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Ask HN: Are non-free Slack Communities worth the cost? - geekuillaume
Hi HN !
I see a lot of Slack based communities annonced here. A lot of them aren't free.
Are they worth the cost ?
Could you share with us your exepriences ?<p>Thanks and have a good day !
======
phantom_oracle
I've never seen this, but I think IRC would be the de-facto alternate to these
"hip" communities.
In the end, you will go where you can benefit most, so if paying $5 bucks a
month gets you speaking to smarter people, folks will do it.
I still think IRC is the place you go to for tech-talk (sadly everyone has
ended up on Freenode though).
~~~
chetanahuja
Why's Freenode sad? (genuinely curious)
~~~
phantom_oracle
Although it is my opinion on the situation, having all IRC centralized onto 1
"network" kind of reduces the redundancy that many different networks would
bring by just existing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bill Burr regrets 2003 password recommendation report - cratermoon
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-man-who-wrote-those-password-rules-has-a-new-tip-n3v-r-m1-d-1502124118?mod=e2tw
======
iokevins
The article seems arising in reference to the NIST SP800-63-3 Digital Identity
Guidelines, published June 22, 2017:
[https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/](https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/)
Three highlights of NIST SP800-63-3, from the SANS Security Awareness blog:
"For years people like Per Thorsheim, Cormac Herley and Dr. Angela Sasse have
fought against this. Finally these painful behaviors are being put to rest by
NIST in their official publication SP800-63-3 Digital Identity Guidelines.
While a rather large series of documents, they have a couple key points about
passwords, specifically in sections 5.1.1.1, 5.1.1.2 and Appendix A. Long
story short.
* Entropy is dead, focus on password length. Stop inflicting complexity requirements, instead long live the passphrase.
* Only change passwords if you are concerned it may have been compromised.
* SP800-63-3 specifically states systems should support the use of password managers."
[https://securingthehuman.sans.org/blog/2017/07/27/nist-
has-s...](https://securingthehuman.sans.org/blog/2017/07/27/nist-has-spoken-
death-to-entropy-love-live-the-passphrase)
~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
Entropy isn't dead, but entropy estimation should be. It's the same thing as
the transition from Yarrow to Fortuna in CSPRNGs: it's futile to estimate
entropy.
------
cityzen
When I read the title I was wondering why a comedian would give out password
recommendations. Different Bill Burr...
------
q3nismypassword
[https://archive.fo/A613V](https://archive.fo/A613V)
------
SomeStupidPoint
I just hope the various other bodies adopt the new rules quickly so I can stop
having absurd policies at work.
But I somehow think it's going to be a battle to get new "best practices"
adopted, even if they're better, people regret the original, etc etc.
------
keeganjw
Can anyone give me the gist of this article? Paywall...
~~~
justusthane
[http://archive.is/EoUOS](http://archive.is/EoUOS)
~~~
keeganjw
Thanks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's the best programming language to learn for security? - patrickgv
I'm talking about all these firms that specialise in security for companies. If I wanted to work at one of these, what programming language would I need to know?<p>I assume it would be something like C++, but I don't know.<p>On another note, how many programming languages (and what programming languages) do you think someone would need to know to have a successful career in that field?
======
ejcx
Depends on what type of security you want to get into.
General Pentesting: Python or something higher level. Lots of library and tool
usage (i.e. scapy, nping, nmap, metasploit)
Application Security: Learn frameworks more than languages. How to work inside
of Rails, Spring, ASP, PHP stuff, etc. Common security bugs that exist in
these codebases, how to fix them, and how to recognize them. It is more
important here HOW things work not how to make really big things work. There
are tools that you need to know how to use too, like Burp or some kind of HTTP
proxy.
Exploit Development/Reversing: Goes without saying you need to know C very
well. You also need to know Assembly very well and how to navigate around the
OS. How windows exploits work from the basics like finding kernel32.dll to
bypassing ASLR and other types of exploitation techniques. Fuzzing, etc. This
probably has the highest bar of entry.
Your side note, how many programming languages do you need to be successful.
The answer is a minimum of 1 if you know everything about it. You can add a
lot of value doing things like AppSec Consulting for Java if you know a ton
about securing Java frameworks.
You can email me if you have any questions. I love talking security
~~~
tptacek
I actually don't think you need to know assembly all that well to do exploit
dev and reversing. What you need is:
(a) native-level proficiency with C and the memory hierarchy that C tries to
abstract (ie: you want to understand what goes in registers, when, and why,
and how a stack frame is laid out and why)
(b) at least limited working proficiency with compiler theory, most especially
the analysis of control flow graphs
As time goes on, knowing little working-programmer details like how LEA gets
used for multiplication is getting much less important, and understanding
compiler IRs (particularly LLVM) is getting more important. Weirdly (but
awesomely), both exploit dev and reversing is becoming more and more
theoretical (predicate translations and satisfiability, symbolic execution,
&c) and less and less systemsy, and the systemsy stuff is getting larger-
scale: like, writing whole-system emulators to reverse firmware targets.
I guess my argument would be: you don't ever need to learn how to write a
decent assembly program to get to (a) and (b), and by the time you have (a)
and (b), you'll _easily_ be able to pick up whatever assembly you need as you
go.
~~~
ejcx
That's fair. I think my point with the paragraph still stands though, that
this path has the highest bar of entry. I think the demand for this type of
worker is way lower, even in the beltway.
------
tptacek
I love a question with a simple right answer:
(Ruby OR Python) AND C.
You can skip C if you don't want to do low-level work (embedded, kernels,
writing shellcode for memory corruption exploits). Only a small fraction of
security people do this kind of work. You cannot skip (Ruby OR Python), even
if you don't ever plan to do web work (which is a dumb plan anyways).
~~~
russell_h
Second this, but want to add:
You don't necessarily need to be able to sit down and bang out quality C, but
learning some C is a great way to understand how software works at a lower
level than you'll get from Python or Ruby. On the other hand you can apply
that understanding to more quickly and correctly understand what higher level
code is doing and what risks it is taking.
If you don't already have a good theoretical background, learn some C.
Something like C++ or even Rust would work for this too, but those introduce a
lot more language concepts that you don't really need.
~~~
tptacek
I think C++ and Rust are actually a bad idea here. Learn C. Don't bother with
C++ until you've got C down.
I mean, learn Rust if you want to write Rust code. But for the objective I'm
addressing with C, you need C.
~~~
noir_lord
Agreed, in addition a lot (if not most) of the low level attack surface
(drivers, kernels, web servers) are still written in C, it's still the lingua
franca (with C++ somewhat second).
------
nanofortnight
You very much have to be flexible. Most valuable would be C and assembly
knowledge (and knowledge of the low level details of both is pretty much
required).
As for tool writing, any high level language (perferably what your employer
uses). For example, if MetaSploit is used knowledge of Perl/Ruby would be
required.
Picking up multiple imperative languages is easy, though. Fortunately most
languages in the field are imperative.
Depending on the software in question, knowledge of how virtual machines
operate can also be useful.
------
cguard
First off, obviously there isn't really a clear black/white answer to this.
Secondly even security is such a broad field that it really depends on your
focus (a similar question could be what programming languages/technologies are
the best for web development, where you'd get answers ranging from classic
LAMP stack, to Node.js, python, RoR, Angular and many others, and it depends
on whether you want to do front-end, back-end, both or whatever combination).
So firstly I'd say it's important to pin-point what you are personally
interested in; I'd say that if you want to be working on some "serious"
exploits in widely used software, you are looking at C and Assembly, and C++.
Obviously for web hacking, you'd be looking more at scripting languages, both
in terms of their usages as the underlying technologies, as well as to
automate those mundane repetitive tasks, so PHP, ASP, Perl, Python, Bash
scripting etc. is something to look into. But you should also be well versed
in sys-admin tasks, things like maintenance, event logging, filesystems and
permissions... And lastly there is networking and all the issues and things
associated with it, tcp/ip stack, routing and so much more.
The thing is, working in security isn't really dependant on the programming
languages you know, either what will matter is your specialization (if you
have any), or the overall skillset that you can offer to the company (if you
can secure a web application on a shared host, but don't do anything about
file permissions and other settings on the server, either someone else needs
to do it, or the security of the webapp is pretty useless); be aware that you
will be (or should be) learning something all the time, again depending on
your interests, and at the same time you have to stay on top of news in
research and exploits, so in a way it's really tough but also very
interesting.
------
abecedarius
The E language ([http://erights.org/](http://erights.org/)) was designed to
express smart contracts back before Bitcoin was invented -- really forward-
looking and, to me, educational. You don't in the least need to know it for a
career in the field, but it changed how I think about security.
[http://erights.org/elib/capability/ode/index.html](http://erights.org/elib/capability/ode/index.html)
is probably the best quick intro.
~~~
kentonv
FWIW, Cap'n Proto ([https://capnproto.org](https://capnproto.org)) is a cross-
language network protocol based on E's design (with direct help from E's
creator, Mark Miller). So if you're interested in E-style capability-based
security but want to use a more mainstream language, consider taking a look at
Cap'n Proto.
(Also Sandstorm ([https://sandstorm.io](https://sandstorm.io)) is a server
platform implementing this model. Disclosure: I am the lead developer of both
of these projects.)
------
ecesena
Do 2 things in parallel.
Learn C, there's plenty of open source C code strictly related to security,
from OpenSSL, to OpenSSH, to the Linux kernel.
Learn full stack web programming (SQL, a language, html+js). As for the
language, PHP could be good as there's a lot of history of (in)security, but I
definitely recommend learning a framework - I like yii (yes it is), but choose
any. Studying a framework is useful to learn how much things could go wrong,
if not done properly (SQL injection, XSS injection, ...).
------
david_shaw
There are a lot of great answers on here (Python/Ruby for general scripting,
C/C++/ASM for reverse engineering, web stack technology for web application
security, etc) -- but I wanted to focus on a slightly different approach.
I've run security teams for the last six years or so, and it's surprising to
some people how _little_ programming is often involved in penetration testing
and application security assessments. If you're looking to do network and/or
(web|mobile) application security, it's often unnecessary.
That said: learning how to do some scripting is always beneficial, and clearly
understanding how code works is very important to understanding systems,
networks, and applications. My advice, though, is that if you're trying to
work in security it's probably better to learn the fundamentals of the area(s)
of security that interest you, rather than focusing on a programming language
or framework that you think will be relevant.
There are a lot of great resources out there, but shoot me an email (address
in profile) if you'd like a little more info.
Good luck!
~~~
tptacek
Programming is a hard requirement for app pentesting.
~~~
Someone
Programming, but not software engineering. For example, it can be merely a
nuisance if the tools you write leak lots of memory, acceptable to parse XML
with a regular expression, and not a problem at all if programs run entirely
within an environment you control aren't themselves secure.
~~~
tptacek
OK, but it's not merely a nuisance if you can't understand why it's unsafe to
parse XML with a regexp, and you might not grok the issue viscerally unless
you're a good programmer.
------
contingencies
There are currently 17 threads in response to this question. None have taken
the architectural angle, one that can be well introduced with the _Rule of
Least Power_ which states _Use the least powerful language possible for a
given problem. Prefer declarative languages over procedural._ Now think for
awhile about what that is actually saying...
Could it be that the heart of a secure system has little to do with process-
oriented thought, and much to do with declarative policy?
In fact, in a well designed system, that should be the case. Unfortunately,
there are bugs in all systems, so process-oriented thinking will always have a
place. But in big picture terms - the 'heart' of a security stance - you
really do need to be thinking in this way, particularly at design time, and
generally also as an attacker.
Unfortunately, a declarative (policy-driven) architecture is essentially
useless unless you ensure the system actually follows policy... for instance,
by actually generating it largely from policy. This degree of rigor is rare in
practice, but highly desirable in theory.
If you want to ensure your skills target big picture, are applicable to
building things and not just tearing them to pieces (which in the security
world often decays in to a range of puerile one-upmanship as visible at most
prominent industry events), you could consider specializing in this area. In
that case, you would do well to learn about declarative DSLs (domain-specific
languages) and learn some of the more common ones. Then, practice generating
things (documentation, functional code, application-level proxies, protocol
test suites, policy compliance test suites) from those definitions... the
generation could be done in any language, though using something simple with
lots of libraries would be smart (possibly go, ruby, python, even perl or
php).
Just thought it was worth contributing a different perspective here.
------
chmielewski
Look into python and play around with scapy... look into Perl and play around
with Metasploit... know how to implement your own Tor hidden-service keyserver
and how to make your own site use an SSL/TLS cert... before you have completed
all four of these tasks you will have a good idea of the landscape and will
have learned a lot, possibly answering your own question.
~~~
tptacek
Metasploit is Ruby. In 10 years of consulting with a progressively larger and
larger team, I'm not sure I ever saw someone use scapy. It's not that scapy is
bad, so much as that direct targeted low-level packet manipulation is kind of
a 90s problem statement.
~~~
chmielewski
Gotcha, thanks for the clarification. So then, I suppose my recommendation of
learning Metasploit and looking into Perl/CGI/PHP/javascript site security
features are certainly separate/more than one thing. My aim was to suggest
some broad "security programming" fields/projects that are easy to get started
in or get quick results with and contain enough documentation and specialty
uses that allow them to be drilled down into specifically if that part of the
landscape interests OP. Also, doing cool things with scapy is fast and easy
and learning to write your own scapy code seemed to teach me a lot about
packet security very quickly. I was assuming that if one is an autodidact, the
things I listed will keep you busy reading/learning related subject matter and
introduce you to some cool things and familiarize yourself with what's out
there while getting visible/fast results with a tool chain rather than just
learning for learning's sake. There's a certain balance between thinking and
doing; with excess of either it's easy to lose touch with reality/scope. This
is why, when people want to "learn Linux" for example, I find out what they're
interested in and point them toward some projects/packages... rather than
pointing them to general Linux documentation which often has new users feeling
like they're reading Greek without examples, or leads to eyeglaze.
------
V-2
Related: [http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/02/and-c-plus-plus-
too/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/02/and-c-plus-plus-too/)
_We fail to learn. Heartbleed. GHOST. The Android 4.3 KeyStore. Etcetera,
etcetera, etcetera._
_C was and is magnificent, in its way. But we cannot afford its gargantuan,
gaping security blind spots any more. It’s long past time to retire and
replace it with another language._
[...]
_So please, low-level programmers of the world, I beseech you (while, to be
clear, also respecting you immensely): for your next project, try Rust rather
than C /C++. There is no longer any good reason for today’s software to be as
insecure as it is. Those old warhorses have served us well, but today they are
cavalry in an era of tanks. Let us put them out to pasture and move on._
(Personally I'm rather neutral on the issue (I don't work with low-level
languages), I just think it's good food for thought.)
~~~
wglb
This is advice useful for architects and engineers, and would be preaching to
the pen-testing choir.
It is necessary for the member of such a security company to think of the
software that they learn is first a tool used to attack other software
(Metasploit, Burp, hand-written tools such as WWMD, quick one-off, discardable
code used during a test), and secondly to develop a deep understanding of how
the software under test works.
And, as I and others have noted previously in this forum, not all of the
dramatically-reported errors are due to the low-level nature of C. Some are
glaring implementation-language independent protocol errors.
------
walterbell
There's also a language-portable state of mind.
[http://phrack.org/issues/1/1.html](http://phrack.org/issues/1/1.html)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia)
------
sekasi
I believe comments here that programming isn't a necessity aren't really
correct. A strong programming knowledge to the point of expertise is what you
should aspire towards in a security-related career.
Language is a hard question though, there are a lot of things to consider
around what sector you want to focus on. The holy trinity seems to be Python,
Ruby and C.
ASM is probably very overlooked in general, but also a lot harder to master.
Good luck, hope you get to a point where you can take a few steps forward.
This is going to be an enormous area of interest over the next few years (much
more so than it already is) so enjoy the challenge and the money ;)
------
based2
[http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/55723/are-
there-...](http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/55723/are-there-secure-
languages)
a specialized one: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Zest](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Zest)
[https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081013174535A...](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081013174535AAjvmY1)
------
Animats
Low-level stuff. C. Assembler. Firmware. Debuggers.
------
readme
You're going to want to learn more than one, but for your first programming
language I would suggest Python.
There are already a lot of people who suggested you a laundry list of
langauges: yeah, you'll need to learn them all. However, that takes years.
Don't fool yourself by thinking it doesn't. It will come with time.
------
Mandatum
You can avoid C/C++/ASM if you're specialising in web application/mobile app
security. However it's suggested you learn them anyway, given the domai8n of
experience required for security roles.
------
dsacco
_This is going to be something of a rant, but roll with it._
This is a controversial opinion, but I don't believe someone should be a
security engineer or a security consultant until they are a provably competent
software developer.
This harkens back to the analogy of writing and editing - how can you expect
to perform competent source code review from a security perspective without
having a deep understanding of programming? Even if you do not know a specific
language you're reviewing (ideally you should, though), you can at least
generalize your understanding to look for common patterns of insecure coding.
The reason why I stress this so emphatically is because, despite the fact that
you are asking which programming languages to learn, my experience with the
security industry is that most people just don't have much real programming
experience, which is absurd.
There are many firms where they will bill out their consultants at $2000+ _per
day_ and their consultants couldn't build a simple Twitter clone if they were
handed a complete spec.
I would much rather someone who can sit down and write a compiler and who has
no security experience whatsoever than someone who knows all the payloads for
XSS and how to find them manually. One of these people understands software
engineering as a discipline and where it goes wrong, and the other is
basically learning different "routes" without truly understanding everything
under the hood. I can teach the person who writes compilers to find serious
memory corruption vulnerabilities in a week. I can't teach someone who has
never programmed to find subtle mass assignment flaws in Ruby/Rails.
This is not a straw-man dichotomy. Like 'tptacek said, it is _absolutely
necessary_ for you to have a programming background if you want to work in
AppSec. And God help you if you try to work on security in firmware or
embedded systems and don't have this background.
My personal opinion is that all security engineers should be senior software
engineers. There is a good quote by Ryan McGeehan (former Director of Security
at Facebook, then Coinbase, now Hackerone) where he explains that the most
competent security engineers start out by fully mastering a particular
discipline. After they hit that point, finding vulnerabilities becomes
extremely easy. You don't need to memorize different payloads or routes or
rote methods of testing. When you have written a lot of C you will understand
a buffer overflow in a half hour (enough to really be dangerous, anyway).
Working in security without a lot of experience programming is like trying to
ski a black diamond without having mastered all the fundamentals. _Do not do
it._ It is entirely too fashionable in the industry to hire people who don't
know what they're doing, please do not add to this.
Now that my rant is over - you should learn Python and C. Ruby and Lua are
also good; most people you'll find in the industry will be doing scripting in
Python. You should know C for its rich history and deep connection with the
information security industry, and also because most of the interesting
vulnerabilities will be found in software projects written in C.
Source: A few years of security consulting, and now working as a security
engineer in FinTech.
~~~
sarciszewski
I don't think this is controversial at all. It's completely agreeable.
------
rishikant42
It is good to learn python/c/c++/java.These programming languages will help
you.
------
aikah
what kind of security? for instance web exploits can be written in any
language even in bash scripts,. Your question is way to vague to give an
accurate and pertinent answer.
------
hoodoof
It's more about how you use it than the language itself.
------
patrickgv
Thanks so much for all the advice so far!
------
secfirstmd
Python can be very useful
------
mc_hammer
its helpful to know the clients language of choice
i would say 75% of the time: asm/c/c++/sql are req languages. python may be as
well, lots of exploits are written in python b/c its fast to write for...
if you dont got that ur gonna need or bonus to have: knowledge of exploit
methods for bash/win/php/ruby/sql and other common languages
just my take on it, cheers
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CakePHP Website Returning HTTP Error 502 - jasondrowley
Is anyone else having problems accessing the site?
======
adamjleonard
Time to learn a new framework! Down for me also
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Trump administration lifts ban on pesticides linked to declining bee numbers - pera
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/04/trump-administration-lifts-ban-on-pesticides-linked-to-declining-bee-numbers
======
sschueller
So this is lifting a ban on the use on wildlife refuges. The use anywhere else
in the US was never banned. So the ban had little effect on preventing bee
deaths.
If bees are dying from this it needs to be banned across the United States for
all farming.
------
drallison
If bees are dying from this it needs to be banned across the United States for
all farming.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Remember the Million Dollar Homepage? Here's a 3D Successor, Redone in WebGL - jumprite
https://www.milliondollarmetropolis.com/#
======
masonic
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jumprite](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jumprite)
~~~
jumprite
You got me :(. It doesn’t seem to be catching on just yet here. Going to add
more features and then consider reposting after some time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New Stealth Spy Drone Already Flying Over Area 51 - electic
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/12/new-stealth-drone/
======
WestCoastJustin
As a side note: Aviation Week is an incredible magazine. Next time you are at
the magazine rack, be sure to check it out. Our office has a subscription and
it just blows me away what is happening in the aviation sector. They cover
everything, from jets, military, spy technology, to satellites.
------
zyztem
Aveation Leaks article is much more informative:
[http://www.aviationweek.com/Article/PrintArticle.aspx?id=/ar...](http://www.aviationweek.com/Article/PrintArticle.aspx?id=/article-
xml/awx_12_06_2013_p0-643783.xml&p=1&printView=true)
~~~
shutupalready
Yes, it is more informative. Does Wired just steal the content by adding the
words, _" according to Aviation Week and Space Technology"_, to their own
article. Or do they pay a fee to Aviation Week to license the content? If it's
the latter, why don't they just reprint the original and better article? Can
anyone familiar with the magazine business explain this?
------
Theodores
Sounds to me like this is the UAV follow-up to the U2 programme rather than
the SR-71. It almost certainly flies s-l-o-w-l-y as per a B2 rather than at
SR-71 insane-mega-speed. It has 24 hours or so of loiter time with no in-
flight refuelling.
Good luck with that, flying over the Crimea, with Russian S-400 missiles just
a few kilometres away. Imagine the consequences, anything up to full-on war
just because they shot down one of our drones.
~~~
eliteraspberrie
That's my impression too. The most basic air force can defend against drones,
let alone Russia's. Even this supposedly stealth drone is very obvious, from
behind. Any IRST system would detect it immediately.
~~~
nether
IR attenuates rapidly in the atmosphere and is only useful for very short
range detection (short range missiles, TV remotes, "laser" tag guns). The
artist's concept seems to show the standard flat exhaust intakes (first
employed on the F-117) which increase efflux "surface area" (versus a circle)
to promote mixing with ambient air. There might be pre-exhaust mixing too.
~~~
greedo
IRST systems are actually quite long ranged for detection, it's identification
that is more problematic. F-14D IRST systems were quite good at long range
detection, and those were much older legacy systems with nothing like today's
technology.
~~~
nether
Yeah, but still very limited by aspect angle to engine exhaust. Detection is
ok, tracking is poor unless very close or with LoS to the tailpipes. Anything
ground-based will almost never be able to stare directly at the aft end of an
aircraft except during egress (i.e. after it's done its job). What I'm getting
at is there are huge limitations to passive tracking of IR emissions,
otherwise we'd be using it instead of (active) radar.
~~~
greedo
An aircraft moving at near Mach speeds has a significant amount of friction
caused by air. It's not necessary for an IR system to be able to see the
exhaust of an aircraft. In fact, all aspect IR missiles have been around since
at least the AIM9L which was used in the Falklands War in 1982.
------
lwhalen
What I'm curious about is, what sort of advanced technology are our rivals and
'allies' flying over us? Is our air/surveillance superiority absolute, or do
they spy on us like we spy on them?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Notes on the Google SRE book - ingve
https://danluu.com/google-sre-book/
======
MoBattah
I had sent an email to my team last week about the book. I'll pass this on,
thank you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Michael Schumacher out of coma and released from hospital - init0
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/16/sport/motorsport/michael-schumacher-condition/
======
goddamnsteve
Finally!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scanimage: Scan from the Command Line - ingve
https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/07/11/scanimage--scan-from-the-command-line/
======
dvh
Few years ago friend gave me a broken scanner. In Windows it always said
"Paper jammed". I opened it and just wanted to short paper sensor, but this
scanner was too "smart". Instead of single sensor there were two sensors next
to each other and the scanner was using them to calculate speed of paper and
if it was outside of some range it called an error. I tried sane on Linux and
got similar error. But on Linux I had source code so I found exact error
message, commented that single line out, recompiled and it worked like a
charm.
------
hoytech
I'm probably going to lose a lot of geek-cred here, but if you're on hour 4 of
wrestling with your SANE config, have some mercy on yourself and checkout
vuescan. It works flawlessly on linux with every scanner I've tried:
[https://www.hamrick.com/](https://www.hamrick.com/)
~~~
Mekantis
It's too bad people look at proprietary software with such disdain. Yeah, I'd
love it too if all the world adhered to open source, but there are too many
useful and awesome applications that simply aren't open source, where the open
source "alternatives" pale in comparison.
~~~
anoncake
As a supporter of free software, why should I advertise for the competition?
------
tapia
My friends can never understand my excitement when I realize that I can use a
non-trivial scanner or printer utility in Linux. For example, I was really
impressed that I could scan without problems from my brother ADS-1100W through
wifi(!), or when I could configure the printer at work that requires some
login credentials. Ah, the little joys of life :P
~~~
non-entity
To be fair I get excited when printing /scanning through wifi works on any OS.
~~~
gvjddbnvdrbv
Nevermind WiFi. I get excited when the ink cartridge hasn't dried up/run out
after 20 odd pages.
~~~
stareatgoats
b/w laser printers ftw
------
Klasiaster
The easiest-to-use scan GUI is GNOME Simple Scan (The binary is `simple-
scan`), not gscan2pdf which is powerful but normally not needed.
------
u801e
It works for my scanner, but I have to reset the usb device after scanning
each page. I use the C program I found in this Stack Overflow[1] answer to
handle resetting the device.
[1] [https://askubuntu.com/questions/645/how-do-you-reset-a-
usb-d...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/645/how-do-you-reset-a-usb-device-
from-the-command-line#661)
------
sam_lowry_
I really miss a tool where I would put paper into the scanner, hit a button
_on the scanner_ and get the output in a folder of my linux workstation.
~~~
pgtan
There are scanbd, scanbuttond, which poll the usb events and trigger a script,
if a scanner button was pressed:
[https://sourceforge.net/projects/scanbd/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/scanbd/)
[http://scanbuttond.sourceforge.net/](http://scanbuttond.sourceforge.net/)
[https://github.com/jdam6431/scanbuttond](https://github.com/jdam6431/scanbuttond)
~~~
sam_lowry_
Gosh! Thanks for the hint!
------
nickcw
What's the best way to get a supported scanner on Linux?
Buy a scanner, put it in a box for a year, then it will work fine!
~~~
ce4
Supported devices:
[http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html](http://www.sane-project.org/sane-
mfgs.html)
Generally, Canon Lide series work great, if you want double sided automatic
feed scanning, Fujitsu FI or ScanSnap series.
------
at_a_remove
I made _great_ use of Dosadi EZTwain tool for command line scanning in
Windows. Fantastic stuff.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
"The digital age consumes more paper, not less." - pius
http://www.43folders.com/comment/337116/Paperless
======
gibsonf1
I know this isn't the case at my Architecture firm. When we do get paper in
the office (snail mail, etc), we scan it (pdf) into our system and put the
original in a box in sequential order for easy retrieval later if we need it.
That is the last time the original usually sees the light of day. We typically
work with pdf files with clients for invoicing and for presentations. In the
past we'd have sent out prints, now a pdf file is all we need. The main time
we are forced to use actual paper is to comply with government regulations and
permitting etc. But effectively, we are paperless and radically more efficient
because of it. (Architecture firm)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
JetBrains offering 75% off all products/upgrades for "Mayan End of World" Sale - lucian303
http://www.jetbrains.com/specials/index.jsp
Can't beat that.
======
Narretz
Well, their website crashes all my mobile browsers on Android 4.0 (Chrome,
Opera Mobile, Firefox)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SendHub (YC W12) Launches Shared Groups - Keep your team's contacts synced - ashrust
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/16/sendhub-takes-on-google-voice-with-debut-of-shared-groups-grabs-new-investment-from-former-florida-gov-jeb-bush/
======
bryanh
I must say, SendHub and co have done a pretty remarkable job. Their product is
superb, I highly recommend just trying it to see how to do onboarding on a
fairly complex service (considering multiple people & phones are involved).
~~~
jaytaylor
Thank you for the kind words Bryan!
------
WadeF
I love the shared groups concept. I always thought there would be a lot of
benefit for small local businesses to benefit from group messaging.
SendHub seems like a great way to make that happen.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How did Apple’s AirPods go from mockery to millennial status symbol? - rusk
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2019/feb/10/how-did-apples-airpods-go-from-mockery-to-millennial-status-symbol
======
0_gravitas
Memes are a very bad metric to measure what is or isn't a "status symbol"
------
anthonys
Because they work pretty well?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Commercial Drone Rules to Limit Their Weight, Speed and Altitude - nkrumm
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/02/15/386464188/commercial-drone-rules-to-limit-their-speed-and-altitude?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews
======
transfire
"relatively benign"? These restrictions are terrible. Either the policy makers
are being purposefully malign, or they have zero understanding of the progress
currently taking place in automated transport.
------
thomasfl
Why not limit the use of drones with weapons all together?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How To Develop A Basic Operating System On The Raspberry Pi - pepsi_can
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/freshers/raspberrypi/tutorials/os/?test=true
======
jws
Unfortunately, with modern hardware a "build an OS" tutorial goes nicely in
small steps, until you hit "need a USB stack to get input".
Suddenly you are in the land of voluminous specs and large amounts of code to
get anything working.
~~~
sounds
I realize this is just one data point, but I implemented a full EHCI (USB 2.0)
stack in 3 weekends. Then I implemented a simple mass storage driver in 2 more
(that was the hardware I was targeting).
My HID implementation isn't worth talking about but it was helpful to test
interrupt transfers.
~~~
krichman
I'm assuming by the fact that it took you a few weekends, you are beyond the
level of learning about OS's as an undergrad, though :) I'm sure it is doable,
but the point is probably that it's a non-trivial detour from writing a basic
OS.
~~~
sounds
Yes, of course.
I'm all for teaching as many undergrads as possible about writing an OS - so
many valuable lessons that aren't easy to teach in any other context.
Still – there are always a few who really take off. Such might enjoy a
tutorial that walked through doing a full USB stack. Maybe... :)
I feel compelled to speak for the over-achievers because they may not even
realize they could go so far, so fast, until someone points them in the right
direction. It's fun to watch.
------
AceJohnny2
This is the kind of stuff that I've been waiting to see on the Pi. It was
touted as a "learning tool" by the foundation, but was co-opted by the hacker
community as a cheap but full-fledged computer to hack with, completely
overshadowing the teaching tool aspect.
~~~
throwaway1979
I'm surprised you say "co-opted" for a couple of reasons.
1) I thought the intent of "learning tool" was teaching novices how to program
in Python. This has huge ramifications in developing countries. In a mid to
high income family in the US, it isn't clear if the raspberry Pi is the right
computer to give to a child in order to teach them basic programming.
2) The hacker community's exploration is not devoid of learning. I'm a
software guy and I've learned a great deal about hardware due to the Arduino
and the Raspberry Pi. I don't think this overshadows the teaching aspects in
any way.
------
simarpreet007
Started this last night, looks good so far!
~~~
jnadeau
I keep putting it off and leaving the link in my bookmarks. It seems like a
fun little project.
------
JosephRedfern
What's with the test parameter in the URL?
~~~
uxp
It's a cheap hack to get around the de-duping system for submitted links. This
article was submitted 53 days ago, with a good discussion about it:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4467612>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Walmart data Leaked by 5CR1PT K1DD135 - GeekTech
http://geektech.in/archives/1763
======
cjzhang
_In the leak file u will fine_
Really?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: A distributed Recommendation Engine based on Redis + Ruby (and C) - paulasmuth
https://github.com/paulasmuth/recommendify
======
jamii
I've been working on something similar - <https://github.com/jamii/springer-
recommendations>
All the open-source engines I've tried scale poorly. Since our input data
already contains >200m interactions I suspect recommendify would struggle
(from my quick reading it looks like the co-concurrence matrix is stored in
redis ie in-memory).
The approach I'm leaning towards at the moment is collating the article->IPs
and IP->articles tables in leveldb and then distributing read-only copies to
each worker. Everything else can easily be partitioned by article id.
~~~
jaylevitt
I can't tell from the README - is your data fairly wide? I'm playing with
using Postgres's new K-Nearest-Neighbor support to calculate similarity on 20D
cubes, but I suspect my approach won't work well for an arbitrary number of
columns (i.e. users x products) unless you first do some sort of PCA or SVD to
narrow it down, and it isn't optimized for binary ratings at all. I started
writing it up here: [http://parapoetica.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/feature-
space-si...](http://parapoetica.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/feature-space-
similarity-search-in-postgresql/)
~~~
jamii
> ... is your data fairly wide?
Around 200m download logs, 2m articles, some million IP addresses. I suspect
that interest in research papers is inherently high dimensional and
dimensional reduction would probably damage the results.
I don't have much hardware to throw at it either. I just started looking at
randomized algorithms - trying to produce a random walk on the download graph
that links articles with probability proportional to some measure of
similarity (probably cosine distance or Jaccard index).
------
fraserharris
Terrific readme
~~~
joeblau
+1 more for that awesome ReadMe. The project looks clean and simple.
------
steve19
How does this compare with other recommendation engines, such as the
opensource EasyRec[0] ?
[0] <http://easyrec.org/>
------
ambertch
Paul, how does C fits into the picture? I don't see anything in the source for
compiling native extensions, and the implementations src/recommendify.c calls
look incomplete?
I am guessing you still working on the gem?
------
sycr
Oh man, this is just awesome. Thanks so much for making this open source -
it's great to be able to pick apart the internals of something like this.
------
chrismealy
Does any part of this involve taking the square root of something? Amazon's
original similarities did that and I can't remember exactly how.
------
moe
Oof. This is beautiful on so many levels.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook’s grand plan for the future - beeker
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/57933bb8-fcd9-11df-ae2d-00144feab49a.html#axzz17BFI1gMU
======
codelust
Facebook is the big story of the decade, but I wish publications who do these
puff pieces do a better job for covering the company.
The quote below is enlightening:
"This is a somewhat different Zuckerberg to the one the public knew just a
year ago. In recent months he has transformed from an awkward wunderkind with
a preternatural ability to anticipate where the web is going, into an amicable
executive unafraid of laying out his grand plan."
So, Mark has become better at communicating the vision of where the web is
going. And what exactly is this vision? It is that Facebook will grow and
expand and with one of the largest audience platforms in the world, any move
it makes into adjacent domains (places, deals) will be instantly successful.
Talk about self-realizing prophecies and stating the obvious.
Next:
"In other words, the world will be experienced through the filter of one’s
Facebook friends."
If you think this is a strength, it is actually not. On the open web the
universe is the set of all indexed pages. On Facebook, this universe depletes
to what your connections know/discover and now the pages that have the
opengraph data on them. I do think that we are quite safe from a world which
is exclusively experienced via Facebook because it can't, as things stand,
represent the actual universe of information out there.
Facebook is a big and important company, but it is also at the height of a
frenzy in a domain that is desperate to realize some of the potential it holds
- thus the breathless accounts from media, bloggers and of course, the
investors. We keep hearing about 500MM active users, but last I checked, they
had about 130MM visits in a day, which is not too far off from what a Youtube
gets at 103MM. Some degree of perspective is badly required in analyzing these
companies, especially when you have nearly zero public data to rely on.
------
samd
_The fear, according to people close to Google, is that as Facebook users
index the web through their Likes and shares, Google’s algorithmic indexing of
the web will become less relevant. “Search is a business that will be pretty
profoundly disrupted by social media,” said Augie Ray, an analyst with
Forrester Research. “Ultimately, what matters to you is not what Google
thinks is important, it’s what your friends think is important.”_
What ultimately matters to you is what you think is important. Whether
Google's algorithms or Facebook's social graph better predicts what's
important to you remains to be seen.
Actually, what really matters is what you will pay for. Google's algorithms
are currently winning at figuring that out.
~~~
codelust
The entire concept of 'like' and 'share' via the open graph has been badly
misread.
What OG gives Facebook is the ability to classify and index (not sure if they
are doing this) 'active' pages on the internet. Look at it as a cheaper and
more efficient way of classifying pages on the web that are being accessed by
users. The OG metadata identifies the page content in a structured manner,
thus offloading a lot of the classification pains to the content publishers.
It is a smart way of attacking the subset of active pages, but it can't
compare to the indexing and classification of a larger web - which is what
Google does.
------
waterlesscloud
"According to comScore, about one in four online display adverts in the US now
appears on Facebook."
Most of the Facebook ads are easily ignored, but some are quite well targeted
to things I'm actually interested in.
There's far too many "get a college degree" ads that don't go away no matter
how many times I give negative feedback on them. Note to facebook- if I
explicitly reject an ad more than once, you're wasting opportunity by showing
it to me again, no matter how high the ppc is for education-related ads.
But there's also a decent percentage of very, very niche items that are
advertised that I am truly interested in. I click on FB way, way. WAY more
than I do on any Google ads.
------
wallflower
Maybe Robert Scoble was prescient [2009].
"Here’s the phases of Facebook:
Phase 1. Harvard only.
Phase 2. Harvard+Colleges only.
Phase 3. Harvard+Colleges+Geeks only.
Phase 4. All those above+All People (in the social graph).
Phase 5. All those above+People and businesses in the social graph.
Phase 6. All those above+People, businesses, and well-known objects in the
social graph.
Phase 7. All people, businesses, objects in the social graph."
[http://scobleizer.com/2009/03/21/why-facebook-has-never-
list...](http://scobleizer.com/2009/03/21/why-facebook-has-never-listened-and-
why-it-definitely-wont-start-now/)
> The takeaway from that is that the social features are really the killer
> part of this,” Zuckerberg told me. “Having good social integration is more
> important than high-res photos.”
Look at the rapid rise of Instagram. If you make a product that makes you
appear cooler to your friends and followers, you can attract a lot of users
quickly.
[1] "Previously, Instagram reported 100,000 users in its first week post
launch. The startup is now said to be close to the 1 million mark"
[http://news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20101203/tc_mashable/instag...](http://news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20101203/tc_mashable/instagram_now_seeing_two_to_three_photo_uploads_per_second)
------
rubidium
"During his presentation, Zuckerberg uses words such as 'revolution' and
'disruption'."
Fun to contrast this with Jobs thoughts from the interview that was on HN
recently: "What's the biggest surprise this technology will deliver?
The problem is I'm older now, I'm 40 years old, and this stuff doesn't change
the world. It really doesn't. "
~~~
patrickk
Yeah the comparison between Jobs' veteran attitude and Zuckerberg's um,
exuberance came across strongly reading this. The personal computing
revolution was far more important, in my opinion; and if Jobs doesn't think
that Apple technology isn't changing the world significantly then Facebook
certainly won't. Slogans like "This changes everything. Again" for the iPhone
4 are just marketing spin.
_"Zuckerberg was still on stage, an analyst leans over to me and says, “They
just changed local commerce forever.” It wasn’t even lunchtime yet."_
Wrong, wrong, wrong. First, they haven't done anything yet. Not anything
visible that I can see anyway. (The 'analyst' is speaking in the past tense.)
Secondly, people like to read newspapers and magazines, watch tv then go
browsing shops and buy stuff they may need or not based on ads they saw.
Facebook or the internet does not enter the equation. The majority of people I
know are like this to one degree or another. Amazon and eBay, two companies
aimed squarely at bringing shopping online, haven't dampened people's affinity
for buying stuff on the high street. And they've been around for years.
_"What we’re imagining is very different,” says Chris Cox, who dropped out of
Stanford to join the company in 2005 and is now one of Zuckerberg’s closest
lieutenants. “If you imagine a television designed around social, you turn it
on and it says, ‘Thirteen of your friends like Entourage. Press play. Your dad
recorded 60 Minutes. Press play.’” In other words, the world will be
experienced through the filter of one’s Facebook friends."_
This is also dead wrong. Most of the people I've friended on Facebook have
much different tastes to me. The last thing I would want is to get
recommendations based on what my 'friends' like. If you were talking to some
random person at a party for five minutes it's almost becoming a faux pas not
to friend them on Facebook. Do I really want to be spammed with updates about
Glee or whatever?
------
marciovm123
'And while this may sound hubristic, it reflects Zuckerberg’s belief that
Facebook’s map of human relationships is among the most important developments
in business history. “That, I think, is the strongest product element we
have,” he said. “And [most] likely one of the strongest product elements that
ever has existed."'
I've been coming to grips with that statement being true.
~~~
revorad
I don't know if Zuckerberg also implied this but what I find truly awesome is
that that map of human relationships is available to anyone now through
Facebook. Zynga is just one example of a business that has used the social
graph so well. There will be more.
------
LeonardoLuz
Working on something similar. The business plan is coming this February. In
fact, I'm looking for financing to get it started.
<http://miximum.ca/en_newProjectPage-kiosk.html>
gallerytungsten, I agree with you that it's part of the race, but I believe
Facebooks approach is fundamentally different.
What's important in this idea is that the content has to be geographically
significant to the consumer. Some apps focus on other things, like game
mechanics, search, etc. As mentioned in the FT.com article: "Facebook’s
application can “check in” to a physical location, such as their local coffee
shop,". Significant geolocalized information is key. For example, this concept
clearly works a lot less well on a PC. Has to be on mobile or in my case a
well localised kiosk.
The objective is to make it significant. Adding friend metadata to the info
makes it more important to us.
------
gallerytungsten
From the article:
"As Zuckerberg was still on stage, an analyst leans over to me and says, 'They
just changed local commerce forever.' It wasn’t even lunchtime yet."
I'll be a contrarian. They're keeping up with their neighbors. Groupon, Living
Social, Yelp, Foursquare. It's all part of the race.
The interesting thing for me is that reading the article generated my idea on
a way to do better: offer the "local discounts" without the privacy
intrusions, overly intensive emailing, or any of the other trade-offs that
current solutions have as a byproduct.
~~~
ams6110
The only motivation for the advertisers to do the local discounts is so they
can tap into your profile and market very targeted offers to you. Without the
privacy intrusion and emailing, how would they do that?
~~~
gallerytungsten
I suspect there are "more anonymous" possibilities than the current
implementations of these ideas.
------
richcollins
_from the web to the TV to the restaurants you choose to eat at – is informed
by your stated preferences and your friends’ preferences_
This is something we need to overcome, not accentuate.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What charities do you donate to? - null_ptr
======
pg
Yours! ([http://ycombinator.com/np.html](http://ycombinator.com/np.html))
------
ajslater
I'd love to donate to an organization who's charter was ending the drug war,
but I'm not sure I know of one specifically like that. I suppose NORML might
be an obvious choice, but I don't feel like picking a specific drug for
promotion is where my heart is. I don't really know much about organizations
in this field. Anyone?
------
ajslater
The American Civil Liberties Union
[https://www.aclu.org/](https://www.aclu.org/)
------
ajslater
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
[https://www.eff.org/](https://www.eff.org/)
------
cjbprime
90% to whatever GiveWell -- [http://givewell.org](http://givewell.org) \--
currently thinks is best (GiveDirectly, Against Malaria Foundation), 10% to
charities I have a soft spot for that I suspect are less efficient (e.g. EFF,
Wikimedia, public radio).
------
loumf
Almost all of my donations goes to local non-profits that my wife or I are on
the board of or where I intimately know the organization's board, staff, and
mission. I also usually support money raising efforts of friends for small
amounts (like a walkathon).
The vast majority of the money is going to organizations that provide services
to low-income people.
If you are looking for non-profit ideas that help the kind of giving I do,
check out Razoo. Another thing those organizations could use is a way to lower
operational costs, potentially by pooling with others.
------
skidoo
I appreciate what the folks at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund do.
~~~
ajslater
me too: [http://cbldf.org/](http://cbldf.org/)
------
jacob_smith
kiva.org -- small loans (usually around $1,000 total, crowd-sourced in $25
increments) made to people for new business ventures, farm improvements, etc.
Definitely worth a look!
~~~
dmgrow
Also a big fan of Kiva. Been involved with it for years.
------
helloanand
I go a local orphanage
([http://www.stcatherineshome.org/](http://www.stcatherineshome.org/)) to
donate clothes, toys and sometimes even food. Recently, did a one time online
donation at [http://www.hopemonkey.org](http://www.hopemonkey.org) (I'm not
affiliated with either of them)
------
ajslater
Planned Parenthood
[http://www.plannedparenthood.org/](http://www.plannedparenthood.org/)
------
retrogradeorbit
Amnesty International [http://www.amnesty.org/](http://www.amnesty.org/)
------
ajslater
The Nature Conservancy [http://www.nature.org/](http://www.nature.org/)
------
robert_foss
nlnet.nl -- NLnet supports a number of software projects, events, educational
activities that strive for an open information society.
Current projects:
[http://nlnet.nl/project/current.html](http://nlnet.nl/project/current.html)
------
stevekemp
There are too many good causes, so I decided to follow my mothers approach:
Pick two/three and give them all the donations that I can make. From that
point on I ignore every other charity in the world.
The only charity I support that I suspect anybody will have heard of would be
the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution; the folks that go out and
rescue people at sea
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_National_Lifeboat_Institu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_National_Lifeboat_Institution)
)
Usually I donate once a year to my chosen three charities, bot sometimes there
will be a small bonus at random times.
------
ernestipark
World Vision ([http://www.worldvision.org/](http://www.worldvision.org/))
------
maxharris
The Ayn Rand Institute [http://www.aynrand.org/](http://www.aynrand.org/)
------
rtcoms
Milaap Social Venture [http://milaap.org](http://milaap.org)
It's basically Kiva for india.
------
nicwolff
Tabby's Place [http://www.tabbysplace.org](http://www.tabbysplace.org)
------
ajslater
Human Rights Campaign [http://www.hrc.org/](http://www.hrc.org/)
------
bjourne
Amnesty and Naturskyddsföreningen
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don't Be An Ass About Airport Security - Trey-Jackson
http://www.slate.com/id/2276166
======
RiderOfGiraffes
Dup from days ago:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1974192>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Information Got Re-Invented - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/51/limits/how-information-got-re_invented
======
eggpy
Another decent in-depth book on this topic that I can recommend is The
Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick[0]. A bit dry at
times but somewhat interesting if anyone is looking for a high-level look at
quantifying and managing information.
[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8701960-the-
information](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8701960-the-information)
~~~
byproxy
Good book. My only problem was that I felt the breadth of the information
minimized the depth. Seemed like each page could be its own book.
------
sp332
Claude Shannon's wife Betty doesn't even get a mention. If you have so much
detail about how he behaved when he was thinking, there's no reason to
minimize her role. [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/betty-shannon-
un...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/betty-shannon-unsung-
mathematical-genius/)
~~~
mxfh
It's an excerpt from the same book by the same two authors, who are promoting
it in another publication with another focus. It's missing in this article,
which is focussing on the theory, not on his life, but it's in the books big
picture. Maybe they had it in there and pitched an exclusive piece to
different magazines? Who knows.
_A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age_ by Jimmy
Soni and Rob Goodman.
~~~
sp332
Ok, that makes sense. It just seemed odd to have so much information from his
girlfriend and then not a word about his wife.
~~~
mxfh
Actually it looks like the reason is purely chronological:
This article is about the research and live events following up to the
publication of his seminal work _A Mathematical Theory of Communication_ in
1948 and ends there.
He met his wife Betty in '48 after most of this already happened.
------
Animats
Site won't load with cookies blocked.
I wonder what they consider "the birth of the information age"? The Lyons
Electronic Office (first business computer)? The US Social Security
Administration (the first mechanized, nationally centralized data processing
service at scale)? Early Hollerith systems? Pneumatic tubes?
~~~
CharlesW
> _Site won 't load with cookies blocked._
(Right-click + "Open Link in Incognito Window", or your browser's equivalent.)
~~~
Animats
Doesn't help. They must be using a third-party cookie "to show your reading
progress". (Right.)
_Nautilus uses cookies to manage your digital subscription and show you your
reading progress. It 's just not the same without them. Please sign in to
Nautilus Prime or turn your cookies on to continue reading. Thank you!_
------
GabrielF00
I've started reading the book this is excerpted from: A Mind at Play: How
Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age It's very well written.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I Don't Want to be a Teacher Any More - hypersoar
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/26/950079/-I-Dont-Want-to-be-a-Teacher-Any-More
======
noonespecial
There is a serious moral hazard faced by most administrators of the so called
"heroic professions" (doctors, nurses, teachers, fire-fighters etc). The
trouble is that their jobs involve taking care of people and a significant
portion of their personal identity is wrapped up in this. Doctors will work
extra unpaid hours "off the books" so patients won't suffer, teachers will buy
classroom materials with their own money, fire-fighters will still respond to
fires, even with inadequate safety gear etc.
Bureaucrats are more or less free to make whatever cuts they want in these
professions because they know that those on the front lines will quietly
mutter "I will work harder" and pick up the slack until the stress finally
drives them from the profession entirely.
I've never once seen an employee of the DMV run out to kinkos and spend their
own money because the copier was broken.
~~~
mslate
These "heroic professions" also share another common characteristic: they can
do no wrong.
Doctors? They self-regulate the size of labor supply in their fields,
inflating their salaries. Why do you think we have a doctor shortage? You
really think there aren't enough smart people to do the job? No, the AMA
controls the number of med school graduates each year by limiting the number
of accredited medical schools. They also lobby governments to legislate that
nurses can't perform medical procedures (all towards the not-so-discrete goal
of preserving their six-figure salaries).
Teachers? They can't be fired thanks to tenure policies. This was the biggest
issue with public schooling when I grew up, and [continues to
be]([http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/nyregion/16rubber.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/nyregion/16rubber.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print)).
Survive three years and you have job security for life. If my workplace hired
and fired based on seniority, we would have gone bankrupt years ago.
Firefighters and policemen also can do no wrong--aside from amazing pensions
they have great job security and the power to help those they know more than
others in the event of disaster (e.g. Katrina).
For every example of those in the "heroic professions" doing the right thing,
you have the same careerism and self-preservation that those in private
industry strive for. But in many people's eyes, they can do no wrong.
~~~
RBerenguel
In part I agree with you. Tenure (which here in Spain is different: all public
workers that got their job through examination can't be fired!) is a big
problem. There are a lot of amazing teachers (I've had a lot in my life, since
school through university), but there is a lot of lousy teachers (also had a
lot of these) that do nothing and can't be fired. And the ones who love
teaching (a few of my friends are math teachers) have to suffer more or less
what the article says. Education always takes the blame, regardless of the
quality of the teacher. Also, they have an increasing responsibility: parents
no longer "educate" children (how to behave well, be quite, listen, be
respective), it is something that now school teachers and HS teachers have to
do, without any level of help from a lot of parents. A simple example, is that
when a child gets some kind of "fine" (bad grade, a written note to her
parents, whatever), most parents blame the teacher and don't believe "their
little child" misbehaved.
~~~
angus77
Are you sure that's "most parents"? The ones that have a good yell at their
kids in the bedroom for their behaviour are the ones you won't hear about, and
I suspect they're the majority. I know _I_ don't expect schools to rear my
children.
~~~
MediaBehavior
I don't know of a study that has quantified the "most" allegation. But what I
have heard from relatives who teach (or resigned from teaching) in public
schools is that _a large enough number_ of parents take this approach and seem
to come to the parent-teacher conference with the "my great kid is entitled to
grade X" attitude... that teachers' authority/professionalism gets undermined.
