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Twitter boss slams Wikipedia's 'silly' SOPA protest - llambda
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/16/wikipedia-sopa-blackout-slammed-twitter
======
im_dario
Maybe a nice way to "blackout" Twitter is don't tweeting or just censoring our
tweets. I just started to spread this tweet (with #twuserblackout as main
hashtag):
Don't force Twitter to close tomorrow. Just don't tweet or ██████ yourself
#twuserblackout #SOPA #PIPA #ACTA
------
jarin
Good old "Dickbar" Costolo
------
pasbesoin
Just today, Twitter sent me an email saying "we missed you". Can't say the
same, Dick.
Actually, if this is the tweet,
[https://twitter.com/dickc/statuses/159014296616058880?_escap...](https://twitter.com/dickc/statuses/159014296616058880?_escaped_fragment_=/dickc/status/159014296616058880#!/dickc/status/159014296616058880)
I can see the point about a global business -- having contract obligations and
cash flow issues, etc. But that does not have a direct bearing on Wikipedia.
Further, Dick's tweet has been repeatedly cited in newstories looking for a
dramatic, opposing sound bite with which apparently to counter "them commies".
Is this Dick's failure, or the failure of "his" platform in its reduction of
all commentary to single brief sentences or phrases? (Yes, I'm being
deliberately a bit snarky. After all, that is one of Twitter's provinces.)
Twitter's gained enormous credibility as a stubbornly open channel in the face
of repressive regimes e.g. those involved in the Arab Spring. What a shame if
its CEO sees fit to lie down and sleep with domestic (after all, you're still
basically a U.S. company -- or U.S. based) repression.
I hope this is about keeping Twitter up, but not about supporting SOPA/PIPA/et
al. And I hope that if so, Costolo will step up and state so clearly. Use more
than one sentence if you need to.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TED Q&A: Neurologist Oliver Sacks - kqr2
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/ted-qa-neurol-1.html
======
katamole
For anybody who hasn't read "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat", I highly
recommend it. Very interesting read (especially for ex-neurology students like
myself).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
White House seeks Silicon Valley help battling coronavirus - notlukesky
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/11/white-house-seeks-silicon-valley-help-battling-coronavirus-125794
======
onyva
Step one: close Drumpf’s twitter account and delete all video clips of him
talking.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scientists improve smart phone battery life by up to 60 percent - ohjeez
https://techxplore.com/news/2018-11-scientists-smart-battery-life-percent.html
======
JoeAltmaier
...for certain apps. Not for the OS, nor for extending the lifetime of a
dormant phone.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why You Should Be Using Virtualisation In Your Development Environment - danw
http://morethanseven.net/2010/11/04/Why-you-should-be-using-virtualisation.html
======
codypo
We're big fans of virtualized development environments at my startup. Not only
is it very helpful in preventing weird environment-related bugs like the autor
states, it's a huge shortcut when it comes to bringing new developers onboard.
Rather than have them spend hours tracking down links to all the right
versions of your various libraries and installing things in the appropriate
order, you hand them your image. For us, setup time for a new developer has
gone from about a day to about 30 minutes, and most of that is time spent
downloading Virtual Box.
In addition, if you get a little too clever and accidentally wipe out
something crucial in your environment, you just spin up a new VM. It's a
tremendous timesaver.
------
johnbender
I'm assuming Mitchell hasn't seen this yet, but I'm sure I speak for both of
us when I say thank you for including Vagrant in your post.
I would like to point out a few things.
1\. Another thing to set up.
Streamlining project setup is one of Vagrant's primary goals. Instead of
putting someone, who potentially has no background with the app, through a 20
step process installing all the application dependencies you can simply tell
them to run a few commands.
2\. It's a "Ruby tool".
While I don't think your intention was to pigeon hole it, Vagrant is really
meant for any development environment/language/setup. Its just unfortunate
that the only supported provisioning tool uses Ruby for its DSL (are there
similar tools in other languages?)
(NOTE: its been a while since I contributed meaningfully to the project)
~~~
mitchellh
I did finally see this entry. It was a great read and I agree completely with
it. Note that I posted my comment on the blog directly:
[http://morethanseven.net/2010/11/04/Why-you-should-be-
using-...](http://morethanseven.net/2010/11/04/Why-you-should-be-using-
virtualisation.html#comment-94464917)
Since clicking on that just to read my comment can be annoying, I've copied it
below as well:
=========================================================
Yes! Yes Yes Yes! Virtualization for development is extremely important and
I'm glad you wrote this. Also, thanks for the hat tip to Vagrant, I appreciate
it. I've given a few talks on this and it always amazes me how many people are
so comfortable with the status quo of developing on their own machines with
apache/mysql/etc installed directly on their machines. Its a disaster waiting
to happen.
I want to point out to the many people using VMWare out there: VMWare Fusion
is great, yes, I won't argue. Their shared folders are better, again I agree.
But Vagrant does make use of NFS which is faster than even VMWare Fusion's
shared folders in order to get around VirtualBox's terrible performance.
And just because I have things to say, here are a few of my own remarks
against the arguments against virtualization of development:
* Speed - Given enough RAM (which for a standard web application, shouldn't be any more than 512 MB to 1 GB for the VM instance), the speed difference is noticeable but not detrimental to your productivity. For regular web requests you won't notice any speed difference. For CPU intensive background tasks, you'll probably see a 1.5x slowdown. Again, unless you're running 5 hour tasks during development, it shouldn't be a big deal, and the benefits outweigh these issues, in my opinion.
* Lower level than you're used to - Then get your friendly sysadmin to setup a base image to use for your site. A modern sysadmin has many scripts made to automate the setup of the environment for production. There is no reason these scripts can't be used to setup your development as well. Use it! Stay in your happy place and just boot up a VM and code! (Although its my opinion every developer should take the time to learn their software stack top to bottom)
* Something else to setup - Once. You only need to learn it once, and its repeatable and dependable. I would argue that setting up a new software stack every time a dependency changes on your web app is far more than one more "something else to setup."
* Developer workstations should be personal - Right! I agree 100%. So stop installing server crap on your personal computers. Keep your Twitter clients away from your web servers. Use a VM and keep your workstation personal.
Thanks again, Mitchell
------
jonpaul
I really wish you could virtualize OS X. I would love to build a beefy Linux
box as a base machine and virtualize OS X and Windows.
It's my understanding you can do it, but it's a bit hacky, right?
~~~
widgetycrank
I ran a VMWare image of OS X a few years ago. I don't know what it's like now,
but back then the lack of an OpenGL driver was the deal breaker. OS X's
graphic shell uses Quartz Extreme on top of OpenGL, without GPU acceleration
it was virtually unusable.
~~~
epoch7
I'm running a VMWare image of 10.6 (Snow Leopard) right now. I didn't set it
up, but it does indeed run. It's not perfect. It had problems running Safari
4, but now runs Safari 5 fine. I use it for browser testing. That being said
Flash video crashes it hard, HTML5 video crashes it gently (like caressing a
child's face with a butcher knife).
I have a pretty capable machine (Core i7 920, 6GB, GTX260 video card), but
speed wise it is quite usable and I run all sorts of osx-only apps on it (like
the omni suite) every day.
So.. i guess like 7.5 out of 10? Buggy, but really getting close.
------
SkyMarshal
I've also found it's generally better to keep your base installation as sparse
as possible, and use virtual machines for anything that does not absolutely
need to be on the host.
That way you can set up servers, experiment with new platforms and/or
applications, hack^Wlearn config files and system internals, etc. without risk
of bogging down or blowing up your machine and having no recourse but a full
reinstall and reconfig.
I've got core Ubuntu Server, OpenSuse, and CentOS server images, that include
extras like git-core, htop, ssh, and a few other utilities I universally
depend on, and that I can copy, deploy, and configure for whatever specialized
purpose that comes up.
<3 it.
------
khingebjerg
Perhaps a middle ground could be using a virtual machine as a staging
environment?
~~~
bmj
This is what we do. The biggest benefit here, for us, is that if a release
goes horribly wrong, or our testers find a disastrous bug, we can easily roll
back to a clean state and only lose the time it takes to load the VM.
I've tried using a VM for doing development, but I've run into the issues
mentioned in the parent article: Visual Studio 2010 is memory and CPU hog.
I've maxed out the RAM in my laptop, and it still ran too slowly to be really
useful.
------
JofArnold
Not strictly in the spirit of the post, but I use a nice VM setup I thoroughly
recommend:
\- Host: OSX (2.4GHz i5, 8GB ram)
\- Guest1: Ubuntu 10.10 (1.5GB ram allocated; acts as a LAMP server, available
to Host and other Guests)
\- Guest2: WinXP (1.5GB ram allocated - I use it for IE and for Xara)
This config eats RAM, but affords so many advantages:
1/ Makes my LAMP server portable. Can set up on new computer in no time
2/ Means I can experiment with server software and can revert when I break
something
3/ Enables easy cross-PLATFORM browser testing which is vital if you care
about fonts and pixels
4/ Can easily fake slow internet connections etc for web dev
5/ Gedit :P
6/ Nautilus :P
Major disadvantage is filesystem access speed.
~~~
JofArnold
PS, if anyone knows a solution to the file access speed issue (not just the
filesystem of the guest, but also what ever you share with it from the host)
please tell me. Parallels, VMWare Fusion and VirtualBox all have this issue
and it drives me mad sometimes!
~~~
reynolds
I'm not sure if this helps in your situation, but when I'm running VMware I
don't share any local directories. I use rsync to manage the virtual server
directories since it's similar to how I deploy to my remote servers.
Having to manually "deploy" code to a local virtual server can be tedious, so
running a background process that watches your local directories for changes
helps a lot.
~~~
ciniglio
Can you elaborate on that background process? Is that something built into
rsync?
~~~
reynolds
It's actually something I've been working on that I want to put up on github.
I hacked up a Python version of it as a proof-of-concept but rewrote it in C
as an installable executable using autotools.
Basically I tell it which directory I want it to watch for changes and it does
automatic syncing by piping rsync. I keep a local and remote signature of the
files and their timestamps. When it first starts up, it pulls the server sig
file and compares it to the local one. If there's a mismatch, the server is
updated. From there it manages the signatures locally until they're different.
Writing the sig file to the remote server is done in the same rsync pass
because it's stored in the local directory as a dotfile.
I realize rsync does its own checksums, but using my own crude signature files
makes it so I don't have to keep calling rsync. I only call it when something
changes.
I also have some stuff I'm working on that ties into auto-restarting servers
when syncing finishes, rolling server deployments for no downtime, db
migrations, etc.
~~~
epoch7
Sounds like some pretty cool stuff! I hope you post about it when you do
decide to release it. :)
------
rdzah
Now if I could only get some vmware <-> ec2 direct compatibility up in here
... proprietary conversion tools = fail.
------
FiReaNG3L
Note that its pretty much a must if you plan to have a MongoDB server as part
of your dev environment on your home box - Mongo by design eats all the RAM it
can find to map files to, and if you have Apache, Solr and MySQL running on
the same box, things can get ugly :)
~~~
someone_here
Why do applications think they can manage my memory better than my kernel?
~~~
mathias_10gen
Actually, MongoDB _does_ leave memory management to the kernel by using MMAP
to access data files. Most kernels will allocate a lot of memory to the disk
cache, which can make it look like mongo is eating all of your ram.
~~~
wanderr
This. It's one of the brilliant things about mongo. The downside is that after
a reboot it's up to you to get the OS to warm those caches back up.
------
Bootvis
One tip for the overly enthusiastic (like me): Unfortunately Vagrant does not
work on Windows 7 64 bit (yet).
See: <https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/issue/194>
------
wanderr
Our servers run CentOS. None of our developers would dream of running that as
a desktop OS. Some just use Ubuntu and call that good, but I like to have my
testing environment as identical to production as possible, so I took an
ancient laptop with a busted display and slapped CentOS on it. As I mentioned
in another comment, I set up samba so I can have apache pointing directly to
my project folder on my dev machine.
It makes for very convenient testing and it has helped me catch issues others
didn't see on their distros, mostly because CentOS has ancient versions of
everything and sometimes people don't realize they are relying on a feature
that was introduced later.
------
codefisher
If your really serious about developing stuff what will end up running on a
Linux server, I think you should really be using Linux on the development
machine. I know that is not always practical, but more people should do it. No
one would dream of writing a Mac app on Windows, and I don't see why Linux
should be any different.
~~~
reynolds
If you're targeting a specific platform, it can make sense to use a virtual
machine instead of installing that platform on your development machine. As
far as code is concerned, it doesn't care that you're running it on a Linux VM
inside a Windows dev machine rather than directly on a Linux dev machine.
That being said, if you're trying to target Mac or Windows, it's generally a
good idea to use that specific platform's tools. It's reasonable to develop
Windows and Mac apps on Linux but it may not be the best environment to do so.
It's really up to you as a developer to determine the best toolchain and
processes based on what you're trying to accomplish.
------
shuaib
Thanks for the great post. Came to know of vagrant for the first time reading
this, and have instantly fell in love.
------
needyballsack
How do you handle version control in this environment? Locally on the mac or
in the virtual server?
~~~
garethr
Personally I edit the code on my mac using gvim and run and use git on the VM.
I've used ExpanDrive to mount the directory from the VM for editing previously
but I've been moving towards using vagrant with it's NFS shares.
------
stretchwithme
I just touched Test and test on mac and I see both of them just fine.
~~~
daxelrod
On what filesystem?
Certainly not the default HFS+, which is is case-insensitive but case-
preserving.
~~~
stretchwithme
It works as you described on my macbook. I was on my Mac at work before.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
John Allspaw Joins the Etsy Team - prakash
http://www.etsy.com/storque/etsy-news/john-allspaw-joins-the-etsy-team-6183/
======
look_lookatme
I interviewed at flickr around 2006 when they were doing a big batch of
recruiting post yahoo buyout. Everyone was super nice (I was pretty nervous),
but I walked away most impressed by John Allspaw. He was smart, patient and
funny during the 30 minutes or so that I spent with him. Since then I've read
his blog and come to realize just how valuable to flickr he probably was.
Everyone knows who Caterina and Stewart and Cal are, but I imagine Allspaw was
every bit as important to their success.
Nice pickup for Etsy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pingdom being hosed by IP 104.131.86.169 (see recent tests) - ashitlerferad
https://tools.pingdom.com
======
jake_rd
wow looks like they're using pingdom to mine bitcoin
------
ashitlerferad
⋊> ~ whois 104.131.86.169
# # ARIN WHOIS data and services are subject to the Terms of Use # available
at: [https://www.arin.net/whois_tou.html](https://www.arin.net/whois_tou.html)
# # If you see inaccuracies in the results, please report at #
[https://www.arin.net/public/whoisinaccuracy/index.xhtml](https://www.arin.net/public/whoisinaccuracy/index.xhtml)
#
# # The following results may also be obtained via: #
[https://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=104.131.86.169?showDetail...](https://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=104.131.86.169?showDetails=true&showARIN=false&showNonArinTopLevelNet=false&ext=netref2)
#
NetRange: 104.131.0.0 - 104.131.255.255 CIDR: 104.131.0.0/16 NetName:
DIGITALOCEAN-9 NetHandle: NET-104-131-0-0-1 Parent: NET104 (NET-104-0-0-0-0)
NetType: Direct Allocation OriginAS: AS46652, AS14061, AS393406, AS62567
Organization: DigitalOcean, LLC (DO-13) RegDate: 2014-06-02 Updated:
2014-06-02 Comment: [http://www.digitalocean.com](http://www.digitalocean.com)
Comment: Simple Cloud Hosting Ref:
[https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-104-131-0-0-1](https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-104-131-0-0-1)
OrgName: DigitalOcean, LLC OrgId: DO-13 Address: 101 Ave of the Americas
Address: 10th Floor City: New York StateProv: NY PostalCode: 10013 Country: US
RegDate: 2012-05-14 Updated: 2017-07-03 Comment:
[http://www.digitalocean.com](http://www.digitalocean.com) Comment: Simple
Cloud Hosting Ref:
[https://whois.arin.net/rest/org/DO-13](https://whois.arin.net/rest/org/DO-13)
OrgTechHandle: NOC32014-ARIN OrgTechName: Network Operations Center
OrgTechPhone: +1-347-875-6044 OrgTechEmail: noc@digitalocean.com OrgTechRef:
[https://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/NOC32014-ARIN](https://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/NOC32014-ARIN)
OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE5232-ARIN OrgAbuseName: Abuse, DigitalOcean
OrgAbusePhone: +1-347-875-6044 OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@digitalocean.com
OrgAbuseRef:
[https://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ABUSE5232-ARIN](https://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ABUSE5232-ARIN)
OrgNOCHandle: NOC32014-ARIN OrgNOCName: Network Operations Center OrgNOCPhone:
+1-347-875-6044 OrgNOCEmail: noc@digitalocean.com OrgNOCRef:
[https://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/NOC32014-ARIN](https://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/NOC32014-ARIN)
# # ARIN WHOIS data and services are subject to the Terms of Use # available
at: [https://www.arin.net/whois_tou.html](https://www.arin.net/whois_tou.html)
# # If you see inaccuracies in the results, please report at #
[https://www.arin.net/public/whoisinaccuracy/index.xhtml](https://www.arin.net/public/whoisinaccuracy/index.xhtml)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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A grandmother made a forest on her own [video] - happy-go-lucky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCEQZDHnAb4
======
qubex
My mother passed away when I was 11, in 1992. My grandfather, who owned
property outside of Bristol (UK), planted a forest in her memory and named it
“Pam’s Wood”. He said that memories fade but that the forrest would grow
higher and thicker as time went by and that even in the far future his
daughter’s name would be remembered even though everybody who had ever known
her had long passed away.
~~~
growlist
Wish I could do this near where I live in the UK, but even non-arable land
etc. is getting stupidly expensive. Apparently this is a big unresolved issue
with the recent drive to plant more trees.
~~~
grovehaw
You don't have to own land to plant trees. The Colne Valley Tree Society has
planted more than 300 000 since the mid 60s.[0] It has made a big difference
to the quality of life in the area.
[0]
[https://colnevalleytreesociety.blogspot.com/](https://colnevalleytreesociety.blogspot.com/)
------
sudhirj
I think her biggest achievement will be that she's grown a love of the
environment in her children and grandchildren. They all sound deeply
knowledgeable about the forest, which is much more than treating it as a
playground.
------
elorant
Reminds me of this, also from India:
[https://interestingengineering.com/jadav-payeng-the-man-
who-...](https://interestingengineering.com/jadav-payeng-the-man-who-planted-
an-entire-forest-by-himself)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkZDSqyE1do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkZDSqyE1do)
~~~
foobarian
Along those lines: [https://www.odditycentral.com/architecture/man-
spends-23-yea...](https://www.odditycentral.com/architecture/man-
spends-23-years-carving-sprawling-underground-temple-under-his-house.html)
Makes me really sad about the water table where I live (MA) :)
------
vishnugupta
I instinctively knew this would be in India, specifically south India. Here’s
a similar story where a lady planted and grew 8000 roadside trees
[https://youtu.be/AHY45HSB-e8](https://youtu.be/AHY45HSB-e8)
------
onetimemanytime
I'm always amazed at people with HUGE backyards and acreage...everything is so
manicured. Why? To me it makes no sense, a real forest is very relaxing
(Granted they may have a real forest 500yards away)
~~~
noelwelsh
Lawns originated as a display of wealth, showing that you were so wealthy you
could afford to have land that wasn't devoted to growing food. This attitude
persists, even though the origin is forgotten; the majority of people hanker
after displays of status even if they don't consciously understand what they
are doing. I don't agree with it (I think lawns are stupid and forests are
great) but that's the way it is. To change it would take concerted public
education. I believe some US states (Colorado?) have efforts to encourage
people to plant native species, for example. When I lived in Australia there
were some fairly half-hearted efforts to do the same (though the majority of
people still had stupidly wasteful lawns; Australia is mostly desert, it
shouldn't look like the UK y'all.)
~~~
pjc50
> Australia is mostly desert, it shouldn't look like the UK y'all.
This is the big problem - lawns kind of make sense if you're trying to be a
tiny Capability Brown emulating the English countryside, but outside of the
temperate maritime climate they're highly unnatural and have to be kept on
life support.
~~~
pvaldes
Is a desert now, but that shouldn't prevent us to restore a bit of the old
australian forests here and there.
Some places in Australia have much more water and are typically forested.
------
JoeAltmaier
Sounds like a lifelong project, but you could do it too! If you have a little
land, a healthy forest needs only 100 trees per acre. You can plant a couple
of acres in a weekend...
~~~
fiter
You say 100 trees per acre, but Afforestt says 100 trees per 30 sq meters
(0.0074 acre)[0][1]! (This is equivalent to 121,000 per acre.) A mature forest
may only need 100 trees per acre, but it may take a much larger density to get
it started. You may need the soil shaded to keep the soil and leaf fall moist.
You may need the trees to shade eachother. You may need the trees to share
resources through their roots. You may need the trees to protect each other
from the wind.
[0] [https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a-forest-really-
real...](https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a-forest-really-really-
fast-d27df202ba09)
[1]
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/pgofw7noxmpfwxg/Miyawaki%20Methodo...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/pgofw7noxmpfwxg/Miyawaki%20Methodology%20Explained.pdf?dl=0)
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Mulch. They grow fine at 100/acre. We're not talking growing timber for
harvest here. Its an urban forest.
------
daodedickinson
My mother is curating something similar. Wish I could afford a relationship
and children even more so.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SingPath is the most FUN way to practice software languages - tea-anemone
http://www.singpath.com/eli/index.html
======
koopajah
Could be nice to have one or two examples before having to sign up. I will not
give my gmail and/or facebook information without being sure I would use the
site.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Grieving for Apple - mrzool
https://wincent.com/blog/grieving-for-apple
======
vessenes
I'm sure there's a word coined for these 'death of Apple' posts.
It is true that my 2020 Macbook Pro 16 is not as much better than the
competition as my 2011 Macbook Air was.
But it is still definitely the best laptop I've ever owned. I keep my laptops,
and I can reach for whichever one I want: 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 in Air,
13", 15" and now 16" form factors, and I choose the 2020. I also daily reject
a number of windows and Chromebook pieces of hardware in favor of the MBP16.
When I don't choose it, I most often choose my iPad pro at times or my iPhone.
A thorough and hard ecosystem-level look at realistic competitors just doesn't
turn up anything that even comes close in terms of just "working".
Probably the closest would be an XPS developer running Ubuntu, but that is a
completely different experience than the 'it just works' world I get to live
in with my Macbook. And, by "it just works", I include a decent package
manager with homebrew, a very solid neovim or spacemacs development
environment, a fully working highdpi environment without 'quirks', ... the
list goes on. And, Windows has no Unix underneath it plus it contains ads in
the start menu. For me, it's just not a serious option for real work.
In all, I'd say that most people agree with me; the market seems to prefer
this hardware.
~~~
itsraining
My 2020 MacBook Pro 16 crashes frequently when it goes to sleep.
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251223766](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251223766)
This has been a downgrade for me.
~~~
wilkowskidom
I had the same. Disabling power nap did it for me. If this doesn’t help I read
disabling graphic switching does it.
But yeah it’s redicules that We have to deal with this on a $3k laptop
~~~
blondin
hold on, disabling power nap won't fixes the auto log outs. it's a (new?)
security setting.
one sec...
alright okay. for anyone having the issue, you have to go to your "security &
privacy" -> click on padlock -> enter password -> click on "advanced". in the
sheet disable "Log out after X min of inactivity".
------
stevencorona
I recently (3 weeks ago) switched from OS X to Ubuntu 20.04 after a decade of
using macs as my primary desktop for software development.
I hadn't used desktop linux in about 15 years and I have to say I was
pleasantly surprised. Everything that I remembered being difficult was
straightforward. My AMD graphics card worked out of the box with dual
monitors. Bluetooth, wifi, HiDPI (two 5K displays), USB plug and play, volume
buttons on my keyboard, all seamless.
There are still a few quirks here and there (mainly HiDPI in some apps like
Spotify, which there are workarounds for), but I'm happy with my setup and
don't plan on moving back.
With Firefox, VS Code, Slack, Spotify, and 1Password X all being cross-
platform my workflow didn't even change.
~~~
acidburnNSA
Add to that excitement the new System 76 Lemur Pro 14" 2.2 lbs laptop with 40
GB of RAM and a massive 73 Wh battery and you're really going to be excited
[1]. I got one recently (moving up from an old Sony Vaio).
I've been daily driver on linux for about a decade now and have to agree that
it's awesome now.
[1] [https://system76.com/laptops/lemur](https://system76.com/laptops/lemur)
~~~
jjice
The price scared me at first, but I had to remember the cost of the new MBP.
Very impressive for the cost, and the 2.2 lb weight is really great,
especially for a 14". If I was looking for a laptop to serve as my main
machine, I could see this being a really strong competitor.
Seems like a great machine, as long as you're a Linux user.
~~~
pfranz
When I was comparing Mac laptops to PC alternatives they usually ended up
within a few hundred dollars. Sure, saving a few hundred dollars is nice, but
I'm fairly confident I can sell the Mac in a handful of years for a decent
price, confident I'll use it for a handful of years, I'm familiar with the
build quality and avenues for parts and replacements, and things like
trackpad, biometrics/fingerprint, and battery life are a known quantity for me
on a Mac. Saving only 10-15% made it less appealing to make the jump--
conversely, I can see people not wanting to pay an extra 10-15% to jump to a
Mac.
------
anorphirith
I went through the same cycle or frustration from apple products, I've bought
6 laptops in the past year trying out all of the competition. The truth is,
all of the alternatives, as frustrating as apple products can be, are just not
as good. And that's by a very very long shot. However fucked apple products
are, the competition is FAR behind. So I just swallow it and keep biting the
bullet.
That only applies if you want a LAPTOP, if you can live in with something
fixed to a desk, there's plenty of viable better alternatives out there.
~~~
m0xte
I disagree. I got rid of a 2013 MBP and a 2019 MBA and went back to a thinkpad
T470 running Windows 10. 300% less of a pain in the ass. Keyboard works
reliably and isn’t horrible, doesn’t get ridiculously hot, actually has enough
USB holes, can actually drive it from the keyboard without tying my fingers in
knots, battery lasts longer, less fighting against the OS, less bugs (that one
hurt to write) and it doesn’t give me a rash that bleeds on my wrists. CPU,
memory, storage is about the same as a high end MBA. Display is 1080p so runs
at 125% scale which is pretty good. If I break it I just get another one off
eBay in 48h turnaround for less than the price of just a new screen for the
MBA. Oh and it docks too and I get triple head displays...
~~~
danlugo92
You're right about everything except high dpi handling.
Also can't beat Apple on trackpad and screen quality.
~~~
m0xte
I hardly miss the Retina display. The 1080p display with 125% scaling is good
enough. It’s not spectacular but fine for a laptop.
The trackpad I didn’t like on the MacBook either. I found it made my finger
tips sore after a few hours. I’m using the TrackPoint on the T470 and have the
touchpad disabled
------
supernova87a
If the touch bar (which I agree is useless, or worse, actively
counterproductive) is the worst thing he's annoyed by, then Apple is doing
pretty well for a computer manufacturer selling 20M units annually, don't you
think?
I think we have to have some self-realization that the gripes that appear here
generally are so specialized (the MacOS Catalina notarization problem just
today) that if you sit here you think the world is coming to an end. Yet
millions of people purchase and seem to get along just fine with buying what
Apple is offering.
Now, admittedly, one of the great selling points of Apple Mac is that its
power features are (were) designed exactly for developers and professionals to
be easy and high-performing, so they need to pay attention to it. But they
generally do, don't they? The notarization problem above, let's revisit in 1
month and see if it got some attention?
I'm just saying that it's easy for your threshold for what's unacceptable has
a tendency to keep on rising, and you get unhappy with smaller and smaller
things. It's important to keep a perspective about it.
If it is truly horrible what Apple is doing or becoming, well of course you
know that Mac / Chrome / your favorite app or hardware were all born out of
being unhappy with what someone else built, and going out to build something
new themselves.
Everyone is absolutely free to go and invent the next better thing and
displace the old and tired.
~~~
cosmotic
Selling well doesn't always mean doing well or doing good.
IT departments for companies that give their staff macs will buy whatever
garbage Apple makes available because they have no other option. Same with
consumers stuck in the Apple ecosystem.
I've been holding out on buying a mac for nearly a decade because they have no
compelling products. I'm stuck using a hackintosh workstation and a crappy
windows laptop for on the go.
~~~
scarface74
Right, because most of Apple sells come from the Enterprise. Apple has a long
history of going out of its way to support big enterprise to convince them to
buy Macs.
------
brokencode
If you really believe that a company can churn out nothing but perfect
products over and over again without making any mistakes, then maybe you have
been drinking too much of Apple’s Kool-Aid. Every top company has good and bad
generations of products, and Apple is no different.
This type of post complaining about Apple losing its soul and dying has been
coming out regularly for at least the decade since I’ve been following Apple,
and probably back way farther than that.
Something about Apple makes it an irresistible target for this kind of
criticism for some reason. Check out the MacRumors forums for examples.. it’s
a group of people who track every move Apple makes, yet overwhelmingly
complain about every potential flaw.
That’s not saying that there aren’t flaws to criticize about Apple’s products,
which there certainly are. But the level of vitriol is extreme compared to
what I see directed towards most other companies (except video game
companies.. gamers are a tough crowd).
~~~
thomascgalvin
I don't think Apple should be held to a "no mistakes" standard, but for the
last few years, the trend has been toward less functionality and more user-
hostility.
Take the drop of 32 bit support. There are now huge swaths of software,
software that I paid a lot of money for, that I can no longer use if I buy new
Apple hardware or upgrade to the latest MacOS.
There are bright spots, too. The new keyboards are much, much better than the
butterflies, and the physical escape key is a welcome return.
But in general, when Apple announces something new, I'm worried about what
they're going to take away from me, not what they're going to start offering.
~~~
scarface74
Apple hasn’t shipped a 32 bit Mac since 2006. How long was Apple suppose to
keep support for 32 bit software? Should they also have kept support for PPC
software? 68K software?
~~~
dmitriid
> Apple hasn’t shipped a 32 bit Mac since 2006.
So, they could easily have given developers a roadmap/timeline of 13 years
saying "in 2020 we're going to deprecate 32bit software, please upgrade".
Instead, they gave everyone less than two years.
In comparison, the switch from PowerPC to Intel took over four years. And this
was at the time when MacOS had significantly less software available on it.
Apple themselves released the last version of software that supported PowerPCs
_7 years_ after the announcement of the transition.
~~~
scarface74
They kind of did when they announced Carbon wouldn’t have 64 bit support over
five years ago.
PowerPC support was dropped in 10.7 three versions after the first Intel Macs
came out. It was an optional download in 10.6.
------
save_ferris
I completely agree with all of this. From the costly obsession with creating
an ever-thinner MBP at the expense of usability, to the demonstrably hostile
removal of Target Display Mode in the iMac and beyond, it’s pretty clear Apple
stopped designing their “pro” products for their pro users some time ago.
They’ve gotten way too comfy with their position in the personal computing
space and I too am regularly looking at the alternatives. If the last 5 years
are any indication of how the rumored ARM migration is going to be, then we’re
in for a really rough ride.
~~~
tonyedgecombe
_From the costly obsession with creating an ever-thinner MBP at the expense of
usability_
The latest MacBook Pro is thicker than its predecessor.
------
zackmorris
I just started writing up a big spiel about the constant daily agonies I
endure while using my older Apple hardware, but after a half an hour of it, I
abandoned it.
It would take me a few days to write out the list of grievances that started
when the iPhone arrived, and how Apple splitting its attention between desktop
and mobile began the long, slow decline, and how it is reminiscent of the old
Apple/Macintosh internal wars that almost brought down the company.
Basically what it comes down to is that Apple has a trillion dollars, and
that's great and everything, but it means that it's the establishment so it
can't innovate anymore. The bottom line is now its top priority.
For Apple to save its reputation in the eyes of geeks everywhere, it would
have to listen to any geek anywhere. It would have to stare at the ground
quietly as the grievances are aired, and then have the maturity to grok what
it's heard and do something about the problems.
I know it has teams of engineers working on this stuff day and night, and even
has a great CEO and everything else. But sometimes in spite of all of that
stuff, companies flounder. It's just especially tragic when it's this dream
company that got countless millions of people interested in tech initially.
Seriously, take a break Apple. Put all the grand plans aside for a while and
listen. I guess that's it. Sorry this came out kinda harsh, I'm not mad, I'm
just disappointed.
~~~
scarface74
Why do you think Apple cares about the “geek”?
~~~
dmitriid
Because somehow they still pretend to care about power and professional users.
~~~
ulisesrmzroche
Programmers are not the only power users
~~~
dmitriid
I know. That's why I didn't say programmers. The bad quality of their hardware
and software affects all power/pro users.
------
_bxg1
I don't disagree with the thesis, but I was disappointed to see yet another
rehashing of tired power-user nitpicks about MBPro hardware details, some of
which have even been phased out already. The opening made me hopeful I was
about to read a thoughtful piece about what's changed in Apple's soul, but
instead all I got was an unoriginal rant.
------
8bitsrule
The Apple I cared about died when the Macintosh arrived. Or was it when the
rainbow logo was replaced by chrome? Or was it when they abandoned Hypercard?
Or when I had to spend hours researching how to tweak the serial port to do
31250 bps I/O MIDI? Or when the serial ports disappeared and my n x $1000 of
serial-port hardware meant I should buy a new Mac.
By the time it released mobile phones with hard-wired batteries, the good
Apple was a distant memory. Borged.
------
ncmncm
Mention of Stockholm Syndrome, in the article, is the key.
Current customers are self-selected as willing to endure any degree of
degradation, provided it is arrived at via sufficiently small steps.
Apple is fully equipped and enabled to provide well-above-average quality
products and admirable service by the high premium they charge, but instead
they pocket the difference, every time. Customers are left with the dubious
benefit of price-signaling, which is increasingly shading into sucker-
signaling.
I get that, looking only at Microsoft, it is hard to imagine stepping down.
But that was never the only alternative.
------
agentdrtran
Ah good, I was worried we'd go more than a month without one of these.
------
fmajid
Pretty much how I feel, except I have less sadness and more anger. I haven’t
bought a Mac laptop since 2015, and I bought 4 PC ones to test my migration
path to Linux, even if it proceeds glacially due to having other things to do,
and in any case 15 years of workflow takes a while to switch.
