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What subterfuges did your startup have to resort to in the early days? - vaksel What was your secret sauce to get those early users to sign up? Fake accounts talking to each other? Deep discounts for those early adopters? Giveaways? ====== aristus A friend of mine adopted a persona at gaming conferences to promote his blog, including a big metal robot head. At a satellite ISP I worked at a long time ago, we used the transponder during offpeak hours to stream porn and bootlegs for extra cash. Other stuff... well if you care to poke around, a lot of sites have poor data security. Further deponent sayeth not. ------ RobGR I heard though word of mouth (i.e., kind of unreliable, so I won't mention any names) that a certain company I had respected "almost died a few months after launching, because craigslist figured out how to stop us from spamming them for a couple of weeks, until we got around it".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Modernish: a shell moderniser library - sundarurfriend https://github.com/modernish/modernish#modernish-a-shell-moderniser-library ====== oweiler While I applaud the effort and extensive documentation I'd never use something like this in production. For example have a look at the definition of `sfor` sfor 'i=1' '[ "$i" -le 10 ]' 'i=$((i+1))'; do print "$i" done Doesn't look too bad at first, until you realize `sfor` is an alias which is defined as alias sfor='_Msh_sfor_init=y && while _Msh_doSfor' So it's an alias which expands to two commands. No have a look at the definition of `_Msh_doSfor` _Msh_doSfor() { case ${#},${_Msh_sfor_init+y} in ( 3, ) eval " $3" \|\| die 'sfor: loop command failed' \|\| return ;; ( 3,y ) eval " $1" \|\| die 'sfor: init command failed' \|\| return unset -v _Msh_sfor_init ;; ( * ) die "sfor: 3 arguments expected, got $#" \|\| return ;; esac eval " $2" \|\| case $? in ( 1 ) return 1 ;; ( * ) die "sfor: test command failed" ;; esac } No thanks, I'd rather use Python. ~~~ yorwba I think the point of this library is that all those gory details necessary for sane error handling are encapsulated, so you can build on that work if you absolutely need to write shell scripts. Otherwise, yeah, I hope that Oil will be the promised better shell and make bash & co. obsolete. ------ jph This is _amazing_ for shells. Thank you for writing it. Your reasoning and explanations are first rate, and the documentation is superb. Your emphasis on POSIX is a great approach for working on a very wide variety of shells, including older ones and regulated ones. I deal with these regularly at enterprise clients, and I'm excited to try Modernish with these. Kudos! ~~~ sundarurfriend Hey, it's good to know you found it so useful. Just to be clear though, I just found and posted this here; Martijn Dekker [1] seems to be the main contributor and presumably the creator of the library. His email ID, according to a personal web page of his [2], is martijn at_the_rate_of inlv dot demon dot nl , in case you wish to send the kudos along his way. [1] [https://github.com/McDutchie](https://github.com/McDutchie) [2] [http://www.inlv.demon.nl/martijn/index- old.html](http://www.inlv.demon.nl/martijn/index-old.html) ------ tibbetts Isn’t this going to make shell scripts that were already fragile on anything but bash not only fragile but also harder to debug? Combining the engineering ideas of JavaScript and autoconf with the checkered history of shell scripts seems like a case of -1 + -1 = -5. ~~~ xiaq It is more like polyfills that serve to defragment different shells and provide more modern constructs. ------ chatmasta This looks really, really good. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while, even considered building it myself. Javascript and Shell programs are actually pretty similar IMO. Both are loosely functional languages that can run in many different environments, with different feature sets in each. Both run from a single entry point. A lot of JS tooling could be applied to Shell scripting. This library takes the right approach, by augmenting existing functionality with syntactical sugar for safer programming. The wrong approach is the many libraries attempting to make a “new” shell language, or a “superset” of shell. The beauty of shell programming is its portability, but that’s lost once you have even a single feature relying on non-POSIX functionality. I like the Modernish approach because it’s _just a library_ , but writing it can feel like writing a cleaner version of shell. The docs say Modernish was inspired by jquery, but I would argue it’s more akin to underscore or lodash in this sense. Following the trend of shell/JS similarities, what I would like to see is a compiler and packaging system similar to webpack and npm. I’m not talking about a package manager that downloads libraries and binaries into some directory in $PATH, but rather a bundler that compiles all libraries imported from an entrypoint into a single executable shell script. ~~~ oweiler Shell is so much not functional. Most shells don't even have proper functions. And while pipes resemble function composition to some extent, you have side- effects and mutations everywhere. ~~~ chubot If you think of stdin and stdout as your function inputs and outputs, then shell becomes very functional: _Pipelines Support Vectorized, Point-Free, and Imperative Style_ [http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/01/15.html](http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2017/01/15.html) In a sense, a shell can only return an exit code. But it's better to think of that as an error handling mechanism rather than the return value, much like in C. In C, it's idiomatic for functions to return values with "out params" (i.e. a dynamically allocated a string). Just like you can write C code that composes, you can also write shell code that composes. And in many ways it composes _better_ than code in other languages. ------ chrisweekly Looks amazing. Note "use safe" in the README is missing some words: > "Does IFS=''; set -f -u -C, that is: field splitting and globbing are > disabled, variables must be defined before use, and" ~~~ McDutchie Thanks for the report. Fixed. ------ ape4 If some modernish functions become popular they might be adopted by bash. So it can be like a testing ground.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Homogeneous operating systems are better - fallat http://ecc-comp.blogspot.com/2014/12/homogeneous-operating-systems-are-better.html ====== jonjacky Besides the two discussed in the linked article, there have been many other attempts to build systems where the OS and all the applications are written in a single language: [https://github.com/jon- jacky/Piety/blob/master/doc/precursor...](https://github.com/jon- jacky/Piety/blob/master/doc/precursors.md)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Nice little W3 toolbox - mikeanders http://www.w3dt.net/ A nice little toolbox thats helpful for all webmasters. Also if you have a suggestion on a tool don't hesitate to tell me about your ideas. Either here or at the sites forum. There are already a couple of tools in development so stay tuned and query away! ====== nedved Need some ssl tools	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Tech Beach – Revamp your app design in 31 days - polimorfico http://www.thetechbeach.com ====== stefek99 For the record - another _hacker_ venue at Canary Islands - [http://ch.totalism.org](http://ch.totalism.org) #coliving #coworking but at a much better rate. I would say it's very 'back to the roots' and all the expenses ever incurred (2.5+ years now) are in the spreadsheet and the daily rate is the reflection of the actual cost. You can read on their wiki: "Non-for-profit, open budget = 100€ a week contribution." (and that 100€ - 135$ - includes food and stay) Been there November 2013, highly recommended. Wish I was able (timewise, employmentwise, familywise) to visit / reside there more often. ~~~ danohuiginn That is the most excellent thing I have seen in weeks. ------ mrlase You need some sort of indicator to keep scrolling down. I only saw your team the first time I clicked on it. I was surprised when I went back a second time that there was more content below that. I'm not a huge fan of the order that you display your content in either. I think you should get to the message quicker than scrolling. The "Refresh your app design in 31 days" bit is better for a headline, not the first thing that your user sees. Chances are they already saw that bit when they clicked on your site. Show them immediately what you do and why they should choose you. Just my $0.02 ~~~ polimorfico Thanks for your comments. You're right. There are some issues we must fix to improve the UX. ~~~ mrlase No problem :) Also, are there any links to your teams portfolio of work or anything? Can't seem to find any. ~~~ polimorfico Sure! Some samples: \- [https://dribbble.com/Dusko](https://dribbble.com/Dusko) \- [https://dribbble.com/Stefooo](https://dribbble.com/Stefooo) \- [https://www.postheads.com](https://www.postheads.com) \- [http://getquaderno.com](http://getquaderno.com) \- [https://medium.com/ux-ui- readings/washing-machine-for-men-b6...](https://medium.com/ux-ui- readings/washing-machine-for-men-b6f927bbb538) ------ 6cxs2hd6 Warning: If you spend any time looking at the The Surf Office site[^1], you're likely to be ruined for normal coworking spaces. The quality of life and affordability... wow. [^1]: [http://www.thesurfoffice.com/](http://www.thesurfoffice.com/) ~~~ infinitone I can't imagine the productivity levels would be as high as a normal workspace. Seems like there are a tad too many things that will break your focus- which is what you need most when building a startup. ~~~ jrvarela56 Ironically, I have found a similar experience to be the exact opposite. Every few months my team rents a beach house to spend 2-3 days working offsite. We end up exhausted: you are so relaxed its easy to put in more (productive) hours. 30-45min daily 'beach break' (its a beach front property), taking turns to cook simple meals, nightly fireside vision/brainstorming chats. Been thinking of setting up something like the coworking mentioned in the article in Panama (5hr flight from NYC). Anyone interested? ------ melling This sounds great and extremely fun. Unfortunately that amount of time isn't going to work for many people. Do people have other recommendations for app redesigns? Any "night school" versions of this in Brooklyn? Maybe it's just best to find a great designer? I probably can't learn enough to compete with even a good designer. ~~~ monkey_slap Agreed. I'd be really happy to see more of these sort of workshops pop up. ------ xerophtye Ironically for me the site has some design bugs on FF 29.0.1 The "meet the team" page seems like a constant bg and all the other pages kinda slide over it with some transparency. so there are times when both of them are visible and overlap. [http://imgur.com/NVCDTFN](http://imgur.com/NVCDTFN) ~~~ polimorfico Thanks for reporting! We're going to look for a fix asap. ------ ingend88 Are there any night school versions of this in bay area where someone without a design background can pick up design skills ? ------ joshmlewis The site is unique but I find it ironic everyone is complaining about the UX when they are advertising a big UX and design package. For real feedback, what in terms of work does this get me? Does it get me well thought out wireframes, PSDs, or fully implemented solution? I feel like the latter is half the battle itself. ~~~ polimorfico We've had some problems with the HTML+CSS in some browsers. We're already working on it. The idea is taking a current project you're working on and help you with its redesign. You'll get wirefames, PSDs, and we'll help you with implementation. Please apply if you're interested and we'll give you more information. ------ startupfounder I am looking at this in the larger context of starting a startup. SurfOffice to me is an indicator that sometimes the most productive thing to do is to get away and focus on your startup. You don't have to be in SF or NYC. FiberHouse - Feld's KC Fiber House and Homes for Hackers are other examples of this and there are many more. One big aspect of starting a startup is runway and with the prices of rent in SF and NYC through the roof getting away to a place that is relatively inexpensive, where other people are also working on projects is a great way to focus and extend runway. I believe it's important to have that out of the office time, to get your subconscious problem solving with a hike, surf, bike and sunshine. This is a step in the right direction when it comes to the startup lifestyle. ------ shekhar101 Awesome! Love such ideas. There is one internship here in Goa, India(a well known beach town) where a tech startup(forgot the name) teaches you everything from fornt end design to back end and if you're lucky, you land a job there as well. ~~~ polimorfico Sounds cool! Nowadays you just need a laptop and an Internet connection to work on your project. And the world is so big and amazing... ------ philippotto Nice site! Just two notes: \- The third FAQ should probably read: "So _I’ve_ signed up… what’s next?" since all the other questions are formulated from the visitor's POV. \- When scrolling to the very bottom, there is a yellow 1-px-line between the FAQ and "Stay in touch" (FF 29.0.1, Win8) ------ noname123 Pretty cool opportunity and effective advertising too. Went thetechbeach.com and then went to Facebook and saw thesurfoffice.com as a sponsored ad. Wonder how big an ad budget you have to have to have targeted advertising like that. ------ ulisesrmzroche Remember that video has a lot of contrast and that's why your home page is so busy and the headline is getting lost. Nothing worse than a headless ad. ------ niico As a designer, sounds not only like a great deal to me but a hell of a fun month. (Im not related to the company) ------ Rulero This is amazing, I was brought up in Las Palmas! ~~~ polimorfico So you know how incredible the city is in October :) 23º C. and a lot of sun!! ~~~ Rulero It's always incredible :) ------ lewro Great idea! ~~~ polimorfico Thank you, Roman! Glad you like it :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Gut Wars: One Man's Adventure with Antibiotics and Ulcerative Colitis - accarmichael http://www.ubiomeblog.com/gut-wars/ ====== jivardo_nucci Looks like a candidate for a fecal transplant: [http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical- upd...](http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/clinical- updates/digestive-diseases/quick-inexpensive-90-percent-cure-rate) Most facilities do it the fancy way (use a tube down the nose or up the rear), run tests and, as usual, charge you and your donor out the a __! But I 've read of DIY'ers who simply spun out the solids, held their nose and swilled the goods(I suppose a real man would use a spoon) or took them in an enema: [http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/29/why-diy- fecal-...](http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/29/why-diy-fecal- transplants-are-a-thing-and-the-fda-is-only-part-of-the-reason/) [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27503660](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27503660) Either way it works. "Compatible" donor? Healthy family member(s). As the author of the article notes, probiotics can't possibly match the variety of organisms that a typical human has in their gut. Business proposal: a repository where people deposit feces prior to taking strong antibiotics, so that, should they find themselves consequently absent intestinal flora and fauna, those could easily be restored. Kind of a new twist on the old curse "Eat shit and die!" ~~~ noonespecial Talk about making a "back up". The possible vowel deficient start-up names for this alone are amusing me greatly. ------ Shivetya I can sympathize with him. While my issues didn't get as far as his, my issue resulted from taking Cipro which killed all the good bacteria in my gut making room for something else to move in. Sadly what moved in was related to dogs feces as I have a pair and you don't have to see it to get contaminated. End result, new drugs to wipe out the bad then a few months with specific medications and kefir and related food products to rebuild the bacteria in my gut. It is no fun planning any drive, even to work, where the primary issue is knowing who is open and has public bathrooms ~~~ partisan Reading this makes me feel really fortunate. I had a bout with colitis, but the doctor prescribed me Cipro and it went away with no other side effects. As an aside, even talking to the doctor made me immediately feel better. Being a pessimist, I assumed the worst and was already planning out my will. This doctor, who looked like Gene Simmons, asked me how many days off I wanted from work, and told me "You gotta take it easy, bro" with a jerky boys accent, he completely snapped me out of whatever I was going through with his amazing personality. ------ JoshTko I think a key component often missing in these discussions is creating a habitat where good gut bacteria can thrive. This article identifies having fiber a critical to maintaining good gut bacteria. [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fiber-famished- gut...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fiber-famished-gut-microbes- linked-to-poor-health1/) ------ tapia I'm always happy to read this kind of articles. I have a history with C. ulcerosa myself (now under control) and since it begun my gut just hasn't been the same. I am pretty sure my microbiota was left in a very bad shape after some hard periods, and since then I have tried to bring it back to balance... but it seems a hard task. I haven't tried probiotic supplements, like described in the article, but just tried to include probiotic-rich food in my diet, like yogurt and sauerkraut, and also prebiotics like bananas and honey. So it would be just great to get exactly the combination of probiotics- supplements that one needs, based on this kind of uBiome test, and then just wait until you have a balanced microbiota again. But for what the article describes, we would have to wait a bit until the real effects of each particular probiotics-combination are understood. ~~~ sunsu I recommend General Biotics: [http://www.generalbiotics.com](http://www.generalbiotics.com) David frequents HN (which is how I found it) and he even took the time to personally answer questions for me via email. There is no probiotic on the market like it and it is based on real science. ~~~ tapia Wow, thanks! It looks very interesting. I had never heard of it :) ------ stevebot Any recommendations for probiotics? I've tried a couple with no luck myself. ~~~ d357r0y3r Sauerkraut is a good option if you like actual food. ~~~ stevebot I love Sauerkraut on a good sausage. Do you actually eat it on it's own? ~~~ cdcarter A beet/cabbage mixture sauerkraut is DELICIOUS to eat on it's own. ------ junto Since this isn't the first time UC has come up on HN (are programmers more prevalent maybe?), may I ask for a quick show of hands of people that have UC or had UC and if you've managed to beat it then how? Me, I've had UC since 2012. I take Pentasa 2mg granulated mesalazine per day. I am an ex-smoker and internalize stress. My UC is definitely exacerbated by poor sleep and high stress. Antibiotics were also what started me off on this horrible disease. I'd love to get rid of it. ------ mullingitover Wouldn't this be a great case for fecal transplant? I have to wonder how effective oral probiotics can really be, give that the oral route includes an acid bath on the way to the intestines. Seems that a fecal transplant would get the desired results near-instantly. ------ a8da6b0c91d The obvious importance of gut bacteria is the health-news flavor of the month, but I don't know. There are definitely two sides to this debate. On the other side some very smart people with nothing to sell (probiotics/prebiotics/tests) argue for a relatively sterile gut. They say feeding gut bacteria with fermentable fibers/starches in general generates LPS and other stressful toxins. Some lab experiments definitely bear out this idea. Animals with sterilized guts fed sterile diets live way longer, and are stronger/healthier. Like I said I don't know, but I advise extreme caution on this stuff where there's any tangential connection to probiotics/prebiotics/tests. ~~~ ubiologist Disclosure: I work for a microbiome biotech company. I have no connection to ubiome. I'm sure this commenter means well but this person is severely misinformed. Any person with even a minimal understanding of our gut microbiome would never argue for a relatively sterile gut. We rely on out gut bacteria to digest foods and there is a healthy, normal exchange of metabolites between the microbes and our bodies. Microbes digest foods such as fiber and starches into (for example) short-chain fatty acids that have been shown to have beneficial effects on our bodies. They also prime our immune system so that we are better prepared to combat invasion of potential pathogens. LPS is a necessary component of all gram negative bacteria. Many of our commensal bacteria are gram negatives. The problem with LPS is when it gets to places where it shouldn't be (e.g. crossing our gut epithelial barrier). Some labs utilize germ-free mice to investigate the causative role of the microbiome on the host. While these animal models can serve as great systems in which to investigate certain hypotheses, every germ-free model researcher would no doubt agree that the immune system of germ-free animals is completely different and severely compromised compared to a normal, conventional animal. They, in fact, do NOT live longer and are NOT stronger/healthier. I felt that the above comment needed to be rectified before people starting actually believing it. ~~~ a8da6b0c91d Let me boil down your essential claims: 1) Bacteria in the gut make stuff you need and helpfully digest things for you. 2) Endotoxin is only a problem when it crosses the gut. 3) By various magic bacteria in the gut strengthen the immune system. Well #1 just isn't really true. There aren't any identified compounds that are at all hard to get from food that you need gut bacteria to make for you. Maybe some vitamin K and that's about it, but a serving of liver or some other foods will more than cover your vitamin K dose. #2 is a silly argument because endotoxin is _constantly_ crossing the gut barrier. LPS endotoxin is a continuous stress on the liver to detoxify. Whether it's a real problem in an otherwise healthy individual or not is a separate question, but the argument presented here is totally specious. It is quite plainly a continuous stream of toxic material the organs work to clear. As for #3, that's the big totally open question I guess. You see the claim made but nobody ever really breaks it down in detail in terms the experimental physiology proving the idea. It's usually some eye-roll-worthy trials. The fact that the sterile rats can't survive outside the lab environment is not the point. No kidding they have under-trained immune systems. The point is that absent the chronic stress of bacteria load they do in fact live longer and are in fact stronger in the literal definition of strong. This guy is being deliberately hand-wavy. ~~~ Klinky Look you're being just as hand wavy, and your sterile gut idea is a bit of spherical cow. We will never be able to sterilize our environment to the point where we can easily maintain a sterile gut. No one fully understands the human microbiome, including you. Are there any case studies of people maintaining a sterilized gut and living healthier lives? Therapies like fecal transplant or helimintic therapy actively introduce third parties into your gut with positive outcomes. Which at least suggests that bacterial balance in the gut is important for some people.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
RF GAN vs. Ldmos for 5G - mrnode https://semiengineering.com/power-amp-wars-begin-for-5g/ ====== mrnode Power Amp Wars Begin For 5G	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hardware Hacks Are Easier Than They Seem. What Does It Mean for the Future? - gdeglin https://www.forbes.com/sites/annashedletsky/2018/10/04/hardware-hacks-are-easier-than-they-seem-what-does-it-mean-for-the-future/#417d9df25ecf ====== Lind5 The hardware is now part of the attack surface, as well, and that will make it much harder to design chips that can withstand attacks years after they are initially designed. The attackers are getting smarter, and at this point anything appears to be a possible target[https://semiengineering.com/designing-hardware-for- security/](https://semiengineering.com/designing-hardware-for-security/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple Unveils a More Powerful Apple TV - salimmadjd http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/09/apple-unveils-a-more-powerful-apple-tv/ ====== athenot The more interesting news is the release of the SDK for the AppleTV. This opens new possibilities. ~~~ malchow Will the new Apple TV be able to play arbitrary files over a network? That would be simply fantastic -- but unlikely. ~~~ superuser2 Apple is in the business of selling legal content through iTunes, and to my knowledge there is no way of legally obtaining non-DRMed video files of movies or TV shows. Making piracy more convenient would be a surprising move. However, I wouldn't be surprised if someone was able to use the SDK to write a XBMC-like app. ~~~ gozo "no way of legally obtaining non-DRMed video files of movies or TV shows" Uhm what? I know the studios are doing their best, but fortunetly non-DRMed video isn't illegal yet. Ripping your own dvd, recording from tv, public domain or cc licensed footage, buying from independent distributors or the authors themselves, video blogs, conference recordings and learning material etc. ~~~ superuser2 >Ripping your own dvd Tell me with a straight face that Apple gives a shit about DVDs. >recording from tv Fumbling around with capture cards is roughly the opposite of the Apple TV's ethos. >public domain or cc licensed footage, public domain or cc licensed footage, buying from independent distributors or the authors themselves, video blogs, buying learning material etc. Vimeo is already a pretty polished UX for most of the independent film use cases. Offline is a concern on mobile devices but not really relevant to the Apple TV. Also, let's be realistic here, people aren't watching public domain content on their couches day in and day out, they're watching big-name TV shows. ~~~ unprepare So if I already bought several standup specials from louisck.net? If I got videos from a kickstarter? If I make videos myself and want to show them to friends? Are stand up comedy fans, kickstarterers, and film creators not part of Apple's target market? ~~~ sangnoir >Are stand up comedy fans, kickstarterers, and film creators not part of Apple's target market? They are, but only if they buy/sell on iTunes. ------ chambo622 This device looks slick but I'm very disappointed that it doesn't really bring anything new to the table. It might be best of breed in terms of polish and features compared to Android TV, Fire TV, etc - but functionally, it's identical. What happened to Apple revolutionizing the way people pay for/consume content? ~~~ knorby In terms of hardware, it isn't the winner for this sort of product. According to reports from a few days ago, the new Apple TV lacks 4K support. The Nvidia Shield runs Android TV, supports 4K (well), and has a pretty reasonable GPU in it. It costs $50 more. ~~~ urda Most homes are not 4K ready and are not anywhere near it at this time. Not really a hurting point in this market. ~~~ t0mbstone It's completely unacceptable for the new Apple TV not to support 4K, when both Netflix and Amazon are releasing 4K content now. On top of that, the new iPhones can record in 4K, and the new iPad can edit 4K videos. You can buy a 50 inch 4K TV nowadays for under $1,000. 4K is going to explode in the next year or two, and if the new Apple TV doesn't support it, I won't be buying it. Period. ~~~ nsxwolf What's the point of 4K on a TV again? So you can walk up to it and say "ooooh!", then go sit down and have it look like 1080p? Is that brief standing-too-close moment worth the massive increase in bandwidth required? ~~~ t0mbstone Watch 4K content on a 75 inch screen, then play 1080p content on that same screen. The difference in clarity is huge. The only reason you can't tell the difference is because you are probably watching 1080p content that is being upscaled. Watch TRUE 4K content on a 65+ inch television, and it's like looking through window. It's amazing. ~~~ nsxwolf At what viewing distance, though? I have a 65 inch 1080p set that I sit 12 feet from. Without my glasses, I can't tell the difference between 1080p and 480p at that distance. ~~~ t0mbstone I sit about 10-12 feet away from my TV. It sounds like you need to get your vision checked. ------ kin This changes gaming. I need a bluetooth controller accessory and devs will really be able to go far with this. edit: While everyone here seems to disagree, many indie devs have been waiting for this for a while. It will essentially be the biggest indie console market. Ouya was unproven hardware and lackluster adoption. Innovation wise, sure, there's nothing new here in hardware nor software. But in terms of form factor, dev kits, and market, this will be very different. ~~~ dublinben >This changes gaming Does it really? I think the failure of greatly hyped consoles like the Ooya have demonstrated that there isn't actually much of a market for this. Hardcore gamers already have fully-powered systems. Casual gamers don't care about playing on their TV. ~~~ jsz0 > Casual gamers don't care about playing on their TV. Is that really true though? Seems like an under serviced market to me. ~~~ zelos Ouya and PS Vita TV were hardly huge succeses. ------ andybak I wonder if this will finally prod Google into actually marketing Android TV? ~~~ tdkl Google has no clue how to market a product. ~~~ InclinedPlane Google has no clue how to maintain anything approaching a traditional customer relationship. They sort of got lucky with ads and everything else is a side show in terms of revenue so there's no incentive to develop products or businesses further. ~~~ elif I want them to succeed so bad. I try to support them. But you're 100% right. The user experience for glass and google fi have both been pretty horrible. They don't even have a mechanism to receive feedback, yet they are purporting that I am "beta testing" for them. I have a feeling when they want to know whats good or bad at about a product, they look 95% at a database. ~~~ InclinedPlane They are a frustrating company to care about. They have so much that's so important that they're working on, but they're like some half-interested genius teenager with a short attention span. They just don't have a significant commitment to anything other than making money through ad revenue, and that's practically heart-breaking. ------ guelo Just last night I walked into my living room where I have Chromecast's shitty screensaver "backdrop" running on my TV and there was an ad on the screen! I was seriously pissed off, I'm not going to have my TV be an ad billboard for Google, I'm done with them. I'll consider this Apple TV, though I think I'll end up with a Roku. ~~~ Yhippa Really? I rather like their picture scroll. Sometimes when I have nothing to watch I'll just have that running in the background. What's pretty cool is that through the Chromecast app you can find more information about the picture. I've collected a lot of potential vacation destinations this way. ------ untog Now let's play the game of "guess which provider won't be on the AppleTV". Amazon, perhaps? This post cord-cutting TV world is pretty awful. I don't want to have to download an app for every video provider, if they even have one for my platform at all. ~~~ ThomPete Give it time. They all will eventually. ~~~ untog It depends. Amazon aren't ignoring platforms because they don't have time, it's because they want people to guy a Fire TV Stick/whatever. ~~~ robwormald at $39 or whatever it costs, I suspect they aren't making a whole lot of profit on the hardware. They have an iOS app, I expect they'll have an AppleTV pretty rapidly. ~~~ untog _I suspect they aren 't making a whole lot of profit on the hardware_ They aren't. The idea is to get you using one and _then_ make money from that usage. ~~~ robwormald Which is why having their app on AppleTV makes sense, no? They don't care about the device playing the content, just that they're selling the content. ~~~ MiguelHudnandez Amazon is not just selling content, though. Their push with Fire Sticks and Fire TV is in part to get "Echo" / "Alexis" into the living room. Until you can ask Siri to buy you laundry detergent in your next subscribe- and-save order, Amazon wants to own whatever you use instead of Siri. ------ protomyth The iPhone and iPod touch are going to make really crappy game controllers. I would get the AppleCare+ if you have kids or are a bit of a klutz. I get the feeling a case with a Nintendo wrist strap might not be a bad idea. ------ georgerobinson I like the Apple TV. It solves the two frustrations I have with the Fire TV stick: 1\. I can’t search across both Netflix and Amazon Instant Video, instead I have to search both one after the other. 2\. I like how you can ask Siri “what was that?” or “what did they say?”. I’ve been watching House of Cards and found myself asking that question quite a bit. On Fire TV, this involves rewinding, turning on subtitles, catching the missing text and at last turning subtitles back off again. Such a chore! I really like how Apple solved this problem. I have yet to see a similar feature in Fire TV. ~~~ dublinben Number one is just a function of the FireTV exising to drive you to Amazon rentals. The Roku has had a comprehensive unified search interface for many years. ~~~ feld Rook's unified search is finally about 3 years old (fall 2012) and the interface is terrible. ~~~ feld *Roku's ------ rev_bird Cordcutter here -- AppleTV looks like a handy way to combine my Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Instant streams, but can anyone comment on whether it's worth the price if I'm not really plugged into the Apple media ecosystem? I quit the iTunes store after I discovered (too late, my fault) that all the audiobooks I'd bought from them could only be downloaded once, then were lost forever. I've got a Chromecast and it works fine, for the streams it supports. But does AppleTV content justify the extra cost? ~~~ JohnBooty I have and enjoy both the Roku 3 and the current (not the one announced today) AppleTV and aside from Apple stuff like Airplay video streaming and iTunes cloud integration, it doesn't really give you much over and above the Roku 3. Of course, the apps and games on the new Apple TV change the game entirely... _if_ any of that interests you. ~~~ rev_bird Good to know, thanks. I've been looking at the Roku 2 for a looong while now. Not really interested in getting mobile games on my TV, might just go with that instead. ~~~ morley If the price difference doesn't deter you, you might be better off with a Roku 3 (or waiting for a Roku 4, if such a thing is in the pipeline). I have a 3 and sometimes the framerate drops a little bit, so I can't imagine what using a Roku 2 is like. (The framerate drops occur when navigating the interface, not when viewing content.) ------ robwormald suddenly the Apple Game Controller framework makes a whole lot more sense.... [https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Servic...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/ServicesDiscovery/Conceptual/GameControllerPG/Introduction/Introduction.html) ------ tjmc Pissed that they dropped the optical audio port. We regularly stream music through the AppleTV to an amp with the TV turned off. I get why they dropped it - newer amps have Bluetooth or HDMI through ports. But I'm happy with the old amp and standalone HDMI splitters are chunky and expensive. Any other options out there? ~~~ jmnickels +1. I pump the ATV via optical out into an external DAC and then onto my amp. The HDMI out is used purely for video. I don't want or need my audio path traveling over HDMI. ------ Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 This event is getting absolutely roasted by the Verge liveblog: > NILAY PATEL 11:01:09 AM PDT > It will play day or night shots depending on > time of day. Sure. > CASEY NEWTON 11:01:08 AM PDT > "People are clapping for > screensavers." -Walt Mossberg And a TV remote without a power button?! That's bold. ~~~ sterculiusx Cherrypicking is fun. "For what it's worth, this UI looks way more intuitive than the nightmare rodeo of the XBOX One or PS 4." "You can quick rewind 15 seconds by asking "what did she say?" That's pretty cool." "Pretty damned impressive.". See what I did there? ------ rebootthesystem I wonder if they have a 30% take on retail apps. That alone is a non-starter because 30% is massive for companies selling real physical products. For reference, Amazon charges 15% and offers best-in-class world-wide fulfillment and customer service. ------ angryasian Why even focus on the remote ? I understand its to make it accessible to people outside of the apple ecosystem, but it would have been nice to see better integration with an iphone app. ~~~ sanderjd Yeah I might consider this if it turns out they have both, eventually. I get that you massively limit your market if you don't have a remote at all (like chromecast), but for me, it's so much more convenient to have everything on the phone. ~~~ daxelrod They already have a Remote app [http://www.apple.com/apps/remote/](http://www.apple.com/apps/remote/) that has all of the functionality of the last-gen Apple TV remote (plus things like a keyboard). I would be extremely surprised if this weren't updated. ~~~ sanderjd Neat, thanks for the link. ------ osi I wonder about the range of the remote. Right now I can keep my Apple TV in a media closet and use an IR extender with the remote. Will BT 4.0 work 40+ feet away through walls? ~~~ masklinn BT4 encourages increased ranges to WIFI-type (~200ft)… whether the remote supports that is a different question though. ~~~ osi nice. that would be awesome. ------ draw_down I haven't bought an Apple TV thus far because I have lots of media that I'm pretty sure it won't play. But this new interface looks fantastic, particularly with the improvements to seeking (a hobbyhorse of mine - underpowered boxes plus crappy software makes it an often frustrating experience) and the addition of Siri. I don't think the remote looks that great for games, though. ~~~ dv35z AppleTV plus a Synology NAS is a pretty great combination. I have a Synology NAS, with an archive of movies stored on it. It also has a torrent client, which can pull down media directly. The Synology media service indexes the movies (finding cover art, genre, ratings), and makes them available for playing within the LAN. The best part is, the media service is AirPlay- compatible. Using Synology's (decent) iOS app, I can (1) Search for & initiate a download using the NAS on-device torrent service, (2) Stream that movie directly to an Apple TV - all controlled by the iOS device. Pretty slick. I might also note, because the NAS & AppleTV are connected to the router by ethernet - not wireless - there is no lag/buffering/etc. ~~~ draw_down But it won't play Matroska/Ogg/AVI, will it? This is my concern, I have a ton of stuff in non-MP4 formats. ~~~ lukifer It's a little roundabout, but I use AirVideo HD [1] with a separate iOS device to get around this. My media server recompresses content to MP4 in realtime, which then bounces to the AppleTV via AirPlay, which all works seamlessly for being so janky. Assuming Apple isn't too tight-fisted with TV app approval (which remains to be seen), I imagine the AirVideo folks will pull off a better version of the same thing using a native app. [1]: [http://www.inmethod.com/airvideohd/index.html](http://www.inmethod.com/airvideohd/index.html) ------ Kexoth I only wonder why the baseball app has the current stats still 'hardcoded' in the video stream & not programmable through the app? ~~~ ascagnel_ The scoreboard is burnt-in by the sports channel carrying the game; to the best of my knowledge, there's no way to get the raw switched video feed before the graphics crew touches it. ~~~ Kexoth I understand that, but the app was from the channel broadcasting the game, so I guess they have control over it :) ~~~ aroch They leave the scoreboard because it contains branding for the host team / stadium and frequently the local affiliate actually running the broadcast. NFL Gamepass, and both NHL and MLB live air the original broadcast feed. ------ zyxley The remote looks a whole lot like a Wii controller in disguise. There's even a wrist strap accessory. What I'm really curious about is if there will be any support for pairing multiple remotes. There could be a lot of Wii Sports knockoffs popping up that would want to take advantage of that... ------ kdamken All those features are just fine and dandy, but did they finally address the issue when streaming shows via hulu or netflix the audio and video eventually gets out of sync and you need to restart the Apple TV to fix it? If so, I'll order mine right now. ------ zelos Are TV boxes really a growth market though? This looks kind of interesting, but most new TVs already have Netflix, Amazon, iPlayer etc. At $149/199 it's not exactly in Chromecast territory, either. ~~~ rev_bird Honestly, smart TVs creep me out. The ones I've used have had impossibly annoying menus and inexplicably slow connections. My parents' smart TV buffers low-res Netflix shows to the point that it's sometimes unusuable. I brought my Chromecast over once and it worked perfectly. Not to mention hooking my television up to the internet means I'll be getting ads from the software (Hulu, broadcast commercials) AND the hardware. No thanks. ------ ThomPete 3rd Party game controller [http://www.apple.com/tv/games-and-more/](http://www.apple.com/tv/games-and- more/) ------ listic What hardware should I use if I want to be able to display arbitrary content on my TV and decide the lifecycle of my hardware myself? Apple TV isn't it, right? ~~~ feld Apple TV is most likely it because Apple devices receive OS updates longer than the competition. ------ lovich So, does this support connecting to a dlna server or can we only watch content that comes through an app? ------ sjg007 It be nice to get a dropcam tv app. ------ meatysnapper A bluetooth remote... oh dear. What happens when it won't sync? EDIT: I've worked a bunch with bluetooth on iOS and I'm not super confident in it. IR anyday for me. ~~~ Cshelton Have you worked a lot with Bluetooth 4.0? Or previous Bluetooth versions? I've found BT 4.0 is tons better than say...Apple's old keyboard and mouse...which is a PITA. ~~~ meatysnapper Yeah, it's better, but 1/50 it doesn't work is super frustrating. Especially if there are multiple apple tvs in a house, I could see this being a problem where the remotes get confused. At work we have a bunch of apple tvs hooked up to presentation tvs/projectors and we all just use the hdmi cable to the screen directly. I do not trust Apple to have their wireless issues sorted out this time. ------ tedajax The Harmonix game demo was beat for beat exactly the same as the Wii and Kinect demos we've been seeing for years. ------ robotresearcher I found the fashion shopping segment repulsive. The physical audience was muted and Eddie Cue took the piss immediately afterwards. ~~~ devindotcom Repulsive because of the conspicuous consumption, or something else? ~~~ robotresearcher The conspicuous consumption exactly. After the gross gold watch anything is possible I guess. ------ nixpulvis Hearthstone on my TV please. ~~~ 147 You'd be hard countered by Nozdormu. ------ cromwellian My take on why this has no change in denting the console gaming market: [https://plus.google.com/+RayCromwell/posts/gENFJnoUUWK](https://plus.google.com/+RayCromwell/posts/gENFJnoUUWK) Pundits are out in force suggesting that the new Apple TV is going to somehow put traditional game consoles out of business, but this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the traditional console market and the difference between console games and casual gamers. The iPhone and iPad has massively grown the casual gaming market, bringing whole new demographics into gaming, and it has disrupted the handheld gaming market, but it has not done so at the expense of console gaming. The core defining characteristic of casual gamers is the ability to get into, and out of a game quickly. They consume games in small bitesize pieces, waiting in line, in downtime between other activities, not in multi-hour binges. Being mobile helps this mode of consumption, because your mood for gaming can arise in many circumstances, and you can instantly satiate it on your mobile phone, without having to arrange TV time or disturb someone else. By contrast, TV console gaming has a high transaction cost. You have to travel to your living room, turn on the TV, find the controllers, boot up the game, make sure no one else wants to use the TV for other purposes, etc. Moreover, console games are designed more as a TV experience, for someone to play 30, 60, 120, even 240 minutes at a time. The new Apple TV, from it's leaked specs, is essentially a casual gaming machine hooked up to a TV. This might spell trouble for the Nintendo Wii, but Sony and Microsoft? The Apple HW is no where close to current generation console level specs, and anyone creating content for it will be faced with casual gamer price expectations. How many publishers will want to spend tens of millions of dollars on triple-A titles and sell them in the app store? That would be like Marvel selling their next movie for 99 cents. Is EA going to put out a $1.99 version of StarWars Battlefront? They're not going to get console ports or exclusives of current games until they've exhausted the markets on other platforms. So, without content to draw the people who want a 2 hour immersive gaming experience, they won't get console gamers. But what of casual gamers? How many people will exchange the convenience of playing Angry Birds on their phone with playing it on their TV? My guess is, people have moved on from wanting to sit in front of their TV and that casual gamers are mostly mobile gamers. I don't think this product fits either market very well, and the primary use case of it will remain video streaming, of which is is much more expensive (and less capable, no 4k streaming) than cheaper streamers already on the market. ~~~ rsynnott It seems like you're assuming that all games are basically either Candy Crush or MGS5. In reality, there's a lot in between, and various indie games which work well with the touch interface have actually had a fair bit of success on the iPad at rather premium price points. FTL and Papers Please, say, are arguably better on the iPad than on PC (both benefit from multitouch), and go for $10 each. There's a lot of potential for midrange semi-casual console oriented games like Rocket League or Starwhal here, and realistically, a surprising number of consoles are used mostly for that type of game. I think there's also some long-term potential to hit the triple-A market, particularly if the console vendors keep up their current ~7 year refresh cycle. This is obviously a lot less powerful than current-gen consoles, it triple-As are still big sellers for last-gen consoles, and the gap will close as Apple refreshes this every year or so. It's far cheaper than a console, and also smaller and presumably silent. I think it'll find a place. ~~~ cromwellian The controller alone dooms it to most console games. Sure, some games work well on the interface. But those games are exactly the games I don't want on a TV. Do I really want to play Papers Please on a TV with a tiny touch pad controller remote as opposed to on my lap? This is too much of a compromise system that sucks at both ends of the spectrum. It's not as good as the iPad for touch games, and it's not as good at consoles at FPS, Strategy, Fighters, etc. Are people really looking for a niche console inbetween? ~~~ rsynnott To be clear, I don't think people will be playing Papers Please on this; the interface isn't at all suitable. There are plenty of iOS compatible controllers already available which presumably will work with this out of the box. I see this as being potentially huge for people who want to play some console-y games but don't want to spend 400$ On a large noisy box. Also, it could potentially be big for indie devs who want to write console-y games; the current consoles are still not terribly indie-friendly, and in practice most popular indie console games started life as PC games. ------ jsonmez Was hoping for a NES remote... ~~~ seivan They could have made it like the Wii controllers (but touch d-pad) where you got a NES controller when holding it with two hands. That was a pretty clever idea by Nintendo. ------ Tloewald Just my opinion of course but this is very bad for the consoles. Apple comes in with a stupidly huge and competitive developer community and everyone in their target audience already has access to plenty of controllers (iOS devices). I imagine we'll see big guns moving over quickly (I have four GTA titles on my iPhone). ~~~ Sumaso Let me know when you can run GTA 5 on your Apple TV, and then we can talk about how this is horrible for consoles. Smartphones have already stolen away the casual gamer. The people playing call of duty and final fantasy are not the people who will be wowed by the apple TV. If you look at sales data for the Wii, there is a ton of people who bought a Wii, which game with Wii sport and then bought very few games. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best- selling_Wii_video...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best- selling_Wii_video_games)) This will simply solidify that casual market into iPhone and Android apps. Consoles have nothing to fear IMO. ~~~ Tloewald OK: I expect GTAV will run _just fine_ on the new hardware -- the A8 will crush the PS3 hardware. Obviously it won't run the remaster for the newer hardware, but really who cares? The old PS2 GTA titles had to be remastered for the iPhone and run fine on an iPhone 4. I for one am sick of slow level loading and endless patches; every time I play on a console I want to throw something through the screen. And I've yet to see a single compelling PS4/XB1 title come out (I have high hopes for No Man's Sky). ------ astaroth360 Universal Search -- Yay, Apple once again catches up to the rest of the group! Now we get to wait for their crappy-come-lately tv service to come out and have "revolutionary features" like a queue. ------ masterleep How about an Apple TV that doesn't need to be rebooted every couple of weeks to keep working?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How to Sell – a guide for SaaS startups - jhchen https://www.entrepidpartners.com/how-to-sell-guide ====== vincentmarle > Common mistakes made by salespeople and founders: > \- Thinking their goal is to close a prospect on the first call > \- Giving a full demo and presenting pricing on the first call > \- Prematurely trying to shorten the sales process These are mistakes? Having been on the receiving end of many "sales processes" I would say the shorter the sales process, the better. I often feel like companies who are too deep into doing high touch sales don't really respect my time and are _shocked_ when I tell them to cut to the chase and yes, I do expect to hear about pricing on the first call, otherwise there won't be another call. Disclaimer: I have zero patience for abundant sales processes. ~~~ goatherders Then I would never sell you a thing. Ever. Anyone that buys on price is a worse customer than a person that buys on education, and churn of bad customers is a silent killer. That doesn't make you a bad person of course, so please take no offense. It just makes you an unideal customer for pretty much everything I've ever sold in 20 years. High touch sales processes exist to provide certainty when making a big purchasing decision. Prospects often think this is for their benefit, all this interaction and courting. But it's also for the benefit of the company courting you. Making sure there is no charge-back and that the client is set up for success is a big part of being a successful salesperson. ~~~ StaticRedux I understand your point, and you aren't wrong, but you are short-sighted. You may only sell to big clients now, but you are also leaving a lot of money on the table for yourself, not your company, yourself. You've been selling for 20 years? How many of your customers have you had for longer than 3? Now I can hear your mind churning, 'but I'm at a different company now! I don't sell the same thing!'. It doesn't matter. Sales is sales. And the best sales people foster relationships for years before they really sell the big bucks. And can go back to those same clients and sell different products and it's easy because those clients know them and trust them. Ever get that little pang of jealousy wondering why that guy you know in sales plays golf every day with clients and doesn't seem to do much else? It's not because he's just that good. He's not. He might even suck. It's most likely bc he has been building relationships with those clients for years and they would buy a cactus as a new pillow if he asked them to. This attitude of telling the little guy to piss off bc he isn't your type of client might make for some ok sales now, maybe you even have a shiny BMW, but it doesn't make for long term relationships with people who trust you. Once those people at that big company move on to bigger and better things, you'll be stuck grinding it out with whoever they replace them with. I take it you work hard. You're certainly passionate. But after 20 years in sales, you shouldn't have to be working hard. Whether you changed companies and products every six months or still work for the same company, you should have been building relationships. Instead you are content writing off the little guy as a waste of your time. The same senior management you grind it out to sell to now who was a little guy 20 years ago. And the same little guys who will be senior management in 10 - 20 years. I imagine you'll still be grinding it out every day then also, instead of playing golf like you should be. ~~~ goatherders I'm not sure your post was meant for me even if you think it was. I dont write off the little guy, I write off the person that just wants to know about price price price. My churn rate is low precisely because I take time to learn what they want then provide what they need. I work with clients that are a good fit in both directions and got out of the "anything for a buck" game years ago. I work hard building my businesses, but I don't have to work hard at sales precisely because of what you said - I've built relationships and skills that make it fun for me to sell. I work about 5 hours a day, travel a ton and play lots of golf. ;) ~~~ confiscate agreed. Whether someone cares only about price, is a separate trait from whether that person is a big/little guy in the very original comment, it said "I do expect to hear about pricing on the first call, otherwise there won't be another call. Disclaimer: I have zero patience for abundant sales processes." this person isn't asking about price because he/she is "little" and can't afford it. Even if the person is a big guy with a lot of $, he/she will still haggle you on price, because that's his/her worldview. besides, it's unclear that a little guy with a "zero-patience policy" that fixates on price price price as a principle, will likely become a big guy some day. Even if they did become a big guy some day, you would still have a lot of problems making money from them. ------ DeanWormer I found this ~20 page guide Fog Creek put out a few years ago and it got me excited about switching from a technical role into sales. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a high level understanding of Enterprise sales. [https://www.fogcreek.com/guide/The-most-basic-things-your- co...](https://www.fogcreek.com/guide/The-most-basic-things-your-company- needs-to-know-about-sales.pdf) ------ Bromskloss Direct link: [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57daf6098419c27febcd4...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57daf6098419c27febcd400b/t/5b0b4dc68a922dbfa263b389/1527467516482/Entrepid_How+To+Sell.pdf) ------ rohamg i've worked with Tyler and Entrepid across multiple of our portfolio companies at Axiom Zen and been super impressed every time ZenHub wouldnt be where it is today without Tyler (we have dozens of Fortune 500 companies as customers) Tyler is a close friend so at this point i am biased, but Entrepid has built a team of humble, holistic thinkers with deep expertise in sales and high-touch growth strategy ------ sparrish Nice guide for high-touch sales. I'd love to see something similar for low-touch/no-touch sales SaaS. ~~~ goatherders "Low touch / no touch" sales is also known as "marketing." I don't know you or your intentions so this may not be directed at you, but I've found that most people looking to develop a low-touch sales engine are really saying "Ew...sales...I don't want to have to do that. Maybe if I blog enough and my site looks good I won't have to actually, you know, TALK to potential customers." I also find that anything above about $70/month MRR is going to require talking to the person. $70 is a limit that most companies will allow to be expensed without much question. MAYBE you can get that number to $100 in the right market. Above $100? Good luck. And if you are selling a $100+ product with no-touch then you are really missing out on TONS of business that could come your way if you just put in some actual sales effort. ~~~ anoncoward111 If I could offer some perspective from someone in the sales trenches: Cold calling does not work. No matter how good your script is, your email, your personality, your talk track, your data sources, your persistence, cold calling does not work. It is a poor ROI. All real sales are made either through the customer opting in to communicate (response to an email blast, inbound lead from the company phone, a referral etc)... or through nepotism and cronyism and ivy league networks of multi millionaires. Hint: this is how Oracle is alive to this day. If I was in charge of selling a product over $100, I would create the most awesome, viral content you would ever see about our product. I would release a free version to 99% of the world that is truly usable and awesome. This is what join.me did to compete with Webex and Skype for Business and GoToMeeting. Remember: if you don't have an existing network, you don't have any business. Start marketing before you start selling. ~~~ bharris315 Bryan from Entrepid Partners here... we find that highly targetted, outbound cold emails are actually the best place to start prospecting. In our experience, if you do the extra work to personalize the email and focus in on why your product/service is relevant to the buyer's pain points, we've seen response rates as high as 30% with the majority of those replies turning into an intro call with the buyer. ~~~ anoncoward111 Hi Bryan :) >highly targeted, outbound cold emails... ...are neither scalable nor calls, in my mind. Here's my opinions: 1) I am currently manually building my own unsolicited email list for the purpose of marketing my b2b service. I have good, quality data sources with no bounce rates and right personas, but it is neither cheap nor simple to enter this data manually 2) even if I send these people highly targeted and well-crafted emails that are friendly and insightful and pithy, it is a slow process with diminishing returns... 3)... because most people add me to their spam filter these days. It is trivial to do so. I would infinitely prefer to invest my time in creating excellent, viral content and offering users a free entry level service with few restrictions. I would then spend all my time obsessively devoting myself to those users who have a big budget and greatly desire to receive communication from me. Lastly, I dare say that someone who responds to a cold email will probably just end up kicking tires. Tire kicking is automated away with my free demo. ~~~ goatherders Certainly more than one way to do this, but I agree with Bryan. Highly targeted email lists are scaleable enough and there is plenty of tech to make them more personal than ever. I disagree a great deal with the idea that cold respondents "end up kicking tires." 100% of my marketing is cold email. 100% of the marketing I do for clients is cold email. I'm happy with my ROI and so are they. ------ akulbe I do Chef and Ansible development. I'd love to know how to sell and find more good customers. I have a long-term customer who's had me on what amounts to a staff augmentation project for 3 years. I know it won't last forever. How would you go about finding more projects like this? ~~~ goatherders Email me and I would be glad to have a back and forth for free. Good sales process comes down to patience and persistence and I can coach you through both if you dont mind the sometimes-slowness of email. ------ goatherders Kudos to you guys. Please report back in a few weeks with the metrics on the number of leads this created for you. I'm in the same space and this content marketing is golden. ------ throwawayosiu1 This actually scares me. I want to bootstrap an SaaS company focused on enterprise / b2b soon and being bootstraped I can't afford to hire an sales rep/ account manager (or be one myself while working on the product) for what looks like a long process. This is definitely a scary thought in my opinion. Fingers crossed, I hope that's a good problem to have. ~~~ consumer451 We are exactly at this stage right now. Bootstrapped, enterprise SaaS, ready for initial sales. This post could not have been more timely for me. I'm not sure if this is possible in your niche, but we are partnering with a consulting company which provides services in the same industry/niche. We will give them a cut from the sales to do this exact process. Many leads will come from them as well. I could not imagine doing this any other way at the moment. Eventually we will certainly hire a full time salesperson. edit: we got really lucky that this consulting company had some biz dev people who used to do SaaS sales at a previous employer. ~~~ bharris315 In our experience, the founder should close the first 3-10 enterprise deals on their own. When you chose to outsource, you may close some deals, but you lose out on the early customer product feedback. The relationships with your early customers are key. You need to make your early customers your biggest fans to show how your product changed their business through references and/or mini-case studies. ~~~ consumer451 Oh, I am definitely in on all calls at this point. And thanks for the rest of the advice, I am trying to follow it already. ------ vinceguidry Is there an awesome list for business that this can be added to? \--edit nevermind, here it is: [https://github.com/cameronroe/awesome- marketing](https://github.com/cameronroe/awesome-marketing) it's not added to the main awesome list, so I'm making a pull req for that too. ------ not_that_noob Excellent guide - rings true. ------ gurglz This is super helpful! ------ ministrator I'd recommend also reading this: [https://medium.com/@fairpixelsco/b2b-growth- strategies-by-in...](https://medium.com/@fairpixelsco/b2b-growth-strategies- by-indiehackers-8ab87ed66d0d) It's an analysis of successful growth strategies used by B2B SaaS Startups that are listed on Indiehackers.com As well as the Saastr podcast. Full of gems on how to sell.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
High doses of ketamine can temporarily switch off the brain, say researchers - hhs https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/high-doses-of-ketamine-can-temporarily-switch-off-the-brain-say-researchers ====== sibeliuss My experience with Ketamine was that it was simply _too much fun, too weird, and felt too good_ \-- I had to distance myself from it, regarding it like some kind of psychedelic heroin. I can understand why it's addictive. However, it does have its purpose. I've heard of a lot of people cleaning up their lives through its application. And reading about it is always fascinating -- Stanislav Grof: [https://realitysandwich.com/321100/my-ketamine-journeys- or-k...](https://realitysandwich.com/321100/my-ketamine-journeys-or-ketamine- and-the-enchantment-of-other-worlds/) ------ pinopinopino Well, I honestly can say, that a hole dose of ketamine might change you in ways you can't comprehend before you go into it. It made me view consciousness as something special, not entirely captured by physical laws. It is hard to explain, but beware before you enter. It changes you. ~~~ mc32 Would it have any therapeutic effect for people convicted of violent crimes? Even white collar crimes like embezzlement? Obviously they’d have to volunteer for something like that but it’d be interesting to see if it changes them for he better or worse... ~~~ crocodiletears I'd be worried about the state endorsing or experimenting with this, even as a voluntary measure. Coming withing even an AU of normalizing pharmacologically 'correcting' asocial behavior could put us on a very dark path. ~~~ fragmede For better or worse, we're very much already on this path. We chemically 'corrected' 'asocial' behavior by chemically castrating homosexuals, the most high profile case being Alan Turing in the 1950's. He is believed to have later committed suicide. Society's views on homosexuality have progressed since then, but there _is_ a bar for being gainfully employed and housed in the US. Unmediated, some mentally ill people are not able to meet that bar. Too asocial to hold down a job and thus too poor to afford housing. Medicated, they are. If the alternative to being medicated and a productive member of society is to be homeless or in prison, aren't we already there? For those that are able to finding the right medication, it's life-changing. We should be very _very_ cautious about what the state can force people to do, but we should all strive for a society that's better equipped to handle and treat mental illness and the problems that stem from that. ------ hprotagonist depression: have you tried turning it off and then back on again? tongue in cheek, but i think the more we learn about mechanism of action the more it’s not the worst 1st order approximation. ~~~ tsco77 Ketamine, psilocybin and electro conclusive therapy are all similar in that regards. Ect is the definitive treatment of resistant depression, but if you can get the same effect without requiring a psychiatrist, anesthesiologist, cna, respiratory, and nursing, why wouldn't you? ------ natch I was lucky / unlucky enough to have one ketamine experience due to a shoulder dislocation. I cannot stress highly enough that I would not recommend it unless you are highly tolerant of some disturbing stuff. It was a very short (under 15 seconds), very intense, forced experience of being in essentially an insect mind that was shunted along a path of thought and movement in a 2D maze with no options whatsoever. It led to a very dark place with a surprise ending that felt hopeless beyond anything I could have imagined. The punchline was I learned in real time that not only was I dying (in the trip, not in real life) but also that the entire universe did not actually exist and never had; it had all been an illusion and a lie. And as I was learning this everything shrank down to a point and blinked out, no time for questioning, all gone. Fortunately at the same time a small part of me was watching the process from the side (in horror) and somehow at some level I had a distant inkling and ray of hope that it was all a trip. And then it was over and... extremely slow fade back to consciousness over 15 minutes or so. Very not recommended but very interesting. ~~~ Mo3 .. and the part of you that watched all of this and was concious of it happening is the real you ~~~ warent That's my understanding of it as well. All this about the universe ending, never existing, being an illusion and a lie, that's just the collapse of a ego. The lie it tells us so that we fight for its continued existence is that the other side of it is some kind of horrific oblivion. Actually, the other side is a serene wholeness. It is the source of beauty. The individual ego is a useful way for the universe to experience itself in a subject/object relationship and we should respect it for what it is, but a side-effect of confusing the real self with this flimsy thing is pain and suffering due to the delusion of separation. I invite anyone who has had this experience, rather than compartmentalizing it as a bad thing, to try and integrate it into life in productive ways. It can lead to some really wonderful things. ~~~ natch Yeah I do try to take the good from it. Thanks for the comment. ~~~ Mo3 Good and bad is simply perspective, my friend. Go on Youtube and look for: \- Eckhart Tolle - The park bench (and everything else) \- Adyashanti - Enlightenment Unfolding (and everything else) It takes years, but you'll come to terms with it. ------ dbqpdb So I'm no scientician, but 24mg/kg is like 1.5g for an average human. I'm pretty sure that this would not only turn of a humans brain, it may cause it to burst into flames as well. ~~~ ipnon The median lethal dose for people appears to be between 6g and 32g depending on method of administration. [0] [https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_faq.shtml](https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_faq.shtml) edit: After investigating, the source for this claim is the Merck Index from 1989, which is not readily available online. Anyone who would use the above information to determine the appropriate ketamine dose for themselves or someone else is a dangerous fool. ------ loceng Hopefully people will have an open mind reading my comment, however within spiritual circles it is somewhat known that many people can't tolerate doing any type of entheogen too many times; what that amount of times is and dosing where you lose complete connection will be subjective. I'm also not trying to suggest all changes that occur after going through such an experience is the act of "losing your soul or connection to your soul" \- however that arguably is possibility at one end of the spectrum of possibilities. Some people seem fine doing Ayahuasca their whole lives, like shamans - whether they are now dependant on it and have regular access to it is another question, however other people through ego mind addiction (entheogens are powerful for breaking physical addictions, however are addictive for the mind) and force themselves into ceremonies or experience that they know they will regularly if not 100% of the time experience pure terror, not listening to their body's fear response for what it doesn't want to experience and is trying to guide them away from experiencing - instead their ego mind maintaining control and tricks them to continue; the body is inherently intelligent and part of the equation that needs to not be ignored to find balance and allowing your body's systems to guide you to optimal health, equilibrium. ~~~ craftinator > however within spiritual circles it is somewhat known Writing things like this is really losses credibility for you. ~~~ loceng Oh yeah? How else would you define the context of people who gather regularly in community in relation to spirituality or gatherings for ceremony? Curious what preconceptions and prejudices you have of who you classify that are automatically discredited in your mind because they use the term "spiritual circle" \- or am I misunderstanding what in that sentence discredits me? Ever been to an Ayahuasca ceremony or talking circle? Just trying to get an idea of your own experiences. ~~~ heavenlyblue Last time I had been in a spiritual circle in London there was a guy telling a bunch of single mothers that when he went to India he saw flying meditating yogis. The funny thing is that the mothers were there for the company (it was a pleasant place to be, that’s why I was visiting too); but the guy’s assumption was that everyone visiting was literally an idiot because he thought they came there for his theories. I am sorry but most of the time when I hear this another theory of mind (of which there’s a bunch on Shroomery btw - you are not alone) and “spiritual circles” this is what I imagine you are. ------ UI_at_80x24 I have undergone several ketamine treatments for depression. I have had 1 positive session out of 9 total. Some trips were 'fun' others were not. My first experience with it was quite rough. The positive experience went as follows: pure nothingness. (I refer to it internally as `#cat brain >/dev/null`) It was incredible. Hope that I can silence all the noise in my brain. It was peace. It may have been zen. I've wanted to kill myself just so I can return to that level of peace. I haven't because I shouldn't. But it gives me hope that I won't feel this way forever. I have tried a variety of audio therapy and cognitive direction while undergoing treatment to assist the process. Examples include: (a) concentrated positive thoughts {thinking of a happy place/directed peaceful imagery} (b) "not thinking" just let the trip take me wherever it goes. {this may be the best course of treatment} (c) soothing sounds {nature sounds, music used while meditating, etc} (d) guided meditation The most recurrent theme I experienced (the trips would include visual and auditory hallucinations) would be repeating geometric patterns and a techo/dub-step style of music. These were pleasant experiences that I didn't mind, although I felt that they didn't quite do the trick. ~~~ Marciplan Hey there. I hope you’re well on your way to feeling better/happy. Best of luck :) ------ spurdoman77 My personal empirical research agrees with the headline. ~~~ sneak > _Six of the sheep were given a single higher dose of ketamine, 24mg /kg. > This is at the high end of the anaesthetic range. Initially, the same > response was seen as with a lower dose. But within two minutes of > administering the drug, the brain activity of five of these six sheep > stopped completely, one of them for several minutes - a phenomenon that has > never been seen before._ You have taken 24mg/kg of ketamine before? I find that nearly impossible to believe. Approximately 15% of that dosage causes mammals to lose consciousness. ~~~ codetrotter What would happen to a human taking such a big dose? Brain damage? Death? Permanent coma? And would the outcome be the same even if monitored by healthcare professionals? Or would they be able to stop the person from taking damage from it? ~~~ Johnjonjoan "Ketamine abusers are known to take doses many times higher than those given to the sheep in this research. It is also likely that progressively higher doses have to be taken to get the same effect. The researchers say that such high doses can cause liver damage, may stop the heart, and be fatal." ~~~ ketamine__ It is _really_ hard to find a fatality attributed to ketamine. Recreational users are known to take heroic doses. This sounds like pure speculation. ------ plerpin Not surprised, vets already have been using ketamine to anesthetize reptiles. ~~~ monadic2 It's used to sedate humans, too: [https://www.denverpost.com/2019/10/14/ketamine-sedative- law-...](https://www.denverpost.com/2019/10/14/ketamine-sedative-law- enforcement-elijah-mcclain/) ------ ben_stevenson I've been working for a Ketamine Clinic the past few months, and it's fascinating to learn about (bunch of good resources here: [https://www.fargoketamineclinic.com](https://www.fargoketamineclinic.com) ). While it can be incredibly addicting, it's also opening new research into solving depression. Because it works differently than traditional antidepressants by targeting the NMDA receptors and binding to them to increase glutamate, it could vastly help people with treatment resistant depression. The problem is that with high doses like this article suggests, it can be dangerous. So it's a complicated area. ------ GordonS It feels like most drugs change your mood or appear to change your environment. The thing about k-hole level doses of ketamine is that it feels like it transports you to another place entirely - lot's of people speak of feeling the presence of multiple universes and timelines, and of feeling like they are moving between them. I have a friend who, after his first k-hole experience, was completely in awe of life and the universe for some time afterwards. He would become emotional and choked up talking about the beauty of it. He was also half way convinced that ketamine would allow him to travel through space and time to anywhere while in the hole. He couldn't wait to throw himself back into a hole so he could travel the torrent of the universe stream and explore further. Nobody here has mentioned Erowid yet - I highly recommend it if you want to read more about people's experiences while on ketamine, or indeed any other drug. ------ oceanghost The spiritual experiences on ketamine and other arylcyclohexylamine are _intense_. Far more intense for me than any other drug I've tried. I've had unexplainable experiences as well, where information retrieved in the drug state turned out was accurate. ~~~ jeffbee That’s the wonderful thing about drugs: they trigger the areas of the brain that normally signal an insight or epiphany, but without the hassle of having an actual epiphany. In reality you’re lying motionless on the floor for hours thinking nothing. ~~~ tasty_freeze Ages ago my next older brother told me that when he smoked pot he liked to sit and think because he had deep insights, and the right answer to what he was considering was clearer than in a sober state. He didn't smoke around me and I hadn't (and still haven't) smoked pot. One Saturday night he came home and it was obvious he was pretty baked. That is when he dropped one of his insight bombshells on me: Stevie Wonder is the Frank Sinatra of our generation. I had the same though you just made: maybe it wasn't that he had clearer insights, just the perception of it because other thoughts that might contradict the conclusion didn't cross his mind. ------ GordonS I wonder if this could be used in the treatment of brain injuries. Let's say someone comes into the ER with a brain bleed / stroke - could they induce a brain shutdown to help prevent further damage, while they worked on the injury? ~~~ sriacha That's an interesting thought. I wonder if there are any parallels with how hypothermia can be induced to preserve brain function (following a period of hypoxia)? ~~~ GordonS That's exactly the thing that spurred my thinking :) ------ tezza And people dancing on large doses of Ketamine clearly have little brain intervention. The K Hole must be the plug hole of one’s mind ~~~ dkersten Dancing on ketamine is such a foreign concept to me. At low doses, its more like sit quietly because my muscles are so relaxed and at high doses (still low doses compared to the article) its lie on the floor while falling through the void. I couldn’t imagine physical activity in either case. ~~~ thatcat There are multiple forms: esketamine, arketamine, and a racemic mixture of both of those. Es type is much more effective as anesthetic than other types so user could experience the hallucinogen effects while remaining sort of mobile. ~~~ dkersten Sort of mobile, sure. I’ve been able to walk around on it. A bit wobbly, but doable. Dancing would be a level of exertion beyond that though. ------ nubb s/temporarily/permanently I partied a lot as a kid and this is a lethal dosage for humans. ~~~ ipnon The median lethal dose for humans appears to be between 6g and 32g depending on the method of administration.[0] Drugs have different median lethal mg/kg dose ratios across species.[1] [0] [https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_faq.shtml](https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_faq.shtml) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose#Examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose#Examples) edit: After investigating, the source for this claim is the Merck Index from 1989, which is not readily available online. Anyone who would use the above information to determine the appropriate ketamine dose for themselves or someone else is a dangerous fool. ------ TomMarius Is the person still the same person? ~~~ ravenstine There's no such thing. We are different people second by second. ~~~ 6510 That must be annoying. ------ softwarejosh isnt ketamine a horse tranquillizer lol, doesnt seem like a stretch for it to be an anesthetic ~~~ bookofjoe It is indeed a horse tranquilizer; it works across species, in cats, dogs, humans, and probably myriad others. ------ Valmar Why not post the actual source, rather than some second-hand clickbait? "Characteristic patterns of EEG oscillations in sheep (Ovis aries) induced by ketamine may explain the psychotropic effects seen in humans" [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66023-8?error=coo...](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66023-8?error=cookies_not_supported&code=8efd8d81-a3eb-4044-8208-2ea77d5a0eac) ~~~ kf ...seems like the official press release of the paper so quite okay. ------ omginternets Enough of anything can _permanently_ switch off the brain. I really wish scientific reporters would at least attempt to use meaningful language in their headlines. ~~~ kylebyproxy > But within two minutes of administering the drug, the brain activity of five > of these six sheep stopped completely, one of them for several minutes - a > phenomenon that has never been seen before. ... > “A few minutes later their brains were functioning normally again - it was > as though they had just been switched off and on.” Headline seems spot-on to me. What exactly is your gripe? ~~~ fortran77 I think he's had too much ketamine.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