Even worse when administrative does not have your (teacher's) back.
If you doubt that the Peter Principle still applies, spend some time in
faculty meetings and check out the admins. There are exceptions, of course.
But IMHO (observation) the "No more A-holes" rule is more honored in the
breach than the observance.
------
wisty
I think there's two sides to the story.
Actually, no, there's more than two sides to the story, and the idiots who
think there are two sides to the story and making everything worse:
* Some teachers are awful, and the unions protect them. They also manipulate educational policy, both to improve teacher conditions (which is fair enough - that's their job), and to push the pet beliefs of a couple of batty union leaders.
* Most teaching "methods" (fads) suck, and are cooked up by the kind of people who get PhDs in "education" - ivory tower researchers who can't do, and can't teach, but can publish in a naval-gazing journal.
* Most "methods" (fads) require mounds of paperwork, so the teachers can prove they are complying.
* Direct Instruction (DI) was found to be the best teaching method by far, the last time they did any serious research. However, it does cramp creative teachers, and it's quite possible that more serious research will find better methods (possibly based on DI, but not as anal), but the opponents of DI don't want serious research (as their pet "methods" suck, compared to DI, and they know it) and DI fans think the problem is solved.
* Some kids are "special needs". Some kids are dumb. Some kids are smart. Some kids just look dumb because they aren't motivated, and some kids just look smart because they are being pushed hard, and nobody can agree what "smart" and "dumb" means. Mixed classes are good in some ways, but they can't be too big (or the teacher can't help the outlying kids). Big classes are good for the better kids, but only if they are streamed.
* Text books are often terrible.
* School work can be assessed (extrinsically motivated) or un-assessed (intrinsically motivated). Extrinsic motivation drives out intrinsic motivation, but some assessment is necessary. The current trend is to pile on more assessment (both tests and formally assessed homework) under the assumption that kids have already been jaded by the existing assessment, and no longer care about learning for learning's sake.
* We are spending too much, and not enough.
* Finally, there's rarely any end goal in mind. Or there are several end goals, and everyone forgets which ones are important. Feeding universities, creating a skilled workforce, providing opportunities for poor kids, getting good numbers in international tests, and most importantly convincing parents (voters) that something needs to be done, and we are already doing all that is humanly possible to help YOUR child beat the kid sitting next to them.
~~~
moultano
>Direct Instruction (DI) was found to be the best teaching method by far, the
last time they did any serious research.
Do you have any good links that describe what this is? All I seem to be able
to find is pages talking about how good it is, but none with a description of
it that made any sense to me.
~~~
wisty
It's a faddy method, but one that works. It puts a lot of emphasis on
fundamentals, but students who focus on fundamentals (in class) are found to
be able to do creative stuff with the material out of class. "Wax on, wax off,
now go kick ass".
It's very anal, like I said.
The teachers get a DI textbook (made up by the inventor of DI). The teacher
reads from the text book, and asks the whole class to respond on cue.
The whole class responding on cue is an important point, as it keeps the
students thinking. "Everybody, what's 12 * 8?"
It uses lots of repetition, and a few standardised instructions to the class.
"Everybody open your books, to page 23. One two three. Everybody should have
their books open. Put your finger on the word "MY". One two three ... Now
everybody read out load ..."
Interesting factoid - "The Pet Goat" (think 911, George W. Bush in a
classroom) was a DI book.
~~~
patio11
This is similar to the Japanese pedagogical style at my university, and our
grads ROFLstomp peer schools' grads at speaking ability. "Class, you are going
to the cinema this afternoon at five. Where are you going? Everyone." "I am
going to the cinema at five.". "Good. Patrick, you." "I am going to the cinema
at five.". "Good. Patrick, ask Tom. Tom, you are going to the restaurant at
seven."
Repeat an hour a day every day for three years and you get _really effing
good_. (Conversations in the third year are, obviously, more elaborate.)
~~~
Evgeny
This is very close to how they taught me English long ago in a Soviet school!
I have to say I can't complain.
------
jacoblyles
The United States spends more money on education per student than just about
any other country in the world[1], and it has been growing quite rapidly over
time[2]. America is not a penny pincher when it comes to education. One graph
beats many paragraphs of anecdote by someone with an axe to grind. Anyway, I
flagged this article because I'm hoping to see less politics on Hacker News.
[1][http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-
chart.h...](http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html)
[2][http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-
chart.h...](http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html#3)
~~~
moultano
Do you have any stats that break down where the money goes? That's probably
the most interesting statistic.
~~~
kenjackson
Here are some stats on teacher pay:
[http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snap...](http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20080402/)
[http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/teacher-pay-
aro...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/teacher-pay-around-the-
world/)
So while we may spend more on education, the delta is not going to teachers.
I suspect admin is a big part. There's a big controversy here in Seattle, the
second in recent years where there was either large corruption or tens of
millions of dollars that disappeared (the last ended up in the super of the
school district losing his job -- the Seattle Times has asked for the current
super to either resign or be fired).
------
leot
Canada has demographics comparable to the US's, but pays its teachers much
more. The results are evident in OECD's "Programme for International Student
Assessment" (PISA) <http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/60/46619703.pdf>
A rewarding job with decent compensation and time off makes teaching jobs
pretty competitive.
~~~
jacoblyles
Do you have any statistics that compare the teacher pay of the US and Canada?
The US spends more on education per pupil than almost every country in the
world (some years I believe it is number one). I would be shocked if the US
didn't pay more than Canada, on average.
~~~
angus77
It might not be so helpful to compare salaries alone (although I've heard
they're actually higher in Canada, but don't have hard statistics). Remember ,
Canadians do have to pay for health insurance, so even if they have smaller
salaries, they could still end up with more disposable income.
~~~
angus77
AAARGH! Of course, I meant _DON'T_ have to pay for health insurance.
------
DanielBMarkham
I liked the spirit of where this was going -- the personal story of how a job
as a public school teacher got more and more frustrating, eventually leading
the author to want to hang it all up.
I'm worried that we're overloading the word "teacher", however. I'm a teacher,
and I'm a learner, and I'll never stop doing those things. It's very important
that we realize that the acts of teaching and learning should be important to
all of us whether we are public school teachers or not. The subject is bigger
than that. Much bigger.
I'm also concerned that this is beginning to sound like on of those issues
where there isn't another side -- after all, who would be in favor of
continuing to increase classroom size, demonizing teachers, and the constant
screwing around with the rules teachers work by?
Nobody, of course. And whenever somebody describes a situation to me that is
so obviously one-sided, I start becoming concerned that there are critical
players or issues that are not being addressed in the essay. Even if our
author is a hero and the entire universe is against him, those other forces in
the universe probably work through some system of logic that should as well be
considered by the reader when looking at the subject.
Finally, instead of a he-said, she-said kind of story, or even a woe-am-I kind
of story, this would work much better as a systemic story. The simple sad fact
of broken systems is that they are usually filled with honest people doing the
best they can at all levels. Of course, that kind of story doesn't make for
much of a personal essay, but it reminds us that for every essay by a school
administrator talking about how bad his situation is, there's another one from
a teacher, and another one from a school board member, and another one from a
parent, and so on. Each of these people have an important story to tell.
Personal essays by definition are very narrowly constructed items. We enjoy
the emotional insight and understanding they provide and then move on, making
sure that we read the dozens of other stories which are equally as valid so
that we can have a bit of much-needed context.
------
vipivip
When you make it big, never forget your teachers... a phone call, a text, an
email, a visit means a lot
------
yason
A prime example of work that you can't measure with numbers: the value of
teaching isn't a scalar. Pretty much like measuring a programmer's output by
lines written.
However, if we think we can't afford to have a decent funding for schools then
nobody has apparently been heard speaking up about not affording to _not_ have
that funding. If we keep merely chasing test scores for a couple of decades,
what kind of an education will we have at that point?
------
karzeem
It's sad how common these feelings are and how nearly all of them trace back
to the government's (arguably) well-intentioned insistence on running schools
itself.
~~~
ylem
I though Singapore, Japan, etc. have government managed schools that seem to
be doing rather well...I can't even argue the locality issue because
Switzerland seems to be doing rather well also. I think one of the
difficulties in US schools is brought up by the author--we try to teach
everyone and we believe in 2nd and 3rd chances. Many countries begin tracking
rather early, so their teachers don't have some of the same special needs
issues (I'm not arguing right or wrong here, just fact) that teachers here
face.
Then, there is the family component. In a number of industrialized countries,
education is highly prized and parents are deeply involved in their kids'
education. Here, that is again not necessarily the case in many schools--and
there is a limit to how much teachers can do to overcome that.
Also, I think that in many other industrialized countries, teachers are
respected and paid reasonably compared to other professions. This draws
talented people into the field (passion is important, but so is economics).
~~~
angus77
Most Japanese kids end up going to cram schools to make up for what the school
system (both public and private) lacks. The system sucks---long hours,
Saturday classes are being reintroduced this spring, and the cram schools are
usually at least 2 hours long---sometimes as much as 4 or 5 hours.
And Japan still can't get into the top 10 of the Education Index.
------
Getahobby
This isn't meant to be a rhetorical question so please feel free to show me
the light. A constant drumbeat from teachers seems to be complaints about
standardized testing. Are there really any better ways to measure progress
across the board? All of us here should be fans and encouragers of standards,
right?
~~~
alextp
The problem with standardized testing is not that they don't measure the
progress well but that they measure all other sorts of confounding variables.
Each standardized test has a small number question templates, and if the
students familiarize themselves with the question templates they will do
better on the tests, for example. Another important factor is timing: some
standardized tests have a fixed amount of time allocated to a student, and
hence there are many different ways of pacing yourself that lead to better or
worse scores. Yet another important factor is the choice between open-ended
and multiple-choice questions, and even the balance between these can be
learned.
So every standardized test has some confounding variables, and effort spent
teaching the students to do better on the tests by dealing well with these
variables is effort that does not go towards helping the students learn the
material. If the standardized tests are known and used to evaluate the
teachers the incentives suddenly get really strong to teach to the test by
focusing on the idiossincrasies of specific testing schemes over teaching the
actual subject.
Standardized tests are a great way to measure performance and improvement but
only if the results won't be used for decision-making, otherwise it creates an
instant incentive to game the system.
~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
It's quite possible to write tests that fairly accurately measure the basic
material to be taught in the third grade. Well written tests cannot be 'gamed'
to any significant degree. People have known how to write good tests for over
50 years and have often done so.
Heck, when I was teaching in college, I passed out copies of tests from
earlier semesters. Then the students could study just to the tests and try to
'game' them. Still, had to know the material at least to some degree to do
even that. Net, the students had every opportunity to study just to the tests
and I was in effect teaching just to my own tests and still the students had
basically to learn the material.
------
robryan
Essentially I guess the government are trying to remove the downside of bad
teachers by destroying the upside of good ones, as well as standardizing the
teaching process, making it easier to run on a tight budget.
You have to wonder how much long term impact these cuts have, I'm sure in the
short term they can keep parents happy by producing decent test scores as they
are only focusing on the tests.
Would love to know how the Australian system compares for teachers currently
if anyone is involved there?
~~~
yason
By focusing on the efficiency of scoring well in tests, they can ignore the
costs of the work left undone. These social, curricular and work environmental
costs don't have numbers now but they will manifest in concrete money years
later. So effectively the school is borrowing from the wellbeing of the pupils
and teachers at the current cost of zero, and moving it to gains in current
productivity meters.
~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
Yup, broad problem in society, done wherever people can find an opportunity --
visible, short-term, small gain at hard to see long-term, large cost.
But the solution is at hand: In the US, local schools are run by the local
school boards, and tough to keep reality from the school board members,
including in the "wellbeing" of the students.
------
jleyank
I am what I am today because (a) I was fortunate to be exposed to a
minicomputer in 1971 and (b) I had a great teacher for 10th grade chemistry.
The former was a product of a forward-thinking school trustee and the fact
that nobody knew what to do it it so they let the kids play. The latter was
luck.
Computers are now part of the background, and I worry there's less of the
magic needed to create a proper hacker/developer. Luck is still luck.
------
ctdonath
His problem is his employer, not the work. When your boss(es) get too stupid
for too long, creating a failing business, LEAVE. There are other much better
employers to join - or start your own.
------
georgieporgie
I went to school in Oregon. Things I remember:
* Three or four really great teachers, who taught me a _lot_.
* Lots of teachers blathering on about personal and rather inappropriate stuff. In retrospect, many seem emotionally desperate and treated the classroom as a captive audience to their personal drama.
* Being singled out and harassed by at least four teachers.
* The school administrator plucking a brand new IBM 386sx off the cart that was headed to the desperately underpowered computer lab. He did this so he could run Windows. So he could launch a DOS-based menu system. So he could switch between two DOS-based applications he used.
Fire the administrators first.
~~~
aik
And the cycle continues. Fire the teachers! The students aren't learning -
they're the problem! Fire the administrators! Fire the teachers! The students
aren't trying! Fire the administrators!...
Perhaps the system itself is the problem. Change the system.
------
NY_USA_Hacker
So, once again it's 'education'. And for more detail, there are two themes:
(1) Send more money. (2) It is just crucial for us to have the money so that
we can do lots of really, really important things that can't be measured.
So, is the article really just about (A) important issues in education or is
it just (B) partisan politics fighting over money with some of the usual
techniques of politics -- some truths, half-truths, deception, distortion,
emotion, etc.?
So, to pick between (A) and (B), let's see:
(a) Source. The article is in 'The Daily Kos', and I believe I've heard that
this site is essentially propaganda by the more liberal wing of the Democrats
and paid for at least heavily by Soros who apparently believes that US
politics should be something like some of the traditions of old Central and
Eastern European socialism.
(b) Subject. The article is to grab people by the heart and the gut to have
them open up below the belt, this time their wallet in their hip pocket. It's
a big sales pitch leading to "Send more money".
(c) Timing. At present one of the hottest political stories in the news is the
fighting in several states and especially in Wisconsin trying to reduce
expenditures by state governments so that the states can have balanced budgets
without raising taxes and to reduce these expenditures by fighting with
unionized state employees, especially the teachers' unions.
(d) Unions. Now we come full circle: The unions are heavily in the Democrat
party with propaganda site 'The Daily Kos'.
So, it seems to me that article really is about (B) partisan politics and not
(A) education.
~~~
angus77
Except that what seems to be the most biting issue for her is being forced to
teach for test scores. Throwing money at that won't make the classes any more
engaging. Try actually RingTFA next time.
~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
What's this sudden big deal against "test scores" from the K-12 teachers'
organizations? Looks like an excuse to get paid the big bucks without any
measurable results. Some good results are difficult to measure, but the basic
results are easy enough to measure and should be measured. A serious practical
problem is that K-12 is not doing well even on those basic results.
For "engaging", that's mostly nonsense.
You sound like a hired propaganda spammer paid for by the AFT or the NEA.
Test scores are important: SAT, CEEB, GRE, LSAT, MCAT. Board Certification in
medicine. Qualifying exams for a Ph.D. Just what is it about test scores you
and our K-12 teachers do not understand?
~~~
angus77
You talk as if there were never test scores to think about before. There
always have been. You can take that strawman and smoke it.
"Engaging" is far, far more important than you realize. Kids who are bored
will absorb less and be distracted more easily. Of course, "engaging" must be
a means, not an end. A teacher's not an entertainer. What do you think the
word "engaging" means, anyways? Or did you not bother to learn that one
because it wasn't necessary for a test?
The problem is not the taking of tests. The problem is focusing on tests at
the expense of everything else.
~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
This discussion is so far from reality in the present it has already violated
the limit on the speed of light.
We're talking nonsense.
E.g., you wrote:
"You talk as if there were never test scores to think about before. There
always have been."
Nonsense. We're in full agreement here.
Instead of some false disagreement, we need to move on to something
constructive.
You wrote:
"'Engaging' is far, far more important than you realize."
Nonsense. In simple terms, you can't know what I "realize". For more, of
COURSE 'engaging' is important.
My father was something of an expert in educational theory and practiced it as
the educational theorist for a military technical school (electronics,
welding, hydraulics, mechanicals, etc.) for years with over 40,000 students at
once.
His main 'guidance' of my education was that I be 'engaged', and in some
subjects I really was. I was engaged enough, but where I wasn't he didn't
push; he likely thought that such pushing would be pointless and may have been
correct. In the end I did well in school, went "all the way". Far and away,
the best things I did in school were from my being 'engaged', although that's
a bit too mild.
So, what about 'engaged' in the article by the third grade teacher?
(a) No teacher in K-12 'engaged' me in anything. Not once. Ever. Where I was
most engaged, in plane geometry, more fun than eating caramel popcorn, the
teacher was the ugliest person I've ever met, and I slept in class and refused
to admit doing any of her assigned homework. So, she would have turned off
many students but did not affect my level of 'engagement' at all.
Actually, I made sure to work every non-trivial problem in the book including
the more challenging ones in the back. I was fully "engaged".
I got 'engaged' for the usual reasons: A desire to achieve the security of
adult competence. The content of the media that emphasized science got me
'engaged' in science.
(b) As I outlined, there's not a lot taught in K-8. Given that, a lot of being
'engaged' is not necessary to that learning. So, it's a bit empty for her to
say that she got her students 'engaged' in learning the standard stuff in the
third grade.
(c) More directly, if she can get her students 'engaged', then let's see the
results in student accomplishments:
So, maybe she gets some student engaged in math and they rush ahead and pass
the AP calculus exam at the end of the third grade. If then she wants to say
that she got the student 'engaged', then I can believe her and chalk up some
credit for her getting a student 'engaged'.
Maybe she plays some music for the students and then has as a class guest the
first chair violinist of the local symphony orchestra. The violinist gives a
concert in class with everything from 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' to various
pieces really easy to like to some dance pieces even easier to like like to
various classic showpieces to some 'video backed show and tell', say, motifs
from 'The Ring', with images as in, say,
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7prUFflX0_E>
where the climax should get much of the class 'engaged', to something really
'engaging', the D major section of the Bach 'Chaconne':
Castelnuovo-Tedesco: "The Bach 'Chaconne' is the greatest piece of music ever
written."
The central D major section is the easiest to like and has the climax of the
piece. The Heifetz performance of the climax is especially 'engaging'.
A violin is such a magnificent piece of 'woodworking' that it is 'engaging'
just to see one for the first time. Being just close to a violin being played
for some of the best music by a good violinist is really 'engaging'.
I did that once: At Christmas at the farm I retired to an upstairs bedroom for
some violin practice. Soon a niece about 8 came up to watch and listen. So,
sure, soon I put my violin under her left chin, stood behind her, showed her
how to hold the bow, and the next day her father asked me, "How much is a
violin going to cost me?". Her mother had been trying to get the girl
'engaged' in music for years with no effect. I was successful in a few
minutes. Part of the reason is that it is much easier to get a child engaged
in something an adult is doing instead of something they are just saying.
Having a really good musician in class will get a lot of students 'engaged'.
Next day, have a good concert pianist do much the same. Sure, start with some
famous pieces some students in the class may be able to play already, e.g.,
the Bach C major "Prelude" from 'The Well Tempered Clavier', let the student
get acknowledged, maybe get a 'master class' on this piece from the guest
pianist, sitting beside him on the piano bench, get status in the class, and
then get the rest of the class more eager to 'follow along' and be 'engaged'.
Yes, the piece is in the movie 'Samantha: An American Girl Holiday' and there
played very well. Net, Hollywood knows that third grade or so girls can like
that piece.
Next day, a cellist. Sure, play something really easy to like, the 'Prelude'
to the Bach first unaccompanied -- easy enough to like to be used in ad music,
but the ascending chromatic scale climax near the end is one of the better
moments in all of music.
Next day, have a guest outlining the math for satellite orbit determination as
needed by GPS. So, get students 'engaged' in math and physics.
So, some student gets really 'engaged', checks out a violin, spends about half
of each day in a back storeroom practicing, and by the end of the third grade
plays the D major section of the Bach 'Chaconne'.
Now I'll give her credit for getting her students 'engaged'.
Some of the students like writing. Okay, have them start some blogs, write the
initial posts, moderate the other posts, and respond, i.e., have them play the
role of Fred Wilson at AVC.com. The teacher will get some chances to supervise
the work and help with the writing, content, handling contentious issues,
computer usage, grammar and spelling. At the end of the year, finally tell the
world that the blog moderators were all of eight years old!
You wrote:
"The problem is not the taking of tests. The problem is focusing on tests at
the expense of everything else."
The tests are not going to cover playing the Bach 'Chaconne' and, instead,
just cover the basics of third grade material. Good students with good
instruction can learn enough of the grade 1-8 material in a few months. Asking
that the ordinary and normal students know the third grade material by the end
of the third grade is asking very little.
For the "teaching to the test", that is presented as some sin but without
details about the sinfulness. Go ahead: Teach to the test. Heck, most straight
A students study just for the test and just as they perceive the teacher will
write it anyway.
If the test is at all well constructed, then passing the test is a quite good
indication of the learning. People have known how to write good tests for
decades.
As we all know, tests are a central part of education, including via the
examples I gave of CEEB, SAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, etc.
Net, these K-12 objections to "testing" with the vague sin of "teaching to the
test" look like excuses less good than the classic "My dog ate my homework.".
One way I got back at my plane geometry teacher was what I did on the state
test. I got back at all those teachers with my SAT scores, especially my math
SAT score.
The SAT score was correct: I had not only a lot of 'engagement' and interest
in math, I had some talent as subsequent events have shown: Yes, the grand
hero of mathematical economics is K. Arrow. There is a famous paper by Arrow,
Hurwicz, and Uzawa. Why poor Uzawa has not gotten his Nobel prize I don't
know; maybe they give at most two per paper? There was a problem stated but
not solved in the paper. There was also H. Whitney, long at Harvard, of the
Whitney extension theorem. So I proved a result comparable with Whitney's,
assumed a little less and got a little less, used my result to solve the
Arrow, et al., problem, and published.
Net, that third grade teacher should (A) have her students do well on the
tests and (B) have her students get fully engaged in much more that is not on
tests but quite visible as I outlined.
I'll add one more important point: However much the AFT, NEA, Department of
Education, Obama, The Chosen One, Blessed Be He, want all of US K-12 run
directly from DC, it is still the case that local school boards run K-12
education. Bluntly, what such a school board wants, such a school board can
get. If a teacher, principal, and school really get their students and parents
'engaged', e.g., parents of third grade see their children wanting freshman
college texts on math and physics, a violin, piano, or cello, are listening to
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7prUFflX0_E>
etc., then the school board can get 'engaged', provide what is needed for,
e.g., getting a concert master into third grade classes, etc., and really go
for it.
Net, that's much of just why we have local school boards.
~~~
angus77
You spat out: "So what about 'engaged' in the article by the third grade
teacher?" but didn't bother to answer it.
You say you and I are in agreement; I thought I was in agreement (on that
point) with the author; you imply you are in disagreement with the author. I
must say, I'm confused.
As for the rest, I might be assuming that Canadian and American public school
education is more similar than it actually is. Maybe what you have to say
about the state of American education is less hyperbolic than I take it to be.
I've lived in Japan for the last 13 years, though, and comparing the to-the-
test Japanese system with its long hours of rote learning and cram schools, I
definitely think the Canadian system produces better results (and the UN seems
to agree). The impression left in my mind by the article was of a Canadian-
like system shifting towards being more like a Japanese-like one. It may be
these assumptions that have us talking at cross purposes.
Although I must assert that, while I think tests are an important _gauge_ ,
"teaching to the test" is a short-term goal that, in my experience, leads to a
lot of cramming and very little long-term learning. (personally, though, I
never crammed---I paid attention in class, although it didn't always look like
it)
~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
Generally the Asians nearly totally fail to 'get it'. There is no chance that
US (or Canadian) K-12 will go very far making the mistakes the Asians make.
That tests are fine does not mean that the Asian approach to rote learning is
fine.
That some students cram for tests does not mean that tests are useless.
For being 'engaged', I gave a very long list of ways a third grade teacher
might get her students engaged. So, I agree that being 'engaged' is important.
But in the article the teacher was using being 'engaged' (A) in only a weak
sense (my examples were much stronger) and (B) was using her weak results on
'engaged' to excuse paying less attention to good tests on the basic material.
But on being 'engaged' and actually learning well and retaining that
knowledge, we've ignored the 2000 pound elephant in the room -- what the
student gets at home.
Yes, the US could use some national tests of basic material during K-12: The
US already has good tests at the end of K-12 (CEEB, SAT) and end of college
(GRE, LSAT, GMAT). But for the rest, keep that local at the level of the
family, teacher, school, and school board.
~~~
angus77
You're still bringing up the "tests are useless" thingy as if anyone has ever
said anything so ridiculous. All I've seen is the criticism of teaching test-
taking skills as opposed to content (and the retention thereof). I'm pretty
sure that's what everyone means by "teaching to the test". I'm pretty sure
nobody here (or anywhere) has argued against greater students having better
comprehension and retention.
------
NY_USA_Hacker
In
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267731>
I argue that the article is just politics.
Still, education is important.
Since we are on 'Hacker News' (HN), there is some considerable irony in this
article:
In computing now, the workers in information technology commonly need to
understand subjects such as:
algorithms, programming languages, frameworks, development environments, user
interface design and development, programming for application installation,
operating system administration, networking and network administration,
relational database and its administration, code repositories, application
instrumentation, system monitoring, many utilities and applications, software
as a service, the Cloud, the social graphs and interest graphs on the
Internet, how to start a company, how to raise venture capital, how to manage
software development, etc.
The content of these subjects changes significantly each 12 months.
To keep up, workers need their own 'computer center' and educational resources
and mostly just must teach themselves, that is, without teachers. In
particular, formal courses are nearly useless because the teachers are rarely
up to date on this material.
This pattern has been rock solid for nearly all parts of the US computer
industry going way back to punched cards.
Net, the readers of HN overwhelmingly learn independently and are self-taught
using their own time, money, and effort.
So, claims by the formal education community in K-12 and college that their
classroom instruction is crucial for education is an ironic, ROFL at HN.
But HN readers are not the only ones: (1) An auto mechanic has to keep up with
the new systems on the new cars. (2) Workers in construction of houses and
small commercial buildings have to keep up with new materials, construction
techniques, and regulations. (3) Recently chefs in high end restaurants had to
learn about 'molecular gastronomy', 'tasting menus', and intricate 'wine
parings'. (4) CPAs and tax lawyers need to keep up on the tax law changes.
Workers in a huge fraction of the US economy have to keep up in their fields,
independently, via self-teaching, and most of this work uses their time,
effort, and money.
So, let's return to K-12: Basically what is needed from K-12 is at least, by
age 18, to be able to (A) read with understanding materials commonly
encountered, (B) write clearly, e.g., as well as on HN, and (C) know basic
arithmetic, percentages, areas, and volumes.
Now we come to some simple facts: Joe gets sick and stays home from school for
three weeks. His grandmother notices that he can't read so, in those three
weeks, teaches him to read. Later she does the same for (B) writing and (C)
basic math. This situation is common. Basically, normal kids can pick up the
3Rs with astounding speed. Just how they do it is not clear at all, and
research on 'teaching techniques' is not promising but also mostly not needed.
The K-12 system should be able to get this teaching done by the eighth grade.
So, to know, sure, give some tests. Simple enough.
But, K-12 does try to do more. Especially important topics include math
through analytic geometry and trigonometry, biology, chemistry, physics, and
history. For these subjects, sadly, the K-12 teachers rarely know enough of
the material to teach it well. Even the K-12 'experts' don't: I understand
calculus quite well, thank you (learned it at several levels, taught it,
applied it, published peer-reviewed original research based on it), but the
people who wrote the AP calculus materials did not. Sad. To learn calculus,
just get any edition of the dozen or so college calculus texts famous over the
last few decades, dig in, and f'get about AP calculus.
Yes, it would be good to teach some art. Sadly, apparently they don't. There
may be more on how art works just in, say,
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2246723>
In the article the teacher said:
"I’m used to wild and crazy discussions about amazing novels."
"Amazing novels"? Eventually I had to conclude that, according to the
standards of information safety and efficacy well established in the first
half of the 20th century, novels are at most for light entertainment so that
the set of all "amazing novels" is the empty set and not worth serious effort.
She was largely wasting time; it's sad she didn't know that; but I can believe
that most readers of 'The Daily Kos' take novels seriously. Those English
majors dragged me through six years of their 'belle lettre' nonsense when I
wanted to study much more in math and science. Bummer.
So, what K-12 does with these additional subjects is at best mixed.
So, net, our K-12 system is heavily for baby sitting. We shouldn't have to pay
a lot for baby sitting.
So, what about education?
HN Style Solution: Put good materials on the Internet. So have careful,
detailed text in PDF files. Have some lectures by some good people. And by
some experts, have some lectures with some intuitive descriptions that explain
the 'forest' so well that the 'trees' become mostly obvious.
With good materials, a good student could knock off grades 7-12 independently
in maybe three weeks per grade except that foreign languages typically would
extend the time. But, with good materials, can do well with a foreign language
surprisingly quickly.
Then for 'more' in fuzzy topics such as art, human behavior, organizational
behavior, civics, politics, just have some excellent lectures on the Internet
and maybe some fora.
E.g., for a curiously good start on both music and painting, in one stroke,
just spend right at 10 minutes with
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7prUFflX0_E>
Likely a good start on art history is the 1969 TV series 'Civilization' by
Kenneth Clark. There is also a book, but the video alone is fine.
Actually, for some good material in history, there are some starts: Some of
the best material on the history of the 20th century is in some selected
movies; it's not common to find better materials in print, and it is nearly
impossible to find materials nearly as good in K-12 or the first two years of
college.
E.g., the movie 'The Battle of Britain' is relatively good on its subject.
Actual dates, numbers of planes, pilots, and bombs per day along with
'logistics' would help but are generally ignored by all of the history
community.
The movie 'Midway' is relatively good on its subject, a turning point in the
war in the Pacific and basically for the reasons made clear in the movie. The
Charlton Heston character should be cut out. The timing, crucial, of the
actual events in the battle should be made more clear. Details on times,
distances, and speeds would help, yes, typically ignored by the history
community. Still the movie is relatively good.
The series 'Victory at Sea' was a lot of US flag waving but still does provide
a good outline of a lot of WWII.
The movie 'The Longest Day' is awash in 'entertainment values' but, still,
does cover the essentials of D-Day.
The hugely long:
William L. Shirer, 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi
Germany, Thirtieth Anniversary Edition', ISBN 0-671-72868-7, Simon and
Schuster, New York, 1981.
actually is surprisingly sparse on important content.
Sadly the biographies of Eisenhower and Patton are so far from the actual
details that they are not good. Bradley's biography is better (but nothing
like the character Bradley in the movie 'Patton').
Net, what K-12 is teaching in history is below what is readily available just
by watching some movies for a few evenings.
Net, for formal education in K-12 and the first two years of college, it's a
huge waste of time, money, and effort for all concerned and can mostly be
replaced by good materials (mostly not yet available but easily could be) on
the Internet, thus, letting students get on with independent learning in areas
of their interests and/or more advanced formal education.
People should say, "I want good education, but I'm not going to pay a lot for
what's in K-12 and the first two years of college now."
~~~
ennimbulator
>by age 18, to be able to (A) read with understanding materials commonly
encountered, (B) write clearly, e.g., as well as on HN, and (C) know basic
arithmetic, percentages, areas, and volumes.
Nah -- you aren't being radical enough!
For example, it isn't necessary to know the multiplication tables in order to
read mathematics at university.
The argument about basic knowledge (also known as 'gateway knowledge' i.e.
stuff you need to know in order to learn most other things), is _back-to-
front_.
If there's something you're interested in, you will learn whatever gateway
knowledge is necessary to learn it or learn it more fully.
e.g. football -- you will learn to count in order to keep score
e.g. multiplayer games -- you will learn more language in order to communicate
with other players
e.g. harry potter -- you will learn more english in order to read the books
e.g. selling goods at market stalls -- you will learn multiplication
In each case the learner will learn more quickly and more efficiently than in
the classroom. He will learn whatever it is 'just in time' and he won't be
burdened by stuff he doesn't need. And he will remember it, as required, with
no testing and no exams.
So, it isn't necessary to force people to learn basic stuff. We're almost
certainly wrong about what constitutes the basics, anyway. (Curricula change
very slowly, according to fashion, and are shielded from criticism.)
~~~
pbhjpbhj
>In each case the learner will learn more quickly and more efficiently than in
the classroom. He will learn whatever it is 'just in time' and he won't be
burdened by stuff he doesn't need.
Part of schooling is becoming a member of a country's workforce. One must
learn some things to be a benefit to society - it is not just about self-
directed "hedonistic" learning (ie learning only to meet ones own perceived
desires).
Indeed with some forced learning one can come to understand that one's
previous desires were short-sighted and wouldn't ultimately lead to the
pleasure one imagined.
For example, some who watch Harry Potter movies might not apply themselves to
learning to read in order to enjoy the books; even if ultimately this lead
them to greater enjoyment of more varied literature and indeed more
fulfilment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Milton Friedman's Free To Choose - pinchyfingers
http://www.freetochoose.tv/
======
hebejebelus
I hate sites that don't tell me what they are at first glance. I don't know
what this is and I'm not going to watch a video to find out. I am an average
user with a short attention span, and I'd give you advice on targeting people
like me, only I'm not sure what it is you do and whether average users are
your target audience.
Please. All it takes is a paragraph. Hell, you don't even have an "About"
page.
Edit: I'm sorry that this sounds unnecessarily harsh, but it bugs me to hell
that I have no idea about what I'm looking at. =]
~~~
pinchyfingers
Uh, I'd think it speaks for itself. Milton Friedman is pretty well known - he
was a leader of Chicago school economics. This is a TV series that he produced
that explains the mechanics of the free market.
What is it you want as way of explanation? I figured Hacker News is a place
where people might be interested in capitalism.
~~~
hebejebelus
That would have been enough. I neither own a TV nor live in the USA (where I
imagine he's more well-known?), and while I do spend the greater part of my
life on the internet, I had never come across his name before.
Thanks for clearing that up. =]
------
racecar789
I like how Friedman explains his logic in the first half of each video, then
in the second half, invites 5 people with opposite opinions to his own and
debates them. The older series is better.
This video (and also Commanding Heights shown on PBS) had a great impact on my
economic views.
Nothing causes more harm than good intentions.
------
mkramlich
i like the simple site layout. i wish more sites were like this. easier on my
eyes and brain and easier on my computer. one design suggestion I have is to
add some kind of About blurb or page.
------
kokoito
Awesome.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WireGuard Merged into OpenBSD - axiomdata316
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=159274150512676&w=2
======
zx2c4
WireGuard project announcement is here:
[https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2020-June/005588...](https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2020-June/005588.html)
~~~
riobard
What's the performance situation of the wg-go implementation now? I recalled
there's a utun device API limitation that each packet requires a syscall. Is
there any progress to avoid the overhead?
~~~
vertex-four
I imagine that io_uring or similar work could help here - provide the kernel
with a submission queue and a completion queue once, and just keep feeding it
buffers to fill without syscalls.
~~~
riobard
That's what I'd assume but I've never seen anyone doing that yet.
~~~
vertex-four
That would be because io_uring is incredibly new and I don't think the tuntap
driver supports it yet.
------
athoik
Just great!
Hope to release wireguard on FreeBSD soon as well.
In order pfSense to include it:
[https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/8786](https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/8786)
~~~
throw0101a
> _Hope to release wireguard on FreeBSD soon as well._
Available as a Port / package:
* [https://www.freshports.org/net/wireguard/](https://www.freshports.org/net/wireguard/)
* [https://www.freshports.org/net/wireguard-go/](https://www.freshports.org/net/wireguard-go/)
Running it in a jail for further compartmentalization:
* [https://genneko.github.io/playing-with-bsd/networking/freebs...](https://genneko.github.io/playing-with-bsd/networking/freebsd-wireguard-jail/)
* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23004061](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23004061)
~~~
loeg
GP is referring to the kernel implementation that is a work-in-progress.
~~~
clort
A kernel implementation also in development on NetBSD:
[https://github.com/ozaki-r/netbsd-
src/tree/wireguard](https://github.com/ozaki-r/netbsd-src/tree/wireguard)
------
atonse
I’ve always wanted to run OpenBSD for our Wireguard bastion host (the one
machine that is “open”. Not sure it makes a difference over Linux but OpenBSD
has an even stronger security culture.
Was satisfied with the state of affairs before but genuinely excited about
this development.
~~~
tptacek
OpenBSD has a different security culture. "Stronger" hasn't been the right
word in over a decade.
~~~
jooize
What do you mean?
~~~
woodruffw
OpenBSD has historically been eager to add new security mitigations without
explaining their intended threat model.
Here's an excellent talk (in website form) on the subject:
[https://isopenbsdsecu.re/about/](https://isopenbsdsecu.re/about/)
~~~
bawolff
I dont think that website is very compelling. It claims a bunch of things as
not good practise, and then asserts without evidence or example that openbsd
does them.
Quite frankly it reads like someone with an axe to grind against openbsd.
~~~
woodruffw
> I dont think that website is very compelling. It claims a bunch of things as
> not good practise, and then asserts without evidence or example that openbsd
> does them.
Here's a material example: OpenBSD has expended considerable effort into
removing ROP gadgets from their compilation products[1].
As the website documents[2], these efforts haven't made a single exploit
harder to write.
GCC even removed their (mostly equivalent) ROP mitigation approach,
documenting it as "fairly ineffective" and "lur[ing] developers to the land of
false security"[3].
(Another good example is PID randomization: OpenBSD added this over 20 years
ago as part of their "randomize anything that can be randomized" approach.
It's never had any real positive security impact, and has made _other_ PID-
based vulnerabilities more viable.)
[1]:
[https://www.openbsd.org/papers/eurobsdcon2018-rop.pdf](https://www.openbsd.org/papers/eurobsdcon2018-rop.pdf)
[2]:
[https://isopenbsdsecu.re/mitigations/rop_removal/](https://isopenbsdsecu.re/mitigations/rop_removal/)
[3]: [https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/gcc/patch/CAFULd4ZL-
wa3...](https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/gcc/patch/CAFULd4ZL-
wa3wBaH4cNmvW=nxMYDgXtybinE4sg5EmsAgtasMA@mail.gmail.com/)
~~~
sanxiyn
I agree some OpenBSD security mitigations are dubious, but if I am forced to
choose between Linux (too little) and OpenBSD (too much), it seems to me
OpenBSD is definitely preferrable. (Of course, the best is to implement only
effective ones.) Do you disagree?
~~~
woodruffw
I think that Linux is a security mess in its own ways.
That being said, I think Linux’s guts get _far_ more attention than OpenBSD’s
do, and that the (fewer) mitigations that Linux chooses to implement are much
better supported by both information on real-world attacks and by the
literature. Given that, I have a slight preference for Linux. But that
shouldn’t be taken as praise.
------
cpach
Very good call from the OpenBSD project to include this in their kernel.
------
bch
WireGuard:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WireGuard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WireGuard)
------
greatjack613
Incredible, so excited to see wireguard start making it into mainstream
distros.
Personally I see this as the most exciting thing to happen to linux in the
past 2 - 3 years.
~~~
asveikau
Enthusiasm noted, but OpenBSD is not Linux.
~~~
talideon
My guess is that GP is referring to WireGuard, not this specifically.
------
Tsiklon
Congratulations to the team on this successful integration into OpenBSD.
I'm really pleased to see ongoing Wireguard integration in all the big
platforms.
The setup is so simple, I route all my personal traffic through a simple cloud
based WG + Pihole setup.
------
jjice
Why does WireGuard need to be a part of the kernels for BSD, Linux, and I
assume other OSes? Is OpenVPN the same way? Why can't it be part of userspace?
~~~
detaro
It doesn't need to be, a userspace implementation is available.
------
schoolornot
Does the underlying crypto in WireGuard lend itself to hardware
acceleration/implementation in ASICs? If so, when do we expect to see such
devices available?
~~~
867-5309
I believe Wireguard is up to 4x faster than OpenVPN where OpenVPN uses AES-NI.
processors with this instruction set is possibly the closest thing to an ASIC
for VPN en/decryption, so I dare say Wireguard will neither need nor benefit
from a purpose-built instruction set
~~~
api
AES is as fast or faster than ChaCha if there is hardware acceleration.
OpenVPN is slow for other reasons, and honestly the crypto is usually not the
bottleneck in most cases unless you are really pushing multiple gigabits or
it's a very small CPU.
~~~
throwaway2048
This is definitely not true, chacha20 is frequently faster than AES even with
AES-NI in use, especially on earlier implementations of the instruction
extension.
~~~
api
I'd like to see some numbers on this. I'm sure there are some chips where it's
the case but are we talking small ARM cores or larger desktop and server
chips?
------
grogenaut
still waiting for wireguard to be TCP based so I can use it in large
corporations, many of who don't dig stateless udp in their firewalls.
~~~
bawolff
Wat?
If wireguard doesn't meet your requirements, don't use it, but its kind of
rediculous to complain it doesn't do X when doing X would defeat the point of
the software.
------
nindalf
I’m confused about their mention of Go. The Linux implementation of WireGuard
is written in C - [https://git.zx2c4.com/wireguard-
linux](https://git.zx2c4.com/wireguard-linux)
~~~
skrause
OpenBSD doesn't want any GPL code, so they couldn't just port the Linux kernel
module.
The OpenBSD kernel module is also written in C:
[http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-
bin/cvsweb/src/sys/net/if_wg.c...](http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-
bin/cvsweb/src/sys/net/if_wg.c?rev=1.3&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup)
But the code looks quite different from [https://git.zx2c4.com/wireguard-
linux/tree/drivers/net/wireg...](https://git.zx2c4.com/wireguard-
linux/tree/drivers/net/wireguard?h=stable)
~~~
zx2c4
This has nothing to do with licensing. OpenBSD is a different kernel, so
different code. Having written the Linux code, I relicensed any similarities
between the two to make it amenable to OpenBSD, and remove any doubt about
status.
~~~
aljarry
Is it possible to create kernel modules for both OpenBSD and Linux with common
code that's licensed appropriately? Something like a library with two kernel
API glue layers, one for Linux GPLed and one for OpenBSD.
~~~
aargh_aargh
My impression about the goal of Wireguard (mind you, I haven't looked at the
code) is that it's to be as simple as possible, reusing as much of the
primitives the OS offers without reinventing the wheel.
That goal may be antithetical to a single codebase supporting multiple
(possibly very dissimilar) operating systems.
It's interesting to compare this approach to the approach taken by OpenSSH
(and its openssh-portable variant). One has code specific to each OS, the
other one has one canonical codebase for one OS + patches addressing
compatibility with other OSes. IMHO mostly due to the difference in complexity
of each project.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AI can help recession-proof your company - sg_gabriel
https://blog.saleswhale.com/4-ways-ai-can-help-recession-proof-your-company
======
sg_gabriel
After researching over 100+ companies globally on how they weathered the 2008
global financial crisis, I noticed they deployed four common strategies.
I wrote an article that looks at each of the above time-tested strategies
through through the lens of AI and automation technology available in 2020.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What has been your worst onboarding experience as a customer? - DanBC
I'm having a pretty lousy experience at the moment trying to become a customer of British Gas (a utility company in the UK).<p>It's such a painful experience that I'm going to pay extra to join a different company.<p>And it made me wonder: what bad experiences have you had when trying to join a company? What made them bad experiences? What should the company have done?
======
hakfoo
I bought off-marketplace health insurance one year. There's no provision for
online subscription. You have to call in, and they have to read and
acknowledge all the disclosures, so it takes like 45 minutes of droning over a
phone.
Considering the plan was basically equivalent to a marketplace plan, I don't
understand why they couldn't just list it on there where enrollment takes like
10 minutes all-online.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
More than 1,000 pupils penalised for phones in GCSE and A-level exams - Cbasedlifeform
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/05/students-cheating-mobile-phones-gcse-exams-a-levels-2017
======
qubex
How could anybody possibly ‘smuggle’ a smartphone into an exam hall and hope
to get away with it? Back when I took my International Baccalaureate (IB) in
1999 we were only admitted into the hall with our standard school-issued
tracksuit with pockets reversed and in stocking feet, and if we went to the
bathroom during the exam the examiner would inspect the stall _and distribute
us pre-approved toilet paper rolls_ that hadn't had notes rolled into them.
The blinds were down so that nobody could signal us from nearby buildings.
Calculators, if allowed, were distributed from a stock of standard units with
no pre-saved programmes or text files stored onboard. We were instructed not
to tap our pencils on the desk's top or tap our feet or even crack our
knuckles because it could be a method of communication and thus be grounds for
disqualification. Our positions were randomised.
Those protocols were bloody rock solid, and rightly so: there's absolutely no
doubt that whomever was awarded whatever deserved it. We students understood
that these measures were in place to protect all of us from any shadow of a
doubt whatsoever. I didn't find it in the slightest disturbing and all but the
weakest students accepted it, and we better students were protected from the
otherwise incessant badgering of those who would otherwise want to copy.
I found it all quite thrilling really.
P.S. I was no saint: I analysed the non-examination protocols and found
multiple vulnerabilities that I harnessed multiple times to _postpone_
inconveniently timed tests. But it would have never occurred to me to _cheat_.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Parking startup – never pay for parking again - joshuaabr
https://valet.launchaco.com
======
masonic
$2/hour car rental? It costs five times as much to rent a scooter!
~~~
joshuaabr
Since we are charging both sides of the marketplace here, it's feasible. It's
actually quite funny, when we tested the pricing, more people (around 80%)
said they'd use the service if it was more expensive ($6.99/hr). Maybe because
they thought it was too cheap to be real?
------
joshuaabr
Would love everyone's feedback here :-) We're launching soon, and would like
any advice you could muster up.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Buggy Dice.com Scraper that Requires a Profile? Not Good. - rwolf
http://www.vitruva.com/
======
rwolf
Indeed.com's results for today (for me, at least) are all from this site. I
spotted a job I wanted, jumped through 30 minutes of hoops setting up a
mandatory profile, only to get bounced to a removed dice.com listing. Awesome.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Housing a prisoner in California costs more than a year at Harvard - omegaworks
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-prison-costs-20170604-htmlstory.html
======
csmark
The USA has ~5% of the world's population but 22% of the world's prisoners.
Financial profiting from prisoners: Prison Labor - paid $0.93-0.16/hr
California Prisons didn't want to release prisoners because they would loose
cheap labor..Courts said they had to: [https://thinkprogress.org/california-
tells-court-it-cant-rel...](https://thinkprogress.org/california-tells-court-
it-cant-release-inmates-early-because-it-would-lose-cheap-prison-
labor-c3795403bae1)
30% of California forest firefighters are prisoners .. The state argued
against parole credit for these prisoners as it would draw down the labor
force and lead to depletion of the firefighter force.
Someone already mentioned the profit of commissaries. Some are actually run by
private companies operating inside the prison
~~~
cubano
At the risk of being boorish about the subject...
I was recently released from Las Vegas County Jail (CCDC) where all sentenced
inmates, myself included, are _forced_ , by state law, to "work" in some
manner in the jail.
In this case, work consisted of 11-hour shifts, 6 days a week, of ultra back-
breaking kitchen work. We were not even allowed to have _water cups_ anywhere
outside the break room.
They actually yelled _faster! faster!_ as we ran "the line"...I never could
get over that one. All that was missing were the whips and the guards with
shotguns spitting tobacco.
We processed approx. _10 thousand trays per day_ , and were constantly
harassed and threatened big time by the corporate kitchen staff in charge. It
wasn't enough that we were clocking 60-70 hours a week for the grand total of
1 extra tray per meal (not every meal grant you, just the ones we were working
during), but you could actually get thrown in the box and _lose gain time_
(more days in jail) for eating a cookie or some trivial such thing.
If you refused to work, you were put in the box and 5 days were added to your
sentence.
I did the math...2 shifts of 28 workers 365 days a year...with overtime and
all that, approx $50k per week($2.6mil/year) of free basically coerced slave
labor for the Aero-mark Corporation that ran the kitchen.
[edits]
~~~
yjgyhj
That is indeed totally crazy.
I wish I had some way to verify your story, as I as a reader can't know who
sits behind the keyboard on the other side.
~~~
cubano
> I wish I had some way to verify your story, as I as a reader can't know who
> sits behind the keyboard on the other side.
I could never in a 1000 years make up the narrative of my life. I often cannot
believe I've lived it.
Every word I write here on HN is true, although you simply have no idea how I
wish it wasn't so.
~~~
ianai
I believe you.
I'm also a LV resident. The city is generally hostile.
------
flexie
I get it - it's tempting to solve the Harvard Business School issue by sending
the MBA students to prison before they wreck havoc on the economy. But I'm not
sure their dads would pay the exceeding tuition.
Also, there is the whole question of whether it would be fair to the other
prisoners. Pretty soon the prison economy would be infested with cigarette
derivatives and yard swaps.
~~~
usmeteora
Back to the topic, prisons are just another haven for contract robbing. The
prison contracts everything from security to mopping. Everything is 3x more
expensive. Prison costs are a sink to our society.
Except taxpayers foot the bill. Theres an economic incentive to keeping crime
low and right now were all being robbed blind, in this area as well (because
yes there are too many to count)
The amount who are released within 5 years with little to no recovery or are
going to end up in an even worse state, with even less of an ability to get a
job, are more likely to continue to commit crime to make ends meet.
Before we talk about Harvard grads destroying the eocnomy, lets talk about
making it less and less likely for 75% of the people imprisoned to ever be
able to contribute to society once they are released.
We have a very protestant implementation of prison, they exist to punish
people, not to reabilitate people or address the issues, and everyone ends up
paying a higher cost with more damage in the end.
Yes people who are doing serious crimes should be put away, but we know that
most of the time thats not the case, and furthemore, we know that alot of
serious crimes including rape, have men released within 5 years, while a first
time offender selling green could land 15 in prison.
Maybe.. [http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/11/14/some-european-
pri...](http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/11/14/some-european-prisons-are-
shrinking-and-closing-what-can-america-learn/)
~~~
jondubois
Yes the idea of having a criminal record is silly - It's a self-fulfilling
label. Once you are labeled a criminal, it only makes it harder to get a job
and give up crime.
Besides, crime has become such an arbitrary thing. A corporation is allowed to
quietly syphon away billions of dollars from society using clever government
lobbying and tax avoidance schemes but if a member of society physically
steals something from a corporation, they'll go to jail. Why don't
corporations like JP Morgan and their executives get a permanent criminal
record when they are found guilty of criminal activity?
Either it should be consistent for all or it should be abolished entirely.
~~~
webXL
I mostly agree that the record makes it harder to get a job and give up crime,
but what about the deterrence factor? How many more would commit crimes
knowing that it wouldn't have any impact on their ability to get a decent job
right after serving some time?
> A corporation is allowed to quietly _syphon away billions of dollars from
> society_ using clever government lobbying and tax avoidance schemes
Was it society's to begin with?
And you can't completely pin the financial crisis on the likes of JP Morgan
when the feds bailed them out with our tax dollars. That was the crime.
~~~
derekp7
But is there really a deterrence factor? Most people don't commit crimes, due
to a personal moral code. Those who have morals that don't get in the way of
crime, just use the deterrence factor to find ways of not getting caught.
