in mining effort. ------ gambiting At the same time there was an article here some time ago showing that bitcoin uses as much energy in a year as a coal mine uses in a day. Everything is relative. ------ wickedlogic The objections in the comments around this are somewhat funny. There is more than a small city's worth of electricity in whole system waste alone. It is like complaining that you didn't eat all of your bell pepper, when behind you is a whole dumpster full of individually wrapped bell pepper sandwiches being thrown away because a pending sell-by-date or a marketing material change. ------ cocktailpeanuts Dear author: Compare Bitcoin mining vs. the entire infrastructure that powers Visa and you'll be so ashamed of yourself for writing this. ~~~ Noos if bitcoin were used anywhere near visa was, it would be mining + the infrastructure. How else would you spend them at walmart? They'd need a POS for example. ~~~ cocktailpeanuts I'm not saying POW is perfect. I'm just pointing out how idiotic it is to just make this type of statement. Also, Bitcoin is not trying to beat Visa. BitTorrent disrupted the entire entertainment industry without being as fast as regular download. ------ jimjimjim do people understand electronic payment transactions? most payment specifications were written when every single byte in a message was important. A lot was done to keep message (and data storage) size as small as possible because that was just common sense. you may think that there are a lot of coin transactions but that's just peanuts compared to the vast vast amount of normal payment transactions. ------ AKifer Isn't that what really backs that currency ? The more you spend value to make it, the more valuable it becomes. Just look at the relative values of BTC and other altcoins that require less energy to mine. IMO there's nothing to worry about it, it's just the natural order of things, you cannot find gold in every house backyard. ~~~ allenz No, you have the causality backwards: the high value of BTC is what incentivizes large investments of electricity and servers. The value of a currency depends only on supply and demand. BTC has the highest demand among cryptocurrencies mainly due to network effects. ------ nvk You could say it's much worst to dig gold out of the ground. (even accounting for the percentage for industrial use) ~~~ danmaz74 But at least gold isn't designed to make you waste as much energy as you can to secure its value. Instead, Bitcoin (and every other proof of work cryptocurrency) is based exactly on this principle. ~~~ duskwuff Precisely. Bitcoin is, by design, a Red Queen's race -- miners are incentivised to spend more energy on mining, but the total reward available to miners is fixed. _" Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."_ _" A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"_ ------ lotsoflumens I used to worry about this. Now I realise that my worry came from a scarcity mindset. There is no reason at all to believe that electricity production will always be difficult or expensive. These problems will be solved. ------ jontro Not sure if I like where this is going. [https://software.intel.com/en- us/sgx](https://software.intel.com/en-us/sgx) sounds like drm for code. ------ VMG My best hope is that there will be some kind of OPEC cartel that agrees to limit production. The members could have unused reserves of mining hardware that ramps up when somebody violates the agreement. ~~~ ZenoArrow > "My best hope is that there will be some kind of OPEC cartel that agrees to > limit production." Those limits were baked into the design from the start. In the current design there are only 21 million Bitcoins that can be mined, and we're approximately 80% of the way to that target. [http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/](http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/) Also, Bitcoin is designed to be harder to come by as time goes on. The number of new coins issued diminishes over time. See the Supply Growth section here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin) "12.5 bitcoins per block (approximately every ten minutes) until mid 2020, and then afterwards 6.25 bitcoins per block for 4 years until next halving. This halving continues until 2110–40, when 21 million bitcoins will have been issued." There will come a time when Bitcoin mining is no longer profitable. If the scaling problems with the transactions are solved in time, we may see more people trading in Satoshis (fractions of a Bitcoin). The scaling problems are pretty hard to solve though, it's probably going to take a hard fork to make Bitcoin a true alternative to traditional government-backed currencies. ~~~ VMG I am aware of this, what I meant was a limit on hashrate ~~~ ZenoArrow Hashrate is also limited by design: [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty#What_network_hash_rate...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty#What_network_hash_rate_results_in_a_given_difficulty.3F) ~~~ VMG Each miner has an incentive to outcompete other miners. A mining cartel can agree to keep difficulty and hashrate low. It is also comparable to a truce in a military conflict. ~~~ ZenoArrow > "A mining cartel can agree to keep difficulty and hashrate low." Won't work. If a mining cartel agrees to keep difficulty and hashrate low, they're just making it easier for those outside the cartel to mine more Bitcoin. ~~~ VMG With unused mining hardware reserves they could smash outsiders by ramping up the hashrate. Cartels usually don't last forever, but they can last for a while. In the case of bitcoin, it could reduce total energy consumption. ~~~ ZenoArrow In one comment you're suggesting a cartel should keep the hashing rate low, in another comment you're suggesting the same cartel should increase the hashing rate to keep out the competition. What are you really proposing? Keeping it low until any form of competition shows up? That competition is always likely to be a factor for as long as Bitcoin mining is popular. ~~~ VMG > Keeping it low until any form of competition shows up? Exactly. This is similar to how price dumping works: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_$pricing_policy$) ~~~ ZenoArrow You're not listening. I'm suggesting it'll never work for Bitcoin as the available competition is ever present. A cartel gains nothing by mining at a slower rate. ------ elif Running USD uses a small planet's worth of hydrocarbons ------ sp332 I think this will solve itself over time. As the block reward gets smaller, miners will afford less and less wasted electricity. ~~~ tromp Unless bitcoin doubles in price every 4 years, the frequency of reward halvings. Then cost of electricity used in mining will remain constant. ~~~ sp332 I don't think it's going to double forever. Transaction fees will eventually outpace the actual block reward and level things out, but even with that it's going to be a much smaller amount per block. ------ samstave Yeah... Weird thought... (I do not know if thi already exists, as I dont care about crytocurrency - only because I dont have the cycles, currently) What if there was a crytocoin that was just a centrally mined 'thing' \- and the value of the coin was what others were willing to bid on the next coin vs volume of those willing.... Isnt that literally how gold currently works? So rather than consume billions of watts on bitcoin - just make digital gold? ~~~ noncoml No need to bid. Just give X amount of coins to every person and newborn for free. ~~~ hoosieree Whuffie? ~~~ noncoml More like Universal Basic Income ------ Synaesthesia Compared to the environmental damage and pollution caused by the mulitary, it will surely be much smaller. Also motor racing is another huge waster of resources, with no real benefit to the population. ------ gt_ My novice armchair estimate is that something like ZCash is broadly much less efficient than Bitcoin. Of course, no measure can go beyond a loose estimate. ~~~ AgentME I don't think it makes any sense to try to compare the efficiency of different proof of work systems. Now you could compare the work that goes into synchronizing the blockchain between all nodes, but I'd expect that has a near-negligible environmental impact compared to all of the miners. (Individual Zcash transactions are a bigger file size than individual Bitcoin transactions if I remember right.) ~~~ gt_ OK I'm confused. Thank you though! ------ freech That is exactly the point of proof of work. Criticizing Bitcoin for this, is like criticizing DNA Evidence for being hard to fake. ------ CJefferson There are real costs to bitcoin, the electricity being burnt in China is killing hundreds of people. ------ progx Burstcoin! ------ pbreit So...way, way, way less energy than mining for gold? Isn't the energy consumption the whole point? ~~~ BoiledCabbage Mining for gold has become orders of magnitude more efficient over time. Bit coin will become orders of magnitude less efficient by design... ------ marank is not bitcoin consuming energy's is people's greed, china or whatever can ban mining same of US can ban industrial mining, bitcoin won't be affected a bit, I would be happy to be able to mine it on my laptop. ------ jimjimjim bitcoin is the This Is Fine dog pouring petrol around the room saying "I wish I started pouring earlier" ------ horusthecat They hate us for our freedoms ------ jimjimjim burn the world to make a buck ------ ece Pyramid schemes are expensive, no shit. ------ chrisco255 /s ~~~ xapata We can tackle problems in parallel. Cultural issues are not a blocking problem. ------ s0rce I'm guessing many of the miners are located in regions like Washington State or Quebec with low cost relatively-green hydroelectric power and the power use doesn't correspond to the environmental impact of an average small city (except obviously one located where the miners are). ~~~ _h_o_d_ Most of the miners are in China, which runs a lot of coal and gas ~~~ CyberDildonics Actually lots of mining is done in China using cheap electricity that comes from a glut of hydro-electric power created by government infrastructure spending. ------ knodi123 But that electricity is cheaply available. We could stop bitcoin's use of electricity overnight, if electricity began to cost more than the expected return on investment. And this will inevitably happen anyway, since bitcoins only get harder to mine over time. This is a temporary problem. Honestly it seems more like "bitcoin is a way to launder stolen electricity" rather than "oh noes, if people keep mining, eventually they'll have a huge impact on global energy consumption" ------ brockers I'm not sure I understand the issue. I'm betting that the amount of energy used to power online games for Play Station Online is orders of magnitude worse than for bitcoin with arguably less benifit to society. What am I missing? ~~~ curiousgal Exactly, this is a non-issue at best. ------ nnfy How much power is drawn by the "ever-expanding" racks of servers powering other stores of value? How many servers are running in the banking and financial industries just to enable non pseudonymous transactions of value? This article is sensationalist nonsense. I would argue it is a positive point that a globally tradeable cryptocurrency with billions in market cap only requires the energy of a "small city." ~~~ djrogers > a globally tradeable cryptocurrency with billions in market cap only > requires the energy of a "small city." It only sounds good because we haven't really considered the scale here, so let's scale that up a bit. What if even 1% of non cash financial transactions in the US were handled with BTC? For 2015, that would have worked out to about $1.8T. How big would BTC need to be to handle that? Well, it looks like last year it's estimated to have done a little over $100B, so it'd have to scale somewhere around 15-20x to even cover 1% of _one country 's_ transactions... [1] [https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/other/2016-p...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/other/2016-payments- study-20161222.pdf) [2][https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction- volume?...](https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction- volume?timespan=1year) ~~~ nnfy You may have a point, except you haven't mentioned how many city's worth of power non-btc transactions currently require, not to mention the additional inneficiency of hundreds of thousands of staff which could possibly be reduced in number because of the distributed ledger. I really don't think things are as clear cut as the article implies, but I dont have numbers for the amount of energy consumed by modern electronic value transaction and storage. Edit: also, "city's worth" as a measure of electricity, as in the article, is a terrible choice because it immediately biases the reader and does not convey much useful information. My GPU maxes at 300W; the article provides no way of conversion. Never mind that a small city may be a suburb using one hundredth of the power used by a small city center full of servers and a handful of skyscrapers. ~~~ djrogers > you haven't mentioned how many city's worth of power non-btc transactions > currently require No, I didn't but the article did, and it's cited elsewhere on HN - Visa for example uses 1/7000th of the energy per transaction...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Building personal search infrastructure for your knowledge and code - october_sky https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-search.html ====== djhworld I've given up with trying to find The One True Note Taking Tool, so have ended up writing my own thing that I tinker with now and again to tune it to exactly what I need. It's essentially a simple web server that sits on top of a bunch of markdown files. The frontend renders the markdown using markdown-it and supports KaTeX for simple inline mathy things, along with the extended markdown stuff like tables etc. I've even made it so that you can drag and drop files (including images) into the edit box and it will upload them to the server and render the correct markdown syntax so they can be rendered when you look at the note. Alongside the files, the data is also stored in a SQLite database file with some metadata, and I'm using the Full Text Search (FTS5) engine to support search which seems to work ok. If the database gets corrupted it can just be rebuilt, it's really just there to augment the notes. If I stop developing it or want to move on, the notes are there as text files. It works well enough in a mobile browser, although admittedly a bit rubbish if you need offline access. Works well enough for me. I might open source it one day but I think I'd need to clean up the code a bit first :) EDIT: the core of the tool was mostly inspired by this article [https://golang.org/doc/articles/wiki/](https://golang.org/doc/articles/wiki/) ~~~ gwgundersen This sounds a lot like a tool I built for myself [1], sans the database. I agree that Markdown + Katex with a local server seems like the right move for most technical people. Lots of things like encryption, backups, and basic text search can be done via other Unix tools. I also agree that the big win is owning your data long-term, even if you get tired of maintaining the software. [1] [https://github.com/gwgundersen/anno](https://github.com/gwgundersen/anno) ~~~ archontes Sir! I have to say seeing you here that I appreciate your contributions. ------ sqs Sourcegraph CEO here. I see the doc mentions Sourcegraph for code search (cool!). Something like ripgrep is indeed better for your case, a single person who just needs to search code in local directories on their own machine. I made a PR for our docs at [https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/pull/8075](https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/pull/8075) that should clarify this. Sourcegraph is a web-based code search tool that automatically syncs and indexes many repositories from your organization's code host(s). It's intended for every developer at an organization to use for searching across all of the organization's code (and for navigating/cross-referencing with code intelligence). It's self hosted and usually there is 1 Sourcegraph instance per organization. If you love local+personal code search, I bet you _and_ your teammates would love organization-wide code search, so give Sourcegraph a try ([https://docs.sourcegraph.com/#quickstart](https://docs.sourcegraph.com/#quickstart)). :) ~~~ mikepurvis Another great option for local code/repo search is Hound. I maintain an instance of it at my workplace, but it's so lightweight and easy to deploy that I could easily imagine running an instance of it on my laptop for offline personal use. [https://github.com/hound-search/hound](https://github.com/hound-search/hound) ~~~ blyry YES! We have been using hound for several years now, having all hundreds of our org repos searchable in one spot, in a LIGHTNING FAST manner has been an invaluable tool to help our various teams keep up with the legacy sprawl and effectively remove old features and all their dependencies from our sprawly systems. I even wrote a microservice that uses gitlab global hooks to keep hound up to date without polling, and a little c# config generator that runs as a cron job on our gitlab instance and redeploys hound with the newest repos included. Hound falls short on access control front (we wrapped our instance with a saml proxy), but it's still a 'you either can search every piece of software for \'password\'' or you don't have any access at all. Having to index a specific branch instead of all of them kinda stinks too; for those two specific reasons we have been eyeing sourcegraph, esp. as the gitlab integration matures. I can't emphasize enough how fast hound is and how pleasurable it is having a regex based code search that doesn't make me wait. ~~~ mikepurvis Yeah, the access control thing is not ideal— I have my instance behind Apache for the active directory plugin. Potentially as a hack you could run multiple Hound instances and reverse proxy the correct one based on a user's role? Might be easier to just add in proper support upstream. :) Anyway, for now I'm at a small enough org that everyone still just sees everything, and it's been super valuable. As far as competition with other tools, the infrastructure team at my org has their Elastic instance plugged into our GitLab, but most of the engineers agree that Hound is better— it's faster, it does regex, and it doesn't do goofy stuff like return pages of the same result from everyone's fork of the same repo. ------ ssivark Meta-observation. This topic seems to be getting a lot of attention on HN over the last few months, indicating massive interest. Further, looking at the landscape of developments in this space (past all the me-too Markdown note taking apps): Evernote seems to have a fading presence on the landscape, Notion seems to be a (too?) well-funded behemoth startup, Roam is trying some exciting things, and Tiago Forte is putting together some interesting things under the BASB banner. (Any others? Oh btw, there’s also Perkeep) It’s amazing for how long Emacs’ Org-mode has been largely unparalleled! Apart from the revered desktop setup, there are now a bunch of mobile offerings including Organice — not quite slick, but definitely useful. I‘m sincerely rooting for more experiments in this area. I would love to be able to write by hand or speak to my memex (multi-modal interaction). Vannevar Bush’s “As we may think” has languished uncourted for pitifully long. In some