Datasets:

timaeus
/

pile-hackernews

Dataset card Data Studio Files Files and versions Community

Split (1)

train · 100k rows

text stringlengths 44 950k	meta dict
Best way to pull in news to my app. Theoretically. - ryanshaun I'm thinking of making an app which pulls in various news items from different publishers.<p>The app would display a list of news items that are to do with education. so would pull from BBC education, guardian and various other sources I could find I deem good for the users.<p>Simply, whats the best way to the news items in terms, of speed, load and efficiency?<p>Maybe RSS, some sort of API?<p>Please excuse my lack of knowledge on this, I plan to know more in the near future with a bit of help.<p>FYI it will be an android mobile app ====== yaur RSS and ATOM. An API (if they provide one) is an option, but stay away from screen-scraping as it will make your solution brittle and put you on shakier legal ground. ------ j3andidier RSS is always a good first option. Also look into XPATH for sites without RSS or an API.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Lazy Japanese and thieving Germans - dhfromkorea http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/research/events/conferences/povertyandcapital/chang.pdf ====== devnonymous Thanks ! I haven't yet read through the entire thing, but the ideas seem interesting. It would be good to have some context about this article/paper though. This reads more like a long blog post / opinion piece (at least as far as I've read, until now). You may choose to agree, partially agree or disagree. I won't consider this as something 'scientific' without first learning more about the context or research. The first page claims it to be chapter 9. I'd be interested in reading the rest.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
This Is What Happens When a Secret Military Jet Crashes in Your Back Yard - kawera https://warisboring.com/this-is-what-happens-when-a-secret-military-jet-crashes-in-your-back-yard-a4bc1abc285d#.7bu6wpmu5 ====== justbees I loved this quote from a guy who had debris from the crash actually fly through his house. “Did you go over to the accident site or just physically — ” the investigator started to ask. “I physically got the Hell out of there, cause I didn’t know what he was carrying,” Dellacorino said, cutting off the official and referring to possible weapons on the F-117.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How to make an impact on climate change? - dontreact Over time, I’ve become increasingly convinced that the biggest and most important problem we have a shot at solving during my lifetime is climate change. However my skills are in software and ML which I do think are some of the most powerful tools available to us. Does anyone on HN feel their work makes a big impact towards solving this problem? Alternatively, does anyone have any ideas about how to make progress on this problem given the type of technical background I and many others on the site have? ====== msadowski I was thinking about this a lot lately. Since I started my business I was trying to reach out to nonprofits to offer my skills, however not one of those that I contacted was interested (although my main skill is robotics). I think the best way to help us to financially support environmental NGOs (I'm currently looking at joining 1% for the planet). I'd be very interested to hear about other ideas people have! ------ titojankowski For inspiration of around helping build tools, check out the Air Miners index of 80+ startups working on removing carbon dioxide from the air: [http://airminers.org](http://airminers.org) I helped build it, happy for any questions. ------ titojankowski Also, does anyone have a chart of the mentions of "climate change" on HN? I'm curious if it's rising in interest, I have alerts set so I see a lot of it but would be interesting for someone to pull actual data. ------ julienreszka You said you are skilled with Machine Learning. Turns out you probably can help by predicting the impact of independent variables on climate and see by yourself. ------ dominotw I've reduced meat consumption by a lot.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New MacBook Air Ad (Parody) - gscott http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0ERgZ9dztk&eurl=http://a1.vox-data.com/6a00cd978d0ef7f9cc00e398d3b7d10004-html ====== cstejerean I was expecting this to be a lot funnier. Optical disks? Is that the best they could come up with? Who uses optical disks on a daily basis? ~~~ curi i use them on a weekly basis: netflix ------ curi it doesn't cost $3000 unless you want $1200 of options. ~~~ chengmi $1200 of SSD goodness... why the hell not?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Frog Leap Test - dennisgorelik http://funstufftosee.com/frogleaptest.html ====== motz143 has any one able to solve it ~~~ waterlesscloud It's easy once you realize the middle state has to be alternating frogs. ~~~ motz143 yes at last solved it :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital on the Paradox of Ego and Humility - astdb https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/business/corner-office-chamath-palihapitiya-social-capital.html ====== uptownfunk I’ve read many articles like these but I think ultimately... it’s luck. I can work hard, but it’s luck. Right place, right time. And then if/when someone finally gets there they can pontificate all they like about how successful they are and how they know what it takes to get there, when in reality, almost everyone who is actually there knows it’s mostly luck (and hard work, but mostly luck) that got them there. In college I stopped comparing myself to the guys who set the class curve and asked if i gave it my absolute best effort and suddenly I was much happier, and doing better as well. ~~~ owebmaster Luck is when you don't know the reason. The reason actually might be ugly, not luck. ~~~ vikiomega9 It's useful to identify such things as luck because we really can't orchestrate those moments by sheer will. To identify a reason is the first step towards controlling the circumstance but for the average situation I'd wager it's hard to do so. ------ karmakaze > ...combination of ego and humility. Let’s be honest, a lot of C.E.O.s are > ego-driven people. But they also have to be humble in some very precise ways > around ideas and decisions, and being able to change their mind. That’s an > idiosyncratic combination. That sums up what I consider to be a good CEO in addition to being good at motivating people. ~~~ filereaper Arrogance is what gets you started, humility is what takes you to completion. ~~~ justinjlynn Well, arrogance is what gets you started, yes; however, if I may, it's the ability to hide it while maintaining one's own goals, and not the ability to be humble, that takes you to completion. Otherwise one gets distracted by what others want or how others feel; in a sense CEOs that can generate strong reality distortion fields, as it has been put, tend to be extremely successful in spite of market conditions. I would imagine that it's a fine line to walk. ~~~ uoaei Humility is the opposite of arrogance, but that doesn't mean you don't have a fixed vision of your goals and will stick to your guns to achieve them. It just means you don't try to show everyone just how good you are at achieving them. ------ khazhou He has good and true advice: If you approach challenges with tenacity, always be curious to learn, and be open and thoughtful with your team, you too can be an early employee at the next FB and become a billionaire. ~~~ jforman To be fair, there are a LOT of early employees at Facebook that got churned through, or who didn't make it to the executive tier. Chamath almost got churned through, but he hit it big on the Growth team. That's the difference between an early employee with $10M and an early employee with $500M. Moskovitz (now Asana), D'Angelo (now Quora), Vernal (now Sequoia), Bosworth (still at FB on hardware/Building 8), Cohler (now Benchmark), Hammerbacher (now ?), Chamath (now Social Capital) ... those are some of the standouts off of the top of my head, out of hundreds of early employees. ~~~ lfischer But what’s the difference between $10M and $500M? In both cases, you can stop working for a living and do whatever you want with your life instead. ~~~ jforman Only if "whatever you want" means lounging on a beach or a yacht. Most of the people on that list had aspirations to impact the world as much as possible, and there isn't a limit to the wealth you can use to do that. You couldn't start Social Capital on $10M, for example. ~~~ aaron-lebo You can change the world on 10k, we believe otherwise because we're lazy, and to be fair, it's a lot more fun to have 10 million than 10 thousand. Sure, if you have a bunch of money and throw that money at things, you'll "change the world", but that doesn't mean that's an effective way of making lasting or useful change. ~~~ jforman Of course you CAN impact the world on $10k. But the Gates Foundation doesn't run on $10k. You can found zero biotech companies on $10k. Money, alas, has value, believe it or not. ~~~ aaron-lebo Well, the Gates Foundation is funded by a monopoly that intentionally restricted competition and progress in the computing industry for at least a decade, so maybe there's a better way of obtaining it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Status IE – IE's feature status and plans - paulirish http://status.modern.ie/ ====== giovannibajo1 I would like to know from the IE team if there's a specific plan to fix the browser update issue, that is the fact that IE is by far the slower browser when it comes to user upgrades. It's exciting to see features in IE1x+, but we all know that those will be a tiny fraction of users for a long time. I think that gaining consensus in developers' mindset goes through forcing updates like Chrome and Firefox do; don't care if it's monthly, quarterly or yearly, but users shouldn't even realize that an update was pushed to their machine. This model has shown that it works for browsers, and not only that, it has also proven to be the best model. Is there any actual actionable plan on this? Adding new features in IE15 is fine and good, but won't buy a dime in developer consensus, when we still waste time supporting 5-years-old IE browsers at any given time. ~~~ anton_gogolev I'd argue that IE is primarily used in corporate settings, when silently upgrading software is a big no-no. Everything has to be tested by the IT/IS department and rolled out in a controlled fashion. ~~~ giovannibajo1 Last time I managed to find a study showing _daily_ browser market share, I noticed that the drop for old IE versions during the weekend was significant but below 50%. So over half of those users are not corporate users. I don't like citing numbers without a source, but I couldn't find one in 5 minutes Googling. If somebody has a link that shows fairly recent _daily_ IE usage share, we can double check my recall. I would also like to add that one technical solution for the "IE in enterprise" problem would be allowing parallel IE version installations. IE already allows to go into old version emulation mode, but it's not 100% faithful (I don't know the details). If it was 100% faithful, sysadmin could simply update IE to the latest version for normal browsing (or even let it auto-update, since I'm sure no sysadmin believe that he/she can QA IE better than MS for general Internet usage), and forcing compatibility (through GPO) for Intranet sites that are broken in newer version. But since it's not 100% faithful, the technical solution would be allowing to install an auto-updating IE in parallel to IE8, and then configure a policy to automatically switch to IE8 for Intranet sites (Chrome Enterprise does a similar thing; you can configure a GPO so that the user is automatically brought to IE when he/she browses to specific websites, e.g.: Intranet). ------ gk1 I wonder if a re-branding is in order. I suspect I'm not the only one who feels an inner discomfort with IE. I even associate the logo and name with thoughts like "outdated," "broken," "difficult," and "cumbersome." I realize they've come a long way, but it's tough to shake off 10+ years of negative experiences and associations. ------ McGlockenshire None of the things listed as "not currently planned" are big surprises, though seeing WebRTC there is very disappointing. I've never seen "Object RTC" before, is it a competing effort, or a restandardization effort? ~~~ BilalBudhani "MathML" is listed as "not currently planned". ~~~ SEMW Honest question: now that mathjax has a high-quality pure-HTML/CSS output engine, does anyone still care about browser MathML support? ------ pyalot2 Note that this site lists WebGL as "IE11+". That's false. IE11 has a flavor of webgl that's experimental (prefixed or not) that's reported as version WebGL 0.92 (this is basically an invalid specification conformant string, it's either 1.0 or something not done). Huge gaps and bugs remain in Microsofts WebGL implementation which make it nearly impossible to use except for specific select usecases that Microsoft optimized for. It took google and mozilla about 4 years to get a good WebGL implementation (and they're still not done). It'll take Microsoft years to come to bring their implementation on par with the rest of the WebGL world. ~~~ adrianba We shipped an update to the IE11 WebGL implementation to developers today as part of Windows 8.1 Update. We will roll this out to all IE11 users through Windows Update starting next week. There will be further updates to our WebGL implementation in the summer. If there are specific use cases that you're interested in support for, please let us know what they are so that we can prioritise the order of our implementation. ~~~ pyalot2 The most important thing is to run the webgl conformance test (online [https://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/sdk/tests/webgl- confo...](https://www.khronos.org/registry/webgl/sdk/tests/webgl-conformance- tests.html) github [https://github.com/KhronosGroup/WebGL](https://github.com/KhronosGroup/WebGL)) every day on a variety of machines with different configurations (I assume you have an automated test farm). Another measure that's also very useful is to run the webgl performance regression test suite every day to see if performance got worse or better with the changes. Unfortunately there isn't a comprehensive GLSL syntax test suite, but GLSL has been much of a sore point in IE where some syntax that's valid GLSL would work except in IE (such as uniforms separated by a comma). I've submitted some tickets to IE (and added more conformance tests to cover them) for some of the gaps (gl.SAMPLES, gl.STENCIL_BITS, gl.SUBPIXEL_BITS). A thing that's also a sore point is IEs lack of support for very common extensions such as OES_texture_float_linear, WEBGL_compressed_texture_s3tc, WEBGL_depth_texture, OES_standard_derivatives, OES_vertex_array_object, ANGLE_instanced_arrays, OES_element_index_uint, WEBGL_lose_context. You can get an overview of the state of support on [http://webglstats.com/](http://webglstats.com/) A note on floating point texture extensions. If you implement one extension (for instance OES_texture_float) you should really implement the companion extensions as well for texture_float_linear and color_buffer_float. Only the triplet of extensions provides comprehensive overview of support. Personally I'd like to see these run in IE of course: [http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/15/soft-shadow- mapping/](http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/15/soft-shadow-mapping/) [http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/04/high-performance- js-...](http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/04/high-performance-js-heatmaps/) [http://codeflow.org/webgl/deferred-irradiance- volumes/www/](http://codeflow.org/webgl/deferred-irradiance-volumes/www/) [http://codeflow.org/webgl/trails/www/](http://codeflow.org/webgl/trails/www/) [http://codeflow.org/webgl/barycentric- wireframe/www/](http://codeflow.org/webgl/barycentric-wireframe/www/) [http://codeflow.org/webgl/ssao/](http://codeflow.org/webgl/ssao/) I think the demos above are fairly good usecases for gaps that you might have, because they exercise a lot of functionality, they're not bound to some specific framework (like three.js) but they are WebGL conformant. ------ TheCoreh Would be nice to know if they plan on implementing special handling for asm.js. This info is nowhere on this chart. ~~~ JacobRossi Ah,yes, good suggestion to add to our list on the site. Look for an update soon from our JS engine (Chakra) team's plan. ~~~ TheCoreh Thanks for such a fast reply! :) I'm quite happy with Microsoft's recent push towards openness. One additional suggestion: Perhaps you could also include a rationale on why a specific feature is not planned to be implemented: e.g. WebRTC. (Though I can anticipate this might not be feasible to do for strategic / management reasons.) ------ AdamTReineke Chrome's dashboard: [http://www.chromestatus.com](http://www.chromestatus.com) ~~~ devnetfx Thanks for the link. I always found it hard to know what is happening in new versions of chrome and which feature became available when. This is exactly what I needed - Thanks! Also found chrome dashboard easier to use than IE dashboard but that's understandable as this is new effort. And, if anyone from IE team is here, how about some consistency with developer tools with other browsers as well. The web developer UI in IE 11 is so different that I struggle to found simple things - maybe I am not good in recognizing new icons :) ~~~ AdamTReineke I'm actually on the dev tools team. I'll pass along the feedback to the PMs. ------ geetee I'm bewildered by the many "under consideration" entries. When all the other major players support something, and you want to be taken seriously, why aren't you throwing more engineers at the problem? ~~~ JacobRossi If feature status were a Facebook relationship status, many might say "it's complicated." ;-) Most of the time, it's not actually a question of engineering resources. Stay tuned as we update more and more stuff to "In Development". (I work for IE) ~~~ derefr I'm curious--does this imply internal-politics problems (e.g. getting other departments to expose, and possibly backport, APIs that Chakra needs to consume to do the features), or just weird engineering challenges specific to the Chakra codebase? ~~~ TheCoreh I could see some conflicts of interest issues too. (e.g. implementing WebRTC could be against their interests - since Microsoft owns Skype, they might not want to lower the barrier of entry to a competitor.) ~~~ dstorey Microsoft are contributing to Object RTC, so I see this as unlikely. ------ jrd79 Can somebody on the IE team comment on when specific SVG features will be added? I am interested in using a <use> tag with a xlink:href to an element in a different SVG file. This is part of the SVG spec and works in the latest versions of Chrome and FireFox, but does not work in IE 11. Any plans to fix this? My Stack Overflow question on the topic is at: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22516712/svg-use-tag- with...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22516712/svg-use-tag-with- external-reference-in-ie-11) ------ paul7986 No web audio API? Are they building in an alternative? All other browsers support web audio. Why isn't MS following along? ~~~ dstorey It’s under consideration. ------ grn You can also download Virtual Box VMs with different versions of IE [http://modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads](http://modern.ie/en- us/virtualization-tools#downloads). Indispensable when developing on Linux! ~~~ tracker1 I wish they'd link the VMWare VMs for other OSes... They're available under the Linux option iirc, which works fine for windows/mac. ------ grumblestumble This is somewhat misleading WRT to Flexbox. IE10 "supports" the abandoned syntax, which is incompatible with the new proposal. It would be very useful if this was explicitly mentioned in cases where the API for these things is in flux. ------ yeukhon I still don't understand why IE still mark Content Security Policy (CSP) under consideration given all other major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera) have at least some version of CSP implemented. I am actually very surprised they don't yet have HSTS implemented. IE is so much behind these security standard IMO. I don't know why they would push Web Crypto into 11+ when they don't even have CSP or HSTS implemented yet. Given the standard, they should have HSTS, then CSP, then Web Crypto and then subresource integrity (which will probably take another year or two to stabilize a final draft for v1). Is this list even up-to-date? ------ dave1010uk I see WebP but no mention of WebM video at the moment. Any reason it's not there? ~~~ ZeroGravitas If they do add that, they should specify VP8 and/or VP9 and/or Vorbis and/or Opus rather than just WebM. The Opus audio codec, which was co-developed by Microsoft subsidiary Skype, would be useful both for WebRTC, and the alternative Microsoft favours, ObjectRTC. VP8 and Opus both get mentioned in passing in the ObjectRTC spec that I found, but I don't know if they have the same status as in WebRTC (mandatory for Opus, optional for VP8) ------ sjf Has the Irish domain registry lifted its rules on .ie domains? It used to be that you only register them for Irish businesses, even getting yourname.ie was not straight forward. It's a little disturbing to see this domain. ------ jakub_g Semi-related for cross-browser ES6 compat: [http://kangax.github.io/es5-compat- table/es6/](http://kangax.github.io/es5-compat-table/es6/) Shows future versions of Firefox and Chrome but not yet IE. ~~~ agapos Future versions of Fx and Chr are available constantly (on multiple channels at different stages), what is not the case with IE. ------ throwaway41597 Thanks. Please add a change log so we can quickly know when features get added/rejected/shipped/... Also I found that sorting by status was broken (a block of IE10+ features in the middle of IE11+ ones). ------ grumblestumble This is great. I realize that there are probably political hurdles to doing so, but it would be awesome if these linked to MDN in addition to MSDN / W3C / WebPlatform. ------ higherpurpose WebRTC is not even in their plan yet. _Sigh_. ~~~ dstorey Object RTC is under consideration instead. ~~~ juberti It's OK. You can implement WebRTC as a JS library on top of ORTC. ------ scotty79 I'm not really interested in IE news unless it's "IE will use webkit rendering engine from now on." ------ wyuenho Does that mean we won't be able to see ES6 modules coming to IE anytime soon? ~~~ dstorey I believe the data from the Chakra (IE’s JS engine) team hasn’t been updated yet. ------ Flenser try view-source, it's build using angular, bower and bootstrap. ------ pepelepoo heheh. This website has a hard dependency on chromestatus.com. ~~~ JacobRossi Yep, and we're already chatting with the Chrome team on how browsers can collaborate on this type of data. We encourage people to use our data too. It's openly licensed. ~~~ molant You can use CORS to access the data at [http://status.modern.ie/features](http://status.modern.ie/features) :) ------ shmerl _> WebRTC - Not currently planned_ Fail. ~~~ jgaylord But Object RTC is under consideration. I believe (but don't quote me) that most of the efforts at the W3C are focused on this over WebRTC. Also, you'll notice that the IE team is taking a slightly more conservative approach to the new features. Since many features are still in draft mode and can significantly change, they're implementing features as they mature. ~~~ shmerl MS tried to sabotage mandating free codecs for standard real time communications, but W3C managed to put Opus in WebRTC. Not sure what's going on in parallel efforts in this regard but it's a pretty important issue and MS is on the wrong side in this one. ------ snird They are comparing IE to other real modern browsers - it's rather surprising to see. Like saying "The competitors are far ahead, here what they already do and we don't and out of that what we plan to do next and what not.". ~~~ dstorey There are only 13 features listed there not currently supported in IE and supported by Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Of those, 4 are currently in development.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Game Table: Classic board games for the Apple iPad - pieter http://www.gametableapp.com/ ====== gcheong Chess and checker type board games I can see, but I'm not sure about card games. It would seem really hard to play and be able to see your hand without letting others see it and see the board if everyone has their hands on the pad. I'm interested in seeing how practical that is. ~~~ code_devil The iPad could act as table and any smart phone (iPhone/android) would connect to it with private set of hands/cards. ------ DLWormwood > Thanks to the early tablet rumors, we got a huge jump on the development on > Game Table. Game Table will be available on the iTunes App Store for an > introductory price of 99 cents when the Apple iPad is released on April 3rd. Ouch. I know some developers who are going to be unhappy with this... There's been some discussion about avoiding the "race to the bottom" that occurred with the iPhone/iPod touch and this zero-day $0.99 pricing is going to help ruin that. That said, I was toying around with making something similar. It's even suggested as a use case in Apple's documentation for iPad developers. (Not an NDA thing anymore, it seems.) A table of pieces with no rules logic, but something more open ended. Looks like no point in supporting standard playing cards as part of it, since this app likely has that part covered. EDIT: Just noticed eob's comment; custom pieces were what I was shooting for (sort of like a card equivalent to MotionX's former Dice Plus app), though with a more practical bent. ------ hartror Suddenly I see a point for the iPad. "Driving to Grandma's? No problems with Game Table!" ------ eob This is exactly the app that I first though of when the iPad was announced. Nice job for putting this together. Here's what I would love to see in a version 2: \- Allow people to upload their own boards & pieces to some site. Or better yet, create a standard file format so anyone can host their own at any URL. This would allow all sorts of board games to be played without having to buy the often expensive sets of cardboard chips (fellow German boardgamers out there, you know what I'm talking about). \- Allow people to play games over the internet and save the games for later ------ melvinram A video showing one of the games would get me to want it more. ------ derefr With the ability to zoom/pan, and add your own textures for back- and fore- grounds, this would also make the perfect pen-and-paper-and-miniatures RPG play surface. ~~~ thorax Given the last word in your sentence, I assume you didn't know about this "surface" for D&D: [http://blogs.msdn.com/surface/archive/2009/12/16/new- gamepla...](http://blogs.msdn.com/surface/archive/2009/12/16/new-gameplay- video-with-d-d-on-surface.aspx) Of course, $499 versus $15k is a big difference, but this shows some of the potential of a larger touch interface here. ~~~ pieter I'm not sure this would scale to an iPad-sized surface. I also kinda like the free style GameTable allows you -- the Surface example (though very cool!) seems to take some control of the game out of you. A D&D tool could be very nice -- just allow a DM to quickly sketch an area, add some characters and allow the players to interact. I think the killer feature would be playback of the battle/whatever, just keeping the history of where everybody moves. ~~~ derefr If these things became cheap enough that everyone had one, each player could have a networked interface that had the game table in one panel/tab, the rules in another and their stats in a third. It'd almost be like an MMO UI, but operated manually. Additionally, everyone could have a different view—the DM could be looking down a corridor that is "fog of war"-ed for the PCs. On the other hand, if everyone had a unified interface, all the iPads could be layed out together on the table to make one big surface, where scrolling one scrolled the others as well.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sleep less for better productivity - alexheaton http://leanminded.tumblr.com/post/9800643432/sleep-less-for-better-productivity ====== gwern This is a little incomplete. It is true that it matters _where_ in the sleep cycle you wake up. You want to wake up during light sleep, or most ideally, during the occasional waking moment (which you forget, but there are usually 0-5 such periods during sleep). Sleep latency is a lot higher when you are woken during deep sleep or REM. (I don't have citations for this off hand, but I'm pretty sure it's well-accepted sleep science.) So if his sleep cycle is very regular, and his alarm time happens to be at a frequently REM/deep portion, then less sleep could lead to a better wake up. But he is still cutting sleep off his schedule! All the research he alludes to about how less sleep is harmful still applies; he's still losing some mental capacity or resilience or something _because_ he has trimmed his sleep. This may or may not be a worthwhile exchange for having a better morning.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Attention Federal Employees: If You See Something, Leak Something - saycheese https://theintercept.com/leak/ ====== kbutler The site claims to be non-partisan, but the only presidential names cited are Republican, and it ignores abuses and issues under Democratic administrations, except the NSA surveillance scandal. Admittedly, they are seeking input from disaffected people at a time when Republicans hold the presidency and both houses of Congress, but it seems they are so completely biased they think their examples are "non-partisan." ~~~ pharrlax Have a casual look at Glenn Greenwald's Twitter feed and then come back and tell me his news organization is partisan. ~~~ tossacct444 Their last line is fully ironic considering the Obama admin's war on whistleblowers. "Becoming a whistleblower is not an easy decision, but sometimes it is the right thing to do." [https://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/14/obamas_war_on_whistle...](https://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/14/obamas_war_on_whistleblowers_forced_edward) [http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/09/mouths-wide-shut- obam...](http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/09/mouths-wide-shut-obamas-war- on-whistleblowers/) Did the "nonprofit, nonpartisan" Intercept publish similar instructions over the last 8 years? For a "journalistic piece" it's odd there is no author of the article. They don't have any contact links beside an onion address and a PO Box. Who funds the Intercept anyway? I think Greenwald, a self described liberal, has been fair in calling out other liberals in their hypocrisy, especially the Obama admin. [http://www.alternet.org/glenn-greenwald-remember-when- obama-...](http://www.alternet.org/glenn-greenwald-remember-when-obama-vowed- protect-whistleblowers) ~~~ maxerickson The Intercept launched in 2014, partly as a way to publish material from the Snowden leaks. So the answer to your question is "No, but...". Pierre Omidyar funded The Intercept. He got wealthy as the founder of eBay. ------ elmerfud Asking people to uphold their sworn oath is one thing, but equating unlawful government abuses with getting a lawful tax write off.... Wow Is this going to be the "birther movement" equivalent against trump? ~~~ tmuir Equating means to show how two things are equal. Listing examples of various leaks is not equating them as equally damning or criminal. Stop extrapolating from singular data points to a preconceived conclusion. Put forth a falsefiable hypothesis, and weigh all available evidence. Dont allow prejudice to select the sources of that data. ~~~ elmerfud The article writer picked the examples not I. Picking clear abuses of government power veiled (or not) as lawful and then listing clearly lawful activities of Trump as being in the same "leak worthy" statement is the writers bias in equating them. There is your evidence since it was to much to ask you to read the article. ~~~ tmuir You've chosen to see the world through a binary lens: Either you're with us or against us. The answer to every extreme is to race as fast as possible to the opposite extreme. Shades of gray are illusions. Balance is an illusion. Compromise is an illusion. Either articles support my beliefs or they are false. Any two analogous subjects in the entire universe can be demonstrated to be similar, as well as demonstrated to be different. That is the inherent nature of similarity and analogy. If two analogous subjects were in fact identical in every way, they would cease to be two distinct entities, as they would be identical. In which jurisdiction of The United States of America is it "clearly lawful" to grab women by their genitalia without their consent? What evidence lead you to conclude that I did not read the article? How have you arrived at the unequivocal primacy of your own ideas? ~~~ elmerfud "Because they let you" That is consent. Please point out this binary nature in my post. It's not there. You are the one reading with your bias goggles on. I'm pointing out that the article made a strong case for the need of leaks in actual cases on government abuse. Then they undermine their case by including targeted "hit pieces" as useful leaks. If it was unbias then where was the Hillary email leaks? Oh that's right, it again was something targeted to undermine and not to show the value of whistle blowers. ~~~ tmuir Your top post shows that you can't see shades of gray. Every list of examples is proof that the examples are all equal. You follow it up with equating a smear campaign based on sensationalism and spearheaded by a charlatan, with journalism demonstrating the value of whistleblowing. Just like our president, you are allergic to blame, even when it's spelled out in plain English. I have no illusions that you will deny the wetness of water, if it stands between you and being "right". ------ adgfadgdfsa545 Having had my name smeared before by journalist from a certain "broadsheet" who took the truth and twisted it to make me look like some sort of criminal regarding a story where the parent company of this newspaper has sent my startup an injunction and this journalist was sent to harass me (no other papers, media printed the story because there was none) f^&k journalists! they will sell you down the river, ignore your side of the story and lie lie lie /posting from throwaway account ~~~ noobermin If you're throwaway, what harm is there in naming who you told, at least the publication. Will that yield too much info? There is wikileaks and him, Glenn Greenwald, who at least to us seem to be fair (dare I say honest?) journalists. ------ tossacct444 There's definitely an agenda in place on HN. Every comment even remotely pro Trump has been downvoted to grey text. ~~~ sctb I don't think see that as a particularly strong correlation here. I see comments on both sides that are grey or dead, many of which have clearly violated the guidelines. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) ------ losteverything This is a great resource for people who make fake news ------ deadalus This article would not have been posted if Hillary had won. The entire site reads like an anti-trump ad : [https://theintercept.com/](https://theintercept.com/) ~~~ apozem You need to learn more about The Intercept. Glenn Greenwald and his crowd spent the election cycle relentlessly attacking Clinton over her emails and Obama over his drone strikes. ~~~ belorn Had you preferred he joined the relentlessly attacking of Trump over the leaked video recording? What is more important, the content of a private conversation between two people off-camera, or drone strikes? Or is the content of such private conversation more important than say, keeping a private server for government business and outside of official records? ~~~ tmuir Why is only the most important topic worthy of discussion? Why can you only see the other side's extremities? Trump's admission of grabbing woman by their genitalia was a conversation he assumed would remain private. Podesta's emails were conversations he assumed would remain private. Yet, the naked partisans of our country somehow see the subject matter of one as the the important take away, while the method of acquisition as the distraction. Those same naked partisans, without any modicum of irony see the other matter in the complete opposite terms: the method of acquisition is paramount, and absolves the content discovered. Por que no las dos?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Unreasonable Fundamental Incertitudes Behind Bitcoin Mining - markmassie http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.7935 ====== apw Here is the reference the authors cite: [4] [4] Bitter to Better — How to Make Bitcoin a Better Currency [http://crypto.stanford.edu/~xb/fc12/bitcoin.pdf](http://crypto.stanford.edu/~xb/fc12/bitcoin.pdf) ------ maxander Could someone explain the difference between "incertitude" and plain-old "uncertainty"?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Greplin (YC W10) open sources exception collection system - rwalker https://github.com/Greplin/greplin-exception-catcher ====== bretthoerner Similar to something we made at Disqus: <http://readthedocs.org/docs/sentry/en/latest/index.html> ~~~ th Sentry and Greplin look like they have a extremely similar feature set. It would be interesting to see a comprehensive comparison between the two. ~~~ alq So does getexceptional.com (from the RoR world). I ended up writing an adapter for pylons (pylons-exceptional) because an API for this kind of stuff means one less thing to deploy and worry about. ------ deepu_256 This looks really useful. In the coming weeks i will try and use it in one of the apps i am building on tornado. Kudos to Greplin. Just one question. I see Tornado related repos in Greplin Github account. Are you using it in one of your Tornado apps ? In that case any gotchas regarding blocking ? ~~~ rwalker We do use it in Tornado apps. We haven't seen any blocking issues so far as the time to write the tiny file is pretty small plus this happens on a small percentage of requests. It'd probably be worth looking in to an asynchronous model at some point though. ------ choffstein Looks like getexceptional.com too. I like this sort of stuff. Great job! ------ newhouseb How does this compare to Scribe?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Synthetic sensors: General purpose sensing (PDF paper by Gierad Laput et al) - mikehotel http://www.gierad.com/assets/supersensor/supersensor.pdf ====== mikehotel ACM CHI 2017 presentation (with live demo) at [https://youtu.be/hpxUrvTltJI](https://youtu.be/hpxUrvTltJI)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Rackspace Open Cloud: Better, Faster, More Affordable - wonderbread http://www.rackspace.com/blog/the-open-rackspace-cloud-better-faster-more-affordable/ ====== ehutch79 Has anyone been using the cloud databases? I assume they're going to optimize better than i would, especially since i'm too busy to. but their 512 db instance is as expensive as a 1g server image that i'm running mysql on no, and I was planning on running more like rabbit mq on that server.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Database schema with more than 100 tables – where can I find some? - samblr I am looking for database schemas with many tables (>100 tables). Where can I find them ? I am currently using mysql and havent done serious database design. So interested in looking at samples with ER diagrams.<p>Although sportsdb.org has large number of tables - it has foreign key relation missing in its create scripts.<p>edit: Replaced '>' with more than in title. ====== cauterized What do you expect to learn from this hypothetical sample database? In my experience, a DB with hundreds of tables doesn't usually model its data any differently from one with a few dozen tables. It just has a couple dozen topical clusters of a dozen or so related tables, instead of just a few clusters of a dozen or so related tables. ~~~ samblr I agree on your view the modelling more or less remains the same (but with more topical-clusters interconnected). But I haven't seen such schemas at work before (most with 15 tables). The (big) examples of such I believe adds to elasticity of what/how something is - in our perception - for example I view schemas as sort of a large tree where each branch grows on every (1:n, 1:1 ..) relations. Some branches converge. Some are isolated branches. This sort of made me curious to search for database schemas with large number of tables. Sorry if my answer doesnt make sense - a short answer would be - if I want to write good c code - I would be probably look into linux\kernel source. I vouch not much can wrong from there. ------ mtmail Magento 1.7 has over 300 tables, see [http://www.magereverse.com/](http://www.magereverse.com/) Magento 2.x has probably even more. You can download the software including a demo store [https://www.magentocommerce.com/download](https://www.magentocommerce.com/download) ~~~ samblr Thank you ------ lucb1e Care2x has quite a few tables if I remember correctly, but I don't remember if it was over 100. ------ tenken Any large drupal7 site. ~~~ cauterized Although probably not a good model for sane relational data modeling.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tech Crunch Crashes under Apple Load? - prbuckley Did anyone else get this... Error establishing a database connection When visiting Techcrunch at 10am today? ====== jacquesm There are about 500 tech sites and they all have the 'iPad' on their front page, and they all have more or less exactly the same stuff to say about it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Increasing usuabily in your game's design - e1ven http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4110/upping_your_games_usability.php ====== Novash I wish HN had a way to save links like reddit does. Posting here so I can track the article later when I arrive home. ~~~ jcl If you vote an article up, it appears in your profile under a "saved" heading.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google execs have ideas on how to run your business - mailshanx http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531056/google-execs-have-ideas-on-how-to-run-your-business/ ====== jauwe Yeah, they sure do. After all beside search and email nothing good really came out of google. I wonder how much will they pay to steal data and gather personal information and sell it to advertisers ?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Super Metroid and a Link to the Past crossover item randomizer - doener https://smalttp.speedga.me/ ====== doener Here is a video about that: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1lsAKbw91I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1lsAKbw91I)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Microcredit examined: stimulates enterprise but doesn't help poverty - lemming http://microfinance.cgap.org/2012/04/11/latest-impact-research-inching-toward-generalization/ ====== danboarder This title makes interesting conclusion as it seems contradictory. Stimulating enterprise in a developing region generally means more economic activity including more jobs, which means people are working rather than not working - and I would consider this as a direct impact on poverty in a region. Beyond CGAP's work, I think one should consider microcredit as one tool in a suite known as "microfinance", which includes savings programs and economic literacy education, among other services. For a global summary check out the Microcredit Summit Campaign's 2012 report here: [http://www.microcreditsummit.org/state_of_the_campaign_repor...](http://www.microcreditsummit.org/state_of_the_campaign_report/) ~~~ DanBC For more reporting about the disadvantages (and sometimes the advantages) of microfinance the IRIN site has plenty. ([http://www.irinnews.org/AdvancedSearchResults.aspx?KW=microf...](http://www.irinnews.org/AdvancedSearchResults.aspx?KW=microfinance)) Micro financing thought to be neutral: ([http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95067/Development- Microfinanc...](http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95067/Development-Microfinance- possibilities-and-limitations)) Some microfinancing is corrupt: ([http://www.irinnews.org/Report/82247/BENIN-Corrupt- microfina...](http://www.irinnews.org/Report/82247/BENIN-Corrupt-microfinance- institutions-profit-from-poorest)) ------ yaix There are thousands of ways to implement Microcredit, and some implementations have been in ways that were already proven to not work very well. But to make money. Yunnus/Grameen had some good ideas (read his book) that are not really about the money they give out to poor people. The money is only a way to get the poor people to come to the meetings regularly and follow certain important principles, like "all my children go to school" or "we eat every day three meals" or "we will try to build a stable home made of bricks/tin roof" etc. Seems trivial, but those are important steps. Not to mention the fact that many Grameen credits are given to groups that mutually guarantee their credit! If one person fails to pay back, the others have to pay back for this person. People learn by that to work together and to trust each other (building social capital, the very basis of every lasting economic development, read "F.Fukuyama, Trust - Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity" for example). Just handing out little credits will of course not help a lot, but in some situations it may help, so its worthwhile anyway. A next important step would be to make laws in all countries that banks /have to/ give one free savings accounts to everybody. No credit account of course, but a right to have a bank account would be an important and easy to implement step. ------ greghinch This just in: centuries old economic and social inequity NOT immediately solved by well intentioned startups! Hipster nerds decry the idea as a failure for not generating a billion dollar valuation after 2 years. Seriously, poverty in these regions is the result of so many factors, stimulating enterprise is going to be helpful but it may take a generation or more to see the effect. ~~~ Dylanlacey Perhaps this would be a good point to discuss how to keep the idea "Sexy" enough to have payoff. I agree with you, incidentally, but if you want to have lasting social effect AND it's going to take time, there needs to be something to keep people trying until a visible payoff is available as "proof".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
One Zoom to Rule Them All – Lord of the Rings Cast Reunited [video] - _bxg1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_U0S6x_kCs&feature=emb_title ====== verdverm The title does not match what the video actually is, I'm not sure what it was, stopped after ten seconds of what seemed like a music video ? ~~~ _bxg1 It's a very long and kind of annoying intro for the channel	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Want to build an app with me via chat? - HackrNwsDesignr Are there any hackers that want to work on a few ideas for a web app from scratch? We could build something that we ourselves come up with together and hack it together in a few hours until it's up and running.<p>I am a front-end designer. I was hoping we could make a resource to benefit the start up community on hacker news.<p>I would like to use PHP/MySQL, but I'm open to learning Ruby on Rails for this project.<p>Contact information and design examples are in my HN profile section. Feel free to just message me on AIM. ====== HackrNwsDesignr Also, if anyone has ideas of something quick and easy they wanted to have built, feel free to share here. ------ veb This leads me to a question, does HN have an IRC channel? ------ jackbauersgun Definitely interested, anyone else want to join the fun?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
ZumoDrive announces pricing (and it's cheaper than it seemed) - pg http://blog.zumodrive.com/being-transparent/ ====== fauigerzigerk So that's roughly the same as storing everything on S3 and downloading almost all of it once per month. Of course it has functionality as well, so the pricing appears reasonable to me if used for data that is actually used and not just archived. ~~~ jwilliams Interesting - I wonder if they can/do detect identical files and store them once? One of the storage solutions I worked on did this - EMC Centera - mostly to handle email archive (in corporates you can end up with the same attachment duplicated many times over - it's a bit of a pain). ~~~ modoc I built a file storage web system several years ago (very popular when free, but when the free beta ended not many people wanted to pay). We computed the hash of each uploaded file, and only stored one copy of the file based on the hash. The database based filesystem simply recorded the hash of the file as basically a pointer to the actual file. This allowed multiple people to have the same file, with different file names (stored in the db), but only actually store the file once. Very simple. ------ cubicle67 Looks good, but I can't stand the cheesy fake-bubbly voiceover on the video. I keep expecting her to tell me it's only 3 easy payments of $19.95 and if I order in the next 10 minutes I'll get a free [something... ] Anyway, good work, but please rethink the video. ~~~ arockwell The video is cheesy, but I thought that it was entertaining. ------ jwilliams Does anyone know - Do you sign up for an account of size "X", or do you just get an account and they bill based upon how much you use? ~~~ hbien When you sign up, they ask you what size you want. I haven't gotten an account yet, I just saw an image of it from: [http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2009/01/zumodrive_is_goi...](http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2009/01/zumodrive_is_going_to_change_everything.html) ~~~ jwilliams Ah ok - think a usage based account with a cap would be a good option too. ------ shergill $2.99/month for 10gig is not too shabby! ~~~ owkaye How about $2.25 a month for 250gig instead? ~~~ sadiq Where? ~~~ owkaye Buy a 250gig Buffalo TurboUSB 2.0 external drive for $80 and it works out to less than $2.25 a month assuming a 3 year life span -- the duration of the manufacturer's warranty. Then you'll have all your data with you all time time so you'll never have to be online to access it, and you'll never have to worry about some 'service company' losing your data or allowing it to get into the wrong hands, and you'll never be subject to the company going out of business. In other words, take responsibility for storing your own data -- on your own hardware -- instead of trying to find excuses to pay someone else to store it in the cloud for you. :) ~~~ sc There is cost in overhead, too. Beyond getting the drive: - Connecting it to the internet so you can access it from anywhere - Setting up iTunes to stream properly - Setting up a mechanism that caches recent/popular files locally - Develop an iPhone app to access the drive	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Myspace is still the place every music artist needs to be. - nedwin http://www.mynameisned.com/myspace-is-still-the-number-one-place-every-music-artists-needs-to-be ====== iaskwhy It amazes me everytime that nobody made a better alternative for MySpace yet. They can't win because everything new they make is really crappy. Two recent examples: they are the place with more concert listings and still their new "I'm going to this show"-thing is really weak and focused on selling tickets instead of giving a good user experience (can't find shows by venue, etc); the new music player reminds me of old 90's, I believe it's a step back. The alternative is really easy to create: it's a place where you can upload your songs for free and use open graph from Facebook for comments, etc, because bands are now trying to slowly move to Facebook. That or Facebook gets a better way for artists to customize their pages. ~~~ bartl Facebook is not an alternative. More and more people refuse to use it. ~~~ nedwin I think this is fairly short sighted - they've got a lot of people to lose before they become irrelevant and they're still in a growth curve. ------ bartl In the USA you allegedly have last.fm, but that's pretty much useless if you're in the rest of the world; like me (Europe) and the guy who wrote the post (Australia). I agree, though: MySpace is no longer a social networking site, but rather, a music artists site: I guess over 99.9% of any active artists has a page there as I've only encountered 1 artist (and not a famous one) who didn't have a MySpace home page, in years. MySpace should focus _only_ on the musical artists, and dump everyone else. I often feel annoyed when I search for an artist on MySpace and I find an ordinary user has taken up his name for a totally uninteresting page about himself. ------ jessor True, sadly. I'd donate money just to see this giant spamhole gone, better: replaced by a successor. Every bit of value a myspace profile might have is destroyed by a crappy design, misused fields, "thanks for the add" messages and just plain advertisement anywhere else. We have nice stuff out there already, Soundcloud (nice player), Last.fm (band info), Bandcamp (most awesome sales platform)... I'm unexpressable eager to see someone creating the myspace killer with them. ~~~ nedwin Crappy design + too much irrelevant advertising + incredibly slow load times. The next version definitely needs to take the best elements of all of those services but initially it needs simplicity and I think the Sixty One guys are almost there. ------ mambodog As a musician myself, I really want someone to do something about this. Soundcloud has some of the important features down (eg. a music player that's not shit, unlike Myspace's), but they really need a customisable/brandable artist landing page to really take over the space. I know its far beyond what they are trying to be, but to me they seem like the closest to actually reaching the critical mass to make a go of it (at least in the electronic/dance music area).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Cursors - alloyed http://cursors.io ====== Matheus28 Dev here. There's an editor at [http://cursors.io?editor](http://cursors.io?editor), but it can't submit the level to me yet. But you can type "generateCode();" and put it on pastebin and email it to me at me [at] m28.io and I'll put it in game if I like it. My server is getting hammered pretty hard, that's the reason for the disconnects. The spike caused by hn: [http://d.m28.io/ZCWdy0m1DHOG.png](http://d.m28.io/ZCWdy0m1DHOG.png) I'm gonna sleep now but ask anything and I'll reply when I get up. Edit: Sleeping is not an option anymore, the server is having some... troubles. ~~~ touristtam Keybind found so far: * O: spawn * A/S: change paint color * W: exit? green block ~~~ dvorak42 More Keybinds from Code: * A: Prev Paint Color * S: Next Paint Color * B: Create Click Button * Z: Undo * W: Add Exit Block * O: Move Spawn Point * N: Create Hover Area * Arrows: Change Size ------ xnxn I started playing this while some code was compiling and ended up getting completely sucked in. That giddy thrill of enabling a restless mass of fellow cursors to rush through a gate, or the temporary, unspoken bond between the lone cursor selflessly manning a button and the new arrival sidling up to them to see if they want to change shifts... there's a lot going on in this seemingly simple game. I'm glad I got to play while it's at critical mass. (Developers, are you logging the cursor movements? This would be fascinating to analyze later.) ~~~ Matheus28 I am not logging anything at the moment. I started writing this a few days ago. ~~~ vegabook This is going to be H U G E. Stats about one's own selflessness etc would be really cool. Or even aggregated stuff. X% is selfish, Deciles of goodness etc. ~~~ sturmeh I was completely expecting some stats read out at the end, saying I had spent X time in levels that selfless people had spend Y time in. ------ potomushto Ooof, it's over. Some levels is more tragic and ironic than Hollywood movies. I've known a cursor who always clicking as if he cheering to everybody. Funny guy. There was two friendly cursors at the maze and they never stoped to draw a lines and moved together, side by side. "Leave me, save yourself!" \- I said to other brave cursor, but he stayed on the blue square and didn't want to escape the level. ------ NigelTufnel This is so much fun. It's kind of like RPG. There are 3 character classes. 1\. Asshole: just goes straight after the green square. 2\. Prankster: draws arrows pointing to the wrong exits. 