Now what would really help, especially with recidivism, is to use the profit
motive of prisons in a different way. First-time offenders-- the prison gets
paid full price. If an offender returns to prison, the prison should get paid
less, or not at all. That would encourage the private prison system to
rehabilitate, and provide post-release re-integration assistance.
~~~
bluejekyll
Alternatively, there could be a payment based directly on the outcome. Say
there is a period in which the ex-con pays back 'restitution', probably based
on the crime and length of sentence. During that period the ex-con owes some
percentage of their paycheck. That is, this prison makes most of its money
from the restitution payments.
This would encourage prisons to also take an active role in finding ex-cons
jobs afterwards, advocating for the highest possible pay (since they make more
money), and also encourages them to train/teach the prisoner more to make them
more likely to get a job as an ex-con. I think most victim advocates would be
ok with this too as there would continue to be a penalty imposed for the
crime.
------
gabemart
This is a cheap, sensational headline and an article that lacks depth and
analysis.
At the end of 2006, there were ~160,000 people in prison "institutions" in the
state of California[1]. The design capacity of those institutions was ~79,000
people[1], so the occupation was ~204% of the design capacity.
At the end of 2016, there were ~114k people in prison institutions[2], which
was ~134% of the design capacity.
Obviously, if prisons are vastly overcrowded, and over time the number of
people in prison is reduced substantially, the per-prisoner cost will sharply
increase. There are no financial savings on infrastructure because
institutional capacity is still vastly exceeded, and the savings in other
areas will not be proportional to the overall drop in prison population
because the people released early tend to be less expensive to imprison, as
they tend to be incarcerated for less serious crimes.
Whatever one's political allegiance, the fact that the prison system in the
state of California has been running at a minimum over 130% of design capacity
for the last decade is a tremendously serious issue, and it feels trivialising
to make a nonsensical comparison to the cost of university tuition, and to
present the fact that per-prisoner costs have risen while prisoner numbers
have fallen as anything less than blindingly obvious.
A discussion of the prison crisis in California seems completely worthy of
Hacker News, but it shouldn't be based on an article like this.
[1] http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Monthly/TPOP1A/TPOP1Ad0612.pdf
[2] http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Monthly/TPOP1A/TPOP1Ad1612.pdf
~~~
sambe
The article does lack any sort of depth. However, it sounds like you're
opposed to the headline itself, which seems to be true, and you haven't
refuted it, have you? The article does indeed mention the prison population
has declined due to a reduction in overcrowding, but that costs are still
rising. The high per-prisoner cost remains a fact, regardless of whether it
was cheaper in the past or what caused that.
------
1024core
I think the Prison Industry should be judged by their recidivism rate. The
Prison Guards union in Cali is very, very strong (they were behind the '3
strikes' law, ensuring a lifetime of "clients"). Their pay and benefits should
be tied to the recidivism rate.
Prisons should not be training grounds for future criminals, but they are
today.
Also: prisons should be shuffled periodically, mixing up the population.
That'll prevent the formation of criminal gangs inside. Outside, they'll be
living in a diverse, mixed environment anyways; might as well get them started
on that inside.
~~~
linkregister
Shuffling prisoners around breaks up the family ties they have on the outside;
visitors have a harder time if they have to travel further. This increases the
likelihood prisoners will offend again.
~~~
1024core
I meant, shuffle them around within the prison, so they're forced to interact
more with other groups.
------
FullMtlAlcoholc
Think about that for a second...$75K/yr for abhorrent, yet improving
conditions and you'll come to the correct conclusion that contractors are
absolutely fleecing not only the p̶r̶i̶s̶o̶n̶s̶ tax payers, but the prisoners
themselves.
Half a lifetime ago, I had to spend a weekend in jail while visiting a friend
in California (accused of theft by a drunk lady who couldn't find her credit
cards and fingered me instead of realizing that she may have left it at the
bar. The best part was when I had to fly back out for a court date, they told
me they were dropping the charge for an obvious lack of evidence. This
decision was made on the actual court date, so I got to waste even more money
on airfare and travel ). I was surprised at the entrepreneurial zeal of those
who have no issue profiting from misery and suffering. In the LA area at
least, many former/older celebrities are investors or owners of prison supply
companies. Most notable was Bob Barker's company which sold travel-sized
generic toothpaste for $7. In this case, the price is wrong, Bob.
The fingerprinting machine was the size of a ultra-deluxe 70's Xerox machine,
regularly needed service, and looked like it had a sticker price around 5
figures (a feature that is just an add-on to $500 phones.) I think that
10x-20x inflation is pretty consistent across the board in the American penal
system. The collect calling system is also beyond ridiculous given the near
zero cost of landline telecommunications and that most cell phones can't
receive collect calls. The food you're eating is the absolute worst (in terms
of taste of course) nutritionally. Nearly everything is processed and is done
so in the cheapest way possible. When I say as cheap as possible, I mean that
the $.49 Nissin Ramen is an actual delicacy (No exaggeration. Some of the
inmates would pool their resources together and "cook" the ramen in a giant
plastic bag with hot water that surely must be leeching pcb's and/or
phthalates from the container.) After a few months of that diet, even the most
physically fit people developed a weird type of gut and loss of musculature. I
didn't eat anything while there, but I observed that the only nutritional
guideline that could possibly be met that of 2K+ calories/day. I know it's not
Club Med, but that type of diet is a blocker for any type of rehabilitation.
It was depressing to look at and had the effect of making one more docile and
depressed.
So while California may spend $75K per prisoner, the value they spend is
probably closer to $7K. It's kind of brilliant in a sadistic way, as if the
prisons, their programs, food, and environment were designed to maximize
recidivism.
Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if some elements were
designed in this way
~~~
gambiting
Does the US court system not refund travel cost? Over here you can get full
refund of travel cost if you are summoned to court(within reason - if you
travel first class you will only get price of a normal ticket back).
~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
> Does the US court system not refund travel cost?
I'm sorry, I'm actually laughing out loud for that one. No, they do not refund
any cost you incur for going to court.
Luckily, I wasn't accused of any drug crimes or they may have seized my car
and kept it under then-existing asset forfeiture (legal theft) laws
~~~
chii
if you were wrongly convicted of a crime, would the costs of your defense be
somehow be re-imbursed or compensated?
~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
There have been people wrongly convicted who can't even get out of prison once
something like DNA evidence exonerates them.
~~~
c0nducktr
I believe there's even been cases where people have been executed despite DNA
evidence exonerating them.
IIRC, the judge's opinion was something like "Well, we followed all the
procedures correctly, it doesn't matter if the wrong conclusion was reached"
------
codyb
I live in Bedstuy in Brooklyn, a predominately African American community in
NYC. Before this I've lived in Albany, NY; Bushwick; and in the housing
projects in Brownsville.
NY has recently taken a significant step forward in ensuring adequate access
to higher education through the legislature's and Cuomo's initiative to bring
tuition free higher education to all NYS residents.
I've become part of several minority communities and met many people with
circumstances not so fortunate as mine. It is unbelievable to hear how such a
large percentage of these young men have spent time in prison. During
highschool I found it odd that in a school with a greater than 60% African
American community the AP and IBO classes I was enrolled in were consistently
90% white. I skipped a lot of class back then and was always amazed by the
peers who, despite by all standards being considered "the bad kids", could
tear a car apart and build it all back together again.
In the projects in Brownsville I learned that my girlfriends mother had
secured some sort of video shooting arrangement, she said the entire
neighborhood would turn out in their Sunday's finest when the cameras were
around. Everyone wanted to see what was going on.
In the projects in Brownsville I noticed an abject lack of activity spaces and
an abject lack of green. Brownsville is one of the poorest communities in NYC
and it consists primarily of a large number of bleak housing project buildings
arrayed across several blocks. I have never heard so many sirens as I did in
Brownsville. In the short month I was there my girlfriends mother literally
walked into a shoot out to calm some of the younger community members down.
I've always thought to myself that I could do anything anyone else could do
(well not always, took a lot of introspection in highschool). I mean, look at
the person doing it. They have two arms, I have two arms. They have two legs,
I have two legs. They've got a head and brain and I have exactly the same.
It would clearly be obnoxious not to believe in any other person the same way.
I believe we're very fortunate to ride the subways in NYC because when you see
a child hankering for a balloon you realize that child is just like any other.
I applaud this effort. I've met so many people who are smart as whips and
deserve the access to the opportunities and future I had and have.
And that's why I believe the solution starts from the ground up.
------
voodooranger
The article forgot to mention that the California prison guards union
bankrolls most California politicians.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peac...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_Officers_Association)
------
danblick
Strangely, I was just reading about the costs of prison in California because
I read an article about "the grave injustice of mandatory sentencing" [1] and
was curious about the associated costs to taxpayers.
I don't feel personally affected by this issue, but I get the sense we are
sentencing too many people for too long for non-violent drug offenses.
Anyway, the cost of the prison system in California is about $7.9 billion
according to:
[https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons-
what-...](https://www.vera.org/publications/the-price-of-prisons-what-
incarceration-costs-taxpayers)
or (given 39 million people in California) about $200 per taxpayer (no, that's
not the best metric).
If the cost per prisoner is going up because we're releasing people from
prisons this year, that's probably a good thing.
[1] [http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/politics/mandatory-minimum-
sen...](http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/politics/mandatory-minimum-sentencing-
sessions/?iid=ob_lockedrail_bottomlarge)
~~~
jopsen
The day you suddenly feel affected by the issue, you won't be commenting on HN
anymore. And with the questionable state of the US justice system you don't
even have to commit a crime. An estimated 4% of inmates are innocent.
Also, the problem is too long sentences for pretty much all crimes.. Americans
aren't very forgiving.
~~~
BearGoesChirp
>An estimated 4% of inmates are innocent.
Source?
From what I remember, 4% is for death row, which has a much higher standard of
guilt. Most people who are sentenced for a crime plea guilty to avoid worse
charges, which is a situation where a rational innocent individual would plea,
meaning that far far more are likely innocent.
------
jagermo
Does the number include the housing and living costs for the students?
edit: sorry, that was not a polemic post. But if the number for the students
excludes stuff like food, rent or other living costs (e.g. medical checkups)
that are "included" with prisoners, the gap might be smaller.
I just checked the numbers for Germany, on the average, a prisoner costs
3281,40 Euro per month, so about 40k Euro or 45k USD per year. So, yeah, it
seems like California is getting shafted, somehow.
~~~
lorenzhs
Now go on Google Images and search for pictures of a German prison, and
compare that to the situation in California.
------
WalterBright
Another option is to put non-violent offenders in camps. The deal is if they
stay in the camp and follow the rules, they can serve out their sentence
there. Run away and they go to the real prisons.
~~~
hansthehorse
If somebody is so much of a non threat to society he can be housed in a
voluntary prison camp he shouldn't be in prison at all. Establish a real
community service program, not one that you can pay your way out of, and
sentence them to service hours. There are dozens of ways to allow a petty law
breaker to contribute.
~~~
tomjen3
Lets say I run some scam against tax-preparation companies and get away with
millions over some months but are caught red-handed. Clearly I am not
dangerous to society, but at the same time I can never really work of the
money. Would you still put me in the community program?
Or take the other case, I am high on drugs and crash a car with several of my
kids in it. At the same time I clearly didn't mean to harm them - you wouldn't
have problem with me having the kids if I wasn't on drugs. Assume further
(because this is often the case) that I skip out of rehab. What would you do
with me?
~~~
DanBC
> Or take the other case, I am high on drugs and crash a car with several of
> my kids in it. At the same time I clearly didn't mean to harm them - you
> wouldn't have problem with me having the kids if I wasn't on drugs. Assume
> further (because this is often the case) that I skip out of rehab. What
> would you do with me?
Everything has to be done in the children's best interest. In this situation
hypothetical_tomjen3 has put their children in danger.
This means any approach covers several points:
1) Firm reminder that continued use of drugs while you're supposed to be in
control of the children means the state is left with little option but to
remove the children from you
2) Removal of the children can be avoided if you comply with rehab
3) Provide good quality, evidence based rehab
4) Provide access to the children (with supervision if needed)
5) Remove driving licence for a year as a punishment. The driving licence can
only be regained after successfully completing rehab with clean tests for some
time.
This particular example you've given is a _public health_ problem, not a
_criminal justice_ problem.
------
cjCamel
Bizarre comparison!
Prisons need to safely and securely provide accommodation for "high-risk,
high-need" human beings to survive and be rehabilitated.
Universities have a wholly different set of requirements.
~~~
lb1lf
> (...) and be rehabilitated.
-Never having experienced the US penal system first hand, I cannot be too bombastic - but from the outside, it sure looks as if rehabilitation has taken a back seat to punishment.
If one were of a sufficiently cynical disposition, it would be tempting to
assume that all involved parties (except the inmates) has more to gain from
keeping people locked up than rehabilitating them.
~~~
cm2187
Rehabilitation must exist but it must also take the back seat to punishment.
In Europe there is this strange concept that developed that crime is a sort of
disease and that prisons are kind of hospital. So there is some expectation
that a criminal will be "cured" when leaving jail. And many judges got to the
thinking that crime is caused by poverty and since jail will not cure poverty
we should not send criminals to prison. And you end up with guys with a 10
pages long criminal record and who haven't spent a night in jail.
~~~
kasparsklavins
What is the purpose of a prison? It's meant to rid the society of unwelcome
individuals.
Another way to get rid of "unwelcome individuals" is to provide
rehabilitation, more opportunities, etc. This is better in the long term.
Source: I'm European.
~~~
cm2187
To me the purpose of the sentence is (by order of decreasing importance):
1\. Reciprocity. The modern justice system is a social contract where the
victim accepts not to seek revenge himself, which would give the powerful a
complete impunity over the weaker. Instead the punishment will be applied by a
greater force, historically the King or the local lord, now the justice
system. If you tell a victim that we don't intend to punish the person who
hurt him/her for the greater good of society, the victim will have a
legitimate sentiment of injustice and may seek to take revenge directly (think
of some Saudi prince committing rape in europe, it may be in the interest of
the country to let him go, the economic impact of upsetting the Saudi may be
much more than the grief of a victim). I think negating this aspect is
extremely dangerous for a society (and I see this aspect completely negated in
some European countries). But it is by no mean the only purpose (many crimes
have no individual victim, like not paying your taxes).
2\. Deterrence. Ideally you want criminals not to commit crimes in the first
place because of the fear of consequences. If nothing happens you create
impunity and you ultimately fuel more crime. Now prison is not a miracle
deterrent. Some criminals are too dumb to consider the consequences when
committing a crime, or are unafraid of some jail time. Also deterrence will
have no impact of terrorists on a suicide mission. But it is an important role
nevertheless.
3\. Protecting society. Some criminals are deemed to do it again. In some
instance the cost to society is low (consuming drug again) or high (rape or
murder). In some cases the cost is too high for society to take a chance and
the sentence is also a way to "take out" a criminal element and protect
society. But this should be in fairly limited extreme cases. But you do not
send Madoff to jail just to ensure he doesn't start a new Ponzi scheme. This
is a secondary purpose of prison.
And of course rehabilitation should also happen during the execution of the
sentence. We would only make the matter worse by not using the jail time to
help criminals find a better way. But I do not believe this is either the
primary purpose of a sentencing (hence it should take a back seat).
------
robertlagrant
Remember when "university" meant "for anyone"? Why should Harvard tuition fees
cost anywhere near what it costs to incarcerate someone 24/7?
~~~
marcosdumay
Didn't it mean "for all knowledge"? When universities appeared, they were
clearly not for everyone.
~~~
robertlagrant
As in they were universally accessible, not that everyone should go to one.
I.e. not just education for the rich, education for the smart.
------
z3t4
It would probably be good for society if those prisoners who wanted would be
sent to a school instead. I can't imagine a better punishment!
------
scandox
Love when the problem as stated contains its own solution.
~~~
stoolpigeon
I think it helps show the cost of crime and look at different solutions but I
don't see how it contains the solution.
I had a car stolen by some guys once. They used my car to drive around
breaking in to other cars and stealing things. The police caught them and took
me to me car so that I could get it back. I also had to go through all the
stuff in the back and tell the police what wasn't mine. It turns out they had
been arrested in California.
California sent them to Arizona so that they could go to a trade school. All
their needs were covered, they just needed to complete the program. Instead
the failed out and then went on a crime spree in their new home state. I'm
sure it was a very cost effective solution for CA but I'm not sure about
society as a whole.
~~~
scandox
It's a numbers game really. At present the numbers show that prison makes
people worse. I'll add my own anecdata and say that I've seen people come out
of prison much worse than they went in.
And, if, for $75,000 per person per annum we can't work towards better
outcomes, then I think we can agree something is very wrong with the current
approach.
~~~
fivestar
Whether or not it makes them worse, it keeps them away from everyone else
where they can do serious damage.
If you want to fix what is wrong you start by not labeling people "felons" for
life--change every law so that when someone gets out they get their full
rights restored--voting, right to bear arms, all of it. And do away with sex
offender registries and all of it. If they re-offend, put them away for good.
------
agumonkey
Gonna throw some weird idea about prison, what about:
\- Smaller but individual cells. (have to think about how to keep them very
clean)
\- No outside yard for crowd.
\- No plural bathroom.
Everything you do is for the benefit of society 90% and the rest for you.
\- Clean something outside, plant trees I don't know, so you get walk, sun and
forest time.
\- You can read books, or some journals.
\- You can talk to old wise persons.
\- You don't have TV, video games.
\- You can work (producing parts, fixing things) again for the benefit of
society.
\- You can do exercice: biking, rowing. Qi gong or Yoga too. (bonus, plug
bikes to generate electricity)
\- You get simple healthy food: raw veggies, some meat, some fruits. No sauce,
no dessert.
Basically a cheap mindful retreat with optional work. Lowering costs as much
as possible and prisonner suffering at the same time. You can improve your
mind and your body while paying your mistake by being cut from the group.
Nothing more.
~~~
ekianjo
i like the idea but there is not much you can do to coerce folks into doing
the activities you suggest. Not everyone in prison is of a good nature.
~~~
agumonkey
Nobody is forced to do anything actually. Only outside things will be done
chained, loose enough to do the thing but otherwise no orders or anything.
My idea is that people with nothing to do, and no absurd violent crowds will
start to soften and try stuff out of boredom or old desires (say before they
turned into the "dark side").
You either stay silently in your cell or you do something that won't cost
society and will give them something back, and you will also get something on
the way (new knowledge, less boredom, health, etc).
------
irpapakons
At more than $200 a night you can spend a whole year at a spa. What do the
prisoners get for that money? The daily cost for food seems to be about $2 and
they live in overcrowded cells. Sounds like a very profitable business for
someone.
------
kapauldo
Seems like it would be smarter to just give them the money and revoke it if
they break the law again.
~~~
chrshawkes
Wow, so I can rob a bank than get out and collect 75k, that is an awesome
thought.
~~~
yjgyhj
How about I rob your store Thursday and you mine Friday?
------
briandear
The other way of looking at this story is that Harvard nearly costs $75,000
per year despite being tax exempt with billions of dollars of tax deductible
donations/endowment.
------
erbdex
If you haven't, Netflix's has a documentary called 13TH[1] where a loop hole
in the slavery abolishment act was used to mass incarcerate blacks in the USA.
As indicated in other threads, USA is inhabited with just 5% of the world's
population but runs 25% of all prisons.
[1]
[https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80091741](https://www.netflix.com/in/title/80091741)
------
dragonwriter
Headline is an outright clickbait lie contradicted by the lead sentence; it
doesn't cost more than the all-in annual cost of Harvard, but more than
tuition.
Not that the comparison is particularly meaningful in any case, since it's not
like sending convicts to Harvard instead is an available alternative.
~~~
aarongolliver
It says it costs "2,000 above tuition, fees, room and board, and other
expenses to attend Harvard." so I have no idea what you're on about.
------
sharemywin
Reminds me of the article about million dollar blocks.
[http://www.npr.org/2012/10/02/162149431/million-dollar-
block...](http://www.npr.org/2012/10/02/162149431/million-dollar-blocks-map-
incarcerations-costs)
------
smsm42
Does this include housing, food, healthcare, etc. for Harvard figure? Looks
like not, so the comparison is kinda meaningless.
Also:
The price for each inmate has doubled since 2005, even as
court orders related to overcrowding have reduced the
population by about one-quarter. Salaries and benefits for
prison guards and medical providers drove much of the increase.
I looked for the word "union" in the article and it's not there. I guess it's
an unsolvable mystery why the costs raise. And even if the number of inmates
declines (as it already did, according to the article) would the workforce be
reduced? Doesn't look likely, unions are very powerful voting blocks.
~~~
parhurs
So you looked for evidence to support your a priori beliefs, didn't find it
and still made insinuations. Good on you.
~~~
smsm42
Er, what? I am struggling to understand how your comment relates to what I
wrote. Once more:
1\. Comparison of Harvard tuition to prisoner's costs is meaningless as done
in the article
2\. The article itself mentions costs raise mainly because of labor costs
3\. The article itself mentions that drop in the inmates number did not reduce
labor costs
4\. The article does not mention any of the factors influencing labor costs.
Which evidence you think I am missing?
------
rini17
~9 billion/year total? That would be enough to establish a penal colony on
moon, perhaps?
------
nautilus12
Wait. Im missing something, if there is one employee per every 2 inmates that
means each employee earns in the range of Min Wage to 152,000. How much of
this is driven by employee salary and how much by administrative and over head
costs? Is this just because the cost of living in california is so high they
have to pay their guards six digits and above?
------
blfr
Fittingly, it's also a better career move to become a prison guard than attend
Harvard:
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704132204576285...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704132204576285471510530398)
------
crimsonalucard
This seems to be a perverted trend in America. Medical bills, tuition and all
fees in general bloated to the point where it doesn't make sense. Is this some
sort of anthropological/economic phenomenon? Somebody should get to the bottom
of this and write a book.
------
bawana
is the need for prison simply the side effect of a population density that is
too high? But that is a different topic. The issue is the cost of
incarceration and how a once noble idea (eliminating bad behavior instead of
eliminating the owner) has been 'corporatized'. It seems a fundamental rhythm
of human activity is to express the goodness in us with a new idea. The evil
in us then tries to maximize profit and efficiency resulting in a loss
function that destroys initially unrecognized but important parameters of
humanity.
------
notadoc
Seems like a colossal waste of limited resources and tax revenue.
Maybe every non-violent criminal should be put on house arrest with an ankle
bracelet instead? Then they can work off a fine, do community service, etc?
------
blorsh
That is just California being California.
Other states are cheaper. If you really wanted to be cheap, you could
outsource to a foreign country. You could fly people to the other side of the
world and still save money.
------
cubano
Do people not realize almost the entire CJS is basically a jobs program for
the very people whom directly influence how the laws are made that self-
perpetuate their incomes?
That usually works out well, right?
------
outsidetheparty
This is what privatization leads to. Hand off a government function to a
profit-seeking organization, well, it's gonna seek profits; the taxpayer winds
up paying for the thing and also for someone else to make their profits off
the thing.
Seriously has there _ever_ been a situation where privatizing an industry led
to actually reduced costs, and didn't lead to reduced quality of output? Even
if you accept the (IMHO dubious) premise that private industry is necessarily
going to be more efficient than government-run industry, the efficiency gain
has to be greater than the profit-taking for it to be a worthwhile tradeoff
for the taxpayer.
~~~
ohthehugemanate
This is an extremely simplistic way to look at things.
Private organizations do some things much better than public, and vice versa.
More often than not it depends on the question you're asking... And there's a
lot of contextualization needed in the answer.
How's your electrical infrastructure, or your water infrastructure doing?
They're supplied by private industry. How's your religious institution, your
school bus, your local day care? What about public-private partnerships, like
public transit? Personally, I will take the mixed market universal health care
systems of France and Germany, over the 100% public Canadian waiting list
system... but that depends on your criteria for success.
Volumes are written about each one of these cases, how to evaluate "success",
what combinations of structures work well in what social contexts, etc. Other
countries have private companies involved in prisons, and get great results...
But their markets are different, their contract terms are different, the
avenues of influence for legislation are different, their bidding processes
are different, and their cultures are different. To reduce it to
"privatization always raises costs and reduces quality of output" is
ridiculous.
~~~
outsidetheparty
> Private organizations do some things much better than public, and vice
> versa.
That is certainly a true statement, and I'm of course by no means suggesting
that privately-supplied functions such as "day care" or "religious
institutions" should be government-run.
I'm reacting primarily to the current American administration's de facto
stance of "small government good, big government bad," which I feel is just as
simplistic as the straw-man version of my question you constructed.
Privatization efforts have been proposed (or have long since been carried out
-- this tendency long predates Trump) for the prison system, the education
system, air traffic control, even the military itself through use of mercenary
companies like whatever Blackwater's name is now. (There's certainly room for
reasoned disagreement about which functions a government ought to serve
compared to private industry, but surely "military and jails" belong under the
government umbrella?)
In every case I'm aware of, the justification has been that it will reduce
costs due to increased efficiency, yet the end results have been increased
costs and reduced quality of service. Maybe Americans are just bad at
privatization, but that was a genuine question: has there been a case where
privatizing a function traditionally served by the government has improved it?
The case under discussion here, the american prison system, certainly hasn't.
My main point was this:
> Even if you accept the premise that private industry is necessarily going to
> be more efficient than government-run industry, the efficiency gain has to
> be greater than the profit-taking for it to be a worthwhile tradeoff for the
> taxpayer.
...which seems inarguable, yet is rarely if ever addressed by proponents of
privatization.
~~~
outsidetheparty
> which functions a government ought to serve compared to private industry
(For what it's worth, and in case it helps clarify my stance here, my opinion
on this is that if it's a necessarily monopolistic or universally-mandated
function, it should be part of the government; if it's a function where
meaningful competition is possible, let capitalism do its thing.
The goal being to provide some recourse when things go wrong: If my private
daycare sucks I can just go to a different one, no problem. If my government
prison system sucks I can at least theoretically vote the people responsible
out of office. But when there's no opportunity for meaningful choice or
competition, there's no benefit to privatization, it's just inserting a
middleman who can skim some profit off the top.
This still leaves a lot of important gray area -- education and health care
remain thorny issues for example -- but I hope I've demonstrated that I don't
hold the simplistic "everything should be government!" stance you appear to
have ascribed to me.)
------
jaggi1
Government runs something inefficiently. That is a big news! Nah. It is known.
This is prison industrial complex at play fueled by insecurities of average
American.
------
timwaagh
just outsource this to a low cost area. i'm sure a poor state would love to
make some money housing california prisoners.
~~~
ptaipale
But I guess California prison guards and their unions - probably not an
insignificant contributor to election budgets of some politicians - would not
like that? They would bring up issues like isolation of prisoners from their
friends and families (further increasing their re-offending risk) and dumping
of working conditions (immoral). And that if you do this, you won't be re-
elected.
~~~
HillaryBriss
> probably not an insignificant contributor to election budgets of some
> politicians
_most definitely_ not insignificant.
[http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/02/are-for-profit-prisons-
or-...](http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/02/are-for-profit-prisons-or-public-
unions)
------
bedhead
Without having read this, I would imagine healthcare costs among a prison
population would be higher by orders of magnitude.
------
EternalData
Criminal justice in the United States borrows a lot more from the Scarlet
Letter than rational policy.
------
sgarrity
How much would Harvard cost if you had to keep students from escaping?
------
jlebrech
at that cost they should send prisoners to an island and send them $50,000 of
care packages.
~~~
jopsen
No need for an island, just set them up with an apartment, an GPS tracker, and
a Netflix account... Most of them will happily sit at home and watch Netflix
:)
~~~
smileysteve
Just a thought, that's also tax free income (if we're assuming not counting
prison jobs program.)
------
fivestar
We're going to end up like China--executing people for most serious crimes. We
only spend the money on prisoners in the US because we have the luxury of
doing so. If (when?) we falter, we're right back to frontier style justice. It
can't be any other way--letting dangerous criminals out just creates more
chaos.
And don't lecture me about all the "non-violent" drug offenders--I don't think
any of them really exist. They're all shitbags who got jammed up for whatever
charges the cops could get them on. For every bleeding heart story, I'll show
you 10 that justly deserve to be behind bars.
------
s-brody
Why is this on HN?
~~~
kwhitefoot
Are you implying that it should not be?
~~~
s-brody
Yes. Am I missing something?
~~~
kwhitefoot
I was hoping that you might explain why.
~~~
s-brody
I was under the impression that this is a purely programming-related list.
~~~
kwhitefoot
I think you have been mis-informed. This site is for things of _interest_ to
'hackers' not merely for things related to them.
------
soup10
giving criminals rights is a politically toxic because of religious doctrine:
the point of jail is not to learn, but to suffer. the idea is if you
flagrantly disrespect god(aka the power structure of the society you live in),
you must suffer as an example to others.
Its not an ideal system, but there's a certain sensibility to it that
stabilizes society. If people saw those that go to jail, come out better
persons. They might get the idea that the criminal is a leadership figure, or
that they too might become better persons after experimenting with crime.
I'm a strong believer in prison reform, and treating criminals as victims of
the difficult choices life offers you. It shouldn't be the accepted standard
to put them in a cage and forget they exist, we need to show them the flaws of
their moral system: we need to preach to them until they concede the errors of
their ways and show meekness.
~~~
sgc
That does not resemble any religious doctrine I know of. The predominant one
in the US, Christianity, views punishment on earth as corrective in nature, ie
for rehabilitation, and also views prisons as serving the purpose of
separating bad actors from society so they cannot damage others. There is no
place for retribution, vengeance, etc. American culture seems to be fixated
with vendetta, but it is not religious in nature at all, just as it has
nothing to do with their love of sports.
~~~
anigbrowl
You need to learn more. It is warmed-over Calvinism and this strain is
widespread in the US thanks to the influence of theologians like the late RJ
Rushdoony. Look into the work of Chip Berlet on Christian Dominionism and its
influence on politics, as well as Colin Woodard's excellent history book
_American Nations_.
------
erikb
That sounds totally fine in my eyes. I live outside the US and a relatively
cheap lifestyle, so a lot cheaper than the average US citizen. And I say if
you add the security requirements of a prison on top of my life I could easily
be at $70k-$80k.
What the article probably doesn't consider is the costs of daily life. I can't
imagine Harvard+eating+sleeping+takingShowers+heating+clothing really just
costs $75k/year, then everybody would go to Harvard, even those who already
have a PHD.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Blub by Convention (In Defense of Arc) - jonnytran
http://plpatterns.com/post/231830654/blub-by-convention-in-defense-of-arc
======
raganwald
The author seems sensitive to the argument that Arc is "just" a bunch of
macros. To me saying that Arc is "just" macros is like saying that Haskell is
"just" a translator that rewrites functional programs into Von Neumann
instructions.
No, I am wrong. Saying that Arc is just a bunch of macros is saying that the
difficulty of the implementation is more important than the value provided by
the resulting product. It seems very close to arguing that OS X is equivalent
to Windows because they both run on PCs. There may be an argument that Arc
doesn't break new ground or introduce new semantics or that it doesn't make it
easy to solve a problem that other PLs have a difficult time solving. But
"just a bunch of macros" is not that argument.
I wouldn't bother with an entire blog post just to refute it.
------
silentbicycle
While it sounds like he's trying to make a point, it's practically impossible
to have a meaningful discussion about language expressiveness when a major
party in the discussion is essentially arguing that _anybody who doesn't use
their pet languages is thinking in baby talk_. It's _incredibly_
condescending, and drags the entire discussion down into name calling.
(For a previous thread criticizing "The Blub Paradox":
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630094>)
~~~
cia_plant
But what if a large part of the 'debate' is _in actual fact_ just people
senselessly defending inferior systems, because they don't know what they're
talking about? Are we supposed to pretend otherwise, for the sake of civility?
~~~
silentbicycle
Calling them an idiot isn't going to make them curious about conceptual blind
spots they may have inherited from their primary language, just encourage them
to ignore you.
~~~
cia_plant
If their inclination is to ignore people who know more than they do about a
topic, then they are more or less hopeless. I don't think that people should
be shy about discussing what is actually the case with languages, just because
some people won't react in a reasonable way to the suggestion that some
languages are more advanced than others.
~~~
silentbicycle
Well, the problem is that the whole "blub" stance is akin to breaking the ice
by punching someone in the face, and then getting all shocked when they think
you're a thug and don't want to listen to your pitch about the metric system.
It's not a stance that invites discussion.
You can encourage discussion about language design, etc. without being smug
and intentionally provocative about it.
------
mahmud
I will be generous and assume this is by someone just new to programming
language research, Lisp, or just programming in general.
The entire essay is tongue-tied and appeals to the gentle reader's kindness
and forgiveness, instead of saying something.
------
fogus
Maybe it's just me (most likely), but I didn't understand the punchline.
~~~
pchristensen
Codifying best practices into a language core is worth doing and should not be
dismissed just because nothing new or groundbreaking was invented.
A similar statement could be made about Ruby on Rails. Nothing
groundbreakingly new but many useful conventions tied together by rule created
a new, more powerful experience.
~~~
jonnytran
Thank you. For a second, I was afraid the post didn't communicate what I
intended.
Do you have any suggestions as to how I could have communicated this better?
~~~
raganwald
A fellow is going to a concert. Realizing he is lost, he stops a passing
musician. "How do you get to Carnagie Hall?" he asks. The musician answers
quickly: "Practice, practice, practice."
Keep writing. Be mindful of the feedback you receive, but there is very little
need to squeeze even more feedback from each post. Just keep writing.
~~~
Afton
The second paragraph is remarkably good general advice.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Anti-corruption blogger Navalny sentenced to 5 years behind bars - areski
http://rt.com/news/navalny-verdict-court-guilty-234/
======
eps
One man's "anti-corruption blogger" is another man's the "US-funded shit-
stirring puppet". It's not all exactly black and white, but it _is_ 100%
political.
~~~
wwosik
I don't know the case, but do you think talking about concrete corruption
cases is "stirring unrest against legitimate government"?
------
znowi
Although, the charges may be true, the case is undoubtedly politically
motivated. Incriminated $500K is a tiny drop in the ocean of "approved"
corruption routinely carried out by the state officials and their affiliated
companies.
When a big fish is "caught" (mostly due to "falling out of favor", not actual
crime committed), if it's of the same "party", it's gently ousted out of their
position and/or the country for a comfortable retirement. If an opposition - a
fancy, exemplary trial is conducted... unless they slip away to the UK :)
------
teleological
Wait, isn't Russia the "first to stand against human rights violations carried
out by the powerful rather than the powerless"? You kidder, you, Edward
Snowden.
~~~
guard-of-terra
Edward Snowden will be more than happy to receive asylum from Germany or
Australia but they don't exactly line for that.
So he had to settle on Russia.
~~~
teleological
He had to settle on Russia because his first choice, China, sent him packing.
------
rorrr2
That's Russia for you. Anybody going against the corrupt ruling party is
either killed or imprisoned.
Actually, it's worse than that. The conviction rate in Russia is something
like 99%, meaning that if you get charged with a crime, you will be found
guilty. There are judges that have NEVER issued an innocent verdict in their
career.
~~~
yread
Japan has 99.97%
~~~
Tyr42
That's because they drop any case that they have a chance of losing, since it
reflects poorly on them.
~~~
Zikes
Part of their strategy is also to conclude that almost any murder is a
suicide, which artificially inflates those statistics quite a bit.
------
anovikov
As a Russian, i support that. He was too stupid to try fighting the system
openly, playing on their own field.
~~~
terabytest
Why is fighting openly a bad move? If it's true that the case that got him in
jail was fabricated, he's been detained in an unjust way and he doesn't
deserve it just because he fought openly. I think he'd actually deserve even
more praise for being open about his identity and fighting the system
directly.
~~~
conductor
I see this in this manner: smart people in Russia know that the government is
evil and that it can (and will) abuse its power to ensure they reserve their
power and money. They know democracy doesn't work as intended, it's a theater.
Contrary to that, people of the western world still believe that they can
oppose an abusive government in courts and by voting for another government.
~~~
cpncrunch
Well in most of the western world you CAN do precisely that (and it happens
regularly). If people get pissed off with the government, they give it the
boot. Unfortunately the Russian people have never had real democracy, so they
don't realise that this should be the norm. In my country we would simply
never put up with that shit. You see people putting up with shitty, oppressive
governments all the time in countries like Zimbabwe, Russia, China, Syria,
etc. Recently people in some parts of the middle east have finally realised
that they can get rid of crappy governments. It's actually quite easy if the
people can actually be bothered. The people of Russia did get rid of their
Tsars a while back, but unfortunately they seem to have a new Tsar.
~~~
anovikov
We had real democracy, in 1993-1996. Basically we democratically voted against
it. Democracy is against Russian traditions, and most people either actively
opposed it or passively (i.e. voting for the funniest candidate to discredit
the whole system), and people were happy we gradually returned to normalcy,
which is dictatorship.
------
qwerz123
So stealing 10.000 cubic meters of wood from organization "Kirovles" is now
"political case", "fighting against the system" and "did nothing"? Ok I'll
keep this in mind.
~~~
sesm
> created: 23 minutes ago
\+ 15 rubles
~~~
qwerz123
I have been reading HN for a long time. But yes i wanted to leave a comment
because we all know how media (especially US) is independent. Independent from
truth, morale and objectivism of course.
~~~
jarman
слишком толсто
you are trolling badly
~~~
arkades
Did you just call him "a little fat"?
~~~
anonymfus
No, it's adverb. Literally "too bold", meaning "you are trolling too bold".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Announcing the winners of 'Reddit Donate' - MilnerRoute
http://www.redditblog.com/2015/02/announcing-winners-of-reddit-donate.html
======
Igglyboo
Surprised to see the amount of hate in the reddit comments. A lot of "this
charity deserves it more than this charity" going on.
~~~
ivraatiems
I'm not surprised, and to be honest, I kinda understand it. But more than
that... money is a limited resource and it ought to go to the places it can do
the most good, not the places the Internet thinks are coolest. I think these
charities were chosen because they push agendas (some I support, some I don't)
that Reddit's users like. I don't think that's a good way to pick charitable
causes.
I'll never argue with Reddit's right to donate to whomever it likes, but I do
feel disappointed in what the choices ended up being, and I find myself
wishing I'd been aware of and participated in the selection, even if it
would've been in a small way.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nissan driverless car guilty of “close pass” overtake of UK cyclist - bootload
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/nissan-driverless-car-guilty-of-close-pass-overtake-of-uk-cyclist/020846
======
kalleboo
The car clearly identified the bicyclist, so this just seems like poor
training/rules, which is easy enough to fix.
I'm more interested in the second video from the BBC where it couldn't
identify the maintenance vehicle. If the driver hadn't intervened, would it
really have plowed straight into it? I seems like even a current, non-self
driving car, would have intervened with automatic braking (or slowing down
with auto-cruise control) in that situation.
~~~
tomatsu
> _this just seems like poor training_
Heh. Yea, passing too closely is what many humans do.
Speaking of potentially murdering cyclists, since they already got all those
sensors, they could prevent drivers and passengers from "dooring" cyclists.
The "dutch reach" (opening the door with your other hand which automatically
makes you look over your shoulder) is unfortunately not commonly taught in
driving schools.
~~~
bootload
_" The "dutch reach" (opening the door with your other hand which
automatically makes you look over your shoulder) is unfortunately not commonly
taught in driving schools."_
Excellent idea, going to use that one.
------
raverbashing
Though the article shows some bias, it's nonetheless something that shouldn't
have happened
More interestingly, this was a LHD car in an UK road, might have something to
do with it (though the navigation system seemed to be aware of it).
~~~
m0nty
> shows some bias
The clue is in the name, it's a mag about cycling. It's run by Carlton Reid, a
well-known expert on cycling - his most famous book is "Roads were not made
for cars", a history of the intertwined histories of cars and bicycles and how
motor transport came to dominate our roads almost to the exclusion of all
others. So I'm not sure it's a "bias" so much as "what he thinks about cars
and bikes".
> More interestingly
No, that's a minor point. The important thing is that cyclists get killed in
close-pass situations, and those that don't are often put off cycling
permanently. Along with the Uber car jumping a red light in SF, and Uber
basically saying "it doesn't matter", this shows a worrying tendency for self-
driving at any cost, including safety, which many of us were hoping would be a
benefit of such technology.
~~~
raverbashing
Thanks for your comment
You're right cyclists get hurt or killed in close-pass situations (by humans).
It seems here the navigation identified the cyclist and avoided it. It
_incorrectly_ didn't follow the legal clearance but nobody got hurt (because
the avoidance happened correctly it seems). It's an unsafe situation but the
car did not ignore the cyclist.
The chance for someone to get injured or an accident happening seemed to be
much higher in the Uber case.
------
vesak
This is perhaps the real risk of AI. In the first wave, the industry is
dominated by a wish to make a great product. In the second wave, the bean
counters walk in and start to optimize everything. And then we start getting
the behavior from Fight Club.
I don't see any way out of this loop except for penalizing bad business
behavior (on an individual level) heavily while protecting engineers who fight
them.
~~~
na85
Yes, no engineer has ever behaved badly, or been complicit in ethically grey
areas, and all the world's ills are due to business types.
~~~
vesak
Well, sure, there's another point.
Programmers should have a similar guild/organization that medical doctors do,
and people who abuse the ethics should be barred from practicing.
~~~
na85
I fully agree. It would solve a lot of problems we currently face in
technology, but there are two issues that I see:
1) Doctors, surgeons, engineers (actual professional engineers, not people
with comp sci degrees who call themselves engineers), lawyers, etc. are called
professionals because they have professional colleges of their peers that
oversee things like ethics and can revoke licenses, etc. They're self-
regulating.
This works because for things like medicine and engineering and law, there is
a large barrier to entry. You have to go to a recognized school and pass an
ethics/comprehensive exam. This isn't so with programming. There's almost no
barrier to entry.
Any kid can open up a tutorial on MySQL and call themselves a back-end
engineer. Unless the software industry is willing to require formal
qualifications on all their hires, this will remain a problem.
2) One of the great things about software is the democratic aspect. Software
is great precisely _because_ any random kid can open up a tutorial and
notepad.exe and start writing code. To rectify problem #1, you'd to a certain
extent kill the democratic nature of learning which is a large part of why
many people are in the industry today. I also think that a large portion of
people who work in software would be highly resistant to this sort of thing,
to say nothing of the difficulty of enforcing ethical behaviour if you can't
see what's going on due to proprietary licensing and obfuscation.
~~~
vesak
You're right. But then again, let's consider how little time has passed, even
if the progress has been very fast.
Anyone could have called themselves a doctor-analogue 100 years after the
invention of "medicine", too.
------
anotheryou
Would a radar reflector on my bike help me? Like this but smaller:
[https://aceboater.com/media/guide/1/radar-
reflector-3.jpg](https://aceboater.com/media/guide/1/radar-reflector-3.jpg)
~~~
ptaipale
This was because of decision made by software, not because of not detecting
the cyclist.
~~~
anotheryou
Are you sure? I read bycicles are really hard to detect. And I thought a
bigger radar signature, pumping up some confidence value, might influence the
behaviour too.
~~~
manmal
You can see the cyclist on the bottom screen in the video, represented as a
yellow speck.
------
discordianfish
Playing devils advocate here.. Couldn't you argue a driverless car simply
needs less space to guarantee the same/better safty for the cyclist?
~~~
tmnvix
A cyclist can swerve very quickly for all sorts of reasons. Drivers (human or
computer) need to allow space for this.
~~~
phicoh
Swerving is good way to get yourself killed. If you find yourself swerving to
the center of the road without making sure there is no traffic trying to
overtake at the moment, then you have to figure out what to do to avoid that.
Relying on each an every driver to leave enough space just in case you need to
swerve is a losing proposition.
~~~
jeennaa
a cyclist should be treated the same as any other vehicle on the road. they
might need to swerve to avoid an obstacle while the car is overtaking, just as
a car may need to swerve while another car is overtaking. when a safety margin
is possible, as it was here, it costs nothing to apply one.
~~~
phicoh
I don't know where you live that you have that much space. My personal rule is
don't swerve. If you don't have time to signal that you are going to move, or
look to make sure other traffic is not in the way, then either brake hard or
continue straight (with the obvious exception if not swerving causes you to
hit another person).
There are just too many roads where you can't swerve without causing a head on
collision. If you make it a reflex to swerve, then you will also do it when
there is no space for other traffic to avoid you.
------
dabeeeenster
Amazing how Nissan have managed to get their car to emulate 99% of London
drivers.
~~~
phicoh
The Dutch rule is basically, that the driver is liable if an accident happens,
even if it's the cyclist's fault (unless you can prove that the cyclist
deliberately caused the accident).
So there are not a lot of rules on what you should do. And this kind of
passing is required often enough on narrow streets, that usually cars don't
swerve if there is more space.
So that means that those self driving cars have to have a per country profile
on how to behave. So if you have to do that for every country in the EU then
that will make developing self-driving cars quite a bit more expensive than
the current system where you have a common market.
~~~
Zak
Self-driving cars should try to avoid collisions regardless of fault and
should not adjust that behavior based on who the local liability laws will
hold responsible.
As far as traffic regulations specifying behavior go, yes, they differ from
country to country and self-driving cars do need to be able to follow them.
That doesn't necessarily mean the cars need to learn to follow a bunch of
weird rules; it may be more of a lobbying problem. "Standardize your rules so
we can offer self-driving cars that are X times safer than human drivers in
your country" isn't a terribly hard sell.
~~~
gens
>Self-driving cars should try to avoid collisions regardless of fault and
should not adjust that behavior based on who the local liability laws will
hold responsible.
I would love to watch a show called "Driverless cars in India".
~~~
na85
The Russia edition of that show would be quite entertaining as well.
------
snackai
Well remove cyclists from streets. Its as simple as that. Remove humans from
streets. Also remove all cars from the streets that need a driver. It will
happen sooner or later. Humans will eventually be the single point of failure.
~~~
Neliquat
Let me simplify that for you.
>Remove humans
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to make fake data look meaningful - birken
http://danbirken.com/statistics/2013/11/19/ways-to-make-fake-data-look-meaningful.html
======
simonsarris
A great method for spotting (or at least suspecting) fake data is to see if it
follows Benford's law. (So remember to fit your fake data to conform!)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law)
> Benford's Law, also called the First-Digit Law, refers to the frequency
> distribution of digits in many (but not all) real-life sources of data. In
> this distribution, the number 1 occurs as the leading digit about 30% of the
> time, while larger numbers occur in that position less frequently: 9 as the
> first digit less than 5% of the time. Benford's Law also concerns the
> expected distribution for digits beyond the first, which approach a uniform
> distribution.
As one might imagine:
> A test of regression coefficients in published papers showed agreement with
> Benford's law. As a comparison group subjects were asked to fabricate
> statistical estimates. The fabricated results failed to obey Benford's law.
So keep that in mind, data fabricators!
~~~
astine
You have to be careful with this though. Benford's law only holds for certain
types of data, such as growing populations. It has to do with the nature of
the decimal system.
~~~
Terr_
To be more specific, it has to do with the nature of __any __positional-
notation system, whether it is decimal, octal, hex, or even binary.
~~~
T-hawk
Wow, thinking about Benford's Law in binary is really interesting, thanks for
this comment.
It's the most extreme expression of the concept. _Every number_ in binary
starts with 1. The only other possible leading digit would be a meaningless
leading zero, so every number starts with 1. Benford's Law holds in the most
extreme manner possible in binary notation, that numbers starting with 1
dominate the population over all others.
------
minimaxir
I recently made a blog post on which universities have the most successful
startup founders: [http://minimaxir.com/2013/07/alma-mater-
data/](http://minimaxir.com/2013/07/alma-mater-data/)
In the post, I made it clear where the data came from, how I processed it, and
additionally provided a raw copy of the data so that others could check
against it.
It turns out the latter decision was especially a good idea because I received
numerous comments that my data analysis was flawed, and I agree with them.
Since then, I've taken additional steps to improve data accuracy, and I
_always_ provide the raw data, license-permitting.
~~~
siong1987
You didn't actually clean up the data that you have tho.
Another flaw of your analysis is that you didn't look at where the founders
went to school for their undergraduate/graduate(this probably doesn't matter).
I opened up the CSV and searched for "Urbana"(UIUC, where I went to school
for) and counted 28 founders. In fact, some "University of Illinois" should
match to UIUC too but I ignored those (for example, ZocDoc CTO).
~~~
minimaxir
I did attempt to clean up the data, just not enough. (I substituted for the
abbreviations for 20-25 colleges. In retrospect I should have looked for a
mapping online first.)
------
datphp
I worked in retail when I was younger. This would be excellent advice for a
sales person working with uneducated customers.
I was the go-to guy, resulting in a lot of freedom when dealing with clients.
It allowed me to do lot of social experimentation, especially when selling
custom services (like fixing "My PC is slow").
Explaining the in-and-outs of different options (goal, short/long term
consequences, risks, up/downsides...), then saying it would cost 50$ would
usually result in the guy becoming all suspicious, saying he wanted me to
guarantee him stuff that I couldn't, and that it was expensive.
Say "Oh you'll need our performance rejuvenation(tm) package, that'll be 400$"
and the guy happily pulls out his credit card!
------
danso
> _If you are trying to trick somebody with your data, never share the raw
> data; only share the conclusions. Bonus points if you can 't share the data
> because it is somehow priviledged or a trade secret. The last thing you want
> is to allow other people to evaluate your analysis and possibly challenge
> your conclusions._
Of course, I'm not against sharing data. However, the satire here is slightly
too optimistic that people, when given raw data, will attempt to verify it for
themselves. When people are given plain narrative text, they can still be
profoundly influenced by a skewed headline -- something which everyone here
may not ever be familiar with :)
I guess I'm being curmudgeonly about this...We should all share the data
behind our conclusions, but don't think that by doing so -- and an absence of
outside observations -- that you were correct. Most people just don't have
time to read beyond the summary, nevermind work with data.
~~~
birken
Well it is similar to open source. Just making a project open source doesn't
automatically reduce the number of bugs. People need to be interested and
capable of auditing it. However, even if only a small percentage of people do
audit it, the gains from that apply to everybody.
I think it generally works out. More popular open source projects naturally
have more eye-balls, which means more people auditing it. Similarly with
sharing data, more controversial or interesting claims will naturally attract
more attention and therefore more people who are capable and interested in
verifying the claims.
------
bazzargh
There is of course a famous book on this topic:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Statistics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Statistics)
~~~
namenotrequired
Which is also linked in the blog :)
~~~
bazzargh
oh, whoops! I had checked and didn't see him mention it - it's behind the link
for 'other'. Good spot.
------
wingspan
I was hoping (by the title) that this was something about generating real-
looking test data for your app, something very useful for UI devs before the
API or backend is in place.
------
cscheid
Raw data, _and the source code which you used to arrive at your conclusion_ ,
or it didn't happen.
In today's world of github gists and python PyPI's and R's CRAN, there's no
excuse to not document the entire process, in addition to raw data.
~~~
Fomite
With some caveats. For example, I'm sure all the patients whose data I work
with would rather not have it spilled out over GitHub.
~~~
couchand
Can you reasonably anonymize it?
~~~
Fomite
For some things, yes. For others - not really. And there have been groups,
historically, that have not been served well by "Everyone has access to this
data". Given the need for their consent and cooperation, I generally side with
what my subjects want their data to go toward, rather than some nebulous
ideal.
