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Microsoft backs Epic in court filing - colinprince
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53888087
======
notafraudster
Dupe of:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24253943](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24253943)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24257455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24257455)
------
giancarlostoro
For those who missed it this is the quote that matters here:
> In an escalation, Apple then said it would pull Epic's access to developer
> tools on iOS and Mac.
> But Microsoft said this would damage a "critical technology" for many third-
> party game creators.
> That is because Epic also owns the Unreal Engine - a tool widely used by
> developers from other studios to build games, virtual-reality VR experiences
> and special effects in major television shows and films.
> Microsoft uses the technology itself.
YIKES, how much longer is this going to go on?
~~~
stingraycharles
I may be missing the point, but does this imply that no games based on the
Unreal engine could be developed for Mac anymore, as Epic themselves will be
unable to develop for it / support it?
~~~
yegle
It means they cannot fix breakages before a new version of iOS/macOS is
generally available, and they won't have access to the new ARM CPU devkit
that's critical to port their engine to ARM based macOS.
~~~
giancarlostoro
This is what I'm taking it as. They probably have special access in order to
get their engine ready for the latest iOS updates. This move on Apple's part
is very abusive. People elsewhere in the thread are comparing Microsoft, but
Microsoft wouldn't cripple developer tools because an app from a vendor abused
its guidelines. Any store willing to do this has gone too far.
~~~
pwinnski
This does seems like an abusive move by Apple.
I note that Epic continues to provide a version of Fortnite that violates the
rules and provides the ability to buy in-game currency at a lower price
through their own store, and has filed legal papers requesting that Apple be
forced to support this while the court case proceeds.
This seems like an abusive move by Epic.
Two wrong don't make a right, but it's tough to see how this isn't a direct
result of Epic's actions, and more to the point, something Epic could fix in
less than an hour by turning off their violating store.
Turn it back when/if you win the court case, Epic. Right now it seems like you
bet that Apple wouldn't call your bluff, and you lost. They did.
~~~
john-shaffer
Epic had a lawsuit and an advertisement already prepared. They were not
bluffing, and they were very confident that Apple would "call" them.
~~~
pwinnski
About Fortnite, sure. About their entire account, that seems to have surprised
them.
Fortunately for Epic, last night the court agreed that is likely a step too
far.
------
jtsiskin
This is pretty funny because Xbox has the same store restrictions (impossible
to install from another source, all games approved by them, takes a revenue
percentage) Apple does.
~~~
addicted
I know this is a popular rebuttal, but are video games consoles really
comparable to phones, which are nothing but general purpose computers?
~~~
akersten
What is the difference between the capabilities of the console hardware and
the phone hardware? The console hardware is actually more powerful. PS3's were
used as general purpose computers until Sony removed OtherOS functionality.
This is nothing but defensive "don't sue us next" posturing by Microsoft.
Consoles are just as general purpose as a phone. The only difference is the
software veneer running on top.
~~~
pkaye
Those game systems allows purchasing from physical stores. Does Apple allow
that?
~~~
akersten
It's an unimportant distinction.
It doesn't matter that you got your Microsoft-store approved copy of Gears of
War from Gamestop instead of the Microsoft app store. MS still gets their cut,
and that application still had to be approved by them.
The core similarity to iOS and Apple's app store is: Third party applications
cannot run on the Xbox without Microsoft review, approval, and fee. It doesn't
matter that it's a physical copy or not. You, an independent developer, can't
just create an Xbox game and get it running without MS approval, no matter
whether you wanted to sell it on the app store _or_ as a physical copy.
~~~
pkaye
How does this compare to Google? You can develop your own app and side load
it. And you can have third part app stores.
~~~
akersten
Yep, I'd say Google's closer to doing the right thing here comparatively,
having at least a non-terrible path to running unsigned APKs.
I would put Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo in the same bucket of "makes
hardware that can run software, but only software they approve." Whether this
is something we as a society should allow, I won't comment on, but I will say
that Epic should either have a grievance with all of them or none of them.
Microsoft and Epic are strange bedfellows and I can't see this headline as
anything other than a nervous preemption on Microsoft's part.
~~~
fomine3
I against to put smartphone platform and game console in the same bucket on
antitrust perspective because there's only two viable players in smartphone
platform market (on gaming, 3 major platforms + open PC platform + smartphone
platforms) and it's mandatory device for modern life.
------
sjroot
For context, the Microsoft Store platform takes a 5% fee compared to Apple’s
30%.
[https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2018/05/07/a-new-...](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2018/05/07/a-new-
microsoft-store-revenue-share-is-coming/)
This isn’t super surprising. Microsoft is desperate to get people to develop
for the Windows platform and this obviously an incentive that developers will
find attractive.
~~~
twodave
Are Windows PC gaming and the XBOX line in such a decline that they could be
described as desperate? I really doubt it, but I'm having trouble finding data
to back up either argument.
~~~
cptskippy
I believe he was referring to the Store on Windows platforms, not Xbox
platforms. The Windows Store has games but Microsoft never made a fight
against Steam the way Epic has.
~~~
criddell
What's the difference between the Windows store and XBox store? Is the revenue
split different? Are there different requirements for selling on Windows and
XBox?
~~~
cptskippy
The Windows Store is exclusively for Windows devices and the Xbox store is for
Xbox devices.
~~~
criddell
Is the XBox Store available for anybody to sell in, or do you have to have a
relationship with Microsoft?
~~~
cptskippy
I mean if you're selling in either store you have a relationship with
Microsoft.
They have completely different ToS.
~~~
criddell
I was under the impression that the XBox store was much more difficult to get
into. Thanks for the clarification.
~~~
cptskippy
I'm not versed in the finer details. Initially it was difficult to get into
the Xbox store but then Microsoft started catering to Indie developers and
smaller games.
They've rebranded the Xbox Store and Windows Store to both just be the
Microsoft Store and content you purchase them (e.g. Movies, Music, TV) is
shared between the two. Some Games are "Xbox Play Anywhere" which means you
can play them on Windows 10 or Xbox (e.g. Forza Horizon 4) but others are
exclusive to either platform (e.g. Flight Simulator). Some games can be
purchased for either platform individually (e.g. Halo).
Then you have the weirdness that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 is published
by Xbox Game Studios but only available on Windows 10.
------
wayneftw
I wonder what car manufacturing companies think about all of this?
In my state and I think in much of the US, we're not allowed to buy directly
from the car manufacturer. I never liked that law because I don't like car
dealerships, but now I'm beginning to see why those laws that keep car
dealerships in business might have passed.
~~~
stingraycharles
> In my state and I think in much of the US, we're not allowed to buy directly
> from the car manufacturer.
Huh, what, in what way is that law a good thing?
~~~
dylan604
If you're a dealership, it's an amazing thing.
This is why you cannot buy a Tesla in TX.
------
mandeeeeeep
Microsoft seems to be doing everything they can to push everyone to writing
platform agnostic software:
1\. Game streaming, which opens the doors to app streaming
2\. Progressive Web Apps, teaming with google to create a tool to publish them
directly to the Android Play Store
3\. At one point, they created tools to port iOS and Android apps to windows
mobile
4\. Investing in React Native and Xamarin
Personally, I am not a fan since today, the quality of these apps are really
bad and give developers too much power. But seems Microsoft is trying to get a
foothold to relaunch Windows Mobile again once more apps switch over
------
throWaythxMod
Epic needs to offer a 30% discount for anyone who gets their content from
their website.
And while I'm not sure if you can side load on Apple products, if you can't,
don't offer your services on Apple products. Customers will move as they
wakeup to their horrible business practices.
~~~
izacus
\- Apple forbids people from buying content on their website.
\- Apple forbids developers from mentioning that the content might be cheaper
elsewhere.
So that won't work.
~~~
eyesee
> \- Apple forbids people from buying content on their website.
Not quite. Apple forbids directing users to a web site from within your app to
sidestep in-app purchases. If you offer any digital purchases through your
app, they must use IAP.
------
newbie578
Full support for Msft and Epic! Time to bring the dictator (Apple) down. And
when that day arrives, it will be a tragedy on HN since tears will be shed by
Apple fanboys. Hint: You cannot support anti-competitive practices because you
like your Mac :)
------
mikewhy
Part of me wonders if this is Microsoft just trying to align with Epic, in the
cast that the courts do side with Epic, who in turn use that ruling against
Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo.
~~~
Okawari
I wonder if it is because they believe that their cloud gaming platform will
be more lucrative than XBox in a few years and think that not having to pay
apple the 30% and still have access to the iOS userbase will be more
profitable.
I for one wouldn't mind if this case ended up forcing Apple to loosen their
restrictions in regards to sideloading and other app stores on the device.
A pipe dream, but one can hope.
------
Razengan
Does Microsoft allow any other stores on the Xbox?
What % do they take from game sales?
~~~
ameen
Yup - physical stores such as GameStop, Bestbuy, Target, etc have been selling
Xbox media for quite sometime.
~~~
criddell
That's not a very meaningful distinction. Microsoft still gets their cut and
till approves every title. An independent XBox store would remove Microsoft
from the loop.
If Epic wins in court (and I hope they do), then the consoles are next in line
to be forced open.
~~~
RealStickman_
Consoles have a very different purpose from phones. Niche gaming-focused item
vs general purpose computer (that was apple's ipad marketing at least)
~~~
criddell
Does it really matter how it's marketed? We know that an XBox is mostly a
Windows PC. There's all kinds of software I'd like to load onto an XBox-like
device. A PC in the living room connected to a large TV has a lot of
potential. I'd like to write software for it and I'm sure I'm not alone.
------
EdwinLarkin
I hope we can also get rid of VAT. I dont want to pay the 20% on everything
because my government cant manage things more efficiently.
You say I should just move to a country with a lower VAT? Yeah not that easy.
I dont condone apple on what they are doing with their platform but you need
to understand that Apple sets a standard and that standard costs money.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Roger Stone Indictment [pdf] - _-_T_-_
https://www.justice.gov/file/1124706/download
======
_-_T_-_
Roger Stone, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, was indicted by
special counsel Robert Mueller and arrested Friday on charges of obstruction,
giving false statements and witness tampering.
Allegedly
Organization 1= Wikileaks
Person 1= Jerome Corsi
Person 2= Randy Credico or Jerome Corsi
Bannon is one of "senior Trump Campaign officials"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If MBAs are useless, we’re all in big trouble - jszlasa
http://qz.com/79042/if-mbas-are-obsolete-were-all-in-big-trouble/
======
kfk
I am probably never going to do an MBA (probably because life in
unpredictable), but, as a business guy with programming skills, I strongly
advise the "tech guys" not to close doors on anybody. If they come with a suit
and they look like they are going to drop a ton a BS on you, just listen and
then ask them to prove themselves somehow. If they ask you money and they
don't want to prove themselves first, then you should send them the high way.
And, I know HN is strongly skewed on consumer SAAS, but there is a world of
companies with big money working on 10 to 20 years old software that would
love to pay for stuff that works and allows them to save costs. Easiest way to
get to this gold mine is actually sympathizing with the business people, not
"enemyzing" them.
------
ckluis
MBA here.
I agree and I disagree. The MBA itself is pointless without considerable
effort of the student to learn things related to startups.
MBAs teach you to be good middle to upper management in an organization with
some structure. It teaches you how to navigate and mold an existing structure
as needed for the course of business. It doesn't teach you how to build a
company from scratch.
I would argue that a skilled business professional is useless for some
startups and necessary for others. Want to tackle enterprise software? A few
of those MBAs can provide insight and credibility.
Web guys are useless in a native world. Cocoa guys are useless in a Windows
world. XAML guys are worthless in an Cocoa world. Right tool. Right job.
~~~
kfk
I agree, although not 100% on the enterprise software point. I am the first to
say you need a business guy for that, at least to correctly figure out the
needs, but I don't see why an MBA here would be better than a business guy
with experience.
~~~
ckluis
Did you notice I didn't directly say you need an MBA? I said they could be
helpful. An MBA is like a CS degree. Do you need a CS degree to be a good
programmer? Does it help?
------
nnnnni
I've noticed that the radio and TV are full of commercials that say "Get your
MBA at $school today and become a success tomorrow!"
It seems to me that whatever the MBA may have been worth at one point, it's
now worth about the same thing as A+ or Network+ certification. This feels
like a rerun of the early 2000s when the job market was flooded with people
that have bootcamp certificates but no real knowledge/experience/drive.
------
jaibot
Anybody going to do a quantitative analysis on the impact of having an MBA on
startup success? Because I'd hate for something to get in the way of all these
anecdotes.
~~~
Major_Grooves
sounds like something the startup genome guys could do.
------
moomin
TL;DR We're all in big trouble.
------
Skibb
ugh you beat me to it!
Truth is MBAs are inflated hullaballoo whose exorbitant price for offering
semi useful drivel may have worked in the time of all-is-fine-and-dandy but in
today's unstable economic world where lean is mean (in good sense) it's just
anachronistic.
------
wheaties
I hate to say it but what does anything an MBA teaches have to do with being a
good leader? Leadership can't be taught, it has to be learned. Those business
analysis skills are just that, business analysis. I think the largest problems
revolving around the concept of getting an MBA is the sense that with it you
should be in a leadership role.I'd love that knowledge but I would never make
the assumption that having knowledge means I am entitled to having a
management role.
~~~
bsbechtel
"You also need to secure scarce resources, develop cohesive teams, assemble
collaborative networks and build lasting customer relationships."
The author assumes if you have an MBA, you are qualified to do these things.
That couldn't be further from the truth.
~~~
VLM
LOL that's just the buzzword bingo version of post bachelors degree
"successful" life. Figure out how to pay for B school while getting married
and pop out some kids and keep everyone on track and happy and cooperative and
tolerate the mother-in-law basically continuously and successfully.
Note that the skills are only present if at all in MBA grads due to filtering
on the input side, not some magic pixie dust sprinkled on during classes or as
part of the credential ceremony.
------
michaelochurch
The hatred for "MBAs" has little to do with the degree itself.
========================
First, an aside.
Paul Graham was wrong about something. He wrote "Why Nerds Are Unpopular"
(still a great essay: <http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html>). He was mostly
right:
_Being smart seems to make you unpopular._
Ok. Reading on...
_Being smart doesn't make you an outcast in elementary school. Nor does it
harm you in the real world. [...] But in a typical American secondary school,
being smart is likely to make your life difficult._
Agree so far...
_So if intelligence in itself is not a factor in popularity, why are smart
kids so consistently unpopular? The answer, I think, is that they don't really
want to be popular.
If someone had told me that at the time, I would have laughed at him. [...] Of
course I wanted to be popular.
But in fact I didn't, not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to
be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something,
but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to
program computers. In general, to make great things._
Holy shit! This is right on. Go nerds!
_I wonder if anyone in the world works harder at anything than American
school kids work at popularity. Navy SEALs and neurosurgery residents seem
slackers by comparison. [...] An American teenager may work at being popular
every waking hour, 365 days a year.
[T]eenagers are always on duty as conformists._
Wow. This is some deep insight. Always on-duty as conformists... what does
that seem like? (Hint: corporate work.) I'll get hack to that.
_Nerds don't realize this. They don't realize that it takes work to be
popular. [...] Likewise, popular isn't just something you are or you aren't,
but something you make yourself._
So far, Paul Graham is batting 1.000.
_In a typical American school, standards for coolness are so high (or at
least, so specific) that you don't have to be especially awkward to look
awkward by comparison._
Yes, this is true. I was somewhere around the 30th percentile of my HS pecking
order and completely fine with that. I wasn't "cool" bit I wasn't unpopular,
people respected me, I never got beat up. But if you wanted to be 98th, you
really had to put a lot into it.
_Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires. [...]
[T]hat's why smart people's lives are worst between, say, the ages of eleven
and seventeen._
Yes. Go on...
_Life at that age revolves far more around popularity than before or after._
This is where Paul Graham is wrong. Yes, high school is horrible for the least
popular couple percent. For most of us, even the nerds, it was fine. You don't
lose your income if you're at the 30th percentile of the pecking order, and
you have other things to focus on. You have things (e.g. college) to look
forward to.
The Work World is more like high school than college or academia. Actually,
it's worse than high school. In corporate Work, the popular kids are actually
evil (in HS, most of them weren't; perhaps selfish and immature but not _evil_
) and you lose huge amounts of _money_ when they fuck you over. Also, there is
_no_ external definition of merit. In HS, you can work hard and get good
grades and that gives you a signal that even though you're not popular, you're
doing well in society's eyes. There is _nothing_ like that at Work. Your
grades (performance reviews, job titles) are given by the popular kids who
have no desire to be fair and who will be as _unfair_ as they can get away
with if it helps them get ahead.
_Adults don't normally persecute nerds._
Well, this is just not the case. Not in VC-istan, not in 99% of jobs even at
"tech companies". The popular kids rule with an iron fist. They dress it up
with a pseudo-meritocracy and "performance" rhetoric and credibility metrics
and job titles, but it's just high school popularity, this time played for
keeps. And yes, if you're one of those nerds who puts his head down and tries
to be as good as possible at his job (instead of playing politics) you will be
attacked in most environments. Why? Because an _actual_ high-performer scares
the shit out of the popular kids.
_[Y]ou can create an enemy if there isn't a real one. By singling out and
persecuting a nerd, a group of kids from higher in the hierarchy create bonds
between themselves. Attacking an outsider makes them all insiders._
This is exactly how corporate Work works.
_It's important to realize that, no, the adults don't know what the kids are
doing to one another. They know, in the abstract, that kids are monstrously
cruel to one another [...]
Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens.
Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. [...] Beyond
that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so
they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what
I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and
pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it._
Office politics, right there. Managers (like HS teachers) are powerless to
prevent it, because the information they get is filtered through the most
intimidating/extortive subset of the people below them (who silence everyone
else and become the real authority on "performance").
_The inhabitants of all those worlds [e.g. high school] are trapped in little
bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally
these societies degenerate into savagery. They have no function for their form
to follow._
Great insight. I agree. I disagree that Work is different for the vast
majority of people. How do you get promotions? Or venture funding? Or just not
fired when a "low-performer" witch hunt happens? Or get real projects where
there's actual high-impact work available? Oh, right. _Popularity_.
_Another problem, and possibly an even worse one, was that we never had
anything real to work on. Humans like to work; in most of the world, your work
is your identity. And all the work we did was pointless, or seemed so at the
time._
99% of office jobs. High school work isn't "pointless". It just has no impact
on the outside world because _it's evaluative_ by design. That's how bottom-
rung corporate work is, too. They aren't giving you work because it's
important. They give you undesirable and unimportant stuff, for a dues-paying
period of a few years, in order to evaluate you for eligibility for real work.
Getting out is based on popularity, not merit.
It's worse at Work because, in high school, real effort is made to make the
work at least marginally engaging and _educating_. At Work, no one cares. The
Work is _supposed_ to be dogshit. It wouldn't be a test if you were learning
something from it.
_Nerds aren't losers. They're just playing a different game, and a game much
closer to the one played in the real world._
This is where Paul Graham gets it wrong. The high school popularity game is
the more "real world"-like game, not the nerd be-smart-and-do-great-work game.
Who is going to get the boss job, the well-connected idiot or the hard worker?
The former, even in "tech". Your boss gets to tell you what to do because he
has more credibility ( _popularity_ ) with the organization.
========================
Okay. I'm not dissecting this to pick on Paul Graham. His essays are
insightful, inspiring, and extremely well-written. He gets a lot more right
than he gets wrong. He also wrote this 10 years ago, before the Social Media
Douchepocalypse was even on the radar. I just think that he had a very unusual
set of experiences that led him to conclusions closer to how the world should
be than what it is actually like. Now, I'm just as biased. Remember that I'm
the Hacker News anti-Christ. I think of Paul Graham as someone very like me
with a radically _opposite_ set of experiences. In his world, brilliant hard-
working people are rewarded. In my world, base about 20 years later after "the
cool kids" had set up permanent camp in something (Silicon Valley) that was
originally by us and _for_ us, such high-quality people are exploited, and
often treated very badly by people who see them as a threat. He and I are both
right, over what we've seen. We just have small data sets. Unfortunately, and
I hate that this is true, I think my conclusions are more representative of
what people face today.
What could this have to do with MBAs? It's a euphemism for "the popular kids".
I know some great people with MBAs, but when disparage "MBAs" as a class,
we're talking about the well-connected talentless smiling idiots who are
competing with us for venture capital, managerial position and favor, and
visibility. Even on our fucking territory (software and technology) they are
_fucking demolishing us_. It's not even a fight. We're just getting trampled
because we don't know _how_ to fight.
When we gripe about MBAs, we're not talking about something that has anything
to do with the coursework. It's the attitude of entitlement that comes with
having a globally visible and permanent "I'm One of the Cool Kids" credential,
and the connections that come with it. You have to be smart to get into a good
PhD or JD or MD program. To get into a top MBA program? Family connections or
work experience (read: high-status jobs, meaning popularity) will suffice.
It's not what people learn in MBA programs that we have a problem with. We
just don't like these fucking invaders. And we shouldn't like them. Technology
is _our fucking turf_ , fuckers. Get off our territory or I, for one, am ready
to attack.
~~~
JonnieCache
_> Technology is our fucking turf, fuckers. Get off our territory or we will
rape your shit for breakfast._
Maybe this kind of phraseology is part of the reason you keep getting passed
over for promotion.
~~~
michaelochurch
I am using such "phraseology" because we are at war with the upper class
whether we want to be or not. What we call the "technology industry" is one of
the hottest battlefields out there. The well-connected/zero-sum evil (the
current social elite) are taking on the hard-working-and-talented/positive-sum
good and while we had no choice in starting the fight, it is in our territory
and we must end it. This goes back to what your Dad probably told you about
fistfights as a kid. "Never start a fight, but end one." On your terms.
Every time a great company (e.g. Google) becomes a closed-allocation nightmare
festival with satanic innovations like calibration scores, that's another
seaside city lost to the horde.
_You may not be interested in war, but it is interested in you._ \-- Leon
Trotsky
I am sick of watching our territory get taken by smiling assholes who have
nothing to offer the world, and whom any properly masculine society would have
done something about decades ago. I'm fucking disgusted and ready to fight. If
that means I occasionally swear a blue streak, who fucking cares? The only
thing that matters is defeating these assholes with such force that they
_never_ fuck with us again.
~~~
JonnieCache
I honestly agree with you, at least with a lot of it. Can you think of any
constructive ways forward, short of developing a striking new range of organic
lamppost ornaments?
Maybe engineer-led companies could establish some kind of guild where they
publicly pledge never to implement certain kinds of corrosive management
practices. Good hackers could then just refuse to work for firms who aren't
signed up, and firms could be ejected if they were seen to be breaking their
promises.
The problem with schemes such as this is that the psychopaths will inevitably
infiltrate it and use it as another way to exert control. I'm sure many people
can suggest examples where this has happened before.
Perhaps this could be guarded against by making some kind of radical
transparency part of the conditions?
~~~
michaelochurch
_Can you think of any constructive ways forward, short of developing a
striking new range of organic lamppost ornaments?_
Sure, but this is several questions. In the very-long term, society will need
to implement a basic income due to widespread structural unemployment. There
will always be differences in social status and popularity contests, but once
we get to a state where low social status means you're on a 3-month waiting
list to go to Mars instead of dying of starvation or health insurance, I'll
say we've won as a species...
But let's stay out of society-wide political changes none of us can hope to
control.
I like to _think_ that I'm doing my part. I'm exposing The Lie to be a lie,
and that's huge. Most people are terrified to speak the truth about ex-
employers, as if it would blacklist them forever. (Having done it, it's not
_so_ severe that you starve, but yes, you do lose opportunities and I
recommend a different road.)
Bringing down The Lie is the first step. Evil credibility systems come down
once people stop believing in them, but people still do. If you apply for a
job, you often deal with reference checks where "we have to speak to a
manager". That's profession of faith in a credibility system that, to be
blunt, deserved to die out decades ago.
The thing is, most companies operate on the assumption that 10% of managers
are horrible people and therefore if someone drew 3 or 4 duds, the problem is
with the employee. But technology draws in psychopaths who want to take
advantage of head-down hard-working nerds and it's more like 50% who are evil
and 30% more who are decent people but just not competent (and their teams get
eaten by young-wolf conflicts as evil asserts itself from non-managerial
corners.)
So, it's several orders of magnitude more common for good people to end up
with fucked-up career histories than we think. That's _also_ why we have such
an age discrimination problem in our industry: by 35, you've had a real career
history, not this VC-istan dream where no one fucks you over and ruins your
reputation. Almost no one is courageous enough to speak about this, though.
Exposure of truth is key. When I "leaked" Google's calibration scores-- secret
performance reviews that enable managers to keep good engineers captive on
shitty projects by giving a positive verbal review and a negative (secret)
numeric one that makes them immobile-- note that I didn't think I was leaking
_anything_ ; how can something known by 50,000 people be secret?-- I did a lot
of damage to the company's image. That wasn't even my intent. If I had known
that a leak of calibration scores could cost Google millions, I wouldn't have
done it. I would have threatened to do it unless given certain considerations
(transfer within the company to a better manager). Luckily, I can't be sued
because calibration scores aren't a product and exposing how a company treats
its employees is unambiguously legal. Unfortunately, I've had a number of
powerful people come out to fuck up my career.
The first step-- and we can legally do it-- is exposure. Companies and
managers that ruin smart peoples' reputations careers, or (much more commonly,
because most targets of this extortion cave) threaten to do so to get
something, should be exposed with such harsh light that the world loses faith
in them outright.
How did I cost Google millions (potentially; I don't think anyone knows the
real figure) by leaking calibration scores? The fuckers who run the world now,
they _need_ us (talent). They need talented people to have faith in what they
are doing. If they didn't, no one would give a shit that I leaked calibration
scores and no one would try to fuck up my career years after the fact. If we
burn down the facade of this economy of lies and fear down and expose the rot
within, then we can right the power relationship.
Also, I don't actually support violence against the rich or well-connected
_because_ they are such. (That's just envious malevolence, and as evil as what
we need to fight.) However, I am 100% in favor of making violence legal
against certain types of social violence-- especially career blacklisting. As
far as I'm concerned, if you "pick up a phone" on a private, powerless,
employee-level person, or if you ruin someone's career with a bad reference,
and the targeted person acquires proof of what happened, it should be legal
for that person to use violence, up to killing, in retaliation. It should be
obvious that I don't support killing the well-connected just because they are
such. If you have social connections, then fine; good for you. If you use them
for bad purposes (e.g. you "pick up a phone" and make someone unfundable or
unemployable) your skull gets broken, and you might die painfully because
examples must be made. That is how it should be.
I support radical honesty and the most honest way to deal with passive-
agressive socially violent people is to kill them.
Ok, that's an ugly topic so I'll stop there. In any conflict, I view violence
as a last resort. It means that one party failed to be human. Violence is
sometimes acceptable and very rarely _good_ but it is always hideous so I
generally don't like it.
We _are_ in violent conflict with the upper class. 45,000 Americans die of
health insurance (either the lack of it, or horrible coverage) every year.
Also, 9/11 wasn't Arabs vs. Americans. It was an upper-class well-connected
douchebag from the second-richest family in Saudi Arabia killing 3,000 middle-
class office workers (who don't matter to such people, because they're middle-
class schmucks) to make a political point. We are at war. It's not a war of
countries. It's a war of classes and it's global. Bin Laden and the Bushite
neocons are on the same side (upper class). Whether middle-class Americans die
or Iraqis is irrelevant to them. They do not all like each other (I'm sure
Bush was convinced that bin Laden is a mortal enemy) and Illuminati-style
conspiracies do not exist; but when they compete with each other, they do it
in a way that makes _us_ lose.
_However_ the good news is that we (at least, you and me, personally) don't
necessarily need to be violent. We in the cognitive 10^-k percent for some
self-flattering k, we have options. We _can_ escape and _outperform_ them. We
don't have to live in high-COL cities and work in VC-istan companies where the
founders treat us like garbage because they have connections (read: they went
to MBA school with VCs, and know disgusting secrets on powerful people they
can use to "call in"/extort favors) and we don't. We can get away from those
assholes-- possibly moving to a low-COL city, because we'll probably have to
use our own capital-- pool our resources, and start fucking building things
that actually solve peoples' problems and make the world better. _We_ (talent
in general, not just programmers) are what the world needs. Money is just an
accounting trick to keep it going. We have the real stuff and it's time to
start acting like it.
_Maybe engineer-led companies could establish some kind of guild where they
publicly pledge never to implement certain kinds of corrosive management
practices. Good hackers could then just refuse to work for firms who aren't
signed up, and firms could be ejected if they were seen to be breaking their
promises.
The problem with schemes such as this is that the psychopaths will inevitably
infiltrate it and use it as another way to exert control. I'm sure many people
can suggest examples where this has happened before.
Perhaps this could be guarded against by making some kind of radical
transparency part of the conditions?_
You ETA'd this after I wrote my original reply and I'm not going to give it
the same long-form answer, but... yes, these are very good ideas.
Here's a post I wrote about something that, if I could get the resources
(unlikely, but who knows) I would want to build:
[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/update-on-
wha...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/update-on-what-id-like-
to-build-april-28-2013/) . What I really think would be a great contribution
to the world is to shine some light on which companies and managers help
peoples' careers and which ones harm them.
~~~
jamesaguilar
> if you ruin someone's career with a bad reference . . . it should be legal
> for that person to use violence, up to killing
It should be legal to kill someone for giving you a bad reference? OK.
------
reledi
Says the guy with an MBA.
~~~
tbatterii
my thoughts exactly. the only folks who seem to value mbas are other mbas. i
don't even think i can accept the defined success criteria outlined in the
article (un-sustained long term growth) much less the premise that only mbas
know how to achieve it.
~~~
MisterBastahrd
Didn't some guy just kill himself a while back because he didn't have the
training to so much as read a balance sheet and ran his company into the
ground? While MBAs may not be the best entrepreneurs, they are more valuable
in keeping large, mature organizations up and running than Joe Nerd and his
series of weekend projects. Hell, that's the very purpose of an MBA.
~~~
tbatterii
it doesn't take an mba to read a balance sheet. a bachelors in accounting is
enough to be a cpa. and you don't have to be a cpa to read a balance sheet.
perhaps it takes an mba to manufacture a fake balance sheet that will pass
wall street muster though.
> they are more valuable in keeping large, mature organizations up and running
> than Joe Nerd and his series of weekend projects
this is the same premise as the article. who says an organization has to be
large to be successful?
~~~
wtvanhest
> this is the same premise as the article. who says an organization has to be
> large to be successful?
The people who invested in it.
~~~
tbatterii
investors want a return on their investment.
i believe the technical term would be ROI otherwise known as rate of return
not the rate increase of the rate of return or ROI.
an investor who demands constant growth in their rate of return on an
investment is either irrationally optimistic or stupid.
~~~
wtvanhest
There are a variety of terms describing how to measure the success of an
investment. Return On Investment (ROI) is one of those.
The most important measure is arguably NPV (Net Present Value) because it
takes in to consideration the size of the amount of money you get back after
adjusting for the required rate of return.
As an extreme example, imagine if I gave you the option to get a 1000% on a $1
investment. But, the entire investment could only be $1, in otherwords, you
couldn't make a $1,000 investment and get $10,000. The most you could make is
$9.
Now, imagine if I told you there was a 3% chance that you would loose 50% of
your money, and a 12% chance that you would get just your money back and an
85% chance you would make 1,000%!
On the face of it, it sounds like a good deal, you have a really strong
possibility of making a 1,000% return and a really small possibility of losing
some money.
But, what if I told you that it would take you 10 hours to figure out whether
my return estimate (1,000%) and probabilities, 3%, 12%, 85% were accurate?
Would it be worth 10 hours to make $9?
Obviously it wouldn't unless your current hourly wage were less than $1 an
hour.
That is one of the reasons VCs do not invest in businesses that don't have the
possibility of becoming huge. There is really no reason for them to spend the
time on figuring it out. It is also the reason that in order for a business to
be "successful" the people who invest in it, must end up owning a part of a
very large business.
Small businesses can be successful for the individual entrepreneur, but they
are not investable.
Also, you don't become a CPA from just doing an accounting undergrad, you also
have to have work experience in public accounting in most states. But, I do
agree that you don't need an MBA to read a balance sheet. A few months of self
study should allow you to understand the basics of financial statements. A few
years of working with them will get you pretty good at analyzing them and may
even give you the experience to construct them.
~~~
tbatterii
> Small businesses can be successful for the individual entrepreneur, but they
> are not investable.
^ ---- by VC's
well that's a good way of explaining the VC's perspective on what to invest
in. whether that is a wise and sustainable strategy or good use of resources
or not is a different matter. But in present company you will win that
argument. Doesn't make it true though.
On CPA's I wasn't implying that all you needed was an undergrad to get it you
have to take the state exam at least. I was attempting to prove an mba is not
required to make some sense of financial statements because it seemed that is
what MisterBastahrd was implying.
~~~
wtvanhest
Yeah, MisterBastahrd is wrong about an MBA helping that much with accounting
anyway.
An MBA is really an introduction to a lot of different business topics rather
than helping an individual master them (bad name IDK?). In business/life etc.
it is as important to know what you don't know, i.e. that you are shitty at
accounting, or that investing is a very deep knowledge business etc. than
almost anything else.
An MBA really helps you learn what you don't know so you can study it later.
Accounting is complex and to be really good at it, it takes years to master.
Reading a balance sheet is straight forward until you realize that you don't
know exactly how everything on there got there and you don't know how the
statements link together, nor do you know what a healthy balance sheet looks
like over a non-healthy balance sheet etc.
Technologists on HN wildly misunderstand the world of finance and business
just like we misunderstand the world of programming.
I comment on business topics and read without commenting on technical topics.
I can't imagine hiring someone without an MBA for a business position unless
it was really basic or unless they had deep experience in the same field. An
MBA can seriously jump start business knowledge. Getting one in your mid to
late 20s is a huge help at that point in your life if you are interested in
business.
------
Major_Grooves
I wrote a related post a while ago to answer to anyone who says MBAs can't
start companies: <http://wannabevc.wordpress.com/2011/10/15/mba-startups/>
~~~
AdrianRossouw
It really felt like you were scraping the bottom of the barrel to list
companies founded by MBA's. It only illustrates the point that MBA's don't do
startups.
The only one founded in this decade is zynga, which is widely considered to be
poorly managed.
I'll give you sun though, and even electronic arts.. founded by trip hawkins.
Although EA only hit it's hay days well after trip left the company, and he
was responsible for some really spectacular fuck ups afterwards (see: 3do).
~~~
davidw
I would surmise that MBA's are more or less capable of doing startups, but
don't have the incentives: with a huge debt load, they're better off with
something that's guaranteed to pay a lot, like, say, a job in finance.
~~~
Major_Grooves
Tell me about it. Large amount of MBA debt, just about to leave job to do
startup full-time. Not easy with that debt millstone around my neck.
------
FelixP
I think non-business people frequently make the error of lumping all MBAs
together; practically speaking, there's a decent gap between the top three
programs (HBS, Stanford GSB, & Wharton), the rest of the top 10-15 (Kellogg,
Berkeley, Sloan, Booth, UCLA, etc.), and there's a pretty massive gap from
there to everyone else.
I think folks often make the assumption that MBA program quality follows a
similar distribution to undergraduate education, but unfortunately there's a
much steeper falloff from the top few schools.
------
ArekDymalski
What I don't like about this article is that it suggests that you are forced
to choose: either MBA or "new methods of innovation, like the lean startup,
accelerators, hackathons and growth hacking". First it seems that the author
doesn't fully understand the quoted buzzwords. But that's not the point. The
important thing is that Lean Startup is a methodology that can be supplemented
by knowledge nad (hopefully) skills that you get during MBA studies. Who said
that these things are mutually exclusive?
------
forgotAgain
The article is a very good demonstration of why MBA's are generally considered
useless. Lots of buzzwords with little seasoning.
------
16s
In my experience, it all depends on the individual. It doesn't matter what
degree they have. If they have work ethic and ambition and they love what they
do, you absolutely want them on your team.
~~~
olso4052
Agree. Much (if not all) of the stigma that MBA's face is due to the people
who traditionally get MBA's, not what the program 'turns you into.' And for
the most part, that's what the article says. To be honest, I'm an engineer
with a technical degree, but I'm probably planning on getting an MBA to help
foster business skills and gain insight into a lot of different areas of
business.
It's tough, because right now I know you're thinking that all of that can be
done at a startup - and you're right. But I think that startups needs to look
in the mirror too. The xxxx-hacker model has created a relatively disconnected
culture. Sure, 'disrupting -whatever' sounds neat, but for the most part
you're just polluting cyberspace with another worthless app.
Anyways, I feel everyone needs to stay humble and hard working. There is no
right path, and both sides (and all sides) will undoubtedly need each other in
the future.
------
graycat
I was a professor in one of the better MBA programs.
(1) Students. The students were good, both when they entered and when they
left.
(2) Courses.
Accounting. Except for students who already knew accounting, the accounting
courses likely helped all the students who wanted to be in business. But the
undergraduate accounting courses did, also.
Likely if wanted to sit for the CPA exam, then would need more study. My
undergraduate school had nothing on business, but if a student wanted a CPA
then there was a nice woman in town who gave tutoring, had the study
materials, etc. One student worked with this woman in the summer after her
Bachelor's, took the CPA exam, and made the highest score in the state. So, if
want to sit for the CPA exam, then just do the studying and take the exam,
whether have had a business school course in accounting or not. Qualification:
That CPA example was from over 10 years ago; the CPA exams may have changed a
lot since then. If want a CPA, then should look carefully into the CPA exam
process.
Statistics. There was a course in statistics, but I was not impressed with it.
The students didn't learn enough about statistics to be anything but dangerous
if they tried to use the material on anything important. And the course didn't
do much for the student's 'skills' at using statistics software packages.
Statistics is taught better, of course, in a department of statistics but
commonly also in good departments of sociology, psychology, economics, and
agriculture.
There is a lot that can be done with statistics, and to some extent now with
'big data' and more in statistical software, more is being done. But the MBA
statistics course was only a weak start for powerful uses of statistics in the
future.
Optimization. There was a course in optimization, mostly linear programming.
Occasionally in a real business that is powerful, valuable material.
The intention of the accreditation system to ask for such a course was to jump
start more 'quantitative' management, i.e., 'management science', via linear
programming and optimization more generally. And there are some applications,
e.g., there is a chemical engineering professor at Princeton who has
apparently some good uses for optimization in the petroleum refining in
Houston. And optimization for airline plane and crew scheduling is a solid
application.
Linear programing and other parts of optimization long were the basis of a
major fraction of the Nobel prizes in economics; the connection with any real
economy or business was mostly in the eye of the beholder.
Mostly mathematical optimization still has yet to catch on strongly more
generally. Maybe in the future with more data, software, and computer
automation optimization will have a new day. So the teaching of optimization
was something of a long shot bet on the distant future.
Having a fast algorithm that shows that P = NP might get optimization going
again in business. For problems where would want such an algorithm, commonly
can do well now, but the work is mostly one problem at a time, slow,
expensive, and risky, and a fast algorithm that shows that P = NP might do
wonders for 'ease of use'.
Also if optimization becomes more important, then the work will likely be done
by specialists from departments of applied math, civil engineering, etc. in
specialized groups or outside companies. So, for an MBA, optimization would be
mostly only to make them an 'educated consumer' rather than an actual
practitioner.
Finance. The finance course would be good for someone who was still struggling
with compound interest but would not help much in serious work at, say, the
CFO's office of a major company, Goldman Sachs, or a hedge fund. The course
did mention the Sharpe capital asset pricing model. Of course the linear
algebra and statistics needed for the Markowitz model would be a struggle! For
stochastic differential equations for 'continuous time finance', that is not
very popular in the US, in business schools or anywhere. There are a few
professors -- Karatzas at Columbia, Avellaneda at Courant, Cinlar at
Princeton, Shreve at CMU, Merton at MIT, a few more.
Labor Law. The course in labor law might be good for someone who never heard
anything about such issues, but the professor teaching the course had never
negotiated an actual labor agreement. One of my students had negotiated labor
agreements for his family's business and had bad things to say about the labor
law course.
Organizational Behavior. Some guys with backgrounds in psychology and
sociology were teaching the organizational behavior course. My brother, Ph.D.
in political science, also taught such a course in a program of public
administration. One of the ideas is 'goal subordination' where a middle
manager is motivated to act in ways that give him a short term advantage at a
long term cost to the business. Not very deep material but maybe worthwhile.
Generally college and university courses can be good if they are
intellectually challenging and, thus, help the student learn how to work hard
and think, work, and write carefully, but the business school courses were not
very challenging in that sense.
The business school was respected in a radius of 200 miles or so: Significant
businesses, some nationally known, would come and recruit.
Likely some of the students met other students who would likely be useful to
them in the future.
The business school full professors, chairs, and deans really didn't have any
very clear idea just what the business school should teach, especially at the
MBA level. The most important influence was to try, although not very
seriously, to do 'research' as in physics envy. Contact with actual businesses
was discouraged. E.g., there were plenty of talks by graduate students and
professors with solutions looking for problems but essentially no talks by
business people with problems looking for solutions. E.g., the idea of having
the business school be a 'research-teaching' hospital for real business
problems was not attempted. The school didn't want to be clinical as in
medicine or even practical as in engineering but, instead, pure white as
driven snow theoretical as in mathematical physics.
Generally the 'research' was too far from business to be at all promising for
any practical impact in the foreseeable future. The best research I saw there
was by a professor taking a novel approach to attacking essentially the
question of P versus NP, but that work really belonged in, say, a theoretical
computer science department or a math department.
Business schools struggle: If they just go for physics envy, then they are
mostly watered down versions of social science. Indeed, long the 'great
leader' architects of business education believed that business school should
be 'applied social science'. That's asking a bit much of social science!
If business school gets really close to business, then it becomes much like
learning, say, the grocery business by starting as an apprentice in the
produce department -- students shouldn't have to pay tuition for that.
In effect some of what is needed is for some professors to look at the world
of business, get a good 'organization' or 'taxonomy' of its parts and pieces,
study those to identify where might find some powerful, fundamental
principles, and then do research on those principles. That is, the effort
would be to look at business and 'formulate' characterizations and useful,
powerful theories. So, that would be trying to make something clear and
precise out of business that rarely looks either clear or precise.
In biology, such work was long just 'descriptive' but eventually some very
interesting science. In physics, too: The motions of the planets were fairly
easy for apparently nearly any civilization to observe, and there were efforts
to explain the motions for hundreds of years before (dates from Wikipedia)
Copernicus (1473 - 1543), Tycho Brahe (1546 - 1601), Galileo (1564 - 1642),
Kepler (1571 - 1630), and finally Newton (1642 - 1727) got a good, really
profound, solution. Such work is not easy to do.
For students, the business schools at Harvard and Stanford seem to be highly
respected in some areas, e.g., investment banking, parts of management
consulting, venture capital, and private equity. It may be that an MBA from
one of those schools would do enough to 'open doors' and 'make connections'
that the effort would be worthwhile for the student. Still I question if much
solid material was learned in the courses.
One way to look at business school is as an 'effort' to make progress against
the apparently messy world of business. Yes, it might be nice if business
school taught enough to really understand business quite comprehensively and
make getting wealthy routine. But it turns out that nearly any advantage, even
one that is seemingly small, could, at some point in a business career, result
in some large gains.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Random Hacker News - jsrfded
http://www.skrenta.com/hn/
======
jsrfded
The other day I "ran out" of stuff to read on Hacker News. I had looked at
everything that interested me, and had even checked out page 2 (I was getting
desperate).
I realized that there were thousands of great HN threads that I hadn't seen
because I hadn't been paying attention to the site when they were ranking.
So I pulled together a little db of the top 10,000 HN threads (loosely
defined; a thread with >1 points, 1> comments, and some web link rank).
I put these into a random shuffle so that reload would give me 30 fresh
threads that I (probably) hadn't seen before.
I'm pretty happy with this. Lets me scratch my HN itch when I've exhausted the
main page, and it's often interesting to see the old material again.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Palm Pre on June 6th for $200: It's official - adk
http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/19/palm-launching-pre-on-june-6th-official/
======
anigbrowl
Ugh, carrier contracts. Why do you Americans tolerate these lock-ins? One
thing I miss about Europe is that you can just buy the phone you want and take
it to the carrier you want.
This is why I use MetroPCS. It's not the world's best service and it only
works in major cities, but I pay $50/mo for unlimited voice/text and I have no
contract. If you want the blackberry I think the unlimited data plan is about
$75.
~~~
nuclear_eclipse
T-Mobile allows anyone to pick up any of their standard plans without signing
a contract, and without even requiring you to purchase a phone from them;
they'll gladly sell you a SIM chip with a plan, and you provide the GSM phone.
The only reason I still go with the contract is because I'm perfectly happy
with T-Mobile, and I decided that I wanted to upgrade to the G1 at the $179
rate, as opposed to paying almost $400 for it without the contract.
So, if you don't like contracts, pick T-Mobile; they're the closest thing to
Europe available in the US.
~~~
randallsquared
One nit, though: don't let the really terrible website and phone service get
you down. If you go to a T-mobile _store_ , everything's easy, fast, and
efficient, and the reps are either knowledgeable or willing to ask someone who
is, on the spot. It's a totally different experience from that on the T-mobile
customer service line, and I wasn't able to use the website to do anything I
wanted. At the time, what I wanted was to buy a G1 full price, but I would
have settled for "with a contract", and I never managed to get it done,
finally going to Wal-mart and picking one up for slightly less anyway, and
then using AT&T for a few months before the lack of 3G service (the G1 doesn't
do AT&T 3G) drove me back to T-mobile. However, it hasn't been useful since I
came back to them, either. The in-store service is really excellent at every
store I've been to, so just go there physically.
------
jhancock
"$199.99 after $100 mail-rebate and 2-year contract"
I really hope this Palm Pre does well. I would have higher hopes for it if it
didn't have carrier lock-in. We'll see if this Sprint-only deal lasts long or
if it goes carrier neutral soon.
~~~
adk
I do too, mainly because I want to see more JS/HTML based mobile device
development, possibly some standard APIs in the near future.
I've been spoiled by the web and I don't like having to deal with multiple
languages, platforms and dev environments just to be able to reach a decent
portion of my potential audience.
------
cubicle67
How many people are waiting for the new iPhone (assuming there is one)
expected 2 days after the launch of the Pre before deciding what to get?
~~~
jodrellblank
Apart from the "deciding what to get" part. I haven't twigged why the Palm Pre
is expected to be particularly good.
~~~
tjogin
Although I don't plan on getting the Palm Pre, I'm quite happy with my iPhone,
I think it would be very beneficial for Apple to get a "real" competitor in
that space. One that can truly challenge Apple to innovate and to continuously
improve.
Having said that, the Palm Pre is unreleased and many questions are still to
be answered; especially delicate are those related to battery and performance
("the snappy"). It also seems a bit fat.
------
oomkiller
I applied to get the SDK when the application page first went up, has anyone
been accepted yet? It was my understanding that this wasn't going to be an
Apple-style beta, where everything was locked up tight.
~~~
mattmaroon
I got in. Haven't done anything with it yet.