3\. Batman: stays on the button and clicks. I've tried all three characters. Playing prankster is fun (I was a true trickster and sometimes drew the right arrow). Playing asshole is boring. Playing Batman is ok. My apologies to all the guys/gals who followed the wrong arrow. Many, many thanks to the author. Also, I haven't seen so many poorly drawn dicks and swastikas since grade school. ------ chrisdone Wow! There is so much going on here. I can't believe you're not logging! * First it starts out as a simple maze puzzle game. * Then it there're weird layouts where people are clicking stuff, and pathways are opening up randomly. * Then you realise it's not random at all, people have to click things for pathways to open. * Then you realise someone has to stay behind and sacrifice themselves for other people to go through. * Then there're levels where multiple people have to coordinate and click at the same time to open n layers gates. * Then there're levels where not only do you have to stay behind, you have to go out of your way to do so. So you'll be letting people through for a while, you realise, as it's more efficient for the group as a whole. At some point you have to decide you've taken your turn and you move towards the main gate and wait, and then new people come and then they have to realise to go to press the key. * So next level you see someone sacrificing themselves and you decide instead to go take their place and wiggle your mouse to tell them to go. "I got this", you indicate. * Now some people have got it into their head this is all about cooperation and selflessness. So you can be waiting in one of these buttons in the middle of nowhere, letting people through for a minute, and a new guy will start making their way towards you to let you go, and you draw "thanks" on your way out, they wiggle their mouse to say "welcome" and off you go, leaving them behind. * On some levels, not only did people have to coordinate at the same time, but things had to be done in sequence. On one, there wasn't enough people to hit all buttons at once, so we coordinated where you would unwrap the "outer" layer of wall protecting the exit, and a couple people would move inside, then you'd unwrap another inner layer, and so on, until they could get out. Finally, you'd decide your turn was over and go wait the same way. It took quite a while before this was figured out collectively -- but once newcomers saw how it was done it went in one smooth operation until I got out and onto another maze. And that's to say nothing of the selfish people who just passed through maze after maze. In one maze people were waiting, and I and another were at the buttons, but there was one other. One of them had to realise they needed to sacrifice themselves. We were both wiggling our mouses to indicate so, but they didn't see it. There's also the way people will follow you in the maze if you look confident, and the way people will draw on the right exit to help people out. I'd try to leave a trail if I'd had the right exit cracked in the maze. In a way I think the inability to write and communicate is fantastic: you can't just tell someone "do this". They have to figure out that they need to collaborate, they have to have some kind of intuitive social empathy that puts the needs of the many against the needs of the few. Genuinely, mate, this is the most fascinating "game" I've played in a long time. And I can't believe you're not logging it all! I'm sure game theorists and psychologists would love to get their hands on this kind of data. I thought it was a real experiment done for research. Glad I got to play this while 700 people were on it, I think that really made for some great interactions. It felt like being part of some kind of military team. ~~~ tokenizerrr It's great, the second time I played it I started drawing arrows at incorrect exits at the one level where you have to pick the correct one or be sent back. When I started there were about 10 people in the level and everything went quite smoothly since there was the occasional person pointing an arrow at the correct exit. By the time I was done there were at least 50 cursors in the room and it became completely chaotic. People started crossing out my arrows, and others joined me in my effort of drawing false arrows. ~~~ Ideka Hahaha. That level is so much fun to troll people in. Someone was drawing an X on the correct exit, and I started drawing a checkmark on the one next to it. When they realized, they tried to cross it out. ~~~ bhaumik Trolling was a fun break between bouts of altruism. On levels like this [1], I'd click until the counter went down to 1 and step away. Right before the cursor I pissed off came to take over the shift, I'd start clicking again. [http://i.imgur.com/i3bOD81.png](http://i.imgur.com/i3bOD81.png) ~~~ shpx You were one of _those_ people... ------ jasonkostempski I love how there's no way to stick out from the crowd, you could be selfish or selfless when ever you want and no one will be able to recognize you as soon as you blend in with the other cursors. Only you know how you behaved. I decided to be one of the dancing cursors pointing to the right exit on the early stage, it was so fun to watch the difference in throughput when someone was dancing vs not. Almost everyone went straight for the dancer if there was one and just went 1 by 1 otherwise. ------ eperfa The band Kilo had a "crowdsourced music video" based on the same concept: [http://donottouch.org/](http://donottouch.org/) ~~~ Matheus28 That was also one of my inspirations! (That and cursors10) ~~~ protester Do you know 5xman. It's a lot of fun. It's a flash game you can play in armor games and kongregate (I don't know for how long this link will be valid, but anyway: [http://armorgames.com/play/6819/5xman](http://armorgames.com/play/6819/5xman)) ------ tux1968 Everyone seems to be loving it, but doesn't work for me. I don't control any of the cursors. There's a message in the bottom corner "Area too full, drawing is disabled". Latest Firefox. ~~~ bandwevil Firefox's cursor hiding breaks it, won't let you move the cursor, so don't enable it. Red circled cursor is your actual mouse position, grey circled one is the 'ingame' cursor that's blocked by walls. Move the red onto the grey to start. ~~~ bjz_ I found disabling the cursor lock on FF helped ~~~ aaronem No trouble here. FF 31.1.0esr. ------ namuol Reminds me of cursor10[1]. I always wanted an actual multiplayer version of it -- awesome! [1] [http://nekogames.jp/g.html?gid=CURSOR10](http://nekogames.jp/g.html?gid=CURSOR10) ~~~ Matheus28 That's actually from where I got my inspiration! Thanks for noticing ------ hanief I love it. I learn to be sometimes sacrificing myself and sometimes to be selfish enough. Ps: I just realized you can draw something on board. Hint: Press and hold Ctrl. ~~~ aganders3 Ahh, that's what the "Area too full, drawing is disabled" was for. I saw some drawing in a later level and didn't connect the dots. ~~~ hanief I think no, that is the message from the server whenever it was overloaded. The drawing is not persistent. It goes away after a while. ------ AYBABTME In that level where the buttons are deep into a maze, I punished jerks who wouldn't do their part by clicking the button until it reaches 1, but no more. For a good 30s, there was a group at the gate drawing hateful messages to me. I'd been there for a good 5 min helping people out, and letting others through. The ones that were waiting had not travelled anywhere close to a button, they'd only been waiting at the gate for others to sacrifice themselves for them. Then one of them eventually gave up and came to replace me. What a bunch of assholes. That's not everybody of course, but the later in the levels you go, the higher the proportion of jerks you'd meet. This, I guess, because the ones who aren't jerks take more time to move forward in the levels, while jerks move faster. So while jerks can't reach the next level without the presence of good-doers, there still less and less good-doers as you progress forward. There's also attrition in good-doers along the way from: - Connections timing out or otherwise erroring. - People giving up. And the further you move in the levels, the higher the jerk proportion so the longer it takes a good-doer to move forward, increasing the probability that one of the two attrition causes occur. So it's possible that good-doers never make it to the end of the game (and thus nobody). In fact, if the game has enough levels, I'd be surprised if anyone ever managed to finish it without deliberate coordination by a group of good-doers. All that to say, this game is really interesting. ~~~ kbart Actually my experience is opposite -- the further you go, the more people have already realised the importance of teamwork and it's easier to cooperate, while at the beginning everyone just rushes to the next level. Anyway, very interesting idea and also could be put to the use for psychology students etc. ------ Walkman The challenge is not to simply finish the game, but to finish the game before it disconnects :D ~~~ pimlottc Yes, some means of saving your progress via the history API or localStorage or something would be very appreciated. ------ zniperr So, I just completed the "curiosity killed the mouse" level, took 3 people a while to realise what was going on, but after a few minutes we got to the non- obvious solution, and I got sent back to the first level. I feel a bit screwed over now... =\| ~~~ Matheus28 Don't worry, it always comes right before the last level, so you didn't lose much. ~~~ Eiriksmal Is that still true, Magnificent Cursors Creator? This morning, I finished it and, if I'm remembering my pre-coffee activities correctly, a few more stages after it and never reached the end. ~~~ Matheus28 It should be, unless there's a bug. But I'm pretty sure there isn't a bug... ------ hkailahi Playing this was a mistake on my part considering I have plenty of networking HW due tomorrow, but then again looking at HN was the first mistake. Great job! It's a simple game that ended up being significantly more fun than I thought it would be. ------ Aaronneyer So much fun, great to see how people work together to help each other win. I gave up on the one where you had to squeeze through a bunch of narrow red pathways, it's not so easy on a trackpad. ~~~ vacri 'Cheat' to get you past thin red pathways: line yourself up with the pathway, and jam yourself against the wall opposing the path. Take your cursor outside the game box, then bring it in from the opposite side. Your cursor will snap across to the wall opposite where it currently is. My hand is a bit too wobbly for those paths, so I had to 'think outside the box' to get past them... ~~~ Robadob I just turned on mousekeys (on windows) and then used the number pad to travel vertically/horizontally. ------ prezjordan This is _way_ more interesting than I thought it'd be. I bet it was a blast to build, too. ------ jmcejuela This is pure genius. I was amazed at the self-emerging cyclical selfish & altruist behaviors. Good job, mate. ------ msthomaa Anybody figured how to get gold in "You can't get always what you want"? ~~~ Kequc I can't see any way to do it I think the solution is it's impossible. ~~~ msthomaa I've been there for a while and tried everything... Nothing worked so far. ~~~ d23 I started poking around with the javascript to see if I could hack it, but it seems to have server-side verification to stop you from moving to places you shouldn't be able to access. ------ iamwil I really wanted to see how many people were at each level, to get a sense of how far up the tower this goes, and how many people were up top, and how soon I'd get there. It'd also be cool if the higher up you go, you can see a previous level, and affect it in some way, like helping more cursors get up to your level, or hinder them to be evil. ------ pmontra Interesting but it lost me when I had start to have to do pixel accurate manoeuvring. That was challenging when I was 16, but it feels so pointless now (30 years later). By the way, apparently it doesn't work with the ad on the bottom turned off by either NoScript or Adblock (connection to server lost). ~~~ josephagoss I used Ease of Access Center in Windows to control the mouse via the numpad to get past the really annoying ones, getting past those parts was worth it. ~~~ pdkl95 for i in $(seq 50) ; do eesh warp rel 0 -8 sleep 0.1 done // yes, I still use e16 ------ fifthesteight Interesting CPU performance in Chrome on Ubuntu! Relating to this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8471049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8471049) (Google chrome helper amok in OSX HN thread) While playing Cursors my chrome CPU usage went through-the-roof! Just like OSX 60-80%+ CPU usage on that page. Side-by-side comparison with a mac at cursors.io had identical CPU (so may just be the load of the app). Just did a side-by-side comparison with Mozilla in Ubuntu showed no higher than 15% for about 90 seconds, but actually ended up jumping to 100% Edit: The mozilla cpu jump was related to cursor hiding. Otherwise the crazy cpu usage is entirely gone. The issue persists in chrome. ------ PavlovsCat I get nothing either in Firefox or Chrome :( Firefox says: > SecurityError: The operation is insecure. client_out.js:30 Chrome says: > Uncaught SecurityError: Failed to read the 'localStorage' property from > 'Window': Access is denied for this document. ~~~ krzyk Doesn't work for me on Firefox Aurora, console shows: ReferenceError: WebSocket is not defined I see just a rectangle with border, when I move cursor to it it disappears, when I move it out it appears again. ------ tbirdz Unfortunately I got the message "Lost Connection to Server", after I had made significant progress, and had to start over. But all in all, I think it's a very interesting (and fun) game. The only part which concerns me is the fact that it's multiplayer only, which means as people lose interest over time it simply won't be playable. But, then again I don't see how the mechanics would translate to single player only, unless the other mouse cursors were controlled by bots with different algorithms to simulate various humans playstyles. ------ Achshar The experience is so good! Though I wish there was some way to save state after connection lost. I have lost it a couple of times now probably because of load and it starts over every time. ~~~ NaNaN +1 Also "clear state". ------ undershirt recorded a video of my experience (1h40m with level bookmarks in description): [http://youtu.be/vtuZlufpfag](http://youtu.be/vtuZlufpfag) truly great idea. thanks for the game! ------ rhapsodyv Hey! It needs save the progress!! :-( ------ SethKinast The level that really made me smile was one with about twenty "exits", only one of which was real. One of the cursors sat by the real one and danced invitingly until everyone noticed. ~~~ RoboTeddy Did they figure out which was the real one, and then restart the game and get to that level just to point out the correct answer? ~~~ dsl When I got to that level a cursor was drawing an arrow to a false path. I couldn't figure out how to draw, so I assume a "fake cursor" was part of the level. ~~~ morgante You can draw by holding ctrl. ------ macu "Warning: Next iteration in a genre of basic addiction games." These games really are impressive though. I wonder if there's been a good thesis written on them yet. ------ ponyous Loved the game. There is one level where you have to push 4 buttons to open barriers. But 1 player if fast enough can push 3 of them and you get glitched through last one. So I was trying to get one cursor through, clicking every button 5 times, but I was just a bit too slow. Then he just came to my place and wiggled "hey move on its my turn to help". He was fast enough and I moved on... ------ Oculus You have to love the game theory behind this. In order to get through the later levels you have to be a bit selfish and take the oppurtunity of going for the green square at other people's expense. The most interesting part is once you get to the last few levels where everyone is selfish. Makes for difficult times passing the level :) Props to the dev for creating a simple game that is a huge amount of fun! ------ smcl OK can someone describe what on earth this is. I've tried twice - once I ended up in a maze with a load of other mouse cursors and no indication of what to do (I spent a couple of minutes moving around towards some coloured squares but ultimately nothing happened). The other time I was in a white screen that said "press shift and click to draw" but doing so did nothing :-/ ~~~ joshvm Get to the green square. You're the cursor with the yellow halo around it. Figuring out the rest of the problems is part of the fun :) ~~~ smcl Guess I've having issues then, I made it to the square when I tried before and now I'm getting a blank screen and a message about losing connection. Oh well. ------ Lrigikithumer Just a heads up, I'm on a touch screen and can abuse those pink parts pretty easily by just tapping the screen on the other side of them. ~~~ eterm You can do this with a normal cursor too. Get the cursor to the edge opposite the one you want to get to. Press escape to go into loose lock mode (not sure how to describe this). By taking your cursor down outside the box, it doesn't register as being too far away (stays yellow). You can loop your mouse around to the other side outside the window and instantly your cursor catches up when you re-enter on the opposite side. ------ cel Awesome app. It reminds me of a thing I made, [http://www.theinfinitemaze.com/](http://www.theinfinitemaze.com/) One thing I did on that site which could be useful here: aid the mouse movement with a A search with limited depth, so that the game cursor moves toward the actual cursor a little more instead of blocking when there is a wall in the way. ------ blackjack48 Curiosity killed the mouse... ~~~ gmaslov I went to the more-difficult-to-reach exit and was sent all the way back to the beginning of the game :-( ~~~ chris_overseas [Spoiler Alert] I did this on the first play through too. I played through again and it turns out that's the last level anyway. If you take the easy option you end up in a blank level where all the winners can hang out and just draw pictures. When I was there it was 50% people expressing their joy in finishing, and 50% dick pics :) ~~~ theLearningChan That is hilarious. This game is awesome. ------ comex Broken in Safari - [Error] TypeError: undefined is not a function (evaluating 'w.requestPointerLock()') ma (client_out.js, line 1) (As the error suggests, checking the 'no pointer lock' button fixes it, but it shouldn't be silently failing.) Edit: Ouch, I was disconnected from the server after getting several levels in. ~~~ Matheus28 Thanks for the bug report, should be fixed now. ------ sillysaurus3 I went AFK after reaching a particularly hard level, and came back to "Lost connection to server." Apparently it boots you if you're AFK for more than a minute or two. A bit frustrating, considering how much "work" I put in to get to that point. It's hands-down the best HTML 5 game experience I've ever had. I look forward to more. ~~~ garrettgrimsley I have that message too now, I think the server simply went down, as I was not AFK at all. ~~~ Matheus28 Dev here, yep. Server was restarted. ~~~ garrettgrimsley I'm an active gamer and this is the first time I've had fun playing something in years. Thank you. ~~~ Matheus28 Thank you. That means a lot :) ------ mythz Loving the anonymous "mob psychology" patterns that can be seen whilst playing the game, the cursors makes it look like we're observing a swarm of (intelligent) flies :) Also funny to witness in the harder levels most cursors getting slower and slower as to avoid having to start again :) ~~~ DonHopkins I was trolled by a very mean cursor who relentlessly cyber bullied me and made some very NSFW gestures! I captured a screen snapshot, reported it to the FBI, and described the cursor who assaulted me to a sketch artist, but they said they could not do anything about it unless they have more evidence as to the rogue cursor's identity. What am I to do??? ~~~ aaronem Be more subtle. ------ Ghoy Lots of fun, most fun is at the end of the game. A lot of drawing took place on the end level, was fun :D ------ edent Just completed the game. Amazed me how "selfish" some players were. Although it's hard to communicate actions - and harder still to differentiate players - it did seem that I spend much longer helping players who just camped by the exit. ~~~ iliis There's an end? Aw, man! I tought it was just big bunch of randomly chosen levels. How about a counter? Something like 'this is level 123 from 444'? Surprisingly awesome game tough! ~~~ Dewie That's what I don't like about these "throw you into our world" games/websites. Sure, it's kind of adventurous to just be thrown into some game you don't know what is about or for, but it's not good for the web surfing procrastinator in me. OK, nice game and all, but is this going to be taking 5 minutes or two hours to complete? (Yes, I did finish this particular game. Someone pointed out how many levels there were, in one of the comments.) ~~~ Dewie And: If I close the game and want to continue the game later, is the game stored for me? ------ patcon Ugh. Two cursors are trolling the first level. They put their cursors on the block that can't have any on it, and so it prevents anyone playing from moving on :/ Would be awesome to kick cursors who haven't moved off a toggle in x many minutes... ------ anmonteiro90 Very nice game, I just wasted a bit of my time trying to get through the levels :) which is always a good indication if you ask me. On another note: 1) can you provide 1/2 links to the JS cursor API behind the game? 2) Do you plan to open source it? Keep up the nice work ------ CyberShadow Crashed twice on me now (other players stop moving, and the game stops responding to input). IndexSizeError: Index or size is negative or greater than the allowed amount Somewhere on line 18 of client_out.js, which is probably not very helpful because the source is minified. ------ Fuzzwah I was going to post asking for level numbers to be displayed, but then I read through the comments here and actually enjoyed reading people's stories about levels and having to describe them in terms other than "level #53". ------ samim We did a quiz game with cursor sharing earlier this year here: [http://artefutureplay-20905.onmodulus.net/play/p](http://artefutureplay-20905.onmodulus.net/play/p) (DE/FR lang only) ------ srijankedia Dev - The game is really creative and addictive! I am a Ph.D. student and I would like to use the game as a platform for research. Do you plan on making the logs available any time? Would you be interested in this direction? ------ KhalilK The only downside is when disconnection occurs, the game gets reset, frustrating :( ------ Nyarglebargle Trying to get it on reddit too: [http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2jowld/cursors/](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2jowld/cursors/) ------ KhalilK Finally finished it, now I can get back to whatever I was doing a couple of hours ago. [http://i.imgur.com/ZUTUZ6L.png](http://i.imgur.com/ZUTUZ6L.png) ~~~ boyaka I happened to see this post while randomly refreshing /newest last night, 0 comments at the time. PST time zone. Says it was posted 10 hours ago which is about 9pm PST. I promise I wasn't selfish! I definitely helped people out. Also had no lag issues at that time but some levels I did have to wait 5-10 minutes for more people to come through. [http://i.imgur.com/STilfzp.png](http://i.imgur.com/STilfzp.png) ------ arms I just finished a long coding session (it's 3AM here), and was about to go to sleep before I saw this. Looks like I won't be going to bed for awhile longer... :) ------ xs I would like the cursor to change color slowly as it ages on each level. This way you can see who's been in that level for a long time and who's just arriving. ------ bbrks This level is impossible to get past if somebody leaves the exit area. [http://i.imgur.com/wBK3pKo.png](http://i.imgur.com/wBK3pKo.png) ------ Vecrios Wow! First impression: this is stupid. Played for two minutes, couldn't stop for a 15 minutes. Congrats on creating a truly fun game from a simple idea. ------ stepstep I love it. :) Small suggestion: make the cursor slide against walls rather than getting stuck (at least it gets stuck on walls for me in Chrome). ------ danbruc This was fun, thx! Nicknames or custom colorable cursor might be a nice addition so you can identify your peers. Or it may ruin it, not sure. ------ singularity2001 To 'skip' the narrow passages: google "Move mouse with cursor keys" ;} programmatically: CGWarpMouseCursorPosition on mac ~~~ Hello71 or do the ol' impossible quiz trick ------ asdfasdfasdf11 Interesting game, and nice little "success" with the amount of concurrent players. Any ideas how to monetize something like that? ------ j_lev Thanks to this game I finally decided to upgrade my ball mouse to LASER. (and unfortunately I got "disconnected from server" about 15 levels in) ------ dsl "Connection to server lost" I had myself convinced for a few minutes it was just a clever way to end the game when you got to the last level. ------ GhostCursor Definitely a Titan game! I like that people are requesting saved progress. Uh no, you're a cursor, get back out there as a fresh cursor... ~~~ Psylocyber I agree! Fun to see people 'claiming' anonymous cursors. "That's me!" "Which?" "That one, with the spots!" ------ zmk_ I just made a bunch of people go crazy drawing on one level. It took me 30 minutes trying to get someone draw anything. ~~~ emerongi I tried that in the end. ALMOST made a mickey mouse. Almost. ~~~ zmk_ The end level I actually did that with some help. ;) I tried to get people draw things at the point where if somebody stepped on a button all walls disappeared. ------ cturhan Is that gold thing real? Any way to go in? ~~~ TEDSON Press alt + F4 to get gold. ------ bevenky A simulated social experiment it is. This is pretty much how societies will need to be like. WIN - WIN - WIN! ------ antimora When I open the link it says "Lost connection to server". Is anyone getting the same message? ------ marco1 How did you solve the chicken-and-egg problem of getting your first dozens of concurrent users, author? ~~~ Matheus28 Threads. Lots of threads. Heh, just kidding. But really, since there are no communication between levels, it's pretty simple actually. ------ iammyIP Nice game! I did not think i would finish, but it kept me hooked. The cooperation mechanics were fun. ------ kevinchau Lost connection to server a couple times now. Gets old trying to get through the beginning levels. ~~~ waitingkuo I think we need a save/load button or the auto-save feature ------ alexvr Are there any safeguards against bots? Or could someone just sit on a # tile while auto-clicking? ------ iopq Lost connection to server??? NOOOOO ~~~ imarihantnahata Start again? :-o NOOOO ------ cheeaun This reminds me of an app that I built ~6 years ago [http://cursorlog.appspot.com/](http://cursorlog.appspot.com/) \- it's not working now, some JS error with `this.hidden` :( Source code here [https://code.google.com/p/cursorlog/](https://code.google.com/p/cursorlog/) ------ lfottaviano Wonderful Gamee! Would you tell us which technologies & APIs have you implemented? thx! ------ hellodevnull For the first five minutes I kept worrying it was going to be a scream (see Maze Game). ------ agumonkey This gives RSI faster than Emacs ------ darekkay The Ending screen is the best thing since using Paint on Windows 3.11 :D ------ mycookie Awesome, reminds me of Antichamber, especially the little hints given. ~~~ Matheus28 Yeah I played that game too. I remembered it when writing the hints... I guess that counts as inspiration. ------ waitingkuo I got a "Lost connection to server" Anything went wrong? ~~~ kevinchau too much load ------ dkurbz Have you made any changes recently/do you have a changelog? ------ amatai Simply amazing. Shows team work, sacrifice, cooperation. Nice!!! ------ spacefight Thank you so much for releasing this not on a weekday :) ------ jaktet Has anyone finished? ~~~ RoboTeddy Yep! [https://roboteddy- img.s3.amazonaws.com/051583a403c58c10a87d3...](https://roboteddy- img.s3.amazonaws.com/051583a403c58c10a87d3756310cd822.png) ~~~ jaktet Woo [http://i.imgur.com/4RN9UN0.png](http://i.imgur.com/4RN9UN0.png) ------ sturmeh This is awesome, you totally need to make cursor RPG. ------ NaNaN I want to buy this game now. <3 The server hurts. ------ olegbl Teasing people after hacking in noclip is quite fun. ------ jjallen How many levels are there? I played until about 12 ~~~ Matheus28 About 40 at the moment. ~~~ aw3c2 Some indicator would be great. Maybe even of "cursors in the earlier levels that might come soon". Is there branching? I was stuck with 3 people in a room where we needed 5-6 (or super good clickers) to proceed and gave up waiting for new cursors after several minutes. (The spiral with 5-6 "5 click" buttons that were all blocking the exit in the lower right.) ------ zephjc Got to big maze and... "Connection Lost" ------ jhsu42 Ugh, as soon as I get far I get disconnected.... ------ zirco Now it's stuck in a stage forever :/ ------ devindotcom This is insanely fun. Thanks so much. ------ ForFreedom why is there a lost connection with the server? Is the game server connecting to the webserver via private ip? ------ afatc This was a lot of fun, well made! ------ bhhaskin Thanks for this! It was a blast! ------ smrtinsert This is soooo addictive. ------ wingworks This is the best game! ------ flyrain Cool game, love it. ------ thethrows And it's dead. ~~~ grepper And we were so far along, too :( _crosses fingers for persistent state_ ------ cyanfrog WTB tutorial :D ------ joshmn My head hurts. I love it. ------ singularity2001 any cheat page yet? ------ congdv awesome ------ notastartup Omg! I couldn't stop playing. what is the technology behind this. this is amazing. ~~~ Matheus28 Just a bunch of hamsters and a few spinning wheels. It was kinda hard at first but once you figure out the right food, they won't stop running.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Elon Musk’s SpaceX uses Linux in Starlink satellite system - vvpvijay https://androidrookies.com/elon-musks-spacex-uses-linux-operating-system-in-starlink-satellite-system/ ====== lgats This is an article on a reddit thread, but it doesn’t seem to link to the source thread. AMA: [https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/gxb7j1/we_are_the_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/gxb7j1/we_are_the_spacex_software_team_ask_us_anything/) Highlights: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/gxypym/starlink_h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/gxypym/starlink_highlights_from_the_spacex_software_team/) ------ mensetmanusman Does anyone wonder what the risk of takeover is? i.e. could a nation-state take control of a starlink network with sufficient code exploits?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Overstated – React state management library that's delightful to use - fabiospampinato https://github.com/fabiospampinato/overstated ====== fabiospampinato Author here. I've kind of rewritten unstated [0], because building large-ish apps with it was starting to become troublesome. Overstated is: \- Even simpler: connecting to the stores via `useStore` of `connect` is much more ergonomic than unstated's `Subscribe` component. \- Much more performant: it encourages the user to use only the state/methods he needs (via a selector function) so it can re-render components only when absolutely necessary. \- TypeScript friendly: our `useStore` hook is fully typed and makes writing components a joy (I think this is huge once you actually get to try it). What do you think? :) [0] [https://github.com/jamiebuilds/unstated](https://github.com/jamiebuilds/unstated)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
First Jolla Sailfish smartphones will ship on November 27 - MehdiEG http://www.techhive.com/article/2063580/first-jolla-sailfish-smartphones-will-ship-on-november-27.html ====== Zigurd This is the first high-spec handset with one of the new OSs. You can get Firefox OS on a fairly lo-spec device, and that's probably good for Mozilla's ability to mature their product, but this launch will determine if any of the new OSs can compete with iOS and Android on first tier OEMs' devices.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why It Took Google So Long to End Shady Rehab Center Ads - champagnepapi https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-26/why-it-took-google-so-long-to-end-shady-rehab-center-ads ====== ballenf I would suggest Bloomberg and other media research what can be done to educate people that advertisers sometimes, once in a while, aren't spending money in order to make people's lives better. To be clear, the parties behind these sham recovery centers are scum that deserve any and every legal repercussion available. And, if illegal, no Google shouldn't do business with them. But the bottom line reason why Google didn't act faster was because they weren't per se illegal, but more so loophole exploiters. Policy makers subsidized an industry and, learning nothing from every other subsidy in the history of the world, forgot that subsidies invite bad actors. (Calling coverage of medical treatment a 'subsidy' is admittedly somewhat of a stretch, but in the context of all the medical issues that health insurance does not cover I stand by the label. E.g., German public health insurance used to cover 'prescriptions' for sun and relaxation, until it became abused by people taking taxpayer subsidized vacations. Designations of coverage have a similar effect as a subsidy, at the very least.) This path we're heading down of expecting "the internet" to protect us from the latest baddies out there worries me on a much deeper level. And I don't see this as a 'slippery slope' argument: this is just looking at existing data points and following the trajectory. The current direction is worrying, without regard for the potential of acceleration. Exploitive ads have been around forever -- from the literal snake oil salesmen to the ads in every newspaper, magazine and yellow pages to the present. Hard cases make bad law. That's a maxim that is depressingly unpopular today. ~~~ kosi28 pfft...Google is more bothered about putting electric thread into Levi Jackets and Lidar on top of our cars. All this shit involving real people and real problems is beneath them. And people like you make it easier for them to stay up there in their Ivory Towers. Keep it up. ~~~ leggomylibro Well, don't scoff at wearable electronics just because they're mostly LEDs and NFC chips right now. If we can figure out how to make something both stretchy and conductive, there's a lot of practical opportunity. What if your knee/elbow/wrist/etc brace had a small alarm to go off when you start to overextend it during recovery? What if your jacket had a button to quickly mark precise GPS spots in the field for later follow-up inspections? What if your shirt could adaptively nag people about their posture during the 4 hours they spend seated every day? Heck, you could cobble the GPS jacket together today with off-the-shelf parts; it'd just look strange and probably be fragile/uncomfortable to wear. As for self-driving cars not involving 'real people and problems,' I just don't understand what you mean by that; could you elaborate? ~~~ s73ver_ That, and it's not like the people working on the wearable electronics could suddenly drop that and become people vetting ads. ------ JacobJans Here's the core of the issue. Google may be making over one billion dollars from ads in this space. However, they say it is "hard for Google to cut off shady treatment providers unless someone tipped off the company." Surely, with a small portion of that one billion dollars, they could figure out a solution. Of course, they have no interest in actually solving this type of situation, which is widespread across many verticals. In one of my markets, I have repeatedly complained about deceptive advertisers. They've done next-to- nothing to stop them. I used to be against ad blocking software. ~~~ leggomylibro What, do you want companies to be responsible for the negative externalities of their products? Next you'll want oil companies to pay for cleaning up their messes, and banks to pay for financial crises, and data processors to take responsibility for their huge data breaches. That's crazy talk - where are we, the people's republic of canada? ~~~ goialoq And you'll want Verizon to monitor the content of your phone calls to catch fraudsters. Oh, wait, what was the narrative again? ~~~ smt88 Your analogy makes no sense. For Verizon to catch fraudsters, they have to police their customers' behavior. The key is _customers ' behavior_, not _their own behavior_. Oil companies don't need to violate customers' privacy to clean up oil. They don't need to do anything negative to customers at all. The same is true of banks paying for financial crises and Equifax paying to privacy damage. All they'd be doing is fixing their own mistakes, not policing their customers or users. As for the relationship with OP: Facebook's users and customers are different. Because such a large percentage of the public uses Facebook, the company's duty to protect its users should come ahead of its duty to protect its customers. If FB kills a few shady corporations, it's not nearly as bad as if those shady corporations harm actual human beings. ------ thrownaway954 Something has to be done with the treatment industry as a whole. It's sad when a group of them come into an AA and/or NA meeting and the meeting is used as their "therapy" session. I see this way too often in the rooms. The center should be treating the mental aspects of addiction as well as the physical at the center. Most of these fly by night treatment centers have no interest in addressing the mental aspect of addiction, and as a result, the center becomes a revolving door for some. Maybe by removing these shady centers from advertising on Google it will help put them out of business and the centers that are trying to help will thrive. Time will tell. ~~~ mapster its the same approach the free market has to elder care. they are for profit cash machines with a thin veneer of care. they are run on a shoe string, hiring barely qualified technicians working 12 hr shifts. what could go wrong? ------ Cenk This is a good article on the problem: [https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me- go...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me-google- search-scam-florida-treatment-centers) ~~~ default-kramer I love this part: > Business name paperwork took a pretty surreal turn during this analogue SEO > war. In 2004, a former Sea Winds exec named his new company A ALCOHAAAAAL A > + A ABUSE 24 HOUR AAAA ABLE HEPLINE AND COUNSELING CENTER, INC ------ mrtron The CPA is so high for rehab that there are many highly motivated people doing highly elaborate schemes for client acquisition. They were among the early adopters for tv ads on adwords a decade ago. ------ sireat Holy cow, $187 per click, that seems ridiculously high and no wonder has attracted attention of all kind of bad faith actors. Granted, I have not checked AdWords in 10 years back when most things cost less than $1 per click, save for some mesothelioma searches which used to go for $10-15 per click. ~~~ CobrastanJorji Most things still do, but there are a handful of CRAZY expensive searches. Stuff like "home insurance price quote" or "dui lawyer LA" or "good mortgage" cost an arm and a leg. ~~~ Karunamon That reminds me, on a slightly related tangent: AdNauseam now works with the latest Firefox nightly. It's a uBlock Origin fork that stashes the ads in the background and clicks on them (but as a simple request, so the other side never gets loaded). Great for ruining your tracking profile and contributing ever so slightly to the downfall of attention abuse as a business model. ------ bogomipz Google, one of the world's largest analytics companies didn't think there was anything suspicious about an uptick in revenue from "treatment center" AdWords? This is the same willful ignorance that Facebook employed when it failed to notice an uptick in political ad buys by "The Internet Research Agency" during the US election season. It seems clear that both Google and Facebook can be counted on to do the right thing but only after someone else blows the whistle. ------ Animats Google has done outreach to some very shady industries. They were at IFX Expo in Cyprus in 2016, pitching Google ads to binary options "brokers".[1] (Binary options are a total scam; start at the link and read the multi-part Times of Israel expose.) [1] [https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-victims-pile-up-the- binary-...](https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-victims-pile-up-the-binary- options-industry-parties-in-cyprus/) ------ coldcode As long as there is enormous revenue from selling ads, Google and Facebook and others have to do stuff like this, or their sky-high valuations might come down. So wether you take money from scummy fake rehab centers (and real ones who now have to play the game) or Russian election manipulators, its not likely to stop without costing a lot revenue. Looking the other way until you get called out is probably good business from their point of view. ------ SCAQTony Unfortunately there is no procedure, process or prescription that can terminate drug dependency for all. Psychology is still somewhat in the middle ages when compared to mechanical or digital sciences. Could one make an argument that all rehab centers are "shady" if they can't deliver a final product for all? With that in mind, rehab centers are VERY important till we figure out the human mind and addiction. ~~~ tyingq At least in the US, I view any addiction treatment center that would pay for leads as useless. Barring the few clinics that are run by charitible organizations, they all follow the same pattern. Your treatment plan always happens to be equal to the amount that your insurance will pay for, or that you can pay out of pocket. Several hundred dollars per day, at a minimum. That means that for all but the rich, it's a 2 week stay, which isn't going to do anything useful. Tldr: If the clinic can afford to pay ppc advertising to get patients, they aren't really helping anyone. ------ lifeisstillgood In the U.K. We have the ASA - advertising standards authority, which while often derided has actual teeth when forcing a "bad" ad to be removed. I am unclear if these ads would get removed (the ad is not untruthful, just the service advertised is scam) but the point I am making is that we need to move beyond Google removing the ads and "us" removing them. This is a society sized problem - and like all society problems it needs society level action - that's either market based where externalities and other effects are in the right direction or plain and simple regulation. The opiods crisis that middle America seem enmeshed in now has to be dealt with at massive governmental action level. Googles ads are a tiny sideshow. And if you do fix it we can use the same model for alcohol, elderly care, sexual abuse. We got lots to fix. ------ ykler Speaking as someone perpetually puzzled by the American healthcare system, from an economic standpoint, it seems like it is primarily the responsibility of government or perhaps the insurance industry to fix this. (Government, of course, is paralyzed. As for insurance companies, I don't understand that well their incentives and the impact of regulation on them. For instance, could they refuse to pay for expensive treatments or for relatively ineffective treatments, and would it be worth it for them?) It is good that Google is finally cracking down and bad that they didn't earlier, but it is a bad idea to present corporations (or people) with opportunities to legally make huge profits by doing harmful things (or allowing harm to harmful things to happen). ~~~ sjg007 They do refuse to pay for experimental treatments or ineffective treatments. The question is why not in the case of shady addiction centers.. my guess is that Florida has/had some language regulating the payers effectively tying their hands. Mental health / substance abuse got a big push from the ACA as well which likely enabled things as well. <conjecture> Also a lot of these early adopters may have likely first started out as court ordered so they were already established for this type of "acute" care and just scaled up when the demand developed. </conjecture> ------ gregshap "America’s $35 billion addiction treatment market" $35 Billion. That's at least 10x-50x what I would have guessed. Google isn't creating this market, but yes they should try to help. This is a fundamental and enormous societal problem. ------ tcj_phx My friend is currently at her second 'rehab' center... The first one was a disaster for her because all they did was go to 12-step meetings, and charged her $25,000 or $30,000 for the month. Talking about drugs all the time is a good strategy to get an addict to want to use drugs. She didn't last very long at that place before she relapsed and they sent her back to the psychiatric hospital, who decided that they'd clearly made an error in allowing the tranquilizers to lapse. Tranquilizers do not treat poor diets. Her current center specializes in "dual diagnosis". This is the fraudulent diagnosis that pretends that patients' psychiatric diagnoses are of no relation to their tendency to self-medicate with the street pharmacy. Really this second place just gets their clients "stabilized" on their psychiatric medications and hauls them around to daily 12-step meetings. My friend is doing better now because I went to the courts to try to get the treatment provider to explain why they had her on double-doses of tranquilizers, when my phone videos clearly prove that she was fine before she got assaulted with Haldol ("anti-psychotic") when she ran out of alcohol [1]. Sometime doctors do good work, sometimes they make work for themselves. [1] [http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/289848-overview](http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/289848-overview) : Alcohol-related psychosis spontaneously clears with discontinuation of alcohol use and may resume during repeated alcohol exposure. Distinguishing alcohol-related psychosis from schizophrenia or other primary psychotic disorders through clinical presentation often is difficult. It is generally accepted that alcohol-related psychosis remits with abstinence, unlike schizophrenia. If persistent psychosis develops, diagnostic confusion can result. Comorbid psychotic disorders (eg, schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders) and severe mood disorder with psychosis may exist, resulting in the psychosis being attributed to the wrong etiology. The only thing the current treatment center gives my friend is "structure" and an expectation that she needs to be sober. She's doing well now, in spite of the anti-treatments, because my court cases motivated the treatment provider to take her off the worst of the psychiatric drugs. Maybe Abilify is the least-bad of the anti-psychotics, but it is known to cause new problems for many patients [2]. [2] Abilify drug blamed for compulsive gambling, eating, shopping, sex \- [http://kdvr.com/2017/02/15/abilify-drug-blamed-for- compulsiv...](http://kdvr.com/2017/02/15/abilify-drug-blamed-for-compulsive- gambling-eating-shopping-and-sex/) edit: All drug treatment businesses are "shady", to some degree. What the industry needs is to move beyond the 12-step program, which is rooted in the 1930's approach to alcoholism. There are aspects of the 12 steps that are helpful, but it's very important to address the biological problems that now are known to be associated with people's tendency to self-medicate. Just yesterday I read of a study that used some chemical to 'extinguish' cocaine cravings... Naltrexone is FDA-approved for alcohol abuse, and prevents people from getting high on opiates. Effective approaches to addiction need to be investigated. A good first step would be to stop treating these people like criminals. ------ bob_theslob646 If this is the case that scam companies are getting to the top, why not try and bankrupt the scam companies, by clicking the ads of the known bad companies on purpose with no intention of going to rehab ? Oh wait,that would be considered click fraud or is it, if it brings up a conversation between owners and google. Oh wait, does google want to have that conversation? ~~~ BearGoesChirp Is there actually a law preventing me from doing a search and clicking on ads that have a high cost per click just because? Assuming I'm not related to any party involved? ------ ocdtrekkie At $230 a click, Google has no incentive to stop selling scams, particularly with internet regulation being so weak. Safe harbor effectively gives them immunity to prosecution for profiting on the malicious content they host. All they have to say is "we're not responsible for content others post on our platforms". Currently, The Verge has more power to regulate Google's behavior does than the US government, by bringing them to the court of public opinion. Which is why I have actually started to lean in favor of laws that strip away safe harbor protections like SESTA. Internet companies don't need or deserve blanket immunity: They should be able to be taken to court when they misbehave. ~~~ izacus Here's an idea - let's punish the scum that creates those ads instead of demanding that Google plays the moral police for the whole world. You're literaly demading that Google (a private for-profit corporation) becomes a private censorship force instead of going after scum that creates those ads. ~~~ ocdtrekkie I'm not suggesting Google be the moral police: I'm suggesting Google take the necessary measures to ensure they are not operating a criminal enterprise. Generally, doing business in illegal goods is considered a crime, and Google was well aware that they will profiting on illegal rehab ads. But right now, they're not legally responsible for that, so they had no reason to do what they should've done: Individually have humans vet the ads. Most businesses have to take reasonable steps to ensure they're not aiding and abetting criminal activity. Pawn shops register stuff sold to them and who sells it, and they lose out if something they bought turns out to be stolen. Gun stores run background checks. Banks end up on the hook for fraudulent charges. Google just profits and has blanket immunity from prosecution. Google made millions of dollars (at least) off sending people suffering from drug addictions to scammers, and got to walk away with all the profit scot-free. ~~~ moftz In this case what should ad networks like Google do to make sure they are running ads for legit businesses? In your gun store example, the seller is relying on the government to provide any information that would disqualify a sale. Rarely is a gun shop going to deny a sale despite government approval _unless there is suspicion of a crime happening_. If these scam rehab clinics can show Google they are properly licensed by the state they reside in, then what else should Google be doing? Google is not a medical license board. The states need to make sure that any sort of rehab or medical facility is legit and using best practices. These clinics rely on insurance money coming in so insurance companies would definitely be interested in making sure that the clinics they are paying out to are using effective treatments. I could see Google having a clause stating that if any business advertises themselves as any sort of medical or rehab facility, that they provide documentation from the state that proves such. This should be the same with doctors, lawyers, notaries, professional engineers, or anyone that advertises themselves as something that requires an approval from the government. Despite Google making a lot of money off of dubious advertisements, if Google can verify that a business is properly licensed to do what they advertise, then Google shouldn't be at fault for any fraud that is being committed. If someone shoots someone unlawfully and the gun was purchased legally, the gun shop doesn't get in trouble. ------ solomatov The price for clicks is exorbitant. No wonder, that everybody wants to sell ads instead of selling products. ------ ballade I can answer this. Money.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Calculus Trap (2005) - adenadel https://artofproblemsolving.com/news/articles/avoid-the-calculus-trap ====== nextos The way calculus is usually taught is a mess. A mix of epsilon-delta formalism, without adequate motivation, differentials and excessive focus on computations. For young students, a great introductory textbook is _Calculus Made Easy_. It is around 100 years old, and develops all the material using infinitesimals. Which is essentially modern non-standard analysis, minus rigor. It is also the way Newton and Leibniz thought about calculus, and the way most physicists intuitively think about problems. For a more mature audience, I like _Infinitesimal Calculus_ by Henle & Kleinberg. ~~~ Hasz No way high school or college level classes are teaching intro calc with delta-epsilon proofs, it just won't make any sense. It's generally introduced in Real Analysis, which is generally a sophomore level class. Develop the intuition, then crystallize and formalize the idea with a proof. Otherwise, it's just not going to make any sense. ~~~ sevensor Huh? I learned differentiation with delta-epsilon proofs in the 11th grade. It was pretty standard at my public high school. I'm sure I didn't understand it very well at the time, but it was good to have seen it when I took real analysis. ~~~ Izkata Had to look it up to be sure, since I didn't recognize the name, but it looks like this refers to using limits to "invent" differentiation? If so, yeah, we did it that way too, in 11th or 12th grade. (Had the same teacher both years, can't remember when exactly Calc was) I remember it involving a lot of drawings of graphs so we could understand what each term referred to, and can't really imagine an easier way to learn it. ~~~ nextos Epsilon-delta is the formalization introduced by Cauchy, Bolzano and Weirstrass during the 19th Century. It is _not_ the way calculus was invented by Newton and Leibniz. They thought in terms of infinitesimals. However, this approach is relatively hard to formalize. It was only done by Robinson in the 1960s. To see why Cauchy et al had to work on epsilon-delta, take a look at [1], an excellent book. [1] [https://www.macalester.edu/aratra/](https://www.macalester.edu/aratra/) ------ gibba999 I don't buy it. AoPS is a great organization, but the focus is on pure, theoretical mathematics. Understanding calculus is key to understanding many beautiful areas of applied mathematics: image processing, signal processing, control systems, electronics, etc. I consider them more elegant than theoretical mathematics. Now, for that, you don't need all the messy manipulation (integration-by-parts and similar), but you do need the basics of area-under-the-curve, of derivative-as-slope, and similar, as well as some of the theory. But that's not too hard to learn. My own opinion is that the basics of calculus should be taught alongside the basics of algebra in elementary school. Plenty of people have had success doing both. ------ dang A couple of good past discussions: 2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7207495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7207495) 2009: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=717982](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=717982) ~~~ svachalek The 2009 discussion at least partly understood that the article is not about calculus, while it seems the 2014 and 2019 discussions missed the point. I don't know if that really says something about the culture of the times but it's interesting. ~~~ dang Discussions are sensitive to random initial conditions like who happened to be online when an article was posted, so I doubt it says much about 2009. ------ hyperpallium What does HN think of Khan Academy's treatmemt of calculus? [https://www.khanacademy.org/math/calculus-all- old](https://www.khanacademy.org/math/calculus-all-old) Ideally, by an expert in calculus, who has done the whole KA course on it (though why an expert would do that, I don't know...) ~~~ HiroshiSan As someone who tried teaching themselves math with Khan Academy, I feel like Khan Academy suffers from the same problem most sites do, in that they tell you the information before you can discover it for yourself. This is different than how AoPS teaches math, where they ask you questions which then guide you towards self discovery, and as a result, you start asking your own questions which create paths for you to go on and explore. ~~~ barry-cotter You, and AoPS’ target audience of current and potential math nerds are very far from the norm. Inquiry based learning is actively harmful to learning for many students, and much less efficient for more or less everyone. > Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the > failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and > inquiry-based teaching > Evidence for the superiority of guided instruction is explained in the > context of our knowledge of human cognitive architecture, expert–novice > differences, and cognitive load. Although unguided or minimally guided > instructional approaches are very popular and intuitively appealing, the > point is made that these approaches ignore both the structures that > constitute human cognitive architecture and evidence from empirical studies > over the past half-century that consistently indicate that minimally guided > instruction is less effective and less efficient than instructional > approaches that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning > process. The advantage of guidance begins to recede only when learners have > sufficiently high prior knowledge to provide "internal" guidance. Recent > developments in instructional research and instructional design models that > support guidance during instruction are briefly described. [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1?needAccess=true&) ~~~ jacobolus Your link is to a very controversial polemic which IMO sets up a straw man, and then makes its own argument in a (both theoretically and empirically) questionable way, based on the authors’ pet “cognitive load” theory (which I personally think is bunk, but YMMV). It should be read in the context of its critics, and taken with a heap of salt. To understand the problem with US-style mathematics pedagogy, I would recommend reading [http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN- NEW.pd...](http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf) For some advice and materials based on an alternative theoretical framework, let me recommend [https://www.map.mathshell.org/trumath.php](https://www.map.mathshell.org/trumath.php) * * * I think Khan Academy should be thought of as a consistently average-quality US-high-school-style lecture, combined with US-style trivial exercises. It is a slow, unimaginative, pedantic curriculum. But it has the advantages of being free, always available, and self-paced (in the sense that students can keep going through as much of it as they want without needing to wait, and can return to previous sections any time). I’m glad it exists, because it sets a quality floor; live teachers have variable quality, and while many are better than KA lectures, some are certainly worse. ~~~ barry-cotter If you can refer me to three relevant articles that critique or falsify Kirschner et al. I’ll be happy to read them. I’ve read _Problem-Based Learning is Compatible with Human Cognitive Architecture: Commentary on Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006)_ already. ------ RandomInteger4 > "For an avid student with great skill in mathematics, rushing through the > standard curriculum is not the best answer. That student who breezed > unchallenged through algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, will breeze > through calculus, too." That was me. I was great at calculus type things, but Matrix Theory hit me like a ton of bricks. I still have that text book, sitting on my other desk, staring menacingly at me from across the room; Matrix Analysis, Horn and Johnson. Geometry in High School gave me a taste, but would have been nice had we had available another proof based class in the math curriculum; Formal Logic or Discrete Maths at a high school level. Maybe even Linear Algebra? ~~~ msla > That was me. I was great at calculus type things, but Matrix Theory hit me > like a ton of bricks. I still have that text book, sitting on my other desk, > staring menacingly at me from across the room; Matrix Analysis, Horn and > Johnson. Geometry in High School gave me a taste, but would have been nice > had we had available another proof based class in the math curriculum; > Formal Logic or Discrete Maths at a high school level. Maybe even Linear > Algebra? I am deeply confused by a curriculum which separates Matrix Theory from Linear Algebra. The description in the Wikipedia category just barely helps: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Matrix_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Matrix_theory) > Matrix theory is a branch of mathematics which is focused on study of > matrices. Initially, it was a sub-branch of linear algebra, but soon it grew > to cover subjects related to graph theory, algebra, combinatorics and > statistics as well. The University of Missouri has a Matrix Theory course: [https://www.math.missouri.edu/class/matrix- theory](https://www.math.missouri.edu/class/matrix-theory) > Basic properties of matrices, determinants, vector spaces, linear > transformations, eigenvalues, eigenvectors, and Jordan normal forms. > Introduction to writing proofs. ... which specifies a textbook: > _Linear Algebra with Applications (7th edition)_ by Steven J. Leon ... which deepens my confusion. If you're taking that course, how is it _not_ an introductory Linear Algebra course? And this MathOverflow answer obfuscates again: [https://mathoverflow.net/questions/11669/what-is-the- differe...](https://mathoverflow.net/questions/11669/what-is-the-difference- between-matrix-theory-and-linear-algebra) > Let me elaborate a little on what Steve Huntsman is talking about. A matrix > is just a list of numbers, and you're allowed to add and multiply matrices > by combining those numbers in a certain way. When you talk about matrices, > you're allowed to talk about things like the entry in the 3rd row and 4th > column, and so forth. In this setting, matrices are useful for representing > things like transition probabilities in a Markov chain, where each entry > indicates the probability of transitioning from one state to another. You > can do lots of interesting numerical things with matrices, and these > interesting numerical things are very important because matrices show up a > lot in engineering and the sciences. > In linear algebra, however, you instead talk about linear transformations, > which are not (I cannot emphasize this enough) a list of numbers, although > sometimes it is convenient to use a particular matrix to write down a linear > transformation. The difference between a linear transformation and a matrix > is not easy to grasp the first time you see it, and most people would be > fine with conflating the two points of view. However, when you're given a > linear transformation, you're not allowed to ask for things like the entry > in its 3rd row and 4th column because questions like these depend on a > choice of basis. Instead, you're only allowed to ask for things that don't > depend on the basis, such as the rank, the trace, the determinant, or the > set of eigenvalues. This point of view may seem unnecessarily restrictive, > but it is fundamental to a deeper understanding of pure mathematics. If I try to parse charitably, I come away with the idea that Matrix Theory is about matrices as a data structure, usable for many things outside the scope of Linear Algebra, where they're all about using matrices to represent linear transformations. It's the difference between a column of numbers on a shopping bill and a column of numbers which represents a vector in a space with a specified basis. Gotcha. However, this answer directly contradicts what the University of Missouri calls Matrix Theory, which is so Linear Algebra they even use a Linear Algebra textbook. It also... I don't know, trivializes the field of Matrix Theory. So you can manipulate matrices. So what? They show up a lot because they're used to represent specific things. Is the course going to barely introduce a lot of specific things and then focus on the matrix representation? What a waste! ~~~ RandomInteger4 I didn't say that Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory were separated. I said that Matrix theory hit me like a ton of bricks. I took Linear Algebra in college prior to that, obviously. I further stated that I think Linear algebra might benefit students if taught earlier, in high school. ~~~ Gibbon1 We were taught a little linear algebra in high school. And more in college. My impression of three semesters of calculus in college was that much was a waste of time. It was probably useful for a mechanical/electrical engineer circa 1950. But today no one solves problems that way. I think more linear algebra and matrix theory would have been better. ------ morpheuskafka > That student who breezed unchallenged through algebra, geometry, and > trigonometry, will breeze through calculus, too. I took calculus last year (AB Calc BC, 10th grade), and I can say that my experience was certainly a counterexample. I did OK, but it was definitely a marked difference from "breezing through" algebra. ~~~ tomrod I expect it was more of a teacher issue then. A solid math teacher is worth their weight in platinum. ~~~ dTal I had an excellent Calculus teacher in high school, and I did very well on the AP exam. It was still vastly more challenging than the trigonometry class that preceded it. Even today, I use trigonometry all the time almost without thinking, but I can't for the life of me remember how to long-divide polynomials (or picture a scenario where I'd need to). There's just so _friggin_ much deeply abstract symbol manipulation in calculus class (which in school also covers essentially "advanced algebra"). It's a different ball game. ~~~ jacobolus Long division of polynomials is literally exactly the same algorithm as long division of base-10 integers, except with no carrying. ------ sevensor I think this is a side-effect of the way our educational system is structured. We rely on big, standard tests to evaluate schools and their students. It would be too expensive, and somewhat subjective, to evaluate students' reasoning abilities, their conceptual knowledge. Can you imagine if these tests were evaluated by rooms full of people reading proofs, rather than by bubble-sheet scanners? So we test what we can test, which is procedural knowledge, and we teach that at the expense of deeper understanding. And because the best way of measuring procedural knowledge is to measure how many procedures you know, we race students forward to as much calculus as they can memorize. ------ hackermailman This article is primarily a marketing piece for their $500 courses, which I'm sure are good but if you don't have money or accessible local math student clubs and want to like the article says 'explore math' try these math foundations playlists for free [https://www.youtube.com/user/njwildberger/playlists](https://www.youtube.com/user/njwildberger/playlists) Wildberger starts from the very beginning, proving laws of each ring/field with basic arithmetic. He also has an algebraic trig method that a primary school kid could do and an interesting discrete algebraic calculus method, plus plenty of abstract algebra content. ~~~ HiroshiSan Not sure how you got this impression, the concluding paragraph is "However, we are not the only other option. Other options students have are to become involved in extracurricular programs, such as math teams. Math contests should be selected with some care: those that encourage mass memorization or just test standard curricular tools tend to exacerbate the ills of the calculus trap rather than enhance problem-solving ability. Students can also pursue independent study if they are able to find mentors. University professors are occasionally willing to fill this role to some degree. There are also many summer programs and good books for extracurricular study, and some communities have developed grassroots programs to provide opportunities for eager students. These options are usually not as easy as “enroll in the next course,” but they will be far more rewarding than settling into the calculus trap." Also these articles are normally targeted to those already invested in the AoPS ecosystem, whether it be books, courses, or their forums. ------ WillPostForFood _If ever you are by far the best, or the most interested, student in a classroom, then you should find another classroom._ It is unfortunate that the prevailing educational trends are to get rid of tracks, lanes, and advanced classes, and dumping all the kids into mixed ability classes. ~~~ threatofrain I believe it's been roughly found that tracking helps smart kids moderately and hurts everyone else with the brain drain. It's a question of to what degree we are individuals, and to what degree we are a community. I think it's a question that cuts right down the middle of many people's value systems. ~~~ WillPostForFood The data isn't very strong to support the idea that leaving advanced kids in the room with those that need more attention is of any help, and there is now growing evidence of achievement gaps widening, possible because it can be demoralizing for the slower kids, possible because the more advanced kids are now more likely to get outside supplementation which boosts them even further ahead.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: DataBrokerDAO – A Decentralised Marketplace for IoT Sensor Data - cryptominded https://databrokerdao.com?ref=hn ====== roderikvdv Hi, Roderik here, one of the founders of DataBrokerDAO. We would love to hear your comments and questions! And do not forget to register for the referral program!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Jason Scott: Archive Corps - mshenfield http://www.archivecorps.org/ ====== danielsiders Context: After rescuing 1,700 boxes of manuals from a closing manual warehouse for future archiving and scanning, "goodwill and the interest in these types of project shouldn’t fade away with the completion of the main part of the Manuals Plus project. He instead proposed that there be something like Archive Team for physical rescues. Naturally, there’s a lot to learn in that space, but with a level of speed and radical approaches that worked for Archive Team, maybe something good will come of it. Therefore, in one line, I announce: ArchiveCorps." from: [http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4755](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4755)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: [p]ortal - shinemonad https://github.com/fbeline/portal ====== avitzurel One really cool trick I recently learned is defining $CDPATH. This way, when you do `cd some-directory`, you can navigate to it even if you are not on the same level. So, if you add ~/projects to your CDPATH, you can do cd project1 from any directory on your computer and it will navigate to to the right place. Cool project though, I like the idea.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