------
tokenadult
Some more sophisticated (but very readable and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny)
articles about detecting fake data can be found at the faculty website[1] of
Uri Simonsohn, who is known as the "data detective"[2] for his ability to
detect research fraud just from reading published, peer-reviewed papers and
thinking about the reported statistics in the papers. Some of the techniques
for cheating on statistics that he has discovered and named include
"p-hacking,"[3] and he has published a checklist of procedures to follow to
ensure more honest and replicable results.[4]
From Jelte Wicherts writing in Frontiers of Computational Neuroscience (an
open-access journal) comes a set of general suggestions[5] on how to make the
peer-review process in scientific publishing more reliable. Wicherts does a
lot of research on this issue to try to reduce the number of dubious
publications in his main discipline, the psychology of human intelligence.
"With the emergence of online publishing, opportunities to maximize
transparency of scientific research have grown considerably. However, these
possibilities are still only marginally used. We argue for the implementation
of (1) peer-reviewed peer review, (2) transparent editorial hierarchies, and
(3) online data publication. First, peer-reviewed peer review entails a
community-wide review system in which reviews are published online and rated
by peers. This ensures accountability of reviewers, thereby increasing
academic quality of reviews. Second, reviewers who write many highly regarded
reviews may move to higher editorial positions. Third, online publication of
data ensures the possibility of independent verification of inferential claims
in published papers. This counters statistical errors and overly positive
reporting of statistical results. We illustrate the benefits of these
strategies by discussing an example in which the classical publication system
has gone awry, namely controversial IQ research. We argue that this case would
have likely been avoided using more transparent publication practices. We
argue that the proposed system leads to better reviews, meritocratic editorial
hierarchies, and a higher degree of replicability of statistical analyses."
[1] [http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/](http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/)
[2] [http://www.nature.com/news/the-data-
detective-1.10937](http://www.nature.com/news/the-data-detective-1.10937)
[3]
[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2160588](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2160588)
(this abstract link leads to a free download of the article)
[4]
[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1850704](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1850704)
(this abstract link also leads to a free download of the full paper)
[5]
[http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.338...](http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.3389/fncom.2012.00020/full)
Jelte M. Wicherts, Rogier A. Kievit, Marjan Bakker and Denny Borsboom. Letting
the daylight in: reviewing the reviewers and other ways to maximize
transparency in science. Front. Comput. Neurosci., 03 April 2012 doi:
10.3389/fncom.2012.00020
~~~
dwaltrip
Start-up idea: Review site that generates scores for published scientific
papers using an open methodology. Maybe even allow community to generate their
own metrics!
Edit: looks like the domains "sciencetomatoes.com" and "rottenpvalues.com" are
available ;)
[http://www.internic.net/whois.html](http://www.internic.net/whois.html)
~~~
Houshalter
This is perhaps a ridiculous idea but I'll post it anyways. There are a lot of
features of a paper that might correlate with it's truthfulness. For example
surface level stuff like what journal published it or the authors, what
subject it's on, how controversial/interesting it is. Then the data itself.
Then get a large sample of papers which are known to be true or false (or at
least were able to be replicated or not) and use some machine learning or
statistical method to make decent predictions how likely new papers are to be
true or false.
~~~
yen223
How are you going to prove that your system isn't pulling random ratings out
of thin air? ;)
------
yummyfajitas
Tangentially, the article gets confidence intervals wrong:
_Simple change increased conversion between -12% and 96%_
That's not what a confidence interval is. A confidence interval is merely the
set of null hypothesis you can't reject.
[http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2013/confidence_intervals....](http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2013/confidence_intervals.html)
A _credible interval_ (which you only get from Bayesian statistics) is the
interval that represents how much you increased the conversion by.
~~~
mjn
The classical frequentist interpretation of a confidence interval doesn't
require invoking Fisherian hypothesis-testing. It's simply an interval
estimate for a population parameter rather than a point estimate, which is
semantics close to what he means here. A 95% confidence interval is an
interval estimate with 95% coverage probability for the true population
parameter, which in the frequentist sense means that it includes the true
population parameter in 95% of long-run experiment repetitions. (One can get
different kinds of frequentist coverage with a prediction or a tolerance
interval, which vary what's being covered and what's being repeated.)
------
AznHisoka
I see this all the time especially in social media blogs. They come to
strange, convoluted conclusions about things like "the best time to tweet",
without taking into account that 40% of tweets are from bots, and auto-tweets.
Or that most of your followers are not human.
------
taylorbuley
Standard methods of calculating confidence intervals are only applicable to
parametric data. Most data I deal with on the Web is non-parametric, so I
wouldn't take a lack of confidence intervals to necessarily insinuate non-
meaningful data.
------
logicallee
Honestly, anyone who isn't showing a 95% confidence interval is just being
lazy. If you're not willing to run an experiment twenty or thirty times, you
might as well not even look at the results and just publish it regardless of
what it is. Why even research?
On the other hand, if you'd like to showcase actual insight and meaningful,
surprising conclusions, it only makes sense to take the time to find the best
dataset that supports it. Real researchers leave nothing to chance.
------
kosei
Reminds me of every single presentation I've ever seen at a games developer
conference. "Look at this awesome thing we did! The graph goes up and to the
right! No, I can't tell you scale, methodology, other contributing factors or
talk to statistical significance. But it's AMAZING, right?!"
------
thesehands
Another great checklist to consider when reading articles: Warning Signs in
Experimental Design and Interpretation : [http://norvig.com/experiment-
design.html](http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html) (found the link on HN a
while back)
------
j_s
Are there any tips that would help when seeding two-sided markets with fake
data, a la reddit getting started?
[http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/22/reddit-fake-
users/](http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/22/reddit-fake-users/)
------
thanatosmin
This isn't really on how to make fake data look meaningful, but rather how to
make useless data look meaningful. If you can fake the data, then there's no
need for these misleading analyses.
~~~
Fomite
Indeed. Properly _faked_ data, rather than just misleadingly spun analysis,
can be analyzed using the most rigorous, statistically sound methods
available.
Indeed, often very legitimate science does exactly this.
Deceptive analysis is pretty easy to spot. A genuine work of data fabrication
artistry is much, much harder.
------
GrinningFool
Meh. I mean... funny, but it just reads like yet another person who saw bogus
numbers, got fed up, ranted.
------
kgu87
I did notice a lot of misspellings on the graph legends :)
------
kimonos
Nice one! Haha... But you need to be extra careful though because some people
are really keen to details..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: should I care about losing karma points? - websitescenes
So apparently my ideas are very unpopular and I always get down votes. Does this matter or should I keep speaking my mind?
======
tptacek
Here are two comments you wrote that were downvoted, where you subsequently
complained about being downvoted:
_Thanks for what? Sounds like your opinion is made up. Still trying to figure
out if this is a question. I like Ruby about as much as PHP; I think it 's
more about what you build on the language or what framework you use._
This is an empty comment that includes a (mild) personal attack.
_Dude, I 'm not your teacher. I come here to learn. Sorry, didn't mean to be
rude. Just working right now. Maybe I'll post an example later._
This is just an empty comment.
In both cases, you'd have been better off saying nothing at all.
You were heavily downvoted recently for being supportive of Obama; I
sympathize, but also wouldn't have written those comments because they're
pointlessly asking for downvotes and anger. But your political comments don't
seem to be a problem (you didn't complain after they got downvoted).
~~~
websitescenes
I see my error in these instances. Good critique.
------
nmcfarl
X4’s first line on Karma affecting your mood and life is dead on. Divorcing
your self-esteem from these social indicators is important, but difficult as
the whole point of them is social coercion.
Which in a round about way brings us back to why you should care (but only a
little)- karma exists to push people into conforming with the rules of society
on the site. If you are being punished too badly in the karma ranks you are
not conforming. (Karma also has a lot of noise - a little punishment is to be
expected.) This will presumably be punished with a hell ban after some
instance of severe enough non-conformity, and with that you’ll be straight out
of the community.
I’d look at what you are doing, and if the things you are being punished for
are things that matter to you (and thus perhaps you should give up on this
place), or are stylistic, or some form of social grace. In the latter cases
you could conform with little sacrifice and that would give you a better
platform to interact with others on the site, while at the same time removing
those ugly drops in karma:)
~~~
websitescenes
Also a very sobering addition. Conformity has always been very hard for me and
has caused me problems throughout my life. I've been kicked out of schools and
thrown in jail for non conformity. Knowing this I have to constantly battle
this emotion inside me. I want to be part of this community because I love
tech and development. I need to find my place here and I think this comment
helps me. Thanks
------
gesman
Downvoting is an attempt to feel "in control" by distracted individuals who
disagrees with your opinion.
Make them irrelevant by expressing your free thoughts.
~~~
websitescenes
This is the assumption I have been operating on but it has made me mentally
sick fighting battles that don't mean anything. I need to adjust the way I am
contributing to and analyzing hacker news.
~~~
gesman
No. Adjust the way you feel about actions of others. Git rid of "wanting
approval" and keep posting your genuine thoughts.
~~~
websitescenes
I will try to find balance. I definitely want to get rid of the "wanting
approval" aspect. I also want to continue to post my genuine thoughts but I a
want to use more of a filter in what thoughts I post and post them to the
appropriate channels. I am somewhat new to all of this and I am trying to find
my balance. Thank you for your support.
------
Ihmahr
There you go, a little bit of karma for you ;)
~~~
websitescenes
Haha thanks. This isn't a karma grab though.
------
X4
Don't care about virtual Karma. Really don't! It's addictive, can destroy your
mood and affect your life. The same applies for "likes". See it as a kind of
addiction, a sickness, something that is manipulative and ill-fated.
I don't say anything about your comments, your style, or your person! I'll let
others do help you with that, because I'm not qualified for that.
Life is about making the life of other people better. Your life only becomes
better this way. Well, you might think about Oil barons, Zuckerberg, Bill
Gates, PRISM etc., but the reality is that whatever they do makes someone's
life better and people pay for it and in return their own life becomes better
too.
One has to accept that even a million likes or karma points have a low
potential of changing your life to the better. Many reading this will think
that having million karma points will make you popular and that this has only
upsides, but they aren't right.
If you "create" something instead of becoming popular for what you think,
hate, like, adore etc. then you really make a difference in your life and
especially in the life of other people.
We're speaking about a developer/manager career, no a political career, keep
that in mind. (As a politician for example you're allowed to be a hypocrite as
long as you can defend yourself with arguments.)
And if you notice that the time you invest in formulating arguments isn't
respected, you're practically argueing in the wrong channel, with the wrong
people or about the wrong topic.
~~~
websitescenes
Thanks, very sobering. I am struggling with this recently. I have been trying
to make people like me online and its been a losing battle. I believe you are
correct about your suggestions. I am going to abandon my quest for recognition
and do things help people instead. That is such a better use of time, yet it
never occurred to me as plainly as you put it. Thank you
~~~
kls
You can't make people like you, but you can be a likeable person, the way that
you do that is to serve people. Help them better themselves and in the process
you better yourself. You learn valuable skills like patients and empathy both
go a long way and people see them in your actions. When people know you are a
genuinely good person not acting in self interests they are more likely to
genuinely like you both on and off line. The original poster is right, the
quest for karma or any other recognition is a self serving quest, the fruits
of which are always tasteless and unrewarding because they are a quest for
acceptance hidden behind a trinket. Once you receive the trinket the
acceptance for that act is gone and you are left in the same state you where
before that. It's akin to a drug and it can become addictive, because it is
not permanent, the high of momentary acceptance fades and you are back on the
treadmill. Now if you contrast this with genuinely improving someone's life
then every time you see the person you have helped in a better state you see
the trophies of your accomplishments and is far more rewarding.
~~~
X4
_Just in case it 's not clear enough, @kls doesn't mean attributing one's life
to someone else or someone specific, it can easily be mistaken for that. There
would be enough people who'd love to profit from such naivety in that matter._
~~~
kls
Absolutely I am not suggesting being a door mat to people who would look to
exploit you, or putting all your self worth into something external, helping
to improve others is an internal quest, to perfect oneself. That being said,
being kind to others and generous to others and the ones that reciprocate are
people you want to help because they are the type of people that view the
world as water lifts all boats and do not have the mentality of someone has to
loose for them to win.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What language should I develop in? - ashread
I'm currently working on an idea for a community management app and as I'm not technical. I was wondering what the pros and cons are of developing in a certain language. Languages that have been recommended so far include; Ruby, PHP and Python.<p>Any advice would be greatly appreciated.<p>If you're interested, here's the app I'm developing: http://getnudge.co/
======
pedalpete
Great to hear you're rolling up your sleeves and going to give developing it
yourself a go.
I taught myself to program using PHP, then moved to Rails, and now do mostly
Javascript and Node work.
There are a few things to consider. Number one, you're absolutely going to
need a front-end, which means you're going to need to learn javascript, and
probably use a framework like backbone, angular, or ember. Personally, I think
knockout may be the easiest of all of these to 'pick-up', but none of them (I
don't think) are going to be easy as a beginner.
At first, I'd suggest your back-end can wait. You can use parse or firebase or
one of the other back-end as a service providers to manage your data. Just
make sure you're able to get it back later.
Now, if you're adamant about doing the server-side stuff, I'd say go with
Ruby-on-Rails, which is a framework for making it easier to build and manage
an application written in Ruby. The framework does a lot of stuff for you, and
you can host it on heroku fairly easily.
A few good things about Rails (I haven't used other frameworks like Django
(Python) or Larvel (PHP)), is that it forces you to have a program structured
in such a way that if you bring in another developer at a later date, they
should be able to find their way around your code base fairly easily. That's
what got me to make the switch, I was doing a contract I knew I wouldn't be
working on long-term, and new that a rails app would be easy for somebody else
to step in on.
~~~
joepour
> probably use a framework like backbone, angular, or ember.
Absolutely, do not do this. Just use jQuery at first. Don't use a framework
until you experience WHY you need a JS framework.
~~~
pedalpete
That's a good point jeopour. A framework can also make things more
complicated, but they are good for learning how to structure your programs.
What would you recommend for learning structure.
~~~
joepour
There are a lot of excellent resources online such as blog posts or open
source projects on github, but the way I learnt was by reading a couple books
people had recommended me. I also took patterns commonly found on the server
side of things and implemented in a way relevant to my client side code.
Let me know if you need some recommendations!
------
easy_rider
One of my friends wants to learn how to code, and asks me where to start, and
what language (PHP? ). I always tell them; well think of something you want to
solve first, smaller problem the better. Then google how to work out that
problem. If they can't do that; (i.e. they do not make any attempt! ) , I
won't invest anymore of my time because they clearly lack the mentality to do
it.
I started with PHP (3 back then) because I had built (copy paste amalgamation)
a website, and I didn't want to maintain all these html files, so probably
altavista'd something in the lines of "how to include other page into page
html" . I know back then I was also messing with Newsdesk, which was CGI/Perl,
and remember adding some fields to the whole thing so my buddy's could post
their Warez uploads on there.
I actually ended up with one of the biggest Warez sites in the scene at that
time. I actually had mostly no idea what I was doing. And there was no Google
back then. Altavista ruled the market.
Anyway what I'm going to is: If you do not have this mindset, you will
probably not make it as a programmer. And that's ok, because maybe you have
different goals. Just make sure you understand what you want to do.
There are a huge amount of musicians who probably never imagined being great
or a rockstar, they just liked playing music and figured out how.
Last note: if you're picking between for example "PHP" , "Python" , "Ruby" I
would definitely start working with a framework, because it will help you
start off the right way; using a design pattern and command line tools.
------
PaulRobinson
If you want to be a developer, you should aim to learn one new programming
language a year, at least to the point where you can understand the strengths
and weaknesses of the language. High-level languages like Ruby, PHP and Python
are all good. At some point dive into functional, and at another point go a
bit lower: C, perhaps.
However if all you want to do is build this one product, then you need to
evaluate which framework is easiest to get started in. So, choose a feature
and build it in a few different frameworks and decide which one clicked for
you.
My recommendation is to try Rails, Django and CakePHP. If you're feeling
brave, Meteor (in Javascript) is worth a look. Figure out what worked for you,
and what didn't and make the decision from there. You might like Ruby but hate
Rails: try Sinatra. You might love Javascript but hate the conceptual building
blocks of Meteor: try Node.js. And so on.
There is a lot of personal preference going on here, and I presume this is for
now a side project so your focus should be on having fun. I think if you can
get your head around it, Rails will be the one that gets you the fastest from
"I have this idea" to being able to use it.
------
izietto
The technology choice is a consequence of your needs. If it is a one page web
app maybe node.js + JS-framework-at-your-choice, or Rails + Angular.js are
good options; if it is a "classic" web app there's plenty of options: Rails,
Django, Play (a Scala framework), PHP, Haskell, it's up to your tastes (I
would seriously consider Yesod for example, an Haskell web framework); if it
is a normal app Haskell, Java, Scala, C, Python/Pypy, Ruby, ...
I suggest you to choose some options, play with them for a short time (2 days
- 1 week), and finally go for one of them.
------
duhast
Don't go with PHP. It's obsolete and obscure programming language. Look at
Python (Flask), Scala (Play Framework). Tool selection is important. Do not
listen to those who say that it does not matter.
~~~
melkior
PHP might be a lot of things, but 'obscure' isn't one of them.
~~~
hmsimha
By obscure they must have meant, 'yet still ubiquitous'
------
bitboxer
The language is not important. There is another factor that is way more
important:
Do you know people using one of the languages? If yes, you could ask them
about problems you have. Will be easier than going to stackoverflow.
------
beagle3
Real answer: depends how much you want to become technical.
Mostly real answer: Ruby, PHP and Python are fine choices. Avoid Java, C++, or
C#.
Relevant answer: Assuming you want to get something done before "becoming
technical" (if ever) Python, by a wide margin - but more than that, you have
to pick a framework to work in: Django, Web2py are the two I'd recommend
looking at.
Far out answer: Look at Tersus.com - If your app fits tersus (and many do, at
least in their prototypical/MVP stage), you won't have to program anything,
you'll just have to draw an annotated diagram.
~~~
rjbwork
>Avoid Java, C++, or C#.
Can I ask why? I'll fully admit to being a C# "fanboy", as they say, at this
point in my career, but that's because it has so many features and syntactical
constructs that are amazing and that I simply NEVER encountered elsewhere in
my schooling, internships, or career. I simply feel more able to turn my
actual ideas of what I want the computer to do into code with C# than anything
else I've used, including Python (distant second) and Ruby.
~~~
beagle3
Op said he is not technical. C# is a fine language, but not if this isn't your
profession. Python is.
~~~
rjbwork
Fair enough.
------
pan69
It's a little bit like asking which color you should like. A lot of main
stream programming languages are very similar in capabilities but differ in
some of the details on how they express this, i.e. the syntax. The programming
languages you end up choosing probably has a lot to do with how appealing the
language and the ecosystem around it is to you.
You might want to try a few languages such as Python, Ruby, PHP, Javascript,
etc. I would suggest to focus on the language first and then the frameworks.
------
meerita
Start with anything that takes you to an MVP fast. You probably will be
iterating months with this until your solution needs a re-thinking or pivot:
you don't need to change your lang right now.
It happened to me 3 times the same way: we started with X in a year or 2 we
ported to Y.
Personally, I would go Ruby or Python, they're pretty much solid, lots of devs
around. Then, if you have the need to scale: i loved Erlang, but I like also
Go a lot.
------
joepour
It sounds like your are not so interested learning to programme but rather it
is just a means to building this project you have in mind.
That being said you should just choose a popular web framework like Ruby on
Rails or something like CakePHP. This means that any problem you run into will
have been encountered and solved by someone already and you can pretty much
just Google your way to a half decent prototype.
~~~
ashread
Hello, thanks for your reply. You're correct, my main aim for this question
was to understand which language may be best to get the app developed in.
I'd love to learn a language too, and eventually be able to develop/maintain
apps myself. But for this project, I won't have time to learn.
Thanks for the feedback.
------
alaskamiller
Real answer: it doesn't matter. Pick one and go.
It takes 3 months to get okay with something. 6 months to be decent. 9 months
to be like, okay, I kind of get this, and then at the end of the year you'll
probably change your mind and try something else.
I tried PHP, it was easy. Too easy. Hated it.
Tried Ruby, then Rails came on the scene and it became cool. Ended up hating
it too.
Now I'm on Python. Learned Django. Tolerating it, but switched to Flask.
What I really want to master is JavaScript, closures, then node.js and
AngularJS.
Just start. You can switch after. And to be real, making websites is actually
really easy with any of the languages. Whatever you're thinking of doing
there's probably already ten other projects on Github that has redone what
you're thinking of that you will end up using.
It's the deploying, that perfect minute customization that you really, really,
really want, scaling, and long term maintenance that's going to be tough.
~~~
antihero
I started off my Python adventure in Flask, and now pretty much use Django for
everything - I found that when I used Flask, I'd essentially just start re-
implementing Django.
Also, Django REST framework is utterly amazing for building APIs.
~~~
yen223
+1 for the Django REST Framework. However, I'm not a huge fan of Django's ORM.
~~~
namelezz
+1 for not being a huge fan of Django's ORM. :)
------
CmonDev
C#. It's a modern multi-paradigm multi-type-system language.
Best choice if you can get Visual Studio (paid) along with ReSharper (paid).
Will let you target all mobile platforms via Xamarin (paid) (since you want to
develop an app as opposed to a website).
If you want to get a prototype quickly rather than focus on code quality then
one of the purely dynamic language options would also be OK.
~~~
victorhn
Do you know of some open source project/application which can be useful in
learning C#?
~~~
CmonDev
Depends on your objectives and situation.
1) gamedev => MonoGame 2) business (SQL DBs) => NHibernate 3) web => SignalR
I personally never learned by participating in OSS but times change.
------
ohadron
All three can get the job done, have tons of resources and extensions
available, very active communities, proven reliability and infrastructure
available, with a similar learning curve.
If you have a friend that can help you when you're stuck in any of these
languages it would be a good reason to choose one over the others.
------
ben_hall
For me it's about the community. Every language has a different mindset / way
of approaching a problem. Read some groups, have a look at the various
packages on github and see which community fits best with what you're
personally doing.
Having contacts / friends who could help is also an advantage.
------
jbrooksuk
Use whatever you're most comfortable with.
------
asselinpaul
Cool site, rendered well on my iPhone except the top logo which was a bit
blurry on a retina screen.
Keep it up
~~~
ashread
Thanks so much :) I'll take a look at the logo and see if there's anything I
can do with it.
Appreciate the feedback. Is it something you'd personally use?
------
mattwritescode
Which ever you are the quickest programming in. Lets face it time is money.
------
camus2
You cant go wrong either with Rails(Ruby) or Python (Django),they will help
you develop your app quickly and both solutions are fun to use. I personally
prefer Ruby while Python is easier to deploy on a server. But you'll attract
more data scientists with Python when your prototype is mature.
PHP : while easy to learn, i would not recommend it.It's an old badly designed
language that has little future outside cmses.I only use it to customize CMSes
today,i would not develop any app from scratch with it, furthermore writing
PHP is awfull compared to Ruby and Python.
NodeJS: While Javascript everywhere seems like a good idea(you'll have to
learn Javascript to script the browser anyway), NodeJS use async programming ,
and async programming is hard,no matter what people say, furthermore Node is
not mature yet, especially its libraries.
Java(JVM):If you have time try it(Spring/Play/...). It will feel hard and
verbose but You'll learn a lot of interesting concepts. If you want to code a
prototype quickly forget about it. And Java has a lot of very good and mature
librairies.
So if you want to develop an app quickly and you care about how your code look
like, go with Python or Ruby. If you have more time go with the JVM.
Also check basic informations on these topics :HTTP,Rest,OAUTH you'll need
them pretty quickly if you want to interact with Twitter.
~~~
h-go
While I agree that PHP is a badly designed language, I disagree that writing
PHP is awful. You can make PHP beautiful. OO PHP and using MVC makes things
way more easy to handle.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
UK phone network TalkTalk has received ransom demand after attack - callumlocke
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/23/talktalk-cyber-attack-company-has-received-ransom-demand
======
merah
Pastebin message reported to be from the hackers [1] contains Islamic State
references/language and some samples of the data breach.
[1] [http://pastebin.com/HHT4BxJA](http://pastebin.com/HHT4BxJA)
Edit: added some clarification to contents.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you vote? - chishaku
Why or why not?
======
cauterized
Yes. If I didn't vote, what incentive whatsoever would my representatives have
to act in my interest? I may not have a statistically significant impact on
the outcome, but neither do any of the other tens of millions of people who
vote. Even if an individual vote isn't statistically significant, the
aggregate of them is, and because non-voters are self-selecting we can't count
on those who vote enthusiastically to be a representative sample of the
opinions of the populace. Each person who makes the decision that their vote
doesn't matter helps our country slide away from government by the people and
towards government by corporations.
Living in a part of the US that skews VERY heavily towards one party, I
especially vote in primary elections, which are where it's actually determined
which congresscritter or senator we'll be sending to Washington or the state
capital. And yes, I will absolutely vote my heart rather than strategically in
a primary. "Electable" too often isn't.
And I make sure to vote in off-year state and local elections too because
those actually have more impact on my daily quality of life in the short-term
than national ones do. (Whereas national elections have more impact on the
long-term direction of the country, especially when there are Supreme Court
vacancies likely).
My state allows a candidate to run for office on multiple parties' slates, and
will aggregate those votes for the candidate. I dislike one party much more
than the other, but there are third-parties far closer to my actual positions.
I'll often vote for a major-party candidate on a third-party slate, which both
helps ensure that the third party remains on the ballot for the next election
cycle and hopefully helps send a message to the major party in question.
(Edited for typos.)
~~~
greenyoda
_" Living in a part of the US that skews VERY heavily towards one party, I
especially vote in primary elections, which are where it's actually determined
which congresscritter or senator we'll be sending to Washington or the state
capital."_
This is exactly the case in NYC, which is heavily Democratic: the winner of
the Democratic primary is the most likely winner of the general election
(where they sometimes even run unopposed). In the recent primary in my
district, the vote for City Council member was won by a margin of a few
hundred votes, since the voter turnouts for primaries are pretty sparse
compared with the general election. One person's vote really makes a
difference in this situation.
~~~
dllthomas
You mean, a few hundred people's votes really make a difference in this
situation.
Voting has a bit of a free-rider problem. To a first approximation, one vote
never makes a difference; but an attitude that voting doesn't make a
difference (especially when unevenly distributed) definitely makes a
difference.
------
mindcrime
Yes, I usually vote and I've even run for public office before ( Lieutenant
Governor of North Carolina, 2008, as the Libertarian candidate. I wasn't
elected).
That said, I am somewhat ambivalent about voting and democracy. I think
democracy is basically just a euphemism for "mob rule" and find that whatever
systems you put in to try and prevent the "tyranny of the majority" never
really work. And if you're on the losing end in a "democratic" system, are you
really "represented"? I argue that the answer is "no". I don't hold Richard
Burr, David Price, or Thom Tillis as representing me in any way. I certainly
didn't vote for any of them, and would't if you paid me to.
Basically I'm a voluntaryist / anarcho-capitalist / market anarchist /
whatever-term-you-prefer, who wants to eliminate most of "government" _as we
know it today_. Note that does not mean I'm in favor of chaos or opposed to
communal action (this is something critics of libertarian thought often get
wrong.. seemingly intentionally at times). I just want _voluntary_ exchange
and self-government to be the fundamental basis for society, with use of
force/violence reserved for self-defense.
~~~
eimai134
I agree. I'm libertarian with a lower case "l" and not too big on democracy. I
don't want my town voting on the best way to do heart surgery for me. Why do I
want the masses voting on other issues that are equally important. The U.S. is
so divided right now, it seems like we could stop it all by returning to more
local, or at least, state governments being in charge of most things. No need
to enforce rules on a gigantic number of people who are all so different.
------
auganov
No. Looks like only people who do feel like commenting here. I guess people
who don't, like me, might just not care about it. Kinda like asking people who
don't believe in God why they don't.
Yes, I might not think I'd make a difference, I don't have anybody to vote
for, I don't think parliament members make much of a difference, I'm not crazy
about democracy etc etc. But in the end I guess I just don't care.
If there was a special party or person that I'd really believe to be a game
changer, I might. If I was American I would perhaps vote next year depending
on who gets the Republican nomination.
------
PaulHoule
Yes.
I used to be an organizer for the Green Party so I am capable of very cynical
views of the electoral system but also going door to door to get signatures,
running candidates, etc.
In local races, even up to the state legislature level, I often know the
people involved personally. I've had friends and acquaintances run for local
offices as Greens, Democrats and Republicans. I even meet a congressional
candidate from time to time.
For the presidential election next year the immediate thing on my mind is that
I don't want to see a Hillary Clinton - Jeb Bush matchup because as much as
the "Anderson-Horowitz politics" people on HN would find that easy to swallow,
it would set a very bad precedent for our country.
~~~
a3n
> I used to be an organizer for the Green Party so I am capable of very
> cynical views of the electoral system
Cynical?
I always vote 3rd party when available, because I know they won't win. It's a
"none of the above" vote, where "above" means dems and reps.
~~~
PaulHoule
For me it really depends.
If I actually like a mainstream candidate I will vote for them. Personally if
I was in a "swing state" I might be more inclined to vote for a mainstream
candidate but I am in the kind of state Hillary Clinton would go to get
herself a solidly democratic constituency so most of the time I vote for
whoever I want.
------
cweagans
Yes. If I don't vote, I have no right to bitch about whatever scumbag takes
over a given office for the next term.
Also, I might be naive enough to think that if I vote despite my cynicism and
outspokenness against the shit politicians pull, maybe - just maybe - I might
inspire just one other person to vote. And if I manage to do that, maybe
they'll inspire someone else and eventually people will start engaging with
politics again, instead of just handing the reins over to the people that
stand to gain the most from voter disenfranchisement.
~~~
cpursley
> Yes. If I don't vote, I have no right to bitch about whatever scumbag takes
> over a given office for the next term.
Please. When our choices are a turd sandwich and a douchebag, we absolutely
have the right to complain.
“Whether it is exerted by ten men or ten billion, political authority is force
… the power of the Rods and the Ax” - Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers
~~~
avmich
Wow, somebody on HN is taking Heinlein very seriously :) .
OP - really good words! Tempted to print the whole passage and hang in the
office :) .
------
0x01
No. I've never voted, not once.
I do not believe I live in a democracy, even though that's what we're calling
it. I believe that by voting I'm validating a broken system.
Who are all these people making calls about everything and setting rules,
while knowing relatively little on the subject matter? I personally think a
democracy would be every eligable person being able to contribute to the
decision of (ie. voting on) these calls, rather than simply picking the 'guy'
who makes them. Let the experts in their fields have a say. I don't know what
such a system would look like - but only if something like that were in place
would I call it a democracy. What we have right now is the illusion of a
democracy. I'm not interested in voting, but I am interested in fixing this
mess.
Back down to earth.. I think the barrier to entry for understanding current
politics is unrealistically high: in order for me to make a call on a party I
need to know quite a lot of things about each. There is no 'official source',
which forces me to google, which forces me to read some third party source,
whether it's a news site or some blog. Either way it's more often than not a
very biased opinion that does not weigh all sides equally, and I can never
form a complete picture. Too much time is required to contribute for what I
would gain from it, and I have better things to do. Is anybody aware of an
aggregator or a summary site of all political parties views? Can I look up a
party's stance on something and cross reference what the other parties stances
are on the same subject?
~~~
anywherenotes
Honestly, if you don't have time to form an opinion for what each party (or at
least main parties) stand for, then how will you have time to vote on each
individual issue? According to this website:
[https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics)
there have been over 10 thousands things those people have input one per year.
(sounds insane to me as well)
You don't want to micromanage each little decision, and you can certainly make
phone calls and show up in person to talk to some people in government to
discuss things you do care about.
~~~
0x01
You're right of course, I definitely do not want to do that. But I _know_ I
would vote individually on the issues that I care about.
For example, if everybody had a say, SOPA wouldn't have gotten as far as it
did. I would have voted it out, as would everybody else. But instead we had to
sign a petition once it was nearly through. We could all be pro-active
about... well, everything! But instead, we're kept on our toes being reactive
to it all. (opt in not out, people!!! This ideal should exist everywhere but
instead it's nowhere to be found).
If everybody did that, I believe that each of us would have more of an effect
on the country than electing somebody who is never going to agree 100% with my
beliefs, but is the best fit. That's insane! There will always be compromise.
In England, a party can promise to change x and y if you vote for them, but
once they finally come to power they might go back on their promise. Okay, so
what did I vote for then? Nothing. And there's no accountability. This system
is thoroughly broken and I refuse to acknowledge it by 'playing along'. And
the worst thing about this is that nobody seems to notice, or care that
picking the best out of a bad bunch is how we should make our country work.
Vote Waldo.
------
miguelrochefort
No.
I refuse to support a system that legitimates the voice of the majority. There
is little to no correlation between what the majority has been led to believe
is right, and what is actually right.
That said, I could see myself voting for a party that (intentionally or not)
would reveal the ridicule of democracy, a party that undisputedly wouldn't be
fit to rule the country.
------
chrisBob
I have voted in most elections I have been eligible for. Many people say they
don't think their vote matters, but we were just a few votes away from
avoiding the whole Iraq war mess[0].
The times I feel I have had much more impact though is when I wrote letters to
my elected officials. If you have an issue you really care about then write to
your representatives in the weeks leading up to a vote. I have always gotten a
reasonable response when I sent a personalized (not form letter) note, and in
at least one case I think I really helped make a difference in how they voted.
[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount)
~~~
eimai134
Really? I have sent a number of letters to elected officials - I've only ever
gotten what appears to a form letter back. Glad you've had a different
experience.
------
joeclark77
I always pray for a blizzard on election day. When there's bad weather, a lot
of the low-information types who are only voting because they want the "I
voted!" sticker, will stay home. At least that's my theory.
------
yompers888
Last presidential election, I voted Ron Paul in the Republican primary, then
didn't vote in the general. If there's someone I like, I'll make the effort to
get registered and mail in my vote. Otherwise, it's not worth the effort of
figuring out what paperwork I have to send, and to whom. Having said that,
after my state elected the governor I didn't like by a narrow margin, I felt a
little guilty not voting. But, the truth is the democrats' strategy of funding
a libertarian candidate to hurt the Republican would've worked on me too, so
it wouldn't have made a difference.
I also don't think I should have the right to vote, as a pretty young person
with minimal skin in the game. The risk is too great that I'd seek just to
support the candidate who offers me the policies most beneficial to me, rather
than acting as a steward, so it seems like I should be left out.
My non-vote is noticed just as little as my vote for any candidate in a
presidential election, so I don't care too much, nor do I feel a need to make
a principled stand that will go unnoticed. I'd vote in lesser elections like
US Rep, but my congressman is pretty well set for every election. He's been
the Rep for my district longer than I've been alive, and I think he mostly
does a good job. He's the house sponsor for the bill that required carriers to
unlock phones, which I think has been fantastic for me, but in a freedom-
increasing, rather than pandering, sort of way.
------
yetanotheracc
No. My political views are extreme enough to not be represented by any
candidate. My non-participation decreases the legitimacy of the current
system, which I want to fail.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
Why do you want the current system to fail? What do you prefer in its place?
How likely do you think it is that, if the current system fails, it will be
replaced by something you view as better?
~~~
yetanotheracc
Concentration of power in the hands of a single social class. Decentralized,
direct democracy. Not very likely, but I see myself benefiting from the
disruption.
------
MrZongle2
Yes, though in the past 10-15 years I've become increasingly jaded to the
point where I really wonder if it's worth it, at least at the state and
national level.
------
jseeff
Yes. I believe it to be a civic privilege and duty. My mother comes from a
country where (for her gender and religion) her civil freedoms were severely
restricted and I think it is important to engage in the process even if you
don't like the options. I believe a void vote is better than no vote at all
and I think real engagement to change the system is the best (although a
difficult) solution to the "no one represents me" argument.
------
toomuchtodo
Yes, because I believe the economy can be a more "fair" place, and that
everyone should have a minimum quality of life (voting for Bernie Sanders in
2016).
------
Mz
I have only voted twice.
Why: I have a serious medical condition which limits how much I can take on. I
spent a lot of years as a military wife and devoted mother, raising two
special needs sons. This was just a helluva lot of work, more than most people
seem to appreciate. Trying to stay up on The Issues was just not something I
could manage. My plate was overly full as is. I saw no reason to vote if my
choices were not based on some kind of meaningful information or opinion.
From what I gather, you see higher rates of voting and political activity in
older people, precisely because their plate is less full (with launching a
career, finding romance, raising kids, etc). It is possible that as I get
older and my life works better, I may someday feel able to effectively
participate in the process. I haven't made any decisions one way or the other.
It wasn't a Stance. It was happenstance.
------
a3n
Yes. Because I think it's my responsibility. But I am against legally mandated
voting.
------
gyardley
Nope. Not legally allowed to vote in my birth country, since I've been away
too long, and not legally allowed to vote in the country I currently live in,
since I'm not a citizen.
I have to admit I don't see much point voting on a state, congressional, or
federal level when living in areas that are completely skewed in favor of a
single political party. Were I able to vote, perhaps I'd vote in the
primaries.
It doesn't bother me too much - when I really care about an issue, which isn't
that often, I call a politician's office or two and donate something to an
appropriate PAC. That's probably more effective than voting directly.
------
theoldguy
Yes, Ivote. Usually for the candidate of the party which, in general, believes
as I do. If I don't vote, I am conceeding control to persons that believe the
opposite of what I believe. All candidates have weak points, but some are
deffently opposed to my main positions and toughts. If the current polls prove
to be correct, the up coming election for President will have two poor major
candidates, but the party platforms will be very different. I can support the
one.
------
MalcolmDiggs
Yes, but I rarely get any pleasure from it. If I want to feel like an active
participant in a democracy it typically takes a bit more than that.
Going to city council meetings, canvassing for candidates, collecting
signatures for propositions, etc...those all feel a bit more impactful than
voting...but I feel like a hypocrite doing any of those things if I myself
don't actually vote...so I vote too.
------
ddingus
Yes.
I devote about 5 or so percent of my free time to civics. This means learning
about my local options, who actually can impact my life in notable and
significant ways, as well as just being active. Being active means doing
advocacy actions, the occasional trip to the State capitol, phone banking,
GOTV efforts of various kinds, etc...
I sure wish I knew how to convince more 20 somethings to vote.
------
proveanegative
I believe that democracy does not scale beyond roughly several hundred voters
of roughly equal expertise and ability. I decide whether or not to vote
accordingly, which means saying no to local and national elections.
That said, I vote on Hacker News stories. Could HN be an example of a
moderated democracy (constitutional monarchy?) working well on a larger scale?
------
ukoms
Long time ago, when I was young and stupid I've mastered in politcal sciense.
So, now (when I'm only stupid), let me tell you this - question do you vote or
not is pointless. Only when you ask for motives right after makes any sense.
Because those two questions can show who you are and what your politicals
class is.
There is quite pleasant theory about what political systems are. It state that
you can represent all political systems as segment, on which both ends are
dictatorship and democracy. But, this theory also states that those two
systems are unachievable in our world, they are like asymptotes - all
political systems tends towards them, but never actually get there. If you
take a look at democracy - even Greek democracy weren't this perfect one -
yeah, everybody could vote. Except for a women, those who hasn't finished
their army service, those who haven't got status of a citizen and those who
were slaves.
Having this in mind, I personaly always go to elections and always vote.
Sometimes - in local elections - I know who had done something for my district
or city, and this gives me clear options. This man did this and that, he seems
fair and honest, he claims he can do few things better - yup, I'll give him my
vote so he can try his best. Other times - especially when it comes to
parliment or presiden elections I go to election but I don't have clear
options. I don't know those people and to be truly honest - most of them has
been on political scene for far to long - so I don't vote for them who have
the biggest election budgets. And it happened twice to this day - I made
invalid votes on purpose. Here, in Poland, we can't add our option to the vote
card. There were two cases where none of candidates on my voting card weren't
good enough to have my voice, so I write my types down which made my voice
invalid.
What does the first paragraph have to do with the second? I choose people who
will drag our political system towards this version of political system which
is nearest my opinions and preference.
And to all people who say that qoing to election won't change antyhing - yes,
it will. But it require some maturity and effort. It require to make a choice
and quite possibly to regret given voice. And then it require consideration -
"who I'll vote for if my previous choice was bad?". In some sense it's quite
biblical - be hot or be cold, not lukewarm. But... this would mean handling
the consequences of our choice, and we humans don't like to do that...
------
thrownear
No, because I see no parties any more. Because there are no philosophies, no
ideologies any more. There are only group of people who put up an appearance
of separate parties to engage in the farce called election. After it is over,
they go back to the ruling/opposing party drama, while collaborating and
robbing people at the back.
------
rajacombinator
I used to but after waking up I made a principled decision to abstain from
what is just another tax on my time. (Best case: trading time for the illusion
of voice.) I would consider voting for a moral statement candidate like Ron
Paul but sadly guys like that seem to be a once-in-200-years phenomenon.
------
echolima
Yes. Local, state, federal...may not always like my choices, but they are all
I have until I actually run.
------
dllthomas
Subquestion, for those in the US who show up at the polling place on election
day: Do you educate yourself about local positions and vote there as well (or
only?)? Or do you limit yourself to voting for those on the national stage
(who, of course, get more press)?
------
arisAlexis
I think voting should be obvious and a much better question would be: do you
vote the candidate you really want or the least bad of the candidates that
could actually be elected? (In parliamentary democracies with many parties).
------
6d0debc071
I do, it's a very small expenditure of time and effort even if the probability
of my vote making a difference is very small considering we live in a two
party system with... conveniently... set electoral boundaries.
------
soared
No. There is no difference between voting/not, bush/obama, this/that in my day
to day life. If I thought a politician would make meaningful changes, I'd vote
for him or her.
------
zhte415
Voted: 'None of the above'
This was an option that was successfully won for many years over (sometimes
concurrently, sometimes not) for the Student Union at my first university,
Imperial College London.
------
AnimalMuppet
Yes. But if the choice is Trump vs. Hillary, I'm going to sit that particular
race out, because I could not in good conscience vote for either candidate.
~~~
cauterized
There will always be at least one third-party candidate on the ballot, even if
they've got zero chance of winning. By voting for that candidate you signal
that you're a voter who WILL go to the polls and whom candidates should put in
some effort to court, while still indicating with your fringe candidate vote
that you are unwilling to support either major party candidate.
------
J_Darnley
No. Not registered here. That's probably partly why I am now represented by a
separatist party both locally, "stately", and federally.
------
sidcool
Oh. You meant in real elections. I thought on here.
------
Mr24601
No - too lazy.
------
sml786
yes i do vote
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
It is not hard to edit Lisp code - rgtos
http://yoo2080.wordpress.com/2014/07/20/it-is-not-hard-to-edit-lisp-code/
======
escherize
Automating the manipulation of S-expressions (i.e. via Paredit) makes quick,
controlled edits feel almost like a second sense. I've found it to be the most
painful part of going back to algol-style syntax.
------
JackMorgan
Please divide all your exercise numbers by 10, it was the thing that took my
attention most while reading, which is probably not what you want.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bruce Schneier: Has U.S. started an Internet war? - Titanous
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/18/opinion/schneier-cyberwar-policy/index.html
======
mtgx
I've long suspected 90% of the budgets and bills they are trying to pass is to
help them _offensively_ against other countries. And yet, 100% of their
arguments in public were that they are needed for _defense_.
The government seems to be lying about a lot of things it's doing in your
name. You may be okay with it, but just don't act surprised when the
retaliation begins, which of course the US government will make it seem like
_they_ started it, and now they need even more money and you having fewer
liberties to help in the "cyberwar" that they started.
And just like that the "cyberwarfare industry complex" will keep expanding
just like the "military industry complex" for decades to come, if nobody wants
to do anything to stop it before it can't be stopped anymore, and its budgets
will keep increasing year after year, with no one daring to touch them.
~~~
TallGuyShort
>> the US government will make it seem like they started it
This has been done extensively with the war on terror. The idiocy of the "they
hate our freedoms" statement has been weighing on me lately. I agree that
caving to a terrorist's demands immediately is a bad thing to do because it
encourages a violent approach to change, which we shouldn't do. But shouldn't
we also take a step back and say "hey - we're killing people on the other side
of the world - maybe we should stop!". If "they hate our freedoms" they must
be pretty happy to see what the Patriot Act has done in response - because
evidently we gave them exactly what they wanted.
~~~
chubot
You know it has become fashionable to hate on Ron Paul and his supporters, but
he is one of the few politicians I have ever learned anything from.
Namely that in 1988 the US shot down an Iranian passenger plane, in its OWN
air space, with a MISSILE! Which of course killed everyone on board.
Imagine if there was an Iranian aircraft carrier parked around NYC, and it
fired a missile into an passenger airliner taking off from JFK. Imagine what
would happen.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655)
~~~
jacquesm
Holy crap, I completely missed that. I thought KAL007 was the worst incident
like this.
> However, the United States has never admitted responsibility, nor apologized
> to Iran.
Why not? That would seem to be the proper thing to do.
~~~
chubot
Try to get a US politician to talk about anything that we do wrong with regard
to foreign policy. Don't forget that we overthrew their democratically elected
government too
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat)).
Ron Paul is intellectually honest; I regret not voting for him now. It would
have been mostly symbolic but you know he would be on the right side of this
whole PRISM debacle.
~~~
cpursley
Seems like the Pauls, father and son, have ideologies that are positive for
the tech industry. I always wondered why the valley and other technologists
pull the left-trigger at the polls. Is it that the right is so bad they are
voting against it, or they actually think the left cares about their interests
(as it is recently apparent that they are not)?
~~~
CamperBob2
_Seems like the Pauls, father and son, have ideologies that are positive for
the tech industry._
Maybe. As a "tech" kind of guy, I'm not quite ready to vote for a medical
doctor who denies human evolution.
~~~
flyinRyan
A one-issue voter is bad enough, but an irrelevant non-issue voter really
takes the cake. Who gives a flying fuck, are you afraid he'll outlaw evolving
or something?
And what does being a medical doctor have to do with evolution? Evolution has
no effect on medication at that level.
~~~
antimagic
Antibiotic resistance? Genetic diseases? The evolution of various viruses? I
for one do not let any doctor near me that doesn't think that evolution is a
real thing.
~~~
flyinRyan
If the doctor learned his material properly, what difference would his belief
that you evolved from some base mammal vs. belief that humans were created by
God a few thousand years ago make? So long as he's following current
understanding of what medicines and procedures _work_ , the _why_ doesn't
matter all that much and what humans were like a million years ago has
literally zero bearing on anything your local doctor will ever do for you.
~~~
antimagic
If a doctor learned his material properly, he would _know_ that humans evolved
from a type of ape. The fact that he believes otherwise _immediately_ puts in
to doubt whether he has or not learned his material.
As to whether or not someone can just learn what has to be done in a specific
situation or not, let me ask you this: do you prefer working with developer
colleagues that work with Cargo Cult mentality or because they understand the
underlying technology that they use? And which of those two developers
produces better work? Yeah, I choose doctors that understand evolution.
~~~
flyinRyan
If the developer were the best I could hope for I wouldn't take someone
_worse_ because of his sad, but ultimately irrelevant beliefs. I would hope I
could build on his work enough to get someone better later. I would certainly
never shoot myself in the foot by picking someone (or allowing someone to be
picked) who had more solid beliefs but was dangerous to the project.
~~~
antimagic
And we were always at war with EastAsia.
In this particular case, the beliefs are not irrelevant - doctors need to
correctly understand evolution to correctly carry out their duties. Also, I
fail to see how someone that understands their job could be considered more
dangerous in doing that job than someone that is cluelessly copying something
they've been told. To be clear, I can imagine a competent psychopath being
more dangerous than an incompetent normal person, but psycopathy is orthogonal
to the discussion here, I hope you agree.
~~~
flyinRyan
>doctors need to correctly understand evolution to correctly carry out their
duties.
Be concrete. In what way would not knowing anything about evolution affect the
duties of a doctor?
> Also, I fail to see how someone that understands their job could be
> considered more dangerous in doing that job than someone that is cluelessly
> copying something they've been told.
Well, you were making a comparison to a developer who understands what they
work with vs. one who doesn't. For this comparison to work, the one with
understanding would have to be evil or dangerous. In that case, I would pick
the one with lack of understanding provided they at least can get the work
done that I need.
>I can imagine a competent psychopath being more dangerous than an incompetent
normal person, but psycopathy is orthogonal to the discussion here, I hope you
agree.
That I agree with a competent psychopath is more dangerous than an incompetent
person? I would agree with that. I don't necessarily agree that psychopathy is
orthogonal to the discussion tough, it's a key part of the reason why I'd vote
for someone like Paul. :)
------
mseepgood
Some facts about Bruce Schneier
[http://www.schneierfacts.com](http://www.schneierfacts.com)
~~~
contingencies
Incredible. Bruce has been put on a pedestal by the security community for far
too long, these dirty secrets definitely need to be aired.
------
JulianMorrison
Corporations are people, assassin drones make war, the military has stockpiled
cyber weapons… when did the real world turn into Shadowrun? And can we please
get dragons and elves out the deal?
------
systematical
Does the world need a Geneva convention on cyber warfare? I'm beginning to
believe so. Unfortunately we (humanity) might need something catastrophic to
occur first.
~~~
walshemj
In theory the Convention and the laws of war should apply - there is a big
debate if attacking a coutrys power grid is allowed or not.
I would not have said this is news certainly the Foreign secretary implied
that SIS has done this.
I am not sure that reconnaissance is an act of war which is the articles
thesis - certainly most hackers would consider reconisance legal or do you
think a nmap scan should be a criminal offence?
The police woudl not be able to get a conviction against a bank robbery crew
if all they had was them looking at where the security cameras where.
------
jessaustin
This is a reasonable thesis (and it seems the hits just keep on coming from
Snowden), but parts of the exposition ring a bit false. If these people are
really capable of total observation of all traffic through a random router in
Beijing, how is it that they've missed all the APT stuff? We've been told that
we had to basically throw out some components of the new stealth planes and
start the design over because Chinese hacking. This seems like an adversary
that would be vulnerable to the capabilities described here.
If they simply didn't think stealth fighter designs were worth protecting,
then yes I think Schneier is correct that they need to think a bit more
defensively.
~~~
Vivtek
"We've been told..." Yes. Yes, we have.
------
Vivtek
I'm not entirely sure that _this_ is what has me worried. The government
_should_ be using the same tools I could rent from Russian botnet owners and a
geolocation service.
What has me scared is that the people directing this don't actually understand
it all. They don't understand Big Data analysis and why that requires _all_
the phone records. They don't understand how boring a concept geolocation is,
or in fact how boring a database of possible attack vectors is.
It's all magic - magic they can control if they just pass another law
abolishing some silly, antiquated civil rights that only pertained in the age
of musketry.
------
DanielBMarkham
Related blog post from awhile back: [http://freedom-or-safety.com/blog/when-
will-the-first-hacker...](http://freedom-or-safety.com/blog/when-will-the-
first-hacker-be-killed/)
This is tricky business. It is not so clear where the boundaries are.
Sidebar: anybody who writes a lot will understand the feeling you get when,
after writing an article, you suddenly understand a topic in a way that you
did not before putting your thoughts together. One of the things I got from my
article that I didn't expect was that, whatever else they are, _computers are
weapons_.
Weird concept.
~~~
anigbrowl
You know the earliest digital computers were developed for the purpose of
doing ballistics calculations during WW2, right?
Of course, that doesn't make them weapons, any more than math is a weapon or
maps are a weapon, despite their long utility in military contexts.
