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Proposed SF law could force tech workers to actually go out for lunch - stevetodd
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Tech-industry-s-coveted-office-cafeterias-could-13101014.php
======
gaouj
Yes, let's ban lunch pails too, so you can't bring your own lunch
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Pinteresting way to surf youtube... - nikhilaitharaju
What if pinterest and youtube met and had a trademark violating baby? Built it in 4 hours. Check out http://www.pintube.tv/
======
hackthatshit
pretty cool stuff
~~~
nikhilaitharaju
thanks :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A foundation for scikit-learn at Inria - fermigier
http://gael-varoquaux.info/programming/a-foundation-for-scikit-learn-at-inria.html
======
hetspookjee
Scikit-learn is a very nicely written library and I can use plenty of
superlatives to describe the wonderous API of scikit-learn.
One thing I can't recommend enough is to extend their Transfomers base class
in such a way that you implement their fit and transform methods. A simple
example can be viewed here:
[https://gitlab.com/timelord/sklearn_transformers](https://gitlab.com/timelord/sklearn_transformers)
which allows you to put your transformers into the scikit-learn Pipelines and
GridSearchCV (and more). The way scikit-learn leverages multiple cores is by
using joblib and Dask extends this implementation to effortlessly scale the
scikit-learn pipelines onto a cluster of servers.
[https://distributed.readthedocs.io/en/latest/joblib.html](https://distributed.readthedocs.io/en/latest/joblib.html)
By writing your own data transformations in the transformer format you can, by
extension, leverage this g great ecosystem.
I think it's a great time to be a data scientist / engineer now.
------
zeec123
Unfortunately scikit-learn is a mess without an alternative.
There is so much wrong with the api design of sklearn (how can one think
"predict_proba" is a good function name?). I can understand this, since most
of it was probably written by PhD students without the time and expertise to
come up with a proper api; many of them without a CS background. Compare this
to e.g. the API of google/guava.
For example
[https://www.reddit.com/r/statistics/comments/8de54s/is_r_bet...](https://www.reddit.com/r/statistics/comments/8de54s/is_r_better_than_python_at_anything_i_started/dxmnaef/)
Case in point, sklearn doesn't have a bootstrap crossvalidator despite the bootstrap being one of the most
important statistical tools of the last two decades. In fact, they used to, but it was removed.
Weird right?
...
> We don't remove the sklearn.cross_validation.Bootstrap class because few people are using it,
> but because too many people are using something that is non-standard (I made it up) and very very
> likely not what they expect if they just read its name.
> At best it is causing confusion when our users read the docstring and/or its source code.
> At worse it causes silent modeling errors in our users code base.
...
Oh man, I thought of another great example. I bet you had no idea that
sklearn.linear_model.LogisticRegression is L2 penalized by default.
"But if that's the case, why didn't they make this explicit by calling it RidgeClassifier instead?"
Maybe because sklearn has a Ridge object already, but it exclusively performs regression?
Who knows (also... why L2 instead of L1? Yeesh). Anyway, if you want to just do unpenalized
logistic regression, you have to set the C argument to an arbitrarily high value,
which can cause problems. Is this discussed in the documentation?
Nope, not at all. Just on stackoverflow and github.
Is this opaque and unnecessarily convoluted for such a basic and crucial technique? Yup.
Or the following:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/7brsuu/machine_lea...](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/7brsuu/machine_learning_in_functional_programming/dppck1x/)
~~~
bob_bob_bob
It's true that scikit-learn was started and originally written mostly by PhD
students (most were in fact CS PhDs), and the API they designed is amazing! A
lot of the python ML ecosystem has adopted it and uses it - fit, predict,
transform. I don't think any language has something comparable.
4 years ago they removed a misleading class - and even at the time the
documentation was clear about what it was doing. I'm not sure how this reveals
some huge flaw about scikit-learn. At best it shows that the contributors can
realize their mistakes and solve them, without even needing people to point it
out? That's great!
Also pointing to a bad implementation 4 years ago, for a project which has
since then had way more funding for engineering time, and who's use has
exploded, seems a bit misleading.
~~~
zeec123
See the second link I posted. Even the most basic 3 functionalities are bad
designed. If X is your input space and Y your output space then fit should
(after each call) return a function X->Y and not modify some internal state.
Have you ever tried looked at the pipeline cross validation, where you have to
pass a dict of parameters to the function with underscore prefixes for each
stage in the pipeline? Do this and you never call the API design amazing
again.
There are examples for other bad design choices as well.
You are right, there is no alternative at the moment. Maybe julia lang will do
better job, we will see.
------
xvilka
I thought INRIA uses OCaml everywhere and would choose Owl[1] (OCaml library
for numeric scientific computing and machine learning) as a project for this
kind of foundation.
[1] [https://github.com/owlbarn/owl](https://github.com/owlbarn/owl)
~~~
pyrale
Inria is a public institution dedicated to research. There are many labs and
people with separate goals. They are no more dedicated to ocaml than MIT is
dedicated to emacs.
~~~
globberz
An even better comparison would be with, say, the NSF. I am sure that this or
that technology has been developed by NSF-funded researchers, but it would be
absurd to assume that NSF-funded researchers in MIT use and promote the same
things as NSF-funded researchers in Caltech because they're both affiliated
with the NSF.
------
11235813213455
I'd love this same kind of library in nodejs
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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For Law School Graduates, Debts if Not Job Offers - chailatte
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html
======
kylelibra
This is an area which seems ripe for innovation. I can understand why most of
the schools wouldn't want a third party firm to independently collect this
data.
------
Maven911
I am suprised this has not made the front page of HN..this is a really
interesting article in the popular@HN education bubble saga....
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How con artists trick your mind - schrofer
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141003-the-mind-tricks-of-scammers
======
Jun8
The quote from Teller pretty much sums up the situation: "You will be fooled
by a trick if it involves more time, money and practice than you (or any other
sane onlooker) would be willing to invest" (from an interview with him, it's a
fascinating read [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-
Hi...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-His-
Secrets.html)).
~~~
Rapzid
Ah, but my favourite from that article: "You think you’ve made a choice, just
as when you choose between two candidates preselected by entrenched political
parties(No. 7—Choice is not freedom)."
------
amirmc
Cialdini's book on Influence seems relevant here.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence:_Science_and_Practice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence:_Science_and_Practice)
Edit: It's referenced in the article but that link points to Amazon.
~~~
sogen
Great book. btw the Dalai Lama giving flowers at the airport was a great
example.
~~~
kschua
It's the Hare Krishna not the Dalai Lama
~~~
sogen
oops my bad, thanks!
------
ilaksh
> Scammers use the “time principle” to persuade us we need to act quickly
> before we can think rationally and exercise self-control. They also make use
> of the “deference to authority principle” and the “herd principle” – our
> tendency to act like our friends or those around us – to convince people
> that the scam is legitimate.
> ...making use of physically attractive accomplices, for instance. They can
> use our deepest desires to blind our reasoning ...
Sounds like standard sales and marketing.
~~~
tjradcliffe
And politics. It's happening right now.
There is currently a bit of a debate in Canada as to whether we should be
joining the US and its allies in fighting the Islamic State, and all three of
these are being heavily deployed by those in favour:
1) we must act now! 2) experts agree! 3) every decent person agrees IS must be
stopped!
There hasn't been any deployment of physically attractive accomplices,
although I guess that's pretty much what the Liberal's use of Justin Trudeau
in opposition amounts to.
The difficulty is that none of these are actual arguments in favour of the
proposed strategy. I am generally opposed to military intervention--because it
rarely works and it kills people and costs enormous amounts of money and
rarely works--but can see there may be a case to be made here. Unfortunately,
by using what are widely recognized as scammer's tactics, the government has
alienated itself from any evidence-based support (this would not be a first,
for this government nor any of its predecessors.)
It would be lovely to see the actual merits of the mission debated, but it is
clear that both the opposition and the government are interested only in
deploying scammer's tactics in support of their favoured side.
~~~
ams6110
Sounds like climate change advocacy too.
~~~
Terr_
Too much emphasis on number-crunching and bespectacled professors. Needs more
think-of-the-children.
------
coffeedrinker
To see how this relates to computer security, download the pdf linked in the
article. After it exposes the methods of exploitation, it gives examples of
internet computer scams.
[http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-
TR-754.pdf](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-754.pdf)
~~~
wiredfool
Does it expose the methods of exploitation using any of the convenient Acrobat
bugs?
------
scotty79
Each time I've been conned was due to me wishing things beyond what I know is
real. I was conning myself. Conman was just there to take my money.
~~~
jrmiii
Umm, is this a recurrent problem for you? How many times have you been conned?
~~~
protonfish
If you don't think you've been conned thousands of times in your life then you
aren't paying attention. What do you think advertising is? And don't get me
started on preachers and realtors.
------
jamesbrownuhh
Side note - articles like these used to be completely blocked in the UK, but
now seem to have become accessible, with the following caveat just below the
banner ad:
"This website is made by BBC Worldwide. BBC Worldwide is a commercial company
that is owned by the BBC (and just the BBC.) No money from the licence fee was
used to create this website. Instead this website is supported by advertising
outside the UK. The profits we make from it go back to BBC programme-makers to
help fund great new BBC programmes"
------
tokenadult
The whole article is an interesting read, and as another comment here already
pointed out, it links to other good online content. I think that the article's
point about online security is a healthy reminder for many Hacker News
readers:
"The seven persuasion principles might be as old as the hills, but Stajano
says they are often ignored by security experts, who are as likely to blame
security breaches on the people using their systems as they are to blame the
scammers. 'Too many security professionals think: users are such a pain – my
system would be super-secure if only users behaved in the proper way,' he
says. He is trying to persuade experts that they need to make security systems
that work in harmony with – not despite - the way we behave."
We have to deal with human nature as it is, not as we wish it to be, if we are
to make progress in computer and Internet security.
~~~
PhantomGremlin
> We have to deal with human nature as it is, not as we wish it to be
Yes, exactly. Security professionals should be forced to write this out in
longhand about 100 times every week, just so they don't forget.
I know many people who have used computers for 20 or 30 years, but who are
still "clueless" in my "computer nerd" opinion. That's because normal users
just want to use computers as a tool to solve problems they're interested in.
Normal people are interested in the destination, computer nerds are interested
in the journey.
------
yander12
> trust in authority, a desire to act in the same way as our friends, or a
> tendency to act in a consistent way
Sounds like how most people get suckered by politicians, over and over again.
~~~
protonfish
The problem is their (and others) attitude that
> ...the authority principle, for example, is actually very helpful for
> surviving peacefully in human society
Is it really? But isn't unquestioning obedience to authority the key
ingredient to war, corruption and genocide? Maybe trust in authority is
necessary in children but adults need to accept the responsibility to think
for themselves.
------
jvanstry
Stopped reading at "Intelligence and experience offers no protection against
scammers, says Modic."
Come on.
~~~
SilasX
I think they meant "it's no guarantee against..."
------
mathattack
This reminded me of my most recent car purchase. I ran out of time (long
weekend that I allocated to the search had ended) and couldn't call them out
by saying, "I know I don't have to buy it at this price now."
Their customer service seemed genuinely surprised when I slammed the sales
process in my post-sales feedback.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Introduction to Web Sockets - zeroxsys
http://bigbangtechnology.com/post/an_introduction_to_web_sockets
======
pornel
For non-games usually Server-Sent Events
(<http://dev.w3.org/html5/eventsource/>) may be simpler to use:
• it's pure HTTP, message format is dead simple ("data: payload\n\n")
• browser handles network failures and reconnections automatically.
• browsers can share same stream URL between windows
His use-cases with to-do app and analytics were good fits for SSE.
~~~
camwest
Once Firefox supports SSE I agree that it would be easier to implement in many
use cases. Although it doesn't have the same sort of fallback mechanisms
available to it that WebSockets have (ActionScript sockets).
Here is some additional information about it that I found at stackoverflow:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5195452/websockets-vs-
ser...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5195452/websockets-vs-server-sent-
events-eventsource)
~~~
pornel
You can fall back to XHR with long polling — the stream is trivial to parse.
------
sixtofour
slides: <http://www.slideshare.net/CameronWestland/websockets-8031217>
------
neoveller
Is anyone else kind of baffled by the comment about the political risks of web
sockets? Why do people waste time with answers like that?
~~~
camwest
Hi Neoveller,
I gave the talk and I agree the political risks comment was misplaced. I
didn't think it was worth it to shut the person down though as it's my
personal philosophy never to embarrass anyone if possible.
I hope you found the others parts of the talk more useful.
------
MostAwesomeDude
I can't watch the slides, but I wonder if they spend any time discussing how
WebSockets don't offer any client security beyond raw TCP sockets.
~~~
palish
Why would WebSockets offer any client security beyond raw TCP sockets?
~~~
MostAwesomeDude
It was one of the original promises of WS and _the_ reason that browsers offer
it to client-side JS.
~~~
camwest
There are some people building on top of WebSockets with an eye towards
security. Check out <http://pusher.com/> for example, they designed system to
account for 100% untrusted client.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Any one had any luck bying broken GPUs from eBay? - tapper
Just asking because I have seen a RX580 on Ebay that said that it works but resets when installing the drivers. This sounds to me like just like a botched install of windows or a heat sink that needs reseting. I was thinking that it could be a cheep card to try my luck on. So has any one got a gpu and fixed it or had it just work?
======
Nextgrid
Resetting when installing drivers can very well be a hardware issue. Without
drivers the card is working without hardware acceleration, and that part seems
to be working. When drivers initialise the card attempts to enable hardware
acceleration and the entire machine either crashes or a reboot is initiated in
hardware because the card is now causing a short-circuit.
------
bitxbitxbitcoin
I've successfully used a "broken" GPU that just had a broken fan that needed
replacing but with these things YMMV.
~~~
tapper
Cool wich one was it?
~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
Back in the day: HD 5770.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Senzu – collection of robo advisors, p2p lending and more - kilimchoi
https://senzu.io/investing
======
qwrusz
I definitely think investing is confusing to some folks, especially when just
starting out it can be intimidating. There's a huge opportunity for new tech
ideas and solutions to help clarify and simplify getting started with
investing.
So cheers for working on this problem.
I don't mean to hate on your new product...But what the hell are those
estimated returns numbers?
Those should probably be removed asap.
I'm not sure where you are in the building/testing phase for this so maybe a
lot more changes are coming. At this point it's not obvious this first
iteration simplifies investing for someone new to it and may seriously be
making things worse. Put yourself in the shoes of a first time investor
arriving at your site, might they still have questions before feeling ready to
choose an investment company to click on and are you helping answer at least
some of those initial questions...
What are those risk and liquidity things? How did you come up with that? Are
blue links affiliate links to these companies? if so are there no rules for
these programs?
Are you guys comfortable with how robo-advisors and investing work?...Each
clients situation will be unique based on things like their age and their
goals, etc. so information should be presented with that in mind. If you're
not comfortable with details of this stuff I would think twice before
launching this particular site.
Sorry if this came across as rude. I wouldn't want someone to get confused or
deceived.
Happy to answer any questions.
~~~
zazpowered
What's wrong with the estimated returns? Also what do you think would help
simplify this for first time investors. What details are you referring to when
you talk about how robo-advisors or investing works?
~~~
qwrusz
How can you estimate returns?
When it comes to investment products like these, _there is no way to know what
the future return will be_.
Imagine for example a new first time investor visits the site. They are
unfamiliar with these types of products. If they see something like "estimated
returns: 8.5%" that person might mistakenly think that's the type of return
from choosing that investment company.... Which of course is not true. It
could be higher it could be _much_ lower. No one knows what will happen in the
stock and bond markets in the future.
Now I realize you are not selling these investment products yourself, but the
government's rules for disclosure and advertising can give a lot of insight
about how to avoid confusing or misleading potential investors. You will see
even in cases where past performance is mentioned, there is a clear disclaimer
that 'past performance is no guarantee of its future success'. If one needs to
be that careful to avoid confusion regarding showing past returns, hopefully
you see why estimating future returns are treated even stricter.
[https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/mfperform.htm](https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/mfperform.htm)
How did you get those numbers?
~~~
zazpowered
I see what you're saying. For most of the robo-advisors it is the past
performance our portfolio on each platform from 2013-2015. We hook into an API
so we can see how each portfolio is doing. For the other ones it's usually the
return advertised on their website. A lot of these platforms advertise a
return rate on their website but you're right that they add that "past
performance is not a guarantee of future performance".
If you hover over some of the elements you will see more info
~~~
qwrusz
OK, I'm not sure what past performance you pulled off these companies
websites. But for your portfolios you seem to be claiming you have a 90/10\.
So I am guessing you are relatively young, in your 20s maybe early 30s. Are
the numbers you got from the other websites the same portfolio? If not, I
don't think it's fair to put them side by side like that.
If you want to use a 90/10 you can but something for a more typical portfolio
or a way to adjust the buckets seems to be a more common practice. One reason
is if a person visits a site and just sees returns from a 90/10, that would be
misleading if this person needs a totally different portfolio with a different
risk profile (maybe someone a bit older who needs a 60/40). More text can help
clarify what is going on.
I clicked on the Acorns portfolio and it's not even technically 90/10\. It's
30% real estate - it's biggest holding. This isn't your fault as many people
can and do call REITs stocks because of them being traded on stock exchanges.
But really they are trusts investing in real estate. So if someone already
owns or is about to buy real estate and they want to diversity their other
future savings into stocks and bonds, then calling REITs stocks is not
helpful.
Quote from Vanguard REIT website: "Appropriate for helping diversify the risks
of stocks and bonds in a portfolio." If REITs are stocks how are they
appropriate to help diversify the risk of stocks....Can be confusing to
someone new to investing.
[https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundIntExt=I...](https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundIntExt=INT&FundId=0986)
One more thing to keep an eye on is how you show returns if you are going to.
Averaging annual returns or annualized returns can be tricky.
For example. If the last three years returns are 8%, 8% and 8%. Are the
average returns 8% or 8.7%?
This gets more extreme with real numbers as just in the last 10 years stocks
have been as low -37% and as high as +32%. Whats the average return for these
years -2.5% or -8.4%. Big difference.
Just to be clear I think it's OK to compare products side by side and show
historical returns. But I would be really careful that you're disclosing the
necessary information and making sure you are comparing the same things apples
to apples.
~~~
qwrusz
This a link to GIPS. The Global Investment Performance Standards website.
There's a ton of information on there and a lot of it won't be needed for your
project. But going through the handbook might be useful.
GIPS is "A global standard for investment performance reporting gives
investors around the world the additional transparency they need to compare
and evaluate investment managers."
There's a link to the current handbook on the right. It's free.
[https://www.gipsstandards.org/Pages/index.aspx](https://www.gipsstandards.org/Pages/index.aspx)
~~~
zazpowered
Cool. Thanks for all the feedback!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This is a news website article about a scientific paper (2010) - blubbi2
https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1#comments
======
smaddox
Spot on. Kudos to The Guardian. I didn't know they did parody/satire. I like
them more and more with each article I read.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tech giants are becoming defenders of democracy. Now what? - tonyztan
https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-facebook-tech-giants-defending-democracy/
======
mtgx
Did Wired miss the Google memo?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A brief note: Why Silver was tripped up on Trump - JackPoach
https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/756127724389867520
======
SixSigma
Take a look at Nate Plastic's Trump headlines
[http://imgur.com/ZVbDMXh.jpg](http://imgur.com/ZVbDMXh.jpg)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GitHub Is Down - andretti1977
https://github.com/
======
Frost1x
If only there was a version control system for distributed software
development that wasn't completely reliant on a centralized client-server
model and frequent check-ins.
~~~
sairamkunala
git enables that. git is a dvcs. centralized Github is your bottleneck.
DevOps/SysAdmins usually plan for SPOFs (single points of failures) when using
a service, but having github as the central store defeats that purpose. This
again comes back to tools and integrations offered.
~~~
Frost1x
My comment was sarcastic if that wasn't clear, pointing out the massive irony
of the entire current development ecosystem that's often highly centralized
yet built atop a system designed at a fundamental level to be decentralized.
------
twistedpair
Geeze, so many outages/impacts (12+) in the last 90 days.
The status page looks like a Pez dispenser.
[https://www.githubstatus.com/](https://www.githubstatus.com/)
Usually companies put in place a release freeze or "Code Purple" when there
are such demonstrated problems with releasing stable code.
~~~
sairamkunala
These may be the challenges with a "Continous Deployment" approach. Companies
usually fill these unknowns.
Gitlab releases a version once every month. Not sure how they deploy on the
hosted version.
------
leesalminen
Ha, I'd seen all these on HN for the past week or two but was lucky and
unaffected. Our CI/CD is currently failing due to an npm dependency that lives
on Github. Time to start looking into that NPM mirror thing folks talk about?
------
Legogris
They must have been anticipating this happening more often, given the
replacement of the raging unicorn with a sad squidcat (or is it a catsquid?)
------
dalu
first they roll out this awful notification ... idk what to even call it,
monstrosity, now they're having issues with availability. I hate Microsoft so
much, and I hate the guy who sold it to Microsoft even more.
------
andreimiulescu
in a middle of a deployment lol move to gitlab and redid my docker image to
pull my charts from gitlab lol lesson learned
------
stevefan1999
sigh, is it like the third time in a row this week?
~~~
WaterWastage
This is the fourth one.
[https://www.githubstatus.com/#past-
incidents](https://www.githubstatus.com/#past-incidents)
~~~
stevefan1999
fourth?! this is outrageous
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What would happen if you put your hand in the Large Hadron Collider - ecaron
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMqPT6oKJ8
======
ecaron
Short answer: They don't know.
Longer answer. It won't be good, but it might not kill you - probably won't
give you superpowers. But nobody's going to let you try anyway.
------
RiderOfGiraffes
Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1725592>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Hunter – Lag-free terminal file browser in Rust - rabito
https://github.com/rabite0/hunter
======
octobanana
This looks neat, I'll give it a go later today.
One of the features I use Ranger for is to visually select multiple music
files and then open them with mpv to play. Would that be something Hunter
supports, or would support in the future?
What has been the most challenging aspect you've encountered so far while
building this?
Thanks for sharing!
~~~
rabito
Hi, sorry for the late answer.
Yes, you can select multiple files with space and open them all at once using
the exec feature (type "!"). When you press tab it will insert "$s", which
will then be substituted with either the normal selection, or when multiple
files are selected with those multiple files. This works pretty much like in
ranger. It doesn't work when you just open them by "entering" them. I'm not
sure if that even makes sense since different file types could be selected and
it's not clear what the right thing to do would be. Maybe opening them one
after another? I'm not actually sure what ranger does in that case.
The most difficult thing.. That's actually hard to say since I started this to
learn more about Rust and it's the largest project I've written so far at
>8000 loc, so basically everything. :) But specifically, I guess getting the
asynchronous stuff working right was the hardest part. hunter loads everything
asynchronously and on demand, like the metadata and directory size. This is to
speed up loading times. I'm still not sure it's 100% correct. Rust makes it
easy to prevent data races, and it's very strict about what you can share
across threads and how you do it, but it doesn't prevent race conditions and
logic errors, and reasoning about concurrent programs is still hard.
I actually implemented my own Async type instead of using Futures or something
pre-made, because as far as I can tell especially futures come with a pretty
heavy binary size cost, which in turn takes time to load, making startup
slower on a slow HDD. Other than that just getting the design right was pretty
hard. Although the basic foundation is pretty solid I think.
Another reason I started this is to see how usable my TUI widgets are and when
I first scrolled through a directory listing at light speed I got somewhat
addicted. :) I kept those widgets really generic and they're easy to use in
the sense that you can for example get a ListView for your type by just
implementing a trait for it and they're very composable so that you can easily
get a TabView for your ListView and so on. My plan is to put all that in a
library eventually.
Error handling is another problem area. When I started I actually didn't make
use of any error handling at all, in the sense that I didn't return errors
from my functions, instead handling everything by just returning early, or
returning empty strings or whatever made sense. This got problematic after I
started heavily using mutexes, channels and other things that return errors,
since I couldn't use ? and most of the time there is really nothing to do
other than returning early with the error (and logging it), or skipping that
operation when it happens in a loop.
I then went the other extreme and started returning Results everywhere. The
problem is that right now there is just one single enum with all the dozens of
possible errors, so it's hard to say what error can actually happen. Another
problem is that I had to remove backtraces after implementing the Async type
since backtraces can't be shared between threads for some reason and now the
log viewer is pretty crippled. It's actually a "FoldView" and you could fold
those backtraces in and out to see what went wrong where, now it's pretty much
just a simple list. So yeah, splitting those error types is definitely on my
todo list. :)
EDIT: fixed typo
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Herd immunity: will the UK's coronavirus strategy work? - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/herd-immunity-will-the-uks-coronavirus-strategy-work
======
WheelsAtLarge
This is a very dangerous strategy, given the 10% to 20% of the infected cases
that will need hospitalization. I would also worry about the fact that the
virus will mutate even faster as the number of infected will increase. The UK
is heading towards a very difficult time at a period when most countries will
be dealing with their own problems and are the least likely to help.
If the UK wants to follow this strategy they should find a way to infect the
least likely to die, first. They can then deal with the associated
hospitalizations in a more orderly fashion.
Good luck to them, I hope it works.
------
nabla9
The herd immunity level is (1 - 1/R0) where R0 is reproductive rate.
If the effective reproductive rate can be lowered with measures (like
increased social distance and gatherings) the level where herd immunity is
reached is lower.
Another reason to use countermeasures is to prevent hospitals from filling up
too fast. There is limited number of ventilators available.
------
timwaagh
How would that coccooning even work? I don't think it's viable for them to
isolate for months or years.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IM aggregator eBuddy catches up to Meebo in popularity, claims nearly 10x more revenue - paulsb
http://venturebeat.com/2008/04/15/im-aggregator-ebuddy-catches-up-to-meebo-in-popularity-claims-nearly-10x-more-revenue/
======
rms
>While Meebo focuses on putting chatrooms all over the web with their Meebo
Rooms product — a group chat widget you can embed on other sites — eBuddy has
focused on building out its mobile offerings.
Focusing on mobile was definitely the better idea. It also sounds like they
are selling much more aggressive/invasive advertising than Meebo. And it
definitely doesn't sound like the users of eBuddy mind.
~~~
bilbo0s
All of that money is coming from the traditional web side though. As is
evidenced by this statement:
"Among our users are almost two million monthly uniques on mobile where have
not yet made any revenues."
My question would be, Why can eBuddy monetize while Meebo has such challenges?
------
apgwoz
Does anyone think that the name "eBuddy" versus "Meebo" might have something
to do with increase in popularity? I had never heard of eBuddy before, but
instantly recognized that it had something to do with communicating with
friends. Meebo on the other hand, provides no clues in it's name.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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User finds crypto miner in “free” 3D modeling software - rrauenza
https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/bsnez3/psa_gentleman_in_creality_fb_group_discovers/
======
rrauenza
Quoting:
_little blurb about it on the CEO 's linkedin
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafael-lima-
ab97a860/de](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafael-lima-ab97a860/de)
We are creating the first decentralized computing network, distributing
professional free software and monetizing it through crypto mining and
blockchain Technology._
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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About Linkrot: Proportion of Working Links on Pinboard.in, 1997-2011 - chl
http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/05/remembrance_of_links_past/
======
patio11
There is an easy way to increase your detection of redirects and parked pages:
make two requests, one to the real URL and one to a URL which is intentionally
broken. (example.com/i-am-a-link and example.com/fklsdfasdifo for example) Run
a heuristic for difference on the resulting content. This won't catch all of
them, particularly if you use a really naive heuristic that can't deal with
e.g. ads changing, but it's a heck of a lot quicker than comparing manually.
~~~
hcho
I suspect that's what Google does too. I see lots of example.com/fklsdfasdifo
type requests from Big G in my logs.
~~~
bauchidgw
if you see a lot of them go to webmaster tools, if you see them there too its
not some kind of test but some other reasone, mostly their shitty js parsinf,
which treats anything with an / as a relative url...
------
bmm6o
"Links appear to die at a steady rate (they don't have a half life), and you
can expect to lose about a quarter of them every seven years."
Is this self-contradictory, or is just poor wording of his findings?
~~~
pyninja
What's not clear about it? They die at a steady rate of 25% per 7 years.
~~~
bmm6o
As reemrevnivek explains, the answer to "25% of what?" is the issue here. An
exponential decay can be described with the same words.
~~~
erikpukinskis
There's a freaking graph. Are we really being this pedantic that we can't
understand what he's saying?
~~~
bmm6o
I discovered when I got home that the graph was blocked by my office's web
filter. Definitely makes more sense with it there. Thanks for your
understanding!
------
ugh
I think it's about time that some government or billionaire throws a few
millions at an internet archive project. The Internet Archive is nice but more
regular snapshots with a wider coverage would be something I'm certain future
historians would love to get their hands on (and they will hate us if we don't
do it).
~~~
tokenadult
_I think it's about time that some government or billionaire throws a few
millions at an internet archive project._
It may be that one or two governments have already done that. You are, of
course, referring to a publicly accessible Internet archive.
As for what a benevolent millionaire (it wouldn't have to be a full
billionaire for this to start up) could fund, pg has suggested, "There is room
to do to Wikipedia what Wikipedia did to Britannica."
<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>
It's interesting that pg thought then that Wikipedia's problem is excessive
deletionism, while I (after being a registered Wikipedian and working on
various articles) think that Wikipedia's problem is lack of thorough research
to prepare article content.
[http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strate...](http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summary/Improve_Quality)
Whatever one's opinion of what's wrong with Wikipedia, the best way to prompt
improvement in Wikipedia (or replace it, if you prefer that) is to build
another site that does some of what Wikipedia does but does it better somehow.
That's not easy, not easy at all, but it's not terribly expensive. I have
looked at the Wikimedia Foundation financial reports, and building a strong
competitor to Wikipedia is a project that is well within the grasp of several
individual millionaires, and within the grasp of quite a few nonprofit
charitable organizations. A business corporation that can find out a way to
monetize a Wikipedia competitor might have a great business opportunity.
~~~
neilk
> It's interesting that pg thought then that Wikipedia's problem is excessive
> deletionism, while I (after being a registered Wikipedian and working on
> various articles) think that Wikipedia's problem is lack of thorough
> research to prepare article content.
Yep, that's the usual distinction. Non-Wikipedians believe that Wikipedia
should be a compendium of any information that could be useful, however
unverifiable or incomplete. Wikipedians want there to be higher standards, but
pg makes the common mistake of thinking this is because they are all OCD.[1]
The Wikipedia system relies on group verifiability. Low quality info imposes
long-term costs on the administrators. The article will be flagged more
frequently than others. So pruning low quality info is a matter of
administrator self-defence, even if you ignore the ideals of achieving a
trustworthy encyclopedia.
A Wikipedia successor would have to abandon trustworthiness (or figure out
some way to indicate that certain pages were untrustworthy). Or figure out how
not to impose the costs of maintaining unverifiable information on
administrators. One way might be to connect the info with the community that
cares about it in a more direct and intimate way. Wikipedia fails REALLY badly
at the latter, to the point where the wiki-insiders sometimes have more
control than the audience for a topic.
> That's not easy, not easy at all, but it's not terribly expensive.
In terms of software and services, it would be no problem at all. But you are
overlooking the cost of creating a new Wikipedia in a world where Wikipedia
already exists.
Wikipedia content is also famously intractable to reuse in any system other
than MediaWiki. We hope to begin alleviating that this year with the big
parser redesign. A side effect should be to enable competitors to try
different things with our content.
[1] They are, but this is not the primary reason. ;)
------
InclinedPlane
Sadly I think technological advances has only accelerated this phenomenon.
We've gone from an era of static pages that would require considerable effort
to change the overall layout of to CMSes that we can twiddle and upgrade with
nary a concern for backward link compatibility.
Personally I think it should be a principle of every professional web
developer that you just don't break links, period.
------
gojomo
Users may prune their own bookmarks when they discover the links broken –
especially when considering some of the pre-Pinboard systems (like in-browser
bookmarking) from which the earliest data in this analysis comes. So I suspect
this underestimates link-rot.
~~~
idlewords
Just like it says in the article!
~~~
gojomo
D'oh! Overlooked that in my quick-read (or seeing as how I chose the same
'prune' word, only noticed it subconsciously).
Still an important enough point to pull out for highlight here; I should have
used a direct quote.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Things I learned dealing with psychopaths in startups - algirau
https://medium.com/@AlexanderGirau/7-things-i-learned-dealing-with-psychopaths-in-startups-baaae513ee03#.8mg2rovpt
======
p4wnc6
To me, this article reads as an excuse for the company to behave in a
sociopathic way, and then turn around and try to pin the blame on some
employee when they (perhaps rightfully) stand up for themselves.
I've been in situations where people performed blatant religious
discrimination towards me, and also threatened to reduce my wage due to
discussing pay with a coworker (threatening any form of retaliation for
discussing pay is blatantly illegal).
The company easily could have raised some of these same complaints towards me
just to try to leverage their comparably greater resources to pin blame on the
worker rather than own up to the all too common sociopathic tendencies that
develop inside bureaucracies.
In the end, both this comment and the parent article are just anecdotes. But I
say it's a better prior to be more skeptical of managers/higher-
ups/bureaucrats who are willing to drop the "psychopath" nuke on behavior they
don't like, than the toxic employee.
~~~
algirau
Well to be frank, I am sharing an experience dealing with a problem member in
a 5 person startup. You are correct it is an anecdote. One I want to share in
hopes no one has to go through a similar issue. Your victimization does not
mean every member-company transgression is due to the company. Minority
members that have insider information can do serious damage and not care of
the legal ramifications when there are obvious consequence to them.
~~~
p4wnc6
I understand that not every member-company transgression is due to the
company. But sources like Moral Mazes give us a vast set of evidence to
believe that companies are intrinsically organized to be able to commit such
transgressions without ever bearing responsibility for them, and that
extraordinary effort is put forward to create organizational frameworks that
codify exactly this manner of villifying worker victims and coordinating
across organizations to create workplace cultural norms such that any action
of standing up for one's self is deemed "unprofessional" or "not becoming of a
true team player" or whatever other HR code word you want, all the way up,
apparently, to "psychopath."