SETI – The Next Ten Years - elorant http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2016/06/-nasa-astrobiology-search-for-transmissions-from-advanced-civilizations-the-next-ten-years-weekend-f.html ====== brianolson 'some guys blog' needs copyediting. I stopped reading at two glaring typos. other than that, nice writeup. ~~~ sounds The same errors appear multiple times: backslash instead of a double-quote mark, two consecutive "f" characters deleted. I suspect this to be a software problem, not a copyediting problem. It also references figures that are missing. So I suspect someone hit publish but their latex-to-wordpress plugin is broken, or somesuch. That's just a guess. ~~~ whiskers The missing "ff", "fi", etc. are almost certainly badly processed ligatures - they seem to crop up throughout the text. Pretty frustrating to read! ------ Strilanc I just see a blank white page. Had to dig into the html and turn off 'visibility: hidden' on '.font- entrybody'. Clearly a well designed site... ~~~ jbicha What browser are you using? I see they set both visibility:hidden and visibility:visible but Firefox let's visible override hidden here. ~~~ Strilanc Firefox, but I have noscript. It's not too uncommon for websites to just end up as blank slates with noscript, I just never expect it to be because they literally told the browser to hide it and somehow scripts tell the browser to nevermind that and show it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
India’s Restaurants Rebel Against Food Delivery Apps - ishikawa https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/technology/india-restaurants-logout-delivery-zomato.html ====== noego > _“The consumer believes that a discount has been his right, not a > privilege”_ It seems disingenuous to frame this "rebellion" as a moral issue. It isn't. It's a business issue. Business owners are free to evaluate their partnerships and pricing strategy on the basis of what is going to best benefit their revenue/profits. And consumers are free to evaluate potential restaurants/apps on the basis of many factors including price. Trying to argue that someone is acting immorally by wanting a discount, is nothing more than crying wolf. > _" Another sore point is customer data. Neither Zomato nor Swiggy shares > customers’ names and phone numbers with the restaurant that fills the order, > citing privacy concerns. Restaurant owners said that left them with no way > to market directly or build long-term relationships with their best > customers."_ Thank God for that. The last thing I want when I order food online, is for every single restaurant I order from to start spamming my phone/email. This fact alone has lifted Zomato a few notches in my eyes. ~~~ logfromblammo If you want to build a direct relationship with customers, put an 8.5"x3.5" glossy flyer into the food order bag with your delivery phone number and your web site address on it, and hope I don't throw it out. If you call me up directly, I will be annoyed. ~~~ dmurray Or your menu! Even in the age of delivery apps people still keep around takeaway menus. ~~~ logfromblammo (Disclosure: I barely know anything about the restaurant business.) If you can't fit your entire menu on one tri-folded sheet of letter-sized paper [with readable print size], it's time to do a statistical analysis on your orders, and cut all the dishes that don't get ordered enough to recoup the costs of offering them. Move them to the infrequent specials menu, if you really can't stand to never make them again. If I recall correctly, one of the major reasons single-location restaurants fail is menu bloat. Diners take longer to decide what they want. It's harder to identify the dishes that are least profitable. Prep is more complicated. The order management system might require additional button presses to navigate between pages. And put the restaurant equivalent of keyboard shortcuts on the menu. As a customer, I like being able to order by number, particularly by single-digit numbers (or single letters). "Give me a number one, a number four, and a number eight, hold the mayo." ~~~ whatshisface I can think of a few restaurants that I quit going to after they trimmed my favorite items off their menus. ~~~ likpok One key business insight is realizing that some customers cost more than they bring in. That may or may not apply to those restaurants, but a restaurant can't be everything to everybody. They might do better by not trying. Consider this applied to tech companies: you need to make very different decisions if you want to start a free social media site versus a webapp aimed at businesses. ------ geodel Nothing unexpected here. Restaurant seems to think they should have major profit share as theirs is main cost and effort to prepare food. Apps guys think there wouldn't be much demand for restaurant food, weren't it for the apps ecosystem. In my personal experience in India just a couple of decades back restaurants would be frequented by either rich people (obviously) or middle class on a couple of special occasions per year. Nowadays eating outside food even few times per week has become increasingly common. So meal price will be overriding concern with majority of people. As much as those 'consumer surveys' claim that customers are looking for great quality and new experiences in food. Most folks would rather have average food at low price after an exhausting day. I think apps will have upper hand on this issue. As with all the knowledge of customer preferences for price/taste/cuisine etc they can very well create centralized kitchens producing most demanded items. At that point restaurants will again be in similar place as they were few decades back: filled by well-off patrons or by middle class on rare occasions. ~~~ mayankkaizen My experience after using app is that if you really want to savour the taste, go to the restaurant. At least food is hot and properly served. Ordering food on app is only for the times when I am tired and really don't want to go anywhere. In past 2-3 years, we got this habit of ordering everything on app for various small occasions and everytime we just didn't enjoy the food. Eventually we started again to go to restaurants and it was worth it. One more thing, I noticed that restaurant ratings don't mean a thing. Even food from 4.5 rated restaurants taste horrible. For most people, only 2 facors: laziness and discount are the driving factors to use app. Quality of food is distant third factor. ~~~ geodel > For most people, only 2 factors: laziness and discount are the driving > factors to use app. Quality of food is distant third factor. This sounds about right. I was talking to my brother and he had this similar thought process. Once back from work at 9pm, he does not have any motivation or energy to cook. A Rs 100-150 swiggy delivered thali is just perfect for him. If it were more expensive or if there were no delivery option he would simply make maggi or fry egg/paneer and eat with bread. So he would not be customer of restaurant at all. ------ SpicyLemonZest It's hard for me to get on board with the David vs. Goliath framing here. These people are running businesses - two of the three restauranteurs quoted even own a whole chain. If they want to cancel their food delivery service or demand better terms, more power to them, but it seems manipulative to try and make their pricing negotiations a social movement. ~~~ cat199 > manipulative to try and make their pricing negotiations a social movement. Aren't the apps negotiating terms essentially a 'manipulative social movement' with a single app/VC backer/organizer (each)? why shouldn't the restaurant owners organize in order to increase their bargaining power to match? ~~~ stratelogical In the US, this - "They made a pact to pull out of Gold and other discount programs for a few days." is collusion and is illegal. If FTC allows restaurant owners (or any group of businesses) to create pacts like this against their suppliers or customers, next time, they will make similar pacts against you (the customer). "hey, what say, let's all make a pact together and increase the price of that dosa to $50?" In reality, some industries (most famously airlines) do this kind of collusion through winks and nods anyway and is bad for consumers (very good for the industry as a whole though). ------ thewhitetulip The food delivery apps abuse the restaurants. I even read news reports that the apps had the restros pay the app's bills even though the app was wrong! This is typical in India, the rich and powerful screw over others upon which they have power on. ~~~ sbmthakur > I even read news reports that the apps... Any links? ~~~ pkteison Grubhub charges restaurants for phone orders based on some claimed artificial intelligence determining that an order was placed on the phone call + the average price of the last 6 internet orders. A reporter easily found examples where reviewing calls where they decided to charge came up with false positives. "I reviewed some of the recordings for Ghost Truck Kitchen and found multiple false positives, where Grubhub charged the restaurant between $7.80 and $7.92 per call for informational phone calls that did not result in an order." [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjwebw/yelp-is- sneakily-r...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjwebw/yelp-is-sneakily- replacing-restaurants-phone-numbers-so-grubhub-can-take-a-cut) ~~~ sbmthakur Thanks for chipping in. While I don't deny that could be happening in India as well, most of the reports of mistreatment of restaurants by aggregators(in India) have been anecdotal. ~~~ jessaustin Wouldn't any report of anything be "anecdotal"? Journalists report stories; they typically don't conduct double-blind studies. ------ stratelogical This is classic "Porter's 5 forces". "The number and power of a company's competitive rivals, potential new market entrants, suppliers, customers, and substitute products influence a company's profitability." There are several hundreds of thousands of restaurants (maybe millions?). There are only 2-3 aggregators. Most of the restaurants are replaceable by a similar one. So aggregators have more bargaining power. As long as there is a profitable business model for the aggregators, the restaurants will get pushed to their lowest common profits. Without resorting to collusion with other restaurants (or asking the govt. to intervene) the only way to compete is to differentiate significantly that makes the customer desire a specific restaurant. ------ yalogin I shudder to imagine how much styrofoam is used to deliver this food. Even if it’s all paaper based packaging it’s still a huge amount of waste generated. I can see these apps increasing food delivery multiple folds and so the waste generated as well. ------ Ayesh I was in India last month, and ordered food with Zomato and Uber Eats many times. Both Uber and Zomato have a lot of promotions and the food price is often 60% of what it would have costed if I were to fine-in (I walked into same restaurants a few times to see myself). The amount of plastic still being used today is unbelievable! Some restaurants send decomposable bags but the majority of the food is Inna plastic container, with plastic cutlery, and in a plastic bag. Zomato has an option to request not to send cutlery, but the environment is also taking a massive toll on this. The streets are full of motorbikes honking for 20 seconds straights every 5 seconds, and the delivery people looked exhausted too, whom I think should be well paid too, while costing the customer more. Another point here is that the restaurants registered tend to be more cleaner and follow hygienist ways to prepare food. This sounds like a small point in other countries, but I had a bad stomach for a few days and I would gladly take someone else's word over how far I can judge a restaurant how clean it is. For me, the best balance is placing an order through the app (with discounts, full menu, reviews, etc), walk in, and decide if I would like to return (this time without the app). This way, I get to check the restaurant without spending a lot of time, and the restaurant owner doesn't have to pay the apps for my subsequent orders. I can also try and help reduce plastic usage . ------ synaesthesisx Why not just subsidize the discounts with VC money like everyone else? ~~~ Ayesh I thought that's what they were doing (I'm a consumer and not a restaurant owner). Hopefully at least Uber is burning VC money and not undercutting restaurant owners. ------ cat199 While I get that apps may be heavy handed, and perhaps the contracts should be renegotiated (not providing marketing data to restaurants for one seems 'off') a simple review of 'marginal cost'/'marginal utility' accounting would highlight that this is not necessarily the zero-sum game the article presents If I'm getting 50% more orders at the same fixed costs with a smaller profit margin on that subset of orders, I'm still netting higher total profits and getting higher utilization on my existing investment.. ------ daodedickinson You wouldn't download a meal! ------ draw_down I get that restaurants are not entitled to whatever profit they think they should make, but that is true of the apps too. In the end, I wonder how the presence of these apps in the ecosystem makes things better, considered holistically. They have so little incentive to care about, for example, the quality of the food when it arrives, because if it's poor that will reflect on the restaurant, not the service. They will also do things like try to honor orders for restaurants that have explicitly rejected working with the services, because they just don't care what the restaurant wants. This is supposed to be the restaurant and the service working together to get the customer their food, but the incentives just seem misaligned the whole way. I'm guessing the end goal here for the services is to run the "restaurants" themselves. ------ tracer4201 On one hand, no one is forcing your restaurant to sign up to the app. On the other hand, my anecdotal experience is these food delivery apps typically have had garbage service (my orders are delayed hours, missing items I paid for, etc.) and not properly pay their employees (contractors) while taking losses to capture the market before regulation can catch up and solidify their hold (I.e. cost of entry for small players becomes excessive). I don’t support the business model, and I don’t give them my business. ------ fit2rule Restaurants should just produce their own apps. Problem solved. Whats that? Its too hard? Well someone should make an app that makes it easy for restaurants and customers to have a relationship with each other, without involving a third party. What's that, its too hard? Well, the OS vendors should just make it easier for a person to contact another person and place safe orders with each other .. ~~~ nix0n > someone should make an app that makes it easy for restaurants and customers > to have a relationship with each other They already exist and they're installed by default. Maps to find a nearby restaurant, browser to look at the menu, dialer to place the order. ~~~ fit2rule Not really. These things are barely functional to most of the rest of the world. Maybe Maps finds things to eat in America, but its generally useless outside that market. There should be much more robust means of restaurant order taking that could be performed by an OS .. ~~~ thekid314 This is true, outside of the US and parts of Europe Google Maps is lacking, Apple Maps is barren, sometimes Maps.me has local people that keep it updated. There is a real gap waiting to be filled. Thi is my experience around the Middle East and Western Africa. ~~~ Ayesh FourSquare could have been this, when they were good. They have many restaurants, photos, tips, photos of the paper menu, etc. Google Maps caught up and it, and from places I have been in Europe, Asia, and middle East, their photos, review, and information seem accurate and helpful enough.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
You can increase your intelligence and 5 ways to do it - jagbolanos http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=you-can-increase-your-intelligence-2011-03-07 ====== emiretsky The original paper, while not conclusive, presents an intriguing idea. But the conclusion of the article is extremely trivial. Do you really need experience working with autistic kids to know that challenging one's self is good?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New Google Maps Interface - mxfh http://googlesystem.blogspot.fr/2013/05/new-google-maps-interface.html ====== wubbfindel Looks nice. One of the first things I do when using Google maps is hide the side bar until I need it. I want full maps, looks like I'll get it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Killing of Tony Blair by George Galloway MP - DaveSapien http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/22595538/the-killing-of-tony-blair?ref=live ====== arethuza It's not a documentary (unfortunately) but _The Trial of Tony Blair_ is really rather good: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_of_Tony_Blair](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_of_Tony_Blair) ------ DaveSapien Uhmmm, well was on the front page for about ten minutes. Was this taken off the front page because its political? If so I do apologise, I don't mean to be the activist load mouth. Just though you guys would be interested for a few reasons. Ta. ------ cup George Galloway is a complex character. I vehemently disagree with his position on Syria but when it comes to Tony Blair and the Iraq fiasco the man is usually on point. Only good things can come out further media exposure on Blair and the Iraq war years. ~~~ youngtaff Galloway's a pretty odious guy in my view, he's just like Blair - a manic self-publicist, who tramples over those who get in his way - but wasn't quite as successful as Blair	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Agile Doesn’t Work - praveenscience https://uxplanet.org/why-agile-doesnt-work-641710709e6e ====== NotPaidToPost None of the criticisms are actually about Agile. Written by an "Agile coach"...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
‘Resist White Supremacy’: A sign. A farm. And the fury that followed - petethomas https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/resist-white-supremacy-a-sign-a-farm-and-the-fury-that-followed/2018/02/13/47e7dfa2-10e0-11e8-9065-e55346f6de81_story.html ====== xupybd “Resist white supremacy” should not offend anyone but in a time when many on the right are accused of being white supremacists just for being on the right I can see why. This crazy political divide is getting scary. I hope we manage to find a better way to communicate between political divides before this gets even more out of hand.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Nipping Libra in the Bud - robin_reala https://mondaynote.com/nipping-libra-in-the-bud-595cea72c6a4 ====== carlosdp Idk why this article is so high up here, it's not very good. \- The article implies Facebook "already made money off Libra", that's false. That $270M goes to the non-profit Libra Association in Switzerland, of which Facebook is 1 of 28 current members. They don't "get" that money, it's there to fund the Association's maintenance costs. \- Facebook built this, yes, but they do _not_ have full control. In both governance and validation, they have 1 vote of 28 (currently, the number is supposed to go to 100 by launch). Will Facebook have the largest deployed Libra wallet? Yes, at least initially. Can anybody make a Libra wallet? Yes. This isn't a data play, it's very clearly a play at getting a bunch of people in developing markets that can only pay with cash right now the ability to pay online. That's a HUGE opportunity all on its own, they don't need our data to make this worth it if it works. How can they sell ads to people in emerging markets, Facebook's fastest growing userbase, if none of these people can buy the things they are advertising? Facebook doesn't need an ulterior motive to make a buttload of money off of this, if it works. I don't know why "experts" are looking for one. Edit: I originally said the initial $10M buy-in per member goes to the Libra Reserve, but that was in error. It goes to the Association to fund the non- profit itself. The Reserve will be funded by the initial on-ramp of users. ~~~ drcode > Facebook built this, yes, but they do not have full control Well, the Libra documents are vague about timelines and how/if they plan to move to a "permissionless" system- Instead of saying "they do not have full control" you should qualify it to say that "their marketing materials claim that even if it launches with full FB control initially, they state that they hope to eventually transition to lower amounts of control." ~~~ carlosdp No, they _do not have full control from the start_. Even in the current permissioned model. The 28 (will be 100) member companies do (or rather a majority vote of them do). But Facebook itself _will not_ have full control, from the start. This is really important and something the media keeps getting wrong. Facebook isn't dumb, they know no one will trust something they control right now, so they made it so they aren't the ones in control. They likely _will_ be the biggest wallet app though, which is significant. But they still can't single-handedly change the rules of Libra, they need a majority of the Libra Association members to do that. ~~~ tehjoker "But if you invest a lot of money, you can designate universities or nonprofits to vote for you on this council. So, in effect, the more money you invest, even though you may not have direct power over how the association functions, you can still have enormous influence on the voting blocs of what would in essence be a new international currency. I’m wondering what—" [https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/19/big_techs_war_for_you...](https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/19/big_techs_war_for_your_wallet) ~~~ carlosdp Sure, look, I'm not saying the Libra plan is perfect and unable to be corrupted, I'm just saying most of the "critical analysis" I've seen thus far doesn't go this deep into how Libra could actually go wrong. They just say "Facebook controls this and they just want your data" and either conclude that it's stupid and will fail or it's evil and must be stopped, with no other reasoning. ~~~ tehjoker I don't think that you need an in depth analysis to understand that Facebook and a consortium of powerful private interests are looking to wrest further control of the world financial system from local control. Corporations are the opposite of democracies, so allowing a group of unaccountable players looking after only their own interests to control the world money system would be a disaster. To the extent the economy is already set up this way, it is already a disaster. ~~~ carlosdp By that logic, it's already a disaster, so this doesn't really change things? All it does is allow more people to engage in payments online. Even in that view, it seems like a potential net benefit to the world economy, maybe. ------ idlewords A lot of discussions I've seen of Libra treat it as 12-dimensional chess where one of the players is a malign entity called "Facebook", looking to maximize revenue, or power, or in some other way malevolently patting a white cat in its lap. I have a different theory to suggest. What if Zuckerberg is simply a very idealistic person who happens to have full voting control of one of the largest corporations in the world, and insists on pushing it to idiosyncratic ends? This is a guy who a couple of years ago decided that "we will cure all disease" was a non-ridiculous goal to put his and his wife's name on. A lot of the complexity around Libra can be explained as Zuckerberg pushing for unfettered access to the financial system for everyone, and the many smart legal and technical minds at Facebook trying to protect the company from the regulatory and criminal nightmare such a system would pose in practice. I may be wrong in this analysis, but in general I think we spend too little time analyzing what vapid thought may have come into Zuckerberg's head this time around, when it is a perfectly sufficient explanation of Facebook's behavior. In this model, the complexity and subtlety of the strategy come from people around the Great Leader trying to mitigate his vision, or adapt it to their own bureaucratic or ideological ends. ~~~ jjeaff Besides a few public comments here and there, what evidence do you see that Zuckerberg is altruistic in any way whatsoever? I've seen quite a bit of evidence and stories that he cares little for anything but total world domination. Not so much on the other side. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt too. But his main mantra since forever has been that he wants to connect the world. But if that was really his goal, then facebook wouldn't be such a closed, proprietary system. ~~~ dymk > what evidence do you see that Zuckerberg is altruistic in any way whatsoever [https://chanzuckerberg.com/](https://chanzuckerberg.com/) ~~~ jjeaff A non-profit can certainly show altruism. It can also be a vehicle for legal tax evasion, PR, and power. Why create a new foundation when there are certainly existing and efficient organizations that could deploy your money better? ~~~ veratwiger Ah, but CZI is not a non-profit, it's an LLC, making it an even more efficient vehicle for legal tax evasion, PR, and power. It also allows Mark and Priscilla to make funding decisions affecting entire communities on a whim, without the involvement of cumbersome board members. ------ seibelj Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology have opened up permissionless innovation in an industry that has been so choked by regulation that previously only the largest, most well-connected players could get in the door: finance. You can, right this second, create a smart contract that allows extremely sophisticated financial instruments and attract real users. The initial shoots of innovation are already happening, such as MakerDao's Collatorized Debt Positions (CDPs)[0] and Compound Finance for money market crypto instruments.[1] Regulators and governments can stick their fingers in their ears, outlaw the technology, and drive everything offshore or underground. The point is that these technologies are permissionless and unstoppable. As long as the internet exists, you can't eliminate such technology and behavior. Rather than knee-jerk outlaw progress in the industry by projects such as Libra, governments need to let the industry mature and eventually pass laws that protect consumers without stifling innovation. HN users especially need to embrace their so-called "hacker" roots and stop lobbying for the state to crush such innovative technology in its infancy. Seriously - the outrage to blockchain and crypto on HN is entirely absurd. This is cool, interesting technology and entrepreneurs should be analyzing it for its disruptive potential rather than whining that there aren't enough licenses and bureaucrats involved. [0] [https://makerdao.com/en/](https://makerdao.com/en/) [1] [https://compound.finance/](https://compound.finance/) ~~~ khawkins This isn't progress, it's tossing out centuries of financial regulations, monetary theory, and power structures to give a consortium of businesses more power than nations. They're trying to set up what is effectively a global, private central bank and replace the currencies of the world. If Libra actually does become the dominant world currency, a handful of individuals beholden to only to corporations and not to any nation can make decisions which affect all of humanity. They can cause hyperinflation spikes or prolong depressions with credit crunches. They can unilaterally cripple the finances of critics by removing their ability to process the currency and create an atmosphere where people are fearful of speaking out. They'll be able to control the actions of countries by making their entire economy dependent on processing the currency. Their actions could send all of humanity into desperate destabilization, and by the time you realize there's a problem it's too late. You can't undo, with regulation or anything, power of this scale. Also, the technology isn't permissionless, it's permissioned.[0] [0] [https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#introducing- libra](https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#introducing-libra) ~~~ seibelj > This isn't progress, it's tossing out centuries of financial regulations, > monetary theory, and power structures That is my definition of progress. I want experimentation, not being handcuffed to centuries of theory which can never be proven. Economics is not scientific, and I don't like the system we currently have. We need more private innovation and less state influence. ~~~ ktosobcy Yeah... let's silly silicon valley be even more disruptive... thanks to beloved FB we have lost privacy, airbnb ef-uped a lot of cities and uber and other gig-economies are chipping in to the downfall of society. thanks... ------ bo1024 Is this article correct in its claims that Facebook is in control of Libra and, more specifically, that Facebook makes money from the initial registration fees and will be able to directly make money in the future from e.g. transaction fees? ~~~ drcode FB has written marketing materials saying that they would like to have less control over Libra, but it's very vague around timelines. Clearly, their incentives are to maintain as much control as possible while making generous statements about how they hope to have less control in the future, to derail as many regulatory attempts as possible. ~~~ theorangejuice What is vague is when and how Libra will become permissionless. It is very clear right now why Facebook don't have control over Libra more than any other association member. ------ crispyporkbites Facebook (or a consortium of companies, whatever this is) controlling a significant global currency feels like a dystopian nightmare. It's one of very few things that genuinely worry me. ~~~ djohnston really? libra is the thing that keeps you up at night? ~~~ save_ferris Not OP but sure. Having both a vast trove of data on user behavior, emotions, and financial background coupled with its own financial system is deeply concerning. ~~~ bpfrh I don't really understand that point. If facebook wants to control users and their financial data, wouldn't it be easier to simply make a fintech? I mean, sure libra gives them more data, but the same could easily be reached if facebook founds a fintech? With the current libra afaik they only have 1 seat out of 28 so less control than with a fintech. With libra you could at least control more than with a fintech. ------ buboard But if Libra is so well-founded, what if, in the face of regulation, facebook decides to leave the project? And what if the project is cancelled altogether? It will be an admission of defeat and bowing down to the banks, and there are thousands of cryptocurrencies that could take its place. ------ lowdose The ZuckBuck has the potential to achieve massive adoption thanks to the hundredth monkey effect. It would be awesome if somebody like Brian Acton would tweet the #ZuckBuck hashtag. This is an awesome opportunity to brand this ridiculous proposal with possibly sticking language network effects. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect) ------ dep_b The World does need a easy to use system to do cross-border payments. US clients often say “can’t we use PayPal?” while it’s often a major pain in the ass for the receiver outside of the US perhaps Europe. Bank transfers are somehow very hard for a lot of people. So yes, I do see something that can give me money in my bank / hand easily across borders succeed. Jay because the alternatives suck. ------ lhl As a long-time follower of digital currencies, while I have some skepticism about Libra (and see plenty of opportunities for competition), it's hard to take an editorial like this seriously when it's making such terrible arguments. The piece starts by claiming that Facebook is profiting from Libra by collecting one-time fees from participants, and that this would somehow be motivation to launch the endeavor. This is so wholly wrong that my head spins a bit at this - the Libra Association members pay in $10M (which gives them a single vote, and "Libra Investment Tokens"), and the cash goes to support 1:1 backing into the Libra Reserve - while there may be a float, the return is basically de minimas since it's basically going into short term treasuries and the like. Considering these funds are controlled by the association (a Geneva non-profit) and that all members have equal voting right, I don't see how there's any way that Facebook Inc (or any individual member) could actually make a "cool billion dollars" in any way from this. Either this argument was made from not taking a few minutes to make a cursory read any of the website announcements or white papers, or is, I don't know, pure imagination? The second argument is less bewildering, but shows even less understanding of what kind of play Libra is. It imagines that somehow FB will benefit (as a 1/100th investor in the LA) from transaction fees! If the goal were to maximize tx fees from a payment system within FB properties, they'd have been much better off launching a first party payment system (the same is true if the only goal was for collection of transaction data, btw). Sure FB wants to make money from Libra, but it'll be by creating exactly what it says on a tin - an open access, low friction, cross-border, transactional digital currency. FB benefits from opening up huge markets in (especially) its EM marketplace, which has been largely underserved by er _everyone_ , and by creating new markets (microtransactions, small international transfers) that have been simply impossible without a true "internet" currency. Of course there won't be any privacy, but this IMO is driven as much by KYC/AML/global money flow of sovereign interests, as much as for consumer data mining purposes. We know how to make private cryptocurrencies, but it'd simply be DOA if that were what were proposed to any regulatory authority around the world. IMO FB has pushed the conversation forward in a good way and I'd say that it's up to everyone else (whether its competing national or corporate consortiums, or open-source/independent cryptocurrency projects) to step up and offer some better alternative. For those arguing that this should simply be stopped (or for the status quo of how money and banking currently work globally, which I personally think is much worse than what Libra promises), well, I guess at the very least, argue better. ------ ilaksh This is sort of the first level reaction. If you can understand what Libra and cryptocurrency really are, you may be able to get to another level. The next level of grasping this is to realize that real scalable cryptocurrency is the actual threat to the establishment. And secondly to realize that Libra is the polar opposite of real cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency that scales is digital cash. It is controlled entirely by citizens. It is difficult to track. Difficult to tax. Nearly impossible for governments to disable access for person's or countries. It is difficult for centralized companies to profit from it. And it provides a direct competition to all fiat currencies. Libra on the other hand is none of those things. It is totally centralized, completely dependant on fiat currencies. Controlled by one company who will give backdoors to governments. Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal (all sponsors of Libra) will be able to continue to take a cut of all digital transactions. The Libra group will profit from interest on your assets and happily freeze them if the government sneezes in your direction. So my main concern is that the government may realize this and do a 180. And that Libra could block adoption of real cryptocurrencies that are making big pushes for scalability. ~~~ cycrutchfield >Cryptocurrency that scales is digital cash. It is controlled entirely by citizens. It is difficult to track. Difficult to tax. Nearly impossible for governments to disable access for person's or countries. Why do I get the feeling like you are describing these as positive attributes? Last time I checked, unfettered money laundering, tax evasion, and buying illegal shit like hitman contracts isn’t exactly a good thing. >It is difficult for centralized companies to profit from it. Oh, you mean like premining or ICOs? ~~~ lightgreen > buying illegal shit like hitman contracts I’m pretty sure all of dark web hitman contracts are scam. There’s no evidence to believe otherwise.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
So, this is what the Army thinks #futurewar is going to look like - SocksCanClose http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/net-assessment-threats-to-future-army-acquisitions ====== dang Please do not use the titles of HN stories to editorialize. That breaks the HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: PHP, Python or Ruby? - thekevan Could you please help me decide which of these three languages to learn? (I already have hobbyist level experience with HTML and CSS)<p>I am a programming novice but I want to move forward and learn to code and build webapps/web services. Maybe down the road I could parlay the experience into a programming job, or build something to make a living on. I know there are a lot of bridges to cross before then. But first I have 2 projects that I want to learn how to build from scratch and launch successfully. One would be just another Google bookmarks-like web service (scratch my own itch) and another is basically a lost-and-found database, but with a bit of a twist. Right now I just want to do them as accomplishments and then reassess on where it will go from there.<p>Brief thoughts on each of the three:<p>1. PHP - It is common so there are lots of resources and lots of jobs. Also it seems like I know more people using it and that translates into it being easier to get help.<p>2. Ruby (RoR) - It is good and works very well like the others but honestly part of why I want to use Ruby and learn Rails is because it is so hot and trendy and cool and I am a victim of marketing.<p>3. Python - Marco Arment (of Instapaper) made a statement in an interview that I understood to say he uses PHP because it just works and he knows it inside and out but if he was going to start over he would use Python.<p>One factor in consideration would be which of the 3 languages makes you the most "hireable" in the North East US, even though I am not sure I would ever even get to that level.<p>I'd also love to hear from anyone who uses one of the three above but wishes they had chosen and become proficient in one of the other two instead.<p>Finally, does it really matter that much? Am I over analyzing? Should I just randomly pick a number 1 - 3 and go with that language, or just pick Ruby because I think Rails is cool and just start building and releasing already?<p>Thanks in advance! ====== For_Iconoclasm There tends to be a lot confusion, with newcomers to any field, over which tools should be used. The truth is that 95% (made-up statistic... I mean a large majority) of the effectiveness of a tool comes from the user's proficiency, not the tool's intrinsic value. If you've heard of the language being used before being experienced and versed in the subject matter, it's probably good enough for your uses. I touched PHP in some college classes based on web programming, and one of the projects that I made actually got me my current job as a Python programmer at a very small company. The key here is that I was able to demonstrate what I was able to do with given tools; I wasn't given a quiz on the finer details of Python iterators or Tornado (the web server we use). Even if I had told them that I was interested in learning Python, but I wasn't great at it yet, I think they may still have hired me. As it was, I already knew Python. I really like Python. The syntax is wonderful; it's just a pleasure to work in. I once saw somebody post "If Python were any easier, it'd write itself." It's a general-purpose programming language, while PHP is mostly a domain- specific language (the domain being _the web_ ). Does that mean it's more powerful? Maybe. You probably won't get to a place in web programming where a single language will hold you back for a long time. Look at Facebook; it's written in PHP, but it's moderately complicated. Meanwhile, Hipmunk uses Python (with Tornado) on their backend. I can't think of any examples that use Ruby/On Rails because I don't really follow the language, but I know it's also wildly popular. Your evaluation of PHP hit the nail on the head. It's really popular in the job market, along with ASP.NET. I think Ruby on Rails and Python (Django) are becoming more popular. If the job market aspect is really important to you, maybe you can try looking up local jobs to see what your area offers. ~~~ thekevan Thanks I appreciate your help. In my area, it seemed like more than half the jobs that mentioned one of the three were for PHP, followed by Python taking a little more than half of the remainder and Ruby taking the rest. (So loosely, out of 20 it would be about: 12:5:3). However that was on the common job sites that do not focus on tech and I suspect there may be more need for Python and Ruby is the hidden market than I am seeing. Just for reference here are some example of who uses Ruby and RoR: <http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/success-stories/> <http://rubyonrails.org/applications> ------ webholics In general I would say the more experience in programming you gain the less it matters what language you are using. Learn the basics first. And learn language types like OOP and functional programming. As a professional web developer you should try to learn several frameworks as well (Zend Framework, RoR, Django, etc.). But I would say that's the second step and not the most important one. Frameworks and API come and go, they change all the time. Try to get the big picture. I'm currently using PHP and Python. I like Python more because of it's simple style and it's clean APIs. But still most of my professional projects are done in PHP because my customers want it that way. ~~~ thekevan Great, thank you! ------ gexla This is an exaggeration but as a PHP developer the biggest problem I have with wrapping my head around Ruby is the Perl-ish "more than one way to do it" design. PHP seems to be more straightforward with relatively fewer paths to my destination. I haven't messed with Python, but I hear Python is more like PHP in that regard. If true, then it would make sense for a PHP developer to select Python over Ruby. The only major reason you might pick PHP over the other options is if you are interested in working with the major content management systems on the market. A huge percentage of business portals (brick and mortar as opposed to web based) are running on PHP based content management systems and of course there is also a lot of work in those areas. If you are more interested in custom application development, then Ruby and Python might be a more interesting choice (though PHP is plenty sufficient.) That's not to say that market size should be your only consideration. If you are strong player in a small pond, then you can do as well or better than you could do in a much larger market. ~~~ thekevan Thanks very much. You raise some interesting points to ponder and investigate. ------ JCB_K Your argument for PHP isn't really great. Both RoR and Python have a huge community, with more than enough people who are willing to help. If you want to be future-proof, I would skip PHP. It's getting used less and less, and also, RoR and Python are both much cleaner. Take a look at the 2 and pick one, actually it doesn't really matter, because once you're good at one of em, it'll be a lot easier to learn something else. RE: your remark about being hireable, I think it doesn't make a big difference either. Clients might be asking for PHP, but unless they want to use Wordpress, try to convince them you can build them the same in another language, in less time and with a better result. If they're still clinging to PHP you might want to ask yourself if it's really gonna be much fun working for them. Oh and if you want to be really trendy, ignore all of this and look into node.js ;) ~~~ thekevan My argument for PHP may not be great, which is why I am asking the knowledgeable folks here on HN such as yourself. Thanks for taking the time to answer. ------ code As a previous PHP developer for years, I'm now moving over to Python. I agree with Marco if that was the statement he made. PHP can get the job done but Python overall is just a more powerful and cleaner syntax language. There are lots of companies that are built in Python big and small. Some examples are Dropbox, Slide, Youtube, Quora, Yelp, etc... It's definitely a scalable language and something I'd highly recommend. As a disclaimer, I don't have any knowledge in Ruby/Rails but I'd definitely still recommend Python. You'll come across between choosing 2 and 3 if this is the path you're heading down, stick with 2 and move onto 3 later. This will make much more senes once you look into Python. ~~~ dutchrapley To add to this comment, I'd recommend taking a look at Learn Python The Hard Way (<http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index>) to get started. I'm not a Python programmer, but I recommended this to a friend who's in the same boat as you and heading down the PHP path. He worked his way through 1/3 of the exercises his first day. The important part isn't what you read, but what you put into practice. You learn by doing. Learn Python The Hard Way gets you up and running fairly quickly. While Rails is a fantastic framework, don't start there. It may be hard to understand how it helps you if you don't understand the context of the problems it solves. Right now, focus on a specific language. ~~~ thekevan If I went the Ruby/RoR route, I would learn Ruby then Rails. As well as LPTHW, another great resource is the MIT OCW course which teaches fundamentals using Python. Thanks for the help! [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/) ~~~ dutchrapley I'll also add it depends on your what OS you're running. If you're on Windows, Python will be more forgiving than Ruby. Some Ruby gems build native extensions as they're installed, which isn't always possible on Windows. Granted, the state of Ruby and Rails on Windows has improved over the last few years, I still wouldn't consider it a first class citizen. Granted, there are some nice online resources for jumping into Rails: <http://www.codeschool.com/> <http://tryruby.org/> <http://rubykoans.com/> <http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/> <http://humblelittlerubybook.com/> ~~~ thekevan Thanks again for the resources, there are some there I have not heard of before. I have both Windows and Linux boxes. ------ madhouse There's a market for all three. Personally, I'd advise you to look at a few code examples, and pick the one that 'looks' best. If you need to, have a quick glance at a few tutorials, and decide which one you like best. You can't misfire all that much. (Though, I would advise against PHP, but that's just my personal hatred towards the php language and its interpreter, and is a very subjective opinion) ~~~ thekevan I did a little bit of the Rails for Zombies tutorial--knowing I was not ready for it. I got stuck pretty early. tryruby.org was much easier, but I did not finish because I had troubles with the site. I'll try it again. After all this input, I am leaning toward Python, but am still researching and gathering info. Both opinions from friends and I will try a few tutorials as you suggest. Thanks for your help! ------ MatthewPhillips PHP is a C-like language so I'd go with that, even though I personally don't like PHP or ever use it. It will make it easier to learn other mainstream languages. Ruby, as great as it is, won't lead to understanding of other languages, too many abstractions (great for productivity though). ~~~ thekevan Thank you!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Blocking protein curbs memory loss in old mice - laurex https://neurosciencenews.com/protein-block-memory-loss-13087/ ====== LinuxBender Link to source: [1] [1] - [https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2019/05/blocking- prot...](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2019/05/blocking-protein- curbs-memory-loss-in-old-mice.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Teenager builds Death Ray - 5000 sun intesity - BluePoints http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1351935/Eric-Jacqmain-invented-Death-ray-dish-intensity-5-000-suns.html ====== motters Absolutely terrible reporting from the Daily Fail, as usual.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
This Algae Battery Could Power A Tesla With 200X The Charge - shijie http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/30/this-algae-battery-could-power-a-tesla-with-200x-the-charge/ ====== finkin1 Engadget mentioned this in 2009: [http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/29/ultrathin-algae-based- bat...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/29/ultrathin-algae-based-batteries- could-charge-things-you-never-t/). I wonder why it hasn't reached the market yet. There's gotta be a reason if the technology is as amazing as people claim. Does anyone know what the hangups are?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Can you suggest a Datalog engine? - AntonioL I want to ask the HN network if they can suggest of a database which understands Datalog query language.<p>I am aware of Datomic, which I think is the one of the best offering in this space, is there any other thing?<p>Also, Github recently acquired Semmle. Its CodeQL engine is similar to Datalog but it looks like that the database engine is not distributed for use with custom datasets.<p>Thank you for your help. ====== refset Hi, I work on [https://opencrux.com](https://opencrux.com) which is a close relative of Datomic but with different design goals (bitemporal + schemaless). It has a rich set of Datalog features, best exemplified in the tests: [https://github.com/juxt/crux/blob/master/crux- test/test/crux...](https://github.com/juxt/crux/blob/master/crux- test/test/crux/query_test.clj) ------ kendallgclark Stardog is a knowledge graph platform with lots of datalog-related features. [http://stardog.com/](http://stardog.com/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Hasn't OpenID Caught On? - buckpost http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/01/08/why-hasnt-openid-caught-on/ ====== mechanical_fish Because the intersection of the sets of people who (a) sign up for more than two websites a year; (b) know and care enough about security to avoid just using the same password on every site; (c) think it's much easier to use OpenID than to just use the "email forgotten password" link; and (d) aren't just using 1passwd or some other password-caching program is apparently really small. Of course, that's just one of the reasons. ------ randallsquared One reason is that there's a very small distance between "I don't care if someone gets in here" (reddit, blog, etc) and "If someone got in here I'd be hosed" (bank, administration stuff, etc). OpenID can handle the former, but since people are using the same insecure password for all those sites anyway, typically, it doesn't matter. OpenID can't handle the latter, because (last I checked) making phishing easy is inherent in how OpenID works. ------ mattmaroon "It seems to be one of those great ideas that sounds good but never catches on - a lot like BlueTooth." wtf? I think it's safe to say Bluetooth caught on. ------ pchristensen Because most that do catch on take a while, and some good things never do. Mostly, people don't have a problem with using a username/insecure password. They want stuff and don't care much about security. Although I agree that if Google, Yahoo, MySpace, or one of the other humongous sites accepted it, that would spread the word much faster outside of the geek echo chamber. ~~~ Kaizyn No established site is going to want to use that for its authentication system. They don't want to make it easy for you to log into sites other than their own. ------ some Because it brings no benefit to anyone. Not to the one who runs the site and not to the one who signs up to it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Serverless – Passing the Buck? Pt.2 - altsang https://www.lunchbadger.com/serverless-passing-buck-pt-2/ ====== skar5151 Like the thought leadership. However predicting costs in Serverless environments can be a challenge. Infrastructure costs, even if elastic are more predictable. Thoughts on how to project spend or determining compute resources per function ? ~~~ altsang Very very true. Cost of compute is already published per cloud provider. For example, on AWS, it's currently first 1M is free. After that it's a million per $.20. At some point of volume depending on your use case there's going to be an inflection of just running your own container or VM. The bigger challenge here is tracking and understanding your usage as it pertains to your application, beyond the compute resources on a per call basis. We're intending on building governance and metering for infrastructure usage as part of our orchestration solution to help shed light on this area. ------ glougheed Don’t worry about the OS, focus on your App - interesting take on API's ~~~ altsang Thanks! We think what we've built can potentially give you the best of both worlds. No one is going pigeonhole your entire API solution into just serverless infrastructure. But a portion of it can be and should be if you want the most efficient cost of compute and manageability.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Do you watch competitors or do you prefer to not think about it? - nrthrn It seems like there are two camps of entrepreneurs/product teams around how to think about competitors.<p>There is the Peter Thiel (Paypal) / Jason Fried (Basecamp) camp who thinks that looking at competitors is a distraction and the Marty Cagan (SVPG) / Hiten Shah (CrazyEgg) camp that believes competitor intelligence and analysis are a necessity.<p>Out of curiosity, what camp (or in the middle) are you in, and why? ====== nrthrn Personally looking at competition is HUGE for me. Here are my reasons that I look at competitors: \- See the strengths and weaknesses of available products in the market, so that I can see where I can create something with a competitive edge. \- To see competitors’ reviews and chatter. Those tell me where customers are feeling that their needs are underserved or poorly met. \- For inspiration on creative ways to solve some of the problems that my customers are facing. \- To see what positioning, language, and targeting is resonating with potential future customers, and view how that changes as customer needs evolve and technology improves. \- For an understanding of existing flows, language, and behaviors expected in my market. (Some things don’t need “reinvention”, like filling out an invoice). \- Before entering a new space, I look at competitors to map out the “blue ocean” of where my product(s) can drive value. \- So that I can guide sales and marketing to show the value of our product and how it excels over other companies. \- To see macro trends in the market when they start happening, as opposed to being surprised.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
10 Technology Predictions From The Startup Whisperer - flashinfremont http://www.startupwhisperer.com/2008/12/10-technology-predictions-from-the-startup-whisperer.html ====== charcoal What does the author mean by, "People are only an hour away from registering online for a new business."? ------ seiji Already posted from different source at <http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=AgrVIF203F> Still not interesting.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: An average developer's work seems meaningless? - duochrome I have been wondering what people need. Most people would love to have a better house, furniture, food, etc. They barely need a better software.<p>I was a developer for 8 years. I worked in some corporation and some startup, and it's the same issue all around. The product is not really been needed nor used.<p>I can see that companies like Google had a good impact on the world but they have a good supply of good engineers. They don't need me.<p>It seems that I would be happier saying making good wood furnitures. But hey that's hard to find a woodworker's job and I guess the paying is a lot less.<p>I'm somehow lost. Did you ever had the same feeling? What change did you do? ====== rnovak Not all programming is fun, in fact the vast majority is boring, and the software that gets produced is boring, but it is still important. Just because you aren't a part of Google or some other ubiquitous, well known company, doesn't mean a product that you're a part of producing isn't important. You may not see the implications of all of the software you develop, and some software that has the biggest impact, no one even knows about. There is always a good reason to program, and considering the current disparity of good engineers, you don't need to be amazing to make a difference, just be good. ------ sharemywin Software isn't usually about making a big impact in people's lives(military, flight control, medical are exceptions). It's about making whole lot of people's lives a little bit better.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