ways, this was supposed to be the first “killer app” for personal computing. ~~~ marviel It's a ripe space. I'm using notion mostly right now, but I've also used: -Coda.io (big, more scriptable player) -Hypernote (super new player, but with a cool new take on inter-note relationships) -Tiddlywiki (super customizable, really fast -- but also has a fair amount of footguns) -Airtable (only played with it a few times but it's usually mentioned in the same breath as notion, I notice) Hopefully someday we'll achieve Alan Kay's dream :) ~~~ DavideNL If only Notion was private (like for example Omnifocus.) I can't imagine uploading all my private data to the cloud of a "free" app. OmniFocus is more expensive but i gladly pay to prevent my data from being analyzed & sold. ~~~ marviel I don't disagree -- though they do have a paid version, and a modest team size, which seems promising ------ klft (1) For note taking I stumbled across anno[1] via[2] two weeks ago. It's a python flask application which you run on your localhost. You write markdown which gets stored locally as file and is rendered as html using pandoc[3]. It's really basic but I love it. (2) For physical documents I use a Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500[4] for scanning. A runtime-licencse of ABBYY FineReader for OCR is included. The resulting PDF has embedded text which I extract using pdftotext[5]. I wrote a python application to search and tag this documents. It loads all the text in-memory which is perfecty fine as I have < 10,000 documents. I use it since 5 years and it works OK. [1] [https://github.com/gwgundersen/anno](https://github.com/gwgundersen/anno) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033792](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033792) [3] [https://pandoc.org/](https://pandoc.org/) [4] [https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/peripheral...](https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/scansnap/ix500/) [5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdftotext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdftotext) ~~~ lifeisstillgood Actually, what has been bugging me recently is the inability to "tag" photos on my iphone - all I want is to snap a copy of my bill / invoice whatever, tag it with "gas bill" and let it upload to icloud / dropbox. from there I am sure I can onwards process looking for "gas bill" but actually there seems to be no obvious way to do it, (even looked into EXIf data), and I guess it will age to wait till i learn ios coding ~~~ jamiek88 Touch and hold , then tap an option. Custom: Tap , tap Enter New Tag, type a customtag, and tap Done. Create additional custom tags: Tap , tap Enter New Tag, type a custom tag, and tap Done. Add more than one custom tag to a photo: Tap , and tap each tag you want to add (so a checkmark appears next to it). ~~~ mceachen Is this a real UX, or something you'd like? (This isn't how either Apple or Google Photos works) ------ stillwater56 Does anyone else find that the simple act of writing notes helps them remember and process better? I spent forever trying to find an ideal note-taking solution, but now I just write things in a single notebook. I rarely review my notes, but I find that simply writing thoughts down consistently has improved my memory and understanding of new concepts. ~~~ otakucode This certainly applies for me personally. My theory is that it ties in with the sort of 'geographic' memory where when you think of something, you might not be able to remember exactly what it is, but you can remember pretty precisely that it's in the middle of a certain notebook, on a heavily marked- up page, in the bottom left corner. By tying things to a location which you can remember, placing it in a bit of a context, its easier to hold on to. I also find, and for this I have no explanation at all, that I can remember sequences of numbers and code very well, better than anything else. I couldn't tell you the date I started or left my job 2 employers ago, but I could rattle off my 7-digit numeric security code for the door no problem. The brain is weird. ~~~ lazyasciiart Well, you also used that 7 digit code a lot more often than you ever had to recall your start or end dates. ------ lcall I wrote and use daily [http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org) (AGPL, uses postgres), for many reasons listed there :) . One way to think of its current state is a text-mode, easy-to-learn (i hope) infinite mind map of things, where I store _and can query_ effectively everything: calendar, reminders, quasi-anki-like knowledge review, journal, automatic activity log, notes on subjects, very efficiently for the user. (It also stores documents, but that is not very smooth compared to other document systems, nor is browser integration smooth at all.) Edit: It also has a very basic security model (private, public, unspecified), and with that in mind, can export trees of notes as html or as outline documents (text), with or w/o indentation & numbering, which I've found very useful. And anything can be in as many places in the tree as is helpful. The export to simple html, I use to generate my 2 web sites. (I plan to move it to Rust, and maybe sqlite, eventually, as well as add features like anki, internal code attached to entity classes for cheap internal customization/automation, etc, but have been slow lately.) (Edit: it is currently only self-hosted by each user. Have considered doing hosting for other users, and might some day.) ~~~ gotts telnet demo seems to be down at the moment: Trying 52.37.29.12... ~~~ lcall True; sorry about that. Maybe I should remove that from the web site until I decide better. But the best thing is probably to check the screen shots via the web site, then install/try it if you like... Edit: I have removed mention of the telnet demo from the site. If there were sufficient real interest I would put it back (or consider hosting the system for others). If so, email me via the mailing list at the site, or via the address at the site footer. Thanks. ------ gricardo99 A great time saver for me was simply setting up better bash history and search capabilities[1]. I wrote a wrapper function, sbh (search bash history) that allows me to input date strings like "2 months ago", or "last week", which narrows the search. Linux 'date' function with --date string arg is pretty powerful[2]. 1 - [https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/05/28/log-bash- history/](https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/05/28/log-bash-history/) 2 - [https://www.thegeekstuff.com/2013/05/date-command- examples/](https://www.thegeekstuff.com/2013/05/date-command-examples/) ------ dchichkov Reminds me somewhat similar - CEO of Wolfram developed a nice way of record keeping: [https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the- prod...](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-productive- life-some-details-of-my-personal-infrastructure/) By the way, is there, by chance, a "note taking/indexing tool from photo"? I'd like to be able to take a photo of an title/abstract of computer science paper with my phone. And then be able to find it, by approximate date and keywords. (I use Android. Seems like something relatively easy to hack, actually, on top of Google photos.) ~~~ tibu Evernote does character recognition quite well. I don't know if there are any others but would be good to have something else too so I can leave Evernote for Notion. ------ napoleond I've been thinking a lot about how I manage my own data lately (notes, photos, code, reference material, etc) and have concluded that the primary feature I'm looking for is longevity. I'm saddened by the amount of data I've lost over the years, either because of hard disk failures or third-party services going out of business/making it difficult to extract things/getting too expensive. In light of this, I'm biasing toward simple file formats managed by tools I write myself, and optimizing for cost in a way that I otherwise don't, since any recurring costs incurred by the system are effectively a lifelong commitment. I _am_ relying on S3 for primary storage (so that it is accessible anywhere) but with a sync to offline backup. So far, I've implemented a personal Zettelkasten tool (with built-in spaced repetition, so doubles as an Anki replacement) and a search engine that's based on Presto (via AWS Athena) so that I don't need to keep an Elasticsearch instance alive. I'm planning to build out other repository tools as I go. It's been very liberating to build tools that are never meant to be used by anyone other than myself, and with the confidence that the tools don't matter too much anyway since the underlying files are stored in evergreen formats. ~~~ silicon2401 what's the optimal setup for long-term, large-scale (personal) data storage? I want to build one big Backup. Some initial research has pointed me to something like Bacula to manage the data backup process from a machine. With the 3-2-1 rule, I know I also need my Backup itself to have at least 3 copies, in at least 2 different forms (cloud/hard disk), at least one of which is off- site from me. As an individual, do you or anybody else know the best way to implement such a system? Should I buy one giant hard drive, use many hard drives to create a RAID array, something else? ~~~ kortex Oooh. I've been wrestling with this problem for a while now. Basically I'm working on a tiered system. Files/dirs are categorized by size (<10MB, <25GB, >25GB) , and by sensitivity (public, confidential, secure. And importance is usually proportional to security). I have fortunately found that security is usually inverse to size. Github/lab anything which makes sense. Confidential small stuff (sans keys) is just stored in gmail/drive. Big, boring stuff (music, ebooks) is just kept on external hard drives. Secure, ultra-important stuff, I don't really have a system for. The system I'm leaning towards is just encrypt archives and store the key/password securely, and store it like you would any boring data, with a local NAS and a cloud backup service of some sort, or just stored on drives offsite. ~~~ silicon2401 Do you feel comfortable using cloud storage for so much of your content? My ideal is to be entirely self-backed-up. I want a personal git server, photo archive, etc. With bandwidth, service costs, vendor issues (dealing with google seems like a nightmare from reading online). How did you construct your NAS? Is it a single system, or multiple hard drives/storage solutions connected to your network? ~~~ kortex It depends. Github is not going down. Gmail is not going down. If they do, it's Bug-out-bag time, and I am working on curating what information subset I need for that. Ideally though yes I would have my own entire backup system but I frankly don't trust myself enough to do it right, so hence some redundancy in the cloud. The NAS I am still designing actually :p ------ spdustin I'd really like a personal "correlate all the things!" setup that has a plugin architecture for any source and creates a time series and document-based store of whatever I want. Tweets, e-mails, text messages, time tracking, etc. There are lots of tools that do the individual moving parts, but a personal aggregator of everything would be interesting. Basically, a tool that lets you become your own personal data broker—just for your own personal data. ~~~ karlicoss I'm kind of working on that too :) [https://github.com/karlicoss/my](https://github.com/karlicoss/my) I wrote a post on some data that I collect and have/will integrate: [https://beepb00p.xyz/my-data.html#consumers](https://beepb00p.xyz/my- data.html#consumers) ~~~ K0SM0S I only skimmed through and the combined breadth + intent of your projects seems very, very interesting — I mean it speaks to me. So, way to go! Mad props, please keep it up! If you ask me, this is the shape of things to come. ~~~ karlicoss Thanks! :) I wish it was easier to share with other people, lots of things are tedious to set up ------ user00012-ab My problem with a lot of services listed below, is they all eventually go away, and all your data is off somewhere else. Unless you store your data locally in a human readable format (markdown) you are just putting all your data into a system that WILL go away at some point in the future. Google has already had 2-3 services to manage your data that they have closed down. Maybe they are the ones that taught me not to trust your data with anything on the web. Even something like Evernote is iffy, they seem like they are constantly on the verge of shutting down. Although I do find it sad that that the human race as a whole puts so little value into this type of software, and so much value into sports and politics. ~~~ lcall [http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org) , described briefly elsewhere in this discussion page and more at that site, is self-hosted, which today means installing postgres and editing one config file, doing backups & upgrades (but I might be able to help some). Maybe I could host for others sometime if there were sufficient interest. And/or move it to sqlite. ~~~ capableweb Yeah, seems neither self-host (onemodel) or letting someone else (you or Evernote) is particularly attractive, because the chance of data loss is always there. Is it possible there is a solution that makes the data more permanent and allows multiple parties to backup the same sources, or something similar? Some sort of federation protocol maybe. ~~~ lcall Thanks. That is on the future roadmap (though I have been slow lately): selective sharing/copying/synch. I encourage anyone with possible interest to sign up for the announcements list at least, and maybe decide sometime to help. :) ------ ketzo It's been mentioned a few times in these comments, but I want to add a +1 for Roam[1]. Note-taking/personal knowledge tool that's very, very different from anything I've seen before -- closest thing I can compare it to is Wikipedia. It's still in beta with some rough edges, but VERY worth checking out. [1] roamresearch.com ~~~ qot Worth mentioning the pricing [0]: $30 / month $10,000 / lifetime [0]: [https://twitter.com/Conaw/status/1214855473876201472](https://twitter.com/Conaw/status/1214855473876201472) ------ Fiveplus > _all digital trace I 'm leaving (tweets, internet comments, annotations)_ I would be open to the idea of a tool which combines the entirety of my digital presence at any point in time in a single platform. Kinda like a dynamically updated list which updates itself - every time a linked account makes a comment, 'likes' a post or performs any activity that may link it back to me. ~~~ kirubakaran I'm building this [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/) It has Hacker News, Telegram, and web browsing (notes, bookmarks, history) integrations already. Up next: Emacs org-mode exports, integrations with Pocket and Pinboard. Here is a bit longer comment on that which I made earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22160026](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22160026) ~~~ swozey This is cool, I'd dig a $2-5/mo unlimited account for 1 person/team with the same unlimited settings. ~~~ kirubakaran Thanks swozey. Can you please send me an email? k@histre.com ------ wtracy This have me a hairbrained idea for a browser extension that drops every web page you visit into a private Lucene database. ~~~ user00012-ab I was kind of having the same idea, except any site you bookmark gets added to a personal web crawler, and then you have your own search site for things you find interesting. ~~~ walterbell This exists on iPhone/iPad! DevonThink2Go, local crawl/search + optional encrypted sync over self-hosted WebDAV or public cloud services. Can also take/search markdown notes. ------ jmakov No mentions of [https://tiddlywiki.com/](https://tiddlywiki.com/)? ~~~ user00012-ab tiddlywiki was great until all the browsers stop supporting writing to local files, now saving changes is a pain, making me find something else. ~~~ ahnick Maybe this solves your problems? It creates a database in your browser's LocalStorage. [https://noteself.github.io/](https://noteself.github.io/) ~~~ BLKNSLVR And the database can be setup to sync with a self-hosted CouchDB instance. ~~~ bachmeier While that works, the original appeal of Tiddlywiki was that you could open a file in your browser, type away, and save naturally. Once you get into "self- hosted", you just have a regular old wiki. I used it everyday for several years but gave up once the transition happened. I keep trying to go back, but it just can't compete with files edited in a text editor and stored locally. ------ capableweb Everything I write about (journal + other things, task lists and what not) is written in plain markdown files currently (about to move it to TiddlyWiki, one of these days...) and to get search, I just use `the-silver-searcher` which searches the entire directory of my files. Simple and scalable (got around 9k documents by now) ------ insomniacity My eternal frustration in this space is that my employer has strict firewalls, web filtering and data-loss prevention software, and remote access is over Citrix with no copy-paste. Consequently, if I build a knowledge base, it is stuck inside the firewall. Equally, if I build it outside, I can't use it at work. ~~~ fctorial Why don't you host it on an ec2 instance? They won't be blocking amazon ip. Where do you work? ~~~ insomniacity There's definitely no external access without going through the web proxy. And a new uncategorized site would be blocked by the web proxy - and it wouldn't pass review. I work in a highly regulated industry... Any workaround would be grounds for termination. So there's no point to my comment really - just curious if anyone else is in the same boat. ~~~ dr_baba Can't you use a personal mobile device with a 4G connection to access a knowledge database outside the firewall, without moving any data across your employers network? As long as the data you wish to read/write is not sensitive in itself, and it's mostly just plaintext notes that you can read/write from any device, I don't see the issue with that. ~~~ KineticLensman Secure physical sites (e.g. some military bases) may require you to place personal electronics in a lockable cabinet. You have to use a paper notepad if you don't have a device certified by the local security team. Using a non- certified device can result in being evicted or prosecuted. ------ karlicoss Hey, author here. Happy to answer any questions! ~~~ saadalem Is there a way we can subsribe to the blog ? ------ porker > Ideally I want to be able to do fulltext realtime search over anything that > I ever had in my visual field. Not even necessarily text, but audio and > video as well. Where I find all these systems break down is recall. They're designed for someone who can recall a word or phrase that was in the content. I can usually recall "It was about X" or "The document/web page/image looked like Y". But an actual word? The author's name? Not a chance. While a more difficult problem, if the tool is to live up to the "Future" section of this page, it's got to go a long way beyond what's in the source data, to what's thought of by the user. ------ albertzeyer This topics comes up again and again. I collected some notes about this here: [https://github.com/albertz/wiki/blob/master/personal- knowled...](https://github.com/albertz/wiki/blob/master/personal-knowledge- base.md) E.g. one software I started to use is nvALT, via: [https://www.macstories.net/links/organizing-everything- with-...](https://www.macstories.net/links/organizing-everything-with-plain- text-notes/) But I'm nowhere near a perfect and complete solution yet... ~~~ computronus The successor to nvALT, nvUltra, is currently in private beta. I'm looking forward to its release! [https://nvultra.com/](https://nvultra.com/) ~~~ porker And still Mac only :( ------ tomerbd I have less notes after being fed up with nites. It's really time consing to manage notes so - I manage logs. I just log everything I do each task in it's new page. It's append only. For notes which I mutate I just keep a personal web site and I tried to keep this as cheatsheet and as compact as possible so I don't need to manage it. So append only log in quip new folder for each task. Mutative cheatsheet super compact pages in personal website. Oh and for quick sniper's alfred. That's it. ------ ajphdiv I self host a confluence server. All my content is available to me offline. Might be a bit overkill, but I have knowledge bases for all my work. If there is a web page I come across I can just copy/paste the content into a new post. Everything is searchable. It really is great. They offer a starter license, which is $10 per year: [https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/starter](https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/starter) ------ glinkot I use a few things for this (on windows): \- For notes, OneNote, though I'm always on the lookout for an alternative with decent UI and syncing, but using open file formats. Full text search simple enough with this. Code formatting isn't good but there's an addin where the free version formats it as it was copied. \- To search local files, Voidtools Everything is great. Searching instantly by filename is a real time saver. \- If I want full text search of a large base of documents, I used Likasoft Archivarius which cost me $30 about 10 years ago and is still handy. It's the only local desktop search I've found that supports full text indexing of tons of formats like outlook .ost, etc and can look inside archive files \- For backups I've continued to stick with external drives, mirrored periodically with Freefilesync. 