------
electromagnetic
I hope this Palm comes to Canada soon, however I hope it isn't the biggest
bitch-slap on the planet like the iPhone's data packages are.
~~~
truebosko
It looks like Bell Canada will have the pre: <http://www.precentral.net/bell-
canada-confirmed-get-pre>
~~~
electromagnetic
Oh god shoot me now. They're even worse than Rogers, who at least have good
customer service. I suppose if Bell has a good data package, I might be able
to deal with them; I'm pretty good with accents so I suppose I can do customer
service in India for a few more years.
------
jemmons
Except, of course, that's not the official price. It's actually $300 with a
$100 mail in rebate.
------
riobard
Not sure if it just me or not, but anybody noticed the count-down on the right
sidebar actually says 46 days? It's May 20 today, and it should be 16 days
until June 6, unless someone forgot that JavaScript's month is 0-indexed?
------
mingyeow
I am so goddamn excited. I cannot wait to get one... (but i will still wait to
see if there is gonna be an iphone 3)
~~~
jemmons
"If"? What, you think Apple's just going to close up shop? Move on to
something different, maybe?
------
Keyframe
I am not quite sure why, but I want one!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Intel Paid Dell $4.3 Billion to Pad Earnings From 2003 to 2006 - alain94040
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/business/23dell.html?_r=1
======
noonespecial
_The exclusivity payments constituted a steadily growing part of what Dell
reported as its operating earnings, from 10 percent in fiscal 2003 to 38
percent in the fiscal 2006, then jumping to 76 percent in the first quarter of
fiscal 2007, the S.E.C. said._
One more year and they could have quit selling poorly made computers
altogether and made a business out of not using AMD.
------
TGJ
_Michael S. Dell, chief of Dell, agreed to pay a $4 million penalty but did
not admit responsibility._
That's a big reason why this stuff just keeps happening.
~~~
raganwald
My knee-jerk, emotional reaction is to say that this is America's corporate
culture. Executives don't accept personal responsibility for anything, ever.
And now to the SEC or whomever accepted the M$4 settlement. This is
ridiculous. What is the point of pursuing someone if not to end up with the
equivalent of a "conviction." How is collecting cash from someone who admits
no wrongdoing different from being bribed to find them innocent?
If I were in charge of the SEC, I would put findings of wrongdoing ahead of
collecting cash penalties. Money is irrelevant to wealthy individuals. The one
thing they cannot afford to spare is time. I would relentlessly pursue them
with subpoenas, prosecutions, and the threat of actual jail time in order to
force them to admit wrongdoing.
Settlements would involve community service, not money. Michael Dell needs to
take some time off his business and read books to children in the library or
perhaps help high school students with their math homework.
~~~
Unseelie
To follow this up: M Dell is worth about 12 billion. 4 million? The easy way
to compare it is by portion, in which case he's just paid, say, a fine of five
hundred dollars in terms of an average person. But rationally, that marginal 4
million will have even less affect on Dell's lifestyle than the $500 would on
a blue collar citizen.
The money doesn't matter.
------
ewjordan
TRWTF here is who the hell at Intel thought it was a good idea to be making
seriously large cash payments to another company so that they would not use a
competitor's product...really, guys? I thought you were smarter than that.
While I'll certainly admit that anti-trust rules have some gray areas where we
could argue the relative utility of actions against monopolies or near-
monopolies, this is not one of them. I doubt if even the most die-hard laissez
faire types would argue against going after Intel here - if cheating like this
is not forcefully dealt with the whole idea of a free market eats itself by
its own asshole.
Did they seriously think they'd get away with this, or did they just figure
the ultimate cost (cash spent + whatever penalties they are subject to once
caught) would be worth it?
~~~
siculars
Um, yes. Unless anyone is being arrested for a criminal offense, than yes.
They did think they would get away with it - and they have. Neither the words
"criminal" nor "jail" were even in that NYT article.
Sad fact is that the entire fiasco was a simple business decision. No one goes
to jail, and if they are caught they simply pay a fine.
Personally, I think every signature on their SEC fillings during that period
should do jail time. But hey, what do I know.
------
byrneseyeview
This is a little weird. It's not 'padding' earnings, since Intel really did
pay them the money, and they really did make it. What the SEC is saying is
that they didn't tell investors that there was a risk, here. But the risk was
"If we think using AMD is worth losing these payments, we'll do it."
That's not terrible. It's like saying "If we think our CEO is incompetent, we
may hire someone else, even if we have to pay him more." Yes, that's a hidden
risk to earnings.
~~~
spinchange
No way. This is accounting fraud, plain and simple. It was a massive cash
kick-back from a supplier that was disguised as regular earnings or revenue to
keep Wall St. expectations and Dell's stock price up.
Who knows how much Dell and other managers in the know profited from this by
cashing out stock or options for years while the rest of the investing public
held the bag? They should probably be in jail.
~~~
byrneseyeview
But the point was that Intel was paying them, presumably in order to not do
something that would harm Intel. So it makes sense to keep accepting that
payment until the costs exceed the benefits.
Are you contending that Dell would not have recouped _any_ of that rebate
money by working with AMD? If so, why would Intel pay so much? In theory, just
paying Dell $1 would be enough.
------
joubert
From Dell's Corporate Governance Principles:
([http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/about_dell/in...](http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/about_dell/investors/corp_gov/corp_gov?~ck=ln&c=us&l=en&lnki=0&s=gen))
_Ethics and Values The Board and management are jointly responsible for
managing and operating Dell’s business with the highest standards of
responsibility, ethics and integrity. In that regard, the Board expects each
director, as well as each member of senior management, to lead by example in a
culture that emphasizes trust, integrity, honesty, judgment, respect,
managerial courage and responsibility._
Crappy hardware, crappy ethics.
~~~
ramchip
I am honestly amazed by the capacity these people have to spew bullshit.
Apparently that was his answer to this:
_Mr. Dell said, “We are pleased to have resolved this matter. We are
committed to maintaining clear and accurate reporting of our periodic results,
supporting our customers, and executing our growth strategy.”_
How is it possible to say this with a straight face? I find this comment very
insulting. Compare this to, say, the Toyota CEO.
------
patrickgzill
Seems that Intel rebated Dell, rather than give them better pricing off the
bat, otherwise they would have had to offer the same pricing to everyone else.
By making it a rebate, they avoided this.
~~~
anamax
Intel would only have to offer the same "Dell-special" price to folks who have
the appropriate contract terms. (Dell doesn't buy off the standard price
sheet, if Intel even has one.)
However, there may be companies that have a "no one gets a better price" deal.
This may give rise to a breach of contract suit or possibly fraud.
And then there's the US govt. The law says that the US govt has to get the
lowest price.
Of course, Intel can give volume discounts to Dell that the govt doesn't get
if the govt doesn't do the same volume, but if Intel told the govt that it was
getting the best deal and Dell's deal was actually better ....
------
spinchange
Nothing like buying your way out of massive financial fraud. What happened to
Sarbanes-Oxley and all that post-Enron & Worldcomm legislation?
------
ramchip
Registration wall, can someone paste the article here or link to a copy?
~~~
JoachimSchipper
There's this little thing called copyright. (There's also BugMeNot, which
usually works.)
~~~
ramchip
I tried Bugmenot before posting, it did not work.
I know about copyright. I tend to ignore it when I believe that breaking it
would have no negative effect nor consequence. Your sense of morality may
vary.
Answering my own question, here's a similar article:
<http://www.kbc.co.ke/story.asp?ID=65474>
------
josefresco
Has there been any information released on why Dell was doing so badly in 2007
when seemingly everyone else was doing well? Is Intel paying other companies
to be exclusive which is inflating their earnings? Makes you think twice about
the top PC makers and who's really #1. Would love to read more about how/why
it jumped to 76 percent.
------
known
"Business? It's quite simple. It's other people's money." --Alexandre Dumas
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NFC Payment Systems Remind Me of the CueCat - dbreunig
http://drewb.org/post/17385294028/nfc-payment-systems-are-just-another-cuecat
======
timthorn
The article misses the key advantage of NFC, namely speed. In the US market
that may not be obvious today, as a swipe takes not that much longer, but with
the introduction of PIN based payments the ability to pay for 90% of small
value transactions instantly will be a clearer benefit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Adding tests when you don't have time to - fagnerbrack
https://understandlegacycode.com/blog/3-steps-to-add-tests-on-existing-code-when-you-have-short-deadlines/
======
clarry
Meh. I keep running into this thing.. I want to test a (legacy) system but it
wasn't designed with testability in mind. Every time I look for advice, I run
into a stumbling block where the advice seems to apply to systems that were
designed to be testable.
In this case, right at step 1. Capturing the output and making sense of it
while simultaneously allowing for normal variation e.g. due to timing is one
heck of a big job and requires a lot of mocking. It's not a job that can be
done in hours; probably weeks, if you want something that doesn't get thrown
away the next time you have time to spend on testing.
~~~
room271
Small changes. If possible, pick a bit of logic and extract it into a (unit)
testable function. Release it, see if anyone shouts. Repeat.
Even then, it is often hard to justify this work/find the time. It depends on
how long you think you'll be working with the codebase really.
Edit: the above assumes you have something like CD/fast release cycle. If not,
then it's not really viable unfortunately.
~~~
Retric
That approach is almost guaranteed to introduce bugs into complex systems.
It’s fine if you’re doing something directly useful at the same time, but just
be aware of the risks.
Though that dependent on what you mean by legacy. If nobody’s touched it in 5+
years it might very well be unchained when the system is completely replaced
with something else. It’s well worth adding tests if something is or will be
in active development.
------
diggan
I don't really understand the obsession around snapshot testing. Seems like a
lazy way of doing testing that doesn't add any confidence that you're doing
the right thing. It just adds confidence that the initial value you got the
snapshot from, is the same going forward, which is not super valuable.
Snapshot testing is basically what used to be referred to "master-knows
testing" (don't remember if this is the exact term) where only the one who
initially created the test knows if it's correct, because the intent is not
exposed at all. Instead, a properly written unit tests exposes what you want
that unit to do, and focuses on only that part, so you can change things in
the unit without breaking those specific parts. Snapshot testing would ruin
this.
> You want to add tests, but you don’t have time to!
This also seems like a weird thing. The idea behind testing is to save you
time. If you're taking longer time because you're adding tests, you're doing
something wrong! The whole idea is to make the feedback if something is
working or not faster, not slower.
~~~
true_religion
Snapshot testing is useful for catching regressions and nothing else. It’s
better than nothing, and in some cases is the only thing you can do if you
don’t properly understand what all the inputs and outputs of a system mean.
For example if working with a large legacy codebase, it’s important to
maintain previous functionality and only change it if you can rationalize why.
People and other systems might be relying on something that’s a bug, or a side
effect that’s not obvious.
If you don’t do this, then you can either choose to have no tests, or have to
tear down the whole system to understand it.
~~~
pydry
>Snapshot testing is useful for catching regressions and nothing else.
Visualizing and eyeballing snapshots in behavioral tests is a highly effective
way of catching bugs and defining behavior (edit code - run test - verify
output is correct, if it is, lock it down).
I find them to be vastly more effective _and_ cheaper to build than unit tests
even on greenfield code bases.
~~~
diggan
The painful part is "verify output is correct" which only the person who
initially did the test, can actually say it's correct or not.
If a new person joins the codebase and sees that a snapshot is now different,
how they know what's correct or not? What I've seen in the wild is 1) talk
with the person who authored the test or 2) just say yes and move on.
~~~
Tyr42
I mean you should have the context of your change right. If you're submitting
a change to reduce the margins on everything, you should expect to need a new
snapshot.
If you're are doing a pure refactor of your css, you shouldn't see a change.
Unless your css rules are order dependent and now you caught that.
------
darepublic
Enough with the memes. I enjoyed the boromir meme the first thousand times but
I'm only clicking this article because I want to see what you have to say not
to browse r/memes lite. It also is a poor deflection of the fact that a deep
topic such as this is getting such a light treatment. If the article is not
much in plain text the gifs colours and box shadow doesn't make it good
------
ricardobeat
This is a shortcut to achieve better coverage, brittle, possibly wrong, and
not maintainable; and it is not really giving you any additional confidence on
the code. If you're pressed for time, why waste it on something with close to
zero value? Coverage by itself is an empty goal, you're better off with no
tests than this.
~~~
dasil003
Suppose you're the first person to touch this code in a while. You don't
really know how solid it is, but given there's no tests you would be justified
in being a bit nervous.
Now you need to change it.
Any future bug discovered is probably going to come back to you, given you are
now the last person to touch it and the perceived expert on this legacy
monstrosity. Having proof of how the code worked before you touched it not
only prevents regressions while you're working on it, but also prevents having
to do this sleuthing on the fly with someone wagging a finger in your face.
Not only that, but depending on dependency drift you not be able to easily go
back and prove the old functionality after the fact, so having this in a CI
log will be valuable for your sanity and reputation.
~~~
ricardobeat
I don't think that scenario is realistic. If you're making a change that
doesn't alter a function's output, why is the code for that function being
changed at all? That would only be possible if the snapshot didn't capture all
the relevant outputs to being with.
Most likely the output _will_ change and you'll be left with a random blob of
data to figure out what went wrong instead of clear specifications.
------
rileytg
This is some of the best testing advice I've read. I follow the first two
points with enormous success. The third idea seems like it would solve a lot
of the cases where i've stumbled. Much appreciated!
reminds me a lot of how github's scientist works.
[https://github.com/github/scientist](https://github.com/github/scientist)
------
hinkley
Every time I forget there is always enough time to write tests, I quickly find
I’ve been grinding gears trying to sort something out that a test would have
helped me visualize much faster.
~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
The less time you have for tests, the more useful having tests will be. -
'Testing Axiom 203'
------
bluedino
>> You can’t afford spending days to write the tests that should be here in
the first place.
We had an outage because of some code that got pushed to production, and no
tests were written for it. It was a very simple bug, basically a list was
being appended to instead of replaced. Nobody noticed for a while because of
the right data 'being there', which made things worse because a lot of things
had to be re-worked after the bug was fixed, as they were going off the bad
data.
I mentioned that any new code should have tests. And the manager replied with
"We don't have time to write tests", and I had to bite my tongue to not reply,
"because we're spending all our time fixing simple bugs and reworking data"
~~~
bcrosby95
I don't understand the line of thought that automated tests are too time
consuming to add. You know what's more time consuming? _Manual_ testing. It
takes forever. And if you have to fix a bug somewhere, have fun manually
testing everything again, if you can even remember all the manual tests you
should be running.
For example, a project I work on is available in Asia. They put their last
name first. So anything related to names needs 2 tests to make sure it works
right. Oh, there is legacy data, so customers might be missing first, last, or
both names. So add another 3 tests onto the pile. You're looking at 5 tests
right there.
Let's say the feature you're working on related to names has 3 dimensions.
Well, now you potentially have to run 5*3=15 tests. If one of those fails and
you bugfix, you have to re-run those tests. Have fun with that if your tests
are manual.
------
rooam-dev
When I hear "add tests" it's always a red flag to me. Imho tests are not
optional, they are implied, they are a tool to build your stuff (like
scaffolding). If tests are added at the end, how would one know the code
written before that was correct?
The later tests are added, the less of their value is leveraged.
~~~
janpot
IMO, where tests are adding most productivity is when they enable rapid
refactoring. When you test with that goal in mind it doesn't really matter
much where in the cycle tests are added.
~~~
rooam-dev
Yes, it should not matter 3 or 30, once you start to test the higher level/API
then some classes don't need a separate test, because they are tested when
being invoked by other tested code.
------
ravenstine
I'd argue that if you feel like you _have_ to use snapshot testing to meet a
deadline, you probably don't even need the test in the first place.
It's one thing if you're using snapshot testing like your average test, to
make sure things don't break when you make changes. But if you're in a bind,
is a snapshot test really better than your own eyes?
Maybe it's better to release the thing in that case and add better tests
asynchronously to the deadline.
I suppose the snapshot test in a pinch is not so bad if it's just changes
being made to legacy code. But I'm not sure I'd do such a thing when building
new features.
------
aero142
It seems the author is using legacy code to mean "bad code I didn't write". My
experience with legacy code is that it exists on one server set up by someone
who left the company 10 years ago, only runs on a particular version of a
runtime that isn't available to download any more, and if you run it locally,
it makes hard coded calls to the live environment, breaking it. Having a unit
test framework is the dream.
------
davidjnelson
You can also skim chapters in this book. Best book I’ve read on the topic,
highly recommended ( Working Effectively With Legacy Code )
[https://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-
Fe...](https://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-
Feathers/dp/0131177052)
------
rgoulter
A "snapshot test" like this would save me time if I wanted to check that the
same input yields the same output for some module. -- I can see wanting that
if I'm adding new code which doesn't change the old part of the module much,
or if I'm changing the implementation (but not the interface) of the module.
But, yes, in many cases it's not a good automated check.
~~~
jpochtar
I like to "make the change easy, then make the easy change". This looks like 2
commits: 1st a refactor to make code more straightforward around the area I'm
about to change, and 2nd to actually make the change. Ideally, the 2nd should
be a small, local, easy to reason about change, enabled by code cleanup in the
1st.
The 1st commit in this sequence is a pure refactor, and definitionally should
change no behavior. The "snapshot test" described sounds perfect for this,
especially in unfamiliar code. Ideally, I'd go even further, and have a
compiler prove for me that my refactor produced a perfectly equivalent program
from a black-box perspective. Snapshot testing is great because it gets pretty
close, very cheaply, whereas the full program equivalence problem is
impossible.
~~~
staticassertion
Very simple - I really like that, thanks for sharing.
------
heydenberk
At a previous job, we had a law called "Peeler's Law", named after an engineer
who was a top front-line bug-fixer: if you don't have time to add a test,
that's when you need to add a test the most.
~~~
the_af
I find this to be a double-edged sword. It's undoubtedly true that the
_system_ needs tests, and if they can't be easily added, it _needs_
refactoring. And it often saves time in the mid/long run.
All of this is true. But what's best for the system isn't necessarily best for
the programmer. If you're under pressure to show results in order to keep your
job or get a good performance review, buggy untestable code is better than no
code because you spent time writing tests. Remember, _if_ the goal is to keep
your job and/or get that raise.
"But," you may argue, "in that case your job is terrible and you should quit."
I often see this advice in the bubble that is HN. The reality is that a lot of
programmers can't change their jobs that easily because of a multitude of
problems (age, difficulty interviewing, social anxiety, bad economy,
disabilities, pressing financial problems, etc).
~~~
Jtsummers
Well, even if you decide not to quit the decision will be made for you if you
choose to continue to develop a system without proper testing. Eventually your
customers will fire you.
~~~
the_af
You would think so, but this is very often not true.
You'd be surprised by in how many businesses you can simply plod on with no
repercussions, but if you try to test (and reduce your apparent immediate
output) you can get a bad review or a PIP. In some, automated testing is not
even something they are aware of. But what happens to the software, you say?
Well, all software eventually ends up either working/used or not
working/abandoned, and tests often have very little impact in this decision...
This was for example the case in the "shared services" unit of a MAJOR oil &
energy company. Probably the first you will think of.
------
yegle
Isn't this considered "Change Detector Test"?
Basically what your test does is to ensure there's no change to the result
(compare the new serialized output to the old one). Google's ToTT had a good
write-up on this topic: [https://testing.googleblog.com/2015/01/testing-on-
toilet-cha...](https://testing.googleblog.com/2015/01/testing-on-toilet-
change-detector-tests.html)
~~~
peteradio
X considered harmful, barf. What is with these pretentious pricks who feel the
need to hold "strong opinions" (TM) to be considered a "senior" (TM).
Sometimes testing the blackbox is all you got, thats it. Change detector test
is an absolutely valid way to prevent code from changing behavior, that seems
to be a pretty basic need and a very common form of regression. If you haven't
seen the case for when that might be necessary then you live in unittest
heaven or maybe you don't have a whole lot of experience dealing with other
peoples legacy code or with real business deadlines. Good fuckin luck!
~~~
ravenstine
I think that even the most "pretentious" opinions are worth learning about,
but people need to have the confidence to go their own way and do their own
thing when an opinion doesn't make sense to them. In programming, there are
very few things that are objectively bad, and even then what's "bad" is often
limited to who will be working on a given project.
The best example at the top of my mind is semicolons in JavaScript.
Opinions on semicolons seem to have changed a lot since I began to seriously
learn JavaScript. I remember most people saying to "always use semicolons"
without really explaining why. Some of the more seasoned developers would
point out a few reasons why not using semicolons could lead to issues, yet
even though one with a fair amount of knowledge about how JavaScript is
interpreted could simply avoid those issues in the first place, people would
still use said reasons to label semicolonless JavaScript code as "objectively
bad". It didn't even matter to these people whether the code actually worked
perfectly well, or if the code was just as readable, or if it was the
preference of the authors of the code. The zealotry towards semicolons entered
the point of obvious signaling of senority; most of these people just came off
as pretentious and unhelpful.
If someone says you shouldn't do something, but what you want to do makes
perfect sense to you, go ahead and do it. You might run into issues, or you
might have no problems at all. I use semicolons in JavaScript today, but I
never had problems when I used to write it without semicolons despite how I
was told by everyone that it was "dangerous".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Volex TTX2000 S: Teletext Adapter for the ZX Spectrum - stevekemp
https://zxnet.co.uk/spectrum/ttx2000s/
======
craz8
Teletext was big in the UK in the 80s and into the 90s. The BBC Micro (6502
based) had an adaptor, and the BBC would broadcast downloadable software on
some of their pages for that computer
I don’t recall if that ever happened for the Spectrum (Z80 based) - but being
able to view the pages in the mid 80s was like living in the future!
Here’s more about the system
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext)
~~~
stevekemp
Seems like it wasn't offered:
> “The RTF downloader is not available as CEEFAX do not have any plans to
> broadcast software for the Spectrum”.
I do recall late at night the BBC transmitted audio for spectrums, and at one
point a couple of the Spectrum magazines came with a free record with software
on it - even at the time I thought that was weird, because everybody else used
tapes.
~~~
philpem
The clincher is, a cassette tape is fairly chunky and can be ripped off the
front of the magazine and lost.
Records are comparatively thin (though quite large) and could be made as
flexible sheets which can be stapled into the magazine as a tear-out or pull-
out insert, removing the issue of them going missing.
Catch is the paper-thin ones don't last for many plays, and you need a fairly
well-adjusted record player to use them. Some recording formats are more
tolerant of speed variation than others. FSK-based ones like CUTS/Kansas City
should be fairly tolerant, pulse-timing based ones possibly less so.
~~~
benj111
I had a flexidisc record glued to the back of a pack of frosties once, I had
to carefully poke a hole in the centre.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexi_disc](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexi_disc)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: I'm learning React. Which projects should I build? - rayalez
Hi! I'm looking for advice. Can you suggest some simple project ideas I should build as I'm learning React?
======
bnchrch
I created [http://benchurch.me/hackersearch](http://benchurch.me/hackersearch)
a tool to search who's hiring threads using react and found it to be a great
starting point for jumping off into the library.
It was simple, had a single external data entry point, was a suitable use case
for diving into functional paradigms and has a lot of room for extension in
the future as I continue to learn
You can see the source here if you'd like:
[https://github.com/bechurch/HackerSearch](https://github.com/bechurch/HackerSearch)
------
lnalx
Build something useful, which will have a real use case for you.
You put more motivation in a product you know it will be used by someone, like
you.
------
johnomarkid
A slack clone using firebase as a back end could touch on a lot of topics that
would help you learn react inside and out - components, state management,
routing, interacting with a server (ie firebase, but avoid the firebase-react
library so you can architect things yourself) and more.
------
przeor
It's important to have a convention of doing apps in React, my one is
available for free at [https://www.reactjs.co](https://www.reactjs.co) :-)
------
frandroid
Scratch your own itch.
~~~
dev-ious
you must have really itchy balls
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Log in to AWS Kibana with IAM User - konschubert
https://www.iamproxy.com
======
konschubert
Elasticsearch an AWS includes an installation of Kibana for analyzing the
indices.
Unfortunately, Amazon does not provide a good authentication mechanism. You
either have to white-list your IP or sign your HTTP requests with IAM user
credentials which requires running a proxy server.
Iamproxy.com is such a proxy server. After logging in and entrusting it with
your IAM user key, you can connect to Kibana with the click of a button.
------
PaulHoule
It's a little (maybe more than a little) scary to enter IAM credentials on a
third-party web site.
It would be nice to have a way to do single-sign on with AWS credentials.
------
konschubert
A month ago I already submitted to Show HN, but received no feedback
unfortunately. Now, after improving the page a lot, I am asking again for your
opinion.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Protecting GDPR Personal Data with Pseudonymization - kiyanwang
https://www.elastic.co/blog/gdpr-personal-data-pseudonymization-part-1
======
kristianc
> Because it contains no data that can directly identify an individual,
> pseudonymous data may represent a lower risk of privacy impact in the event
> of an unintended disclosure..
This is playing with fire when it comes to GDPR. 'PII' for GDPR is interpreted
much more broadly, and includes any information that could feasibly be used to
identify an individual (even IP addresses!). Swapping out the names alone
probably wouldn't cover you, and anyway isn't in the spirit of the
legislation, which is to give customers more control over their data [1].
While no doubt this would be a boon to AdTech brands that by and large don't
care about the name of a customer, but very much want to be able to sync data
without customer consent, this seems a little too cute.
[https://www.gigya.com/blog/gdpr-difference-between-
personal-...](https://www.gigya.com/blog/gdpr-difference-between-personal-
data-and-personally-identifiable-information/)
~~~
softawre
This concept is specifically mentioned in the law text.
[https://gdpr-info.eu/art-6-gdpr/](https://gdpr-info.eu/art-6-gdpr/)
> the existence of appropriate safeguards, which may include encryption or
> pseudonymisation.
~~~
kristianc
You can see from the law text that the definition of personal data is much
wider than is traditionally applied in the US.
> Art 4.1 - ‘Personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or
> identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person
> is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by
> reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number,
> location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to
> the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social
> identity of that natural person. [1]
Pseudonymization _may_ provide a get-out if the subject of the processing is
not identifiable by any of those other means, but it is by no means sufficient
on its own.
[1] [https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/](https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/)
~~~
softawre
I agree, it _may_ protect you. Consult your lawyer.
Or, in my companies case, just build out the tools to let people delete all of
the data we don't absolutely need.
------
505aaron
I am curious about the long-term ramifications of this law. How much work will
be required to delete users from backups?
~~~
Symbiote
This article [1] explains an important distinction between backups and
archives.
"Backups exist in case information is accidentally destroyed. Backups should
cover all information, but each one only needs to be kept for a short time:
essentially however long it will take the organisation to discover the
destruction. … Archives, by contrast, involve long-term storage of the
organisation's history."
It concludes that it's probably not necessary to delete data from a backup —
just keep a record of what requests for deletion were made, in the rare event
that restoration from a backup is necessary.
And avoid storing personal data in archives, or else split it out by-person,
so it can be deleted if required.
[1] [https://community.jisc.ac.uk/blogs/regulatory-
developments/a...](https://community.jisc.ac.uk/blogs/regulatory-
developments/article/gdpr-backups-archives-and-right-erasure)
~~~
505aaron
I'm not a lawyer, but that seems like it is open to too much interpretation. I
feel like these laws only hurt the little guy. I can't even imagine all of
that data that companies pass through third parties, like analytics services.
It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
Fortunately, I don't have to do deal with it any time soon since I don't do
currently do business in the EU.
~~~
sandstrom
Small nimble companies will have a (relatively) easy time supporting GDPR. I
work at a small european tech company with lots of personal information.
Sure, there is some hassle but we’ll be able to adjust with a few weeks of
work. Larger companies with more legacy stuff will have a harder time.
Also, the law is easy to read and quite sensible. Plus it’s great for
consumers!
~~~
dogma1138
Larger companies are much more used to dealing with regulatory requirements.
They have huge legal teams and can hedge their risk and they have a
relationship with the regulators.
Legacy software is actually a huge plus for the GDPR currently people might
laugh at companies that run MSSQL or Oracle but all the major storage and
backup solution vendors support record level backups for the database which
means that it's easy to purge or anonymise a purged record, it also means that
dealing with backups is now a turnkey solution from the likes of EMC.
A small company that run on flavor of the week DB and uses tarsnap for backup
might have a much harder time figuring what is what.
Heck there are plenty of small companies that have an IT team of like 2-3
people that handle personal data for 100,000s of people and it might not even
know where all of it's backups are.
"How sure you are that that seagate drive in the back of the closet doesn't
have a copy of your database form 2 years ago?"
And most importantly small companies don't have the resources nor the
knowledge on how to handle information requests under the GDPR.
I laughed about the idea of having launching handling the information requests
as a service platform if I was crazy enough to come up with a way to actually
make it work under the GDPR.
When I think of the GDPR what I see is potentially a lot of companies getting
screwed over because they don't know any better as regulation of this extent
usually only involved giants.
Say you are a company of 15-20 people you get a letter like this:
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-
acce...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-access-
request-under-gdpr-karbaliotis/) What are you going to do? Do you have a data
protection and a privacy officer? probably not.. so now it's another hat that
some one in your company needs to wear and I really pity the person who'll
take this level of legal responsibility on themselves without having the right
background, training support and more importantly time.
While this letter might not be pleasant such a letter would be a breeze to
many large companies I work for a US financial institution (based in the UK).
This isn't any different than some letters we might get from a regulator or a
customer/partner and there is essentially a production line overseen by both
inhouse and external legal counsel.
There is a CIO and there privacy officers and compliance officers and
champions in each department / team the entire process is essentially
automated in an internal ticketing system which will go through a pre-defined
workflow and invoke the right people and automated resources (e.g. data
discovery), heck for like 90% of those questions we would have premade answers
which were signed off by compliance and legal that are maintained upto date.
If you work for a small company and you don't have all these processes set up,
you don't have legal counsel I really feel bad for you this isn't something
that you can just wing it.
These large legacy companies were working on their GDPR compliance for years
any company with a risk department with a pulse would've kicked of a steering
committee / SWAT team in March of 2014 as soon as the initial draft was passed
and kicked into full gear in 2016 when the final version was approved if not
earlier.
I'm willing to bet you that there is a non-negligible number of small
companies that didn't do anything as of april 2018 and many more that their
GDPR preparation was having a few dev/devops folks sit through a webinar.
I'm really hoping that neither the former or the latter is the case for you
but in case your statement _" Sure, there is some hassle but we’ll be able to
adjust with a few weeks of work."_ wasn't in tongue and cheek you have less
than 50 days to prepare as the GDPR comes into effect on the 25th of May.
~~~
zandor
> If you work for a small company and you don't have all these processes set
> up, you don't have legal counsel I really feel bad for you this isn't
> something that you can just wing it.
But that is exactly the point. If a smaller company does not have the
resources (both costs and competence) for something like this, then they
should not be handling personal data at all. How would the same excuse sound
if they don't have the resource to even secure personal data? Being too small
is simply not a valid excuse.
------
HenryBemis
> "using a fingerprinting technique where we replace the value of identifier
> fields with a hashed representation"
I don't see any mention on tokenization: "Tokenization, when applied to data
security, is the process of substituting a sensitive data element with a non-
sensitive equivalent" [1]
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenization_(data_security)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenization_\(data_security\))
I know of banks that have been using tokenization for at least a decade, and
they are problem free (unless someone manages to break through all barriers
and get to the vault).
I don't think this "solves" GDPR, it merely reduces the attack surface by
keeping fewer DWHs (exposed).
------
rdtsc
> pseudonymous data may represent a lower risk of privacy impact in the event
> of an unintended disclosure, so according to GDPR
Worried about the "may" part. So does it represent a lower risk or not. In
other words you can still go through the motions and in the case of a breach
it turns out the "may" part you were hoping for was actually a "no".
~~~
number6
If you can better anonyminize the data. If you can't send pseudonymous data to
third party where only you can depseudonyse it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Learning from my web app 23 visits at a time - juanre
http://juanreyero.com/article/technology/23visits.html
======
ars
Not sure if this is the right place to tell you this, but no one wants to buy
a pdf of a star chart. If I want a computer star chart I'll use a program to
generate one live. It might not be as pretty as yours, but it's interactive.
Now if you actually printed large (huge?) format posters of the star chart you
would have a market.
People would love to print a start chart as visible in a specific special
place and time. It would be a great gift for weddings, birthdays, graduation,
etc.
~~~
juanre
Thank you for the suggestion. I've thought about setting up an agreement with
a print shop, where I can send the PDF or PS to them and they do the printing
and sending. But before going that route I wanted to figure out if anybody
would want a personalized star chart to start with. Looks like I need to look
seriously into it.
~~~
narag
Check <http://blogalia.com/>
There are some professional astronomers blogging over there, doing
divulgation. They might be interested. At the very least, they will link the
site.
~~~
vrruiz
Thanks for the mention! (I'm the founder of Blogalia :)
IMHO, greaterskies.com is interesting as a project, but:
\- I don't think anyone will pay for simple visual star charts: there are free
sites, free desktop programs and free tablet/mobile apps out there.
\- If not for visual, but deep sky: there is 3Atlas from José R. Torres (9, 11
and 13 mag sky atlas): <http://www.uv.es/jrtorres/tools.html> Available for
free in PDF.
\- The marketing problem: find your tribe! There are some forums, like
cloudynights.com (or <http://www.asociacionhubble.org/portal/index.php/foro>
in Spanish), but this are mostly for dedicated observers.
My 2 cents.
------
bambax
Thanks for this article!
I had a comparable experience last week launching an online Markdown editor:
<http://akaya.me>
and nobody noticed, as I blogged about it here:
[http://blog.medusis.com/all-quiet-on-the-western-front-
silen...](http://blog.medusis.com/all-quiet-on-the-western-front-silence-its-
ha)
But I don't think you're right when you say " _it's possible that nobody wants
what greaterskies offers today. And most of the features that I've been adding
for the last week are probably irrelevant._ " Well, it's _possible_ , yes, but
you don't know that one way or the other.
Nothing happened because nobody saw your announcement (or mine); nobody saw it
because HN gets hit by a deluge of posts at any time of the day, and luck has
a big part in deciding which ones don't sink immediately. (Time of day
matters, but time of week matters also; I since noticed that slow days
(Sundays esp.) are better for the "Show HN" type of message.)
I think what we need are two things:
\- on the functional side, beta-testers that are dependable (as opposed to
casual); maybe that means they're paid, but maybe we can do with "honest
friends"
\- on the marketing side, a _story_ , of which your post is a start (I'm still
looking for mine).
Don't give up! and please keep us posted.
~~~
autoreverse
Thanks for building Akayame bambax. Pretty neat.
A few comments:
1) Please add one or more licenses so developers can include Akayame in their
projects with confidence. A couple of examples:
<http://jquery.org/license/>
<https://github.com/jquery/sizzle/blob/master/LICENSE>
2) The footer and menu are below the fold in my browsers in the Converter and
Editor views so I need to scroll to see the menu and "Yet Another Markdown
Editor" text.
3) The footer could do with improved styling : text overlaps the border,
bullets and links use default styles. Minor quibbles but improvements would
improve the professionalism of the site. Image here:
[http://autoreverse.s3.amazonaws.com/2011006_Akayame_footer.j...](http://autoreverse.s3.amazonaws.com/2011006_Akayame_footer.jpg)
4) Landing page does not convey to the visitors what the site is about
(and"Yet Another Markdown Editor" is below the fold).
5) Adding a page or two with keyword rich text explaining the project ("jQuery
powered online Markdown editor") and background ("inspired by other Showdown
online Markdown editor projects") could help with search engines listings.
6) Have you considered hosting the code on Github for increased exposure and
link juice?
~~~
bambax
Many thanks for your comments (we're pretty OT now and I'm sorry to piggyback
on greaterskies story).
I'm clearly design-challenged but I don't really know what to do about it
(except hiring someone who, unlike me, knows what they're doing; but I don't
have the cash). But I did test the footer in many browsers and am surprised to
see that it can fall below the fold; I guess I'll test again.
What do you mean by "developers can include Akayame in their projects": right
now it's just a webapp, the code isn't available and there's no API, so why
would you need a licence?
(The code would need some serious cleaning before being shown publicly; as for
an API I don't think it's applicable, although I'm working on a sister project
to transform HTML to clean HTML and/or Markdown, with a public API).
------
alex5092
I like the idea. I am trying to buy a chart for my wedding date in Pittsburgh,
but the download after preview fails to happen. I using Chrome on a Mac. Maybe
I am using it wrong. I don't know.
Anyway, here are my feature requests:
1) See what a chart looks like immediately. Can be pre-generated. (Someone
already said this in a previous comment)
2) Would like to annotate my chart with notes or custom title, subtitle, etc
3) Share chart on various social media sites as an interactive widget or
simply a photo. (Someone already said this in a previous comment)
4) Print to a T-shirt or mug on zazzle.com or other T-shirt site (you can
probably make money here as an affiliate).
5) This is a little crazy, but maybe overlay my wedding gift registry items on
top of the star chart so that people can buy our wedding registry items in a
cool and interactive way instead of navigating through multiple totally crappy
wedding registry sites. (again you can probably make money as an affiliate
here)... it's just an idea...
Good luck with the project!
~~~
juanre
Thanks for the ideas!
The problem with the preview request is that the server is struggling. Beefing
it up right now on AWS.
------
sushidev
Two suggestions:
1\. After filling in the info I started looking where to click next and was a
bit surprised that it is above to the left of the map, I think you have to
make the interface flow a bit more intuitive. 2\. It would be great to see the
image in small format before I pay.
~~~
juanre
Thank you very much for the feedback. Maybe I should put the next click to the
right? I'll certainly try it out. As for your second point, you should be able
to see the image in large format before paying: a link appears after you have
input the map data where you can ask for a preview, and a full-sized one will
be created for you.
------
bajsejohannes
Thanks. A little tip: Make the star chart in the blog link to
<http://greaterskies.com/> . I clicked it more than once before I realized I
had to find the link in the text.
~~~
juanre
Done. Thanks.
------
juanre
The traffic from HN has reduced my previous statistics to noise, so I've
thought I'd as well implement some of the feedback I've got, online now. Also,
the server is suffering and I cannot try to set load balancing because I need
to run to a meeting (why didn't I before?). So I've added feedback to let you
know at which steps the server is struggling, asking for some patience.
Thanks everybody!
------
hedgehog
Might be attractive for people celebrating anniversaries or having kids. Sort
of a cosmic snapshot of that particular time and place.
~~~
juanre
I like the cosmic snapshot approach, maybe with the rest of the cosmos left as
an exercise for the reader.
------
fleitz
Awesome job man!
Ease of use requests for the star chart page:
1. GeoIP db to get current location
2. Autofill location
3. autofill date
4. autofill local time
GEO IP: [http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/03/31/3-free-ways-to-
ge...](http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/03/31/3-free-ways-to-geolocate-by-
ip/)
Viral ideas:
1. Allow creation of star charts from FB data (eg. City / DOB)
2. Add FB share link.
3. People buy star charts for friends
It pains me that people believe in this psuedo-science, but will make you
money ideas:
1. Allow some kind of astrological star chart that is
tangentially related to their astrological sign.
2. Pair with FB (eg. Fred's Libra Starchart)
Btw, yesterday was my birthday and if I could have posted this on my wall it
would have been awesome. (Not the astrology part)
~~~
juanre
Thanks! And thank you for the pointer to the geoip options. I know I should
look into astrology, but it kind of pains me. And I'll check out FB pairing as
well.
~~~
fleitz
Yeah, I'd put the astrology one up on a separate domain.
For the astrology thing you may want to see if you can join some kind of
affiliate program and put a link in the PDF might pay more in aggregate giving
them away for free.
------
mmavnn
Awesome project! I do have one feature request (preferably before my wife's
birthday...), which is the ability to add custom text as a heading of some
kind.
For example, I would be ordering a picture of the night sky over Rome on a
particular night, and it would be nice if the poster said so - not everyone
knows Rome's lat./long. off by heart.
~~~
juanre
Sure, I'll add it. Should it appear at the top, encircling the map, or at the
bottom?
Thanks for the feedback!
------
pragmatic
A star chart of the Star Wars "Universe" would be the best thing ever. (and I
know there would be licensing issues)
Also, what about EVE Online players, would it be cool to offer them some kind
of print out?
(Think of any other persistent games, or imaginary universes).
Think of things people are passionate about.
------
jarsj
I think this is great, but I ain't paying for anything I can't see. The flow
should be Enter Location -> Image Preview -> Share-on-FB or Pay-to-Print.
That's your MVP. Hard-Code it for a few locations or show some random image
previews.
~~~
jarsj
My bad. Your product does everything, but in a totally non-obvious way. Please
do yourself a favour and read the book "Don't make me think"
~~~
juanre
Yep, I kind of know I am obvious-challenged. Thanks for the suggestion.
------
doctororange
Great site, but I found the interface very confusing. It took me ages to
figure out what to do next at every step. The resizing text is an ok idea, but
currently it's more distracting than guiding. Hope that's helpful. :)
~~~
juanre
Thanks. Maybe I could make arrows appear, or something. Need to try it out.
------
optimus
How is the chart supposed to be interpreted? Is it me looking up at the sky on
a particular night seeing a a 360-degree view of the stars?
Also, how are future positions determined?
------
pmorovic
great article - impressive what you've done there (connecting all the
different pieces, including Common Lisp and AWS!!). love the charts too!
------
fduran
thanks for sharing Juan. I think HN managed to bring
<http://greaterskies.com/> down.
~~~
juanre
Indeed. And I cannot figure out how to scale it up without changing the DNS to
point to a load balancer. Oh well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PHP library that detects users' mobile phone based on device OS - ph7s
https://github.com/pH-7/PhoneDetector
======
bobmaxup
This is 3 lines of code. Why add a dependency for:
$isIos = preg_match('/(iPhone|iPad|iPod)/i', $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ??
''); $isAndroid = preg_match('/android/i', $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '');
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why the term 'sharing economy' needs to die - henrik_w
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/05/why-the-term-sharing-economy-needs-to-die
======
cryoshon
For the most part, the "sharing"/"gig"/"contractor"/"race to the bottom"
economies are a result of generation-term poor economic times and skyrocketing
income inequality resulting in fewer resources to go around and
commodification of existing resources in order to make par. Sharing is far too
innocent of a term, because really these "sharing" paradigms are another way
of treading water. I hope that someone else has mentioned that before, but it
seems absent in these discussions most of the time.
You think the rich need to share/borrow their power tools via the latest app?
Pfft, they don't even need to think about power tools because they can hire
tradesmen whenever needed. Sharing is for people who can't afford an expert or
their own personal items.
------
maus42
>A typical analogy for the sort of model people wanted to build was focused on
household tools: if you own a drill, you likely don’t use it 364 days of the
year; why not let others use it in the meantime?
>In its purest sense, that is the sharing economy. But it very quickly ran
into an issue: while some people act out of altruism, most don’t. My drill is
mine. Why should I share it with you?
> [...] And so “sharing” became “renting”.
Quite great summary how socialism (at least the utopian kind) implemented at
large scale, while a beautiful idea, still remains an elusive dream.
------
javiercr
I wrote something similar one year ago:
[https://medium.com/@javier_dev/uber-is-not-sharing-
economy-2...](https://medium.com/@javier_dev/uber-is-not-sharing-
economy-2f6f7ce6f076)
------
geebee
"While renting out a spare room in a flat (or even renting out a flat) may be
close enough to “sharing” to be hair-splitting…"
It's actually good for me to read these sentences, because it reminds me that
clear-minded people can have opinions that I consider borderline nutty. The
best thing to do in these situations is to disagree firmly and unambiguously,
but politely.
Ahem.
So, pop quiz, "commerce or sharing?": I put up a listing on a website that
says "you may stay in my house on october 11-13 for $275 a night." If you
don't pay, you may not stay. If you do pay, we now have a deal.
How on earth is that so close to sharing as to be hair-splitting? It is so
clearly a quid-pro-quo, money for service transaction that I think it is
almost a pure illustration of commerce. If I wanted to illustrate the
difference between sharing and commerce and where it gets ambiguous, this
would be an excellent example of something that is commerce, not sharing, with
no ambiguity.
------
maus42
Otherwise, article makes also a good point about services like Uber, that they
are not really about sharing anything.
A "sharing economy" version of Uber would be more akin to a car-pooling
service.
~~~
kedean
I mean in theory, that's what Uber is supposed to be. Drivers share space in
their car while on the way to places, and make some spare change. In practice,
drivers pick it up as a part time job and just drive around looking for
pickups.
~~~
TheCoelacanth
I don't see any evidence that Uber is intended to work that way. Drivers don't
get to filter riders to only get riders who are going somewhere near to where
the driver wants to go. They have to take whoever is nearby, and can only
reject a small percentage of requests before they are kicked out of Uber.
------
pinkrooftop
This is perhaps an application for blockchain technology, keeping track of
"ride credits" that drivers earn and can only spend on rides from other
drivers. It's not a Taxi model, it'd be a sharing model.
I'm surprised Uber is not running a tier like this, because they could
advertise completely free rides (just give a few rides first) and charge a
small admin fee
~~~
sewercake
Under this 'definition' of sharing, the only requirement seems to be for the
goods transferred to be in a 'closed' system. If someone were ever to create a
service that traded 'ride credits' with 'food credits', would it no longer be
a sharing model? Couldn't we frame the entire world economy, based off of
currency as a 'sharing model'?
While I do think sharing models require some kind of 'inclusiveness' to make
them viable, I think we must take into account the distribution of
goods/resources, and the power relationships that evolve from providing these
services. The only way (or at least the only way I can think of off the top of
my head) to keep these in check is to allow everyone participating in the
system to have a say in how the system operates. Something akin to a co-
operative rather than a shareholder driven corporation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Taking Tesla Private - freerobby
https://www.tesla.com/blog/taking-tesla-private
======
nine_k
> _As a public company, we are subject to wild swings in our stock price that
> can be a major distraction for everyone working at Tesla, all of whom are
> shareholders. Being public also subjects us to the quarterly earnings cycle
> that puts enormous pressure on Tesla to make decisions that may be right for
> a given quarter, but not necessarily right for the long-term._
> _SpaceX is a perfect example: it is far more operationally efficient, and
> that is largely due to the fact that it is privately held._
Something that I can very well understand.
~~~
patrickaljord
Isn't SpaceX success due to the fact that most of its orders come from the US
government while Tesla has to compete in the free market and isn't that
successful there?
~~~
gameswithgo
The free market of automobile manufacturing in which the USA has propped up
both GM and Ford, and in the past Chrysler? The one in which the Japanese
government is carefully intertwined with their automotive industry?
The government is _a_ customer of space x but they still compete against other
companies for that business.
~~~
gamblor956
Tesla has also received a substantial amount of government support, including
state and federal EV rebates for buyers of its cars (roughly $300 million), an
extremely large handout from the state of Nevada ($1.3 billion), a large
handout from New York ($1 billion), handouts from US Government ($500
million), carbon credits ($520 billion as of 2015). Collectively, Tesla's
government support actually exceeds the government's bailout of Ford by
several orders of magnitude...
GM and Ford were propped up by the government during the Great Recession to
protect tens of thousands of jobs. Both companies have since repaid those
loans...though GM discharged much of its loan through bankruptcy.