For those who aren’t quite sure why these media layoffs keep happening - longdefeat https://twitter.com/JeremyLittau/status/1088503510184927233 ====== chiph > Classified ads were a damn boondoggle. $500 in a mid-metro to place a car > ad. A friend's parent just passed away. There is a state law that says that a death notice must be published in the local paper so that unknown creditors can be found. The paper charges $750 for a three-line notice that is published weekly for four weeks. The executor/executrix must retain copies of the notices as proof for the court. ------ imhelpingu Right. The problem is _anything at all_ other than _people who had credibility as their only asset have demonstrated repeatedly that they no longer have credibility._ They will always come up with _absolutely anything_ other than "we stopped objectively reporting on current events." _Anything but_ "we started generating pages of entertainment-oriented crap and snarky opinion pieces that a sophomore in college could have (easily) written." ------ Waterluvian I feel so weird saying this at 32 but I'm new to Twitter. And I find these tweet chains to tell a larger story really weird. We solved this problem already. ------ matheweis More or less a dup: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18994760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18994760)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Chaos Computer Club breaks Apple TouchID - biafra http://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2013/ccc-breaks-apple-touchid ====== abalone Just to keep things in perspective, the goal of Touch ID is not to be unhackable. The goal is to get more consumers to move from _zero_ security to pretty good security. A very large number of people don't put any kind of passcode of any kind on their phone, simply because it's inconvenient. Touch ID is designed for them. It's not designed to secure nuclear footballs. Touch ID is going to _massively_ reduce the number of totally unsecured iPhones that require zero effort to access. That's the goal. I think some people see "fingerprint scanner" and think "military-grade security" because that's where we've seen scanners before in movies and such. But this is really very much a solution for the consumer market, where _convenience_ and _usability_ are critical features of a security system. Sometimes infosec folks forget that. If you make it too hard to use (passcodes), people just bypass it. So you can blame the user, or you can try to design something easier to use. If in the end you've improved the overall security landscape, you've succeeded. I think that's what Apple is doing here. ~~~ DasIch Touch ID is not "pretty good security" it's not even "good security" it's simply very bad security. Touch ID is better than nothing and that people use Touch ID instead of nothing is better than the current state but not by much and this definitely isn't a huge achievement. Which is really the biggest issue with Touch ID, it's advertised as such and people believe it. ~~~ epo Having a lock in your front door is not perfect but it is much better than not having one at all. The way that Apple haters use stunts like this to suspend normal logic and reasoning in order to express their juvenile spite is staggering. No one, ever, claimed TouchID was impregnable, but it _is_ very good security and is better than what the vast majority of people do at present. Anyone prepared to devote the time and resources that CCC did to breaking your phone has other simpler means at their disposal. I personally believe that no one else will replicate this achievement because it is simply a publicity stunt to get clicks and feed the hordes of anti-Apple zealots. ~~~ hahainternet > Anyone prepared to devote the time and resources that CCC did to breaking > your phone has other simpler means at their disposal Really? Lift someone's print, leave it with superglue, scan and print it and then dump glue on the scan. That seems to be the sum total of what needs to be done. You need only sticky tape to lift the print and the rest can be done in an hour. It sounds quite action movie, but in reality it's pretty damn simple and if I wanted to get access to your phone I could easily prepare it in advance and carry a tiny latex strip in my wallet for just the right occasion without your knowledge at any point. ~~~ deveac _It sounds quite action movie, but in reality it 's pretty damn simple_ Also in reality it will foil over 99% of potential unauthorized activation attempts as most people aren't going to craft fingerprints to get into someone's device. If reality is the bar you're using, TouchID still wins. ------ MarcScott If we've learned anything over the past few months, it is that security is an illusion when it comes to Google, Apple and Facebook. The fingerprint scanner is not intended to protect your personal data from being accessed by nefarious cyber-spooks or crackers. The $5 dollar wrench technique is fairly effective in bypassing such security anyway. The fingerprint scanner is there so that when your phone is nicked by a mugger, they can't reset to factory defaults and sell it on eBay. If some knife wielding thug that robs me of my phone has the intellectual capability of lifting my fingerprints off the case and then using them to bypass the security, he still has to know my AppleID password before he can remove the 'Find my Phone' feature. Give Apple a break. This is just another layer of security. It's _not_ the panacea to all our security woes, and they have never claimed it was. ~~~ chmars Giving Apple a break? Just another layer of security? That's not how Apple describes it: [http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5949?viewlocale=en_US](http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5949?viewlocale=en_US) And selling a stolen iPhone on eBay does not need a password or a fingerprint, a jailbreak is enough … ~~~ nobodyshere Jailbreak is enough... When it exists. And for now it doesn't. ~~~ arbitrage taking past trends into consideration, it looks like you're betting on the wrong horse, here. it will exist. ~~~ tptacek What are the actual trends on jailbreaks for iOS on current hardware? ------ WestCoastJustin The _" How to fake fingerprints"_ link [1], is one of the scariest things I have seen, given how simple it is, and how much we reply on fingerprints for linking people to crimes. BTW, for anyone who does not know about Chaos Computer Club (CCC) [2], they run a massive conference in EU. You can look at some of their talks @ [http://media.ccc.de/](http://media.ccc.de/) [1] [http://dasalte.ccc.de/biometrie/fingerabdruck_kopieren?langu...](http://dasalte.ccc.de/biometrie/fingerabdruck_kopieren?language=en) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Computer_Club](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Computer_Club) ~~~ yellowbkpk Frontline had an excellent piece on the (lack of) reliability behind most of crime forensics. Fingerprints in particular are mentioned as being very unreliable and unscientific. The only scientifically rigorous piece of "CSI" is DNA matching. [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/real- csi/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/real-csi/) ~~~ auctiontheory Even DNA can provide false negatives in the case of human chimeras. ~~~ Amadou Or just someone skilled enough to place fake dna in his body such that the person taking the sample is fooled into taking it from the fake dna. Yes, this really happened - at least once that we know of: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Schneeberger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Schneeberger) ~~~ coldtea Or someone just being careful with his DNA at the crime he commits, that then places someone else's DNA that he wants to frame? ~~~ pavel_lishin That would work in the sort of Hollywood movie where the government has everyone's DNA on file. Then again, I guess we've seen that you literally cannot be too paranoid. ~~~ coldtea > _That would work in the sort of Hollywood movie where the government has > everyone 's DNA on file._ You don't have to have "everyone's DNA on file". It's actually pretty trivial even for your neighbor or whoever to get your DNA. As for the police falsifying evidence, there's a wikipedia-long history of cases, in Europe, Latin America, Asia, etc. Especially in politically charged times, like the sixties and seventies. Heck, something like half of Italy's government in the 70's have been proved in later Italian courts to be involved in such things. ~~~ pavel_lishin > You don't have to have "everyone's DNA on file". It's actually pretty > trivial even for your neighbor or whoever to get your DNA. Sorry, I wasn't clear. I can dump a gallon of your blood and semen onto a dead guy in an alley, but how would the government trace that blood and semen back to you? ~~~ CaveTech They don't have to necessarily trace it back to me, as long as they can't trace it back to _you_. ------ neilk I think they're missing the point. The passcode on an iPhone defends against other people in your environment - family members, coworkers, roommates - getting your information opportunistically. It doesn't defend against hackers, the government, or even slightly savvy thieves. Also, if a fingerprint sensor is significantly easier to use, and in practice will deter a class of privacy violations, it could increase overall security. This is a question you can only answer by looking how people behave, not solely with an analysis of the technology. The fingerprint sensor worries me more that it records biometric information at all. It's one thing to leave fingerprints all around your environment, but there is now the potential to steal your biometrics over the internet. The device supposedly hashes the data derived from your fingerprint, presumably with a hardware-based secret, but I worry someone will find a way around that. (EDIT: maybe this is physically impossible; can someone provide details?) Also, the issues that CCC discusses about how fingerprint unlocking can be coerced are important. Many law enforcement organizations now have devices that can scan smartphone data, which is bad enough, but at least the use of those devices are controlled. A fingerprint sensor now allows a cop to handcuff someone, jam his or her finger onto the phone, and then to (for instance) delete an incriminating video. Likewise anyone else willing to use force. Might become the next schoolyard amusement for bullies, if your kid has a smartphone. ~~~ controv3 > I think they're missing the point. The passcode on an iPhone defends against > other people in your environment - family members, coworkers, roommates - > getting your information opportunistically. It doesn't defend against > hackers, the government, or even slightly savvy thieves. The Google Chrome Security team begs to differ [1]. According to them giving someone the illusion of security is bad. [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6165708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6165708) ~~~ CamperBob2 Giving someone the illusion of security is bad because it displaces their _understanding_ of security. An understanding of security will reveal that security is not a binary state of affairs. It's perfectly reasonable to trust known-imperfect mechanisms like the iPhone fingerprint reader to keep honest people honest and discourage ordinary muggers and thieves. I don't need military-grade access control for my personal iPhone, I don't want the inconvenience that would necessarily accompany it, _and I damned sure don 't want to pay for it._ And the Google Chrome guy is correct in all respects: it's not reasonable to expect an application to provide security that's redundant with security provided by user accounts on the OS it runs on. It would be better to teach users to create separate accounts on their system, if they want to hide their local passwords from other members of their family. ~~~ epo You are completely detached from normal practical realities, as such your beliefs on security can be safely disregarded. ------ arrrg Expected. Still much, much better security than no code at all. I will use it (with full knowledge of its downsides and tradeoffs) and it would behoove the CCC to not portray security as a binary state. (Just as much as it would behoove Apple to be truthful in their marketing.) Don't use it if thieves would consider going through all the effort of faking out the scanner. That's what I take from this no doubt valuable and important work from the CCC. (I assume that iPhone tracking and activation lock cannot be disabled with the fingerprint, so stolen phones will still be easily remotely wiped and bricked, with fingerprint or without. Thieves will have to be crafty and quick if the want to pull this off.) ~~~ makomk Not that expected. I know a lot of people were BSing about how much more secure Apple's fingerprint sensor was and how the usual techniques for faking a finger wouldn't work on it, including some security researchers. ~~~ thrownaway2424 Yes. I anxiously await Gruber's lengthy post-mortem about the fingerprint reader being just as bad as all previous fingerprint readers, equal in number, length and enthusiasm to his previous posts about how wonderful and advanced it is. ~~~ Anechoic I know folks love to have on Gruber, but looking at df.net I don't see where he has compared the security of TouchID to other fingerprint readers - rather he's compared the convenience and performance of TouchID to other fingerprint implementations, and I don't know that anything in the OP would, or should, change his assessment of that. (not an iPhone or Android user, at least not yet). ~~~ yapcguy Gruber is an ignorant fanboy. There are too many examples to pick from, but here's a recent one. In his iPhone 5S review he rambles on about how Apple is an innovator and picks out the A7 procesor, TouchID and a new burst-mode camera feature: "But the real innovation — there’s that word — is software, right there on the device itself, that makes it easy to select only the shots from those bursts that you really want to keep, and to throw away the rest." Yet Samsung did the same thing for the S3 back in 2012. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxXEAyuoyQk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxXEAyuoyQk) ~~~ melange So rather than addressing the point, you attack him on something completely different. Presumably because there are actually no examples where he's been wrong about TouchID. ~~~ yapcguy No, I couldn't be bothered because the man writes guff. [http://daringfireball.net/2013/09/the_iphone_5s_and_5c](http://daringfireball.net/2013/09/the_iphone_5s_and_5c) > "You know how iOS touch latency and scrolling performance have always been > far ahead of its competition? The way you could just tell that internally, > Apple had uncompromising standards for how responsive these things needed to > be? That’s what Touch ID is like — it’s to all previous fingerprint scanners > I’ve seen what the original iPhone was to previous touchscreen computers." Make that fawning guff. Convenient that he forgets the uncompromising standards of Apple Maps. > "Touch ID’s extraordinary performance and accuracy fit right into that > story." No benchmarks or comparisons to justify this hype compared to other fingerprint scanners. How do we know it's not the same as a cheap $1 RF scanner from China? > " a complete experience hosted entirely on the device. Your fingerprint data > is not just “not stored in iCloud yet”, it is not stored in iCloud by > design, and according to my sources, never will be." Rubbish. He knows nothing about Apple's roadmap. He always cites his inside "sources" yet he has NEVER broken any story where he had the lead on a scoop. Not on any products or corporate announcements. I don't care what an armchair blogger thinks about TouchID. I do however care what the Chaos Computer Club thinks because they actually know what they are talking about. ~~~ gurkendoktor > Convenient that he forgets the uncompromising standards of Apple Maps. In the _next paragraph_ , he writes that Apple sucks at online services, and that TouchID is great precisely because it's a completely offline feature. You haven't even read the article. I wish HN would blacklist any mention of Gruber's name. ------ gjmulhol I have accidentally seen basically all of my friends' passcodes as they type it in at bars etc. I could get into their phones easily. TouchID is more secure than that simply because someone needs to take a 2400dpi image of the person's finger to do it. Locks (when physical access to a device is available) are to keep honest people honest. Most security experts that I know agree that if an intruder has physical access to a device, it can be considered compromised because it is just a matter of time. ~~~ lawnchair_larry > Most security experts that I know agree that if an intruder has physical > access to a device, it can be considered compromised because it is just a > matter of time. Anyone who says this is not a security expert. That hasn't been true since full disk encryption became available. A properly encrypted device is a brick if stolen, which is the only reason to have full disk encryption in the first place. ~~~ gjmulhol Most people outside of this community are not using disk encryption. With that said and the caveat that I am not an encryption expert myself: given an infinite amount of computing power and an infinite amount of time, can full disk encryption not be broken? If so, then it is just a question of computing power and time, not of whether it is possible to get to the data. ~~~ unimpressive >given an infinite amount of computing power and an infinite amount of time, can full disk encryption not be broken? Sure. But the difference between "infinite" and "a couple billion years" from a human perspective is minute. ------ sehrope Considering that people generally don't wear gloves when they use their phones this is like having a picture of your key on your door. Combine that with what we know you can do with pictures of keys[1] and yes it's obviously not a very good idea. [1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6167246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6167246) ~~~ bobbles no no no no no. This is not being done by lifting an existing print from the existing device. They're taking a photo of the authorised FINGER and using that to create their fake finger... I don't see how this could be considered a significant issue unless you are going to steal someones phone AND somehow get a still 2400 dpi photo of the surface of their finger ~~~ ethanhunt_ You are incorrect. Second sentence of the article: "A fingerprint of the phone user, photographed from a glass surface, was enough to create a fake finger that could unlock an iPhone 5s secured with TouchID." ~~~ czhiddy Which glass surface? The oleophobic glass on the iPhone itself? If the print was copied directly from one of the phone surfaces, you'd think that the CCC would want to include that little tidbit. ~~~ slantyyz >> Which glass surface? The oleophobic glass on the iPhone itself? That brings up another interesting point -- I wonder how many people are going to put screen protectors on their 5S's that are not oleophobic. ------ hrktb In the comments there is so much focus on the convenient aspect of TouchID. I agree, but the main point I think is that we have a situation where: \- fingerprint authentication will be seen as more casual and mainstream than it was before [1] \- people will still leave fingerprints everywhere, including around and on the fingerprint sensors \- once a high resolution image of a fingerprint is done, it can be re-used for literaly a lifetime (imagine keeping track of someone for years and use his/her fingerprints anytime it's needed) \- if enough applications rely on fingeprint authentication, exchanging fingerprint databases might become lucrative enough From this point of view, seeing TouchID as just a cute way adding some security to a phone is too candid I think. It will have an immediate positive effect for casual phone locking, but would bring much worse effects down the line. Optimisticly no one would rely on fingerprints alone to authenticate users for anything important. But the definition of what's important is blurry, and there is so many situations now where weak passwords are used, but it would be so tempting to switch to fingerprints (door unlock for instance...). [1] laptops had finger unlock features for years now, but it never really made it to the wild masses I think. Fujitsu phones had a fingerprint reader too, but again, I don't remember other makers picking up the feature. ------ kirillzubovsky This is a really silly statement - "This demonstrates – again – that fingerprint biometrics is unsuitable as access control method and should be avoided." Sure, maybe you can bypass this mechanism, but as an everyday password, this is still a substantially easier tool than typing in a 4-digit password. In fact, at least you cannot easily spoof my fingerprint at a public location, while you could certainly easily figure out my password by just standing over me when I type it. I wonder how many mall cameras, street cameras and all sorts of public surveillance cameras have all our passwords? ~~~ MBCook > this is still a substantially easier tool than typing in a 4-digit password. I know tons of people, including myself, who don't use _any_ passcode on their phone because the 4 digit stuff is a hassle. CCC is arguing this isn't pick-proof anti-tampering deadbolt, when right now a huge number of users _don 't even have a door_. It's still a MASSIVE improvement. ------ professorTuring Of course they have broken it, I had no doubt it would be broken like any other fingerprint security system. The issue here is that it's ok, it doesn't really matter. It is all about the amount of security you need. Does a normal user need unbreakable security? No. The security provided with this method is more than ok, it is kinda secure and it's faster (imho) than writing your passcode. After all your "enemies" here are nosy friends or similar... If you need "unbreakable" security then you shouldn't use iphone or android, or you should use an specific secure storage application (cyphered content, hard to guess pass or whatever). If you need "unbreakable" security you better consider hiring a security consultant. So, the question here is, are the security systems in mobile devices more than fine for most normal users? I guess so... ------ pcl Here's an idea that would improve security in conjunction with the new sensor: Create a random pattern of ridges and, using the technique outlined in the OP, build a latex key. Attach that to your keychain (in some sort of case to improve durability, maybe). Then, enjoy 2-factor auth, between the phone's pass code and the synthetic fingerprint. ~~~ dwaltrip Wow cool idea, someone needs to test that ------ chmars What is the resolution of the fingerprint image stored in biometric passport, i.e., the kind of passport you need to enter the US? Biometric passports store an actual fingerprint image and not just a hash like the iPhone 5S. So if the resolution was high enough, everyone with access to a biometric passport – for example by scanning people carrying such passports around at an airport – could forge fingerprints … ~~~ andrewpi Biometric passports don't necessarily include fingerprint data. For example, current US passports are considered biometric but do not include fingerprint data since fingerprinting is not required to obtain a US passport. ~~~ chmars That's interesting, thank you – especially because I had to get a biometric passport with fingerprints in order to enter the US … ------ sarreph An interesting comment on the YouTube video: Not cleaning your iPhone is likely to leave fingerprint evidence/marks directly on the device's housing that could be faked. ------ joejohnson "[I]t is far too easy to make fake fingers out of lifted prints" Really? It seemed like this was a lot harder then just shoulder-surfing someone entering their passcode. Touch ID may be hackable, but this is still way harder for the average person to hack than a simple passcode. AND it's way easier to swipe your finger than type in a code! Touch ID can't be worse for security; it appears it's at least a bit better. ------ reillyse Talk about missing the point. I dislike entering a passcode every time I pick up my phone. Yet if someone steals my phone or I leave it somewhere I don't want someone to be able to access my photographs or my data. Fingerprint sensor sounds like a pretty good solution to me. Do I want Fort Knox security on my phone? No. Could someone still access all my data even if it was secured with a passcode, certainly they could with physical access to the device and a couple of debugging tools they could lay it wide open. So put simply, fingerprint is more convenient than having to type in a passcode. +1 for Apple Good to know how easy it is to break though so no one gets carried away and starts using it for things worth breaking into. ------ mephi5t0 They tried to make a fingerprint readers more sophisticated and added a temperature registers to avoid fakes or (more in more gruesome case - a cut off finger), but hackers managed to make so called rubber fingers or peel dead finger and fill with a warm salty water. Anything can be hacked. But I think they are missing the point. If Apple wanted its phones to be a secure gimmick at Pentagon - that was silly. But for average user - nobody is going to steal your prints. It's just a usability. For average Joe it is so much easier to tap with finger than type PIN all the time. But if you get specifically targeted nothing will save you. ~~~ bparsons The exact same arguments could be made for having crappy passwords, which, I might remind you, are defeated hundreds of thousands of times a day, at a massive cost to its victims. ~~~ melange I don't see hundreds of thousands of fingerprints being lifted from people to fabricate 2400 dpi fake fingers 'every day'. ------ Cushman Actually, this raises an interesting thought. Couldn't a security-conscious user take advantage of this to turn "something you are" into "something you have"? Since you can train the sensor with anything, is there a market for semi-permanent, cryptographically-random... Thumb rings, or something? ~~~ BrianLey This is a great idea. Go for it. -Brian :-) ------ Marazan Wasn't Gruber getting awfully excited about how amazing and revolutionary Apple's finger print sensor was? Will he be claim chowdering? ~~~ jpttsn What did he claim? ~~~ lyso Well he did approvingly quote some nonsense that the reader would only work on a 'live finger' (presumably it is supposed to be able to detect the presence of a soul?). [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/09/12/5s-fingerprint-s...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/09/12/5s-fingerprint- scanner) ~~~ dmishe Well, to be fair, in this case it was a live finger. ------ DigitalSea I don't think the goal of Touch ID is better security nor is it an attempt by Apple to prevent the loss of iPhones from theft. The goal of Touch ID at the end of the day is to make it easier for people to make purchases, entering passwords to make an iTunes/App store purchase is a hindrance to Apple's bottom line. Currently because of the steps involved, people have the ability to rethink their purchases during the time it takes to enter and confirm they want to make a purchase. Touch ID takes away a few seconds of time to make a purchase, touch your finger on the reader and BAM! instant purchase. The steps in which the Chaos Computer Club took to break into an iPhone, no criminal would even think of undertaking. In the criminal world the longer it takes to steal something, the higher the chance you'll be caught. It's no different to an engine immobiliser that prevents a car from being stolen. If a criminal were to take their time, they could pop the bonnet and start the car, but most criminals will just take your stereo and car contents and leave the car if they can't get it started within a couple of minutes... Although, having said that. Apple's marketing speak does make Touch ID sound much more secure than it actually is. This might come back to bite them in the behind one day if the wrong person has their iPhone and data stolen and decides to act upon Apple's somewhat deceivingly clever marketing speak in a court room with dollars to spare. And besides making it easier for people to spend money without having time to think, a fingerprint scanner to the not-so-technology inclined sounds futuristic and cutting-edge, which in turn will sell millions upon millions of iPhone units. While many who frequent HN can see past the marketing spin and realise a fingerprint scanner isn't all that exciting or new, the lowest common denominator who buys an iPhone sees things differently. ------ dmishe I thought, based on anandtech review, that this scanner is not optical but electrical, hence "sub epidermal scanning", so why does a printed finger work? ~~~ Someone It looks like either of the following: \- the capacitance of the ridges and crests of one's fingerprint dominates any differences in subcutaneous capacitance (possibly because they are closer to the scanner, or because there simply is too little variance in capacitance between flesh and hair veins) \- subcutaneous structures resembles fingerprints too much (seems quite possible, as there must be a reason that it is hard to permanently change one's fingerprints by using sand paper) Aside: a Google found this procedure: [http://www.zoklet.net/bbs/archive/index.php/t-202956.html](http://www.zoklet.net/bbs/archive/index.php/t-202956.html) I don't have the faintest idea whether that is real, but regardless, I don't recommend it. ~~~ makomk The subcutaneous structures are, from what I've read, basically the same as the surface ridges and crests. ~~~ Someone Looking at the chaos computer club video, that becomes plausible/likely (the iPhone UI shows a picture of the fingerprint as a guideline for the quality of the phone's knowledge of the fingerprint, and afaik the sensor does not have a camera, so that is not just an aid for the user.) Yes, it could also be Johnny Appleseed's fingerprint, used as an image users are familiar with, but [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friction_ridge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friction_ridge) seems to confirm it, too ("The pattern of ridges they produce in hands and feet". I'm not sure whether they refers to the epidermal cells or to the blood vessels (less likely), but that doesn't matter) ------ blinkingled To be fair Apple hasn't said anything about liveness checks or any other safeguards against faked/duplicated fingerprints. All they talked about was how the fingerprint storage itself is secure, hardware level and local. The hack that gets the fingerprints off of the chip by exploiting some implementation related vulnerability would be a big deal. TouchID is just another fingerprint reader - albeit one that's easier to use. ------ coldcode Apparently a lot of people are much smarter than the people who built the technology. Kinda like everyone is better at cryptography than actual cryptographers. Nothing anyone says here is going to surprise the folks who designed it. ------ drakaal Kind of a "well duh" post. All of the image scan finger print readers are easy to game. Even the ones that use capacitance can be beaten with a rubber glove and a copy of the finger print, printed on the latex. (the best is actually an Vinyl condom that doesn't come pre-lubed, the ink sticks better and the vinyl is less of an insulator) ~~~ danpalmer The problem is that Apple made a big deal in the announcement about how it was so much more secure than previous implementations, how it used sub-dermal imaging and stuff like that. It appeared from what they were saying, that this would be considerably harder to fake. ~~~ melange It is considerably harder to fake. ~~~ danieldk Considerably harder? From the article: _" In reality, Apple's sensor has just a higher resolution compared to the sensors so far. So we only needed to ramp up the resolution of our fake",_ ~~~ gfodor Difficulty of lifting a good print is probably proportional to the resolution needed. Ie, you need a higher quality print to get a higher resolution image to contain additional information. ~~~ XorNot I'm actually pretty skeptical this is the case. Fingerprint data is noisy - it has to tolerate a high degree of error. I suspect the problem is actually that you need to smooth it out appropriately to make the sensor not get tripped up by non-biological noise. I'd be really curious to see what you could do with a high-resolution smartphone camera and a little image processing. ~~~ drakaal I am guessing I can beat it with a good pen. As you say it has to be tolerant. If you have a little grunge on your finger, or a cut, or get a tan or there is grunge on the sensor it still has to work. Also, there are a lot fewer fingerprints than the world has been lead to believe. Especially since we each have 10 to try, since the phone only checks 1. ------ speeder Great quote com CCC team: "Biometrics is fundamentally a technology designed for oppression and control, not for securing everyday device access." It explains why Brazil is trying to put biometric scanners on the electronic voting machines. ------ joshstrange First off I want to say I agree with most of the people here that Touch ID was not meant to be in breakable but rather an easy to use system that vastly improved users security over 4 digit PINs or no PIN. That said, hypothetically, let's say I get arrested and the police take my phone. My phone has my fingerprints all over it. What is to stop them, legally, from using my prints on the phone to unlock my device? I say this not to spark an argument but as a real question, I bought an iPhone 5S and I really am interested to know if any law would protect my phone if it was taken in such a situation? ------ induscreep This isn't new, some other guy broke TouchId by making a fake finger from gelatin and soy sauce. [http://blog.fortinet.com/iPhone-5s--Basic-Fingerprint- Replic...](http://blog.fortinet.com/iPhone-5s--Basic-Fingerprint-Replication- Methods-Stymied-by-TouchID-Sensor/) ~~~ danieldk It seems that that guy directly made a 'copy' of his own fingerprint in a mold. I agree that it is breaking TouchId, but the CCC did a more realistic crack: making a fake fingerprint without the person's finger. ~~~ interpol_p He was not able to use the moulded version of his finger to access Touch ID. Instead he had to "enrol" his fake finger as a new finger, and from that point was able to unlock the phone. ------ nodesocket Honestly, TouchID is better than what we have today; a 4 digit useless passcode. If somebody has to take a photo of my fingerprint off a glass surface to gain access to my phone, so be it. ~~~ nly 4 digit pin? I use a 12+ character alphanumeric password on Android. ~~~ _djo_ iOS lets you choose between a 4 digit pin or an alphanumeric password of whatever length you want. The 4 digit pin is meant to be more convenient, but even then most smartphone owners don't use it. The point of TouchID was to have a more secure default for most than a 4 digit pin or, more commonly, no pin or password at all. Few people would be happy with having to enter a 12+ character alphanumeric password each time they wanted to use their phone, you're an outlier there. ------ JofArnold Presumably solvable by using a digit that isn't normally in contact with your phone - eg the pinky of your non-dominant hand? ~~~ lostlogin Wonder if using your nose would work... A toe surely would but accessing that piece of hardware is an ugly hack in too many ways. ~~~ Tepix It sounds silly but it's a brilliant idea! ------ fmax30 Nice , The mythbusters did this in their fingerprinter scanner episode , although they didn't have the iPhone5s but I am sure the same principle/technique would work. ~~~ MBCook As I remember, after using a similar technique they started working backwards and found a simple photocopy (no gelatin or other simulated finger) would do it. Apple has at least beat that horrifically low bar. That was a great episode. Beating the thermal sensor was great too. ------ thatha7777 A further argument against biometrics, for those in the United States, is that your "right to silence" (under the 5th amendment) doesn't protect you against the government compelling you to use your fingerprint to unlock something (however it does protect you against revealing a PIN code)... ------ yohann305 These findings would have been more surprising if the fingerprints were taken from the phone itself! ~~~ msds Actually, touchscreens are more or less the ideal surface to get the fingerprints from - a smooth glass object frequently touched. I just took my phone out of my pocket and found three very clear prints... Just look at 00:37 in the video they posted (1) - lots of clear prints. If the video was higher resolution, you might even be able to use frames of their video as a print source. 1\. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM8b8d8kSNQ&t=37](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM8b8d8kSNQ&t=37) ------ shawkinaw Let's think about the real point of Touch ID technology. Is it to secure your phone against high-tech criminals with a lot of time and resources? No; it's to give you enough time to realize your phone is gone and remote wipe it via iCloud. ------ bdcravens We see him register his index finger. Then he places his supposedly artificial index finger on his middle finger, and the phone unlocks. Since it uses RF and goes beyond the outer layer of skin, how do we know that the middle finger wasn't already registered? ~~~ computer Because it's the CCC, and they're very reputable. ------ danpalmer I'd be interested on peoples' opinions, is this more or less secure than a 4-digit passcode? From a real security perspective, users should have alphanumeric password, as far as I know, businesses often enforce this. Obviously a 4-digit code is easy to brute-force on a computer, but it requires far more technical knowledge to do so - booting custom firmware, using some script to brute force, etc, and if the attacker doesn't have the skills, they are limited to 10 tries, maybe more after waiting a few minutes or an hour. It seems to me that, excluding users leaving smudges on their screen and seeing the passcode that way, a fingerprint is even easier to break than a 4-digit passcode. ~~~ Cushman I think you're missing the biggest security hole with passcodes: whenever someone on the subway unlocks their phone, I need to consciously look away or I'll risk inadvertently committing their code to memory. It makes me seriously uncomfortable. I'll hazard a guess that abuse by acquaintances, intimate or casual, is the most common risk to smartphone users, and that the fingerprint is an _incredible_ improvement over the status quo. ~~~ danpalmer This is true, but this is more down to people not covering their phone. I tend to shield my phone to the point where it would be obvious to me if someone were trying to see my passcode. I think TouchID provides good security against 'casual attacks' \- those by people who see you use your phone a lot, people who aren't going to put much effort into an 'attack', just try and post things on your Facebook account while you're out of the room. However, in the case of 'real' security, where a person is being targeted for their data, or anything like that, I think it would provide less security. ~~~ Cushman I find the idea that the typical 4-digit password provides any more security against an attacker dedicated enough to make a copy of your finger pretty hard to credit. You're placing a lot of weight on your "covering" ability. (There have been times I've had to try hard not to infer someone's passcode purely from their hand movements.) ------ cowsandmilk > The method follows the steps outlined in this how-to with materials that can > be found in almost every household I own almost none of the materials they list. They have a very different idea of what materials can be found in almost every household. ~~~ IvyMike By my reading the minimum is: 1) Laser printer 2) transparency sheet 3) white glue. You might not own a laser printer but surely you have a library or kinkos nearby that makes the distinction academic. ------ jccc [Regarding the point that this is only supposed to be convenient for users, not to be unhackable...] Today: "Fingerprint scanning on my phone ... that's super convenient." Tomorrow: "Fingerprint scan required by government ... oh well, I already use that on my phone." FTA: _" We hope that this finally puts to rest the illusions people have about fingerprint biometrics. It is plain stupid to use something that you can´t change and that you leave everywhere every day as a security token", said Frank Rieger, spokesperson of the CCC. "The public should no longer be fooled by the biometrics industry with false security claims. Biometrics is fundamentally a technology designed for oppression and control, not for securing everyday device access." Fingerprint biometrics in passports has been introduced in many countries despite the fact that by this global roll-out no security gain can be shown._ _iPhone users should avoid protecting sensitive data with their precious biometric fingerprint not only because it can be easily faked, as demonstrated by the CCC team. Also, you can easily be forced to unlock your phone against your will when being arrested. Forcing you to give up your (hopefully long) passcode is much harder under most jurisdictions than just casually swiping your phone over your handcuffed hands._ ------ confluence This is fairly unsurprising to anyone with even a modicum of understanding as to how these sensors actually work and the decade long history of researchers breaking them with Photoshop, gummy bears, latex and spit. What concerns me more is the claims they make about the "secure enclave". Maybe I'm just paranoid, but historically if data does exist, then it will be abused. The TouchID sensor, coupled with its strong bullshit security claims by Apple, in addition to the claims made about how data is never sent by Apple because of the "secure enclave", makes me think that this would be a very convenient way to create a global voluntary fingerprint database tied to every aspect of everyone's identity without freaking anyone out. If a government were to release something like this, they'd be sued into the ground and screamed against for breaking core privacy covenants. But when Apple does it's just brilliant and revolutionary. Reasonable technically informed paranoia is what made the NSA releases fairly unsurprising to me as well. My rule with security is that if it can be done, then it will be abused. It's basically a Murphy's law for humanity. Trust nothing. Trust no one. Doubt everything. ------ abritishguy Some people seem to be forgetting what this is being used for. This is an OPTIONAL replacement for the pass code. However you feel about its level of security it is definitely more secure than a passcode which is the other option. If someone wanted to target you for whatever reason then how long would they have to follow you with a high zoom camera before they would see you type the passcode in? The passcode/touch ID is to stop opportunistic unlocks not a determined attacker. ------ countrybama24 If you're really concerned about this, just register part of the finger that isn't the tip, and get in the habit of smudging the home button afterwards. I usually only touch the phone with my finger tips or palm, and you could register, for example, a part of the finger under the knuckle that almost never touches the device except to authenticate the print. Of course if CCC knows which finger was registered, AND has a perfect print left on the device AND they know which print corresponds to the finger registered on the device, of course they can crack it. But if they have to guess which print on the device cracks it, I'm willing to bet they trigger the 5 failed attempts which then requires a passcode (and 10 failed attempts wiping the phone, although this is optional). This means there are more than 10 options (which finger AND what part of each finger) you could use as a print. The oft cited scenario of police being able to compel you to input your print assumes they know what part of your hand unlocks the phone. They can't make me divulge the part of my hand thats registered just like they can't make me divulge my password. ~~~ countrybama24 So if some of the worlds most elite biometric hacking experts need 48 hours, knowledge of the registered finger AND an almost perfect print left on the phone, I think it actually proves how secure the system actually is. If this was that easy they would have cracked it Friday, but it clearly took them several attempts despite being (some of, if not) the best in the world at forging fingerprints. Yes you can't change your fingerprint, but you can change which is registered on the device (or with the bank, or whatever) and I'm guessing financial transactions outside of iTunes might require a passcode also. It's just another layer of optional security. Clearly it shouldn't be relied on as a foolproof, 100% secure authentication system but it certainly shrinks to pool of people who can gain access to my phone from "anyone who sees me unlock it several times a day" to "fingerprint forgery experts and highly sophisticated and motivated criminals." ------ EpaL Important to remember Touch ID only gives you 5 tries before _requiring_ the device passcode. I wonder how many attempts the CCC guys had before they were successful? ------ stesch Just in time. Who knows how long these research projects stay legal in Germany. ~~~ thrownaway2424 More context, for those of us not up-to-date on German politics? ~~~ stesch Outcome of the elections. Merkel won. The CDU (Christian Democratic Union) isn't very Internet and hacker friendly. ~~~ frank_boyd For the record: Merkel personally assured Obama that she would refuse Snowden, in case he applied for asylum in Germany. Makes it pretty clear what the world can (not) expect from Germany. ------ s_q_b iOS security is trivial to break if you have physical access to the device. TouchID (and passcodes) should be considered little more than a convenience, not a serious security measure. ~~~ lawnchair_larry Really, how do you trivially break a passcode on an iOS device? There is a way that I know about, and it is very much non-trivial. ~~~ s_q_b Just use brute force or dictionary attack over the wire. Given that most users use 4-digit pass codes, this can be done usually in minutes, almost always in less than an hour. Or, if your target is paranoid and uses a very long passcode, target the charger rather than the device itself. iOS assumes any physical device to which it is connected when unlocked is secure. Replace the usb brick with a small computer (e.g. Raspberry Pi) in a convincing looking Apple-esque case. Then wait until your target plugs in his iDevice and unlocks it. You can then dump the drive, or side load malicious code. ~~~ czhiddy > Just use brute force or dictionary attack over the wire. Given that most > users use 4-digit pass codes, this can be done usually in minutes, almost > always in less than an hour. It's clear you've never actually attempted this. The timeout between passcode entries increases with the number of consecutive failures. Get 10 wrong in a row, and the device is wiped (if the user has chosen that option). > Or, if your target is paranoid and uses a very long passcode, target the > charger rather than the device itself. iOS assumes any physical device to > which it is connected when unlocked is secure. Replace the usb brick with a > small computer (e.g. Raspberry Pi) in a convincing looking Apple-esque case. > Then wait until your target plugs in his iDevice and unlocks it. You can > then dump the drive, or side load malicious code. This no longer works on iOS 7. The user has to manually choose to trust the computer they're attached to prior to any communication going across the wire. ~~~ s_q_b I'll ignore the needless snark. > The timeout between passcode entries increases with the number of > consecutive failures. Get 10 wrong in a row, and the device is wiped (if the > user has chosen that option). Only if you're typing in pass codes to the lock screen, which isn't how its done. An attacker would instead image the flash, grab the Dkey from effaceable storage, and decrypt the filesystem. Indeed this is exactly how professional iOS forensic analysis kits work. This will get you access to SMS, photos, and anything else that doesn't fall under Data Protection. Data Protection, a second level of encryption that uses your passcode to generate keys, is only used on the keychain block and emails by default. To crack Data Protection, use brute force on the copied data, not on the iDevice itself. >This no longer works on iOS 7. The user has to manually choose to trust the computer they're attached to prior to any communication going across the wire. Cool, I didn't know that. EDIT: Here's a good overview: [http://mobappsectriathlon.blogspot.com/2012/09/how- do-you-pr...](http://mobappsectriathlon.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-do-you- protect-your-users-sensitive.html) ~~~ lawnchair_larry _" Only if you're typing in pass codes to the lock screen, which isn't how its done. An attacker would instead image the flash, grab the Dkey from effaceable storage, and decrypt the filesystem. Indeed this is exactly how professional iOS forensic analysis kits work. This will get you access to SMS, photos, and anything else that doesn't fall under Data Protection."_ Yep, as I suspected, you haven't done this ;) Please don't discuss how "simple" it is if you're getting your info from third parties. You can't image the flash. None of this works how you think it does, because the forensics toolkits left out a crucial detail in their marketing. The dirty secret? You need a 0day bootrom exploit. The professional kits use the limera1n exploit, which was patched years ago. ~~~ s_q_b I didn't say "simple." I said "trivial" :) Nope, I've never done this live. For this I'm reliant upon what I've read. Feel free to tell me what's wrong. Stating how it works, or pointing the way to an accurate source, is infinitely more helpful than saying "you're wrong", even if it might feel satisfying. Here's my understanding of how the initial loading works. BootROM uses a series of RSA validity checks on the chain of software components to load the RAMdisk (which is used for update in DFU mode.) To load your own RAMdisk, you need an exploit in bootROM (which are the same exploits used for jailbreaking, and thus of high value for the community to discover.) ~~~ lawnchair_larry I just told you. You need a bootrom exploit. That's the non-trivial part. Nobody has one, and they haven't since 2010. I mean, the NSA might, but the forensics companies don't, and there aren't any public ones. Hence, it's far from trivial. Even with the multi-thousand dollar forensics kits, you cannot even begin a brute force PIN attack on any bootrom for any iphone or ipad still on sale. The last devices it worked on was iphone 4 (not 4S) and ipad 2. ~~~ s_q_b You clearly know much more about iOS hacking than I do. It's well outside my area of expertise, and I'm grateful for the corrections. I learned a lot getting up to speed on how this actually works over the past couple days. Pretending to have knowledge when you don't understand the fundamentals of the problem is both a good way to make yourself look foolish, and is certainly the cardinal sin in engineering. For that, I apologize. For context, the reason I've been insistent is that there is a particular company that claims to be able to pull data from iPhone 5 and below in spite of the encryption. Whether this is true or not, I don't know, but I've heard it from a person I trust in mobile security. If you keep up with the jailbreak hacking community (which I'm just now getting into), the Grugq (a fairly reputable source) posted on MuscleNerd's twitter that he's heard a private company has a new 0-day bootrom exploit, which would fit with the information I've heard. Regardless, I should have just shut the f*ck up and let you teach me some science, instead of letting my competitive instincts lead me down a rabbit hole. I'll work on that. ------ adamconroy It is amusing to see thousands of unpaid apple PR workers spring into action, making sure no critical comment exists without a defence. Perhaps they feel their credibility is on the line, given how often they have sermonised on the genius/quality/beauty of their electronic device manufacturer of choice. ------ ForFreedom According to the adverts by Apple they specifically select certain points on the finger print and analayze then permit access. If such a technology is broken then I would assume their encryption on the A7 chip where the fingerprint is stored also can be broken. If lots of people do not use passwords on their phones for the sake of comfort then it is not anyones fault that their phones are logged into or information stolen. Information is stolen because the user is lazy to secure the device. When Apple says one can use finger print to do transactions then I have to assume that the transaction cannot be done by anyone other than me and by any other means through the phone. ------ malandrew I want to see this exact attack repeated based entirely on the fingerprints left on the device itself. It's an all glass surface and we leave fingerprints everywhere, including on the device itself. It you are literally leaving the key all over the screen itself, this is pretty damning. I wouldn't be surprised if an entire photograph of all the partials all over the screen could be used to reconstruct one full fingerprint of the desired digit. Now that this type of security is on the iPhone, it is likely to become widespread, which will only further increase the value of improving attacks on this particular security measure. ------ tambourine_man _First, the fingerprint of the enroled user is photographed with 2400 dpi resolution. The resulting image is then cleaned up, inverted and laser printed with 1200 dpi onto transparent sheet with a thick toner setting. Finally, pink latex milk or white woodglue is smeared into the pattern created by the toner onto the transparent sheet. After it cures, the thin latex sheet is lifted from the sheet, breathed on to make it a tiny bit moist and then placed onto the sensor to unlock the phone._ Yeah, easy as pie. Finger chopping should be added to this xkcd: Security: [http://xkcd.com/538/](http://xkcd.com/538/) ------ Marazan The amount of kool-aid drinking about TouchID in this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6403089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6403089) is pretty staggering. ------ runn1ng Looking on the video is very unsettling. I think the person needs some medication or something. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM8b8d8kSNQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM8b8d8kSNQ) ~~~ frank_boyd "CCC" actually stands for "Coffee, coffee & coffee". ------ moocowduckquack Potential side effect of TouchID: Due to the mass marketing of this feature it becomes cool for people to learn how to copy fingerprints, causing a massive headache for forensics teams everywhere. ~~~ wiml All the l33t kids will quit their current jobs and go to work busing tables, where they can surreptitiously lift prints from every glass or coffee-mug they carry. ------ Cbasedlifeform Wouldn't it be ironic if the new iPhone 5S camera had a high enough resolution to take the photo of another user's fingerprint off the screen of his or her phone? ;) ------ anizan Dont panic! this loophole is easy to fix if AAPL gives free mittens(cuter than gloves) to its users with clear instructions to take them off only when unlocking the phone. ~~~ _pmf_ Yes; the hackers are just holding it the wrong way! It's really secure if it's held the right way. ------ matdrewin Much more convienient than a passcode with a little less security. I'd still use it unless I was a CIA agent. ~~~ abritishguy How is it less security though? You don't have to follow someone for very long with a high zoom camera before you can get their passcode and that is a lot easier than duplicating their fingerprint. And yeh it is much much more convenient. ~~~ matdrewin The Touch ID is less secure because you can force a person to put their fingerprint to unlock their own phone. Forcing the passcode out of someone can prove more difficult and the phone will wipe itself after 10 tries (if you have that feature enabled). I could steal your phone and manage to unlock in the process by taking your hand and unlocking the phone before walking away, somewhat more difficult to do with a passcode. ~~~ interpol_p You'd still have to force the correct finger, and Touch ID requires a passcode after five incorrect tries. ------ joakleaf So the big question is, how hard is it to get at 2400 DPI finger print? They don't show if they can scan the finger print off the phone. I would imagine that it could be quite tricky to get that level of resolution. I would like to see a complete hack purely based on a finger print on the phone. ~~~ contingencies _How hard is it to get at 2400 DPI finger print?_ Left arrow key? Coffee cup? Left button of a mouse? Car door handle? ~~~ joakleaf Well... yeah, but there is quite a lot of smearing. Will the quality of the finger print you can extract that way using whatever means you have be of high enough quality? It is not obvious to me that you'll be able to get something that is 2400 DPI quality. ~~~ contingencies Look at your finger. Actual ridges are not that dense. _A sampling frequency of 20 points per mm is high enough to visualise a fingerprint in sufficient detail for identification purposes_ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint#Research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint#Research) Random #s: 20dpmm = 5,080dpi? Sounds like 2400dpi sensing is certainly insufficient for research-grade identification... and therefore maybe easy to fool? :) ~~~ brianpgordon DPI refers to the number of samples in a straight line one inch long, not to the number of samples in a 1 inch square. ~~~ contingencies Aha! Thanks, that makes more sense. So 1 inch = 25.4mm. 20 dots per mm is sufficient. So 20x25.4 = 508dpi. That's more believable as a rough minimum. ------ dbg31415 The comment was made, "It's not for people who care about security, it's about people with no security." But poor security just replaces no security with a fake sense of security. I'd argue that false security is worse than no security. ------ spyder Can the fingerprint reader work with other parts of your hand ? For example if you can use the back of your finger or part of your palm then it could be a little more secure because you don't leave the prints of these everywhere. ------ Fourplealis Guys from IsTouchIDHackedYet.com crowdfunded reward for hacking TouchID. I guess CCC won bounty worth over $10k. [http://istouchidhackedyet.com/](http://istouchidhackedyet.com/) ------ seanmcdirmid I've seen plenty of people "hack" the 4 digit password simply by observing the user entering it. This kind of hacking seems to involve even more work than that. ------ therandomguy So much more secure than my house or car? Looks like it. Also probably buys me enough time to realize that my phone is missing and do a remote wipe. ------ 001sky It is a Touch screen ! YOUR FINGER PRINTS ARE ON THE PHONE... Don't lose it !! =D ------ frank_boyd Demo: (only 1 min) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM8b8d8kSNQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM8b8d8kSNQ) ------ KamiCrit At this rate, no method of security is secure. ~~~ adestefan The most secure computer is the one locked in a room and unplugged. There has _never_ been a method of security that is secure. The first thing you learn when dealing with security is there are tradeoffs between opportunity, time, money. and usability. ~~~ aroman While I agree with the spirit of your post, there is in fact a method of security that is definitively unbreakable (if used correctly/precluding side- channelling): the one-time-pad. But as you imply, the reason we don't use it is because the opportunity cost and hassle of using it are too high for many uses. ~~~ adestefan You proved my point by needing to exclude side-channel attacks. You also need keying material, and a way to communicate that material, for a one-time pad and that's vulnerable to a whole host of attacks. ------ ruttiger This will end Poopin' tweets. [http://poopinrules.com](http://poopinrules.com) ------ anmalhot even though it was almost expected to be bypassed easily, using fingerprints can still be handy if one wants to establish claim on a device. I believe the thinking was to provide a way to uniquely link the device to an entity - security was just a byproduct (but marketing trumpeted it) ------ jchimney Its an improvement. The typical pass has 4 characters so 10,000 possible combinations. Doing about 1 per second would find the password in the worst case scenario in about 3 hours; simply by trying all possible combinations. I think trying to lift a usable fingerprint off a glass surface would be significantly more difficult than that. ~~~ coldcode No, each failure increases the time between tries until you brick the phone. ------ Navarr Were people saying that this was secure? I thought it was just another fancy unlocking method like Google's "use your face to unlock" ~~~ makomk Yes, they were - for example [http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/09/19/iphone-5s-fingerprint...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/09/19/iphone-5s-fingerprint- scanner/): "As for the tech itself, Rogers explains fingerprint scanning as a whole is more secure than the four-digit passcode. Copying someone's fingerprints remains a cumbersome process, not to mention pricey -- as much as $200,000, by some estimates." Edit - and [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/09/12/5s-fingerprint-s...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/09/12/5s-fingerprint- scanner) which someone linked elsewhere in this discussion: " And like the sensor in the iPhone 5S, the sensors ... can detect the ridge and valley pattern of your fingerprint not from the layer of dead skin on the outside of your finger (which a fake finger can easily replicate), but from the living layer of skin under the surface of your finger, using an RF signal. This will protect you from thieves trying to chop off your finger when they mug you for your phone (assuming they’re tech-literate thieves, of course), as well as from people with fake fingers using the fingerprint they lifted from your phone screen." ------ rashthedude Kabel-salat ist gesund. ------ JoachimS (Huge discussion here - lets add to it. ;-) There are several things here that people in discussion seems to miss och confuse. I've been working with biometrics and can at least try to clear things up. For authentication (and identification) of a user we have three types of information: Things you have (a hard token generator), things you know (password) and things you are (shape of face, gait, voice, pattern in the iris, arteries in the back of the eye, hand, DNA. And fingerprints). Measuring what you are info and using it is called biometrics. For good security we normally want to have a combination of at least two of the types. OpenID using for example a Yubikey is a good example. The good thing with biometrics is that the user always carry the info needed with him/her. There are a few drawbacks though: (1) The information is not very stable. It changes during the lifetime of the user. Sometimes it can be pretty rapid. (2) The information is not very unique. Some types of biometrics is better than others. There is also differences in informational quality between individuals and ethnic groups. Depending on type of biometrics we get anything from a few bits to a few ten of bits. This means that it is not better than a good password that is 8 characters or more, but as good as or a bit better than a normal PIN code. (3) The information is not under the users control and can't readily be replace. _This_ is one thing many here and elsewhere seem to have missed in the CCC announcement. The point is that you as a user can't decide at any given time that you don't trust you token anymore, invalidate it and get a new token. That is why biometrics is foremost a tool _for others_ to identify you (passports, forensics). The reason fingerprint based biometrics is so popular (compared to other types of biometrics) is that it is possible to build compact, cheap sensors that are pretty easy to use and are simple to integrate into digital systems. All types of biometrics are fuzzy. We normally talk about False Acceptance Rate (FAR), that is how often do we accept a biometric ID as valid when in fact it is not. And correspondingly we have False Rejection Rate, where a valid ID is rejected. Good biometric systems have FAR, FRR under 10%. But for a busy airport there is still quite a few mistakes during a day. The way a fingerprint based biometric system normally works is that you have a sensor that creates an image (256 levels of gray scale or similarly). The image is then processed (differential filters etc) followed by feature extraction. The features are called minuae: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minutiae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minutiae) Typically sworls, where lines end, merges splits. Normally we find 8-10-15 or a few more good minutae in the image. Based on the location of the minutae we create a graph. The graph is then stored (if registering a user - called enrollment) or compared to stored graphs. And here comes the fuzziness. The graph will not be similar so we simply can't do a SHA-1 digest and match. The graph will be rotated, scaled, stretched, have fewer or more points. Basically fuzzy congruence matching with threshold. The feature extraction can be done directly in the sensor. But in the case of TouchID I don't think so. Apple bought Authentec and their area sensors (that can capture a whole image directly. Sweep sensors detect movement of a finger over the sensor, estimate speed and stitch image slices together) simply delivered a raw image. This means that the filtering, feature extraction and matching is done inside A7. Apple has touted the security of the processing. Basically it is ARM Trust Zone used in several other devices. [http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/trustzon...](http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/trustzone.php) TZ is good, but there has been attacks published. And there is nothing that says that Apple has not added a read port from the untrusted enclave into the memory of the trusted enclave. For efficient debug reasons for example. So. Biometrics is fuzzy and will give false acceptance (as the main problem. rejextion is less of a problem). There is quite probably an image available in the A7 and we really don't know if it and/or the graph database is in fact accessible. When it comes to the CCC attack - we simply don't know if they tried lower resolution before ending up with 2400 dpi. I wouldn't be surprised if it works (at least sometimes - fuzziness again) with lower resolution. Also attack always gets better. I'm prepared to bet a good IPA that someone within 2 years will show how he/she can unlock a 5S just by smartly pressing on the home button while breathing to activate residue as fingerprint. It has been done with area sensors such as Authentecs before. TouchID is good if it makes users without PIN to use it. But if it gets users with PINs stop using PINs, it is not as good. What would be great if we could combine TouchID with PIN or password. All the time. I hope all this explains a few things. And remember, once again, the main problem with biometrics is that it can't be changed at will by the user. Good for others, less so for the user. ------ rickjames28 _" Biometrics is fundamentally a technology designed for oppression and control, not for securing everyday device access."_ Yes ~~~ geoffmacdonald lol, @ "oppression and control" . go back to your conspiracy theory cave. Apple didn't have this in mind, they simply set out to solve a problem. ------ goggles99 Not really anything new here. This was done a decade ago when bio-metrics were shown to be a weak form of authentication/verification. Still, the iPhone scanner is a deterrent and thus adds value. ------ cremnob Overall security will be increased because of Touch ID because most people don't use a pass code at all. ------ Siecje He is still using his finger behind the tape.... ~~~ zenbit He is not using the same finger. ------ 2muchcoffeeman Despite all the claims of how insecure this is, I've just checked a bunch of my stuff. I cannot find a single clear print. There are a few smudged prints on my laptop and coffee cup. My phone is just smudges all over. So what is a realistic way to clandestinely grab a print? ~~~ _ak The CCC previously published a German minister's fingerprint. They acquired it by lifting a water glass he had used at a public event. [http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.7/fingerprint- schauble](http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.7/fingerprint-schauble) ~~~ 2muchcoffeeman This doesn't really translate to an everyday attack vector. They had to have served the minister a drink that would not cause precipitation to form on the surface of the glass and specifically target him. Then you need to actually process the print. A better measure would be how easy it is to lift a usable print from a crime scene. But even this has problems. You need to target a person to know whose prints you have. If you just randomly pick pocket a phone. How do you get the print? How do you identify which finger was used? You need to get lucky or get 10 good prints. I agree with others. The real question here is, "Is this better than no password?" I think the answer is, yes. ------ yeukhon I am not impressed by this so-called hack at all. This is like people expecting encryption to solve both authenticity, integrity and confidentiality altogether by doing c = E(p,k). We want to see real hack as in actually bypass the system without any fingerprint, or a way to forge a fingerprint.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Gemfury A/B testing their landing page - listrophy http://www.gemfury.com/37s ====== coderdude Definitely impressed with how quickly they got this page out there. It's a good example of someone seeing a very limited window of opportunity to do something that gets them noticed -- and actually taking it. I'll bet the designer felt a rush as he designed and coded the page as quickly as possible, for fear that we might have already forgotten about the thing which this is about. Certainly paid off. ~~~ rykov Thank you. This has been a lot of fun. It took about 2 hours from inception to the first iteration. You're right, I was worried that Curebit will capitulate before we're done and would take much humor out of it. Luckily, it still did pretty well with the crowd, even though we published this after their apology. ------ sudonim I could see it being funny as a standalone parody if it wasn't attached to your company. But it seems that it's an attempt at publicity for gemfury. And since you're using an image of DHH, I think it's in poor taste. You may not get the reaction from the crowd you were looking for. ~~~ ebzlo Or at the very least, host the images on your own server. ------ jphackworth They say "please don't take this seriously" and pretend it's a parody. Yet... the product is real, and the "see plans and pricing" button still takes you to a payment page. So because they're promoting their site on HN instead of on Techcrunch they think it's okay? This is like building a knockoff MacBook with an Apple logo on it, and pasting a "parody" sticker on it. I guess the GemFury folks just wish they could get as much publicity as CureBit did, even if it's mostly negative. ~~~ rykov Thank you for the suggestion. We've fixed the "See Plans and Pricing" link to give a more appropriate response. ------ azago I don't know how I feel about this stunt, but I've been using gemfury for about a month and it's really cool. Makes deployment super easy. ~~~ rykov Thanks for your help with beta testing the service. Glad you're not letting this little bit of fun affect your opinion. ------ unreal37 Clever. Great way to get your name out there! ~~~ rykov Thank you. It beats writing a dry "Introducing Gemfury" blog post. ------ sachingulaya Very clever. I liked it. It's nice and refreshing to see this as we put our pitchforks away. ~~~ rykov Thanks for the support. Judging by other comments, the pitchforks are never fully put away on literal-net :) ------ gumbo this is of low taste, i'm impressed with the ability of people to try to use any situation. And using the DHH pic is really lame. ------ redslazer Ouch? Im not sure thats what the current debate really needs. ~~~ redslazer My karma seems to be swaying up and down due to this comment. The page itself is funny but i dont think you are helping anyone but yourself with the page, which is very creative but in bad taste.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Tomb of Queen Esther in Persia - CrocodileStreet http://riowang.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-tomb-of-queen-esther-in-persia.html ====== kweks I happened to head through this region last year. The desert near Isfahan is absolutely mind blowing. It's like procedural generation meets the clone stamp tool. [http://travel.ninjito.com/2014-08-18-Iran](http://travel.ninjito.com/2014-08-18-Iran) ~~~ Ricker Wow, this really looks great. I was thinking about traveling there as well, but couldn't convince any friend. They had doubts if it was secure enough. Is it? I still want to go one day. I have also been to Tashkent once, and it is just so different from anything you have seen so far, and so beautiful. ~~~ kweks Unequivocally, there's no safety situation in Iran. It's probably best to add an asterisk: Assuming you're not hanging around the Iraq / Afghani borders. Iran is a beautiful country with a big PR problem. Yes the government sucks, but it's just a government. It will pass. The persian culture has survived for thousands of years, and they have a lot to show for it. They're not 'fantatical muslims'. In fact, islam was only introduced after the arabs invaded. The best part about countries with PR problems is that if you do bother to make the effort to understand and to go there - everyone is very, very happy to see, meet, chat, help etc with you - because they know that just by being there, you understand a little bit of their culture. Finally, now is the moment to go there. With the embargos falling, and the embassies opening etc, Iran will be flooded with tourists, and this unique eco-system will be permanently changed. I'm taking my parents there this year for that reason alone.. ------ eternalban Relations between the two tribes go back at least 3000 years if not earlier. (The city of Rages, then Ray, and now a suburb of Teheran, apparently had a substantial Jewish community during the Median period, per Book of Tobit [2]) Typically quite friendly and simpatico. [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Daniel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Daniel) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Tobit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Tobit) ~~~ ZanyProgrammer Many of the features of Second Temple Judaism (and hence Christianity) were thought to have been influenced by Zoroastrianism, from the time of the Babylonian Captivity onwards. ~~~ hetman One must be very careful when determining the level of influence as this can often be quite an emotionally charged topic with interests that go beyond the purely academic on both sides. Some of the ideas that area said to be influential, historically don't appear fully formed in Zoroastrianism until after contact with Christianity. Like the other religions, Zoroastrianism did not appear in its modern form but gradually evolved some of its modern ideas. ------ jonah My grandparents/dad/uncle lived in Tehran in the 50s. They always had such wonderful things to say about the people and the culture and the art. Today, in the US, the Iranians I talk to say "we hope one day it will again be a country we would want to live in." ~~~ virmundi I hope they will live there too. I look forward to the day where repatriation occurs en masse from the US. I think it would allow the return of intelligentsia as well skill labor to areas that sorely need it. While I admit there will be a loss for the US, I doubt that whole extended families will up and leave. In the end, I hope that it will lead to a better understanding and camaraderie for US and formerly hostile countries. ------ pazimzadeh Iran is a beautiful country, I'd like to go back sometime. Here are some of my favorite pictures from my time there which I sometimes use for design inspiration: [http://imgur.com/a/ll2no](http://imgur.com/a/ll2no). I put some of them through Google Deep Dream for some strange results: [http://imgur.com/a/xIro8](http://imgur.com/a/xIro8), [http://imgur.com/a/iwawP](http://imgur.com/a/iwawP) Incidentally, my first pen was a red Lamy, back in France where children were required (still are?) to use fountain pens. I had no idea it was a classic or famous in anyway. A very solid pen which can withstand a lot of chewing. ~~~ jbattle Scrolling up and down on your last link makes my eyes play tricks on me - they look like they start animating. ~~~ joshvm The second one is animated, the other three not as far as I can tell. ------ Jun8 Fascinating place! On a related note HONY is currently doing Iran ([http://www.humansofnewyork.com/](http://www.humansofnewyork.com/)), you should check it out if you haven't done so for the intimate portraits or regular people. ------ shortlived What a nice surprise to see 'Poemas del río Wang' blog on HN. Top notch writing and they also do guided trips. ~~~ steve19 Can you link me to their guided trips? What exactly are they? I could not figure it out. A humanist society that translates book!? ~~~ jeremyswank The blogger at Poemas del río Wang is a personal friend of mine. (Sometimes I also write for his blog.) By profession he is a translator and art historian, a Hungarian by birth living in Berlin. I have gone on many of his tours, and travelled with him personally as well. I can unreservedly recommend his tours, but they fill up quickly. Most of the participants are Hungarian speakers, but he can translate on the fly into English, and other languages, too. A link to his upcoming Iran trip: [http://riowang.blogspot.cz/2015/08/come- with-us-to-iran.html](http://riowang.blogspot.cz/2015/08/come-with-us-to- iran.html) Incidentally, I wanted to go on this trip, but as a US passport holder, I would not be free to go wherever I want without an Iranian-appointed guide on a limited itinerary (at least as I understand the situation). ------ prewett I think of Iran as desert (a particularly beautiful one, judging from the pictures), but I can't imagine Persia having the resources from a desert to become a world power. Was the area of Iran always a desert? ~~~ eternalban Ancient Iranians were hackers in the best sense [1], and experts at long range transport of water. Water was conveyed from the Alborz mountain range all the way to the south. The mongols destroyed much of this network (that was still functional after a thousand years) and that pretty much put an end to verdant growth in the central and easter regions. [1]: [https://youtu.be/k6cmvM5oj3Q](https://youtu.be/k6cmvM5oj3Q) ------ ars BTW Mordechai and Queen Esther were _cousins_. In contrast to what the blog says, he was not her uncle. ~~~ Herodotus38 Could you give a source for that? From what I've read Mordechai was her uncle. ------ totalrobe This is nice and all but why on HN? ~~~ koenigdavidmj [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you think a comment is egregious, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click "flag" at the top. ~~~ davidw I'll add - this is something that's interesting - it's new knowledge for many people. It's not political or an 'outrage article' about some injustice.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Any good books on the history of the internet? - dom2 Looking for some books about the creation and the history of the internet. Ideally not purely technical, with a focus on how society impacted the internet's development and vice versa. ====== mulholio Some of my favourite internet-specific books: \- The Dream Machine. Fantastic tech history coverage with a particular focus on the lead up to the internet [https://press.stripe.com/#the-dream- machine](https://press.stripe.com/#the-dream-machine). \- Tools for Thought - Lots of similar ground to the Dream Machine but with a less internet-centric focus. Still great though - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tools-Thought-History-Mind- Expandin...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tools-Thought-History-Mind-Expanding- Technology/dp/0262681153/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=tools+for+thought&qid=1594581458&sr=8-1) Perhaps not internet focused, but tangential/technology: \- The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation \- One Giant Leap (Apollo Missions. Decent amount of computing foucs) \- Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson \- Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration. Lots of interesting snippets of tech and non-tech history ------ HenryR Where Wizards Stay Up Late ([https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up- Late/dp/0684832...](https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up- Late/dp/0684832674)) ------ mnunez A book that I loved since the first time I picked it from a library shelf back in 1998 or so, "Computer - A history of the information machine", lists the following book as additional resource about the history of the Internet: Abbate, Janet (2000). _Inventing the Internet[1]._ "Janet Abbate recounts the key players and technologies that allowed the Internet to develop; but her main focus is always on the social and cultural factors that influenced the Internet's design and use." [1] [https://archive.org/details/inventinginterne00abba](https://archive.org/details/inventinginterne00abba) ------ leejoramo The Cuckoo's Egg tells the story of the early internet, breaking into Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s net by Cold War spiss. Well Written by Clifford Stoll the net admin/astronomer at the center of the story. Plenty of the tech and culture of the internet young internet. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg) ------ a3n This Wikipedia article has pointers and references in so many directions, you're bound to find something about what you're looking for, or that points to something else that you're looking for. The article itself is a good start. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet) ------ japhyr This isn't entirely specific to the internet, but rather the development of UNIX. Brian Kernighan's _UNIX: A History and a Memoir_ [0] is great. It covers a bit of the technical underpinnings of UNIX, but also covers the people and personalities behind its development. It helped me better understand many of the tools we still use today. [https://www.amazon.com/Brian-W- Kernighan/dp/1695978552/ref=s...](https://www.amazon.com/Brian-W- Kernighan/dp/1695978552/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=unix+history+kernhigan&qid=1594513676&s=books&sr=1-1-spell) ------ DataDaoDe I just finished reading "The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage and would highly recommend it. The book is an informative and enjoyable read about the rise and fall of the telegraph in the 19th century. The development of the telegraph has a lot of parallels to the modern internet that are worth contemplating and this book provides a point worth noting - the modern internet was not the first means of rapid exchange of information through networks spanning the entire planet. ------ gabrielsroka Not a book, but a video from one of the creators, Vint Cerf: [https://youtu.be/Hf0rjtnwC9A](https://youtu.be/Hf0rjtnwC9A) ------ jcontini The latter chapters of "The Innovators" by Walter Isaacson did this well I thought. Just finished it and highly recommend. ------ sgillen Not a book, but I’ve been really liking this blog post. [https://technicshistory.com/the-backbone/](https://technicshistory.com/the- backbone/) ------ giantg2 Not explicitly internet or complete history, but The Best of 2600 is a good historical tech book. ------ redis_mlc You can see one or two of the original Internet routers at the Computer History Museum in Palo Alto. ------ vithlani Mother Earth Mother Board -- a superb essay by Neal Steaphenson on internet cables.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Using AI to Summarize Terms and Conditions - andrewnc 88% of people never read the terms and conditions of websites or services they use. However, most people want to know what they are agreeing to in those terms. That is why we created Legal Leaf. We strongly believe that everyone should have easy access to those agreements, in language they can understand.<p>Legal Leaf works behind the scenes, in your browser, to read and summarize these terms using powerful AI. We're constantly working to improve the accuracy of these summaries. The results are displayed in the top right corner without affecting web speeds.<p>Legal Leaf is a beta product still going through development, but it's improving rapidly and we would love a group of willing beta testers.<p><a href="http://leaf.legal" rel="nofollow">http://leaf.legal</a> ====== geuis One concern that comes to mind if my company uses this: A user reads the auto generated summary but not the actual ToS, then does a thing that violates the ToS. The summary didn't say the thing was against the rules, so the user consciously made their choice on that fact. Not being a lawyer, this raises some questions. Some companies go the extra mile to make their ToS quite short and readable for their users, but that text is still reviewed by a lawyer (presumably). But if the summary is auto generated, that review isn't necessarily in place unless leaf.legal is just a summary tool subject to lawyer review before approval and publication to my website. Also, how do we keep track of which version of the automated summary that is seen by which user? This seems like it could have legal ramifications. For example, the user who violates the ToS because something isn't in the summary. Tomorrow legal.leaf updates its algorithm and regenerates all the summaries for its clients and now the missing ToS article is in the summary. I imagine there are some pretty solid answers on how to handle these situations. Would love to hear how you are approaching them. ~~~ andrewnc This is an awesome question, and one that was raised by the lawyer on our team. Since summarization is not a lossless process, there will be some information that the user doesn't see. For now, we have a blanket disclaimer that our product is merely for summary and should not represent the will of the company whose terms you are reading. However, you're absolutely right, we want to make sure that the companies are also well represented. We are building out an avenue for companies to "contest" the summary on their page to be more accurate, or write a personalized summary. The question can be looked at for any one, what happens if they don't read the ToS at all, and then do something that violates those? We think Legal Leaf is a step in the right direction towards education, but there is still lots of work left to do. ------ rhacker I can see the next progression being something like: You're about to upload a photo. The T&C of this website gives them irrevocable legal rights to use this photo in [social media settings, advertising campaigns]. Click No to stop the upload, Yes to continue, or Always to stop warning for this website. ~~~ andrewnc Oh that's awesome! I hadn't thought of that. This would really allow people to change behavior based on the information they get. That's great. Thank you! ------ got2surf This looks really interesting! Two points: 1) A quick side-by-side of a sample Terms/Conditions versus Leaf's summarized version would be helpful. It would help me understand the product more before I install it. 2) What ML/NLP tools did you use for this? It looks like Sumy for Python summarization, along with a specific list of clauses (will, agree, must, etc). When you get a chance, I'd be curious to know more about the technical process. Also, I noticed that you are stemming words - you may also be interested in lemmatization, which is a slightly more complicated way of converting words into their base forms (like running -> run or ran -> run). Lemmatization also takes into account part of speech context. Given that legal documents are fairly grammatical (I'm assuming?), lemmatization should work well here. I've been fairly happy with Spacy's lemmatization results ([https://spacy.io/](https://spacy.io/)) ~~~ andrewnc Great feedback! 1) That is an awesome idea, I hadn't thought of that. We'll put that together. 2) Right now its sumy/regex/bs4 for our tech. As you can see, it's nothing complex, but we're hoping to had some real ML to warrant our use of buzzwords. The hardest technical challenge was actually working within the Chrome Extension framework, the actual summarization (currently) is fairly straightforward. 3) Spacy lemmatization looks like exactly the next step! Thank you for that. link. ------ rcshubhadeep A small resource, which may help you - [http://thescipub.com/PDF/jcssp.2016.178.190.pdf](http://thescipub.com/PDF/jcssp.2016.178.190.pdf) I am currently (and for some time actually) interested into the same problem. Summarization of text. It is a hard one to master. Not a lot of work has been done. I will be happy to be of any help. (Bonus - a recently published paper about extractive summarization - [https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.04439](https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.04439)) ~~~ andrewnc These look like great resources! Thank you! ------ HaHa31 I like the concept, but using both "ai" and "blockchain" on the front page of your website triggers me. ~~~ ada1981 Maybe look into the maps.org phase III clinical trials for MDMA? Pineapple fund just gave them another $4MM in BTC ( a blockchain based cryptocurrency). But to be fair, they were citing an award they were given. "Best use of AI/Blockchain" ------ bckmn I believe this is the relevant repo (tangentially linked in the footer): [https://github.com/andrewnc/terms-and- conditions](https://github.com/andrewnc/terms-and-conditions) ------ needcaffeine When you say machine learning...do you mean NLP text summarization? ~~~ needcaffeine It's a cool project, I just wish its capabilities weren't being misrepresented like this. It's currently just sumy, tokenization, and summarization. Like got2surf said, you'll benefit greatly from lemmatization. ~~~ Radim For people wondering what Sumy is: Our students compared and benchmarked Sumy against a bunch of other popular summarization techniques, [https://rare-technologies.com/text-summarization- in-python-e...](https://rare-technologies.com/text-summarization-in-python- extractive-vs-abstractive-techniques-revisited/) ------ superasn Can it create a small faq based on the summary, e.g. q) What happens i upload a photo to this website? a) the website owns it and can use it anywhere q) what happens when i give them my e-mail? a) be prepared to recieve lots of promotional email from them and third party sites, etc.. Also if there was a sample on the home pageit would be great since I'm on a mobile and can't open Chrome store right now ~~~ andrewnc Currently we divide it up into 3 categories. 1\. What you agree 2\. What they agree 3\. Other terms But you're right. There is good room for thought there. We're working on an example to put on the homepage. It's a good suggestion. ------ adtac Fun fact: Wordpress's permissively licensed terms of service (CC BY-SA 4.0; using it in my product, many thanks to the Automattic folks) has a treat. Just go to the page [1] and ctrl+f for "treat". [1] [https://en.wordpress.com/tos/](https://en.wordpress.com/tos/) ------ tetchart This is awesome! One thing: it would be really cool if clicking on one of the summary text boxes brought you to where the full details are approximately located on the page. That way if a certain clause or something is particularly relevant to you, you don't have to search the full thing for it. ------ DoritoChef There's a claim that you use blockchain technology for your technology. How's it used? ~~~ andrewnc If you're referring to the hackathon award. They combined the award to say "best use of AI/Blockchain" we qualified as using AI, but are not using Blockchain ------ harryf How about an example of the results it produces on your website? Might convince more people to give this time if you can show some output, given either a known T&Cs like Apple's or if that's a legal issue, use a T&C template ~~~ andrewnc Alright, there is a screen shot of some of our results on the site for now. Thanks again! ~~~ harryf Nicely done ------ jasonsmash Reading your summary wouldn't mean I've legally read the ToS tho. I like that its sort of when you log in with FB and they clearly summarize what access they'll get. ------ sinab Hey Andrew, cool product! I appreciate the work you all have put into it. I have a few things that crossed my mind: If the TOS can be summarized into a shortened version that is understandable and readable, then was the original TOS too long and complicated to begin with? I wonder if summarizing can really distill that which the TOS covers. I further wonder if someone reads a summarized TOS and then violates a part not covered in the summarized version, then who do they blame? ------ TekMol Does it matter what is written in website TOS? Are there any cases where a court decided that some surprising term in such a thing was legally binding to the user of a site? ~~~ riku_iki There are cases about scrapping and who owns the data, user or owner of website. ------ swyx Reminds me of [https://tldrlegal.com](https://tldrlegal.com), but i guess this has an AI component ------ jprissi If this ever becomes the norm, we might see some attempt to obfuscate Terms and Conditions which might be really interesting to see. I'm also concerned by the fact this tool could miss some important pieces of information or subtleties. How can its reliability be improved ? ~~~ andrewnc This is a great question that we're working on. It obviously will never be as good as reading the whole thing, but you're right, how can it be improved? ------ eppsilon I installed it and tried running it on your site, but it just showed the "summarizing" spinner forever. ~~~ eppsilon Also tried it on [https://www.humblebundle.com/terms](https://www.humblebundle.com/terms) (happened to have a bundle page open) - the output wasn't great. Coincidentally the bundle I was looking at is a bunch of ML books. ~~~ andrewnc First, thank you for being willing to try it out! The results can be... underwhelming... at times. However, we're working hard to really nailing down the tech and so if you stick with it for the next few weeks, I think you'd be pleasantly surprised at how the summarizations improve over time. Either way, thanks for the feedback! ------ fiatjaf Please publish it as a Firefox addon! ------ BatFastard Only 80%? I have totally given up on reading them. What I really hate is when I get T&C at a credit card terminal. ------ asow92 I would guess 88% is nowhere near the actual number. People _never_ read those. ~~~ andrewnc You're probably right. That was the number we got from our initial user interest survey	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The dystopian world of software engineering interviews - asangha https://www.jarednelsen.dev/posts/The-horrifically-dystopian-world-of-software-engineering-interviews ====== ideal0227 When my classmates were preparing interview coding questions, I was working on a mini TCP implementation and a toy kernel. AWS rejected me since I failed to write prefect code to traverse a tree in level order. Google did not even give me an interview since I told the campus recruiter I have not prepared for the coding questions. Then I ended up with an internship at CoreOS and created etcd. I am glad that they did not hire me back then. Today, I am sure I still cannot pass the coding interview at "Giant Search and Advertising Company", but they run a lot of my code in production :P. ~~~ paxys Hah! Reminds me of [https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768](https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768). Cynical answer though — Google does not want people like you. They don't want to hire entrepreneurs or inventors. They want people who can churn out code when given specific instructions, and that is what their interview process optimizes for. ~~~ throwaway5283 This is absolutely true. I work at Giant Search and Advertising Company, and joining was a huge mistake. I thought I would be working interesting technical problems with a high degree of autonomy — instead the work is extremely boring, and you get ahead by playing political games rather than by innovating. I’m one of the rare few here who managed to get through the interview without really preparing. Before joining, I had endless enthusiasm for computer science and programming. Now I feel so unenthusiastic that I question my future in this industry. ~~~ throwaway582 That sucks that you've had that experience, I'm sorry. I hope it's the exception and not the rule. I work on the Advertising part of Giant Search and Advertising, and my experience has been pretty great—indeed, working on interesting problems with a high degree of autonomy. I do need to persuade others of my ideas sometimes, or let them persuade me against them, but this seems like a good thing, and doesn't feel political. Throughout my team and the other teams we work closely with, I find my co-workers and superiors to be thoughtful, smart, open-minded, and really nice to work with. ~~~ pansa2 > I work on the Advertising part of Giant Search and Advertising [...] on > interesting problems Genuine question - what do you consider to be interesting problems in advertising? ~~~ busterarm Having worked on the spend side of things and at high stakes (9 figure budgets), targeting and how to improve it is extremely intellectually stimulating. More than anything else I've done in my career, even. This is especially true when you have constraints, like being in a regulated industry such as legal marketing. The only problem is that it's hard to command a salary commensurate with how good you are at it unless you're in business for yourself AND the one spending the money. ~~~ blub _" targeting and how to improve it is extremely intellectually stimulating"_ I thought the answer to that was a rather bland "by gobbling up even more information about everyone"? ~~~ busterarm Not all data points are useful. Different pools have different profitability advertised in different ways. Some highly useful data is hard to get directly or requires significant and/or stealthy spend. ~~~ arez you try to make people click on ads, selling that as "extremely intellectually stimulating" sounds fancy but all you do is manipulate people and you're nothing more than a marketing guy with fancy tools. Do you really want to spend your career working on that? Why not use your power in some way that it actually helps people, even if that means that you earn a bit less. ~~~ busterarm I thought that I made it clear that I don't work on this anymore. Advertising isn't an inherent evil. You find your mechanic, doctor, lawyer, etc because they advertise. I advertised for one specific company. I worked in an industry that was pretty grey. Some parts of the business were vaguely predatory and others served a great public social need. More importantly, you had to have an actual reason to fill out our forms and follow through with us. We weren't just desperately trying to get any eyeballs. The work that I did very much did help people. Also you're not going to get much mileage shaming people for what they do for a living. You being reductive doesn't really reflect reality either. I was much more than some marketer and yes, the problems were extremely intellectually stimulating, otherwise I wouldn't have been there. That's better than I can say for most of the quants I worked with -- they were almost all just in it for the money. ~~~ kortilla > You find your mechanic, doctor, lawyer, etc because they advertise. It’s funny you say that, because I found all three literally by looking at reviews and not advertisements. Those 3 categories are perfect examples of industries where referrals are far more reliable than choosing which one had the best ad budget. ~~~ busterarm A lot of reviews are just forms of advertisements. Companies pay third parties lots of money to curate their reviews and put them in contact with the reviewer to smooth things over. I know that because that's the business I work in now. Companies still have a problem of getting their reviews surfaced to the top of your search. They also have a need to give people the lowest-friction way possible to leave them a positive score when it's the best time in the interaction to do so. There are many large enterprises competing in this space specifically. The best performing adverts today are ones where you don't even realize you've been marketed to. ~~~ kortilla If having to reach out to real customers and fix their fuckups until they are happy enough to leave a good review, then I’m completely fine with that level of advertising. That’s just fixing your fuckups until your customers refer you, which is the best thing that you can hope for. That has no relationship to the paid shitstorm of ads on Google. ~~~ busterarm Somewhat. A lot of review systems are designed to contact you asking for a review at the exact time you're most likely to leave a good review. The companies then optimize the whole customer interaction around that experience. To actually go back and edit that review when things change isn't always easy. The overwhelming majority of all other reviews are either the Amazon variety (so a paid endorsement, usually) or from total cranks. People don't really often leave unsolicited reviews. ------ _bxg1 A few months ago I interviewed with Major CDN Company for a front-end dev position. They sent me a take-home React/NextJS project stub with dependencies and such already defined, and instructions to finish building out the full app. "Perfect!", I thought. No stage pressure, plenty of opportunities for going an extra mile. They encouraged me to get creative and I did; it met all the requirements and then some. I proudly submitted it. A few days later I got an email saying, "Sorry, we're going to pass. The feedback from the person who reviewed it said that, 'It crashed with res.flat() is not defined when we tried to run it'". "That's weird", I thought. I assumed they were running it in a different browser that lacked Array.flat(). Annoying, but maybe browser compatibility was part of the test (it hadn't been stated as such). So I did some digging just to be sure; I asked what version of NodeJS they were using. Version 10. Turns out that version of Node is somewhat old and doesn't have flat(). Huh. Dug some more. .flat() wasn't even called in my code. The stack trace went down into NextJS itself. They had given me a project with a particular dependency declared and then run it in an environment which was incompatible with that dependency, and then immediately punted it without any further debugging. I tried to engage my contact via email, presenting the proof that it wasn't my fault. I got an icy "Thanks for your feedback, we'll forward it to our hiring team", followed by silence. ~~~ DoreenMichele It's hilarious, but I think you dodged a bullet. Imagine for a minute actually working there. ~~~ alexpetralia To be honest I never understood this logic. Clearly a firm's skill at interviewing might diverge from their ability to mentor, innovate, have a great engineering culture and so on? Sure - perhaps it's slightly less likely, but it's not at all obvious that interviewing skill and company excellence are 100% convergent. ~~~ Frost1x Well, from this example, management side was unwilling to even invest time in exploring or acknowledging the idea that _they might be wrong_. I don't know about you but I don't want to work with people who you can't have a reasonable conversation with to get to the bottom of a problem and figure out the issues together. Everyone makes mistakes, sorting them out together and achieving mutual goals is what makes this sort of work bearable. If management doesn't understand collaborative working environments, humility, and basic problem solving, I don't (and will not) work with them. ~~~ cortesoft They might not even have reached the management team... who knows if the recruiter passed this on or not. ~~~ DoreenMichele If you have ever been in a situation where things were done to a standard of excellence, this type of excuse is simply unacceptable. People who have first- hand experience with environments that pursue excellence in earnest have little patience for such nonsense. Kind of like the movie line "Failure is not an option." The line involves a bit of creative license, but was based on the movie people interviewing someone from NASA. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tid44iy6Rjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tid44iy6Rjs) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_Is_Not_an_Option](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_Is_Not_an_Option) ~~~ cortesoft I wasn’t implying that it was ok... just that it might not be the hiring managers doing the ignoring. ------ glofish In my personal experience, having interviewed dozens of candidates (data science), I believe that asking "easy" and "simple" questions is the most effective way to probe the problem-solving skills of a candidate. Fun and interesting solutions to easy questions are hallmarks of great individuals. The question would go like this: _Suppose I have a column-oriented file and I want to print out a column in a reverse-sorted order. How could I go about it?_ This question is among the most effective ever. First it filters out the FizzBuzz failures right away, let's you see immediately how people think (does the candidate want to code it up or understands that they could do: cut \| sort\| head)? It lets you explore the various aspects of sorting numerical, alphabetical, different locales, in numerical you can have generic numerical sort etc. Then what if the file is really large, now a much better approach could be to split sort then merge sort back into one file. everyone with real work experience has a story about sorting. but then you can move on, let's do it in your favorite programming language, then explore of what if the data is "infinite" long, a stream ... and so on it is a topic that can produce very interesting solutions, nobody is stressed out, and people that "fail" do understand why. Edit: I will also say I feel that I can learn more about a person based on how they respond to easy questions. Are they cocky, are they showing off, are they rattled etc. ~~~ thedance How do you sort an infinite stream? ~~~ ummonk You could have a balanced data structure and keep inserting into it. ~~~ nutjob2 Sorry, you failed the interview! Your algorithm doesn't terminate, it's no better than an empty infinite loop. If a list is sorted, then you'd be able to return the largest value. Since that is impossible the correct answer is that it's impossible. ------ proximitysauce In addition to all of the very dystopian examples given in this post, there are other non-technical, super-dystopian things that have been popping up as "trends" in the tech industry. Ever heard of top-grading? It's the most oppressive interview technique of all time. A series of grueling multi-person interviews. A retrospective of all work experiences since _high school_. You also have to get multiple prior employers as references. Apparently top-grading is used to weed out "liars". Imagine what kind of place optimizes to find liars; maybe one with a problem with a lot lying? I've heard Twitter uses this technique (or did last year when my friend interviewed with them). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topgrading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topgrading) ~~~ LordFast My experience as both a 50+ hiring manager and as a candidate tells me that we are collectively living in an illusion of whacked up expectations. Yes, it's super hard to hire good people, but most of the time it's because "good enough" isn't good enough anymore, and while we may think our company is a 9 and we deserve 9s, we are probably more of a 4 based on what people are actually working on. Yes, interviews suck, but that's because we all want to get paid the big bucks so we can afford the prohibitively expensive COL and actually do better economically than our middle-class parents. My background and resume legitimately qualifies me as a 9 on the high end, but really I'm probably just a 4. Cascading causal relationships thus expand both upwards into the capital markets and downwards into your grocery stores. If we can all take a chill pill employers+employees and stop 49er'ing around so hard, then I think most everyone can be happily employed. I don't see us getting there on our own though, since that next door neighbor ain't gonna stop and I'm sure as hell not getting left behind /s. I hope we can find a bit more maturity in our industry, but I'm not holding my breath. ~~~ whack > _we are collectively living in an illusion of whacked up expectations. Yes, > it 's super hard to hire good people, but most of the time it's because > "good enough" isn't good enough anymore, and while we may think our company > is a 9 and we deserve 9s, we are probably more of a 4 based on what people > are actually working on._ You're essentially implying that companies like FAANG can get by just fine, even if they hired "average" programmers, as opposed to "exceptional" ones. If this were the case, they wouldn't need to pay anyone 250-350k compensation either - they can just hire some average programmer for 70k and call it a day. Or better yet, hire someone in a country with much lower COL, pay them 30k, and everyone walks away happy. I don't think this is true, for the simple reason that companies are far too greedy to pay people 200k a year, unless they _really_ need to. Do you honestly think that a company like Amazon is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on someone, if they can get someone else for a fraction of that? Maybe I'm wrong and one day, some startup will grow to be a unicorn while paying their developers sweatshop rates. I'll believe it when I see it. ~~~ hogFeast Dear God, I wish companies were run like this. Everyone refers to these faceless "companies"...no, you are being hired by employees just like you who almost always overpay for staff. They overestimate their ability to assess talent, HR usually link their own salaries to the people they hire...it is a shitshow. Look at CEO pay, most CEOs are clueless. They are way overpaid. Google is a perfect example, that business is a cash machine, it could be run by a ham sandwich, and they are paying people $100m+ to run it...lul. Jokes. Btw, this also shouldn't matter. If your business relies on hiring these 1 in 1000, super-smart individuals (ignoring the fact that it is statistically impossible to actually do this if you are hiring thousands of programmers), you will fail. Every time. You get into a bidding war, and your budget depends on the intelligence of others to not overpay. If you can work out how to turn average employees into good ones, you will print money because no-one wants average employees...supply is infinite, you will never overpay (I know companies that have done this...they usually end up acquiring the companies that hire the "boffins" and fire everyone on day one). In tech, the opportunities for this are basically limitless. It is pretty easy to teach someone how to code, the main challenge is really all the stuff you learn "on the job"...and guess what? You have a job to teach them. Why doesn't this happen? Try telling a coder he has to help a junior guy out one day a week and stop fucking about with Haskell/burning cash. Try telling HR that you want to hire unremarkable people. Try finding an executive who wants to work somewhere where they hit singles...he has an MBA you know, he swings for the fences every time. You are vastly overestimating, ironically, the intelligence of most people who work in companies (I worked in equity research for a while...Buffett's dictum of a company that could be run by a ham sandwich has much wisdom). ~~~ z3t4 Actually most software business use that business model. Eg. buy low, sell high. The difference between market rates and wages are their profit. ~~~ hogFeast That is true. It occurred to me after that I had seen that in consultancies...that works, it is possible to do this sustainably and with less churn. ------ parsimo2010 Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certainly, I don't think that anyone thinks that this is an absolutely perfect way to hire people. But it is an undeniable fact that some people pass this interview process; software companies do fill positions with this process. So that kind of makes me think that many of the complaints are from people that wouldn't cut it at a high-pressure tech company and would be better off coding internal software for a non-tech corporation. I'm sure that the hiring process at Kroger (the grocery store) is much lower pressure than Google's. Google might not need you to code some efficient algorithm to search a b-tree every day, but they pay top dollar and can rightly expect that their software engineers can come up with efficient and creative solutions to hard problems without dragging the rest of their team down. ~~~ codingslave People are completing 500+ problems on leetcode before heading into interviews at google. Don't believe me? Go read the teamblind forums. People might spend six months studying, after which they pass a bunch of interviews and get good comp. Getting just one offer from a FAANG company often doesnt pay well enough, you need multiple competing ones. If you think this has anything to do with incompetent people complaining, then you arent reading into the situation. I will add that one can pass these interviews without extensive preparation, but it makes it alot harder when those around you are willing to spend ridiculous amounts of time studying. ~~~ JMTQp8lwXL I'm imagining it's going to bite these people on the backend later in life when they sacrificed everything for their careers and potentially missed other major life milestones: cultivating a relationship, starting a family, etc. I know not everyone spends 6 months getting into Google, but there are so many other companies that will take you without 6 months of preparation. If career is the only thing that gives you meaning in life, sure, but I'd rather not put all my eggs in one basket. ~~~ fourmyle I used to think that until I heard of people with far less experience than me getting paid $400k total comp at these places because they can ace the interview and get competing options. That's worth putting 6 months of work in. ~~~ JMTQp8lwXL Yeah, once you're in, it's cushy, for sure. But that's not the full story. You're likely going to have to move to the bay area to make $400k kind of money. Are you willing to forego living near family, friends? Plenty of people do, but time gets more valuable when you have less of it left. ~~~ jophde I already live in the Bay Area and have for 8 years. Startups pay half of what big tech pays once you factor in the stock that is liquid. ------ coconut_crab > There is a cottage industry springing up around passing interviews This, a million times. I was told to practice solving dynamic programming problems to prepare for the interview[1]. Looking around the web I found out that people spending _months_ solving _thousands_ of dynamic programming problems, just for getting a job. This strongly reminds me of the rote learning I had to do in order to get into university, which includes thousands and thousands of integration, derivatives, series, lense placements etc... A nightmare I thought that ended decades ago.[2] Now dp is all nice and cool, but I think most jobs don't involve solving dp problems on a daily basis. Just like most mechanics don't need to solve Lagrangian mechanics problems or civil engineer with continuous girder (the interview for those those two don't have those either)[3]. There must be a better way to measure problem solving ability of a candidate, isn't there? Something thay requires more dedication from the company instead of blindly followingbthe practices of Google. [1] The position is EM at a offshore branch of a medium sized non IT company, way below the likes of Google. [2] Typical Asian problem. [3] I started as a mechanics, and then doing some civil engineering job, building bridge and such. ~~~ hogFeast Just speculation but I think a big part of this is that it is often quite difficult to lay off staff. The issue isn't that you assess employees poorly...it is very hard to be right based on knowing someone for a couple of hours...but that it is so hard to get rid of someone if you are wrong. Would you marry someone after meeting for as long as the interview? That is the decision for a lot of companies. I think that is why you see places like Denmark and Sweden, that make it easy to fire employees, do well and places like Japan and France do relatively poorly (the latter is particularly odd, they had a big lead in engineering...tech is miles behind)...ofc, it is hard to fire people in California...so not every example fits. ~~~ wojciii To fire people in DK is possible but I would not call it easy. It takes money - for example if the person worked at the same company for 3 years, it takes 4 months salary if the person was hired using a standard contract which follows a law called "funktionærloven" written to create rules between company and employees. ~~~ hogFeast Yes...and DK has the most job flexibility in the world. ------ mLuby > 23 interviews and I didn’t get a single offer That's… an unusually consistent signal. Suggests to me that either this person is getting into the wrong interviews (eg junior interviewing for senior role—though they say that's not the case), or more likely there's some hidden variable, like a bad reference, bad BO, really noticeable "culture" misfit, or other "red flag". Regardless, the general points are spot on; it's a mess, for both sides. And even if the game weren't improved, I wish we all gave and got more honest feedback (however illegal that would be). Wishing you luck in this numbers game! ~~~ scarejunba I think OP should use interviewing.io and take the feedback seriously. It's likely to be helpful if they want to actually pass those interviews. But there are other ways for a non-traditional candidate to make it. ~~~ AlexCoventry Not sure why this comment is being down voted. Seems like a sensible suggestion. ------ sigotirandolas It's funny that the other day I was reading about the door policies of some top-tier Berlin nightclubs and it seems that the underlying processes are similar. The bouncers there do a "door interview" designed to not only filter likely bottom of the barrel (too drunk/high, tourists) but you also need to know arbitrary and often unwritten codes (e.g. the name of the event, line-up, dress code, physical appearance) which is a proxy for showing you've put in some amount of effort and "know the rules". It doesn't seem to help much to possess the real values they desire (actually not causing problems once inside, actually enjoying the music, actually contributing to the party's atmosphere) because they simply can't screen those quickly enough. In both cases this seems to be the market solution to the problem of having limited capacity, high demand, necessarily short interviewing/screening processes, high cost for admitting sub-par candidates but low reward for admitting good candidates. And in both cases it seems most dislike the process for being ripe for arbitrariness and routinely turning away good candidates and "there ought to be a better way" but the process seems to have evolved naturally and doesn't seem to go away despite there apparently being no major barrier for using a better process should it exist. Just a random though. ~~~ thrav I’ve been to that club. The internet descriptions are overblown. When I got all up in my head and attempted to follow all of the advice, I got turned away. I felt like I was wearing a costume and trying to be someone I wasn’t, and that was probably obvious to them. When I went back years later and just went as myself, my wife and I were immediately welcomed in without much questioning. For those wondering, this is not a club where being with a woman is necessarily advantageous, but I will certainly admit that it likely had an impact. The biggest things I saw them looking to screen out, beyond drunk - high - obnoxious, were youth and naïveté. They seem to largely be aiming at people who know exactly what they’re getting into, and are relaxed about it + not overly attached to the outcome. Just so you know exactly what I had on, and how much it flies in the face of some of the advice... on Friday: White t-shirt, jeans, baseball cap. Saturday: Grey Everlane pocket t-shirt, backwards baseball cap, Patagonia 5” running shorts, Off-white Adidas Marathon sneakers. I did learn to dress like you’re going to dance for hours in Friday night, and jeans got hot and shirt came off real quick, so I adjusted on Saturday. Wife went more classic and wore black jean shorts, black tee with a ripped collar, black baseball cap, black adidas. ~~~ blub If you didn't have female company the first time around, it's very likely that this tipped the balance on your second visit. Clubs are notorious for this. ------ f2000 I'm in my late 50s and after 10+ years at same company I found myself on the job market. 1998 was the last time I had any real interviews - after that point it was all networking with no real tech interviews. After much cursing at the advent of white boarding and code tests, I finally just caved and bought a leetcode subscription and starting working problems I hadn't seen since the late 80s in college. Long story short, After 8 interviews I landed a great job with Big Company. At the end of the day, it's a game. You can play it or complain about it, but it is what it is. Has leetcode made me a better programmer? NO. What has helped though is stackoverflow and github. ~~~ jonex It showed that you were able and ambitious enough to learn (re-learn) a somewhat complex skill in a reasonably short time. This seems like a very desirable property to me, and a good substitute for having strong talent or recent experience of algorithm design and implementation. ------ userbinator Well, if you pass that interview, you then get to help Giant Search and Advertising Company make the world an even more dystopian place... ------ mullingitover I honestly don't know why anyone gives FAANG recruiters the time of day anymore. I have yet to meet anyone who feels good about the prospect of working for them, anyone who works there who's super proud of their mission, and the competitors who are looking to hire at that level of talent pay roughly similar wages from what I've seen. My advice for this poor kid is to look around at startups and do more networking. FAANG jobs aren't anything to aspire to anymore. ~~~ fossuser A couple of reasons: \- Comp: Total comp for a new hire with 3+ yrs dev experience is probably 300k -> 400k at a FAANG on average (with possibility to be higher). If you want to live and raise a family in your own house in the bay area (2.5 Million for a reasonable house), this matters. \- Access: Few places have the kind of scale and resources of these companies, that can make them fun places to work. You also get to learn a lot from really good coworkers (and go to talks, explore different things, etc.) \- Work/Life: FAANGs are generally pretty good for work/life balance (though this can vary by team and manager). They're generally pleasant places to work as an engineer. ~~~ vqc What kind of house is a reasonable house for $2.5M? ~~~ gfaure The vast majority of engineers at FAANGs are _not_ commuting out of San Francisco -- looking at where the workforce really is: Mountain View, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, you most definitely don't need to shell out $2.5M for a reasonable house. ~~~ fossuser Yes you do - Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, and nearby peninsula cities are even more expensive than SF. At least in SF you can get a nice new construction apartment for 875k. You can find a cheap house for $1.25M in San Mateo or on the outskirts of San Jose, but it’ll still be pretty small and far away. ------ RangerScience I've been doing initial phone screens (small companies) this week (two just today, actually), and with all of them when the recruiter (internal or external) gets to the "we'd like to send you a coding challenge" I interject with: "Let's do a code exchange. I'll point you at some of my GH projects, and you send me some of your code". So far they've accepted ("I'll forward it to the hiring manager"), and it's far too soon to see if this works... but I'm hoping. The next step I'll be trying is "I'd like you to pay me for my time. If you're not comfortable with that yet, let's talk about what's involved in getting there." ~~~ heleninboodler One approach I really like is a company that will vet you and decide you have promise, then decide to hire you on the spot for some small amount of contract work. "Ok, you seem great, let's commit to 40 hours of work from you on whatever schedule you want, and we'll see how that goes." This lets you squeeze that in on evenings and weekends if you want and not quit your current job. Costs them very little and is way more productive than a standard interview loop. ~~~ RangerScience Oh, nice! I'll keep that mind and see when I can play it that way. Good suggestion! ------ d1zzy It's good to see people complaining about interview processes from Google&co as it's a good idea to always try to improve the current situation. However, I feel there needs to be some context here. While the interviews at FAANG seem not ideal, they are HUGELY better than most other tech interviews I've had experience with. In most other interviews you get to have a chat with some HR person that has no idea what the word "variable" means. You answer a set of standard questions and they barely know how to map your answers to the expected list of answers they have. Then they score you based on that. Let's not lose that perspective in discussions like these. ------ holografix Sincere question: What are you all doing accepting these multi-hour, multi-day take away free consulting gigs? Say NO to this bullshit. Establish a deadline and clear guidelines and expectations: 1\. I will not be doing any take away work at all. 2\. You will explain how my GitHub repo, resumé, previous experience is insufficient to qualify me for the job in 100 words or more. 3\. You will sign an NDA for whatever solution I created to whatever problem you task me with. You do not own my solution’s IP and may not share it outside of the people involved in my hiring process without my consent. 4\. In the case where I fail the test you will explain in 100 words or more why my solution was unacceptable. 5\. In the case my solution doesn’t compile/run you will allow me 3 attempts/1hour to provide you a solution and/or give me a Dockerfile representing the env where my solution will be tested. ~~~ blotter_paper Have you ever established these guidelines and expectations with a potential employer and subsequently been hired by that employer? ------ hinkley > It sounds to me that now companies are more afraid of hiring bad candidates > than they are excited about the opportunity to hire a great candidate. People have come right out and said they’d rather miss out on a good hire than get a bad one. There’s no “sounds”. It is. Rather than more and more convoluted interview processes maybe we should work on better weed out techniques? I mean, what’s the overall cost really of picking the best person you saw in two weeks, getting back to the process of building new functionality (and your new hire training materials) and just kicking the dense ones with a little reflection on what we’re the objective warning signs this was going to happen? I really think the thing is that people want to believe that training for their team is arduous, and so the cost of every person is huge. I’ve known more than a few people who philosophized about how much they learn about their craft by teaching. And it always seems like the people who create the biggest messes are the ones who can’t explain themselves. Which we have known forever. In fact during the dot com era it was quite common to hire the most articulate people you interviewed. At least of they were wrong about something you’d know it right away, instead of them obfuscating their bad ideas. ------ codingslave Interviews are so bad because there are too many capable programmers. If there really was a market shortage, companies would not interview like this. ~~~ sciencewolf As someone who interviews, you'd be shocked how many "senior engineers" can't write a function with two for-loops. ~~~ umvi I once interviewed a "senior engineer" who was nearly twice my age. I was very intimidated; his resume indicated that _he_ should be the one interviewing _me_ , not the other way around. We chatted for a while, and I felt really good about him. However, I had a gut feeling I should just check to make sure he could do the equivalent of fizz buzz. I said something like "Sorry for this formality, I know it might be seen as an insult to your experience... could we do a bit of coding?" His resume indicated nearly twice as many years of C++ experience than me. I took out my laptop and produced three function signatures - one passing by reference, one passing by pointer, and one passing a pointer by reference. I asked him to explain the difference between the three. With a completely straight face and unshakable confidence he replied "no difference, they are all three ways of doing the same thing". I asked some clarifying questions, trying to probe the difference between pass-by-reference and pass-by-pointer. Again, he answered extremely confidently and coolly (but incorrectly). "Err, no." I replied. "This ampersand here is a pass by reference, which means c++ handles the referencing and dereferencing of the pointer automatically. It's much safer than the other two, where you are ultimately dealing with a raw pointer and need to check for null pointers before dereferencing". Immediately he broke out into an uncontrollable sweat; it was really remarkable. Before asking the technical questions, I felt really good about him. I wonder how many companies he has fooled. ~~~ leftyted My team hired a guy like this. At this point everyone knows he's a fake. He's not involved in anything technical despite being a "senior dev". It was quite uncomfortable when he was programming and we had to review his code but at this point he's just hanging out in the office and sitting in on meetings. I wonder about his psychological state. He doesn't seem happy. ------ daenz If all you care about is money, go bust your butt on leetcode and ace a FAANG interview. If you care about a work-life balance, and having a big impact on a small team, work for a medium-small startup and negotiate a flexible schedule. Personally I get a huge kick out of making massive improvements to a small business's tech and infrastructure. The lack of bureaucracy is a freedom that is often taken for granted. If you have the vision and drive, you can improve the business's processes and product offerings by leaps and bounds...something I would argue is not readily available at a big company. Smaller companies are also much more willing and able to negotiate with you to help balance your life. A 4-day work week for example. Again speaking anecdotally, I don't need that much money. I certainly don't need FAANG-level compensation. If I'm going to work somewhere, it's going to be because I want to be with those people, working on those problems, and having a big impact. Not because of the fat paycheck. ~~~ Aperocky > I'm going to work somewhere, it's going to be because I want to be with > those people, working on those problems, and having a big impact. There are teams in FAANG that are like that. And I'm going to say mine, as we're a new team building a top level public service for a very large cloud company. It does mean sometimes there's lots of work though. ------ eternalny1 I recently flagged myself as "back on the market" on sites like StackOverflow and LinkedIn. What a nightmare process this whole thing is. I end up with a slammed inbox, constant cold-calls from head hunters that are all dead ends, and in between all of the noise are some real opportunities where I get moved from the tech screen to the final round quickly due to my seniority. It's like most jobs except there is a strange dichotomy between the technical screens, and the on-prem final rounds, which become more of a culture-fit type interview. I feel like I am up against the Bob's from Office Space a lot of the time. If anyone needs a 30+ year software engineer currently working with .Net Core 3.1 on Azure Linux and Angular 9, please hit me up. ------ cdoxsey I was given a 2-hour coding challenge once to build a language server for a programming editor. It had to implement 3 functions: 1\. show help text (type/doc string) for a word 2\. go to definition 3\. find all references My first thought was "this is an absurd request for a two hour coding challenge". My second thought was "boy I hit the jackpot, a few years ago on a whim I built my own language server for Go in sublime text and could probably crank out a new one pretty quick" Sadly despite my best attempt they rejected me. They never did give me an explanation. (fwiw: [https://github.com/calebdoxsey/languageserver- challenge](https://github.com/calebdoxsey/languageserver-challenge)) I wish I could say it was a fluke, but I've been rejected by lots of companies due to the coding challenge. One day I'd really love to see what the passing code for these challenges looked like. Maybe I could learn where I dropped the ball. ~~~ willberman FWIW. This is an absolutely awful coding challenge for an interview especially in a 2-hour setting. The challenge requires building off of implementation details for a few very specific technologies. Interviews are supposed to test for general problem solving capabilities within some domain of competence. Unless the job was specifically to work on a go language server, and that was your aforementioned domain of competence, I see no rationale for using this programming challenge to determine employment. ------ Apocryphon What does it mean for the industry when there's one of these articles on the front page every other week? ~~~ berdon That most people have a hard time viewing the world from different lenses. The article presents a picture of a guy “studying up” for a career and his adventures in interviewing. As someone who’s interviewed hundreds of candidates I noticed red flags right away. For instance, if someone asks you to design a micro service - you don’t say “I can’t”. No FAANGco interviewer wants you to fail. In fact, they want to help you. The best worst answer would have been “I’m not really familiar with micro services but I’ll give it a shot. Could you explain a bit more about them?” This shows the candidate doesn’t falter at a challenge, is willing to dive deep, and is committed to the task. The lens shift comes into play when 50% of the candidates can’t complete fizz buzz, another 25% simply lied in there resume about any relating experience, and the other 24% don’t have any real understanding about algorithms. There are software developers and then there are great software developers. It’s generally initiative and algorithms that separate the two. ~~~ Apocryphon And yet, virtually all boot camps allocate time to interview questions now. Hell, there are boot camps devoted entirely to whiteboarding interviews. Surely this cottage industry, similar to those for gaming standardized tests (SAT/GRE/LSATs/MCATs), is a red flag that the industry has fallen into a pit of Goodhart's law? ~~~ berdon Hmm, perhaps. But interviewing has become big businesses for prep and passing. There are companies that will ghost interview for a candidate, even through actual onsite interviews. It’s a real problem. Tangentially, candidates should read “Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job” for prep. It was recommended to me a long time ago and it was enough. ------ closed Something that strikes me in reading articles like this, is the distopian part often seems to be thinking about this: p(job_capable \| not_interview_capable) That is, it's crazy that an interview could miss so many people qualified for the job. However, I wonder if oftentimes companies are aiming for.. p(job_capable \| interview_capable) If p(job_capable \| interview_capable) is high, and p(interview_capable) is pretty good also, then the company will probably get what it's looking for. This means that the author is right to recognize the test is doing a bad job of measuring _their_ job readiness. A reasonable instrument in this case doesn't have to measure everyone's job fitness (whether there are nasty side effects is another big issue). ~~~ paxys A simple way of saying this - companies are optimizing for filtering out bad candidates, at the expense of sometimes filtering out good candidates. Because the cost of hiring the wrong person is a LOT higher than missing out on the right one. ~~~ heartbeats > Because the cost of hiring the wrong person is a LOT higher than missing out > on the right one. Why can't anyone come up with a good solution for this? A "we'll hire you for a month and see how it goes" kind of deal? ~~~ demosito666 I don't know about US, but where I live they hire you with 1-3 months "trial period" during which the company can fire you any time if you turned out unfit for the job. This is exactly your proposal. ------ scarmig This will probably be lost in the pile of comments, and I'm sure some people will interpret it as humble bragging. But I genuinely do not get the angst and anger over the tech screen, from the perspective of an applicant. So I want to explain why I like them. My background: I've never taken any kind of CS or programming class in my life. Mediocre grades in college. My first exposure to programming was at age 24, as I fell into it with an IT tech position. Went from there to a series of jobs at several startups. Before applying to a FAANG, I went through Elements of Programming Interviews and solved all the problems in it, which at around 10 hours/week took maybe 6 months of prep. I then sent in two applications, one to FB and one to GOOG, immediately got phone screens, passed, and then two weeks later went through the on-sites. Every one of the questions was either lifted from the coding prep book or trivial. End result? Offers from both, joined as an L4, at a total comp higher than I had ever dreamed of, and significantly higher than friends in medicine who have easily spent over a hundred times as much time preparing and studying as I have. So I'm kind of left flummoxed. Am I just incredibly lucky? There are huge issues in the hiring process, but if you want a job at FAANG, as far as I can tell it's incredibly easy to game the system. Set aside some time each week (easy, if you don't have kids), study for a couple months, and then apply. There's literally no other field than ours that is so open to motivated people without paper qualifications and that simultaneously offers so much in terms of lifestyle and compensation. Whether it hires the best candidates is another question entirely, but that's an issue for the company, not for the applicant. But, when I give an interview to an applicant and use my go-to question, which I initially feared would provide no useful hiring signal for being too easy (and which, yes, I've tested on all my coworkers, who solve without any difficulty), I find that only maybe a third of applicants complete it at LH or higher. To be clear, I'm calling this out as a blind spot I have--there's clearly a massive gap in perspective here--but hopefully it'll provide a useful data point for why tech screens aren't universally hated and why they manage to persist. ~~~ peferron Your experience is incredibly close to my own. I'd love to know if you also feel the same about a few other issues: \- I used to have a massive impostor syndrome due to not having a CS degree. Joining FAANG alleviated perhaps 80% of it. (Just to be clear, that's not the reason why I joined FAANG; I just wanted to try a large corp after years in tiny startups.) It feels good, but I'm mourning it a little, because I believe it was a driving factor to how intensely I was trying to better myself. \- I enjoyed solving all these problems. There's beauty in finding the most optimal solution to each of them. Binary heaps are plain beautiful, and suffix trees and arrays still blow my mind years later. I wonder if people here dislike this stuff because they were forced to learn it in college for a piece of paper, while we learned it on our own volition for a big jump in compensation. Maybe I'm just projecting because I hated school and college; many HNers seem to have enjoyed their studies, which is awesome. ~~~ scarmig > imposter syndrome Absolutely. And that imposter syndrome played a substantial part in motivating me to apply to FAANG :) I found myself in the doldroms for years afterward after starting at G, but I recently quit to do my own thing for awhile and have been so happy to find that I still have the capacity for joy and drive. And, yes, it was incredibly fun to study and solve these problems. Sometimes I'd end up going on unrelated tangents--cache-oblivious algorithms, a full history of quicksort and all its variations and partitions, how all the concurrent data structures in the Java standard library are implemented--and just spend all day reading about them and/or re-implementing them on paper on a sunny day in Golden Gate Park (and one of my Google interview questions was with a gruff Ukrainian guy who wanted me to implement a concurrent LRU cache, so that went swimmingly!). And so when people talk about how hellishly oppressive and difficult having to learn about binary search trees is, it just doesn't resonate with me. Even if not for the jump in comp, it was just genuinely fun. My background is math/physics, so perhaps that's part of it? Maybe many applicants just want to build something and just care about the final product, while the part of programming that I enjoy most is the brain teasers and making things work in the most efficient and elegant way possible. ~~~ peferron Thanks for answering. If you're still in the Bay, and feel like drinking a beer to our dear departed friend the impostor syndrome, feel free to email me :) it's in my profile. ------ Solar19 The potential red flag in this account was Jared interrupting the interviewer who was asking a question that mentioned microservices to say that he had no experience in microservices. Why did he interrupt the interviewer? And why interject that he had no experience in microservices? So what? You can still tackle a question that mentions microservices... It's not like one's programming skills are useless for questions that merely mention an architecture you haven't officially worked with before. It's very strange to me that he interrupted that way, for that reason, and it makes me wonder if he acted similarly in other interviews. If his attitude is that he shouldn't have to answer questions about architectures and technologies not specified in his resume, that wouldn't go well. Also, there's a lot of hype and looseness around the term "microservices" these days. You might have worked with what some people call microservices without knowing it. All the more reason not to cut off the question. ------ JMTQp8lwXL The evolution of the software engineering interview is a consequence of people gaming the metric. As the author points out, once the cat got out of the bag, the problems became increasingly challenging. The real consequence is for wages. By making interviews a ceremonious practice where even engineers with years of experience need to spend a month Leetcoding, you severely restrict the talent pool. It discourages poaching. Engineers only care to subject themselves so many times, and since they already have a job, they're not too motivated to find another (compared to industry outsiders who aren't already earning software engineering-level salaries). Fortunately, many places don't put you through the hazing that is the typical FANG interview. You can make 85-90% of a FANG salary, at a company that asks Leetcode easy's. That's what I've chose for myself. Not because I'm an incompetent engineer, but because mastering leetcode isn't a priority for me. ~~~ scarmig > You can make 85-90% of a FANG salary IME, it's more like a >50% pay cut. Plenty of reasons not to do FAANG, but when calculating trade-offs it's important to have an accurate view of the costs of each decision. ------ akdas This is a topic I wrote about recently[0]. The fundamental problem is that these big companies are so afraid of hiring a bad candidate (a false positive) that they are willing to put up with a ton of smart people who fail their interviews (a false negative). And the worst part of this is, from the inside, it really looks like the process is working. After all, there are some really smart people who get hired, and saying the hiring process is bad feels like you're saying your coworkers aren't smart. But the truth is, these companies are hitting smart people. They're just hitting a non-uniform dust of all three smart people out there. I think this is an opportunity for smaller companies to hire people who wouldn't make it into the big companies, and innovate in a way the big companies can't! [0] [https://hiringfor.tech/2020/02/10/false-positives-and- false-...](https://hiringfor.tech/2020/02/10/false-positives-and-false- negatives.html) ~~~ TrackerFF A bit late, but... Does it work? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps you get some fantastic candidates (true positives), and perhaps you get people that are very god at gaming the system (false positives). The process, as it is, is kinda like trying to select potential mathematicians on the basis of how well they solve HS AP Math problems. It is fully possible to rote learn every kind of integral and derivative under the sun, if you just solve enough - without actually understanding the underlying principles. It becomes a pattern recognition problem. There are tons of anecdotes from seemingly false positives, when it comes to tech hiring. The web is filled with "I was very lucky, because they re-used problems I had just solved". BTW, when I say false positives, I don't mean incompetent programmers / engineers - I just refer to those that do not master the subjects they're being tested on, but average candidates (on the subject) that luck out on getting asked the right question. I still think Goodhart's law stands true for this trend. People game the system, because they want to earn more money. Companies make the system more rigorous and robust against gaming. People still find ways to game the system, and it essentially becomes a race to the bottom. Along the way you start losing out on terrific candidates, because they refuse to partake in the increasing demands. So you end up with a mixture of very talented engineers, and very able test-takers. ------ ourlordcaffeine It is my observation that you generally don't need to know how certain algorithms are implemented. You need to know of them, what they do and their strengths and weaknesses compared to other algorithms. That is, just enough knowledge to make the choice on which way to go. The actual implementation part can be Googled when the time comes. If I was ever an interviewer, I would not ask candidates to implement algorithms, but rather to explain why you would use a certain one. Or give them a situation and some choices and ask them to choose one and justify their choice. (e.g. For this task, would you do it in python or C? Would you use a linked list or an array to solve this problem?) ------ reggieband > “Yes. Can you write an algorithm to find the Kth highest value in a binary > tree?” I got this exact question on a phone screen with "Giant Search and Advertising Company." I got stuck on a stupid detail and botched the implementation. Once I hung up the phone I took a deep breath and fixed the algorithm in about 15 minutes. That still isn't very good since I was only given 15 minutes total at the end of the interview to implement it in the first place so I assume that is the time-span they expect to get an answer from a senior engineer. Fair enough, I didn't study for the interview, I don't have a lot of binary tree experience. I realized that if I couldn't get through that phone screen cleanly/easily then I probably wouldn't make it passed 4 or 5 whiteboard problems either (which are likely to be significantly more difficult). Fair play to any company that wants to screen candidates using that approach because I am not the kind of guy they are looking for and that is just fine. Everyone I spoke to was polite, professional and sounded competent. I do wish they would stop calling me and letting me know that I did well enough to be eligible to retry. I have no doubt that I would contribute at an above-average level within any of those FAANG orgs but I appreciate their process and the reasons behind it. I have had no problem finding high-paying employment and distinguishing myself within any team I have worked on for my entire career. I generally get promoted quickly and asked to lead teams. As far as I can tell there is no dystopia, just people looking for different things. ~~~ thedance How snarky do people get on these interviews? If anyone asked me to find the kth-greatest element in a tree I'd write down a loop that increments std:set::crbegin k-many times and then dereferences and returns it. This is literally how anybody at Giant Search and Advertising Company would do it, and almost nobody at that company has ever written a tree, they just use the one in libc++, from Jeff Dean on down. ~~~ ajross Sigh. They aren't asking you the question because they expect you to write an in-memory data structure library. They are asking you this question because they want to know that you can reason about systems with subtle behavior, and a binary tree is one such system that most programmers learn about in school. So if you refuse to engage, they'll have no evidence from you about your ability to write subtle code of any kind. And they'll go with someone less snarky who they know does. ~~~ thedance Isn’t it up to the interviewer to ask a useful question? This is exactly how I would find the kth item of a search tree. I don’t feel like that is refusal to engage. Is the question is more like “describe various approaches to the designs of search trees and their iterators, and discuss the time/space complexity of a few examples” then that’s a different question. ~~~ ajross But... demonstrating the ability to write subtle code _is_ a useful question. "Describing" or "discussing" algorithms isn't the same thing at all. I mean, I can't speak to the thinking of the original interviewer, but this is what I'm looking for with that sort of question. And I don't see how a binary tree is a bad choice. Again, it's something that everyone sees in school, so it doesn't require a ton of description in the interview. I guess I put the question back to you: if you won't write a binary tree traversal in an interview, what subtle code _would_ you be willing to demonstrate? And why is that better than a binary tree? ~~~ thedance I really can’t more strenuously disagree. At Giant Search writing “subtle” code is very strongly discouraged. The very last thing I want is candidates with a penchant toward subtlety. ~~~ ajross The point is to demonstrate capability, not "penchant". I mean, look, subtle code happens. Maybe it shouldn't. But it does, and it has to be fixed. There was a story here just a few days ago about some Project Zero work to find a bug in Chrome that involved a state machine with something like 50+ states! And realistically finding people who can do that requires that they be able to also do things like traversing a binary tree, right? So I'm going to ask the question one more time: if you won't traverse a tree in an interview, how else do you propose to select for people able to reason about that kind of problem in practical code? ------ fsniper Not exactly a comment for the piece, but for overall comments going around. I am really shocked with people's understanding of situations. Like one great example of a different interview process which totally seems like working for the interviewer and his/her interviewees is bashed for not being good for their tastes without even getting the rationale. Or expecting people to spend 6 months on preparation for interviews considered normal or totally acceptable. Either HN crowd are totally out of loop of life, or their self importance is out of bounds that they can't see anything else which is deemed below. Is life something that you could spend so easily? What kind of affirmation people get from jumping hoops that would never even matter in the big picture? The newer interview procedures that are described here really made my jaw drop. I am not the most down to earth guy without the last bit ego, but I believe I improved over the years. Still if I would encounter any of these , I would go jerkiest of egocentrics ever and tell them go do themselves. ~~~ peferron > expecting people to spend 6 months on preparation for interviews considered > normal or totally acceptable You're expected to be able to solve a certain set of problems. Whether you don't prepare at all, spend 6 months, or spend 6 years is up to you. Oh, and everything you need to prep is available in cheap books and websites. That's immensely superior to being required to spend 5 years and thousands of dollars in college to get the degree that nobody will hire you without, like some industries do. ~~~ fsniper Please look around, here you can find hundreds or thousands of people probably never used advanced algorithms for their lifetime except once or twice for their interviews. And you can see some who uses these daily who never implement them out of their heads but with intuition, preparation, effort, books and research. Oh and don't get me started that they all are compansated for. Which type do you think these interview methods are optimized for? These methods are waste of money, time, brains for both parties. ~~~ peferron I'm not disputing that it's imperfect or wasteful, and I'm happy to see some companies trying different ways of interviewing that may not have these flaws. I'm disputing that spending a few months to prepare for free and on your own schedule is particularly abnormal or unacceptable. Maybe we could do even less, but it's extremely benign in comparison with many other high-paying jobs. Some people in this thread call the tech interview process hazing. It's a word that comes back on almost every HN discussion on the topic. Do you agree with that labelling? If you picked a random, non-software engineer person in the street and asked them whether solving algorithmic challenges at home for a few months before being flown all expenses paid to a tech campus to write on whiteboards and eat sushi constitutes hazing, what do you think would they answer? Remember that hazing regularly kills people and is categorized as a crime in California and many other places. ~~~ fsniper About hazing, I absolutely totally agree it's hazing and from what I read here is getting worse. Take a surgeon. for interviewing ask her to do a frog dissection for a take home project, and than ask her for a 10 hours long lead neural surgery, without meeting the patient before and preparing for it before. Oh you won't be paid, you can ask anything while patient is on the table. Oh I forgot you can't use the latest auto surgeon functionalities that we have which would improve or perfect the chances of success. Now you know we are paying top notch, also have sushie served to your open office. You won't find a better option! I know this is ridiculous, but why don't you think what we are exercising is not? ~~~ fsniper Also to make it clearer, let's add that this is a job for plastic surgery. ------ heartbeats Unfortunately, it doesn't matter - since all tests test for _something_ , and all these things are highly correlated, grueling job interviews are entirely justified. As much as it pains to say me, HR is entirely justified in their approach of asking people to fill out a form, importing the list into excel, sorting on the GPA column, and calling the top N candidates on the list. ------ scarlac Push for change. Show others the alternative. I have worked with teammates to change hiring culture and gotten some fantastic feedback. Change will happen if you push for it. Here're my points: 1\. Supply candidate with a challenge that I built myself, tested with a co worker 2\. Test should have many small goals and bugs: Get more data points on what they achieved, don't make it binary! 3\. Challenge should include real bugs from when you built it. e.g. typos, wrong attribute names like 'innerHtml' instead of 'innerHTML', forgetting an import, etc. 4\. Make results runnable / viewable (for front end work) 5\. Explicitly tell candidate that Google is not just allowed, but expected 6\. Allow candidate to ask questions so you're not dehumanizing them (but don't always give a straight answer) 7\. Follow up with questions like "what do you think could be improved?" 8\. If candidate spends more than 10 minutes on any of the challenges, allow them to skip it Get as many data points as possible from an interview. Make it as close to real life as possible. ------ jorblumesea Everyone knows it's broken, but interview cycle still continues to bring in talent, even if there are false negatives. People still brave the grueling gauntlet. People still show up for interviews. Smart people still get hired. The system works, just in a terribly shitty way. To HR, the engineer hiring process is voodoo magic and we best not touch it. ~~~ Mountain_Skies It only works because there's always another body standing outside the door waiting their turn to be abused by the process. It'll end real quick if they run out of interviewees. ~~~ heartbeats And then, the system will adapt. There is never any problem. ------ ai_ja_nai This horror story would be enough to quit the entire FAANG game: "At one particular ‘top’ tech company the process is that when a candidate goes through an interview he or she has a packet compiled about their interview performance. The packet then goes to a committee whose job it is to impartially review the packet to make a hiring decision. At one point a particular committee got so critical that they rejected every packet for several months. When HR caught wind of this they decided to set up a test. They sent the committee a new round of packets and once again the committee rejected them all. HR then called them all into a meeting and explained that they packets they had just reviewed were in fact the hiring committee member’s own packets from when they interviewed for that company. They had unknowingly rejected themselves! How could anyone pass that bar?" ------ andai > At one particular ‘top’ tech company the process is that when a candidate > goes through an interview he or she has a packet compiled about their > interview performance. The packet then goes to a committee whose job it is > to impartially review the packet to make a hiring decision. At one point a > particular committee got so critical that they rejected every packet for > several months. When HR caught wind of this they decided to set up a test. > They sent the committee a new round of packets and once again the committee > rejected them all. HR then called them all into a meeting and explained that > they packets they had just reviewed were in fact the hiring committee > member’s own packets from when they interviewed for that company. They had > unknowingly rejected themselves! How could anyone pass that bar? ------ fogetti I am not sure anyone mentioned it before, but in many occupations you are required to take standardized tests which you are required to renew each X years. This way if you hold the credentials than you don't have to actually demonstrate your technical skills when applying for jobs, since your certificate proves them. And guess what?! Your diploma is actually such a certificate, at least something that's close enough. Still our industry largely ignores that for some reason. To get to the point I wouldn't mind to renew my credentials with supplemental diplomas every X years on standardized tests facilitated by educational institutions to avoid the stupidity of the industry's current trends. ------ artsyca The word 'dress' doesn't appear once in this thread and that's a sign of the disgusting state of affairs all in itself It used to be people took care in small gestures like wearing a pressed shirt but now all the auspices have gone awry in favour of this laughable meritocracy No wonder tests of this nature have been devised by people who haven't ever buttoned a collar and it's everyone's fault for not taking the moral high ground When's the last time you walked into a formal interview that actually was formal? Casual guys in a jizzing contest over O(logn) implementations of tree traversal is the reason every start-up fails after 18 months ~~~ Aperocky What? I interviewed at my current location wearing a cargo short and a tshirt. It’s a trillion dollar company and we’re not failing any time soon. Coding interviews aside, no dress requirement is one of the biggest plus and allow people to focus on the thing that matters. I have no idea where you come from that software engineering is helped by dressing up pressed shirts. ~~~ eitland I strongly suspect sarcasm. ~~~ artsyca Bro I use dress as a way to read people one way or another how you dress is how you play ------ Koshkin I have just realized that I have no idea how interviewing is done in other areas - for instance, mechanical engineering. ~~~ thedance GREAT question. For one thing you’re not getting any job in mechanical engineering without a degree and an EIT, so that narrows the possibilities. Companies recruit at universities and this is the main pipeline into the industry. Connections are very important, so doing internships in summers during university gets your foot in the door. After you practice for ten years you get your PE and set up your practice either within a large company or independently. It is very likely that an ME can do their entire career without ever being subjected to the trick questions of some kid with six months of industry experience, like we pretend is normal for software developers. ------ RobKohr The FAANG's of the world are doing us a big disservice. They filter out the best of the best programmers in the world, and then shackle them with 300K+ golden handcuffs to work on meaningless tasks on already developed products. I was talking with a recruiter many years back about when Yahoo had a massive layoff. The following year, he was suddenly awash with jobs to fill with new startups that were created by these Yahoo employees that were in comfy jobs for life. If one of the FAANG companies laid off their workers, we would have a huge tech boom as these brilliant people suddenly would be forced to either get another job, or create something new, and that percentage of people that would create something new would rock the world. We would have new innovations across the board in IT and other fields that they would apply their talents to. Instead, they are building plumbing in a system that really is just in maintenance mode. Remember, 99% of the functionality of these systems that exist today was already in existence 5 years go for them. This swarm of high priced talent is basically just moving the needle about 1-2% per year to just stay ahead of any other potential competitor. The trouble is that these companies are so successful, that they can burn the cash trapping talent, and still pull in billions per year. This grind for small returns is just a small line item compared to the flood of cash they all rake in. ------ satisfaction I find this post accurate. Please also keep in mind that interviewing is as much about deciding if the company is right for you as it is if you are right for the company. When I take a bit too long to solve the coding challenge and the interviewer puts on an attitude I just assume that this is what it would be like working with this person, no thanks. I recently interviewed with a hot VC funded start-up, the interviewer was the most dry and passive aggressive person I have ever met, I decided about 5 minutes into the 'get to know you, tell me about your work history' section of the conversation that I would not like working for this person. I had never wanted to end an interview early before this experience. When they sent me a leetcode link (to a problem I had solved in preparation for a series of interviews I was doing) and asked me to solve the problem I just sat there wondering how long before they would ask me to leave if I typed nothing. About 5 minutes later they asked me to leave, and that was the first time during the entire interview that the interviewer cracked a smile. I think that company will fail. Am I the a-hole for playing that sort of game? Edit: I also interviewed with a medical startup during which the interviewer, while telling me it took me a while to get to the solution and critiquing my implementation, admitted (I think by mistake) that they had spent some time researching the solution prior to the interview. I asked them how long it took them to solve, he did not answer that question. ------ overgard Hiring and interviewing are incredibly broken, I totally agree... And the algorithm puzzles are basically silly and don't tell you any relevant things, like how pleasant would this person be to work with, how conscientious are they, etc. But. Usually interviewers are asking these questions to see how you think, not because they expect you to get it exactly right. And so verbalizing your thought process is how you prove yourself. And if you have trouble verbalizing your thought process, I sympathize, but being able to explain to others what you're trying to do and why you want to do it that way is a really big part of the job. And there are going to be a lot of times on the job where you DO need to tackle something wildly outside your skill set, and people need to see that you can at least start iterating towards the right thing. You don't have to be right, you just have to convince them you'd get there in a reasonable amount of time. Also, if a small amount of pressure causes you to forget your entire CS education, that's kind of relevant to being able to do your job? I'm not trying to pile on to people that have anxiety issues, but being able to do things under pressure is a skill. If we're up against a deadline and you entirely freeze up and can't do anything, that would be a bit of a problem wouldn't it? ~~~ NhanH It's incredibly hard, and would take years for _anyone_ to come up with any algorithm from first principle. Which means that any test of algorithm is a test of knowledge, rather than "how you think" or "being able to reason about subtle behavior in system" etc. You looks good if you already have the knowledge, and you will look like a clown otherwise. That is okay if you also realize that the breadth of CS fundamentals are incredibly broad and everyone only knows a subset of it (ask as many simple things as you can). My deadlines are measured in months, weeks and in the minimum, days. There is practically no cases where it is in hours, and absolutely no case where it would be 30 minutes. I (We?) have trained myself to work and deal with deadlines/pressures of those standard time frame, which means that if I have only a day to deadline left, my technical mind shut down and it is now thinking about the business to see what should be best done next. I believe people would feel more pressure at the risk of failing an interview than the risk of their company's product having a downtime ------ bilekas Its so funny, but I was with a good friend of mine who I've worked with on private projects, and we were just talking about this. We spent a good lot of the night interviewing eachother in our own respective questions and judging eachother. I'm a bit more senior that I like to admit, and I loved his questions. His approach was more simple questions, then go and follow up on them. This was evident when he mentioned 1 hour was not enough time for him. I have quick fire nonsense questions that are just an entrance fee, What is SOLID, how can you prepare a unit test. Then important things (IMO) Patterns, identifying refactoring needs. As for the questions themeself they're actually not that important and both of us tonight realised.. The questions you ask should reflect the work you EXPECT(if a senior/mid) the person to be able to do. If you're hiring a JUNIOR I will say... The most important thing is to make sure they actually have an interest. I have been burnt hard on this. Forget about language specifics also.. They can be learned, and as for Patterns, I am taking a step back on them because a lot of people use them without knowing it. Our world comes from experience.. If you're willing and able to teach, hire like that, if you need some core team member quickly, hire for that. It was easily the best chat I had with him in a long time and I hate interviewing! ------ stebann I don't even have the coding level that the writer has, but I felt myself so expelled from the industry that I quit looking for jobs. I just gave up and started working independently. Financially now I'm really broke but I think I'm better with myself. Maybe I'm not the "super-programmer-hacker" but at least I don't have to participate feeding the sadistic pleasure and sense of power that recruiters have on us. ------ swagonomixxx > The second was to write a recursive permutation generator using dynamic > programming which is no easy task. I got totally stumped in the moment by > that one. At the end of the interview I asked the interviewer “This problem > seems a little steep for a phone interview. Do you often write recursive > algorithms at Payment Processing Company?” He replied “No, we don’t use > recursion.” “How about permutations? When have you used those?” He answered > “Our algorithms have no need for permutations. Most of the engineers here > work on user interfaces and infrastructure.” This is absolutely hilarious, and has happened to me a bunch of times interviewing at large corps. Although I wish I had the balls to do what Jared does here, which is ask the interviewer if they ever even _used_ dynamic programming on the job. Like, I get that some jobs are algorithms intensive. I've worked in such jobs myself. On the job, I had a lot of resources to help me - access to textbooks like CLRS and Wikipedia, so that building an algorithm and coming up with it's big O was mostly straightforward. But we've never had the CEO come and say "I need a O(n) algorithm stat for this problem _text dump of hard DP problem_". ------ coolassdude1337 Yes it sucks but so what? It's worth it. FANG will give anyone an interview if you have an internal reference. I am an undergrad English major in my 30s and just got in. Gaming the system is easy. You just have to put in the work. Do every question in EPI and then do a few hundred leetcode questions until you're ready. It will take between 100-500 hours depending on where you're at when you start. Good luck! ------ cmonnow How can you think clearly when someone is watching and judging you? The ideal scenario would be - give a problem, leave the room, and come back after 15 minutes - give the candidate some breathing room.. to make mistakes, to try out few methods, to collect their thoughts. This concept of 'We want you to think aloud, We want to see your approach', doesn't match reality. In reality, the only time that happens is when both parties are trying to figure out a solution collaboratively. Not when one party already knows the answer and is 'testing' the other party. An author's first draft, or a speaker's demo, has a million corrections before it gets to print/stage. Can RR Martin write freely if the NYTimes reviewed his every draft version ? Can Steve Jobs go on stage and give a demo if he has not already rehearsed the entire saga ? It's like judging a person at their vulnerable stage. Unless they are a saint who can completely block out the existence of another human being sitting a few feet away, it's hard to concentrate. You're more worried about how your thought process looks than you are about solving the problem at hand. ------ sefrost Is it possible to create a meaningful coding test that only takes 45 minutes? I would love some examples for front end tests if any one has any. ~~~ bawolff Fizzbuzz? I'm pretty sure the only meaningful coding test is if you can program at all. After that everything becomes artificial in an interview setting. ~~~ kragen [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuPSibuIKIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuPSibuIKIg) took less than 45 minutes and was considerably deeper than FizzBuzz. Moreover, it would be easy to do better than the interviewee did. Granted, it's a pretty artificial situation. I think most things you can write in less than 30 lines of code or so could be reasonably written inside of 45 minutes. Like this Lisp interpreter in JS [http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/terp.js](http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/terp.js) or this octal-to-binary converter in assembly [http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/osmb.s](http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/osmb.s) or this Collatz-sequence searching program [http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/collatzsearch.py](http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/collatzsearch.py) or this paren-matcher in Scheme [http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/pmatch.scm](http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/pmatch.scm) or this paint program in C [https://gitlab.com/kragen/bubbleos/-/blob/master/yeso/%CE%BC...](https://gitlab.com/kragen/bubbleos/-/blob/master/yeso/%CE%BCpaint.c) or this Unicode Wang tile ASCII-art maze generator [http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/uniwang.py](http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/uniwang.py) or numerous other things like that. There are some things that are really tricky and so they take longer than that to write even when they're less code, but the examples above are not among them. Also, it's pretty often that I've written longer programs than 30 lines inside of 45 minutes. I know there are people who can do things like that but can't do them in an interview because they freak out, and there are people who can program somewhat but can't do things like that, and they might be better at other things than I am. You aren't going to find out how well someone's high-level architectural abilities can help you steer clear of unnecessary implementation problems in a 45-minute interview, unless they're the same as your own high- level architectural abilities, in which case you can recognize them. But you _can_ find out if they can write code that works, at least sometimes, because that's a thing that you can actually do in that timespan. ------ alfiedotwtf When I was young and free the FAANGs were my ultimate dream. I even saw the interview process as a cool pissing contest. However living in the US wasn't for me, so always had to regrettably pass on interviews... but now as time passed and we've seen the FAANGs go from good guy to Bond villain, I'm forever glad I never hauled my family across the world to be part of the cool gang. Talking to friends who now work for the FAANGs, I've heard stories of having to spend 40+ hours (re-reading Sedgewick and practicing programming questions etc) to just prepare for the _first_ round. Fuck that... _FAANG_ interviews might be dystopian, but if you look outside the Silicon Valley bubble, you can find interviews that are far more enjoyable than spending days in front of whiteboards just to move onto the _next_ round. The most common pattern of past interviews for me has been beer/coffee/coke and a 30 minute chat about the company's future goals and see if I fit might in. That should be how it's done. ------ LaPingvino I've designed an interview test before and I am ironically now doing a very similar interview test to what I designed for the company I used to work at. It worked extremely well for where I used it and I am absolutely thrilled to work on it now for this company. The key element here is indeed relevancy to the job you apply for and not looking for a perfect answer. For anyone doing programming tests, I would like to give some advice, too, based on the tests I did and got through successfully: \- Always give it a try \- Always explain what you do and what you are trying to do \- Don't worry about sending in an incomplete test when you don't manage to do it \- Be verbose about what you are trying to do to solve it \- Don't be afraid to ask questions My first great programming job was at a place where I got a hard mathematical problem to solve, and I didn't manage to solve it at the moment, so I asked if I could take it home. I didn't manage to solve it at home but sent in the broken code that I had either way. I got the job. Why? Because the broken code I sent in showed that I understood recursion (it was for a Common Lisp job, that code was in Clojure) and the other people, even if they did manage to solve it, used more common languages and iterative solutions. He wanted someone who got the spirit of what they were working with, so that got me in. I asked my boss later how to solve that question, and he didn't manage either. When I did the interviewing myself, the situation was similar. One candidate sent in a huge resume that looked impressive, but didn't send in the test. Immediate fail. Two others had a hard time with the test, but they showed that they cared about making it work, and that was enough for us to accept them: the core thing we wanted to see was that they could learn and cared enough to learn about what they needed. One of those became main programmer and leader of many others later on, and made the company hugely successful. ------ hanswesterbeek Whenever I've interviewed people I've always made sure to them feel comfortable, so any anxiety does not get in their way. Then, we talk and I look for all the qualities they /do/ have. Sadly, lots of interviewers get a kick out of finding out what the interviewee does not know, so they can feel superior. Coding challenges should be: -1. take-home -2. concise -3. relevant to the job -4. take no more than 4 hours One example of such a decent test that I came across involved having to read a file, parsing it and turning its contents into some basic HTML. During the interview we talked about things like "what if the file were really big", e.g. let the candidate reflect on the limitations of their implementation. This was enough to suss out where somebody is, professionally. And nobody had to have a bad day. ------ tanilama I mean looking at the author's resume, it looks like he is mainly focused on machine learning domain, where the hiring is tight. Yes, in ML top 5% candidates are sought after like there is no tomorrow, but there is barely anything left for the left 95% of candidates. So here is my advice. For your first job, and as a newbie, be accommodating. When I was out-of-college, I thought Java is no fun and is only for old people, I am functional and cool. And the job scene is just a hammer right on my head. So brush up my Java knowledge like in 2 weeks, and putting Java everywhere on my resume. Get a job pretty quickly. Now I have experience, and don't have to bundle myself as Java programmer anymore. But that is only after I have grown from that early experience. So again, be accommodating, get a job first and everything else can be figured out more easily. ------ dfg0987098x7 There's literally no reason not to name these companies who rejected you, you don't owe them anything! ------ 0binbrain All this discussion is spot on. The problem is all these startups now think they are FAANG companies also. You're not Google dude and you're probabaly passing on great hires and making the hiring process harder on everyone. We recently did a bunch of hiring. Our coding excersize was practical and involved working through some existing code that had a bug and extending it. They had to be able to state the problem back to us clearly. It was take home solutions submitted to git. It was simple to weed through candidates looking at the code for 30 secs. We looked for things like clean code and well thought out solutions. We didn't do the silly BigO optimization stuff that every company is obsessed with. We've been very happy with our hires. ------ musicale > companies are more afraid of hiring bad candidates than they are excited > about the opportunity to hire a great candidate Pretty much - they're willing to reject 100 good candidates in order to avoid hiring one bad one by mistake. It's also a feedback system/arms race (like college admissions, conference paper submissions, etc..) The lower the acceptance rate, the more places you have to apply. This raises the number of applicants for each position, which in turn lowers the acceptance rate even further. This continues until you reach the maximum number of applications that each candidate can produce. Needless to say, the quality of evaluation is inversely proportional to the number of candidates, so acceptance becomes arbitrary and random. ------ cmrdporcupine I have a poor opinion of the Google style job interview to the point where despite having worked at Google for 8 years and trained in the interview process twice I just won't give interviews... I don't like the idea of giving an interview that I wouldn't pass myself. BUT... Having recently been through an interview with a well-known open source software company where the third interview ended with a "No" based on what seemed like purely subjective factors with no skill-based or evidence based reasoning at all... I do now have a lot more sympathy for our process @ Google which at least requires a panel of people with calibrated scores, multiple interviews with copious note taking and documentation, etc. It really is hard to find a middle ground, though. ------ FpUser Ok maybe it is different as I did not apply for permanent position for about 25 years but I have developed/helped to develop many products on consulting basis for other companies and had to go to numerous interviews. Here is my experience: Some companies are hiring a pie in a sky while other have real problems and want to hire people that can solve real problems. Hence 2 type of questions: 1) Write me working Lisp code of some exotic sort algorithm, oh and btw what that Hermite–Minkowski theorem is about. 2) They ask what you've done, how you did it, some references and how you can help them to solve their problem. When I smell #1 I just apologize and leave. #2 can go either way but at least you're talking to a reasonable people with real needs. ------ epicgiga This is life though right? These companies pay crazy high salaries -- they're not going to make it easy on you. The fact that you'll barely be using the algorithms if at all doesn't matter. They use that for interviewing specifically because it's hard, and it screens for intelligence, problem solving speed, knowledge, and even how fast you learn (since everyone's got to learn the same algorithm question prep). The end goal for them is that all their workers are at a minimum screened for the ability to grind at and break through difficult and esoteric problems, which are the biggest time sinks and therefore biggest limiters on the progress of the business. ------ person_of_color I once got a Union Find algorithmic problem in an Embedded Systems phone screen. Seriously. I've seen that same role unfilled on LinkedIn for more than a year. How do you stop Google engineers from straight out gatekeeping if they are afforded so much freedom? ------ z3t4 I have over 20 years of experience but due to the constantly changing and re- inventing of tooling I consider myself "junior". I like to do my "cooking" using fresh ingredients, but I prefer to use a sharp knife, rather then special purpose cutting tools, so when I get asked: -"Have you used popular framework and tool x,y,z" my answer is often _no_ , so they probably think I've been living under a rock for the past 5 years. But quite the opposite, I constantly read about most of these tools, but they do not solve any problem I have. ------ lalit-mohan I have done multiple hiring and interviews in tech industry and find it quite baffling what has s/w engineering interviewing process degenerated into. I hear many sad interviewing stories these days. Some my conclusions: Interviewing is an art and it takes a very good interviewer to identify good candidates, this algo/prog interview in 45 mins can not do justice. Problem solving is what is really should be checked and extremely difficult to check, dont ignore the attitude of the candidate. Einstein with a bad attitude should be avoided. ------ jackcosgrove If you work at a FANG too much of your income is hoovered up by rent anyways. Especially factoring in the hours and stress. Promises of a career ladder are breadcrumbs for most people. Why bother. Big Tech has been captured by finance and professional management. In other words those companies are now political bureaucracies where workers, as opposed to connected operators, are exploited. Workers now need to go elsewhere, save up some cheddar, and start their own companies. Same as it ever was. There's nothing special about Silicon Valley. It preys on idealism and naivety just as much as Hollywood. ~~~ jophde Hard to save money in the Bay if you aren't making FANG money. ~~~ jackcosgrove Then leave the Bay. ------ tracerbulletx You need to follow a pretty similar path to get good at competitive programming, which seems to be what that type of interview optimizes for. Know lots of optimal approaches to a large class of problems, and be able to very quickly identify and classify the problem you are given and apply those approaches to solve the specific problem. I agree this isn't really a good match for real-life work. I'm pretty happy with my non MFAANG job but I took up competitive programming as a hobby just so I can have options next time I want to change jobs. ------ jrjarrett I start a new position Monday. I expected my search to be exactly like this, so I started early. Within a week of setting the "would hear from recruiters" flag on my admittedly-thin LinkedIn profile, I had 3 solid leads from 3 companies. I had 3 in-person interviews, and even feeling like I flailed a bit on a couple of the coding exercises (I had the exact panic about writing The Game of Life in 60 minutes), I had two offers and one almost-offer. (The almost was more due to they wanted a principal engineer vs. senior engineer). Maybe around where I am companies are learning their lesson. ------ raz32dust The priority of a big company is to get a "good enough" person as quickly as possible. They have tons of applications, and interviewer time is expensive. Naturally, the process is geared towards minimizing false negatives, and getting a reasonably good hire in the minimum time. The current process works well for that. People who clear these interviews are usually not terrible, and are good enough. There is no incentive for a large company to do anything differently, unless they are looking for a very specific skillset, which is rare. ------ anthonysarkis Re: 'Time limits are detrimental and discriminatory' the short answer is that it's really testing if you already know the answer - some of these original algorithms took decades to discovery the first time. My interview process if a bit different but still very tough. I talk about some of my opinions on that here [https://medium.com/@anthony_sarkis/software-engineering- path...](https://medium.com/@anthony_sarkis/software-engineering- paths-180595fd229c) ------ nickysielicki I wonder if they were actually effective with that recruitment strategy. I got that notification a bunch of times, generally when googling for documentation, and thus when I’m in the middle of something relatively technical. Finally, I accepted the challenge, looked at the problem, realized it would take at least an hour, and then went back to the programming problem I was doing in the first place. You’re selecting for employees who are able to get distracted for a few hours when they’re in the middle of something else. That’s not who you want. ------ ddevault I think Giant Search and Advertising should make the interview more difficult, then more difficult still, then cease hiring entirely, then atrophy employees until they die and/or are legislated out of existence. You - yes, you, HN reader who already works at one of these companies - are ethically responsible for the actions of your employer. When you're the one on the front lines helping realize their dystopian dreams, then the blame falls on you. Don't work for FAANG. ~~~ jrockway > Don't work for FAANG. What did Netflix do? And don't we like Apple now? They ship crypto to billions that annoys the government's spyware programs. ~~~ ddevault Netflix is the better of the bunch, but they still develop and support DRM (Digital Restrictions Management). Apple is awful, they have a long and storied history of anti-competitive and anti-consumer behavior. Pay-to-play developer ecosystem, walled gardens of applications, proprietary connectors just for the sake of being proprietary, armies of lawyers finding creative new ways to evade taxes... ------ makecheck To me the main misstep with a lot of modern interview testing is the time- constraint factor. Having 20 minutes to solve a complex problem sans-Google in a not-really-a-text-editor field on a web page just isn’t a real-world scenario. And, what you do in that setting doesn’t really say anything useful. If you’re going to test people, either whiteboard it and make it absolutely clear you just want to see how they break it down; or, give them _hours_ to do it right without a lot of restrictions. ~~~ ummonk There is something ironic about not being able to use Google when interviewing with Giant Search and Advertising Company... ------ doh > Hierarchies are real - I am rather confused with the advertised rankings of > a software engineer. There seem to be only two rankings: non-senior and > senior. This one greatly differs between large and small companies, but I think for small companies there are only two positions they can interview for, junior and senior. Anything beyond that, be it Director, VP or SVP, the company is no more interviewing a candidate but rather is doing everything in their power to convince them to join. ------ jupp0r A lot of the article can be explained by viewing the interview as a test. The economics of false positives vs false negatives are vastly different. Giant search company can afford to not hire great candidates. More will apply tomorrow. The cost of hiring somebody they shouldn’t have is disproportionately higher. I’m not saying this is a good thing, but to me it does explain why interviews are so hard and why they are so disconnected from actual jobs that applicants will actually perform. ------ tobyhede Last year I did the initial phone screen for a management level role at large search company and the next step was the infamous code test. Such a hard pass. Maybe it's different at a FAANG but my day job is communication and coordination, being technical enough to unblock and optimise work across multiple teams. The process just felt like it was optimising for the wrong thing. Not to mention that it's 20 years since my degree and I have better things to do. ------ microtherion Every time I read one of these articles, I'm surprised at the complexity of the coding questions the candidates had to solve. When I interviewed for my jobs, the questions were much simpler, and as an interviewer myself, I (a) pick much simpler questions and (b) even so, the candidates tend to have plenty of struggles solving them. Am I really missing an army of engineers who can write an involved image filter in 45 minutes without that actually being their specialization? ~~~ anonytrary Ah, image filter is easy with python: import math from "some huge math lib that does everything you can think of" print math(image) ------ nhumrich Can we move on? Interviews suck in every industry. "Sell me this pen" isn't relevant to what a saleman will be doing. He will be on the phone, following a script but its so standard. It could be worse. In the medical industry you have to work for free (or low pay) for 1-2 years to even be considered for a "real job". Law firms are highly competitive, and have very rigorous interviews . And yet software engineers are payed better on average then both. ------ tenryuu I feel this personally. But I suppose the author is doing a lot better job that I could of as I typically just don't receive a response at all to anything I would apply for. Finding work here feels quite tough, and even with recently graduating with a bach in CS, I ended with contract work writing English content for Japanese websites. It's not demanding and pretty breezy, but at the very least keeps me from turning up homeless. ------ wces I've multiple colleagues who got offers from all of FAANG. They tell me about solving 500 problems on LeetCode 2 or 3 times before appearing for interviews. ------ opless I have always found coding interviews weird. For example, you don't ask a carpenter if they know what a dovetail joint is. You don't ask a bricklayer on which brand of bricks he prefers, or how tall his last wall was. You certainly don't ask a mechanic how an internal combustion engine works! Sure throw a few algorithms at entry level employees, with no experience, to make sure they understand the basics. But not experienced developers! ------ _wldu I strongly encourage self-taught developers to take a good theoretical algorithms class. In it, you'll learn to represent most problems as some sort of graph problem and map the problem at hand to nodes, edges, etc. and find the most efficient way to solve it, prove your solution and show how long it takes. You'll also learn (more importantly) what classes of problems cannot be solved at all. ------ 29athrowaway Engineering interviews borrow ideas from competitive programming. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_programming) The world's top companies receive a flood of applicants and use this format to filter them. If you work in simple web applications with mild traffic volume, filtering candidates in this way is unnecessary. ------ Igelau The heart of the issue is that the interview and even the application process are geared towards finding this mythical coder who lives to churn out code. "URL for website or GitHub repo" is a required field on so many applications now. Sorry... between music, art, exercise, children, and commuting, finding unpaid time to do my job even more is a little tricky! ------ starpilot It's bad, but it's less bad than all the other ways of testing SWE's. These companies aren't averse to self-reflection on hiring criteria. They no longer care about GPA, whether you went to college, or test scores. Evidently their data have shown that algos questions are effective at identifying high performers, albeit inhumane and non-holistically. ------ cleandreams The worst interviews of my life were at Google. The reason is, they ping me when I am not looking and that gives me the idea to look - then they are my first interview. The last time I went through a new job search I studied first for two months. The google interview was before all that. Bombing was painful! IMHO job interviewing is a skill and practice is essential. ------ m3kw9 They are missing a lot of good engineers by putting sink or float weight on white boardings. Apple does this as many big companies. a lot of candidates can code but can’t white board or they can white board because they studied the cracking the interview. You will get some that can actually get whiteboarding but you are hiring people with very simular minds ------ nobleach I really, really want to see Crystal succeed. I've been playing with it over the past few weeks. Since it is so Ruby-like, it's the first language I sat down and pretty much immediately knew how to achieve most of my goals. And having Spec (RSpec-like testing framework) made me nostalgic. I hope to see a critical mass grow behind this one. ------ jrockway HN explores interviewing again. At my last job, I was trying to hire a frontend engineer. More programmery than designery, so I would kind of expect the ideal candidate to have heard of Typescript, and to have maybe written a unit test before. Our recruiter put a job listing on the usual places with those exact criteria, and ... we got hundreds of resumes by the time I took a look at the queue a few days later. I reviewed them all! 90% of the applicants had gone to a bootcamp and had nearly identical resumes. They wrote down their camp projects as though they were work experience. They linked to their Github that had line-for-line identical code between applicants that went to the same boot camp. Some were just directly the output of create-react-app with no additional code added. The common theme was, "I hear you get paid a lot to be a programmer. Count me in!" The other 10% of applicants didn't really have anything negative going on. They have some claimed programming experience, and they want to get paid to write computer programs. Why not call them up and ask them to find the k-th element of a binary tree? It's not a super-obscure area of study. When I was at... erm... "Giant Search and Advertising Company"..., I did in- person interviews. I went through a lot of the shared interview questions to use, but ultimately came up with my own: given a stream of events from a variety of event sources, count how many unique event sources emitted an event in the last 5 minutes and last 30 minutes. I chose this because I literally wrote this exact program, and it took me a few iterations to get it to be optimal. (Or what I think is optimal!) For that reason, I found it to be a pretty fair question. The answer is just a few lines of code. The problem is a real-world problem. It's not a puzzle, but it does involve some thinking and maybe asking some questions. The last thing I'll say, which I know is kind of snarky... As a Senior Software Engineer at Google, your total compensation is going to be north of $300,000 a year. You should be able to find the k-th element of a binary tree. Teach yourself how; it's kind of fun, and might someday be useful. I agree with the HN consensus that hard CS comes up somewhat rarely in the day-to-day life of a programmer. But when it does come up, you really do need to know it. You will never be finding the k-th element of a binary tree. But there will be tree structures, and you will come up with some brute-force algorithm because you haven't seen that class of problems before, and you will push your "uses too much memory and time on production-sized datasets" hack to production, and production will crash, and then you find yourself with a production outage you don't have the tools to fix. You aren't getting paid $300,000 a year for that. So that's probably why they ask you CS-y questions. ------ tomnj Here’s an Xoogler talking about how he was given his own hiring packet to review (without knowing it was his) and rejected it: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=r8RxkpUvxK0&t...](https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=r8RxkpUvxK0&t=8m50s) ------ leet_thow What I've noticed about interviews is that there are a lot of generally unhappy and insecure people out there. People, especially in the Bay Area, are under the thumb at home and work and have a lot of debt and stressful family lives. Social comparison is an instinctual response in such instances and extreme bias is commonplace. ------ cryptozeus “When I was asked to write an image filtration algorithm I spent the first 15 minutes just to understand the question. I ran out of time. ” I have been through few of these, I just assume that there are people out there who can understand and code up the question asked within 15 min. Those are the people this company is looking for. Not you and me. ~~~ erikerikson It's a form of "guess the teacher's answer". I was once observer to a committee that rejected a candidate that came up with a more efficient and correct answer than the interviewer was looking for. I couldn't argue against it because I had recommended the candidate. ------ erikerikson After 15 years, patents, open source, and repeats successes it hasn't gotten better. I got into this because I loved it so much... I feel asked to be a hyper energetic, extroverted ego case and really I just want to be humble and quietly write some code I can feel proud of that does something useful with some kind people. ------ TXV Much of these hiring practices are just a self-perpetuating narrative. Just spreading the news that interviews at your company are hard is a way to discourage unqualified candidates. And candidates that don't want to put up with your (perceived) bullshit. Either way, the choice of playing the game is entirely on us. ------ jwmoz I have no desire to work at those kind of companies nor do I expect I would pass their tests. I've had a successful and well paid career as a contractor in London and highly advise others to check the scene out. Some of the best contracts I worked on were just casual interviews, I didn't even write any code. ------ newfeatureok I think the best hiring process is the following: 1\. Open source your entire codebase 2\. Each user story, commit for feature, etc is tagged 3\. Pending features are correlated to (2). Finally, no interview or references. Simply hire people who can complete high level implementations for the features to extent one can given an arbitrary time frame. ------ alexfromapex The best part is they might hire someone that knows the answers by chance when someone with much better technical skills doesn’t know the answers to the particular set of questions and then the new hire might be technically savvy but often have very poor interpersonal skills ------ joshsyn I almost got into a role as a lead dev only to decline myself later. Their entire team had left for some reason and last developer wanted to leave too. No technical interviews, though lol. Small companies aren’t that great either, when their main business isn’t tech ------ xivzgrev I mean interviewing sucks yes. And don’t spend too long on take home work, no more than what you’d expect to put into a normal interview at that stage eg if it’s a screen no more than 1 hr if it’s later no more than a few. ------ andai > I lie somewhere between junior and senior and it seems to be slim pickings > for my experience level. In some countries I see job postings with a third experience level: "Medior". Is there an equivalent in English? ~~~ twodave The term in English is "mid-level" though most find it somewhat derogatory. ------ 32gbsd No matter how many APIs and tutorials you do it comes down to being calm under pressure and knowing who you are talking to. You have to practice your communication skills and be cool. Often times you will be interviewed by HR people and managers - rarely will you get to be interviewed by a TDD Clean code geek that you follow on twitter. Eitherway there is nothing out there that you deserve more than other people. If you are young shut up and build stuff. (I wrote this as satire a couple moons ago; [http://owensoft.net/v4/item/2162/](http://owensoft.net/v4/item/2162/) ) ~~~ 01100011 > rarely will you get to be interviewed by a TDD Clean code geek Have to disagree. Every interview in the last 3 years was majority technical with top-tier team members. Yes, I talked to a couple HR reps and managers but they were less than 10% of the individual interviews. ~~~ 32gbsd well I guess it all depends on where you are and the ratio of HR people to startups ------ FilterSweep Sadly there are too many people applying to too few jobs. So they’ll hit the archives for CS questions that largely won’t apply to the actual job ------ xvilka The secret is to skip FAANG and alikes. You will be surprised how many highly paid and quite interesting jobs outside of that overhyped circle. ------ AtlasBarfed "I have always sought to be completely honest and humble with myself and others about my abilities." Well, there's your problem right there. ------ winrid There's something I read In The Company of Others by Julie E. Czerneda years ago. "The pay's respectible when the company's not." ------ luord I've gotten so cynical about this that the lyrics of "razzle dazzle" resonate in my mind whenever I'm interviewing. ------ kaveh_h Face it, FANG companies are mega corporations. All that made them good in the eyes of most employees vaporized when they grow much bigger and they lose their culture. That means less autonomy for the new employees (how many remember mythical 20% own time at Google?) and less freedom of expression (James Damore). If you want to be part of something special join a startup or at least a small or mid size company made up of people that actually values your whole skillset and creativity instead of only one aspect. ------ scarejunba I actually really like Google's process. It's got everything I look for, as a candidate: * Predictability - I know what it's going to be like clearly from the beginning * Trainability - I can become better at it * Memoryless - They don't care that I did terribly a year ago Of course, in the end, I didn't actually interview even once with them so maybe I'm lying about what I like. I guess I'm one of those guys who goes from job to job not having a whiteboard interview. Lucky me. ------ hartator This is stupidingly hard and test for the wrong thing but how this is dystopian? ------ christiansakai Everytime this topic is mentioned in HN it always garnered so many comments more than any other topic. And so many people have rehashed over and over their positions. I did, and I will do it again today. Tech booming just happened pretty recently. People are going from law and finance and medicine to software in droves. Though it is arguably that those people better stick with law, finance or medicine than software, the fact is that software field has lower barrier of entry, from socio-economic/financial point of view and artificial gatekeeping point of view. Majority of people just don't have the resources to study law, finance or medicine. We have a gold rush, and majority of people want to improve their life, with the least amount of effort/barrier possible. This result in new supplies of software engineers, whether from graduating bootcamp or graduating CS degree. All of these engineers are of varying quality. Let's not talk about the older experienced software engineers, because I think it is safe to point out the fact that older more experienced software engineers are of better quality in general. So now, we have massive influx of newbie/junior software engineering candidates. How do companies realistically interview all of them? Knowing that these people graduated with varying degree of skills/quality. If the majority of the workforce are older experienced software engineers of good quality, then companies won't have this filtering problem. They can just give interviews by talking from previous projects/referral and call it a day. But now we have this DS&A and take home test as well, because interviewing is hard, and the more candidates out there the harder it becomes. I am about 5 years into my career in this, and did interviews at a few companies and also FAANG. I experienced take home tests, work for a day, and DS&A. And I choose DS&A every single time because the other two sucks. I don't have that many projects, or even side projects that I can be proud of. I love doing hard tutorial such as learning how to do compilers rather than doing some projects. All my github is filled with trash/throwaway code. And for some reason I always got involved with projects that ended up being throwaways in my previous companies, because those projects were generally hard problems. Work for a day, take home tests, those two are a waste of time in my opinion. I can't do multiple of them and get competing offers. But with DS&A I can just learn once and do it multiple times and get multiple competing offers. Not to mention that I won't have to compete with more senior engineers that are obviously more capable than me. By doing this DS&A game I already filtered myself up for better. Besides, I hate learning about framework this, framework that, technology this, technology that, multiple times. It gets old quick. Don't get me wrong, I love learning new stuffs, but too many of those and I just spin around in circles learning the next Javascript framework flavor of the month. I'd rather be interviewed about how to do recursion than being interviewed about the nitty gritty of React vs Angular, Express vs Koa, etc etc etc. In general I favor DS&A interviews. For those of you who are more senior than me. Please don't do DS&A. Please stick with what works for you. If competent people like you start doing DS&A and be good at it, then what are the chances of people like me, or other non senior engineers for getting a job. If you think I'm being sarcastic, believe me, I am not. I truly believe there are people out there that can code in circles around me despite me knowing how to recursively generate a permutation. In general I have success in interviewing at non FAANG/Unicorn companies. I usually finished those coding challenges in 10-15 mins, and the rest 30 mins I just talk to them about random stuff and they ask me about previous project, culture, etc. However, I still haven't found success in FAANG companies. I still got rejected, despite having solved 300+ Leetcode questions. And yes I know people who solved 500+ and still got rejected. Now that brings me to the things that bother me the most. I've seen, as many of the commenters here, that there are people who got in despite not doing any preparation at all. I thought at first those were lies, until I saw it myself, and not just once, but twice, three, and now four times. Everytime I heard these stories it demoralized me. I've seen people who got into L3, L4, E4, without knowing how to reverse a binary tree or do a simple BFS/DFS. Why? What am I doing wrong? What are they doing right? p.s. Don't ask me why I want to work for FAANG. I need (not just want) the money. I have people that I support. ------ smartsystems They need to make sure you will be obedient to arbitrary orders. ------ jvanderbot I think this person was not rejected for their coding. They were passed over for an MS or PhD with similar skills. It is necessary to do well on coding interviews, but not sufficient. optimizing for coding interviews is the wrong approach. ~~~ jophde Wrong crushing the code interview is all that really matters. ~~~ jvanderbot Well, maybe I've had different experiences. ------ alexebird Thank you for writing this. ------ willberman I see peoples' opinions here generally falling into one of two camps. The standard way interviews are conducted are either good or bad. I think it's important to consider both the good and bad elements, and then come to a conclusion about what to do in order to move the collective interview process in a better direction. To note, I've never gone through a traditional technical interview, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. Let's look at the example in the given in the blog post, _write an algorithm to find the Kth highest value in a binary tree_. Now my data structures and algorithms are a bit rusty, so assuming that I remember the correct definition for node height, I believe the solution looks something like the following. data Tree a = Tree a (Maybe (Tree a)) (Maybe (Tree a)) deriving Show -- Assuming k=1 Means the highest node, k=2 means second, etc... -- Note this solution successfully puns non-positive k's -- to return Nothing kHighest :: Int -> Tree a -> Maybe a kHighest 1 (Tree a _ _) = Just a kHighest k (Tree _ (Just l) (Just r)) = case (lRes, rRes) of (Just x, _) -> Just x (_, Just x) -> Just x (_, _) -> Nothing where lRes = kHighest (k - 1) l rRes = kHighest (k - 1) r kHighest k (Tree _ (Just l) _) = kHighest (k - 1) l kHighest k (Tree _ _ (Just r)) = kHighest (k - 1) r kHighest _ (Tree _ _ _) = Nothing Barring some fundamental misunderstanding of the problem (entirely possible), the evaluation criteria is not that the solution is exactly correct and covers all edge cases. The evaluation criteria is does the solution show fundamental knowledge about properties that are used to classify things as tree-like, and does it use the common idiom (decomposition into smaller sub-problems) that is used to process tree-like data. In my opinion, the common criticism that interview questions hold no similarity to day-to-day software engineering problems, holds no water. Yes, you will not directly re-write the tree data type every day in your job. However, you deal with recursive data definitions that require solution by decomposition _multiple_ times a day. If you are not dealing with problems that fall under that category, then you should think hard about which problems you see that could be framed as such because I guarantee you're missing a few. The beauty of the tree as a data structure is that it captures a common set of algebraic properties. Even when other data structures don't exactly fall under said algebra, the concepts to reason about them are reused (note the early language that specifically said "tree-like"). The point of drawing interview questions from your data structures and algorithms course is not to test you on remembering arcane minutia from 5+ years ago but to see your fundamental reasoning skills within the domain of computer science. ~~~ PaulStatezny I might be mistaken (and I'm no Haskell expert) but I believe your solution is based on a misunderstanding of the problem. > Find the Kth highest value in a binary search tree Your code seems to return _any_ node that is at level K. Where K is 1 for the root node, 2 for its children, 3 for its grandchildren, etc. But unless I'm mistaken, by the wording of the problem, it's looking for the concretely K highest value, in sorted order. Not "highest in the tree". So if a binary search tree has values (1, 3, 5, 8, 13) the algorithm is supposed to return 8 when K=2, _regardless_ of how the nodes are structured. (E.g. Even if it's unbalanced and 8 is the root node.) Because 8 is the 2nd highest value contained by the tree. Sounds like a harder puzzle than your interpretation... ~~~ willberman I love posting things to the internet that end up being wrong :). I think this is an interesting look at ambiguity in wording for computer science terminology. In my mind, height or highest always means node height. The term largest should be reserved for numerical measurement. See the next paragraph for a good example. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the k highest interpretation with an unsorted tree sounds like a simpler problem. If the tree is unsorted, you must traverse the entire tree, sort the result, and then you have your answer. The more challenging problem sounds to me to be what happens when the tree is already sorted. Interestingly, I think the solution for this problem makes my point better than the original problem. Look at how buildHeights breaks the sub problems down. The height (size) of a value in a node at a given level (height) is a function of the heights (sizes) of sub-trees. I included a main method, so you can run the code and not mentally parse it :). What's interesting to me is the commonality in structure between the two solutions despite the problems asking for radically different things. Note, I probably could not have come up with this solution in the amount of time allotted in an interview because it took a while to find a solution that properly showed problem decomposition. import qualified Data.Map as Map data Tree a = Tree a (Maybe (Tree a)) (Maybe (Tree a)) deriving Show buildHeights :: Tree a -> Map.Map Int a buildHeights (Tree a Nothing Nothing) = Map.singleton 1 a buildHeights (Tree a (Just l) Nothing) = Map.insert 1 a lRes where lRes = Map.mapKeys (+1) (buildHeights l) buildHeights (Tree a (Just l) (Just r)) = Map.unions [rRes, lRes, curRes] where rRes = (buildHeights r) maxRight = maximum $ Map.keys rRes lRes = Map.mapKeys (+ (1 + maxRight)) (buildHeights l) curRes = Map.singleton (1 + maxRight) a kHighest :: Int -> Tree a -> Maybe a kHighest k t = (buildHeights t) Map.!? k main = do let tree = (Tree 4 (Just (Tree 2 (Just (Tree 1 Nothing Nothing)) (Just (Tree 3 Nothing Nothing)))) (Just (Tree 6 (Just (Tree 5 Nothing Nothing)) (Just (Tree 7 Nothing Nothing))))) in do { putStrLn $ show $ kHighest 1 tree ; putStrLn $ show $ kHighest 2 tree ; putStrLn $ show $ kHighest 3 tree ; putStrLn $ show $ kHighest 4 tree ; putStrLn $ show $ kHighest 5 tree ; putStrLn $ show $ kHighest 6 tree ; putStrLn $ show $ kHighest 7 tree ; putStrLn $ show $ kHighest 8 tree ; } ------ jordan801 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Warning Heavy Cynicism Ahead -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= I've worked at my current job for a long, long time now. Every year or so I decide to peak my head out from it and test the job waters. I get nearly the same set of 4 outcomes each time. I have over 7 years of experience with everything from front-end development to sysops, devops, and management. I've built entire companies by myself in months. Albeit buggy ones. I bloody hate interviewing. Outcomes: 1\. I get rejected for messing up a programming fundamentals question. Which, honestly stings because, yeah, I should probably be more informed. But, currently, I ain't got no time fo dat. I'm too busy solving a bombardment of problems like: "Hey, programmer X quit, I know you don't work with X language at all but we need this fixed, yesterday". 2\. I spend a bunch of my precious time writing a fully functional code test, to be inexplicably rejected. Maybe because I didn't write unit tests? Maybe because I didn't use doc blocks. Maybe I didn't make the code reusable enough given their imaginary scope. Who knows. 3\. They're super excited to hire me for a position I am not at all qualified for. Usually for a ridiculously minuscule salary. I had a company ask me, after spending 2 hours on a phone interview, to build and run their development shop. They wanted to on board 50 employees by my 6 month mark, and completely dismantle their overseas workforce. 4\. I'm just plain ghosted. I'm absolutely sick of potential employers asking me why I am excited to work with them. Well sir, to be honest, appearances and mission statements are superficial. I am excited to experience something new. I really hope that your shop lives up to the hype. I am excited to learn. Take note employers. Saying pretty much anything else is either ignorance or a lie carefully concocted over the countless hours you require of potential employees, just to get in the door. Your interview question responses are almost never genuine talent. They are hours of memorization. I know, because I've asked, and answered them. Why even require a resume? I've spent hours cultivating a bomb resume and 19 out of 20 employers, have literally no idea what it says. Employer: "So what languages are you familiar with?" __They 're literally listed on the resume that you required I send you, with demonstrations. The one I customized to your company and needs. __ A different employer: "So, you don't actively work on any opensource projects, we can review"? __No, I try to have a life when I am not working, and go outside. I know, hiss... __ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Right now 7:23 PM on Valentines day, I am trying to speed up a program, an MVP, that I rebuilt in a week. One that I acquired after the prior developer got fired. One of my many, many projects. This one is particularly pesky as I am also trying to build out another app that is due, about 23 days from now. Send help. ------ bx32 wow! ------ allovernow In my admittedly limited experience, there's one way to avoid such nonsensical interviews - run away from bureaucracy. Seek smaller organizations (startups in particular) and if you're lucky enough to have a minimally cross- disciplinary background, you can seek out niche organizations where you'll interview with technical specialists who'll ask reasonable questions that are _actually related to your work_ and your interviewers won't be saddled with "standardized" managment pleasing bullshit. One of the biggest problems I see with modern tech (and large industry in general) is this ridiculous idea that MBAs can standardize all processes across all departments across all industries. This is a source of needless pain and waste - but I suppose it keeps execs happy when they can reduce every metric to a nice little [bullshit] number. Interviewing at FAANG is a case in point. I've never in my life had to implement a recursive memory optimized underwater red black tree balancing algorithm, and it's insulting to be told I'm not a good enough programmer if I can't pass your totally contrived white board problem. Who the hell are these people even selecting for with these kinds of questions? Do they understand how much talent they're throwing away? In any case, I have a strong suspicion that, aside from compensation, working for FAANG is hugely overrated. And that's not just sour grapes talk - mountains of red tape, processes upon processes, overwork and burnout, and best of all, you get to spend your best years infecting society with the cancer that is adtech. ~~~ Quekid5 I agree on small orgs, but... recommending startups is a bit iffy, IMO. DGMW, startups can be great, but if you're just a good programmer wanting a stable job, then that startup job is not the job for you. However, you could be a _huge_ contributor and positive influence in a small org... and it's possible to gain a lot of life satisfaction that way[0]. Plus, your employer actually knows you and understands the value you bring, etc. etc. Yes, you probably will not earn as much as you could by indirectly peddling ads, tracking users, or whatever, but personal fulfillment matters... at least it does to me... and I hire people who feel the same way. [0] It sounds weird, but studies have shown that giving people agency (as they must be in a small org), setting their own goals, etc. has a positive influence on their well-being and productivity. ~~~ mnm1 I only disagree with "as they must be in a small org". I only wish that was true, but my experience says otherwise. A small company might give one agency or it might not. Or it can do both over time. With a dozen people in the company you'd think it'd be wise, but the latest management trends and compensation procedures prevent it. In other words, we build what the boss wants and have zero incentive and time to work on anything else. In fact, if there is time, I actively avoid any tasks not delegated by management so as not to appear like I'm working on non sanctioned things. But mostly, the time just expands to fill the work. Or the other way around. There is zero incentive to try to change this or do anything not scheduled as it has been shown it'll not be appreciated but with empty words. ~~~ Quekid5 That's a very fair point. I can only speak from my own experience on this. It's a great observation that authoritarian tendencies can probably arise in any size of organization. (I would advise getting out -- if you can, financially, etc. -- if you do not have self-determination. It's incredibly soul-destroying in the long term. Best of luck.) ------ rcarmo This only gets worse when you’re old enough to go in, sit in a room across two or three people and realize you have at least as much experience as all of them _combined_ - not necessarily in terms churning out of code in the language _du jour_ or their domain specifics, but in terms of people management and systems design. There are multiple kinds of dysfunction at work here: \- When I was looking for purely technical gigs I breezed through phone screens and automated testing only to go up against the ageism wall on the first Skype call. Period. \- Recruiters reproducibly drop out of the blue without a clue as to what you actually do or your experience level. Adding “Senior” to my LinkedIn profile measurably decreased the amount of randos that reach out on a weekly basis. \- Puzzle-based screenings are a complete waste of time. It’s not about the prep, it’s about the likelihood you’ll ever encounter those problems. People are much more likely to have to address system design problems, but those cannot be tested for by the online questionnaire cottage industry, so you get mediocre engineers who know how to write fizzbuzz but have zero clue of how to design an order management system from scratch or where to look for issues in an old one. \- Companies often don’t understand what is involved in the roles they hire for--even if you’re a perfect match for the job description (if there is one), the hiring team has an agenda that seldom matches it. \- Engineering is not just about writing code. The second you start asking questions about how teams interact or if they have a strategy for X, the people in the room (or call) are seldom the ones that can get past canned replies. \- Startups tend to be extremely picky and hype-driven. The language _du jour_, their “triple mocha with a squeeze of raspberry” Agile flavor or someone’s pet organizational methodology (teams/tribes/packs/etc.) usually feature prominently in senior interviews, but even VPs _very seldom_ talk about how they manage people--just product and investors. As a result, I’ve long stopped applying to “normal” engineering positions (and even senior management ones at startups). I drop out of the process (politely) as soon as I get the first hint of automated tests, ageism or VC hype, and prefer networking and getting to know the culture first. Even so, I’ve had a few notorious duds--I would talk to a VP, have a great conversation, and then have “peer” discussions with people half my age that might as well have lived inside a bubble (and had obvious gaps in empathy and emotional intelligence), or simply have an “OK, boomer” moment whenever the conversation steered into how they managed people growth or I commented on their org structure. Or I would go through the _whole_ thing and then be told that they wanted someone at “a different career stage”, even though you ticked all the boxes, talked to around a dozen people, and gotten consistently excellent feedback (that one smarted a bit, because it was in a very niche field I was particularly good at). My key takeaway is that “vanilla” engineering jobs are most often not seen as being long-term hires that bring in outside experience: they are fresh cogs for an internal hype-driven, Rube Goldberg-like contraption that many tech companies cling to and want to preserve at any cost, and the hiring process (and lack of care in it) mirrors that. ------ _martamoreno_ Bad example really. There are many companies where you don't need to know this stuff, Google is not one of them. You want that 350k a year, but you don't know the basics about computer science to find the k-th highest element in a BST, well doh. What can I say... To be honest, this is really a super simple question and I would be stunned if this was anything but a warmup for you, like the interviewer giving you a simple question to get you into focus. I haven't done anything with BST in years but still I could easily do this with a piece of paper. Back in the days, Google was asking to insert an element in a Red-Black-Tree. Well, this is a clusterfuck and far too specialized. But questions like those were rightfully banned. Yeah sure, it's not what you do all day, but not being able to answer these questions has implications. There are many code monkey mills where you just write some JS code to hack a webpage together and it would seriously bother me if they would ask you such questions. Just rethink what you really want. FAANG is not for everyone. ~~~ Infinitesimus > To be honest, this is really a super simple question and I would be stunned > if this was anything but a warmup for you, like the interviewer giving you a > simple question to get you into focus. > Back in the days, Google was asking to insert an element in a Red-Black- > Tree. Well, this is a clusterfuck and far too specialized. But questions > like those were rightfully banned. Our blindspots are pretty funny. I can assure you that many people thought Red Black trees were easy enough and if you had a hard time, their advice would be: > Just rethink what you really want. FAANG is not for everyone ------ trollied > "The horrifically dystopian world of software engineering interviews" If you actually read the linked article, there aren't really any interviews. The OP is just getting let down by recruiters. ~~~ pinewurst I disagree - the recruiters are forced to be the messengers of dysfunction. I've seen some pretty reprehensible examples of this where I actually felt sorry for the recruiters.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
R.I.P. Good Times: One Year Later - vaksel http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/06/r-i-p-good-times-one-year-later/ ====== JacobAldridge I know I've been reasonably immune to this, being based in Australia (where interest rates are on their way back up!), but doing some global research for a speech I have to give next week gives me mixed views about this article. -True, much of the 'Great Depression' media was hyperbolic speculation -But, this recession probably _will_ be the worst since the mid 1970s, and since most businesses weren't operating with their current owners back then many mistakes are being repeated due to lack of specific experience -Green shoots and 'good times' articles are also premature. The bounce in stock markets is only just starting to be seen in the broader economy, and we're hearing this will be followed by a drag phase and then another significant dip before really taking off again (think a W shape) Some of my colleagues ran a similar presentation in Washington State last week, so if you search Twitter [1] you'll find plenty more thoughts and observations. [1] <http://twitter.com/search?q=%23shirlaws> ~~~ mahmud _I know I've been reasonably immune to this, being based in Australia (where interest rates are on their way back up!), but doing some global research for a speech I have to give next week gives me mixed views about this article._ They went back up yesterday. The first developed nation to officially end the recession. But to be honest, I think the Aussie government has a relatively docile public who are more tolerant of bullshit than other nations, so Rudd can pull off stunts like this unquestioned. ------ TomOfTTB I don't dispute there's a financial crisis but I've always believed this is maybe the most over reported crisis ever. I can't count the number of times I've heard "VC money is drying up." Someone ought to show those people these charts. Again, no doubt there's a financial crisis but this whole "next great depression meme" has been silly from the start. (For an example of how silly things have gotten look in the comments for "William Blanchard". He not only claims to have heard 60% of New Yorkers are unemployed but he actually believed that number) ~~~ UncleOxidant Perhaps, but news of "green shoots" has also been over reported for the last few months. This thing isn't over by a long shot. Great Depression II, though? Not likely. But I suspect we'll have unemployment around 10% for quite some time. ~~~ RyanMcGreal What concerns me is the question of what happens when economic growth finally does take off again. At what point will increasing demand for oil push prices into another economy-crippling super-spike? ------ bbuffone Any look back to last year has to include the "Team Cyprus" video [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/10/team-cyprus-move-to- und...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/10/team-cyprus-move-to-undo-the- video/) <quote>Team Cyprus: Alcohol + Bad Judgement + Really Poor Timing</quote> Edit: Note I don't agree with the quote. I think it was funny how "some" thought that people that earned money honestly, went to have fun was in Bad Judgement.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
IE6 No More - 100k http://www.ie6nomore.com/ ====== gscott Personally, I have a harder time supporting Firefox than any version of IE. The most complicated thing for Firefox is a Rich Text Editor. I cannot tell you how many editors I went through to get one to work with Firefox. I have had Firefox upgrades break rich text editors as well. One day it works, next day, bam, I have to spend half the day fooling around with something that should work, but doesn't. Hard core programming geniuses, this is no problem for them but there was a day when the 'world wide web' was supposed to be this easy thing to put information online. It's moving far away from that especially with a crazy w3c 'validator' that says 'hey you have 100 errors!' when not a single error exists and the page(s) work fine in every reasonable browser to test with. ~~~ pbhjpbhj Wordpress, Joomla, etc. seem to have no problem with this. I've implemented FCKeditor and TinyMCE without issue. There's content-editable now too, which should make things simple: just mark a section of text as editable, edit in the browser and resubmit the page back to the server (nope not tried it yet). "any version" - hmm, really? You should be coding to standards compliance first, not to MSIE, perhaps that's the issue?? ------ rjurney A good start, but why stop at 6? ~~~ jmtulloss I'm not sure if you're being facetious or not, but it's because 7 & 8 are much more standards compliant and take way less time to hack on to get working. Plus they have a huge market share. ~~~ Oompa I think he means why not get rid of IE all together? 7 & 8 are more standards compliant than 6 (which isn't saying much), but they still are lagging behind Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera. ~~~ likpok Depends what you mean by 'standards'. 7 & 8 support more of CSS 2.1 than the other browsers. I believe support for CSS3 is lacking because they didn't want to write to a draft, and then have to support no-longer-standard extensions when the draft changed. ~~~ pbhj But neither has PNG right yet. ------ alex_c Nice SEO move for Weebly :) ~~~ tocomment explain? ~~~ alex_c Look at the bottom of the page - "Weebly" and, more importantly, "free website". If all goes well, this domain should get a ton of incoming links - which should give Weebly a lot of weight for the keyword "free website". I don't mean this as a criticism in any way, btw - if you can save the world and benefit at the same time, so much the better :) ------ jeroen Discussion has started here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=742029> ------ jsz0 I think the best strategy is to display a message warning your site may not work on IE6 and simply stop testing IE6. If it works, great, if not -- too bad. Going out of your way to block people who very likely have no control over the browser they're using at work just seems pointless. Most IT departments aren't going to feel pressure to upgrade based on their employees wanting to use non-work related sites. A better strategy would be to include a scary warning about IE6 being unsafe. This might at least shame some IT departments into upgrading. It works... I'm being shamed into buying legit SSL certs for intranet sites because I'm sick of people complaining about the scary warnings you get from self signed certs these days. ~~~ pemdas It really sucks to design for IE6 but to make purposely make a site that breaks in IE6 is so bad for accessibility. If your CSS messes things up in IE then at least just displayed unstyled semantic HTML. At least the user will be able to access the content which should be what matters most. ------ timdorr How many of the member sites have this implemented already? I don't see the code on Weebly, Posterous, or Disqus. I'm sure this isn't a drop everything, must-have, showstopper feature, but it might be good to implement it before you start telling people you do :) ~~~ drusenko All of us have. You need to log-in to Weebly to see it (where we show it very prominently). Posterous has it on their home page. Fire up IE6 in a virtual machine and check it out :) ~~~ timdorr Ah, you're just not displaying it depending on the user agent? I'd rather not fire up IE6, if I can avoid it :P ~~~ drusenko well, yes, that's sort of the whole purpose :) ------ ryanspahn We (<http://sleep.fm>) redirect IE6 users to an older version of the site that has less features. Not sure, if that's suffice for this campaign or not? ~~~ donaldc Do you make these users aware that's what you're doing, and that their experience on the site would be better in a modern browser? I think the point of this campaign is to make IE6 users aware (if they aren't already) that they're using an obsolete browser. ------ jmah I fear that an alert-style warning may be ignored by users, just as they're used to ignoring "Warning: Your computer may have spyware!" banners. ------ mwcremer There are similar efforts underway: <http://www.pushuptheweb.com/> ------ joseakle Do you offer the option to download a modern browser ?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Drag and Drop with HTML5 (plus source code) - talison http://blog.zenbe.com/2009/07/23/shareflow-drag-and-drop/ ====== wsbail29 here's the direct link to the sourcecode for the DropManager class extracted from our work on this feature. <http://gist.github.com/153019> from the docs... The DropManager class provides a pleasant API for observing HTML5 drag-n-drop events, cleaning up the data that they return, and triggering the appropriate callbacks. With the drag and drop API so far, there are generally three types of data we're interested in: HTML, URLs, and plain text. On drop, your callback will receive a pre-processed drop object with corresponding 'url', 'html' and 'text' properties. ------ TweedHeads Can I see the demo with the click of just one link? Sorry, I have no time for free registrations or downloading and running something, I just want to see the demo. ~~~ jarlow click the link... there's a demo video right there.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: AWS vs. self-hosted for collection of small apps - productionQA Hi All,<p>Curious about your thoughts on paying the $10-15/month for a small AWS instance (t1, t2) vs. a self-hosted server.<p>I have a small collection of apps I run, maybe 3 right now, that need to be available to the outside world, but that do not (and probably won't) see much traffic ever. The apps revolve around a small amount of users intentionally. The apps themselves are small, but a couple do require a database.<p>Should I just throw these on a machine, open a port, and self-host them, or should I grab a small EC2 instance and pay the small monthly fee?<p>Any benefits or cons to doing either? ====== josekpaul It sounds like you already have the infrastructure, and your requirements for scalability/uptime/etc. are not very high. In this case I would just go with the self-hosted solution.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Developing mobile applications : Android vs iOS - brserc It's been a while since I've seen a discussion about whether to develop for android or ios as a developer. Android now has most of the mobile phone market(%80), but most of the developers believe that making money from ios market is easier.<p>Can you share your experiences? Especially some statistics about some apps that are on both platforms would be very useful for everyone. Experiences of those who develops for other mobile markets would also be very helpful. ====== kumarm Android Hands down. Yes Per User you make more money on iOS. But that market is way over matured and slim chance for any new entrant to make it. Also there was a question in Silicon Valley iOS Developers Meetup mailing list to find Bootstrap developers who live on revenue from their apps (without any contracting work on the side). The only developers who seem to make money purely developing their apps are Android Developers. (Not a single iOS developer from silicon valley developer group with 6K+ members said they make a living purely on iOS app development). PS: This was from September 2012. I don't know how to link the emails from meetup. ~~~ coralreef Heh, surveys are only worth so much. Aggregate data is usually more useful. FWIW make 100% of my income from iOS (<$100k range). ------ tartle From what my clients say (I develop cross-platform apps as freelancer, mostly in Titanium), sales still remain much higher on iOS. ------ jamesjguthrie Learn how to do both, natively. ~~~ tartle ...and when you have learnt it - use a decent cross-platform framework (like Titanium or Xamarin, I don't mean uncanny-valley-html-pretending-native-ui...) for 80% cases, where it makes more sense than producing two separate code bases. ------ pearjuice Due to the ease of iTunes, Apple users have it way easier in having directly usable credit for the App Store. Besides, they already paid premium for their devices so it is likely they have additional money which they will spend on third-party applications for the iOS platform. Android still has this "It is cheap and free" imago so they are not heavy spenders and will not grab their wallet fast. I don't have any data at hand to directly back this up, but my guess is it will be roughly like this. It would be valuable to have a report on how the high-end pricey smartphone owners (HTC One, Galaxy S4 etc) are spending more or less than the budget Android devices.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Freelancing for family? - scottndecker I wrote a static site for my sister who runs a small business from her home. Overall, it went pretty well. We launched the site a few months back. Then it came out that she was pretty much expecting free support afterward via the good ol' family discount.<p>Have any of you done work for family?<p>Did you give them any kind of discount?<p>How did you handle support after launch? ====== yebyen Of course, free support. I run into this all the time at work. Yeah, I am being paid, but it happens more often than you think that someone comes asking for something and they think you can just wave a magic wand and it's done. Never mind they know it would have taken hours for them to do so without your help. This happens less and less when you can educate people about how much work it is to do a thing, exactly what goes into it, and what small things can be done to save you (them) from wasting lots of time on unnecessary work that may not be obviously unnecessary to them. How much do you like your sister? Do you think she can afford to pay for ongoing support? Is it a successful business, or more fledgling? Is what she needs now so big, in comparison to what you've already done for free, that you feel you have to charge for it where you didn't before? If you built it sanely, hopefully there is a way you can show how to do what needs to be done now. Normal people are usually afraid of making websites, and it's not that hard. You can do your part by making good backups of what you've already done and being available in case something goes wrong and it gets too hairy for a novice to fix. It should not be necessary for you to be responsible for editing copy on an ongoing basis. Then again, depending on how hard-up you are for work... ------ sogen Oh man, honestly I always ask for payment. And the issues: once I had a family member asking for way too much and taking way too long to respond. I had to stop doing work with that person. tl;dr: 1.- Avoid it as much as possible. 2.- Ask for more. 3.- Read point one.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dear HN - help me with my online dating site - steveeq1 Dear HN,<p>I'm trying to come up with some wildly different approaches to the online dating problem. I'm emphasizing concept development instead of technological development (which is overemphasized, in my opinion).<p>One strategy for instigating creative ideas is to ask oneself "what is the dominant idea behind all this?" Take Speed Dating, for example. The dominant idea behind speed dating is "going on a large number of small dates instead of a small number of long dates". One can throw out the "dating musical chairs" format, but still keep the basic concept. So my question is:<p>What is a good excuse/activity for people meet up for 5 minutes?<p>I'm thinking about hooking up people via gps/cell phones, although that may change. I would like to get some input or ideas of anything that comes to mind. I don't care if it's outlandish or "probably won't work". I'm not looking for "right", I'm looking for "different". While the "crazy, but wrong" idea might not work, a related idea could, so please don't hold back.<p>- Steve<p>PS Any hackers on my list who are into experimenting with concepts (not necessarily this one), join my meetup "Hacker Codejam": http://www.meetup.com/hacker-codejam/ . It's kinda a hangout for programmers who like to work on their side projects from time to time. ====== m0th87 Plug into facebook. This will allow you to attract users because there's no registration barrier, and collect information about the user's tastes and interests. Then use that information to find like-minded individuals who would be a good match. Now you could connect that with your GPS idea. If you're within, say, five miles of a good match, a notification goes off on your cell phone saying you should meet this person. If both parties confirm, your service would provide a means of having them connect in real life. Either it could call them both and connect them, or it could propose a mutual location for them to meet. ------ roundsquare How about you make a deal with theaters etc... in the area. Couples go online and pick shows/movies they want to watch. You match people by show, time, area, etc and when they both agree they PayPal you the money to buy the tickets online. They meet at the theater or a nearby public place. So, they have a common interest, feeling of safety, immediate discussion points, etc... And maybe you can squeeze a percentage of the ticket price from the theater. ~~~ theblackbox Okay, I've never been able to figure this one out... you're saying the perfect place for a first date is a large darkened room filled with strangers and an attention grabbing audio-visual bonanza? I just don't get it. Maybe as a second or thid date, once you've figured out some particularly interesting inde film you think he/she might like. Otherwise it just seems a bit uncomfortable to me. Anyway, having said that: I wonder if you can utilise aspects of speed dating and social media. The _point_ of speed dating is the anonymity (it's a person, not a profile), and a (woefully) popular part of social networking are those abhorent lists of likes and dislikes. Throw people together "willie nillie" (anonymously so to speak) and provide them with some of the aforementioned evil lists to fill in about the other half. This can then be pushed as marketing info, and you can direct the latest black and white french film that the local picturehouse is showing to the perfect couple... the idea being that it is the other way round, (active instead of passive) so it still has the feeling that you invited her to this movie because she _told you_ it was her favourite. You didn't just read it on a profile and think that'll do. ~~~ cracell I like a movie as a first date. You meet and get to chit-chat for about 10-15 minutes before the movie. Then you get to just quietly get used to being by the other and no pressure of conversation during the movie. After you can continue to chit-chat and get dinner or coffee. If things aren't going well you can easily bail (or they can). I find it's a nice simple format. Compared to starting with say dinner. ------ dpifke I think there needs to be a way to leverage a person's social graph. I'm in a three-year relationship that came about because a mutual friend played matchmaker. By having the two parties connected to each other via mutual friends you also address some of the safety concerns - perhaps you require someone in the chain from person A to person B to vouch for each of them. This may or may not tie into an existing social network - the problem with making it tied to Facebook is that not everyone wants to announce to the world that they're looking for a date, for fear of appearing desperate, or because they use Facebook for other purposes (such as business connections). Another potential downside is that a lot of people go online specifically to date OUTSIDE their current circle of friends. (As an aside, I typed this and was reminded of what my little brother and his friends called the "Friendster game" in college - going through acquaintances' friends to score who had the hottest friends.) ------ maxdemarzi I had an idea to make a designer clothing retail store into a dating site a while back... I'll share my notes: If you are trying to build on online e-commerce site that sells apparel and want to BE something different, then... build a free Online Dating site with a Catch: Validated Profiles (aka. Real People) - Must have/buy an outfit from [Designer Clothes Retailer] and wear it on the photo to be able to use all of features of the site (look but don't touch model). You can coerce people at the stores to register (discounts or good salespeople) to get it started ( just need a camera and a laptop, good lighting, and a backdrop with logo on it). Have buy this outfit on every profile, and given the ability to rate people and clothes separately (hot or not style) then you overcome the (straight) guys looking at guys problem by showing them what outfits were top rated by girls... and so on. ------ there speed dating is in large groups of people, it's safe, and there's not much pressure. a lot of people (especially women) don't want a spontaneous meet-up alone with some random internet person they've never seen nor know anything about. even on sites like okcupid where you can email/instant message someone for weeks while having a completely filled out profile with pictures and background information, many are still uncomfortable meeting up in person. unless your site is going to be geared towards hookups and one-night stands. then it would probably work exactly for those same reasons; it's somewhat anonymous and quickly provides a way to meet someone extremely local. ------ dryicerx One Idea I've thought in this area solves the question you were asking about, what activity/excuse the users have to come meet? Well instead of that being a question for you, make it for the users... Users can enter in activities they want to do? (may it be grab some coffee, see a new show, bird watching, even slightly non dating things like jogging or carpooling, etc). It'd be something like Craiglist, but more focus and non chaotic on this aspect of person-person activities... Now the site would do is match up these based on relatedness of activities the person would like to do. ------ chaosprophet Try this: Have your user select some 5 people they would like to date. Once selected shoot an email off to 5 of the user's friends asking them to have a look at the prospective date's profiles and tell which would be most appropriate for the user. Then confirm with the user and setup a date. DISCLOSURE: This idea is not my own. I read about it somewhere, most probably a previous HN thread. ------ iterationx I had some friends that started dating from hotornot.com and the interesting thing I think is that it is more like a game or a place to amuse yourself for a few minutes than a dating site. So I think that's an interesting principle, wrap up a dating site in a game format. ------ peterwwillis You could base your meet-ups on anonymity and uniformity. I've always wondered why these sites focus so much on pictures. I think they should be based on personality and similar interests. Take the pictures and user-ids out of the list of people going to meet up. Also you can add structure to the event. I find people are much more likely to meet a bunch of strangers if they know exactly what to expect and what is going to happen. The social map idea isn't bad at all: you might not get a great idea about a person by their biased autobiographical profile. Looking at their facebook or myspace activity may glean much more insight as to their personality. One of the things that strikes me about dating sites is how they're designed for people who are the absolute best at communicating and putting forth a good impression. If online daters were so good at that they probably wouldn't be trying to get a date online! There needs to exist mechanisms that help people to express themselves. Also, I could just be crazy, but it seems like there's some inherent dishonesty in presenting yourself via online dating. Are you lonely? Horny? Bored? There doesn't seem to be a way to express any emotions or desires that others may share without appearing undesireable. Some way for people to connect based on their emotional state seems useful to me, I just don't know how you'd present it to users (other than perhaps through hidden settings and a "show me users who feel similarly to how I do" list method). ------ kapauldo i speculate that with dating paradigms, women fear: 1) safety 2) stalking 3) hurting a guys feelings men fear 1) rejection 2) stigma of "resorting" to a dating site 3) not having to face a girl he's not interested in so, if you can solve these things you've got something. i think an iphone/gphone app with faces you can flip through (here are some guys/girls in your area) would be neat. really simple interface. also, i'd let anyone browse, no signup, but if they want to date, they have to sign up and get verified. or something like that. i agree about the other comment about verified identities. you might want to drop a postcard in the mail with a code and have them enter the code online to verify they're real. that would help remove the safety and stalking factor for women. ~~~ matty What you're very close to describing here is the Loopt Mix app. There is a small sign up, but its pretty quick and simple. The number one issue with these platforms is that they are plagued with a large number of males completely throwing off the male to female ratio. The problem to overcome is how to get women to use these applications.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Misinterpreting Copyright - tjr http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html ====== flipbrad I do take slight issue with articles on copyright theory that go back into the history of copyright but make little or no note of the atoms to bits transition. It's possible, of course, that the author doesn't feel that anything has changed and that he's preaching fundamentals. But when one looks at how easily an author's work, in digital form, can proliferate beyond the remotest semblance of control, through social networks that have absolutely no semblance to the small-world form they used to have - lending a book to my physical neighbour, vs. upping an mp3 to an international, ananymous filesharing community. The copy you lend never comes back, and it's easier than ever before to record - you're not manually copying (or even photocopying) the book or sheet music Frankly the way media is handled, produced, distributed, consumed is totally different. There's no question that old systems that used to regulate that flow are totally inappropriate. But this is still far too new for anyone to legitimately claim to know what the solution is. The scientist in me calls for some experimentation. Nobody in the debate denies the existence of some sort of equilibrium between protection of an author's interests and levels/quality of production (this is different to the balance which Stallman firmly denies the conceptualvalidity/constitutionality of). Let's tweak and test protective measures and see where the new equilibrium falls. It may be that there's a vast amount of elasticity in this new world and that the creator segment can tolerate vast reductions in the protections society offers them and their publishers. Or we might see them scale back creation immensely. I go so far as to propose two possible ways to perceive the piracy 'pandemic' which the creative segment has been subject to for the past few decades. The first is as society's response to the shifted equilibrium - the release of tensions built up by wildly inappropriate and restrictive copyright practices that have taken away too much of people's freedom;It might thus be a sign that copyright practices have to be relaxed for equilibrium to be restored. The second is that it could be viewed by policymakers as precisely the sort of experiment that I ealier advocated we try. What happens when we weaken the copyright protections surrounding the output of publishers - does society suffer? This is precisely what has happened (without any relaxation from the lawmakers). Does it perhaps point to a sustainable future with reduced copyright protection? I realise that experimentating in law is difficult - law is a signal as much as a framework and tweaking/screwing with it on a regular basis will in itself be a destabilising influence to a system that we'd like to see come to a new, stable equilibrium so that we can observe the effect. Ideally we'd use different parameters in parallel universes; an approximate might be different countries with different systems but the globalisation of distribution networks means that these are no longer isolated systems, so that's out of the window too. The experiment has to be conducted worldwide, simultaneously; WIPO perhaps needs more power to override sovereignty. So what about different parameters for different media forms, as Stallman suggests (though perhaps not with the same intent as mine - I want to do it for experimentation, he suggests it might be necessary to tailor protection parameters for different media forms - as if a media form has an inherent level of protection demand). ------ prospero Stallman says that the inherent tension in copyrights is between the consumer and publisher, and that the consumer clearly takes precedence. You could just as easily, however, say it's a tension between the short and long-term benefits for the consumer; on the one hand, copyright weakens the rights of the consumer, but on the other hand it guarantees they will continue to have quality media to consume. I don't claim to know where the balance lies between these two considerations, but I do know that there has to be a balance, even if we are solely concerned for the consumer's well-being. ~~~ ggchappell > Stallman says that the inherent tension in copyrights is between the > consumer and publisher, .... Actually, I don't think he said that at all. He said that, in passing laws related to copyright, the government is, ideally, acting entirely to maximize the benefit to the public. He says that copyright exists in order to encourage authors to produce more works, because that should benefit the public. > I don't claim to know where the balance lies between these two > considerations, but I do know that there has to be a balance, .... Stallman doesn't agree with you. He specifically states that the idea that copyright should balance the rights of various parties, is a bad one. Read the section titled, The first error: "striking a balance". It ends: "Since the idea of 'striking a balance' between publishers and readers denies the readers the primacy they are entitled to, we must reject it." ~~~ prospero You're right, I put that badly. He says that the copyright issue is _treated_ as a tension between consumer and publisher, and that this is a problem. I don't agree with this characterization. I think the publishers are absolutely concerned with their bottom line when they complain about lost sales. I also think that there's enough substance to their slippery slope argument (given time, they'll lose so many sales they'll become insolvent) that it's wrong to dismiss it out of hand. Publishers aren't faceless entities intent on trading our freedoms for money, any more than a person who downloads a DVD screener is a hardened criminal. To suggest otherwise is ridiculous, and makes it that much harder to have a real conversation about the future of media. ~~~ ZeroGravitas To see the difference between "for the benefit of publishers" and "for the benefit of consumers who read what the publishers create" you just have to ask which applies to retroactive copyright term extension. That to me is the act of an entity that is "intent on trading our freedoms for money". I'd say that similar is true of any rich industry that lobbies for laws to protect their outmoded business models. Isn't a tax on imported sugar a minor loss in freedom that results in a major increase in money for certain groups. ------ jorgem Should be required reading for all our representatives. Or, maybe even for all our citizens :) ------ nazgulnarsil good thing copyright was invented. human beings made little to no progress before it. without the incentive to copyright no one ever invented anything. ~~~ cduan Please keep your intellectual property straight. Creative works are COPYRIGHTED. Useful inventions are PATENTED. Names associated with goods and services are TRADEMARKED. (Or perhaps there is a missing </sarcasm>? I didn't see it...) ~~~ nazgulnarsil irrelevant, intellectual property is in the same league as dry water.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is BackPropagation Necessary? - sajid http://deliprao.com/archives/191 ====== _0ffh Short answer: Of course it's not! Slightly longer: The brain almost certainly does not use it, as BP uses nonlocal feedback. Somehow the brain works anyway (well, for a given meaning of "works" ;-), ergo: No BP needed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Please review my side project i.crowdfunded.it - d3x http://i.crowdfunded.it<p>Basically it's like a kickstarter for stuff. Right now i am just using Amazon.<p>How It Works<p><pre><code> 1. Search 2. Put stuff in cart 3. Crowdfund it 4. People pitch in 5. Item is shipped once fund is complete</code></pre> ====== channelmeter Since I'm at the age of where my friends are getting married or having babies, I can see this being useful for the really expensive gifts on wedding registries or baby showers. Heck, it could even be useful for contribution towards a honeymoon for friends who can't afford it after their costly wedding! ~~~ aviernes I agree. I can easily visualize the pitch to business who offer registries (wedding, engagement, baby shower, graduation) as an alternate method for payment. It makes it simple for people who want to collaborate on gift purchases but who might live in different cities/states. The UI is simple, usinge SM networks to connect ppl looks easy, service is appealing you don't plan to add a charge for the service. Heck, I'd use it!... hope you get funded! ------ mapster excellent. I will use this. Two items about your video: (1) you didn't discuss how to add friends/how to broadcast this fund request, and (2) the video loops. A++ on design and simplicity. Does the site take a % of the funds - this should be clearly stated. Local sales tax are not included in total cost of the item(s). note: I logged in via Twitter, added xbox and checked out - got a generic error. Guess some bugs still there? ~~~ d3x Nope, I take 0%. The only way I make money is by being an affiliate; thats why I am only using amazon right now. ------ mrkmcknz How it works page is needed but apart from that. A nice side project indeed. ~~~ d3x I just put up a homepage and I am putting up a screen cast / how it works right now. Let me know if this helps. ------ BadiPod Who pitches in? Friends? Family? How do they pitch in? ~~~ d3x Anyone can pitch in. When you checkout it creates your funding page and people visit that page to pitch in. ~~~ BadiPod Can you send me to a sample funding page? What happens to the money if you get your item partially but never fully funded? ~~~ d3x You can create one and the user can change their item to an item of lesser value after their fund has entered "inactive" status. ~~~ BadiPod On the checkout form, I think that you should have the zip code field prefill the city, state, and country fields. Or explicitly limit to US only. I think that people will wonder why you're not asking for their full address, most people don't know you can get city and state data from their zip. The enlarged radio buttons don't look good on Firefox 7 Mac. In general radio/list/select fields not not scale well. The 3% fund from you is a nice touch. There needs to be a link which you can share with other people to help fund your purchase on the account page. Don't see a link. <http://i.crowdfunded.it/crowd_members/?id=4> Does not work. "You currently have 0 completed funds. " Should be at least 1, right? I like the idea just needs a little more polish and a lot more pitch. To be honest I just don't trust the service in it's current state. ~~~ d3x Thanks for the feed back. <http://i.crowdfunded.it/apple-ipod-shuffle-2-gb- silver> is the page people use to pitch in. you can click the fb like, google +1 or tweet to share with others so that they can pitch in. Trust is definitely important here. How do you suggest I improve on that? ~~~ rudasn Shouldn't that page say to whom I am giving money? I think it's a nice concept. People will perhaps be more inclined to give if there was some sort of feedback mechanism. Something that will tell a complete stranger that the guy who was an ipod shuffle for his birthday deserves my $5. Perhaps if I knew that this guy gave $10 to someone else last week for a school textbook? Just thinking out loud. ~~~ d3x I cant believe I missed that. Thats a very good idea.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Wikileaks moves to Amazon's cloud to evade massive DDoS - evo_9 http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/11/wikileaks-moves-to-amazons-cloud-to-evade-massive-ddos.ars ====== ars Doesn't hosting with Amazon create a money trail? If the US were to prosecute them, they could subpoena Amazon, and find more members of the organization. Assange is knowingly putting himself in the line of fire, but isn't there a goal to make sure other members of wikileaks stay anonymous? ~~~ sigzero Why should other members be anonymous? Isn't that hypocritical since Wikileaks is all about transparency? ~~~ TallGuyShort It's also all about protecting whistle blowers. They've put a lot of thought into ways of covering the tracks of people who come to them to keep them safe - I don't think it's hypocritical. They're concerned for their safety, not their politics. ~~~ metageek Ironically, Clinton expressed similar concerns about Wikileaks exposing people who speak privately to diplomats. ~~~ chaostheory They asked the US gov to redact any sensitive sources. They didn't get any help. [http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/20...](http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/20/wikileaks) ~~~ metageek Possibly because that would tell Wikileaks what they thought was sensitive. ------ mh_ Moving to an elastic infrastructure in the face of an attack that aims to increase usage, seems like a recipe for a huge bill.. The wikileaks guys are obviously uber smart and have thought through the pros and cons of the move, but it seems an unusual choice.. ~~~ risotto As it's mostly static content, they're likely just using Amazon as a CDN, which isn't very expensive at all. Makes perfect sense actually. It'll be interesting to see what Amazon has to say about this. ------ bradly I'm not familiar with Amazon's content policies, but I couldn't see Amazon wanting this stuff hosted on their servers. ~~~ d2viant It would depend on how Wikileaks designed their AWS infrastructure. Amazon's policies are specific to the territory in which they operate. They obey the local laws for the data they will store on their hardware and will only comply with local laws. For example, if you provision your services in the EU-Ireland region, it is governed by the laws of the EU, not by the United States. That being said, I don't know the specifics of the laws with regards to each of the different AWS regions. ~~~ JoachimSchipper > the laws of the EU We are, sadly, not quite that far along yet. ~~~ jules Sadly? The things that come out of the EU are at least as stupid as local laws, especially wrt technology. ~~~ JoachimSchipper The US has a massive commercial advantage because its laws, while not _better_ per se, are at least uniform. Also, European national states are mostly too weak to have any influence in the global problems of the 21st century. A smaller share of a larger (power) pie would still be an improvement. ~~~ jules Economically, it would be an improvement. But look at laws like the data retention law that forces ISPs to keep access logs on all their users. The EU is also highly undemocratic, or at least very indirectly democratic. First install a working democratic process, then get more power. Not the other way around "lets give them insane power and then they will surely be nice to us and give us a good democratic process" as many people seem to want. Also I'm not even sure that if there were a good democracy that I'd want to give e.g. Italians the power to vote on what happens to me, given that they elect and keep electing Berlusconi. ~~~ JoachimSchipper Meh, the Netherlands went further than the EU requirements on data retention. Yes, that's stupid, but... And yes, creating a "EU government" is almost certainly even harder than it appears. The current system seems to combine the speed of a multi-country democracy with the legitimacy of a multi-country oligarchy (of elected ministers, but still). ------ jamesaguilar I am curious who wants to attack Wikileaks and for what purpose. I think it's unlikely this is the USG because of the sheer pointlessness of it, plus the fallout that would occur if it were discovered. The likeliest major player I can think of is China, but I'm not sure I have a reason for that belief other than that they are the bogeyman du jour. An alternate possibility is that this is just some cracker flexing his muscle, or showing a potential client what he can do. ~~~ burgerbrain Shear pointlessness has not been preventing thr USG from doing much of anything in the past decade or so. Or did you miss the past few years of security theatre and unwinnable wars? ~~~ jamesaguilar Are you actually trying to argue with me, or just taking a potshot at the USG? If the latter, please use someone else's comment as a platform and not mine. If the former . . . Sheer pointlessness is meant to encompass several reasons I believe the USG is an unlikely culprit. First, there's the risk of significant consequences if the USG's involvement comes to public light. There's another election in two years, so even the PR damage could cost them. Then there's the matter of this kind of action being illegal. Maybe no prosecution would occur, but maybe it would. Second, unlike your security theater example, there is literally zero chance of this doing any good for anyone. Every person who is even the least bit interested could obtain the documents with only minor effort considering how widely they have been distributed. Major news organizations have already collated them for the masses. On the other hand, "security theater" and "unwinnable wars" are only pointless in a debatable sense. There are obviously a large number of people who believe that airport security measures are having some positive effect. Similarly, by some metrics (not mine), the war in Iraq has been successful and the war in Afghanistan is heading in that direction too. I don't doubt in hindsight that they will prove to be mistakes, but that is not the same as their having a absolutely known "pointlessness" value now. So I think that objection of yours is incorrect as well. Also, you've only pointed out two pointless things the USG has done in the past decade. That's not the same as proving that the USG is equally inclined to do pointless things as pointful ones. In fact, it may be that the USG discards pointless courses of action at a much higher rate than pointful ones, but that certain pointless actions have been enacted nonetheless. In this case, it would still be predictive of the US not being involved that the Wikileaks DOS is pointless. Finally, I'm not aware that it is the USG's standard infosec policy to maintain batteries of compromised civilian computers with which to perform cyber warfare. Perhaps it is, but that would be quite a discovery in and of itself. So, there are a lot of problems with your line of reasoning. I could be wrong, but I think the odds are something like 80-20 that I am right and this is not the USG's doing. ------ jjoe It looks like it's hosted in the US (ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com). Also, the front end proxy is doing some heavy filtering to weed out the cheap hit-and-run nodes participating in the DDoS but still accepts legitimate browser-based requests (persistent). Notice how a Reset (R) is sent right away on the first try: 08:57:41.211436 IP managed.unixy.net.49467 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: S 1398247905:1398247905(0) win 5840 <mss 1460,sackOK,timestamp 2031832550 0,nop,wscale 7> 08:57:41.264403 IP ec2-184-72-37-90.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http > managed.unixy.net.49467: S 1288073904:1288073904(0) ack 1398247906 win 16384 <mss 1460> 08:57:41.264424 IP managed.unixy.net.49467 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: . ack 1 win 5840 08:57:41.318642 IP ec2-184-72-37-90.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http > managed.unixy.net.49467: R 1288073905:1288073905(0) win 16384 The Reset packet sent from the EC2 node to the initiating node is a probe to identified non-existent nodes (spoofed). Notice in the above handshake that the initiating node didn't send a packet-response to the Reset. On the second consecutive attempt though all appears well (because the EC2 node added the initiating node to the ACL). 08:57:42.961708 IP managed.unixy.net.49468 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: S 1394481180:1394481180(0) win 5840 <mss 1460,sackOK,timestamp 2031832989 0,nop,wscale 7> 08:57:43.016547 IP ec2-184-72-37-90.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http > managed.unixy.net.49468: S 1406181195:1406181195(0) ack 1394481181 win 5792 <mss 1460,sackOK,timestamp 26523835 2031832989,nop,wscale 3> 08:57:43.016564 IP managed.unixy.net.49468 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: . ack 1 win 46 <nop,nop,timestamp 2031833002 26523835> 08:57:51.100914 IP managed.unixy.net.49468 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: P 1:18(17) ack 1 win 46 <nop,nop,timestamp 2031835023 26523835> 08:57:51.180674 IP ec2-184-72-37-90.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http > managed.unixy.net.49468: . ack 18 win 724 <nop,nop,timestamp 26525876 2031835023> 08:57:56.206546 IP managed.unixy.net.49468 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: P 18:39(21) ack 1 win 46 <nop,nop,timestamp 2031836300 26525876> 08:57:56.261630 IP ec2-184-72-37-90.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http > managed.unixy.net.49468: . ack 39 win 724 <nop,nop,timestamp 26527146 2031836300> 08:57:56.678942 IP managed.unixy.net.49468 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: P 39:41(2) ack 1 win 46 <nop,nop,timestamp 2031836418 26527146> But I wonder just how long they'll be able to evade the attack. Regards ~~~ trotsky I guess this explains why netcraft keeps showing their website as mostly down worldwide for the last day or so when it's actually performing extremely well. Question: why does the RST packet identify non-existent nodes? Doesn't TCP sequence prevent a blind continuation of a http request? Is this just one type of syn flood protection? ~~~ jjoe Most likely, the initial Netcraft attempt to connect is met with a RST. Subsequent attempts are also met with the same RST. This is because the attempts are spaced out in time enough for the original ACL, permitting access, to be flushed. According to the RFC, the RST does not get an ACK if the initiating node is "legitimate." So the "silence" or non-ACK is a good sign, which results in the initiating node being added to the ACL. You don't want plain TCP handling this because of half-open TCP handshakes which can exhaust kernel data structures (memory) and CPU (from having the kernel sift through a large data set). Regards ~~~ trotsky Thank you for your insight. A bogus IP - one that no one is listening on - would also not ACK a RST, right? Doing a little googling this process seems to detect an attack (from a valid ip) that has been programmed to ignore RST - presumably because some intermediate ISPs (like tier1 borders) will detect a DDOS and forge a RST to attempt to mitigate them. Much like the firewall configs that circulated to defeat sandvine RST throttling of bittorrent. ~~~ jjoe A bogus host will obviously not respond to the RST but the last router-hop that receives the RST will (per RFC/protocol specs). The response is destination unreachable via ICMP. The ICMP unreachable packet is cheap (non- persistent) and requires no up-keep from the last hop to the bogus host. Most importantly, the ICMP unreachable packet requires no upkeep from the filtering node in EC2. Regards ~~~ trotsky thanks much! ------ ajays _ALL_ the more reason why Assange should stop prancing around like a f __*ing queen and just release the entire trove in one big torrent. By dishing out the documents slowly (their own FAQ claims they'll release the docs over a period of months to maximize exposure), he's setting himself up for such attacks. They can always release their analysis and interesting findings later. ------ netmau5 I know DDOS is a difficult problem to solve, but I think using the cloud to out-scale your attacker doesn't solve the problem, it just increases the cost of it. The obvious solution for the bad guys (not gonna call them hackers, can't call them crackers can I?) is to use the cloud too. Generating an HTTP request is even cheaper than serving static content on a CDN. ~~~ ceejayoz > The obvious solution for the bad guys (not gonna call them hackers, can't > call them crackers can I?) is to use the cloud too. I'd say a botnet already qualifies as "the cloud". Why pay Amazon when you can get a million desktop machines doing it for free? ~~~ stcredzero At college, we were already talking about "the cloud" in 1990. That's a long time before AWS was even a twinkle in anyone's eye. ------ dtf Unfortunately, once the big guns of the media and those opportunists in government find out, Amazon will be forced to make a statement one way or another. Do they support this kind of thing or not? I can even imagine calls for a boycott from some sectors - not a great thing for Amazon at this time of year. ~~~ eru Everything that embiggens this story is good news for Wikileaks. And Amazon taking a stance would be something big. ------ o_nate According to this, Wikileaks is no longer available on Amazon either: [http://online.wsj.com/article/AP90b4520b2a9b455ea6e9d8d66fae...](http://online.wsj.com/article/AP90b4520b2a9b455ea6e9d8d66fae1fec.html) ------ Garbage I think after some days, WikiLeaks will publish documents using torrents. That way they can avoid (at least) DDoS. ~~~ JoachimSchipper They are already doing that. Not much good if people can't get to the .torrent file. (Yes, I know about DHT and that you can just mirror .torrent files. It's still inconvenient enough that most won't bother.) ------ brianr This is very interesting. If Wikileaks does in fact become designated a terrorist organization by the US, then it seems Amazon will have to shut them down or run the risk of providing them "material aid". The same would be true of any other cloud provider... are there any sizable cloud providers outside the US? ~~~ jonhendry If Wikileaks is a terrorist, then so too is the New York Times, and any other media outlet that has conveyed the same information Wikileaks released. ~~~ ceejayoz Bingo. Bob Woodward publishes leaks like this all the time in his books. Some of it is TS stuff, too, IIRC. ------ hacjjjjjjjj Why don't they invest some of the donation money in P2P DNS and start hosting the site as torrent ? Many people would be happy to seed. ~~~ drdaeman Because Bittorrent-powered P2P DNS is a weird buzzword, not yet really existing piece of technology. And, I'd guess, WikiLeaks probably want to publish (primarily) on the mass-accessible Internet, not at some obscure place where nobody except for crypto-geeks could access it. They could try popularizing Freenet (which is already existing and is a fairly stable technology), but, again, I'd guess they probably have their hands full of other tasks already. WikiLeaks hosts torrents. For example see the link "Click here to download full site in single archive" at the bottom of <http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/>. And, I believe, the content is already copied to (and being discussed at) Freenet and other similiar P2P networks. ~~~ mambodog If they used Freenet I can imagine the mainstream media going straight for the fact that Freenet is full of child porn. I don't think they need any more of that kind of publicity. ------ known <http://geo.flagfox.net/?search=wikileaks.org> ------ to <http://e.businessinsider.com/nbl.2e8/TPa_4qqdbcEdB9HKA8022> there it is - i called it! <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1957189> ------ to on ec2? 10 bucks that site is gone by end of this week. ~~~ to and i was right! ;) ------ mwg66 Shouldn't we really be trying to get to the bottom of who is behind this DDoS attack? If Wikileaks is said to be a terrorist organisation, isn't this an act of war? ~~~ nano81 I don't understand the logic - why would attacking a terrorist organization be an act of war? ~~~ mwg66 Is it not?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tech Gadgets Vending Machine - laurenceputra http://blog.geeksphere.net/2011/07/09/tech-gadgets-vending-machine/ ====== lsc I've been talking for some time about starting a company to stock old snack vending machenes in data centers; but stock them with things like cisco cons cables, ethernet cables, cage nuts, and the other sorts of things you might have forgotten when you get to the data center at 4am. My initial thought is to use old snack machines and only sell things that can be sold for a fiver or so. It'd be nice to sell hard drives, too? but if I'm going to have $100+ product, I'm going to have to be much more certain that the machine will actually dispense product.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Great Essays and Essayists - jasim http://www.adamponting.com/great-essays-essayists/ ====== thicknavyrain While he doesn't write essays that necessarily create or explain fundamental ideas in the academic sense, I'd definitely pitch for David Foster Wallace as an essayist. I picked up a short collection of his essays, "Both Flesh and Not", and the manner in which his writing flows through and around the topics of his choice is extremely satisfying to read. His opinions, insights and deconstruction of other writers and literary works are also pretty eye opening, even though I come from a hard sciences background, if only to understand what someone so ridiculously well read has to say about those things. His general musings on life, modernity and culture are also pretty great. The best place to start (in my opinion) is with This is Water, his commencement address to the incoming class at Kenyon College back in 2005: [https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is- water/](https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/) It's a great read, but it's even more enjoyable listening to him deliver it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL- ydFMI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI) ~~~ HNLurker2 I agree with you that he is amazing writer. But I am worried I may not get his works like: Infinite Jest and other essay because of not having the American (USA) cultural context. ~~~ rustyfe In my opinion, this won't stop you from from enjoying Infinite Jest. There are a few arcs that might require some insight into American culture (Professional Football, the US drug rehabilitation system). But the big picture themes are either very universal or so particular you aren't really expected to be keyed into them (you don't need to be a competitive tennis player or a Quebecois separatist to enjoy it). Pale King might be a bit of a different beast. The focus on the IRS is somewhat particular, and you may miss big beats because of ignorance about the IRS. But at the same time, some of the accounting minutiae are such that I don't think you're expected to understand them. Anyway! I wouldn't let this steer you away. To me, the joy of DFWs writing is the individual sentences. The mannerisms and humanity of the characters. If you miss some details because they're US focused, I don't think it'll be anything important. ------ jihadjihad I'd like to toss The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate into the mix. It's a terrific collection that spans the millennia--from ancients like Seneca and Plutarch to Gore Vidal and H.L. Mencken, and everything in between. As far as being exposed to different styles and modes of thought go, that anthology can't be beat. ~~~ nilskidoo I'm a great fan of Mencken, as well as Ambrose Bierce and I.F. Stone. I love the idea of essays, but have struggled my whole adult life to find voices who can write from my own experiences. So, I stay passionate about keeping the art alive on my own: [https://nilskidoo.blackblogs.org/archive/](https://nilskidoo.blackblogs.org/archive/) I've written about homelessness in the Bible Belt- a supremely taboo topic; and I've observed commonalities between the ideals of Pope Francis' detractors within Roman-Catholicism and that of Positive Christianity- the denomination literally begat by the Nazis. I draw more parallels than conclusions, but having gone to a school without a debate program I feel obligated to define as many left-field arguments as I can, for posterity or for poops and giggles. ------ pjmorris As an impressionable 13-year-old, I found Arthur C. Clarke's book of popular science essays, 'Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible', to be a real mind-expand-er. What's your favorite book of science essays? ~~~ jasim Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli. Ultimate Questions by Bryan Magee (more philosophy of knowledge than science per se). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski are not essays, but it is one of the finest writings on science I've read. The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard W. Hamming Letters to a Young Scientist by Edward O. Wilson I can't not help mention The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, which is fiction, but hear me out - it melds natural philosophy, alchemy, maths, history, Newton, Leibniz, The Sun King, British parliament, colonialism, slavery, Egypt, India, war, finance, commerce, revenge, satire and so much more. I've learnt more about the origins of the Royal Society and the early days of modern science from these three books than anywhere else. ~~~ 0xferruccio I loved Rovelli's lessons of physics! I didn't know he was known and read outside of Italy too ------ mykowebhn No female essayists or essayists of color? Virginia Woolf, as an example, was a superb essayist. ~~~ casefields This is one persons opinion, not some affirmative action quota that needs to be met to be accepted. Write your own list and submit it. ~~~ thicknavyrain Perhaps rather fittingly, Virginia Woolf's essay "A room of one's own" is an absolutely brilliant read on _why_ precisely women are and were so often neglected and left out of the cultural conversation and literary landscape. One of the cruxes being that opinions matter and the reinforcements culture (such as the compilations of widely shared lists like these) provides sustains their exclusion. I'd give it a look, it's not preachy and it's thoroughly entertaining. [http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/PikliNatalia/Virginia_Wo...](http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/PikliNatalia/Virginia_Woolf_- _A_Room_of_Ones_Own.pdf) ------ schemathings Guy Davenport is another fascinating essayist - a true polymath - he ties together narratives that are at first glance unrelated into a beautiful whole. I've only read The Geography of the Imagination which is 40 essays, but he has other compilations as well. One of his essays is on Youtube narrated by a former student apparently. [https://youtu.be/sFe7cqXuzZU](https://youtu.be/sFe7cqXuzZU) ------ pmoriarty The greatest essays I've read have been by Seneca. Here is my favorite, _On The Shortness of Life_ : [https://tripinsurancestore.com/4/on-the-shortness-of- life.pd...](https://tripinsurancestore.com/4/on-the-shortness-of-life.pdf) ------ lbacaj Shameless self promotional plug, if you would like to listen to any of these essays on the go, some of them seem long for me to read in on one sitting. You can do so using a new App I built that uses some beautiful sounding Machine Learning AI models to convert any of these articles to Audio. [https://articulu.com](https://articulu.com) I basically built it exactly for these sorts of reasons I found that I had all this dead time. On my commutes and in between running errands, or biking, and I wanted to maximize my learning and staying informed. ~~~ e1g > uses some beautiful sounding Machine Learning AI models to convert articles to Audio This sounds great. I'm a big fan of audiobooks and podcasts, and would love an app like Pocket but that narrates the articles for me. However, downloading & trying a new app is a big friction point. Your landing page would be a lot more persuasive if it provided an example of the unique value proposition - e.g. several example of audios as generated by the app, or ability to take a URL and provide a narrated version of it. ------ jurassic George Orwell is best known for 1984 but he was a prolific essayist. The collection of his narrative essays "Facing Unpleasant Facts" was one of my more interesting reads last year. ------ godelmachine My favorite essayists -> 1) Bertrand Russell. Read "The Conquest of Happiness" and you shall never know unhappiness. 2) Henry David Thoreau. Read "Walden" These two chaps have a tranquillizing effect on me. ------ billfruit I would have included more of the English greats in essay writing: Charles Lamb (Whose 'Essays of Elia' might perhaps be be the finest collection of essays in the English language, Macaulay( whose essay on Warren Hastings is a masterpiece of English prose), William Hazlitt, even Dr Johnson (His 'Lives of the poets' is essentially a large collection of brilliant essays) and Joseph Addison. ~~~ yesenadam I did mention Hazlitt several times on the page. He's in my pantheon (Emerson, Chesterton, Stevenson, Hazlitt). I do have a page dedicated to Johnson [http://www.adamponting.com/sayings-of- johnson/](http://www.adamponting.com/sayings-of-johnson/) , he's a favourite of mine who I frequently return to. I had a period of enthusiasm for the _Rambler_ etc, but his Latinate essay style is, let's face it, awful compared with the Johnson of Boswell's _Life_ , Mrs Thrale's book about him etc. I don't know most of his writing about poets or Shakespeare so well, I should have another look. Lamb and Addison I tried long ago, they seemed too..literary, too fictional, or style-focused. I prefer those (who tend to be on the philosophy/essays boundary) who have something to say, and just incidentally say it well. Could you mention some particular essays that would be at the top of your list? Thanks. ~~~ billfruit Of Lamb; "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple" and "The Praise of Chimney- Sweepers".Lamb tries to express his awe and wonder and curiousity to the reader very effectively. Johnson of the Lives, is much, different, much more lively than the Johnson of the Rambler, esp his sense of humor is on full display. I greatly recommend the "Life of Savage" and "Life of Addison" from the lives. I think Macaulay is exceptional, his essays like "Warren Hastings", "Samuel Johnson" (Which he wrote for Encyclopedia Britannica), "Ranke's History of the Pope's", etc are such stunning works, the reader shall find it very difficult to put them down once they start. ------ ttonkytonk Of the list I read Paul Graham's "How to do Philosophy". Btw I don't think Goodjoke's comment deserved to get killed off, but I will dare to say to Goodjoke that maybe "a little more carrot and less stick" is in order: what's the best essay of the group of authors you mentioned? ~~~ theoh GoodJokes's "stick" was a mild call for more diversity. I don't see how naming a favourite would counteract that or add "carrot". Maybe one or more links would have done the trick? The fact that the original list is (almost?) all white men is the kind of thing (like all male panels) which will attract negative attention these days. There are people on HN who think conceptualizing diversity on the basis of gender or ethnicity is a dangerous distraction from what they claim is the really important form of diversity, which is intellectual diversity. It's that kind of Thielian position that GoodJokes is challenging, quite rightly. ------ HNLurker2 I wonder how many modern bloggers where inspired by pg (me included)? E.g: SSCodex ~~~ lukifer Meditations on Moloch undoubtedly deserves to make the list: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on- moloch/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/) ------ 0_gravitas As much as the author has expressed displeasure with it, I really liked CGP Grey's older essay (from when he actually wrote essays) "I Have Died Many Times" ------ GavinMcG Are no women great essayists? ~~~ jonjacky Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Marilyn Robinson. Somebody upthread mentioned Camille Paglia. If you include journalism, politics, criticism, and humor in a recognizable voice that reveals the author's personal take on life, there are many more: Oriana Fallaci, Katha Pollitt, even Nora Ephron and Pauline Kael ... ~~~ GavinMcG Wonder why none of them made the list. ~~~ meruru If there are fewer female essayists the chance of any given one making into any given list is reduced. I'm not saying there are fewer female essayists, but if there is that's a reasonable alternative explanation to the (implied?) default one of "sexism". ------ mcguire No Borges? Or E. B. White? ------ yesenadam "Author" here. Well, this was a nice surprise! I'd love to see suggestions for the list, peoples' favourite essays that I might love too. Sometimes it's hard to choose one - so maybe then please mention one or a few essays that would be a good introduction to that writer's work. Thanks! I put a huge collection of my favourite quotes/bits from my readings online here[0]. (with reliable sources, I hope, please let me know if any are fake/wrongly attributed) This list (especially the top 3/4) are essays that I've read many times and loved and lived with. Some writers (e.g. Emerson, Hazlitt, Chesterton, Stevenson, James, Mencken, Russell) have _so many_ essays I love and have read many times that it's hard to single out just one. It's been more like living with them than 'reading' them. With them (and most of all, Emerson), even trying to single out one or a few essays would be strange, like trying to pick a favourite Miles Davis album - there are dozens; it's the air I breathe, it's who I am. Yes, I toyed with removing the "Great" from the headings (also I have pages on great musicians, great writers etc). But what the hell, that's what the word means I suppose, "things _I_ think are great". I do believe that "instead of there being no disputing about tastes, they are the one thing worth disputing about". I was surprised that so many comments are like "Why aren't there women/non- white/etc' people on the list. I don't know. They're also concentrated in a certain time period (see timeline diagram on this page[1] ), no-one complained about that. I seem to feel more at home with 19th C writers! (also 16-17th C e.g. La Bruyere, and ancient stuff e.g. Plutarch) I'm white and male, I don't know if those writers resonated more with me for that reason; I guess that had something to do with it. Most of what I came across wasn't by female or non- Anglo writers, I think. I don't care what someone's sex, colour, country, sexuality etc is, in art, music, writing or anything. To expect or insist on proportional representation of each sub-section of humanity in someone's list of their favourites - or even a list of the greatest, the classics - seems to utterly miss the point. Why focus on the creator, not their creation? If some superior works aren't read for whatever reason, ok great, bringing them to attention is a very worthy task. But to insist they be read _because_ they're female, black or whatever, which people sometimes seem to be doing, seems misguided to me. It would be strange, for example, if someone suggest I should listen to more white or female musicians.[2] They just say "Listen to this!" if they'd heard something they love, and if I love it too, I'll keep listening, and seek out more of their work. I was reading about "the essay canon" recently. There was a paper that analysed the school essay readers and found that only one writer was added to the essay canon in the 1990s - Deborah Tannen: chapters from _You Just Don 't Understand_. It so happens that I've been a huge fan of that book for decades, recommend it to everyone, have lent the book to many people, rarely go a week in life without understanding something in life better with some insight I learnt from it (or her previous book _That 's Not What I Meant!