datajuicer/LLaMA-1B-dj-refine-150B
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M: Show HN: Australia Quiz (Sound) - gaving
https://terraaustralis.herokuapp.com/
R: gaving
Weekend(ish) project to play with React.
[https://github.com/gaving/terra](https://github.com/gaving/terra)
Related:-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178358)
R: simonblack
Faulty quiz - needs work. | {
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M: Twitter Picks Berlin For German Headquarters - platzhirsch
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-25/twitter-picks-berlin-for-german-headquarters-focus-says.html
R: untog
I'm surprised more companies _haven't_ chosen Berlin. Big startup scene,
desirable location, great transit links... seems to be obvious to me. I must
be missing something.
R: blumentopf
I can certainly think of German cities with advantages over Berlin.
Karlsruhe for instance has an extremely awesome scientific community, its
university is in fact home to the oldest computer science faculty in Germany
and coincidentally was the first place in Germany to have leased-line Internet
connectivity (in 1989). There's an abundance of excellent engineers coming out
of the university which is definitely a plus when you're staffing a startup.
Also, much nicer weather compared to Berlin and a much more affluent region
with better infrastructure and more companies.
Frankfurt/Main also comes to mind, the secret Internet capital of Europe and
home to the largest Internet exchange in the world (DE-CIX).
I guess it's just that these cities aren't as sexy and hyped as Berlin.
R: untog
_I guess it's just that these cities aren't as sexy and hyped as Berlin._
I know it sounds like that shouldn't matter, but it does. People want to live
in desirable places with other amenities than just good jobs.
I would agree that Frankfurt/Main would be a good destination too, though.
R: sneak
This is great news for the Berlin technology scene, if for the halo effect
alone (big brands attract big talent). Berlin is indeed a great place to live,
and I think a lot of companies will follow suit in the next few years.
Accordingly, rents will continue to rise sharply and all of the qualities that
initially made Berlin an above-average-attractiveness choice for employees and
employers alike will eventually evaporate - but that will take ten years, and
lots of people and companies will build lots of awesome stuff in the interim,
all while saving tons on rent and other living expenses.
Give it a whirl! 'tis a fantastic place. Ping me when y'all arrive.
R: tferris
Great news. Hamburg is usually very good in attracting strong online brands
(Airbnb Germany, Facebook Germany) but this time they weren't and it seems
that Hamburg as a online/tech destination is slowly questioned.
Hamburg and the people there are quite nice but Berlin it's a completely
different ball game. Everyday, VCs shotgun boatloads of money to Berlin based
startups, the largest European VC are moving to Berlin and really EVERYBODY is
in Berlin right now.
R: excuse-me
Although presumably, like Google and Facebook, it will still claim that it has
no substantial presence in Germany and all it's Eu revenue is generated in
Eire and so pay no tax.
R: herge
The real name is Ireland, or the Republic of Ireland if you need to
disambiguate.
R: justincormack
The "real name" depends on what language you speak. It has two official
languages, and in one is Éire.
Edit: see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Irish_state> not sure why
getting downvoted for factually correct information.
R: herge
The real name is what people who live there actually use. You only sound like
a twat when using Eire, or calling Irish "Gaelic".
R: disgruntledphd2
Well, yes and no. I agree that I have never heard anyone call the country Eire
(except for me when posting letters from the UK), it still remains that the
canonical interpretation of our constitution is in Irish, as as such , the
name Eire takes legal preference above the Republic of Ireland.
R: excuse-me
Ireland is ambiguous and likely to annoy half the inhabitants, Republic of
Ireland sounds like legal small print and "the south" is a euphamism if you
don't know who you are talking to in a bar in Belfast.
So Eire is safest ;-0
R: urgeio
Great news for Berlin, the place to be right now. I am using this thread for a
shameless plug: if you are interested to come to Berlin and to work here
please check out opportunities at our brand new startup:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3653322>
R: suking
Why does twitter need so many employees? I could see like 50... Nothing has
changed in years there, they have 1 product which is posting 140 characters.
Everything else is pretty basic, just big scale. I don't get the need for
thousands of employees.
R: magnusgraviti
I think they need not so many programmers but staff for call-centers,
marketing, R&D etc.
R: suking
What - call centers??? R&D? What are they researching - how store 140
characters?
R: magnusgraviti
They have millions of companies posting twitter messages and they provide
analytics and other tools for businesses. I think they need a lot of people at
call centers, support department etc.
All we see as users is 140 characters + apps <https://twitter.com/#!/download>
as there is nothing to ask about :)
Look at <http://business.twitter.com/> they have more than just 140
characters.
R: platzhirsch
Kind of a game changer given that Google and Facebook chose Hamburg and Munich
for Germany.
R: sneak
Munich is stuffy and expensive, Berlin is comparatively poor and open verrrry
very late. The game hasn't changed - it's just a totally different
environment, for vastly different hiring objectives. | {
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M: Best VC firms database - thankuz
http://venture-capital-firms.findthebest.com/
R: zzleeper
What are their sources? Is it <http://www.nvca.org/> ? | {
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M: Reddit Offline in EU 9am-5pm in Support of Don't Wreck the Net - OJFord
https://dontwreckthe.net/
R: OJFord
GDPR has already 'challenged' the open internet, by causing many American
websites to decide it's simply not worth it, and just block European access,
as discussed previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17714152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17714152)
R: ToFab123
Good. Gives room for competition and creation of alternatives to the American
sites we are pested with right now. | {
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"perplexity": 1841,
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M: Starting sometime today, Safari on Yosemite cannot play HTML5 YouTube videos - gittes
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/youtube/safari/mlfwY4s-1Lg
R: gittes
Seems youtube.com did some update that is making HTML5 video playback stop
working with a loud squeak and no play, or dropping to Flash. I'm experiencing
it myself.
Submitted link to YouTube Google Product Forums.
From initial post: About an hour ago, all HTML5 playback just stopped. I was
running OS X 10.10.1 (now 10.10.2) and Safari 8.0.
Videos would either switch to the Flash Player, throw an error, make a loud
"squeak" noise and throw an error, or just crash the Safari page outright and
forcing a Force Reload.
I know this is unrelated to the recent Yosemite update, as this issue was
happening before I installed the update. In the meanwhile, Chrome does work.
R: gittes
Is it "sometime today" or "some time today"? | {
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"perplexity": 1474.8,
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M: At what point should an intelligent machine be considered a person? - spacey2
http://robohub.org/at-what-point-should-an-intelligent-machine-be-considered-a-person/
R: basicplus2
When it has self awareness
R: CuriouslyC
Young babies don't display any signs of self awareness. | {
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M: Warren Buffett Flags a Successor - grellas
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303467004575574630162624198.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
R: jeffmiller
"He is extremely well-trained, reads 500 pages a week and does his own deep-
dive research." Sounds like a Buffett guy.