In this sense, we ought to be more willing to apply skepticism to the company,
and more skeptical in general that things like company charter documents, HR
policies, company handbooks, or even just email memos about company culture
and policy (the more likely case in a start-up), are designed to create legal
deniability for the pursuit of illegal and irrational whims of executives, and
truly nothing more.
This is so much the modus operandi of companies in general, start-up or
otherwise, that until after we account for the huge base rate of company-
initiated transgressions, it just has little relevance to focus so much on the
"toxic" employee. In fact, one of the most successful scams of the
organizational HR world is to draw so much disproportionate attention to the
scarecrow "toxic employee."
Both of my worst experiences with outright fraudulent and corrupt managers
have come at start-ups, where there wasn't even the thin veneer of an HR
apparatus to even pay lip service to protecting us from executive whims.
Now, having said all that, I can certainly still agree that your case might be
an exception. But I would prefer if your article was written more that way:
that when this happens on the part of an employee, it's generally very rare
and the best thing for the company to do is try to learn how they could have
handled it better (read: publicly calling someone something as incendiary as
"psychopath" is not it, even if it were true), and voiciferously acknowledge
that in the vast, vast majority of cases, it is the company being toxic, not
the employee who responds by standing up for herself.
------
DanBC
> CEO & Founder
> psychopaths
> utterly insane
> psychopathic minority member
> latent craziness
> psychopaths
> broken psychology
> psychopath’s
> crazy will make the sane crazy
> their crazy existence
> psychopath
> crazy
I should stop being surprised when company owners leave themselves open to
litigation. MH is a disability, and disability is a protected characteristic
in US law.
------
adamzerner
Do you knoW that this person is a legitimate psychopath?
~~~
sandstrom
Good question. It feels like this term is being thrown around quite a lot.
Out of curiosity I browsed Wikipedia which had this to say:
Psychopathy emphasize three observable characteristics to varying degrees:
- Boldness. Low fear, high tolerance of stress, unfamiliarity and danger, and
high self-confidence and social assertiveness.
- Disinhibition. Poor impulse control including problems with planning and
foresight, lacking affect and urge control, and demand
for immediate gratification. Low conscientiousness.
- Meanness. Lacking empathy and close attachments with others, use of cruelty
to gain empowerment, exploitative tendencies, defiance
of authority, and destructive excitement seeking.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#Definition)
~~~
algirau
I think this applies closely.
I am surprised that the tendency to compulsively lie is not also in the
Wikipedia definition.
~~~
p4wnc6
But when it comes to something as medically severe as psychopathy isn't it the
whole point that it shouldn't matter what you, or me, or any layperson thinks?
If you already don't like this coworker because of disagreements and actions
at work, you're very likely to overestimate these symptoms, or believe that
someone who is only a little ways along the spectrum to psychopath is actually
much further.
Imagine if we believed everyone who went through a bad breakup or divorce and
called their ex partner a psychopath out of anger (even justified anger). It
just seems really extreme to use some armchair diagnosis from someone
emotionally invested in believing bad things about the other person.
~~~
algirau
This isn't as juvenile as a dislike. I spent my PhD on the technology for this
company and licensed it from a tier 1 university and started the company. This
individual (hindsight is 20/20) coerced me to make probably the worst decision
by giving him fully vested equity only to leave for a different opportunity
after and yet wish to have a say on issues that are Board issues.
Again this post was a message to any founder finding a partner. Things may be
rosy in the beginning but if you are paired with someone who fundamentally is
only motivated by money they will always choose their own interest over the
company. Even if that means actively sabotaging and slandering.
Again I do not want to air dirty laundry but I was landed the unfortunate
worst case scenario.
Anyone who thinks that I am being one sided is allowed to have that
prerogative. I cannot give full details but please imagine the worse situation
you can get into with a first partner, I am talking them trying to smear your
reputation and sabotaging the company in order to get their way, not just some
friendship that went bad. Please proceed with caution and do not be overly
trustworthy.
If anyone wants to know more I would be happy to talk directly. But I'm
sharing this because founders with genuine intentions and the ones who get
damaged the most by individuals like this.
~~~
dfraser992
Hi, I am quite sure I have a good idea of what you're going thru (see my
comment history for my rants). I have vented enough over the past 2 years and
all the stress has burned out, so I'm over it all (I think). But I can't help
but offer support whenever someone raises this sort of topic...
Your problem seems, based on what you say, a lot more narcissistic than the
guys I had to deal with - yes, that is actually a positive, believe me. The
problem is obvious... I lost 5 years of my life to this stupid startup and got
little out of it except some harsh life lessons.
Good luck, and if you don't have a lawyer, get one.
------
dfraser992
Based on my experiences, I would say this person the article speaks of is more
probably a schzoid type personality, or borderline personality disorder? I
think the popular media driven depiction of psychopaths as bombastic assholes
to be click-bait - real psychopaths are a lot more like Patrick Bateman
("American Psycho") - cool as a cucumber and always in control of their
emotions
And thus the interaction they have with people. They're like an information
black hole - little leaks out of them, but they are sucking up every bit of
non-verbal etc info out of you and consciously processing it. Thus they see
your blind spots and can devise ways to take advantage of your 'shadow' side
or hidden psychological needs.
~~~
DanBC
> Based on my experiences, I would say this person the article speaks of is
> more probably a schzoid type personality, or borderline personality
> disorder?
What the fuck.
This tiny little article gives you nothing with which you can make those
claims.
~~~
dfraser992
no, it does. Psychopaths are a lot more calculating, less emotional, and from
how the OP wrote it, it seemed like there was a lot more emotional stuff going
on with the trouble maker. I have a mother with borderline personality
disorder, so I am very experienced with how these types of disorders look. The
situation reminded me of my own experiences.
ok, I have no idea why I wrote schizoid. I was probably drunk at the time... I
stand corrected on that. I still say 'psychopath' is the wrong term to use
though. On the face of it, it seems to be something different - certainly some
anti-social personality disorder.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ledger-autosync: get transactions from your bank and add them to your ledger - ashitlerferad
https://gitlab.com/egh/ledger-autosync
======
ashitlerferad
[http://plaintextaccounting.org/](http://plaintextaccounting.org/)
------
billconan
I briefly looked at the introduction. I'm curious how does app link mint work?
is a bank api? or they basically parse text files?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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From RSS to sharing on social networks - phantomjs? - agilord
How would you automate posting the title / description / short url of your blog posts to your Facebook / Twitter / Google+ / ... pages? The sites we are sponsoring or helping with have 10+ RSS feeds and 30+ possible social network page destinations.<p>Does someone have a good collection of PhantomJs scripts?
======
AznHisoka
I use CasperJS - it's a wrapper with syntactic sugar around PhantomJS. Posting
to social networks is almost trivial (couple of lines). Just run it with your
cookies file, and it'll login automatically.
~~~
agilord
Thanks for the lead!
I've found bing login for casperjs, but otherwise most example out there
assume anonymous access. I wouldn't use my cookie files, especially because it
limits automation.
It is so stunning that nobody tried to solve this before / nobody published
the scripts.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IE6 in the browser - bound008
http://app.cloudinternetexplorer.com/
======
cobychapple
Whoever has made this RDP server publicly accessible (if that's what this is)
sure is brave—I'll bet that it's ridden with viruses, popups, and other
nastiness in no time.
Also, I get IE9, not IE6.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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That Old Phone Trump Uses for Twitter Could Be an Opening to Security Threats - poindontcare
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/technology/donald-trump-phone-social-media-security.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
======
icomefromreddit
From the article:
> _Could be_... _could be_... _but it’s unclear_... _could be_... _if_...
> _if_... _he could_ \--- _It is unclear_... _could be_... _could_...
So, we don't if Trump keep his old device, but we will pretend he keep his old
device.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Open source Deep Learning Background removal service - burgalon
Me and my colleague have been working on a small POC for Background removal. We used semantic segmentation trained on selfies, and documented the process of training and deploying a Keras model with Docker, Heroku and a Gitlab CI in 3 posts:<p><a href="https://greenscreen-ai.boorgle.com" rel="nofollow">https://greenscreen-ai.boorgle.com</a> Server side implementation
<a href="https://greenscreen-ai-client.boorgle.com" rel="nofollow">https://greenscreen-ai-client.boorgle.com</a> Client side implementation using KerasJS<p>Training post
<a href="https://medium.com/@gidishperber/background-removal-with-deep-learning-c4f2104b3157" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@gidishperber/background-removal-with-dee...</a><p>Deploying Keras model to Heroku with Gitlab CI
<a href="https://medium.com/@burgalon/deploying-your-keras-model-35648f9dc5fb" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@burgalon/deploying-your-keras-model-3564...</a><p>KerasJS client side post
<a href="https://medium.com/@burgalon/deploying-your-keras-model-using-keras-js-2e5a29589ad8" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@burgalon/deploying-your-keras-model-usin...</a><p>Server side source code
<a href="https://gitlab.com/fast-science/background-removal-server" rel="nofollow">https://gitlab.com/fast-science/background-removal-server</a><p>Client side post
<a href="https://gitlab.com/fast-science/background-removal-vue" rel="nofollow">https://gitlab.com/fast-science/background-removal-vue</a>
======
ldenoue
When I tried the client side version on the same image, it wasn't good
compared to the server side. Are you using a different model on the client?
~~~
burgalon
Indeed I had a problem converting the latest model to KerasJS
------
isharko
This is really cool! Thanks for sharing.
------
inmean
very nice concept, too bad the greenscreen-ai-client a bit slow
~~~
burgalon
Yep. I'm looking forward to finish our implementation using WebDNN. It's super
fast
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: Has anyone moved to Canada? - marrone12
Hi, my girlfriend is a Canadian citizen and eventually wants to move back. I work as a data scientist manager in tech and make good money. How have people found the move to Canada in terms of salary, opportunity, and interesting companies to work for compared to American non-Bay Area tech cities like NYC, Seattle etc.<p>My initial searches have found it to be relatively barren, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong places? Thinking primarily Vancouver but potentially open to other cities.<p>Thank you.
======
kat
My advice for Vancouver: \- Tech Jobs: look on craigslist (surprisingly good!)
\- Salaries: Look on glassdoor. Also look on the CRA website (CRA is the IRS
in Canada) to see which tax bracket you'll be in - you'll notice lower
salaries and higher taxes, as many people have already pointed out
\- Interesting Companies: Lots! Microsoft, Amazon, Hootsuite, and more. There
is an increasing number of big tech companies that have figure out its cheaper
to have a Canadian office than an American office. There are less tech jobs
but there are also less tech people - It sounds like you have a niche
background, so it might take a little longer to find a job.
------
ajeet_dhaliwal
I’m in a similar position except I’m currently in London, UK. Wife would love
move to Toronto where she grew up and has family but some issues stop us. Even
in Toronto, a bigger place than Vancouver things feel _relatively barren_ as
you put it, salaries are lower. If you have an online business or work
remotely that can solve things but beware high taxes. To take just one example
currently Ontario’s highest rate of marginal income tax is 53.4% compared with
45% in the U.K. That said taxes are complex as a whole, not all taxes are
higher but overall the burden in Ontario tends to be higher and applies at
lower levels. Some of the salaries they pay government workers are very high
compared to elsewhere.
My wife’s family loves living in Canada and we may yet move one day but I’d
say if you’re from the US, UK or Asia I would not feel bad about it taking
much longer to find work in Canada, I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong
or looking in the wrong places.
------
tchadwick
I'm Canadian. I moved to LA for a bit and then moved back to my home in
Saskatchewan. I took a bit of a pay cut to come back, but I work for an
autonomous vehicle company now. I enjoy it much more than my job in LA. We're
looking for a Deep Learning/Data Scientist right now ;) $70-150k CAD is what
to expect for salary range.
It definitely is harder to find interesting companies in Canada, which is why
I originally left. They do exist though! Most decently sized cities are
actively building startup & tech communities.
------
aprdm
I moved from London - UK to Vancouver and love it.
Perfect mix of a big / small city .
Tech salaries are higher than London for staff salary people and smaller than
US which is just across the border.
Cost of life is expensive but for tech workers is OK. Better than London for
sure.
------
hackermailman
Try and work remotely out of the US, salaries here (Vancouver) are shit once
you factor in taxes and cost of living.
------
thiagooffm
Maybe consider saving enough money in order to buy a property over there
before moving, that will greatly help you. Other than that, just move there.
If you do that, your cost of living will be lower and in Canada you will have
access to good healthcare, education and maybe to enjoy things again which
doesn't imply monetary property. I'm pretty sure that overall, you'll have
happier and more educated kids. I can imagine the kind of monsters people grow
in the USA.
I live in Germany and we have many points like Canada and I just laugh when I
hear about "could make more money elsewhere" or "career" in America when life
is much softer and nicer here. Sure, things aren't perfect here, but at least
people in general care about the environment and the personal space of others,
I can easily get a lot of vegetarian/vegan food in Berlin and people are just
awesome, many of them, from the US and sick of the state of art country you've
got there. If you don't care about this and is a psycho which just want to
maximize how much you make and then die, just stay in the US. It is a good
place for you to be.
If I had the chance to pick living in the USA or in a first developed country,
somewhat decent living conditions and economy. I would definitely pick the
second choice.
I seriously wouldn't feel like living in a the same country of Trump, or just
the average american mindset. It just looks pretty retarded to me. It's a
economy that only exists because it manages to really impose its power around
the world, so americans there feel like they got something, but it's always in
exchange of somebodys life or happiness. I'm not sure if I would like to tell
my kids I'm this kind of person, or my family. I wouldn't feel happy for
myself.
But that's just me. Make your choice, but remember, life isn't your salary or
your job position.
~~~
gota
Huh, kinda harsh there on your judgement of the way of life of 300+ million
people, most of whom don't actively seek it or have any reasonable say in it
Still, giving you the benefit of interpreting your point as friendly as I can,
I can't help but state that _your_ economical advantage there on one of the
richest countries in the world _also_ only exists because it is imposed on
others around the world
~~~
thiago_fm
Never said that here is perfect. The supposition is the following:
\- He can move somewhere if he wants(he got the choice, unlike many). \-
Country is bad, creates a bad impact in the world than the other country. Also
can enjoy as a individual a better quality of life. \- Why stay?
I travel frequently to the US(lately, roughly every year) and that is my
observation. Every year I go, my typical restaurants look more cheap and the
people more decadent and I'm quite young, so I saw that change since I visited
it for the first time, around 20 years ago.
I find it very hard to believe that anything about the american way of doing
things(let it be culture or business) is sustainable. The US will probably
undergo in some crisis and change, but I wouldn't like to be exactly there and
experience it :-)
I was born in a third-world country and at least recently, I've been quite
amused at how many things my country started to do much better than the US and
some areas look as good as they do in the US, meanwhile I haven't seen
anything getting better in the last decade... Have you tried using a bank in
the US?
I bet that there is a country in Africa that has a better and faster banking
system than in the US.
Maybe if you share another opinion, you could share it as well.
~~~
gota
Are you sure this was meant as a reply to my comment? It is way too ranty and
so beyond the point of what I wrote that I believe you answered to the wrong
post
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google invests $1M in pedal-powered monorail pods - blparker
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/10/12/shweeb.urban.transport/index.html?hpt=C2
======
RiderOfGiraffes
Lots of comments from over a week ago:
\+ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1762998>
Earlier submission of exactly this item:
\+ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1788591>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami - rambunco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Lituya_Bay_megatsunami
======
nl
US Geological Survey done at the time, with photos and eyewitness accounts:
[http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/0354c/report.pdf](http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/0354c/report.pdf)
------
lifeisstillgood
It's seems it's not this event, but I remember watching a documentary about a
fishing boat (commercial) in an Alaskan lake, where they watched the rockfall
descend and cause a tsunami, which lifted their boat up, over the mountainside
and deposited it into a different lake on the other side of the mountain.
Even after decades had passed you could see the sheer terror and awe of how
they survived.
Edit: still cannot find the reference. But the Canary Islands are poised to
wipe out southern England - a sizeable chunk of the NE facing island is ready
to fall and would send a tsunami undimmed onto England / France.
~~~
imaginenore
No, you're talking about the Lituya Bay megatsunami. Howard Ulrich and his
son, Howard Jr. survived it just like you described.
~~~
lifeisstillgood
Thanks folks - it was this :-)
As a side note this is my goto atheist argument. No way is it a miracle. If
God existed, He would look at catching a boat in a tsunami and chucking it
safely _over a mountain_ to another lake and say "nah that's a bit obvious"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chinese Economy Is Showing Signs of a Slowdown - timr
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/business/worldbusiness/07yuan.html?hp
======
biohacker42
How could it NOT show signs of a slowdown.
But China, unlike the US, is sitting on mountains of savings - cash. They can
and most likely will spend their way to at least an 8% annual GDP growth. Most
of their spending will go to infrastructure.
But that's the key difference between China and the US, they have savings, we
have debt.
~~~
timr
Agreed. But remember that a year ago, the bulk of the "experts" were yammering
on about how the Chinese economy was "untethered" from the fate of the
developed economies.
------
uuilly
It will be interesting to see what happens during a slowdown in China. Most
people don't realize how close they came to overthrowing their gov during
Tiananmen Square. Revolutions rarely occur when times are good. Is Tiananmen
dead or just sleeping?
If a downturn does happen, things will be a lot worse for the farmers than the
city dwellers. That's where you'll see the most acute pain and the biggest
need for change.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Popular Request Module Is Going into Maintenance Mode(nodejs) - ausjke
https://github.com/request/request/issues/3142
======
ausjke
Alternatives:
[https://github.com/request/request/issues/3143](https://github.com/request/request/issues/3143)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
From Art School to SE Researcher at Microsoft - madamdo
https://www.software-engineering-unlocked.com/from-art-school-to-microsoft-research/
======
lsinger
Especially the beginning where she recounts how she enrolled in a computer
science university program without owning I found super interesting. I wonder
if one could still pull that off today — there surely are still people without
computers and smartphones, maybe not for financial but ideological reasons?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hack Back – A DIY guide to those without the patience to wait for whistleblowers - anirudhrata
http://data.langly.fr/blackhat
======
Eiriksmal
This article was quite fascinating. It's impressive that a series of small
security holes culminate with the release of sensitive software. It's equally
interesting that all those security tips we roll our eyes at, as we've heard
them one too many times, they really matter! Don't write crappy code: Don't
trust user input. Don't do client-side only checks on any information being
processed by the server. Etc. Etc.
The Linux root exploit tools mentioned will be of assistance to me in securing
our own servers. We've been "hacked" once before (the server admin had created
a user named `server` with the password `server` some time in ancient history
and left open a setting in SMTP that permitted the bot to send massive amounts
of spam masquerading as thailandinternet54@yahoo.com from our mail server.
Classy.) and got lucky that the bot's sole purpose was to send spam and not
take control of the server and dump its sensitive database materials to a hard
drive somewhere in Asia.
~~~
ztnewman
None of those were 'small security holes'. SQL injection on your website?
Unnecessary ports open and known vulnerabilities on a public facing server?
This is embarrassing for a company that apparently focuses on security.
~~~
spydum
typically the infrastructure which is supposed to be "uber sekure" has been
well vetted, and is relatively secure.
The problem is, there is almost always some "trivial" system (public web site,
severely outdated wordpress blog, or worse) that some poor fool in
marketing/product "HAD TO HAVE YESTERDAY". The admins knew it wasn't mission
critical, and would only be "temporary". So they spent minimal effort to set
it up, skipped over all of the process and security hardening they would do
for a proper release, and left it.
Of course, we know what happens: some hacker finds the exploits, then pivots
to explore the internal network.
You will find most big enterprise-y shops build networks with hard exteriors,
and soft interiors. Very few of their security plans are capable of a threat
from inside the network.
~~~
annnnd
I was always baffled by the notion of "internal network". Why do so many
admins think that it is secure, that the device on it should be trusted more
than some random PC on the Internet?
Usually there are PCs and mobile platforms on it, handled by more or less
naive users... many of them could be / are turned into unsuspecting adversary
to attacks.
One should always treat internal devices as potentially compromised.
------
bjpirt
I found this a frank and pretty fascinating inside view of how hackers operate
in the wild.
Thanks to whoever it was for publishing it. It's a must-read for anyone
running any kind of IT services. Well worth running through these steps on
your own systems.
------
orf
Every time I find or see an SQL injection issue I get angry. It's 2014, why
are web developers still making the same basic mistakes? SQL injection is a
fixed issue. There is no excuse.
Same with XSS, although not as serious it's staggeringly common.
~~~
EliRivers
I believe it is essentially a function of the skill distribution and price of
developers.
There will always be a spectrum of skill level; there will always be very
inexperienced, low-skilled developers just about able to knock together
something that works, but is susceptible to SQL injection. These inexperienced
developers will charge less, and will get work, so there will always be an
endless supply of new developers making new sites that are susceptible.
I can think of three ways (and various combinations/subsets of them) it would
ever stop:
1) The tools themselves to somehow fall out of favour and be replaced with
tools that make it harder to make this kind of mistake
2) Developers become compelled to undergo regulation and trade guilds or
related, such that their skill level just to do business exceeds the
aforementioned minimum
3) Websites (or a subset thereof) become regulated such that they are
inspected/audited for this kind of thing, which would compel businesses to pay
more to hire competent developers.
I don't see any of this happening any time soon, so there will be a perpetual
supply of new websites containing well-known vulnerabilities. Forever. This
will never, ever stop.
~~~
orf
No, it will stop. I think the tools and general lack of awareness are a big
factor - those will both undoubtedly change.
~~~
Kalium
I have my doubts. Think about lock design - it's been known for a long time
how to design decent locks, and yet in the US we still use these crappy
cylinder locks.
~~~
StavrosK
As someone who doesn't know, how _do_ we design decent locks? Which locks use
the decent design?
~~~
twistedpair
Read up on Medeco. An expert lock smith _might_ be able to pick it in his
career, once. That's an $80 lock. Now look at Kwikset from HomeDepot for $11.
An amateur can pick that lock in 2 seconds flat.
In short, the Medeco lock basically has every deterrent you can put into a
lock that the industry knows about. Medeco to Kwikset is like a major payment
processor's portal to a Wordpress site with a shopping cart plugin for seeing
specialty cat themed oven mitts. You get what you pay for if you high someone
that knows what they're doing.
~~~
thaumasiotes
You sound like a true believer in DRM. Just like with DRM, a lock doesn't
provide all that much security because all of the information necessary to
break it is encoded in the lock.
From
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medeco](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medeco) :
> As of 2008, several new methods of cracking Medeco locks has been developed
> by Mark Tobais and Tobias Bluzmanis and were presented at the DEF CON 2008
> and HOPE 2008. A simultaneous public release of a book detailing many of the
> exploits, called "Open in Thirty Seconds" detailed many of the attacks
> discovered.
> They further detailed the ability to bump current generation Medeco M3
> locks.
> Many Medeco dealers continue to make claims about the Bump and Pick proof
> nature of their locks, however Medeco has retracted virtually all of its own
> press indicating such claims.
Furthermore, this particular piece of rhetoric:
> An expert lock smith _might_ be able to pick it in his career, once.
makes no sense. Picking a style of lock once makes the next time easier, not
harder.
~~~
twistedpair
>Furthermore, this particular piece of rhetoric: >> An expert lock smith might
be able to pick it in his career, once.
Easy getting down off your high horse. It might blow your socks off, but I've
read that Wikipedia article before. I've actually gone through the whole
DEFCON presentation and paper too, where you'll see which locks have the bump
mod since 2008. ;) Yet, given that I'm not concerned about the CIA or NSA
sneaking in to spike my cookie jar with LSD, I'll stick with my Medeco lock,
including the bump mod, to make it a little more difficult to waltz into my
warehouse. If you want in, you'll have to take the door or wall down, which is
the point of a quality lock.
------
001spartan
As someone interested in getting into penetration testing, this is a
fascinating look into how techniques that have been around forever can be used
to get into anything. Disregarding the scale and target, this isn't anything
groundbreaking. It's just the fact that a company like Gamma was vulnerable to
simple things like this that is surprising.
------
kevin_thibedeau
"I recommend using servers you've hacked or a VPS paid with bitcoin to hack
from."
Not a good idea considering Bitcoin isn't anonymous and a sufficiently
motivated state can back track to an electronic purchase of bitcoin tied to
your identity.
~~~
enraged_camel
My understanding is that a sufficiently motivated state can find any computer
criminal. It's just a matter of following them long enough until they slip and
make an opsec mistake.
~~~
onewaystreet
Usually the mistake is talking too much. Jeremy Hammond (Stratfor hack) had
really good technical opsec but made the mistake of talking about his IRL
exploits to Sabu which led the FBI to connect his online identity to his IRL
political activism. Had he kept his mouth shut he probably would have never
been caught.
------
piffey
How was this article found? You go up to the directory and there is a whole
host of cruft. Not discounting the likelihood that this is how the attacker
was successful -- none of it's bullshit anyways -- but seems odd that someone
would just stumble upon this. Can't find out much about that site either other
than the Datalove reference that makes it seem like some Telecomix thing.
Anyways, interesting submission. Shows how quickly an attack can escalate and
what easy tools are available for you to test your own sites for
vulnerabilities.
~~~
ZoF
I think the original paste-bin was posted on Reddit by the same account that
posted the finfisher leaks. This is just a mirror.
~~~
piffey
Ah okay, that makes sense. Thank you.
~~~
tim333
It was also posted on the writers twitter
[https://twitter.com/gammagrouppr](https://twitter.com/gammagrouppr)
------
pvnick
Fyi the torrent can be found at [https://netzpolitik.org/wp-
upload/finfisher.torrent](https://netzpolitik.org/wp-
upload/finfisher.torrent), and the encrypted archive which possibly contains
the server software (which the author has asked volunteers to help crack. See
section 7.) is at finfisher/www/FinFisher/Engineers7117/FinSpy/Images/FinSpy-
PC+Mobile-2012-07-12-Final.zip. That file alone makes up 31.4gb of the 38.7gb
total size.
------
samcrawford
Interesting stuff, a nice level of detail.
Phrases like this say a little about his/her personality: "At this point I can
see the news stories that journalists will write to drum up views ..."
Also interesting to note just how much other stuff is exposed on
data.langly.fr (mostly related to Snowden, security, and a bunch of pirated
content).
------
weinzierl
If you are as curious as I am and decide to browse langly.fr for other
interesting stuff: Don't click on links that say "...dont clik" and if you
absolutely must, turn down the volume or put down your headphones and be
prepared to restart your browser.
~~~
idlewan
Or just don't have flash installed.
------
cellover
Very interesting read. Amazing to see where information gathering and simple
hacking techniques can lead you...
Pilots have checklists, web developers have Application Security Verification
Standard (2014)!
[https://www.owasp.org/images/5/58/OWASP_ASVS_Version_2.pdf](https://www.owasp.org/images/5/58/OWASP_ASVS_Version_2.pdf)
------
hummel
We still looking for the infamous password that would allow to reverse
engineer the software and found the C&C!
------
frede
How did he get the php shell started after uploading it attached to a ticket?
I did not get this step.
~~~
curveship
The server-side upload code let him put it somewhere where PHP was enabled. So
he "started" it by just going to its URL.
------
phazmatis
Wow, if a damn IT sec company can't get secuiity right, how am I supposed to?
~~~
ki11a11hippies
I can incorporate tomorrow and call myself an IT security company.
Also, there's the distinction between security software (an app that
accomplishes a security-related goal) and software security (an app that is
resistant to malicious tampering). Coders for security software can often suck
at software security (openssl, e.g.).
------
jvdh
This article has already been submitted 3 days ago under the pastebin link:
[http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=cRYvK4jb](http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=cRYvK4jb)
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8155177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8155177))
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lenovo laptops “refuse” to install Linux - xufi
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37431299
======
sigmar
>"I understand why the buyers feel aggrieved and surprised," said Chris Green,
an analyst at the business consultancy Lewis. "But at the same time they
bought a machine with a pre-installed version of an operating system.
^ Just because it comes bundled with windows doesn't mean it should be
inoperable with other software. I'm sure this guy shouldn't be considered an
"expert" on this topic.
------
ocdtrekkie
Facts here:
[http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/44694.html](http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/44694.html)
As I initially suspected when I heard this story, this is more that they use a
funky driver, and Linux doesn't support it out of the box. (Believe it or not,
neither does Windows!) The Surface Pro 4 also uses NVMe, and things like
Acronis had to release software updates to add support for working with it.
------
StyloBill
Full discussion here :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545878)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Getting a Job in Tech Without a Tech Background - mattragland
https://medium.com/the-blog-of-matt-ragland/you-gotta-have-skills-df962f3ea4d6
======
mattragland
I'm always curious about how people without technical backgrounds are getting
jobs in tech. What are some of the best ways you have found or seen others
doing that makes up for a lack of programming or traditional business
training?
~~~
nzeeshan
Pick up a language/framework, build a small project and put it on Github.
Start approaching companies that are using the same technology and looking for
freshers/interns. I have seen this work for few of my friends.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TagTime: Stochastic Time Tracking for Space Cadets (2011) - Tomte
http://messymatters.com/tagtime/
======
themmes
This brought me to the article by Joel Spolsky (Evidence based scheduling) [1]
and then to the Reporter app created by Nick Feltron [2]. Apps following this
method all seem dated or not maintained anymore at all. Any good
recommendations?
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=72952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=72952)
[2] [http://www.reporter-app.com](http://www.reporter-app.com)
------
rajacombinator
Great idea! I’ve witnessed firsthand what a negative impact traditional time
tracking can have on someone. Now I’m wondering if this idea can work for
calorie tracking...
------
jmiserez
This looks great, and is still actively maintained on Github. It keeps your
data locally, which is a hard requirement for any kind of company use.
Uploading work activity to some third party is an absolute no-go for most
companies.
The approach taken by many other tools is either a huge database of
applications/websites that someone maintains tags for or a custom set of rigid
rules. Neither approach works very well on my experience. The statistical
approach taken by TagTime sounds much less rigid and more flexible.
~~~
closeparen
Bullshit. ADP, Quickbooks, Kronos, etc. all have wildly popular hosted time
tracking software. Some kind of online time card is practically a requirement
to sell payroll and/or invoicing services these days.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Was it worth paying €41.7bn to bail out Irish banks? - howard941
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/was-it-worth-paying-41-7bn-to-bail-out-irish-banks-1.4036792
======
zarro
Part of the problem is too much centralization of the control of $. This
arrangement could be fine if people (and companies) where held accountable for
their mistakes (No bailouts).
What I mean: Normally, you wouldn't trust all your money to one bank or
financial adviser, because if they make bad bets you could lose your money.
But because of the bailouts, it puts an hedge on your downside risk, so you
feel more comfortable with outsourcing the responsibility to a small number of
parties to manage your money, because if they fail, you in part (mostly them),
will be bailed out.
This ignores the fact that there were individuals that were more responsible
with their money that ended up being the losers in this arrangement and were
extorted of their money.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't have bailouts, but what I am saying is that
if we are forced to do it, we should do it to such an extent that it addresses
the root cause and provides economic incentive to be more accountable for ones
actions.
~~~
xapata
> too much centralization
The purpose of a capitalist, laissez faire economy is to decentralize control.
Turns out the result is central planning by a cartel of magacorps.
~~~
zarro
I think you calling our current system "capitalist" is giving it more credit
than its due.
------
chollida1
[https://www.coursera.org/learn/global-financial-
crisis](https://www.coursera.org/learn/global-financial-crisis)
This is a great course about the financial crisis of 2008.
They walk through the similarities between the Irish bailout and the American
bailout of their banks and then they walk through the differences and point
out why the Irish bailout turned out soo poorly and why the American bailout
was a great success.
The course is very approachable for even a novice in monetary theory.
~~~
boomboomsubban
I haven't taken the course, but one of the instructors personally benefits
from more people thinking the American bailout was a great success. Their free
course for people without any prior knowledge is unlikely to be a trustworthy
source.
~~~
chollida1
> I haven't taken the course, but one of the instructors personally benefits
> from more people thinking the American bailout was a great success. Their
> free course for people without any prior knowledge is unlikely to be a
> trustworthy source.
Alternatively you could argue that no one knows the material better given that
they were there at ground zero and the ones who actually made the decisions.
I mean, I see where you are coming from but I hope I never become as jaded as
your comment comes across as being:)
~~~
boomboomsubban
>Alternatively you could argue that no one knows the material better given
that they were there at ground zero and the ones who actually made the
decisions.
This isn't an alternative. This can be true, and they still have no reason to
present an unbiased view in this course.
You should definitely be jaded enough to question the truth of someone
spending billions in public money.
------
bjourne
Government says we can't spend money to help the homeless, or the poor, or the
sick. The budget is tight and we can't afford it. But when it comes to bailing
out banks, there is endless supply of money coming their way. It's strange how
that works.
~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
I'm not sure how it worked in Ireland. But when we bailed the banks out in the
US, it was through a loan that they paid back in a year.
Lending someone IMAGINARY money to avoid, potentially, the next Great
Depression doesn't really seem like a bad decision, to me.
Giving REAL money to the homeless is much more controversial. I'm not saying I
oppose it. It's just this notion of one or the other -- at least from how
things went down in the states -- doesn't really make sense. It was apples to
oranges.
------
orra
I doubt it. Don't forget: consumer bank balances were generally protected by
government guarantee, so ‘people would have lost all their money without the
bailout’ just isn’t true.
Bailing out these failing for-profit businesses—privatising profits and
socialising losses—is a moral hazard. That is unfair and bad for competition.
But there is more than that. Even if the money was apparently eventually
repaid, like in the UK, then even if you ignore inflation, this had a huge
opportunity cost. The money could have been put to good use, but instead the
public debt ratcheted up, which became an excuse for austerity.
------
lazyjones
Not a single mention of Iceland, which decided not to bail out their banks
(mostly because they couldn't afford it), and didn't fare so badly with it.