_). I just don't think of it as an essay. Same with SARK, probably the female writer dearest to me, who was a close companion and friend, particularly when I was in my 20s. I've read and re-read her first 1/2 dozen books countless times. I lived with, by and from them. Plus they're colourful, hand-written and hand-drawn, and in that way superior to any other books I know of. re Virginia Woolf: I read a lot of her essays decades ago, and while I really liked them, I haven't returned since. Some feminist street cred: Harriet Martineau's wiki page says "Martineau wrote many books". Before I changed that a couple of years ago, it said, bizarrely, that she wrote only one book. On Emerson's wiki page, first in the list of influences in the sidebar is his aunt (and, effectively, father) Mary Moody Emerson. She wasn't even on there until I added her recently. I only recently learned about what an overwhelmingly huge influence she was on him - he's in many ways her project, her creation - his voice is recognizably hers, speaking through him. [0] [http://www.adamponting.com/quotes/](http://www.adamponting.com/quotes/) [1] [http://www.adamponting.com/great- writers/](http://www.adamponting.com/great-writers/) [2] My "great musicians" list [http://www.adamponting.com/great- musicians/](http://www.adamponting.com/great-musicians/) is overwhelmingly black, and my "youtube favourites" [http://www.adamponting.com/youtube- favourites/](http://www.adamponting.com/youtube-favourites/) are overwhelmingly black _and_ female. I'm not sure why! ------ claudiawerner I take some issue with David Stove's essay on idealism being in the list; while it might be a "good essay" it is philosophically weak[0]. I'm disappointed that some big names like Adorno, Marcuse and even Marx didn't make the cut. [0] [http://jgalis-menendez.blogspot.com/2009/05/david-stoves- cri...](http://jgalis-menendez.blogspot.com/2009/05/david-stoves-critique-of- idealism.html) ------ GoodJokes We can do better. We must do better. Here are some of my favorite essayists that don’t identify as white and male: James Baldwin Amy Henkel Mary Ruefle Maggie Nelson (more prose) Audre Lorde Susan Sontag Roxanne Gay	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Cassandra Performance - mfiguiere http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/2012-in-review-performance ====== endymi0n Cassandra is ugly, hardcore and performant as hell. It's not meant for the casual user, it's really meant to be there for you at scales where MongoDB craps its pants. If you wrap your head around ColumnFamilies, tunable consistency and NetworkTopologySnitch strategies, you get rewarded by a database that can scale on a global level to millions of I/O operations per second. We at Trademob have chosen Cassy as the backbone of our tracking platform and couldn't be happier. It's pretty serious stuff though and nothing for a quick prototype or the first few iterations of a product IMHO. ~~~ taligent Sorry but this is just nonsense. Cassandra with PlayORM/Astyanax has been the easiest database for me to install, use and manage out of the 10+ I've tried. Far simpler to install/manage than MySQL Cluster or Riak, far easier to use than PostgreSQL and infinitely better to scale than MongoDB. You don't have to understand ColumnFamilies, consistency or the different topology strategies. The defaults are fine and if you are a Java developer life couldn't possibly be simpler. ~~~ 3amOpsGuy If you don't understand the implications of eventual consistency, you're heading for a fall. It's not a trivial topic and unfortunately "it appears to work as you'd expect" on a small dev cluster which can lead to statements like yours. Your parent's post is actually very very accurate. ~~~ taligent I am not disputing that Cassandra has a learning curve but I just disagree that it is any different to every other database available today. They ALL have issues and eventual consistency is a fundamental part of a distributed database so its something you have to learn either way. ~~~ rescrv Check out HyperDex, Hbase and BigTable for systems that provide better guarantees than "eventually." ~~~ tylerhobbs You would need to define "consistency" in order to have a more reasonable discussion about what each system provides, but Cassandra certainly isn't only eventually consistent. You can choose the number of replicas that must respond in order to consider the read/write operation a success per operation, which allows you to have quorum-based strong consistency guarantees. There are more details on the options here: <http://www.datastax.com/docs/1.2/dml/data_consistency> ~~~ rescrv Consistency is a safety property. HyperDex, Hbase and BigTable all provide linearizability, which has a well-defined meaning. Cassandra does not, and most of its descriptions of consistency only refer to the behavior of the system, and not the properties you can rely upon. Pointing to the number of replicas read or written only clouds the issue. ~~~ crypto5 I think if you will write to Cassandra with consistency level ALL, you will get strong consistency. Or you can use write consistency = 1 and read = ALL, or write consistency = Quorum and read consistency = Quorum. ------ otterley > A log-structured engine that avoids overwrites to turn updates into > sequential i/o is essential both on hard disks (HDD) and solid-state disks > (SSD). On HDD, because the seek penalty is so high; on SSD, to avoid write > amplification and disk failure. This is why you see mongodb performance go > through the floor as the dataset size exceeds RAM. The structure of MongoDB's on-disk data has nothing to do with why its performance starts to falter when the dataset size exceeds RAM. It falters because each node mmap(2)s its dataset into MongoDB's process space and relies solely on the kernel's buffer caching algorithm to determine which pages to cache. The buffer cache is general-purpose, shared with every other process running on the node, and isn't finely tuned (or tuneable, for that matter) for database workloads, in which a basic LRU would be too naive. This is why MySQL, for example, doesn't mmap its tablespaces - instead, it's typically configured to manage its own buffer pool, and to avoid double buffering, O_DIRECT semantics are used for disk I/O. ~~~ rogerbinns There is a secondary problem with using mmap. You don't know if an access will take a page fault. When thrashing starts happening MongoDB doesn't throttle new queries. New queries coming in then add fuel to the fire making existing queries take longer and longer. This causes a huge and rapid performance dropoff. Of course not all new queries will cause paging so they could be left unthrottled. There is a system call mincore that will tell you if pages will take faults but it doesn't support scatter/gather and has race conditions especially when there is lots of paging! I did report this at the beginning of 2010 - currently marked as major priority, planned but not scheduled: <https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-574> That said MongoDB is still my first database of choice. Nothing beats arbitrary JSON in, the same JSON back out. ------ linuxhansl HBase looks bad in some of these benchmarks, because it is hard to setup and has many tuning knobs to be tuned correctly for the workload in question. Due to its strictly consistent nature you have to think about key design, hotspotting of servers, etc, etc. In return you get correct atomic operations, row transactions, range scans by default (Cassandra uses a random partitioner by default not allowing range scans), etc, etc. Some of the largest installations on this planet run on HBase. For example, FaceBooks HBase stats at HBaseCon (May 2012): Billions of msgs/day, 75Bn ops/day, 1.5M ops/sec peak. 250TB new data/mo and growing. (Facebook also created Cassandra, but is not using it) As usual you use the right tool for the job and isolated benchmarks usually do not bear this out. ~~~ jbellis It's worth noting that the FB HBase install is also sharding across multiple sub-clusters because of the HDFS namenode SPOF problems [1]. Personally, if I'm going to shard manually I'll stick with postgresql. One of the primary reasons to use something like Cassandra is that it solves that for you. [1] [http://www.slideshare.net/brizzzdotcom/facebook-messages- hba...](http://www.slideshare.net/brizzzdotcom/facebook-messages-hbase/23) ~~~ justin_hancock My understanding of facebooks Pod Architecture for HBase was not the name node but simply scaling HBase, HBase gets rather unpleasant at facebook scales. The facebook HBase fork has things like compactions disabled to improve performance. I ran a HBase cluster with 1PB storage, it became very unwieldy at this scale, thousands of regions and lots of tricks to keep it happy. As for SPOF, the name node now has HA and it works very well. ~~~ linuxhansl Interesting. Do you remember what kind of problems you ran into and what version of HBase you used? ~~~ justin_hancock HBase 90.4, problems with I/O we had a very heavy read load on top of a write load, write load bursting 14,000 TX per second, and an average of 8,000 per second - each record around 2k. Because of the I/O the WAL had to be turned off, this introduced problems when Region Servers occasionally died. Implementation of large regions 10GB, and fairly large HBlocks 512MB, increasing flush sizes to reduce minor compactions. Use of MSLAB to virtually eliminate GC all together, use of large heap 12GB on RS. Worst problems we experienced was META corruption, that really , really sucked. ~~~ linuxhansl Thanks. If there's a more detailed writeup you can point me to that'd be great. I would like to make sure then that all these issues are addressed in the current versions. 0.94+ has MSLAB by default, with HFileV2 (0.92+) we can support much larger regions (20G or bigger). Curious about the 512M HBlocks, did you have scan- heavy read-load? 14k TX peak per regionserver? x 2k that's 28M/s (56M with WAL). Should be doable now even with WAL (definitely with deferred flush). Well, maybe not with concurrent very heavy read load, depending on disk configuration. Probably on top of Hadoop 0.20-append? Hadoop-2.x.x should be far better too. ------ ddlatham The benchmark referenced in this post was previously discussed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4453500> ------ ogrisel Has anybody found / done a benchmark that would compare the scalability of a Cassandra cluster vs an ElasticSearch cluster the latter used as a NoSQL database (with stored fields)? I am interested with 2 kinds of scalability: \- volume scalability with single concurrent user: average read / write query times vs stored-data and indexes size vs number of EC2 nodes \- concurrency scalability with a fixed size database: average read / write query times vs number of concurrent users vs number of EC2 nodes ------ mnutt While Cassandra has some nice characteristics, there are a few things I've run into along the way. Don't expect to run a 3-node Cassandra cluster and get much out of it in terms of availability, in the way you might run a master/slave failover setup. It's somewhat obvious, but your Cassandra deployment can't just start with a couple of nodes and scale up as you run into bottlenecks. The number of nodes needed starts to add up quickly with a replication factor of > 1 and quorum reads. And while you might say "I'm ok with eventual consistency, let's just read from a single node," if you're not reading from multiple nodes, the data may _never_ become consistent, from what I can tell. And counters should be marked with a big warning "not for production use". Their performance isn't great, and it nosedives as the dataset grows. (each counter update involves a read + a write) Having a node reboot can sometimes cause counters to double. They seem like basically an afterthought. ~~~ jbellis Post author here. Your first paragraph is, bluntly, incorrect. Cassandra guarantees that data will always become consistent. This is automatic [1] for normal operation, including in the face of temporary failures. Permanent failures require running a "repair" process to rebuild the failed machine from other replicas [2]. I think you've also misunderstood how quorum works; it is a quorum of the _replica count_ , which tends to stay constant over cluster lifetime, not _machine count_. You are right that the current counters are an afterthought. I linked in my concluding paragraph, where I talk about improvements for Cassandra, "A new design for distributed counters." [3] [1] <http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/modern-hinted-handoff> [2] <http://www.datastax.com/docs/1.2/operations/node_repair> [3] <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-4775> ~~~ jmix False -- if there are nodes being added or deleted from the system, Cassandra provides no guarantee of consistency. Two nodes might disagree on quorum membership and thus quorum accesses may fail to overlap, leading to inconsistency. The consistency claims are overblown. ~~~ parasubvert Please enlighten us with a cluster database that enables guaranteed consistency with dynamic node membership. They all have quirks handling membership (unless you're looking at a shared disk setup). ~~~ rescrv Checkout HyperDex. We just released a new version, and it is indeed consistent as nodes join and fail. ------ sturadnidge Not trying to take anything away from Cassandra (or any of the other products mentioned), but I would have liked to see the article focus on the actual data presented rather than a somewhat speculative discussion about 2 products that were not evaluated in the referenced study. Unless I'm missing something. ------ pothibo I'm not sure what's the point comparing benchmarks this way. Choosing a database is not only about performance, it's about the type of application you are building, the stage it's in (prototype product doesn't have the same need as a product that has grown over 5 years). It's also about the people that works on the project. Some projects are better handled in a specific language (ruby/java/php,asp.net, etc.) For example, using MongoDB on a ruby stack to build a prototype is a pretty good choice. Moving some loads off mongo to redis would be a solution later on. And eventually, the need would arise to migrate your mongoDB stack to Cassandra. ~~~ abolibibelot I'm not sure switching to a document model with multiple indexes (MongoDB) to a key/value store (Redis) is something that can be done easily "later on". ~~~ pothibo Well structure evolves over time. Probably the structure would move and you would use redis as a memcache layer (to update counts, notifications, etc). What I'm saying is that databases needs evolves over time. Comparing in-memory storage with SQL and NoSQL isn't a useful and misses the point. ------ chetanahuja Well it's a cassandra company so it's bound to exaggerate the throughput test that shows Cassandra winning but relegating its huge weakness in latency performance (Whoa!! 10ms average read latency from in-memory store...) to an "area for improvement" list at the bottom is a bit disingenuous. It's not a small issue. It's an order of magnitude difference from Voldemort, redis and even mysql at scale. ------ MichaelGG The big caveat in their usage of VoltDB is that they are apparently using a synchronous client, waiting for a response each time, instead of async streaming. They mention this briefly in passing at the bottom of the paper, and say the VoltDB people were able to see performance increase by using an async client. ------ aoprisan Where's the MongoDB comparison? They mention it but don't see it in their graph ~~~ corresation Aside from MongoDB not being a part of the subject study, it's also worth mentioning that they cherry picked the example that made Cassandra look particularly good. MySQL actually did extremely well on the non-scan tests, while offering consistency. It depends upon your usage. ~~~ rescrv When benchmarking HyperDex we found something similar. Cassandra is better at writes than reads by a surprising amount. Given Facebook's elaborate caching architecture (which likely pushed for such an inversion) this makes sense. ------ ddorian43 Poor hypertable is never included in nosql benchmarks ------ meh01 Serious question: are people really still using Cassandra? I've only ever heard horror stories about big deployments, and the only posts about it come from DataStax. ~~~ henrikschroder Netflix is probably the most well-known large user currently. ~~~ meh01 I don't know if this is heretical to say, but when I think about services that people should look up to in terms of architecture, I don't think of Netflix. See all the downtime they have despite the 1000 posts on their blog about how wonderfully available their architecture is. I can point to 10 other sites running on a boring LAMP stack with similar availability. ~~~ tadfisher And if you examine the causes of Netflix' downtime, is it because of their usage of Cassandra? Would a LAMP service running on the same AWS ELB nodes have avoided said downtime? ------ dschiptsov What is memory overhead? How much memory Java processes consume comparing to the amount of data a node could handle, assuming there _must be no swap_ (otherwise we all know what happens to _any_ Java process). ~~~ chetanahuja It seems that question has almost completely fallen off the radar today. I've experienced medium sized voldemort clusters eating up huge amounts of extra RAM (of the order of 100% overhead[1]) to avoid falling into pathological GC patterns over long runs. Actually I shouldn't really single out voldemort. The problem is java. Java[2] is a terrible platform to write large in-memory caching servers on. The write and access patterns are a complete mismatch for the assumptions made in the generational GC algorithms that most current JVM's sport. Most caches will evict on an LRU basis, which means that almost all allocations will end up in the old generation heap before finally being evicted. Which is precisely the counter-optimal case for the basic assumptions that the generational GC model relies on (that most objects are short-lived and get swept while still in the "young" heap (which is ultra cheap). Footnotes: [1] "overhead" here means precisely how the parent post defines it. [2] more precisely, the commonly used freely available JVM's that most shops use. There might be better GC implementations (e.g. as claimed by azul) but I don't have any direct experience with them. ~~~ henrikschroder We got bit by GC issues with our Cassandra cluster, and we had to completely re-design a column family to fix it. It's pretty telling that the development community is moving as many memory structures as possible outside the java heap, each new major release has moved some piece or other. The biggest threat I see to Cassandra is that java in the end won't cut it, that the JVM will limit its performance too much, allowing a competitor to surpass it. Stop-the-world GC pauses are not something you want in a high- performance database solution. ~~~ chetanahuja I was in a discussion with a member of the Go development team, bitterly complaining about their decision to go with a GC'd heap as the only way to access memory for something they intended as a "systems programming language". They suggested I link in C data structures for those heap-heavy caching applications :-( As I see it, C and C++ are the only practical options for writing high performance, memory efficient, cache heavy applications for production use in the current tech climate.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Silicon Valley Dream Collapses in Allegations of Fraud - sxates http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/technology/a-silicon-valley-dream-collapses-in-allegations-of-fraud.html ====== calcsam Daniel Tunkelang, the advisor mentioned, is trying to find new homes for the Python developers, so they don't get kicked out of the country. Message him if you're hiring. [https://twitter.com/dtunkelang/status/771148199427989505](https://twitter.com/dtunkelang/status/771148199427989505) ------ wrong_variable I have some issues with this sort of doxxing. In fact unless a court decision is made I think it technically unfair to the company and their employee the way the mob has brought out their pichfork. We have only heard the story from one person - and it makes the company and its CEO look like Satan's spawns - which in my experience never is 100% true. Having said that, I am always a little unnerved browsing LinkedIn - you have CEOs, CFOs, Management always complaining about their employees, and employees doing cringy asskissing :( It makes me deeply sad what LinkedIn has turned into, LinkedIn just gives employers more power. On the other hand I have noticed that HN, reddit are places where Labour ( employees ) come to complain. Its just an interesting trend where two social networks exists - one for the capitalists and one for labor. ~~~ sanderjd We have now heard one story from one person and read corroboration of that story from a professional news organization along with some new information in the form of interviews and requests for comment from the principals involved. That isn't "doxxing", it's news. I use both LinkedIn and HN quite a lot and don't really see what you mean about the capital/ labor split between the sites, for what it's worth. ~~~ wrong_variable I think its just my feed of subscribing to terrible people :( ------ scott_s Reading a NY Times article that quotes a HN thread is my through-the-looking- glass moment of the month. ------ throwaawweay My money is on this being a Visa scam company bringing Chinese nationals over. The poorer ones probably got screwed, while the ones who paid (400k from one of his employees???) have probably vanished into the country. (I have nothing against the Chinese, or immigrants in general, I'm an immigrant myself, and I feel terrible for the innocent victims who have lost money, jobs, and for many, their american dream) ~~~ tootie The only thing that makes no sense is why they hired Penny Kim. The business was seemingly imaginary, the only employees were the CEO's bros and his H1Bs. If the business was some sort of front, why hire a veteran marketing leader to publicize your scam operation? Especially someone who was not in on the scam and was highly likely to rebel? My money is on the CEO being a genuine egomaniac who thought he could will a legitimate business into existence with enough personal charm. ~~~ readitmeow The business wasn't imaginary. The tech was real. The CTO and devs have been building since December 2015. He misrepresented the runway claiming to put in 2 million when he only had 400k to put in. That's why in the CTO's comment, he said he didn't understand what was the end game, why accelerate into a brick wall? It made no sense why he hired so many people when he didn't have the money too. ------ eropple This seemed pretty likely to me the second I saw bouncing between tech/analyst positions and "CEO of mines in Asia and South America" on his LinkedIn (when he was mid-thirties at the latest?). There is only so far one can push it before all thered flags go up. ~~~ spitfire Actually the "CEO of mine in south america" thing isn't so far fetched. Except you have to know that a "mine" can be a 5 acre plot of land dredging up mud to feed into a processing machine. Friends of mine do it each year. So technically they "own a mine in south america". It's still bullshit puffery though. But you can do it for $20K. ~~~ jonathankoren I'll see your bullshit puffery, and raise you. I'm part owner of an NFL franchise, and it only cost me $250. ~~~ bdcravens Green Bay? ~~~ jonathankoren It is -- and _can be_ \-- the only one. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers,_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers,_Inc). ~~~ fencepost HN is stripping the last "." out of the URL, but it's required for the link. The organization named is the corporate entity that owns the Packers; there are >350k share owners and it's structured such that nobody can own more than 4% of the shares. It's grandfathered into the NFL rules which for the last 30 or so years have limited ownership groups to no more than 32 people, at least one of whom must own a >30% share. ------ SEJeff This reminds me of my last job, where the karma gods smiled upon me and not so much for another guy. I've always written my resume somewhat uniquely for SEO[1] and happen to work quite heavily in the Linux space. At the time several years ago, my resume was on the first or second page google search results for something along the lines of "linux system administrator" and variations. The stars must have aligned as some poor schmuck thought he'd spruce up his resume by copy & pasting lines verbatim from the first 4-5 good Linux resumes he found via google. Unfortunately for him, one of them was mine. Also unfortunately for him, I'm known as a very technical interviewer that doesn't take any bs. So besides the fact he wasn't qualified from a technical perspective for this position, I decided to see what he'd do. I stopped him mid interview and pulled up my resume on my phone. I handed it to him and asked him to read a few lines. Then I asked him to read a few lines that were verbatim from his resume. His face lost all color and he shuddered. There is simply no way I was buying that he and I both came up with the following 3 lines in a row: * Re-implemented the global dns/ldap setup for higher availability. Used keepalived for auto-failover * High performance computing, benchmarking, and kernel tuning. Constant review of upstream kernel activity * Maintenance and engineering on a from scratch Linux distribution in support of high volume electronic trading Amongst two or three additional ones, it was too much of a cooincidence. He swore that the recruiter had doctored his resume and that the recruiter was a liar. I gave him a shot at doing tech for the rest of the interview. However, I turned it up to 11 and was visibly agitated at this point that he'd stolen from my work trying to market myself. Now I'm normally extremely friendly in interviews, but teched him so hard it hurt my brain. He failed miserably. We told his recruiter the story and said if it was true we were going to immediately stop doing business with that recruiter and his company. He quickly and happily forwarded us every single email from that candidate clearly showing they'd done nothing other than rearrange the styling and put their awful logo on it. The recruiter decided to stop working with this candidate as well. Moral of the story: Don't steal people's resume, they work hard making it and that is dishonest. Don't lie to technical people about your technical skills. It will ruin your future career prospects. [1] [http://www.digitalprognosis.com/resume.htm](http://www.digitalprognosis.com/resume.htm) ~~~ whamlastxmas You sound like a huge asshole. You knew going into this you wouldn't hire him, yet you wasted his time anyway. You make it sound like he plagiarized a book you wrote and was trying to sell his own. He found people that worded their resume really well and decided to use it for his own. It's not like there's some sanctity to the wording of resumes. Get over yourself. ~~~ SEJeff Correction, he wasted my time, but interviewing for a position he wasn't remotely qualified to perform. Honestly is the most important trait in any team member. How do you not see this? ~~~ whamlastxmas Because job listings are overwhelmingly asking for more than they mean. "10+ years experience" means "a couple years if we like you". "CS degree or similar required" may as well not be there on the listings that have it. The responsibility of figuring out whether they're qualified is yours, not the candidate's. How the hell is he supposed to know what your needs are? You should have figured this out in an email or quick phone screen. Additionally, you're a terrible interviewer if someone is failing miserably. There is no valuable data to use from this situation. Turn it down until they stop failing, and see how far it can be pushed. I'm sure you know this, but decided to be a prick instead. There's nothing dishonest about using wording from someone else's resume. If I did it and someone asked about it, I'd definitely say "I saw how someone else phrased it and found it really good, so I used it too" and obviously wouldn't put it down if it wasn't true. This guy probably would have said something similar if you didn't throw it in his face and make him so uncomfortable. ~~~ danso The unfairness of job listings -- much like the unfairness in getting published -- doesn't excuse plagiarism. ~~~ whamlastxmas The concept of it being amoral to plagiarize a resume is laughable. He's not creating some original piece of writing or trying to demonstrating his writing abilities. He's not submitting some piece of writing as part of his job responsibilities or for any sort of publication. He's conveying facts on a piece of paper that is handed to, at most, a few dozen people, who glance it at for about 20 seconds and then never see it again. He's not even implicitly claiming that everything on his resume is 100% unique, because more than half of resumes use the same structuring, wording, and general descriptive approaches. I thought this was common sense until your comment. Calling this plagiarism is like saying the sentence "By using our Services, you are agreeing to these terms" in a terms of service is plagiarizing whoever wound up writing that first. It's ridiculous. ~~~ danso Then you have a differing opinion from me and SEJeff on what is needed to create a good résumé. If all it required were a reciting of simple facts, then presumably the candidate would not need to have copied from SEJeff. I don't have to look at other people's work when writing the school I attended or year that I graduated, or number of years that I have in some skillset. Perhaps you think that it wasn't actual plagiarism? That it could've been coincidence, or that SEJeff's phrasing is so routine that it doesn't count as something with real investment of thought? Have you tried Googling it? _" Re-implemented the global dns/ldap setup for higher availability. Used keepalived for auto-failover"_ [https://www.google.com/search?q="Re- implemented+the+global+d...](https://www.google.com/search?q="Re- implemented+the+global+dns%2Fldap+setup+for+higher+availability.+Used+keepalived+for+auto- failover"&oq="Re- implemented+the+global+dns%2Fldap+setup+for+higher+availability.+Used+keepalived+for+auto- failover") There are exactly 5 results, 2 of them which originate from this current discussion. That's just one of the bulletpoints, nevermind the same 3 in the same order. For reference's sake, the odds that Melania Trump didn't plagiarize the following sentence from Michelle Obama -- _values that you work hard for what you want in life that your word is your bond and you do what you say_ \-- is about one in a trillion [0] [0] [https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/07/19/we-ran-melania- trum...](https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/07/19/we-ran-melania-trumps- speech-through-a-plagiarism-checker/) ------ smb06 There was extensive discussion on this topic here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12394679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12394679) Now it seems like the CEO faked his past work experience as well. ~~~ akcreek This might be the thread you were looking for (with 500+ comments): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12379518) ~~~ GuiA And my claim to fame! If someone had told me posting on HN would get me quoted in the NYT... ------ jmspring Gold rushes bring in the fraudsters. @honkhonkpants response, I take it tongue in cheek. Born and raised here. There is a lot of good that does happen, the Valley used to be more balanced (tech, manufacturing, ag, etc)... In the 10+ companies I've been at, I could see one as having been fraudulent, that was mostly at the non-founder level pushing work overseas for kickbacks. His career has since stalled. When things are easy and fast and loose, study the gold rush or any other similar history, these things will happen. Today, it's sad that those backing people like this don't use all the tools at their disposal to do deep do diligence. It seems like if you tell the right story, have people skills, and the surface isn't scratched, you can end up with a seed round that isn't warranted. ------ samfisher83 I guess you fake it until you make it? Obviously not the same thing but when reddit originally started didn't the founders use bots to submit stories. Theros got billions. Kind of sucks for the H1Bs they might lose their visa. ~~~ uberdog "Fake it 'til you make it" is more about pretending to have confidence before you really have it and less about falsifying your past in a way that's easy for someone to fact check. ~~~ joshmn Let's not forget Biz Stone "faked [his] way into Google"[0] [0] [http://www.wired.com/2013/04/fakeit/](http://www.wired.com/2013/04/fakeit/) ------ winteriscoming From what I have read on Kim's blog and other articles, this appears to be more a case of the CEO Choi being an immature and incompetent individual who started out to earn some big bucks but couldn't handle failures and ended up creating one fraud after another. To me it doesnt look like he started the company with the intention of committing some grand scam. ~~~ brockhaywood Except he appears to have started with fraud, given that his LinkedIn etc misrepresents his past work experience. ------ zaidf _WrkRiot CEO 's entire resume fraudulent (nytimes.com)_ Somewhat misleading title. The article itself only mentions the resume once. For example, it doesn't provide examples of the fabrication. If you read the original post. there is little new info. aside from revealed identities. ~~~ Dramatize The places he claimed to work at say they have no record of him. Another business can't be found. ------ hkmurakami With the promise of great riches, come the fraudsters. Sad. ~~~ vinayan3 It's really sad. I grew up in the Bay Area and felt like the propensity for fraud was very low if not non-existent. I guess it's not like that anymore or maybe it never was and I've been lucky to work for and with people who don't commit fraud. ~~~ hkmurakami Same. Grew up in the Peninsula and I feel like things have really spiraled out of control. ------ tptacek Proper title: _A Silicon Valley Dream Collapses in Allegations of Fraud_. ------ joshmn Incredibly curious about this Chinese firm. Are they talking something like BrandYourself, or more... whatever that makes it? If anyone has any leads/ideas, I'd love to hear them. Again, just incredibly curious. ~~~ readitmeow There's no chinese firm. It's chinese students with OPT visas who needed sponsors to get into the H1B lottery and now they risk getting deported if they don't find another sponsor within 90 days (probably less since they used some of the clock to find this current position) ------ NearAP I'm curious - did NYTimes amend the title of their article? I'm asking because the title of this post on HN doesn't correspond to the title on NYTimes and I was under the impression the submission guideline here says to use the 'original title'. In addition, I read the NYTimes article before I saw this posting on HN and while the NYTimes article questioned 3 items on his resume, I can't conclude his entire resume is fraudulent since the article neither contained the full resume nor did it list all the companies/schools on his resume. ~~~ dang It looks to me like the submitter broke the HN guidelines by rewriting the title when it was neither misleading nor linkbait. (The submitted title was "WrkRiot CEO's entire resume fraudulent", and we've since changed it to the NYT headline.) Not 100% sure, though, because NYT has a habit of changing its headlines. Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" is one of the site rules here. Please follow it, and especially please don't rewrite titles to make them more dramatic. ------ honkhonkpants "... but who expects fraud in Silicon Valley?" lol, wut? Anybody who has been here more than an hour is who expects fraud in SV. The first job I had in SV ended in a joint SEC/DOJ prosecution and jail time for multiple executive officers. Lawlessness, scams, and dishonesty are endemic in this area. ~~~ marvindanig > Lawlessness, scams, and dishonesty are endemic in this area. And homelessness. I was disappointed to see hundreds of helpless homeless people, some in horrible mental state, right there on streets in the middle of huge ivory towers that SV thumps its chest on. It's such a shame! And with young kids coming out of those glass doors flashing gadgets and gizmos at each other, with that certain bay area flair … I mean the collective blindness of the place felt only surreal. It's a personal thing but I guess my family will never be at home in the bay area. ~~~ tsunamifury You can judge, but SF goes further than any city I've seen to provide services to the homeless. So much so that it's a mild weather Mecca to many. So you can turn up your nose and go back home to a city that likely ships them here or "takes care of it" so you don't see it -- but you are being naive. The poor will always be with us, and we are judged by how we treat them. ~~~ Finbarr Have you been outside of the US? Coming from Europe, SF is utterly shocking. I've never seen anywhere else like it. Government provides a lot of support for low-income and homeless people in EU. ~~~ chrischen Part of the reason there are so many homeless in SF is because the SF government and local charities provide food and shelter. The tourists handing out money doesn't help with attracting them. Much of the panhandling money is used for drugs, as basic needs such as food and shelter are already covered by the government and nonprofits. If you really want to help them, volunteer at a homeless kitchen or directly donate to them. I walk by the local drug dealers in the Tenderloin every day, and all the clientele I've seen are homeless people. ~~~ soufron Wow that's some serious reactionnary stupid stuff. You are pretending that these people are homeless because the State provides for them? Man, you are such a model person for this new techno-aristocracy. ------ throwaway349000 They shouldn't be here in the first place when wages for American engineers have been stagnant for decades. ~~~ dang We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12403317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12403317) and marked it off-topic. ~~~ throwaway349000 It was perfectly on-topic. The OP was appealing for assistance in extending the visas of immigrants who arguably never should have been granted those visas in the first place, which I pointed out.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Docker Bomb - daenz https://github.com/amoffat/dockerbomb ====== jlhawn Very cool experiment! A fork bomb spawns processes at an exponential rate, however it looks like this just creates a linear chain of Docker daemons? > Now wait patiently until your hd fills up. This is obviously slower than a fork bomb, but I wonder which happens first: either the hard drive actually fills up or you run into a process limit. ~~~ daenz @frankh with exponential support! [https://github.com/amoffat/dockerbomb/commit/2b474f2d97ddf3d...](https://github.com/amoffat/dockerbomb/commit/2b474f2d97ddf3d17978dde0654384f0acc63c11) ------ raesene9 So if you let people run arbitrary docker commands on a box, it's pretty much a given that they can affect the availability of the system, heck a low tech version of this would just be to keep spamming docker run on an image and move some files around to chew disk space. If you're looking to restrict what users can do with docker on a host there's a variety of overlay packages you can look at to do that, with things like docker Universal Control Plane. Theoretically there's a Docker authorisation plugin framework which could be used to restrict what user's who connect to the daemon can do, but it's never (AFAIK) really taken off. ------ dhbradshaw Something similar to this happened to me recently -- My Ubuntu 1604 hard drive was unexpectedly full and cpu was being used by docker processes. Killing the docker processes and deleting info saved by them restored my system. ------ LinuxFreedom Meanwhile, is there a way to restrict Dockerfiles, e.g. not allowing users to be root in the container? I had the impression that this technology was only usable for the "single user machine" use-case, as too many bad things might happen in true multi-user environments - what is quite limiting in a unix world where we are used to multi-user reality since a long time - it was disturbing to see that such a successful tec seemed to ignore that. However, I am really happy for any updates on this issue, I did not follow Docker development too much, so punish me when I am totally wrong! ~~~ technofiend [http://www.infoworld.com/article/3030558/application- virtual...](http://www.infoworld.com/article/3030558/application- virtualization/docker-goes-rootless-and-thats-a-good-thing.html) [https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/linux/linux- post...](https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/linux/linux- postinstall/#manage-docker-as-a-non-root-user) ------ shawabawa3 Unfortunately it's pretty slow as it has to rebuild the docker image in each child - this could be made better by dumping the image and passing it in in the docker context	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Twitter is now worth almost as much as Yahoo - stevenj http://qz.com/161691/twitter-is-now-worth-almost-as-much-as-yahoo/ ====== bdcravens Article is from 12/26\. On 12/27 TWTR lost 13%. [http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=TWTR](http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=TWTR)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Extracting Structured Data from Recipes Using Conditional Random Fields - aaronbrethorst http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/extracting-structured-data-from-recipes-using-conditional-random-fields/ ====== jawns "But there is an ever-increasing appetite from developers and designers for finely structured data to power our digital products and at some point, we will need to develop algorithmic solutions to help with these tasks." One really cool area in which this sort of algorithm could be applied is identifying location data. Imagine an algorithm that could scan through a Times story like this one ... [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902EFDE1230F...](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902EFDE1230F933A05752C0A9679D8B63) ... and extract from the text all location identifiers, then geocode them: "Seventh Avenue and 36th Street" \--> 40.7522877,-73.9897059 "Bleecker Street between Sullivan and Thompson" \--> 40.728887,-73.999566 "Chrystie and Rivington" \--> "40.7212581,-73.99224" I used to work for a metro daily, and I developed a script that allowed us to geocode an address by highlighting it in our CMS and clicking a button, but that still required an editor to highlight the correct portion of the text. Using an algorithm to perform the task instead of an editor would open up some incredible possibilities. For instance, imagine a local news alerts service in which you could enter your location and a radius, and receive alerts whenever a news item mentioned a location within that radius. (I once developed a prototype of such a service, but the lack of a fully automated process for identifying locations led me to shelve it.) ~~~ discardorama > One really cool area in which this sort of algorithm could be applied is > identifying location data. You may want to try "PlaceSpotter" from Yahoo: [https://developer.yahoo.com/boss/geo/](https://developer.yahoo.com/boss/geo/) I haven't tried it myself, but did look at it for a similar idea a while back. ------ denimboy Weird since I just read this yesterday about the LA times doing the same thing: [http://datadesk.latimes.com/posts/2013/12/natural- language-p...](http://datadesk.latimes.com/posts/2013/12/natural-language- processing-in-the-kitchen/) The LA Times article has some generic python NLTK code. They used a MaxEnt classifier instead of CRF. ------ jsankey This is really interesting to me as I've just been solving the same ingredient parsing problem in my iOS app (Zest Recipe Manager) to implement smart shopping lists. Although I was tempted to use a statistical approach I opted to start with a more direct heuristic approach to see how far I could get (and to make sure I really understood the issues before trying a more generic solution). The heuristic approach actually works pretty well, though with a significant amount of effort! A lot of ambiguities can be resolved with a custom algorithm of this kind. For shopping list support (where really the common cases matter most) the results are excellent. But there are ambiguities I have had to hack solutions to that would probably be better resolved via a probabilistic method. And there are cases where some actual NLP is required to properly detect extraneous descriptive phrases etc. I'm considering adding a statistical helper to my custom parser to take it to the next level. ------ sheraz Funny enough, I'm also working in this space at the moment. Right now we are training models to identify cuisines and diets in multiple languages. Also, anyone interested in this space might also check out Yummly (www.yummly.com).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Advice on forum software - pkdevil I am looking to create a niche community website (100 to 1000 users in the beginning) with a discussion forum. I had a look at some of the popular software (vBulletin/phpBB - also tried searching on forummatrix.org) but somehow I find most of them to be lacking in one way or the other. I hope HN community can help me if they have any personal experience with running forums.<p>Here are some of my thoughts on what I am looking for (in the order of preference).<p>1. Good/Modern UI - What I found most surprising in my search is that most of the available software have a UI that is practically the same and it looks like all of them are stuck with their default UI for the last 7-8 years (if you are a regular on vBulletin-powered forums you would know what I mean). It is possible that there may be some custom themes that provide a UI that look stylish in which case I would like to know about them too. The closest I could find to my taste was Ning but I had to rule out Ning for other reasons (see point 2).<p>2. Hosting - F/OSS is desirable since I would like to know what goes on inside but I am not particular. However, I need to be able to host the site on hosting providers of my choice. This was the reason I ruled out Ning. Also, some time back I heard about Ning shutting down websites on flimsy grounds, so I prefer to have some measure of control.<p>3. Chat - I hope to have a lot of private messaging between users so an unobtrusive chat plugin would be desirable (like the Chat feature in Gmail). It should support group chat(multi-user).<p>4. Social networking - Profiles/friend-ing(for lack of a better word)/photos/likes etc. would be nice purely in the interest of building relationships between users but it is not a core feature. Voting on stories/topics ala HN is not necessary.<p>5. Tech support - I should be able to jump in and resolve most technical issues but I would rather focus on managing/growing the community, so I would like to see some decent support for troubleshooting issues.<p>Even if you do not know specifically about the software, I would appreciate if you can point me to some well-designed forum sites that you personally like. ====== pkdevil Strange. When I added the question I did not put the ":" after "Ask HN" so this did not go into the "ask" tab. But even after editing it now, it is still shown only on the "new" tab (rather than ask). ~~~ pkdevil Can a mod help in moving this question to the Ask tab? I am afraid it is getting buried in the "new" section. Coming to think of it, what I would probably like is the clean UI of Basecamp's discussions but that still supports certain forum features that users come to expect (the quote button/embedding media etc).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Making Java fully dynamic via invokedynamic and dynamic class creation - nerds-central http://nerds-central.blogspot.com/2011/05/performing-dynamicinvoke-from-java-step.html The op-code thing is a means to an end. The key of the article is how to use this technique to get at the new invokedynamic op-code and use the dynamic language features that provides from Java. Java does not support invokedynamic in syntax, so there are a few hoops to jump through to get to it. One can create a class which has an invokedynamic call site in it. Then link to that class. However, that is not very flexible. So using dynamic class loading from op-codes to create a new class site and then using that from Java (by casting to a know interface) makes a very clean pattern for Java its self to make use of invokedynamic. ====== nerds-central I am personally convinced that invokedynamic (the new BA op-code for Java 7) is not just for dynamic language support. Patterns like the one in this post _will_ let people develop dynamic approaches to Java. This will effect aspect oriented programming, all reflection based system and so on. I can see applications in server environments where objects/beans etc can use invokedynamic to tight bind initially loosely associated business logic. In short - I believe invokedynamic is a game changer for Java and everything that interoprates with or competes with Java.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google's Microsoft Moment - blasdel http://dashes.com/anil/2009/07/googles-microsoft-moment.html ====== ZeroGravitas Am I wrong or is this just not true: _"Google's recent development work on applications for mobile devices has often been delivered exclusively as applications for their own Android platform instead of as iPhone applications"_ I don't own an Android phone so maybe there's lots going on I'm not aware of but there seems to be plenty of stuff developed for a) any browser, b) any decent browser, c) iPhones specifically, d) java smartphones, e) Windows, f) Mac, g) Linux. He state's this is what Microsoft was like 5 or 10 years ago, and yet I think this is still true of Microsoft today. Certainly Microsoft sales folk I've recently come into contact with seem to be actively denying the existance of other browsers in relation to Sharepoint stuff. ~~~ nostrademons Yeah, I was gonna point that out. I've got some friends & family members with iPhones, and they use Maps & GMail all the time. I've met someone on the Mobile-Maps team, and he's always carrying around at least 3 different phones because he has to develop for them all. I work on the search UI, and a rough ordering of the amount of time I spend on each browser goes something like Firefox > IE7 > IE8 > IE6 > Chrome > Safari > Opera > Konqueror. The only browser that _really_ gets screwed is Konqueror, and to a lesser extent Opera (sorry guys). There've been features that we launched for Firefox+IE but cut for Chrome due to time restrictions - yeah, it's embarrassing to not support our own browser, but it's less painful than cutting off 20% of the market. ------ iamelgringo I've had this nagging feeling/paranoia the past year, that I'm really not comfortable with the massive amounts of data that google obtains on me. If someone came along and gave me a better email experience with a calendaring system that I could pay for and be reasonably ensured that my payment was keeping my data private. Id jump off the Google platform relatively quickly. ~~~ jsz0 Safe from what? Safe from misuse by Google? I think that's a risk you take with any third party provider. Being one of many millions of users does provide some security through obscurity in that respect. Chances are most of us are just not special enough to be legitimate targets. Safe from misuse by bad guys outside of Google via security problems? I'm pretty confident Google has some of the best engineers out there. You also have a strength in numbers thing going for you with Google. Lots of people are looking at it. Google is very high profile -- if they did have a leak you'd at least know about it. I can't say the same about some random provider. They could have half wit engineers who cover up data leaks. You might never know. Even bad providers can have sterling record if they choose not to report problems or simply have a run of good luck until someone copy & pastes the wrong command and every bit gets leaked. Safe from being an anonymous fraction of a statistic when Google aggregates its data? I'd be more worried about my ISP spying on me. Overall I think it's good to be aware of the risks but realistically there isn't a whole lot you can do about it no matter which provider you're using. If you were to separate all your different accounts to different providers you might at least spread the risk out. If you choose to run your own server(s) you quickly become the weakest link in the security chain. Even if you're a pro it probably won't be your full time job to administrate your servers so that already puts you at a disadvantage. ~~~ tome What worries me about Google is not that it has my data, but that it has a _massive_ cross section of my data: * search records * e-mail * calendaring * documents * which youtube videos I've watched etc. I'm sure it's _much_ more than proportionally easier to abuse this information the wider the spread of it they have. ~~~ jodrellblank You wish that's all they have on you - they also own doubleclick, and Google ads, two of the largest web advert providers in the world tracking you as you go to www.unrelated.example.org, and Google Analytics, one of the most popular web tracking extensions also tracking you as you go to www.anysite.example.org. Also any site that pulls graphs in from Google's public graphing API, or a sidebar from blogger or picasa. The bought DejaNews, so anything you post(ed) to Usenet is in their grasp, and they spider the entire web so if they can pull a probable forum name from your existing data then they can try linking them together. If you've ever used Google Maps to find directions, then the most likely place to find directions is from/to your home and from/to your workplace, so they can get highly probable locations for you. (Used it from an iPhone with GPS?). Shop with Google Checkout? Browse with Google Toolbar? Use any of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products> ? ~~~ dflock Ok, serious question: what's the worst that could happen? Some internet entity (could be Google, could be someone else) knows everything about me - all my personal details, everything I've ever done on the internet that wasn't encrypted. What's the worst case scenario for me, realistically? ~~~ jodrellblank WARNING: I'm not as paranoid as this post. Quite. ;) I follow the arguments that computer processing power is cheap and getting rapidly cheaper at a surprising rate. Because of this, I don't want to constrain ideas of "the worst" thing that could happen to be limited to things I can imagine now. I doubt it would end up killing you, but information is power and giving out information about you is giving away power over you in exactly the way that some people feared photographs were capturing their soul. (That is, within a small number of years, "the worst" thing could be very much worse, and in unpredictable ways). However, let's see: 1) "Government does bad things, made worse by Google's position and power" scenario --> Governments use phone companies to track "terrorists" by who calls who and what is said (or is rumoured to - see Echelon). It's not too far fetched that they could forge links with Google for Google to flag up suspicious persons by net activity (See recent story about German legislation mandating that ISPs block a list of pornographic websites. They could mandate Google.de to be included), and the list of triggers could be secret. So far so good, but ... a change in public opinion, a terrible government gets in power and starts adding more triggers based on the kneejerk fears of the day. Are picked up by it because you were reading an unusual amount about medical fraud? Because you were in the vicinity of a known communist's house thrice in a week (picked up by your GPS mobile phone)? Because of your religion, gender, sexual orientation, political leanings? 2) Techno-illiterate courts legislate that Google's information hoard is in the public interest and must be made publicly available. Anyone can now search all that stuff about you, all your emails, their contents. Have you ever wanted a stalker? Have any jealous friends? Is there nothing you would like to forget? Think employer-employee profiling, discrimination and bullying can't get much worse? 3) Nobody emerges as a Google sized competitor. Google becomes the de-facto choice for advanced image, video, audio processing. Google announces Google CCTV - desirable for companies because of the unlimited storage, web accessibility and tremendous analysis capability. Voices are transcribed, people are tracked, identified by sight, motion, limb length, gait... Soon all companies use GCCTV. Soon local councils do. Soon dflock can be tracked across systems. Google acquires eyes all over the country. Google starts population- scale experiments in secret. Can they predict where you will be? Can they, by dint of showing you different adverts, search results, articles with different slants _influnece_ where you will be? Which stores you shop in? Who you phone? Which way you vote? 3.1) Voice control hasn't really got much further. Microsoft, Dragon Dictate, Apple, they're all roughly as good as they were. Google has been quietly training on youtube videos, GrandCentral phonecalls, GTalk calls, google mobile search. Theirs is much better. Any device from your satnav or car stereo to your TV or Kindle has Google Voice tie-in. Everyone loves it because you can talk in whole sentences and say things like "remind me to watch XYZ on channel 123 on Sunday" and it does. Google offer this for free because now they know what you're doing when you're not on the net - and what you're talking about when not directly addressing your devices. Goto (1) and (3). 4) Google starts accepting "bribes" by another name. CrummyLabs Sound Cards by some ad-words and they appear at the top of search results for Sound Cards. Not happy with this, they backhand a few more quid and their competitors results fall lower. Then vanish. Competitors drivers are nowhere to be seen. Forums discussing their competitors wind up on page 50. Reviews vanish. The only products you see, hear about, can easily purchase and get support for are those with ties to Google. Not just IT products though - why did you _really_ buy that cooker? Google hires Derren Brown. You start to bank with Google Bank because "it's the best free bank" (well, that's why you think you bank with them). 5) It's 2025 and Google translate is as good as a human translator. All international business phonecalls go through Google Translate. All international _political_ phonecalls go through Google Translate. Tranlsate isn't always completely honest and unbiased in its translations. Information is power, Google's net is wide and growing wider. The more information flows through them, the more scope there is for them to do bad things, and the more incentive for legislative bodies, malicious employees, hackers, spies, to try to get their hands involved too. The worst thing that can happen is probably along the lines of you (us) being more and more a pawn in someone's business and political games, or being caught up in some witch hunt or having our lives ground up and spat out ruined by a juggernaut that doesn't even notice us. We are buffetted by massive tidal forces now. Google is paving the way for those to be controllable, all the media forces synchronised and coherently pushing in the same ways. A laser not a light bulb. (And if a sentient computer appears, which company do you think will spawn it? Which company has masses of computing power, masses of data, masses of smart people, masses of money, a corporate culture of machine learning and megascale processing? Such an AI would be constructed with implicit knowledge of you. Have you read "I have no mouth but I must scream"? [http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html) ;) ) ~~~ jsz0 You forgot the obvious one: Google's secret robot army is unleashed and enslaves humanity. I find this possibility to be as valid as some of the ones you list. It could happen, sure, but Google ultimately cannot risk alienating their customers so they wouldn't do it. Even at Microsoft's peak the doomsday scenarios never came to fruition for the same reason. The first time Google does anything unsavory with the data they collect is the moment when they open the flood gates for their competitors to rush in. I do think there's some value in keeping information offline and people should consider that as a valid alternative. You don't really need to account for every second of your life in Google Calendar. You don't need to upload every single photograph you've ever taken. You don't need to geotag the photos you do choose to upload. You may not want to use Google Docs to store your bank account information. Part of this whole situation is consumers protecting themselves. ------ rjurney The problem here is that in combination with Wave, Google is setting the platform that we are supposed to develop for a year or more before it exists. That IRRITATES the hell out of me. It is the same kind of egotistical douschebaggery Microsoft used to pull: pre-launching products to gain control before contributing anything. Watching the Wave introduction video... when I see that semi-euro, T-shirt wearing trim-bearded fuck up there on that stage with his falsely elegant peppy smart talk planning a 'boating trip', and the scripted passing back and forth with 'the best project manager in the world,' I see one thing and one thing only in my mind: Ballmer's sweaty bitch tits bouncing up and down, round and round, as he stomps and screams, vibrating to the tune of "Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers!" At least Ballmer had the good sense to be ugly, which gave him an odd kind of dignity. I think I prefer this stagecraft <http://bit.ly/pwGXs> to this stagecraft <http://bit.ly/15aSar> because Google's culture of arrogance is starting to disgust me. ~~~ freetard > It is the same kind of egotistical douschebaggery Microsoft used to pull: > pre-launching products to gain control before contributing anything. Well no, Google Wave will be open source and they already published the whole protocol and API so people can build clones of it before it's even released. Microsoft releases proprietary API ran on secret protocol no once can clone unless they get sued or do crazy reverse engineering in a country where they can't be sued. Not quite the same thing. ~~~ rjurney Granted - FOSS is good. But the traffic will still be running through google for almost all of this. And that, combined with their sole invention of this... I don't like it. I'm tired of them. They are too big. The worship bothers me. They've turned a corner. ------ stilist Interesting theory. There have certainly been occasional questions about exactly how trustworthy the company is, but no lasting negativity that I've seen. I suppose it has been long enough—and Google is big and broad enough—that a real backlash could begin to appear. ~~~ anigbrowl Agree. Extra points for the cartoon, which I hadn't seen before. ------ dustice I've seen many articles recently that suggest Microsoft's bundling of Browser to OS is analagous to Google's bundling of OS to Browser. They miss the key distiction that Google's offerings are /free/ and open-source. You don't like the OS? No problem, you can run Chrome (or Chromium) on whichever OS you want. No lock-ins, no harm to the user. ~~~ trezor Chrome != Chromium. Anyone who has tried Chromium in Linux will instantly notice they are using a much less polished product. Chromium may be open source, but Chrome is not. ~~~ ljlolel If I may ask, how is it less polished? I'm posting with Chrome for Linux right now (and I used Chromium before, which is identical) and it looks beautiful. Excepting of course external plugin type issues (printing and Flash don't work yet), the browser runs super-fast, never crashes, and looks great. Some of the configuration options aren't complete, but those are minor issues (oh and I see they have added many of them). ~~~ trezor It has gotten better recently, but it is lagging quite a lot compared to plain Chrome. Text rendering used to be horrible but it has gotten better. But if I can't even configure proxy settings without hacky gconf editing, that tells you that you are definitely using a browser in catch-up mode. ------ tybris I thought we were past the short-sighted Microsoft is evil childishness. In general, if you think a large group of people is evil or stupid (especially if these people are known to be very, very smart), you are wrong and should be wondering why. If a company is growing its business is to be on the offense, challenging the competitors products. When it becomes too big to adapt to the changing needs of the customer quickly it needs to go on defense to protect its business. Has nothing to do with stupid or evil, just business. ~~~ rdrimmie The post isn't about evilness (and in fact Dash has frequently defended Microsoft, as he states). The post is about a corporate entity growing past the point where the internal concept of 'self' that its staff has differs largely from the external concept of its identity that the public has.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Snapchat secretly bought a struggling startup, then bet the future on it - JumpCrisscross http://www.businessinsider.com/untold-story-vergence-labs-snapchat-acquired-spectacles-2016-11 ====== nsgoetz Snapchat has the scaled back version of the original product on the market but I bet they are still working on the more complete AR system. Looking at Snapchat as an AR company paints it in a whole new light. ~~~ AndrewKemendo It's like screaming into a void when discussing Snap as an AR company. I've been talking about it since 2014, posted about it last year on our blog, comment the same thing consistently and yet it's like it's a surprise to everyone.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A new theory about political polarization - samizdis https://phys.org/news/2020-06-theory-political-polarization.html ====== tusharchoudhary Political science seems to be going through a phase of questioning the rationality of voters. The two major theories of public choice -- Median Voter theory[1] (political parties take positions that appeal to the median voter) and Investment theory of Party Competition[2] (parties take positions most beneficial to their donors), both assume emotions (irrationality) of voters to be small. In the current political climate -- while it seems that the explanatory power of emotions seems to have gone up, it isn't clear why. This sounds very similar to the debate in economics around Efficient market hypothesis[3] and the emergence of behavioral economists. While it is seems easy to attribute things to emotion, we might miss other explanatory variables underneath. A great sound-bite from Thomas Ferguson who first proposed [2]: "The electorate is not too stupid or too tired to control the political system. It is merely too poor." [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_com...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_competition) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient- market_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis) ~~~ nordsieck > The two major theories of public choice -- Median Voter theory[1] (political > parties take positions that appeal to the median voter) and Investment > theory of Party Competition[2] (parties take positions most beneficial to > their donors), both assume emotions (irrationality) of voters to be small. > In the current political climate -- while it seems that the explanatory > power of emotions seems to have gone up, it isn't clear why. I read an interesting political science piece[1] about the fall of professional (i.e. corrupt) politicians and the rise of amateur (i.e. ideological) politicians. The claim is largely that voters started to care more about politicians implementing their favorite policies than being the recipient of trickle-down graft. They started choosing zealots who (at least seem to) have uncompromising stances on issues which won't change later in their term for some reason. Needless to say, these sorts of politicians don't tend to be the moderate, nuanced type. ___ 1\. I wish I could find it, but it's lost in the mists of the internet. ~~~ ChainOfFools Perhapa shorter messages reach more targets' emotional activation potential with better propagation fidelity and much less energetic commitment per impression? Mass media is increasingly a battle of bottlenecked channel management and rationally persuasive content simply doesn't survive this infrastructure without being ground down into smooth, bite sized harangues. And if you are going to get massed support for an issue, emotional persuasion content suffers much less from propagation distortion because it's distorted to begin with. ~~~ dane-pgp Or, to put it another way, and at the risk of taking this discussion out of the abstract, "Lock her up!" only has to work as a tribal shibboleth, not as an actually deliverable policy (especially if your voters have already given up on the idea that politicians actually mean what they say). ~~~ Tiltowait-- Reality Winner was sentenced to federal prison for far less than Hillary Clinton did. She mishandled a single classified document while Hillary mishandled many, including top secret. She's not in prison because the US has one justice system for us and another for establishment elites. Billionaires pay millionaires to tell the middle class that the poor are the problem. Punch up and fight the ruling class criminals. ~~~ michaelmrose We have had an increasingly hostile reaction to members of intelligence leaking to the media for decades especially where it has caused notable embarrassment. I am actually glad that Winner leaked but there is little doubt she intended to break the law. This is manifestly different from Hillary Clinton keeping email on a private server something other politicians have done without incident or controversy. She clearly intended to receive email more conveniently rather than intending to break the law. >News reports by NBC and CNN indicated that the emails discussed "innocuous" matters already available in the public domain. For example, the CIA drone program has been widely discussed in the public domain since the early 2000s; however, the very existence of the program is technically classified, so sharing a newspaper article that mentions it would constitute a security breach according to the CIA [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy) ------ notafraudster In political science, the conventional view is that polarization observed in the US is not a product of the two camps drifting further apart (in the sense of having more extreme views), it's the product of issue divisions aligning more closely to partisan camps. Consider Kim Davis. Kim Davis was a county clerk who went to jail after illegally refusing to issue a same-sex marriage certificate after the court system ruled she must. Davis, like most southerners until recently, was a registered Democrat. Until about the year 2000, virtually every southern government was majority Democratic, in some cases supermajority Democratic. The people in those parties often voted for Republican presidential candidates and were as conservative as the Republican Party, but due to inertia, they registered as Democrats. This has largely been eroded over the last 20 years. The result is that even if no one switches their opinions on anything, conservative Democrats now identify as Republicans. There are a number of inertial reasons to stick with a party that has left you behind, or to cynically join a party for a meal ticket. So, some of the apparent "era of good feelings" \-- confluence between parties -- actually occurred because a big part of today's Republicans were "mistakenly" registered as Democrats. If any other region becomes one-party dominated for a long time, you'll see the reverse. The reverse is true in Hawai'i, where many erstwhile Republicans would today be simply more conservative Democrats, because the Republican party is extinct there. There is also a belief that voters are better able to attach positions to parties. For example, if I told you that one party in the US generally favors higher taxes and higher services, and one party generally favors lower taxes and lower services, could you match the party labels to the descriptions, imperfect as they are? There is a general belief that people are better at this than they once were. Finally, the increase in correlations between issues positions. For example, today we largely view Republicans as a rural party and Democrats as an urban party. That was not true 30 years ago. Prior to the politicization of abortion, there were constituencies that were pro-life and voted for the Democrats (Catholics being a huge such group). Now abortion is neatly aligned across party lines: there are almost no pro-choice Republicans and almost no pro-life Democrats. Ditto immigration -- which used to be cross-cutting when the union left viewed it as a threat to working conditions but now is primarily conceived along the dimension of racial conservatism. If I tell you someone loves guns, you have a pretty good chance of guessing their position on immigration, healthcare, and school prayer, even though outwardly those four issues do not need to be attached to one another. Finally, within congress, two institutional reforms have contributed to across-party polarization: first, banning earmarks. It used to be that if I wanted corn subsidies and you did not, I would add an amendment to my bill to fund the navy base in your district. We then both vote yes. Killing earmarks may have reduced waste and corruption, but it also reduced a procedural tool used to secure inter-party agreement on contentious bills by offering concessions to the other party. It's like "suing for peace". Second, the "Hastert Rule", a rule that the Republican party adopted to never advance any bill that does not have majority Republican support. It used to be that, say, Republican leadership might advance a bill that had 40% Republican support and 80% Democratic support when those totals add up to more than 50% of the overall congress. By committing not to "roll" their own party, the Hastert rule virtually guarantees that votes that would internally divide parties and thus reveal ideological heterogeneity within the party are less likely to happen in favour of votes that divide across parties. Why am I mentioning these trends? They contribute to a phenomenon that many political scientists (here I am thinking Tausanovitch and Warshaw, but others as well) have noted: you can perceive polarization (increasing distances between the two parties) without anyone adopting more extreme views. Rather, polarization can emerge from how party labels map to issues and how institutions surface issues to vote on. This doesn't mean no views are changing or become more extreme, but it does mean we should resist estimators that have a simplistic appeal to our gut feeling that things have become more extreme. Some of this is discussed in the linked article, obliquely, but I think the article suffers from being written by non-political scientists trying to think about a political science problem from first principles rather than engaging with the existing literature. Reinventing the wheel can sometimes be helpful and sometimes is not. ~~~ ep103 Of the explanations you have given here, most of them appear to be good things. Voters learning more about and becoming more aware of the actions of their representative parties. Except the hastert rule. The hastert rule appears to be uniformly evil, and would appear to be an underlying reason for all of the other trends you've described in your post. Because it makes it impossible to govern, except in an extremely polarized manner. Leading to all of the other changes you've described. ~~~ afiori > the hastert rule. Rather I am surprised to discover that the speaker has so much power in suppressing proposed legislation. How are member of Congress called lawmakers if they are not allowed to propose laws? ~~~ Majromax They are allowed to propose laws (and amendments to bills). However, the House and Senate leadership has control over the voting schedule. There are still ways around it (e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discharge_petition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discharge_petition)), but they are not particularly fast and the legislative calendar is crowded. Worse yet, these measures also stick it to leadership – a plucky Representative has to not just want something, but want it badly enough to embarrass the rest of their party. That’s rare. ------ SI_Rob How about, polarization is highly compressive and humans have limited time and mental resources to devote to the many competing concerns they encounter. Those issues that they sense are important in some broad abstract game of value creation and control, but that don't have an obvious impact on their immediate sense of agency or leverage, get heavily and "lossily" compressed into extreme min-max caricatures or silhouettes as a heuristic compromise between the infinite nuance/complexity rabbit-hole of rigorous intellectual honesty and very finite human capacity for attention. ------ raz32dust Disappointed to not see any mention of ranked choice voting. I think the winner takes all system leads to a two-party duopoly and makes it difficult for intermediate positions to win. P.S: Yes, I know Australia has ranked choice and they also have problems. Of course it's not a panacea, there are other problems like the role of money in politics. But it will be better than what we have today, and should reduce polarization considerably over time IMO. ~~~ mmcconnell1618 Harvard Business Review podcast had an interesting take on this which suggested that the party-aligned primary system was the main cause. They applied Porter's 5 Forces to politics and suggested ranked choice voting would be one of the main ways to break to duopoly. [https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/06/applying-porters-five- forces...](https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/06/applying-porters-five-forces-to- fix-u-s-politics) ~~~ raz32dust It makes sense right? It's so ridiculous to see Biden and Bernie battle it out in "Stage 1", and then only one of them gets to go against Trump. Instead of Biden, Bernie and Trump and everyone else just run together in a race as it should really be. We might have even had a better person on the Republican side in this case. ~~~ birdyrooster Maybe every four years we switch between FPTP and RC ------ andrewla > The ever-deepening rift between the political left- and right-wing has long > been puzzling theorists in political science and opinion dynamics I feel like people who make this claims are in one of two camps. One is the camp that just wants to ignore that the 60s or 70s even happened, to refuse to acknowledge that the polarization we see now is extremely mild in comparison. The other camp believes that we can measure the polarization using some insane metrics that purport to indicate how polarized society is, but really just measure the opinion of the people collecting the metrics through increasingly inane measures, like literal telephone polling that attempts to extrapolate from "people who use landlines routinely and either are willing to answer unknown caller calls or don't have caller id" to "all people". The latter camp is extremely insidious and I implore you to remember the last time someone used metrics to prove something clearly false and assume that everyone is doing the same thing, just Gell-Mann amnesia is preventing you from seeing it. ------ jjk166 People are polarized because they don't like being not polarized isn't really a theory, it's a tautology. ~~~ twiceaday My wife has a cup that she got as a gift from somebody she cares about. It's not a very good looking cup, it can't be microwaved, and it has to be hand- washed. She never uses it, it just sits in the closet. She has this cup not because she wants it but because she can't come to terms with not wanting it, with getting rid of it. Maybe you can vaguely summarize the situation as her wanting this cup, but that misses a lot of nuance. ~~~ jjk166 I concur, you wife not-not wanting the cup is not a satisfying explanation for why she keeps the cup. Likewise not-not wanting to be polarized is not a satisfying explanation for why people are polarized. ~~~ tunesmith Still not a tautology though; not-not wanting does not mean wanting. ~~~ jjk166 Only because in your example wanting != wanting, which is an unfortunate consequence of the language not having a good word to differentiate between the desire to possess something and the desire not to be rid of it. -(-A) == A, when A == A, is a tautology though. ~~~ tunesmith Still not true, for instance if A is "proven". If A is not not proven, it doesn't mean it is proven; it can still be a hypothesis. And yet, proven == proven. ~~~ jlokier > If A is not not proven, it doesn't mean it is proven; it can still be a > hypothesis. Are you sure? It seems to me if A is not not-proven, it is surely proven. If A is still just a hypothesis, then it _is_ not-proven, and isn't not not proven. ------ headsupernova Great discussion of this topic on the media criticism podcast Citations Needed last week. "How 'Polarization' Discourse Flattens Power Dynamics and Says Nothing" [https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-112-how- polar...](https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-112-how-polarization- discourse-flattens-power-dynamics-and-says-nothing) ------ idrios I like this article a lot and would like to see it expanded upon further. Based on their visuals and explanation (without seeing equations) it looks like they've modelled an individual's political alignment based on a number of orthogonal issues and based on how they see their peers. So if there were 3 issues (examples used were marijuana legalization, gay marriage and income tax) then there are 4 forces acting on each person - marijuana legalization, gay marriage, income tax, and pressure from peers. But their model could be expanded to account for people who are single issue extremists (e.g. a dot that isn't pulled to other dots but _does_ pull other dots towards it), randomness or irrationallity (dots suddenly jumping, possibly to be pulled back or possibly not), and in general more variance in the weight of the force for each individual. Side note: Is there a field of political science that builds and works off of statistical models similar to how they did in this article? I know that basically the entire field of economics does this, but what about political science? ~~~ xh-dude There are plenty of thoroughly competent, talented, quantitatively oriented PoliSci researchers. Relative to other social sciences it can be less straightforward to be productive with quantitative methods ... there are cases where quant methods shine, the field needs more of it IMO, but the field can’t be reduced to that kind of scholarship alone. ------ seph-reed Balance is a good beginner philosophy, but adults need to do better. Most things are orthogonal, nothing really balances it out, and it appears from this article that peoples obsession with balance is also a self destructive obsession with opposites. At this point, any time the word balance comes up as an answer, my mind jumps towards "paradox" as a means to nip that fallacy in the bud. ------ motohagiography The article seems to map how the differences effect the overlapping issues in peoples existing ontologies. We're all aware that abortion exists and generally have an opinion about whether it is an individual and social good, which would fall into this ontology mapping. We are not all aware of discrimination, since it's noticed mainly by the people who experience it - which would be a gap between ontologies that has more to do with polarization than how people view the same object. Polarization itself is the resistance to understanding. It isn't a rational phenomenon. We could use quantitative polarization models as post-hoc explanatory metaphors, but as a model with predictive power, I think literary narrative depictions will still provide more foresight. There is very little new under the sun. The question from me would be, what might these models credibly predict that reasoning through with tools from psychology, history, economics, or even game theories could not provide in a more reliable and accurate way? ------ tehjoker This is the kind of stuff when you get when you don't know anything about historical materialism. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism) Historical materialism is the idea that politics comes from changes in the material conditions of a population. When people need something and aren't getting it, then they meet others in the same situation and compare notes, then you get a political formation. The United States is refusing to adapt to the needs of the bottom strata of society, and as they learn they can't change the system by voting or protesting, more and more radical steps are taken until the goals of the majority of people will be achieved. The refusal of the government to give even an inch is causing this to happen. Just look at the Bernie Sanders campaign that was talking about state funded medical care for all people, how popular it was and is, and how the DNC merc'd it. Then we had a pandemic happen that showed definitively how beneficial that policy would be, and the state still refuses to lift a finger to help anyone other than the business community with the exception of a paltry one time $1200 and some unemployment benefits. It took pushing to get Joe Biden to even call for free testing let alone free care! Edit: To be clear, my objection to this paper is that even though it is authored by physicists, people who should have a clear understanding of materialism (!!) they merely build computer models of ideas, and in that they are merely pontificating on liberal idealism. Their models will be flawed because ideas only "catch" when they find fertile soil. That soil is material reality. ~~~ ChainOfFools Isn't this just Marxism with all the Marxist theory about class struggle rephrased into plain conflict theory language and de-jargonified? ~~~ tehjoker Yes. It's much more understandable that way (and I don't have a useless Marxist academic position to justify). Frankly, I find it rather difficult to disagree with the premise of historical materialism. You can disagree with Marx's conclusions about which factors were important, but the basic assumption seems solid. The major exception that comes to mind where ideas might dominate material need is a situation present in the US today where the media so dominantly control narrative, they have been able to mostly squeeze other ideas out of the discourse. This is sort of like fighting entropy, possible, but requires extra energies to do. I hadn't heard of conflict theory before, so thanks for the tip. ------ ChainOfFools interesting to note that the guy who coined the word 'sociology' (Comte) originally wanted to call his theory 'Social Physics,' but his rivals had already claimed that term for different theories. ------ elicash Is there a link to read this anywhere? The one I found in the article was broken. There's really no way to evaluate this argument on the basis of this article. Do we need to wait until it's published tomorrow? ~~~ samizdis [http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/23/3/5.html](http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/23/3/5.html) ------ sova Politics is much more nuanced than Left and Right. Plus, a person can have multiple identities depending the question to vote on. So, while it's interesting to correlate emotion with voting outcomes, it still assumes that Far Left and Far Right are different people, instead of schizophrenic blobs as they actually are. At least that is an alternative way of looking at it. This assumes people are consistent in their personal views, and I find that to be a very dubious claim. ------ doctoboggan This article made me think of the graphics in this piece from WaPo: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/23/a-stu...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/23/a-stunning- visualization-of-our-divided-congress/) Ever since coming across that visualization a few years ago I've been thinking about it. I wonder what the endgame is. ------ jkingsbery So, they built a model for polarization. I read through the article a couple times, but maybe I missed it - I don't see what predication this model makes that can be useful or can test it. The article also implies that being on a political team is the only reason for polarization. Maybe that's a big part of it, but it seems to me that ignoring incompatible world views is uncharitable to all involved, and almost certainly a way to increase misunderstanding. ------ take_a_breath A recent HBR IdeaCast episode on political polarization. They viewed our political climate through the lens of industry competition and came to many similar conclusions. [1] [https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/06/applying-porters-five- forces...](https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/06/applying-porters-five-forces-to- fix-u-s-politics) ------ jedharris The paper doesn't help to answer: Why now? The model it proposes would have produced high polarization any time, but polarization is much higher now than 40 years ago... If the model could help us analyze the dynamics of polarization it would be helpful. As a static analysis it is just a fairly obvious application of cognitive dissonance. ------ pbuzbee Wait But Why has been releasing a long series of posts on the current polarized era. I've found them insightful: [https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of- us.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html) ------ crazygringo This is interesting mathematically... but false empirically. The forces behind modern political polarization are extremely well-known and well-documented in political science, and they are: 1) The awareness by political parties that extreme views motivate extreme voters to vote, more than moderate views motivate moderate voters to vote, therefore parties and candidates are being pushed further away from the center than decades ago 2) Political primaries are now democratic, so less centrist candidates are being selected than from when candidates were selected by party leadership 3) The awareness by the media that politically polarized coverage is more popular than centrist/balanced coverage, thus the rise of right-wing and left- wing news It really is that simple. Potential solutions include making voting mandatory (like Australia and many other countries) so extreme views aren't used to drive turnout, various strategies like eliminating primaries and using ranked voting for elections instead (allowing multiple candidates from all parties), and well there isn't really much we can do about the media, but if parties and candidates aren't pushing the polarization as much, the media probably won't as much either. ~~~ Tiltowait-- > Political primaries are now democratic, so less centrist candidates are > being selected than from when candidates were selected by party leadership That's not true at all. At least on the Democrat side. The party chooses the nominee, not the people. "The DNC, led by Wasserman Schultz, Admitted In Court they Rigged Primaries Against Sanders" >A Federal Judge dismissed the lawsuit after DNC attorneys argued that the DNC would be well within their rights to rig primaries and select their own candidate. [http://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie- wass...](http://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman- schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/) "DNC Lawyers Argue No Liability: Neutrality Is Merely a ‘Political Promise'" [https://observer.com/2016/10/dnc-lawyers-argue-no- liability-...](https://observer.com/2016/10/dnc-lawyers-argue-no-liability- neutrality-is-merely-a-promise/) ~~~ crazygringo That's quibbling over details, or the exception that proves the rule. Candidate selection used to be a backroom affair. Now it's an open democratic process. Party leadership obviously has their favorites, and can certainly try to push voters a certain way. But at the end of the day, people are still voting in primaries. Yes there are superdelegates too, like there's also an electoral college. But political primaries are based on voting by the people now. They weren't before. That's the point. ~~~ afiori > the exception that proves the rule. Off-topic: I was presented with the argument that this sentence should be taken to mean "this is the exception that shows the rule [as in law] is needed" rather than "this is the exception that the rule [as in inference/deduction] is correct". I have not looked into whether this interpretation is historically true, but it makes much more sense. ------ js8 Just started reading Mark Blyth's Angrynomics, which talks about this topic a lot. I really recommend it to everyone, it's short, and it's an excellent synthesis of psychology and political economy. ------ dr_dshiv Somehow these remind me of Ising machines, where our neighbors align us and heat randomly flips us. Except we recoil at the extremism of the extremes to settle further into our current position. ------ dqpb I think disinformation has an information-theoretic advantage over factual information when consumed by someone who can't tell which is which. ------ ed25519FUUU > _It ultimately ends in total polarization, " illustrates co-author David > Garcia_ Actually, I think it's more likely to end with violent conflict between the groups. The horsheshoe theory simply won't die[1]. At this point in time the extremes have more in common with one another than they do with the center. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory#:~:text=In%20...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory#:~:text=In%20political%20science%20and%20popular,a%20horseshoe%20are%20close%20together). ~~~ 082349872349872 One might hope that a common enemy (say, a virus with no known vaccine) would act to reduce polarisation in a society. ~~~ theLastVoice It has done that in most societies across the world. Except in one country that is heading into elections this year. ~~~ jonny_eh I'd put more of the blame on the leader with no interest in uniting a nation under threat. ~~~ pstuart Who also doesn't want to mess up his face makeup with a mask. ------ acarrera94 Interesting article. Any fans of A Conflict of Visions? That tends to be the theory that makes the most sense to me. ------ c3534l This is trivial to the point of tautology. ------ rayiner > It ultimately ends in total polarization," illustrates co-author David > Garcia (CSH and MedUni Vienna). Not only do people categorically favor or > oppose single issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and nuclear energy. > "If they are pro-choice, they are at the same time highly likely to be for > gay marriage, against the use of nuclear energy, for the legalization of > marijuana, and so on," says Garcia. The possible variety of combinations of > different opinions is reduced to the traditional left-right split. This is an interesting observation, because while we think of all these things as related ideologically, they aren’t necessarily. For example, both Denmark and New Zealand have liberal new Prime Ministers who are women, pro-LGBT, pro- welfare state, and quite strongly anti-immigration. (New Zealand’s PM, Jacinda Ardern, has received very positive media coverage in the U.S., but is part of a ruling coalition with the “New Zealand First” Party, such that her deputy PM is an anti-immigration right-winger.) So the issues on which the “left” and “right” have formed coalitions aren’t necessarily ideological but are to some extent the artifact of history. ~~~ commandlinefan > we think of all these things as related ideologically, they aren’t > necessarily. I have to fight this tendency in myself: I'm as anti-liberal as they come, but I do happen to agree with a handful of "liberal" positions such as abortion, drug legalization and immigration. But from time to time I catch myself disagreeing with the messenger so much I almost forget I actually agree with the message. ~~~ throwaway6274 How strange, as I’m the opposite. I’m about as anti-conservative as they come: UBI, legalize almost everything, universal healthcare and insurance, but I’m extremely against abortion. ~~~ jawns You are in an unenviable position, because the Democratic Party has all but said that you can't be both a Democrat and pro-life. There is a minor party called the American Solidarity Party that is a little more of a mix, similar to Christian democratic parties in Europe. They oppose abortion and the death penalty but support universal health care, environmental protections, stricter regulation of financial markets, etc. ~~~ throwaway6274 > You are in an unenviable position Yep, it doesn’t seem to be a common position, for sure. I have heard of the American Solidarity Party and like some of their viewpoints, but I think that any consenting adults should be able to have a relationship (and the corresponding legal benefits). I also don’t like the religious motivations behind many of the arguments of the ASP; my views against abortion are secular in nature, and I think the religious arguments probably hurt the pro-life movement as a whole. ------ narrator I think what broke the political dialog in this country is the whole hearted embrace of the association fallacy[1]. For example. I was talking with someone about COVID-19 and why it could have been released from a lab accidentally. The person I was talking with then accused me of believing in conspiracy theories. I then said many prominent people such as Tom Cotton and Mike Pompeo said this theory is credible. She then said that those are Trump supporters and "you know what those people are like." I said, no what? and then she said "They're like Timothy Mcvae" they are extremists. Implying that I was like Timothy Mcvae for believing ideas that Trump supporters also held. I then, to show her the flaw in her reasoning, played guilt by association with her. That people denying this are parroting CCP propaganda and the CCP does all this horrible stuff. Why do you support all that horrible stuff? She got very emotional and burst into tears at the accussation. I then explained the association fallacy, we made up and moved to other topics of conversation. However, this is a good percentage of arguments on reddit and most political forums and mainstream news. The association fallacy over and over and over again. Nobody wants to have an information producing argument they just want to find out what team you're on by comparing your beliefs to "bad people" and "good people" and seeing which one you match the most with and then accusing you of being them. [1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy) ~~~ fzeroracer I'm not sure why it matters if prominent people believe in what is ostensibly a conspiracy theory. Alex Jones was prominent, but that doesn't mean chemicals in the water are turning frogs gay for example. In fact you should be placing more scrutiny on prominent people (politicians especially) for pushing such a thing, because usually they have an agenda they're trying to push. The fact that you chose to accuse someone of denying such a thing as parroting CCP propaganda indicates either your story is entirely fake or you're just an asshole. ~~~ narrator "The fact that you chose to accuse someone of denying such a thing as parroting CCP propaganda indicates either your story is entirely fake or you're just an asshole." I was using her reasoning to make a ludicrous argument similar to the one she made to show her the flaw in the argument and her method of reasoning. I don't actually believe that and made it clear to her when I explained the association fallacy. The only way to argue against someone using a fallacious arguing technique, which can be used to prove anything, is to use that arguing technique to prove the opposite or something ridiculous. ~~~ fzeroracer I mean, you countered her reasoning by committing multiple fallacies of your own. You strawmanned her ('That people denying this are parroting CCP propaganda and the CCP does all this horrible stuff.') and did an appeal to authority ('I then said many prominent people such as Tom Cotton and Mike Pompeo said this theory is credible'). You did so in a way that was enough to make her cry by your own admission. ~~~ narrator Whenever I see a person use a fallacy I immediately use that fallacy against them. When she said the thing was a "conspiracy theory" that's essentially an appeal to authority that no one in authority believes that argument. When she compared me to a terrorist, that's an association fallacy, so I used that argument. Arguing against a fallacious reasoner is pointless, the only thing you can do is instruct them in proper reasoning. ------ badrabbit The otherside are villains,not their ideas but the people themselves. I am not going to say that view is incorrect but it is incompaible with the preservation of a democracy. For example, I have a hard time accepting a neo-nazi should be allowed to live when capital punishment is a thing. I wouldn't kill a neo-nazi because I don't think capital punishment is the right way, but I still think it should be considered a very serious crime. Things like free speech should not be used to tolerate nazi or confederate flags and a nazi salute should get you prison time, just like in Germany. I think both with privacy and free speech, Germans have learned a good lesson after the nazis. Either way, it is incompatible with democracy for me to think millions of my fellow citizens should be free. So, my opinion is, polarization is normal, polarized views like white supremacy and leftist anti-religion propaganda (you have no idea how much restraint it takes to not act violently against someone blatantly mocking and disrespecting your religion!) are themselves wrong. It's not the polarizarion that's wrong,it's just a symptom. The problem is we have too many people (self included) that were not raised to be decent human beings who know to be ashamed when they do wrong. At the very least treat other people the way you want to be treated, you know: don't hate on people because of the melanin content in their skin because you wouldn't want to be treated that way, don't open up satanic "churches" just to hate on religious people or prove a point because you would feel completley outraged and hurt if someone did that to you, don't lock up kids in cages sleeping on concrete without basic hygeine because you wouldn't want someone to treat your children that way because of your crimes! Even if you think your views are right, doing right and being decent is not optional if you want your rights and the society you live in to remain intact. Polarization is a result of population wide flaws in the people's character as a whole (and do not for one second think this is american problem or americans special this way). I for example need to be more accepting of neonazis,xenophobes, anti-religious people's basic human rights. I am pointing finger at myself as well. Everyone needs to reevaluate their views to confirm with principles of basic decency without which any democracy will fail. ------ buboard I find such studies rather shallow, just explaining away a phenomenon without looking deeper for causes. I dont think the level of political animosity that the USA seems to have now has been seen before, maybe ever. In no other country have people massively defied death in the way americans do today. When people stop valuing their lives , it seems rather like a change in psychology. Maybe it's not even a political phenomenon, but an extreme expression of underlying psychological issues in individuals that express themselves macroscopically in an irrational way. ~~~ moate " I dont think the level of political animosity that the USA seems to have now has been seen before, maybe ever." Wait til you find out about what happened from 1775–1783 or 1861-1865. It's gonna blow your mind dude!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Stablecoins Like Basis Won’t Be Stable - d8673821 https://medium.com/@glenjeh/why-stablecoins-like-basis-wont-be-stable-ca42e13a29d8 ====== cimmanom Don't you always have to start with the question of "stable relative to what"? Relative to the price of gold? Relative to the price of Bitcoin? Of USD? Of a loaf of bread? Of a unit of energy? Of a plot of land? (Where?) Of a "basket of goods and services"? (What goods? What services? How much of each? In what location?) ~~~ d8673821 Yes, relative to $1 USD.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Psychology of Envy and Social Justice - peter_d_sherman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcviUfFTQXk ====== peter_d_sherman Disclaimer: I'm not saying that I think the video referenced is right or wrong in any way -- I merely find it _interesting_... Thus, it is submitted for the HN community's approval... ...or disapproval -- as the case may be! <g>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dynamic Bézier Curves in React - joshwcomeau https://www.joshwcomeau.com/posts/dynamic-bezier-curves ====== themre awesome post for someone who is getting started with SVG animations and curves! thanks!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