Generating returns on a fund of Berkshire's scale is no joke, though. Good
luck to him. | {
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M: Brief History of JIT in MoarVM for Perl 6 - Ultimatt
http://brrt-to-the-future.blogspot.com/2018/07/perl-6-on-moarvm-has-had-jit-for-few.html
R: 3rdAccount
I'm always impressed with the size of the problem that the Perl6 core team is
trying to solve relative to the number of volunteers and funding.
It is a really nice language based off of all the tutorials and presentations
I've watched. It just needs some better performance before I'll really start
using it and I think there are many in the community that are in the same
boat. It's a pity, because it's a chicken or the egg kind of problem. I would
try to help, but when it comes to computer science I am a consumer and not a
producer (I have my own large projects in my domain :)).
R: tyil
> It is a really nice language based off of all the tutorials and
> presentations I've watched. It just needs some better performance before
> I'll really start using it
I'm also very impressed in how the language is turning out. It's a pleasure to
write and read. I know most people really don't like Unicode operators, but I
find them to be very useful. They're short and concise, and allow those
writing mathematical equations to stick to their regular symbols. And for
those that don't know how to do Unicode on their OS/editor, there's ASCII
equivalents.
Performance-wise, it seems to be fast enough for all my personal projects, and
it's getting faster every release. Is there a certain piece of code that you
want to have running within a certain amount of time? That would allow you
(and Perl 6 devs) to have a goal to look at, and work towards.
R: 3rdAccount
Running grammars past very large datasets. You hear enough people talk about
the performance and you decide to stay away a bit until things improve. I also
have some numeric code and that is generally probably not a great P6 fit (more
of a Python + Numpy thing).
As a general scripting language, P6 looks nice as a lot of features such as
concurrency that are aren't super straightforward (Ex: python) seem to be dead
simple in P6.
R: b2gills
Perl 6 was designed in part to allow PDL (Perl Data Language) type features to
be added easily.
In fact some things that you would do in PDL have already been added, they
just currently aren't as fast as they could be.
(1,2,3; 4,5,6; 7,8,9) "**" 2
(1,4,9; 16,25,36; 49,64,81)
The above is specifically allowed to do all of the operations in parallel, but
doesn't currently. (Perhaps even on a GPU)
R: aidenn0
Why did I think the Perl 6 VM was called parrot?
R: Ultimatt
There is an intermediate language the Rakudo compiler is implemented in called
NQP. That split from the Parrot project to support several VMs as the stuff
emitted as the "compiled" code. For a while Parrot and JVM were supported
simultaneously. With the addition of MoarVM the project moved away from
supporting Parrot. There are other targets in development including JavaScript
and most recently Truffle/GraalVM
[https://github.com/perl6/nqp/commits/truffle](https://github.com/perl6/nqp/commits/truffle)
Essentially a _lot_ happens within the Perl 6 project at a pace that's kind of
surprising if you keep an eye on it.
R: aidenn0
Thanks for the summary!
R: totalperspectiv
I appreciate the time taken to fill in the history!
R: sunseb
Is Perl 6 fast now?
R: jdoege
It really depends. The question really should be, "Is Perl 6 fast enough?" For
my purposes, the answer is almost always yes. I can imagine some applications
where the answer would be no, but then I would probably be looking at C/C++
for a solution, anyway. Language bench-racing has really begun to look
counter-productive to me.
R: b2gills
Someone once posted code that they had written in both Perl 6 and C/C++. The
Perl 6 code was shorter, arguably easier to understand, and they said it was
also faster for their data.
My guess would be that the strings had to be copied more often in the C/C++
code. | {
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M: Code bullies - ShannonRohn
In response to the harassment conversation.. I read the entire article a few moments ago. Interesting... Don't we want this young girl to be able to stand up for herself one day? Instead of looking at it as harassment in the adult world, shouldn't we be teaching her to 'code like a girl?' That should not only entail one thing individually, at her age we should be transforming her thought of inability into ability. What she learns now will shape her every being, as an adult. Teach young ladies that the opinions of others can be far off of your own intentions.. not to be bothered by it. Stand up to the code bullies, fight against it. The opinions of others don't matter, don't let it overcome you. With the teenage suicide epidemic in this country, we cannot afford to be defeated by words or thoughts of others that may shape us to who we become as a person. No, harassment is not okay, but not teaching this young girl how to really, and intellectually code like a GIRL, is not okay either. (Stand on the only floor in front of you) it's the only thing holding you up. Instead of running to her defense, making it a bigger deal than it is, will scare her too. I've been teaching youth cheerleading for 17 years. So I know all about teenage girl emotion. However, let's teach our children how to be strong without us. Lead the way now, so they can show us how to get there next time.
R: jamesmp98
I'm confused? | {
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M: Ask HN: How do you host your personal domain email accounts? - clappski
I'm looking at getting an email service provider account to associate my own personal domains email address with. Who offers the best service/price? How much effort is it to host it myself?
R: mattkrea
Fastmail.com
They are reliable and I like to know that it'll just work™. I've been a
customer for over 3 years or so now.
R: Artemix
My old workplace uses that for their entire staff, and I use the personal
5€/month plan, with no complaint.
R: sadris
Epik.com seems to be the cheapest. Most providers are at least $10/mo but for
only one address I'm paying $3/mo at epik
R: rapnie
With ProtonMail you get 1 custom domain and 5 addresses for $5/mo.
R: feistypharit
Migadu. Pay by number of mails sent. Not by number of domains.
R: tumdum_
Zoho.com (it's free). | {
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M: Bending Over Backwards - freerobby
http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/bending_over_backwards
R: Kylekramer
So I guess Gruber is just giving up on even trying to be a bit objective
anymore? This read more like a hurt comic book fan forum post about a bad
review of his favorite superhero's movie than anything else. Worse battery
life, a non improved screen, weak cameras and lack of 4G/flash are drawbacks,
no matter how you slice it.
The funny thing is Mossberg's review is overwhelmingly positive.
R: spicyj
The point is, the iPad's real competitors don't beat it in any of those
categories except for camera. (Also, Gruber said in his own review that he got
identical battery life to the previous model.) The Xoom is the only tablet
that promises 4G and Flash and got mediocre reviews even without those
components, which will probably make it run worse.
R: greatDismay
I have a Xoom and I don't know why people are giving it such a bad rap. It
does everything I want it to do and it does it really fast.
R: jarek
I'm now going to be That Guy: one person disputing another person's statements
about a mainstream consumer electronics device? Hacker News?
R: ZeroGravitas
He missed the criticism of the iPad covers:
_"Unfortunately, I found the cover's magnetic latch came open in my
briefcase, turning the screen on and wasting the battery. Also, the light gray
color I had picked up smudges."_
R: fod
Great, a review of a review. | {
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M: Dynamic Pricing and Major League Baseball - jamessun
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is_dynamic_pricing_a_hit
R: jamessun
Link to the referenced paper,
[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2796407](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2796407) | {
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M: Ask HN: What product most improved your quality of life? - miguelrochefort
R: marapuru
A good bed. There is no bed like my own. I have a good night's rest so I can
fully take the next day again.