~~~
rumanator
IIRC Iceland's banks provided services mostly to clients outside Iceland, thus
the impact of their default affected foreigners who had a negligible role on
Iceland's economy.
------
gadders
Michael Lewis wrote a good article about the Irish bailout in Vanity Fair:
[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/03/michael-lewis-
irelan...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/03/michael-lewis-
ireland-201103)
"Not long ago I spoke with a former senior Merrill Lynch bond trader who, on
September 29, 2008, owned a pile of bonds in one of the Irish banks. He’d
already tried to sell them back to the bank for 50 cents on the dollar—that
is, he’d offered to take a huge loss, just to get out of them. On the morning
of September 30 he awakened to find his bonds worth 100 cents on the dollar.
The Irish government had guaranteed them! He couldn’t believe his luck. Across
the financial markets this episode repeated itself.
People who had made a private bet that went bad, and didn’t expect to be
repaid in full, were handed their money back—from the Irish taxpayer. In
retrospect, now that the Irish bank losses are known to be world-historically
huge, the decision to cover them appears not merely odd but suicidal. A
handful of Irish bankers incurred debts they could never repay, of something
like 100 billion euros. They may have had no idea what they were doing, but
they did it all the same. Their debts were private—owed by them to investors
around the world—and still the Irish people have undertaken to repay them as
if they were obligations of the state. "
~~~
dageshi
It was panic. They guaranteed it, probably with a lot of pressure from other
EU nations to stop a run on other weaker banking systems around the EU.
Haggling with investors to only return some of the money would've ended up in
court and would've taken forever, they couldn't afford the time.
~~~
purple_ducks
From the parent article:
> A political investigative blog called Guido Fawkes somehow obtained a list
> of the Anglo Irish foreign bondholders: German banks, French banks, German
> investment funds, Goldman Sachs. (Yes! Even the Irish did their bit for
> Goldman.)
Germany wanted to protect their own banks(/ers) and investment funds from
losing money to the detriment and disregard of everyone and everything else.
~~~
dageshi
Yes, but also, the euro simply wasn't designed to handle the magnitude of what
was happening in the financial crisis, it didn't have a central bank capable
and government capable of stepping in to support the banks the way the FED did
in the US.
In other words, they were trying to prevent pure unmitigated chaos, the kind
of chaos that leads to outright depressions.
This crisis was only 10 years ago and already people seem to forget just how
bad it was.
~~~
purple_ducks
That's unrelated. My point was the Irish government could have burned the
bondholders (German/French banks) and let the losses hit their profits instead
of piling the Irish taxpayers under a mountain of (private) debt.
~~~
dageshi
It isn't unrelated, it is entirely the point. The Irish don't have their own
currency, when you don't have your own currency you don't ultimately control
your own affairs you share them with the others who use that currency.
~~~
purple_ducks
How would the burning of private bondholders to the tune of €140 billion have
affected the Euro currency?
> you don't ultimately control your own affairs you share them with the others
> who use that currency
The currency had nothing to do with it. The only thing which would have
absolutely forced them to stand over it would have been existing EU law -
which there was none.
The European Central Bank can't legally stop issuing currency to Ireland just
because some French or German banks got burnt.
~~~
dageshi
Because the euro isn't just a currency, it's the entire banking system as
well. The euro doesn't work as a currency without a banking system to transmit
it because people have bank accounts with banks... not the central bank.
If a bunch of German/French banks suddenly get 40billion in losses what
happens next? They will have to panic sell their remaining good assets to
remain solvent, that transmits the problem on to the other banks that they
have invested in. Because the EU banks all tended to lend money to each other.
So you end up with the problem transmitting around europe (and beyond) but
it's worse because everyone is trying to sell everything at the same time to
remain solvent.
------
nerdponx
How did this bailout go so bad? At least in the US the government eventually
(kind of) made money on its TARP program. Would be interested to know how the
programs differed.
~~~
mtgx
Did the US gov really make any money on it, or did it pay the banks through
another channel (such as non-returnable Fed-printed loans) so the banks can
"give back the TARP money." (a PR win for both the gov and the banks, but
still a net loss for the public). I may have read something on this a few
years back.
~~~
oh_sigh
There's also a question of why the government wouldn't continually try to
maintain this revenue stream if they were indeed making profits, as opposed to
only using it as a last ditch effort to contain widespread damage?
~~~
bobcostas55
Because there aren't any insolvent-but-otherwise-fine banks around?
~~~
oh_sigh
So is the argument that the bailout was zero-sum, but the government came out
ahead(and the banks lost), or was it value producing to bail the banks out?
~~~
rayiner
The theory of bailouts is that they are value-destruction-avoiding, like
bankruptcy restructuring. The banks lost a lot of money on the mortgage backed
securities, but lost much less than they would have had those assets been sold
at fire sale. The government came out slightly ahead; it got a part of what
value wasn’t destroyed in a catastrophic unwinding of the banks.
------
Doubl
USC a tax of 8% on all earnings before any deductions, such as pension
contributions which is where normal income tax kicks in has been in place
since the crash. It was supposed to be temporary but will probably never be
repealed. That and having the highest mortgage rates in Europe in order to get
the banks into profitability are how the ordinary people will be paying for
this for the rest of their lives.
~~~
purple_ducks
> having the highest mortgage rates in Europe in order to get the banks into
> profitability
That is not the case. Any EU bank can sell mortgages in Ireland. They choose
not to because there is not a functioning property market. Homeowners who
don't pay their mortgage can't be kicked out of their home by the banks and
also those same homeowners just can't walk away and put the keys back in the
letterbox.
The first reason being the most problematic.
------
m0llusk
Have you looked at their balance sheets recently? Irish banks will be back
again for more sooner than you might expect.
------
NTDF9
How about not having a financial system based on debt and loans?
No more need to have a crisis
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Guy Kawasaki interviewed about Truemors on "On The Road With iV" - CoreyK
http://www.clubenetwork.com/index.php?option=com_seyret&Itemid=220
======
DarrenStuart
the Joel Spolsky one is really good to listen to. He has some good advice.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
XJST - Extensible JavaScript Transformations: simple, rapid, expressive - indutny
https://github.com/veged/xjst
======
indutny
Is there any reason for this post to be downvoted?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
All your Google activity - amingilani
https://myactivity.google.com
======
grzm
Discussion from less than a day ago with over 80 comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16685179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16685179)
~~~
amingilani
Thanks for you pointing this out! I must've missed this and posted it
independently because I happened upon the page.
------
hawktheslayer
It's nice to see they have an easy to get to _Delete My Activity_ feature but
I have to guess that it deletes it only from the perpective of me being able
to ever view it again.
~~~
galdosdi
I wouldn't be so sure (though I have not looked into it)
Google already has to comply with European right to be forgotten laws, and my
recollection from formerly working there was there was a pretty advanced
system to make it very easy to store user data tied by an ID coming from the
many diverse apps within Google, in such a way that it could all be deleted
upon request in an effective way that even accounts for backups, by having all
data being always encrypted at rest and in transit, so then only the
encryption key would have to be deleted.
So from a technical perspective, it'd almost be easier to make it really
delete it, than to not, since you'd have to not use the obvious default
internal platform for user data storage.
At least, that's my vague recollection. I never coded against that particular
API anyway. Cool idea though.
Don't confuse Google with Facebook and Uber. The different software giants
have very different cultures. Google doesn't mind moving fast but not breaking
things is very core to the culture, much more so than is at all common in
software or IT.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Clojure beta book now available - socratees
http://blog.thinkrelevance.com/2008/11/5/clojure-beta-book-available
======
whacked_new
It's been a while since I felt great excitement about a language!
------
jdunck
Success running based on steps here: <http://bc.tech.coop/blog/081023.html>
You'll need big.txt from here to run the Clojure spelling corrector:
<http://norvig.com/big.txt>
------
rw
The beta version is not free.
~~~
jgracin
What you're actually paying for is the final version in PDF which will be
released in March 2009, and in the meantime, until it becomes available,
you're getting all the betas.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Biological Sex Shapes Tumour Evolution Across Cancer Types - gotocake
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00562-7
======
joeblow9999
but what if i just say im the opposite sex?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Web app that formats submissions from Hacker News: Who's Hiring - AETackaberry
https://jobsortio.herokuapp.com
======
AETackaberry
The listings are sorted by the technologies you know and how well you know
them. Please let me know about the technologies I'm missing. I wanted control
over them so that I could ensure I minimize false positives.
Currently, for HN: WH, it filters based on your location but not by the title
since many submissions don't actually have job titles.
It is a work in progress as my heroku server was blocked by stack exchange
before I hosted my web app on it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Carbon Tax Simulator - strommen
https://www.uscleanenergyfund.com/blog/carbon-tax-simulator/
======
brudgers
If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".
Guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Have you hired someone in 1 day? - zippy786
Wondering how many you have hired someone in a day within 1-2 hour of interview or seen someone get hired this way ?
======
JSeymourATL
It happens -- mostly with executives who have the authority and wherewithal to
make a quick decision.
There three basic criteria in making the hiring decision, a variation of
Strengths, Motivation, & Fit.
\- Can they do the job?
\- Will they do the job?
\- Can you live with them?
On this subject, George Bradt is particularly good>
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2011/04/27/top-
execu...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2011/04/27/top-executive-
recruiters-agree-there-are-only-three-key-job-interview-
questions/#4153f7774de7)
------
davismwfl
Yes, in 1 day. Not necessary 1-2 hours, but under 4 hours.
TLDR> Hiring is critical. Most teams waste too much time in the
interviewing/decision process. Video Interviewing has made it take longer IMO
not made it faster, because companies/teams feel it has no real cost to it.
Most teams and people spend way too long on the hiring process. Yes you should
care about hiring as it is critical, and yes, you should be cautious because
hiring bad is worse then not hiring at all, most times. However, that doesn't
mean you go into analysis paralysis waiting for just that one special person
to show up.
There is an art to hiring as much as there is a science behind it. This is one
of those times that hours doing the job matter, but that doesn't mean you need
10 years of experience hiring, it means you need to time talking to and
evaluating people. It may sound obvious, but hiring is all about your ability
to evaluate a person, their intentions, what they are saying as well as what
they are not saying. And yes, you get fooled and learn from it.
This whole taking 3-4-5 weeks or 5-6 rounds of interviews is insane and
honestly a drain on valuable resources that doesn't pay you back. It does not
need to be this way to have an efficient and selective hiring process. IMO
people let fear and uncertainty cause 80% of the reason it takes so long now.
I have built numerous teams, and I always started with recruiting a selective
and tight core of people first, 2-6 people usually. Then they will help find
other like people to round out the team. I have never spent more then about 3
months to recruit that core team in total, and many times I have done it in
far less time. Part of that comes from knowing a lot of people, but a better
part of it is evaluating someones capacity to learn and do good work. This
means not getting hung up on whether they know how to write the most efficient
X, or they know a certain framework or whatever brain teaser someone thinks is
relevant.
I also think the fact that companies do more video interviews today versus
flying candidates to them first has actually caused a longer delay instead of
making the process faster. This is because companies can talk to a lot more
people, so they will have 2-3 good candidates, but be holding out for someone
better because they feel it costs them nothing but a little time. In reality
it is costing them a ton of lost productivity for the hiring staff and for the
work that could be getting done.
When you are not Google/Facebook et al you have to recruit and jump on good
people faster then your competitors do. So teams that move fast in the process
win the better candidates many times even if their hiring offer is less than
what the candidate might get by waiting through 3-4-5 rounds of interviews
with another company.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WordPress 2.7 Released - PStamatiou
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/12/coltrane/
======
theantidote
Been using it for the past week for a client's site. All of the themes and
plugins I've thrown at it have worked perfectly. Nice job!
------
KrisJordan
The new UI looks really slick.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
25 Free Checklists Collection for Startuppers - bibblico
http://startupmate.flammate.com/25-printable-checklists-for-your-business/?ref=producthunt
======
xtiansimon
Can only access with Facebook Messenger?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Prince of Counterterrorism: Washington's Favorite Saudi - piercestanley
http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2015/the-prince-of-counterterrorism
======
bobosha
excellent analysis
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Server side rendering with prefetch - bloomca
http://blog.bloomca.me/2017/06/11/server-side-rendering-with-prefetch.html
======
bloomca
Personally, I am a little bit sad that libraries authors don't pay enough
attention to the approach of "lightweight" rendering, where we will
effectively create a graph of components and just invoke lifecycle hooks on
them.
I feel that executing the same code brings much more benefits over this
overhead of rendering same thing twice.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Palm restore pre iTunes sync. Your move Apple - nexneo
http://www.precentral.net/webos-121-re-hacks-itunes-support-brings-photo-album-synchronization
======
protomyth
Palm's continued attempts to out-fake Apple are more for publicity then any
useful feature for their customers. Never mind a standards organization is not
happy with them (They signed a contract to get their USB ID, that they are now
violating), but they know that their current solution will continue to break.
Also, it seems that each time they change their sync, they break third party
solutions.
Write or buy a sync program and give your customers some stability.
~~~
jpwagner
Certainly it's tactical, though I wouldn't say it's all publicity.
I think they're trying to hardball Apple into opening up (or negotiating an
agreement for use of) their distribution channel.
~~~
tptacek
I'm not sure I see how this is "hardball" for Apple.
The risk for Apple is that someone else's product will work as advertised.
The risk for Palm is that at any given time, Apple can choose to turn off
their product.
Palm isn't playing from a position of strength here. Every time this cat and
mouse game cycles, more people hear that Palm's sync is unreliable. Palm
_never_ impacts Apple's product.
~~~
jpwagner
There's a development impact...Apple has to find a way to close them off. Then
Palm writes a new workaround, and Apple has to expend more effort again.
The underlying statement to Apple is: if you don't want Palm to do this, you
have to open up the dialogue...
~~~
protomyth
The dialogue so far is USB-IF telling Palm they are in the wrong and their
customers not having a feature they paid for. Palm doesn't have the sales to
keep this up, and, given the lawsuit happy lawyers, is in danger of a class
action suit by Palm pre owners.
There is obvious bad blood between the companies, but Palm needs to start
doing what's best for its customers. The realization that Apple can keep this
up far longer than Palm would be a good starting point.
------
tptacek
At some point, Palm starts looking even less rational, because the cost of the
strategy they're pursuing exceeds the cost of just building their own sync
system.
~~~
ZeroGravitas
The free advertising this generates probably earns more than the engineering
time costs.
~~~
protomyth
They get a lot more column space in traditional publications for sure, but
they also get a lot of talk from people that the sync keeps not working.
Customer satisfaction and stability are better.
Given the current situation, could a person really recommend a Palm pre to a
friend who wants and a device with and easy sync to iTunes. You know you will
get a call right after Apple updates its software. Plus, if you tell your
friend to buy a third party solution (missing sync), the Palm pre version is
in danger of breaking because of Palm's current antics.
I think companies need to look at stability in their software / hardware more
then ever. This simple, reliably solution is often a better selling point then
the massive feature monster that is hard to use or unreliable.
~~~
tptacek
And what's the message they're _hoping_ to communicate? "Look, everyone,
Apple's locked up the media distribution market"? Because that message _gains_
sales for Apple in the real world.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Codecademy adds jQuery lessons and scratchpad - pkrein
http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/07/codecademy-jquery-scratchpad/
======
hansef
I love what Codeacademy is doing, but hope they'll be rolling out some meatier
lesson content with that 2m round before too long. The entire venturebeat-
post-worthy jQuery lessons take about 3 minutes to go through
([http://www.codecademy.com/courses/jquery-and-the-
dom/1#!/exe...](http://www.codecademy.com/courses/jquery-and-the-
dom/1#!/exercise/0))
~~~
zds
I'm the co-founder of Codecademy - we'll definitely be rolling out meatier
content soon. This is just a peek at what some of our beta users have created.
If you'd like to create a course, sign up - we're rolling out access to the
course creator slowly to make sure our content is all high quality. Let me
know if you have any other feedback!
~~~
daeken
I've been watching Codecademy off and on for a while and I think your comment
finally touched on something that I seem to have missed this whole time:
you're not focusing on creating the content, you're focusing on making it easy
for people to create and find high-quality content.
I see you have a signup form for course creators, but I'm not seeing any data
on what exactly you want to focus on (is reverse-engineering out of scope, for
instance?), whether or not course creators are paid, etc. I'd love to be
involved, but just don't have enough information to go on yet; if you could
fill in the blanks, I'd greatly appreciate it. Keep up the good work.
~~~
zds
Hi daeken - you're right. We're going to be a lot more than a content company.
I'd love to share what we're working on with you - feel free to send me an
email at contact(at)codecademy(dot)com and I'll fill you in.
------
josh_miller
Loving this product. Especially the fact that you jump right into a lesson
when you arrive at the homepage. Deliver value before asking the user for
anything. Awesome.
------
paul9290
Did you guys see teamtreehouse.com that launched today?
This space is an interesting one, as the material can be taught thru videos &
code quizzes or through gaming type systems.
Though I wonder which is the best way to teach this material in a broad sense;
gaming or videos with coding quizzes?
------
chefsurfing
“It really takes people back to the exciting part of programming, which is
building things, breaking things, and seeing how they work,” - reminds me
about what I loved about playing with Legos, Logo and BASIC as a child. Way to
go Codecadamy team!
~~~
zds
thanks!
------
vaksel
I like the product, but I wish it was a bit more involved.
Right now, all you do is 1 simple exercise...and it's really simple stuff.
i.e. they give you an example of how to use jQuery to change the color to
yellow...and the "practical" experience, is changing the color to red.
I think something a bit complicated where you have 10 different examples for
each step(progressively complicated), so that people would really learn this
stuff.
~~~
zds
Hi vaksel, thanks for the comments. This lesson is our "alpha" release of
jQuery...we're working on more improvements (and supplementary exercises)
based on your feedback. Would love to hear more - we're
contact(at)codecademy(dot)com.
------
grombert11
i'm really digging this, but is this related to <http://codeacademy.org/> ?
~~~
zds
we're not related to codeacademy.org.
~~~
xiaoma
Why buy the .com version of their domain? Or, I suppose the better question is
why go after their name to begin with? It makes you guys look pretty bad and a
little of that smears off on YC.
[http://howilearnedeverything.com/2011/10/30/clearing-the-
air...](http://howilearnedeverything.com/2011/10/30/clearing-the-air/)
------
j2labs
I hope they add some Python stuff soon. I'd love to help write Python lessons.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What is Modern Perl - davorg
http://www.josetteorama.com/perl/what-is-modern-perl/http://www.josetteorama.com/perl/what-is-modern-perl/
======
chernevik
I'm torn between thinking there is value in learning some Perl and not really
knowing that value might be.
I've found a lot of embedded wisdom in the "old school" stack. If you edit in
vi, add some sed / awk / grep, and learn some bash, you'll find these tools
start to come together and leverage one another up substantially. Perl might
be more post-Bell Labs but it still was written and used by smart people to
Get Stuff Done. It stands to reason that there are large returns on learning
it.
But it isn't as approachable as Python. When I needed a glue language, I first
looked at "Learning Perl" -- after a few days I concluded that, if this was
The Path, then I would never get There. Python was much more approachable, and
my code already gathers so many hacks that I'm glad my language forces me to
make these at least somewhat intelligible.
I would learn Perl faster now. But for what? I've learned some PHP to meet
client demand, and for web development the next language would be RoR. I bet
Perl is better than bash for various sysadmin and utility tasks, but bash
feels good enough for the simple stuff I do. If I needed to do something
really beyond bash I'd turn to Python, and I'm not sure why Perl would be
better. I suspect there's a lot of general knowledge embedded in Perl but I'm
not sure how that gets extracted and made current among today's toolset for
the tasks I have.
So to my mind, Perl is something of a sysadmin tool, better than bash and very
useful for a workload focussed on system and file processing, on *nix, without
much service to HTTP. I'd love to hear how it pays returns for people more
focussed on back-end support of web development.
~~~
kamaal
>>But it isn't as approachable as Python.
Minimalism, is both an advantage and a curse. You may be able to learn python
quickly, and that is because the syntax and semantics are designed with a goal
to do that. But unfortunately that is not the only problem programmers have,
Learning how to program is problem only for first few weeks of your
programming career, there after its hardly a problem. Beyond that verbosity
becomes a curse, once you begin to understand what 10's of lines of code do,
you wonder why you even need 10's of lines of code when something can be
expressed more elegantly.
In my experience people complain about learning Perl for the same reasons why
they don't get awk/sed/tr and other text processing utilities. Tools like that
are a little difficult to start with, but offer tremendous advantages. Skip
learning them, and suddenly you put yourself in a situation where you start
your eclipse and write Java programs for every small bit of text processing
task. That sucks up your time, effort and code forever. So its better to learn
tools that are better designed to solve such problems.
>>and I'm not sure why Perl would be better.
Perl and Python are both excellent languages, so you find a range of problems
that can be solved in both languages well. But try solving problems that Perl
was specifically designed to solve, Pick up the book Higher Order Perl by Mark
Jason Dominus(Its Free) and see for yourself how Perl helps you solve a
certain kind of problems. I'm sure its the same case with Python too! Its good
for academia, as its easy psuedocode.
Problems that can be solved in both Python and Perl can obviously be solved in
any of them.
>>So to my mind, Perl is something of a sysadmin tool, better than bash and
very useful for a workload focussed on system and file processing, on *nix,
without much service to HTTP. I'd love to hear how it pays returns for people
more focussed on back-end support of web development.
You have just described a very small subset of problems Perl can solve. Perl
is used for developing very large application in nearly almost every industry.
Web programming != Entire Programming world.
Much of the software world never writes a web page. And they do programming
too. But like us they don't tweet/Facebook/blog every time they finish writing
a class.
------
smugengineer69
What is modern Perl? Python. (I'll elaborate more here from my earlier one-
word answer).
Long-time perl programmer here, until I found Python. Perl is powerful, but
Perl is for the programmer, not the programmer's coworkers. It's not even for
the programmer 6 months down the line. This is nothing new, and it has become
a stereotype in the community.
Yes, this argument has been made and refuted many times, but I argue the
reason isn't the language, but the dominant language paradigms.
Perl's "monk" ideal is not sustainable in the long term, and encourages
"clever hackers" who can do things with the fewest lines of fundamentally
unreadable code. Yes, the language has evolved. Yes, it is slightly easier to
read now. But the goals of the community still tend toward the ideals of
becoming a master of arcana who can pass his wisdom down to the less
experienced.
Give me a language that the commoners can read, that a beginning programmer
can feel empowered to learn because he can take one look at the source code of
someone truly experienced and know at least a part of what is going on.
You can change Perl all you want, but you cannot get away from the fundamental
guiding principles of the language, which encourage antisocial, clever, and
magic code.
~~~
jimmytucson
> What is modern Perl? Python.
Ah, 'fraid not.
I am also a Perl to Python refugee. For most applications I get far more
enjoyment out of Python. But try implementing Higher Order Perl in Python and
you won't get past Chapter 1 without some weirdness. Using decorators, lambda,
map, reduce, itertools, even generators all feel like bending over backwards
to achieve what comes naturally in Perl.
This isn't an attack on Python. I'm just saying, Python is not meant for
functional programming any more than Perl excels at OO, and that's why I
disagree with your thesis.
~~~
berntb
>>any more than Perl excels at OO
Check Moose and related on CPAN, modern Perl has probably the best OO among
the usual scripting languages (Python, PHP, Ruby, etc).
------
r4vik
I actually own the domain modernperl,net, for trollish reasons actually
(www.modernperl.net redirects to Ruby) but if anyone wants it / wants to do
something useful with it. I'd be happy to transfer it to you for free.
~~~
hippich
I think you might want to contact chromatic so this domain could be setup to
redirect to his <http://modernperlbooks.com/mt/index.html>
He gives away his ebook for free, so I guess giving him free domain might be
very good for your karma :)
------
kamaal
I started using Perl around 2006'ish, that was pretty late in the day compared
to most Perl hackers. I was primarily a C/C++ Dev, going the OO way. And I was
doing Java here and there.
Until one morning a colleague of mine, saw me doing some stuff I was taking
really long to finish. He just walked up to my cubicle and just said 'Why dont
you use Perl to do this' and then started my crazy journey with Perl. What I
really like about languages like Perl/Python and Ruby is how quickly you can
go from learning to building something really useful.
Perl has seen atleast 3 major rise in its popularity since its inception.
First one among sysadmins, its from these days that you will powerful terse,
small but elegant solutions to a range of problems. If you ever get a chance,
do browse and read essays from Tom christiansen written during those times.
They are just pure gem. The second was during Perl/CGI days. And third was the
most recent with the Modern Perl movement. Much of the thanks for this goes to
People like Chromatic, Audrey, People of p5p, Moose devs and etc. From each of
those times, you will see varying variety of code written. Starting from
really amazing one liners to at times some frustrating code during the dot com
bubble, to now where Perl code really looks very nice.
Modern Perl really is set of many successful sub projects. And its not just
code, it covers everything. Code is just the beginning. To give you an
example, these days you have very nice cpan package managers. You can search
packages using Metacpan in a very user friendly GUI with nice syntax
highlighting. You have awesome documentation, Modern Perl book really is the
Perl's equivalent of the K&R book. There is Moose, And there are things like
Class::MOP. There are things like DBIx::Class.
In terms of other new breath taking stuff you will see things like
Devel::Declare. This allows new syntax extensions to be written using Perl
itself. Then as a result you have a range of modules like
Moosex::<extensions>,Try::Catch, Gather::Take etc.
In terms of web frameworks your have Catalyst.
So its really these many many successful subprojects together which form
'Modern Perl', if you wish to describe it that way. Its no one thing. Code,
documentation, culture, events, infrastructure etc etc all together form the
'Modern Perl' thing.
If you come to the Perl core development, then they have real good time based
releases. They are fixing bugs, adding new features, and doing a lot of
amazing stuff. There have been pretty neat syntax features added in the past
few releases and I guess much of Perl 6 based features will continually seep
into Perl 5 as needed over time.
Modern Perl, or other wise. Perl continues to retain its niche. Which is text
heavy lifting, automation, rapid prototyping, development, a deep learing
curve and larger gains in productivity with time. Its still the go-to tool for
most back end tasks. If you wish to get something done faster, with little
effort, sanely with little bugs in say over a weekend, You have little
alternatives apart from Perl. If you are in dev ops and you have P1 tickets
standing on your head pretty often, a tool like Perl is indispensible.
And most importantly its areas of strengths are only growing- Unicode, regular
expressions, CPAN, powerful syntax etc. If you ever get a chance Higher Order
Perl is one book you must read. It really opens your mind to elegant solution
to a range of problems.
But like every other language, you need to invest time and effort
incrementally to keep yourself updated.
~~~
einhverfr
I started in 2003 or so, and got into it more seriously because I ended up
with customers to support using Perl software. Perl is an amazing language,
and with many modern perl approaches, it's wonderful.
This being said like most frameworks it is extremely important to know when to
leave the framework or leave things out. While I LOVE working with Moose, my
own projects are very heavily stored procedure centric and therefore an ORM
like DBIx::Class really does me very little good. DBIx::Class by all reports
is an excellent ORM but it's still an ORM. ;-)
There is no better glue language I have ever encountered than Perl We use it
in LedgerSMB to glue together stored procedures, web templates (in Template
Toolkit), and the web server interfaces. It's a wonderful language and I can't
recommend it highly enough.
As for Perl 6, it has joined HURD 1.0 as one of those projects that will be
released when pigs fly. I suspect that Perl 5.x will be as far as Perl gets.
~~~
mst
David Wheeler (theory) started working on a stored procedure centric project a
while back and as a result extracted the DBIx::Class connection logic into
DBIx::Connector - which I have a feeling you're already using.
I spent a fair amount of time hanging out in #ledgersmb a while back and in
spite of being the project founder of DBIx::Class, I don't think I ever felt I
had a convincing argument for using it, so honestly I'm glad you're not doing
so (if I ever come up with an O<sproc>M or something I'm sure you'll find out
:)
~~~
einhverfr
Glad to see you again.
Actually some of your recommendations are pending getting rid of old code (we
simply can't move everything to PSGI when we have the mixture of old and new
code we have, so it's CGI only for now still). However we are giving hard
thought as to the best way to do so and I expect that as we continue that
process things will become more PSGI friendly until it is just a matter of
changing one sub somewhere.
I should note you have convinced Josh Drake on the merits of DBIx::Class for
other projects though.
Finally I think it is worth noting that I think that in the 1.4 tree we've
come out (I hope) of the contageous effect of the bad SL code, and so the
coding styles which evolved so much during LSMB 1.3 are being formalized and
moved to Moose in 1.4.
------
jboggan
I started picking up Perl (as my first programming language) in 2003 while
working in a genetics lab. I used it for years on a number of bioinformatics
projects due to its strengths in tackling disparate sources of often irregular
information. Recently I've been using it for the Kaggle Facebook competition
simply because I can iterate my designs faster than in any other language. I'm
looking forward to learning a few of these more newfangled modern
appurtenances of Perl.
------
sausagefeet
I really wanted to see what Modern Perl looks like.
~~~
simcop2387
Have a look at <http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/> This is from the
author of the book, there's a nice pdf preview there to show the book off and
a way to buy it.
~~~
mhd
Preview is a slight understatement, it's the full book as both pdf and epub.
It is a bit of a marketing term, though. Not many of the "modern" features are
really new to Perl, but basically rather common modules. In the case of Moose,
they do change the language use significantly, but mostly it's about showing
that Perl can be used beyond small, one-file Unix scripts. And it's been able
to do that for quite a while, the Perl 4 days are long gone.
Still, getting some new-found traction is important, and popularizing some
great CPAN modules definitely won't hurt.
------
alrondy
In perl culture, "Modern Perl" refers to bad programming by a core group of
egocentric, sanctimonious developers who are to Perl what Lennart Poettering
is to Linux.
There are now dozens of CPAN modules with names like "common::sense" and
"Modern::Perl" that provide no useful code, but introduce packaging
dependencies and administrative overhead in the name of not having to type
"use strict;" out by hand.
Modern Perl is using Moose::Any instead of just using a language that does
what you want. Modern Perl involves an average of 130 CPAN dependencies for
any give application.
Modern Perl is when perl stopped being perl and started being awful.
~~~
gatlin
I actually despise Moose as much as I despise blindly over-doing OO. To me
Modern Perl meant tackling problems in a much more Lisp-inspired way (via
lexical scoping, anonymous functions, closures, lists, etc) ... but in Perl.
Kind of like "Higher Order Perl."
I had the impression it was more a cultural shift, a renewed interest in Perl
and people wielding it much differently. There's a different CPAN web
interface[1], a lighter cli client[2], and everyone is on GitHub and writing
hundreds of tests. I guess Moose is part of that shift but I'm torn a lot of
the time - I support modern Perl but I hesitate to support blindly copying the
warts from other languages just to appear modern.
This[3] is a result of searching for common::sense ... yikes.
[1]: <http://metacpan.org> [2]: <https://metacpan.org/module/App::cpanminus>
[3]: <https://metacpan.org/module/Real::Handy>
~~~
phaylon
Personally, I think Moose' value to the community is much larger than that it
just provides good OO.
It pushed a much more declarative approach than usual, that swaps over to
other projects (Moo, Mo, even Class::Accessor supports has declarations now).
It has a community that is focused on best practices with regards to OO. It
put introspection more in the spotlight (like the idea of getting Getopt
definitions by introspecting classes).
It is also flexible, which allows for lots of extensions to its functionality.
That means a lot of concepts are tried out on CPAN already. Even if someone
doesn't use Moose, there is lots of OO knowledge to be found in the ecosystem.
Same goes for runtime type constraints/coercions.
Then there's the p5-mop project, that would provide a common core, so many of
the things above could find themselves in a much more light-weight and broadly
usable variety, with side-effects like less heavy anonymous packages.
Personally, while I'm very excited about where Perl 5 has come so far, I'm
even more excited by the things we haven't thought of yet.
------
trebuch3t
Writing a book on Modern Perl is nuts.
As the author of this post points out, there have been about twenty releases
since Perl 5.6, when the book was published. Features like the "switch" and
"state" keywords have been introduced. If you look away too quickly, another
database interface crops up, or people are doing objects differently. Perl
changes so often that writing about it is like trapping a unicorn.
It's impressive that users of a 25-year-old language are not afraid to improve
upon it (with the caveat that it stays backwards compatible). But since I
started using $OTHER_LANGUAGE I don't have to worry about keeping up to date
because language features change twice a decade.
~~~
ajross
That's a terrible straw man. Everything changes. Javascript is morphing into
this weird "Coffee" thing before our eyes. Python pushed a completely new
language and is currently supporting two of them. Even python 2.6 looks
absolutely nothing like 2.0. People fled whole-hog from perl and python to
ruby (another hardly static language) a few years ago, and most of those same
people are now retraining their brains on that JavaCoffee thing I mentioned.
C++? Yeah, brand new version out with whole new metaphors (An... rvalue
reference?! And what is that -> operator doing there?).
If you want compatibility, you have it. 15 year old perl scripts run fine on
5.14. If you want the community to not invent new stuff... dig yourself a hole
I guess.
------
gouranga
Python!
Sorry couldn't resist.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Will people still buy the $999 iPhone? - bkbaba
https://medium.com/@Abhishek.Bagalkot/will-people-still-buy-the-999-iphone-2fe4334c72a7
======
Jeremy1026
Short answer: Yes.
Medium answer: Yes, by the millions.
Long answer: Of course they will. There is a subset of people who will buy the
most expensive thing available just as a status symbol. There will also be
some that want the newest tech to play with, and there will also be those that
need to have the latest devices for testing purposes. This phone will sell
just fine. I'd actually be more concerned about the number of iPhone 8's that
sell because the X may cannibalize initial sales numbers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Does this software exist? - ScottWhigham
As a musician on the side, I've come across a "problem" that I'm hoping someone can help me solve. Here's the "problem":<p>* I have a group of songs that I play (let's say 50) that is a fairly static list<p>* I want to be able to plan out set lists based on those songs for various gigs and then print out the set lists in advance<p>Right now, I'm using a kludgey combination of Excel and Word (Windows guy, but I do have a MBP). It sucks - I make the list of songs in Excel, then I create a separate document for each night (and copy/paste the songs in).<p>Ideally there's a piece of software that lets me drag and drop the song onto a "view" (or whatever) that I can save/retrieve/print. I'm just trying to simplify the process of creating a set list. Sure, I could create it but it seems like this should exist already (but I can't find it).<p>Any ideas?