VerifyValid - smallegan http://www.verifyvalid.com ====== smallegan I recently signed up for this after hearing some friends try it out and love it. I guess the nicest part is that as an employer I can pay my employees for .50 a check and I don't have to ask for any of their bank account info. They can either print out the check and bring it into their local bank or they can have the funds electronically transferred into their account.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: DevTalk - raj_khare https://lit-dawn-62972.herokuapp.com/ ====== isuke Hi I could connect nobody :(	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
[mfetch] Make your fetch api become more powerful - JanryWang https://github.com/janryWang/mfetch ====== JanryWang mfetch will provide you with a strong ability to request resource management, at the same time, you can use it very simply	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Microsoft building more Surfaces, adding non-Microsoft retailers - newplagiarist http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/microsoft-building-more-surfaces-adding-non-microsoft-retailers/ ====== oboizt I wish I could pre-order the Pro already. :( ~~~ hmexx me too	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Live chat with visitors (For lean startups and customer development) - edo I wonder if there is a service which allows you to see an overview of website visitors and initiate (pop-up) a javascript chat window with them. By default it should be hidden.<p>This could be intrusive, but it could also be a great tool for customer development and lean startups in general. How fantastic it would be to talk to your visitors instantly and learn what their pains and cravings are.<p>If something like this does not exist, and there is sufficient demand, I will gladly build this with a friend. Curious to hear your thoughts. ====== icey I think Olark does this: <http://www.olark.com/portal/>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How about an anonymous social network? - mythriel Over the last weeks(since all the crazy stuff regarding the NSA) I was thinking of this startup that would be an anonymous social network. Well not 100% anonymous, your profile would be public/private with your data but everything you do and all your comments to other people will be anonymous(messages encrypted even in the database based on tokens). This would also validate the idea behind you will get real answers to your questions, real and honest feedback to your photos and so on. What do you guys think of this idea, is it a valid startup? ====== krapp It's an interesting idea. The number of 'throwaway' accounts on HN suggests there might be some value to a network where now and then a comment or thread couldn't be traced back to an account. It doesn't mean at all that you would necessarily get more valid answers to your questions. If that were true, the boards on 4chan that aren't /b/ would be glittering beacons of civilized discourse. People given the mask of anonymity can act more truthfully but also deceptively because they don't bear the consequences of identity. Of course, there's public anonymity and there's anonymity to the mods and anonymity in the database. If the NSA wants to know who's who in your network, encrypting messages and hashing IPs probably isn't going to keep them at bay. What will the server logs tell them, for instance? Or packet sniffing? Or planting a mole on your staff? If you allow file and image uploads by anonymous posters, you WILL inevitably wake up one day and find a ton of child porn, that's just how anon rolls sometimes. How will you deal with gore, porn and copyrighted material? When someone makes a threat against another user and posts personal information about them, will you go to the police? Under what conditions would you as an administrator violate the anonymity of your users? Maybe only allow the anonymous posters to post text, or make certain that the mods can tell which account it really is (although this by definition makes the system less secure for users.) Either way, I think you'll need to be prepared for trolling and mischief, have your moderators ready with a clear set of guidelines, and even a few rather fascist options available like blocking Tor if need be. ------ ishener Why not just have a social network where you required _not_ to provide any real information about yourself. You must create an anonymous virtual identity. Another idea I once had was an anti-social network called "strangers". In this network you add people you know as friends, and all of their activity is hidden for you, and all your activity is hidden for them. You can only discover and interact with complete strangers. ------ arh68 What would your profile look like? I'm a little confused. At first glance, does this add any features past what 4chan has already done? It's 100% anonymous and you get real answers (though I think we've got different definitions of 'real'). I think if you can make 4chan "a nice place to visit" with your friends' photo/text updates with the same all-data-expiring-soon policy, you've got a niche. I'm also reminded by CupidWithFriends, though that's a slightly different concept. ~~~ mythriel from what I see 4chan is not a social network :) ~~~ krapp It is, but their idea of society differs from the norm...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Our First Dive Into the New Open Payments System - kleinmatic http://www.propublica.org/article/our-first-dive-into-the-new-open-payments-system ====== kleinmatic "There is one drug simply listed as 'KNEES' and another as 'Foot and Ankle.'" "The database includes three varieties of Clinpro 5000 toothpaste: bubble gum, spearmint and vanilla mint. One drug, CimziaCD, includes the notation "do not use" after its name." ------ dnautics What is "royalty or license?"	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti Review - p1esk https://www.anandtech.com/show/13346/the-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-and-2080-founders-edition-review ====== shmageggy Are there any deep learning/AI specific reviews out yet? Searching for such is complicated by the fact that these cards use a deep learning component for upsampling or something. I'm really just waiting to see price/performance ratios on deep learning training tasks, specifically with regards to FP16 and Int8. ~~~ p1esk I don't think you need reviews to see that these are the cards to get for DL. We already know the performance of Titan V and 1080Ti cards. 2080Ti is a lot more cost efficient than Titan V, and 2080 is a lot faster than 1080Ti due to tensor cores.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Let’s Talk about Logging - UkiahSmith https://dave.cheney.net/2015/11/05/lets-talk-about-logging ====== absc I generally agree with the article. Personally, I don't log _that_ many informations in my applications. Normally, my users will just dump the whole log in an e-mail with a "doesn't work" message attached. IMHO, a logging facility should grow with the project and I think the standard logging package in go is the right size. About bubbling up the errors: absolutely! Always let the caller handle it!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
PostgreSQL Count() Performance Improvements - turrini https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/count-made-fast/ ====== shay_ker The headline makes it sound like they did work to _improve_ the performance of count() in the postgres code, when that's not at all what the article is about. This post from Citus is far more informative: [https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2016/10/12/count- performance/](https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2016/10/12/count-performance/) ~~~ pkmishra +1. Citusdata article is much better. ------ BenMorganIO Given the title, I expected this to be about how PG improved their counting. This is not what it was about. I remember working over half a billion records and having problems when I needed a count. I used count(id) but that was mainly from internet mantra. I did not see an improvement. Using Citus gave me a significant improvement from 7 minutes to 1. And that was just a single coordinator, two workers on the same host. It could become much much better. If the data is very stagnant and writes are very low the triggers are great. Usually the "close enough" with pages is good if you have over 100k since paging - please correct me if I'm wrong - is sometimes 1k off. My preference is Citus as a catch all, but a trigger, a Redis cache managed at the app level, or using page counts are all . really useful for stickier situations. ~~~ groestl As an alternative to page counts, we used HLLs to estimate (unique) cardinality, and were quite happy with it. There is a postgres extension (postgresql-hll) and also a version for the JVM using the same algorithm/data format. ------ noncoml Sorry for being a bit off topic, but anyone out there who is using PostgreSQL in production, how do you manage tables with lots of updates? Is auto-vacuum doing good enough job for you or do you have to run “vacuum full” regularly? ~~~ pageald For our use case, we found the best approach was to clone all of the data to a temporary table with indices and constraints disabled, perform the updates, re-enable indices and constraints, and then replace the production table with the temporary table. This only works if you are able to update your data in bulk, and if some lag time in your updates is OK. This also has the benefit of never locking your production table. In situations where real-time updates are important, the key is to minimize your indices as much as possible. Read up on heap only tuples (HOT). If that all isn't enough, maybe consider sharding your database. Never run VACUUM FULL; it locks too aggressively. Let autovacuum do the job. ------ hinkley \| A note about count(1) vs count(* ). One might think that count(1) would be faster because count(* ) appears to consult the data for a whole row. However the opposite is true. Which is the opposite decision of other databases. So sometimes Postgres _does_ make bad decisions... ~~~ derefr I think the "the opposite is true" is in reference to the assertion that "count(⧆) appears to consult the data for a whole row", not to the proposition that "one might think that count(1) would be faster [than count(⧆)]". count(⧆) just counts the tuples themselves, which is fast; it's like counting heap-allocated data structures by counting their pointers (which you're already walking), without dereferencing those pointers. count(1) counts the result of evaluating the SQL expression "1" upon landing on each row, but still walks the same pointers to do so. So, in terms of time complexity, they're roughly equivalent. Both data items (the tuple and the SQL constant expression) are already on the stack, ready to be directly computed upon. Postgres's count(1) isn't slower than the one in any other DBMS. It's just their count(⧆)—at least the expression-evaluation part of it—which is _more_ optimized than the one in other DBMSes. Nothing wrong with that, IMHO. ~~~ rejschaap > Postgres's count(1) isn't slower than the one in any other DBMS. count( * ) is faster on Postgres than count(1). But both are fundementally slow because of MVCC. And count( * ) on postgres (the optimized one on Postgres) is much slower than count(1) on other databases (the optimzed one on other databases). So practically speaking, counting rows is slower on Postgres than on other databases. That said, I love Postgres. I use it every day. There is some room for improvement and it does improve all the time. It is an amazing open source project. And I wouldn't care at all if they never optimize count(1) ~~~ derefr Yes, I was trying to make a finer point—the _difference_ between count(⧆) and count(1) comes down to the cost of _filtering_ the row, and in Postgres count(1) is a regular filtering operation—taking the same _filtering cost_ that count(1) has in other DBMSes—while count(⧆) has a _filtering cost_ that is lower than that of other DBMSes, because it has been specifically optimized†. Separately, there's an MVCC cost of _walking_ the rows to filter them, and other DBMSes optimize walking rows for counting [usually causing both count(1) and count(⧆) to be faster], while Postgres does not do this optimization. (And, as stated in the article, in those DBMSes, this isn't a pure optimization _per se_ , but is rather a trade-off, trading write speed for all INSERTs/DELETEs for read speed for this particular case.) († Technically, the filtering cost of count(⧆) hasn't been _specifically_ optimized; the relative speed of filtering tuples for count(⧆) is an emergent property of the general fact that Postgres treats any mention of `⧆` as a reference to the row-tuple object itself. i.e. If `foo` is a table (x int, y text), then in actuality, `foo` is first created as a type [a pg_class] defined as the tuple (int, text); and then the table `foo` is defined as a relation persisting a rowset of `foo`-tuple-typed rows [in est making a table['s triggerable operations] each into a stored procedure with a `foo`-tuple-typed-rowset return type.] Then, the expressions `(SELECT ⧆ FROM foo)`, and `(SELECT f.⧆ FROM foo f)` both evaluate to rowsets type `foo`, which means that Postgres doesn't need to dereference the pointer to each `foo` heap tuple to build those rowsets. It only needs to dereference the pointers when it comes time to actually serialize and emit the row over the wire—which in case of a `count(⧆)` operation, never happens.) ------ freekh It is not count( _) that is slow, it is iterating through the rows that is / can be slow :) For me, the trick to basic understanding of perf in PG was exactly this: it is all about limiting the amount of rows you have to iterate over. It is true for count(_) but also for every other operation you do. PG is surprisingly non-magical (at least in my experience) in that you won't get much perf for free, but on the other hand you can reason about perf & optimize pretty reliably once you come to terms with this. ------ zeroimpl Note the trigger approach mentioned in the article would be terrible for performance in a concurrent environment, since only one transaction could modify the whole table at a time. ~~~ simonw I wonder if there's a way to "shard" these counters to avoid this problem. If you had 10 different counters (maybe in ten different tables) and a mechanism for round-robin or randomly selecting which counter gets incremented/decremented would that allow ten concurrent transactions at once? The query to return the total count would then need to sum the 10 individual counters, which should be extremely fast. Or is the concurrency limitation here caused by the trigger on the counted table itself, not the writes performed by the trigger? ~~~ ht85 Even though only 1 / 10 counters would be locked, you'd still have to read all 10 to get the count, which would be blocked until the concurrent transaction ended. ~~~ ants_a With MVCC writers don't block readers. ------ brightball I appreciate approaches that acknowledge when “close” is good enough. It would be interesting to graph how far off those numbers are to put a real metric to it. ~~~ nieve Only one data point, but I've got a custom search engine for a community that has pretty close to the ideal usage pattern for this: append-only with no update or deletes. A pure count() over 6.8M rows on a slow VPS takes 135,015ms and the n_live_tup technique¹ takes 214ms. The latter was 00.009557% high before an analyze and 00.001414% low afterward. Definitely good enough for me. ¹ SELECT n_live_tup FROM pg_stat_all_tables WHERE relname = 'comments'; ------ javitury The author claims that the tally method using "mytable_count" is concurrency safe. On the one hand, I think that is great. On the other hand, I am still suspicious. ------ type0 This title should be "Fast explanation on why PostgreSQL count() is slow" or something like that ------ j16sdiz Nothing to see here, move along. Been using this since 2009 [https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Count_estimate](https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Count_estimate) ~~~ davidgould Be careful with this if your postgresql release is not up to date. There was a bug in the way ANALYZE updated pg_class.reltuples that could cause the value in reltuples to grow incorrectly for large tables. If the table had a lot of updates the pg_class.reltuples value would tend to increase a bit each time it got updated. This was fixed in March 2018 and was backpatched so any binary release since then should be ok, eg 9.x.latest 10.x.latest, 11.x. See [0] for details of the bug. [0] [https://www.postgresql.org/message- id/flat/20180117164916.3f...](https://www.postgresql.org/message- id/flat/20180117164916.3fdcf2e9%40engels)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Malware on Linux – When Penguins Attack - fgeorgy https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/07/28/malware-on-linux-when-penguins-attack/ ====== em3rgent0rdr curiously, I'm on fsf-endorsed parabola linux, and of course the soundcloud won't play due to iceweasel's default privacy protections. Could someone who listened to this podcast enlighten me with brief summary? Mainly, if I only install the open-source vetted software from my package distributor, and don't do silly things like insert untrusted usb devices or run binaries not from my distro's repository, or execute random scrips from the internet, or disable my sudo password, or not keep up-do-date with security patches, and assuming I'm not subject to 0-days, then how does the malware get in? The only malware I'm aware that I've ever had on linux is from ubuntu installing the amazon search thingie, or from proprietary programs I thought I might try which ended up running stuff I didn't want in the background. ~~~ choudanu4 The security researcher who was interviewed was not able to garner how the malware gets in as that would require breaking into the infected systems, which he was not prepared to do (as it would be illegal). The entire podcast was simply statistics, with the occasional repeated reminder to update packages. The key takeaway was that linux servers when infected are often used as attack vectors for distributing a further set of malware on windows computers (which are the end target). The estimate from the podcast said of the compromised URLs that the researcher investigated, 80% ran some derivative of linux (i.e. apache server) and 20% were windows (an insignificant [~.1%] were other OSs). Another point, the researcher claimed was that 20% of the "compromised" linux URLs were actually infrastructure set up by exploiters themselves, rather than servers taken over forcibly. A final point, the researcher noted that many (no definite statistic here) of the compromised linux servers were running old versions of software (be it apache or whatever). TL;DR: Linux servers (when compromised) are often used as attack vectors to distribute malware to Windows computers (which are the end targets). ~~~ em3rgent0rdr Sounds like the title should have been, "when malicious internet servers attack!" >> "The security researcher who was interviewed was not able to garner how the malware gets in as that would require breaking into the infected systems, which he was not prepared to do (as it would be illegal)." Not much of a security researcher if we aren't breaking into systems. My understand of the term "security research" is that you hack into systems under safely quarentined experimental setups to provide specific knowledge of how, in order to improve future systems. ------ jmnicolas I think it's even worse on Linux, because on Windows you have an anti-virus that might detect you have a malware. On Linux you're blind.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Had you used any dVPN? - chompomonim I see that there are at least a couple of decentralized VPNs out there (Orchid, Sentinel, Mysterium...). How one could choose which to use?<p>I like the idea that they can't store logs, they require buying own tokens. So I don't want to buy a bit of each of them just to test. So any suggestions from which to start? ====== xadam Most of VPNs have no logs policy and are quite secure IMHO. Why you wanna go for this blockchain something? ------ foob4r Yes, tor. ~~~ chompomonim Tor is cool, but I'm tired of using their browser and all the captchas. Also would like to protect anything is going out of my phone (all the apps I use). ~~~ foob4r On Android, you can use orbot.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Twitter's future could look a lot like its past - razin https://www.getrevue.co/profile/caseynewton/issues/twitter-s-future-could-look-a-lot-like-its-past-215420 ====== Hamuko I have my doubts about Twitter being able to create an open and decentralized standard considering they still haven't even opened up polls to third-party clients. I imagine there's no technical reason for it, just business ones. If they want to make the big leap towards a decentralized standard, why not make the small leap and give features like polls to current app developers? ~~~ 4ntonius8lock I think such issues (give developers features) are something that would require a centralized response. This in turn creates liability and the issues of large platforms; they are tweaked by an incredibly small % of users who develop the feature, who can't fully foresee the unintended consequences of any large action. Then the results are mostly expressed by another % of loud/angry/extreme users, amplified by the media and then the centralized developers have to answer. In the article, the author mentions 'your policy is what you enforce'. But that's really overly simplistic. There's a gradient, with extreme moderation on one end and no moderation on the other (even those in favor of no moderation will generally agree that nuclear launch sites and codes should be moderated off). And then there's how and where you implement systems to identify cases which require moderation and what systems you put in place to avoid abuse and what incentives you are creating. And all this probably changes with time as people try different things to game systems. Our government(s), economies, etc are getting more and more centralized, controlled by fewer and fewer hands. This skews incentives and positions of leverage, look at what's happened with youtube content creators as a tiny example, but it's way beyond that. By making it decentralized, Jack's basically appealing to the wisdom of crows. I think the article is missing the long of it. Yes, there will be forks, but eventually consensus appears in the community. I feel his comparison to Mastadon is unfair, since it was new and looking for a niche. Twitter is such a big name, everyone will want to have input on such a decentralized system, so there should be strong input from all sides as they are represented, at least within the tech sphere (which is pretty large and diverse when you leave SV/CA). Our current development climate is allowing something as dramatic of a change as P2P protocols in the early 2000s. P2P has mostly disappeared in favor of streaming services, at least in the first world. But it was the P2P that allowed the creation of big streaming services. Without that pressure, I have serious doubts the current IP holders would have allowed Netflix or Hulu to be. Jack's level of vision is reaching way beyond mine, but I think he is on to something, and the payoff can be truly disruptive, not just to business which is a bit boring, but to how things can work. ------ amoorthy Jack Dorsey references [1] Stephen Wolfram's testimony to the US Senate where he outlined a solution for algorithmic transparency and content curation. My startup, The Factual, coincidentally built something similar to what Stephen envisioned as a "final ranking provider". Blog post with details: [https://blog.thefactual.com/delivering-on-stephen- wolframs-v...](https://blog.thefactual.com/delivering-on-stephen-wolframs- vision-for-addressing-algorithmic-transparency) [1] [https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766086320680961?s=20](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766086320680961?s=20) ~~~ thundergolfer I’m very interested in the area you’re working in so I checked out The Factual. Heads up that the “About OwlFactor” page gave me a 403. From clicking around it seems like you’ve built a cool system for ingesting and scoring articles. I would say that you’re methodology and it’s bias against “highly opinionated” journalism seems to be committing the Argument to Moderation fallacy. ~~~ amoorthy Thanks for checking out our site! We rebranded from OwlFactor and I forgot to update my HN profile! Doh. Fixed. You're right that our methodology encourages moderation in news articles. But it doesn't penalize far right or far left outlets. Rather, if the style in which an article is written is inflammatory or opinionated then it is dinged. So it's not so much that viewpoints should be moderate but rather that the case for any viewpoint should be made without undue hyperbole and emotion. The real test of our technology is if regular news readers like you and me like this selection bias. So I'd be grateful if you checked out the selections on www.thefactual.com/news and commented further. ~~~ thanatropism Can I test your algorithm in some of my writing? ~~~ amoorthy Hi there - our Chrome extension rates any news article: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/civikowl/clbbiejji...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/civikowl/clbbiejjicefdjlblgnojolgbideklkp?hl=en) but it won't rate an arbitrary piece of writing (yet). To be honest, an unknown author with no history on a topic on a site that's also previously unknown will struggle to rate >50%. Lmk if I can answer any other questions. ------ thinkloop > A third-party Twitter client might be prettier and more functional than > Twitter’s own client — shout out to Tweetbot! — but it certainly would not > be more profitable. I never understood this, why can't the API/firehose serve ads that would be presented in the 3rd-party apps? Additionally 90% of users would naturally gravitate to the default app regardless, leaving 3rd-parties for cool/interesting/advanced/innovative use- cases. I still feel this was a mistake - not as some hippy idealogue - but from a ruthless capitalist perspective. This was their like button. ~~~ vojta_letal Because there simply would be a 3th party app which would ignore the ads? If there was not I'd write one. Simple as that. FB and Google closing their XMPP gateways is an example of a similar issue. ~~~ busymom0 They could state in their terms of services that the API key will only be valid if the developer doesn't hide the ads. ~~~ iamatworknow Then why would I as a developer bother with it at all? I don't want to serve ads someone else is getting paid for from my app. And if my app was to be funded by ads, then what? Display twice the number of ads to the user? ~~~ ceejayoz Tweetbot is a paid app. Its revenue model wouldn't be fundamentally affected by Twitter putting ads in the feeds it displays. I'd rather see ads in my feed than Twitter continue to make third-party clients less useful. ~~~ thinkloop Or Twitter could share the ad profits a la YouTube to incentivise all kinds of innovative niche ui's. 3rd parties are not the enemy to be managed. They are a blessing - free engineers who managed the impossible of building a product with customers and traction. UI is a cost for Twitter. ------ kuu It's funny how things have turned. They had an open API with several 3rd party clients, and they killed them. Now they want to go even more open... Strange ~~~ skohan It seems like the heart of it is this: > He argues that Twitter’s value lies in directing your attention toward > valuable tweets — not hosting all the content. If twitter can succeed in offloading their hosting costs onto this "decentralized network" and remain the authority over which tweets are relevant (and therefore remain the primary channel which can serve ads on this type of content) it could be a big win for them as far as the bottom line. At the same time, it might take some of the heat off of them as far as accusations of bias on the platform. If Twitter is the _only_ entity deciding what is and is not acceptable in the discourse, questions can be asked about whether or not they're doing that in a wise and fair manner. If they are just one of many curators, then "the market" can decide if their method of governance is best, and they can't be accused of having a monopoly over the discourse in the same way. ~~~ kuu I get your point, but I wonder if exactly this will happen, that they will lose the monopoly (and therefore a lot of money). I'm not saying that losing it is bad or good per se. I'm just talking financially. ~~~ skohan I understand what you’re saying, and I would venture to guess that Twitter has put a lot of time and money into determining whether this would be a good outcome for them before they would go through with it. It is curious in a way, since Twitter does seem to hold a monopoly on a certain kind of online discourse. It’s not like FB -> Instagram -> Snapchat -> TicTok where there there seems to be a generational sunrise and sunset. In that case it seems like there would be more to gain going open with the hopes of having the opportunity to exert more control over the next up-and-comer ------ roimor How "open" is the Twitter API compared to other social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc... What is the lay of the land in this regard? ~~~ ceejayoz That's a broad question without one single answer. In my experience, getting approved to _use_ the API is substantially easier with Facebook than Twitter. Twitter will reject for bullshit reasons, and send you a "there can be no appeal" message. The only way around it is to kick up enough of a fuss with prominent people to get a manual reconsideration. Once you're in, though, you can pretty much do anything a Twitter user can do. Facebook heavily limits what data you can get - you basically can't get _any_ info about the user's personal profile/feed, or info about a user's friends. Twitter makes all that readily available. On the other hand, analytics.twitter.com has no API (and hasn't for years), whereas Facebook makes all sorts of analytics info available on Pages. ~~~ paulgb One thing conspicuously missing is getting all of the replies to a given tweet. This makes it difficult to build anything resembling an alternative Twitter UI (such as existed the the hayday of more open Twitter APIs) using the official API. ------ olah_1 Twitter gets free bandwidth but still gets to profit off of the centralized social index? We call that the "bitchute effect".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
JSON or XML: Just Decide - urbanjunkie http://www.mnot.net/blog/2012/04/13/json_or_xml_just_decide ====== justin_vanw JSON is great, but it is not nearly as flexible as XML, partly because of attributes. Also, because of it's JS heritage and compatibility, lots of common things are _not representable_ in JSON. This is mostly because object keys MUST be strings. Examples: In [1]: from simplejson import dumps In [2]: dumps({1: 5, '1': 0}) Out[2]: '{"1": 0, "1": 5}' Derp, good luck figuring out what that is supposed to mean. In [3]: dumps({None: None}) Out[3]: '{"null": null}' In [4]: dumps({False: False}) Out[4]: '{"false": false}' Oh snap! That's an ugly bug waiting to happen! Of course, Python is not immune from such uglyness: In [5]: {True: 'true', 1: '1'} Out[5]: {True: '1'} WTF! My new favorite method of encoding data is MSGPack. It's efficient, fast, available for all popular languages, and doesn't have inherited uglyness. Disadvantages: not human readable (it's a compact binary format), and no Unicode support. The unicode support issue can be worked around by convention (for example, always encode strings as utf-8), still very annoying though. I think we can all agree that XML is gross. Another major issue with XML is bad programmers. XML is an interchange format, it's meant to be used when you have to give out or accept data from the 'outside'. However, it is very rare to come across industry created XML that validates. And dealing with invalid XML is a complete shitshow. ~~~ wicknicks I have spent equal amounts of time with XML and JSON. Here is what my experience told me: 1] XML is painful to write. 2] Languages don't natively support it. It always requires additional drivers/libraries. 3] Its non-trivial to store XML also. With the solutions that were out there we would always run into some requirements which the database didn't support, and had to done in the business logic. JSON databases (I use Mongo) have a very clear interface, about what they support and what they don't. 4] Finally, most websites support JSON, if they don't then I resort to the XML interface. Tools like MsgPack and Google protocol buffers are great, but can only be used in house. Not over HTTP. In short, JSON wins for me. ~~~ justin_vanw You can use MSGPack over HTTP just as easily as JSON. In fact, it performs better in most browsers. ------ mindcrime Use the right tool for the job. I wouldn't say that XML or JSON is always right. But I will say that I believe XML has a better ecosystem around it; with things like XSD, XSLT, XQuery/XPath, etc., and some pretty easy to use data-binding frameworks like JAX-B. My feeling is that XML makes it a lot easier to do certain classes of things that I want to do, like taking a business event message off a queue, match it against an XQuery expression, route it to the appropriate place based on that matching, store it in an XML database where I can later locate it using XQuery, and then render it into a web-based activity stream by applying an XSLT transform. Sure, you could get there from here with JSON as well, but it sure seems more natural using XML. ~~~ derickson Using an XML native NoSQL database is a game changer when consuming XML and producing XML HTTP APIs. A good XQuery engine makes many of the problems people are listing about XML simply go away. I like @mnot's point about providing "excellent client bindings" in common languages. ~~~ mindcrime What DB do you like for storing and querying XML? I've been using eXistDB lately, but I'd be curious to hear if people are finding something else to be better. ------ 6ren He's talking specifically about web APIs. Web APIs tend to have simple, shallowly nested formats. In an informal survey, the deepest nesting I found was 3 levels. JSON is simple, and has resisted all efforts to complicate it, or to add to its stack. There is no popular schema for JSON, no "JSLT". no visual JSON mapping tools. The only tooling is databinding (and if you consider JSON as a subset of JavaScript, it arguably has not even that). The XML toolchain, especially XML Schema and XSLT, is highly engineered - well, over-engineered. The designers threw in everything they could think of. As a result, even enterprise tools don't need to support the whole spec. I think it's fair to say that if you _need_ something more powerful (and therefore more complicated) than JSON, you should use XML. It seems the very existence of the XML toolchain helps _keep_ JSON simple: instead of demand for complexity being channeled into over-tooling JSON, it is harmlessly diverted to XML. The deeper question is: _do our tasks really_ _NEED_ _that extra complexity?_ It seems related to loose dynamic typing vs. tight static typing (and scripting vs. compiled). Maybe web APIs are an exception - or, because very young, haven't yet needed the complexity that beset CORBA, then XML... Or maybe they _are_ an exception, but it doesn't matter because everything is becoming a web API anyway. Or... maybe we're finally got it right...? There are pervasive needs that JSON doesn't address. For example, there's a problem with coupling between JSON and application data structures in that they must be the same basic shape. So to give your JSON format the ideal shape for consumers, you need to translate into a layer of objects first - and your consumers need to do the same thing to get it into _their_ internal data structures, Similarly, you aren't free to evolve; instead, you produce another version, and all your clients must upgrade. Most web APIs are very very young, yet have several versions already... The same problems occurred in XML (and CORBA), and though JSON is an improvement in that it allows fields to be added more easily, the tooling to support conversion/evolution hasn't grown up around it (and _isn't_ growing). I think the answer is that JSON works great when the underlying features of applications are changing quickly because you can't "evolve" around this, you need humans to rethink the basics. while "web APIs" continue in vigorous growth, it will dominate. Maybe it will settle down and consolidate, once everything has changed into a web API... or maybe continuous churn will become the rule, as everything accelerates? [Interestingly, relational algebra squarely addressed and solved these problems 42 ago. It's still going strong; though also under attack by the similar forces (NoSQL) allied with loose dynamic typing of scripting languages, and the need for so-called "web-scale" performance being greater than the need for evolution/conversion... at present.] ~~~ Yarnage >For example, there's a problem with coupling between JSON and application data structures in that they must be the same basic shape. So to give your JSON format the ideal shape for consumers, you need to translate into a layer of objects first - and your consumers need to do the same thing to get it into their internal data structures, Don't you need to do the same-thing with XML? How do you use XML data without conforming it to your internal structures first? You can't just guess...I just don't get the difference here. I'm trying to understand what XML can offer that JSON cannot. Do you have an example? >Similarly, you aren't free to evolve; instead, you produce another version, and all your clients must upgrade. Same-thing here; doesn't XML have the same issue? Upgrading formats can make XML useless just as well as JSON. Also, just like JSON, you can upgrade them without issue so I'm not seeing the distinct advantage of XML over JSON. Do you have an example? I'm not trying to be argumentative; I just haven't seen any examples showing what makes XML better than JSON just lots of "you can't do this in JSON" and I can't find a way to make that true in my head... ~~~ 6ren Yes, XML has the same problem. The end of that paragraph reads: > The same problems occurred in XML (and CORBA), and though JSON is an > improvement in that it allows fields to be added more easily, the tooling to > support conversion/evolution hasn't grown up around it (and isn't growing). Maybe it's not clear, but the tooling to solve these problems _has_ grown up around XML. Mainly XSLT, and visual mappers that operate on top of that. Examples: MS's Biztalk mapper <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa547076.aspx>; MapForce <http://www.altova.com/mapforce.html>; StylusStudio XML mapper <http://www.stylusstudio.com/xml_to_xml_mapper.html>; both IBM and Oracle have similar - this category of tooling has been around a decade or so; XSLT itself started in 1997 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSLT>). Have a look at the images in those links - you'll immediately see what they do. So to be precise, XML doesn't solve these problems, its tools do. ------ cpunks Or... they're designed for different purposes and not even competitors. XML is a markup language: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markup_language> It was designed for documents. Try converting an HTML page to JSON. Try something as simple as: <h1> Hello World! </h1> <p> The most common introductory program is called <i> Hello, World </i>. </p> Go on. If you think JSON wins, just do it, and post it below. The problem was when people started mis-applying XML to send data structures, for RPC, and similar tasks. That's not what it was designed for. JSON is a cross-language way of specifying common data structures, and is very good at doing that. ~~~ thezilch Yes, JSON is no ML, but YAML is, which is a superset of JSON's semantics/features. You're perfectly right that JSON is not always the right tool for transporting a document, but I still wouldn't regard XML as the best tool for any of those cases. ~~~ cpunks Please post an example of the HTML above in YAML (or your preferred language) that would be better than SGML or XML. Sidenote: YAML doesn't consider itself a markup language. See the renaming: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML> ------ Yarnage This "article" is odd. I've worked with multiple systems and I don't see a reason why one data model can't be bound to XML and JSON without being awkward. It's so incredibly EASY to output and input with both, why not? Personally I prefer JSON as I haven't found anything that can't be represented within it. I didn't see any example within the article regarding JSON formats that generate awkard XML ad vice versa. Does anyone have examples of that? ------ icebraining I like Turtle: <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar> dc:title "RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised)" ; ex:editor [ ex:fullname "Dave Beckett"; ex:homePage <http://purl.org/net/dajobe/> ] . It's only useful if you drank the RDF kool-aid (like I have), though. ~~~ dajobe You have good taste, since I invented Turtle. To keep this on topic, I've been using JSON for data web APIs since that's what it's best at. It sucks at: markup and graphs of course. ~~~ tptacek We use JSON for graphs. What sucks about it? In what sense is XML better at representing graphs? ~~~ dajobe There's no way to point from one part of a JSON doc to another without inventing a terminology or convention for marking the start (anchor) and end of the arc (href). People use 'id' for one end but there's no way to say a json value is actually a reference (href) not just a string. XML has that built in (ID IDREF) and so does HTML, but I didn't say XML was better, I said JSON sucks at markup and graphs. JSON's handy for serializing trees of data with no loops. ~~~ Yarnage What do you mean by "built in"? I don't see how or why an ID couldn't be used in the same manner; the implementation is just a little different because they store data differently. XML is only a series of nodes and attributes. There isn't really anything else special about it and it's trivial to represent it in JSON so I'm not sure I follow your issue. Could you provide an example? ------ democracy There is no excuse not to have both + plus something else (like soap web services) if the end user wants it. It is not entirely host's choice. ------ qbproger YAML :) ~~~ mcot2 +1 ------ officialchicken Do you need validation? XML. Otherwise use JSON. ------ joe24pack YAML ? Easy to read, edit and understand. ------ derfclausen I wish JSON had syntax for comments. ~~~ rollypolly Good point, but you can use a parser that supports comments, even if it's not standard. You could also create a node to hold comments. Then there's also YAML that supports comments. ------ nirvana JSON. I've decided. Actually, I think I decided in 2001 or so when I decided that XML was just a bear. Seems most people have decided to go with JSON as well, and that XML is more used for legacy systems and systems where there's some enterprise component you have to interface with. Frankly, I hope JSON wins, but if it doesn't, XML needs to have a resurgence really quickly.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Retainer and rate question for software engineer - ncavig I'm curious how a contracting software engineer would structure an agreement for work where there may or may not be time spent actually doing work. Simply put, it's an "on call" type arrangement for server administration and hotfix/bug fixes if the need does arrise.<p>I've contracted before, and have my standard rate, but have never been in a situation where I'm on call, but have the potentiality to not do any work what-so-ever.<p>What is the industry standard for this sort of arrangement? Thanks!<p>I'm also sorry if there's a similar ASK HN posting. I perused google and HN a bit and didn't find any similar posts. ====== bradleyjoyce I generally have structured based on some average of "how many hours will you need me if everything goes terribly wrong" and "one or two small things a month" multiplied by my a slightly higher than normal hourly rate. In cases where clients don't want to pay a retainer so to speak, I'll usually give them the option to pay as they go, but at generally 2-2.5x my normal rate. ~~~ SkyMarshal What about a flat weekly/monthly charge for being on call, plus hourly charges for any actual work you do? Is that ever done? ~~~ bradleyjoyce hmm it might be, but I've never done that.. basically clients would pre-pay for a chunk of hours (use them or lose them) and overages would be billed at normal hourly rate ~~~ ncavig Thanks for both responses. I do like the having a couple options to offer. I appreciate the input guys	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Infecting Android applications – The new way - thatskriptkid https://orderofsixangles.com/en/2020/04/07/android-infection-the-new-way.html ====== thatskriptkid The new and efficient way to infect android applications without using vulnerabilies or bugs. With PoC	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The height limit of a siphon - monort http://www.nature.com/articles/srep16790 ====== matthiasl A longer summary: the maximum height of a siphon pumping water, at sea level, predicted by barometric pressure is about 10m. But the tensile strength of water is nonzero (a surprise to me) and that is enough to allow much higher siphons if you first remove dissolved gases from the water. The paper speculates that several hundred metres may be possible, perhaps even more. The paper also describes an actual experiment where they showed that a 15 metre high siphon works in practice. ~~~ venomsnake What are the practical implications of higher siphons? ~~~ johnm1019 IANA fluid dynamics expert, but it seems to me that for certain designs which move water by creating a lower pressure at some point inside of a pipe you've created a "siphon" in a general sense. If that's true, this could affect certain water pump and plumbing designs, albeit this degassing process may be prohibitively expensive. ~~~ Gravityloss Closed circulation central heating systems are degassed. Though, the water is hot there so boils much more easily. Maybe closed circulation cooling water systems... ------ chadnickbok Relevant xkcd what-if: [http://what-if.xkcd.com/143/](http://what- if.xkcd.com/143/) ~~~ aaron695 Except he has gotten it wrong hasn't he? Which I guess is why this is trending. ~~~ gefh His note [5] links to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F4i9M3y0ew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F4i9M3y0ew) which is a demonstration of a siphon in a vacuum, so he's covered :) ~~~ Dylan16807 But working "a little bit" as the note says is a good way off from working an order of magnitude or two better. ------ emmelaich My summary: the limit is much higher than can be predicted by barometric pressure because of the tensile strength ("surface tension" of water) ------ glup So this is why I couldn't siphon (gray) water from my bathtub on the third floor to water plants in the yard, not lack of moral fortitude. Great! ~~~ jeremysmyth No, unless the water had to _rise_ 10m from your bathtub before descending. If it only had to rise enough to climb through a window before descending to your yard, then that is not enough to produce the problem in the article. The problem described is that water cannot be lifted _up_ more than 10m (due to air pressure pushing on the bath side not exceeding the weight of 10m of water in the hosepipe), not pulled down on the far side. ~~~ basicplus2 yet but no.. 1\. bottom of siphon outlet has to be sealed by the surface of water held in a container.. and 2\. and height of long side must less that atmospheric pressure in height from said surface of water or water column on down side will break and draw will be lost ~~~ LeifCarrotson But the bottom side of the siphon doesn't have to be the bottom of the system. Run the tube up 1m to the window and back down out the window perhaps 3m to a bucket on the porch roof - an easy, simple, working siphon. From that bucket, you can use a regular positive-pressure bottom drain to go down as far as you like. ------ iandanforth I love this classic science. Theoretically this experiment could have been performed in the 19th century! ------ mabbo This is why water is pumped from below pushing up rather than pulling from the top. But perhaps this will open up new ways to make water pumping more efficient.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Misadventure, a little game based on Faux+Backbone.js - raganwald http://unspace.github.com/misadventure ====== phamilton if it weren't for the "visited" links, I don't think I'd be able to figure it out, with pen and paper at least.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How To Manage A Tech Career - SeanOC http://antipatter.com/2010/12/how-to-manage-a-tech-career/ ====== sayemm Great post and a wonderful read to kick things off for 2011, thanks for writing this. On a related note, I often think about this quote from Benjamin Franklin: "An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." ~~~ ljordan Word. Further, in the same direction: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." (attributed to Edison) It's profoundly true of the world that nothing is wasted. Remember that no success or discovery is an accident. It is the result of time invested in the process. ------ kapilkaisare > "The path of least resistance is to try and gain seniority at small or > obscure companies. From there you create legitimacy for your seniority in > larger companies. Experience in the larger company will in turn make smaller > shops take a chance on you for a more senior position." Working in larger companies earlier on - when you're fresh out of college, for example - can often ensure you end up learning a very tiny portion of the development lifecycle. Moving from there to a smaller outfit, where you would assume greater responsibility, would leave you realizing that you know very little about the big picture. ~~~ nostrademons I've observed the opposite. I found that working in small companies blocked me from developing large amounts of useful skills (scaling, i18n, performance tuning, latency optimization, security, etc.) while working at a large company has exposed me to them and also opened up the full development lifecycle, from embedded prototyping frameworks to large-scale refactoring of legacy systems. Of course, much of that may be because the small companies were two startups that went nowhere, and the large company was Google. YMMV. ~~~ strlen > I found that working in small companies blocked me from developing large > amounts of useful skills (scaling, i18n, performance tuning, latency > optimization, security, etc.) I think it really depends on what sort of company you work for. Small companies are highly variable, but there are many where the product is expected to scale from the start (because scalability is a functional feature of the product), have internalization from the start (because of the market it's aimed for), be secure and offer a latency SLA from the start etc. There are frequently open source projects that contain great deal of legacy code that have to be revived and modernized. My previous could be described that way despite having been started by a few hackers. Of course they weren't in consumer web area: the product is an email/web security system: obviously it has to be secure, it can't be slow, it should deal with messages in different languages and it has to scale to email volumes of government organizations, universities and f1000 companies. Since we were in the email sphere, most of us or code base had been in C++ and Perl, which (by the virtue of the languages' age) had a great deal of legacy code out in the open that was nonetheless very useful. It may be the case that these are after thoughts in small consumer Internet companies, but there are plenty of companies which employ similar skillset (especially if the application has a web UI and is deployed "in the cloud") who have to deal with these issues form the start. I now work for a private consumer Internet company at this time where all of these issues also matter tremendously, but we are medium size at this point. Interestingly enough I've learned a lot more of "how to scale" here than I have at Yahoo: at first it was surprising, but realized it was almost tautological -- scale is about the first derivative, not the absolute site; going from 20,000 machines to 25,000 machines (not real numbers, just an example) is simpler than going from 1000 to 2000 machines. I can't just say "let's use this wonderful partitioned database and this wonderful data replication bus", I have to build those tools first :-) A formula that works for me is: take an offer where you have the opportunity to learn the most. All else is fluff (they can talk about how great it is that they're small company, but they can still be structured in the same way that a big company is). It's also a good idea to work at large, small and medium companies in different industries to see what suits you better rather than make a decision based on what someone on the Internet (including some bozo calling himself after a libc function) wrote. ~~~ dasil003 > _scale is about the first derivative, not the absolute site; going from > 20,000 machines to 25,000 machines (not real numbers, just an example) is > simpler than going from 1000 to 2000 machines._ I've never worked on anything bigger than 10 machines or so, but is this really true? I would think the difficulty of scaling is not any kind of smooth function, but very easy or very hard depending on the bottlenecks you hit at any particular point. lemma: doesn't every application have some theoretical limit about how big it can scale within the limitations of current network and computation hardware? ~~~ strlen > I've never worked on anything bigger than 10 machines or so, but is this > really true? I would think the difficulty of scaling is not any kind of > smooth function, but very easy or very hard depending on the bottlenecks you > hit at any particular point. You are right it's not a smooth function. This isn't just about numerical aspect, it's figuring how to get over a hump: going from one datacenter to two is much harder (not even twice as hard) than adding a rack to two datacenters or adding a fourth datacenter when there are five. In other words, when you're at scale you have tools available to operate at that scale. When you find yourself having to scale out without having done so in the past, you have to build those tools. ------ pmorici In giving this advice is he assuming that the end goal is to garner some kind of senior technical director position at a large company? It seems to me there are a number of potential career goals one might want to maximize for. For example; job title, salary, employer, company size, or cool factor. It's not clear to me that all of these are parallel goals. For example if all you care about it optimizing for salary then getting a job at a small obscure company is likely not the best way to go unless it's all you can swing. Likewise I can think of a few jobs that have a high "cool factor" but make it hard to break out into other areas if you ever want to change paths. That is to say that depending on what you want you might need to go about it in a different way. The bit about learning new things though is solid advice. ------ goodgoblin Another path that you can use if you are already at a big company is to try and distinguish yourself there and move up within that organization. Of course this depends on the people you are working with, but if you have a good manager and are really interested in improving the state of software development at your shop, they'll notice. For someone who may not be a political animal jumping into a new situation can be challenging. The benefit of working in the same place for a while is you get to know everyone there. Sometimes at a big company that means realizing that everyone there has rotten zombie brains, but there are usually some core of smart interested tech people who are influential. ------ JohnnyBrown >"for some reason I’m seemingly out on the end of the axis as far as risk- tolerance is concerned" I wonder whether most people would rate themselves above or below average in terms of risk tolerance. Is this something we tend to have a good picture of, or is it more like the Dunning-Kruger effect? ~~~ ejames The problem is that your assessment of risks also depends on your valuation of the underlying issues. For the sake of argument, suppose that someone considers a 15% chance of going broke and having to live with their parents to be a "moderate" financial risk. Somebody else considers a 30% chance of the same thing to be a "small" financial risk. It's possible that the latter person has a higher risk tolerance. But it's also possible that they just like their parents a lot and wouldn't mind living with them as much as the first person. My instinctive answer would be that most people consider themselves to be cautious or perhaps even cowardly - because, by nature, you pay the most attention to the risks that bother you the most, and if your internal, subjective mental process is to always avoid those risks, you will feel like a cautious person, even if there are other objectively-measurable risks that you are not avoiding.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I'm now a full-time freelancer and working alone really depresses me. - Mohamed-Hamo99 So, I am building a place where remote workers can connect with one another based on the similarity of their tasks. It's like a co-working space, but on your laptop. it's called tribes and here is what it does: https://tribes.landen.co/<p>But really, I am deeply passionate about this because working remotely really does take a huge toll on my mentality. It also shunts me away from true human enjoyable interactions...given that most of my contacts are work-related and only require professional talk. So, this is a place for people who do the same stuff and want to converse on whatever the hell they want, outside of a work setting.<p>I want to see if people here want something like this so I can continue developing the platform knowing people will actually use it. So, I just set up a waitlist on the website, we are currently at around 70 people on the waitlist. If you think this might be of any use to you, don't forget to add your email to the waitlist!<p>Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this, everyone!<p>P.S: cuz I didn't have time to actually code one, I made this landing page really quickly on some landing page builder (landen). To anyone who appreciates design, I know that this might seem low-effort but please understand. ====== Mohamed-Hamo99 Forgot to greet everyone...so, Hi, everyone! Also, what else frustrates you whilst you're working online? ------ jstewartmobile " _based on the similarity of their tasks_ " no thank you. ~~~ Mohamed-Hamo99 hey, jstewart. would you mind elaborating as to why? ~~~ jstewartmobile Limiting one's social circle to fellow practitioners is spiritually and intellectually disfiguring. If it mixed web devs with truck drivers and CPAs, then you'd be on to something. ~~~ Mohamed-Hamo99 I'm inclined to agree with you...but the point I'm trying to entertain here is that when a lot of the people that work remotely - freelancers, work from home folks, etc- communicate with anyone online it's mostly on a transactional basis. It's either their boss or someone who demands some form of a deliverable. And that is mentally straining. I personally know of many people that have decided to quit working online altogether because they couldn't cope with the depression. So, most of the interactions they have aren't really that friendly, and it's hard to build deep relationships when doing that like you would if you are working in a geostationary workspace. What I'm trying to do here is emulate the normal co-worker relationship that occurs in "normal jobs" and try to bring it to people who are working online, people that are mostly by themselves and want to connect with people (that are like them) they can relate to...to have communion with. ~~~ jstewartmobile "normal co-worker relationship" is one of fellow sufferers rather than friendship. traditional modes of socializing--politics, religion, civic organizations, etc --will hit closer to the mark. ~~~ Mohamed-Hamo99 I'd argue that a mix of both similarity of tasks (for relatability) and any given one of the modes you've just said would be a great idea for testing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Find titles to watch and keep track of everything you watch - gogetakame https://www.addtothelist.com ====== gogetakame Hey everyone! I had previously shared a site I had been working on called AddToTheList. I’m excited to present Version 2 of the site! It is a complete redesign of the site with way more features and better usability/aesthetic changes. I’ve been working hard on this for the past month so hopefully you will find the new version more useful. Check it out here: [https://www.addtothelist.com](https://www.addtothelist.com) Some of the newer features: * You can now write reviews for titles. * Improved search and filtering system for titles (including IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes ratings). * You can like and comment on reviews and lists now also. The more popular lists and reviews will get featured on the home page! * You can add tags to your lists and reviews so users can search for them more easily. * You can now create Ranked lists (rank/order the titles in a list). * Improved user profile view to see most watched genres and other stats. * You can add descriptions to your lists. * See the most popular lists, reviews, and users to find out what to watch. * You'll be able to edit/create lists much more easily and add titles to them more easily also. * Titles don't need to be added to lists explicitly to rate them. * And much more! Thank you for all of the feedback and I’m hoping that this version will really take off. Make sure to invite your friends to join also! I still have more things planned to come so stay tuned. In the mean time, happy watching! :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple to Close iPhone Security Hole That Police Use to Crack Devices - aaronbrethorst https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/technology/apple-iphone-police.html ====== zelon88 It's frustrating that you never hear the pro-unlocking scene actually looking past their own noses. Like back when you could bypass a linux login screen by pressing backspace 28 times. Obviously that's a problem, but could you imagine if police departments all over the country got pissed when that bug was fixed and started complaining that they couldn't use the exploit themselves? Like they're the only ones smart enough to use the exploit and nobody else would ever do such a thing for malicious reasons. It's so short sighted. ~~~ Veedrac An issue which wouldn't exist if Apple provided access for people with warrants. ~~~ jmull The problem is, how do you build a back door that can only be used by people with valid (and just) warrants? You really can’t go down your line of argument without answering thar ~~~ Veedrac You centralize ownership, the same way it has been done since the dawn of the internet. Even Intel can securely update your microcode. ~~~ bunderbunder Yep, and private keys are never compromised. Aside from the many, many known cases where they are: [http://legacydirs.umiacs.umd.edu/~tdumitra/papers/CCS-2017.p...](http://legacydirs.umiacs.umd.edu/~tdumitra/papers/CCS-2017.pdf) ~~~ Veedrac As best as I can tell, if you don't trust OS or microcode updates, you can't trust your phone _at all_ unless you airgap it or somesuch. ~~~ wholinator2 Very true. Everyone should know their TNO, Trust No One. As far as I can see it's the only way to really operate in the world of computer security that we live in. ------ thermodynthrway > and all the kids we can’t put into a position of safety "For the children!" They can't think of a good reason to have access to all these phones so they blantantly use an idiom so tired that it's practically a joke. ~~~ ppeetteerr I read that too, but it's quoted from a guy whose job is to protect children. The full quote: > “If we go back to the situation where we again don’t have access, now we > know directly all the evidence we’ve lost and all the kids we can’t put into > a position of safety,” said Chuck Cohen, who leads an Indiana State Police > task force on internet crimes against children. ~~~ sandworm101 >> all the evidence we’ve lost and all the kids we can’t put into a position of safety, There are two type of child abuse imagery: the new and original stuff that points to a kid currently being abused, the one can can be rescued, and the enormous mass of old material that forensic investigators have seen literally thousands of time before. Actual new abuse material that could lead to the rescue of a child is thankfully very rare. While these phones could lead to arrests, the likelihood of them leading to the rescue of a child is negligible. Once upon a time the bulk of images on phones were originals taken by the phone. Now "phones" are really just internet machines and the images they are looking for are essentially browsing history and stuff saved from online sources. ~~~ pm90 > While these phones could lead to arrests, the likelihood of them leading to > the rescue of a child is negligible I think you're ignoring some aspects of how the US criminal justice system works. Arresting a child abuser is one thing; they have to be tried in court and found guilty by a jury/judge. Criminal cases especially have a high requirements to prove guilt since they are very serious charges. So even if unlocking the phones may not help save actual children from abuse, I _think_ what the guy means is that you can get more convictions for these child abusers who have been arrested and prevent future children from being abused. Note that I'm not stating an opinion about the ethics of reducing security of phones, only pointing out what the person meant when he said that doing so prevents child abuse. ~~~ sandworm101 Then he would not have described moving children to places of safety. He would have said something more like preventing future abuse. Talk about physically moving children is rather dramatic and specific. ------ mirimir I highly recommend this 2016 paper by Stephanie K. Pell: "You Can’t Always Get What You Want: How Will Law Enforcement Get What it Needs in a Post-CALEA, Cybersecurity-Centric Encryption Era?".[0] She’s a former prosecutor from Florida, who now teaches at West Point. She agrees with security experts that maintaining such lawful access, against pervasive "strong" encryption, would require the introduction of vulnerabilities, such as backdoors or key escrow. Which would expose users to malicious adversaries. She argues, basically, that law enforcement has become lazy. She also raises the possibility of lawful hacking for smartphones, "infecting them with malware capable of capturing voice communications and keystrokes before they are encrypted." That brings to mind the FBI’s use of network investigative techniques. And of course, all those NSA tools. 0) [https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...](https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1306&context=ncjolt) ------ gruez Doesn’t it seem strange that they’re not patching the actual exploit, only mitigating it? Do they have no idea what the actual bug is? Is the usb interface fundamentally insecure? ~~~ willstrafach This approach mitigates the class of vulnerability, neutering the effect of this one and any similar future vulnerabilities. This approach makes sense, since they do not know what this specific vulnerability is. ~~~ jonknee > since they do not know what this specific vulnerability is How do you know this? I'd be shocked if they don't have one or more of these devices themselves and have it completely figured out. ~~~ Torn No way would the makers of the device sell one to Apple - they probably have strict measures in place to only sell to police departments, with contracts in place to prevent re-selling. Apple would have to buy one on the grey market, which they may be unprepared to do ~~~ jedberg > Apple would have to buy one on the grey market No, they would have to pay someone to do "research" for them and figure out the vulnerability. They would pay that person enough to buy one on the grey market and figure out how it works, keeping their hands clean. ------ lev99 > “They are blatantly protecting criminal activity, and only under the guise > of privacy for their clients,”[Hillar Moore, Baton Rouge District Attorney] > said. I understand a Law Enforcement point of view of having access to private data in order to prosecute criminals. I disagree with that point of view, but I would never say that point of view is a guise to implement a surveillance state. ~~~ favorited That quote jumped out at me too. Like, does he actually believe Apple is using "privacy for their clients" as an excuse to accomplish their true goal of protecting criminal activity? ~~~ sundvor It sure looks that way. 'If you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear' must be gospel for these people. ------ munk-a This article is written in a terribly slanted style bringing up constant adversarial comparisons involving apple and law enforcement. There is an objective point of view to the article but it bundles in a lot of quotes and references that are highly slanted. I am not someone who assumes all NYT articles are slanted, but this one is bad. ------ kingnothing Why do we only hear stories like this about Apple and the iPhone? How secure is Android? Is Google taking the same approach to protecting their users? ~~~ pxeboot Google is definitely starting to take security more seriously with the Pixel: [https://www.blog.google/products/android-enterprise/how- pixe...](https://www.blog.google/products/android-enterprise/how- pixel-2s-security-module-delivers-enterprise-grade-security/) ~~~ alphabettsy I’d argue they, as a company, always took security pretty seriously, but never privacy. FDE was pretty late and performed slow on early Android, among other issues. ------ JumpCrisscross > _The Indiana State Police said it unlocked 96 iPhones for various cases this > year, each time with a warrant, using a $15,000 device it bought in March > from a company called Grayshift_ And what were the results? How many people did those 96 iPhones allow Indiana to bring charges against? In how many of those cases did Indiana prevail? And in how many of those was the evidence on the phone necessary? ~~~ zaroth These are the wrong questions to ask. There's no doubt that total surveillance would result in more crimes being solved, and more criminals being successfully prosecuted. It's not a question of whether the technique is effective enough that it should be allowed. The question is can the government be trusted with a backdoor into our personal devices that "only they" can use? Should the people trust their government to only use that access lawfully, and can the people trust their government to protect that access from unlawful outsider access? Since we've seen nothing but incontrovertible evidence, throughout history and to this day, that government cannot be trusted with this level of access to our personal devices (lives), then I can only hope that Apple and companies like it will fight to provide us with secure devices, and that our courts will protect our right to strong encryption to protect our personal data. ~~~ slg I see this line of thinking a lot in tech circles, but you really have to divorce this issue from the digital world. Imagine the exact same argument is about a safe instead of a phone. The government would simply request a warrant and then work on brute forcing their way into the safe. If you have the same objections when using a safe, the answer to the problem has nothing to do with technology because you believer there is a fundamental flaw in the US criminal justice system. You aren't going to be able to consistently defeat the government by repeatedly trying to outpace them technologically. You have to instead change the laws that govern their actions. If you think the rules should be different for a safe and a phone, you need to be able to explain why digital evidence should be treated differently than physical evidence? ~~~ Borealid The government is allowed to crack open a safe with a warrant. The government is allowed to crack open an iPhone with a warrant. What does either of those things have to do with decrypting things found inside either the safe or the iPhone? If the FBI found coded papers inside a safe, they could try to decrypt those papers, but couldn't compel the owner to assist them. Security flaws are fair game for law enforcement. Secure encryption without exploitable weaknesses will probably defeat them even in the presence of a court order. ------ S_A_P I have nothing to hide. I don't intend to do illegal activity with my phone. I also do not want a government entity to be able to access my phone or device simply because they can. I am also _very_ skeptical of any government entity that uses "because child molesters" as valid reason to shame a company for respecting privacy. ------ thinkloop The most surprising part for me is that iPhones have been relatively easily hackable by having access to the data port. That doesn't seem in-line with the high security advertised. What about the inaccessible hsm and all that other jazz? ~~~ alphabettsy The company didn’t release the details of how their exploit works, but it is believed it is an automated brute force mechanism so it’s actually attempting to bypass security by trying passcodes over and over, not breaking encryption. This is another method to slow down brute force attempts. ------ trumped It took a while... I wonder if Grayshift have their next hole already lined up so that business can continue as usual... ~~~ 21 If this fix disables the data port when the phone is locked, presumably all future zero-days will be blocked. ~~~ CGamesPlay Naw, the next 0day might rely on Bluetooth being enabled even while the phone is locked, for example. Or even the cell radio being enabled. There's always some vector for attack. (Even if it's none of these, the next exploit might be "we can decap the secure enclave and read/manipulate data on it with an electron beam") ------ codezero Isn't one of the main sources of data the iCloud backups? ~~~ mayniac When I was doing forensics for the police, 9/10 times if we had an iPhone we couldn't get into there'd be an unencrypted iTunes backup. Didn't even need to go to Apple for it, it's all local. Wouldn't get everything from it, iirc it's photos, bookmarks, contacts and documents as well as some app storage (WhatsApp, notably). ~~~ scarface74 Seeing that the last time that the only way you could back up your phone was via iTunes was before the introduction of iOS 5 in 2011, the chance of finding someone with an iTunes backup is slim. ~~~ jonknee Plenty of people are cheap and don't pay for iCloud storage which means if you want any backup at all it's local. ~~~ scarface74 I have four devices on my account and I can back them all up with the 5GB free account. It doesn’t back up your apps - just your data ~~~ jonknee That's great for you, but most people have enough photos and videos that 5GB isn't enough for a single device, let alone four. For a similar reason this is why many people complained that Apple continued to ship 32GB phones for so long, it's just too small for most people. ~~~ scarface74 I use Google Photos and iCloud photo syncing. Pictures and Videos are automatically downloaded to my Windows computer. [https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht205323](https://support.apple.com/en- us/ht205323) ------ hacknat The more I think about this issue the less interested I am in the extreme of either side. The government shouldn’t have unfettered access to our devices, but I can’t think of any other product in the history of the planet that gave people the ability to hide information so completely that the government could never look at it. To those that argue that our phones are an extension of our minds, that is both a bad thing and fetishizing our phones. Finally, couldn’t I argue that my diary or journal is an extension of my mind (certainly more so than a phone)? Yet diaries and journals can and have been subpoenaed. ~~~ uniformlyrandom > any other product in the history of the planet that gave people the ability > to hide information so completely that the government could never look at > it. Any volume-level encryption? ~~~ TillE Or anyone's who come up with a half-decent code that's stored only in one or two brains. There are various medieval alchemical manuscripts which have never been fully deciphered. ------ mappu _> an hour after the phone is locked [...] In order to transfer data to or from the iPhone using the port, a person would first need to enter the phone’s password. _ An hour seems like a long time? On Android (at least, on my device) the USB port is always charging-only. For data transfer you must always unlock the phone and accept a notification for MTP/PTP mode. ~~~ bilbo0s You don't have to hack into an Android phone if you are the police. The data is available to you in multiple places. (Including the phone.) That's why this semi-adversarial relationship exists principally between Apple and Law Enforcement. Not necessarily Google or Samsung and Law Enforcement. ------ paulpauper for enough money, pretty much anything can be backdoor-ed if it hasn't already. The FBI, CIA NSA,. etc have a huge trove of 0-days for this purpose. It's like "I thought TOR made me anonymous" ha you thought wrong. ------ aphextron >In order to transfer data to or from the iPhone using the port, a person would first need to enter the phone’s password. (Phones could still be charged without a password.) So how long before the NSA has it cracked with power signal analysis? ~~~ briandear If we could ban parallel construction than any NSA exploit would be rendered worthless for domestic criminal prosecutions. ~~~ bilbo0s There's a ban against law enforcement planting evidence on innocent detainees. That ban hasn't really stopped police departments across the nation from doing that very thing. [https://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/09/city_settles_law...](https://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/09/city_settles_lawsuit_against_n.html) [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/us/baltimore-police- corru...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/us/baltimore-police- corruption.html) Etc etc etc I'm fairly certain a ban on parallel construction would not do you much good. ------ Shivetya Perhaps then its high time we encrypt all personal computers as well by default. ~~~ workaccount34 Ah yes. Windows 10 has a built in drive encryption. It should be enabled by default. (little do they know, it sends the encryption key to microsoft) ------ ppeetteerr If guns had the same safety mechanisms as the iPhone, maybe we'd see fewer shootings. You know, register a gun to an owner, not allow anyone but the owner to fire the gun, etc. (yes, I realize ownership is already registered, but you can circumvent registration through various means) ~~~ lostapathy It's also simply not practical to apply these mechanisms to guns without making them less safe or reliable. A gun must always work when needed for protection - it's not like software where it's ok to be "down", rebooting, or having battery troubles some of the time. ~~~ ajross > making them less safe That's a very spun definition for "safe". Any individual gun is _far, far, FAR_ more likely to be used to commit a crime than deter one. ~~~ JackCh That depends on how you define "used". And furthermore, while it _may_ be true for guns on average, it's not true for _any individual_ gun. You are confusing individuals for averages. ------ randyrand I always see headlines about this for iOS. What about android? Is it crackable? ~~~ nicky0 Yes, easily. ------ wpdev_63 Is that the one they use to remote exploit iphones? Or is that a backdoor?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
inDinero (YC S10) peers into your company’s financial future - jlm382 http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/20/indinero-peers-into-your-companys-financial-future-invites/ ====== barmstrong inDinero is a cool idea. One thing I've wondered after seeing it - why the focus on projecting future cash flows? To me the killer app is making financial statements for businesses easy. Simplify the complex process of getting a good income sheet and balance statement each month. Does anyone else feel like the focus on _projecting_ is a distraction from the real value of the product? It could just be me as a programmer not trusting the projection, or finding little value in it, because I know it's based on limited information. For example, if I know I'm going to buy $5k worth of ads tomorrow, and I know inDinero has no way of knowing this yet (because it's just an idea in my head), then the projection is wrong. What do you think? ~~~ arram I'd agree with this. I was having problems with Quickbooks last week, so I tried some of the major online accounting services, including Xero, Outright, and Quickbooks Online. Of these, InDinero was my favorite. Though I still think they're going to have a hard time overcoming the chief advantage of Quickbooks - that my accountant knows it. ~~~ alttab Usability will effect retention and adoption rates - but overall doing a critical business function better or easier than their competitor - Quickbooks - will be the winning factor here. This means financial statements, tax planning and integration, and proactive alerting and real-time status. Branching out to integration with Freshbooks for invoicing and billing (as I believe they have done) along with multi-user, tiered accounting and HR integration (they do most of the accounting for small businesses), and resource planning. ------ dusing When I connected my freshbooks account I got this email. Pretty clever, they probably get good feedback from this by offering a seemingly direct connection to devs. Hi there, Hope the FreshBooks integration is working well for you! Wondering if you have any additional ideas or suggestions for us? Thanks :) \- Chris Zhang (the engineer who built the integration with FreshBooks) ~~~ cjzhang :D That's meeeee~ But to be fair, it's not a "seemingly" direct connection, it's an actual direct connection. In a company with no sales or marketing or support staff, who do you think answers support emails? ------ kineticac awesome coverage everywhere for inDinero! Looks to really be catching on as something people need and want to use. ------ callmeed I started a new LLC for some side projects and setup my Chase bank account with InDinero. I'm trying not to spend much money (only $7 for our GitHub account so far) but it's looking like a very solid product. I've already recommended it to a couple other business owners. I don't know if this is a crowded space, but I think this is one of the better recent YC companies in terms of potential (IMO). ------ dusing Bummer they are down <http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/indinero.com>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
3 Internships Available with Wildly Profitable B2B Software Company (Zannee) - chrishaum Hi Hacker Newsers!<p>With summer here already and your friends off interning at Google or Twitter, some of you may be worried and frustrated about not having an internship of your own.<p>Perhaps none of your summer plans materialized. Or you didn't decide that you wanted an internship until it was too late, and now you're stuck.<p>Well, here at Zannee, we've still got open internship opportunities for this summer! If you are reading this, then you may be an ideal candidate!<p>By interning with Zannee from now to the end of August, you can:<p>- Gain real-world experience helping to develop products for a successful B2B software company.<p>- See Lean Startup principles applied first-hand.<p>- Get to build your sales and marketing mindset as you learn from Dane Maxwell (founder of Zannee).<p>- Possibly get university credit for the internship (depends on the university, but we'll help in any way we can).<p>Please note that the internships are unpaid.<p>We are looking for interns with skills in two main categories of web development:<p>- Frontend design and development. (Relevant skills: HTML/CSS, Javascript/jQuery, Photoshop/sketching/mockups, a good design sense).<p>- Backend architecture and development. (Relevant skills: Python, Django, Amazon Web Services, some familiarity with Linux).<p>It's fine if you currently only have experience with some of these; we'll give you opportunities both to reinforce your existing skills, and to learn new ones.<p>Even you are interested but aren't a technical person, still contact us - we'll discuss your skills and interests and see if there are other ways you could contribute and learn.<p>Interested? Please contact the intern coordinator (a.k.a me, Chris), at chrishaum@gmail.com. ====== massarog Companies always say that unpaid internships are a way for people to gain experience and knowledge and build up their resume, but the way I see it, it's just a way for a company to get free work. As a former college student (recently graduated) the last thing I wanted to do was work for free during my summer when I had bills, tuition, and rent to pay. ~~~ chrishaum It really depends on your career goals and the length of your outlook. If you need to pay bills (now!), then an internship like this obviously won't work for you. On the other hand, if you have a long-term mindset, and aren't in need of immediate cash (if you're living with your parents for the summer, for example), the knowledge, skills, network, and experiences you could gain this summer could have a HUGE, measurable impact on your ability to provide an income income for yourself through a B2B software business. It's not for everyone, though. It's not high-tech. It's not flashy. It's not Silicon Valley. It IS for someone who wants to learn - from an expert - how to build a profitable lifestyle business. ------ chrishaum Yes, I can see how you would see it this way. Heck, even I did, until a few weeks ago, when I a) began working (unpaid) for Zannee, and b) read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Here are just a few thoughts about why I made this request as I did: We aren't forcing anyone to take an internship with Zannee. This isn't slave labor - no one has to work for free against their will. If people don't see the value in an internship with Zannee, they won't take us up on our offer. No harm done! We are looking for students who are trying to expand their education, who want to take their own entrepreneurial and programming educations into their own hands. We will give them enough structure that they can feel supported as they learn and improve their skills, but not enough to constrict them - we keep it flexible and give them significant autonomy. Rich Dad, Poor Dad teaches that to be wealthy, you should not work for a wage; instead, you should work to learn - to gain skills and knowledge that you can apply in building your own business (your "business of you"). No, we aren't paying, but this _is_ a profitable company selling B2B software online. If you are a young entrepreneur who wants to learn how to successfully ideate, implement, market, sell, support, upsell, and grow a B2B software product, what better opportunity could there be? Remember how I said above that I myself am working unpaid? That wasn't a typo. I thoroughly believe that Dane has the knowledge, skills, and experience (obtained through intelligent hard work and lots of practice in his business) to help a mature, driven student with entrepreneurial desires and programming skills learn how to start and grow a successful B2B software business. That's why I flew out to Des Moines, Iowa, all on my own dime, leaving my friends and the wonderful restaurants of New York City, to work for Dane - for FREE - for the summer. You might think that Dane is taking advantage of me, but I disagree. It's a win-win situation. He gets free labor to help with growing his business. I get access to invaluable knowledge, skills, and one-on-one time with a successful entrepreneur, not to mention access to his network of entrepreneurs and businesspeople! It's a big win for both of us. For students (or non-students even - I could care less) who want to have their own profitable B2B software business, this really is the chance of a lifetime. ------ fezzl Pay them something, for goodness' sake. Our startup barely made a dime, and we still pay them something that is more than a stipend. It's basic respect. ~~~ chrishaum Is it? What were you trying to teach them? That they'll continue to earn a wage from their employer, even if the employer is unprofitable? ~~~ akavi Yes. That's part of the employee-employer relationship: The employee continues to receive payment for their work so long as they are employed. This is the inherent trade-off of being an employee, which you as a founder should be aware of: that one (largely) gives up the chance for high return at high risk in the form of equity for the guaranteed return of a salary. People are speaking out in this thread because many students don't _realize_ that the work they produce has value, and that they deserve to be compensated for that value. Yes, there are situations where the supply of experience in the form of internships is sufficiently low and the demand is sufficiently high (this is true in many creative professions), but it is extremely unusual for that to be true for programmers. ------ jccodez wildly profitable, unpaid, :-( ~~~ akavi Yeah, I noticed that too. Maybe I live in a weird bubble, but I've never heard of an unpaid programming internship.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Snoopers' charter set to return to law in UK - UVB-76 http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/snoopers-charter-set-to-return-to-law-as-theresa-may-suggests-conservative-majority-could-lead-to-huge-increase-in-surveillance-powers-10235578.html ====== luxpir Yup. Came to post a link to Wikipedia[x]. Only Clegg (now former Liberal Democrat coalition partners) stood in the way of this before. Now Theresa May can get to work implementing this lovely piece of legislation. Maybe they'll even manage to outlaw encryption if they're lucky. Sigh. \-- [x] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_Communications_Data_Bill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_Communications_Data_Bill)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