~~~
DanielBMarkham
I think you're generalizing a bit much.
Yes, computers were originally used for ballistic calculations, code-breaking,
even.
What's different now is that virtually every computer is connected to a world-
wide network which is connected to physical things. That means you're no
longer having a special-purpose computer assisting a specialized weapon.
Instead you've opened up all sorts of mayhem and damage to anybody with a
smartphone.
An axe is also a weapon, but it's also the best thing we have to cut wood.
Computers are moving into a similar role: things that have practical value
which can also be very deadly. And _any_ computer, with the right
program/operator can inflict far more damage than an axe.
------
doctorstupid
A quote from the leaked document:
"Malicious Cyber Activity: Activities, other than those authorized by or in
accordance with U.S. law, that seek to compromise or impair..."
It's a nice way to render the U.S. incapable of being malicious.
------
sage_joch
This reads like the backstory to a Terminator movie.
~~~
uptown
I've often wondered how technical advancements might have evolved differently
if the content of our entertainment were to have provided a different
prospective roadmap.
------
adventured
I'd argue that China started the war, and the US is going to escalate it. At
least a decade before the US had an organized plan for fighting a digital war,
China had organized, very large, and very effective hacking efforts underway
targeting the US government and US companies.
------
sneak
They've probably not started a war. I honestly believe it takes a bit more
than that. (Admittedly, they should not be doing stuff in the category of
"might start a war" without the knowledge/consent of the general public.)
However, this whole "foreign entity" business did just start them a domestic
war - with the entire US internet industry, which they have just entirely
thrown under the bus with regards to their foreign customers (which, it is
worth pointing out, outnumber their US customers by a sizable multiple).
------
bborud
If so, then the US has fired the first shot and hit...its foot.
------
serverhorror
Started? Not so much (I think)...rather made some stupid decisions so that it
went public.
To me the real question is: Who is fighting (nationalities, companies,
individuals)? AND: Are the combatants attacking who they think are their
targets or just some enemy so that we are entering a circle where
informational warfare is simply being carried out for the sake of being able
to do it?
I can imagine one party going for another when indeed they have the same
goals...
------
RyanMcGreal
In the embedded video, I quite enjoy the barely-masked contempt in Greenwald's
face when he answers the interviewer's last question.
------
wallio
Is all this secrecy just "security through obscurity" which is well know to be
unreliable. In other words, would we be better off just letting everyone
(citizens and enemies) know exactly what you are doing (e.g. tapping phones or
not)?
The benefits are certain but the costs are uncertain.
------
albertyw
It's MAD 2.0
------
throwaway10001
Unless we start spending less than 1% of our GDP or so on Pentagon Inc, I
don't mind this. What's the point of having a $12 Billion aircraft carrier if
a Chinese hacker can hack it? Or having a $700 Billion a year military if a
kid with telnet can hack your power grid? I mean to say that war has been
shifted to computer networks and we need to be ready.
I just think it can be done without tracing all the phone calls my aunt makes.
~~~
ryusage
I think that's part of Schneier's point though. This spending seems to be
primarily on cyber "weapons", not cyber "shields". We DO need to spend money
on making our networks more secure and redundant. But instead of that, we seem
to just be taking more of a MAD-style first strike approach to things. Glass
cannons, essentially.
~~~
zokier
> we seem to just be taking more of a MAD-style first strike approach to
> things
But that actually worked during the cold war. I mean MAD prevented it turning
hot. Sure, it wasn't the most pleasant or elegant solution but it worked.
~~~
nostrademons
Big difference is detection. When somebody launches an ICBM at you, you know
it, and can react appropriately (which makes them tend not to launch ICBMs at
you). When somebody hacks your computer, if they're good at it, there are
often no fingerprints, and so the parties involved can continue conducting
offensive warfare with no threat of retaliation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
U.S. Border Agency Lets Other Units Use Its Drones - anaptdemise
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/business/us-border-agency-is-a-frequent-lender-of-its-drones.html?_r=0
======
anaptdemise
If they are so under utilized that they can be lent out, why even have them?
Just from in terms of budget, this disappoints me. It makes sense if it is
cheaper to fly them than a cessna, which is up for debate. It is all over when
they arm them in any way.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ubuntu Rolling Release Proposal - hotice
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2013-February/036537.html
======
moxie
What's interesting is that they are in part re-creating the original problem
they were trying to solve.
The complaints about Debian were that they only cut a release like every two
years. The Debian response was that people who wanted more timely updates
could run the "testing" branch, which was a "rolling" release.
Ubuntu promised to solve the slow release cycles and the instability of a
rolling branch by cutting stable and well-composed releases on a rigorous six
month schedule.
This announcement sounds a lot like the original Debian model they were trying
to get away from.
~~~
gizmo686
A difference is that Debians testing branch was a testing branch, and as such
did not have the same effort and priority put in to keeping it stable. Even as
a rolling release, I would expect Ubuntu's main reopositories to be more
stable than debian tesdting.
~~~
meaty
From extensive experience, debian testing is way more stable than Ubuntu's
current LTS release even.
~~~
BUGHUNTER
I would like to learn from others: how do you handle security with testing? I
like debian testing very much, and occassionally I have the idea of using this
in production, too, but I fear the responsibility to take care of many
security fixes on my own. here are the high-urgency vulnarable sources for
testing:
[https://security-
tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/t...](https://security-
tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/testing?show_high_urgency=1)
but even more surprisingly, this list for stable is even longer:
[https://security-
tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s...](https://security-
tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/stable?show_high_urgency=1)
Can anybody explain this?
(Yes, I will take the shame on me and ask this on a debian mailing list,
however, maybe anybody has a good explanation here...)
~~~
meaty
As follows:
1\. Read the vulnerability description.
2\. Ask yourself if you are vulnerable.
3\. No? Don't worry about it.
4\. Yes? External mitigation where possible or patch ourselves and commit back
to debian (we a project member on our team).
We've not got to 4 yet, but have committed loads of fixes anyway.
~~~
BUGHUNTER
OK, but real life (low budget) scenario is:
1\. aptitude update && aptitude upgrade 2\. ask yourself, if your system is
vulnerable now 3\. feel the good hope and go ahead.
If I had the budget / time to research every single CVE I would probably not
trust repositories at all...
do YOU trust repositories?
~~~
meaty
Yeah and that's pretty much good enough for most people.
That's what we do for our internal dev systems.
------
mhw
I think that's a very well reasoned proposal and I'd be very happy to see it
implemented. I might be unusual, but I find myself in both of the user groups
that the proposal identifies. For my 'utility' machines (home server, XBMC
host, web servers) I prefer the stability of the LTS series, but for my laptop
I'm happy to trade that stability for getting new stuff sooner, particularly
new usability features that are getting baked into Unity and other components.
One minor nit: in the section on benefits for Core/MOTU developers it suggests
that only 2 releases would need to be supported. I think in reality that would
actually be 4 releases, as with a 5 year support commitment for each LTS
release there could be up to 3 LTS releases that are still being supported at
any point in time. May be just a minor wording thing though - I'm sure the
author knows what he's talking about.
~~~
icebraining
Your use case is exactly what many of us Debian users have been doing for a
long time. I use Unstable on my laptop and Stable (+ backports) on my VPS for
those exact reasons.
~~~
takluyver
Technically, Debian unstable is close to what I want, but I don't want to be
using something that comes with 'at your own risk' warnings day to day.
I think the expectation is the important thing: if an update breaks something,
the response I want to see is 'sorry, we'll fix that ASAP and try to avoid
doing it again'. I get the impression that Debian unstable (and to a lesser
extent testing) is only intended for people who're willing to put up with
things breaking often.
~~~
icebraining
Well, yes, it comes with absolutely no guarantees. That said, many Debian
developers use it, and breakages have been rare at least for the last few
years, since I started using it.
------
homeomorphic
I'm sure the decision wasn't taken lightly, and I'm sure Canonical has
concluded that an 18 month LTS + rolling makes the most sense for the project.
As a user, I am a bit worried about rolling releases though. Maybe someone
here can alleviate my worries?
As I see it, software has to change. The question for distros is just _when?_
A rolling distro sees such changes continuously, and each package may in
principle change at any point independently of any other package. Doesn't that
mean that at any point, my workflow-critical programs may change their
behavior or even stop working together? Sure, I can do upgrades more seldomly,
but then I'm left without security updates. The main benefit I feel that non-
rolling distros offer is _predefined breakage points_. I know that Ubuntu
Quantal will work the way it works now until I upgrade to the next release.
Even simply knowing in what way software _is_ (and will remain) broken is
useful.
Now of course, one can stay with LTS and get the same behavior. I guess I'm
simply complaining because the 6 month cycle was perfect for me.
At any rate, I would guess that most users only really desire rolling behavior
for a few (dozens?) of packages. Ubuntu has that nicely covered with PPAs (and
also "special status" rolling packages like Firefox).
~~~
YokoZar
The decision hasn't been made yet. Canonical's CTO may have decided he likes
it, but the Ubuntu project hasn't yet given it a pass.
If you've got workflow-critical programs you don't want updating, use the LTS
release. That's what it's for.
~~~
pyre
I think the real issue is when infrastructure things move.
How would the move to PulseAudio have worked in a rolling release? Would
someone with a new install end up with PulseAudio, but someone with an
existing install, would just never have it installed unless they knew what it
was and started poking around for it?
The same for the transition to using evdev for (e.g.) mouse-handling in X.org
rather than defining things in xorg.conf.
I know that Debian has lived through these transitions, but my impression was
that the packages were setup in a way that allowed people to keep the old
config, or move to the new one. That said, it seems like these issues could be
more complex than a 'human being' (Ubuntu's target market) would be able to
decipher.
~~~
YokoZar
It's not even clear that the rolling release will be intended for non-
enthusiasts at this point, however as a matter of policy you can be pretty
sure that any update applied to the rolling release will need to be tested
against users as old as the last LTS.
That means the same sort of transition of config files and libraries that
occur on release upgrade would just happen during a normal package install,
which is pretty much how it works anyway (a release upgrade isn't much more
than a giant group of packages being upgraded together -- all this logic is
stored in the packages themselves).
~~~
pyre
I get the difference between a release upgrade and a rolling release schedule.
My point was that when you are creating a release, you can say "this is the
point where this change happens." With a rolling release, will a "apt-get
upgrade" transition me? What if this was unexpected? What if this breaks my
config?
For most normal upgrades this doesn't matter because the applications are
usually fairly insular, but when you get into integrated systems like Desktop
Environments it's different. Especially when Ubuntu is making a number of
UI/etc changes to the desktop. It would be a bit surprising to have UI parts
shift around. When you do a release upgrade, you know that there are going to
be some major changes, and there are ChangeLog/notes on the release itself to
tell you what major changes there are.
------
hristov
This repeated notion of a truly converged OS is really annoying and it is very
disappointing to see Ubuntu continue to pursue it despite the loud complaints
of most of their users.
Lets point out the obvious: the user interaction of a small handheld device is
very different than that of a computer with a full size monitor and mouse.
Thus any os's on those two devices have to have different UI features. That's
it.
Of course the parts of the OS that are not UI can be converged. In that sense
Linux is already a fully converged OS.
But you are never going to fully converge the UI of two devices that use
vastly different UI methods.
~~~
Recoil42
>Lets point out the obvious: the user interaction of a small handheld device
is very different than that of a computer with a full size monitor and mouse.
And what happens in-between? What happens in the case of tablets? Notebooks
with a touchscreen? Future devices like large format displays with full UI,
and future paradigms like gesture control?
~~~
kinleyd
At this stage the key differentiation point is touch (ie. your finger as the
pointer) v. the pointer (mice/keyboard, etc.) The UI for these two categories
is naturally different, and convergence would be possible only when the UI can
handle both. Even in the case of notebooks with touchscreens, the UI has to
handle both requirements well, that of the finger and of the mouse/keypad. I
personally feel Ubuntu is neglecting the latter. In time, that may well be the
right choice. At present, it's definitely only part of the story.
------
jjcm
I'll miss the bi-yearly fun with trying out a new release, and the name
alliteration, but I think overall it's a smart move for Ubuntu. Does anyone
have any reasons why they shouldn't move toward this? I'm curious.
~~~
gtaylor
A lot of the counter argument is based on FUD and bad experiences with OTHER
rolling release distros. I'm not sure we can look at Gentoo or Arch as
examples of what Ubuntu would be aiming to do (and I say this as an Arch
user).
Within the proposal, it states that packages would be released when ready, and
when stable. This doesn't mean that you are going to live on the bleeding edge
like an Arch or Gentoo user may. You're going to get the updates after Ubuntu
has done QA on them, and the maintainer will probably be peeking at bug
trackers on other distros for tips on issues (Arch and Gentoo effectively
expand their QA process).
It is true that there will probably be periodic UI changes in some of the
applications. It is not necessarily true that these changes will happen any
more frequently than they do now (since each application has different life
cycles). What _will_ happen is you will potentially not need to wait 6+ months
to get a new version of a package with a fix or improvement that is important
to _you_.
If it lets them spend more time on QA and development rather than arbitrary
deadlines and bundling, this sounds like a win-win to me. If and when problems
happen, they'll get it figured out and hopefully not repeat their mistakes.
~~~
yogo
I don't think it's so much on the bleeding edge in Arch as most people think
and packages are usually upgraded in such a way so that dependencies don't
cause problems in other packages (at least from my experience). The key has
always been to always do a system upgrade and not upgrade individual packages,
i.e. always run pacman -Syu or pacman -Syu <packagename>. In four years I've
never seen anything break (knock on wood) aside from a minor issue with a pcre
upgrade sometime ago. That has just been my experience though, I run Arch on
my desktop, laptop and about 10 vps servers.
~~~
jff
My experience with Arch has frequently been:
1\. Run pacman -Syu
2\. Pacman failed.
3\. Go to Arch website
4\. Learn that I shouldn't have run pacman just then, and now I have to follow
these steps to un-break my system
The most notable instance was when Arch decided that /usr/lib should be a
symlink to /lib. Yeah, barely recovered from that... it was also a
reinforcement of my position that basic utilities should be statically linked.
I finally gave up on Arch when a GRUB update broke my system and locked me out
of my encrypted root.
~~~
adwf
Yeah I got caught by forcing the /usr/lib update too. Went away for a month,
came back and did a full upgrade, failed. Checked the website, the news had
dropped of the front page, forced update, broke it horribly.
Despite the problems, I still find rolling release vastly preferable. If
Ubuntu can bring some of the commercial support quality to a rolling release,
they'd alleviate a lot of the difficulties that I have with Arch.
~~~
deepdog
> forcing the /usr/lib update
That's the number one thing to remember with pacman, _never_ force an update.
That is how 90% [citation needed] of problems arise.
------
ohazi
I definitely support this. Having a rolling release was the primary reason why
I decided to go with debian (unstable) vs (x)ubuntu a few weeks ago. My
previous install (oneiric; non-LTS) was about to become unsupported, and the
last time I decided to ignore the official support status (years ago... I
think it was dapper?), the main repository upped and vanished one day. That
was not a fun morning.
~~~
IgorPartola
The problem is that Debian can be faster or slower whilst Ubuntu LTS releases
are on a schedule. For example I believe the currently stable Debian release
includes Python 2.6 because 2.7 just missed it. I prefer Ubuntu's LTS releases
to Debian because they are predictable.
~~~
ohazi
Yes, I agree that ubuntu's time based releases are generally a better
experience that debian's "whenever it's ready" stable releases. Debian's
testing and unstable branches are rolling releases though, and those were the
only alternatives I was actually considering.
~~~
gtaylor
Although, I'm not sure we can even look at the Debian when trying to predict
what a rolling release Ubuntu would look like (even considering that they are
"relatives").
The current difference in manpower and mind share is pretty big between these
two related distros. Regardless of which one each of us may like better,
Canonical has the manpower and mindshare to probably have a bit more success
with this model. I really like Debian, so this is not a knock on them (I used
Debian on servers for a very long time with great results).
Heck, we may even see Debian and Ubuntu working more closely once they take on
this shared dev style (I know, I am pipedreaming, but hey...).
~~~
IgorPartola
I was under the impression that the Debian team is much larger than
Cannonical. This is why they have always said that they could not do what they
do without Debian. The biggest problem with a rolling release is that you
constantly have to reboot the server to apply kernel upgrades, which you have
to do less with LTS (though the first 6 months after the release it feels like
a weekly chore).
~~~
gizmo686
Doesn't Linux support hotswapping kernels?
~~~
IgorPartola
Ksplice [1] lets you do that. For a while they had very limited support for
it, but I just checked and they seem to support Ubuntu on the desktop as well
[2]. Once this comes to the server edition and/or is bundled by Canonical,
using Ubuntu would become much smoother.
[1] <http://www.ksplice.com/>
[2] <http://www.ksplice.com/uptrack/download-ubuntu>
------
loudmax
I suppose derivative distros like Xubuntu and Edubuntu will need to follow
suit.
I've had pretty bad experiences with non-LTS versions of Xubuntu. The last
time I had a go on it on my laptop, things broke unpredictably, a little at a
time. When I say unpredictably, I mean totally by surprise, not even after
performing an update. First, Pulse audio stopped working. Spent a few days
trying to fix it, then gave up and reverted to Alsa. Then the graphical login
got stuck in an endless loop cycle. So reverted to text login, starting X
manually after I'd log in. When wireless stopped working, I gave up. I run the
LTS Xubuntu on two other machines and neither of them have had problems like
this. I put my laptop on the LTS Xubuntu and it's been good since.
I'm guessing mainstream Ubuntu gets more QA and is more stable than Xubuntu.
It might be harder for derivative distros to keep up with a rolling release.
Or maybe not... this might give them more flexibility to QA stuff as needed
instead of trying to keep up with a new release every six months. As long as
Cannonical keeps the LTS cycle going, moving to a rolling release sounds
reasonable.
~~~
bad_user
One thing to keep in mind is that you're going to have far fewer problems with
compatible hardware.
On my older laptop things were breaking on each upgrade. Most problems I had
were with the Geforce graphics card included, but wireless stopped working at
some point in combination with the router that I have at home (kept working
with other routers just fine, so I guess it was a protocol issue). Anyway, it
required constant tinkering.
So first of all, on that laptop I gave up on Nvidia's proprietary drivers and
went with Nouveau, which for my needs works well. 90% of all problems I ever
had were linked to these proprietary Nvidia drivers. Don't know how well
Nouveau works with newer Geforce cards, but you should give it a try.
I also have a new Thinkpad with Intel HD 4000 graphics and the Wifi chip is
also from Intel. I rejected other models with Geforce cards on purpose. With
the latest Ubuntu everything worked flawlessly out of the box on this laptop,
graphics, wifi, sound, everything.
People expect Linux distros to run well on any hardware they throw at it and
many times it does, but if you're buying a new laptop / PC, do some research
first and prefer models for which all drivers are available as open-source, or
if you don't want that hassle, search for models certified for Linux.
Thinkpads are good (if you get it with Intel HD at least), Dell also sells a
couple of models that are Ubuntu-certified, like that new developer-targeted
laptop, there's also System76 and I'm sure you can find others.
------
zalew
considering the tipping point of me leaving buntu was being tired of the
upbreak release process, I second this idea.
they are basically adopting the debian scheme, only the stable releases will
be more frequent.
~~~
csense
I thought Ubuntu's original reason for existing was because Debian releases
don't happen often enough?
~~~
zanny
It existed because testing wasn't stable enough and stable wasn't fast enough.
The 2 year LTS releases are basically just the slow stable thing carried over,
but having 2 layers of rolling release (like Arch) where you have a base repo
and a testing repo lets them having the rolling release without all the
continuous integration problems if it hits enough testing users first.
------
eliben
I watch Ubuntu's recent steps with trepidation. I love using it for a home
Linux machine (indeed upgrading just to LTS-es), and _I could not care less_
about its "convergence" aspirations. I don't want Ubuntu on my phone or my
tablet, or at least I don't care.
I worry that eventually its mobile plans will bury the desktop Ubuntu, move it
out of focus, so to say. When that happens, I wonder whither I should turn.
Debian?
~~~
dpearson
I used to use Debian, and I'm not sure I'd go back. On one hand, the stability
was wonderful (Debian was pretty much bulletproof for me), but packages were,
for stable, quite old. Hardware compatibility isn't quite as good: hardware
(including a USB Wi-Fi dongle) that Ubuntu autodetects and has no trouble with
became an adventure to get working.
I tracked stable, so maybe testing would be better in terms of package
outdating, but hardware compatibility is Debian's achilles heel right now.
~~~
nonamegiven
Depending on what you do with your machine(s), it might make sense for you to
go with whatever versions come with the vast majority of the packages, but for
the few that matter to you, manage them yourself. For example, I use Oracle's
Virtualbox PPA, and it just updated as a normal software update last night.
That's 4.2.x, compared to Ubuntu's 4.1.x. For things that aren't PPA'd, you'd
need to pay closer attention. It's an option.
------
mattlong
I wonder how much this proposal is driven by Ubuntu's push into the mobile
space versus improving the Ubuntu project at large. Clearly it's possible
rolling releases would aid both.
I guess what I'm really asking is what are the possible negative implications
of the plan for the more "traditional" Ubuntu users? Many of whom are likely
sysadmins trying to maintain consistent package versions across their
infrastructure. Sticking to the LTS versions is the first step. But then you
would be delaying access to newer package versions without the interim
releases.
------
JulianMorrison
One thing I'd add as a suggestion: if they do a rolling release, hot-rebuild
the package so that if you download an "Ubuntu rolling" ISO, you get a 100% up
to the minute copy with all the latest security patches and so forth. This so
that _starting_ a new Ubuntu install is not annoying (which it would be if you
basically had to throw away and redownload the whole OS as updates as soon as
you installed).
~~~
takluyver
There's already a daily ISO of the development release, so I imagine that
would carry on under a rolling release.
------
olenhad
Yes Please! I'm sick of PPA-ing for updated packages.
~~~
homeomorphic
Really? I've always felt that they give me the perfect balance: the distro
itself is non-rolling, so breakages (possibly) happen at known intervals, yet
PPAs let me "go rolling" for a subset of packages where I want the latest and
am prepared to handle breakage at any time.
~~~
gizmo686
I wonder if there is a way to build this process more into the package
management system. Maybe have to sets of repositories, a 'stable' repository
that would behave like current, non-rolling repositories, and a 'rolling'
repository that would get new versions of software once they've been tested.
By default, software would install from the stable repositories, but you can
do something like 'apt-get make_rolling python', and get the rolling release
version of python. Such a system should then be able to handle dependencies
that would need to be made rolling as well.
This clearly means more work for the maintainers, but only because the PPA
method is so clearly a hack that there is no expectation that it must just
work.
~~~
qznc
Apt supports this. However, no distribution officially supports that scheme.
<http://wiki.debian.org/AptPreferences>
[http://serverfault.com/questions/22414/how-can-i-run-
debian-...](http://serverfault.com/questions/22414/how-can-i-run-debian-
stable-but-install-some-packages-from-testing)
[http://blog.drewwithers.com/2011/06/mixing-debian-stable-
and...](http://blog.drewwithers.com/2011/06/mixing-debian-stable-and-
unstable.html)
Debian stable + backports is probably closest. Unfortunatelly, there are few
backports. Partially, because few people use it and partially because upstream
rarely cares for Debian stable.
~~~
sp332
Can't you do this with Synaptic? Include apt lines for multiple versions, then
select "prefer versions from Oneiric". That lets you force a version for
specific packages while not updating the whole system.
------
Nux
This could work, rolling-release + LTS. Archlinux seems to be doing quite well
under the rolling-release auspice, so why not.
Of course, never in my experience has rolling-release ever worked in anything
close to production environments - it's what killed FreeBSD in the data
centre, however, if you're a techie with some time on your hands it could be
cool.
~~~
lorenzfx
totally dead <https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/software>
~~~
Nux
Not totally dead, it still has some strongholds left, but I'm sure Netflix
doesn't use the rolling-release side of it (ports mainly). :-)
------
themstheones
No one has ever tried this with an OS before.
~~~
schabernakk
What do you mean? Arch and Gentoo are two pretty successful distributions and
both use a rolling release approach.
~~~
wcchandler
Sarcasm doesn't translate very well over the Internet.
------
stormbrew
I'd like to see them balance out dropping the interim releases with doing
slightly more frequent LTE releases. Maybe every 1 or 1.5 years instead of 2.
But obviously there might be manpower issues there. I just think they're
abandoning a middle ground of stability that's still a very valuable space.
------
lorenzfx
I really like the way FreeBSD does it: stable base system but all (ok, most)
3rd party software is still fresh.
------
andyl
This seems like a reasonable proposal to me. I've starting using the LTS
releases exclusively for my desktop and server systems. I'm planning to use
the Ubuntu phone heavily, and would love that device to be on a rolling-
release schedule.
------
mtgx
Canonical should just wait until the 64 bit of 14.04 LTS for ARM is ready
before they put it on mobile. Should greatly simplify their lives when it
comes to upgrading later.
------
smogzer
I can't use Ubuntu, I've tried countless times, the experience sucks. I'm
trying mint, and i can't even access latest libraries, everything is old, no
partition resizing during installation, lack of distro tools and lack of
polish; in mageia everything is fresh and if it not the free support quickly
updates them.
Mandriva had rolling releases with cooker and mageia has also with cauldron.
Sorry for looking like a troll but i never got the hype with this ubuntu
distro, i wish HN supported mageia more since distrowatch even reports mageia
as the number two more popular distro.
~~~
vacri
If you need the bleeding edge of a package, install that package from a pinned
archive (or similar). If you need the bleeding edge of _everything_ , I don't
believe you. If you just want the bleeding edge because 'hey, it feels cool',
then you're not the target demographic for ubuntu - something they stated from
the outset.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Charles Kao, Nobel laureate who revolutionized fiber optics, has died - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/obituaries/charles-kuen-kao-dead.html
======
ggm
Amazing stuff. At Leeds university in the computer sciences department in the
1980s we had a Head of Department who was in laser physics/photonics. I am
ashamed to admit we (some of us) were not very nice about this, I think we
completely failed to see the _critical_ importance of laser physics and
photonics to future computing outcomes.
I think the delay between the work, and the Nobel is very odd. I think well
before the 2000s anyone in the field would have known the import of the work.
The science museum in London had a very nice display of the concepts using a
clear lucite rod with a bend, and a light at one end. It was remarkably well
done with all kinds of cute museum tricks to 'show' the bent light inside the
pipe. I think the modernisation they did in the 90s or later got rid of this
kind of thing, which is a damn shame.
~~~
khuey
_Practical applications of_ physics rarely tend to win Nobels, and only after
substantial delay. CCDs were invented in 1969 and were being mass produced in
consumer electronics in the 90s but the Nobel was only awarded in 2009 (the
same year Kao won his). Blue LEDs weren't recognized until 2014. Kirby got a
Nobel for the integrated circuit (invented in the late 50s) in 2000!
A slightly more cynical person would say that the Nobel committee is not
really interested in awarding prizes for this sort of work.
~~~
kondro
A more pragmatic person might argue that the reward for innovative practical
applications already exists (i.e. money) and that by rewarding more purely
theoretical research that doesn't have any immediately practical applications
that you encourage more of it to take place.
~~~
pkaye
How much money did the inventor of the Blue LED get?
~~~
kondro
He was employed to create products which may or may not have ended up having
commercial application with a salary when he quit of ¥20m (very above average
in Japan). Plus he won a settlement after of USD$9m.
Not to mention the fact that he also won a Nobel.
------
j45
The backstory of Fiber optics Between 1950-1970 is fascinating and worth a
read for anyone into seeing what innovation decades ahead of use looks like.
Mr. Kao contributed some amazing advances in a field kickstarted by perhaps
even madder scientists before him.
The story of the foundational work in Fiber Optics by the group a decade
earlier (Bram Van Heel, Harold Hopkins, Narinder Singh Kapany, etc) is worth
learning about at a time of reflection to appreciate Mr. Kao's contributions.
Some are still alive today.
Science, and the Nobel folks are also revealing in how those who who laid a
foundation for Fibre Optics almost a decade earlier don't seem as well known.
It reminds me of how our society has benefitted greatly because of less known
individuals due to recognition (until recently) like Nikola Tesla.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber)
~~~
dredmorbius
Any further reading you'd recommend beyond Wikipedia?
------
seanxh
sometime i felt like the whole Noble things also became a joke, just like
politics. People think blue LED that invented in 1990 didn't get fair
treatment until 2014, but not too many people know the infrared LED was first
invented in 1962, but the inventor Nick Holonyak still didn't get any fair
treatment even till now.
------
yegle
Mr. Kao moved from China to Taiwan in 1948, and moved from Hong Kong to London
in 1997. Both happened at very interest time if you are familiar with China.
~~~
fatjokes
It's not a surprise that he was avoiding the communists. As the article
states, his family was wealthy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Getting Started with Vim: The Basics – Opensource.com - axiomdata316
https://opensource.com/article/19/3/getting-started-vim
======
ksaj
This is a good intro. But I don't understand why the author says in the
Searching section: "In the image below, the colon is missing but required."
when in fact the picture is correct - you don't need the colon. It works the
same either way, and omitting it is faster.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Toronto Advisor Resigns Over Data Concerns with Google's Smart City Project - severine
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3km74w/google-smart-city-in-toronto-advisor-resigns-data-privacy
======
severine
I wonder how GDPR compliant are the many "smart city" projects across the
European Union, anyone has info on that?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Magnus Carlsen buys chess platform Chessable.com - akbarnama
https://www.ft.com/content/c2a4b3a0-cd8b-11e9-99a4-b5ded7a7fe3f
======
bookofjoe
[http://archive.is/Ofjn7](http://archive.is/Ofjn7)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Real Reason the U.S. Has Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance - rafaelc
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/upshot/the-real-reason-the-us-has-employer-sponsored-health-insurance.html?mabReward=CTS2&recid=7a8dd53f-90e3-496a-53a6-1d1d718a777a&recp=2&action=click&pgtype=Homepage®ion=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine
======
api_or_ipa
Explaining away US healthcare as an artifact of WWII by claiming European
countries turned to nation health schemes because of economic ruins ignores
one very important counterpoint: Canadian healthcare.
Canada had no wartime ruin, and indeed, excelled after the war by advances in
industrialization from the demands of WWII-- much like the US. Actually,
Canada got it's universal healthcare because of the efforts of Tommy Douglas
and the CCF in Saskatchewan and an entire history of social democracy in
Canada that's worth studying. Sufficient to say, I think the author needs to
look deeper into the social fabric of American life to see the barriers to
socialized healthcare.
~~~
mikestew
This article describes how employer-sponsored healthcare started, but it
avoids the reasons why it continued. And the reason Truman didn't get support
for his universal healthcare plan was the "S" word: "socialism".
From
[http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/november-19-1945-harry-t...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/november-19-1945-harry-
truman-calls-national-health-insurance-program/) (first link I found, it's
documented numerous places): _" Almost as soon as the reinvigorated bill was
announced, the once-powerful American Medical Association (AMA) capitalized on
the nation’s paranoia over the threat of Communism and, despite Truman’s
assertions to the contrary, attacked the bill as “socialized medicine."_
Never mind that Mussolini's brand of socialism might be just a _tad_ different
than the kind that gives you socialized medicine, but one need merely utter
the word to get those knees a-jerkin'.
~~~
VeronicaJJ123
Socialism brings ruin to whatever it touches. Canadian healthcare is not an
exception but Venezuelan and Cuban healthcare are much better examples.
~~~
dang
You've posted quite a few generic-ideological-battle-style comments to HN.
Those are off-topic here. Would you please read the site rules and follow them
when commenting?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
------
k__
To me it sounds like slavery.
I mean, if you get old and/or sick you are stuck with your employer. How crazy
is this?
~~~
didgeoridoo
This is primarily a problem for people who are older but not yet eligible for
Medicare (government health care that becomes available at age 65). Basically,
don't lose your job between age 50 and 65, unless you have literally hundreds
of thousands of dollars saved just to pay for huge individual market insurance
premiums.
~~~
ergothus
It's far more than that. Because health care costs are artificially jacked up
(so that insurance can "negotiate" them down), anyone without health insurance
can be screwed, even if you aren't "poor". So - anyone that doesn't have
employer-provided health care and isn't eligible for Medicare/Medicaid.
Examples: I once tried to buy some nasonex (or equivalent) without my
insurance info. $180. When I didn't pay and returned with my insurance info,
it dropped to $5ish. My wife gets bi-weekly injections that stops her
psioratic arthritis (which she's had since her teens) from crippling her. With
insurance, $50/month. Without....we were quoted in the thousands, each month.
It is very, _very_ easy for me to see situations where you need health care to
be able to work, and you need work to afford health care.
And this does impact employer lock-in. Every time I switch jobs (and to a
lesser but still notable degree, when my company switches insurers), we have
to do a new dance of:
* getting registered for insurance. Most places backdate your insurance to date of hire, but if you want to actually get the benefits immediately, it usually takes weeks to get your info from your employer to the insurance company and then they "process" it. (I have been told by one company that it takes them 1 business day to know they GOT a fax from my company, and another 2 business days to "process" it.) From experience I can say that if you make yourself enough of a problem you can drop this down to 5-10 days, but it takes a lot of work and that's still a ridiculously long time.
* Did I mention that it's quite common to have a by-mail pharmacy? That's a separate company from your insurance, so step 1 has to repeat for the new company (that process is usually faster, but it's still easy to lose another day to it). Oh, is your drug expensive and/or restricted? That might be handled by a specialist pharmacy, which is a 3rd company. (that last is not a guarantee - I've seen it in about 50% of my insurance
* Once you have the insurance info, now you need to get the doctor to send in the prescription. For basic drugs that's simple and automated, but for expensive and/or restricted drugs, that's more hoop jumping. Have you tried to get a hold of the average american doctor's office? My experience is you call, get transferred to a nurse's voice mail. Leave a message, and in 8-24 hours they will call you back. Re-explain whatever you said in the voice mail, and they say that will need the doctor's okay. Enter a second 8-24 hour wait. Now the doctor's office will send the prescription to whatever pharmacy you need...who will reject the request because they need justification (Silly me, I thought the prescription WAS the justification). Now the doctor needs to call the insurance company directly. Which is, you might guess, usually harder that getting them to send in the prescription in the first place. (we've had wonderful doctors for this and terrible doctors for this...and in my opinion the terrible doctors are only terrible on a relative scale - I hate the hoop jumping and I'm not doing it for multiple patients)
And all of this presumes the drug ( or non-pharmaceutical care) is covered in
the first place. Every time I consider switching jobs, I have to find out if
they will cover my wife's treatments. (Figuring out if something specific is
covered is non-trivial and I have a degree of mistrust about the results).
I'm fortunate enough to have a good wage and many job prospects. I can easily
imagine someone in less beneficial circumstances getting locked into a job by
the above.
------
flukus
Has there ever been an effort to ban employer sponsored health care? I bet it
would be a much bigger issue for people if they were paying for it personally
rather than having their employer shell out.
~~~
paulddraper
For me, that was the most egregious part of Adorable Care Act: I have to tie
medical insurance to my employer.
And there was a failed effort to repeal the ACA.
It drives me crazy. I can choose auto insurance, life insurance, home
insurance, disability insurance all independently from other decisions, but
health is this special category that is legally linked to my employer.
~~~
maxerickson
Isn't it messier than that? I'm pretty sure you could decline your employer
provided coverage and buy a plan from an ACA marketplace.
It's just that it wouldn't make sense to do that at an additional cost of
thousands of dollars.
~~~
paulddraper
Correct.
You could decline the benefits if you really wanted (e.g. if you were
Christian Scientist), but you lose thousands of dollars of your compensation.
The ideal would be for your employer to deliver the same value in the form of
salary, and then you have the choice free and clear.
~~~
RightMillennial
TIL: "Christian Scientist" does not refer to someone who is both a Christian
and a scientist. It's some quacky, new religious movement, anti-science cult.
[Edit] Corrected "new age" to "new religious movement".
~~~
paulddraper
> new age
1870s
> anti-science
Though popular medicine was only a little sciency when they were founded.
> quacky
They use to have lots of celebrity adherents: Joan Crawford, Mickey Rooney,
George Hamilton. Kind of like Scientology nowadays.
------
VeronicaJJ123
> and the wage freezes and tax policy that emerged because of it.
> Unfortunately, what made sense then may not make as much right now.
I wish NYT does a piece on origins of minimum wage. Minimum wage was brought
int to make sure black people dont find employment.
~~~
zaccus
No it wasn't. Please stop.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MacKenzie Bezos gives 75% AMZN and voting rights, relinquish WaPo and BOI - mzs
https://twitter.com/mackenziebezos/status/1113851260040503296
======
mzs
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-04/jeff-
bezo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-04/jeff-bezos-to-
keep-75-of-his-amazon-stock-in-divorce)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Carte Blanche – isolated development space with integrated fuzz testing - tilt
https://github.com/carteb/carte-blanche
======
randompotato
The UI looks very similar to the Cosmos project
([https://github.com/skidding/cosmos](https://github.com/skidding/cosmos)).
Could you outline the main differences and the motivation behind creating a
different project in favor of contributing to an existing one?
~~~
nik-graf
I have met skidding last February when this was project was in its early
stages. We walked through Cosmos and it definitely was an inspiration to Carte
blanche. Skidding even helped us to design the initial props form:
[https://github.com/carteb/carte-
blanche/issues/47](https://github.com/carteb/carte-blanche/issues/47)
Cosmos in my opinion is a fantastic tool and covers even some areas we haven't
touch yet, but planning to do soon like injecting/manipulating the internal
state of a component.
While there a many more differences these are probably the most interesting
ones:
\- The core of Carte blanche is a Webpack plugin. By hooking into the main
compilation of Webpack Carte blanche can identify your components and list
them in an application living within your running server on different URL
path. The coolest part from my perspective is that we inherit all your webpack
settings by default. No need to configure your loaders. Cosmos in comparison
is a separate app.
\- In Cosmos your need to write your examples by hand. Carte blanche reads out
your propTypes/Flow types and allows us to generate a form input for each of
your properties including nested structures like a person object containing an
avatarUrl, firstName & lastName. This approach allowed us to create some kind
of UI fuzz-testing feature in the interface. While I believe that it's
important to focus your efforts designing/developing for the most likely cases
it's also relevant to cover edge-cases. Fuzz-testing is a great way to
discover them.
I hope this help. Let me know if you any other questions :)
~~~
glenjamin
Do you only support autogenerated inputs? Is there also a way to create
scenario-like examples?
I say this because I'm working on an app with a large drawing canvas component
at the moment, and being able to produce hand crafted examples of specific
drawing scenarios is really powerful.
I'm doing with this devboard[1] and I've created a mini-DSL within my cards to
describe a series of mouse interactions, which can either be played back
immediately or one-at-a-time to display the interaction and animations.
Being able to combine this with fuzz-testing would be really cool!
[1] Shameless plug :)
[https://github.com/glenjamin/devboard](https://github.com/glenjamin/devboard)
~~~
mxstbr
This is not yet implemented, but since the core of CarteBlanche is a plugin
system[0] making this happen is definitely possible!
We're happy to provide any support you need to create this, we'd love to see
the ecosystem around CarteBlanche thrive to all sorts of different use cases.
[0]: [https://github.com/carteb/carte-
blanche/tree/master/WRITING-...](https://github.com/carteb/carte-
blanche/tree/master/WRITING-PLUGINS.md)
------
ac360
Awesome project :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
FBI Kept Demanding Email Records Despite DOJ Saying It Needed a Warrant - ryan_j_naughton
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/02/fbi-kept-demanding-email-records-despite-doj-saying-it-needed-a-warrant/
======
themartorana
_" In 2008, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that
the FBI was only entitled to get the name, address, length of service, and
toll billing records from companies without a warrant. Opinions issued by the
OLC are generally treated as binding and final within the executive branch."_
_" The FBI has said it disagrees with that conclusion, and interprets the
opinion differently, according to a 2014 inspector general report. It sees the
question as more of an “impasse” than an actual legal barrier."_
It's madness to me that the FBI can just say "na, we see it differently" and
until the Supreme Court tells them to stop (and even then?) they'll do
whatever they want.
~~~
jklinger410
At what point will the public realize the truth of rogue agencies and
corruption of power in the military and FBI/CIA?
~~~
1121redblackgo
The public realizes the truth. But what can we do as individuals? The best we
can do is, what, teach our children the value of philosophy and a common
humanity and hopefully have them occupy these leadership roles in a capacity
that follows the rule of law and the greater goals?
How do individuals change a system that rewards loyalty, secrecy, and praise
to higher ups who run with the status quo way of thinking? Shit, I even
recognize that if I was put into a middling position at the CIA/FBI/ETC that I
would probably forgo several of my personal moral/political positions to keep
and progress in my job.
Changes can come externally through art and civil demonstrations of our power,
but really, it may be that our best path is the slow one through education,
which is slow, and long, and again, very slow. And very painful.
~~~
PavlovsCat
I think you also have to organize and get money out of and honest people into
politics. Just consider Stav Shaffir, who near the end of this video makes
some very good points about idealists and their aversion to power:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eqCprXn_UY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eqCprXn_UY)
If more people were "more like that", and if more of them would manage the
"quantum leap" into serious politics, that would still be slow and painful,
but at least more than _asking_ for things or _offering_ facts. Don't get me
wrong, that is all very necessary and good, but it's not quite enough IMHO.
~~~
krashnburn200
>organize
If only there were not an agency dedicated to the disruption of organized
opposition.
It's incredibly simple to disrupt emerging organizations in to chaos when you
have access to everyone's metadata. You don't have to assassinate anyone, you
don't even have to discredit all of the important nodes, although that's a
useful tool. Many of the critical nodes won't recognize themselves as such.
Divert them to other interests, personal, professional, philosophical/moral or
legal... And a movement sputters and scatters in to emephera instead of
transitioning in to an effective force for change.
Social judo is vastly more effective than jackboots ever dream of being.
------
bpchaps
This stuff is becoming more and more maddening to hear after my recent FOIA
adventures.
I requested this from Chicago's Mayor's office last week:
_Please provide to me all communications or records of communication (phone,
email, receipts of phone /email, etc) from those in the mayor's office for the
below companies. Please limit the search to Oct, Nov, Dec of 2014.
Aura - Prestige Club (of verycoolrooms.com)
Kennealy & O Callaghan
Statewide Investigative Services
Azura Investigations_
Their response, which reeks of complete bullshit:
_In order to run an email search, the Mayor’s Office needs the names or email
accounts that you wish searched. The email system’s tool set cannot identify
the department where an email user works, and therefore, a search cannot be
based on a department. Parameters that would assist the Mayor’s Office in
conducting an email search include: (1) the e-mail address of the account you
wish searched; and (2) the e-mail address of each individual’s mailbox, if you
seek e-mail correspondence to and from two individuals.
Without email addresses, search terms, or a time frame, the Mayor’s Office
would have to retrieve each and every email for every employee from October –
December, 2014, which is both unduly burdensome and costly. After retrieving
these e-mails, each and every e-mail message a Mayor’s Office employee
received or sent would have to be downloaded and reviewed to determine if it
is responsive to your request or is exempt from disclosure. If any exemptions
were to apply, the Mayor’s Office would need to redact such information. The
entire process of retrieval of the emails, finding responsive records,
reviewing for exempt information, and then redacting the materials would be
onerous._
~~~
michael_storm
How do you propose the mayor's office identify senders and recipients from
e.g. that law firm without combing through every message? What if their email
domain has changed? What if someone used their personal email address? If they
left out any records, you could sue them.
The remaining reasons, mainly an inability to filter emails by department,
sound normal. If you're designing a database, can you build an efficient index
for every possible query? No. The mayor's office has not optimized their
records for random people making FOIA requests. Nor should they. I'd rather my
tax dollars go to potholes, rather than axe-grinders.
You'll have better luck with more legwork on your end.
~~~
bpchaps
I'm not asking for a complicated query system, really. An upgraded version of
outlook would probably do the job. Or an email to their IT department who
could do it. That's what I ended up doing last time which ended up turning
into a year and a half battle to prove that the numbers were releasable under
FOIA.
The judge ended up telling them to JFGI [0], since not googling it was costing
the city thousands in court fees. That should address your concerns. It
probably didn't get me every releasable number, but I'm sure as hell not going
to sue and waste another six months. It takes too long to sue, they know it,
and it's a huge factor in why this is all so difficult to do.
Please realize that paving the way for others to obtain this data is a huge
part of the end goal. In some ways, I'm trying to fix the potholes of FOIA.
[0] "Next, DoIT and its counsel conducted online research on each remaining
responsive phone number — in other words,they "googled" each number to
determine whether that number was publically listed, and, if so, to whom it
belonged."
Edit: Cleaned up (a couple times).
------
Aelinsaar
The casual disregard with which the FBI has always treated the law is
disgusting, and unfortunately, the true face of our country.
~~~
xviia
It surely didn't start in the last decade, and it won't stop this decade,
either.
Just look at COINTELPRO in the 1960s:
COINTELPRO (a portmanteau derived from COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a
series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United
States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling,
infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting domestic political organizations.
~~~
Aelinsaar
Jean Seberg, never forget that name.
------
kordless
The FBI was founded by a man who believed in secretive abuses of power. There
will always be those who believe it is their purpose to protect us from
ourselves. What those in power don't get is that all suffering can't be
eliminated without creating a whole new level of suffering at lower levels of
society as a result. Or do they?
~~~
curiouscats
Not only that the FBI continues honoring his memory with his name on their
building. That they keep up that public honor to his memory is consistent with
their continued behavior.
It is sad we continue to elect people that allow that type of thinking to
direct behavior of such a powerful organization but it is pretty clear we have
elected very few people that are interested in changing the actions they
continue to engage in.
------
ck2
It's always tragic when people expect law enforcement to actually obey the law
themselves.
It's not just an FBI problem, it's anyone in an authoritarian position, from
individuals to entire organizations.
------
JumpCrisscross
Suppose I'm a user whose information was disclosed by Yahoo! under these
illegal requests. Would I have standing against Yahoo!? What about against the
U.S. government?
~~~
tomkinstinch
You generally can't sue the government unless it lets you. Sovereign immunity.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity#United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity#United_States)
~~~
grrowl
or unless you are a multinational corporation.
[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/10/obscure-
leg...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/10/obscure-legal-system-
lets-corportations-sue-states-ttip-icsid)
~~~
rgbrenner
No, that's still a case where the government has agreed that you can sue them.
Every government being sued has agreed to investor-state dispute resolution in
one or more treaties that they've signed (to encourage foreign investment).
The ICSID does not hear cases against countries that have not agreed to abide
by its rulings.. so if you invest in a country that has not signed, you're
SOL... they're not going to help you.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-
state_dispute_settlem...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-
state_dispute_settlement)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Settl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Settlement_of_Investment_Disputes)
------
venomsnake
What happens if a government agency demand something they don't have the
authority to do, but they get it.
If FBI wants from your isp your name, address and contents of your emails. But
they are entitled only to the first two. Your ISP though complies on all 3
counts. What is the state of the information gathered by the content of your
email since it was surrendered voluntarily by your ISP?
------
yompers888
I'm repeatedly astounded by the FBI's overreach (though I oughtn't at this
point). I'm also always surprised how much people wanna take swings at NSA
when FBI are the ones abusing everything domestically (though certainly NSA
are helping them, and they shouldn't.)
------
robbiemitchell
Just. Get. A. Warrant.
------
beedogs
The FBI is really long past its prime and needs to be done away with.
~~~
yuzi
It would just be replaced with a new shiny organization having a new name,
more freedom to do more harm (given its lack of baggage) and probably end up
employing the same people.
Sadly being on the brink of destruction is likely going to be the only
motivator for real change.
~~~
epoxyhockey
FTFY: _It would just be replaced with a new shiny organization having_ no name
..the kicker being that the organization probably already exists
~~~
gknoy
Oh come on, surely there's no such agency. ;)
~~~
yuzi
Sure there is. I've seen them. They wear back suits, black sunglasses, and
drive big black oil guzzling SUVs that move in tight groups travelling at the
exact same speed. I've also seen their leader too:
[http://bit.ly/1Y5Irgs](http://bit.ly/1Y5Irgs) (whom is shown reading this
thread).
~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
~~~
yuzi
Pfft... Reminder to self: sense of humour not allowed on HN unless you're part
of the clique, when then becomes permitted.
~~~
whamlastxmas
Comments for the sake of humor are generally frowned upon on HN. The exact
same topics are usually posted on reddit, where anyone is welcome to meme and
joke all day. HN tries to stick with substantive, interesting commenting. I am
not trying to speak for everyone, this is just what I have viewed.
Jokes will sometimes fly, but it's usually in pretty inactive subjects and
they aren't political like yours.
------
lasermike026
Vote. Raise money. Spread it around.
------
Sacho
_“The FBI asks for so much, because it is banking that some companies won’t
know the law and will disclose more than they have to. … The FBI is preying on
small companies who don’t have the resources to hire national security law
experts,” he argued._
This is something police officers routinely do, to people with vastly less
resources than companies like Yahoo. It is sanctioned because all the "bad
guys" must be caught. Why is it a problem when the FBI does it?
~~~
tremon
Why is this not a problem when the police does it?
~~~
zaroth
The 6th District described the practice of police lying about having DNA, "a
regrettable but frequent practice of law enforcement was not
unconstitutional," citing to People v. Jones (1998) 17 Cal.4th 279, 299 -
which allow police deception as long as it is not unlikely to produce an
untruthful confession.
[http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/people-v-
jones-31413](http://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/people-v-jones-31413)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A final proposal for Rust await syntax - gaogao
https://boats.gitlab.io/blog/post/await-decision/
======
jkarneges
I figure the reason the proposed syntax looks gross is because other languages
have been using a prefixed await for many years. The Rust decision seems well
thought out though, enough to make me wonder if perhaps other languages have
been doing it wrong.
My first experience with futures was in the form of QFuture
([https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qfuture.html](https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qfuture.html)),
and there you call .result() to block and wait for the result. This postfixing
is intuitive.
Rust's "?" operator is neat. I don't know if I've seen a postfix operator
anywhere else yet. It's certainly possible Rust got this language aspect
wrong, but as a user it feels pretty right.
Given the existence of the "?" operator, and the fact that futures resolution
via postfix is intuitive (and not a new thing either), IMHO the best course of
action probably is postfix. I'm not sure if literally ".await" is the best,
but it's in the ballpark.
~~~
arcticbull
IMO it's awkward for the following reasons:
(1) It looks like a field access, and field accesses are "cheap", method
invocations aren't. This breaks the 'conceptual weight' model when you look at
a line of code. Field accesses are simple and understood. It becomes
impossible to gauge the 'cost' of a line by looking at it unless you're
intimately familiar with the workings of 'await' and there's no visual cue.
(2) If we create new such postfix operators in the future we'll have to break
yet more source code by reserving yet more field names in all structs in all
existing code. This whole postfix thing is proving itself nice to work with so
I'd prefer a path of less destruction if we do lean more into it.
(3) It's a one-off that's different from everything else in the language
that's being shoehorned into existing syntax.
IMO, it's either break existing syntax by introducing something new or break
semantics of existing syntax. I'll always lean towards the former over the
latter. I like it being postfix, it's very much in the '?' family of
ergonomics which has shown itself quite nice to work with. I'd prefer postfix
"@await" or "!await".
~~~
majewsky
> there's no visual cue.