------
m0zg
After 15 years of using Apple exclusively for my "creative" work (music,
photo, video), I've switched back to Windows 10 for those needs. Paid work is
still 100% Linux (including the laptop I'm typing this on), but I ain't payin'
$6K for a workstation, sorry Tim. Especially if I can't use an NVIDIA GPU in
it. And HP Z32 4K monitor costs $200 less than the Apple _display stand_.
------
hbrown92
I couldn’t agree more, I wish a new innovative platform would emerge. Apple is
too comfortable and their products just aren’t worth it anymore.
~~~
linguae
My dream platform would be essentially a revival of OpenDoc
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFJdjk2rq4E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFJdjk2rq4E)),
except it's built on top of the Common Lisp Object System, a dynamic object
system that supports multiple dispatch. Users can integrate components either
programmatically (like Unix pipes but with even more flexibility) or through a
GUI interface. GUI programs would be written in such a way where its UX is
highly flexible. The desktop environment should be fully themable, and GUI
programs written for this environment must comply with these themes. This
themability allows users to choose how they want their desktop environment to
look. If they like Material Design, they can use a desktop that adheres to
those standards. If they like classic UIs like those from the classic Mac OS
or Windows 95, then can choose those options and the programs would fit those
standards. They can use themes that have entirely different design standards.
The goals of my dream platform would be composability and flexibility, the
complete opposite of monolithic applications and opinionated UI/UX design.
This would run on Linux/BSD and would be implemented in Common Lisp, though
there will need to be some ways to allow programs written in other languages
to access CLOS objects since developers should be able to code in the
languages of their choice.
------
turtlebits
I thought everyone knew that you waited at least a year on Apple hardware and
software. I'm still on 10.14 and have no problems with it.
That said, I don't get the hate on number of ports. USB type-C is a godsend -
single cable to my monitor which provides power and USB hub.
I'm probably also in the minority on this one- I just got a new 16" Macbook
Pro work laptop, and I much prefer the keyboard on my 2018 15". The esc/touch
ID now being buttons are great. The speakers are amazing.
------
d3ntb3ev1l
I tried a world without Apple and lasted 2 months. I switched to a top of the
line Pixel phone (which is now in a box) and top of the link thinkpad. (Sold
it for next to nothing).
Overall I am glad we have choices. Everyone should make the ones that work for
them.
Give Google can’t make a decent android phone or watch after significant
acquisitions and investments, building real amazing things that make your life
better is hard.
I’m glad lots of people still are trying hard.
------
D13Fd
I disagree.
On ports, 4 is enough. At home and at work, I use standard Thunderbolt docking
stations, so ports on the laptop are irrelevant. When traveling, I typically
use at most 2 HDDs, so 4 ports is plenty. I’d honestly rather have the battery
life than the ports.
On the keyboard, they’ve fixed it in the new laptops. I agree it was awful for
a long stretch there.
On the annoying prompts, they are there for security, and I think they made
the right call generally. Everyone thinks security is so annoying, right up
until they get rooted.
On the Touch Bar, I think they missed the mark, but I appreciate the fact that
they are innovating. And in the end it’s an OK replacement for the function
keys (now that there is a physical escape key).
On the OS phoning out before running executables etc, I agree that it sounds
like a poor implementation overall. That said, I’ve never noticed any delays
from it in my 2016 MBP.
All that said, I always think it’s a good idea to try new things, and there is
no harm in switching brands/OS’s/etc. As others noted, so much software is
cross platform these days that switching is much less of a commitment than it
used to be.
------
topkai22
Apple is a phone company that has a side business in personal computers. This
is good for Apple, because the personal computer business as a whole has been
pretty stagnant for a long time. The article would have been much improved by
at least making a nod to the fact that their beloved computer make was now in
fact primarily making other devices
------
kilo_bravo_3
>it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the Apple I once loved is moribund
If there is anything more pathetic than an adult expressing love for a
publicly traded corporate entity regardless of what they make or where they're
from or how cool their marketing is, I haven't found it.
edit: Never mind-- writing a 1600 word essay about the lover-who-must-
file-10Qs who is disappointing you and then publishing it online is definitely
more pathetic.
Compare and contrast:
1\. it's increasingly obvious that the White Rock Beverage Company, Inc. I
once loved is moribund (followed by a SIXTEEN HUNDRED WORD ESSAY about how
they changed the recipe of Sioux City Root Beer and it sucks now)
2\. it's increasingly obvious that the Apple, Inc. I once loved is moribund
(followed by a SIXTEEN HUNDRED WORD ESSAY about how their laptops suck now)
------
theonemind
Hmm. The way I see it, Apple still seems to have the same basic attitude of
high-value of aesthetics over function and a "my-way-or-the-highway" attitude,
backed by just a bit less creativity in innovating actual function.
It doesn't seem that much different, but a little less satisfying, ultimately.
------
luord
I rarely use the mac that my company issued to me, but I couldn't place my
finger on why exactly. It's a general feeling that everything about it is
obnoxious and cumbersome. Probably the sum of all the little things (and more)
mentioned in this comment.
This was curiosly not the case the last time I was issued a mac, which I used
pretty much all the time and not just for work; essentially replacing my
personal (Linux) device. That was a 2016 model, when this trend had already
started, so I guess everything has exacerbated in the three years since.
------
purplezooey
Apple is not alone in making janky laptops since 2015. Most of them are junk.
They all get too hot, have too much brittle plastic, and low rez displays
unless you want to pay a high premium. I've been liking the Chuwi laptops for
$200. At least if you get a cheap laptop, pay a cheap price.
------
brandonmenc
> I bought a refurbished mid-2015 model which I love. From a utility
> perspective, it’s the best laptop they’ve ever made, with a bunch of stuff
> that you’d reasonably expect to find on a "pro" Apple laptop: namely, 8
> ports/slots
Only two of which are actual USB ports.
I'd still have to carry around a hub to use it with my mobile music production
setup.
------
stanislavb
OK, let's craft a way out.
------
monadic2
It's profit-driven software, dummy.
~~~
cosmotic
Apple seems to be driving their software toward what they _think_ the consumer
wants (and maybe even what the consumer says they want, or even choses to buy
because of), instead of what the customer _actually needs_. Yes, the customer
might feel enamored with what's being sold, but they could have been even more
enamored had Apple focused properly.
~~~
scarface74
Well, if it wasn’t what the _consumer_ wants, then why are consumers still
buying their products at a premium? Maybe it’s just not what a few outspoken
geeks want.
~~~
monadic2
Customers do buy what they want relative to other products in the market, but
absolute satisfaction could still be broadly low across the board. The
incentive to fix commonly complained about problems is tied entirely to the
speed to which their competitors respond—shared incentives prevent the market
from improving as a whole through competition.
This is especially true in markets where the capital investment required for
entry is in the billions of dollars, like smartphones, operating systems,
vehicles and other patented infrastructure (looking at you, john deere).
Overall the claim should be that “customers buy what they want from available
products”, so that the one can not claim the converse, that a customer is
necessarily satisfied with the products they purchase.
------
wedgeantilles
Buy something else then.
~~~
0xDEEPFAC
He is going to, as he says at the bottom of the article, and he has bought
2015 refurbished models to avoid the headaches.... lol?
------
thebiglebrewski
Amen
------
plerpin
I had a similarly emotional schisms with Apple, but back in 1997. I finally
became aware of Apple's penchant for designing "road apples" to fuck cost-
conscious consumers. I worked hard as a teen to buy my 62XX Performa, but
later when I found out that it was a piece of shit because Apple deliberately
designed it as a piece of shit... well, fuck them, really. No respect for
their buyers.
I switched to Windows in 1998 and didn't look back.
[https://lowendmac.com/2014/road-apples-second-class-
macs/](https://lowendmac.com/2014/road-apples-second-class-macs/)
~~~
scarface74
Apple has never catered to “cost conscience” computers. Even back in the early
80s the 8 bit Apple //e’s were more expensive than competitors. T
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why we will never see a 15-hour work week - showsover
http://www.sphere-engineering.com/blog/15-hour-work-week.html?
======
informatimago
Indeed, but the point is that we're about to see a systemic change.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: GatePlay, HTML5 logic circuit simulator - greglo
http://greglo.github.io/gateplay/
I created a logic circuit simulator called GatePlay - aimed for casual use by beginners/students, but the simulation is not over simplified.<p>I know of a couple of small bugs already, but feedback would be awesome!<p>Use it: http://greglo.github.io/gateplay/
GitHub: https://github.com/greglo/gateplay
======
greglo
I created a logic circuit simulator called GatePlay - aimed for casual use by
beginners/students, but the simulation is not over simplified.
I know of a couple of small bugs already, but feedback would be awesome!
Use it: [http://greglo.github.io/gateplay/](http://greglo.github.io/gateplay/)
GitHub:
[https://github.com/greglo/gateplay](https://github.com/greglo/gateplay)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Convert sqlite results to json consumable dicts [python] - khubo
https://github.com/khubo/sqliteJson
======
brudgers
If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN
guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)
~~~
khubo
I will do it. thanks :D
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
X is business value - teej
http://unethicalblogger.com/2011/11/18/x-as-business-value.html
======
hello-trolls
obvious
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What Happens When Web Services Do Not Backup? - martey
http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/01/13/who-protects-your-cloud-data/
======
tlrobinson
I'm not too surprised. I was just reading a blog post
([http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zoho_omnidrive_data_sta...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zoho_omnidrive_data_standards.php))
from a year ago, in which the CEO of Omnidrive posted a mistake-ridden comment
defending their decision not to use WebDAV. "The reason why you can't write a
WebDAV client in Javascript is because XmlHttpResponse() is a HTTP function,
not a WebDAV function" Huh?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
It's Harder to Read Code than to Write It - edw519
http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog/2007/12/22/reading-comprehension-will-make-you-a-better-programmer/
======
cduan
Great post, so true. One point I'd add, though: when you're writing code, make
it readable by commenting well! Sure it's obvious to you why you used a
ternary operator expression that uses a postfix-decrement operator and raises
an exception, but that's not clear to me. Until you tell me that you're
testing to see if an object reference count is zero, decrementing it if not,
and raising an error if so.
Good comments are tedious work and seem pointless at the time, but just wait
until you're reading your own code two weeks later, or even worse, someone
else's. The time you spent explaining yourself frequently makes up for the
time you'll waste later reimplementing what you did the last time around.
~~~
jamesbritt
> Until you tell me that you're testing to see if an object reference count is
> zero, decrementing it if not, and raising an error if so.
But that won't tell me _why_ your code is doing what it's doing
> Good comments are tedious work and seem pointless at the time,
Good comments should make you think about your code, not be some pain point
you are compelled to endure.
If you think it's tedious and pointless, there is a good chance the reader
(quite possibly yourself not to far in the future) will consider the comment
tedious and pointless as well.
~~~
cduan
> But that won't tell me why your code is doing what it's doing
Indeed, that's what the rest of the comment is for.
> Good comments should make you think about your code, not be some pain point
> you are compelled to endure.
Fair point. Yet the fact is that many people enjoy neither commenting nor
thinking about their own code, and that's not going to change. The question is
how to convince people to write good documentation in the face of intrinsic
motivations not to do so, and I think the best persuasion is a reminder of how
they will use that documentation later.
------
gruseom
It's harder to read _bad_ code than to write it.
~~~
parbo
No, _bad_ code is really easy to write.
~~~
gruseom
Am I missing something, or was one of us up too late? :)
~~~
brlewis
No, one of you didn't go to bed early enough. ;-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN/YC/PG: Dealing with tax and accounting - markbao
(Focusing on the US) So, how do you deal with tax (and on a side note, accounting?) If I remember correctly, YC companies are incorporated as C corps (which means both double taxation and a bit of hassle with IRS forms and such.)<p>More specifically, what does your company do with the profits at your company that are distributed to the founders? In other words, do you keep all the cash inside the company accounts and pay out a small living salary? Do you pay dividends based on the equity table of the startup (and thus dividend tax comes in?) Do you have an accounting firm or just do it all yourself and throw it in EFTPS?<p>PG, if you're reading this: what do the YC companies do in terms of tax? Does YC have accounting firm connections, or do YC companies manage it by themselves?<p>Why am I asking this? Albeit being really important for startups that are incorporated to consider, I don't hear much about tax talked about here, for something that takes a minimum of 15% of your cash to the FDA^W IRS.
======
pg
As a rule, technology startups don't distribute profits till they approach
senescence and investors no longer trust them to invest their profits in their
own expansion. E.g. Microsoft, which was founded in 1975, didn't pay dividends
till 2003.
YC companies usually hire accountants when they raise enough money to. Before
that the founders keep track of finances themselves using Quickbooks (or a
shoebox full of receipts).
~~~
j_baker
This is going to sound dumb, but why do you use the word senescence here
rather than maturity? They both seem to mean the same thing. Does it have some
specific business meaning, or is it just another way of saying the same thing?
~~~
pg
Senescence implies decay.
~~~
j_baker
I see. So a difference in connotation.
------
petenixey
If you don't have a significant number of investors then dividends can be a
good way to save on income tax. If you do have investors however you're
throwing company money back to them which is not good for you and not that
good for them.
For smaller companies the vast majority of accounting is not accounting but
just book keeping. This is actually easier than it seems (it took me 4 years
to realise this though) and is much easier if you use www.xero.com than
Quickbooks. I hated all the usual "accounting" packages as they didn't guide
me. Xero does a great job and whilst not perfect is definitely the best of the
bunch and worth the monthly fee.
From having run 3 (small) companies this is what I now focus on:
1\. Making sure I keep a note of everything that I spend and what it was (if
you ignore everything else, _do this_ )
2\. Keep a note of which account I spent it from e.g. petty cash, bank
account, paid directly by me
3\. Making my "list of accounts" (i.e. categories of spending) meaningful to
me and ignoring all the numbers that accountants give to them. Whether it's
"domestic flights", "taxis", "computer hardware" or "web services" - I make
sure it's a category that's meaningful and actionable
4\. Paying my salary taxes when they're due & use a payroll company
5\. (easy if you've done the others well) Filing my tax return on time
It's through getting all of these wrong that I've learned which ones were
right :)
One last thing that I've found _very helpful_ is having a google spreadsheet
form with a link on my iPhone homepage to enter the amont and detail of
purchases as I make them. This makes it much easier when it comes to
remembering what each individual bank transaction was for when you import
them.
~~~
kevinelliott
The only problem is, once you do desire to hire an accountant, they often want
you to use Quickbooks. And, this can often be good because it'll save on how
much time they spend on your file since they can easily open the file in their
own Quickbooks, and thus reduces their fees. However, the front load to learn
and understand Quickbooks costs you a lot of your own time.
~~~
swanhunt
They want you to use Quickbooks (or any other software they request) because
they don't want to have a learning curve. It's your business, so find someone
that is willing to work with you. Besides a few laws in physics, everything is
negotiable.
~~~
kevinelliott
Indeed, but sometimes having flexibility ends up costing real dollars.
------
kevinelliott
If you have put capital into the company, and assuming you did not loan it to
the company but simply provided capital, you can track that in "capital
accounts" in your accounting software, and then as profits are made you can
withdraw that money, without any tax consequences, up to the amount you have
contributed to the company. For any amount above contributions taxes must be
paid. The corporation must pay corporate tax on any of the revenue it
received, with exception to any deductions that match up, etc.
If you have only provided sweat equity and are taking a draw against the
income of the business, you must pay taxes on that income, in addition to the
corporate tax (double taxation as you mentioned).
In most cases, startups seem to be keeping as much money in the business and
taking as small of a draw as possible. This is for a variety of reasons:
avoiding double taxation while the business is young, having more capital
available for growing the business, having more money available for investing
than would be available if you drew the cash and took the tax hit, etc.
But remember, people have to eat, and need a roof over their heads. Unhappy
miserable people probably lend to lower productivity; some people would
probably say the opposite, that uncomfortable unhappy situations make a person
more jazzed up to "get things done" but I don't personally like that form of
motivation.
It makes a lot of sense to hire an accountant, specifically one that
understands startups if possible. Sure, you could figure out all the
technicalities of running the books on your own, and then managing the tax
filings, but it's more complicated than personal taxes, and you're risking
your startup legally. Also, these guys know what they are doing and can knock
it out of the park, letting you focus on what you do best -- building your
startup.
------
swanhunt
The problem is that these questions really should be tailored to the company's
details because that's how the decisions are made. YC sets up C corps so they
can easily issue shares to VC. They would probably retain the cash as a part
of the agreements with the VC to spend on growing the business. If that's not
your plan, then alternative organization might make sense and will eliminate
some of your tax fears. Also, if you have more of a lifestyle type business,
then distributions would make sense. Do you start to see how the intent and
details change the advice? Talking to someone when you are setting something
new up or having a major change makes sense. That said, don't worry too much
about the taxes. If you are so worried about not giving the government a cut
that you don't make money, then you lost the point. What is it specifically
that you want to know here? Details are what you need to give to get the
advice you are looking for.
------
speby
It just depends. If the profit towards the end of the year isn't too bad, it's
possible to pay as much of that out as possible as a bonus to founders and/or
employees. Obviously, the company pays taxes on the wages
(state/federal/medicare/etc) and you personally pay income taxes, too. In some
cases, this may be a lower, overall tax hit than paying the same amount out to
founders as dividends only. It certainly depends on the total amount in
question, too.
It is possible to also retain most, or all, of the profits at the end of the
year within the company. As was stated, though, corporate income taxes must be
paid on that. Up to about $75,000, the tax rate is pretty low and not a huge
deal but after that, corporate income taxes are pretty steep and as a young
business, it's definitely good practice not to give Uncle Sam a dime more than
you have to so if you have a huge windfall of profits, you might reconsider
whether to retain it all or not.
Another option is to report as much expense as possible so as to have
deductions against the corporation's income. Naturally, this means spending
actual money and giving it to someone else but it also means avoiding tax. So
if you can do this with things the business needs (or even paying for some
things way in advance and up-front), the loss in the time value of $ is still
far less than the tax consequence that otherwise would have been incurred
(example: pay for all of your hosting needs 6 months in advance before Dec
31st, provided you are on a cash accounting basis and a calendar fiscal year)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Net Neutrality Protesters Arrested At Google HQ - hammock
http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/occupygoogle-arrests/#
======
jack-r-abbit
From the article: _Google has generally been a strong advocate of net
neutrality but the OccupyGoogle protestors argue the company could be doing
more to champion the cause at this critical moment – hence their occupation of
Mountain View HQ._
I'm confused. Is it smart to find someone who is generally on your side and
then set up camps on their campus and disrupt them... calling for them to do
_more_? Isn't the _Occupy_ movement traditionally where you occupy the space
of entities you oppose and try to make them suffer until they change? It
doesn't makes sense to do that to someone you want on your side. I don't get
it.
------
jonstjohn
Did this protest make it into the event? I did hear some yelling during one of
the keynote talks.
~~~
mmastrac
The yelling during the keynote (at least the second one) was someone
protecting killing robots and NSA integration.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The perils of microtask work - okket
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/09/in-most-cases-online-microtask-work-can-be-a-raw-deal-un-study-finds/
======
tenpoundhammer
I think this particular example is a great example of what's difficult about
the world right now.
Technology has opened many new opportunities for corporations and for everyday
people.
However, the pace of new opportunities is way faster than the ability that
governments have to regulate the new opportunities. It would seem that
companies, entrepreneurs, and silicon valley have realized this and are using
it as a business strategy. If I had to sum up the business strategy, I would
say "Find a regularity system that can be exploited by rapid innovation".
While it's always been a business strategy to exploit legal loopholes, I think
the difference is that companies exploit an entire regulatory system which is
harder to update and takes longer. Airbnb, Uber, Mechanical Turk, are all
examples of exploiting a regulatory system by creating a product and then
quickly scaling it up to mass adoption before the practices introduced can be
outlawed.
Once something has been massively adopted it's difficult to stop completely.
While the word exploit seems inherently negative I'm not trying to make
judgment value, I think it's the correct description. I don't have a strong
opinion about any of these companies or exploiting regulatory systems.
However, I do think that democracy needs to find a way to keep up with the
forces taking advantage of its inherent systematic boundaries, such as being
slow to react. I'm not sure what needs to change but I think when you have
many US citizens participating in completely unregulated labor markets there
is a problem that needs to be solved.
~~~
394549
> I think the difference is that companies exploit an entire regulatory system
> which is harder to update and takes longer. Airbnb, Uber, Mechanical Turk,
> are all examples of exploiting a regulatory system by creating a product and
> then quickly scaling it up to mass adoption before the practices introduced
> can be outlawed.
> Once something has been massively adopted it's difficult to stop completely.
> ...
> However, I do think that democracy needs to find a way to keep up with the
> forces taking advantage of its inherent systematic boundaries, such as being
> slow to react. I'm not sure what needs to change but I think when you have
> many US citizens participating in completely unregulated labor markets there
> is a problem that needs to be solved.
I think the solution is that it be made _very clear_ to the companies pushing
the regulatory boundaries (and their fans) that they should be prepared to
have their business models destroyed when the regulatory environment catches
up.
Call it "Creative Destruction 2.0."
~~~
michaelbuckbee
This feels too harsh. It's not that either the business models need destroyed
or that regulations should never change, but that some middle ground is worked
out that benefits society at large.
All the services we're talking about have both real utility and (for the most
part) unplanned costs and impacts.
The Taxi Medallion system is/was horribly corrupt and inefficient. Uber (for
all their faults) is an improvement in terms of safety, convenience and less
discriminatory practices.
Similarly, AirBnB isn't defacto a horrible presence in cities (tons of great
experiences), but hosts should abide by neighborhood norms, pay hotel taxes,
etc.
~~~
NeedMoreTea
Uber, for all its faults, _may_ be a vast improvement on the USA approach to
taxis.
In many of the other countries Uber has presence it has done damage to a
sector that was not horribly corrupt or inefficient. Yet the workers and
governments still have to react to rule breaking that effectively treats
everywhere on the planet as some US city with a broken and corrupt taxi
system.
In the UK I would call Uber a very marginal increase in convenience (all taxis
have apps if that's your preferred method), but _absolutely and demonstrably_
significantly worse in terms of safety, discriminatory practices, and worker's
incomes. So overall I don't think it is too harsh, at least here.
------
satyrnein
I think the concept of "informed consent" is applicable here.
Are the workers informed? Much like the question of whether Uber drivers
properly factor in the cost of maintenance, it's possible that workers do not
have the right expectations of what they will earn, so articles like this are
helpful in adding context and information. Let it get around that these tasks
make you less than minimum wage.
Do the workers consent? Obviously they consent in at least some sense, so
comparisons to slavery (as in the comments to the original article) are
overblown. These workers are free to seek other options. However, it's also
possible that they are correctly concluding this is their best option, due to
lack of opportunity in their area, health reasons that make them immobile,
etc. In that case, then two cheers for MTurk for improving their lives, to at
least some extent.
~~~
jakelazaroff
I take issue with your conclusion that "if the workers are correctly
concluding this their best option, then cheers to Mechanical Turk for
improving their lives to some extent". A less generous interpretation is that
Amazon has identified a cohort of people with limited employment options and
found a way to effectively pay them less than minimum wage.
Is any job better than none to an unemployed person? Maybe — but we need money
to live, and labor laws exist precisely to prevent employers from exploiting
that.
~~~
twerpy_d
The same wage that's a slap in the face to an American can be quite lucrative
to someone in a lesser developed nation. Hits for pennies are a god send to
those folks.
~~~
jakelazaroff
Maybe so, but the article, parent comment and my comment are all referring to
people for whom microtasks are _not_ a lucrative source of income.
------
sjbase
> The survey counted unpaid work as "time spent looking for tasks, earning
> qualifications, researching requesters through online forums, communicating
> with requesters or clients and leaving reviews, as well as unpaid/rejected
> tasks/tasks ultimately not submitted."
These hidden costs are almost identical in the world of independent freelance
work. Similar for "gig" workers as well. An Uber/Lyft driver told me he aims
for 10 hours per day, which usually takes an extra 4 hours (14 total) of
unpaid relocating, waiting around, etc.
My hope is that people view this as the cost of autonomy, but I fear most
people aren't pricing it in.
~~~
tomjen3
Presumably they would find out about those costs relatively fast.
But I mean those costs have always been part of the reason freelancers are
more expensive than employees (the other being the increased flexibility).
What seems to happen now is that, increasingly, free lancers are cheaper,
which suggests that employees are paid above the price they could expect, if
there weren't rules about minimum wage.
~~~
s73v3r_
Freelancers had the ability to set their price. With most of these gig apps,
you have exactly zero say in how much is being charged.
------
emodendroket
Honestly, nothing here is surprising. It's amazing that this stuff operates
without scrutiny.
------
jstanley
I don't see the problem. People wouldn't do the tasks if they didn't think it
was beneficial to them.
~~~
nkrisc
People will sacrifice well-being in one area (ex.: mental health) for well-
being in an other area (ex.: money for housing/food). That doesn't mean it
isn't a problem. You seem to be assuming a perfectly rational world...
~~~
jstanley
You seem to be assuming that you know what's best for other people. Why not
leave it up to them?
If you were to shut down MTurk I don't think the people who rely on it for
money would thank you.
~~~
crc32
Your question amounts to "Why do we have employment law"?
~~~
beaconstudios
more like "should we be creating employment law for microtask work?" which is
more of an open question, especially if you consider what such legislation
might look like and what effects it may have on the workers and clients alike.
~~~
xg15
What is so fundamentally different about microtask work that it would warrant
no employment regulations?
~~~
beaconstudios
well, a ton of things - it's much closer to freelance work than employment.
Not that I'm even advocating for keeping it deregulated specifically - I was
making the point that when considering regulation, the (often accidental)
effects of said regulation need to be considered. You don't want to fall afoul
of the Cobra effect and end up destroying a good thing.
Regulation should be introduced to fix specific issues, not just because there
aren't any yet. Especially if it's filling an important financial gap for
people with low incomes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Breathe – Peripheral Breath Trainer - filipeisho
https://github.com/filipeisho/breathe/
======
amar-laksh
KISS Solution for Linux: imv breathe.gif
-> imv: [https://github.com/eXeC64/imv](https://github.com/eXeC64/imv) (or any other really lightweight gif viewer)
-> breathe.gif: [https://quietkit.com/img/box-breathing-4x-v03.gif](https://quietkit.com/img/box-breathing-4x-v03.gif)
-> Set it to a custom shortcut and press q to close window.
~~~
b3ting
I put this gif into a floating window, with a chrome extension using the
Picture-in-Picture API: [https://googlechrome.github.io/samples/picture-in-
picture/](https://googlechrome.github.io/samples/picture-in-picture/)
Chrome extension:
[https://github.com/b3ting/breathe](https://github.com/b3ting/breathe)
~~~
filipeisho
I love it! I thought it wasn't going to stay on top when I switched to another
app but it did, it works great
------
geoelectric
I love this. I have ADHD and anxiety/stress issues where having occasional
reminders to concentrate on myself and get back in touch with things like this
actually really helps.
One quick comment. Aside from speed control, which wouldn't be terrible, being
able to resize it or park it in my menu bar (prefer that) would go a long way
towards usability.
~~~
filipeisho
I am glad you like it! This was a quick demo to see if it was useful for
someone. I was hoping to implement the same idea on the menu bar and on the
touch bar (for people who find a window annoying). A quick question: Why would
you like to resize the window? To make it bigger or smaller?
~~~
geoelectric
Smaller. I just need to see a hint in my peripheral vision to know I should
use it, and only need it to be very obvious while I am using it.
If you parked it in the menu bar, I could drop it down like a hanger when I
needed it.
I probably would _not_ suggest pulsing the menu bar icon itself or at least
making that optional. Having something constantly pulsing in the corner of my
eye wouldn't be great for flow. Having an occasional reminder to drop down the
hanger might be nice though.
~~~
interleave
I had the exact same experience. I put together a bare-bones menu bar app for
macOS. See my comment above for the link!
Edit: It does pulse within the menu bar which works for me, please let me know
if you find it distracting.
------
hombre_fatal
It should change color (even just shade) as a function of its radius so you
can learn where it is in the cycle from deep peripheral vision.
~~~
nsomaru
How would this work? My understanding is that there’s no colour in peripheral
vision. I guess a change in shade/intensity would be enough?
~~~
BugWatch
There is minimal color, yes, but I suppose one's brain will learn to "fake it"
once it figures out size-color correlation during those times you're paying it
direct attention.
------
owly
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/awesome-breathing-pacer-
timer/...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/awesome-breathing-pacer-
timer/id1453087953) I’ve been using Awesome Breathing. Presumptuous name but
simple and does the job.
------
voisin
For those interested, James Nestor’s book, “Breath: The New Science of a Lost
Art” [0] is absolutely fantastic on this subject.
[0]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48890486](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48890486)
------
apazzolini
It would be cool to control Phillips Hue bulbs on this cadence as more of a
background cue to breathe
------
hartator
That's awesome. Is there a way to custom speed or it's actually what you
should aim at? It feels super slow for me.
~~~
kioleanu
That's actually how it should be. I think you should aim for 4 to 5 breaths
per minute, I don't remember the exact number.
The technique is described by Kelly McGonigal in "The Willpower Instict" as
being the only scientifically proven "quick hack" to make your brain relax and
focus.
~~~
filipeisho
Yes! I hardcoded the app to make 4 seconds breathing in, 4 seconds holding
your breath, 4 seconds breathing out and 4 seconds holding your breath again.
~~~
JohnKacz
Perhaps instead of allowing full control you could have different modes? I
like using the 4-7-8 Method[1] but there are lots of different breath
exercises.
[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-C_VNM1Vd0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-C_VNM1Vd0)
~~~
filipeisho
I am quite new to breathing exercises but I also like the 4-7-8 exercise a
lot! I was thinking about implementing the most known exercises and then have
the option to create your own exercises. A lot of people have been pointing
out that the app was way too slow and that it was difficult for them to keep
up... I think that maybe if they can increase progressively the duration with
custom exercises they can adapt better (it's just a theory)
------
interleave
I love this so much. Thank you!
Especially for the "peripheral" part: For me it works better to "check-in" to
the ongoing process once in a while than having to remember to start an app
etc.
What didn't work for me was the window-based approach because I could never
find a good place to keep it. For whatever reason, I happen to use all four
corners of my screen all the time (!).
But I still wanted to have something peripheral! So with your inspiration, I
created a basic MacOs Menu Bar application that animates the 4:4:4 ratio
breathing. This works better for me personally now.
-> [https://github.com/akaalias/menu-bar-breathing](https://github.com/akaalias/menu-bar-breathing)
------
michaelbruce
Cool! Breathing ex are so powerful. I founded moonbird which is a personalised
breathing trainer!
Http://www.moonbird.life
------
jedimastert
I just saw an EDC video[0] that featured a Komuso Shift[1], which is basically
just a small metal tube that acts as a regulator to slow your breathing.
I don't know what component of HackerNews enjoys "luxury" EDC items, but the
idea of a hysical breath regulator is somewhat interesting to me.
[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVMGOfKdHQg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVMGOfKdHQg)
[1]: [https://www.komusodesign.com/](https://www.komusodesign.com/)
~~~
evanlivingston
Yo, is that an $85 dollar straw?
~~~
amelius
> which is basically just a small metal tube that acts as a regulator to slow
> your breathing.
I'm curious if COVID facemasks have a similar beneficial effect on breathing.
------
mopierotti
Very cool. It would be nice if it was cross-platform, but I understand that
that would have been a bit beyond your 5 minute scope. (I use Mac, Windows,
and Linux roughly the same amount daily)
~~~
schwinn140
Agreed! How about possibly converting this to an in-browser web app to get
around the platform hurdles?
~~~
filipeisho
Someone on the comments implemented a chrome extension that opens up a gif
with the same ratios as breathe (4-4-4). It works great to be honest. Here is
the link:
[https://github.com/b3ting/breathe](https://github.com/b3ting/breathe)
------
nrjklk
This is great! I think this would be quite cool as a chrome plugin (solves
cross platform issue). You could also make the circle bigger every 20 mins or
so to remind you to breathe and avoid distractions. Kindof like a pomodoro
timer but where the break is breathing.
~~~
filipeisho
Hi, I am glad you like it! Someone on the comments implemented a chrome
extension that opens up a gif with the same ratios as breathe (4-4-4). It
works great to be honest. Here is the link:
[https://github.com/b3ting/breathe](https://github.com/b3ting/breathe)
I think that the idea of breathe reminding you to do breathing exercises
during regular intervals is great!
------
pivo
Nice! I've been using for the last 10 minutes and find I sometimes miss the
visual cues on my big monitor. It might be nice to have an option for subtle
audible cues as well.
~~~
filipeisho
I tried some iOS apps and some of them had audible cues as very low chords
(they were very relaxing) but since I am someone that listens to music a lot I
thought they would bother other people... Quick question: imagine I have a
magic way to make you not miss any visual cues from the app, do you think it
would still be nicer to have audible cues?
~~~
pivo
Not knowing what you're thinking about makes it hard to answer that question
but I'd be happy to give it a try!
------
weego
There's a similar visual shared on mental health discords when people are
suffering anxiety or panic attacks, though granted likely with a less accurate
breath cycle
[https://media1.tenor.com/images/80b6db690c2f50bd9a876ca0f70e...](https://media1.tenor.com/images/80b6db690c2f50bd9a876ca0f70e82d6/tenor.gif?itemid=8455215)
------
boncom99
It's so cool! I've been trying it for a few hours and it really work! Good
job!
------
Kiro
Can't breathe this slow even if I try. I normally breathe 30 times a minute.
~~~
GavinMcG
If you're breathing both in and out 30 times per minute, you should probably
speak to a doctor. There are a number of medical concerns that could be behind
that, and rapid (and therefore shallow) breaths can fail to rid the body of
carbon dioxide, making your blood overly acidic.
~~~
Kiro
> making your blood overly acidic.
What are the symptoms of that? I'm almost 40 and never had any health issues
so far. The breaths are shallow but I'm surprised to hear my breathing is
abnormal so I should probably speak to a doctor.
~~~
GavinMcG
> Slowly developing, stable respiratory acidosis (as in COPD [chronic
> obstructive pulmonary disease]) may be well tolerated, but patients may have
> memory loss, sleep disturbances, excessive daytime sleepiness, and
> personality changes. Signs include gait disturbance, tremor, blunted deep
> tendon reflexes, myoclonic jerks, asterixis, and papilledema. [0]
So, quite possibly nothing, or nothing you'd realize. Bodies are adept at
compensating. But there are potential concerns, and also, a chronic (and
compensated for) issue can acutely deteriorate.