~~~
ilove_banh_mi
My understanding is that in 2009 Ford rejected the bailout the US automakers
were offered (taking instead a loan which they are still repaying, through
2022).
GM was effectively nationalized (at a reported cost of $11b) and the creditors
lost their shirts.
~~~
gamblor956
Ford received a different bailout.
Also, I mixed up GM and Chrysler on which of them repaid the loan.
------
peeters
The main question I have is about financing. If Elon owns 20% of the company
now, and he doesn't intend for that to change, and he is giving the option of
public shareholders to sell at $420, then who is financing this? Usually a
private takeover requires a partnership with a huge private equity firm.
Wouldn't releasing this without having (or identifying) that partner be
premature? And wouldn't the resulting stability be dependent on that partner's
exit strategy?
~~~
take4
> _CNBC reports that none of the Wall Street banks it contacted were aware of
> any transaction or had committed to funding a leveraged buyout of Tesla._
~~~
peeters
So there's the real story. Who is this financer (or group) with ~40 billion in
capital that is willing to bet long on Tesla? That's really interesting to me,
if Musk is being truthful here.
~~~
Diederich
Totally, totally random thought, but I figured I'd record it, even though it
doesn't seem to make sense.
Bezos?
~~~
peeters
What, timed with an announcement of a merger between Blue Origin and SpaceX?
:)
~~~
RankingMember
That wouldn't be the worst idea in the world considering the cost of
spaceflight to begin with and the duplicate work they're undoubtedly doing.
------
synaesthesisx
As an investor since 2012 I think Tesla would be far more operationally
efficient private. Also a bit of schadenfreude but I've personally enjoyed
watching Wall Street shorts collectively lose hundreds of millions of dollars
over this.
~~~
joezydeco
Might be in the _tens of billions_ before this is all said and done.
(~34 million short shares outstanding * $420/share = ~14 billion dollars to
cover. Is my math wrong?)
~~~
coltonv
Wouldn't that assume that every short seller would lose $420 per share? They
probably purchased their shorts at like ~$350 per share, so they'd only stand
to lose 420-350=$70 per share, correct?
~~~
peeters
I'm a newbie when it comes to calls and puts, couldn't they just fill their
shorts now (no pun intended, I seriously don't know the terminology) if
they're worried about it? Tesla closed at $370.
~~~
mikec3010
What happens when $14bn in short interest tries to buy simultaneously?
~~~
whataboutism
It sounds like everyone will be buying TSLA tomorrow. Even the little guy who
wants to earn the difference between $379 and $420.
------
athenot
This would have a side-effect of making all the short-sellers lose, which
would be quite satisfactory to Musk.
Until Tesla's economics become obvious to all in the market, this is probably
the best decision; this allows them to be more focused on the long run.
~~~
mikestew
Part of me wonders if it isn't a side-effect, but the goal: put the squeezin'
on the shorts. But, man, if that tin-foil hat theory is true, Musk better have
someone in the wings at least _pretending_ to want to finance this lest the
SEC come a-knockin'. Normally, I'd just pass that off as "haha, wouldn't
_that_ be funny!", but given some of Musk's tweets lately, there's still a
little part of me that entertains the idea as plausible.
~~~
Cthulhu_
Yeah I'm really wondering whether this was legal - I would've been on his ass
if I were the SEC for illegal price manipulation. Even if he doesn't go
through with it, it's still bumped the stocks up by a lot. Could've been a
move to scare off the shorts?
~~~
mikestew
By the time you had made your post, Tesla had already issued a press release
saying the same, and news had come out that Musk had been talking to the board
about it for the past week. So, yeah, he was serious and not being
manipulative, and AFAICT completely legal.
------
derriz
Not directly related to the thread, but I'm surpised by the extreme anti-short
seller sentiment? Why is it important that they suffer?
Short-selling is what makes almost zero expense mutual/index funds available
to mom n' pop investors. Fidelity are about to offer ZERO TER funds on the
basis that short-sellers pay heavily to borrow stock from them.
It seems analogous to expressing hatred for umbrella sellers because you don't
like rain.
When I lived in Ireland before the GFC banking collapse, I remember bank
executives whipping up public support for a government ban on short-selling
bank stocks on the basis of "protecting decent companies from shady
speculators and evil gamblers". In terms of cost to society, it was the bank
executives who inflicted massive damage and bankrupted the country, not short-
sellers of bank stock.
Since then, I've been quite skeptical when people blame speculators and short-
sellers for the behavior of markets. There's usually some basis for shorting.
~~~
apexalpha
What real world value do short sellers add? Owning a stock used to mean that
you invested in (a part) of a company. You risk your money to get some of the
real world gains the company hopefully makes.
Now, the stock is the product, not the company. It's become a game in itself.
It adds nothing to the real world outside of finance.
~~~
flush
What real world value to long buyers add? Sure, if you invest and the company
takes that investment and does really well with it, the world may benefit from
an increase in productivity/wealth. But if you invest and the company does
poorly and tanks, then the world loses by something because you could have
taken that money somewhere productive. The kind of market that produces the
most real world value is one where companies are valued accurately. If you
think a stock is undervalued, you go long. If you think it's overvalued, you
go short. Both actions affect the market value of a stock.
Seems like two sides of the same coin. I can't see where an argument against
one doesn't work against the other.
------
nostromo
This feels like a rushed announcement.
First you throw out a tweet, later in the day you halt trading, then you make
an announcement that you're "considering" something major, but that you
haven't decided yet.
Not only that, but Musk seems a tad bit paranoid. He's regularly talking about
all those evil greedy short-term traders that attack the company -- which is a
little silly since traders have given Tesla a larger market cap than GM and
Ford.
~~~
gameswithgo
I think he is more concerned about actual espionage, sabotage, manufactured
bad press etc, than the stock price manipulation. That maybe indeed be
paranoia or maybe he has seen it happening enough.
~~~
fpoling
Huge shorts positions give strong insensitive to pay for sabotage or other
real harm to the company.
------
dangjc
It's a sign public equity markets aren't structured well that companies aren't
encouraged to think long term. The most successful companies in today's
markets don't even allow common shareholders to control the company, ie Google
and Facebook with their special classes of controlling shares. We might need
to reconsider changing laws around choosing board seats or requiring
shareholders to have minimum holding times in order to align incentives better
for the long term.
If public equity markets don't work, the alternative is more and more of
wealth creation happening privately, in startups funded by VCs, private
equity, or family owned businesses. The public won't get to participate.
~~~
gimmeThaBeet
>If public equity markets don't work, the alternative is more and more of
wealth creation happening privately
I say that's a fair point, for the reasons you describe, that there's less
oversight, and more mammoth capital sources that have an appetite for VC at
nearly any stage.
The "aren't encouraged to think long term" is an odd bit. You are right but at
the same time it seems to be at least imo that we (the market) _want_ these
ownership structures. We want Page and Bezos and Zuckerberg and Musk, but we
want to own it too. Snapchat and its S&P denial would be the battleground
there.
So I think to paraphrase you latter idea "we might to formalize a public
equity model that is more flexible around a founder/visionary, or we might
need to be more explicit about who controls a company, and what can be done to
change that control."
I suppose the balance to me is between making the burden of public markets
lighter on companies with longer term vision, and exposing retail markets to a
wild frontier that is imo only appropriate for more sophisticated parties.
------
Keyframe
Interesting. Bloomberg's Sebastian Boyd said:
_Incidentally, Tesla has a free-float of 127.5 million shares. At $420 a
share, that would cost you $53.6 billion. The company already has net debt of
of $8.8 billion and an adjusted net leverage ratio of 13 times. Were it to be
bought in a management-led LBO, a back-of-the envelope calculation would give
it a leverage ratio of over 90 times, worse on a trailing 12-month basis. You
can 't run a company on math like that._
So, either it's happening based on persuasion and belief (with Saudis as
rumoured) or it's an attack against shorts and a bluff in which case SEC's
rule 10b-5 might come into play and then... In any case, interesting.
~~~
swalsh
An interesting perspective on why Elon might be pulling this move:
[https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-stocks-surge-puts-
con...](https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-stocks-surge-puts-convertible-
bonds-in-the-money-1533667505)
~~~
djanogo
"...which would effectively let the electric-auto maker pay off that
obligation in stock instead of cash."
How does paying off the obligation with stock work?, whose shares would Tesla
assign the bond holder?, if it assigns shares after market closes and when
market opens if it's below $360, won't the bond holders sue?
~~~
brohee
The shares are created. As the debt are not repaid it's as if the bond holder
bought shares in a round of recapitalization instead.
------
cs702
_No external financing might be necessary_ , because virtually all Tesla
shareholders today (i.e., people who are net-long the stock) are _true long-
term believers_ in Musk's vision unconcerned with the company's short-term
financial issues. (People who are concerned with financial issues are either
avoiding the stock or shorting it.) These true-believer shareholders will want
to hang on to their shares as the company goes private and shares start
trading "by appointment" on less liquid, secondary private equity markets.
If I'm right and Musk pulls this off, short sellers are in for a world of
pain. They will likely have to scramble to cover their short positions in the
face of a limited supply of shares before delisting.
~~~
nopriorarrests
I need to double check it, but some of the largest institutional shareholders,
like Vanguard Group, could only hold positions in public companies, so they
will have to sell.
Retail investors can decide to go private, but tesla free float is very small,
so they don't matter much in a grand scheme of things.
~~~
cs702
Yes, that's true for Vanguard. But others, like Fidelity, can and will allow
shareholders to hold private shares in their brokerage acccounts, sometimes
through special purpose vehicles created for the purpose.
------
glbrew
I would like to make a prediction: the Saudi Royal Family is the funding
source. There are very few banks that could back this financially, and they
have all said they are not behind it. The only source of this much money and
secrecy is the House of Saud. They apparently also snapped up to 5% of public
shares, and have expressed lots of interest in investing in the "new" economy.
~~~
Symmetry
Good way for them to hedge against a threat to their primary source of income.
------
martinald
Pretty enormous amount of money required. Say half of TSLA shareholders take
the $420, that's approx ~$40bn required. Then there's another $10bnish of debt
refinancing required, and probably many more billion for future product
development and new assembly lines.
I don't think Softbank could finance this, it would be well over half their
entire fund.
Saudi maybe - but still quite a chunk of change for them.
~~~
martin_bech
Or Apple, Google, maybe even Jeff from Amazon. Musk changes the rules of the
game on a regular basis.
~~~
Element_
Just because those companies have massive market caps and cash reserves
doesn't mean they can cut a check for 40B+ to buy a company that is burning
cash. Hard to imagine any board signing off on that deal.
~~~
dragonwriter
> Just because those companies have massive market caps and cash reserves
> doesn't mean they can cut a check for 40B+ to buy a company that is burning
> cash.
Cash reserves mean they _can_.
> Hard to imagine any board signing off on that deal.
Right, conservative (appropriately so!) corporate decision making means they
likely _won 't_, not _can 't_.
------
annamargot
How will Tesla get around the shareholder limit?
There is a limit to the number of shareholders a privately held company can
have. It's apparently 2,000.
[http://blog.gust.com/limiting-the-number-of-shareholders-
in-...](http://blog.gust.com/limiting-the-number-of-shareholders-in-private-
companies/)
[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/5/500-shareholder-
thresho...](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/5/500-shareholder-
threshold.asp)
~~~
toomuchtodo
You would own shares in a private fund that would own Tesla shares.
------
mikeryan
In the Tesla case I feel that the shareholder concerns are pretty valid and
provide an interesting counter pressure to Musk's "This is fine" attitude. Not
saying either is right, but the friction is likely valuable.
I'd not want to be an investor in a private Tesla. It would seem way to
volatile.
~~~
Fuckyourself
I am a shareholder. I will not be selling after going private. This is really
good for me because we can finally stick it to the shorts and the only people
who we lose are "traders" \- I don't care about what they think. Long term
investors only is a good motto :)
~~~
gamblor956
If Elon's tweet is motivated by a desire to stick it to the shorts, and he
does not in fact have funding lined up to take Tesla public, he could
(probably would) face a _massive_ stock manipulation lawsuit that would
bankrupt him, in addition to any SEC settlements which would likely result in
him being banned from holding an executive or board position in any publicly
traded company.
~~~
shafyy
How do you know he doesn't have funding lined up? Usually, if Musk says
something like this it's true. (And don't start with he has a history of
underestimating deadlines etc., this is totally different)
------
edhu2017
I think it's a great move. Prevents short term greedy shareholder strategies.
~~~
jonknee
By paying a large premium to the all time high? If he's worried about the
stock going down, paying more for it doesn't make a ton of sense. You should
wait until the stock is down and then take it private.
~~~
aembleton
By paying a 20% premium he's ensuring that the short sellers will need to buy
shares at the premium price guaranteeing that they've lost at least 20% of
what they've gambled.
~~~
jonknee
Ah yes, overpay so you can stick it to the big mean short sellers. Might as
well go for 50% premium with that logic!
------
shawn
_Second, my intention is for all Tesla employees to remain shareholders of the
company, just as is the case at SpaceX. If we were to go private, employees
would still be able to periodically sell their shares and exercise their
options. This would enable you to still share in the growing value of the
company that you have all worked so hard to build over time._
How does this work as a private company?
~~~
Voloskaya
Private companies are still allowed to give share to employees. Employees are
then allowed to sell their stock periodically (every 6 months in this case).
~~~
shawn
Right, but with who?
~~~
Voloskaya
Depends, the company could buy back, or during a founding round, some part of
that founding can be reserved to buy employee shares. External investors are
also allowed to buy from employees during this period.
------
S_A_P
I am a bit ignorant as to the mechanics of how this would work. Can anyone
with the knowledge elaborate on what this means? Im thinking in terms of a few
scenarios here: 1) I read this news and want to get on the Tesla train and
throw all my liquidity into the current stock. 2) I already have x number of
shares. What happens to them? 3) If I dissent, am I cut a check and told to
hit the bricks? 4) is he going to need to raise capital to do this? 5) would
the private company/person still be able to buy/sell "shares" on some off the
stock market exchange?
~~~
dunpeal
1\. You can buy TSLA stock as soon as trading them resumes. Lots of people
already have.
2\. If this acquisition goes through, each one of your stocks will be worth
$420. Congrats.
3\. You can't really dissent to shareholder majority agreeing to this deal.
4\. $70bn is a lot of mulla, so I would guess this will not be all Musk's
personal funds.
5\. Theoretically, through some sort of a private equity venue. Just like any
other private company.
~~~
TrickyRick
Or an alternative to number 2, the acquisition does not go through and the
stock plummets 20% from current price and you're now deeply in the red. I
don't know enough about Tesla to predict which one is the mos likely but I
have seen this happen in other companies.
------
explorigin
Elon fashions himself a super hero: Batteries to Australia and Puerto Rico, A
pledge to fix Flint's water quality and a submarine to rescue the boys in the
cave.
Super heroes rock when they really do super things, but Elon flew off the
handle with the last one when he called the master diver a pedophile all
because his idea wasn't the one they used.
Having someone at the helm that is volatile like this is bad for a public
company, but a private company would be able to shrug off embarrassing events
such as these much easier.
Elon might be doing it to save his job.
~~~
mehblahwhatevs
I was thinking the same thing.
Usually his tweets send stock down, this one sent it up but may be in
violation of SEC rules.
I imagine shareholders must be getting pissed whenever he goes off on a Trump
like tirade on Twitter.
------
jonknee
He tweeted that he had funding and in the email mentions no funding. This is a
really weird announcement that feels like an empty pump of the stock. He could
have chosen any number...
~~~
belltaco
I don't think it was an intentional pump, I think he needs someone to change
his Twitter password, not tell him the new one and post on his behalf, just
like Trump also needs.
------
maaaats
Not sure I agree with the dupe-flag. The other post was about the Saudi deal
and then got changed. So the discussion there is fragmented.
~~~
dang
You're right that it's not a precise dupe, but the topics are almost identical
and we shouldn't have two of these on the front page at the same time. So we
have to decide which one.
The other article is more substantive, since it's based on at least some
facts, and the thread is correspondingly better. This one, by contrast, is
really just an announcement of a possible future announcement. So it seems
clear the first URL should win. If and when they actually take steps to go
private, there will certainly be much discussion on HN.
~~~
maaaats
That's fair. Thanks for explaining.
------
gtdawg
There was a HN discussion a couple of days ago complaining about companies
going public much later. Could the short term quarterly horizon of public
investors, as pointed out here, be a big reason companies don't IPO sooner?
------
sounds
TSLA up 7% on announcement, high of $370.79
If you're a short seller, beware the "squeeze." If you're not a short seller,
this article can be an amusing read:
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen/short-
sellers-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen/short-sellers-make-
vw-the-worlds-priciest-firm-idUSTRE49R3I920081028)
~~~
dunpeal
If you're a heavy TSLA short-seller, you're already in deep trouble, unless
this falls through very quickly. There will be margin calls. Welcome to the
losing side of short-selling.
~~~
eanzenberg
It only falls if Elon is bluffing. He’s guaranteed $420 / share.
~~~
filmgirlcw
He’s not guaranteeing anything. He hasn’t mentioned financing to do this, and
it’s not a small amount of money to raise. Shareholder approval isn’t a given
either. It’s probable that he’d get the votes if he showed the financing
necessary for a $420 stock price, but it’s not a guarantee.
~~~
nopriorarrests
If can demonstrate guaranteed financing for this deal from outside investors
at $420/share, then he just tweeted material news about his company, and he
had all the rights to do so.
If he can't prove guaranteed financing for this deal, that's securities fraud
and SEC investigation is the next step of this drama. Imagine... well, SNAP
CEO tweeting "Some rich folks are going to take us private at $50 per share
lmao ayee, cover your shorts". This is a market manipulation.
------
Camillo
If Tesla announces this (causing the stock to rise, since the suggested price
is much higher than the current price), and then doesn't go through with it,
is it considered stock manipulation? I don't mean to accuse them, I'm sure
they covered their bases, but I'd like to understand how it works.
~~~
Keyframe
SEC has a rule for that:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_Rule_10b-5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_Rule_10b-5)
and
[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rule10b5.asp#ixzz5NWNPZ...](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rule10b5.asp#ixzz5NWNPZXqa)
_Examples of offenses that would violate rule 10b-5 would be: executives
making false statements in order to drive up share prices_ ... interestingly,
it's as serious as ... _or a company hiding huge losses or low revenues with
creative accounting practices._
------
bitxbit
My take is he needs to do this in order to keep and attract the talent Tesla
needs. Stock was way too volatile while rest of the tech industry has been
going hockey stick.
------
FabioFleitas
If Elon is guaranteeing a $420/share buyout - are there any downsides to
buying as much stock as possible right now? Would the only risk be that this
whole plan falls through or that Elon ultimately decides against that price?
~~~
bklyn11201
As shares are not close to $420 right now, that indicates healthy skepticism
that Elon is capable of getting this done. Do you have reason to believe that
he is capable of raising $50-80 billion to complete the transaction? If yes,
then you have a great arbitrage opportunity.
------
avree
Guess Elon isn't too confident about being able to deliver the earnings he
promised on.
~~~
Diederich
Can you expand on that, please?
~~~
avree
Wall Street investors and analysts focus heavily on the bottom line. Elon
believes that the work Tesla is doing requires more time, sustained attention,
and focus than public investors have tolerance for. Furthermore, he thinks the
volatility demotivates employees.
These are all completely true, and very reasonable, but do show (at least to
me) that the near-term promises regarding profitability he made at the last
earnings call are probably in jeopardy.
Thank you for asking for a clarification rather than just knee-jerk down
voting, though. :)
~~~
jsight
I agree with your assessment. It seemed clear that Tesla was cutting back
investment in new supercharger locations and maybe even service centers to
reach profitability. I can't say that now felt like the best time for that
kind of slowdown to me.
------
ckastner
I don't like the guy (and it's obvious from my comments), but this move is
brilliant on so many levels.
The short sellers just got taken to the cleaners, _badly_.
By taking the company private, he's under less public and regulatory scrutiny.
It's probably easier for him to raise money privately, and there seems to be
sufficient interest.
Tesla's employees, who are probably pretty much worn out, got a nice pay day.
And, of course... he's _the_ hero again.
_Edit_
Pure speculation, but could it be that this announcement might actually
backfire on the $420 price?
Tesla's is one of the most shorted stocks, ever. The short sellers stand to
lose _immensely_ , so they'll try to close their short position as quickly as
possible, thereby driving the price up higher -- possibly higher than the
$420.
~~~
mrtron
Why don't you like the guy? I am always surprised that people could have a net
negative opinion on someone who is trying hard to push technology forward in
multiple directions.
I agree this move is brilliant, and could be a huge competitive advantage when
self-driving bad press liability kicks in.
~~~
peeters
I'm overall a fan of Tesla and SpaceX, but there are a number of valid
criticisms you could make against Musk:
Occasionally childish relationship with his investors. Unfoundedly calling a
diver a pedophile after he attacked Musk's rescue submarine as a dumb idea. He
thinks he's an expert in any field he touches. Has an overall tendency on
social media to promote Trump-style tribalism--you're either on team Elon or
you're an idiot. There is no such thing as valid criticism of anything he
does.
Some of these things also make him great. He assumes that everyone who looked
at a problem before him was just too incompetent, corrupt, or complacent to
solve it right, which can be a useful trait because it's often true. But when
it's false it just makes him look like an asshole.
To be honest a lot of the hate just seems to come from how he responds to
haters, so it's a bit of a vicious circle. If he just took a break from
Twitter it'd probably benefit his image considerably.
~~~
bvc35
I'm not qualified to make a diagnosis of any kind, but this at first glance
suggests that he's a narcissist.
------
danpalmer
While there's some good reasons here, I can't help but think this is more an
emotional reaction on Elon's part, to the shorting and general negativity
around the company.
~~~
THE_PUN_STOPS
I think it's uncharitable to call it purely an emotional reaction. While that
is certainly a component, I think this is actually one of the best mission-
oriented strategic decisions Elon has made in a while.
The shorting and general negativity around the company are a morale drain on a
scale that few companies have ever experienced before, let alone any companies
that push their employees as hard as Tesla. I have friends who work very, VERY
VERY hard at Tesla to help achieve their overall goal, and all of the hate
really drags them down and makes them question why they work so hard, let
alone the anxiety over the value of their shares. The cloud of negativity is a
huge productivity sap and I suspect it is a contributor to the legendary rates
of turnover at Tesla as well.
~~~
danpalmer
> I think it's uncharitable to call it purely an emotional reaction.
I agree. I didn't call it one.
------
dogma1138
Would an Apple buyout be considered them going private if they are kept as a
separate entity? It’s the only one with enough money to buy them that I can
think off.
~~~
martin_bech
Apple could do it with cash, but a lot of others could do it with some form of
financing. A leveraged buyout.
~~~
dogma1138
Financing on this scale would require a massive and likely quite lengthy
undertaking if this is not a stop gap bluff it looks like they already have a
buyer and it looks like all the usual suspects as far as financing goes are
not involved.
------
maddyboo
I couldn't be more supportive of this idea. I am so tired of seeing Tesla
scramble to meet shareholder expectations which are almost always short-
sighted.
------
trhway
> as the most shorted stock in the history of the stock market
does this squeeze beats the VW one?
>First, I would like to structure this so that all shareholders have a choice.
Either they can stay investors in a private Tesla or ...
given the potential number of shareholders wouldn't there still be pretty
tough information disclosure requirements - isn't such required disclosure is
among the major factors pushing companies into public market?
------
madrox
On the one hand, the challenges of being a public company cited here are the
same ones facing all public companies, and they do quite well. On the other
hand, there's a ton of negative attention on the street that's probably a huge
distraction.
I do think Tesla will be better served as a private company as long as Musk is
CEO. He isn't public CEO material.
------
myth_buster
Cached:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xcMrTh...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xcMrThoRYRgJ:https://www.tesla.com/blog/taking-
tesla-private+&cd=36&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)
As the page is erroring out.
------
panchicore3
I can see the cannabis industry investors and other stoner dudes purchasing
for that specific amount.
------
yisymphony
Instead of taking it private, what's stopping Tesla as a company from buying
back shares from public market when the price is low? It not only stabilize
the price it is also have long term benefit if the company is confident for
the future.
~~~
kgwgk
Tesla doesn't have money to buy shares back. It's not clear what does he mean
by "taking Tesla private" and who would be providing the money.
------
whatok
Nothing on financing and an FT reporter said bankers close to Tesla knew
nothing about it.
------
agumonkey
who is gonna finance that 420USD buy-back ?
------
tomphoolery
The difficulty to predict TSLA, especially early on, was one of the main
reasons I sold it. It's now about double its value, but that's a recent
phenomenon and it was pretty volatile before that.
~~~
belltaco
I made the mistake of trying to trade the highs and lows on other stocks, got
burnt out by the unpredictability. After that I just put my money on stocks I
trust will grow over the long term(2+ years) and I don't even check their
prices daily or even weekly.
------
takeda
LOL at $420/share I think he wants investors to chill out.
Anyway, since I own some shares will miss their stock, since I truly believe
in them, but I guess this is better for the company.
------
pstadler
Why has the been banned from the homepage and marked as dupe?
~~~
goshx
I'm wondering about that as well. I don't see any other post about it and this
is the official post from Tesla.
------
isseu
Is this common? Would shareholders accept this?
~~~
raverbashing
With that premium? I'd say it's a no brainer
------
bearcobra
I'm surprised given their burn rates that they don't want continued access to
public capital markets.
------
arvind3199
He is bluffing trying to squeeze the shorts, no one rational can value it 82B
unless it was waymo level tech.
~~~
mythz
This is no bluff:
> Investor support is confirmed. Only reason why this is not certain is that
> it’s contingent on a shareholder vote.
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026914941004001280](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026914941004001280)
~~~
arvind3199
Yes he is, Where do you get 66 billion $. Investor support dosen't mean he has
the financing. Don't quote a tweet, get some real sources.
"And yet it also left many questions unanswered, namely how Musk -- who owns
almost 20 percent of the company -- would be able to come up with the $66
billion necessary to complete the transaction. At $420 a share, Tesla would
have an enterprise value of about $82 billion including debt. To take it
private, the billionaire would have to pull off the largest leveraged buyout
in history, surpassing Texas electric utility TXU’s in 2007."
~~~
mythz
That's an announcement from the CEO of Tesla. The details are still
forthcoming but there is no greater source.
$66B is inaccurate, Tesla would only need to buy from the shareholders that
wish to sell at $420.
------
swalsh
I'd like to think that back in the day Elon, and Clarence Saunders would have
been great friends.
------
I_am_tiberius
Not sure when it was published exactly but the stock price impact was visible
already 2 hours ago.
------
eizo
First anounced a couple of hours by Elon on twitter:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/10268726522903797...](https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776)
Which lead to comments if it being a scam.. It is impressive to see the power
of twitter news!
------
phoenix1326
Seems like a good decision for Tesla. They have been pushing way to hard to
satisfy the public opinion. The product and the company will continue to do
well without being a public company.
------
11thEarlOfMar
True story: I was standing on my back porch, finishing my morning coffee. It
was one of those January Silicon Valley mornings where it can't quite decide
whether its raining or not. Between the clouds, a rainbow appeared. From my
vantage in the hills in South Fremont, the end of that rainbow sat squarely on
the Tesla factory.
Being the sophisticated investor that I am, I know a 'buy' signal when I see
one.
Here's to Elon and any Tesla employee who ever broke a sweat to deliver the
pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.
~~~
Invictus0
Is this supposed to be a joke?
~~~
baq
are you so short on tesla that you can't appreciate some nice quick'n'dirty
storytelling? :) whether the story is true is of no consequence.
------
jefe_
I know Twitter is powerful, but its wild to imagine you're Elon Musk or Kylie
Jenner or Donald Trump, you know that when you push send, the 280 characters
you typed will cause millions of people to either smile or frown, lead to
significant financial gains or losses, and set the course of news for the
morning, day or week. That level of influence is crazy to think about.
------
isseu
Why this post was flagged?
------
bitCromwell
would make a hell of a utility coin
------
eastendguy
Can someone please ELI5 this for me? Why is a private Tesla better? As long as
Elon and employees own more than 51% of the stock (do they?), can't they not
just ignore the stock price swings?
~~~
belltaco
You still have to publicly reveal all the quarterly numbers, estimates for
next few quarters, do all the GAAP accounting etc. which puts a lot of toll on
a company that's going through wild swings in capital spending and production.
If they don't keep their promises, the stock will crash, so everyone goes on a
production death march close to the end of the quarter under extreme stress,
instead of just growing organically at a steady pace. Good estimates are hard,
just like in IT. That's why many companies delay going public, for example
Uber.
~~~
eastendguy
Yeah, but why not just ignore a stock price crash if you don't need to sell
and believe in the long term plan?
~~~
Scarblac
Every employee holds stock. I don't think every employee is in the position of
never needing to sell. A price crash is bad for morale.
------
Karishma1234
As a thumb rule I do not like to work for private companies especially when
around 40% of my renumeration comes from RSUs.
------
h4b4n3r0
Ballsy. And nukes short sellers from the orbit as well even if it doesn't go
through. It's the only way to be sure.
------
arcanus
(If this happens) What does this mean for owners (non-employees) of TSLA
stock? Will you be able to maintain your holdings in the company after it is
delisted from an exchange?
~~~
cdkee
His post says you can have private shares or accept the buyout at $420
~~~
cure
I'm going to guess that that will require accredited investor status
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor)).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A real comedian goes to Comedy Night - smacktoward
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/12/04/ridealong-a-real-comedian-goes-to-comedy-night/
======
ntw1103
Capitalism at work.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Introducing Ivy: a new smart contract language - bascule
https://blog.chain.com/announcing-ivy-playground-395364675d0a
======
DonbunEf7
Tell us about capability-safety. Tell us about how you'll avoid plan
interference. Tell us about about what makes this language fundamentally safe
and not just hard-to-use.
------
BenoitP
A step in the right direction. I'm still waiting for a TLA+-like language
where you can build proofs for high level custom properties like "Robust to
some parts of the contract being indefinitely delayed".
------
brianorwhatever
what's a chain.com? I've never heard of them. Ethereum competitor?
~~~
dharma1
looks like a private blockchain being sold as an on prem product to financial
institutions
------
andrewrothman
Anyone know how to do mathematical operations on an Amount? I can't seem to do
this ie:
amountRequired: Amount amountNeeded: Amount
then...
verify amountRequired * 3 == amountNeeded
Any ideas?
------
notthemessiah
Is it Turing-complete or not?
~~~
jadengeller
Are there any useful contracts you might write that require Turing
completeness?
~~~
DonbunEf7
Sure. For example, you might specify a contract which happens to require a
solution to a Diophantine equation be generated for a certain handful of
coefficients. This is known to scale up in complexity to Turing-completeness.
[0] An example equation might govern the exchange or transfer of some
resources, in which the contract only accepts a resource exchange which is
equivalent in value.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_tenth_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_tenth_problem)
~~~
dynamic
Even in this... implausible scenario, the contract would only need to verify
the solution to the equation. The party creating the transaction would then be
responsible for generating a solution.
------
brighton36
oh lovely, now you need to release tokens so we can ponzifi it
~~~
jamespitts
Or... they can release tokens so we can fund its continued research and
development.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
City of San Francisco Data Portal - yayitswei
https://data.sfgov.org/
======
joshmlewis
There's a lot of powerful things you can do just in their interface. I heard a
Ted talk recently that suggested there is a lot of hard to find datasets with
lots of valuable information out there just waiting to be untapped. There are
several non-profit and even business use cases.
~~~
modarts
How does this compare to OpenGov's offering?
~~~
andrewliebchen
This looks like another Socrata-based offering. Socrata allows cities to dump
their datasets online for consumption. Certainly this makes the data more
available than ever before, but it doesn't do much to help the ordinary
citizen parse and understand their own city.
OpenGov on the other hand, consumes city financial information, organizes and
visualizes it in such a way that anyone can easily explore and understand
their city's finances. Socrata's great if you want to get an RSS feed of all
the parking tickets issued in your city; OpenGov's great if you want to
actually see how your city is spending your tax dollars.
Disclaimer: I'm a designer at OpenGov :)
------
keithflower
I've used some of their data for tracking and visualizing locations of
methamphetamine-related incidents in the city:
[http://keithflower.org/welcome/default/meth_timemap](http://keithflower.org/welcome/default/meth_timemap)
~~~
simoncion
It is... annoying that the viewport width changes both the range of dates that
you're looking at and the center of that date range.
Otherwise, it looks like a decent toy project.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Britain’s partisan press takes aim at the ‘Brexshit’ - apress
https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/brexit_theresa_may_newspapers.php
======
richrichardsson
It's been Brexshit from the outset.
I can't understand why the people that voted for it want anything other than a
complete break from Europe, and that some are seemingly unaware of exactly
what that entails.
I live in hope that these last two years will cut to a shower scene, and the
UK will wake up thinking, "Jesus! That was a mental dream!", but I'm
pessimistic and fully expect No Deal.
------
cirrus-clouds
In the UK, we are truly cursed by the worst national print press in Europe.
The deputy editor of the right-wing tabloid newspaper _The Daily Express_
admits he feels 'slightly responsible' for the current political chaos due to
the paper's Brexit stance. He voted 'remain' but nevertheless pushed for leave
in the newspaper [1]. This should tell you everything about the integrity of
people who work in the national press.
I wrote this piece about the British press before the 2017 UK General Election
election - it gives you a flavour of what our press is like:
[https://medium.com/@dontvoteconservativeuk/uk-general-
electi...](https://medium.com/@dontvoteconservativeuk/uk-general-
election-2017-coverage-in-the-media-cfc2d10f451c)
[1] [https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/daily-express-deputy-
editor-s...](https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/daily-express-deputy-editor-says-
he-feels-slightly-responsible-for-current-political-chaos-due-to-papers-
brexit-stance/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
America Needs a Nationalized 5G Network - jonbaer
https://www.wired.com/story/america-needs-more-fiber
======
zw123456
For wireless carriers, the three highest opex costs are 1. Real estate (lease
costs, no one owns their cell sites) 2. backhaul, which today means fiber 3.
employees
Nationalizing the 5G roll out will not help with any of these costs, the real
estate costs are more and more coming from local municipalities or other local
entities to place in the right of way which is probably the only realistic
option with the densities needed for 5G. The Federal government does not have
the power to take those rights of way. This constraint applied really to two
of the big items, real estate costs for the cell sites and right of way for
the fiber.
The reason countries like China or others like it can more easily deploy a
nationalized network is because the central government has total dominion. We
don't have that system here so a federal approach will not reduce costs, if
anything it will cause them to spiral as local entities will see that as a
cash register from the federal side.
And we all understand that a federal work force is not going to be a low cost
option for the third component of the equation.
For these reasons I disagree with a federal approach. To my way of thinking,
if local entities, cities and counties, want 5G wireless broadband, the best
way is to make rights of way available to carriers in a fair and accessible
way without trying to over play their hand and jack the costs up which
inevitably will just price it out of reach of more and more people.
The capital outlay to deploy these networks is fairly significant and by
making a reasonable accommodation for the carriers will help offset that.
The federal government is not a good answer here as much as it may seem like
the quick and easy answer. All it takes is a quick review of recent
performance of congress to realize how unrealistic that notion is.
~~~
Spooky23
The federal government certainly has the ability to use eminent domain to
acquire property, particularly with a (specious) national security angle.
Nike-Hercules missile sites are an example of what can happen when the Feds
are motivated. The interstate highways are another.
This is a fairly obvious play at rebuilding the AT&T monopoly of yore. The
Feds would just pay a carrier to run the thing, perhaps by using an existing
contract vehicle (maybe first net?).
~~~
zw123456
It might be theoretically possible, or legal, but it would be hugely
controversial and would be in the courts for sure. I do not think the FCC
could do it with a rule it would take an act of congress which seems pretty
unlikely in the current political atmosphere. It is not clear that the federal
gov could use eminent domain to force cities and counties to relinquish rights
of way, perhaps, but it would be pretty unprecedented in peace time as you
point out.
Interestingly, the former bell system was nationalized for a brief period in
1918 and run by the post office (an arrangement that some European countries
have today)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AT%26T](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AT%26T)
But it did not last and was a complete disaster. I am sure a redux of that
would end in tears.
In the early 1980's the Bell System had something called ISDN which purported
to be something like what we call the internet today. They had a plan to roll
it out (64Kbps !) nationally over a 20 year time frame. Had not AT&T been
broken up in 1984 I posit that the internet we know today would have never
emerged, it was free enterprise and entrepreneurship that made it happen.
~~~
saas_co_de
> hugely controversial and would be in the courts for sure
Controversial like illegally wiretapping every single citizen in the nation
for years? Controversial like the current President? The bar is so low on
controversy and legality that it practically doesn't exist.
> It is not clear that the federal gov could use eminent domain
That sounds like an opinion but even if it were true it doesn't mean that the
threat of using eminent domain couldn't be used as leverage in negotiations.
------
kiwidrew
New Zealand is currently in the process of rolling out fibre connections in
almost every urban area of the country (target is 87% of households) and the
amazing thing is that a basic fibre connection is now the _same price_ as an
ADSL/VDSL connection.
The government put together a technical specification (e.g. minimum speeds,
networking standards, API for service providers) and set a series of coverage
targets; then they solicited bids from the private sector to build and operate
the network in each region. Funding was in the form of an interest-free loan,
and the network operators are required to offer wholesale access to any retail
provider. The operators are also prohibited from offering their own retail
services.
So in the end, once the loans are paid back, the net cost to the taxpayer is
likely going to be less than NZ$1.5bn -- that's gigabit fibre to the home for
every non-rural household at a cost of less than NZ$1,000 each!
~~~
evanlivingston
I would be very, very upset if I were forced to pay 750 USD for a fiber
connection that didn't even benefit rural households.
~~~
gizmo686
That's how government works. Most government programs don't directly benefit
every individual citizen; even though they all get funded from the big pot of
'government spending', which is filled by taxes.
If you think there is a systematic problem, where a disproportionate amount of
money goes to urban centers, and a disproportionate amount of money comes from
rural areas, then you have something to complain about; but you shouldn't
complain about a single project just because it does not benefit 100% of the
population.
~~~
jcims
Eh, if it cost $1250 per household to light up every home in the country, you
can bet metro folks would be carping about how much they are paying to cover
the much higher per-household costs of rural users.
~~~
zappo2938
The most Republican Libertarian TV station on cable is Rural Free Delivery TV
named after the United States connecting farmers with free rural delivery.
They now hide the history of where the name came from.
------
saas_co_de
So basically the wireless companies don't want to pay for all of the real
estate they need for the new base stations they have to deploy and so they
want to use eminent domain. The free market is great till you have to buy
something I guess.
------
wyager
I would propose doing essentially the exact opposite; commodify the entire
spectrum using a high-frequency rolling regional auction system, so anyone and
their dog can become a wireless carrier. This would be vastly more cost-
effective for rural areas, and would offload the effort of organizing fiber
leases onto random small (regional) businesses providing bandwidth.
~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Aren't equiptment costs still prohibitive?
~~~
wyager
Nope; check out open-source LTE tower projects. Surprisingly cheap these days!
Totally within range of individuals, especially for the kind of hardware that
only needs to serve rural areas.
------
donatj
With the impending mass cheapening expense of launching satellites via SpaceX
and the like, wouldn’t a large array of telecommunication satellites be a more
reasonable option for nation wide coverage in a country the size and density
of the United States?
~~~
strictnein
Possibly, which is why SpaceX wants to do exactly that[0]. They're launching
their first test satellites shortly[1].
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation)
[1] [https://www.geekwire.com/2018/spacex-gets-set-launch-
first-p...](https://www.geekwire.com/2018/spacex-gets-set-launch-first-
prototype-starlink-satellites-global-internet-access/)
------
jankotek
America needs good and enforced regulations. My country had nationalized
network and it was a disaster.
------
SheinhardtWigCo
If we’re saying that the free market isn’t capable of delivering the
infrastructure that underpins much of our modern economy, then where does that
leave the idea of capitalism?
~~~
addicted
Capitalism is great because it’s been the best tool we’ve had to massively
improve quality of life in many different areas of life. That doesn’t mean
it’s the only tool we have and/or it should be an end in itself.
The situation where capitalism is not the best tool for the job we should
abandon it for that job. That will not only mean we have a better standard of
living, but will also mean the idea of capitalism gets stronger because it
doesn’t suffer from negative backlash when it fails because it is used in
situations where it isn’t the right tool because of ideology.
There is possibly an analogy here to programmers who insist a certain
technology be used everywhere, even where it isn’t a good fit, instead of
opting for the best tool for the specific application.
~~~
knieveltech
"The situation where capitalism is not the best tool for the job we should
abandon it for that job." Soooo healthcare, food distribution, housing,
transportation, resource extraction, education...
------
atonse
We tried this. It was a national broadband initiative in the late 90s. Telecom
companies were given BILLIONS of dollars to build fiber across the country.
They took it and did exactly zero.
If we are dumb enough to do it this way again (paying the wolves to secure the
hen house), we better have good checks and balances on it.
~~~
lern_too_spel
The proposal is to build public infrastructure and lease it to private firms,
not to pay private firms with public money to build and own infrastructure.
~~~
wmf
When people talk about this "nationalized" 5G network, it's very likely that
it would be outsourced to a single prime contractor (probably either AT&T or
Verizon). The government has actually done this before with FirstNet.
------
kregasaurusrex
A nationalized 5G network will be essential for high-bandwidth applications
like V2V across level 5 autonomous vehicles. As has been done in the past for
large scale projects like GPS, LEDs, photovoltaics, and nuclear (just to name
a few!) which private companies wouldn't be able to eat the long-term capex
against. These technologies are also licensed either for free or very cheaply
to companies in order to benefit the public at large since we've already paid
for the R&D with tax dollars.
In order to prepare for the future of the digital economy at large, bandwidth
shouldn't be an artificial limitation of it. Once all the associated RFCs for
5G are standardized, a rollout of this scale would most definitely pay for
itself and more over the network's useful lifetime.
~~~
cobookman
I expect that l5 autonomous vehicles will be able to function without any
internet connection.
I'd be afraid if my car required cell service to function.
~~~
kregasaurusrex
While there isn't an official RFC yet since the protocol is still in the RFP
stages[0], the amount of new cars on the road will require roughly about the
spectrum allocation as what's needed for cellphones right now. If we tried to
cram all of this into existing 5GHz range of lower frequency spectrum, it's
simply not enough. 5G has both a larger spectrum allocation and throughput of
data available to it.
Edit: The cost of putting in a lidar system for your car won't be too
expensive (probably <$1000 when done across a manufacturer's whole fleet); but
think about having to pay for another cellular line on your phone bill at
current telecom prices. It would be prohibitively expensive to the end users
for mass deployment.
[0] [https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/readiness-
of...](https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/readiness-
of-v2v-technology-for-application-812014.pdf)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: A replacement for last.fm? - csbartus
Since today you can't really listen to radio on last.fm outside US, UK & Germany, can you recommend something similar but for free?<p>Thanks.
======
vorador
<http://listen.grooveshark.com/>
------
jl
<http://thesixtyone.com>
~~~
csbartus
hmmm.. not exactly but thanks!
~~~
csbartus
until then www.arigato.ro :D
------
acro
Shoutcast radio on winamp is what I have used for years, many stations there.
~~~
RossM
Hurrah for nostalgia!
------
defied
<http://www.hypem.com>
tons of good music - some hard to find songs as well
------
voberoi
I use last.fm recommendations + <http://seeqpod.com>
------
trickjarrett
Most radio stations have individual feeds on their sites. That's the best tip
I can offer.
------
10ren
<http://www.imeem.com>
------
nsrivast
<http://www.lala.com>
------
viggity
pandora.com?
~~~
Shamiq
Doesn't work out of the US.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Charcod.es – Fuzzy Unicode Character Search - msiebuhr
http://charcod.es/
======
pluma
Looks useful. If it had query URLs I could use to define a custom search in
Google Chrome (e.g. [http://charcode.es/?q=%s](http://charcode.es/?q=%s)) it
would be nearly perfect.
EDIT: It does: [http://charcod.es/#%s](http://charcod.es/#%s) works fine
~~~
msiebuhr
Author here
I use the fragment-identifier for that, ex
[http://charcod.es/#foobar](http://charcod.es/#foobar). Also, check
[https://github.com/msiebuhr/charcod.es/blob/master/http-
pub/...](https://github.com/msiebuhr/charcod.es/blob/master/http-
pub/opensearch.xml) for doing searches directly.
~~~
pluma
Yeah, I noticed Google Chrome recognized it automatically. I just didn't see
it at first because the fragment identifier wasn't updated when I searched.
~~~
msiebuhr
That'd be OpenSearch
([http://www.opensearch.org/](http://www.opensearch.org/)) in action.
------
ippa
Nice! I've been using other similar services but this looks lightweight and
fast with decent search.
Would it be possible to show ios/android-icons (how they look or even exists)
for each code?
That question always comes up when I use utf8-chars instead of classic image-
icons in webprojects.
~~~
msiebuhr
Thanks!
I've been pondering about that too (mostly something with having a service
worker drawing each char on a canvas, uploading that to a server), but keeping
track of OS/Browser/vendor/font-setup/... (let alone getting it all out of the
browser) makes it pretty hairy to get right.
~~~
ippa
I think something simple would add alot of value and separate you from other
similar services :). Wouldn't be wrong with icons from os/browsers but just he
2 biggest would add value too.
For example if I see the icon from the most common IOS-version looks bad I
won't be using that particular charcode.
------
breakingcups
> Try out searching for arrows, chess pieces, emojis, arrows
Any reason it lists arrows twice? :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Middle class is disappearing in California as wealth gap grows - spking
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/412928-middle-class-is-disappearing-in-california-as-wealth-gap-grows
======
vannevar
The author cites a variety of statistics regarding California's government
programs and poverty rate, then draws the completely unsupported conclusion
that the one creates the other. Generally, the conservative argument against
taxes and regulation is that they handicap business and consequently hurt
economic growth. It's hard to make that argument for California, which has had
one of the strongest state economic growth rates in the nation despite being
the largest state economy. Faced with this clear contradiction, the author
simply dispenses with any kind of coherent theory and simply takes as a given
that California's poverty must be due to taxes and welfare programs.
~~~
rayiner
California does not have particularly strong economic growth. From 2003 to
2013, it slightly trailed the country in GSP growth per capita and personal
income growth:
[https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/infogra...](https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/infographics/2015/05/sr152/bgredstatesbluestatestable3825.jpg).
(To calculate GSP growth per capita, divide the GSP growth column by the
population growth column.) More recent data also shows pretty middling
results:
[https://www.bea.gov/news/archive?field_related_product_targe...](https://www.bea.gov/news/archive?field_related_product_target_id=461&created_1=All&title=&=Apply).
Adjusted for cost of living, California's income level is about in the middle
too:
[http://i.imgur.com/WdfQqJR.jpg.[1]](http://i.imgur.com/WdfQqJR.jpg.\[1\])
The idea that California is a prosperous state is a myth. California is a very
expensive state, with higher salaries that do not compensate for the cost of
living. And it has a few very rich people (in tech, entertainment, etc.) that
don't do much to move the needle on averages.
