Datasets:

timaeus
/

pile-hackernews

Dataset card Data Studio Files Files and versions Community

Split (1)

train · 100k rows

text stringlengths 44 950k	meta dict
Why Marissa Mayer should acquire IFTTT and go all in on Yahoo Pipes - jfornear http://jfornear.co/why-marissa-mayer-should-acquire-ifttt-and-go-all-in-on-yahoo-pipes/ ====== newobj Holy cow with the grandiosity of the title I would expect a master 5 year plan about how Pipes will take over the world. Instead it's just another 'aggregate my aggregators non-problem' that will be relevant to a fraction of a fraction of nerds. Of course as soon as the value prop for the piped companies becomes lower than the value prop for Yahoo they will simply turn them off. But that's not to worry, because the value prop for the piped content will ALWAYS be higher than for Yahoo. How exactly does one go "all in" on schlepping around other people's content? Yahoo was in fact just that, to begin with... ~~~ jfornear _> Holy cow with the grandiosity of the title I would expect a master 5 year plan_ Thanks, I edited the post to include a chart from a PowerPoint I saw -- it only projects the next 4 years though. Seriously though, the goal of this post was to point out how current trends are creating a user experience where Yahoo! Pipes is relevant. ~~~ whatusername I think you need the re-examine the term "all in". All In implies something like IBM with System/360. Spending more than annual revenue (5,000,000,000? in 1960's - I can't find a great source for the actual number)on a product line that still drives significant profit 40 years later... That's all-in. Buying IFTTT so people can post tweets to Twitter and App.net? Not quite in the same league. ~~~ nsfmc the computer history museum provides: [http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/mainframe- computer...](http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/mainframe- computers/7/161) ------ tommorris The blog post doesn't make a compelling business case beyond "it'd be cool". If Yahoo! were to buy IFTTT for the purpose of consolidating their mobile experience (and I'm not even sure what that is supposed to entail), what's to stop Twitter, Facebook and all that from turning their feeds into the service off? Twitter have already pulled that kind of stunt. Currently, IFTTT is a fun toy for hackers and power users who want to do slightly off-the-wall mashups. If it got bought up and became a more critical part of the infrastructure of a big company like Yahoo!, you can bet there'd be some intervarsity tech company politics going on. ------ diego This post does not deliver what it promises in the title. It gives no reason why Marissa Mayer should acquire IFTTT. It's not particularly insightful either. I'm trying to guess why it has 53 votes. The only explanation I can come up with is that there must be a number of IFTTT fans who upvoted it just because it praises IFTTT. That would mean there is a high likelihood that this comment would be downvoted. ~~~ emmett I downvoted you just for the jab about "that will mean this gets downvoted". ~~~ diego That is an idiotic reason for downvoting a comment. However, I wouldn't downvote you if I could. By the way, as the CEO of Justin.tv you may want to be more mindful of your personal image. I wouldn't want to see comments like the above if I were your investor or your employee. ~~~ jspthrowaway > I wouldn't want to see comments like the above if I were your investor or > your employee. Why? He called you out and he's 100% correct, why would it matter who he is? Personally, I think it speaks to his "personal image" that he doesn't give a shit about your feel-good CEO image demands. There's also no shortage of hilariousness that you think him taking a shot at you lowers his "personal image"; no harm done for telling the truth, you just don't see it that way because you're on the wrong end of it. If I were shopping around for a company to invest in and I came across a comment like that, I'd be _more_ likely to toss my money at him. You know why? Because I know I'm dealing with a person, not someone repressing all personal feelings and emotion to create this caricature of someone that they're really not. A person like that is more invested in their failures and successes, and, in my experience, is a better person to work for. Becoming the leader of a company, as you know, is not a magic threshold after which you have to change who you are. I wish we'd get over this ridiculous assumption that we must hold people to a higher standard based on who they are. It underlies pretty much all of politics, and makes it a newsworthy event when Obama is seen drinking a beer. It's depressing. ~~~ diego _"I wish we'd get over this ridiculous assumption that we must hold people to a higher standard based on who they are."_ I agree that it would be nice, jspthrowaway. Unfortunately you, Emmett (whom I've met in person), and I are not representative of all investors, employees, user, or customers. Emmett quoted me incorrectly, and made questionable use of the downvote button (which comes with great responsibility, especially if you are a YC partner like he is). To his credit he probably went back to work and forgot about this thread. ~~~ jspthrowaway > and made questionable use of the downvote button In your opinion. I think it was right on target. Complaining about downvotes is in the guidelines as something to be avoided, and predicting their onset is a slightly differently colored shade of the same thing. It manipulates peoples' reactions to your comment, and you are not at all oblivious to that. I'm actually glad he told you why, even though it cost him karma. I wish every downvote came with a reason. > (which comes with great responsibility, especially if you are a YC partner > like he is) I laughed out loud at this. It's the downvote button, not a loaded gun. I'll summarize. The CEO of justin.tv, who you've met personally (as if that's important to the issue at hand), downvoted you and you've gone after his personal image as a result. Now you're citing his responsibility "as a YC partner" to act fairly. Can we circle back toward you just not liking being downvoted eventually? Your comment was so devoid of insight that the downvote jab at the end just became icing on the cake, and I agree with it being called out. People upvoted the article. It's a dumb article. Commenting on the people upvoting the dumb article and characterizing them as mindless IFTTT fans is just noise, and this entire thread which has now launched off from your noise is even more noise. ------ buro9 I know 3 startups trying to solve aggregation of metrics for analytics. I worked for a management consulting company and produced such a system based on aggregating data from across a global corporate network and producing dashboards in SharePoint. Yahoo could have an enormous impact on KPIs, dashboards and metrics for consumers and business were they to want to. And with it, one hell of a revenue stream. IFTTT could solve data/metric aggregation for consumers, marketeers and other less technical users. And if an export from IFTTT could produce a Yahoo Pipe, then a developer (or slightly more skilled user - a good Excel user perhaps) could then make it do even more. It could be used to read from Excel. From CSV. From SharePoint. From databases. From web pages on the internet and intranet. Everything. Aggregate news headlines concerning your company. Create cohort charts with data from different and unconnected systems. Combine data from servers to mailing list campaigns to observe impact much quicker and to identify fully which campaigns work best. Or just grab the numbers from many systems to find out which system is showing the wrong value. So much is possible that companies struggle with today because their data is siloed in disconnected systems... or some of it is external and they have no interface to it. Glue between Twitter and App.net? That's just trivial. A real prize will be to aggregate anything and everything and allow it to be processed before reporting on it. It's not glamorous... but I can say from experience that the company I worked for successfully sold the product I made for £50k licenses to large companies. The demand is there. ~~~ rsync "I know 3 startups trying to solve aggregation of metrics for analytics." Get. Off. My. Lawn. ~~~ buro9 Not at all, I'm really excited by all of them. Particularly as they may make this capability available to really small companies and consumers. I dislike that this stuff is currently just a large enterprise capability. ------ mvkel If something like Feedburner, (which was several orders of magnitude more popular than Pipes and IFTTT combined) is forced to shutter, I don't think a tiny service for power users is going to turn around a publicly traded company as large as Yahoo. Call me crazy. ------ w1ntermute > Will Twitter deprecate support for RSS to lock down our tweets? Will > Facebook block IFTTT to control how we share our filtered photos? I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they did. Doubling down on Pipes with Twitter heading in the direction it is right now would be a really stupid move. ~~~ tlrobinson The entire version 1.0 API will be turned off March 5, 2013. Version 1.1 only has JSON, and more importantly requires authentication on every endpoint. <https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/overview> So yeah, Twitter really doesn't want your data to leave their network. ~~~ Karunamon Uh.... requiring authentication and using an industry standard communications language is hardly what i'd call "not wanting your data to leave their network". ------ randallu So Yahoo should buy IFTTT to help people migrate from Twitter to App.net? There are probably some good products to be built on integrated social experiences (or internet glue), but Pipes+IFTTT doesn't sound like an actual end-user product. ------ bslatkin OP doesn't realize that big companies like Yahoo cannot sign API contracts; they get terminated immediately. Remember Ping/Facebook? I think the ToS termination issue is the single largest risk facing start-ups operating in another company's ecosystem. How can Yahoo buy you if your API key is deactivated as soon as the deal closes? I love IFTTT, but I think their long-term prospects are bleak. Urban Airship had the same problem. ------ thesash If the market opportunity here is defragmentation of social networking, then Yahoo should acquire Buffer[1], and get themselves a dead simple product that "just works." IFTTT and Yahoo Pipes are awesome for technically savvy folks, but it's a non-solution for the vast majority of the market. [1] <http://bufferapp.com> ------ DigitalSea This is hardly a convincing article for justifying why Yahoo! acquiring IFTTT is a good idea. I get IFTTT is a great service, but it's nothing particularly special, there's even a Rails clone of it on Github that Yahoo! could modify and use to start their own IFTTT like service. I am however an avid Pipes user and fan. It's definitely one of the strongest tools Yahoo! have in its arsenal with exception for Yahoo! BOSS which I am currently using for my new startup which relies on search engine data instead of scraping it myself. It was a nice try. I don't understand how this reached such a high spot on the homepage. ------ 23david IFTTT and Yahoo Pipes are completely different products with different business models. The customer excitement around IFTTT is great to see, but IFTTT is still figuring out their business model, and they need to finish development of their new platform and SDK. Once they get these things rolling I can see them being an attractive acquisition target. But even then, I don't see Yahoo Pipes and IFTTT co-existing nicely, and I'm not sure that Yahoo would make sense as an acquirer. ------ kylemaxwell I've no idea about the finances of it all, but in terms of usage, the two services are a natural fit. IFTTT has easy integration with lots of services, but Yahoo! Pipes has a lot more flexibility in terms of functions and logic. That said, I'd like to see some sort of hosted version or library to do this. Yes, you can do a lot of this yourself, but if the plumbing (hrrr) already existed, you'd be free to focus on the actual logic instead of the infrastructure. ------ kittxkat That homepage design has to be the most distracting blog theme setting ever. ~~~ rossmiller Only to be outdone by the swirly .gif avatar... ~~~ kittxkat I don't really mind .gifs if used appropriate, like in this blog post of his <http://jfornear.co/the-pinterest-layout-will-not-save-you> where he (imho) also had a superior blog post design. ------ brainsqueezer Yes, average user wants to do visual programming. ------ marcuspovey I kinda feel sorry for Marissa Mayer, the internet collective has put a lot on her. I can see why, many great and well loved services have faced death by yahoo over the years. Clearly people do still care about the future of yahoo (or at least the services they consume) otherwise we wouldn't keep seeing these kind of posts. I just hope that there is a plan, and it would do much for me if MM made some sort of statement to the effect that Yahoo will properly support acquisitions rather than let them slowly die. ------ spullara If the Pipes/YQL team that is still at Yahoo had any interest in duplicating the functionality of IFTTT or Zapier, they could just do it. ------ roomnoise I think about this a lot. Not just for my personal accounts but then add in the pages and micro-brands one has to manage if you have a small business, or a band, or just a blog you have an identity for. It becomes a juggling mess. Ha, lets have an master service that manages user-created services on these platforms. Then let Twitter play wack-a-mole with that... ------ BHSPitMonkey A question I've always had about posts like this in general: What would happen if Mayer actually did this? Would she not bet met with derision for apparently guiding the company with advice gleaned from a blog post? Do "Company X should do Y" articles actually hurt their own chances of being fulfilled? ~~~ 001sky The monday morning quarterback is a staple of the genre. This is the "pre- game" version. =D No different, I suppose, a NY times Op Ed on XYZ political policy. They are written to "influence" the lower members of the power structure who surface ideas, not directly to the decisionmakers. Decisionmakers (in general) are too busy doing other stuff. ------ bluetidepro Nice article, however Yahoo! could probably figure out a way to ruin the awesome UX IFTTT currently has. And with the track record Yahoo! has, I would hope they wouldn't buy it. _Yahoo! is where good apps go to die. Haha_ ~~~ iamdave Flickr seems to be doing well. ~~~ zacharycohn Flickr is in a holding pattern, and has been for years. ------ dudus I miss the point. Of course if this setup becomes common they will block it as well. They don't want you to do that. If you find a loophole they will fix that. ------ smogzer There is also <http://tarpipe.com> which is similar to ifttt but with a gui more like yahoo pipes. ------ TopTrix What if IFTTT acquire Yahoo! ? Now or then Yahoo! is going down and down. No one depend on Yahoo!. We just use it as secondary platform. ------ seltzered_ my problem with ifttt: it does it's job just fine, so well I don't remember the last time I logged into ifttt.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
RethinkDB Expands Beyond SSDs, Launches Its Speedy Database To The Public - spahl http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/06/rethinkdb-expands-beyond-ssds-launches-its-speedy-database-to-the-public/ ====== samstokes This looks like an interesting product for cache-like use cases. Have you considered including Redis in your benchmarks? From the FAQ it sounds like there are some use cases where both Redis and RethinkDB would be suitable. The main functional differences I can see are: * RethinkDB supports datasets larger than RAM, whereas Redis doesn't really. This could be big, for some use cases. * Redis supports lists, sets, priority queues etc, whereas RethinkDB values can only be strings for now (if I understand correctly?). * With Redis, writes are not immediately durable by default (though they can be configured that way at a performance cost), whereas with RethinkDB they are? (In particular I'd like to see RethinkDB benchmarked against Redis with 'appendonly yes' and 'appendfsync always'.) * Redis has built-in master-slave replication, whereas RethinkDB does not yet. * Redis is open-source; RethinkDB you have to pay for updates. (Will updates eventually trickle down to the free plan, or is 1.0 all she wrote for free users?) One more question, based on your hint that "support for more protocols is coming". Salvatore has said he considers Redis to be a protocol first and a database second (<http://antirez.com/post/redis-manifesto.html>). Have you considered implementing the Redis protocol in RethinkDB? That would actually be awesome, to be able to switch between Redis and RethinkDB as requirements changed. ~~~ coffeemug _Have you considered including Redis in your benchmarks?_ Yes. The trouble is that doing performance benchmarks correctly is incredibly time consuming. Most of the time people aren't actually measuring what they think they're measuring, so most benchmarks end up comparing apples to oranges. We spend a lot of time to make sure that our benchmarks measure the right things and expose the right data, at the expense of doing more benchmarks. Naturally, this requires learning a great deal about the products we're benchmarking against. We're working to automate much of this process and putting an organizational infrastructure in place to add more (hopefully almost all) competitors, but it will take some time. _Redis supports lists, sets, priority queues etc, whereas RethinkDB values can only be strings for now (if I understand correctly?)._ Correct. We think of RethinkDB as a database first, and a protocol second. We've built really good, largely protocol-independent technology that allows to execute most protocols with very high performance. We think _that_ part is hard, while protocols are easy (in a sense most people can implement a known protocol, but few people can build a system that makes them all run fast in the same product). We'll be adding more protocols shortly, and Redis is definitely on the list (among Cassandra, Hadoop, and beyond). _With Redis, writes are not immediately durable by default (though they can be configured that way at a performance cost), whereas with RethinkDB they are?_ This is fully configurable. See here: <http://rethinkdb.com/docs/#durability> _Redis has built-in master-slave replication, whereas RethinkDB does not yet._ Correct. RethinkDB 1.1 (currently in QA) has full support for master-slave replication, automatic failover, and range queries (via memcached rget extension). _Redis is open-source; RethinkDB you have to pay for updates. (Will updates eventually trickle down to the free plan, or is 1.0 all she wrote for free users?)_ Our strategy is to set up the pricing structure in such a way that companies that have the money and the demand will have to pay for the product, and customers that don't have the money (companies + individuals) will be able to use it for free. Getting the details on the pricing structure is difficult - we're working it out now, so I can't share the details yet. ~~~ samstokes Thanks for your responses! All makes a lot of sense. _We'll be adding more protocols shortly, and Redis is definitely on the list (among Cassandra, Hadoop, and beyond)._ Great to hear! ------ Meai I have little experience with databases, please forgive me: How useful is a database with no horizontal scaling support? Is your target market small businesses and using it as a caching tier? I can imagine that everyone dreaming of a popular website eventually needs to scale beyond a single server pc. I think a very strong selling point of Cassandra and MongoDB are 1\. sharding (distributed database load over multiple machines) 2\. replication (simultaneously running backup databases over multiple machines) Am I correct that I would have to make my own [nightly] backups of my database? ~~~ coffeemug At the moment our target customers do horizontal scaling in the application layer, and we built exactly what they need (they wouldn't use the horizontal scaling features). V1.1 of RethinkDB (currently in QA) will include replication. V1.2 will include full-blown clustering support (currently in development). ~~~ Meai Which of these features will require the premium support? ~~~ coffeemug We're working through this now. I expect that we'll only charge for the functionality that really advanced customers need (multidatacenter support, multitenancy, resource quotas, etc.) but we haven't finalized this yet. ------ gruseom Best of luck, guys. I like super-ambitious projects that make things go fast! ------ gleb Congrats on the launch!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Most trees alive today won’t survive in the climate expected 40 years from now - oftenwrong http://www.rapidshift.net/most-trees-alive-today-wont-be-able-to-survive-in-the-climate-expected-in-40-years/ ====== _jstreet Worrying news. There's a YouTuber - CodysLab (relevent video: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sghWcjGYSxY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sghWcjGYSxY)) - I watch that experienced this exact die-back with pinion-pines. It's interesting to see how a marginal increase in temperature can have huge impacts on the ecosystem, for example incests able to survive where previously they couldn't. I'd also be interested to see what the impact of a large number of tree's dying out would cause - growing up deforestation of the rainforest was a huge environmental issue (and continues to be). ------ eloff > At the current pace of warming, much of the world will be inhospitable to > forests as we know them within decades. The extinction of some tree species > by direct or indirect action of drought and high temperatures is certain. > And some recent research suggests that, in 40 years, none of the trees alive > today will be able to survive the projected climate. That is so ridiculous. Temperatures within 40 years aren't going to change by much more than they've already changed over the past 100 years. Did most forests die off and vanish? No, in fact the extra C02 in the atmosphere, and warmer climate is beneficial for tree growth - if only we weren't clearing the forests we'd have more trees today. The earth has been hotter than where we're headed with global warming. It was heavily forested at that time. To be extra clear, none of that is saying global warming isn't a huge problem, just that forests dying off probably isn't the part to worry about. Articles like this do climate science a serious disservice and give people reason to doubt climate change - they're counter productive. ~~~ Arnt Most trees alive today were already alive 40 years ago; saying that they won't survive the temperature in 40 years is simply saying that the warning in the past 40 years has already used a large part of their tolerance. BTW, I wouldn't bet that temperatures will change only a little in the next 40 years, considering how many record temperatures we've had in the past ten. ~~~ eloff We're warming about 0.2C per decade. So, even assuming that accelerates we're going from a current 1 C change since per-industrial times to 2 C change in average temperatures. I'm going to call that a little compared to what's coming over the next couple centuries.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is the Golang/Rust hype developing the same way as the ruby hype? - valevk I was not aroung when ruby "got big". Is it today the same with new languages as it was earlier? ====== claudiug I do not like hype languages or framework. remember node.js? Today is golang or rust. Leaving for the hype will never make you happy. There will always some language, library or framework that is 'super' impressive. Also, there will be always some internet 'dude' that knows better than you. hype languages: \- ruby \- scala \- rust \- js(node.js, ember, angular, react, triple react \- golang \- hack \- d language \- static languages, not java, or #net, or c but something on top of jvm \- reactive programming \- self healing prototype dynamic language (aka: trust)* *imaginary language, style :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is CO2 an Indoor Pollutant? (2012) [pdf] - pauldw http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/120/12/ehp.1104789.pdf ====== greenyoda From the abstract: _" Relative to 600 ppm, at 1,000 ppm CO2, moderate and statistically significant decrements occurred in six of nine scales of decision-making performance. At 2,500 ppm, large and statistically significant reductions occurred in seven scales of decision-making performance (raw score ratios, 0.06–0.56), but performance on the focused activity scale increased. Conclusions: Direct adverse effects of CO2 on human performance may be economically important and may limit energy-saving reductions in outdoor air ventilation per person in buildings."_ Since all the researchers seem to have been behavioral scientists, they concentrated on decision-making tests. But it would be interesting to know whether spending a large part of your day breathing a relatively high concentration of CO2 also has long-term health consequences. (That's not an experiment that's easy to perform on humans, however.) Also, it would be interesting to know how many plants you'd need to put in an office space to absorb the CO2 that one human generates. Although the cost of maintaining the plants could be higher than the cost of providing adequate ventilation. ~~~ internaut Have you seen this? [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/199300...](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930073077.pdf)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Would You Go to the Doctor Right Now? - _bxg1 I have a minor doctor visit I need to make that's <i>probably</i> nothing serious but there's a small chance it could be. It's something that has to be looked at in-person, so I can't just do a remote appointment.<p>But I'm also in Texas and we're having a COVID spike right now. I'm thinking about just waiting a couple weeks to see if there will be another dip, but if there isn't then the virus situation will be a couple weeks' worse with potentially no end in sight.<p>What would you do? Do you think we'll keep having a seesaw effect as restrictions are lifted and then re-instituted over and over, or do you think a lot of people are just done quarantining for good? ====== AnimalMuppet If it is something serious, how fast is it going to be? Is it something that will cause you significant issues in five years, or in a few months? If you have, say, a 1% chance that the thing you have is fatal, well, you have a 1% chance of dying from Covid... if you get it. You aren't 100% certain to get it if you go to the doctor, though. In fact, it's probably in the single digits that you'll get it from a doctor's visit. (All numbers made up on the spot - I have no actual data.) In fact, if your thing has some time urgency to it, maybe going _now_ is the answer. My personal impression is that Texas isn't going to get better for a long time. Six months? Two years? It's not going to get better, and it may get worse. Note well: I am not a doctor, and this is not medical advice. I'm just some random nobody on the internet, shooting my mouth off. ------ giardini My scheduled physical at a medical center was last week. It was different to say the least. I was met in the lobby by 6 nurses and guards, told precisely where to stand and to answer 10 questions which were shouted to me by a frightened nurse. She moved forward, pointed a temperature gun at my forehead and then jumped back. It was as if I were about to be arrested; very unsettling. Once "approved" an orange sticker was put on my shoulder and I was permitted to proceed to the hallway elevators. Once inside I began to notice discarded orange stickers at random in the building. During my visit I asked my physician about all this. He said no one with covid symptoms is allowed in the bldg. Instead they're handled by tele-medicine and/or directed to a hospital or ER. He has seen _NO_ covid patients _at all_ , nor had his starr. Here was a medical doctor in the middle of a pandemic who had _never_ seen a covid-19 patient: the irony of the situation apparently had long since escaped him. Anyway, a medical center may be one of the safest places to go right now since a sick person, especially a covid-sick person, is unlikely to get past the guards! So likely covid will eventually enter these medical centers via the staff, cleaning workers (who can't afford to not work), someone fixing the windows, or suppliers, &c. Unless you have covid I recommend you relax, go see your doctor and enjoy the theater of entering a locked-down secure and armed medical facility. Leave your handgun in your car or they might shoot you (seriously). Any quick move I made was _immediately_ attended by multiple guards startling. Way, way too much caffeine and imagination is fueling these places! And FWIW my cholesterol is really looking good!8-)) Aside: for a month I've been asking everyone 2 questions: \- do you know anyone who has/had covid? \- has anyone _you_ _know_ ever spoken of someone _they_ know who has covid? Results: only one person said "yes" to either question: he knew some workmen who had it: They worked through it b/c they'd lose their jobs otherwise. So it appears covid is really, really rare, on the order of unicorns rare. I can see why some people believe the pandemic is a giant hoax. ------ caiobegotti Try a remote screening first so the doctor or at least someone with an actual medical background can have a chance to tell you a technical opinion whether you can wait more or not. Men usually underestimate health issues so don't count on your "probably" from your post being nothing really, but please don't expose yourself out of pure fear just yet. If the remote screening tells your odds of needing an on site visit are over 50% then plan accordingly, then be paranoid with self-care/clothing/hygiene and good luck. ~~~ _bxg1 Already did a remote screening and the current thing is a referral. The symptoms are definitely real and not in my head, but my doctor said the chance of it being something serious like cancer is "small". ------ mech422 I'm in AZ and going for a full body PET scan Monday. I'm also high risk for covid-19. However, medical facilities require everyone wear a mask, have temp checked on entrance, etc. And I'll probably only be out a couple of hours. TBH, the Uber ride is probably a bigger risk then the doctor. On the other hand - I won't be going to any hospitals till this all dies down. If I need biopsies, they'll have to wait. Anyway, I think you'd be ok ~~~ _bxg1 Yeah, unfortunately what I go to is a "medical center", which I don't believe counts as a "hospital" in terms of having emergency rooms and such, but it is a large medical complex including lots of GP offices; not just a one-off specialist's building. ~~~ mech422 Still - if its not an emergency room, people there are probably in for routine checks and not covid related. The place I'm going is an 'imaging center' \- so they do xrays, CAT scans, PET scans, etc. Probably not going to bump into anyone infectious there. My endo and pulmonologist's offices have been pretty empty, with short waits. Both the imaging center and the office's had the full mask, social distancing (empty chairs blocked), temp, and sanitizer routine at the door.. If you're going to a 'medical complex', I'd expect them to have something similar at the doors since they usually have a receptionist type desk. ------ tomohawk If the personnel there wear masks and require all visitors to wear masks, then go. Many people are forgoing routine checkups, and this will lead to extra death and morbidity going forward. EDIT: also worth checking: some facilities have been set aside for non-covid symptom patients. In some areas, whole hospitals are this way. ~~~ _bxg1 I checked and mine filters people by symptoms at the door and has symptomatic people wait in their cars. But then, something crazy like 70% are asymptomatic, right? ~~~ tomohawk I saw a recent study of an Italian town where they exhaustively tested everyone. It was something like 40% got it but had no symptoms. The main means of transmission appears to be when people are talking, coughing, sneezing. If someone is talking without a mask on, they are spraying droplets everywhere. If they have a mask on, then the risk is much lower. If you have a mask on, too, then it is even lower. In Singapore, medical personnel had excellent success by wearing surgical masks at all times, and wearing N95 masks only when performing procedures where lots of droplets were expected, such as extubating a patient.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
2015 State of Clojure community survey - dgellow http://blog.cognitect.com/blog/2015-clojure-community-survey ====== venantius The results from these are always really fascinating and I think if you look at the past few years you can really see a lot of momentum behind the language. I'm excited to see the results of this year's survey, particularly with an eye to Clojure as a mature piece of technology and to what the community perceives the current state of ClojureScript to be.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
You Can Leave Your Children in a Tesla Now and They Won’t Die Because Technology - uptown https://jalopnik.com/you-can-leave-your-children-in-your-tesla-now-and-they-1786946299 ====== midgetjones They could still starve, though.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook's Bet on an Augmented Reality Future - prostoalex https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2018/03/08/inside-facebooks-bet-on-an-augmented-reality-future/#5575cacb4d56 ====== seibelj AR / VR has been the biggest bust of all tech buzz words in the last decade. The hardware is currently too expensive and awkward for normal use, and the only thing that captured the public's imagination was Pokemon Go, which was ultimately a summer fad. Snapchat Spectacles was a flop. I think AR will be a game changer, but honestly it's still a long ways out, maybe another decade even. ~~~ ngokevin It was overhyped, as with any new technology, but hardware always gets cheaper and better fast. Not close to mainstream right now, it's still very early adopter mode. But prices of Rift/Vive have about halved in the last year, and headsets trending wireless. Many that do have those headsets though, swear by them. ~~~ loggedinmyphone _hardware always gets cheaper and better fast_ This is an article of faith taken for granted by software people, but keep in mind this had only been happening because of specific improvements to wafer process technology. It's not a guaranteed trend. ------ api A pair of glasses that shape your reality according to the desires of a marketing company. No thanks. ------ retrocryptid so sure. oculus is cool. i even know a few people working there; they're smart dudes. but. they're being managed by an organization whose ops group can't remember to renew certs and whose marketing group thinks it's cool to demo first person shooters at NRA events the day after a mass shooting where you play the part of a deranged mass shooter killing random people on a train platform. as smart as the tech guys are, the organizational + business guys aren't really the sharpest tools in the drawer. ~~~ askafriend I'm sure you had a valuable point to make but the blatant inaccuracy in your comment distracts from any effectiveness your point may have had. * It was a game killing random robots, not people. * It wasn't an NRA event, it was CPAC where the NRA was one of many presenters. * It was not the day after, it was a week after. You could argue that these are minor errors, but that's not the point. You've already tarnished your credibility so it's hard to take anything else you retort with at face value. It's unfortunate because I think you had a decent point about optics. ~~~ mediocrejoker The "person" in "first person shooter" refers to the narrative perspective of the player (ie. first person, third person) and not the species that is being "shot at" ~~~ monktastic1 FWIW: > where you play the part of a deranged mass shooter killing random _people_ > on a train platform ------ tritium Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have some really limited applications. There are maybe 5 or 6 silver bullet consumer ideas I can think of, but they’re such prohibitively expensive concepts that I can’t think of a way to bring these ideas to a wide audience to distribute costs, such that mass appeal gains realistic traction toward high adoption and growth potential. In fact, these ideas might only make sense under circumstances where there is literally _nothing_ to do for really, _really_ long periods of time, waiting around in tight quarters until you’re able to unbuckle and move freely. In other words during space travel. I hope that’s where this is going. Any other setting or context for application of such technologies doesn’t make any normal amount of sense. And this fits, since space travel isn’t exactly normal yet. My intuition tells me Carmack and Zuckerburg have discussed this WRT rocket ships and outer space. And that combination of subject matter, legitimate credibility, intellect and wealth is the only thing that makes sense, to justify such a bet. ------ onion2k _just about every technology giant is racing to build AR functionality into their products and ecosystems_ If there's anything that'll kill AR before it's really had a chance it's a million different APIs that aren't compatible with each other, leading to developers choosing to support different platforms and users not knowing which one is actually suitable for them. ~~~ roymurdock Keep your eye on Unity. It's bridging that gap and becoming the go-to AR dev tool that supports most of the leading hardware platforms. Wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft (or another big AR player) acquire it - I'm sure a lot of companies are eyeing it hard atm. As for what could kill AR "before its had its chance" (AR has actually been around for a long, long time) - lack of wearable hardware. AR apps on phones/ipads/handheld devices are nice, and getting better all the time, but generally don't have the potential to increase productivity to the extent that hands free glasses/headset can. Wearable hardware needs to get more powerful, less intrusive, and have better/ubiquitous connection (more bandwidth than current cellular, potentially 5G could solve this issue). ------ mtgx _Now_ we're starting to get some clues for the real reason Facebook wants everyone to give it the facial biometric profile. AR is not the only reason, but it's probably up there with the main ones. I doubt security (the only reason they've given so far for collecting facial biometrics) is even in the top 5. ------ 908087 So once everyone is walking around with cameras on their faces feeding data back to Facebook/Google/whoever 24/7 and running facial recognition on everyone in sight, how are those of us who object supposed to opt out of the privacy policies of those companies? "Just stop leaving your house"? ------ deltron3030 They should launch some lightweight AR glasses for developers, extending laptops with virtual screens, basically like additional monitors for laptops over an USB-C dongle. They (FB) have already a good standing among web and mobile developers, why not try it with hardware too. ------ cycrutchfield Is it just me or is this entire article essentially just breathlessly raving about Facebook copying everything that Snapchat has done for years? ------ michaelbuckbee I feel like the article doesn't hit upon the number one reason big companies like FB and Google are investing literally billions in mixed reality systems. That right now they are the most likely thing to evolve into what replaces smartphones. ~~~ seren Also contextual Augmented reality Ads could be a thing. ------ rabidrat Hasn't anyone seen Black Mirror?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
It’s not the reader’s responsibility to subject themselves to your advertising - Adrock http://tumblr.quisby.net/post/700811683 ====== apowell If the ad-blocking crusaders succeed in eliminating all discrete advertising from the web, then what we're left with is (1) very little content (2) lots of paywalls and/or (3) a web supported by paid placement. If users don't allow the ads alongside the content, then the ads will become the content. On the other hand, if you choose to block ads and recognize that your decision to block ads and enjoy the web as it exists today wouldn't be sustainable if everyone did it; just accept that you're freeloading and move on. ------ natrius Writing off the effects your actions have on the future production of things you like is plainly irrational. If a site you like has created a hostile viewing experience, let them know. If they continue with their misguided efforts, go ahead and block ads, but you should try to ensure that they are profitable by making an effort proportional to your enjoyment of the site. Try harder to get your message across. Send them money. Do _something_. Doing nothing but harming their revenue stream harms yourself. If you block ads based on a broad, generic filter set, you're hurting the sites you enjoy reading, and you make no sense to me. ~~~ derefr I don't know what kind of surfing habits you have, but for 99% of the sites I visit, I don't have an "enjoyment of the site" to push me into being sympathetic for their financial needs. I find individual, useful bits of websites through Google or Reddit, take what I want or need from those bits, and then ignore the rest. Websites, in this way, are commodities; necessary evils to transmitting information or entertainment. I don't maintain "relationships" with these websites as if they were bands or political parties; they're more like one-night-stands. I think this is the way many people see the Internet as a whole, and that is why so many are amenable to unilateral ad blocking. There are a few websites I _do_ visit over and over (HN, for example), and I don't block ads on those—but I wouldn't _start_ a long-term relationship with a site like that if its ads were obnoxious. ~~~ natrius Those bits of information exist because they have revenue-earning potential. If you block all ads, you're making providing information less profitable, which will make it harder to find information in the future. Block ads on a site after you get annoyed by them. If it's a site you rarely visit, there's probably not much use in going further out of your way to help them out. ~~~ derefr I do agree with you in _principle_ —but it's not pragmatic, and you can't expect users to go out of their way to first look at ads, and then decide whether or not to block them. It's much more work on their part than either allowing, or blocking, everything (consider web-surfing like a flow state in programming, where having to decide whether to block an ad is an interruption that breaks flow. It's a tiny mental speed-bump that, when occurring often enough, greatly reduces overall mental velocity.) And besides it being more work, it's also _annoying_ , like you said; choosing to block everything removes the "annoyance factor" altogether. If you have a blanket-policy ad-blocker on, you never see the really, really bad ads that animate and have sound and make you hunt through your opened-in-the-background tabs to murder them. People don't like to be annoyed, and anything they can use to prevent themselves from getting annoyed in the first place will automatically be liked, even at the expense of the ability to find information in the future. I'm not saying it's moral, or ideal, or anything like that—I'm just saying that webmasters will have to deal with (and work around) the fact that people _like_ ad-blockers, for the same reason that people like eating fruit: it's a purely parasitic relationship where you take what you want, and the "victim," seemingly static in relation to you, can't do anything about it. ~~~ natrius You're right that I'm probably fighting a losing battle, but I'd expect a group of people with a demonstrated proficiency in critical thinking to not take actions that make themselves worse off. ------ bdickason Unfortunately, the author's point about "toxic" advertising such as popups, popunders, etc. doesn't have anything to do with YOUR advertising. Ad blockers are generally turned on after a very negative ad experience with something like a popup-riddled site. It's usually not the publisher who's creating great content that's delivering those horrible ad experiences. They are generally fighting their ad networks to police the bad ads because they hate them as much as you do. ------ tptacek If you don't like the manner in which an author chooses to support their work, don't partake of that author's otherwise free material. If you're going to block their advertisements or otherwise transform their work, I'm not going to have a temper tantrum. Doing so seems objectively unethical, but in an "epsilon from jaywalking" sense, plus or minus. Even I block Flash. There is no Board of Governors that decides what is or isn't "cheating" when it comes to laying out pages for advertising. The ethical response to a site that crosses the line isn't "now I get all your stuff with no ads". It's "now I'm not going to visit your site anymore." Getting self-righteous about the reader's "right" to block advertising seems myopic. Yes, even when the advertising is unbelievably annoying. You can't have this one both ways. You're always going to be able to block ads, but you're not going to get to claim to be taking the high road when you do so. ~~~ gte910h So if you don't sit through the commercials on TV, by say, taking a leak, you're a thief? What about tivo? I think your theory has some holes in it. ~~~ natrius Nobody said anything about theft. This is just about cause and effect. If your actions will cause less of the things you like to be produced, you probably shouldn't do them. No one knows if you went to the bathroom, nor does anyone know if you're using Tivo unless you have a Nielsen box. Do whatever you want. However, if they're selling an ad-free, timeshiftable version of the show you're Tivoing, you will be better off if you make their business viable by paying for it. Product placement is making that less of an issue for television. If the entire show is a Subway advertisement, you're probably doing your part by just watching it. ~~~ orangecat _If your actions will cause less of the things you like to be produced, you probably shouldn't do them._ So I shouldn't pay off my credit card before it accumulates interest. _However, if they're selling an ad-free, timeshiftable version of the show you're Tivoing, you will be better off if you make their business viable by paying for it._ And public libraries are evil. ~~~ natrius > _So I shouldn't pay off my credit card before it accumulates interest._ I trust that you're aware of the absurdity of this comparison. > _And public libraries are evil._ That's better. If you like an author's previous works, you should probably buy her next book instead of checking it out from the library. Using libraries for discovery or reading older works won't have much of a negative effect on your own future enjoyment. Spending money for works by long-dead authors won't do much to incentivize new high-quality works, nor will purchasing books of uncertain quality. ~~~ CaptainZapp >> So I shouldn't pay off my credit card before it accumulates interest. >I trust that you're aware of the absurdity of this comparison. You're aware what the credit card companies call card holders that pay off their invoices in full, every month? That's right: Freeloaders or Deadbeats. I don't think the analogy is really absurd, but I do think you're trying to defend a right for profit. Which, I dare say, nobody has. ~~~ natrius Nothing I've said could be interpreted as a "right for profit". All I've said is that if you want things you like to exist in the future, it is rational to make an effort to make them profitable. The credit card comparison is absurd because people who pay off their invoices in full probably don't get much value out of the card. If they had to pay interest, they'd just stop using it. Plus, credit card companies make plenty of money from the merchants I buy things from. Again, I'm not saying there's a right to profit. I'm just saying that you should evaluate the value you get from goods and services, and take action proportional to that value in order to increase the chances of those things existing in the future. ------ sprout I find the color scheme of his blog somewhat ironic. It looks fine in grayscale but it is absolutely painful to read that red on that yellow. Textbook case for built-in readability if I ever saw one. ~~~ tobiassteele Came here to comment on that - it may not be your responsibility to look at the author's ads, but its the author's responsibility to help you read what he wants you to read.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How did you keep improving your typing speed after 100 WPM? - sixhobbits I type at 100+ WPM on a Laptop (Qwerty) keyboard (120+ on a nice cherry blue keyboard). I know many typists get faster than this. I practice on http://play.typeracer.com/ a bit, but it doesn't seem to improve my speed much.<p>I have no need to type faster than 100 words per minute, but I'm interested in how one would keep improving when all the learning resources are targeted at beginners. ====== kanzure I rank somewhat high on typeracer: [http://www.seanwrona.com/typeracer/profile.php?username=kanz...](http://www.seanwrona.com/typeracer/profile.php?username=kanzure) Maybe I can provide some advice. The most important thing is to type very quickly. Heated real-time chatroom activity (read: flamewars) are also helpful for honing this skill... But chats might not be your thing. One other thing that might help is going to conferences and typing transcripts. Here's a few that I have done: [http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/](http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/) For example, this recently included a Bitcoin event where my typing was originally meant to be a community resource for after the event... but during the event this "resource" became a supplement to and alternative to live translation into Chinese (someone decided to throw it up on a projector while I was typing- no pressure): [http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/2016-july-bitcoin- develope...](http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/2016-july-bitcoin-developers- miners-meeting/cali2016/) A long time ago I thought of myself as a keyboard snob, but the truth was that I hadn't tried that many keyboards. After experimenting with some expensive keyboards, I have found that for me the actual keyboard doesn't make too much of a difference, unless it's an exceptionally bad keyboard. I would recommend looking for keyboards that support n-key rollover, which would allow you to experiment with plover if you ever wanted to go in that direction for typing. I use the default qwerty keyboard layout. It might be more productive to experiment with building alternative keyboards rather than changing keyboard layouts. Chording might be an interesting direction to pursue. Skip to using lots of MEMS accelerometer sensors and gyroscope sensors on a glove and get real-time motion capture of tiny finger motions. Use a few accelerometers per finger. You could spend a few hours making weird (easy) motions with your fingers, and then those state transitions could then be mapped to different symbols. You could also use a 3d model of the human hand, forearm and shoulder to compute the exact range of feasible and repeatable motions based on muscle anatomy, then sample from that range and assign symbols to different transitions. Typing quickly isn't everything. It doesn't help you figure out what to say. ~~~ sixhobbits That's certainly a lot of words you've typed. Thanks for the detailed insights. I need to Google things like "n-key rollover", so I'll definitely spend some quality time with your reply. ------ davekt [https://typing.io/lessons](https://typing.io/lessons) let you type through code, which exercises the right pinky more than prose. The site also requires backspacing to correct typos. This adds realistic overhead not normally captured in wpm measurements. ------ w-m After looking for something similar some time ago, and also not finding anything suitable, I wrote a simple script that would let you repeat given phrases from a text file. I gave it two modes: 1) show a new phrase to type and time the wpm. 2) of all already timed phrases, show the slowest one to be typed and timed again. My observations were that you could in fact increase typing speed for certain areas of input, weak fingers or weak letter combinations. Just showing the slowest phrase is very simplistic, but it does a surprisingly good job. You will only get to see a different phrase if you improved on the current one significantly and learned a new 'skill'. It also automatically does a form of spaced repetition as you normally only increase speed in small steps and will see slow phrases again and again. It didn't bother me much to type in lots of phrases I was already fast at to single out the slow ones. But: after some playing around with it I saw that for many inputs it's mostly a concentration problem, less a finger-mechanical one. How much C code can you type at 100 wpm before running out of things to type? How much C code written by others can you read/parse at > 100 wpm before making a concentration lapse? I haven't used the script in a while and went on to try to single out the slow patterns in every-day typing (mostly the error rate being to high) and then try to figure out why my fingers don't know where to go reliably. I then make an effort to train these patterns a little, maybe correcting an actual mistakes or lazyness in placement. ~~~ abecedarius What length of phrase did you find most effective for this kind of deliberate practice? How'd you pick them? ------ gcr Court reporters are required to type at 240WPM with zero mistakes, or they lose their court reporting license. You can teach yourself to use a stenography machine. You can build your own steno machine with some open-source software and a fancy gaming keyboard. See this video by Mirabai Knight and the Plover project: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb- dB6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpv-Qb-dB6g) I wanted to try this but I couldn't stick with it. ------ curun1r Disclaimer: I type slower than you (~80 wpm) and I have no idea whether this will help you, but it's helped me get to where I am without any formal training in typing. And I never went through a hunt-and-peck phase...it always felt natural to use all 10 of my fingers. That said, have you thought about taking up the piano? I feel like the dexterity that I develop playing the piano, particularly the ability to very quickly play repeated and alternating notes, has helped me to type faster. It should also help with rhythm, since piano keys need to be correct in both location and time to sound correct. If you're only interested in the effect on typing, you can avoid music with lots of chords and focus mostly on songs that have a quick tempo. ------ saintzozo Typing ability is mostly neurological. After learning proper technique, you aren't going to improve much more. Sleeping well if you don't already is probably the only thing you can do. ------ cweagans Epistory ([http://store.steampowered.com/app/398850](http://store.steampowered.com/app/398850)) might be of interest. ------ mjklin Sounds like you're talking about stenography. Have a look here: [http://www.openstenoproject.org](http://www.openstenoproject.org) ~~~ sixhobbits No, I'm looking at pushing the limits a bit further on a standard keyboard with no specialized software. ------ DanBC Most advice is to start correctly with proper touch typing, and then focus on accuracy and rhythm. If you got to 100 wpm by that route all you can do is keep practising, maybe with a metronome. (Although that's going to be a horrible noise at that speed). If you ever look at the keys that's going to slow you down, so use a cloth over your hands to hide the keys. The other problem is that typing tests require you to read. Try typing some spoken word - try typing a podcast or radio show. You may find you type that faster. ------ nso95 The marginal benefit of exceeding 100wpm is quite small. Your time would be better spent learning other things, or just relaxing and enjoying your life. ------ jbpetersen I normally type around 110 WPM and have found I can hit 150+ sprints of a few seconds if I have real-time feedback on how quickly I'm typing without relying on how quickly it feels like I'm typing. Unfortunately I don't know of any tools that go much further than that in providing useful feedback. ------ lousken For me the best training is vim. I have 80+WPM, peak 105. If you have keyboard that suits you, the only thing you can do is type more. ------ bitwize Switch to Dvorak. ~~~ sixhobbits _real_ men use Colemak, right? /sarc I tried Dvorak for a couple of weeks and got to OK speeds, but in the end it wasn't worth throwing out the countless hours of experience with qwerty, or the slight discomfort of using other computers and having to switch mentally. ~~~ phoboslab I've been using Colemak for the past 10 years now and couldn't be happier with it. I have abandoned the German QWERTZ layout, mainly because writing code with QWERTZ is a real pain (curly braces, brackets and many other special chars can only be reached with the ALT modifier). Also, the layout for special characters on QWERTZ is different for Mac and Windows and I'm using both. Colemak is way easier to learn than Dvorak if you come from QWERTY. With Colemak, all special chars and some common shortcuts (undo, cut, copy, paste) are on the same key as on QWERTY. I don't know if I'm faster with Colemak than I would be with QWERTY now for normal text, but it certainly feels smoother and more natural, if that makes sense. Unrelated to Colemak: I wrote a typing game a few years ago. It's more "playful" than Typeracer and targeted at beginners. I don't think it will improve your typing speed past a certain level, but it should still be fun: [http://zty.pe](http://zty.pe) ~~~ bitwize That's because of keyboard-layout colonialism: most programming languages in common use were developed in English-speaking countries, particularly the USA, and make use of symbols that are not hard to type on the US keyboard layout. ------ Rainymood I peak around ~160 wpm, just practice. Work on 0 mistake and then after that speed. ------ throwawayReply What is this, humblebrag? Advert for typeracer? You type at 100WPM. Unless you're transcribing can you really think at 100WPM? I haven't measured it, but I think I type around 40 wpm (although adjusted much slower, I have poor typing accuracy) and I certainly don't feel like my typing slows me down, my typing more than keeps up with the speed of thought. Maybe I just think really slowly. But honestly, "Oh no I only type at <ludicrously fast speed>, what can I do to improve?" sounds a bit silly. ~~~ throwawaymsft The average talking speed is above 100 wpm. Why not learn to transcribe your thoughts (internal speech) in real time? ~~~ douche Really? That seems very high. I think I shoot for 10-15... Ideally, I can measure my speech in wph. ~~~ forthefuture I'm not sure I understand. 15 words per minute means you say one word every 4 seconds. ~~~ douche On reconsideration, I think I'm still estimating too high on the average. I might be a little laconic.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GPS and Relativity - jcr http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html# ====== IvyMike I seem to remember that the original satellites (which were the first highly accurate clocks in orbit) had a hedge--if the effects of general relativity turned out to not be correct the system could drop that part of the correction. But I'm on janky hotel internet right now so I can't find a reference. Edit: The comment from jcr is correct--this was not in GPS, but in an earlier system. [http://www.leapsecond.com/history/Ashby- Relativity.htm](http://www.leapsecond.com/history/Ashby-Relativity.htm) > At the time of launch of the first NTS-2 satellite (June 1977), which > contained the first Cesium clock to be placed in orbit, there were some who > doubted that relativistic effects were real. A frequency synthesizer was > built into the satellite clock system so that after launch, if in fact the > rate of the clock in its final orbit was that predicted by GR, then the > synthesizer could be turned on bringing the clock to the coordinate rate > necessary for operation. The atomic clock was first operated for about 20 > days to measure its clock rate before turning on the synthesizer. The > frequency measured during that interval was +442.5 parts in 1012 faster than > clocks on the ground; if left uncorrected this would have resulted in timing > errors of about 38,000 nanoseconds per day. The difference between predicted > and measured values of the frequency shift was only 3.97 parts in 1012, well > within the accuracy capabilities of the orbiting clock. This then gave about > a 1% validation of the combined motional and gravitational shifts for a > clock at 4.2 earth radii. ~~~ jcr From wikipedia, it seems the keeping of accurate time (i.e. known relativistic effects) was already solved before the first NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS I) satellites were constructed. What you're possibly remembering is one of the GPS predecessor systems like Transit or more likely, Timation. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Prede...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Predecessors) ------ rzimmerman GPS receivers also have to correct for things like light traveling slower through plasma in the ionosphere. Receivers on the ground actually solve for their positions in 4 dimensions (they need to solve for time!). GPS is so cool. ~~~ bargl That's part of what the 4th connected satellite does. Also this is one of the better descriptions of trilateration I've seen. [http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/12866/why-does-gps- po...](http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/12866/why-does-gps-positioning- require-four-satellites) ~~~ nly Andrew Holme explains a some of these things succinctly on his home made GPS receiver project page[0]. Search for "Solving for user position", where he even mentions ionospheric propagation. He also has an appendix showing his math[1] [0] [http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/Main.htm](http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/Main.htm) [1] [http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/user_position_solution.pdf](http://www.aholme.co.uk/GPS/user_position_solution.pdf) ------ K2h $30 for a GPS that will log 15 hours of telemetry[1] I just cant get over how much cool math, science, engineering and technology can get crammed into a single concept. in some ways GPS is as revolutionary as the CPU. [1] [http://www.adafruit.com/products/790](http://www.adafruit.com/products/790) ------ charriu By the way, Pogge also has recordings of some of his lectures available as mp3. Astro162 was especially interesting, and also goes into more detail on the effects and implications of relativity. ~~~ jcr Thanks for the info. I totally missed it. Lecture Recordings: [http://www.astronomy.ohio- state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Audio/](http://www.astronomy.ohio- state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Audio/) Lecture Notes: [http://www.astronomy.ohio- state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/index.html...](http://www.astronomy.ohio- state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/index.html#lectures) ------ jbert Does the system rely on knowing the position of the satellites to equivalent accuracy? i.e. "millimetres" accuracy for differential GPS. If so, how is this accuracy achieved? (Obviously the satellites themselves cannot use gps to determine their position...). Measurement from the ground plus manouvering? Are there any events (micro debris strike, solar wind?) which cause drift in our estimate of their position? ~~~ TickleSteve The orbits of the satellites are known to a certain accuracy allowing prediction of where the satellite is at any given point. The accuracy of this almanac & ephemeris data is only valid for a short time in the future (hours to days) but is continuously updated from measurements of the satellites actual position. The ephemeris & almanac data is what is transmitted to the GPS receivers on the ground along with the timing information allowing the receiver to calculate their position. An assisted GPS (A-GPS) system can transmit predicted ephemeris for up to a week ahead to a device and store it allowing very quick start ups (Time-To-First-Fix) presuming that the data is preloaded (avoids having to wait for an almanac &ephemeris download which can take up to 13 minutes). In answer to your question, the orbits are affected by everything from the atmospheric weather which causes deflections in the signals to phases of the moon and the shape of the earth that it is passing over causing small deflections in the satellites orbit. Many factors combine to make orbital predictions _very_ difficult, akin to predicting the weather. ~~~ jbert Thanks for that, this is really interesting. So - there are ground-based observatories continuously determining the absolute position of the satellites? This seems really hard. The satellites are ~20,000Km up. I think that means a 1 millimetre difference would be a 5 x 10^-11 radians difference (theta ~ tan theta), or 0.0001 arc seconds - surely this is beyond any telescope technology? And even if they could resolve at that level, we're trying for an _absolute_ fix, so we're also trying to measure the alignment of a (moving?) telescope with 0.0001 arc second precision (hoping no mice cough nearby?) That can't be right, so what am I missing? Wikipedia says that there are lots (~13?) stations: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Contr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Control_segment) Are there potential issues with them being covered by weather etc? [Ah - found the link to '[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter'](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter') \- this is probably the magic?] ~~~ VLM Two ways to do it 1) You have a defined position of your antenna... make the ephemeris "work" such that your antenna gets the right signal from the satellite. In a philosophical sense, where is the satellite? Well... does it really matter? This ephemeris says your antenna is in the right place, so... I'm not implying this is how it work or its a good idea, but it certainly is a good unit test if your "real" method when run thru a test bench implies you're on the moon instead of at the (note singular) base station... 