I was doubting to write the next one. Since it's obviously not a "product",
but want to mention anyway.
My wife. She really completed me in such a way that it significantly improved
my quality of life. She holds the mirror in front of me at the right times and
works in an entirely different field, making her a great sparring partner.
R: drakonka
It's hard to pick just one.
* Laser eye surgery in 2009 - I know it isn't really a "product", but it is one of the best purchasing decisions I've made.
* Kindle - it is so much more convenient than reading or collecting physical books, and with the e-ink screen doesn't detract from that "book feel" for me
* Tretinoin - this might be a weird one, but as someone who is very into skincare this single product makes me feel confident that I am effectively taking care of my skin for the long term. I don't have to worry about if I'm "doing it right", or bother with gimmicky expensive "texture-enhancing" or "anti-ageing" or whatever-the-next-buzzword-is products. Tretinoin has a very large body of research behind it. We know it works. A single tube of tretinoin (coupled with sunscreen!) saves me a lot of wondering and money. This is not to say I use nothing else at all, it's more like this one product and the knowledge base we have on it keeps me from spending money on otherwise expensive skincare that I don't need, which is _marketed_ to do the same thing as tretinoin but isn't actually shown to work like tretinoin is.
R: ak39
How old were you when you did LASIK - and what did it fix? (I am in early
stages of flirting with the idea - had 2020 vision till about 3 years ago. I
am 47 now.)
R: drakonka
I was 21 at the time; I hear that this is a bit young to get that kind of
procedure as my eyes may still change rapidly, but I went to a reputable
doctor who ran various tests before concluding that I was a candidate, and
luckily my eyesight is still going strong almost 11 years later.
I can't remember exactly what my deficiencies were at the time to be honest,
other than I could not see well far away. I was told I needed glasses but
never bothered wearing them or paying attention to my sight other than knowing
it sucked. When doing an eye test for my driver's permit I was one line away
from not being able to legally drive without glasses, if that gives you any
idea.
Now there are apparently other options than LASIK which might work better for
some. For example, a few years ago a coworker of mine got a procedure that he
described as them basically inserting a lens into his eye instead of
resurfacing part of the eye itself. Apparently it means if his eyesight
changes sufficiently over the years he can just go back and get a new lens
inserted!
R: muzani
Nice glasses. There are a lot of bad ones out there that I've been wearing for
over 10 years.
The bad ones DoS my brain with pointless information, greatly harmed my focus
and ability to think, as well as gaming abilities. It's also made driving,
especially in heavy rain, difficult and hazardous.
The good one made life seem really high resolution. It reduces eye strain a
lot, which is wonderful when you work with computers a lot and live in a sunny
area.
R: polyterative
Peak Design messenger - solved all things bags in my life. Proud of having it
on me all the time, beautiful and functional.
Sennheiser PXC-550 - One of the best wireless headphones out there. I can keep
them on 8 hours a day without any stress.
Keychron K2, just a well-thought wireless/wired mechianical keyboard. Less
fatigue and more confort, I can type 4x more text now.
I've been using these every single day for years now.
R: aynyc
MacBook - Spent years developing software on windows/xterms, my company
finally approved Mac for work.
Safari Online - Getting learning material has never been so easy. Actually
learning all of them is different :)
AWS - I can get hardware resource without lengthy PO and approval.
Wireless Headphone - Apple Airpod.
A fully stocked and well equiped kitchen in the apartment
R: tmm84
* My exercise bike - I have no reason not to get in some physical activity (rain, time, etc.).
* My desk whiteboard - It helps so much when confirming/working out a solution.
* My wireless mouse and keyboard - They fit my hands and I can put them away when the whiteboard is what I need.
R: kleer001
A membership in the car sharing company Car2Go. It was amazing being able to
be my own taxi driver and then drop off the car. Too bad it'll be leaving my
home area soon.
R: catacombs
Wireless headphones. Bar none. The fact I can walk around my apartment and
listen to a {book,podcast,song}, without worrying about cables or carrying my
phone, has been amazing. | {
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M: Ruby 1.9.1 released - vaksel
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-talk-google/browse_thread/thread/35e963933f9d0b1a?pli=1
R: rockbilly
This is a duplicate of: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458357> | {
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M: Ask HN: What projects have you made with boards like Raspberry Pi, Arduino? - akudha
R: stevekemp
When I was getting ready to take paternity leave I figured I'd either a)
explore "hardware", or b) take a stab at learning mobile development.
In the end I started playing with Arduinos. After a very short while I got a
little addicted, but switched to using ESP8266 devices - because having
onboard wifi made the hardware so much more useful.
I've built, experimented with, and torn down a hell of a lot of projects in
the three years since. But my absolute favourite project is nothing more than
an LCD screen which shows me the next tram-departures from the local stop:
[https://steve.fi/hardware/helsinki-tram-
times/](https://steve.fi/hardware/helsinki-tram-times/)
That project was hacked up in an hour or two, but later made much more
"producty" \- being configurable with a web-browser, and being installed in a
3d-printed case I paid somebody to make for me.
Over time I've added little hacks, so now it alternates between showing "$HOUR
$DATE" and "$HOUR $TEMPERATURE" in the top-line. Because my wife would often
ask me "Is it cold outside?"
I've done more impressive things; such buying a random radio-based
temperature/humidity sensor, then having to sniff for the packets, decode the
bitstream, and inject the temp/humidity into an MQ queue. But for sheer
practicality, and sheer usefulness, the always-on clock and tram display has
been worth it.
R: devenblake
My Pi 3B is a media server right now. I have it hooked up through HDMI,
converted to composite, and run to my Commodore 1702 so I can watch cartoons.
It has probably around 80GB of movies and another 80GB of music, 10GB of
books, and a couple gigs of pictures on a partition of a hard drive that's
hooked up via a SATA bay. Over the years it's been an IRC server, a Tor
webserver, an emulation station, and a backup computer to watch South Park
after my old one died.
R: user_agent
Nothing very fancy:
1) A home server for hosting a couple small websites for free, instead of
wasting cash on $5/mo VPS. 2) A cluster of PIs for training with distributed
computing (Docker, K8s). 3) An EMP proof remote backup case with a Pi and a
large, encrypted HDD -- mounted in a metal military case intended for storing
ammunition. I keep it in my pal's place.
R: aosaigh
I'm currently working on a controller for my standing desk. The built-in
switch was just a plain old up/down one.
I'm using a relay switch, home bridge and an infrared height sensor to
automatically raise and lower the desk to certain presets.
Another project I have is to use the pi camera and a small display to detect
movement and show a fact/quote/lyric on the screen.