[1] One can debate the relevance of the cost-of-living adjustment for
engineers making $400k/year, but in the middle class salary range, where
groceries and rent make up a bigger fraction of expenses than toys or savings,
cost of living is a driving factor.
~~~
vannevar
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis at the US Department of Commerce,
California is in the top ten US states for per-capita GDP growth since 2009.
Not 'middling' at all, particularly considering it was the country's largest
state economy to begin with. And a big reason the cost of living is high there
is precisely _because_ the economy has been so good. The middle class hasn't
been hurt by taxes and regulations, it's been hurt by low wage growth as the
top 1% of the population has absorbed a grossly disproportionate share of the
robust economic growth. The same problem shared by the rest of the country.
Taxes aren't too high, they're much too low, particularly on the wealthy.
Not sure where your numbers came from (the link at the bottom of the image,
referencing a report at alec.org, is broken).
~~~
rayiner
The specific ordering is somewhat sensitive to the specific date ranges.
Looking at the BEA data:
[https://apps.bea.gov/regional/histdata/releases/0616gsp/inde...](https://apps.bea.gov/regional/histdata/releases/0616gsp/index.cfm)
If we use 2009 to 2015 as the data points (which is the most I have on this
chart), the following states grew faster than the U.S. average:
North Dakota 1.37
Texas 1.16
Oklahoma 1.16
Michigan 1.15
Ohio 1.13
Pennsylvania 1.11
Indiana 1.11
Nebraska 1.10
California 1.09
Iowa 1.09
Minnesota 1.09
Tennessee 1.09
Wisconsin 1.08
Massachusetts 1.08
Illinois 1.07
Kentucky 1.07
I wouldn't call growing at about the same rate as Iowa and Tennessee as being
particularly exceptional, even if it's technically in the top 10.
More important, because cost of living continues to explode, California
continues to be middling in terms of purchasing power:
[https://spectator.org/adios-california/](https://spectator.org/adios-
california/) (California 37th in GDP per capita adjusted for cost of living).
For real people, that's the most important benchmark of economic health.
(Which is why when you're comparing _different countries_ , you always use
PPP-adjusted numbers.)
Note that this particular problem isn't something you can fix through
redistribution. California's COL-adjusted GDP per capita being in the middle
means that, no matter how you distribute it, California's _on average_ just
can't buy as much stuff (food, housing, etc.) as Iowans.
~~~
vannevar
_I wouldn 't call growing at about the same rate as Iowa and Tennessee as
being particularly exceptional, even if it's technically in the top 10._
I would. Iowa and Tennessee are much, much smaller economies. It's truly
remarkable that California, with an economy ten times larger, can nonetheless
grow at a comparable rate.
While it's true that the cost of living is higher (in large part because the
quality of life overall is higher), it is simply not true that "it doesn't
matter how you distribute it." The subjective experience depends quite a lot
on how it's distributed. I assure you that millions of middle class
Californians would be much happier if their wages had grown even half as much
as the massive increases taken by the top 1%.
~~~
rayiner
> I would. Iowa and Tennessee are much, much smaller economies. It's truly
> remarkable that California, with an economy ten times larger, can
> nonetheless grow at a comparable rate.
No it's not. California's economy is larger simply because it has more people.
That doesn't make it any harder to grow the economy further. According to the
same BEA data, the Great Lakes region as a whole (which has a population
comparable to California) grew faster than California. If your theory were
correct, it should be much harder for the U.S. to grow than France, and for
France to grow than Sweden. But that's not borne out by the data:
[https://snbchf.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/GDP-Per-
Capita...](https://snbchf.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/GDP-Per-Capita-
Developed-Nations1.jpg)
(If California's economic production _per capita_ were much higher, you might
hit "diminishing returns" effects, but that's not the case.)
~~~
vannevar
_That doesn 't make it any harder to grow the economy further._
Nonsense. Economic growth depends on a complex web of law, culture and
resources. Large economies _are_ systematically harder to grow than smaller
ones. It's not simply a matter of adding people. It _is_ in fact harder for
the US to grow than France, the fact that it actually happens doesn't negate
that reality. Remember, the fundamental argument you're making is that
California operates under a handicap because of its taxes and regulations. It
should be laboring under both that burden _and_ the additional inertia that
comes from a larger economy. I think its growth (not to mention the historical
success of the rest of the industrialized world, virtually all of it more
socialized than the US) belies the conservative old wive's tale that you can't
have a stable, growing economy and maintain a sensible tax and regulatory
environment at the same time.
~~~
rayiner
I’d be very curious to read a citation for that assertion.
> Economic growth depends on a complex web of law, culture and resources
If anything the opposite is true. Larger regions create economies of scale in
these areas. A company can amortize the cost of complying with California laws
over a much larger market than Iowa law. A product targeted at California
cultural trends has a much larger market than one targeted to Iowan cultural
trends. Historically, the size of the US internal market has been a huge
benefit compared to smaller European countries.
~~~
vannevar
It's harder to grow a large economy for all the same reasons it's harder to
grow a large business (percentage-wise) than it is to grow a small one. Sure,
there are some economies of scale. But in the end, there are always fixed
components to growth that are less dependent on size, and those less elastic
components are necessarily more significant for a smaller economy (or company)
than for a larger one.
Going back to the original point of my criticism, even if you regard
California's growth as merely average, that doesn't explain how that modest
growth has resulted in the middle class squeeze. Any loss incurred by the
middle class as the result of tax or other government policies pales in
comparison to the massive loss of the wage increases that should have
accompanied even modest growth. The problem is clear: left to its own devices,
the market doesn't distribute growth in anything like a fair (by value
actually contributed) manner. Wealth, in and of itself, creates a huge
advantage in capturing new growth, and that advantage is nowhere
counterbalanced. Money naturally runs uphill until some kind of catastrophe
interrupts it.
------
watt
"Despite having just 12 percent of the national population, California
represents nearly a third of all Americans on welfare. [...] In Texas, 6
percent of families in poverty receive welfare. In California, the figure is
66 percent. "
I don't know how welfare works in USA, but if it's a federal level program, it
would seem California is pulling a pretty clever hack there.
~~~
dragonwriter
> I don't know how welfare works in USA, but if it's a federal level program,
> it would seem California is pulling a pretty clever hack there.
Welfare isn't a program, it's many different programs, almost none of which
are fully federally funded, and where (because of its strong aggregate economy
despite poor distributional features) California gets less federal cost
sharing than most other states (the absolute minimum) in most components that
are partly federally funded with a variable federal share. California also has
some of the most expansive state (or local) funds only welfare programs.
And, bottom line, California pays more federal taxes than it gets federal
spending, unlike lots of poorer states; in summary, it's not hacking anything
here.
Also, the 6 vs. 66 number for Texas vs California is almost certainly using
the federal poverty line, not the local CoL-adjusted poverty figure as the
base universe. California, on average, has a much higher cost of living than
Texas, or the US as a whole, and so the comparison doesn't actually represent
those actually _in_ poverty.
~~~
rayiner
On the new supplemental poverty measure, which accounts for cost of living,
California is at 19% and Texas is at 15%:
[https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-265.pdf).
------
rjkennedy98
> '“Not In My Backyard” development and construction restrictions mean that
> California cities are much more expensive for the poor'
Don't agree with the rest of the article but this is the crux of the issue.
Banning single family zoning in urban areas like Minneapolis is doing would be
a good start. The hypocrisy among liberals when it comes to housing is just
astonishing. Nothing epitomizes this as when the Mayor of Berkeley who
independently joined the Paris climate accords called a pro-housing bill an
attack on their way of life [https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/01/22/berkeley-
mayor-wiene...](https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/01/22/berkeley-mayor-wiener-
skinner-housing-bill-declaration-war-neighborhoods).
------
chrisseaton
I can't tell if they think they vast numbers of people in California working
in tech, research, academia etc are working class, or upper class. Both seem
ludicrous ideas.
~~~
theoh
The argument made in the piece is that there is increased polarization between
the haves and the have nots. Successful professionals are haves.
I don't know what nuances the term "upper class" has historically had in
California; perhaps it's not the right word for those earning (as little as) a
hundred thousand a year. But the idea that there is now a privileged
socioeconomic group which no longer blends, at the low end, into the
traditionally larger middle class and lower middle class seems like a clearly
testable proposition.
In other words, the claim is that the middle class is evaporating and tech
professionals are left on the wealthier side of the gap, typically earning
"upper class" salaries.
In the UK, a huge proportion of the population identifies as working class,
somewhat bogusly. Tech workers tend to be part of what is sometimes called the
"technical middle class", a new (post-WW2) and slightly wretched group with
little cultural or social capital but strong finances. Ramen-eating
programmers are in the technical middle class even if their earnings haven't
yet matched those of more established professionals.
I agree that both "working" and "upper" are anachronistic categories.
~~~
chrisseaton
I think if you're working a job and earning a salary or a little equity, then
you're clearly middle class at best.
I think it's the working class that's being eroded, leaving the a middle class
on one side, and the destitute on the other, with the upper class being the
same as it ever was.
~~~
theoh
Well, the Pew research organization puts everyone who earns above a certain
amount in the upper class. It's about 100k. And we know that the rich have got
even richer in the last few years, with a thinning of the "middle" earners.
There are plenty of articles out there which focus on the erosion of the
middle class.
As I mentioned, some people (in the UK for example) are invested in the idea
of the working class, and draw the class boundaries between working and middle
so as to enlarge the working class. Often this is about preserving their own
identity rather than assessing the wealth of different social strata. But
living in relative comfort has been a middle class thing.
------
masonic
URL redirects to thehill.com
------
gumby
This is really an oddball collection of bad news (although it does properly
add context to the %-of-population numbers). This bad news is well worth
repeating, though there's plenty more.
However it's hard to understand the point of the piece. The author describes
herself as a libertarian and wrote a book calling taxation a rip off. Yet the
only real analysis seems, to my reading, to claim that more government would
help. It seems especially at the end that she is criticizing unregulated
capitalism.
(for context: I consider CA to be one of, if not the, best run states in the
Union, despite its manifold problems and failures. And while like anyone I
could easily make a list of rules I think should be eliminated, I hardly think
the blanket libertarian position of "less regulation" is any sort of
solution).
------
stochastic_monk
Non-AMP link: [https://thehill.com//finance/412928-middle-class-is-
disappea...](https://thehill.com//finance/412928-middle-class-is-disappearing-
in-california-as-wealth-gap-grows)
~~~
dang
Changed from
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/opinion/finance/412...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/opinion/finance/412928-middle-
class-is-disappearing-in-california-as-wealth-gap-grows%3famp).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Super simple static web hosting - rabbitsfoot8
https://tiiny.host
======
rabbitsfoot8
Hey guys I built this to greatly simplify hosting. All feedback appreciated.
Here's a common question I get:
Q: How is this different to github pages, netlify, surge.sh etc?
A:
\- No knowledge of git or cmd line required (great for beginners)
\- Sites you upload disappear within 7 days. Great for prototyping and
temporarily hosting stuff to share.
\- Unlimited subdomains (not the case with github pages)
\- No registration required (you can remain anonymous)
~~~
ocjo
this looks great. Is there any way to download a site before they disappear?
~~~
rabbitsfoot8
Thanks! Yep with the premium version, any site you upload is automatically
archived upon expiry so you never lose it. You can download archives whenever
you want.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Patents show Google Fi was envisioned before the iPhone was released - tobyjsullivan
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2914833/opensource-subnet/patents-show-google-fi-was-envisioned-before-the-iphone-was-released.html
======
loureed69
If Google can prove its case to consumers and increase coverage and capacity
by enlisting more mobile carriers, Google could outflank Verizon and AT&T with
a larger, faster, and more reliable network. Google convinced the third and
fourth largest mobile carriers in the U.S., Sprint and T-Mobile, to become
partners in Google Fi, indicating that at least some carriers agree that this
model is a promising business venture.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How I learned to stop worrying and love working capital - rmason
https://medium.com/@EAgarwal/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-working-capital-39917e86041d
======
perl4ever
"High growth startups play between 1–3x. In theory, in a world of zero cost of
capital, unlimited liquidity, and an infinite market size, any LTV/CAC greater
than 0 is perfectly acceptable."
I don't understand how a ratio between 0 and 1 can be acceptable. If it's
under 1, aren't you losing money in the long run?
------
mmt
This is the sort of startup advice article I wish there were more of (though
I've never been a founder myself).
It points out how the "obvious" reaction to an impending cash flow problem at
a high-growth startup might be undesirable, but, more importantly, how an
alternative is better and how it was implemented.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Can you get a J1 visa for your startup if admitted to an accelerator? - technotony
Hello, immigration is a perennial question here on HN. Does anyone have any experience of sponsoring themselves as a J1 visa? Is this possible? We have been admitted to a relatively prestigious accelerator in the bay area which I think should qualify for the training requirement for the visa. My co-founder is American and with advisors and others my share is below 50%.
======
codeonfire
Are you doing technical work? Why not work remotely? btw, J-1 is a non-
immigrant visa. How long is the accelerator program?
~~~
technotony
Program is six months (hence can't use ESTA), requirement for the grant they
offer to be in the US for the duration
------
coryl
Your country?
~~~
technotony
UK
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kubernetes v1.3 Preview – Auth, Scale, and Improved Install - philips
https://coreos.com/blog/kubernetes-v1.3-preview.html
======
philips
Most of these topics were discussed during my KubeCon Keynote in March.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A49xXiKZNTQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A49xXiKZNTQ)
Happy to answer any questions! k8s v1.3 will be an exciting release.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The real reason android is winning in volume. 30% goes to the carrier. - bound008
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/mf_android/all/1?
======
kiba
Title should be changed to: The Android Explosion: How Google’s Freewheeling
Ecosytem Threatens the iPhone
------
tomjen3
>But make no mistake: As is often the case in technology, only one platform
will prevail.
I don't buy this - sure there are only one OS for pcs, but there are many
different browser.
The end game is fun to speculate about but before we can do that we need to
know if the phone is a platform (like the OS) where the main feature is if it
can run the app you want or if its a browser where you can access the
information with either.
A decade ago this would have been easy but today the pull of the internet is
so strong that I don't think it is a given that one platform is able to cut
the other of.
If it takes 5 years before the two platforms face each other of the pull is
only going to be that much stronger.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tweets tell scientists how quickly we normalize unusual weather - Elof
https://phys.org/news/2019-02-tweets-scientists-quickly-unusual-weather.html
======
Zenst
One factor would be the speed of communication and interaction would help
expedite the normalisation of the weather.
Though we clearly have an ability to adjust, an area this is highlighted would
be driving in snow. FIrst snow, drivers are weary, you get accidents, snow
sits about for a week (increases even) and people adjust. Same with
temperature changes as a whole, up or low, you adjust and after a week or two,
you have a new norm.
What needs to be looked at are unusual weather that is short lived and unusual
weather that lasts a couple of weeks. As the latter, whilst still unusual
weather, would of been the norm for a two week period and you can't expect
people to be as reactionary to it on day 14 as you would on day 1 of such an
event.
I would question the usage of social media as an insight into any human
traits, as would it encompass a full snapshot into personalities when some
groups more represented than others upon social media platforms.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
JIBO, the world's first family robot - molf
http://www.myjibo.com
======
jgmmo
Looks neat. But announcing you are the first of a kind when you are
hypothetically 2 years away from release -- seems a bit presumptuous.
------
vannevar
The vision here is spot on. It looks like what I imagine an Apple robot might
look like. But they're going to need a lot more money and a lot more time to
realize it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
37signals: Behind the scenes: A/B testing part 2 - wlll
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2983-behind-the-scenes-ab-testing-part-2-how-we-test
======
wlll
Part 1 for easy clicking: [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2977-behind-the-
scenes-highri...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2977-behind-the-scenes-
highrise-marketing-site-ab-testing-part-1)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Mass Effect is the Most Important Science Fiction Universe of Our Generation - personjerry
http://www.popbioethics.com/2012/02/why-mass-effect-is-the-most-important-science-fiction-universe-of-our-generation/
======
austinz
> Despite writing at the turn of the last century, H.P. Lovecraft’s Cosmicism
> is something with which no major narrative of humanity’s journey through the
> stars has dealt.
Vernor Vinge's _A Fire Upon the Deep_ tackled this very subject decades ago,
and with far greater poise than Mass Effect did. (And I say this as a fan of
the series.)
I suspect the author's reference pools are not as deep as they should be, and
I say this because a lot of the topics that the author claims ME to be the
first to address have in fact been bandied about in science fiction for a long
time. Mass Effect is great in lots of ways; it brings together a lot of plot
points and concepts from other series and synthesizes them together into a
decently coherent whole. But the series is far from original thematically.
(minor spoilers) In particular, the third game tries to address the idea of
transhumanism in a way reminiscent of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, another game
which came out a year before, but does it in a particularly cack-handed way.
Even the ending choice in ME3 is thematically similar to the one from the
earlier game.
~~~
cromwellian
+100. A Fire Upon The Deep totally predates this. Many of the main characters
in the story aren't even humans, they're hive mind wolves and plants, and
hyper intelligent AIs. And the Blight doesn't even have any goal, it's more or
less a virus that wants to survive, other than that, we don't know it's
motives, and the hyper-intelligences don't really care much about humans. The
humans in the story are portrayed as fools who don't have the wisdom of the
older races and end up digging up stuff they shouldn't be messing with.
------
spain
I agree with the others saying that the themes in Mass Effect have already
been done many times in the past and that it brings nothing new to the table.
Furthermore, in my opinion they are very mediocre as videogames (well, with
the exception of the first one).
------
cromwellian
"The reason is this: Mass Effect is the first blockbuster franchise in the
postmodern era to directly confront a godless, meaningless universe
indifferent to humanity."
Really? That seems like a bold claim. The story of insignificant humans who
ultimately are controlled by eternal, hyper-advanced species, seems a repeated
theme. I actually found that aspect of Mass Effect rather boring (this again?)
Both 2001 and Babylon-5 featured completely alien cultures and insignificant
humans, who were unwittingly guided to evolve the way the god-like races
wanted.
A few years ago (2007-ish) I wrote up a space-game design that was like a
combination of Minecraft and Elite in space. The main (hidden, exposed in
glimpses) plotine was that the universe was actually being run by a vast, very
old species called The Alphas, who actually had no interest in other species
at all, but were committing mass genocides, based on a Frank Tipler's _Omega
Point_ concept (which was the title of the game, OmegaPoint). The Alphas were
doing Kardashev scale Type-V galactic engineering, moving stars, blackholes,
and interstellar dust clouds around to permute the geometry of space so as to
control the collapse of the Universe in order to extract infinite energy and
computation from it.
In game, they would have ships the size of planets, which would disassemble
and surround stars, creating photon rockets to move them over eons. Think of
how in 2010, the monoliths overtook Jupiter. The younger races would try to
stop them, but would be ineffectual in the face of self-replicating Von
Neunmann probes.
Only by races banding together, and allying with the second oldest race in the
Universe (the Gammas), could they hope to take down Alpha Ships.
But the gist of it is, the older race doesn't give a shit and has no goal with
respect to other species. They see you as nothing more than bacteria or ants,
and are only interested in manipulating stars, whether or not your have a
civilization dependent on that star.
But God-like races who want to control evolution, or play "Order vs Chaos"
games seem quite common in SF.
------
mercer
As an aside, as far as (RPG) gameplay experiences go, few have topped
Planescape: Torment in quality of storytelling.
If you include non-rpg's, The Thief series (1 and 2) are good contenders too.
------
PhasmaFelis
He claims to be speaking for all of sci-fi, but only mentions four written
properties--Ender's Game, Dune, Starship Troopers, and the Cthulhu Mythos--
three of which have been big-budget motion pictures, and the last so deeply
embedded in general pop culture that you can know all about it without ever
cracking a book. He can't even _spell_ "Ender's Game" right after three tries.
He's routinely flabbergasted by concepts that have been routine in written
sci-fi for decades.
tl;dr: Yet another commentator who thinks that Gene Roddenberry invented
science fiction. Ugh.
------
jimmcslim
TL;DR.
I kid, I kid!
On a serious note, has the Mass Effect trilogy led to any conversion of
opinions by 'serious' 'art' critics that computer games aren't an art-form...
as it seems plain to me that Mass Effect does indeed qualify but is oh so much
more besides, as outlined by this excellent thesis. Is 'can computer games be
art?' still a debate anymore? Was it ever a valid question or just
intellectual snobbery?
~~~
mercer
I still hear many people say that games can't be art, but the debate seems to
have subsided. Perhaps this is because games have become so ubiquitous there
it's just not as interesting to discuss it anymore.
------
beloch
Choice in most computer games, the Mass Effect series included, is largely
illusory. It is too costly and difficult to provide radically divergent
branching experiences based on player choice. Choices that truly alter the
plot result in exponentially increasing demands on development resources. Just
one truly game-altering choice would halve the length of a game that a given
budget could produce. No matter what choices you make in the Mass Effect
games, Shepard always winds up in the same places doing the same things. It
truly does not matter if your Shepard is the sort of person who holds all life
sacred or a hardened killer who ruthlessly throws people off of highrises when
mildly annoyed. You can overthrow the rulers of the galaxy and replace them
with humans in the first game of the trilogy and, to Bioware's credit, that
choice is reflected in the subsequent games, but in a way that has almost no
impact. In the Mass Effect universe, what you do truly does not matter.
However, the genius of Bioware is that the player feels their choices _do_
matter to a degree that is sometimes agonizing! Despite the lack of impact on
the plot, there are enough minor details to make you deeply care about how you
interact with the game's NPC's.
Bioware has been at the forefront of RPG's/adventure games for quite some
time. While their combat mechanics are occasionally rather broken (e.g. Jade
Empire), their plots are the gold-standard in the industry. The illusion of
choice is a part of their craft that has been finely honed over the years. The
Mass Effect universe is not the first impressively deep game-world Bioware has
created. They breathed new life into both the D&D and Star Wars universes, and
created the Dragon Age universe, which is a notable example of world-building.
Consider Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games. This is a long series of games
extending back into the nineties. The amount of reading material, in the form
of in-game books, in this series of games is staggering, but the quality of
that material ranges from mediocre to absolutely awful. In the first Dragon
Age game, Bioware produced a similar amount of reading material, but every
last word of it finely crafted and carefully designed to immerse you in a
game-world far richer and larger than actually portrayed in the game. Even the
title of the game, "Origins", suggested that this 80+ hour RPG was a mere
introduction to a new world. Mass Effect used this approach as well, fleshing
out the universe with a Codex that is truly impressive in terms of depth. This
supplemental material is insanely cheap to produce relative to the time it
takes for gamers to consumer. Hardcore fans will gobble every last word up,
but even casual players will feel the depth of the universe that is present
even if they just sample a few paragraphs here and there. The choices may be
illusory, but the conceptual depth of the Mass Effect universe is not.
The biggest leap forward made by Mass Effect was the dialogue wheel system.
Prior to Mass Effect, RPG's allowed players to choose exactly what their
characters said. Players would be presented with several options and would
read precisely what their characters would say in the process of selection. As
a result, it was largely redundant to voice the protagonist. Players who had
read what their character was about to say would probably be too impatient for
their character to read that text aloud. As a result, games would often fully
voice every role _but_ the protagonist, ostensibly so that the player could
imagine him or herself speaking the protagonist's lines. The process of
reading several (sometimes) lengthy responses also injected unnatural pauses
into conversations. The Mass Effect dialogue wheel provides players with a
rapid, shorthand way to select responses. Your choices are described by a few
words at most, and often in terms of what your character is thinking instead
of what he'll actually say. e.g. When faced with a prevaricating NPC, an older
RPG might have offered one dialogue choice in which your character spots the
lie and tries to draw the NPC into a self-incriminating trap. In Mass Effect,
to do the same thing you might choose a response that simply says "He's
lying!". The wheel usually provides you with your next choice while other
characters are still speaking, so you can carry out a natural, flowing
conversation just by making choices that reflect how you feel. The most
crucial dialogue, that of the protagonist, is now fully voiced by an actor.
The result is that players feel like they're in a movie. Not merely watching,
but _starring_ in. They are frequently awed by the eloquence of Shepard's
finely voiced responses and feel a tremendous boost due to simultaneously
identifying themselves as Shepard. The Mass Effect dialogue wheel let's you
feel like you're delivering dialogue like Pacino! It's an utterly ingenious
system. To get an idea of how important the dialogue wheel is to Mass Effect,
consider Dragon Age: Origins. Origins was released after Mass Effect but was
in development for much longer, so it uses the old system with a voiceless
protagonist. It feels astonishingly primitive when compared to Mass Effect as
a Result.
Video Games are going to take fiction (sci-fi or otherwise) to new heights.
The reasons are legion. I can't do them all justice, but consider just this
one alone: Minds and time. Movies, like video games, are a collaborative art
form that takes many minds to create, but the time they have to convey meaning
is limited to just a couple of hours. Novels, on the other hand, can take tens
of hours to consume, but are the product of a very small or, most typically,
just one mind. Video games are the first art form to emerge in which many
minds can engage their audience for an extended period of time. Mass Effect is
notable for bringing an immense richness and variety of tropes together and
synthesizing a truly meaningful universe that invites open interpretation. It
is simultaneously big-budget, pop-culture space opera and a dozen different
things, ranging from nihilism to humanism and everything in between. The Mass
Effect universe is, perhaps, too complex for any single human mind to have
created.
Now that I've spent enough time gushing, let me add one sour note of
pessimism: Electronic Arts. EA is notorious for tainting the gaming universe
with their sweat-shop productions. Bioware was bought by EA and, as far as
anyone is willing to say, remains largely autonomous. The gargantuan size of
EA's bank account should have offered Bioware the freedom to do truly brave
things, but that is not how EA operates. They expect profits. Hints of cost-
cutting and compromise have set into Bioware's latest games. Consider Dragon
Age 2 and Mass Effect 3. Where the previous games in these two Bioware
properties included multiple cities/worlds to explore, the latest, EA
influenced games did not. Practically all non-combat interaction in ME3 is
confined to the Normandy and Citadel, while all of DA2 takes place in the same
city. Both games could have opened up new areas as the game progressed, but
instead relied on stocking the same old areas with a mixture of new NPC's and
old, unaltered NPC's. DA2 is especially awful, recycling the same dungeons
repeatedly even within the same chapter of the game. ME3 was epic enough for
this to go largely unnoticed, and the end of the game was so ballsy that it
overshadows EA's cost-cutting. However, DA2 was met with luke-warm reception,
largely because so much of the game material was so excruciatingly recycled.
One can only hope that EA doesn't continue driving Bioware into the ground.
~~~
JohnTHaller
It's also worth noting that EA basically cut a year off of ME3's original
development time, which is why we got a series of endings to the whole series
that made your choices matter a whole lot less. It's still one of the only
series that sees you choosing whether or not to kill off one of the major
characters (Wrex) and has many dialog and character choices open or close to
you based on previous actions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Let's make a programming language - floater
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/687
======
zephjc
Wow, a pretty old LtU thread!
I think too many PL geeks working on _one_ language is a sure fire way to
either get nothing done, or get some really weird hodgepodge that would
satisfy nobody - the ultimate design by committee!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The BS Bubble: My Response to Peter Thiel - audreyw
http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/04/12/the-bs-bubble/
======
ewams
Might this have born from the "you can do anything..." mentality that parents
have been telling their kids for the 80's and 90's children? FYI, I am one of
those. Though I was fortunate that my parents taught me also how to work hard,
think smart, and be a realist.
I agree with you on most points. But what to do about it? It seems that better
parenting would be the place to start. Instead of sending kids to
college/university when they turn 18, have them: travel, come to work with
parents/friends/family, dine on the Khan Academy, start a business, get a job,
have kids, volunteer, watch TV, do nothing.
This sounds vaguely familiar with what you do after college and could be
better for you. In my current position there are two gents that do the same
thing as me, have more experience, and get paid about 30K more, and are 15
years older than me. They never received a BS or similar level education.
While I went to school for 4.5 years and spent 120K in the process. Though I
feel my education from RIT was well worth it and regret none of it. It is all
about how you do with what you have.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Roadlike – An app to record your personal memories anytime, anywhere - roadlike
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.roadlike.app
======
roadlike
Roadlike allows you to record your personal memories at spots and places
(along with few photos) you feel are worth remembering in the future so that
you can relish these records looking back at them. Your memories could cover
your various vacation trips, travels or your entire life’s journey. Roadlike
is a personal application. All records created by you are private.
When you are traveling, on our iPhone app & Android app you can create records
of your spots even if you have no internet and are in offline mode.
Roadlike app allows you to create records / check-in to places even when you
do not have Internet and are in an offline mode.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chomsky: Work, Learning and Freedom - robdoherty2
http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/work_learning_and_freedom
======
dkarl
_What he discovered was that as these methods were devised there was a choice
– whether to design the methods so that control would be in the hands of
skilled machinists or whether it would be controlled by management. They
picked the second, although it was not more profitable – when they did studies
they found there was no profit advantage to it but it’s just so important to
keep workers under control than to have skilled machinists run the industrial
process. One reason is that if that mentality spreads sooner or later workers
are going to demand what seems obvious to them anyway – that they should just
take over the factories and get rid of the bosses who don’t do anything but
get in their way._
This is a good observation -- that management tends to take as much control as
it can get, without any regard to costs and benefits -- but his analysis
depends on some cultural assumptions about authority. In some cultures, a
person with authority over another person is a different kind of person, a
superior one. North Korea is a caricature of this attitude: Kim Jong Il, being
at the apex of the power structure, had to be wiser, a better golfer, and a
genius at every subject compared to everyone under him. In such a culture you
can speak of the workers kicking out management and taking over, because
workers and managers are distinct classes of people.
In other cultures, authority inheres not in the person but in the social role
they play. A manager is just a guy who has a certain limited authority at work
because of his role as manager. He is not assumed to be a better golfer,
dancer, or calligrapher. He may be less talented or less virtuous than the
people he orders around, and that doesn't threaten his authority as long as
the company is happy with his job performance. One expects that people
promoted or hired into management show more than typical interest and ability
at management, but other than that, if management and workers are
systematically different in any way, it is because of different patterns of
_déformation professionnelle_ due to their different job concerns.
In the latter kind of culture, the idea of workers kicking out management and
taking over makes no sense. If you kick out the guys wearing manager hats,
take away their manager hats, and give them to guys who used to wear worker
hats, then you're left with the same number of manager hats, and therefore the
same number of managers. You haven't kicked out management, you've kicked out
the guys who used to be management.
~~~
reso
Interestingly, you see very anarchic power structures in some of the world's
best software companies. Facebook, for instance, has very little hierarchy,
and nearly all the manager are engineers. Valve has literally zero hierarchy,
workers choose what they work on and decisions are made by consensus.
~~~
neumann_alfred
But: who owns Valve, and is "who gets how much from the profit" also among the
decisions made by consensus?
------
jpdevereaux
His point about the commissioned artist vs. the self-motivated artist is very
interesting to me as a freelance developer. I often feel bored/discouraged
doing projects for hire, yet when building something for myself I'll dedicate
18-hour days to it - even if it's basically the same project. A similar
psychology is likely what caused me to excel as a self-taught hacker but fail
as a student.
On a similar note, with all the hubbub about how worthwhile college is, it
seems that curiosity and self motivation are some powerful deciding factors.
Perhaps the current standard of going straight to college after high school is
not the right way to go about it.
~~~
zanny
> On a similar note, with all the hubbub about how worthwhile college is, it
> seems that curiosity and self motivation are some powerful deciding factors.
> Perhaps the current standard of going straight to college after high school
> is not the right way to go about it.
The problem is deeper in culture than that. All education as a whole should
not be about raw numbers or facts, it should be about exposure and lighting a
creative or investigative spark. We never _had_ an education system centered
around motivating interest in topics rather than route fact memorization
(insert the Einstien quote about don't memorize what you can look up vis-a-vis
the internet) but I think that has to be the end goal of education for humans
in general. You can't be content teaching a topic, taking a test, and calling
it quits. It has to be about inspiring people to persue more, and Chomsky
really hits on that.
I have the same thing you do with software. I'll spend hundreds of hours on
personal projects in a month, but for school assignments I'd do semester long
assignments the last day. It is about what you are interested in vs what
others force upon you to accomplish in that structured environment, the former
is the goal and the latter is the failure in that objective.
Mainly because on some projects in my CS undergrad I _would_ put in those
hundred hour sessions. I wrote my own shell, for example, that I spent a
combined ~100 hours on over 2 weeks, where most people did it in ~10, and I
had autocompletion, history, pipes, and primitive variable / looping
implemented. Most other people couldn't even do a proper execvP.
~~~
46Bit
I've had the similar experience, of working on personal projects quite close
to undergrad coursework yet having a huge difference in my motivation between
them. What helped me was the modules that really fit with levelling up my
knowledge (for instance a report on System/360 microprogramming).
It's always seemed to me that this kind of person should be a good candidate
for postgraduate degrees: driven in their own exploration, effort on
interesting things, etc. I've never managed to really find out the reality
though.
------
charlieflowers
I am missing something here, and I am genuinely curious what it is I'm
missing.
If a capitalist starts a manufacturing business with the goal of making money,
and if he then discovers that the business would run much more effectively by
letting the skilled workers make the decisions than by hiring a layer of
management ... then why wouldn't the capitalist go with the more effective
approach?
TL;DR rephrase -- why would a business owner maintain a layer of management if
that was truly a less effective way to go?
Is Chomsky (or Noble) claiming there's something like a "conspiracy" amongst
the "managerial class" to create _fake_ jobs for managers, merely to maintain
class power? (Or, if not, what am I missing from his argument?)
~~~
steveklabnik
> then why wouldn't the capitalist go with the more effective approach?
"Making money for me" and "making money for everyone" are not the same thing.
For example, if your business has 1MM in profits, and you own half, then you
get 500k. If you ran that as a cooperative, you made 2MM in profits the next
year, but you own 10%, you made $200k. Worse for you, better for everyone else
and the group overall.
~~~
charlieflowers
OK, that makes sense but doesn't connect all the dots for me.
I am starting with the assumption that no one gets an ownership stake for
free. You can start a business if you want, and you can either bootstrap it or
take investment. Either way, the owners are not _handed_ their ownership ...
they "buy" it with what they put in.
Is this Chomsky/Noble point of view arguing that workers should be _granted_ a
degree of ownership by virtue of the work they do?
~~~
steveklabnik
The basic tenet of socialism is that democracy is good: the traditional
corporate model is dictatorship, and it should be reformed into democracy
instead.
> the owners are not handed their ownership ... they "buy" it with what they
> put in.
Sure, but then they have it, and that's great. Being rewarded for your work is
good. Problem is, they have to do nothing to maintain it. After an initial
period of work, they have it forever. Whereas a worker who comes in afterward
has no access, and even though they also put in a lot of work, they won't get
any ownership. Those people are not being rewarded for the work that they do,
which we all agree is bad.
> workers should be granted a degree of ownership by virtue of the work they
> do?
Basically, yes. People should be in control of themselves, and their
situations. Ownership == control.
Please note that I'm painting in _very_, _very_ broad strokes here. There is a
ton of space under this tent.
~~~
yummyfajitas
_the traditional corporate model is dictatorship_
Huh? The traditional corporate model is representative democracy. Shareholders
elect a board of directors who then elect upper management, who then appoint
lower level positions.
_Whereas a worker who comes in afterward has no access, and even though they
also put in a lot of work, they won't get any ownership._
This is false for any publicly traded corporation. Any worker can open up an
ETrade account and trade their salary for part of the corporation.
As far as I know, most workers choose not to. Why do you feel these workers
(myself included) are making the wrong choice?
~~~
steveklabnik
Please see my statement about broad strokes. That said....
> Shareholders elect
There's your error. Shareholders elect. Not workers. Maybe "oligarchy" is a
better word than dictatorship, but as I said, trying to keep it simple to get
the concept across.
Workers do not have a vote. Traditional corporate structures are not a
democracy.
> This is false for any publicly traded corporation. Any worker can open up an
> ETrade account and trade their salary for part of the corporation.
Only if that company is publicly traded. Even then, if it is, acquiring
ownership comes through spending capital, not by virtue of having control over
yourself and what you do.
> As far as I know, most workers choose not to. Why do you feel these workers
> (myself included) are making the wrong choice?
Most people do not have the ability to work in a place that's run
cooperatively because there aren't enough places that are cooperative. Even
GitHub and Valve are socialist in social structure only: Both are private
companies, but I'm pretty sure that everyone does not own a portion of the
company. I could be wrong on this.
Secondly, post-Cold War, 'socialism' became such a scare term that people
would shy away from it even if it were a rationally better choice for them.
The notion of 'ideology' is useful here.
~~~
codewright
You don't need the word socialism to make me skeptical, I'm skeptical that
democracy would produce better results in a business context. Also, I have a
hard time believing you've read any Marx. You're not doing his work very much
justice.
I don't even trust democracy in politics all that much, my state (California)
is a complete and utter failure as an exercise in democracy.
~~~
gruseom
_Also, I have a hard time believing you've read any Marx. You're not doing his
work very much justice._
I call foul. That's personal, and it's unsubstantiated, which makes it unfair
not only to the GP but to the rest of us reading the thread. If you're going
to make a comment like this, instead of being mean why don't you share with us
some of what you've learned about (in this case) Marx? I for one would be
interested to hear it.
~~~
codewright
>And the victorious party” (in a revolution) “must maintain its rule by means
of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris
Commune have lasted more than a day if it had not used the authority of the
armed people against the bourgeoisie? Cannot we, on the contrary, blame it for
having made too little use of that authority?. - Engels
>As, therefore, the state is only a transitional institution which is used in
the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one’s adversaries by force, it
is sheer nonsense to talk of a ‘free people’s state’; so long as the
proletariat still needs the state, it does not need it in the interests of
freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes
possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist - Engels
Democracy is a threat to the midwife State and the final state of what Marxism
aims to achieve.
~~~
infinite8s
So what was Marx's end goal? Some sort of utopian paradox in the vein of
John's Galt, where each person is free to realize his own potential? The last
quote from Engel seems to suggest that Marx was actually pushing for something
much closer to Anarcho-Libertarianism.
~~~
codewright
Marx was pushing for a utopia somewhat opposite of Galt. Namely, communism.
Voluntary communist utopias are referred to as anarcho-communism.
Anarcho-libertarianism assumes a free market is involved.
Communism assumes all resources are pooled.
------
rdtsc
> People are supposed to be passive and apathetic and doing what they’re told
> by the responsible people who are in control.
That is the fundamental struggle -- to control the masses. Get them
brainwashed, scared, addicted, distracted. One way is to carefully control the
information they receive that was very easy up until the Internet showed up.
Now it has become a lot harder. China just built up a firewall, here it is a
bit more difficult. So it still all has to rely on sophisticated spin and
propaganda models.
Take Chomsky for example, most people might not even know who he is. They
wouldn't have seen (or at least anything positive about) him on TV or mass
media. Chances are they read something about him on the Internet or heard from
their friends. Sure there were local activist groups, underground zines, but
the cost of spreading information that way was pretty high, now the cost is
much lower.
As propaganda and media control was becoming more sophisticated it seemed like
nothing could stop it, until the Internet exploded. For example, I haven't
went searching for news to any of the popular American news outlets in years.
It is funny (or scary) that I trust some silly site like reddit.com to deliver
better news than CNN, Fox or other such thing.
------
dreamdu5t
Chomsky is incoherent and sensationalist. He consistently paints a narrative
of class struggle and weaves it into everything, ignoring any kind of
contextual reality.
What a sad, paranoid, naive old man.
~~~
gruseom
A troll, yet I feel like responding anyway.
How you get that from this interview is beyond me; it seems to me full of joy
and love from start to finish – joy of learning, love of freedom and play.
I saw your comment before I finished the article and was going to mention that
about the only thing I bet Chomsky was very sad about was the death of his
wife, by all accounts the love of his life. And then he brought it up at the
very end.
Chomsky has his issues like anyone, but it has always been plain to me that
there is something very beautiful at the core of the man.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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The Dire State of Rural Mental Health Care - atlasunshrugged
https://www.axios.com/rural-mental-health-care-montana-41fb2b48-f4c8-4027-9d56-9902d99db448.html
======
atlasunshrugged
Bloomberg article with more info but paywalled
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-15/the-
state...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-15/the-state-with-
the-highest-suicide-rate-desperately-needs-shrinks)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Continuous 3D Printing Possible With Transparent Polygon Scanning? - hexa_storm
https://www.fabbaloo.com/blog/2019/8/3/continuous-3d-printing-possible-with-transparent-polygon-scanning
======
MisterTea
The sad part of this whole article is this method of scanning a laser beam had
to be devised to side step a patent that uses common galvanometers instead. So
there isn't any new 3d printing technology here. Only a clever method to
circumvent a silly patent.
~~~
mensetmanusman
I work in the area of new intellectual property generation, and you (as was I)
would be surprised to learn this is not actually a sad feature of the system.
There have been countless advancements in the sciences when people have been
forced to work around existing IP and have uncovered hidden benefits when
working through the actual implementation.
It is a hidden benefit of the western system of IP that China et al. have not
yet caught on to.
~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The problem is that, in 2019, most obvious methods of scanning a laser with
moving mirrors should be covered by _expired_ patents from 40-30 years ago.
~~~
hexa_storm
You have to specify application in a patent. Riken desribed it for 3D printing
in 1997 see
[https://sffsymposium.engr.utexas.edu/Manuscripts/1997/1997-2...](https://sffsymposium.engr.utexas.edu/Manuscripts/1997/1997-25-Yamazawa.pdf)
but did not specify the use of laser diode as it was quite new at the time. It
got only invented in 1996 by
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuji_Nakamura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuji_Nakamura)
who got a patent for the laserdiode but little rewards and fought with his
employer over it.
~~~
kevin_thibedeau
how is "obvious thing ... with a laser diode" any different than "obvious
thing ... with a computer"?
~~~
mikekchar
Obvious things are not patentable in the first place, so it doesn't matter
what the "with a X" refers to. That the patent office continues to patent
things that are obvious to a normal practitioner is a serious problem. I think
part of the problem is that the field of technology is so wide right now that
most patent examiners aren't good at judging whether something is obvious or
not -- so they don't generally attempt it. If it's novel, then it's not
obvious, is what I think they are doing.
Having said all that "with a laser diode" is categorically different than
"with a computer". In the latter case, you can do any general purpose
computation you like. So if you have a machine driven by a computer, you
should not be able to patent it if you would not ordinarily be able to patent
the machine. In other words, the driving of the machine by a computer should
not be patentable, IMHO. Of course it gets complicated as you add more and
more machinery to the machine -- should "computer driving a car be
patentable"? Probably it should as it is not just software, even though it
requires software. I think it's tricky.
If a laser diode allows you to do things you wouldn't otherwise be able to do
_and that use of the diode is not obvious_ , then it probably should be
patentable. However, generally if "machine with a laser" is not patentable,
then "machine with a laser diode" should also not be patentable. There's got
to be something special and non-obvious about the use of the laser diode.
~~~
AstralStorm
Patent offices are patently not doing the job of rejecting obvious
modifications. Of course lawyer mangling of the documents does not help with
discerning whether something is new or not.
------
romwell
If this is about photolitographic 3D printing with resin, then I say not much
is being disrupted. Those printers aren't that expensive now; the resin itself
is quite expensive though.
The price of resin isn't directly comparable to the price of plastic used for
FDM printing because one can print most models nearly hollow with FDM in an
automated way (e.g. with honeybomb-like infill patterns), but I'm not aware of
doing the same thing with resin with ease now, making the resin prints 10X the
price of PLA ones.
Better software would disrupt that tech though.
~~~
hexa_storm
expensive is a matter of taste. The envisiontec 3SP costs well over 5K euros
and can go up to 100K. You can only get a a price if you ask for a quote.
Carbon 3D does not sell their printers you have to lease them. Formlabs does
sell you a printer at 3.5K but you can't use third party resins, so you
decide. I actually know some open-hardware printers which sell for 5K.
~~~
sydd
you can get an Anycubic Photon under $500, its a decent resin LCD printer.
~~~
opencl
The patent mentioned in the article is specifically for _continuous_ SLA
printing (no pauses for lifting/peeling between layers), which the photon and
other similarly-priced models don't do. I have one of the cheap SLA printers,
and the lifting can occupy over half the printing time depending on layer
height/resin type. The continuous printing machines seem to start in the
several-thousand-dollar range.
~~~
hexa_storm
the rotating reflective polygon patent is this one
[https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/29/68/46/da50635...](https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/29/68/46/da50635a85b615/US9079355.pdf)
I think it is even more relevant but somehow it did not get posted.
~~~
benjohnson
You'd think laser printers would be prior art - a rotating mirror (usually a
hexagon) was exactly how older laser printers would scan across the drum to
form out the print.
~~~
hexa_storm
You have to specify application in a patent. Riken desribed it for 3D printing
in 1997 see
[https://sffsymposium.engr.utexas.edu/Manuscripts/1997/1997-2...](https://sffsymposium.engr.utexas.edu/Manuscripts/1997/1997-2..).
but did not specify the use of laser diode as it was quite new at the time. It
got only invented in 1996 by
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuji_Nakamura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuji_Nakamura)
who got a patent for the laserdiode but little rewards and fought with his
employer over it.
------
stcredzero
_Netherlands-based Rik Starmans has devised something he calls “Transparent
Polygon Scanning”, or “TPS”._
Does this mean the linked article is a TPS report?
~~~
hexa_storm
should have named it differently; I use a laser scanner with a prism instead
of a mirror. A detailed description is here;
[https://reprap.org/wiki/Transparent_Polygon_Scanning](https://reprap.org/wiki/Transparent_Polygon_Scanning)
~~~
stcredzero
_should have named it differently;_
Don't sweat it. I would guess that the name will amplify the amount of media
attention it gets.
------
gene-h
I don't think it's that disruptive. One thing that the 2009 roadmap for
additive manufacturing has emphasized is the need to move from point to line
and area deposition[0]. This still scans a point like stereolithography has
done since the beginning. We now have stereolithography machines capable of
area deposition by using a DMD projector[1], often called DLP, that are
approaching manufacturing products at high volume[2]. Some DLP
stereolithography machines now have resolution on the order of 10 micrometers
over a 160 mm by 50 mm area[2]. We're having to develop new ways to describe
3d geometry just so that we can take advantage of this resolution. So there is
potential here for both fast and incredibly high resolution using DLP
stereolithography. We've also seen the development that the 2009 additive
manufacturing roadmap couldn't anticipate: volumetric deposition[3].
In addition, there are some potential disadvantages to prism scanning. Prism
scanning can only do raster scans, we can't define the outline of a part in
vector mode. Although I will admit that this may not be as much of a problem
if we can control the brightness of our laser. In addition, in
stereolithography it is advantageous to carry out raster scans perpendicular
to each other, this is because the photopolymer contracts as it cures and
scanning in both directions helps make this contraction uniform.