2) Those numbers are no big deal with doppler / frequency ranging. If you transmit at 1500 MHz its a little higher as it approaches and lower as it leaves. Ask a ham radio operator to demonstrate with their 144/440-ish MHz satellites, the doppler in low earth orbit is maybe 15 KHz or so. Anyway sub- Hz accuracy measurement (no big deal) of a 1.5e9 Hz signal for a couple seconds gives you the -11th class of accuracy you're looking for. The absolute freq would be nice to know, but you can figure out the instant the satellite passed zenith (or any other elevation relative to your position) as long as the freq is "short term more or less constant". Of course giant and heavy earth bound clocks can give you that precise freq you're looking for, which is also cool. The doppler of a satellite pass is pleasingly non-linear and they're high up enough so make for long passes and proper data analysis means you can downsample maybe 10000 samples to find the theoretical best RMS zenith instant for all 10000 samples, so oversampling and averaging gives you another couple orders of magnitude. Maybe another way to say it, is if you have basically perfect accuracy clocks, and you sample and literally count every incoming cycle of a 1.5e9 RF signal for only 100 seconds even if you ignore phase data (why would you? But for the sake of the argument...) then thats 1.5e11 cycles in a given time, a bit of division and you have a freq accurate to one cycle or part in 10 to the 11th. Its more complicated in reality because the GPS signal is not a simple RF carrier but is a spread spectrum signal so you need a reasonably low noise and stable PLL to lock onto the SS signal and then you actually measure the SS signal. ~~~ zb > the GPS signal is not a simple RF carrier There is still a simple carrier; the modulation only affects the sidebands (which contain the broadcast data). Also, don't forget that GPS is a dual-frequency system (civilian receivers don't tend to use the L2 band because they can't decode the data it broadcasts). Finally, the control segment is not limited to passively listening for signals from the satellite - it has the entire resources of the USAF available to it. ~~~ VLM Hmm thats interesting. I've never seen that on a spectrum analyzer. L1 C/A looks spikey if you zoom out but its really a meg or so wide and only 20 dB or so above the rest of the spectrum anyway. From what I understand of the modulator its not possible to output a carrier other than bleed thru probably 60 dB down or equipment failure. BPSK modulation just doesn't work that way. Maybe you're talking about the L3 signal? I find that part of GPS to be spooky. Or that experimental L5 stuff that I don't know anything about. Everything I do know about GPS is just BPSK and the "old" stuff like L1, L2, etc.. ------ nyc111 How come everyone here believes without question the statement in the original article that "the engineers who designed the GPS system included these relativistic effects when they designed and deployed the system." The author gives no evidence for this claim. In fact the research was classified and he cannot offer evidence even if he tried. See references in this comment [http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/10/11/if-newton-were- to-c...](http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/10/11/if-newton-were-to-come-back- to-earth/#comment-1381) which says that "Nevertheless, in practice, neglect of relativity does not now contribute measurably to the GPS error budget, as the OCS software is currently configured. (p.194)" cited in this source GPS AND RELATIVITY: AN ENGINEERING OVERVIEW Henry F. Fliegel and Raymond S. DiEsposti [http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/1996/Vol%2028_16.pdf](http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/1996/Vol%2028_16.pdf) I am always amazed how normally skeptical people suspend their skepticism and believe anything a physicist or a learned doctor writes. I would be grateful if you can supply a real evidence that without GR GPS will not work. ------ hoggle Talk about deployment hell - puts things into perspective: "to counteract the General Relativistic effect once on orbit, they slowed down the ticking frequency of the atomic clocks before they were launched" The mind boggles. It makes me uneasy that we only have this single system though (the effects of a GPS failure would be quite severe I guess). Do the people behind GPS collaborate with the Galileo folks? Thanks a lot for the submit, now I need to find a good book on the history behind the GPS! ~~~ timthorn There are multiple GNSS platforms - not just GPS & Galileo, but also GLONASS, Compass, IRNSS, and others. Some receivers are multi-system capable, such as: [http://www.u-blox.com/en/gps-chips/stand-alone-gps- chips/ubx...](http://www.u-blox.com/en/gps-chips/stand-alone-gps- chips/ubx-g7020-ctktka.html) ~~~ tomfanning And the iPhone, Samsung Galaxy and others, at least assisted GPS + GLONASS [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS#Receivers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS#Receivers) ~~~ CWuestefeld Given that 4 satellites are necessary for a fix, are such receivers able to mix-and-match satellites, say, three GPS satellites and one GLONASS satellite? ------ hyperliner Why does the article say that clocks "appear" to be running differently? Are they running differently? Or they only appear to do so? If so, what happens when the two participants get closer? Do clocks start "getting in sync"? If we had an atomic clock with a mechanism to self-destruct when not running at the original "right" time, does the atomic clock self-destruct? Can it "tell" it is running slower? In more biological settings (say, a human being) what are the effects of "aging faster"? Is it possible that the body would "not work correctly" under certain gravitational forces because of the effects of time? (i.e. maybe the blood flows faster, just a terrible example, I hope you get the idea). ~~~ acchow > Why does the article say that clocks "appear" to be running differently? Are > they running differently? Or they only appear to do so? Short answer: they are running differently. Complicated answer: I don't think this question really makes sense in relativity. > If so, what happens when the two participants get closer? Do clocks start > "getting in sync"? No. > If we had an atomic clock with a mechanism to self-destruct when not running > at the original "right" time, does the atomic clock self-destruct? Can it > "tell" it is running slower? There is no "right" time in relativity, only frames of reference. > In more biological settings (say, a human being) what are the effects of > "aging faster"? Is it possible that the body would "not work correctly" > under certain gravitational forces because of the effects of time? (i.e. > maybe the blood flows faster, just a terrible example, I hope you get the > idea). Relativistic time dilation will have no effect on chemical and biological reactions. But I'm sure there are aspects to our biology that go beyond chemical reactions and actually rely on quantum effects - time dilation might have some effect here? I don't have the answer for this. ~~~ pdonis _> Relativistic time dilation will have no effect on chemical and biological reactions._ This is not correct. Relativistic time dilation affects all processes. If you flew a chemical reaction and a living organism on a GPS satellite, and then brought them back and compared them with a similar reaction and organism that stayed behind on Earth, the reaction on the satellite would have proceeded further and the organism on the satellite would have aged more. (In practice, the differences would be too small to detect with our current technology, but if we had accurate enough ways of measuring we could detect them.) ~~~ acchow Right. That's the actually movement of time changing. The processes themselves are unchanged and nothing could "go wrong" in your body. ~~~ pdonis _> That's the actually movement of time changing. The processes themselves are unchanged_ You can interpret things this way, I suppose, but that doesn't change the fact that it applies to all processes; from the viewpoint of someone who sees the processes as moving, _all_ processes are time dilated--the "movement of time changing" applies to all of them. There's no special exception for certain quantum effects, or anything else. They're all the same: they all are unchanged to someone moving with them, and they all are time dilated to someone not moving with them. ------ mschuster91 Can one build a GPS reciever chip that uses the signals from GPS, GLONASS, EU and the Chinese navigation satellites? In theory, there should then, assuming the EU/Chinese navigation systems have an equal amount of satellites as GPS/GLONASS, be always 24 or more satellites in view of the user - which should be enough to provide millimetre-precision positioning in real time. ~~~ gambiting You can already get a centimetre-precision for rather low money: [http://hackaday.com/2013/08/05/centimeter-level-precision- gp...](http://hackaday.com/2013/08/05/centimeter-level-precision-gps-for-500/) I have a friend who build an automatic lawnmower as his pet project at uni,and he used two GPS receivers to get <10cm accurancy which allowed the lawnmower to make automatic turns around the garden. ------ mer10z Does this mean that the people living on the space station age faster than people on earth, or does this only affect the atomic clocks? ~~~ deeviant In there own frame of references, i.e. living near a large gravity well, and living on a space station, 1 sec = 1 second. Meaning if I experience a second on earth, then go to a space station, my own person clock will always read 1 second no matter where I am. The rub is, time is _relative_ , so even though your personal clock always reads 1 second in your own frame of reference, the clocks of two individual people in two different frame of references _can disagree_. So, it only really _looks_ like the person in the space station "ages faster", but if both the people in both frames lived 100 years, they would be experience 100 years in their personal reference, but the space station guy might die when the earth guy is like 99.9999(or something, I didn't do the math here) years old. This is due to gravitation time dilation, and it's not the only type. For instance if I went off on a super space ship at a very high fraction of the speed of light, traveled around the galaxy and returned 10 years later, situation would be reversed from the space station/earth gravitation scenario, and while 10 years may have passed ship time, many hundreds of years(once again, I didn't do the math, it's just more the higher fraction of the speed of light you are going) may have passed on earth. In this case, it is the accelerated frame of reference in which time "slows down" relative to the non- accelerated frame. ~~~ pdonis _> This is due to gravitation time dilation_ If you're talking about an object in orbit compared to an object at rest on the Earth's surface, both gravitational time dilation and the other type you describe come into play, because the objects are in motion relative to each other as well as being at different altitudes in the Earth's gravitational field. Many other comments in this thread have addressed this. _> In this case, it is the accelerated frame of reference in which time "slows down" relative to the non-accelerated frame._ Not really. The key difference is not acceleration; it's the fact that the super space ship is in motion relative to the center of mass of the galaxy, while the Earth is not. (Strictly speaking, the Earth is too, but its motion with respect to the galaxy's center of mass is so slow that it can be ignored in this scenario.) Similarly, if I sit at rest on the Earth's equator and you move westward around the equator at the same speed as the Earth is rotating (about 450 meters per second), then when we meet up again, _my_ clock will have less elapsed time than yours, because you will have been at rest with respect to the Earth's center of mass, not me (because I am rotating with the Earth, but you are not). ~~~ deeviant In the first example, yes, it is the combination both of gravitation and acceleration based time dilation. In the spaceship and the earth example, I can't see what your reference of the galactic center of mass has to do with anything. If you take the space and earth out of the galaxy into empty space, the result would be very much the same. You could say there would be some slight differences because of the extremely minor differences caused by the gravitation effects of the galaxy and the acceleration due to galactic orbit, but being that relativistic speeds are require to see the big differences(we were talking about a spaceship capable of high fractions of C here), I can't see what you were getting at. It is the accelerated frame in which time is "slower" relative to the rest frame, it has nothing to do with gravity. ~~~ pdonis _> I can't see what your reference of the galactic center of mass has to do with anything_ The galactic center of mass defines a reference frame that is special with respect to this problem, because that frame is the one that makes manifest the time translation symmetry of the spacetime. However, I do see that I left out an important piece of that: see below. _> If you take the space and earth out of the galaxy into empty space, the result would be very much the same_ Yes, because empty space has a similar time translation symmetry, as long as the Earth is at rest in it. If the galaxy is included, the Earth has to be at rest relative to the galactic center of mass; I see now that I was implicitly assuming that it was, without saying so (I did hint at it when I commented about the Earth also rotating around the galactic center, but too slowly to make a difference). So you're right that the galaxy itself isn't really relevant; but the underlying time translation symmetry is. The point is that what makes the Earth observer in these scenarios have the longest proper time is the fact that he is the one who is "at rest" with respect to the underlying time translation symmetry of the spacetime. Acceleration only comes into it because that is the particular mechanism you chose to make the space ship move relative to that time translation symmetry. In flat spacetime (which is essentially the idealization you're adopting here), accelerating is the _only_ way to move relative to the underlying time translation symmetry. But this does not generalize: there are plenty of examples in curved spacetime where unaccelerated observers can be the ones with shorter elapsed proper time, because they are moving with respect to an underlying time translation symmetry. ------ agarcia-deniz A less useful but,perhaps, more interesting example of relativity at work is the colour of Gold [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_quantum_chemistry#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_quantum_chemistry#Color_of_gold_and_caesium) I believe that this has been posted before ------ tgb I don't understand the problem yet. Presumably all the satellite clocks run slower at the same rate. The receiver doesn't have a clock on it (or at least not one of that accuracy) so it can't tell the difference, or can it? Is the problem with the database or satellite positions? ~~~ maxerickson The positions of the satellites are tracked by ground stations that also have atomic clocks. This comment knows more about it than I do: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8041620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8041620) Those stations have to know the satellite time, so the compensation has to happen somewhere. ~~~ pdonis The clocks on board the satellites have their rates corrected so that they run at the same rate as ground clocks--i.e., the satellite clocks' effective rate is not the "natural" rate of a clock at their altitude and moving at their orbital velocity. The ground stations then send corrections to the satellite clocks to compensate for the fact that the rate correction that's built in to the clocks on the satellites isn't exactly right, because the satellites are not in perfectly circular orbits at constant altitude. ------ axilmar If we can have a common time between two points in space, even if for point A the time is corrected with relativity, doesn't that mean that we can have a common time for the universe? i.e. in other words, simultaneity is real for any two points in space. ------ debrice GPS Satellites "live" in our future, meaning our present and our future are real. Whatever you do, you are still free to make your own decision but you should know that you already made that decision. ~~~ mihai_ionic Or, as I prefer to think of it, the state of a distant object is undetermined with respect to your state (in a superposition of all reachable states since your last interaction) until you actually interact with it, at which point both get reconciled into a compatible state. Of course, it's slightly more complicated than that, because this applies to every particle you're made of individually. And then the particles are actually merely excitations of a field. I'll leave the rest to actual physicists. :) ------ elicash Another way to put this is that we've already built time machines. ------ bernardom I can't believe nobody posted the obligatory XKCD reference: [http://xkcd.com/808/](http://xkcd.com/808/) ~~~ tedks XKCD references don't add to the discussion. Especially since XKCD is itself mostly just references to things technical people often know, a lot of people have the courtesy to keep HN clean of its cheap humor-by-association. Note that the only real connection between this article and the XKCD is that they both contain the words "relativity" and "gps".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Implementing a shell for Bytengine using 'state functions' - wilsonfiifi https://github.com/johnwilson/bshell/blob/master/core/shell.go ====== wilsonfiifi I thought this would be a good opportunity to use 'state functions' to implement a shell for Bytengine. Rob Pike mentions the use of state functions in his talk "Lexical Scanning in Go" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Name good examples of Modern C++ usage - marenkay Hi folks,<p>I'm basically looking into making the transition from a C++98 world into what is supposed to be Modern C++.<p>Since that is a rather opinionated field I'd love to see a few real world examples. Shoot links to your favourite Open Source project :-) ====== jchw Since Dolphin-emu came up, in the realm of emulators I have to mention byuu's Higan emulator. It's got some really cool stuff going on, though the perfectionism is a bit intense (it has its own STL-replacement!) YMMV for some of the decisions, but seriously, there's a lot of great stuff. I always cite the ARM instruction decoder as being my favorite part, but there's really a lot of great use of cutting edge C++ all over the place. Byuu seems to adopt C++ features roughly as soon as GCC and Clang support them, or maybe sooner... If you want something a bit more orthodox, or perhaps less depending on how you look at it, on the other end of the spectrum is the intensely engineered "Boost" libraries. Though, to be honest, that may be pushing it as far as "modern C++" goes considering it's written to support older C++98 compilers in many instances. Qt 5 is one of my all-time favorite C++ projects, although it's again worth noting that it may be pushing it to consider it modern C++. I believe they're currently on C++11 with Qt, so a bit further than C++98. Still... there's plenty to learn about even older C++. There's more out there, but those are the ones that come to mind for me. I have been out of the C++ game for a while now. ~~~ jchw Oh yeah, one last thing: not an example, but a pretty useful reference- Google's C++ Style Guide. [https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html](https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html) I've not read the whole thing, but it looks pretty solid. Of course, there's a lot of highly subjective suggestions, but I can get behind many of them personally. ~~~ gumby Note that the style guide contains recommendations specific to Google's situation (they note this in the guide). For example they recommend against exceptions because by the time the style guide was written they already had an installed base. Had they started over they would use them. Having recently started a project from "empty buffer" state we elected to go with C++17 (supported now in both GCC and clang although with some library features still missing). It's worked out well for us, but in my case I approached it as a brand new language rather than an evolution of old C++ (which I'd started in the cfront days and dropped around 2000). In that light it became and expressive and powerful systems programming language that is fun to use. ~~~ jchw To be honest, I still don't use exceptions. They don't really feel all that great in C++, and I think Go has solidified my anti-exceptions attitude. A lot of the STL and standard libraries and even many third party libraries also abstain from using exceptions since they behave poorly across library boundaries on many platforms thanks to the lack of properly standardized ABI, and of course because the standard libraries try to be as unassuming as possible. Of course, you can still more or less safely use exceptions if you control your ecosystem, but since this is the case, it gives a (pardon my french) PHP feeling of inconsistency in many ways. There may be compelling reasons to use exceptions, but if there were I think they have to be quite compelling to overcome the limitations. ~~~ pjmlp This is one of the reasons I never liked to work with certain C++ teams back on my C++ days and drifted to other languages that don't allow to turn features off, because I always enjoyed having exceptions and RTTI turned on. ~~~ jchw Really? I've used RTTI a handful of times but to be honest with you aside from debugging I very rarely had a use for them. I think C++ could benefit from more powerful reflection, though. Do you have any simple examples of exploiting RTTI to solve problems? ~~~ pjmlp Yep _dynamic_cast_ is not guaranteed to compile with RTTI disabled. Doing _static_cast_ instead, will open the door to fun surprises if one cannot guaranttee the safety of the pointers given to the library code. I must add that in those days, we were making use of C++ gui libraries like OWL, followed by VCL and MFC. ------ atemerev Doesn't contain many "modern" features, but nevertheless, probably the best C++ code I ever saw, and it is usually hard for me to give any praise for C++. Stockfish chess engine (currently 1st place by Elo). I am really impressed: [https://github.com/official-stockfish](https://github.com/official-stockfish) ------ tjalfi Kenny Kerr's dx.h library[0]. He has also written several articles[1][2] that discuss the design of its unique_handle class. [0] [https://dx.codeplex.com/](https://dx.codeplex.com/) [1] [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/hh288076.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/hh288076.aspx) [2] [https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/09/01/get- a-h...](https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/09/01/get-a-handle-on- the-windows-api.aspx) Edited to fix footnote formatting ------ nly Here's an existing compilation of such work: [https://github.com/rigtorp/awesome-modern- cpp](https://github.com/rigtorp/awesome-modern-cpp) A couple of my personal favourite libraries that I consider modern: The Parsing Expression Grammar Template Library - [https://github.com/taocpp/PEGTL](https://github.com/taocpp/PEGTL) Beast: HTTP and WebSockets in C++11 - [https://github.com/vinniefalco/Beast](https://github.com/vinniefalco/Beast) ------ jjuhl I would name Eric Nieblers range-v3 library : [https://github.com/ericniebler/range-v3](https://github.com/ericniebler/range-v3) \- amazing stuff. ------ andreasgonewild Snackis may be considered more post-modern than modern, I prefer open structs and free functions to classes and methods and simple/custom to over- engineered; but it depends on plenty of new C++-features to do its magic: [https://github.com/andreas-gone-wild/snackis](https://github.com/andreas- gone-wild/snackis) ------ agauniyal Can I post mine :) Here is a short but useful terminfo parsing library I wrote - [https://github.com/agauniyal/termdb](https://github.com/agauniyal/termdb) And here is another for console decorations - [https://github.com/agauniyal/rang](https://github.com/agauniyal/rang) Recently I worked on a network programming library (still WIP) for college project - [https://github.com/c10k/net/tree/develop](https://github.com/c10k/net/tree/develop) And here is a boilerplate to get you all started with Continuous Integration, Unit tests etc etc - [https://github.com/agauniyal/cppb](https://github.com/agauniyal/cppb) I try to write good code everywhere but since I lack experience so the code might not be perfect. Hence I advise to go light on it. Have a good day :) ------ mhh__ LLVM is a very interesting project when it comes to C++ style. It is very much modern C++, except that they implement quite a lot of stuff themselves (e.g. RTTI and dynamic_cast/dyn_cast). Certainly very well engineered, but I wonder whether some of the techniques are strictly necessary (It works well, so I'm not complaining) ------ cottonseed Two previous Reddit threads on this topic: [https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/489f9l/open_source_pro...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/489f9l/open_source_projects_with_examples_of_good_modern/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/5sxrun/what_are_some_e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/5sxrun/what_are_some_examples_of_new_modern_c_projects/) My list: SeaStar and ScyllaDB [https://github.com/scylladb/seastar](https://github.com/scylladb/seastar) [https://github.com/scylladb/scylla](https://github.com/scylladb/scylla) Cap'n Proto [https://github.com/sandstorm- io/capnproto](https://github.com/sandstorm-io/capnproto) LLVM range-v3 [https://github.com/ericniebler/range-v3](https://github.com/ericniebler/range-v3) Facebook folly [https://github.com/facebook/folly](https://github.com/facebook/folly) easylambda [https://github.com/haptork/easylambda](https://github.com/haptork/easylambda) thrust [https://github.com/thrust/thrust](https://github.com/thrust/thrust) xtensor [https://xtensor.readthedocs.io/en/latest/numpy.html](https://xtensor.readthedocs.io/en/latest/numpy.html) ------ nick0garvey [https://github.com/facebook/folly](https://github.com/facebook/folly) ~~~ fishnchips +1 to Folly for elegant modern code, but their use of shared pointers is nothing to be proud of, at least in the C++ world. ~~~ Frogolocalypse I've yet to find a valid use for a shared_ptr. A unique_ptr is great to use for polymorphism but I've always thought if you can't figure out what owns what in memory in a program, you haven't planned it very well. ~~~ pjmlp Then I imagine you never had the fun of feature driven software development by consultants at enterprise level. Being one, this works like this. Company X, which main business has 0% to do with software development requires a new feature on an application being used at deparment Y. They send out an RFP to several consulting companies, the one that gets the gig, sends a few developers, which get a configured devenv from company X IT department and implemente the requested features and go away. Manual memory management languages became out of fashion in such kind of companies, because it is almost impossible to jump into a gigantic ball of mud, while keeping track of all ownerships. ~~~ Frogolocalypse I understand that you have legacy requirements to support elements that previous developers have used, but that doesn't explain why someone would use a shared_ptr in the first place. The great thing about unique_ptrs is that they take away the manual memory management. It is a complete PITA not having them. I can even see the use in weak_ptrs. My issue is with shared. I can't see how their use wouldn't lead to larger problems in code. ~~~ pjmlp Well, Windows projects with COM everywhere, and no access to the complete code, with responsibilities scattered across feature teams. Thankfully I only use C++ nowadays when we need to bind native libraries into Java or .NET projects, so since 2006 I never had to deal with such horror scenarios any longer. ~~~ Frogolocalypse I 'learned' (bumbled) through c++ almost 30 years ago. I formally learned both c and c++ properly through uni more recently. I'm not sure I'll ever use another language if i want to build something that is complex but i need to be really fast. I love c but the more complex the problem, the more infeasible it gets to use. But c++? There isn't a processing problem that you can come up with that you couldn't use c++ to resolve it with. Love the language. ------ tcbawo I've been impressed by the Sea star Project ([http://www.seastar- project.org/](http://www.seastar-project.org/)). It was developed to build a high throughput database (ScyllaDB) but has since been used in several other projects. I recently spent some time evaluating it as a starting point for a new application. Also, a fan of the elegance on display is this serialization library: [https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c](https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack-c) ------ rahkiin LLVM is my favorite C++ project. (Together with clang and swift) ------ duarten Seastar ([https://github.com/scylladb/seastar](https://github.com/scylladb/seastar)) and Scylla ([https://github.com/scylladb/scylla](https://github.com/scylladb/scylla)). ------ pacala [https://github.com/google/leveldb](https://github.com/google/leveldb) ------ mabynogy \- variadic template arg (static va_start/end) \- rvalue&& (avoid few copies) \- enum class (enum with a size and a namespace) ------ lwansbrough I'm not a C++ developer by trade (mostly C#) but this looked compelling when I was looking to create high performance Windows app middleware: [https://github.com/microsoft/cppwinrt](https://github.com/microsoft/cppwinrt) ------ marenkay Ladies and gents, thanks a lot; those are some nice starting points! ------ kodisha Doom 3 BFG on github [https://github.com/id- Software/DOOM-3-BFG/blob/master/README...](https://github.com/id- Software/DOOM-3-BFG/blob/master/README.txt) ~~~ Narishma That's very far from Modern C++. It's more the C with classes style of C++. ------ desdiv [https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin](https://github.com/dolphin- emu/dolphin) ~~~ jchw ha. As a former contributor to dolphin-emu (very minor though, too busy :() I'd caution against calling it a "good example of Modern C++." It's an amazing program written by super smart people, but some of the things that lurk in there can be quite messy. Of course, I'm sure it has improved markedly since the Google Code days, but still... That being said, on the other hand, there ARE some nice usages of modern C++ in certain parts. I also like their choice to move to #pragma once - I know it's non-standard but despite pretty intense arguments it seems to do the job just fine.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GitHub RCE by Environment variable injection Bug Bounty writeup - helper https://gist.github.com/joernchen/a7c031b6b8df5d5d0b61 ====== mappu I decided to actually read man ld.so and came across this: --ignore-rpath LIST Ignore RPATH and RUNPATH information in object names in LIST. This option has been supported by glibc2 for about one hour. Then it was renamed into: --inhibit-rpath LIST I'm not sure if it's a joke or an incredible testament to backwards compatibility. I've been writing a COFF linker recently, and have been reading lots of comments and man pages about linkers and loaders. The more i read, i think dynamic linking isn't such a good idea after all. ------ userbinator They must've expected usernames to not contain anything other than alphanumeric characters... this is yet another example of the fact that if you write code that consumes external, untrusted input, always expect every single byte value from 0 to 0xFF could be present, and deal with them accordingly. ------ krallja We prevent this specific attack in Kiln by only allowing specific environment variables to be set. ------ jwcrux Any idea what the bounty was for this finding? ------ 0x0 Will this affect bitbucket as well? ~~~ guipsp No. ~~~ 0x0 Why not? Is it specific to github's "gerve" application? What and where is the bug exactly - I mean, how can a username with linefeeds end up setting environment variables? And what username is being set - ssh? github account? wouldn't you need to use exactly the username "git" when ssh'ing in to github to trigger this gerve app anyways? ~~~ SolarNet Read closely and you'll see the answers in the link: Yes. "it is possible to inject some environment variables into gerve" Because it's his git hub username. You answered that question yourself: "And what username is being set - ssh? github account? wouldn't you need to use exactly the username 'git' when ssh'ing in to github to trigger this gerve app anyways?" So if it's not his ssh username it must be his... 'github username'! it's the only other possibility you could think of right? ...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact - Anon84 http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2013/01/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii/ ====== georgecmu _Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion._ It's interesting that they stumbled on the persistence hunting technique so naturally. Indirect evidence to support the Endurance running hypothesis (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis>). ~~~ pav3l Whoever is interested, here are two very good academic articles about persistent hunting (subscription required): <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/508695> [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248408...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248408001358) Also, here is a video of a modern persistent hunter <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o> ~~~ resatori How do they bring the prey home after hunting it 30km? ~~~ pav3l Endurance hunting is rarely a straight line race. Here is an example of a route for one of those hunts (it's from my first link): [http://www.jstor.org/literatum/publisher/jstor/journals/cont...](http://www.jstor.org/literatum/publisher/jstor/journals/content/curranth/2006/ca.2006.47.issue-6/508695/production/images/large/fg2.jpeg) As you can see, even though the overall distance is 25.1 km, the straight line distance between the start and finish is less than a mile. ------ kenjackson As a boy there was a common game that friends would play, which was -- if Newton were to come back today, what technology would he be most shocked about. I found this quote interesting, and I think shows how hard it may be to predict such things: _"What amazed him most of all," Peskov recorded, "was a transparent cellophane package. 'Lord, what have they thought up—it is glass, but it crumples!'"_ ~~~ callmevlad My grandfather was born in Abakan, and published several books on the history of the region. He visited Agafia several times by helicopter with my uncle, after the other members of her family had passed. When I was around 15, he showed me a video of their first encounter with her, and to this day I cannot get the image of the pure terror on her face out of my mind. She had multiple visitors before, but something about this visit scared her so much that she hid inside for hours. It turned out that this was the first visit where someone in the crew had brought video equipment (one of those big shoulder-mounted VHS cameras), and Agafia would later tell my grandfather that she thought this thing would 'steal her soul.' She wasn't shocked in amazement at the new technology, this was pure fear. Reminds me of one of the early silent film The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station [1], which allegedly was so realistic that people ran out of the movie theater screaming. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LArriv%C3%A9e_dun_train_en_gare...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LArriv%C3%A9e_dun_train_en_gare_de_La_Ciotat) ~~~ scoot _It turned out that this was the first visit where someone in the crew had brought video equipment, and Agafia would later tell my grandfather that she thought this thing would 'steal her soul.'_ Sorry? It might as well have been a log on his shoulder. Now, if it was viewing video of herself on this camera that brought a look of "pure terror" to her face (that you can't get out of your mind to this day, no less) I could begin to understand, but if she was watching a video replay on the camera, then how was it being recorded? With no prior knowledge of video or photography what basis would she have for belief that the random equipment on a videographers shoulder would "steal her soul"? ~~~ callmevlad The video was shot on approach to her home/shack from the helicopter (which was a ways off). I called my dad to see if he can locate the video somehow (my grandfather passed away several months ago), and I'm trying to find the book he wrote which touches on this experience. This is vague recollection at this point, but I do believe that the family did have knowledge of photography (my grandfather visited her 10+ years after this family became 'famous' through Russian press) and the father did not approve of their pictures being taken at first. I can see how that, combined with their deeply religious and isolated world view, could have been a cause for her superstition. ------ cdjk Dick Proenneke (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke>) did something similar in Alaska. He lived alone, but brought supplies in, had a wood stove, a rifle, and even spent the occasional winter in civilization. He wrote a book about his first couple years: [http://www.amazon.com/One-Mans-Wilderness-Alaskan- Odyssey/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/One-Mans-Wilderness-Alaskan- Odyssey/dp/0882405136) It suffers a little from some heavy editing, but is very interesting. There's also a video that airs on PBS every so often, which is worth watching. He died in 2003, but left his cabin to the National Park Service. I've been to his cabin, and it's been preserved as he left it. It's amazing what he was able to make with simple tools. The door is particularly neat - the hinges and bear-proof lock are made entirely of wood. Sometimes it makes me want to move to Alaska and build a cabin. Internet connectivity is a bit of a problem, but I suppose that's the point. ~~~ avoutthere As did a man named Sylvan Hart. In the 1930s escaped the Great Depression by settling in north-central Idaho and lived out his days there alone until his death in 1980. He put his engineering education to good use, mining ore and smelting it to make tools, as well as hunting and farming to sustain himself. [http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1...](http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1079108/index.htm) ~~~ tobiasu Thanks for linking to that, great story! ------ throwmeaway33 "When the warm days do arrive, though, the taiga blooms, and for a few short months it can seem almost welcoming." Hahaha. This guy has no idea what he's talking about. As someone who has been in the taiga in the summer, it's absolutely horrible. The air is alive with mosquitoes. There are clouds of them around you 24/7. The place is just permafrost and swamps. It's really pretty, but a miserable place to live. That's why there is no on there. ~~~ grecy Which is welcoming compared to winter. Trust me, when summer finally comes and there are actual green things an animals and berries around, mosquitoes can be tolerated (I live above 60 degrees north - it's well past -40 here today) ~~~ pyre Note: -40C == -40F, so grecy doesn't need to specify the units[1]! [1] Unless he's using Kelvins. ~~~ mcherm With a reading of -40, I'm fairly certain* he's not using Kelvins. [*] Sometimes negative temperatures are used to represent temperatures ABOVE infinity. That's when high-energy quantum states are MORE populated than low- energy quantum states... it's useful for things like making a laser. But I still think it's unreasonable to believe that the temperature outside is -40 kelvin. ~~~ gokfar What do you mean by 'above infinity'? ~~~ defen In a nutshell, if you put a negative temperature object A in contact with any object B with a positive temperature, energy will flow from A -> B, regardless of how high B's temperature is. This is the opposite of everyday positive temperatures, where energy will flow from the high-temperature object to the low-temperature one. So in a sense you could say that the temperature of A is "above infinity". ------ lkrubner There were 4 children, and one died. I have often wondered why the world's homo sapien population did not grow faster during the period 200,000 BC to 10,000 BC. In his book Extinct Humans, Ian Tattersall has argued that fully modern homo sapiens took shape around 200,000 BC and left Africa around 150,000 BC. [http://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian- Tattersall/dp/08133...](http://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian- Tattersall/dp/0813339189) The growth of the population was very slow. Someone suggested that at their peak there were 100 million bison worldwide, but it seems to have taken most of human history to catch up with the bison -- we seem to have hit that number only when we began agriculture. As late as the year 1300, the historian Fernand Braudel estimates a world wide population of only 500 million people. We became one of the most successful species in the history of the planet, so why wasn't there faster growth, for such a long time? That question interests me, so it also interests me that a family, living alone, with fanatic Christian fundamentalist beliefs and no access to contraceptives, still only ends up having 3 surviving children -- not a whole lot in excess of the replacement rate. Something similar to this must have been going on for many thousands of years. ~~~ madaxe Also, don't forget that agriculture only arose recently, in the grand scale of things - somewhere around 20,000 years ago, and these folks had agriculture - in fact, their suffering is largely based around the fact that they're attempting agriculture in isolation, which doesn't really work with a "tribe" of their scale. You have to have trade, as, as we saw with them, if you lose your seed stock (carrots, almost rye), you're up the proverbial creek. It took second generation wilderness upbringing for what sounds like a instinctive hunting technique - i.e. chase the animal for days until it falls over exhausted, and kill it - this is how some Sub-Saharan cultures have hunted (and may in fact still) for millenia - Khoi, for instance, and is likely actually how humans have hunted since we descended onto the plains. We have no claws or fangs, just a physiology perfectly adapted for running long, long distances. I digress. Another factor is that crops have changed _vastly_ since the start of agriculture, which is also a major factor in the relative growth rate of human population (along with disease, which arose hand in hand with agriculture, of course) - see Teosinte vs. Corn, and Emmer Wheat vs. Durum. Same plants, shaped by man's hand since time immemorial by selective breeding. So, yeah. These guys actually had it really well off compared to historic humans, as they had agriculture, but it doesn't function well in isolation, particularly in such a harsh environment as the taiga - don't forget the place used to be inundated with hunter-gatherers before everyone migrated for the cushy disease and war-ridden life agriculture offers. Survival was a bitch until we figured out farming and trade - and it's improved over the last 150 years or so due to modern medicine (lower infant and adult mortality), improved crops (green revolution), improved productivity (industrial revolution), and all the rest. ~~~ Androsynth >before everyone migrated for the cushy disease and war-ridden life agriculture offers Cushy unless youre a peasant. >Survival was a bitch until we figured out farming and trade I think this is a misconception leftover from earlier eras. But I don't think it is the commonly accepted scientific viewpoint anymore. see: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society> ------ Florin_Andrei > _Old Karp was usually delighted by the latest innovations that the > scientists brought up from their camp, and though he steadfastly refused to > believe that man had set foot on the moon, he adapted swiftly to the idea of > satellites. The Lykovs had noticed them as early as the 1950s, when "the > stars began to go quickly across the sky," and Karp himself conceived a > theory to explain this: "People have thought something up and are sending > out fires that are very like stars."_ WOW. ~~~ saalweachter It makes me a little jealous of the quality of sky they must have had. ~~~ Someone It isn't that hard to see satellites in the sky. The ISS, in particular, can be very bright, to the point where you can see it in daylight (<http://www.hobbyspace.com/SatWatching/>, [http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2009/06/18/how-to- se...](http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2009/06/18/how-to-see-the-iss- in-broad-daylight/)) The 1950 ones would have been a lot harder to spot, of course, but might at times have reflected the light of the below-the-horizon sun. ~~~ amolsarva I have seen the ISS. In New York city! Flying past the tops of buildings. <http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/> ~~~ conradfr Cool application ! And done with Bootstrap ;) ------ jnhasty In 2010 Werner Herzog released a documentary about trappers and their families living in the Taiga. It's called "Happy People": <http://www.wernerherzog.com/62.html> I really recommend it. The people survive their arduous living conditions by continually preparing for the next season. They've done the same things more or less for generations, always working, and pretty much cut off from modern civilization. Makes you realize how happiness is a fairly relative value. Their lives are completely defined by the need to survive, and as long as that's accomplished things are good. ~~~ shortlived FYI - for those trying to find this online: The full docu is about 130 minutes long and has professional English voice overs [1]. There are a few copies on youtube with subtitles, but they are missing about 30-40 minutes. [1] [http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6866374/Happy_People_A_Year_I...](http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6866374/Happy_People_A_Year_In_TheTaiga_x264_AC3_) ------ seanalltogether I found this post which indicates that Agafia is still alive and now trying to recruit church followers to live in the mountains with her. [http://www.byzcath.org/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/363063/A...](http://www.byzcath.org/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/363063/Appeal%20from%20Agafia%20Lykova%20of%20L) ~~~ jusben1369 Ouch. Trying to recruit church followers? A bit cavalier with that description I feel. "With a great big bow to request of all: I need a man as an assistant, one whom I will not survive, [who] lives so not good, with weeks of being alone. Do not leave me for Christ's sake. Have mercy upon a wretched orphan, who is in trouble [and] suffering." ~~~ seanalltogether Both you and greghinch seem to have a very negative association with that word. Maybe having grown up in the church, I don't see that word from the same angle as the two of you. ~~~ jusben1369 Well removing the emotion it's just a very inaccurate way to describe what appears to be happening. ~~~ brianpan I believe you misread- he's saying she's writing to the church to ask someone to join her. The audience is clear- the post is on the church website for church members to read. He's not trying to say that she's doing the much harder task of recruiting someone to the church and also to live with her. > trying to recruit church followers to live in the mountains with her ------ goatforce5 The last 'first contact' with a group of Australian Aboriginals was made in 1984. [http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/lost-tribe- happy-i...](http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/lost-tribe-happy-in- modern-world/story-e6frf7l6-1111112932308) I had heard a version of that story where the brother who returned to the traditional life was believed to still be out roaming the desert, and if they saw smoke in the distance they knew it to be him but they'd stay away and leave him be. That version of the story also had someone explained the terror of seeing a motor vehicle for the first time, followed by (relatively) fat people coming out - believed to be cannibals (how else could you get so fat?) - and their first sighting of a white man. That's quite a lot to take in over a few minutes. ~~~ dorian-graph I lived in the Philippines for two years and while it seems a good majority of the population are used to seeing white people I had a few instances where I was the first white person they had ever seen. Some children were absolutely horrified and ran away screaming and crying! They have a very superstitious culture and have many different types of 'aswang' which translates roughly to 'monster'. We had learnt the local dialect(s) and that terrified them even more, oddly enough, at first. Most of them warmed up to us pretty quickly though not all. ~~~ ninjafox Filipinos most likely to incorporate what they see as strange outside their norms to an Aswang, It so famous that it was used to tame a child if they misbehave, so as a child here you get 'programmed' for the fear of it...I started to create a blog about Aswang do check it out [http://creaturesofmidnight.blogspot.com/2013/01/the- aswang.h...](http://creaturesofmidnight.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-aswang.html) ------ catch23 _The daughters spoke a language distorted by a lifetime of isolation. "When the sisters talked to each other, it sounded like a slow, blurred cooing."_ It's interesting how isolation does to a spoken language in only one generation. I'm guessing they had nobody but themselves to talk to, so any mispronunciation would be greatly exaggerated. ~~~ ahoyhere My husband & I lived in Vienna and we were the only people who spoke out loud to each other on a daily basis (especially in English), and we understand each other very very well in any case, and we got the point where we often didn't even speak in complete sentences over a mere matter of months. When we traveled abroad for a month in an English-speaking country, it took me several days to feel like I was making sense to strangers again! After that I made sure never to go so long without talking to other people out loud again. ~~~ dalke I found that my own English changed after being in Sweden for a few months. I learned to pronounce 'r's and 't's and make a few other changes so that local people could understand my American accent better. Then upon returning to the US I had to unlearn those habits. ~~~ ahoyhere Me too. It's amazing what you do to get by. You probably simplified your vocabulary some too, I expect? I know I did. Living in Austria was hell on my previously prodigious vocab! ------ aeontech Here's some fairly recent photos of Agafia and her companion Erofei. [http://www.panoramio.com/photo/7516964?tag=%D0%9B%D1%8B%D0%B...](http://www.panoramio.com/photo/7516964?tag=%D0%9B%D1%8B%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%20%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%BA%D0%B0) ------ sakopov I just glanced at this story. I'm actually familiar with this family and used to read a lot about them in early 90s. In fact, Peskov used to write pretty frequently about them in "Komsomolskaya Pravda," a very popular newspaper publication in Russia, ever since he located the family. He even found relatives of this family who invited Agafia to live with them, but she declined. Really interesting and kind of makes you think about the vastness of Siberian wilderness and that this kind of stuff is even possible in today's day and age. ------ vardoger It's absolutely astonishing to me that there could still be people out there, even in what's termed wilderness, who have never encountered the modernities of the society we inhabit - that for an all but unknown few the world is still just what lies outside their front door. I feel true sadness for the Lykov's, being 'discovered', then somewhat forced by the intrusion of others to be aware of their greater surroundings and soon thereafter the father and sister seeing the rest of their family felled in quick succession. ~~~ unreal37 There is also at least one tribe in South America that has never been contacted by the outside world. <http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/brazilfootage> ~~~ will_brown There are a number of tribes along the Amazon who have never been contacted by the outside World, for example Brazil actively tries to identify isolated Indian tribes by fly-over but a policy to not contact them. Here is a story about drug traffickers massacring one of the documented, but uncontacted tribes: [http://www.ibtimes.com/uncontacted-amazon-tribe-massacred- pe...](http://www.ibtimes.com/uncontacted-amazon-tribe-massacred-peruvian- drug-traffickers-829975) ~~~ nandemo Just to clarify: in Brazil, those "uncontacted" tribes include many (probably a majority) that have had contact with the outside world in the past. However, they currently have no ongoing contact, and the Brazilian authorities don't have enough data about them from the previous attempt at contact. In some cases, they might have had a less than pleasant experience when they were first contacted by explorers or loggers. Nowadays, while they'd be in danger should they meet illegal loggers and the like, it shouldn't be dangerous for them to contact the authorities. However, their memory from the initial encounter might have been passed on for generations. Also, as you say, the Brazilian agency in charge of documenting and protecting the Indians has a policy of not forcing contact. So those tribes can remain uncontacted indefinitely. The page below has more info. Use your favorite translator. [http://mundoestranho.abril.com.br/materia/ainda-existem- trib...](http://mundoestranho.abril.com.br/materia/ainda-existem-tribos-de- indios-sem-contato-com-os-brancos-na-amazonia) ------ z-factor Here's a recent video of the last survivor: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayWPnm0JWG0> ------ jofo25 It would be cool to isolate yourself just to return and be blown away by all the technological advancements made. Probably not worth it overall though. ~~~ grecy I spent two years camping and hiking in remote parts of Central and South America, and on the plane on the way home I genuinely thought I was looking at the future when I saw my first iPad. ~~~ lostlogin I thought (and think) that and I was around the whole time. Then I set a few up, and realised that until the password situation is resolved, we're stuck with the present. ------ thinkmorebetter Latest report in the Russian news. Non-speakers will have to use the crappy English cc. She's still out there and seems to be doing well. She now has a neighbor whom she visits once a week to listen to the radio. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQv0mg9TEaY&feature=yout...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQv0mg9TEaY&feature=youtu.be) ------ redwood Another reminder of the value of hemp. ~~~ leke If I knew that I was going to live off somewhere remote for the next 40 years, a handful of hemp seed and the knowledge to weave would be one of my essential requirements. Well that and Jessica Biel. ------ scrapcode This is absolutely amazing. This woman is more of a man than any man I know, living in some desolate valley for all of those years now absolutely ALONE? One word: Wow. ~~~ cowpewter Not to start drama, but that's a bit sexist, isn't it? Can't she just be 'stronger than any person you know'? There's nothing inherently 'manly' about being a strong independent person. ~~~ Xcelerate > Not to start drama, but that's a bit sexist, isn't it? There's absolutely nothing sexist at all about the post. It was a compliment, geez. > Can't she just be 'stronger than any person you know'? No, men are generally stronger than women; it's why we have different classifications in sports. Would you rather we lumped them together? ~~~ seldo Complimenting a woman by saying she's like a man is pretty much the definition of sexism. ~~~ Xcelerate Sheesh... Let me translate the post for you: "This woman is so good that a certain physical difference between genders that has historically been regarded a prestigious male trait can be made even more of a compliment by giving it to a woman". I don't understand the obsession I find online of people searching for insults and controversies that don't exist. ~~~ seldo I know that's what you meant. Regarding male-only traits as prestigious implies that they are superior to female-only traits. That implication is sexism. Whether or not you think sexism is insulting -- and it appears you do not -- it was definitely sexism. And other people find sexism insulting. ~~~ Xcelerate > Regarding male-only traits as prestigious implies that they are superior to > female-only traits Nope. It in no way implies that. That was an assumption you made. _Among_ male traits, strength has historically been prestigious. How on earth is that implying female-only traits are inferior? Give me a first-order logic chain or something here because I'm not seeing the inferences. > Whether or not you think sexism is insulting I do think sexism is insulting. His post was not sexism. ------ dmazin Here's an update from March 2012: <http://www.1tv.ru/news/sport/201780> You can hear her speak around 50 seconds in. She says she's very sick. One thing I didn't realise until I talked to my grandma is how famous she is in Russia, but it makes sense. ------ arb99 May have been posted in another comment (couldn't see it) but apparently this is the location ( found on a reddit comment) on google maps [https://maps.google.com/?ll=51.460852,88.427083&spn=0.00...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=51.460852,88.427083&spn=0.002289,0.006094&t=h&z=18) ------ pertinhower Minecraft LARP. ------ sampo This book, mentioned in the Sources of the article, is (obviously) a book length account of the contacts between the Russian geologists and the Lykov family. Probably translated to several other languages as well. Vasily Peskov. Lost in the Taiga: One Russian Family's Fifty-Year Struggle for Survival and Religious Freedom in the Siberian Wilderness. New York: Doubleday, 1992 ------ bdunn This would have made for a great Lovecraft story. ------ arbuge One thing you learn from these people is that there certainly is another way besides the rat race... I mean, for 40 years they had zero income in conventional terms and survived, if not very comfortably. ps. YMMV. You could call withdrawal from the rat race a comfort that makes the lack of physical comforts seem small in proportion. ------ sixQuarks How did they tell their kids about the birds and the bees? Must have been very awkward as a teenager. ~~~ freehunter How so? Humans survived for quite some time indeed without the concept of hiding sexuality from children. I would imagine in prehistory, the birds and the bees was explained through visual observation of your elders or just by figuring it out when the urge arose. Sex doesn't really need to be explained or defined unless you have a need to put it into context of cultural acceptance (which doesn't matter in this case). In this case, with the people being heavily religious (and not knowing much about their religion), it may have been handled differently. It just didn't need to be. ~~~ DanBC > How so? Because of the incest taboo. ~~~ freehunter Depending on how their created civilization viewed sexuality, there might not be this created taboo. There might be the natural aversion to incest, or there might not be. Since they were religious, there might be religious reasons to abstain. If the kids are that heavily religious that they are terrified of modern technology etc, it seems doubtful they would struggle too much with resisting temptation. That's just my take on the matter. ~~~ nandemo They didn't create a new civilization. The couple was born and raised in Russia. Their religion was a sort of Russian Orthodoxy. Whatever quirks they had, it's pretty fair to assume that they had an incest taboo (as do practically all human societies). On the other hand, it's not obvious at all that resisting breaking that taboo would be as easy as not using modern technology. This was hinted in one of the book's reviews on Amazon: > _A spectra haunted this group, as well as other remote old believers - > incest! Peskov never can definitely state this is the reason why the two > brothers established separate dwellings six kilometers from the main housing > unit, but certainly it is high on the speculation list._ [http://www.amazon.com/review/R2TGXPO509YNC0/ref=cm_cr_dp_tit...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R2TGXPO509YNC0/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0385472099&channel=detail- glance&nodeID=283155&store=books) ~~~ lostlogin I'd say that the taboo is now stronger than it has been. I'm half way through the excellent Montefiore book Jeresulem, the biography, and royal families and leader mentioned in it definitely didn't have strong taboos here. This may just be a ruling class thing I suppose. Link to book review as the book is fascinating. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/16/jerusalem- biogra...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/16/jerusalem-biography- sebag-montefiore-review) ------ senthilnayagam Jarawa tribe which lives in Andaman, face extinction after coming with contact with civilisation ~~~ LatvjuAvs Think about it as a transformation. Do not delve into death as some sort of full stop for entity. Everyone will extinct at some point, to avoid it, stop fighting it. ------ DanBC Are there any Google maps urls? ~~~ gameshot911 [https://maps.google.com/?ll=51.460852,88.427083&spn=0.00...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=51.460852,88.427083&spn=0.002289,0.006094&t=h&z=18) ------ habosa The link seems to be non responsive. Does anyone know of a mirror? ~~~ lambda Works fro me. But if it's not working for you, you could always try the Coral Cache link, by adding .nyud.net to the end of the domain: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com.nyud.net/history- archaeology/F...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com.nyud.net/history- archaeology/For-40-Years-This-Russian-Family-Was-Cut-Off-From-Human-Contact- Unaware-of-World-War-II-188843001.html) ~~~ diggan Myself use Pocket for reading articles but was interested in the link you provided. However, doesn't seems as it's working. Can't even access the domain nyud.net. ------ RivieraKid > having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost How can someone survive that? ------ sergiotapia And I thought Thanksgiving with my folks was bad... ------ itsjustme Can anyone spot the site on HERE or Google maps? ------ bostonpete > having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost I'm no scientist, but I don't believe frost forms until 32 degrees. Maybe this was a mistranslation...? ~~~ FireBeyond I've been reading a book called "Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places " ([http://www.amazon.com/Cold-Adventures-Worlds-Frozen- Places/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Cold-Adventures-Worlds-Frozen- Places/dp/B005OHSZ2Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359499768&sr=8-1&keywords=cold)): "One degree of frost was one degree below freezing Fahrenheit. An explorer might write in his journal of fifty degrees of frost - negative eighteen degrees Fahrenheit" ~~~ kalleboo Fahrenheit just gets more and more confusing ------ photorized I went to school with their relative in Russia. CSB ------ RDeckard Пипец. ~~~ gameshot911 Kick? ~~~ RDeckard <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pizdets> ------ angersock To be fair, the plight of the Lisp developer has come a long way since those dark days. ~~~ gnarbarian Still no beard combs though. ------ kahawe It is just baffling to me how they were able to pull that off for 40 years and raise infant kids as well with practically no experience or training and no way out, after they had to leave so suddenly - when in comparison, Christopher McCandless (alex supertramp) barely made it four months with arguably better equipment, shelter and under overall better weather conditions. And considerably VERY nearby ways out.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Shazam's Search for Songs Creates New Music Jobs - wallflower http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/technology/14shazam.html?_r=1&hp ====== soulclap as a (currently 'idle') tastemaker/music blogger, this seems like a sweet job opportunity to me. shazam, holla! that aside this is a real interesting article, i always wondered how they are getting ahold of all the music and was really stunned when shazam recognized rather unknown tracks from random mixtapes.