I am not a doctor, though.
[0] [https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/endocrine-and-
meta...](https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/endocrine-and-metabolic-
disorders/acid-base-regulation-and-disorders/respiratory-acidosis)
------
ghostbrainalpha
So simple and such a good idea.
Have you noticed a difference in your anxiety or productivity?
~~~
filipeisho
I have been using it all day and I felt way calmer. For me (I think I am a
fast breather) it feels like I am meditating when I am able to follow the
breathing exercise. Since it has been a day since I started using it I can't
tell anything about productivity but what I can tell you I have been working
happier :)
------
guzik
How about having a real-time feedback regarding your breathing rate?
~~~
weego
And how would it know your breathing rate?
~~~
rks404
Apple Watch but tied around your throat?
~~~
nrjklk
lol
------
flaque
I love this
~~~
filipeisho
Thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: XZA.FR – a modern URL shortener - xza-fr
https://xza.fr
======
caraujorenan
Got the following error: # ActionController::InvalidAuthenticityToken in
ShortnController#create > The browser returned a 'null' origin for a request
with origin-based forgery protection turned on. This usually means you have
the 'no-referrer' Referrer-Policy header enabled, or that you the request came
from a site that refused to give its origin. This makes it impossible for
Rails to verify the source of the requests. Likely the best solution is to
change your referrer policy to something less strict like same-origin or
strict-same-origin. If you cannot change the referrer policy, you can disable
origin checking with the
Rails.application.config.action_controller.forgery_protection_origin_check
setting
~~~
xza-fr
OK yes actually i see how you hit that error. fixed and thanks for telling me
------
xza-fr
note that i haven't actually uploaded xza.fr/public/tar/source-code.tar yet,
but will do soon!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Async Requests and Downloads Without Thinking About It (Python) - jelloslinger
http://aiodownload.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
======
jelloslinger
Here is a python package I wrote a few months ago to make async requests and
downloads more convenient. I haven't had much time to work on it lately so I
thought I would give it some more exposure to the wild. Constructive feedback
welcome.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Grade levels could be a thing of the past in schools focused on competency - tokenadult
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/say-goodbye-fifth-grade-k-12-schools-test-competency-based-learning/
======
paulhauggis
In a PC world that we live in, with gems such as "everyone needs to get a
trophy so they don't feel left out" that created the cultural problem we are
now having with Millennials, I seriously doubt this will ever take hold in our
public school systems.
I wish we could allow smarter kids to excel, but to many, this will be seen as
'unfair' and an 'inequality that needs to be solved' by bringing everybody
down to the lowest level.
It seems to be the answer to every other 'inequality' these days...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Appsumo + Crate = 10gb lifetime account! - sahillavingia
http://appsumo.com/lets-crate-lifetime-file-sharing-promo/
======
mbyrne
I believe the correct equation is:
Appsumo + Crate - $25 = 10gb lifetime account!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger - specialp
http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102
======
japhyr
I'm teaching a high school science class right now called "Are We Alone?" It's
a survey class of what kind of objects exist in the Universe, and how we're
scientifically attempting to answer the question of whether life exists
anywhere other than Earth.
It's going to be fun sharing this with the class today!
------
specialp
We ramped up capacity. Massive traffic! Also, if you are looking for a good
article on this from a field expert, we have a Physics Viewpoint on it here:
[http://physics.aps.org/articles/v9/17](http://physics.aps.org/articles/v9/17)
~~~
mutagen
I also enjoyed the article on the LIGO site at
[http://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-
GW150914/index.php](http://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-
GW150914/index.php)
Solid coverage without the fluff.
------
rubidium
LIGO's mirror:
[https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0122/P150914/014/LIGO-P150914%3A...](https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0122/P150914/014/LIGO-P150914%3ADetection_of_GW150914.pdf)
------
rubidium
It's a wonderful data and a well-written paper. Really just remarkable.
They have a few minor events that seem less likely to lead to anything, but to
capture a big one like this at the start of 16 days of collection is a gift.
------
java-man
Thank you for posting a direct link to the paper!
------
dskhatri
B.P. Abbott must be getting a lot of inquiries :)
Edit: Abbott is, when alphabetically arranged, the first name of a long list
of authors.
------
AliCollins
Is this paper mirrored anywhere else yet? The Phys. Rev. Letters site appears
to be a bit overloaded!
~~~
mhandley
Here's the abstract:
On September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC the two detectors of the Laser
Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory simultaneously observed a
transient gravitational-wave signal. The signal sweeps upwards in frequency
from 35 to 250 Hz with a peak gravitational-wave strain of 1.0×10−21. It
matches the waveform predicted by general relativity for the inspiral and
merger of a pair of black holes and the ringdown of the resulting single black
hole. The signal was observed with a matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of
24 and a false alarm rate estimated to be less than 1 event per 203 000 years,
equivalent to a significance greater than 5.1σ. The source lies at a
luminosity distance of 410+160−180 Mpc corresponding to a redshift
z=0.09+0.03−0.04. In the source frame, the initial black hole masses are
36+5−4M⊙ and 29+4−4M⊙, and the final black hole mass is 62+4−4M⊙, with
3.0+0.5−0.5M⊙c2 radiated in gravitational waves. All uncertainties define 90%
credible intervals. These observations demonstrate the existence of binary
stellar-mass black hole systems. This is the first direct detection of
gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger.
~~~
qubex
I dabbled with GR many years ago, so I'd have been surprised if this hadn't
turned up sooner or later... but My God, look at that... three earth masses-
worth of radiated gravitational energy, I can hardly fathom that.
~~~
selimthegrim
I think that's three solar masses.
~~~
qubex
My bad, you're right — my astonishment has risen by orders of magnitude.
~~~
selimthegrim
Intermediate mass black holes are 100 to 1 million solar masses.
------
cozzyd
wow, I hope some of my APS member dues go to improving the servers!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Will you consider using this Whatsapp tool? - bthn
Hello, I started to make a tool for managing and automating mine and my clients' whatsapp accounts 2-3 months ago and day by day I improved this tool according to my needs.<p>Right now, it's so easy to use. You will register from project website and it will give you a token and with that token you can send/listen messages and also you can still use your whatsapp account at your phone.<p>With using this project, I managed to create a whatsapp poll & whatsapp wall(streamed incoming media messages to a TV) &multi agent whatsapp support desk easily and every developer will be able to create tools (or bots) with this project.<p>I also consider integrating this project with services like IFTT&Zapier for extend my audience to power-users not only developers.<p>Here is a quick demo; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIfAUozWNPU<p>Question is; I want to sell this to developers like 20$/mo do you think it's nice product?<p>Disclaimer: Please do not give legal advice.
======
brudgers
I watched the video. I still don't understand what it is clearly. I don't
understand "why I should care" by which I mean how is using the potential
product so much better than the alternatives that it offsets the risk of a
dependency on Whatsapp's platform (and based on not wanting legal advice I
suspect that there is risk involved in taking this kind of dependency on
Whatsapp's platform).
Curious as to alternatives and their shortcomings.
~~~
bthn
you are scanning a qr code from project's website or terminal, and boom you
are able to create chat bots with your Whatsapp account.
I'm not using any open sourced and problematic libraries(which are replacing
whatsapp client) like whatsapi&yowsup, I developed more secure, robost and
undetectable method and want to create a product.
also what are the solutions did you mentioned?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is Lisp a Blub Language? - ehsanul
http://coding.derkeiler.com/Archive/Lisp/comp.lang.lisp/2007-07/msg00060.html
======
Zak
I find in certain cases that I'm looking across the power spectrum from the
Lisp point of view. I recently ported some code from Haskell to Clojure and
occasionally found myself missing Haskell's amazingly expressive type system.
Trying to give Lisp such a type system would make a lot of things that are
currently easy in Lisp hard or impossible.
There are certain kinds of mutually exclusive features that make certain kinds
of problems easier or harder. Examples that come to mind are mutability vs
immutability and static typing vs dynamic. Most of the things I sometimes find
lacking in the Lisps I'm familiar with are of this sort.
~~~
silentbicycle
> There are certain kinds of mutually exclusive features that make certain
> kinds of problems easier or harder.
Right. The fundamental problem with the whole "blub" argument is that there
isn't one linear continuum of language power. There are problems for which
Erlang's supervision hierarchy and distribution primitives or Prolog's
backtracking are a killer feature. This doesn't mean they're "More Powerful
than Lisp", just better suited to certain kinds of problems because they
committed to some very specific trade-offs.
But, these same trade-offs have far-reaching implications for the language
semantics, so you can't just use macros to graft them on after the fact. You
can embed a mini-Prolog in Lisp, sure, but adding fully native logic variables
(as in Prolog or Oz) would be far from trivial.
------
jjs
Blubness of a language comes from its practitioners not knowing about useful
features from a higher-level language (or not grasping the utility of such a
feature).
If your favorite Lisp lacks a certain feature you want, it's easy to add,
making Lisp the anti-Blub.
(And if your favorite Lisp makes it hard to add it, you've picked the wrong
favorite!)
~~~
olavk
Some features are not easy to add. For example, one important feature of
Python is that the language is designed with consistency and readability in
mind, and combined with the "preferably one obvious way to do it"-ideal means
that code written by other people is easier to read and understand. This makes
code and knowledge sharing easier, and the network effect creates a blooming
ecosystem for libraries.
How do you easily add that feature to your favorite Lisp?
~~~
floater
Your example is a feature of the Python philosophy (or community) not the
Python language.
~~~
olavk
The philosophy is hardcoded in the design of the language. For example, the
BDFL has explicitly stated he doesn't want macros because it will hurt the
readability (1), and he rejected support for multi-line anonymous functions
because he didn't find a syntax which he thought was clear and readable
enough. Clearly this is a very different philosophy than the one behind Lisp.
(1) The quote from Guido: _Programmable syntax is not in Python's future -- or
at least it's not for Python 3000. The problem IMO is that everybody will
abuse it to define their own language. And the problem with that is that it
will fracture the Python community because nobody can read each other's code
any more._
([http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-3000/2006-April/0002...](http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-3000/2006-April/000286.html))
~~~
swannodette
_Programmable syntax is not in Python's future -- or at least it's not for
Python 3000. The problem IMO is that everybody will abuse it to define their
own language. And the problem with that is that it will fracture the Python
community because nobody can read each other's code any more_
I like Python and use it everyday, and I this is simply FUD. Sadly it's the
kind of argument I hear coming too often from people in the Python community
unfamiliar with Lisp when attempting to critique powerful Lisps.
~~~
demallien
Is it really FUD though? Having gone through a few bruising experiences with
different libraries having incompatible object systems built in Javascript, I
have come to appreciate the advantages of only having one way to implement
certain types of structures.
It doesn't need to be hard-coded into the language though - a decent Standard
Library showing how things _should_ be done, and a culture maintained by the
community would be enough. That would allow everyone the freedom to do what
they want if they say a definate advantage in breaking with convention, whilst
making it easy for people to generate libraries that are interoperable...
~~~
lispm
I think macros do have certain disadvantages (they make debugging seem to look
harder, more syntax, etc, ...).
But I find things like extensive use of MOP also make maintenance of
programming more challenging.
Common Lisp has never tried to take away 'power' from users.
Scheme had a different philosophy: reduce everything to the most basic and
pleasing constructs. But that approach has its own disadvantages - if one
arrives at the bottom of programming language constructs, working 'upwards' is
a problem.
Take for example the argument lists: Common Lisp has things like keywords,
optional and rest arguments. Plain Scheme only has rest arguments. Adding
other argument interpretation is possible, but is only really use if the
language would support it and would make use of it.
------
programnature
Pattern matching is the missing feature. I keep thinking about switching to
Clojure from Mathematica, but then I think "How can anyone get anything done
in Clojure? It doesn't even have pattern matching."
Its not something that can get patched in a library, because the way symbols
and evaluation need to work is different (and simpler) than in a Lisp. There
is no distinction between macro-s and nonmacros - everything is just a tree
transformation.
The main benefit of first-class pattern matching is that your function
definitions get a lot more succinct and expressive, since you can encode quite
a lot of information in the structure of the arguments, and elegantly unfold
the definition from the short and common case to a parameterized sequence of
generalizations.
~~~
noelwelsh
What exactly do you mean by pattern matching? I understand it in the ML sense.
The Lisp language I use, PLT Scheme, has extensible pattern matching:
<http://docs.plt-scheme.org/reference/match.html> The implementation isn't
simple but the techniques are published (see "Pattern matching for Scheme"
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.53.2...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.53.2004))
so any Lisp language could implement this. Clojure has less powerful pattern
matching, but it does the most common stuff.
The linked article is really about Common Lisp, where the issue is a standard
that hasn't been updated in a long time. This doesn't stop individual
implementations from making their own advances but in my limited knowledge of
the CL implementations this doesn't seem to be occurring.
~~~
programnature
Good question. Here is what I mean:
1\. Pattern matching as the basis for function definition, to determine which
code executes and expedite argument destructuring.
2\. Patterns themselves should have first-class representation (preferably
symbolic), so you can generate them in one place and use them in another.
3\. Implicit in this is that the structure of the language is systematic
enough to make this worthwhile, meaning something s-expression based, or
perhaps something like Scala that achieves similar ends in a much different
way.
~~~
hga
How close does Qi
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_%28programming_language%29>) come to what
you desire?
------
mixmax
Aren't all languages blub languages depending on the usecase?
If you write AI programs c++ is a blub language. How can you get _anything_
done without macros?
If you program drivers PHP is a blub language. How can you get _anything_ done
without direct access to the hardware?
If you're doing webapps lisp is a blub language. How can you get _anything_
done with a syntax that's so different from HTML and so difficult to read?
The whole premise of a blub language depends entirely on what you're trying to
accomplish - the right tool for the right job.
_Disclaimer - I'm not much of a programmer, so maybe my examples don't hold
up, but you get the idea :-)_
~~~
zephjc
Disclaimer noted, but as to your lisp/HTML example, HTML and lisps actually
have a lot in common - if you strip away the end tags and the angle brackets,
you get something very lispy looking
<div>
<span>Hello</span>
</div>
has the same (prefix) order of operators and operands as
(div
(span "Hello"))
Off the top of my head, the "hiccup" package for Clojure has an 'html'
function (macro?) that translates just that sort of stuff directly into html
~~~
mixmax
Interesting. Do you by any chance have links to some newbie resources? Maybe
it's worth reading up on some sort of lisp. Clojure maybe?
~~~
Zak
Generating HTML from Lisp is very easy and natural. Of course, there are
situations where it might be better to use an HTML template, and there are
libraries for that too. Here are a few more examples of HTML generation in
Lisp:
A tutorial about writing an HTML-generating DSL in Common Lisp:
[http://gigamonkeys.com/book/practical-an-html-generation-
lib...](http://gigamonkeys.com/book/practical-an-html-generation-library-the-
interpreter.html)
The Common Lisp HTML generation library most people actually use[0]:
<http://weitz.de/cl-who/>
HTML generation in PLT Scheme's Continue framework: [http://docs.plt-
scheme.org/continue/index.html#(part._.Rende...](http://docs.plt-
scheme.org/continue/index.html#\(part._.Rendering_.H.T.M.L\))
Arc's built-in HTML generation (powers this site):
<http://files.arcfn.com/doc/html.html>
[0] I'm not actually certain about that, but I think it's the most popular.
------
defdac
So how many here can take any problem and use any language to solve it
language-optimally with all known best practices with the least amount of
code?
How do you figure out that one language is better than another for a given
context where hundreds of people with 10 years of experience with language X
would solve a problem faster and more elegant with language Y and zero
experience?
Are the people finding certain languages unreadable and ugly really the people
that should decide what language to use for a problem at hand? Or the
experienced craftsmen with expertise in their old, ugly and "unredable"
language?
Personally I find it rather funny and ironic that noobs are the ones driving
the language of choice because they have learned how good their new and
powerful language is - and because they are having trouble reading anything
else.
In this way the noobs get an edge over Old-timers with years of experience
that actually know how to write beautiful code in their old ugly language.
The noobs doesn't realize this until their favourite language is considered
old and obsolete by even newer noobs, and they start to call themselves Old-
timers..
I think most people will have a native language where they express themselves
better and more elegant than any other language. They will probably solve any
problem faster with their native language compared to the optimally correct
besserwisser language. I bet their solution would be more readble and elegant
too, compared to be using a language they don't have any experience with.
------
cabalamat
No.
I'll explain why: all languages are in some sense equally expressive, because
they are Turing-complete. But some languages don't have particular
abstractions, for example classes; so in that sense they are not expressive,
because you can't express those abstractions.
But Lisp has macros. This means that any abstraction it doesn't yet support,
you can add.
~~~
silentbicycle
No, because you can't add language invariants (guarantees that thing X will
never happen), and without invariants such as pervasive immutability, certain
features are impossible to add.
While it's possible to add features to Lisp that are at odds with its
fundamental model of evaluation, it's usually done by adding an interpreter
(or, occasionally, compiler) for a nested sublanguage. There are several
interpreters in SICP and EoPL, several Lisp books have a mini Prolog, etc.
This is handy (and Lisps do make it relatively easy), but you can't graft
something like Erlang's entire semantics onto Lisp with just macros.
~~~
cabalamat
> _No, because you can't add language invariants (guarantees that thing X will
> never happen)_
That's true. Macros aren't a perfect solution.
> _without invariants such as pervasive immutability, certain features are
> impossible to add._
As are certain optimisations.
> _While it's possible to add features to Lisp that are at odds with its
> fundamental model of evaluation, it's usually done by adding an interpreter
> (or, occasionally, compiler) for a nested sublanguage._
Indeed, which is in a certain sense cheating.
If one is designing a language, and one hopes that one's language will become
popular, then it's likely (in fact inevitable) that the language will be used
for tasks that the designer hasn't anticipated. So how can a designer cater to
this? Macros are one way, and IMO a powerful one.
Another is to make the language so that it is easy to mix-and-match it with
other languages, so that it can call code in other languages, be called by
other languages, use common data structures and serialisation formats, etc.
Implementing in the JVM goes some way to meeting this goal.
------
Estragon
Were there any interesting suggestions in the reply to the op?
------
programnature
(@lispm Looks like our symbolic language flame war has exceeded yc metrics)
Yes, I understand what ' does. You are manually controlling evaluation. The
same way, once upon a time, people manually controlled garbage collection.
Having a+a explode by default means that the whole time you have to be
juggling what is intended to be used symbolically or not. This seems to not be
a 100% perfect realization of the code == data paradigm.
I'm glad you now agree that structure is a good way to encode meaning. Now,
what is a more idiomatic way to manipulate that information? Walking the tree
manually, or expressing those patterns of structure directly?
Unfortunately, in Lisp, you need to "evaluation manage" those structures. And
its not just quote, its the whole macro language with its own idiosyncrasies.
Its just a lot easier to have a single elegant system with the right defaults.
I'm the kind of person who implements models of computation as a recreational
activity. I've probably wished for more granular evaluation control 1% of the
time, but having civilized pattern matching (and representation) has vastly
increased productivity and code density.
~~~
lispm
I haven't said anything about encoding of meaning, you are dreaming.
You are the kind of person of Xah Lee...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook creates preview photos that are just 200 Bytes for fast mobile loading - slyall
https://code.facebook.com/posts/991252547593574/the-technology-behind-preview-photos/
======
mtmail
duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10020840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10020840)
~~~
slyall
Weird. the URLs seems to be exactly the same. Wonder why the dup detector
didn't complain
------
applecore
GraphQL doesn't transfer raw bytes, so they would save the 33% overhead if
they weren't using Base64 binary-to-text encoding.
~~~
laurencerowe
Gzip content encoding recovers most of the overhead.
~~~
imrehg
Except they shouldn't really use Gzip if they are also using HTTPS.... See
[http://stackoverflow.com/a/4063496/171237](http://stackoverflow.com/a/4063496/171237)
or look up BREACH and CRIME.
~~~
duskwuff
BREACH/CRIME aren't a huge concern here. Unlike in a web browser, an attacker
can't cause a user's browser to fire off crafted requests (because they're
only occurring in the Facebook app, which doesn't let third-party scripts
run), and they can't easily observe the size of requests and responses
(because they're all happening over a cellular network, which is difficult to
sniff).
~~~
imrehg
Running inside the app is probably the strongest argument here, though I think
that's also kinda assuming that people cannot subvert the app in unexpected
ways. The size of requests can still be observed e.g. being on Wifi - people
don't just use their Smartphone from the cellular network.
My thinking is that while in this case it's "probably safe" to use Gzip +
HTTPS, but that's not a good practice to build secure systems. If e.g. here
these requests are exempted and run to Gzip, the reasons and circumstances for
doing it here will be forgotten, and can end up with other stuff exempted
later which shouldn't. Just from experience how things work in large orgs.
------
caseyf7
Do they do this on the web too or just the native app?
~~~
nitrogen
I suppose it _could_ be done on the web by sending the fixed JPEG header in a
JS file that would be cached, then crafting _data:_ URLs on the fly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Browser wars go back to future over video formats - cwan
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/01/guest-post-browser-wars-go-back-to.html
======
iwwr
Is Google really that concerned with saving a measly $6M per year? It looks
like they would pay it back anyway (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1361442> \-- less efficient codecs,
greater server loads ).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Micro-targeted digital porn is changing human sexuality - jseliger
https://aeon.co/essays/micro-targeted-digital-porn-is-changing-human-sexuality
======
Tenoke
I am not convinced their interpretation of how market forces work is
definitely right, but this rings true:
>The pursuit of the most rabidly loyal audience has already driven political
websites and talk radio to polarising extremes, with vast societal
implications. Fearing similar outcomes in the world of pornography and
sexuality is not entirely outlandish.
~~~
Roritharr
This is something which I often contemplate but rarely but into words for fear
of being misunderstood.
Is it people which were without the Internet unable to develop their character
fully, or is it the Internet that changes the people?
Were Otherkin a normal phenomenon, or is it something that exposure to the
Internet does to some people? Same with all kinds of fetishes, especially
Haskell.
~~~
ggggtez
Of course otherkin already existed. They just would have not had community
that connected them. People have felt connected to spirit animals and all
sorts of things. Dragons may not exist but they are part of the Chinese
zodiac, and I'm sure plenty of people considered the idea of being possessed
by ghosts or demons real. Perhaps there just was to much societal pressure to
prevent people from displaying casual interest before the internet.
~~~
adrusi
_People have felt connected to spirit animals and all sorts of things._
If that's how you define otherkin then it's pretty obvious it's been around
forever, but "otherkin" also refers to the tribe that has formed around that
idea online. It refers to the interpretation of what that animal connection
means, and to the dogma around it. Otherkin frame their condition in much the
same way as transgender people do, and that's a very contemporary way of
understanding psychology, and also a way that many people a disturbed by. The
question is: would otherkin have arrived at that same interpretation, and the
same dogma, without the interent. I think probably not, because it would take
so long for those ideas to spread that they would be outdated long before they
achieved universality.
~~~
posterboy
> Otherkin frame their condition in much the same way as transgender people
> do, and that's a very contemporary way of understanding psychology
So, was transgenderkin a thing 50 years ago? I guess, but at least they knew
it was a joke, most of the time, when they weren't send to therapy.
> The question is: would otherkin have arrived at that same interpretation,
> and the same dogma, without the interent
That's like asking if multiplayer games would have arrived at the same
popularity without the internet
------
mmierz
I really don't buy the author's contention that "normal" people are likely to
become diaper fetishists just because a diaper porn clip popped up on a
website.
More plausible situation: people who were kinky-but-didn't-know-it or kinky-
but-too-ashamed-to-tell-anyone are becoming plain kinky thanks to exposure to
their kinks on the internet.
~~~
nialo
I notice my preferences tending slowly towards more 'extreme' versions of a
particular set of kinks over time. I suspect, but obviously cannot prove, that
this would happen even more slowly if the porn for those tightly targeted more
extreme versions wasn't easily available online.
I don't think this is a problem exactly, and I'd guess it's a small effect,
but I think there certainly is _some_ effect.
------
guard-of-terra
In my opinion, the overall quality of offering on tube sites is poor. There
are hidden gems, there's a limited number of them and they aren't promoted or
discovered in any way. Ratings system is useless that way.
Instead we're seeing this fetish obsession, which fills tops with videos which
cater only to a subset and are still boring.
What most videos lack is passion and talent. Fetishes are an attempt to
substitute passion and talent.
> No adult online content provider is going to go belly-up showing young women
> having sex
Actually, no. This stuff never gets old if done right. Anything else does.
~~~
adrusi
I think that seeing fetish content in porn easily translates to sexual
stimulation, in a way that passion and nuance just don't. What turns you on
while you watch sex might be very different from what turns you on while you
participate in it.
------
ggggtez
Tldr: ew porn is icky. Is Anal Prolapse the new missionary?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Coder Frozen in 2009 Awakens to Find Front End Development Not Awful - eropple
https://www.schneems.com/2017/08/09/coder-frozen-in-2009-awakens-to-find-frontend-development-not-awful/
======
eropple
I posted this because this was basically me about six months ago. Modern
JavaScript is almost as nice, for me, as peak Ruby is, and the smart,
functionally-oriented decisions in React/Preact beat all hollow everything
that used to be the case (which was when TripAdvisor was using MooTools...in
2012...).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Solar energy in Israel: It's a knockout - mblakele
http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14082027
======
dkasper
Just goes to show, it's only a matter of time before enough breakthroughs
occur that solar power overtakes fossil fuels.
~~~
pmorici
How much of this is scientific breakthroughs and how much is the climate?
Israel is hot and sunny for most of the year, the same is not true of the
upper Midwest US for example.
~~~
quizbiz
Israel for the most part (then again the Negav Desert is 1/3 of Israel) is not
exceptionally hot and sunny. But Israel does have an exceptional motivation to
be energy independent. It is a county in the middle east with no oil
surrounded by political enemies with oil. When there is a will and that will
is backed by cost, there is a way.
~~~
ido
None of Israel's direct neighbors is even close to being a significant oil
producer - those are mostly in the Arabian peninsula.
~~~
quizbiz
I used 'neighbors' very loosely, speaking more about Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.
But you are right.
Oil Produced: (Wolfram Alpha)
Israel | 5 966 bbl/day (barrels per day)
Syria | 381 600 bbl/day (barrels per day)
Egypt | 664 000 bbl/day (barrels per day)
Saudi Arabia | 9 200 000 bbl/day (barrels per day)
Israel for the political reasons can not afford for its economy to rely on
exported oil from Arab states. I'm not even sure if Iran, Saudi Arabia, or the
UAE would be willing to export oil to Israel. It's expensive to import it from
farther so Israel spends 73.43B/year on oil imports[1]. The opportunity cost
of not developing alternatives has been high so solar panels are already a
part of the infrastructure (ie: to heat the water in almost every single
home).
[1] <http://www16.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=oil+import+israel>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MS-Linux? Lindows? Could Microsoft Release a Desktop Linux? - CrankyBear
https://www.zdnet.com/article/ms-linux-lindows-could-microsoft-release-a-desktop-linux/
======
masonic
Call it "Black Hat Linux"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook Approves Dogecoin Tipping App - kordless
http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/facebook-approves-dogecoin-tipping-app/2014/06/06?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
======
kordless
To the moon.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Verizon Bets on Connected Car - jayzee
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303552104577440550104642214.html
======
moistgorilla
Good thinking by Verizon. In the long term this will play out to be a huge
advantage with self-driving cars.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Unbelievable History of the Express JavaScript Framework - tdurden
http://thefullstack.xyz/history-express-javascript-framework/
======
toyg
There's something missing here, timelines don't align... So TJH sells express
in 2014; Doug ploughs on for two years, with zero contributions from
StrongLoop (?). Then IBM takes over and assigns two devs to actually do some
work, and Doug quits...? Stating a problem of trust. So what happened? Did SL
promise something that is not going to happen now that IBM is in charge? Did
SL promise him a job or something?
Sure, Doug should be thanked for his tireless job; but the post is simply
lacking or omitting important details.
~~~
aeb
I think what happened was that he (Doug) was trying to push SL into helping
out more and to get some issues fixed, Doug felt like he was getting
somewhere, but then SL was sold to IBM all conversations had to be started
again. There is a github issue titled 'Is Express dying?' [1] that contains
all of the events, issues and comments from Doug, TJ, SL and IBM.
[1] -
[https://github.com/expressjs/express/issues/2844](https://github.com/expressjs/express/issues/2844)
------
dstroot
Doug is a great guy and super helpful. He has personally responded to many
issues on Express as well as the ecosystem of Express middleware. He is truly
a treasure. Doug - if you ever read this I personally really appreciate you.
------
doublerebel
Express is alive and well, I just developed two new middlewares for it in the
last week. Koa has been straddling 1.x to 2.x rewrite for quite a while. In
the meantime Express chugs along powering 1000s of websites. The performance
difference is negligible and Express still beats Hapi by a long shot.
Long live expressjs.
------
percept
The characterizations of the framework author as "evil" and "dickish" seem a
bit extreme, and unfair.
Otherwise, it's nice to see credit given where it's due.
~~~
spriggan3
If you're talking about TJ I don't think anyone said he was "evil" or
"dickish". The selling of a repo on Github is questionable however it is no
more questionable than Ryan selling NodeJS to Joyent. But frankly nobody
really believes IBM gives a damn about Express, so people should move on and
use something else, because it ain't gona be maintained seriously . For them
Express is just PR for their platform Blue mix as they try to attract
businesses based on NodeJS.
~~~
jaredandrews
> I don't think anyone said he was "evil" or "dickish"
Dude, the article literally calls him both of those things and links to
another article that is entirely about what a dick the author thinks he is.[0]
[0] [http://hueniverse.com/2014/07/30/open-source-
dickishness/](http://hueniverse.com/2014/07/30/open-source-dickishness/)
------
0xCMP
I tweeted. He deserves the recognition however we can give it.
| {
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Sexual Partners “Gender Gap” Debunked by Scientific Research - nikse
https://www.inverse.com/article/47430-number-of-sexual-partners-study
======
notadoc
The most obvious reason for any discrepancy is that people lie.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Web services should be both federated and extensible - dwynings
http://cdixon.org/2010/09/04/web-services-should-be-both-federated-and-extensible/
======
dva
There is so much data already trapped in Twitter & Facebook services. It is up
to those platforms to provide the tools to free it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Javascript type inference and Asm.js - logn
Asm.js works best for compiling statically typed languages into Javascript, adding type information into the JS so that compilers can optimize around this. Some people are worried this will lead to stagnation in JS optimization for when it's written by humans (although I've seen V8 developers de-prioritize Asm.js requests in favor of other optimizations serving JS programmers).<p>Can't we add type inference to JS to let it be Asm.js compiled? E.g., http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dimvar/jstypes.html (however, this doesn't distinguish between float/double/int/long, but that doesn't seem impossible)<p>I don't see in the Asm.js spec that they add type info for classes/objects, but this doesn't seem too hard to infer either. You'd take an inventory of what keys and types are in objects and make a hierarchy of them for 'inheritance' of objects.<p>Am I missing something?
======
llogiq
Are you proposing a JS to JS filter that
a) checks if functions/modules are eligible for asm-ifying (that is, it only
uses asm.js functionality, no metaprogramming, only using asm.js "heap", do I
oversee something?) b) adds a "use asm" to the function/module c) adds the
correct type information d) perhaps compiles some JS functionality into asm.js
(I'm thinking of the heap, which could be precompiled under certain
constraints, but it's probably better to make the compiler not too smart)
~~~
logn
Generally, yes. Granted, I don't know the specific details of this. I'm just a
JS programmer, not familiar with Asm.js (other than browsing their homepage
and slides and articles). But it seems like the people working in these
communities have written off or not focused on JS ever being compiled to
Asm.js JS and achieving near-native efficiency. And that instead, the focus is
on more traditional languages with static typing compiling to Asm.js JS. And I
suspect there's a reason for this, that it's hard or impossible to compile
regular JS to use asm to achieve near-native efficiency. But I'd like to know
specifically why, because in my naive view, it's possible (and even if really,
really hard... totally worth it since you can then speed up all the JS that's
ever been written to date and all future JS we write... and even if that's not
possible that we can focus on avoiding certain features of JS to make
compilation to Asm.js JS possible, i.e., a saner way to write Asm.js JS in
JS).
------
argonaut
I am not by any means an expert in compilers/language design. But apparently
according to this talk [1] dynamic typing is not the reason JS and other
dynamic languages are slow, given the optimizations that effectively "solve"
that problem.
I would guess that both 1) metaprogramming, and 2) lack of low-level memory
management contribute more to the fact that JS is slower than dynamic typing.
[1][https://speakerdeck.com/alex/why-python-ruby-and-
javascript-...](https://speakerdeck.com/alex/why-python-ruby-and-javascript-
are-slow)
| {
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NYT Cascade visualization - helwr
http://WWW.nytlabs.com/projects/cascade.html
======
mattdeboard
This could be a Very Big Deal in the Marketing/PR 'industry' where it is
extremely difficult to quantify performance of PR departments and individuals.
I can easily envision a "Cascade score" of a particular press release or press
conference being a hard metric of influence & success.
If I was running a PR department or agency, I'd want this application as soon
as possible, at any practical price.
~~~
janesvilleseo
Yes this tool could be very helpful to many. I could see it working very
nicely with Klout. And taking it a step further sales departments could use
this info to see who their 'target' is influenced, which could be very helpful
as well.
------
donohoe
They have this installed on the 28th floor by the elevator bank over 4 or so
large screens. Its pretty damn awesome. You can access it via your iPhone on
the network and control it. I wish I'd had a chance to play with it more.
------
blatherard
Jer Thorp is the guy who built the visualization tool. He also designed a tool
to help layout the names on the 9/11 memorial.
He's got other interesting stuff at his blog, <http://blog.blprnt.com/>
~~~
donohoe
He didn't do it alone, but he was a big part of it.