[0][https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4716/c69f0b90a158589e54248a...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4716/c69f0b90a158589e54248a524a57ad78f4a3.pdf)
[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpH1zhUQY0c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpH1zhUQY0c)
[2][https://www.carbon3d.com/case-
studies/adidas/](https://www.carbon3d.com/case-studies/adidas/)
[3][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31xHZvUP1Ls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31xHZvUP1Ls)
~~~
jacobolus
#3 is pretty neat. Paper: [https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lapd/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/ms3...](https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lapd/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/ms3790.pdf)
* * *
Inre #1–2, Is anyone selling custom parts produced on that Carbon3D printer?
That is, someone that ingests a shapefile (or whatever) and mails back a part
printed on one of these machines?
------
tiozorak
Hardware is the new frontier of open source, I'd like to see schematics/PCB
versioning on GitHub, with diff viewer and stuff.
~~~
inetknght
That sounds like an amazing idea and is pretty close to what I want as well.
~~~
hexa_storm
There is a blog here [https://hackaday.io/project/21933-open-hardware-
transparent-...](https://hackaday.io/project/21933-open-hardware-transparent-
polygon-scanner/details) also provides all the link to github files. Design
are made in Freecad, Kicad, C++ and Python. My main focus is on developing
prior art. This needs to be done to prevent IP and "liberate" the technology
from patent trolls.
~~~
hexa_storm
Of course, what’s worse than a weak start is simply not starting at all.
Moreover, if you’ve publicly disclosed your invention, then you have only a
one-year grace period to apply for a patent. You forfeit your patent rights if
you fail to file within the 1-year grace period.
[http://www.patenttrademarkblog.com/first-to-file-patent-
rule...](http://www.patenttrademarkblog.com/first-to-file-patent-rule/)
In the EU.. you destroy immediately.. there is no grace period.
------
ragebol
Interesting, I've used something quite similar to the scanning-through-prism
technology a few years ago, though with an 8-sided polygon for the application
of exposing PCB masks. We were looking at 3D printing too IIRC.
To get to the desired ~80x80cm PCB size and the accuracy needed, we had to
achieve super high throughput and super low timing jitter on the UV-LEDs. Very
interesting technology, unfortunately we took too long to get a smaller scale
proto working and funding was cut right after we delivered that proto :-(.
Calibrating the whole machine from scratch was clever too.
Learned a lot there.
~~~
hexa_storm
do you have a link?
~~~
ragebol
The domain name has lapsed, but some articles remain: \-
[https://www.alexandergroenewege.nl/wp-
content/uploads/2016/0...](https://www.alexandergroenewege.nl/wp-
content/uploads/2016/04/eindhovens-dagblad-2015-09-09.pdf) \-
[https://www.linkmagazine.nl/maskerloze-pcb-machine-ldi-
syste...](https://www.linkmagazine.nl/maskerloze-pcb-machine-ldi-systems-gaat-
proefdraaien/)
In Dutch unfortunately. Looking at OP's article, it could very well be that we
had licensed some of the tech of the Rik Starmans mentioned int he article.
------
bfrog
Are there things beyond modeling where 3d printing is useful? The parts I've
seen using dlp or sla never seem structurally useful to me. Sintered metal
printing seems like although it may be less precise might be more useful
structurally?
~~~
kriro
Small scale stuff you want on premise is a decent use case. The prime example
being medical/dental. Imagine a patient with a crushed jarbone. You can model
and print a custom prosthesis on premise and print it in maybe 16h-38h.
Compare that to sending the job to some lab, custom molds being created and
waiting for the item to be delivered (while the patient is waiting).
I know it's used quite a bit for custom tooling as well. Think special tools
needed on an assembly line in automotive where pausing the assembly is very
expensive or lead times for some custom tool to grab a wheel while working on
it and whatnot are expensive.
I think one of the biggest success stories is cutsom made hearing aids. Return
rate a lot lower, easier to iterate and produce the perfect fit etc.
Another example (maybe a bit more high end) is turning some item that is made
out of many parts into a single item both for cost saving and other reasons.
Iirc NASA uses ultrasonic welding (which is 3d printing of sorts) for this.
~~~
bfrog
I'm guessing the resin used for medical applications isn't the cheapo toxic
stuff.
Neat use cases though, and certainly makes some sense. I guess I would've
expected precision cnc to be faster/better for such cases though, unless you
absolutely need the impossible to create voids
------
digdugdirk
Hmmm... Seems interesting (and perhaps questionable?) from an infringement
perspective.
What possible recourse would the original "continuous printing" patent holder
have now that this prismatic design has been open sourced, rather than used in
a commercial application?
~~~
hexa_storm
patents are expensive and you don't know the results.. Patent in my name is
here
[https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/43/72/4e/1ee7792...](https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/43/72/4e/1ee7792f56148f/US10114289.pdf)
.. but is for a plurality of sources. So I avoid my patent, I am author of :P
------
patrickread
Came here for the 3D printing of unicorn animals using lasers. Disappointing.
~~~
DonHopkins
I prefer highly significant Bladerunneresque origami unicorns.
[https://br-insight.com/library/significance-of-the-unicorn/](https://br-
insight.com/library/significance-of-the-unicorn/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Where is Jack Slocum? (ExtJS) - woid
ExtJS renamed to Sencha and his name is gone:<p>http://www.sencha.com/company<p>I'm not following ExtJS intensively, I'm just curious what is he up to.
======
linead
from: [http://www.sencha.com/forum/showthread.php?101713-About-
Jack...](http://www.sencha.com/forum/showthread.php?101713-About-Jack-
Slocum..).
A few people in the community have been asking about Jack and his whereabouts
as of late.
We're not entirely sure whether to respond to this with a 404 (not found), 301
(moved permanently) or a 307 (try again later at the same location.) After
pretty intense work getting Ext JS established, Jack tapered down his
involvement during the past 18 months. Although he may return in some capacity
in the future, we wish him all the best.
------
smiler
I would like to know too!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
[LIVE] Trump expected to back a move to reopen government for a few weeks - mfoy_
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/government-shutdown-trump-to-make-shutdown-announcement-at-white-house-2019-01-25-live-stream/
======
mfoy_
The announcement was in the first 20 seconds of his speech. He will support a
bill to re-open the government up to Feb 15th. Back-pay will be provided ASAP.
The rest of the announcement is just him describing his wall plan.
~~~
_Schizotypy
Yea he's pretty much just spouting racist nonsense now.
------
mfoy_
Oh boy, he just doubled down and said that if congress doesn't give him his
wall he's shutting government down again on Feb 15th.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unofficial Ruby coding style guide - clark-kent
https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide/blob/master/README.md
======
DanielRibeiro
Many comments on this very same project can also be found on its former
incarnation:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2987488>
------
indspenceable
||= Always felt really messy to me. There are cases where its useful, but if
you are using it a lot you might want to reconsider.
Otherwise looks good to me :).
~~~
rawsyntax
like any language feature it can be abused, however I find I like it
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
RISC vs. CISC (2000) - jcr
http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/risc/risccisc/
======
_delirium
For context, note that this site was part of a class project from 2000. Some
stuff is still relevant, some not.
Other similarly styled informational sites created by students in this course
over the years can be found here:
[http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/](http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/)
~~~
jerf
All of it is true in the historical sense, virtually none of it is relevant.
With the advent of "instruction decoders", everything is RISC on the inside
and the "machine code" is now nothing more than another layer of interface.
Instruction sets no longer determine internal architecture. And instruction
decoders are trivial elements of the overall die.
RISC didn't die and CISC didn't die... "RISC vs. CISC" died instead.
~~~
voidlogic
In some ways this modern hybrid is better than either. RISC CPUs were almost
always internally more efficient due to the simpler decode and easier
application of performance tricks; whereas CISC was always better externally
as it had better memory/instruction density. So in some ways the CISC on the
outside, RISC in the inside approach is the best thing that could have
happened for a CISC arch. like x86.
~~~
1amzave
> _CISC was always better externally_
...aside from being orders of magnitude more of an ass-pain if you ever have
to write software that actually deals with machine code (at least on x86;
perhaps other CISCs aren't as bad).
Simple example: given an instruction boundary, find the preceding instruction
boundary. On most any RISC it's trivial (subtract 4, or perhaps 2 in some
cases). On x86...I'm not an expert, but I'm about 80% confident it's basically
impossible to do in the general case.
~~~
voidlogic
>...aside from being orders of magnitude more of an ass-pain if you ever have
to write software that actually deals with machine code
1\. I was talking about external as in the memory hierarchy not development
effort.
>(at least on x86; perhaps other CISCs aren't as bad).
This, the PDP-11 machines have a lovely instruction set for example.
------
IvyMike
One argument I've seen: RISC is one way you can get an advantage of clock
speed, die size, and power.
But another way you can get an advantage in clock speed, die size, and power
is to go to a smaller fab process.
And given Moore's law, die shrinks marched ever on, and the next shrink was
never that far away. And Intel had a boatload of money to push their fabs
ahead of most everyone else.
(Yes, this is pretty hand-wavy, and you can pick a lot of nits, but I think
there's a lot of truth to it.)
~~~
Rusky
And combining the two ways, you get a CISC encoding turned into a RISC-like
internal microcode. This is what x86 does, for example.
~~~
notacoward
I was wondering who would point that out first. Amusingly, Intel was not the
last vendor to stop running x86 instructions natively. IIRC, Cyrix was doing
so well after Intel themselves had switched to the front-end-decoder ("ROP")
approach.
------
gilgoomesh
If anyone is wondering what happened to the RISC/CISC debate...
RISC won and all CPUs are now RISC CPUs. Even the x86 CPUs with CISC
instruction sets are now RISC CPUs.
This is done by using a thin instruction "cracking" layer that turns CISC
instructions into a series of "micro-ops" (equivalent to simple RISC
operations). Additionally, most RISC CPUs still need to break some of their
instructions down into micro-ops.
It just didn't require the death of the x86 instruction set.
~~~
ANTSANTS
Or did CISC win?
Old CISC: Microcoded interpreters interpreting higher level ISAs.
"New" CISC: JITs transpiling higher level ISAs into microcode.
Old RISC: Let's skip the middle man and deal with 80s CISC microcode directly,
so as to simplify instruction decoding and pipelining.
Somewhat new RISC: Oh wait, instruction decoding is trivial, at high
frequencies we can't ignore the fact that i.e. multiplies inherently take
longer to compute than adds, and icache density _really matters_ in an age
when DRAM is orders of magnitude slower than the SRAM it feeds. I guess we'd
better start reading those Ars Technica articles on the design of the Pentium
from the late 90s.
Is "new" CISC wearing old RISC's clothing, or is new RISC just finally
catching up to 90s "new" CISC?
~~~
gilgoomesh
Everybody wins?
~~~
ANTSANTS
Sure, we all settled relatively steadily on fruitful common ground in the end,
and that's all that _really_ matters. I just think it's ironic that people
toot the RISC horn so hard in these threads when modern high performance RISC
chips are much closer to the Pentium than vice versa. So many people miss that
RISC was inspired by CISC microcode, not the other way around, and that the
existence of complicated OoO RISC chips basically proves the RISC hypothesis
(that you could keep the architecture simple to make it easy to crank clock
frequencies up and up) false.
------
api
It's my understanding that memory bandwidth has always held back RISC.
Memory is considerably slower than CPU. CISC can be thought of as a kind of
data compression for code. The article does mention this, but kind of glosses
over its importance. In many cases a load from RAM can take hundreds of clock
cycles, so minimizing that is a huge win. It also makes programs load faster
since smaller code footprints require less disk or network access.
~~~
duaneb
This is a little overstated, typically:
1) Cisc code isn't really any better in some languages, e.g. C++, which uses
heavy code duplication. 2) The instruction cache these days is pretty fucking
huge. Any tight loop will fit in it just fine, and it's hardly like you're
thrashing the cache often at all (except, again in cases where you would
already be thrashing the cache on CISC). It's very difficult to find a
scenario where RISC is held back by the instruction cache where CISC would not
be. Obviously, if you shrink the cache and use -Os and try not to duplicate
code, you could probably run into this scenario more often, but it's just not
a very relevant argument. See: why people don't bother to use thumb
instructions on ARM. It's very rarely the bottleneck for a chunk of code. In
fact, the only place I'd expect to see it make a difference is either a) with
dynamic translation, ala Qemu, where you might rapidly thrash a lot of code
pages, and b) on application load on heavily duplicated code (again, think
C++).
In fact, I'd argue that the RISC vs CISC argument is less relevant than ever
these days:
\+ Compilers hide more assembly than ever, removing the need for human
readability of underlying instructions.
\+ Memory bandwidth and branch prediction are both larger issue on both
architectures than decoding of instructions.
\+ Intel has shown low-power CISC processors are in fact viable (atom and
celeron are both respectable), although it looks difficult to get a risc-like
performance/watt out of them.
\+ Most modern cisc code translates VERY CLEANLY to a risc-like microcode.
Assuming the translation cache is hot, translation really shouldn't add much
overhead.
No, I think the major downsides of CISC are maintainability (both in terms of
ISA and actually laying down logic) and in the difficulty of correct
implementation semantics across diverse implementations, something I'm frankly
amazed at Intel's ability to reliably pull off.
~~~
api
Good points. Intel's ability to pull it off seems a result of bucks and brute
force. They've got the money to fling suicidal hordes of rampaging Ph.Ds at
the problem for decades.
------
faragon
The past was CISC, past future was RISC, and present is CISC-decoded-to-RISC.
Future looks like more of that, i.e. the shorter the opcodes, the better: if a
short opcode can mean complex things, even memory-to-memory operations, it
will not be a problem when being scheduled in OoOE CPUs.
In my opinion, we'll have following things to come:
\- Simple in-order execution CPUs with tons of ALUs, as the generalization of
current GPUs (a la Larrabee or AMD/nVidia/ARM VLIW). This would be used for
graphics and signal processing.
\- Complex OoOE CPUs with expressive ISA for complex r-r/r-m/m-m operations,
transactional operations, runtime-defined opcodes, focused to maximize
sequential execution. With operating system support, it could allow to re-
optimize code, defining opcodes for groups of operations, so code could get
faster/smaller (code self-compression de facto).
~~~
Rusky
The Mill CPU ([http://millcomputing.com/](http://millcomputing.com/)) seems to
be going down both those routes- it's a very in-order, VLIW-like design with
some tweaks to make it work well with typical OOE workloads, including several
ways to make the encoding much smaller.
~~~
faragon
It looks interesting. The VLIW with OoOE approach will make sense, may be they
will follow that path, some day. In my opinion Industry has not yet reached
global adoption of that because of having still some room for enhancements,
being the macro-ops from Intel/AMD the last bullet in that regard. IMO, if not
explicit VLIW ISA, current ISAs (x86 and ARM) will follow a de facto VLIW
transcoding, like Transmeta did back in the day (they had no OoOE VLIW, but
in-order VLIW, in order to reach their power comsumption goals).
------
AceJohnny2
This article doesn't seem to have been updated in a while.
No mention of ARM (which is a RISC architecture)? No mention of power usage
advantage? You're not just removing those code translation transistors to
simplify your chip, you're also removing them to reduce power usage!
~~~
bostonpete
The title does say (~2000).
~~~
rodgerd
ARM had been around for a decade and a half at that point, and was quite
popular. Intel still owned their own (well, Digital's) ARM processors at that
point!
------
Symmetry
I think John Mashey's long-ago usenet post is still the best thing I've seen
on the topic of what RISC is.
[http://userpages.umbc.edu/~vijay/mashey.on.risc.html](http://userpages.umbc.edu/~vijay/mashey.on.risc.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The $35 Raspberry Pi: The cheapest way to play Minecraft - Libertatea
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/141354-the-25-raspberry-pi-the-cheapest-way-to-play-minecraft?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-25-raspberry-pi-the-cheapest-way-to-play-minecraft
======
Zenst
Hmm I was aware that when you get a product in USA and sell in the UK the
conversion is to change the $ sign to a £ sign. But I have not seen it go the
other way!
Can you realy purchase a Pi for $25?
~~~
freehunter
Can you purchase one? I don't believe so. Is one planned? Yes. Currently the
only one on the market is the $35 option, but the $25 option is planned as a
lower-spec version. Have a peek at their FAQs
<http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs>
With shipping and conversion rates, the price I actually paid when I ordered
mine was around $45-$50 though.
------
freehunter
I ordered mine 8 months ago. It should be arriving sometime within the next 20
days. Longest wait to play Minecraft I've ever had.
~~~
RobotCaleb
Crazy. I didn't know there was still a backlog on it. I ordered two when it
launched and have had both for months and months.
~~~
jyu
Probably depends more on the stocks of the resellers and where you are
ordering from.
~~~
freehunter
Yeah, I bought mine from RS. They recently sent me an email saying the product
was on the way, but no tracking number. I guess it will be a surprise.
------
orangethirty
I just wish they could scale their production. The Pi is great, but a waiting
list of _months_ is just crazy.
~~~
comlag
I ordered mine from <http://www.newark.com/> and had it within 2 weeks.
~~~
npsimons
I ordered mine in April? May? It got here last Saturday. I'm not complaining
(I've been busy with other stuff; I haven't even had a chance to play with it
yet!), it's pretty awesome to think of this kind of power for so little cost,
and it's like early Christmas :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Where do Github users live? WebGL visualization - hawkharris
http://aasen.in/github_globe/
======
arscan
I've been fiddling around with a realtime(ish) geo visualization of github
updates. Fans of the movie WarGames might enjoy the theme:
[http://streams.robscanlon.com/github](http://streams.robscanlon.com/github)
Its a work in progress!
~~~
sneak
I love that you're using IRC as the messaging protocol.
~~~
arscan
Way more fun than redis. I actually like to sit in the channel and watch the
data fly by (its color coded so its actually quite pretty). /connect
irc.robscanlon.com /join #github or /join #wikipedia. You can create your own
channel and stream your own data as well (it'll automatically create a url on
my site for you with that wargame theme). I'm working on other themes that you
can choose from.
And please don't bug the web-* bots that are hanging out in the rooms... they
are the actual web servers and are a bit busy at the moment ;-)
------
guard-of-terra
It stacks what I assume to be all unresolved Russian locations to a column the
size of Saint Petersburg in the middle of Siberia.
Same thing with China with a large spike in the middle of Gobi desert.
Same with Canada - apparently some lumberjacks code when it snows too hard and
they can't get out!
I wonder if there is a similar column in the USA and where is it located.
India is surprisingly bare. Come on, you can do better than that.
P. S. Went to update my Location: in github.
~~~
aaasen
Author here, sorry about the spikes where people do not actually live. A lot
of users put only their country and not city, and I didn't want to throw that
data away.
I probably should've checked the specificity of the location and only thrown
out the data for large countries like Russia and China, or distributed it
across all other data points in the country.
Interesting project if you want to fork it!
~~~
guard-of-terra
Distributing it across should work well. Throwing out not so much because
you're losing a varying big chunk of data.
------
oscilloscope
Here's a quick 2d visualization of the data using D3.js. The advantage of a 2d
projection is you can see all parts of the globe at once and have quantitative
encodings that aren't distorted by projection effects. In this case,
color+radius encode the magnitude variable, but there is overlap of adjacent
circles.
[http://bl.ocks.org/syntagmatic/6769077](http://bl.ocks.org/syntagmatic/6769077)
~~~
tectonic
Very cool. Also, I didn't know about bl.ocks.org!
------
sejje
It takes a minute, for my brain at least, to realize that the darker bits are
the landmasses.
I unconsciously expected the opposite.
~~~
k-mcgrady
I had the same problem. Looked around for about 10 seconds wondering why I
couldn't recognise anything.
~~~
CodeCube
Oh man, I thought it was just me!! Sat here for a while in quiet shame after I
realized it and thought there must be something wrong with me :P
------
lechevalierd3on
Good 3d visualization is tricky, this is a good example of a 3d fail. The 3d
here adds more trouble than goods. It makes it harder to see the whole set of
data and it is also harder to compare.
~~~
breck
As someone else mentioned, there's a 2D version as well
([http://bl.ocks.org/syntagmatic/6769077](http://bl.ocks.org/syntagmatic/6769077)).
Personally I loved the 3D version. I found it interesting and __fun __.
------
ajmurmann
It would be very exciting to normalize the Github user numbers by the
population in the area they map to. Right now especially in Europe it seems to
pretty much seems to map to population numbers of cities.
~~~
singlow
+1
It does correlate quite a bit to city population, although, the spike in what
I presume to be Austin, relative to Dallas or Houston is quite telling.
~~~
sehr
That was the biggest surprise to me. I know Houston has over twice as many
people but I didn't expect the numbers to be that large of a difference.
------
seivan
It took a while until I realized that the black parts were land and gray was
water.
Am I the only one who feel like it should be the reverse?
~~~
anonymous
No, it was the same for me. Seas are dark blue while landmasses are white near
the poles, green in most other places and sandy yellow in deserts - light
colours. It makes me expect lands to be light and seas to be dark, even on a
stylised monochrome globe.
------
Systemic33
Any thoughts what the European location that seems to be southwest of Berlin.
Seems to be between Hannover and Leipzig, but there are no major cities there,
and it's strange that its bigger than Berlin.
EDIT: Could be people who just wrote "Germany".
~~~
hwh
Well, it could be my coworkers here in Göttingen, but given that this lovely
little town is about quite the middle of the country, I'm going with your
post-edited hypothesis. Thanks for the hint, though, I was scratching my head
about some of the other points I could not attribute to any city known to me.
------
cpfohl
Hmm, would have been nice if the great lakes were still in place in North
America...they're very useful landmarks for us frozen chosen in the American
tundra (read: New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Ontario).
------
snogglethorpe
Hmm, I'm little suspicious of the accuracy of these numbers...
I looked at Japan, and there's a very high bar for Tokyo, which is expected
(and a shorter line right next to it which is probably Yokohama)—and then
there's a slightly shorter but still pretty extreme bar that looks like it's
smack dab in the middle of Nagano prefecture, which is relatively speaking,
the boonies. There seems to be almost nothing for Osaka and other big Japanese
cities....
------
bnegreve
I find it very hard to read because you cannot see the height of the bar from
above. And when you can see the bar, then you can't see the country.
------
datahipster
This is pretty cool! However, I'm going to put on my Edward Tufte hat and
point out that it's probably best to serve up this data in a static table. It
always disappoints me to see sparse, categorical data visualized on a map
since there's no additional context one achieves from the geospatial
components. OP: maybe you could explore visualizing continuous fields, such as
the Earth gravity field:
[http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/gallery/gravity/ggm01_asia_f...](http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/gallery/gravity/ggm01_asia_full.jpg)
------
grogenaut
While it looks cool, it only takes you a second to realize that this is kind
of a worthless visualization because to see the height of the bar you have to
spin the globe so the line is parallel to the view plane. If you are looking
straight down, you only get the color.
Remember, 3d isn't 3d, it's 3d projected on a 2d plane. And if this were real
steroscopic 3d, then each of these datapoints would be like the 3d gimmics in
movies like a spear right to your face.
That said I've got this bookmarked because I think at it's base it could be
useful for other visualizations.
~~~
aaasen
I also used the same data in a 3D visualization with the Oculus Rift. You can
check out a demo here:
[http://youtu.be/dgMOdzfoPgs?t=31s](http://youtu.be/dgMOdzfoPgs?t=31s)
------
tjmc
Wow - nice work! Are there really that many contributors in Alice Springs or
is the big spike in the middle of the country just a generic "Australia" stat?
~~~
taybenlor
Yeah it seems odd that there are more people in Alice Springs than in Perth.
Must just be "Australia".
~~~
mittsh
I don't think it's Alice Springs. It's probably all users that wrote
"Australia" as location + Alice Springs is actually a little northern that
this bar.
------
wallawe
If you're wondering why Andreessen Horowitz felt github was worth the 100M
dollar investment, look no further than India and China. These massive
populations are yet to be tapped for the most part leaving a great opportunity
for future growth. For a company that has been profitable from the get-go,
things are only going to get a lot better in the long run.
Awesome job on the visualization btw.
~~~
bradleyland
I know we're all guessing here, because I assume you don't work at Andreessen
Horowitz, but I don't agree with the bet you're making. When it comes to
online services, China has a tendency to adopt their own versions of services
started elsewhere. For example, Google is dying hard in China [1]. The players
in the social media scene are similarly unfamiliar to users outside of China,
with Weibo leading (I'm lacking citation here).
If Github sees China as an opportunity, they'd better move quick, and look
very deeply at what has allowed services like Baidu and Weibo to trounce
American-born competitors in their market.
[http://www.techinasia.com/china-baidu-qihoo-google-search-
ma...](http://www.techinasia.com/china-baidu-qihoo-google-search-market-share-
war/)
------
shubb
It looks like this awesome visualization was done with Three.js, but I wanted
to flag Ceasium[1] to anyone wanted to do 3D 'map stuff' in a browser. It has
some great features, like built in support for CRS systems (hard), WMS/WMTS
client. We got a lot done with it really fast.
[1][http://cesium.agi.com/](http://cesium.agi.com/)
------
davidfischer
My GitHub data challenge entry was along a similar vein. The data is stale
now, but it does break it down by project and language which can form some
interesting hotspots.
The globe is a really nice touch and you did a good job on
canonicalization/grouping/binning.
[http://davidfischer.github.io/gdc2/](http://davidfischer.github.io/gdc2/)
------
simonholroyd
Seems curious to me that (at least by visual comparison) London looks to be
about 30% larger than NYC, and NYC appears to be about the same as Paris. By
population, you'd expect NYC = London > Paris. Is NYC really still that far
behind in its tech scene? Does Paris have that large a tech scene? Or am I
just reading the chart poorly?
------
arxpoetica
It's not showing my data from Antarctica.
~~~
aaasen
It only shows the 1000 most common locations. Sorry!
------
metaphorm
The real story this map tells is about the Digital Divide between the First
World and Third World.
------
puller
The usual problem with this kind of visualization is that, as you add more
data, you get what is basically just a population density map.
What would be interesting is to see where there are more Github users than you
would expect by pure density of internet users.
~~~
mcosta
This is not the case. Examples: NYC vs SF and Madrid vs Berlin. Well, Madrid
is bigger and more dense than most of the cities with more github users in
this map.
------
aliston
Great visualization, but it really needs labels or some other means of
figuring out what city the columns are referring to.
What is the third large spike on the East Coast? I assume the two more
Northern spikes are Boston and New York.
~~~
troygoode
Washington, DC
------
lelandbatey
Lane, I don't know if you remember me, but I saw your name and instantly
thought "Of course Lane would build something this cool."
_AWESOME_ job with this, it's both fascinating and well laid out!
~~~
aaasen
Thanks Leland!
------
romland
More visualizations of the same type can be found here:
[http://www.chromeexperiments.com/globe](http://www.chromeexperiments.com/globe)
(some interesting ones) :)
------
mittsh
Very awesome visualization work! Though it shows bars in the middle of nowhere
(see France, UK...China too maybe), probably users that haven't mentioned any
city.
------
blt
Low quality texture map with seams and bad filtering at the poles. Big
perceptible delay on camera movements. WebGL doesn't make a subpar gfx demo
cool.
------
dpcx
This is neat. Would it be possible to add boundary lines? It's difficult to
determine where Louisville Kentucky is without them.
------
lambdasquirrel
As with all similar such counts, it would be nice to be able to see them
normalized against the size of the local population.
------
smoyer
This might be the most beautiful visualization I've ever seen ... well done.
------
Quarrelsome
For some reason the rotation animation and control is incredibly satisfying.
------
mratzloff
Nice! Would be cool to have a tooltip over the lines to show the location.
------
GeneralMayhem
Cool stuff. That's some gnarly JPEG around the coasts, though.
------
Argentum01
Makes me want to commit some code in antarctica...
------
CmonDev
I guess, London is the tech centre of Europe.
------
jsonmez
Antartica you are disappoint :*(
------
mumbi
Very awesome and interesting.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nintendo files patent to emulate its Gameboy on phones - sanqui
http://www.dailydot.com/technology/nintendo-gameboy-emulator-patent/
======
anonbanker
Prior Art [1]:
* no$gmb
* VGB-DOS
* Boycott
* GNUBoy
* HelloGB
* KGB
* Virtual GameBoy
Just as Nintendo owns few of the patents on the computer chips inside the
original GameBoy, they do not automatically get to patent the rights to a
virtualized version. "Possible" improvements (especially when none are listed
or implemented) do not allow wiggle-room for this patent, either.
Someone should call Marat Fayzullin [2], and have him sue nintendo for
violation of his intellectual property (Virtual GB was the first
implementation), then bring that lawsuit to the patent office as evidence of
an improper patent filing, in order to bring it up for a review.
1\. [http://www.zophar.net/gb.html](http://www.zophar.net/gb.html)
2\.
[http://marc.rawer.de/Gameboy/Docs/GBCPUman.pdf](http://marc.rawer.de/Gameboy/Docs/GBCPUman.pdf)
& [http://fms.komkon.org/GameBoy/](http://fms.komkon.org/GameBoy/)
------
mschuster91
Hmm... wouldn't Prior Art render this patent null and void?
~~~
psgbg
There's an interesting argument behind that.
Back in the days of the DS, an emulator of the DS was leaked.
I don't know much about US legislation, but apparently if you develop an
patentable artifact and it's publicly known, the creator has up to one year to
file a claim for a patent.
~~~
james-skemp
I'm confused.
The DS was released well over a year ago, so I'm confused why you're bringing
up the one year filling bit. Can you clarify?
~~~
psgbg
It's Ok, I'm just bringing that up.
Since they themselves developed an DS emulator and never filed a patent claim
that's a precedent. Ok the DS and the GameBoy are different but if you add
that Emulation is not something new, plus they never considered protect that
asset so is another argument Against that patent.
------
paulhauggis
I think this is a little late. There are so many free emulators out there, why
would I go through Nintendo?
~~~
psgbg
Because Lawyers. They think Nintendo could Bleem all the emulators, so they
are preparing the move to fortify their position.
Next develop/release a proper emulator then Use the Google and Apple stores to
enforce their copyright and profit!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why are p2.16xlarge EC2 spot instances 10x the price of on-demand? - marklit
EC2 is currently listing Linux-based p2.16xlarge instances in Ireland at $155.52 / hour at the moment. Getting on-demand instances at $15.552 / hour is proving impossible. Any idea why there's a price spike? Any good alternatives short of just buying some cards?
======
vosper
I haven't used AWS for a year, but last time I saw this it was crypto coin
miners who didn't know how to use the spot market place properly. This was way
back when Bitcoin was first spiking, and for about two weeks the price of the
compute instances was ridiculous (CPU mining was still a thing). This was
confirmed later by an AWS person.
If you look outside the default us-east-1 region you often find prices are
more stable (though not always as cheap)
------
dakami
Funny you should ask. I just looked into this:
[https://twitter.com/dakami/status/884715382061252608](https://twitter.com/dakami/status/884715382061252608)
Yeah. Ethereum blew up and all that compute is going towards GPU Mining.
------
petercooper
I'm guessing if you can't even get any at on-demand pricing, the demand is
high, the supply is too low, so the only way to get access is to pay through
the roof.
~~~
marklit
I'm wondering if the Cloud providers are seeing cryptocoin mining as the
primary workload at the moment and don't want to be left with a ton of
inventory the next time there is a difficulty increment and clients move on.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
James Frey’s Fiction Factory - tricky
http://nymag.com/print/?/arts/books/features/69474/
======
misuba
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I can't wait for Frey to get
some competition. On the other, he's actually a pretty good commercial writer
(competing with him will be pretty tough on that front) and I almost hope he
branches out into the kind of formulaic, Oprah-bait adult fiction that mostly
fills bookstore shelves - the stuff that's actually insufficiently pretentious
(yes, that is possible). It's practically genre fiction already; why not have
somebody drive the point home?
------
gatsby
This practice has been alive in various forms of art (ghostwriters on songs,
apprentice painters, writers-for-hire, etc.) for the last several decades (at
least).
As others have mentioned, the work often provides little creative value, but
builds huge cult followings and massive profits for the artists. Koons' art
regularly sells for $10-25mm and one of Hirst's auctions generated $198mm in
2008. Likewise, musical artists who employ ghostwriters often make it to the
top of the charts, and authors like Frey can reap millions from their hired
"co-writers."
Using "assistants" has been around for many years, and it's not going away
anytime soon - there's still money to be made. One of the best examples of the
absurdity occurring in the creative world is Banksy's Mr. Brainwash character
in 'Exit Through the Gift Shop.' Highly recommended to all.
------
tricky
"He was looking for young writers to join him on a new publishing endeavor—a
company that would produce mostly young-adult novels. Frey believed that Harry
Potter and the Twilight series had awakened a ravenous market of readers and
were leaving a substantial gap in their wake. He wanted to be the one to fill
it."
"In exchange for delivering a finished book within a set number of months, the
writer would receive $250 (some contracts allowed for another $250 upon
completion), along with a percentage of all revenue generated by the project"
~~~
runevault
...without proof he can deliver sales yet only a $500 advance? Wow that's...
ballsy. I know he's known for his books on writing but still, this seems an
odd play and without prior proof hard to buy into.
~~~
tricky
He did sell "I Am Number Four" to Spielberg.
~~~
runevault
Was that someone else's work? I know he can sell his own stuff, at least to
publishing houses.
~~~
tricky
yes, the series was conceived and written by a Columbia mfa
~~~
runevault
Interesting. Though not sure I'd call selling to one person (Spielberg) the
same as publishing (selling to the masses). But it's a lot better credential
than only selling your own stuff.
------
muhfuhkuh
This sounds really close to what Mark Kostabi did (does?) with his art: He
hires fresh or recent art-school students for basically teenage McJob wages
and "collaborates" with them (basically affixes his signature on their work)
and sells the canvas for US$10000-50000 each.
There is a market for this teen/young adult genre-crossing stuff, and it will
_certainly_ get saturated at some point. Whether that some point is when Frey
starts his Warhol/Kostabi factory or not is the key question.
------
cafard
He strikes me as being, for the printed word, what Jeff Koons is for sculpture
and portraiture, all buzz and little value.
------
kenjackson
Is this the Y-Combinator of books?
~~~
petercooper
Only if Y Combinator took total control of your idea, how it was sold, put
only their name on it, and dealt with all the money coming into your business.
So no, not really.
~~~
kenjackson
What is up with all the terms around pseudonym's and substituting the author's
name and such? I get having terms that move a lot of the risk to the young
writer, but I don't get why you'd be so malicious as to demand that they can't
be associated with a book they've written.
~~~
gallerytungsten
It's pretty simple. If a book succeeds, the author's name acquires "brand
equity." Frey wants to retain total ownership of all the equity. The real
author knows it's a fraud; but with a confidentiality clause, they can't tell
the world. It's an extremely nasty clause, designed to keep the author
beholden to Frey. Sadly, this type of control freakism and greed are common in
the murkier echelons of both the music and film business. To be fair, Frey is
not alone. Any big shot who suddenly "writes" a memoir most likely had help;
and a standard part of such ghostwriting arrangements is that the real author
remain exactly that: a ghost.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cancer therapy by RNA delivery to dendritic cells - kaivi
http://www.nature.com/articles/nature18300
======
rcthompson
This is certainly an interesting and theoretically promising method, that, if
it works, should make it fairly easy to develop specific personalized
"vaccines" for each person's cancer.
For background, dendritic cells are a type of antigen-presenting cells, which
means their job is to pick up proteins, break them up into small pieces
(antigens), and then show those pieces to T-cells, whereupon the T-cells can
either say "looks like a self antigen, everything's fine" or say "that looks
like a foreign antigen, raise the alarm!" and then initiate a specific immune
response against that antigen.
The basic concept here is that if you have a specific protein that you want to
raise an immune response against, you can do so by tricking dendritic cells
into producing copies of that protein, which will then get presented along
with all the other antigens for inspection by T-cells. You can pull off this
trick by feeding RNA that encodes the target protein to the dendritic cells,
and as a bonus, the fact that there's free RNA floating around triggers anti-
viral defenses, which causes the T-cells to be extra suspicious of the
antigens they're inspecting (i.e. it lowers their threshold for raising an
immune response). But injecting RNA directly into your spleen isn't exactly
practical, so instead they found that attaching the negatively charged RNA to
some positively charged lipids in a specific ratio (which results in a
specific ratio of charge to mass) causes them to localize to the spleen and
then get taken up, translated, and presented by dendritic cells when injected
intravenously.
So, put it all together, and the workflow for treating cancer looks something
like this:
1\. Find a protein produced by the cancer cells that is either sufficiently
different from the same protein in normal cells (due to mutation) or not
produced in normal cells.
2\. Construct an RNA transcript that will produce that protein when
translated.
3\. Attach that RNA transcript to the liposomes in the appropriate ratio, and
inject it into your bloodstream.
4\. Let the immune system do its thing.
5\. Repeat as necessary to keep the immune response active until it's killed
all the cancer.
Obviously step 1 is still the hard part, and the paper chose as a proof of
concept two example cancers for which this step was already done. But finding
a viable cancer-specific antigen is certainly orders of magnitude easier than
determining the mechanism of a cancer and then developing a treatment specific
to that mechanism.
~~~
pvnick
Great summary, thanks for that. This therapy appears fairly elegant. Let's
hope it makes it through trials.
~~~
rcthompson
Yes, it certainly seems elegant, but with biology (and science in general),
you always have to keep in mind that the (apparent) elegance of an approach is
predicated on the assumption that we have an accurate understanding of how the
system in question works, which frequently turns out not to be the case.
~~~
muditjai
Thanks for the great summary. But I'm guessing previous immunotherapy based
treatments are also based on stimulating T-cells to fight cancer cells. Any
idea why they didn't work? This method only makes it easy to stimulate
T-cells, but what about mutations in cancer.
~~~
rcthompson
The job of the immune system is to distinguish self from non-self and to seek
and destroy any non-self that it discovers. If you want to get the immune
system to fight something, you need to get it to recognize that something as
non-self, preferably without also forcing it to recognize your own healthy
cells as non-self (because then you'd have autoimmune disease). Cancer is an
especially difficult case for the immune system because for the most part,
cancer cells are your own cells with just a few mutations[1]. The vast
majority of proteins produced by cancer cells are the same proteins that your
healthy cells produce. They may be produced in different proportions,
regulated differently, etc., but they are the same proteins. Even the proteins
that mutated could have only a single amino acid change relative to the
original. So the difference between healthy cells and cancer cells at a
molecular level is much more subtle than the difference between your cells and
bacterial cells, for example. It's not impossible for your immune system to
identify cancer cells, but it's obviously not guaranteed either. (There's a
nigh-untestable theory that a majority of cancers are actually detected and
destroyed by the immune system long before they become symptomatic, so the
ones we see are just the ones that managed to evade the immune system in their
early stages.)
As I've mentioned above, this paper skips the hard part of finding a suitable
protein target by picking two proof-of-concept cancer models for which a
suitable "non-self" target is already known.
[1] Actually many mutations, but few that affect protein sequences, which are
what T-cells mainly look at.
------
baldfat
Paywall: I read this as an ability to help in immunotherapy which works like a
vaccine. I really am interested in what types of cancer this works with the
strongest effect. They list soft tumors in Lungs.
The bellow citation seems to show that these are something that could work on
all cancer types and is cheap. These are exciting times.
Now it will be another 5 years till we see this even in a trial for children?
(Son and sister died of cancer and my daughter's 10 year old friend (same
cancer as my sister) is in immunotherapy trial which we are praying for a
miracle for her reoccurring brain cancer.
> RNA-LPX vaccines are fast and inexpensive to produce, and virtually any
> tumour antigen can be encoded by RNA.
~~~
Aelinsaar
It's very exciting, but as these therapies become more successful, we're going
to have to tackle the adverse reactions both acute, and chronic. Granted,
you're surviving cancer so that's not the primary concern, but it will be a
concern.
~~~
baldfat
Well that is the Number One Reason why they are going immuntheraphy the side
effects are minor compared to Chemo and Radiation. This is your own body
fighting the cancer.
~~~
Aelinsaar
I don't think "Minor" is accurate. A good friend just went through this to
beat a strange form of metastatic blood cancer, and he was in the ICU for a
week as a direct result. (and essentially comatose) It was worth it, since he
went from, "Plan your death" to, "Full remission!". Still, he was strong going
in, a lot of people would have died.
Right now, there's still a lot of art to the balance between having your
immune system fight hard enough to kill the cancer, without setting off a
cytokine storm that kills you. There's also the issue of longer term
autoimmune complications, which I suspect will turn out to be the "secondary
cancers" of the immunotherapy world.
------
superfx
Here's the full article for those interested:
[http://rdcu.be/iFZr](http://rdcu.be/iFZr)
~~~
baldfat
Thank you for the link
------
reasonattlm
Paper:
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature18300](http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature18300)
Company release: [http://biontech.de/2016/06/01/nature-publication-
describes-f...](http://biontech.de/2016/06/01/nature-publication-describes-
first-example-of-a-clinically-applicable-and-systemic-mrna-cancer-
immunotherapy-vaccine/)
Really it is pretty random as to what cancer research and development gets
more or less attention from the media and public. Merit has little to do with
it. You should assume that any given article like this is representative of
many similar ones that passed by without comment.
The most important thing for any approach aspiring to be widespread in the
next generation of cancer research is how costly it is to adapt the platform
to any specific cancer. The only way to make real inroads in control of cancer
is to crush down the cost of addressing different cancers, making it a small
project rather than a whole new research initiative each time around.
~~~
hanklazard
>The only way to make real inroads in control of cancer is to crush down the
cost of addressing different cancers, making it a small project rather than a
whole new research initiative each time around.
Agreed. And while this study's methods wouldn't be cheap per se, RNA-based
methods combined with whole genome sequencing of tumors are much more cost
(and time) efficient methods than approaches that require antibodies or
chimeric proteins. I believe that these methods, in combination with
immunotherapy, are the best candidates for future cancer therapy.
------
pessimist
To keep things in perspective, in oncology the current success rate of
treatments that enter trials is just 5%! See
[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/06/02/are...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/06/02/are-
things-getting-any-better-in-the-clinic).
Immunotherapy is indeed the most promising approach to cancer therapy so I'm
optimistic, but the odds of success here are 1-in-20 if this is an average
study, or perhaps 1-in-5 at best.
~~~
danieltillett
You certainly have chosen the right user name, but it is a logical error to
use the success rate of all cancer trials to calculate the chance of success
of this immunotherapy trial.
------
brudgers
The breaking story in the popular press:
[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/cancer-vaccine-
imm...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/cancer-vaccine-
immunotherapy-universal-immune-system-rna-nature-journal-a7060181.html)
------
teekert
This link does work, assuming it is the same article:
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature18300.html)
~~~
VSerge
thanks
------
wyldfire
Stupid/insensitive question: what if cancer were a species "feature" earned
through evolution that helps reap people who made it through their
reproductive years without accident or disease but are now more hindrance than
help to the species?
~~~
Houshalter
Because evolution doesn't work on a species level, it works on a gene level.
Genes that help propagate themselves spread more. A cancer causing gene would
almost certainly be selected against, vs a gene that caused you to live longer
and have more children - and spread more copies of itself.
The reason people die is not because it's better for evolution. It's because
evolution simply doesn't care about maximizing life expectancy. Most organisms
die long before they get cancer, so the fitness of a gene that prevents cancer
is pretty small.
~~~
dekhn
I take issue with your first statement- evolution certainly works at the
species level (in the sense that population genetics is a thing). It does
appear there is a population fitness that is selected for when two desirable
phenotypes can't be accomodated in a single individual.
Also, "Most organisms die long before they get cancer, so the fitness of a
gene that prevents cancer is pretty small." ignores the fact that there are
genes preventing cancer (tumor suppressors), and those genes are under active
selection.
~~~
Houshalter
>evolution certainly works at the species level (in the sense that population
genetics is a thing).
That's not at the species level. That's, at the very best, at the level of _a
very small_ group. And most of those theories have generally been discredited
- it only works if the beneficial effect on the group is sufficiently large,
see
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/kw/the_tragedy_of_group_selectionism...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/kw/the_tragedy_of_group_selectionism/)
>there are genes preventing cancer (tumor suppressors), and those genes are
under active selection.
That doesn't contradict what I said. Those genes work well enough to prevent
cancer in young organisms, but they are clearly not enough to stop all cancer.
Why hasn't evolution evolved away all cancer? Because even if there was a gene
that could decrease cancer risk by _an additional 1%_ , it wouldn't actually
increase fitness that much. A 1% decrease in risk is small on it's own, and
then it only affects the 1% of organisms that haven't already died of other
things. Preventing cancer is just not in evolution's priorities - at least not
past a certain point.
~~~
dekhn
I concede I was probably inaccurate in my statement about evolution and the
species level; note, however, that I disagree with people who believe that the
gene is the unit of evolutionary selection (I would refine it to say
"functional region" rather than gene because I believe that mutations in
enhancers and other transcriptional activators play a bigger role in evolution
that mainstream science).
On to your second reply: I basically agree. We're mostly arguing about where
that certain point is. Problem is: cancer is a disease that is closely tied to
many necessary functional parts of multicellular organisms.
In a sense cancer is what gets people who weren't got by something more acute
earlier, and probably evolution is addressing the more acute issues with a
higher priority.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Azure rising: MS will be largest Cloud Service by 2019 - SQL2219
http://www.geekwire.com/2016/azure-rising-microsoft-will-largest-infrastructure-service-vendor-2019-says-new-morgan-stanley-survey/
======
DamnYuppie
Having used both Amazon's Web Services and Azure I am not surprised by this
one bit. Once you get past basic hosting and storage Microsoft's offerings are
deeper and better integrated.
Also they are bringing out Azure Stack which will let you run Azure on prem. I
don't believe this will be ready until 2017 and yes they have specific
hardware requirements so you can't just plop it down in an existing data
center but I do like the concept and direction.
------
herbst
It does look a bit better (not good IMO, but amazon is way worse) but it is
still Microsoft, with their main competency being Windows. Most applications
don't usually run on Windows, a lot would simply perform worse.
I don't see this happening, really.
~~~
mindcrime
Likewise, I have a hard time buying this. Azure is better than what I would
expect from MS in many ways, but it's still Microsoft. Granted, you can run
Linux VM's with no problem, but why would you go to Microsoft to run a Linux
server given the other options? Unless they do something really amazing in the
near-term, color me skeptical.
~~~
herbst
Exactly. Why would i settle for some properitary hypervisor actually ment for
windows to host my linux machines when i also can use industrie standards.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Does creating a startup helps you get interviews in big tech companies? - ai_ia
I am a starting a startup. Have quit my job recently and will be working on it for next couple of months. I would like to know if someone got any jobs after failure from startups, (obviously success would mean a different story) in any big companies. The roles such as Product management etc.<p>Or generally how is the job scene after startup failure.
======
faet
I think it depends on the reason for the startup and how close to success you
got.
I have friends who started a startup, got VC money, and ultimately shut it
down after 2-3 years. They didn't have any issue getting another job as they
had a product to show and they worked with a standard team. It was essentially
a 'business that failed' and they were able to show the successes they did
have (fundraising/launching/hiring/etc).
I have friends who tried consulting/solo startup and gave up after a year of
no traction. They had a harder time getting a job afterwards because people
felt they were just going to leave after they got another idea for a startup.
"Less likely to put up with work politics" or they felt they "just took a year
off" because they didn't have much to show for it.