We must ensure ISPs don't stop the next Google getting out of the garage - ph0rque http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/19/we-must-ensure-google-garage ====== russell Corey Doctorow has a thoughtful article on how ISP's are trying to limit internet access for their own benefit. (The title is a little over the top.) Some of these things happen in the US, but seem to be stomped on by the FCC and public opinion. The rest of the world, including the UK and Europe, governments are abandoning the citizens and getting in bed with the ISP's. Corey makes the point that telcos owe us net-neutral access because they are granted a monopoly to lay the wires. I read a couple of UK nonpolitical blogs, and I find astounding the willingness to compromise what we in the US consider basic rights, like freedom of speech or unfettered telecommunications. I dont like a world with the worst of US IP policy and European speech, privacy and communications policy. ------ aminuit The issue of metered billing has been criticized here and in other places. It makes for a pretty popular punching bag, but I don't think it's fair to dismiss it as a non-issue. The ISPs have to manage oversubscription rates. It's a real problem. Total throughput is fixed at various points along the network, and there are going to be times when the demand outstrips the available capacity. So what should the ISPs do? Time Warner's recent foray into metered billing was obviously moronic. Customers shouldn't be penalized beyond their monthly payment for usage. Their plan also didn't do anything to reduce congestion during peak traffic hours. I think the onus should be on the ISP to make sure that they can actually deliver the rates that they are advertising, which are clearly far too high. The customer shouldn't get screwed just because the ISP can't manage the oversubscription rate that it wishfully dreamt up. In this scenario, advertised rates would have to drop substantially, but it means that the customer, not the big media partner, decides on his own quality of service. This is basically how it has worked for business class circuits for all of eternity. I guess I don't understand why they can't apply the same pricing model to ordinary consumers. ~~~ graemep I see nothing wrong with metered billing - and it certainly far preferable to ISPs doing deals with favoured partners. Even better, pricing could vary with price of day. There are (or, at least, were) electricity tariffs in the UK that offered low rates for a few hours at night. ~~~ ph0rque If this happened, bittorent clients could get an automatic throttling feature built in to minimize downloading/uploading during peak hours, and maximize during off-hours. ~~~ aminuit This makes sense for heavy bittorrent users who are generally bright enough to realize how much data they are sending back and forth, but do you really expect casual YouTube viewers to know how much data is transferred when they watch a video? What about Grandma who wants to video chat with her grandkids? Graduated metered billing makes sense for certain things: electrical power, telephone calls, etc, but it doesn't make sense for Internet usage where there is no good way for users to easily get a handle on the amount of data transfered by their applications. ~~~ blhack How is bandwidth used any more abstract than electricity used? Grandma wants to video chat! She doesn't know how much bandwidth it uses! POOR GRANDMA! Grandma wants to run the air conditioner! She doesn't know how much power it uses! POOR GRANDMA! Maybe grandma should learn, eh? ~~~ aminuit You're being ridiculous. The marginal cost per kilobyte of data transfered during off peak hours is approximately $0.00. The marginal cost per kilowatt of electric power, while lower during off peak hours, is still material. ~~~ quoderat "The marginal cost per kilobyte of data transfered during off peak hours is approximately $0.00." This can't be repeated enough when commenters -- as the above one did -- make such disingenuous arguments. ------ nazgulnarsil um...the main problem is that ISP's are flat out lying about infrastructure costs to make their money grab seem more legitimate.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Much Ado About $41 Million Dollars - greglmercer http://www.give-me-information.com/2011/03/much-ado-about-forty-one-million.html ====== leeHS There is this show in Canada called Dragon's Den. I think it's called Shark Tank in the US. If you don't know what I'm talking about, basically you pitch you business idea to about half a dozen rich business people. If they like what they hear, they invest their own money into your business. One of the most frequently cited reasons for not investing (even when the business seems quite promising) is that they either have no sales, or the company value being presented was too high. I can't help think of this when I see $41M invested into a startup that has no users, no sales, and has not been proven yet in the market place. The Dragons would tear it apart. What am I missing here? Does Color has SO much potential that it offsets the massive risk? Or is it that when we talk about the "internet", we are operating under a different set of rules? But didn't they say that before?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Drop-In Minimal CSS – Preview Minimal CSS Frameworks on any HTML Page - dohliam https://github.com/dohliam/dropin-minimal-css ====== dohliam This started as a small collection of minimal (i.e., classless / boilerplate / ultralight) CSS frameworks like Tacit, Sakura, Tachyons and others. It turns out there are a _lot_ of others -- the list now includes 97 (!) different frameworks. There is a live demo [0] with all the frameworks combined with some HTML5 boilerplate, and also a bookmarklet [1] that embeds the CSS switcher in any page (including web pages and local HTML files). Those used to working with larger traditional frameworks may find it hard to see the point of minimal CSS frameworks. Igor Adamenko (of awsm.css) has a great and pithy explanation: > Why? I have to create simple pages in my daily work. Sometimes it's compiled > Markdown and sometimes it's pure HTML. I'd like to make them more beautiful > without additional classes, ids, etc. So I did it. These minimal CSS frameworks have also been surprisingly useful for converting Markdown files directly into PDFs [2]. Not all of them lend themselves to this purpose, obviously -- usually the simpler the theme the better. Suggestions for any minimal frameworks that were missed are very welcome! [0] [https://dohliam.github.io/dropin-minimal- css](https://dohliam.github.io/dropin-minimal-css) [1] [https://github.com/dohliam/dropin-minimal- css#bookmarklet](https://github.com/dohliam/dropin-minimal-css#bookmarklet) [2] [https://github.com/dohliam/workflow](https://github.com/dohliam/workflow) ~~~ kup0 Nice! This is a great way to preview how "opinionated" these frameworks are and how subtly or drastically they affect the appearance. Even just viewing the demo was a nice way to quickly pick out favorites that I could use or drop into quick personal projects/websites, or even just internal documentation stuff I use for myself at home and at work. ~~~ dohliam Thanks for the feedback! This is exactly what I've found it to be useful for as well. Glad you mentioned the "opinionated" aspect of these types of frameworks too -- I should add something about this to the documentation so people have an idea what to expect. ------ anotheryou Thank you!! Really cool, I needed that :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Econ 101 for Presidential Candidates - aaronchall http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/econ-101-presidential-candidates ====== fridaa I find people often over simplify things like this. Sure, free trade is good. The issues is that we've never had a free trade deal. Our "free trade deals" come with thousands of caveats where we are the partner country agree to all kinds of rules, regulations, etc. I think true free trade would be the best, but failing that I think straight-forward protectionism is better than what we get now with "free trade". ~~~ sharemywin You can't have trade without some kind of assumptions/rules of the game. Even a simple trade holds assumptions/rules your not going to come and take back your widget after we've traded. that you didn't lie about it. or switch it out at the last minute. As the agreements get more complicated the more rules you need.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Got out of coding, burnt out, how to get back in? - TyrionDrawf Looking for suggestions on what technologies are worth learning right now, both for fun factor and for employability. My current plans are to learn some Cloud stuff and get back into .NET for employability, try some game making with a friend in Python and PyGame for fun, and do another attempt at functional programming most likely with Haskell (previously did some SICP, and it made me a better programmer everywhere).<p>I'm originally a .NET/C# developer for five years doing nothing particularly innovative, switched jobs and spent three years doing customer support /onboarding with very lightweight JavaScript/HTML work and maintenance. Decided to get into Product Requirements and have been in that for slightly under two years.<p>I've enjoyed writing requirements and product specifications, but everything else I found exhausting. I'm not naturally talented at UX, and dealing with the politics is brutal and demoralizing (departments refusing to co-operate but pretending on the surface to be helpful; management not having a unified vision; no serious analysis on what projects we should be doing so we spent a year on a product that clients have not adopted). I realize that this might be just my company and other companies might be different, but I'm at the point where I have no interest in the work and don't really feel passionate about designing some perfect product and talking to the users. If nothing else, I need to get back into coding for a few years to just recharge my batteries.<p>Has anyone here been in a similar situation? Tips on recharging energy? Tips on getting back into coding and what technologies should I focus on now? Would really like to get out of web front-end browser crap with changing frameworks every six months (should I even bother to look at Angular or is it already replaced?), but I've done a bunch of HTML/CSS/JS and I'm comfortable in back end. ====== tboyd47 Hey, I'm still in coding and I'm pretty burnt out for the same reasons. The open source web ecosystem is really polarizing right now. Either you love the new Javascript World Order to the point where you port React to other languages in your free time and name your kids Bobby.js and Billy.js, or you hate Javascript with an all-consuming hatred that emanates from the very core of your being and makes you lie face-down on the floor with impotent rage, muttering rants in Old English about why it's wrong to break the back button. Are you sure you want back in? Edit: you should try Gomix (formerly Hyperdev), it's pretty cool. ~~~ jcmoscon Hey, after I learned clojure and haskell I started liking javascript. Maybe you should learn some good functional programming and open your mind to other ways of thinking.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
"37signals is the (Lotus, iPhone, Disney) of software" - vladimir http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1427-37signals-is-the-lotus-iphone-disney-of-software ====== ksvs 37 Signals is the Moosewood Cafe of software.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
When Are Nonconvex Optimization Problems Not Scary? (2015) - tpudlik https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.06096 ====== tpudlik Abstract of a talk with the same title by one of the authors (Ju Sun; coming up at Duke University on February 5th, 2018): Many problems arising from scientific and engineering applications can be naturally formulated as optimization problems, most of which are nonconvex. For nonconvex problems, obtaining a local minimizer is computationally hard in theory, never mind the global minimizer. In practice, however, simple numerical methods often work surprisingly well in finding high-quality solutions for specific problems at hand. In this talk, I will describe our recent effort in bridging the mysterious theory-practice gap for nonconvex optimization. I will highlight a family of nonconvex problems that can be solved to global optimality using simple numerical methods, independent of initialization. This family has the characteristic global structure that (1) all local minimizers are global, and (2) all saddle points have directional negative curvatures. Problems lying in this family cover various applications across machine learning, signal processing, scientific imaging, and more. I will focus on two examples we worked out: learning sparsifying bases for massive data and recovery of complex signals from phaseless measurements. In both examples, the benign global structure allows us to derive geometric insights and computational results that are inaccessible from previous methods. In contrast, alternative approaches to solving nonconvex problems often entail either expensive convex relaxation (e.g., solving large-scale semidefinite programs) or delicate problem-specific initializations. Completing and enriching this framework is an active research endeavor that is being undertaken by several research communities. At the end of the talk, I will discuss open problems to be tackled to move forward.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Narcissistic Students Get Better Grades from Narcissistic Professors - jimsojim https://hbr.org/2016/03/narcissistic-students-get-better-grades-from-narcissistic-professors?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=harvardbiz ====== danharaj > the idea that narcissism has increased among college students over the last > 25 years is worrisome from an organizational perspective. Millennials are > the next generation of leaders. When i was in school, everyone was raving at me, barking madly that all of us students had to be the leaders of tomorrow. Maybe it's because everyone is obsessed with who gets to be a leader that people presume that they should be leaders. Millenials are also the next generation of followers, or workers, or you know, discarding hierarchical considerations: millenials are the next generation of humans. Which is tautological. Looking at the current field of candidates for leader of the most powerful (by a few metrics, but not all) government of the world, i think the bar has been set very low for millenials and the people who write articles like this merely have some heavily tinted rose-colored glasses on about their "generation of leaders". That said, i don't think it's surprising that people in positions of power in a hierarchical structure, like a university setting, are biased towards people like them and hence create a selection effect within that power structure. Isn't that the basic observation that validates affirmative action? Nepotism, cronyism are commonly understood terms, but clearly they are specific cases of a general phenomenon. You cannot separate the exercise of power from its social implications. People being social creatures, they will exercise their power in ways that have social consequences. That's why people are put in positions of power in the first place. ~~~ asQuirreL This is an interesting point, and one I've seen from the other side as well: When leaving secondary (high) school, for university, a common piece of advice is: "You may have been one of the smartest people here, but be careful, you probably won't be where you're going, so you have to manage your expectations." But if everyone is being told this, then those who could become some of the "smartest people at university", are being told it too, and some of these people could be unnecessarily lowering their expectations. I've always thought this was a great shame. ~~~ danharaj Preoccupation with status hardly helps cultivate the virtue that status was supposed to indicate. ------ stcredzero Seems to me that "narcissism fit" definitely applies to a lot of schools and companies. (Though to be fair, it's particular subgroups inside those organizations that this really applies to.) ~~~ kough _coughivyleaguecough_ Yeah, definitely to subsets, but certainly not to a majority is my guess. There are always people who meet the stereotype of a school, and always those who don't. For every rich son-of-an-alum at Princeton there's someone on heavy financial aid, more or less. ~~~ stcredzero _coughivyleaguecough_ I'm one. This is part of how I know. ------ noobermin >And yet despite narcissists’ flaws, there’s lots of evidence that people are drawn to them, not least because they tend to be very charismatic. Is it possible to be both charismatic and not-narcissistic at all? I can't think of a single example, to be honest, of a leader displaying charisma and not being somewhat narcissistic. ~~~ kordless For someone to be charismatic, they may either inspire devotion by "followers" or claim they are receiving divine inspiration. If someone finds themselves with a bunch of people who are devoted to them, this is a form of implicit trust. i.e. the thing that inspired originally may have been trustworthy, but eventually the trust becomes implicit in that the "followers" will follow more regardless of inspiration. I've written about this effect on cloud services before. Divine inspiration also deals with trust channels. If someone claims to be divinely inspired (which I personally believe is possible - see Buddhism Insight for example) then whoever they relate this information to will then have to implicitly trust the information coming to them is actually represented as the divine intended it (assuming they don't have direct access themselves). Obviously, that's caused a lot of problems in the past for us, so it's non-tenable. Teachers of the way[1] avoid dictating teachings received from insight because of this. It's also probably why sutras tend to be very terse, now I think about it. The answer to your question is that it might be possible, but it's unlikely to be possible for long as the trust channels turn implicit, which then has an impact on the individual's relationship with their followers. When someone trusts you implicitly, there is no feedback on whether their trust is warranted or not, or put another way, there's no way for you to to trust if the trust you are receiving is real. And _that_ is just as bad as you not being trustworthy. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Way](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Way) ------ analog31 Maybe "narcissism" will be over and done with, by the time we come up with a popular stereotype for the next generation. ~~~ tosseraccount There is nothing new under the sun. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_generation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_generation) _The baby boomers ... were dubbed the "Me" generation by writer Tom Wolfe during the 1970s; Christopher Lasch was another writer who commented on the rise of a culture of narcissism among the younger generation._ ~~~ noobermin Is it ironic that it is often the "Me generation" that derides millennials as being self-absorbed? Not that gen Xers don't as well. ~~~ tosseraccount _" [young]... lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else."_ \- Aristotle Griping about those wacky young folks goes way back. ------ xplot A true fairytale ending.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
BitcoinPlus: montize your websites' visitors by mining bitcoins - snissn http://www.bitcoinplus.com/miner/embeddable? ====== matznerd It is marked insecure, there is no way mainstream users will mine or even visit a site with a warning like that popping up ...cool concept though ------ metalruler Last time I looked into javascript based mining perhaps a year ago, the effective earnings for a site with a few thousand uniques per day was only a few cents. Considering that a CPU intensive background process will impact negatively upon some of your visitors, is it really worth it? Happy to be corrected if circumstances have changed since. ------ icelancer Very cool. But also basically malware. ~~~ octopine It's not really malware. You're trading some CPU time for content. You do the same thing with your brain when you visit a website that contains ads. ------ octopine I wonder if it's possible to accelerate this using WebGL? ------ AndersSandvik Google marked it an unsecure website	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: When doing everything yourself, design or code first? Together? - samelawrence I'm working on a side product in my free time while I still work full-time. I am the only team member, and I will be building the initial prototype and MVP alone. I am neither an expert developer nor designer, but can handle both well enough to get something built.<p>Should I build a functional "ugly" prototype and then go back and redesign everything, or start with a shiny "we're not ready yet but give us your email" page like a LaunchRock or something, and get my logo and jazz together so I have eager users once the product is ready to launch?<p>I'm tempted to just do both at the same time and progress each day as I choose, but I wondered if any other solo founders had found success starting with one hand stronger than the other.<p>Thanks. ====== loladesoto balance this: "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late." \- Reid Hoffman with this: "Make something customers actually want." \- pg i once designed 20 screenshots of an iOS app before spending serious time with potential users. don't do that. after that mistake, i'm currently demoing the world's ugliest MVP to potential customers. my MVP = a google form and a graph based on the data. i got my first verbal commitment from a customer after demoing this and mocking up the final product on a sheet of paper. (we agreed on price and initial functionality, despite the fact that 0 lines of code had been written.) simply put: i'm building something his team can use. he gave me valuable feedback, threw in a few future feature requests and gave me a short list of other CEOs he wanted to refer me to. i also asked him to tweet about using my product. he agreed (and did). just build something that does one thing very well, and get that in front of people. they'll tell you everything you need to know from that point on. ~~~ samelawrence Oh I know my MVP is going to be hideous, and I'll probably have to throw it away quickly. I guess I was curious about whether or not marketing spice mattered on the front end of the product lifecycle as well... I feel like it's a balance, but given my target audience, it may be more important in this case than in most. ~~~ loladesoto it's a good question to ponder but the 10 mins you spend pondering it are 10 mins you could be demoing and getting feedback. i'm serious. wow them with ugly. (tm) ------ seven I just started to promote my side project[0] and I guess I am in a more or less comparable situation. I work alone and my time for this is limited. First I focused on getting the product usable and that the documentation is somehow understandable with some code examples. My design skills are very limited, and since I build something for a technical audience, I though that the look of my website would not matter that much. That was until Zach from headlinr[1] made me change the layout. Since I have a more or less decent looking website I get significantly more sign-ups and the logs show that visitors take more time to explore the content. So with this new knowledge, I would vote for nice and shiny with minimal functionality first. Get something online as soon as possible. Just to get indexed etc. but do not underestimate the rejection caused by bad design. [0] [http://template2pdf.com/](http://template2pdf.com/) [1] [http://headlinr.com/](http://headlinr.com/) ------ jt2190 The prevailing wisdom [1][2] is to sell/market the product first, so that you avoid wasting time building/designing a product that nobody wants. [1] "Yes, but who said they'd actually buy the thing?" [http://blog.asmartbear.com/customer- validation.html](http://blog.asmartbear.com/customer-validation.html) [2] "Validating product ideas before building them" [https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/validatin...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/validating_product_ideas) [3] "Do things that don't scale" [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html) ~~~ samelawrence I know my idea solves a real problem, and it's one that I've witnessed myself over and over. Whether or not people would actually use my product I think depends on which avenue I take it down, and that will be an experiment over time, to see which precise solution is the one. Over time, I will develop two sets of customers hopefully, but the initial set is anyone who cooks at home and is frustrated by sharing and viewing recipes split across Pinterest / cookbooks / work docs / sticky notes / etc. ~~~ AznHisoka you're targeting ppl who view recipes online? Most advice about customer validation won't apply to you then. Your best bet is to cross your fingers and pray you're the next Pinterest. Because even if ppl say they think it's a great idea, most won't have the cash to pay for it. ------ digita88 It is about striking a balance. You don't want to spend too long on something but at the same time, you don't want an ugly MVP that will turn off potential users. I spent a few hours doing a decent website front with the essential details, with a working newsletter form, so that I can have that front up and running while working on an MVP. I wouldn't spend a few days or weeks on it. Same with the product - maybe allocate a certain amount of time where you would work on the design and then focus on the actual product itself. I also agree in getting customer validation before spending too long (ie more than a year) on a certain product iteration ------ pedalpete I think it somewhat depends on the market you're going after. If you're doing b2b with a product that is clearly a differentiator, you can probably build an mvp and talk directly to customers and get them to try it out and get feedback. For this you may be able to get by with 'good enough' design. If you're doing a consumer product, where you won't get to speak to most of the customers until after you get them interested or even using the product, then you may need to focus more on design. Keep in mind, the less features you have, in theory the less design you need, so keeping it bare-bones at first is always a good start. ~~~ samelawrence The product is B2C, and focused on women (mostly). It's in the home cooking space, so they will probably be the early adopters. ~~~ phantom_oracle Methinks you are building a recipe-sharing website. I thought Pinterest had that niche on lockdown. Goodluck! ------ saranshkataria In my opinion, the early adopters are going to give it a shot anyways whether it has a good user interface or not, so you should just let it be a ugly prototype and focus on the functionality in the initial stages. Try and keep a simple interface, but don't try and make it attractive, just build in the minimalistic of it. Go put it out and take feedback and if the response on functionality is good, re iterate and make the interface better. ------ DharmaSoldat People (in my experience, anyways) would prefer a product that is fast and gets the job done without fault or error over a product that looks really awesome but performs poorly and is buggy. In other words you can put as much makeup on the pig as you like, but in the end it's still a pig. Try telling that to one of my former bosses though ;) ~~~ samelawrence Thanks. That's my thought as well, and my priority right now is to get a working proof-of-concept and see if anyone actually uses it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Syncany is a FLOS, versioned, encrypted, byo-storage Dropbox clone - candeira http://syncany.org/ ====== candeira I think this is the client I want to use for replicating my desktop like Max Hodak describes[1]. It sure has enough options for target storage. It boasts client-side encryption, but the author says that "In terms of speed, Syncany only transfers the changes of files, so if you change only a couple of bytes of a 100 MB file, only those bytes which have changed will be transferred (+ some more)[2]." Sounds like it uses homomorphic encryption[3]. I don't have the skills to read the code and know whether it's well done. Can anyone comment? [1] <https://www.maxhodak.com/notes/2011/05/30/dropbox.html> [2] [http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/syncany-great-dropbox- alterna...](http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/syncany-great-dropbox-alternative- which.html) [3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption> ~~~ kragen It is very unlikely to be using homomorphic encryption; it's only 2011, after all. There are any number of ways to store an encrypted file such that you can transfer deltas to it instead of entire new versions. They support different kinds of deltas. Some of them are secure. I have not read the code. ~~~ candeira Oh, thanks. I thought updating encrypted files required transferring the whole file, but I can see now how one could encrypt files in chunks and only transfer the updated chunks. ------ cheez The guy needs development help. This looks like it could really be the Dropbox/Wuala killer, at least as far as techies are concerned. ------ mathgladiator I like this, and I think given time, it will probably be superior to dropbox. But, it will suffer the linux desktop problem. How can I get my mother in law to use it? Understand it? Trust it? Who is doing the marketing? ~~~ candeira Three thoughts: \- The windows/mac installer could have a little dialog saying "the software is free, but if you want storage, you need to pay for it" and send you to open an aws account, or use your gmail account, whatever. It's a UI problem more than a marketing problem. \- If your archetypal mother in law can use Dropbox, she can use syncany with the training wheels on. \- I don't care whether your mother in law uses it, and if you do, it's your job to explain to her why it's better than Dropbox. This is not something like Skype, where the usefulness of the product depends on how many other people are using it. If the only two people in the planet using syncany were its author and myself, I would still find it enormously useful. I would be proselytizing it to my friends and family, though. ------ charlesdm Seems really nice but it needs to be simpler. The reason why Dropbox works so well is because you can pretty much install it on any device without having to think. I do like the idea of open sourcing it. When I took a look at the code I was surprised that it was written in Java. If the intent was to support a lot of platforms I think writing at least the core in C or C++ would've allowed him to get more versions up faster. Oh, and what do you mainly need help with at this point?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tesla Tanks After Goldman Downgrades to Sell - sillypuddy https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-27/tesla-slumps-in-premarket-trading-as-goldman-downgrades-to-sell ====== JumpCrisscross Tesla went public on 29 June 2010 [1]. Since then, it has traded 1,677 days. It's average (median) movement, from open to close, is -0.01% (-0.09%). There have been 50 days when Tesla stock _fell_ at least 5% and 53 days where Tesla stock _rose_ at least 5%. So about 6% of the time, historically, it's "tanked" or "boomed" by a similar amount. (By coïncidence, the average >=5% movement is +7.452% while the average <=5% movement is -7.458%.) Note: this is not a traditional presentation of volatility. Its point is to narrate, not power trades. \--- So what should you be looking at? One, there is heavy bearish sentiment around Tesla, representing about 30% of its float [2]. Short interest ratio "is the ratio of tradable shares being shorted to shares in the market" [3]. Two, Musk's reality-distortion field just faltered. None of Musk's companies have ever been realistic about timelines. But having a Goldman Sachs analyst publicly counter Tesla just a week after "Musk said the firm’s new vehicle is on schedule to arrive in July" is a new level of assertiveness. This is salient given Tesla's short-term need to raise boatloads of money. I'd keep an eye on Musk positioning back-ups to Wall Street through political channels, _e.g._ low-cost 'infrastructure' or 'domestic manufacturing' financing and/or government contracts, while he repairs his warp field. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#IPO_and_Model_S](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#IPO_and_Model_S) [2] [http://shortsqueeze.com/?symbol=tsla&submit=Short+Quote™](http://shortsqueeze.com/?symbol=tsla&submit=Short+Quote™) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_interest_ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_interest_ratio) _Disclaimer: this is not investment advice. Please don 't be a numpty and trade based on Internet comments._ ~~~ johan_larson I wonder why Bloomberg didn't try to put this drop into perspective, somehow. Surely there are traditional measures of volatility, and they could have presented those. Why didn't they? The simple answer is that bold statements grab more eyeballs, I suppose. But is that all there is to it? ~~~ slackstation Because news agencies make money from attention not accurate and usable information. Also, financial market movement has so many factors that govern their movement, that in the short term it looks random but, peoples' daily need for news forces them to put a narrative to almost random short term moves. Now this movement seems clear but, I can't know and verify for sure unless I have a representative sample of trader sentiments to know why they chose to buy or sell the stock that day. ~~~ flukus > Because news agencies make money from attention not accurate and usable > information. Doesn't bloomberg have a specific market that values accurate and usable information over click bait? ------ tommynicholas 5% drop after a 30% rally is "tanking"? Tesla stock will always be volatile it's fine. Stock was under $200 a few months ago. ~~~ elmar October 7, 2016 Elon Musk dumped by Wall St’s Goldman, Morgan now that he really needs them [http://www.biznews.com/global-investing/2016/10/07/elon- musk...](http://www.biznews.com/global-investing/2016/10/07/elon-musk-dumped- goldman-morgan/) ------ michaldudek It baffles me how all these smart people completely don't get Elon or Tesla. Maybe it's hard to understand for some that money is not the ultimate motivator? I'm pretty sure that Tesla could be a profitable company today if they stopped all investments and just focused on selling amazing Model S (who needs AP2?) (best car ever made in opinion of many reviewers!). But they're a tech company that happens to make cars (among many other things), not a traditional car company. That's why they should be valued at tech company criteria. They're doing what all the tech "unicorns" are doing - burning through cash by investing in stuff that will give them massive advantage in the future. Why profit when you can grow massively? (hello Gigafactory! hello Solar City!) Sure, I can see how this is not a company to invest in during daily trade. But it's not a company that ever said it's in it for the quick buck. 10 years ago it was failing in delivery of Roadster. 5 years ago it was failing in delivery of Model S and 2 years ago it was failing in Model X. If you ask me, I'd love to fail on the scale Elon and Tesla fail. Unless something really really random happens, Tesla is not going down anytime soon. Sure, M3 is risky, Solar City deal might be iffy, but I think some of the smartest people in the world are running this company, they're not gonna flip it. I mean, a chat app aims to be valued at $25bn vs a company that delivered almost 200k feats of engineering in the last 10 years and everyone is laughing at their current valuation of $40bn. What is wrong with the world? ~~~ nikdaheratik If you're planning on holding onto the stock long term, the best advice is to just ignore this and ride it out. The issue is that mass market auto making is _hard_ , it's intensely regulated, and it has a large potential to cost alot of money to build a factory, acquire the parts you need, and handle any liability issues. Their job is to be skeptical and that makes sense as they're lending out billions of dollars to a company that's going to need tens of billions to get everything working. ------ KirinDave It is almost like there is a secondary agenda here. It's difficult to see how anyone arrived at these conclusions. ~~~ hodder Tesla investors are learning a hard lesson that just because a company is cool and makes amazing products, that does not make it a buy at any price. There is almost no way to justify the current valuation and Goldman is simply reiterating that. I have a really nice coffee mug in front of me right now. Best mug I've ever used. Is it worth 1200 dollars? No. Price matters. ~~~ mikeash With a market cap of about $40 billion, I don't think they're learning that yet. If the price drops to reflect something vaguely resembling the company's current size, rather than wild dreams of massive growth, then they might be learning that. But the current price is still way high if you just look at the present or even the near future. ~~~ Udik I often reflect that if Elon Musk died (god forbid) the shares of Tesla would drop to a fifth or a tenth of their current value in the space of a few hours. It's incredible how much a single person can make the difference. ~~~ sixQuarks very true in this case, because Elon is a once-in-a-generation, perhaps even once-in-a-century type of person. On the other hand, if he keeps going at this pace for another 15 years, there is a very good chance that Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world. That's the whole risk/reward situation with Tesla, if he dies or loses his abilities with older age, shit hits the fan, otherwise you got a 20-bagger in your hand if you wait 15 years. ~~~ ygjb-dupe wow. The hero worship is strong with you. I agree that he has accomplished some pretty cool things, but calling him a "once-in-a-century" or "once-in-a- generation" person ignores all of the other people who have been as or more successful than him in multiple dimensions of success. ~~~ sixQuarks please name some of these people who have been as or more successful - and don't go by wealth alone. I'm talking disrupting multiple, huge industries with innovative products. ~~~ MegaButts I think Elon has accomplished a lot, but I think you're ignoring the fact that every one of his companies is still surprisingly risky. Tesla might not get another loan and it could go under in a year. SpaceX has fantastic margins, but they still have significant hurdles with failed launches (although this is true of rocketry in general) and navigating a political landscape. Solar City was going under when Elon saved it by combining it with Tesla, a very controversial move. Elon has yet to run a profitable electronic vehicle company. Elon has yet to run a stable alternative to NASA. Elon has yet to ween the world off its oil dependence. He is working towards all of them and it's great! But he hasn't succeeded in disrupting any of them yet, because all of the alternatives still exist and are as healthy as ever. ~~~ sixQuarks you're avoiding the question. Name someone else that has done more impressive things than what Elon has already accomplished. ~~~ brianwawok Ben Franklin Thomas Edison Ghandi ~~~ gordon_freeman It's 'Gandhi'. ~~~ brianwawok Apologies, been a while since I played Civ ;) ------ elmar Anyone knows the status of these loans? Elon Musk Is Borrowing Another $150 Million From Goldman Sachs To Buy More Tesla Stock (2013) [http://www.businessinsider.com.au/elon-musk- borrows-150-mill...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/elon-musk- borrows-150-million-to-buy-tesla-2013-5) ------ frgtpsswrdlame Once people realize that the self-driving dream won't be taking place anytime in the foreseeable future, I'd expect another big drop. ~~~ gr3yh47 i'd say the next 5-10 or even 20 years certainly falls under the 'forseeable future' ~~~ frgtpsswrdlame >i'd say the next 5-10 And I'm gonna say you're delusional. The thing I'm really curious is about how much of Tesla stock is self-driving hype? I still believe in electric cars. Also will Elon's web of companies come crashing down when progress on the self-driving front starts to falter? ~~~ JumpCrisscross > _will Elon 's web of companies come crashing down when progress on the self- > driving front starts to falter?_ Are you confusing Tesla with Uber? Uber _needs_ self-driving cars to justify its valuation. Tesla doesn't. It just needs production volume. If anything, very near-term self-driving cars might be _bad_ for Tesla because it would reduce aggregate demand for cars. ~~~ frgtpsswrdlame >Are you confusing Tesla with Uber? No, although I think Uber is in dire straits itself. A lot of laypeople buy Teslas not just because they are electric but because of a general feeling that they "are the future." The self-driving dream goes a long way towards driving this consumer sentiment. If self-driving peters out in the way I suspect it will, Musk/Tesla begin to lose some of their luster. If traditional car brands can bring in affordable electric cars which also look good, what will Musk have left? His image is necessary and part of that image is placed in self-driving. ~~~ djrogers > If self-driving peters out in the way I suspect it will I think the current capabilities in 'self driving' are already driving a lot of attention and sales. Even if it 'peters out' in a few years with only refinements on the current abilities, people love the idea of a car that can park itself, come when summoned, handle the drudgery of stop-and-go commute traffic, and predict/prevent some accidents. Those features alone are good enough to make a $35k car very desirable. ------ OliverJones Wall Street really doesn't like companies doing things with a promised payoff beyond the present fiscal year. That's what they're doing at TSLA. Sure, a lot of it ("Gigafactories!!!!!") is ego driven, not economy-of-scale driven. But they will need the manufacturing capacity as electric storage becomes more common. Don't forget, TSLA is an energy company. Their present products have wheels because rich dopes like me will spend money on them, and because there's some low-hanging fruit in transportation energy in this decade (not this fiscal year). But long term their products are going to be as ubiquitous as household electric meters and just as boring. If I had a bunch of shares of TSLA and a kid entering college, I might sell some of them at the present price. But that doesn't make them a bad investment. ~~~ idiot_stick > _Don 't forget, TSLA is an energy company._ Boy are people going to have to do some explaining if Tesla winds down Solar City, which I see as a major possibility. > _But long term their products are going to be as ubiquitous as household > electric meters and just as boring._ I'd love to know how people are so confident that it's going to be Tesla that wins this. This isn't Tesla vs GM, Tesla vs Toyota, Tesla vs Ford; it's Tesla vs Everyone. If you were betting, you would really bet on Tesla vs one of about 15 other, huge companies in pool? That seems insane to me. ~~~ djrogers > if Tesla winds down Solar City Why would they wind down a profitable financing arm of the company? Auto makers get a huge chunk of their revenue from financing, as do solar lease companies. Lots of synergy there, and just about zero downside to continuing Solar City operations. ------ jacquesm This is just Goldman trying to get better terms for their loan. ~~~ idiot_stick > _This is just Goldman trying to get better terms for their loan._ In the vaunted halls of Silicon Valley, maybe. But people in the finance world are starting to wonder if this thing can hold up. Others have been wondering for a while. ------ exhilaration I wish it would "tank" a little further so I could buy some shares. ~~~ alexro If you like to risk buy Bitcoin instead. None of the Bitcoin buyers who held on the investment ever lost money. ~~~ jlgaddis I bought $11,000 USD worth of BTC at $7. I sure wish I had held on to it. ~~~ thefalcon Out of curiosity, and if you don't mind sharing, why/when did you get out of it? ------ M_Grey IIRC wasn't there just a debate here on HN about the wisdom of shorting Tesla stock? ~~~ angstrom There's also a fitting debate about blindly follow GS. ~~~ M_Grey I can't imagine that anyone would be so foolish as to do that today, even if they had been so inclined years ago. ------ cryptozeus 5% down != tanks ~~~ trimbo 11% since earnings. ------ lutusp This narrative explains why there can be no "winning strategy" in equities investment (apart from investing in an index fund). The widely followed analysts who recommend selling TSLA shares based on what they _expect_ to happen, make their prediction come true by speaking publicly (an "announcement effect") -- compare the rate of change in the stock price when the "experts" aren't offering their advice to the public. It also builds the reputation of the analysts -- the more correct calls they make, the more wise they seem. The more wise they seem, the more the public follows their advice. The more the public follows their advice, the more "correct" calls they seem to have made. The real winners are those who make their moves _the day before_ the experts speak, which is why insider trading is illegal. [http://arachnoid.com/equities_myths/](http://arachnoid.com/equities_myths/) ------ nodesocket I wouldn't call it tanking. I'd say correction. Since Dec 2nd, $TSLA has been up over 40%. Today's action brings it down to up 35%. [https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=0&chds=1&chdv=0&...](https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=0&chds=1&chdv=0&chvs=Linear&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1488256521671&chddm=22678&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ:TSLA&ntsp=0&ei=B_60WImPCIHRjAH27rbYBA) ------ mjgoeke Part of me really wants to read this headline as - "Tesla retaliates with heavy armored vehicles after creditor denounces them to the public" ------ ChicagoDave I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist, but Trump is friends with the oil & gas industry, Tesla and the gigafactories are a direct threat to that industry, and GS is embedded deeply in this administration. Tesla is doing what we as a world should be promoting, that is to stop pushing oil & gas exploration and pushing sustainable energies. There is an energy war. Tesla is doing better than anyone expected from a science perspective. There is a lot of money at stake in oil, gas, coal, and electricity (in its current form). I expect this administration to drop the EC subsidies at some point, but retain the O&G exploration subsidies. The Koch brothers are probably somewhere in this mix as well.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Virtual Networking App - tryamtamtam https://apps.apple.com/app/connect-club-virtual-place/id1500718006Greatapptoconnecttofriends.Reallylovedit. ====== tryamtamtam Great app to connect to friends. Really loved it!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Growing One's Consulting Business (2012) - ColinWright https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consulting_1?HN_repost ====== fchollet One should remark that the price of your services does not depend solely on how much value you're providing. That value is just the upper bound of what you can charge. The other factor is what somebody else would charge to do the same service (it doesn't even to be a service of the same value, just a service _perceived_ to have the same value --and people are notoriously bad at estimating that value in software). That's why in practice consultants find it impossible to increase their rates above market average unless they have a very strong brand. I would certainly be curious to know how much patio11 is really making from his consulting business. It sounds like he would be making at least $300,000 (a lowball estimate of $x0,000 would be $15,000, and a lowball estimate of how many weeks he works in a year would be 20). And possible up to $1.2M (40 weeks at $30k). ~~~ tomjen3 You are right, assuming the market is liquid. The market in these types of consultants isn't liquid, it is very possible that, if they don't hire patio11, they will have to search extensively for somebody else, whom _they perceive as qualified to do the job_. Given that they still make a lot of money of of the deal, that isn't going to be too smart. Note that if I am right, this suggest an arbitrage opportunity, uber for small business consultants. It's most important issue is vetting the people who are doing the job and making sure clients know that they can count on them. ~~~ reagency Your uber idea is exactly how the decades -old traditional consulting shop works (Accenture/Anderson, McKinsey, etc). The "partners" are well-reputed deal-makig salespeople, and they farm out work to associates . ------ sown So how do you start a consulting business, if you're technically a programmer with a degree n' all but not much experience spread over 7-8 years. All I do is fix bugs; that's all _they_ trust me with. For example, I didn't know that Design Patterns were a thing. I'm learning about it now. I don't know what I don't know, yada yada. Not sure what to do. I really do aspire to make new code, but it seems like if I never give up and I never win, then I'm wasting my precious remaining years. Recently I've been writing a ruby grape-based api server and I thought I had a handle on it. Then I had the privilege of seeing a similar project for real and I wasn't even close. Theirs was so much better. Maybe I can get to that level but these guys are young, half my age, and they know 4x what I do. I don't want to get negative but it feels like my career has just stalled and is at risk of never starting up again. I'm at a loss as to what to do exactly. What would you do? ~~~ toxicFork I'm not a super expert on consulting, and my advice is going to be specifically about doing things other than "bug fixing": I would recommend contributing to open source projects, find some that may interest you and are at an early stage. If none exist, you can also just use a couple hours every day, and some at the weekends, to create something from scratch on your own. You will run into problems and you will have questions, use the internet (e.g. stackoverflow)! Also - it will help me too - could someone recommend some books please? ~~~ amorphid This may sound too simple, but if you wanna make the big bucks as a well paid consultant, learn how to be a consultant. The simplest option might be joining a successful consulting company, and learn to play the game they play. You can also get your own clients and work your way up. Just push yourself to figure out what you don't know, and then go after it. Finding one or more mentors can be pretty strong, too. Source: I taught myself to be a recruiting consultant, and then taught myself to be a software developer. Neither was easy. Now I'm growing as a software developer, and that's going pretty well. ~~~ toxicFork You may need to reply to the above message and not this one so that it can reach the intended recipient easier :) ------ akassover There's another type of hybridized consultancy/product business to consider: have a product and provide value-added consulting around the product. This tends to work best with B2B products that require implementation legwork, customization, or just general thought on the customer side to get maximum value. For example, at Guidearama.com, our platform lets businesses turn marketing assets (videos, white papers, case studies, etc.) into a resource center on their website with lead generating landing pages. We've often ended up managing the entire program our clients are implementing around our platform. This can be packaged at a fixed cost and is much easier to price based on value than normal time & materials work. To our clients, we look like heroes because we can produce results very quickly using guidearama.com that in their minds should take 10x longer to complete. There are a few benefits to this hybrid approach: * The consulting work becomes decommoditized. You gain an unfair advantage because you developed the product the client is interfacing with. * Your product builds your pipeline for you so you spend less time on sales and marketing. * Your consulting work becomes more efficient because you can automate many tasks in your product that would otherwise take time if you were doing straight consulting work In patio11's case, I don't think there wasn't an opportunity to do this because his consulting work and Bingo Card Creator didn't overlap - the case might be different with Appointment Reminder. ------ apatters When I read this I don't know whether to be inspired or to put a bullet through my head. I've been freelancing/running a micro-PHP/WordPress consultancy for a few years now and the experience has been very, very different. (We have a fair splash of node and javascript competency on the team too, but haven't turned it into projects yet.) Our margins are thin. Billing on a weekly or monthly basis is a fantasy for us. Clients are never interested in this arrangement, they want to do hourly only because they think it'll save them money. When I try to pitch things as a business solution instead of just renting a coder, they invariably push back and say it's only fair to tell them what it'll cost to build, and they'll pay that. I don't have a huge personal network so we've relied on platforms like Elance to make many of our contacts. The nickel-and-diming, even outright scamming on these platforms defies the imagination. We had a client last year who was very lucrative in the beginning, but he ran out of cash. After a lot of sob stories and assurances that it was a temporary situation, we ultimately did five figures worth of work for him on credit. Of course now it's been six months, we haven't seen a dime of what he owes us, and he continues to demand more work. If I say no he attacks me with some of the most vile personal abuse and insults I've ever seen. I want to get rid of this guy so badly, and I finally drew the line with him and said no more work yesterday after he insulted me and called me names in front of other people in my industry. But the reality is he owes us tons of money (well, by the standards of what I make) so I'm very afraid to burn that bridge for the same reason I took him on in the first place: I need the cash. Recently we did a small job for a payday loans affiliate website. (I know, I know, I know, but again, we needed the cash.) The guy who owned the website congratulated us on a job well done, and then of course proceeded to "not notice" that there was $200 still owed and not reply to my messages. After a week I reverted the changes we made to his site and he was super responsive after that. He chewed me out for how unprofessional it was, of course, but he paid up. Look it's not all bad. We've had some good clients and we're very proud of the work we do -- I'm in love with the craft of software development, not in the "chase the latest framework like a puppy on adderall" sort of way, but in the "this is an amazing and never ending intellectual challenge" sort of way. My employees are like this too. We work in an EXTREMELY difficult environment and if we weren't very good at what we do, we would have been replaced by $8/hr programmers in India a long time ago. We get some good business from referrals because we do (IMHO) great work, but when half of your clients are broke and/or scammers, how good are their referrals really going to be? I started my career at one of the tech giants where the compensation was good, the coworkers were amazing, and I learned a ton. But not about running a business, where I clearly have a lot more to learn. Sometimes I look at where I am now, squabbling with a freakin' loan shark over 200 bucks, and ask, "Holy crap, how could I have screwed up this badly?" Building a product with the proceeds of our consulting business? What proceeds? I can only dream. ~~~ mtbcoder Two suggestions I would have: 1) Expand your services offerings beyond "Wordpress consulting", even if it means putting your company on the back-burner for a bit to acquire more lucrative skill sets. "Wordpress consultants" are a dime-a-dozen and there's simply too much noise in this arena for it to be sustainable. 2) I'm not sure what city you are located in, but try to tap into the local market first before aiming for national or international clients. Small/medium sized businesses generally like to have people that they can interact with face to face. Also, participate in and join your local chamber of commerce. From my past experiences, they love to do business with other members. ~~~ apatters Do you think that node consulting would be a better play, in terms of having fewer nickel-and-dime clients? We already have a bit of node experience on the team. ------ bdcravens This was posted almost three years ago at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4805091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4805091). I see you appended "HN_repost" to make it unique. ~~~ tptacek As is the idiom on HN. You're explicitly allowed to repost older things, but doing it for recent stories in order to get them multiple cracks at the front page is an abuse. The title could use a _(date)_ on it, though. I no longer work at Matasano; instead, me, Patrick, and Erin now run a company together. ~~~ larrys An interesting discussion could revolve around what happens if you (Patrick) give up your lucrative consulting practice to start a company? If the company doesn't work out for some reason and if that process takes many years then how easy is it to get back into consulting and to build a book of business and referrals again? ~~~ MichaelGG Going off Patrick's blog, I'm guessing it'd be pretty straightforward for him to resume very successful consulting work. ------ j2kun Reading this post inspired me to give consulting a shot. ~~~ patio11 Awesome! Drop me a line in a year if you want to share how it goes. ~~~ sarciszewski This general attitude of being friendly and encouraging people is probably a large contributor to your success. :P ------ paulhauggis It sounds like Patrick is doing what most developer/business owners do (me included), which is consult until your product or service based business succeeds. I tried it twice and twice I nearly burnt out. Luckily, after the second time, my business was making me a good living already, so I never looked back. The problem is that consulting will take a lot more time out of your life than even a regular job. His clients sound professional and fairly large, but the majority of your clients will be small and mid-sized companies. They will try to nickle-and-dime you for everything because they want to save money. You only have so much mental energy and I found that I didn't have much left over to work on the business. On top of this, you then needed to worry about chasing down customers for payment, which adds to the stress. I also worked for a consulting company (they grew like what is described here). It was very difficult for them to find reliable consultants. We went through so many different people, I was the only one that was still there after a year, when I finally left. It's a brutally difficult business and will sidetrack you to the point where your other business may not ever succeed. ~~~ gk1 > ...but the majority of your clients will be small and mid-sized companies. > They will try to nickle-and-dime you for everything because they want to > save money. In case anyone reading this is considering going into consulting: There _are_ good clients out there. You don't hear about them because people don't complain about good clients, they only complain about the bad ones. I've been consulting for two years and never had these problems. It helps to be on a monthly rate (vs hourly) and choose your clients wisely. ~~~ crdb I agree with this. If you set expectations and make sure you work with decent people (and that last part is just a function of life experience, unfortunately), you will have a much smoother ride. I've had both, learning the hard way. Also agree with monthly rate. ------ blumkvist >but after you've figured out scaling for a product business (highly non- trivial), they often scale so well that continuing with the consulting would be economically irrational. I have this hybrid model going on. I do consulting, I do products and I do training too. Products make 2-3x Consulting revenue. If I pushed it, it would go much higher than that. However, I just like my job. I like consulting. I like solving problems for businesses. I like it much more than building a full scale business for myself, actually. What I want to say is this: If you're a consultant and want to scale, you won't be doing what you're doing now. You will be running a business. If you do software deelopment, you won't be doing any of that any more. You will be figuring how to hire people, how to train them, how to retain them, how to get them work, deal with accounting and a million other things. Another thing to think about is competition. When you're a solo operation, competition is not a problem. When you grow a company, however, it becomes a big problem. Not only direct competition. Indirect one too. Take for example PPC (pay-per-click) agencies. Firms offering search engine optimization started offering PPC, so the ones specializing in PPC had to start offering SEO too. Then SEO became all about web development and now those firms had to compete with web dev shops. Hire, train, retain people for that? Then traditional ad agencies started getting into digital too and they have a lot of other expertise to offer. Growing a business is like taking a life-long trip without knowing the destination and you might be very unpleasantly surprised at the end. ~~~ lifeisstillgood I am not so sure. I was CIO for a small/mid company and ran it well, but slowly got fed up with the politics. So I went back to contracting, and loved it for a while, just me and the keyboard. But I still have to do the same "CIO" stuff - negotiating the trade off between "right" and "right now", project and risk management etc etc. but this time it's for me alone, with far less positional authority, far less face time with decision makers and generally less support. It's called being a professional I suppose. But I simply do not trust that contracting or consulting without working on a client funnel and focusing on a niche and so on is going to provide the richness of work I want. So despite having thought I was going to be happy, it turns out I need to work on the business in some fashion so I can later on work in the business - without worrying so much about the future. Tl;Dr - if you are a consultant and want to keep on being one without constant fear of empty schedules or just being a cog in a giant machine you have no control over, you need to work on your business. Automate as much as you can, but if you are not marketing yourself and building some funnel then you are accepting whatever comes along - if anything. Edit: Oh, and when you are just a solo operation, competition is definitely something to worry about - you are almost a commodity, pitched about by shiny suited agents or vaguely remembered contacts in past contracts. Edit2: hmmm, and this is me after two weeks holiday. Might need a long look at things Monday Morning.