------
helwr
via <http://processing.org/exhibition/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do You Still Read Comics (And Do They Inspire You)? - CallMeV
How many of you regulars here derive pleasure and draw inspiration from reading comic books?<p>Do you eagerly await the latest X-Men to be put on the shelf of your regular newsstand on your way to work, or have it on order at your newsagent? Do you subscribe to your favourite titles and have them delivered to your home?<p>Or have you set aside the monthly issues, concentrating on collected stories and omnibuses, hanging around in comic shops on your off days haggling over prices and conditions of individual books with fellow comic traders?<p>Do you follow any particular title, such as Batman, The X-Men, Thor, The Avengers - or are you a Brit and a Squaxx Dek Thargo, a hardcore 2000AD addict until your dying day?<p>One of the oldest regular comic readers I ever heard of was 83 when he died. Japanese businessmen read their manga religiously on the commute to work. So nobody is really too old to read comics.<p>Taken in that light, how about you?
======
autalpha
I still read Japanese graphic novels or Mangas. I hope that counts.
Growing up in Vietnam, my parents generally forbid us kids from reading comics
because they're not... smart materials. I don't know, but I tend to disagree
with that.
I find graphic novels/comics fascinating because it seems like the writers can
get their messages across with just an image an a short bubble/line of text.
On that front, I think web creator should learn a thing or two from comics
writer :)
I love the older cartoons. I think waking up Saturday mornings or rush home
from school to watch cartoons was so good back then.
That's why I archive a lot of my favorite cartoon series (Arthur, Life with
Louie, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, etc.) for my future children :)
My hope and inspiration to make the web a more positive experience in my daily
work definitely has something to do with the simplest stories which come from
some cartoons I saw as a kid.
~~~
autalpha
Just saw Thor last night. That was a very entertaining movie!
| {
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Cisco ASA Software IKEv1 and IKEv2 Buffer Overflow Vulnerability - amatus
https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20160210-asa-ike
======
amatus
Here's Exodus's write-up on the vulnerability and exploit:
[https://blog.exodusintel.com/2016/01/26/firewall-
hacking/](https://blog.exodusintel.com/2016/01/26/firewall-hacking/)
| {
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Michael Arrington falls for Y Combinator - drm237
http://blog.bos.genotrope.com/2008/03/16/michael-arrington-falls-for-y-combinator/
======
alex_c
Not much to say about the article itself (yeah, TechCrunch has been covering
YCombinator a lot lately), but that blog has a seriously annoying layout.
| {
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Launching Docs.github.com - todsacerdoti
https://github.blog/2020-07-01-launching-docs-github-com/
======
li8n
Remarkable post of ms. Jean Leaver on Launching docs.github.com
[https://github.blog/2020-07-01-launching-docs-github-
com/](https://github.blog/2020-07-01-launching-docs-github-com/) Femene genius
soured into IT marks the end of open source, as we know it. The flagship of
big data pillars behind marvelous github platform had announced deprecation of
the idea that it was built upon.
Try fetching long and painful history of github's docs evolvement through the
last decades.
pff, — it's gone.
------
the_arun
I was hoping to see competitor for Readme.io where documentation is exposed as
a platform to users of github.
~~~
fowl2
yeah or even an integration of something like docs.msft tooling
------
rany_
I don't know why I expected this to be a Google Docs competitor.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The latest “nightmare inducing” Boston Dynamics robots - swamp40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h5qpXO3isM
======
swamp40
Skip to the 3:45 mark.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SimTK: open-access biomedical research models and tools - fitzwatermellow
https://simtk.org/xml/index.xml
======
brudgers
SimTK is part of Simbios:
[http://simbios.stanford.edu/](http://simbios.stanford.edu/)
| {
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Keeping the Art of Silent Film Music Alive - tintinnabula
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/keeping-art-silent-film-music-alive-organ-cinema-comedy
======
mrob
Not only did theater organists improvise music, they also improvised sound
effects. See this booklet describing such techniques:
[https://archive.org/details/TheatreOrganistsSecrets](https://archive.org/details/TheatreOrganistsSecrets)
The right justified text after each heading is the list of organ stops, i.e.
the list of timbres played at once. The numbers after each stop name are the
pitches. They're specified as the length of an open pipe that plays the lowest
note on the keyboard. 8 foot pitch matches a piano, and other pitches are
transposed, so by selecting multiple pitches at once you can play chords with
a single finger. See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_stop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_stop)
~~~
jerrre
Thanks for the link! Should be fun to spend an evening trying to emulate these
sounds!
------
Tharkun
Years ago, I got to watch a Japanese movie narrator (benshi) in action.
They're a dying breed who narrate silent movies in real time, on stage, next
to the big screen. It's a mixture of narrating, voice acting and
improvisation. The same movie could be entirely different with another benshi.
This performance was accompanied by live piano music, played by a pianist who
hadn't seen the movie, who didn't speak Japanese, and who didn't have a score.
It was over an hour of improvisation, based on what he could see of the movie
and his interpretation of narrator's intonation. It was incredible. It was
fun, and it was unique. Out of all the movies I've seen, this performance
stands out. It would be a shame to lose out on this.
~~~
mrob
Live narration lives on in some African countries as the "video joker". The
narrator translates as well as adding their own jokes and commentary. You can
hear an example in the only surviving copy of the famous Ugandan film "Who
Killed Captain Alex?"[0] I thought it would be annoying at first, but VJ Emmie
does a great job and really adds to the entertainment.
[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEoGrbKAyKE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEoGrbKAyKE)
------
biztos
In Budapest there's a local bar that does silent movies with live music
weekly. Pretty cool, and it only takes over half the bar. Kisüzem on Sundays
last I checked.
Check out Club Foot Orchestra[0] as well. It's a great way to watch films!
[0]: [http://www.clubfootorchestra.com](http://www.clubfootorchestra.com)
~~~
arximboldi
Here in Berlin there is this theater, where they do silent movies with live
music/effects regularly:
[http://www.babylonberlin.de/](http://www.babylonberlin.de/)
Very much recommended!
------
tribby
the valerie project[0] was a psychedelic folk band that toured the US playing
screenings of "valerie and her week of wonders," a 1970 czech surrealist
horror movie (highly recommended!). they were pretty awesome, especially for a
one-off super obscure thing like that.
related but different: guitarist loren connors did a soundtrack for "the
passion of joan of arc" (1928)[1] that I find incredibly moving. for those not
familiar with connors' work, it comes from a kind of catholic guilt that makes
his score and this particular film an artfully brutal pairing.
0\. [http://www.dragcity.com/products/the-valerie-
project](http://www.dragcity.com/products/the-valerie-project)
1\. [https://vimeo.com/53953169](https://vimeo.com/53953169) (excerpt)
~~~
cpete
Awesome recommendations, thanks! Was able to find the Valerie Project
soundtrack album on YouTube in its entirety. The first track or two is
reminiscent of The Mars Volta without the frenzy. Enjoying the heck out of all
the tracks though.
~~~
tribby
If you like the valerie project's music, check out espers, helena espvall +
masaki batoh, meg baird, fairport convention, greg weeks, ilyas ahmed, lau
nau, gavin bryars, orion rigel dommisse, heron oblivion (definitely chaotic
though) and trees (there have been a few bands with this name -- UK 1970s).
------
cpete
In 2008 or so The Hot Club of San Franscisco[0] (gypsy jazz/hot jazz a la
Django Reinhardt) played a live accompaniment to some work by the silent film
actor/comedian Charley Bowers[1]. It was definitely one of the better
performances I've ever seen/heard. What a perfect juxtaposition, not even
taking into account the obvious caliber of the musicianship.
Ever since I've been on the lookout for similar "soundtrack" concerts,
improvised or composed. A live rendition of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"
orchestrated by a Denver jazz guitarist is another favorite.
[0]HCoSF Sample Song:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZlPBYVOXXg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZlPBYVOXXg)
[1][http://brightlightsfilm.com/forgotten-charleys-i-charley-
bow...](http://brightlightsfilm.com/forgotten-charleys-i-charley-bowers-
silent-comedys-wizard-of-the-bizarre/)
------
nickhalfasleep
A music professor at CU Boulder accompanies silent films at the Chautauqua
event hall every summer. It's a wonder to behold the duration, speed, and
exceptional timing to bring together a multiple reel silent film.
[https://www.denverpost.com/2012/07/06/denver-pianist-hank-
tr...](https://www.denverpost.com/2012/07/06/denver-pianist-hank-troy-
provides-music-for-silent-films-at-chatauqua/)
[https://www.chautauqua.com/events/film/](https://www.chautauqua.com/events/film/)
------
adaven_xt
I was excited to see a number of silent movies on Amazon Prime Video, but gave
up in disgust after trying only a couple. None of the music even remotely
matched the film, even when Wikipedia says a full orchestral score was
originally produced.
Instead, each was backed by a piano playing Scott Joplin ragtime songs.
Nothing like watching the hero getting struck by an arrow in a sudden betrayal
while listening to the Entertainer or Maple Leaf Rag.
------
erebus_rex
A little off-topic but if you want to give silent cinema a go try Abel Gance's
Napoleon. It is a 5 hour epic and incredible technical achievement. Some of
the tricks in its bag (like the 3 screen finale) haven't ever been attempted
since (as far as I know).
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6504eRh5h6M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6504eRh5h6M)
~~~
verylittlemeat
If we're sharing our favorites then I don't think you can go wrong with La
Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928).
The criterion collection version is great and watch it with Richard Einhorn's
Voices of Light, especially if it's your first time.
It's one of the more high profile silent films but with good reason. If you
want to try something different with friends but don't want them to fall
asleep I've had good success with this film.
| {
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Announcing Free Tier and Live Migration Tool for MongoDB Atlas - nparsons08
https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/announcing-free-tier-and-live-migration-tool-for-mongodb-atlas
======
arkham
Disclaimer: I used to work for MongoDB, but left more than 2 years ago.
I'm really happy to see the free tier as an option - I was a big fan, user,
and advocate of MMS back when that was a free option for monitoring, and
accessibility to Atlas has been lacking a "try before you buy" option (though
I did pick up free credit from the MongoDB booth in Re:Invent, it makes it
hard to recommend to others).
Also great to see an official utility for migrations with MongoMirror too.
These things, along with the Jepsen tests now being in CI (and passing in 3.4)
seemed so far away when I left MongoDB, really great to see them come to
fruition :)
------
kastanza1415
Can you migrate your data from the free sandbox version over to an M4, for
example?
~~~
vinum_sabbathi
hey - this blog post handles basics to do such a migration:
[https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/atlas-on-day-one-
importing...](https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/atlas-on-day-one-importing-
data)
| {
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How do developers promote open source projects? - eqcho4
https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.04219
======
ktpsns
Interesting topic, but the paper presentation looks weird to me. Most figures
don't show curves but a single value with error bars. Never have seen such a
way of presenting single data points. I don't see any advantage of presenting
these numbers (solely) in text.
I wonder at which journal this paper is going to be submitted (I am not a CS
guy so this is a honest question, no sarcasm here)
| {
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Show HN: PWA, SSR for a demo modern web app - revskill
https://www.resta.us
======
sotaan
can you show your code please? seems like you are using Vue 2
| {
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WhatsApp Cofounder Tells Students to Delete Facebook - jmsflknr
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/whatsapp-brian-acton-delete-facebook-stanford-lecture
======
nilskidoo
“The capitalistic profit motive, or answering to Wall Street, is what’s
driving the expansion of invasion of data privacy and driving the expansion of
a lot of negative outcomes that we’re just not happy with,” he said. “I wish
there were guardrails there. I wish there was ways to rein it in. I have yet
to see that manifest, and that scares me.”
\- what Berners-Lee meant to say.
| {
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Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users - Kenan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304458604577488822667325882.html
======
suprgeek
It is important to read the article carefully:
WRONG - Mac users see higher prices for same hotels than Windows users
RIGHT - Mac users are sometimes also shown hotels that are costlier than their
windows users
"...so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and
sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see."
~~~
starship
Regardless, it never ceases to amaze me how controversial pricing
discrimination is. Especially since most people have taken Econ 101: pricing
discrimination eliminates dead-weight loss, which should be a good thing
right? Nope, instant controversy.
~~~
gjm11
> _most people have taken Econ 101_
Er. Um. No, most people have not taken Econ 101. Most graduates have not taken
Econ 101. Most graduates in quantitative disciplines have not taken Econ 101.
Most people with economics degrees have taken Econ 101. A modest number of
other people have. Some more have learned the basic concepts by means other
than taking Econ 101. These are probably not the people complaining about
price discrimination.
In any case, being surprised when people are upset because they think they're
getting inferior treatment and saying "oh, but they should think of the gain
in overall economic efficiency" seems like a sign of, well, not having taken
Psych 101.
~~~
pavel_lishin
I took Econ 101 - but the only reason I did so was because it was one of the
only two classes available in high school that offered college credit.
If it didn't give me three hours of credit, I probably would have ended up
with Texas History, or something similar.
------
mratzloff
It wouldn't surprise me. I've suspected for years that they do differential
pricing, but I got confirmation a few days ago.
I just bought tickets to Las Vegas on Friday. I got through the checkout
process (choosing a flight and a hotel) and then they said there was a
"problem" and kicked me back to the beginning of the process. I went through
it again, choosing the exact same flights (with the same number of seats
available) and the prices were 20-30% higher. The available seats were
identical (I was buying for a same-day flight so there were only a handful
remaining and it was easy to see that they were the same). I went ahead and
bought since it at was the last minute, but I made a mental note not to ever
bother coming back.
It's happened so frequently to me on this and other aggregators like
Travelocity that it may even be intentional.
Perhaps they display competitive prices so they will be chosen by people who
are comparison shopping (either manually or through a site like kayak.com).
Then once you've asserted your willingness to buy by moving through the flight
selection process they randomly restart you with higher prices on the
(probably likely) belief that you have already mentally committed to Orbitz.
~~~
derda
It is also possible, that they show you a cached price first and one step
before the confirmation they check back with the airline if they price really
is the same. In your case the airline might have increased the fare, for
whatever reason, shortly before you started your booking process.
~~~
mratzloff
That's definitely possible. I just have a hard time giving any company
involved (airline or aggregator) the benefit of the doubt...
------
aresant
Another interesting one is when Capital One showed different rates by browser
types by using a demographic study of wealth based on browser via
[http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/11/do-different-
we...](http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/11/do-different-web-browsers-
bring-different-demographics)
~~~
unfasten
The Capital One example actually turned out to just be normal split testing,
not based on the visitor's browser.
HN discussion thread about it: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1861037>
------
unreal37
I also find this fascinating.
As someone involved in creating recommendation systems for web sites based on
various user behavior signals, I can see adding a "what type of browser do
they use" and "what type of OS do they use" intelligence in the future to
further segment users.
Mac ownership must be a proxy for "household income". Brilliant.
~~~
mitchty
Would be easy enough to compare prices on windows/linux in a vm on my mac
though. And take note of the companies that do it. Something else to add to
comparison services as well, aka does site xyz.com discriminate based on
os/browser?
~~~
unreal37
Important note: the prices are not different. Just that more 5-star hotels are
shown in the search results to Mac users. If they were charging more for the
same hotel, it would be evil not brilliant. :)
~~~
bigiain
We were doing this back in early 2001 on this site:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20010722191804/http://travelmall....](http://web.archive.org/web/20010722191804/http://travelmall.com/)
We tried both adjusting individual prices for Mac users (and didn't see any
statistical difference from the price sensitivity for non-mac users, same as
we didn't see statistically significant differences between older and newer
Windows version users), and skewing the search result price range for Mac
users compared to non-Mac users (and we certainly saw statistically
significant improvements there in terms of average dollars per room-night). In
the long run though, although we proved to ourselves it worked, the Mac
userbase back then was so small that the overall bottom line effect wasn't big
enough compared to the engineering and marketing effort to keep it working - I
think it all vanished in the big 2004 rewrite of the site's back end.
------
abruzzi
Inevitably, this will make people like me (Mac user that considers $50 a night
overpriced) book through other sites. Does orbitz think I only price through
them? Most people I know price at least a half dozen locations before
deciding, so as long as everyone doesn't jack prices for Mac users, Mac user's
business will naturally migrate to whomever doesn't try to screw us.
~~~
citricsquid
If they believe Mac users are happy to pay higher prices they most likely also
believe Mac users are less prone to shopping around.
~~~
GoodIntentions
I bet they are right too.
I think mac users have demonstrated they are for the most part willing to pay
more for something they perceive as offering a better experience. You can't
make that choice if you're some broke dude surfing from a 400 dollar *nix box,
so I think it is given that average mac users are less price sensitive - the
more cash you have, the more your time is valued imho.
FWIW, posting this from a slackware box with my mac cooling in the next room.
So by all means, show me the cheap stuff first :)
------
eridius
Are they simply showing pricier offers, or are they showing the exact same
offers but with the prices raised? The former is annoying but not inherently
evil, but the latter would be terrible.
~~~
dmfdmf
In Econ, the latter is called differential pricing and there is nothing evil
about it at all.
[http://www.pricingforprofit.com/pricing-
explained/differenti...](http://www.pricingforprofit.com/pricing-
explained/differential-pricing.php)
~~~
InclinedPlane
That depends on your moral code, of course.
~~~
bigiain
We knew that _downward_ differential pricing worked (in terms of increasing
conversions) - a popup saying "Hi, you're a return visitor to our website, we
can discount this room rate 10% if you book today) _always_ increased
conversions.
We sure as hell _experimented_ to see if the decrease in conversions by
bumping margins (and hence prices) up was worthwhile in terms of total profit.
I'd happily make an argument that if the first is morally "OK" then so is the
second…
~~~
rwolf
Your phrasing here suggests that you work for orbitz or a similar company. Is
that accurate?
~~~
bigiain
Same field, but not since 2008. I was doing this in early 2001.
------
vishaldpatel
Does this means that Linux users get the best deals? Or maybe it's Windows
users with cracked copies of Windows.
~~~
dave1010uk
When the Humble Indie Bundles are on sale (where consumers can pay what they
want), the stats showed the average Linux user paid more than Mac or Windows
users.
~~~
jasonlotito
I don't think that necessarily carries over. For the most part, all the Linux
users I know contribute more simply because they want to encourage other
developers to create games for Linux. It's a point of price, they can point
at, and say "Hey, Linux users spent more then Windows or Mac users."
------
benmanns
Another curious statistic: according to the sales numbers on
<http://www.humblebundle.com/>, Linux users on average pay more ($12.50) for
the choose-your-price bundle than Mac ($9.99) or Windows ($7.98) users.
~~~
jlcx
I would guess that this is either related to user enthusiasm for more
professionally developed games (explaining why Windows users aren't as
excited), or a desire to support the creation of cool stuff and be part of a
community around it.
~~~
dave1010uk
Additionally (ceteris parabus) a Linux user would be richer as they have not
spent money on an OS (except the odd RHEL user). However I doubt this makes a
statistical difference.
------
kintamanimatt
I wonder how Linux users are profiled.
~~~
jbigelow76
Redirected to Airbnb of course.
~~~
kintamanimatt
I assume only Ubuntu users are so redirected.
Arch --> Ikea.
LFS --> a forest.
~~~
zalew
Debian --> a commune
------
ajays
It's not like someone at Orbitz sat down, rubbed his/her hands with glee and
said with an evil laugh, "ha! I will rip those Mac users off!"
In all likelihood, someone used the browser type as a feature in their model.
It so happens that Mac users are (or were) younger, slightly more financially
successful and like to splurge a little (e.g., the Mac itself, when comparable
Windows laptops are significantly cheaper). Hence the model learned that it
can show more expensive hotels to users with that specific browser type.
------
hnalien
Full Article -
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230445860457748...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304458604577488822667325882.html)
------
ghaff
Not that familiar with most of the hotel examples shown but, for Las Vegas at
least, both the hotel examples shown are pretty low-end Strip Casinos. (i.e.,
at least this example isn't about significantly different classes of
properties)
------
brackin
As a Mac user I hate this but I do think you should (on applications at least)
use different models for each platform. Angry Birds monetizes differently on
Android and iOS. This isn't a justification for Orbitz' behaviour though.
------
doh
"I don't understand the Orbitz debacle.
First, they're not charging Mac users more than Windows users for the same
hotels / services. All users, regardless of OS, have access to the same set of
options at the same prices. This is ad targeting, not price manipulation;
they're (essentially) showing Mac users different advertisements -- for
higher-priced options. You're free to not click on the ad; if Orbitz chose
wrong, they're losing money (by wasting ad space on their page)."
Rest here: <https://www.facebook.com/tudorb/posts/10100307597913113>
------
joshmlewis
I'm cofounding a startup in the travel space and our cofounder has a lot of
domain expertise and according to him it's illegal to show a rate lower on
Expedia than say Marriott.com. There are exceptions as always, but for the
most part this is true. Now I don't know if this applies to the opposite..I
guess you could just add to a price but I still would think that's fishy.
Anyway, just a little tid bit of knowledge.
Edit: Turns out they prices weren't different, just showing pricier results
first.
~~~
bigiain
"Illegal" is not _quite_ the right word.
When I got out of the online hotel booking game (back in '08) - all of the
major chains were starting to include terms like that in their contracts (or
had been for a few years), and were leaning on all the wholesalers
(Pegasus/Sabre/Gullivers/Octopus) to push and enforce those decisions on small
players (like us) who booked through them. Our lawyers said there was a
_strong_ chance that these contract provisions wouldn't stand up in court
(here in Australia), but it was obvious to everyone that it wasn't worth
getting into expensive legal fights with the suppliers of the "product" our
business relied on…
------
gurkendoktor
Amazon also shows costlier suggestions to customers who have bought costlier
products before. Orbitz is doing what they can with their comparatively
limited knowledge.
The ironic thing about this is that many airfare websites have a German
version with curiously higher prices than the US version, and that Apple's
computers themselves are more expensive in Europe. (Sadly I'm never sure how
much of this can be explained with taxes.)
------
w1ntermute
Screenshots for those of us stuck behind the paywall:
<http://imgur.com/a/VtNRf>
~~~
bmunro
Paste the article title ("On Orbitz, Mac Users Steered to Pricier Hotels")
into Google.
The Wall Street Journal article should be the first result. Click on it.
You should be able to see the whole article. The WSJ appear to give you the
full text when the referrer is google.
------
yo-mf
One interesting insight that was edited from the final article; Linux users
tend to not book hotels, but prefer building campgrounds from scratch.
------
yo-mf
You know which Mac users are NOT seeing those higher cost travel options?
Apple Store employees...
------
kika
The real question is who paid for this article - Parallels or VmWare :-)
Kidding.
------
badhairday
Paywall. :(
~~~
ctrl_freak
Protip: many paywalls, including this one can be circumvented by using
Google's URL redirection service:
[http://www.google.com/url?q=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB...](http://www.google.com/url?q=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304458604577488822667325882.html)
Simply use 'www.google.com/url?q=' and paste in the address of the article
which has a paywall.
~~~
damian2000
That's awesome, thanks .. how does it work? I mean why does it allow google to
bypass their paywall.
~~~
hristov
Because google does not like to index pay-walled articles. They are either not
indexed at all, or given a low score. This makes complete sense because Google
wants their users to be happy and users are usually not very happy when they
hit a pay-wall.
Online publications, on the other hand, really want their paywalled articles
to be indexed by Google. You may remember Murdoch did a lot of complaining
about this a couple of years ago. So now publications do a little trick where
they make the whole article available to people coming from Google but offer a
paywall to anyone else. This means that you can usually access the entire
article if you are redirected from google.
~~~
damian2000
Interesting, thanks. It seems counter-intuitive that they would allow all
users from google to see the full article, since that's where you'd imagine a
lot of traffic would come from.
------
wilhow
Does linux users get a lower price?
------
jermaink
OS discrimination
------
rsanchez1
Well, Orbitz certainly understands its audience. If you're willing to overpay
on laptops, hopefully you're also willing to overpay on hotel stays.
------
uptown
Dear Orbitz - I'm done using you.
-Love Your Ex-customer
------
Kelliot
Good business model. Exploiting the higher disposable income / lower
intelligence of mac users for profit is awesome =)
~~~
jewbacca
I see you're a new user: this type of comment is, by consensus and executive
decree, not welcome on Hacker News. If you don't have something genuinely
novel to contribute to the conversation, please do your part to keep the noise
low.
~~~
RegEx
> by consensus and executive decree
Man, some people around here _really_ love the 'sound' of their own text.
~~~
adbge
Hell, _I_ love the sound of his text.
~~~
RegEx
And there's always someone there to appreciate the pretentiousness.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Relativity of Wrong (1989) - coffeeandjunk
https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm
======
Buldak
I remember reading about this topic in philosophy class, namely, the
Pessimistic Induction [1]. I've wondered if a similar argument could be made
for moral progress. Certainly, many people are quick to make similarly
skeptical arguments which point out that people in the past had different
moral views than we do now, and no less confidence that they were right. If we
were to survey the history of moral conventions, would we find that it
converges in the same way as our scientific theories? (Does the arc of history
bend toward justice?)
[1] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-
realism/#PessI...](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-
realism/#PessIndu)
------
mixedmath
The linked article is an article written by Asimov. The main idea is an
allegory about how even though the Earth isn't flat, and the Earth isn't
spherical, it is less wrong to say that the Earth is a sphere than to say that
it is flat. The point it that it is exciting to be alive now, in a time when
physics is becoming so much more "right" about so many things so quickly.
Although I'm not sure if it exists, I would enjoy a brief description of ways
in which physics is more "right" now than in 1989, when this was written.
~~~
vilhelm_s
Specifically, he says the key period was 1900-1930.
I guess something like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_discove...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_discoveries#20th_century)
can be helpful, but I think none of the discoveries in the last 30 years are
quite as world-changing as general relativity, atoms, quantum physics, or
galaxies.
~~~
pmwhite
Plate tectonics is a candidate to go on that list, and it was controversial
until good undersea maps were available circa 1970. That is 50 years ago, not
30.
------
apo
_I RECEIVED a letter the other day. It was handwritten in crabbed penmanship
so that it was very difficult to read. Nevertheless, I tried to make it out
just in case it might prove to be important. In the first sentence, the writer
told me he was majoring in English literature, but felt he needed to teach me
science. (I sighed a bit, for I knew very few English Lit majors who are
equipped to teach me science, but I am very aware of the vast state of my
ignorance and I am prepared to learn as much as I can from anyone, so I read
on.)_
Here Asimov reveals the scientist's secret weapons:
\- The source of an idea doesn't matter, only the idea itself.
\- It's ok, even expected, to not know everything.
~~~
hermitdev
I think it's worth noting, too, that science is very skeptical of itself. To
my knowledge, there's only 3 accepted laws: those of thermodynamics.
Science is not about necessarily finding __the __perfect explanation, but
finding a __more __perfect explanation. Always speculating, testing, refining,
building on the shoulders of the giants that have come before us. I doubt
within my lifetime, or even in anyone 's lifetime, that we will truly have a
Grand Universal Theory that fits 100% of the time. But, I have no doubt that
we'll keeping making steps to a more perfect explanation. Sometimes it will be
small steps, others huge leaps, but there will be progress, but no completion;
at least that's my current thought.
------
markrages
One possible confusion is the words used. "Right" and "wrong" have moral
overtones. Asimov is using them to just mean "correct" and "incorrect".
~~~
pmwhite
True. But I presume that Asimov is answering the letter using the language of
the same. Translating "wrong" to "incorrect" does not add anything, better to
take the issue head on using the same language.
Better still would be to use "accuracy". But that presumes the audience is
ready to understand the nature of the issue in a scientific and logical way.
We want to get there, but we cannot start there.
~~~
shoo
Accuracy is a good choice of word. It doesn't come with the baggage of being a
binary classification.
The terminology I jump to is "approximation error", where error is some
quantified measurement of (in)accuracy. But using the word "error" might lead
one to think of e.g. "having erred" or "being in error", which is unhelpful.
There's a quote from Box I like: "all models are wrong, some models are
useful".
I guess this might be rephrased less snappily as "no model is completely
accurate, but some models are useful".
Replace "model" with "theory", "belief" as desired.
That said, some models or theories fall into the category of being "not even
wrong", i.e. to be so incoherent or unfalsifiable that it isn't even
theoretically possible to measure how accurate they are.
Pauli: "Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig; es ist nicht einmal falsch!"
------
thedancollins
I agree with the English Lit major. No education is complete without a healthy
lack of respect for the same. "Healthy" being the key word.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can Psychiatry Turn Itself Around? - okket
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/can-psychiatry-turn-itself-around/
======
phren0logy
I'm a psychiatrist. It is always amazing to me that despite four years of
medical school, six years of residency and fellowships, and four board
certifications, the assumption is that I have no idea what I'm talking about
and have evil motives.
There are fair criticisms of psychiatry, there are bad psychiatrists, but
mostly there are crappy generalizations. Good psychiatrists have an
understanding of what medications can and cannot do, and a well-rounded view
of the person they are treating as a whole human being.
I work with the mentally ill who are involved in criminal justice, both
juveniles and adults. I can assure you, having more psychiatrists would help a
lot of people.
~~~
mattnewport
I'm curious what you make of the claims Robert Whitaker makes in "Anatomy of
an Epidemic" and elsewhere? Psychiatry comes off looking quite bad in his
analysis and he is far from the only critic of the profession. My attempts to
find convincing rebuttals of his claims from Psychiatrists have so far drawn a
blank.
In a nutshell for those not familiar with the book, he presents convincing
evidence that most psychiatric medicines have no significant short term
benefits over active placebos and in fact worsen long term outcomes and that
the profession has been complicit in presenting unsupported hypotheses about
chemical imbalances in the brain causing conditions such as depression as
established fact and in pushing drugs as the primary means of treatment
without sufficient evidence of their efficacy and largely ignoring worrying
evidence of long term harm.
I'll admit to having a pre existing suspicion of psychiatry stemming from
taking a degree in psychology in the UK but after reading this book and
digging more deeply I have to say it looks far worse for psychiatry than I
previously imagined.
~~~
djcjgshjjc
It looks like meta-analyses published after that book support the efficacy of
anti-depressants, are you familiar with this evidence?
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_serotonin_reuptake...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_serotonin_reuptake_inhibitor)
~~~
mattnewport
This seems to be a fairly balanced (and pretty long!) review of the evidence
from Scott Alexander who is a psychiatrist (I believe) which comes down on the
side that the balance of the evidence is that SSRIs do have an effect that
can't be explained purely as active placebo:
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/ssris-much-more-than-
yo...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/ssris-much-more-than-you-wanted-
to-know/)
Here's another 2014 article leaning the other way by Irving Kirsch, one of the
more prominent researchers to question the evidence for anti depressant
efficacy:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/)
In _Anatomy of an Epidemic_ Robert Whitaker details many of the problems
around the published studies that raise real concerns how bias free the
remaining positive results of these studies might be. In addition, pretty much
all of the discussion above is based around short term effects and perhaps the
most worrying part of Whitaker's book for me is the suggestive evidence of
devastating long term effects of many psychiatric drugs, SSRIs included.
Personally I think the bar should be rather higher for evidence of short term
benefit for any drug than the 'optimistic' view of the evidence for SSRIs and
especially in light of evidence of the drug making the condition it is
supposed to treat significantly worse over the long term. Given that even
proponents of SSRIs seem to accept that talk therapy is equally effective I
know I'd rather take the drug and side effect free option but Scott Alexander
gives a different take on that in his article, pointing out that drugs are
much cheaper (and hence more profitable for both psychiatrists and drug
companies as Whitaker points out in his book).
------
marsrover
The last Psychiatrist I went to prescribed me 4mg of Klonopin a day for
anxiety. The one before that prescribed me 40-50mg of Adderall a day for ADHD
and about 600mg of Seroquel a night for sleeping problems. Both times I
decided to quit going and tapered myself off.
There never really asked how I felt or seemed to care about me in any way
shape or form. Just, "Here's your drugs, see you next month."
I have a horrible opinion about the entire profession of Psychiatry and at
this point do not trust any of them in the slightest. I have not seen one in
years. These days if I have a degenerated mental health in some form (whether
that be inability to focus, sleep, or bouts of anxiety), marijuana is my go to
solution.
~~~
alleychnt
Psychiatrists are a bit like chiropractors. They want to be seen as "doctors",
but none of what they do has any scientific basis. Ever notice how
psychiatrists just prescribe you random medications without knowing how, or
even if, they work? The most damning fact is that I've never met anyone on
psych meds who is doing really great.
~~~
marsrover
I have noticed. Multiple times I've gone to a Psychiatrist and they have
decided to try something because it's new and supposed to work, when the
reality is they've only ever put 2 or 3 clients on it and it has been working
for a few weeks, and the medication itself has only been out a year.
In addition, the worst times in my life were the times when I was taking
psychiatric medications.
~~~
phren0logy
I'm sorry this has been your experience, but please don't throw my entire
profession under the bus because of it.
~~~
intopieces
Your profession needs no help from marsrover to find itself under the wheels
of a bus.
Every other medical revolution -- such as the rise of antibiotics, the
pioneering of complex surgeries, and the advancements in medical imaging --
have resulted in a net reduction of people suffering from the ailments those
tools are involved in treating.
Not so with psychiatry. The more drugs that are developed, the more illnesses
are discovered to use them on.
You'll have to excuse the skepticism of some us who have seen loved ones
suffer through debilitating, sometimes permanent side effects from drugs their
psychiatrists prescribed. Your profession will get the benefit of the doubt
when fewer of us are caring for those loved ones.
~~~
vonmoltke
> You'll have to excuse the skepticism of some us who have seen loved ones
> suffer through debilitating, sometimes permanent side effects from drugs
> their psychiatrists prescribed.
What debilitating side effects are those? How does their frequency compare to
side effects for non-psychiatric drugs and treatments?
~~~
intopieces
You know it's odd: in all those years I spent helping my dad with his knees
shot from zoloft induced weight gain or waking my roommate up because she
drank too much to counteract the stimulants they prescribed to balance the
benzos or sleeping next to a partner with a permanent, random, violent
parkinsonian tremor caused by antipsychotics, I never considered doing a
frequency analysis against the myriad of unrecommended non-psychiatric drugs
and treatments out there.
Unfortunately, neither did any of their doctors, it would seem.
~~~
vonmoltke
You know, it's odd: I don't recall asking you if you had personally done a
study or frequency analysis. I recall asking a rhetorical question as a
follow-up to a specific question about your claim in order to head off
anecdote poker. Seems like you decided to jump straight into it, though. So,
how many people have you had to deal with who had night terrors due to
Chantix? Who became addicted to opiod pain medications? Who developed T2DM as
a result of corticosteroid use? Who nearly bled out because of blood thinners?