3 copies - one as master, two mirrors ensuring one is offsite. ~~~ seized Take a look at Standard Notes. It is privacy focussed with encryption but has markdown and code editors and can be self hosted ~~~ glinkot Thanks, looks interesting. I find Markdown a great idea in theory, but have found very few examples of wysiwyg markdown editors that work 'as you'd expect'. For me that means: \- Bullets with multiple indents going from 1 to 1) a. etc \- Table handling \- Usual formatting like heading levels etc And there seem to be lots of flavours of markdown too, just to add another layer to things. ------ dapithor I wish things like [https://piggydb.net/](https://piggydb.net/) had more momentum or competitors... personal knowledge databases seem to be such a tough niche to tackle. Edit: since there is a new project here is more details years back: [http://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2014/160/Workspace- Pigg...](http://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2014/160/Workspace-Piggydb) ------ flaque If you're into this sort of thing, you might want to checkout Roamresearch: [https://roamresearch.com/](https://roamresearch.com/) ~~~ losteric Seems similar to ZIM ([https://zim-wiki.org/](https://zim-wiki.org/)), except proprietary/hosted? I've just started using zim - can someone more experienced compare the two? ------ jslakro We could fill a whole internet with each personal method for storing, classifying and accesing. We're missing a OS for our own memory. ------ jefurii I wish there was a method for printing QR codes or URLs on paper that would be the reverse of scanning a QR code. This would make it easy to write complex URLs in your paper diary/techo/commonplace book/notebook. ------ andreygrehov I keep my knowledge in a private Git repo managed by [https://www.gitbook.com/](https://www.gitbook.com/). So far it works out great. Going to make it public soon. ~~~ karlicoss That's cool, please drop me an email (or just share here?) when you release it, I'm collecting ([https://beepb00p.xyz/tags.html#exobrain](https://beepb00p.xyz/tags.html#exobrain)) other people's wikis! ~~~ spoontoeat Thanks for making your notes public. It inspired some further thinking for my org-mode setup. ------ Unsimplified Tried the custom webapp and DB solution for a while. Wasn't publicly portable enough (for others to copy paste/export easily). Currently using markdown files in git repos. ------ ziyadb The holy grail [[https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm- search.html#future](https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm-search.html#future)] of this really resonated with me and fully mirrors what I've been thinking about the past few months. In my observations, it's input capture, information organization, and subsequent retrieval: Information Capture: Input Capture - You’re going to have all-encompassing tracking and recording of all activity, but want configurable privacy on the extent to which you want your daily conversations and observations of external things you encounter and are exposed to. Capturing input needs to be holistic and incorporate all properties of encounters and new information. Potential sources of input: Vision — point of view recording, see snapchat spectacles, etc as primitive examples. Audio (voice notes and multi-party conversations) - voice calls, video, etc. and other forms of audio transmission where there is more than a single party in the interaction. Digital interactions You will need to keep track of web pages you visit at what times Conversations you see on Twitter, etc. Properties and cues must be extrapolated from the information that is captured on input, in the case of audio, transcriptions are sufficient for transcription and retrieval purposes, however since video is a visual medium, it includes significantly more properties that need to be accounted for. The aim here is to identify sufficient data points (cues) that are subsequently represented in such a way that they are easy to search across things you have encountered but only seem to recall a certain property or cue from. This is because of the fact that human beings tend to remember things in fragments, for instance, you might remember a certain color on a page that you visited within the last 6 months and nothing else. So long as you are capturing sufficient input and actions then you should be able to go back to any given point in time. How and where are you going to store this information? Storing everything is going to be a large amount of data. The essence of the information and context must be preserved. If you want to wind back to an arbitrary position in time with the original context intact, you want to retain as much as you can in the most efficient manner possible, so determining which data points to retain is essential. (Once the content structure has been figured out, this will be viable). Examples of Primary Cues: Time - humans generally keep track of things in a linear time-based fashion. Color - invokes emotion and is memorable. Physical Location - the efficiency of information retrieval is highly influenced by the location at which it is originally synthesized, encountered, and stored. Keywords - the default conventional mode. Can and should be extracted from video/imagery and audio. Imagery - search for images based on their contents and ambience. Potential Secondary Cue — Music - see historical associated input and actions while certain music was played. (What else?) Meta Cues — Subjects - Automated tagging of keywords/encountered content. Any combination of these queries is possible, but ultimately the killer feature is the ability to backtrack through time to find a certain piece of information that is made available thanks to the always-on recorded nature of your interactions with the physical and digital worlds combined. Knowing what to store, and how, + displaying it needs to be worked on further. ~~~ lcall [http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org), described elsewhere here and moreso at that site, tries to model arbitrary knowledge and has a vision encompassing any kind of info one wanted to be tracked (again, more at the site). (Edit: If you have possible future interest, there is an announcements list.) ------ maurits I've been pondering on building something like this for a while. For now, I've settled on sphinx because it can be easily exported to dash, and tied in to an alfred workflow for search. ------ hvasilev I use a vim plugin called vimwiki and I export my todos and notes into HTML. Works fine for me. ------ chimichangga I just email links, code, docs, etc. to myself with descriptive subjects and tags. ------ JabavuAdams I basically live in Evernote. Will gradually transition to personal tooling. ------ rawoke083600 Most stuff (links, photos, docs, etc) I just email it to myself ------ voltagex_ Is there anything for people who don't use Vim? ~~~ executesorder66 emacs has org-mode. ------ jacquesm A search infrastructure for my knowledge would require access to wetware. Code I can see working. ------ marv3lls Ya lost me at $(emacs)!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Random street view - kirchhoff http://www.mapcrunch.com ====== Muzza Very cool.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Disney Streaming Service to Feature Marvel and Star Wars Spin-Off Series - digighoul https://digit.fyi/disney-plus-streaming-service-launch/ ====== RedBee I'll just sit here praying that they won't ruin them. No hard feelings, it's just that it always makes me nervous when it comes to something really classic and Disney...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Foreign buyers crushing home dreams in Vancouver as Canada, B.C. do zip: study - kspaans http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/foreign-buyers-crushing-home-dreams-in-vancouver-as-canada-bc-do-zip-study-378549955.html ====== jrnichols This has been happening in other US cities as well, and probably on the same scale. Several realtors I know in the Dallas/Ft Worth area have noted the same things - a large uptick in Chinese homebuyers over the past few years, often with all cash offers. Another friend sold her house, and the person that bid over their asking price and bought it _cash_ and sight unseen? Chinese. They bought it so their daughter and son in law could live there while she attends TCU. ------ __derek__ I was in Vancouver last weekend and, as is my habit, checked out the prices near the place I was staying. Houses that I would expect to cost $600k in Seattle were listed at $2 million. I'm still struggling to comprehend that. ~~~ mccoolman The craziest part is when you go outside of Vancouver to places like Abbotsford or Victoria. Both have housing prices nearing the $1m mark fast, and it's not uncommon for property owners to get realtors knocking on their doors daily asking them to sell to their overseas client. ~~~ __derek__ As it happens, yesterday, a real estate agent dropped off some materials about selling while I was out. Now that's a timely coincidence.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hi HackerNews - IceyEC http://maps.chrismacnaughton.com/Hi%20HackerNews! ====== IceyEC Probably should make sure that bad geo location doesn't make the whole thing break :) ------ IceyEC It's amazing what you can accomplish while waiting for a Windows 7 install!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Writing Your Last For-Loop - Beautiful Code - nickb http://beautifulcode.oreillynet.com/2007/10/writing_your_last_forloop.php ====== cperciva Before criticizing a language, understand it. In this case, the author can't even write a for loop correctly: for(int n = 0; n < size; ++n) sum += elements [n]; Leaving aside the stylistic question of declaring variables in the middle of a for statement, and trusting that the author knows that the variable _sum_ will never overflow and (if he's dealing with floating-point values) that rounding errors won't matter, the code should still be for(size_t n = 0; n < size; ++n) sum += elements [n]; An index to an array should always be declared as _size_t_ , not as _int_. Otherwise really bad things can happen on systems where size_t is 64 bits but int is 32 bits. EDIT: Before someone accuses me of being overly pedantic: I've lost count of how many security issues I've fixed which have existed because someone used _int_ where they meant _size_t_ , but it's at least in the double-digits. ~~~ dfranke Pedantically you're correct, but on what archictecture/compiler is (sizeof int) != (sizeof size_t), and in what circumstances have you seen this become a vulnerability? (I'm not trying to be argumentative here; I'm legitimately curious.) ~~~ brl I was going to argue against this too because using integers to index loops is such a huge convention in C and then I realized that he's absolutely right. On LP64, integers are 32 bits and size_t must be 64 bits (or you could overflow it with otherwise legal code). Even when integer and size_t are the same size, using an integer as an array index is dangerous unless you make sure that it is not negative and can never become negative. Here's what easily exploitable code looks like: void pad_ten(char *array, size_t length) { if(length < 10) { error(); return; } for(int i = (length - 10); i < length; i++) { array[i] = doPadding(); } } It's exploitable by either choosing a 'length' which becomes negative when assigned to the integer or choosing a 64 bit 'length' which becomes an entirely different (and incorrect) value when truncated to an integer. ------ edw519 Sorry, but I have the same reaction to any "programming language" argument, no matter how eloquent: so what? 90% of your code should either be generated or copied from standard templates. I've put over 2500 new programs into the library in the past couple of years, yet I don't remember the last time I wrote a program from scratch. I, too, am a stickler for details, but I let the compiler (or interpreter) do its job. Why worry about nanoseconds when I have users running the asylum? ~~~ damon I would argue a language that is eloquent, concise, and for lack of a fancier word, pretty, is important. Language features change how you view and approach a problem. I approach problems much differently in scheme given I have a macro system than I would in C. I _think_ differently depending on the language. And it's usually not about performance for me. I like code that looks good and is dense.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Resume: 30 seconds to impress - Jaminh http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/02/25/a_glimpse_and_a_hook.html ====== wallflower As someone who has been at the same software company for 8+ years, reading articles about how you need to have a professional presence / a dossier on the web (blog, LinkedIn) frankly freaks me out. I went to a presentation by a recruiter (for graphic design) who echoed the fact that if you don't have a viable LinkedIn presence - you're not really a candidate. Blogging about personal & software development and learning Wordpress are high on my choose- to-do short list for 2008.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is there a Canva for mobile UI/UX? - febin I am a devleoper who don't know to design. I struggle with CSS and XML too. Instead of designing from scratch, I was wondering if there's any tool that can help me use existing UI templates to develop apps faster. Sketch, Figma, etc needs the user to have know how to design. ====== mimixco I think Invision has templates you can start with... [https://www.invisionapp.com/](https://www.invisionapp.com/) ~~~ anandsatyan Invisionapp is great for high fidelity designs. But I think the question is more about generating copy paste frontend codes for native mobile.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
iTunes Store Japan labels all purchases as Title “” by Artist “null” - kalleboo https://twitter.com/search?q=itunes%20null&src=typd ====== kalleboo Anyone who let through a massive Unicode bug into production, you can feel _slightly_ better now that the world's biggest music retailer broke sales in their second biggest market...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Generation Y Internet users aspire to become rich and famous rather than work for their country - tim http://www.hero.ac.uk/media_relations/18020.cfm ====== shogunmike It's a shame that so many people will not attempt to follow on with their "dream job" goals. At my UK University there is a strong culture of getting a good degree in a quantitative field, perhaps doing a PhD in a similar (but still quantitative) field and then being plucked out by a large investment bank to work as a "quantitative analyst". The salary is good, but I'm sure the work becomes tedious after a while. The process is almost as precise as an automobile assembly line! I wish the culture of entrepreneurialism was stronger than the desire to go and price financial derivatives. After all, two/three hundred years ago nearly everybody was an entrepreneur (farmers). How things have changed... ------ pg False premise. Do Larry & Sergey do less for the world than politicians? Does the median politician even have a net positive effect? ~~~ brlewis To answer your first question, absolutely yes. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Computing_and_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Computing_and_Communication_Act_of_1991) I don't know the answer to your second question, nor could I answer it for the median of whatever group Larry & Sergey represent. ~~~ pg <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War> ~~~ brlewis I see the current Iraq war as evidence that more talent and smarts should be applied to politics. On the other hand, the comparison isn't so useful. How many young people are choosing between politics and hacking? The two skill sets overlap only slightly. ------ byrneseyeview This is pretty hilarious. Is "campaigning for green issues" going to do more for green issues than starting a startup like Craigslist that saves the world more wasted newsprint than all those activists put together? ~~~ brlewis It might, depending on the talent of the person running the campaign. My talents aren't suited to being effective politically, but I wish more people who did have such talents would use them to change things. Many of the world's biggest and most important problems are political, not technological.