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Dating Site Without Pictures - gieoon https://ohmyperson.com/ ====== firefoxd Close to two years ago, there was a show HN for a dating app posted here. I signed up, found a couple bugs, reported them, then deleted the app. Couple month later, I got an email saying that I got a match. Downloaded it again, had a very nice conversation, but I was not attracted. I went to the settings, selected 25 miles radius and Black only. The next match I got was not Black, and over a thousand miles. Now we are married with children. I think dating apps all look for a trick, a gimmick, or a twist. We will find you the perfect match. The real issue is as we get more disconnected from one another, we don't know how to deal with another person. Here is what the dating app I won't build will do. It will tell you how to start a conversation. Help you get dressed on a first date. Help you hold a conversation. Teach you étiquettes. Tell you what to do when you don't get an answer. These are all real relationship building tips that dating apps don't bother with. ~~~ UweSchmidt I propose a paid service with a human operator who suggests matches and sends people on appropriate dates. You get one match, go on the date and report back how it went, and get a new match based on both of your feedback. "That person was a little crazy" -> get someone more boring next time. The date you get sent on is engaging and topical: a dance class or a tennis class or a guided tour in a museum, something that's engaging in the right way and avoids restaurant first date awkwardness. ~~~ robjan We've gone full circle and reinvented the dating agency. If technology fulfils its original promises we would ideally be in a world where people didn't have "too little free time to meet people" and relationships would happen organically again. ~~~ SenorSourdough Is the problem that we have too little time to meet people? It strikes me that the problems are more related to increased isolation/individualism, increased distraction, degradation of real-world communities, and increased fear of making unwanted/unexpected advances. People who have free time just aren't choosing to use it in ways that encourage the creation of organic relationships. ------ dinkleberg I applaud the attempt to innovate in the dating world which tends to be solely focused on looks. But sexual attraction is an important part of relationships, so going in blind is inherently risky (from a time utilization perspective). With old school blind dates, your date is friend/family selected so some level of filtering is already done for you. I guess a good portion of dates are disappointing anyway and there are even those that get catfished, so it's always worth trying something else out. ~~~ gamegoblin Potential solution: make photos and text bios disjoint. That is, imagine a tinder-like app where 50% of the things shown to you are photos and 50% are bios. But they are all mixed up so you don’t know whose photo matches to whose bio. You only “match” with someone if you swipe right on their photo _and_ their bio. ~~~ Guest0918231 In that case people would swipe on just the attractive users and on every bio without reading them. A simple fix would be to only allow users to swipe on 20% of the photos and 20% of the bios. ~~~ sandoooo I am going to defeat your system by swiping on the top 20% looks and bottom 20% bios. And everybody else will follow suit once they realize it's an effective strategy. And you'll have a race to bottom. ~~~ Guest0918231 What's the bottom 20% of bios? "If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best"? Are you suggesting that attractive people have terrible bios? If so, you're probably right and it would be a decent strategy. That being said, it seems silly to try and force people that only care about looks into caring about bios. Who are we to tell them how to select a partner? Maybe they would be most happy with an attractive partner that doesn't share any of their interests. If that's who they want to find, then instead of telling them they're wrong, we should help them do it. ~~~ im3w1l He is saying that he only cares for looks, so he'll go for the less in-demand bios to improve chance of a match. ------ dlkf Props for building this! The online dating market is a complete mess. It's basically an oligopoly, and has a pretty obvious misalignment of incentives. Novel ideas and competition are sorely needed. As regards all the brilliant psychologists here who are commenting "looks matter to most people!": it's not as though you will find every person you meet on ohmyperson unattractive. The issue is that meeting people you find attractive might happen less frequently than it would on eg Tinder. How much less frequently is an empirical question. It's worth noting that edited, filtered, selection-biased Tinder profile pics are not always useful. Sometimes they're worse than nothing. I've been on a bunch of internet dates in the past year, and half the time my date looks nothing like their photos. At least with ohmyperson I won't feel duped. The problem I see with this model is that it might naturally lead to the situation where people develop a strong connection over messages and then feel disappointed when they meet IRL, only to find that they are incompatible for reasons of physical attraction. This happens sometimes and it's a real bummer. (It's for this reason that I think you should meet - or pass - after sending a couple messages, rather than having a protracted convo). Just as the Tinder model provides a coarse grained filter for looks, I can see ohmyperson providing a coarse grained filter for interests, values, and relationship goals. Some apps (bumble, okc) have various filters for these sorts of attributes, but in my opinion none have really figured it out all that well. ~~~ chillacy This is basically what happened when Ok Cupid tried this as an experiment for one day. Long conversations were instantly abandoned. ~~~ iudqnolq Can you expand? I'd like to learn more about this. Ok Cupid used to publish lots of interesting blog posts, so I'm assuming you got that from one, but I can't find it. Do you have a link? ~~~ c0nducktr I wonder if the old blog posts are even still up. After they were bought by Match Group, all those experiments stopped, and the site became one with the borg. It's depressing that one shitty corporation, controls every fucking dating site, and has the money to buy pretty much any competitor at this point. ~~~ disqard Somebody archived them here [0] [0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/gwern/comments/aapn1l/okcupid_blog_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gwern/comments/aapn1l/okcupid_blog_archives/) ~~~ iudqnolq Thank you. The one top of chain was referring to was [https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/weexperimenton...](https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/weexperimentonhumanbeings.html) ~~~ yorwba That doesn't seem to show that "Long conversations were instantly abandoned." The graph of "conversation life expectancy vs. normal" vs "where in the thread the photos came back on" does show a dip in life expectancy of 20%-30% if photos appeared after just a few messages, but the gap grows smaller the more messages had been exchanged. In other words, the longer a conversation had been going on, the smaller the influence of learning what the other person looked like was. ------ bjornlouser In 1 month: Dating Site Without Pictures, But With Voice Recording In 3 months: Dating Site With Pictures, But Only Of Eyes In 6 months: Dating Site With Pictures, Eyes and Nose In 12 months: name change to ohmymember.com (adult site) ~~~ mgarfias 13 months: profit ~~~ m463 1 month: sells personal data of people with poor judgement: profit ------ daliwali Hahaha this will never work for an obvious reason that isn't socially acceptable to state. As soon as looks get involved, it's over. ~~~ StavrosK Why isn't it socially acceptable to state that looks are important? I feel like people are conflating "external appearance matters" and "external appearance is all that matters" and demonizing the former in their attempt to ward away the latter. ~~~ crooked-v Also, putting the "X out of 10" scale aside, some people are just drawn to certain looks more than others. Tall, short, certain facial structures, different body types, beards/no beards on men, etc. ------ nikkwong > "References: He was really nice to me, and one of the nicest guys I've ever > dated. We had some issues with his parents not liking me, that eventually > caused us to break up. but otherwise I'm envious of the next person who gets > to be with him!" The juxtaposition between dating and references.. doesn't work, at least to me. I can't imagine actually writing this about an ex. Especially, curious as to the circumstance in which this type of interaction would even occur. "Hey, sorry we didn't work out, now can you write a reference for my dating profile?" ~~~ mirimir That sounds pretty good to me. Funny story. Good references from one of my ex wives got me in bed with two of her friends. However, they didn't want me, just my sperm. But it was still fun. ~~~ plemer That’s more of an overt brag than a funny story. ~~~ mirimir Maybe. But I did say that they didn't actually want a relationship, which isn't such a brag. ~~~ plemer I read it mostly as “sex with me comes highly recommended and I have desirable sperm.” But if you were looking for a relationship, I can see how that wouldn’t have felt as...victorious? I didn’t get that context from your original comment though. Anyway, good night. ~~~ mirimir I was lonely. But also way too angry for a relationship. So yeah, it was bittersweet. Also, said ex wife was professionally quite awesome, so I think that sort of rubbed off on me. ~~~ saagarjha You’re still bragging. ~~~ mirimir OK, maybe so. But it's by no means purely a brag. I mean, what. Divorce. And feeling used. Not fun. As I recall, one of them was about to leave her husband, but a grandmother had offered her $1K if she had a kid. Which I learned just after sex. ~~~ 55555 offered 1k to have a kid. lol. It took a while to find a funny part but this will do. ~~~ mirimir I have a better one. Former lover stops by to say that she's pregnant, and needs a green card. But says that she's going to tell some other guy that it's his. Because he can support her, and [unsaid but implied] I'm just another itinerant hippie. But hey, dodged one there, didn't I? ------ Razengan Current dating apps/services are little more than ad platforms; you advertise yourself to the pool of members they claim to reach, and you pay to have your ad shown to more people more often (Tinder's Boost, OKCupid's A-List.) Apparently they actually _hinder_ matches unless _both_ people are paying. Some of those prices are laughably ridiculous, like Tinder's $40 for a 3 hour "boost", with no indication of effectiveness, and sadly prey on desperation. I'd love to see a modern service that aims to meaningfully connect people instead of perpetually preying upon them for cash. On the other hand, the dating industry may be like the lightbulb cartel; if you're _too_ effective, your customers will no longer need you. :) ~~~ burfog They do need to make money. How would you have them do it? My preference is a markup on the cost of validating alleged attributes. If you claim to be 6'2" tall, that might be validated with a notarized statement from a doctor. If you claim to have a degree, that can be checked via the usual electronic clearinghouse non-profit that universities use. If you claim to own property, county records can be checked. All this costs money. Apply a markup, and that gives a profit that will seem reasonably fair to most people. Another way is to sell the obvious products, ranging from condoms to wedding rings. ------ anonytrary Although the physical component of sexual attraction may not be sufficient (which is your premise), it is definitely necessary and cannot be ignored. Tinder is suitable for hookups, but not for dating. Your site is suitable for friendships, but not for dating. Both of these sites could create relationships that evolve into dating, but I don't think either of them are the path of least action for this purpose. Tinder focuses too much on physical attributes, text-only sites focus too little on physical attributes. Both solutions are at the poles of a spectrum. "Dating" is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. ------ duelingjello I’ve thought about this a lot. I think it’s important that dating people match based on relative attractiveness, health, energy level, tidiness, age/maturity, mental attitude, goals and standard of living. Also, dating sites should facilitate meeting, not pen-pals or “virtual” phony “relationships.” Perhaps a more palatable way to approach this is to legitimately screen/curate each applicant and rate them honestly so that there’s less disappointment on blind matching. Also, you don’t what a Philip DeFranco moment of moving to NYC for a would-be significant other that is actually a 16-year-old con artist in Idaho. ~~~ octorian > Also, dating sites should facilitate meeting, not pen-pals or “virtual” > phony “relationships.” This. So much this. Above all else. Playing the whole game of an online back-and-forth "relationship" before the first meeting is annoying and exhausting. Honestly, it feels like a complete waste of time as well. There will be a yay/nay decision made by at least one party, within the first FIVE MINUTES of that first in-person meeting, that will render EVERYTHING previously exchanged online to be completely irrelevant. Better to just get to that point as quickly as possible, and not kid ourselves about it. ~~~ crooked-v This kind of thing is why I feel like there's an untapped market in some kind of facilitated speed dating that does some kind of basic prescreening on mutual preferences (age range, want/don't want kids, general interests, etc) and sets up events when there's a sufficient 'pool' of people whose Venn diagrams all reasonably intersect. ------ progval Although I'm personally done with dating sites, I'm glad to see someone else had this idea, and actually made it. But please consider not making all data go through Google (analytics (which can be blocked) and firestore (which is required)) and allow logins without Google or Facebook accounts. Sharing browsing data of a dating site with a third-party should be considered a privacy issue. ~~~ WarOnPrivacy I get a blank page w/ an empty header. When I allowed google-analytics in UBO, I get a blank page w/ a more populated header and 2 sign-in options. I tried it in IE11 (where broken things go) and I get the You Need Javascipt message on an otherwise blank page. Guessing this page just can't live in a decrapified world. ~~~ progval There was an error in the web console that they exceeded their Firestore quota. They probably didn't provision enough money for hours of being on HN's frontpage. ------ crca What’s the incentive for attractive people? Why would you voluntarily give up a competitive advantage in a highly competitive market? If you’re ugly like me this is great. ~~~ riversflow Being attractive brings its own host of problems when it comes to finding a mate, especially if you are looking for someone you really relate to at a high level rather than someone who just scratches some primal itches. ~~~ globular-toast Rubbish. Being attractive only makes things easier. Why on earth would a less attractive person have a higher chance of finding a soulmate than a more attractive person? ------ me551ah Looks are always a factor and some people on this site will find it out the hard way. Imagine being matched with someone on this website and chatting with them for a few weeks before meeting. If they ghost you after that meeting for your looks, it's going to be a lot more painful than being swiped left . ------ undefined_user6 Is it normal to provide relationship history on dating sites nowadays? I would feel extremely uncomfortable just giving out that info. ------ overgard Nothing screams romance like a dating profile designed to look like a resume. ------ m0ther I have a lot of professional experience in this field. If you want some help refining your system through my experience, provide some method for me to contact you directly. ~~~ gieoon Hey thanks, much appreciated, my email is jun.a.kagaya@gmail.com ------ eat_veggies This UI looks exactly like LinkedIn hahaha ~~~ gieoon It is! ------ rahulchhabra07 Looks cool. Supper simple, attractive as is. Found missing: \- Qualities the person might be seeking in a potential mate; the existing user profiles signal that need. \- The button to go to the next profile seems out of place. Could enjoy more focus. \- Completing my own profile could be a little more nudging. ~~~ kitsuac The site should be unattractive but functional. Gotta drink your own koolaid. ------ swiley Looks really aren't that important but context is. Dating sites don't create the environment where this building up context and friendships is possible, maybe chat sites are better? Although I haven't found an online community around something I enjoy that _also has lots of women involved._ which is kind of frustrating. ------ tempsy It just seems like wasted time if you end up meeting and there’s no physical attraction. Perhaps something like this would make sense if you only saw pictures after mutually matching based on something both people liked about each other’s written profile. ------ Bostonian People do filter based on education. College graduates usually marry college graduates. I am married and don't have a direct interest in dating sites, but I suggest that people be allowed to state SAT/ACT scores and to filter based on those scores. My wife's relatives looked on her behalf and chose me partly because I graduated from a famous university. I chose her partly because of her profession (physician). The Rick Singer scandal has dramatized how non-academic criteria affect college admissions. Graduates from HYPS/MIT are on average smarter than other college graduates, but a more granular filter based on test scores would be helpful. ------ icebraining The "without pictures" concept is fine, but why did you choose to model the user profile after a CV? What do you think are the benefits over, say, OKC's approach? ~~~ ta999999171 Probably less subjectivity in how to answer. ------ avirajkhare00 This is LinkedIn without photos. ------ anonu I've had this exact same idea. The difference was there was a bit more tech or "AI" behind the scenes. You would still upload a picture of yourself. You would also build a model of what features you were looking for ... Maybe like choosing who you like better between two different pictures. Then your matches would be made if both sides had high "similarity scores" for each other's pictures. ~~~ gieoon That's a really cool idea, it would be cool to compare profiles (maybe even using images generated from a GAN like thispersondoesnotexist.com) to figure out what kind of features are attractive, then choose from a pool of narrowed down candidates on both sides. It just seemed like a bit of a hurdle to launch with ------ samat There is a super app like this called Lex, but it’s for non-straight people only. [https://apps.apple.com/ru/app/lex- app/id1436964232?l=en](https://apps.apple.com/ru/app/lex- app/id1436964232?l=en) ------ adventured The little two person icon in the top right apparently generates a random result. It's very much not obvious what that does at first glance, it appears to be a user account or login type icon. It needs a clear, random element indicator to it. ------ crow996 Just thought I'd mention that I was once on a Dutch dating website, where you could read the profiles straight away, and each other's photos would gradually fade in (from blurry to clear) for each chat message you exchanged. ------ braindead_in Just signed up. The website needs a UI overhaul. I think this will work. All the best. ~~~ gieoon What kind of UI do you suggest? ------ yellow_lead From the guest view, it looks like people are only described through their name, job and relationship history. I might suggest a by-line or other information on their profile, but understood if it's only available to members. ------ RomanBob Dating sites are female-driven, and females select primarily on looks, as has been shown on plenty-of-fish and tinder data analysis. So a dating sites without pictures would never work. I hope to be proven wrong, but I don't think so. ~~~ devit They select on looks because that's all they have on dating sites. People (especially women in mainstream society) mostly ignore looks when they have already had a real-life pleasant interaction; however, it is very challenging to replicate that online, since it's very hard to give incentives to be genuine. ~~~ rubidium No women (and men) don’t. Looks matter. It’s eons of biology that’s too much to completely suppress. Looks always matter... but the degree can change. ~~~ vonseel The funny thing I noticed when living in Switzerland and traveling other European countries is due to the _way lower_ obesity rate, most people are generally attractive. The American obesity rate is something absurd like 40% among adults. A bunch of these people aren't actually half-bad looking if they were able to drop the weight. ------ lanius I could see this being popular with blind users. Perhaps prioritize accessibility. ------ devit This is awesome, please make it succeed if possible. Dating sites are simply horrible at actually creating awesome interaction, and one of the first reason is the fact that obviously looks are pretty much irrelevant for that, yet most seem centered on photos. The site is empty for me other than the top bar though, so can't give any more advice for it. IMHO the most important thing though is to match people that want the same thing out of dating. I.e. if someone wants to have a one night stand and the other wants a long monogamous relationship they should not even see each other's profile, yet pretty much all dating sites don't even let you state your goals! ------ idclip As Others said, sexual attraction is important, as much as i want to believe in text adventure love, heh. Simply allow the photo to be viewed after a mutual text-like occurs ------ superqd I only see a mostly empty web page. Nothing does anything. Just checked the dev console, and there was a FirebaseError: quota exceeded. ------ nazgulnarsil Imagine one founder starts a company based on stated preferences, the other on revealed preferences. Place your bets. ------ scotty79 As okcupid becomes more like tinder I think there's a place now for more thoughtful dating site. ------ presstumer I logged in with google but am unable to see any profiles on the main page ~~~ presstumer I've opened up the console and seen that it's just your Firebase quota being exceeded. Doesn't seem like a problem at all on client end ------ littlestymaar Just so you know: the website is totally broken on Firefox for Android. ~~~ gieoon thanks ------ Smithalicious Just like how social networks without censorship attract people who say things nobody wants to hear, this will attract people with faces that nobody wants to see. There might be value in a dating site for really ugly people, but it's niche at best. ------ keyle Props for trying something new. Also the savings on bandwidth. ~~~ steve_taylor And easier to seed with fake profiles to solve the chicken and egg problem. ------ fwber Here is my adult matching site with generated avatars, would like feedback: [https://www.fwber.com](https://www.fwber.com) (nsfw) ------ buboard kind of sad that political orientation has become romantically relevant. Other than that , why not add a bidding layer on top? like, everyone starts with 1000 dollars and bid for their favorites. ~~~ Bostonian I am a staunch member of one the two main parties, and if my wife donated lots of money and campaigned for candidates of the other party, that would be difficult for me to accept. Avoiding a lifetime of political conflicts within a marriage may be wise. ------ sandoooo Let's avert our eyes from the tire fires for a second: how would you actually fix this idea so that it actually works? Let's define two win conditions, and you have to hit just one: 1\. How to make this actually profitable without being more dark-patterny than Tinder? 2\. How to help at least some of the people who are not finding what they need on Tinder, while expending only a reasonable amount of resources?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Git Repo to Document Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests - novia https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality ====== dang See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914), which is still on the front page. ~~~ adjkant Hi dang! If I may ask, why is this one not on the front page? It seems to offer something significantly different that that older link which only links to an article indexing police brutality against journalists, while this is against all people. It appears to have enough upvotes to be on the front page - did some other part of the weighting system bump it off or is there a manual flag/bump on it? Appreciate all your efforts here and hope that doesn't come off as confrontational or accusatory. ~~~ dang We downweighted it as a follow-up submission [1]. Follow-ups are by definition repetitive, and repetition goes against curiosity which is the root principle here [2]. I'm sorry, because this seems like a good project, and as a reader I approve. But as a moderator, the perspective is different—the quesiton is always, is there enough SNI (significant new information [3]) to support a significantly different discussion? in this case vis-à-vis [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914), which has been on the front page all day? The answer seems to be no, because the comments in this thread aren't about the specifics of the repository—they're just about the general topic of police brutality. In other words this thread just gets sucked into the stronger gravitational field of the more generic topic, which unfortunately is what happens to most posts that fly too close to a large hot planet (i.e. a hot ongoing thread). All that said, I'm tempted to contradict myself ("very well then I contradict myself") and dump the other thread in favor of this one, because I can feel there's something interesting here. So how about a compromise: if someone still feels like this post is interesting after, say, two weeks have gone by, they can email hn@ycombinator.com and we can arrange a repost. I was originally going to say one week, but that's sort of on the cusp between now and the future. Two weeks is more on the future side. [1] [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow- up&sort=byDate&type=comment) [2] [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment) [3] [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment) p.s. People who say "hope that doesn't come off as confrontational or accusatory" are the least of our worries :) ~~~ adjkant Appreciate the insight into the process! Someone very well may follow up in two weeks :) ------ mehrdadn Just a heads-up: before you get angry, bear in mind the situation is evolving and that the context and the timing information are very relevant. Here's why: at least in NYC, I know the protest leaders and the NYPD police chief got together just a day or two ago to have a dialog and try to mend things so they can work together instead of against each other. [1] They don't hate each other, and in any case, both sides realize they need the other's support. They just want to be able to work together to keep things peaceful. And it seems like they're giving each other another chance to do things right, and it's important that they get that chance instead of having more tensions flare again as a result of anger from 3 days ago. So, before you get worked up about what happened, check the date, and try to see if there's any local news in the city that might indicate something might have changed in the meantime. You won't necessarily see these on frontpage headlines, so it might take a bit of digging. (I've found actual videos from local news reporting on the ground much more helpful than textual articles from national outlets here. It seems to me it's just too difficult to capture all the relevant dynamics, emotion, and nuance in text.) In fact, if anyone's involved, I would suggest putting this information in the repo here as well. You don't want to add fuel onto a fire that was already under control a few days ago, and you want to know when (or whether) good progress is being made. Ultimately the goal is to find a working model that others can hopefully emulate. [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJGT06zIUiY&t=2m32s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJGT06zIUiY&t=2m32s) ~~~ johnnyfaehell > Just a heads-up: before you get angry, bear in mind the situation is > evolving and that the context and the timing information are very relevant. "Before you get angry about police brutality, remember context is important!" Are you serious?! Some people are talking to the police chief so you shouldn't be angry that they are blockading people on to a bridge. Or angry that they are driving SUVs into people. Or violently pushing people to the ground. And that's just the NYPD. A department where the commissioner was praising the department for their restrain, if that's restrain wait until they stop holding back. Giving each other the chance to do the right thing? What are you talking about? What do the protesters need to do? Stop proetesting? > So, before you get worked up about what happened, check the date, and try to > see if there's any local news in the city that might indicate something > might have changed in the meantime > So, before you get worked up about what happened, check the date, and try to > see if there's any local news in the city that might indicate something > might have changed in the meantime. You won't necessarily see these on > frontpage headlines, so it might take a bit of digging. (I've found actual > videos from local news reporting on the ground much more helpful than > textual articles from national outlets here. It seems to me it's just too > difficult to capture all the relevant dynamics, emotion, and nuance in > text.) Are you nuts? So if it happened 3 days ago and the police are saying sorry but not laying charges, it's a-ok? There are no real nuances here. You have police shooting rubber bullets are people's faces, spraying them with pepper spray while they have their hands up, tear gassing people. All while not facing criminal charges. > In fact, if anyone's involved, I would suggest putting this information in > the repo here as well. You don't want to add fuel onto a fire that was > already under control a few days ago, and you want to know when (or whether) > good progress is being made. Ultimately the goal is to find a working model > that others can hopefully emulate. No, you want to add fuel to this fire if you want this problem to be solved. Working models can be found in nearly every civilised country in the world. Stop telling people not to be angry and start being angry. ~~~ chrisco255 You know a 77 year old retired cop was killed in St. Louis last night, holding his cell phone to call police about looters. You gonna protest his death too? Or do you just want an endless vicious cycle of blood feuds for the next 3000 years? ~~~ robert_foss Clearly that is wrong too, but you know, two wrongs don't make a right. And a major difference is that violence against police actually is prosecuted unlike the opposite. ~~~ chrisco255 No, this guy was left to die in the street. His killers weren't caught. He was a cop for 38 years before becoming chief of Moline Acres, Mo: [https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/500839-retired- st-l...](https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/500839-retired-st-louis- police-captain-killed-outside-looted-pawn-shop) This is what anti police hatred brewing in this country leads to. Gang violence. You embolden true criminals. ~~~ robert_foss The killers may not have been caught in this case, but I think it safe to assume that someone actually looked for them. ~~~ chrisco255 You got a lot of mental gymnastics to squirm out of your culpability for perpetrating hate towards the 99.9% of cops who do their job ethically. But you got no words for a dead man who served his community for 40+ years and meets a fate like this thanks to instigators and rioters who claim they're for justice. ~~~ robert_foss I have perpetrated no hate, and don't strawman me. Acts of violence are _always_ wrong. I did however point out the police are not prosecuted in any meaningful systemic fashion. ------ Melting_Harps Thanks for doing that, during the Hong Kong protests the (presumably) CCP were attacking doing ddos attacks and trying attack servers that hosted footage of the police illegally beating, arresting and pepper spraying lawful citizens protesting or simply just having the misfortune of being around one when the HKPF/PLA decided to get violent. Here is the torrent hash if anyone wants to host it and seed: 9b85dd223c8f92c923f516ed77bbdfcb770f4dd8 > I vouched for this. In other threads, an attitude I've seen is "well I'm > just a tech worker, what can I possibly do to help?" I hope something like this is done for these protests (Anonymous?) and undertaken by the greater tech community as the Police need to be held accountable for the brutality and callous inhumane behaviour towards citizens and journalists alike, that many on here simply accepted 'as other people's problems.' And in many cities the police have simply decided of their own accord to just shut off their bodycams. I spent most of the weekend following the events and after you weed through the BS bots, you actually see the numbers are there to make it happen in just about every city. It's really just a matter of coordination and Will. If nothing else this is a stark reminder of what your tax money is going towards, and it isn't going towards roads, schools or whatever absurd notion most use to justify the ever growing militarization and expansion of a Police State in the US. The thing I don't get was that in the late 80s and 90s activism and tech/hacking oriented people were pretty much one and the same, namely Cypherpunks. Specifically in the Valley! ~~~ cinquemb > The thing I don't get was that in the late 80s and 90s activism and > tech/hacking oriented people were pretty much one and the same, namely > Cypherpunks. Specifically in the Valley! Alot of those folks were co-opted… at least according to folks like Bill Blunden (belowgotham.com) and John Young (cryptome.org) ~~~ Melting_Harps > Alot of those folks were co-opted… at least according to folks like Bill > Blunden (belowgotham.com) and John Young (cryptome.org) I don't know who those people are, nor have I taken the time to analyze their work. But let's assume that some were co-opted, you do realize that ultimately it doesn't matter because the few that weren't are responsible for some of the greatest innovation in citizen's use of cryptography and a non-state issue currency, those being: Wei Dai, Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, Adam Back, Timothy May. Hell, these people inspired a certain loud mouth Cyberpunk who went on to create wikileaks, and tried to expose covert Nuclear armament by the US prior to that, you may have heard of him as he's currently being used as political football in an extradition case: Julian Assange. And he motivated a guy who went to to work on TOR (Jacob Applebaum) and a former NSA contractor that revealed the extensive abuses of the the Intelligence Agencies around the world (Edward Snowden). What I'm getting at is that these kind of movements are useful precisely because they do not rely on a single entity or person to steer the actions of said movement. ~~~ cinquemb > What I'm getting at is that these kind of movements are useful precisely > because they do not rely on a single entity or person to steer the actions > of said movement. I don't disagree, I'm just not as surprised as you are that things have changed from the 80/90's… the stakes are higher… and the name of the game is "dealing with the metadata killchain", building it, or both ;) ------ akersten I vouched for this. In other threads, an attitude I've seen is "well I'm just a tech worker, what can I possibly do to help?" Projects like this are what you can do. ~~~ rrmm Also just in general, make sure the people around you are registered to vote, get absentee ballots if they need them, understand how to complete, and send them. Make sure they vote. ~~~ DyslexicAtheist but vote for who? Joe Biden has historically backed legislation for search and frisk, he is only a good choice for people who think "BlueLivesMatter" ~~~ rrmm I'm not gonna tell you how to vote. I will only tell you to exercise your civic duty. We are all smart people here: to wield both the abstract and pragmatic concerns into a decision. Make it. It may be the last we get to make. ------ brigandish A laudable idea but why restrict it to the protests? There's a problem with police brutality in lots of places and at lots of times (even just the perception of it), perhaps a more standard way to report and record _which can be replicated easily_ and hence, compared better, might be an idea. (As I was writing an issue opened up on this kind of point [https://github.com/2020PB/police- brutality/issues/83](https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/issues/83)) It seems to me that the current set up excludes the vast majority of people (who are unlikely to know markdown, Git, or Github) which limits its effectiveness. ~~~ akersten (Not the author) I like Git for the decentralization and ease of someone backing it all up. Agree that there's a huge usability cliff for anyone outside our circle that wants to contribute. Maybe a good add-on project for someone is creating a website where potential new incidents can be submitted and evaluated, then pulled into the repo automatically if they pass muster. ~~~ Cthulhu_ If Reddit wasn't censored, you could use that, but you'd need moderators to manage duplicates and spam. Backing up Reddit pages / posts / videos should be fairly straightforward. If anything it's a lot more accessible to anyone because you can e.g. post from mobile. ------ adjkant This tweet has a good two minute video of some of these cases, for those who are questioning if this is "valid" as I have seen in many threads. [https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1266917228752056320](https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1266917228752056320) ~~~ ebg13 This one is from a link further down. I think it tells pretty much everything. [https://twitter.com/stephtseo/status/1267680737915924480?s=0...](https://twitter.com/stephtseo/status/1267680737915924480?s=09) ~~~ asiachick I don't see what you seem to see in that video. I see an umbrella put way over the fence. I see a policeman grab an umbrella that was way over fence. I see then someone else reach across the fence in response to the police grabbing the umbrella. I see the police then react to that person reaching across the fence. I don't see blame. I just see tinder, a spark, and an escalation. I'm fully 100% for "Black Lives Matter" and 100% against police brutality and the militarization of the police. But that video is too ambiguous convince all people. It's the same with the CNN reporter. People who want to see racism see a black reporter get arrested. People who don't want to see racism see 3 people getting arrested, one black, one white, one latino? Yes, racism exists but that video is also not proof of it. ~~~ ebg13 > _that video._ First of all, it's two videos. Watch the aerial view in the immediate reply. (If you didn't see it, you can find it here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the_moment_it_all_happened/)) > _I see a policeman grab_ You see an attempted robbery resulting in the destruction of someone's private property. > _I see then someone else reach_ You see a person trying to hold onto their property as they're pulled over the fence because a cop just assaulted them. > _I see the police then react_ You see the police immediately start spraying and bombing and gassing, with the flimsiest excuse, an entire crowd of people who are literally just chanting. This coordinated initiation of violence is extremely typical from the police playbook. Watch this third video from 26:30 as the filmer explains the meaning of a "posture" change when the police swap in gasmask brutes in place of the bicycle cops who were standing there before, showing that they planned to escalate from the beginning. [https://www.facebook.com/omarisal/videos/10220021035848747/](https://www.facebook.com/omarisal/videos/10220021035848747/) ~~~ asiachick The aerial video doesn't help at all. If you're being unkind to the protesters then the ground level video shows a protester shoving an umbrella in a policeman's face which is the start of the entire thing. The policeman reacts as anyone would when someone shoves something in their face, they grab/bat it away. That causes others to reach over the fence which would appear threatening and then the spray starts. If you're assuming good intentions on the part of that protestor then the umbrella being over the fence and in the face of an officer was just an accident of being too close the fence so that their umbrella ended up in the police officer's face. The result is the same, the protester is crossing the line like the "I'm not touching you" meme. The officer has an umbrella shoved in their face and they react. [https://www.slideshare.net/Matthewthig/4-11-am-im-not- touchi...](https://www.slideshare.net/Matthewthig/4-11-am-im-not-touching-you) From the officer's POV this ([https://pasteboard.co/Jbm1UXn.jpg](https://pasteboard.co/Jbm1UXn.jpg)) is a protester trying to intentionally block their view or just annoy them. I know you won't accept that interpretation as remotely valid because you've already decided there is only one correct way to see it. I'm not placing blame and I'm not defending the police. I'm just pointing out your interpretation of what happened is just that, an interpretation. There is at least one other perfectly valid interpretation. ~~~ asiachick Here's another incident with 2 interpretations [https://twitter.com/EDDIFUL/status/1267338642617364481?s=20](https://twitter.com/EDDIFUL/status/1267338642617364481?s=20) 1) The simple police brutality 2) Kid grabs policeman, policeman reacts You can see the kid reach for the officer. The officer reacted. Whether it was actually a threat I have no idea. The officer is trying to pass. The kid effectively corners him into a wall, intentionally or not, and then reaches toward the officer. Maybe it was supposed to be a friendly tap on the upper arm but in the middle of such a situation it's not hard to believe whatever the kid reached for felt like a threat to the officer. Again I'm not trying to defend the police but if you want people to come together, if you want that 1/2 of the nation that's on the wrong side to support your cause, then you need less ambiguous examples. Otherwise it's just easy to dismiss it. Other than taking the kid down there is no visible brutality in that video. ~~~ ebg13 > _Again I 'm not trying to defend the police_ You're doing a great job of it anyway trying to justify marching in brutes covered head to toe in armor all prepared for a gas attack and then mysteriously "reacting" to an _umbrella_ a minute later by bombing a crowd of people standing around chanting. You're doing some heavy concern trolling here. I see you. > _The kid effectively corners him into a wall_ If I push between you and the wall, you have not cornered me into the wall. The person who pushes in is responsible for being there. > _Whether it was actually a threat I have no idea_ Kid has a phone in one hand and sunglasses in the other. If you have no idea then you're intentionally not paying attention. > _Other than taking the kid down there is no visible brutality_ Other than the visible brutality, there is no visible brutality. Well, by _that_ definition... ~~~ asiachick I'm not trolling and dang should have banned banned your message for name calling. There is no brutality in that video. The officers wraps his arm around the kid and pulls him to the ground slowly and safely. There is no evidence in that video the kid got a single scratch or bruise. If there is evidence of actual violence it's not in that video. There are videos of actual violence. [https://twitter.com/vantaepedia/status/1266055700515520512](https://twitter.com/vantaepedia/status/1266055700515520512) no need to use the ambiguous videos that don't actually help change minds but only preach to the choir. Black Lives Matter! ~~~ ebg13 > _There is no brutality in that video_ Putting someone into a headlock and dragging them around by their neck when that person had not initiated violence is brutality. And that person clearly did not initiate violence. > _The officers wraps his arm around the kid_ Sure, a gentle loving caress around the neck, and then a gentle loving pull by the neck, and then gently and lovingly putting him to the ground by the neck. > _There are videos of actual violence._ Both are videos of actual violence. Thank you for sharing that one. ~~~ asiachick Violence: Behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. There is no intent to hurt, damage, or kill that kid and there is no evidence in the video of the cop on a bicycle taking down the kid that the kid was remotely hurt. Unlike other videos. So no, it is not actual violence. And, no I'm not getting hung up on the word "intent". I'm pointing out if there is no actual hurt or damage then it's not violence. As for the kids intent or the officer's perceived intent we'll never know unless the officer has a body cam and even if we did different people will likely see it differently just like the umbrella above. You see an innocent girl with an umbrella. Others see a girl intentionally putting her umbrella in the face of an officer and blocking his view effectively obstructing an officer. When he takes the umbrella clearly in his face people react and things escalate. In any case you, and all the other downvoters, seemed to miss the entire point of my comments. The point is there are multiple ways to see those videos. You claiming there is only one is about as relevant as telling someone their feelings are wrong. You can't tell someone else how they feel and you can't tell someone else what they see in those videos. If you showed those videos to 100 people and found that 50% (or even 20%) saw something different your rage that they didn't see the exact same thing you saw would not help you convince them they're wrong. If instead you understand those videos are actually not strong proof of your case you'd drop them for videos that are and therefore make your case better and help bring about the change you (and me) want to see. ------ war1025 Am I the only one that gets the feeling these riots have nothing to do with George Floyd at this point and are just a massive boiling over of tension from Coronavirus lockdown orders? ~~~ phoe-krk I think that and the resulting unemployment boom certainly contributes, but you seem to miss the obvious point here - that the Black and Brown people of US have other objective reasons to protest about, too. ~~~ war1025 Sure, Black and Brown people have legitimate things to protest. But all I see are videos of white kids throwing bricks and otherwise stirring the pot. ~~~ ebg13 At this point, if that's all you've seen, it's because you aren't looking. So maybe look up videos of cops shooting journalists, smashing windows, bashing people in the face when they weren't doing anything, and running people over with their cars. There are literally hundreds of such videos from the past few days. Then you'd be able to say you've seen videos of things other than white kids throwing bricks. ------ orwin Seeing US police act almost make me believe French BAC is a peacefull police force trained for violence deescalation. I don't understand how you can not have the equivalent of CRS/Bereitschaftspolizei. ~~~ freeone3000 We do. SWAT teams absolutely exist. You're seeing them here. ~~~ 411111111111111 Uh, nobody questioned that you've got trigger-happy and overgeared specialists on a powertrip. That's not what CRS/Bereitschaftspolizei is though. I've only ever seen them running around entirely without protection or with shields to stop people doing dumb shit. ------ axegon_ Probably a bit of a controversial opinion but in some cases I can sympathize with the police officers. The reality is that the vast majority of them likely condemn the events around George Floyd's death. They are also regular people with families, children and friends they have to provide for. And they have the exact same problems that many of us do. Their daily work involves keeping things in order, which is something I respect. That said, the first video I opened at random[1] shows a small number of people blocking a road in what looks more like a civil war scene rather than a protest. And the authorities are greeted with "F-U" and people tossing objects at them. The people in uniforms are ordinary people. Put yourself in their shoes and tell me: having all the problems you have, seeing all the destruction, which in all cases is no longer a protest, people shouting "f-u" and throwing stuff at you: You can be the most mentally stable human being but everyone has a limit. Many of those men are possibly working overtime, in extreme conditions and I bet they would much rather be with their kids or sick parents for instance. With this idea in mind, I personally can't picture myself being able to remain calm and not overstep my boundaries sooner or later. Now putting myself in the shoes of the protesters: seeing the same destruction, destroying of properties, cars and businesses, I'll call it a day because this is no longer a protest. I'd go back home and wait for this to be taken care of and join a civilized protest once this has been taken care of. A civilized country should be able to hold a civilized protest. And having spent most of my life in eastern Europe, you can say I know a thing or two about protests. Last large protest I was a part of was in ~2013 irrc and the aftermath was very different. The night after each of those protests, everything was spotless clean, people thew all their garbage in the bins, nothing broken or destroyed. People were coming with their children and pets and being completely comfortable with it. There was a completely unrelated incident of a gas explosion at a Chinese restaurant, which burned a nearby shop. People gathered donations fo the shop owner to recover. Incidents with police? Practically none during ~3 months of daily protest. And we are talking eastern Europe - the police officers are anything but the nicest people on the planet. [1] [https://twitter.com/XruthxNthr/status/1266903223220097024](https://twitter.com/XruthxNthr/status/1266903223220097024) ~~~ muglug I think most of what you’re saying is not controversial, but I think you’re missing a lot of context. Those officers, and the protestors, exist in a country that still treats black people as second-class citizens in a variety of ways. Hell, the current President spent years saying the previous (black) President was illegitimate. You want to see the protesters and officers as equal, but they’re not - the protesters are trying to change the status quo, the officers by and large want it to stay the way it is, and often want to make things worse for minorities (“Make America Great Again”). Sympathy for the officers is fine, but remember they can quit whenever they want. Black people can’t quit being black. ~~~ jtjbdhsjjdnd As an outsider (maybe I am wrong) US will continue their bad treatment of 'black people' as long as you continue calling them 'black' and supporting it at the official level. It is just racial segregation in disguise. ~~~ muglug > maybe I am wrong Yeah, uh, I have bad news for you... ------ sneak Please put the media clips into the repo. The original links will frequently disappear from the censorship platforms. Don’t just link, mirror the videos. ------ sagebird GIT (and github) is a terrible tool for general purpose collaboration of non- technical people. Something like shared google doc would fit better. Perhaps google docs, or other collaborative tools are actually able to scale to 30+ users? What is the largest google doc collaboration that you have seen work out? ~~~ bskap I think Google docs has a limit of 100 concurrent users on a doc ------ booleandilemma Is there a Git repo to track the stores that have been looted/burned to the ground? ~~~ gremlinsinc Maybe they should do that, but make sure to exclude the ones that are insured. Because that's not a net loss. Also be sure to include the ones that police are responsible for like this car that the Riverside Sherrif busted out for no reason: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_XERvsXvSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_XERvsXvSU) ~~~ zanmat0 Its not a net loss if they have to increase their prices to pay for the new higher premiums? These failures to understand basic economics are frightening. ------ nojvek This is awesome. However it’s still pretty vague. Can there be any meaningful action from this ? Is there a way for a civilian to get access to the officer’s body camera recording and identify which cops are the trigger happy ones. Basically a more targeted list that says “These officers violated the first amendment constitutional rights of citizens to peacefully assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances, this is the proof, please file charges”. We are protesting because the police are unaccountable for their actions. How do we move to a place where we can hold them accountable and there is a quick as fair process for justice to be served. ------ Nemo_bis You can also contribute to the press freedom tracker. [https://pressfreedomtracker.us/](https://pressfreedomtracker.us/) ------ MisterBastahrd Here's a thread by T. Greg Doucette, a public defender and 1st amendment litigator who is white and conservative-leaning but who also attended an HBCU. [https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266752393556918273](https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266752393556918273) The thread was at 185ish at last count. It has been growing since he started it on May 30. ------ _bxg1 I don't see the source for the linked "Web App" here; just the markdown files. Would be good to be able to contribute to that as well. ~~~ NameDoesntExist The Web App repo is here [0] 0: [https://github.com/ubershmekel/2020PoliceBrutality](https://github.com/ubershmekel/2020PoliceBrutality) ------ Melting_Harps While we're on the topic, here is another useful program that removes metadata from images on github, of anyone can take the time to look over the source code and verify it does what it says that would be super useful: [https://everestpipkin.github.io/image- scrubber/](https://everestpipkin.github.io/image-scrubber/) ------ throwaway391003 This is just inciting and encouraging violence against police, increasing a feud between the left and the police ------ itsbits Just wanted to know why protests are still continuing? Aren't Police involved with the incident are charged? ~~~ nsilvestri The one officer who was immediately involved has been charged; the other three have not. However this case is more of the straw that broke the camel's back. It's freshest in our minds and is the face of the protests, but as a whole the protests represent decades of tensions boiling over. ------ razius Why not go the other way as well, do one with how many police officers have been killed by protesters. ~~~ netsharc You're free to start one... ------ samh You people are credulous and mad. Goodbye Western civilisation. ------ ghthor If you're going to document violence, do it on both sides and try to document without any bias. Don't let your agenda cloud your judgement about what narrative to tell. ------ master_yoda_1 what about the looting on the street? ------ sbmthakur Nice. Is there any repo that tracks all the riots? ~~~ Cthulhu_ Why do you ask, and what is your end game? ~~~ sbmthakur I have no end game. ------ alphachloride The organization for this repo has only 2 repositories in their github profile: this one .... and Atom the text editor. Wat. ------ throwaway391003 There's one from NYC that says: "A police officer forcefully pulls off a protestors face mask and pepper sprays him. The protestor had his hands up in surrender when this happened." From [https://github.com/2020PB/police- brutality/blob/master/repor...](https://github.com/2020PB/police- brutality/blob/master/reports/New%20York.md#police-pull-off-protesters-mask- to-pepper-spray-him--may-31st) If you look at the video though the guy was pushing towards the officer against the officer's hand. What do you expect to happen when you decide to aggress on an officer instead of back away? Here's the video they link [https://twitter.com/_doreenpt/status/1266994439039455232](https://twitter.com/_doreenpt/status/1266994439039455232) How many other incidents are there in this repo that are unfairly listed/described? ~~~ mquander I watched that video. You have clearly mastered the application of Newton's third law, by pointing out that when someone pushes you away with their hand, you are also pushing against their hand. We only disagree about whether it's correct to pepper spray someone in the face when this happens. ~~~ throwaway391003 The guy did not take a step or two back, like everyone else seen in the video was doing edit: I just walked the video again. you have to be crazy if you don't think the guy was encroaching on the officer's space ~~~ mquander I agree. We clearly have a dramatic difference of opinion about when it is a good time to pepper spray someone. I suppose the police officer in the video shares your opinion, and the authors of the document share mine. ~~~ rrmm The cops seem to have a low threshold for using it. There was a video where a bunch of riot police were riding on the outside of an SUV. One fell off of it to the ground, got back up turned around and pepper sprayed behind him, even though there was no one behind him. There was no one moving towards him or even near him. ~~~ adjkant Truly an insane moment that really underscores the level of fear these cops are acting under. If they are that unstable, they should not be out in the field currently. I have said this elsewhere on HN, but I think these protests would be better for everyone if police simply did not show up. I think the video we are referencing is a great example why. ~~~ throwaway391003 Like what Minneapolis was experiencing before the National Guard came in? ~~~ adjkant The national guard is backing up the police. The police presence there was long before they came in. So yes, like Minneapolis. If the initial police response was different we could see a vastly different landscape of protests currently, but that set the tone and virtually no departments have been effective or even been trying to deescalate it seems.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New ALPHA-g Detector Poised to Search for Signs of Anti-Gravity - DanielBMarkham https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/astrophysics/new-alphag-detector-poised-to-search-for-signs-of-antigravity ====== stephengillie > _Understanding whether antimatter obeys the same laws of gravity as matter > is an important step toward confirming whether decades of theory surrounding > antimatter stand true._ The Economist recently covered the same experiment at CERN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18110857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18110857) ------ ars If anti-matter has anti-gravity, then the next question to answer is why do photons obey normal gravity? Are there anti-photons? (Presumably only anti-matter can make them.) Or is matter special because it matches photons gravitationally and thus answers the question of baryogenesis. That second option leads to some very interesting implications for stars made of anti-matter. Any photons they make would be "shoved" away from the star - but where does that energy come from? The first option means there are photons we can not detect (only anti-matter can make them, so only anti-matter can see them). That would imply there is an entire second universe out there overlayed on this one (at least photonically overlayed) that we have never seen, except gravitationally. But during annihilation events which type of photon would be produced? Both? Randomly one or the other? Finding that anti-matter has anti-gravity would open an absolutely enormous list of questions. It's not as simple, as OK, anti-gravity - every other part of physics would have to change as well. ~~~ akiselev Do we know that photons obey normal gravity? I was under the impression that we know that light can be bent by the warping of space-time due to gravity, but not that it interacts with the Higgs field. Photons don't _really_ have an anti-matter pair that we can observe afaik because anti-particles have the same mass and spin but opposite charge as their counterpart. Since photons have no charge, a photons anti-matter pair is just another photon. Furthermore, we know that anti-hydrogen has the same spectral lines as hydrogen so their electromagnetic interactions are the same. Finding that anti-matter has anti-gravity would be world changing, though I'm setting my expectations very low. It would mean that we have access to the kind of exotic matter needed for a practical Alcubierre warp drive and could open up an entirely new field of space time engineering. It's just extremely unlikely, given all we know, that anti-matter has such properties. ~~~ AGoodName >we know that light can be bent by the warping of space-time due to gravity That literally is light obeying gravity. Gravity interacts exclusively by the warping of space-time. Gravity and the Higgs field are completely 100% unrelated. [https://profmattstrassler.com/2012/10/15/why-the-higgs- and-g...](https://profmattstrassler.com/2012/10/15/why-the-higgs-and-gravity- are-unrelated/) ~~~ hliyan > Gravity and the Higgs field are completely 100% unrelated. That is an incredible insight for me -- I never thought of it that way. So the thing that creates inertia (mass) is not the same as the thing that generates gravitational force -- they're just correlated in the types of matter that beings like us can interact with? ~~~ gpderetta IANAP, but IIRC while the higgs field gives mass to electrons, quarks, the W bosons and a few more particles, the vast majority of the mass of the atom (and thus of what we normally call matter) is due to the binding energy of quarks and gluons and not related to the higgs field. ------ blueprint This could be one of the most important experiments that modern physics has attempted. It's funny that they must adapt their schedule to others, and not the other way around. They're being given just a few days to carry everything out before hitting a cut-off point that may realistically cause the experiment never to get done due to changes in funding or the landscape. If they obtain a positive result, how many experts will suddenly no longer have a position of expertise? Suddenly, I wonder if they are having a harder time than other experiments, and whether there are any at CERN who actually don't want the experiment to occur. ~~~ eganist > If they obtain a positive result, how many experts will suddenly no longer > have a position of expertise? This is true of most experimentation for novel theories, and it's true of many large experiments e.g. attempting to locate the Higgs Boson (the discovery of which invalidated many theories of physics just through confirming certain unknowns.) > Suddenly, I wonder if they are having a harder time than other experiments, > and whether there are any at CERN who actually don't want the experiment to > occur. Well, possibly, but not for the conspiratorial reasons you're alluding to. It's a powerful device with only so much time to operate; the usage of that time needs to be prioritized, and that prioritization can really only be accomplished by gauging the likelihood of an outcome which produces new knowledge (either validating a theory or invalidating it). No one behind the operation of the ALPHA-g detector is going to block an experiment because they may personally not like the results; if the detector has a hand in a successful discovery, the detector and the team supporting it will be able to claim having a hand in the discovery. ~~~ XorNot The real issue is so far all the supporting evidence and theory says antimatter obeys normal rules of gravity. So it really is a long-shot experiment - if it actually differs in a significant way (and let's be clear: experiencing less gravity, going in a slightly different direction - anything - would be major) - then that would be a huge surprise. ~~~ blueprint What evidence are you referring to which supports antimatter obeying "normal rules of gravity", by which I am presuming you mean gravitating in the same direction as matter? ~~~ krastanov There is a very large and very convincing body of purely mathematical arguments, and some minor experimental work [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_interaction_of...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_interaction_of_antimatter) ~~~ blueprint For some reason I had a feeling you'd post that. That wikipedia page doesn't show anything except for, at best, an argument that the Standard Model is incompatible with gravitational repulsion plus many statements of unsuccessful attempts to falsify repulsion of antimatter. Did you even read it?? By the way, it's old news by now that Standard Model is incomplete. But let's just go back to passive aggressively condescending to people we don't know on the internet by implying they've never studied so much as modern QFT because we're not prepared to understand their original argument. ~~~ eganist > But let's just go back to passive aggressively condescending to people we > don't know on the internet Please stop accusing people of this; it's being observed as radiating from your own commentary by multiple people, which might explain why others are responding in kind. I called out the gaslighting elsewhere, and the fact that you're persisting with it against multiple parties hampers constructive discussion. ~~~ blueprint Are you not aware of his other comment to me? I've seen it many times before. We don't know each other so perhaps defer belief that you can tell whether that is true or not until you have some evidence. Gaslighting... lol	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