R: akudha
wow, that standing desk idea is nice. Do you have a blog? | {
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M: Use standard deviation (not mad about MAD - vasili111
http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2014/01/use-standard-deviation-not-mad-about-mad/
R: vasili111
Also look here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11737743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11737743) | {
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M: It's easy to make something incredible. - dhotson
http://unalone.tumblr.com/post/88825593/its-easy-to-make-something-incredible-all-you-do
R: pkaler
This reminds me of a passage from "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance"
that I love to quote:
_You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Just make
yourself perfect and then paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do
it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from
the rest of your existence. If you're a sloppy thinker the six days of the
week you aren't working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks,
can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together.
The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that
appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to "in here" are not two
separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together._
R: jamongkad
That was a great quote. I guess no matter how much you know about the latest
and greatest paradigms involved in the art of software. You can never truly
become "perfect" if it does not become a part of yourself. And to extend that
you can never truly become "perfect" if your description of software is not
art, but work. When I think about it, it only shows how far I have to go to
reach that kind of Zen like state.
R: paulhart
This brings to mind an old saying:
You can't polish a turd
The underlying assumption to the post is that somewhere deep within the turd
being polished there is a nugget of gold.
Not every turd is hiding a nugget of gold. And not every polisher of turds has
the capacity or understanding to find the nugget.
The other saying that comes to mind is:
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the
ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it.
R: unalone
_The underlying assumption to the post is that somewhere deep within the turd
being polished there is a nugget of gold._
It's not that so much as that in the process of polishing the turd, it's
possible for you to realize you're working on a turd and start over again.
That's part of the revision process.
One case that stands out to me was that in the writing of my novel, I had a
70-page part that I thought was great and slaved away on, then realized in one
blinding moment that it was awful. I threw it away, rewrote the entire section
over a day, and now it's the best part of the book. (I'll say in advance that
the book wasn't exactly a nugget of gold, but at least I was aware of that
when I published it. If I'd spent more time in it it could have become much
better.)
R: melvinram
I don't doubt that making something awesome is about removing the unawesome
parts. But what most people are missing is the sense of what is unawesome and
what is awesome. This trait of having excellent taste is what most are
missing... at least from my experience of interacting with others.
The people who are really good at something have an evolved sense of what they
are willing to accept. For example, I knew of a guy named Rod Weckworth who
was/is really good with relationships. And I think he was really successful
because he had a sense of what level of a connection he was willing to accept
with people. He wasn't okay with having an okay relationship with people. He
makes sure to write thank you notes, call on birthdays, etc.
So more than just not letting shit stay, you have to have a nose for detecting
shit.
R: unalone
Yeah! On IRC somebody read this and disagreed with me: something to the effect
of "I've seen amateurs revise and they still churn out shit."
But you can't just sit down and revise something. You've got to develop the
ability to be self-critical, and that means learning what to be self-critical
_of._ So in my case of an amateur writing a symphony, he'd have to be willing
to learn just what makes symphonies suck, and if he's not willing to do that,
chances are he won't be so successful after all.
R: harpastum
"In the same way I fancied that those nations which, starting from a semi-
barbarous state and advancing to civilization by slow degrees, have had their
laws successively determined, and, as it were, forced upon them simply by
experience of the hurtfulness of particular crimes and disputes, would by this
process come to be possessed of less perfect institutions"
\- Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method
I think that Descartes' thrust here is that building anything up slowly will
introduce artifacts that have nothing to do with the optimal solution.
Sometimes the only way to truly succeed is to come up with a truly amazing
starting point. If you try to build off a bad idea, you will often get
nowhere.
From the article: "It baffles me that people think making...worldshocking
pieces of work is a particular challenge. It's mainly a battle of endurance."
I don't disagree with you here, but I think you are vastly underestimating the
backbreaking effort in that single word: _endurance_. Try telling a marathoner
that just hit the wall at mile 22 that all they need is a little more
endurance.
"Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."
\- Thomas Edison
R: robotrout
I was struck, on reading your post, the similarities between your premise and
the premise of "Intelligent Design" advocates. To paraphrase both you and
they, "How can something so perfect have occurred iteratively?"
Not judging, just noting the similarity.
R: harpastum
I admit there is some similarity there, and it might be because I didn't fully
explain myself, but I would argue that it's neither a perfect conception nor
iterative development that creates true greatness, but repetitive rebirth.
When you simply build on the past, you aren't considering its true intentions.
How many laws are there in the US that are simply reactions to British rule
(i.e. safety from the quartering of troops)? Should those laws be held in as
high esteem as those laws that are truly based on human rights? Descartes
continues in _Discourse on Method_ :
As for the opinions which up to that time I had embraced, I thought that I could not do better than
resolve at once to sweep them wholly away, that I might afterwards be in a position to admit either other
more correct, or even perhaps the same when they had undergone the scrutiny of reason. I firmly believed
that in this way I should much better succeed in the conduct of my life, than if I built only upon old
foundations, and leaned upon principles which, in my youth, I had taken upon trust.
The entirety of _Discourse on Method_ is a very interesting read. You can read
the whole document at project Gutenberg (<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/59>).
Wikipedia also has a decent write-up
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_method>).
R: brc
"The longer you try and deshit something, the less shit it is."
Not true for the 20%, but true for the 80%. Software is a good example : all
1.0 versions are crap. The trick is to get to the next n revisions and still
be interested in the project. You may end up with none of the original code,
but it's the act of revision and correction that makes it better.
All those who say you can't polish a turd, I say look at Windows. From version
1 to version 7, there's a gloss in the side of that nugget that you would not
have believed possible 20 years ago.
R: staunch
Someone said it best, I can't remember who it was: _"It's like knowing a
fabulous sculpture is hidden inside a block of marble, and all you have to do
is remove the marble that isn't part of it. It's an encouraging thought,
because it reminds you there is an answer, but it's not much use in practice
because the search space is too big."_
R: echair
If it's easy to make something incredible, this post should be, and it's not.
It's ok, but it's not incredible.
(Except in the original, literal sense, because of the fact that it's not in
the colloquial sense.)
R: unalone
I'll explain something about this blog, because it's not something that I
wrote specifically on the page and so it's not seen by a lot of the people
that haven't been reading this daily.
I don't use this blog like other people use blogs. I essentially write down
every thought that comes to me, without planning it out or revising it. So
there's a ramble about Valve on the front page right now, and not a
particularly interesting one, and I'm aware of the fact that it's not
interesting. I'm fine with that, because my blog isn't a marketing tool. It's
simply a place where I store my thoughts.
So this post was conceived of pretty much instantaneously, written in 5
minutes, and posted without a double check. I didn't even bother to go back
and look at the spelling.
It's all about intent. My blog is not a masterpiece in any sense other than
the fact that I attempt not to filter myself in any way. But at the same time,
this post was interesting enough to provoke a nice little discussion, and it
was interesting enough for somebody to think it merited posting. | {
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M: Java: All about 64-bit programming - AndreyKarpov
http://vanillajava.blogspot.com/2011/07/java-all-about-64-bit-programming.html
R: Khaki
_As of mid 2011, for £1K you can buy a PC with 24 GB of memory and for £21K
you can buy a server with 512 GB of memory._
I'm not sure where he gets his computers from but those prices seem to be at
least a few years away.