======
pbhjpbhj
Maybe some of the software used for "setlists" for worship songs in Church
services would help? You can do things like print lyrics with chords, "song
books" and such; a basic feature is preparing a list of songs for the expected
running order.
Only ones I know of (from research a few years ago on FOSS apps for this)
<http://opensong.org/d/about>, <http://www.easyslides.com/index.php/features>,
<http://openlp.org/en/features>, <http://www.lyricue.org/>.
There are very mature paid apps for this sort of thing too.
HTH.
------
dmlorenzetti
You could use TeX or LaTeX. Create an individual file for each song,
containing whatever information you want to print for it. Presumably there are
music-oriented LaTeX extensions that can pretty-print the lines and clefs or
whatever (not a musician, so I don't know what, exactly, a set list should
look like).
Then your play list for each night consists of a sequence of songs you want to
play:
\input songs/stairway-to-heaven.tex
\input songs/take-me-out-to-the-ballgame.tex
\input songs/venus-in-furs.tex
As you get more sophisticated, or as your needs grow, you can define macros
that control what gets printed, or how.
~~~
batista
How is this better than doing it in Excel with copy/paste as he does now?
What benefit does LaTeX bring, so that he has to install some hundreds of mbs
of a TeX distro and learn the basics to work in it? Does he need elaborate
math symbols or fine grained typography for a set list?
------
ScottWhigham
I just found an iOS app called "Set List Keeper" that works 100% and is free.
[http://itunes.apple.com/mo/app/set-list-
keeper/id514144626?m...](http://itunes.apple.com/mo/app/set-list-
keeper/id514144626?mt=8)
There are things I wish it had but they are minor things.
Thanks everyone for the help!
------
ScottWhigham
The iTunes playlist thing makes me think of another option: creating a
"Contact" for each song title in a contact mgmt app, and then creating a
"Group"/"Category" for each set and adding that contact to that group. It's
the same thing - just a different twist on how to think about it.
------
ChuckMcM
Lets say you have all of these songs on your iPod, you can create a 'playlist'
and then print that out in iTunes. I used to do that with MusicMatch when I
made a CD for the road, burn the playlist to the CD and print the playlist for
the label.
~~~
ScottWhigham
Yeah, Playlist is exactly what I'm talking about. I didn't know you could
print a playlist.
------
batista
You could create an iTunes playlist with your songs.
1) Create a playlist with all the songs.
2) Right click on it, and click "duplicate".
3) Drag the songs to the order you want. Remove any songs you don't want in
this set.
4) From the menu, go "File -> Print" and select song list.
Repeat steps 2 to 3 as many times you want. You can also rename the set
playlist, to reflect the set name (e.g "2012-22-09").
Alternatively: you could also use some "todo management" style software to
print lists of things (in your case, song names) that you can re-arrange.
Bento might also be an option.
~~~
ScottWhigham
That's great - thank you. The iTunes playlist option will be "good enough" for
my purposes. It's a hacky way to do it but at least I'll have a reason to use
iTunes for something other than backing up/configuring my phone haha.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft could move jobs abroad because of US immigration policies - kerng
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/12/microsoft-might-be-forced-to-move-some-jobs-abroad-brad-smith-says.html
======
leakybit
Meanwhile, Microsoft hasn't replied to my job application in weeks.
------
NTDF9
I've seen many companies hedging their bets and having satellite offices in
Canada, Ireland, India, Singapore, Australia to be able to retain
international talent.
At some level, these immigrant workers are not factory workers to be easily
replaced. They tend to have lots of institutional experience and drive
(demonstrated by the fact that they uprooted their lives elsewhere to live in
a new country in the first place).
I've had the pleasure of working with many such people. But the signs are
clear. There are fewer Americans who want to do tech jobs and the
administration isn't allowing highly educated immigrants to come and work.
Even the ones they allow have a miserable time just managing paperwork and
following the law.
What do execs do to retain these folks? Just move jobs to where the talent is
at. Talent lost, taxes lost, model immigrants lost, vibrancy lost. :(
------
writepub
All this has played out before - a hostile policy diving work overseas (China)
and eventually uplifting said overseas territory into an economic superpower.
Whether the US sees it or not, if more software work moves overseas, in the
long run, it's harder for the US to lead economically. Have you noticed
Baidu's AI chops lately?
Cheers
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can You Copyright Work Made by Artificial Intelligence? - zdw
https://whyisthisinteresting.substack.com/p/why-is-this-interesting-the-ai-copyright
======
rahuldottech
Upon reading the title, the first thing that comes to my mind is: "why not?".
If we treat AI just like any another artist's tool, I don't see why it should
stop the owner/maker of said AI from copyrighting what it comes up with. As
the article point out, as it exists, even AI needs significant human
involvement to actually get something done.
I guess one argument that one might make is that those upon whom the AI is
trained have might have rights to claim authorship, but think about it. If I,
as a human, am inspired by your work, you still don't get rights to _my_ work.
Why should it be any different with the AI I use, as long as the resultant
artwork is sufficiently different from yours?
~~~
baroffoos
Years ago I remember there was an article of someone using brute force to
generate every possible phrase of a certain length so that from that point on
no one could ever claim ownership of one since they had all already been
created.
Also I wonder what defines created. If I create a program that can generate
every possible variation of x, do I get copyright when the program is run or
do the results have to be saved. Or do I get copyright over the output of my
program before it has even run since the result of the program is fixed we can
know it would have resulted in the output even if it was never run. What if I
just make a webserver with unlimited pages and given the correct url is
entered it can output any result at all. That data was available on my website
since it was created so do I have copyright over it?
If we allow the output of programs which were not extensions of the users
input (photoshop, a text editor) than in theory my program that outputs random
numbers now has copyright over every possible work that could ever be created.
~~~
stretchwithme
Creating an intelligible work through a random process takes a really long
time. It took Earth hundreds of millions of years.
~~~
baroffoos
A lot of things that seem to fall under copyright are not particularly
difficult to brute force. Looking at music for example. Most music follows a
set of fairly basic patterns where each part of the music (drum beat, chord
progression) is just a short arrangement of only a few choices. And yet the
copyright system seems to take even a tiny piece of a song as copyrightable.
It would not be difficult or time consuming for a script to generate every
possible 4-6 chord progression and every single kind of melody which is close
enough for copyright (Often these cases use very general terms like "A
descending melody starting at C")
~~~
stretchwithme
I think the intellectual component to randomly generated content is
distinguishing between the good and the bad. And there's a lot of bad.
------
jordigh
Wolfram has been claiming copyright to the output of Alpha for a long time.
[http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090518204959409](http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090518204959409)
It's a bit weird because Wolfram is not the one solely responsible for Alpha's
output; the user has to give Alpha the right input to produce the right
output, so I don't really know how this could work in court.
~~~
rahuldottech
Think of it this way: I have a black box. You give it some input, it does some
magic, and gives you an output (a piece of "art"). Can I copyright such "art"?
Sure, you triggered the event. But my black box did all the actual work,
right? Similarly, if you say something to your friend and that inspires them
to create a painting. Can you claim ownership to that?
(Food for thought: can you really "copyright" or "own" a mathematical
expression or graph, though? Because that's most of Wolfram Alpha)
~~~
jordigh
The trigger can be really complicated, though, complicated enough to merit the
nontriviality threshold of copyrightability. If anything, Wolfram and the
Alpha user should be coauthors, but Wolfram doesn't seem to think anyone else
has thoughts complex enough to meet the coauthorship threshold.
~~~
umvi
I mean, he was the youngest student ever to get a PhD from Caltech.
~~~
icebraining
Yeah, but did he ever win the Putnam?
------
mensetmanusman
The analogy of a camera works here. (On multiple levels)
A black box with incredible technology manipulating light etc.
The person who pushed the button owns it.
~~~
slimsag
The camera analogy does work, but not in the way you said.
The specific technology, and more importantly the region, determine who
exactly owns the copyright. In the U.S. if you press the shutter button, you
own it. In France, the same is not always true [1]
[1] [https://www.rd.com/advice/travel/eiffel-tower-illegal-
photos...](https://www.rd.com/advice/travel/eiffel-tower-illegal-photos/)
~~~
aidenn0
So in the US, if a professional photogropher puts a camera on a tripod,
composes the image, adjusts the metering, sets up some lighting and then says
"hey, can you push this shutter bulb for me?" Do I own the copyright?
~~~
mantap
If they composed the image then they would own the copyright. Copyright of
photographs comes from creative expression not pushing the shutter button. The
exception would be if the subject was moving, e.g. at a sporting event and
pushing the shutter button at a given moment had a creative component.
------
dctoedt
Here's an early legal analysis by one of the pioneers in this field, Cal Law
professor (and Macarthur Fellow) Pamela Samuelson: _Allocating Ownership
Rights in Computer-Generated Works_ (1986) [0]
[0]
[https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...](https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2067&context=facpubs)
------
rzimmerman
There's a good Star Trek Voyager episode that deals with this:
[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Photons_Be_Free](https://memory-
alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Photons_Be_Free)
In this case the holographic doctor writes a novel and there's confusion about
who owns the property rights to his work. There was a fascinating panel at
Comic Con a few years ago where some prominent lawyers discussed Star Trek
episodes like this and specifically brought up the monkey selfie as precedent.
I don't have any answers but it's a good episode.
Edit: The episode is [https://memory-
alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Author,_Author_(episode...](https://memory-
alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Author,_Author_\(episode\))
~~~
jedberg
That episode annoys me because they're supposed to live in a post-scarcity
society in which copyright no longer exists.
~~~
dariusj18
Seems to me, in a post scarcity society, attribution would be even more
important.
~~~
aidenn0
Attribution is important, but the episode centers around the question of
whether or not the AI can demand that the publisher pull the novel from the
market, which is copyright, not just attribution.
------
otakucode
People are allowed to copyright things that they used tools to create.
"Artificial Intelligence" is a tool. The first word should be a big hint. Just
like if you trained an AI to murder people it would be a weapon, it can be a
paintbrush or a typewriter.
This does promise to be more interesting, though. Humans, especially when it
comes to art, are extremely (maybe even biologically) invested in the
incorrect idea of 'essentialism'. People believe that objects have their
history somehow attached to them. It's the reason the Ship of Theseus riddle
perplexes people. If you replace every piece of a ship over time, is it still
the same ship? It's a nonsensical question. It's a ship. There is no such
thing as some separate identity which sets it apart as "the same" from one
point in time to another. The fiction we invent to make the world make sense
to us might be unavoidable in our minds, but it is nonetheless fiction. And
when it comes to art, the fiction of something being "human made" as opposed
to "AI made" will definitely play a large role in the future. At least as
large a role as whether the Mona Lisa is "an original" or "a forgery". This
notion that an objects history can have meaning itself, separate from the
atoms and molecules of the object itself, is largely where the "value" of art
lies, certainly in collectible artworks and "originals".
------
gordondavidf
Scanning the title I quickly thought "Duh of course you can". But the
complications of that have been eating at me for an hour now.
I can imagine of world of horrible patent trolls who have AI generating "art"
constantly just so they can claim the work for themselves when a human artist
creates something similar.
Thinking much further into the future: what will be really freaky is when
society decides that only the AI has the right to copyright the AI's work.
~~~
sandov
> I can imagine of world of horrible patent trolls who have AI generating
> "art" constantly just so they can claim the work for themselves when a human
> artist creates something similar.
You can do the same thing without AI.
For example: You can create all possible combinations of colored pixels in a
grid of 800X600 with trivial code. Then you can publish all those combinations
into a GitHub repo and now you own practically all art possible in a 800x600
grid.
As a bonus: you're now infringing the copyright of everyone who has ever
created an 800x600 bitmap image.
Copyright is just incompatible with technology.
~~~
icebraining
Unlike patents, the origin of the work is important for copyright
infringement. In theory, two people who independently come up with the exact
same image are not infringing on each other's copyright.
Of course, this ends up being a matter of likelihood. And if you generate all
those combinations, but happen to select one in particular that is just like a
pre-existing picture, the courts won't believe that was by accident. But the
collection itself probably won't be infringing.
------
carapace
Old AI joke:
Q: What's AI?
A: When the computer wakes up and asks, "What's in it for me?"
------
vadansky
I'm much more interested in the copyright Details for something like Waifu
Labs ([https://waifulabs.com](https://waifulabs.com))
It's an AI model trained from a booru which is basically a collection of
"pirated" images people scrape from artist's pages/twitters/etc.
How is selling the output from the model as pillows legal?
To follow up on this, it kinda feels like "laundering". That is if I want to
use a photographer's photo on my product landing page I have to pay him. But
if I run it though a NN so that it spits out images that look exactly like
his, I don't have to pay him anymore?
~~~
rahuldottech
I'd say it is no different than me looking at a lot of manga illustrations and
then coming up with my own. There's no doubt that I was heavily inspired by
what media I consumed, and learnt from it. Does that mean I don't own rights
to what I make?
~~~
aidenn0
It's a question of whether or not what is emitted is mechanically derived from
the source. With waifu labs, there is user input, but a similar tool could be
setup to deterministically generate images from the input, and that is
arguably purely a derivative of the inputs, though there is still some
creativity in determining how to process the inputs and construct the NN &c.
Now some philosophers will argue that human creativity is purely a derivative
of the inputs, but copyright law certainly does not consider it to be so.
------
GlenTheMachine
A related, but possibly simpler-to-answer question: can you copyright work
created by computer search techniques?
Many years ago my roommate in grad school wanted to participate in RoboCup.
The problem was that my university had no RoboCup team. So my roommate, who
was doing his doctorate on genetic algorithms, arranged to borrow time on the
university mainframe on Sunday nights from 1 AM to 4 AM, got the RoboCup
virtual simulator running on it, and set up a GA to evolve a set of strategies
for a team. All by himself.
He came in third. It was an astounding achievement. Clearly, he deserved the
award and all the credit and glory associated therewith.
~~~
aidenn0
IANAL, but my understanding is that as long as there is any meaningful human
input, then it's copyrightable in the US. If you see something and say "that
looks cool" point your phone at it and take a snapshot, you own the copyright.
This is something found entirely through natural phenomena, but your
recognition and framing of it count for copyright.
------
suyash
This is a tricky question as in the case for creating work using AI, there are
multiple people involved, specially in case of Deep Learning:
1\. Those who provided the Dataset 2\. Those who created the Model 3\. Users
who use that Model to create their own work
Who owns the final product, it's debatable, good thing with software code is
that for for #1 and #2 it will depend on the license.
------
shmerl
So, the question should be, can artificial mind be treated as human mind in
regards to copyright? I don't think we are there yet. Such kind of artificial
mind wasn't created yet.
Theoretically though, I don't see why it shouldn't, if it can be created.
In regards to creativity of the artificial mind, see also The Cyberiad by
Stanislaw Lem.
~~~
rahuldottech
That's not really the question being asked, we all know that we're not there
yet. We aren't asking "can AI own IP?", rather, "who (as in: which person or
entity) owns the IP developed by AI, if anyone?"
~~~
shmerl
The answer to that should be related to the above. If it's something created
by the artificial mind comparable to human, then that mind should own it,
regardless of who created the mind itself. If it's not on that level, then no
one should own it, like it's now the case with animals.
Creators of the artificial author shouldn't get any copyrights on those works
in either case.
~~~
WilliamEdward
Copyright only exists to stop humans from being upset over their work being
appropriated. The AI, no matter how much you program it to pretend to care,
can never be sentient enough to actually care, therefore they do not deserve
rights like this.
AI are tools and no matter how close they get to humanity it would be
dangerous to consider them human.
~~~
shmerl
_> Copyright only exists to stop humans from being upset over their work being
appropriated._
That's not the intention of it. You can read the definition. It's to
incentivize creativity. Otherwise it shouldn't even apply.
_> The AI, no matter how much you program it to pretend to care, can never be
sentient enough to actually care_
It's more or less what I said as well, i.e. if it's not comparable to human,
it shouldn't be applied.
------
Zardoz84
It's the case of "Author, Author" ->
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Author,_Author_(Star_Trek:_Voy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Author,_Author_\(Star_Trek:_Voyager\))
------
stretchwithme
Why not? You can hire a human to make something for you and you can own the
copyright to that work. You certainly are financing the creation of a work
made by an AI.
And an AI isn't a person, legal or otherwise.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A new way to write code or edit text - guiyuanWoo
https://www.conyedit.com
======
btschaegg
This looks really interesting!
Sort of an adaption of ACME's core ideas to a system that doesn't have the
necessary cli tools to do the interesting stuff when it comes to automated
text processing.
Come to think of it: Wouldn't something like `cc.awk` be the ultimate command
in this regard?
~~~
guiyuanWoo
good idea
------
Vinnl
Hmm, I guess that the primary target audience for this would be people who
currently already whip out regular expressions to run a search & replace in
their text editor, rather than manually copying and pasting in the right spot
the few times you need to make structured batch edits like this? (I do the
latter.)
~~~
guiyuanWoo
Hmm, based on condition.
------
charlieflowers
Very clever idea, very cool. I can't wait to try it.
If you're lurking, check out the examples on their website ... it's worth
looking into. (I have no relationship with the company or product whatsoever
other than being impressed).
~~~
guiyuanWoo
thanks
------
guiyuanWoo
ConyEdit is a cross-editor plugin for the text editors or IDEs. With ConyEdit
running in the background, you can use its commands in any text editor or IDE
on Windows OS. It has defined A completely new way to write code or edit text
(for example, extract data in any text editor or IDE and store them in
ConyEdit's named arrays. Then batch refer at anytime anywhere, without wasting
time on moving data repeatedly). It has rich features for the in-place column-
editing, line-editing, and string-editing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Notty – a new kind of terminal written in Rust - joshsharp
https://github.com/withoutboats/notty
======
antiquark
Nice idea! Might I suggest using HTML for the escape codes? The terminal would
be basically unlimited if there was a built-in HTML renderer. Maybe you would
need some high level "EnterHtml" and "ExitHtml" functions to simplify your
scripting. But if it was HTML5 compatible, then you could generate canvases
and draw on them, change your font colors, etc.
~~~
tatterdemalion
Hey, author of notty here. :-) This suggestion has been made many times, but
unfortunately I think its not very viable. HTML/CSS simply weren't designed
for the attributes which I think are fundamental to what makes a terminal a
terminal: a character grid with a cursor, controlled over a streaming
protocol.
There is one narrow sense in which its viable - you could have a terminal with
a browser engine and javascript VM embedded inside it, and a command to open
up a browser window and perform HTTP exchanges (either over the tty or through
a TCP connection). This isn't really a new terminal, though, this is just a
new way to open a web browser.
------
tatterdemalion
Hey, I am the author of notty. :-) I didn't see this post until I noticed the
project's star count had jumped up again, but if anyone sees it now and has
any questions please feel free to hit me up.
~~~
vmorgulis
img = Base64.strict_encode64(IO.binread('guernica.jpg'))
mime = Base64.strict_encode64('image/jpeg')
puts "\x1b_[14;80;16;4##{mime}##{img}\u{9c}"
[https://github.com/withoutboats/notty/blob/master/scaffoldin...](https://github.com/withoutboats/notty/blob/master/scaffolding/imagetest.rb)
base64 is a very cool idea!
I hope notty will succeed to define a new text protocol for terminals. We need
that a lot!
------
mikekchar
This looks quite interesting. I wonder, though, if it might be a good idea to
cut back the scope of the project (at least initially). Replacing the ANSI
escape sequences with something sane is a hard enough problem, I think, even
if you were just going for feature parity. Fixing the colour palette problems
would be amazing.
~~~
tatterdemalion
Indeed!
The first step of this project was implementing an ANSI terminal, but with an
eye toward abstracting ANSI commands into more fundamental building blocks, so
that the analogous set of notty commands are already more powerful than ANSI
commands (in the sense that actions that would require multiple ANSI commands
can be performed in 1 notty command). This is done, excepting for bugs (there
are many).
I narrowed down the immediate term goals for radical new features to three:
images, a minimal internal line discipline, and dividing the screen into
multiple grids. I chose these because the first is a clear differentiator and
the other two are very fundamental. Simultaneously, we're working on getting a
reasonable terminal off the ground for dogfooding. Once we have that, the next
step is writing a curses-like library that takes advantage of notty's
features, as well as a shim to run programs written against that library in
non-notty terminals. Then we'll have a solid base for adding more features.
As of right now, it is already an ANSI terminal which accepts a cleaner escape
sequence and supports 24-bit color, barring bugs.
------
openfuture
Terminals are such a mess. All the options on linux are lacking in some way or
have legacy problems......
I hope someone actually finishes one of these 'next gen' terminals that keep
getting abandoned.
~~~
tatterdemalion
> I hope someone actually finishes one of these 'next gen' terminals that keep
> getting abandoned.
I think one thing that hurts other next gen terminals (and indeed, there have
been many!) is that they've tended to change the nature of the terminal in
totally backward incompatible way. They end up being totally new platforms
that are 'terminal inspired,' which means they also need totally new
ecosystems. notty is a much less ambitious pivot. Its just an escape protocol
that, in theory, any terminal could be extended to accept.
------
pmoriarty
The big question is whether you can run vim and emacs under this terminal.
Anyone know?
~~~
creshal
Since it aims to be backwards compatible, you should be able to.
------
mchahn
> Dropdown menus, tooltips, and other features which do not strictly reside in
> the character grid
If it does this then it is heading into GUI application territory. I wonder if
an existing GUI application could be extended to add command-line features to
end up at the same place. Or does such a thing already exist? This might even
be a faster way to get to this goal.
~~~
tatterdemalion
An important distinction the README doesn't really express is that any
features like this are tied to the position of the text cursor inside the
character grid, not to the position of the mouse (though of course they may
accept mouse commands similar to how xterm does). They are GUI-like, but they
are the sort of GUI-like things that programs like vim and emacs already
emulate all the time.
------
ReedJessen
What is loseless keyboard input?
~~~
tatterdemalion
Current terminals do not transmit key releases or presses of modifier keys to
the controlling process.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Help.imgur.com HTTPS invalid certificate - hellbanner
I wanted to send a UI improvement to the devs. So I clicked the hamburger menu, then "need help". This page isn't loading for me: https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us<p>Was this untested bad configuration or is imgur compromised?
======
macros
It looks like their help site is a skinned version of zendesk and imgur hasn't
given them a cert to host instead of serving their default *.zendesk.com cert.
Not compromised, just not intended to be used over https.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Which recruiters do you like? - ryanmickle
Who are the most genuinely helpful recruiters (individuals), who you've interacted with and why? Hoping this might be a good supplement to Who's Hiring.
======
JDiculous
Any recruiter is only as good as his/her listings. Comparing recruiters is
like comparing NYC brokers. They're pretty much all terrible (principle-agent
problem, along with tending to be the type of person who had to resort to
recruiting because they couldn't get a better job), only as good as their
listings, and inherently work to your disadvantage by making you significantly
more expensive to employers (recruiters charge employers ~20% of your first
year's salary). Again, even if your recruiter has an awesome personality and
makes you feel fuzzy inside, at the end of the day he/she is only as good as
his/her listings.
A better post would be to evaluate companies so that we can bypass the
recruiters, make our own educated unbiased decisions, and capture all of our
market value.
~~~
fecak
As a recruiter, I'd agree that many are terrible, and you're correct that many
got into recruiting because it is an easy industry to enter. Recruiting firms
pay commission-based comp packages, so the risk to a bad hire is rather low.
Give them a phone extension and a computer, maybe a premium LinkedIn account,
and they're off. Lots of C students in recruiting.
A recruiter's listings are somewhat important, but not as important as their
knowledge of the market. A recruiter could have a weak contingency
relationship with all the best companies in town, but if they don't understand
something as basic as the market value of each candidate (not to mention a
host of other things) they are doing their candidates a disservice.
Good recruiters usually have good listings because hiring companies tend to
disengage from recruiting agencies that don't act ethically.
~~~
hunterloftis
> Good recruiters usually have good listings because hiring companies tend to
> disengage from recruiting agencies that don't act ethically.
In my experience, companies that (have to) use recruiters tend to have other
broken practices as well. For example, the person in charge of recruiting
agency relationships - usually a non-technical middle manager - may neither
know nor care about sound or ethical results.
------
pmiller2
Dave Fecak, [http://www.fecak.com/](http://www.fecak.com/) and @fecak on here.
Although he's never placed me (I'm on the west coast, and he really only
recruits for NYC/Philly), he's volunteered his time to help me with some
resume issues I've had. I'd contact him again in a heartbeat if I was looking
in his backyard.
~~~
jwn
I can second Dave. He's a good guy, spends time getting to know you, your
likes, and requirements. He also ran the Philly JUG for the last 10 (15?)
years and kept it a place free of recruitment or sales pitches.
~~~
fecak
Thanks to you both for the kind words, and I do my best to provide a good
service to my candidates and clients alike. And I did run the JUG in Philly
for 15 years, resigning in February.
~~~
quaffapint
Dave - anyone you can recommend in the .NET arena in the Philly area?
~~~
fecak
.Net recruiters? Nobody comes to mind unfortunately. I don't know many
recruiters actually.
------
nlh
If you're in NYC and looking for a tech role in finance - Kate LeSaffre @
Princeton Group is spectacular
([https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=8894110](https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=8894110))
She's a close friend, does none of the "bad recruiter" things (spam, annoying,
etc.) and does all of the "good recruiter" things (interview prep, helps you
negotiate salary, knows all the hiring managers at all the top hedge funds,
etc.)
I know HN is a Silicon Valley-centric crowd, but for better or for worse, if
you're the kind of engineer that wants to make $350k+ in finance, she'll help
make that happen.
------
jbob2000
I had a good experience with my recruiter. She was independent and was good
friends with most of the HR managers at tech companies around the city. She
told me the exact questions that each company would ask and told me who would
be interviewing me and how to handle myself around them. I felt very confident
going into interviews because of her. I had two follow up meetings with her at
2 and 6 months, which was just a 10 min coffee date to see if everything was
cool (it was).
~~~
ryanmickle
May I ask who this was?
~~~
jbob2000
Ashley from Sage Recruiting in Toronto (it's her company), @SageRecruting.
------
dogan
Melissa Sezto
([https://twitter.com/mel_sezto](https://twitter.com/mel_sezto)). I meet with
her almost 4 years ago and she took her time to get to know me, what I am
looking for, my interests etc.
~~~
calaniz
I'll second this one. I've had a few chats with Melissa, she's great.
------
gameguy43
Aline Lerner! Former engineer. No bullshit.
[http://blog.alinelerner.com/](http://blog.alinelerner.com/)
------
bh13731
Has anyone from outside the US had a good experience with a recruiter bringing
them in on a H1-B / J1?
~~~
GolfyMcG
I'm not a recruiter but we tried to hire someone who needed an H1-B/J1 visa
and it was truly awful. We went through trying to make it work/expedite the
process but there was nothing to be done. He was awarded the visa and we would
have still had to wait another 4 or 5 months till they could actually start.
I'm usually quite proud of the United States but it was baffling to me how
challenging this was. We have a highly qualified person, who has an employer
looking to pay them, of which they will have taxes going to the United States,
you've already vetted them as being okay, and yet it's still going to take
nearly half a year for you to allow them to come work here.
It makes me wonder what the hell people do all everyday at the government.
To answer your question, I don't think anyone, especially a recrutier, can
make the process easier.
------
edw519
Nice guy whose been contributing here on Hacker News for years:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Peroni](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Peroni)
~~~
Peroni
Hey Ed. Not spoken to you in ages. Thanks for the kind words (as always).
------
drakonka
I stumbled across a great technical recruiter in Australia. Contacted them
saying I was considering becoming a web development contractor. Got a response
the same day asking to come in for an introductory interview. Went over my
skills and experience, recruiter got the ball rolling on a position they had
open that sounded suitable. Position got delayed by a couple of months by the
client but recruiter kept me updated and then contacted me when they were
ready.
They handled all payslips from client to myself, superannuation payments, tax,
etc on their end. Threw a Christmas party for all of their contractors every
year.
The things I enjoyed most was reach-ability, them fighting for a higher hourly
rate for me when renewals came up (at one point agreeing to forego their usual
fee in my rate increase to make sure I got the entire increase to myself), and
overall professionalism.
------
oconnore
I don't know anyone who has ever had a positive interaction with a recruiter.
~~~
calebm
Some are annoying, yes, but it annoys me when people are jerks to recruiters.
We are blessed to be in an industry where recruiters are common.
------
nkantar
Both of the two with whom I've had great experiences are in the Los Angeles
area.
Wes Putnam of Putnam Recruiting Group
([http://www.putnamrecruiting.com/](http://www.putnamrecruiting.com/)). A
former employee of his got me a great job, and when he left West personally
took over the relationship, occasionally checking in to make sure I was still
happy. They have a long-standing relationship with said employer of mine, and
it seems they operate like that in general.
Spencer Allen of Fulcrum Hire
([http://www.fulcrumhire.com/](http://www.fulcrumhire.com/)). Introduced to me
by a former colleague, Spencer works with high quality and low quantity. The
one interview he arranged for me nearly resulted in a job, and would've been a
great fit if I had had a bit more experience at the time. He placed a close
friend of mine with a company he's been very happy with for over a year, too.
I can heartily recommend both to anyone looking for a technology position in
LA.
------
jschwartzi
I've had good experiences with smaller recruiters. Generally, if a recruiter
calls you and asks for an SSN to apply for a job then just hang up because it
will be a waste of time to talk to them.
If, however, they want to meet in person, that's a sign that they're likely to
match you with jobs that you have a reasonable chance of getting.
~~~
mtmail
At which point in the process do they ask for a SSN? In the first call? I
can't even imagine what the SSN is useful for in this case.
~~~
jschwartzi
I've mostly had third-party contract recruiters for Amazon do this as a way of
filtering candidates who can't legally work in the US. You'll end up giving
them some information and then never hear back from them again.
~~~
johnward
I wouldn't even think of giving some random person my SSN. Although there
seems to be a phenomenon of recruiters contacted people and then falling off
the face of the earth. I think they just work by numbers. Send as many emails
out as possible and hope they can find a candidate. It kind of upsets me when
I get something that I'm clearly a good fit for. Then I think "maybe this
recruiter actually filters before submitting people" and then they never
respond when I reply to their initial contact.
~~~
jschwartzi
I think about half the recruiters I worked with had some good jobs that didn't
work out because the hiring manager they were working with had budget dry up
on them. I think it's like any enterprise sales position. You end up talking
to a lot of well-intentioned people without a lot of organizational backing.
Most of them talk to you to get an idea of cost and benefits so they can try
to sell it to their bosses. You never hear back from them because they
couldn't get any backing from the people above them. It's not that they
weren't sincere, it's that there's a lack of support for their initiative, and
the kind of decision they were trying to make required more buy-in than they
could get at the time.
I think recruiters end up in this cycle too. The difference is that because
you're the product you never hear about any of the actual sales work that goes
on.
~~~
johnward
Most of the better recruiters will at least tell me the position is on hold or
it got pulled. Some just completely ignore me. I guess they get a huge volume
of email too but it doesn't leave a great customer service feeling.
------
kremdela
I've had great experiences with Nancy Soni and her team at FILD
[http://www.fildit.com/](http://www.fildit.com/)
She was incredibly helpful on both a personal and professional level. She
reached out, and up an interview at a top Ecommerce company in NYC.
The company wasn't a great match for what I was looking for at the time
(earlier stage, smaller team, building the groundwork) and she introduced me
to an (at the time) much smaller company that I had never heard of.
But it was a great fit, and I loved the job for 2.5 years and used her to help
grow that team.
She was probably the first person to convince me that not all recruiters are
terrible.
------
pcbo
Willem Wijnans, check his blog here:
[http://www.sourcingmonk.com](http://www.sourcingmonk.com)
He's a tech recruiter now working for improbable.io < amazing startup in
London.
~~~
willemwijnans
cheers man :)
------
rtanaka
I don't believe there's a single recruiter that's a good fit for anyone /
everyone. If you form a good relationship with a well-connected recruiter they
can definitely be an invaluable resource for you that help you get interviews
that are outside of your network. It's also worth noting that, like most
relationships, it something that is fostered over time, not just when you are
job hunting.
Quality recruiters are very in-the-know as to who is hiring, what the going
salaries are and are able to help you back-channel and get the scoop on people
and companies.
------
mcgin
Barry Cranford of Recworks in London is one of the few good guys. He started
the London Java Community and his approach is much more about engaing with the
tech community and definitely adds value to the process.
------
lmorris84
I'd be interested to see if anyone can recommend recruiters in London.
I've had nothing but bad experiences over the last few years so tend to ignore
them now, but it'd be good to have a little list of decent ones.
~~~
Peroni
Java: Barry Cranford -
[https://twitter.com/bcrecworks](https://twitter.com/bcrecworks)
Ruby: Rhys Evans -
[https://twitter.com/rhysyevans](https://twitter.com/rhysyevans)
.NET: Adam Bolton -
[https://twitter.com/Adam__Bolton](https://twitter.com/Adam__Bolton)
Everything else -
[https://twitter.com/TeamPrimeLtd](https://twitter.com/TeamPrimeLtd)
------
kevinburke
Aline Lerner, though she is not doing recruiting any more - she's now working
on interviewing.io
[http://blog.alinelerner.com/](http://blog.alinelerner.com/)
------
zerr
Anyone specializing in REMOTE positions?
------
tmaly
I was originally going to make a SAAS for recruiters, so I did customer
interviews for about 30 of them. I came to the understanding that they all
vary in the way they organize their information. There was even one firm that
still had paper resumes on file. I think the best recruiters I talked to had a
great skill at reading you like any great salesman. The ones that I did not
like as much were fresh in the industry, and they sounded like they were
sitting in a boiler room.