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sharing Is (Still) Hard - ivankirigin http://blog.kirigin.com/sharing-is-still-hard ====== apaprocki I understand your specific pain ;) I suppose a quick "hack" would be to allow creating "managed" accounts where you can easily have management access over a sub-section of family/friend accounts without knowing their password, etc. That doesn't solve the underlying problem, though. Maybe there is room for a single-click-install desktop software app that simply takes the name/email of the destination contact for the arbitrary content and then crawls provider APIs to quickly determine how best to get the content to that person and orchestrates it using the APIs so that the end-user doesn't need to learn configuration screens and confusing (to them) UX. ------ bpeebles What's wrong with uploading 200 photos to Flickr? Sharing 1.8GB of photos more than once on Dropbox (who deletes things like this?) means you need a paid Dropbox account. So even if this was in the Past when Flickr didn't have an "unlimited" free account, you'd still need to pay for something. The only way I've found Flickr isn't good at sharing a large number of photos if you want/expect some people to have high res versions of all or a large percentage of those photos on their computer so they could print them offline or something. Still an unsolved problem there, but if all you were going to do was "host them on a hostname", I'm not how Flickr _doesn 't_ address the need very well. ~~~ ivankirigin I think Flickr recently removed limits, making it the best option. I doubt he has the desktop uploader though, so the upload experience is much worse than Dropbox. ------ kyro I bet he wouldn't have had any problems emailing that folder to you. I know when I need to send a few documents or photos, I without even thinking try to do it via email, only to be met with messages of exceeding size limits. Is there a service that ties both the action of emailing with the process of syncing via dropbox? If not, I could see it being incredibly useful for people like your dad, and mine. An app whereby you go through all the same motions of creating a new email, attaching a few documents/folders, and in the background those attachments are being synced to some dropbox folder. Of course, email services could expand their size limits, but I'm sure there's a reason why they're not. ~~~ ivankirigin Yep, it's too big to email. Dropbox integrates with a few mail clients actually. ~~~ Gravityloss Email is actually a great and natural way to share things. It's often easier to mail documents and comments to a content management/ticket system than actually go there, log in, press "create new" etc. If the email protocols could be extended for efficient file transfer and cloud hosting somehow, a lot of people's lifes would suddenly get a lot easier. ~~~ __--__ What about a desktop app that activated whenever you drag a photo into an email? Instead of attaching itself to the email, it uploads the photo to imgur and externally links to the image in the email instead? ------ GBKS I agree that Dropbox is not very good at sharing photos. The solution really has to start much earlier in the tool chain, ideally with the camera itself, or the tool that downloads them. Smart phones are great with this, since you see share options right after snapping a photo. iPhoto also has fairly decent sharing options (resizes images, creates web albums, etc). But once you're outside of the realm of camera and photo apps and working with general purpose tools like Dropbox, it gets a lot more difficult. ~~~ ivankirigin I have an eye-fi that directly uploads to Flickr with settings set to private. It's right in the SD card! [http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Fi-Class-Wireless- Memory-EYE-FI-8P...](http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Fi-Class-Wireless-Memory-EYE- FI-8PC/dp/B002UT42UI) This is the equivalent of the mobile app experience with Dropbox. Curating and sending photos around is still hard. ------ kumarski I've worked with users that are anywhere from 15 to 85. You've hit on a lot of key issues. Sometimes they ask questions like "What's a browser?" and then you have to remind yourself that the average middle America user is so far from the demands of a silicon valley user. Disclaimer: We make a solution in this space. [http://eversnapapp.com](http://eversnapapp.com) I'm curious to get your thoughts on it. Well written piece. ------ informatimago What is wrong with FTP? Or scp if you prefer? scp -r pictures dad@my.son.computer.org:~/pictures Oh right: this would go directly from your dad's computer to hour own computer, encrypted, without passing by the NSA case and without your dad's pictures scanned for terrorism. ------ cpach I came to this conclusion as well when my Dad was looking for a way to share travel photos. Another issue: I imagine it would take a lot of time for the Dropbox client to sync 1.6GB of data, even for people with fast Internet connections. ------ ivankirigin true fact: I didn't share the images in this blog post correctly the first time. I used the Dropbox links from the shared folder view, not the shared link view. It's obvious what I put it that way, right?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
NoMansSky: Update 1.3, Atlas Rises - based2 http://www.nomanssky.com/atlas-rises-update/ ====== Jare After being massively in love with the original game (first Steam game I get 100% achievements), I just started a new save. So far it feels mostly the same amazing and self-guided experience, just a bit deeper, so I'm not people who hated it at launch will change their minds now. I hope the current coop "lite" gives way to true synchronous coop. If that happens, I think I might never play another game, ever. ;) ------ inopinatus The game is very substantially changed since release. Indeed each revision of the last few months has invalidated more of the information you'll find in online game guides from commercial sources, and with this update I'd say most of them are either entirely irrelevant or downright misleading. No Man's Sky is now in a sort of no-man's-land between "interesting tech demo" and "full blown video game". This new update has many new features but also myriad new bugs. It's clearly still a work in progress. What's interesting, and unusual, is that developer has continued to work, as though the first release was really more the start of an "early access" series. Hard to believe they've made significant money from the drip of sales since. ~~~ aguilarm It appears that they used the massive influx of capital they got from the hype pre-launch to continue building their vision that was entirely too big to deliver in any timely manner. They might be able to turn this around riding that into something that generates enough interest to continue to make plenty. Putting it on sale on steam has it back at the top, which is actually kind of incredible considering the launch outrage. The hype wasn't for nothing, people are craving the kind of game that was described before this launched. This is potentially Minecraft all over again. ------ azm1 After the massive faux-pas with release I see huge potential in this game although I never played it.. ------ tiglionabbit > Glitches allow travelers to explore the universe together So it's actually going to have multiplayer? Actually what does this even mean? ~~~ maplechori from the patch notes it says they are the first steps to accomplish that. ~~~ Pica_soO I so do not envy the engineer who is pressured into hooking what is essentially two procedural generators, with the possibility for a alteration overlay together. If one mad guy alters a whole solar system into planet lava smileys..., how do you pack and transfer that information history on top of that, in real time... ~~~ cgb223 Why not just have one procedural generator for both players and send changes to and from a server where they both pull from? ~~~ Pica_soO The story goes something like this- they in fact have the same procedural generator. Both work upon the same key- thus mountains and everything is in the same place, provided they use the same hardware or the code is protected against floating point deviations. The problem is- where do you begin and end with that? If a player can modify a world, basically, every change has to be distributed.. you have a sort of highres minecraft on your hands. Without originally being intended to be this. How do you sync it, if multiple players join and merge a universe? ~~~ je_bailey I would have thought something along the lines of an acyclic graph ala git. ------ digitalsin I only started playing it last night for the first time. Really awesome game and I'm having a blast. ------ Cozumel The portal system looks an awful lot like Stargates. I traded in my copy though, I don't know if it's worth getting again for this? ~~~ based2 They need an Obelisk Gate. ------ nfriedly This might be a weird question, but does anyone know if the GOG version of the game has proper Steam Controller support yet? ~~~ oelmekki I play the GOG version with steam controller, but I'm a bit of an edge case. I play on linux, installed the GOG version through PlayOnLinux (thus playing it through wine), and I made a launcher in steam so that I can use the steam controller with it (anything you create a launcher for, even an emulator or nethack, gets steam controller support for free). Even if you're not on linux, you can do the same : just create a launcher ("add non steam game") to launch the GOG game. Even then, though, it does not qualify as "proper support" if this means "native support". It's just like using steam controller for any game that has no controller support : you configure it to emulate keyboard and mouse (but it's still a good experience for NMS, once done). ~~~ nfriedly Yea, I know you can configure it, but by "proper", I mean that it is automatically configured, and that the buttons can automatically change their action depending on the context. I believe it works this way in the Steam version of the game, but when I tried a few months back, it didn't work that way in the GOG version. ------ maplechori 60% off ~~~ nfriedly For reference, the sale is not on the "official" buy now link - its at GOG & Steam, making the game $23.99: [https://www.gog.com/game/no_mans_sky](https://www.gog.com/game/no_mans_sky) [http://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/) ~~~ cwyers It's also on sale for the PS4: [https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-us/games/no- man's-sky/ci...](https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-us/games/no- man's-sky/cid=UP2034-CUSA04841_00-NMSDIGITAL000001) ------ cwyers Wait, how did this threat get flagged? ~~~ sctb I'm not sure why users flagged this, but we've turned them off for now.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Slingring – Chroot-based development containers powered by Ansible - vlowrian https://github.com/vlow/slingring ====== tyingq Curious why schroot instead of something like "systemd-nspawn -D /the/chroot/dir". Might offer a little more flexibility in configuration. I guess, though, schroot allows for full non-root use, perhaps that's the big driver. ~~~ vlowrian There are two main drivers for this decision: first, as you already mentioned, systemd-nspawn requires root privileges when creating a container instance. With schroot this is something I don't really have to care about. The other important reason is that I try to keep the slingring codebase as small as possible. At the moment, I maintain this project alone and I want to keep it manageable in the long term. I actually started Slingring using nspawn containers, but I found that handling things like providing the user/group nss databases inside the container had to be done by myself, while schroot includes that functionality. On the other hand, I simply do not need the greater flexibility that is provided by nspawn-containers at the moment. This could change in the future. Therefore, the coupling with schroot inside slingring is kept to a minimum and I might switch to nspawn whenever it might suite my requirements better. ------ vlowrian Hi everyone, I am the author of Slingring. It is in a very early stage and I am interested in your opinion on the basic concept as well as my approach. Please ask anything you want to know :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Did Team Oprah Rig a Contest Against Zach Anner? We Investigate (thoroughly) - interesse http://www.geekosystem.com/zach-anner-rigged-votes-oprah/ ====== camworld About 10 years ago I was approached by Oprah's producers to be on her show. I showed no interest but they were very persistent. They called me every day and tried to get me to change my mind, but I told them "No" every time. They eventually called my boss (!) and tried to get him to convince me to be on her show. Luckily, he was aware that they were harassing me and took my side and basically told them to leave me alone. I respect Oprah for what she has accomplished but I detest how her producers deal with "recruiting" the people who go on her show to tell their stories. All they care about is being sensationalistic so they can hook their audience. They don't give a flying fuck about the people who go on the show or how going on the show affects them afterwards. So, when I question whether Oprah's people are rigging the vote? Well, my mind is made up. It's pretty obvious to me. But don't be surprised if Oprah "reaches out" to Zach and has him on her show but doesn't choose him to have his own show. ~~~ anemecek You tell us this story without saying why they invited you :-)? ~~~ mahmud He was the victim of an online scam. <http://www.camworld.org/archives/001376.html> ~~~ camworld No, that was not it. <http://camworld.org/screwed/> <http://camworld.org/screwed/oprah> ------ ismarc I'm not sure who the "investigators" are over at geekosystem, but while they present a lot of data, they fell over when it came to analysis of the situation (as did numerous others). Scenario: For a time period, contestant B received votes at a rate of roughly 3 votes for every 2 that contestant A received. Contestant B had a different value for an unknown field that was combined as part of the cookie used in voting/vote confirmation. The extra value on contestant B's call is meaningless if they're estimating that the vote rate was determined by contestant A's votes. Based on the data reported of the two time periods: Shawn saw a 100% increase in votes/minute David saw a 66% increase in votes/minute Cheryl saw a 175% increase in votes/minute Maria saw a 28% increase in votes/minute Jasbina saw a 100% increase in votes/minute Jacqueline saw a 13% increase in votes/minute Kornelius saw a 10% increase in votes/minute Zach and Phyllis saw a decrease in votes/minute Total rate of increase in voting (excluding Zach and Phyllis) was 31% increase in voting rate for the non-top 2 positions. If we include Zach and Phyllis, there was a drop in voting rate to almost 50% of the previous number of votes per minute. Determination: eid probably played a large role in the cause of what appeared to be tampering of voting. There's no correlation between votes of any candidate and any other candidate. The most likely cause? The reported vote counts are not 100% live. The votes are processed on a server and displayed via a cache. Most likely EID is a way to force vote counting onto a specific system, which caused a backup of cast but un-counted votes for Phyllis. While the backup was being cleared, the rate of voting appeared distinctly high. Once the cause of the backup was identified and resolved, the backup was quickly cleared out and the rate of votes appearing took a sharp drop as there was no backlog for that candidate and the others still had backlogs to process. ------ bryanh I think this is extremely interesting; not because of the supposed "rigging" but because of the uproar and sleuthing of the community as a result of perceived misdoings. I mean, just think that this random guy Zach Anner has all these people behind him because of one video. And then something fishy starts happening and they all flock to it. What are they more interested in? Catching "Oprah" in the act of allowing someone to effectively cheat or do they genuinely want this guy to win? ~~~ earl They're btards; of course it's for lulz. But I think they genuinely want Zack to win, just to see what happens :shrug:. They started voting for Zack last week, so well before any cheating. ~~~ trafficlight It's not just 4chan, either. Reddit is up in arms over this whole thing, but I'm not really sure why. ~~~ ZachPruckowski Reddit tends to act as a filter through which the useful[1] outputs of 4chan reach the rest of the Internet. [1] - where "useful" here means "non-pornographic" and "not illegal" more than "provides real value" ------ BoppreH It reminds me of the Times poll where moot won. And guys, please don't feel bad if Zach loses for some absurdity. Remember that this contest is being rigged on 4chan's side too. There are tons of people using macros and I've even seen messages like "now that Zach is winning, let's DDoS the site." Not that I don't find that fun, but don't hold your breath. ~~~ mahmud Zach Anner Z4ch Anner Z 4 Channer Yep :-) ------ aresant Despite having the word "Oprah" in the title this is one of the best "hacker" stories I've seen here in a while. Particuarly how the votes "slowed down" at the removal of the suspect code, amazingly good reverse-engineering on their end. ~~~ jgrahamc Seriously? You thought that was good analysis? "That extra number was labeled in the add_vote function as “eid,” which frequently stands for “employee ID” and could in theory allow for behind-the- scenes vote manipulation by an OWN employee." Sounds like speculation and rubbish to me. If they'd read the code they could have followed through and found out what the eid was. "but it largely corroborates with our own independently collected data. It shows that, mathematically, it would fit nearly perfectly with for that mysterious coding to have given Phyllis two free votes every time Zach received a vote, in addition to the votes Phyllis otherwise received. But while the math seems to work well for most of his time window, there is no way to confirm this algorithm was actually implemented, especially now that the coding for the button has been reverted to its original form." Yeah, except that say Oprah's people wanted to do that, they could just do it on the back end without changing the add_vote functionality to send through the mysterious eid. The only interesting thing is the spreadsheet screen shot, but I'd like to see the source of that to understand what's going in more fully. "Yes, it turns out that in theory, coming in first or second doesn’t actually matter at all in terms of whether Zach would eventually get his own show or not. But in practice, there would be a much bigger backlash if Oprah anointed someone other than Zach to be the winner of the contest if he was in first place than if he was in second or lower, whether that person was Dr. Phyllis or anyone else." And now we'll make up a tenuous reason why she needed to be in first place. But the most bogus thing: the claim is that by changing the JavaScript that's executed when someone votes for Dr Phyllis that causes a vote for the other guy to create extra votes for Dr Phyllis. Huh? How does that work? Surely you'd change the other guy's voting JavaScript? ~~~ jim_dot I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the EID has nothing to do with anything and it was a coincidence that the javascript changed when the vote cheating work on the backend was changed. ~~~ ars Especially because adding an "eid" has to be the stupidest way of manipulating a vote ever. Don't the votes get sent up with an ID? Why could you possibly need an extra field? Just program the server to do "stuff" to the ID you care about. And did anyone try send up votes with varying EID fields for other candidates? ------ Revisor I don't find this submission HN worthy.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Becoming a better developer (2014) - ooooak https://gist.github.com/prakhar1989/1b0a2c9849b2e1e912fb ====== scarecrowbob "Musicians get better by practice and tackling harder and harder pieces, not by switching instruments or genres, nor by learning more and varied easy pieces. Ditto almost every other specialty inhabited by experts or masters." At some level maybe. But for most folks I know, there is a plateau that you get to when you only play a single instrument in a single situation. It is true that if you're intermediate at something, just practicing more will get you further. But learning piano (and the instrument's linear layout presenting a more visual set of tonal relationships) helped my pedal steel playing immensely. Learning cello (and the instrument's focus on pitch forced the lack of frets, compared to guitar) immensely helped my harmony singing. Playing in blues bands that call tunes I've never heard on the fly (which necessitated listening intently to the form and hoping to intuit changes before hearing them) helped my musicianship in more scripted forms because I had to both listen much nore closely to the other players and to develop my music theory chops so I could anticipate changes and develop language to describe common musical passages I needed to play on-the-fly. I feel like knowing several programming languages and frameworks yields similar kinds of reactive benefits. ~~~ LeonB “Range” by David Epstein goes into this at length. Studies about “mastery” that indicate you should stick to a single instrument tend to be about classical music where you’re playing (generously: ‘interpreting’) existing pieces, which is very easy to assess. But qualitative research on successful creative musicians from a far broader range of genres demonstrates exactly what you’re saying: a range of experience in different instruments and genres is highly beneficial. ------ azangru Interestingly, the gist that this one is forked from has a more complete version of the text: Imagine your proposal recast: * Writing Achievements Learn a variety of languages Learn Chinese Learn French ... Experience the ins and outs of various platforms Write a book review Write a product catalog Write a comedic screenplay ... Enhance your understanding of the building blocks that we use as writers Write in the first, third person Write poetry ... Write in the open Blog Tweet Publish essays ... ** Teach Conduct a writing workshop Tutor students in writing ... These analogies have been lost from the fork. ------ commandlinefan > Sorry, I have to disagree with the entire premise here. Is this in response to something? He seems to be replying to somebody, but if what he's replying to is included, I can't find it. ~~~ ceronman This is what he's replying to: [http://jasonrudolph.com/blog/2011/08/09/programming- achievem...](http://jasonrudolph.com/blog/2011/08/09/programming-achievements- how-to-level-up-as-a-developer/#comment-287120251) ~~~ angarg12 Thanks a lot, the point is lost a bit if you don't have the entire conversation.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