R: Roritharr
[http://www.alternate.de/html/product/GeIL/DIMM_24_GB_DDR3-10...](http://www.alternate.de/html/product/GeIL/DIMM_24_GB_DDR3-1066_Hex-
Kit/663956/)? <\- 180€ for 24gb of memory... i think his prices are pretty
accurate.
R: obtino
You also have to remember that to run 64-bit applications, you must specify
the -d64 flag. Otherwise your app will run in 32-bit mode!
R: peter_lawrey
AFAIK -d32 was the default on some versions of Solaris, but -d64 is the
default now. Windows doesn't support these options. Linux does support -d32
but it has to be installed seperately, otherwise -d64 is the default for a
64-bit JVM.
R: abdulhaq
A big win for 64bit java over 32bit is that the kernel can provide more memory
to the 64 bit process. This is because the java heap has to be 'contiguous'
memory, and this is difficult to offer when in 32 bit mode due to memory
fragmentation. In 64 bit mode the kernel can cobble together disparate blocks
of memory and make it appear contiguous to the process. | {
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M: 12,000 year old pre-agricultural temple findings - Gobekli Tepe - jackchristopher
http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/449/gobekli_tepe_paradise_regained.html
R: tokenadult
Wikipedia article on the temple:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe>
Is anyone else troubled by the submitted article coming from Fortean Times?
That's not usually considered a reliable source, as it doesn't fact-check the
way many other publications would.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortean_Times>
R: davi
I was troubled, but read the article. It was a little breathless, but seemed
okay.
Though I didn't like clicking through a link on HN and seeing, essentially,
"Garden of Eden located!" I was suspicious enough that I googled Gobekli Tepe
and found this Smithsonian article:
[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-
te...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html)
So at least I knew the subject was valid before reading further on the
submitted link. Definitely seems like a weird source though.
R: jackchristopher
I read all the links from Wikipedia entry and searched for more articles
before submitting, but I liked this one.
But all articles I found beside the Wikipedia one, had something I didn't
like; they were boring, less information, or had needless speculation. But the
submitted one despite the speculation had extra detail.
I never heard of Fortean Time. I didn't know of their reputation.
R: idm
These time scales do cause one to consider: what is the lifetime of SGML,
HTML, XML, RDF, ... How have those Gutenberg typefaces held up? I was in a
British church last year, and the floors were made of carved granite, which
were completely illegible.... People walking on the floors for centuries
caused gradual wear.
Chiseled granite!! What names or words were written? I don't know, but 12,000
years is a long time to propagate a certain signal... This causes one to
consider...
R: rjurney
This is a must-read. | {
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M: Ask HN: What would be a safe and secure VPN to use when I visit China - ForFreedom
I will be visiting China in 2 days and found that most of the apps social network apps that we use in the US are blocked.<p>I would like to know a safe and secure VPN.<p>Thanks in Advance
R: TravelTechGuy
I've been successfully using proXPN on my laptops and tablets for a couple of
years now. Used it all over the world, though not in China. They have several
exit points, in different countries, to choose from.
R: ForFreedom
From what I heard the problem in China is that they would block VPN servers
too.
R: Zombieball
I used PIA while in China with no issues.
R: ForFreedom
privateinternetaccess.com ? | {
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M: After five years, "dancing baby" YouTube takedown lawsuit nears a climax - 001sky
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/after-five-years-dancing-baby-youtube-takedown-lawsuit-nears-a-climax/
R: jstclair
The article summary of Universal Music's defense seems to say that since
Universal had no procedures in place to determine if something was fair use,
they can't be liable for the portion of the DMCA that punishes take-down
attempts that are, in fact, fair use. Kafka-esque barely begins to describe
this situation. I imagine that the defense will also introduce pictures of
Universal compliance officers with their fingers in their ears as well.
R: sageikosa
We cannot be held liable for abuses we committed, because we didn't spend the
effort to think before we acted.
That about wraps it up...
R: 001sky
If this in fact is how it plays out in court, it would says alot about how USA
laws are made (and form whom). Not a pretty picture for the great democracy.
Public servants => providing carte-blanche to abuse the public interest.
R: jgiancarlo
<http://xkcd.com/343/> Panel 2 specifically. Fighting in a broken system does
nothing.
R: parfe
Copyright has taken too much from society to benefit IP holders. Corporations
have the power to erase context from your life. It reminds me of Soviets
erasing people from history.
Universal doesn't approve of your dancing baby? Sorry, but that event is no
longer something you can freely distribute.
R: Sumaso
Worse yet, it appears that the best way to avoid this is to flat out ignore
the law, rather than go along with it.
Your video gets taken down? Just put it back up again and hope it wont get
found a second time.
R: 89a
Or just upload it to a non-Google service seen as Google are happy to bend
over and let the music industry/hollywood do whatever they want. | {
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M: Ask HN: Why a big org like Amazon release a mediocer windows primevideo app? - anongoesprivate
i have been using the Amazon PrimeVideo for Windows recently,mostly for downloading in hi-res and view on Weekend with out buffering issues.<p>the app seems to be lacking even Basic Q/A in lot of things, for example a simple download feature they have is not downloading anything and if we minimize it the download restarts , it works very unpredictably.<p>so my question is how a Big org like amazon that produce stable platforms like AWS, but at the same time produce a mediocre products like this<p>what structure they have in terms of engineering, that's making this differences?
R: thesuperbigfrog
It was probably written by an intern and maintained by an overworked team.
I would recommend giving feedback using a bug reporting or feedback dialogue
if it exists in the app. (I have no idea I don't use Windows at home and have
never used the app.)
If you downloaded the app from the Windows App Store, you could leave a review
there and might get developer contact info for feedback there too.
R: anongoesprivate
yeah, i have given feedback via the help chat in the app already, I'm just
curios how these simple things got missed, considering how huge the
organizations is and it have most talented people in it, like what kind of
process will lead to this, in a structured org like amazon
R: speedgoose
Different teams, different budgets. The app may also be made by another
company.
R: anongoesprivate
between the copyright they will be paying for movies and shows, the
development cost will be very minimal i think, their web app and android app
is pretty good, as for last point , prime video seems like a major product ,
will amazon outsource it? | {
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M: Post your Friendfeed ID here - rms
http://friendfeed.com/kfischer is mine, feel free to follow me<p>I'd also like some more people to follow, so post here.
R: utnick
I made a little app to to help people find people to follow
<http://livebloglist.com/>
Here is a list of other people interested in new.yc:
[http://livebloglist.com/list/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombina...](http://livebloglist.com/list/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com)
R: engtech
Pretty cool, but there's lots of dupes in the result.