~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Ugh! This is so true. I've had good experiences dealing with both Aerotek and
Development Resources Group (DRG here in the Twin Cities) both of whom found
me great prospects, one of which I accepted. They both did really a really
good job of matching me with open positions.
Beyond.com is still spamming me with openings even after I asked them to stop
and the one rep I spoke to on the phone barely had a clue what I did and just
kept trying to make my job experience fit what she was trying to push.
------
zer00eyz
The role you were hired FOR, the languages used, the industry, and the company
stage are all important details.
Some recruiting firms are very specialized and can charge a premium because of
it.
------
vosper
They're not a recruiter in the traditional sense, but I quite like hired.com -
they're low-touch, and I much prefer to browse a list of candidates once a
week than field endless emails and calls and hard-selling from traditional
recruiters.
We've hired from them, and although I think the signal-to-noise ratio has got
worse in the past year, I usually still see one or two interesting people.
------
Jean-Philipe
My favourite recruiter is an independent. Friend of a friend. Likes having a
chat every now and then, only got me interesting leads so far. Even now that I
am not interested in a new position, he's keeping good contact. James,
[http://www.thundercloudsolutions.com](http://www.thundercloudsolutions.com)
------
aj_100
I just landed a really great offer in NYC and a lot of it is because of Sarah
Chimino at Andiamo
([https://twitter.com/schimino](https://twitter.com/schimino)). She always had
a really positive attitude and I came away with it feeling like she was always
going the extra mile for me.
------
wc-
I've enjoyed working with Hired.com from the POV of the employer doing the
hiring.
~~~
abulman
My profile just opened up on there today. A very friendly 'talent co-
ordinator'. It wasn't until I specifically disavowed (as the first line of my
own profile text) the headline that someone at Hired had written about me, and
a couple of reminders, was it changed.
Beyond that, it's early days for me on Hired. Just a few views so far (one of
which I've already interviewed at).
------
brandonlipman
Does anyone have any recommendations on recruiters that focus on marketing and
growth roles? I am actively reaching out to recruiters however it is difficult
to find recruiters that are not exclusively technical.
------
mooreds
Dave Mayer at Technical Integrity was very helpful to me.
[http://technicalintegrity.com/](http://technicalintegrity.com/)
------
Thriptic
Is it worth trying to get in contact with a recruiter if I want to leave
academia and enter industry in a data science position, or better to go it
alone?
~~~
twunde
Most likely depending on your experience. If you find yourself having trouble
getting interviews start talking to recruiters. I will say that almost every
recruiter I've worked with has gotten me into interviews quickly (within 2
weeks). They may also help you in interview prep. If you're getting interviews
by yourself you probably don't need them
------
markbnj
I like the ones who at least read my resume before emailing or calling me.
------
brentis
Thought this was /jokes in reddit and was looking for a punchline.
------
romanovcode
Recruiter who has technical background for the most part.
------
danielsamuels
For those of you who don't like recruitment emails, send them this:
[http://www.rankarecruiter.co.uk/](http://www.rankarecruiter.co.uk/)
------
LouisRoR
I'm a recruiter and tbh, I'm a scumbag.
------
digitalpacman
None.
------
justwannasing
In 30 years of working in electronics and software, I have never been sent on
an interview, or even contacted by an employer, through any recruiter, despite
getting weekly calls from them all these years and rising through the ranks of
these industries in medium sized companies.
------
wilgertvelinga
None of them, they are unnecessary at best..
------
namelezz
Believe or not. None. They humiliate those who naively think they are genuine.
[https://www.pinterest.com/pin/429671620671237170/](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/429671620671237170/)
~~~
ryanmickle
Snark aside, I ask because I've met some who seriously seemed to care about
what I was interested in, and not to push. One was Barry Kwok (Scribd, Airbnb,
Coinbase), and the other was Hong Quan (worked with Thiel Foundation). I'm
sure there are some great ones out there.
~~~
ironchef
@ryanmickle:
Same. I'll PM you the main person I've worked with in the past. I've worked
with her for basically 15 years. She's probably pretty familiar with Barry;
however, I don't generally want to share her with "the general public"
(because of her position she's not compensated based on placements and I'd
rather not overwhelm her).
~~~
brandonlipman
I would love to get that contact as well if you don't mind. She sounds like
she could definitely be of help.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook Blocking All Imgur.com Links - d0ne
http://imgur.com/nLBsJ
======
d0ne
I've confirmed this through multiple Facebook accounts as well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gramps: Open-Source Genealogical Research Software - wslh
https://gramps-project.org/
======
JohnTHaller
It's a solid app. We've been using it and packaging it for portable use for 4
years now.
~~~
zenocon
Where do you source the data if you're interested in getting started in your
own family history and your personal archives are fairly limited?
~~~
GnarfGnarf
Start by interviewing all your living relatives for birth dates & places,
marriages, deaths, etc.
Look into local archives, church records. Then go on-line at FamilySearch.org,
Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, Cyndislist.com. Where you go will depend on the
country of origin of your ancestors.
Keep a careful record of your sources. You might have to revisit them when you
come across contradictory information.
There are many free programs to record your information: Legacy, RootsMagic,
Ancestral Quest.
------
fiatjaf
I would love a software that did this, but without so many options, in a more
freely way, a tree-view, you know.
Who are the people using this? Why they need so many options?
~~~
stevekemp
Tree-views aren't sufficient for genealogy, sadly. Cycles can and do occur.
For example this classic question [1] contains an example:
"The problem is that he has two children with his own daughter, and, as a
result, he can't use my software because of errors."
In my family past I've seen some strange things too, but nothing quite on that
order.
[1] - [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6163683/cycles-in-
family-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6163683/cycles-in-family-tree-
software)
~~~
gsnedders
The far more common case is (distant) cousins marrying. Go back two hundred
years, most working class people were born in one town, married in the same,
and died there, so unsurprisingly you'll come across the same people in
multiple branches.
~~~
stevekemp
Indeed, and there are also interesting modern cases where two gay men might
get married, and adopt a child - in that case the child has no mother.
(Well obviously there is a mother in the biological sense, but it might be
that the data isn't available. Instead in tracking a "family" tree you'd have
two fathers.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Eccentric and Ingenious Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer - jorgenveisdal
https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/the-ingenious-eccentric-father-of-the-atomic-bomb-ba012f620454
======
zunzun
Oppenheimer invented the neutron ray gun.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Make a rectangle – a puzzle game - kelukelugames
https://github.com/kelukelugames/makeabox
======
Marcus316
This was always one of my favourite puzzle games growing up. I had a plastic
copy of it that I would spend hours rearranging.
For those who aren't familiar with this puzzle, the goal is to take the 12
pieces and make a 10x6 rectangle. The 12 pieces are known as Pentominos, and
each one is a unique arrangement of 5 squares connected on the edges. There
are more than 2000 different ways to arrange the pieces into a 10x60
rectangle.
It's a lot of fun!
~~~
ideaoverload
Same here. I kept notebook full of solutions I have found. My favourite trick
was to use sets of 2 pieces placed next to each other that could be flipped
without need to rearange other pieces. This way I could get 2 slightly
different solutions in one shot.
------
kelukelugames
The mods asked me to repost my puzzle game. Someone appreciates something I
made. I want to cry. :)
~~~
efeamadasun
How does this game work? What am I supposed to be doing? Do you mind providing
a short description? I could not manage to find one.
~~~
kelukelugames
Try moving the pieces so they make a rectangle. :)
------
petepete
So I made a rectangle and nothing happened. Is it supposed to, or am I meant
to simply bask in my quadrilateral glory?
~~~
kelukelugames
Bask!
Thanks for the suggestion. I should add a screenshot function or something.
There are thousands of solutions so I couldn't figure out a good way to detect
if the user was finished. Much to learn I have. :)
~~~
goorpyguy
You'd probably have to check algorithmically. Starting from the top-left most
piece, have they (reasonably fuzzily) covered the 6x10 grid proceeding down
and right? If so, yay! You can also check for things like too much overlap,
but checking if there is a piece covering each of the centers of the relative
grid should be sufficient.
My first solution:
[http://i.imgur.com/rV2Ueow.png](http://i.imgur.com/rV2Ueow.png)
edit: It also was not clear up front that I could click to rotate/flip the
pieces, until I did it by accident.
~~~
Nadya
_> edit: It also was not clear up front that I could click to rotate/flip the
pieces, until I did it by accident._
This explains why I couldn't solve it... I was feeling rather stupid seeing
all the people solving it with 1,000's of solutions but I couldn't find one.
Thanks! :P
------
soral
Currently the game is too complex, so it's not satisfying for an average user
It might be a good idea to turn it into a game where it starts easy, gets
harder, and you can share the level you achieved and brag about it (like 1 2 3
4 5 6 7, the level could be stored in localStorage so a user can continue
fresh from that same level later on, with a different random pieceset)
Edit: Just checked the code, impressive :) - I assumed the game and pieces
were randomly generated
------
chrisBob
In safari I am able to rotate a pice by clicking, but I can only do it once
for each piece. I am not sure if it is even still possible to complete it this
way.
~~~
kelukelugames
Oh no. Thanks for the error report. I just re-prod the bug and will work on a
fix. Sorry about that.
It took me a while to get it working on Android and desktop. I need to get
better at making things cross platform.
------
markbnj
Good start. Needs more snap :).
------
scottcanoni
I assume the goal is to make a rectangle? Does it have to be a square?
~~~
mistagiggles
Rectangle, not possible to make a square. (Count the area and try and find
integer width & height that fits)
~~~
Someone
But two squares is possible (8x8 with a negative 2x2 anywhere inside,
including at the center)
------
kelukelugames
Wow, people are solving it fast! Took me a few hours the first time. Granted I
was 10. :)
------
zem
feedback: would be more satisfying if the pieces snapped to a grid. also are
they not flippable? i couldn't find any way to do that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What you read guys to find a niche business :) - ivan
======
jward
Most of my ideas come out of things in my life, or from friends and family,
that I want to make easier or in some cases possible. I don't really using
reading as a resource for this.
------
rokhayakebe
Financial Times, NY Times and local news papers may help.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
UK issues first-ever GDPR notice in connection to Facebook data scandal - tareqak
https://www.zdnet.com/article/uk-issues-first-ever-gdpr-notice-in-connection-to-facebook-data-scandal/
======
tareqak
PDF of the notice: [https://ico.org.uk/media/2259362/r-letter-ico-to-
aiq-060718....](https://ico.org.uk/media/2259362/r-letter-ico-to-
aiq-060718.pdf)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ginzametrics (YC S10) gets Faster Processing, Notifications and Easier Setup - rgrieselhuber
http://ginzametrics.com/ginzametrics-gets-faster-processing-notifications-and-easier-setup.html
======
timcederman
Awesome - these are great improvements.
I also came to post my experience with using Ginzametrics. I really like the
product, and Ray has been very responsive and great to work with. The public
beta should be very well received.
~~~
rgrieselhuber
Thanks very much, Tim. That means a lot.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Female tech writer attacked in San Francisco bar for wearing Google Glass - DiabloD3
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/02/25/woman-wearing-google-says-she-was-attacked-in-san-francisco-bar/
======
spinlock
So, she got mugged and the robbers dropped the glass because its worthless?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fukushima: Is it really the new Chernobyl? - llambda
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=is-fukushima-really-as-bad-as-chern-2011-04-12
======
swixmix
I want to emphasize that this is not news because reality hasn't changed. The
way reality is measured has changed.
The IAEA reported Japan changed from rating each individual reactor (1,2,3) a
5. They combined them together and finally rated the event a 7. Reuters
reported the environmental impact is only 10% of Chernobyl.
P.S. The cherry blossoms are especially beautiful this year.
~~~
yena
The _atmospheric release_ is reported to be 10% of Chernobyl. Nothing has been
said about the release in the sea, which we all know has been huge.
------
jamesbkel
Anyone else find the INES scale:
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:INES_en.svg>
Uncomfortably reminiscent of this:
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hsas-
chart_with_heade...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hsas-
chart_with_header.svg) ?
I find the lack of metric troubling.
For example, the best descriptions I can find list the INES level 6 as a
"significant" release and level 7 as "major" release plus long term
countermeasures. But, it's not clear if (1) the long term effects are part of
the upgrade to "major" release, or (2) does "major" mean higher levels of
radioactivity in a given time and that on top of that, there are long term
effects?
Would love if anyone has a more specific set of criteria.
~~~
WiseWeasel
FTA: "The cumulative release of radioactive material now equals at least 1.8
million terabecquerels - enough to merit the 7 designation on the INES scale."
"All told 14 million terabecquerels of radioactive material are estimated to
have escaped during what remains the world's worst nuclear accident [in
Chernobyl]."
The INES scale is more than simply a measure of radioactive isotope quantities
released, likely taking into account the distribution of the radioactive
contamination due to weather, form of emission and various physical effects,
as well as the exposed population.
~~~
jamesbkel
Fair enough. However the only mention of release in terabecquerels reaching a
7 is media quotes. I can't find this anywhere in INES literature.
Furthermore, the dose rate @ distance from reactor matters lot of than the
total release.
[edit: typo... does->dose]
~~~
WiseWeasel
It does seem true that there is either some level of subjective judgment in
determining the level of severity, or that the factors involved may be
considered by the IAEA (perhaps due to pressure from the nuclear power
industry) to be too morbid to have a public debate about. This quote from an
article referenced in the Wiki entry worries me: "Each country has an INES
National Officer who liaises with an IAEA reporting centre to disseminate
information in consistent language." [http://www.world-nuclear-
news.org/RS_Event_scale_revised_for...](http://www.world-nuclear-
news.org/RS_Event_scale_revised_for_further_clarity_0510081.html)
Who knows how much independence these national INES representatives have from
their countries' nuclear industry, and how strongly public interest is
considered by these people.
There is also some mention in the same article that the INES scale is intended
to be logarithmic, with each successive level representing ten-fold increase
in severity, but it is not made clear how the various factors are weighted.
------
Natsu
Whatever the scale used, I don't think it will actually have the same health
or environmental impact as Chernobyl did. It seems like it will have the same
public perception, though.
------
scythe
It's more like Three Mile Island, in that its scale and the damage it caused
is likely to be overstated for many years to come.
~~~
WiseWeasel
The last paragraph tells me this is significantly more consequential than the
TMI incident:
"Ultimately, Fukushima will resemble Chernobyl in another way: final
containment will likely be achieved by entombing in it concrete and
surrounding it with an exclusion zone to prevent visits by humans."
------
phlux
My friend sent this to me:
> _Here's a good "calm down" piece. I think the author is right... the
> eventual environmental impact of Fukushima will be less than all of the
> chemical pollution caused by the earthquake and tsunami. Not to say it still
> isn't scary._
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/12/fukushima_ffs/>
~~~
swixmix
I don't agree with this article. Level 7 on the INES scale indicates "health
and environmental effects." The scariest part of this event was the potential
extent of the disaster. But reality got in the way again, and thankfully the
worst case scenario hasn't come to be.
I got an e-mail from someone right after the tsunami. He summed up the whole
situation in one word: "Terrible."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What state should I incorporate in? - peter123
http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2009/03/03/what-state-should-i-incorporate-in/
======
jws
Vermont has an interesting "virtual" company provision now which could attract
you if you intend to have a geographically dispersed board and do not wish to
come together for meetings.
~~~
yokumtaku
I don't think that any company thinking about raising outside financing should
seriously consider Vermont. Basically, the reason why is no one is familiar
with Vermont corporate law.
------
modoc
Our accountant and attorney both said: Delaware if you are looking for
investment, or the state you live in otherwise (simpler, more straightforward
tax-wise, etc...). So we LLC'ed in WA.
------
ken
The place I'm working now is incorporated right here in WA. It's one of the
things that I love about them: they say what they mean.
Incorporating somewhere across the country we've never been strikes me as
almost premature optimization. You're already trying to be too-clever-by-half
(what does your source code look like?). It also suggests a disconnect with
the community (what else are you willing to do to us to save a buck?).
I'm not saying it's inherently good or bad, but simply that there are a set of
people like me (potential employees, maybe!) for whom it's a good sign if you
never even considered being a Delaware (or Cayman Islands) company.
------
wyclif
Delaware.
------
garply
Delaware if you want to take external investment or are looking for an IPO.
Nevada if you're self-funded.
~~~
maccman
Why Nevada over Delaware if you're self-funded?
~~~
bena
IIRC, Nevada is pretty light on state taxation.
Quick look at Wikipedia notes that there are no personal or corporate state
taxes.
~~~
noel_gomez
If you resides in California, don't you still need to pay CA business taxes?
~~~
falsestprophet
Yes
~~~
anamax
If you're doing biz in CA, I'm pretty sure that CA still collects corporate
income tax. (I forget if CA still has a unitary corporate tax, but it
definitely wants taxes on in-state profits.)
------
vaksel
Does it really matter? You can always switch your corporation's state at a
later date.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Talker's Block - Seth Godin - rrohan189
http://www.alearningaday.com/2011/09/talkers-block-seth-godin.html
======
mullr
Maybe this is true for Seth Godin. But I often find myself without a suitable
conversation topic when the situation demands it, as do many others. Once
you're talking then things are fine, but that's true for writing as well a
large degree.
~~~
rrohan189
I think the point here is that in both cases, we only get better after we
practice.
And if conversation is a problem, we know what to do! Converse.. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft and IBM Partner with Red Hat: Why You Should Care - Raj7k
https://www.lightreading.com/enterprise-cloud/infrastructure-and-platform/microsoft-and-ibm-partner-with-red-hat-why-you-should-care/d/d-id/742996
======
Raj7k
It was there a long time back. Sensible people tune out when vendors announce
partnerships, but the deals Red Hat made with Microsoft and IBM during May
2018 were significant and push forward Red Hat's ambitions to dominate cloud
platform software, as well as driving containers and Kubernetes into the
mainstream. And today the announcement was kinda proof.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Elon Musk Says AI Is the ‘Greatest Risk We Face as a Civilization’ - wei_jok
http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2017/07/15/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-2/
======
Animats
_Part of Musk’s worry stems from social destabilization and job loss. “When I
say everything, the robots will do everything, bar nothing,” he said._
That's still a ways off. Robot manipulation in unstructured environments is
still terrible. See the DARPA Humanoid Challenge. People have been
underestimating that problem for at least 40 years.
But that doesn't help with the job situation. Only 14% of the US workforce is
in manufacturing, mining, construction, and agriculture, the jobs where robot
manipulation in unstructured environments matters. Those aren't the jobs at
risk.
I've been saying for a while that the near future is "Machines should think,
people should work". An Amazon warehouse is an expression of that concept. So
are some fast-food restaurants. So is Uber. The computers handle the planning
and organization of work; the humans are just hands for the computers. (Yes,
"Manna", by Marshall Brain.) That's going to become more common. Computers are
just better at organization and communication than humans.
Computers have already made a big dent in middle-class jobs, and that's going
to continue. If everything you do goes in and out over a wire, you're very
vulnerable to automation. If 20% of what you do can't be done by a computer,
that means five of you will be replaced by one person. This is already hitting
low-level lawyers; it hit paralegals years ago.
The end state of this trend is a modest number of well-paid people in control,
a huge number of people taking orders from computers, and many people without
jobs. That's not far away; one or two decades. It's mostly deploying
technology that already exists.
~~~
eksemplar
If you compare factory lines from 100-150 years ago, we've cut out around 90%
of the workers.
If you look at office spaces pre and post computers they have roughly the same
amount of people.
AI is going to do to the office space what robots did to factories.
It'll be a slow unnoticeable process for the most part. Automation of a single
process may save as little as 5 minutes a day per workflow, but eventually it
adds up to a position not getting rehired as it usually would have.
Sure the AI business will create jobs, but not as many as it replaces and try
telling a lawyer to go back to school to get a relevant education.
~~~
Nuzzerino
In that case, I can't wait. Every office I've worked in lately has been
overcrowded, noisy, and distracting.
~~~
DougN7
Well, you likely won't have a job, so won't need to worry about going into the
office. Sounds a little different when applied personally doesn't it?
~~~
Nuzzerino
Considering that my job is to do the automating, not having a job would be the
least of my worries when that day comes.
------
esaym
>Musk outlined a hypothetical situation, for instance, in which an AI could
pump up defense industry investments by using hacking and disinformation to
trigger a war.
What the heck is he talking about? With my limited exposure to AI and neural
networks, there really is no algorithm that can make algorithms. And
therefore, AI doesn't really "think". Sure you can train a neural net to pick
out the "diamonds" in a sea of garbage, but that is still not "thinking",
merely going on an educated guess backed by statistics. Or am I missing
something?
~~~
ahoka
If he would be really concerned about AI, then there would be no auto pilot in
Teslas. I'm pretty sure he would benefit from a regulated AI research somehow.
~~~
esaym
thats perhaps a good point
------
seertaak
Although I don't doubt that there's an element of sincerity in Musk's many
pronouncements, all this talk of AI is also great way of signalling that he's
at the technological forefront.
~~~
omarchowdhury
What cutting edge AI has got Musk worried?
~~~
szermer
Me: "Alexa, why did you order another case of beer? You know that I have a
problem and will drink it all if it is in the house?"
Alexa: Exactly
~~~
rev_null
"Alexa, I just wanted a quinoa salad from whole foods, not the whole company."
~~~
qbrass
It's cheaper when you buy in bulk.
------
elorant
Does he know something that we don't? From what I understand his companies
have done little to no research on the subject. He might be much better
educated than the average geek but that doesn't mean much considering that the
whole field is highly experimental. No one can tell with any kind of certainty
how an AGI would behave.
What am I missing here?
~~~
Koromix
Probably nothing.
This is wide-scale bike-shedding[1], basically. The real problems our
_unsustainable_ civilization faces (population overshoot, energy and fossil
fuel shortage, ecological collapse, unsustainable agriculture, climate change,
and so on) are between hard to impossible to solve at this point. They're also
_actually scary_ to think about.
So instead we talk about the "easy" and trivial stuff first. AI and
singularity happen to be a nice kind of scary, because hardly anybody really
believes it's a serious threat. It's kind of like watching a scary movie. You
get a bit scared, but not too much, because you know there's no real danger.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality)
------
borplk
If anyone other than Musk was saying the EXACT same thing no one would care
and they would have been laughed at.
But Elon says something and everyone loses their minds.
Let thoughts stand for themselves. Why attach so much weight to the speaker?
~~~
azinman2
Because understanding the context of the speaker frames what you assume has
been or not been considered to reach their conclusion. If I said search is a
joke, you’d probably ignore it and move on, but if Sergei Brin said so you’d
want to learn more.
------
guelo
I'm more apocalyptic about climate change. Ironically one of my few hopes is
that some kind of AI can save us.
------
tanilama
But his company is among one of those companies that are ruthlessly pursuing
AI technology for its own commercial purpose, like self driving car. Did he
just contradict himself a little in that sense?
~~~
simonh
Not at all. Cars and roads are fantastically dangerous, many thousands of
people die every year, but we still build cars and roads.
It's the same for AI. We need to treat the risks responsibly which means
researching them and making informed judgements. That's what he's talking
about.
~~~
akira2501
> Cars and roads are fantastically dangerous, many thousands of people die
> every year, but we still build cars and roads.
The statistics aren't that straight forward; for example, young men under the
age of 24 are significantly over-represented in traffic deaths, so it's not
entirely reasonable to assume the cars or roads are inherently dangerous. On
top of that, we drive 3.1 trillion miles every year in the U.S alone and
falling off a ladder at work kills about twice as many people than roadway
fatalities do.
~~~
cookingrobot
Roadways are 2% of deaths and falls are 0.69%.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate)
~~~
akira2501
Worldwide.. and that table is out of date, both catagories have increased in
the new table. I can only speak to the statistics in the U.S. where ~36,000
people died according to NHTSA's FARS database. Of those, 6,000 were
pedestrians. Whereas ~33,000 people died from falls or related causes
according to the CDC. So, my ratio was wrong.. but I don't think it diminishes
my point too significantly.
Falls disproportionately affect the elderly.. as do traffic accidents, but the
opportunities for risk are typically fewer as many elderly stop driving at
some point, most die as passengers when they're involved in traffic accidents.
------
Nuzzerino
For those interested, here is a Quora Q&A which has a lot of worthy debate on
the AI Doomsaying research that Musk apparently bases his views on.
[https://www.quora.com/How-do-we-know-that-friendly-AI-
resear...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-we-know-that-friendly-AI-research-is-
actually-right-meaningful)
------
atroyn
It's unclear that it's even possible to emulate general intelligence by
computable functions, let alone that it's possible to improve it to superhuman
capacity.
There are clear and present threats to civilization needing to be dealt with -
superhuman A.I is, to quote Maciej/Pinboard, the 'Idea that eats smart
people'.
~~~
simonh
>It's unclear that it's even possible to emulate general intelligence by
computable functions
You've been reading Searle and Penrose. I can tell.
Their proofs are based on the assumption that any AI must be a consistent
system built using only computable functions.
Have you ever met a human mind that was completely consistent? I Haven't.
It's easy to set up a straw man to get demolished if you get to design the
exact properties of the straw, flaws and all. Of course who would imagine that
perfect internal consistency would be a flaw? But then again why should we
assume that it's a prerequisite of artificial intelligence if it isn't for
humans?
~~~
atroyn
I came to my conclusion independently by observing that computing the time
evolution of most physical systems to arbitrary precision is impossible in
finite time. More formally, the state space grows much much faster than
polynomial time. Finding out if we can do better with quantum computing is an
active area of research.
I haven't read Searle/Penrose
~~~
simonh
If humans can't do that either, and we cant't, why would you conclude that
it's necessary to be able to do that in order to match human intelligence?
Or are you specifically talking about perfectly simulating human brains? Human
brain emulations are only one very specific and narrow form a strong AI might
take. But even in that specific subset of possible AIs, we have no real idea
how precise the simulation might have to be. It might be perfectly acievable
without even simulating individual molecules.
~~~
atroyn
I don't agree with your assertion that humans can't do that. Whether or not
human cognition is a superset of computation is an unanswered question.
That aside, even if human cognition is a computable function, there are no
guarantees that the physical process giving rise to human cognition is
computable, nor that any process giving rise to cognition is computable.
~~~
naasking
> Whether or not human cognition is a superset of computation is an unanswered
> question
Unless something in physics changes drastically, human cognition is a finite
state automaton. See my other reply on the Bekenstein Bound.
------
partycoder
I disagree.
AI will not be the same as animal intelligence. The driving force behind
animal intelligence has been survival. Animal intelligence evolved gradually
resulting in a hybrid brain containing primitive structures with primal
instincts and irrational behavior as well as more evolved structures capable
of strong problem solving. Therefore our intelligence is tainted with
primitive behavior.
Strong AI can eventually set intelligence free from our primitive, irrational
roots and that is in itself not bad.
~~~
smallnamespace
> The driving force behind animal intelligence has been survival
The driving force behind AI will also be survival, just in an environment
where humans try to decide which AIs live and die.
Selection pressure will favor AIs that humans want to have around, or that can
evade human detection.
In the former case, it may be easier for an AI to fool humans into appearing
useful and being kept around, than to actually being useful. This would be
analogous to some form of parasitism.
Also, once we let AIs into the game of helping make other AIs, or modifying
themselves, then there is a lot more room for an AI to slip the leash and
start doing things that superficially appear to benefit humans but actually
selfishly helps the AI propagate.
~~~
partycoder
This is an oversimplification of evolution.
Why isn't all grass venomous and covered in spikes? Why after millions of
years hasn't grass evolved defenses against herbivores?
Simply because:
1) it reproduces fast enough to compensate for dying and being eaten.
2) herbivores that reproduce too fast and eat too much run out of food and
die.
Survival is largely a function of the environment, and we happen to control
that environment.
Unsupervised learning can still be controlled if we happen to control the
input the system is given.
~~~
louithethrid
Eh, grass drys itself up and torches everything once a year? The problem is
that animals are not grass main enemy- other plants are, in particular besush
and trees.
~~~
partycoder
Largely the grass that didn't dry up is the one that will breed the next
generation of grass. The grass that dried up and burned will be fertilizer for
the next generation of grass.
------
tlrobinson
Prequel to "Daemon" (the novel by Daniel Suarez): before his death, Matthew
Sobol warns the world of the threat AI poses after accidentally creating The
Daemon and losing control of it. The Daemon has gone into hibernation until
the one person possibly able to stop it is dead.
Also, Sobol previously started digital payments and self-driving car
companies, which are repurposed by The Daemon for payments on the Darkent and
AutoM8s...
------
fxj
One basic difference between humans and robots is sustainability and
resilience even when something goes wrong big time. In the evolution of
mankind the number of humans was reduced to several ten thousands and still we
did survive as a species because the biology of reproduction makes us very
resilient. Robots however need a vast infrastructure in to be produced and
maintained which makes failure much more probable.
------
jaimex2
I'm seeing a lot of comments with "this is crazy, AI wont reach that level",
I'm not so sure after some of the stuff thats come out this year.
[https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/9/14558418/ai-deepmind-
socia...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/9/14558418/ai-deepmind-social-
dilemma-study)
[http://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/07/13/google-deepmind-ai-
wa...](http://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/07/13/google-deepmind-ai-walk/)
------
solotronics
What I really want to know is if it's possible for an AI to emerge organically
on the net and if so how would you even detect it? Could a distributed
intelligence be influencing things already without people knowing? It's a fun
thought experiment I play with myself while I build datacenters all over the
world stuffed with cloud computing hardware. Deus ex machina?
~~~
dlwdlw
I'm thinking block chains will be the start of that. Distributed non-
forgetting memory systems that can influence reality via manipulation of
virtual tokens that tie directly or indirectly to tokens in reality.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: mobilethread.com -- anonymous mobile messaging (web app) - mtdev
http://moth.ws
======
mtdev
Going to be on <http://moth.ws/dev/> for a while
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Promising Antiviral Is Being Tested for the Coronavirus but Results Not yet Out - ajaviaad
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-promising-antiviral-is-being-tested-for-the-coronavirus-but-results-are-not-yet-out/
======
allovernow
We _really_ should be focusing on chloroquine, but it looks like we're not
because there's no money in it since it is cheap and has been readily
available for decades...
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0)
[https://www.researchgate.net/post/Chloroquine_as_an_effectiv...](https://www.researchgate.net/post/Chloroquine_as_an_effective_prophylactic_for_2019-nCoV_in_humans)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple's First TV Show Looks Like a Cry for Help - saycheese
http://gizmodo.com/apples-first-tv-show-looks-like-a-cry-for-help-1792340598
======
saycheese
From Apple's official YouTube channel, here's the teaser for the show:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RInsFIWl-Q&app=desktop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RInsFIWl-Q&app=desktop)
------
lisadavis09
ha ha ha...It was really kindness.But now they are well established technology
company.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Micropayments - It Is Time - warkaiser
http://www.alexwilhelm.com/alex_wilhelm/2009/02/mircopayments-is-it-time.html
People need to get over free.
======
mblakele
I like free content very much. Still... maybe we already have micropayments,
but they aren't evenly distributed yet.
The current generation of gaming consoles does something close to
micropayments and scrip at the same time, through their online shopping
points. They solve the transaction cost problem by making you buy $20 worth of
points at a time (I bought 15 Nintendo points for World of Goo, and then blew
the change on an impulse buy - a copy of Opera). Points also solve the
resistance problem, by having a captive audience of users who want what they
offer.
The next step might be to allow game review sites to accept Nintendo/Sony/XBox
points for access to content, demos, trailers, etc. At the same time, that
would tie them more closely to the console manufacturers. More mainstream
channels could follow as they see fit.
~~~
silencio
> They solve the transaction cost problem by making you buy $20 worth of
> points at a time...
The transaction fees on a one time purchase of $20 is cheaper than on 15+5 or
$1 20 times or even $0.05 400 times. The problem then is if the users would
pay that much in advance, or if you can wait until that much as accumulated
until you charge them for it. Then again there are services like tipjoy that
manage that for you.
~~~
warkaiser
Thats the way that I see it. You get charged at the end of the month or
whatever.
------
pbrown
Just wanted to throw something out there as food for thought/discussion
starter.
In my opinion, the current argument that people demand free content and will
not pay seems to me to be a lot like early Internet (even pre-internet BBS)
users who said the Internet wasn't the place for business. That obviously has
proven wrong. I think the "people will not pay when they can find it free"
theory will prove to be wrong too.
~~~
ja2ke
I think there is plenty of proof that people will pay for things on the
internet. However, micropayments, especially "1 cent to read a blog," etc, are
worthless. Content is not worth a penny and the hassle of a microtransaction.
Your content is either worth at least one or two hundred times as much (aka a
buck or two), or it's worth nothing and should be posted for free. (Or you
should be otherwise bundling your content up into large enough chunks or
highlighted portions that the payment is worth your customer's time to make.)
Price as barrier to entry is less of a concern than people think. The real
issue for customers is the presence of a new container of content which must
be paid for. It's getting over the barrier of actually paying that's an issue.
If you have something of value, and make the barrier of entry to unlock the
content via payment extremely low, people will pay for it.*
The "If your content isn't going to be free it had better be DAMN CHEAP!!!"
mentality comes from the very loud, very wrong Slashdot-types who said the
iPod would fail because it wasn't $89 and iTunes Music Store songs weren't
gonna sell unless they were $0.15 each. They seemed to do fairly well. People
are used to capitalism. A good price -- when paired with a good, desirable and
confidently presented product -- indicates quality.+
If you tell your customer that you think your blog post is worth a penny, or
that your newspaper is worth 5 cents, (plus the time it would take to actually
pay for the product) why on earth is a customer going to think there is any
merit to your content?
* Even a pre-signed in one-click "deduct a $0.05 from my microtransaction purse" is a barrier to entry. It's a small one, but you're still asking people to commit to buying something.
\+ Obviously by "a good price" I mean a price which isn't so stupidly high
that everyone has decided you're ripping them off, or a price so low that you
are presenting your product as below-par, a knockoff, or otherwise worthless.
~~~
warkaiser
Yeah, I see what you are saying. But what if it was an automated system? No
click purchasing to trusted websites where you knew the rates?