With Yelp Knockoff, Groupon’s Still Searching for Magic Bullet - orin_hanner http://recode.net/2014/10/22/with-yelp-knockoff-groupons-still-searching-for-magic-bullet/ ====== rjf1331 So more small businesses can be coerced into selling their products at 25% of retail value in the name of "getting their name out there". Plus more clutter in organic search results along with yelp, yellowpages, and thumbtack.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Worn Out EMMC Chips Are Crippling Older Teslas - slowhand09 https://hackaday.com/2019/10/17/worn-out-emmc-chips-are-crippling-older-teslas/ ====== jacquesm That's clearly a manufacturing defect, warranty expired or not. You should be able to expect a car to function for many years beyond the warranty, to have a time-bomb like this on board is reason for a manufacturers recall and free fix, no way that owners of the cars should foot the bill for this.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple, Samsung Agree to End Patent Suits Outside U.S - dannynemer http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-05/apple-samsung-agree-to-end-patent-suits-outside-u-s-.html ====== Zikes Because as their rampant patent trolling gets called out and smacked down in more sane courts, the US will become the lone lunatic and double down on patent reforms so as not to look like the village idiot. Of course we'll still look like the village idiot, but Apple and Samsung will at least deny the rest of the world the opportunity to prove they can do better. ------ AlyssaRowan Good. Unfortunately, other phone manufacturers aren't in this pool. I'm not sure if you include Microsoft in that assessment, but they're certainly a big patent risk now that they did the Nokia & Nortel things, and they know it. ------ shmerl Why not in US? ~~~ thecopy Probably because settelments are high and patents are more serious in the US. ------ curiousAl So now it's down to a game of slapsies, but with borders.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is there a website, which analyzes UX of Products? - noobplusplus I came through this awesome site useronboard.com which does a teardown of how different services onboarded different users.<p>Is there a similar site, which does a teardown of features of webapps or SaaS Apps? ====== ASquare There's one that does it for iOS apps: [http://uxarchive.com/](http://uxarchive.com/) ------ sogen iOS dev weekly recently had two sites linked. Sorry can't remember the URLs right now, I'll try to search for them	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Real-world experience importing from China? - mistermann Is anyone familiar with the site alibaba.com? "Global Trade starts here" they say. As far as I know, alibaba is basically a hub for overseas manufacturers to contact overseas buyers....you buy products in minimum lots of 100, etc.<p>It seems logical to have one central source for overseas manufacturers to market their products to buyers, but to someone in the real know, are sites like alibaba just for suckers? Are you way overpaying for products vs dealing more directly with someone closer to the manufacturer?<p>Anyoine have any experience in this sort of thing? ====== mahmud I poured my heart out for "you" a few days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=762531> Alibaba is a hub, but it's a very Chinese company; I was there in Hong Kong during their IPO and I can assure you, HK and all of China was abuzz. Nearly every Chinese factory has an account with them. You should be safe dealing with .cn firm through Alibaba, specially if they have verified accounts. You can use that post of mine to look for scam clues, but generally, your order will arrive, albeit a little bit overpriced. If you want fair market you should be at the market, in person, taking long rides to dusty villages like the rest of us ;-) The price hikes are usually done by resellers, middle-men and brokers. Not all "Chinese" are Chinese; there are plenty of Overseas Chinese (Honkies, Malaysians, Taiwanese, Singaporeans, Vietnamese, even Filipino Chinese, who do business in the mainland and act as brokers to foreign companies.) Indians are pretty safe too. The guidelines for doing business with Indians is different than doing with Chinese, but not by much. Indians are usually less polished in appearance; the Chinese spend a lot of money on image, so they have bigger office buildings, fancier sales brochures and the like. In my experience, specially in generic drugs and pharmaceuticals, the most efficient Indian "companies" have been a few guys, usually cousins, usually Punjabis, who did business outside a shared office in Hong Kong or Dubai but they did a great job delivering the goods as promised. Indians also have trained practitioners as salesmen; my pharmaceuticals sales guy was an oncologist (In China he would have been an English major, for example.) Usually the best way to conduct an important business is to fly there. Even if you budget is $10k; I would say spend half of that on travel expenses and your eyes will be opened to the many possibilities out there. I also dabbled in scrap metal and used cars; those two are the FOREX of the import/export world, rife with scammers and sometimes violent criminals. Avoid any business that offers you "government connections"; this is where you will likely be robbed. If a partner hints at having government links and tells you he has the ability to avoid customs or shipping expenses, this is their way of appealing to your greed. There are plenty of Westerners who are dying to be friends with a rich 3rd world dictator, it's like an undocumented fetish. Play ball, and play by the rules. More than Alibaba, I would be weary of any firm that has the label "drop- shipper" anywhere on its site. Big manufacturers don't sell to EBay kiddies; that's just weak and disgusting. ~~~ mistermann Wow, thanks for some of the awesome tips! re: "If you want fair market you should be at the market, in person, taking long rides to dusty villages like the rest of us".....do you think it would be difficult to find someone local in China I could work with, to visit factories, inspect products, take photos, etc? ~~~ mahmud Depends on who you know, actually. Most business expats are doing this exact same thing for their paying employers. If you want a freelancer, it depends on what business you're in; if you are interested in electronics stuff made in Guangdong province, I don't mind going through my rolodex and introducing you to my friends. Shoot me a mail. The reason I specified the product industry and manufacturing region is that it's not just a matter of calling up factories and looking at their samples. It takes a lot of effort to create a _relationship_ with the Chinese. If anybody tells you they can "get anything from China" they're blowing smoke; they can't, at least not efficiently and cheaply. Everyone is in an specialized industry, and whoever has a lead outside his expertise passes it on to someone in _that_ industry. China is all favors, face, _guanxi_ , and connections. The concept of "face" is a lot like consumer rewards and frequent flier mileage; the more you buy from a factory the more perks you get and the more face you have with the management. At the high end, people with good contacts can get millions of dollars worth of products up front :-) reputation is currency. People who hop-industries, the jacks of all trades, don't get any deals and nobody knows them. (or worse, people _do_ know them and they have a negative reputation.) ------ rms My only experience on Alibaba involved someone sending me a free sample of a fake product. Whatever you do, get references and make sure you trust them before you wire the money. As far as a general answer to your question -- it depends, but Ali Baba is certainly not only for suckers. It's too big to be worthless. ~~~ mahmud I don't think it was a fake _product_ , but most likely a fake _brand_. You should only be buying original brands from their manufacturers, or generic commodity items. For example, you can get great prices on LCD screens on Alibaba, but you will get a fake Samsung LCD screen, unless you were buying from Samsung or a reseller. People who get fake stuff from Alibaba willingly do so. Counterfeit is a huge business, and every minute a moron gets ripped off on EBay, so he decides to rip off others by importing counterfeit products with the intention to resell them. What he doesn't know is that he will be ripped off again, this time wholesale. It's for this reason that generic, white-label products are hard to come by in certain markets; it might even be cheaper, sometimes, to buy new cases for knockoff products and rebrand them yourself as Acme. ~~~ rms In my case it really was a fake product but I wasn't buying electronic components. ~~~ mahmud :-( Yesterday my girlfriend bought me a electronic shaving kit from a reputable chain store and I remembered seeing that same product in China for $10; I was asked to export it. I have even seen Australian mobile phone company booths selling knockoff phones without realizing it. ------ jacquesm I once signed up with alibaba.com to get some leads on sourcing LCDs, since then they've been spamming me 3x daily about LCDs, so they're certainly efficient. I wished I could get off their list somehow :) Other than that no experience with them. ~~~ mahmud _Sigh_ It's not Alibaba that's spamming you, it's the vendors themselves. If you're in the U.S. take a trip to any commerce fair for your industry. Before I got into electronics I was doing lighting and green building products; I called one of the Chinese companies attending the New York Lighting Fair and told them I wanted to come to their booth. Next day I drove to Manhattan, walked to the reception area and told the lady there I was a limousine driver here to take my Chinese company out for lunch. She printed a $100 badge out for me for free and I went to Eddy, my friend, we shook hands talked for hours and he invited me to his factory and his home in Shanghai. I did the same thing several times in different trade fairs and by the time I went to China I had organized orders from Arab and American companies for their products and we're good friends and brothers to this day. For Chinese companies, it's best to call your sales person up and become friends. But don't sit on your ass and chit chat all day long, they want salespeople, get up and make calls on their behalf. I paid good money getting their product photos edited and printed on glossy materials. If you can organize enough buyers, the Chinese will let you tack your profit ON TOP of the cost of the products. Or you can get your clients to by X units and your factory will sell you X+N units, where N is your own free inventory to do with as you wish. ~~~ jacquesm A sample from this mornings batch: From: Alibaba Trade Alert <tradealert@service.alibaba.com> Three exactly identical messages. To three totally different names... ~~~ rms You know you can probably disable that by clicking the link at the botton of the email and then clicking a radio button. (I never do it myself either) ~~~ jacquesm I tried unsubscribing from their 'gifts' in several ways, so far without success. ~~~ mahmud I auto-archive all sales mailing like that to separate folders. You never know when you will need to search for patterns in their communication. Do the same with your competition as well, but read it more actively. Thanks to this unhealthy hoarding habit, I can produce product samples and quotes to buyers for stuff I don't even have. I have seen some sites also publish their user growth in newsletters as well; it allows me to study their growth patterns. Ditto with sales mail that's CC'ed to me. Instant mailing list of potential buyers, for free.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Confirmed: Amazon RDS Mysql is not vulnerable to the Password Exploit - mark_ellul https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=353148 ====== mark_ellul Sorry my last post had a funky char after the URL	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Take a screenshot every minute and see how you're spending your day - knes https://github.com/tjluoma/screenshot-journal ====== Semiapies This is just like some spyware my employer used to put on everyone's computers, years back. Weirdly, this was not a feature they seemed to be aware of - everyone was taken by surprise when some nearly-full hard drives started filling up, and when I asked if I could clear off these images from my computer, the answer was, "What images? ...Huh. Yeah, go ahead." I actually created an HTML front end to conveniently flip through the pics for just this purpose.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Whatsapp changed their emoji styles: added gloss - abhas9 http://imgur.com/gallery/WvvLC ====== clydethefrog Can you check if they also edited the gun emoji? I wish Unicode enforced their rules better, nowadays Apple decides how emoji look. Edit: They did. ------ flukus As a mere programmer, they look identical to me.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Spotify’s Love/Hate Relationship with DNS - yarapavan https://labs.spotify.com/2017/03/31/spotifys-lovehate-relationship-with-dns/ ====== jlgaddis What Spotify calls a "stealth primary" has typically been referred to as a "hidden master" for 15 years or so. Googling that term will turn up more relevant results, for anyone looking to do something similar. ~~~ inopinatus To be clear, a strict implementation of your DNS means that this host appears in the MNAME field of your SOA record. Not so stealthy or hidden, despite the moniker. You might ask "who on earth looks at the MNAME field of SOA records", I answer "well I do". However there is no requirement that the MNAME host be willing to answer queries. There _is_ an expectation that the host in the MNAME field accepts dynamic DNS updates, if one is using RFC2136-style dynamic DNS, although I didn't get the sense Spotify were doing so. ------ guitarbill > We run our own DNS infrastructure on-premise which might seem a bit unusual > lately. I don't think running your own DNS is too uncommon, especially if you have a lot of on-premise hardware that changes somewhat frequently. However, if you do this don't run BIND. We found PowerDNS to be much better in terms of features, user-friendliness, and documentation. Having backends that aren't zonefiles is a huge win. I've heard good things about Unbind, but haven't used it in a big environment yet (>1000 machines). ~~~ jlgaddis I'm a "BIND lover" and have been since the 90s and still use it for public- facing authoritative name servers. In their case, though, it definitely sounds like they should consider PowerDNS. It allows for various backends, including SQL and custom ones, which might fit in well with the "data store" they mentioned. Instead of all the cronjobs and pushing and pulling, they might be able to point the authoritative nameservers directly at their "data store" and cut out a lot of that "plumbing" (it's impossible to know without more details, of course). Also, unless there's a huge amount of DNS data changing every 15 mins, they might gain some speed-ups from sending dynamic DNS updates to the authoritative nameservers and/or using IXFRs instead of AXFRs. (n.b.: unbound only handles recursive DNS, not authoritative.) ~~~ guitarbill > (n.b.: unbound only handles recursive DNS, not authoritative.) Yeah, but as you probably also know the PowerDNS recurser is separate, so there's no reason PowerDNS + Unbound couldn't also be a great combination. Heck, I might even choose that combo so resolvers only have unbound installed and can never act as authoritative servers. ------ sigil > _It simply pulls from our DNS data repository, then compiles all the zone > data via named. With every compile time – which takes about 4 minutes..._ 4 minutes seems like an awful long time for what I'm assuming is a fairly simple transformation. Any insight as to why? Is named just slow? ~~~ inopinatus It's not intrinsically slow, no. I've built & run BIND-based infrastructure spanning >20 sites, >50 servers and >10,000 zones, and changes were compiled and propagated in seconds. Only a total rebuild & recompile & reload of all zones & services required time on the order of minutes. ------ adrianratnapala I got side-tracked by the talk of version control. Do they use a single repo for everything? It seems like it from they way they talk. In that case, I am surprised git is a good fit. SVN might have been better, though some commercial solutions like ClearCase or Perforce would actually be right for that sort of work-load. ~~~ raverbashing I assume you never used CC but it's a gigantic pile of crap. It is completely worthless. Sold on golf courses to clueless higher ups, because most developers hate it But in general I've never seen any commercial source control system beat an open source I've. ~~~ daxelrod Perforce is mostly a better Subversion. The two have an extremely similar model, but Perforce handles merges much better and gives more flexibility in slicing and dicing your local view of the repo (extremely useful for huge monorepos). Disclaimer: it's been several years since I've used Subversion, this may have changed. ------ vinay_ys DNS for service discovery is very old school stuff that has been known to be unreliable and requires unnecessary amount of work. You are better off using an actual dedicated http based service for doing service discovery. Keeping things largely TCP/HTTP based makes everyone's life simpler. ------ peterwwillis They didn't even look at their firewall tables before deploying a completely different OS to production? Wow. ~~~ nailer This: > Upon the migration of the final nameserver – you guessed it – DNS died > everywhere. The culprit turned out to be a difference in firewall > configuration between the two OSes: the default generated ruleset on Trusty > did not allow for port 53 on the public interface. Deploy a new service on a Linux box in the last decade? Poke it through whatever the distro uses to manage iptables. It's like a webdev saying "it turns out DROP deletes tables". ------ alex_duf So DNS as way to orchestrate sharding? is this common, or am I right to find that odd? ~~~ daenney What makes you think this is about sharding? ~~~ ec109685 The article talks about their use of dns service records to encode shard locations. I know other companies that do similar things. DNS has to be up, so rather than adding another dependency, encoding it into that infrastructure is a valid approach. ------ blorgle Spotify should consider implementing Consul :P ------ Something1234 What's with the weird font rendering? It looks blurry. ~~~ Twirrim Comparing Firefox with Chrome, it kind of seems like it is doing more anti- aliasing on Firefox. If I split the two windows side by side, the difference is marginal. If I do them fully maximised, the difference is more pronounced (at least on Windows) edit: downvotes? really? Do I need to post screenshots or something? ~~~ kuschku They also set the font-weight on every single line of text, separately, via html style attribute. To 400 (normal is 300). That’s very weird. ~~~ notyourwork > That’s very weird. They are probably using a WYSIWYG editor that auto generates so when you press return it creates a new paragraph. I agree the output is weird but I could see how this would happen. ------ leesalminen Maybe instead of worrying about internally built DNS servers they could allow me to undo an artist ban from a daily mix. Seriously frustrating. ~~~ daenney Maybe their engineering blog is about engineering things and customer support should go through [https://twitter.com/spotifycares](https://twitter.com/spotifycares) and [https://support.spotify.com](https://support.spotify.com) instead of an HN thread.