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ultima Underworld bugs - rsaarelm http://dfan.org/blog/2011/02/21/ultima-underworld-bugs/ ====== jasonkester Ultima 3 was the ultimate hacker's game. You could crack it open with a Hex Editor and mess with anything you wanted. Your characters were all stored in one place, with every attribute easy to find (and change to FF). Towns and the world map were all sitting there in memory waiting for you to change whatever you want. I made my own town at one point. Better still, you'd inevitably screw something up and suddenly find yourself being chased across the map by a giant letter M, which you couldn't defeat because your armed weapon was "Paladin". Too much fun. ------ bryanh You could tell that these guys were having a blast making the games, and the games showed it. That, in my opinion, tends to highlight the big problem with a lot of sterile games nowadays: designed by committee and handed off to underpaid developers in a cubicle. Thank goodness for indie games, they seem to retain that spark. ------ jasonkostempski No other game makes me so nostalgic. Though I've been bitten by the Judy bug, not knowing what it was at the time, I was more than happy to start over. I figured I just missed something critical and would have to immerse myself even deeper into the game. ~~~ Maciek416 I got the surge of nostalgia too. Another heartbreaking (but no less attempt-discouraging) bug that would occasionally happen would be that after loading a saved game you'd discover that the contents of your bags had all turned into UW's ubiquitous piles debris (or pools of blood, I can't remember anymore), and that your saved game had been saved in a corrupted state. Underworld wasn't the only Ultima that had a hit-it-with-a-stick-till-it-does- something-funny-or-undefined quality to it. You could do some fairly unsanctioned things (climing on top of stuff, going where you weren't supposed to go) in 7, and in Ultima 9 (Ascension) you could visit places long before you were "meant" by mountain climbing with stairways constructed from objects out of your inventory (my favourite was using books and loaves of bread). Origin games always had such a rough-but-polished quality to them. Whenever I broke an Ultima in this manner it never quite shattered my suspension of disbelief (like, for example falling out of a Quake level into empty space) but instead gave me the impression that wow, they had a fairly open environment here where you could expect the unexpected. With a lot of modern games that seems to have been lost, where typical map design is simply a straight march through a series of set pieces, with invisible walls blocking off any chance of looking behind or underneath something or coaxing some kind of unsanctioned behaviour out of the game. Not to mention the flood of quality control these games enjoy.. Too bad! On the other hand, one of the most popular games out right now, Minecraft, seems to have brought back a little bit of this spirit. [EDIT: did any other UW players here hoard objects in that room near the dwarves on level 2? Good times.. ] ~~~ dfan Oh, the goddamn container bug. OK, that one was probably even worse than Judy. We finally found the problem while developing Ultima Underworld II. You will think we were complete idiots for not using this process (described below) to find it earlier, but it was 1992, we were straight out of school, and we basically discovered all our debugging techniques ourselves. We knew (even during UW development, I think) that it was possible for your inventory to get corrupted. We even wrote debugging code that would trawl the entire object system ensuring its validity; the problem was that, especially on PCs at the time, running it all the time slowed down the system too much, even just for local testing. Our eventual bright idea (duh) was to run it just once every few seconds, assuming that whatever corrupted the object system was likely to be due, however indirectly, to player input. The hope was that when the assert fired the player would have just done something noticeable, and we could then look into the code that followed from that behavior. Sure enough, a few days later, the assert fired right after a tester threw a bag into the water. And it turned out that's where the bug was. ~~~ JanezStupar Dude... seems like literally Everybody is on HN :) You guys (Looking Glass) were THE heroes. You got me into computing for real. Massive kudos to you sir. My first PC gaming experience (aged round 7-8) was UW2 - and I remember how I managed to get into sewers, wandering in the dark (who would know to use a torch) and then ran into a headless. God did that first sewers level freak me out. I couldn't bring myself to return to playing for a month I guess. I'm still waiting for that UW series remake. Gothic came pretty close, so did Oblivion in a way, KOTOR and Mass Effect got a lot of magic - but I'm still holding out for the real thing (shame on EA!). ------ brisance Even though back in the day Origin Systems were known to have stiff hardware requirements, these games programmers were real hackers in bringing entire worlds to life. Kudos! ~~~ dfan The "nice" thing about writing for PCs was that even if our game was slow, if we took long enough to release it, the hardware out there in the real world would catch up a bit. (Of course, taking a long time to release the game creates other problems...) It still amazes me in retrospect that people were willing to play Ultima Underworld at single-digit frame rates, though. It wasn't really an action game, but still. I think our target "that looks pretty smooth" frame rate was 12 Hz, and if a super-powerful PC could get up to 20, that was insane. It was a different age... ~~~ hcles Do you know which developer in UW2 was responsible for the Servant Strike bug? That glitch wasted 6 weeks of my life! I recently started playing UW2 again through Dosbox, using a character editor written in 1994 to change save files is humbling. I would read a book or 10 full of these old-school game developing anecdotes. ~~~ dfan I do, but he's paid me to keep quiet... Truthfully, he was pretty upset about having caused it at the time. The worst thing was that you triggered the bug at the beginning of the game, but didn't discover that it had made the game unwinnable until the end. ------ zandorg I swear Ultima 6 kept me playing - not even to completion - for 3 months of my entire life. But it was worth every moment. When I'd explored everywhere, I just stopped playing. A strange game. ------ k4st Thank you, that brightened my morning up :D ------ agavin Ultima was so easy to patch that I wrote my own character editor in basic that worked on II, III, and IV (Apple II versions). You'd insert a disk at the programs's request, load a character and could edit virtually any property or inventory item. The Binhex style single byte encoding really did make it a "pleasure" to hack. ------ phlux Anyone remember the boat duplication bug in Ultima II? I had hundred of ships that I made to make bridges all across the world and would retreat to the ships when fighting as well. I cant recall though, how I made the dupe ships....	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why input validation could cost you a lot - thierryrietsch https://medium.com/because-we-love-software/1b9dcc107a27 ====== nraynaud One thing I did on my website was being quite lenient in what I accepted and then re-formulating what I understood to the user [http://i.imgur.com/NiPtDEX.png](http://i.imgur.com/NiPtDEX.png) I'm still not sure it's a good idea since I've never seen it anywhere else. ~~~ Ziomislaw This is an amazing idea, thanks. It is also one of the best ways to check if you are being understood IRL - just ask your interlocutor to explain in his/her words what you just told. I've seen something similar (well, now I know it's simmilar, it didn't occur to me until I saw your example) - though I assumed it would be unhandy. It was a way to show your webshop cart as a text saying something like: You have bought X, We will send it to (Addres here). It should arrive @ (date). Will cost (some)$. (it didn't look as awkward as my example though). ~~~ nraynaud frankly I haven't done any research into that (the way to present it or the effectiveness of the idea), I might have found the idea somewhere else, like in the "About Face" book or in one of D.Norman's books, but I don't remember. I strongly believe in showing the future in users before they click. They are afraid to click and explore, that way they know what to expect. It's the same with the date field, you can type a lot of stuff in it and it will tell you what it decides to understand: the first letters of "Today", "Yesterday", a number will be understood as the last day with this number(this month or last month), a full date, etc. ------ InclinedPlane I don't think this is a good argument against input validation, though it's a good argument against _incorrect_ input validation, of course. A few things that seem missing from this critique is the idea that shipping and payment aren't just human mediated processes. With most ordering systems payments and shipping are directly integrated using external APIs, and if you pass garbage data out to those then you will fall into the trap that professionals call "really fucking everything up", which is undesirable. Processing payments typically requires a name and an address, as does shipping. That's not much of an excuse for not doing proper input validation or accepting non-ascii input but it does help to explain why the problem isn't a trivial one. If users are just sending you cash (or, say, some sort of gift-card code which might as well be digital cash) and you're just hand labeling packages and taking them to the local post office that's one thing, but that's not the way even very tiny businesses work today. ~~~ jordangsu Agreed, especially when shipping, and invalid address can be expensive. We were charged $$ for each address which was "invalid"...even as simple as missing a "NE" on the street. An address lookup service was put in place, but it was done non-obtrusively. The user was prompted if the address was completely invalid, but they were allowed to ignore and continue anyway instead of stopping the order. Bad-validation certainly doesn't justify no- validation. ~~~ thierryrietsch as long as one does not prevent the user from ordering, the process can be ok but still it is not working in so many cases. ~~~ jordangsu Really, what cases are these? We found the address lookups to be very accurate, and saved money. ------ afandian Last week I tried to fund something over KickStarter. The form wouldn't accept my card's expiry date. The expiry month field went red. No explanation about why, it just went red and I couldn't submit. The expiry month is this month, but it expires at the end of the month, not the start. Obviously an OBOE, right? So I wrote to them and explained. They wrote back that the problem was that my card would have expired by the end of the campaign (I'm still waiting for a new one because of the postal service). Form validation is normally syntactic rather than semantic, but KickStarter mixed their validation types to something I didn't expect and then didn't tell me why when it went wrong. It's either surprisingly easy to get wrong or surprising that KickStarter got it wrong. I'll be generous and let you choose which. ~~~ croisillon I've seen the last month of expiry happen before. Although annoying it might be a security for the seller. If you enter your card number on Sep 29th and for some reason the bank only transfers the money on Oct 1st, it might not work? ~~~ afandian I don't care what the business rules are. I just want them to explain why my card isn't being accepted. ------ afhof Nope, you should still validate your input. The correct thing to do is the validate that the input is semantically valid rather than syntactically valid. If they enter an address, try looking it up. If they enter an email, try sending a confirmation email. If they enter a phone number at least see if you can find it in a phone number DB. Customers and users do have an interest in getting their shipping details correct. Help them get it right rather than telling them they're wrong. ~~~ danieldk _Nope, you should still validate your input. The correct thing to do is the validate that the input is semantically valid rather than syntactically valid. If they enter an address, try looking it up._ We rented a newly constructed house. The old houses in that area were demolished, but the same street names were kept. It was very annoying to have web forms doing such validation telling me that the address was invalid (you cannot have that house number in that street). Another pet-peeve: I have an ë in my name. When I purchase some software through a web form that accepts that character, please don't just remove it or replace it with garbage in my license key ;). ~~~ Ziomislaw this looks a bit different from the other side. When I worked at in a big retail shop we had to have forms (ie. zip/city) validation. There was a time when validation was as simple as proposed in the article (checking for presence of data, not the meaning). You wouldn't believe the things people are able to type into forms. One of the most common errors was a bad combination of zip/city (ie. zip code for a different country area) which required a live person on the phone asking customer about proper data - it costed money. The most unusual one was when a person managed to type gibberish in every field avaliable and than add to it a proper adress, name, zip etc... all in a three or four letter wide house-number box. VALIDATE ALL THE THINGS! ~~~ thedufer > a three or four letter wide house-number box That sounds problematic to begin with. I grew up in a house with a 5-digit street number. ------ hownottowrite Trust but verify. The back end charges could end up eating all your profit too. [http://www.ups.com/content/br/en/shipping/cost/additional.ht...](http://www.ups.com/content/br/en/shipping/cost/additional.html#Address+Correction) [http://www.fedex.com/us/2013rates/surcharges-and- fees.html](http://www.fedex.com/us/2013rates/surcharges-and-fees.html) ------ cliveowen I think this exposes a need for a service that does just that: localized input validation. It knows the right ZIP code for the right country, it supports every kind of name imaginable and lifts another weight from the shoulders of thousands of developers. ~~~ wffurr We use libphonenumber from Google to do just that. Have to stay on top of the latest library version, though, to avoid pissing off customers when their country's phone format changes, which happens surprisingly often. I subscribed to the ITU-T newsletter for a while, and there are phone number format changes somewhere in the world every month. Kind of amazing. ------ kutakbash Sometimes these arbitrary pseudo-technical restrictions are just infuriating. Once I came across an online store that wouldn't let you ship to one country and pay with credit card of another one (say, you try to order something to the US and pay with Canadian credit card), like no one ever moves between countries. Or Elance.com won't check your address in Belarus because they don't 'support' Belarus (I guess it means they didn't want to find anyone who can read Belarussian), preventing anyone from Belarus from using their service. It's great the author brought this problem to everyone's attention. ~~~ bigd This craziness with CC is the norm rather than the exception whenever the company has international breadth. It sadly due to international treaties, weird taxation and bureaucracy rather than coding. three examples: Apple store Amazon Playstation Store I agree with you that this is ludicrous, but sadly there's not much you can do. (I keep my french bank account on only to keep my ps games.) ~~~ kutakbash Is it really a norm? Most of online stores don't attempt to 'validate' your CC number in this way. Entire reshipping businesses are built on this premise. ~~~ bigd for my experience with ps store and apple store: ITA CC FR Account: No ps store, no apple; FR CC US Account: No ps store, no apple; US CC FR Account: No ps store; other combinations not tested. I remember having issues with amazon, but not for the CC, but for shipping outside the country. for what i saw, the issue with foreigners is very bad in france and us. in france your country is usually "constant" and even the gov.fr does not allow you to specify a new residence outside france. US are even worst. someone with no SSN almost does not exist. Or the eventuality of foreigners is not even considered possible. It is sad that then we go around bragging about "globalization" when it is impossible to keep something like the credit score if you move country. ------ Gigablah Things to watch out for when validating people's names: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods- programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers- believe-about-names/) Even following a spec for email validation could be trouble: [https://github.com/swiftmailer/swiftmailer/issues/71](https://github.com/swiftmailer/swiftmailer/issues/71) ------ lnanek2 One place I've seen a lot of web developers really screw up on this when they try to write something for mobile, they make tons of fields required that they really don't need. Meanwhile people really hate typing and entering stuff on mobile and it is really tough on the users. So much so that many just ditch. I guess novice developers just see they can mark things required in some library trivially, so they do so without thinking through the consequences. ~~~ scarecrowbob Well, while I am all for pushing back on bad design and I'm all for showing folks how many people abandon their forms, it's probably not so much that novice folks think it's okay to mark everything required because it's easy to do with a library... what is easy for novice folks to do is mark everything required because your boss/director/client demands that it be done. ------ mholt I hope web developers/designers learn this lesson -- quickly. Perhaps we need to re-think how we do validation. For example, SmartyStreets is trying to make the validation of street addresses painless, allowing you to type it basically however you want: [http://smartystreets.com/kb/liveaddress-api/website- forms](http://smartystreets.com/kb/liveaddress-api/website-forms) ------ oakwhiz There's nothing inherently wrong with input validation. The real problem here is twofold: Validation rules that make no sense, and what action is being taken by the system when input fails validation. Instead of just rejecting the form submission outright, why not just ask the user for explicit confirmation that their input is not mistaken? ------ AJ007 The example the author gives is of poorly executed form validation. His solution is to to tear down the firehouse because a firetruck hit a single pedestrian -- "Always try to avoid input validation wherever it is possible and not required." If you have received a large sample from, say, 1,000,000 users a certain % of those entries will be invalid. The number of users is too large to manually fix or attempt to contact the user to fix the entry. If the contact information is invalid, you can not contact the user. If the contact information is invalid but you think you may be able to correct it, e.g., add a .com to the end of "user@gmail", you may not even legally have permission to contact that person. The goal is to reduce the invalid % to as low as possible. There is no 100% perfect rate. You are going to sacrifice 1 user for 10. ------ ygra I like what Amazon is doing in that regard. When entering an address they try to verify it and offer you a looked-up address, asking you whether that's probably better. ------ moron4hire this is exactly why Ive started arguing with my clients for using a freeform text field for the address. Why have separate fields for state and city and street? I dont ever need that information separately. And the user will have a far better idea of how to format their address than I will. So let them type the whole thing into one textbox and I never have to worry about it. ------ croisillon Germany has a five-digit postcode system yes, but it doesn't start at 10000. ------ mariuolo I don't understand why it complains for ö but not é or ü. o.O ------ ape4 Error: you have an accent in your name	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
He Spoke Out Against Somalia’s Terrorist Groups. Now ICE Has Deported Him There - domevent https://theintercept.com/2018/03/31/ice-detention-immigration-somalia-refugee/ ====== dahdum Certainly the conditions sound horrible and should be addressed. They glossed over his convictions, so I searched and found the article below. I can see why ICE targeted him. ROCHESTER, MN -- A Rochester man was arrested for selling drugs to an undercover officer. Police arrested 20 year-old Guled Muhumed of southeast Rochester during an ongoing narcotics investigation. Muhumed sold or possessed 11 grams of crack cocaine, or around a thousand dollars in street value, at the time of the arrest. Police say Muhumed was pulled over during a traffic stop soon after selling the drugs but as the officer walked up to the car he drove off striking another car at The Villages of Essex Park Apartments. But that didn't stop Muhumed who then fled on foot. After a short chase police were able to arrest him. He faces multiple charges including fleeing an officer and drug sales. [http://www.kttc.com/story/8294086/drug-bust-leads-to- police-...](http://www.kttc.com/story/8294086/drug-bust-leads-to-police-chase) ~~~ a_t48 He went to prison for it already and has kept clean for years afterwards. Do you think he deserves his deportation still? ~~~ bcherny It’s certainly a statement about our society that we talk about who “deserves” and doesn’t deserve to be deported (not just you, but others and even NPR use that choice of words). As if being deported is a punishment - like prison - for those of us that we can get away with applying it to. ~~~ a_t48 Hmm, fair point. Do you have a suitable substitution? ~~~ bcherny It’s a good question. Practically speaking, no. The US has done some pretty Machiavellian stuff to kick out immigrants before (eg. See the Mexican expulsion in the 1930s). It’s hard to justify that kind of thing given the really limited harm that illegal immigrants have on society. Open borders are also dubious given how many social services the US provides. So this is probably a reasonable policy, but it does create some strange dynamics. ------ burfog I expect he'll do quite well. First of all, he's going to a place where record keeping for identity is really lax. He can be anybody he wants to be. He can trivially claim to have a different name. Second of all, he has a valuable skill: fluent English. ------ jeffdavis What's missing from all of these human interest immigration stories is: what _should_ the law be? If there are any conditions at all it will seem "unfair" compared with citizens. So we either have no laws at all, and make everyone a citizen who wants to be, or we do some "unfair" things sometimes.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I Took a Dump the Same Way the Apollo Astronauts Did–and Dear God Was It Awful - siberianbear https://jalopnik.com/i-took-a-dump-the-same-way-the-apollo-astronauts-did-an-1836637152 ====== bradknowles Oh, dear god. I am mightily embarrassed to say that this was one of the funniest things I have ever read in my life. I literally laughed so hard that I almost passed out. More importantly, I was almost kicked out of the bedroom for the night. Be very, very careful where you are when you read this article.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GrubHub, Doordash accused in suit of pushing prices higher - hhs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-13/grubhub-doordash-among-delivery-services-facing-antitrust-suit ====== rogerkirkness You can have price fixing, or liquidity. Choose one.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Making a Ransomware Payment May Now Violate U.S. Sanctions - rbanffy https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/making-a-ransomware-payment-it-may-now-violate-us-sanctions/ ====== kartan Ramsomware (like any ransom) is a typical "tragedy of the commons" situation. To pay is beneficial for yourself, as you get your data back that is more valuable than the amount of money that you pay. Society losses as a whole as you are incentivizing their business model. But, you bet that it will not happen to yourself again. > With the rise of ransomware, we have also seen a rise in data recovery > companies who claim that they are able to recover ransomware victim's files > for a fee. It has long been suspected that these companies are not actually > using any home grown techniques to recover victim's files, but are > negotiating with the ransomware developers and simply paying the ransom on > your behalf while tacking on a fee for their work. And it makes sense. As it can become a big business. Forbid the payment of ransoms and society is better-off as a whole. Even that some victims are going to be in a worse situation. ~~~ m-p-3 Cutting the financial supply to those who benefits from ransomware is the logical choice to move complacent businesses to properly secure their data and ensure proper backups. If the data was valuable to start with, it should be backed up. Ransomware is just another cause of data loss, among with hardware failure, theft, etc.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
a tiny thread - Threaded discussions for Twitter - idlewords http://a.tinythread.com/ Joshua Schachter's latest ====== covercash Not sure how I feel about moving the conversation off twitter completely. I think I'd still like my comments to be posted to twitter in their entirety, not as a link to another site. Right now it seems like a simplified message board that authenticates with Twitter and pushes a link to your feed when you participate in a thread. ------ danw Already fed up of the auto tweets from this spammy app filling my twitter timeline ------ idlewords Joshua Schachter's latest project. Beware - submitting a comment will auto- post a notification to your Twitter account. ~~~ joshu what with the dots? ~~~ phony_identity Joshua, I'm sorry for posting your regret of selling to Y. I hope it did not distress you too much to see it. I should not have done it. ~~~ pvg You didn't do anything wrong. A newsworthy public comment made by a public person (certainly 'newsworthy' and 'public' in the context of a site called 'Hacker News'). What Joshua (enabled by PG) did was simply silly. Don't add to the silliness by brown-nosing. ~~~ joshu It's a reddit thing. Not polite here. ~~~ pvg Let's assume that's the case (although it's a strange custom because, again, it's quite conceivable someone comments something that in itself is newsworthy and comment-on-able). If it's impolite, presumably the magical social filter will take care of it by downvoting or ignoring. Calling in the heavy artillery for something trivial like that is still ham-handed and unwarranted. You can't have said something like that unaware that it will end up all over the place anyway, as it did. ~~~ joshu The thread was flagged and removed before PG got to it. So yes, it was voted against social mores. ~~~ idlewords It was voted because you asked people to flag it ~~~ joshu Sure. But they did it. ------ dchest Lightweight appearance, but it's not that good as it could be. Try more spacing between comments, and (maybe) some other format for indicating authors instead of "username →". Message counts also definitely need a different style, e.g. bold or italics, or -- better -- gray color. ------ wyclif Very light and old-schooly. Nice. ------ blasdel _I think I just scored the best "# of lines of code to techcrunch article" ratio ever. (208 lines of code thus far)_ <http://twitter.com/joshu/status/3248158809> ------ thristian Ahh, like identi.ca's Conversation view: <http://identi.ca/conversation/7918366> The only winners in the microblogging-service feature- war are the users. ------ mfukar I like it. I like the Twitter spam that will follow it. Thumbs up. :D	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What are some examples of good achievements on resume? - FahadUddin92 I am looking forward to understand what counts as good achievements on one's resume after 5-7 years of experience. What kind of wins do employers/recruiters/managers look for? ====== edent Something quantifiable. Saying "I worked on a big project" isn't impressive - because the reader has no idea what you consider to be "big". Better - "This project served 5,000 customers in the local area." Look at STAR - Situation, Task, Action, Result. "I increased revenue from £5 per customer to £7.50 by doing XYZ."	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What To Do When Ol' Man Winter Freezes Fiber Transmission - usea http://www.polywater.com/icefree3.html ====== DonGateley Reminded of the time my VW's trans-axle froze up in -27 degree weather and couldn't be started by pushing it (it just skidded down the road) I was wondering what the hell a fiber transmission is.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments - Anon84 https://bookofbadarguments.com/ ====== chrisbennet I got a security warning when I visited that side. (Microsoft System Essentials)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Software Circus conference announced for September 10th/11th in Amsterdam - mrmrcoleman http://softwarecircus.io/ ====== puja108 This sounds like it will a pretty legendary event! Btw, great design and choice of location. ~~~ Jamie_Dobson_CS It's the anti-conference. Loads of live music and great beers. Conference runs all evening. I can't wait! ------ paulvanw can't wait to attend, just booked the super early bird! /Paul ~~~ ildiroen That's the spirit! ------ danielbryantuk Looks awesome (and great graphics on the site)! ~~~ Jamie_Dobson All we need to do now is get the fourth keynote. We want Arnie. ------ maple03 Sounds like an interesting conference :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Learn operating systems fundamentals - aportnoy What is the best way to learn the fundamentals of operating systems, with a focus on UNIX/Linux? I am a recent graduate in mathematics and I've taken basic CS courses but stopped short of taking OS/Compilers.<p>Not looking for a 600+ page tome, a book in the 200-300 page range or a lecture series would be optimal. ====== hackermailman This is a good lecture series [https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.a...](https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.aspx#folderID=%22b96d90ae-9871-4fae-91e2-b1627b43e25e%22&maxResults=50) It's CMU's 15-213 class: [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~213/schedule.html](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~213/schedule.html) There's also a book for it, CS:App [http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/](http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/) which is a 600+ page tome filled with exercises, and the student site has all the labs that the class does like Attack/Malloc lab. The lectures are self contained enough you can do most of the labs without the assigned text but I'm glad I bought the text anyway. It's the perfect course in that you dive into x86-64 computer systems fundamentals just enough from a programmer's perspective on how to write cache friendly code, what C code looks like in assembly, how the linker/compiler works, how virtual memory works, how OS signals work, ect., but you don't go heavy into OS implementation details like you would reading an Andrew S. Tanenbaum book. ~~~ aportnoy Thank you, your description sounds like what I'm looking for.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What is your go-to thing to do while compiling/building - sowrabh What's your go-to thing to do while your build is running? ====== bradknowles [https://www.xkcd.com/303/](https://www.xkcd.com/303/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
May 11, 868: Signed, Sealed, Delivered - Anon84 http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/05/dayintech_0511 ====== chaosmachine "Reverently made for universal free distribution" The first known instance of a creative commons license? ------ i2hsu That's Chinese, not Sanskrit...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Arctic sea ice trend since 1979 - jseliger https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/22/climate/arctic-sea-ice-shrinking-trend-watch.html ====== Afforess An even more interesting arctic graph. Arctic sea ice extent by area: [https://goo.gl/b5ciWZ](https://goo.gl/b5ciWZ) Which year is not like the others? Most of the arctic ice extent in the last decade fell outside of the 2 standard deviations, but 2016 in particular was something like 5 standard deviations out of bounds. ~~~ candiodari As a statistician I just feel SO bad when I read this. The odds of anything falling outside of 2 standard deviations 10 times in a row are infinitesimal. Which means that you're wrong, it did not in fact do that. Now of course in this case it means that your variable is not normally distributed. And it isn't: sea ice is receding and therefore comparing the mean year over year is different, whereas a normal distribution only applies to multiple measurements of the same thing. ------ KGIII Meta: Thanks for changing the title. It was something like, 'We've been monitoring arctic sea ice since 1979. You'll notice a trend.' I put that in the patronizing click-bait category. So, thanks mods!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tibetan Monks Can Change Their Metabolism - yters https://mindmatters.ai/2019/09/tibetan-monks-can-change-their-metabolism/ ====== 0-_-0 Reminds me of this guy: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof) "He has set Guinness world records for swimming under ice and prolonged full- body contact with ice, and still holds the record for a barefoot half-marathon on ice and snow. He attributes these feats to his Wim Hof Method (WHM), a combination of frequent cold exposure, breathing techniques and meditation." "In 2007 Hof climbed to an altitude of 7,200 metres (23,600 ft) on Mount Everest wearing nothing but shorts and shoes, but failed to reach the summit due to a recurring foot injury. In February 2009, Hof reached the top of Mount Kilimanjaro within two days wearing only shorts and shoes. In September, he ran a full marathon in the Namib Desert without water, under the supervision of Dr. Thijs Eijsvogels." He can also regulate his immune system: "They injected an endotoxin that stimulated the response. Most subjects respond with flu-like symptoms (fever, headaches and shivering), and affected cells release signalling proteins called cytokines. Hof had no flu-like symptoms and half as many cytokines as control subjects. Moreover, after he had trained some volunteers for a week, they too had reduced symptoms." ~~~ Nicksil Non-mobile: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GiveYC: One month of free advertising space - khangtoh I wanted to repost this since my last submission was on Sunday and might not have got to the people I had wanted to help - BootStrappers.<p>Update: There is no catch! You do NOT have to link back to Simplebucket or anything like that.<p>Here's my pitch: One month of free advertising on my new site Simplebucket , url here: http://www.simplebucket.com/explore/photos<p>Here's the traffic that we have doing since our relaunch on March 20 to April 7. We are on track to getting more than 10000 visitors/month considering its only 17days from March 20th.<p>Traffic Stats (March 20 - April 7th) Absolute Unique: 6000+ Visitors: 6669 PageViews: 14400<p>What do I need to do to submit my startup? Add a comment here with your startup url and a brief description of what your startup does and the comment with the most points get the spot. How this?<p>*oh, I forget to add, I will reserve the right to select the next highest comment if the winner is a competing startup (ie. photo hosting ), I hope you understand. ====== thorax <http://bug.gd> \- Global error search engine and database. Find an error? Search for it on bug.gd. If it's solved already, great, you're all set. If not, we email you in 48 hours and ask you to share your solution for the next lost soul. Long term, we're trying to change how all software and operating systems handle errors. There's absolutely no reason it shouldn't be automatic that we're able to find people who ran into errors and how they got past them. Why are we all wasting so much time solving problems that have already been solved by others? ------ Sam_Odio Very creative idea... I love seeing this kind of stuff going on in the news.yc community. I'd like to offer up 1 month of bluwiki.com to the cause. Here are my stat's from google analytics (3/7 - 4/6): 325,934 Visits; 1,029,153 Pageviews; 3.16 Pages/Visit; 41.37% Bounce Rate; 00:05:58 Avg. Time on Site; 23.71% % New Visits; 86,076 Visitors Reply to this post if you're you're a struggling startup and want a mention on my main page. ~~~ dhc Debatewise needs your love - <http://www.debatewise.com/>. Plus if you start a debate between now and 14th May you could win a MacBook Air. More info on the Competition link from the home page. ------ akcoyote <http://www.dailygreenproject.com> Daily Green Project offers environmental earth friendly products while donating 10% of every sale to various non-profit and eco-friendly organizations. You shop with the earth in mind, so we then take that mentality further in donations and service projects in making a difference. This will begin to positively affect people who shop online as well as those who receive donations from the 10% we donate from each sale. So the strength of Daily Green Project is threefold: giving money to something you believe in, positively effecting the environment around you, and donating to charities that help to make the world a better place for everyone. Daily Green Project members will also be doing hands on work to help non- profit organizations like Habitat for Humanity thrive in their giving. To support this program, we will take $1 of every sale and put it in our “DGP Fund”. This fund is for us to use as if we were one of the organizations you chose to donate to. ------ Readmore well if there is no catch I submit my new site Embought www.embought.com . It's a shopping search engine that donates 50% of its profits to charity. ~~~ inovica Like it. You get my note for the charity side alone! ~~~ Readmore Thanks, I've been working non-stop for the last couple months to get it up and running. I'm in the home stretch (I'll hopefully 'launch' in the next week) and I'm starting to turn my attention to promotion and marketing. ~~~ Readmore So is the contest over? How can I contact you? ------ dhc Debatewise - <http://www.debatewise.com>. Created because I wanted to find out what both sides of an issue thought and I found searching various blogs time- consuming and error-prone. We allow debate creators to collaborate on their argument, wiki-style and present the points they make alongside the points of their opponents, so people can quickly compare the two. ------ samson <http://mytipnetwork.com> \- just finished making it, thought it would be useful for bloggers. creates a open page that lets your readers tip you off to news worthy things they find on the web. ------ mkull <http://www.revzilla.com> \- RevZilla Motorsports - an ecommerce startup While what we are doing probably is not incredibly interesting to the new.yc demographic (selling motorcycle gear online), the technology behind it (rails + pgsql) and our end goal (becoming the #1 supplier online for the powersports industry (big market)) should be. Our startup launched about 7 months ago and is starting to turn the corner into profitability. Trying to get traffic up anyway we can so a link would be much appreciated! ------ jfno67 It's a book hotels on the maps site, we plan to add to it as we get more time. look it up <http://www.seeyourhotel.com> ------ vaishali_mahale I'd like to submit <http://www.askurpals.com>. A simple review/question-and- answer service that lets you control who gets to answer your question using your existing mailing lists like your yahoo groups or office mailing lists. Goal is to produce collection of quality answers from trusted sources for the community with no spam or trolls ------ shafqat Great stuff! How bout some love for NewsCred (<http://www.newscred.com>). We're launching our private alpha this week, and would appreciate any publicity from the trusted HN community. Wish us luck! If anyone wants invites and didnt sign up earlier, email me at shafqat[at]newscred.com! ------ iamwil Mobtropolis - a social photo scavenger hunt making it easy to photo stream your adventures, big or small, and get inspired to try new things. <http://www.mobtropolis.com> Even though mobtropolis uses photos, it's focus isn't to host photos. I'd say it competes more with the likes of 43things. ------ rochers <http://www.thephotostream.com> The Photo Stream delivers buzz and newsworthy content to the masses through a rich, eye-opening photo interface. This is a good fit for the free advertising space because although The Photo Stream is in the "photo" space -- we're not a photo host. ~~~ khangtoh I like photostream, so I've put in my vote for it. ------ gibsonf1 <http://streamfocus.com> Get things done and collaborate with our integrated project, workflow & action management system. We just launched limited beta after over a year of coding. ------ glyphobet Spydentify: <http://spydentify.com/> People love looking a pictures and trying to figure out what’s in them. And it's not photo hosting (in fact, it's specifically configured to disallow photo hosting). ------ slim <http://markkit.net> highlight text in any web page ------ khangtoh After almost 24hours, here's the update submission. I will keep this open until 11:59PM EST APRIL 8th and then declare the winner! Please prepare a 125x125 jpg for your ad space. 1) Embought.com 6pts 2) bug.gd 5pts The rest in no particular order markkit.net 2pts mytipnetwork.com 2pts www.seeyourhotel.com 2pts www.debatewise.com 2pts spydentify.com 1pt feedity.com 1pt newscred.com 1pt thephotostream.com 1pt streamfocus.com 1pt askurpals.com 1pt mobtropolis.com 1pt dailygreenproject.com 1pt ~~~ khangtoh Looks like the spot goes to Embought.com, please send me a 125x125 image with the url you want to link to the email below advertise ..... at .... simplebucket.com ------ nreece Cool! Here's ours: <http://feedity.com> \- Create RSS feeds for any webpage. Track webpage changes in real-time. Pull data for mashups. ------ johns This is not meant as a dis, just a curiousity question. Is ~2 page views/unique typical for a photo sharing site? At first glance, that seems low. ~~~ khangtoh Simple. we just had the explore feature up this weekend, before there was no other ways to see other uploaded photos. ------ utnick so there is no catch? ~~~ khangtoh no .. nothing.. one month of free advertising ~~~ utnick ok haha sweet... my submission is www.hangmanworld.com - the best hangman game on the internet :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What are the problems faced by people who are starting to contribute to OSS - sudo_bangbang I'm starting a project to address the problems faced by noobs to opensource community.<p>I've started out with a simple readme file which explains the basic git and github workflow. Please give me feedback ====== vitovito There will be people reading this who have never used a Terminal, or typed at a command line, or called directories anything other than "folders". There will be people reading this who have never installed anything that wasn't from an App Store. There will be people reading this who have never heard of source control, branches, repos, or any of the other jargon in your document. I think the number two thing project maintainers need to do is to stop making assumptions about the background and experience level of their potential contributors; or, if they do, to admit and outline them. I write more about this here: [http://opendesign.foundation/articles/import- designers/](http://opendesign.foundation/articles/import-designers/) ~~~ flukus Someone described by those first 3 things probably couldn't do much on an OS project anyway. ~~~ sudo_bangbang Agree with @flukus. I didn't put anything about pre-requisites because I didn't want to drive anyone away. Anybody seeing these things for the first time can just google it and learn right? ~~~ afarrell For some people, it takes quite a while to learn to be comfortable with the command line. ~~~ bbcbasic Some open sourcerers use Windows and Visual Studio and Sourcetree. No cmd needed! ------ Jtsummers If this is intended for noobs, I suggest cleaning up your example fork/branch/push/pull request. You have the reader create a branch called add-your-name, then push that to the server. Only the next example for the pull request talks about a branch called fix-readme. This _will_ confuse novices. ------ sudo_bangbang Here's a link to what I've started [https://github.com/Roshanjossey/first- contributions](https://github.com/Roshanjossey/first-contributions) ~~~ ashitlerferad Seems very specific to git/github, which are popular here on HN but there is a great deal more variety out there. I'd suggest something that doesn't deal in specific technologies but more general principles. ~~~ sudo_bangbang Thank you for the insight. Will checkout other tools as well. ------ soboleiv I'd point to a few examples of pull requests which were merged into OSS projects already and explained what authors generally went through. ------ ashitlerferad Check out this: [http://openhatch.org/](http://openhatch.org/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Disney, a Mobile Company - NickSarath http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/16/disney-a-mobile-company/ ====== aaronbrethorst This is the stat that most blows me away: Over 55% of ESPN’s traffic in a record September was exclusively mobile. Not just ’also mobile’, but ‘only mobile’. ~~~ georgeecollins I'm surprised that is news to this audience. The head of NFL mobile was on a pod case (this week in Venture capital) and he had great statistics about traffic to NFL.com. IMO NFL.com is a great proxy for a mainstream US sports site. He said about 60% of their traffic was mobile, 10% of mobile was tablet. This was interesting to me: mobile traffic was about 50% their app and 50% mobile web. That stuck in my head: apps are growing, but the mobile web is growing with it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
U.S. to host World Press Freedom Day - ZeroMinx http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/12/152465.htm ====== abhimishra This paragraph is hilarious: "The theme for next year’s commemoration will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age." ------ emilsedgh While hunting down Wikileaks and Julian Assange? dont get me wrong, i live in iran and what you have as freedom of press is a thousand years ahead of us, but really, 'world press freedom day' and calling wikileaks 'a terrorist organization' AT THE SAME TIME? ~~~ frisco s/haunting/hunting ------ joeybaker I love how the lede makes it sound like UNESCO is the only real press-freedom organization in the world. Never mind folks like Reporter without Borders <http://www.rsf.org> who have condemned US actions. Or, <http://www.cpj.org>, or <http://freedomhouse.org>, or <http://amnesty.org>, or <http://www.hrw.org/> ------ znt I guess the event will be sponsored by the Ministry of Truth. ~~~ quanticle The accommodations will, of course, be provided by the Ministry of Love. ------ swombat How hypocritical! It's not press freedom if you only allow it when it suits your agenda. ~~~ astrodust This year's special guest speaker will be held in a CIA rendition cell in a secret location. Get your tickets now! ------ abyssknight Say what you will, but the U.S. puts up with a lot more than most countries. Be thankful for the freedoms you have and celebrate the freedom of others. Edit: Not sure why some went on the defensive. I never said you shouldn't fight to protect your own freedoms. Nor did I condemn anyone or anything. Is this really what we've been reduced to? In our search for freedom of speech we're squelching the voice of those who don't agree with us? Isn't that what you are aiming to fight? ~~~ swombat The fact that it's better than some others is no reason to avoid condemning it when it fails to live up to its own standards. By this argument, we shouldn't complain about any abuses of government in the western, because a lot of countries do even worse to their citizens. That's a nice idea, but if it was really applied, the result would be that the western governments would soon be no better than others. ~~~ abyssknight I don't think I said we should avoid condemning it. Did I? ~~~ swombat You said we should be thankful for what you have. That implied disagreement with the criticism of the US govt for this hypocritical stance. I suggest starting the post with something along the lines of "I agree that this stance is hypocritical, but ..." if you want to avoid conveying disagreement. It's less concise, but it gets the message across correctly! ------ fredBuddemeyer this is the first time i can remember when such a headline would appear ironic. ------ nir When WikiLeaks published the docs, I thought it would be great as it would expose Westerners to how most of the world lives & operates. Clearly it didn't. Which nation would the commenters here recommend as host of WPFD, in place of the US? (Not counting nations too remote/small to have any security concerns at all) ------ gasull 37 votes 2 hours ago. And it isn't in the frontpage. Isn't something broken in the ranking? ------ bwb How ironic given our actions of wikileaks, crazy. ------ Charuru Come on guys, the United States didn't do jack to Julian Assange. It's the Swedish who are pursuing the case against him, and quite possibly the matter is one of internal politics. You might say that the US put pressure on Sweden to have this happen, but here in the civilized world we say innocent until proven guilty right? On the other hand many many Americans celebrate Wikileaks and what it represents, the government has done extremely little / nothing against wikileaks, and all the antagonists wield only rhetoric. The relative inaction so far is reason for celebration! Obviously there are always going to be people who say sensational stuff, but they don't represent the entire country. ~~~ abyssknight And thankfully our laws and the freedom of speech allow them to say all that sensational stuff. As someone once said of Voltaire's attitude: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." ~~~ gasull Are you aware that the US Government wants to accuse him Assange of treason and espionage. I think the reason they haven't formally done it yet is because they are waiting for him to be extradited to Sweden first. ~~~ ehutch79 also, not that the likes of palin will let little things like the law stop her, but you can't commit treason against the US without being a US citizen... ------ to does not compute. ------ ZeroMinx Oh come on... ~~~ VSD20C haha... the title is an oxymoron	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Coinbase is down. - rafeed https://coinbase.com ====== aryanet I am new users of CoinBase. I personally have almost all my orders cancelled since last Monday. Customer service is not responding. ------ rafeed Just dropped $200 and I can't do anything about it. ------ misframer Works for me now. ~~~ rafeed It's been down intermittently for the last hour or so and was working for a few minutes... It's down again though.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is the Gitlab stylesheet also busted for you? - wheresvic3 It looks like the gitlab stylesheet is not being loaded ... ====== ahuang1018 Does the stylesheet works now? Do you mind documenting this question in an issue? [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues](https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/issues)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
From DOS Games to BBSes: Five Ways To Reminisce About Your Online Past - ckcin http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/five_ways_to_reminisce_about_your_online_past.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29 ====== bluesmoon When copying links out of your feed reader, it's useful to get rid off the tracking parameters they add. For example, in this link, the ?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29 part is unnecessary.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How politics makes us stupid - js2 http://www.vox.com/2014/4/6/5556462/brain-dead-how-politics-makes-us-stupid ====== DrScump "Kahan compares the HPV debacle to the relatively smooth rollout of the hepatitis B vaccine...." The following premise assumes that the HPV vaccine _s_ (emphasize plural) consumption was lesser than the HepB vaccine because patients were ignorant and/or it was mismarketed. It does not consider that consumers may have been _more_ intelligent than they give credit for and didn't jump to each vaccine as it was released because they didn't fall for its planned-obsolescence business model or marketing. Those parents who _did_ fall for the marketing would have proceeded thus: 1) inject their child(ren) with the three-vaccine series of Cervarix over a 12-month span. This protects against two HPV strains. 2) Then Gardasil comes out, which protects against two additional strains. Again, 3 doses over a 12-month span. 3) THEN, Gardasil 9 comes out, which adds 5 more strains. Again, 3 doses over a 6-8 month period. So, at this point, a parent with full buy-in to the concept has had administered 9 different HSV vaccine dosings. Yet, there are still more HPV types that are not addressed in any of these vaccines, and the recipient is not protected from any other STD.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Improving Connectomics by an Order of Magnitude - lainon https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/07/improving-connectomics-by-order-of.html ====== martythemaniak For those of you who would like to learn more about the field, I highly recommend this 3 part lecture by Jeff Lichtman, one of the leaders in this field Part 1 is about the history of brain imaging and general info about how the brain is wired: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtTOg0mzRJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtTOg0mzRJc) Part 2 is about how the brain is connected to muscles through the central nervous system: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1qwQ3Qrzhs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1qwQ3Qrzhs) Part 3 is pretty mindblowing, it talks about the imagine technique Google discusses here and about the machinery and microscopes that have to be developed to image a brain and the enormous challenge it posses. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QVy0n_rdBI&t=10s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QVy0n_rdBI&t=10s) ------ legatus This post introduced me to the field of connectomics. I must admit I am extremely fascinated by this field and the technology that characterizes it. Can anyone suggest me a few introductory resources, such as books and introductory papers, that they consider reliable? ~~~ ArtWomb Check out Sebastian Seung's lectures online Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS6nTA3DUuY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS6nTA3DUuY) As well as the MIT Seung Lab's Eyewire Game. It's a kind of citizen science interface. Observing images of the neural structures behind the human eyeball. You can assist in untangling the dense jumble of wiring that leads to image processing in the brain ;) ------ legatus This, to me, seems incredible stuff. Can someone with some knowledge of the field point out if this is really ground-breaking? ~~~ aurellem Yes, this is an important advance in the field. Google's been working on this for the past few years after convincing Viren Jain ([https://www.janelia.org/our-research/former-labs/jain- lab](https://www.janelia.org/our-research/former-labs/jain-lab)) to leave Janelia and perfect this technology. Very cool stuff! Even as early as two years ago, it generally took a grad student months to years of work to manually reconstruct 50-100 neurons (see [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4844839/);](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4844839/\);) now this same process can be done in virtually no time at all. Expect to see several more papers in the future involving reconstructions of thousands to tens of thousands of neurons, instead of the hundreds we've been seeing. Exciting times! ~~~ legatus Thanks for the response! I think the link you provided includes the ");" at the end, leading to an error page. Removing ");" leads to the article I think you wanted to mention. Anyway am I correct in saying this may allow research to analyze bigger and bigger neural networks (the biological ones)? I remember OpenWorm ([http://openworm.org/science.html](http://openworm.org/science.html)) which was able to recreate virtually the nematode's brain thanks to a few "maps" of its brain. Could this technology (coupled with the improvements that will come in the next years) allow something of the OpenWorm kind with more and more complex organisms? ~~~ saltcured To really extract networks, you would need to either image synapses (very, very difficult since they are sub-micron sizes) to determine how cells connect, or image something like calcium potential to infer a circuit of active neurons as a very sparse subset of a larger set of observed cells during a particular kind of neural activity. ~~~ legatus The paper (available at [https://sci- hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-01...](https://sci- hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-018-0049-4)) says that the part of the zebra finch brain analyzed had a resolution of 9 x 9 x 20 nanometers. If I'm reading it correctly, should they not be able to analyze synapses, too? At that resolution, shouldn't synapses have been imaged too? ~~~ jmrko That's correct - I imaged the volume and we extracted the synapses before ([https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.4206](https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.4206)). ------ paxys > Due to the high resolution of the imaging, even a cubic millimeter of brain > tissue can generate over 1,000 terabytes of data This is so insanely unimaginable to me, wow ~~~ wetpaws It sounds like a lot, but in 10 years it might be pretty manageble. ~~~ mortenjorck Serious question: As we near the end of Moore's Law, how much advancement in storage can we really expect from the next 10 years? ~~~ wetpaws Moore's Law is merely a side effect of a larger law of accelerated return. You can see it with solar power, CPU's, disc storage, etc. Every aspect of human technology is growing exponentially and the rate of growth itself is growing exponentially. Population, overall education level of people, scientific inter-connectivity, the mere fact that entire new scientific disciplines can appear overnight pretty much indicate that we will face enormous advancement everywhere. ------ mlthoughts2018 For a semester project in grad school, I once interviewed Ken Hayworth while he was at the Lichtman Lab at Harvard working on FIB-SEM tissue slicing and imaging technology to create extremely high-res imagery of slices of mouse brains. The most interesting idea he discussed with me was the idea that getting to the point of pragmatic whole-brain imaging for purposes of connectomics-like neural reconstruction (and perhaps actual brain emulation) looked like it would be so hard that he expected there would be a funding model similar to the way astronomy labs handle expensive telescope time. With telescope time, it's not economical for any specific lab to totally own the entire observatory, as the equipment is really expensive to create and maintain, and any given project may only utilize the equipment for a tiny fraction of the time. So instead, you get a model similar to cloud computing: some consortium will build and operate the infrastructure and different labs would bid on actual scope time to dedicate some devices for their specific research needs. The more urgent or promising the research project is, the more they might be willing to pay to get priority scope time, and this would drive what types of astronomical discoveries are made. With connectomics / neural reconstruction, it could be similar. Someone might propose a certain section of the brain to map out because of a promising connection to a certain disease or development in cognitive science or an understanding of behavioral patterns. And over time we would get some piecemeal, patchwork "planetarium" map of an imaged brain where we have highly resolved detail about some regions, but have almost not information about others. Incidentally, the project for which I conducted this interview was a semester project to try to pin down tight estimates on how long it would take using known technology to fully image a whole brain. There are several different physical techniques, but the FIB-SEM and ultramicrotome stuff was by far the most promising and most efficient. To give some idea of the time scale involved in imaging a human brain, putting aside data storage, retrieval costs and the setup and preprocessing time to prepare the tissue into small enough column slides to be operated on by the particular device (FIB-SEM), a single 20 by 20 by 20 micron tissue cube can be imaged into 5 by 5 by 10 nm voxels in roughly 2 hours, assuming a 10 MHz optimized FIB-SEM device (which is a reasonable extrapolation from current technology). It would take 30 years for one such FIB-SEM device to image a single cubic millimeter volume of tissue. The human brain is roughly 10^6 mm^3 in volume (it's between 10^5 and 10^6, just using an upper bound here), and so even if we parallelized a set of 100 such FIB-SEM devices and set them running continuously for 10 years, we would only have imaged 0.003% of the human brain at this resolution! I'm sure other technological advances can speed this up, but it is really hard to predict by how much. In my thinking, this is one of the main remaining reasons why someone might feel that strong AI is unlikely to be developed via first emulating human brains in software (e.g. like Robin Hanson's primary argument), compared with being developed through algorithmic research in machine learning and AI (the stuff that Friendly AI researchers are often more directly concerned about). ~~~ jaybo_nomad The Allen Institute for Brain Science is in the process of imaging 1 cubic mm of mouse visual cortex using TEM at a resolution of 4nm per pixel. The goal is to complete this in about 4 months running in parallel on 5 scopes. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO8xCLBv6j0&t=70s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO8xCLBv6j0&t=70s) ~~~ mlthoughts2018 That’s very cool. It looks like this was enabled by extremely recent advances in the FIB-SEM devices [0]. I’d say 20 total device-months is a bit optimistic, but maybe they will hit it, and even if they are anywhere close it will be impressive. 20 device-months for 1 mm^3 compared with 360 device-months with the devices I studied in 2012-14 is impressive. I hope they do it! FWIW, my belief is that this line of research is probably more promising for strong AI than straight development of AI from e.g. meta-reinforcement learning, although in the end it probably will be a mix of these things. [0]: < [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5476429/#!po=3....](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5476429/#!po=3.23529) > ~~~ mlthoughts2018 Just following-up on this, it's still staggering how long it would take to image the entire 10^6 cubic mm of the whole brain. If it took 20 device-months to image 1 cubic mm, it means we would need 20 _million_ device-months to image the whole brain. With 10,000 devices running in parallel, and assuming no failure rate (though with a device count this high, failures would happen constantly), that would still require _2000 months_ (or about _167 years_ ) to image a whole brain. Let's imagine the technology can undergo some type of Moore's Law (I don't know enough about the underlying SEM physics to know whether there is a clear ceiling on speedups achievable) and the time to image 1 cubic mm halves every two years. This might predict that in ~20 years, we could image a whole brain in about 4 months time (still requiring 10,000 parallel devices). If you keep going past 20 years and continue the trend, but assume you would halve the device count but keep the 4-month timeline the same, then it would be about 42 years before a set of 5 devices could image the whole brain in 4 months time, or going on ~50 years until 5 devices could do it in less than one month, ~60 years before one device can do it in less than one month. Obviously, hugely gigantic error bars around such estimates. ------ aperrien Why are all of jmrko's links dead? They seem to be putting out useful information. ~~~ jmrko I just signed up for this, maybe that's the reason? ~~~ aperrien I guess that was the case, it all looks unflagged now. I'm really impressed with your work, one question, though. What do you believe are the biggest bottlenecks to speeding up your work? How soon could we see this applied to say, millimeter sized brains? ~~~ jmrk84 The Allen institute (see e.g. [https://twitter.com/danbumbarger?lang=de](https://twitter.com/danbumbarger?lang=de)) and also Jeff Lichtman ([https://lichtmanlab.fas.harvard.edu/](https://lichtmanlab.fas.harvard.edu/)) are very close to having solved the data acquisition problem (using very fast TEMs or multi-beam SEM) for cubic mm sized volumes, and we ([http://www.neuro.mpg.de/denk](http://www.neuro.mpg.de/denk)) are also working hard on it. On the analysis side (i.e. automatic reconstruction), I am actually optimistic that it is mainly a software engineering problem (scalability to Petabyte-sized volumes, use tailored machine learning for remaining problems, e.g. to identify reconstructions that make no sense) and not so much a fundamental algorithmic limitation problem anymore. So 2 years from now, we should see the first cubic mm reconstructions. ~~~ aperrien Just today they came out with the full image set of a fruit fly brain ([http://temca2data.org/](http://temca2data.org/)). Is the output of this something that could be fed through you algorithm, and if so, how long would that take? ------ sp332 Wow, I knew connectomics was starting from behind, but I didn't realize the state-of-the-art was so bad they can't even reliably find neurons in pictures of neurons. ~~~ londons_explore Take a look at the images in the paper... It's rather a squiggly mess of lines... I can understand why it's hard! Personally, I think we need even higher resolution imaging. We need to be able to do 5nm thick layers. Obviously at that kind of resolution, we won't be able to store all the output data, so we're going to need to run this kind of segmentation and connector analysis in real-time as the data is generated.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What's the best time to post to HN - pattle Does anyone know what's the best time to post to Hacker News to achieve the most visibility?<p>I live in the UK so I'm guessing the best time for me to post is around 5pm. That way people in the UK may read my post plus I know there is a large user base in the U.S especially on the West Coast. For them it would be 9am and they will be just starting their working day. ====== Glowbox This question has been asked a lot, have you used the search yet? There is this app too; <http://hnpickup.appspot.com/> but it has a big error on the top so I'm not sure if it still works.