I've started startups/businesses as side projects and I've found that it has
only helped me. Most people are curious about them, gives me something to talk
about, and I get to discuss pain points and things I've learned. But, they
don't see it as a threat as I present it as a way to "learn" and keep my
skills up to date.
------
ecesena
If you start a startup to close it in 2 months, don't do it. You won't get
anything good out of it.
If you work on your own startup, and eventually shut it down, in SV at least
is not seen as an issue and you'll have many opportunities. It all goes down
to what you achieved in term of product and team.
If you run your own project for 2 months, you're not much better than before.
If you grow a team even of 3-5 people, maybe raise some money, have a
compelling story about your product, and hustle for a few years, that's a
completely different story.
Best of luck.
------
xstartup
Having run a successful startup, I keep getting offers from middle-tier
companies, not from FAANG.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Say Goodbye to BlackBerry? If Obama Has To, Yes He Can. Maybe. - dcurtis
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/us/politics/16blackberry.html
======
robg
I love the fact that he's the President, but he may not be "allowed" to use
email.
The biggest loss may be one they briefly cite: Getting a view from outside his
bubble. Cutting a president off from his personal contacts, the ones best
positioned to give unvarnished advice, seems like exactly what happens as a
president becomes increasingly isolated from the "real" world.
~~~
jonknee
He still has a phone.
~~~
mnemonik
Which do you use more and find more convenient, a phone or the internet?
~~~
jonknee
Point taken, but if I was the President and people would stop mid-sex to take
my calls and I had a staff to screen incoming calls, I'd probably warm up to
the phone.
The law's a bit unfair that all email is public record but no phone calls are,
until that changes I don't expect a President to be a big emailer.
I wonder where text messages fall, public record?
------
mdasen
I wish this weren't the case. In a government where an embarrassing email is
more important than sound policy, we all loose. Yet, from both sides, we cast
out politicians for gaffes and misspeaks while leaving those who don't offend
and merely mismanage and embezzle to reap the rewards.
Maybe I'm just being pessimistic.
------
gcv
Presidential email is a tough technical problem. The audit trail piece is easy
enough, but there's also the problem of keeping the email account clean and
secure. Somehow, it needs to provide relatively unfettered access to the
president from his close friends and advisors, but not allow the general
public or untrusted parties to send messages to it. It should guarantee that
emails sent to that account are from verifiable sources. It absolutely must
guarantee that emails sent from that account were sent by the president.
Security by obscurity is bound to fail, as an obscure address will leak out
quickly. A private-key system (PGP/GPG) is a step in the right direction. All
unsigned or unencrypted mail sent to or from that account would be rejected
outright (but looked at by staff and saved, of course). In this restricted
case, where the number of trusted recipients is manageable, even the public
key distribution problem is simple: a Secret Service agent could hand-deliver
a CD containing the president's public key to every trusted recipient, and
pick up the recipient's public key in return.
Keeping recipients' private keys secure is more difficult. Whereas I'm sure
that the NSA or even the White House IT staff can keep the president's private
key reasonably safe, a security breach on a correspondent's laptop, with a
private key on it, would potentially mean that someone can masquerade as a
trusted recipient. That would, at best, lead to the feared PR nightmare and
scandal.
------
anon256
"G94B@aol.com"? Yuck.
~~~
aneesh
For what it's worth, '94 was the year he was elected Governor of Texas.
~~~
LPTS
Don't you know that magicians take numbers as names (crowley was 666), RAW and
23?
g94b is obviously a black magic name. Obviously it's the number he was given
by Satan when he sucked Satans cock and drank blood to gain power in a skull
and bones bilderberger convention. You have a superficial explanation for what
is obviously a flag for other black magicians as intent on evil as he is. 94
is the number of children whose blood he had to drink to get power. That it's
related to the year was synchronistic. The other black magicians called him 94
long before that.
------
sown
It seems that this could be an easily solvable solution...there is a way to
have BES archive mail via exchange + symantec vault or emc xtender or whatever
and he could use white lists + pgp to make sure he is talking to who he thinks
he is..but i don't know what the requirements are for this kind of system
~~~
notauser
As president he could have a totally isolated mail system with a staffer to
transfer messages to it after verifying identity.
~~~
sown
I forgot that BES sends email through canada
------
jrockway
I will be amused if he has to give up his Blackberry. Bush used his power to
indefinitely detain and torture people he didn't like -- in a military base in
another country... then we complain about Obama wanting to be more productive
and send e-mail?
Anyway, I assume Windows Mobile (or Android) will be just as good for him? The
government can setup their monitoring server, and he can IMAP from that. In
fact, I will set this up and maintain it for free, just because I'm such a
nice guy. (I should tweet this -- he follows me on Twitter ;)
~~~
mattmaroon
Don't Blackberries typically connect to an Exchange server? It's trivial to
document/archive them, I think its more the invasion of privacy.
~~~
alecco
From TA, Obama faces three problems.
1 All his private mail exchanges will be archived.
2 Third parties listening on the wire (security breach or PR scandal.)
3 Potential PR disclosure scandal by someone who had a conversation with him (Lewinsky, anyone?)
He can diminish the amount of personal talks to deal with problem 1 (e.g.
something he'd say to his wife.) Having encrypted client server conversation
doesn't completely fix 2, doing PGP-style encryption mostly would do (there is
still the issue of PDA security, usually it's not good.) But that would make
problem 3 even worse as the valid 3rd party can now show the message(s)
cryptographically signed by Obama.
This last bit can be addressed with Off-the-Record cryptography as it offers
plausible deniability. <http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/> But the third parties
should have to have a compatible client (that could be a nice filter for
randoms :)
Anyway, the NSA can sure give him a PDA-based system better than Blackberry +
Exchange, with all that and maybe more.
------
andreyf
<http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>
_A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing
president, but aides said that seemed doubtful [...] aides said he hopes to
have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first
American president to do so._
That is pathetic.
~~~
mattmaroon
Must be those Big Email lobbying bucks at work.
~~~
andreyf
I'm missing something - the article refers to the Blackberry in the title as
well as all over the article...
The comment about it being pathetic that Obama would be the first "emailing
president" or the first president with a laptop in his office is unrelated.
~~~
mattmaroon
I don't see how that has to be PR. Obama actually uses a Blackberry,
Blackberry addiction is so common that there's a term for it (Crackbery) that
even my dad would know, and their brand name has almost become a generic
substitute for any smartphone with a keybad. Blackberry is the knew Kleenex or
Xerox.
I don't think PG would suggest that every time you see a brand name its due to
submarine PR.
------
sdurkin
The reason politicians worry so much about using email is accountability. They
use the phone so the lawyers can't prove anything.
There needs to be some sort of legal exception made for email. It shouldn't
carry the same weight as regular correspondence.
------
mattmaroon
Poor guy. I know what it's like to be addicted to push email. It's the primary
thing tethering me to the traditional Microsoft stack.
~~~
axod
iPhone has done push email for a while now ;) It's a great feature though.
~~~
snprbob86
It isn't really "push". It is just a very high rate pull. It really hurts
battery life.
~~~
dcurtis
Yeah, it's pathetic and Apple has really failed at this. But at least they
admit it, and say they are trying to improve.
------
albertni
Hardest job in the world just keeps sounding worse and worse =)
------
newt0311
Why is this "story" on a major national (in this case international)
newspaper? Why is this even on hn? Does the New York Times not have anything
more important to report?
~~~
mattmaroon
I found it fairly interesting that he'd be the first president to have a
laptop on his desk, and the first to use email.
~~~
Maktab
That's not really correct. There's still no word on whether he'll be allowed
to send and receive emails directly during his term(s) as president. The
chances are that the risks will be considered too high to permit it.
If that happens, he'll be in the same position as George W. Bush, who was a
fairly prolific emailer before becoming president but was not permitted to use
the technology directly while in office.
As an aside, it may not always be a good thing. South Africa's former
president Thabo Mbeki was quite well known for having a computer at his desk
and a personal email account while in office. Unfortunately, he tended to use
his to research crank AIDS activists online, write raving and offensive weekly
newsletters on his party's official website and send off diplomatically-
unsound emails to newspapers, unpopular researchers and other world leaders.
Perhaps it is better to keep a president isolated to some extent.
~~~
StrawberryFrog
You say that like seeing your leader's true inclinations is a bad thing.
~~~
Maktab
I was speaking from the perspective of a president's staff.
As a voter, sure. Let them communicate with us directly so we can see who they
truly are. Mbeki was recalled before his term was done, in part in response to
his perceived arrogance and crazy ideas, both exposed in part through his
personal communication to the electorate.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Becoming a Great Programmer: Use Your Trash Can - estherschindler
http://www.javaworld.com/community/node/2537
======
dnaquin
Seldom a good idea. And faulty in so many ways. eg.
_It's long been a tenet at the Schindler bitranch that when you find a block
of code with several bugs, it's time to dump the whole file and write it again
from scratch. It's faster than trying to squash all the bugs in your bug
factory._
So now you've traded bugs you know about for bugs you know nothing about.
The real key isn't rewriting, it's refactoring. And in my opinion, should be
done almost continually.
~~~
gruseom
Actually, the idea that most bugs are produced by faulty modules, and that
such faulty modules don't produce fewer bugs as a result of efforts to fix
them (and so are best thrown out), is one of the few interesting results
produced by experimental studies of software development. So I don't think it
should be dismissed so cavalierly.
I don't have time to track down the original sources on this, but I do
remember that one of the places I read about it is in Robert Glass' _Facts and
Fallacies of Software Engineering_ , which is worth reading because it's (a)
well-grounded in the research literature, yet (b) not stupendously boring.
It's worth noting that the findings in question have to do with rewriting
faulty _modules_ and not to do with rewriting entire systems (which is a quite
different matter). But this is also what the OP was talking about, so I think
this evidence, for what it's worth, supports her claim.
~~~
jwilliams
Agreed - the distinction is between (1) the code is simply buggy and (2) the
code is full of bugs because the design is wrong/inadequate.
I've realised over time that fixing a bug in a decent design is a lot of the
value (of software). A single line of bugfix can be worth reams of new code.
It's why banks are still running COBOL mainframes.
------
kaens
I do think that the necessity of what the article talks about varies from
project to project - but it strikes close to home in reference to my current
project.
I'm working for a client doing something like centralizing a whole lot of
decentralized data for use within an industry - the project has been attempted
by other people in the industry before, and failed horribly - I suspect
because few businessmen understand the problem they're trying to solve (and
"enterprise-ready code-monkeys" are a dime a dozen).
I'm lucky enough to have a client that understood that the first functional
version of what we were developing was more or less a throwaway version. It
helped us get a handle on the _exact details_ of the problem, but couldn't
last. I'm currently working on the third iteration of the application as a
whole, and (not to toot my own horn but) we have a pretty impressive, stable
app now.
If we wouldn't have done some major re-writing from the early versions, the
app would be utter fucking hell to maintain or develop at this point. Since we
did, the codebase is understandable, the architecture is correct for what
we're trying to do, and maintenance is not much of a pain.
------
joe_the_user
Hmm,
Actually, I suspect you need to redo a particular program design an infinite
number of times to get it perfect. That said, if you are going to accomplish
something, you need to hold onto that imperfect thing you just finished _at
some point_ and use it - or equivalently let go of the thing and let the
company use it...
Unlike art, programmers can't get hung up on perfection. Rather than being
_artists_ , programmers are _artisans_ (producing thing with perhaps beautiful
craftmanship but still forced on the use of those things)
~~~
harpastum
I disagree. My experience has been that no matter how well thought-out the
first version is, there are always a few extra features added, or previously
major features abandoned. These types of changes represent a distinct shift in
the structure of the program, but are often simply tacked on or hacked out,
respectively.
On the other hand, this article is simply stoking the embers of the long-
standing war between refactoring and rewriting, without adding a whole lot to
the debate.
Some other insightful opinions on the issue:
Joel Spolsky: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>
Jeff Atwood: <http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000684.html>
Ronkes Agerbeek: <http://www.ronkes.nl/blog/?2005-04-15-neverrewritecode>
~~~
joe_the_user
Actually, I wasn't saying that you should always use the first version (or
that you should always use the second version) but simple that at some point
you need to release and that the result you release will be imperfect(I have
edited my original post to reflect this).
I would actually agree that one should not rewrite existing, _production_ code
for the purposes of using it in the same application. The main reason is that
the compromises that you remember as silly actually happened for important
"semi-major" reasons you have forgotten about. Development can feel like a
huge "rolling jello" activity _but_ that jello-rolling produces a "compromise
path" which cannot be found by deductions from first principles.
The reason to rewrite code from scratch is to produce a _different
application_.
Any serious application, produced over a matter of months, has so many man-
hours in it that it impossible for even the creator to comprehend the sum-
total of compromises which it involved and their motivation. Thus the
"character" of a particular application can almost never be recaptured by a
rewrite.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: RestJS: An “ORM” style library for consuming REST APIs on the front end - daviesgeek
https://github.com/daviesgeek/restjs
======
daviesgeek
I would love feedback and PRs from anyone willing to take a look at this! It's
based on Restangular
([https://github.com/mgonto/restangular](https://github.com/mgonto/restangular)),
just without the Angular part and I changed a lot of the things I didn't like
about the way Restangular works.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
13 Negative effects of secrets - bsgroves
http://bobgroves.com/13-negative-effects-of-living-with-secrets/
======
Mz
I am a big believer in the truth shall set you free. But this is about "dirty
secrets". Not all secrets are like that. If you have any kind of privacy, you
have "secrets". And it isn't necessarily a bad thing.
The "secret sauce" of a company can be the key to its wealth and success.
Secrets are not inherently evil per se.
~~~
bsgroves
def agree 100%. thx for reading & replying. there are some things that are
private that are not bad at all...
------
bsgroves
great article about the way secrets harm us
~~~
bsgroves
thx for reading...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is there any academies in San Francisco that teach Ruby on Rails? - VicT11
I saw this http://codeacademy.org/ and thought it looked great. Wanted to ask if anybody had recommendations for something similar in San Francisco.
======
probitymike
We have a lot of people in the Bay asking us for a program like this, so I
don't think there is anything out there like us yet! Keyword is "yet."
~~~
VicT11
In a quick google search I've come across a few things. Like
<http://www.academyx.com/training/san_francisco/ruby/rails/> and
[http://marakana.com/training/event/ruby/ruby_on_rails/san_fr...](http://marakana.com/training/event/ruby/ruby_on_rails/san_francisco/2011-07-18/1946.html).
But they don't look as official as the one listed in the question so I wanted
to see if there were any recommendations.
~~~
probitymike
Ping us off list to see how we can get Code Academy running up in SF! mike AT
codeacademy DOT org
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
‘Papa Help Me’ Boy cries out as boat with Rohingya refugees capsizes - myth_drannon
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/10/27/papa-help-me-boy-cries-out-as-boat-with-rohingya-refugees-fleeing-burma-capsizes.html
======
ictoan
Dear god, this was so sad to read... Buddhist, Muslims, Christians... why are
we fighting and hurting each other? At the end of the day, beyond labels, we
are simply human beings...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Real-time H1B wage information not available anymore - vsskanth
Previously, you could use the iCERT or OFLC systems [1] to search for labor condition applications and PERM (green card) filings. You could search by state, employer, job title etc..<p>This was very useful to know which companies are filing for H1Bs, green cards and what annual base salaries are being offered. Many other websites aggregated this data and provided more search capabilities. [2]<p>Looks like they've moved to a new FLAG system [3] which is behind a login now, and you can't search other LCAs being filed. It appears data disclosure is now annual as opposed to real-time (or daily, I don't know).<p>[1] https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm<p>[2] http://www.myvisajobs.com/<p>[3] https://flag.dol.gov/
======
person_of_color
This is horrible. A great alternative to levels.fyi (without puffery). Though
you could not see RSUs or yearly bonus
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Django 2.0 alpha - orf
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/releases/2.0?hnews
======
nickstefan12
If anyone wants to see "Database level -- on delete cascade", here's my PR to
Django that's been open since July/August:
[https://github.com/django/django/pull/8661](https://github.com/django/django/pull/8661)
~~~
cjbprime
Nothing against your PR, but the default cascade-on-delete behavior is my
least favorite thing about Django. :(
~~~
nickstefan12
You don't like that models.CASCADE fakes it with extra requests to the Db? Or
you don't like that the default is models.CASCADE instead of something like
models.DO_NOTHING? There's talk of making the on_delete kwarg required. In
that world there would be no default :).
------
nnain
Some highlights from the pages:
"This alpha milestone marks a complete feature freeze."
"The current release schedule calls for a beta release in about a month and a
release candidate about a month from then."
"The Django 1.11.x series is the last to support Python 2.7."
------
gt_
Can someone recommend a learning path for building Django sites/apps to
someone who has no web dev experience but uses python for scripting and
workstation utilities? In particular, I use python for VFX/CGI scripting.
~~~
spapas82
Start with the django-tutorial. Always start with the tutorial no matter what
else they tell you. The django tutorial is excellent and cover most basics:
[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/intro/tutorial01/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/intro/tutorial01/)
Then start writing your own application. When you have questions read the
django documentantion. The django docs are the _best_ documentantion I've ever
seen, they are better than most books about django and should answer all your
questions. The docs are so good I recommend reading them from start to finish
- i.e download this off line version of the docs:
[https://media.readthedocs.org/pdf/django/1.11.x/django.pdf](https://media.readthedocs.org/pdf/django/1.11.x/django.pdf)
and read it from cover to cover. You will not regret it.
~~~
gt_
Thank you. My bookworm habits make this hard to accept, but your advice
reflects my experience learning Python as well. The python.org tutorial was
better than anything.
Would you also recommend learning CSS, HTTP, PHP _before_ the Django
tutorials?
~~~
ubernostrum
I strongly recommend the DjangoGirls tutorial:
[https://tutorial.djangogirls.org/](https://tutorial.djangogirls.org/)
It covers HTML, CSS, git, etc. in addition to teaching you Django.
~~~
otherme1
I also like that tutorial, but the name is a bit unfortunate. I recommended it
to a woman and she quickly accused me of "giving her a dumbed down tutorial
for girls". I had to convince her that the site is actually very good.
------
obilgic
Can someone who uses Django, review this release? What are the most
anticipated changes etc?
~~~
keganunderwood
Not an expert by any means but to me the biggest change is no more Python 2.
> Django 2.0 supports Python 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6. We highly recommend and only
> officially support the latest release of each series.
People should not write new code in Python 2 at all. If you're learning Python
today, I'd say pretend Python 2 doesn't exist. Use python3-venv and renounce
the baggage of the past.
~~~
gt_
Doing VFX pipeline dev here and none of the softwares support 3 yet.
Houdini/3ds Max/Maya are all 2.7 only.
I have not even seen mention of moving to 3.
~~~
ubernostrum
What are they planning to do when the support for Python 2 runs out and people
remind them they had a decade in which to start a port but didn't?
~~~
gt_
I have the same question. If I remember right, it's going to happen in 2020.
I don't work with a studio yet but studios who buy the software don't seem too
worried for some reason, even though their pipelines depend on it. Maybe
someone else can offer better insight. As someone wanting to go into pipeline
development, I am very curious.
------
cryptos
It's a bit disappointing that Django doesn't emphasize REST more. I'm
expecting that "classic" web application frameworks with templates rendered on
the server (as long as they are not templates from a client-side framework
rendered there for some optimization) are on their way out. And, to be honest,
REST is not a strength of Django ...
~~~
nicwolff
I'm expecting that REST APIs are on their way out ツ but what's wrong with the
Django REST Framework?
~~~
ric2b
Why is that, are you thinking about GraphQL?
------
vegbrasil
I started learning Django yesterday and now I'm not sure if I should just skip
to the 2.0 alpha instead of learning the current stable version.
~~~
huxley
I wouldn't worry that much about it, the differences between Django 1.11 and
Django 2.0 aren't major ones with the exception of dropping support for Python
2.x and the new simplified URL routing syntax.
Django 1.11 is a LTS (Long Term Support) release so it will have security
upgrades until 2020, so you are safe sticking with it.
However I'd go ahead with 1.11 and transition to 2.0 to learn how Django
handles deprecation and how to upgrade a codebase, both very useful skills as
Django has a steady release process and it's often easier to track Django than
to do a multi-version migration.
------
claudiug
How a rails/ruby buy should start with python/django?
~~~
unoti
Two answers for you:
1) don't-- instead learn about making single page apps on the front end using
React and Redux, or perhaps Angular 2. Then write a REST backend in either
Node, Go, Python, or C#. Or go serverless and write the backend in Firebase.
2) if you really do want to do Django, start by doing the default tutorial
that focuses on building something in the admin interface. Coming from a rails
background you are on somewhat similar ground.
~~~
spapas82
Answer 1) is plain wrong. I don't think that more than 10% of all web
applications will benefit from SPAs. Your recommendation stands only for
valley companies that have money to burn.
For example, in my industry (I work on the public sector) SPAs are never
needed. Good old traditional request/response web apps, maybe with a little
jquery on top to make things more responsive or add some advanced controls
(autocompletes, keywords etc) are perfect for the job.
An experienced django developer can create a full traditional multi-user CRUD
web app in a couple of hours. You'll just create the models and a couple of
CBVs and everything else will be auto-created (but not magically created)
through django-forms, django-filters and django-tables2. Now, how much time
would you need to duplicate this functionality with an SPA? As I said, if you
have money to burn then this is the way to go - on other cases, just use
Django.
~~~
unoti
> Answer 1) is plain wrong. I don't think that more than 10% of all web
> applications will benefit from SPAs. Your recommendation stands only for
> valley companies that have money to burn.
Actually it's very easy to put together a single page application today!
Really easy, really fast, really practical. I'll lay out the basic steps
below. But before that, an important note: several years ago, what you said
was totally true. In, say, 2013, it would have been a big piles-of-cash-
burning exercise to make a single page application. Today, though, it's
actually quite simple, fast, and productive to create and deploy a single page
application. Here are the basic steps, assuming you're using Angular 2 for
example.
1) Generate your application. This is a single command line command. 2) Edit
it a little, add a text box and some buttons. 3) Deploy it to google app
engine; this is a single command line command, too.
The time investment is in learning how to write apps with Angular 2 or React.
That is indeed a big learning curve, but it's way easier today than it was
years ago. Angular 2 is way easier to write apps in than Angular 1 was.
Deployment is easier than it once was.
My real thesis here is that today is a good day to embrace the modern web and
try things a new way-- single page apps are actually much more straightforward
and practical than they were years ago.
I totally agree that if your goal is to build a crud app for a client then
Django is likely a superior approach. But if you're already a Rails developer
that wants to learn something new, then SPA is a better investment of time
than Django.
~~~
spapas82
> 1) Generate your application. This is a single command line command. 2) Edit
> it a little, add a text box and some buttons. 3) Deploy it to google app
> engine; this is a single command line command, too.
That will create a toy application. If you want to create a production
application you need to handle data. To handle data you will need:
* Tables / lists to display the data
* Views to edit and display the data
* Forms to edit the data
* Auditing of the user actions
* User authentication + authorization
All these are _not_ trivial to create in an SPA especially since you'll always
need both server _and_ client side code. With django (or rails, or spring or
various other server only frameworks) you won't need to write client code
_and_ most of these components will be auto-generated (at leas their default
values).
For your last comment, I also agree that if you know rails then you don't
really need to learn django since they are both similar (however I do profer
django because of its no magic philisophy and because python is a better
language than ruby) but I believe that you also don't need to go the SPA route
until somebody specifically asks for an SPA and has good reasons asking for it
(or you want to learn the technology and modern frameworks that surround
SPAs).
As a final comment, I have to say that really like all those modern frameworks
(especiall react and redux) but I won't consider them for my day-to-day job
since instead of creating something in 1 week I'd need 1 month using these
technologies.
~~~
unoti
I think you and I are actually not far apart on this at all. Everything you
mentioned Django does well. And so does Rails. And I sorely miss the beauty of
Django admin in the world of SPA's.
------
tiagocorrea
How smooth is to upgrade your app to every future release of Django? Starter
here, on Python and then Django.
~~~
leetrout
In very broad terms it's not bad. The docs are great and they give specific
advice for upgrades.
With that said you may find many 3rd party apps / utils lagging. A couple libs
I use still don't support new style middleware, for instance.
With 2.0 dropping support for py2.7 this might cause more pain points for
poorly maintained libs but all in all keeping up with Django releases is
pretty straightforward and almost always worth it.
Source: happily using Django since 2008.
------
zaro
So basically nothing new. Nothing about channels, ASGI or any async support
which IMHO are way overdue to be included.
------
sdfjkl
Hmm, I haven't done much with Django in a while, but for a major version this
seems a bit... underwhelming.
~~~
brianwawok
Dropping python2 is a pretty big feature alone.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Drink Plan - Luiz7
http://www.drinkplan.com
======
bicknergseng
Something that really pisses me off about Yelp and others is that it's now
pretty much impossible to figure out where to go. Search Happy Hours on Yelp
and you get a bunch of expensive restaurants that might not even be open, not
$1 beers. The results are so cluttered with other non-useful data that finding
the closest, cheapest, dingiest bar at 5 on a Friday is just not gonna happen.
~~~
marvvelous
You can filter/sort by price too on yelp but I know what you mean. A lot of it
is the format of their results and how impossibly slow the maps are.
Might be solvable with a "find similar" function that lets you put in a bar
you like and finds similar listings close to your location.
~~~
bicknergseng
Unfortunately in SF $ can apparently mean $15 for a sandwich and says
absolutely nothing about the price of their happy hour beer. The thing is that
I really don't want similar places, I want to know which places have a happy
hour and how much a beer is. More specifically, I want to know the closest
place offering dollar beer.
------
jogzden
I'm assuming this only works with Chicago?
------
mathattack
Great concept, but add NYC please!
~~~
oftenwrong
add all the cities
------
blueblob
This is cool, now I just have to move to Chicago.
------
BigTuna
That's a long drive for a beer.
------
xwowsersx
hehe this is awesome
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: React with Meteor Back End Social Feed Example App - adambrod
https://github.com/adambrodzinski/react-ive-meteor/
======
adambrod
I've love to hear feedback on what people think about using Meteor for the
backend. Meteor has some cons but the pros outweigh it for most of my
projects.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tell HN: I'm frustrated with Snow Leopard - daveambrose
Probably like many of you, I was excited to hit "purchase" when I heard the news of Snow Leopard's release. I did and now I wish I waited for 10.6.1.<p>Small bugs are annoying me, i.e. Transmission hangs when closes, Cyberduck won't load my server, Expose randomly shakes windows at times, etc. Apple certainly had me sold on the under-the-hood bells and whistles for the OS, but certain applications don't like to play nice.<p>I imagine an update will be coming out in the next few weeks and solve these initial woes. I guess what I'm trying to say is - why did I need to move from Leopard to Snow Leopard when it was working perfectly fine?<p>Are you frustrated with your results thus far? Am I the only one?
======
makecheck
I've seen no such quirks myself, although when moving from Tiger to Leopard I
was one of the people seeing blue screens at boot, and was very angry.
Ultimately, you should never expect all your applications to work on day one;
if you have things that "must" keep working, wait awhile before upgrading the
OS.
For one thing, not all developers have advance access to the OS (like me; I
only find out if my code works when I buy the retail copy of the OS). Even if
a developer _does_ have advance copies, it is possible that a tiny change
between the beta and GM will have unexpected consequences.
Fortunately in my case, I had to change nothing to support Snow Leopard (and I
still support 10.3.9!). But not all apps will be so lucky.
------
kevinherron
Most of the problems you are having sound like a 3rd-party application is at
fault rather than Apple. Maybe they should have been prepared for Snow
Leopard?
The following is admittedly under the guise of "should have been prepared",
but I'll say it anyway:
I think one of the more legitimate complaints is that the upgrade completely
removes Java 5 from your system. Not only that, but they silently remapped all
of the 1.5 entries in /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions to
point at 1.6.
Got a project in Eclipse compiled against a 1.5 JDK? That suddenly doesn't
work. And it may be confusing to some because guess what, you're still setup
as compiling against that Java 5 JDK. It's just being remapped to 1.6 now.
~~~
TomOfTTB
How would you suggest Developers "prepare for Snow Leopard" Even now if you
want to know what was changed you have to scour various web sites which are
making lists based on user tips. Apple certainly didn't put out a press
release saying "hey, this is what we're changing"
I think upgrading to any OS right when it comes out is a little silly so I
don't have much sympathy for those experiencing quirks either but I do have
sympathy for Apple developers who never know what's going to come down the
pike next.
~~~
brown9-2
Actually Apple does give developers (at least, large ones) advance copies of
the OS, API changelists, etc.
It would be irresponsible not to work with vendors that make applications for
your OS to make sure that your user's favorite programs still work in the
latest version of your OS.
~~~
TomOfTTB
Somehow I don't think Cyberduck made the advanced copy list. That's the point.
Sure Microsoft probably got Snow Leopard in advance but a lot of developers
didn't and it's unfair to chastise them for not being prepared when there's no
way they could have been.
That said, I mean no offense but I thought this comment by you was
hilarious...
"It would be irresponsible not to work with vendors that make applications for
your OS to make sure that your user's favorite programs still work in the
latest version of your OS."
I'm not sure if you own an iPhone or not but if you did you'd know Version 3
nuked A LOT of programs.
~~~
squidbot
Anyone who is a premium member of ADC or went to WWDC got an advance copy. You
don't need to "make the advanced copy list."
~~~
TomOfTTB
In fairness I had forgotten that advance copies were handed out at WWDC. But
at the same time the conference was attended by 5,000 people many of which
were journalists so I still don't think that qualifies as "easy for a
developer to get their hands on" (I don't know that it was distributed to ADC
members)
Also, I go back to my original point which is now that Snow Leopard is public
we STILL don't have an official list from Apple of what they changed.
~~~
GHFigs
_we STILL don't have an official list from Apple of what they changed._
[https://developer.apple.com/mac/library/releasenotes/MacOSX/...](https://developer.apple.com/mac/library/releasenotes/MacOSX/WhatsNewInOSX/WhatsNewInOSX.html)
_This document is not intended as a complete list of features or changes for
each new version of Mac OS X. Instead, it focuses on those features or changes
that affect the development of third-party software, providing overviews of
each along with insight as to how and when you might use them to create your
own software. Wherever possible, this document also provides links to other
Apple conceptual and reference documentation for that feature or change._
You will need a free Apple Developer Connection account to read it, and the
rest of the updated developer documentation.
------
Brian_D
Has anyone else tried opening.. and then saving.. a Quicktime Movie directly
in Safari? This one is a no go. I suppose this is not 'good' user behavior.
All in all Quicktime-X smells bad. In Safari - it won't play much for me. The
same videos that load in QT7.. are either broken icon's or just a blank page
in Safari.
Example.. google some random movies (google: index_of .mov OR .avi)
pick a movie and click away. If the movie loads, "Save as..." is disabled. Now
you say you can just right click on the link and then save as.. yes.. but
sometimes you don't get a nice link to click on. Seems to be a added
'antifeature'.
------
colbyolson
With Transmission, I've found that it helps to pause or remove any active
torrents before quitting the application.
As for 10.6.1, so far the update has been smooth. I have yet to see any
application hiccups, though I haven't really taken it for a true spin. While
the 10.6.1 update is available to ADC Mac-Dev members, I would assume the
update is coming publicly soon enough.
------
GHFigs
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenga>
------
unalone
Transmission hangs on close for me, and I'm running 10.5.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Application review by YC Alumni - shenoybr
Hi YC Alum,
We've randomly cold emailed a few YC Alumni asking for help reviewing our application to YC. I know most founders are really busy so I don't want to keep bothering them. Instead, we decided to post a question here.<p>If there are any YC alumni who have a few minutes to spare to review our application and guide us we would be extremely grateful.
======
nicoles
Feel free to shoot me a mail, email's in profile.
~~~
shenoybr
Sent. Thanks a ton :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MongoDB Inc. Appoints Dev Ittycheria as President and CEO - denzil_correa
http://www.mongodb.com/press/mongodb-appoints-dev-ittycheria-as-president-and-CEO
======
Nux
He seems to have a suitable name. :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How north ended up on top of the map - zvanness
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/maps-cartographycolonialismnortheurocentricglobe.html
======
jasallen
The article does get to my base assumptions, but it takes awhile. (1) North
Star was what people navigated by first, so would orient maps to that
regardless of which way the words were written -- so people started writing
the words to fit. (2) Compasses, pick north or south for same reason. North
was picked because we were already using the North Star.
It all just makes so much better intuitive sense than a "Conspiracy of
Northern European Hegemony"
~~~
einhverfr
I don't think it is just that. If you haven't read Ptolomy (and in particular
all of Tetrabiblos, the Almagest, and his Geographia), you really should.
Ptolomy was quite an incredibly observant individual and he worked through
things with an attention to detail that is quite impressive.
He clearly understood he was in the Northern Hemisphere, but he placed
Alexandria not in the southernmost part of the known world as the article
suggests but in the center. A lot of this was pride and the sense that the
center had everything good from the edges (see Tetrabiblos), but to some
extent everywhere is the center, right?
He painstakingly discusses the proof that the earth is a sphere in Almagest.
His geographia is worth reading and directly relevant to this.
I suspect that Ptolomy put the north at the top simply because he was in the
Northern Hemisphere and knew it. He displays no great knowledge of navigation,
though he does explain how the stars shift as you move north and south (again
see Tetrabiblos and Almagest), and he even seemed to be aware that Mercury and
Venus revolved around the sun (or so he seemed to say in Tetrabiblos).
All in all he's one of those authors one really has to read if one is
interested in history, even the seemingly weird works he wrote (Tetrabiblos is
an astrology manual but includes a lot of information about Ptolomy's
understanding of geography not found in Geographia, and astronomy not found in
Almagest).
~~~
igravious
Top marks for Ptolemy (I think that's the more usual spelling in English?)
citations. But I think the point is that the Northeren Hemisphere gets its
northern-ness from magnetic north or the pole star, correct? But what makes
north be up/top and south be down/under? Vile European hegemony I tells ya. I
jest. But do I? Also, obligatory Gall-Peter's Projection reference for maximum
egalitarian cred:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection)
. Choice quote for cartography newbs: "The Mercator projection increasingly
inflates the sizes of regions according to their distance from the equator.
This inflation results, for example, in a representation of Greenland that is
larger than Africa, whereas in reality Africa is 14 times as large. Since much
of the technologically underdeveloped world lies near the equator, these
countries appear smaller on a Mercator and therefore, according to Peters,
seem less significant. On Peters's projection, by contrast, areas of equal
size on the globe are also equally sized on the map."
~~~
einhverfr
BTW, one interesting read regarding medieval maps and knowledge of geography
is "Heaven and Earth in the Middle Ages: The Physical World before Colombus"
by Rudolf Simek. It's expensive, so you may want to check libraries. However
it is quite an impressive work, quite accessible, and deeply interesting.
One of the more interesting points is that while Europeans were generally
aware that the world was round since at least the 13th century (and monks from
at least the 8th century) they thought it was impossible to sale across the
equator until remarkably late. And the really revolutionary part of Columbus's
voyages was that it destroyed the Augustinian view of people, since the
Augustinian view was that if there were other continents, they must not be
inhabited (because of only three sons of Noah meant only three inhabited
continents).
~~~
igravious
Thank you, I'll check that Simek tome out.
Think I mentioned this here before but never mind. Another great book about
the whole round/flat debate (and much much more) is Arthur Koestler's The
Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe. Basically
the ancient Greeks had this one all figured out - Aristarchus[1] "who
presented the first known model that placed the Sun at the center of the known
universe with the Earth revolving around it" I didn't know about the crossing
the equator thing, nor did I know about the Augustinian view but it doesn't
surprise me :)
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos)
------
tokenadult
It's an interesting article. I looked for references to Chinese practice. In
Chinese, a (magnetic) compass is referred to as a "指南针," literally "south-
indicating needle," so it does appear that south was the most important
cardinal direction for the Chinese-speaking people who first used compasses.
The article notes that old Arab maps showed south on the top, and attributed
this to Chinese practice in map-making (which, if I remember correctly without
sources at hand, was not fully uniform in this regard).
Overall, the article offers an interesting discussion of trade-offs in map-
making, including the trade-off of what country to put in the middle of a flat
wall map that shows the whole world. I have become quite used to Chinese wall
maps of the world in Mercator or equal-area projections that display China in
the middle (left-to-right) and consequently split North America along both
sides of the map.
~~~
asolove
The Chinese name has a good deal to do with cultural tradition. In traditional
Chinese practice, north is the direction of evil. Cities were planned with
gates at the south and rulers sat facing south. Magnets were actually first
used as tools in geomancy rather than navigation. [1] This is why you would
not call a magnet a points-north-needle.
Of course, the association of North with evil is itself probably because of
the Northern hemisphere seasons. North, cold, winter and evil and all grouped
together in opposition to South, warm, summer, and good.
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass#Geomancy_and_feng_shui](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass#Geomancy_and_feng_shui)
~~~
sardonicbryan
Not to mention the Mongols and Manchurians who were always trying to invade,
as opposed to the tribute-paying Southern kingdoms. There's a reason they
built the Great Wall to the north and not the south.
Weather also does play a role, as the south was able to generate three
harvests a year vs. two in the north. Historically, the capital of China has
been in the south, only being moved north during the Ming (aka second to last)
Dynasty.
Not sure how much any of that has to do with compass points, but did want to
elaborate a little on the cultural/historical context of north vs. south in
China.
------
est
The Chinese make south top because the emperor must facing south to rule.
南面称尊, 面南背北, 坐北朝南. So if they look at maps they sure must look at south.
------
Claudus
A pointed needle can be magnetized to point either North or South. But you
definitely want some way of distinguishing between the two ends, and making
one end pointed seems like the easiest way to do so. Maybe the magnetization
just happened to result in the needle pointing North the first time and that
set the standard.
Really interesting article on making a compass.
[http://www.wildwoodsurvival.com/survival/navigation/rbimprov...](http://www.wildwoodsurvival.com/survival/navigation/rbimprovisedcompass01.html)
------
dhughes
Etymology Online has an interesting description for the word north:
_"...possibly ultimately from PIE _ner- "left," also "below," as north is to
the left when one faces the rising sun..."*
It's pretty much arguing over our ancestors saying "to the left" in reference
to the rising sun.
------
kbutler
The position of most prominence and importance on a map is the center, not the
top.
Would you use a map application that always put the location you searched for
in the top left?
The article referenced this briefly (Italy and Jerusalem were disappointed to
not be at the center).
The manufactured controversy that Europe and America are traditionally at the
top of global maps is rather silly.
------
ArekDymalski
Two explanations came to my mind: 1\. East - the direction where the Sun
appears - was located on the right because the right hand had a special
meaning for people. 2\. South was located down (behind the back of someone
reading the map) to provide the maximum amount of light to the reader.
------
secstate
Seems to me the vast majority of habitable area lies in the Northern
hemisphere, so this would likely be an issue of statistics, not subconscious
superiority.
Also, magnetic north on a compass is a natural way to orient something.
~~~
mcv
> magnetic north on a compass is a natural way to orient something.
More so than magnetic south?
~~~
jessaustin
_More so than magnetic south?_
Perhaps more so than magnetic west-by-northwest, etc. The point is that there
are _two_ orientations that make sense with respect to compasses, rather than
a hundred. As to why it's a particular one of the two available possibilities,
that doesn't seem to require a conspiracy. At some point a critical mass of
cartographers simply chose north rather than south.
~~~
secstate
Indeed, and it doesn't take much data crunching to realize that the vast
majority of habitable space on the planet is in the northern hemisphere. No
slight to Africa, S. America, Australia and parts of India, but most of us are
up here in the North. Blame plate tectonics before you blame your white
European overlords
~~~
mcv
I don't see it as a slight on Africa. I think most of Africa is also in the
northern hemisphere.
------
georgecmu
Interesting historical exploration! The medieval debate on whether North, East
or South should be at the top of the map could be linked to the disagreement
on the East/North coordinate system convention of the modern day: ENU vs NED.
Generally, land vehicles use the ENU (East-North-Up) convention, with East
corresponding to the X axis and Z axis point up (against the gravity vector),
while sea and aircraft use the NED (North-East-Down) convention, with X axis
pointing North, and Z axis pointing down, aligned with the gravity vector.
~~~
couchand
Regardless of the east vs. north distinction, I find it very unnatural to have
an increasing vertical coordinate correspond to a movement towards the earth,
if for no other reason that calling sea level zero and using mainly positive
numbers above seems very convenient (for any vehicle except submarines).
~~~
7952
If you are measuring sea depth it doesn't make sense to have a minus sign when
most of your values will be negative.
Also, it is important to remember that sea level is an entirely arbitrary
concept that depends on your frame of reference. On nautical charts elevations
are usually measured against the lowest tide level which will be different to
the datum on GPS (for example).
------
acheron
I had heard a story once that the verb "orient" (as in finding where you are,
aligning yourself/something else, etc.) was related to east being on the top
of the map: you figured out which direction was "oriental" (i.e. eastern), and
matched it with the top of the map.
Later I researched it though and while that may have contributed, the more
likely original meaning came from people wanting to build their churches and
such to face east.
------
kiliancs
Just a small almost off-topic correction: Majorca was not Spanish-ruled in
1375, hence the name of the map "Catalan Atlas" attributed to cartographer
Abraham Cresques as well as the mentioned nickname of "el jueu de les
bruixoles" (in Catalan language).
------
squigs25
Is it unfair to also ask why the poles of the earth don't appear on the sides
of a map?
------
filereaper
The West Wing covered this on the topic of the Mercator Projection:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-
PrBRtTY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY)
cheers.
------
ableal
Interesting map; also a site with an extensive collection of old maps:
_" While there is something endearing about the idea of an Indiana map maker
in 1871 [ preparing an atlas
[http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/s/91721z](http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/s/91721z)
] with Indiana squarely in the center of the world, the unfortunate side
effect was that most of the Midwest disappeared into the gaping crease between
atlas pages."_
------
jpatokal
_For Americans, it’s easy to think that our position, at the top left of most
maps, is the intrinsically preferable one._
This clearly was not written by a geek. Obviously the top right is preferable,
since it's the only region where both decimal latitude and longitude are
positive.
------
decentrality
A better "up" would be East, oriented to the Galaxy as a whole, rather than
Earth's roll relative to the Sun.
~~~
eCa
Compasses points to the poles, not the centre of the universe. I can see some
advantages to have compasses and maps point the same way.
~~~
decentrality
Sure, but spatial orientation and temporal orientation are too important to
leave to arbitrary tool particulars. It's really bad for the mind.
I get your point ( with correction by @JoeAltmaier ) but with GPS and the like
being the `new` tool, and with them needing new thought rather than
continuation of the old "because we always did it that way"... I'd definitely
go East in the future... along with changing calendars away from solar
orientation ( Gregorian primarily ).
But as with most things involving the masses, this all falls into the category
of why most use Metric versus Imperial, and why that is such a radical change
to expect. Still, great to see a post questioning "up" ...
~~~
lmm
I don't think that's a fair comparison. Metric measures have genuine practical
advantages in terms of unit conversions. Switching to East-oriented maps would
just be change for the sake of change. (Also a map projection distorts at the
poles, so it's best if the poles are in uninhabited areas that ships don't
sail through)
~~~
decentrality
Having a spatial orientation relative to the universe is of practical value to
conscious individuals. People with minds have a frame of reference. Updating
that is important, since our reality is bounded by our mental frame as much by
that, if not more by that, than by our knowledge.
I get what you mean, if this were still a boat-based world. I am saying we are
not in a boat-based world now. Our consciousness can re-orient.
Since we don't live in a boat-based world for the most part, it'd be more
helpful to tend toward an orientation to a place where people have minds more
often than people have ships. Part of why the world is the way it is, is
because we don't allow our minds and the mental framework of the masses follow
forward to an overall update to what in the world is actually worth orienting
to.
So it's not change for change's sake. It's updating to be true to what we
know, giving our minds the benefit of advancing onto a better framework.
Digital maps don't distort for curves. They just keep going with the surface
of the planet. Remaining true to a boat-based world is a disservice to mind-
having individuals.
~~~
cgh
Okay, but there are also practical concerns, like those of us who use map and
compass in our lives (for me, geocaching and hunting). It's very well to wave
your arms and talk about being a "mind-having individual" but it won't help
you navigate in the Coast Mountains.
------
jackgavigan
Someone needs to tell McArthur that his "Universal Corrective Map of the
World" is missing an entire continent.
------
nroose
That article says that Stuart McArthur on Jan. 26, 1979!
------
dschiptsov
Because a compass points there?)
~~~
ef4
But a compass points south equally well.
~~~
qbrass
But when you're facing north, the sun is behind you shining on the map.
~~~
daniel-cussen
Only in the northern hemisphere.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hawking’s final science study released - laurex
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45826748
======
dchest
Guardian article quoted by BBC (it also has a link to the paper):
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/10/stephen-
hawk...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/10/stephen-hawkings-
final-scientific-paper-released)
------
laretluval
No link to the actual study?
~~~
kleopullin
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.01847](https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.01847) Abstract,
it looks like a preprint so there should be a link to a PDF.
~~~
ekphrasis
Top right corner of the publication post, or
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.01847.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.01847.pdf).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Learn to Love to Practice: Is there a secret to staying in the zone? - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/33/attraction/how-to-learn-to-love-to-practice
======
iEchoic
The ability to find (or manufacture) this "flow" state on a regular basis is
probably one of the most underrated personal and professional skills
(interestingly, it's also one that you can't really interview for in others).
This article seems to treat the ability to get in "flow" as an intrinsic
quality of the individual or a superpower to unlock. In my experience, like
everything else in life, there's no "secret", only an iterative process
through which you learn and improve. These things have been the most helpful
for me:
• Taking care of the rest of my life: trying to eat well, work out, get enough
sleep, etc.
• Constantly identifying things that slow me down or cause mental exhaustion
(tiring processes, poor work environment, poor tools), and making fixing them
a priority
• Consciously hyping myself up; motivation doesn't always come easily. When
I'm having a hard time focusing, envisioning a future self that's gone through
this work and have achieved what I want to achieve helps orient and motivate
me. If you're a competitive person like I am, treating it as a competition
helps.
• Once deciding on a strategic direction and sitting down to work, staying
focused only the next piece of work to complete. Similar to the "one game at a
time" mantra from competitive sports.
• Cultivating an unwavering belief that I will succeed at <thing>, it's just a
matter of practice and dedication.
------
Nomentatus
Focus and the ability to stay on a task aren't the same thing as flow.
Flow is much rarer than focus because for evolutionary reasons it has to be -
flow is action without a lot of the self-monitoring that's necessary for
learning. When you're in a knife fight, you'll flow 'cause learning isn't job
one, surviving is job one. Learning a task so well that you can dispense with
further learning also gets you to flow; but only a fool wants to get to that
flow despite NOT actually having mastered the task.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A look at Chrome’s new tab design - okket
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/a-look-at-chromes-new-tab-design/
======
hajile
<announcer voice>
This update is brought to you by Mozilla. Try the fox today!