Would be great if I could put in my FF username and it would filter out the
people I'm already friends with.
R: engtech
<http://friendfeed.com/engtech>
<http://friendfeed.com/ruby>
Here's a tool I wrote for importing your Twitter contacts into friendfeed:
[http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/21/import-twitter-to-
fri...](http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/21/import-twitter-to-friendfeed/)
Here's a ton of greasemonkey scripts I've written for Friend Feed:
<http://internetducttape.com/tools/#friendfeed>
R: mhartl
<http://friendfeed.com/mhartl>
The only service aggregated by FriendFeed that I currently use regularly is
Twitter, so you might as well go to
<http://twitter.com/michaelhartl>
R: mhartl
Update: now it's <http://twitter.com/mhartl>
R: mpfefferle
This post has singlehandedly killed my productivity for the entire day.
R: rms
I do what I can.
R: immad
<http://friendfeed.com/immad>
R: paul
<http://friendfeed.com/paul>
R: rms
Feature request: news.yc support!
R: paul
I would like that too. We just need per-user feeds from news.yc. Patrick has
actually written the code, but I think that perhaps PG is concerned about the
extra load.
R: randomuttering
<http://friendfeed.com/randomutterings>
R: glenstansberry
<http://friendfeed.com/glenstansberry>
R: gourneau
<http://friendfeed.com/joshuagourneau>
R: philcrissman
<http://friendfeed.com/philcrissman>
R: jaredhanson
<http://friendfeed.com/jaredhanson>
R: codesurgeon
<http://friendfeed.com/codesurgeon>
R: cryptovenom
<http://friendfeed.com/cryptovenom>
R: truebosko
<http://friendfeed.com/truebosko>
R: msnoulten
<http://friendfeed.com/msnoulten>
R: mwmanning
<http://friendfeed.com/mwmanning>
R: nilobject
<http://friendfeed.com/nilobject>
R: maheshcr
<http://friendfeed.com/maheshcr>
R: rantfoil
<http://friendfeed.com/garrytan>
R: jrockway
<http://friendfeed.com/jrockway>
R: STHayden
<http://friendfeed.com/sthayden>
R: justindz
<http://friendfeed.com/justindz>
R: rksprst
<http://friendfeed.com/rksprst>
R: mariorz
<http://friendfeed.com/mariorz>
R: mdemare
<http://friendfeed.com/mdemare>
R: pierrebombay
<http://friendfeed.com/pierrel>
R: brlewis
<http://friendfeed.com/brlewis>
R: jraines
<http://friendfeed.com/jraines>
R: adityakothadiya
<http://friendfeed.com/aditya>
R: gaborcselle
<http://friendfeed.com/gabor>
R: mk
<http://friendfeed.com/emkay>
R: jasoncartwright
<http://friendfeed.com/jason>
R: mpfefferle
<http://friendfeed.com/pfeff>
R: TrevorJ
<http://friendfeed.com/trev>
R: icey
<http://friendfeed.com/icey>
R: abstractbill
<http://friendfeed.com/bill>
R: rjb
<http://friendfeed.com/rjb>
R: adk
<http://friendfeed.com/adk>
R: talkeinan
Great idea! <http://friendfeed.com/talkeinan> Feel free to follow me as
well...
R: mosburger
<http://friendfeed.com/mikedesjardins>
R: abstractwater
<http://friendfeed.com/ettorepasquini>
R: dustineichler
<http://friendfeed.com/dustineichler>
R: entelarust
<http://friendfeed.com/entelarust>
R: calvin
<http://friendfeed.com/anwamehtar>
R: sdpurtill
<http://friendfeed.com/sdpurtill>
R: kschrader
<http://friendfeed.com/kschrader>
R: madsimian
<http://friendfeed.com/madsimian>
R: juzmcmuz
<http://friendfeed.com/juzmcmuz>
R: hooande
<http://friendfeed.com/hooande>
R: lyime
<http://friendfeed.com/dodeja>
R: epi0Bauqu
<https://friendfeed.com/yegg>
R: nadim
<http://friendfeed.com/nadim>
R: awt
<http://friendfeed.com/awt>
R: ca98am79
<http://friendfeed.com/uglychart>
R: nikpay
<http://friendfeed.com/nikpay>
R: theproductguy
<http://friendfeed.com/theproductguy> | {
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"text_len": 4074,
"word_rep_ratio": 0.0211335255
} | 14,391,688,202,526,396,000 |
M: Microsoft sues TiVo over patent - wglb
http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2010/01/18/daily50.html
R: wglb
By way of Groklaw: <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2010012014205446> | {
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"special_char_ratio": 0.3482587065,
"text_len": 201,
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} | 10,236,801,320,104,765,000 |
M: Sustainable bricks made from sewage - pseudolus
http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2019/01/sustainable-bricks-made-from-sewage/
R: leed25d
You too can live in a shit-brick house. | {
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"num_words": 44,
"perplexity": 1077,
"special_char_ratio": 0.2459016393,
"text_len": 183,
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M: NoSQL Smackdown with Werner Vogels and MongoDB, CouchDB and Cassandra devs - stuhood
http://thechangelog.com/post/457259567/episode-0-1-8-nosql-smackdown
R: codexon
Is there a transcript for this?
R: oldgregg
I can summarize. Mostly just people making snarky comments about opposing
products. The guy from CouchDB is particularly annoying. Apparently he feels
like he has to raise his voice and cut people off to defend his product.
R: basugasubaku
One the other hand, the discussion is punctuated with the audience yelling
"Louder!" and "We can't hear you!" on top of a lot of background noise
(including various interruptions from the audience). I got the sense you
almost had to be loud and aggressive to be heard. It got kind of stressful to
listen to.
R: brandnewlow
Listening to this, I'm struck by how wimpy and tame all the journalism/media
panels were by comparison. We need to raise our game!
R: brandnewlow
The guys on this podcast mapped it out at the SXSW table I was sitting at over
lunch. It seemed pretty clear to me there was going to be some spirited
arguing when they got down to it.
R: bradleyjoyce
this was really great to see/hear these guys duking it out. props to @pengwynn
for holding it down for mongodb against the big boys.
R: janl
Agreed, @pengwynn did a great job!
R: jchrisa
If it doesn't have a theme song, it ain't NoSQL!
R: ncb000gt
I hear you have to have a dance too? | {
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"text_len": 1415,
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} | 11,127,741,330,002,117,000 |
M: Show HN: Nudj - One Touch iPhone Messaging App - 04rob
http://nudjapp.com
R: 04rob
My friends and I created a new iPhone messaging app focused on speed and
simplicity. You can send or respond to a request for a picture, location,
yes/no, or quantity in as little as one touch. We'd love the community's
feedback on the landing page or app itself. BTW, this app was also an
experiment for serverless architecture, and utilizes AWS Lambda for the entire
backend. | {
"id": "11915754"
} | {
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"max_line_length": 78,
"num_words": 103,
"perplexity": 591.1,
"special_char_ratio": 0.2284482759,
"text_len": 464,
"word_rep_ratio": 0
} | 8,772,819,324,030,634,000 |
M: Google Announces Adsense For Mobile - luccastera
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/18/google-announces-adsense-for-mobile/
R: ivankirigin
The elephant in the room with Google is locality. Where are the brick & mortar
ads and coupons in g-maps? Will they incorporate GPS location to aid mobile
Adsense?