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Deep Learning might not be a silver bullet - cjauvin http://lemire.me/blog/2017/01/27/deep-learning-the-silver-bullet/ ====== webmaven _> everything evolves by a process akin to natural selection. Nature acquires an ever growing bag of tricks that are being constantly refined. In effect, there is an overarching process of trial and error. This is truly general, but with a major trade-off: it is expensive. Our biology evolved but it took all of the Earth ecosystem millions of years to produce homo sapiens. Our technology evolves, but it takes all of the power of human civilization to keep it going._ This is glossing over the robust modular meta-systems that life and technology have both developed to preferentially express a broad range of potentially useful variations. This makes evolution of life and tech ever more efficient over time, as it becomes much less likely that any particular random change will produce a non- viable result. You might say that the mechanisms of evolution have themselves evolved to become less expensive. This isn't about anything as straightforward as error-correction, but really about increasing the systems' generativity. Example: a mutation may result in longer legs. This does _not_ require separate mutations for each affected limb, nor does it require separate matching mutations to adjust the musculature, ligaments, circulatory system, skin, nerves, etc. in tandem, because all of those systems are adaptive within the context of the individual organism.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Web Based Chat – Anonymous / Historyless / Loginless / $Topic-Ed - rahul_vagadiya http://holaa.io/ ====== fs2 Looks cool and it works pretty well so far. But why no https? ------ rahul_vagadiya Any feedback is welcome guys :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Spy with Openvpn - mr-cribo hi guys I wanna know that is it possible to spy with openvpn in the arch linux ?? I got a openvpn file from my pal and it was related to a project , but I don't have trust to it . based on your opinion Do think is it possible ? I mean is that buy a dns server and monitoring the site traffic . I apologize because of my terrible English. ====== ktpsns Your ideas sound crowds and nonworking. What about investing your interest on technology for something good. What about learning the basics of Linux and Networking? Installing Arch Linux is a good exercise. Setting up an OpenVPN server, too. I bet your friend has experience and is willing to support you. One day, this move could bring you a good education and income. ~~~ mr-cribo Thank you because of your respond . to tell the truth I was started learning Arch Linux one year ago and now I know a lot of stuff about Linux, specially Arch . but I apologize , I don't understand your mean from this sentence : " What about investing your interest on technology for something good. What about learning the basics of Linux and Networking? Installing Arch Linux is a good exercise . " ?? Yeah , My pal is one of the best programmer that ever I have seen before he's so professional . ~~~ ktpsns Perfect, so you should learn about OpenVPN. Forget about IPv6 in the moment, learn about classical TCP/IP, routing, CIDR. Spend 10€/m for a VPS, it is a great investment for learning.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Introducing Facebook Shops - davidbarker https://about.fb.com/news/2020/05/introducing-facebook-shops/ ====== saadalem Small businesses operated either individually or by less than 10 people. A bunch of customers buy products/services from these businesses. So they need a better way to: Engage with their customers Sell and manage product/service deliveries Target specific customer audience Show products/services availability Whatsapp could be the right solution not facebook apps. Also a combination of Yelp and Facebook/Whatsapp could lead replacing small business websites(I'm not telling that no smb website should exist) that going to make a fortune. The platform needs to accomplish these three things : The ability to list core info like contact details, hours of operation, and service offerings in a minimalist fashion. The ability to solicit feedback (not ratings) from customers in a low- friction, high-upside way. An ad system that let's a 60 year-old luddite set up a campaign in less than 3 minutes without having to call anyone. There's a lot to tell but I'll leave you with these thoughts. ~~~ phreack I have always thought about what it would take for Whatsapp to lose their place as the dominant chat app and you finally nailed it. If I ever start getting ads or requests for reviews or anything remotely related to someone selling something to me, as a personal message because of automated Facebook tools, I'd get myself and everyone I know off the platform in a matter of seconds. On the other hand, for information requests they already have Whatsapp for businesses and it works fine, several luddites I know use it. ~~~ oblio > I have always thought about what it would take for Whatsapp to lose their > place as the dominant chat app and you finally nailed it. Unfortunately, that's not how these things work. I don't know of any mainstream platform that died because of ads. You have to keep in mind the fact that the average person on this site has a total different attitude to technology and its warts than most other people. ~~~ 72deluxe Tangentially, I know they mentioned the "adpocolypse" for YouTube but recently it's insane the amount of adverts being shown. It's really putting me off using it. But as you say, mainstream platforms with no competitors seem to get away with it. ~~~ nicky0 I've been youtube pro subscriber for a while. Zero ads, it's heaven. Really transforms the youtube experience. ~~~ 72deluxe Does this also work for YouTube in smart TVs etc.? Does it permit playing of videos audio-only? I use backing tracks on my Honor Play but it has terrible screen burn so after an hour of instrument practice my screen looks like the comments section (which keeps moving on YouTube) ~~~ tssva It does work on smart TVs. You get can use backing tracks without them being on screen by either using the regular YouTube and putting it in the background or using Youtube Music, included with YouTube Premium, which has an option to play audio only. ------ mrkramer Crucial information from Shopify: "Merchants will get control over customization and merchandising for their storefronts inside Facebook and Instagram, while managing their products, inventory, orders, and fulfillment directly from within Shopify." "Consumers will be able to easily find, browse, and buy products through a purpose-built, immersive experience in these apps they use every day. Checkout will be powered by Shopify for merchants, with Shopify also offering Instagram Checkout to select merchants testing the new feature." Facebook wants to capture all discovery through FB and Insta directly competing with Amazon and Google Shopping. ~~~ buboard FB should be merciful and buy shopify before murdering them ~~~ sbarre I think there's a place for FB Shops, mostly with "small-small" businesses, think "kiosks in the middle of the mall" or "plastic two-colour sign stapled to electrical poles" type of small, but any reasonable business that cares about it's brand and wants to maintain control over itself would still likely be attracted to a more flexible and powerful platform like Shopify.. You give up a lot of control when you use FB, they control branding, UI, UX, etc.. if you don't care about those things and you just want to sell stuff, that's probably fine.. I say this of course without knowing what the future holds for FB Shops.. Facebook is basically already the shopping mall food court and bus stop, they're just adding the stores now I guess.. ------ jameslevy "We’re also working more closely with partners like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce..." Is Facebook Shops not a direct competitor to Shopify? Or is this just "embrace, extend, and extinguish"? ~~~ nickff My guess is that they will try to integrate Shopify sites into the platform, to give the FB Shops platform some momentum, then gradually push the non FBS stores down the page. My reasoning is that they are emulating Google. Alternatively, they could be looking to make FB Shops an advertising platform, similar to Amazon Seller Central, where they don't care who you buy from, but they want each seller to pay for ads and/or payment processing. ~~~ basch Although being a simple shopify drop in replacement would have its advantages in simplicity, there is probably more long term potential if they embrace multi-channel sales, and become a storefront management tool ala [https://www.ecomdash.com/](https://www.ecomdash.com/) and [https://www.shipstation.com/](https://www.shipstation.com/) Some people are going to keep shopping on amazon, some on ebay, some on walmart, some on etsy, some directly on websites. Im not saying that's what they are doing, but its a way to skim off all transactions instead of trying to force business into facebook. ~~~ nerfhammer Probably the right answer. If you have a shop that's getting some sales on etsy, amazon or ebay or wherever else you're not going to want to _close it down_ in favor of facebook – you'll just open a second storefront there. ------ einpoklum I just wish we could read on HN tomorrow: "Introducing Antitrust action against Facebook (justice.gov)" ~~~ jedberg That's not likely to happen under this President unless MZ says something nasty about him. Otherwise you'll probably have to wait until the next admin at least. ~~~ einpoklum This is likely to happen neither under a Biden administration nor under a Trump one. ------ Thorentis It's fascinating to see these tech giants fight each other for control over the Internet empire. Eventually I think we will see 1 by 1 they will fall, and a couple will remain. This is Facebook's attempt to take on Amazon and Google both at once, and given their huge user base and method of engagement, they may just have a shot at it. I can see it now. Scroll Instagram to see photos of your friends wearing new clothes, "like" the photo. Get an ad the next day for that same product now available from a Facebook Shop for 40% off. Use your Facebook Credits to buy it. ~~~ gitgud They might also implement object detection within photos and match things in the photo to products you could buy... on Facebook... ~~~ londons_explore Google could do this with Chrome... They already have the "right click, search google for things looking like this image". All they'd need to do is make the UI more discoverable and make the search results include products, and they'd be $1B up on revenue... ~~~ woodrowbarlow i don't think the "search by image" tool is doing as much computer vision as you think it is -- it seems to mostly match shapes and colors. ------ TheLastMan I don't need to bother reading dystopian sci-fi anymore, it's all happening around me. ~~~ einpoklum One of the frightening things is when you notice that, as society becomes more dystopian (e.g. more totalitarian, more extremely unequal in the division of wealth etc.), there doesn't develop the strong awareness that it _is_ dystopian. It that the sense of what's normal and acceptable degrades. At best you get this weak sense of a general malaise. ~~~ Kiro So either people are clueless sheep that don't know better or they simply don't care. The first seems pretty patronizing to me and the latter means we are in minority with our definition of dystopia. ~~~ 72deluxe I think they just don't care. I had a look at Marx's ideas of people being in a certain class and engaging in a class struggle, rising up. But it didn't happen because people are mostly just selfish. They don't care if they're in a certain "class", they don't care if they're being sold to, they generally don't care if they're being tracked. They just care about being able to do what they want to do. As long as it doesn't interfere with their life too much (or even if it does, if there's no alternative), they don't do anything about it. And with the modern population, as long as it is extremely easy they will do it. I am not sure if this is good or bad, or just an inherent part of human nature. ------ CosmicShadow As someone with an Etsy shop this got me excited for a second, but unless I missed something, this is just some sort of link from your FB Page to some integrated shop? We use Etsy because we get all these sales from people using it to search for stuff, but I guess if we only have 80 people and spend no money on FB ads or trying to grow our page, this is essentially completely useless as we already have links to our shop... We were hoping this was some sort of shop built into marketplace that was curated or searchable or something, since we've had some success selling on there, but it's a complete garbage pile and dealing with people is awful and doesn't scale very fast. People flake out like crazy, no way to manage messages well or anything. Missed opportunity. Maybe for Instagram, having a shop built into your profile could be awesome instead of saying, "link in profile" then having your user search for the product they say starting at your site homepage. ~~~ codecamper If you make a shop on FB Shops, please know that you do not need Shopify to do that. Shopify provides no benefit and charges you per transaction. ------ koolba This is long overdue. I bet they’re working on a PayPal competitor and eventually their own in-house data driven credit system. If you think you were being tracked across every mouse hover and scroll now, imagine what it’ll look like when there’s this much on the line. ~~~ richardbrevig > I bet they're working on a PayPal competitor... They've allowed money transfer through Messenger for sometime now. The UX is probably the best I've had. I prefer sending money that way because it's through the debit card (easy set up), free, and instant. ~~~ vasco In Europe at least they've rolled this back from the only 2 countries they tested it in (UK and France). You can still do donations to organizations in most countries, but no p2p money transfers. ~~~ tixocloud Any reason why? Seems to be a strong digital payments ecosystem in the U.K. and Europe that would've made it work well. ------ swagonomixxx With the rise of services like Shopify, Etsy, etc. why are independent product manufacturers in the US / Europe still using Amazon? Is it the lack of the supply chain / item delivery that Amazon provides so well or is it something else? Hearing about how Amazon undercuts pretty much every seller on their system makes me think that sellers would be willing to jump in a heartbeat if given a viable alternative. Facebook Shops seems like a Shopify clone to me ... but I'm not sure as I haven't really used Shopify (and I keep mistaking it for Spotify). ~~~ Spivak It's the logistics network. Being able to just ship your product to an Amazon warehouse and then have them handle the rest on the cheap pretty much guarantees that using Amazon will come out cheaper. Combine that with Amazon handling the bulk of customer support, returns, and payments and you end up making more money on Amazon than anywhere else. I've actually tried to get a company to price match _their own store on Amazon_ and they told me to just order it on Amazon because it was better for them. ~~~ fuzzybeard I purchased an item directly from a manufacturer's own website, so there's no middle-man and no fees lost to selling on another platform. The price difference between that and Amazon was so staggering, I returned the original purchase and re-purchased, this time from Amazon. Same product, but it was significantly cheaper on Amazon. ~~~ raxxorrax You will almost never get good prices from the manufacturer itself. That would undermine their standing with sales partners. So you will always get the rather high list price. ------ destitude I already have enough trouble with businesses that think Facebook is the internet. I wonder how many customers businesses lose by only engaging with Facebook users? ~~~ Kye Not many. Most of their customers also think Facebook is the internet. ------ swiley Yes tie yourself to a large platform that can and will shut you down for political/social reasons. Or just stick a paypal button on a static site. ~~~ fsociety Yep that worked well for Wikileaks ~~~ Tepix Yep, Wikileaks is still around. Their store is at [https://wikileaks.shop/](https://wikileaks.shop/) or [https://eu.wikileaks.shop/](https://eu.wikileaks.shop/) ------ buboard Hm, unlike classifieds, shopping is not a social activity, in fact most ppl would not like their friends to know what they re purchasing. And the shops would need to either duplicate inventory or lock it in facebook. They 've tried