فلسطين. top-level domain representing the Occupied Palestinian Territory - matant http://www.iana.org/reports/2010/falasteen-report-16jul2010.html ====== Cushman It's interesting that the Arabic TLDs aren't abbreviated the way Latin and semi-Latin (.рф) country codes are. I wonder if that's reflective of anything besides that abbreviation of words is not as common in written Arabic. ~~~ talbina That is correct, there are no abbreviations in the Arabic language. ~~~ hasenj One thing about abbreviations in Arabic is they will be read as a word, not as distinct letters. In English, "http" can't be read as a word, you always read it as "ech-tee-tee-pee". "etc" is not read "etk" but read as "ee-tee-see". Where as in arabic, "الخ" is read as one word "ilkh" instead of as letters "alif-lam-kha". So, to abbreviate words, you have to think hard about how people will read it. For instance, someone mentioned in another reply "Hamas" and "Fatah". Both these abbreviations read nicely as other words with related meanings. But, how would one abbreviate "Filisteen"? If you choose the first three letters "Filis", well, that reads like "penny" and is generally used to refer to cheap things - you don't want to use that. If you use "ft", that would read as "FiTT" فط which just sounds awful in Arabic. (it's not like "fit", the "t" here is heavy/strong). Actually, "filisteen" is already bad enough: it sounds like "filis" + "TTeen" which is "penny" + "dirt" (we used to make fun of this when we were kids). Though in Palestinian (and the Levant region in general) they pronounce it "falasteen", not "filisteen". ~~~ chad_oliver Good points, although I believe "etc" is pronounced etcetera, or ɛtˈsɛtərə in IPA. ~~~ munificent It's pronounced "et cetera" because that's what it's an abbreviation of. Most abbreviations (unlike acronyms) aren't verbalized in their abbreviated form. You say "versus", not "vs" when you read it. However, I do often hear Unix hackers say "et-sey" when referring to the "etc/" directory because precision is important there: the directory is _not_ named "etcetera" so pronouncing it as such would confuse. ------ jlgreco My impression is that all the major browsers show these links as punycode for security reasons. What is the point of these then? Is punycode defaulted to "off" in some countries? Wouldn't that just create two classes of users, one more vulnerable to phishing than the other? ~~~ Cushman It looks like if you add Arabic as a language in Chrome, domains aren't converted. (And actually it will change <http://xn--ggblala6cyf.xn--wgbh1c/> to ستفتاء.مصر in the address bar.) ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel Makes sense. If your language isn't Arabic, you may be unable to, for instance, write the website address down. ------ mkhalil Cool beans. Glad to see IANA recognizing it. Hopefully the US Gov won't pull all there funding. </political joke> ~~~ ars A bigger question is if the two factions (Fatah and Hamas) will fight over control of this TLD. ~~~ gadders If the domain is just for the occupied territories, than Gaza (and Hamas) will get a different domain. ~~~ shmerl "Occupied territories" aren't a country though. Otherwise the domain should be related to Egypt or Jordan (whose territories are supposedly "occupied"). ~~~ snotrockets The Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem are not self ruled, no. The term "occupied" relates to the fact that they are governed by the Israeli army, and are not self governed by their native inhabitants (the Israeli settlers unlawfully transferred there do vote for the Israeli parliament, and hence are self-governing in a way, as the Israeli army is under the authority of the Israeli government.) You are missing some of your history lessons: Jordan and Egypt have recsinded any claims to those territories, instead recognizing the Palestinian people as the one who should rule those territories (the same was recognized by the State of Israel in the "Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements" aka Oslo I Accord) ~~~ shmerl _Jordan and Egypt have recsinded any claims to those territories_ That's exactly my point why those territories aren't occupied. The only way to call them occupied if Egypt or Jordan would still claim their authority over them. But as you said - they don't. Therefore while their status isn't clear, they aren't occupied. I.e. they are not more occupied by "Israeli Civil Authority", as they are occupied by the "Palestinian Authority" (i.e. Fatah and Hamas). At least that's how I view it. Oslo agreements weren't supported by Arabs (de facto), therefore they are morally void for a long time already. UN might support the idea of "occupied" terminology, but UN isn't the only entity who defines it. ------ mark_l_watson Why not? The web is supposed to be open and letting all countries have whatever TLD(s) they want makes sense. The fact that some browsers may have font problems, etc. makes me think that countries might want to also have a secondary TLD in latin text. Perhaps they could be mapped to the same domain? I would think that a lot of countries might want this as a local pride issue. ------ taylorfausak This TLD messes up HN's title: "top-level domain representing the Occupied Palestinian Territory \| Hacker News .فلسطين" I assume this is because Arabic is right-to-left, but it's interesting that only the title is affected. Edit: This affects Mobile Safari on an iPad (iOS 5.1.1). ~~~ mratzloff It appears to be a bug in Safari in general. I see it on 6.0. ------ ars Will this become a trend and other countries will start registering TLD's in their native language? Even if they use latin script, the name of the country is not always written the same in it's own language vs in English. ~~~ MartinCron This is already happening. The TLD for Spain is .es ~~~ jtreminio I don't think it's "es" for "español (Spaniards don't speak Spanish), it's "es" for "España". ~~~ MartinCron Yes, I knew it was "España" but I was too lazy to get the special character. But, um, what _do_ the people in Spain speak if not Spanish? ~~~ tadfisher There are five co-official languages recognized in the various regions of Spain: Castellano (everywhere), Aranese (Catalonia), Basque (Basque Country), Catalan (Catalonia), and Galician (Galicia). In addition, there are several localized languages, that are not "official" but "recognized": Aragonese (Aragon), Asturian (Asturias), and Leonese (Castile and León). And there are countless dialects of each. ~~~ nandemo For what is worth, Galician is essentially a variant of Portuguese, in the sense that it's mutually intelligible with European and Brazilian Portuguese. There are differences in pronunciation but not significantly more than between European and Brazilian Portuguese. ------ mariuolo "Presidential deGrees"?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Lambda School raises $30M in quest to tackle student debt - loganfrederick https://www.axios.com/lambda-school-venture-capital-student-debt-4440700d-735b-45e0-a492-66bab6918d6d.html ====== utdiscant Congratulations on the round Austen and team! One thing I have always thought about when it comes to incentives in this model is that you have an incentive to only take in students that are likely to finish the degree and get a high paying job. This could lead to pattern matching people from backgrounds that are likely to do well due to demographics. How do you think about this and do you have any systems in place for minorities? ------ suff Nobody wants to buy a percentage of the lifetime earnings of a barista, and Engineers are smart enough to do the numbers and realize what an awful deal that would be. ~~~ austenallred What if you take a barista, buy a percentage of his or her income for two years, and use that to make the barista an engineer? ~~~ suff My experience is that it takes several thousand hours to make an engineer, so it has to be more than a bootcamp in order to work, but in theory, sure, I see the angle. ~~~ austenallred Yes, Lambda School is 8 months long full-time, approaching 2,000 hours of work to graduate.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Functional Programming with Java - srean http://functionaljava.org/ ====== srean Taken from one of the examples : final HAppend<HCons<Boolean, HNil>, HCons<Double, HCons<String, HCons<Integer[], HNil>>>, HCons<Boolean, HCons<Double, HCons<String, HCons<Integer[], HNil>>>>> one = append(zero); It's here that I miss the repurposed _auto_ keyword of C++ to do some rudimentary type inference. ~~~ timrobinson final boolean b = a.exists(new F<String, Boolean>() { public Boolean f(final String s) { return fromString(s).forall(isLowerCase); } }); It's here that I miss lambdas to make functional code at all readable. ~~~ ndunn2 _exactly_ the example I was going to cite. In Scala this would be val b = a.exists(str=>str.forall(_.isLowerCase)) or val b = a.exists(x=>x.toLowerCase() == x) There's no way I'd start using functional programming in Java if it's this clunky. Just stick with Scala. ~~~ hraberg Enumerable.java (<http://enumerable.org>) is not really a functional library, but it does support limited closures: boolean b = a.any(λ(s, s.equals(s.toLowerCase())); s and λ are statically imported. ------ badmash69 Great Job!! To those wondering why not move to Clojure or Scala instead of this approach, here is why I am holding back: a) I have a mission critical enterprise app that is in maintainance mode. I need to enhance certain features dealing with concurrency -- my team can ramp up Actor model implementation in functionaljava or Jetlang faster than they can ramp up on Scala. b) No doubt that Scala is actually better Java , but I am confident that later versions of JDK would catch up. The concurrency features of JDK 7 are pretty good. c) did I mention the team -- its hard enough finding a good java programmer; imagine how difficult it would be to hire good Scala programmers from the small eclectic community of Scala programmers. d) most of the enterprisey stuff my team develops doesn't require functional programming -- just reliable applications delivered within drop dead deadlines. Plain old Java gets me there . JDK 7 concurrency and various Actor model implementations in Java such as FunctionalJava, Jetlang , Kilim are just cherry on top. ~~~ joshhart It would be actually easier to hire a good Scala than a good Java programmer because most Scala programmers are good. PG has an essay on this phenomenon somewhere. I'm also not confident that Java will "catch up" to Scala. There's more to Scala than concurrency or functional programming. Type inference, first class objects, short syntax for FP, persistent datastructures, a better object system, etc. ~~~ badmash69 I agree with your opinion about Scala. However, my point was that Java will continue to be always good enough to steal thunder from more promising languages. ( I realize that Oracle may find a way to screw it up) Had JDK 7 not included Fork/Join and had Actor model implementations such as Jetlang, Kilim and FunctionalJava not been developed, there could have been a strong case to call Java dated and explore Scala in the enterprise. I began exploring Scala / Clojure to deal with multicore CPUs .concurrency etc. but that is no longer a valid concern. Java was never elegant to start with -- it just barely got the job done -- and continues to get the job done and that is good enough. They say that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a Nail. Java is my hammer. ------ moondowner Or even better than using libraries for functional programming in Java, learn and use Scala. You can mix Scala and Java code where needed. ~~~ sandGorgon scala != functional programming <http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/scala- not-functional/> It does have functional programming constructs though Clojure is a much better candidate for FP on the JVM. ~~~ gtani [http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/what-is-a- functional-...](http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/what-is-a-functional- programming-language/) Note: NOT written by same guy who did "Scala not Functional". Everybody has a different definition of FP in mind with these, uh, parameters: \- "no hidden side effects"; clearly demarcated IO functions, database calls. \- curry, partial function application; lexical closures \- TCO \- 1st class, higher-order functions \- Immutable / persistent collections / data structures Altho most people agree that these are orthogonal to the definition of FP, (but nice to have: \- type inference (ML's is variously referred to as Damas-Milner or Hindley- Milner) or static typing \- lazy eval \- pattern matching \- green/lightweight threads with message passing OR STM/MVCC \- monads,arrows, functors, CPS [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/485418/distinctive- traits...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/485418/distinctive-traits-of- the-functional-languages) [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1112773/what-are-the- core...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1112773/what-are-the-core- concepts-in-functional-programming) ~~~ gtani is scala FP? Usually FP languages are : \- lisps and schemes: CL, racket, \- the ML/erlang/haskell axis incl ocaml, \- spoken of in reverent tones: dylan, clean, mozart/oz \- the JVM/CLR languages: clojure, F#, scala, groovy, jruby ~~~ moondowner Well you have the answer: "- the JVM/CLR languages: clojure, F#, scala, groovy, jruby" Yes, it is, it's and OO and FP. ------ msutherl Does anybody know if there is a library like this for C/C++? ~~~ msutherl After a quick Google, I see there are a few. So I change my question to: has anybody used and liked/disliked one of these libraries or a similar one? The main ones I could find were FC++ and FACT: <http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~yannis/fc++/> <[http://hci.usask.ca/people/ragu/writings/FunctionalProgrammi...](http://hci.usask.ca/people/ragu/writings/FunctionalProgrammingInCPP.pdf>); <http://www.fz-juelich.de/jsc/FACT/Old_Pages/fact_index.html> [http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/libs/functional/index.h...](http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_45_0/libs/functional/index.html) <http://okmij.org/ftp/cpp-digest/Functional-Cpp.html> or <[http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Calling_Haskell_from_C...](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Calling_Haskell_from_C>); :) ~~~ srean I have played with FC++ a little bit. Its nice, but if you are used to scheme it will feel verbose. But one cant really complain, C++ wasn't really meant for this. ------ mahmud java -jar clojure.jar	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Janet: a lightweight, expressive and modern Lisp - galfarragem https://janet-lang.org ====== ristos This looks so awesome! It's got the best parts of a lot of languages. This is what sticks out to me: \- Really simple lisp like scheme, but reminds me of lua (and not bloated like CL) \- Has resumable fibers, no callcc like scheme \- Not missing the lack of lists tbh \- A module system that doesn't feel awkward like CL \- A built-in package manager (unlike CL) \- Good lua and C support \- Threads have a shared-nothing approach with message passing (reminds me of Erlang actors) \- Destructuring \- Good PEG support, encourages it over regex \- (Im)mutable versions of data structures (ie tuples vs arrays, structs vs tables) for maximum flexibility \- Prototypal inheritance \- Docs are clean and easy to read I'll definitely have to try this out, it looks really cool. Some stuff I'd like to see: \- Pattern matching support (could be a library I guess) \- Multimethods \- Full numeric tower with arbitrary precision types \- Javascript compilation -- I could see this language being really useful for web and game dev Does it have good debugging support? I'm thinking of something like slime, swank, etc. Can I set up emacs and/or vim to work the same way I can use CL with slime + swank? I'm also wondering about the stack traces -- one of the downsides to CL is sometimes the stack traces are nasty to read ~~~ armitron I never thought I'd see a Lisp without lists. Oh wait, I didn't because this isn't a Lisp. I know naming is hard, but this is getting out of hand. Don't say you're a Lisp when you're clearly not. Say Lisp-inspired. Don't use the term 'modern Lisp', 9/10 it's signaling the wrong thing. ~~~ MaysonL From the examples: # A simple fizz buzz example (loop [i :range [1 101] :let [fizz (zero? (% i 3)) buzz (zero? (% i 5))]] (print (cond (and fizz buzz) "fizzbuzz" fizz "fizz" buzz "buzz" i))) Is this not lisp? ~~~ nonbirithm I'm not clear on the exact reasons, but I think some people see it as "Python with S-expressions" rather than "Lisp". I think it's because Janet does not use lists implemented with cons cells and historically that's just what Lisp always used. (Janet uses arrays instead.) But by that logic Clojure isn't a Lisp, if has no cons cells... Another criteria used is homoiconicity. I think the argument is about if a language satisfies the historical definition of "Lisp" rathen than being a Lisp-inspired language with parens. ~~~ oalae5niMiel7qu A good reason to regard this as "Python with parentheses" is because not only does it use arrays instead of cons cells, but there's no non-mutating `append` function. Instead, Janet has an `array/concat` function that behaves like a Python array's `.append` method, and that's it. And no, Clojure isn't a Lisp. Perhaps it would be appropriate to say that Janet is "a Clojure". ------ kleiba Okay, so when Clojure came along, it came with a strong underlying philosophy of what the language was supposed to be/do. Among them were design decisions such as, e.g.,: - VMs, not OSes, are the platforms of the future, so target the JVM - Object Orientation is overrated, but polymorphism is a good thing - Multi-core is here to stay, so use immutable data structures to greatly facilitate writing correct concurrent programs - Leverage the strengths of LISP but give it a modern overhaul (most notably, throw in different parenthesis) Now, you may or may not subscribe to any of these but my question is just: how does Janet compete on that front? What is the problem it is trying to address specifically? I looked at the web page a bit but it's still not clear to me. ~~~ galfarragem What I like in Janet (I'm just a noob so take this comment with a grain of salt as it will sound superficial): \- Easy to get started: one click install, great website and concise docs. No matter what some people say, getting started in Clojure is a nightmare. \- Lightweight and fresh. No JVM, no Node. \- Freedom and expressivity. Mutable or immutable data structures, ultimately is up to me. It might bite me down the road but for now it feels great. ~~~ adamkl I've posted this quote before, but it might help explain why making Clojure easier to get into maybe hasn't been a priority for Hickey et al. _So we need players. I would rant here, but I won 't. But look at this guitar player with blisters. A harpist has blisters, a base player with blisters. There's this barrier to overcome for every musician. Imagine if you downloaded something from GitHub and it gave you blisters._ \- Rich Hickey (Design, Composition and Performance) Clojure seems more concerned with power, expressiveness, and reach, rather than ease of use. Does this alienate new users, sure, but the Clojure community seems OK with that as a trade-off. ~~~ rfrey I am full to my neckline with Clojure kool-aid: I love the language and programming experience. But the "getting started" your parent is referring to, IMO, is getting the tooling set up, getting the repls connected, figuring out what a full-stack app looks like with its 2 distinct repls and toolchains and lein config mashups, hooking up an editor... and then having it break the next day. After 5 years of Clojure I still get frustrated if I'm away for more than a month. It's like you were getting blisters from _stringing_ your guitar. You buy a guitar, get home, and it takes three days to open the case. Then another week to figure out which strings go where. God help you when you realize you have to _tune_ the thing. Two, five, seven days pass and you haven't played a note. I don't think that's what Hickey meant. That said, it's worth it. ~~~ tartoran Spot on with your amusing guitar analogy. Getting to play notes seems like an afterthought, but when it does it plays for you as if it reads your mind to do so. The problem is the setup and that's the part that I dislike these days, the patience to to configure the tools is not there, a lot of the tools are like black boxes, something goes wrong and it isn't visible or or it is too complex to enjoy the process. ------ emmanueloga_ I'd love to hear more from the author (can someone interview him for a podcast please? :-). He also has another programming language called Fennel [1] which compiles a lisp like language to Lua. Both Fennel and Janet seem to orbit around Clojure ideas.... interestingly one of Fennel's main contributors [2] is also the author of Clojure's most popular build system, Leiningen. 1: [https://fennel-lang.org/](https://fennel-lang.org/) 2: [https://technomancy.us/186](https://technomancy.us/186) ~~~ aasasd I kept thinking that in the ‘small scripting Lisp’ category, a startup- time/performance comparison with Fennel would be apropos, as the latter is blazingly fast and thus well suited for scripting in interactive contexts. ------ phoe-krk janet:1:> (cons 1 2) compile error: unknown symbol cons on line 1, column 1 while compiling repl janet:2:> (list 1 2) compile error: unknown symbol list on line 2, column 1 while compiling repl janet:3:> (vector 1 2) compile error: unknown symbol vector on line 3, column 1 while compiling repl I certainly need to learn the basic idioms of this dialect; it looks nothing like Common Lisp under the hood. ~~~ pjc50 Is it really Lisp without cons? ~~~ phoe-krk Yes, it seems so. Try the REPL available at the website. ~~~ oblio I wonder if his question was not rhetorical, as in: It is _really_ Lisp if it doesn't have cons? ~~~ lispm Is it really Lisp without 'lists'? [https://janet-lang.org/api/index.html](https://janet-lang.org/api/index.html) that does not mention list in meaningful ways. It seems to prefer to work with other data structures (like arrays) - which is okay, but then I won't call it a List Processor dialect. ~~~ jonathanstrange I don't understand why somebody downvoted you, I've seen a number of languages that look like Lisp, but are based on vectors or arrays, and that changes the language drastically. So I'm wondering, too. I was trying to find out whether Janet programs are lists or something else like arrays, but didn't find it in the docs. ~~~ bakpakin This does change the language drastically - source code is represented as tuples usually, although all of the core data structures have literal forms. This means writing macros is still easy, although certain idioms like consing are usually replaced by splicing, which is like unquote-splicing in Common Lisp but more general. ~~~ hexmiles as someone who dosen't know the theory what is the difference between list and array? consing and splicing? is there a pratical difference in the way you write programs or is more of theory/implemetation detail? ~~~ bakpakin A list refers to a singly-linked list, while tuples are implemented as immutable arrays. The former is flexible in that multiple lists can hare structure, and prepending to a list is an O(1) operation that does not change the original list (consing). This property allows all sorts of interesting data structures which at their core are simply lists of atoms and other lists. Janet on the other hand just uses tuples, which are easier to pack densely into memory so usually have better cache performance on reads (clever lisp implementations can sometimes can make lists fit densely in memory, but usually they take about twice as much memory as a tuple). splicing is the like the spread operator in JavaScript or the splat operator in Ruby. This turns out to be very useful in a language without cons for manipulating tuples in macros, even though it is not as efficient as a cons. ~~~ hexmiles thank you! ------ pjc50 1) How is this different from other Lisps or Schemes? 2) When promoting a new programming language, _always_ provide a nontrivial example. Couple of pages of code. Mandelbrot generator, desk calculator, notekeeping app, that sort of thing. ~~~ augustk And the motivation for designing the new language. What problems does it solve better than existing languages? How does it promote the creation of maintainable programs? Etc, etc. ~~~ phonebucket > What problems does it solve better than existing languages? How does it > promote the creation of maintainable programs? I broadly agree that widespread adoption probably requires answering some sort question like these. But sometimes people create languages just because they are fun to create, and they think other people might enjoy using them. ~~~ pjmlp Just taking into consideration that most engineering degrees have of some of compilers design course, there are thousands of programming languages born every year across the globe. So it needs more than just _" grammar + semantics + basic library"_ to actually be relevant. However that is how many nowadays mainstream languages have started, so luck also plays a big role. ------ w0utert Lisp languages should be great for embedding into games to implement game logic, instead of more straightforward solutions such as embedding Lua. I've always wanted to explore this for my iOS side-project game, which now uses an event-based system inspired by ReactiveX, implemented in Lua. This works pretty well but is very hard to debug. The main thing holding me back to try to replace it with something Lisp-like is that I have zero experience in Lisp programming. I know some FP theory (in fact the Lua-based event system lends some concepts from it), but when I try to reason about common subproblems I really have no idea how to map them to something like Lisp. For example how to efficiently implement a message bus with observers that can register themselves, using state-based functions to execute when certain events are received, scheduling events, async/await to suspend processing until some event is received, etc. Does anyone have pointers to books or websites to learn 'real-world' LISP programming? In other words not yet another introduction that shows the same old forced examples that just show you how to evaluate an expression or use higher-order functions to solve artificial toy problems, but resources that teach you how to be productive in a Lisp language? ~~~ phoe-krk > but when I try to reason about common subproblems I really have no idea how > to map them to something like Lisp. For example how to efficiently implement > a message bus with observers that can register for certain events. I think that's a badly posed question. The main benefits of using Lisp are its introspection and interactivity. You can use the REPL to inspect your message bus at runtime, you can modify parts of it as it runs, you can interactively debug errors as they happen, but none of that is directly related to "how to _implement_ a message bus". I think that is more of an ADS question that it is a Lisp question; an efficient message bus, no matter whether you implement it in Lisp or in C or in Haskell, needs some synchronization primitives from the programming language core that are likely backed by OS primitives, as well as some data structures that need to be cleverly designed to be fast. Neither of these is language-specific - only means of implementing and using those might be language-specific. In other words: Lisp makes it possible to be more productive by means of dramatically reducing the time of feedback loop and by means of providing in- depth language introspection, but it doesn't solve the problem of actually needing to figure out how to design programs and data structures. That's why e.g. SICP is not a Scheme tutorial, despite using Scheme throughout the whole book. ~~~ pjc50 This is a very classic Lisp answer in that "productivity" is considered in the pure abstract, and that the specific question of how to do a specific thing - the actual productive result - is uninteresting. Who would expect the classic book on Scheme to teach you how to write Scheme programs? ~~~ phoe-krk Regarding productivity, I don't consider it abstract. I feel a concrete efficiency boost from the two things I mentioned, which are interactive and incremental development with a very short feedback loop (no time wasted while waiting for the toolchain to do its work) and the ability to introspect and debug the live system (since I do not need to bother with external debugger and tooling). What exactly do you mean by "uninteresting"? ~~~ pjc50 The original post complains of not knowing how to solve their particular problem in Lisp, and gives an example: > how to efficiently implement a message bus with observers You say: > I think that's a badly posed question But it isn't! It's the specific thing that person is trying to do and is having trouble with, the act of translating structures and designs they understand from other languages into the Lisp language. This is the barrier to Lisp adoption. You can cite iterative development and live debugging all you want, but they only benefit after you've actually written a program, which is the barrier the potential users are struggling at. ~~~ phoe-krk > but they only benefit after you've actually written a program, which is the > barrier the potential users are struggling at No, you miss the point. There is little benefit in interactive and incremental development once a program is written. The very benefit that this such incrementality provides is noticeable during the _process_ of writing the program, not after it; when a program is written, it's written, and from some point it doesn't really matter if you've done it by mutating an image-based programming language or by linking together compiled C objects. ~~~ pjc50 Programs are never finished. Most work is incremental modification and debugging of existing systems. The "getting started" bit of going from a blank editor to something that starts to be useful is a small part of the process. But it's the very beginning that is a surprisingly hard barrier to cross. The starting to write a program in the first place. Which is where the OP has got stuck. And is dismissed as irrelevant? ------ mapcars 2020: a programming language is named Janet; a child is named X Æ A-12. How did we come to this. ~~~ oblio It's not really something new. Ada ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_$programming_language$) ) was created 40 years ago. Kids with crazy names is a long standing tradition, going back millenia :-) ~~~ mhd Also Amos, Haskell, Idris, Joy, Miranda or Yorick. Arguably Dylan or Pascal. I'm more confused by a name starting with a capital "J" not being associated with Java, as once was custom. As for kid's names, definitely[1]. [1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg9w0YSMLHY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg9w0YSMLHY) ~~~ iLemming And don't forget Swift, named after the biggest philosopher of our time - Taylor Swift. ------ thanatropism Not mentioned here: Hy (hylang.org), a Lisp that manipulates/converts to the Python AST and therefore is fully interoperable with the whole vast Python ecosystem. Although the language is still somewhat short of 1.0, it has stopped changing (after a fairly dramatic turn circa 18) and I’ve been writing more Hy than straight Python for a while now. When I started using Streamlit (and then you can’t have a main.hy function that it will recognize, although you can import arbitrary Hy modules) I started writing straight Python again for my weekend project and boy, do I regret it. I’m seriously considering pausing everything to port to Hy. ~~~ mark_l_watson I certainly agree that if you need the Python ecosystem, then Hy makes development much more enjoyable, at least it does for me. I look at Hy in the same way as Armed Bear Common Lisp: as a great tool is I need the Java ecosystem. ------ mr_custard Many people seem to be comparing Janet and Clojure here as if one had to choose to use only one or the other. Most of my daily work is done in Clojure or ClojureScript and that will continue to be true. However, I am excited by what I've seen in Janet and I'm already thinking that I'd love to call this from bash scripts to do system tasks (devops for example) that don't need the JVM cranked up. I'm choosing both :-) ------ technoplato Please tell me this was somehow inspired by “The Good Place”... ~~~ Witoso Yep. > Janet is named after the almost omniscient and friendly artificial being in > The Good Place.[0] [0][https://github.com/janet-lang/janet#why-janet](https://github.com/janet- lang/janet#why-janet) ------ dleslie I'm not really clear why I would use this and not one of the small embedded Schemes that have srfi-18 support. Chibi and S7 are both "drop some C into your project" levels of trivial to get running, and reasonably zippy. And there's an upgrade path by using the standard: you can move to Chicken, Gambit, Guile, Racket or Chez and keep your code. ------ orwin I'm beginning to create a lisp webserver using sbcl for a personal project. I find this interesting but i'd like to know if a webserver library exist for janet yet, and how does it perform compared to sbcl performance-wise (x2 to x5 does not bother me, anything beyond that would not be great). I'd like to know if a slime/swank can be used with janet (although this is really not a requirement) [edit] i just thought that creating a webserver would be a nice introduction to the language. Also can you compile janet into wasm? ~~~ srle It’s right on the bottom of the page my dude, just scroll down or C-f circlet ~~~ orwin wow i stopped at "try it". thank you. ------ eggy I like it, and I am considering using it as a scripting language. It was clear and easy how to build it for my Windows 10 box, and it is relatively small. I have always like the small Lisps like PicoLisp, but PicoLisp is not Windows friendly; it's very POSIX-dependent. I haven't had great experiences with Cygwin. PicoLisp works on WSL/WSL2 though. ~~~ kmwr Have you seen [https://janet-shell.org](https://janet-shell.org) ? ~~~ eggy I had, but it is for unixes, and I am primarily on Windows. I have a Linux box, WSL2, and an iMac, but all of my paying work is on Windows. I like them all, and I like Janet a lot! ------ rcarmo Janet is quite nice, and I was playing with it only the other day: [https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/05/10/1300](https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/05/10/1300) However, nobody here seems to have mentioned Joker, which is a Go interpreter/linter for Clojure: [https://joker-lang.org/](https://joker-lang.org/) I'm rather torn between Janet and Joker, but am considering using Joker instead (even though it is single-threaded and lacks SQLite support) because it's closer to Clojure syntax. ------ mlatu This sounds awesome! I was about to try and extend a software-product with graalvm to extend it live in clojure. But Janet sounds like a couple less hoops to jump through. Also, I won't have to deal with Oracle at all :D which is really the main reason I haven't begun work on this project yet. ------ augustk How does this language compare to, say Scheme? ------ macleginn I looked at the first two libraries listed on the landing page, and they seem to be mostly implemented in C. (The same goes for the 3rd lib, but it's SQLite bindings, which makes sense.) This is a bit discouraging. ~~~ prirun I have been looking at Nim, Go, and D lately, as a follow-on to Python. Good SQLite support is something I need for HashBackup (author). Nim has a direct interface to SQLite's C API and a higher-level db_sqlite interface. The higher-level interface doesn't support prepared queries so Nim's SQLite performance on a small test is slower than Python using the sqlite3 API which automatically compiles and caches queries. The Nim binding replaces all parameters, specified with ?, with quoted values. That means: \- you can't have a null-valued parameter \- numbers get inserted as text (I think) \- blobs are string quoted and get changed to text instead of using SQLite's X'(hex)' blob notation All returned values from db_sqlite are strings. If you want integers, you have to parseInt() the column. I do like that Nim's db_sqlite interface is very simple so that you can still use the lower-level sqlite interface with the same db connection. So at least I could cache prepared queries if I wanted, but I have to do the work. Checking out Go's SQLite interface, there are some issues posted on the repo (mattn/go-sqlite3) about performance problems because Go uses cgo for SQLite. Haven't test that yet. Since the SQLite module was listed on the front page of Janet's site, I decided to check it out. It, like all the other C code I looked at in the project, is rather beautiful, and that's not a compliment you see very often about C code, my own included. The SQLite interface handles multiple types, including nulls, blobs, and numbers (everything is a float, I'm guessing because that's how Janet implements all numbers). It appears to not cache prepared statements (that would probably be a big performance boost), but does allow parameter substitution by name. If you want to see some really nice C code, check out this project! ------ firepoet So, I do a lot of string manipulation using regular expressions, and Janet doesn't support that, in favor of PEGs, which I've never heard of. Does anyone know of a "PEGs for RegEx addicts" resource or something similar? :-) What an interesting project! I'm sorely tempted to examine it more closely for one of my side projects I've been working on in Clojure. ~~~ firepoet While I'm asking for help.. does anyone know of any crypto bindings? I've been working with libsodium lately, and there is a Clojure library that binds to it. ------ Koshkin For those who would prefer a more traditional albeit possibly less “lightweight” alternative there’s always Embeddable Common Lisp. ~~~ flavio81 Or, since Janet is a bytecode interpreter with a download size of <2MB, there's CLISP which also fits that criteria, while providing the full power of Common Lisp and a nice FFI with C. ------ Jaruzel There is already a JANET in the computing place, please rename your project: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET) Next time, actually Google your proposed name before you use it. ------ gozzoo Is it compiled or interpreted? If interpreted does it use existing interpreter? The description mentions Lua, does it use the Lua engine? Does it have JIT? If it is compiled is it based on LLVM? ~~~ anonymoushn I don't know much about Janet (all I've done is complain that create-fiber did not work the way the docs say it did), but I'm pretty sure it uses its own bytecode interpreter. ------ Sawamara For what it's worth, the win x64 installer died on me at "creating desktop icons", not exactly the most confidence-inspiring start, but lets see again. ------ pixelrevision Wow a lot of care was put into making a complete out of the box readable library but not including too much fat. Looking forward to my weekend. ------ shirian Wow, this is exactly what I've been looking for. Also, I'm not a C-programmer, but I think the source code is good-looking. ------ billfruit How does this compare with Carp? ------ oknoorap Any tutorial about Janet? ~~~ jbritton The Janet documentation is sufficient to get going. It reads pretty much like a tutorial. At least if you have any lisp/scheme experience. [https://janet- lang.org/docs/index.html](https://janet-lang.org/docs/index.html) I downloaded a couple weeks ago. I really wanted to build an executable, but I couldn’t. It seemed all the docs on this aspect were out of date or my build was broken in this respect. ~~~ oknoorap oh okay, freecodecamp course would be great :-D ------ lenkite Can't find the tutorial or language manual. ~~~ hanche I see no tutorial either, but did you try clicking the prominent link near the top labeled “Documentation”? The language manual seems to be all there. Once you're inside the documentation, there is a hamburger menu exposing a comprehensive table of contents. ~~~ lenkite I am an idiot. Somehow I went to the API documentation and examples instead on the github site. Thanks. ------ pauljurczak Call me when you modernize parenthesis out. ;-) ~~~ pauljurczak Touchy subject. As expected, downvoted by the Brotherhood of Defenders of a Holy Round Bracket. ------ frankpf I don't use lisp languages, but one basic difference this has from other lisps is that functions accept multiple expressions, e.g.: (defn greet [firstname lastname] (def fullname (string firstname " " lastname)) (string "Hello, " fullname)) In other lisps, you'd have the last expression nested inside a `let` block: (defn greet [firstname lastname] (let [fullname (string firstname " " lastname)] (string "Hello, " fullname))) which makes the code hard to read and edit IMO. Languages like Haskell and OCaml suffer from a similar problem too. ~~~ nathcd > which makes the code hard to read and edit IMO. Languages like Haskell and > OCaml suffer from a similar problem too. That's interesting, I've always really loved the "return last expression in a block" syntax. (Ruby and Rust can be added to your list as well.) That syntax just reads really naturally to me. ~~~ frankpf I like that too, but both Rust and Ruby allow multiple expressions/statements before the last expression. In Haskell and OCaml IIUC you need to use things like `let x = ... in <expr>` or `<expr> where x = ...`, so you still have a single expression in function bodies.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Amazon Finally Renamed Amazon Mom to Amazon Family in US - heavymark http://amazon.com/family ====== heavymark Great news for families where dads taking a leading role in the child's childcare. Such as single dads, coupled stay at home dad, single gay dads, and gay dad couples who all adopt or through surrogacy. Outside the US it was already named Amazon Family, but in the US it took a group of dads and their campaign for equality to get it finally renamed, albeit very quietly by Amazon. Great news for moms and dads.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Collective Motion of Moshers at Heavy Metal Concerts (2013) [pdf] - deweerdt http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.1886v1.pdf ====== joezydeco When do 2015 Ig Nobel nominations open up?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Time Warner Cable Expands Metered Billing To Four More Cities - vaksel http://consumerist.com/5192997/time-warner-cable-expands-metered-billing-to-four-more-cities?skyline=true&s=x ====== paul_houle Frontier DSL, which also serves communities around Rochester, NY has also been talking about a bandwidth cap -- at a ludicrously low 5 GB/month. Frontier serves a number of rural areas where they're the only option people have for service: they've backed off on their threats when customers threatened to take their cases to their state PUCs. ------ mdasen For me, the caps are way too low and the bandwidth cost too high. I think a cap in the 200GB range makes a lot more sense (since 243GB is full utilization of a fractional T1). Then additional bandwidth at $0.30/GB (in the range of what you'd pay from a hosting company) would work nicely. To put the 200GB in perspective, streaming Hulu 100% of the time for the whole month wouldn't hit 200GB of usage. It's one thing to go after those who have decided that they can saturate their 10Mbps connection all day and all night, but with the top cap at 40GB, that's going to catch a decent amount of casual users.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous? - todd8 http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/the-fat-fueled-brain-unnatural-or-advantageous/ ====== rotwoof I've been doing Keto since Feb 25 2016. My primary goal when switching over was weight loss, which turned out to be easy. I'm 25, male and was experiencing growing health complications related to obesity. I've lost well over 60 lbs since making the switch despite the fact that I maintain a primarily sedentary lifestyle though I now work out weekly as well as take bi- daily walks. There are downsides though. It's not cheap, it's restrictive and it requires you to build a fairly sizeable knowledge base in order to successfully maintain the diet and your own health. For instance your body consumes more water in order to burn fat stores which leads to the body burning through electrolytes more rapidly. It is very common to supplement electrolytes every day. It is common to drink broth while on Keto in order to cover the daily salt intake requirements of Keto, ~5000-7000mg every day on top of normal dietary salt intake. Failure to cover the daily electrolyte requirement will lead to muscle cramps and more severe symptoms brought on by electrolyte deficiency in the body. Prior to supplementing magnesium I experienced leg cramps and quickly realized what was going on. However there are significant health benefits. Weight loss, improved mental clarity and better energy levels throughout the day, as well as less need for frequent meals are positive effects that a lot of people experience on Keto. It is also a useful tool for reversing lifestyle diseases such as diabetes type 2 and pre-diabetes. When it comes to the stuff you "have to give up" while on Keto it's mostly a case of strict moderation rather than completely cutting things out. The things you do try to cut out though like bread, sugar, potatoes, pasta, corn- syrup etc have good alternatives available in most grocery stores. You can bake bread out of almond flour, make pasta out of almond flour (or have someone make it for you), replace potatoes with sweet potatoes and so on. If you're thinking that keto sounds like it's too much hassle please leave me a reply and I'll gladly talk about whatever you're unsure about. ~~~ dave_sullivan Has there been any more research into the long term health effects of Keto? I tried it years ago, but found it to be more of a pain than it's worth (I seem to have better luck with intense exercise 3x per week and avoiding sugar). And it seems like tons of meat and cheese is actually bad long term, in the sense it clogs your arteries or increases cancer risk. Atkins did not look like he was in good shape inside when he died. It strikes me as a body hack that bypasses a lot of bodily processes evolution may have counted on as we developed. But it seems like we know a fair amount about the chemistry and processes involved, so I'm curious. ~~~ rotwoof >And it seems like tons of meat and cheese is actually bad long term, in the sense it clogs your arteries This is an inaccurate conclusion based on old studies where the subjects underwent a high-carbohydrate high-fat diet. Recent studies on ketogenic diets (low-carbohydrate, medium-protein, high-fat intake) shows that dietary fats and dietary cholesterol barely make any sort of impact on the subject's cholesterol. Rather it is dietary carbohydrates and genetics which are the primary contributor to raised cholesterol and arterial blockage. When it comes to arterial blockage, studies have found that there is no significant correlation between high dietary fat intake and cardiovascular disease. >or increases cancer risk Keto is primarily a high-fat diet, not a high-protein or high-carb diet. Studies have showed that a sugar found in red meats called Neu5Gc is primarily correlated with inflammation in the body and the development of certain cancers. If you're on keto you're less likely to develop cardiovascular disease, and while there is not enough data yet to draw a scientific conclusion preliminary research indicates that individuals who follow keto are at less risk of developing cancer due to restricting sugar intake. See: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/search?q=cancer&restric...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/search?q=cancer&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all) All of these posts link to multiple, verified studies which go into details about what I just said. ~~~ AstralStorm What you said about cancer risk or long term safety of the whole class of those diets. Especially anything related to mortality and morbidity endpoints. Cholesterol numbers are nowhere near the end of story, they're just markers. Rat and mice studies are useless for this purpose. Please correct me if I am wrong. Preferably with published larger studies. In humans. ------ jlturner I'm on my third ketogenic diet stint, and I can attest to how fantastic it is. I'm narcoleptic and I experience nearly no symptoms on the diet, my fiancée is epileptic and is transitioning off her meds to the ketogenic diet (with the supervision of her nutritionist and neurologist), and a former employee uses it to keep her benign tumor from spreading (actually! And she's totally normal, again with doctors). All of us report much better hair, skin, daily energy levels, ability to think more clearly and focus better, and massive weight loss. The first month my first time doing keto I lost 30 lbs without trying to, ended up being a total weight loss of about 70lbs and I became very lean and muscular. Why stop? Bread is delicious and it make social eating event difficult / less engaging. You can take a meal off from the diet and be fine, but it's a slippery slope of will power. ~~~ misiti3780 no alcohol either ... that is a deal breaker for a lot of people (including myself) ~~~ Sargos Alcohol is actually fine on a low carb diet. Beer has carbs but Vodka, Rum, etc are totally fine. In fact alcohol tends to have a greater effect on you when in ketosis so you even save some money when out drinking. ------ trendia Genetics plays a very large factor in fat and cholesterol metabolism, and one that I think explains the variance in success with the ketogenic diet. e.g. FTO, PPARG, APOA5, FABP2, and APOE. Essentially, not everyone processes fat the same way, and for some, especially those with APOE4/4, a high fat diet may actually be deleterious to health. People with the right genes will have great success with ketogenic diets... but convincing their friends to join in might not have the outcome they expect. ~~~ alakin This is key. Apoe status appears to control the absorption rates of LDL cholesterol (tiny balls of fat). Individuals with apoe4, appear to have really low LDL cholesterol absorption rates between cells, and high blood-LDL cholesterol concentrations. Having done a bit of research on optimal dieting, its pretty inconclusive. This study shows negative consequences resulting from high fat diets for apoe4: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27656136](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27656136) ------ tetraodonpuffer what I wonder every time I hear people be very enthusiastic about how their diet improves their quality of life, is if it's just a case that eating good food and working out (which a lot of people do when starting a new diet) is the trigger to feel better as opposed to the vegan / raw food / ketogenic / paleo / high-carb specifics, not to mention the obvious placebo effect of starting something new that supposedly will help you feel better. It does feel that we as a species, being omnivore, can do just fine on all sorts of different diets, and maybe the reason these testimonials come up for all sorts of different diets, is that it's the staying away from sugar / processed food, the working out, caloric restriction, weight loss and consequent improvement in quality of sleep that cause the improvements, as opposed to the food specifics. Going from eating fast food, not working out and sleeping badly, to eating less caloric whole foods, working out and sleeping well would make anybody feel so much better and lose weight, regardless of what type of whole foods they pick. If this is the case, then it opens the opportunity to pick your diet more based on say environmental impact or ethical reasons, as opposed to say feeling that your veggie diet is not as good as your friends' paleo diet because you have been veggie for 10 years and your friend just went paleo and so they are in the "omg I feel so much better" phase. Wish it was possible to do a double blind study on diet and its effects but unfortunately for obvious reasons that's not possible. On the other hand it is quite possible to quantify your diet's environmental impact / footprint, which makes minimizing it reasonably feasible. ~~~ circlefavshape I was wondering about this too. Many of the comments on this thread are "I felt great on keto and lost X lb/kg". Could you be feeling better just because you lost weight? if you have no weight to lose is there anything to gain? ~~~ redwards510 I think a lot of those types of testimonials come from people who have tried other dieting styles and failed with them. One of the biggest reasons that people really enjoy keto is that a high fat + protein diet leaves you feeling sated even though you are eating less calories. You are not STARVING all the time like with a simple calorie reduction diet. Another reason is that by eliminating sugar/carbs, you aren't dealing with large insulin spikes anymore, and that evens out your mood. ~~~ cuddlybacon +1 I tried the standard advice (Canada Food Pyramid + exercise). I felt miserable (tired, irritable, hungry) and couldn't sleep well. Keto has been the exact opposite. I feel great all the time. I sleep better. I no longer get daily nosebleeds. For the first 6+ months, I didn't exercise at all. ------ rpazyaquian The main problem I have with ketogenic diets is that it's actually quite difficult and sometimes expensive to eat a 90-95% fat diet. I tried it for a while, and since I couldn't have carbs OR too much protein, I had several instances where my dinner in a pinch was melted down cheese and half-n-half. Your diet basically becomes cheese and avocados with some, but not too much, salmon or chicken. I'm not arguing that it doesn't work for a good subset of people, but it's not the kind of diet that's easy to keep up over time or is all that economically feasible for some. Keto diets are actually _more_ restrictive than vegan or kosher or halal, and it's not a surprise that they're mostly prescribed for epilepsy - it definitely feels like a "sick person diet". I also wonder if it's possible to work out while doing keto. Since muscles use glycogen to work, and the keto diet is intentionally low in glycogen, does that make weight training and cardio harder? Especially the former, since you're limited in how much protein you can eat, and strength training benefits from having ~150g of protein per day. ~~~ Nav_Panel > _The main problem I have with ketogenic diets is that it 's actually quite > difficult and sometimes expensive to eat a 90-95% fat diet_ From what I've seen, your diet should be ~60-70% fat, 5% or less carbs, and ~25-35% protein. Definitely not 95% fat. > _I had several instances where my dinner in a pinch was melted down cheese > and half-n-half. Your diet basically becomes cheese and avocados with some, > but not too much, salmon or chicken_ What about vegetables? I ate a lot of salads when I did keto. I also ate a lot of fattier meats, such as cured italian meats and ground beef. No reason to eat super lean protein when fat is most of your calories; buy the cheap fatty stuff and enjoy it. Also, eggs? I was having an omelette every morning. > _I also wonder if it 's possible to work out while doing keto_ It's very possible: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22835211](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22835211) but I doubt it would be if you're not eating _any_ protein... ~~~ rpazyaquian I prolly fucked the diet up, then. It certainly _felt_ like I was eating almost all fat...good to know that I can take advantage of cheap fatty meats like short ribs, oxtail, and marrow then. As for vegetables, I missed carrots and peas too much. Mustard greens and broccoli are apparently okay, though. I could always just make salads out of baby spinach and arugula, but I suck at making salad dressings. ~~~ Nav_Panel > _As for vegetables, I missed carrots and peas too much. Mustard greens and > broccoli are apparently okay, though. I could always just make salads out of > baby spinach and arugula, but I suck at making salad dressings._ The rule for veggies is to avoid starch and stick to dark leafy greens. My go-to easy dish would be a "taco salad", where I'd cook some ground beef and serve it with cheese, salsa, sour cream over lettuce. There's also lots of dishes possible with kale and spinach. > _take advantage of cheap fatty meats_ Fish included! No reason to worry about eating "too much" salmon. Cook it with butter sauce and it should fit your macro-nutrient ratios perfectly. > _I prolly fucked the diet up_ As another comment said, it's no wonder you felt sick. Also, the "keto flu" is a known phenomenon while your body adapts and flushes all the water out of your system. Drink a lot of electrolytes (chicken broth is a good source) and you'll feel better. ------ wpietri No comment on the main topic, but the "unnatural or advantageous" binary in the title is a confusion that I really dislike. "Natural" and "good" are independent axes. No relationship should be assumed. Tuberculosis is natural, but not good. Brushing your teeth is unnatural, but I'm happy to call it good. This can seem obvious, but the error crops up all the time in serious ways. E.g. women voting and joining the workforce was seen as unnatural, therefore wrong. People market all sorts of quack remedies as natural, and therefore good. It goes the other way, too. Slavery was seen as right, and people decided it was therefore natural. (See the various declarations of secession of the US states for examples.) Violence is seen as wrong, so people decide it must be unnatural, ignoring our long history as predators, the amount of education we give children about not hitting, and our societal structures for limiting violence. Is and ought: two entirely separate things. ~~~ abandonliberty Cyanide is also natural. Organic farming permits organic pesticides, half of which are cancerous as well and may have worse environmental impacts [0]. The organic label doesn't guarantee that you're getting more ethical/better/safer products - and it is worth a lot of money. [0] [https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lhom/organictext.html](https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lhom/organictext.html) Funny, when I first saw your comment it was collecting negative votes, so I came in to lend it some support. Now it's on top! ~~~ eth0up A few thoughts: Does 'organic' regulation permit the use of paraffin coatings? I imagine the prolific use of paraffin in conventional produce could make rinsing away pesticides quite difficult. Copper sulfate is one of the most common organic pesticides that I am aware of. It's certainly nothing to gorge on. However, when handled safely, it may be preferable to directly engineering a pesticide into the plant. On the organic farms I tended, there was very minimal use of pesticides or herbicides. The inherent diversity of the farm allowed the temporary discontinuation (rather than synthetic maintenance) of problematic plants, and either experimentation with others, or the continuation of what was presently working. For weed control we relied on hay and profuse weeding by hand, some of the weeds being edible (amaranth) and providing snacks during the process, at least for me ;) Personally, I prefer this method to glyphosate. The term "natural" may not be synonymous with "healthy and safe", but it does functionally delimit e.g. Roundup from acetic acid. ~~~ jerf "For weed control we relied on hay and profuse weeding by hand," For a while I've said that "robotic fast food joints" are one of the touchstones I'm using to say that robotics has really arrived. I've been considering adding "robotic weeders" to my list. How much would our agriculture change if instead of pesticides, we physically weeded everything? The robot may not even need to "remove things by their roots", which would be quite complicated; if it can sweep by reliably every two or three days just trimming everything that isn't desired crop would probably do fine. Bushy plants low to the ground might take more work, but given the way corn grows it seems like we could robotically weed corn pretty effectively. ~~~ eth0up Of course, it would result in less hours/pay for some, but I'd still welcome _effective_ robotic (solar-powered?) weeding anytime. Maybe it would work with corn, but the vegetables I'm accustomed to are delicate and I suspect it would be a great undertaking to duplicate the efficiency of the hand on a large scale. I'm honestly not sure if "trimming" would work or not. Seems frightfully difficult to me, but so is ingenuity. PS: I am not a professional farmer, so take my opinions accordingly. ------ artellectual Actually, I've tried the ketogenic diet. It's great, however it does have negative side effects. That is the lack of fiber. This can lead to hemorrhoids. Which can be extremely painful. Everything was great, I burned a lot of baby fat, but it was painful in the toilet, there was bleeding involved. You need to supplement yourself with fiber if you want to try the ketogenic diet. ~~~ vixen99 There are many options for avoiding your problem. Vegetable fiber using vegetables with minimal or zero reserve carbohydrate should do it. Cabbage for instance also offers additional benefits from its phytochemicals. See for instance [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304423806...