One problem with locality is that your average store front operator knows
nothing about the internet. There are probably huge franchise opportunities
here.
R: jsjenkins168
Yes, based on a recent patent application and whats been hinted at, they have
plans of incorporating location and time into mobile search results:
<http://www.redherring.com/Home/22459>
Mobile ads already have higher click through rates than most traditional sites
(like > 5% in some cases), so the prospect of incorporating location and time
sensitive ads could be huge.
R: gustaf
Lots of people have high hopes in location based advertising. For no reason, i
think. at least not right now.
[http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/my-thoughts-on-
consumer-l...](http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/my-thoughts-on-consumer-lbs)
R: nreece
I wonder when they'll officially launch Adsense for RSS (currently in private
beta)? | {
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"perplexity": 1121.8,
"special_char_ratio": 0.2212978369,
"text_len": 1202,
"word_rep_ratio": 0.0326530612
} | 99,938,892,714,056,260 |
M: Simlish, the language that defined The Sims - tintinnabula
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/7/21126705/the-sims-simlish-language-history-20th-anniversary-game
R: stock_toaster
The article reminded me of Pingu[1], which also used an invented Grammelot[2]
named "Penguinese".
Fond memories of watching Pingu with my kid. I'm not sure which of us enjoyed
it more! Noot noot!
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingu)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammelot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammelot)
R: alisonatwork
There is a bit more of an in-depth take of the history of Simlish and the
people who created it in this article:
[https://www.techradar.com/news/simlish-how-an-improv-game-
tu...](https://www.techradar.com/news/simlish-how-an-improv-game-turned-into-
the-most-recognisable-language-in-gaming)
R: snthd
The timing of the articles (both in the same week) makes it appear to be a PR
push.
[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)
R: erk__
The reason for the timing is likely that The Sims was released on february 4th
in 2000 so it is the 20 years anniversary.
R: jeanvaljean2463
The Sims is where I learned the appropriate way to interact with others based
on what provided higher relationship status. I grew up in a very rigid,
structured family without a lot of external interaction so this was my primer
to "succeeding" later in life. I still experience crippling anxiety from
social interactions, but at least the The Sims provided an appropriate
socialization path to allow for quasi normal relationships with coworkers.
R: James_Henry
I played quite a few of the Maxis games and I thought that the Simlish of the
Sims was the natural progression from the Sim noises of SimCopter which can be
heard here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKDsoasXgQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKDsoasXgQU)
R: TwoBit
Sim Copter was indeed the first appearance of the Sims. The Sim character tree
editor was first used for Sim Copter, which was in development concurrently
with Sims. They were "project X" and "project Y" respectively.
R: emilfihlman
Heh, based on the title I first thought it was a novel domain specific
programming language, not a human language! | {
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M: Want a project? Buy BluWiki. All proceeds go to charity. - Sam_Odio
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160421557085#ht_884wt_1167
R: Sam_Odio
You might remember BluWiki from an Apple censorship lawsuit a few months back.
More info: <http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/07/apple-backs-down-blu>
Of my web projects, BluWiki is Divvyshot's ugly sister. The site has always
been much larger but has received a fraction of the attention. This would be a
great move if you're looking for an instant source of traffic.
R: ErrantX
The auction isn't all that clear in some aspects...
1) What's being sold? The domain and content or the whole server/setup?
2) What's the current monthly costs like?
R: Sam_Odio
Everything you need to achieve massive wiki success (domain, similar domains,
wiki, slicehost account, etc) is included.
Another note: I was just told that our pagerank fell from 5/10 to 0. Probably
happened a few months ago from wiki spam that we've been strugling with. If
you implement a captcha you can might convince google to restore the PR.
R: timdorr
It's funny. I used to help out with the PackRat (Alamofire's Facebook game
that came before Gowalla) Bluwiki site: <http://packrat.bluwiki.com/> But due
to some heavy-handed community leadership I ended up creating my own:
<http://packratwiki.com/> I'm not really involved with the operations of
either (and don't play the game anymore), but I think I emailed you at some
point or talked to you via your Talk page.
I might end up snatching this up out of nostalgia. Could definitely be more
monetized (look at Wikia for an extreme example), but I'd be more interested
in the community-building aspects of it. Is Nathan Richards going to stay
involved after the sale? That wasn't clear. | {
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"special_char_ratio": 0.2415349887,
"text_len": 1772,
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} | 13,896,076,778,304,561,000 |
M: San Francisco residents can now switch to 100% wind power - vipulved
http://CleanPowerSF.com
R: masonic
It's only accounting theater. The electrons still come from the same sources.
R: ZguideZ
That's super cool, but doesn't change the whole problem of exploiting
planetary resources for personal gain
R: vipulved
Not sure which problem you are referring to and would like to hear more. It's
cool that you can go to a website, spend 5 mins to fill out a form and start
getting emission free power. A good step in the right direction. | {
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"max_line_length": 77,
"num_words": 112,
"perplexity": 762,
"special_char_ratio": 0.2211895911,
"text_len": 538,
"word_rep_ratio": 0
} | 11,230,464,343,360,537,000 |
M: Doom as a System Administration tool (1999) - ColinWright
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/
R: ColinWright
Also relevant:
Doom as an Interface for Process Management:
[http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html](http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html)
Doom SysAdmin Tool:
[http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_SysAdmin_Tool](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_SysAdmin_Tool)
More:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=doom+system+administration](https://www.google.com/search?q=doom+system+administration) | {
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"lang_score": 0.5142760277,
"max_line_length": 120,
"num_words": 159,
"perplexity": 417.3,
"special_char_ratio": 0.2471910112,
"text_len": 534,
"word_rep_ratio": 0.4133333333
} | 2,782,540,032,122,579,000 |
M: Google's Microsoft Moment - blasdel
http://dashes.com/anil/2009/07/googles-microsoft-moment.html
R: ZeroGravitas
Am I wrong or is this just not true:
_"Google's recent development work on applications for mobile devices has
often been delivered exclusively as applications for their own Android
platform instead of as iPhone applications"_
I don't own an Android phone so maybe there's lots going on I'm not aware of
but there seems to be plenty of stuff developed for a) any browser, b) any
decent browser, c) iPhones specifically, d) java smartphones, e) Windows, f)
Mac, g) Linux.
He state's this is what Microsoft was like 5 or 10 years ago, and yet I think
this is still true of Microsoft today. Certainly Microsoft sales folk I've
recently come into contact with seem to be actively denying the existance of
other browsers in relation to Sharepoint stuff.