this before, and failed [https://mashable.com/2012/02/21/facebook-brands-closing- stor...](https://mashable.com/2012/02/21/facebook-brands-closing-stores- fcommerce/?europe=true) I don't think it will be better this time ~~~ joelbluminator > in fact most ppl would not like their friends to know what they re > purchasing Not true by my experience. In fact, lots of people go shopping together. Sure, some stuff is private. But most clothes, electronics, computer games, household, furniture etc etc is stuff people buy and share around all the time. ------ mnehring Has anyone seen anything specifically mentioned about an API? I did a quick search and didn't see anything mentioned, but if they integrated with 3rd party tools, either they have an API or they already programmed a feed scraping tool of some sort. I suppose if there is an API, but they haven't released public documentation, it might be possible to find out details about many of the endpoint from WooCommerce's code. ~~~ busymom0 As someone who’s been burnt by using their IG API before when they decided to shut it down out of nowhere, I won’t trust their API for this. ~~~ mnehring For my personal selling, I wouldn't trust the API's:-). However, I have a product that helps a particular retail vertical list their items for sale online. I imagine my clients wouldn't mind having their items automatically cross-posted to Facebook's shop as well. (So, if Facebook kills the API, it would kill a feature in my product, but not my whole product.) That's why I was wondering about the API. I'll probably need to do some reading and searching today when I get some time! ------ dzonga FB, just came with a bang. with how prevalent fb is internationally. they can capture majority of the market share. sad day, for open solutions like woocommerce. & if FB had managed to get libra, off the ground, then they would be transacting more amounts of currency than anyone in the world. I won't put Shopify in the discussion, as they are only available in select 1st world countries. ~~~ ibdf Woocommerce fails to deliver a product that doesn't require a developer and or thousands in add-ons. It works for a very basic shop but after that you will need to hire a developer. ~~~ Kye It's $45/month from the company behind WordPress for the majority of companies that don't need that level of customization. Past that, it's probably still cheaper than rolling your own solution or doing a panicked migration off Facebook Shops when they start closing the doors. ------ yalogin What took it so long for FB to do this? This is honestly one of the first things they should have done. ~~~ Mengkudulangsat They are waiting for Libra. ------ amelius Another BigCorp trying to put a gate around an existing market, this time it's retail. Yuck. ~~~ riazrizvi "Is your store doing well? Have you expanded to a couple of other locations successfully? Is it time for you to create a broader franchise? ... Don't worry, we've been watching, and we already made this information available to big stores in your area who were willing to pay for the privilege. That's why Big-store-chain is already negotiating a better contract with your supply chain. I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted. Thank you for your business." \- American Edge. It's our edge, not yours. ------ Traster That advert is an incredibly tone deaf advert. Support the little guy! Yes, support little Mark Zuckerberg and his sole control of a $600Bn company. Has it ever occured to anyone in a multi billion dollar corporation that maybe it doesn't come across well to pretend you're fighting for the little guy. Why not take a break for once and just say "Hey, we're fucking enormous, no one even browses the web anymore, they browse facebook, so we've deigned to give you the smallest sliver of access to our amazing hoard of treasure - customers (in exchange for 90% of your profits)". At least it would be honest. ~~~ creddit As always, when you’re everyone’s favorite punching bag: damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Would love to know how you got to them taking 90% of the profits. Are they even charging commissions or is this a scheme to drive more ads purchases? ~~~ Traster I love it, spend a decade engaging in scummy behaviour, and then have people completely ignore that and claim that you're just a punching bag. Do you know how you become the everyone's favourite punching bag? Stand by and watch whilst people use your platform to commit genocide, and then tell everyone you're looking out for the little guy. Damned if you do enable a genocide, damned if you... oh no, just the first one. ~~~ creddit This would be a great rebuttal to someone who said “I like that Facebook helps people kill people” but is a pretty weak rebuttal to someone calling out you making up fee structures for the product and your silly moralizing over a company launching... checks notes... a way for people to sell things on the internet. The horror. ------ kumarvvr Shopify will be the loser here. FB will use them, chew and spit them out. FB only wants shopify now because it has all the data, inventory, categorization, etc. The next logical move would be to buy a company like wix, then target smb with their sales and marketing team to help them make digital storefronts on FB, integrate with their social platform and then ditch shopify. Edit : Also, there is no way to tell if your competitor is paying to get your data and costomer info. This will lead to an overall weakening of the mom and pop store operations, where they are disrupted ever more easily by the competition. ~~~ ta17711771 True. Square bought Weebly for this. ------ saltedonion I don’t see this as a positive for FB at all. To me, this looks like FB has finally accepted defeat in the social networking space. Over the years it has been deteriorating at delivering on its core mission of connecting people and supporting personal relationships. I don’t think FB of the past would have green lighted this project, the hit on its brand positioning is significant. It will only accelerate people’s disassociation between FB and a social network. Effectively, at this point they’re just cashing in on their brand equity and milking their user base. They’ll pay in terms of churn and decreased LTV. ~~~ carlinmack Do you know about Facebook Watch, their streaming service with real original TV shows? Their switch from 'just' a social network was years and years ago ~~~ saltedonion Didn’t know they had original TV shows, but I thought at least they will build social features into Watch. Shopping on the other hand, is a private and individualistic activity. I feel this is far removed from their core mission. ~~~ chillacy > is a private and individualistic activity Some people go to malls as a social activity. Others like to read product reviews by people (sometimes well known bloggers), or watch youtube videos. Sometimes people even ask their friends for product recommendations. Shopping is to some a very social thing. ------ suyash Why have 2 different shops on Facebook and Instagram, it will lead to more confusion. Also what about for folks who don't use either of those services? ~~~ derefr Plenty of brands were already doing lead-gen to their products through Instagram, whether through ads, or just by creating a photo/video of their product that started trending (in a way similar to how you'd expect a pretty craftwork to trend on Pinterest.) I think Instagram even already has the inline "purchase the thing this is a picture of" flow—though right now it's just in the form of a modal webview to the partner's shop product page for the relevant item. The "Instagram Shop" part of the offering they're describing, sounds less like an independent system, and more like a way for independent creators to get the same benefits as those large partners, where they can take a picture of the fancy sweater they made, have it appear on trending, and then there can be a "Buy" button right there on the post everyone's sharing. It's an Instagram _integration_ for the Facebook Shop system. I also don't think there's going to be a separate "Instagram Shop" landing page for a given account, per se; if there is an index view, it'll just be a collection of the buyable items posted by a given Instagram account. The expectation, though, would be that "buyable" posts would just be part of a brand page's regular feed of posts. The "buy button" is just an enhancement to what the account was already doing, rather than a whole separate storefront to set up. I'm guessing, in the end, what you'd really be purchasing via the Instagram hosted inline purchase flow, is a Facebook Shop product SKU. You'd probably get an email from Facebook Shopping about your product, etc. In other words, "Facebook Shop" would be a payment processor / hosted commerce backend, that happens to have a flagship front-end UX; and Instagram would be an alternative front-end UX. > Also what about for folks who don't use either of those services? Given the way they seem to be building it, there's definitely some backend core with an API that looks a lot like Shopify's API. I'm guessing they'll offer third-party developer access to that API. ------ dadarepublic Tangentially related: >'GrokNet', the AI behind Facebook Shops, looks for body type, skin tone, location, socioeconomic class in photos [https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/groknet-the-ai-behind- fac....](https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/groknet-the-ai-behind-fac.html) Is there good reason to be concerned on this level? ------ rakoo The WeChat-ification of FB is going forward. There is still so much to do, but I for one am happy that total control over society's interaction by a single company is slowly coming over to the Western world. (For reference if you don't have wechat or alipay in China, you might as well live as an hermit because fewer and fewer places will accomodate you) ------ sarfrazarshad Facebook has had the shop option for quite some time now on the Facebook pages. I have used it, it really sucked. What's new here? Checkout option? The Instagram shop is new that's for sure. But I am not sure how that will perform. ~~~ sarfrazarshad Discovery was a real issue. I hope they have improved it now ------ alexashka The more low hanging fruit these companies pluck, the more obvious it becomes how much of the internet wants to be connected to real identities. Facebook is largely a real person <-> online person connector and a very crude version of everyday items such as photographs, calendars, small shops, etc. Except computers lift the constraint of copying being expensive in the real world, while the internet lifts the constraint of copied object being expensive and slow to move around. While Amazon provides inventory and delivery infrastructure to businesses and an internet storefront for customers, Facebook hardly provides anything that isn't trivial to copy - they rely solely on network effects and as a result - can largely be seen as a middleman parasite, worthy of extermination. ------ rodolphoarruda Another nail in the decentralized web coffin. The big steam machine is working at full power. ------ bovermyer If Facebook Shops allows you to sell digital products like PDFs, then it very much has my attention. ~~~ type0 I really hope they don't poison that market as well. ~~~ bovermyer Well, to be fair, there are digital product marketplaces that are still essentially monopolies (DriveThru, Kindle). I doubt Facebook is going to take over those markets any time soon. ------ WrongThinkerNo5 I still remember that time when Zuck publicly admitted that he was aiming for Facebook to replace the internet, which was clearly promptly scrubbed from the internet (it is one of those regrets that I did not save the video even though I realized it was important, while not realizing we actually had memoryholes already). It seems more than ever that he is well on the way to doing so, as it becomes ever less likely that any kind of relief or resolution will come from captured regulators, let alone captured and bought off legislators. Pretty soon, real competition will be dead, it has little life left in it as is. ------ lykahb The main source of revenue for FB is advertising. They are able to offer Facebook Shops at a loss to get the market share. Many small businesses are mainly present online as a shop on a platform and a FB page. This is bad news for Etsy. ------ flyGuyOnTheSly Instagram shop charges 5%+ transaction fees... (more if the product is priced below $8) is this going to be the same pricing model? Because if so it's a non-starter for myself and anyone comfortable with the stripe api and/or shopify at least. ------ A4ET8a8uTh0 I dislike Facebook, but this is a really smart way to grab a market share. Most businesses need minimal online presence so FB front is sufficient. I won't see those businesses, but I know I am a minority, when it comes to this. ~~~ scarface74 Random non rant: Thank you for being self aware enough to know that you are in the minority when it comes to not having Facebook. Most posts by people who don’t use FB and post to HN feign ignorance and say something like “I haven’t used FB in 10 years. Does anyone still use it?” ~~~ stephenr Minority of what exactly? As pointed out downthread, a lot more people on earth don’t have FB than do. I’d also wager plenty of people who’ve stopped using it still technically “have” an account but never use it. So how do you define that “the majority” use Facebook? ~~~ scarface74 [https://www.worldometers.info/world- population/](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/) First subtract China where it isn't available and you're down to a possible market of 6.35 Billion. But then start subtracting the number of children in the world, the number too poor to spend any money on anything FB would be selling or advertising and random other places where it might be blocked. ~~~ stephenr That’s a lot of words to say “the majority of Facebook users are using Facebook”. That you just ignore the country with the largest population because Facebook doesn’t operate there is a big tell. Also, why would you assume the kind of products people might sell and thus their pricing? I’ve seen (and bought!) stuff online for ~ 11THB. 35 US cents. You can say a lot of people use Facebook and that’s fine. But if you’re going to say “the majority of people” you really need to define which people you’re talking about. ~~~ scarface74 No business cares about trying to reach people who don't have money to spend on their products. It's kind of common sense that FB isn't trying to reach 5 years old. Also, it's kind of common sense that Facebook doesn't have many people in China where it's banned. Out of the FAANGM's, the only one that competes with Facebook is Google and they aren't in China either. But to be even more blunt. FB no more cares about people spending 35 cents online than Apple cares about people who only want to/can buy a phone that cost $100. ------ NicoJuicy And using the big E-commerce platforms. Reducing opportunity for a software developer with his own platform to connect to it, what is basically just a product feed + order confirmation endpoint. And more useless noice on Facebook of everyone promoting their take-away. Ugh Ps. I buy local, the take-aways across the street. Not the 30 places from my old hometown. ------ AnonC _> Creating a Facebook Shop is free and simple._ That’s just PR speak. The truth, as it will be realized soon (if not suspected already), is that this will not be free. It will take away the freedom of the businesses and hold them to ransom for Facebook’s own benefit. Neither will it be simple to move out when the realization hits. It’s a trap, IMNSHO! ~~~ chillacy Game theory would suggest that even if all individual business participants know this, they will still opt to sign up anyways because they're making locally optimum decisions. The paradox of advertising is well known as well, yet ad spend continues to go up. Unfortunately there aren't many solutions to the dilemma, there's always the illusion of choice but the reality ends up being coercive nonetheless. ~~~ AnonC Could you suggest some reading material on this please? ------ bitL Some time ago I was thinking what would it take to bring down Facebook and one of the ideas was for social platform to allow direct sales for hobbyists/small shops. They managed to patch this vulnerability now. ------ hckr_news How can developers leverage Facebook/Insta shops for business opportunities? ------ ta17711771 FTC is asleep at the wheel, with Facebook. Did you know they're doing dating, gamestreaming, classified ads....list goes on longer than my patience. ------ tams In the light of this, it's much more obvious why they stared exposing the Facebook brand in their Instagram and WhatsApp properties. ------ milin What does this mean for Squarespace and companies alike who strive to make shopping experiences for small and medium businesses? ------ TYPE_FASTER Uber buys GrubHub, Facebook creates a Facebook Shop vertical for restaurants and food. Most places have a Facebook page anyway. ------ rbarnes01 Interesting that their preview doesn't show any stars/reviews. I wonder if they will add this feature in the future? ------ AzzieElbab how are those going to magically just-work without logistics and conflict resolution? ~~~ tomcooks (unfortunately) worked pretty well for amazon, and the concerns were the same ~~~ kevindeasis what do you mean? isn't the logistics and conflict resolution of amazon, pretty much best-in-class? ------ treebornfrog This is a very smart move. Zuck proving he's the best allocator of capital in the consumer Internet space once again. Im not in the HN bubble so much, I did delete for a few years. Recently installed it to get on a few silver bullion trading groups as there is a shortage and boy are those groups super valuable for buying and selling. ------ kull Any idea how to apply for the early access to this api? ------ _448 Looks like a challenge to Amazon minus the warehouses! ------ champagnepapi Does this work for subscription based businesses? ------ _jal A whole class of retailer that will be blocked at my router. The Balkanization is well underway. ~~~ itsspring My thoughts exactly. I’ve blocked Facebook in my DNS hosts file & thankfully Firefox has a Facebook fence to isolate their trackers. ~~~ swagonomixxx Out of curiosity, has doing this disrupted your web browsing experience in any way? I'd like to do this but I'm kind of afraid of alienating 75% of the web that relies on the FB JS SDK for something (I'm not really sure if this is the case, but it might be?) EDIT: thanks for the responses. Will block at DNS :) ~~~ mikestew By "disrupt", do you mean "improves immensely"? It depends on how much FOMO you suffer from. For instance, the folks that I used to do music jams with (picture middle-aged folk playing bluegrass) have moved to FB Live(?) for some things. I don't see those, nor participate. That's okay, we do our own non- proprietary chat once a week in lieu of live jammin'. Local animal shelter posts stuff on FB, most of which I can live without. Does shit break because something, something FB SDK? Nope, at least not shit _I_ care about, and not FB. But for the most part, I get to mostly forget that FB even exists. ~~~ dmix Indeed. What's the point of having values if you're not willing to be burdened with some costs? Since FB lacks strong values it gets imposed on the wider community, but such is life. The only true option is using or building alternatives. Trying to chain the monster, where every