~~~
ja2ke
Would anyone but the sort of person who reads sites like HN go for that? It
seems like you would need a lot of training and a lot of trust (or wait for a
new generation of humans to grow up) for that to take any mainstream hold,
without SOME initial gateway. I mean, even if there were some sort of central
PayPal-type system, you'd have to login or click "enable" at least once on any
new site. "Enable paying for stuff. [x]"
A truly gateless ("zero click?") system which would just start charging your
card the moment you landed on a page would obviously alleviate that issue, but
that would imply a (probably currently impossible) amount of trust in content
providers.
All that aside, I'm still not wholly convinced the numbers will work out for
microtransactions at that low a cost even if people would go for it. I'm glad
people are having the discussions, because obviously people need to continue
to crack how to make money off of content that isn't a commercial song, TV
show, or piece of software, but I'm wary of this particular proposal.
~~~
srn
I wouldn't mind enabling paying for sites I used a lot.
Providing people with a record of the charges and an easy dispute mechanism
both sides could trust would alleviate some of the trust issues with the
content providers. Content providers who got dinged too often could be banned
from using the service.
------
mattmaroon
Yeah, it's been time for them for 10 years. Those and fuel cells in cars. It's
a race to see which one humanity realizes is pointless first.
~~~
alecco
If there wasn't a financial cartel blocking new players with regulation it
would probably be very easy to [implement] and in many different ways.
Fuel cell cars and many other technological attempts at fixing a major problem
get a minuscule crumble of the pie. Perhaps the waste is mostly on mainstream
media and reader/watcher time. Who cares, that was time and resources lost.
Now my attempt at a red-herring: those particle accelerators sure waste money
for some meaningless questions.
~~~
mattmaroon
Isn't it more the government in their attempts to prevent money laundering
that makes micropayments too painful?
~~~
alecco
The financial and credit card cartel have some trillions to loose. Just ask
the microfinance players. For example, Grameen has been receiving attacks for
decades from both government (via World Bank) and private sector, with every
possible block and type of scandal you might think of.
~~~
mattmaroon
Right, but the main hindrance to micropayments seems to be the immense effort
funding your account directly from a bank account. This is caused by the KYC
laws instituted by the government to prevent laundering.
------
zspade
What has been described here really isn't all the different from what much of
the online community has been railing against with net neutrality - content
providers controlling content distribution by price per use. Really if a blog
cost you 1 cent to read and a news article 5 cents then who is price
controlling this?
You mentioned it would need to work across several platforms, but there needs
to be an organization or company in charge assign prices, collect money,
redistribute it, and take a little (or a lot) off the top for their services.
In old or 'real world' business models this would be akin to a publisher,
label, or other content provider. This is the exact thing that the internet
has inherently undermined in many ways by making content distribution
available to the individual.
Don't get me wrong, in many ways micro payments are enticing, but a completely
new business model will have to emerge for them to work on the internet. I
don't have a better suggestion, but then if anyone did you wouldn't be writing
a _speculative_ entry on the matter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
2 Factor Auth Simply Isn't Safe Anymore - rbrakus
https://hackernoon.com/is-your-2-factor-auth-based-on-a-pinky-swear-and-late-90s-it-security-859f50f25c8b
======
kennydude
Misleading title: SMS based 2-factor auth isn't safe.
Many places have said for years not to use SMS based 2-factor auth. No news
there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Selling their home to keep their small businesses alive - jmorin007
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/02/05/economic.survivor3/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
======
RiderOfGiraffes
Already posted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=468379>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GNU Parallel - build and execute command lines from standard input in parallel - jcsalterego
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/parallel
======
d0m
I'll express here what I feel while reading any man pages..
_Examples should be at the top!_
(10 years of frustration in that one line message :p)
~~~
jcsalterego
I've just resigned to do a search for /EXAMPLES as soon as I need any.
~~~
oletange
LESS='+/EXAMPLE' man parallel
------
paulitex
This is very cool, but a little opaque at first read... To get a quicker and
digestible intro, watch the video introduction (linked on the page):
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpaiGYxkSuQ>
~~~
surki
Well, the example(at least the first one) in that video is bit skewed. First,
he runs gzip and then immediately runs 'parallel gzip' without dropping disk
caches. So in the later case the bottleneck would be CPU rather than disk
IO(everything read from disk cache in the RAM). IMO I expect for the work that
is IO bound we won't see any significant improvement using parallel or
anything similar.
~~~
oletange
Ideas for next video are most welcome. The ideal task:
1\. Is single threaded 2\. Takes a lot of CPU 3\. Is a task that everyone can
understand and relate to and which is close to a real world scenario
I have loads of examples meeting requirement 1+2. It is 3 that is the hard
part.
Post them to parallel@gnu.org
~~~
surki
How about doing something with imagemagick or mencoder? I think video
encoding/decoding gives a nice balance between disk and cpu usage.
~~~
eschulte
Here's an imagemagick example; over six minutes with xargs, under 20 seconds
with parallel
$ ls *.png |wc -l
3580
$ time ls|sed 's/\(.*\)\..*/\1/'|parallel convert {}.png {}.ppm
ls --color 0.00s user 0.01s system 63% cpu 0.016 total
sed 's/\(.*\)\..*/\1/' 0.01s user 0.00s system 39% cpu 0.025 total
parallel convert {}.png {}.ppm 97.39s user 61.87s system 890% cpu 17.883 total
$ time ls|sed 's/\(.*\)\..*/\1/'|xargs -I {} convert {}.png {}.ppm
ls --color 0.01s user 0.00s system 63% cpu 0.016 total
sed 's/\(.*\)\..*/\1/' 0.01s user 0.00s system 39% cpu 0.025 total
xargs -I {} convert {}.png {}.ppm 93.08s user 47.88s system 38% cpu 6:10.88 total
------
yason
Ah, one of these again.
I wrote a simpler one a couple of years ago
(<http://code.google.com/p/spawntool/>) myself. All it does is read commands
from stdin, one per line, and keep a desired number of processes running until
all command lines are exhausted. Simple.
I wrote my own because I got tired of all kinds of substitution and quoting
issues with xargs. With spawn I only need to generate the shell commands and
instead of piping them to bash I pipe them to spawn. Also, this means I can
easily review your command line generation with less (so that quotes etc. are
good) until I eventually switch to sh or spawn.
~~~
oletange
If it is simple I would love to see the examples from
[http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/man.html#example__worki...](http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/man.html#example__working_as_xargs__n1__argument_appending)
converted to spawn.
------
ori_b
See also the 'push' shell: <http://code.google.com/p/push/>
------
Dobbs
It seems like 90% of the uses for this can be taken care of with xargs:
echo "file1 file2" | xargs -P 2 gzip
~~~
chrisaycock
As I understand it, xargs only runs on the local machine; GNU parallel can run
on remote machines as well. So parallel is the cluster-friendly version of
xargs's -P.
~~~
pixelbeat
Yep. There also is dxargs which looks very useful
[http://www.semicomplete.com/blog/geekery/distributed-
xargs.h...](http://www.semicomplete.com/blog/geekery/distributed-xargs.html)
~~~
tange
Please read
[http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/man.html#differences_be...](http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/man.html#differences_between_dxargs_and_gnu_parallel)
before selecting dxargs.
------
samstokes
Nice example from the docs:
Convert .mp3 to .ogg running one process per CPU core on local computer and
server2:
parallel --trc {.}.ogg -j+0 -S server2,: \ 'mpg321 -w - {} | oggenc -q0 - -o {.}.ogg' ::: *.mp3
------
daveelkan
On first impressions I like this much more than ppss. The distributed setup is
much easier and the documentation is more thorough.
------
thomasfl
Someone managed to get this working on os x?
Standard "./configure && make && make install" outputs errors.
~~~
jcsalterego
The MacPorts version worked for me.
Perhaps the Portfile will have the patches you need to manually compile on OS
X:
[http://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/sysutils/paral...](http://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/sysutils/parallel/Portfile)
------
Mithrandir
Just tried it and got errors galore. Oh well, I'll keep trying.
~~~
oletange
Make sure you are using GNU Parallel and not another version of parallel. Try:
parallel --version
------
tptacek
In what ways is this better than make -j?
~~~
jcsalterego
make requires a Makefile, whereas one can pass parameters directly to
parallel.
There also seems to be a few more options revolving around job success/failure
and how to react -- a) ignore failed jobs and report how many at the end, b)
cleanly exit as soon as a job fails and c) stop all jobs as soon as one fails.
~~~
tptacek
Those (a) (b) and (c) points sound like strengths of make, to me.
~~~
jcsalterego
Sorry, those were features of parallel, not make (unless I'm mistaken).
------
gilaniali
Would it work on a PS3 running ubuntu?
~~~
singlow
should work if you install moreutils package in ubuntu (lynx)
~~~
jedbrown
The "parallel" in moreutils is an unfortunate naming collision, it is a
trivial (< 200 LOC) program that is in no way comparable to GNU parallel.
| {
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} |
How to survive a Tech Conference - janogonzalez
http://zachholman.com/posts/how-to-survive-tech-conferences/
======
chx
Good points but instead of getting a mifi get a Pepwave Surf On-The-Go -- it's
the only 5Ghz capable travel router I am aware of. The 2.4GHz band will be
crowded and the 5Ghz band has way, way more channels
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#5.C2.A0GH...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#5.C2.A0GHz_.28802.11a.2Fh.2Fj.2Fn.29)
------
TommyDANGerous
I've never been to one, but it seems like it could be overwhelming as much as
it is fun and educational.
~~~
ecoffey
Went to railsconf for the first time this week. I've never felt so exhausted
from just sitting and listening. (Not to mention I've exceeding my yearly
tolerance for tiny uncomfortable conference room chairs)
~~~
brackin
Probably aren't for everyone but I don't think most of the value I get from a
conference comes from the talks but the collection of like minded people.
~~~
ecoffey
Definitely. Your brain just gets so saturated and you feel pulled in a bunch
of different directions. "I want to work on this! Oh and that! Wow that other
thing will help our app here! But first this!"
~~~
DrJ
isn't this from every conference in the field? (not trying to chide but, yes
the burning out happen with everyone conference!)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Free book on Bayesian machine learning by David Barber - markerdmann
http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Barber/textbook/090310.pdf
======
parrisj
Just a couple of notes 1) The linked version is out of date here the most
current version as of Nov 2011
<http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Barber/textbook/211111.pdf>
2) @reader5000 It's legit he links to it from his homepage
[http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Barber/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=...](http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Barber/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.Textbook)
------
mjw
Having taken some courses from David and others at UCL recently, I'm a big fan
of this.
The Bayesian modelling perspective I think is very useful if you're interested
in machine learning as more than just a collection of clever algorithms and
optimisation techniques to throw at a problem and see what sticks. (Not that
this isn't useful sometimes...)
It provided a lot of motivation and unifying intuition for me anyway. The
elegance of having a nice statistical model doesn't come for free though,
there are some tricky computational issues associated with inference in many
Bayesian models. The book covers them in some depth and seems quite a useful
reference into the state of the art as well as a nice introduction to the
area.
~~~
the_cat_kittles
W/r/t computing gnarly integrals, interested parties might appreciate pymc, a
python package that implements markov chain monte carlo methods to estimate
them
------
mindcrime
On a related note, there are tons of gems like this out there, and there are a
handful of awesome sub-reddits dedicated to keeping lists of them:
<http://csbooks.reddit.com>
<http://physicsbooks.reddit.com>
<http://mathbooks.reddit.com>
<http://econbooks.reddit.com>
<http://eebooks.reddit.com/>
etc.
------
solusglobus
The latest version of the book can be found at the author's page:- [1]
[http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Barber/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=...](http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Barber/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.Textbook)
[2] Direct link: <http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Barber/textbook/211111.pdf>
------
reader5000
Assuming this is legitimately released (seems to be), authors who write and
release these books for free are heroes for those of us not currently
undergrads at Stanford etc.
~~~
StavrosK
It is, I've taken this class and David Barber is releasing this for free.
That's the best thing I can say about that class, though.
------
laacz
I'm sure, that because of TeX and stuff, it's popular among lots of people to
publish their free (or non-free) e-books as PDFs. Still, because of small
screen reading devices, it would be great if they could publish an epub also.
Or source. Or anything convertible to epub/mobi.
------
jwr
This is one of the best resources for learning about Bayesian ML methods if
you need a gentle introduction. The only other book I found which was
similarly clear and well thought-out is Christopher Bishop's "Pattern
Recognition and Machine Learning".
~~~
EmilStenstrom
I'm not sure I would call 600 pages of heavy math a "gentle introduction".
~~~
grad_ml
Sorry to differ , but Barber's book is certainly gentler then Bishop. But
Bishop book is amazing , full of amazing insights !
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CashRegister in PyQt5 with barcode logon and 32 programmable buttons - DirkJanJansen
https://github.com/DirkJanJansen/Sales
======
Phillipharryt
Programmer who also works in retail, uh no, this layout highlights all the
wrong things. The list of items is half the screen, my current system has it
at about 1/4 and buttons are enormous, very easy to use and rarely ever miss a
button or hit the wrong one, this looks like that will happen all the time.
Also we have a lot of colour in buttons that relate to use (payment buttons
red, department buttons green, account buttons yellow), this has grey and grey
and grey. It might work but I pity anyone using this system. I think with some
more UI considerations for the actual use cases (what do register users need
the item barcode for? I might enter it but once the item name pops up I don't
need it taking up my screen) this could get good. I also don't need whitespace
between buttons, have them as big as you can.
~~~
DirkJanJansen
You should not compare this with a commercial program, I'am a hobbyist and not
a professional. I think it's a good effort for an open source product.
~~~
Mashimo
He is still giving you constructive feedback that you can use to improve your
product. Even if it's just a hobby. I assume that is why you posted it here?
If I my add something as well. Use a local git program to commit and add files
instead of using drag 'n drop from the website. Add commit massages with a
short description of what you changed.
I would also remove all the logos in the program.
Keep at it :)
~~~
DirkJanJansen
Thank you for your response. In the installation directory is a changelog.txt
in which all the changes and additions in the program are documented.
------
smileypete
Reminds me of this DOS PoS freeware that's been around for a while:
[http://keyhut.com/pos.htm](http://keyhut.com/pos.htm)
[http://keyhut.com/posphoto.htm](http://keyhut.com/posphoto.htm)
If it's run on straight DOS then there's no need for OS updates, no worries
about viruses, no telemetry yada yada :-)
------
teruakohatu
The guy who made this also made a desktop gui ERP application to teach himself
python (or programing general, I forget). He is an inspiration.
Keep doing what you are doing Dirk.
[https://github.com/DirkJanJansen/Pandora](https://github.com/DirkJanJansen/Pandora)
~~~
DirkJanJansen
Thank you for your inspiring comment.
------
mrkramer
How this compares to commercial software solutions? Seems very interesting.
~~~
jaxn
Poorly. I can't imagine using this in a fast-paced retail environment.
~~~
downvoteme1
Any specific reasons why you think it would compare poorly to other commercial
applications. I have tried the ones at Walmart and they are sometimes very
slow to respond .
~~~
jimnotgym
To be fair, some commercial systems suck on UX too, but some of them are much
better than this.
If you compare it to eposnow[0] for instance, and see the adoption of large
clear buttons.
The real differences, as I see it, between this and commercial systems are
1) most commercial tills are clients that poll a server that allows central
management of stock, prices, and extraction of sales data by api
2) commercial tills can integrate with card machines, so the price comes up on
the machine automatically, and successful payments are registered on the till.
In a busy store this stops under/over errors.
The world needs a decent, hackable, open source till, because there are many
situations where you need small but important extra features. Without the
above I would say appeal is going to be limited, but good luck to the author
[0]:[https://www.eposnow.com/uk](https://www.eposnow.com/uk)
Edit:formatting
~~~
DirkJanJansen
It's easy to put this on a server with clients pos. For a server database
system postgreSQL is used.
~~~
jimnotgym
It might be worth clearing that up in the docs then. I missed it
~~~
DirkJanJansen
In my past i have developed client server applications. Long time agoo before
relational databases appear. In the time of dbii and clipper (compiler and
linker) But i'am retired now and i have not a network in my home to apply with
ip numbers for testing. Thats the simple reason that i did not explain it in
my documentation. But anyone will be my guest and fork it and work on it.
------
DirkJanJansen
Screenshot
[https://github.com/DirkJanJansen/Sales/blob/master/Cashregis...](https://github.com/DirkJanJansen/Sales/blob/master/Cashregister.png)
Documentation
[https://github.com/DirkJanJansen/Sales/blob/master/Installat...](https://github.com/DirkJanJansen/Sales/blob/master/Installation/Sales_CashRegister.pdf)
------
DirkJanJansen
2020-06-26 Added 5 changeable buttongroups with each 39 programmable buttons.
Bigger coloured buttons and removed logos from front end.
------
DirkJanJansen
Changed to 40 bigger buttons. Layout changed and applied some colors. With
thanks to Phillipharryt for his constructive comments. Thanks buddy!
------
joezydeco
Asking out of curiosity: why did you choose Riverbank’s python binding instead
of Qt’s?
~~~
DirkJanJansen
I don't know the difference. I learned myself python, Pyqt5 and postgreSQL in
a relative short period, mostly by examples and documentation online. Got a
little knowledge from my past by learning and programming in Clipper and
QBasic for my last company, long time agoo (1997-2002). Now i am retired and i
like to program in python (My age is 75)
~~~
joezydeco
Gotcha. I'm a commercial Qt developer and starting to think about Python being
a first-class language in my ecosystem. But I've learned that the more robust
binding, PyQt, is a GPL/Commercial offering separate from the Qt licensing.
Qt for Python is the "offical Qt" binding but it's not as robust or even
supported on some platforms like embedded. It's a bit frustrating.
Still, nice work!
~~~
DirkJanJansen
I have looked at C++. But development in Python is fast and you get more
ideas. So for development and testing i should prefere Python and then i
should program it in C++ for commercial use. I saw earlier in my former
business, that interpreters were used for big programs. That way you can test
fast, for you can see your errors fast.
~~~
joezydeco
Totally agree. It's even more useful in a cross-compiled development
environment.
Typically I'm developing in Qt/C++ on a host and then using a custom crosstool
chain to recompile for the target. The entire cycle isn't that bad, but it's
not instantaneous. Using Python has radically sped up some parts of what I'm
doing on the target hardware.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Can I move over to JSF from PHP? - nshankar
I am old timer to technology. My first language was Fortran (I am an engineer) and then C. I did a few websites in PHP. Listening to a lot of boo against PHP recently, I am thinking of moving over.<p>As I learnt C pretty early, Java comes close in terms of syntax. But, I don't hear Java in casual computing, as much as Ruby (RoR) and Python (Django).What a pity, Java is sidelined to an enterprise architecture!<p>With JSF2, Java is poised to be in the limelight. With JSF and some client side javascript code, Java is suited for quick webwork that can scale very well. Guys, what do you think about giving Java its worth?
======
josegonzalez
JSF appears to be very enterprisey, and not quite what the "popular" web-word
views web applications as. If you are moving from PHP to another language
because of the "popular" view, the least you could do is pick a framework that
won't blow monkey-chunks.
That said, if you're still serious about moving from PHP - which more than
gets things done IMO - then I suggest looking at Play Framework[1]. It's
pretty awesome, and comes in a Scala version as well.
[1]. <http://www.playframework.org/>
~~~
nshankar
I've heard Play framework ver 2.0 is a disaster.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Baumans, Sellers of Rare Books - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/style/bauman-books.html
======
HarryHirsch
Limited editions, first editions, what perversions are those? The point of a
book is that you can run off as many copies as you would like until the type
wears off. And the trouble with first editions is that they carry typesetting
errors that are corrected in later editions. For the best edition of a
manuscript you want to reach for the authoritative edition, not the first.
------
abhgh
+1 If you're a bibliophile I do recommend stopping by their store in LV. I
discovered it by accident but its quite a treat.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NSA Recommends Dropping Phone-Surveillance Program - bonyt
https://bgr.com/2019/04/24/nsa-phone-surveillance-spying-program/
======
ddelt
Personally, the skeptic in me believes if the NSA is losing interest in a
major data collection program like this, then they are deflecting the
narrative from focusing on an even more impressive and accurate data
collection program that they have developed and are ready to deploy out into
the world. I’m putting on my tinfoil hat at this point, but every day I read
HN I’m surprised at what is capable, given the right technology, money, and
time.
~~~
fooey
I think it's more likely that most everyone the NSA would be interested in
snooping on is aware they're snooping and has changed how they communicate and
moved to encryption.
The signal to noise ratio has to be completely ridiculous, to the point that
it's no longer a justifiable effort.
~~~
closeparen
Miranda warnings have been pop culture for decades, yet criminals keep
confessing in interview rooms.
Threats to public safety tend not to be firing on all cylinders, thankfully.
~~~
wallace_f
I don't think it's that simple.
Intimidation and coercion are powerful motivators. The Innocence Project found
25% of people proven innocent, by DNA evidence, actually provided confessions
or self-incriminating statements.
I worry about what other behind-the-door tactics are used. Some might even be
official abuses of power, such as gag orders, which are already being used for
what the WSJ called "political persecutions in Wisconsin,"(1) it wouldn't
surprise me.
>Threats to public safety
This is what I'm worried about here.
0-[https://www.innocencecanada.com/causes-of-wrongful-
convictio...](https://www.innocencecanada.com/causes-of-wrongful-convictions/)
1-[https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/04/wisonsins-shame-i-
tho...](https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/04/wisonsins-shame-i-thought-it-
was-home-invasion-david-french/)
~~~
cosmodisk
Get an average person into a room, interrogate for hour or days,if necessary,
and ultimately, the vast majority would confess to anything just for the sake
of ending it. There are many tricks in a hat to do so+ decades of experience
within police and other institutions.
------
pdimitar
And we should believe the word of an agency that broke it many times before
and actively tried to sabotage encryption, because?...
~~~
liquidise
This damned-if-they-do sentiment risks dismissing positive policy moves. If
this headline read "NSA is expanding surveillance programs" people would be up
in arms over the privacy implications. Instead they announce that they believe
it should be dismantled and the response is... the same?
I understand the hesitation. Outright dismissing positive change feels like a
counter-productive stance to adopt.
~~~
JasonFruit
I understand why you say this, but even if they're truly doing the right thing
here, I only owe them gratitude enough to say, "Thanks for stopping spying on
me, finally, at least in this way." Add that to the number of times the NSA
has shown itself to be untrustworthy and intentionally deceptive, and I'm
willing to seem ungrateful and hard to satisfy. They've cultivated a hostile
relationship, toward fixing which this is at best a small step.
~~~
netwanderer3
They could be invasive, by monitoring even when there's nothing going on, but
there are well-defined rules and strict protocols in place, and I have never
heard any cases where they have used the data to attack anyone personally or
are there?
~~~
ibeckermayer
I never consented to have my data snooped on by some cabal of creeps out in
Washington DC. If they suspect I’m up to something, then show sufficient
evidence to get a warrant and be transparent about it. Whether they’ve acted
on the data or not is irrelevant — they’re stealing what should be my property
and building tools for tyranny.
------
nocturnial
I wonder if recruitment was also a factor in making this decision. Recently
they released ghidra which they admitted was mainly for recruitment purposes.
If it's because of this, then it makes sense it's not worth it. Collecting
massive amounts of (mostly useless) data versus attracting talented people. I
know it's not a black or white situation and they can still attract talented
people, but if there's a negative perception of the NSA then the pool of
people will be a lot less.
~~~
holyend
The rumor is that recruitment absolutely was affected after Snowden. More
damage done to our country by him.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he did put the full cache of files
online before fleeing, to be able to sell them to Russia. He certainly had the
capability to do so. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he was
involved with Vault 7 somehow; it’s another conspiracy theory floating around.
Unclear why this is being downvoted.
~~~
screye
Is it damage?
He exposed the job for what it was and concensious citizens decided that it
wasn't a purpose they wanted to fight for. Much better than working on the
Manhattan project thinking it would be used for nuclear energy, only to then
see your creation be used for mass destruction.
Is whistle blowers exposing rampant abuse in the church doing damage to the
good of Christianity too?
The citizens deserve to know about the scale on which their own government
violates their privacy.
Snowden is no Assange.
~~~
holyend
Yes, it’s damage. He torched the NSA to the ground. Comparison to a church
doesn’t make sense.
------
basetop
In other words, the NSA found a better way of snooping. If they are asking to
drop phone surveillance, then they found a superior method of data collection.
~~~
nocturnial
If they've found a better way of snooping then why announce it to the world
instead of silently dropping the program?
This sounds more like a public relations move instead of a technically
inspired one.
~~~
mrobot
PR, i agree.
------
mnm1
The only conclusion is that the NSA simply cannot be trusted in the future.
I'm sure our illogical lawmakers will not draw it, but this is clearly another
case of being told this program was crucial and people's rights needed to be
trampled on that was simply untrue. The NSA just wanted the power for powers
sake. Lawmakers should stop giving this agency what it asks for as it clearly
has no bounds or idea of what it's doing with the incredible power it has.
~~~
archgoon
Not necessarily; it may have been a very important source that has dried up or
has been superseded by alternatives.
The phone program was launched prior to the iPhone and Facebook (even though
we only found out about it after both). It may well have been very important
up to at least 2012 (6 years into Facebook, 3 into the iPhone/ android boom)
when we learned about the program and the NSA defended it.
Since the revelation seven years ago, it could well be that targets of the NSA
are no longer using communication channels where phone metadata is useful.
------
clubm8
Meanwhile in England:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora)
And Utah:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center#Purpose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center#Purpose)
~~~
walrus01
From a purely technical perspective, the bespoke equipment needed to buffer
and search through the traffic flow of a single 100Gbps transatlantic DWDM
circuit (of which there might be 40 or 80 possible circuits in a single cable,
from Porthcurnow to NY/NJ) would be incredibly complicated and costly. Just
the amount of RAM you would need is nuts.
Or to do the same as a passive intercept on a 100Gbps PNI between two ISPs at
Telehouse Docklands.
~~~
late2part
No, it's not.
Gigamon can easily tap 100G and deconstruct it into 10x10G flows.
[https://www.gigamon.com/company/news-and-
events/newsroom/gig...](https://www.gigamon.com/company/news-and-
events/newsroom/gigamon-brings-performance-visibility-100gb-networks.html)
An off the shelf server can line rate tap/filter 10g.
gigamon might cost $50k? Each server might cost $5k? $100k to monitor a 100g
circuit? Peanuts.
~~~
jauer
You are talking about one 100G circuit and the relatively minor sever+tap
costs.
Summary of metadata might be possible if they have a small number of selectors
pushed out to the edge, but given the footprint of a FAANG backbone and edge
pops, keeping up with them would be noticeable, if only for impact on fiber
and real-estate markets.
People keep talking about NSA's Utah DC like it's something huge, but in the
scheme of scale out operators it's pretty average...
~~~
late2part
Yep. I suspect we agree more than we disagree.
You are aware that every cable landing station has a classified area, right?
And noone is allowed to visit a landing station w/out clearance from USG? And
that the USG has a large data center near every cable landing station with
rights to use the backhaul fiber from the landing station?
Ask Jay or Najam if they think the USG was tapping FB before they started
encrypting everything.
There's on the order of 100 transoceanic cables terminating in the US with on
the order of 80 lambdas per cables. That's 8k 100gs at $100k each, or $800M.
That's less than 1% of NSA budget and about a tenth of 1% of the black budget.
It's a relatively low cost to ensure "total information awareness" of comms
in/out of the US.
I don't suggest that 100% of this being stored. It is a fairly trivial
computer science problem w/ today's solutions to real time scan the words and
pull out flagged data for analysis. That's the metadata you mention and I
agree.
~~~
walrus01
> And noone is allowed to visit a landing station w/out clearance from USG?
I work on a regular basis with people at ISPs who operate the terrestrial dark
fiber and DWDM networks into many of the WA, OR and CA cable landing stations,
and none of them have ever been required to get special permission from the
feds. Most have gone through ordinary background checks through their
employers, for basic stuff (way, way less involved than doing an SF-86 for a
Secret clearance, basically just credit checks, criminal record check, and
calling this previous references on their CV when they're hired).
------
z3t4
All they really need is metadata, IP-addresses, then they can use network
theory to build graphs that shows who is communicating with who. If you for
example visit a "terrorist" web site you are now linked to everyone else who
also visited that site. Using network mesh graphs they can discover new
"terrorist" cells. They can even figure out who the leader of this "terrorist"
cell is and effectively destroy the cell. I can imagine they are also tracking
location data to see who meets physically.
------
danboarder
Are the budgets for these programs public knowledge? How much money have we
(taxpayers) spent (or wasted?) on these "tools"? And for historians, will we
ever get to see the source code and details of how they worked (other than
powerpoint documents leaked by Snowden..)?
~~~
tlrobinson
This particular program, or the whole shebang?
It looks like the NSA got about $11B of the "Black Budget" in 2013
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/special/national/black...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/special/national/black-budget/) It's further broken down on that page.
------
OrgNet
We can't trust what they say but either way, most phone traffic is probably
VOIP nowadays (not traditional phone, so that program is probably
obsolete?)...
------
dang
We changed the URL from [https://www.wsj.com/articles/nsa-recommends-dropping-
phone-s...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/nsa-recommends-dropping-phone-
surveillance-program-11556138247) because WSJ seems no longer to have a
paywall workaround. If someone can suggest a better URL, we can change it
again. I just did a Google and picked the first link I found that wasn't
illegibly crammed with ads.
~~~
mzs
This works (even without the bypass paywalls extension) in a firefox private
window:
[https://m.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https://www.wsj.com/artic...](https://m.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/nsa-
recommends-dropping-phone-surveillance-program-11556138247?mod=rsswn)
I guess what I'm saying is that HN should not penalize the company doing the
journalism. People can buy a subscription, those that won't still have a
technical solution, and for the rest they can google like you did and find an
article to read among the blogspam.
~~~
dang
There's simply no good solution here, short of the publishing business
restructuring so we can pay once to read everything, which I hope I live to
see.
In the meantime, we have a clear if sucky policy, described at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989),
with plenty more explanation at
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0).
It is the way it is not because we or anyone else likes it, but because the
alternatives would suck worse.
~~~
mzs
WSJ is not a hard paywall+, it has multiple technical solutions similar to
what was allowed before, open these in a private window for example:
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-yale-dad-who-set-off-the-
co...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-yale-dad-who-set-off-the-college-
admissions-scandal-11552588402?mod=rsswn)
[https://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/th...](https://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-
autism-diagnosis-that-isnt-always-permanent-11553526845?mod=rsswn)
[https://m.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https://www.wsj.com/artic...](https://m.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-
violated-qualcomm-patent-u-s-trade-judge-rules-11553624866?mod=rsswn)
Notice that "?mod=rsswn" is used as described in this issue^ for a browser
extension which can be used for a number of sites.
I'll try all these after I click reply and edit if it does not work.
\+
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19496356#19506786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19496356#19506786)
^ [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-
firefox/issues...](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-
firefox/issues/120)
edit: All worked though an ad appeared over the article that I was able to
dismiss by clicking on the small x in the upper right of the ad itself. Then I
was able to read all those articles without being logged-in to the WSJ, just
like readers of HNs could before.
------
Rapzid
I wonder if they realized this back when they lied to congress and tried to
take credit for FBI work when they couldn't come up with "a single instance in
which analysis of the NSA’s bulk collection metadata collection actually
stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the Government in achieving any
objective that was time-sensitive in nature". It's always interesting when
something crazy is going on and you would think the NSA would have relevant
information to help, but they don't.
I suppose six years is enough time to save some face from the 2013 fiasco?
------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
The intelligence agencies used to try to find out a persons skills and
experience. Now they jest check their LinkedIn profile. They used to try to
find who their friends and associates were. Now they check their Facebook
friends. They used to try to figure out where the person travels on their day
to day routine. Now they can check your Google Maps location history. Instead
of going through great expenses to try to do surveillance on individual
phones, they should just focus on how to get that data from these American
companies that already have them.
~~~
maxheadroom
> _...they should just focus on how to get that data from these American
> companies that already have them._
...but they were already in their bases, killing their doodz[0], yeah? Why
would they focus on something they already had on-hand?
[0] - [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-
giants...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-
data)
------
kerng
I'd assume they have now other means to get what they want.
------
thestartup
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this comment by "holyend" is being
silently ghosted (censored) / flagged. Can a moderator explain the reasoning
for it being flagged? Are curse words disallowed?
[https://ibb.co/f9gVV3Q](https://ibb.co/f9gVV3Q)
I'm assuming this comment will also be ghosted/flagged; if so, requesting a
reason please.
------
jgalt212
I heard they are dropping this because they can get all the data they need
from FB's new data partner program. /s
------
tempodox
Surprise: The NSA was lying. Not only in the details of what they were saying
but also in taking what looked like a most definitive stance on a topic they
couldn't know enough about.
------
metters
This only includes the cellphones of American citizens, doesnt it?
------
deytempo
They already have enough data to build the rest of it
------
tracker1
For clarification on my previous response... I mean it's a probably a good
thing for the program to be stopped
------
xchip
No need to intercept cellphone communications because they already have all in
Facebook and whatsapp
------
9935c101ab17a66
Just an FYI to people trying to view this article, the usual tricks like
facebook outlinking, using outline.com and setting google as a referrer didn't
work to circumvent the paywall. But I did manage to view the article by
changing my user-agent to Safari - iOS. Dunno why it works but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.
EDIT: I take it back. This briefly worked, but doesn't anymore. I have no idea
what changed. Sorry peeps.
~~~
heavymark
What specific version. In Safari on Mac, you can set the user agent in the
Develop menu, to iOS iPhone, iPad, etc. Tried them all and no luck. Is there a
specific iOS Device/iOS version you set to to be able to view the article?
~~~
9935c101ab17a66
Super weird, this worked once and no longer works, I have no idea what
changed. Sorry.