RBG – An Example for Our Times - ananonymoususer https://blog.simplejustice.us/2020/09/19/ride-an-elephant/ ====== ananonymoususer My politics are 180 degrees from hers, but I respect that she could put human relationships above politics. We need more of this.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Machine learning for the impatient: algorithms tuning algorithms - aelaguiz http://www.aelag.com/147952673 ====== danger As another commenter pointed out, the accuracy _really_ needs to be evaluated using a validation set, not the test set--the approach described in the post is training with the testing data. In the field, we call this "cheating". The basic idea of automatically tuning hyperparameters (the things this post discusses tuning with genetic algorithms) is cool, though, and is becoming a popular subject in machine learning research. A couple recent research papers on the topic are pretty readable: Algorithms for Hyper-Parameter Optimization: <http://books.nips.cc/papers/files/nips24/NIPS2011_1385.pdf> Practical Bayesian Optimization of Machine Learning Algorithms: <http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.2944> ~~~ aelaguiz Thanks for the information! I've updated the article to reflect this. Here's a question: where does "the field" hang out? Is there a cohesive community of any sort? ~~~ danger I'd say the closest thing to a cohesive community would be the MetaOptimize Q&A forum, but maybe others have other suggestions: <http://metaoptimize.com/qa> ------ scottfr Such aggressive usage of the test data set in determining the tuning parameters in effect makes your test data set part of your training data set. The more times you go back to your test data set to evaluate the effectiveness of a model, the more optimistic your error predictions will be and the greater your chance of overfitting. Several iterations of his loop will probably improve the model, but if you keep repeating it eventually the true model performance will start to degrade. ~~~ brador Question: Why is the data for machine learning split into a training dataset and a test dataset? Wouldn't using the entire dataset to build the model result in greater accuracy of the predictions? ~~~ reginaldo When you develop a model, for instance, when implementing a classifier, you supposedly want to apply the developed model to _other_ data, i.e., data you don't have available during development. In many situations, it doesn't make sense to test your model _only_ when it's put to make or influence decisions in the real world (although you have to test in the real world too). You'll want to test the predictions of your model on data you already have the _actual_ results for. To test your model you'll split your data into data you know _and will let the model know about_ (training dataset), and data you know _but the model can't know about_ (test dataset). That way you can use the data the model doesn't know about to make controlled experiments and compare models (and, if your data is really representative of the real world, your mofrl comparison and the performance of your chosen model will hold). The moral of the story is: if you don't split your data, you won't have any idea of how it performs in the real world, you'll only know how it performs with data it already knew about. ~~~ brador I understand this is the way it is done, however, it all feels a bit hand wavy and not how my gut tells me to do it. I'd get the entire dataset, set columns as variables, assign weight to each of these variables and process each weight in 0.1 increments. (So the final number of passes is 11^n where n is number of variables). I'd have something at the end of the row to know what was predicted right (+1) and what was predicted wrong (-1), sum this column. Hit run until optimal weights for each variable are found. I'd use the entire dataset to do this. Is there any mathematics on defining what % of the dataset should be training vs. testing or is it left to the analyst (like with confidence intervals (95% hypothesis testing etc.))? ~~~ ninjin > Is there any mathematics on defining what % of the dataset should be > training vs. testing or is it left to the analyst (like with confidence > intervals (95% hypothesis testing etc.))? In my own field, Natural Language Processing (NLP), it is either up to the original creators of a dataset or you do your own split if there isn't one established already. I'll go with what I have learned for supervised learning. In an ideal world all three sets; training, development (the Machine Learning people sometimes call this one verification if I remember correctly) and test should be infinitely large. Also, you should preferably not stratify or try to make the assignment anything but random (there are cases where this could be justified, but let's not go there just yet). I personally go for a 3/6 train, 1/6 development and 2/6 test, but I have just as well seen 2/4, 1/4 and 1/4, etc. Training is essential, so it gets the biggest cut, testing is important too so it also gets a large chunk and development is the least important out of the three so it gets the smaller one. In short, train is for making sure your algorithm can learn something, development is in order to guide your development and not fool yourself, lastly, test is in order to be able to make claims that you state to other people (thus, it is pretty darn important). I then use the train and development set when constructing the model, I do the write-up of most of my results and then generate the final results by running on the test set only once with the model that performed the best on development. What you usually see is a drop in performance, but this is expected since you have most likely overfitted the development set. Since the hyper parameters need to be adjusted as well I commonly do ten-fold cross- validation on the test set and use some variant of grid-search (read yesterday that this approach for hyper parameters is coming under fire as being naive, I need to have a look at what has been going on in ML for the last two years). ~~~ ninjin > I commonly do ten-fold cross-validation on the test set... Um, darn, edit period ran out, test set should obviously be train set in the above quote. Otherwise my PI would probably smack me in the face for overfitting the test set. ------ bencpeters I had a few questions about the actual implementation of this stuff. I took the coursera ML course, so much of the terminology and techniques are familiar after that, but Professor Ng structured the exercises in the course around Matlab/Octave and suggested using one of these tools for a first-pass solution when implementing machine learning problems. Have you used Matlab much in your work? How does the performance (and libraries available) compare with Python? Also, does anyone know a good resource for finding good, high performance ML libraries for other languages (Ruby, C++, etc.)? ~~~ punee Scikit-learn for Python, great tutorials/user guide covering various ML techniques, makes prototyping very easy: <http://scikit-learn.org/stable/> ------ misiti3780 This article is very interesting but I am really confused about the edit: "A few people have pointed out that using the testing set for tuning demands that final measure of effectiveness be doing using a validation test set which is not part of either the training or testing datasets. This is due for the very real potential of over fitting. Also – apparently this technique is called “Hyper-Parameter Optimization.” A helpful commenter over at Hacker News supplied the following resources" Does that mean there is definitely overfitting going on but it is acceptable for the purposes of the article. That 82.5% accuracy rate has overfitting written all over it. Good stuff regardless!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Ugly Thing about the Hard Thing about Hard Things (2014) - simonebrunozzi https://medium.com/@simon/the-ugly-thing-about-the-hard-thing-about-hard-things-d6445dbb1b09 ====== aszantu Clickbait selling a book ~~~ qnsi he's not selling his book, but Ben Horowitz's one but this article is not that high value. tl;dr ugly thing is it makes you hesitant to start a company	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Simple data analysis in R - chaostheory http://www.mailund.dk/index.php/2009/04/10/simple-data-analysis-in-r/ ====== schtono Thanks for sharing, R is really a great tool. Using it as well for my PhD thesis because I needed survival/ hazard rate models, which I couldn't find in Eviews, SPSS et al. And btw: If you need good alternative to R's native plotting, try <http://had.co.nz/ggplot/> \- it's awesome.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A new Operating System - TheUnknown00 https://github.com/TusharPardhe/ ====== achtung666 Yet another generic linux distro. Nothing interesting.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Fire One, Fire Ten: Implications of the Torpedo Scandal of World War II (2018) - smacktoward https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2018/2/8/fire-one-fire-ten-implications-of-the-torpedo-scandal-of-world-war-ii ====== desdiv One of my favorite piece of WWII trivia is that Albert Einstein actually worked on fixing the Mark 6 exploder of the Mark 14 torpedo. Back then, Einstein was not employed by the military at all; he was an academic at the Institute for Advanced Study[0] in Princeton. Lt. Stephen Brunauer from the Bureau of Ordnance sent an unsolicited letter to Einstein basically saying: “Hey Einstein, can you help us with our torpedo problem?” and Einstein happily obliged[1]. Their entire correspondence is in the national archives; here’s an example: [2]. [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Advanced_Study](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Advanced_Study) [1] [https://mathscinotes.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/torpedoesan...](https://mathscinotes.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/torpedoesandeinstein.pdf) [2] [https://catalog.archives.gov/id/305254](https://catalog.archives.gov/id/305254) ------ redis_mlc This is a great read. If you study the Pacific carrier battles carefully, you'll notice that the Americans sank no Japanese carriers with torpedos for 2 years, while the Japanese had great success. So all of the US torpedo planes and pilots were sent fruitlessly for that period of time. Usually the performance of their obsolete planes was blamed, but that doesn't matter when you're dropping duds. In later wars, the US repeated similar disasters ... The F-4 didn't have a gun, early air-air missiles either didn't work or were sensitive to carrier landings and stopped working, the Zuni rocket had electrical issues, the F-14A had the wrong (bomber) engine, carriers were loaded with tons of "expired" bombs to reduce costs which contributed to the USS Forrestal inferno, etc. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire) The USA has always taken a while to spool up for war, but has then been unstoppable. It would be nice to break the pattern of early failures though. ~~~ brazzy > This is a great read. It is not. I found it maddeningly superficial. It talks about "crippling flaws in all three control mechanisms." but fails to provide any information whatsoever about what those flaws were and what effects they had. The story about how the flaws were isolated and fixed is confined to a _single sentence_. It is completely unclear how "Lesson 1: Indecision can thicken the fog of war" has anything at all to do with the faulty torpedoes. Why and how did "operational consequences of this startling strategic decision masked the true nature of the torpedo problem"? ~~~ wffurr It's not a technical article about torpedo design. From that perspective, it is superficial but that's not what it's about. You can easily research the torpedo design if you want. The article is actually about the organizational and strategic failures that led to and exacerbated the problem. From that perspective, it has plenty to offer. ~~~ brazzy Even from that perspective, it has very little to offer because it completely fails to explain how those "organizational and strategic failures" actually had anything to do with the torpedoes. ------ cstuder I had a chuckle while reading this: Switzerland is currently starting an evaluation of a new ground-to-air missile defense system. The Swiss military decided that due to the enormous cost of the missiles, the evaluation will not include a firing test, but rely on a big questionnaire for the manufacturers of said system. ~~~ nradov If you're buying a weapons system for deterrence then it doesn't actually have to work reliably. It just has to present a credible appearance of possibly working some of the time in order to complicate an adversary's plans. ~~~ ceejayoz Plus, it’s Switzerland. They’re surrounded by friendly NATO countries. Their Air Force has office hours and relies on France/Italy outside them. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/feb/19/swis...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/feb/19/swiss- air-force-ethiopian-airlines-hijacking-office-hours) ------ noir-york For a worse screw-up read about the bureaucratic slug fights around the M14 rifle (the shortest-serving US standard issue rifle), and the M16 (substandard ammo, etc) in Vietnam that needlessly cost American lives. There are good reasons the Springfield Armory was closed down by McNamara in '68. ------ jarym In such stories there’s always a group or person that remains in denial long enough to frustrate the overall objective. I see it in tech when developers often try to tell me there’s no problem until weeks later admitting there is one. Why not spend the time investigating instead of denying? ------ protomyth The USS Barb's story is amazing. It is detailed in the book _Thunder Below! The USS Barb Revolutionizes Submarine Warfare in World War II_ by _Eugene B. Fluckey_ who was the commanding officer for 5 deployments. Another good book is _Sink ‘Em All Submarine Warfare in the Pacific_ by _Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood_ who was the US Navy commander of the Pacific submarine fleet during World War II. Both discuss the torpedo problem and are available as Audiobooks. Fluckey says in his book that they installed stiffer springs in all torpedoes before sailing on his first deployment as Barb's captain. ------ CharlesColeman > As a result, the Bureau of Ordnance developed highly artificial testing > procedures that were designed, in part, to safeguard their practice > torpedoes so they could be used for multiple tests. Reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
PHP 7 Virtual Machine - lvht http://nikic.github.io/2017/04/14/PHP-7-Virtual-machine.html ====== donatj It's always pleasant to see PHP occasionally get a positive moment in the limelight on HN. It's oft scorned yet powers a very large chunk of the web. With the work done on 7 it's also one of the fastest scripting languages around and deserves a little more credit if I'm honest. ~~~ malza Honestly. I think its main problem is it's not hipster enough. It's too popular. I bet if you made it difficult to use (for most people), added features that make certain aspects a nightmare to scale and gave it a weird name then it would do well here. Obviously don't let anyone know about the origin... say you built it at a series of obscure coding bootcamps. ~~~ simias I think that's unfair, the reason PHP has a bad reputation is not because of silly hipsters. It's because for a long time it was a terribly designed language. It was a laughing stock for a good reason. The whole "hobby-grade templating language turned general purpose with complete disregard to how programing languages are designed" thing. Now I'm willing to believe that it's improved a lot since then, but it's got a very bad reputation to overcome, and it's deserved. The languages seems headed in the right direction at least, maybe in a few years we'll forget what PHP used to be. ~~~ drspacemonkey I'm pretty sure a substantial part of PHP's reputation is the nightmare code produced by PHP developers. ~~~ cr0sh And that goes right into the whole "badly designed language" trope as well. Essentially, anything written in PHP prior to version 5 (and especially prior to version 4) should be considered suspect. I'm a long time PHP developer (well, was until recently - my current position is in the javascript/nodejs stack arena), and have been using it since the v3 days (so not there from the beginning, but close enough). There were some truly awful examples and code practices out there. That isn't to say you couldn't write quality procedural PHP back in the day (had you configured your server properly and stuck with "best practices") - it's just that the majority of people hacking on PHP didn't. I'm sure there were a few that did, though - but I'm hard-pressed to recall any at the moment. Today's PHP is a much different beast than yesterday's. The OOP model and other advancements makes things so much better, provided they are all used properly and followed. Now - could you make PHP 7 as ugly as 3? Sure. But you'd be insane to do so unless you had no other choice... ~~~ drspacemonkey Nail, meet hammer with claws on both sides. It's entirely, 100% possible to write good, clean, tested, maintainable code in PHP. But most people working with PHP, for whatever reason (and I'm sure there are many reasons), simply don't bother. I suppose the same can be said of all languages, but PHP devs are the worst offenders IME. ------ tyingq It's fairly impressive that the php7 core team was able to release something that competes well with HHVM from a performance perspective. I assume they are working with significantly fewer advantages and resources than Facebook, so that's a pretty nice result. ~~~ nodesocket HHVM was released in 2011, while PHP 7 was released in 2015. So perhaps in that extra time there was additional techniques, optimizations, and technology that allowed PHP 7 to stay comparable in terms of performance to HHVM. ~~~ tyingq There was a long time to catch up, yes. But HHVM did several big improvements to their JIT tech between then and now. PHP7 also rolled out with very little noise about stability, migration issues, etc. Not knocking FB at all, just noting the PHP folks did a nice job. ~~~ kijin The PHP team is absolutely obsessed with backward compatibility. They broke surprisingly few things with PHP 7, and everything they broke was clearly documented. You don't get to power a significant fraction of the world's most important websites if you break backward compatibility every few months. ~~~ bpicolo They broke an unusual number of things in 7.1, a couple somewhat annoying e.g. defaulting DateTime('now') to including microseconds, without a single builtin function available that can strip/change microseconds on a datetime. ~~~ captn3m0 Yes, but they decided to keep it to 7.1, not 7.0, which meant the majority of the perf upgrades were available to most users who migrated to 7.0 _easily_. 7.1 was where all the breaking changes got pushed as a result. ------ chx Another one of nikic's seminal guides into the workings of PHP. It was him who wrote the foreach guide on StackOverflow [http://stackoverflow.com/a/14854568/308851](http://stackoverflow.com/a/14854568/308851) . Another note: if I ever catch you using these cute "finally ... interesting edge-cases" described in this article, your PR will be refused. Yes, yes, it's very smart, and you might win an obfuscation contest but in a professional environment we like code that can be understood even when the emergency phone kicks us out of bed. If it's five times as long, I care not, but if it requires me to think hard on the code, I do. ------ _RPM Great write up. Thank you for writing this. I've always been interested in the PHP VM, but it is not documented. Nikic is one smart dude. ------ Vogtinator That the smart branches optimization requires a workaround in the IR codegen concerns me a bit. It makes sense in a HW context, like MIPS branch delay slots, but not really here. There could be a flag in the branch instruction that disables the optimization at least. ------ DenisM I wonder if it's possible to compile it for iOS? I need a templating engine in my app, and php seems like the most popular one. ~~~ improv32 PHP is a whole lot more than just a templating engine. I think you would find that much more effort than is required just to make some templates. ~~~ DenisM Perhaps you can send me down the righ path? I want my users to be able to send emails from their iPads, and those emails would be generated based on templates. There will be many such templates built in, and eventually users will be able to hire web developer-type person to make custom templates. My thinking was that PHP is the most popular language for that sort of thing, so it would be nice if could support that. My second choice is handlebars. I'm not sure if JSX would do the job? Any thoughts appreciated. ~~~ my_ghola PHP is not a templating language. You can build a template engine with it, but then, you can build one with any other language. If your app is in swift or objective-c, look into template libraries for those languages. Simple Google search tells me there's a couple of options including one using handlebar's format. ~~~ DenisM How is this not a template? It generates valId HTML out of data. <?php for ($x = 0; $x <= 10; $x++) { echo "The number is: $x <br>"; } ?>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
After 2 Months, FOBO (YC S11) Has Hit a Million-Dollar Run Rate - ed http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/16/fobo-video/ ====== jw2013 For those of you wondering what were they doing in the huge gap from S11 to two months before. Here are some info: 1) The startup they applied to YC is called Yardsale, and it's still alive: [https://www.getyardsale.com](https://www.getyardsale.com). "Yardsale, a mobile app to help folks sell goods to local buyers." 2) FOBO is founded by Yardsale, Inc. FOBO received $1.6M in Seed funding. (10/18/13) 3) More stories here: [http://josephwalla.com/how-to-hustle-and-launch- in-3-weeks-t...](http://josephwalla.com/how-to-hustle-and-launch-in-3-weeks- the-fobo-backstory) ------ eldavido Have to call bullshit on this one. "Run rate" for a business with single-digit gross margins (marketplaces) are a pretty different animal than "run rate" for a pure software/SaaS company. ~~~ joelrunyon That's a fair distinction - but that's something you deal with by filtering through context - not calling "bullshit" ~~~ sinzone dude, in just two months.. still amazing. ~~~ jfarmer It's mostly irrelevant, honestly, except as good marketing. If I buy $1000 worth of candy and sell it for $1000 every month, do I have a "$12,000 run rate?" I'm not poo-pooing FOBO, only saying that "$X run rate" is meaningless without understanding the underlying economics. It's a vanity metric. So, it's awesome they got ink based on that story, but let's not kid ourselves that this says something about the business in and of itself. :) ~~~ baddox > If I buy $1000 worth of candy and sell it for $1000 every month, do I have a > "$12,000 run rate?" Yes. As far as I know, "run rate" refers to taking data from a shorter time period and extrapolating it to a year, and the obvious implication is that revenue is the data point being extrapolated. ~~~ jfarmer You're either being deliberately pedantic or missing my point, which was to illustrate how silly "run rate" can be as financial metric unless it's backed up by fundamentals. The $1000/month candy business is a _bad business_ and in fact the more revenue it "makes" the more money the business actually loses. ~~~ baddox No one is disputing that this one figure doesn't give a complete representation of the health or success of a company. That doesn't mean that run rate can't be a useful metric. You just asked if you were correct about the definition of run rate, and I just responded that you were. ~~~ jfarmer Deliberately pedantic. Got it. ~~~ baddox No, not pedantic. It's the standard and widely-accepted definition of the term "run rate." ~~~ jfarmer Yes, I know what it means. Thanks for your help. ~~~ baddox I feel the need to inform you what the word "pedantic" means, but that would run the risk of again being accused of pedantry. ------ yid The biggest question for me remains unanswered, having been bitten pretty hard by an eBay scammer who claimed the camera I shipped "wasn't as advertised". How will they verify that an exchange has taken place, and how will they solve disputes? ~~~ andymoe I thought this was all local stuff. At the top of my FOBO screen it says "FOBO SF." so my assumption is they just handle the payments and you deal with picking up your stuff. Am I wrong? ~~~ yid Looks like they still rely on the buyer "confirming" that the exchange happened, which seems like a red flag to me. ~~~ simonk So when your giving it over to them to look at they see its all okay and then pull out their phone and confirm it before you let them leave with it. ~~~ ceejayoz Won't stop them from doing a chargeback with the bank. ~~~ baddox But that applies to literally every credit card transaction. ~~~ ceejayoz Sure, but most credit card transactions have other methods of at least somewhat verifying the charge. Receipts, security camera footage, IP addresses, shipment records, established businesses unlikely to randomly pick people to screw, etc. ------ everettForth Does this mean their revenue was $1 Million / 12 ~$83k last month (the normal definition of run rate), or the sales they processed was $83k last month? ~~~ jcampbell1 It is almost certainly the latter. Their fees are 15%, so the revenue run-rate would actually be closer to $150k. That being said, my guess is the service partially operates as an eBay proxy, thus they are buying some of the stuff. If that is the case, then the revenue run-rate could be close to the processing amount, as they would be the merchant of record for anything sold on eBay. ~~~ mbesto For the purposes of TC (and most likely FOBO's PR), the run-rate _does_ make this a "million dollar business in 2 months" \- yes that's what most people will think after reading this. For anyone curious about some of the terminology here: 1) A run-rate is typically determined by using some financial figure and extrapolating it over a year. Typically this is used in seasonal businesses, where a Q4 might be strong (take Apple for example) and you can thereby project what the revenues will be for the next 4 quarters. Trying to establish a run-rate after 2 months of business is not only extremely rare, it's deceptive and almost downright lying. No respected financial person would ever use this terminology in this context. 2) It's not clear (purposefully so) what figure is being measured to calculate a run-rate. Gross sales? Revenue? Profit? Most likely it's gross sales. Again, an extremely rare case for using the term run-rate, as it's mostly used for the annualized revenue amount. Lastly, awesome job by FOBO and can't wait to see how a whole year pans out for them! Unfortunately this is a case of appalling journalism by TC (no surprise). Subsequently it means we'll have a whole lot less educated entrepreneurs who think they can fumble around with telling investors that their app that is doing $5,000 in revenue in it's first month, is now all of a sudden the next million dollar success. (EDIT - I'm not saying that FOBO is one of them, in fact quite the opposite) ------ pdx6 I am unfortunately addicted to FOBO. It has made me use my iPad quite a bit more, but I wish they'd make an Android version too. I think they'll see more penetration once they add some social media sharing; I think they would do well with something like Twitter where feeds go by fast. I have made 4 purchases on FOBO, all exceptionally good deals, and I picked up from the seller right away. Zero problems. I even ran into one of the guys running FOBO on my first pickup; nice guy. ------ dkl _By now you probably know that Craigslist sucks as a way to sell stuff._ Uh, no it doesn't. I never got a single spam, and I've sold about 10 things (mostly electronic) over the last year. Not one of hte people flaked on me or tried to haggle once I met them. Yeah, they haggled before (on the phone or via email), but once I met them, everyone was nice and kept to the agreed upon price. ~~~ x0x0 I've had enough flakers and hagglers that I now post warnings in all ads: 1 - I refuse to hold anything (first person to show up _with cash_ takes it) 2 - no haggling on the spot; I'll turn you down on principle It's a fucking hassle. I buy a new macbook every 12-18 months and craigslist the old one (and the same with phones). I take good care of my hardware and carefully point out any scratches or nicks in the craigslist listing. People still try to knock you down 10% or 20% when they come. ~~~ xdocommer Use craigslist experience to become better at negotiating. Problem with this app is there is a limited amount of users while cl has 90% of the market. So you will probably still get a better deal on cl. ------ lifeisstillgood The universe of unwanted, _valuable_ consumer electronics is probably quite small. The universe of unwanted goods whose resale value is less than the cost of disposal is pretty huge. Add to that the huge risk of tying up capital in worthless electronics and I see this one as pretty risky. But it might just be how ebay will have to go - small seperate communities. ~~~ ef4 > The universe of unwanted, valuable consumer electronics is probably quite > small. Spend some time exploring Ebay and Craigslist and you'll see that it's bigger than you might assume. People are exchanging a lot of consumer electronics, and for nontrivial dollar amounts. And not only the newest stuff. As for worrying about disposal costs, I think that's unrealistic for any device that isn't actually broken. Show my any working computer or phone and I can guarantee you there's a non-negative price at which somebody will take it off your hands. This is a case of tech-world myopia. Lots of people either don't care about or can't afford the hottest tech. An 18-month-old smart phone or two-year-old laptop still affords quite a lot of value. Which is why you'll see hundreds of them changing hands in the various marketplaces. ------ 3327 My math may be a little rusty but how is "2 months" equal to 3 years for YC s11 company? Can someone please enlighten me. ~~~ baddox As far as I can tell, the FOBO app and service is a rebranding and minor pivot from their original (and surviving) Yardsale app. I have used Yardsale a few times over the past 2 years, so I suspect that was their primary effort after going through YC. ------ manishsharan Congratulations to FOBO ! I am curious about their pivots and paths taken so far. Wasn't YCS11 a long while ago ? ------ xdocommer Not good enough to switch from craigslist. Craigslist is better exposure and this app does not really solve any real problems. A perfect example of starting a business for the sake of starting a business. ------ amscanne YC S11... after two months? Huh? ~~~ jw2013 "It’s been just about two months since FOBO launched its local marketplace app for consumer electronics." So they were probably making the app before launching. ------ djyaz1200 Die Craigslist, Die! ~~~ bdcravens For any competitor to even make a dent in Craigslist they'd need to expand well beyond SF. Almost three years, and what markets is FOBO in? When you install the app, you get a modal that says "Available Only in San Francisco". It apparently uses geolocation: I can't even look at the app if I'm not in SF. Also, they need to expand well beyond consumer electronics: on CL I've bought furniture, cars, found freelance work, searched for office space, searched for a home to lease, and more. FOBO could "win" 100% of personal consumer electronics sales in SF and it's probably would have no effect on CL. ~~~ juliendorra If I'm remembering well, craigslist started as very very local. And then expanded city by city. ~~~ djyaz1200 I mean, it's time. Right?! I am tempted to lock myself in a room for 3 months and just invent a half decent UI for them as a gift to humanity. Their interface says F off humanity. I'm not even good at UI design, not even a little... but I could still do them a service. Or they could just keep suing people?! Why don't they just provide an API and charge for it? They'd make billions and I wouldn't have to feel like my eyeballs got raped every time I need to post/view something.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I took a risk leaving school and now I need help - bsho HN has always been one of the first things I've checked when I woke up. I know there is an amazing amount of experience and intellect here. 4 years ago, I applied to Stanford as a direct result of reading (here) about getting out of our comfort zones. I was living in a Bureau of Indian Affairs dormitory for high school students when I got the news that I was accepted. This was a huge deal, because statistically I am part of a demographic the comprises the bottom 1% of the income spectrum here in America. But I left Stanford after a year, partly because it was such a huge change, but also because I wanted see if I could succeed on reservation I grew up in (the Navajo Nation). I'm now 22, and I can say I used what little I had to try to make a difference. I've made mistakes - one of which was lying to my peers about leaving because I wasn't prepared for the change that Stanford demanded. Another was not asking for help when I needed to. And, finally, I didn't pursue a regular job when my family demanded it. And now, I don't know what to do. I have about $20K in debt - student loans that have already been deferred, money I used to buy a computer (pretty much the only thing I own), and medical bills from a year of battling cancer. And, as of today, I had to get out of my step-parent's house because it was not a good place for me to be anymore. I am at a park in the next town over - a town that tends to be particularly disdainful of Native Americans wandering the streets. I don't know what I am looking for here on HN. It's always been a source of encouragement to me, especially in those times that I felt the most uncomfortable or hopeless. I've learned a lot for living on a reservation where the nearest IT-related job is 100 miles away - and it really is thanks to you. ====== bdickason My wife and I own a salon in New York City. We're looking for someone to help work on our salon software which was built a few years ago in PHP. Do you know how to code or have any inclination to learn? We could start with something small - maybe $100/week to get you started while you learn and fix a few bugs, then ramp up to a $30k or $40k/yr gig. Not a ton, I know, but it would be a start :) If you're interested, my e-mail is in my profile. (Note: you don't have to be in NYC, just have an internet connection) ~~~ bsho Wow, seriously!? This is great! I just got started learning how to use CakePHP (PHP was my first love). I will definitely be in touch! ~~~ aniketpant I have worked with quite some PHP frameworks in the past. Do tell me if I could help you with anything at all! ------ dlo I would say go back to Stanford if that is an option. You'll grow a lot there. I don't know what you mean by "change," but if you need pointers on how to handle the schoolwork or on how to take advantage of the resources you would have at your disposal, just let me know here and I'll get in touch. ~~~ bsho I really do want to go back to Stanford. The change I was referring to was the culture. There is so much brilliance in a place like that, and I was not prepared (as someone that rode the school bus 4 hours a day for most of my public schooling) for such a huge change. I owe Stanford tuition, though, so that isn't an option until I can pay it off. ~~~ dlo I would revisit this. Financial aid at Stanford is extremely generous... I was a beneficiary myself. Someone in that office will help you figure this out. I am still in the Bay Area, so if you need someone on the ground, let me know. To be honest, your $20K loan sounds like an error. Alumni like myself do not donate back to Stanford so that things like this happen. EDIT: Added the final paragraph. ~~~ aadamson Yeah, I'm trying to think through how that could have happened in one year. ------ ecualombian We all make decisions and they guide us in different directions. I don't really believe in a "right path". I'm not really sure what type of help you're looking for. I was a once computer science major, now clinical social worker. I work with people that have different stressors in their lives and are learning how to live a life they feel good about. In most cases I find, even with past horrific traumas, people are very resilient. So the little I'll offer you right now is this. In my own journey of healing and getting my life together, there is always a lot of noise. Things to "worry about" things to "figure out". These often include career goals, life goals, etcetera. I have found often that much of my energy has been wasted on things that have not yet come to pass. The future stuff that I'm not quite ready for in that moment anyway. Of course plans are important, but in terms of getting "help now", often we overlook or neglect our day to day basic needs for loose ill defined hopes. It's not these things are not important, its just we very likely are not yet ready to hold ourselves up with enough firm ground to withstand the tremendous amount of unknown that entertaining such things requires. With that said, Maslow's hierarchy is a helpful frame to start from in any trying times. You'll find that when you consistently knock out a 100% of your basic needs (healthy food, shelter, meaningful relationships, meaningful daily activities, etc.), you'll start naturally taking on bigger things. You must be a smart guy if you got into Stanford. Something the pressure of a "name school" has more baggage than its worth. I know what that's like. I once went to a "name school" and found that I spent just as much energy on deflecting the image of what it meant to goto a place highly regarded and what that meant to the world around me - as I did on just trying to survive the experience. With that said, an important step for me, was to forget and let go of that image and build a real foundation of self-respect and confidence in myself that I felt. Once you tap into that, and you spend the time defining what YOU want to do, not what the world wants you to do - then you will begin to let the important things in and you will get better at passing on the distractions. I'm still learning how to do this. I graduated from my undergrad a decade ago. I've changed my career, felt lost, loved and lost multiple times, and am better for it. I hope you find some inspiration for yourself in these words. ~~~ bsho I want to have enough stability to go back to school and to be in a place where I can explore technology and create amazing stuff. I beat cancer, my work has been featured in the newspaper, I've helped people by connecting via technology, and I've generally done what has made me happy. But there are genuine cultural differences between me and my (Caucasian) step-father that I finally decided to leave behind. I have looked after my mentally-disabled step-brother for a long time, and I am sad that I had to leave him behind. Right now, I am worried that I won't have a bed to sleep on anymore. But, I did manage to apply with a local startup (I got amazingly lucky) and I will see them on Monday. I feel I am starting to focus more on myself - which is something that resonated with me in your reply. Thank you for offering perspective. ~~~ ecualombian It sounds like you're noticing important cultural differences and have had a history of heavy responsibility. Best tomorrow, and remember, any decision you make isn't the last or the defining one...those labels generally come after something has passed. You always have choices in front of you. They will likely never be what you have envisioned exactly but they are indeed the ones in front of you. Letting go of the image we've envisioned and embracing what's in front of us I think is one of the hardest things to do in life. Take good care. ------ damonpace I grew up in Navajo County(Holbrook & Snowflake) and now live in Downtown Palo Alto. I understand the drastic change you've experienced more than anyone on HN. These Ivy league pricks have no idea. No matter what you do...don't give up. Learn as much as you can and keep growing. I went to ASU and when I was your age I went through a similar experience. All you can do is keep innovating, keep learning and find a support structure. AZ is not known for that...not even in Phoenix. Get out of Tuba City or wherever you are. The rez is not for driven people. I have some Navajo friends in SV if you need help. Reach out...there are always options. ~~~ santaclaus Nitpick... Stanford is not an Ivy, but instead part of the Pac-12. ------ aadamson I'm an undergrad at Stanford right now, and my understanding is that they do everything they can to meet demonstrated need. I could be wrong, but I think nearly all student loans (public and private) can be deferred indefinitely while you're in school. I'm not sure what you plan on studying. There are many fields that can put you in a position to pay your loans off rather easily, given that you put in the sweat. Is there anything else stopping you from coming back? The finances seem to work if you want them to. ~~~ bsho Leaving mid-term was the big mistake here. I didn't understand how outside scholarships would be cancelled. There was a balance on my student account for the longest time that is now in collections. But other debts are simply medical related. It was a daily 100 mile round trip during therapy, and I let things get off track while I was getting treatment. At the time, it was the only thing I felt I could do. ~~~ aadamson Oh wow, my bad, I completely let the fact that you overcame cancer slip. Again, while I've never been in the position to have to learn if this was actually the case, I think fin aid would find some way to accommodate you. You're probably aware of this, but the NA community has grown here a lot in the last few years. Sherman Alexie came and gave a talk in Cubberley this past year. ------ partisan I hope you have found someplace safe to lay your head. I went through a very similar situation as you, attending an ivy league university only to find myself overwhelmed, unhappy, and feeling like there was no one I could relate to, culturally, due to growing up as part of a marginalized group in the very same city I attended university. I was as depressed as I ever was in my life and spent days locked in my dorm room with the shades shut and considering the most horrible options because my life was over as I saw it. It's amazing to me to think that was 15 years ago because life has a funny way of going on. One of the most valuable traits you have already discovered, due to your battle with cancer, is your resilience. You will adapt, learn, and grow from your experiences. Here is how I found my way out of the situation: with the help of my family, I transferred to a public college, worlds (but only blocks) away from where I was previously. I re-invented myself enough to succeed and have a meaningful career thus far and continue dreaming for better. I recommend that you apply to a school like this, one with a somewhat decent computer science program, but one you can handle and possibly work a job to keep your debt low. Be the best student there and rebuild your confidence. Graduate and get on with life. Most importantly, do not look back with regret because each decision you made was simply a step to where you are now and only a step towards where you will be tomorrow. ~~~ bsho I have definitely reworked my short-term plans, and I've set aside the long- term hopes to focus on getting into a local community college. With $1K tuition rates, it's a huge difference from Stanford, but I'm still trying to work out how get in before the term starts. The past few days have been a rollercoaster, and I'm glad I waited the lowest parts out because I feel a lot better. Thank you for finding this thread and sharing - it helps! ------ WoodenChair It sounds like you've already had an incredible journey. You made hard decisions (leaving your home multiple times including just now), and you fought incredibly difficult battles (against cancer, maybe cultural ones as well). Now, your next move is a little more mundane. The most dramatic decisions are actually behind you I think - now you just need to decide to succeed through perseverance. That probably means getting a college degree (hopefully back at Stanford, but if somewhere else, so be it) while working nights to pay down your debt. Like everything else you've been through, it won't be easy, but it's a clear path with direction. ~~~ bsho This is reassuring to read. There aren't a lot of people around me that I can relate to, so when it comes to the situation I'm in, I guess I panicked a little because I'm actually on the streets now. I have a few cents in my bank account, but I am hopeful as ever. Thank you ------ joeclark77 Well, I know there are tech jobs such as web development here in Phoenix, AZ, but if you want to stay in the Navajo Nation then I don't know how to help you. I've been in Arizona for a year now and I hope I'll have a chance to get involved with some of the Indian communities around here, one way or another, but it hasn't happened yet. For what it's worth, I'll tell you that sometimes, hitting "rock bottom" can be good for you. I bet you're pretty motivated now not to go further in debt, and not to waste your next opportunity! Lucky for you that you get to start over at such a young age. Find a way to dig yourself out of this hole. ~~~ spydertennis Yeah, he is lucky. ------ zo1 My best suggestion is to go back home. I'm sure you still have friends, and family that have some smidgeon of care for you. Rather than going it alone, as others have said, you need a support structure. I know it can be tough, but suck it up (in terms of the family situation). And while you're there, take some of the remote gigs that I see the HNers here offering to give you. Until you can stand on your own two feet, and then you have to leave and _remove yourself from abusive relationships_ (which it sounds like from what you wrote). But until you can do that safely, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. ~~~ bsho The thing about going back to my reservation home (the one that is offering a place to stay) is that there is absolutely no internet available. So, I've chosen to suck this up. Last year I did a 500+ mile walk, before I started heavy therapy, and I camped out every night. It's almost the same. For the time being, I'm happier. I've already had 2 interviews and applied wherever I could for work. But the home I just left - no. I left that place for good. ------ k-mcgrady If things are that bad and you don't want to go back to school your immediate concern should be a job. Forget about an IT job - you aren't in a position to choose the job you want. Apply to everything and anything that has an open position. At least that will help you get back on your feet. ~~~ bsho Advice taken. I've already had 2 interviews, and I'm still applying around town. ------ pecanpie OP, I've been in your shoes, or at least similar ones. At Stanford, and out of it, years ago. I wish I'd had someone like my current self to talk to back then. PM me if you'd like to talk. There are no saviors, but you're not alone, and it gets better. Anonyfish: satnightfever. ~~~ bsho Thank you - I know what you mean by 'there are no saviors'. Hoping for one is tiring. ------ JSeymourATL The good news, there is a hack to your problems. Here's some practical advice on getting out of debt, budgeting, and focusing on your career> [http://www.daveramsey.com/category/tools/](http://www.daveramsey.com/category/tools/) ------ huyoagonop Go back to Stanford. It's the best university in the world and the fin aid is great. ~~~ peteretep > It's the best university in the world Source? ------ schmoofer Byron, if you need a place to stay in the Los Angeles area, shoot me an email. I'd be more than happy to help you get back on your feet. ~~~ bsho Thanks! I'm getting situated here slowly, but I'll follow up with you if I decide to get out of AZ. ------ zaqokm Do people use paragraphs anymore ?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Introducing Moments: A Private Way to Share Photos with Friends - jonas21 http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/06/introducing-moments/ ====== pesnk I liked it. I was planning a product like these for a hackaton, mainly because I wanted to have something alike. Glad someone already made it =D ------ squiddle Who considers an upload to facebook and having face recognition algorithms running and matching images against the whole userbase as being a private way to share photos? I really expected some bluetooth p2p technology involved to give (some illusion about) location-enabled private photo sharing instead it is just a centralized upload service. ------ dang [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9720783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9720783)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Russian journalist and Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko shot dead in Kiev - thirduncle https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/29/russian-journalist-arkady-babchenko-shot-dead-in-kiev ====== stephen82 He is very much alive. Here is the latest article by theguardian: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/30/russian- journa...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/30/russian-journalist- arkady-babchenko-who-was-reported-killed-is-still-alive)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Similarities between the Learn to Code Movement and Online Poker - dsinsky http://bplesser.com/2014/01/02/similarities-between-the-learn-to-code-movement-and-online-poker/ ====== duffdevice one similarity you called out is "They also share a risk loving profile (though maybe not to quite the same extent)." I don't really follow this. Maybe it's true that engineers in early-stage startups have greater risk tolerance than average, but this is more related to the startup part, not the engineering part. There's nothing in software engineering that is inherently risk-loving (you could probably argue the opposite). Overall, I like coding, and poker, but I don't really see this as a super apt comparison IMO, outside of general things like logical thinking, working hard, and liking money. ------ nicholas73 Do many people drop out of code schools or drop off after completion, like poor poker players would after finding out it's harder than it looked? ~~~ bjpless That's a great question. Developer bootcamps are a huge time (3 months) and financial ($10k) commitment. Lots of risk if you're uncertain about your interest/proficiency in coding. ------ pmcpinto Interesting comparison. By the way, do you still play sometimes or you quit completely? ~~~ bjpless I played in the World Series of Poker in 2010 (the worst experience ever) and then quit completely. I was sick of the whole thing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Hosting for My Startup’s Website - jetcata It seems like every time I create a new website landing page I have to start researching options from scratch.<p>What do you use to host a basic landing page for your app or startup? ====== smt88 SquareSpace is excellent. For a static, informational site, I don't see any reason to build it from scratch, set up hosting, etc. You have more important things to do than reinvent the wheel for a marketing website. If you insist on doing it yourself, uploading a static site to S3 and putting CloudFront in front of it is incredibly easy, inexpensive, and performant. ~~~ fefb For static files, Firebase Hosting is great too. Easier than S3 + CloudFront , just a firebase deploy inside your project. Also, you can undo versions from their dashboard. In addition, easy integration with your domain. ------ mimixco You can use wpengine.com to build a quick site with WordPress that has all the features you're going to want. ------ q3k Google App Engine.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Extract a unique CSS selector for any element on any page - GFuller https://flutter.social/bookmarklet ====== petercooper At first glance, I thought this was going to be like Selector Gadget ([http://selectorgadget.com/](http://selectorgadget.com/)), a tool I've used for years to get CSS selectors for elements on pages. But it gives you a _unique_ selector for the unique element you click, which adds a different angle. I've got to admit, I'm not sure I'd use this over SG since SG can nail down to a single element if you use it the right way, but it's great to see more tools of this nature, as it can really help when doing ad-hoc scraping. ~~~ GFuller I use Selector Gadget too and I was recommending users of Flutter use it to get selectors. However, I'm trying to make the process of getting a unique selector for any element so simple it won't put anyone off. This bookmarklet avoids the need to deselect things and once an element is selected it's just a case of CMD/CTRL + C. ------ malditojavi I don't get it - I do this in Chrome tools > magnifying glass > right click > Copy CSS path. What does it solve this ? ~~~ GFuller The purpose of this bookmarklet is to provide a streamlined method of getting the selector without having to go into the source or use chrome tools. There is also the problem of using ids. For example in Flutter I may want to auto tweet out the top post in a list of posts on a blog. If the posts have individual ids, and the CSS selector includes them, every time Flutter tries to scrape new content it will get the same post. I want the unique selector for the page element. i.e. the first post in the list. ------ SchizoDuckie Super cool. I can really use this for DuckieTV's custom search engine definition form i'm working on! [http://i.imgur.com/lT7hUTj.png](http://i.imgur.com/lT7hUTj.png) ------ guiporto Just tested it. I can't leave the Flutter Selector once I open it. Clicking OK or Cancel keeps it. I've tried ESC as well but the selector is still present until I reload the page ~~~ GFuller There should be a red 'Close' button in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. I'll add the option to use ESC as well. ~~~ werber I have one (red close button). Flutter on first use seems like a faster workflow than the normal, right click, inspect element, look at the chrome elements, find the tag. Great Job!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bold Ambition and Our Core - jdp23 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/ceo/index.html ====== kirinan After working many corporate jobs over the years, this kind of rhetoric seems trite and overused. "We are stream-lining our processes and going to empower our employees to change the world!!!!". So many corporations that fell behind the trends and are just trying to reinvent themselves to that they can get back on track use the same words. However, in this case, it seems different. Microsoft has over the past few months kinda proved that they mean it. Open sourcing .NET and other technologies, playing nice with many different startups like Xamarin to help empower and push them forward on their stack. It really does feel different and for the sake of the technology world, I hope they do. We need more than 2 giants competing in the consumer market, and we need people willing to dare to move the needle forward, pushing the bar everyday. If there is a company with the means and resources to do it, its Microsoft. I don't work there, but I hope an employee can shed some more light on the internal changes that are taking place. ~~~ jasode It may be unfair to Nadella's abilities, but his 3000 word essay reads like typical techno fluff. This can be a red flag because other innovative CEO's write in a much more straightforward manner instead of corporate doublespeak: Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Reed Hastings, Elon Musk. I read a book[1] about corporate speak and it opened my eyes to the fact that it's actually the lingua franca of middle managers and not visionary CEOs. I'm also convinced that practitioners of corporate-speak are truly not self-aware of how vacuous it sounds. I wonder if venture capitalists look at corporate-speak from a founder as a red flag signaling mediocrity. [1][http://www.amazon.com/Business-People-Speak-Like- Idiots/prod...](http://www.amazon.com/Business-People-Speak-Like- Idiots/product-reviews/0743269098) ~~~ danudey I think that practitioners of corporate-speak are surrounded by so many other people who corporate-speak that they don't realize how idiotic it sounds to everyone else. To them, they're normal words that actually mean real things – because they _are_ normal words that actually mean real things. I think the real issue it people who use them as buzzwords. They say 'synergize our corporate efficiencies to maximize our value proposition…' in the same way that someone else might say 'make things better': it conveys meaning, but only in the most vague and useless of terms instead of going into specifics. ~~~ o0-0o That last word really resonates: Specifics. Why is it so hard for people to boil down their message? Is it fear? Is it ignorance? Is it lying? It must be some combination of these for if presented with a life and death situation I doubt corporate psycho babble would spew forth. In general, in the words of the late/great Mr. George Carlin, "People tend to use extra words when they want something to sounds more important than it really is." I would encourage everyone at M$, and frankly anyone that hasn't seen it, to watch George Carlin's bit about the boarding process of airlines. A couple gems worth note (that could easily be translated to corporate speak): 1\. Please look around your immediate seating area SEAT! 2\. Items you may have brought on board. Well, I may have brought my tiddly-winks collection, but I didn't, so I'm not going to look for it! If I worked at M$, and could roll into work anytime I wanted, take off early without anyone noticing, two hour lunch breaks, and so on and so forth - I'd be scared. Layoffs are the next step after letters like these, and you're the fat. To sum it up nicely in a way only George could do: "More shit from the bogus captain!" ------ stiff So what's the bottom line? They are going to take it to the next level? Seriously: this is unreadable BS. Quoting Nietzsche and Rilke at the end seemed almost farcical. ~~~ jimbokun It was way too long, but I thought this could be Microsoft's rallying cry going forward: "We help people get stuff done." I actually believe this could distinguish Microsoft from the likes of Google, Apple and Amazon. Google helps you find the information you're looking for. Apple gives the individual user a great computing experience. Amazon lets you buy anything at a low price. But Microsoft is more strongly associated with work than any other software company in my mind. They should embrace this, and re-envision what it means in a post-Windows world. ~~~ asakura89 Indeed. When microsoft invented Office, productivity and LOB was their plus point ever since. Then they push the productivity everywhere with Office365 to web and mobile. He, Satya, was only helping the company to remember it's core business line and it's vision. >I actually believe this could distinguish Microsoft from the likes of Google, Apple and Amazon. I like how they distinguish themselves from others. ------ aaronbrethorst On July 22, we'll announce our earnings results for the past quarter and I'll say more then on what we are doing in FY15 to focus on our core. Ten bucks says there'll be big layoffs. On the plus side of things, I'm looking at buying a property in Seattle and this should make things just a bit easier[1]. [1] The incredible influx of new hires at Amazon has made renting generally _more expensive_ than buying in my neighborhood. Of course, buying sucks too, as many properties are going for 10+% over list, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $1700 for a 350 square foot studio ([http://www.urbnlivn.com/2014/07/06/sunset-electric-taps- into...](http://www.urbnlivn.com/2014/07/06/sunset-electric-taps-into-capitol- hills-energy/)). ~~~ nojvek Not Really. I work at Microsoft. MS has mountains of cash and they're hiring like crazy. I agree Microsoft might not have the sexiest product that make everyone drool, but they have some products that make a ton of money and not sexy at all. e.g SQL Server ~~~ aaronbrethorst I spent four years working on Visual Studio. Your product's management UI is one of the key things I worked on. You're going to be fine. Your peers in Bing, MSN or Nokia are not likely to be so lucky. Also: I bet you ten bucks (USD) that major layoffs are announced by the end of the month. ~~~ nojvek Not sure how major, major will be. ~~~ aaronbrethorst I'm hearing numbers ranging from 5-15% of the company. I'd say that a major layoff is anything as big or bigger than the 2009 layoffs that cut 5,000 people. 5% is about 6,000 people. 15% is about 19,000 people. ------ nmrm Oh wow, after the first few screens you get an "if I repeat it enough maybe it will be true?!" feeling :-( Also, this: On July 22, we'll announce our earnings results for the past quarter and I'll say more then on what we are doing in FY15 to focus on our core. <screen after screen of corporatespeak> I wish I cared enough to place a bet that those reports aren't positive... ------ ape4 If everything is cloud and mobile, I hope they don't forget people who want to user a PC without that. It would be horrible to be required to have a cloud account to login to my computer. ~~~ kylec It's not required, but Windows 8.1 pushes you very strongly to log into your Microsoft account, and to create one if you haven't already. If you don't, most of the built-in Metro (er, Modern) apps won't work, including some like Calendar which you'd think shouldn't need it. Further, if/when you finally break down and sign into your MS account, you have to use it to sign into your computer from then on, instead of using the password you set when you created your local user account. So unfortunately, the scenario you described is pretty much already here for Windows users. ~~~ AnimalMuppet If Microsoft wants to fix something, fix the thinking behind that. Microsoft has an awful history of trying to "leverage" assets like Windows to try to get people to use things like IE or Bing or whatever. But when Microsoft uses _leverage_ , customers feel _forced_. I don't want Microsoft to force me to have an online account! I just want to do what I want with my computer, not what Microsoft wants me to do, and I don't want to have to fight Microsoft to do it. I'm tired of having to fight them for control of my computer for the last 15 years. If they want to change, the best change they can make is to change their attitude about who actually owns my PC. ~~~ lloeki This time it seems it's the other way around: people are asking for more cloud and mobile, thereby dragging Windows on PC towards that unified cloud ecosystem their two leading competitors already have, possibly at the cost of those not wanting that. The core of the message is an admission that, while still a massive component of their business due to sheer inertia, Windows on typical PC hardware is not what makes Microsoft relevant anymore. IOW Microsoft clearly aims at not becoming the next IBM. ------ chaostheory If Xbox is so important, they need to open up its API and app store. It feels like a dinosaur relic from the last decade. It's behind Google Play, Amazon and Apple App Stores, and even the Windows App Store. ~~~ mikelat They've been trying for the last few years to copy apple's walled garden model when realistically their greatest strength was the fact that they weren't an overly restricted platform. ~~~ chaostheory I'm not talking about Windows. Xbox is different. Xbox has always been a walled garden. The difference is that Xbox is a lot more exclusive than the app stores that everyone is now fond of. ------ goodgoblin props to any CEO who references Rilke in his rally-the-company-speech-that- gets-forwarded-to-the-world: 'Rainer Maria Rilke's words say it best: "The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.' ~~~ jessaustin Sounds like a Lady Gaga tattoo to me. ~~~ o0-0o Sounds like fornication to me. ------ nealabq My take is that Nadella's Microsoft will push more products that work with already existing products in a continuing effort to create/enforce a closed ecosystem. This might be a shift in emphasis for MS, from revenue to user- experience, but the underlying instinct seems the same as it always was: lock- in the customers. And this has proven to be a great money-making strategy in the past. But for it to work it seems you have to control the dominant platform, and/or have a few really-great products, and/or have a killer brand. And MS has some of these: the desktop platform, workplace tools, a pretty-good brand. But the dominant platform has shifted, the brand is waning, and MS is losing its lock-in. A truly radical MS strategy would be to build products that communicate using standard protocols. To build tools that are part of an open ecosystem. That really would be customer focused. But it's not gonna happen. It's not a business model MS grew up with. It's not in their DNA. ~~~ AnimalMuppet Here's the thing: To get to the point where they could start trying to lock people in, Microsoft _first_ had to build the platform that everybody wanted to be on. That was 30 years ago, but they knew how to do that, once upon a time. _That 's_ where they need to go now. Not back to locking people in, but back to building stuff that's so good, everyone wants to use it. ~~~ EdSharkey Nobody's put more good software into more people's hands than Microsoft. But since the early 2000's, I feel like they've lost their hardcore productivity edge. Their software has become this endless march of shiny things and fads. I rely less and less on their products every day. The old microsoft that didn't mind being hated was a good thing. They relished being the target and they drove competition whenever they didn't succeed in outright squashing it. I can't see how Microsoft can get back to being the big bad enemy again. Maybe they still are that for folks, I dunno, as a software guy, I don't feel them in my life and I haven't for years. ------ alaskamiller Funny how the wheel of time turns. I grew up with Micro$oft, a dying Apple beset by clones, and an internet that very few people know about. Now Apple is one of the most valuable companies on the planet, Microsoft needs a rallying cry, and everyone thinks they know about the internet. One thing's for sure, haters back then and still haters now. ------ 6d0debc071 Productivity is a bit of an odd duck for Microsoft to focus on. Not that it's not a worthwhile thing, but there are contradictory demands in that regard with respect to the expertise of your user. A system that a novice might find intuitive an expert might find incredibly irksome. ~~~ nealabq When they say "productivity and platform", I think they mean Office and Windows. It's probably a code everyone at MS is familiar with. ------ dammitcoetzee That's the most windows phones I've ever seen in one picture. ------ tathastu Microsoft: Stop talking, start doing. ~~~ markhelo Isn't that Home Depot? ~~~ AznHisoka Or.. Lowe's? ------ jdp23 I wanted to submit the original memo, but unfortunately it's a the same URL [1] that was used to announce Nadella's appointment as CEO, so already showed up in another HN story [2] [1] [http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/ceo/index.html](http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/ceo/index.html) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7177388](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7177388) ~~~ skizm If the content is different enough but the url is the same just tack on a parameter to the url. Ex: [http://SomeUrlThatWasAlreadySubmittedBefore.com/?hn=1](http://SomeUrlThatWasAlreadySubmittedBefore.com/?hn=1) ------ ttflee > First, we will obsess over our customers. I bet that not every customer of MS wants the mobile-first and cloud-first experiences. In order to push forward, they have to slam down a lot of existing models and platforms, e.g., the Windows before 8 and Office before 365, and doing these does not feel painless to MS, IMHO. They must be facing difficult choices in the years to come. ~~~ rhizome Does he define who they consider to be a "customer?" This has been a problem with MS (et al) in the past. ~~~ ttflee With the bold ambition in the email, I could not possibly imagine it is defined as a much smaller number of customers than there are today. ------ georgespencer "Synthesize" ~~~ dictum More words == more _synergy_. ------ thunderbong [http://smmry.com/http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/ceo/ind...](http://smmry.com/http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/ceo/index.html#&SM_LENGTH=7) ------ bm1362 I see they're moving in the direction of Amazon regarding company culture, 'First, we will obsess over our customers.'. I wonder if this is due to companies sharing so many employees over the years. ------ bengali3 pro tip: skip the first 6 paragraphs and read his email To: All Employees ------ dammitcoetzee calling it: Next significant windows will be windows WX. ------ Thiz No, fuck you. We don't want you, and the worst nightmare of all for you, we don't need you, at all. The world is a better place without microsoft. Shills can downvote me into oblivion all they want but that doesn't change the fact that when monopolies don't exist, we vote with our wallets, and both Apple and Samsung are getting all my money nowadays, Google gets my eyeballs, Ubuntu gets my love. Microsoft? my middle finger.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What is Dependency Inversion? Is it IoC? - kioub http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2011/08/what-is-dependency-inversion-is-it-ioc.html ====== smoyer Another defining article can be found at <http://martinfowler.com/articles/injection.html>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Classical Data Structures That Can Outperform Learned Indexes - chmaynard http://dawn.cs.stanford.edu/2018/01/11/index-baselines/ ====== edchi We actually tested cuckoo hashing against learned hash-maps and in our setup it was slower. One of the main reasons is that cuckoo hashing is quite sensitive to the payload and we used a scenario were we actually assumed records with meta-data fields as used by many systems at Google. We will update our technical report soon to include those comparisons as well. However, we do agree with the authors of the blog post, that there are cases in which traditional data structures will remain the best choice and as so often, it always depends. In addition, it might be possible to combine learned models with cuckoo hashing, so those are not even exclusive ideas. \--(from original authors of the Learned Index paper) ~~~ mateiz We'd love to hear about the size of the payloads used. With the code we posted, larger records take 10-15 more ns per query, which is still faster than the numbers in the paper, but of course YMMV based on the table implementation and other factors. ------ candiodari The point that ML practicioners are making is not that machine learning beats every other algorithm, or even that they beat humans at specific tasks. The point they're making ML practicioners acceptable at every task. You learn ML and you can have great indexes for your databases, inverse kinematics, cancer treatments, and youtube movie generation that actually gets views, all using the same theory. Like in the 1980s, that humans can assemble cars with a greater success rate than machines, and can fix the ones they don't assemble correctly, it didn't matter. Humans still beat machines at various metrics in car assembly. That you can write a program do 1% better at a specific task than an algorithm that can solve every task won't matter. ~~~ geofft > _The point they 're making ML practicioners acceptable at every task. You > learn ML and you can have great indexes for your databases, inverse > kinematics, cancer treatments, and youtube movie generation that actually > gets views, all using the same theory._ Just to make sure I'm understanding you right - the claim is that you want an ML person on your team (or you want everyone on your team to know ML the way that everyone on your team knows calculus and Shakespeare, i.e., so they can brush up on it as needed), not that human domain knowledge in ML replaces human domain knowledge of what a database does, or what inverse kinematics is, or how to measure cancer, or how to film movies or draw animations, right? The latter is definitely a potential future, but I don't think we're there yet (but I might be wrong!). ~~~ candiodari We're definitely not there yet. Right now it's just one domain after another (slowly) getting replaced by ML. It'll expand though. ~~~ geofft But I don't think these are domains getting _replaced_ by ML, any more than domains were replaced by calculus, or machinery, or even computers. Sure, cancer researchers need to know something about programming now, but they also continue to need to know more things about biology. Is that different for ML? ~~~ PeterisP It kind of is. For a specific example, a decade ago face recognition, speech recognition and machine translation each incorporated a _lot_ of domain- specific knowledge and were largely disjoint fields, since doing anything remotely useful required the specialized knowledge that the subfield had accumulated over the last decade; but nowadays a face recognition ML expert can achieve state of art speech recognition while not knowing a thing about phonetics, and a speech recognition expert can train a decent end-to-end MT solution while being ignorant about all the language/text specific cases that required particular attention and specialized solutions and subsystems some 5 years ago. This is quite a big practical shift in ML; we moved from research on specialized solutions for separate problems to generalized solutions that work on large classes of problems with minimal adaptation, highly reducing the need for domain-specific knowledge. I mean, it's still usually useful, but not absolutely necessary as it was before. ~~~ tincholio Don't you need to have domain expertise anyway to engineer your features? What exactly will you train your speech recognition models on, if you have no understanding at all of speech? It may definitely lower the barrier of entry to those fields, but I'm not sure it has removed it altogether, at least not just yet. ~~~ PeterisP With modern deep learning methods, you often can get state of art results without any feature engineering whatsoever - you do need a decent efficient representation of the raw data, but that's about it. That's the whole point, in many domains the accumulated knowledge about feature engineering isn't necessary anymore, since you can train a deep network to learn the same features implicitly from data, and (depending on the problem) it's quite possible that the learned features in the initial layers will be _better_ than anything people have engineered before. For your speech example, speech recognition models used to contain explicit phonetics systems (where the chosen set of phonemes mattered), separating acoustic models and language models. But now you can also get decent results from an end-to-end system, by throwing all the phonetic knowledge you had into the trash bin and training an end-to-end model from the sound data (though, not a waveform but a frequency domain representation, e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel- frequency_cepstrum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel-frequency_cepstrum) \- but that's not "understanding of speech", it's understanding of audio data format) straight to the output text characters. ------ zzzcpan The important bits of the article: "the cuckoo hash, can achieve 5-20x less space overhead than learned indexes, and that it can be surprisingly fast on modern hardware, running nearly 2x faster". ~~~ edchi 1 point by edchi 0 minutes ago \| edit \| delete [-] We actually tested cuckoo hashing against learned hash-maps and in our setup it was slower. One of the main reasons is that cuckoo hashing is quite sensitive to the payload and we used a scenario were we actually assumed records with meta-data fields as used by many systems at Google. We will update our technical report soon to include those comparisons as well. However, we do agree with the authors of the blog post, that there are cases in which traditional data structures will remain the best choice and as so often, it always depends. In addition, it might be possible to combine learned models with cuckoo hashing, so those are not even exclusive ideas. \--(from original authors of the Learned Index paper) ------ thesz The authors of fine article did not tested against cache-friendly binary search, for one. This approach can easily give speed up of 2x and more. Another thing they didn’t test against is data-dependent middle index choice. Which would play nice with RLE encoding of first bytes of keys, especially if one choose reasonably big number of keys per page, at least 1024, not small number of 128 (or was it 256) in the paper. Especially for log-structured merge trees where learned indices can be used safely. Anyway, original paper was very sloppy at establishing baseline and very disappointing because of that. ------ dragontamer I liked the article, but seriously... an SIMD friendly Cuckoo hash? Erm... can we have a blog-post on the design of THAT?? I'm going through their Github and they also make a reference to "FAST", which is a cache-friendly SIMD-friendly tree implementation. That sounds... non-trivial. Its like reading a post that says "Oh yeah, Trucks can beat trains. We made a truck that goes 400 miles an hour for example, and its tested performance beats the stuff that Google is doing". This just begs the question: how did you make a 400mph truck? Similarly, tell me more about this SIMD-based Cuckoo Hash. That sounds awesome. I can see why Google can beat a "normal" Cuckoo Hash, but one that has been SIMD-tuned sounds outrageous. ~~~ mateiz You can see the table here, it's not a lot of code: [https://github.com/stanford-futuredata/index- baselines/blob/...](https://github.com/stanford-futuredata/index- baselines/blob/master/hashing.cpp). Each bucket just has 8 keys and you want to test whether one of them is equal to the key you're searching for. ~~~ dragontamer That's pretty intelligent. There's an 8-way SIMD operation for comparison to match up to the 256-bit AVX2 register. So in the case of Cuckoo hashing, its not 1-thing per bucket and 2-buckets per hash... (as per the classical "textbook" Cuckoo Hash), but instead 8-things per bucket (very quickly compared with 8-way 256-bit AVX2 Comparisons), with 16-effective locations (2 buckets, 8-locations per bucket) for each key. I was wondering how you were getting 99% occupancy and other such numbers. I'm not exactly up-to-date on the latest Cuckoo-techniques, apparently. But even then, this simple implementation you have is way deeper and useful than the one discussed on say... Wikipedia. \--------- A few notes for those who aren't up-to-date with the latest architectures: 1\. Intel machines can perform 2x 256-bit loads per clock cycle, but ONLY using AVX, AVX2, or AVX512 instructions. Two-loads per-clock can be sustained through the L1 and L2 cache, only slowing down at the L3 cache. Latency characteristics differ of course between L1 and L2 levels. 2\. Most AVX2 instructions have superb numbers: executing in a single clock or even super-scalar execution per clock. Skylake supports 2x 256-bit comparisons per clock cycle (Simultaneously, with the two loads. Ports 0 and 1 can do 256-bit comparisons each, while port 2 and 3 can do loads. Intel Skylake will still have ports 4, 5, and 6 open as well to perform more tasks) So effectively, the code checks ~16 bucket-locations of a Cuckoo Hash in roughly the same speed as the total-latency of a DDR4 RAM Access. In fact, their implementation of ~36ns is damn close to the total latency of the Skylake system as a whole. The implementation is likely memory-controller bottlenecked and can't be much faster. [http://www.corsair.com/~/media/corsair/blog/2015-09/ddr3_vs_...](http://www.corsair.com/~/media/corsair/blog/2015-09/ddr3_vs_ddr4_generational/ddr4-latency.jpg?la=en- us) Note that this Corsair chart is from 2015, and DDR4 RAM Latencies as well as memory-controllers have gotten better. Good job with the implementation! That's an outstanding level of speed you've achieved. I stand by what I said earlier: you've basically made a 400MPH truck and barely spend any sentences on it, lol. That's the really interesting part of your post IMO. \----------------- I think I better understand the conclusion of the blogpost as well: > Does all this mean that learned indexes are a bad idea? Not at all: the > paper makes a great observation that, when cycles are cheap relative to > memory accesses, compute-intensive function approximations can be beneficial > for lookups, and ML models may be better at approximating some functions > than existing data structures. The Google Machine-learning paper is an indicator of how slow RAM is, rather than anything else. RAM is so slow, that spending a ton of cycles doing machine-learning may (in some cases) be more efficient than accessing memory and being wrong. The Cuckoo-Hash has two major benefits: Its basically checking 16-locations at once (AVX2 instructions + speculatively looking at two memory locations at the same time). Secondly, Cuckoo-Hashes are provably wrong at most two times. So two memory- accesses (which can be done "speculatively" by the processor) is the worst that could happen. Indeed: the latency numbers reported here are close to the practical limits of the x86 processor! A machine-learning algorithm can't do much better than that. ~~~ mateiz Yup, this is a great explanation. Cuckoo hashes actually do much better in terms of load if you use buckets with multiple items, as we did here. The classical one with one item per location can get "stuck" with unresolvable cycles between elements at 50% load, but when you have these buckets, there are many more ways to resolve collisions, which lets you greatly increase the load. 99% is extreme but definitely doable. Writing a fuller post on this is definitely a good idea -- we may do it in the future. ------ mcguire I missed the original research; what guarantees are made by the learned indices? Correctness? ~~~ eggie5 Here's some info about the original research they are referencing [http://www.eggie5.com/127-paper-review-the-case-for- learned-...](http://www.eggie5.com/127-paper-review-the-case-for-learned- index-structures)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Functional Programming Fundamentals Lectures - Anon84 http://codebetter.com/blogs/matthew.podwysocki/archive/2009/10/09/functional-programming-fundamentals-lectures.aspx ====== apr Oh crap, the vids require Silverlight. ~~~ cvg Just below the player are some other options. MP4 is an alternative. ~~~ apr Thank you, I overlooked that.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
2 years of digital transformation in 2 months - yarapavan https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/04/30/2-years-digital-transformation-2-months/ ====== yarapavan From Satya Nadella: We delivered double-digit top line and bottom line growth once again this quarter, driven by the strength of our commercial cloud. As COVID-19 impacts every aspect of our work and life, we have seen two years' worth of digital transformation in two months. From remote teamwork and learning, to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security, we are working alongside customers every day to help them stay open for business in a world of remote everything. There is both immediate surge demand, and systemic, structural changes across all of our solution areas that will define the way we live and work going forward. Our diverse portfolio, durable business models, and differentiated technology stack across the cloud and the edge position us well for what's ahead.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