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Web Developer Security Checklist - aeronautic https://simplesecurity.sensedeep.com/web-developer-security-checklist-f2e4f43c9c56 ====== sho While it means well, I think some of this advice is pretty bad, or at least unbalanced. From the very first section: > Encrypt all data at rest in the database ALL data? How are you supposed to query against it then? What does "at rest" even mean in the context of an always-on database? An encrypted partition or something? I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean and it is certainly not common practise. > Use secondary encryption for data identifying users and any sensitive data > like access tokens, email addresses or billing details So _two_ layers of encryption!? Again, how is one supposed to look up an access token or email address if it is encrypted? And it strikes me that if you don't trust the first level of encryption, the solution is to fix that, not add _another_ one. > Fully prevent SQL injection by only using SQL prepared statements and stored > procedures That is an extraordinarily inefficient and costly way to develop. The correct way to protect against SQL injection is to use a framework/driver which guarantees escaping and to be cautious about what you allow into queries. I could go on. The costs of implementing these recommendations would be staggering for the questionable benefits they would provide. It is absolutely possible to have excellent security without implementing any of these ideas, and I don't think they're helpful at all - and certainly not "simple". ~~~ pjungwir Totally agree about the encryption. I've set up databases to run on encrypted disks (LUKS or nowadays on AWS you can get encrypted EBS), but I feel like that is really just to tick the "encrypted at rest" compliance checkbox, because if the machine is turned on, anyone can read the data (subject to normal file permissions of course). As far as I can tell the only threat this is protecting against is someone physically pulling the drive and walking off with it. Also this business of two layers of encryption: yep, anything encrypted can't be indexed or searched (basically). At best you can encrypt the query input too and compare for strict equality---sort of like hashing passwords. (Is that what he means?) I've never seen anyone hash email addresses though. And encrypting billing details . . . okay, I guess, although if the app has the decryption key, then what security are you really adding? ~~~ aeronautic If the hacker gets access to the database due to a network config error, then they will be able to query the database, but only get records with some sensitive fields encrypted. Given the number of email addresses that have been hacked and stolen (3.75 billion in Troy Hunt's haveibeenpwned alone), I believe doing one little extra bit of encryption on email addresses is worthwhile. We push that into our ORM layer and can easily flag any field in the database to be encrypted. On very, very high volume accessed tables, you may not want to do that. But for user logon details -- for us it was a no brainer. ~~~ stephenr Wait, so you encrypt the user's email before it's inserted into the table? Are you using a different field for 'username' on logins, or do you have to jump through some hoops to find an encrypted email to do a login check against the pw hash? ~~~ k__ Can't you encrypt the entered email and search with that? ~~~ aeronautic Password hashes are handled separately using bcrypt - another story. For the User.email field, we crypt/decrypt in the ORM/DB layer. So we search with the encrypted value that is stored in the db. App code provides plain- text email, ORM encrypts and searches with that value. Symmetric encryption of short strings is pretty fast and this is not a high volume API. We use rate limiting on the API to protect against DOS on this API. ~~~ arjie If it's symmetric, then doesn't an app vulnerability make it possible for you to leak your key? Then the app also contains access credentials to the DB, so vulnerabilities in the app will still lead to real access to the DB, right? ~~~ aeronautic Yes, we're not protecting against the app being attacked, the key being jacked and then the attacker getting access to the db. Rather, we're protecting the database against being accessed directly. That could happen due to an error in configuring network access to the database or another service could be compromised that has access to the same database -- as has happened to many mongo databases over this year. ~~~ stephenr So your solution to fixing a basic ops problem 'software package A was exposed to the internet with(out\|effectively no) auth' is: encrypt shit in an ORM layer and destroy your ability to do anything beyond absolute string comparison queries. No thanks. ~~~ aeronautic No, we don't encrypt indiscriminately. We selectively pick fields to encrypt - fields that are highly sensitive. And you are right, we do this because an ops error can easily make a mistake sometime in the future and probably will one day. We all make mistakes and defense in depth is all about that. ~~~ swsieber It does seem like emails are a good fit for encryption. I can't see wanting to do anything more than simple equality checks. ~~~ thatwebdude I could see a use case to see which emails are from what TLD. For instance, all @gmail, all @yahoo, all @aol. Maybe you want to do the cool "hey we noticed your email on haveibeenpwnd, you should change you password here just in case". In which case, anything other than plain text could prevent that from happening. Hashing an email in that sense gets much more difficult, no? ~~~ eropple If you have enough emails that you can't SELECT * FROM users and do that query in memory, you're probably in a spot where you should not be picking security advice from a blog like this. (That's not a negative as to this blog, it's really good and I've recommended it to multiple clients already, but that level of acumen should already be assumed at that scale. If you don't have it, this blog post is insufficient.) ------ smoyer OWASP has published a release candidate of the OWASP "top-ten" available as a PDF at [https://github.com/OWASP/Top10/raw/master/2017/OWASP%20Top%2...](https://github.com/OWASP/Top10/raw/master/2017/OWASP%20Top%2010%20-%202017%20RC1-English.pdf). They also support the creation and maintenance of quite a few OSS tools to help secure systems. To those who are claiming some of these steps are too onerous or would cause performance issues: Are you sure? For an individual system, maybe some of these checkboxes are indeed overkill. Or perhaps your system isn't as secure as you believe? To be fair, there are systems that don't require as much security because the data simply doesn't matter - if they systems contain email address / password hash combinations, they should still treated very carefully. I think the biggest mistake I've seen made time and time again is that teams go the cheap route and put the database on an Internet connected machine. Don't build a whole architecture until you've got customers to support it but don't be quite that cheap at the beginning. For systems that require higher than average security, I've been part of a team that went to _MUCH_ further extremes. ~~~ hartleybrody Can you elaborate a bit more detail around a MVP-style architecture where the database isn't on the public internet? I assume you're talking about something like a public facing load balancer that connects into a private network where the web servers and database server live, and you'd need a bastion host (or just the load balancer) to connect into the private network and access any of the machines. ~~~ smoyer Yes ... that's about the simplest form. If you want to get really fancy you can use a further cloistered machine with hardware encryption and a key that's only inserted when the machine is booted but that's pretty excessive. The main thing is that you don't want your database server's port exposed to the Internet and you don't want your database on your web servers (the most likely part of your infrastructure to be compromised). ------ tptacek There are 168 comments on this thread all earnestly discussing what is pretty clearly a marketing document written by someone without a firm grip on most of the bullets they've written. Is there that much of a need for another "security checklist", that we'll dive in this deep on a really bad one? Seriously asking! Finally: if you're worried about "APTification" or whatever it is this company is talking about, and you're deploying in AWS or GCP, do what Ryan's team at Slack did and get auditd monitoring on all your servers, and perhaps get osquery instrumentation set up as well. Attack detection systems like the product this post sells are pretty far down the list of things you should be considering. ~~~ aeronautic As the author, I should clarify that I am a developer - full time and have been for years. If my english seems to imply a lack of depth of understanding - I'm sorry. The purpose of the checklist is to get people thinking about items they may have forgotten to address during their dev. In the push to ship new products quickly, that happens all too often. I agree with you that there are many more important and basic things to do first when securing your app - than worrying about APTs. I did not think the checklist gave that impression? ~~~ wglb English is not the problem. You are missing fundamentals like the Seven Deadly Sins of Web Security. Also missing is ninja threat model. These are the thing that will wipe you out. ------ strictfp This list could just as well be called "List of security stuff I learned about when making my product". Some of the stuff is just Draconian, certainly not applicable for any arbitrary web developer. ~~~ viraptor There are rarely any checklists applicable everywhere in the same way. Why not treat it as: list of ideas to evaluate and prioritise/ignore into your own checklist for future/current project? It's not like it's all invalid because it's not fully applicable. ~~~ strictfp No, I think it's valuable as a work log and bucket of ideas on how to improve security. It's just how it's framed that irks me. ------ cyberferret Hope the moderators edit the post title to include that this is a 'security' checklist, and not just a 'steps I need to develop a simple website' checklist. I am thinking quite a few people skipped past this article not realising the intended audience. ~~~ michaelmior Agreed. The original title of "Web Developer Security Checklist" is much better. ------ eggbrain My biggest worry with this checklist is that while it helps already security- minded people and web developer professionals remember what they should already be doing, it doesn't really help security novices (who may search for something like this) make their app more secure. Why? 1\. The checklist tells me what I need to do, but not how to do it right. I could imagine many security novices reading one of these items, implementing the first solution they find on StackOverflow, and checking it off in a "fixed it, boss" kind of manner. That may lead them to thinking their app is more secure than they should, and is then a detriment to the security of their app. 2\. The checklist doesn't really help me decide in what order to do things, and what perceived increase in security I'll receive Storing sensitive data in the database using bcrypt is pretty easy to implement (many times baked into web frameworks), and provides a good amount of security for the time it takes. Compare that to something like implementing CSP however, which may involve moving a ton of files around your app, adding nonces/hashes, etc, and it gets me an A+ on secureheaders.io, but I'm not sure if all the pain was worth it for my basic application. 3\. The checklist makes things way harder for a developer to think about. Anyone wanting to build a web app looking at this list would probably be too overloaded with information to want to implement much of this, when in reality, they could start off with something like Heroku where they just push it up and it works, and many of the security concerns have been taken care of for them. ~~~ aeronautic Thanks for your well structured comments. The purpose of the checklist was to get people to think. It is really hard to do much more without going very long. A number of people have suggested that I link implementation background off each item. I think that can work and layer the info as well. ~~~ eggbrain I know your pain -- things like this get long fast, and it's hard to include everything all at once without going on forever. I would definitely appreciate implementing some background off of each item! Another thing that might help is knowing about services or open source solutions that can bundle a lot of the checklist together. Heroku might be a paid one, for example, but there might be things like ansible scripts out there that do a lot of this from security professionals, I'd love to know how to be able to package a lot of these checklist items together more easier. ~~~ aeronautic Coding is easy, writing is just darn hard!! Thanks for the ideas. I'll check those out. ------ iamdave "Hack yourself" May I suggest the opposite, and say if you're going to pen test your infrastructure, don't have the same people maintaining the infrastructure trying to hack the infrastructure. ~~~ aeronautic Do both. I'm a big believer in having dev learn and own a part of the security process. You learn an enormous amount by hacking yourself. But you are right, you definitely need other eyes to pen test as well. ~~~ FLUX-YOU >Do both. I'm a big believer in having dev learn and own a part of the security process. Devs already do enough, take some bloody ownership of security outside and inside of code. When devs start having to whiteboard security issues in interviews, then you can make us responsible for it because we'll appropriately charge you for being decent at two things instead of one. ~~~ eropple This is...shortsighted. Security is _part of_ your development work. It always has been, always will be. You need to understand application and server-level security--the former is always your responsibility and while you may have specialists for the latter they do not replace you understanding the fundamentals of it. The server is part of your "stack", even if the "full- stack" people want you to believe it ends at the language runtime. If you are a web developer and in your interviews you _aren 't_ demonstrating that you can think in a security-conscious way, your interviewers need to reflect. ~~~ FLUX-YOU >Security is part of your development work So is everything else, apparently: databases, algorithms, data structures, operating systems, cloud infrastructure, front end design, business logic features, etc., etc., etc. -- the list just keeps fucking growing and you people are turning devs into skill black holes where they're never going to master anything. All of it apparently matters at one point or another and you're not a good developer if you're not prepared to be the best at everything! As a web developer, your security knowledge is rarely assessed and tested. If you're not focusing on security 100% of the time, you're not going to be as good as a professional and the bad guys. You need people focused on security doing the security work. Having someone do business features and security work at the same time is an indication you don't take security seriously because you do not have dedicated people for it. If Bob who's mostly front-end but some back-end says it's secure, I'm not going to believe him. That's the same false confidence that companies parrot to us when they say that "security is a priority", but they have XP machines on their network still and code vulnerable to SQL injection in their code. Don't tell me this doesn't exist because I woke up this morning and _read that exact email_. You can't half-ass security and a line of business developer is not a security professional. This doesn't mean you get to be lazy and continue to concat SQL strings even after someone has told you it's bad in a code review. ~~~ eropple _> So is everything else, apparently_ Yes. Sorry (not snarky) that it sounds like you work in a lousy place, but if your "security people" aren't cutting it, you are the line of defense for your users. You need to understand this stuff to be able to do the right thing. Being at least competent--and we're not talking A-plus or best-in-the- business, we're talking a solid C-plus to B, able to consistently make things better rather than leave them static or regress--in these things is your responsibility when you take a job working on stuff that touches these fields, because _somebody has to and you 're a somebody_. "Security people" (and I'm not one, I'm a software developer--though, somehow, [this part is snarky] none of databases, algorithms, operating systems, cloud infrastructure, front end design, business logic features, _or_ application security are beyond me; weird, that) are there to help you, not excuse you from your responsibilities. There's a lot of stuff to understand! This is why you are paid the medium bucks. Remove "not your job" from your vocabulary and you'll be better at not just these things, but the things you think are your job, too. Because each bit informs the rest. ~~~ FLUX-YOU >Remove "not your job" from your vocabulary and you'll be better at not just these things No one else is removing that from their vocabulary. I don't see the incentive for me to do that. This is the problem. You haven't realized that everyone is saying "not my job" and pushing it all onto developers. ~~~ eropple _> I don't see the incentive for me to do that._ Oh, I don't know, to not be bad at what you do for a living so you can call yourself a _professional_ without it being a farce? I don't care what other people are doing and you shouldn't either. I care about doing the right thing and building good systems that work for people rather than expose them to risk and you should too--and that means understanding the breadth of your _profession_. The people who are pushing responsibilities onto you are the people that software is automating out of existence and are of no account except that you get to feel good by "pushing back" in ways that just make everything worse. ~~~ FLUX-YOU >I don't care what other people are doing and you shouldn't either. Until their decisions affect your work, and you don't get to say anything about it. Because the people pushing around responsibilities are usually your bosses or equals, so you can't really do anything about that. If you get to work in a silo where you're responsible for everything and you understand everyone and do it well, great, you're a master of the universe. You should be a multi-millionaire by retirement at 45. But most developers won't ever approach that level. Putting your best people in the best slots is a practical approach for teams > 1\. And there's no reason you should be mixing responsibilities and watering down everyone's chance at becoming good at ~literally everything in development~ ~~~ eropple Let me restate, so you can catch it: I'm not saying _be good at everything_. I am saying _be bad at nothing relevant to your work_. Security is without exception and in all circumstances critically relevant to web development. You cannot be an adequate web developer if you cannot look at a system and break down its security impact and how to mitigate it. You can be a bad one, but you can't be even an adequate one. Less excuses, more practice. It's what you signed up for. ------ spydum It is shocking to me to see how many developers giving this checklist a hard time. Every single item is solid advice and what I would have presumed sane people considered common sense/best practice. Just goes to show how bad a job we have done in the InfoSec world of educating developers. ~~~ ams6110 I got downvoted in another reply, but "security by checklist" was one of the biggest complaints that SANS and other security firms had about enterprise and government IT security policies. Not that it's a bad checklist, but most "web developers" will not have the background to understand and implement all of these things properly, even if they think they do. Security is not a checklist -- "OK, all boxes ticked, we're done" \-- it is also an ongoing, reactive and proactive set of processes and constantly re-verifying that everything you think is so, is actually so. And if you rely on "web developers" to get all of this right you will at some point be disappointed. ~~~ aeronautic I think we can all agree that developers can get better educated about security and can participate building security into the product from the very start. It is hard to engineer security in via a sec-team at a later stage. Education is the key. ~~~ creepydata How is something like "Use CSP without allowing unsafe-* backdoors" in any way educational? If I'm a newbie web developer, even coming over from embedded systems, how do I know what CSP is? What do I use CSP for? How do I start with CSP? What do I do to configure CSP? What does CSP even stand for? I don't know, it wasn't even defined! Basically, this is a useless listicle. If you know anything about web security you get nothing from it and if you don't know anything about web security you still get nothing from it. ~~~ aeronautic Try this to get you started: [https://www.troyhunt.com/understanding-csp-the-video- tutoria...](https://www.troyhunt.com/understanding-csp-the-video-tutorial- edition/) ~~~ creepydata I don't need to get started and I don't need that link; I, personally, know how to develop secure webapps. I am criticizing your listicle for being useless because it is. Your "educational" resource is not educational for anyone. ------ partycoder A largely incomplete list. One of the most important items would be: handle errors correctly and make sure errors do not result into any sort of resource leak or sensitive information disclosure. For example, this code was from a guy in Stack Overflow: ... function (req, res, next) { if (err) return console.log(err) What will that piece of code do? Leak the request object, the response object, including the underlying client connection... keep the connection open, leak memory... and at scale, make your server run out of sockets and memory. Then, when memory is low, swapping kicks in, overloading your CPU as well. In short, kills your machine with only a little 1 line of code mistake. There are less trivial ways of running into the same situation, but the lesson is that node.js is not a babyproofed technology and needs to be used with care. This piece of advice is one of the most important, and the most overlooked/ignored in the node community. ~~~ slackingoff2017 Well, I've avoided the node hype because of people warning about bad debugging experience. With that, I'm going to try to avoid touching it ever. I've used many web stacks over the years and not a single one defaults to blowing up like that. They all follow proper modularization... The framework cleans up objects that the framework creates, you deal with yours. In any other framework forgetting to end the request would result in the request automatically ending when your code finishes. This includes Vert.x and Undertow which are just as asynchronous as Node(but also multithreaded). Also how the hell does that leak memory? Is JS reference counting that bad? I've done some really stupid things in Java and C# but never leaked memory enough that it mattered. ~~~ partycoder It's not a problem with the garbage collector, just how the objects are referenced. Basically you need to ensure the request reaches a terminal state where you either close the connection (ServerResponse.end) or send a response (ServerResponse.send and similar). All the cleanup happens after you do that. ~~~ slackingoff2017 Is there not an OnDispose or some kind of hook to detect when requests can end? To end a request in every framework I've used you just return from your code back to the framework. You shouldn't have to worry about a framework object like request state. ~~~ partycoder There are ways to detect this, but since express declares itself as an "minimalistic, non-opinionated framework" it's up to you to do it and do it correctly, or have correctly implemented logic that does not run into this issue. ------ vultour Prepared statements are amazing. Found out about them very soon after I started programming (incidentally my first language was PHP), and switched to PDO right away. This was years ago, I don't understand how people are still using the deprecated and insecure mysql_* functions, you can still find them all over SO and my university "web" class was teaching them as well... ~~~ plug You'll be glad to hear that they've finally been removed since PHP 7.0 so slowly but surely they're being consigned to history. And there seems to be much better awareness about the perils of mysql_* functions amongst PHP devs these days. However, 5.6 is still in security support until 31st December 2018, so all that bad advice on SO and elsewhere is still relevant and lurking, waiting to be found by inexperienced devs. ------ Kiro When do we get a SaaS which just comes with all this built-in? I want to pick a framework and let the service add all these things, including automatic updates. ~~~ eropple What you want, and what is effective and feasible, are at odds. Trying to build a framework for this to work in the general case will--not may, will-- result in something that doesn't work in that general case for anybody. You can't framework away _security_. Parts can be abstracted, but that abstraction is for ease-of-use, not correctness; you need to understand what's going on and why. It's your job to. (Or pay someone else to. But we're expensive.) ~~~ aeronautic I agree with you, but I understand his wish though. Security sometimes is just hard and it is unrealistic to hope that all developers, everywhere, all the time will get it right. The more the platform can do, the better. ~~~ eropple I understand it too, but it's, to be honest, horseshit. Well-meaning horseshit, but horseshit despite it. Security is hard. It is irreducibly hard when you add the constraint that arbitrary do-whatever code and applications must be supported. Having your platform do things is great-- _to make you faster_. You still have to understand what it's doing because it's very easy to step outside the guarantees of that platform and suddenly no longer benefit from those security features. Sometimes you might even have to do that for business reasons. And then you _must_ know how to safely compensate for it. It's a rare web developer who isn't safeguarding somebody else's personal information. (Yes, even just name + email. Don't make it easier for other people to be phished.) The onus is on us as a development community to take that seriously and to treat the security of our code and our systems with the caution it mandates. ~~~ aeronautic No argument on that (except the horseshit ;-) ------ jaequery Not simple by any means, this one is very thorough and one of the better security checklist I've come across in a while! Sensedeep looks very intriguing and I often wondered if anyone has created an alternative to Atomic Secured Linux. Could this be it? Or is it like an ids / ips with a gui? ~~~ aeronautic We're just in beta. SenseDeep is part host-IDS and part cloud-side. The key is real-time. We want to detect attacks in real-time on the server or on the cloud-side. It has a GUI on top to unify and give a cloud complete view. The focus is DevOps and not companies with a security team. Not sure if this helps or confuses things. ~~~ jaequery Does your product help satisfy any areas of the pci compliance? ~~~ aeronautic I don't want to take the focus off the post and discussion which was about the web checklist. You could dm me twitter @SenseDeepSec or email mob. But briefly, we hit some of the PCI compliance objectives but not all. We expect to cover more ground in this regard quickly. ------ iovrthoughtthis Implementation discussions for each of the checks would be handy for those of us not familiar with all of these practices. Also those most likely to need such a list. ~~~ aeronautic Great idea for a follow on post. I'll do that. ------ ryandrake > Store and distribute secrets using a key store designed for the purpose. > Don’t hard code in your applications. Curious: Is there a widely-used off the shelf solution/pattern for this? Or a "idiot's guide to writing one"? It's always seemed to me like super bad practice to hard-code a (for example) AWS secret into your app. However if you set up a basic web service to deliver the AWS secret to the app, wouldn't your app need to authenticate with that service with... a hardcoded secret? ~~~ ams6110 Sure, classic chicken and egg problem. At some point you need an unencrypted secret. ~~~ eropple A better way to phrase it is that at some point you need _trust_. AWS IAM instance profiles are a great example of this. ------ dbg31415 This is great! Unfortunately this old list hasn't been updated in forever: * Web Developer Checklist \|\| [http://webdevchecklist.com/](http://webdevchecklist.com/) ------ slackingoff2017 Besides the bad SQL tips most of it is okay. Sounds like the author has little experience with ORM's or SQL abstraction layers with parameterization like ADO.NET, SQLAlchemy, or JDBC. Besides the SQL stuff mentioned elsewhere, Regex is rarely a safe whitelist. It's better to use specific escapes for HTML or URI or whatever. Most of XSS is finding bad input that isn't filtered. Hardly anyone is stupid enough to not filter input at all, but few filter it enough to prevent all XSS. Also keeping port 22 closed is just silly. If you have secure credentials no amount of portscanning will hurt you. If you get tired of the logs just move the port and setup fail2ban. This point is controversial so whatever I guess. ~~~ aeronautic Thanks for the tips. Can you say which SQL tip is bad, someone has already picked up the Stored procedure comment -- really meant prepared statements. Regarding regexp. You can do very precise regexp for many patterns. I agree some are harder, but I wouldn't say "rarely" in our experience. The point about port 22 is that if you have it open, many people tend to use it more than they should. Effective automation should eliminate / greatly reduce the need for it. If using AWS/cloud, then you can apply a security group to open when you need, but otherwise keep it closed at the network level at least. I agree it does seem to get people all hot an bothered. ~~~ slackingoff2017 A lot of Regex is a hint that you shouldn't be using regex. Regex is a bad parser and poor sanitizer. I would wager that more than 50% of XSS vulnerabilities are due to bad regex when you should be using HTML or URI escape ------ appcraf8 How about extending the same with examples for popular web frameworks like django RoR? ~~~ aeronautic I know node better and would be a bit light on other frameworks. Do you have suggestions? ~~~ appcraf8 Throw across your node work. I will try to replicate the same for RoR. :-) ~~~ aeronautic When I post the implementation notes for Node, feel free to speak up with the RoR speak for that item and I'll add it in. Thank you. ~~~ ianamartin I'd be happy to try and do a Python version of this. I'm most familiar with Pyramid, but Flask and Django would be a learning opportunity for me. Much of this advice I've already implemented in Pyramid. ------ xupybd > Create immutable hosts instead of long-lived servers that you patch and > upgrade. (See Immutable Infrastructure Can Be More Secure). An interesting idea, I've not come across before. Anyone know where I can find some case studies on this? ~~~ aeronautic I did a post on that here: [https://simplesecurity.sensedeep.com/immutable- infrastructur...](https://simplesecurity.sensedeep.com/immutable- infrastructure-can-be-dramatically-more-secure-238f297eca49) but the originator was: Chad Fowler [http://chadfowler.com/2013/06/23/immutable- deployments.html](http://chadfowler.com/2013/06/23/immutable-deployments.html) ------ nolikeynovotey There's some good Android & iOS security checklists here - [https://codifiedsecurity.com/2017/04/24/mobile-app- security-...](https://codifiedsecurity.com/2017/04/24/mobile-app-security- testing-checklist-android/) & [https://codifiedsecurity.com/2017/04/19/mobile- app-security-...](https://codifiedsecurity.com/2017/04/19/mobile-app-security- testing-checklist-ios/) ------ pjmorris "Finally, have a plan" I'd argue that you're more secure and your life is easier if the plan (threat model), or at least the planning, come first. The greater your understanding of your data, users, platform, and attackers, the more likely you are to make good (e.g. secure, economical) choices about infrastructure, design, implementation, testing, incident response, etc. "Plans are nothing; planning is everything." \- Dwight D. Eisenhower ------ adakbar Is it good to redirect to https when user hit API with http? I have heard somewhere doing so is bad ~~~ SadWebDeveloper Nop.. it isn't good, secure endpoints for API's shouldn't be exposed in plain, an error should be raised when a developer/app tries to contact via HTTP rather than HTTPs. ~~~ thatwebdude Is 404 sufficient? ~~~ SadWebDeveloper Depends on your choice, personally i would choose between 410 or 501 but whatever you choose, just don't allow an implicit redirect with any of the 301/302 codes. ------ SadWebDeveloper General guidance mostly, nothing too deep, seems suited for C-level since there is no discussion on securing the infrastructure (as in hardware, not in software), deployment and way too heavy on looking at the world "from the clouds". ------ chvid Lots of random mostly unnecessary advice that will surely take a simple project and turn it into a big half-baked unmaintainable mess. Sorry for the harsh words; but good advice needs to be both practical and cost-efficient. ~~~ aeronautic Could you highlight what you think are the important items in a web security checklist? ------ ams6110 Forgot one: [ ] Don't rely on security-by-checklist. ------ aeronautic Thanks everyone for some great comments and discussion. Really appreciate your time and feedback on the article. I'll fold in the feedback and the ideas and go forward with it. Thanks all OP: Michael O'Brien ------ nnaumann Simple Web Developer Checklist: #1 make sure the css stylesheets are loading ~~~ slackingoff2017 I like this better ------ EGreg I would add one more regarding DOS protection: Sign the session tokens that you issue. This way you don't need to do any I/O to verify these tokens at the router level. ~~~ aeronautic I'm not sure I fully understand what you are saying. Can you elaborate. ~~~ EGreg I came up with this technique when designing our platform ([https://qbix.com/platform](https://qbix.com/platform)) so I don't know if it's widely used. Many apps include session id tokens in requests, to identify the logged-in user. The session id is usually a bearer token (like in a cookie) which identifies the session on the server. To mitigate against DDOS attacks, as you said, all publicly available resources can be cached on CloudFlare. (Personally I look forward to content- addressable protocols like IPFS supplanting HTTP.) However, the non-public resources are usually dynamic and should not be cached. These resources are typically for users who have logged in, or at least have a session. So our design basically encourages this: 1) if you want to serve non cacheable resources, require that the request included a session id 2) the session id is generated on our server _and signed with an HMAC_ so the app can verify this signature _without_ doing any I/O. This is because I/O is expensive and hard to parallelize, whereas statelessly checking whether a session token has been issued by our app is easy to implement, even at the external router level. Simply examine the packets coming in, decrypt, look at the request, and verify the HMAC on the session id. If it is wrong then the session id is bogus so we don't expend any more resources within the network on this request. You can make sessions expensive to start. For example, a user might have to log in with a valid account to get a session. The big question is, how can we ensure that users don't get too many accounts? To prevent sybil attacks. Any ideas? ------ winut23 Isn't best practice when it comes to passwords to actually choose a good one, use a password safe, and _not_ rotate? ~~~ aeronautic Both. You want to choose a good password and then not let it get too stale. A very old password (say 1 year) has a higher chance of being subverted purely because there is more elapsed time wherein attackers could have gained access. Choose good passwords, long, special chars, preferably random and generated by a password generator / manager. And then change periodically. That period depends on your application. We change our cloud passwords and keys every 90 days. ~~~ rubidium "A very old password (say 1 year) has a higher chance of being subverted purely because there is more elapsed time wherein attackers could have gained access." Any actual evidence for this? My counter-hypothesis is if your password lasts 6 months of attempted hacks it'll last >6 years (unless social engineering attempts succeed). I ask because rotating goes against the current NIST password guidance. In fact, for your recommendation "Implement simple but adequate password rules that encourage users to have long, random passwords", I'd recommend pointing people in that direction. ~~~ aeronautic Sorry, I should be clearer (late here). With time passing, the chance of you or anyone with access to the password being socially engineered, or some other human error, or a hack on your PC desktop systems, increases linearly with time. The password may last a decade of brute force cracking, but we humans .... continue to make mistakes far more frequently. So rotating passwords protects against the accumulation of human mistakes and insider threats. If you are using proper hashing, then your passwords should be safe even if the hashes are compromised. Could you please point to the NIST recommendation you mention. I thought they said that you should NOT force customers to change passwords. But that is different to you rotating your own critical passwords at a time of your choosing and on your policy. ~~~ pgsandstrom Rotating passwords will only help in a very specific situation: When the password has been leaked, but you have not yet been hacked. If someone has already gained access to the system, changing passwords are not sufficient. If no one has gained access to the system, rotating passwords does not protect you against social engineering. ~~~ aeronautic Nicely said. The one mod I'd suggest is: If someone has gained access to the passwords and has not used the password yet or was not interesting in directly using the password themselves, but rather, they on sold it. There is a window of opportunity that rotation helps. For example: you may be on one of the password lists being sold in the dark web. The owner of the list isn't hacking you, but those purchasing the list will some time soon. So more specifically, you could be compromised by malware on a PC holding the password and that password may be extracted, sold and may not be used against you for months. Rotation helps in this case which is more common than we care to admit. ------ horsecaptin How much of this is built into various frameworks such as Rails, Django, EmberJS (for frontend) etc? ~~~ aeronautic No much at all. ~~~ sho For RoR many of the app-level points are - CSRF, SQL escaping, bcrypt by default, etc. That's a big reason to use such a framework in the first place. ~~~ creepydata Yeah, what kind of shitty frameworks is this person using if the answer to this question is "not much at all?" ------ Gmo @aeronautic, there's a typo on your website front page : "acccount" with 3 c. ------ type0 Security is a process and not a product of some checklist. ------ xanderjanz Apparenlty written by somebody who isn't responsible for the actual web development themselves, just upfixed web devs work for enterprise pen testing. ~~~ aeronautic Sorry, not true. Spent many years doing full stack web dev and security. Please offer some constructive criticism - gladly received. ~~~ softawre You are the OP HN needs but not the one we deserve... ------ slackingoff2017 Come on man, 4 submissions in 5 days all leading to your startup's website? And a profile created 5 days ago with zero comments on anything you didn't post? You could at least try to make it look like you're doing more than promoting your startup. ~~~ aeronautic Been an avid HN reader for ages, but been seriously heads down doing the startup thing for about a year with zero time for blog or posting. Insane hours. Started surfacing a month ago so I can do more than just code and wanted to share a bit. Not trying to hide the company, in fact pretty proud of it and the new things we're doing. But we are very early stage and still in beta. I do want to add value through the posts and discussion like this regardless. ------ jwr I do not like this list. > [ ] Use minimal privilege for the database access user account. Don’t use > the database root account. This advice seems outdated. In general, every significant security breach will get the attacker root access. Playing games with database accounts gets you no security at all, while introducing lots of friction and headache. ~~~ spydum Sorry, you don't throw away mitigation techniques because they aren't foolproof. This is still excellent advice. Stop using sa and root accounts for your apps. ~~~ retro64xyz I agree with Spydum. The reason I agree is - Layers of security are required. You should not use a root account for your web application. You should also use escaping, properly formed queries, and prepared statements. You use best practices in an orderly manner and you will be much safer than just picking one "silver bullet". Not every attack provides root access to the database or server. Why make it easier for folks? Least privilege is a viable tool in your bag.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Schools monitoring pupils' web use with 'anti-radicalisation software' - SandB0x http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/10/schools-trial-anti-radicalisation-software-pupils-internet ====== skidoo If only the same programs could be used to block searches for Justin Bieber, Dancing with the Stars, Fast and Furious movies, anything Kardashian, etc.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tesla 5-1 Stock Split - ikarandeep https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459020039353/tsla-8k_20200811.htm ====== sfblah Does anybody else share my sort of shell-shock WRT Tesla? I'm one of those who thinks its stock (and probably all the big tech names) are in a bubble. But whenever I say that I get shouted down, downvoted, told I'm an idiot, etc. I'm hoping this comment is vanilla enough to be safe... just curious if others have had the same experience. To be clear: I'm not interested in debating the value of Tesla. I'm curious if others have the same emotional reaction at this point. That's it. If you think Tesla is worth $1T, good. Fine by me. I don't want to debate it or be told I'm a piece of garbage. ~~~ o-__-o If they can successfully enable fully automated self driving cars, then I think the value is entirely justified. See FaceBook. Disclaimer: I bought Tesla calls today and now assume I’m rich so your opinion may differ ~~~ nine_k I bet on self-driving trucks instead. They can go like 95% of the way via highways driverless, only accepting a driver to drive it through a city to a loading ramp, and maybe to a pump midway a very long trip. Drivers will not disappear soon but will provide local service. Having a driverless _car_ which can navigate through a city would be great, but it is a much more complicated problem to solve. ~~~ mac01021 Is there a good asset to buy to bet on those? ~~~ nine_k I wish I knew! There are a few, and different experts suggest different winners. ------ nradov The whole notion of individual shares with prices is legacy baggage from decades ago when trading was done with paper stock certificates. What really matters is the percentage of the company you own, regardless of how that percentage is sliced into units. Some retail brokerages already offer fractional share tracing so for those investors a stock split is mostly irrelevant. ------ dripton Meh. Total non-event. Once upon a time I hated splits because they made record-keeping more complicated, but the online brokers do a good job of tracking basis across splits now. Once upon a time there was a real reason to do splits to enable easier purchases, but the online brokers allow fractional shares now. So, just not excited either way about splits anymore. ~~~ riffraff Matt Levine made me notice that there's still an effect of stock splits on making options more accessible i.e. there are brokers for fractional shares, but not options on fractional shares/fractional options. I am pretty sure this is irrelevant, but it's interesting. ------ gzu Speaking of splits, I love how Apple’s stock split justification is: “We want Apple stock to be more accessible to a broader base of investors.” [https://investor.apple.com/faq/default.aspx](https://investor.apple.com/faq/default.aspx) Yet it’s one of the top stocks held on Robinhood (#3 at 700,000 users) [https://www.robintrack.net/symbol/AAPL](https://www.robintrack.net/symbol/AAPL) ~~~ ogre_codes Apple is in the DOW and the DOW is a stupidly weighted index where share price affects what percentage of the index that company holds. Right now a 1% increase in Apple pushes the DOW up 10 times more than a 1% increase in Cocoa Cola. Companies in the DOW _tend_ to have share prices below $500/ share and most are under $200 and the DOW won't add companies with high stock values as a result (Apple was added only after their last split). It's likely being in the DOW bolsters and stabilizes stock prices as a lot of indexes are based on a the DOW. It also brings a company a certain prestige. Whether any of this affects the Apple board's decision to split the stock or not is entirely speculation... it just seems a far more likely reason than the idea that they are splitting to make it accessible to people with $500 they want to invest. ~~~ njarboe Very few people invest in the basket of companies that make up the Dow Jones. Its use as an index of how the stock market is behaving is really a historical artifact at this point. One ETF in the top one hundred [1] ETFs is based on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and that one is ranked 43rd. Joining the S&P 500 is a big deal, on the other hand, as the three biggest ETFs are S&P 500 funds. [1][https://etfdb.com/compare/market-cap/](https://etfdb.com/compare/market- cap/) ~~~ ogre_codes Fair enough. Even so, I think inclusion/ exclusion in the DOW is far more likely to affect Apple's choice to split or not than making the stock more accessible to investors. ~~~ betterunix2 I doubt it, and I think there is a misunderstanding about the investors Apple referred to in their public statement on the split. As a company's share price rises the stock becomes less liquid, because trades happen in smaller quantities; Berkshire Hathaway's class A shares are probably the most extreme example. Low liquidity is a problem for mutual funds, which have to sell assets whenever an investors sells their shares in the fund (which may be a relatively small sale e.g. a retirement account distribution), because low liquidity makes asset sales more difficult. In general institutional investors will have liquidity rules that constrain the assets their funds can hold to avoid that kind of problem. Given how much investment capital is held by institutional investors, companies have a good reason to split their shares if the share price is too high. Berkshire Hathaway created a new share class to support the needs of institutional investors, and I would read "accessible to investors" as "conforming to the liquidity requirements of institutional investors." ------ nine_k A more informative link [1], also on sec.gov, explaining the nature of the operation, says: _PALO ALTO, Calif., August 11, 2020 – Tesla, Inc. (“Tesla”) announced today that the Board of Directors has approved and declared a five-for-one split of Tesla’s common stock in the form of a stock dividend to make stock ownership more accessible to employees and investors. Each stockholder of record on August 21, 2020 will receive a dividend of four additional shares of common stock for each then-held share, to be distributed after close of trading on August 28, 2020. Trading will begin on a stock split-adjusted basis on August 31, 2020._ [1]: [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459020...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459020039353/tsla- ex991_6.htm) ------ Xcelerate I don’t really understand stock splits. Is the only point to allow people to buy shares who could previously not buy because one share was too expensive? If so, why not just introduce fractional shares into the stock market with some fixed point number of decimal places? Or just keep track of ownership fraction (e.g. 0.0043% of the company)? ~~~ rich_sasha There are weird incentives for this. In US the tick size for any stock is always $0.01. So a stock with a price of say $1 has a minimum bid ask spread of 1%, which is a lot. On the contrary, if one share is too expensive, it limits liquidity in a stock. This is usually bad, though Berkshire Hathaway voting shares are deliberately kept expensive to stave off speculators. This then get meta-player. A split suggests the company expects a price increase, and vice versa (reverse splits area thing too). ~~~ esrauch It seems very strange; can a share not be worth less than 1 cent, or can it for ask but not bid? ~~~ cynix It can be "worth" less than 1 cent. That simply means if you put in an offer at 1 cent, nobody will buy it, because they think it's worth less. ~~~ esrauch I meant if the bid-ask spread must be minimum 1 cent, then is it true that bid can't be lower than 1 cent as long as ask is semipositive? ------ hmate9 TSLA stock is up over 7% after hours now. ~$15 billion of "value" created out of thin air. Sounds ridiculous. ~~~ webXL About $6 trillion was "created out of thin air" in the S&P 500 since mid March. But don't confuse value with output or wealth. The market is forward looking and valuations are pretty unstable long term. ~~~ aeternum Everything is relative, we're printing a lot of money right now, possibly for the right reasons. In general though those valuation probably do make sense in a world where money is plentiful. ------ caiobegotti For reference, here's a short amusing thread about the original Tesla IPO (even replied by Musk himself): [https://twitter.com/Mark_Goldberg_/status/129281818458888601...](https://twitter.com/Mark_Goldberg_/status/1292818184588886016) ------ firekvz Hope you guys had some tesla calls :p	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Deja Vu: Google Settles Age Discrimination Lawsuit for $11M - rmason https://www.forbes.com/sites/patriciagbarnes/2019/07/20/deja-vu-google-settles-age-discrimination-lawsuit-for-11-million/#456d9f5971f1 ====== btown > In 2010, Google settled a lawsuit filed by a one-time Silicon Valley > superstar, Brian Reid, then 52, who was hired by Google in 2002 to serve as > director of operations and director of engineering. Reid was transferred two > years later to head up what was supposed to be new program to retain > engineers. He was given no budget or staff and the program was quickly > disbanded. Reid left Google in 2004 with a two-month severance package. I wonder if this was the basis for the similar storyline in the Silicon Valley show. ------ rmason It's clear why tech companies keep practicing age discrimination, the fines aren't meaningful. ~~~ thrwaway34847 I'm perplexed by age discrimination (I don't get it) so I was excited when you wrote "It's clear why tech companies keep practicing age discrimination," \-- I thought you'd finally give the reason. You didn't. What's the reason? What do they get out of it? ~~~ kop316 From what I have read here, the underlying theory is that someone younger doesn't have kids/spouse/family/etc. So they are more willing to work long hours (I guess without pay since salaried?). Also the theory is that someone older means they would want more money for their experience. Note that I don't actually know, this seems to be the running theory as I understand it. ~~~ bigmit37 Younger workers also seem to want/care more about recognition and praise and are willing to work those extra hours without monetary compensation. ------ jammygit How exactly do you prove that you didn’t get an interview because your LinkedIn photo had some grey hairs or wrinkles? ~~~ brooklyn_ashey Are you asking because this happened to you? You can subpoena the CVs of the people invited to the interview and you can cite the hiring/interview practices of the company and its record on age-related hiring and firing. That said, it's usually after the interview and rejection that you bring a successful case. If your point was that so many people over a certain age don't even get asked to the interview in the first place, and that's where the discrimination gets most people, you'd be right! In that many "elderly" (wink/over 30) workers have some valuable experience and maybe some great ideas, not to mention wonderful facility, we may have to consider: does high level work actually need doing?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is it worth it to learn desktop GUI frameworks anymore? - rnovak I don't consider myself entirely noob-ish in software/computer engineering. I've worked for a few years in low level development, and I think I have a good enough understanding to get a lot of things done.<p>I also spend a lot of time out-side of work on self-improvement, i.e. trying to become a better developer, learn more patterns, better ways of doing things, more practice, etc.<p>For a little while now, it has seemed like Software is in many ways converging in to the Web. Even big names like MSFT are beginning to offer a lot of "Cloud" based software. (I consider myself at least semi-competent in Web development, I've been a key contributor on a couple big projects for the SaaS company I work for).<p>Last week though, I thought it would be a good idea to try building a C++ application using Qt for the presentation layer. I've used WPF, .NET, ObjC/Cocoa, and JavaFX/Java Swing to build graphical programs. After a week though, I'm not really very close to getting Qt linked together correctly with CMake.<p>I'm just wondering if I should even bother? Web seems like it's dominating so much right now, that eventually desktop applications will be a thing of the past?<p>What are your personal thoughts on this, and should I even continue trying to improve my desktop GUI skills? ====== EleventhSun Well, I can't speak for other frameworks, but C++/Qt is very much likely to be worth your time at some point. In general, it's well written and well-documented. Many things you expect that will be hard to do in C++ are suddenly made easy. Just go through some of their small examples to get a gist of signals/slots, QObjects and QWidgets. If you're struggling with CMake I would recommend to stick with .pro files ("qmake") as the syntax is much, much less of a headache. ------ walterbell An embedded browser can be packaged into a desktop app, [http://www.tivix.com/blog/nwjs-and-electronjs-web- technology...](http://www.tivix.com/blog/nwjs-and-electronjs-web-technology- desktop/) ------ proyb2 AppStore are more important than website and they're dominated on mobile devices, e.g. Facebook. If you don't have the motivation to learn, find something you're comfortable with.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple Is Said to Work on Cheaper, Smaller iPhones - solipsist http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-10/apple-said-to-work-on-cheaper-more-versatile-iphone-models.html ====== brudgers This is one of those articles written as if Apple's entire strategy was centered on the US market - e.g. ATT exclusivity, two year contracts and carrier subsidies are used as the primary rationales for Apple's past product alignment in the smartphone segment and Verizon availability is offered as the sole reason for Android's rise. The worldwide commodification of smartphones is never mentioned nor are the economics of distribution in the BRIC markets and the global south. This journalism at its laziest. ------ xcjamie I think a smaller version is a good idea. Its funny how new/more advanced cellphones used to mean smaller, thinner and sleeker, but now with smart- phones they are increasing in size again. The Droid X is freakin' huge! The iphone is still a reasonable size, but some of these new phones are just too big for my liking (ended up getting the incredible). Plus cheaper never hurt...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hacking SWF – Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Shapes In Flash - jgalvez http://wahlers.com.br/claus/blog/hacking-swf-1-shapes-in-flash/ ====== chipsy My favorite of Flash's many non-sensical quirks: If you create, in code, a Graphics object with a color of 0xFFFFFF(pure white), it won't draw. But 0xFEFFFF will work. There is probably some setting buried somewhere that impacts this, transparency/masking features being likely culprits, but it certainly isn't documented in the APIs. At times, it seems like everything in the Flash APIs suffers from some kind of misfeature. You can load Sound data from a ByteArray, but not Video data. The security policy mechanisms have changed in major ways at least three times(maybe more, I've lost track) over the last three years, meaning everyone doing Flash networked apps has to keep an eagle-eye on player updates. Because Flash uses system fonts in lieu of including its own cross-platform default, you can't count on text rendering the same across platforms unless you always embed a font in your file(which, of course, adds file size). If you use alpha transparency, it will render quickly on Windows, slowly on OS X, and molasses- like on Linux, with the same hardware on all three. Accessing the stageWidth and stageHeight properties on the first frame(e.g. in a statically instanced variable) will give you an incorrect value. It just goes on and on like this. But if you want to do something high-traffic and media-related on the web, you don't have many alternatives - Flash has the appropriate features and the largest deployment of any of the plugin-based options. ~~~ DarkShikari _If you use alpha transparency, it will render quickly on Windows, slowly on OS X, and molasses-like on Linux, with the same hardware on all three._ As good friends with the Linux Flash maintainer, I can say the primary problem here is that Flash has to be extremely picky about the APIs it uses; even if there's a very fast API that does what it wants, if that API results in crashes due to bad drivers on 0.5% of machines (and Flash can't detect which machines that 0.5% will be), Flash can't use it. This results in all kinds of horrific platform-specific code and platform-specific results. On a related note, the primary reason that Flash video playback is slower than people expect is because it does forced software YUV->RGB conversion, as the rendering pipeline does compositing in RGB, which is needed for (for example) overlays on the video. Speaking of which, if you want any specific feedback forwarded to said Linux maintainer, I can do so ;) ~~~ moe _if that API results in crashes due to bad drivers on 0.5% of machines_ Ahem. I have yet to see a linux machine where flash _doesn't_ crash constantly. I strongly doubt the platform inconsistencies are due to a willful decision from either Macromedia or Adobe. I'd say there is simply incompetence and neglect at work here, "who cares about that 1% linux users anyways". _Speaking of which, if you want any specific feedback forwarded to said Linux maintainer, I can do so ;)_ Adobe needs to learn that a significant portion of developers (not end-users) do all their work and testing on linux machines. By denying these developers a reasonable flash expirience Adobe is negatively influencing more platform decisions than they can probably imagine. Flash is completely out of the consideration for most linux developers because for them it's not the fluid expirience you see on Mac or Windows, for them it's "that nasty thing that always freezes and crashes". Pissing off the top 1% of your most important target audience (developers!) like that is, well, not exactly smart.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Java bytecode fundamentals - cgbystrom http://arhipov.blogspot.com/2011/01/java-bytecode-fundamentals.html ====== verroq Having never touched Jave bytecode. I have to say I was pretty thrown off. Perhaps I need a "Java bytecode fundamentals" fundamentals. ~~~ barrkel I don't know what you're specifically missing, but it is important to be aware of the basics of how RPN works, i.e. reverse polish notation, as stack machines in the JVM, .NET etc. are essentially RPN calculators with a lot of extra bits and bobs. 5 + 4 * 2, in RPN with an explicit push opcode, looks like this: push 5 push 4 push 2 multiply add Each operation manipulates a stack. Here it is, marked up with the stack: push 5 // now stack is: 5 (top of stack is leftmost) push 4 // now stack is: 4 5 push 2 // stack: 2 4 5 multiply // pop top two on stack, multiply, and push // stack: 8 5 add // stack: 13 Add in a few more opcodes, and instead of pushing simple integer constants, you can push an object reference instead; and instead of a multiply or add opcode, you might have a getfield or putfield opcode, which takes an argument (in the opcode stream, rather than on the stack) indicating which field to read or write. Similarly for functions to call, constructors to call when creating an object, etc. JVM uses an explicitly typed instruction set. There are variants of each operation, such as those starting with a (e.g. aload - JVM spells push as load) for objects, starting with i for integers, and f for floats (so iadd is different from fadd). Part of the verification the JVM does when loading classes is to simulate the stack operations and make sure that the operations match up with their types; the type associated with each opcode is technically redundant, and was probably done that way to help in making simple interpreters slightly faster. .NET doesn't do this; it has a single add instruction etc., and instead infers the type of the arguments by what was pushed onto the stack. .NET stack code requires at least an analysis pass to interpret with any efficiency. ------ erikb Well, it says nothing more then the original article by Peter Haggar, does it? [http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/it- haggar_byte...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/it- haggar_bytecode/) ~~~ arhan actually it doesn't. it is just a rewised version of the original article with some updates and other examples. the generated bytecode is a bit different coz Haggar's article is a bit old.. ~~~ __Joker May be coincidence, but I like the work rewised. The article getting wised up !!!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Small Asteroid Is Earth's Constant Companion - suprgeek http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6537 ====== beamatronic "In effect, this small asteroid is caught in a game of leap frog with Earth that will last for hundreds of years. " ...and then what? Would be interesting if they speculated on the end game. Or perhaps they already know. ~~~ jobigoud From Wikipedia article on Quasi-satellites: > Over time they tend to evolve to other types of resonant motion, where they > no longer remain in the planet's neighbourhood, then possibly later move > back to a quasi-satellite orbit, etc. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi- satellite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-satellite) ------ lunchTime42 Capture it, wrap it and notch it closer with ion drives? Everybody dances the Dinosaurus? ------ RangerScience Good news for asteroid mining! Don't have to go all the way to the belt - might not even have to move the thing from where it currently is. ~~~ dogma1138 The Asteroid Redirect Mission was never about going all the way to the Asteroid Belt. We have discovered about 2000 near earth asteroids so far, this one is cool because it also orbits the earth in a fairly closed pattern but it's not unique. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near- Earth_object](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_object) That said the orbit of this one actually doesn't make it a good candidate for the ARM as it seems to be further than pretty much every ARM candidate and it's orbit isn't really good either. What we want is something that would woosh close us anyhow and we need only a relative small amount of energy to redirect it into an earth or lunar capture orbit (lunar is of course safer since if we screw up the math it doesn't end up blowing a landmark like something that was picked up off michael bay's cutting floor). ------ marcusarmstrong So does this mean the Earth has not yet cleaned its orbit? And thus needs to be classified as a dwarf planet? ~~~ dogma1138 Our orbit is quite dirty there are probably over 10,000 NEO's, but Pluto's orbit is even dirtier. Earth is the 30 year old single guy/gal, Pluto is the 19 year old college slob.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