individual positive attributes always has to be controlled and directed from some other central body, whom we then also have to trust with even more power, sounds like a losing game to me. Not using FB isn't that difficult anyway. There's plenty of group messaging apps that achieve much of the same. ~~~ mikestew Are you replying to me, or just hijacking to make a general point? Because FB gets blocked at DNS at my house, I could have saved you some typing on "values". ~~~ dmix I was commenting in support of not using FB, which is supporting what you're saying... ~~~ mikestew Gotcha, thanks for the clarification (and the stealth edit ;-). I'd delete my original question if it wouldn't leave your comment dangling. ------ aboringusername To me, it seems like these tech giants want the internet to start and end with their platforms. Facebook is becoming (or has become) people's experience of the "internet", it has a lot of what people want. My concern is there isn't yet a law or enforced guidelines (similar to the GDPR) about machine learning, and what happens when it gets things wrong. Recently, we've seen with a postcast app and pushbullet being threatened on Google. What happens if an AI or system decides it no longer likes your shop, or factors outside your control cause it to be flagged? A commenter worried about MLM's, which is a valid point. Will we know the identity of the FB user who made the shop? How does the ownership process works? (I.E who actually "owns" the FB shop on FB and get admin controls). I refuse to engage with and use FB, it may be that some shops become entirely FB oriented and forget "mycoolshop.com", because FB provides all the tools a business owner needs. Sad, but slowly we're seeing the death of the internet we all wanted and possibly knew for a time in the early part of the century. ------ codegladiator Brace yourself for the tide of MLM FB shops ~~~ texascloud What is MLM? ~~~ benmarks Multi-Level Marketing, e.g. that person from grade school who messages you out of the blue to ask how you're doing, and then tell you how much better you'd be doing with daily injections of IsoLeanIonigenTonicWater which you will also want to sell once you feel amazing/thin/virle/whatever. ~~~ davidajackson I used to program in a co-working space for fun where the company next to me was trying to build one of those schemes with some sort of ionized water. The CEO was perpetually convinced that if he "just got 400,000$ in funding" everything was going to be great. All the employees seemed to hate it there. Was pretty annoying to listen to, but not as annoying as the guy a few cubicles away who was trying to sell gold. ~~~ moneywoes Yikes, do you know what happened to him? ------ furtive808 Is it US only? ~~~ rnotaro US Only and selected shops for now. ------ foobar_ It's interesting how people here are happy to criticise "chyna" when facebook is really the same thing with a corporate logo and a backdoor. The difference is china has a frontdoor. Facebook also runs in your phone with spyware. ~~~ ancarda This thread seems mostly negative towards Facebook (good - fuck em') but your comment seems to suggest you think there's some bias here. Are people on HN being too positive about Facebook? ------ sub7 lol FB trying to fuck over 3rd party sellers and Amazon is like go ahead chumps we've been at this for decades. Seriously though who the hell trusts FB. Nobody. They should fold. ~~~ dylkil >Seriously though who the hell trusts FB. Nobody. 2.6 billion monthly active users beg to differ ~~~ sub7 I'm one of them. But the graph is going down and engagement is going down faster, hence the frantic acquisition of anything else that gains traction - IG, WA etc. Tiktok won't sell and their curve is convex so let's see what happens in the next couple years. ------ youareostriches Facebook needs to be broken up _immediately_ , and their core platform offering replaced by an open protocol. ~~~ holler why open protocol and not help other competitors gain market share? ------ tomcooks Finally some honesty, good riddance to feel good nonsense about persons, being connected and the like - it's all about the money. ------ MadafakinBATMAN Is it just me or was that the most hippy non-value product ever? Like printing with antique printing press seems as mumbo jumbo as gwyneth paltrow's selling stones to me	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
When your data science activities can send you to prison - vincentg64 http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/doing-illegal-data-science-without-knowing-it ====== tgflynn This is a very strange article. The first set of activities would usually be considered to belong to the fields of cryptography or information security, not data science per se. The author doesn't distinguish between export controls and classification. The issue of export controls on this type of technology may be an issue but it's something that's been discussed elsewhere and I think is fairly well known. I've never heard of any encryption work that wasn't funded by the government being classified. I think there is legislation that allows the government to classify patents, even if they weren't developed with government support or using classified information, but as far as I know it's very rarely used and the only cases I've heard of involve nuclear technology. As for the other items, "data science" can be applied to any activity, including ones which are illegal for various reasons (like running an insurance company without respecting the relevant legislation and regulations). That's a far cry from claiming that doing "data science" itself, ie. developing algorithms, analyzing data, etc. can be illegal. If the author has any evidence that this claim is true in the US, he doesn't present it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: A Tinder-style app for deciding where to eat - kelvinfan https://github.com/kelvinfan001/findalicious ====== kelvinfan Covid restrictions are loosening up and restaurants are starting to reopen. Can't wait to finally eat out with your friends and family, but not used to the plethora of options out there anymore? Try out findalicious and easily decide! [https://findalicious.herokuapp.com](https://findalicious.herokuapp.com)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Vectorized execution brings a 10x performance increase for expression evaluation - Lilian_Lee https://pingcap.com/blog/10x-performance-improvement-for-expression-evaluation-made-possible-by-vectorized-execution/ ====== gameswithgo I have an 'art/game' project in Rust that uses vectorized expression evaluation to draw random images. It turns the expression tree into a stack machine then evaluates the stack machine with SIMD instructions: [https://github.com/jackmott/evolution/blob/master/src/stack_...](https://github.com/jackmott/evolution/blob/master/src/stack_machine.rs) The speedup is really big for this case sometimes because not only do you do math 4x/8x/16x faster (depending on instruction set) but you also traverse the stack machine (or tree if you are pure interpreting) 4x/8x/16x less often. The improvement when traversing a tree is extra extra big because of reduced memory hops. I used a SIMD library I made in Rust, which lets me write the stack machine once, and then run it in SSE2/SSE41 or AVX2 mode. You can select either at runtime or compile time: [https://github.com/jackmott/simdeez](https://github.com/jackmott/simdeez) ~~~ dahart Sounds cool, do you have a gallery? I had a similar sounding project inspired by Karl Sims’ genetic images that I haven’t touched for many years now, but I’ve been meaning to revive and compile to GLSL or CUDA to get (I expect) much faster eval than is possible with CPU AVX or SSE instructions. Have you considered that route? ~~~ gameswithgo the readme has some examples: [https://github.com/jackmott/evolution](https://github.com/jackmott/evolution) Not really enough to show off the full range of possibilities but it is a start. The program is still a WIP I'll release it eventually. ~~~ dahart Very cool, thanks for the link! The cell & fbm primitives look really useful. The only complex primitive like that I included so far was Perlin turbulence. If you’re interested, here’s a sampling of mine, [https://flickr.com/photos/biv4b/albums/576553](https://flickr.com/photos/biv4b/albums/576553) I haven’t gotten around to any vectorized evaluation yet, it’s pure CPU recursive eval, the closest thing I did was to use multiple threads, but it’s not particularly fast compared to what a GPU would do. ~~~ gameswithgo those look really nice, id be interested to know what primitives you have and how you compose them ~~~ dahart Sure, I happen to have written those things up in a paper; it’s a fairly simple & constrained set. The composing part is also fairly standard though I came up with a couple of new mutation strategies that seemed useful. [http://dahart.com/paper/hart_evomusart_2007_paper.pdf](http://dahart.com/paper/hart_evomusart_2007_paper.pdf) You can ignore most of that unless you’re interested in animating evolved expressions; the primitives & mutations are summed up in the first few pages. ------ snidane I always wondered why people assume that the more high level abstractions or high level programming languages you use the less performance you should expect. C is faster than Java, Java will be faster than Python etc. The 'interpretation overhead' is supposed to kill your performance. But there is one weird exception. You have the APL family, which are a very high at level of abstraction but perform even faster than C. Especially because od using vectorized processing. When you work on vectors of 1000s items in one instruction, you amortize language interpretation cost away and since working with vectors is actually the only natural way to work with computers you get massive performance from those instructions using vectorized instructions or even running on gpu. (All memory access is naturally linear in computing. Random access memory is an unnatural computing myth which comes at enormous cost and has to be hardware accelerated to be even usable). Similar can be said about databases and SQL. Especially in OLAP processing, where you can linearize your data tables and columns and vectorize your processing. Because it is near impossible to overcome von Neumann bottleneck in traditional single computer languages like C or Java, any SQL or APL will beat the crap out of them if you span the processing over multiple cores and machines. Days of single machine processing are over and clusters of computers are the future. AWS (and potentially other clouds) are essentially Operating Systems for sich environent. It'd be nice for open source to catch up though. ~~~ gameswithgo >The 'interpretation overhead' is supposed to kill your performance. Java isn't interpreted >You have the APL family, which are a very high at level of abstraction but perform even faster than C. No they don't. You process an array of numbers in contiguous order in C (or anything else compiled with llvm or gcc or similar) it gets vectorized too. APL may encourage the programmer down the right data layout path for vectorization more often though. Which would certainly be a good quality on modern hardware. ~~~ colejohnson66 > Java isn't interpreted Correct. Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Java and C# are JIT’d, but only hotspots are aggressively optimized (at least in C#; not sure about Java). So in short runs, prevectorized C code will run faster, but once the optimizer kicks in (with long runs), they’ll be neck and neck. Side note: C# also supports AOT compilation with optimization. Not sure about Java ~~~ daxfohl C frequently cannot vectorize without explicit hints. This is because with pointer arithmetic, what you're writing to could be within the array you're reading from. So order of operation could matter, and vectorization could break it. ~~~ colejohnson66 I guess, cause in C#, you can’t have pointers to the middle of an array (when not using `unsafe` code). So I guess one would just check if the arrays’ pointers were equal, and if they aren’t, the arrays don’t overlap. Side note: C# 8’s ranges and indices return an IEnumerable, so I wonder how those vectorize. Can IEnumerable’s even be vectorized? ~~~ daxfohl The only vectorization I'm aware of in C# is the few classes in System.Numerics that are provided specifically for this optimization. In theory, the C# compiler and/or JIT _could_ automatically issue SIMD ops for some array operations, if it could determine that order of operations doesn't matter (as could just about any other language), but I think as a general rule this is too expensive at compile time or runtime to be worth it, and most languages force you to make it explicit. Except a couple languages like FORTRAN and apparently APL. (Though I'd love to be shown wrong in the C# case). ------ tom_mellior > As the table reveals, every time this function performs a multiplication, > only 8 out of 82 (9+30+28+8+7=82) instructions are doing the “real” > multiplication. That's only about 10% of the total instructions. The other > 90% are considered interpretation overhead. Once we vectorized this > function, its performance was improved by nearly nine times. See PR #12543. This is a misleading way to present this data. If I understand this correctly, most of the 90% "interpretation overhead" are time spent evaluating the operands to the multiplication, and this is _also_ vectorized. So it's not just that vectorizing the 10% can give you a 9x speedup overall, although in my opinion the text tries to suggest this. In any case, there must be even more going on here. The data being processed here seem to be Float64. On an AVX-2 processor like most of us have, you can only fit up to 4 64-bit floats into a vector register. This means that, even if your entire computation vectorizes very very nicely, you should only expect a 4x maximum speedup. Even if they have an AVX-512 server (they don't say) with twice the vector width, 8x would be the expected limit. In practice it would be considerably less because the processor reduces its frequency to avoid overheating on AVX-512-heavy computations. I'm not aware of hardware that uses even wider vectors. So an end-to-end 9x improvement for the entire function here seems impossible to achieve using vectorization alone. I question both the measurement and the suggestion that vectorization is the _only_ thing that changes here. Maybe they accidentally (? they don't seem to understand in detail what's going on) stumbled upon a much more cache friendly version of the computation they were trying to do, or maybe previously they caused the GC to interfere, or... something. But 9x due to vectorization of a Float64 computation? I'm not buying it. ~~~ mping I believe that in db context, vectorization means batch processing column wise. Quoting the CockroachDB blog post: Using vectorized processing in an execution engine makes more efficient use of modern CPUs by changing the data orientation (from rows to columns) to get more out of the CPU cache and deep instruction pipelines by operating on batches of data at a time. Here is the link: [https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/how-we-built-a- vectorized...](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/how-we-built-a-vectorized- sql-engine/) ~~~ senderista That’s right, I believe it was MonetDB that introduced this abuse of terminology into the DB lit and it's stuck. I remember being very confused as well, looking for any mention of SIMD instructions in the MonetDB paper and finding none :) ("Pipelining" is another term that the DB community uses differently from everyone else--nobody else would refer to single-threaded execution as "pipelined".) The other typical optimization for expression evaluation is code generation, which usually targets LLVM bitcode or Java bytecode. That's pretty standard for column-oriented databases now and they're not exactly state of the art if they don't implement some equivalent of the above. ------ qeternity I’ve seen a fair bit about TiDB but not much from actual users. Can someone who uses this in production explain why and what alternatives they evaluated (we use Citus so would be curious to hear). ~~~ jinqueeny You can check out the case studies from our users here: [https://pingcap.com/success-stories/](https://pingcap.com/success-stories/) ------ baybal2 Well what to say. You are just throwing potential performance away if you don't use SSE when you can. There is an idea that "renaming and reordering engine can make non-SSE code as fast as it without extra hassle." At least of X86, that can't be true as you physically can't access all execution ports with non-vector instructions. ~~~ pdpi Vector instructions come at a cost, though — there’s implications on power budget and on thermals, so it’s very much a “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” piece of tech. Specifically, sustained use of AVX instructions on 256 and 512 bit registers will cost you a chunk of clock frequency even for all, so you have to pass the hurdle of having enough AVX instructions that the downclocking is worth it overall ~~~ dr_zoidberg AVX(1) and AVX2 don't cause throttling, just AVX512. Even so, on code that can do the best of them[0], they still result in better performance. Eventually they will implemented in a way that doesn't require throttling, maybe AMD when it finally supports them or Intel when the famed 7nm[1] process arrives. [0] numerical code usually, but go ahead and use them if you can express your problem in a way that makes sense in AVX512 [1] 7 as in "seven" since the 10nm is so troublesome that apparently no desktop/server chips will be made on it and just skips to 7, which should be comparable to TMSCs 5nm ~~~ gameswithgo >AVX(1) and AVX2 don't cause throttling, yes they do, on intel cpus anyway. On Ryzen anything that makes more heat will cause throttling, rather than a step change in mode. >. Eventually they will implemented in a way that doesn't require throttling Probably not, there are fundamental physical limitations. I mean, you can put a good cooler on the cpu and disable the throttling, but then you could raise the non SIMD clock rate too. ------ notbigdata i'm quite surprise how many of HN comments are focused on nitpicking frontend implementations rather than the content itself. it's not very likely the author who works on vectorized execution also implemented the blog system. ------ userbinator You can also get a 10x accessibility increase for viewing your site, by not doing shit like this: <div class="center-element" id="page-loader"> <svg id="hexagon" viewbox="0 0 129.78 150.37" ... </div> <div id="page-content" style="display:none"> (actual page content here) This is another one of these pages that shouldn't require JS, but _deliberately hides the content_ and then uses JS to un-hide it. _WTF!?_ I know this is a little off-topic but I found it ironic that a post about optimising performance would be presented so outrageously inefficiently and inaccessibly. (I just turned off the CSS to read it.) ~~~ iamxy An SRE at PingCAP here. Got it. Thanks! We found that using JS to toggle page visibility has some usability issues. We just removed the JS loading animation and will deliver content with good compatibility and progressive enhancement. Sorry for the issues with the display! ~~~ withdavidli Nice to see quick response. Page loading on mobile for me. Using Brave browser.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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