You've Never Seen a Robot Drive System Like This Before - naish http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/youve-never-seen-a-drive-system-like-this-before ====== vermontdevil This is really cool. I do would like to know the possibilities such as using it for larger sized robots for cargo transport etc. ------ Ronkdar This seems very difficult to drive straight, but I'm highly impressed by the speed and small size.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Lama.io – Adblock Creative Manager - lgl https://lama.io/faq ====== lgl Hi hn, I've built this as a side project. It's still in early stage and yes, I know it's a controversial subject and these types of systems are often frowned upon here and in more technical corners of the web. This is basically just a simple tool to manage several creatives instead of set it and forget it "you're using adblock" type messages or other more complex ad-replacement or acceptable ads services that have been increasingly found across the web. It's mostly for hands-on publishers that are looking for new or better ways to engage their adblock traffic. I can answer any questions about the service or website. ~~~ Sunset How are you going to sidestep the first thing that will happen. That is your messages getting adblocked in the main lists themselves? ~~~ lgl Hi, not sure I understood what you meant by "messages" in this case but there are no predefined messages, customers can choose to show or write whatever they want. The system does use regular html classes to define zones and those could potentially get blocked on a list. The system allows customers to change those classes as needed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison - a5withtrrs https://darknetlive.com/post/dream-vendor-canna-bars-sentenced-to-prison/ ====== jasoneckert What I find the most interesting about this article is that someone was able to be identified using a picture of their fingerprints. Thus, any photos posted online could be scoured for identification information. And with computer vision technologies becoming more mature, it means that regular video footage of people could identify them the same way in seconds or less using a wide variety of different visual traits. The implications of this on individual privacy are immense. ~~~ genewitch There was some pytorch software called "enhance", i.e. ./enhance <image> [options] and you could take an image that someone took of their unpowered tv across the room and pull out a high resolution image of their face from the reflection in the matte-ish surface. I used it on reddit to convince people it was unsafe to post any images of that sort. It seemed to work for about 6 months. There's magic in image enhancement, but I don't know that ridges and valleys of a fingerprint are there, yet. I don't even know that "this specific person is scared that they leaked their face in a way that is recognizable to them" even scales to "never upload anything" \- it could be this sort of news is programming the population that computers can tease out identities with any and all leaked information, pictures, audio, etc. Heck, a decade and a half ago there were claims that governments could narrow a search for an audio file upload based on the deviation from 60hz on the power line noise - in an audio recording. So who knows? ~~~ absorber > Heck, a decade and a half ago there were claims that governments could > narrow a search for an audio file upload based on the deviation from 60hz on > the power line noise - in an audio recording. Wow. Any source for this? ~~~ RisingFusion I think it was referring to Electrical network frequency analysis, which is to find the time that the recording was made. It compares small changes in mains hum frequency to historic records of the changes. I am not sure how it is in the US, but the UK grid has a single frequency over the network so it wouldn't work for finding the location. ~~~ teruakohatu The propagation of waves is very fast, but wouldn't distance from multiple large sources or sinks fluctuate the frequency just slightly based on distance? ~~~ torified Distance doesn't change frequency, only velocity. Doppler effect. ------ varispeed It's incredible that so much tax payer money and human resources are devoted to defend pharmaceutical companies monopoly on drugs. By his inventory it sounds like his customers would likely be people with chronic conditions that have strong presence of pharmaceutical lobby to prevent legal sales of cannabis and probably cannot afford Xanax through legal means because the cost of getting medical help is extortionate. ~~~ grugagag That wouldn't be too far from truth. 75 percent of people started their addiction from prescription medication who then turn to the black market to maintain their habit. The big pharma is loosing a large profit. They heavily opposed marijuana legalization, their role in the war on drugs is quite clear to me. ------ modin > The pictures included closeup pictures of Porras’ hand with visible > fingerprint ridges. I thought via the title that they fingerprinted the lens used to take the photograph, not that there was literal pictures of fingers. ~~~ heelix I strongly suspected that is what they did too. Got to wonder if they used the EXIF data to find him - linking photos of the pot and other social media/etc public shots, then used the fingerprints as parallel construction. ~~~ ficklepickle Imgur strips exif by default. I agree it sounds like parallel construction. The article mentions they compared his finger prints to those from the picture. How did they know to check against his prints? Sounds like they already knew who it was, by means that aren't admissible as evidence. ~~~ Jabbles Imgur certainly doesn't display EXIF by default, but are you sure it doesn't retain it such that it could be obtained by a warrant? ~~~ Scoundreller If I were them, I wouldn’t save it just to reduce my warrant workload. Kinda like 4chan and DMCAs: there’s no point since it’s usually deleted by the time it’s submitted anyway. ~~~ mianas 4chan is a bit special when it comes to government orders. For example, they have a (heavily limited) de-facto warrant canary. Since damn near all of them specify that no data should be deleted for a period of time, posting is disabled on a board, or the entire site so nothing gets deleted. They also disallow posting of files with embedded data (based on some heuristic) and either strip exif data, or forbid posting images containing it. (the exif stripping thing comes from people accidentally doxing themselves by posting an image from facebook a few years back) ------ mschwaig 'So we have these fingerprints, and we think they belong to this guy we already have prints on file for. Can you give us a yes/no answer if they match up?' seems like a pretty low bar for evidence. Seems like the kind of thing that could heavily skew towards telling you what you want to hear. Maybe someone else knows if it actually works like that, the writeup made it sound like that to me. I'm just some guy who saw a tv documentatary at some point about how forensic techniques that worked like that got called into question when conflicting DNA evidence started turning up. ~~~ zapdrive My understanding from skimming the article is, they only identified the suspect from fingerprints. After identification they did surveillance and gathered additional evidence. ~~~ mschwaig > The FDL [HSI Forensic Document Laboratory] returned the request after > conducting a comparative analysis of the friction ridge detail of the > fingerprints from the Imgur album and the fingerprint samples taken after > police had arrested Porras for a different crime. The fingerprints in the > Imgur album matched the prints they already had on file for Porras. It doesn't sound like that to me, but maybe I am misunderstanding what a comparative analysis would entail. ~~~ zapdrive It doesn't say they arrested him immediately after the match. If you read the article they say they placed multiple orders and would surveill him after every order. That's how they gathered evidence. ~~~ mschwaig I did read the article. I am interested in how forensic evicende like that is gathered in general and how reliable it is in general. It's debatable what role that fingerprint played in that investigation, but I did not want to call into question that particular outcome. For example my impression is that DNA evidence is very reliable while for example optically matching hairs or matching bite marks, which I think was done in the past in a similar 'does A match B setup' is fairly unreliable. It's interesting to me both from both the 'what bar does evidence have to meet to make sure there are no false convictions' side as well as the 'what are the privacy implications of posting pictures with fingerprints in them' side. ------ djinnandtonic I don't like to sound like I'm wearing tinfoil, but I'm not sure I believe this. We keep getting eyebrow-raising explanations for how computer criminals are caught; I always ask why bother? The American intelligence apparatus has compromised nearly all network traffic, from hardware backdoors on up. I assume the real way this person was detected and caught would be too embarrassing to admit, hence the fingerprints-from-a-photo cover. ~~~ justanotheranon Parallel Construction. it would be a national security catastrophe if it leaked that NSA was bulk decrypting all TLS/SSL traffic Internet-wide, by using a giant rainbow table of prime pair products for instant decryption without factoring, which was first proposed by Rabin back in 1997 at a NIST working group for establishing crypto standards. then NSA would lose the biggest SIGINT advantage since ENIGMA back in WW2. so instead, DEA is tasked with finding the dummies who post photos of their hands or bookshelves or who made n00b opsec mistakes like re-using handles or email accounts that connect to their real names. then DEA applies Parallel Construction to fabricate an investigative evidence chain to present to the Court. the Court never needs to know the truth. by the way, i personally do believe NSA is doing this, and all of Tor is as good as plain text to Ft Meade, because Rabin's idea really would scale with today's computing and storage capacities, and because that is exactly what i would do too. just what do you think Bluffdale is really for? ~~~ schoen > by the way, i personally do believe NSA is doing this, and all of Tor is as > good as plain text to Ft Meade, because Rabin's idea really would scale with > today's computing and storage capacities, and because that is exactly what i > would do too. I love to talk about how we can mitigate attacks on cryptography as much as the next person, but have you looked at what algorithms Tor uses? While they have a bunch of alarming legacy 1024-bit RSA and DH stuff, they also have Ed25519 identities and Curve25519 ECDH key exchange, plus running everything over TLS with various ciphersuites -- many of which are now ECDH. [https://github.com/torproject/torspec/blob/master/tor- spec.t...](https://github.com/torproject/torspec/blob/master/tor-spec.txt) The type of handshake and key exchange is chosen by the client, and I think the default has been to prefer the ntor method for a long time. ------ mabbo > Porras also admitted possessing a Model A uzi-style pistol; a MAK 90; and an > S&W .44 caliber revolver. Although all weapons in Porras’ possession were > legal firearms (the uzi-style pistol used post ban parts), a felony > conviction for possession with intent precluded firearm ownership. Can someone explain this part to me. Was he _previously_ convicted of a crime that precluded ownership? Or are the police able to take legal behaviour and change it to illegal behaviour later on? ~~~ ciarannolan Felons cannot own guns in the US. There's nothing complicated about it. ~~~ garrettgrimsley It's actually more complicated than that. In many states if you are convicted of a non-violent felony then at the end of your sentence your firearm rights are automatically restored. There are also the cases of pardons, expungements, and other restorations of civil rights. It varies by state, and while USC 922(g) outlaws firearm ownership possession by _any_ felon, in practice the Federal courts look at whether the person has had their civil rights restored in the state of the alleged offense. When it comes to Federal charges, the prospect of amelioration is grim. In the Federal scenario, there is no expungement or pathway to restore your civil rights, but a pardon is possible. [0] There's also a discussion to be had about your and the legal definition of a "gun." For example, antique firearms such as some black powder rifles are specifically excepted [1] from the Federal legislation, but it could vary on a state by state basis. [0] [https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource- manual...](https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource- manual-1435-post-conviction-restoration-civil-rights) [1] [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/921](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/921) ------ syspec > We know, thanks to documents from other Operation Dark Gold cases, that > Porras had used a money laundering service controlled by Homeland Security > Investigations Geeze ------ ddelt I’m reading a lot of comments here which tackle the thorny topic of decriminalization of drugs in the US that we have historically over- prosecuted. I happen to agree with this sentiment as well. But almost everyone here arguing for a middle ground agrees that things won’t change because all three branches of the US seem determined to keep a hard-line or zero tolerance policy on drugs, even when legalization and medical supervision, creation of new business and exploration of safer alternatives and research into benefits of said drugs are brought up as arguments and are summarily dismissed because “reasons”. What are some actual, practical steps we all can take towards making decriminalization a reality? ------ Scoundreller So uhhhh, who’s building a deep fake generator that’ll transpose someone else’s fingerprints on a photo containing another hand? ------ booleandilemma I wish more resources were spent on law enforcement at the local level, fighting _real_ crime. They could have more police patrolling the streets and subways, deterring assaults[0] and daylight shootings[1]. Does anyone really care that this drug dealer is locked up? Is anyone safer now? Do I have to worry any _less_ about getting mugged on the subway at night? Of course people are calling to defund the police, and if that happens I’ll have to be more worried. [0]: [https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny- homeless-m...](https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-homeless-man- arrested-women-shove-penn-station-video-20200919-mvusy4lbk5fm5iqzis5samcdae- story.html) [1]: [https://nypost.com/2020/09/08/three-injured-in-broad- dayligh...](https://nypost.com/2020/09/08/three-injured-in-broad-daylight-nyc- shooting/) ~~~ mleonhard The drug dealer was selling meth. Meth destroys people. And meth addiction leads to many robberies and burglaries. I think punishing this meth dealer is a net positive for society. ~~~ Sevrene Someone will just fill the void left by this vendor and no harm will be removed. It wont be a net positive at all. In the end, all there will be is another person ruined. I don't think it's right to punish a pub for all problems caused by alcohol intoxication, but I do think punishing a pub for serving alcohol negligently is okay. My understanding is one of the main reasons methamphetamines are so widely used and sold is because meth is cheap and easy to make compared to safer possible alternatives. That indicates to me that this seems like a market that needs regulation, not prohibition. I'm not saying meth should be legal, I'm saying the drug market can be regulated to reduce harm. If that regulation means disallowing certain substances that do cause excessive harm, that's a good thing too. ------ cnst I've always been conscious of fingerprints potentially showing up in the photos. _Just because you 're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't after you._ The same thing goes about keys -- it's amazing how people willingly share photos of their keys (with full signature and all) in full view. ~~~ EmilioMartinez Always wondered the same. More so, it baffles me that locksmiths use physical keys to copy new keys, propagating errors in the long run. ~~~ Dylan16807 They have the machines to cut keys to code spec but don't bother using them? ------ anewguy9000 this guy should not be in jail. if he lived a little further north he could grow cannabis in his back yard. its wrong and its immoral but i guess the old white dudes in capes playing judge grew up thinking cannabis makes you into a rapist ~~~ tartoran They charged him on multiple charges * illegal possession of firearms, distributed a few kilos of Xanax and also lots of marijuana over 2 years or so. If he sold pot only he'd probably get a suspended sentence as a first time offense. I think he got a bit greedy, had he stopped short at some point and went on a year long vacation around the world he would probably be still free now. ~~~ anewguy9000 as i understood it the firearms were legally owned but became illegal because of the traficking charges ~~~ tartoran Maybe you're right and I'm sure they 'overcharged' as much as they could, did take their time collecting a whole lot of evidence against him. But, he knew what he was doing. If he stopped at pot he probably would be on probation or something. ------ peter_d_sherman >"Vendors sent the money launderer a certain amount of Bitcoin and the money launderer mailed cash back to the vendor." My question: If Party A sends Party B Bitcoin, and Party B sends Party A money, and that transaction is considered "money laundering" \-- then let's suppose Party A sends Party B _gold_ (coins, bars, bullion, etc.), and Party B sends Party A _money_ \-- does that transaction also count as "money laundering"? ? ------ userbinator Legal or otherwise, I've seen plenty of sellers holding their products while photographing, so I wonder why it's done --- personally I think it looks a bit unprofessional to have a hand or other things showing. Putting it on a table or otherwise featureless surface would look far better to a prospective buyer. ~~~ renewiltord It gives the impression you didn't just stock photo it or reuse someone else's. ------ themark Things I learned: Use the spell checker. Randomly misspell different words. ~~~ SpelingBeeChamp Check out Anonymouth: [https://github.com/psal/anonymouth](https://github.com/psal/anonymouth) (How do you hyperlink text here?) ------ ourmandave There's useful links at the bottom of the page, like the Darknet Market's Noobs Bible. =) _Hello and welcome to the Darknetmarkets bible for buyers. The buyer's DNM bible aims to be a complete guide that covers all steps that users have to take in order to buy securely from darknetmarkets._ In case you're thinking about launching your criminal career or whatever. ~~~ non-entity In what world does purchasing from a DNM make you a career criminal? What if I buy a completely legal item? ~~~ unnouinceput None. Doubt you find legal items there though. Maybe you find legal items in some parts but illegal in others, like marijuana is now in US. Better have all papers prepared to prove you made the purchase in a legal state though. ~~~ bunfunton Good thing that the government has to prove our guilt instead of we having to prove our innocence. ------ antihero What a colossal waste of time. Prosecuting someone for selling online something that is illegal in a lot of states. Mindblowing how stupid the war on drugs is. ~~~ aristophenes I can partially understand that point of view for marijuana (though I think it’s important for a functional society to obey laws, and get them changed if they aren’t working instead of just breaking them based on personal preference). But the guy had been selling methamphetamine too, which is life destroying poison. Our government provides costly services for people who are incapable of taking care of themselves, and that drug creates a bigger burden on those programs. Unless you also advocate for the removal of social safety nets I don’t see how you can justify thinking that the government shouldn’t try to limit drug use. ~~~ bunfunton Meth isn’t life destroying poison sorry to inform you. I take 10mg for ADHD a day and it’s saved my life when all other alternatives have failed. I would argue the bad cases you’ve seen are from people with no self control. Why should the government be able to tell you what you can and cannot put into your own body? Better, let people do what they want as long as they don’t hurt anybody else and educate them. ~~~ jonquest I challenge to do a google image search for faces of meth and come back and say that again with a straight face. That stuff is a poison that destroys both mind and body. If you think self control is enough to keep that stuff from rotting your face, making your hair fall out and keep yourself from going crazy you are foolish. Comparing it to ADHD medications is plain and simple stupid. If you think meth is the drug you need to focus you already need professional help because there are lots of stimulants out there, even illegal, that have nowhere near the side effects and consequences of meth. ~~~ leadingthenet Stop it with the hyperbole, as you clearly have no clue what you’re talking about. Methamphetamine is routinely prescribed for the treatment ADHD (also obesity and narcolepsy, amongst other off-label uses), and is sold under the brand name of Desoxyn (in the US). Meth IS medication! On that note, maybe don’t believe everything you read about drugs online. ~~~ pitay I may need to clear up a misconception of mine, so here goes. Isn't it Dexamphetamine that is the routine treatment for ADHD? As far as I understood, methamphetamine has much stronger effects than dexamphetamine, also meth been prone to cause more adverse effects and have more neurotoxicity than the dex counterpart? Maybe I'm completely off base here. ~~~ Lazare Dextroamphetamine is a common first line treatment for ADHD, but methamphetamine is a second line treatment. A lot of the information about methamphetamine is, bluntly, propaganda. For example, there seems to be nothing about methamphetamine that is uniquely harmful to teeth, but "meth mouth" is a common trope. When taken orally at therapeutic doses it's not clear methamphetamine is any more harmful than dextroamphetamine, but it's certainly possibly it has more scope for abuse. It's certainly dangerous at high doses! Unfortunately it's hard to find hard data and not drug war propaganda. ~~~ pitay Thanks for the reply. Is second line treatment, what is heard from others may be derived from drug war propaganda, got it. This clears things up nicely. Thanks. ------ iseanstevens A friend described that many in the government/military of Nazi Germany (including Hitler) were using significant amounts of amphetamines. Which in part lead to the atrocities of humanity that occurred. I can’t speak to the truth of this, and have definitely seen the US War on Drugs as a way to treat people unfairly based on race etc. I would certainly believe something similar is going on with the Trump administration. It would at least make a bit of sense as to why so little sense is being made. Anyways I thought it was an interesting theory so figured I would relay it here. ~~~ lioeters Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler, Shaun Whiteside (Translator) [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29429893-blitzed](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29429893-blitzed)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Learn to read Korean in 15 minutes - Tomte http://ryanestradadotcom.tumblr.com/post/20461267965/learn-to-read-korean-in-15-minutes?resubmit=hn ====== quibit If you want to actually learn Korean, check out this site. [1] An American knowing no Korean moved to Korea and meticulously documented everything he learned, and this website was the result. It's an incredibly thorough study into Korean. [1] [http://www.howtostudykorean.com/](http://www.howtostudykorean.com/) ~~~ ilurk Anything similar for Japanese or Chinese? ~~~ jzelinskie Tae Kim's work is probably the equivalent for Japanese [0]. I think his "complete guide" is still a work in progress, but his grammar guide is pretty much the defacto free resource. [0]: [http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/](http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/) ~~~ Nadya I actually suggest imabi.net over Tae Kim depending on how you want to define "learning the language". Tae Kim is a great introductory guide to Japanese and is something I often hand to beginners. But for anyone who wants to _seriously_ study the language, imabi.net is on an entirely different level. [0] [http://imabi.net](http://imabi.net) ------ bane Yes, Korea (Hangul) really is about this easy to learn. It takes about a week of an hour a day to remember everything well enough to be able to sound out Korean words easily (and it's especially fun when you find English loan words). Depending where you live, you might not use it very often, but it's a neat skill to pick up. It also does that weird hack to your brain where you start looking at signs and instead of just seeing a picture of the sign, your brain almost starts involuntarily looking for things to read (almost like in some kind of unkillable background thread). Since it'll be a new writing system, your brain won't do it as quickly, but you'll never be able to look at ㄱ and not immediately have your brain turn that into a 'g/k' sound, but it'll happen kind of slowly compared to your native script and you can "feel" the thread working. ~~~ keerthiko Yes this! Like many Indians, I was raised bilingual on completely different scripts (Latin alphabet and Malayalam) and learned the Hindi (Sanskrit) script when I was really young too. I learned to read Hangul in the first 2-3 days of wandering the streets of Seoul aimlessly when I stayed there for a month, just trying to read every neon sign, advert and train/bus stop I came across. The thread works at slightly different paces for each of them because of how much I use each one, really feeling like it's all about cache hits and memory bus limitations. It's pretty interesting to meta-think about. ~~~ bane It's so weird because of how involuntary it is. I notice that on signs in languages I can sound out, my gaze will stick on the sign until I can "read" it, without me wanting it to happen. The first few days in a new country can be kind of exhausting simply because of this effect. ------ chernushka He did the same with Russian a while back. [http://ryanestradadotcom.tumblr.com/post/97607943779/learn-t...](http://ryanestradadotcom.tumblr.com/post/97607943779/learn- to-read-russian-in-15-minutes-i-did-this) ------ agumonkey Fastest decomplexification I ever felt. Before that Korean was like Chinese, and now it's as easy as Korean. ------ lfowles Free PDF for learning Korean: [http://www.koreanfromzero.com/](http://www.koreanfromzero.com/) I've heard a lot of good things for the author's other series Japanese From Zero. ------ matthewrudy This is a great start. But there is more to it, if you wanna learn. Eg. Double final consonants 닭, and all the "Consonant assimilation" stuff. The Korean Wiki Project has a more indepth look. [http://www.koreanwikiproject.com/wiki/Learn_hangeul](http://www.koreanwikiproject.com/wiki/Learn_hangeul) ------ panglott The Korean script is fantastic, yes, one of the few designed to effectively promote popular literacy. But you're only going to learn to read Korean in 15 minutes if you already speak Korean ;) Otherwise, you'll have to learn to speak Korean (at least, learn the phonology of Korean) as you learn to read it, which will take more than 15 minutes. ~~~ digitalsushi This was still a fantastic little primer - in the tech field, I think we all know a few people that know katakana and hiragana well enough to impress their friends by mentally sounding out an english cognate - "hey friends, this is a pharmacy up here" \- the first 1% looks like magic to the rest of us. ~~~ Glide Well... Taking Japanese in high school will do that to you. Hiragana and katakana are the first things you go over and it took a good part of the first year. Korean is simpler by far. Just a couple weekends of looking at the rules and what they do. My problem is that I can't actually form the sounds in my head fast enough in order to know what the words mean. ------ jdeisenberg Excellent work condensing the alphabet into a single fun-to-read comic. Shameless self-promotion: [http://langintro.com/kintro](http://langintro.com/kintro) ; much slower paced, with exercises and other stuff. ------ melling I've got a site that has some basic Spanish grammar. [http://thespanishsite.com/spanish/grammar](http://thespanishsite.com/spanish/grammar) [http://thespanishsite.com](http://thespanishsite.com) I'd like to repurpose it to cover the basics for several languages. With all the localization, it's handy to have a quick reference. ------ ddoolin Plug: If you're learning Korean and have questions or just want to chat with other people in Korean and are familiar with IRC, #korean and #learnkorean on snoonet (irc.snoonet.org) always have people around who are also learning and/or willing to help others. ------ titanix2 Too bad Korean is not written in mixed script (hanja + hangul) anymore. It is incredibly easy to understand texts and to focus on learning grammar rules once you have a signifiant Chinese character knowledge. ~~~ ddoolin Not regularly but it is still mixed, particularly in literature. People still learn Hanja for benefit, albeit relatively minor. ~~~ NoMoreNicksLeft I thought those were only used for street/place names, and sometimes business cards for family names? ------ 1arity Awesome. My name in Korean ( sort of ) [http://imgur.com/BelRtBC](http://imgur.com/BelRtBC) Ryan is a genius. This really works! ~~~ defen Should be 오 at the end there ~~~ 1arity Nice! Cool. :) ------ fernando_moon I've developed a beloved app to learn Korean [http://get.egg-convo.com](http://get.egg-convo.com) ------ thatusertwo I lived in Korea for awhile, I still seem to remember the sounds of the letters, this was a good refresher. ------ nthState This is really great! Thanks for posting	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Airbnb and house-sharing firms reduced New York housing stock by 10% – study - pyrophane https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/27/airbnb-new-york-city-housing-stock-reduction-study ====== pyrophane Trying to find the original study. It was paid for by housing advocacy groups who generally oppose Airbnb, so I want to understand their methodology since they certainly have a bias. Edit: This looks like it: [http://www.hcc- nyc.org/documents/ShortchangingNYC2016FINALpr...](http://www.hcc- nyc.org/documents/ShortchangingNYC2016FINALprotected_000.pdf) Here's their underlying logic: "If the 8,058 units defined as Impact Listings were made available on the rental market, the number of vacant rental units citywide would increase by 10 percent and the vacancy rate would rise to 4.0 percent" So, in other words, if all of the full-time "entire apartment" listings were to hit the market as vacant units immediately, the vacancy rate would increase by 10%. This is not the same thing as Airbnb reducing housing stock by 10%. This is actually probably more interesting: "53 percent of all Airbnb listings are located in one of the following five “macro-neighborhoods” - East Village/Lower East Side (LES), Chelsea/Hell’s Kitchen, West Village/Greenwich Village/SoHo, Williamsburg/Greenpoint/Bushwick, and Bedford Stuyvesant/Crown Heights." Something I think a lot of people don't appreciate about Airbnb's potential impact on the housing market is that a lot of the listings are concentrated in a few areas, so while Airbnb might not impact the housing market that much overall for a particular city, it can have a pretty significant impact on individual neighborhoods. ~~~ kenferry Thanks for tracking that down. I had the same questions. I would be very interested to see followup interviews with a representative sample to investigate the percentage of units that would actually be on the market if not for airbnb. ~~~ themartorana I'm genuinely conflicted about this. On the one hand, I'm all for more housing. It can drive prices down (although not a lot I've seen has ever driven prices down in Manhattan) but at the same time, were I a property owner, I'd want to be able to do with that property as I wish. They're obviously income properties, so why are we mad about them making income in this way? I guess I'm asking whether or not income properties either a) are already regulated as such (and laws are being flaunted) or b) the desire here is to create laws that tightly scope what a property owner can do with their non- primary residentially-zoned property? I can't seem to form an opinion yet, so I'm mostly asking for yours, I guess. I suppose I need a bit more education on the debate. Edit: this isn't where I meant to put this reply. But it's here now, so, if it's slightly out-of-thread, apologies. Edit 2: if it's easier, can someone point me to a cogent and not-lopsided explanation of the debate? ~~~ mancerayder I'm a property owner in one of the identified areas, for what it's worth, and I can give a summarized piece of the debate and some additional information not everyone knows. One pro-AirBnB argument has to do with property rights, and doesn't have to be rehashed as you implied it ('doing as you wish'). Another has to do with the idea that housing is so expensive, that a renter can help pay his/her high rent by supplementing the income. <\- this latter argument is obviously not part of the 'landlords are renting out entire apartment' complaint. One anti-AirBnB argument has to do with some of the target areas being gentrifying neighborhoods (Bushwick, Bed Stuy, others; we're not talking about Tribeca here). In these, further increasing the scarcity of housing by taking the apartments out of the long-term rental market increases rent and displaces long-time, mostly poorer residents. This argument is given more by progressives. Another anti-AirBnB argument, this time by the hotel lobby, is that hotels have to pay different taxes, and abide by different standards of code and safety [ similar to the anti-Uber arguments, I guess ] and that it's not fair. In 2010 a law was passed which made it illegal to rent the entire apartment for less than 30 days. So if you're a renter, for example, you can rent out a room. One item of note is that in the State of New York, occupying a unit for 30 days or more grants one to certain rights as a tenant, meaning the landlord has significant hurdles in pursuing an eviction. I believe this set of laws [ edit: <30 days, not the tenants rights], which I believe went into effect in 2011, is referred to as the illegal hotel law. One often overlooked fact is that the law here excludes 2 and 3 family homes from the illegal hotel law. The punchline I'll add is that, in the gentrifying areas I mentioned above, a large piece of the housing stock is 2 and 3 family (especially 3 family) homes. ~~~ eternalban I would question the assertion that Bushwick's (and BK's in general) gentrification is Airbnb driven. Manhattan's rental picture started getting unreasonable around turn of the century. Williamsburg, for example, was pretty much an urban wasteland around 1997 but was already a 'beach-head' of adventerous/artist tribe of Manhattan exiles. Regardless, the displacement of poor people from these areas is self evident. What I find objectionable in terms of Airbnb is the corrosive effect that the transitional flux has on cities and neighborhoods. Manhattan is now basically worlds largest open air shopping center -- yes a bit shinier than before but not the Gotham of yore (which is sorely missed). ~~~ themartorana Thanks, guys! ------ vkou The situation is even worse in Vancouver. [1][2] This is a city with Manhattan rents, paid for by Cincinnati salaries... Amid a desparate shortage of housing. [1] [http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/british- columbia/vancouve...](http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/british- columbia/vancouver-airbnb-research-1.3621539) [2] [https://affordablevancouver.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/airb...](https://affordablevancouver.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/airbnb_and_affordability- marjoribanks2.pdf) ~~~ nacho2sweet I have ratted out two places in my South Granville apartment building that were permanent AirBNB's. My place is good value, and well run, and I believe someone should have the chance to live in it. ~~~ vkou Did anything happen to the owners? Strata fines? Citations by the city? ~~~ nacho2sweet My whole apartment is owned by a single company. I think they kicked them out. We are allowed to sublease for 6 months of the year, but you have to have the person sign a liability contract with the owning company, and they have to stay minimum 30 days. TBH I am going on vacation for 3 weeks and I want to AirBNB my place out, but I think that is the proper way to use the service. The market here doesn't support the cash flow to buy and rent condos unless you have a lot of cash, because the wages don't match what one could afford. That Rich Dad Poor Dad shit doesn't work. So someone buying a condo can get like $1600/month, but their mortgage, maintenance, and property taxes are going to be like $3000/month. However I think a case could be made for buying and AirBNB'ing if you are good at it. My gf is a strata lawyer, and I have heard horror stories of people owning 10+ condos in a single building and AirBNB'ing them all out.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Grain of Salt - dwaxe https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/grain-of-salt ====== franciscop Some of Edward Niedermayer recently written article titles in bloomberg [1]: \- Worker Discontent Makes Tesla a Union Target \- Tesla Needs More Than Elon Musk \- Tesla Will Get Trampled by the Mass Market \- Tesla's Radical Update Is Just More of the Same \- Tesla Has to Start Acting Like a Car Company \- Tesla Stock Shifts Into 'Insane Mode' [negative] \- The Empire Strikes Back at Tesla \- Why Tesla Has a Target on Its Back \- ... And the original cited in teslamotors.com: [http://dailykanban.com/2016/06/tesla-suspension-breakage- not...](http://dailykanban.com/2016/06/tesla-suspension-breakage-not-crime- coverup/) It seems that yes, we should take a grain of salt and a lot more. There's definitely something fishy going on here. [1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/ARwBOWvU7QI/edwar...](http://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/ARwBOWvU7QI/edward- niedermeyer) ~~~ bedhead Thank you for posting. Reminds me of the NYT article that bashed Amazon and Bezos a while back. Didn't take much digging to conclude the author/organization has a preconceived bias against the subject. ~~~ fluxquanta >Didn't take much digging to conclude the author/organization has a preconceived bias against the subject. Doesn't every journalist when reporting on any newsworthy item? Everybody has their biases, and they'll naturally come out in reporting. There is no "fair and balanced", it's just a matter of what extent these biases are hidden in the work. I think the onus is on us, the consumers of this media, to take every piece as only part of the whole truth, and make up our own minds about the subject. ~~~ jontas You are surely correct, however, I think there is a difference between a reporter recognizing their own biases (to the extent they are able) and striving to write objective, fair pieces that are properly sourced, fact checked, and give both sides a fair hearing. It is impossible to completely escape one's own unconscious biases but this particular example is a blog post written by someone in an obvious attempt to put forward a personal (or business) agenda. ~~~ true_religion If you are a reporter who has identified a bad company, how are you supposed to investigate them publicly without writing articles about how 'bad' they are? Writing a string or articles about the same topic, shouldn't instantly mean you get extra scrutiny. That scrutiny should be on everyone, since sometimes the most biased are those who care the least to write and have done the least groundwork. ------ djaychela OK, not as tech as many on here, but I've spent the last 25 years as an amateur mechanic, and spent 10 preparing and driving my own rally car, right up to World Rally Championship level, as well as having owned more cars than most people have had hot dinners, and fixed even more than that (sadly!) The balljoint in question has failed because the rubber boot on it has failed, allowing water/dirt in, and it's rusted out from there. This is nothing specific to Tesla, it can happen on any car - I've seen it on quite a few FWD cars, but never to this degree (total failure) - they will go on for a LONG time with play in them, and take a LOT of abuse before failing. To have failed in this manner, it would have needed to go un-noticed for some considerable time - I've had ones which have had a year of abuse in extreme circumstances and still been nowhere near as bad as this, so I think you have to ask about the servicing that had been done on this car - whether or not it had been inspected. In addition, this would have had significant play in it for some time, leading to noise which would be noticeable to most drivers when on the road, and easily noticed during any kind of worthwhile inspection (such as the MOT in the UK) - not sure if the state in question has a mandatory inspection? Yes, being on a dirt road could have exacerbated the problem, but it's not something that a "normal" car can't take - you'd be amazed the amount of physical abuse a mechanically-standard car can take on rough gravel roads at speed. Components such as this are usually sourced from sub-contractors, who produce them by the thousands/millions without issue, does anyone know if Tesla makes these themselves? Seems unlikely to me. As has been said elsewhere here, if this had happened on a Ford Focus, no-one would give a monkey's, it's only because it's a Tesla and this guy has an axe to grind. ~~~ Unklejoe [In addition, this would have had significant play in it for some time, leading to noise which would be noticeable to most drivers when on the road, and easily noticed during any kind of worthwhile inspection (such as the MOT in the UK) - not sure if the state in question has a mandatory inspection?] True. I've had to replace a few lower control arms on various cars due to loose ball joints. In all of the cases, the car made terrible sounds during normal driving long before the ball joint was actually loose enough to pop out. It was always very evident that something in the wheel was loose. Of course, anything can happen... [Components such as this are usually sourced from sub-contractors, who produce them by the thousands/millions without issue, does anyone know if Tesla makes these themselves? Seems unlikely to me.] I agree. I doubt that Tesla is making their own ball joints. It seems like to much NRE considering there are tons of off-the-shelf options available. ------ hbhakhra "Recently, a Model S was in a very high speed accident in Germany that caused it to fly 82 feet through the air, an event that would likely be fatal in vehicles not designed to the level of safety of a Tesla. All five occupants were able to exit the vehicle under their own power and had no life- threatening injuries." That is a pretty impressive feat for a car. Also, the voluntary recalls are an interesting case because to me they did something positive in doing a recall before any injury happened. When the news of the recall broke though, people were complaining about the recalls. Part of the problem is that any announcement by Tesla makes the news round while a similar recall by Toyota or anther company, that would affect many more people, wouldn't get a tenth of the attention. ~~~ PinguTS Sorry, but this part of the blog article is completely PR BS. This car was speeding but not "very high speed". The car crashed into a field. This is flat. Every other comparable car like Mercedes E class, Audi A6, Volvo S60, … would have provided the same level of safety. Here the original reporting with images: [http://www.tz.de/muenchen/region/schwerer-unfall- icking-18-j...](http://www.tz.de/muenchen/region/schwerer-unfall- icking-18-jaehrige-rast-tesla-acker-6373238.html) ~~~ Mchl What exactly is the difference between 'speeding' and 'very high speed'? ~~~ PinguTS Speeding = you are to fast according to the allowed speed High speed = anything above 130 km/h (about 80 mph; because that is the recommend speed on an Autobahn) Very high speed = anything above 250 km/h (about 155 mph; because that is where normally the limiter kicks in) Just, yesterday morning I drove my self at about 200 km/h (124 mph) because I was in hurry, because I had some unexpected road-construction work before. This was an 18 year old girl, who just had her driving license (18 is the minimum legal age for driving here in Germany; 17 with governed driving by an adult) Here an comparable accident who lifted for 40m (131ft) and crashed in a field with some rollover and it does not look that different from that Tesla accident: [http://www.swp.de/heidenheim/lokales/polizeibericht/Auto- lan...](http://www.swp.de/heidenheim/lokales/polizeibericht/Auto-landet-nach- Ueberholvorgang-im-Acker;art1180840,3824196) BTW: Are there any international news on how the safety cell of this BMW protected this 51 year old guy? ~~~ clamprecht How would you classify Formula 1 cars' speeds? (320 km/h or 200 mph) ~~~ MikeTLive plaid? ------ biokoda Crazy how Tesla as an entire company is scrutinized for car incidents that no one would even remotely care about if it was any other car manufacturer. If this guy had a range rover, or even some other electric car this would be a nonstory. ~~~ legulere It's the same as with Apple. If you put out so much marketing about how your products are perfect every little flaw will be hyped just as much as you hype the positive traits. ~~~ simonh Apple's actual marketing budget is famously modest compared to their competitors. I believe their spending has increased in the last couple of years though. [http://www.cultofmac.com/252918/apples-advertising-budget- is...](http://www.cultofmac.com/252918/apples-advertising-budget-is-tiny- compared-to-microsoft-samsungs/) ~~~ georgespencer Their marketing budget is $2bn. About 0.85% of revenue. ~~~ simonh And people have been saying exactly the same things about Apple back when their marketing budget was a tenth of that. The amount of marketing Apple puts out just isn't relevant to this issue. ------ voiper1 Hmm. [http://cdn.dailykanban.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/06/TeslaG...](http://cdn.dailykanban.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/06/TeslaGoodwill.jpg) (via [https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/06/09/2122208/tesla- suspen...](https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/06/09/2122208/tesla-suspension- breakage-its-not-the-crime-its-the-coverup)) On it's surface, that definitely looks like a full NDA: "don't speak of this" (IANAL) However, I can see Tesla's interpretation/spin: "It just means: we aren't admitting liability, don't sue us for this, and don't say we paid for part of the repairs" \-- which doesn't include "don't report a safety issue". Still, it seems rather strongly worded for that... ~~~ emn13 That agreement is completely unreasonable. "In accepting the Goodwill, you hereby release and discharge Tesla and related persons or entities from any and all claims or damages arising out of or in any way connected with any claims or incidents leading or related to our provision of the Goodwill." (etc, with similar language concerning talking about incidents.) in other words: we'll fix your car for you, but only if you keep quiet about a broadly and unclearly defined set of events, oh, and only if you agree not to hold us accountable for any wrongdoing on our part that's in any way "related or leading to" this agreement. That's absurd, and shameful, especially the excessively broad scope of the incidents and the fact that even actual wrongdoing by Tesla is protected. ~~~ tigershark In other words: you should read more carefully whatever you quote given that the meaning is pretty clear. There is nothing in your quote about keeping quiet and, most importantly, if you don't want to accept the _free_ repair you can still _pay_. It's really incredible how people pretend to have everything for free, and even when they can actually have it for free they manage to find a reason to complain. I have never __ever __seen any other car manufacturer paying for the suspensions repairs on a out-of-warranty 100k car. ~~~ trhway > have never ever seen any other car manufacturer paying for the suspensions > repairs on a out-of-warranty 100k car. It happens a lot. You could have just Googled. Manufacturer would pay for the repair, warranty or no warranty, if there was a defect. For example almost all of those 690000 cars were out-of-warranty at the time of the recall: [http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/toyota- recalls-690-000...](http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/toyota- recalls-690-000-vehicles-suspension-glitch-n214121) Tesla using NDA to prevent such situation is so childish. I hope Musk would fire that a-hole who came up with the idea (i really hope it wasn't Musk itself). Simple Google search brings this by the way, so there are definitely issues: [https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/model-s-pulls- le...](https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/model-s-pulls-left-please- read) What important here is that it is not the issues itself that are main risk to the company - after all it is a young car company - it is how the company reacts to them, and such rotten actions like NDA is a really bad style which would cost a lot in the long run. ` ~~~ tigershark Your example is completely unrelated. This was not a recognised defect. If you really think that every car manufacturer does it then it should be trivial for you to find some source where a single car was repaired for free after 100k km for something that was not a recognised defect. You have plenty of time to prove your thesis. ~~~ nl _repaired for free after 100k km for something that was not a recognised defect_ Not entirely sure what your definition of "not a recognised defect" is if the Tesla fixes aren't one. Nevertheless, many manufactures do similar things: _Chrysler minivan owners may notice that the front wheel bearings on models from 2008 to 2010 are subject to premature wear, so dealers will replace them for free during a vehicle’s first five years or 90,000 miles._ _Honda, however, and its upscale Acura division stand out with a half-dozen or more. Because CR’s survey data show that Honda and Acura vehicles, in general, are among the most reliable on the road, the company’s high number of service campaigns suggests it’s been unusually generous to customers_ [http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/11/get- your...](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/11/get-your-car- fixed-for-almost-free/index.htm) ------ NeutronBoy > With respect to the car that is discussed in the blog post that led to > yesterday’s news (more on the blog post below), the suspension ball joint > experienced very abnormal rust. We haven’t seen this on any other car, > suggesting a very unusual use case. The car had over 70,000 miles on it and > its owner lives down such a long dirt road that it required two tow trucks > to retrieve the car. (One to get the car to the highway and one to get it > from the highway to the service center.) When we got the car, it was caked > in dirt. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in this post, but a dirty car has nothing to do with a rusty ball joint. Dirt doesn't cause rust. It means, as they note, the owner lives on a dirt road. The two tow-trucks line is such a red-herring - nothing to do with the issue at hand. ~~~ throwaway2048 quite right, i live in a rural area and drive extensively on dirt roads every day and have for decades across maybe a dozen+ vehicles, i have never had a ball joint failure, nor have i heard of one. ~~~ saulrh I bet that you chose all of your dozen-plus vehicles knowing that you'd be driving extensively on dirt roads every day for the life of the car. I also bet that if you tried it with a $70k luxury sedan it'd have a _major_ mechanical fault within a year traceable directly to it not being an off-road vehicle. ~~~ throwaway2048 dirt road is not "off road", ive owned minvans, and compact cars that have had no issues with suspension. ~~~ yetihehe And I've seen broken suspension in 4x4 car driven for 3 years on 2km of dirt road, then 20km normal paved roads. One sample is not enough. ------ schneidmaster Since I've seen this mentioned a few times in the comments, it's worth noting: Tesla did not expose the identity of the customer who had the suspension problem. Edward Niedermayer is a blogger who uncovered a post on a car forum[1] and then made hay out of it[2] causing some national media to report about it. Tesla was merely commenting that this blogger has a pretty clear anti-Tesla bias in his other writing. If anyone's responsible for exposing the customer to scrutiny, it's Niedermayer (who linked to the semi-anonymous forum post and turned it into a media story). 1: [https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/suspension- problem-o...](https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/suspension-problem-on- model-s.69204/) 2: [http://dailykanban.com/2016/06/tesla-suspension-breakage- not...](http://dailykanban.com/2016/06/tesla-suspension-breakage-not-crime- coverup/) ------ OliverJones I have a first-generation Honda Insight. It's sixteen years old and still going. At about 110K miles, the power pack failed, someplace in the Central Valley of California. Honda (I guess some zone office) had it towed 50 miles to the nearest dealership, which happened to be in Bakersfield. They then replaced the power pack without charging me for it. Now, I knew I was an early adopter. I knew this could happen. I was prepared to pay for it. And Honda decided to treat me like an early adopter. (They sent the old power pack back to Japan; I suppose they wanted to inspect it.) It never occurred to me to slag them in the media, or try to get a class action suit going, or some such foolishness. I was stuck in "the desert" for a few hours. But it might have made a good story. The media love stories about design defects in cars, and the big car companies' coverups play right into those stories. If it bleeds it leads. These EVs don't need oil changes. So the temptation may be to treat them like Soviet tanks and never maintain them. That seems a bad idea. They still have rubber seals on ball joints. They still have pads on the disc brakes. All that stuff is expendable, and needs to be looked at. Tesla is right to debunk this "big story." One guy who could have been using a 20-year-old jalopy pickup truck experienced a typical failure and turned it into his fifteen minutes of fame. ~~~ knorker > They still have rubber seals on ball joints. Do they? I seem to remember Musk saying they motor brake (picking up the power to charge the batteries) to brake. Maybe secondary brakes. ~~~ michael_h Those two things are unrelated. The ball joint lets you position the wheels (ie steer). I would be monumentally shocked if Tesla didn't put rubber seals on the ball joints. ~~~ gervase You can judge for yourself[1] whether the joints are sealed with rubber or not; it appears to me that they are. [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgdKZMlzQog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgdKZMlzQog) ------ usaphp Looking at all the blog posts that blogger Edward Niedermeyer wrote on his blog [1] I can't find a single positive thing he ever said about Tesla, it looks like he has some obligation to just write all the negativity he can come up with. [1] - [http://dailykanban.com/author/bjorn/](http://dailykanban.com/author/bjorn/) ------ steve19 NY Times says.. "The nation’s top auto safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said on Thursday that at least some Tesla customers who experienced suspension failures with Model S luxury cars were asked to sign confidentiality agreements about the issue." [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/business/tesla-model-s- nht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/business/tesla-model-s-nhtsa- suspension-failure.html) ~~~ Cyph0n They were asked to sign agreements _if_ they wanted a free repair from Tesla. If these customers didn't want to sign the agreement, they could have just paid for the repairs, so I don't see the issue here. The fact that they felt the need to tell NHTSA about it is proof that the agreement is a smart move on Tesla's part. ~~~ Vik1ng You are making it sound like that's just fine. Most people would sign something like that over spending thousands of dollars for a repair. Just imagine it is the battery and they choice is like "well, you can pay $20000 yourself or sing this paper and we take care of it". ~~~ Cyph0n Of course it's fine. They are doing you a favor, and in exchange would like you to sign an agreement. Remember, we're talking about out-of-warranty repairs here. But if you don't like the terms of the agreement, you have the choice to fix it on your own dime. Again, it's your problem if you can't afford to not take the offer. You should be thankful that all you need to do is sign some kind of NDA. What I find hilarious is that people sign the agreement to get the free repairs, then go ahead and complain about the agreement anyways. Well next time you need an expensive out-of-warranty repair, you're not getting a free pass :P ~~~ lafar6502 What other kind of favor you can expect from a monopolist? You're not going to have your car repaired anywhere else and they know it So you're getting a 'favor' only because you're doing even a greater favor to them ------ castratikron That ball joint is in miserable condition. How had the owner not noticed any problems? The ball joint would be visible to anyone who would have had to replace the tires, which should have happened before 70K miles. Something feels off about this story. And about the $3k repair bill: You will see that with any luxury car. Low number of cars means a smaller market for used parts, so what usually happens is only the manufacturer sells used parts. When they're the only supplier, they can charge whatever they want for the parts, and they often do. Maybe the owner did know about the problem, but chose not to replace it because it was too expensive. It doesn't sound like Tesla is at fault at all, but I suppose they feel the need to protect their brand. ------ ktRolster _" the blogger who fabricated this issue, which then caused negative and incorrect news to be written about Tesla by reputable institutions, is Edward Niedermayer. This is the same gentle soul who previously wrote a blog titled “Tesla Death Watch,” which starting on May 19, 2008 was counting the days until Tesla’s death. It has now been 2,944 days."_ ~~~ bionsuba I, too read the article. ------ abpavel Material science lifecycles are measured in decades. Just because you "haven't seen it before" does not mean it can't happen. It means you're not testing well enough, or that your data sample is not good enough. Noone is clairvoyant, and excuses such as "dirt" and "70000 miles" don't make you either. Why automatically attack the victim? Is it not remotely possible, that the fault lies with Tesla? ~~~ OliverJones Yes, the fault may lie with Tesla. They fixed it! I bet they also put the failed part on a test bench to figure out what happened. ------ jacquesm What strikes me about this whole saga is that if the dealership had simply recognized that those joints should not have failed this early in the vehicles life and fixed them it would have ended right there. Also I think that to have a 'will not sue' clause in the agreement to fix issues that are out of warranty is fine but the explicit consent not to talk about it is the kind of thing that will make your lawyer happy in the short term but that will damage your reputation in the longer one. Manufacturers should _never_ try to control the speech of their consumers, even if it benefits them in the short term. It will look like you're trying to cover something up, even when you don't. ------ awestroke 70,000 miles is an incredible distance. I am impressed the car held together that long. I see nothing wrong with the agreement. If I fix your car for free, I will make you agree to not thank me with a lawsuit. It's very simple, really. The customer gets a free repair, Tesla does not have to deal with lawsuit-wielding psychopaths. ~~~ seszett > 70,000 miles is an incredible distance Is it though? That's a third of my car's, and it has not had a suspension issue yet. Maybe it's different in the US, but as far as I know, at least French diesel cars are usually _expected_ to go at least to 70 000 miles (100 000 km) without a major issue. Gasoline engines are supposed to have a lower life expectancy, but I don't know what's a reasonable expectation for those. Now, it's still impressive that Tesla fixed this problem for free and that old a car (but they're under more scrutiny than other car makers, so they don't have much choice). But to me, considering 70 000 miles "an incredible distance" means having quite low expectations. What would be a non-incredible distance for you? ~~~ blaisio No, most people in the US would expect a decent car to last at least 150,000 miles. ~~~ jsjohnst Define "to last". Having one part needing to be replaced is not a total loss of the car. ------ yellowpug Big fan of Tesla and their achievement even thus far, but perplexed that they didn't take the high ground, and decided to call out the individual by name in a derogatory and spin-like manner whilst still hiding behind the anonymity of authorship attributed to "The Tesla Team". ~~~ makomk This is their standard M.O of late. Remember the misfeature where depending on the Summon Mode settings, accidentally double-tapping rather than single- tapping Park would cause the Model S to start driving forward a few seconds after leaving and how Tesla blamed the driver after this caused their car to crash into a truck, obfuscated how easy it was to activate, and made it sound like they'd deliberately activated it. ------ pedrocr This was perhaps not the best phrasing: "A few things need to be cleared up about the supposed safety of Model S suspensions:" Maybe it's just me but it seems to imply that Model S suspensions aren't safe. The whole post is written in a pretty aggressive tone as well. Not your run of the mill PR piece that's for sure. If what Tesla states about this case and about the blogger is true I can see why they would be angry about it though. ~~~ colinbartlett I always find Tesla's responses like this astonishing because they are clearly not written by a traditional PR team. In fact, they always read to me like they are written by Mr. Musk himself. Like the stereotypical CEO gone wild who writes from his heart and doesn't care what the guys in suits want him to say. Which makes the byline "The Tesla Team" always so strange to me, as I never quite believe they were written by a team. ~~~ schneidmaster I'd actually suspect it's a content team that ghostwrites for Elon. So they're probably intending to use his tone while also keeping relatively minor things like drafting PR off his plate. ------ miander So are the documents customers were allegedly asked to sign real, or fabricated? This post calls Mr. Niedermayer everything short of a liar, and yet they didn't answer the obvious question. I am still withholding judgement. ~~~ shawn-butler I agree, if it is true they executed even a soft-NDA in exchange for repairs (ala hush money), regulators rightly need to start looking alot closer at Tesla. Nothing illegal about it but it would definitely be a symptom. Fanboys will be fanboys, and haters will be haters but auto safety is not something to take lightly. We have had auto manufacturers and parts suppliers outright lie to regulators and the public about safety issues. It seems to be a recent pattern in the industry. ------ gnoway Looking at Mr. Niedermeyer's linkedin profile[0] and what he's doing/where he's worked was kind of enlightening as to his purpose and motivations. It probably works for him, though. I think 99+% of people, myself included, do not often look at who is writing what they read online. And I'd guess a majority percentage don't think about the fact that they are reading opinion vs. news. [0] [https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward- niedermeyer-35942261](https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-niedermeyer-35942261) ~~~ blatant Please explain how it was enlightening. I do not have a LinkedIn account, so I might not be able to see his while profile, but it looks fine to me. ~~~ gnoway I was going on the public profile as well. The profile notes that Mr. Niedermeyer works in the PR and Communications industry, and the bio blurb says he has written Op/Ed for several major publications. His listed work history is at TTAC, followed by Argot Industries and, mostly concurrently with Argot, an unnamed startup. He founded Argot, which is an automotive industry research/analysis/communication/consulting firm serving private clients. His startup promises to redefine strategic communications. I came away from this thinking Mr. Niedermeyer's work is more about influencing readers than informing them; that he is more PR flack than journalist. It's not always clear what a blog or blog writer is all about. A lot of sites I read are literally subject enthusiasts recounting personal experience, testing something and reporting on the result, etc. You can often just take that information at face value: this is what this does, this is how this works, I did this and/or this happened, etc. Based just on work history, I don't think Mr. Niedermeyer falls into this category at all, which is what I meant by enlightening. ~~~ blatant Thanks, I obviously didn't go deep enough into it. Yes, he is definitely not trustworthy. ------ sathishvj [http://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/ARwBOWvU7QI/edwar...](http://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/ARwBOWvU7QI/edward- niedermeyer) A list of articles by said Edward Niedermeyer. There definitely are a lot of anti-Tesla articles. ------ icu What a coup de grâce this blog post is! I have never read any corporate communication that pushed me to finish the whole thing, enhanced my perception of their brand, increased my desire to own one of their products and become a shareholder. ------ S_A_P Edward Niedermayer seems to be more concerned with click bait and controversy than really promoting discourse. The Truth About Cars has almost become readable since his departure, but its still a car tabloid at best. The dude is young and was given a pretty good sized platform, decided he didn't like Elon Musk and has now spent a significant percentage of his time to prove Tesla is a scam. I wouldn't call myself a die hard tesla fan, and Im not willing to spend the kind of money required to own a model s or x. But I would certainly call them compelling reasons to look into an electric car and they are easily 10-15 years ahead of the entrenched auto makers. I think that Tesla definitely has challenges ahead as well. The biggest is that they need to have cars fully baked and delivered on time. They need to start showing positive balance sheets regularly and they need to get the gigafactory done. I dont see them failing in the near term but their balance sheet and stock price need to reconcile eventually. As to the claims of reliability, Ive not seen anything that looks to be egregiously worse than cars in the target market. Ive yet to own a single car that has never had a defect or something break that required a warranty/out of warranty repair. I have had cars that were better than average (My current 2014 A4 has had one thing break in 55k miles) and some that were much worse (2009 Chevrolet silverado - everything electric broke, power rear glass, power windows, cruise control, fuel pump, power seats; 2001 VW GTI vr6 had the check engine light on every 6 weeks after I exceeded the ridiculously short 24000 mile warranty- I think they knew that was all that car was good for. I replaced the MAF twice, several other engine electrics as well) Whatever happens I have to give Tesla(not just Musk) a lot of credit for taking on a hard problem and creating a credible product. ------ Shivetya Great news. Still Tesla obviously expects this type of news to break and it will be an ever constant duty for them to refute or acknowledge issues. They must also understand that eventually some customers will want to work on their own cars, do preventive service and the like. They need to accommodate them as well. It is one thing to be serving almost exclusively early adopters, when the III comes along its going to be very interesting to see how they handle it. There will be a whole lot of people who simply don't know how to treat their cars well combined with many who are louder about issues simply because its a bigger investment to them ------ HeavyStorm "That said, sometimes Tesla does make genuine mistakes. We are not and have never claimed to be perfect. However, we strongly believe in trying to do the right thing and, when we fall short, taking immediate corrective action." This is what makes me feel confident about a company. Doesn't ring like false humbleness or a disclaimer, just something that you'd hear on a open conversation, where the other party is being sincere. And the worse thing about the whole situation is that damage is already done. Because people will believe anything they read. ------ rplnt This is what caused Tesla to dip so much yesterday? [https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATSLA](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATSLA) ~~~ LeonM I'm no expert on the subject, but unless something else happened at Tesla yesterday, this was indeed what caused the dip. About a year ago a youtube video popped up of a Tesla caught fire after it hit a metal object which pierced the battery pack. The stocks immediately plummeted, even though car fires are a common thing. Like the article states, it is likely the negative news story was fabricated to drive prices down, to gain profit for those selling short on tesla stocks. ------ heisenbit Ok, someone has an axe to grind and there is a blogger with an vendetta. But at the end there was this surprising update: Of greater concern: 37 of 40 suspension complaints to NHTSA were fraudulent, i.e. false location or vehicle identification numbers were used — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 10, 2016 If true this goes beyond telling blown up stories and may cross the threshold over to criminal behavior. ------ geomark Musk tweeted that "37 of 40 suspension complaints to NHTSA were fraudulent, i.e. false location or vehicle identification numbers were used"[1] [1] [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/741411531582115841](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/741411531582115841) ------ reubensutton I love how non-corporate the Tesla blog is: "It is deeply ironic that the only customer who apparently believes that this document prevents him from talking to NHTSA is also the same one who talked to NHTSA. If our agreement was meant to prevent that, it obviously wasn’t very good." ------ hartator I think it's worth noting that Tesla models seems to have issues with leaks and water infiltrations that can explain the rust. Anyway, if they beleive in stock manipulation, they should sue. ------ quocble Edward Neidermeyer is a douchebag. Look at all the articles he wrote. [http://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/ARwBOWvU7QI/edwar...](http://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/ARwBOWvU7QI/edward- niedermeyer) ------ post_break The real crime here is Tesla dangling repairs in front of owners only if they sign an NDA. ------ abpavel Very interesting Tesla's response: 1\. The car was not brand new and was actually driven, which is horrible. 2\. NHTSA did not investigate anything, they just asked us for the documents. 3\. We don't ask customers to sign anything, just demand that they sign "the agreement". 4\. We're the best. Customers are idiots. 5\. We'll even publicly expose the identity of the customer for you to hate. Here is his name, address, and SSN. Have fun! ~~~ dingo_bat Though all other points in your comment are quite juvenile, I think the first one is valid. >the suspension ball joint experienced very abnormal rust. We haven’t seen this on any other car, suggesting a very unusual use case. The car had over 70,000 miles on it and its owner lives down such a long dirt road that it required two tow trucks to retrieve the car. (One to get the car to the highway and one to get it from the highway to the service center.) When we got the car, it was caked in dirt. So what, Tesla? Cars are meant to be caked in dirt, sand, water, whatever elements they may encounter in the course of use by people who buy them. Most people drive on roads but some do go off-road and the cars should be able to handle it. Just the information provided here does not indicate misuse. It may still turn out that way, but not right now. It is more likely, IMO, that your engineers failed to consider some particular scenarios and the suspensions in your cars are a bit less rust-resistant than they should be. ~~~ unethical_ban If a car is frequently driven in abnormally severe conditions, perhaps by a bad driver, for many more miles than a routine service check would warrant, it may be useful to point out the irregularity of the circumstance. ------ antihero > we believe in putting our customers’ happiness ahead of our own bottom line. Fuck off with this shit. Your customers happiness IS what defines your bottom line in the long run. Can we stop with all this fucking corporate lies. I think we need a new trend. Blunt honesty. I'd trust a company far more if they just came out and said yes, we're here to make money and expand. If this means treating you well as a customer, we will do that, but at the end of the day, we make money for our shareholders and to fund other crap we want to do, and we provide you with a thing you are cool with paying for and give you good service in order to do that. ------ SFJulie A whole company going after one person. Whether they are right or wrong makes is irrelevant compared to the door to company bullying it opens: if a customer speaks against a company right or wrongfully the arsenal of legal retaliation a company has against him/her is disproportionate (libeling, doxing, mass PR/reputation, secrecy of affair new laws), resulting in de facto possibility for companies to control public space communication. Government are just giving the key of censorship to corporation. Private owned interests that do not represent the people. Tesla and its owner's arrogance are creepy. ~~~ mthoms I have a hard time imagining how you got all that from the article. Bullying? Legal Retaliation? Doxing? Companies "controlling public space communication"? Censorship? Not a single one of those things have come close to happening here. ~~~ SFJulie well, there is an asymmetry that is obvious to me: it is easier for the PR of tesla to make its voice overpower the voice of a consumer (promoted links, using the crowd of the company to upvote on HN or /., paying community manager to do damage control). And random rightful consumers may just remember that before daring to voice a concern. I call it bullying because like in school, it it the tallest and strongest against the isolated weak ones. And yes Tesla so far has used yet no legal means, but they have a better arsenal to harm a consumer than a consumer has to fight the company, especially if you have NO lawyer to support you. So, it is a new prototype of censorship by bullying resulting in people potentially shutting their mouth in fear of the harm for their cyber reputation or liability. Most people think we should fear government and need more secrecy, I say we should begin to fear corporations and need more transparency from these legal entities. I don't know if the consumer is a fraud (maybe he is) but I find the tesla PR pretty disproportionate. ~~~ mthoms We should certainly be watching for abuses of power like you describe, no question. But let's be careful not to _cry wolf_ lest we hurt our own cause. Let us save our outrage for when a real abuse has occurred. In this particular case, we now have both sides of the story and are able to form our own opinions based on the presented information. I think that's as close to an ideal situation as you're ever going to get. Were this to happen in the 1980's (or earlier) we wouldn't even be discussing it. What a great time to be alive :-) And yes, we should definitely remain vigilant against corporate/government abuse and control.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Shameless self promotion - edwardbenson Hey YC crowd,<p>I regularly troll YC news because I've got the entrepreneurial itch that so many share here. I've finally got something to stand up on a stump about, so I thought I'd write a post for once:<p>I just spent the past year working on a book called The Art of Rails [1] about web application design, coding style, and life cycle in Ruby on Rails. It is aimed for the intermediate Rails developer, but it is really useful for anyone interested in learning about modern thoughts in web application design and picking up a bit of Ruby along the way. The book really tries to appreciate the aesthetic of Ruby, Rails, and the development practices that have come to characterize modern web development.<p>That's all I have to say; I'll let the book say the rest!<p>[1] http://www.amazon.com/Art-Rails-Edward-Benson/dp/0470189487?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209652925&sr=8-1<p>(Edited to fix link) ====== ambition I took a glance at the table of contents, but more efficient to ask you directly: What does this book add or teach that isn't out there already? I hope that doesn't come across as snarky, I don't mean it to be. ~~~ edwardbenson @ambition - not a snarky question at all. The Rails book market is certainly growing crowded, so I think it is a very valid question. I hope this isn't a cheesy thing to say, but I really tried to make this the book I wish that I had to guide me after I had been experimenting with Rails for a while. This book is different for a few important reasons: First off, it speaks to issues of design rather than issues of API. That has important ramifications in the way the material is covered. Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic) and The Rails Way (Addison) are two fantastic books, and both are on the shelf next to my desk right now, but they both concentrate on exhaustive coverage of the Rails API. The Art of Rails is meant to be the kind of book you buy after owning one of those. It takes someone familiar with the /syntax/ of coding Rails and attempts to provide guidance and insight into the /style/ and design patterns of architecting an entire application with Rails. Second, it devotes three whole chapters (8, 9, and 10) to developing with the "Ruby style". So many web developers learn Ruby because of Rails that they eventually get to a point in their Rails development skills where they stand to really benefit by taking a few steps outside of Rails to learn how Ruby is a fundamentally different language than {PHP, Java, other OO/Procedural languages}. The Art of Rails really devotes a significant effort to talking about the new and Ruby-centric design patterns that constructs like blocks, Procs, method_missing, and instance_eval make possible, and then it provides examples of how you can use these design patterns in your Rails applications. Third, it backs up design patterns with useful, concise examples that you can actually execute, but otherwise stays clear from drowning you with example code that is better left to online format. Finally, I wrote it to read cover-to-cover, or at least a chapter at a time, whereas a lot of tech books these days are really centered around dictionary- style reference lookup. This book should be fun to read, have you nodding your head, and leave you with some useful abstractions, coding techniques, and new tricks when you're done. I'll stop here to prevent myself from leaving a run-on comment, but thanks for pushing back for more justification of the book ~~~ abstractbill "@edwardbenson" Hope you don't think _this_ is too snarky, but there's really no need for the at-signs on a site that has threaded comments ;-) ~~~ edwardbenson what can I say -- old habits die hard :) ------ utnick cool! congrats on the book would you mind writing about how you came about getting a book deal? were you active in the rails community? Did wrox approach you? did you write the book then approach publishers? etc etc congrats again ~~~ edwardbenson @utnick - Thanks! As to your questions: \- I've been a lurker in the Rails community ever since it was first released. So no, not active. I guess in that sense I'm doing things backwards. I hope to be active now that I'm not spending all my free time writing and am polishing up an acts_as_rdf plugin for ActiveRecord that I hope will help the semantic web-minded folks. \- I had co-authored another book for Wrox before, so had been emailing back and forth with them afterwards about how important Rails was. That email thread turned into a book proposal. I can only speak for my own book writing experience with Wiley/Wrox, but it is likely similar across the tech industry. You don't have to write the book up front or get an agent. Instead you submit a proposal to the publisher that is essentially your pitch: it includes a potential table of contents, your own market analysis, and why you think the book is a necessary addition to the existing set of published knowledge. If all goes well, the proposal turns into a contract, which is basically a 15 page way of saying that you split the copyright, get a royalty advance, and get X% of sales, where X seems to be around 10% for the big publishers. (Pragmatic gives 50%!!). Then you start the writing process, which took about a year both times for me, divided into ~8 months of writing, ~2 months of editing, and ~1.5 month of last-minute bug fixing and waiting for the book to print. All in all, it's been simultaneously the hardest and most rewarding thing I've done in my (admittedly short) professional life. If you're interested in more details about how to get your foot in the door, feel free to shoot me an email (edward [dot] benson [at] gmail [dot] com). ------ petercooper I know I'll probably be reviewing this book for Ruby Inside anyway, but.. tip for the future: Use better headlines for posts on HN ;-) ------ redorb I think 'shameless' would've included nothing about "promotion".. you have a little shame (and thats a good thing) ------ allenbrunson this might be a good post to ask my related question. i'm teaching myself ruby on rails. i'm learning ruby by reimplementing some of my c++ classes, and i'm learning rails by ... erm, haven't figured that one out yet. does anybody know of a project that i could apply myself to? i'm no good at doing tutorials, they bore me to tears. i learn by having a goal to accomplish. but i don't have any really strong ideas about sites i'd like to implement. so i'm willing to work on somebody else's site, for free, just for the experience. who knows what projects would have me? i just quit my job, i have a lot of money saved up, and i am serious as a heart attack about putting a lot of time and effort into this. ~~~ davidw I have a couple of open source Rails projects: <http://rubyforge.org/projects/dedawiki/> <http://rubyforge.org/projects/stufftodo/> Or if you want to work on pay sites, email me and we'll see what we can work out. ~~~ allenbrunson stufftodo looks interesting. i've got some personal stuff to attend to today, i'll try to get into it tomorrow. thanks for the links. ------ Anon84 So... Where's the pdf link? ~~~ edwardbenson Heh - I wish. As far as I know, Wiley (the publisher) doesn't have any plans to do an electronic version. If it is e-books you're looking for, you should really check out Geoffrey Grosenbach's Peep Code (peepcode.com). It has a collection of screen casts and PDF books that are really great, and cost $9 bucks each, which is far worth the information they contain. ------ simianstyle you handsome ruby-hacking devil you ------ sabat You should have added something about Rails to the subject line; would draw more attention. Nothing wrong with promoting this, and as an intermediate Rails programmer, this may be a book I can use. I'll take a look.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What should I be doing with our business' cash? - recyclelater Using a throwaway account, since we are semi well known. We are a mature, cash flow positive and bootstrapped company that is sitting on a business checking account with $280k in it. $100k is earmarked for 2015 taxes with a known due date. The rest is just general operating funds, about 3 months of run. What should we be doing with this cash that we can't necessarily spend, but don't want to have sit idle making no money for us? Are there any good options that beat the measly < 1% rate a CD would get? ====== recyclelater Additional details: I am mostly interested in hearing about financial instruments. We do have a murky path to fueling more growth with some strategic hires (a designer might go a long way), but my founder and I are trying to ramp up our team, and our ability to manage that team, in a controlled and smart fashion. Meaning there is obvious gains to be had with an additional web dev and a designer, but it feels like we are 6 months out from having the right culture/structure/management skills to use them effectively. We went from 5 to 8 full time employees this year, so adding more is a bit risky feeling. ------ cambel Keep it in cash & cash equivalents. Here is a great write-up on companies that looked at higher yield options: [http://www.feld.com/archives/2015/04/cash- policies-startups....](http://www.feld.com/archives/2015/04/cash-policies- startups.html) ------ mswen Tripling your rate of return from 1% to 3% is only an extra $3600 a year. I suspect the same amount of effort applied to your core business would yield a better return on your time and mental energy. ~~~ recyclelater That's my general take as well, but thought I'd float the question. There's also the consideration of $250k FDIC limits, though for the next 2-3 years that's as simple as maintaining a couple of different accounts.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Natural Language for Developers - Perados https://wit.ai/ ====== freen In it's current implementation, Wit.ai is broken. I built a bot recently on it and it was one of the worst experiences I've ever had integrating into a third party API. By a long shot. 1) chat logic is declared on their buggy web platform, which is inconsistent if you use multiple tabs, and doesn't actually indicate current system status. I had a number of "bugs" whereby my "story" was correct, but attempts to test it failed and only after I gave up and let it be for a few hours did it start to work. Meaning stories that were broken would all of a sudden be marked green after a few hours. Flows that failed would start to work given some unclear quantity of time. Oh yeah, and the opposite too: things that worked while futzing around with their interface would potentially break after a few hours. Delightful. 2) Documentation is horrific. It's not clear from any of their examples how to build anything other than a toy to turn on and off lights. If you can figure out how to build a "yes-or-no" entity that follows two different paths from their "recipes" I will buy you a drink ($10 USD and for the first five people). Just provide proof and a BTC address. 3) Flow control is next to impossible to implement, and when you do, it's totally opaque as to why the bot actually chose one flow over the other. 4) can't currently version your stories, which means you can develop new features without breaking production. 6) their support is horrendous. I have four outstanding questions, all unanswered after, oh, two weeks? The combination of all of the above means it's INCREDIBLY brittle, hard to reason about and extremely time consuming to develop against. If Facebook wants people to build bots for their messenger platform, open source wit.ai, and then pay people to develop it. This current state of affairs is untenable, morally questionable for all of the reasons outlined elsewhere in the thread (which have gone unsatisfactorily answered by apparent Facebook employees who should know), and fundamentally broken. ------ iheredia So, the site has this demo: [https://wit.ai/getting- started](https://wit.ai/getting-started) First two queries it shows are "Turn on the lights" and "Open the door please!" showing how nice the response is. If you combine them in "Turn on the lights and open the door please!" then the reponse ignores the door part completely: { "_text": "Turn on the lights and open the door please!", "confidence": 0.94, "intent": "lights", "entities": { "on_off": [ { "value": "on" } ] } } ~~~ dominotw "wash the car" , "feed the cat" results in "intent": "tv_onoff", seems wrong for such simple example. ~~~ cyberferret Similarly, when I input "make me a sandwich", I got "tv_onoff" as the intent. I am assuming however, that you can "train" the AI to suit your particular syntax depending on your app and bot's intended purposes. No doubt as more scenarios are fed into Wit's database, the parsing and intent selection will get better?!? ~~~ coroxout I typed "Translate how much does that cost to French", which was one of the examples it showed me on the front page (under "Intent Parser", exactly as shown, no quotes), and it still gave me tv_onoff. And "Turn on the TV please" is interpreted as "Turn the TV on to channel 'please'". And don't invite any physicists round, because "Set the temperature to 293 K in my bedroom" results in a "temperature" value of 293000. Still, the docs do indeed say you can train it (for sentiment and yes/no queries, at least, and hopefully other things too). ------ JustinBlock It seems like Facebook built this so they can feed the data from people using their api to train their eventual messenger AI/assistant. ~~~ jventura I don't know why you are being downvoted, but this reminds me that thing about facebook/google/etc. that if there is no product you are the product. It also came to my mind that they may be after your users data for their own models.. ~~~ majewsky They "may be"? As far as I heard, Google is pretty clear about using spoken language input for their voice recognition API for precisely this purpose. ------ anilshanbhag Correct me if I am wrong, but this approach essentially recognizes entities and matches it to a rule. This is naive ! There are better approaches which work based on parse tree structure or use a PCFG to encode rules ~~~ IshKebab Can you link to these better approaches? ~~~ majewsky PCFGs are about the first thing that I learned about in my Stastical Machine Translation course. It's like a regular context-free grammar (see Wikipedia if you're not familiar with these), but each production is assigned a probability, such that all productions from the same non-terminal sum up to probability 1. Then you can assign a probability to a parse tree by multiplying the probabilities of all productions that were used (the model assumes that all productions are mutually statistically independent). After a proper training run, you have your ambiguous grammar which, given an input sentence, will produce a set of parse trees, and assign a probability to each of them. You will typically choose the most probable one. The Wikipedia article on PCFG is surprisingly biased on RNA/protein analysis and does not go into much detail on how to train these PCFGs. But it's basically just an EM algorithm using inside-outside weights. See for example [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-78291-9_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-78291-9_7) ~~~ IshKebab This requires defining matching patterns, like a word-based regex though, right? Houndify uses that approach because it is easier to integrate with speech recognition, but it is very cumbersome to use and maintain and doesn't allow learning new utterances. I don't think Wit.ai works as simply as you believe - it isn't merely matching keywords. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find out exactly how it does work. Alexa, and Nuance Mix work the same way as Wit.ai. In my experience it is the superior approach. Viv is also one to watch but they haven't really said the NLU works yet. ------ dfischer I've been using Wit and enjoy it. The site could improve in terms of usability and performance. It definitely feels buggy at times. I'm not using their story framework though. Just their intents parser. Using wit entirely for the conversational layer doesn't seem like a good way to go about things. Overall I'm happy though. \- I wish I could download my data set at will. ~~~ francis88 We will be releasing an import/export in the next 2 weeks ~~~ dfischer Wonderful! Thanks! ------ rkwz I've used nlp-compromise.js for building an ecommerce shopping assistant bot. It's a bit rough around the edges but works most of the time. Demo: [http://nlp-compromise.github.io/website/](http://nlp- compromise.github.io/website/) Github: [https://github.com/nlp- compromise/nlp_compromise](https://github.com/nlp-compromise/nlp_compromise) ~~~ jbnicolai You seem to have commited a merge conflict in [https://npmcdn.com/nlp- syllables@0.0.4/builds/nlp-syllables....](https://npmcdn.com/nlp- syllables@0.0.4/builds/nlp-syllables.js) Library looks fantastic! ------ joshgel I have been using this with [https://jasperproject.github.io/](https://jasperproject.github.io/) on a raspberry pi to make an open source amazon echo type device. It works pretty well for controlling basic things around the house. ------ personjerry How does wit.ai make money? ~~~ deet Wit.ai has been around for a while now, and used to charge a monthly fee for some private models. It was then acquired by Facebook and made free for all uses. ~~~ personjerry I guess it would really improve peoples' trust in wit.ai (and thus the number of users) if they would declare their plans for monetization or policy otherwise for the future. Otherwise developers might not want to see their work become invalid when the platform suddenly costs money, or something. ~~~ stephenr It's owned by Facebook. What part of their monetisation plan (privacy whoring to sell ads) is not apparent to anyone who cares to look by now? ~~~ personjerry That would be rather short-sighted. Different platforms should be monetized differently, and Facebook has shown that it is willing to do this, such as with WhatsApp, which isn't filled with ads: [https://www.quora.com/How-does- WhatsApp-make-money-especiall...](https://www.quora.com/How-does-WhatsApp- make-money-especially-in-India) With wit.ai, I would be surprised if they decided "privacy whoring to sell ads" is the right way to go. ~~~ stephenr From that very page > Instead, the company said it will explore ways businesses can use WhatsApp > to connect with individuals, and will introduce new ways for users to > communicate with businesses and organisations that will pay the company to > target relevant communications with customers. >> __organisations that will pay the company to target relevant communications with customers __ So, their plan is more targeted advertising in the form of "offers" or "deals" etc. ~~~ personjerry Ah, I think you may have misunderstood. Below those lines, the examples given on the Quora link are: > A bank could use WhatsApp paid account to communicate with its customers > about recent transactions and necessary fraud warnings. > An airline could use WhatsApp paid account to contact its passengers about a > delayed schedule or cancelled flight. I would argue that these do not seem like ads. ~~~ stephenr Right. Just like my telephone company says it might want to send me SMS notices about when a bill is due, and then actually sends me SMS notices about every fucking promotion under the sun from their sister companies, in a language I can't read. I honestly do not understand the logic of people who look at a company, wholly owned by Facebook, and give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to business tactics, privacy, etc. ------ aibottle Would never use that. It's free of charge, so how is it financed? Right, its Facebook owned and just like every product of (Google, Facebook, Apple, whatever) if if cannot pay for it I won't use it, they eventually stop offering the service someday because they change their plans. Don't want to be forced to rewrite my app because of their change of mind. ~~~ cyberferret These are my fears too. I've been looking at this over the weekend as a possibility to embed a 'bot like feature into my web app, but I would hate my users to get used to it, then have Wit go away like Parse did. Much harder to develop an AI engine from scratch myself than an authentication/database engine. ~~~ HillRat As far as I've seen, this isn't anything you couldn't do with basic classification and NER passes in OpenNLP. Straightforward, even trivial, stuff as far as existing NLP toolsets go. ~~~ deet Wit seems to be heading towards more conversation-oriented (ie multi-message) approach to NLP which is something existing NLP toolsets don't make straightforward. For example, predicting the next action a bot should take based on conversation history is a bit different than just classifying an utterance. There are hints at how to do this in literature, and Init.ai (disclaimer: I work there) is working on it as well, but it's not widespread. There's also more to this type of slot filling than just NER. Again, the necessary techniques are available in academic literature, but not necessarily turn key. Plus, you need to handle parsing after locating the slots. For the parsing, you can take a look at Duckling ([https://duckling.wit.ai/](https://duckling.wit.ai/)) which Wit did open source. Both on the classification front and the slot filling, open source toolkits might get you part of the way there but not all the way. Having a training and management UI is also a substantial value add once you use it. ------ meeper16 What we now need is a real AI engine.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How do I get past beginner-programmer? - sidek Hello. I've always been interested in programming, and I've learned some languages and programmed a few programs. I'm probably best, actually, with ARM assembly for a few reasons I don't want to go into- it has a bit to do with the DS and GBA.<p>However, I always take a very long time to do (what seem to be ) relatively simple things , and my solutions usually end up being terribly inefficient.<p>It seems like my problem is that, although I have a good command of the commands found in programming languages, I don't know how to use those languages well. Perhaps my problem could be compared to that of one whom can read every word of a foreign language, but cannot use the grammar at all.<p>To try to solve this problem, I've been trying to create a lot of relatively short programs that solve problems requiring some algorithm work, but I seem to be slow in improving.<p>In any case, I'm wondering if there's any ways to see faster improvement - if I need to sink a lot of time into improving, I don't mind; I simply don't want to if it's not necessary.<p>Thanks for reading, sidek ====== MattJ100 For my part, I got involved in an open-source project very early on. I produced plugins and patches for the project, and people in the community gave valuable criticism and helped me improve my code. I didn't do this consciously to improve my skills, I stupidly thought I was "good enough" back then. However I remember that changed when I sent a 20 line patch to a developer, and he replied "Wouldn't this be better?" with a 2-line patch that also caught corner-cases I'd missed. From that day forwards I realised exactly how unskilled I was, despite knowing well the language and APIs, and I realised how valuable that community was to me. I haven't stayed with that project, I moved about a bit. I found that I enjoy networking and protocols, so I'm more active in another community now. Finding something that I really like doing I would count as the second thing that helped me improve. I find it sad the number of people I encounter who are just programmers for the sake of it, and not because they love what they do - some of them are good, but I've seen some of the worst code come from these people (who really couldn't care less). TL;DR I'm really really good ;) [I should learn to avoid tagging British sarcasm to everything I write, it always bites me back] ------ Scott_MacGregor Find a medium sized piece of code in a language that you already know. Pick code that is that is "good" well written "tight" code that is already written by someone else. Spend a couple of weeks getting to fully understand how the code works. Then spend some time playing with your own modifications to it. Work on making it do something new and unique. Then once you are comfortable with it, pick another piece of medium sized "tight" code and do it again. Pick something of a size that that seems challenging to you personally. Be it a single dll or an entire OOP application. Pick something challenging, but not so big that you cannot get a hold of it in your brain and learn from it in a couple of weeks. After three or four of these self directed learning exercises you should have a better understanding of how to write "tight" code. At that point, (with some additional experience under your belt) pick up an advanced programming guide for the language you have been studying and read it cover to cover. <http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/tight+code> ------ barrydahlberg Moar program! Seriously though... pick a modern, popular language which has lots of resources available and go and build real world useful things. Once you have the basics down you spend a long time learning style. A lot of this comes from having made a great many mistakes before and being able to draw on a huge pool of ways not to do it. Attempt big programs that are a bit beyond your means and learn how to break them into small pieces you can build. Then learn how to build those up into abstractions that let you make the big program. Learning the different types of abstraction available to you in your language and how to apply them with style is what will turn you into a great programmer. (Languages: Python, C#, Ruby, Scheme, Clojure etc) (Abstractions: Functions, modules, classes, closures, aspects etc) ------ malandrew "Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman" by Dave Hoover & Adewale Oshineye <http://apprenticeship-patterns.labs.oreilly.com/> ------ elliottcarlson I would recommend getting peer reviewed - allow people to review your code, coding style etc and offer constructive criticism on how you could have done things better, cleaner and more efficiently - this can be done here on HN, by getting involved in open source projects or just talking to people who you know are good enough. ------ geekytenny You are improving but you want this to happen more rapidly! The language you are most intimate with will not allow for rapid development of projects. "sure you may like walking or running, but if you need to get anywhere quicker you need to fly". Practice! Yes, but with the right tools for the desired results. ------ PilotPirx Read some books about algorithms. Implement the exercises in Python. "Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach" by Russel & Norvig would give you some interesting insights and exercises. ------ n2dasun [http://shawnpresser.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-to-become- game-...](http://shawnpresser.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-to-become-game- programmer.html) ------ codedivine Read this <http://norvig.com/21-days.html> ------ weilawei Program more. ------ olalonde Your best language is ARM assembly... are you serious? ~~~ sidek Well , I'm most experienced with it. I can get lots of things done in Haskell and Python too, but I know ARM assembly intimately. ------ nands yup! practice is the key. Gradually you will be able to start figuring better way of doing things.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The story behind:How we use K8s and spot instances to reduce cost up to 80% - tuananh https://tuananh.net/2020/02/20/the-story-behind-my-talk-cloud-cost-optimization-at-scale/ ====== tuananh author here: this is the story of how we make use of Kubernetes / spot instances and .NET Core to significantly reduce our EC2 billing cost in 2016.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Where Americans and Nutritionists Disagree - MrJagil http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/05/upshot/is-sushi-healthy-what-about-granola-where-americans-and-nutritionists-disagree.html?mabReward=A7&moduleDetail=recommendations-2&action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&region=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&src=recg&pgtype=article ====== sharemywin I need to find these 1 in 10 nutritionists that say ice cream, bacon, french fries and cookies are healthy. ~~~ maxerickson I can imagine explanations. Like maybe they think how much matters a great deal more than what.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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