</announcer voice>
------
blacksmith_tb
I had a much more visceral reaction to the new context menu, which is styled
to look basically like it does in gDocs / gSheets but everywhere - instead of
the OS default.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Seattle Needs an “Incubator” Culture - cwan
http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2010/02/04/seattle-needs-an-incubator-culture/
======
anamax
Does Silicon Valley have the "incubator culture" that Seattle supposedly
needs? If not, why does Seattle need it?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Ench.me — Create your personal landing page in a few clicks - hewmax
https://ench.me
======
hewmax
Hi everyone,
Ench.me is a tool for building micro landing pages from the phone without
coding.
It allows bloggers, influencers, content creators, entrepreneurs, and brands
to connect with their friends & followers outside of Instagram and other
social media in a simple way.
This is our first beta and we will be happy to receive feedback. Feel free to
criticize or praise (we love constructive criticism :)) Or just let us know
what you think.
We really hope you enjoy it. Express yourself through these micro landing
pages ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Enabling C# 8 in Visual Studio 2019 for Any .NET Project - dirkstrauss
https://dirkstrauss.com/enabling-c-8-in-visual-studio-2019/
======
markdu
Doing this will have some limitations (as you have rightly stated). I would
rather just use .NET Core 3.1.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Social influences kill the wisdom of the crowd - Anon84
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/05/following-the-crowd-undermines-its-wisdom.ars
======
Terretta
Nothing? Nobody discussing how this relates to HN vote counts display?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Quantum Physics & Natural Language Processing (pp. 8-11) - haliax
http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/industry/content/IndustryNewsSummer2011.pdf
======
Emore
Cool, didn't know about these publications (I'm at the Comlab myself.)
Seems like the webpage to sign up for the newsletters (by email!) is
<http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/industry/public/newsletter.jsp>
~~~
haliax
I graduated from the Comlab / New College last year. Which college are you at?
What year?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ludwig Wittgenstein - human_v2
http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/wittgenstein.html
======
joecode
My college abstract algebra professor, who was fond of grilling us in class,
once asked me to define an "isomorphism". I said something to the effect that
an isomorphism is when you have two structures that though technically
different, share an essential similarity. To which he quipped "that's the Time
Magazine definition of an isomorphism, I want you to tell me how you really
define it, mathematically."
This article, I submit, is the Time Magazine definition of Ludwig
Wittgenstein. Read at your own peril.
(Peter Hacker is the only academic I know who really seems to get
Wittgenstein. You're probably best off ignoring the secondary sources on
Wittgenstein altogether, but if you must, I recommend you read Hacker---please
not Daniel Dennet.)
~~~
cchooper
I'll second Hacker and recommend his _Wittgenstein's Place in 20th Century
Analytic Philsophy_ as a reasonably accessible starting point.
------
kurtosis
This recent new yorker article gives some interesting background on
wittgenstein's extremely neurotic (and intersting, of course) family.
Apparently three of his four brothers committed suicide, as did one of his
sister's husband. I personally didn't understand his books - I guess a lot of
what was revolutionary in his ideas (language games?) had already been
absorbed and taken for granted by the time I was born.
[http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/04/06/09040...](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/04/06/090406crbo_books_gottlieb)
~~~
coolestuk
I don't think that Wittgenstein's observations on "language games" has been
absorbed and taken for granted. His interest in games was part of his
exposition of the nature of universals (forms, essences). Considering that for
at least 25 years students in the humanities (social sciences, media studies,
literary studies) have been force-fed a simplistic 'anti-essentialism' as a
political doctrine, I'd say that's proof that Wittgenstein's work is almost
completely unknown outside of Philosophy Departments.
Sadly most of philosophy is unknown outside those walls. Ludwig may not have
found that so sad - he saw philosophy as a kind of mental disability, and
himself as the doctor.
Probably the best introduction to Wittgenstein is Janik and Toulmin's
"Wittgenstein's Vienna". Even if one decides that philosophy is a fly in a
bottle, there's fascinating stuff in that book on forgotten greats like Karl
Kraus.
------
patrickgzill
Spam from me (I know the author of this book) about a recent book on LW:
[http://www.amazon.com/Wittgenstein-Flies-Kite-Story-
Models/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Wittgenstein-Flies-Kite-Story-
Models/dp/0131499971)
------
intellectronica
Daniel Dennett, himself a contemporary caricature of a philosopher, opens by
asking whether a philosopher would be happier to become so successful as to
strike down philosophy completely, or rather to become popular and read
forever. Wittgenstein, says Dennet, aimed for the former, but achieved the
latter.
To my mind, though, Wittgenstein did, in fact, succeeded in shooting down
philosophy as we knew it. He did so by demonstrating with his own unique story
and bizarre writing that (if to paraphrase Clemenceau) philosophy is far too
important to be left to the philosophers. Wittgenstein's generation was the
first one in which Philosophy as an academic and literary endeavour has
contributed virtually nothing to our understanding of the world.
~~~
jollojou
I disagree with you. Wittgenstein's generation of philosophers did contribute
something crucial to the twentieth century thought. At least Karl Popper
(1902-1994) should be mentioned in this context. His arguments against the
political philosophies that emphasise metaphysics are traces of the world that
resulted in communism and fascism.
The German philosophers before Wittgenstein (Hegel especially) created a
philosophical atmosphere in which it was acceptable to create large
metaphysical constructions such as the proletarian state or the third Reich.
Popper among the other liberal thinkers devoted significant part of their
academic work to show that communism and fascism were founded on metaphysical
constructions that could not deliver the dream they promised.
~~~
intellectronica
You are right about Popper (other commentators mention him too), but he's the
exception
------
jamesbressi
I don't think I agree with the author of this TIMES article. I think a
philosopher deep down inside definitely wants to be right over read.
~~~
bmj
Isn't that the point he was trying to make? Most philosophers want to be read
over and over. Wittgenstein was less concerned with his legacy of writings
(only the Tractatus was published during his lifetime, and that was little
more than his journal) and more concerned with solving problems.
------
Create
What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. -- Wittgenstein
------
chunkyslink
time.com - a good example of a badly put together website.
It looks awful and finding stuff is virtually impossible. How wide exactly is
that text column where I am supposed to read from ? 300px ?
<shudder>
------
mattlanger
This just in: Daniel Dennett cites Ludwig Wittgenstein as one of the 100 most
important people of the century. And coming up later on the 11:00 news:
Heisenberg admits, "I never could have done it without Bohr."
~~~
CytokineStorm
Actually, I would say that Dennett's philosophy owes far more to Alan Turing
than Wittgenstein, which is why I was surprised that he suggests that
Wittgenstein's legacy may prove more valuable than Turing's. Pretty high
praise considering Turing gave us the theoretical basis for computers.
------
xenophanes
Wittgenstein was a terrible person who hit children, hard, on the head:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein>
> His severe disciplinary methods (often involving corporal punishment, not
> unusual at the time)—as well as a general suspicion amongst the villagers
> that he was somewhat mad—led to a long series of bitter disagreements with
> some of his students' parents, and eventually culminated in April 1926 in
> the collapse of an eleven-year-old boy whom Wittgenstein had struck on the
> head.[29] The boy's father attempted to have Wittgenstein arrested, and
> despite being cleared of misconduct, he resigned his position and returned
> to Vienna, feeling that he had failed as a school teacher.
But Wittgenstein was a much worse philosopher. He wrote, for example,
confusing/obscure attacks on the value of philosophy itself. Not having any
philosophical problems one is interested in or finds fruitful is completely
understandable. And of course a person in that situation won't make any useful
contributions to solving philosophical problems. The weird thing is why he's
considered a philosopher, let alone a good one, by anyone.
~~~
wynand
> Wittgenstein was a terrible person who hit children, hard, on the head:
That old bugbear - horrible as he might have been in person, his philosophy is
distinct from this side of him. We might as well insinuate that Feynmann's
work is worthless because he was a womanizer.
> Not having any philosophical problems one is interested in or finds fruitful
> is completely understandable
How is reasoning about the problems of philosophy itself not an interesting
philosophical problem? You are entitled to your own opinion, but when you
slate someone who was considered by other big philosophers as a giant, you
need to make a stronger point than that.
~~~
xenophanes
Whether "reasoning about the problems of philosophy" is interesting depends on
what you think they are, and whether you manage to come up with any useful
answers.
What sort of stronger point do you want? I have an explanation of what
Wittgenstein was (a person without philosophical problems) which accounts for
all evidence of Wittgenstein known to me. I think it can account for
everything you know about Wittgenstein too, if you think about it.
Did you want me to pick several examples -- which you can then accuse of being
cherry picked -- and show how it fits? And I should do this in addition to
offering my general explanation, even though you've offered neither an
explanation of Witt nor brought up any examples for or against mine?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
3D Printed Guns Aren't Coming. They're Already Here - geneeva
https://gen.medium.com/the-3d-printed-gun-isnt-coming-it-s-already-here-6855fd394a47
======
t0mmyb0y
Yeah, we were printing them in the 90s.
------
jrnichols
And they've been here for years.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sex, Income and Happiness - greenspot
http://www.samuelwbennett.com/sex-income-and-happiness/
======
osmala
I love the graphs, they clearly show that women have far less sex when they
are grumpy and in bad mood general, the effect is lesser in men but still
exists. Other graphs clearly show that you should be satisfied with you life
in order to get ahead. And negative view on life clearly hinder your ability
to increase your income.
------
rdlecler1
I'm note sure they showed which was cause and which was effect. I look at that
chart and I see that unhappy people have less sex. Not surprising. On the
other side, happier people have sex more often than unhappy people. Some happy
have sex less often some have sex more often.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tesla Model 3 with Unplugged Performance parts breaks McLaren F1 track record - rbanffy
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-vs-mclaren-f1-tsukuba-circuit/
======
BoorishBears
Heavily modified Model 3 in track mode with tires Michelin calls “streetable”
(they were designed to meet minimum DOT standards to allow you to drive them
legally on the street... that’s it. They come at a thread depth where you
would replace your tires, degrade below 40F, hydroplane on any standing water
at all and do not “do well on the street”) beats the record specifically of a
30 year old super car
The article almost makes it sound like it beat the track record, which was set
by an F1, but it’s the record for the F1 on that track... on a rainy day.
~~~
natch
The above is a highly skewed, and one-sided, comment that cherrypicks things
in an apparent attempt to tear down what has been achieved. Readers should
read the original article and decide for themselves.
For example compare this quote from the actual article:
"It was even equipped with OEM tires from a Porsche 911 GT3 RS (997), which
are good on the track but also great for regular driving."
to what is said by the parent about the tires. That's a pretty wide gap to
bridge. And that's just one example.
~~~
BoorishBears
What on earth are you talking about?
First off, describing Cup Sports like that is incredibly dumb, it’s like
saying “I drive a 911 with a V12, standard equipment on a Ferrari” when you’re
talking about setting track records
They are not “great” on the street. They’re not even OK. They’re the legal
minimum to be legally sold as an on-road tire, and immediately after you use
them on a track they don’t even meet that limit.
Now the following probably sounds like obsessing over a nit if you don’t know
better and aren’t aware just how much tires matter for lap times.
Tire technology accounts for a vast portion of the insane increases in
acceleration we’ve seen in modern sports cars.
-
The F1 run Best Motoring did is like record number 30 something on the
circuit, yet only 4 seconds from the top listed outside of race cars.
When you’re talking about 4 seconds, driving tires which are _actually_ good
on the street would _easily_ cost you seconds.
The version of this tire which is “good on the track but also great for
regular driving” actually exists by the way... it’s the Pilot Sport 4S, which
is what I usually run on the car I track these days.
It easily loses me 3 seconds on a 1:50 lap compared to the RE-71Rs I used to
run (an equivalent to the Cup Sports), and I’m not even close to the fastest
on the track. A better driver could squeeze even more out of better tires
The GT3 RS is not a normal car, even by 911 standards, which is why it comes
with tires which start losing traction before the quoted 40 degrees where they
start degrading...
-
When you’re talking about less than 4 seconds separating 30+ cars, street
tires you can track vs track tires you can Street is a _huge_ difference.
-
Now what else about my comment is wrong?
No one in the motoring world talks about records the way the title wants to.
If I say “I beat the GT3 RS's record at my local track”, people would assume I
meant I beat the overall track record, held by a GT3 RS.
Here it was meant to mean it beat the record for the F1... there were 64 F1s
ever made for road use!
No one would really compare their track record to the one set by a TV show
running a 1 of 64 supercar on a rainy day. But if they did they wouldn’t do it
with the wording they used.
-
The car was also heavily modified, again to a layperson if they didn’t change
the power output who cares?
But when you’re talking about tracking a car, suspension and aero bits are
extremely important, to the point they’re restricted by really complex rules
in each racing class.
-
For the record, I also have a Volt, and I’m not anti-EV.
I’m anti-lightly veiled aftermarket manufacturer puff pieces, which the
performance driving field is rife with.
~~~
natch
>Pilot Sport 4S, which is what I usually run on the car I track these days.
Yep I have the same tires on my daily driver. I don't track though, too much
of a n00b. I'll admit you're much wonkier than me on this stuff.
But I found the original article much more balanced with the negative and
positive, and it did fully disclose that the car was heavily modified, where
your comments imply that it didn't.
And I'm pretty skeptical that the (yes rare) road version of the F1 had no
differences from the track version, but your comments didn't mention any, as
if there were none. Which made me think your presentation of the facts is
tilted beyond what's warranted.
~~~
BoorishBears
My comments don’t imply that they didn’t mention it, my comments reiterate it
as part of why this article reads like a puff piece.
The catch when it comes to stuff like this is always in tiny details like
runouts, special tires, weirdly specific records that move the goal post from
what you’d expect.
It all ends up sounding like a bunch of nits from the outside, but again,
under 4 seconds separate the that F1 run from the 30+ cars that did it faster
(ironically a 911 GT3 has the fastest hot lap)
Honestly to me the title alone is the biggest hint. It sounds kind of insane
to say this, but there is nothing truly special about a car being faster than
an F1 on that track, it’s much more about the driver, and to me that’s what
would impress (but wouldn’t let you right an advertisement for Unplugged...).
In fact, you can watch the original F1 run separately and see that in action:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcRY15toko0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcRY15toko0)
To the untrained eye sliding = pushing it, but if you look closer, you can
clearly see they were not pushing it. Especially by Best Motoring standards.
And who can blame them? Damp track, skinny tires, irreplaceable car, on a
track with an unforgiving layout
Many other cars in the price range of their modded Model 3 could have beat
that lap (for reference, their front brake kit alone is almost 10k. All their
aero upgrades and body mods also cost well over 10k in total, they also have a
15k wheel package for sale...)
> And I'm pretty skeptical that the (yes rare) road version of the F1 had no
> differences from the track version, but your comments didn't mention any, as
> if there were none. Which made me think your presentation of the facts is
> tilted beyond what's warranted.
Also don’t know what this is supposed to be saying.
The F1 and the F1 GTR were immensely different cars, and the F1 GTR was
obviously not what set that record.
I haven’t brought up the GTR (which would be the “track version”) at any
point, so why would I bring up the differences?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Asus unveils new 3d gaming laptop that doesn't require glasses - pbj
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/250453,asus-unveils-glasses-free-3d-gaming-laptop.aspx
======
aidenn0
It sounds like they use the eye tracker to move the pixels relative to the
lenticular array (actually on further reading, they use an active lenticular
array, but it's still a relative movement). That's kind of a nifty idea. A
long time ago philips had a prototype that worked by just having a lot (7
IIRC) fields under each lenticule so that it worked from a wider angle.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Improved JavaScript and WebAssembly performance in EdgeHTML 17 - pjmlp
https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2018/06/19/improved-javascript-webassembly-performance-edgehtml-17/
======
giancarlostoro
One announcement I'm waiting to hear about in all honesty is Microsoft open
sourcing Edge, they don't have to reveal Cortana specifics (though that would
be fund to read through if they'd allow it) but just EdgeHTML with Chakra in a
way that compiles nicely. I would love to see what would happen if they
allowed the community to contribute back to Edge if it could become much more
competitive as a result of them welcoming contributors.
A few years ago I'd sound like I'd be tripping on bathsalts but I think it
could happen, just a matter of when they choose to do so.
~~~
Flenser
Chakra is Open Source:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore](https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore)
but I guess what you want is an "Edgeium" equivalent of Edge in the way that
Chromium is the full (compilable) OSS version of Chrome.
~~~
danShumway
I think that Microsoft is still working on a Chakra version of Node as well.
That's probably what I'm most excited about, V8 hasn't had much competition,
which means that there's nobody to question its approach to resource usage,
garbage collection, etc...
V8 is great for some things, but it falls down hard on low-resource
environments. This is one of the reasons why Electron apps are so greedy, you
have to kind of do a lot of fighting with V8 if you don't want it to balloon
RAM usage. If you have open RAM sitting around, sometimes V8 will decide to
just take it so it can defer garbage collection longer, or so it doesn't need
to waste time asking for it in the future. From what I've heard, Chakra is
better about those kinds of situations.
I would really like to see a runtime ecosystem for Node and Electron that is
as competitive as browsers are. Microsoft is probably in the best position to
push that.
There's some potential that with a solid competitor they could open the
floodgates and encourage other developers to start building browser runtimes
that are optimized for specific scenarios rather than a one-size-fits-all
approach.
~~~
kodablah
[https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore](https://github.com/nodejs/node-
chakracore)
------
TheAceOfHearts
I've never seen a person using Edge. Does anyone here use it? Do you work at
Microsoft or have a big technical investment in their technology? Do you find
the lack of cross-platform support annoying, or do you primarily use a single
OS?
These changes all look like they apply to ChakraCore, which is open source and
available outside of Windows. I'd be curious to hear what kinds of use-cases
people have for using Node Chakra over Node V8.
~~~
NiveaGeForce
Edge is the most resource efficient and respects modern Windows conventions,
therefore it has the best, pen, touchscreen, tablet (including share button
and stuff) and precision trackpad support. And since it's WinRT/UWP, it can
suspends its tab processes, and also itself when minimized or automatically
during tablet mode in the background, and during fullscreen it also
automatically unhides the taskbar when you hover over it, for better multi-
tasking.
It also has nice features such as the set tabs aside session manager that even
retains history and session cookies, and it a nice PDF and ePub reader with
support for notes and highlighting with the pen, and Cortana integration.
Before Edge, I primarily used Firefox and dabbled with Chrome and Vivaldi.
Edge is on both iOS and Android, and no I don't work for MS, I just value
proper modern OS integration and battery efficiency, so that I can use my
device as intended.
~~~
beagle3
> Edge is on both iOS and Android,
Something called Edge from Microsoft is available for iOS (where it is a
rebranded WebKit) and on Android (where it is a rebranded Blink, IIRC). If you
primarily work with Windows 10, Edge makes some sense, otherwise it makes no
sense.
On iPhone, by Apple decree, ALL web browsers (including Firefox and Chrome)
are rebranded WebKit; However, on Android, Chrome is (mostly) the real chrome
and Firefox is (mostly) the real firefox.
> I just value proper modern OS integration and battery efficiency, so that I
> can use my device as intended.
The only downside to it I see is that you are using Windows 10... I value
privacy and control of my devices a little more than 10% of battery
efficiency.
~~~
NiveaGeForce
> Something called Edge from Microsoft is available for iOS (where it is a
> rebranded WebKit) and on Android (where it is a rebranded Blink, IIRC).
Why is it a problem that it uses webkit on iOS and Android? Why reinvent the
wheel, when those rendering engines are already optimized for those platforms?
The thing I care about is that it supports syncing of settings.
> If you primarily work with Windows 10, Edge makes some sense, otherwise it
> makes no sense.
If you primarily work with Mac OS, Safari makes some sense, otherwise it makes
no sense. Why do I never hear that complaint?
Also, Edge on iOS and Android will soon have a built-in adblocker.
> The only downside to it I see is that you are using Windows 10... I value
> privacy and control of my devices a little more than 10% of battery
> efficiency.
Have you ever looked at the privacy controls of Windows? Also the battery
efficiency is significantly more than 10%, and try find me an as versatile and
user friendly alternative OS for pen capable 2-in-1s, that has better privacy
controls.
~~~
beagle3
> If you primarily work with Mac OS, Safari makes some sense, otherwise it
> makes no sense. Why do I never hear that complaint?
Yes, but I work on all three desktop OSes, and two mobile OSs; I picked
Firefox, which I use everywhere except on iOS (where it does exist, but is not
really Firefox, even if it does sync with the rest of the Firefoxen).
> Also, Edge on iOS and Android will soon have a built-in adblocker.
Cool. Firefox already does, and I can also use it on Linux and Mac.
> Have you ever looked at the privacy controls of Windows?
Yes, I have, and they are horrible; Have you?. I cannot stop telemetry or
updates (unless LTSB which I can't even get, or enterprise which is too
expensive to get for home), I can't get security updates without _eveything_
else that Microsoft decides to bundle even if I did use LTSB or Enterprise. I
have no way to verify exactly what Microsoft sends to their servers (and their
description is incomplete and out of date, if you care to trust it).
The upgrade-to-windows-10 dark patterns are what you should consider when you
think "windows control & privacy".
> Also the battery efficiency is significantly more than 10%,
Not in my experience of Edge vs Firefox, unless things have changed very
dramatically in the last few months.
> and try find me a more versatile and user friendly alternative OS for pen
> capable 2-in-1s, that has better privacy controls.
"versatile" and "user friendly" are very subjective terms; I curse every
minute I have to work with Windows after having used a consistently set up
linux machine (and even MacOS is a little clunky in comparison). "pen capable
2-in-1" is a very specific requirement that means nothing to me and (I would
guess) 95% of the users.
In my biased sample of the world, PCs have gone back to being work devices,
and everything else is being done on the phone, with cloud sync bridging the
gaps. I know a few people who bought a 2-in-1 but no one uses them except as a
laptop except on very very rare occasions.
~~~
pjmlp
Surely not an Android nor ChromeOS user I would guess.
Where are the telemetry setting again?
~~~
beagle3
On android they are called "Google Play Services". I'm an incidental Android
user, but last I tried removing them, that did stop the telemetry (and killed
a lot of functionality, but my phone is still usable for my usage).
No idea about ChromeOS - my chromebook runs Arch ....
------
maga
Two things on my wishlist as a developer:
1\. Decoupling Edge updates from Windows updates for quicker adoption.
2\. Custom Elements as the basic feature for Web Components.
~~~
vbezhenar
Edge is a Windows component, why decouple its updates? Is there any problems
with quick windows updates? Ordinary users can't even disable updates now, so
it shouldn't be a problem.
~~~
ohitsdom
Why tie one program's update cycle to the update cycle of the entire OS? It
would unnecessarily slow down updates to Edge.
This is the opposite strategy that Microsoft adopted with .NET Core, where
everything is being moved to smaller, individual packages so they can be
updated on their own schedule instead of being tied to the overall framework
version.
------
jillesvangurp
The browser wars are back; that's a good thing. The web started moving forward
again since Firefox upped their game on the performance and ux front. I
converted back (from Chrome) about a year ago and haven't looked back.
MS has been bleeding market share for a long time. The IE to Edge transition
basically fragmented their market, destroyed their brand name, and they never
really got back the market share they had gotten used to with Edge. Most
people I use that actually use windows, have Chrome or Firefox as their main
browser. Apple has the same problem with Safari. I only ever use it to
download Firefox or Chrome. Mobile browsers are completely dominated by Chrome
and Safari. MS killed their mobile platform and basically serves a niche
market for people that really want a MS branded platform there. I actually use
Firefox on Android and like it a lot but I'm a minority.
IMHO wasm is approaching the point where it will (finally) create a viable
ecosystem for languages other than javascript to be used for mainstream web
development. MS, is well positioned with their tool chains to take advantage
of that. So, not strange to see MS investing there. Though I do think they
need to cut their losses and put their money behind either Chrome or Firefox
and retire their in house browsers. Edge at this point is not an easy sell.
They did the right thing on mobile killing of windows phone and eliminating
that as an internal distraction and I don't see them getting away with having
any edge only websites these days.
~~~
NiveaGeForce
There is no need for MS to abandon Edge, especially when OS integration is
going to be more important in the near future. Chrome and Firefox are also not
as resource efficient on Windows, which his especially important on battery
powered Windows devices. Same as on Mac OS, where you use Safari, if you value
your battery life.
Also there will be new mobile Windows devices very soon.
[https://www.windowscentral.com/upcoming-microsoft-
hardware-w...](https://www.windowscentral.com/upcoming-microsoft-hardware-
watch-out-over-next-year-or-so)
~~~
jillesvangurp
I imagine maintaining it is a big effort and keeping up an even bigger one.
Sure they make billions, but still. What are they really getting out of this
at this point.
~~~
TimJYoung
For one, they're getting a platform for UWP applications that are written in
JS, which I would guess is pretty important.
------
martin_drapeau
The article I find weak. They state things like 'an average memory savings of
7%' and 'up to 2.5x faster' without providing details. I would like to see
benchmarks. Then again, I don't really care. Chrome has won the game on
Windows.
Beyond that, I feel people who have chosen Chrome as a browser on Windows will
be very hard or impossible to switch because of their browser history,
passwords and so forth is saved and carried over across devices.
~~~
giancarlostoro
Speak for yourself, Firefox has been good to me, and without phoning back home
to Google. Facebook & Google Containers are great.
Browsers are like text editors, opinions and (pardon my French) like assholes,
everyone has one, but nobody likes anybody else's...
------
ralusek
"Good ideas, thanks."
\- V8 team
------
shultays
They should just add buttons to download chrome/firefox/opera. That is all
Edge users needs at this point
------
darrensw777
Seriously Microsoft -
let addOne = (x) => {x + 1};
That is such a basic syntax error it's unbelievable that whoever wrote it
didn't see it, and whoever proofread it didn't see it either.
~~~
kylealden
"teh" is a basic spelling error, but I bet you've let it slip through
somewhere before
------
magnat
> our early experiments show an average memory savings of 7% from this and a
> few other memory improvements
This seems little. I wonder if they knew it beforehand and decided it is worth
the effort, or overestimated potential memory savings.
> Chakra was able to reduce RegExp bytecode memory in some popular extensions
> in this release by up to 10%
Same as above. My current total size of ad filter rules is less than 1MB. Even
if all of them were RegExps and bytecode representation was few times larger
than raw rules, that would be quite insignificant gain.
~~~
dictum
Some optimizations compound. Skipping anything that doesn't pass some
impressive threshold (20%? 30%?) is the path to 500MB about:blank tab
processes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon is eating the software (which is eating the world) - gasull
https://medium.com/@swardley/amazon-is-eating-the-software-which-is-eating-the-world-738888fb9e82
======
jmnicolas
Interesting (and scary) but frankly I don't have enough knowledge to assess
this theory.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
On the Osborne 1 and Adam Osborne, 30 years later. - technologizer
http://technologizer.com/2011/04/01/osborne-computer/
======
dsuriano
_"Hi, this is Steve Jobs. I'd like to speak with Adam Osborne."
The secretary informed Steve that Mr. Osborne was not available, and would not
be back in the office until tomorrow morning. She asked Steve if he would like
to leave a message.
"Yes", Steve replied. He paused for a second. "Here's my message. Tell Adam
he's an asshole."
There was a long delay, as the secretary tried to figure out how to respond.
Steve continued, "One more thing. I hear that Adam's curious about the
Macintosh. Tell him that the Macintosh is so good that he's probably going to
buy a few for his children even though it put his company out of business!"_
[http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Tell_Adam_Hes_An_Asshole.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium)
------
iuguy
I used an Osborne 1 as a child, it was my uncle's. He used to take it with him
as he travelled between factories a lot and often had to write reports.
Although it looks ridiculous now, it really was mind-bending technology at the
time. This was a full computer running full CP/M! Wordstar! Everything! Here's
a video of the Osborne 1 in action[1].
He also had an Epson HX-20[2] which he eventually gave to me, it's an amazing
machine and bizarrely Epson still provide support pages for it.[3]
[1] - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTC2_Y8SQ4>
[2] - <http://oldcomputers.net/hx-20.html>
[3] - [http://www.epson.com/cgi-
bin/Store/support/supDetail.jsp?BV_...](http://www.epson.com/cgi-
bin/Store/support/supDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=14492)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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List of States with Nuclear Weapons - tosh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons
======
rurban
There are rumored to be nuclear weapons stationed in South Korea also.
Admitting it would complicate the peace talks significantly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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How Amazon's Culture Enables Innovation - andyidsinga
https://www.bri-associates.com/blog/2018/8/3/how-amazons-culture-enables-innovation-t3pls
======
andyidsinga
Although the target audience for the post may be more medium to large'ish
companies working on new business innovation (and the creative agencies trying
to help them) - I particularly like the parts about focusing on free cash flow
and self-service & service oriented platforms.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Hey, Turn Bluetooth Off When You're Not Using It - SREinSF
https://www.wired.com/story/turn-off-bluetooth-security/
======
api
Better yet let's kill it and replace it with a near field protocol that isn't
so overengineered, fragile, and failure prone. Bluetooth has always been junk.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Higher-Order JavaScript (A Javascriptish companion to Higher-Order Perl) - soundsop
http://interglacial.com/hoj/hoj.html
======
systems
thanks for the link :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future - Anon84
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/how-the-simulmatics-corporation-invented-the-future
======
LyndsySimon
I would love to see a follow-up to this in the form of an interview with
someone (or as many people who are still alive) who worked behind the scenes
at Simulmatics. The events in the article happened 61 years ago, so it’s
entirely possible that some of their more junior people could still be alive.
They would be in their 80s or 90s, and time is rapidly running out for such a
story.
I’m 36. It’s striking to me how much has changed in my professional lifetime
already - we’ve gone from rumors of data-based marketing causing issues for
other companies to it being embedded in everything we do. A/B testing is
fundamental to feature development at every successful company I’ve
experienced in the past decade.
While the election of 1960 was before my time, it seems like fairly recent
history to me. To realize that it’s closer to the Wright brothers’ first
flight at Kitty Hawk than to the present day is disconcerting. I can’t begin
to imagine what the future holds sixty years from now. Subjectively, it seems
like the velocity of the societal impact of technology continues to increase.
I’ve seen the rise of social media (MySpace, Facebook, Google+, and countless
others that have failed). Sitting here today I see the only survivor of that -
Facebook - increasingly as a legacy network that appears strong on its
surface, but precariously so. I fully expect something new to hit the scene
that steals the limelight and turns Facebook into a ghost town. Each time that
has happened in the past the new platform has fundamentally changed the way we
interact with others, both virtually and in person.
We look at the current state of technology with different eyes than our
predecessors. The “People Machine” described in the article is almost
certainly possible today. It exists in various forms at Facebook, Google,
Apple, Amazon, the NSA... We see each of those implementations as limited
because we have perspective on how they could be made to be more powerful and
a better understanding of how models are limited by the purpose for which they
are created. Our dystopian fiction today takes the dystopian fiction of the
1960s as a starting condition.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Judge: Not running an ad is an exercise in free speech - 6stringmerc
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/judge-agrees-broadcasters-have-first-amendment-right-refuse-advertisements-1007317
======
valuearb
It would be an easier decision if most broadcasters weren't using public
property to broadcast with. Long ago it was decided in exchange for the gift
of free airwaves they'd accept strict regulation along with the obligation to
run "public service" announcements, and to curry favor with powerful
politicians.
I say grant the airwaves as property to their current controllers, and stop
regulating them altogether. Then it's private property and clearly they can
broadcast what they and their customers want. Or they can sell to some data
service to use their frequencies for high performance networks. Or find even
better uses.
Public control of broadcasting is just a hidden tool for our political
organizations to maintain their power.
~~~
TheCoelacanth
Selling part of the spectrum is theft from future generations. At the absolute
most there should be leases lasting maybe a decade or two.
~~~
valuearb
It's no more theft than allowing you to own the property under your house.
~~~
ninju
Very different "the property under your house" is very tangible discrete thing
that you pay to own The airwaves (and the signal being transmitted over it)
are nebulous flowing item and giving perpetual ownership rights to what can be
delivered on those airwaves is a _very_ powerful right..maybe leasing is the
right way
~~~
valuearb
They can treated effectively as property and there are good reasons to do so.
TV and radio frequencies are losing value for media broadcast, but can't be
repurposed for better uses such as competing with cable monopolies in data
transfer. Ownership rights would make that feasible.
------
Mz
_InfoStream argued the broadcaster 's refusal was "pretextual," one designed
to garner favor from SiriusXM's preferred customers._
God forbid that a business should cater to its best customers. I mean, for
shame and all that.
/s
------
mesozoic
Does this imply that adblocking is also free speech
~~~
moomin
That'd be my interpretation...
------
exabrial
This seems the opposite direction in the cake baking decisions that have come
up of late.
~~~
moomin
You make a good point. I think the difference is that the cake refusal case is
founded on 14th amendment rights, whereas the advertiser can't argue that in
this case.
------
lolc
Obligatory [https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)
"Not listening to my bullshit is violating my free speech rights" actually
means "I should be able to force people to listen to my bullshit."
~~~
graphememes
This runs a thin line where orders of powers are in play, what has the most
power in a certain realm and what conditions are to be followed or met. Are we
arguing legality of Freedom of Speech or are we arguing order of power and
rights to all irregardless of ownership and power structures?
If it is the former then yes, the law cannot arrest you for speech. If it is
the latter, that is harder to ascertain, and I don't think (nor will I assume
or paint a broad brush on these individuals) that people mean they want to
force people to listen, but they want the same and equal opportunity to voice
their opinion.
Having the opportunity is not the same as forcing, and I would never conflate
these in my mind.
If we are arguing that America is the originating power structure and the
servers are hosted in American soil, does that mean they must follow these
bills to rights? Does the rights of those who claim ownership of the servers
factor into the equation and do they have authority to govern whether someone
should be capable of censorship? What about the network the opinion travels
over? What about the country that the opinion comes from? What about...
Many of these cases renders down to ownership case, and Capitalism at times is
at disagreement with rights, and in this case, capitalism is what allows these
to propagate in a way due to monetary ownership of grounds where opinions are
being voiced.
It's a very difficult conversation and road to navigate. It's not as simple as
your statement renders.
~~~
lolc
Yes my statement is too simplistic looking at all the issues around free
speech. I meant the first amendment in particular and the mistaken belief that
"shut up or leave" is a violation of it.
So yeah, I criticized people for mistaking the first amendment to mean their
absolute right to free speech all while confusing the terms myself.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Two shot dead because they unfriended woman on Facebook - cs702
http://www.nettechblog.com/two-people-are-dead-because-they-unfriended-woman-on-facebook
======
sp332
Man, I thought Knife Party's "Internet Friend" song was a joke.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What will the world look like after capitalism? - techmarketerguy
Simple question: what social or economic arrangement will replace capitalism when the time eventually comes?
======
bb01100100
I'm not sure the current system is actually capitalism - it's more like a
corrupted version where lobbyists manipulate policy to suit large corporates.
Being a free-markets kind of person, I'd like to see real capitalism at the
small-scale: individuals creating products & services of value for the world
and being rewarded properly for those things.
I would think that the likely replacement for what we've got at the moment is
likely to be the antithesis of capitalism: socialism.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Cult of Busy - pmcpinto
https://medium.com/thelist/the-cult-of-busy-bbb124caed51
======
valarauca1
I love this post. I've long been guided by a simple saying, "Accomplishment is
only for those who need to validate their existence."
Obviously it doesn't apply to work, but what you do in your free time. Or time
not allocated to earning money. But free time, and weekends. Do you spend that
time on others, for the sake of them acknowledging your existence? Or do you
spend it on yourself, making you happy?
------
dinarebecca
Yes, yes exactly right. Decide how you want to spend your time, and then spend
it exactly as you'd like. And figure out what you can do in a day so you're
not "busy" \- or frantic all day. Celebrate calm.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are some good iPhone app developer blogs or forums - tocomment
Mostly I'm just curious how I get into the program and what the ETA is to get a an app in the store. It looks like they haven't added any new apps since the launch which is kind of discouraging.
======
tstegart
How to get in to the program? You go to Apple's website and sign up. Its a two
step process, first you sign up, and then sign up again for the developer
program. When they accept you, you pay $99 and can submit applications to the
app store. No word on how long those are taking to get approved. And they have
added a few hundred apps since launching. There are RSS feeds of new
applications, updated applications, and the top applications. See
<http://www.pinchmedia.com/your-view-into-the-app-store/>
I'm not sure of where to go for the developer side, but apple's forums would
be a good start. I run a blog about the business side (in sig.), and there are
many other resources out there as well.
~~~
tocomment1
Nice. I subscribed to that and to your blog. (FTW It might be nice to but some
dates on your blog posts if you get a chance.)
I signed up for the developer program yesterday. Any idea how long it takes to
get accepted?
~~~
tstegart
Thanks. I added dates, not sure how those got lost. I don't know how long it
takes to get accepted, but I know people were starting to get accepted quicker
since the App Store opened. It took a little over a month for me. Plenty of
time to write an application. :)
------
tstegart
For the business side or the coding side?
~~~
tocomment
Actually both in equal portions :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OpenBSD Is Now My Workstation - sogubsys
https://sogubsys.com/openbsd-is-now-my-workstation-operating-system/
======
lifeisstillgood
For years I lived in FreeBSD world - servers and laptops. I was fighting the
good fight and rationalised that having to only remember one location for
network services was a win.
Then I took a second look. I realised that I was spending waaayy too much time
getting the laptop usable (usually wifi) and not going enough using it
I bailed for ubuntu and I cannot remember where the network confit is and hate
the GUI but I have stopped caring and I just do my work
Sometimes I feel dirty.
~~~
gbmor
I switched from Linux to OpenBSD, then to FreeBSD as my primary OS on my
laptop, which involved a bit more set-up time than I was accustomed to with
Linux, previously. Eventually I grew tired of the manual setup for so many
things and bailed for Debian Sid.
It feels like a nice middle-ground. Most things work out of the box, but I
still get to tinker and scratch that itch.
~~~
munmaek
I went the same route. Arch -> Void -> FreeBSD -> OpenBSD -> Debian Stretch
(no desktop, just xorg + i3).
I love it. No more random updates breaking things like in Arch. I can install
things relatively smoothly and get them running quickly. If I really do need
the latest version of something I can still install from source. Etc.
I just want to work on things, not configure things endlessly and deal with
random bugs :-)
~~~
gbmor
That is _exactly_ how I feel.
------
lone_haxx0r
I hate the fact that Thinkpads are the laptops with the best OpenBSD support.
I dislike Thinkpads for two reasons:
\- They're made by Lenovo. A couple of years ago, Lenovo bundled malware in
the BIOS of their laptops [superfish incident]. For that reason, I won't ever
again buy a single product from them, since I can't trust them.
\- They're ugly. I find most current laptops ugly, so this may be _my_ fault,
and by itself it wouldn't be enough of a reason not to buy one. But still.
~~~
architect64
For what it's worth, the Superfish and LSE BIOS scandals didn't apply to
ThinkPads. I think Lenovo understands that they have too many serious business
and gov clients using ThinkPads to risk doing something silly like that to
their professional-grade ThinkPad brand.
~~~
RaleyField
> For what it's worth
Not much in my book. The problem isn't Superfish, the problem is leadership
that allowed it.
~~~
Stratoscope
ThinkPad is under rather different leadership from Lenovo's consumer division
that had the Superfish debacle on IdeaPads and the like. Sure, they are part
of one corporation at the very top, but you don't have to go very far down the
org chart before they split into separate teams and leadership.
ThinkPad is from the old IBM teams in Raleigh and Yamato. Lenovo made their
own laptops before buying IBM's personal computer division, and that line (and
its management) became IdeaPad.
If you're troubled by leadership that would allow Superfish (as I am), buy a
ThinkPad, not an IdeaPad.
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20240533](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20240533)
~~~
lone_haxx0r
I shouldn't have to learn about the internal structure of a company in order
to buy a laptop without malware.
Maybe Lenovo should have thought about their internal structure and their
brand reputation before installing malware on their laptops, or maybe not
(because they don't care about clients like me, they care about the 90% of
bosses that buy bulks of Thinkpads and don't know what firmware is). But
anyway, it wasn't a rogue engineer who did it, it was Lenovo, and in my eyes:
Lenovo ships malware.
~~~
Stratoscope
Of course it's up to you to decide what computer to buy or not to buy, based
on whatever criteria you see fit.
But I don't think you're doing yourself a favor by ruling out ThinkPads just
because of a boneheaded decision that Lenovo's consumer division made a few
years ago. ThinkPad and IdeaPad really are two separate organizations under
one corporate umbrella.
Superfish was not something handed down from on high, it was the bright idea
of the consumer group. The ThinkPad team would never go along with something
like that; it's not in their DNA and it would destroy their business. Their
bread and butter isn't you and me, it's large organizations with IT and
security departments who deploy hundreds of ThinkPads at a time and look very
closely at the software on them.
Only offering food for thought, it's cool with me whether you buy ThinkPads or
something else. :-)
~~~
patrick5415
Personally, I agree with the op. If we want to send a message that malware in
our BIOSs is absolutely unacceptable, it makes zero sense to give Lenovo any
business.
~~~
Stratoscope
I don't see how boycotting ThinkPads sends a message that BIOS malware is
unacceptable. ThinkPads never had that, and never would.
Anyway, I don't usually buy or not buy a computer to send a message. I buy one
because it meets my business and personal needs. I've been using ThinkPads for
over 20 years, and they have served me very well.
You may choose differently, and of course that's fine.
~~~
RaleyField
> I don't see how boycotting ThinkPads sends a message that BIOS malware is
> unacceptable
It sends a message to other manufacturers: add malware at your own peril. I
frankly consider it unethical to buy or recommend products from companies,
like Lenovo, who demonstrated anti-consumer behavior because it perpetuates
bad behavior as companies think consumers will forget or forgive them.
> ThinkPads never had that, and never would.
That is speculative. I can't know that whatever harmful and irrational
environment that led to Superfish in IdeaPad won't affect ThinkPads in the
future. Even in the most generous understanding where IdeaPad is a different,
physically separate branch of the company, and Superfish was an act of
incompetence and not outright malice I can't be expected to keep up with the
insider intrigue of the company to notice any changes that could negatively
affect me. More importantly, leadership is still responsible for setting
irrational environment that lead to Superfish, whatever that environment was.
This is a multi-billion dollar company, there is no excuse for such
incompetence.
------
dijit
I like openbsd. I like their attitude (even if many don’t) I like what they’ve
given to the UNIX-likes, and what they strip away due to complexity (removal
of Bluetooth) or lack of decent UX (wpa_supplicant), or just potential issues
(removal of Hyperthreading)
I know it’s probably controversial to mention it; but I’m also glad they
didn’t buy into the code of conduct saga that waved over FreeBSD and
eventually Linux.
I’ve used the OS as a daily driver, it certainly was nice, albeit slow. I
would go back if I could avoid some of the Linux/MacOS stuff I really need. I
still use it on personal servers and I still really love it.
I send them €50/mo but I don’t feel like it’s enough. I wish they had more
resources to bring things like AC Wi-Fi to the fold. Truly impressive work to
all involved.
~~~
wrycoder
I don't think there are many who send €50/mo, kudos to you! Few of their
corporate users give much back at all.
I used OpenBSD as my workstation a decade ago and also ran it on a firewall
box. However, upgrading the system every six months is tedious: basically, you
manually download the files, overwrite the kernel and userland core, and then
do a three way merge of /etc. Plus there's a bit of manual work required to
deleted unused files and account for moved files:
[https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade65.html](https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade65.html)
After that, you still have to upgrade the ports tree (which has gotten
easier).
Note that skipping upgrades is not supported.
Security updates between the six month upgrades are handled by monitoring the
security list and downloading and applying patches as instructed.
If you are running a bunch of identical servers professionally, it's not much
of a burden, but it is if you are upgrading one workstation and a firewall
box. I got tight on time and went back to Debian/apt.
Does anyone here know how to do this more efficiently?
(It is a really nice system, and the man pages are superb.)
~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Somewhat like sibling comment, I'd be really tempted to put /home on its own
filesystem, control/configure everything else with Ansible (or Chef or Puppet
or [...]), and just do a fresh install every 6 months. For bonus points,
automate the install part with an autoinstall file. Keep in mind, there's
setup cost here; it's easy for me to say because I'm already controlling my
system with Ansible, but if you're just getting started it's harder.
------
davesmith1983
I've been using OpenBSD since 3.8.
OpenBSD is a great system because it makes sense. If you want to find out how
something works. You go to the manual page. A lot of questions about the
Operating system can be found on the FAQ.
Much like Arch Linux, I don't find myself needing to Google around forums
trying to find a solution. I go to the docs and 99% of the time I will find
the solution.
The reasons for using it aren't really that exciting. It is a basic system
that works well.
------
hdfbdtbcdg
He literally can't do his job on this OS... He runs his critical workloads
(Linux virtual machines) on another laptop with Linux installed.
~~~
4ad
But he can. I have no idea why he dismissed vmd.
~~~
sogubsys
I need to run Windows workstation and server VMs, too. (In the screenshot, I
show Windows).
Additionally, the Linux VM cons with vmd are off-putting, but I'll be getting
them working. I even saw a blog post about running docker containers on linux
on vmd. So, I'm going to try that out soon :D
------
loop0
I tried openbsd in my thinkpad x220. IDK if the processor only make a huge
difference (mine being core i3 2.1ghz), but what I saw was a slow system
experience, opening firefox for the first time (after boot) took a decade. I
would experience slugishness everytime I closed a tab. And I was using cwm
which is supposed to be even more lightweight than xfce4. I'm upgrading my
motherboard to have the same processor as the author, maybe I will give
another shot.
~~~
dmm
Were you using a traditional spinning rust hard drive? OpenBSD is basically
unusable without an SSD because of the filesystem they use.
~~~
edwintorok
I think you need to enable Soft Updates:
[https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates](https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates)
I don't know why it is not done by default, running without soft updates feels
like using a filesystem without a journal.
~~~
sogubsys
Indeed, it was recommended by several people that I add that and noatime.
That's active on my mount points.
------
akulbe
I have Linux-on-the-Windows-Desktop. WSL, that is. For my use case, it's
fucking amazing. I've come full circle.
I switched from Windows to Linux in 1999. I switched from Linux to Mac in
2003.
I've used Linux natively, it turned into a hack-fest. I spent more time trying
to get things working, than getting ACTUAL work done. Using the Linux platform
for development is fantastic.
It's when you want to do non-dev related productivity stuff that it got
frustrating for me. You had to have workarounds galore. Or you had to have
Wine, or you had to have a full Windows VM (when $APP didn't have a good nix-y
equivalent).
macOS _was_ great when the computer hardware was prioritized. Then at some
point, Apple shifted focus. It _was_ all about a cohesive experience, and
integration galore. Then it shifted. Now it's all about
iOS/iPadOS/watchOS/tvOS. macOS and its hardware have largely taken a back
seat. See the MacBook Pro 2016-.
When Apple releases the 2019 MBP and it _IMMEDIATELY_ goes onto the keyboard
repair program... you know that in spite of all lip service to the contrary,
that Apple gives no fucks about the Apple computer, like they do their gravy
train products.
I needed an environment that'd let me still target Linux development, but
stay-the-eff-out-of-my-way for productivity stuff. Windows it is. I know
that's not what HNer's wanna hear, but the cultural shift at MS and using MS
for a dev platform... it's been surprising, and amazing. Not what I'd expected
in a million years. #flyingpigs #flameon
Anyone else experience a similar evolution?