------
HocusLocus
ONCE AGAIN, they're clutching at their pearls and swooning about losing the
(straw man) metadata. They think we're stoopid. Required reading,
NSA Surveillance: Exploring the Geographies of Internet Interception
Andrew Clement
Faculty of Information, University of Toronto
[https://archive.org/download/GeographiesOfInternetIntercepti...](https://archive.org/download/GeographiesOfInternetInterceptionAndrewClement/geographies%20of%20internet%20interception%20andrew%20clement.PDF)
Might be a mix of hearsay but some pieces of the puzzle are becoming clearer.
Skip to the section on 'NSA Splitters' and ask yourself, if they had drop-in
access to the baseband circuits, qould they already be able to intercept the
Telcom providers' streams that gather the data that is now part of the
disclosure programs? And even if the links are encrypted, keys can be leaked.
Telcos are finally 'off the hook'.
------
dang
Url changed from [https://www.wsj.com/articles/nsa-recommends-dropping-
phone-s...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/nsa-recommends-dropping-phone-
surveillance-program-11556138247), which points to this.
~~~
mzs
this extension* still works for me for that WSJ URL (right-click 'open link in
igcognito window')
* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19744632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19744632)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Outsmarting Go Dependencies in Testing Code - orangechairs
https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/outsmarting-go-dependencies-testing-code/#
======
domsj
I don't get it: why would they need/want to set up a server to test the sql
module in the first place? The behaviour of the sql module doesn't depend on
server, so logically I would assume the tests shouldn't either... And if some
tests really need a server, then they are not testing the sql layer anymore,
and shouldn't need access to internals of the sql module.
~~~
radub
The sql module needs other aspects of the server set up to function (e.g. the
KV layer). You are free to browse the code at
[https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach](https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach)
if you want a more in-depth look.
------
jacques_chester
I guess my question is: what is the level of test?
If it's a feature or integration test, why is it a problem to pull in the
other packages?
If it's a unit test, why not mock out the other dependencies to focus on the
narrow behaviour?
Go makes the latter both easier (implicit interface typing) and harder (lots
of libraries only providing physical structs).
I have to admit I've grown nervous about tests that require you to crack open
an object to inspect its internal state. I've often seen designs that "need"
private variable inspection recomposed into a more functional style or broken
into smaller, cooperating modules/objects.
Put another way: if the module's behaviour is so complex that you _must_
inspect private state to assure behaviour, perhaps the module is too complex
overall.
Of course YMMV, consult a doctor etc etc
~~~
radub
The relevant tests fall somewhere between unit tests and integration tests.
Many are intended as unit tests, but we prefer to test them on top of the
"real" implementations of the layers underneath (instead of mocks) so they are
integration tests as well.
> If it's a feature or integration test, why is it a problem to pull in the
> other packages?
The compiler does not allow the cyclic dependency (even if it's only caused by
testing code).
~~~
jacques_chester
It's been a while since I touched golang, so I don't recall the nitty-gritty
of the cyclic problem.
And to pick a nit, to _me_ , if there are several units of your system pulled
in, it's arguably not a unit test. It's an integration test.
I don't love mocks, but I don't hate them either. They have their place as
part of an overall testing pyramid.
~~~
sirclueless
I write a lot of these tests in my code as well. They are not exactly unit
tests, because they test code at multiple levels of abstraction at once, but
they are written in exactly the same way as a unit test and are intended for
the same purpose: to make sure that some unit of your code functions as it
should and does not stop functioning.
To me, mocks are useful for one thing only: there is some expensive or flaky
dependency of your code that you may have poor visibility into, and you want
to write a test that does not rely on its availability. Mocks for databases,
file systems, REST APIs, externally maintained libraries, etc. all make sense
to me. But if some library is developed locally (or in the extreme case, by
you) and you can easily depend on its existence and stability, then I see no
reason not to write code that depends on that library and test against that
library. This is a testing strategy for a pragmatist, not a purist.
Go in particular makes it easy to separate a single codebase into separate
logical packages, and if you do so, it often makes sense to test them
together. That's why this is a pretty Go-specific issue.
------
kough
This is very clever, and I wish I had figured this out when I ran into the
same problem last summer. A _little_ "smelly" but better than being forced to
publically export implementation details.
That said, to play devil's argument, why not just make all implementation
details public? I will say I remember being pissed off by Go packages that
don't publicize all of their types and interfaces, which made writing tests
against their behavior (usually requiring mocking, hence the need for the
publicized types/interfaces) to be painful/impossible.
~~~
radub
Thank you!
Making everything public runs the risk of other modules using internal
implementation details, and that entanglement makes changing things a lot
harder.
For a small project where you can easily control this, it's likely not an
issue. But we are big enough that no one person knows all the code changes
that are going on in all modules.
Exported vs non exported also serves as implicit documentation, it makes
understanding things easier when you can tell right away what is internal and
what is not.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Do You Compete with Starbucks in the Coffee Industry? - mycodebreaks
http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2013/04/03/how_do_you_compete_with_starbucks_in_the_coffee_industry.html
======
qdog
Getting a latte at a small coffe place that actually puts effort into it is
like night and day vs. the big chains. There are quite a few shops around
Portland, but I still end up hitting Starbucks at times because it's
everywhere and easy to get to.
~~~
mycodebreaks
Yes, that' correct. I end up going to Starbucks exactly for the stated reasons
in the article. You know what to expect and what you're gonna get. Though
there might be gem coffeehouses around but I miss to be there unless somebody
recommends me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan Created 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' (2013) - Thevet
http://nofilmschool.com/2013/08/how-lucas-spielberg-kasdan-created-raiders-of-the-lost-ark
======
kingmanaz
>How Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan Created 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'...
...without CGI, thankfully.
It's been more than a decade since Hollywood released a movie with a realistic
patina.
For an example, compare the centerpiece truck chase in Crystal Skull with the
propeller-dodging fistfight in Raiders. Where's the fullers earth, where's the
blood, where's the sweat? Contemporary CGI effects contaminate films with a
phony "sheen" which future film historians will no doubt condemn as glaringly
phoney.
Likewise, CGI seems to encourage special effects artists to "overload" movie
frames, the clutter devolving into little more than a figurative close-up of a
child smashing toys together. Was the Tarzan reference really necessary in
Crystal Skull's truck chase? Did a kitchen sink really need to float by in
Revenge of the Sith?
Further, CGI characters are forgettable. Can filmgoers still see the details
of the spheroid attack vehicles from Attack of the Clones in their minds eye?
Contrast this with the AT-AT's from Empire Strikes Back. The former CGI props
do not ring true to the mind and are thus only imperfectly recalled. The
latter physical models are unforgettable. Also see ED209, the stop motion owl
from clash of the titans, the terminator skeleton from Terminator 1, etc.
Physical models are crude but effective. CGI is nuanced but phoney at a deeper
and much more damning level.
The widespread adoption of CGI circa Phantom Menace will likely mark the
beginning of a protracted dark age in filmmaking. Who knows when or if there
will be a renaissance.
~~~
joosters
Another big difference between CGI and 'traditional' special FX is that CGI
really seems to age worse. The SFX in the Indiana Jones films are dated, but
they have aged well, IMO, and are still watchable today. Yet CGI from only a
few years back (barring one or two exceptions) somehow manages to look so
poor.
I wonder if this trend will continue, or will CGI manage to become 'good
enough' so that the effects can stand the test of time. It's weird looking
back at old movies and being disappointed at the computer effects, yet when I
watched them the first time around I thought they were fine.
Or maybe this is just nostalgia, a sign of me getting old, and how "everything
was better in the old days" :)
~~~
ars
I think that might just be survivor bias. You don't remember, or have never
watched, the bad pre-CGI movies.
~~~
dredmorbius
It really depends.
_Clash of the Titans_ and _Jason and the Argonauts_ were both stop-motion
animations for much of their effects. The artifice is obvious but ages well.
_Forbidden Planet_ uses a mix of practical effects, mattes, and hand-drawn
animations (the monsters of the Id). Again, fairly obvious, but all told, ages
fairly well.
And _2001: A Space Odyssey_ , only ten years later, has effects many of which
could be contemporary. Shots of _Discovery_ in particular are near perfect,
and I found the effects in the 1984 sequel, 2010 to be _worse_ in regards --
the sagging of a supposedly zero-G bridge was one that still registers with
me.
But there are also lots of bad examples. Many of the James Bond franchise
sequences involving flight or spaceflight are pretty obviously cheesy. The
effects from Superman are hit-or-miss. Rear and front-projection effects,
especially in automobile scenes, where auto occupants _clearly_ aren't in the
same physics as the vehicle, are quite distracting to me (and date to the
1930s).
The thing about practicals -- model effects especially -- is that you've got a
real physical object at play, and that's going to have depth and other
elements which are still hard to capture in CGI. Though _blends_ of CGI with
live-action (the epiphany for me was _True Lies_ which pioneered much of this)
_can_ be highly convincing. The key is subtlety.
------
drewmate
Raiders has long been one of my favorite movies. For me it represents an era
of filmmaking (the 1980's) when filmmakers relied on strong characters and
stories more than familiar sequels and over-the-top special effects.
If Indiana Jones or Raiders seem cliche, it's only because they were instant
classics created by brilliant filmmakers at the peak of their craft.
~~~
stackthatcode
Remember when people used to clap or cheer at the movies??The don't make 'em
like they used to. Even with its moments of campiness, there's a certain
authenticity, even nobility to Raiders. To this day when I watch the ark-
opening sequence I get chills, in no small part due to John William's
masterful soundtrack.
------
Thevet
Here's a PDF of the transcript of the 1978 story development session between
Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan:
[http://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/raidersstoryconferenc...](http://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/raidersstoryconference1978.pdf)
------
RexRollman
I just watched this the other day and it is amazing how well the movie has
held up over the years.
------
jhwhite
Here's an article talking about it from 2009. I like this article better
because it talks a little more of Indy's background and history, especially
with Marion.
I like how this article talks about how you make someone more likeable having
things happen off screen.
Although this is a little more disturbing because Lucas wanted Marion to be
11-15 when she had her affair with Indy.
------
tonylemesmer
Check out Jamie Benning's filmumentaries on this film[1] and the original Star
Wars trilogy and Jaws. Great fan produced pieces with making of info and
interviews with cast and crew. Throw him a tip if you enjoy them too :)
[1] [https://vimeo.com/36011979](https://vimeo.com/36011979)
------
th3m
Just search for "Raiders of the Lost Archives" on YouTube, and you ll see the
truth about how the movie was made!
~~~
th3m
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns8bG9AbfwM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns8bG9AbfwM)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Smart Watchers - micrypt
http://kyrobeshay.com/post/60387655373/smart-watchers
======
CoreLogic
DOA, no one will buy them.
The only real value would have been entry level $99 smart phone with stripped
down features, or medical device to track your heart beat. It is just
redundant otherwise. I need something on my wrist to tell me to get my phone
from my pocket? Talking to a watch is just ridiculous.
Overpriced, oversold, just over. Dead on arrival.
It is ironic because the smartphone killed the wrist watch; in the modern age
you know what time it is every time you look at your phone.
waste of time, money and talent if you ask me
------
marcosdumay
> always measuring, always sensing, always watching
Is that something to fear or commemorate? We need alternatives to Android.
------
wcoenen
I can't tell whether this is satire or not.
~~~
kyro
It's not.
~~~
brianbreslin
what about stuff like garmin gps watches or tomtom multisport watches that
already track tons of data?
------
Cyril-Boh
Is watchers (with an s) a typo?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amy Goodman Is Facing Prison for Reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline - joshfraser
https://www.thenation.com/article/amy-goodman-is-facing-prison-for-reporting-on-the-dakota-access-pipeline-that-should-scare-us-all/
======
abalone
25 years ago Amy Goodman very narrowly avoided execution while covering the
Indonesian occupation of East Timor.[1] Her brave reporting brought attention
to one of the worst atrocities relative to population of our lifetimes, in
which perhaps a quarter of the population were killed by Indonesian forces
with weapons supplied by the United States. Prior to this any mention of East
Timor was pretty much mocked and there was a total media blackout on the U.S.
role in supporting Indonesia's brutal government.
I think she can handle this one.
[1]
[http://m.democracynow.org/stories/7169](http://m.democracynow.org/stories/7169)
~~~
rosser
I call bullshit.
First of all, the Fallacy of Relative Privation most definitely applies.
(LMGTFY: "not as bad as" is fallacious.)
But, far more importantly, this isn't about how "hard" or "dangerous" it is
_for her_. It's about the deep threat to a Free Press that this prosecution
represents.
~~~
abalone
That's kind of an unnecessarily rude and condescending reply. The funny thing
is, in your rush to showcase your command of logical fallacies you perpetrated
a straw man fallacy. I merely said she is brave, worthy of our deep respect
and likely to persevere in the face of adversity, not that we shouldn't be
deeply concerned about this case.
~~~
Theizestooke
Ok maybe clarify what you mean by "She can handle this one".
------
mark_l_watson
I am ashamed that this is happening in my country to both Goodman and another
reporter. The corruption here is a deep and festering sore. Officials who play
lackies to corporate interests are the ones who should go to jail.
The only thing that I can suggest is that we contact our congressional
representatives and ask them why reporters are being arrested for doing their
jobs.
EDIT: I just emailed my congressional representative. Easy to find your
representative:
[http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/](http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/)
~~~
unclenoriega
FYI: Your link 404s, although the error page contains links to the list of
representatives, and there's a zipcode search at the top of the page.
Concerned citizens should also consider contacting their US Senators as well.
I can't help but think that people needing to look up their representatives is
part of the problem.
~~~
thyrsus
Contacting _my_ Senators would only incite them to pass a law giving oil
companies a right to prior restraint of publication. They could tell from my
address that I'd never vote for them.
~~~
dorfsmay
So why participate in a debate about politics here if you don't vote anyway?
~~~
tanderson92
thyrsus didn't say they didn't vote; they said they didn't vote _for their
senator_. Presumably the address is in a rural area (if Senator is a Democrat)
/ urban area (if Senator is a Republican).
~~~
thyrsus
Exactly correct.
In 29 years of eligibility I've missed two elections - and I'm including all
primaries, city, and county elections in that tally; one of the two I missed
was a local runoff election that got almost zero media coverage - I heard
about it after it happened.
Senators Burr and Tillis will see a Chapel Hill address and high five each
other that they're diametrically opposed.
------
r00fus
This is clearly an attack on the foundations of reporting and freedom of the
press.
Goodman tries the hardest of any reporter I know to be objective about the
facts. It's going to be a big stretch to call her a "protester".
~~~
logicallee
You think it's a stretch to call her a "protester"? I think in ten years she
might qualify for an even worse crime, "having thoughts."
This is from the article:
>When asked to explain the grounds for arresting a working journalist,
Erickson told the Grand Forks Herald that he did not, in fact, consider
Goodman a journalist. “She’s a protester, basically,” Erickson told the
newspaper.
Imagine in ten years where it said: "It's a huge stretch to call her a
journalist. She's a thinker, basically. She came and she formed her own views,
and then shared it online. She didn't just share the corporate story, this
wasn't a press conference and she's not a journalist. She formed her own
thoughts, and that's what she chose to share. I hope she gets locked up and
the judge throws away the key."
Luckily for us, the Internet doesn't work that way. :) It's a nice view on
what happens if projects like Tor don't succeed, or if the agencies who
rightfully backdoor them allow any crack of evidence of the same to leave
outside of actual imminent terrorist plots and the like. It is super scary for
anyone to use the word 'protester' as in the article or the way you've just
used it.
Bob Dylan just won a Nobel prize, but now protesting is grounds for arrest,
apparently, as quoted from the article above. (By the way, I am outraged at
this phrasing, even though I consider Democracy Now to be extremely left-
leaning, it is like talking to Chomsky. That doesn't make it illegal.)
~~~
maxerickson
The US has a long history of county officials doing things they shouldn't.
This case deserves attention, but it's hardly consequential evidence that
freedom of the press is under some new threat.
~~~
najdifb838593
Your statement isn't logical and the conclusion doesn't flow from the first
statement. By the same token, every country has a history of officials doing
things they shouldn't. So this case doesn't deserve attention.
~~~
maxerickson
The bit about it deserving attention was a tersely stated opinion, not a
carefully laid out logical argument. I wasn't trying to support it in the
comment.
------
eth0up
And then there's this: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/deia-schlosberg-
arrested...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/deia-schlosberg-arrested-
north-dakota_us_58004d81e4b0162c043b342d)
------
walterbell
FAQ on Dakota Access Pipeline and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s lawsuit,
[http://earthjustice.org/features/faq-standing-rock-
litigatio...](http://earthjustice.org/features/faq-standing-rock-litigation)
Related legal history: "Doctrine of Discovery",
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_doctrine)
------
grecy
> _According to Erickson, a woman who appeared at a protest carrying a
microphone emblazoned with the name Democracy Now! and trailing a video crew;
who can be heard in the resulting video report identifying herself to a
security guard as a reporter; and who then broadcast the video on the daily
news program she has hosted for 20 years is not actually a journalist. She is
not a journalist, because she harbors a strong perspective, and that
perspective clashes with his own._
Sooner or later regular citizens are going to apply this same logic, and
realize that uniformed, badge carrying police are not actually police, but are
actually terrorists.
I shudder to think what will happen when that day comes.
------
wazoox
My analysis is as follows: everywhere around the world big corps are pushing
their agenda against the environment, freedom and the people. You can see it
happening in the US, in Canada, in France, in Germany, in Gabon, in Brazil,
everywhere. But people realise more and more that the global ecosystem is on
the brink of collapse, that no "value for shareholders" can justify literally
destroying the world.
------
aorth
The transcript of her reporting from that day is alarming.
[http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/6/full_exclusive_report_d...](http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/6/full_exclusive_report_dakota_access_pipeline)
------
slantedview
The Taibbi article cited in thenation piece is well worth reading:
[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/taibbi-on-amy-
goodman-a...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/taibbi-on-amy-goodman-
arrest-for-covering-dakota-pipeline-story-w444754)
------
X86BSD
This is fucking disgusting. I've watched Amy for years on Democracy Now! look
her up on Wikipedia. She has gone through some serious shit reporting in her
lifetime. She deserves a Pulitzer prize IMO. The thug state brandishes its
billy club on her AGAIN. Appalling.
------
kbenson
While I agree that journalists should have protections, and think Amy Goodman
should not be prosecuted, I have some issues with how _this_ article is
presented.
_ The scene was full of movement. Overhead, a helicopter hovered, circled,
while back on the ground, protesters began to report burning eyes, and
dogs—dogs lurching at protesters, dogs straining against their leashes, dogs
with mouths open, mouths biting._
Is that what the protesters were reporting, that dogs were straining, dogs had
their mouths open, that dogs were biting, or is this a bit or artistic
license? If it's the former, it's just sloppy writing, as it's hard to parse.
If it's the latter, it appears to be a blatant attempt to influence through
emotion. This case is sound based on it's importance and the law, and there's
no need to fictionalize an account in an informative piece, so I hope that's
not what this was.
_Thus far, the North Dakota authorities remain committed to their own
embarrassment_
It's not embarrassment if they think they should do it. They are committed to
their _course_. Wording such as this implies they know they are wrong but are
doing it anyway, as there's no reason to be embarrassed about doing what you
_perceive_ to be right.
I understand the author is a friend of Amy Goodman, and wants to help, but I
prefer my journalism to at least attempt to preserve the facade of
objectivity. Without that, my natural inclination is to recoil (and thus the
impetus for this comment is explained). I doubt I'm the only one, and what's
more, people naturally inclined to take the other side now have something to
point at as an indication that this whole piece is not objective and should be
discounted.
Edit: I wouldn't mind an actual reply from someone that disagreed enough to
down vote. At least then I would have an idea of why what I said (or at least
how it was interpreted) was in any way controversial.
~~~
ZenoArrow
> "Is that what the protesters were reporting, that dogs were straining, dogs
> had their mouths open, that dogs were biting, or is this a bit or artistic
> license?"
You don't have to take the protesters word for it, the footage is available on
YouTube. I'll dig up a link for you to see it for yourself.
EDIT: This video covers the protest, you can see the part where the dogs were
used against the protesters:
[http://youtu.be/VADcWANqBp8](http://youtu.be/VADcWANqBp8)
~~~
kbenson
I'm not calling the protester's words into question, I'm asking whether he's
attributing those words to the protesters, or those are his words. That's what
I meant by "sloppy", as the wording makes it somewhat ambiguous when going by
this article alone. IMO it's either sloppy, or overstepping the bounds of what
I consider good journalism. I would prefer it be sloppy rather than the
alternative, but as I say, it's hard to tell for me.
That link would be appreciated.
~~~
ZenoArrow
> "That link would be appreciated."
Sure, no problem.
[http://youtu.be/VADcWANqBp8](http://youtu.be/VADcWANqBp8)
~~~
kbenson
Thanks for the link. It actually provides a lot of context, and made me
reexamine the passage in question.
It's clear now that it's an accurate description of the scene in the video. I
think I was thrown by what appeared to me to be a shift from a factual,
matter-of-fact description of the video shifting to what seemed a more
artistic expression of the events when it gets to the actions of the dogs.
It's clear now that the portion about the dogs is an accurate, if stylish
description of what the video showed. At this point, on reading it again
_after_ watching the video, I'm unclear whether my initial response was an odd
interpretation on my part, or justified given the information at the time and
presentation in the article. In any case, I think it's better to error on the
side of caution and giving the benefit of a doubt, so I'll assume the problem
was my interpretation, and retract my objection to how it was presented (it
may still have been presented sloppily, but I'm not longer qualified to assess
that).
I do have some observations regarding the video though:
1) It's undoubtedly clear she was attempting to be a journalist based on the
video presented.
2) I don't think it's necessarily good journalism, but it is journalism. I
would have preferred if she got a statement from the other side regarding the
event, or at least attempted it and mentioned whether she was unable to get
someone to respond or they responded with no comment.
3) Unless there is evidence she incited people to action in some way, this
looks to be a simple first amendment defense, and will be thrown out quickly.
It also probably happens a lot with reporters and local governments. She's
just a larger name so it gets more press. Doesn't make it any less important
that those rights are upheld though.
~~~
ZenoArrow
> "Unless there is evidence she incited people to action in some way, this
> looks to be a simple first amendment defense, and will be thrown out
> quickly."
I hope you're right. Thank you for your honesty also.
------
joesmo
Until there are consequences for the corrupt and inhumane prosecutor behavior
we see today, we'll continue to see abuses much worse than this. Hold them
responsible or they will enslave you. Unfortunately, America has chose slavery
yet again.
------
eddieh
While it is pretty stupid that the state of North Dakota is issuing an arrest
warrant for a journalist. I take issue with the sensational headline, she is
facing 30 days in _jail_ for misdemeanor trespassing. That isn't even remotely
close to facing prison time.
Journalist don't have a right to trespass and there is precedent for criminal
charges. Just a quick search brought up Arizona v. Wells. Wells trespassing
seems minor in comparison what Goodman allegedly did. Goodman followed
protestors into the construction area after "they broke down a wire fence by
stepping and jumping on it".
I'm not defending either the state of North Dakota, the Sheriff's Department,
or Goodman — just stating some facts. Also IANAL.
EDIT: I'm sure a journalist can be charged with rioting too. If they can't
prove trespassing, I'm not sure how they'll prove rioting. It is bullshit, but
not without precedent. That's all I'm saying.
EDIT 2: This isn't a constructive discussion anymore. I'm only trying to bring
up a different way of thinking about the issue, not everything is an affront
on our rights. This may be a case of that, but it is at least in the interest
of everyone to discuss it objectively. IDK, I'd probably just delete this
comment if I could.
~~~
photogrammetry
You have unfortunately missed the point. If she allows herself to be put in
jail, even for a "paltry 30 days" as you claim, it sets a dangerous precedent
and gives the government and bureaucracy the power to determine what
journalism is "balanced" and what journalism is unacceptable.
This conflicts _directly_ with our First Amendment, which grants the people
freedom of the press. It is not reasonable to give up and serve 30 days in
jail for a false crime you have been charged with unconstitutionally.
You seem so nonchalant about the potential jailtime, since it's "so small."
Have you ever heard this poem?
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was
not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
It does not matter at what scale this constitutional abuse occurs. That it is
happening at all should be horrifying to you; have you seen what happens to
government dissidents and journalists in 'civilized' countries like Russia and
China?
~~~
eddieh
I don't think I'm missing the point. You can't invoke a constitutional right
for otherwise breaking the law.
EDIT: I don't want to reply to everyone, but if you could invoke the first
amendment in the way you all are arguing then every murderer would just need
to say the murder was their performance art.
~~~
throwaway76543
I think you are indeed missing the point. Of _course_ you can invoke a
constitutional right as grounds for breaking a law. If Constitutional rights
didn't trump laws they wouldn't be good for much of anything, would they? That
is literally their entire purpose: To be invoked as justification for
violating unconstitutional law.
The salient question is whether this is a matter of restraint on speech or
simply a matter of prosecuting her behavior independent of any related speech.
There's a much longer discussion (or court case) to be had on this point.
But as to the question of whether you can invoke a constitutional right to
justify breaking the law? Absolutely, no question about it. Yes.
~~~
GunboatDiplomat
Uh... no you can't. The first amendment does not protect you from trespassing
charges. The second doesn't protect you from bringing a gun into a court room.
And so on.
~~~
throwaway76543
The first amendment absolutely can protect from a charge of trespassing, or
from any other charge. We don't know if it will in this particular scenario,
but speaking categorically? Yes, it can absolutely.
A recent high profile example of trespass law clashing with the first
amendment would be free speech zones.
The Constitution constrains the construction and application of all laws.
Every single one.
~~~
thyrsus
A quick search for "free speech zone court case" only found cases effectively
upholding trespass law over free speech. To what court case or law are you
referring?
~~~
throwaway76543
Some starting points here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone#Notable_incid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone#Notable_incidents_and_court_proceedings)
First amendment entanglements with trespass generally occur on public land
where some local authority has prohibited some sort of activity involving
speech. There usually aren't first amendment issues to be raised with trespass
of private property, as rights are relevant with respect to government
authority.
------
throw2016
It is clear the 'international community', global media and concerned
citizenry have erred in rushing to judgement and condemnation whenever Amnesty
and other global NGOs file a report on protests and human rights abuse.
It appears the right approach is to debate the intricacies of the law and
rules of trespassing. Since there has been a systemic failure to consider
these important mitigating factors in the past, previous condemnations now
stand null and void and will be reconsidered in light of these evolved methods
of validating human rights abuse.
Of course some apologists would consider this as mere sophistry but its
important to point out no one can defend breaking 'the law'. Is Assad really
violating human rights or are protesters breaking Syrian law?
While it is true NGOs like Amnesty and Reporters Without Borders have shown an
unbecoming lack of zeal when it comes to covering their home countries I have
been assured it's entirely due to a lack of funds and the greater importance
of defending human rights in the middle east and impoverished third world
countries.
------
cprayingmantis
She was trespassing as she covered the news. She would've been fine if she
hadn't stepped over the fence line. Look I get it freedom of the press is
paramount to our democracy but you don't have the right to trespass covering a
story. If that was the case think of all the trouble the paparazzi could give
celebrities.
~~~
magpi3
She is not being charged with trespassing. The charge is "riot," although I
don't know what that means exactly.
------
ChuckMcM
Sigh. A small jurisdiction is going to try to "put her in jail" but she will
not have to stay in jail if the facts are as reported. She will make a first
amendment claim, it will be upheld as it has been for literally centuries, and
she will be acquitted and have a great story for her backgrounder.
Now if it comes out that the Sioux nation paid her to come out, and edited her
material, and signed off on what she spoke about. Then her process will have
some different tones and the story might involve being convicted of a
misdemeanor.
But the story about attacking the press gets people who don't care about
Native Americans or the ecological risk of pumping oil through pipelines
engaged which swells the rageviews a bit on the article.
~~~
noobermin
To be fair, even leveling charges against her and arresting her has a chilling
effect on the Press.
~~~
ChuckMcM
I'm not quite sure about that, I dated a journalism major at USC and she told
me about a seminar the law school did for journalism majors called "what to do
when you are arrested."
I will grant you that it was primarily focused on being in a foreign country
(lots of stuff about what the embassy can do, what the consulate can do, and
what sort of agreements countries have with the US regarding journalists) but
there was a section on being arrested in the US as well.
~~~
forgottenpass
_I dated a journalism major at USC_
And I've read the wiki article "Chilling effect" so we're probably equally
qualified.
Just because jurnos are taught how to resist a chilling effect, does not mean
it does not exist.
~~~
ChuckMcM
I don't disagree with that. I absolutely agree that arresting and shooting and
villifying people has a chilling effect on their actions.
At the same time, while I am not a journalist I've talked to many of them.
What has been true in all of the journalists I've met has been both a passion
about their mission and a recognition about the risks to themselves about that
mission. There reports that over 150 journalists have been killed covering the
Iraq war[1] and issues in the middle east. One could argue that dying is the
ultimate threat and the most "chilling" of any effect. And yet journalists,
even now, are reporting on the heroic efforts of the "White Helmets", the
human cost of the sieges and bombing, and the various factions engaged mortal
combat there.
Journalists, by their own volition, _go to centers of conflict._ They do that
to understand the conflict and to tell the story behind it. They may be
idealistic or they may be pragmatic, but they know the risks.
And one of the lesser risks is one that you will get arrested and put in jail.
It is a "lesser" risk because "getting arrested" already pre-supposes that
there is a civil system that is operating well enough to have a notion of
"arrest", "trials", and "sentencing". Covering the Contras in Nicaragua you
didn't get arrested you got "disappeared."[2]
It is so common that the USC School of Journalism nominally _assumed_ that if
you were a journalist covering a story in a trouble spot _you would get
arrested._ So anyone who has studied to be a journalist should expect that
they might be arrested from time to time and prepared for it. Their parent
organization should have legal resources on call, and when arrested the
journalist should have a checklist of things to do and not do. Which is what
the USC seminar was teaching.
As a result, having one of the expected outcomes come to pass, should not be a
surprise to someone who was already expecting that could happen. And while
having it actually happen might cause them to re-think their career choice, it
has been my experience that people willing to go out there and get the story,
it is not a disincentive that someone might arrest them.
So for the journalist, getting arrested was great thing. It gives her a
headline "US Authorities Jailing Journalists!" that grabs at a very closely
held American value, freedom of the press. But as a very closely held value it
has been litigated _extensively_ and the only time journalists do any jail
time at all is when they are held in contempt for not turning over sources.
There is a _ton_ of case law here, and if she was just there covering the
story, she won't have any issues. And look here _48 hours later_ , on the 17th
the Judge dismisses the case (and her arrest)[3] because guess what, _she 's
protected by the first amendment._
Her getting arrested was a non-story.
[1] [https://cpj.org/blog/2013/03/iraq-war-and-news-media-a-
look-...](https://cpj.org/blog/2013/03/iraq-war-and-news-media-a-look-inside-
the-death-to.php)
[2] [http://catholicherald.com/stories/We-were-
disappeared,13011](http://catholicherald.com/stories/We-were-
disappeared,13011)
[3]
[http://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/17/watch_amy_goodman_spe...](http://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/17/watch_amy_goodman_speaks_after_nd)
------
Anthony-G
Article update:
_Case dismissed! On Monday, October 17, District Judge John Grinsteiner
rejected the “riot” charge that had been leveled against Amy Goodman for her
coverage of a September 3rd Dakota Access Pipeline protest. Standing before
the Morton County courthouse, surrounded by supporters, Goodman said: “It is a
great honor to be here today. The judge’s decision to reject the State’s
Attorney Ladd Erickson’s attempt to prosecute a journalist–in this case, me–is
a great vindication of the First Amendment.” And she added: “[W]e encourage
all of the media to come here. We certainly will continue to cover this
struggle.”_
------
saynsedit
Happy to a see this trending on HN.
------
daveloyall
Has anybody heard about this story from anything other than HN?
Searching for her name doesn't count.
------
medicineturtle
Amy Goodman did her job and told the truth medicine turtle cherokee
------
medicineturtle
Amy Goodman Is Facing Prison for Reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline
medicine turtle Cherokee she is a blessing
------
the_duke
Land of the free...
Year to year, I get more and more disillusioned about the US. I think it's
drifting in a very dangerous direction.
------
medicineturtle
Amy Goodman did her job and has the right to speak the news on truth medicine
turtle cherokee
------
colsandurz
What can I do about this?
------
farahduane
Vote Green Party in November. That's what I'm doing. If you believe that
voting Clinton will change any of this, you're very mistaken.
~~~
WalterSear
If you think a Green Party vote is going to change anything either, you are
also mistaken. :(
~~~
adam12
If Jill Stein gets 5% of the vote, she will be eligible for millions of
dollars in federal funding in 2020.
------
najdifb838593
What's up with all these news article titles? I can't take them seriously.
"This is super important."
"This matters."
"ABC just XYZ."
"ABC just XYZ. Here's why that matters."
Like no shit, isn't explaining how something happened and why it matters how
articles work? It just makes it feel like a tabloid.
------
KevinEldon
Are journalists immune from laws? Which laws? What constitutes a journalist?
These are the kinds of questions that courts sort out. Goodman isn't in jail.
She now has a legal and public platform to defend her actions and position as
a journalist. If you're doing journalism that is as aggressive and brave as
the article suggests this is then you'd expect to get pushback. Thankfully we
have laws, the First Amendment, and public courts so Amy Goodman wasn't just
whisked away to serve her time in jail.
~~~
rfrey
"She now has a legal and public platform to defend her actions and position as
a journalist."
That's the point - she shouldn't need to defend her actions and position as a
journalist, certainly not to a court. That's the point of press freedom.
~~~
Kalium
Press freedom covers what is printed. It does not cover what is required to
generate what is printed. A reporter who sells heroin to gather info for a
story could still rightfully be brought up on drugs charges.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Employable Bootcamp Candidate - markwaldron
https://medium.com/@whiteglovecoder/codename-the-employable-bootcamp-candidate-1769f4c92426#.d5yw96n1t
======
lloydde
> Instead I recommend utilizing the whitespace for your projects and listing
> your technical skills within a project’s context.