So you want to manage a product? What no one tells you about the role - ggonweb https://medium.com/managing-digital-products/so-you-want-to-manage-a-product-c664ba7e5138#.bc5ag6x7a ====== skaplun The pm does care more than everyone, its a fitting definitiom but once you learn all the things you say you're not you'll increase your earning potential. Also, it should be abundantly clear for anyone who spent a day working in high tech that the CEO decides absolutely everything.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How do you find your passion? Am I off course? - rootsudo I'm in the deepest, darkest part of my life.<p>I'm not overly depressed. But sad because I don't know what I want. Directionless<p>I've been making income by crypto daytrading/localbitcoin. It's been great, not the most income but $2000-3000 a month. I do stake about $25,000. Some days I lose money, some days I get locked in a trade, some days I make $300 some days I make $500-4000. The past few days have been fantastic and reading about strategies, risk management and risk aversion have been rewarding.<p>The idea of a traditional job isn't fun, but that sounds pretentious of me, doesn't it?<p>I've put out resumes, got interviews, got job offers ranging from $40-50/hr and I balked at signing. I even had a recruiter berate me over the phone for being the perfect candidate and taking away his December bonus because I declined. It was $50/hr, the biggest offer I ever received and I declined it.<p>I question it now. The money would've been nice, but to dress up business formal and be a half assed sysadmin just doesn't seem as fun as it once used to be.<p>I was a contractor at Microsoft and it burned me out, it really did. Maybe it was the lack of respect from everyone, doing soul-less work or being constantly compared to cheaper labor in India and Philippines. Ironically, thanks to that role I took some time in Philippines and loved it. It made me realize it was really a toxic role. I do miss the prestige, but in the end I was just a V- and I hated my managers. Looking back, I realize they were probably under more pressure than me. It was a rewarding experience, but not fully positive.<p>I miss traveling and roaming in SE Asia. I haven't' done Vietnam, Indonesia nor Cambodia yet.<p>I haven't exercised and made my body perfect.<p>I haven't finished my 4yr degree.<p>I'm horrible at time management.<p>I have ideas, I get energy and then in the end it fizzles out.<p>How do you find true passion? Are these are signs of depression?<p>Age: 26. ====== alexkavon If you are worried that you are experiencing depression, you should see a doctor/psychiatrist and get a professional opinion at the very least. It depends on where you work for burn out. It can happen again, but it would seem that now you're experienced you would probably notice some signs that you are. I would try to get a gig somewhere that can be a bit more relaxed. Contracting work can lead to burn out quite typically, but a good day to day job won't always. I've experienced burn out after several attempts at personal projects where I needed a team, found one and they didn't pull their weight, or I didn't find a team and tried to do it all myself. It goes away in due time and sometimes the scariest thing is returning to work after burn out (gun shy). My best advice is that you're 26 and in a great place to earn money cause you're young. I wouldn't dive deep into crypto-currency. I'd say take a look at what you want your passion to be and head that direction. The only way you can move forward is by trying something and seeing if it really is you, it's okay if it isn't there is a whole world of opportunity and possibilities out there. You mentioned you miss traveling. Have you thought about studying abroad? As far as time management goes, it is hard. If it was easy to manage time and get things done, the world would be a much more perfect place. A lot of things are hard and you will feel as if you have less time growing up. So you'll need to start forcing yourself into better habits. There is no secret sauce, only your persistence. All I can say is that it sounds like you may need to answer some questions for yourself. If you are close to finishing your 4 year degree, it may not be a terrible idea to see that through. That university degree is a good thing if the economy goes to shit. ------ totalZero The idea of a traditional job isn't fun, but that sounds pretentious of me, doesn't it? The only part that sounds bad, is that you (counterproductively) feel some insidious kind of shame for casting off the shackles of traditional work. In reality, it often sucks to work for the man even if you're making millions a year. Maybe there's more to life than marching in a straight line. Fuck your recruiter. His job is to connect BOTH ends of the deal, not just to satisfy the hiring party. It's not your fault that he couldn't sell you on a job. Go travel for a bit; your career will not magically disappear during a vacation, even for several months. And check out this poem, _Desiderata_ by Max Ehrmann: _Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy._ ------ eesmith Passion is overrated. No, worse than that. All that advice about "finding your passion", etc. for work, is corrosive. Oh, yes, there are people who love X, make a career out of it, and continue doing X for the rest of their life and are successful. While there are people who love X, trying to make a living doing X, only to find it's not a viable career. Only, their "passion" makes them continue to do X far longer than they should, causing them to burn out. There are all sorts of fields where the number of passionate people are far greater than the number of available jobs. Look at people who are passionate about dance, or sports, or horses, or art. Only a few of them can make a living from it. Yet everyone successful had to be passionate about it. Now, get this. There are also people who start doing Y because a job is available, and find that, after a while, they enjoy doing Y. Some even find they are passionate about the job. Others use the money from Y so they can do what they are really passionate about as a hobby. (And sometimes that hobby can, over time, become a career. I knew someone who was a manager of the grounds crew for the local cemetery, and a hobbyist woodworker. There was enough demand for he work that he now makes custom furniture for a living.) The worst case in this scenario is to find that they really don't like Y, but nothing says you have to do Y for the rest of your life, and at least you have the money saved up to support you while you switch jobs. Otherwise, a lot of people do X for a living, and let the income fund their passion as a hobby. (For another example, my dentist decided to stop his practice and be a musician. I think it was a mid-life crisis, but at least he had the money saved up for it.) Here's another thing - most jobs aren't fun. Most jobs are boring. For that matter, David Graeber argues that most jobs are bullshit, that is (quoting [https://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs](https://www.strikemag.org/bullshit- jobs) ): > The answer clearly isn't economic: it's moral and political. The ruling > class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time > on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this > even began to be approximated in the '60s). And, on the other hand, the > feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to > submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their > waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them. One way to interpret the general call for "passion" in your job is that reinforces the cultural norm "to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline". As for your specific situation, not all work environments are like Microsoft. There are companies which are more supportive of their employees. One friend of mine, with a mostly system adminstration job, worked for several programming-centered companies for a while, but it wasn't until he worked for a company doing light industrial work where he really enjoyed himself in his job. He liked that they were making actual things, rather than bits, and the owner/boss also did a great job of looking out for the employees. If you're currently making $3000/month = $36K/year, then that doesn't give you time for the one thing you said that you are passionate about - international travel. While $50/hour is $100K/year. That's much more than is needed to support a travel hobby. You might consider looking at how much vacation time you have for a given company, or negotiate for more unpaid time off instead of salary. Or, since your in your 20s, it's pretty common to change jobs. Some people will work for a company for a year or two, then take 3 months off for travel, then work again. Ignore what a recruiter thinks. Making you happy is far down the list of what they are supposed to be doing. And drop this idea that you need to make your body "perfect." That's another corrosive attitude. Your body will never be perfect, making it all to easy to give up before doing what you should be doing, which is to get some exercise every day. It could be walking, dancing, going to the gym, cycling, swimming, martial arts ... something that gets you moving. (Edit: To be clear, "exercise" doesn't have to mean a gym membership or something formal. At your age I mostly bicycled for local errands, like shopping. It helped that I was still in a college town. Later I walked my partner's dog for 30-45 minutes. Later I started salsa dancing, and go to the point where I was dancing 4-5 times per week. (A passion, perhaps, but not a good career choice.) Now I walk, and swim 30 minutes twice weekly. :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The industry’s magic bullet for robocalls is currently useless on an iPhone - smacktoward https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/20/20875500/stir-shaken-robocalls-ios-13-apple-call-verified-currently-useless-iphone ====== bradknowles I much prefer the other option that Apple added to iOS 13: [https://www.cnet.com/how-to/this-new-ios-13-feature-stops- st...](https://www.cnet.com/how-to/this-new-ios-13-feature-stops-strangers- and-spam-callers-from-ringing-your-iphone/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Skysafe Can Disable and Take Over Drones - paulsutter http://finance.yahoo.com/news/skysafe-can-disable-and-take-over-rogue-drones-in-midair-161620854.html ====== sharemywin I imagine it has figured out the comm protocol for the popular drones but I'm sure if you created your own protocol it wouldn't work.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Researchers: We can detect life on other worlds through its vibrations - whyenot http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/12/researchers-we-can-detect-life-on-other-worlds-through-its-vibrations ====== Houshalter This sort of reminds me of the voyager experiment that some people believe confirmed the existence of life on Mars [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/04/120413-nasa-...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/04/120413-nasa- viking-program-mars-life-space-science/) ------ marcosdumay Well, how would an equipment collect single cells to place them on the instrument? Is there any procedure that could end with single cells correctly placed, but does not depend on detecting those cells beforehand? ~~~ XorNot AFM tips can be scaned at fairly high speeds over fairly large radius's. More importantly, they can operate easily in aqueous or otherwise life-favoring conditions. The fact that you could use an AFM tip to both image a target sample _and_ determine if something which looks like bacteria is actually alive, is pretty significant since you can also use an AFM for lots of other things (i.e. rock morphology, hardness testing etc.) Its a way of making one instrument on a spacecraft much more useful. ~~~ marcosdumay Didn't think about scanning the sample :) This thing must be way slower than a conventional AFM, but wes, it's cheap, light, and reliable to several factors that other instruments aren't. Should be a great add-on.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tesla reveals revolutionary new wiring architecture to help robots build cars - evo_9 https://electrek.co/2019/07/22/tesla-revolutionary-wiring-architecture-robots-model-y/ ====== Glawen So the idea is to make ecu in the vicinity to be responsible of the components, and drive them through communications. Nothing new, trucks are applying this technique already. The big drawback is that it increases SW and systems complexity. You cannot believe how few of the SW guys in the automotive industry have a clue about CAN (or flexray) communications and its failures mode. Its unbelievable how much code does not react properly on Communications failures / init / lag. ~~~ m463 I know someone who used to work on BMWs and he said when they first came out with the lan-based car wiring problems were almost impossible to diagnose. Basically the shops would just swap parts until something worked. I think it's gotten better now as things have matured. I expect because tesla is doing it in SV, they have enough software guys available to figure things out (and maybe frontload the diagnostics to make servicing things easier). That's how technology works - make cheaper and less sophisticated hardware do more and better. ~~~ Glawen I don't see how this would help, because the default behaviour in a computer software is to inform the user that an error occured, please press enter to continue. When you write software for a car, you always have to think about the impact of your code in the car, and pressing enter or crashing the sw is not the safe way to respond. So if the comms fails, you have to ask yourself what should the thing you're writing do and what the driver would see or think. The problem with this architecture is that when you have a physical sensor, it is obvious when it fails and you can easily add contingencies. When you have a sensor other CAN or whatever, you are adding new failure modes: sensor OK but communication not reliable, or sensor info not yet received. You thus need more code to handle those new failure modes which are tricky for the average sw guy. ~~~ m463 This is generally how everything computerized is developed. The hardware is simplified and the software becomes more sophisticated. In this case, the recurring costs are minimized (simplified wiring harnesses that are installed via automation) in favor of an increase in non-recurring costs (more up-front engineering time). The failure modes of these kinds of designs are by now a solved problem. The fact that automated assembly of simpler wiring harnesses occurs might mean the hardware reliability goes up. ------ gamblor956 Tesla has finally discovered subassemblies and the concept of minimizing wiring. Other car companies have been using both for years...even decades, in Toyota's case (the original pioneer behind using subassemblies in automotive design). ------ lsllc How is this different architecturally from typical structured wiring in networking, or say the arrangement of USB controllers within a typical laptop / docking station? Although I'm not thrilled by the idea of my drivers side puddle lamp having it's own [IP] address! ~~~ jaclaz AFAIK systems "bus based" are very similar, even for home/office electric cabling. In the home/office "domotic" ones there are usually two couples of wires, two are the mains (poass-through) and two are "signal", every device is connected to both. The closest thing in typical networks is - I believe - PoE: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet) In automotive, normally the frame is 0V or "ground" and you need only a single (big) wire with +12 V and the signal cable/wires. ------ karmakaze Tesla's big advantage is that they're not just building autos, they're redefining how they get built. It's not about the car, it's about the machines that make them and the interfaces between them. Effectively, the car is built using an electromechanical design language (DSL) specialized for automated manufacturing. ------ ummm32 > ts unbelievable how much code does not react properly on Communications > failures / init / lag. I think this is the main reason those we do some kind of engineering work have jobs. Those issues are prevalent in anything built with some constraint in time and/or money, that would be just almost everything built and in production on Earth. ------ sschueller This is just Tesla claming they invented something like when Apple does the same thing for something that others have been doing for a while. It's PR.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Getting Started with Modern Web Development - mikehostetler http://modernweb.com/2014/07/16/getting-started-modern-web-development/ ====== gjreda It seems like there is a good amount of posts hitting the front page lately that are simply collections of tutorials, libraries, or other references without much substance. I'd love to read about some in-depth experiences with said tutorials and libraries, why some options might be better than others, or the tradeoffs made amongst them. ~~~ mikehostetler The site has consisted of straight-forward tutorials to date. That will slowly evolve and change over time. Thanks for the suggestions! ~~~ rweir Wouldn't it have been better to not post it until you had more to offer? ~~~ mikehostetler The site has been up for a year and a half. It used to be called "Flippin' Awesome" so we are just keeping pace with the current editorial pattern. We'll be re-launching soon and you'll see a more marked change then. ~~~ rweir is that a yes? ~~~ mikehostetler That's a "no" because it's important to keep up with the current reader base and slowly change it over time, rather then make a massive change at once. We chose to iterate slowly instead of a "bet the farm" launch. Agile vs. Waterfall.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Open-Plan Offices Are Making Us Less Social - mancerayder https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-04/open-plan-offices-are-making-us-less-social ====== betadreamer I’m not sure if it makes us less social but I noticed that open plan creates one of the two environments: 1) Super distracting. Everyone is talking the whole time and it’s hard to focus. Your team member bugs you all the time and you realize that your team is part of the noise. 2) Slack driven communication. No one bothers anyone and all the conversation is done on Slack. You slack a person even if they are sitting next to you. Pretty awkward and can be time consuming. ------ oblio Can companies just come out and say it? They’re all adopting open offices because they’re cheaper and the cogs are easy to move around. Though it baffles me why Facebook, Google, etc., companies that can afford it, don’t switch to 2-4-6-8 person offices. Best option: not too isolated, not too bunched up together. ~~~ Felz I feel like optimizing for manageability is a great way to run a tech company into the ground. And I notice that Microsoft, which gives its programmers offices, seems like the only tech megacompany that can still produce software. ~~~ bgorman Microsoft Windows is probably the worst software product of all time. All Microsoft has is lawyers and a good marketing department ~~~ oblio Many people have been using Windows successfully since at least 95. There’s definitely worse products out there. ------ sidibe This and preferring ads to subscriptions are the two topics I feel like I disagree with 99% of HN. I much prefer open offices and I don't mind my neighbors having conversations. Sometimes it turns out to be pretty useful what you overhear by accident. Otherwise headphones work. ~~~ derekp7 Same here -- it's not too noisy, and it is really useful to overhear someone having an issue and then jumping in to help. Only on relatively few occasions is it a problem, specifically when one of my team members who speaks English as a second language is having trouble with HP support, he tends to get a bit louder and more excited. At that point I just take a quick tea break. ------ hyperrail Here's the academic paper on which this article is based: [http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/1753/2017...](http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/1753/20170239) and here is the HN discussion of that paper from a couple days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17448187](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17448187)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Take down Notice from Y Combinator - jizie http://getintoycombinator.com/take-down-notice-from-y-combinator/ ====== stackcollision I don't see a (TM) on the Y Combinator logo. Is that necessary for this sort of thing to be enforced? ------ mattl you should edit the HTML and take down the phone number properly.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sed – An Introduction and Tutorial - aethertap http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/sed.html ====== narrator I just use \| perl -pi -e 's/foo/bar/g' , etc for this kind of stuff. Is there anything I can't do with perl on a line that sed will do? I can see how perl is a lot more complex than sed, but I went through the whole perl learning curve back in the late 90's so it doesn't bother me that much.. ~~~ scdlbx It's a lot easier to delete specific lines using sed. Also you can have sed do replacements to the n'th instance of something. Doing that in Perl is a bit more complicated and a lot less succint. $ echo "foo foo foo foo" \| sed 's/foo/bar/3' foo foo bar foo ~~~ raiph The Rakudo Perl 6 compiler is still immature and slow, and the -i option (in- place edit) hasn't yet been implemented, but, at least for comparison's sake: $ perl6 -pe 'next if ++$ == 2' example.txt ... prints all lines except line 2. This is an example from Perl 6 One Liners[1]. The `$` is just just an unnamed variable that is getting incremented once per evaluation (-e is for `evaluate`) which in this case happens once per line (-p is for printing each line of input after eval'ing the code -- unless a `next` applies, in which case that line gets skipped). And... $ echo "foo foo foo foo" \| perl6 -pe 's:3rd/foo/bar/' ... replaces the third foo with bar. P6 regexes are far easier to read and way more powerful than P5 regexes. The `:3rd` bit is a general language feature called "Adverbs", in this case applied to the regex focused s/// built in.[2] [1] [https://github.com/sillymoose/Perl6-One- Liners](https://github.com/sillymoose/Perl6-One-Liners) [2] [http://doc.perl6.org/language/regexes#Adverbs](http://doc.perl6.org/language/regexes#Adverbs) ~~~ cogburnd02 I've read literally nothing about perl 6 but what David Skoll wrote here: [http://david.skoll.ca/blog/2010-07-29-perl- sss.html](http://david.skoll.ca/blog/2010-07-29-perl-sss.html) Quote: "I asked on a forum what the goals are for relative size and speed of Perl 6 vs. Perl 5, and a Perl 6 developer responded that a reasonable goal would be to have Perl 6 be twice as big as Perl 5 and take twice as long to start up. "To achieve this goal, the Perl 6 developers will have to shrink the program size by a factor of 6.1 (that is, get rid of about 84% of the code.) They'll need to reduce startup memory consumption by a factor of 13.7 (that is, cut out 93.7% of their memory use) and reduce startup time by a factor of over 275. "Oh, and this is after they add in all the missing features required to bring Perl 6 up to production-level." Has the situation gotten better since 2010? ~~~ raiph > Has the situation gotten better since 2010? Not really. Startup uses about the same RAM. It's about 10x faster. The best docs I know about performance would be [http://pmichaud.com/2012/pres/yapcna- perflt/slides/slide17.h...](http://pmichaud.com/2012/pres/yapcna- perflt/slides/slide17.html) and [http://jnthn.net/papers/2014-yapceu- performance.pdf#page=72](http://jnthn.net/papers/2014-yapceu- performance.pdf#page=72) > "... all the missing features required to bring Perl 6 up to production- > level." The latest story is that the last major missing features (Unicode grapheme-by- default and native arrays) will land in the next few months and Perl 6 will be declared "officially ready for production use" by the end of 2015. ------ JeremyMorgan Sed is one of those tools that once you learn it, you'll start to wonder how you ever got by without it. This is a great set of tutorials, he also wrote one about Awk: [http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Awk.html](http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Awk.html) Get to know these two tools and you'll be amazed at the hours you can save and what you can do, especially with text files. ~~~ sqrt17 Maybe it's because Perl was really popular at the time I discovered Unix and its tool, but why would you use sed and awk instead of a Perl one-liner? (Or even :s// in vim or M-x query-replace-regexp in emacs, if it's just regex munging) ~~~ emmelaich Exactly. Use Perl (or maybe Python). sed is bullshit. Do you know it is _not actually possible_ to get output from sed that does not contain a newline? ~~~ Tobu Are you sure? sed has -z, it's useful. ------ sidcool I tried posting this to /r/programming. It said already submitted 8 years ago. It's a very good tutorial and I was oblivious of its existence for so long. ------ c3RlcGhlbnI_ To be honest I don't know how much he has improved on the manual. It is such a small language that you could easily read up to the the examples very quickly even if you aren't particularly interested in learning. I would suggest just giving it a look directly at [https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/sed.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/sed.html) Though be forewarned, something that neither document explains well is the actual syntax. As in how addresses and expressions can be used and how to read a script. The syntax is relatively simple to understand looking at some examples, but the lack of clear delimiters between the address, command, and command parameters can confuse beginners. ~~~ josteink But that only covers the GNU bits. If you stick (too closely) to that one, sometimes you might use features only found in GNU Sed and think you're writing portable scripts. I think this tutorial helps clarify what is and isn't portable. ~~~ c3RlcGhlbnI_ Well, it does mention explicitly which parts are GNU extensions. But I see what you mean. I can write sed scripts fairly well at this point but clearly didn't internalize any of the notes about what is an extension, thus it is frustrating trying to get the non GNU versions to do anything at all. ------ senorsmile probably the best reference besides the o'reilly books. ------ sea6ear Peter Krumins also has decent a walkthrough of sed that essentially goes through and explains it via detailed explanations of sed one-lines (The explanations are original, but the list of one-liners was already popular on the internet). Book: [http://www.catonmat.net/blog/sed- book/](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/sed-book/) Free online articles: [http://www.catonmat.net/blog/sed-one-liners-explained- part-o...](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/sed-one-liners-explained-part-one/) ------ mbubb For context of 'why sed and why not x?' This was written in 1984 (I think) and still works with a few syntax adjustments. I think it is not bad discipline to return to these tools from time to time and remember core UNIX principles. [http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs124/kwc-unix-for- poets.pdf](http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs124/kwc-unix-for-poets.pdf) I am not so sure anything that I currently am writing would/ could be relevant in 30 years. Very humbling. ------ Jacky800 I have always used grymoire.com for regex and sed tutorials since probably around 2009. Thanks grymoire ------ jakeogh Is there a command to automatically escape a string for use in sed? I got frusturated escaping for simple replacement: [https://github.com/jakeogh/replace-text](https://github.com/jakeogh/replace- text) ~~~ klshxsh If you find yourself having to escape a lot of slashes, then you can do something like this: echo "/foo/bar" \| sed -e 's\|/foo\|/tmp\|' (The article mentions this) ~~~ JetSpiegel It can be any character really. I like sed 's,foo,bar,' sed 's@foo@bar@' ------ nkangoh A friend of mine has been trying to get me to learn awk, sed, perl or grep. Honestly I only have the patience for one at the moment, which do you think is the best (taking the ease of learning into account)? ~~~ jibberia Learn grep. If you're familiar with using a shell, it'll be the most immediately useful. # search current and all child directories for files containing "bananas", case insensitive $ grep -ir "bananas" . ~~~ scarecrowbob here's an example of the first useful grep I learned : history \| grep "git push" ~~~ jpwgarrison I alias "history \| grep" to "hrep" and I'd bet it is one of my top 3-5 commands. ~~~ spdustin Why not find out: history \| awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' \| sort -rn \| head ~~~ jakupovic uniq seems a bit easier to understand here: history \| awk '{print $2}' \| sort \| uniq -c \| sort -rn ------ stygiansonic Great reference; with the awk reference on that site, this formed a great resource for learning text manipulation/searching in a Unix environment. ------ michaelsbradley There's also an excellent (non-free) book: _Definitive Guide to sed_ [http://www.sed-book.com/](http://www.sed-book.com/) I found it to be well worth the money, though I wish it were available as a PDF. ------ la6470 Awesome ------ misiti3780 was interested in reading this until i saw the yellow background and couldnt stomach it - looks like a lot of great information just displayed in a horrible way ~~~ mdaniel If it's available on your platform, you could print it to a local file since the print version doesn't use the same CSS as the web (OS X = print to PDF, Win = print to XPS, etc). Or, presuming you're on a modern browser and care that much about the content, you can just inspect the dom, find that <link type="text/css"...> in the head, and delete it. ~~~ nilved > If it's available on your platform, you could print it to a local file since > the print version doesn't use the same CSS as the web (OS X = print to PDF, > Win = print to XPS, etc). Yeah or you could go read a better book ~~~ gh02t You'll have a hard time finding one though. The O'Reilly books are the only ones that I know of that might qualify as "better." The site is ugly, but it's one of the best references for sed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Marcin Wichary Interview - js2 http://ajaxian.com/archives/web-ninja-interview-marcin-wichary-creator-of-google-pacman-logo-html5-slide-deck-and-more ====== js2 Marcin is responsible for the (in)famous Google Pacman logo, as well as today's logo celebrating Jules Verne. Aside, today's logo is orientation-aware if you're using Firefox/Chromium on supported hardware (i.e., a MacBook [Pro]).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
10,000 year clock gets lowered into Texan mountain - fanf2 https://www.theengineer.co.uk/10000-year-clock-texan-mountain/ ====== kragen This is great news! Thank you for posting this, Tony! The Long Now site says, "Located under a remote limestone mountain near Van Horn, Texas, it will require a day’s hike to reach its interior gears. Just reaching the entrance tunnel situated 1500 feet above the high scrub desert will leave some visitors out of breath, nicked by thorns, and wondering what they got themselves into." Presumably that means Jeff wants to make it a little bit challenging for people to find the Clock, at least for a few years. [http://longnow.org/clock/](http://longnow.org/clock/) The Clock is designed to require the Hero's Journey to reach, because it's primarily designed to inspire, to bring people to spiritual experiences, not to tell time. Also, keep in mind that the greatest risk to the Clock is human vandalism and looting — the one thing you can't protect against by design, although they've certainly tried. If the Clock survives a century without anyone visiting it, it will have made it 1% of the way to its design lifespan. They've published enough photos and videos that it should be possible to find, though. ~~~ reificator If 4chan can find a flag on a webcam, people can find this clock. ~~~ cypherpunks01 The clock is fully intended to accept visitors, if you check out the site longnow.org/clock/ you'll see there are certain "features" for people visiting the clock. The 4chan CTF was truly epic and hilarious though. ~~~ PhasmaFelis > _The 4chan CTF was truly epic and hilarious though._ I looked up the story expecting "epic and hilarious", and got "/pol/ Neo-Nazis harass a bunch of people for not liking Trump and steal an anti-Trump flag. But look how clever they were about stealing it!" Is there some other, similar story that I'm missing? ~~~ vim_wannabe A bunch of people saw an A-list celebrity do a publicity stunt and wanted to have fun with it. As far as the "Nazis!" claim goes you need to be able to read between the lines if you want to read an imageboard as trollish as 4chan. And if you want to see who really is behind the posts you can look up the first "He will not divide us" event at a New York museum. Spoiler alert: It's not nazis. ;) ~~~ jquery 4chan doesn’t have natural defenses against “normie” invaders that other sites have (moderation, identity), so it developed a potent meta-defense. Anyone who takes the site literally will find themselves extremely confused and upset like your parent post. In the old days it used to be gore posting to make newbies flee. It’s defenses are constantly evolving as paid online agitators try to control the message there (as they have successfully done on other more straightforward platforms that limit free speech yet supposedly have far more resources to prevent shilling). Turns out free speech is very powerful indeed. ~~~ simias That's a romantic way to look at it I suppose. As somebody on 4chan for a little more than a decade now I'd say that it slowly moved from an anarcho- libertarian community who loved gratuitous provocation to an alt-right echo chamber, at least as far as the big boards are concerned. "Hitler did nothing wrong" went from a provocative joke to a political stamement. 4chan is the embodiment of "any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company". That puts modern 4chan in the somewhat ironic position of being actually on the side of the American government for the most part something I couldn't really imagine 2007 ever endorsing, regardless of the who's in charge. ~~~ Kattywumpus > "Hitler did nothing wrong" went from a provocative joke to a political > statement. I'm sort of fascinated by the phenomenon, which I think of as "LOLgical argument". You start off with a joke where the humor is based in an extreme and socially transgressive statement. It could be "Hitler did nothing wrong," or "The Earth is flat," or any number of similarly absurd ideas. The original users are trolls who privately do not actually believe what they are saying, but enjoy "rustling jimmies" and the increased status their daring obtains. But as more members of the community join in, the original statement loses its edge, and even more transgressive poses are needed to continue the joke. Often this means doubling-down, and telling others that you do indeed believe the thing that they had, at some level, still been treating as a punchline. This meta-joke involves finding "proof" that the shocking thing you said before was actually true, and demonstrating your commitment, by creating memes and other "evidence"-based arguments for it. In doing so, you begin to create a community that becomes indistinguishable from a community that actually believes the original statement. As these arguments pile up, even trolls who started off disbelieving their original statement find themselves surrounded by "evidence" they were right all along. There is a swell of camaraderie as those who were bold enough to question the official version of reality begin to support each other. The community pressure, the ego boost of having discovered some secret suppressed knowledge, and the psychological difficulty of abandoning their previous position all contribute to the complete conversion of a troll into an earnest believer. I find this fascinating because it works in such opposition to the ways we normally talk about convincing people of new ideas. It's not the logic of the argument here that leads people to a new conclusion but rather the logic of the joke, the idea that the funniest punchline to an absurd joke is to actually believe it. When enough individuals in a community feel that way, they can actually end up convincing each other. So it's not so much that the community becomes "flooded by actual idiots" as it is the original trolls who become believers themselves. Vonnegut once wrote, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." He was probably more right here than he knew. ~~~ simias I think your analysis is accurate. These past years reddit's "The Donald" community is a prime example of that, except it went through all phases in about a year, maybe even less. But I also think you need to take into account that many of the original users who genuinely did not seriously believe the "Hitler did nothing wrong"/"Hearth is flat"/"Donald Trump would make a great president"/... meta-joke end up leaving when things get serious. It's actually a feature for the extremists who push these ideas, if you're not with them you're against them, it's all about creating an echo chamber at this point. Reddit is terrible for that because of the moderation and voting system but even on 4chan good luck trying to argue against the hivemind, you'll just get insulted over and over until the thread 404's. Eventually you give up and stop bothering. ------ twic Or does it? > "Penn Jillette suggested that the real way to do this is make a video > documentary of the making of the clock and then hiding it, but not actually > doing it," Rose says. "(The clock) never gets found, but people would become > intrigued. The mystery of the clock becomes the real thing." [1] [1] [https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/THE-MARCH-OF- TI...](https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/THE-MARCH-OF- TIME-2492139.php) ~~~ nabla9 Write a book that allegedly contains hidden messages that reveal the location of the clock. The book itself is teaching valuable lessons for the humanity. Only those who follow the teachings with pure heart will find the clock. ~~~ pilsetnieks The final message is that the 10'000 year clock was always in your heart. Neal Stephenson wrote that book, it's called Anathem. ~~~ jrussino The foundation claims that Anathem was inspired by this project: [http://blog.longnow.org/02008/07/21/anathem-and-long- now/](http://blog.longnow.org/02008/07/21/anathem-and-long-now/) ------ w0de0 """ I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away." """ ~~~ jt2190 > The biggest problem for the beating Clock will be the effects of its human > visitors. Over the span of centuries, valuable stuff of any type tends to be > stolen, kids climb everywhere, and hackers naturally try to see how things > work or break. But it is humans that keep the Clock’s bells wound up, and > humans who ask it the time. The Clock needs us. It will be an out of the > way, long journey to get inside the Clock ringing inside a mountain. But as > long as the Clock ticks, it keeps asking us, in whispers of buried bells, > “Are we being good ancestors?” [http://longnow.org/clock/](http://longnow.org/clock/) ------ schoen I've known about this project for a long time, but I was just reminded of the song "Particle Man": He's got a watch with a minute hand Millennium hand and an eon hand And when they meet it's a happy land ------ chrissnell What happened to their Nevada site up in the White Pine Mountains? What made them choose the Van Horn area instead? Long Now, by the way, has a great center and bar at Fort Mason in San Francisco. It's my favorite place to get a drink in the city--great bartenders, very low-key, and lots of interesting stuff to look at. ~~~ spc476 Perhaps similar to The Foundation and the Second Foundation---one to be public, the other, private. ~~~ eludwig What would you be inclined to do if you were making something truly unique, something that required amazing attention to detail and custom effort? Make two. ------ jjxw Now if they could get to repairing the solar system model at The Interval ;) I've been stopping by at midnight for the past year or two in hopes that I'll be able to see the system in action, but alas it appears the system is so complex that repairs are costly. For those of you intrigued with The Long Now and are based in SF - definitely visit The Interval, it's one of the more interesting "themed" bars out there with books and a collection of mini exhibits dedicated to science, art, and music. ------ Bucephalus355 In case you want to visit, both the Amtrak Texas Eagle (LA to Chicago) and the Amtrak Sunset Limited (LA to New Orleans) pass right through Van Horn. The Amtrak Station is technically in Sierra Blanca, TX FYI. [https://m.amtrak.com/h5/r/www.amtrak.com/routes/texas- eagle-...](https://m.amtrak.com/h5/r/www.amtrak.com/routes/texas-eagle- train.html) ~~~ briandear Have you ever been to Texas? Why would you take a train for a dozen hours when you could fly and rent a car for far less money? When you finally get to Sierra Blanca, then what? There aren’t any car rental places there and certainly not any taxis.. and I am sure you aren’t going to just walk everywhere — look at the distances. The West Texas Light Rail Project hasn’t quite made it as far as Sierra Blanca or Van Horn. Your advice to take Amtrak is just ridiculous and could get some idealistic, yet ignorant hipster eaten by vultures or, at the very least, severely sunburned and dehydrated. ~~~ lardo Idealistic hipster here. I've hitched a ride from Kent to Van Horn which is about as far in the opposite direction. West Texas is beautiful. Bring a bicycle, and don't go in the summer. ------ bcherny Great work Kevin, and everyone else involved in Long Now! For those who aren't familiar, Long Now is a non-profit dedicated to long term thinking (on 10,000+ year timescales). ~~~ bonsai80 Fun related fact: Neal Stephenson's involvement in Long Now also led to ideas in Anathem. Excellent book, which has a fun long term clock idea in it. [http://longnow.org/events/02008/sep/09/anathem-book- launch/](http://longnow.org/events/02008/sep/09/anathem-book-launch/) ~~~ versteegen In particular, a clock with a 10,000 year cycle. It's one of my favourite books. ------ grondilu > inspiring a more long-term view of the world and our place in it I fail to see how that is pertinent. We know the world will still exist in 10,000 years, but we have no idea what it will look like. The mere existence of a clock that could potentially still be running then doesn't change anything about that, does it? If anything, celestial objects do exist and provide some kind of a natural long term clock. I really don't get what a mechanical one hidden in a mountain adds to it. ~~~ hbosch > but we have no idea what it will look like That’s the point. The point of the clock is to put a frame on a span of nearly unimaginable time and live life now in a way that will be significant in 10,000 years - it is a challenge to do big, great, meaningful things with long term impact. The clock itself as a mechanical object is an expensive monument and nothing more, it likely won’t last the full 10,000 years of course... ~~~ grondilu > live life now in a way that will be significant in 10,000 years That does not make much sense to me. You can't both admit we have no idea what the world will be like in ten thousands years, and at the same time claim you can do something that will be significant in such time frame. You don't know what will be significant then. ~~~ shervinafshar The way I understand it, long term thinking is neither about the future nor about predicting it or planning something significant for it; it is rather a thought model which tries to extend beyond the timeframes humans might feel at home with cognitively. An off-the-cuff, superficial yet interesting example is the lack of a common word in English language to express units of time longer than 1000. This style of thinking sometimes has its benefits, like gathering together a community to build a mechanical clock, create a manual for restarting a civilization[1], or write a non-fiction book about "earth without people"[2]. It's just an interesting intellectual, cultural endeavor. [1]: [http://blog.longnow.org/category/manual-for- civilization/](http://blog.longnow.org/category/manual-for-civilization/) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us). ------ abruzzi I’m happy to see progress on this. I hadn’t heard update for so long I had stopped checking their website. I don’t live terribly far from the location—maybe a five or six hour drive, so when it’s ready to be visited, I’ll definitely make the trek. ~~~ grondilu > I hadn’t heard update for so long I had stopped checking their website. I hope I'm not the only one who appreciates the irony of this sentence. ~~~ Nomentatus Poignantly appropriate, perhaps piquant - but not ironic (contrary or inappropriate in a poignant way.) "As you might logically expect" is not what we usually want to point to with the word "ironic" which derives from the taste of blood in the mouth (iron), I believe. Irony is always poignant, but what is poignant is not always ironic - it can be poignant and suitable(appropriate/consistent). Poignant and surprising and nonetheless consistent with what one might expect; not contrary to expectations. Of course, 100 years from now I'll probably be wrong, the word irony is so thoroughly misused, that by then the dictionary will have dropped the word poignant entirely, substituted "irony" and we'll need a whole new phrase to say what one word, "irony", means now. ~~~ grondilu Expressing impatience regarding a project that is supposed to inspire long- term thinking is pretty much ironic in my book. ~~~ Nomentatus You think it would be unusual to find a ten-thousand year project a bit slow and even frustratingly so? No, you don't. Follow the logic. ------ mulmen There are a lot of comments here expressing concern for the longevity of the clock due to vandalism and human activity. The inspiring thing about this project to me is the optimism that something like this can be exposed to the public and that we will respect it for 10,000 years. ~~~ briandear Sorry, but “yeah right” is what I thought when I read your optimism that people will respect something for 10,000 years. Look at everything ISIS and the Taliban blew up. Look at all of the random vandalism everywhere. There was once a cool balanced rock near Fredericksburg, Texas — until in 1986 vandals blew it up with dynamite for no reason other than “fun.” I visited that place when I was a little kid and I was 9 when it was destroyed. Be inspired — but be disappointed. Humanity is a dark and imperfect species. That’s why I treat utopians, Communists, and socialists with such contempt — because they base entire economic philosophies on a naïve hope of the perfection of man rather than acknowledging man’s inherent desire for his own self-interest. ~~~ mulmen So what? Just give up? What’s your point? I don’t know what will happen to the clock. What I know is someone put in the time to make it and express their idea now. In this moment in time that inspires me. What does a defeatist attitude of dwelling only on the negative do to improve the human condition? ~~~ meric The human condition is as good as it can be at this point in time - To try to change it, damages it. E.g. A child feels loved when they're accepted as they are, rather than pushing onto it things the parents wished they had done or ideals the parents wished they lived by. Sometimes, to yield to the current gives strength. ------ MR4D Creating things that last a long time is hard. If for no other reason than forecasting the future is hard. I have this weird thought that this project could be undone by fracking within 100 years. Current well map shows how much is in the area: [http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/oil-gas/major-oil-and-gas- formati...](http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/oil-gas/major-oil-and-gas- formations/permian-basin-information/#) (FYI, the Texas Railroad Commission is the regulTor of oil & gas operations in the state. ) ------ pantalaimon Now will they also build a math around it? ------ TheGrassyKnoll You can actually appreciate country music driving through West Texas. It works out there. ~~~ mulmen Out in the West Texas town of El Paso... ------ Animats It should last. The oldest working clocks are big tower clocks over 600 years old. They've needed maintenance over the centuries, but they're iron and brass, not stainless steel and ceramics. ------ nugi I am late to the party, but others may have similar interest: Are there any physical 1000+ year clocks for sale? Asking for a friend. ~~~ darkmighty There are clock that run on small temperature variations, there seem to be commercial ones with a hefty price tag: [http://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/us/en/watches/atmos/atmos- cl...](http://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/us/en/watches/atmos/atmos- classique/5101202.html) (previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16419434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16419434)) The problem is those don't have an automatic synchronization mechanism. That's the really tricky/cool part about the 10ky clock. If you wanted to create, say, a time capsule that'll last for 1000 years with a working watch, I think your best bet would be some ultra-low power microcontroller and an LCD that you could turn on occasionally. Both power and syncronization could be done from temperature variations. Just leave it buried somewhere outdoors exposed to daily (night and day) and seasonal variations, it should be enough to keep time with +/\- a few hours at decent probability. Just make sure to avoid anything that exhibits remotely any degradation, like electrolytic capactitors, and account for erosion of the moving parts. Some relevant discussion: [https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/317684/could...](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/317684/could- modern-electronic-chips-e-g-arm-and-intel-processors-operate-for-millen) ------ sulam It’s sad that they couldn’t get Danny Hillis’s name spelled correctly in the article! ~~~ reassembled I seem to recall reading an article in Wired back in the 90s about Danny Hillis, The Clock and how he liked to give everyone piggy back rides. Actually, reading that article about Danny way back then definitely inspired me to realize that its OK to have big huge enormous ideas and do things that other people think might be a little weird or silly. Kind of like 10,000 year clocks and running up and down hallways with strangers on your back. ------ myroon5 save 10,000 lives [1] or make a 10,000 year clock? Opportunity cost exists [1]: [https://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/our-criteria/cost- effec...](https://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/our-criteria/cost- effectiveness), [http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-best-charity- can-s...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-best-charity-can-save-a- life-for-333706-and-thats-a-steal-2015-7) ~~~ adventured Or maybe save a lot more lives than 10,000 over time by doing things that keeps the species aspirational, helping avoid protracted regression and short- term thinking. For another example, building out space infrastructure. The notion that the other things we do, with creating and building, often don't pay off in a radically superior way than directly saving a life, is ridiculous. How many lives could we have directly saved instead of doing the space race? How about: instead of a space race, the US and USSR focus more on regressive behavior, war, and nuke the shit out of eachother, killing hundreds of millions of people. How many lives will the transistor have saved, improved, or made possible over a century: should that investment have gone into saving 10,000 or 100,000 lives back then instead? Your setup is a false choice. ~~~ myroon5 I do actually find the project fairly neat, and I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. Just wanted to start a discussion about a different aspect of this and see people's arguments because opportunity cost definitely exists, and the allocation of our limited resources is a difficult and interesting problem. Also, I would contest that some of those charities are arguably long-term thinking as well. ~~~ draugadrotten How many lives could you personally have made better, by not reading Hacker News, and instead helping the homeless in your city? > the allocation of our limited resources is a difficult and interesting > problem The one without sin cast the first stone. There is always a better, more impactful choice available today than spending time online or watching Netflix. Yet, it is unreasonable to expect others to live the life of Mother Teresa when oneself is writing it on such forums. Even the most good people alive today probably played a game, read a book or watched TV at times. People should not be judged on what they did in their off time, but what absolute good they have accomplished. Let Mother Teresa build all the silly clocks she wants. ------ yitchelle This project has $42M pumped into it. Still having a hard time seeing the value add for this type of project with this level of investment (or spending). ~~~ fastball But it makes sense to spend $100m on a painting? Not all money is going to be spent productively, and not everything needs a clear purpose. ~~~ yitchelle No, spending $100m does not make sense either. ------ juanmirocks 10,000 years is a LONG time (for our modern civilization, that is). To me the question is: how will we measure time once we become a multi-planet species? ------ tim333 >The clock will tick just once a year It looks like it has a large pendulum, maybe 50m which would lead to it ticking every 7 seconds or so? ~~~ clarkmoody No, the article is wrong. The large weight simply powers the clock by gravity. The blowtorch part of the video shows the triple-sided chain attached to the weight. Visitors to the block will wind up the weight in order to hear the chimes. The clock chimes once per day, and a mechanical computer varies the chime such that it is different each day for the full 10,000 years. If it's not wound, the chimes are silent. The time-keeping function of the clock is much smaller and can run for a _long_ time without anyone winding the clock. The idea is that even if there is a serious calamity, the clock will continue to keep time until it's found again and wound by visitors. ------ davidw So where is it? "near Van Horn Texas" is all I could find. ~~~ blacksmith_tb There's also this site[1] which seems to be more specifically about the clock in Texas, and has a mailing list sign up to be notified about visiting possibilities. 1: [http://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html](http://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html) ~~~ davidw [https://www.google.com/maps/@31.4485152,-104.902702,1698a,35...](https://www.google.com/maps/@31.4485152,-104.902702,1698a,35y,2.05h/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4?hl=en) Looks like some construction work on top of a mountain near Bezos' land north of Van Horn. If you zoom out, you can see it shows 'West Texas Suborbital Launch Site' a bit to the east. Looks like it's in the Sierra Diablo range. Bing's satellite map of the same place: [https://binged.it/2ou7xtf](https://binged.it/2ou7xtf) Background image from the site you linked looks consistent with those sheer ridges in the Bing imagery: [http://www.10000yearclock.net/img/bg.jpg](http://www.10000yearclock.net/img/bg.jpg) ~~~ maxerickson Nice find! These guys have a picture that looks like the tower: [http://www.swaggartbrothers.com/project/10000-year- clock/](http://www.swaggartbrothers.com/project/10000-year-clock/) ~~~ davidw Oh, yeah, you can see the strip mine type thing in this photo: [http://www.swaggartbrothers.com/swaggart/wp- content/uploads/...](http://www.swaggartbrothers.com/swaggart/wp- content/uploads/2012/12/IMG_0472.jpg) That's visible in the bottom of this satellite image: [https://www.google.com/maps/@31.4370941,-104.8992241,5680a,3...](https://www.google.com/maps/@31.4370941,-104.8992241,5680a,35y,2.05h/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4?hl=en) ~~~ maxerickson Looking at a USGS topographical map, the tower is located right on a peak. ------ luxurylive This will be another place to visit, once this clock start. ------ sosodaft The 10,000 year is very convenient for Discordians. ------ medlinkstudents Really interesting, thanks for sharing! ------ bitL Corrosion, dirt etc. How is that going to last 10,000 years? ~~~ burnte They built it out of specifically engineered materials that are highly resistant to corrotion. It's in an underground hole carved into rock to be dry and fairly dirt free. This was planned for quite a long time, I assure you. ~~~ bitL > I assure you. Wonderful. I was simply asking how did they do that. Like in technical details. ------ just_steve_h It will be interesting to see how this mechanism fares, for sure. If they can master this, they're at least 10% of the way toward figuring out how to contain high-level radioactive waste! That brilliant (!) engineering marvel needs to be contained at least ten times longer than this clock is supposed to run. Easy peasy! "Clean! Safe! Too cheap to meter!" ~~~ philwelch Just a minor technical quibble (because that's what HN is for, after all)--"too cheap to meter" refers to the expected cost-effectiveness of fusion power, not fission, and "too cheap to meter" doesn't necessarily mean that power is free, just that the costs of power delivery are dominated by the delivery infrastructure rather than the generation of the power in the first place. In other words, you'd pay a flat rate per month for unlimited power to keep the power grid up and running. Fusion power would _also_ be cost-effective enough to literally turn CO2 and water back into hydrocarbons, desalinate ocean water for large-scale irrigation, sustainably produce nitrogen-based fertilizer from the air, and otherwise solve virtually every sustainability problem we face or will conceivably face for centuries. (The rest can be solved by harvesting mineral resources from asteroids instead of the Earth's surface, but that problem can be solved through better orbital infrastructure, which turns into an energy problem.) ~~~ skybrian Even in principle, this is similar to saying a bridge is "too cheap to meter". There's no fuel cost, but it can certainly take a long time to pay for pricey infrastructure via tolls. I don't see why anyone would charge a flat rate for unlimited electricity when you can pay off the enormous debt faster by charging market rate. ~~~ philwelch This might be a case where public infrastructure makes more sense than private infrastructure; if a large industrial country like China standardizes on a design and builds dozens to hundreds of identical plants, they would enjoy vast economies of scale and probably regain their investment in GDP growth purely from the economic activities made possible through fusion. ------ wiradikusuma I'm in awe, but at the same time concerned of its longevity due to vandalism and human acts. I assume this remote site will be unguarded? Expect rubbish, empty cans, used condoms etc there. That's assuming nobody does damage to the clock itself, either on purpose (stealing) or not ("what if I put a wood stick inside..."). Some people would start climbing it just because.. and some of them would get hurt or die. Police would come and seal the place. "It's one day hiking!" \-- yes for now. Human settlements expand, and within few years maybe the distance from nearest settlement would be half. Also if the place becomes famous, people would pave ways to it (you know, as tourist attraction). I guess I'm an old fart. ~~~ maxerickson It's 3 kilometers from the nearest public road, an unpaved access road for a wildlife management area. There is an access road they have used for the construction but that can be blocked a considerable further distance away. And go look at how sparse that part of Texas is. It'll be just a little while before any development encroaches on the mountain. The access road above is 50 Km from a village with ~2,000 people. ~~~ cialowicz Don’t underestimate what a tiny percentage of people with malice in their hearts can do with 10000 years of opportunity. ~~~ maxerickson Right, a determined vandal could go damage it. My argument is that the level of determination required isn't going to change very quickly.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Mind Wanders - atomlib http://bit-player.org/2018/the-mind-wanders ====== nicolashahn I wasn't able to finish, but the first section was worthwhile. Very interesting ideas about how the brain encodes and associates information, and trying to find an algorithm and data structure that behaves the same.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: VideoWorkLink (VWL) – Work remotely via live video with privacy - kentich http://videoworklink.com ====== kentich Hi, Guys! Would you like to work remotely in a way that that product offers? What do you think about the product?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ohmm Mining: Turn Flared Natural Gas into Bitcoin - seibelj https://upstreamdata.ca/ ====== michaelt A few years ago, I wondered if my electrically-heated office could instead be heated with bitcoin mining hardware. It would effectively be free electricity, right? What I found out from sources like [1] was, because the bitcoin mining difficulty is constantly increasing, the BTC a bitcoin miner produces reduces exponentially. So even with free electricity, a miner that makes BTC worth a total of $361 in 24 months, will only make $10 more if run for 99 months. And if you only need to heat your office 25% of the year? Well, the mining difficulty will keep on rising even when your hardware is turned off, so it'll be obsolete after 24 months anyway. But it'll only have produced 25% the BTC in its fixed useful life. So if buying retail mining hardware is already questionably profitable† _even with free electricity_ , buying it and only running it a fraction of the time is even moreso. This company must be getting a great price on mining hardware if it's profitable to install and run it only a fraction of the time. [1] [https://calc.randomcrypto.org/?h=bitmain-s9j-14.5&hr=1450000...](https://calc.randomcrypto.org/?h=bitmain-s9j-14.5&hr=14500000000000&hc=625&hp=1350&er=8736.77&sd=19-05-30&d=36) † Which seemed to be the case when I researched this, although bitcoin prices can vary a lot of course. ~~~ EthanHeilman At some point Bitcoin mining difficulty either: 1\. must hit a ceiling and the rate of increase will significantly slow, 2\. or Bitcoin mining will break SHA-256 and render it insecure. I find 1 to be a the most likely outcome however the most plausible path for 2 would be a novel cryptanalytic attack on SHA-256 which could be exploited to increase mining power. It seems very unlikely that 2 would occur because mining power approaches the brute force limits of SHA-256. ~~~ sunsu No. There is no way for Bitcoin mining to "break SHA-256 and render it insecure". There isn't enough energy in the whole SUN to do that. ~~~ EthanHeilman Well Bitcoin mining could "break SHA-256 and render it insecure" by: 1\. exploiting cryptanalytic weaknesses in SHA-256, 2\. successes in new computing paradigms such as a large scale quantum computer using Grover's algorithm. 3\. or turning the local galactic cluster into computronium for SHA-256 miners. Although at that point we have bigger problems. =) If you think SHA-256 will not be broken anytime soon then that suggests that you believe that mining difficulty increases will slow down. ------ throwaway5752 Or burn it, pretty much the same. Anything furthering bitcoin going to result in much more electricity use, so flaring might be preferable environmentally. Microgenerators or fuel cells (both complicated by source stream being unscrubbed) would be better. If grid tie is the issue, would be more interesting and productive to advance trapped energy source storage methods, either thermal/kinetic, hydrogen separation (of source stream or splitting local water), or other chemical. One thing is that you don't generally have a bunch of completely isolated wells - usually clustered smaller platforms or a giant one with tie-backs.. point being they share infra, though, so you can probably have a bunch of wells in the same field sharing some energy storage infrastructure. What the _net_ energy saves would be is a great question. ~~~ throwaway5752 Too late to edit, but "Microgenerators" should have been "microturbines" ------ pwagland I like the idea of: > conserv[ing] sources of wasted energy without the need for invasive > infrastructure (pipelines, power lines, etc). However, it isn't just a matter of dropping one of these skids onsite and leaving, since these skids need to be connected to a power source, not a waste gas source. So that waste gas _first_ needs to be converted to power, and then that power routed into the skid. This _is_ much easier than running lines out to the main grid to get rid of that generated electricity. And a 750 kW generator probably isn't going to be the main cost centre. Neither does bitcoin require particularly high bandwidth by normal standards, but they are quite high for a remote location, and doesn't seem to be mentioned in the blurbs. It would also still be competing against cheap energy sources, since bitcoin cost is essentially your input energy cost. And even if the gas that powers the generator is "free", there are still a large number of costs with doing anything remote… ~~~ comboy For those wondering just like me, 750 KW generator yields $657K worth of electricity during a year assuming 1kWh=0.1$ I'm guessing these rigs are at least $500K+ and you have to take into account things breaking like they always do. Btw, these rigs definitely don't look like they would be able to provide appropriate cooling in a hot climate, but maybe that's not where they are going to be used. ~~~ jdhn Based on the .ca domain as well as the fact that they talk heavily about Alberta, I'm betting that they're targeting the Canadian market. While Canada can get warm in the summer, it's no Texas, and it's markedly colder during the winter. I don't think that they're too worried about their equipment overheating. ------ solarengineer I wonder if protein folding might be a better use of such ideas and energy. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home) ~~~ qqii Grid Coin is built on that idea: [https://gridcoin.us/](https://gridcoin.us/) ------ thinkcontext Deeply skeptical of this but I'm curious about the practical aspects of consuming the excess gas. What volume of gas is being expelled over what period of time and how does that compare to the 750kw consumption of the rig? Is there a storage vessel as part of the rig or at the drill pad to buffer gas that would normally be flared? All of this affects what capacity factor can be achieved which determines whether this can be made economic, ie the difference between having to move the rig every few days vs letting it just sit in one place for months on end sipping gas. ~~~ npongratz > What volume of gas is being expelled over what period of time and how does > that compare to the 750kw consumption of the rig? I have no numbers, but the flares are apparently pretty easy to see from space: [https://geology.com/articles/oil-fields-from- space/](https://geology.com/articles/oil-fields-from-space/) And I've heard from first-hand reports that the amount of heat and light being thrown off by flares is staggering. Like, feel-it-from-a-hundred-yards-away hot. (Of course, I'm just some guy on the internet -- do your own research, grain of salt, and all that). ------ guy_c The founder was interviewed on this podcast - [https://overcast.fm/+OBZna2NS8/5:16](https://overcast.fm/+OBZna2NS8/5:16) To summarise points that are missed in the comments and maybe not well describe on the website: This is based in Canada. The vast majority is heavy oil in unconsolidated sand. This cannot be pumped, so there are commonly no pipelines. During the process of extraction a lot of low value methane escapes from the oil. Canada has limits to the amount of venting a well can do, so if they reaches the limit they have to either slow the well's production or spend money on building a flare. Both options have an economic cost. These mining units are addressing this. ------ ilaksh How does it connect to the internet? ~~~ magnamerc Starlink obviously. ~~~ Robotbeat You laugh, but existing satellite internet like Viacom is probably doable. $50-70/month with a 40GB/month soft cap should be good enough with a local Stratum proxy. Latency is high, so you could lose a small amount due to stale work units, but it’s not a big amount. ------ ryanmarsh Others in the oil and gas industry are looking at this too. Natural gas is cheap and plentiful, natural gas generators (that can burn Y grade) are common. Vertically integrating around power seems the logical next step in bitcoin mining. I'm waiting to see the first bitcoin mining company that builds their own ASICs and drills their own wells. ~~~ Xplosiveoctopus I'm sorry this is off-topic, but there's no other way for me to contact you. I read your comment in one post about salaries: "Your comment really saddens me. There’s so much more you could have. There’s no reason why what I make has to be an outlier. I’m so so so not special. Many people have come on HN to say exactly what I’ve said and have achieved outsized results. Jesus, is patio11 really that incredible of a guy? I mean, he’s really nice and pretty smart but dude he made his start with a bingo card creator. Our mindset is our greatest limitation." I'd like to send you a letter. Could you please drop me an email at xplosiveoctopus (at) gmail.com? Thank you for your time, Ryanmarsh. ------ DonHopkins If you invent a money printing machine, then why not just use it yourself instead of trying to sell it to other people? ~~~ hjk05 Obviously because you can make more money selling it then keeping it to yourself. If the purpose of the machine is to make money why chose the least effective way of making that money just to prevent others from making money as well? Incidentally this is also the reason that people sell profitable companies even though they are “printing money” every year. ~~~ DonHopkins The point is that if you can make more money selling machines than printing money, then it isn't a very good money printing machine, and you're just another bitcoin scammer, refusing to eat your own dog food, selling an impossible dream to suckers. To purpose of simply using the machine yourself instead of selling it isn't preventing others from making money, it's to avoid wasting your own time and money on sales and marketing and customer service and hiring employees and paying for their health care and leasing office space and manufacturing and shipping products and giving refunds to unsatisfied customers, when you could just be shoveling money directly into your bank account instead, without all the overhead. If the machine was really so great, then you could just print all the money you needed, and give the machines away for free. Now if you could invent a machine selling machine, then you'd have something. ------ henearkr Well... they could have converted it in electricity, either directly on the grid or by using a battery system (like the liquid batteries used to store solar in Australia). Converting it into Bitcoin is hardly the best choice for ourselves and our planet. ~~~ k_sze I guess one reason it’s not already been done is because of physics. You can capture the flared gas and convert it to electricity on site, but you still need to be able to deliver it to the consumers for it to be valuable. But electrical power is lost when you transport it over long distances due to wire resistance, unless you convert it to really high voltage. Maybe all the infrastructure required is just not worth the money. Bitcoin doesn’t have this problem, all you need in order to make it liquidable is an internet connection, which any gas/oil field probably already has. ~~~ J-dawg Got to admire the creative thinking involved in this. Are there any more "practical" potential uses? Some industrial process that requires lots of power but not too much other infrastructure? ~~~ arethuza CO2 sequestration? ~~~ TeMPOraL Could a coin backed by stored CO₂ work? ~~~ arethuza I promise to pay the bearer the sum of 1 ton of C02 on demand? ~~~ TeMPOraL Well, Bitcoin doesn't work that way either. I was thinking more of a "you get a coin for X tons of CO₂" \+ hype to make these work as currency, but I suppose it's just a weird version of existing carbon trading solutions. ~~~ cwkoss Kind of silly to make this a coin. Because you'll fundamentally need an external system to audit CO2 sequestration and manage issuance, the auditor might as well be a centralized issuer.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Memory Deduplication: The Curse That Keeps on Giving - iliasku https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2016/Fahrplan/events/8022.html ====== iliasku i will add the video link as soon as it appears here : [http://download.mette.org/videos/33c3/](http://download.mette.org/videos/33c3/) ~~~ Phithagoras When that happens you should consider submitting that link as its own story. ~~~ iliasku done: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13283545](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13283545)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Introducing HelloSign for Eventbrite: Attendees Can Now Sign Waivers Online - guiseppecalzone https://www.hellosign.com/eventbrite ====== mikestew I guess the only news to me is, "wait a minute, they dont already do this?" I'm a runner, I run races, every race I've probably run over the last 40 years requires a release form, and I don't think I've signed a paper release form in ten years. I would assume that mechanism is portable to other, non-athletic events. (Check a checkbox, "sign" your name by typing it in a text field.) So is Eventbrite just particularly lame and behind the times, or am I so dense I can't see the big deal right in front of me? ~~~ ramenmeal Most event ticketing systems are 100% scams so I don't expect much.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What, exactly, is a lead investor? - speek http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/11/what-exactly-is-a-lead-investor.html ====== pg Not all startups want a VC in the office with them acting as a "virtual CEO." In fact I suspect increasingly few do. ~~~ fredwilson I totally agree Paul. But that isnt what most good VCs do. They help when needed and get out of the way when they are not ~~~ jpdoctor > and get out of the way when they are not Really? How would you discern that failure mode from all of the other possible startup failure modes? ~~~ fredwilson i'm not entirely sure what you are asking. can you elaborate a bit more please? thanks. fred ------ samirageb Very interesting post. If a VC stepping in to save the ship is what's needed, I'd be all for it. I wonder how many Fred Wilsons there are out there though...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Achievement Unlocked: Get Hired as a Junior Developer - byaruhaf https://skiplearnscode.wordpress.com/2015/10/24/achievement-unlocked-get-hired-as-a-junior-developer/ ====== jeena > "the fact someone has a degree in Computer Science means complete dick" I don't agree, sure you can learn everything yourself, but you won't learn the things you consider boring. People with a degree in CS have more often than not a much better overview over what to do when and why. It starts in chosing the right tool for the work and ends with structured and usefull documentation. ~~~ d2xdy2 > It starts in chosing the right tool for the work and ends with structured > and usefull documentation. Usually; I have the misfortune of meeting a non-trivial number of green- behind-the-ear CS grads who don't know where to start looking for tools, let alone pick the right ones.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