~~~
moksly
I’ve made the same transitions from win to Linux to Mac and for the same
reasons. I’m going back to Linux though.
I’ve used windows professionally all that time and Windows 10 is the least
productive it’s ever been, for me anyway. It’s just such a horrible experience
and I don’t know exactly why that is. I didn’t even mind CMD and powershell
and it’s not that I dislike Microsoft. I recently traded my personal g-suite
in for a Office365 essentials plan, and I’m rather happy with it, but I just
can’t get on the right food of Windows 10. I wish I could, the Surface Books
are genuinely the modern MacBook Pro, but Ubuntu is just a better experience.
Of course there is still a few quirks, the only one that’s really bothered me
is the lack of a Linux One Drive client, which should frankly tell you how
little Microsoft has really changed. They don’t intend to be good for Linux,
they want Linux to be good for them.
~~~
akulbe
To discount the sweeping changes in the company culture because they haven't
yet worked on what you want them to, don't you think that's a little short-
sighted?
I wanted Microsoft to release a new terminal. It took 2 years. Now that it's
out, I want it to support panes. There's only so much they can do at once.
I wanted a good consistent UI experience for Linux. It's been decades and that
still hasn't happened. The groups maintaining KDE and Gnome can hardly agree
_among themselves_ much less with the userbase.
At this point, I'm more inclined to believe that Microsoft will get things
done faster, than the Linux community will.
I'm not slamming Linux, either. Just being realistic after many years/attempts
of being user. Better to have a stable and consistent base to work from. If
you ask me, that's why so many folks who target Linux for development do it
from a non-Linux platform. It makes for a much less frustrating experience.
~~~
moksly
We’ve worked with Microsoft for decades and I personally really like them as
an enterprise partner, but I’m just not seeing those sweeping cultural changes
you are.
They’ve certainly opened up, they’ve even open sourced .Net with core. It
works with Linux, but it works better if you feed it security through Active
Directoy, monitor it with Application insights and deploy it in Azure. There
is now a CLI, VSC and Visual Studio for Mac, but Visual Studio for Windows is
still light years better. And that’s really the general story. They’ve opened
up, but I see it much more as Microsoft understanding the market again than a
“new” Microsoft. I’m fine with it, it’s certainly nice to have better
products, but I do think it’s the same old story of getting the most out of
your environment if you buy all of it from Microsoft. I’m perfectly fine with
that by the way, they are a company after all, and if they can make better
products than they did before then cool!
I don’t personally think Windows 10 is a better product though. I find it to
be one of the most frustrating OSes I’ve ever had to use, aWd that’s why I’m
not going windows -> Linux -> Mac -> Windows like you are. I think Ubuntu is a
much better experience than Windows 10, but then, I happen to actually really
like gnome.
------
AdmiralAsshat
>Speed is Stellar
>Speed is not a concern for me.
Is he saying that speed isn't a concern for him _in general_? If so, why
mention that the speed is stellar, then? Or is he saying that the system is so
light in general that he doesn't suspect speed will become a problem down the
line?
~~~
sogubsys
You're right, my mistake in communication there.
Speed is not a concern for me because it is fast for everything I use the
laptop for. I didn't hit snags where things were slow.
I'll update the post later for clarity. Thank you for pointing it out.
~~~
blackhaz
Great stuff. Also a big fan of OpenBSD, but what put me off eventually is lack
of VMs, Wine and... speed. On Thinkpad T410 (ancient) it was noticeably slower
than FreeBSD almost on any task, especially video playback in the browser. Not
really related to the file system use. Perhaps, the effect is not as
pronounced on CPUs of these days. Software selection was also a little
claustrophobic.
I'm now using FreeBSD as my main machine for almost a year - really happy with
the outcome, but even there some areas, like neural networks for example, are
difficult. (But Keras and Theano are there!)
In many aspects OpenBSD was amazing. It needed very little tinkering with to
get running properly, configs and ps ax were super-clean. Amazing environment.
~~~
edwintorok
There is some work done about VMs:
[https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html](https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html)
------
stonogo
OpenBSD will download your wifi firmware during first boot (post-install) if
there is a configured internet connection (i.e. ethernet).
~~~
microcolonel
A lot of Linux distros just ship a lot of this firmware, not expecting to be
litigated against for it; and it seems to work out.
~~~
petecox
c.f. Debian, which has a policy to exclude non-free firmware from its
installation media.
The onus is on the user to themselves supply the firmware.
[https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s04.html.en](https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s04.html.en)
------
cubano
So, you are giving up what seems like your 2 most important apps (Evernote and
VMs) just so you can run X operating system on a laptop?
Excuse me, but this just doesn't make any sense. Applications are the reason
we use computers, not OSs, and to have to make such sacrifices is IMHO just
silly. The whole OS holy-war thing seems so played out to me...its 2019 just
use whatever works..no one care really.
Add to that the apparent political nature of the openbsd "manifesto" and
guidelines and I'll just say that I, personally, am not a fan of mixing
politics and OSs.
~~~
sogubsys
I understand what you're saying but I fear you may be misunderstanding my
intentions and opinions. I feel you may be injecting your own issues with
things into my blog post. Please allow me explain.
The importance of having a secure and correct OS is most important to me (I
feel OpenBSD is most appropriate and interesting here). I feel the value of
OpenBSD outweighs the lose of two applications. I'm not part of an OS war, I
frankly don't care what anyone uses. I just posted about about my experience
on my blog (blogging is a new/rare thing for me and I am proud of the post, it
took hours to do) and frankly didn't expect the post to HN to do anything (I
posted on a whim, a coworker next to me loves the site) :)
I intended to migrate off of Evernote at some point, it is a tough band-aid to
pull off after getting used to it for 10 years. Not having native VirtualBox
on the machine is definitely a dislike, but isn't the end of the world. I only
need it for labs. NetBSD can apparently run in vmm, too, just have to pass a
boot option for the serial console (but I haven't tried it).
For Evernote, I had to ask myself what I'm actually using Evernote for. I'm
solely using it for having minimally rich text and website scrapes stored in
notebooks, and all notes being searchable. And I want it available wherever I
am. I don't use OSR, non-text notes, pro features, related notes, etc. So, I
question why I'm still paying for it, entrusting a vendor with all my data,
and dealing with non-standard clients outside of windows/mac. Doing something
just because I've always done is a terrible pattern. Time to re-evaluate and
fix. That's what I did, and now I have an extremely portable and flexible
solution that doesn't cost me anything but time, which I'm OK with.
I make a living with Linux for high traffic web applications, I use NetBSD and
Linux for my personal servers, and OpenBSD for my workstation. I enjoy
operating systems and I'm comfortable in all of them. Each one has their own
character, their own quirks and pros and cons. One size fits all, for me, is a
fool's game. No matter what you choose, there's some price to be paid for what
you get.
And to be crystal clear: I'm not trying to change hearts and minds, or
influence others, or be part of some cool kids club. Ultimately, I'm selfish
with my hobbies, which this is, and so I do what solely is interesting to me.
If I was able to help others, that's great and I'm happy for that, but I have
no expectations.
Thank you. I hope we can be on the same page now, and I hope I was not too
verbose. Be well.
An update to the article too about VMs: Note that for VMs I'm now using Oracle
(non-distro provided) Virtualbox with their VRDP active, which is RDP for the
VM instance and not the VM OS itself, so can RDP to the VMs on the network
much better than libvirt. So, it is good enough. VirtualBox is mainly for
intensive labs or monkeying with NetBSD kernel development, which 99% of the
time I'd do at home.
~~~
CTOSian
screw the evernote, use org-mode
------
anthony_doan
I bought a used Thinkpad to use OpenBSD.
The default installation is good and the internals are easy to understand.
It's not as complicated as Linux. The security etho is what brought me to
OpenBSD and the simplicity and easy to understand how everything works made me
love it even more.
The only reason why I haven't use it much after a few months is because I
needed RStudio. I wanted to settle for tmux+vim workflow for R but I've been
busy with other stuff.
------
merlincorey
Thanks for sharing this!
I run OpenBSD on my refurbished T430, and have very similar experiences.
Glad you have moved on from Evernote to something local and parse-able!
------
gbrown_
> vmd is cool tech, for sure, but it isn’t that useful to me. It is best if
> you want to run OpenBSD virtual machines or gimped Linux virtual machines.
The use of "gimped" is poor choice of words. It would be better if the author
described specifically what fell short for them.
~~~
sogubsys
From
[https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html](https://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq16.html)
The following features are available:
serial console access to the virtual machines
tap(4) interfaces
per-VM user/group ownership
privilege separation
raw, qcow2 and qcow2-derived images
dumping and restoring of guest system memory
virtual switch management
pausing and unpausing VMs
The following features are not available at this time:
graphics
snapshots
guest SMP support
hardware passthrough
live migration across hosts
live hardware change
Supported guest operating systems are currently limited to OpenBSD and Linux.
As there is no VGA support yet, the guest OS must support serial console.
~~~
yellowapple
One thing I've been meaning to try doing (and probably will indeed try doing
on my "workhorse" laptop at home, which is currently insufficiently used) is
experiment with running X clients from a vmd-managed Linux VM, plus perhaps
figuring out a way to stream audio in/out of the VM (and - as icing on the
cake - video in).
If I can get reasonably decent graphics, sound, and webcam support (in order
of importance), I'd be able to return to running OpenBSD on my work laptop
(I'm currently unable to do so because there are a couple apps I use daily for
work that don't run on OpenBSD).
------
rasengan
> Update: The core dumps are due to buggy programs. OpenBSD malloc is not as
> forgiving to blatant programming errors as other implementations of malloc
> available on other Operating Systems.
What is the difference/error?
~~~
yellowapple
OpenBSD's malloc is much more strict for security reasons. A crash sucks, but
it's infinitely preferable to an undetected bug that leaks data.
Heartbleed was famously possible even when using OpenSSL on OpenBSD because
OpenSSL (if I understand right) used its own custom allocator instead of the
system malloc, thus bypassing the various attack mitigations OpenBSD's malloc
provides (and that would have prevented Heartbleed from affecting OpenBSD
systems). This (among other instances of similar behavior) is what prompted
the OpenBSD folks to fork OpenSSL into libressl.
------
fluffything
There are trade-offs involved in choosing OpenBSD for a "Work"station, and the
post covers some: lack of packages/no proper package manager (requires
recompiling with patches from source), no Docker/VMs/VirtualBox/Wine, etc.
Other are lack of drivers, etc. None of these issues are incompatible with an
Operating System design (or not really), they mostly just need extra work.
However, the blog post mentions that "for them" performance isn't an issue.
This should not be interpreted as performance being good. OpenBSD performance
can only be described with data:
[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=8-linux-...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=8-linux-
bsd)
Even for something that the OpenBSD devs themselves are doing all the time,
compiling stuff, OpenBSD is ~20x slower than Linux. 2x slower would be
horrible. I really have no words to describe 20x slower performance. If you
are a dev working with a compiled language, imagine a 20x perf hit on compile-
times. Imagine having to patch LLVM/Clang on OpenBSD by recompiling it from
source. "Apocalyptically horrible", "worst in class", do not even make justice
for how slow OpenBSD is.
~~~
vbezhenar
> requires recompiling with patches from source
I don't think that's true. There's pkg_add and syspatch and those are
preferred methods for upgrading your system. You can recompile things from
source and I think that it's an awesome feature for hacker, who wants to
tinker with sources of some package, but that's not the only way.
~~~
fluffything
Between distro releases, if you want to apply security patches, you need to
recompile from source, because there are no binary releases.
------
user00012-ab
This article is what is wrong with bsd/linux. You have to write an article
about all the things you did to get your desktop to just work like any normal
desktop works out of the box.
In a normal world, the article should read "I installed bsd, and just used my
computer to do something useful."
~~~
sogubsys
There's more to it. It isn't a "Use OpenBSD, everything else sucks", it was
simply "I used OpenBSD on a Thinkpad T420 and let me tell you about it".
I also posted about that I tried Linux (Ubuntu), FreeBSD, and OpenBSD on the
laptop before deciding on OpenBSD. It wasn't made out of stubbornness.
It was simply the right choice for me for that laptop. And I shared my
experience getting it up to a state I was used to with my previous Linux
workstation (that this laptop replaced).
~~~
azinman2
But given the amount of steps I do think repeatedly stating how simple and
easy things were makes me think your bar is quite low. Compare installation to
macOS, it’s a million time so more complicated. If you need a FAQ to configure
your system and get wifi working, you’re doing it wrong.
(I also have installed OpenBSD before and found the whole process actually
quite complicated and documentation insufficient. YMMV)
~~~
sogubsys
That may be true, my bar may be low. I started with early BSD and Linux in
1996, and have been happy with minimal, cheap, and command line ever since.
My experience or expectations others may not share. I didn't truly consider
that when writing the blog post.
The stuff I complain about is probably less than 5% of the entire experience.
So, almost all the time OpenBSD is out of my way and I go about doing what I
did with a Linux workstation.
It is mostly web browser and terminals for me, with random apps here and there
like gimp or something.
I'm learning kernel and assembly programming and penetration testing, so my
use case probably differs from the average user experience, I'd guess.
I'm just a geek enjoying geeking out :)
------
auraham
I am attached to Ubuntu because of apt, my development stack (python, numpy,
scipy, matplotlib, and so on), and i3 as window manager. I would like to give
it a try, but I am not sure if these applications are available in OpenBSD.
~~~
basscomm
Apt isn't available for OpenBSD, but the rest of the apps you listed are:
[https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/6.5/packages/amd64/](https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/6.5/packages/amd64/)
------
peter_d_sherman
Excerpt:
"Speed is Stellar
The speed of the system is stellar. I feel like it is faster than the Linux
and FreeBSD installations, but I don’t have proof of it. I suspect there is
less bloat to weight things down and the hardware support for Thinkpads is
super in OpenBSD."
One of the hallmarks of a good Operating System...
------
lacampbell
Less 'mainstream' OS's seem more viable to me right now, because pretty much
every bit of software I use these days runs in either a terminal or a browser.
With termux I feel like I could use just an android phone if I had to.
------
sogubsys
Thanks to everyone for sharing their opinions, feedback, and help! I truly
appreciate it and was not expecting my blog post to explode like it did.
I am grateful for your kindness and hope you have a great time hacking away :)
------
waynesonfire
BSD OS's are very appealing to me given the infiltration of systemd on linux.
I'm very excited to be deploying FreeBSD on my homelab network.
------
stabbles
Does anyone know the status of Bluetooth on OpenBSD? I believe it does not
ship Bluez by default?
~~~
gbrown_
It was removed [1] and there aren't plans to bring it back as far as I'm
aware. Though you may be surprised in that you can get away without Bluetooth
support for some things, e.g. [2].
[1] [https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-
cvs&m=140511572108715&w=2](https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-
cvs&m=140511572108715&w=2)
[2] [https://xosc.org/bluetooth.html](https://xosc.org/bluetooth.html)
------
vasili111
I wish BSD systems had better support for hardware.
------
markhahn
surely "my workstation is now openbsd".
fwiw, didn't mention anything at all that would make me budge from linux...
~~~
sogubsys
That's OK, I was posting about my experience without intentions to change
hearts and minds of others.
I'm just a geek playing around, ya know.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What offline encryption methods do you use? - KennyFromIT
If you need to communicate with someone offline, how do securely conduct a conversation?<p>Same place, same time? Easy (relatively speaking). How about when you're separated by distance and time?
======
shrimp_emoji
This is not offline, but offline seems silly given today's technological
options:
> Both of you generate public/private key pairs
> Both of you spam your public keys to the world (including each other)
>> You might meet offline once, to make sure the public keys you gave each
other were indeed yours (and not a MITM's sending theirs to both of you while
suppressing your actual messages to each other)
>>> This is probably where your actual question's parameters would come into
play, but it only needs to happen once
> You encrypt (using a good cipher) some message into a binary blob with your
> friend's public key and send the encrypted message
>> Only your friend can decrypt this, using their private key which only they
have
> Your friend encrypts their reply with your public key and sends the
> encrypted message to you
>> Only you can decrypt this, using your private key which only you have
E2EE.
~~~
KennyFromIT
> This is not offline, but offline seems silly given today's technological
> options:
Agreed. There aren't many places where you'll be technically limited in
today's world.
However, let's say your're in prison and wants to communicate privately to the
outside world. Or, you're in a place where the government is
actively/extensively monitoring all technology mediums (to the extent that
they could even get your private keys). What are your best options?
~~~
Arbalest
The prison example is clearly the most difficult. Under oppressed governments,
you may still be able to use digital help to create offline communication
parcels. When you're in prison, you have your brain, a pen, paper and if
you're lucky, a secure destruction mechanism that doesn't immediately raise
suspicion.
~~~
shrimp_emoji
>you have your brain, a pen, paper and if you're lucky, a secure destruction
mechanism that doesn't immediately raise suspicion.
It would be absurdly difficult, but you could manually implement Diffie-
Hellman key exchange to generate a secret with the other party without
actually ever communicating it.
Just find a large prime, p (at least 600 digits to be safe).
Then pick an integer g between 1 and p and a random integer x.
Then compute g^x mod p.
Send p, g, and (g^x mod p) to your friend (you can even include these
instructions for them -- it won't affect whether this works).
They take your p, g, and (g^x mod p) and choose a random integer y
They compute g^y mod p and send that back to you.
You take their (g^y mod p) and compute (g^y mod p)^x mod p. This equals g^xy
mod p.
They take your (g^x mod p) and compute (g^x mod p)^y mod p. This also equals
g^xy mod p.
You now share a secure secret key, (g^xy mod p), that you can use for
encryption in a cipher. This is secure if you both chose a random x and y,
which you never shared, and which any attacker would need in order to derive
(g^xy mod p) from the four pieces of information they have: p, g, (g^x mod p),
and (g^y mod p). The discrete log problem makes it computationally-infeasible
to calculate x or y from those values.
Buuuuut then would come the even harder part: encrypting and decrypting
messages (being a human cipher suite) with that secret key. :3 It's just rote
math at that point, but... let's hope you have a lot of time and paper.
------
z1r011
1\. Use PGP / GPG and encode the key as 2D-Barcode for easy key-sharing. 2\.
AES or better block cipher for the payload.
------
ChrisGranger
I haven't had a need to do this, but I suppose you could print out an ASCII-
armored PGP message and snail-mail it to somebody. Of course this still
requires each of you has a computer, just not necessarily an internet
connection.
------
mtmail
Leaving messages at secret places
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_drop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_drop)
------
lioeters
Just as a thought exercise, I would consider:
\- Mailing encrypted USB sticks or messages on paper
\- Some kind of steganography: hidden/encoded messages disguised in another
form, like a painting..?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
News or ‘Trauma Porn’? Student Journalists Face Blowback on Campus - Bostonian
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/us/college-campus-journalists-newspapers.html
======
Bostonian
How is a protest going to have an impact if no media cover it?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gödel's Completeness Theorem - adamnemecek
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_completeness_theorem
======
bulatb
This theorem seems to be like monads: Someone posts about it on the internet,
someone doesn't understand and asks for help, someone comes along and writes a
simple explanation that seems to make sense, then someone says that
explanation is completely wrong (but here's this totally inscrutable "correct"
one... which someone comes along and says is even worse.)
And everyone is left confused.
~~~
anaphor
Just read this book, IMO [https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6dels-Proof-Ernest-
Nagel/dp/081...](https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6dels-Proof-Ernest-
Nagel/dp/0814758371)
It's only 160 pages and gives what seems to be a good explanation of the
basics.
~~~
novalis78
Currently reading Morris Kline’s “Loss of certainty” - a beautiful very
readable work that elucidates the relationship of Mathematics with concepts of
‘truth’ and ‘reality’ throughout mathematical history.
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195030850/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_aJ...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195030850/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_aJ.BDb2XFHVCA)
------
theWheez
This theorem actually changed my life. Once it clicked for me it shifted my
understanding of reality significantly.
~~~
meowface
I've tried to make this click for me for a long time, to no avail. Do you have
any tips?
~~~
solinent
Essentially, all logically valid formulae have proofs in first-order logics.
Remember, logically valid formulae means that if you enumerate all possible
interpretations (boolean values for the variables), the formulae remains true.
So you could prove everything that ever exists by creating a set of all
possible proofs using the given deduction rules.
~~~
xamuel
This is 1st-order logic so it's a bit more complicated, though you're on the
right track (what you stated is the completeness theorem for _propositional_
logic, not _first-order_ logic).
Rather than boolean values for the variables, you need to enumerate all
possible...
* Ambient universes where the language is interpreted
* Values (taken from the ambient universe) for the constant symbols
* Sets-of-tuples-of-values (from the ambient universe) for the predicate symbols
* Functions-from-tuples-of-values-to-values (from the ambient universe) for the function symbols
~~~
solinent
Yup, my definition of interpretation was limited for pedagogical purposes, but
I should have been clearer. The propositional logic version is much simpler to
understand, but the implications of the theorem are much more interesting in
first-order logic, so introducing all of this nomenclature may be too much for
someone who isn't motivated yet.
------
aerovistae
Godel's work has always been incomprehensible to me. no matter how I attempt
to understand his theorems, I find them impenetrable. Apparently they are of
great consequence, so I'm very interested, but to no avail.
~~~
rwill128
I can relate. My understanding of it thus far leads me to think I can
summarize it fairly well though, and I would welcome other people's input or
critique on this.
It seems like it's so consequential because he demonstrated that no matter
what kind of mathematical system you're using -- and no matter how much
mathematics generally speaking develops -- there will be objectively true
mathematical statements within that system that can't be proven.
If that part of my understanding is correct, the part that's really
interesting to me is whether we can know these true statements to be true,
despite them not having proofs. This is where I could be misunderstanding
things I suppose, but it suggests there's a disconnect between what's knowable
and what's provable, and furthermore, that we can know more than we can prove.
To actual seasoned mathematicians: is this a really naive interpretation of
what I've read, or not?
~~~
xamuel
You need to be a bit more specific: no matter what kind of _true, computable_
axiom-set you're using (this has nothing to do with 'how much mathematics
generally speaking develops'), there will be objectively true mathematical
statements that can't be proven _by that axiom-set_.
>a disconnect between what's knowable and what's provable
"what's provable [from a given axiom-set]" is a concrete, technical,
unambiguously defined set of things. "what's knowable" is a vague
philosophical set of things. Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem is a technical
result about the former, and it's a common mistake to assume it says anything
about the latter, except very tangentially.
For those who are interested in the misty area where the two things do
overlap, I will shamelessly plug this 2-page paper of mine, "Mathematical
shortcomings in a simulated universe":
[https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEMSI.pdf](https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEMSI.pdf)
~~~
guerrilla
I think they meant what is true, which is also concrete, technical and
unambiguously defined in this setting. But you are very correct to make the
distinction between truth and knowledge. Pointing out that many philosophers
have believed that knowledge is justified true belief might elucidate the
relationship a bit.
------
adamnemecek
The theorem reminds me of William Lawvere's "Adjointness in foundations".
Formulas/programs are in an adjoint relationship with their executions. The
fact that they are adjoints is a big deal.
~~~
theWheez
Is that related to the Curry-Howard isomorphism?
------
wrp
Godel's theorems are a popular subject among technophiles, but the popular
conception of their implications is seriously off base. Torkel Franzen's
book[1] is a quick read and will guide you away from the most common errors.
[1] [https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6dels-Theorem-Torkel-
Franz%C3%A...](https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6dels-Theorem-Torkel-
Franz%C3%A9n/dp/1568812388/)
~~~
adamnemecek
Most people talk about incompleteness theorem, not completeness. The book does
briefly mention completeness theorem.
------
kkylin
Anyone interested in this topic should be sure to follow the various links on
the page. One of my personal favorites is the Compactness Theorem:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compactness_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compactness_theorem)
.
------
120bits
Oh my! this reminds me of a class I took in my masters. Had to learn "Halting
Problem". Godel's work in just astonishing and way beyond my caliber. I
managed to pass the class but memories are still with me.
~~~
jandrese
I still think most CS courses teach the Halting Problem in just about the
worst way possible.
They always give you that one highly contrived counterexample where you're
feeding the algorithm with the output from itself which doesn't even begin to
touch on what the Halting Problem actually is or why it is so important. And
if the student asks "well, what if we redefine it so it only works on OTHER
algorithms to avoid this one weird edge case" the answer is basically "that's
not covered."
But really, the Halting Problem is asking the question if we can solve all of
mathematics, and indeed all of philosophy with a fancy enough computer
program. Can we build a machine God? And the standard textbook answer is
roughly "If we built a machine God it could create a burrito so big that even
it could not eat it, therefore machine God can not exist."
IMHO, it would make more sense to get students down the right path to ask them
what the halting computer would do when fed a program that calculates all of
the digits of Pi. Or one that halts when it computes the answer to life, the
universe, and everything. The halting problem may have been mathematically
disproven by finding one highly convoluted counter example, but it's more
significant failing is that it is infinite and thus can not be implemented on
a machine with finite limits.
~~~
xamuel
>And if the student asks "well, what if we redefine it so it only works on
OTHER algorithms to avoid this one weird edge case" the answer is basically
"that's not covered."
Only if the teacher doesn't know what they're talking about. If they know what
they're talking about, the answer is "Since every function can be implemented
by infinitely many different algorithms, in order to blacklist our halting-
solver from the list of things we can input into our halting-solver, we would
need to blacklist ALL the algorithms that implement it, but in order to do
that, we'd need an algorithm for determining whether or not a given algorithm
is a halting-solver, and it can be shown that that itself is just as
impossible as solving the halting problem."
>digits of Pi
You seem to be deeply mistakenly about something, but it's hard to point out
exactly what you're mistaken about because all the terms are so poorly
defined. If, for example, you meant, "What the halting computer would do when
fed a program P that takes an input n and outputs the nth digit of Pi, if we
asked whether or not P halts on a particular input n", then the answer would
be "Yes". If you meant "What the halting computer would do when fed a program
Q that takes no input and runs forever, listing all the digits of Pi, when
asked whether or not Q halts on no input", then the answer would be "No".
Either way, there's absolutely nothing deep or profound about the digits of Pi
here.
>life, the universe, and everything
Please, don't make things even _more_ complicated for the poor students.
~~~
jandrese
You only need to blacklist the possibility that the program under review has
access to the output of the Halting Detection program for itself.
The Digits of Pi example is to illustrate that the Halting Program needs to
understand the high level math necessary to prove that Pi is infinite. And
then you lead them on to discovering that it needs to be able to solve every
problem in mathematics, even ones that have not yet been discovered, and then
you realize that it has to be omnipotent and infinite.
The purpose is to pull students away from the kind of empirical solutions that
immediately pop into your head when presented with the halting problem. "Well,
if we look at the loops and what the exit conditions are and start iterating
over all possible inputs..." which is not at all what the Halting Problem is
about, despite what it looks like on the surface.
~~~
xamuel
Oh I see what you're getting at. I think what you're trying to get at is, "If
you had a halting-solver, you could use that like an oracle to answer
arbitrary mathematical questions." Unfortunately, this isn't true, you
couldn't use it to answer _arbitrary_ mathematical questions, just certain
questions.
For example, even if Pi happens to be rational, and the algorithm to list its
digits eventually starts listing a periodic repetition (possibly the all-0
repetition even), that still doesn't mean it halts. So the halting-solver
doesn't directly help you determine whether or not Pi is rational. You would
instead need a "determine-if-given-function-eventually-has-periodic-output"
solver, which is stronger than a halting solver.
I'm not sure if there are any really slam-dunk examples of what you seem to be
looking for, that don't involve proofs in some guise or other. An example
which does involve proofs might look like this: "Let x be a program which
attempts, by brute force, to find a proof that P<>NP, and immediately halts
when it finds such a proof, if ever. If you had a halting detector, you could
plug x into it and based on its output, you would know whether or not there is
a proof of P<>NP." [Which is subtly different than whether or not P<>NP is
true. That would require something stronger than a halting solver to obtain.]
~~~
jandrese
Wouldn't you simply define your sample program to halt upon discovering a
periodic repetition in its output?
~~~
tlb
Finding any finite number of repeating digits does not prove that there's an
infinite number to follow. You might find 1000 3s in a row, followed by not a
3.
~~~
jandrese
If you know the entire state of your algorithm then it's possible to compare
the state vs. it's state in a previous step to determine if you are in a
repeating loop. If all of the parameters and internal are identical, then the
algorithm can not produce a different result.
~~~
xamuel
A machine can print the same thing over and over, and yet never repeat its own
internal state. For example, "let x=0; while(true) { print("0"); x=x+1;}"
~~~
jandrese
A halting problem solver would necessarily have to be smart enough to detect
state that is relevant to the completion of the program vs. not. Plus, even in
this case on a real world machine x can only store as much state at the
underlying type. So if it's a 32 bit int then you can absolutely prove the
algorithm does not halt after only 4 billion iterations, but even before that
you can simply note the lack of exit conditions from the loop to show that it
never terminates.
However clever you are, the halting problem program has to be even more clever
by definition. But we don't have an upper bound on cleverness, so the halting
problem program has to be infinitely clever, hence my previous point about it
being able to solve all of mathematics.
------
phab
Douglas Hofstadter's book, "Gödel, Escher, Bach" is very highly recommended
reading for anyone who finds this (and the theory of computability more
generally) interesting.
I've lost entire days of my life to that book!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach)
~~~
wellpast
Here's a good adjacent read that I thought was a much clearer and relatively
accessible tour through the Proof - [https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6dels-Proof-
Ernest-Nagel/dp/081...](https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6dels-Proof-Ernest-
Nagel/dp/0814758371) \- it's more of a pamphlet than a book, really.
~~~
jerf
GEB is _fun_ , but it's definitely a bad introduction to the idea itself. It's
a lot more fun if you already understand the subject matter and can enjoy the
tone of the book.
------
dwohnitmok
This is _not_ Godel's _in_ completeness theorem(s). This deals with a
completely different notion of completeness.
Godel's completeness theorem is the theoretical justification for why first-
order logic occupies such an important position in mathematical logic. It
basically establishes that two different methods of proving a logical
statement happen to coincide for first-order logic.
Let's say that I come up with a long list of axioms that define what it means
for an object to be a "cow" and what it means to have a "spot." Then I state
"all cows have spots."
There are two ways of proving this. One way, the "semantic" way, is to take
every example of cow and prove that it has a spot. This is hard; I not only
have to examine every cow that exists, I have to examine every possible
imaginary entity that satisfies the definition of "cow" and prove that it has
a spot.
The second way, the "syntactic" way, is to play the string manipulation game
that people often associate with the notion of a "logical proof." I start out
with the axioms of a "cow," and I'm given some rules for how I can manipulate
these axioms. Example of this include the string "A and B" allows me to
immediately substitute "A" instead. Given "A implies C" I can substitute all
instances of "A" with "C" and so on and so forth. Hopefully I can work out a
series of string manipulation steps that eventually end with the statement
"All cows have spots."
It is not obvious that these two methods should coincide in what they are able
to prove. The rule set that I get to manipulate my strings by could be a
really wacky set of rules. Maybe it says something like if you see "A implies
B," you get to substitute any arbitrary string "C." It's also not apparent how
you might choose to interpret the axioms that define a "cow." One of the
axioms might say "a cow has four legs" and you might say, in my world, I've
decided the string "four" corresponds to the natural number 5, and I'm going
to look at all entities with 5 legs.
Godel's completeness theorem states that for first-order logic these two proof
techniques coincide: every statement you can prove or disprove the first way
can also be proved or disproved the second way. More specifically, if you
stipulate that rules of string manipulation are exactly the rules of deduction
in first-order logic, and that you interpret your axioms when constructing
semantic entities according to the standard semantics of first-order logic
(e.g. you don't get to arbitrarily stipulate that the string "and" actually
means logical disjunction, i.e. or, in your world), then any property that is
true of every entity you can conjure up that satisfies your axioms has a
"string manipulation" proof that proves that property. Conversely, every
statement you can prove with your string manipulation game also holds true of
every entity you can conjure up that satisfies your axioms (this isn't
strictly speaking part of the completeness theorem, but is also true and
usually stated hand-in-hand with it).
------
tabtab
What are _practical_ consequences and examples of such in typical debates
about politics, programming paradigms, etc?
~~~
lacker
One practical consequence is that the halting problem is undecidable, so if
your boss asks you to build a program to check if another program will ever do
X, you can tell them "hey that's an impossible task!"
~~~
jmcqk6
In practical matters, this is not quite true. If you ask 'will this program
launch a toaster to orbit mars', you can usually answer that question with
high confidence.
The halting problem describes the situations where you can't decide one way or
another, but it does not say you can't decide anything. This is a very
important distinction.
We write code to analyze other code all the type. It's a core part of
developer tools. If it was impossible, life would really suck.
------
lacker
IMHO if you understand the history it makes sense why the theorem is both
important and confusing.
In 1921, Hilbert had this idea, that mathematicians could create an algorithm
that would automatically prove every true statement and disprove every false
statement. Wouldn't that be neat? It's important that this idea _predates_
computers. When Hilbert was thinking about an algorithm, it wasn't an
algorithm as we would think about it in computer science today, because the
modern idea of a computer hadn't been formalized.
In 1931, Godel proved that it was impossible for an algorithm to automatically
prove or disprove true mathematical statements. Take that, Hilbert. The modern
idea of a computer _still_ hadn't been formalized. So a lot of stuff that
nowadays we think of as simple, Godel did in a really weird and confusing way.
For example, as part of his proof Godel needed a way to algorithmically encode
a bunch of numbers into a single number. Nowadays, that's pretty intuitive -
any software program can be saved into a file, any file can be interpreted as
a sequence of binary bits, which can be interpreted as a number. Back then,
Godel used a really crazy encoding - encoding (a, b, c, d, ...) as 2^a * 3^b *
5^c etc.
So if you go back and try to understand Godel's proof, it is really just
needlessly complicated. I loved the book Godel, Escher, Bach when I first read
it, but once I understood the mathematics more deeply I started thinking that
it really wasn't the best approach to actually understand the mathematics.
In 1936, Turing defined a Turing machine and also proved that the halting
problem was undecidable. This is an equivalent statement to Godel's
incompleteness theorem, and the proof is about 100 times more intuitive,
_especially_ for modern computer programmers who tend understand computers and
computer programs pretty well, far better than they understand prime
factorization.
So, personally I think if you are learning this stuff, you are better off
starting by learning about the halting problem. Sometimes the historical
sequence of discovery isn't the best way to learn math, just like we don't
learn about the Greek method of exhaustion before we learn modern methods of
calculus.
~~~
teilo
You are talking about his _Incompleteness_ theorem. This article is about a
different theorem, with a different definition of "completeness".
~~~
lacker
Whoops. I thought about deleting the comment but hey maybe someone will find
it useful.
~~~
defective
I did! Thank you!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Thoughty2's Channel on YouTube - peter_d_sherman
https://www.youtube.com/c/Thoughty2/videos
======
peter_d_sherman
I have watched many of Thoughty2's videos on YouTube, and as a person of the
mind, feel that they are quite good.
The man is a thinker; a fellow person of the mind, quite simply stated...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
JDK-4045622: Java.lang.String.hashCode – Where Did This Code Come From? - dpflan
http://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4045622
======
kleiba
The post mentions somewhere further down below that Knuth's treatment of
string hash functions is outdated, but unfortunately does not go into details.
Can anyone around here elaborate by any chance?
~~~
jerven
The bug is from 1997, so not up to date with the latest versions of knuth.
There are nice new string hash functions like murmur, cutyhash and xxhash that
I believe are not covered in the art of computer programming.
~~~
rurban
All of these are not "nice", and are outdated. Murmur is too big, cityhash was
replaced by farmhash, xxhash is good for digests, but not for strings.
------
wolfgang42
A fascinating read, but it could use (1997) in the title.
~~~
dpflan
Good point, thanks. Next time I post some archival content like this I'll add
the parenthetical.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Julian Assange has been detained for 6 months - tomp
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/06/17/julian-assange-video-diary/
======
spitfire
Can't he sue the government for this somehow? Presumably they have laws for
false imprisonment/arrest in england.
and if they have that recourse why aren't they taking it? (I'd guess they want
the attention.)
~~~
homunculus
It seems, post 9/11, 'democratic' governments around the world have been
appropriating the 'right' to hold individuals without charge indefinitely.
Guantanamo?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple vs. Android: Developers see a socioeconomic divide - amichail
http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/04/04/apple_vs_android_developers_see_a_socioeconomic_divide.html
======
mixologic
Wow. That is the worst case I've ever seen of map analysis.
Go to the original map here [https://www.mapbox.com/labs/twitter-
gnip/brands/#](https://www.mapbox.com/labs/twitter-gnip/brands/#), and turn
off the iphone layer that happens to be on top. This is pathetic.
Im gonna call my buddy at mapbox.
~~~
nostrademons
Yeah, this is pretty egregious. When I played around with the source map and
Manhattan, most of the effect they mentioned goes away when you look at the
maps in isolation. The iPhone layer was drawn _on top_ of Android, so of
course it looks like Manhattan is full of iPhone users; the only time the
Android pixels stand out is where there are no iPhone users at all.
~~~
nkoren
Even with the egregious layering problem, the map actually shows something
pretty interesting: the way in which Android has colonised lower-density
lower-income areas to the almost total exclusion of the iPhone. It makes
sense: you can buy brand-new low-end Android devices; you can't do the same
with iPhones.
So the map doesn't actually show that Android is doing poorly in high-value
areas; it does, however, show that Android is doing well in low-value areas --
_in addition_ to doing well in high-value areas. The data is a win for Android
even if the map literally obscures this fact.
------
downandout
Is this news? Android users aren't worthless, but they are indeed worth less.
On some apps I've heard of disparities as high as 15X - the value of an
Android user being 1/15th that of an iOS user. On my own apps it's gone as
high as 9X.
That said, as long as you understand the economics of each platform and ensure
that your advertising expenditures and any incremental user costs are in line
with the disparity, you should be fine. In my experience, the best strategy is
to spend any advertising budget on iOS installs, and let word of mouth/viral
features get free installs on Android.
~~~
eik3_de
So if the iOS user is willing to spend more, I could add a few % to the price
tags in my online shop if user has an iOS user agent?
~~~
dcohenp
There is some related precedent, with Orbitz charging Mac users more:
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230445860457748...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304458604577488822667325882.html)
~~~
balladeer
I think "charging more" is a lot different from what the article says:
>> so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and
sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see
------
fidotron
The maps are clearly flawed, but the overall point is entirely true, and
emphasised by the fact that most spending on Android is, predictably, done by
those with newer higher end devices.
I used to be super bullish on Android, now much less so. It's sacrilege around
here, but I'm beginning to think that ecosystems which are not primarily based
on open source have broader economic benefits. Even the notion of barriers to
entry (i.e. expensive dev tools) can serve a purpose, in that companies will
invest more developing products in such situations with less fear that they're
going to be nuked by some kids and an open source stack. (Of course in reality
they just do less, but the free competitors problem isn't going to happen).
This is why I'm incredibly pessimistic about the web, and almost any
technology attached to Google these days: it's simply far too competitive, and
the barriers to entry, thanks to the cloud wars and modern software stacks,
are getting smaller at a frightening rate. Google are smart enough that when
you're in an ecosystem with them and they aren't doing the role you're doing
it's because they've commoditized their complements: you.
My hunch is Google have been pursuing Glass, and now wearables, in a desperate
way to attach their brand to the classes of people that carry iPhones. The
Apple envy in Mountain View seems to run very deep indeed, but they're also
trying to fight off Facebook at every turn, which has led to a very confused
situation.
~~~
Yetanfou
And all this is bad for what reason exactly? If you see everything as a profit
center - or, in other terms, something which gives 'economic benefits' (to
whom?) - I can understand why you're peeved by free software. From a user
perspective I can see no downside to the availability of a large body of free
software, au contraire.
Understand that 'value' does not equal 'economic value'. There are many
factors which make up the value of a good or a technology, some of them easily
quantifiable - like your 'economic value', some of them less so. Also
understand that in the long run the increased access to technology which free
software and free protocols provide can actually lead to economic benefits as
well.
You use the web as an example to support your thesis. Imagine what would have
happened if CERN decided to license and sell web technologies in the way Apple
and Microsoft license and sell their products. You would not have been able to
write your comment here, on this web site, using that browser. There would not
have been a web site for you to write it on. Even if you were 'lucky' enough
to have some corporate sponsor to pay for your 'Platinum web access' voucher
your comment would probably have lingered in the void for lack of readership.
The web would have resembled America Online or Minitel, with limited
interaction and commercial sites only. It would also have given but a fraction
of the 'economic benefits' of the current, open web.
------
msoad
One thing that many of Silicon Vally people fail to understand is that, data
is expensive. For many people who have Android phones, it's not the user
experience or quality of the OS. It's just that they have no data plan or
their data plan is limited. So don't expect them to download your app over LTE
or tweet left and right.
This is more true in developing countries. People buy expensive Android phones
but they don't pay for data. Because it's even more expensive than the phone.
If you say a phone lives for two year, it's easy to do the math and see a
regular data plan is two to three time more expensive than an Android phone.
~~~
sliverstorm
But does this matter when you can connect to Wi-Fi via your phone?
~~~
ineedtosleep
When home internet plans are starting to have data caps as well, yes.
~~~
sliverstorm
I thought that was primarily a USA feature?
------
steven777400
I think the relative user experience of the platform might also drive the
particular outcomes. For example, I do a lot of my shopping online. From my
desktop PC. I have an Android phone. It's garbage. There's no way I could buy
something with it even if I wanted to. I have an Android tablet. It's fine,
but I don't do much shopping on it.
Would I shop more with my mobile devices if they were Apple? Maybe. My
coworkers show me their most current generation Apple phones and tablets and
WOW it's like I stepped 10 years into the future.
I agree that economic issues are a reality, but many low-end Android devices
are not useful for shopping or paid apps, so that artificially makes the
Android market look worse. It would be nice if the graphs could be further
subdivided by some metric into, say, Android 4 devices capable of running
apps, and older Android devices that don't have the speed, space, or otherwise
are unusable anywhere outside of the phone or text screens.
~~~
gress
This. This is the precise explanation of the difference.
The Samsung Galaxy and Moto X phones may be equivalent to an iPhone, but the
iPhone outsells them 2:1. The Android phones that make up the bulk of the 80%
market share just aren't equivalent.
------
tehabe
This is just my personal opinion but I've seen a lot of very nice looking and
well designed iOS applications while the Android counter part (from the same
company) is awful and almost unusable. It looks and feels like an iOS
application but it just doesn't work on Android.
And there are a lot of of those applications on Play Store.
Yeah, there are also a lot of ugly and unusable applications w/o an iOS
counter part but well.
I think Android users are not willing to spend money of bad applications and
the count of good and well designed applications is higher on iOS also because
Apple enforces the design guidelines. Google doesn't do that.
~~~
doctorcroc
Can you give me some examples of apps where the android counter part is
significantly less usable? I'm not calling you out, I'd just like to see why
this is the case...
~~~
tehabe
DB Navigator is for me such an example, the Android version improved but it is
still very buggy and slow. The Android version used to look and behave almost
exactly like the iOS version which simply doesn't work for Android.
While the iOS version works very well.
That is a frustrating experience.
------
makeramen
As an Android Developer, I would urge aspiring mobile developers to think
about it this way: In which market is there more demand _for developers_?
I know so many companies that need good android devs and can't find any
because nobody has the experience. From my anecdotal experience, the demand
for Android Developers is much higher than iOS (relative to the supply) at the
moment.
~~~
tieTYT
Why would you urge that? Seems like it depends on what you want to do with
your skills. If you want to make an app, you should follow the money. If you
want to get a job, you should follow the demand for developers.
------
lyinsteve
Also because iOS development is, in my subjective, biased opinion, much less
of a pain than Android development.
~~~
bennyg
I want to start tracking hours at my current employer for Android and iOS dev
since they are for the same apps. Anecdotally what I've seen is that iOS
finishes faster, with way less hiccups and compromises.
~~~
makeramen
The experience of the developers is also a huge factor.
~~~
threeseed
I wouldn't say it is a huge factor. The biggest by far is that each
manufacturer/carrier has a slightly different implementation of Android to the
next. I have seen small Android projects that have hundreds of defects despite
the factor being implemented exactly right.
------
crxpandion
This post warrants a little public shaming:
[http://xkcd.com/1138/](http://xkcd.com/1138/)
------
iamben
Is my maths awful (I have been drinking) or am I right in thinking that even
if Android users spend less on average, having three times as many of them is
going to equal more revenue?
~~~
coldtea
Your math is a little sloppy. Nothing necessitates that "3 times as many"
users on a platform equal more revenue than another platform.
So, if iOS users overspend Android users more than
android_user_count/ios_user_count times, iOS still offers more revenue.
Average spending and profit margins count as much, if not more, as raw user
count. The same way that the Mac, say, has around 15% of the laptop market
share, but takes home around 80% of the laptop market profits.
------
Iftheshoefits
Data plan and phone-cost affordability has some impact here, but the
socioeconomic divide is not explained entirely in those terms.
I think it has as much to do with the fact that Apple's target market consists
largely of affluent people seeking to identify with a brand that has geek/tech
credibility. It's not that people with lower incomes wouldn't be (or aren't)
interested in having Apple mobile products; it's that Apple basically ignores
them.
------
frankus
Among people I've worked with (at least those wealthy enough that a $200
subsidized price difference once every few years isn't a deciding factor),
I've noticed a pretty clear split where Android fans tend to skew Republican
and Apple fans skew Democratic.
I'd be curious to see if that's just confirmation bias on my part or a real
trend.
------
marklubi
The initial cost of a given device could easily explain this difference. There
are plenty of Android devices that you can get for free with a two year
contract, not so much for iOS.
Those with less expendable income are probably more likely to select a free
device.
~~~
sureshv
iPhone 4S is free with 2-year contract; Apple moves the older generation
devices into the free tier after they start the upgrade cycle. The iPhone 5c
will be next into the free tier.
------
ohwp
I think a lot of people underestimate how much money is going in in in-
company-apps.
As an app developer I prefer Android over Apple because of how easy it is to
deploy your app.
~~~
allsystemsgo
But I would rather drive a nail into my eye than write in Eclipse.
~~~
w1ntermute
Well then it's a good thing Eclipse isn't necessary for Android development,
isn't it?
------
archagon
Wait, aren't data plans equally expensive all across the board? I don't think
I've ever seen an Android user in the US with no data plan.
~~~
pyoung
I am not 100% on this, but I think most of the US providers wont allow you to
activate a smart phone without a data plan. It's kind of BS, but my guess is
that they do it to ensure they re-coup the costs of the higher subsidies given
out for smartphones.
~~~
stickmangallows
I was able to use my android phones on T-Mobile for a few years with voice-
only. Perhaps things have changed there but I know AT&T forces you to buy a
data plan whether or not you buy the phone from them.
------
Steko
The real divide is when you look globally. Android probably has 90% of the
$100-$300 smartphone market and closer to 50% of the $400+ smartphone market.
------
arnarbi
Looking at Atlanta is telling.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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