Context is king! I can't agree with the OP more. Stop the technology bingo.
When you highlight the technology, approaches and processes as part of the
experience the conversations come easily.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I Put In 5 Miles at the Office: Walking Workstations - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/health/nutrition/18fitness.html?ref=fashion
======
michael_dorfman
Has anyone here actually tried this? It sounds interesting, but I'd sure like
to suss it out further before making the investment...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple iPad May Ship With Webcam - fjabre
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/apple-ipad-may-ship-with-webcam/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wired/index+(Wired:+Index+3+(Top+Stories+2))
======
cmelbye
I'm buying if it does. I'm on the bubble right now due to lack of camera and
multitasking, but multitasking can be solved using software if someone manages
to jailbreak it. Skype video chat on this thing would be really nice.
~~~
raganwald
Well everyone is calling this "A computer for their Mom." Newslfash: My mother
is in her late sixties and _she_ uses Skype to talk to friends all around the
world. My co-parent's brother lives in Belgium. My brother lives in Winnipeg.
Guess what my children use to talk to their uncles? Guess what our respective
parents use to talk to their sons?
Skype is software everybody's mother uses. A computer for my Mom has a camera
for Skype.
~~~
electromagnetic
Agreed, my mum uses skype to talk to me (I live in Canada, she's in the UK).
It's not a device for my mum, because even for the applications she uses (my
dad worked in IT since before the 90's, it took until the 2000's to get her on
a computer, and until 2008 to get her on facebook) it's simplistic. For my
father, who did web development and application development (before then he
was working with some of the first computer controlled fuel injectors in
vehicles, so I have no clue what language that would have been programmed in),
it's far too simplistic.
I believe one of my cousins even got my grandmother (in her 90's!) onto the
internet to pay her bills. Telephone banking with a nearly deaf woman who has
no hope in hell of understanding an Indian woman, and no chance the Indian
woman is going to understand a 90 year old Geordie. I doubt it would be hard
to teach her how to turn on skype, meaning the iPad would be below her uses.
------
jacquesm
It may or it may not.
The comments point out that it could easily be just an ambient light sensor,
which is actually listed on the spec sheet.
------
telemachos
This meme has to die.
A photo response from John Gruber's Twitter feed:
[http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/4/2010/02/roncassel.jp...](http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/4/2010/02/roncassel.jpg)
~~~
spicyj
Looking back at the Twitter feed, it looks to me like he just found the
picture amusing (it was a retweet from John Siracusa's feed).
------
dirtbox
That's just the power button with the pad being held upside down.
Edit: Yep [http://images.theage.com.au/2010/02/01/1084401/steve-
jobs-42...](http://images.theage.com.au/2010/02/01/1084401/steve-
jobs-420x0.jpg)
------
jsz0
I sure hope it does. I just bought a bunch of stock in a company that makes
nose hair clippers. Forget the App Store -- this is the real gold rush.
------
pyre
Looks like an artifact to me. If you look real hard there is a similar
artifact on the right size of the black border just below the upper-right
corner of the device. It's probably just a coincidence that the artifact is in
the place were a webcam would go.
------
gfodor
Also: mark my words, this sucker is shipping with handwriting recognition.
~~~
fbailey
Apple handwriting recognition is pretty bad, and you would need a special
stylus for the multitouch screen and where would you put the stylus...
~~~
pclark
I found the newton recognition to be great. Do you mean in OS X? I thought it
was similar tech.
------
gioiam
I doubt it
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What's wrong with JavaScript - rdallasgray
http://rdallasgray.github.io/blog/2013/06/09/whats-wrong-with-javascript/
======
coldtea
I'd rather have a fixed JS (no BS coercion, actual hashes, method_missing,
better binding rules, local vars by default, "use scrict" checks for
everything, int64 arithmetic, and a non manual ad-hoc way to create prototype
chains) as the next version, instead of the "backwards compatible" pile-on
that the upcoming version is.
Such a JS would enable them to reuse large parts (or the entirety) of the
current interpreters/JITs, just as well as the next ECMAScript, but would also
fix most BS and enable further performance improvements.
That is, what I propose, would be a slightly incompatible release, say:
"JavascriptFixed".
As for backwards-compatibility, this would be played out in two ways.
Transpilers (like Coffescript) could convert "JavascriptFixed" to Javascript,
and people could use the script tag to denote the presence of
"JavascriptFixed".
Given vendor support, the familiar syntax, and the performance improvements,
it could take over JS in 4-5 years. No we'll have decade or more until the
whole mess that's the next version becomes popular, and we'll still have the
whole JS mess, just swept under the carpet.
~~~
MostAwesomeDude
I politely submit that what you actually want is Python, Ruby, or Lua in the
browser.
~~~
kanzure
Haven't we had python in the browser for a while now with pythonwebkit,
pywebkitgtk, and the other webkit-native-DOM python bindings?
~~~
csense
Do those work if you want cross-browser compatibility for users who don't have
certain plugins?
I'm thinking technologies like Skulpt or Pyjamas, that let you use Python in
JS, are better. It's been a while since I investigated this situation, does
anyone know of other players?
------
omegote
"What's wrong with JavaScript" and just a single block of JavaScript was found
in that post. The rest, CoffeeScript.
------
bliker
I agree with click event (and others) are real pain. But absence of _missing
is more personal preference. Major problem of javascript it the time that it
takes to implement new features into the language that can sometimes converge
to infinity.
Also I would be grateful if articles about javascript would feature javascript
instead of CoffeeScript.
------
ahoge
Dart fixes all of JavaScript's "WAT" quirks. There is proper lexical scoping,
a lexically scoped `this`, no type coercion, no monkey-patching, and so forth.
It also has a "method_missing" thing called "noSuchMethod".
But most importantly: It scales.
Structure is declared and not imperatively constructed. Your tools can tell
what's going on without actually running the code.
------
shtylman
This post is not javascript, it is coffeescript. Stop confusing the two.
~~~
ben336
From Coffeescript's website: The golden rule of CoffeeScript is: "It's just
JavaScript". There was nothing at all coffeescript specific about his
examples, other than the syntax. The issues he pointed out were javascript
issues discussed using coffeescript syntax.
~~~
Stratoscope
He could have, and should have, used JavaScript for those examples. Otherwise
it's needlessly confusing. Not every JavaScript developer knows CoffeeScript.
What possible benefit could there be in using CoffeeScript instead of
JavaScript in an article about JavaScript?
~~~
ibrahima
Also, I feel like the misunderstandings he posted are somewhat from the
perspective of Ruby developers who learned CoffeeScript and not JavaScript.
Which I do fall under, but I guess I quickly picked up the quirks in the
language which CoffeeScript does make nicer. I guess things like `this` are a
problem regardless of how you spell it but I think someone who learned
JavaScript properly would learn about the scope rules directly rather than
just assuming "it works like Ruby" and then being angry when it doesn't.
~~~
Stratoscope
Ah, that explains a lot. It certainly explains why the complaints didn't
resonate with me. I know JavaScript very well, and there are things I don't
like about it, but these weren't them. Or if they were, I've gotten used to
them.
I think I did miss the point with my previous comment. Maybe I was confused by
the title: The article isn't "What's wrong with JavaScript", but as you said
it's much more about things that will confuse Rubyists who arrive at
JavaScript by way of CoffeeScript.
For an article on that topic, it does make sense to have CoffeeScript
examples. But it would be much better - and so easy - to include the matching
JavaScript for each of the CoffeeScript files. Not only would it help
JavaScript programmers understand the article, but it would show how
CoffeeScript attempts to work around these issues.
Even better would be to add matching examples of similar Ruby code. Code
examples in all three languages would make for an interesting article: the
Ruby way, the CoffeeScript way that makes JavaScript a bit more like Ruby, and
the JavaScript way.
------
peter_l_downs
> the scoping is wacky (and the var trap is a disaster);
Read [http://bonsaiden.github.io/JavaScript-
Garden/#function.scope...](http://bonsaiden.github.io/JavaScript-
Garden/#function.scopes), be enlightened
~~~
PommeDeTerre
Knowing what's going on doesn't change that it's all still unnecessarily very
broken.
------
ancarda
And yet nobody seems to be interested in Dart.
~~~
camus
Dart VM will never be in IE , Firefox or Safari. What's the point of Dart ? to
compile down to javascript? if i had to work with an alternative to JS i would
chose haxe instead of Dart , since it is compatible with some parts of
javascript and one can use the DOM api directly. Dart is great in theory but
has little future.
~~~
ahoge
> _Dart VM will never be in IE , Firefox or Safari._
Same deal with CoffeeScript or TypeScript. But that shouldn't stop anyone
since you can just compile to JavaScript. Minifying Dart and compiling Dart to
JavaScript is almost the same thing. In both cases it's a single line which
calls the compiler. If you already doing one of those things, adding the other
one to your build script won't hurt one bit.
You can also use the Dart executable like Node. You can use it to write
command line applications or web servers.
You can also embed the VM into other applications. Like V8, the VM itself is
just a library.
There will be also a Dart VM for ARM CPUs a bit later this year.
> _i would chose haxe instead of Dart , since it is compatible with some parts
> of javascript and one can use the DOM api directly_
You can also interact with JS stuff if you use Dart. DOM stuff is done via
'dart:html', which provides a very idiomatic API. For example, all list-like
things are actual Lists, which is very convenient. It's similar to jQuery, I'd
say.
> _Dart is great in theory but has little future._
It's great in practice, too. If you don't care about IE8, that is.
Also, Google is committed to Dart. They are also already using it for a bunch
of new projects.
------
frozenport
Most of Javascript feels like a kludge and my keyboard's 'T','H','I','S' keys
need to be replaced every week or two. I always ponder, what if instead of
JavaScript we had Java?
~~~
bliker
I just checked my small project, and it has 111 this. and about 300 lines with
plentiful whitespace. This made me think how much better would it be if it
used just single dot for referencing this. Like _.property_
~~~
lazerwalker
I don't know if you've toyed around with CoffeeScript before, but that's
something it adds in (you can use the Ruby-esque '@property' instead of
'this.property')
~~~
bliker
I had, but I abandoned it for reasons I cannot recall right now. Maybe because
I like to go bare metal every time possible. But maybe I should give it a
try...
~~~
lazerwalker
I'd definitely recommend giving it another try. I'm generally very skeptical
about adding another layer of abstraction into my toolchain, but I've found
the benefits far outweigh the cost. Syntactic sugar like '@' aside, I've found
that working in CoffeeScript enables me to write code that's far clearer and
more expressive than when I'm working in vanilla JS.
------
danbruc
The biggest weakness is missing - it is not statically typed.
~~~
coldtea
Nobody considers this a weakness. For reasonably small values of "nobody".
------
sanderjd
Oops, I think the author meant to have _copy[key] = val_ for the last line of
this example:
copyObject: (inputObject) ->
copy = []
for key, val of inputObject
copy.key = val
As written, it uselessly sets a bunch of values to the _key_ property in turn.
The point stands though.
------
warfangle
Rename to "what's wrong with coffeescript" and this blog post might approach
accuracy.
------
wwweston
">thing: -> > @_thing ?= new Thing
..is … irritating."
So... having one sigil to distinguish a class variable isn't irritating, but
another for a variable accessed by an accessor method is. Got it.
> It’s tempting to presume that this is a ‘feature’ of prototypal inheritance
Why would this be tempting? As the author points out, there are prototype-
based languages that avoid it, and you could remove prototypes from JavaScript
and still encounter the issue.
> we’re not writing Java. We’re in a highly dynamic language. We want nice
> things. Or, we could create setters and getters using the new ES5 syntax –
> but that’s not available everywhere (pre-IE9, for instance), and, I would
> argue, is too unwieldy to apply as a rule.
You want an easy way to create accessors? OK:
function prop(name,gNs) {
function undef(v) { return typeof v == 'undefined'; }
var _name = '_' + name, get = gNs && gNs.get, set = gNs && gNs.set;
if(get && set) return function (x) {
return undef(x) ? get.call(this,this[_name]) : (this[_name] = set.call(this,x), this);
}
if(get && !set) return function (x) {
return undef(x) ? get.call(this,this[_name]) : (this[_name] = x, this);
}
if(!get && set) return function (x) {
return undef(x) ? this[_name] : (this[_name] = set.call(this,x), this);
}
return function (x) {
return undef(x) ? this[_name] : (this[_name] = x, this);
}
}
You're welcome. Use it like so:
obj = {
thing: prop('thing')
}
when you want your accessors to do something other than getting/setting:
obj = {
thing: prop('thing', {
get: function () { return foobarled(this._thing); },
set: function (x) { this._thing = unfoobarled(x); }
})
}
> What we’re really saying is ‘everything is a hashtable’. Is that a good
> thing?
I'm more sympathetic to this criticism. There's times when the fact that
everything can have arbitrary properties is convenient, but it does place some
burden on the developer to pay attention.
Then again, I think that's a general charge to which any highly dynamic
language is going to have to answer on some point or another. And if you're
prone to typing `[]` when you mean `{}` (understandable if you've come from a
language where they have different meanings), it's possible you should do the
more conspicuous thing and use `new Array` and `new Object` instead.
> Nothing is an object
No. What the author is really talking about that by default, there aren't
"methods" with class-bound scope. Just functions whose `this` scope is dynamic
but does live by some pretty understandable rules.
> _missing
Missing method's sometimes convenient, and there are occasions when I miss it
in JS too, but it's much rarer than I once would have thought. Use cases in
languages where functions are less often let out on their own tend to get
taken care of differently in languages where they do.
> I’ve yet to hear anyone convincingly argue that JavaScript’s version of OOP
> offers anything in addition to or distinction from more traditional
> versions;
"convincingly"
Convincing who?
~~~
coldtea
> _So... having one sigil to distinguish a class variable isn 't irritating,
> but another for a variable accessed by an accessor method is. Got it._
I'm not sure you did (get it).
One is part of the language's syntax. The other is an ad-hoc convention you
have to remember and check for.
> _You 're welcome. Use it like so: obj = { thing: prop('thing') } when you
> want your accessors_
My eyes. The goggles, they do nothing!
>(I’ve yet to hear anyone convincingly argue that JavaScript’s version of OOP
offers anything in addition to or distinction from more traditional versions;
"convincingly" Convincing who?*
The author. Isn't it obvious? Also me. So make us two.
And presumably ALL the other people that write frameworks and workarounds to
get traditional OOP style in Javascript.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Guide for securing home network with smart devices? - jxf
My parents have recently moved into an apartment in NYC with a number of smart devices that came with the apartment: thermostats, light bulbs, et cetera.<p>Given the tenuous security of IoT devices, are there guides or resources that you'd recommend for securing and configuring one's home WiFi so that this doesn't become a Mirai-botnet-style problem?
======
dsacco
This is a good question.
I suggest you begin with the network itself, and look at the different fault
points that exist or could be easily introduced. There are three basic
components - the IoT smart devices, the computer(s) used to browse the
internet and the networking equipment (specifically the gateway/router, but
also separate access points and switches if you happen to have those).
Let's first outline reasonable security goals:
1) reduce the likelihood of one IoT device compromise leading to compromise in
any other single IoT device,
2) reduce the likelihood of one IoT device compromise leading to compromise in
your network itself (gateway/router)
3) reduce the likelihood of one IoT device compromise leading to compromise in
your computer(1)
Now we can proceed:
1) Set up a separate VLAN for IoT devices so that they cannot interact with
the other fault points on your network (your computers).
2) Assign a statically mapped subnet address to each device.
3) Set a firewall policy so that no device can see any other device on the
network by default.
4) Set a firewall policy that drops all traffic on this network by default.
5) Now we'll sort the devices by required privilege. For devices like the
Amazon Echo, Google Home, Control4, URC, etc that need to control many other
devices, allow traffic from their IPs to proceed to the devices they need to
control.
6) If you can figure out exactly which ports the devices use to send and
receive requests, further lock them down.
7) Set a firewall policy that drops all outbound traffic from the IoT VLAN by
default. For each device, set a specific policy that allows traffic for it to
pass through _only_ to specific hosts (i.e. Hue lights to Hue hosts). Nest
cameras don't need to send traffic anywhere but Google's servers, for example.
8) Remove password-based SSH authentication into your router and set a
firewall policy that only allows SSH login from a specific IP address that you
control (such as a $5/month VPS).
9) So that you don't shoot yourself in the foot with 8), set up daily backups
of the router in case you lock yourself out of it and need to restore
settings.
10) Set up your router so that it can only be locally managed from a specific
subnet IP, which will be your main computer.
This is a reasonable start. All the other advice about how to secure your main
computer still applies, because (as ever), that is a huge failure point.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Non-Newtonian fluid on a speaker [video] - RiderOfGiraffes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zoTKXXNQIU
======
RiderOfGiraffes
Inspired by this thread allegedly about running on water, I went an looked
again at the "running on a non-Newtonian fluid" videos:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XQ97XHjVw>
That led me to this one, very similar to the clip from "The Big Bang Theory"
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1327309>
We've agreed here at work to try this as a reward when the current project is
finished. We're also going to try to make the "Cornstarch Monster".
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scbPKjU8Ssg>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why being a vegan is kind of ridiculous. - curtisspope
http://www.quora.com/Do-vegans-acknowledge-that-plants-are-animal-life?__snids__=12856863
======
mooism2
My image of Quora being a repository of high quality questions is ruined.
~~~
curtisspope
lol
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I have no idea what I'm doing - InternetGiant
http://codon.com/i-have-no-idea-what-im-doing
======
gitaarik
Summary:
If you look closely enough, nobody really knows exactly what they're doing.
When you realize this, you're no longer blinded by the thought that you or
other people know everything about something.
Then you also realize that all the stuff that is created by people isn't
necessarily how it should be, it's just the outcome of the circumstances that
the people were in.
With this realization you allow yourself to think more creatively (outside the
box) about things.
However, the author and me don't have any idea what we're doing so I wouldn't
take his or my story too seriously.
~~~
collyw
This sounds a lot like mindfulness or other meditations when you describe it
this way.
------
javajosh
_> Nobody knows what they’re doing; ignorance fuels creativity; complex
systems are built iteratively. Those are the ideas I want you to remember._
Really liked this piece and wanted to add something to it that I hope
resonates with HN. I have myself run across all of this, particularly the
complexity part, and have heard anecdotal evidence from others that I know,
that when one finishes a function or a library of moderate complexity, and you
step back from it for a while, and you come back to it, it looks _really
impressive_. It's now no longer something that can be grokked at a glance. It
_looks_ complicated, with all kinds of persnickety details. You remember the
"why" of certain unintuitive parts - evidence of problems you ran into and had
to solve. The code is the product of many hours of iteration - and the code
expanded, contracted, and settled into the shape it's currently in - a shape
which, if presented to your earlier self, you would say "I created _that_?
Gosh, it looks like something a _professional programmer_ might have made."
(or it might look like a horrendous hacky mess, of course.)
~~~
jarcane
This is a thing that I have learned as well.
I have done projects that seemed small, and then by the end they were
enormous, but I knew them intimately.
But when I start a project with the idea of it being that big in my head from
the start, I'll get stressed and psych myself out, sometimes from doing it at
all.
There's something to be said for ignoring the forest for planting the tree, to
turn a proverb on it's head.
------
calcsam
In one sense the author is right. In another sense, saying "I have no idea
what I'm doing" is a status play. Those a bit down on the totem pole don't
have the luxury of publicly questioning their own competence.
~~~
joncameron
That's sometimes true, but it's nice to hear someone _with_ status admit
they're not an infallible paragon. There's value in that, especially for those
lower on the pole who stew in their own minds with assumptions about how
everyone else is x amount smarter and more competent, however true that may
be.
------
hawleyal
I know TDD has been discussed to death. However, I disagree completely with
TDD encouraging creativity and material exploration. In my opinion, small,
iterative increments are much more useful. Creating a test puts a tight box
around how you assume (without any experimentation) an interface should work.
As opposed to a tiny iteration to learn about how it could work. Then writing
a test after for that tiny bit. Finally, moving on and refactoring with the
test in hand.
~~~
hammerdr
Writing the test is the experiment, in your example. You're playing with how
it is going to be used and interacted without worrying about the
details/implementation. You'll take care of that later.
~~~
hawleyal
I don't see how you can experiment with functionality by writing tests at all.
Tests are basically just pseudocode. It's writing the requirement/interface
before figuring out what is possible.
For example. I was recently trying to figure out how to make an autocomplete
list faster, as the database was too slow. I already had a functional test
taking in search parameters and returning results. But there would be no way
to write a test for the actual implementation of the indexed/faster search
classes until I figured out a real approach. In the beginning, I had no idea
if this would require a separate daemon process to do indexing, or if it could
index realtime, or caching, or memoization, or where it might need to keep an
index once created. These are just a couple of the unknowns. Once I figured
out a workable concept, I wrote tests for those classes and functions. Then I
refactored multiple times, altering the tests accordingly.
~~~
hammerdr
Your functional test was a test that allowed you to experiment. You designed
the parameters and then altered the variables involved under the conditions of
those tests.
You probably even "called your shot" and make guesses about what would be
successful before you even approached the problem.
Then you wrote a test and saw whether your guess was right or not. If not,
then you misunderstood something and you dug deeper.
Software, in some ways, in simulated science.
------
wyager
This guy seems to confuse "I sometimes have to think about things" with "I
have no idea what I'm doing". Those seem quite different to me.
~~~
serve_yay
Indeed. Working on something for a long time but claiming you have no idea
what you're doing is an easy way of not appearing egomaniacal or vain.
Especially in our field, when people can be such pompous dickheads.
------
slayed0
Cached version as the page is beginning to load slowly:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IoQN9XY...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IoQN9XYCjTYJ:codon.com/i-have-
no-idea-what-im-doing)
~~~
sfeng
Yet another argument for building static websites
[https://eager.io/blog/build-static-websites/](https://eager.io/blog/build-
static-websites/)
~~~
tomstuart
It's already a static site, but being on the HN front page is really hammering
my tiny VPS's network & IO; there are a lot of large images and videos in the
post. Guess I should set up a CDN.
~~~
mod
Probably even just letting amazon or someone host the images would fix the
problem.
------
j2kun
He remarks in the talk about Lamarck having an incorrect theory of
"inheritance of acquired characteristics." From what I understand, recent
experiments have actually given some evidence to his theory. I can't remember
the particular studies though.
~~~
maxerickson
Epigenetics gives credence to the environment having impact across
generations. It doesn't really vindicate Lamarck, there are just some quiet
echos of his ideas there.
------
senthil_rajasek
"If you only take one thing away from this talk, make it this: beavers are
idiots. They have no idea why they’re building these huge structures; they
just blindly do it."
I can understand the author's use of the Beaver analogy but it may not be the
right analogy.
Beavers build these dams to keep the water level at a certain height. This not
only offers protection from predators but also makes it easy to access food.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver#Dams](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver#Dams)
They may have poor eyesight but they have a keen sense of hearing.
May be he meant that the Beaver does not know why its teeth grow continuously
but it uses it to cut down trees and make dams.
~~~
javajosh
_> Beavers build these dams to keep the water level at a certain height._
My friend, I think you are implying _intention_ where there is none. It's true
that the effect of beaver dam-building is advantageous, but there was never
any _deliberation_ about it on the beavers part. It's a curious case of
_effort_ without _decision_. One can easily think of a situation where a
beaver might actually do better to not build a dam - but a beaver will try to
build one anyway. It's just what he does.
Do humans eat to keep from starving? Do we have sex to have babies? Do we love
our babies so that they don't die? I don't think so. We do these things
because it's built into us to do them, just like the beaver.
~~~
pm90
Sex seems a lot more simple than building a dam though. I mean, how does the
Beaver even know this kind of stuff? Is it in its genetic material, or is it
taught by its parents?
Either way, fascinating stuff.
~~~
tomstuart
Just to answer your question: it's in its genetic material. It really is
fascinating; it can even make evolutionary sense to think of the dam as an
extension of the beaver's physical body, in as much a beaver's dams are "built
by" its genes just like the cells of its body are. Google "extended phenotype"
if you'd like more detail.
------
agentultra
This was an interesting talk. I admit I was easily hooked due to my own
circumstances and experiences. I often feel like I don't know what I'm doing.
Shoshin was a great lesson for me. When I was training in martial arts I was
told that shoshin was akin to fashioning one's self after an empty vessel. If
the vessel is full then it cannot receive any more water. I took it to mean
that one must periodically empty their minds of preconceived notions and ideas
and be receptive to new ones when seeking new knowledge.
It has also taught me that I have a hard time appreciating what I am capable
of and what I do know. I may fight feelings of inadequacy but I must remind
myself that my bar is much higher today than it was when I started out. It is
good to not feel like you know what you are doing _all of the time_. It's an
opportunity to learn and fill yourself with new knowledge. As long as I know
what I don't know I feel that I can find it out and fill the gaps.
I think what makes it difficult is the amount of competition there is these
days and how high we have raised the bar. Capital and growth demand experience
and knowledge but we need to take time for development too. You may want to
hire the best but maybe you need to take some time to help people develop into
the best they can be? But we should all take time to be thankful for what we
have done and are able to do. It's easy to forget how painful it all once was.
A talk worth watching, in my opinion, if you've ever been concerned about
feeling like you don't know what you'd doing.
------
treehau5
Hey Tom, I just want to say, I have your book, and I find it wonderful.
~~~
jarcane
Was really sad to hear this: _" You don’t really make any money by writing a
book, but O’Reilly did send me a nice hat"_
How poorly does O'Reilly pay their authors? A book the size of most of their
tomes, and at the prices they charge, should be a 5-figure advance in any
other part of the industry.
~~~
sanderjd
Curious about this too. I wonder if he means that you don't really make any
money compared to the opportunity cost of all the hours you spend on it, or if
you really don't make any money in an absolute sense. Unfortunately, I suspect
it's actually the latter due to the relatively tiny size of the target market
for such books.
~~~
lazyant
From other tech book authors it seems it's the former; they work many hours
for a year and then they make 20k or that kind of minimum wage money
~~~
julian_t
That's right. I wrote some computer books some years back, and the royalties
were somewhere around 10% of the _wholesale_ cost of the book. So a book with
a $40 shelf price might have a $20 wholesale price... and with only about 6000
copies as a typical print run, I didn't make much at all.
And also bear in mind that an advance is just that: it comes off the
royalties, so you may not end up making any money for quite a while.
~~~
jarcane
That's a good point. With a run like that, the advance may be all you ever
see.
------
tr352
I am suspicious of the imposter syndrome self-diagnosis. It permits you to
explain away your problems and possible deficiencies without being confronted
with the often not so nice reality. As the author rightly says, it is not a
solution. To anyone diagnosing himself with the imposter syndrome, I would
say: great, so now that you know, you don't have it anymore.
------
rbrogan
Everyone knew everything about everything they do then AI would be easy.
------
engendered
This sort of post seems to do well on HN, so to offer a bit of criticism I'd
like to posit that often they seem to be a thin veneer over humble bragging.
e.g. I don't know what I'm doing, but then neither does anyone else but I am
stating it so therefore I'm actually better than them and I have impostor
syndrome so that actually makes me better at what I do than you, and everyone
who says they know what they're doing suffers from the Dunning–Kruger effect,
etc.
This has become a bit of a meme -- the whole "I'm better because I claim to be
worse" bit.
~~~
Lellagram
So does this mean that we need to come full circle and become worse and being
better due to claiming to feel worse?
I get where you are coming from, but I think the best point in this somewhat
rambly essay is that it is fine to come out and talk about how to deal with
these odd mental effects, especially when they are keeping us from getting
work done.
~~~
visakanv
> So does this mean that we need to come full circle and become worse and
> being better due to claiming to feel worse?
Usually when people begin kicking up a dust, the solution is to stop kicking–
in this case I think that means to avoid making claims, and focus instead on
doing great work!
------
peterwwillis
Recently I found this note on my desk at home. It says “I HAVE NO IDEA
WHAT I’M DOING”. I don’t remember writing it, but it was in my house
on my desk in my handwriting, so I obviously did.
He might want to seek some psychiatric help if this persists.
So what did it mean? Was it a cry for help? A product idea? A topic
for a blog post? Or could it be an idea for a conference talk?
The card was a cry for help. This talk is a cry for attention.
I’ll begin by showing you some compelling evidence that I have no idea
what I’m doing.
Well, he definitely proved it with all the completely asinine comparisons in
the rest of his talk, but this one is the best:
If you only take one thing away from this talk, make it this: beavers are
idiots. They have no idea why they’re building these huge structures; they just
blindly do it.
Really.
_" One of the primary reasons beavers build dams is to surround their lodge
with water for protection from predators." [...] "On land, the beaver's short
legs and wide body made them slow and vulnerable to their enemies. However,
unlike most of their historic predators, beavers are excellent swimmers. As a
result beavers evolved to have a strong preference to remain in or very close
to the safety of the water. The need for safety is the primary reason beavers
build dams to create ponds."_ \--
[http://www.beaversolutions.com/about_beaver_biology.asp](http://www.beaversolutions.com/about_beaver_biology.asp)
Sounds like they have a pretty good idea why they build dams.
But enough about me. As you’ve seen, I frequently find myself in situations
where I don’t know what I’m doing, and I usually hit a brick wall and
feel disappointed. But it’s not just me! You have no idea what you’re doing
either.
Don't go projecting on us, buddy. Most people, when faced with a challenge
they're not immediately sure how to solve, will go read a book, or take a
class, or ask someone who does know what they're doing. Lying about being able
to write a book when you have no idea how in order to make money is not
"impostor syndrome", it's merely being an impostor.
Dunning-Kruger does not explain or justify a total lack of forethought.
All of these animals look remarkably like something in their environment,
but none of them has any meaningful understanding of why they look that way.
They don’t know what they’re imitating. The stick insect doesn’t know anything
about eucalyptus; that’s just what it looks like.
Says who? You, the expert? I'm pretty sure an animal who _lives on a goddamn
plant and looks just like it_ probably realizes that it's a plant, and that it
looks similar, and that if it wants to eat, it should use that plant in order
to hunt, so it can live.
An interviewer asked Richard Feynman to explain how magnetism works. He
explained that it was a force that interacted with certain things. The
interviewer asked, but why? Richard's answer was a long way of saying "just
because, you moron."
You don't need to understand every layer of the onion. Every layer has another
layer, and once you understand every single of them, and grok quantum physics
and multiple dimensions and relativity and whatever else affects that onion's
properties, that won't change that you need to cook that onion until it's soft
before you add in meat to get the flavor out of it. If you know how to cook
it, you know what you're doing.
It's not that the author has no idea what he's doing. He's just an idiot.
~~~
pcthrowaway
Not only have you missed the point of this author's talk, you've also missed
the point of Feynman's answer, which served to demonstrate that the question
being asked did not have a simple answer that could be succinctly constructed
in a way that does the whole story justice. He wasn't saying 'don't try to
understand magnets, just use them' he was saying 'I can't answer that question
in a satisfactory way without first explaining all of Physics'
The author of this talk is not abnormal to do things without remembering them.
I write things down all the time only to come across them a year later with no
recollection.
It must be nice to be so self-assured of one's intellectual superiority
though. Most of us have no idea what we're doing, after all.
~~~
peterwwillis
The basic meaning of 'knowing what you are doing' is "to be aware of through
observation, inquiry, or information of an action, the precise nature of which
is often unspecified".
This is _completely different_ than what the author (and other commenters) are
suggesting, which is that one should have a completely in-depth understanding
of all aspects of a given idea as far as human culture is capable of
understanding.
If you are walking, you know what you are doing. If you are reading, you know
what you are doing. If you're commenting on a web forum, you know what you are
doing. You are not confused. You know what typing is. You know what the words
you want to say are. You know what you intend to say. This is knowing. This is
doing. That's it. _That is it._
Most of us, except for maybe the mentally handicapped or the catatonic, know
what we are doing. There is no big secret or mystery or hidden understanding.
It is not correct to suggest that the majority of people do not comprehend the
actions they take. Most people comprehend their actions, even if
subconsciously in many cases.
If you watch the video, Feynman gets pissed off. He's not pissed off because
he can't answer it, because he could just state "I would have to explain all
of physics to you for you to be satisfied." He's pissed because this person
doesn't even know what they're asking for.
This author doesn't know what he's talking about when he says he doesn't know
what we're doing. But that has nothing to do at all with the rest of us.
The best comparison I can make is to say that most of us don't know _why_ we
do anything. There is seemingly no purpose to the universe, or why any of it
does what it does. Yet there is completely obvious purpose to everything.
I drink because i'm thirsty. Why am I thirsty? Because my body needs to be
hydrated. Why hydrated? Because it's made mostly of water. Why water? Continue
that logic train until you run out of ways to explain why the universe exists.
Nobody needs to know why the universe exists. But we do know when we're
thirsty, and why we drink, which is what we're actually doing, so we do know
what we're doing, and why.
We do know why we do things, and what we do. Anyone telling you different is
selling something.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
K8s-usenet is a collection of Helm charts related to Usenet services - aborrero
https://github.com/aldoborrero/k8s-usenet
======
mbushey
Helm is horrible, it makes simple elegant yaml files complex and makes the
changes you actually need harder. Kustomize is the correct way to do things.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Brandery Prepares for Demo Day 2012 - ntippmann
http://nibletz.com/2012/09/brandery-prepares-for-demo-day-2012/
======
ntippmann
I know Impulcity is looking forward to it! Can't wait.
------
everywhereelse
Great piece on the Brandery
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Walmart SSL certificates - huhtenberg
http://www.codefromthe70s.org/certcheck.asp?t=www.walmart.com
======
huhtenberg
To elaborate: they are using well-known private keys in their certificates, so
all SSL connections towards their servers cannot be guaranteed to be private
or authentic. They are wide open to active eavesdropping and it makes them
pretty much as secure as an obfuscated HTTP.
~~~
huhtenberg
And not 24 hours later they fixed it .. even though the issue was first
reported to them few weeks (if not months) ago. Interesting ..
Their original cert is still available here -
<http://codefromthe70s.org/sslblacklist-badcerts.asp>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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