There is. Your editor is going to show the await keyword in a different color.
(Unless you happen to be Rob Pike.)
~~~
arcticbull
There's nothing else in Rust that requires me to use an editor for a semantic
cue, is there? Why start here? You are correct of course, it's more a question
of Rust being just as useable right now with or without syntax coloring, this
small change breaks a lot.
------
foota
It seems they've settled on using a postfix approach. I can't help but feel
this is a mistake. Rust is already a weird language to come to from the likes
of python, Java, or Javascript, and it feels to me like this relatively
unknown approach of putting the operator at the end is a mistake that will add
another confusing aspect of the language.
I feel like the committee has worried about the wrong things when considering
postfix vs prefix. Their main concern seemed to have been the extra syntax
required to make prefix work with . And ? (i.e., (await foo).bar() ), but
while avoiding this makes for a more optimized language I'm concerned they've
missed the impact this will have on new people.
Or maybe I'm just a Luddite :)
~~~
jwr
> Rust is already a weird language to come to from the likes of python, Java,
> or Javascript
Every time I see a statement like this, I remember a (paraphrased) statement
from Rich Hickey: "[musical] instruments are made for people who can play
them!".
I think unless you are specifically designing a beginner language (like
Scratch), you should not take into consideration "ease of use" or
"familiarity" arguments.
~~~
13415
I wouldn't use a programming language whose designer had this attitude.
~~~
jwr
Would you also refuse to play a musical instrument, because the designers had
this attitude? Pretty much all musical instruments are "hard to play" and you
have to learn them, sometimes for many years.
~~~
kazinator
Professional grade, expensive instruments are highly playable compared to the
junk.
------
jerf
"It has also devolved into a situation in which many commenters propose to
reverse previous decisions about the design of async/await on which we have
already established firm consensus, or otherwise introduced possibilities we
have considered and ruled out of scope for now. This has been a major learning
experience for us: one of the major goals of the “meta” working group will be
to improve the way groups working on long-term design projects communicate the
status of the design with everyone else."
I'll be pretty intrigued to see what they come up with for that. I've been up
closer to the Go developer's attempt to connect with the community, and while
I'm not going to say they've done everything perfectly on their end, I've also
been sort of frustrated by the way that they'll put up a request for comments
about something in particular, and a good chunk of the community replies
basically throw away _everything_ they're talking about and rewrite arbitrary
amounts of the language from scratch. By "everything", I don't just mean the
direct proposal under discussion, but the goals of the proposal, the
discussion of alternatives from other languages and how they are and are not
relevant, as alluded to above the things already proposed and rejected for
solid reasons, the context around the runtime and how it interacts with
that... that is, not just the proposal itself, but _all_ the thought and
reasoning around it too. That wasn't really the question, so to speak. This
frustrates everyone, on all sides, in various ways.
A lot of the problem is structural to what is being done; there's a lot of
impedance mismatch between the core designers and the community at large for
any language. It would be interesting to see some explicit thought around how
to address that, from a community with Rust's experiences.
~~~
zzzcpan
It's just means there is lack of trust to core designers. They haven't proven
themselves to users, that they are capable of addressing their problems and
align with their interests. Obviously core devs of Google backed language
cannot do better. They can only gain that trust from users within Google, not
outside of Google. Not sure about Rust though.
~~~
xpe
It does not necessarily mean a lack of trust. It could be different incentives
or priorities.
For example, some users might desire major redesigns of past work but not bear
the cost of the rework. As such, they might perceive some small improvement
without any (direct) cost.
Personally, I think some groups have moved so far in the direction of
community involvement that they forget the practical implications of
diversity. Leadership is hard for many reasons — one big reason is that
leading sometimes means making some people unhappy. Still, this is much better
than inaction.
~~~
pas
Could you please give some examples? I think I follow Rust pretty well, but
have no idea what/which-improvements/who/which-groups you could mean.
~~~
dj-wonk
I don't want to name any particular people or groups, because everyone makes
mistakes and has limitations.
I will say this: in my personal experience, I've been a part of groups that
struggle in dealing with complex decisions. Many times they get bogged down
when they don't find a clear answer that satisfies everyone or all criteria.
In many cases, such groups don't have a clear leader or the leader lacks the
skills, experience, and character to do what is necessary; namely, choose (and
communicate) the least-worst decision that keeps the ball moving forward.
In such cases, it is not necessary (and unrealistic to expect) that everyone
agree with every aspect of every decision. A leader needs confidence and
persistence to make tough decisions, as opposed to abdicating leadership. Some
examples of the latter include (1) ignoring a choice until some default
decision is made implicitly or (2) simply choosing the idea from the most
vocal person.
Put more broadly, in this context, leaders must balance four aspects: (a)
scoping and framing a decision; (b) gathering diverse points of view; (c)
building some degree of consensus or buy-in; and (d) making a decision. It
appears to me that the Rust language team handled all four comprehensively.
------
nixpulvis
> Its very easy to build a mental model of the period operator as simply the
> introduction of all of these various postfix syntaxes: field accesses,
> methods, and certain keyword operators like the await operation. (In this
> model, even the ? operator can be thought of as a modification on the period
> construct.)
I like this explanation.
But this whole post could really use some more concrete examples of the at the
very least the final style being used in various situations. Not just mainly
`expression.await`.
Keep up the work on this, I'm excited to use this in my projects.
~~~
Sharlin
My dislike for the ”dot keyword” syntax has been strong, but if it _is_
selected, hopefully it’s at least generalized to other keywords in the future,
so that `.await` doesn’t stay a lone awkward exception to what dot notation
means. In particular, I wouldn’t mind if in the future `expr?` could be
spelled `expr.try` for consistency (even at the expense of introducing
redundancy).
~~~
gamegoblin
I wonder if I would ever find something like
my_iter
.foo()
.bar()
.return
more appealing than
return my_iter
.foo()
.bar();
I could see it happening, but I'll definitely need some time to get used to
it.
~~~
nixpulvis
See, now this is _exactly_ my issue with this syntax, I generally expect to be
able to "chain" things with the "." notation.
~~~
mintplant
You can chain .await, though.
let n = future_of_future_of_int
.await
.await;
~~~
asdkhadsj
Curiously, will there be limitations to where it can be used? Eg, imagine a
`foos.iter().map(|f| f.await).collect::<Vec<_>>()`?
That seems crazy, think it'll be possible?
~~~
comex
Not as things are currently designed. This is similar to how you can’t use
things like the `?` operator, break, return, etc. inside a lambda and expect
it to affect the outer function: it doesn’t work because lambdas are treated
as their own functions. Personally I think it would be cool to pursue an
extension to lambdas that would allow some of those things to work, but I’m
not a Rust team member or anything, just an interested observer.
~~~
swsieber
Technically, `?` can work in lambda's if the return value is a `Result` -
though it won't work like it's being called as part of a normal loop or
whatever. That's largely mitigated by the combinators available on an
interator of `Result`s.
So I think we'll just need similar tooling for lambdas - perhaps an `async`
modifier for them? That (I think) would lift await stuff up to `?` in terms of
lambda support.
~~~
comex
Yep, and in fact async lambdas are already a thing on nightly. But, while I
may just be nitpicking, `.map(async |f| f.await)` wouldn't do anything useful.
Applied to an Iterator of Futures, it would be a no-op, kind of like (since
you mentioned `?`) `.map(|x| Ok(x?)). Instead you'd probably want some
combinator to turn it into whatever "Iterator but async" trait Rust eventually
standardizes on – futures-rs has Stream for this purpose, but std doesn't have
anything yet. That trait would have its own collect() method which would
return a Future<Output=Vec<T>>, and you'd then await on that.
Yeah, I guess I'm nitpicking.
~~~
swsieber
Thanks for the nitpick! I hadn't thought it through all the way. I was mostly
thinking about doing async stuff with the inner stuff, but you're definitely
right. I'm glad you commented because I've had to rethink it.
------
cyphar
Super excited to see async/await finally get close to MVP and landing. I am
not a huge fan of ".await", but there isn't much more to be said -- my
personal preference of "#await" or "@await" _does_ look like line-noise and I
think there's no perfect answer to this one (await{} was too messy and no
better than prefix-await, and (await foo))? had too many brackets).
I also appreciate that this proposal was insanely bike-shedded and so really,
any decision is better than no decision. I would've been happy with "await <<
f()" if it meant we could get this feature (lots of Rust projects I'm
interested in are waiting on async/await before focusing on further
development).
~~~
blattimwind
Wouldn't "await expr" or "await@expr" (if you hate whitespace) make more sense
compared to "expr await"?
let db_conn = await pool.connect()
(Which is what e.g. Python uses, with the downside that you tend to need to
parenthize more because await has very low precedence).
vs
let db_conn = pool.connect() await
.await is not soo bad, kinda method-y
let db_conn = pool.connect().await
~~~
cyphar
I don't think "expr await" would be a good choice but that isn't the decision
that was made, and I wasn't arguing for it in the first place. TFA says that
using alternative punctuation was decided against because it would lead to
line-noise and I don't think there's much more to discuss -- I understand that
position and respect it.
My main issue with .await is that it does look method-y rather than keyword-y.
But while I like Python's "await expr" syntax _in Python_ the existence of ?
and chaining of methods in Rust justifies having a different syntax for it.
~~~
int_19h
Python also chains methods. And having to write (await (await (await
foo).bar()).baz()) is annoying.
~~~
imtringued
That doesn't look like well written async code at all... You're not supposed
to use await literally everywhere and especially not multiple times in a
single line.
Javascript already has an answer to this (Hint it was inspired by Monads but
it isn't one):
await foo.then(f => f.bar()).then(b => b.baz())
~~~
int_19h
What happens if f.bar() throws an exception asynchronously?
------
ch
Nice insight into the amount of thought going into this design proposal. It's
always tricky to introduce new syntax to a language and re-using the field
access notation here isn't as icky an approach as it first looks.
I don't know enough about rust to understand how this would operate during
compile time w.r.t if a user tries to define a field named 'async'. Is that no
longer allowed or would the compiler be able to disambiguate?
~~~
jmcomets
Disambiguation is easy when `await` is a keyword. [0] ;)
error[E0721]: `await` is a keyword in the 2018 edition
--> src/lib.rs:2:5
|
2 | await: i32
| ^^^^^ help: you can use a raw identifier to stay compatible: `r#await`
[0] [https://play.rust-
lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&editio...](https://play.rust-
lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&edition=2018&gist=b3999aad31966f91af75d501358d02bd)
~~~
msla
Programming languages didn't used to have reserved words:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserved_word](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserved_word)
> Not all languages have the same numbers of reserved words. For example, Java
> (and other C derivatives) has a rather sparse complement of reserved
> words—approximately 50 – whereas COBOL has approximately 400. At the other
> end of the spectrum, pure Prolog and PL/I have none at all.
I don't really know why modern programming languages bother with reserved
words. Yes, it would be confusing to have a variable named 'if', but compared
to all of the other ways to write confusing code in, say, C, that's barely a
drop in the bucket. Plus, it's something good tooling (highlighting, for
example) could obviate, as it's entirely possible to use a grammar to show
exactly what role each token is playing in a statement.
~~~
sinistersnare
I don't know about PL/I but Prolog kind of cheats, in my opinion, about the
reserved words. It is very strict about naming conventions, which is (IMO)
worse than having reserved words.
~~~
msla
PL/I is syntactically like Algol, or Pascal, or C with more words and fewer
brackets. At heart, it's a "normal" block-structured procedural programming
language, which proves that a C clone could adopt the same basic idea.
~~~
int_19h
XQuery is probably a more recent example of that. No reserved words there,
just syntax.
[https://www.w3.org/TR/xquery-30/#nt-bnf](https://www.w3.org/TR/xquery-30/#nt-
bnf)
------
lukeqsee
I'm anxiously awaiting this.
I just finished overhauling a rather involved Tokio/Future based project, and
having await/async in the language spec will be a big step forward (and I'm
hoping the compiler errors improve as well).
As always, kudos to the Rust team for making decisions that are well-reasoned
and documented and in a way that looks to the future of the language (and not
just meeting a feature deadline)!
~~~
astrodust
If the way async/await has fundamentally changed how you write JavaScript code
is any example, this will be a tectonic shift, especially for event-driven
code like you use with Tokio.
~~~
kibwen
I agree that it's an important addition to the language, but I think it will
be less impactful for Rust than for JavaScript because server-side JS is
almost always in a domain that benefits from async IO, whereas Rust exists in
many domains where async IO isn't a performance priority.
~~~
astrodust
It's an important concurrency model. Perhaps Rust doesn't have a lot of async
code because it's been really annoying to do it. This could change that
dramatically.
------
jnetterf
While there might be a better syntax if you only care about this one feature,
async/await needs to fit into an existing language, and this syntax makes
sense with the rest of Rust.
This syntax makes it clear that’s it’s not a function or macro invocation,
works the same way as ‘?’, and allows for clear and concise chaining.
------
erikpukinskis
Reading this feels like a person with no good choices trying to convince
themselves there's no other way than their best bad one.
"This is the best proposal, except the syntax doesn't make sense, we don't
know if we can implement it, and conversation has broken down to the point
where we are running in circles and we don't expect to have any more ideas."
I am curious what the current way to do non-blocking code in Rust is and why
it's so bad that they'd introduce this much confusion to the language design
to fix it.
~~~
steveklabnik
If every choice was obvious, there would be no need for a designer in the
first place.
~~~
erikpukinskis
Who said any choice was obvious?
(Also would love your take on the question in the last line of my comment. My
gut as an outsider is that the best solution may be cultural not technical,
except Rust is struggling to implement cultural projects now that the
community is scaling fast. But you know what I don't.)
~~~
steveklabnik
Heres the most straightforward answer I can give:
[http://aturon.github.io/2018/04/24/async-
borrowing/](http://aturon.github.io/2018/04/24/async-borrowing/)
------
Grollicus
At this point I don't really care how the syntax looks. I just want to use it,
been waiting soo long for this.
Problems with differentiating .await from .member can easily be solved by
using syntax highlighting. Also, Rust is already strange to write, this is
just one more quirk one will get used to.
------
jules
The designers of Kotlin also had an interesting point: await (synchronous
call) should be the default, non-awaited (asynchronous) code should have a
keyword indicating that it is async.
~~~
Rusky
This would have been my favorite approach, and there was a discussion about
doing it in Rust: [https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/explicit-future-
constructi...](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/explicit-future-construction-
implicit-await/7344)
There were two main objections:
First, a Rust async function like this (using explicit lifetime annotations
for exposition purposes only, normally they would be elided)...
async fn f<'a>(r: &'a i32) -> i32 { ... *r ... }
...desugars to a sync function whose return value closes over its arguments:
fn f<'a>(r: &'a i32) -> impl Future<Output = i32> + 'a { ... }
Sometimes you want the future to live longer than the arguments, so you write
that desguaring yourself:
fn f<'a>(r: &'a i32) -> impl Future<Output = i32> {
let i = *r; // Deal with the reference *now* before constructing the future.
async { ... i ... }
}
Ideally, functions could switch back and forth between these two forms
_without changing their API_ , for backwards compatibility reasons. This means
you can't just auto-await calls to `async fn`s like Kotlin does- it would need
to be a more complex rule.
Second, a lot of users want suspension points to show up in the program text
the same way `?` does. This is nice for managing invariants- you know when you
might be interrupted. (Personally I don't think this is a good reason; the
borrow checker and async-aware synchronization primitives would solve the
problem with less noise, but it is what it is.)
~~~
jules
I wonder about an altenate timeline where Rust kept its lightweight threads.
Marking async calls explicitly instead of marking synchronous calls with await
is a step in that direction, because that's also the syntax you have with
lightweight threads. What would problem 1 look like in that alternate
timeline?
In that case the concept of async functions disappears and your first function
becomes a normal function. The second function remains a Future building
function. So I'm tempted to conclude that this problem might be a non-problem,
caused by a confusion between async functions and Future building functions.
Even though an async function desugars to a Future building function, they are
conceptually distinct in the lightweight threads model. With lightweight
threads, all functions are async functions. A future building function
explicitly builds a delayed computation. The types _should_ be different.
An async function is just like a normal function, except that it may call
async APIs (i.e. other async functions). Calling an async function from a
normal function is an error; it does not return a future. The programmer never
sees that async functions are implemented with Futures under the hood. In
particular, an async function is _not_ syntactic sugar for wrapping its body
in an async block. We rename the async { ... } keyword to future { ... },
which constructs a future out of the block. You may call async functions in a
future block. So if you want to call an async function inside a normal
function, you must do future { foo() }, making it syntactically clear that the
call is delayed _even when the call is made from inside a normal function_.
The programmer no longer needs to think about how async functions work at all.
Don't tell them that future{ foo() } actually will just call foo(), and foo()
returns the future, they don't need to know that. The only thing they need to
remember is that async functions can only be called from within async
functions or future blocks. In all other respects they behave the same as
normal functions. All delaying of computation and running computation in
parallel is explicit.
IMO, problem 1 only occurs to programmers that have been told that async fn =
Future returning function. That's a leaky abstraction; it's syntactic sugar.
If you prevent them from developing this notion, the problem simply doesn't
occur. To understand the main proposal for async/await you basically have to
understand what desugaring the compiler is doing. With the "Explicit future
construction, implicit await" you can use async functions and futures without
understanding how they work under the hood. It's a non-leaky abstraction.
IMO, problem 2 is a problem for the IDE. The IDE can easily show which
function calls are async and which are not.
~~~
Rusky
I tried to lean pretty hard into "this syntax is just like threads" in that
internals.r-l.org post, when I wrote it, proposing almost exactly what you
describe here. Unfortunately problem #1 is not a result of confusion or
unnecessary conflation, but a fundamental question of lifetimes- the exact
same problem _already exists_ with normal OS threads just as it would with
lightweight threads.
That is, a function is always allowed to hold onto its arguments until it
returns. If its execution is deferred (e.g. `|| the_function(and, its,
arguments)`) for whatever reason (e.g. spawning a lightweight thread or async
task), the borrow checker has to consider that those arguments may stick
around indefinitely.
Of course, it is 100% doable to force people to work around this just by
giving future-building functions a different type. But as I described, this
means callers have to add or remove an extra `.run()`/`.await()`/etc. if the
API ever switches between the two. This is accepted in the world of threads,
but not in the world of futures, because _we already have a solution_ which is
"just switch to a future-building function, everyone's already awaiting it."
(Personally, while I certainly see it as a real problem, I would rather we
just live with it. It's not hard to work around, and we already do it in the
world of threads when necessary, which is rarely.)
~~~
jules
I still don't understand why #1 is a problem.
> But as I described, this means callers have to add or remove an extra
> `.run()`/`.await()`/etc. if the API ever switches between the two.
Switches between what though? When you want to do something asynchronously,
you indeed build a future and later .await() it. Suppose you then want to
build that future in a different way, for example by transforming future {
foo(x) } to making foo(x) itself return the future (i.e. moving the future{}
block inside foo), possibly because you want to dereference x before building
it. Well, the .await() was already there, and doesn't need to be changed. The
future{} ... await() pair gets introduced when you want to making things
asynchronous, which is exactly as it should be?
Furthermore, isn't that the same with the main async/await proposal? It is
indeed true that when you make things async you only have to mark a function
as async, and then all the calls to it automatically become async. However, at
the end of the day you still need to await those futures or else they won't do
anything. So when you switch from sync to async you still need to add those
awaits.
The difference seems to me the other way around: with the main proposal you
need _more_ awaits (namely, at all points where you want to stay synchronous).
With your proposal you need more async/future blocks (namely, at all points
where you want to switch to asynchronous).
I think that using the same keyword for async fn and async{} block is a source
of confusion, because it makes it seem like async fn is basically like
wrapping the body in an async{} block. It's what makes people think that an
async fn is like an automatically awaited future, which is a confusing way to
think about it and makes it hard to see why this proposal is a good idea (even
if it's actually implemented like that under the hood). I think it becomes a
lot clearer if you use a different word for these two concepts (like async fn
and future{} block), and remove the ::new() and only use future{} syntax.
This proposal does raise another question: why not just green threads, and
remove the concept of async functions entirely?
~~~
Rusky
> This proposal does raise another question: why not just green threads, and
> remove the concept of async functions entirely?
Making another reply because this is completely unrelated...
Rust already tried that. The problem is that Rust has a hard requirement as a
systems language to _support_ , at least, native I/O APIs, and the green
threads implementation added a pervasive cost to that support because all
standard library I/O had to go through the same machinery just in case it was
happening in a green thread.
That overhead made green threads themselves basically no faster than native
threads, so they were dropped before 1.0 to make room for a new solution to
come along eventually. Futures and async is that solution, and it turns out to
be much lighter weight than green threads ever could have been anyway- no
allocating stacks, no switching stacks, no interferering with normal I/O.
The syntax could have been different, but the implementation is far better
this way.
~~~
jules
Couldn't green threads in principle be implemented the same way as your async
proposal? The compiler could infer which functions need to be marked async. To
support separate compilation it might need to compile two versions of each
function, an async one and a normal one. You'd have exactly what you have in
your proposal, except you never have to write async fn. You could still have
blocking & non-blocking IO. It wouldn't totally unify green threads with OS
threads, but Futures/async/await don't do that either.
~~~
Rusky
Yes, though you probably wouldn't call them green threads anymore at that
point. (I mean, Rust async/await is implemented that way modulo syntax and
it's not called green threads. But that's beside the point.)
In fact Rust has already thrown out separate compilation with its
monomorphization-based generics, so making functions "async polymorphic" in
the same way wouldn't be anything new.
And while that's somewhat unlikely from what I can tell, Rust _is_ getting a
little bit of that "effect polymorphism" somewhere else- generic `const fn`s
can become runtime functions when their type arguments are non-const. So maybe
someday we'll be able to re-use generic functions in both sync and async
contexts depending on their type arguments.
------
arcticbull
After reviewing the syntax writeup, I've reached my own decision on what color
the bikeshed should be.
I like the "Unusual other syntaxes: Use a more unusual syntax which no other
construction in Rust uses, such future!await." [1] (or future@await). It makes
sense because it is in fact something different than what exists anywhere else
in Rust so it should receive a commensurate syntactic treatment. This was
written off pretty quickly in [1] but it appears the most consistent with
language philosophy -- specifically because it's inconsistent with any other
language features it should get inconsistent syntax. I think that's what's
throwing people off in this process: an attempt to impose 'consistency' on
something that just isn't. As such, it'll never feel natural to co-opt
existing syntax. Let's embrace it's inconsistency and introduce new syntax.
It supports '?' and '.' natively, and offers a path forward for new similar
kinds of postfix operators without making more field names off-limits -- even
the expr@match { .. } postfix expression thrown around would fit well. The
@-prefixed postfix operator would return a value like all other expressions.
tl;dr: Either the syntax is inconsistent or the semantics are, and IMO, the
former is preferable to the latter.
Either way, cool to see this feature moving along! Looking forward to using it
no matter how it's spelled out haha.
[1] [https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Await-Syntax-Write-Up--
AcIbhZ1...](https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Await-Syntax-Write-Up--
AcIbhZ1tPTCloXb2fmFpBTt~Ag-t9NlOSeI4RQ8AINsaSSyJ)
~~~
OtterCoder
I'd tend to agree with you, except for the fact that Rust reserved words are
reserved _everywhere_. Even if the syntax were changed, you still couldn't
name a field "async" or "return". Since it's no _extra_ burden on the
namespace, I'm less opposed to it.
I'm on the fence about disambiguation via unique punctuation, vs avoiding
Perl-like line noise.
------
mklein994
The syntax feels a bit Ruby-ish, doesn't it? Here's an example from the
article of how they could expand the syntax in the future:
foo.bar(..).baz(..).match {
Variant1 => { ... }
Variant2(quux) => { ... }
}
Compared to some Ruby:
5.times {
puts "Hello world!"
}
Note I'm by no means an expert in Ruby or Rust, this is just what I thought of
when I saw the syntax.
~~~
hombre_fatal
A .match "method" just opens the dam to "why stop there?"
I prefer Kotlin's general approach of .let and similar:
number = foo.bar().baz().let {
match it {
A => 1
B => 2
}
}
Now anyone has the general tool for chaining without needing library authors
or language designers to create the API for them.
~~~
jnetterf
Neat! When working with Options/Results/Iterators, you can use `.map` [1] for
exactly this purpose. It would sometimes be convenient to have something like
`.map` / `.let` on unwrapped values as well.
[1] [https://doc.rust-
lang.org/std/option/enum.Option.html#method...](https://doc.rust-
lang.org/std/option/enum.Option.html#method.map), [https://doc.rust-
lang.org/std/result/enum.Result.html#method...](https://doc.rust-
lang.org/std/result/enum.Result.html#method.map), [https://doc.rust-
lang.org/std/iter/trait.Iterator.html#metho...](https://doc.rust-
lang.org/std/iter/trait.Iterator.html#method.map)
------
ketralnis
Here's a question that may sound a little naive but I'm behind on where the
Rust async stuff is shaping up and I don't know what to search for to answer
it.
You can of course already do async things in Rust the same way you do in C: by
passing around function pointers and either passing around a handle to the
event loop or, more commonly, using a single global handle. But you
theoretically could run multiple event loops (one per core, say) and could
pass around a pointer to which event loop you wanted to work with and a lot of
libevent examples do this. (IMO it's the only correct way to do it, but I have
sympathy for wanting to have the global variable.)
This is a little different to Javascript where the event loop is part of the
language/runtime. Javascript's "the event loop" model means you can't run more
than one event loop per runtime, so it's kind of nonsense to want to pass it
around explicitly.
Rust is more like C in this regard. So if I wanted to mix threads and events,
or run an event loop per core, or have an event loop that my Fancy HTTP
Library manages itself but exposes a blocking interface to, do I lose access
to the new fancy `.await` syntax? There's nowhere in this syntax to say which
event loop I'm registering myself with. Is there just one global one? Does it
get globally registered on runtime boot, and everyone references it? Or is
there a thread-local variable for the "current" event loop that this thread
knows about?
Even more concerning is how to make _other_ libraries do this than the one I'm
writing. If I'm calling into an async library how can I tell that library that
I want it to use "an" event loop instead of "the" event loop?
What should I be googling for to answer this? :)
~~~
steveklabnik
You do not lose access to it.
A short version of the answer is that at its core, you create a chain of
futures, and then place them on an executor. The executor is responsible for
executing them.
Async is sugar for creating a chain of futures. Doing that stuff is a property
of the executor. Completely different axis.
(And tokio today has a multi-threaded, work-stealing executor, for example.)
~~~
ketralnis
I see, so the "root" Future in the chain is bound to an executor and that's
where the "which event loop" part is specified
------
nchie
Wow, this is the only suggestion I really didn't like. I'm really happy that
it's progressing forward, but I can't help but feel that staying with the
macro and postponing the decision would've been a better choice.
A language should, in my opinion, not depend on syntax highlighting.
~~~
Arnavion
What good will postponing do? The blog post implies that it's already been
debated for a long time and all the arguments seem to have already been
brought forth. You can't just keep punting it forever; it has to get
stabilized at some point.
~~~
nchie
It's been debated, but there's hardly any code using it. After seeing how it's
being used by most people, it'd be easier to make a choice.
~~~
steveklabnik
Because it’s been clear that what exists is not stable, many people are
waiting until it’s stable to try.
There were a number of people who converted code to the various proposals, so
that helped.
------
holy_city
The process for how this feature is being handled is fantastic, and a great
example of what I love about Rust and its community.
------
andrewflnr
I'm sold. This post did a good job of addressing my concerns with the syntax,
plus a couple others. I'm now looking forward to postfix match.
I still kind of want postfix macros, though. I saw a couple other neat use
cases like `file.write!(...)`
~~~
Buttons840
User definable postfix macros might be nice, I don't know.
But we don't need user definable postfix macros to have a single
`expression.await!()` as a magical macro. There are already magical macros,
and to most Rust users `foo!()` means "magic here, read the docs". It would
have been syntactically consistent to have `await!()` also mean "magic here,
read the docs".
100% of Rust users will recognize the inconsistency of overloading field
access syntax. Only a portion of Rust users will dig deep enough into macros
to recognize that `expression.await!()` is special and is not defined as a
normal macro. By the time a user digs deep enough to realize that, they are
ready to understand why that inconsistency was necessary.
With `expression.await` new users may ask about the inconsistency and the
answer will be "because reasons you can't understand right now".
------
lachlan-sneff
I'm curious as to why the mandatory prefix syntax wasn't chosen (`await
{...}`). It's less magic than a magic field and it fits into preexisting
syntax better.
~~~
bvinc
I'm not sure why it wasn't chosen, but I can give you some arguments against
it. The braces introduce line noise. They introduce a new scope. I believe
that rustfmt will currently put a newline after the opening brace. And it has
the general problem that it can't be read from left to right.
(P.s. I'm not trying to start a debate, just trying to answer the question.)
------
wwwigham
I wonder why similarly to the existing `yield` keyword operator in the
experimental generators support doesn't rate highly in the decision making
here. Maybe they plan to revise generators to `expression.yield`, too? Also
`expression.return`?
Control flow from a dot-access rubs me just a bit the wrong way - honestly,
I'd rather the syntax be a bit cumbersome because if I saw multiple nested
`await`s in a single expression, I'd think the code was suspect and review it
more, while I'm probably not going to have quite the same reaction for
`x.await?.await?.foo.await?`, just because it _looks_ like normal property
chaining.
------
james-mcelwain
Really don't like the magic field access syntax.
~~~
apk-d
Having done most of my work in C# and TypeScript the Rust syntax felt _weird_
when I read about it, but on the other hand, I always felt bad being unable to
readably chain awaits, least they become
var result = (await (await obj.DoSomething()).SomeOperation()).SomeValue;
In the end, all syntax is magic that you need to get used to, I guess.
~~~
wbl
Do notation solves that problem!
~~~
IngoBlechschmid
Came here to say that. I think do notation (and applicative idioms) are easily
one of the most-underappreciated features outside the Haskell community.
~~~
yawaramin
Scala has had monadic do-notation (called 'for-comprehensions') for a long
time and OCaml has recently gained both monadic and applicative 'do notation'
(called various things, but mostly 'let+ syntax'). Edit: Oh and F# has also
had computation expressions for a long time.
------
lucideer
This is way way off-topic but: I have never seen the word "postfix" used in
this way. "Suffix" is the normal/common English word for this as far as I've
always been aware.
A quick search has it listed it as a synonym, but I can't find any usage
outside tech and it sure seems like a tech-industry/coding erroneous neologism
trying to balance the seemingly logical "post" -vs- "pre".
Am I way off the mark here?
~~~
dj-wonk
Yes, "postfix" is commonly used. See
[http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~pjj/cs212/fix.html](http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~pjj/cs212/fix.html)
or
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation)
~~~
lucideer
Reverse polish notation is an entirely different usage: not the same meaning
as used in this proposal.
It's also commonly used as the name of a piece of email software, but that's
also an unrelated usage to this.
~~~
dj-wonk
No.
RPN and postfix notation refer to the same core idea. From Wikipedia: "Reverse
Polish notation (RPN), also known as Polish postfix notation or simply postfix
notation, is a mathematical notation in which operators follow their operands,
in contrast to Polish notation (PN), in which operators precede their
operands."
Can you please explain why you wrote "Reverse polish notation is an entirely
different usage"? With a citation, preferably.
~~~
lucideer
Reverse polish notation is a term used in mathematical notation for an a
alternative operator syntax to the more common "infix" notation.
The article describes affixing the word "await" to methods in a programming
language as a "postfix" and explicitly contrasts it with a "prefix", which is
a linguistic term for affixing words, commonly contrasted with the term
"suffix".
~~~
dj-wonk
I don't see any reference nor any clear argument supporting your claim that
RPN and postfix notation are different.
Again, RPN and postfix notation mean the same thing.
Here are some more references that show how these terms are commonly used:
1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infix_notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infix_notation)
2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation)
3\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postfix_notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postfix_notation)
(which redirects to a page on RPN, which is very strong evidence that your
claim is incorrect)
Ok, onto the next thing. You wrote:
> The article describes affixing the word "await" to methods in a programming
> language as a "postfix" and explicitly contrasts it with a "prefix", which
> is a linguistic term for affixing words, commonly contrasted with the term
> "suffix".
I'm not getting your point. I don't think you are summarizing the language
accurately. Perhaps you could quote the section of the article at length.
Here is one quote from the article: "The lang team proposes to add the await
operator to Rust using this syntax: `expression.await` This is what’s called
the “dot await” syntax: a postfix operator formed by the combination of a
period and the await keyword. We will not include any other syntax for the
await operator."
Here is another quote: "Our previous summary of the discussion focused most of
our attention on the prefix vs postfix question. In resolving this question,
there was a strong majority in the language team that preferred postfix
syntax. To be concrete: I am the only member of the language team that prefers
a prefix syntax. The primary argument in favor of postfix was its better
composability with methods and the ? operator."
These usages of "prefix" and "postfix" are consistent and idiomatic.
I hope this clears it up.
------
Dowwie
I trust that they've made the best decision.
------
jnordwick
They dismiss the best option - choosing another symbol instead of a period
with hardly a though because they don't lke "line noise".
Just as `?` was introduced, I don't see a good reason ("line noise" doesn't
even count as a thought) that they wouldn't introduce postfix notion with `@`
`#` `$` or any thing else similar.
If they are looking forward to expanding postfix synax for things like
`match`, then this would provide them with the most flexibility and
essentially provide a new namespace for those features.
"Line noise" isn't a reason. APL had it right in that consistent syntax (Perl
doens't count as consistent) is useful.
------
danfo
Since `await` is a keyword reserved for this purpose, could `(await
expression)` ever mean anything else? What is the cost of ripping off the
bandaid and starting there, as at least an alternative syntax that is
consistent with the language?
match expression
await expression
It feels like a future proposal, to allow these keywords to be chained more
conveniently with a postfix. It's cool that this can possibly be generalised
for chaining ergonomics.
expression.match
expression.await
expression<-match
expression<-await
~~~
kibwen
I expect a proposal of this nature to pop up relatively soon. If I had to
guess, I'd say the reason they're not doing this now is because they only want
to choose one option for the MVP, and they've decided that they prefer this
option to that option, and that the chosen option fortunately does not
preclude the future option.
Also, I would expect `await` to have mandatory braces, just as `match`, `if`,
`for`, etc. do.
------
trashface
As an old salty programmer, I don't understand why people are upset at this.
Sure the syntax is unusual, but they had good reasons for it, and people are
adaptable and get used to things.
Personally I like the fact that ".await" emphasizes that you are dealing with
something fundamentally different from other language constructs, because
futures _are_ fundamentally different.
------
cesarb
To me, this syntax feels like a "magic" method call (like in languages where a
field access can go through a getter method). That is, if you can think of
"x.await()" as a compiler-implemented method call on x which does some stuff
and returns a value (plus some magic to allow you to omit the parenthesis),
this syntax looks intuitive enough.
~~~
Sharlin
Except that, as described in the article, `await` is fundamentally a control
flow construct and too magical to be ever considered a ”sort of a method
call”. It’s not really a useful mental model. No function is supposed to be
able to reach outside its definition and _rewrite the control flow_ of its
caller.
------
Const-me
Language syntax and futures is only a half of the problem. IMO actual async IO
implementation is harder.
Too many incompatible platform-specific APIs: epoll and AIO on Linux, kqueue
on BSD and OSX, IOCP and new thread pool API on Windows. I’m pretty sure I
forgot couple others, and each of them have non-trivial amount of quirks,
bugs, and performance-ruining edge cases. Also these APIs are not directly
compatible to each other.
To be usable, async IO needs to be integrated into the rest of IO. You can’t
just place that on top, e.g. Java did that, IMO didn’t work particularly well.
The combination of the above makes creating good cross-platform abstraction
for async IO challenging.
Not saying impossible, but it’s very hard to do.
I’ve tried once in C++, for that project I needed epoll and iocp, but I wasn’t
able within reasonable time. Ended up swapping relatively large IO-related
parts of my app depending on platform.
~~~
bvinc
Most of the work you're talking about has been completed for a long time in
the crate "mio". It abstracts out all of the platform dependent async io
operations into a single consistent interface.
~~~
Const-me
Are you sure about that?
I've looked at the library, it doesn't support anything besides epoll and
IOCP, i.e. no BSD or OSX support, no AIO on Linux (the kernel one, not POSIX).
You probably don't want to consume IOCP API on Windows anymore, Vista
introduced higher level and easier to use StartThreadpoolIo and friends.
Also on Windows, even with IOCP, you don't want to split async IO from thread
pool. The OS kernel manages them both at the same time. Work stealing or other
custom scheduling is usually slower than what kernel does.
~~~
bvinc
It says that it is also backed by kqueue and supports FreeBSD , NetBSD, and OS
X.
I found this issue where they're discussing rewriting the Windows
implementation using the library `wepoll`.
[https://github.com/tokio-rs/gsoc/issues/3](https://github.com/tokio-
rs/gsoc/issues/3)
What would be the advantages of supporting AIO on Linux?
~~~
Const-me
> rewriting the Windows implementation using the library `wepoll`.
Interesting idea but I don’t like it too much. While removing the huge
complexity of manually managing IOCP and required resources, It’s an
undocumented API. New Vista+ threadpool-based IO also removes that complexity,
removes complexity of implementing thread pools in the higher level in Tokyo.
It’s documented and supported, and Rust has issues with WinXP support anyway.
> What would be the advantages of supporting AIO on Linux?
Faster async disk IO for the apps which are OK with the limitations, i.e.
which read/write complete blocks of O_DIRECT files. Databases come to mind.
BTW, io_uring feature coming into Linux kernel removes most limitations of AIO
while also improving performance.
------
eridius
It was glossed over why `await expr` isn't in the running; I take it it's
because the language team doesn't like the necessity of adding parentheses any
time you want to do postfix expressions on the await results e.g. `(await
foo()).bar()`?
~~~
Rusky
That was discussed in a previous post, but yes that's why. And in Rust, the
biggest postfix expression is the extremely common `?` operator, expected to
be used with _most_ futures.
~~~
eridius
I haven't really been following along very much. I take it from your comment
that await in Rust will not automatically propagate errors upwards like it
does in JavaScript? So you have to use `foo.await?` in the normal case if you
only want to handle successful results?
~~~
Rusky
That's correct. In a sense Javascript await isn't the thing that propagates
errors, that's just the language's usual exception behavior plumbed through
the Promise.
~~~
eridius
That's actually a really good point, I never thought of it that way.
------
arcticbull
Serious suggestion, and I assume you have -- have you considered ".await?" as
an alternative? It won't conflict with field names and cribs on the fact that
"?" changes control flow.
~~~
eridius
That conflicts with `.await` + the ? postfix operator. Namely, if `.await`
returns a Result, the ? operator could then be used like it is in code today.
In fact, this was referenced in the article:
> _The primary argument in favor of postfix was its better composability with
> methods and the ? operator._
~~~
arcticbull
Yeah, I thought that through after, and revised my thoughts. I wrote it up
top-level but I think the best way forward is embracing that this isn't
consistent with anything else in Rust and introducing new syntax, specifically
'!await' or '@await' postfix operator. The reason there isn't a good answer
that's consistent is that the behavior is inconsistent. As such, it needs new
syntax.
Either the syntax is inconsistent or the semantics are, and IMO, the former is
preferable to the latter.
------
danielscrubs
I'm very conflicted. In one hand I'm happy that becoming practical, on the
other hand: await and async is the best these awesome PhDs could come up with?
They where really in the forefront in so many regards that I kind of expected
something mindblowing.
------
marvelous
I wish more language constructs used postfix notation. It looks so natural to
me when reading from left to right. Consider:
[a+2 for a in as if a > 3]
Vs
as.filter(a -> a > 3).map(a -> a + 2)
Sometimes I even wonder why variable assignment has to precede the assigned
expression.
~~~
kibwen
_> Sometimes I even wonder why variable assignment has to precede the assigned
expression._
I think there's a good discussion to be had on preferring either prefix or
postfix operators, but the answer to this question (which is also the answer
to the question "why are we so accustomed to prefix keywords?") is easy:
because ALGOL did it.
------
cryptonector
Don't forget to consider dot-dot-await (EXP..await)as well.
------
lkjalkjsdfasds
Postfix works because Rust doesn't have piping or do-notation. I don't care
either way though, I'm welcoming await to the family & excited to use it.
------
mruts
Why doesn’t Rust just implement HKT and then make a Future a monad. It seems
to me that Rust has too many special things that arise from a lack of
expressiveness as it is.
HKT would make things considerably nicer.
~~~
steveklabnik
[https://twitter.com/withoutboats/status/1027702531361857536](https://twitter.com/withoutboats/status/1027702531361857536)
------
tav
In the off chance that some Rust developers are looking at this thread, I'd
like to put forward a counter-proposal:
1\. Use a postfix ?! instead of .await
2\. Use a postfix ?? instead of .await?
3\. Use the await keyword only in the "for await" construct
Then the common case becomes:
let resp = http::get(url)??.to_string()
Which, imo, is a bit easier to parse than:
let resp = http::get(url).await?.to_string()
This would make it easier to follow the core logic in async code, the same way
that ? made error handling so much cleaner in Rust.
~~~
afiori
I think the ?? can be already used for Result<Result<_,_>,_>.
I agree that the syntax should have `await' somewhere, and the observation
that it "clearly" is not a field access is actually credible to me. This also
open the possibility to have other kinds of postfix keyword e.g. .try or
.match
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Are the new TLDs really black holes for SEO? - limeblack
So I have read this article by Google http://searchengineland.com/google-explains-how-they-handle-the-new-top-level-domains-tlds-225671 which states "There are no TLDs that Google finds preferential to others; they are all treated equally in rankings. There are some geo-specific TLDs that Google will default to a specific country and use that as an indicator that the website is more important in a specific geographic region. But all TLDs are treated equally."<p>But reading on previous hacker news comments like this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11684696 the top comment suggests the they are SEO black holes.<p>So which is it? I would love some data comparing the 2.
======
shanecleveland
I've had a competitor with a new "vanity" tld come in and very quickly outrank
my .org site. And the new tld is being used as a keyword itself, as opposed to
a representation of the subject matter or industry.
So, anecdotally, it certainly didn't hurt this sight. I guess it would also
mean, and support the building belief, that exact match domains or utilizing
keywords in the domain name is also no longer helpful(in the eyes of search
engines). If the tld doesn't matter, then I could scour all of them until I
found an available exact match.
------
paulcole
> the top comment suggests the they are SEO black holes.
The top comment in question reads like a Trump tweet and provides no further
details, no sources, and no data:
"I have said it before and I will say it again, the new gTLDs are just a money
grab by ICANN. Not only that, but they are basically SEO black holes, no
thanks!"
Until someone definitely proves that new TLDs are detrimental to SEO, I'm not
buying it. Much likelier is that the domains built on new TLDs simply don't
have the domain age or link profile of competitors whose domains have been
around for years and years.
------
SteveGerencser
They are only black holes because very few of them rank well in competitive
niches. I have a client in a non-top 3 TLD and he does just fine in the serps.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Yak-Shaving Methodologies - arsalanb
For those of you who follow Zed Shaws "Learn X the Hard Way" series, the term "Yak Shaving" might sound familiar, but for those of you that don't — <p>>"“Yak shaving” is a programmer’s slang term for the distance between a task’s start and completion and the tangential tasks between you and the solution. If you ever wanted to mail a letter, but couldn’t find a stamp, and had to drive your car to get the stamp, but also needed to refill the tank with gas, which then let you get to the post office where you could buy a stamp to mail your letter—then you’ve done some yak shaving."<p>What methods/tips do you use to convince yourself to do a boring but important task? This isn't restricted to programming (such as creating environments, installing dependencies), and applies to life in general.<p>Thanks
======
pestaa
Well, if it's important, I don't need convincing.
Anyways, at work we printed badges similar to this one:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/449910996832751616/PXOr...](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/449910996832751616/PXOrGYXE_normal.jpeg)
and give one to a person who solves a problem only to be able to continue
working. Too bad only a friend and I understand the concept -- makes us laugh
even harder, though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The First Webcam Was Invented to Check Coffee Levels Without Getting Up - 1cvmask
https://petapixel.com/2013/04/03/the-first-webcam-was-invented-to-check-coffee-levels-without-getting-up/
======
WaitWaitWha
This sounds false at first, because I am thinking "wait, this had to be much
earlier, I mean that's like yesteryear"... Then, I try to remember freenet
email, fixing fidonet, then configuring uucp, building my 300 baud, then ...
and then I get sad. I am old. :/
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An onslaught of pills, hundreds of thousands of deaths: Who is accountable? - howard941
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/an-onslaught-of-pills-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths-who-is-accountable/2019/07/20/8d85e650-aafc-11e9-86dd-d7f0e60391e9_story.html
======
vikramkr
It would be so much easier if just one person was responsible wouldn't it? But
time and again we run into systemic, multifaceted failures that we dont have
easy answers to. Maybe it will be more productive to, instead of trying to
understand who is accountable, ask "why did this happen?" Depersonalize it so
you can try and see the big picture, and begin tackling it from there.
~~~
gshdg
What if part of the systemic problem is a lack of personal consequences for
those who make selfish choices?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Graduate Going to College Career Fair - potatosareok
I graduated college last year but still live around it for my current job. I'm considering going to some upcoming career fairs that are at my college to see what other job opportunities are available. I'm wondering is that strange? Would any companies be considering me as someone who has graduated already?<p>My current position is some coding but mostly setting up middleware stacks and stuff, so my coding skills aren't the same as someone who's had a fulltime job coding for 1yr. So I guess I'm basically looking for entry-level coding jobs?
======
ecspike
Some places categorize new grads as people who have graduated in the past 2
years. If you graduated in an off cycle (like in the late summer or fall),
that can smooth over some of the resistance.
You will get rejected by some but do yourself a favor by having a good story
of what you've been doing since you graduated, also what you have been doing
to make yourself more marketable or what skills you've learned.
Good luck on the search.
------
rebelde
I did it and got a job out of it. Some companies won't consider you, but
others might see determination. As long as you are mentally ready to get
rejected by most, you have little to lose.
------
williamhsu
If you're in one of our cities, give lunchcruit a try. www.lunchcruit.com
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Who Rises To The Top? Early Indicators - wallflower
https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Kell-Lubinski-Benbow-20132.pdf
======
datacog
Is is a very interesting research paper. Sort of something we're trying to do
with this: [http://getpredikt.wordpress.com/2013/12/13/predikt-
aggregate...](http://getpredikt.wordpress.com/2013/12/13/predikt-aggregate-
and-quantify-your-professional-data/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Does Turbulence Get Started? (2014) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/71/flow/how-does-turbulence-get-started
======
ubertakter
Not exactly the best written article. I think the author was a little out of
his depth.
The original paper is in the arXiv:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.06372#](https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.06372#)
Other related work of interest:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-017-0018-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-017-0018-3)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Canada's leading Web 2.0 pioneers - roblewis
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/canadas-leading-web-2.0-pioneers
======
vaksel
I just can't take any list seriously, that has a twitter app in the top 10.
#10 HootSuite, Vancouver - A Twitter toolbox that manages multiple Twitter profiles
~~~
gojomo
HootSuite is one of only 3 listed that I'd heard of (HootSuite, FreshBooks,
NowPublic), and I'd heard of it in a business context where people would pay
-- a technical team at a Major Company sharing responsibility for a support
Twitter account. So the dismissiveness is unwarranted.
~~~
vaksel
they may be fine as a stand alone business, but not as a top 10 business for
an entire country
~~~
paulgb
The list is supposed to be the top 20 web 2.0 businesses, not all businesses
or even all tech businesses.
~~~
vaksel
and would you say that those are the 20 top web 2.0 businesses for the entire
country? I just don't believe that.
~~~
paulgb
I'm not sure, I don't really follow web 2.0 stuff. The list does seem a bit
West-coast biased though. I can think of other Canadian tech and software
companies (Idée, for example) that are more interesting _to me_ than
HootSuite, but it's not my list.
------
spitfire
Some of those companies are absolute rubbish. Though voices.com looks very
cool. I browsed around and if I had a need for voice acting I'd go there.
ThoughtFarmer looked like a neat idea. Then I saw their demo and pricing.
$109/per seat, 100 seat minimum. For $4K I can buy an Xserve from apple that
does the same thing, better.
I can't wait for the second dotcom crash.
------
sunir
It's great to see the Internet on fire in Canada. Most people don't realize
that we have had some amazing Web companies come out of Canada, like Flickr
and iStockPhoto and StumbleUpon and ClubPenguin, and it looks like we'll have
a bunch more over the next few years. Congrats to all the winners!
Disclosure: I work at FreshBooks (and am very excited!)
~~~
JimmyL
Got an email? I've got a few questions about FreshBooks...
~~~
sunir
For sure! sunir splat freshbooks dot comm
------
chaosmachine
Ottawa is completely missing from the list.
~~~
elai
That's like saying Washington DC is completely missing from the list. Ottawa
city is bit of a boring town.
~~~
paulgb
Ottawa has generally had a lot of tech and software (Corel, for example), so I
do think it is surprising they aren't on the list. Shopify, for example, is
based in Ottawa.
------
rantfoil
I've said this before and I will say it again -- any list of Canadian
entrepreneurs without backtype.com on it is a sorely incomplete list. They're
building real core tech that is powering dozens of other sites.
~~~
kitsguy
Agreed - looks like this list only includes Web 2.0 companies that are located
in Canada. While Backtype was founded by Canadians, I believe they have moved
to Silicon Valley??
------
matthewking
Shopify.com should probably be on there..
------
tyohn
Gas Buddy is missing too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The World's Largest Tesla Coil? - rms
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/648673855/the-lightning-foundry
======
rms
Why you should care, and why this is revolutionary science:
Lightning has recently been found to generate positrons via gamma rays. This
is very recent science and definitely underexplored and not yet solved via
theory.
[http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-
nasa/2011/11...](http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-
nasa/2011/11jan_antimatter/)
<http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011EO220001.shtml>
A Tesla Coil this large looks a lot like a lightning generator, an opportunity
to explore the space where electrical arcs become lightning.
Lightning had also been hypothesized to produce x-rays for a long time, with
evidence of x-rays in lightning only confirmed in 2001. The creation of x-rays
by lightning bolts is also not completely explained by theory.
Basically, lightning is extremely poorly understood for such a basic natural
phenoma and there is ample room for exploration, possibly leading to
economical ways of generating antimatter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are your music prototyping solutions? - przemoc
I am not a professional musician (just played on a music keyboard for ~8 years till I stopped ~10 years ago), but sometimes various ideas flow into my mind or I want to quickly transcribe (at least some parts of) heard music. The problem is with figuring out and writing down the stuff (or staff if you prefer, but literal staff is not needed, anything easily convertible to SMF or music XML would be fine). And doing it efficiently, obviously.<p>I lack sound recognition skill (cannot immediately reconstruct heard or thought sounds, have to find them out using trial and error method, which sometimes becomes more effective if I am getting into vibe of currently analyzed tune).<p>I have my old Casio CTK-750, but:<p>1. It's not next to my PC, so I have to relocate (it would be acceptable if not the other things below).<p>2. It has memory only for 2 songs.