You specifically demonized psychiatric medicine. You know people who have had
pretty bad experiences with psychiatric medications but none who have had
similar with non-psychiatric medications. My point is not to doubt that these
side effects exist, but to illustrate that they exist for a host of non-
psychiatric medications as well. Many of those are just as over-prescribed as
psychiatric medications, and often by the same general practitioners over-
prescribing them.
~~~
intopieces
How does the existence of side effects in other medicines affect the status of
psychiatric medicines and their percieved (in)effectiveness or their
overprescription status?
You claim I'm 'demonizing' (i.e., being unfair towards) a subset of the
medical profession when in fact I'm only relaying my personal experience and
skepticism based on that. I don't doubt that there are a whole host of other
medicines whose effictiveness is unknown and whose popularity is primarly due
to its availability as free samples in doctor's offices and the U.S.'s
notoriously effective prescription drug advertisement industry.
But to make that a point in this discussion seems like a misdirection more
than an counter-argument. Two things can be bad at the same time
independently.
To answer your questions: I dated someone with night terrors from Chantix,
have a relative who is addicted to opoids (but who thinks no one knows when
he's high at Christmas dinner), but have thankfully never had to deal with the
last two.
Even still -- none of those latter series were prescribed to treat disorders
discovered _after_ the invention of the drug itself. This is the primary point
of skepticism: horrible side effects for well-advertised drugs for disorders
we just recently discovered affecting, what was astutely noted by another
commentor, the most complex organ of the body.
Many psychiatric medications are an excellent example of 'when you have a
hammer, everything looks like a nail.'
~~~
vonmoltke
> How does the existence of side effects in other medicines affect the status
> of psychiatric medicines and their percieved (in)effectiveness or their
> overprescription status?
> You claim I'm 'demonizing' (i.e., being unfair towards) a subset of the
> medical profession when in fact I'm only relaying my personal experience and
> skepticism based on that. I don't doubt that there are a whole host of other
> medicines whose effictiveness is unknown and whose popularity is primarly
> due to its availability as free samples in doctor's offices and the U.S.'s
> notoriously effective prescription drug advertisement industry.
Because you singled out and attacked psychiatrists and psychiatry as if there
were something inherent to that field of medicine and that class of
medications that is not present in other fields and types. You specifically
said:
>> Every other medical revolution -- such as the rise of antibiotics, the
pioneering of complex surgeries, and the advancements in medical imaging --
have resulted in a net reduction of people suffering from the ailments those
tools are involved in treating.
>> Not so with psychiatry. The more drugs that are developed, the more
illnesses are discovered to use them on.
That is not merely relating your experience. That is throwing a particular
medical specialty under the bus for what are in fact widespread issues with
medical practice.
> Even still -- none of those latter series were prescribed to treat disorders
> discovered after the invention of the drug itself. This is the primary point
> of skepticism: horrible side effects for well-advertised drugs for disorders
> we just recently discovered affecting, what was astutely noted by another
> commentor, the most complex organ of the body.
Are you claiming that there were no mental disorders until the advent of
psychiatric drugs? That a subset of disorders are just marketing ploys by a
psychiatrist-industrial complex?
~~~
intopieces
It's here you might benefit from the book:
Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing
Rise of Mental Illness
To explain further the unique situation that mental health drugs present. You
might benefit especially from the notes section, to which his citations refer.
Am I saying there is a conspiracy between psychiatrists and pharmacuetical
companies? Were it only so simple! There are a myriad of complex reasons why
we're in the situation we're in -- but claiming that the situation is not
unique, that my discussion of my personal experience and the research behind
it is somehow a 'demonization' of an otherwise unremarkable industry belies
both the thesis of the article and experiences of millions of patients.
~~~
vonmoltke
> To explain further the unique situation that mental health drugs present.
...
> claiming that the situation is not unique, that my discussion of my personal
> experience and the research behind it is somehow a 'demonization' of an
> otherwise unremarkable industry belies both the thesis of the article and
> experiences of millions of patients
You are saying it is unique, I am saying it is not. How am I misrepresenting
the thesis?
------
nwah1
We're all aware that most of the drugs that are common in the profession have
serious side effects.
I'm glad the author called for his colleagues to focus more on the whole body,
since realistically lifestyle and nutritional changes can have as profound
effects as drugs, with no side effects.
I tend to think subclinical deficiencies in various nutrients can play a big
role. Most people are already aware of the imporant brain benefits of Vitamin
D and Omega 3, but there's others.
Tryptophan:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3405680/#RSTB201...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3405680/#RSTB20120109C25)
Lithium:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/opinion/sunday/should-
we-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/opinion/sunday/should-we-all-take-
a-bit-of-lithium.html)
Uridine:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3080753/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3080753/)
Magnesium:
[https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-
psychiatry...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-
psychiatry/201106/magnesium-and-the-brain-the-original-chill-pill)
NAC:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3044191/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3044191/)
~~~
AstralStorm
Lithium, uridine... no side effects? You must be joking.
Even at subclinical dosages there are sometimes side effects from those.
Dietary changes have a ton of shoe effects as well. Even the dieteticians
cannot really find precise enough consensus on these.
~~~
nwah1
As the article mentions, the dosages of lithium that are naturally in water
tend to be well below the levels that we're familiar with in prescription
lithium. (Less than 1/1000th the amount)
But if lithium is more like a micronutrient, then long term administration of
low dose lithium would be much better than temporary use of prescription
dosages, and have very few side effects.
------
1_2__3
Had a doctor prescribe two meds once, then a few weeks later asked me how one
of them was working. I was honestly confused by the question, since I have no
idea how one drug is working when I've only ever taken it in tandem with
something else. The very question indicates at best an unacceptable level of
indifference, at worst outright incompetence.
~~~
Neeek
Wouldn't that imply that the second drug might just be there to ease side
effects of the first? Regulate hormonal levels or blood pressure, or any other
functions that might not be directly related to how effective the other one is
but simply keeps everything in order? I get what you're saying, but
incompetence is a bit of an extreme conclusion to draw from you not knowing
what your prescription is meant to do.
------
force_reboot
There seems to be a huge gap between what psychiatrists believe and how
psychiatric knowledge is presented to the general public.
For example, I'm not aware of any _scientific_ evidence that depression is
qualitatively different from being unhappy, or that depression can't be caused
by events that would make a typical person unhappy, or cured by the opposite.
And I'm fairly certain that very little such evidence exists, because this is
not the concern of psychiatrists, they just want to treat the person, not
define categories per se. But I believe that psychiatrists allow the public to
form this flawed understanding because they think it will lead people to treat
people with depression with more sympathy and treat depression like a real
problem. To me the more honest approach would be to simply say that
unhappiness is a real problem and any approach or treatment that works should
be considered.
~~~
epistasis
If you'd look you'd find plenty of evidence of the sort that you think doesn't
exist. Try a popular book like Against Depression as a starter. I think that
the existence of such evidence also invalidates the rest of your prejudices
that you express.
~~~
force_reboot
I don't have time to read every book out there, so when I look for answers to
questions like this I look for sources that are authoritative, that is,
sources that summarize the majority opinion in a field. The book you recommend
doesn't seem to be that, and so I'm not convinced that it's worth reading. Are
there particular studies in the book that specifically address whether
depression is qualitatively different from unhappiness? Does the book cite
mainstream opinions by psychiatrists and if so, what opinions does it cite?
~~~
epistasis
This is not secret information, some key google terms may be "biology of
depression" or something like that.
Just one piece of the literature that you might find convincing (not sure if
its from that book or another) that you might find convincing is that there
are structural differences in the pre-frontal cortex that can be seen under a
microscope. The biological basis of depression is something that's so well
established that strident doubt of it means that you can't be troubled to look
for anything. It's like being convinced that evolution can't possibly be true
because biologists can't be trusted.
~~~
force_reboot
I think that a "biological basis" means something different to you than to me.
How exactly do these studies show that depression is different from being
unhappy? Did they study the brains of merely unhappy people and find no such
biological differences? Again, in my understanding psychiatrists and
researchers make no attempt to differentiate between depression and
unhappiness because they have no reason to make this distinction.
I'm going to assume that your argument is that if depression is caused by
biological factors then it must be treated differently from unhappiness that
is caused by life events. But in that case you will have to explain how this
is consistent with the fact that "...depressive episodes are strongly
correlated with adverse events..."[0]. This fact seems more consistent with
either reverse causation (depression causes biological changes) or that
depression can have multiple causes, and can occur in the absence of a
biological cause.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder#Psyc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder#Psychological)
------
fuzionhk
Most drugs on the market today have side effects that are serious to most
people. Also the fact is that now a days it seems that almost all kid have
"ADHD" or "ADD" and are getting put on stimulants for it. I don't get it at
all. I was put on antidepressants when I was young and it really could have
fucked me up if my parents kept listening to my doctor.
~~~
derefr
ADHD is overdiagnosed _and_ under diagnosed. (It's just _badly_ diagnosed,
really.)
On the one hand, parents get their kids prescribed stimulants (which
necessarily entails a—usually fake—ADD diagnosis) for the same reason
university students go pick up illicit stimulants: they think it'll "make"
them study. That is not the problem that ADHD causes, nor is that the benefit
stimulants provide, but it's what parents _think_.
On the other hand, many people only discover as adults that they've had ADHD
their entire lives, and have suffered unnecessarily through 3+ decades of
being unable to motivate themselves to do homework/projects before they're
overdue, or practice anything, or focus on reading rather than (badly)
multitasking five different things, or put themselves to bed before 4AM, or
even remember half the things they need to bring with them when they leave the
house.
------
codefolder
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
\- Jiddu Krishnamurti
------
tcj_phx
If Psychiatry wants to "turn itself around", it needs to do some house
cleaning.
In a recent "skeptic" magazine [1], Harriet Hall, M.D. had this to say about
the situation:
"Psychotropic drugs are far from ideal. They don’t work well for everyone, and
they can sometimes cause devastating side effects. But they do save lives, and
they do allow some patients to lead a more-or-less normal life. _They are the
best we have at the moment._ " (emphasis added)
[1]
[http://www.skeptic.com/magazine/archives/21.1/](http://www.skeptic.com/magazine/archives/21.1/)
This is an apology for the status quo, and distracts from the main issue. My
girlfriend is one of the ones for whom "psychotropic drugs" don't work at all
- in fact, I believe that the psychotropic drugs that she's been prescribed
have a lot to do with her present predicament. Haldol - sold as an anti-
psychotic - is well known to cause the condition it supposedly treats. Dr.
Hall states that these drugs "save lives", but I wonder what the ratio of
"lives ruined" to "lives saved" is.
There are non-psychotropic drugs that have been very helpful for my
girlfriend, but her psychiatrists don't know to use them. I've spent a few
hours today revising my latest petition to the courts asking them protect my
girlfriend from the palliative treatments that she has been ordered to endure.
The main thrust of my argument is that the medications aren't working because
they do not address the causes of her condition. The causes are perfectly
obvious to me, but the doctors have all been "shooting in the dark", hoping
that the next pill will work better than the last one.
I suspect that "exhaustion" is related to most psychiatric problems. New
research linking psychosis to an inability to produce cortisol is a good clue:
[https://www.jcu.edu.au/news/releases/2016/june/stress-
hormon...](https://www.jcu.edu.au/news/releases/2016/june/stress-hormone-link-
with-psychosis)
------
pc2g4d
Psychiatry's trouble is that it tries to treat emotional problems using drugs.
That's also the entire point of psychiatry.
It's in a crisis because "stabilizing" people by numbing their brains does
nothing to help them face their problems. A profession of cleaners whose main
technique was to sweep everything under the rug would also face crisis at some
point.
~~~
conanbatt
Thats not the problem, its a tool to solve a situation. If someone is
emotionally suffering so much as to not perform a job, not get out of bed,
talking with them will not save their lifes. Treating the symptoms is one very
legitimate way of dealing with a disease.
------
morgante
> Psychiatry programs attract medical students with lower board scores and
> fewer academic honors on average compared to other specialties.
It sounds like a self-reinforcing problem. Psychiatry's bad reputation leads
to it having less qualified practitioners, thereby justifying the poor
reputation.
I personally do not place much value in the field. It seems to monopolize on
creating problems where none existed, and thereby increasing profits. In
particular, the fact that most treatments seem to be lifetime is suspicious.
~~~
wbl
Working as a psychiatrist is hard. Reimbursement is low, and many serious
patients do not have private insurance.
------
forkandwait
Interesting that the author does not cite anything describing the resounding
success of psychiatry...
~~~
droopyEyelids
Still it was more honest than the forensic odontologists' assessment of their
profession.
[https://theintercept.com/2016/03/25/in-las-vegas-
embattled-f...](https://theintercept.com/2016/03/25/in-las-vegas-embattled-
forensics-experts-respond-to-scandals-and-flawed-convictions/)
------
jokoon
The future is really about making advance in understanding the human brain and
neurosciences. If AI could be really good at anything, it's really about
making solid steps in psychology and have opportunities to stomp down myths.
------
_greim_
Doesn't scientology have some kind of weird self-declared feud with
psychiatry? I wonder if they've perhaps been sowing FUD whenever and wherever
possible.
~~~
tcj_phx
Last week I posted a section [1] from Robert Whitaker's book _Anatomy of an
Epidemic_ about how Scientology was probably used to deflect attention from
the ineffectiveness of commonly used drugs.
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12222898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12222898)
------
Pica_soO
The basic lie that psychiatry is based upon, is that there is a sickness where
there is suffering. Not neural phenotype, that yes can suffer, but have been
useful for various enterprises and endeavor of humans kind. Manic-Depressive
where our "suicidal" explorers, alcoholics stopped us from being nomadic, gays
pressured into churches formed the first institutions and created contract
security. The list continues near endless. If psychiatry would be a honest
science, it would look upon cause and effect, asking what did this or that
creatures side effect accomplish do to pay the ferry-woman. And can we
optimize that- can we create creature constellations which produce new ideas
like a machine. But it does not want to know, it wants to heal, which it can
not heal as long as it cant resequence DNA in a living human. It doesn't even
want to know the possible consequences if it could cure.
Do not interpret this statement as a general dismissive of proper treatment.
Treatment of some neuronal constitutions allows some humans to live in this
society. But i want to know what society trades personal meh-ness for.
~~~
serge2k
I honestly have no idea what you are talking about here.
~~~
selimthegrim
He's riffing on pop psych theories about the "warrior gene" and suchlike. I'm
pretty sure there were institutions predating Holy Mother Church.
~~~
Pica_soO
Disliking complexity, are we? And having a warrior gene, is actually something
worthy of treatment in current society. Warriors, are useless today and will
be for the foreseeable time. If there is such a gene, that shapes its owners
brain in such a way.
But the main point is, that hunting for local optima of personal happiness, is
sacrificing the upholding or even gain regarding personal happiness in the
future. And psychiatry is neither cartographic why and for what society became
composed of what it is and is neither offering constellations society could
become.
BRB Got to go to Turings Barbershop. Best haircut in the city. Though
sometimes conversation gets stuck on who shaves the barber.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft is testing a new mosquito trap to fight Zika - nmc
http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/21/technology/microsoft-mosquito-zika/index.html
======
MollyR
Just wondering, why microsoft is spending resources on this, rather than its
flagship products. It feels like a pr move.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Look out for No. 1 - yread
http://timharford.com/2011/09/look-out-for-no-1/
======
mdda
"Nobody seems sure why so much data has the Benford distribution. " : Have a
look at [http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/benfords-law-
zipfs-...](http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/benfords-law-zipfs-law-
and-the-pareto-distribution/) (cited in the previous discussion on HN) for an
excellent exposition of the theory, and an explanation of the 'power' of the
Benford Law.
~~~
bermanoid
That Terry Tao article is excellent, as usual (well, at least for math dorks -
what's unusual about this one is that you don't need a very high level of
dorkery to grok it 100%) and the "executive summary" reason that Benford's law
applies so broadly is easy to find:
"More generally, it is not hard to show that if X obeys the continuous
Benford’s law, and one multiplies X by some positive multiplier Y which is
independent of the first digit of X (and, a fortiori, is independent of the
fractional part of log_10(X)), one obtains another quantity X' = XY which also
obeys the continuous Benford’s law."
In other words, multiplicative combinations of (independent) quantities will
inherit Benford's law as long as any one of the quantities obeys it on its
own, so it just takes one sub-factor that grows exponentially in order for an
entire distribution to follow the law.
------
pigbucket
Good to be aware of this if you plan to falsify your tax returns, according to
a '98 NYT article (from which this post takes its neat title)
[http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/04/science/following-
benford-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/04/science/following-benford-s-
law-or-looking-out-for-no-1.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)
------
amirmc
Previous discussion of Benford's Law on HN
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701342>
------
RockofStrength
I'm impressed that Madoff was smart enough to mimic Benford distribution in
his monthly returns (that's what the article led me to infer).
I actually made an r/math post about Benford's Law that I thought was pretty
interesting, although it didn't get much attention or many comments
(admittedly bad signs). Any peer review (or su-peer-ior review) is
appreciated.
Here's a snippet: "...generation of the geometric layout for Benford first
digits is a similar process to creating a Sierpinski Triangle by drawing a
triangle, and randomly plotting midpoint dots between vertices and sides
recursively. In the Benford case the plotted dots are instead individual
numbers, which share a geometric connection (e.g. two galaxies colliding will
on average be a doubling, so galaxy size should possess Benford
distribution)."
[http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/gkj2i/benfords_law_exp...](http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/gkj2i/benfords_law_explained_through_a_tree_of_first/)
------
alecco
Last month Khan and Vi Hart made some very interesting videos on Benford's
Law:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KmeGpjeLZ0>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZUDoEdjTzg>
------
borgar
No link in the article so here is the report cited:
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0475.2011....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0475.2011.00542.x/full)
------
chailatte
I don't think the issue at hand is that fraud detections are unsophisticated.
The issue at hand is that the fraud detections are in cahoot with the fraud
themselves. For example: Enron, Worldcom and Accenture (past) Greece, Italy,
Spain and Goldman Sachs, Fitch, Moody, S&P (present) Chinese local banks,
Chinese companies and SEC (future)
The problem with hackers is that they always try to find mathematical
solutions to moral problems. What the world needs right now is a moral
solution. A beheading for those that have fouled.
Unfortunately, the hackers, the workers - ones that actually have the power to
demand changes - are willingly allowing themselves to be exploited by those
that lie, and not demanding any moral judgements. They're not interested in
changing the politics, they claim. They just want to keep producing
interesting things, they exclaim. They don't realize they're the ones keeping
the lie going. They're the ones propping up this decrepit shell of a society.
Until one day the shell collapses on their kids, anyways.
~~~
william42
The problem is that revolutions tend to be more harmful than their
predecessors: see China in the 60s, for example.
~~~
0x12
That's definitely not a given. Revolutions are a time of instability and the
outcome can be worse or better. It mostly depends on what precipitated the
revolution in the first place, how educated the people in the country where
the revolution takes place are and how involved they plan on being once the
violence dies down. A revolution is a time of transition and instability
without any guarantees towards the outcome.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists - blasdel
http://powazek.com/posts/2090
======
blasdel
"SEO consultants are just web designers who are incapable of doing the other
90% of the job"
~~~
meatbag
By the same logic, web designers are just web developers who are incapable of
doing the other 90% of the job.
------
cousin_it
The article's reasoning seems to imply that everyone who releases a good
product without advertising _will_ eventually succeed by word of mouth. This
doesn't sound to me like an accurate description of our world, though I'd have
liked it to work that way.
------
greyman
>> 1\. The good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work.
Not really. The rest also works, or used to work in the past.
>> Occasionally a darkside SEO master may find some loophole in the Google
algorithm to exploit, which might actually lead to an increase in traffic. But
that ill-gotten traffic gain won’t last long. <<
That's true, but sometimes it last for several years. In some specific cases,
it lasts only a few days, but brings so much revenue that it is still worth
doing it.
>> Remember this: It’s not your job to create content for Google.
:-) This is laughable. Everyone can create content, no matter how spammy it
might look, that's just a freedom of expression. It's Google problem that they
index it.
But of course, there are shady practices like automatically spamming blog
comments, and that's evil. I think SEO is ok, it made some people very rich by
exploiting search engine holes, which then allowed Google to fix them and make
the engine better.
------
Psyonic
"But seriously - there's a pervading myth in the search engine marketing and
optimization industry that if you're a good boy, the engines will pat your
head and will reward you with fine rankings, even if it may take an
incarnation or two. That's unfortunate because not only does it fuzz up the
hardcore technological issues involved, it also attracts all sorts of gut
level thinkers to the SEM world, flogging their gut level advice ("content is
king" being just one pervasive popular myth in question) and confusing each
other and everybody else. This is a basically religious, moralistic attitude,
and quite an inadequate one when dealing with technological issues." -- Taken
from
[http://www.searchengineblog.com/interviews/interview_ralph_t...](http://www.searchengineblog.com/interviews/interview_ralph_tegtmeier.htm)
------
chaosmachine
_"If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned."_
Not really.
~~~
ja2ke
True, you haven't been conned, you've just made two shitty hiring decisions in
a row -- paying sone designer or developer who didn't build you a good site,
and then paying a snake oil salesman to try and make your troubles disappear.
~~~
chaosmachine
There's lots of legitimate ways to do SEO. Making the site more crawlable,
setting up proper title tags, designing a good robots.txt, etc. Not all SEO is
blackhat.
~~~
Psyonic
The author calls this "making good websites," and believes that if you run a
website at all, you should be forced to learn about all of this stuff, even if
your passion is just for writing. Further, he goes on to say its "obvious." By
no means do I agree with him, just letting you know how he'd respond (taken
from his response to similar comments on the article.)
------
jellicle
The problem is, his statement is false:
"Which brings us, finally, to the One True Way to get a lot of traffic on the
web. It’s pretty simple, and I’m going to give it to you here, for free:
Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again."
That isn't the One True Way to get a lot of traffic on the web. It's A way,
and not the easiest way. Maybe he thinks it should be the best or only way.
Maybe I think it should be. But it isn't. As long as search engine spammers
can make a living, they will continue to spam search engines, and simply
declaring that that is "bad" is going to have about as much effect as
declaring that dealing drugs or prostituting oneself is "bad" has had on those
professions.
------
DanielBMarkham
This article lost me about half-way down with all of the over-the-top
language. Google is not all that is good and just in the world, and those that
manipulate its algorithms for their own ends are not all that is evil and
base.
Come back when you've gained a bit of nuance.
------
bhseo
"Spam" exists in most communication channels.
Telemarketers in call centers. Automated voice messages. Bulk SMS messages.
Bluetooth spam. Junk mail. Email spam. Usenet spam. IRC spam. Web spam. Word-
of-mouth spam. Celebrity “endorsements”. Street peddlers. Classifieds spam.
Flyer spam. Sky writing, flying banners etc. Huge billboards with blinking
fucking lights.
I could go on for a while.
Are all of those people evil opportunistic bastard cockroaches?
~~~
f00
Yep, pretty much.
Just because preying on ignorance is easy and lucrative does not make it okay.
~~~
bhseo
I'm not very fond of advertising as a practice in general. I'm not trying to
say all those practices are ok, just because a lot of people carry them out.
Is the pilot with the flying banner evil?
Is my low-volume, efficient, targeted, semi-automated marketing evil?
How many of you have cold called people? Are you evil?
Is Google evil, trying to cut into every online (and offline) publisher's
profit?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Fallacy of Technical Debt - fpgaminer
https://medium.com/@fpgaminer/the-fallacy-of-technical-debt-202f7406337e#.4wxxnqksy
======
devnonymous
> This is because the real cost of software is time.
Exactly... And so it follows that technical debt is the debt of time. What
your quick and dirty ^solution^ achieves today will be more _expensive_ in
terms of time, to fix/scale/debug/maintain tomorrow.
How is the author not seeing this? There is a cost and a value to everything.
A highly valuable quick and dirty solution today makes sense only if it will
cost less to throw away, replace or clean up.
Sigh, I'm tried of this industry that keeps not just reinventing wheel but
rediscovering the entire process that leads up to it.
~~~
zzzcpan
"What your quick and dirty ^solution^ achieves today will be more expensive in
terms of time, to fix/scale/debug/maintain tomorrow."
This is also a fallacy. You are assuming that you know how and what to do
better today to make it less expensive tomorrow. The simple truth is - you
don't. You can only know how to do better once you do it in a quick and dirty
way and it might not even be worth it.
Technical debt is very broken and very misleading concept that should be
avoided.
~~~
devnonymous
My comment itself is a good demonstration of the point I was trying to make. I
anticipated the possibility of misunderstanding or misinterpretation of my
first statement and put in the time to add the second to qualify my point.
I did not intend make a blanket generalization against quick and dirty
solutions (ref: google about Doug McIlroy and Don Knuth trying to solve the
same problem[1]). I am in fact stressing that there exists a tradeoff that
needs to be considered. Usually the tradeoff is made towards less work (ie:
lazy programmers) -- less work _for the foreseeable future_ (and if you can't
forsee at least somewhat in the future, you're not doing it right).
By responding to just the first part of my comment you've confirmed the last
part.
[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=literate+programming+the+wor...](https://www.google.com/search?q=literate+programming+the+word+count+problem)
edit: I mistaken said Bill Joy instead of Doug MaIlroy initially
~~~
zzzcpan
"and if you can't forsee at least somewhat in the future, you're not doing it
right"
This is the idea I'm trying to discuss. You cannot know future trade offs in
advance. You can only make a bunch of assumptions about the future. But the
more assumptions you make, the fewer of them will be correct or worthy of the
time and even more will not be addressed at all. Which defeats the purpose of
the technical debt concept.
Jumping into the future with the "no-technical-debt" solution is generally a
bad idea.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Home Industries Health Care Many diabetics won’t be able to get insulin by 2030 - srameshc
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/many-diabetics-wont-be-able-to-get-insulin-by-2030-unless-big-changes-happen-2018-11-21
======
capsch
Annoyingly doesn't say WHY.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Minimalism in feature implementation presentation from Social App Workshop - abraham
http://vimeo.com/13770948
======
abraham
I would love feedback on content, style, usefulness, etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: SCSS live editing with Sublime Text - bwm
https://github.com/mechio/takana
======
akhleung
LibSass maintainer here -- it's really great to see another project pick it
up, and although we're aware that we still have a fair bit of catching up to
do, things like this give us all the more incentive!
~~~
iamlacroix
Thanks for all your work on LibSass!
------
ErikHuisman
Is this different than say grunt-watch with livereload.js?
Edit: grunt-tekana links to [http://usetakana.com](http://usetakana.com)
~~~
nc
Yes. It updates per keystroke rather than per save. We've found that makes it
perfect for sketching in code and tweaking a design.
~~~
ErikHuisman
Awesome.. Id like to try is but it doesn't do compass?
------
criswell
This is awesome and I plan on using it. The only issue/feature is that it's
using libsass, it definitely has some catching up to do to compete with Ruby's
version's features but damn it's fast.
------
coderzach
Wow, this is really amazing! It makes editing scss in sublime feel like
modifying css from the in browser dev tools. Very well done!
------
jbeja
Is only for OSX or is just tested in it?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Paris Rolls Out Sidewalk Urinals to Tame "Wild Peeing" - gscott
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/14/638512558/nope-those-arent-mailboxes-paris-rolls-out-sidewalk-urinals
======
cpursley
This would not be a problem if Europe had free toilets like the United States.
I really don't understand why I should have to pay to pee.
~~~
strict9
Where is this in the US? McDonalds? Those don't exist except interstate
highways.
~~~
jstarfish
This shouldn't be downvoted. Restrooms within U.S. urban centers are hard to
find, for patrons only, if they have public restrooms at all. Seattle, NYC,
Atlanta, San Diego, L.A...all the same. There's a reason people urinate behind
dumpsters.
10 years ago on NYE at Times Square, people were literally dropping squat or
pissing in bottles in the middle of a televised street for lack of anywhere
else to do it. I've been desperate enough to have to to it myself.
Somewhere in the suburbs? Sure, just stop at a McDonald's, a public park, a
mall, or any number of places with toilet access. But cities themselves
largely lack them.
~~~
Nasrudith
Time square was also cordoned off during New Years celebrations I believe. Why
they didn't include sufficient portapotties within the perimeter but out of
central show areas is beyond me.
~~~
jstarfish
Even worse, the way they had security set up was that herded everybody into
corrals after frisking them. No re-entry into your pen was permitted.
There were portapotties stationed up and down the strip...outside of the
corrals. If you dared to use them, you were done for the night-- you couldn't
get back into your pen unless you evaded the cops and hopped a fence.
------
tomc1985
Netherlands has public urinals in some places (Dam Square in Amsterdam, for
example), the sky didn't fall or anything. They are a little unsightly but
younger drunken me certainly appreciated their presence.
I wish there was some equivalent to these things suitable for women though, it
isn't fair that we have all the fun :)
~~~
donkeyd
They're all over Amsterdam. There's an app for people who are boating that
shows every urinal next to the canals. It's very convenient!
Edit: There's even ones that come up out of the ground at night!
------
LarryL
I'm french, I live near Paris and very often walk in Paris for various reasons
(shopping, etc)
The BIG problem is that the automated public (and free, which was not the case
before) toilets are NOT numerous enough (400 only according to the article,
what a joke!), you have to _search_ for them, even in the very popular -and
touristic- areas where I usually roam. But the other, and far worse, problem
is that they are SLOOOOOOOOOW!!!! Obviously only one person can use the toilet
at a time, then when they exit, the toilet auto-cleans itself, which takes
FOREVER, and I mean a good couple of minutes, maybe more. Imagine a line of
ten people in front of you (it happens)... You'll have a 30 minutes wait, if
not more!
I won't insist on the fact that after the auto-cleaning the toilets are still
(understandably) wet on the floor and the toilet seat, which is not the most
pleasant thing. But I agree that it's not an easy thing to do. I will also
pass quickly on the fact that sometimes you find used needles (left by drug
addicts) in the hand washing bowl...
In some of the most touristic places (remember that France is the most visited
country in the world, and Paris draws an incredible number of visitors,
especially during the holidays), you can see ONE or TWO toilets, and that's
it, for thousands of people! That's a total joke.
As for those new urinals, who would want to use those? I don't want to pee in
front of everybody, thank you! There are plenty of possible more secluded
spots.
The idea of adding more toilets is one thing, and more efficient (and less
cumbersome) models compared to the current ones would be a VERY welcome idea,
but this solution is in my opinion not well studied. Plus it does not help
women (~50% of the public) who also need to use toilets...
And it would also be good if toilets were available in the subway! That's
where I've seen the most people take "wild pees" (usually again a wall in the
stations), it's the WORST place, it's disgusting.
------
kiddico
Before reading the article my first thought was that there was not adequate
public restrooms, but its mentioned they've already added 400. It would be
interesting to know if the incident rate dropped after adding them, and if so
then maybe they need to add more. I'm not sure how much area the 400 had to
cover, but it might not have been enough.
~~~
rtkwe
400 for a large city like Paris isn't that much and discoverability is an
issue. They're fairly densely packed in some areas [0] I'm guessing near
restaurant/bar heavy areas but fairly sparse out side of that.
[0] [https://www.paris.fr/services-et-infos-
pratiques/environneme...](https://www.paris.fr/services-et-infos-
pratiques/environnement-et-espaces-verts/proprete/les-sanisettes-2396)
------
titanix2
This is a return of the 19 century « vespasiennes » (public pissoirs) that
were removed partly because they were detourned by men for other purposes. By
that time homosexuality was frowned upon. The new version take less space but
also offer less privacy; it’s a weird choice in my opinion.
~~~
blang
Not just 19th century:
[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
news/seattles-5-million...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
news/seattles-5-million-automated-public-toilets-sold-for-12000/)
less privacy as a design choice seems to be very deliberate
------
jwilk
Text-only version:
[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=638512558](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=638512558)
Archived copy (with photo):
[https://archive.is/Ycjrc](https://archive.is/Ycjrc)
------
torstenvl
This is both hilarious and very useful. Parisian culture leans toward
leisurely café sipping, which means there aren't a lot of Starbucks-type
places where one can stop quickly to pee and grab a drink or snack. Current
options are to pay for access to a little cabin-style bathroom (even those
aren't always easy to find), or line up for a place that permits bathroom use
without essentially renting a table for an hour (the line for a bathroom at
McDonald's on the Champs Élysée can stretch out the door)... or pee in an
alley or subway.
I'll be interested to see how this is received by Parisians.
~~~
lainga
Is it for the same reason there are no trash cans in Japan? You're expected to
keep that stuff at home, as home business?
~~~
Nasrudith
I thought that was related to the nerve gas attacks on the subway and deciding
they would rather have litter sweeped up than standing cans which may hide
bombs.
------
hackermailman
[http://uritrottoir.com](http://uritrottoir.com) that marketing of the guy
taking a selfie while using one. We have free robotoilets here but drug
addicts cover the floors in used needles and other piles of trash that clog
the autoclean ergo alleys reeking of urine all summer persist.
~~~
awakeasleep
Places with the needle problems (like SF) should bite the bullet and provide
sharps containers that are maintained by public employees.
It's simply insane to ignore the problem posed by the kilotons of used needles
laying around everywhere, and they're a public health menace, so the
government should take responsibility for the issue.
~~~
_jal
We (San Francisco) do have them. Some people don't like them, and there are
ongoing fights about that. Generally speaking, "the government" here is trying
to "take responsibility" like you ask. It is a certain segment of the
population that you should be taking issue with.
I'm not singling you out, but a personal pet-peeve of mine is this "us vs.
government" thing. You, the reader, are a part of your government. Pretending
like government should be like a restaurant and service you is a category
error that causes lots of unnecessary problems while not solving real ones.
Take responsibility, indeed.)
------
rayiner
Pretty much this:
> "They have been installed on a sexist proposition: men cannot control
> themselves (from the bladder point of view) and so all of society has to
> adapt," Gwendoline Coipeault of the feminist group Femmes Solidaires tells
> the news service. "The public space must be transformed to cause them
> minimum discomfort."
They need to bring back flogging for public urination and littering.
~~~
phyzome
Yes, because beating people will make them suddenly not need to pee. >_>
(Will you also advocate removal of trash cans, and beat people for littering?)
...how about free public toilets, which will solve the actual problem?
~~~
hfdgiutdryg
_...how about free public toilets, which will solve the actual problem?_
I get the impression that you misunderstood the parent. Installing _toilets_
would solve the problem without being sexist. The plan of installing urinals
does seem rather sexist, doesn't it?