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304423806000483) ~~~ CuriouslyC You can even go one step further and eat Sauerkraut. A lot of the (limited) carbohydrates in the cabbage are fermented into lactate, which has some health benefits, and if you make it yourself it is a good probiotic. ~~~ rjsamson Yup - and it's got a lot of potassium too! Definitely a keto staple for me. ------ CuriouslyC While I don't think a ketogenic diet is an optimal diet in terms of longevity or overall health (as all blue-zone diets are carb rich), it does appear to confer some benefits in the short term which are fairly compelling. The vast majority of humans are adapted to seasonal eating, with high carbohydrate diets during spring, summer and fall, and very low carbohydrate diets during winter (or during the wet/dry seasons). I suspect that our bodies have evolved around short periods of keto-adaptation as part of a natural rejuvenation cycle. Given our modern non-seasonal eating habits, that would mean we're missing out on a natural bodily process that is important to health. ~~~ whiskers08xmt Out of curiosity, are there any areas with a fat rich diet, which has good access to quality health care? It seems most cultures, which aren't based around hunting and gathering, have a carb based diet, as it's simply the most feasible for supporting a large population. ~~~ CuriouslyC Not all blue zones have access to stellar health care. I'd argue that the health care of Nicoya peninsula in Costa Rica isn't much better than what keto-adapted people of Alaska or Greenland have access to, but the life expectancy difference is pretty large. ------ tew28 Something to watch out for - the first time I tried a ketogenic diet, I developed a terrible rash on my torso after three weeks. After a few fruitless trips to the dermatologist, I found that it was very possibly something called prurigo pigmentosa, a rash that tends to occur in people fasting or in ketosis. Someone even set up a website about it - www.theketorash.com. It's unfortunate, as I had been successfully losing weight. No one really knows how to treat it, except for, well, eating more carbs. ------ shanusmagnus This has been scattered around the existing comments, but I'd be really interested to hear people who are keto comment explicitly on its perceived cognitive effects. I know a number of pretty successful scientists who have told me they feel that being keto provides them a significant performance advantage. I'm really interested in how it affects perceived energy, clarity of thinking, fatigue, and creativity. I'm gearing up for keto induction myself in the next month (the social things are the hardest for me to deal with, so require a lot of planning to make it feasible), but I'd love to hear (or be pointed to) stories on this topic, especially for knowledge workers / intellectual-types. ~~~ serg_chernata I went through about 2 months of pure keto earlier this year. Small disclaimer, I generally follow a "warrior" diet and intermittent fasting. I think keto gave me a similar "sharp" awareness and energy. For whatever reason, not eating, while difficult at first, provided me with even more energy and clarity in the same way keto did. Even though I continued doing fairly intense workouts 3 days a week. ~~~ rudolf0 I also get a lot of mental clarity and alertness after extended periods of not eating, followed by tiredness and fogginess after a meal. This might be one reason why I'm underweight. Unfortunately, a keto diet isn't really an option for me (vegetarian, and allergic to many vegetarian protein sources). I wonder what the underlying science behind it is. ~~~ serg_chernata Science behind keto? This article explains it pretty well. ~~~ rudolf0 No, the science behind feeling mental clarity after extended fasting. Unfortunately, everything I could think to Google just returned a bunch of grandiose pseudoscience. ~~~ serg_chernata Yeah I'm not a scientist either but I would equate this to the opposite of feeling sleepy after a big dish of pasta. Food does have a certain effect on the body especially if it's full of carbs. What I get out of fasting and keto is the opposite. ------ tzaman I do keto once a year for about 3 months, and truth be told I feel like a superman. I feel more energetic, loose a ton of fat (ironically with increased fat intake), get more stuff done and overall feel better. The only reason is stop doing it is because I'm a sucker for sweets :) I started all this by asking a friend of mine who's a personal trainer what's the best way of loosing 15 kilos (because I was fat) and he prescribed me a keto diet. Lost all 15 in three months and no, haven't gotten them back. EDIT: on the flip side, my wife's menstrual cycles got completely messed up and her periods started to hurt a whole lot more, so she stopped it. ~~~ akgoel I did keto for 4 months at the beginning of this year, and I did lose 40 pounds, and generally felt great. But then I started getting more active and picked up tennis. I found that after 30 minutes, I was completely out of energy. It wasn't that I was tired, it was that I literally felt like I was out of fuel. Taking a swig of Gatorade immediately picked up my game, and so I had to introduce carbs back into my diet just to stay active. ~~~ tzaman That's quite the contrary to my experience. I combined the diet with a daily 5km morning run, and I had no problems with it, not only was I not exhausted, I was powered up. But maybe that's just placebo :) ------ mattbgates I have been living in ketosis for the past 2 years, very rarely breaking the lifestyle diet. Although the majority of my weight loss started off with calorie restriction and a high-protein/moderate-fat/low-to-moderate carb diet, I eventually hit a plateau for 6 months, until I finally learned about and tried ketosis, switching to a high-fat/moderatere-protein/low-carb diet which allowed me to lose 30 more pounds, for a total of 85 pounds, or 260 to 175 pounds. I have logged almost everything I have eaten with [https://LoseIt.com](https://LoseIt.com) so I have the data to show everything including before and after photos of myself, along with my complete understanding of my experience with ketosis. You can read my article here: [https://mypost.io/post/no-bullshit-diet](https://mypost.io/post/no-bullshit- diet) ------ fnsa I did a keto diet for a few months 3 years back and one of the things that I noticed very quickly was the reduced need for sleep. I slept at least an hour less every night and I felt great. Apparently it's due to a reduced production of melatonin. ------ mtreis86 Anecdotes: I started keto over a year ago after struggling with weight my whole life. I have always been heavy for my height. Anyways, two years ago I was in a motorcycle accident and the doctors told me that having plaque in my arteries significantly increased the damage (I had internal bleeding requiring surgery). So I decided to fix my shit. Started working out a couple times a week, but the weight didn't go down for six months, when I found keto. I won't get into the benefits, unless anyone has specific questions. I just came here to say this: Once in ketosis, I started learning to enjoy hunger. Enjoying hunger made weight loss work without much conscious effort. I have lost 50 pounds in a year, then maintained the lower weight for another year. ------ mrob If we're sharing anecdotes here, I've also tried a ketogenic diet for about 2 months. I wasn't trying to lose weight, I was just curious what it was like. The only change I noticed was I became slightly weaker, lifting only about 90% of my previous weights. But this might have been placebo, because I had already heard that it could happen. I stopped the diet because it made cooking and eating difficult for no obvious gain. ~~~ jlturner The first time I did keto I lost a lot of weight until I started lifting, and while the scale stopped changing entirely I continued becoming much more lean as a result. Definitely have more power lifting with carbs though. Also it's possible that your carbs weren't low enough (the diet is extremely restrictive, generally you want less than 10-20g carbs which is most / all from leafy vegetables) and you may have been stuck in glycolysis/ ketosis transition which makes you feel weak. ~~~ mrob I followed the restrictions carefully and confirmed ketosis with urine testing strips. And I didn't _feel_ weak, I just couldn't lift as much. I doubt I'd have noticed any difference at all if I wasn't lifting. ------ coldtea For those talking about ketogenic diets in general, try Atkins 2.0. I'm not for fads, and I don't even believe claims that "caloric intake doesn't matter" if you only eat protein/fat etc. That said, I've found that their Atkins 2.0 four-stage plan makes sense, and incorporates most of what modern studies say. It's also not the caricature "steak and eggs" diet that some people believe Atkins or ketogenic diets are. They have some strict whitelist of food for the stage 1 (2 weeks, which you can extend to lose weight faster), but the other 3 stages gradually add back carbs into your diet, and you are even encouraged to add them "at your own personal balance", so you end up with a final balanced diet you can keep following forever that's not about ketosis anymore but health and sustaining your weight. They do promote some of their own branded snacks etc, but you can ignore those, and they have tons of information on their site to do the diet on your own. As I wrote in another comment, following it for 3 weeks, immediately after trying a couple of others for the last months to no effect. Not only I lost 10 pounds and counting, but am less sleepy and lethargic during afternoons at work, can wake up better, and have more energy. Those could also mean that I was gluten intorelant (never bothered to check, but I did ate tons of breads) and staying off bread made me better. Or maybe it's that I cut sugar completely which is also part of stage 1 (except for fruits and sweeteners). I also don't care to eat anymore -- before I looked forward to every meal of the day (or snacked like crazy between). ------ johnward "Emerging evidence from animal models and clinical trials suggest keto may be therapeutically used in many other neurological disorders, including head ache, neurodegenerative diseases, sleep disorders, bipolar disorder, autism and brain cancer. With no apparent side effects. " I suffer from bi-polar disorder and have been swinging back and forth between a "traditional" (IE eat too much of everything) and a keto diet. My wife has made comments that she can tell when I am on keto by my mental stability but I've never read anything to back that up until now. My only problem with keto is cheating. If I cheat once then I crave anything with carbs in it. I don't usually have those cravings after about the first week of ketosis. ------ serg_chernata Since we're discussing this, I wanted to ask a question in regard to electrolytes. First time I tried keto everything was fantastic except I missed the electrolyte requirement and ended up with heart palpitations along with muscle cramps and overall crappy feeling once enough time passed and I unwittingly ignored the electrolytes. Talking to doctors proved to be worthless because most of them haven't even heard of keto nor understand why anyone would do that. Does anyone have advice or reading materials in regard to this aspect of keto? PS I am a completely healthy male of 27 years old and active lifestyle. I'm pretty positive there's nothing wrong with me physiologically. ~~~ rjsamson There are some great resources on the keto subreddit (reddit.com/r/keto). I personally had similar issues when I first started keto - several times a week i found i had to be conscious of my electrolyte intake and would supplement with broth and often almond milk (potassium). However 6 months in I've found it's less of an issue, even at lower electrolyte intake, but I'm not sure why. I never found the need to hit the super high recommendations on /r/keto though - I found that 4,000 - 5,000 mg per day was more than enough, and I'd get heart palpitations and muscle cramps generally under 2,500 / day. You'll see a lot of people on /r/keto saying you _have_ to hit 7k+ a day, and people who drink salted water all day - personally, I think that's overkill. ~~~ serg_chernata That's what I'm worried about. Taking in too much and simply the hassle of having to mix salted water every single day. ~~~ johnward I take ZMA and potassium daily. I will drink electrolyte water too. When I get home from the gym and feel drained I will drink 8oz of chicken broth for the salt. I had some severe cramps before starting this. ~~~ serg_chernata Potassium in pill form is only sold in very small doses, correct? How do you reach the high daily minimum? ~~~ johnward I don't know what the daily values are to be honest. I just take it until my symptoms, mostly cramping, go away and stick with that dosage. I basically eat broccoli or brussels sprouts with dinner every day. They both seem to have a decent amount of potassium. ------ eth0up If certain crazed bureaucracies have their way, it may become burdensome to benefit from ketosis: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tax#Denmark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tax#Denmark) When I experimented with keto, two products were essential to my ability to do so; coconut oil and butter. It infuriates me that some in positions of influence and power (but not of productivity!) would dare usurp people's dietary choices based on the careless assumption that saturated fat is bad. Although such propositions have so far been unsuccessful, I doubt the mischief has ended. Where is the Charlton Heston of fat!? ~~~ jsprogrammer The 'assumption' about saturated fat is not careless. Increasing saturated fat intake increases total plasma and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations. ~~~ eth0up [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22131700](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22131700) I support any form of ethical research, but not the hasty imposition of its ostensible results onto the masses. At least not in the case of personal decision in regard to diet. As noted in the above link, ghee has been used for thousands of years. Health advantages have been attributed to it. There is controversy and that is fine. Let people make their own decisions. Certainly groups of people having nothing to do with the production, distribution and consumption of ghee have little claim to profit, although they may freely wail to their content about how much they resent it. ~~~ jsprogrammer People should make their own decisions. Here are the USDA's macronutrients dietary reference intake guidelines, with notes on adverse effects of excessive consumption: [https://fnic.nal.usda.gov/sites/fnic.nal.usda.gov/files/uplo...](https://fnic.nal.usda.gov/sites/fnic.nal.usda.gov/files/uploads/macronutrients.pdf) ------ hackermailman I do the opposite diet, the Fuhrman "End of Dieting" so called nutrarian diet of mainly veg and beans with meat once a week, sometimes less. Saved a ton of money on food, lost weight back to my early 20s levels and have stamina to do 2 jobs, one very physical(climbing stairs all day) and one mentally taxing that I do 5 hours a day before my physical job. I also have energy to get in a research paper after both jobs where before I wanted to crash and burn after eating a heavy meat meal. Complete anecdote but if anybody doesn't want to eat a lot of meat and keep a low weight read that book. ------ miguelrochefort Whenever I'm keto adapted, I can fast for 23 hours out of every day without any effort. I eat once, between 6PM and 7PM. Recently, I've been following the zero carb movement, which advocates only eating animal products (meat, fish, fat, cheese, cream, egg) and drinking water. I'm looking forward to exclusively eat beef and drink water for an entire month. ------ bill343 If you checkout the foundmyfitness podcast with I believe Dr. Satchin Panda, ketosis is discussed and the doctor indicates that you can eat sweet potatoes, or even ice cream once in awhile and not be taken out of ketosis. And even if it does you can get back into ketosis easily. ------ seangrogg I see a few ad hoc source recommendations, but is there a solid resource (or list of resources) surrounding this? Particularly who would benefit from this diet, good foods, what to expect from your first few weeks/long term, should it be something you do in phases, etc? ------ caub I think the body can generate fat from any type of food, even sugars, the thing is just to learn to use that stored fat, instead of overconsuming ------ iand Anyone here got tips for a lactose intolerant vegetarian? (and I don't mean "eat meat" tips) ~~~ miguelrochefort [http://www.reddit.com/r/veganketo](http://www.reddit.com/r/veganketo) ------ eevilspock So keto is all or nothing? I won't experience any benefit by just increasing fat calories and decreasing carbs? ~~~ miguelrochefort You're correct. ------ epx Works very well for me. By far the brain works better. ------ auggierose Maybe both. ------ zizzles Nutritional information is laughably conflicting. Example: Eat meat, it's essential! Don't eat meat, it will sky rocket your cholesterol! Buy organic, it is much healthier! Organic is over-priced and isn't proven to be healthier, don't buy into it! Fruit is so healthy, you should eat plenty of it! Fructose is bad for you, don't eat too much fruit! Every piece of information you end up reading, there is another piece of information somewhere out there that completely conflicts it. What even is FACT anymore? ~~~ white-flame There's also the fact that bodies are different, and have developed differently and gotten used to processing things in different quantities and different ways. All these studies looking at people overall to figure out the effect of some food on "the average person" is IMO misguided. We need to study links between foods and an individual's body state, be it their gut ecosystem, ethnic/genetic indicators, in combination with the rest of their diet, and such things.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What do you think of my landing page - MaxwellM http://signup.wiyf.org I want to buy some Bing adWords to validate my business idea. Keywords: Grocery List, Spoiled Milk<p>What do you think of the landing page. Does it succinctly convey a use case and the purpose/features of the app?<p>Would a background of a shopper at a store make more sense?<p>Any other input on the business idea & validation method is appreciated. ====== idleworx Nice pic and landing page, but ... I don't see how this app would benefit me (at least). What does it do exactly that anyone would be willing to pay money for? Or are you planning to make money through advertising and affiliate programs? "Automatic shopping reminders" - There's tons of apps and todo apps like this. "Local deals to help you save" - Again, tons of apps and websites and cupon websites providing this service (not to mention the daily safeway/shoppers/local grocery store cupons i get in the mail. "Track your spending" - how exactly and why would I need this? Discovercard and other credit card companies alredy have very useful interfaces for sorting 'groceries' purchases (not to mention Mint.com and similar sites) Other questions come to mind (if you're also thinking of implementing some kind of inventory tracking/mangement of 'fridge' items: \- You scan a receipt, get the items, but then how do you know which ones aren't there anymore? \- Who has time/patience to keep track of their fridge items in a website? Overall, other than the 'potential' for the visual coolness factor of scanning my receipt and displaying that stuff in the fridge image online I don't see anything I would use here, much less pay money for, and even then, why wouldn't i just open my own fridge and look at it? Just my two cents'... ------ MaxwellM I plan on buying Bing AdWords to validate my business idea. Keywords: Grocery List, Spoiled Milk What do you think of the landing page? Does it clearly describe a use case and the features of the app? Would a background img of a shopper make more sense. Any other input on the business idea/validation method is appreciated.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
White House Open Data Unavailable - runesoerensen https://open.whitehouse.gov/browse ====== privong All the data appear to still be available here: [https://open.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/](https://open.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/) I think that might just be the usual revamping of the White House website for the new administration. I spot-checked a few datasets and it looked like they are still available at the link above. Mods, a better title for this might be "White House Open Data Page Archived"? And the link changed to the above link? ~~~ runesoerensen Thanks for sharing this! The notion of archiving "Open Data" due to a change in government still seems odd considering this is factual, time-stamped data. ~~~ jdoliner All digital properties go to a clean slate when the Presidency changes hands. There's nothing odd about this. It's similar to the physical aspects of the government, such as cabinet posts, that are directly under the Presidents purview. It being factual really has no bearing on this, although given that for data it just gets archived rather than completely purged it seems to be an incredibly reasonable treatment. The title of this post, on the other hand, is, dare I say, an alternative fact. ------ runesoerensen Related tweet: _" Today Trump removed all open data (9GB) from the White House [https://open.whitehouse.gov/browse](https://open.whitehouse.gov/browse) but I grabbed it all Jan 20! Will distribute soon"_ [https://twitter.com/denormalize/status/831581871230193664](https://twitter.com/denormalize/status/831581871230193664) ~~~ weaksauce Why did trump do this? What was in the data? Could this be an error? ~~~ ajones It isn't an error. If you click into one of the individual data sources (links available on the home page), you see messages like this: > This page is being updated. It will post records of White House visitors on > an ongoing basis, once they become available. > This page is being updated. It will post records of White House staff > salaries as the data becomes available for the Trump Administration. ~~~ huydotnet No request sent from the browser ------ grzm Is there more to this than a page of empty results? Looking at this from a troubleshooting perspective, there are a number of things that could be causing this page besides the data itself being gone. I agree, it's something that should be looked into, but before proclaiming a purge, I'd want to know more about the situation. ~~~ runesoerensen I did consider using "No Longer Available" rather than "Purged" in the title, but all things considered I think there's overwhelming reason to believe this was intentional. Hopefully we'll soon have more information if someone looks further into this. ~~~ massysett So you recklessly decided to post something inflammatory just because you think there's "overwhelming reason to believe" it--so overwhelming that you haven't cited it? Meanwhile "hopefully" we'll have more information "if someone looks further into" it? When Trump does this the New York Times calls it a lie. He often says we "need to figure out what the hell is going on," just like your "if someone looks further into this." ~~~ runesoerensen If the Trump administration wanted to control the story they could've just posted information about the change on the webpage and redirect users to the Obama administration archive (which exists, as pointed out here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13647041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13647041)). Instead they chose to break all links and API integrations with no warning or information. ~~~ grzm What's _your_ goal? What do _you_ want to accomplish? Raise awareness of what's going on in the Trump administration? Who's your audience? Do you want to reach anyone other than people who already share your concerns? Do you want to be written off by people who aren't already predisposed to agree with you? Sure, they could have handled this differently. I also suspect that the people who are running IT at whitehouse.gov may not be used to doing the work that they're currently doing (how often do you change administrations? I know I rarely optimize once-every-four-year processes that aren't critical), or are doing it under time constraints that's preventing them from doing the job the best they can. Except under the most ideal organizations, I think most of us have been in situations where things have been rolled out, on purpose or by accident, that haven't been done the best way possible. There are plenty of things for people who are concerned about the Trump administration to watch closely. To raise the alarm at all of them very much dilutes the power of the alarm for more serious issues. In such a polarized climate, preaching to the choir isn't going to make things better. People need to be focused on reaching some kind of shared understanding, and that takes people paying attention to what they're saying and how they're saying it, as well as people being willing to listen and understand (even if they don't agree) what others are trying to say. ------ problems Is there any reason to believe this won't just be moved to the Obama admin archive or something? Seems like it could just be part of the website change process. ~~~ idiot_stick > _Seems like it could just be part of the website change process._ It might be. But don't worry, if that's the case I'm sure there will be a story right at the top of HN that says, "Whoops! Trump didn't delete anything". Because we hate fake news and are not hypocrites...right? ~~~ jrochkind1 it is the top-voted comment right here before you even made your post. ~~~ idiot_stick I shouldn't have to read the comments to determine if the headline is a lie or not. ~~~ jrochkind1 Indeed you shouldn't, I was responding to your suggestion that the HN community would ignore it if the article content or headline were determined to be inaccurate. (I _think_ that's what you were suggesting through the sarcasm?) The community already hadn't ignored it before you even made that suggestion. So the aspersions against HN's ethical or intellectual consistency were unwarranted. ------ rodionos It would actually be better for the White House datasets to be cataloged and managed via catalog.data.gov. They posted some speeches and videos back in 2014 but have been running their own show since then. [https://www.data.gov/metrics](https://www.data.gov/metrics) Notice that White House is listed as having a total of 4 datasets. ~~~ bb88 Those pretty much have press releases and other specific videos. ------ dj-wonk I would like to get good answers on this question: What are the U.S. Government data retention policies and rules? > As I understand it, the most applicable overarching law is the Federal > Records Act. More information can be found on the Record Management FAQ. > Additionally, I've found the NARA Management Guide. ... Question posted at: [http://opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/10446/cross- cutt...](http://opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/10446/cross-cutting-u-s- government-data-retention-policies-and-rules) ------ sunraa From Jan 26th: [http://web.archive.org/web/20170126072506/https://open.white...](http://web.archive.org/web/20170126072506/https://open.whitehouse.gov/browse) Bulk of them seem to be reports to Congress regarding staff with the odd climate change adaptation task force. ------ LyalinDotCom We as a community need to invest into people who are willing to take the time and duplicate all data that is "public and open source" in truly independent repo's. Its simple as that, we know from history that as times change, government changes, political policies change, the truth becomes a victim. ------ 69mlgsniperdad um.. clickbait? misleading for certain.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Norm Kerth’s Safety Poll - eloycoto https://medium.com/@JoshuaKerievsky/norm-kerths-safety-poll-bcccd5be6e44 ====== wgerard Dang, this sounds like a great idea and maybe I'm just mega-jaded, but I feel like the places where this would be most helpful are also the places least likely to: 1) Do this at all 2) Do this in a way that doesn't invite retaliation (basically trying to de- anonymize the poll) 3) Do anything about it even if everyone says "1" other than pay lip service to it	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The most fuel efficient car ever built: 2072 miles with 1 liter of fuel - mtgred http://www.camarocarplace.com/fuel-efficient-car-ever-built/ ====== papa_bear Very cool car, very poor quality article. It reads like it was written by a syndication algorithm that throws in weirdly subjective statements at the end of every paragraph. Here's a slightly better one with a video: [http://wonderfulengineering.com/new-car-designed-by- french-s...](http://wonderfulengineering.com/new-car-designed-by-french- students-can-do-2072-miles-on-a-single-litre-of-fuel/) ~~~ 001sky Ha. Its not even a car - it's a tricycle[1] ! The distinctin may sound pedantic but legally speaking they are quite distinct: _It’s lack of a four wheel, and low production volume, exempt the Morgan from most safety and emissions regulations._ At least in the US...Quite Ironic. [1] see, eg> [http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/morgan-three-wheeler-is- it...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/morgan-three-wheeler-is-it-a-car-or- a-tricycle/) ~~~ corin_ There may be legal differences between types of car, but I don't see why three wheels should make it "not even a car". For example in the UK we had a mass-market three wheeler called the Reliant Robin, which was culturally considered to absolutely be a car (albeit a car worthy of having jokes made about it). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliant_Robin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliant_Robin) ~~~ 001sky From your citation: _It is markedly different from most mainstream cars due to its fibreglass bodyshell and compact three-wheeled platform which allow it a special taxation and licensing class under British regulations._ Also, the Morgan I linked to is British and is very capable--far more so--as a piece of engineering. My guess is that three-wheel regulations were originally set up for motor- cycles with side-car. These evolved a seperate lineage of both engineering and regulation. For modern examples, see: Can-Am Spyder. ~~~ corin_ My point is that culturally they can be considered cars, if they look like cars and function like cars. I'd argue that they _are_ cars, even if they get taxed differently than most cars. ~~~ 001sky Fair enough, but in the linked article the example would not meet even your test of "Look like cars and function like cars"...because the thing is basically a luge-position with an aero-fairing. This was the starting point of my comment--its not a "car" really in any sense--because it fails the technical/legal/regulatory (not obvious) in addition to the practical/function (more obvious). ------ adwn A nice engineering project, sure. But it has nothing to do with cars. They only thing that their results show is that you can get vastly different results for vastly different constraints and requirements. ~~~ onion2k It does have something to do with cars - it shows that if we changed our requirements we could be driving much more efficient cars. Even if safety and comfort meant than we could only get 1/10th of the demonstration, that'd still be a good deal better than what we have now. ~~~ jerf You need to drop a lot of the safety, grossly raise the price, or both though. I've got some family in the auto industry, and their consensus is that we are either really rapidly coming up on the point where we've got just about all the safety _and_ fuel economy we can have without sacrificing safety, or we're already there. You're getting into the space where arguing for increased fuel economy is going to be directly arguing for killing more people. You may find this a tough sell. Especially since telling the automakers to "make less safe cars" is also going to have to come with an ironclad guarantee that _when_ people die in these cars, the car companies won't be sued. And getting that law passed is going to be a tough sell, too, for a lot of reasons. The safety advocates aren't exactly going to stand passively by while you try to tear their stuff apart. Basically, you can't have it all. Not even if you pass a law saying that you have to have it all. And while we're at it, let us also not forget that "grossly raise the price" also is not something you can just wave into being. The Democrats can hardly try to make "inequality" into a major issue, then do something that unambiguously makes cars much more expensive for everybody. ~~~ onion2k I don't have any family with a vested interested so perhaps I can be more impartial. ;) There is a very straightforward way to make cars both more efficient and safer - make them smaller and lighter. Then they'll require less energy to move around and they'll have less energy if they hit things. The challenge to overcome is that driving a small and light car is actually more dangerous while big and heavy cars are still on the road. So we have to get rid of them. That's actually very easy too - ramp up taxes on fuel to the point where people actually give a damn. It's what we're doing here in Europe, and the proliferation of small, light cars is very noticeable. ~~~ jerf I don't have a vested interest either; I don't work in the industry myself. What I have is a bit of a view into just how far down the road we are on the engineering tradeoffs already. Small and light cars aren't a miracle cure anyhow. It's amazing how small the gains are from shrinking a car. Yes, there are gains, but we're not talking taking a 40mpg sedan (in routine manufacturing now, BTW) and turning it into an 80mpg sedan "just by shrinking it a bit". You might get it down to 50mpg, but, per other articles observing that "mpg" is the wrong way to view it and "gallons per mile" starts making more sense, a 40 to 50 mpg gain is not actually _that_ large. No, the environment can't be saved just by "making cars smaller". You don't win anywhere near as much as you think, because of the way drag works (it's nonlinear in speed). And you can't just start taking panels off and stripping out airbags. From what I gather, having trimmed just about everything they can from the spare tire, they're on the verge of dropping it off entirely. That's the level of optimization we're down to. There isn't much left after that. The seats are what they are due to safety regulations. The airbags are there because of safety regulations. The bumpers are there due to safety regulations. The body panels are what they are due to safety regulations and the need to survive a certain number of years out in the elements. There's just not much freedom in car design anymore. My family doesn't include designers in them, but they relayed the designer's complaints to me that the constraints are becoming so strong that it's becoming very difficult to differentiate between cars anymore. If it feels like they all look the same lately, excepting perhaps the exact location or shape of the lights, it's because they do look the same; the combination of safety and efficiency regulations is rapidly converging down to one solution for a given form factor. Again... this is the sign of an optimization process reaching its Pareto frontier, and that you can't get big gains anymore without big sacrifices somewhere else. You can look out in the world and see that last bit of evidence yourself, without anyone in the automotive industry. It's the same systems optimization problem faced by any engineer, even programmers. ------ nileshtrivedi Here are the detailed results of the contest (and yes, the original results are in km/l): [http://s08.static-shell.com/content/dam/shell- new/local/corp...](http://s08.static-shell.com/content/dam/shell- new/local/corporate/ecomarathon/downloads/pdf/europe/2014-results/sem- europe-2014-results-prototype-gasoline-220514.pdf) ~~~ utopkara There are more than ten contestants who beat 1000 km/l. That's a lot of contestants ignored by an article about a research contest. Without getting into a long argument about how science and collaboration works, narrow sighted articles that cover events like this do a lot of damage. ~~~ chrismcb To be honest with you, even the second place was not even close to this car. In all seriousness though, the top car beat the 2nd place vehicle by 50%. While the other vehicles were impressive (even the last place one achieved 200+ mpg) this one was much more impressive than all the rest (yes it is!) I'm not sure what damage you think this article is going to do. ------ vaadu Calling it a car does not make it a car. 3 wheels and space for one passenger makes it closer to a Can-Am Spyder Motorcycle. ~~~ sigzero I'd give them 'vehicle'...not 'car'. ------ stinos Amazing. Anyone has an idea what kind of bearings used in the wheels? The _if you would spin its wheel, it would not stop spinning for almost 2 miles_ , whatever that actually means, makes it sound like they are something special. Also somewhat funny how such competitions are usually sponsored by fossil fuel companies. It's like they are preparing for the future with a business model idea like 'so, within x years there's going to be not enough fuel for the cars. Prices will skyrocket. Hmm, better make some cars that don't use a lot of fuel so we can stretch it to the fullest'. Perfectly understandable from an economic point of view, but would't research into alternative, cleaner mobility a better solution for _everyone_ in the long run? ~~~ Loughla Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't moving the same distance using less fuel cleaner? ~~~ saalweachter It's probably better than where we are (assuming, as someone else pointed out, emissions standards aren't reduced). I think the point being made was more about local minimums versus global. The most optimized ICE car possible will be impressive, but the emissions will never beat electric (assuming clean electric sources, obviously), and the rolling resistance will probably never beat trains or canals (which are of course only useful for arterials, and possibly only freight). ------ ohwp Project page: [http://www.la-joliverie.com/projets- pedagogiques/microjoule-...](http://www.la-joliverie.com/projets- pedagogiques/microjoule-cityjoule/) Wikipedia entry: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microjoule_%28vehicle%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microjoule_%28vehicle%29) ------ jofinjo I am wondering how far is this from getting to mainstream city cars! I would be happy with a 100 miles per litre! ~~~ arethuza The VW I mention in another comment has the goal: "The 1-litre car was designed to be able to travel 100 km on 1 litre of diesel fuel (280 mpg-imp; 240 mpg-US), while being both roadworthy and practical." Edit: I do find it amusing that VW Group make the super efficient XL1 as well as Bentleys, Lamborghinis and Bugattis. ~~~ dpcx There are those that prefer form over function. There are others that don't. ------ kopparam This is pretty cool. But at what speed did the car travel that many miles? ~~~ larrydag These types of articles gloss over what the researchers are trying to perform. To say its a "car" is an exaggeration. They are basically piston engine prototype vehicles. They are testing the limits of piston engine fuel efficiency and that is their main and only objective. The driving strategy is very different to normal car driving. They do a lot of pulse throttle acceleration where they tap the gas and then coast for as long as possible. They also drive very, very slowly to minimize wind resistance. The idea is to test conditions to optimize fuel efficiency and not for practical every day driving. That said there is a lot of benefit to the research. They are testing which conditions work best for fuel efficiency in all sorts of designs from engine performance to vehicle body. Here is a great site to look at DIY improvements to help with fuel efficiency. [http://www.ecomodder.com](http://www.ecomodder.com) ------ jacquesm This one has always intrigued me, especially the modifications done to get it to perform that well: [http://www.59fiattestcar.com/](http://www.59fiattestcar.com/) ------ codehero I don't understand where the 2072 mile figure came from. The Shell competition was only 16km. And why describe fuel economy in miles per liter? ~~~ easytiger > And why describe fuel economy in miles per liter? err, why not? ~~~ nixy The most common fuel efficiency ratios are expressed either in miles per gallon or kilometers per liter (or liters per 100 km). Mixing imperial and metric units is pretty unusual. ~~~ easytiger In the UK road distances are almost entirely expressed in Miles, including all road signage. Fuel is sold by the liter. ------ rlpb I wonder what the maintenance efficiency of this car is. ~~~ Shivetya Your too generous, its not a car. It is a rolling science project, a trike, something no one could drive to work or play. I want to see work done with existing vehicles, full safety and comfort features, where through inexpensive aerodynamic changes and propulsion tricks improve on what manufacturers offer now. ~~~ Jach Thanks for posting this. My own first thoughts on seeing the project were: looks like a soapbox racer (and I laughed watching a video where they gave it a manual push down a slope to get it going), does France not have speed bumps or steep driveways or road litter, what's its top speed, and how survivable is a collision? This competition is just pure PR for Shell and other companies, engineering constraints for an actual car don't seem to matter. (I'm sure the students enjoy it and learn a lot though.) ~~~ hcho Speed bumps would be prohibitive for F1 too. Yet, many technologies perfected in F1 made their ways into every day cars. This is a race car. The purpose of the race is not to be the fastest but to consume the least amount of petrol.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
JavaScript: The First 20 Years - snek https://zenodo.org/record/3707008 ====== fizfaz some context: [http://www.wirfs-brock.com/allen/posts/866](http://www.wirfs- brock.com/allen/posts/866)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Breaking Spotify DRM with PANDA - ivank http://moyix.blogspot.com/2014/07/breaking-spotify-drm-with-panda.html? ====== moyix Post author here! I wanted to make it clear that the original technique for breaking Spotify DRM is not mine - it was developed by Wang et al. in their excellent paper, Steal This Movie: Automatically Bypassing DRM Protection in Streaming Media Services. I just thought it would be a nice showcase of PANDA's capabilities. In particular, we can avoid the crazy optimizations in that paper because we can operate on a replayed execution rather than doing it live. ~~~ msane On the subject of cracking streaming music DRMs, a realization I have been sitting on for a while about what people can do with it... Considering the common wisdom that: \- storage will get exponentially cheaper \- data transfer speeds will get higher It makes me think that eventually there will be illicit torrents of _all_ the worlds music, plus the index, plus the metadata, and plus the interface/app for browsing it. In other words, people would not only pirate individual songs or movies, they would download their own complete copies of Spotify / Netflix. It isn't feasible now but it could be sometime in the next 5-15 years, depending bandwidth speeds. I'm not sure how many people see this coming or take it seriously but I wonder what the effect could be and what the remedy attempts would be. ~~~ null_ptr You can see the remedy attempts already * push for cloud storage over local storage * push for locked down devices over general purpose computers * push for DRM on the open web * big ISP companies fighting against net neutrality ~~~ msane I very much agree. I hope that, capitalism, ironically enough for DRM, is the probably always the solution to overstepped DRM remedies. Regardless of the issue of piracy, which I am not advocating. For instance there will always be a market for custom computing and "PCs", and so non-locked PCs will (hopefully) always exist in a capitalist environment. That market I think ultimately circumvents any attempt at ubiquitous control of hardware. The same thing is at play with software. And hypothetical new methods of connectivity may be able to circumvent many attempts at central control of the net. ~~~ userbinator _For instance there will always be a market for custom computing and "PCs", and so non-locked PCs will (hopefully) always exist in a capitalist environment._ Unfortunately, that market is slowly becoming the minority, and because those "more free" devices may have limitations that make them incompatible with a lot of proprietary content (which is the majority) and circumventing those limitations could be illegal and difficult, there will be fewer users of them. Reminds me of this [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to- read.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html) and the old saying "If you outlaw freedom, only outlaws will have freedom." ------ timsally Shameless plug to follow... Much of the technology here was invented by Brendan and others at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, which is where I work. We have been very lucky to have Brendan join us for a few summers while he was completing his PhD at Georgia Tech and he gave a great showing at RECON. Brilliant guy. If you're interested in reverse engineering his most recent papers are essential reading: [http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/b/brendan](http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/b/brendan). In addition to some of the automated RE work, we've also got multi-million dollar research efforts hacking the Linux kernel and reverse engineering/analyzing embedded systems. Lot's of fun stuff. You get to work on really exciting problems and you'll have the funding and the skilled coworkers you need to execute successfully. If you find this type of stuff exciting, you should drop me a line at sally@ll.mit.edu. We're always hiring^. We've got great benefits too, like a pension, unlimited sick leave, 13 holidays, 20 vacation days, and free classes at MIT. ^One caveat is that because of how we are funded, we are only able to employ US citizens. ~~~ reitanqild > One caveat is that because of how we are funded, we are only able to employ > US citizens. Just wanted to say thank you: just being aware of limitations like this and letting people know up front makes it a whole less annoying. Also the circumstances makes it understandable. ~~~ test_account_1 I don't understand why being funded has anything to do of only hiring US citizens. ~~~ sqrt17 From Wikipedia: Since MIT Lincoln Laboratory's establishment, the scope of the problems has broadened from the initial emphasis on air defense to include programs in space surveillance, missile defense, surface surveillance and object identification, communications, homeland protection, high-performance computing, air traffic control, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). Lincoln Laboratory conducts research and development pertinent to national security on behalf of the military services, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and other government agencies. Projects focus on the development and prototyping of new technologies and capabilities. Program activities extend from fundamental investigations, through simulation and analysis, to design and field testing of prototype systems. Emphasis is placed on transitioning technology to industry. Essentially, the Lincoln Lab is one of several labs that are part of a strategy to make best use of creative people (who can think up things, but don't necessarily want to productize/weaponize them), industry (who can productize/weaponize things, but don't want to be part of a war effort) and military. To see why they would not hire non-US citizens, consider the first author of the "Steal this Movie" paper, who now works at a Chinese university (presumably on similar problems to the ones that people in LL and at UCSB are tackling). ~~~ vfclists Interesting. The DoD funds research which enables them to hack into other systems, which means devices and our communications, and in return we get the tools to hack DRM and everything else. Not a bad trade. ------ MichaelGG If you're wondering, PANDA is this:[https://github.com/moyix/panda](https://github.com/moyix/panda) QEMU based recorder. Sounds pretty neat. Although if you wanted realtime audio decryption, I'd imagine just writing a sound driver or hooking the OS's sound functions would be far more direct. ~~~ nzmsv That would miss the point. The approach in the article does not hook the audio driver, but rather the decryptor. This gets you the original compressed audio file, not a stream that has been uncompressed (and would have artifacts when re-compressed). ~~~ MichaelGG That's fair. Although a lot of BluRay rips are re-encoded and seem quite usable. Even the YiFY stuff at 1GB/hour or so. Edit: Why can't a compressor perfectly re-compress the decompressed audio? It's obviously possible since the compressed data exists producing that specific decompressed data. ~~~ e12e > Why can't a compressor perfectly re-compress the decompressed audio? > It's > obviously possible since the compressed data exists producing that specific > decompressed data. It's not granted that a compressor c1, that given A produces Az that decompress with d1 to A', can easily find any Ax that compress to Az, or equivalently can easily find Az given A'. Formulated like that it doesn't seem quite so obvious: finding Az from A' amounts[1] to finding A from Az -- ie: lossless compression. > Although a lot of BluRay rips are re-encoded and seem quite usable. Even the > YiFY stuff at 1GB/hour or so. Usable at any given viewing/listening set-up != actually remotely "good enough". I always say people shouldn't buy more expensive hi-fi gear than what they can actually tell apart -- the one problem with that (apart from people not being honest with themselves, optioning for the more expensive stuff anyway) is that when you're used to listening to crappy audio, you stop being able to tell the difference. It's like listening to an FM radio that's slightly off station -- after a few hours, you probably don't notice anything wrong, until a new person walks into the room and adjusts it to be better. Another point -- while BluRay certainly isn't lossless -- when you're talking the kind of compression/quality differences you mention (not sure what regular bluray films are, but if they max out at 48mbit/s for AV, that's by my calculations about 20GB/h) -- 1:20 -- I think you'd be hard pressed to notice any "additional" artefacts. It would be like comparing a raw/flac audio file compressed first to 320 kbps vbr mp3, and then compressed down to _16_ kbs mp3, versus just doing the compression to 16 kpbs mp3 (well order of magnitude is correct, obviously this is going to be mostly cutting into the video data, but still). Just something to keep in mind. [1] Ok, "may almost amount to". ~~~ sqrt17 Lossy compression != lossy decompression/restoration. With vanilla JPEG, you should be able to redo the DCT and find the quantized values exactly as they were, which means that you could losslessly reverse the JPEG compression not in the sense you get a compressed version that decompresses to the same lossy reconstruction. With deblocking filters in MPEG2 and later, this is not necessarily the case, because you try to smooth things over in decompression and can't reconstruct the compressed version either. ------ lucb1e Uh what? Wow, I thought for a minute it said you took a 30-second recording and I was wondering what you were going to do to get the file format right. Use a raw encoding to get close to audio levels? Then I read on, noticed something and had to read back. Indeed, you didn't record the audio, you just recorded and replayed the operating system. Say what! ~~~ keehun Yeah, it's next-level stuff, here. He said around 12 billion instructions which sounds like a lot, but with our current processors, not that much work for the CPUs. ~~~ jzwinck More specifically, a billion instructions is one giga-instruction. A 2 GHz processor can execute roughly 2 billion instructions per second (this is a very rough estimate, thanks to superscalar, pipelining, uops, yada yada). So 12 billion (typical) instructions will take around 6 seconds to run. This sort of thing is handy when profiling: see a function taking a billion instructions? Half a second of CPU time. And this ratio hasn't changed all that much in quite a while (what has changed, of course, is how many threads can execute simultaneously). ------ MichaelAza This is really cool. Both referenced tools (PANDA and Volatility) seem awesome. I have some experience with IDA and Olly, but learning about new tools is always nice. Any resources you guys recommend on the subject of reversing? ------ Steer I don't know, perhaps I'm totally wrong, but this just depresses me. I can see the point from an engineering point-of-view, this is a riddle to be solved, but why would you want to help people circumvent one of the (to me) reasonable ways of enjoying and paying for music? I know the author stopped short of giving the full solution to getting it to work, but still. Is this what we've come to? No one should get paid for anything if we can enjoy it for free regardless of the hoops we will have to jump through to not pay? Sorry if I am too dramatic. I can often see the point of pirating things, but in this case I just don't get it. Edit: I would appreciate an explanation of the downvotes. ~~~ tptacek I understand where you're coming from (also, piracy repulses me). However: it's worth knowing whether content protection is implemented soundly. Contrary to overwhelming popular opinion, there are content protection schemes that work. Generalist engineers mistakenly believe that content protection schemes must be unbreakable to provide value. They don't: all they have to do is cost more to break than the value of the content they protect (across all the users who might subsequently get access to it). For an example of a content protection scheme that worked extremely well, see modern satellite TV smart cards. Given that there are ways to implement content protection soundly, there's validity to research that determines whether a given content protection scheme is sound. ~~~ bri3d I generally agree, but I think you're conflating two kinds of content protection. One prevents the attacker from accessing something they aren't subscribed to, and relies on crypto and secure subscriber identity mechanisms. This is completely possible to implement soundly. The other prevents the attacker from copying something they can see or listen to, and relies on bizarre mechanisms designed to prevent the user from learning the state of their hardware. I find the latter awful, because it's an infinitely losing battle (you can always point a camera at your display in the end) which erodes consumer freedoms and encourages walled gardens. Satellite TV is a funny example - since the communication is strictly one-way, the hardware state needs to be protected or it can be cloned, but I still think it's fundamentally a question of the transport protection variety rather than the copy protection one. ------ ilyagr I am wondering if someone who understands statistics better than I do could explain conceptually how encrypted data is distinguishable from compressed data. I always assumed that Shannon's paper says that perfectly compressed data should be indistinguishable from random data (which is indistinguishable from encrypted data). Is mp3 compression not sufficiently perfect? Is my understanding wrong? Thank you! P.S. This is a really clever trick! ~~~ MichaelGG Pretty sure you explained it: it's not _perfectly_ compressed data. Even a small bias is enough to give it away. ------ shmerl Isn't music available through DRM-free sources most of the time anyway? Just don't use Spotify if you are against DRM. It will also be a vote with your wallet against it. By using it you implicitly support DRM proliferation. ~~~ jdong Voting with your wallet is much less effective than publicly complaining, unless of course your wallet is worth a lot. ~~~ shmerl My comment wasn't really to the authors of this tool. Their tool is a form of the public protest and is appropriate. It was more directed to those who actually use Spotify. For them, complaining while actually using these kind of services (and helping them to spread more DRM in the process) is strange. ~~~ jdong What if they like the product but would rather have it without the DRM? ~~~ shmerl I'd say they should stop using it until the product drops the DRM. Otherwise their complaints don't sound sincere. Or at least not convincing. It's like as if smokers would complain that cigarets industry ruins public health. ~~~ MichaelGG Smokers complain, and now we have e-cigarettes which may be less harmful while still allowing the enjoyment of nicotine and the fun of smoking. I'm not sure why it's insincere. I keep buying ThinkPads, but I hate the new designs with a passion. (And they hate me; they literally cause me RSI where the earlier ones didn't.) It doesn't make my arguments against the new ThinkPads any weaker. ~~~ shmerl _> and now we have e-cigarettes which may be less harmful while still allowing the enjoyment of nicotine and the fun of smoking._ So, we can have digital goods sold without DRM, so we could enjoy them without police state methods attached. _> I'm not sure why it's insincere._ Because by buying from those who push DRM on them, users support and prolong the usage of the said DRM. Complaints won't persuade DRM Lysenkoists. Loss of profits can. ------ icoder Would it have been possible to figure this out without the statistics by playing something very specific, like a 440Hz tone (yes, there's spotify 'music' that does just that)? ------ spindritf I'm pretty sure you used to be able to just copy .ogg files from Spotify's local cache at one point. Am I remembering right? It's a soup of 10-2000kB files now. ~~~ AlyssaRowan At one very early point in its history, yes, I understand that was accurate. Then they encrypted them, but the key was easy to find, and then they started doing more complex stuff. It's of idle academic interest to me. Never used Spotify, but I don't wish them harm either. ------ n0body A very interesting read. ------ the_cat_kittles this is cool, but for someone who actually wants to rip songs off spotify, why would you do this instead of use audio hijack? is there some advantage? ~~~ MichaelGG As mentioned in another comment, if you do this you get the original compressed file. If you capture the audio and then want to recompress it, you'll introduce artifacts. Although, it seems to me that an intelligent compressor could perfectly recompress the audio back to the original form. ~~~ KMag This presumes that downsampling in either bit depth or sample rate isn't happening somewhere (such as your audio drivers) between decompressing the audio and where you're capturing the audio. ------ sigzero I guess I could just google it but isn't breaking DRM illegal? ~~~ DanBC Yes, under US DMCA and EU something or other. EDIT: here's the relevant wikipedia article [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- circumvention](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention) (sorry for mobile link) ~~~ eli _" Sec. 103(f) of the DMCA (17 U.S.C. § 1201 (f)) says that if you legally obtain a program that is protected, you are allowed to reverse-engineer and circumvent the protection to achieve the ability the interoperability of computer programs (i.e., the ability to exchange and make use of information)."_ Though I wouldn't want to have to test that in court. IANAL. ------ desarun I read this and thought "I am not a true developer, I am merely a journalist- style hack". Disclaimer: Contractor, native app dev.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Scott Kelly Reflects on His Year Off the Planet - t23 http://www.npr.org/2016/03/01/468239527/scott-kelly-reflects-on-his-year-off-the-planet ====== daveloyall I love space stations and astronauts and that robotic arm! Makes me feel like a kid again. Which is probably why, every time I see photos of inside of the international space station, I think: _Damn, I 'm cool! I use the same laptop that astronauts use!_	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Delivering Breaking Bad on Netflix in Ultra HD 4K - conorgil145 http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/06/delivering-netflix-in-ultra-hd-4k.html ====== beloch For a small to medium displays at typical viewing distances (this includes most "big screen" panels you can buy at your local electronics shop), 1080p meets or exceeds the limits of the typical human eye's resolving power. Without using a projection system and a large screen or a stupendously expensive (>100" diagonal) flat-panel, 4K is a subtle upgrade at best. When video is encoded with insufficient bandwidth, compression artifacts (e.g. macroblocking) are anything but subtle. These artifacts typically are not constrained to one or two pixels, but ramify to much larger portions of the image. Netflix has, by necessity, used insufficient bandwidth on practically their entire library. My money is on Netflix's over-compressed 4K being inferior in quality to Bluray 1080p for the vast majority of users. ~~~ rorski This might be useful in illustrating your point: [http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html](http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html) ~~~ ars Am I the only one who watches stuff on his computer, and sits about 2-3 feet from it? ~~~ michaelgrafl What screen size are you on? 27 inches? Can you make out individual pixels with film material (which usually has no sharp edges in it)? ~~~ richforrester Not arguing against what you are saying, but there's a significant difference between "making out individual pixels" and "noticing a difference". ~~~ michaelgrafl That's true. ------ te_platt I'm old enough to remember tv shows making a big deal about being in color, then stereo, then HD. The big change in going to 4K is that Netflix doesn't need regulatory permission or ten years of drafting standards to make the upgrade. ~~~ josephlord "...Netflix doesn't need...ten years of drafting standards..." When do you think standards work started on HEVC? When do you think NHK were first demonstrating UHDTV? They were both being worked on by 2004 and much of the research work will have preceeded that. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Televisi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Television) ~~~ te_platt Good point. And I'm sure Netflix engineers had a certain amount of internal bureaucracy to deal with as well. The point I was trying make was just that it's easier now to make a change like this than what had to be done in previous iterations. ------ orik The biggest problem holding back adoption for 4k media is vendor lock in. You can't get 4K unless you're on a Sony/LG/Samsung "Smart TV". There is not a legitimate technical reason why I can't watch House of Cards in 4K on my Seiki through my PC. I watched the trailer in 4K over a dozen times on YouTube. Gamers want to play games on low input lag 4K screens from brands like Asus, Dell, Acer. 4K is much more easily justifiable when users can buy a single screen for their games and ultra-hd content. Gaming PC's are about the only units with enough compute for highly compressed h.265 playback without built in hardware acceleration, so I don't understand why the market has not made this content accessible for me to purchase. ~~~ josephlord You are right there is no technical reason why you can't but there are probably commercial and practical reasons. The number of people with gaming PCs is relatively small and the complexity of providing it to them might be quite high. I don't know what the availability of stable HEVC decoders is like or what the licensing cost for them is or the difficulty of integrating them with Silverlight or whatever it is that Netlix use. The Youtube trailer was probably VP9 not HEVC but was possibly using a higher bitrate that could effectively be downloaded rather than streamed for a short trailer. Basically the complexity of supporting the small group of gamers with the right PC's and 4K monitors was probably not worth it initially especially considering the backlash from customers who's PC's weren't fast enough. It is easier to launch on a set of known devices and then they can expand from there. I'm sure it will come. ------ sixQuarks This is great and all, but what are we gonna do with 4K streams when Comcast can't even deliver a low-quality stream? ~~~ hudibras That's the whole point. (Warning: conspiracy theory ahead) Netflix is rolling this out to illustrate to consumers how internet providers are failing to fulfill their contractual obligation for high-speed, unlimited internet at a set price. ------ NamTaf How many GB/min of footage is this? I can't imagine ever being able to stream that here, where our high-end quotas are measured in 100s of GB/month. ~~~ jasoncartwright 15Mbps [1], which will consume around 6.8Gb/hr [2] [1] [http://bgr.com/2013/09/26/netflix-4k-streaming/](http://bgr.com/2013/09/26/netflix-4k-streaming/) [2] [http://web.forret.com/tools/filesize.asp?speed=15&unit=Mbps&...](http://web.forret.com/tools/filesize.asp?speed=15&unit=Mbps&dur=3600) ~~~ nemasu It's actually ~6.6GB/hr. Note: _Actually_ GiB, but who writes GiB... ------ barrystaes Netflix; I dont need that, we already watched it. It was great. Please add more shows to the EU/Dutch region.. the US and UK catalog are interesting.. why cant we see this? Also, i'd pay extra if i could watch ANY movie as soon as it got out of the theatre. ------ SamuelKillin Wait, my back of the envelope says you'll need to pull down around 650mb a second to stream 4K. That's uncompressed, sure, but anything in that power of ten isn't feasible. ~~~ gibybo Typical compression of 4k video ends up being more than a factor of 10 smaller. ~~~ SamuelKillin Yikes you're right. Looks like 2 powers of 10. ------ broodbucket Wait, only on select smart TVs? So I can't watch this on netflix.com with my 4k monitor? (not that I have the connection to stream it anyway) ~~~ JohnTHaller Nope. See 'proprietary DRM' and 'vendor lock-in'. You can basically use specific Sony/LG/Samsung TVs and that's it. Or pirate it after it's released and watch it the way you want to. ------ Kiro In what resolution are the original negatives? ~~~ gibybo It was almost certainly shot with 35mm film. Film is analog so it doesn't have a well-defined resolution, but modern 35mm is pretty comparable to 4k (maybe a little less, depending on the quality of the camera/printing/etc) ~~~ bluedino AMC still shoots their originals on film. ------ izzydata Too bad their 4k content has bitrates that should only be acceptable for 1080p or less. Downscaling their 4k to 1080p would almost look as good as if they just had proper 1080p to begin with. And a proper 1080p upscale to 4k would look better than this poor excuse for 4k. ------ aditya How do I know what quality stream I'm getting? ------ dirtyhand Smurfs 2, really? ~~~ iMark Sponsored by Comcast. It's one way of reducing the bandwidth demands ;)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Making Wrong Code Look Wrong (2005) - NieDzejkob https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/05/11/making-wrong-code-look-wrong/ ====== kd5bjo The modern solution to this problem is to use different types for semantically distinct categories, even if the in-memory representation is effectively identical. Noticing that you’re mixing HTML-safe and HTML-unsafe strings is exactly the sort of thing the compiler should be able to help you with. ~~~ NieDzejkob There's a nice discussion on this topic under 2011's submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2912702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2912702)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