(There are though many tracks, so I can abuse them going with single idea per track and muting all others during recording/playing. Cumbersome.)<p>3. After recording I still lack the score and next day I can easily forget how I played it before.<p>There is a MIDI stuff. Haven't tried it recently, because my current desktop doesn't have gameport or I don't have the cable anymore or both (don't remember now the exact state, sounds ridiculous, I know). But I tried it many years ago on my AWE32 (that was really expensive and huge back then!) and Cakewalk was getting some more notes than I played (some very high and very low tones), so it was practically useless. Never figured out whether it was bad cable (didn't have the second one), bad keyboard (didn't have the second one) or bad gameport (didn't have second sound one). Maybe I should buy MIDI-on-USB, cable, and recheck it nowadays.<p>Ad rem. I tried some applications (haven't checked them thoroughly, though) like musescore, noteedit, nted, rosegarden, milky tracker, (modplug on Windows also) and possibly some others I don't remember their names now, but apparently no one has sane recording/playing via keyboard feature. The best what you can get are shortcuts for notes, like C for C, D for D, etc. which are possibly ok for slow editing/tuning purposes, but far from being even acceptable for "live performances". Having some music keyboard mode is so obvious that I am amazed not seeing it anywhere.<p>Well, there is VMPK, but it doesn't have good enough way of mapping tones (tones -> keys instead the other way, which means you cannot have same tones on two different keys) and I failed at seeing/hearing its output in musescore, i.e. did set the connection via qjackctl's connect dialog box, but musescore doesn't have any way to choose the input provided to it in IO tab. Musescore is not the best target actually, as it is ok only for storing notes alone, without timestamp and duration information.<p>(I have voluntary preemptable Linux kernel right now in my debian squeeze, so it's suboptimal for MIDI stuff and audio in general, but still have to say that latency I get in VMPK is extremely awfully annoying.)<p>So tell me HN, what are your music prototyping solutions, suggestions, tips, favorite apps, etc.?<p><i>My first AskHN thing here, hopefully it's not too long and I'll get some insightful comments.</i>
======
bane
Digital trackers.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracker_(music_software)>
I have yet to find a faster way from idea to music. It's clunky to get into
until you spend some time to learn the idea and build up a collection of music
and wrap your brain around the entire concept, but it's a few decades old a
very mature concept with tens of thousands of works created with this method.
Here's a site that streams tracked music 24-7
<http://www.scenemusic.net/demovibes/>
Some of it is quite good (thought the quality obviously ranges quite a bit
though both talent and technology).
If you want to see the music with a visual production try
<http://demoscene.tv/>
I've been working with a piece of software called MadTracker 2 for a while,
but I'm about to transition to Renoise (MadTracker 2 is long since a dead
project) which is available for Windows, OS X and Linux and is about as
professional as a piece of software has any right being.
<http://www.renoise.com/>
In a rush I can crank a reasonable tune out in a few hours. I've heard of at
least one major artist cranking out an entire album (vocals and all) in less
than a week.
<http://hunz.com.au/>
Most of the modern trackers will let you render individual tracks to file for
final downmixing.
Note: These _are_ most definitely not intended for live performance, though a
few folks have used them for that purpose.
~~~
przemoc
Thanks for your comment. I am aware of digital trackers (I mentioned modplug),
was even using FastTracker 2 back in the old days (but not for a long time). I
like scene music, especially old school chip tunes.
I heard about renoise before. I'll maybe try its trial version, but I doubt
trackers are really what I am looking for as they lack proper recording
feature (at least the ones I tried). Check also the comment in my new thread.
~~~
bane
Yeah, it seems like you might have more of a desire for live performance
tools. Maybe even something simple like this:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miMM8R1CSM8>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25VGdNU3nrU>
which can produce really great results.
And once you're happy with the results, "record" the individual parts with a
midi tool so you have the notes down someplace for recall later.
~~~
przemoc
Thanks for your comment. Maybe you're right. These YT examples are really
nice. Even though I can hum or sign accurately (thus this has clear advantage
over playing), I am more inclined in getting track of my melodies early (i.e.
what I am actually crafting, is it F#, G or G# scale, etc.), so I don't think
voice-way is the right solution (maybe I'm wrong, as it would be more
efficient assuming good recording and looping devices, still it's not that
good for every kind of music), but definitely interesting one.
------
jodoherty
I use a little Akai LPK25 keyboard (fits perfectly right above my computer
keyboard, so I just reach up a little to play) with seq24 for
editing/recording MIDI notes and zynaddsubfx as a synthesizer on Linux. It's a
straightforward, simple, and clean setup. Notes in seq24 are displayed in
piano-roll format, and you can compose looping patterns that you can then
combine into song patterns. I'll also use an electric guitar with jack-rack to
mess around with ideas on and record stuff in Ardour with, or even tab it out
in tuxguitar, since I can find my way around the notes on a fretboard a bit
more easily sometimes.
I also bought a license for Renoise, which I use occasionally, but trackers
are too involved for my tastes and I prefer a piano roll layout for editing
notes. It does allow you to use your computer keyboard as a music keyboard
though, and the layout isn't bad, but you're still better off using a small
MIDI keyboard.
I used to use Cubase (got the full version in a box somewhere), but it's
overkill for an amateur like me, and I don't even have a Windows PC or a Mac
to run it on anymore. Maybe someday I'll buy a Macbook Pro or something.
<http://www.akaipro.com/lpk25>
<http://www.filter24.org/seq24/>
<http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net/>
<http://www.renoise.com/>
~~~
przemoc
Didn't know there is such USB keyboard (but I felt that there should be
something like that). Thanks for informing me about it and apps I didn't know
before.
Two octaves (actually almost three) I could easily get on computer keyboard
(not that convenient, I know), so it doesn't look that useful to me, also
because 2 octaves are not enough for most of two-hand plays.
So Renoise has computer keyboard as music keyboard mode? Good to know. I'll
have to check it whether it works as I would like it too.
~~~
jodoherty
No problem, but I would encourage you to reconsider your train of thought.
The LPK25 is limited, but it's definitely more convenient for getting down
ideas than using a computer keyboard, since once you have it set as the MIDI
input device in an application, you can hit keys and play notes without having
to worry about what application is in focus and what its keyboard shortcuts
are. Computer keyboards also only recognize up to a certain number of keys
being held down simultaneously (since they're designed with the assumption
that you won't be pressing five keys in the same row at the same time) and
don't provide velocity or intensity information, but you always get note
intensity and velocity MIDI information out of a MIDI keyboard. As for the
limited number of keys, you can shift the keyboard down or up entire octaves
with the buttons on the left and then record the left and right hand parts
separately in two passes. You can also look at it and see what notes you're
pressing instead of having to translate between a computer keyboard and a
musical keyboard.
So I'd say it's quite useful compared to having just a computer keyboard, and
the small size means you're that much more likely to have it with your
computer, even if your computer is a laptop and you travel a lot. Your
argument that it only does what you could still do with a computer keyboard is
like saying the virtual keyboard on an iPad is just as good as using a
bluetooth keyboard, since they offer the same keys and basic functionality...
so a bluetooth keyboard for the iPad is useless. But you'll probably still
want to use that bluetooth keyboard with the iPad if you're doing any amount
of writing, because it just makes it easier to type (and it frees up the
screen space for what you're writing).
If you have the desk space though, Behringer makes some cheap gear that
usually works fine, so go with a larger keyboard and check out the Behringer
UMX610, which should work perfectly with Linux:
[http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/672870-REG/Behringer_U...](http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/672870-REG/Behringer_UMX610_UMX610_USB_MIDI_Keyboard.html)
You could even use such a keyboard for actual performances if you absolutely
had to, but it probably doesn't play as nicely as your Casio, and you should
probably figure out your latency problems in Linux. (To be honest, if I were
doing anything music related on an everyday basis, I'd much rather use Cubase
on a Mac. Linux software is a disheveled mess of parts that can fit together
quite nicely, but can also cause a lot of hairpulling too.)
Finally, you probably don't want to hear this, but if you have time and energy
for ear training practice, relative pitch recognition would make your life a
lot easier and solve most of your problems. Then if you can work out what the
first few notes of your song are and you figure out the key, you can figure
out how to write down the rest pretty easily from there. Then you could use
some of the score editing software, trackers, or anything else that people
mentioned in the other replies.
As it is now, it sounds like most of your musical fluency is trapped away in
the muscle memory of your hands, and that's the real source of your current
problem, since it's the same as being able to speak and listen, maybe even
read a bit, but not write anything.
Anyway, just something to consider. Good luck, and I hope you find something
that works for you.
~~~
przemoc
Thank you for this insightful comment.
You're right, music keyboard is obviously better than computer keyboard in all
ways. I didn't want to argue opposite statement.
Behringer UMX610 looks more interesting, but it's a bit more expensive. Having
my old casio, which has nowadays only one really annoying thing (less annoying
is broken volume potentiometer, so only one speaker works above ~10% level) -
clappy sound (don't know any good term for it) of its keys - I don't have real
need for new keyboard (I don't intend to compose being outside of the home,
but OTOH having small keyboard next to keyboard would be possibly convenient).
It's still unknown about this casio's MIDI capabilities, i.e. whether they are
working correctly. First thing I have to do in spare time is get some MIDI on
USB interface cable (like Roland UM-1G, which is already more than 100PLN) and
test my keyboard on it after years to see whether old problems are still here.
As I stated in response to troyal7562, I have some relative pitch recognition
skill (not accurate) that combined with the knowledge of key indeed gives good
results, but not good enough for real-time transcription-through-play.
Well, I can write, but not off-hand, that's the point. Also via playing you
can develop and change your ideas further, so I wouldn't call this additional
stage as trapping. Remember I am talking about prototyping, not crafting final
version of some music piece. That is also why having it in my computer, when I
can (or should be able to) easily alter, improve and combine my musical
sketches, is that important. But surely having perfect sound recognition skill
would ease all of my efforts.
------
seagaia
If you absolutely can't spend money on anything, I'd go with PxTone for bare-
bones prototyping. It runs on Wine. It is point-and-click tracker.
<http://buzinkai.net/PXTone/tutorial/>
It's an incredibly lightweight tracker or whatever, and comes with preloaded
instruments (basic chiptune-ish sounds). But when you're prototyping a song or
trying to get an idea down really fast, you shouldn't worry too much about the
instruments or anything. PxTone is strong in this regard, it's VERY FAST and
intuitive to just jot down a melody.
I find PxTone is great if I think of some short melody and want it sort of
stored so I can come back to it later and maybe work with it on something more
involved than PxTone.
Of course it's mostly useful for the prototyping stage. Any sort of recording
with real instruments, or effects more than just
panning/volume/reverb/echo/overdrive/portamento, you'll want to look
elsewhere.
~~~
przemoc
Thanks for your comment. Point-and-click is not what I am looking for (at
least for input stage), but I'll look at it later. It's not that I cannot
spend some money, but I would like to definitely avoid additional expenses
(see also comment in my new thread).
------
jdietrich
Logic or Digital Performer on the mac, Cubase on PC. If you're very score-
centric, Sibelius. Buy a quality audio interface with MIDI ports. Not cheap,
but the only way to get genuinely high quality MIDI and score editing.
Trackers are a crutch for people without a musical education and simply aren't
sophisticated enough. They represent music mechanically, using an abstraction
that collapses in the face of something as mundane as triplets. There are no
good sequencers on Linux. Lilypond does excellent engraving, but there's no
Free software that'll prepare a score without endless hair pulling.
~~~
conner_bw
There's a delay column in Renoise that make triplets trivial.
The Lua API and users writing scripts, such as this "Fractional Notes
Generator" makes it even more trivial:
[http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?/topic/28248-allow-
fl...](http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?/topic/28248-allow-float-values-
in-edit-step-for-quick-triplets/page__p__221850#entry221850)
I thought this was hacker news were people actually knew how to code?
Musically educated in what? Last time I checked we're not troubadours
performing occitan lyric poetry in the high middle ages.
Trackers aren't for everyone, some things are clearly not reasonable to do in
them (recording a live band comes to mind), but the "musical education" and
"crutch" comment is without foundation.
~~~
jdietrich
Musically educated in what? Music. Not genre-based electronic music, but music
in it's broadest sense - from bebop to Bulgarian folk music, from Stravinsky
to Stockhausen, from Abba to Zappa.
I write music for sync. I need things like timecode support, which is a weird
niche thing, but also things like tempo and time signature maps, which aren't.
In a proper sequencer, I can play in a phrase, then instantly quantise it to
any time signature and any tuplet I want. Septuplets in 9/8 are no more
difficult than straight eights in 4/4. The grid in my piano roll display will
conform to my chosen timing, as will the output of my score editor. I can draw
in a series of gradual tempo changes to an automation channel, or extract
tempo and groove from an audio or MIDI track to use as a tempo map. If that
sounds like an exotic requirement, try arranging a piece in a tracker based
around drums recorded without a click, or using a tracker to arrange a version
of, say, "Anyone Who Had A Heart" by Burt Bacharach.
Trackers represent music in a way that is alien to people who can read
classical notation and who have studied composition. Someone with a modicum of
training can follow an orchestral score with dozens of parts, scanning the
score in real time and picking out the harmonic progression and main melodic
theme. That's simply not possible with a tracker, either using numerical or
piano roll display. Not an issue if you make primitive electronic music, a
cataclysmic failure if you deal with big, complicated arrangements.
Trackers are a toy. They're intolerably crude if you're a professional user
who has deadlines to meet, but also intolerably crude if you're merely an
amateur with musical training. Tracker users don't know what they're missing,
overwhelmingly because they can't read or write music, have little
understanding of musical theory and no experience of playing in ensemble with
trained musicians.
~~~
conner_bw
Again, you are confusing "right tool for the job" with your silly prejudices.
Take me for example, I know Stockhausen because I studied him in my fine arts
undergraduate degree in Electroacoustic studies at university.
To recap, the question was somewhere along the lines of "how do you prototype
music, I have a casio?" not "how do you write a serialist score for a chamber
ensemble?"
Even then, The Linux Laptop Orchestra based in the music department at Virgina
Tech uses trackers. Of course this isn't the score to Star Wars and a house in
Malibu; it is very left field stuff, but it can't be denied that this is
serious contemporary practice for anyone in the know.
Regards,
~~~
przemoc
Thank you conner_bw and jdietrich for covering topic a bit more deeply here. I
am open-minded and I like discussions from various PoV. Even if I am only a
guy with casio (somehow it sounded like a really lame thing, is it? :>), I
happily get to know more about professional-like stuff, as I am perfectionist
deep in my heart. But I also almost always try to find the most effective way
of what I am doing (and often this finding part takes more time than doing the
job, oh well...), like writing scripts for one-time task that could be done
quicker by hand, etc.
------
przemoc
Thank you all for great comments. I think I should add a few more words here.
In my case playing music (and recently composing) is just a way to break from
daily activities or relax in spare time. I used to do it years ago and somehow
this year I started doing it again. This is why I do not intend on spending
money on it (like > 22$/30EUR/100PLN), just want to use whatever best free
tools are out there.
By best in terms of music prototyping I mean the most effective ones:
\- giving the possibility to quickly store my musical ideas, like by
supporting input from playing on a computer keyboard (by "live performances",
mind I used scare quotes also in starting message, I meant rather playing for
recording purposes than for amusing of others than me in the room),
\- allowing me to easily rearrange, tune and mix my crafted pieces.
Once again, literal score is not the purpose of music prototyping, but some
way of saving the music sketches, overwriting and enhancing them, etc., just
working on them (but doing it in a efficient manner) seems crucial to me, as
otherwise I'll lost idea before writing it down or won't have enough time to
tediously input it in clunky tracker/sequencer/staff editor/whatever.
No comment explicitly addressed my wish for rapid prototyping/transcribing
(don't get me wrong, I am not complaining here just stating the fact), but
I've seen some new app names that I'll try to test later and check how they
fit (if at all) in my idea of composing/music recognition workflow.
Maybe I'll have to prototype my own tool for music prototyping one day. :)
------
symphonyapp
If you have an iPad, check out: <http://symphonypro.net>.
The app allows you to create and edit sheet music. There's a built in keyboard
and a real-time recording feature. If you have a Core MIDI compatible device,
you connect it to your iPad and input notes in real time from that as well.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the developers
~~~
przemoc
Thanks for slipping in. I don't have any Apple product.
(But I'll possibly buy some MacBook if there will be TrackPoint in it - sadly
I feel it is quite unlikely to happen. I know there are others like me,
though.)
------
meatsock
the problem is finding a software sequencer you can get comfortable with. pick
one and stick with it, and use it every day. don't give up on a track till
you've spent an hour on it, as there's no better practice than finessing an
idea you're not sold on to improvement (this will come in handy if you end up
doing it for money). with an apt combination of keyboard shortcuts and smart
combinations of presets, no amount of software will hold back your ideas from
fruition. i use FL studio in this manner to great effect, and can have a 5
minute song assembled to some structure in about 30 minutes. from there it's a
matter of EQ and balancing.
another option may be to use something like audiomulch or PD to create the
sort of work-flow environment you need to sit down and start sketching.
~~~
przemoc
Thank you for a good tip. Being good in anything usually requires spending
some time on it. I'll possibly invest more time if I found that particular
sequencer/tool that works as I would like it to and its workflow is convenient
for me.
I'll check audiomulch later. What is PD?
~~~
meatsock
PD is pure data, which is an open source clone of the (surprisingly) closed
source MAX/MSP. <http://puredata.info/>
it's basically an open-ended programming environment for music/data/midi --
it's got a steep learning curve but disclaimers like that have no place on a
site for hackers =)
~~~
przemoc
Whoa, another interesting stuff. Thanks for explanation!
------
troyal7562
The best solution, of course, is to develop this "sound recognition skill".
While the amount of work it takes get there is significant, the benefits far
exceed the mere ability to transcribe what is in your head. Most people think
that the ability is magic, so that whe you develop this ability, people will
think you are some kind of musical genius. It is similar to how the computer
illiterate respond to programmers.
I use pen and paper. Anything else is an (understanably neccesary) shortcut. I
feel for the trees, but I havent found an iPad app that allows you to simply
write on a representation of staff paper yet.
~~~
przemoc
Thank you for comment. Developing such skill would be awesome. I have some
grasp of intervals (far from perfect), but not scales, so I have to find the
first tone to properly continue. When I find the scale, it's easier to follow
the melody, but I can never go error-free on first play real-time.
Do you have any tips about learning this skill efficiently, useful resources,
etc.? If I could at least improve in a short time, I would consider investing
my time into it.
I understand (a bit) your feel about writing on staff paper. But I was never
able to quickly do it and preserve acceptable look of my scores.
------
wanorris
Another vote for the Akai LPK25 -- it's superportable, so it's easy either to
keep right by your computer, or even to throw into a laptop bag and have along
with you.
Personally I like Sonar (the current generation Cakewalk) on Windows as a
software solution. I can't speak to Linux solutions.
I also keep some composition apps on my Android phone. If you really want to
capture musical ideas wherever you are, a phone is perfect. I like Caustic and
ULoops for Android, and I've also tried NanoStudio on an iPod Touch and found
it quite nice.
~~~
przemoc
Thanks for your comment. I don't have a smartphone, so I have to skip mobile
solutions. :)
------
ltamake
I have a Yamaha DGX-500 that I bought from a bloke at my office. It works
great and is compatible with FL Studio. Saves about 5 songs, though.
~~~
przemoc
Thanks for your comment. I know that some recent keyboards have memory for lot
of songs, LCDs displaying recorded music and such, also USB port to store it
on pendrive. It should be quite productive.
------
bphogan
Ableton Live with the Session view is how I make my music. In fact, here's a
stupid rough video of how I do my stuff.
<http://www.bphogan.com/files/videos/livesession.mov>
~~~
przemoc
Thanks for commenting. Ableton Live is undoubtedly a great software. AFAIK
it's not suited for rapid prototyping.
Here is some nice stuff. Just in case somebody haven't seen it yet.
Making of "The Prodigy - Voodoo People" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZYLp5uX9Yw>
~~~
bphogan
Did you watch the clip I posted tho? Using the session view, I can prototype
really quickly by recording simple loops. I used to use lots of other tools,
but I am so much faster with the session view. I can record things in parts
and then move them around to see if I like what I'm hearing. Very organic.
~~~
przemoc
Sorry, I did not, as I am short on time recently. I have done it just now in
speeded up way and indeed, session view looks quite interesting and useful for
music prototyping (assuming you already clearly know what to play, doesn't
look equally good for trial and error method).
Thank you for being stubborn and convincing me about AL usefulness. I won't
spend 350EUR on it, though.
~~~
bphogan
No problem. And depending on the USB midi input controller you get, you might
be able to get a free LE (limited edition) copy with it.
~~~
przemoc
Good to know. Thanks for this remark, but USB MIDI controller with Ableton LE
won't be cheap either. :)
Also quoting wikipedia:
_As of version 6, Ableton also offers a stripped-down version of Live
targeted at the non-professional market. It has limitations on the number of
audio channels and effects and does not feature some of the synchronization
(MIDI Clock, ReWire) utilities the full version has to offer. The current Live
LE version is 8.1.4.
As part of the Able10 celebrations, Ableton introduced Live Intro as an
effective replacement to LE. Registered users of Live LE can now receive a
free upgrade to Live Intro. The current version is 8.2.2._
------
bfung
checkout an earlier thread! <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3089010>
~~~
przemoc
Thanks for reference, In fact it inspired me to create this submission, as
subject is not the same. (You missed my comment there, right? :>)
------
dminor14
Guitar, voice, imagination. Next I write a few notes and lyrics on paper. Then
I start to record for real...
~~~
przemoc
Thanks for sharing your story.
------
gallerytungsten
Chord chart on paper. Play, improvise, revise.
------
MostAwesomeDude
I _am_ a professional musician. For getting things typeset, I use Lilypond,
and the two tools I use are vim and rumor. (<https://launchpad.net/rumor>)
Very simple, but it gets the job done.
For live performance, I have a USB keyboard and several voices in Csound
(<http://www.csounds.com/>) and run the whole thing through a keyboard amp.
Cheap and effective.
~~~
przemoc
Thank you for comment. Did not hear about rumor before. I'll have to
definitely check this out, even though it's not suited for prototyping. I'll
test Csound too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Client cheques that I rejected - janeboo
https://m.oursky.com/client-cheques-that-i-rejected-7426f392d5e9
======
wpietri
One of the best things about being independent: You can't tell _everybody_ to
fuck off, but you can tell _anybody_ to fuck off. That's clearly great because
then you don't end up doing dumb, pointless work because some executive said
so.
But the subtly great part is that clients get better results. They know they
don't own you, that you have other options. So they have to take your advice
seriously. They may not follow it, but they'll at least listen. Which,
counterintuitively, means you'll have a lot less desire to actually tell
people to fuck off than you would in a regular job.
~~~
HumanDrivenDev
If you're a permanent employer, you usually can't flat out refuse, true. But I
still think we have a responsibility as professionals to tell people why their
ideas are shit - politely.
_management:_ "I want an app that does A to solve business problem B"
_programmer:_ "If you want to solve B, you're better off with an app that
does C. If you do A you'll run into problems X, Y, and Z. I can do A but i
strongly advise against it"
Far too many programmers just go ahead and do the first idea and then it
inevitably falls apart, because they're too scared to act like professionals
and give their own professional recommendations.
~~~
cosmie
I think one of the more fundamental issues is the programmers access to that
conversation itself. I’ve seen this scenario be far more common when
developers try to get business context :
Management: “I want an app that does A.”
Programmer: “Alrighty. Can you give me more details on why you want that app
and what you’re hoping to achieve?”
Management: “No. Now how long will it take to get App A out the door?
Executive Foo said he wanted app A, so we need to give it to him ASAP.”
_Programmer feels satisfies they’ve at least tried, and any screwups are
managements fault. Scrambles to get App A out the door. Management comes back
with feedback_
Manager: “What is this? This isn’t what we asked for. It doesn’t even remotely
address Business Problem B and now Executive Foo is on the warpath after
championing this project and looking like a fool!”
_Management finds a way to convince Executive Foo it was all the overpaid,
useless developers that screwed up and reinforces the stereotype of IT being
an untrustworthy and frustrating blackhole of a cost center. Management saves
face and they pay a consultant to do it. The programmer is left dizzied by the
sudden political flak they were just blindsided by._
~~~
HumanDrivenDev
Ha! I'll take your word for it. Makes me think I would not last long at all in
that kind of workplace, as I'd go right over managers head to executive foo
with evidence if he pulled that on me.
~~~
cosmie
I've only worked in a place like that twice. Once (a large company), I didn't
last long. In the other (a growing company), the blame-shifting and credit-
stealing politics and the people who brought them in didn't last long.
In that situation, it's really a lose-lose for the developer. If they go over
their manager's head, they've just made a very unfortunate enemy. And as the
manager has more rapport and access to the executive, it's likely going to
wind up fruitless as the manager finagles doubt into your evidence (by leaning
on that existing relationship and handwaving misunderstandings and referencing
non-existent verbal conversations into the points of contention that you
raised).
And if they _don 't_ go over the manager's head, they now have an internal
reputation for incompetence that'll negatively impact the rest of their time
at that employer. So they're screwed either way.
At that point it's better to just leave rather than make waves. If you make
waves they can come back to drown you later on during your career or job
search. If you leave with little ado it stays more compartmentalized to that
toxic environment.
~~~
HumanDrivenDev
I'm glad I haven't experienced anything quite like that. Your decision to just
get out is probably the best one.
------
wslh
Great article. I have similar experiences in my market and many times I ended
up pointing to a Crunchbase page to defend the budget. It is not by chance
that companies like Uber and Spotify raised more than one billion. Even if the
customer will spend only a fraction in software they are not understanding how
much capital they need for their product.
I am not saying that you cannot compete with Uber in a smarter way but if you
only ask about an app then you are forgetting all the stuff that happens in
the back office.
------
gwbas1c
Learning to tell idea people to pound sand was the hardest, and most expensive
lesson, in my career.
The crux of this article is that it's important to quickly identify and reject
idea people. They just suck on your energy and waste your time going nowhere.
~~~
optimuspaul
What do you mean by "idea people"? Because I consider myself an idea person,
but I also make things and get things done. I'm afraid you are throwing the
good out with the bad... unless you have some other idea of what idea people
are... and maybe a better name for them that is less inclusive.
~~~
combatentropy
"Ideas are just a multiplier of execution,"
[https://sivers.org/multiply](https://sivers.org/multiply)
~~~
andrewflnr
What a breath of fresh air. I get just as tired of the "ideas are worthless"
people. This perfectly expresses why you need both.
------
BeetleB
The photos in the article provided no value to the content. I know the common
wisdom to get lots of page hits is to include fairly random pictures, but I do
tire of them. To the point that I find myself unconsciously discounting the
_content_ because my brain automatically assumes the article is more about
becoming more popular than providing useful content (and may have suppressed
content that would be unpopular).
------
iopuy
"you want a clone for eBay/Facebook/Amazon? You realize they have teams of
many thousands of people working on code bases over 15 years old right? And
you think a single person, me, is going to be able to replicate that in 3
months?"
~~~
craigsmansion
"you want a clone for eBay/Facebook/Amazon? You realize they have teams of
many thousands of people working on code bases over 15 years old right? And
you think a single person, me, is going to be able to replicate that in 3
months?"
"You can use Lisp if you want to."
"...I'll have the POC on your desk by next week."
~~~
user5994461
And it will take hundreds of people over years to go from the POC to an
equivalent product.
~~~
HumanDrivenDev
Because they'll do a costly re-write in python? :P
~~~
user5994461
Because it took hundreds of good developers to find one who was experienced
and was willing to work in lisp. /s
------
HumanDrivenDev
I have to wonder why they wrote this article.
I mean, it's a well written article, I enjoyed reading it. Great for a target
audience of developers.
But what will potential clients read when they see this? A company disclosing
details of (possibly confidential?) meetings, talking about how stupid their
ideas were. They don't name companies but they do give some very specific
details - and HK isn't a huge market.
------
antonkm
> I’ll eventually ask, “Which platform do you like to build on to start with?”
> One client answer was: “All — Android, iOS and web. And I want the mobile
> apps in native to make sure the responsiveness of the app is good.”
Maybe I'm misreading, but the client wanted a Yelpish kind of app. The right
play, in my book, would be convincing the client that a React Native app would
do. This is a really easy sell since that is actually what the client need.
Maybe the author's team aren't yet familiar with RN.
React Native is super snappy and is a great choice for MVPs. It's easy to
develop, the reusability is really high between platforms and the price tag is
usually quite low in comparison.
------
intrasight
My opinion is that any client that is serious, is putting together a team, has
a budget, and has real prospective customers is something I can get on board
with. I personally don't have to like the idea or think that it's going to
find a wider audience. Pretty much any billion dollar unicorn I would have
looked at their elevator pitch and said "I don't like the idea and I don't
think you are going to succeed".
------
a_c
"We want a [insert big name here] clone, how long does it take." is, in my
experience, a good indicator to move on.
------
dboreham
In our consultancy we refer to this kind of situation by similarity to the Mad
Man "Jai alai" episode (S3:E4)
------
mankash666
Why is an app agency judging the client's business model. If what the client
is asking for is legal, and if the agency can deliver, I'd think it a win-win
to make it happen.
Specifically, they should have cloned Uber for their client, and let the
markets decide.
------
jimrandomh
> It’s not cost-effective to build the app on all the platforms at once
> because it takes 3 times more effort to make a small change. We should start
> with just one and invest into others when the concept is proven to be
> successful.”
There are multiple development toolsets that will let you do this, without
tripling your effort. There are tradeoffs involved, but I think this request
was more reasonable than this article presents it as.
~~~
ksenzee
The article specifies that the customer didn't want a cross-platform
framework: "I want the mobile apps in native to make sure the responsiveness
of the app is good."
------
gnicholas
Note: this is not about cheques that were rejected from clients — it’s about
clients that were rejected.
~~~
matte_black
Agreed, I very much doubt any of these clients would have put up any serious
money upfront. My experience has always been they look for alternative deals
or financing such as “equity” or “revenue share”.
~~~
kevin_b_er
Or they offer "exposure"
------
edraferi
Thoughtful article highlighting common pitfalls of rookie app ideas.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Atebits - Tweetie for Mac - yvesrn
http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/
======
yvesrn
The first time I've seen that an iPhone app gets developed for the Mac. It's
usually the other way around.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Incremental Learning – A continuous learning approach (2018) - pps
https://kishorepv.github.io/The-value-of-Incremental_learning/
======
keiferski
I have been personally experimenting with what I call "drip learning" \-
essentially, I am trying to learn a large amount of non-urgent information
very slowly, piece by piece, over a very long timeline. For example, learning
all the letters of the Greek (or Hebrew, or Russian, or Armenian) alphabet. If
I sit down and attempt to learn them all it once, it quickly becomes
overwhelming and retention is low. But, if you simply learn one new letter per
day, it's very manageable - and you'll learn the entire alphabet in a month.
Combined with spaced repetition (Anki) to reinforce the memory, I think it's
extremely powerful. Anecdotally, it works well - I can recall all of these
items on demand, months later.
The next step (which I haven't quite figured out) is to multiply this across
multiple domains. I.e. every day, learn 1 French phrase, 1 Spanish phrase, 1
German phrase, and so on. In my (nonscientific) experience, this is more
effective than focusing on a single topic.
~~~
misiti3780
I like the idea but I think with languages it's better to stick with one till
you a certain level (maybe b1/b2) then move on.
If you are going to Italy soon you can memorize "non lo so" to say "I dont
know" very effectively. But if you are actually trying to learn and retain
"some" Italian, you probably need to know more like "lo" is a direct objective
pronoun for him/her/it and "so" is the verb essere conjugated in the present
tense for io.
~~~
xthestreams
Little correction: "so" is the conjugated verb "sapere" (to know)
~~~
misiti3780
yep - thanks!
------
burtonator
This is great. I'm actually working on an app that's literally designed as the
perfect incremental reading/learning platform:
[https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)
Here's how it works. You basically add everything you're reading to Polar.
Right now it supports PDF and captured web pages. It works offline and your
data is yours. It's a desktop app with a webapp+mobile coming soon (like 2
weeks).
Polar supports suspend and resume of reading with "pagemarks" which are
basically "boxes" covering multiple pages with a start and end.
[https://getpolarized.io/incremental-
reading.html](https://getpolarized.io/incremental-reading.html)
This way it's very very clear what you've read and what you have not.
While you're reading you can annotate and take notes directly in Polar.
This includes comments, highlights, but also flashcards.
The flashcards can be sync'd with Anki which means you get spaced repetition
built in so you NEVER forget anything.
Here's a screenshot of my current reading:
[https://i.imgur.com/jdnuhVB.png](https://i.imgur.com/jdnuhVB.png)
The progress bar on the right is how far I've read within that document.
All your annotations and highlights are yours. We support markdown export and
the on disk format is simple JSON.
It's also Open Source and we'll have a web and mobile version soon. Works on
Linux, MacOS and Windows.
It also supports cloud sync so if you have multiple computers you can keep all
your data in sync.
If you just want to avoid the cloud you can not use the cloud sync.
However, if you do, you can also use the web version which is coming out soon
and which also means you can use it on a tablet device.
~~~
IOT_Apprentice
looking forward to epub support as well.
~~~
burtonator
Working on it... need to build out a new reader though.
------
thisisit
This sounds like the "Compounding Knowledge" post from FarnamStreet last week:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19094502](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19094502)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Too much fun with implantable brain electrodes - caycep
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1905240
======
ASalazarMX
Didn't know the NEJM needed clickbait too. Paper title is "Fornix-Region Deep
Brain Stimulation–Induced Memory Flashbacks in Alzheimer’s Disease".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Launching a crowdsourcing startup - praveenaj
Hi, I'm planning to launch my crowd sourcing startup in a few weeks. I hope you guys will review it when I do, on HN :)<p>This will be a place for job seekers to find work by showcasing the skills they possess. (more concern on personal branding :)<p>So I'm planning to do this launch in two stages--i.e first get job seekers registered and when the no. of users hits a particular milestone then let people post jobs, since I don't want job posters to lose their expectations.<p>What do you guys think about my approach?<p>Thanks in advance!<p>Cheers!
======
rcavezza
We thought of doing something like this for college students with
crowdmarkup.com a while ago - didn't follow through after the first lean
startup machine - best of luck.
My Suggestion - Build a 1 sided tool to get jobseeker contact info - solve 1
side of the chicken/egg problem first. Maybe some type of resume critique
application - checks for spelling errors, makes some simple suggestions like
using action words and using more qualitative numbers. Maybe matches keywords
in a job description to the resume and gives a match score.
Also, make sure you know the # of job seekers you want in advance so you know
the milestone you're looking for and it's not an arbitrary number.
Finally, make sure when users submit their resumes for the critique, they
consent that it might also go into the next version of the application.
------
Papirola
chicken and egg problem: why would job-seekers join if there are no jobs?
~~~
praveenaj
hehe ya. I have to start from somewhere, so decided to have job seeker
profiles first :)
~~~
Mz
I really suspect that's not going to work. You need to find some means to
populate the site with something of value to someone to start attracting one
side or the other. I don't know what that would be. I've done a bit of reading
up on this topic in recent weeks/months. I gathered a few links here at one
time: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126209>
Here is a link to another discussion about the topic that has links to other
good discussions: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2239281>
~~~
praveenaj
wow. didn't know others are also having this problem :) thanks for the reply.
------
Brian_Wang
Gread ides.It likes the ODesk. Do you have enough resources, I want to join
your team, Can I ?
~~~
praveenaj
will let you know if i want in the future. but now im expecting your views...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Joys of Unix – NSA Cryptolog (1978) - Mithrandir
https://archive.org/stream/cryptolog_42#page/n16/mode/1up
======
pdw
Interesting that he praises the RAND editor. It's a branch of editors that has
entirely died out as far as I can tell, on Unix at least. The source code for
RAND E19 can still be found, but I couldn't get it running.
~~~
BuildTheRobots
I also failed to find recent information on RAND's "e" editor, but from
reading the article the interface/commands seem extremely similar to Vi.
------
nl
Crytolog magazines are always interesting.
One thing that intrigued me were the mentions of the POGOL language. There
seem to be no mentions of it on the internet, which makes me suspect it is
either an arcane language specific to a 3-letter agency. That agency may
either be IBM or NSA.. both seem equally as likely.
~~~
pja
There were a _lot_ of ALGOL variants around in the 1960s & 70s if you look at
the Wikipedia page for ALGOL, including one called GOGOL for the PDP-1. My
first guess would be that POGOL was an ALGOL-a-like for the IBM-360, perhaps
developed internally by the NSA?
~~~
nl
I would assume an ALGOL variant.
Given that this was in '78 (which is quite late in ALGOL's lifetime), it's
possibly the "P" referred to the P-porting kit for Pascal[1]?
That's speculation of course, but the ALGOL name variations generally did mean
something.
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)#T...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_\(programming_language\)#The_Pascal-
P_system)
------
mml
All this on a minicomputer that costs a mere $300,000? No way!
Off the top of my head, I'd guess that would run you $6m today.
------
BuildTheRobots
Does anyone happen to know why the shell got named a "shell"?
~~~
Alupis
Just speculation, but perhaps it's because it "wraps" the kernel. ie. the
kernel's shell...
~~~
rootbear
That was always my understanding. In older mainframe operating systems, the
command interpreter was more integral to the OS. In Unix, it's just a process.
Its function is to run programs for the user, so it is in some sense a shell
around the OS seen by the user.
~~~
smhenderson
That's the way I see it and to extend the analogy a bit further Unix, et el.
are like a hermit crab that can trade one shell for another if there is a good
reason to do so.
------
jasim
"I became, in fact, less and less of a programmer at all, and more and more
simply a procedure-writer who tacked together canned routines or previously
debugged POGOL steps to do dull things in a dull way". This was when the
author had to work with layers of accidental complexity of the IBM 360s,
before discovering Unix. It gives hope to know that such complexity existed
even in 1978, but that it was simply bad engineering, as the advent of Unix
later proved.
I marked two snippets from Coders at Work where Guy Steele and Ken Thompson
both lament the increasing number of layers in modern computing. It is perhaps
inevitable, but it is worth wondering at.
##
Seibel: What has changed the most in the way you think about programming now,
vs. then? Other than learning that bubble sort is not the greatest sorting
technique.
Steele: I guess to me the biggest change is that nowadays you can't possibly
know everything that's going on in the computer. There are things that are
absolutely out of your control because it's impossible to know everything
about all the software. Back in the '70s a computer had only 4,000 words of
memory. It was possible to do a core dump and inspect every word to see if it
was what you expected. It was reasonable to read the source listings of the
operating system and see how that worked. And I did that—I studied the disk
routines and the card-reader routines and wrote variants of my own. I felt as
if I understood how the entire IBM 1130 worked. Or at least as much as I cared
to know. You just can't do that anymore.
##
Seibel: Reading the history of Unix, it seems like you guys basically invented
an operating system because you wanted a way to play with this computer. So in
order to do what today might be a very basic thing, such as write a game or
something on a computer, well, you had to write a whole operating system. You
needed to write compilers and build a lot of infrastructure to be able to do
anything. I'm sure all of that was fun for its own sake. But I wonder if maybe
the complexity of modern programming that we talked about before, with all
these layers that fit together, is that just the modern equivalent of, “Well,
first step is you have to build your own operating system”? At least you don't
have to do that anymore.
Thompson: But it's worse than that. The operating system is not only given;
it's mandatory. If you interview somebody coming out of computer science right
now, they don't understand the underlying computing at all. It's really,
really scary how abstract they are from what a computer is or even the theory
of computing. They just don't understand it.
Seibel: I was thinking about your advice to your son to go into biology
instead of computing. Isn't there something about programming—the intellectual
fun of defining a process that can be enacted for you by these magical
machines—that's the same whether you're operating very close to the hardware
or at an abstract level?
Thompson: It's addictive. But you wouldn't want to tell your kid to go into
crack. And I think it's changed. It might just be my aging, but it seems like
when you're just building another layer on top of another layer on top of
another layer, you don't really get the benefit of writing, say, a DFA. I
think by necessity algorithms—new algorithms are just getting more complex
over time. A new algorithm to do something is based on 50 other little
algorithms. Back when I was a kid you were doing these little algorithms and
they were fun. You could understand them without it being an accounting job
where you divide it up into cases and this case is solved by this algorithm
that you read about but you don't really know and on and on. So it's
different. I really believe it's different and most of it is because the whole
thing is layered over time and we're dealing with layers. It might be that I'm
too much of a curmudgeon to understand layers.
~~~
ashark
This got me thinking: I wonder if places like St. John's College[1] might
eventually take up teaching directly from Turing and von Neumann. Maybe one
day those sorts of great-books focused liberal arts colleges will be the only
places left teaching the low-level stuff and the basic principles of
computing, outside a handful of hyper-focused engineering programs designed to
meet the limited need for some people in the industry who understand it well.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_(Annapoli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_\(Annapolis/Santa_Fe\))
(I can't speak to the rigor of that program from direct experience, but look
at the reading list—it's not all the fluffy philosophy and literary criticism
that many imagine when they think of liberal arts programs. They cover the
major Greek mathematicians in the first two years, then it's off to
enlightenment-era mathematics—John von Neumann or Turing, and maybe even
something like TAoCP, wouldn't be out of place)
~~~
cafard
The on St. John's grad I know well used to have a copy of a book including "On
Computable Numbers" on his mantelpiece. He has worked in the tech business for
many years.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Porn Stars Want to Know: Why Did Facebook Delete Me? - lkrubner
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/02/porn-stars-want-to-know-why-did-facebook-delete-me.html
======
dozzie
Somebody has just realized that it sucks not to have control over their own
content. Facebook (or Google for that matter) provides _free_ service, so they
have pretty much total control over whom to refuse or withdraw the service.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What do you use to access HN on your phone? - charlieirish
======
Polyphonie
An iPhone HN client called MiniHack. There are quite a number of these type of
apps but most of them are just readers. MiniHack allows comment.
~~~
joshschreuder
Just checked it out, looks good to me. I am in fact replying via the app. Only
thing is I can't upvote you because it says the upvote failed.
~~~
rahimnathwani
It didn't used to do that. I'm not sure whether the upvotes actually fail, or
whether they just appear to fail.
~~~
avalaunch
I use minihack and tested it. They just appear to fail.
------
codegeek
I have found 2 good ones:
[http://hn.premii.com](http://hn.premii.com) \- I like it the most from
functionality perspective but it crashes often on my Android phone.
[http://ihackernews.com](http://ihackernews.com) \- Works great on my android
phone but it has not been updated with recent menu changes in HN (like Show HN
etc)
Overall, I have settled with ihackernews.com for now because hn.premii.com
crashes too often on my phone at least.
------
mcpoyles
I use Hacker News (YC) by thekingshorses. The design is alot better then most
the stuff out there. My only beef would be that it stops loading content after
a few pages. Sometimes I like to binge read and would love to go deeper into
the results.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn&...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn&hl=en)
------
jobaro
Started using Hacker Times ([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-
times/id939293040](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-times/id939293040))
recently on my iPhone & iPad. Doesn't let you post though.
------
bgar
HackerQueue is pretty good [http://hackerqueue.io](http://hackerqueue.io), it
also shows lobster.rs and /r/programming.
------
brudgers
Firefox on Android. IE on WP 7.8. Whatever the browser was on Symbian 60
before that.
Clearly, I've missed the rational behind using an app rather than the web.
------
dawson
I use [http://newsyc.me/](http://newsyc.me/) (it's open source too, iOS only
though)
------
vld
[http://hn.premii.com](http://hn.premii.com) \- really wonderful
~~~
hkailahi
I'll second this. I actually use the site to view on my laptop, as well as the
app.
------
moioci
HackerNode serves the purpose, but I can't say I've tried any others.
------
baristaGeek
The browser, specifically Chrome. This is a huge call for a HN native app.
------
hashtag
Chrome. I try avoid using 3rd party apps to access HN.
------
Arnt
hnapp to make a feed, then bazqux and news+ to read the feed. Works well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Quick SEO Tip: Set Preferred Domain in Google Webmaster Tools - mdolon
http://devgrow.com/quick-seo-tip-set-preferred-domain-in-google-webmaster-tools/
======
eli
If I already do the redirect, do I still need to set a preferred domain?
~~~
mdolon
I did, and I think it can only help (it certainly can't hurt to). The main
scenario I can see this being of importance is if you recently started
redirecting to a single domain and Google has previously crawled your site,
setting a preferred domain may help to regain your page ranking.
------
danskil
Are there any relative merits to standardizing on a www sub-domain versus
standardizing on non-www sub-domain?
~~~
mdolon
There was a huge debate on this a few years back, however most of that seems
to have died down now. Matt Cutts discussed it a few years ago:
[http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-
canonicalizatio...](http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-
canonicalization/)
I think it's a matter of personal preference - just be consistent with
whatever you pick.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple already has several ARM powered laptops drifting around internally - sperglord
https://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10191963&cid=53786433
======
kstrauser
Fascinating, but take it with a grain of salt. One anonymous poster didn't
just violate, but shredded and used as hamster mulch, their NDA to report
iPad-with-a-keyboard? It's plausible, but I think most of us here could have
written that comment as a speculative exercise.
~~~
Analemma_
That AC could be both right and wrong. He could be totally right about the
existence of those prototypes, and I bet it's true (it'd be more surprising if
Apple _didn 't_ have prototype ARM laptops floating around). But it doesn't
mean he knows anything about actual plans to get these out the door. There are
HUGE barriers to that happening at the moment, the cost/benefit ratio is
extremely high. It sounds to me like this AC is correctly reporting the facts
but incorrectly extrapolating his own story out of it.
~~~
ColanR
> From what I was told, there's a huge push to get this stuff out the door as
> soon as they think the market will accept it.
Looks like a) he's not extrapolating anything, and b) the AC knew those
huuuuge barriers existed when he wrote his post.
------
bsharitt
Makes sense. Allegedly they had pretty much every version OS X after Rhapsody
continuing to run on x86 in some capacity until the x86 version of OS X
finally came out. Keeping an ARM version around seems like a no brainer.
I suspect this isn't being held in case the Mac market falls apart, but in
case the iPad market starts losing to Surface and friends.
~~~
xoa
Exactly, in fact there's even more to it then that. Particularly at Apple's
scale, maintaining a codebase across multiple architectures internally, even
if there is absolutely zero foreseeable intention to use them, offers
significant value. Strategically of course it creates some hedge against over
dependence on any single supplier, it's not just "the Mac market falling
apart" so much as Intel/AMD dropping the ball or becoming unable to go in a
direction Apple wanted (as happened with PowerPC). By the same token it helps
maintain some level of economic negotiating position, even if Apple faces what
is effectively right now a single key supplier situation. The mere fact that
they _could_ switch if absolutely forced to is of use.
Non-strategic value though is probably just as important as any of this stuff:
as probably most of HN knows well, keeping a codebase portable can be quite
helpful in terms of plain and simple quality. Obscure bugs or bad patterns
that are hard to find on one architecture can be a lot easier to identify on
another. It can help promote discipline and good practices. Portability I
think is really a constant process rather then a goal or single thing, it's a
lot easier to have worked on it all along for years before you need it then
try to "port" something later because without the constant pressure of staying
portable it's all too easy to start falling into dependence on features (or
worse, quirks) of a single arch and build up more and more technical debt.
Then when the "bill" (not necessarily just in terms of money but sheer
developer hours) finally comes due it's effectively unpayable.
~~~
walterbell
Should this apply to cloud provider portability?
~~~
derefr
The problem with portability between "clouds" (IaaS/PaaS providers) is that
many of them have features (e.g. object storage; Dynamo-based distributed
tables; reliable message-queueing; health checks connected to load-balancing
and hypervisor lifecycle control),
• which are "obvious" and perhaps even _necessary_ for productive coding of
distributed systems software; and
• which have _huge_ economies of scale (one shared cluster for all customers
beats the pants off the performance+availability of your company's puny little
three-node private cluster), and yet...
• which other major clouds _don 't support at all_.
Effectively, all the "clouds" currently only offer between 30% and 90% of what
you'd _want_ in something that called itself "a cloud." Nobody has a "whole
cloud" (AWS is closest, but still not there.)
Designing for portability between these clouds would be like writing assembly
intended to be portable between processor architectures, when only one
architecture had an ALU, only one had registers, and only one could
conditionally branch. It would be madness.
\---
Personally, I feel like, to be able to sensibly design for portability between
cloud providers, they'd need a lot more features in common than they have now.
Maybe we could invent a minimum common standard to hold the cloud providers'
stacks to—maybe a small one at first, with a growing list of expectations over
time; or maybe a "core" spec, and then a number of "levels" of support atop
it. Then you could say you've targeted "IaaS Level 3", and clouds could claim
to support that, and cloud-abstraction libraries like Fog could actually do
something useful.
------
mcphage
They better have ARM laptops done or nearly so. If they didn't, I would
conclude that they have no idea what the fuck they're doing anymore.
Although if the software is through the Mac App Store only, then... well, it
won't be a very useful device. I hope that they're looking to replace the
Macbook with an ARM device, not create a new Chromebook.
------
breatheoften
I'm sure they will still have a compiler on the system -- it has to be
possible to compile code for this machine from source and run it ...
As I think about it -- wouldn't app store (if well run, then it provides the
best possible security for distribution of binaries without source code and
the most consumer friendly commercial licensing model) + open source eco-
system (self-compiled -- source only distribution) pretty much the best
possible world for users? There is (kind of) an open-source argument for
making binary distribution without source onerous or impossible...
Perhaps they'll bundle or distribute an official version of something like
homebrew to make installing open-source software as easy as possible and maybe
even provide a way for binaries generated from these packages to become signed
and distributed as binaries as an optimization?
I don't think I would mind app-store being the only way to get pre-compiled
binaries if augmented with a well-supported open-source ecosystem for
utilities that need to venture beyond the capabilities of the app-store
sandbox. There is a technical argument for making any software that needs to
operate beyond the sandbox subject to source code auditing simply because of
the potential attack surface ... I wouldn't necessarily mind if subscription
pricing was the only business model for such sandbox-spanning utilities --
continuance maintenance (and ongoing revenue) for software that works beyond
the sandbox is needed from a security perspective ...
------
0x0
If the future is supposedly going to be this locked down, I wonder what will
happen to the internet when there is no hardware left where you can develop
stuff like apache-httpd and php and mysqld.
~~~
api
Mac is dead for developers and pro users if this is the case. My current Mac
will be my last, and I'll be happy to give my money to Dell instead and anyone
else selling more open hardware.
One of our devs just got a new XPS 15. It's a gorgeous machine. Amazing. First
time I've envied a non-Apple machine since the early 2000s. I still marginally
prefer the Mac track pad but the rest is on par or better.
~~~
mi100hael
Can confirm. I sold my MBP and bought myself one of the new Dell 15" developer
editions. Trackpad is about on par with the prior physically-clicking mac
trackpads. I run Fedora and the only thing that doesn't work is hot-plugging
the Ethernet adapter. Otherwise all the usual Linux pitfalls like sleep/wake,
wifi, hidpi, touch screen, etc. work fine out of the box. No plans to switch
away.
~~~
sofaofthedamned
I did exactly the same with an xps 13. Gave my Macbook Retina to my
girlfriend, as the new models were not compelling at all. Fedora 25 is lovely
on it and I can run docker and KVM on it natively. I will buy another Mac if
they give me a proper value proposition.
------
esturk
You have to live in the future to invent for the future. These are probably
being used by product manager to see the deficiencies for the next feature
upgrades to make it perfect.
------
digikata
An interesting product line split might be putting the Macbook line onto ARM
for portability & battery life, and keeping the pro or air & pro line on
Intel.