I mean, it appears to be saying, "oh well, boys can't hold it" or "women don't
(or can't) drink". Aren't those sexist statements?
It sure sounds to me like it's reinforcing a weird culture of men not doing
any planning and feeling entitled to piss wherever it's convenient for them.
~~~
phyzome
Public urination has several causes: 1) People not caring enough not to; 2)
People can't find a public restroom and they have to pee; 3) People can't
_afford_ to use the available restrooms.
The first of those could possibly be handled with threats and punishment; the
other two would only be minimally affected by that.
Yes, it's sexist to only provide facilities for men—whatever the argument. I
don't disagree! But corporal punishment for urination, as rayiner was
suggesting, _without_ providing free public toilets... that's just cruel.
~~~
hfdgiutdryg
_But corporal punishment for urination, as rayiner was suggesting, without
providing free public toilets... that 's just cruel._
I don't think the problem is caused by vast numbers if underprivileged
homeless people. It sounds like it's caused by irresponsible, indifferent
young men. There doesn't appear to be a widespread problem of women urinating
in the streets.
It's perfectly valid to conclude that the problem is a lack of punishment and
shaming of the unwanted behavior.
~~~
phyzome
So, let's say your new "Whip the Pissers Act" gets signed into law.
Congratulations, there are now public floggings of irresponsible, indifferent
young men, and many of them do change their ways. But there are also public
floggings of the homeless. Awesome.
Or does your law somehow codify "indifferent and irresponsible" as a condition
of the crime?
~~~
rayiner
Just like with any other crime, the prosecution or sentencing authority could
take account of mitigating circumstances. We don’t get rid of laws against
speeding because sometimes people are rushing to the hospital.
~~~
phyzome
I don't trust prosecutorial discretion to protect me from overly broad laws.
------
patrickg_zill
What changed?
(Twitter tells me that it is because of immigration from the 3rd world.)
~~~
qop
That is correct.
European business culture also contributes in some small part, so given enough
growth it would have eventually been a problem anyways, but it was exacerbated
by importing tens of thousands of primitive terrorists.
~~~
dang
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our
requests to stop.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: With all of these news about Rust, is anybody running it in production? - aledalgrande
It seems a cool language and I have a lot of C++ in my prototype that I could, possibly, convert to Rust when I do the rewrite. C++ hasn't treated me bad, but I am evaluating the conversion possibility.<p>But is there really any company using the language in live products?
======
yazaddaruvala
[https://www.skylight.io](https://www.skylight.io)
~~~
aledalgrande
Are you working at Skylight? Can you share your experience?
------
steveklabnik
OpenDNS and Skylight are the two big deployments we know of, and there are
some smaller ones we've heard rumors of.
We don't encourage it until 1.0, of course...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why super-smart people may be drawn to a life of crime - randomname2
https://qz.com/923648/why-do-highly-intelligent-people-commit-crimes/
======
AndrewKemendo
_Many prevailing theories of intelligence suggest that people with lower IQs
are the ones most likely to break the law, since impulsivity, struggles at
school, lack of social bonding, and lack of foresight are all linked to
criminality._
...
_the overall amount of crime in this range is still “much, much lower” than
among people with very low IQ scores._
In fact what I would expect you find is that these groups of people break
_different_ laws, not fewer.
The "low IQ" group likely have less capability of breaking say, regulatory
laws, by virtue of standing or access. They are more likely to break laws like
B&E, drug dealing, petty larceny, etc... that are more harshly and more
frequently prosecuted.
The laws that high performing, and High IQ people would be breaking,
securities, privacy, regulatory etc... might not be prosecuted at all, or at
most would lead to civil fines.
I think the bottom line is that "high IQ" people will tend to have more
capability to break white collar crimes, and will do so with better cover
(lawyers, special accounting etc...).
~~~
SomeStupidPoint
My anecdata suggests most drug dealers beyond the lowest tier street level
dealers are quite intelligent (and become more so as you move up the chain).
It's almost like drugs are a business and businesses take intelligence to run.
~~~
api
I find it funny that illegal drugs can be a 12-figure business globally and
yet people seem to think it's just street level gang bangers doing this. Now
who would have a vested interest in people thinking that? :)
I'm sure there are organizations that would easily make it to the Fortune 100
if they could be listed as such. They're also smart enough to let disposable
thugs break the street level laws. Real drug kingpins _never_ physically
handle product.
~~~
paganel
> I'm sure there are organizations that would easily make it to the Fortune
> 100 if they could be listed as such.
Case in point, a report from a couple of years ago claimed that the Calabria-
based 'Ndrangheta had a turnover of 53 billion euros, approximately 3.5% if
Italy's GDP. This is one of the articles discussing it:
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/26/ndrangheta-
maf...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/26/ndrangheta-mafia-
mcdonalds-deutsche-bank-study)
------
VA3FXP
2 reasons: (1) Boredom - 'work' is boring and involves tedium. Smart people
try to avoid that. (dad joke: That's why it's called work and not play!)
(2) False idols - We have been told since we are children, "work hard, and get
ahead" or "you need an education to get ahead". We know this is only works to
a certain degree. The wealthy stay wealthy because the game is rigged. The
laws are tailored so that they can maintain wealth. They don't have to pay the
same amount of tax and there are multiple tax-loopholes that allow them to
keep their money. They get the public to pay for their expenses and are not
forced to share the wealth that they generate.
Smart people recognize this and do not want to play that game. Why should I
bust my ass to make some millionaire more money? It is obvious that the 'easy'
way to make money is to break the law. It's only the poor people who end up
getting caught/punished.
~~~
jackcosgrove
I generally agree with this, and would emphasize that wealth is not just due
to intelligence or academic achievement as some are led to believe. In fact,
accruing wealth has more to do with work ethic and simple living practiced
over a long time than being a wizard at something or getting credentials. The
whiz kids who make it big are a tiny fraction of all smart people. The rest of
the smart people have to grind it out over decades to assemble an inheritance
which will maybe afford their children the opportunity to generate wealth from
rents.
A lot of people frankly don't care enough about the lives their children, if
any, will lead, and want a wealthy lifestyle fast. As you pointed out, more
intelligent people also see how the system works and may resent it more.
------
sulam
My IQ tested in this range, and I've broken some laws that aren't entirely
common. I managed to get a copy of the master key to my campus and had
essentially unfettered access to all the buildings and rooms I wanted,
provided I was careful (for a while I shifted my waking time so that I was
able to take more advantage). I got into software development as a profession
by way of breaking into systems for several years. This was a time when the
only way to get the access I needed normally was to be in the major and I
wasn't.
I've never killed anyone, although I can think of one instance where I
considered it and would certainly have gotten away with it. It would have been
a big hassle, though, and honestly who wants that on their conscience?
At the end of the day it seems to me that I've only done the things other
people would have also done if the opportunity arose. I may be somewhat more
attuned to those opportunities than the average person, but in many cases they
arrived after a cascade of events that weren't specifically aimed at any kind
of criminality. At worst I was initially guilty of a high degree of
curiousity.
The only thing that _really_ resonates for me in this article is low
attachment, although I find it hard to really quantify that. I do seem to have
fewer friends than most people, but there are probably mathematical reasons
for that. I am confident in my ability to make friends, but don't feel like
making the effort usually. I have a busy life and can barely keep up with work
and family -- having more than a few good friends outside those two groups
takes more time than I have.
~~~
0xfeba
> I managed to get a copy of the master key to my campus and had essentially
> unfettered access to all the buildings and rooms I wanted
Wow, your campus used one lock type and the same master key for all buildings?
That's great foresight and coordination across multiple levels of business,
construction and maintenance teams. What about older buildings with completely
different types of locks? They switched those out as new buildings came up, or
are all the buildings new?
~~~
owenversteeg
It's possible they were at a college campus that had electronic entry for most
buildings - there are a lot of those these days, and some have been operating
over the whole campus for 10-15 years. Graduate school + edge of this range
and they could be in their mid-40s now.
~~~
sulam
I'm a lot older than that, sadly. ;)
------
VLM
When a culture and economy are in general decline, lots of equations
indoctrinated into kids along the lines of "do ABC, get XYZ" will be broken,
and the smart kids will feel ripped off and at the same time have the agency,
time preference, and logical thinking skills to achieve XYZ anyway, just
perhaps while bending the rules.
~~~
saxonklaxon
The most dangerous one being when educated, middle class young men can't find
wives or a middle class income. Then _revolutionary_ forces start to brew.
~~~
anonnyj
Memes and waifus may be working towards making that particular reaction less
potent in developed countries.
~~~
cryoshon
on the contrary, the rage surrounding the opposite sex is a core element of
the alt right's platform. couching discontent via memes is still expressing
it.
------
lordnacho
What about the simple idea that being smart means you find more opportunities
to commit crimes where you won't get caught? Is that addressed? It seems to
square with the fact that high IQ people commit fewer crimes; they'd also find
more legit opportunities to enrich themselves.
~~~
pixl97
> It seems to square with the fact that high IQ people commit fewer crimes;
Do you see the problem with your statement here. The word crime is a selection
bias filter. You automatically assumed that high IQ people committed less
crime and immediately discounted they get caught less for crime.
These styles of biases are rife in law enforcement communities. For example
the idea that (poor|ignorant|minority) groups do more drugs than the average
person. Therefore the police search those groups more and when they find drugs
it is a justification for their behavior. Meanwhile studies outside of law
enforcement show that illegal drug use across all spectrums of wealth, IQ, and
race are similar.
Also, another similar observation is the saying "You're likely to be murdered
by someone you know 70% of the time". The problem with that statement is it
only take in account _solved murders_. The other 33% (or way higher in some
places) of cases that are unsolved are not counted in that statistic. If we
had perfect information on who committed a murder we might say that "50% of
the time you are murdered by someone you know". This may have a major
influence on how cases are handled. Juries are lead to believe that in the
majority of cases it is someone the murderer knew and they become biased
against the charge. If it was a 50/50 thing a jury may not be as willing to
pin a conviction on circumstantial evidence. That said, it may also be that
those 70% of murder cases that convict someone the victim knew are correct and
murdering someone you know is a good way to get caught.
tl;dr, be careful using law enforcement statistics. Systemic bias in law
enforcement procedure can make them invalid.
~~~
lordnacho
>> In comparison, intelligent people have traditionally been seen as less
likely to commit crimes, and this view of brainpower as a protective factor
against offending has been bolstered by many studies over the decades.
No idea whether those studies have accounted for your comments, but you'd
think if they're academic studies they would have?
------
Pitarou
What utter garbage. Not to put too fine a point on it, this isn’t a survey of
the high IQ population; it’s a survey of high IQ losers.
The sample is drawn from a high IQ club. You won’t find many Nobel laureates,
brilliant engineers and so on in these clubs. Why would they bother? They have
nothing to prove and better things to do with their time.
Broadly speaking, people join a high IQ club because their performance on
standardized tests is the ONLY thing they have going for them.
And by the way, the average IQ of the sample was 149, so many must have been
below that score. Smart, but not exactly Hannibal Lecter.
~~~
tajen
> Smart, but not exactly Hannibal Lecter
H.L. is a fictional character with IQ 200, and Einstein is only 160, so who
would qualify as an "Hannibal Lecter" for you? If the average is 149 and the
group is spread in a gaussian curve with exactly one Einstein, then the dumb
guy of the group will be 138.
Which is under 1% of the population, especially in US where the average IQ is
98. So the first 3 paragraphs of your criticism are well-reasoned, but I
wonder why you feel the need to down-play the smartness of that group with
your first and last sentence.
~~~
Pitarou
> Einstein is only 160
I don't believe Einstein is ever recorded as having taken an IQ test.
In any case, IQ scores quickly lose their meaning when you get to 160 or
above. Try taking a physical fitness test designed to make fine distinctions
across the general population, and extending it to Olympic athletes. The
athletes would just laugh at you.
> Which is under 1% of the population, especially in US where the average IQ
> is 98. ... I wonder why you feel the need to down-play the smartness of that
> group with your first and last sentence.
It's the use of words like "super-smart" that bugs me.
A US male in the top height percentile would be about 6'4". Tall, but no André
the giant.
------
brilliantcode
Here's what I disagree about the article. That white collar crimes are
committed by high IQ people.
It's the socioeconomic lineage that gives you to access to such position where
it's very easy to commit crimes that the law is not designed to punish. Much
of the written laws are around hauling violent criminals away from
civilization.
While high IQ could empower someone to feel that they can get away with white
collar crime, such disposition are innately built from their lack of
attachment that arises from being isolated from poverty and all the bullshit
that comes with non-upper class life.
You go to an elite school, meet other friends who think rules for tools, they
go onto work at powerful positions, it's all too simple to collude and create
secret societies to further their collective monetary ambitions.
It really seems to be true what they say. There are rules for those who made
it (because they create the rules) and conditions and terms for those who
didn't make it (you follow the rules). It almost seems to me like the whole
system is a sham.
Imagine if Ghengis Khan discovered the best way to conquer people and other
nations is not by force but by credits and materialism. In a chaotic and
lawless reality, law is created by individuals who impose their power on rest
of society. We are so entrenched that we are "right" and rest of the world is
"wrong", we've become a slave because we are told we are free to make our own
decisions-limited by powerful men who play God.
------
adrusi
The study looked at members of high-iq societies and alumni from elite
universities primarily, which is going to select for a disproportionate amount
of people who consider their high-iq important to their personalities.
Intuitively, I'd expect high IQ to be correlated with narcissism, and in this
group even more so. Narcissists are going to be more likely to commit crimes.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
A little searching and I don't see any evidence that IQ is related to
narcissism. That seems intuitive to me - narcissism is unrelated to the real
world, they don't have to be actually better than anybody to _believe_ they
are.
~~~
DFHippie
The claim is that membership in high IQ societies, not high IQ itself,
correlates with narcissism.
------
YCode
I suspect the two pragmatic points to take away are:
> Many of Oleson’s respondents discussed the alienating effects of their high
> intelligence; social maladjustment could be a possible explanation for their
> elevated crime rates.
> Another issue is that the bulk of his gifted cohort was recruited from a
> private high-IQ society, and people who join such clubs might not represent
> highly intelligent people in general.
To that last point, this has the same vague smell of the kind of study whose
participants were from the college it was sponsored by and so as he says it
should be taken as preliminary and I'd add with a large grain of salt.
~~~
FabHK
In particular, I'd venture that well adjusted high-IQ people are less likely
to join a high-IQ society than more alienated people.
------
eyeownyde
Can you help me reconcile these two quotes?
_But Schwartz stresses that the overall amount of crime in this range is
still “much, much lower” than among people with very low IQ scores._
_“Not only does it mean that elites are just as likely to lie, cheat, and
steal as anyone else,” Oleson writes_
Do these people simply disagree, or am I misinterpreting one of them?
------
foldr
I think there's a presupposition here that's worth challenging. Smart people
aren't morally superior to dumb people; they're just smarter. They're drawn to
crime for the usual reasons: greed, selfishness, lust, etc. etc.
------
booleandilemma
_But Schwartz stresses that the overall amount of crime in this range is still
“much, much lower” than among people with very low IQ scores._
The smartest criminals don't get caught.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Presentation of a project: Muonium, an encrypted cloud - hitoshi54
https://github.com/muonium/core/wiki/Presentation
======
cmurf
What French crypo laws prevent them from deploying in France? And then why can
C14 do this? "Your data are encrypted using AES-256, replicated many times and
stored in our 25 meter deep underground fallout shelter located in Paris,
France." [https://www.online.net/en/c14](https://www.online.net/en/c14)
~~~
hitoshi54
This project use the server side encryption, therefore there is a moment where
the file isn't encrypted on the server.
Contrary to this project, Muonium use the client-side encryption.
Also, French laws do not authorize this kind of initiative, maybe the
passphrase is just hashed in MD5 xD
And privacy haven't to cost.
------
brudgers
Muonium Home: [https://muonium.ch/photon/](https://muonium.ch/photon/)
~~~
hitoshi54
Yea x)
------
bni
What is GAYFAM?
~~~
hitoshi54
Google Amazon Yahoo Facebook Apple Krosoft x) It represents the big
centralization of these companies, which love to rape your privacy x)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to address horrible practices at new job? - remyp
I recently (~2 weeks ago) started a new position that ostensibly was "running the development team (3 devs)" for a SaaS firm. I am working remotely, so it has been difficult to get the CEO to keep meetings or spend the necessary time (> 5 minutes) to discuss much of anything.<p>I have been getting up to speed on the codebase -- which is 10 years old -- and in doing so I have noticed the following problems so far:<p>- No documentation, a few in-code comments only<p>- No automated testing whatsoever<p>- No monitoring (a critical API went down today and we found out because our customers told us)<p>- No development server<p>- Development environment not standardized or even documented (3 hour screen share with the only guy who knows how to get set up)<p>- Code is committed directly to master, not on branches<p>- Developers manually push code directly from local environment to production through undocumented process<p>I brought up these problems and the solutions to them and was brushed off as "slowing down our process" and "solving problems we don't have". My current dictated priority is a coding up a feature addition that will take me a month.<p>This is a small firm, so there is only one decision maker. Do I try to get him to see the light, ignore it and do as I'm told until he trusts me, or start calling the other firms I turned down to take this (extremely well-paying) position?
======
NathanKP
There is a pretty simple order of operation you can target if you want:
1) As you onboard and get your environment setup simultaneously write a
Vagrantfile so that you can provision a local dev environment in an automatic
fashion.
2) Set up an automatic monitoring solution. This shouldn't take longer than 30
mins but will be all it takes to provide proof that lack of tests and deploys
directly from local to prod are endangering the stability. It will also allow
you to pinpoint outages coinciding with deploys.
3) Write an extremely basic test script. Even if it is nothing but a bash
script that uses curl commands to do auth, the top 5 transactions, and that's
it it will still be better than nothing. You don't need 100% coverage for
tests to be useful. Most of the time there are a key ten to twenty tests that
can cover 80% of the core stuff that you don't want to break.
4) Any time you figure out how an endpoint works, or have to ask one of the
other engineers something take 5 minutes to commit this meatspace knowledge
you just learned to a bitspace markdown file somewhere in your repo.
The nice thing is that these are all things that take minimal time, but have a
huge multiplicative effect on your productivity and that of others. You should
be able write better code faster than your coworkers and the results will
speak for themselves.
~~~
tacone
Nice advice.
They won't allow you to change everything bottom up, but they probably will
not care about small adjustments.
Little by little, so much can be gained.
~~~
remyp
Agreed. This is the advice I will plan to follow -- its simplicity is Gandhi-
esque. Thank you, Nathan!
------
davismwfl
Its a small firm and these are not uncommon issues. The size of the firm means
that likely the focus of the CEO is to bring in the next client, not worry
about whether there is a development server setup properly. A lot of the
times, these are the exact reason he has hired someone that knows their job.
He isn't going to want to know about all the little details, he just wants
everything to work so he can sell. And the feature he has you working on may
be critical, as he sees it, to land a client or give existing clients
something new.
My 2 cents. Don't judge everything just from 2 weeks. All of your issues are
valid, but give yourself a little time to acclimate to the team. Gain their
respect, gain the CEO's respect by showing you can do the job and take care of
details. Take some of these issues you highlighted and fix them. Add automated
testing for your new feature, add documentation for it, setup a quick monitor
to alert when the API goes down and learn the development setup so you can fix
that process. In fairness most of these issues show a lack of development
leadership so be the leader. Don't try to convince the CEO why you need to do
these things, just do them and the results will speak for themselves. Do
yourself a favor first, get the respect of the team by playing along and
getting the feature done and do it with proper process and documentation.
That'll go a long way.
In the end, you may hate it and need to leave, but give yourself a chance to
see if it is systemic issues, or just a lack of development leadership. I have
seen many times when a small business CEO tries to control development because
he doesn't have anyone strong to do it. Usually this is because he doesn't
trust the results from the team totally because of things like an API going
down and it takes a customer call to fix it. Why else would he have hired an
"outsider" to run the team? He doesn't know what he doesn't know. Show him
through doing and see if it changes, if not, move on.
------
PhilWright
It sounds like you have not been in the position of leading a development team
before. As a result you are suffering from the same mistake that I made myself
when moving into that situation.
Stop asking your boss for permission to do every technical task. As a
developer this was appropriate but when running a team it is not. It sounds
like your boss is viewing the development team as he should, it's a sausage
factory. He cares about the output but has no real interest of what happens to
produce it.
As he will not let you dedicate fixed time now to make changes you need
instead to gradually introduce them. Set a goal of getting all the process
changes you want made over the space of the next year. For example, add some
automatic monitoring. Don't ask for permission, just go ahead and go it
because it is a small task. Once it is working well you then get the three
other developers to start using it. Once everyone sees the benefit over the
next few weeks you can then make another change.
------
Nadya
I assume their code base has been working for 10 years? Not every owner cares
about scaling or quality, sometimes speed is their selling factor.
That's why we have McDonalds _and_ 5-star restaurants instead of only 5-star
restaurants.
You can try to educate him on why documentation would help speed up
development, would make on-boarding new devs easier/faster (increasing product
quality/stability and possibly decreasing churn for when your critical API
fails on a customer...)
But his business is clearly _working_ for him. So why change things? Why spend
a lot of time (and time=money) on fixing problems that haven't ailed his
successful business for 10 years?
~~~
Einstalbert
Sometimes these businesses work because of people like the OP, who shoulders
the burden of a bad decision maker for years. We're celebrating one of our big
company milestones and we're no different. The decision makers think we're
here but by the grace of God sometimes. I say we're here but by the grace of
Todd and his addiction to energy drinks.
~~~
remyp
This is definitely the case currently. There is one developer that has been
around for several years and he has clearly been bearing the brunt of the
work. This firm's bus factor is equal to 1.
------
brudgers
Your question imples a large amout of technical effort and presents zero
business value creation in return. After two weeks on the job, you're arguing
with your customer over their prioritization of the backlog.
My advice: learn why the current methods are working for the current team in
their pursuit of creating customer value and why the YAGNI of reality doesn't
conform to Uncle Bob's best practices. Note that I am not saying this is your
dream job. but it is a chance to gain experience beyond theory and more
nuanced judgement such as only experience can provide.
Good luck.
~~~
degenerate
This is the best advice in this thread.
------
gt565k
Run, and run fast.
Since you've only been there for 2 weeks, you've yet to experience the
ridiculous amount of production issues that will arise due to the lack of a
solid software development process. Wait long enough, and when the only guy
that knows the system inside-out leaves, you'll be left with the fire
extinguisher trying to put out fires every other day.
Nothing will change. I can tell you from experience. If the place has been
running like that for 10 years, there's a reason for it, poor management. I'm
sure a lot more people before you have brought this up.
Run, and run fast!
------
hga
Sounds like a case of responsibility without authority. You signed on for the
job of "running the development team" but they've demonstrated they're not
going to give you any authority to actually do that.
And your CEO has no respect for you if he can't find more than 5 minutes
(total or at a time) to bring you on board.
I'd leave ASAP, this is going to be nothing but pain, and very high stress;
almost certainly not worth the money.
------
segmondy
Demonstrate competency first. Solve the main problem you were brought there
for. Solve it right, solve it fast, employ all the ideas you wish to see,
documentation, testing, monitoring, dev server, peer reviews. Earn their trust
and respect, you are 2 weeks in. Focus on the job at hand, and in 2-3 months,
you will know who can be your allies and you can then start figuring out how
to get these changes out.
------
gus_massa
Assuming the stress/money ratio is good enough, you can try this "Getting
Things Done When You're Only a Grunt"
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000332.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000332.html)
I think that monitoring is an easy target because it's isolated and it will
not "slow down" the rest of the team.
The next step could be automated texting for your new code and later for all
new code (and much later, for old code).
(Documenting the development environment is still in my todo list :) )
------
JSeymourATL
> it has been difficult to get the CEO to keep meetings or spend the necessary
> time (> 5 minutes)...
It turns out a lot Small Company CEOs have limited bandwidth. Learn his
communication style and how to manage him. Can he take a 7am call on his
commute into the office? Relative to your performance imperatives, help him
understand how these things move his agenda forward. Otherwise, his problems
aren't going away.
------
SideburnsOfDoom
I would seriously look at the terms of your employment contract. there is
usually a "probation period" of a few months during which time you can be let
go at very short notice because it's not working out for whatever reason.
It's not always kept in mind that "it's not working out" cuts both ways. If
you aren't happy there (and I really would not be) then it's time to decide -
as they say "if you can't change your company, then change your company."
Some of these practices, YMMV. For instance, "Code is committed directly to
master, not on branches" gets a big shrug from me. What does it matter so long
as only 1 person is working on a repo at a time, or if changes are isolated
and merges are frequent?
Others, like no testing, no build automation, no live monitoring, give me the
creeps. There is actual harm from them "an api went down and we didn't know"
so there is leverage there to pitch you can make for mitigation of recurrences
of actual problems and for proven industry practices. But it looks like a lot
of uphill struggle.
------
jbdigriz
This is generally a problem in various forms at firms of all sizes, so running
away is simply conceding that you lack the desire to develop some of the most
important skills required when moving into an elevated lead or management
position: the ability to compel people without forcing them and the ability to
compromise.
Looking at your list of gripes, some are clearly critical issues (ie.
Automated production monitoring and alerting of customer facing system) while
some are obviously nitpicking (ie. Comments and documentation? Lol). Drop the
"nice to have" stuff and instead pursue the "need to have" items. No CEO worth
his salt is going to accept the liability of customer loss or lawsuit simply
because no one thought to build some simple monitoring jobs. At the same time,
I cringe at the prospect of a developer even mentioning comments or version
control minutae to an executive level - definitely NOT a point to be
explicitly bright up beyond some quantified metric on a regular report. It's
distracting noise for him and definitely your problem to solve. Given that you
mentioned being very well compensated, well that's a pretty good hint that the
task ahead of you will be challenging and often not in the way you expect, as
evidenced by this case.
On that note, be sure all these things are actually important for that
specific business. I once worked on an in-house, Windows based C++ trading
system with over 600k lines of code and there wasn't a single unit test to
speak of. Granted, it was developed following SDLC and included 4 levels of
testing (dev integration, ba functional, user demo and qa) but the system was
running continuously for almost a decade and reaped profits in the high 9
figures. Some shops produce high quality software with deeply knowledgeable
long tenured senior technologists and don't necessarily require such testing
frameworks as they perform that task themselves and often far better than some
pre-canned block of code ever will. I've also been in shops where testing and
coverage minimums were required and tracked precisely in real time, preventing
code release if standards were not met. The end result were loads of trivially
passing, nonsense tests and a culture where developers often felt compelled to
create even those for only the lowest hanging fruit to meet the minimum
requirements for a deadline or risk a monetary impact to their bottom line. So
don't just rotely follow (let alone impose) paradigms without realizing that
quantifying their value is hard in many scenarios, not to mention could be
construed as stepping on toes...
As some have mentioned, the best managers are those who are able to gain the
trust of their teams and this is something that takes time and strings of
successes along the way. At the same time, lead by example and instead of
imposing your will, let the results speak for themselves. Add tests in some
minor modules and if they fail, use the opportunity to demonstrate how they
saved potential headaches or worse. I've found that people invariably flock to
those who demonstrate not only ability and intelligence, but also civility and
geniality. I can't even begin to explain how small humorous exchanges have
vastly strengthened my network. I've had to lead teams of juniors and offshore
folks without any official management title and its forced me to adapt and
develop various methods of building repoir and ultimately compelling people to
get things done, with few sour grapes to speak of and many successes (and comp
increases) along the way.
Regardless of all of the above, you're still getting paid, right? By your
admission, paid WELL. So why would you leave that because you believe you're
not being allowed to do your job (most of which actually requires more work
and maintenance)... 2 weeks in?!? Perhaps after 6-12 months, you come to the
conclusion that the culture is just not for you. So, leave then - I assure you
there will be just as many, if not more opportunities then, except at that
point you can be confident you've shed any insecurities and gave it your best
shot and have some quirky behavior tolerance to boot. That sort of techno
"battle scar" is quite visible as a sort of confidence backed by wisdom and
experience and makes prospective employers wet their pants. Or maybe you just
kick ass and prove you're worth every penny - smiling all the way to the bank.
Either alternative is far more appealing than tucking your tail and running.
Food for thought
------
deeteecee
why do other people say this is "a general problem" in any way? sounds
extremely fishy and rare to me.. i guess just do what you're told if that
salary is such a big bonus for you but ask him if it's okay to slowly tackle
those problems you considered after you get the main task at hand finished.
------
an0nymoose1
Is your name Nate?
~~~
remyp
Nope.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Scratchwork – a tool for drawing technical equations and diagrams - jstogin
http://scratchworktool.com
======
jstogin
Hi everyone, I’m John from Scratchwork (scratchworktool.com). This is a
project I started as a math PhD student, because I was frustrated by how
difficult it is to share ideas (mainly equations and diagrams) with other
people on a computer. I designed Scratchwork to make it easy to draw
complicated ideas by hand. For example, you can use your webcam to scan your
drawings from a sheet of paper and they will be extracted and added as digital
objects on the virtual board. These drawings can then individually be selected
and moved around, deleted, etc. We’re also working on tablet apps, starting
with the Samsung Galaxy Tab A with S pen, a relatively affordable tablet with
an inductive stylus. As with basically all whiteboard apps, multiple people
can work at the same time and see each others’ changes in real time. There is
support for embedded video calls, which is admittedly somewhat buggy at the
moment.
As the demo video illustrates, we have plans to support recognition of math
expressions, allowing you to calculate by simply selecting some of your
drawings and then applying operations such as simplify, differentiate,
integrate, etc. The current implementation is not available publicly yet, and
this is not our highest priority at the moment, but the eventual goal is to
make it very easy to do calculations without needing to type equations.
This project is still a work in progress, but I would love to hear your
thoughts and suggestions. Definitely sign up for our beta program. Also,
please be aware that we are not permanently storing data yet, and many
features are only partially implemented. Finally, we’re looking to expand our
development team, so if you like this project and are looking for something
new to work on, contact us at contact@scratchworktool.com.
Enjoy!
~~~
ai_ia
Hi John,
Any plans of making embeddable systems for using on website?
I am building an educational website that would benefit from this tool.
~~~
jstogin
This is definitely something we hope to do. Since we're still getting started,
it's a matter of prioritization (not if, but when). We would love to hear more
from you about your needs and that could help us expedite the feature. Could
you please email us at contact@scratchworktool.com?
Along similar lines, we've been trying to plan an API for developers to use
with our product. I'd love to hear if anyone has ideas.
------
justAQuestion3
Building a drawing tool in the browser is complex, when one has to begin to
calculate various stuff(do bounding boxes intersect, perform a affine
transformation).
Could you share some insights?
Do you use an external math library like math.js(which seems to be very
hewavyweight)? Do you have a model with objects and other objects/functions
that draw to the canvas, or draw the objects themself on the canvas? When the
user moves a object, do you update the model immediately, or only when the
move has ended?
~~~
jstogin
I definitely agree that this kind of tool is complex to build. We have our own
model, which I have developed over a few earlier iterations of what we have
available now, and we use it to draw all the objects to the canvas.
Generally speaking, there are two types of changes that we deal with. There
are the changes that are very important, which don't happen very often, and
then there are changes that are not very important but happen quickly. For
example, when a user drags an object, each movement of the mouse is of the
second type, while the final release is of the first type.
We make a distinction between what a user sees and the underlying "document"
that a user is editing. When a user moves an object, we don't update the
document until the user releases the move. However, we do send data to other
devices so that anyone who is watching still sees the object being moved.
------
osrec
Looks great! I'm interested to know what tech stack you used for the video
calling feature?
~~~
jstogin
The video calling feature is based on WebRTC. (We also use WebRTC for
streaming the data--so you can see other people draw in real-time, with
Socket.IO as a fallback.)
------
blt
I clicked "Request Invitation" and nothing happened...
~~~
jstogin
Thanks for letting us know! At first glance, it seems to be an issue related
to Heroku. We just tested the request invitation feature and it is working
again.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Xero ditches HTML5 in favor of native iOS and Android apps - mattquiros
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/03/18/accounting-software-startup-xero-ditches-html5-in-favor-of-native-ios-and-android-apps/
======
jarjoura
That's been the case all along that HTML5/CSS/Javascript is much harder to
develop for when targeting mobile devices. You have to build for an array of
screen sizes and your assets need to work in the dizzying amount of screen
DPIs.
However, the freedom you gain in designing a common UI across all mobile
devices you will now lose with having to build discreet applications for each
platform.
iOS applications have a really high bar for slick UI and subtle animations.
(If they are going to be featured and successful.)
Android applications also have a really high bar for system wide integration.
Plus, UI that works on iOS will most likely need to be rethought on Android,
though not always.
Then for Windows 8/WP8 devices you're in for a world of hurt. The UI and
strict guidelines are so different from anything common in iOS & Android that
to include them will require what could likely result in an entire different
design team.
~~~
kayoone
Creating a common UI across all mobile platforms is a big challenge as well
and you mention the main points in your post. Your "one-size-fits-all" UI will
look a little alien on every platform because its made to fit all of them at
the same time.
Personally id use Xamarins excellent C# tools to build the core of the app
multiplatform and then utilize the native APIs to build platform specific UIs.
I dont think this approach is alot more/less work than making your webApp work
with all platforms and resolutions, but in the end you have a native
experience on all of them.
~~~
pjmlp
Yes, I did bash Miguel's work a few times, given his inclination to bring
Microsoft based technologies to the UNIX world.
But I have to acknowledge that he has made a very good work with Mono and
although I prefer to use C++ on my hobby Android projects, Xamarin's tools are
a great approach for many developers.
~~~
kayoone
Agree, while MONO is controversial i believe that in the end its a good thing.
I believe its more Microsofts fault for not making the C# platform open, they
would have probably squashed Java by now.
That aside, mostly i care about the best tool for the job and in this case
thats my choice.
------
mruniverse
Not just for mobile, but building a UI in html has always struck me as a hack.
Mainly because the built-in components (dialogs, menus, buttons, etc) are
lacking. And some components (tabs, overlays, etc) are missing altogether.
I think most front-end devs are so used to it now, that it doesn't seem
bizarre to build tabs with a list element, float the items to the left, add a
clearing div below the list, etc.
~~~
rimantas
It _is_ a hack. There is a reason why we have "T" and not "I" in HTML.