When is it not preferable to specify your types first? - raphaelss http://pchiusano.github.io/2015-10-28/top-down.html ====== molyss I can't help it but disagree with the author. His example shouldn't make someone think "god, I wish I didn't have to specify the type here", but rather "wait, there's a problem here. There's way too many concepts in a single line of code, I should probably refactor that to make it clearer". Having to specify the type is what should help the developer come to the realization that something needs to be more modular, so the people reading the code in the future (including him/herself in a week from now) will have a easier time understanding what's going on. Overall, I feel like there's a common thinking these days that most of software cost is in the time spent to write it and thus we should use any means necessary to reduce that time. type inference everywhere makes it so that just reading a source code prevents you from knowing the type of anything without learning first the whole API by heart. And it's reaching the top when you define a function using "fn" in rust (there might be another explanation than saving keystrokes, but I can 't think of any), or "go fmt" instead of "go format". IMO, the truth is that while a code has been written exactly once in its current form, it's being read hundreds or thousands of times. For learning, debugging, fixing, improving or adding performances. It doesn't matter. And when you have to read the code to understand the concepts behind it, you're just wasting brain cycles. Yes, typing types everywhere is a complete pain in the neck. But reading and modifying code without anything has always felt 100 times worse to me ------ avmich The first example reminds me specifications of some types in typed Clojure. Part of the reason it gets complaints is those tricky types. At least they look like that, comparing to Haskell.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How not to get a $30k bill from Firebase - squidrings https://medium.com/@PurpleGreenLemon/how-not-to-get-a-30k-bill-from-firebase-37a6cb3abaca ====== paulgb I really wish cloud providers would allow users to set a hard budget that just stops the service if you exceed a threshold. I got a surprise bill from AWS this month (fortunately orders of magnitude less than this, but still ~15x my usual) and am thinking of moving from Lambda to a VPS just so the possibility of this doesn't keep me up at night. ~~~ stickfigure You can? I have daily limits for my Google App Engine apps. ~~~ EugeneOZ Don't forget they are only warnings, they will not shut down your app and their update rate is not as frequent as you might expect. ~~~ asciimike App Engine PM: the GAE Daily Spend limits are hard caps that will shut down services when hit. They are different from the broader GCP Billing Alerts which are simply notifications. The issue is that they only apply to certain GAE services (compute, legacy APIs, etc.) and not across the platform. ~~~ EugeneOZ Thank you for correction! ------ paxys Billing problems aside, it's amazing that web development has reached a stage where it's almost _too_ easy to scale a site to 2m active sessions and 20m+ page views in two days with just off-the-shelf tools and barely any specialized skills. ~~~ cryptica Except for very simple use cases, serverless platforms in general encourage bad software design patterns. For example, in this case, if a regular database was used instead of Firebase, "counting the number of supporters" would have been done inside the database using a query. The worst that the developer could have done is forget to index to the relevant column; performance would have been sub-par but still orders of magnitude better than Firebase because the bulk of the data would not leave the database if there was a proper query language. With Firebase, when doing complex calculations, not only does the data have to leave the database, it often reaches end users; the calculations then happen on the front end and this is a huge problem in terms security, performance and even correctness (due to latency and the fact that other users may be making conflicting calculations simultaneously based on slightly outdated data). Also, based on the article's description of the application, it sounds like it may have exposed potentially sensitive data (about supporters) to all users so it may have introduced a security vulnerability. I would not be surprised if this was the case. ~~~ bmelton > With Firebase, when doing complex calculations, not only does the data have > to leave the database, it often reaches end users Any time sensitive data reaches untrusted users it is a bad practice, but this needn't be the case on Firebase just because it is serverless. Firebase cloud functions can be triggered as a response to document saves (or authentications, or a plethora of other things) and run outside userspace, and are available for exactly this sort of work -- keeping the minutiae of upkeep away from the client. That said, I agree that it's easy to make this kind of mistake with serverless development, but mostly due to lack of existing domain knowledge. It's trivially easy to make similar (or worse) mistakes without a serverless environment by untrained developers, too. It's just a matter of becoming familiar with the toolset, and because serverless tech is newer, fewer are as familiar with them as they are the old things (and there are fewer people to catch those mistakes when they see them.) ------ intricatedetail That's why I don't use cloud offerings. Their pricing models are designed to trap someone with a exorbitant bill and you don't have control over it. For example let's say you put an image on a CDN and someone who doesn't like you runs AB for a couple of days making billions of requests to bankrupt you or someone finds a page that runs costly queries and sets up curl against it. No thanks. ~~~ StreamBright Interesting, I saved roughly 2M USD / year for customers moving them to the cloud. Your example is silly, all of the CDN I set up has very strict limit on how much a single IP can use and have multiple alerts if you are passing 100, 200, 500, etc. USD limits. On the top of that if that is not enough you can add more limitations to avoid that exact scenario that a public resource can be abused to cause you financial troubles. It won't "bankrupt" you if you do it right. Just like pretty much every other technology, you need to know it. The other problem with your comment is that you try to make it sound like it was a single dimension decision to use the cloud. It is never a single dimension questions though. ~~~ BartBoch Not taking sides here, but I think that the cloud is complicated enough (especially for a person that does not specialize in it), to miss one of the edge cases that can lead to the huge bill. In a few minutes, I can set simple PHP script with curl, that will launch 100 requests each second, using a pool of hundreds of thousands of IP's thank to the rotating VPN. This is an edge case of course, but it can happen. I use cloud myself, but only cloud servers, which allows me to control budget better and provides me with an "escape plan", where I can just switch to dedicated quickly. ~~~ cc81 There is a difference between "cloud" and serverless though. I bet most people are not using something that can autoscale infinite by default. ------ laken I have to mention this every time I see it... The crowdfunding campaign mentioned in this article took place in "Colombia" not "Columbia." There is no country by the name of "Columbia." This problem is so aggravating to Colombians they even sell t-shirts in their airports that say "IT'S COLOMBIA NOT COLUMBIA" ~~~ nestorherre Why is this getting downvoted? As a colombian myself I find it frustrating everytime it's spelled wrong. Upvoted. ------ quickthrower2 The Cloud. The sky is the limit for how much you can run up on your credit card. The silver lining is what you're going to be paying to your cloud provider. ------ klaaz0r Offtopic I need to register with medium now to actually read the article? ~~~ comprev It looks like you get 1 month "free". Open the article in incognito mode and it's available without registration. ~~~ labster > Get one more story in your member preview when you sign up. It’s free. Oh wow, one free story for logging in! Such generosity of content other people wrote for free. Why did we all leave LiveJournal again? ~~~ 55555 Medium pays the writers who opt-in to the paywall by dividing rev on a pro rata basis a la spotify. ------ crankylinuxuser Well, simply put: don't use Firebase. I know I've seen at least 4 articles about 'OMG Surprise horrific billing" with them. And to be quite frank, you can buy a EC2 instance, throw Postgres on it, and have a stable bill (Except for bandwidth costs, but that's trivial... usually). I'm sure Firebase has good features, but this surprise billing is terrifying. They can't even offer a warning "10 min average indicates a bill roughly XX,000$/mo". I could not suggest it in good faith for anything, especially since it doesn't have a hard cutoff. ------ reimertz I just want to point out to people who are new to Firebase that you can query your Firestore collections. Also, Firestore Queries are cached by default, so if you try and fetch data that hasn’t changed, you shouldn’t have to pay for that read. db.collection(‘Payments’).where(‘id’, ‘==’, ‘payment 1’).onSnapshot(console.log) // 1 read, then cached Whereas specifying a document and then manually get it always counts as a read. Example; db.collection(‘Payments’).doc(‘payment 1’).get() // always counted as a read It's funny. I've had multiple discussions with people who build apps using Firebase and then not being able to scale to 1000 concurrent people without the BE falling apart. I want to tell them that they've done something wrong, but since none of my apps haven't reached those kind of usage levels, I really don't know. I think Firebase comes with a lot of power, and as long as so plan to scale, design your database model, have proper security rules and cache as much as you can, you can probably host a 1M concurrent users without getting scaling problems. Cost though, ooh yeez. :) ------ nicebill8 This video [1] goes into more detail as to what exactly they did wrong and how to fix it. [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb- Pnytoi-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb-Pnytoi-8) ------ sessy TLDR: The huge bill was a result of an improper way the application was coded. They contacted Google/Firebase who were gracious enough to waive off the bill. ~~~ genericacct That's very nice of them. However I'd have to read all of firebase's small print before i would consider using it. Does their SLA guarantee data availability even if google dcide to spin it off or sunset the way they did with google+, reader and such? ~~~ kkarakk Does it matter what their fine print says if you have to bang your head against a buggy automated bot process to get support things done? Switched over to MS appcenter recently(they added support for cosmosdb + authentication). Their customer care is so nice by comparison ------ lofo Writing a cost calculator for firebase is a baffling experience. The relative difficulty to gather precise information and model costs are intentionally discouraging you to undertake any estimation. ------ Gustek @squidrings I believe you are the author? Very interesting post especially as I am myself currently working on my first firebase based app and making sure I don't get huge bills is one of my worries. Just little correction needed: > July last year, a crowd funding campaign went viral in Columbia It's Colombia not Columbia.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Achieving reliable UDP transmission at 10 Gb/s using BSD socket - pmoriarty https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.00333 ====== ignoramous > (abstract) _Optimizations for throughput are: MTU, packet sizes, tuning > Linux kernel parameters, thread affinity, core locality and efficient > timers._ Cloudflare's u/majke shared a series of articles on a similar topic [0][1][2] (with focus on achieving line-rate with higher packets-per-second and lower latency instead of throughput) that I found super helpful especially since they are so very thorough [3]. Speaking of throughput, u/drewg123 wrote an article on how Netflix does 100gbps _with_ FreeBSD's network stack [4] and here's BBC on how they do so by _bypassing_ Linux's network stack [5]. \--- [0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763323) [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12404137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12404137) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17063816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17063816) [3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12408672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12408672) [4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15367421](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15367421) [5] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16986100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16986100) ------ snisarenko Optimizing UDP transmission over internet is an interesting topic. I remember reading a paper a while ago that showed that if you send two consecutive UDP packets with exact same data over the internet, at least 1 of them will arrive to the destination at pretty high success rate (something like 99.99%) I wonder if this still works with current internet infrastructure, and if this trick is still used in real-time streaming protocols. ~~~ zamadatix 99.99% for two tries would be a 1% drop chance which I'd say is pretty lenient - we average better than that on our sites running off 4G (jitter is horrible though and that will kill any real-time protocols without huge delays added). Generally you'd just implement a more generic FEC algorithm though unless you had 2 separate paths you wanted to try (e.g. race a cable modem and 4G with every packet and if one side drops it hope the other side still finishes the race) as there are FEC options that allow non integer redundancy levels and can reduce header overhead compared to sending multiple copies of small packets. ~~~ syrrim >99.99% for two tries would be a 1% drop chance Not per se. The drop chance for consecutive packets is likely correlated, such that if you know the first one was dropped you should increase your prior that the second one will also be dropped. ~~~ zamadatix Depends on the cause and root question. For instance in the most common scenario of congestion routers do intelligent random drops with increasing probability as the buffer gets more full [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_early_detection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_early_detection). The internet actually relies on this random low drop chance to make things work smoothly rather than waiting til things are failing apart to signal to streams to slow down all at once while it catches up. Same randomness with transmission bit errors which will cause drops but the randomness is not by design as much as by the way noise is what is causing those. On the other hand if the root question is if there is an outage style issue then yeah if the path to the destination is having a hard down style issue no number of packets are going to help because they are all going to drop. Likewise if the question is "on a short enough time scale is reliability of delivering a single packet somewhere on the internet ever less than 99%" then yeah somewhere there is a failure scenario and if you look at a short enough time scale any failure scenario can be made to say there is 0% reliability. ------ exdsq Can you do something similar with TCP and increase the packet size such that the "TCP Overhead" is reduced compared to 64 byte payloads but with the increased reliability over UDP? ~~~ toast0 In the system proposed, not really. To use TCP instead of UDP there are two big problems: 1) the sensor device would need to keep unacknowledged data in memory, but it may not have enough memory for that 2) if they're running at line rate (max bandwidth in this case) in UDP, there's no bandwidth left to retransmit data All of the buffer manipulation is going to be more CPU intensive on both sides as well, and you'd run into congestion control limiting the data rate in the early part of the capture as well. For a system like this, while UDP doesn't guarantee reliability, careful network setup (either sensor direct to recorder, or on a dedicated network with sufficient capacity and no outside traffic) in combination with careful software setup allows for a very low probability of lost packets dispite no ability to retransmit. ------ zamadatix "In a readout system such as ours the network only consists of a data sender and a data receiver with an optional switch connecting them. Thus the only places where congestion occurs are at the sender or receiver. The readout system will typically produce data at near constant rates during measurements so congestion at the receiver will result in reduced data rates by the transmitter when using TCP." At that point a better paper title would have been "Increasing buffers or optimizing application syscalls to receive 10 GB/s of data" as it has nothing to do with achieving reliable UDP transmission, which it doesn't even seem they needed: "For some detector readout it is not even evident that guaranteed delivery is necessary. In one detector prototype we discarded around 24% of the data due to threshold suppression, so spending extra time making an occasional retransmission may not be worth the added complexity" As far as actual reliable UDP testing at high speeds one might also want to consider the test scenario as not all Ethernet connections are equal. The 2 meter passive DACs used in this probably achieve ~10^-18 bit error rate (BER) or 1 bit error in every ~100 petabytes transferred. On the other hand go optical even with forward error correction (FEC) it's not uncommon to expect transmission loss in the real world. E.g. looking at something a little more current [https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/transforming-enterprise- applicati...](https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/transforming-enterprise-applications- with-25g-ethernet-smf) is happy to call 10^-12 with FEC "traditionally considered to be 'error free'" which would have likely resulted in lost packets even in this 400 GB transfer test (though again they were fine with up to 24% loss in some cases so I don't think they were worried about reliable as much as reading the paper title would suggest). Generally if you have any of these: 1) unknown congestion 2) unknown speed 3) unknown tolerance for error You'll have to do something that eats CPU time and massive amounts of buffers for reliability. If you need the best reliability you can get but you don't have the luxury of retransmitting for whatever reason then as much error correction in the upper level protocol as you can afford from a CPU perspective is your best bet. If you want to see a modern take on achieving reliable transmission over UDP check out HTTP/3. ~~~ ignoramous > _Generally if you have any of these: 1) unknown congestion 2) unknown speed > 3) unknown tolerance for error_ > ... _If you want to see a modern take on achieving reliable transmission > over UDP check out HTTP /3._ Not an expert but I have seen folks here complain that QUIC / HTTP3 doesn't have a proper congestion control like uTP (BitTorrent over UDP) does with LEDBAT: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546651](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546651) ~~~ wmf LEDBAT-style congestion control is not proper for "foreground" Web traffic and it will result in lower performance than TCP-based HTTP. Fixing bufferbloat is an ongoing project and it isn't fair to blame QUIC for being no worse than TCP. ------ rubatuga TLDR: sysctl -w net.core.rmem_max=12582912 sysctl -w net.core.wmem_max=12582912 sysctl -w net.core.netdev_max_backlog=5000 ifconfig eno49 mtu 9000 txqueuelen 10000 up ------ mynegation Relevant discussion on HN from 4 months ago of IBM’s proprietary large data transfer tool: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898072) ------ Matthias247 Reading through the paper I can't see what the authors mean with "reliable transmission" there, and how they achieve it. I only see them referencing having increased socket buffers, which then lead - in combination with the available (and non-congested) network bandwidth and their app sending behavior - to no transmission errors. As soon as you change any of those parameters it seems like the system would break down, and they have absolutely no measures in place to "make it reliable". The right answer still seems: Implement a congestion controller, retransmits, etc. - which essentially ends up in implementing TCP/SCTP/QUIC/etc ~~~ rubatuga They want reliable UDP, not TCP. They state that very clearly. ~~~ zamadatix Yes but they didn't do anything to make UDP reliable they just said in our test scenario we didn't notice any loss at the application layer after increasing the socket receive buffer and called it a day because elsewhere in the paper they noted "For some detector readout it is not even evident that guaranteed delivery is necessary. In one detector prototype we discarded around 24% of the data due to threshold suppression, so spending extra time making an occasional retransmission may not be worth the added complexity." I think the paper meant "reliable" in a different way than most would take "reliable" to mean on a paper about networking similar to if someone created a paper about "Achieving an asynchronous database for timekeeping" and spent a lot of time talking about databases in the paper but it turns out by "asynchronous" they meant you could enter your hours at the end of the week rather than the moment you walked in/out of the door. ~~~ touisteur I just think they meant reliable in a 'how to dimension to greatly reduce the possible loss'. No protocol is 'fully' reliable in all dimensions (latency, message loss, throughput). Sometimes you benchmark your exact physical conf and you add large margins, add some packet loss detection mechanisms, eventually retries (but if your latency requirements are hard no dice) or duplicate the physical layer (oh god, de-duplication at 10GbE...) or just accept some losses. I just meant 'reliable is a spectrum'... ~~~ p1necone Reliability in the context of networking protocols means a specific thing to me - guaranteeing packet delivery (to the extent that it is physically possible of course). This does seem to be a technical term with a defined meaning that matches my assumption too: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_(computer_networki...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_$computer_networking$) ~~~ greglindahl Try considering what the authors of the paper mean. ~~~ p1necone If the authors of the paper are using a term that already has a specific meaning in the area they are working in, but meaning something different from that then they are making a mistake. ------ bogomipz From the abstract: >"In addition UDP also supported on a variety of small hardware platforms such as Digital Signal Processors (DSP) Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA)" I am curious what would be the use case for implementing a network stack and using UDP directly in a DSP chip? Perhaps I have a very narrow understanding of DSPs. ~~~ touisteur Well you might have to use a DSP to get the signal from your ADC to your PC for signal processing. You might find 8-core DSPs with built-in 10GbE capabilities easier to program than a 10GbE IP on a FPGA... ------ a_t48 I wish I had seen this at my last job. This is something I had to set up and it was painful - lots of trial and error. ------ otterley (2017) ------ fulafel This would be interesting to try on today's faster ethernet speeds, wonder how it goes at 100G.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google engineer ends push for crypto-only setting in Allo - eigenvector http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/05/incensing-critics-google-engineer-ends-push-for-crypto-only-setting-in-allo/ ====== tetrep It's very dishertening to see people get pushed around by their employers loke this. Does censoring the opinions of your employees not count as evil?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom - davedickenson Are libraries illegal? Libraries lend out movies, music, and nearly all other forms of information on a daily basis and I believe they're allowed to do it (at least so far -GOD help us when the RIAA or MPAA turn their wrath on libraries, could be soon!).<p>Take the library idea one step further... I am, personally, more than willing to lend my music/video compilations - small as they may be - to as many people as ask for it. Am I breaking any laws by do so? What if the people I lend them to copy them, did I break some law or did they? Can I be sued for lending my music/video discs to people who then copy them?<p>Unfortunately for the RIAA/MPAA music and videos are now firmly seated in the digital realm where "lending" means to making them available for downloading. Unfortunately for us there is no digital equivalent to "lending" a physical object, -ie I give the disc, the borrower takes the disc, I no longer have the disc. In the digital world giving implies making a "copy" for/by the borrower.<p>But, isn't this like playing the music loud so more than one person can hear it? Would all the listeners be hearing the original music on disc or are they hearing a "copy" of the sounds as they propagate through the air. Are such "copies" to be made illegal too (don't laugh, wireless signals work the same way too and you can be sue for "listening-in")?<p>Perhaps we can find a way to make sharing digital music/videos that conforms, at least in principle, with the way libraries and friends share the same. I can think of at least one way to do it, and it's a side effect of a project I'm working on with some friends. Anyone with ideas about how this might work? ====== getonit As long as it's illegal to shoot people who place money over other things, the disease will never be cured.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google's new data center in Finland - drtse4 http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/09/15/googles-mega-data-center-in-finland/ ====== avar Google page about the data center: <http://www.google.com/datacenter/hamina/> I can't see it on Google Street View, unless it's that area of tents on the map. But I don't see anything that looks like a paper mill there. Maybe they just dropped the marker in a random location. Edit: Yes they did, here's an actual Google Maps link: [http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=60.536944,27.116944...](http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=60.536944,27.116944&ie=UTF8&ll=60.540821,27.130566&spn=0.016547,0.11776&z=13&layer=tc&cbll=60.539887,27.125669&panoid=fKiaXsB2CZcsakOg8BuX9g&cbp=11,229.57,,0,2.45) The street view doesn't show the location, just a guarded gate into the area. Here's a Finnish Wikipedia article about the site (with the coordinates): <http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summan_paperitehdas> And Google Images of the site: [http://www.google.fi/images?um=1&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&...](http://www.google.fi/images?um=1&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&q=summan+paperitehdas&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=) ~~~ drtse4 Looks like it is/it was a geocaching location [http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=f13ea...](http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=f13ea14e-e452-4248-ad26-272721c7dd8a) ------ jparise Interestingly, Nokia started off as a Finnish paper mill. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#Pre- telecommunications_er...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#Pre- telecommunications_era) ~~~ Alleyfield What's even more interesting is that prior deciding to produce mobile phones - Nokia's biggest asset was producing rubber boots. ~~~ MikeCapone I think this was mentioned in a recent issue of The Economist. Just out of curiosity, is this were you found out about it? ~~~ Alleyfield To fulfill your curiosity - No. I knew it beforehand as I'm a Finn myself. And here's the first logo of Nokia. It's quite, uhm, interesting compared to what they're doing at the moment, wouldn't you agree <http://www.about- nokia.com/images/nokia-logo1.jpg> ------ nirmal _Google plans to employ 50-60 people to run the data center. So far they have found four, so they have some head hunting to do._ Google Maps says Hamina is a 2 hour drive from Helsinki, can any Finns comment on if this is an accurate time? Or is it one of those 6 months of the year the roads are dead sort of thing? ~~~ sushi Yeah It's almost 2 hours 15 minutes drive from Helsinki but driving is the only option to reach Hamina. There is no rail system connecting Hamina (there was one, no longer operational). I have been closely following the news about this particular datacenter and it really is strange that Google hasn't found enough engineers for the job there. I have been seeing the ads for the jobs at Hamina datacentre since last one year or so. ~~~ zeemonkee I've only been to Hamina once (nice harbour BTW) but I don't recall if there was a university or technical college there. I'd have thought Helsinki/Espoo, Tampere or Oulu would have been better for communications and near to recruitment grounds. ~~~ sushi You are right. Helsinki/Espoo, Tampere or Oulu would have been far better choices from the point of recruitment but this is a large piece of land and probably Google didn't want to let it go. Besides they must have thought the name _Google_ is enough to get smart people where ever they want. btw this is what centre of Hamina looks like : <http://torikamera.haminetti.net/user/toricam.html> ~~~ iuyhgtfvgbhjn I assume they are getting a big chunk of local/national/eu grants to support the depressed area and a quick pass on building/environmental permits which you wouldn't get for building it in the capital. Plus as the article says - this is really the St. Petersburg/Stalingrad/Leningrad data center without the political problems of having to keep renaming it. ------ mhb How big an issue is corrosion when using sea water for cooling? I thought this was why fire departments don't use salt water to put out fires. ~~~ Retric They probably use a two loop system so most of their pipes are not filled with salt water. ~~~ j-g-faustus Yes, that's what they are saying in the linked video, around the 1-minute mark: [http://www.hs.fi/talous/artikkeli/Google+raotti+ovea+hakukon...](http://www.hs.fi/talous/artikkeli/Google+raotti+ovea+hakukoneen+uumeniin+Summassa/1135252144819) [We will be] taking the heat outside of the building and using cold [sea] water to remove it So it could mean air cooling inside the building, using salt water to cool the air. ------ herdrick I've been wondering for a while why Google and others don't put data centers in Iceland. Electricity there is almost free of charge and has zero carbon footprint - in fact zero emissions of any sort. (It's geothermal.) The location is remote so you would have some extra latency but for lots of stuff that'd be fine. ~~~ iuyhgtfvgbhjn Poor international connectivity. Small country, where do you hire a lawyer with expertise in Icelandic IP law? How much jurisprudence is there? Do you trust the government given that they just basically walked away from their bank guarantees ~~~ herdrick I don't think you would need IP lawyers to set up and run a data center. And yes I do trust the Icelandic government. ------ paulitex Was anyone able to glean Google's plans for the huge volumes of heated sea water 'waste'? I sure hope they're not planning on just pumping it back into the Baltic - warming of the world's oceans and seas is a very serious problem (see [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/temperature- ocean-...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/temperature-ocean-life/) for a summary). It seems this only shifts their heat dissipation problem from having to cool servers to having to cool large quantities of sea water. Perhaps the latter is an easier problem to solve (gigantic outdoor cooling tubs?) but I don't know. ~~~ jonknee Many power plants heat sea water (either for steam or cooling), I think the ocean can handle a data center just fine. Update: I should add that I'm all for environmental study to make sure that they aren't venting it out in a sensitive ecosystem or at a radically different temp. Done correctly this can be an important development towards sustainable data centers. ~~~ Alleyfield We're talking about the baltic sea here. Its average depth is 55m. Besides, it's already quite contaminated so there is a lot of environmental protection going around it. [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/BalticSea...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/BalticSea_March2000_NASA-S2000084115409_md.jpg) As you can see, there really isn't places for the water to flow back and forth, so it's not a case of "the ocean is going to handle it" Always consider the context. ~~~ russss Yes, but it's still a massive body of water. Local heating of the water may be an environmental issue (although a small one, I think), but heating of the entire Baltic Sea is absolutely negligible. ------ Marticus I believe this is the final answer for water-cooled systems, haha. ------ icco I'm kind of confused why we care. It's another data center, big whoop. I am worried about the waste from warming sea water, but other than that, meh? ~~~ jodrellblank If you don't care, why comment? I am impressed at Google putting datacenters in cold climates for cheaper cooling. You know they have enough datacenters and custom software that they can migrate heavy compute jobs around the planet, keeping them running in night regions where the temperature is lower and cooling cheaper? ~~~ icco It's not that I don't care, I just don't understand why this is news. I'd love to know if what you claim they are doing is actually happening, but I didn't see that in this article. From what I can tell, all this article says is "Google is creating a new data center and it is cooled by the ocean."	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Steve Wozniak Explains the Biggest Difference Between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates - anaxag0ras http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-steve-wozniak-steve-jobs-bill-gates-2015-5?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29 ====== Alupis The biggest difference between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates is Steve Jobs rejected modern medicine, science and technology, leading to his early and most likely avoidable death.[1] > In spite of pleas from family and friends, he tried to cure himself through > acupuncture sessions, drinking special fruit juices, visiting > "spiritualists" and using other treatments he found on the internet. [1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8841347/Steve- Jo...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8841347/Steve-Jobs- regretted-trying-to-beat-cancer-with-alternative-medicine-for-so-long.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel – A tediously accurate map of the solar system - takinola http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email ====== nercht12 Nice of them to add comments and not make the ride so boring. Scrolling speed is nice with the arrow keys.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Cheapest place to stay at and work out of in Bay Area? - zkirill Has anybody got any ideas beyond just watching out for good postings on Craigslist? Looking for insider tips from locals. Not interested in comfort, just needs to be inhabitable. Thanks! ====== andymoe Lake Meritt area in Oakland is pretty cheap and livable. I had an ok one bedroom over there for 750 ish a few years back. It's also pretty near BART so it's easy to get to sf. <http://www.oaklandnet.com/parks/parks/lakemerritt.asp> Inner Richmond in sf is also cheaper (for sf) and sunnier than the sunset area. ~~~ zkirill Thanks andymoe, I'll check it out!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Vivaldi 1.13 is here :) - OlgaA We’ve just released Vivaldi 1.13! It adds Window Panel, improves Downloads and brings lots of other features. Please take a look at our blog post here and let us know what you think! https://vivaldi.com/blog/teamblog/vivaldi-1-13-adds-window-panel/ ====== jonmccull Big fan of the Window Panel. I think I'll try disabling the Tab Bar and only uses this to manage my tabs for a bit. :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GShard: Scaling Giant Models with Conditional Computation and Automatic Sharding - lawrenceyan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VdEw_mGjFk ====== lawrenceyan For easier viewing: 0:00 - Intro & Overview 4:10 - Main Results 5:10 - Mixture-of-Experts 16:00 - Difference to Scaling Classic Transformers 18:50 - Backpropagation in Mixture-of-Experts 20:05 - MoE Routing Algorithm in GShard 38:20 - GShard Einsum Examples 47:40 - Massively Multilingual Translation 56:00 - Results 1:11:30 - Conclusion & Comments	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
ARM Cortex-A9 SMP Announced: High-Performance ARM - neilc http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/09/16/ARMCortexA9SMPDesignAnnounced.aspx ====== DarkShikari That's why we dedicated one of our Google Summer of Code spots this summer to developing ARM support for x264: <http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=142> Now we have most of the core DSP functions optimized for NEON SIMD, we can achieve realtime CIF video encoding on a ~400mhz Cortex A8. Now start doing the math... A Cortex A9 is faster than an A8, per clock. The chips are planned to scale up to 2Ghz, 5 times faster than ours. Quadcores are already hitting silicon. At this rate, there might even be a market for ARM servers in a few years-- low-power, high-performance devices designed to minimize cooling and electricity costs in the datacenter. ------ Aegean My startup is about virtualizing OS kernels on these processors. I am a single founder and a kernel hacker. Single because not many people have enough skills + want to start a startup. I always wonder if there are any real kernel hackers here that might want to get involved. <http://www.l4dev.org> ~~~ wagerlabs How are you looking to make money? ~~~ agl ... and where are you based? ~~~ Aegean Currently spread around the world as a few engineers. Works well so far. Planning to have U.S. presence - either boston or the valley, and been to the valley for exhibitions. Making money is via dual-licensing the project. GPLv3 is too restrictive to deploy, so people buy a commercial one. Skill set needed: Linux Kernel, C, Assembler, Linkers & loaders, Python. ------ rbanffy I hope this ushers an era of architecture diversity. Diversity is one of the most powerful tools in evolution's bag. Besides that, this x86 world is utterly boring. ~~~ neilc Diversity for its own sake doesn't seem that compelling: there was previously much more diversity in CPU architectures, and presumably there were valid "evolutionary" reasons for that changing (e.g. network effects WRT software support, economies of scale WRT building foundries). ~~~ rbanffy The network effect around software support to binary architectures is irrelevant (next to, actually) when applied free and open-source software. An ARM netbook has been proved viable regarding software availability because Linux-based netbooks have already proved themselves viable. The fact they employ x86 processors is a historical accident. ------ kevbin I think this might spawn a whole new category of very-small, energy-efficient laptops primarily used to access electronic mail, world-wide web sites, and those new-fangled instant-messaging services. ~~~ zokier "Internet Tablet" ring a bell? Check out N900, it has quite nice ARM CPU etc ~~~ kevbin I was making a funny. I'm hoping santa brings me an ARM netbook this year.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Arborists Have Cloned Ancient Redwoods from Their Massive Stumps - jomaorfe https://e360.yale.edu/digest/arborists-have-cloned-ancient-redwoods-from-their-massive-stumps ====== matco11 “Cloning” here seems the wrong (click-batey) choice of words. They have horticulturally propagated redwood trees - that’s a relatively simple technique, commonly used by your average gardener. What’s special here is that they found which conditions maximize the yield of the redwoods propagation and they are planting colonies of the new trees in areas around the world that offer particularly good/promising climatic conditions. As these are very large trees, establishing large colonies can have a relatively meaningful impact in carbon capture. ~~~ fredley > As these are very large trees, establishing large colonies can have a > relatively meaningful impact in carbon capture. Surely it's not size but speed of growth that matters? Wouldn't forests of Leylandii (a fast-growing conifer that can grow as fast as 1m/year) felled and resowed every few years/decades capture more carbon? ~~~ blauditore I guess it matters a lot what happens to the grown out wood as well. If it's burned after cutting it down, you're back to zero for that particular tree. So assuming you're not storing large amounts of cut-down wood, the relevant metric is amount of bound carbon per surface area, and I think larger trees might have a higher density (in the long run) than smaller ones. ~~~ kijin Coastal redwood lives for a looong time, up to 3000 years. All that carbon is eventually going to go back to the atmosphere one way or another, but the time scale looks long enough to keep some carbon safely sequestered until after we've figured out how to live in harmony with our planet -- assuming we don't manage to kill all the trees in the meantime. ------ mabbo Where and when can I buy one? Look, this is one of those cool cases where the free market may be able to _help_ the environment instead of harming it. Sell these seedlings for $200/each. Some number of people (myself included) will happily buy them, then plant them _wherever_ and the world has more of these amazing trees. The funds can be used to further the cause of helping forests and old trees. ~~~ androidgirl You can currently purchase redwood seeds online to grow yourself! Plant them in peat moss in large groups to be sure they survive, as most seeds are not viable. Keep them warm until they germinate, too! However, redwoods are really, really destructive anywhere that isn't a wide open field. Their roots will tear up concrete and pipes. Also, they shed branches like crazy during rapid growth, which deals damage to surrounding structures or flora. Just something to keep in mind! If you have space and they won't be a danger to current inhabitants of the area, go for it. ~~~ Haga Found them to be difficult to grow. Average dry flat air is not good, to wet and they rot. Need water spray regularly. ~~~ chabes Yes, coast redwoods grow where there’s plenty of ocean influence. Hence the name.. ------ ZachWick I went to a planting a few years ago put on by this same group in Ann Arbor, MI at the Nichols Arboretum [0]. It was pretty inspiring to see a real living clone and hear David Milarch speak about the science and art of cloning these old growth trees. IIRC, the clones planted in Ann Arbor are from one of the Giant Sequoias at [1] in northern MI. [0] [http://sustainability.umich.edu/events/sequoia- planting](http://sustainability.umich.edu/events/sequoia-planting) [1] [https://www.michigan.org/property/lake-bluff-bird- sanctuary](https://www.michigan.org/property/lake-bluff-bird-sanctuary) ~~~ Exuma I had ego death from 1/4 of mushrooms in that amazing place many years ago. Such a beautiful little area that will be with me until I die. ~~~ samatman Huh, can say the same actually. Small world. ------ Dowwie Fun fact: Metasequoia are in New York City and New Jersey. Around the five boroughs are 100 year old, towering Dawn redwood! I have even seen full grown trees in Cresskill, NJ. Recently, a two year art exhibit in Brooklyn [1] concluded that used more than four thousand live, baby Metasequoia. All of the trees have since found new homes, but I am unsure where the recipients are. I now have a baby Metasequoia growing in the corner of my front lawn. The tree was a gift from the owner of the tree farm that supplied the Dawn redwood for the exhibit. [1] [https://www.publicartfund.org/view/exhibitions/6126_spencer_...](https://www.publicartfund.org/view/exhibitions/6126_spencer_finch_lost_man_creek) ~~~ rsync Thank you. Another surprising redwood tree is in the "Rieterpark" in central Zurich. ~~~ jbrazile And further down the lake of Zurich was this one planted in 1860: [https://www.google.com/maps/@47.2305482,8.6713386,3a,60y,287...](https://www.google.com/maps/@47.2305482,8.6713386,3a,60y,287.47h,94.77t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s8tMzvEYgewAqqS4Q2ghjsg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656) ------ njarboe This species of tree grows all over Northern Coastal California and there huge preserved areas of old growth trees throughout the region. It is great to keep replanting coastal redwoods to help replace all the ones that were cut down, but this cloning of gigantic old stumps sure feels like a pure propaganda move with no ecological benefit over using seeds. It is likely a bad idea to plant a lot of clones of single individuals, especially in concentrated areas next to each other. ~~~ kseistrup Except the trees that were used for cloning have a proven track record of being able to survive for hundreds of years (“some of which were 3,000 years old”). ~~~ quixoticelixer- It would be highly unlikely that the seeds aren't also capable doing that. ~~~ kseistrup Right. But the clones were made from stumps, not from seed-bearing trees. And even if you used seeds from “old trees”, there would be no guarantee that the entire genome in the seed originated from “old trees”, or that the relevant genes responsible for “getting old” are expressed to the same extend as in the old tree stumps. I'm all for genetic diversity, but I think the researchers have a point when they use living cells from provably very, very old trees to establish new trees. Even if you took seeds that were known to have a genome originating from one or two “old trees” there would be significant genetic variation in the seeds, and it would take centuries before we know if a plant from a given seed has what it takes to become as old as its parent(s). ~~~ njarboe Sure. But there are thousands and thousands of really big, old redwood trees that are growing today. It cool and all to clone the biggest old stumps. But they are likely the biggest because they were growing in very good locations. I would say taking almost as big trees from less ideal locations growing today have even a better chance of getting really old and big. My point is that the stump thing is for marketing to an unknowing public, not based on trying to find the redwood tree genomes that will grow the oldest trees. I was trying to help public be a bit less unknowing on the subject. ------ amenod Nitpick: > ...some of the world’s oldest and largest coast redwoods, some of which were > 3,000 years old... > a nonprofit working to reestablish ancient redwood > forests to help combat climate change. Coastal redwoods, which can grow an > average 10 feet per year, sequester 250 tons of carbon dioxide from the > atmosphere over their lives, compared to 1 ton for an average tree. Yes, but over <3000 years, so the comparison doesn't tell anything without knowing the lifespan of an "average tree". Not that it matters though, the achievement is great, and I hope this helps us return many species that went extinct only because they had the misfortune to exist at the same time as humans. ------ newnewpdro This isn't the Wooly Mammoth. My impression is we already have the same species of Redwoods living today, they just need a lot more years of growth to reach such epic proportions. Am I missing something? ~~~ Cthulhu_ I wonder the same; did they 'clone' the tree, or just propagate the saplings? I think the latter is a lot more believable and less clickbait. ~~~ thaumasiotes The article specifies that they took cuttings, a pretty ancient technology. But the fact that the technology is old doesn't mean it's not cloning. Plants are easy to clone. ~~~ stochastic_monk It says “DNA” and “genetic material”, while also talking about finding living tissue and growing from it. I think the presentation is either misleading or confusing. ~~~ wil421 It’s a tissue culture. The result is an exact clone of the tissue doner. They didn’t get Dino DNA from amber but a clones a clone. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_tissue_culture](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_tissue_culture) ~~~ stochastic_monk Thank you, though I do understand. I’m saying that the article’s repeated mention of DNA is misleading, since it’s not being directly used by humans. ------ jmspring Sadly a lot of our forest eco-systems, especially in CA are at risk. Drought, poor forest management, bark beattle, over forestation, etc. Were forestry practices 100+ years ago good, not really - a lot of these ancient trees spawned eco-systems in themselves (evident in the Headwaters groves). That said, modern "do nothing" approaches pushed by environmental "concerns" are the exact opposite of the over-logging. Sadly, no middle-ground was approched with towns that relied on sustainable logging and good forest management practices. I don't ever recall a conversation about such happening. The recent debacles with PG&E? They are highly to blame for funneling "maintenance money" to their parent corporation for profits. However, in California, the National Forests vary greatly in their management practices as well. Plumas is pretty good at cleaning duff, downed trees, etc. Some of the others, not at all. During the Detweiller and related fires, PG&E was offering to work with the NPS around Yosemite to clear dead trees due to bark beattle. NPS said no. Why? It would ruin the ambiance (of dead brown trees). Drought, the beattle, etc. cause a number of issues for our forests in CA. However, management practices and hinderances due to some over reactions in environmental policy are jsut as bad. ~~~ londons_explore Can you explain what's wrong with the "do nothing" approach? It seems to me to be the most natural and clearly the cheapest too. Perhaps simple steps like putting up fences or signs saying 'nature reserve, keep out" might be worthwhile, but I don't see how any more invasive steps will lead to a more natural forest. ~~~ FakeComments Death is the natural outcome of heart attacks, but you don’t seem to apply your logic to what hospitals do. There’s no a priori reason to believe the “natural” outcome is a good outcome. Large wildfires are natural, like heart attacks. If we want to let nature be nature, we need to stay well clear, put up defined firebreaks, and let the forest burn down everything next to it periodically. And then accept half or more of certain states will be clouded in smoke some years. Since people generally seem unwilling to do that, and live next to the forest, or just don’t like smokey cities, the next choice is to manage the forest and minimize the intensity of forest fires while having some control over the timing through managed burns. This has side benefits like increasing the air quality across the whole state, because you never get these giant fires. The worst outcome seems to be having people live next to the forest while doing nothing, because we periodically have random disasters and financial messes. ------ hiccuphippo Won't they have problems with the low genetic diversity the same way Cavendish bananas seem to be in problem now? ~~~ bduerst The redwood trees are still able to sexually reproduce with other variants, unlike the banana trees that are cultivated for crops. ~~~ mark-r The issue is that they appear to be establishing groves of genetically identical trees, so sexual reproduction is irrelevant. Unless you're planting next to an established forest. ~~~ bduerst The difference still lay in that the groves are still genetically different from each other, unlike bananas which are the same genetic organism planted on thousands of acres. ~~~ mark-r That does no good unless the groves are close enough to allow interbreeding. From what I understand they're trying to establish these groves all around the world, and most won't have any neighbors. ------ RosanaAnaDana Total aside, but as an undergraduate, I was part of the school tissue culture club. We brought 'albino' redwoods into culture and made a pretty hefty profit selling carnivorous plants on Fridays. We did a tour of a local redwood companies tissue culture lab, and almost all the employees were female, and a fair few had developed severe arthritis in their work. Was very depressing to see. ~~~ jelliclesfarm Would it be possible to automate tissue culture with precision robotics? ~~~ RosanaAnaDana Totally. Especially considering that plants are a kind of biological machine which works to turn light into plant stuff. This means that how the plant interacts with light can tell you _a-lot_ about the health and well being of the light. A pinch of machine vision, and you are pretty much there. ~~~ jelliclesfarm Thanks. Is this already being done? Or is it a tech waiting to be delivered? ~~~ RosanaAnaDana I'm almost 100% convinced its already being done by private industry; you can do the vast majority of it w.out any ML/AI component. Biggest issue however is that it only makes sense on high margin plants. See, as it turns out, plants already have this novel/ ingenious way of packaging the data required to make complete copies of into very discrete packages. They're called seeds, and in general, for the vast majority of cases, seeds which are often actually cheaper than dirt are just fine. Only when you have a plant that has certain characteristics (GMO in a non- hereditary trait etc..) does this make real sense. ~~~ jelliclesfarm I understand. I was thinking of Apple and stone fruit orchards where commercially fruit is grown in a standard way and would require exact clones etc. ------ drieddust That stump is sad reminder of greedy destruction we have bought to the world. I hope we can reverse it. ~~~ chris_overseas For anyone looking to offset their carbon emissions, I looked into the various options and settled on Cool Earth[0] as the most promising charity for this. Here's some commentary on them from independent research on charities[1]: "We estimate that Cool Earth is able to reduce emissions by 1 tonne of CO2-equivalent for every $1.34 donated, for directly protected forest specifically (although this figure may be as low as $0.65). If indirectly shielded forest is also included, this drops to $0.38 per tonne of CO2-equivalent. This is 25 times less expensive than most carbon offset providers, which typically reduce emissions by 1 tonne for roughly every $10 spent" Having said that, it's even better to not produce the CO₂ in the first place of course. [0] [https://www.coolearth.org/](https://www.coolearth.org/) [1] [https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool- earth/](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-earth/) ~~~ thangalin "At this stage the information gathered doesn’t allow me to give a strong opinion on Cool Earth, but I would recommend that we now consider the earlier [Giving What We Can] analysis out of date." [https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RnmZ62kuuC8XzeTBq/...](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RnmZ62kuuC8XzeTBq/why- we-have-over-rated-cool-earth) ------ throwaway5752 This is a great thing that will pay increasingly high dividends for decades and centuries: [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914) ------ rcostin2k2 How is the CO2 capture for redwood (250t over 3000yrs per tree) compared with other trees ? Would be interesting to know if the lifecycle of those short lived trees (compared with redwood) have better efficiency regarding the carbon capture ... ------ JulianMorrison Just seeing that stump makes me terribly sad for what has already been lost. ~~~ kevin_thibedeau Many forested parts of the US were stripped bare 100 years ago. These will become old growth in time. ------ User23 I always wonder how grafting and budding were discovered. ~~~ josefresco This might help: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting#History,_society_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting#History,_society_and_culture) ~~~ User23 Thanks for the link. I meant in a more narrative sense though. I like to imagine that some fool cut down a tree and changed his or her mind and tried to stick it back together and lo and behold it worked. ------ mark-r Unfortunately these clones are establishing monocultures that are unlikely to do well long term. You need some genetic diversity. ~~~ rattray Redwoods commonly grow as clones in the wild: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens#Reproduct...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens#Reproduction) ~~~ mark-r Yes, but they're not all the _same_ clones. ------ nicwilson Wow! That is one big tree. ------ justaguyhere 3000 years! Isn't mother nature amazing?!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
HN's Submit page sucks - everyone I really admire HNs design. Its a bastion of elegant pragmatism in an age of bloat and irritating whimsy.. But the submit page sucks. Here are two problems I've just encountered.<p>1. I try to submit something and it says "Please try again." I can try over and over again and get the same message. Obviously something is wrong here, perhaps the site could indicate what?<p>2.Theres no link back to the HN homepage, and if I've tried submitting 10 times then I'd need to hit back 10 times in my browser to get back to it. ====== DrScump Theres no link back to the HN homepage When you submit successfully, the resulting page you get is not the Newest page ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newest](https://news.ycombinator.com/newest)), with the HN homepage then directly clickable (the "Hacker News" link at top left)? Because that's what I've always seen.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
AI Defeats the Hivemind - J3L2404 http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26186/ ====== futuremint Wait... the naive-Bayes was trained on Yelp data? Isn't Yelp data _also_ crowd-sourced information? I may not be thinking about this right, but it seems to me that training the classifier on crowd-sourced data and then comparing that to Mechanical Turk... that in the end you're just comparing the quality of the crowd-sourced data to each other? ~~~ JonnieCache In fact you're comparing individually crowdsourced data to massively mechanically aggregated crowdsourced data. When viewed like this the results are not in the least surprising. ------ nicpottier Making good Turk tasks is a science in of in itself. Figuring out the incentive is the key, and sometimes you have to think a bit out of the box. We actually used turking at my company for some really nutty stuff, logo generation. Basically we'd give people a URL and ask them to generate a 160x40 logo for it. We had some base rules, like the background had to be solid, have no scaling artifacts etc.. We assigned each logo to five people. Our reward was essentially this: \- anybody who met all the rules, got .25c \- the best of all that met the rules, got a 50c bonus It took a few days for people to get the hang of it, but after that we consistently got excellent results, with some really creative stuff coming back. Yes, we were paying up to $1.50 for the logos, but we weren't using them for every site, only the really popular ones, and having it automated made it worth it. Every day we spent maybe 60 seconds picking the best logo of five submissions for a few dozen sites, everything else was automated. The product that used these by the way is NewsRoom, a pretty sexy RSS reader available on Android. All the logos you see for sites there were generated by Turkers. Anyways, finding the right equation for that task took some experimentation, but I was impressed by the results in the end. ------ bad_user 79 passed. This was an extremely basic multiple choice test. It makes one wonder how the other 4,581 were smart enough to operate a web browser in the first place. I stopped reading right there. As for the question itself, that's simple: people come for the money, and since "Turkers" are paid pennies for those tasks that means they have to do a lot of them; so replying randomly on a test is a no-brainer (I wouldn't even bother to click and type and just write a script). It's a good thing we've got these magazines reminding us how we are so smart and the rest of the world is so stupid. What would I do without my over- inflated ego? ~~~ LiveTheDream If you had kept on reading, you would have seen that the article specifically identifies low wages as a likely cause for the low quality. ~~~ bad_user Yes, but why keep reading an article that insults people ... the reason for the low accuracy was not the point of my comment. My own father is "not smart enough" to operate a browser. Lack of English skills don't help him. But he can read French and Russian just fine, he has a Ph.D in his profession and a carrier in politics (former advisor to the prime minister, currently a senator in a eastern-European country). ------ carbocation They don't mention the price per HIT. If they're paying between $0.01 and $0.05 for these HITs, I'm not surprised by these results. I looked at the cited paper and did not see the cost, but without the cost I really would not bother interpreting these results. "Machines work for electricity; humans need real money. News at 11." ~~~ mattmcknight Who is to say that the mechanical turk-ers aren't AI? ~~~ d4nt Now there's an idea. It would be a beautiful irony if, in a few years from now, the mechanical turk API was used as an open platform for AI applications to make money solving difficult problems. ~~~ JonnieCache Well according to the article, this would be lucrative to some extent right now. As ever it would be a problem of matching problems to algorithms. EDIT: maybe we can get the real MTers to do the algorithm/problem matching bit... ------ nl Did anyone else read the paper? The summary doesn't seem very correct to me. From the summary: _The results weren't pretty: in order to find a population of Turkers whose work was passable, the researchers first used Mechanical Turk to administer a test to 4,660 applicants. It was a multiple choice test to determine whether or not a Turker could identify the correct category for a business (Restaurant, Shopping, etc.) and verify, via its official website or by phone, its correct phone number and address. 79 passed. This was an extremely basic multiple choice test. It makes one wonder how the other 4,581 were smart enough to operate a web browser in the first place._ From the paper: _Of the 4,660 workers who took this test, only 1,658 (35.6%) workers earned a passing score, and over 25% of workers answered fewer than half of the questions correctly. To investigate the high failure rate, we conversed with workers directly on TurkerNation and through private email. Based upon worker’s names and email addresses, we believe that we conversed with a representative sample of workers both inside and outside the United States. We found that the test was not too difﬁcult and that most workers comprehended the questions. We believe that many applicants simply try to gain access to tasks as quickly as possible and do not actually put care into completing the test._ ie, 1658/4660 workers passed this test, NOT 79 (!!) Then later they describe some additional filtering they put in place to attempt to find the best workers (they tried estimated location and time to complete task). Based on these filters they said: _Using a combination of pre- screening and the test tasks described above, only 79 workers of 4,660 applicants qualiﬁed to process real business changes._ ------ john_horton I was at NIPS and talked to one of the authors. I thought the paper was interesting, but I think the "you're not paying enough" critique is spot on. Humans clearly _can_ be better at this task---you just can't give them strong incentives to cut corners on quality, which happens with a low piece-rate and a task that takes on the order of 3 ~ 4 minutes to do properly. ------ JonnieCache Am I right in thinking that a naive Bayes classifier is beyond "not even the best out there," and is in fact about as simple a learning algorithm as you can get, and straight out of AI 101? ~~~ gjm11 Pretty much, yes. (Though that doesn't mean it's not a good technique. Lots of quite effective spam filters are more or less naive-Bayes.) ~~~ abeppu They're sometimes a good technique only because some problems are really simple. There are almost no problems where the extreme independence assumptions of naive Bayes create a reasonable likelihood function. The consequence ends up that when it's wrong, it tends to be very very certain that it's right. I think the aphorism that gets passed around is "Naive Bayes classifiers are often in error but never uncertain". ~~~ gjm11 Yup. But some problems -- for instance, discriminating between spam and non- spam emails, and keeping up decent discrimination as spammers vary their tactics -- are (1) "really simple" in that sense and (2) apparently quite difficult to solve, given that there basically were no really effective spam filters before naive-Bayes ones came along. ------ yarapavan The original NIPS 2010 paper that sourced this article is - "Towards Building a High-QualityWorkforce with Mechanical Turk". Available at [http://www.cs.umass.edu/~wallach/workshops/nips2010css/paper...](http://www.cs.umass.edu/~wallach/workshops/nips2010css/papers/wais.pdf) HN submission of the same (13 days ago) here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1984130> ------ ianferrel Does this indicate that the majority of Turkers are _already_ just simple scripts? Perhaps just not as well adapted to particular problem sets as this custom-built one was.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