------
TazeTSchnitzel
If we assume for a moment that this is true (which is a huge assumption), it
doesn't mean they'll necessarily release a product quite like it.
------
dplgk
I don't know how CPUs and instructions work but wouldn't this mean that every
app has to be recompiled for ARM or run in an emulator?
~~~
detaro
Yes, it would mean that.
~~~
ams6110
In the NeXT days, a program could be compiled as a "fat" binary that would run
on multiple supported CPU architectures.
It made things easier for developers because they only had to ship one set of
installation media regardless of the CPU the user had.
~~~
Turing_Machine
This capability still exists, and is in fact often used for libraries. The
lipo command-line tool lets you bundle code compiled for multiple
architectures into the same physical file (or extract the code for a specific
architecture, etc.).
------
mahyarm
If this is true, I sure hope to god developers will have some performant build
machine edition. It would make CI even more painful for iOS dev.
------
b1gtuna
I'd love to see a worthy competition to Intel.
~~~
allengeorge
The AC points out that the chips were made by Intel.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DotSpots: Spot the Truth, Connect the Dots - matt1
http://dotspots.com/#dots/
======
Tichy
I'd like to know more before signing up. But maybe that is because it is still
in beta.
------
Ai02
Maybe sign up to know more?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Examples of open-source projects which became closed/proprietary? - gitgud
Are there any examples of Open-source projects - which for some reason - became closed-source?<p>Theoretically the project could be forked and continued as open-source, but I'm just wondering if there are many <i>known</i> cases of this and if it's a valid concern...
======
andygrunwald
This guy wrote about his open source project which he made closed source:
[https://medium.com/@kitze/github-stars-wont-pay-your-
rent-8b...](https://medium.com/@kitze/github-stars-wont-pay-your-
rent-8b348e12baed)
------
kick
MongoDB.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Eligible Receiver: NSA’s successful 1997 hack of the U.S. military - secfirstmd
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/03/inside_the_nsa_s_shockingly_successful_simulated_hack_of_the_u_s_military.single.html
======
dsl
This was my favorite part, and a good lesson for every startup. Skip over all
the overrated recent Stanford grads and Box alumni, _THIS_ is the guy you want
to hire:
"Only one person in the entire Department of Defense, a technical officer in a
Marine unit in the Pacific, responded to the attack in an effective manner:
seeing that something odd was happening with the computer server, he pulled it
offline at his own initiative."
~~~
Afforess
Absolutely, and bravo to the officer. If you are ever unsure, pull the plug.
The safest computer is one turned off.
~~~
theoh
I'm not sure that was implied. He could have used ifconfig.
Now that you mention it, though, I thought of an apparently notorious scene
from NCIS: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc-
FuE41kZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc-FuE41kZU)
~~~
dfc
You think your computer might be compromised but you still trust your binaries
and OS to operate as intended?
~~~
theoh
No.
~~~
dfc
So probably not ifconfig...
------
mariodiana
The most telling part, for me, is here:
> Everyone in the room was stunned, not least John Hamre, who had been sworn
> in as deputy secretary of defense at the end of July. Before then, Hamre had
> been the Pentagon’s comptroller, where he’d gone on a warpath to slash the
> military budget, especially the part secretly earmarked for the NSA. Through
> the 1980s, as a staffer for the Congressional Budget Office and the Senate
> Armed Services Committee, Hamre had grown to distrust the NSA: It was a
> dodgy outfit, way too covert, floating in the gray area between “military”
> and “intelligence” and evading the strictures on both. Hamre didn’t know
> anything about information warfare, and he didn’t care.
I say, bravo to the NSA for uncovering the vulnerability. But, the cynic in my
wonders how long anyone over there had suspected this, but never acted on it
until faced with the threat of having feed pulled from the trough. My
prejudices lead me to think of government as tending towards the
dysfunctional. So, I worry if the same sort of thing isn't going on right now.
~~~
mjevans
That's surely a part of the US government that is in dire need of more checks
and balances.
Another even more telling thing revealed in this article; the very end where
they realize that /no one/ is 'in charge' of fixing this. (Arguably because
they ALL are. This is all what should be general OpSec training!)
~~~
jessaustin
Profiles in "leadership"...
------
jackgavigan
The unmentioned background to Eligible Receiver is that the previous summer,
the National Security Studies Quarterly published a paper by Eric Sterner
entitled _Digital Pearl Harbor: National Security in the Information Age_.
------
nxzero
Curious thing to me is at what point do you switch from saying this was a test
to this is the real thing; meaning that you task the NSA to hack someone, then
blame it on for example North Korea, China, etc.
~~~
jessaustin
It's possible we've already seen this with the Sony hack. Even if the loudest
adherents to this theory have been somewhat discredited this year, nothing
produced by Mr. Fart et al. contradicts it in convincing fashion.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stop Using Toilet Paper - elijahparker
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/opinion/toilet-paper-hoarding-bidets.html
======
temporallobe
Paywalled. Or at least you have to create a “free account” to read it. In any
case one doesn’t have to read the article to understand its ridiculous
premise.
~~~
mimixco
Turning off JavaScript in your browser will get you past the NYT paywall and
many others.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A few thoughts on SSL Search - jlhamilton
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-secure-search/
======
pwim
In the post, the author mentions he doesn't want hotels or cafes snooping on
his search. However, I fail to see why search is any more important than the
results a user visits (which most likely will not be ssl).
If someone truly wants privacy, they should use something like tor.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Efene - a little more object oriented (a language for the erlang vm) - marianoguerra
http://efene.tumblr.com/post/1146316926/a-little-more-object-oriented
======
marianoguerra
I'm the creator of efene, if you have any question let me know.
------
extension
I like the idea of offering a choice of syntax for the same language.
Generally speaking, I don't see why syntax and semantics need to be as coupled
as they are.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
It’s the beginning of the end of satellite TV in the US - rmason
https://qz.com/1480089/att-just-declared-the-end-of-the-satellite-tv-era-in-the-us/
======
bradknowles
Cable TV was a way to escape the crippling hegemony of broadcast TV. Along the
way, it consolidated into its own new crippling hegemony.
Satellite was a way to escape the new crippling hegemony of cable TV.
Then the wireline companies bought them, and killed them, because they
threatened the cash cow.
Internet now offers a better way to escape the crippling hegemony of cable,
except the wireline companies are making sure that they are the only effective
providers of Internet.
There is nothing new here. Just old imperialists who want to make sure that
their empire doesn’t die, so that they can continue to exploit the peasants.
------
nickthemagicman
It's the end if TV in the US. When my grandma has a subscription to hulu and
Netflix instead of cable you know the market is on the way out.
Why not make internet sattelites like Elon is doing?
------
nichos
I think there's a renaissance of antenna TV. I get several channels in my area
and they seem to add a few each year. Pair that with a DVR and there's always
something to watch. We still have sling, but don't use it often.
------
mpalfrey
Satellite is still great. You can get a shit ton of bandwidth to a load of
people, really pretty easily. Awesome for developing nations.
The downside is cost. Building them is expensive, as is launching them. Most
people in developed nations have half decent (20Mbit+) internet access now, so
do we need them?
When you can get 4k Netflix which looks great at 15Mbit or so, satellite is a
little redundant these days (and I _love_ satellites and worked in the TV
industry from 2008 until 2015!).
------
JamesAdir
With the proliferation of cheap launches and satellites we are only at the
beginning of satellite tv.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: newsola - top news stories at a glance - kirchhoff
http://www.newsola.com
======
nuttendorfer
Was instantly reminded of this: <http://newsmap.jp/>
~~~
drats
Seems to be a very direct clone, down to the colours, but using a different
back-end system.
~~~
etcet
It's a different front-end too (JS instead of Flash). But the author not even
mentioning Newsmap in the about is low.
~~~
kirchhoff
You're right, that was an error on my part. I have added a new comment.
------
PeterWhittaker
My first few reactions were "why can't I X" only to discover I could in fact
X: Select my country, eliminate categories, etc. The only thing left is to
perhaps rearrange the categories (business, then national, then world, e.g.,
but that's a quibble).
Zooming the page increases/decreases the number of stories per category, which
is quite cool (if perhaps counter-intuitive, but OK). But would it be possible
to have an absolute "no smaller than" minimum size for the menu? (I've zoomed
in a few times via "ctrl -" and the menu bar is now unreadably small.)
On a related note, as I zoom in, I get more stories, but the font for existing
stories remains the same as before the zoom, with their blocks occupying
roughly the same amount of screen space as before the zoom; this means that
newly added stories are in tiny blocks and tiny fonts: as I zoom, new stories
become unreadably small.
It would be good to have an absolute "no smaller than" minimum for newly added
stories as well, scaling down the size of existing stories; I'm OK with
different font sizes for relative importance, but existing stories should
decrease in size to accommodate new stories as I zoom to add more.
EDIT -- It would also be nice to be able to close particular boxes (display an
X in the top right corner when I hover there?) and have that story replaced
with another from that category.
(And it would be waaaay cool if there was some way to mark stories as seen and
to not display them again... ...when I revisit the page, I only see things new
since the last time, or not displayed the last time. That way, the page is
always new. No idea how to do this without a server/account on your end, but
it could be cool....)
Cool app. I am adding it to my regularly checked folder of news sites.
~~~
kirchhoff
I had not considered zoom functionality at all. I'm not sure that it's
possible to specify that an element shouldn't be resized (the menu), I'll have
to investigate.
Your suggestions are great, I will try to implement them, thanks.
~~~
PeterWhittaker
The more I use newsola, the more I like it. Do you have a donation page? I
will gladly cough up $$ for features I like.
I'd like to be able to get the unique union of two feeds, i.e., the union of
www.newsola.com/#/ca/tc
and
www.newsola.com/#/us/tc
without any duplicates.
That way, I would have three bookmarks:
<http://www.newsola.com/#/ca/w,n,b> \- my default Canada-centric news page
<http://www.newsola.com/#/ca/tc/UNION/#/us/tc> \- for tech
www.newsola.com/#/ca/s/PLUS/#/ca/e/UNION/#/us/e - for sports and entertainment
(emphasis on CDN sport, i.e., more hockey, less baseball, with US and CA
entertainment - in fact, I could add Britain too, e.g., to keep up with
Blake's 7 and Red Dwarf news).
Make any sense? Not sure how this might work, but I'll play PHB and throw
impossible features at you as a challenge! :->
(I'm not sure why "Romney, Santorum battle in Michigan" is such a large
business item in my CA/B feed, but OK, I can live with that... :->)
~~~
kirchhoff
Combining multiple countries shouldn't be a problem, but I'll have to modify
the UI a bit.
Sports subcategories I've looked at as well, but it starts to get messy and I
wanted to keep everything simple.
I don't think I could accept donations, but I'll try to add those features
when I have time!
Thanks
------
kirchhoff
I should mention that this is essentially a clone of the excellent NewsMap
(www.newsmap.jp), but written in JS instead of Flash.
------
LefterisJP
Looks nice, I would recommend it to my friends for a quick glance of news. But
I would like to bring the attention of the author to the comment of
nuttendorfer. The two sites seem very similar and you should either mention it
somewhere, or try to differentiate yours in the design part
~~~
kirchhoff
I have added a comment reflecting this.
------
rshigeta
i like the design - i don't think the animation adds much though. For all the
stuff that's going on in the world and how the other aggregators behave, i
think that just 5-6 stories showing up is not enough when I click sometimes.
Your categories are a little weak "Lin" shows up in news of the World, Apple
shows up in National. Keep tweaking - there is definitely room for a better
news aggregator and being able to easily switch to other national editions is
great!
------
swah
How do you decide which stories are more important? Would be interesting if
you let users curate and present their own newsola frontpages.
~~~
kirchhoff
The stories are taken from Google News who themselves aggregrate stories from
news sources. The "importance" is defined by the number of media outlets
covering a particular story.
------
miles_matthias
I'd like it more if apple-mobile-web-app-capable was set. But nice work!
~~~
kirchhoff
I experimented with that, but if you click a link from the "app" it loads the
browser, with no easy way back to the app.
------
kirchhoff
Should work cross browser / device. Any comments would be welcomed.
------
MichaelApproved
On iPhone, when I click about, the contact section is cut off.
------
vixen99
Colorful!
------
pghimire
Looks awesome. How are you seeding the stories?
~~~
kirchhoff
They are taken from the Google News RSS feeds.
~~~
PeterWhittaker
Any chance of integrating the "Top Stories" section?
~~~
kirchhoff
Indeed - it is on my todo list.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sheep logic – We think we are wolves but we are sheep - Melchizedek
http://epsilontheory.com/sheep-logic/
======
Nomentatus
As the old saying goes, "Sheep are freer than human beings because they get to
think whatever they want, just as long as the stay with the herd." [Whereas we
have to herd even with our thoughts.]
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mercury News laying off about quarter of newsroom? - danielha
http://venturebeat.com/2007/06/01/mercury-news-laying-off-about-quarter-of-newsroom/
======
NickDouglas
People from both the Merc and the Chronicle talked to me about doing work for
them; I've heard both are laying off a good chunk of the staff. The
inevitability of this was one of the reasons I didn't pursue either. (I hope I
can do enough online video to make the same thing happen with TV networks.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bitcoin Outlook Is Sunny as Creator Emerges from Shadows - _Codemonkeyism
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-02/bitcoin-outlook-is-sunny-as-creator-emerges-from-shadows-chart
======
_Codemonkeyism
Looks like the mainstream business press seas Wright different than HN or
Reddit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Are there any open-source projects related to cancer research? - cimi_
======
jonjacky
I worked on Prism, a radiation therapy treatment planning program. It's a
physics simulation with 3D graphics and lots of data management used to
customize radiation therapy treatments for each patient. It's a big system
with stringent requirements for accuracy and correctness.
Some HN readers may be interested to know that Prism is written in Common
Lisp. It is one of the largest and most featureful Lisp programs I know of.
For many years Prism was the sole planning system used at the University of
Washington Medical Center. It is still used there for the cases that can't be
handled by the commercial system they now have. It has also been used at some
other medical centers, as a platform for research projects that require access
to system internals -- which the commercial planning systems do not provide.
The project page is [http://www.radonc.washington.edu/research/cancer-
informatics...](http://www.radonc.washington.edu/research/cancer-
informatics/prism/)
According to that page, it is covered by the Lisp Lesser GNU Public License,
LLGPL.
~~~
jonjacky
PS - Prism includes some separable components that could be use in
applications other than radiation therapy. There are a server and client for
DICOM, a network protocol for images (from CT and MRI scanners etc.) and other
medical data including radiation therapy prescriptions and treatment records.
There is also SLIK, a GUI toolkit for Common Lisp and X Windows.
------
jeggers5
Not exactly sure if this is what you're looking for, but it's the best I could
find :P [http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news-IN-Open-source-
Cyber...](http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news-IN-Open-source-
Cyberinfrastructure-to-Aggregate-Cancer-Research-Data-020910.aspx)
------
aastaneh
The NIH caBIG project site hosts a ton of such projects:
<http://gforge.nci.nih.gov/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
On the Security of Password Manager Database Formats (2012) [pdf] - monort
https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/files/6487/pwvault.pdf
======
jeremyt
[http://keepass.info/help/kb/sec_issues.html](http://keepass.info/help/kb/sec_issues.html)
Problem. In their paper 'On The Security of Password Manager Database
Formats', P. Gasti and K. B. Rasmussen have presented attacks on the KDB and
KDBX file formats based on unauthenticated header data. For KDB, this issue
has allowed silent data removal attacks. For KDBX, the issue has allowed
silent data corruption attacks. Both were minor security issues
(confidentiality was not compromised).
Status. Header data authentication has been introduced for both KDB and KDBX
in KeePass 1.24 and 2.20, in order to prevent the attacks. Also see the
release notes KeePass 1.24 and 2.20 Header Authentication. P. Gasti and K. B.
Rasmussen published their paper in a responsible disclosure process, and the
defenses in KeePass have been implemented before the issues were presented to
the public.
------
keehun
It there a similar study done more recently on this exact topic? Would love to
know if the problems revealed in this paper have been fixed in 1Password and
others
~~~
tjl
They've definitely been fixed in 1Password. I think they were fixed in the
next version after the paper. They've discussed it pretty openly on their
blog, but it was shortly after the paper was released and that's been a few
years.
------
loop2
For the record, KeePass added header authentication after (thanks to) this
paper.
~~~
briHass
Also, Dominik responded to claims made in a (unfounded) post here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9727297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9727297)
with a quick blurb:
[http://keepass.info/help/kb/sec_issues.html](http://keepass.info/help/kb/sec_issues.html)
I think KeePass with the key file option (not readable by user accounts, run
KP as admin) is the best solution on Windows I've found.
------
drdaeman
A pity it doesn't include analysis of using gpg-encrypted file
(pwd.sh/passbox-style) or files (pass-style).
------
Digit-Al
I've been using Password Safe for years. Nice to see verification that it is
as secure as I thought it was.
------
AdmiralAsshat
This paper appears to precede the rise of LastPass. I'd be curious how it
stacks against the rest of them.
~~~
chmars
LastPass got hacked just this year:
[http://lifehacker.com/lastpass-hacked-time-to-change-your-
ma...](http://lifehacker.com/lastpass-hacked-time-to-change-your-master-
password-1711463571)
------
iraphael
I'm new to infosec and I'm having a bit of trouble understanding how
PasswordSafe is able to modify the master password without re-encrypting the
entire database with the new salt.
The only scenario I see this happening is if, upon the creation of a new
master password, PasswordSafe encrypts the header (with the old password).
This way, when the user enters their new password, PS uses it to decrypt the
header, and then uses the old password (stored in the header) to decrypt the
database. This would make it easy for someone with access to the old password
and the database to simply decrypt it.
Is this how it works? I can't think of any other way it would be able to not
re-encrypt the database with the new password. Plus the lingo/acronyms in the
paper are going a bit over my head.
~~~
ryan-c
Generally these things work by creating a master key to encrypt the data. The
master key is then encrypted with a key derived from the password. To change
the password the master key just needs to be reencrypted.
~~~
zwp
This is correct. For v3, with P' the key derived from stretching the password:
"2.6 B1 and B2 are two 128-bit blocks encrypted with Twofish [TWOFISH] using
P' as the key, in ECB mode. These blocks contain the 256 bit random key K that
is used to encrypt the actual records. (This has the property that there is no
known or guessable information on the plaintext encrypted with the passphrase-
derived key that allows an attacker to mount an attack that bypasses the key
stretching algorithm.)"
------
sigma2015
Bruce Schneier's PasswordSafe (according to this paper the safest of all those
considered):
[http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/](http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/)
Available for:
\- Windows
\- Linux
\- Android
~~~
gpvos
Works pretty well under Wine on Mac OS X too. (Very sporadically, it locks up
for me; probably Wine's fault.)
------
currysausage
_> Google Chrome stores usernames and passwords in an SQLite database file in
the user profile directory. This database provides neither secrecy nor
integrity._
Chrome has since implemented OS-level security, the SQLite database contains
ciphertext instead of plain passwords.
Is this encryption directly related to my Windows password? Can I transfer the
"Login Data" database to another PC with the same password? Or is my password
only a passphrase for a longer key?
------
0x0
I think it's a huge shame that Chrome has moved away from integrating with the
OSX keychain / Keychain Access since v45. Apparently they argued Safari used
the keychain in such a way that passwords weren't shared with other apps, so
why should Chrome :-/
~~~
r00fus
Of course, the real reason is that Chrome is an OS masquerading as a browser.
If you consider the keychain to be an OS level function, Chrome (the OS)
provides it.
------
stullig
>Unfortunately, most formats turned out to be broken even against very weak
adversaries. For this reason, users should carefully consider whether a
particular database format is acceptable for storing data in the cloud, on a
USB drive or on a machine shared with other users.
Finally, our works shows that it is indeed possible to construct a format that
provides security, usability and low computation and storage overhead, using
standard cryptographic tools.
~~~
grhmc
Can you explain?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Storehouse shutting down - hturan
https://www.storehouse.co/more-info
======
niftich
This is the first time I'm hearing of Storehouse. Looks like they were VC
backed in 2014 [1].
Looking at two reviews from 2014 [2][3], the concept seems pretty neat.
Unfortunate that they didn't find a business model or a buyer.
I'm glad they let people download their archive for a month, though it's
pretty short timeframe.
[1] [http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/05/22/storehouse-
ra...](http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/05/22/storehouse-
raises-7m-for-visual-storytelling-app-made-for-tablet-generation/) [2]
[http://www.imore.com/storehouse-shuts-anyone-who-ever-
said-i...](http://www.imore.com/storehouse-shuts-anyone-who-ever-said-ipads-
werent-creation) [3] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/16/storehouse-an-apple-
vet-tri...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/16/storehouse-an-apple-vet-tries-to-
move-the-needle-on-long-form-visual-communication/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The 'Cuddle Hormone' Might Help America Take on the Obesity Epidemic - pseudolus
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/04/oxytocin-obesity-treatment/587533/
======
lkadr
I have fibromyalgia, which is characterised by chronic pain caused by muscle
tension. Out of all the methods I've tried to limit pain, from meditation to
weight lifting, cuddling has been the most effective. All muscle tension just
instantly melts away. I wonder if oxytocin would work as a light pain killer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Much MBA Grads Are Paid at Startup Jobs - Mitchhhs
http://chicagoinno.streetwise.co/2017/03/29/heres-the-salary-equity-bonus-mba-grads-make-at-startups/
======
meri_dian
I understand that MBA's can command high salaries, so they're helpful for the
degree holder in that sense, but how useful is the degree beyond just being a
signalling mechanism for potential employers that the candidate is driven?
~~~
Mitchhhs
I would say the majority of the degree is in its signaling effect. In general
I would say thats true of most degrees, its a heuristic that indicates
something about a candidate.
Luckily, in terms of actual skills, some MBA programs are offering more
quantitative classes in big data and product management/application
development which I think is catching the degree up to modern times.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Your predictions for 2012? - csomar
This year we saw interesting things in technology and considerable improvement in the Web related tech.<p>What are your predictions for 2012? Not limited only to the startup world, but any prediction worth mentioning.
======
da02
* More solar energy startups go bankrupt or shutdown: [http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100125720/...](http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100125720/more-bad-news-for-the-anti-energy-green-greed-brigade/)
* Bubble in American farmland continues growing: <http://blog.mises.org/19970/farmland-is-bubbleland/>
* More civil unrest in China as economic landing is closer to a crash: [http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iWObIptHU...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iWObIptHU6RYQSwGSY49xn9IA_xg?docId=CNG.9fba8c14e4ed9e891c8b1c23225a7daf.921)
* Ancestral/Paleo/Primal Lifestyle more popular, but still not mainstream.
* Gold at $2,500/oz.
* New season of Doctor Who is repetitive, derivative, but still just as popular and exciting.
* csomar builds a website to keep track of predictions, but his homepage will still say, "coming soon".
~~~
anonymoushn
* _Gold at $2,500/oz._
Are you taking bets on this one?
------
chmielewski
Oakland's continuing trend as an up-and-coming alternative to the SF start-up
scene will gain some recognition and tractable returns, exponentially fueling
its viability.
Start-ups ending in .ly will reach critical mass and those further hoping to
capitalize on this will be viewed as "old-hat" (if even only in
name/branding). This will be revisited in late 2012 by a smashing.ly
successful start-up that uses it for "ironic" purposes (if even only in
name/branding).
Some sort of hybrid between Bitcoin and MMORPG will emerge. If you think
people are jumping ship on Bitcoin in droves and that it will soon be "dead",
consider that people still play Project Entropia (and even _begin playing_ as
new players) to this day, and then consider why.
20 to 30 new programming languages will be released, giving birth to the meta-
polyglot, or a language whose purpose is to form a polyglot translation
bridge.
Hundreds of articles will be written with titles like "n ways to foo your bars
in 2012".
Thousands like me will make public their predictions for 2012 based on the
biases and misinformation that have been brewing in their vacuous heads for
more than just the past year.
------
ivank
<http://predictionbook.com/> is handy for keeping track of predictions, and
getting feedback about your overconfidence/underconfidence. (It generates a
graph of your your confidence vs. accuracy - '90% sure' should happen 90% of
the time.) Outside of specialist sites, you generally see no confidence values
attached to predictions, and vagueness that makes judging them difficult or
impossible.
Of possible interest:
<http://lesswrong.com/lw/7z9/1001_predictionbook_nights/>
[http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/8dx/predictionbook_a_sh...](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/8dx/predictionbook_a_short_note/)
~~~
nyellin
Don't forget InTrade.
<http://www.intrade.com/v4/home/>
~~~
gwern
You have to get money into Intrade, the fees are bad for small sums like a
hundred bucks or so, you can't do long-term predictions profitably (foregone
interest/investment return eats you alive), and you can only bet on the
preselected set of markets - assuming they're even liquid enough to bet on.
So for predictions like we're discussing here, PredictionBook is _way_ better.
(Sometimes using real-money doesn't make things better.)
------
lucaspiller
The world won't end on Dec. 21, 2012.
~~~
OpenStartup
Only the beginning of the end of Closed Institutions.
For the last 5000 years the closed institution has ruled humanity. 12.12.12
that will change. And a new collaborative framework will marginalize the 1%
and their money.
It all started with the the closed family of the strongest tribal leader...
future generations became chiefs by enslaving and killing rivals. Fearful of
others killing them they sought mystics to aid them and in turn these anointed
them into Kings with divine right of rule; and the "closed" religion casts
were born. And these leaders become great and powerful tyrants. Innovation
brought about a new class "the merchants" and these eventually usurped the
tyrants in great rebellions Magna Carta and the French Revolution and over
time more innovation made these expand into global territories and giving them
eventually more power and control than the leaders. Such power in fact they
decided and controlled all matters -- spinning everything out of control:
Climate, Fishery's, Forests, etc... Until that day that the bearer of the gift
arrived and that gift was the Open !ncubator Framework (O!F) makes a good
story :) <http://mtrout.com>
------
kgutteridge
* iPhone 5 will add NFC, which will have advertisers foaming at the mouth as Apple will link to ATV
* RIMM will be brought by a network operator for their operator friendly tech
* Existing iOS and Android publishers will be looking to other markets to get a ROI on their current outlay
* Stephen Elop will jump ship from Nokia
* Nintendo will release something on one of the existing mobile platform (probably more hoping, they should just do a high priced accessory game combo branded for Zelda/Mario for iOS)
* HTML 5 will provide "cross platform apps"
------
dia80
Groupon will trade less than 25% of its current share price and may
restructure / fold
~~~
gwern
<http://predictionbook.com/predictions/5004>
------
herval
* No economy bubble burst in europe
* G+ doesn't go anywhere, but doesn't shut down just yet
* More failed IPOs will make mass media call it "a different 2k bubble"
* Incubator/accelerator bubble burst (specially outside USA)
* Facebook phone
* Facebook credits for physical stuff will face-off with Paypal
* Obvious Facebook IPO
* Groupon files for bankruptcy
* Nintendo declares yet another year of losses, doesn't die (yet)
* The year of Linux on the Desktop (just kidding)
------
unexpected
1) RIM will be bought.
2) Google will fold ChromeOS and roll up everything into variations of
Android.
~~~
math
On the other side of the trade ... some RIM related commentary on seeking
alpha by one of the people I pay attention to, Rocco Pendola: "don't expect
anybody, particularly Amazon, to buy RIM anytime soon.".
[http://seekingalpha.com/article/315331-amazon-making-
blackbe...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/315331-amazon-making-blackberry-
cool-again)
------
math
Our latest project will give you lots of financial predictions, many for 2012
(though you can't filter by that explicitly yet): <http://backrecord.com>
Early days, but if you're into this sort of thing worth checking out..
------
booduh
\- The year of the startup.
\- Massive government policy changes.
\- Revolution in conscious dream and mind (self) control.
\- Apple TV sucks.
\- Facebook gets lucky.
And of course...
\- My startup is the most viral web app of the year!
------
willvarfar
Native Client (NaCL) will power the next wave of social games.
Adobe Creative Suite will support an NaCL target and Flash will be superceded
whilst Adobe get a new boost of adoption on the tools front
~~~
charliesome
I hope NaCl doesn't gain any traction. It really is a step backwards.
------
buymorechuck
Facebook continues work on their own fork of Android towards releasing a phone
and Facebook mobile app platform. Perhaps an IPO to coincide with it.
------
yurylifshits
10x-100x growth in enrollment into online classes from top universities (like
Stanford classes)
Non-TED lecture to get 5M views on Youtube
------
teja1990
Android will gain more market and still struggles to make more money than iOS.
I'll start my startup and still continue reading HN :D
------
colinm
Steak-in-a-can!
------
janus
The year of the linux desktop
------
ellie42
iPhone 5 I guess. New MacBooks.
------
OpenStartup
I am a disgruntled entrepreneur who for nearly 2 years have been developing an
enterprise 2.0 solution for the "closed" startup. I predict this will be the
year of the Open Startup and it's foundup®. We running a closed alpha
development trial and launching public beta on 12.12.12. What's so great about
the open startup? It doesn't need the 1% to succeed and they launch as Open
Corp and new selfless framework in which 20-80% of net profits are invested
into lannching more open corps. My prediction is this...
1) Closed incubators such as this one and other clones will be displaced by a
highly scaleable open free solution that offers a solution where 1% are not
needed. 2) Closed crowdfunding funding platforms like profounder, KS, IGG, etc
will be disrupted by our free version that offers TWO new ways to raise funds,
1) has raised over $1.6bn for npo strategic initiatives and another is my
creation that I call passive crowdfunding. 3) Developers will be marginalized
to becoming construction workers. As I have invented a new way to validate
ideas.
There is a lot more but I will leave some things to be suprises :) Here are my
talks... <http://j.mp/OSiplaylist>. If you want to see the solution that lies
outside your paradigm to fully comprehend and you are willing to sign an NDA
then I would be happy to show you it. After all I don't want this BS happening
to us <http://j.mp/modista>. Open Startups is really Stupid simple... it
combines 10 years of me beta testing experience, throws in fundraising lessons
learned and 2 years of picking apart the Valley Startup. Just as Wikipedia
disrupted MS Encarta. The Open Startup will change the world. I am here
telling you but it should so absurd none of you will take heed... that OK.
FOUNDUPS® Vision statement is "Be Good." because let's face it "Don't Be Evil"
just doesn't cut it any more. We are a blue ocean strategy just letting now
the red ocean we are here and would LOVE you to own some of use to hedge
against our disrupting your business model. Jimmy Wales never did that... I
think that was wrong. Paul, there you have my prediction... Love to show you
our Open Startup !ncubator (OS!)
FOUNDUPS® Michael Trout, CEO Sorry for the edits, like Shakespeare I am highly
dislexic
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WikiReader - $99 E-ink offline Wikipedia reader that runs on 2 AAAs - blasdel
http://thewikireader.com/index.html
======
tamersalama
Not sure how this would compete with other mobile devices. disconnected state?
battery life? unifunction?
~~~
ajuc
On the site there is info that batterylife is 1 year on "normal usage",
whatever it means.
If i was to buy it, it would be as a cheap ebook reader. But only if it will
allow reading pdfs with images.
~~~
Tichy
It seems rather small for reading ebooks. And then 99$ isn't cheap, compared
to the kindle.
~~~
ahoyhere
Yes - forget reading PDFs. I have a (fairly huge) Kindle DX and it's barely
adequate for most PDFs, with their small-ass type.
That said, it doesn't seem to say anything about how it will sync.
If it's clever, I'll probably get one for my husband.
------
groaner
The update mechanism seems to imply a 4GB+ download each time. Surely there's
a way to apply patches?
~~~
kaitnieks
Since there's probably a heavy compression used and the modifications happen
all over the wikipedia, I don't think there is a way. The only thing they
could probably do is to split the articles in several categories and allow to
update them separately.
------
chanux
It's nice. But just wikipedia doesn't sound GREAT. Maybe project Gutenberg
stuff will be a good addition. I believe that the device has space to grow in.
And nice to see openmoko in action.
~~~
lupin_sansei
And it's text only too. No images from WP.
------
thelonecabbage
OMG it's the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy!
------
robin_reala
No WikiMedia images? That’s a shame. I guess that including images for every
article would suck up a lot of space and wouldn’t work well on an eInk black
and white display anyway, but a lot of the more useful information on
Wikipedia is presented in chart and graph format.
------
callmeed
Could be a great device for schools–even more so if, as chanux suggested, they
added Proj. Gutenbuerg stuff.
Heck, I'd even consider buying 10 of them for my daughters' private school
(they have no computer lab).
On the other hand, linux netbooks are < $200 now.
~~~
kragen
Where do you get Linux netbooks for <$200? New?
~~~
callmeed
[http://www.google.com/products?q=netbook&oe=utf-8&hl...](http://www.google.com/products?q=netbook&oe=utf-8&hl=en&price1=150.00&price2=200.00&);
------
Tichy
Cute, but an iPod Touch is cuter.
------
lupin_sansei
there's a video of it in action here
[http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/13/wikireader-packs-all-
of...](http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/13/wikireader-packs-all-of-wikipedia-
in-a-power-sipping-portable/) maybe it is real after all ;)
Also photos here [http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/13/openmoko-branches-out-
wit...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/13/openmoko-branches-out-with-
new-99-wikireader-device/)
------
aw3c2
Alternatively you could get a Zipit for 40$ and put Linux on it.
~~~
m_eiman
But then you're not the target audience of the device.
------
jacquesm
dupe:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=880140>
~~~
chanux
My experience is that I can't post a duplicate link on HN. :-S
~~~
jacquesm
It looks like the dupe checker isn't smart enough to check
<http://[www.]something[/][index.html][#somethingelse]>
(cue 100's of duplicate submissions of highly valued posts from the past ;) )
That shouldn't be too hard to implement
------
blasdel
I'm absolutely astonished that this was produced by the previously putrescent
OpenMoko. _Astonished!_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why is HN down so frequently? - rankam
Apologies if this has been asked and answered before, but HN seems to be down quite frequently and I am curious as to why. For instance, I visited earlier today and it was down. However, I rarely see any other sites that I frequent offline, though I will admit I visit HN far more than any other so it could be my own observation bias. Any insight would be appreciated - thanks!
======
krapp
It's some guy's weekend project that took off, and it's too clever to use
plebian nonsense like a database.
~~~
rankam
It doesn't? I had no idea, I guess I just assumed it did.
~~~
krapp
Someone will probably some along and explain it in detail, but as I roughly
maybe understand it, Hacker News stores everything as Lisp closures in RAM,
which fills up frequently. So every now and then, it sort of has to be turned
over and emptied out, like a toaster.
..and as flat files to disk. But not a database.
------
canadaj
I noticed it was down a bit earlier as well, but I wouldn't say HN is down
frequently. In fact, I can only think of today's incident and maybe one other
where HN was down without any kind of advanced notice.
~~~
piyush_soni
Yes, 'frequent' can be a relative term, but I see it down once every few days.
------
serve_yay
It doesn't make any money :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft completes aquisition of Yammer - justauser
http://blog.yammer.com/blog/2012/07/yammer-starts-a-new-chapter-as-part-of-microsoft.html
How long will they keep on a Java stack before converting over to Dot Net?
======
justauser
How long before Yammer moves off of Java and on to DotNet?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I haven’t had a smartphone for more than two years…and it’s been great - alexwoodcreates
http://www.thememo.com/2015/06/24/i-havent-had-a-smartphone-for-more-than-two-yearsand-its-been-great/
======
monroepe
I have never had a smartphone. Keyboard phones ftw.
------
bpolania
I have had a smartphone for the last 6 years and it's been freaking awesome!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
YUI Version 2.2.0 Released - bootload
http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/02/20/yui-220-released/
======
jaggederest
Bit old news isn't it? I've been playing with this since march.
It's good stuff, especially the CSS files make it easy to really define what
you want. Not as sure about the javascript, myself, but then I haven't used it
as heavily. I tend to just go with bare-metal javascript as/when needed.
~~~
bootload
_'... Bit old news isn't it? I've been playing with this since march. ...'_
the release news is, but quite a few yc companies use the api so it might be
of interest. nice thing with this set of tools is a) open source and b) not
dependent on a closed service. what do you use for calendering? (showing 'foo'
items on a particular date?)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
W^X policy violation affects Windows drivers compiled in VS 2013 and previous - mmastrac
https://codeinsecurity.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/wx-policy-violation-affecting-all-windows-drivers-compiled-in-visual-studio-2013-and-previous/
======
munin
ugh.
At the root, this issue is probably an oversight. Understanding why things are
discardable and pageable is interesting though.
Memory is pageable because live memory is precious. Your multi-tasking OS that
supports paging can dynamically load and unload pages of memory to a backing
store, say, disk. This means that if the sum of the memory being used by all
tasks is greater than the physical memory available on your computer, your
computer can still work.
Ah, but let's consider a few facts. Data is stored in memory, but so is code.
Can all the code in your system be paged to disk? There is some code in your
kernel called the page fault handler. This code is responsible for identifying
when the region of memory being accessed is not present, and can talk to the
backing store to bring that memory back in. What happens if the page fault
handler is, itself, paged out? What happens when the page fault handler needs
to run?
So, now some code needs to be pinned into memory. It can not be paged out, or
the system might stop working. Transitively, this property affects other
pieces of code on the system following control and data dependencies between
that code and the page fault handler. This can include device drivers that
third parties write.
Some kernels say, all kernel memory is nonpageable, deal with it. Not Windows.
In an attempt to make more memory available, it allows device drivers to mark
code and data in the driver as both INIT and PAGEABLE. There are two contracts
that you, the driver author, must live under when you do this. You must agree
not to access anything in INIT after your DriverEntry (main) has returned,
and, you must not attempt to run code in a PAGEABLE segment when the system
cannot take a page fault. Many kernel mode components can easily fit code into
these two contracts, so some good citizens do this.
~~~
CamperBob2
The whole DISCARDABLE thing was a relic of pre-NT versions of Windows, back
when people were just beginning to realize that 640K was not, in fact, enough
for everybody. I'm surprised the kernel pays any attention to it at all
anymore. There's not much upside to paging memory associated with drivers in
and out. Certainly not worth the additional attack surface that you get by
making things more complicated than necessary.
~~~
munin
Pre-NT? Are you sure? My understanding of history is that the PE file format
was part of NT 3. I would have thought that earlier systems kept as much paged
as possible, but maybe that's wrong.
Maybe it's not worth it any more. My phone has 8GB of memory. I do remember a
time when you could boot Windows XP on a system with 64MB of RAM when you
needed special configuration / custom kernels to boot Linux on such a system.
You would think that this was because of the pile of small choices made to
relieve memory pressure...
~~~
phaemon
> I do remember a time when you could boot Windows XP on a system with 64MB of
> RAM when you needed special configuration / custom kernels to boot Linux on
> such a system.
No, you're misremembering. A Linux kernel has never needed anywhere near that
much RAM to boot. The first machine I used Linux on had 8MB RAM and that was
considered plenty at the time. I do remember KDE being pretty slow on a
machine with 64MB...maybe you're thinking of desktop environments.
~~~
rleigh
Yep. The smallest I've seen IIRC was a 386 with 4MB running X11 back around
1998. Took a good time to boot and start X11, but it did work.
~~~
jjuhl
My first X86 machine running Linux was a 386DX/33 with 4MB of RAM. It booted
the Linux 0.96 kernel (IIRC) just fine and I also used X on that machine. As
far as I remember, I did have 16MB swap as well to make things actually
usable, but the kernel itself would boot just fine with just the 4MB RAM. If
memory serves me right, it was actually possible to get the kernel to boot
with as little as 2MB in those days, but that was the limit.
I remember a custom kernel compile on this machine took a little over 24
hours. :-/
------
0x0
From the reddit netsec discussion, it seems like this is a mildly interesting
compiler quirk with no obvious real-life consequence, as the steps required
for exploitation could be better (and with less effort) applied to directly
attack kernel data structures instead...?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/3jlipz/wx_policy_vi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/3jlipz/wx_policy_violation_affecting_all_windows_drivers/)
------
retox
W^X policy??
~~~
brohee
Writable exclusive OR eXecutable policy, applied to memory pages it makes
memory safety bugs a lot harder to exploit, as an attacker can't simply load
an executable payload (typically, shellcode) in the address space of the
exploited program and jump to it...
~~~
JoachimS
Just to emphasize (be picky): Logically it is exclusive or (XOR), not
inclusive (OR). That is either write or execute, but not both.
~~~
Avernar
Too be really picky, logically it's NAND. Not writable and not executable is
valid. :)
------
lukeh
Is there a flag to mitigate this at link time?
------
andrewchambers
At least you "felt fuzzy" doing free work for a multi billion dollar company.
They didn't even give him proper responses or acknowledge the fix.
~~~
mynameisvlad
Someone always tries to make this comment when a security vulnerability comes
up, and it's just as silly every time. If Microsoft asked him to investigate
this, then paid him nothing then sure, you can call it "free work". But
really, it's just that the author was interested in this one particular thing
and decided to investigate it as a hobby and sent his findings in. The company
shouldn't be expected to pay for it, or even care about it because they never
requested it, and calling it "free work" or trying to imply that a company is
in the wrong for not paying him because they're a "multi billion dollar
company" is asinine.
~~~
andrewchambers
I didn't say Microsoft is in the wrong. I think he is naive if he thinks they
care or even really appreciate it though.
They didn't even give him proper responses.
~~~
Asbostos
I suspect the fuzzy feeling was more that his discovery seemed to have caused
Windows to be changed. Who wouldn't feel some kind of emotion at that?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon Maps API - taylorbuley
https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/maps.html
======
cek
And so the fragmentation of mobile platforms accelerates along the services
axis. [1]
Amazon attempts to ease the pain by offering "interface parity" with the
Google Maps API, but there are significant functional differences.
We are going to see more and more examples of this where mobile platform
vendors are going to try to get developers to use their firm's web services
when running on their platform. Bummer for devs who are already struggling
with trying to target multiple platforms.
[1] [http://www.lockergnome.com/mobile/2012/10/22/the-
fragmentati...](http://www.lockergnome.com/mobile/2012/10/22/the-
fragmentation-of-mobile-fragmentation/)
~~~
peatmoss
Starting small isn't necessarily bad. I can't blame Amazon for dipping a toe
in the water and offering limited functionality to start after Apple's
overreach. If Amazon invests in validated data sets and functionality, but
keeps its AWS disposition of being the substrate, this all of a sudden becomes
a very exciting new entrant into the maps wars.
It'll take strategy, time, and resources for Amazon to be able to offer the
validated datasets and functionality that people expect. If they go about it
the right way, I could easily see them becoming the lurker map that comes to
dominate.
~~~
cek
I was not making negative statement about Amazon.
I was just pointing out that this trend is going to continue to make the
mobile developer who's trying to target multiple platform's job harder.
------
tnuc
Why are Apple and Amazon both only allowing their maps to be usable on mobile
devices?
I am sure there are people who want get away from Google/Bing but without web
I can't see them bothering.
~~~
ge0rg
The Google Maps API for Android [1] can only be used on Google-certified
devices, as it builds on a Google-provided system library. Therefore, none of
the apps embedding Google Maps will work out-of-the-box, unless the device
manufacturer violates Google's copyright - which Amazon certainly will not do.
[1] <https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/android/>
~~~
btipling
This isn't related to the question that your parent comment asked. That
comment was asking why the Amazon and Apple map products are mobile-only, with
no website component. Not sure how a comment about embedding Google maps has
anything to do with this.
------
cynwoody
If memory serves, Amazon was the first to come out with street view, via their
a9.com site, circa 2005. However, they canned it before coverage got behind a
few major metropolitan areas.
Then came Google Maps and a much cooler street view implementation.
------
Codhisattva
Amazon has licensed Nokia map tech and data. Not that interesting unless you
are desperately trying to get away from Google.
~~~
scherrymomin
You sure about that?
[http://gigaom.com/2012/07/02/exclusive-amazon-
buys-3d-mappin...](http://gigaom.com/2012/07/02/exclusive-amazon-
buys-3d-mapping-startup-upnext/)
~~~
aaronpk
Yes, from the license agreement of the Amazon Maps API:
"If you use the Program Materials we make available to enable the use of
mapping-related features within Your Products, including any component of our
Maps API, you accept and agree to be bound by NAVTEQ North America, LLC’s
(“Nokia”) Developer Software Agreement for NLP and Third Party Supplier Terms,
which applies to the portions of the Maps API provided by Nokia or its
affiliates."
------
sadfaceunread
So this is ONLY on Kindle devices? Do kindle targeted apps suffer from an
inability to use google/bing?
~~~
mborsuk
They do to a large degree yes. The Google maps add-on SDK for instance isn't
available on devices that haven't been blessed by google (and received an
official Vending.apk).
------
killermonkeys
Presumably, this is an attempt to put Amazon's App Store on par with the
Android Market, but having to swap in different Maps APIs for different
devices seems like a big disincentive. If this mild fragmentation continues,
and I can't rely on Google's APIs existing for a given build target, I'd
prefer to just ignore the smaller and/or less likely to be useful platforms
like Kindle rather than try to stick to the common interface.
------
SeanDav
Probably a good idea, until you find a really good use for it that everyone
wants, in which case Amazon will kill your app and steal your idea.
Sorry, just getting a bit cynical in my old age. Also a disclaimer; this
warning is not aimed at/about Amazon in particular but to anyone making a
business off an API to a popular web business.
------
rjzzleep
well it's an android maps library. what's the particular interest?
<https://developer.amazon.com/sdk/maps/concepts.html>
demo looks like a demo. basically it's because they're not part of the android
group. do they have the google maps api libraries on the device? just curious
i honestly don't know. I'd imagine there are licensing issues?
------
thejosh
Page Not Found
We're sorry, but we couldn't find the page you requested. You may want to go
to the homepage or read our FAQs.
~~~
Loic
Interesting, with Firefox, without incognito mode, the page is found but with
Chromium in incognito mode, I also have a Page Not Found error. It looks like
they are doing some kind of browser sniffing or requesting to be signed in
without sending back the right error code if not signed in.
------
bstar77
Can someone with developer access say how good the maps are? I don't see any
way to use the maps without an invitation.
~~~
xmodem
They're Nokia maps so presumably you could just look at <http://here.net/>
------
alimoeeny
Only for Kindle Apps, as far as I understand
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don’t stop calling yourself a UX designer – it’s working - primigenus
http://blog.handcraft.com/2011/08/dont-stop-calling-yourself-a-ux-designer-its-working/
======
timr
_"If it’s becoming cool, then sure, you’ve got the hipster crowd who like to
go about saying they were designing UX before anyone had heard of it. That’s
great for those people. You know what? It’s even better for the rest of the
world because now people know there is such a thing as user experience
design."_
Uh huh. It also means that every no-talent, former "business guy" with a
strong opinion has latched on to the title, because they've realized that
declaring themselves a "UX designer" allows them to get hired into plum, boss-
everyone-around positions without having to go through the pain of learning
how to write code or actually do graphic design.
There are genuinely talented designers out there, but the many of the "cool"
kids who have glommed on to the movement in recent months have done little
more than read _The Design of Everyday Things_ , written opinionated blog
posts (on blogs designed by someone else) and gone to trendy parties. But
hey...it's great when there's a profession with vague/undefinable job
responsibilities and lots of authority over the product features -- you get to
take a disproportionate share of the credit, which makes that next UX Design
gig easier to get! Maybe you can even become a product manager!
~~~
yuhong
Personally, I think the right position for this kind of people is Product
Manager in the first place anyway.
~~~
timr
Heh. Personally, I think the right position for the kind of people I'm talking
about involves asking "do you want fries with that?" That's "product
management" too.
~~~
yuhong
I am particularly thinking of Steve Jobs. Of course, not all of them are as
good as Steve Jobs, but it proves the concept is not flawed.
------
dmix
The day I stopped calling myself a UX Designer was when I attended a "UX"
meetup in Toronto. The extent of skill of every person there, who called
themselves UX Designers, was creating wireframes for corporate gigs.
They were the guys who handed off wireframes and stories to the photoshop
designers who handed it to the HTML/CSS coders.
I was hoping UX Designer would encapsulate someone who knew the full spectrum
of ux research/design/photoshop/html/css/marketing for building software.
But thats not the way it turned out.
~~~
OzzyB
^ this.
That is 100% my experience too, and it's complete bs imo.
Between the co-opting of "interactive designer", "web designer" and "ux
designer" I am just happy to call myself a developer now.
A developer who also knows a thing or too about design, and yes, user
experience too (duh! isn't that a given?)
I will do this until people realize that developers, in this web/app/tech
industry, are really the designers -- and it will happen one day :)
------
nathanbarry
3-4 years ago I started to call myself a UX Designer because I wanted to
distinguish myself from the other designers I knew who did brochure websites,
or had just started a transition from print to web design.
I work almost exclusively on software design and UX design is the best term I
know of to sum up what I do.
------
jordank
Interaction designer was previously the preferred title for many
designers...until it became completely co-opted.
I wouldn't get too attached to the title UX Designer either, since that term
will no doubt get diluted as well — but as the article states it does give
people something to grasp immediately.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Code School for an Experience Project Manager? - __throwmeaway
So I'm going to ask yet another one of these annoying questions....<p>My background: I've got a degree in engineering management w/ a specialization in Industrial Engineering. I've been in the software/hardware world for 6 years. I started in aerospace as what can only be translated loosely as a "Solutions Engineer" which was a unheard of rarity, my co-workers were grey beard engineers called back from retirement. After a few years there I went on to a Big 4 Management Consulting firm. I did a lot of Project Management IT stuff in the finance and health care sector for just over a year.<p>Now I work at a web agency where I'm the "technical project manager," "devops" and cranky IT guy.<p>Here's my challenge: I'm trying to leave Washington DC to move to San Fran, Austin, or Portland. I've been actively trying to get a job in one of these cities for the past 5 months. I've had some really great interviews in the beginning with some more mature startups and other mid sized companies. For the past 2.5 months I can't get a single person to respond to my applications.<p>My skills thus far (Python, Django and Bash): Several web scrapers, load testing via Locust, I run my own set on Mezzanine (Django project), I've got another site for a wedding that runs on Django and uses some CBV for RSVPing to the wedding, as well as a JS integration with Echonest.<p>Last night I applied to what I only later realized was a dev director position, there wasn't much of a hint to writing code but I caught it after I applied. I continuously find myself attracted to this position and only wishing I could have those type of positions.<p>Today I realized maybe I should go to code school boot camp.<p>My Ask:<p>1. Does anyone have an opinion/experience similar to this?
2. Is this a really bad idea?
3. Any recommendations on schools?<p>Ps. I looked at getting a MS in Comp Sci is out of the question.
======
czbond
Do you want to program, manage projects, or manage people? They're all
entirely different, and usually a different personality. I am guessing by
asking for a code school, you would rather program? Or are you mainly
interested in a code school because of the perceived higher salary of coders
(not true, btw)
~~~
__throwmeaway
No I'm not in this as some sort of salary booster. I'm looking to manage(lead
not manage) people in particular developers. The reason I'm saying code school
is that no one (that I know of) lets people who weren't at some point a
developer, manage developers. Although I do like writing code so I'd be
shooting for maybe a 40% of my time writing code.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A 1950s egg farm that hatched a business incubator - rbanffy
https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-1950s-egg-farm-hatched-the-modern-startup-incubator/?mbid=social_tw_backchannel
======
Retric
Are there any real successes from the Incubator that includes office space
model vs just cash?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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