------
marknutter
I was not surprised to see the word "Sencha" in this article, but I _was_
surprised to read it took them 12 months to develop the app. Where I work we
actually replaced two in-development native apps with one cross platform
Sencha app which only took about 4 months to develop. This was with only two
developers, and like with most frameworks the first 80% went extremely fast
but we ended up fighting against it for the last 20%. The performance,
especially on older Androids, was unacceptable.
But instead of doing another complete 180 we decided to instead go with a
hybrid approach like LinkedIn did - use native when performance is key, and
HTML5 everywhere else. We just re-launched the app using all custom
html5/js/css and native ui elements and animations where necessary and it was
a complete success. Not only does the app perform really well on even very old
Android phones, but it absolutely flies on newer devices. The best part,
especially when compared to using Sencha, is that all of our code which was
written in angular.js will be used on the web app and native desktop apps. We
are very close to having the vast majority of our code being shared between
every major platform our users may use.
I love when articles like these get popular because it scares people away from
using HTML5 in any way and gives us a clear advantage. Keep fueling the FUD,
we'll keep our productivity advantage :)
~~~
nullspace
Would be great if you can share more details how you went about the hybrid
html5 - native app route.
For instance, did you scrap all the work you put in with Sencha and start from
scratch? And how did you go about combining native elements and html/js/css,
and how did angular js tie into this?
~~~
marknutter
Yes, we did scrap the Sencha app and start from scratch. Because Sencha Touch
is really only designed for mobile devices with touch interfaces, you can't
really re-use the code for web apps, so there wasn't much to salvage. We also
were not very comfortable with Ext to begin with.
For JS frameworks we decided between Backbone.js, Angular.js, and Can.js
(because we had previously used JavascriptMVC on our web app). We fell in love
with angular.js and went that route.
The main reason to use native UI components is to allow smooth scrolling on
older Android devices which don't support fixed elements like top and bottom
nav bars very well. Both on iOS and Android the top navigation bar and bottom
tab bars are done in native code as well as the Facebook-style drawers that
reveal other sections of the app. In all, we use three Phonegap enabled
webViews and three major native UI components (top bar, bottom bar, and a
custom "quick add" control). We pass messages back and forth from the native
app to the javascript app via phonegap's native bridge, like when a user taps
a native button or the javascript app changes tabs and needs to inform the
native app.
We used grunt.js to help manage all our development and build workflows. It
concatenates our files for us, creates separate builds for iOS and Android
(and other platforms now, too), compiles and minifies our CSS, etc. It also
runs our test suite which is another big advantage to using HTML5/JS instead
of native. Most of our code has test coverage and it's very easy to automate
using grunt.js and testacular.js.
If you're interested you can check out the app on the Play and iTunes App
stores; it's called Kona Mobile (it's the mobile app for our main offering,
<http://kona.com>).
~~~
nullspace
Thanks for the explanation! Makes a lot of sense.
------
DigitalSea
Of course web apps aren't ever going to be as fast as a native application
(especially on iOS because Apple deliberately hampers performance for web
apps) but they're by no means a hopeless cause. A HTML5 web app might take a
little while longer to develop, but it'll work out cheaper than building an
iOS application. LinkedIn to this day remain the perfect example of how to
build a straight-up HTML5 mobile app that performs beautifully.
~~~
fjarlq
How is Apple deliberately hampering performance for web apps? What evidence is
there for this?
~~~
monsterix
There is some evidence for sure. For example, iPad Safari doesn't allow full-
screen mode, nor implements fullscreen API as per standards. Another browser
on the iPad (Dolphin) supports it interestingly.
Support for ordinary CSS properties like z-index, position:fixed and iframe is
pathetic. Some of the things that I can recall now. UIWebView takes it to
another level of pain altogether.
------
Sujan
In the comments of the article a commenter points out that they worked mor
than 24 months in total on the HTML5 web app version and says "That was one
expensive mistake".
I would say, that it was actually a great strategy. When they started, the
HTML version was more than enough. They saved lots of time, effort and
resources during these two years while building their product. Now their
mobile user base is big enough to justify dedicated teams for all platforms -
and that's great for them.
But it doesn't say anything about HTML5 as a viable platform for building
apps. If you are a team of 3, where 0 have any mobile development experience,
but years of web experience, it surely is the way to go. And often, it will
even stay this years later.
~~~
Sujan
Actually, isn't there a name for technologies you use as a stepping stone for
some time?
------
jacques_chester
Storm, meet teacup.
Also, "accounting startup"? Xero is a publicly listed company.
~~~
petercooper
The HN-centric redefinition of "startup" relying mostly on rate of growth is
taking hold it seems.
------
leeoniya
what web-apps offer me, as a user, is peace of mind in terms of security -
something i dont get with native apps that ask for broad, overreaching
permissions. there are many many native apps i refuse to install simply based
on those grounds.
if facebook ditches their mobile site, that will be the end of facebook on my
phone for me.
~~~
mattquiros
I don't make a habit of persuading people to change their preferences, but a
couple of questions:
1\. Don't web apps need cookies enabled in your browser, so technically they
can still track your browsing history and behavior, at least to some extent?
How is that different from your privacy concerns with native apps?
2\. How do you think about installing applications on your desktop/laptop
computer then, since doing so grants them certain permissions, and not doing
so prevents you from doing certain things?
3\. More of a comment, than a question. I don't think Facebook will ever ditch
their mobile site. Mobile sites are a replacement of the "desktop" site
instead of the native app. It's just accessing Facebook via the browser but
with a mobile-friendly UI.
~~~
leeoniya
1\. there's a vast difference between a third party simply tracking which
sites i visit vs an app having access to my GPS location, address books, call
history, etc.., whenever it pleases. with a web browser, i can "share my
location" as i desire...if i want to find nearby restaurants on yelp's mobile
site, i'll share my location once. with an app you just say "yes, you have
permission to read my gps", you have no control of when or how often it does
this.
2\. on my desktop, there's no guarantee that any specific info will be in the
same place. for example i use thunderbird portable in an encrypted container
for my email and contacts. on a phone, your contacts are pretty much in the
same place and every app knows how to get to them, there's much less variance.
3\. you may have a point, but without a good mobile site, they can coerce
people to use the app by providing a shitty experience in the browser, cause
an app can get to a lot more of your juicy data which they crave.
------
rayiner
Web apps suck. It's like going back to 1980's lowest common denominator level
of functionality.[1] I'd rather see something like PNACL offer easy
distribution of native apps over the internet, but we'll probably just see
more web apps (<http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/worse-is-worse.pdf>).
[1] Honestly, that's an insult to the 1980's. Word Perfect 5.x was pretty damn
functional, lack of GUI aside.
~~~
lukifer
Saying "$X sucks" sucks. Even when it's accurate, it conveys little to no
actual information.
------
michaelwww
From their blog <http://blog.xero.com/2013/03/making-mobile-work/>
_Even with frameworks as amazing as Sencha Touch, we’ve found the ability to
iterate as fast as we would like has become harder as our application has
become more complex. The choice to go with HTML5 was very much a choice based
on us – how do we use the skills we already have to build a mobile
application? Unfortunately as the application grew we needed to hire to fill
out the team, and we were never able to hire fast enough to fill those roles.
Ironically those skills were equally as critical for the 'desktop' version of
Xero – we were cannibalizing our own team and slowing everything down._
With Xero, it seems more like a case of not being able to find great HTML5
developers and less an indictment of HTML5. This is good news for me.
------
SG-
I see this a lot where the person/people making the decisions decide they can
make a product that's almost as good but for less resources/money because they
will be able to use a lot of existing 'web' code and be able to use existing
web devs or simply hire another one.
The reality like this article suggests is it will take a long time to get
something that works almost right but isn't right, even if somehow the
performance doesn't matter going forward with much faster devices. It gets
pretty hard to try and get a webapp to work with native parts of the OS and
features that your users might want or expect.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Building a web application from the ground up - truetaurus
What should be considered when building a website from the ground up? What process could be followed? What resources should be considered?
======
bsdpython
It starts with what you know. How much programming experience do you have?
What front and back end technologies do you know? What operating systems? Have
you built a dedicated server? Have you worked with cloud services? Is this
just for you as a side project are is it your work?
~~~
truetaurus
In terms of knowledge and experience I have that. I work doing a lot of php,
js, css/html and a little java.
Its more for my knowledge, and of course could turn into a side project. I am
just looking for tips and i guess frameworks and architectures that could help
me learn how a website is developed from the ground up
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why do public hotspots deliberately circumvent Apple’s portal detection? - ghodss
When I join a hotspot using my MacBook Pro, sometimes a dedicated web browser window comes up and navigates me to a portal where I can agree to terms or purchase wifi. Other times, that window doesn’t come up at all and any website I attempt to navigate to just stalls on “Connecting…”. Now, me being a technical person, I am aware that if I try to go to an HTTPS page (which is just about any page I’d normally go to now), the hotspot is not able to redirect me to a portal. So I deliberately try to find an HTTP page I can go to, then I instantly properly get redirected to a portal and can proceed to get on the internet.<p>I am perplexed by this, specifically:
1. How do non-technical people successfully get on the internet with these hotspots? If I didn’t know to go to an HTTP page, I feel like I would be stuck on hanging page requests forever.
2. One thing I’ve noticed is that macOS seems to use http://captive.apple.com to test for portals. For many hotspots, it seems like this is correctly captured and redirected to the portal. But for the hotspots I mentioned above, this URL simply returns “Success” with no portal redirect headers. Is this deliberate? Why would a hotspot try to circumvent this detection from Apple?
3. Am I misunderstanding this whole situation or have some aspect in my environment that makes this a very different experience for me than for others?
======
telesilla
I've wondered this many times and assume that non-technical people just don't
get online and remain frustrated. I keep an http site in my bookmarks for this
purpose.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Carbon Transistors to Increase Speed, RAM of Smartphones and Tablets - RaduTyrsina
http://techpp.com/2012/07/20/carbon-transistors-increase-speed-ram-smartphones-tablets/
======
rajupp
Low voltage consumption is the key
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Difference Between Business Development and Sales - kml
http://iamvictorio.us/post/26979018144/difference-between-business-development-and-sales?f4093320
======
tryitnow
Someone should send this article to every young person starting out in
business, whether they're and entrepreneur or not.
Biz Dev is usually considered more prestigious because partnerships of one
sort or another can move a lot of volume quickly or can create new
opportunities that radically change fortunes. It also requires understanding
business models, strategies, etc.
Sales might require an understanding of the user or might not. The company I
work for does enterprise software and I seriously doubt our sales people know
a whole lot about the user experience. They do know how to schmooze and most
importantly how to be persistent and by persistent I mean continually
bothering people. I have found discussions with BD professionals to be
interesting and occasionally enlightening. Most conversations with salespeople
annoy me - whether those conversations are a sales job or just sitting around
chatting.
~~~
JVerstry
This original post is not fair in its definition and presentation of business
development. So let's set the record straight. Managing companies does
requires taking business decisions 'you have to make' with other businesses.
It is not an option. Saying 'all these benefits are nice to have but are not
core to the existing strategy of the the target partner' is misleading. Proper
BD is precisely the opposite, your have to take into account the core strategy
of the target businesses to make it a success. Saying 'Consequently, BD may be
ultimately harder to succeed in since it requires a lot of faith and time' ->
BD is not preaching or based on beliefs, it relies on sound financial and
strategic analysis. BD serves a very different purpose than sales (long term
vs short term revenues) and both are equally important beyond the start-up
stage.
------
fab1an
I agree with the article but would add that a lot of times sales people are
hired under the "business development" umbrella simply to not call them
"sales" people - most businesses don't want to be contacted by _a sales
person_ (except when you do know that you absolutely _must_ acquire a certain
widget). At the same time, this isn't true for most startups: most startups by
definition (given they do something new) don't sell existing must-have
products but current nice-to-haves with a potential to become future must-
haves if their transformative vision pans out.
~~~
iamvictorious
yeah, that's absolutely true. Some people prefer to get the title of business
development so they feel like they are doing something higher level and
justify their education/credentials.
I've noticed also some startups don't call people sales people because then at
conferences people aren't turned off by meeting a sales person. I'm not
opposed to these tactics but just wanted to point out the functional/true
differences.
Most startups are actually selling a better/different version of what does
exist. Very few startups are truly category defining so as a result they are
mostly doing sales. Business development as a result for most startups is
really for getting distribution versus getting customers.
------
dfriedmn
Education is also a much weaker predictor of sales abilities than of biz dev
potential. Sales seems like a more directly learnable skill. Sales also tends
to leave highly-educated people with a negative taste (that's absent from biz
dev), even though good salespeople can have as big an impact on the bottom
line.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Bit-bundler – simplify the JavaScript bundling experience - manchagnu
https://bundler.bitjs.io/
======
manchagnu
So I built bit-bundler as an experiment to achieve configuration ergonomics
that I like. Specially around bundle splitting and pattern matching. I also
wanted to try parallel file processing, which improved performance
dramatically in a pretty large project I am working on. Perhaps others will
find this useful.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Search HN for “port Facebook data” – no results – lets change this - devinrhode2
======
ihuman
What do you mean by "porting" facebook data? Moving it to another platform?
There is already a way to download all the data facebook has on you.
------
c22
Saw this just the other day [0], looks pretty neat.
[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16682940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16682940)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Secret Life of Photons: Simulating 2D Light Transport - Tunabrain
https://benedikt-bitterli.me/tantalum/
======
ykl
This is way cool, and the writeup is excellent as well. Very much worth the
read :)
------
amadeusw
Good job! The UX is top notch and the results are inspiring
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Software companies demand own copyright law - Mithrandir
http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/1/14/software-companies-demand-own-copyright-law/
======
bediger
This smells fishy. The Digital Economy Act isn't harsh enough, so something
even more draconian must be done! Think of the children!
Given that the Digital Economy Act passed in that weird way that didn't get
any discussion, and that a variety of other governments have gotten "help"
([http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/12/three-
st...](http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/12/three-strikes-
typhoid-mary-identified/index.htm#)) from the USTR about 3-Strikes laws and
etc, why do we belive this is actually "software companies", and not the RIAA
and MPAA lobbying via US State Department?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
BART Workers Give 72-Hour Strike Notice - AjayTripathy
http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/06/28/bart-workers-give-72-hour-strike-notice/
======
bifrost
If you read the article you'll note that "rider safety" is not about adding
more and better trained cops to BART, its about lights...
> BART spokesman Rick Rice said the system can’t remain sustainable if
> employees continue to contribute nothing to pensions and pay a flat $92 per
> month for health care, regardless of the number of dependents.
Its ridiculous that this has been allowed to persist, pensions need to go the
way of the dinosaurs, people need to get their own retirement plans sorted
out.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Scramble for Access to Libya’s Oil Wealth Begins - antr
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/business/global/the-scramble-for-access-to-libyas-oil-wealth-begins.html
======
tzs
The title is a bit misleading as many will take from it that there wasn't
access before. A better subject would have called it re-access, not access, as
it is the scramble to reestablish access that was readily available before the
revolution.
------
ChuckMcM
Not reddit
~~~
redthrowaway
Flag it if you think it doesn't belong here; these comments don't add
anything.
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to
its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there
is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that
you did."
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What books/tutorials/articles to read to get into reverse engineering? - mlejva
======
jamieweb
I've been picking up the basics in the past few months - I started out with
playing around with some open source tools (radare2/Cutter), and then watching
Josh Stroschein's introductory course on PluralSight [1]. The course is more
Windows oriented but that's alright for the basics.
Then, I asked my friend to make me a really basic CrackMe challenge [2].
Solving this was where most of the real learning took place.
The tool I have been learning is Cutter [3], which is the official GUI for
radare2. It's a feature-rich and open-source tool that allows you to reverse
engineer without the licensing/price restrictions of the more well-known
paid/closed-source tools.
To help concrete this new knowledge, I'm currently working on a 3-part
introduction to reverse engineering with Cutter series, part 1 of which is out
so far [4].
Something that I've found very useful for learning is to analyse your own
binary rather than someone else's. Just write basic C++ programs ("What's your
name?", calculator, etc - almost as if you're learning programming from
scratch again), compile and then reverse engineer them.
Having full knowledge of what the binary does and how it works allows you to
focus on understanding the technical details (registers, stack, etc) rather
than jumping straight in at the deep end with a mystery binary. Once you've
got your head around how a basic binary works, the knowledge is very
transferable to binaries where you _don 't_ have the source code.
[1] [https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/reverse-engineering-
gett...](https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/reverse-engineering-getting-
started)
[2] [https://github.com/jamieweb/crackme-
challenge](https://github.com/jamieweb/crackme-challenge) __Looking at
source.cpp may reveal the solution, so be careful! Get a trusted friend to
audit the code first if you are concerned about its legitimacy. __
[3][https://github.com/radareorg/cutter](https://github.com/radareorg/cutter)
[4] [https://www.jamieweb.net/blog/radare2-cutter-part-1-key-
term...](https://www.jamieweb.net/blog/radare2-cutter-part-1-key-terminology-
and-overview/)
------
ecesena
Lately I read this interesting article on STM flash protection, incredibly
clear, but also rich of low level details:
[https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot17/workshop-
program/pr...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot17/workshop-
program/presentation/obermaier)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Down With Social - twampss
http://spencerfry.com/down-with-social
======
bonaldi
There needs to be a Godwin-esque term for "takes one data point and
extrapolates it to the entire world".
So, for his 5-person company the social media role "just isn't" a full-time
job. I doubt if marketing or HR are full-time jobs there, either.
But at a 1000-person company, they very much are. Tweeters demand and expect
instant responses: look how out of the control the Amazon-hates-gays thing got
because they took a day or two (fast by corp standards) to respond. You want
an instant response from a big company you need a person or team constantly
watching and able to get in touch with the people with the answers very
quickly. (This fantasy of "everyone in the company can tweet!" doesn't work
any more than "everyone in the company will blog on the world wide web!" did)
Similarly, he begs the question hugely with his shade-of-blue instance on
analytics and metrics. Not everything that can't be quantified is valueless.
It's hard to put a figure on how well-written an article is, for example, or
how interesting a story is.
What you can do is measure them by their effects -- see how many readers a
story gets, for instance. But even this is a bad path to take: it leads to
celebrity gossip and link whoring.
Social media is similar. You might not provide the analytics Spencer wants,
but equally you might not _want_ what analytics you do get.
~~~
armandososa
> There needs to be a Godwin-esque term for "takes one data point and
> extrapolates it to the entire world".
"Cum hoc ergo propter hoc" is not very Godwin-esque, but I think it'll work
here.
~~~
saratogacx
I'm not sure you can get away with any term on the internet where Cum is the
first word.
------
patio11
I'd be really interested in tales of how social media is working for people in
real, measurable ways, _particularly_ for folks who do not sell to the usual
suspects.
I'm of the impression that my market is on Facebook these days, or I would not
have to spend so much time squashing cow requests from great-aunts, but all my
attempts to use this to the benefit of my business have been crashing
failures. I'm not sure if that is because my customers just aren't there yet,
my implementation(s) of these campaigns has just universally sucked, or there
is too much of a mental disconnect between Facebook and my problem domain for
my users.
The success stories I read about are generally techy-focused or, ahem, perhaps
more enthusiastic than is warranted by measured results.
~~~
euroclydon
My impression, after watching my brother who runs a chiropractic office in San
Francisco which has had a heavy internet presence for years, spend thousands
of dollars hiring kBuzz to create a Facebook site/campaign, is that Facebook
users simply aren't in the mood to be marketed to in the traditional sense.
The mindsets that you have when you're checking up on your friends versus when
you're searching for a product to buy, are almost mutually exclusive.
That's just my two cents. I also felt that his Facebook campaign relied
heavily on give-a-way's which don't jibe with what people are looking for in a
doctor, namely authority, trustworthiness, and warmth.
~~~
alabut
That's a pretty good description of the mindset and the focus on the user's
intentions also explains why adwords does so well. You _intend_ to find
something when you're searching and are receptive to ads that help you do
that, whereas you _intend_ to check up on friends and have fun when you're on
a social network. It's why ads that tap into the same intentions do well, like
games, shopping, conferences, etc.
------
maxklein
This post is just wrong. He says that their site does not have social features
- and he says it in a strangely proud manner. Have you TRIED social features
and after comparing the two, discovered that the version without social
features was better? The site in question looks like it would benefit from
social features - if you are not motivated to add features, then don't retro-
explain them as if it were a tested and proven hypothesis. You guys just don't
WANT to add social features - done proper, it could male the site better.
Now, regarding the statement that social media is not useful - that's just not
true. Used wrongly (follower chasing), it's wrong. If you treat social as a
metric, then you are doing it wrong. Social is about people and relationships
- an you don't need many followers to have great and profitable relationships
using social media. It's really all about using these tools right, and Spencer
does not seem to be doing so.
------
dsplittgerber
This "social" thing is similar to so many societal changes occuring over time.
It's introduced, picked up, overdone, there is an anti-movement and over time,
it finds its way into regular life in an amount and a way that fits with
people's lifestyle.
In internet speak, let's wait and see how social 2.0 comes about.
~~~
cageface
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic>
thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis
~~~
carbocation
(In particular, that formulation fits with what most people would call the
"Hegelian dialectic.")
~~~
cageface
Yep. I get the impression from chatting with people more up on philosophy that
this model has fallen into disfavor but I seem to bump into real-world
examples of it all the time.
~~~
maxawaytoolong
It moved over to the other humanities domains. Every philosophical "criticism"
(art, literary, feminist, media, cultural, etc) stems from Hegel. The latest
trend is Zizek.
------
SandB0x
People look at successful companies, see that they have a Facebook page and
are posting on Twitter, and assume these things will make them successful too.
It doesn't quite work that way round.
~~~
joshhart
Cargo cult startups?
------
wccrawford
He's right in that some sites should be 'social' and some shouldn't...
But for the life of me, I can't think of any sites that shouldn't be and are.
That portfolio site that he says shouldn't be, isn't, and that's correct. It's
not to talk about the art, it's to display it. The site correctly knows it's
niche and it's acting appropriately.
However, if that site had been DeviantArt and tried to avoid having 'social'
features, it would be devastatingly wrong.
------
jakevoytko
Contacting a person over social media is obviously of limited value. If you
get a Tweet from a random business, you're going to ignore it. You know
they're selling you something, and you have no idea who they are. You're not
even sure they're not a spammer. At best, you'll "Like" it or Retweet with the
message "this looks cool!". Whatever that's worth. But the message will never
leave Twitter, and it will be gone within minutes.
This is bad. As Seth Godin points out in "Purple Cow," you want other people
to remark about your product. A good blog post might spawn a dozen tweets, but
a great Tweet that spawns a dozen blog posts is exceedingly rare. You want to
communicate in mediums that encourage others to remark: conferences, tech
talks, blog posts, and even aggregators like HN or Reddit. If you see a
business mentioned by several of your friends, and on HN, and know company X
uses their stuff, you're going to check them out because of your natural
curiosity. If you provide good source material, people will go out of their
way to mention you elsewhere. After all, there are Karma points at stake! But
if you try to form a conversation in a social medium, its as awkward as
walking up to the person in real life and announcing, "I'm great! Don't you
think so?"
~~~
IgorPartola
Agreed. It seems to me that a lot of people assume that they can just reach
their customers. For example, I deliberately try to make it hard to get in
touch with me. I don't click on most ads (since they are almost never what I'm
looking for) and I never answer promotional e-mail (unless it is personally
addressed to me at which point I reply with a no-thank-you). If a company
tried to reach me with their product they'd have to infiltrate places like HN
and that is hard to do. So maybe the approach should be the opposite.
Companies should focus on building a product they can market to people who
will buy it and who they can convince to buy it.
------
Encosia
Whenever I hear someone label social as "echo chambers in which nobody is
listening", all I can think is that they must be doing it wrong. Seems to be a
"tell" for when someone's awkwardly _using_ the medium as a write-only
marketing channel, which explains why they aren't getting traction.
You get what you give.
~~~
crux_
Something of a counterpoint: <http://leoville.com/buzz-kill>
~~~
Encosia
Leo's also interacting with people on Twitter daily. His engaging with people
there on a one-to-one level seems to exactly disprove the idea that it's an
echo chamber that no one's paying attention to.
By the same token, it should come as no surprise that something so mechanical
that it was automated through a third party wouldn't be missed.
~~~
crux_
> His engaging with people there on a one-to-one level seems to exactly
> disprove the idea that it's an echo chamber that no one's paying attention
> to.
Except, you know, for the part where he calls it an echo chamber that no one
is paying attention to: "It makes me feel like everything I’ve posted over the
past four years on Twitter, Jaiku, Friendfeed, Plurk, Pownce, and, yes, Google
Buzz, has been an immense waste of time. I was shouting into a vast echo
chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting
themselves."
~~~
Encosia
Look at a Twitter search for @LeoLaporte to see all the people responding to
him and/or trying to engage with him, or look at his Twitter stream to see him
interacting with people himself. For that matter, look at all of the people
commenting on his Buzz postings directly (e.g.
[http://www.google.com/buzz/laporte/iGbULnn1UMH/Its-funny-
bec...](http://www.google.com/buzz/laporte/iGbULnn1UMH/Its-funny-because-its-
true))
None of that squares very well with the echo chamber claim.
------
jasongullickson
_Tweeting, Tumblring, Facebooking, blogging, etc., are all routine tasks that
can be performed by any person out there with basic English skills and a
friendly personality._
Precisely...and this is why so many programmers, developers, executives and
any other kind of "specialist" can justify hiring someone for this position.
~~~
Tichy
Still, also on Twitter some people are way more popular than others.
------
njharman
Am I the only one who believes blogging and email are part of social media?
Other than to troll traffic with controversial post why do so many bloggers
make the assumption "that my niche situation / experience applies to everyone
everywhere and reveals new fundamental laws that I must loudly proclaim in
absolutest terms."
~~~
mgrouchy
I don't think they believe that assumption, I think they believe that
proclaiming assumptions, rules and absolutes in a very loud voice gets people
to read your blog(and guess what? It works!).
------
notahacker
I'm confused by the suggestion that "social media marketing can't be measured"
(and equally perplexed by the suggestion that banner ad effectiveness couldn't
be monitored).
Social networks are more popular with marketers not because of their novelty
(they've been around in different guises since before the web...) but because
they are increasingly centralised on platforms with real names and
relationship networks, which offer far more quantitative data on reactions to
your product whose relationship to actual sales can be analysed.
And even if you're half-hearted it's a more efficient way to spam with the
good old-fashioned coupon code as a measure of how many people that saw your
messages circulating on social media networks chose to buy
Just because companies sometimes look at the wrong metrics doesn't mean they
aren't there to be observed, or that the benefits aren't there just because
"likes" turn out to be only loosely correlated with purchases. The only real
losers in the social game are people building networks for people that won't
come or won't buy.
------
robryan
I'd disagree that having a dedicated person doing the social media for a
company doesn't add value, nothing measurable but I would be very surprised.
It depends I guess if you are directly trying to shove something down peoples
throats or acting as a channel of communication between an entity or product
and potential customers.
I guess many of the most effective uses of social media are very hard measure
in terms of a dollar value as you aren't getting people to directly go click
on something and spend money. An example would a team I support in AFL, over a
period of time they have build up a following on facebook from a large group
of supporters, facilitating closer contact between the club and fans and an
opportunity to give supporters a convenient place to discuss the club. It's
pretty much impossible to measure how this increased interest and involvement
from supporters assists their main products, memberships and game attendance,
but I feel it is worth the investment.
------
bosch
"Social media marketing can't be measured, at least not effectively. Spending
money on social media marketing reminds me of the early 2000s, when you
couldn't measure the effectiveness of banner ads. Everyone was spending on it
without knowing what the outcome was."
This is very true. While tweeting and facebooking might be very cool, how can
you tell it's worth the time you spend doing it without a MEASURABLE return?
And if it's not resulting in sales is it worth doing?
------
gamble
If he really believes this, why is he blogging about it?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Come for the network, pay for the tool - cookingoils
https://subpixel.space/entries/come-for-the-network-pay-for-the-tool/
======
codingdave
Paid communities aren't new. AOL was a paid community. Anyone remember Apple's
eWorld?
I'm not denying that the economics of the internet are evolving, it just irks
me our industry comes full circle to the same stuff we hashed through decades
ago and people act like it is a new phenomenon.
~~~
derefr
> AOL was a paid community.
Did the majority of people paying for AOL really pay for it for access _to AOL
services_ , rather than thinking of it mostly as an Internet (and email)
service provider, that just _happened_ to offer some value-added gated-
community-portal services? Were those portal services an actual selling point?
Maybe a better example is paying in phone minutes to dial into a BBS. Sure,
that money isn't going _to_ the BBS (unless it's on a 900 number)—but users
are still being charged by the minute to be there, so they're constantly doing
an ROI calculation and only staying if they're getting real value out of the
place.
~~~
codingdave
> Did the majority of people paying for AOL really pay for it for access to
> AOL services
Yes, they really did. Before the web grew, AOL had far more content in its
services. There were discussions, communities, even early MMORPGs. They
devolved into an ISP and email later.
------
syntheticcorp
Apparently a “Bloomberg Hacker News clone” exists, according to this article.
Does anyone have access to it? Is it good?
------
jasode
The author doesn't seem to reference it but the title looks to be a riff on
the 2015 article _" Come for the tool, stay for the network"_:
[https://cdixon.org/2015/01/31/come-for-the-tool-stay-for-
the...](https://cdixon.org/2015/01/31/come-for-the-tool-stay-for-the-network)
~~~
eitland
> Bloomberg is an example of the classic Web 2.0 business maxim “come for the
> tool, stay for the network.” But the inverse trajectory, from which this
> essay takes its name, is now equally viable: “come for the network, pay for
> the tool.” Just as built-in social networks are a moat for information
> products, customized tooling is a moat for social networks.1
I don't know if the post has been updated, but unless I misread something it
is explicitly mentioned now.
------
tantaman
The example paid communities are trivial -- they're hobbyist groups when
contrasted against the social media companies this article is trying to
compare against.
and it starts with quite an unsubstantiated claim " and audiences are slowly
but surely evacuating the big social media companies"
------
fouc
\- The Emergence of Paid Communities
\- Paid Communities Are a New Business Model for Bespoke Social Media
------
joezydeco
Meanwhile, MetaFilter just turned 21 years old.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Linkedin gets a new look - codegeek
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49433400
======
gren
I don't really like this dark header in contrast with the body. Also the
dropdown menu dark border looks horrible IMHO.
The rest is quite ok! :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How I used Heroku, Chargify and Sendgrid to take my web-app to market in 3 days - Tawheed
http://www.tawheedkader.com/2010/04/how-i-used-heroku-chargify-and-sendgrid-to-take-my-web-app-to-market-in-3-days/
======
ApolloRising
Did you include the time it takes to create/purchase a merchant account,
Payment Gateway, etc?
~~~
Psyonic
No, he didn't. He had already done that for braintrust and re-used it. So it
is a bit misleading.
~~~
ApolloRising
Thanks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OTPW – A one-time password login package - JNRowe
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/otpw.html
======
JNRowe
Links to alternatives and/or advice about how to judge the quality of these
types of things as an outsider would be appreciated.
For example, to me having Markus Kuhn's name attached to it is a big plus.
However, just saying "oh, some well known security dude was involved" doesn't
seem like the best way to evaluate a security product.
| {
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Ask HN: How to set up a minimalist professional web page these days - ACow_Adonis
I'm thinking it might be time for me to start branching out on my own. I've been doing analytics and stats for a long time now. But I haven't done anything with the web for almost a decade.<p>What's a recommended path to setting up a nice clean, minimal, compatible website/web presence these days for myself.<p>I'm thinking things like no advertising, email domains, minimal overhead, maximum compatibility. Oh and I guess I'll need a domain :p<p>Dev time on my behalf kept to a minimum would be a plus, obviously? I'm willing to pay a bit of money (think what one guy can afford on a decent salary) for tooling...(but I want to do the actual work myself).<p>Content wise I'm thinking primarily involving written articles, books, papers, blogs, visualisations, and maybe links to video/presentations.<p>So how about it HN? Possible, easy, silly? What do you suggest?
======
achairapart
1) Use a service like SquareSpace or Medium, no dev involved.
2) Use WordPress: just pick a simple, one purpose theme and avoid bloated ones
(ie ThemeForest). It requires a LAMP/LEMP stack.
3) Ghost is an alternative blogging platform with minimalistic and usually
well designed themes. It runs on Node.js.
4) Pick one of the many static site generators based on the language of your
choice. They require no database and only need basic static hosting:
[https://www.staticgen.com/](https://www.staticgen.com/)
------
_RPM
Mine is a true home page. There isn't anything on their but hand written HTML
that contains links to my online stuff. Not really anything special. It also
contains a picture of myself and my email. I wrote some obfuscated javascript
to write my email to the document.
~~~
ACow_Adonis
OP here: Html + css was where the tech was last time I involved myself with
the web, WordPress had just come out as "a thing". I'm not against it, but is
like to know where we're at and what's feasible/standard these days.
Ideally I'd like something a bit more involved than raw html (unless it's
become far more sophisticated than I remember), as I imagine I'll be updating
and writing and presenting quite often, so a way to
structure/manage/maintain/present/modularise/categorise material would be
great.
As I'm on the data science end of things, I'm guessing I'd also be looking at
hosting/presenting small data sets, or at least visuals representing such to
be inserted/included in posts/demos/documents...
------
avail
I wrote my homepage[1] in about an hour (with bits and pieces of js borrowed).
I used to have a wordpress blog styled exactly the same, but I never posted on
it so it is gone now.
I by all means don't think this is 'professional', but I doubt what you want
to make would need much more work than I have done.
These days there's resources for _everything_ , webservers which have really
good proxying if you want to code in a language other than php or manually
writing html, pre-made 'article-writing software' in many languages made for
the web.
Tools? All you'd need is notepad, or nano (or, your preferred text editor)!
You shouldn't need to run compiled code for the web, in my opinion, as there's
no noticeable speed differences.
Googling for specific things in a specific language will probably give you
results, e.g. 'nodejs blog' will land you to Hexo[2], which really neat,
customizable, and fast.
[1] [https://avail.pw](https://avail.pw) [2]
[https://hexo.io/](https://hexo.io/)
------
mdorazio
Can you provide more detail on what you're actually looking to post and how
much functionality you want to include?