10 Tactics to Improve Blog Readership [video] - noyalizor http://moz.com/blog/10-tactics-to-improve-blog-readership-whiteboard-friday ====== dozzie Number five should be number one: have actually something to say.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
TechStars incubator hatches 10 new companies - jasonlbaptiste http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2009/08/techstars-incubator-hatches-10-new-companies.html ====== jknupp TakeComics, one of the companies mentioned, has the absolute worst copy ever on their landing page. It is rife with grammatical and spelling errors. A fine example of how to turn off visitors. ------ zhyder Another similar thread that's been killed but has more comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=746701> ~~~ paul9290 Why was it killed? Hopefully not because TS is perceived YC competition? These incubators are great for all hackers and entrepreneurs who are the readers and contributors of HN. ~~~ pg _Why was it killed?_ It's a dupe; it's the same article. ------ qeorge I've used Vanilla forums before and liked them a great deal. Is this Lussumo in the TechStars program, or has someone taken their open-source app and run with it? ~~~ mcm It's them. They're looking to take their goods to the next level.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
When Mozilla's Fanatics Make Us All Look Bad - jasoncartwright http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001099.html ====== ZeroGravitas This seems a little bit "fanatic" itself, though I've not read what they're responding to so maybe that's even worse. I'm glad someone is coming up with the ideas, even if the right answer is "not yet" or "we need to fix X and Y first". ------ binaryatrocity First of all, Mozilla is talking about slowly shutting down -features- in their browser to non-https sites, especially those that could pose a security risk to the user or their computer. I see nothing wrong with that. Second, Mozilla is partnering with the EFF to launch Let's Encrypt! which will be a Certificate Authority providing free and automated SSL certs - so that should remove the 'resource barrier' the OP is so concerned about. Mozilla is taking steps in the right direction to provide a safer internet for all of us, but more importantly, those of us that don't know any better, don't know how to protect themselves. Keep it up Mozilla Team! ~~~ pc2g4d I personally don't think the existence of Let's Encrypt makes mandatory encryption more palatable. Requiring encryption is a problem because it introduces one more filter I must pass through before getting my message/app/product out on the web. Now in addition to the DNS registrar and the hosting provider, I have to make Let's Encrypt or some other CA happy--- jump through their hoops, not upset their politics, etc. I'm just not okay with that. ------ ggchappell One conclusion I draw from all this is that it is long past time to separate encryption from identity.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google Bans VPN Ads in China - jmsflknr https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-bans-vpn-ads-in-china/ ====== xster Would Google ban BDS ads in Germany too since it's now illegal [https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Post-Exposé-causes-German- cit...](https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Post-Exposé-causes-German-city-to- remove-pro-boycott-Israel-advertisement-569282). ------ identity_zero It's this type of state intervention into internet companies that I worry about. We'll have lost something special when we give the US or the EU to dictate what we can or can not see on the internet.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The lies I told for insurance companies about 'Medicare for All' worked - howard941 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/health-care-debate-shows-lies-i-told-insurance-companies-about-ncna1067331 ====== daveslash It's good to have an insider speak out and expose some of this stuff, but it would also be nice to see a little remorse about the scale of the deception. Instead, I see that they got a book deal. (I haven't read it... maybe remorse is expressed in there.) ~~~ jnellis Wendell Potter was a national media figure during the hub-bub about the Micheal Moore film Sicko about __ten __years ago. ------ IXxXI Obamacare made it illegal for consumers to shop for health insurance across state lines. Medicare for all eliminates private health insurance, leaving only a single state run monopoly in place. The marketing campaign says obamacare and medicare for all give consumers more options and reduce prices, in reality they do the opposite. ------ ars Medicare advantage might work but the regular Medicaid is absolutely horrible. I know this because I was financially in charge of somebody on Medicaid who had a lot of health needs. We very much regretted not signing up for Medicare advantage while it was still possible. And guess what: Medicare advantage is private health insurance companies, while Medicare regular is government. And no I'm not some hired shill, I tried it I used it, it really and truly is horrible. The problem is very simple it's the 20% copay and the deductibles. someone with a lot of health needs gets an absolute mountain of extraordinarily complicated bills to have to figure out and pay. Then trying to figure out what you are and aren't eligible for requires hours of time. For example hospital stays reset nursing stays and all kinds of complicated rules. If you have somebody on Medicare see how much mail they get, multi-inch thick booklets come in the mail and they're supposed to read them all and understand them. ------ diogenescynic It’s too bad neoliberals like Klobuchar and Buttigieg are using republican talking points to scare the left from pursing Medicare for all. Bernie or Warren are the only options. We need to fundamentally change so many aspects of our society and half-measures aren’t going to do anything but protect the broken status quo. ~~~ dantheman Half measures definitely will not fix the problem. The only way we can make progress on this issue is to fix the problem of transparency on costs, billing, and payments. Right now it's impossible to make any sort of realistic policy proposals because we don't have access to the fundamental data. One thing that concerns me about "medicare for all" is that from a lot of things I've read hospitals that have too many medicare patients go out of business -- what's really going on? Also, another key issue we need to address is the fundamental costs; we can perhaps lower the bar needed to administer healthcare -- if the error rate goes up a little but is offset by access and earlier interventions we could big improvements. Right now we are pretending that we have one standard of care and it's high and expensive; but we really have two high or almost nothing. Perhaps theres room for a medium quality of care that is backstop so that no one gets nothing. ~~~ Can_Not > The only way we can make progress on this issue is to fix the problem of > transparency on costs, billing, and payments. Is anyone actually running on this? Otherwise MFA is simple for the end user and superior to "more options" that nobody can afford or HSA that only benefits people who didn't need it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Search across every word from 25 years of the Simpsons - samclemens http://benschmidt.org/Simpsons/ ====== UncleSlacky Frinkiac does pretty much the same thing but in a more entertaining way: [https://frinkiac.com/](https://frinkiac.com/) ~~~ edpichler Very cool that site, well done. Thanks for sharing. ------ nkrisc It appears I can now confirm that the Sea Captain's name is only mentioned by a character (Lionel Hutz) in one line in Season 4. It does also appear to have been used in a caption in season 11, though not mentioned by a character. His first name is given as Horatio according to the Simpsons wikia but that doesn't seem to appear in the show as far as I can tell. ------ surement It would be nice if the search was case-insensitive! E.g. 'she' returns different data than 'She'. ~~~ talldan there's some settings in the top right corner that allow you to change case sensitivity ------ bakztfuture I jumped straight to, "dental plan" ~~~ Diederich Didn't Lisa need braces? ~~~ virgil_disgr4ce dental plan ------ t0mbstone I find it interesting how "Homer" has experienced a constant, steady decline in usage over time. ~~~ pavel_lishin I'm surprised that Marge is consistently higher ranked than Lisa. ~~~ evincarofautumn Moreover, Homer > Bart > Marge > Lisa > Maggie. ------ danso Very cromulent. Is the raw data available or is that unpossible to legally distribute? ------ irrational So donut returns quite different results than doughnut. Is this just the script writers using their preferred spelling for doughnut, or does this come from transcription data (thus indicating a preferred spelling for transcribers)? ------ parshimers "This is great! And all I've done is enter my name-Thrillhouse!" ------ neonhomer The word "Doh" doesn't even show up until season 8. I'm guessing it's not written out in the closed captioning? ~~~ jerf The official written form is "Annoyed Grunt": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27oh%21#Origin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27oh%21#Origin) ------ tomrod Search does not appear to be case insensitive, nor does it group common words. EDIT: apparently others discovered this an hour or so before me! ------ marzell A few interesting trends: Fox, McBain, Poochie ------ rsync What about us braindead slobs ? ~~~ neonhomer You'll be given cushy jobs! ~~~ s_kilk Monorail ~~~ cbanek Were you sent here by the devil? ~~~ thehodge Nobody gonna finish it?. fine No good sir I'm on the level.. ------ e40 Is the data on which this based freely available? ------ gm-conspiracy tomacco? ------ bertlequant Probablie ~~~ virgil_disgr4ce upvoted for reference sickness index ------ Sangermaine All good people should already have seasons 1-8 memorized. What else would anyone need? ~~~ pavel_lishin My friend and I used to be unbeatable at Taboo, and similar games, because we could use Simpsons references to get to just about any word. ------ blackkettle there are no tick marks on the x axis. ------ ashurbanipal This would be better if it was only 10 years of the Simpsons.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Do you want to change European journalism through technology? - europeandme Have you ever noticed that almost all media have a national angle? Would you like to change the way we write about Europe? At Europe & Me (www.europeandme.eu), we want to establish a new paradigm for European journalism: instead of stories aimed at individual national audiences, we write from a transnational perspective. Since the magazine began, this has partly been made possible by a great website design, and we want to go on pushing boundaries in this area.<p>We’re currently looking for a new tech editor, and if you want to work with an international team, solve a different technical problem every week and help create an innovative magazine, this could be the job for you.<p>This is a flexible role, which would depend on your interests: we are primarily looking for a webmaster, but if you’d like to be involved in layouting articles, training others, or developing new features for the website, you're very welcome to take on these roles! You'll get useful experience in a whole range of areas, and meet people from all over Europe.<p>The project is fully voluntary and not for profit, and all positions are unpaid.<p>Interested? Think you could help? Have an idea to push our magazine forward? For more information, contact application@europeandme.eu. Deadline for applications: 7th of March 2013. ====== europeandme If you have any questions, feel free to post them here!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why isn't Mexico Rich? - cwan http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/why-isnt-mexico-rich/ ====== hga Here's an important reason that I bet isn't in this article: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Slim> (Important background that curiously enough isn't in either Slim's or the NYT's Wikipedia entries: <http://www.google.com/search?q=Carlos+Slim+new+york+times>)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New Features in Java 14 - pjmlp https://blogs.oracle.com/javamagazine/java-14-arrives-with-a-host-of-new-features ====== rafaelvasco "Helpful NullPointerExceptions": One of the biggest pain points of Java, probably the biggest. Good that it's being finally solved; ~~~ cryptos Java is quite far away from finally solving NullPointerException issues. Kotlin, C# or TypeScript with their compile time null checks solved it mostly. Common to these three languages is that they need null to be interoperable with older language versions (C#) or with related languages (Java, JavaScript). Languages like Rust that don't even know null (or nil as in Go), have finally solved the problem. ~~~ rakoo > Languages like Rust that don't even know null (or nil as in Go), have > finally solved the problem. I'm in no way a Rust expert, but I see a lot of code with Optionals, something like match sth { Some(v) => do_something None => nothing_to_do } This looks awfully a lot like if (something == null) { nothing_to_do } else { do_something } It might look more pleasant, but it doesn't "solve" anything, only shifts it in a different place. Go is in the middle, because structs have no null value, only a zero value; the only thing that can be nil are pointers which I personally feel should used as little as possible. ~~~ Sharlin In Java you're passed a reference to an object. Might it be null? _Can_ it be null? Who knows! Mostly you're just going to ignore the possibility and hope for the best. In Rust you're passed a reference to an object. Can it be null? No, it simply can't! There does not exist a magic "null" value for references. To represent the possible absence of a value, you _explicitly_ encode it into the type system by using `Option<T>`. ~~~ hcarvalhoalves Just changed from having a bottom null type for all types to everything being a boxed Option type. It’s equivalent. The actual difference is the reliance on pattern matching and the compiler enforcing coverage on those languages. ~~~ LessDmesg Option types don't have to be boxed and are specifically optimized in Rust and, if I remember correctly, in Haskell. The Nothing is represented much like a null pointer, i.e. with a special value that can't be dereferenced. ~~~ tome Not in Haskell, FYI. Maybes are boxed. ------ mateuszf I wonder about records - they would be great for simplified implementation of immutability, but they seem to not provide a way to copy with a subset of modified fields - like in Scala: case class Person ( firstName: String, lastName: String, age: Int ) you could create an instance like this: val emily1 = Person("Emily", "Maness", 25) and then create a new instance by updating several parameters at once, like this: // emily is married, and a year older val emily2 = emily1.copy(lastName = "Wells", age = 26) ~~~ Benjammer You'd probably have to manually write a Builder in the Person record class. Then the callsite might look something like this: val emily2 = emily1.newBuilder() .lastName("Wells") .age(26) .build() I think the inner Builder pattern is common enough in immutable java object implementations that they might want to include that fully in the Record class generation at some point. Most immutable object libraries that I've seen include a lot more functionality than Records, like builders. ~~~ jeswin Why not do what JS does? val emily2 = { ...emily1, age: 30 }; This has many advantages, one being that it provably and declaratively creates a copy, which is not the case with the builder. In fact the obsession with methods (and hence the implied state) is what makes Java a terrible misfit for functional paradigms such as immutability. ~~~ sa46 I don't understand what you mean by provably. The Java example does the exact same thing as the JS version: create a shallow clone with a different age. Do you mean the builder might do something different? // Java val emily2 = emily1.toBuilder().age(30).build() As far as adding the spread operator to Java, I think you'd have to require a Spreadable interface to use it or limit usage of the spread operators to records. It's not clear to me that the expressive power is worth it over a builder. ~~~ jeswin If a tool analyzed the JS AST, it could conclude (with fairly trivial analysis) that emily2 is a shallow clone of emily1. No such guarantee is possible with the Java version. ------ redact207 "switch expressions", "text blocks". I haven't used Java for 15 years but it's one of the most mature languages out there. I'm surprised it's only just getting these pretty standard features now. ~~~ dionian it's always moved slow on purpose... one of the language's greatest features is backwards compatibility and stability it's purposefully dead simple. this is why many of us switched to alternative JVM langs ... Java can't keep up with the innovation other Langs have without breaking its philosophy of slowmoving/backwards compat ~~~ jfim To be fair, it moved much faster after the Oracle acquisition. The Java 6 era of no changes whatsoever was slow as molasses. The joke back then was that even C++ got lambdas before Java. ~~~ chaorace Anonymous inner classes sucked royally. Java 7 rocked my world when it dropped! ------ leibnitz27 negative instanceof is a _disaster_ I posted a bit about it here [http://www.benf.org/other/cfr/java14instanceof_pattern.html](http://www.benf.org/other/cfr/java14instanceof_pattern.html) it was first noted [https://twitter.com/tagir_valeev/status/1210431331332689920](https://twitter.com/tagir_valeev/status/1210431331332689920) here but the main thing is that if the 'taken' conditional is guaranteed to exit, then scope hiding happens, if not, not. But in java if (true) { throw new Exception(); } is not guaranteed to exit. So: [https://github.com/leibnitz27/cfr_tests/blob/master/src_14/o...](https://github.com/leibnitz27/cfr_tests/blob/master/src_14/org/benf/cfr/tests/InstanceOfPatternTest10.java) In case you don't want to run, as of java (build 14-ea+34-1452) this prints: Fred WIBBLE public class InstanceOfPatternTest10 { static String s = "WIBBLE"; public static void test(Object obj) { if (!(obj instanceof String s)) { throw new IllegalStateException(); } System.out.println(s); } public static void test2(Object obj) { if (!(obj instanceof String s)) { if(true) { throw new IllegalStateException(); } } System.out.println(s); } public static void main(String ... args) { test("Fred"); test2("Fred"); } } ~~~ vbezhenar Looks like a bug. But anyway should be easily detectable by a static analysis and reported as a warning, so not a big deal in practice, even if working as intended. ~~~ leibnitz27 Nope - the if condition is not considered in flow analysis. Read the end: [https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se8/html/jls-14.htm...](https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se8/html/jls-14.html#jls-14.21) "14.21. Unreachable Statements It is a compile-time error if a statement cannot be executed because it is unreachable. This section is devoted to a precise explanation of the word "reachable." The idea is that there must be some possible execution path from the beginning of the constructor, method, instance initializer, or static initializer that contains the statement to the statement itself. The analysis takes into account the structure of statements. Except for the special treatment of while, do, and for statements whose condition expression has the constant value true, the values of expressions are not taken into account in the flow analysis." ~~~ vbezhenar I still don't understand why reachable or unreachable changes the binding from names to local variable/field. The process of identifier resolution should happen before reachability analysis. Is there some bug or mail list thread with reaction from Java developers? ~~~ leibnitz27 I haven't raised mine, as I consider it to be a refinement of the bug noted in [https://twitter.com/tagir_valeev/status/1210431331332689920](https://twitter.com/tagir_valeev/status/1210431331332689920) (Don't know if java devs have responsed to that.) (again, reachability analysis of unrelated code changes semantics.) The problem is that this IS defined behaviour - the scope of the instanceof- assigned variable is dependent on whether or not the taken if-statement is provably exiting. This is intended to allow { if (!(obj instanceof String s)) return; // s exists now. } But it's not been thought through. ~~~ vbezhenar IMO they should treat it exactly like they treat uninitialized variables. void test1(boolean b) { String s; if (b) { return; } else { s = "test"; } System.out.println(s); } This code compiles. void test2(boolean b) { String s; if (b) { if ("a".equals("a")) { return; } } else { s = "test"; } System.out.println(s); } This code does not compile. But it does not mean that println will try to resolve s to something else. I think that they should have gone to a similar route, where declared variable will be available for entire lexical block where `if` was used, but initialized only inside matched branch. Usage in other code would error with "variable might not have initialized" consistently how it works now. Of course that would require to shadow previous declaration for consecutive `if`-s. But it would be much more obvious and understandable. Actually the whole construction would be just a syntax sugar almost expressible with current Java constructions: /* if (o instanceof String s) { System.out.println(s.length()); } //System.out.println(s.length()); // variable might not have initialized if (o instanceof Number s) { System.out.println(s.intValue()); } */ String s; if (o instanceof String) { s = (String) o; System.out.println(s.length()); } //System.out.println(s.length()); // variable might not have initialized Number s$; // no variable shadowing in Java now, but it could work if (o instanceof Number) { s$ = (Number) o; System.out.println(s$.intValue()); } //System.out.println(s$.intValue()); // variable might not have initialized and would be directly expressible if Java would allow variable name shadowing which is a good thing as proven by Go and Rust (although that would be incompatible change for old code, but allowing variable shadowing for patterns would not be incompatible change, because old code does not have pattern variables). Of course I did not think about this problem for too long and probably missed something important, so that's just my 2 cents. I guess, developers took that path for a reason. Basically they want to following code to work: String s; void test(Object o) { if (o instanceof String s) { System.out.println(s); // local variable o } else { System.out.println(s); // this.s } } and I'd argue that this code should not compile! It's bad code. If developer wants to use `this.s` he should explicitly write that. ------ whateveracct With switch, records, and (soon?) sealed interfaces, Java will be more pleasant than ever. Would I ever choose it if I were in charge of a project? Probably not. But it is nice that the language is incorporating these proven features that make a huge difference. It'll make working in Java when I'm not in charge much nicer. ~~~ whateveracct One question about sealed: Does anyone know how it will play with type parameters in the interface? I know in Scala, you can simulate GADTs with that. sealed interface Expr<A> {} record IntExpr(Integer i) implements Expr<Integer> { } record StringExpr(String i) implements Expr<String> { } Will that be legal? And will switch be able to do its magic and carry that type variable through? ------ Yhippa I've been doing mostly Java work in my career and I'm using more JS these days on the side. I'm envious of the rest, spread, and deconstruction functionality in ES6. Really, really, envious. ~~~ smt88 What would stop you from switching to Kotlin, which has those features and many more? ~~~ winrid I was in a Java shop at one point where leadership said Kotlin would be too hard for the engineers to learn (they were all mostly fairly junior). ~~~ smt88 Syntax is not that different from Java. Someone who knows Java could be productive in 1-2 days. But it sounds like you agree that your leadership in that scenario was not rational. ~~~ winrid I'm not sure, I never tried Kotlin. I like the look of it but I know Java pretty well so it's been hard to not just use that for my personal stuff :p ------ correct_horse I feel like Java has a particular problem in common with Android - they both keep getting better, but most people are stuck on some old version. The difference is that smartphones phones last at most 5 years, but a program that a business depends on lasts forever. ~~~ vbezhenar People deliberately chosen to stay with some old version. Java backwards compatibility is awesome. The only questionable move was with Java 9, when they removed a lot of classes from standard library and introduced modules, but even that move was not so hard to migrate. Some people just don't want to invest ANY money to improve their code. They just want to release new features. They would use Java 1 on Windows NT 4 if they could. ~~~ pjmlp To be fair, many users would do just fine with an Amiga 1000, given what they do with their computers. ------ namelosw It's good to see Java is becoming better and iterates faster. However, I found it's weird that hosted languages like Kotlin, Clojure or Scala are more approachable for me as they are working fine with JDK 8 like 'libraries'. They're much easier to upgrade than upgrade JDK itself. ------ wereHamster > Pattern Matching for instanceof Why is the cast even necessary? Isn't the cast only part of the type checker and thus unnecessary with a smarter type checker? For example TypeScript can do it, if you have code following an if condition that checks the type of the variable, you can use that said variable as if it were of that type without any further assertions necessary, eg. let x: unknown; if (typeof x === "string") { console.log(x.charCodeAt(0)); } ~~~ frant-hartm Two reasons - current convention and backwards compatibility. Java developers are simply used to the cast, it is commonly occurring pattern (even if it is from necessity). The backwards compatibility part: class Foo { void foo(Object o) { } } class Bar extends Foo { void foo(Integer i) { } } ... Foo x = ...; Integer i = 42; if (x instanceof Bar) { x.foo(i); } Currently this calls Foo.foo, if there was a smart cast it would call Bar.foo, possibly breaking existing code. EDIT: Added method parameter. ~~~ koreth1 That's not correct. Java method dispatch is always dynamic, so x.foo() will always call the foo() method on whatever concrete type x actually is. The declared type of the variable that holds the reference to that object doesn't matter, nor does casting (with a couple exceptions, none of which apply here). But don't trust me, try it! \| Welcome to JShell -- Version 11.0.5 \| For an introduction type: /help intro jshell> class Foo { void foo() { System.out.println("Super"); } } \| created class Foo jshell> class Bar extends Foo { void foo() { System.out.println("Sub"); } } \| created class Bar jshell> Foo f = new Bar(); f ==> Bar@58651fd0 jshell> Bar b = new Bar(); b ==> Bar@5419f379 jshell> f.foo(); Sub jshell> b.foo(); Sub jshell> ((Foo)b).foo(); Sub ~~~ frant-hartm That's right, I forgot a method parameter: jshell> class Foo { void foo(Object o) { System.out.println("Super"); } } \| created class Foo jshell> class Bar extends Foo { void foo(Integer i) { System.out.println("Sub"); } } \| created class Bar jshell> Foo f = new Bar(); f ==> Bar@7f9a81e8 jshell> Integer i = 1; i ==> 1 jshell> f.foo(i) Super jshell> ((Bar)f).foo(i); Sub ------ hrgiger This blog post doesnt cover all interesting changes, at least for me.[0] For me most interesting upcoming changes are JEP: 352: Non_Volatile Mapped Byte Buffers, JEP 345: NUMA-Aware Memory Allocation for G1 and JEP 370: Foreign-Memory Access API (Incubator). Especially FMA api [1] examples seems most promising but shipped with panama and I am not sure about the maturity yet: [https://github.com/zakgof/java- native-benchmark](https://github.com/zakgof/java-native-benchmark) I wonder how GraalVM stands in this picture that beside of being polyglot, it has AOT and auto vectorization futures and I dont know if those are already/will be shipped also with openJDK [0] [https://jaxenter.com/java-14-update- news-163585.html](https://jaxenter.com/java-14-update-news-163585.html) [1] [https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/370](https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/370) ------ cutler Wow - raw text but I still have to escape \s, \w and friends in a regex. Call me underwhelmed. ------ time4tea BankTransaction amount is a double? transactionDate is a LocalDate? Please nobody copy paste that class. ~~~ sdfin What's the problem with using LocalDate to store a date (without time)? ~~~ thu2111 There's no timezone. LocalDate is appropriate for things like user interfaces, where you're modelling an intuitive/vague concept of date-ness only meaningful in some wider human context, or where the actual time at which that day starts just doesn't matter or is unknown. For instance it may be a good type to use for annotated historical events, where the day the event happened is the most accurate you can get. For a bank transaction where they're international by nature and usually need to be ordered temporally against each other, it's an inappropriate type. The time zone in which the date should be interpreted is important. But really for transactions you'd be better off using Instant, at least internally. Time matters too. ------ insertnickname "Java 14 is scheduled for release on March 17" So it didn't quite arrive yet. ~~~ filomeno You know, candidate/preview releases have been available for some time, if you can't wait to test these new features: [https://jdk.java.net/14/](https://jdk.java.net/14/) ------ technoplato So, (if I could write LaTek in here I would) The limit as JavaVersion —> Inf = Kotlin? I won’t complain. ------ dang Related from a few weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22237145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22237145) ------ julius_set Would be great if Records were actually bonafide value types lol as in not allocated on the heap. Otherwise it’s just nice syntactic sugar like data classes in Kotlin ~~~ eklavya All in good time, value types is in progress. Available to try here: [https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/valhalla/Minimal+Value...](https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/valhalla/Minimal+Value+Types) ~~~ julius_set It’s been 6 years since Valhalla was announced why it’s still in prototype befuddles me. If anything, getting value types out the door will have significant performance improvements and least barrier of entry for current java / jvm based programmers. ------ exabrial How do I propose a language change? One thing I'd really like to see is optional type declarations in Lambdas to bulletproof them. Take this simple Lambda List<String> names = new ArrayList<>(); names.stream().filter(String name -> "Bob Vance".equals(name)).findFirst().get(); By adding the String type declaration, a whole host of bugs in really complicated Lambdas can be eliminated and found easier when the original types and lists are being shuffled around ~~~ sickmartian Can't you do .filter((String name) -> "Bob Vance".equals(name)) already? ~~~ exabrial Oddly enough I'm having trouble finding references around this, even though it most definitely compiles. ------ dbsmith83 Seems like Java is trying to catch up with Kotlin ------ justlexi93 Pattern Matching for instanceof. Non-Volatile Mapped Byte Buffers. Helpful NullPointerExceptions. Switch Expressions (Standard) Packaging Tool (Incubator) NUMA-Aware Memory Allocation for G1. JFR Event Streaming. Records (Preview) Everything looks promising for me. ------ dmitriid Can't understand the need for records when C# solves the problem of boilerplate with regular classes and some syntactic sugar. ~~~ Kipters It's an easy and zero-boilerplate way to have immutable data-only structures with some useful tidbits like structural comparison, meaningful hashcodes etc. I say this as a C# developer that would _desperately_ want them supported in C# and was super pissed off when they were discarded from C# 8.0 (I actually need them right now, they would save me a whole day of typing today) ~~~ u7u7h Records are coming [https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/projects/4#card-1849391...](https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/projects/4#card-18493910). Will be in C# 9 ~~~ Kipters hopefully yes, I'm following the Records v2 issue on github :D ------ anonymousiam Who cares about the new features? The new license makes it almost impossible to use Java without some form of payment to Oracle. ~~~ aw1621107 > The new license makes it almost impossible to use Java without some form of > payment to Oracle. Do you have a source for this claim? It sounds a bit extreme, to say the least, and I had the impression OpenJDK was licensed using fairly standard terms. ~~~ Spinfusor It's mostly FUD: it's only relevant for the Oracle JDK; it doesn't apply to OpenJDK (or the other open distributions by other orgs). ~~~ cxr It doesn't help that multiple Oracle/Sun folks—including people like McNealy—said under oath that they don't believe that the licensing permits you to make commercial use, even if you opt for the GPL version. ~~~ pjmlp At the time Google screwed Sun, the GPL version did not cover the deployment into embedded platforms, only desktop and servers. OpenJDK license is another matter. ~~~ cxr I don't know what you're referring to, but FSF does not allow the GPL be used in such a way that the four freedoms are compromised by the licensor imposing additional restrictions. ~~~ pjmlp Except that there are plenty of dual licenses with GPL-exception clauses and Java was one of them back then. It is up to the courts and copyright holder to decided what to do with their IP. ~~~ cxr First, you didn't describe an exception; you described additional restrictions. But now you're pivoting to talk about exceptions. These are fundamentally different things. One enlarges the set of actions a recipient is free to do relative to what vanilla GPL allows. This is permitted (and in the case of the classpath exception, endorsed) by FSF. The other attempts to shrink the size of that set by denying the user things that the GPL would otherwise allow. The FSF simply does not permit the GPL to be used in that combination (and there would be extreme contrast in your last sentence and the failure to recognize the FSF's say in this). And secondly, you've yet to substantiate your claim that Java was ever distributed with such GPL-modifying restrictions. ~~~ pjmlp Well, I let Gosling speak about Google's then [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be&t=57m42s) ~~~ cxr How about a straightforward response, rather than trying to change the subject again? What's more, I've seen this interview multiple times. Listening to Gosling stutter and be coy is not illuminating in the least. He has no idea how to answer the question he was asked, much less what's being discussed here now. Can you substantiate your claim or not? ~~~ pjmlp Sun as copyright holder had the right to constraint Java's usage as they wanted and embedded deployment wasn't covered. Naturally it is hard for anyone to link to anything Sun, given what happened with their assets and Internet presence. Is a substantiate argument? Maybe not, it doesn't change the fact that Google screwed Sun, didn't bothered to rescued it went it went down, and now we have Java and Android Java. I guess FSF is happy with the outcome then, since it is allowed to tank companies. ~~~ cxr > Sun as copyright holder had the right to constraint Java's usage Sure. But what they don't have is domain over the GPL. I won't respond to the rest of your comment, which has nothing to do with the claim you made to kick off this branch of discussion and is just another attempt to change the subject (with what is an opinion, not a "fact"). This will be my last comment here.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Trying to understand income inequality in the USA - pchristensen http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026/ ====== pchristensen I agree with <http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html> as the general rule for creating wealth. My question is, is "middle-class" income and wealth simply a function of how labor-constrained the current engine of economic growth is? The postwar boom needed lots of workers so it was worth paying them more. The most recent booms have been technological and IP-driven, which is why fewer people benefited from them. Pay for the middle class is reverting back to their marginal value of an hour of time. (Caveat: hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians are benefiting from the same labor-constrained economy that the US benefited from 50 years ago. I'm mainly talking about the US). ~~~ lukesandberg While excess demand for laborers did contribute to the Great Compression, it was not the only contributing factor. The actions of Unions and Wage Controls, also played a large role. Nonetheless you have a good point. The real question is why if productivity of the middle class is rising why aren't their incomes also rising. It seems that the marginal distribution of income should be somewhat related to marginal productivity changes of the workers, but its not. ~~~ pchristensen Business owners own the _output_ of their employees, so the improvement in productivity goes to the owners. Employee wages are mostly determined by the supply and demand for the _input_ of the workers. If demand is high, wages go up, if supply is high wages go down. It's the combination of low supply and high demand that gave workers the leverage to gain some of the increase in their output during the Great Compression. ~~~ lukesandberg That's true, it is up to the business owners to control their wages. But why is this changing so much more since the mid 1970's than before, and (even more importantly) should it be changing? With that second question we are getting more into a philosophical question than a purely economic one. I personally believe that additional productivity of a worker should benefit the worker not just the employer and i also believe that there should be institutions in place to promote and foster lower income inequality. Addressing this as purely an effect of supply and demand ignores the whole human component to the labor market and the vast political instability that can be created by an ineffective labor market. ~~~ pchristensen Business owners control wages only in the event that labor supply outstrips demand. After the 70s, due to globalization and technology, the demand (in the US) for modestly educated bodies dropped, while the demand for (a comparatively smaller number of) highly educated workers increased. When you can buy steel from China or run a car factory with robots, what do the 20,000 workers that used to work there do? Google has ~20K employees worldwide and it's worth $175B, the old USX steel plant on the South Side of Chicago has 20,000 workers _within 2 square miles_. Tech companies create jobs, but nowhere near the number that manufacturing used to. I never mentioned whether this was a good thing or not. I think that every person that doesn't get autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward (worth reading the book Outliers just for that 3-item list), society will be poorer overall. So I think that unemployment and underemployment are huge drags on the economy, not to mention how devastating they are to the people involved. "I personally believe that additional productivity of a worker should benefit the worker not just the employer" - this happens when the worker creates unique or hard-to-replace value. I too wish everyone could do this, and it's one of the main reasons to do a startup. "i also believe that there should be institutions in place to promote and foster lower income inequality." - you can argue that YC is doing this, by teaching founders how to become richer than they would have otherwise been. The question is if this method (teach people to create more value vs capture value from those that create it) will scale to a whole society. I personally doubt that, so the question is how much to take from the top, and where to set the floor. ~~~ lukesandberg sorry if i misinterpreted your earlier comments, it looks like we actually share a lot of the same ideas. I don't think that everyone in a society can generate unique value, but its great that in our society that people who can are able to do so. So we really need a better method than just the invisible hand of Adam Smith to solve this problem. Actually implementing policies to do this is incredibly complex, a lot of this is discussed (as they mention in the article) in the book Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman. He made good arguments for raising minimum wages and the importance of unions. I'm kind of torn on the Union issue (too much Chicago School of Economics influence...), so i think there needs to be some sort of modernization of the union. Especially with trends pointing towards more and smaller companies, centralized unions don't seem to make much sense. Livable Minimum Wages seem to make a lot of sense and at least that is more politically tractable than setting wage maximums.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Yipit deploys from Github with multiple private repos - vacanti http://tech.yipit.com/2012/09/05/deploying-from-github-the-right-way/ ====== dekz I believe you can setup aliases in ssh_config where you specify the actual hostname and the key to use. Which is what I've used in the past to get the right key to just work with git (and gitolite). Host github-yipit-main Hostname github.com IdentityFile ~/.ssh/yipit_main_rsa then just go about your merry way of: git clone git@github-yipit-main:/yipit/yipit-main.git ~~~ andrewgross Not a bad idea since it would make easier to pull changes outside of the automation without needing to specify the GIT_SSH variable. ------ mnutt It seems like it would be easier to just create another github user, add it to your organization as a read-only user, and then add each machine's ssh key to that user as a real ssh key rather than a deploy key. The downside is that you can't restrict certain machines to certain repositories, but the upside is that it's a lot less complex. ------ mey I was looking at this sideways until I read the last statement about the future. There is something bothersome to me about deploying code directly from a code repository. Things I can think of that bother me about it, not clear what code has and has not been deployed, code is not explicitly validated (automatically, manually, on a build/test lab), and it isn't clear who triggered the release. I think it also bothers the side of me coming from compiled languages where there is more to a code release then copy files from a to b. ~~~ maratd Not if you structure your repo correctly. > not clear what code has and has not been deployed You can have your production machines deploy from specific branches. In other words, master is the development branch, some-version-branch is the production branch. You can also do it vice versa. You can use tags. Lots of solutions. > code is not explicitly validated (automatically, manually, on a build/test > lab) If you use the structure above, you wouldn't commit to a production branch unless you did that. Another solution is to force validation/testing using hooks before allowing a commit to a production branch on your development machine. > and it isn't clear who triggered the release. Not sure what you mean here ... every commit is recorded, so you always know who did what. ~~~ mey I guess it depends on your deployment system, if there is an automated system watching that branch on a central repo, you assume any commit is rolled out and who ever pushed triggered it via commit. ------ pbiggar If anyone is interested in something very like this, but as-a-service, check out <https://CircleCi.com>. We do continuous deployment so long as your tests pass, with key management to support this kind of flow. (Though to be honest, this flow seems overly complex, and I'm not 100% sure what problem it's solving). ------ bbq Great work! Looks like Github has a big area for improvement, though. ------ borlak best way: don't deploy from github. you should have an internal github server (github enterprise). don't rely on the site to secure your production code. they have had security problems in the past. ~~~ maratd How is that more secure? They're both running the same code base. That means they have the same vulnerabilities. Both also need to be public facing to deploy code. ~~~ amccloud No. Github Enterprise can be setup to be only accessible from your internal network. ~~~ maratd You can set it up that way, but then you wouldn't be able to deploy from it ... unless you're developing something that is being used internally? ~~~ amccloud What makes you say that. Just make sure your server are on the same network. ~~~ maratd > Just make sure your server are on the same network. Using a VPN? Or are you hosting your own stuff? If your public facing server gets breached and it is sitting on your actual internal network or is connected through a VPN ... well, that means the attacker just got a free pass right through your firewall. I used to put my production boxes on a VPN, but now I don't have to because I can deploy from GitHub. That was the main reason I signed up with GitHub.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Supreme Court to hear arguments on Aereo this week - xhrpost http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/aereo-case-goes-to-supreme-court/2014/04/21/50bbd1e8-c59d-11e3-9f37-7ce307c56815_story.html ====== yahelc SCOTUSBlog has a great deepdive into the case: [http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/04/argument-preview-free- tv-a...](http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/04/argument-preview-free-tv-at-a- bargain-price/) ~~~ dublinben It's really surprising that nobody else has mentioned the Cablevision ruling. That is the exact precedent that Aereo has designed their system to comply with. ~~~ joezydeco It gets mentioned, and then another HN story pops up on Aereo and we have to review the facts and stances over again. And again. ------ brk I've followed the Aereo stuff going on. Not heavily, but with more curiosity than not. One question I've never seen fully addressed about the technology: are they literally claiming to capture a signal directly from the tiny antenna and encode/route that specific signal to a specific user with no other filtering/enhancement/etc. in between? Knowing how hard it is to get a _good_ DTV signal, it seems unlikely that a bunch of tiny antennas buried in a data center are going to get reliably good signals. It would seem like what they are doing is capturing the signal from a better source, and then maintaining a batch of crappy antennas just to claim a 1:1 ratio of antennas to customers. Does anyone know with reliable data how the technology really works? ~~~ kevincennis The antennas aren't "buried in a data center", they're housed in RF- transparent rooftop enclosures with line-of-sight (and reasonably close proximity) to the broadcast source. Full disclosure: I work there. ~~~ brk Thanks for the clarification. Some other tech article I read last year didn't really clarify it, and the pics made it look like the antennas were basically on some form of a PCI card, installed in racked servers. So then you're saying that two customers using Aereo watching the same broadcast channel are getting uniquely encoded signals, and one could theoretically be connected to an antenna that had poor reception/signal (for whatever reason) and the other could be connected to an antenna with a better signal, and they'd see visibly different image streams? ~~~ kevincennis Yup. Our CEO gave a similar example (15:30) on C-SPAN a few days ago: "If one individual consumer's antenna — let's say a mosquito sits on it or it fails because the associated electronics failed — your screen goes dark and your neighbor is fine". "Neighbor" here meaning "the person using the antenna next to yours". [http://www.c-span.org/video/?318908-1/communicators-chet- kan...](http://www.c-span.org/video/?318908-1/communicators-chet-kanojia) Side note: As a front-end engineer, I can tell you it's pretty cool to know that on the other end of your app there's an individual piece of tangible equipment interacting with the physical world. That's pretty unique. ~~~ avar It's so frustrating to watch that interview. He gives an initial summary of the situation and then the journalists ask him the same rephrased question over and over again. ------ steven777400 This was tried before with the "rent a DVD and player" streaming service (Zediva [1]). I would be shocked if Aereo won this case. The courts look strongly at the intention of the law; it's not the same "literally as-written" interpretation that technical folk tend to take of things. From the Zediva case: "The courts ruled that it was irrelevant that the videos were streamed to one customer at a time in his private hotel room; the service still transmitted videos 'to the public,'" [1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/08/judge-orders- shut...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/08/judge-orders-shutdown-of- dvd-streaming-service-zediva/) ~~~ xhrpost I remember reading about this. Even from the "intention of the law" perspective though, I still didn't get the argument of the MPAA. How is it that a private individual choosing a title to watch for themselves constitute as a "public" display of the work? They were renting their own DVD player and legit movie disc, something anyone can do physically if they so choose by going to a couple stores. ~~~ CamperBob2 Because the MPAA rents its own US Senators, that's why. ~~~ EGreg Not supreme court justices though ------ akgerber This is a confusing headline, to me— I'd phrase it 'Supreme Court to decide on Aereo, a startup that could reshape the TV industry' ~~~ jisaacks I thought the same thing, that they had decided. This is the title of the original article though. ~~~ dang HN's guidelines call for changing the original title when it's linkbait or misleading. This one was misleading, so we changed it. ------ selmnoo If Aereo loses, there's a nice little thing they can do. They should stop offering the streaming service, and start selling this thing (either recreate a similar competing device, or simply become a reseller!): [http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_broadway.html](http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_broadway.html) \- a TV-signal-receiver/streamer-in-one device -- which can stream either over your local Wi-fi, or across the interwebs so you can watch remotely when you're out of the house. And then people can use this thing for themselves _and_ their friends and families... at no cost! Aereo should ship the thing to all current consumers immediately after losing, and lock everyone into a contract of 8$/month payments for however long it takes to recoup the full $150 cost of the device. I'll be happy if people get this device over a service because it goes a nice distance to finally putting the power of cloud in the consumer's hand. ~~~ Splendor Aereo is for people who can't put up an antenna (or don't want to). This device requires an antenna. ~~~ selmnoo You must have at least one friend or family member who can put up an antenna though, right? Give it to them, and get a streamcast going! Sure it's five minutes of hassle setting the thing up, but once it's setup it's all free. ~~~ bri3d My experience with doing this with friends is that most US ISPs have awful upload jitter, plus (increasingly) data caps as well. This might work for lucky fiber-to-home subscribers but every time I've tried on Comcast, a giant buffer (10 seconds or more) is required to hide the jitter, and sometimes the neighbors start seeding something on BitTorrent and the stream will still cut out. Plus there are a lot of contingencies that require an increasingly complex technical solution. First you have to deal with whatever router configuration / NAT is present. And sometimes your friend's IP changes, and you're stuck setting up dynamic DNS or a reverse proxy. The Broadway box was generally panned in reviews for not including a workaround for these networking issues, and I suspect the technical complexity of friend-to-friend streaming is why TV broadcasters have never been worried about it in the past. IPv6 will hopefully help solve the addressing and NAT issues, but the generally awful quality of US home connections remains a big problem. ------ Shivetya One oddity here is that broadcast tv is treated differently than cable/satellite only channels. the FCC enforces different rules regarding advertising and programming restrictions than what can and does appear on cable. Mostly this is restricted to political ads. From that standpoint of broadcast being so highly regulated because the airwaves are public property do the stations who use that medium retain any rights to what they broadcast? If the FCC can claim jurisdiction and tell you what you cannot broadcast over "public airwaves" because is public property does the act of freely putting your shows on it mean you give up the right to control unaltered reuse or differing uses? ~~~ jarrett > does the act of freely putting your shows on it mean you give up the right > to control unaltered reuse or differing uses? No, by law it does not. The copyright remains in effect. As discussed in the article, broadcasting grants certain rights to end users, but it certainly doesn't wipe out all the copyright holder's rights. ~~~ davorak Aereo's they are just a middle man for the end user. The end user is using that antenna and for convince is sending it over the internet to wherever they are. It is perfectly legal for an end user in this case to make a video recording and watch it later for personal use. Or even digitize it and watch it on their computer. In Aereo case that digital copy is also sent over the internet to another computer for personal viewing. In this case no copyrights seem to be broken. ------ drawkbox You'd think broadcast and cable companies would embrace doing their own competitive product to extend their reach. Instead they still to this day create a false demand by holding back American innovation, that only works if their aren't other alternatives. If broadcast/cable want to live on they need to get to innovating and improving service, not fighting everything that challenges their kingdom. I hope Aereo once again opens up competition on overpriced and monopolistic practices. Cable and broadcast had an immense lead when broadband internet innovated (with the help of taxpayer money and rights to provide the service they agreed to), then they stopped, got fat and turned to hogs. Monopolies can sometimes move everyone forward for a time (At&T/telcos leading to software/C/C++, Microsoft spreading computing and internet, possibly Apple and the smart phone initially) but eventually, if the leaders aren't innovating and get too comfortable, they need to be jolted awake as they are no longer the leading innovators nor the future. ~~~ rayiner The broadcasters aren't monopolies, not in an age where the broadcast medium itself (as distinct from the content) is increasingly irrelevant. Only 7% of households rely on over-the-air TV: [https://www.ce.org/News/News- Releases/Press-Releases/2013-Pr...](https://www.ce.org/News/News- Releases/Press-Releases/2013-Press-Releases/Only-Seven-Percent-of-TV- Households-Rely-on-Over-t.aspx). The networks continue to matter because they offer products that people want to buy (movies and TV shows). These products are so compelling, that very few people have managed to offer compelling alternatives. E.g. people don't just want a doctor show, they want "House." They don't just want a sitcom, they want "How I Met Your Mother." It's not "innovation" to simply figure out new ways to take popular products and distribute them to consumers without paying the creators. I applaud Netflix and Amazon for going down the path of real competition. Shows like "House of Cards" and "Alpha House" are rare alternatives to the media offered by established companies that actually receive good critical and audience reception. ~~~ drawkbox Yes broadcast channels are on the decline but they owned and ran off the benefits of public airwaves which were/are very hard to get access to. Before cable, Fox was successful in being the 4th big broadcast network but it was a huge battle (although it did shake things up when successful shows like the Simpsons were on). Thankfully shortly after, we have cable and internet now, both further steps in limiting top down broadcast control. But with the support of tax money, broadcast space and lots of money the old broadcast stations were a combined monopoly on the airwaves. You could argue the network stations have had to innovate a bit with cable and internet taking over and so they do have content that people love. The desire to use the public airwaves has been impossible for so long nobody really wants to take over the public airwaves much anymore so it is silly to fight against Aereo. ~~~ rayiner The broadcast channels never owned the public airwaves. At the time, broadcast was the most practical way of delivering content, and they engaged in what was a reasonable bargain for everyone: the public gets high-quality content for free, and the broadcasters get to use the public spectrum. Today, I don't think the arrangement makes sense for anyone. Broadcast TV isn't the best use of all that spectrum, and the vast majority of people get their television content through cable or the internet. The bulk of the value of the networks today is in their content. They've always had the content people love, because they do a really good job making such content. They have expertise. It's very difficult to create content people want to watch, because most people will quickly dismiss shows and movies that don't have high production values. That's where the value of these companies lies in the modern era. And going forward, they'll have to double-down on this core function. But Aereo isn't moving "innovation" forward in any way. They're just trying to make a quick buck using other peoples' content. In contrast, Amazon and Netflix (as well as HBO and some other companies) are moving the whole situation forward by trying to compete with the networks in the area of content production. ------ dalek2point3 Katie Couric did this great interview of Chet Kanojia on Yahoo that is definitely worth checking out. [http://news.yahoo.com/video/aereo-broadcast- tv-worst-nightma...](http://news.yahoo.com/video/aereo-broadcast-tv-worst- nightmare-032204252.html) In it, the Aereo CEO admits to being "anxious" because the $100 million on the company is essentially down the drain depending on what the Supreme Court decides. He says, this is mainly due to the 110-odd people who work at the firm. Fair-nuff -- seems like a reasonable sort-a guy. ------ kodablah "They cringe at the thought of paying $130 a month for cable so Boorstin won’t miss Nationals baseball games. [...] With Aereo, baseball streaming site MLB.com, and maybe another app, they would gladly use the Internet for all their video news and entertainment." Nope, if the Nationals aren't over the air in DC (likely not most of the time), and you live in DC, it will be blacked out. Aereo does not affect this in any way. ~~~ orky56 Of course it does. Someone can subscribe to an antenna in a different market than DC, specifically to get a nationally televised game that is NOT blacked out in the local market. This is would be my biggest draw to Aereo. ~~~ lanaius Your credit card billing address has to match your service area. ~~~ x0054 Get a prepaid credit card and claim any address you want. ~~~ venomsnake And commit 30-40 CFAA and wire fraud felonies according to an overzealous DA in the process. //just to show how absurd the situation with computer crime right now is. ------ filmgirlcw Assuming the court doesn't punt the decision (the way it did with Bilsky), this has the potential to be the most important broadcasting case since Betamax. I've been following and covering Aereo since its NYC launch in Feb 2012 and regardless of who wins, the implications for the future of broadcast are huge. ------ sdegutis Who needs TV for entertainment anyway? That old Maine saying comes to mind: use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without. ------ higherpurpose Why did the government have to intervene here? Just because the current administration is a tight friend of the RIAA? It seems to be doing it quite a lot lately. Imagine Monsanto suing some farmers, and then the government intervening in the trial to _help_ Monsanto. There's just something wrong about that. The government should stick to its own cases and lawsuits, not intervene in 3rd party lawsuits. ~~~ DerpDerpDerp I mean, they already induced a foreign state to violate that state's laws in order to harass a resident of that state, seize assets and information which they had no legal claim to, and then after a politically motivated prosecution fell apart, presented all the illegally obtained evidence to their industry friends so they could use it as the basis of a lawsuit against the same person. Why would we expect any better here? ~~~ DerpDerpDerp I'm curious what specifically people think is inaccurate about my description of the Kim Dotcom events. ------ joesb > But Aereo argues that it is entitled to draw freely from programs > transmitted on public airwaves. Are they talking about the data being broadcasted in public spectrum? Or that the wave travel through public air and atmosphere? If it is the latter and that argument can be used, then would it be legal to capture cellphone communication and any wireless data? I just don't think one should blindly accept unsound argument even if it would result in the change one wants. ~~~ rayiner Their argument isn't that they should be able to use the data freely because it's broadcast over the public airwaves. The relevance of the public airwaves is that there is an existing compromise between broadcasters and the public such that the public is entitled to watch certain content for free over the air, in return for broadcasters being allowed to use the public airwaves. What Aereo is arguing is that their service falls within this existing compromise, because it's no different than attaching a rabbit-ear to your TV with a really long cable. In other words, it's okay not just because the data is on the public airwaves, but because the data is on the public airwaves AND broadcasters have agreed to let the public use that data under certain conditions. This isn't quite the legal posture of the dispute, but it's the public policy essence of it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Growth Hacking Notes - nodemaker http://tedna.sh/2013/07/26/growth-hacking-notes/ ====== 6d0debc071 Okkaaayyy, I can see why this might seem like a good idea to you. But I don't see how it's in anyone's interests, including your own, for you to talk about it. If this becomes widely practised, you've killed the source of trust you were exploiting - and if this becomes widely practised it makes it more difficult for users to find out about things that are worthwhile. Now you might say something to the effect of: "Oh what's the harm? I'm just getting the word out." However, take the reviews strategy for instance: Your reviews probably aren't going to be honest in-depth analyses of the faults and benefits of a particular piece of software. There's such a strong incentive there for you to lie that I know, even ahead of you saying yes or no, that your word won't count as strong enough evidence for me to believe you don't. (My perception of the average person's truthfulness just isn't high enough to withstand that sort of incentive.) If you give someone a bad review, what are the chances they're going to give you a good one? What's your percentage in the truth? So, you win in the short-term, as long as this is kept small. But my trust for the network you're using is going to approach 0 fairly quickly if this becomes practised on any significant scale. Tragedy of the commons, basically. The easiest solution to that is just to quarantine my brain from the lot of you and treat all similar coms from similar sources as noise. ------ Leander_B Usually the saying goes "Build a great product and users will come". Reading this reminds me more of "Build whatever product and drag users to come". But in the end, for a real business, it's all about being able to pay the bills, stay alive and make some profit. And for that last one, I think some of the points in the article can gain you some advantage against another average product you compete with.. ------ jdmitch _this piece about hacking should give you a good example of aggressive networking._ 'aggressive networking' is right, don't some of these tactics get you blocked or reported? ~~~ tednash Hey JD, Thanks so much for reading. I've never been reported or blocked. With FB, a lot of what I did was in- conjunction with a contact at FB. Twitter is the only slightly more dodgy one but even then, I've never had any issues. ~~~ figurify The fact that you haven't been noticed yet doesn't make this an acceptable method. Basically the article is all about gaming the social networks and getting away with it in favor of publicity for your product or service. I don't think anyone can go very far with such dodgy methods ~~~ tednash Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. This has worked for me and it's down to the individual to decide how aggressive you want to be. I'll let you know how far I go...or when I fall. ------ hsuresh A lot of the techniques pointed out seem like plain spamming. Why/how does that count for growth hacking? ------ pyamparala Excellent post Ted. Being the owner/moderator of the closed Facebook group ([https://www.facebook.com/groups/appentrepreneurs/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/appentrepreneurs/)) which you have mentioned and used as part of your growth hacks, I just wanted to tell people who have been complaining in this thread , theat the amount of value you have added to the group and its participants has been extraordinary. I remember you joining the group about 3 months ago and already you are the de-facto expert on App marketing for the group. Thanks for that ------ lifeisstillgood In SEO, the user makes an overt action (search) and the ranking of search then can affects what the user sees. We've grown to accept that. In social-graph-optimisation the overt act is much higher granularity - its to follow / friend another person. So the game is to join as many graphs as possible, or to find the graph of the person you want, and join that. I think this granularity problem will severely limit the acceptance of SEO- for-social-graphs. Seo right now works because it is possible to finesse at the right granularity level as a function of a users action. Geo-location work will also massively help - but social is effectively painting ads onto my friends T-Shirts in the hope I will read them. I struggle to see the next fine grained action (*) We need a better term than social media, because this is all just variations on an individual has their own webspace, and updates that space regularly, plus a central scraping service to let others know. The important bit is that Ts&Cs play less of a "real" part in this than might seem true - essentially the Ts&Cs cover FB/Twitter business model, and less the privacy of the user. ------ chinmoy Your techniques, as effective as they maybe, aren't really 'Growth Hacking'. I think there is fine line between the good 'ol 'Internet Marketing'(read spamming) and growth hacking. I'm not sure your's fall into the later. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the things you mentioned will not help you to get more users and eventually make more money. Then again, if money is the only thing you're after, you could as well be making crapware or promote 'Work From Home' guides. Trust me, they can make you a lot of money, I've been there. There's a reason you're making iPhone apps instead of crapware. That reason should be honored. Anyways, I hope I delivered my message correctly. There's is nothing wrong with what you're doing. Zynga did the same things you're doing with twists on a large scale and made millions. But we don't want to be Zynga, do we? ------ phpnode it is basically crazy to "out" your methods like this, this is grey hat at best and you're just asking to get banned. If you find an unethical tactic that works for you, milk it, don't shout to the whole world about it, you just expose how unethical you are. ~~~ tednash Thanks for this note. It's valid. Not sure I agree in being unethical. For me the opportunity that arise from disclosing vs keeping secrets makes it worthwhile. ~~~ anu_gupta Astroturfing from 25 fake twitter accounts is ethical, is it? Who do you work for? What companies have employed you? If you think everything you do is above board, I'm sure you won't mind naming some companies that have benefitted from your ethical marketing services. ~~~ tednash Sure, I've had one employer who took me on at 19 and I left when I was 21, (six months ago). I disclose my employer in other posts on my site. ------ artagnon Yes, this approach will probably earn you a quick buck and attract some fleeting customers. Nobody with even a shred of integrity will want to be associated with the brand you're creating; so yeah, you'll have a few thousand cattle customers. What is the point of all this, again? ~~~ tednash Appreciate this note and your views. However, that's not been my experience in previous businesses. You can create the worlds best product but if no one knows it exists, why build it. I view the methods I use as a delivery medium to put information which adds value to the individuals who read it. If I do that, then I can start to develop a personal relationship with them. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, this post has certainly created some interesting polarising views. I appreciate your comment. ------ lukethomas I had no idea you could scrape Facebook ids from groups and serve ads to them. That's horrible, but brilliant. ------ toisanji Awesome notes, I've found [http://targetpattern.com](http://targetpattern.com) to be the most effective for gaining targeted followers on twitter, I haven't seen tweetadder before. ~~~ tednash Thanks for the share, I'll add this. ------ butler14 Growth hacking. Also known as digital marketing. ~~~ pidg "Create and automate retweets and tweets from 25 fake accounts"? This is definitely a hacky approach, not true digital marketing. ~~~ butler14 People do a much, much worse in social media marketing (a well-defined discipline within digital marketing). ------ lovesgreen Really enjoyed the article, thanks! ~~~ tednash Glad you enjoyed it!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You - qw http://thecodist.com/article/why_i_don_39_t_do_unpaid_overtime_and_neither_should_you ====== grellas The U.S. has a strong free enterprise foundation and its laws reflect this. Freedom of contract remains the rule even though it is much criticized in some circles and has been hedged considerably over the years. In employment, the old rule was that you could pretty much fire anyone at will for any reason and, if you did, you incurred no legal consequence. This is pure freedom of contract. In time, this unrestricted freedom came to be deemed repugnant where it bumped into important social policies - for example, that employers not discriminate on the basis of race. Hence, protective laws were passed and these circumscribed the old unrestricted freedom to have pure at-will employment relationships that gave an employer an open ticket to fire people for any reason whatever, even a repugnant one. That said, however, when you get down to the day-to-day employment relationships that most of us encounter, the at-will rules still prevail and, with limited exceptions, it really does remain the case that most people can be fired for any reason at any time and almost always without legal consequence. This may be seen as good or bad but it is the way of life under U.S. law with its strong bent toward free enterprise and freedom of contract. The same pertains to overtime rules for employees. The U.S. does have a body of protective laws that require employers to pay overtime for excess hours worked, either by the day or by the week. But the historic relationship between employer and employee had a strong bias toward freedom of contract - that is, if an employer and an employee agreed to a certain working relationship, that was their prerogative and the government had no say in the matter. Again, this older form of unrestricted freedom led to consequences deemed repugnant as a matter of social policy (e.g., sweatshops). Thus, laws were enacted to abridge the older unrestricted freedom of contract (wage and hour laws, in the example considered here). But, as in the case of at-will rules, these laws did not disturb the large measure of freedom of contract that formerly prevailed except for the specific situations where a policy judgment was made that the workers were most vulnerable and in need of protection. Thus, U.S. overtime rules apply without question to low-skilled jobs and to low-paying jobs and to jobs where the employees have little or no independence or control over how they perform their duties. But these protective rules can and do peacefully co-exist with an equally important set of rules providing that high-skilled employees, skilled professionals, employees with substantial administrative responsibilities with managerial functions, and like positions are expressly exempted from the overtime rules. The idea is that, in a free economy, as a matter of policy, it is better for parties to retain freedom in defining the work requirements of a position than for the government to dictate protective rules where the parties are not deemed in need of protection. In other words, the employer-employee relationships for such exempt categories are deemed to be healthier if the parties are free to negotiate salary/bonuses or other compensation that is not tied to rigid rules about overtime. The laws let the parties have much more flexibility in deciding how to frame their relationships, and this basically reflects the old-style freedom of contract that has always characterized the U.S. economy. Protections were adopted as deemed necessary but they are limited as a matter of public policy. This can be seen as good or bad but it is the law in the U.S. What does this mean in practice? It means, for example, that a computer professional can be paid a salary of $100K/yr and be asked to work like a slave, all without overtime compensation. But that same professional, if paid $30K/yr, is required to be paid overtime for excess hours worked, even if that person is on salary. One case is treated as appropriate for free choice by the parties without overriding restrictions; the other is not. And the difference, in this case, turns on the amount of salary paid - the highly-paid worker is treated as being able to protect his own interests while the relatively low- paid worker is not. Europe clearly has taken a different approach and this too can be seen as good or bad depending on one's perspective. In general, in Europe, the idea of open-ended freedom of contract is suppressed in favor of more sweeping protective laws favoring employees. Whether this leads to a robust economy or chokes enterprise is open to debate but it clearly differs from the U.S. approach. In this piece, the author criticizes the U.S. employment pattern as, in effect, requiring exempt computer professionals to work for free when they are required to work excessive hours tied to a fixed salary. In making this point, the author admits that his European biases are showing. The "U.S. view," if I can call it that, is not that the worker is being made to work for free but rather that the worker has not agreed to be paid by any hourly measure but rather for an overall performance to be rendered, no matter how many hours it takes. This might be regarded as "slavery," but (taking, for example, the exemption for executives) does anyone really believe that top executives have as their focus the exact number of hours worked as opposed to broader goals related to their job performance. The same can be said of professionals, as many computer professionals look primarily to the task and not to the hourly measure as the mark of their jobs. In my field, lawyers too see the hours worked as entirely secondary to their jobs. For every such executive and professional who would be deemed "helped" by overtime laws that might be extended to apply to their jobs, there would undoubtedly be many who would recoil at the limitations of suddenly not being able to do their jobs without regard to the scope of hours worked. I don't believe that most such employees see their work as "slavery" when they have to work excessive hours. I think they see it as career development. And, in any case, the U.S. law gives such employees freedom to become "slaves" if they so choose for their own reason. It is the old freedom of contract and highly skilled, highly compensated workers in the U.S. retain that freedom to choose, as do their employers. Work-life balance _is_ very important as well, a point the author emphasizes. He seems to have made that choice later in life (as did I) and I commend him for it. But, while I can exhort others too to strive for such balance, I will not begrudge them the choice to work exceedingly hard (especially as they are first developing in their careers) to achieve other "unbalanced" goals. People do accomplish insanely great things by working insanely hard. If they choose to do this in their work as employees, that is their privilege and, as long as they are highly-skilled and highly compensated, I say more power to them if they do it without the benefit of protective labor laws. ~~~ mattmanser There are two problems with your wall of text. Firstly your comparison to lawyering is disingenuous, lawyering has the partnership model, you take a load of young naive idiots, you dangle this partnership jackpot in front of their noses and then you work them to the bone doing dull and even pointless work that you bill your clients many $$$s an hour for while the partners take the bulk of that money home. Lots drop out, some make partner, the cycle repeats. It's a 'jackpot' industry. Programming is not that way, there's a massive demand for programmers, there's not a massive demand for young lawyers. The second problem is your belief that working long hours = working 'exceedingly hard'. There's a massive body of evidence that working past 35-40 hours per week that you're actually _less_ productive in the medium to long term past about a month, it's bad for your health and the whole scenario feeds on itself in a horrible vicious cycle as employees who decide to 'opt out' of it get punished with no promotions and lower raises, perhaps even fired. You see posts like yours trotted out when anyone puts their hand up and says 'hey, why _are_ we working these long hours?'. Worse still in the UK, where a lot of companies also have this ridiculous culture, we have contracts in place specifying the amount of hours to be worked _but they are just ignored_. The employer is wilfully and knowingly breaking the contract and often lying to prospective employees in the interviews. But what can you do, you took the job and you can't have too many jobs in the last 2 years as people will begin to wonder. But we have to protect startups and free enterprise right. Because all managers and CEOs know exactly what they're doing and have been taught that creating a culture of long hours rapidly creates pointless busy work zombies where everyone's losing. And that's where you're argument falls flat on its face. Turns out we're not actually training any managers they just wing it and one of the intuitive fallacies everyone subscribes to is that more hours at the desk means more hours of production that somehow putting more hours means you're working 'exceedingly hard' instead of the truth which is 'exceedingly inefficiently'. Perhaps it is time for government to step in as the free market's quite obviously failing at it as they refuse to listen to the scientists and worse are totally ignorant about studies done 100 years ago. ~~~ tptacek You're not arguing with Grellas so much as cherry picking sentences out of his comment and howling at them in isolation. If we extract the signal from your comment --- that partner-track law careers are problematic, that working unreasonably hard is a bad idea for employer and employee alike --- from the emotion, we find a series of arguments that Grellas himself likely agrees with. In some cases I can guess that he agrees with your underlying argument because he's written comments to that effect in the past (for instance, you can use the search bar at the bottom of the page to find out some of what he thinks of partner-track law). In others, unfortunately, I can guess that he agrees because the very comment you're replying to says that he does. I think I speak for a lot of people on HN when I ask that you not berate one of the more uniquely valuable contributors to HN for writing "walls of text". He writes differently than you and I; longer, yes, but also much more carefully and considerately. I have never, ever seen him address someone else on HN the way you just did him. ~~~ larrys "You're not arguing with Grellas so much as cherry picking sentences out of his comment and howling at them in isolation." That's certaintly a creative way to put it. But that is what everyone does when they make comments. They respond to things they don't agree with. The use of "cherry picking" in your context seems to indicate taking unfair pot shots. The use of "howling in isolation" brings up an image of a lonely dog in the dead of night. Why is that necessary exactly? "I think I speak for a lot of people on HN when I ask that you not berate one of the more uniquely valuable contributors to HN for writing "walls of text"." Then why do you need to say this? If there are people that think that they will downvote, right? By the way this is not to say I agree with his language. I think it's great that grellas takes the time to write a "wall of text". ~~~ scott_s If you focus on individual points, then the discussion will degrade. Take the time to synthesize what the overall message from the post is, then respond to that. The danger of responding to individual points, instead of the message, is you start arguing about the trees, not the forest. It's the difference between an honest discussion and a game of "Gotcha!" I admit it's a difficult balance. I will sometimes pull out individual sentences from a person's post, but only if I feel that sentence is representative of their overall point, or it is a mistaken premise that when corrected, the rest of the post is moot. ------ snprbob86 When I worked for a big company, I had a very simple rule: If I make a promise to my team that I can reasonably keep, I owe it to them to do so. I'd generally aim to under-promise and over-deliver, while feeling like I'm making a comprable (or bigger!) contribution in comparison to my peers. After some practice at this, I got reasonably good at estimating work. I'd work 20 to 50 hours per week depending on how accurately I estimate, usually aiming for (an achieving) about 35 hours of work. Only once or twice did I ever feel like I really put in any serious "overtime" and I blame that on estimation inexperience. I made it a point to explain this philosophy (sans actual target hours) to every manager I've ever had. I always fed them the "Work/Life Balance" party line and reminded them that if I wanted my work to be my life, I'd join a startup (I have since founded one). They all seemed to appreciate my being forthcoming. Once or twice I got a panicked email. The team was going to miss a deadline unless I stepped up to help out! Each time I replied that I had expressed my concerns about scope and timeline during the planning meetings. I'd remind the panicked person that we could simply cut the feature (always an option for a previously shipped product) and would offer my help and time in doing so. No one ever took me up on it. ~~~ spinlock It's too bad you couldn't openly tell your team how you were scheduling your time. It sounds like you developed a very good, consistent process. In my mind, that's exactly what a large company should be going for because it can scale. ~~~ snprbob86 I did tell them! See where I wrote: > I made it a point to explain this philosophy (sans actual target hours) to > every manager I've ever had. I simply didn't tell my manager exactly how many hours I targeted because it was less than the customary 40h/wk. ------ alan_cx I don't know much about US employment law, and what I do know, I don't like. But what I do know is this: No employer has ever, ever given me free money, and I have never expected it. There for, I have never ever given an employer free time, and never ever will. To do different is insane. It lowers one's worth since the deal is an exchange of money for time. It makes the employer think your free time is theirs to exploit and frankly damn wrong. Like I say, the day employers give out free money is the time I give out free time. ~~~ mseebach So, I agree with the point made in another comment about this not being so much about overtime, but about crap jobs. But: > the deal is an exchange of money for time It's not really, no. It's an exchange of _work_ for time. If you're doing an exchange of time, you'll be punching in and out, and the boss worrying about your "butt in seat" productivity metric is reasonable. It doesn't necessarily follow that you should work 80-hour weeks for months on end, but the case where some extra hours in a crunch is warranted makes more sense. Of course, a good employer would seek to offset that, either with money, time off in lieu or otherwise, but that ties back to the crap jobs again. ~~~ neutronicus There's an asymmetry here: I want to see the exchange as money for time, because my work is not valuable to me (I don't get to keep the product!), but my time is. I want an upper bound on how much of the resource that's valuable _to me_ that the company is entitled to in exchange for their money. The employer wants to see the exchange as money for work, because they couldn't care less how the work gets done. They want a lower bound on the amount of the resource that's valuable _to them_ that they get for their money. ~~~ dodedo And a difference of opinion: I want to see the exchange as work for time, because I work much more effectively than many other people. An hourly-rate job is simply not attractive to me, because the hourly-rate will not effectively capture my value. As explained by grellas above, overtime in the US is typically applied to replaceable workers who's hourly value is a more or less quantifiable resource. If I'm flipping burgers, painting a house, or banging out simple webapps based on someone else's design then it's fairly easy to quantify the value of my time. However, if I'm working in an industry where force multipliers abound, for example software engineering, or any sufficiently advanced executive/management position, I would much rather capture the value of what I produce -- there simply cannot be a good fit with shoehorning me into an hourly value rate. It simply isn't an accurate way to represent my value. This is best exemplified by jobs which supply equity stakes. If you give me a chunk of your company I'm no longer working for free, when I work overtime. ~~~ forcefsck > I want to see the exchange as work for time, because I work much more > effectively than many other people. An hourly-rate job is simply not > attractive to me, because the hourly-rate will not effectively capture my > value. Why not? If you provide better value per hour than others, you should also get higher hourly rate. If you just work more hours without more compensation, then you're just cheap. ------ forcefsck I agree with the author. We work to make a living, not live to work. However, he thinks that in Europe there are more human conditions. Well, this is rapidly changing towards the american system. E.g. the bail out for Greece was offered with the exchange of passing new employment rules. Some of them are enabling employers to demand for more work time without extra compensation, or to fire much more easily without specific reasons. Another nice change, not yet implemented but soon to be, the employee will not get the full monthly salary if he had any sick days. Furthermore, the public pension funds and health care is being demolished. Soon the only option will be to get in a insurance plan offered by your company (big companies have already started to offer such plans). So except if you're one of the very few top talented people, soon you'll be very depended on your job and will be forced to accept to work more working hours without any additional benefit. Romania has already moved that way, and Italy will follow soon. And the rest of Europe after that. This mentality that you must sacrifice your life for the benefit of your company, it is just absurd. If the law was enforcing less working hours and bigger compensations for overtime, there wouldn't be any competitiveness excuse. And the developed world should enforce the same work rules to the developing countries. It's absurd, especially if you think about how much the unemployment rates have risen and how much the technology today automates tasks so no humans are needed, and the production of material goods is so high that most products are never sold and end in the recycle bin. It screams about lowering the working hours and the retirement limits instead of raising them. ~~~ eli_gottlieb I have begun to wonder why we don't have a regulatory authority, something along the lines of a national central bank but for working hours, dedicated to regulating the work-week. When unemployment and overemployment are low, work hours are kept stable. When there is a chronic over-demand in the economy, the work-week is lengthened. When there is a chronic over-supply in the economy, the work-week is shortened. First World economies right now have an oversupply problem. Marx predicted the crises of capitalism due to overproduction and under-demand. We don't need a complete socialist revolution to deal with this issue (though I'm somewhat in favor of one), we just need to fine-tune the working week to productivity levels. ------ spinlock Here's my problem with people who put in 80 hours a week: they don't write good code. At my first job - way back in the last millenium - we were creating a carrier class network device. I was hired to run the mail servers but ended up building an embedded linux that ran the PowerPC on our hardware - we also had a Strong ARM that ran a gig ethernet but that was under another guy. So, how did I go from mail server to an integral piece of the product? I took over for the guy who put a lot of time into not solving a problem. Before you can even get linux running on your hardware, you need a boot loader to initialize your hardware and get it into a state where linux will run. Our "hard worker" volunteered to write a boot loader and spent 60+ hours a week for the next 6 months writing it. But it never worked. Management decided to let me take a crack at the boot loader. Now, I was in my early 20's. I had bars to drink at, a girlfriend to get some lovin' from, and parties to go to. I didn't want to spend 60 hours a week at my desk. So, I did what any lazy hacker would do: I found an open source project that was close to what we needed. The project I started from was PPCBoot and it was started by Wolfgang Denk for the purpose of booting hardware running a Power PC processor. I spent 2 weeks telling everyone else in the company that I needed their help on X, Y or Z; getting them to write some code; and burning the new version of PPCBoot onto the flash chip. After 2 40 hour weeks, something amazing happened: it worked. It configured the hardware and handed control to linux which booted up. Anyway, that's my reason not to spend more than 40 hours at work in a week. All of the people who I've seen put in all those hours aren't really working. They're just playing with a neat project because they've always wanted to write a boot loader. The purpose of you job isn't to write code, it's to ship a product. If you keep that in the front of your mind at all times and focus your efforts on shipping product, you can "work" 40 hours a week and code a pet project on your own time. ~~~ ajross Honestly that anecdote just proves that you were a better engineer than the 60 hour boot loader guy. It doesn't say anything about hours other than that some people will work hard even if they aren't making progress. You aren't claiming that he'd have done _better_ by spending only 2/3 the time, just that a solution (that he couldn't find) existed that fit. Honestly I find myself amused at the extent of the argument here. Most people I've known in the tech world who work long hours generally do so because ... they like it. It's a way to define your life. It's a way to feel good about yourself. I'm sure there are programmers trapped in death march dungeons somewhere for exploitative wages, but they are the exception, not the rule. ~~~ jiggy2011 I think the point is more that having some sort of time constraint perhaps helps force you to come up with more realistic solutions. For example the number of startups with VC investment who seem to have spent 50%+ of their time creating a new NoSQL DB or something. ------ TDL Please stop comparing overworking or non-optimal work conditions as slave labor. Slavery means you can not, either because of the law or threat of violence, leave the service of your master. I've had bad jobs in my day. One I left (I was a "partner" @ startup) and it was a financially bad decision, yet it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Here is the difference between slavery & a crappy job; a person can choose to leave the crappy job even if it means living hand-to-mouth a slave can't. I generally agree with what this author is saying. The best way to start thinking about your job is as though you are a contractor and your employer is your client. Remove the boss/employee template from your mind and start using the client/contractor template. ------ minikomi I work 3 days a week for quite a large social game / mobile web company here in Tokyo. They are asking me every 3 months to become a "Seishain" - full time employee - but I will continue to take the no-benifits, paid by the hour option. The pay's not great but I'm learning a lot. And I can go home on the dot at 6.. However, everyone who is not part time is here before I arrive, and stays after I leave. . . . ~~~ mathrawka I think that holds true for nearly any company in Japan though. The main reason people want to become "Seishain" is because you have much more job security. It is very hard to fire a full-time employee in Japan. And if it is a large company, there is the pension you get... a large sum of money when you retire, from the company. It is not uncommon to get an extra 10M - 20M yen when you retire. Part-timers don't get any of those... but they get some more freedom in their lives (unless they choose to go against the grain, which most Japanese don't). ~~~ minikomi Yeah.. I've been there (at an admittedly insane company), and "enjoyed" the benefits of cheaper health care, pension.. at the cost of sleeping under the desk a few nights a week, coming in at 6 or 7 just to read every single mail which circulated not to get caught out having missed some minor little thing by my senpai.. Now I balance this with really laid back face-to-face english teaching. It's actually quite nice. Half the week staring at a glowing box, half the week talking casually with people who are motivated to learn. edit: I'm quite broke though! ------ leppie Like the old saying goes: "I work for money. If you want loyalty, get a dog." ------ justinhj I have worked at game development companies for nearly 20 years. Initially I worked a lot of overtime for free,but after a couple of years I started to feel the effects on my life. After that I mostly just did not do OT unless it was paid. One year on a badly run project I doubled my salary through OT pay, and though my life outside work was not good I was able to put a significant amount of money aside. The following year hourly OT pay was gone, but the expectations were not. I made it clear I would only do OT on rare occasions, such as my work falling behind and a colleague being dependent on it at the weekend, when he would be working and I would be having a life. Even this caused resentment and I had to do the walk of shame at 5pm every day, and I was laid off as soon as the game shipped. The sense of personal failure was very hard on me at the time, but 12 years down the line, I've had a successful career in games, while being upfront at the hiring stage about my attitude to OT. I have worked a handful of weekend days and never later than 8pm in the week. I didn't miss my son growing up, and I read him a bedtime story every night. I don't think this is possible for every programmer and every company, but you can make it work. ------ buff-a _If you lose your job you may have to pay a lot more (COBRA) for a limited time_ No, you'll pay the same as you were paying. Its just that before, you thought you were being paid $100,000 when in fact you were being paid $120,000, and out of that came your health insurance and the other (more-than-) half of your social security and income taxes. ~~~ awolf You pay 10% more on COBRA than your employer was paying on your behalf. But the gist of what your saying still stands. ~~~ quatrevingts Plus, COBRA payments are (generally) not tax-deductible, so add another 30-40% more. ~~~ buff-a A self-employed person can deduct health expenses against gross income. You are correct in that COBRA cannot be deducted in this way. But it can still be taken as an itemized deduction. I'm not a tax accountant, but my tax accountant is. Another gotcha: if you're taking the 60% markdown on COBRA from Obama, then no, you're not allowed to write it off at all, but I wouldn't be complaining about that. ~~~ quatrevingts Only the portion which is greater than 7.5% of your gross income can be deducted on Schedule A. ------ x5315 I work at Twitter, where i regularly work longs hours (my standard work day is something like 10 - 19:30) and am frequently on call. I even spend time at the weekends thinking and hacking on specific problems. I feel that the author's post doesn't apply in my case, because: \- Some of the problems i work on are amazing. They're interesting and fun, and i enjoy them outside the normal "work hours". \- Twitter has an "unlimited"—be respectful to your team—holiday policy. I've probably taken about 6-7 weeks off in my one and a quarter years here. \- Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served for free. While you might not count that as 'being paid overtime', the costs of food can add up. \- This behaviour is not required. I know people who do 9-5 and that's it. They get their work done within deadlines, and there's no issue with that. So, am i to assume that Twitter is a huge exception? I'm not so sure. I think that while Twitter is a special environment, there are many companies that offer similar benefits. Maybe the real statement shouldn't be "don't do unpaid overtime", but: _"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle."_ \- Steve Jobs ~~~ troels > Twitter has an "unlimited"—be respectful to your team—holiday policy. I've > probably taken about 6-7 weeks off in my one and a quarter years here. Curious as to how these things work in the states. I take it that you pay for the time off from your salary? (E.g. you don't get any for the period) Do you have any time off that is paid by your employer? ~~~ jandrewrogers It is all paid time off. A lot of tech companies in the US have this policy. I know software developers that have taken two months off (paid) after a big product launch. It is part of the compensation and perks. Ironically, this policy is illegal in most European countries. ------ mefistofele Many industries are forbidden, by law, from unpaid overtime. The law specifically exempts the software industry from this requirement. Like so many other things about the culture here, this issue seems to come down to the US being afraid of its own shadow. We're the greatest country on Earth... we say so all the time. But to change the law and forbid unpaid overtime for the software industry, something that will make people's lives better here in the greatest country on Earth, is to risk losing all these programmers jobs overseas. A terrifying prospect. So we do nothing out of fear. ~~~ crander Programmers here are discussing if they choose to work unpaid extra hours or not. You don't make a country great by forbidding extra work regardless of the employee desires. You make a country great by allowing employers and employees to decide amongst themselves case by case. If labor wants to forbid this for other vocations good for them. I would like to keep my right to work more hours on salary or not. ~~~ moocow01 Nobody is forbidding overtime work - they are exempting tech employees from receiving pay for the overtime they work. Much of this legislation was passed in the US through the lobbying of big tech corporations (Microsoft) to increase profit margins. I personally would like to revoke my right to work overtime for free. ~~~ rprasad They are not prohibiting tech employees from receiving overtime, nor are they prohibiting companies from paying tech employees overtime. The law simply _does not require_ companies to pay overtime to tech employees (along with other, more traditional professionals such as doctors, accountants, and lawyers). ~~~ moocow01 You're correct in that tech companies _can_ pay overtime but in real terms this legislation results in no tech companies that actually pay overtime (but Im sure there is some rare exception). I'm sure there is a bandwagon of free- market folks who would be quick to point out why this is good for tech workers but from a practical point of view it has lead to an industry that treats long hours for the same pay as the norm. ------ wisty Towards the end, he gets to the main point - the US health system is not set up for people who aren't wage slaves for a big company. The idea that a company should pay your pension is also kind of dumb. ~~~ BadassFractal Bingo. What to do about it though? Would meaningful reform of the current system be possible? Where could one start? ~~~ etfb The Australian system is quite functional and, unlike the USA, we still have a functioning economy. Granted it mainly comes from digging up bits of the country and selling it cheap to China, but it's not all bad news. The USA could do with a lot more socialism than it's currently got. ~~~ jacques_chester Australia was successful before the mining boom started. The policy reforms of the 80s and 90s are the basis of our long-term success. ~~~ wisty Well, we were OK in the 90s. The mining boom, and the fact that overseas lenders are only just starting to question our ability to take in more debt has what has kept us out of recession, for now. Medium term, we might be in for a beating, like the US. Long term, we need more innovation. Name Australian innovation. Easy, right? Now name one innovative Australian company. ~~~ jacques_chester The boom was abruptly interrupted here, as it was everywhere else, in 2008 when the GFC kicked off. My old man works for Rio, who dumped _tens of thousands_ of contractors almost immediately, freezing tens of billions of dollars of projects. What really saved our bacon was a) labour market flexibility (ie many companies renegotiated hours instead of being forced to sack people) and b) that the Reserve Bank had lots of room to manoeuvre. The Commonwealth could also borrow deeply because it had no long term debt. None of these conditions was accidental. They were, as I said, consequences of decades of sensible reform by both major parties. > Easy, right? Now name one innovative Australian company. There are thousands. They're just not necessarily talked about by the HN set. Off the top of my head there's Cochlear, the half dozen companies spun off from NICTA, Kaggle, Computershare which was the first of its kind and so on. ------ smadam9 What about the part where programmers work overtime, but not because they are demanded to? I consistently see programmers, even in my own team, who happily stay 60-70 hours per week because the idea/concept they are working on means something significant to them. I find this phenomenon to be the exception of what your post has mentioned. Although the post was mostly accurate, I encounter this exception on a daily basis. While those 60-70 hrs./week aren't at 100% efficiency, the idea that a programmer will stay the extra time to produce high quality work while maintaining their own personal life says a lot about their view of their job and career. To some, it's just that - a job. However, others see it as an art (just as any profession, I suppose) and strive to increase their skills - they understand that invested time equals increased knowledge and a more refined skill set. ~~~ BadassFractal If your job is such a great learning experience, or the mission so captivating that you want to work 70 hours a week on it, you should be allowed to do that. In my experience few positions will be so exciting that you'll want to do that though. One can only get so much thrill out of writing CRUD apis for years. ------ leventali If you are constantly needing to work 70-80 hours a week that generally implies an issue with planning and/or engineering practices. ------ orblivion Well, I have an American way of looking at things. Why is 40 hours the magical number? Why is it that you're working for free after that point? He was correct in the first place that it's devaluing your hourly worth (assuming time is fungible). But guess what, if you can't get the job done that the employer wants to pay you the given salary for in the 40 hours you expected to satisfy him with, and the employer would let you go if you told him that this wasn't what you signed up for, you _are_ devalued. The employer hired you for a certain amount of work and was willing to pay a certain amount of money for it. If you made an agreement about the work to be accomplished, and did not make an agreement about hours, and you end up working 80 hours a week, you _are_ being paid overtime. Your base salary is just much lower because you're not worth very much to that particular employer at the base salary. Now, if the employer would _not_ fire you if you put your foot down, it's a matter of knowing your true worth. And I definitely agree it's worth doing this if you end up in this sort of situation. Either you part ways from a job that isn't worth it to you, or you get the conditions that are worth it to you. Negotiations have some leeway, you don't really know what the other person is willing to give up. ------ cletus This is a rant that's a bit all over the place. The author points out a lot of exceptions (eg working at a startup or somewhere where you might get something out of it). If you take out all those exceptions, you basically end up with the crap jobs. The real problems with a crap job isn't the unpaid overtimes... it's that it's a _crap jobs_. The fact is though, you get as much out of pretty much anything in life as you put in. If you want to working 9-5 5 days a week, you can probably find a job that'll let you do that if you try, which is fine, but I probably wouldn't expect anything but stagnating in it. I too have been a contractor. Never again. It's the ultimate in _transactional work_ [1]. When I did do it though, I _always_ negotiated an hourly rate. Employers love a daily rate because what is a day exactly? An hour is unambiguous. Health insurance in the US is a problem. This is known. The lack of vacation here is (IMHO) a problem too. I now have a great job and I have it because I put in effort (both at work and outside). YMMV. [1]: <http://cdixon.org/2009/10/23/twelve-months-notice/> ~~~ rickmb In the real world, there aren't only great jobs and crap jobs. Most jobs are just jobs. Period. You put in work, you get paid. It's not horrible, it's not always great fun either, but it's neither awesome nor crap. This is what most people do for a living. If you call that "stagnating" or "crap", you missed out half the point of the post: that the majority of people don't live to work, they work to live. They don't expect to get any fulfillment out of their job, they get it out of their life _outside_ of work. The idea that you cannot expect to get much out of life if you only put in 40 hours a week is bullshit that reduces the majority of the population to drones who's happiness is irrelevant. ~~~ BadassFractal If you live your work life, say from when you're 25 to 65, working from 9 to 5 on something that you don't really care about but you do just to pay the bills, aren't those 75,000 hours of your life you flushed down the toilet? That's almost half of your adult life, if you exclude sleep, that you throw away just so you can "enjoy" the other 8 hours a day you have. I personally have failed miserably to be happy with my life if my 8 hours of work a day sucked or were mediocre, I want all of my waking hours to have meaning. Not everybody has that luxury, but I feel it's something we should all strive for. ~~~ toadi Tell that to the people cleaning after you in the office. The people picking up your trash or the millions of other jobs that pay the bill. Now if we are only talking in the domain of information workers. There is still CRUD to be developed or the 1 millionth website designed or other boring business logic to be developed. I got this questions many times if you win the lottery would you still be doing your job. Hell no and I love my job. But there are other things I enjoy even more... ~~~ BadassFractal Why do I have to compare my situation to that of a latin-american middle-aged lady that ran away from the crippling poverty of her country to pursue her version of the American dream? How does that put in perspective 300 grand I dumped into six years of education at two top 5 US institutions and years of experience at industry giants? If I had unlimited money, I would still work in technology and with technology, I simply love learning and hacking too much. I would not be writing mindless Java CRUD though, unless perhaps if those were my customers and I somehow felt that someone's life somewhere will so greatly benefit from it that I HAVE to do it for their sake. ~~~ toadi What a stereotyping. I think in America a lot of people have 2 jobs or maybe 3 jobs. They must be loving their job. America is the greatest and best country if have to dump 300 grand in education. Luckily I can study at a university in Belgium that's one of the top 100 universities in the world for a fraction of that amount. Actually If I had unlimited money I would do the same thing as what Bill Gates is doing now. It benefits people too and you don't have to do the work :D ------ Androsynth I used to work at a company that routinely worked people well over 40 hours/week. I left because I felt I was losing the best years of my life doing tedious projects, however I know a lot of people who stayed and who still work there. Its not like people don't know the situation. No one looks at routine 60 hour weeks and says 'yeah, this is about right'. Everyone has their own reasons for staying, or for leaving. One big reason is the 120k yearly salary they make (in SF). But NONE of these people are slaves. Anyone who uses the term slaves loses all credibility. Feel free to call them sheeple all you want, but _they're not slaves_. People need to learn from their own mistakes. You can't teach people lessons on a grand scale. Everyone needs to find their own career paths. The biggest problem with employment is not that we need more regulation (no no no we dont), its that we have a culture where we view jobs as privileges rather than simply: me exchanging my time for your money. (as others have pointed out, health care issues are a big factor here) ~~~ jsharpe A better term than "slave" is probably "golden handcuffs". You are trapped by what you are given, whether that's healthcare, salary, vesting, etc. ------ ggwicz "For men fright at relinquishing their material goods, but shackle their time to others willingly." This is a paraphrased quote from a weird version of the Stoic Philosophy of Seneca; I'm sure the correct quote is out there, but hopefully you get the point: Your time is your most valuable asset. Dole it out like your employers (or clients, etc.) dole out their money: carefully. I know people who'll complain about taxes, drive further to get to a cheaper gas station, order goods in bulk to save money, etc. all to save some cash. Rarely do these people have this diligence with the allotment of their time. Be careful and cautious with how you use your time. View it as something being spent, and if higher dollars means less free hours then don't do it. This philosophy, in my (albeit small amount of) experience, helps you avoid a lot of the issues OP brings up. Be careful, people. Paper money can blow away in the wind but then be recouped fairly easily. The few seconds you spent reading this comment, for example? Permanently gone. Be wary of how you spend your time... ------ thurn You should be paid to do a fixed amount of work (generate a certain amount of value for your employer), not work a fixed number of hours. If you can get that work done in 10 hours a week, everybody wins. If you need to work 70 hours a week to do that work, well, maybe you're not a good fit for the job. ~~~ okamiueru How do you consider the factor "good work"? You can finish a job quickly, but it'll bite you (or a coworker) in the ass later, or you can do the job well, but take you longer. As a programmer, I can't thing of a worse way of management than the former. You'd have to start defining criteria for "good work", and then spend tons of time reviewing. Nightmare. ------ phomer When I get paid to work I really care that the work I do is worth the money I am paid. That is, if I'm paid for 40 hours, I feel its important to give my employer 40 hours of good solid work. From time to time, I don't mind going above and beyond, things happen and sometimes it takes a significant effort to correct them, a bit of overtime is fine. But I strongly feel that any of those companies that pay people for 40 hours of work, but generally expect them to work 60 or 80 hours most weeks are abusing the relationship on their side. What they are looking for is a seriously large discount in labor costs. Unless there is some 'other' form of compensation that balances it out, then it is clearly abusive (and quickly leads to burnout, so they aren't even getting value for the hours worked). Paul. ------ smallegan I'm not a big fan of unionized work but it is worth mentioning that when developers agree to work in poor conditions like this it changes the social norm and negatively impacts the economics surrounding software development. If 2 developers are working 60 hours a week they are essentially putting a third developer out of work. (I understand that studies show you can't be as productive over a certain number of hours but the principle remains the same) Unless there is a large pool of unemployed developers in the market this need for developer number 3 will in turn drive the cost for a developer up as the market will be more competitive. This is simply supply and demand at work. ~~~ jandrewrogers The weakness in your argument is that developers are not fungible commodities in practice. You can't just hire a third developer in many cases so no one is being put out of work. For many companies (like mine) there are far more open positions than we can find qualified developers to fill them. The reality in the market is that there is a shortage of developers, or at least developers with the talent and skill required. This is not an argument for working 60 hours per week, just that you can't solve that problem by hiring more developers. There are not enough good developers as it is. ~~~ smallegan I understand what your saying but if the need for developers truly outweighed the market the cost would continue to rise until an equilibrium is approached. In many areas as the cost goes up balance is found with outsourcing. ------ wyclif _which is not all that common in this industry_ In context, it sounds like he means "which is not uncommon in this industry." ------ mirsadm I have noticed that the example you set when you start somewhere new is what is expected of you for the rest of your time at that company. To clarify, if you start a new job and work for free an extra 40 hours a week then you will forever be expected to do that. I made the mistake of doing that to 'prove' myself and I ended up working very long hours at a place which I wasn't particularly fond of. The person sitting close to me worked exactly 8-5 from day one. Everybody knew he wouldn't be at work after 5 and they never expected it. ------ mathattack Sometimes the overtime is implicit in the rate. If you joint a sweatshop that pays 100K, you know going in that it's not $50/hour for 2000 hours, it's more like $40/hour for 2500 or $33.33 for 3000. It's not unpaid, it's built into the expectation. The real question is, "How much do you want to work?" If you are a talented hacker, you can answer that however you want. If you are 21 and looking for someone to teach you a trade while paying a good wage in a tough job market, it is a more difficult choice. ------ jcromartie All I want to know is: why do I have to work as many (unpaid) hours as necessary to get the job done, but I have to count the hours I take off? ~~~ cconroy This seems to be a cultural problem with the US. I agree with everything the author has said, but let me play devil's advocate: What is stopping a employee -- in a free market with specialized skills -- from adding a provision in his/her employment agreement for payment for hours worked >40 hrs/wk. If the employer values you they will either tell you not to work more than the 40, or tell you when you can -- shifting the power to you. There is no rule -- or should there be, about negotiating such terms. Switching back, I think this should arrive more from our culture as it takes an assertive individual to do this as of now. I am a little hesitant to make such terms gov't mandated -- but I would like to hear arguments for it. ------ fiznool Whilst I agree with the general principle of not working yourself to death (nobody ever says on their death bed, 'I wish I'd spent more time in the office'), I think the author of this piece is missing something crucial. I regularly work more than 40 hours a week, not because I have to, but because I want to learn. One day I'd like to go freelance or perhaps start up a business, but I need to skill up first. I'm lucky that I have a job in my chosen sector of mobile web development, something which pays me to learn about the technologies I am passionate about. I am seizing the opportunity to learn as much as possible so I can be in a position to just work when I want to in later life. IMO the author is looking at this from an experienced point of view. Juniors and those starting out often have no choice but to work a little longer to get where they want to be in 20 years time. There's nothing wrong with that, surely? ------ spiralpolitik Generally IMHO not paying overtime usually masks inefficiencies in your business. If someone is having to work 70-80 hour weeks to get the job done then something is messed up somewhere in your process. Paying overtime is an easy way to spot these area as its immediately visible to any half brained manager. ------ brudgers The title is misleading. [IANAL] In the United States, for a person in a salaried position, work week hours beyond 40 are not legally classified as overtime. For salaried positions, the length of the workweek and compensation for additional hours are always subject to negotiation (for hourly positions compensation for overtime is also negotiable but cannot be less than the statutory minimums). In my opinion, the author's analysis of economics entailed by salaried positions is rather naive. Hourly rate of pay is often less important than the monthly or weekly or yearly rate, i.e. cashflow is often the more important consideration. For example, if one's household maintenance is $10,000 per month, then monthly income, rather than hourly rate, is likely to be a more critical issue in regards to compensation. ------ ChuckMcM Wow, that's a pretty disjoint rant. It boils down to this: "I'd rather have a work and life balance that I can enjoy." Which has nothing to do really with working overtime and everything to do about how you approach work and life. I think one could boil down the philosophy into 'if you're working too much and your balance is out of whack, then quit.' And it is quite reasonable. In the Bay Area families can be especially hard hit by people who over commit. That being said, in spite of the Author's disdain for economics, the interrelationship between who is available to work, pay, and whether or not they are willing to stay, does 'fix' the problem magically. ------ djhworld There is no contract stipulation in my contract that says I might need to do overtime. The only mention of overtime is the fact that it is unpaid. So I've never done it. I get in at 8:30am and leave at 5pm every day. ~~~ tptacek There doesn't have to be; if you're told to get X done before leaving the office, and 5pm rolls around with X undone, you can be fired. That's the nature of at-will employment. ------ railsmax That's really true And you are right about over hours. Why should I work more hours and receive money only for 40 hours a week? But sometimes(I mean my case) if you like your work and project and it is intereting to you to do this job, why not to work a little more for example, because sometimes you should finish task today - for your own purpose - not to forget smth. tomorrow. But I said that only for 1-or max 2 hours a day and only sometimes, and you can use this hours if you want for example leave work in friday earlier. ------ Strom _In Europe your health is not tied to your employment in any way._ This statement is just wrong. In Estonia, health insurance is subscription based, paid as a tax from your salary. ~~~ bnr So you lose your health insurance when you lose your job? How is health insurance for unemployed people handled in Estonia? ------ SonicSoul i'm never a fan of these blanket statements such as "i won't work unpaid overtime". Some jobs are 35 hours, and some jobs are 70 hours. Some jobs pay 40k, and some jobs pay 200k. Who said that 40hr week is the holy and undisputed threshold everyone should abide by? Look at construction workers, some of them work from sun up to sun down, 6-7 days a week (i sure did when i was younger) and there is no such hour standard. Sure they are often paid on how much work gets done, but at the end of the month, many won't make more than someone with a good salary working in an office writing code. I am not trivializing writing code. that's what i do, and i often work 60-70hr weeks, and sometimes it's a stressful time. But i do get paid accordingly (not in overtime, but i consider my salary to be great), and i do get a lot more done than average person would in 40hrs. I guess if your employer tells you it will be 40hrs and it turns out to be 70, thats a problem. but in my experience most of the time you know exactly what you're getting into when accepting a job (besides occasional crunch times couple times a year). ------ hpguy If you hate your job and have no interest in the success of your company, good advice. If you love your job, there's nothing wrong doing it a bit more. I sometimes see myself work 12 hours a day just because I can't get my mind of a coding problem. And I sincerely hope the company I work for become successful. ------ ngokevin Coming from a student, for those who might really enjoy the project they are working on and have a comfortable enough lifestyle to not worry about money, working more is its own reward. I am only paid for a maximum of 20 hours a week though I work more than that since I enjoy working. ~~~ toadi Well explain to the your children that they can't get more food because daddy likes the work more over getting paid. A bit harsh but understand that not all people live in the same context. Single, student, ... ~~~ ngokevin I said for those who don't have to worry about money, from a student. But thanks for restating that. ------ joedev Work does, quite literally, _kill us_ \- [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-22/the-worse-the- econo...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-22/the-worse-the-economy-gets- the-longer-people-live-peter-orszag.html) ------ jac_no_k This doesn't work when one works in a multi-national company. My colleagues in other locations will eat my lunch because they are less concerned about work/life balance and a lot more hungry. ~~~ nostrademons That's when you work smarter, not harder. I've found that the biggest benefit of working reasonable hours is that it gives you time & energy to self-reflect and look at your process as a whole. Most work processes have inefficiencies that can be eliminated if you look at the process as a whole. If you do that, you can easily accomplish more in 6 hours than your colleagues in other locations can in 12. That in turn gives you more time to invest in other process improvements and tools, which in turn let you accomplish still more, and so on. ------ latch This is stupid. Why? Because you are getting legal advice from someone who isn't a lawyer. The spirit of his post is fine, but the reality, for a lot of people, is very different. <IANAL> In Ontario, the Employment Standards Act, which defines all of this (and a lot more) has a ton of exemptions. Here's the exemptions for "Information Technology Professionals": [http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/tools/srt/coverage_go...](http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/tools/srt/coverage_government_it.php) Notice that we are exempt from "Hours of Work", "Daily Rest Periods" and "Overtime" to name a few. This means that, aside from your employment contract, there are no laws that protect your right to refuse unpaid (or paid) overtime. ~~~ dinkumthinkum It's good thing you're not a lawyer because nothing he said violated the law or a contract. :) Unless I missed it, the only thing he discussed relating to laws was how other countries dealt with this sort of thing. Refusing to work unpaid hours is just fine, perhaps you will be fired, but it is definitely you're right but no boogeyman is going to come and lock you up for banging out mindless Java code to meet some unrealistic deadline. ~~~ latch First, he suggests that no one should work overtime, which isn't practical for people who can't afford to get fired. Second, he suggest that there's no benefit to working over time, while many would see keeping your job as a benefit. I'm not sure if he realizes that refusal to work overtime can, in itself, be a reason to get fired, or if that consequence simply doesn't matter to him. Either way, saying that they shouldn't matter to any one else is incorrect. Also, the entire health care angle is weird. Both Canada and UK have public health care, but both work a lot of overtime: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4149835.stm> [http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Unpaid+overtime+grow...](http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Unpaid+overtime+growing+problem/1889928/story.html) ~~~ potatolicious It's only impractical in a poor job market. I take it you write code? As a fellow Canadian, I have only one suggestion: get the fuck out of Canada. The market for programmers is piss poor, the selection of jobs anemic and mostly drudge-work monkeying. There are other geographies that offer much more interesting work, double-to-triple Canadian salaries, and a strong enough employment scene that _nobody_ can hold much over your head, least of all fears of being on the street. You sound like you're being bullied. Your employer is holding your basic survival over your head to get you to commit to unreasonable demands. I'd highly suggest turning this around. ~~~ latch I was in Canada for most of my life. I'm in Asia now. I agree, getting the heck out of Canada is a good idea. None of this is about me. I just think the article really comes off quite sheltered..."I can do what I want and who cares if I get fired, so should you!" ~~~ potatolicious > _"I just think the article really comes off quite sheltered..."I can do what > I want and who cares if I get fired, so should you!"_ I don't see that sentiment in the post. There are two takeaways for me from the post: 1 - You have more chips to play with than you know, particularly in this industry. We're not fighting over factory line work here, we're people with a highly coveted skill set that is (at least for now) at incredibly high demand world-wide. Abusive employers would _like_ for you to believe that you have no choice but to submit, but in reality people in our line of work have an almost comically absurd number of options right now. If you are programming and dealing with this, you probably don't actually have to, and your fears of getting fired and unable to find other work are likely unfounded. "You're going to get fired if you don't submit to my unreasonable demands, and you're lucky to have a job at all!" is usually a scam. Triply, quadruply true for our field. 2 - If you _do_ find yourself in a position where your freedom to say "fuck you" to an abusive employer is compromised (no other jobs in the area, collapsing industry, etc), you need to get yourself away from that kill-zone as quickly as humanly possible. If you need to retrain your skillset, do so. This is a problem that will never correct itself, and you _can_ get out. If you have high expenses that limit your savings rate, and thus your unemployment runway, do something about it. Your employment mobility is _the_ negotiation leverage in this line of work, and you should never do anything to compromise this (like, say, take out an unwisely large mortgage). ------ Flow If there are no cost of overtime, I think the company lack a feedback on how well planning, estimation and execution do. With no feedback there are less reason to change the company for the better. ------ eli_gottlieb If you don't like unpaid overtime, move to Massachusetts! Programmers aren't overtime-exempt here. ------ joedev "Work hard and go home!" - Amen, amen, amen! ------ gnosis The culture of overwork in America in general (not just in IT) seems simply pathological, and I just don't understand it. The crazy overtime that people in the medical profession are expected to put in is probably one of the most egregious examples, because lives could literally be lost as a consequence of errors made due to lack of sleep and overwork. Lawyers are typically worked to death at law firms. Wall St is famous for making people slave away virtually non-stop -- making work your life and having no life outside of work is quite common. Of course, big bonuses are promised -- and delivered to senior people -- but more junior people often aren't so lucky. Even teachers, who many people think "have it so easy", actually spend a huge amount of time outside of school hours grading papers and making lesson plans. Their "long vacations" are also typically filled with work-related activities. And don't even get me started on how low-wage employees and undocumented workers are typically treated. It seems no matter where I look, people are working their assess off in America -- and suffering the consequences: burnout, a shitty life/work balance through which their families, friends, and their non-work lives suffer. And for what? It's not like many of the companies these people work for couldn't afford to hire more people to reduce the workload to sane levels. I'm really amazed at how highly skilled employees at prestigious law firms and Wall St firms are made to work like mad. Those firms could easily afford to hire more junior people to pick up some of the lower-level work -- but they don't. As a result, a lot of these firms are like revolving doors, with people dropping like flies. The carrots of money are dangled in front of their faces, but otherwise the firms don't really seem to care about their employees -- and will often drop them without a second thought (even if business suffers as a result, which it often does). And it's just so incredibly dangerous and downright unethical to make doctors and nurses work a crazy amount of overtime with little or no sleep. Why is it so difficult for these companies to offer their employees a healthy life/work balance? Why is a big paycheck is supposed to solve everything? Why don't more companies offer their employees a healthy amount of time to sleep at night instead of just more cash? Business will improve as productivity improves as a result (and business should know this well by now, as there have been tons of studies to show it). Employees and their families will be healthier and happier. Healthy and happy employees are clearly better employees, especially compared to the super- stressed near-burnout heart attack candidates that so many of these firms seem to prefer to cultivate. Improving the life/work balance seems like a huge win-win situation for both employers and employees, and a no-brainer. What am I missing? ------ dustingetz you get a bad deal when you negotiate without leverage. ------ kamaal Its not always about the money I earn now, or over the next two weeks. Looking at thing from that perspective is not just a narrow minded way of looking but a very destructive thing over the longer run. I push 16 hours work day packed with productivity at the extreme, why? Sure I don't get paid for all that immediately. But bear in mind incrementally over the years I have learned tons more than the average guy. I am also better trained to perform on my current job than my peers. The chances of me doing some thing big are higher, I am better aligned to a good job/promotion or a raise. Basically when somebody is talking of career development and over time this is what they mean. I joined this industry 5 years back. Without fancy degrees, Ivy league brand, marks and grades. Today I'm far ahead of most of my peers who joined with me then. Ofcourse I have faced a lot of ridicule, mockery as to why like a fool I do so much work for free. I am not doing anything for free, I am just ok with temporary loss in compensation for a premium later. In you and your research by Richard Hamming - <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html> , This point is mentioned: _Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.'' I simply slunk out of the office! What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question about this. _ And trust me this incremental learning and productivity give mindblowing results over time. ------ pullo first world problems ------ utkarshsinha Do you know there are people working in sweatshops at really low wages? Be glad you're not there yet. ~~~ utkarshsinha Seriously?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

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