India Plans to Launch Moon Mission in July - adventured https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-12/india-to-launch-moon-mission-in-july-eyes-entry-into-elite-club ====== giis Before some western-media starts their well known statement like "India is a poor country and they need to focus on their healthcare, education etc before wasting money on Space projects like this". They need to examine themselves, "Have we ever said above statement when our country lobbying for multi-million/billion dollar defence deals from India?" ~~~ dev_north_east I have no problem with India doing whatever it wants and prioritising certain things above others. I do object to my taxes funding foreign aid to a country that have a well developed nuke program, a big military and a burgeoning space industry. Good for them but not with my money thanks. ~~~ Tepix If a poor country spends all its money feeding its citizens chances are it will stay poor. If they invest in the future chances are there will be better jobs in the future and less hungry people. ~~~ dev_north_east Yeah I don't see what that has to do with my comment. I don't want my taxes sent to subsidise their space industry, nuke program or military. Not a big ask really. ------ bmurali3 India has to push on all fronts. Increasing momentum in tech advancements is especially important. Focusing only on poverty/water scarcity/culture would be narrow minded. Besides, I can't imagine how exhilarating it will be for the engineers actually working towards this. I'm sure engineers here will relate with the need to "implement it themselves" when trying to understand or build confidence in a particular area/concept. It does not matter that it has been done before. Why should it just be for acknowledgement from other countries? ~~~ coldtea > _India has to push on all fronts. Increasing momentum in tech advancements > is especially important. Focusing only on poverty /water scarcity/culture > would be narrow minded._ Why? There's tons to do at that level, and money can be much better invested there (with huge returns even for tech and innovation) than some me-too moon landings. You get more innovation by getting people out of poverty and into tech school, than by sending some mission on the moon with people starving... ------ nilsocket ISRO is also helping to launch satellite's designed by students for free. [https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/isros-new-pslv- varian...](https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/isros-new-pslv-variant-to- launch-power-student-satellites-for-free-starting-25-jan-5933331.html) [https://theprint.in/science/isro-to-launch-free-satellite- tr...](https://theprint.in/science/isro-to-launch-free-satellite-training- programme-for-students-from-developing-nations/72948/) ------ InterestBazinga Why is there so much hostility against an achievement that is still pretty rare? How many countries out of all the countries can boast about their space program? Why does everything have to be so political. People are ready to take a Jab at Modi's govt at every single opportunity. ~~~ thewhitetulip They are taking a jab at Indian government. They took a jab even when Modi was not in power because the "west" says "India is a poor country and should focus on food security than space program" It is pure racism? I'm not sure of the exact term. P.s. I remember such a cartoon when India had asked for some missile technology few decades ago. It is not about Modi but about general attitude of the west towards India ~~~ briandear Having spent considerable time in India, I might argue that running water and sanitation might be a bigger accomplishment than landing on the moon. Much of India is profoundly poor — some of the worst absolute poverty I have ever seen anywhere on Earth. Sending rockets to space seems to be a mission of vanity and pride more than an actual benefit to the Indian people. ~~~ astatine tehlike's response earlier in the thread is particularly appropriate here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20171915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20171915) ~~~ thewhitetulip Exactly! We just see the price but not the inventions or background technology created as a by product of space research ------ swatkat Chandrayaan-2 homepage: [https://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan2-home](https://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan2-home) ------ sidcool This will inspire a generation of Indians. If any country can have a space program, they should. Like Elon Musk says, solving one problem after another is necessary but not sufficient. People need to feel hopeful about the future. The 1969 Moon landings have inspired a whole generation in the West. Despite of the high costs, we are still reaping its benefits. I am a huge fan of all agencies, ISRO, NASA, ESA, CNCA, Roscosmos etc. ------ samrohn The first mission in this series Chandrayan-1([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1)) had provided more evidence of presence of water on moon [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_water) ------ happy-go-lucky > ISRO’s next priority is the $1.4 billion Gaganyaan mission, which aims to > put three Indian “gaganauts” -- at least one of which will be a woman -- > into orbit. According to this wiki [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronaut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronaut), they are vyomanauts, coined from the Sanskrit word व्योमन् (vyoman meaning 'sky' or 'space'). The wiki has some interesting terminology as to what spacecraft crew members are called by different space agencies. _Dryden preferred "cosmonaut", on the grounds that flights would occur in the cosmos (near space), while the "astro" prefix suggested flight to the stars_. _In English-speaking nations, a professional space traveler is called an astronaut_. _NASA applies the term astronaut to any crew member aboard NASA spacecraft bound for Earth orbit or beyond_. _By convention, an astronaut employed by the Russian Federal Space Agency (or its Soviet predecessor) is called a cosmonaut in English texts. The word is an anglicisation of the Russian word kosmonavt_ Polish uses kosmonauta and astronauta, _and the two words are considered synonyms_. In Chinese, _Yǔ háng yuán (宇航员, "Space-universe navigating personnel") is used for astronauts and cosmonauts in general, while hángtiān yuán (航天员, "navigating outer space personnel") is used for Chinese astronauts_ _The term taikonaut is used by some English-language news media organizations for professional space travelers from China_. _With the rise of space tourism, NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency agreed to use the term "spaceflight participant" to distinguish those space travelers from professional astronauts on missions coordinated by those two agencies_. _and the Indian Space Research Organisation hope to launch a spacecraft in 2022 that would carry vyomanauts, coined from the Sanskrit word व्योमन् (vyoman meaning 'sky' or 'space')_. _In Finland, the NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra, a Finnish American, has sometimes been referred to as sisunautti, from the Finnish word sisu_. ~~~ rishav_sharan A proper terminology would be "Vyom" \+ "maan" (like shaktiman - someone with shakti/power). Vyoman. almost sounds like Woman. :D Even sounds similar to "Viman" (Vee-maan) which stands for planes/flying ships in sanskrit. ~~~ happy-go-lucky > Vyoman. almost sounds like Woman. :D The word _vyomanaut_ (vyo‧ma‧naut) is a portmanteau of Sanskrit _vyoman_ (sky or space) and the suffix _-naut_ which forms nouns meaning a voyager. ------ tauwauwau Just going to leave it here Quotes from anime Space Brothers Tomii Ryūnosuke: The American thinker Buckminster Fuller once called our planet "Spaceship Earth." On the other hand, British scientist James Lovelock stated that our planet was a life form named Gaia. I was always puzzled by the contrast between spaceship and life form. But the British scientist Richard Dawkins helped tie it together. Humans can be considered the Earth's genes. The planet is trying to self-replicate. That is natural behavior for a life form. Tomii Ryūnosuke: Michael Ende once compared humans to cancer cells, but I believe that humans are germ cells. However, there is the possibility that any of us could become the cancer cell that destroys Earth. Tomii Ryūnosuke: If we are truly Earth's genes, the purpose of space exploration is because mutation is necessary. ------ varshithr > _Chandrayaan, which means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit_ Doesn't _Chandrayaan_ mean _a journey to the moon_? ~~~ spdebbarma "Chandra" [चन्द्र] is one of the Hindi/Sanskrit words for the _Moon_. Other examples are _chaand_ and _chandni_. "Yaan" [यान] means _vehicle /coach_. ------ tibbydudeza The budget of ISRO (their NASA) for what they have accomplished is amazing. It is critical for India to retain the talents of own people rather let them be poached by HB1 visa's and eventually emigrating to the US. ------ jillesvangurp It's indeed "the west" that's in need of advice like this. I'd be a bit weary of neo-colonialist arguments like this as well. There's a sense of entitlement there that is increasingly at odds with the facts. I think the west might need to wake up to the notion that increasingly China, India and others are running the show according to their own agendas rather than following in the footsteps of the west. A lot of the CEOs of companies like Google, Microsoft, etc. are Indians. Lots of Indians are also active in core industries in the US and the EU. Likewise, lots of Chinese can be found across our industries at all layers and both are primary customers for our best universities. Both have the education, expertise, and economies to produce a moonshot. And neither of them is lacking in ambition. I think it's become more a question of when than if, and sooner rather than later. Either way, there's a new space race on and I think this is a good thing. We've been stuck not getting back to the moon mostly for budgetary and other non technical reasons. It's about time people go back there. ~~~ thewhitetulip The "west" is busy with their political agendas. Mr Trump thinks Mars is a part of moon. And NASA isn't getting funding due to myriad reasons Countries like India take pride in space achivements and defense related ones That's why India China are shooting ahead while west is seemingly lagging behind I read somewhere that ISRO is able to launch satellites at fraction of a cost as compared to SpaceX. ~~~ sgift "Shooting ahead" == repeating what the west did 50 years ago. Interesting definition of shooting ahead. The west (as if that's even a coherent body for topics like this) has many problems. Being overtaken by India isn't one of them. So far it's all "we want to do this, we want to do that" \- I want to be a billionaire, doesn't make me one. We'll see if they can pull it off. > I read somewhere that ISRO is able to launch satellites at fraction of a > cost as compared to SpaceX. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. ~~~ thewhitetulip Well, shooting ahead of themselves :) I didn't say West is lagging behind India or India shooting ahead of the "west" Our competition is with ourselves and not with others. Coming to cost of ISRO vs SpaceX > There is also a big difference in terms of cost per mission. For example, > the Falcon 9 launch vehicle’s cost per launch comes up to $62 million, while > ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) costs roughly $15 million per > launch. Source: [https://www.thequint.com/tech-and-auto/tech-news/isro-vs- spa...](https://www.thequint.com/tech-and-auto/tech-news/isro-vs-spacex-where- does-indias-premier-space-agency-stand) ------ chauhankiran The space program department[1] is under prime minister authority. So, this is the obvious one. [1]. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Modi_ministry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Modi_ministry) ------ AFascistWorld Looks like another PR move by the Modi government. ~~~ swatkat How is this parent comment getting upvotes? Stop spreading false information. This mission was approved in 2008 by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh[0]. [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2) ------ Causality1 I'll be very happy if they pull this off without creating a massive cloud of orbital debris like their last "space triumph". [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/world/asia/nasa-india- spa...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/world/asia/nasa-india-space- debris.html) ~~~ z3phyr That was the DRDO, analogous to USA DARPA. The Moon mission is from ISRO, analogous to NASA. ~~~ godelmachine IMHO, DRDO cannot be equated with DARPA. DARPA tries to solve every challenge, irrespective of the field, by opening contracts to the national public and holding contests among them. The winning solution is often adopted for further enhancement. ------ lota-putty India is very fortunate to attempt this feat* in 21st Century. 1\. 1991 USSR Collapse 2\. Technology today 3\. NASA insufficient funding 4\. Globalisation Visit public-hospital at any sub-district/Taluk or any public-school in a remote village. I mean, potential is very high but most of it is misplaced. Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan & Gaganyaan are easier today as opposed to improving public health & education. ~~~ 0xFFFE What,exactly, are you on about? ~~~ swatkat Moonshine.. maybe.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Chinese Phone Giant Chooses a Web-Based Mobile OS - olalonde http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429279/chinese-phone-giant-chooses-a-web-based-mobile-os/ ====== PythonDeveloper How ironic is it that a major phone company in a country that won't let its people browse the REAL web, or interact with people outside its borders without spying on and filtering them, chooses a WEB BASED OS for its phones.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Wheeler Resolution of 1938 - leoh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler_resolution ====== leoh >...it is the sense of the Senate of the United States of America that the operation of radio broadcast stations in the standard broadcast band (550 to 1600 kilocycles) with power in excess of 50 kilowatts is definitely against the public interest, in that such operation would tend to concentrate political, social, and economic power and influence in the hands of a very small group, and is against the public interest for the further reason that the operation of broadcast stations with power in excess of 50 kilowatts...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What are your 2 favorite news sites? - tbanacek ====== csa 1\. Daily 202 from the Washington Post 2\. Money Stuff by Matt Levine from Bloomberg View Honorable mention to John Mauldin's newsletter Thoughts from the Front Line -- not a "news site", per se, but it has a nice level of insight into economic matters for the non-technical (maybe semi-technical) reader. ------ richardknop I don't really read news (don't care much about politics and world events). Mostly specific subreddits about tech and my hobbies, blogs, hacker news. From time to time (maybe once a week) I will read a newspaper website in my native language (a small local European news company which has been quite objective in my view) just to not be completely clueless about what's happening in the world. ------ tedmiston Techmeme and HN ------ therajiv NYT and Nature News. ~~~ levimaes You might like the free section of this closed-/open-source scienticific publications resource (labs can opt-in to open-source their research), called Thieme medical publications. Here's a link [1] to my favorite journal of theirs: Planta Medica. I wouldn't have imagined any kind of lab toiling away to get funding in plant pharmacology research--until I found planta medica. 1\. [https://www.thieme- connect.de/products/ejournals/topten/10.1...](https://www.thieme- connect.de/products/ejournals/topten/10.1055/s-00027015) ------ john_mack Virwire.com Because I made it!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Non-technical person seeking help learning how to make weekend project - jmjerlecki Please don't mistake this for the "looking for a developer to work for equity (i.e. free) to help me build the next billion dollar idea." This isn't what I am asking.<p>I saw great advice on a post on here that essentially said if a non technical person just asked for help and showed a desire to learn how to develop their idea, that individual would be happy to help. I am taking their advice.<p>Any help pointing me in the right direction would be much appreciated. If you would actually like to help me and be a part of the project, please feel free to reach out.<p>What I know: I can do graphic design. This will not be an issue for me. I know basic HTML and CSS and can build a static website.<p>What I would like to learn: I am trying to make a website that is similar to Textsfromlastnight.com. I have an idea that would function similar in concept and is a twist on the idea. How would I go about creating this type of website? What languages (PHP, java) would I need to learn or is there anything open source I could try and learn and modify for my needs. I am interested at being a better web programmer and I think this would be a great weekend project of sorts for me to try my hand at. If the site doesn't ever take off, I will be happy I expanded my knowledge.<p>I have enjoyed being a part of this community and thanks in advance for anyone who helps or posts! ====== draz I think you should go for a Ruby on Rails / Groovy on Rails / whatever framework. My reasoning? They encapsulate a lot of the configuration files that you don't want to deal with (ugh, Spring is just annoying, with all those XML files... and I'm a Java person!). Moreover, because they're so ubiquitous, you'll find loads of plugins/code samples online for things you're looking to do. It will really cut down on your development time. ~~~ iamsidd2k7 I agree with Darz, Ruby on Rails is good for getting thing upto speed. If you know you can work your way, by simple tutorials. I don't know if you are using MAC/PC but <http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html> this is a good way to learn how to make website. Also my suggestion would be to learn git, this would help you in long run. ~~~ jmjerlecki Hey thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I am pretty positive I can learn from the tutorials. They seemed pretty geared towards beginners to which is great. And learning Git would allow me to be active on github? ~~~ iamsidd2k7 Yup thats right, plus it will paying off when you need to figure out what changes you made say a week ago. Github is a hosting site for git code repo. Email me on gmail id: iamsidd if you need more help or specific clarification. ------ beatpanda You can build a textfromlastnight clone using WordPress, and WordPress has an incredibly low barrier to entry. Start there, then move on to something more complicated, like Ruby on Rails or Django. ------ jmjerlecki Clicakble: <http://textsfromlastnight.com/> ------ EricR23 Drupal sounds like a great fit for what you're looking for. ~~~ tritogeneia Seconded.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Youtube is down (for me). Anyone else? - dansingerman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCbuRA_D3KU&noredirect=1 ====== dansingerman All video URLs I have tried (over 50) report a 500 with a screen like this: [http://oi40.tinypic.com/2ni6y4g.jpg](http://oi40.tinypic.com/2ni6y4g.jpg) Curious. Am using chrome on Mac OS X. But working in Safari and Firefox. Any idea what all that means? ------ pvaclavek It happens to me only when I'm logged in. In anonymous chrome window everything works. ~~~ shock For certain videos in chromium I would get "This video is not currently available" in the flash player but the same url would work if opened in private browsing window. I fixed it by clearing the cache and cookies. ------ MartinMcGirk I find DownForEveryoneOrJustMe ([http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/)) to be an invaluable tool for this kind of question. ------ bifrost Its up for me, but I don't use their player so that could be part of it. ------ dTal Not for me.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is a .net domain good enough? - klon I'm trying to find a good name for a startup I'm working on and think I've finally found one that is really good. The problem is I've only managed to secure the .net domain for it. The .com is taken by a domain squatter who is not replying to my emails. Should I proceed with the name or continue looking? ====== ohashi Can we not call everyone who holds domains squatters? Just because they don't: * answer your emails * you don't see anything on the page * there are currently advertisements showing * won't sell for 10$ because that's registration fee doesn't make them a squatter. A cybersquatter is someone infringing on your trademark. In almost every case I see, the people calling someone a squatter are simply pissed off that the domain they want is taken and they have no legitimate rights or claim to it, other than they thought of it just now and think they can do something _better_ with it. Thanks. ~~~ j_lagof I agree, it is the same thing as buying a piece of land and waiting for the area to become more popular and sell later... The issue comes from the fact that buying domains are very cheap and easy, but that's other problem. *btw, I am not saying that I approve people with 1000s of domains just waiting for someone interested, but the business idea is the same. ~~~ dkarl Intentionally provocative question: So you think domain squatting is ethical if it's done occasionally and unsystematically, but not if it's done in an efficient and industrious manner? ~~~ ohashi If we use the real definition, it doesn't matter, if you break trademark law, you break trademark law. ~~~ dkarl Your definition doesn't match how I usually see the term used, so I don't understand how it's the real one. Sure, it's written into law that way, but legal jargon doesn't supersede actual widespread usage except in a legal context. When people say "domain squatting" or "cybersquatting," they mean speculatively buying and holding a domain with no intention of using it, hoping to sell it later when it becomes valuable to someone else. (And no, putting up a generic advertising search page does not qualify as "using" it for the purposes of this definition.) ~~~ ohashi Then what is 'using'? Please define it and think about the implications for domain name registrations at all levels. ------ pg I discourage it. People will always look for you (and worse still, send you mail) at the dot com. And there are lots of decent dot com names still available. ~~~ decadentcactus Wouldn't that also depend on the target audience of the site? If a site was targeted at the same people that use HN for example, I doubt they'd have a problem with the site using a .net ~~~ davidw What if they only sort of peripherally remember the name? It's about finding it, rather than using it. ~~~ zepolen Most people (even geeks) use google to find a site they don't remember the exact url for, and google does a very good job at finding that url, regardless if there is a .com with the same name. Eg. searching for 'python' gets you python.org as 1st result. You don't want to go to the .com ~~~ davidw Because a ton of people link to python.org. Your startup most likely will not have that advantage. Also, I wonder how many people (say, someone's boss), heard about this cool Python language and just tried python.com. Oops. ------ patio11 I have multi-personality disorder on this question. The SEO in me says "I would take a strong, exact match .NET over a weak .COM every day of the week and twice on Sunday." For example, if you want to do restaurant scheduling, restaurantscheduling.net is better than servrschedulr.com or whatever the convention is these days. However, I don't think exact-match domain names are the answer for everybody on this forum. I like them and swear by them, but a lot of y'all have goals which would be better served by something brandable, even if it does sound like twitpickr.ly. PG mentions that people will always look for you at the dot com. This is true, but the dot com they're looking for you at is google.com, because direct navigation is dead. The ascendancy of search engines, broadening of the Internet away from technical Americans, increasing use of mobile devices, etc etc etc, have killed it convincingly. As always, check your stats if you don't believe me. ~~~ icey This is something that I started noticing a few months ago myself. Almost all of the non-technical people I know have stopped using their address bar in exchange for using Google's search box when they want to go somewhere. If I say to go to foobar.com, they'll open their browser, either go to their home page or _type in google.com_ , then type foobar.com into Google's search box, search, and then click on the first link. When I've asked, they've almost all said that it was "easier" than typing in the address. I'm talking about tens of people... it's very strange, but I've certainly been seeing what you're talking about first-person. ~~~ ElliotH I have the same experience. It seems strange in the age of address bars with searchable history and automatic search that people are still going out of their way to go to a URL they already know. ------ astrec Failure to secure the dot com cost us $400,000 at auction (plus legal fees over 10 years): I really can't recommend you try and build a brand without it. Even bit.ly owns bitly.com. ------ healsdata I'd recommend against it. I worked for a company that was named akin to "example.net" Nearly every week, we'd get a call from someone who went to "examplenet.com" and didn't know why we were suddenly selling skateboards. ~~~ patio11 On the flip side, I host net-benefits.net as a favor to friends in the debating community, and every week _I_ get an email from somebody attempting to get into, e.g., Prudential's online insurance portal Net Benefits, because they Googled the name on their benefits statement. (There are about four places on the Internet that thought this would be a clever name for their insurance/investing portal.) ------ flooha I posted a similar question a couple of days ago here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1058437> I'm curious how much it really matters. I can see it being a big deal for email, but for organic traffic I'm not convinced. Most domain squatters don't have anything up on the site, have a adsense landing page or something extremely outdated. Assuming your site has even mild success, your search engine ranking will be much, much higher. Sadly, the email issue is probably a show-stopper. Also, I don't think a lot of people actually type the domain in the address bar. They're either clicking a link or searching. The real question here is, can you pull a dropbox? Trademark the name, launch your site, get popular, then just take away the .com if the owner somehow infringes on your mark. Is this a valid precedent or do you have to have boat- loads of cash to actually make this work? In any case, it's probably just easier to choose a different name. I just emailed someone yesterday about a .com domain name and he wanted $20k. Seems like the dropbox method might be easier. ------ yannis On the premise that you are expecting your start-up to be a success you should look for another domain and you should register the .com, .net .org .info etc... Besides your application you will be building a brand don't share it with a domain squatter and don't pay for a name over what is reasonable. ~~~ hh I disagreed with this statement because there are plenty of successful sites that has other dots besides .com. It's all depend on your application. If your application is useful, then people will come. For example, when I registered my website, <http://www.mathmaster.org>, the .dot com and everything else were taken but now I am still doing ok in term of visitor counts. Majority of my users come from either bookmarked or search engine anyway. ~~~ niyazpk What happens when the domain squatter decide to persuade you (to buy the .com domain) by uploading porn? Risks should be properly taken care of when building a brand. ~~~ toothcomb I saw that recently on an innocuous kids site. A domain with a different tld, was a hard core porn site. Ouch. I don't think that was a squatter it was just rather unfortunate. Unless that is a trend? ------ shykes It could be interesting to look at Dropbox's story. Didn't they secure dropbox.com only recently? ~~~ ironkeith Yes, but prior to that they used getdropbox.com, not dropbox.net (or something of that ilk). I do believe they were able to lawyer a squatter into releasing the dropbox.com domain _after_ they were proven successful. ~~~ shykes You would think that being successful makes it _harder_ to get the domain back, since the squatter knows the real stakes. What are the legal grounds for "lawyering" him into releasing the domain? ~~~ ironkeith I guess Dropbox ended up taking legal action against dropbox.com when they started placing ads for Dropbox's competitors. As a result, the domain holder ended up handing the domain over (no mention of purchase in the article). [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/13/dropbox-acquires-the- do...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/13/dropbox-acquires-the-domain- everyone-thought-it-had-dropbox-com/) ------ jasonkester If your product is a development tool targeted at .NET developers, then yes. Otherwise No. It looks bad, and nobody will remember it. If you want to be a real business, you need a .com domain name. That's just the way it goes. Register the .net and .org variants of your name if they're available, but definitely run your site off a .com. ------ thibaut_barrere I'd go .com whenever possible, at the cost of choosing a slightly different name. 37signals <http://campfirenow.com/> (instead of <http://campfire.com/>) is a typical illustration. ~~~ KWD Or consider Dropbox that started at getdropbox.com before obtaining dropbox.com. ------ markkoberlein When you are a startup with no money, I would say buy the .net first only if you could foresee buying the .com in the future when you do have the money. Example of this would be if the .net was available and the .com domain was owned by a squatter and is willing to sell it for $2k to $5k. I wouldn't by a .net domain where the .com is already owned by an established company because you probably won't be able to buy it in the future. ------ thinkbohemian If you decide to look for another domain, someone posted a pretty cool app to Ycombinator called nxdom.com it is worth taking a look. In my personal experience, I say go for a few domains and direct them to an alpha of your site with no branding. Then ask your alpha testers what they prefer, and if they can remember your url. There are some popular .net sites boingboing is the first thing that comes to my mind. ------ pierrefar The short answer is no. The only time you should use the .net is if you have secured all the other TLDs and the .net is the best choice for branding or marketing. ~~~ kls \-- the .net is the best choice for branding or marketing. I agree which is why, we need more information before making a recommendation as to what is the best course of action. If you are going to rely on word of mouth and a grass roots ground swell then you need a memorable name and I would say that the .com is very important. If you are going to rely on advertising buys and blogger who will be linking to your site then the domain name is less important. The comment about the squatter uploading porn to strong arm you is a very valid concern. If you are in a business where there could be confusion and that could reflect poorly on you then I would avoid the name all together. ------ krav In a nutshell, nope. If your startup takes off, part of your traffic (the type-in kind) will go to the .com, where it'll be a parked page full of Google or Yahoo ads, and will make the domain owner money. Move on and find something else. ------ adrianwaj I can help you with finding an alternate domain. I've had the exact same problem very often and always ended up with something more imaginative, and practically better each time, once I start brainstorming. Try combining two short normal words. ------ profquail You could try using Sedo (domain name buy/sell website) to make them an offer for the domain name (or they may even have it listed there), or use Namejet to try to grab it once it expires. ------ jrgnsd I can only add that yes, it's a good idea to get the .com as well. If you look at Slashdot, they didn't even bother with the .net (or they're struggling to get it), but they did register .org and .com ------ Tawheed What're your thoughts on .IO domain names? e.g. <http://braintrust.io> ------ kebaman Have you tried the .us domain? I always suspected it's the next big landrush as so many of the .com names are gone. ~~~ kebaman [added] one example: script.aculo.us ------ visakhcr If you really want the domain, then I would suggest that you go ahead with .net now, and later try to get the .com and link them to the same page. To cite an example, Darren Rowse of Problogger initially started with problogger.net since the .com was with someone else ('squatter' as you call them). He started off the blog with the .net and later went on buying Problogger.com	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Call GitHub (or other) API from the browser (like a mini-Postman) - gabrielsroka I wrote a short (100-line) JavaScript snippet to call the GitHub API.<p>It runs in your browser like a browser extension. In fact, it can easily be turned into a browser extension.<p>Setup and usage instructions are in the file.<p>Check out gabrielsroka.github.io/GitHubAPIExplorer.js or to view the source code, see GitHubAPIExplorer.js on github.com/gabrielsroka/gabrielsroka.github.io ====== gabrielsroka Clickable links: Check out [https://gabrielsroka.github.io/GitHubAPIExplorer.js](https://gabrielsroka.github.io/GitHubAPIExplorer.js) or to view the source code, see [https://github.com/gabrielsroka/gabrielsroka.github.io/blob/...](https://github.com/gabrielsroka/gabrielsroka.github.io/blob/master/GitHubAPIExplorer.js) ------ gabrielsroka A short writeup and some screenshots: [https://gabrielsroka.github.io/APIExplorer](https://gabrielsroka.github.io/APIExplorer)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple’s hired contractors are listening to your recorded Siri conversations, too - jtbayly https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/26/8932064/apple-siri-private-conversation-recording-explanation-alexa-google-assistant ====== jtbayly From the article: "Additionally, as The Guardian notes, while Amazon and Google allow customers to opt out of some uses of their recordings, Apple doesn’t offer a similar privacy protecting option, outside of disabling Siri entirely. That’s a particularly bad look, given that Apple has built so much of its reputation on selling itself as the privacy company that defends your data in ways that Google and Amazon don’t." I was shocked by this because I opt out of sending analysis data to Apple at setup of my devices. I figured that would also prevent sending Siri recordings. Apparently not, though.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Barack Obama wins 2009 Nobel Peace Prize - prakash http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/barack-obama-wins-nobel-peace-prize/article1318102/ ====== jacquesm <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=870921>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Mozilla and Unity bring games to the Web without plugins, at near-native speeds - tweakz http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/03/18/mozilla-helps-bring-unity-games-web-without-plugins-near-native-speeds-achieved-webgl-asm-js/ ====== nailer Love, love love the Unity authoring tools. Being able to publish to the web might make for both some great games and some great webGL 'experience' type sites. ------ JelteF I would love to be able to play Unity games on Linux in the browser. Currently there is no Linux plugin and that kind of sucks. WebGL support would be the ultimate solution of course. ------ Ygg2 I'd love to see Unity, without the need for plugin, that would make Unity games, really accessible. But only if it's done as a first class thing, and not a fallback option. ------ dragonbonheur There are other alternatives which will appeal even to 12 year olds: [http://pewtersoftware.com/browserbasic/](http://pewtersoftware.com/browserbasic/) (based on [http://kikito.github.io/luv.js/](http://kikito.github.io/luv.js/)) ~~~ SifJar A quick look at that site reveals that is NOTHING compared to Unity. Unity is a rather powerful gaming engine (that powers a surprising number of very popular games), compared to what can be achieved with BASIC. ~~~ Ygg2 How about Godot Engine [http://www.godotengine.org/wp/](http://www.godotengine.org/wp/) It seems powerful, 2D/3D and open source? ------ Jare The size of the generated asmjs files is going to be a challenge for practical uses of this (the Unity engine is pretty large), but it is a huge accomplishment. ~~~ azakai Code size is a concern on the web, of course, but typically in games the size of the art assets is much larger. ~~~ Jare During Brendan Eich's Fluentconf presentation of UE4 on asm.js, the file sizes were visible for an instant: 570 megs of assets, 210 megs of js. The code will gzip nicely but we're still talking tens of megabytes. Unity 5 is probably in that ballpark.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Creating a ZigBee Chain Reaction - nanis https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1047 ====== SkyMarshal Security is expensive for vendors to implement, so they externalize the risks to their customers and society in general. To reverse this dynamic, "insecure by default" needs to be more expensive than "secure by default". It seems simplest for the Govt to avoid trying to mandate detailed security standards for continuously changing tech, and rather simply make the vendors legally liable for damages and let the market evolve effective standards and practices. However, constructing effective legislation/regulation for doing so is a non- trivial legal challenge. Simply proving when the vendor is liable vs a user could get tricky, as well as estimating damages and divying them up among multiple vendors if damages involved products from multiple vendors. Among other things. Anyone, especially lawyers, have insight on best way to fix this problem? ~~~ rapsey > It seems simplest for the Govt to avoid trying to mandate detailed security > standards for continuously changing tech Govs can do a lot of broad legislation rules that is non-specific. The software industry requires a legislative bitch slap like the auto industry received. These rules would wreak havoc on the industry but if you ask me for the better. \- Are you running unpatched software exposed to the internet for which CVE patches exist? Pay a fine every day until you do so. \- Ban IoT devices that do not have automatic signed software updates over encrypted channels (which would probably ban all current IoT devices). \- Ban all IoT devices without crypto capabilities. Must have a hardware RNG and a set of standard crypto algorithms. \- Does an IoT maker have a CVE and has not patched all their devices in X amount of time? Daily fine. \- Are you a vendor who has not patched a CVE for your software after X amount of time? Pay a fine every day until you do so. ~~~ sametmax Cars kill people. At worst current IoT let a pirate control your light bulbs, see your heart beat or record your sleep patterns, waste your food and listen to your music. This won't interest anyone. For this to start seriously motivating people, you'll need: \- even more numerous DDOS, with more expensive consequences. Companies are affected so they act. \- scandals with naked people, preferably famous ones or underage, or both. People that gets the medias talking. \- money stolen. A lot, to bother insurances. \- people dying. Scaring the public always work. E.G: fire started by pirated IoT device. Otherwise nobody is gona bat an eye. We don't live in a world were most companies do the right thing because it's the right right. Remember that tobacco companies use to run ads to show you how cool your life is with cigarettes while lobbying the congress to state how non dangerous for health it was. Remember that people are putting their entire life on systems with text analysis, geolocation and face recognition and they don't see the big deal out of it. Remember that the government spies on every citizen, considers it perfectly acceptable, and that the citizen let it to. So really, the fact that your connected fridge has an open telnet port is not going to move anyone. You need damage done to get a reaction. Not potential damage. ~~~ flukus > Cars kill people. At worst current IoT let a pirate control your light > bulbs, see your heart beat or record your sleep patterns, waste your food > and listen to your music. Once you're home network is compromised it's much easier to infect other computers on it, a lot of IT people don't even run firewalls on PC's anymore. We largely rely on a single line of defense for home cyber security. A compromised device becomes a launch pad for a bunch of other attacks, like data collection and credit card theft. Imagine how many pedophile rings would love to remotely watch kids using a built in webcam? All without the family ever knowing. Or you could simply use them to stream illegal torrents. ~~~ sametmax I said "Cars kill people", not "cars could kill people". You are talking about potential. People don't care about that. Potential that I mentioned by the way, with "scandals with naked people, preferably famous ones or underage, or both." They will care only once pedophiles will have watched THEIR kids using their web cam. Repeatedly. With media coverage. Not before. ~~~ rapsey > You are talking about potential. People don't care about that. What people care about is irrelevant. What should be legislated for the better of all is another matter. Car safety laws were unpopular with a lot of regular people as well. ~~~ sametmax That's fair but it was because dead people cost money. ------ sametmax Security should be embedded in the IoT frameworks and should be easy for it to become the standard practice. But most IoT stuff are hacked on, rarely using anything standard, and even when there is a framework involved, it seldom has security as a main feature. Even when it does, it's still a lot of work. Take crossbar.io, which is my go to tool to communicate within a IoT context (or anything soft real time really). To secure it you need to: \- setup the TLS certificate. Default communication transport is over unencrypted websocket. \- configure the provided authentication service (and write a backend for your system). \- declare several realms to isolate the clients, and configure the permissions accordingly (default permissions are YOLO, to ease the "hello world", which I understand). Make sure you don't expose important RPC to the wrong clients or allow anybody to declare callbacks. \- manually code the procedure to use their hot reload system to swap code updates. It's made for local updates, not remote ones. \- be very careful when updating your clients. Crossbar routed RPC is transparent and it's tempting to replace a call from JS to Python to a call from JS to Postgres to remove a layer of indirection. But do you make proper permissions checks in your SQL ? Are you sure you don't expose too much ? So basically, you can make it secure. But only if you know what you're doing and don't have a deadline tomorrow. ~~~ bsder > Security should be embedded in the IoT frameworks and should be easy for it > to become the standard practice. To be fair, almost all of the security libraries suck. The only thing which is _SMALL_ and solid is DJB's TweetNaCl ([http://tweetnacl.cr.yp.to/](http://tweetnacl.cr.yp.to/)) If I'm running on a Nordic nRF51 series, for example, things like SSL/TLS are a _HUGE_ chunk of my RAM, ROM, battery, and time budgets. This exploit is a good example. Even if you wanted to use something like a public/private key system, it's not clear that the the Atmel SoC could handle it. In addition, there are still gaps in security libraries that we need. We don't have a good PAKE (password authenticated key exchange) library, for example. HomeKit standardized on SRP with a 3072-bit key, and then discovered that it was too heavyweight and slow for devices working with a lithium coin cell battery. Even Microsoft with AllJoyn had to deprecate SRP and switch to a non- standardized elliptic curve key exchange to better match tiny hardware. The crypto folks are falling down on the job here. These things aren't standardized, and they don't seem to have been beaten on very hard. And they certainly haven't been tested on small hardware very much. Everybody can bitch about security, but until someone figures out the tools required for these small systems, it's going to remain the wild west. ~~~ sametmax Well you said it. There is a reason IoT is not secured. It's hard to make thousands of connected devices with little system resource but connected on foreign networks in heterogeneous context secure. ~~~ catdog Then simply do not connect thousands of such devices if you can't handle it… ~~~ sametmax Yeah. And to avoid theft, simply don't acquire things that are not yours. ~~~ pythonaut_16 A better comparison would be: to avoid theft, don't build your house out of toothpicks that can't support a deadbolt door. ~~~ bsder And yet we built houses out of such materials for thousands of years. Security has 2 problems--technical and social. The technical problem will eventually get solved as transistors are almost free. We are integrating hardware accelerators into almost everything since transistors are so cheap. The social problem isn't so easy. Companies don't give a crap about security. Only when companies start losing 25% of their stock price after a breach will they care. ------ jrockway While reading this, I went looking for the ZLL master key. What surprises me is that it got DMCA'd everywhere, including Hacker News: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249841](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249841) And there was really no outrage about it. Very strange. ~~~ ktta It's amazing how 16 bytes of data can be under copyright. Not arguing, just pointing out how there can be a DMCA request for something so small, citing copyright laws. Reminds me of the AACS controversy when people starting printing keys of t-shirts, and illegal numbers were born. ~~~ Sanddancer John Cage's 4'33" is silence that is under copyright, and has been the subject of legal controversy. [http://edition.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/](http://edition.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/) ~~~ fjdlwlv Differnt issue. 4'33 is a recording of the audience, not silence. I studied it in a music class in school. Cage's estate's infringement claim on "silence" was not upheld by a court. The defendant on that suit put Cage's name on the album as a songwriter, of his own accord. ------ Paul_S I don't work in the IoT department but they use our chips and I can guarantee you that if you make security a legal requirement my company will not hire more engineers, they will hire more lawyers. ~~~ mirimir OK, but then lawyers will say to hire more engineers. ~~~ Paul_S I genuinely can't tell if you're joking. In case you're serious: No, they will work on some legal dodge to avoid the liability. The company does not see it as a technical problem. ~~~ mirimir OK, I was joking, a little. If the regulations are crafted properly, legal dodges won't make the nut. Firms that go that route will fail. ------ bgentry previous discussion was here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12893793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12893793) Though the report does say it was recently updated, unsure what the diff was. ~~~ notthetup Yea.. Is there a good way to find the diff? Only if research papers were published on git :P ------ mahyarm ZigBee / Z-Wave are just getting started in their WEP everything stage. Most of the installed base is unencrypted. It will take many more years until they are at WPA2 levels of robustness. ------ mirimir Wow. That's awesome. The first WiFi worm, I think. Think of the art that's possible with this. You could create city-scale images. Maybe larger, in high-density areas. ------ modeless IoT is a bad vision for the future. 20 years from now I don't want a million devices in my home running software. Either they'll all constantly be pestering me with updates that break functionality I rely on, or they'll be out of date with bugs and security holes that last forever. My vision of a good future is one where I have exactly one smart device: a robot butler which will operate all my other devices. I don't need a smart lock if the butler unlocks the door for me. I don't need a security webcam if the butler monitors the house while I'm away. I don't need a smart thermostat if the butler sets it for me. Etc. ~~~ colechristensen Meh, I'm much more interested in a future where all my devices aren't "smart" but they all include an API contract regulated by an org akin to UL or FCC backed by legislation providing legal remedies to security and usability deficiencies. It's not about _if_ legal regulation will come to software but _when_, and the further in front of it hackers are, the better the future can be. ------ rochellle I don't know why, but I kind of want to see a truly gargantuan IoT debacle unfold at this point. Something beyond stupid, and completely preventable, and all the more horrendous, because at this point, it can only be funny. I want to see something like a TV commercial accidentally trigger a home automation system, which corrupts the operation of a class of light switches, which cascades onto smart microwave ovens, which transmit kill signals to self-driving cars which synchronize with flying cars at which point they all swarm the nearest hospitals and explode, demolishing trillions of dollars of health care, and imploding society because of failed credit default swaps on all of the health care insurance (even obamacare), which then causes automated trading platforms to sell, killing off everyone's 401K's, destroying the retirement plans of all survivors, such that the living envy the dead. Can we make that happen? IoT is retarded. ~~~ virmundi Hyperbole, or just wanting to watch the world burn, aside, why is IoT, as an idea, retarded? It seems to me that having the underlying platform for secured communication to semi-smart technology is good. If my house could intelligently govern itself within a set of parameters I define that fit my life, I bet I could save a few bucks a month on power, not have as much food, and help the environment in my own little way. I do see the idea of IoT with no security and no long term commitment to the products as actually, technically retarding (we'd be worse than we are no for the reason you enumerated). Could you make an argument for your last statement as to why a good implementation of IoT is bad? ~~~ pdkl95 > why is IoT, as an idea, retarded? The usual complaints about IoT as an excuse for surveillance capitalism aside, the key problem with IoT in _most_ products is the (currently obscured) costs do not outweigh the (often novelty) benefits. By benefits I mean actual, significant time or effort savings that need to outweigh the large risks inherent to anything IoT. > underlying platform for secured communication That illustrates a big part of the problem. There is no such think as a "secure platform", because "Security is a process, not a product."[1] The internet is and will always be an incredibly hostile place. If you plan on internetworking on the shared global network _or_ anything that connects to it in any way, you need to plan on a way to maintain vigilance over the devices you created or are responsible for. This means continuous work into the future[2]. > I bet I could [...beneficial outcomes...] You're only listing the positive side. To judge IoT properly also need to enumerate the _known problems_ and _possible risks_. A few examples of the risk that most IoT devices bring are: * The other end of the supposed "secure communication" being compromised by governments, criminals, disgruntled workers, etc. * Bugs (everything has bugs) allowing assholes of the "swatting" persuasion messing with your power, food, _etc_ "for the LULZ". * All that data being logged - even when stored locally - becoming the target for discovery in a trial (maybe involving you, maybe not). * The manufacturer of your IoT device selling data to your insurance company, or you insurance company requiring that data from you directly (e.g. fitbit data for "cheaper" insurance that now has more ways to deny you coverage). That's just some obvious examples. The real problem is that after data is collected it tends to be permanent. Nobody has thought of the _big_ risks of plugging your devices into a hostile network. You see the _potential_ benefits of IoT devices, but you also need to consider what some black hat (or script kiddie) will do with all of those devices - and the data they collect - in 10+ years with a clever new exploit. [1] [https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2000/04/the_process...](https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2000/04/the_process_of_secur.html) [2] It might be possible to limit this with products that have a limited lifespan and are guaranteed leave the network. ~~~ virmundi All the things you listed are things to be planned for. None of them are extremely terrible in and off themselves with the proper vigilance. Even the data logging should be solvable with reasonable laws. Apply the general argument to personal computers. Anyone can attack your PC. Once pawned, they can get valuable information. Your IP could be wrongfully associated to a crime, which brings Jonny Law to your door. Given all of this, I still assume you see the idea of being connected via a PC as a good thing since you wrote a response via a browser. My question was essentially, why dismiss something whole cloth? You raise valid things to consider, but I don't think that anyone of them is a death stroke to IoT. They are, at least in my opinion, design considerations for products that make sense. ~~~ pdkl95 > proper vigilance You seriously expect the average person to have anything close to "proper vigilance" with a collection of IoT devices? > reasonable laws I'd absolutely _love_ to see strong data protection laws passed, but that isn't likely in the near-ish future. Also, laws don't protect against bugs. > All the things you listed are things to be planned for. The worst problem in a new, _unexplored_ area are the unknown/unexpected problems. You believe these data risks are minor - I strongly disagree - but how can you even begin to make that kind of judgment? Data persists and CVEs increase with time; how can you be certain that your data (which includes access credentials, e.g. ssl keys/certs, passwords) won't be stolen off some server (or your home devices) 20 years from now? These are huge, unknown, open-ended risks that could suddenly become a problem at any point in the future. > personal computers The PC isn't tied to sensors around the house, with the ability to control various important hardware. The thermostat (nest) is an obvious example: it _should_ be a trivial device, because simplicity is one of the better ways to guarantee reliability. Adding massive complexity and network access left a lot of people with a freezing house[1]. My PC isn't tied to important thing like the thermostat, because adding risk for effectively a nerd toy, social status symbol, and (allegedly) minor heating-bill benefits isn't a good trade-off, and it's terrible security. The PC _is_ a risk, but it can also serve as a place to _contain_ the risk of being connected to a hostile network. > why dismiss something whole cloth I'm not: "...the key problem with IoT in _most_ products is the ... costs do not outweigh the ... benefits." Internet connectivity can work if the benefits sufficiently outweigh the cost of having to actually secure the device _and_ remain vigilant and responsive to new security issues for the lifetime of the device. This is expensive, and approximately nobody is doing that right now. I also find it hard to believe that anything remotely similar to the current IoT _toys_ on the market can ever be profitable enough to pay for their own security. There may be exceptions, of course, but they will be expensive (in some way) and rare. [1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/fashion/nest- thermostat-g...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/fashion/nest-thermostat- glitch-battery-dies-software-freeze.html) ------ Kenji A lot of people are calling for government action against IoT. Think twice, people. You are undermining your own profession (and I don't just mean IoT, I mean software engineering in general). The laws the state will come up with will not be great, they never are, and they will stifle innovation. The internet is pretty darn stable, I don't think we need good old state to tell us how to write software, we will fix our problems ourselves as we have in the past. ~~~ lolc What do you think about IoT devices with powerful motors that are able to kill people? Or conversely, what do you think about current regulations regarding cars and aircraft?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Portland Seed Fund: Y Combinator, it’s not. - mtrichardson http://siliconflorist.com/2010/10/04/portland-seed-fund-y-combinator-unconstitutional/ ====== bradhe First off let me say that I'm pumped that there is movement in the Portland startup scene. Even though I am not very well plugged in to the local scene (if you are a Portlander raise your hand and I'll buy you a beer), as a Portlander, this is awesome to see something -- anything -- happening up here considering how cool this city is. Otherwise, get ready because this shit is going to happen a lot all over the place. Really, this is business and we've been spoiled by YC -- this is the way the rest of the world works.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.