On the lowest effort end, squarespace is a pretty decent option for getting
something that looks nice up and running quickly without needing to deal with
server stuff. It works for several colleagues, but has some flexibility
limitations.
The next step up would probably be a Wordpress installation either on your own
server or the lower-effort hosted solutions from wordpress.com. Personally I
can't stand wordpress (it's become immensely bloated and keeping it updated
and all your plugins/themes/whatever in sync and playing nicely can be a
pain), but it works well for a huge number of people.
After that you're looking at rolling your own custom page on your own server,
maybe a simple themeforest template on a shared host. I don't recommend this
approach these days unless you're itching to get your hands dirty with some
code whenever you want to update something.
~~~
ACow_Adonis
Thanks for the reply: very quickly, I'm looking primarily at essentially
showing off my analytical abilities and making available articles and writing.
It is essentially marketing for...me. I appreciate I'm being a bit vague,
because I'm just trying to gauge what the state of play/possibilities are at
this point.
I'm really not concerned with (in fact probably against) social involvement
such as comments or community forming things on my site. Its all me. I'm torn
about whether it could be integrated with the likes of social media (to
automatically make posts to an equivalent facebook/twitter page/account). I do
not need/want to make any money off of the site itself, so I don't want to
worry about advertising, and indeed, want to keep it off the site and make it
100% gauged around user accessability. Its goal is to make money by people
being interested in hiring me and what i do, rather than generate revenue by
views of the site.
Really, its going to be a very close form to that of a fancy blog/versions,
but posts may take forms of blog posts, articles, presentations, books or
software links/articles etc. I would appreciate some way to apply themes and
manage or structure my content.
Don't know if that helps at all...
------
bobwaycott
There is a plethora of static site generators in just about any language,
nearly all of which have some decent-looking templates you can use. Then
managing your site is just a matter of writing markdown for text content, and
pushing it up somewhere for hosting. Github can handle this, as can many other
services (e.g., S3).
------
LarryMade2
I like dokuwiki -
[https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki#](https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki#)
You can use a CMS template to make it blog like, lets you do nice formatting
no cruft.
Here my use of it (need to do some updating, been a while):
[http://www.portcommodore.com](http://www.portcommodore.com)
Heres a good example page:
[http://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=larry:proj...](http://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=larry:projects:flash_attack_cable&s\[\]=flash&s\[\]=cable)
------
probinso
If you do not want to see yourself as web developer, you can often find free
templates that are simple HTML CSS. You can either use this as your template
depending on the license, or create a derived piece.
I use Dynamic DNS and a lamp(hp) server hosted on a Raspberry Pi.
This cost me a total of $10 a year + trivial Electronics costs.
My site consists of 0 interactive parts. I have no use of a database . It only
lists work that I've done, Often linking out to GitHub repositories.
------
bbcbasic
Just to throw a few numpty options out there we have Wix, Wordpress.com,
Blogger.
Then there is Github pages and some people have created template repositories
that you can clone or fork that look rather nice and are easy to post content
to if you just learn Markdown which takes five minutes
E.g. [https://github.com/barryclark/jekyll-
now](https://github.com/barryclark/jekyll-now)
------
snehesht
If you just need a blog try this
[https://posthaven.com](https://posthaven.com)
However if you need an intro page I would suggest wordpress, they have a
hosted one too, incase you don't want to deal with server stuff.
p.s My site [https://snehesh.me](https://snehesh.me) is built on react and
nginx
------
kelt
I went this route for a simple web pressence:
\- html theme from themeforest
\- amazon s3 for hosting the static files
\- linked a domain
\- used formspree.io for the contact form
Not much traffic, couple of cents a month. I don't do much updating too.
Worked well for me.
Good luck!
------
bigmanwalter
My choice right now is to build a small Django site with a sqlite db backing
it. This way you get a free admin dashboard for updating the site. For the
theme, grab something from www.html5up.com
------
kirankn
I would suggest Jekyll on Github pages with a custom domain and possibly Zoho
for custom email. All this is free and can be setup on a quiet Sunday
afternoon.
------
walrus01
What is your level of proficiency with Apache/php/mysql? There are some good
minimalist WordPress templates that do not look like a blog.
------
sheraz
Wix, weebly, or square space. Done and done.
I'm a dev and would doing it if I were not such a cheap bastard.
------
peternicky
Check out codepen and/or GitHub pages...very simple and flexible.
~~~
ACow_Adonis
My concern/hesitancy with github (possibly completely unfounded) is that the
site is primarily targeted at developers. So while I already have a github
account, and developers appreciate it and that setup, I think it's kind of
hostile to non-developers. Non tech people don't like/want to be referred to a
git page.
Say for example I want to show commercially/professionally that I can predict
elections, real estate prices, gambling markets or pedestrian/traffic
movements, and I convey this through words and visualisation. I think in a lot
of that space, any window/connection to git or software development is a
barrier to many of the people who would hire me to do such, and the technical
people would dig deeper if they wished. Or they can home in on the
specifically technical articles.
So is it possible, if hosted on git pages, to divorce the page on a
presentation level from any concept of git/repositories/software development
concepts if I so choose?
~~~
hanniabu
You can use a custom domain with github pages so nobody would know the
difference, plus the housing is free. I use this in conjunction with
CloudFlare [1] for free partial SSL and Formspree [2] for free static email
capabilities. I would make a simple medium/markdown styled page and all you
have to do for blogging is reuse the same frame, write your content, update
the meta tags, and add a link to your blogging page. It may take about 5 more
minutes per post you make, but in the end I think it's worth it considering
how much faster your site will load with the static content.
[1] [https://blog.keanulee.com/2014/10/11/setting-up-ssl-on-
githu...](https://blog.keanulee.com/2014/10/11/setting-up-ssl-on-github-
pages.html)
[2] [https://formspree.io](https://formspree.io)
------
marvel00legend
Try WIX
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Samsung GT-E1080E - LutfiGjuta
http://35879604470894/0
======
gaspoweredcat
why have you posted the imei of a samsung feature phone?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cloudflare Bans Sites for Using Cryptocurrency Miners - fraqed
https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-bans-sites-for-using-cryptocurrency-miners-171004/
======
godzillabrennus
Good move from my perspective. The user isn't opting in to participate in this
mining so it's ethical for Cloudflare to protect the user.
~~~
thephyber
> According to Cloudflare, unannounced miners are considered malware.
This suggests that Cloudflare might still allow "announced" miners, even if
they aren't opt-in.
~~~
hobarrera
If they're well enough announced, you opt in by leaving the tab open. You can
opt-out immediately by leaving.
~~~
Raed667
Opt-in is clicking "opt-in" button.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Should an RSA public exponent be prime? - cr0bar_uk
I've done some research and found conflicting answers.. should an RSA public exponent (used in GPG etc) be prime? Is there a security risk in using non-prime numbers?
======
tptacek
1\. Technical answer: an RSA public exponent needs to be coprime with the
modulus, which is not the same as requiring that it be prime.
2\. Pragmatic answer: prime numbers are generally coprime with the modulus,
and so they're an easy answer, and so RSA public exponents tend to be prime.
3\. Best-practice answer: just use 65537, in all cases. The other popular
answer is 3, which is mathematically fine, but leaves less room for
implementation error; there are some implementation flaws for which attacks
are untenable with e=65537.
4\. Long-term answer: don't use RSA. RSA is well on its way to obsolescence.
Most problems you'd ever want to solve with RSA are better solved with
Curve25519 (for DH) and Ed25519 (for signing). Not coincidentally, these are
the algorithms implemented by Nacl, the only crypto library you should
consider using.
5\. Scolding answer: if you have to ask, please don't try to implement any of
this yourself. It is _very_ difficult to get RSA right.
~~~
sdevlin
I think e needs to be coprime with phi(N) rather than N itself. This is so you
can find d = e^-1 mod phi(N), which would otherwise not exist.
Of course, if e shares a factor with N, you have bigger problems.
~~~
tptacek
Oh, duh. Of course. :)
| {
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Walking Contrarian, Peter Thiel - hobaak
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-11-14/peter-thiel-is-silicon-valley-s-contradiction-video
======
bob_theslob646
FYI, video does no play for me with Adguard enabled on mobile.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Are Startups Cool? - dshanahan
http://dshan.me/are-startups-cool/
======
mimiflynn
Startups are just like any venture into starting your own business: its hard.
But, your article talks about 'working at a startup' as if interchangeable
with 'founding a startup', when, obviously, its not. I agree with your tribe
membership reference, but, its almost more like being in a bad relationship
when you think about the employee.
Lots of young fresh developers are drawn to startups because of the pingpong
tables and 'free' meals, potential equity in the business, and the coolness of
being at a startup. They get a salary that isn't as much as they could be
making at an established business, but they get all those perks, and they
might even be able to own part of the business one day. They have to work long
hours and get no vacation and have limited resources (sometimes having to use
their own personal computer!) because the business is a startup and working at
a startup means its exciting and you're going to take over the world and
everyone will know about you, but, really, you don't have time to have a life.
You're forced to write really bad code to get a feature out fast because the
investors want to see something, anything, which means refactoring for a
better future is out of the question because they just need to sell the
startup to a big firm ASAP.
Its hard to keep a straight face around a developer that just moved to New
York City talking about the cool new startup they just got a job at, quoting
their salary (which is far below average) and pitching like a business person
why their company is different than all of their more established competitors.
I'm not trying to say 'straight face' as in laugh at them, I mean 'straight
face' as in "you're about to fall off the cliff into bitter bitter land like
me and I'm sorry!" especially when they talk of catered lunched and dinners
and events and such because all it means if they feed you is that they don't
want you to leave the office.
So, yes, I agree with you that startups are difficult. I just thought the
employee's perspective is valid in this case too.
~~~
dshanahan
I agree that I slipped in between 'founding' and 'working' a bit. The
conversation that inspired the post was agnostic to the distinction,
obviously, but you're right there are differences. I think it's most useful to
actually explore the 'employee' experience, as outsiders will most likely end
up there if they jump from traditional work - this is what I'm seeing most
often anyway.
I wouldn't go so far as to say working in startups leads inevitably to
bitterness for the people who are made for it. I did certainly write the post
hoping it serves as fair warning that you should expect it to suck a lot.
~~~
mimiflynn
Yeah, I shouldn't speak for everyone when I speak of my own bitterness ;)
Overall, I'm glad I worked for a startup because it gave me the insight to
understand what I would want to do differently in my own business.
| {
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Ask HN: Have any good website ideas? I'll implement them, open source - lampstack
Hey HN- currently in a rut because I want to program but I don't have any good website/app ideas to implement. Post any website ideas you want implemented and if there's enough support I'll make it, 100% open source.
======
opendomain
Sounds like a great idea! How do I contact you? I am hacker AT my username dot
org
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
30 Years of .ORG - fcambus
http://happy30th.org
======
0x0
The "responsive" text layout needs some work.
I clicked and clicked expecting to find the second half of every sentence
(".ORG hit the 10 million mark with"... with what?) and only at the very end
did it occur to me to resize the browser window.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Facebook Back on the Defensive, Now Over Data Deals with Device Makers - Cbasedlifeform
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/technology/facebook-device-partnerships-criticized.html
======
merricksb
Previous/ongoing discussions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17229397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17229397)
(272 points/251 comments)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17223926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17223926)
(700 points/200 comments)
------
mlb_hn
This is a followup to the first article where they confused the ability to use
a device to access Facebook functionality (e.g. upload photos) without using
the app or browser with giving a third party the ability to access Friend
data.
The common understanding seems to be that Facebook is allowing device
manufacturers to download user data the same way that Cambridge Analytica and
other third party services did.
So far, they haven't shown that device manufacturers are siphoning that data
to their own databases short of the statement "Facebook acknowledged that some
partners did store users’ data — including friends’ data — on their own
servers" (in the original article, no explanation of context). What they have
shown is that Facebook gave device manufacturers the ability to let users use
the device to interact with their Facebook accounts without using the web
browser.
~~~
supercanuck
>"Facebook acknowledged that some partners did store users’ data — including
friends’ data — on their own servers"
Let's just let this statement stand on it's own for a moment.
~~~
cjhopman
Amazon Silk does that whenever you log in to facebook (or any other site, for
that matter). The data they capture during that presumably isn't even covered
by a similar data use agreement.
------
dmagee
What I think is really interesting is that there is public appetite for
outrage against the tech giants. Hence why this article was published even
though there is not a whole lot more information.
Public outrage often results in low hanging fruit for political movements to
pick and use for their own gain.
If this snowballs some more I expect reactionary politicians and reactionary
policies to rear their ugly head.
~~~
ehnto
It is interesting but perhaps not surprising. They have gone from darling
startups to consuming our lives and holding enormous power to influence,
people have noticed and people care.
It might be surprising if you don't feel the same way though and aren't
exposed to it. In the same way that I wouldn't have noticed the brexit
movement had even a handful of followers when infact it was a huge portion of
people.
The lesson I took from that was that I have a world view but it is only a tiny
fraction of possible world views, and I will never know or understand most of
them.
I do wonder what sort of politics it will influence though, as it stands I
can't really imagine many outcomes. These are new problems in a unique
political climate, I haven't been able to read it well for a while now.
------
wyldfire
> But Facebook officials said this week that they did not consider hardware
> partners to be outside companies, under the terms of Facebook’s privacy
> policies and a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission.
....except for when hardware partners are discovered to have had a breach, in
which case Facebook officials said that those companies would be held liable.
~~~
extralego
True. And even besides your example of discontinuity, if they want more
specificity, it could be theirs. They are free to specify as much as needed
when _they_ write the documents.
------
Larrikin
Is there any feasible way to actually have the good parts of Facebook but
prevent all of the data mining especially by third parties. I can't actually
think of a way. Is there some subset of acceptable data to share? Is Facebook
as it is right now totally broken and a new model needed?
The use cases of automatically adding your friends pictures and birthdays to
matching phone contacts was awesome when I first used it in college. Games
like Words with Friends are a lot more fun when I'm actually playing with
people I know. Not everyone discovers and plays games at the same time so its
nice seeing when someone new starts playing and also knowing not to pester
friends that stopped playing long ago.
Being connected with actual people I know is nice, I just hope it doesn't all
have to go away because there are so many people out there trying to abuse the
data.
~~~
amarkov
I don't like that my data is exploited to target ads. But I also wouldn't like
it if Facebook charged 25 cents per friend request, or threatened to cut me
off from my social groups if I didn't pay the monthly fee. Similar problems
apply to Facebook's platform standards and data handling.
I don't mean to claim that Facebook's done nothing wrong. But ultimately,
there are uncomfortable tradeoffs involved in friendship-as-a-service.
Expecting an completely non-creepy version of Facebook is like expecting a
completely non-controversial version of government.
~~~
ericd
Other than the obviously extremely-difficult-to-overcome network effects, I
don't think it'd be impossible to create something decentralized that
replicated much of the core functionality of Facebook, ie syndicating news,
pictures, etc about people you care about, and providing some basic ability to
have conversation threads. There'd obviously be some tradeoffs, but I don't
think any of them would necessarily be mortal blows to the UX.
~~~
amarkov
But it seems like decentralization would be a mortal blow to privacy. If we
struggle to get a monolithic Facebook to treat our data responsibly, how could
we possibly convince 500 decentralized Facebook nodes? (And why isn't it
trivial for the NSA or FSB to copy the world's data by standing up node #238
under an alias?)
~~~
Yetanfou
Decentralised as in "run your own for your family and any friends who do not
want to run their own", not as in "run the node for this geographical area".
As long as the management boundaries coincide with the privacy boundaries -
i.e. data within nodes belongs to a group of people who already share said
data since they are in the same family or friend group - the scenario you
picture here would not come to pass.
Of course there are several attempts at building a decentralised 'social'
network like this, e.g. Diaspora and GNU Social. Thus far they have not taken
off other than in limited circles.
------
dingo_bat
In the article, they haven't said why they think FB is "back on the
defensive". They just rehashed the whole controversy, no new events seem to
have occurred.
~~~
bobbyi_settv
I don't see how the article could have been any clearer. The first sentence
explains that it is about how they are back on the defensive from US lawmakers
and the rest of the article is directly quoting members of Congress including
one who says "Sure looks like Zuckerberg lied to Congress".
How is any of that "rehashing"? What lawmakers even knew about this at the
time of the previous article?
~~~
dingo_bat
> The first sentence explains that it is about how they are back on the
> defensive
> Facebook endured a new wave of criticism from lawmakers and regulators in
> the United States and Europe on Monday after disclosures that the social
> media giant had allowed dozens of hardware manufacturers access to its trove
> of personal user data.
I don't see any evidence of "defensive" action from fb. English is not my
first language so maybe I'm misinterpreting being "on the defensive". If
someone criticizes you are you automatically "on the defensive"?
~~~
yoav
Yes
------
Froyoh
Do you think the using 'facebook.com' in Apple's demonstration of their social
media blocking feature at WWDC was deliberate?
~~~
pacala
facebook.com is the largest social media site out there.
------
adamnemecek
Fb, pls die already.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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What are the advantages of the Hurd over Linux/BSD? (2013) - pmoriarty
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq/still_useful.html
======
derefr
> These were just examples, Linux is trying to catch up in ugly ways indeed
> ... In the Hurd, it's that way from the ground and there is no limitation
> like having to be root or ask for root to add magic lines, etc.
HURD might have user filesystem servers, but they're nowhere near Plan9's
"each process gets a mount table, and then things like environment variables
are just exposed process-local mounted filesystems."
Interestingly, given all the cgroups work put into the Linux kernel, you can
almost achieve this postmodern "every process gets its own VFS, and uses it as
scratch-space" effect with the one-two punch of:
fusermount ... /mnt/env/1
docker run -v "/mnt/env/1:/env" ubuntu
This, admittedly, still takes root-esque privileges somewhere along the line
(either fusermount is SUID and run on the host, or the container must be run
-privileged so you can mount inside it), but this isn't a fundamental
restriction, just a historical artifact of Docker being designed before user-
namespaces were finished. It's perfectly possible with raw unshare(2) to spawn
a process as an unprivileged user, in which the process is acting with
alternate-namespace UID0 privileges, and can mount whatever filesystems it
likes in its alternate-namespace VFS.
~~~
stormbrew
The need for privilege escalation to create the namespace is basically the rub
for this sort of thing.
It seems like the main thing that makes true plan9-style namespacing
unrealistic is the security implications, since the filesystem is used
extensively to control privilege escalation. Whether it's through setuid flags
or through /etc/sudoers or /etc/groups, at some point a privileged program (su
or sudo) might be running in an unknown or untrusted namespace where the facts
visible to that program make a solid case for allowing the escalation.
I'm not sure this tension can ever really be resolved without also adopting a
plan9-style out-of-process escalation mechanism. Which is a huge departure
from POSIX in and of itself, as far as I know.
I'm really not sure how HURD deals with this, to be honest, or if it does at
all.
------
mscarborough
> These were just examples, Linux is trying to catch up in ugly ways indeed
> ... In the Hurd, it's that way from the ground and there is no limitation
> like having to be root or ask for root to add magic lines, etc.
Catching up to what? A 24 year old kernel with no userbase and uses IRC logs
as the majority of documentation? Is Hurd useful as anything other than a
research project? I would be interested to see what people here who have used
Hurd have to say.
~~~
ama729
> Is Hurd useful as anything other than a research project?
Bear in mind that a research project can be interesting in its own right, not
everything has to be about large scale use.
Now if HURD is an interesting research, that's an entirely different
subject...
~~~
rbanffy
Even if it's not, not being interesting after so many years is, itself,
interesting. I find the psychology of the attachment to software platforms
fascinating.
------
snvzz
At this point? None. It's a silly exercise on not going anywhere.
HURD uses Mach, which is a mid-90s academic microkernel that's not so good in
practice. Particularly, it's so slow at IPC (which is critical to performance
in a pure microkernel system) that those using it (Darwin/OSX/IOS, HURD) had
to compromise and use a hybrid architecture: Running drivers and some other
components of the system with kernel privileges; A popular design choice in
the 90s (also BeOS, Windows NT) due to the immaturity of microkernels.
In late 90s/early 2000s, L4 happened. It went to great lengths to actually
make achieving performance with a pure microkernel architecture possible.
Afterwards, there were a lot of followup microkernels implementing the L4
interface, so these days when we say L4 we generally mean the interface, or
any microkernel that implements it.
The HURD was watching, and sometime early 2000s they realized that the hybrid
architecture was dead and they needed to move on if they wanted to stay
relevant. There was a serious attempt at porting HURD to L4. It was already
working, but the people behind it became disillusioned with the HURD, after
realizing flaws on the architecture. I recommend reading the papers the L4
port people wrote on this. Back then, there were some ten to twenty HURD
developers active.
After that, the HURD should have rethought its architecture and moved on with
L4. Instead, they didn't continue the L4 effort nor fix the architecture. What
they did was abandon it and start an entirely new port to a different
microkernel, Coyotos, which didn't bear fruit, either. Throughout all this,
the HURD was losing developers as they became disinterested.
Fast forward to 2005, Andrew Tanenbaum and his students released the first
version (a mere skeleton, without even virtual memory support) of Minix3, and
continued working from there
[http://wiki.minix3.org/MinixReleases](http://wiki.minix3.org/MinixReleases) ,
going a long way and bringing us to its current state. Right now, Minix3 has
20-30 active developers any given day, a few of which are working on it full-
time, supported by funds coming from European Union research programs, as the
reliability aspect
[http://www.minix3.org/other/reliability.html](http://www.minix3.org/other/reliability.html)
to Minix3 has been deemed important.
Meanwhile, the HURD has 0-3 active developers depending on the day, none of
which working full time, and with no roadmap or organization whatsoever. Last
I've heard, they introduced userspace driver support, which is a step in the
right direction, but a bit silly as the real problem (they're still using
Mach) is yet to be solved.
Minix3 next version, 3.3.0, is weeks away. Here's some insider info: It breaks
ABI to adopt NetBSD types, skyrocketing compatibility with pkgsrc software.
The system will for the first time be built dynamic, as mmap() is finally
working and the dynamic library support has been adapted to actually do shared
libraries using it.
As lack of proper dynamic library support was holding back X (which already
ran, but with barely any software for it), I expect we'll have a lot of WMs,
DEs and GUI programs from here on, and interest will pick up.
If you ask me about the HURD, I'd say it's not worth continuing. Just take
along whatever salvageable ideas and concepts and move on. Working on a system
that isn't at a dead end is one suggestion. Escape [https://github.com/Nils-
TUD/Escape](https://github.com/Nils-TUD/Escape) , HelenOS and Minix3 are three
such systems. Genode is not exactly a system but it is interesting in its own
way, and Plan9Front [http://ninetimes.cat-v.org/](http://ninetimes.cat-v.org/)
is very interesting even though it is not currently a pure microkernel system
(it can be made so without breaking anything thanks to the awesome design).
All these systems I suggested are _Free Software_ , interesting, promising and
actually active.
~~~
fhars
Another intersting microkernel might be seL4, which is an L4 implementation
(as you might have guesses from the name) focussed on security that will be
released as open source (code _and_ correctness proofs, as all good security
software should be in an ideal world) at the end of July:
[http://sel4.systems/](http://sel4.systems/)
~~~
erikano
Didn't know seL4 was going to be open source. Thanks.
------
hcarvalhoalves
With hardware support for virtualization I see the OS landscape going a
different direction, it seems the Holy Grail of "everything is userspace" will
be effectively side-stepped by "everything is sandboxed".
~~~
mrbabbage
Here's something that's even more "out there": an experimental OS and
programming environment where all protection is done statically, at compile
time. You can do things as crazy as run all "user" processes and the kernel in
the same (kernel-mode) address space safely, because the system compiler
enforces type-safety and memory-safety. It's pretty cool! (my memory is a bit
weak on this paper so some of the details might be off, but it's well worth
the read)
[http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/?id=69431](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/?id=69431)
~~~
rbanffy
Sounds interesting if you have very constrained hardware, but you'd have to
trust the compilers or you wouldn't ever install 3rd party binaries.
And I think gaius is right. Burroughs did it before.
------
barosl
Presenting services in user space has always been a benefit of microkernels,
which is welcomed considering that I frequently make use of FUSE or OpenVPN.
The only concern for me is performance. Though I believe the service server
provided by the Hurd would outperform FUSE, I'm not sure that it is worth the
overhead of all other parts in the entire system. If the performance decrease
is negligible, I'll be happy to use the kernel.
~~~
ChuckMcM
In general, a kernel that requires a five transitions
(user->kernel->user->kernel->user) for system service calls, will be less
performant than one which requires only three (user->kernel->user) The impact
is magnified with multiple services being involved. So if you naively design
your disk driver as a user level process, your file system as a user level
process, then something like read() from a user's applications goes: read ->
kernel -> user(fs) -> kernel -> user(disk) -> kernel -> user(fs) -> kernel ->
read(app). It was really really slow when things had different page mappings
but it gets better if you have an alloc area where everyone shares the same
virtual address space (keeps TLB thrashing down).
Per another comment on this thread the Docker as P9 process is pretty close.
But it doesn't share services per se across users in the space. Spring (Sun's
research OS) looked at cutting the penalties down for moving kernel/user with
some nice 'doors' kinds of things. At the time there was discussion that with
enough address space (so that you're VM system got the benefit of warm caches
and no page remapping) you could really do some interesting things. Were I
retired I would probably spend some time playing with that stuff on a modern
64 bit architecture :-)
~~~
wolfgke
five transitions (user->kernel->user->kernel->user)
three (user->kernel->user)
Aren't these 4 vs. 2 transitions?
~~~
ChuckMcM
You are correct 5 contexts, four transitions.
------
rwmj
Or with libguestfs (no root needed):
guestfish -N test1.img=fs
guestmount -a test1.img -m /dev/sda1 /tmp/mnt
------
GregBuchholz
Here's a more interesting list of potential file system translators:
[https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/translator/wishlist.h...](https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/translator/wishlist.html)
------
msl09
the best part of hurd is that systemd does not support it :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Turns out Amazon buying Eero wasn’t the startup success story we thought - aaronbrethorst
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18297619/amazon-eero-price-fire-sale-mesh-wi-fi-buyout
======
yellow_postit
I hope Eero has better luck under Amazon than Blink which seems to have
stalled out after the Ring acquisition and is constantly having "sales" which
makes me suspect they are just cleaning out inventory.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In the Bay Area, technology has gone hand in hand with imperialism for 500 years - edw519
https://www.salon.com/2018/12/09/in-the-bay-area-technology-has-gone-hand-in-hand-with-imperialism-for-500-years/
======
masonic
n the late 18th century, the newly-arriving Spanish
That would make it the last _300_ years, not 500.
The Ohlone hadn't even employed the _wheel_ , let alone other technologies.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jeri Ellsworth, self-taught engineer, talks about her career (2011) [video] - jacquesm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLy0mVkoLio
======
gluelogic
Jeri Ellsworth is a wizard! A huge inspiration to me.
I always loved this floppy drive reverb she made:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr7B-7BFP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr7B-7BFP4)
------
andrewstuart
I wish Jeri would build the J64 - the definitive rebuild of the C64.
~~~
tdicola
The C64 DTV is pretty close. You can hack them to add a keyboard and disk port
without too much trouble.
~~~
andrewstuart
Altavista was pretty close to Google.
------
radoslawc
I didn't know her story. Amazing person.
~~~
fit2rule
She really is an amazing person - I met her once, and became instantly a fan
when she pulled out a "transistor I made".
I mean, really .. make your own transistor? From scratch?
Simply one of the most inspiring people I've ever met.
~~~
kropotkinlives
Indeed. I tried to make a transistor with the reverse side of a pile of 74LS
IC dies I extracted with solvents, household chemicals and a blow torch. I
managed to make an acceptable diode that lasted about 2 minutes at a mere
200uA of current. I gave up then and decided that the transistor was the base
abstraction layer I could be bothered with.
For ref diode recipe:
1\. 74LS die. Turn it over.
2\. Small pile of borax on one half. Small pile of sulphur on other side.
3\. Apply torch until everything is baked nicely.
4\. Scrape off surface with a razor.
5\. Poke two pins connected to your circuit until you find a bit that works
like a diode (can take a few minutes). I used a simple home made curve tracer
out of a twin-t oscillator, buffer and an oscilloscope. Don't hit it with much
current or it'll kill it instantly.
~~~
jacquesm
You can do this with a lead crystal as well (that's how in the old days the
diodes for crystal receivers were made).
Even a dirty razor blade and a pencil will work as a diode!
~~~
kropotkinlives
Yeah that was where I started with the idea and then decided to see if I could
dope some silicon to make a diode then move up to transistor level, then a
simple IC.
You could knock up a point contact diode or even transistor without too much
pain but that's not as much fun :)
There's info on how to make point contact devices in here:
[http://www.qrparci.org/wa0itp/csts_book.pdf](http://www.qrparci.org/wa0itp/csts_book.pdf)
------
makeset
C64 Bass Guitar:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kDhpFaf4EY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kDhpFaf4EY)
I first thought this was just someone slapping on an empty C64 case for a
guitar body. It's... a bit more than that.
------
moron4hire
She's been a major inspiration for my own work for years.
~~~
jacquesm
I like your 'burning zombie'!
~~~
moron4hire
Heh, thanks. That was sort of the start, my first major project outside of
programming, outside of anything I had actually been trained in.
I'd always had hobbies of a wide variety, and people always like to parrot
that tired "jack of all trades, master of none" line. Seeing Ellsworth's work,
it made it feel normal to not only be interested in and doing a bunch of
different things, but to try to be good at it all, too.
She's always seemed extremely brilliant, yet ultimately accessible. She's
always not only created awesome things, but tried to explain them as well. To
try to bring other people along into the fold. We could all use more of that.
~~~
jacquesm
Fun story: Back in the early days of hobby computing a friend-of-a-friend, a
guy called Jim ran a robotics gig in Amsterdam. He asked me to control a head
on a stalk with the face of a politician on it lip-synched to some audio. Jaw
movement, eyes rolling side to side, some facial animation. Very funny job.
Anyway, one night I was working on the 'head' with the latex part off, you
have to imagine a very scary looking appliance with teeth and two eyes painted
(very realistically) on ping-pong balls behind a skull like frame of
fibreglass.
I was writing some code deeply concentrated when my refrigerator decided to
generate some really ugly spark causing the servos on the head to become
activated, the jaw opened really wide and the eyes rotated to face me, which
totally scared the shit out of me.
So much for me being level headed and cool under pressure ;)
~~~
moron4hire
Hah! Yeah, that would freak me out, too.
------
unclesaamm
The caption of her as "Force of Nature" made me laugh. Very inspiring.
------
616c
jacquesm, thank you for doing my homework for me. You went far beyond what I
teased about.
For background:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9576219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9576219)
Thanks again.
~~~
fnordfnordfnord
See also: [http://www.windytan.com/](http://www.windytan.com/) and
[https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea](https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea)
~~~
616c
windytan is sick. I have read the stuff every time it is posted here, and I am
saddened with all my interest in SIGINT as a kid I never took it seriously,
because her non-mil, non-intel signals analysis makes it seem so much cooler
than what I read about as a kid! And it is so approachable.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is Google Planning an E-Book Rental Service? - Anon84
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_google_planning_an_e-book_rental_service.php
======
godkira
Interesting. FTA "And would users choose to go to Google for this service,
rather than some of the other e-book publishers and providers out there?"
Personally I have had nothing but good experiences with Google, and depending
on the prices and books available I would have no problem renting books from
Google.
~~~
hugh3
And since they've already got damn near every book ever written scanned and
indexed I can see big... uhhh, synergies. Or whatever the non-wanky synonym
for "synergies" is.
I google for "obscure topic X" and I find a few crappy websites combined with
what looks like a great discussion in the book "An Advanced Course In Obscure
Topic X". It tells me I can find a hardcopy in the library three miles away,
_or_ for 99 cents I can rent an e-copy from Google for four weeks. Why the
hell not? Everybody wins -- me, Google, and the publisher.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Doge iOS - lukasko
https://twitter.com/doge_ios
======
ctruman
This is awesome. A great addition to
[https://twitter.com/horse_ios](https://twitter.com/horse_ios)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gandi – Why we retired the security question - ddacunha
https://news.gandi.net/en/2020/07/why-we-retired-the-security-question/?affiliate=nl_EN_jul20_1&pk_campaign=Newsletter_EN_email_44032&pk_kwd=NL&pk_source=email&pk_medium=email&pk_content=news1_security
======
Jaruzel
In the UK the NCSC[1] also no longer advocate security questions such as these
and recommends using MFA to recover lost passwords. Additionally they also
advocate non-expiring passwords, as ironically, having to change a password
every 30 days actually causes users to use less secure passwords (i.e.
Monday1, Monday2, Monday3 etc.).
\--
[1] [https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/](https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/)
------
sha666sum
This URL includes a bunch of tracking parameters. Cleaned version:
[https://news.gandi.net/en/2020/07/why-we-retired-the-
securit...](https://news.gandi.net/en/2020/07/why-we-retired-the-security-
question/)
------
FunSociety
Using the email to trigger a password recovery is a good solution. But in the
end, you are just outsourcing your "self-care" problem to the email provider.
~~~
Normille
That works as long as you to know the email you signed up with and have
forgotten the password. But what if it's the other way round?
I'd imagine most web savvy people these days have several email addresses and
lots of us will use disposable emails or tricks like adding '+something' to
our emails when we sign up.
I've recently run into this problem on a couple of sites [I'm thinking
Trustpilot and Mastodon but could be wrong], whereby my password manager had
saved my login name and password but, when I returned to the site, it wanted
me to login with my email address and password. [inconsistent naming of form
fields twixt registration screen and login screen, no doubt].
I couldn't remember which of my half dozen or so email addresses or "+"-added
variations of them I'd used, or if I'd used a disposable email like Mailinator
to sign up. So I clicked on the "forgot login" link --which then asked enter
my account email address, in order to be sent a password reset link!
------
Normille
Another favourite of mine is when sites ask your date of birth as a security
question. Y'know, that top secret piece of info known only to; yourself, your
family, most of your friends, anyone you've ever worked for, anyone you've
ever filled in a form for... etc.
Which is why, when sites require me to setup answers for these dumb security
questions, I always invent ridiculous ones and then save those along with the
password in my password manager.
It did partially backfire one time though when my insurance co. had to ring me
and asked me to confirm my mother's maiden name. I don't think they believed
me when I replied it was "Hitler".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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