R: nostrademons
Yeah, I was gonna point that out. I've got some friends & family members with
iPhones, and they use Maps & GMail all the time. I've met someone on the
Mobile-Maps team, and he's always carrying around at least 3 different phones
because he has to develop for them all. I work on the search UI, and a rough
ordering of the amount of time I spend on each browser goes something like
Firefox > IE7 > IE8 > IE6 > Chrome > Safari > Opera > Konqueror. The only
browser that _really_ gets screwed is Konqueror, and to a lesser extent Opera
(sorry guys). There've been features that we launched for Firefox+IE but cut
for Chrome due to time restrictions - yeah, it's embarrassing to not support
our own browser, but it's less painful than cutting off 20% of the market.
R: iamelgringo
I've had this nagging feeling/paranoia the past year, that I'm really not
comfortable with the massive amounts of data that google obtains on me. If
someone came along and gave me a better email experience with a calendaring
system that I could pay for and be reasonably ensured that my payment was
keeping my data private. Id jump off the Google platform relatively quickly.
R: jsz0
Safe from what?
Safe from misuse by Google? I think that's a risk you take with any third
party provider. Being one of many millions of users does provide some security
through obscurity in that respect. Chances are most of us are just not special
enough to be legitimate targets.
Safe from misuse by bad guys outside of Google via security problems? I'm
pretty confident Google has some of the best engineers out there. You also
have a strength in numbers thing going for you with Google. Lots of people are
looking at it. Google is very high profile -- if they did have a leak you'd at
least know about it. I can't say the same about some random provider. They
could have half wit engineers who cover up data leaks. You might never know.
Even bad providers can have sterling record if they choose not to report
problems or simply have a run of good luck until someone copy & pastes the
wrong command and every bit gets leaked.
Safe from being an anonymous fraction of a statistic when Google aggregates
its data? I'd be more worried about my ISP spying on me.
Overall I think it's good to be aware of the risks but realistically there
isn't a whole lot you can do about it no matter which provider you're using.
If you were to separate all your different accounts to different providers you
might at least spread the risk out. If you choose to run your own server(s)
you quickly become the weakest link in the security chain. Even if you're a
pro it probably won't be your full time job to administrate your servers so
that already puts you at a disadvantage.
R: tome
What worries me about Google is not that it has my data, but that it has a
_massive_ cross section of my data:
* search records
* e-mail
* calendaring
* documents
* which youtube videos I've watched
etc. I'm sure it's _much_ more than proportionally easier to abuse this
information the wider the spread of it they have.
R: jodrellblank
You wish that's all they have on you - they also own doubleclick, and Google
ads, two of the largest web advert providers in the world tracking you as you
go to www.unrelated.example.org, and Google Analytics, one of the most popular
web tracking extensions also tracking you as you go to
www.anysite.example.org. Also any site that pulls graphs in from Google's
public graphing API, or a sidebar from blogger or picasa.
The bought DejaNews, so anything you post(ed) to Usenet is in their grasp, and
they spider the entire web so if they can pull a probable forum name from your
existing data then they can try linking them together.
If you've ever used Google Maps to find directions, then the most likely place
to find directions is from/to your home and from/to your workplace, so they
can get highly probable locations for you. (Used it from an iPhone with GPS?).
Shop with Google Checkout? Browse with Google Toolbar? Use any of
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products> ?
R: dflock
Ok, serious question: what's the worst that could happen?
Some internet entity (could be Google, could be someone else) knows everything
about me - all my personal details, everything I've ever done on the internet
that wasn't encrypted. What's the worst case scenario for me, realistically?
R: jodrellblank
WARNING: I'm not as paranoid as this post. Quite. ;)
I follow the arguments that computer processing power is cheap and getting
rapidly cheaper at a surprising rate. Because of this, I don't want to
constrain ideas of "the worst" thing that could happen to be limited to things
I can imagine now. I doubt it would end up killing you, but information is
power and giving out information about you is giving away power over you in
exactly the way that some people feared photographs were capturing their soul.
(That is, within a small number of years, "the worst" thing could be very much
worse, and in unpredictable ways).
However, let's see:
1) "Government does bad things, made worse by Google's position and power"
scenario --> Governments use phone companies to track "terrorists" by who
calls who and what is said (or is rumoured to - see Echelon). It's not too far
fetched that they could forge links with Google for Google to flag up
suspicious persons by net activity (See recent story about German legislation
mandating that ISPs block a list of pornographic websites. They could mandate
Google.de to be included), and the list of triggers could be secret. So far so
good, but ... a change in public opinion, a terrible government gets in power
and starts adding more triggers based on the kneejerk fears of the day. Are
picked up by it because you were reading an unusual amount about medical
fraud? Because you were in the vicinity of a known communist's house thrice in
a week (picked up by your GPS mobile phone)? Because of your religion, gender,
sexual orientation, political leanings?
2) Techno-illiterate courts legislate that Google's information hoard is in
the public interest and must be made publicly available. Anyone can now search
all that stuff about you, all your emails, their contents. Have you ever
wanted a stalker? Have any jealous friends? Is there nothing you would like to
forget? Think employer-employee profiling, discrimination and bullying can't
get much worse?
3) Nobody emerges as a Google sized competitor. Google becomes the de-facto
choice for advanced image, video, audio processing. Google announces Google
CCTV - desirable for companies because of the unlimited storage, web
accessibility and tremendous analysis capability. Voices are transcribed,
people are tracked, identified by sight, motion, limb length, gait... Soon all
companies use GCCTV. Soon local councils do. Soon dflock can be tracked across
systems. Google acquires eyes all over the country. Google starts population-
scale experiments in secret. Can they predict where you will be? Can they, by
dint of showing you different adverts, search results, articles with different
slants _influnece_ where you will be? Which stores you shop in? Who you phone?
Which way you vote?
3.1) Voice control hasn't really got much further. Microsoft, Dragon Dictate,
Apple, they're all roughly as good as they were. Google has been quietly
training on youtube videos, GrandCentral phonecalls, GTalk calls, google
mobile search. Theirs is much better. Any device from your satnav or car
stereo to your TV or Kindle has Google Voice tie-in. Everyone loves it because
you can talk in whole sentences and say things like "remind me to watch XYZ on
channel 123 on Sunday" and it does. Google offer this for free because now
they know what you're doing when you're not on the net - and what you're
talking about when not directly addressing your devices. Goto (1) and (3).
4) Google starts accepting "bribes" by another name. CrummyLabs Sound Cards by
some ad-words and they appear at the top of search results for Sound Cards.
Not happy with this, they backhand a few more quid and their competitors
results fall lower. Then vanish. Competitors drivers are nowhere to be seen.
Forums discussing their competitors wind up on page 50. Reviews vanish. The
only products you see, hear about, can easily purchase and get support for are
those with ties to Google. Not just IT products though - why did you _really_
buy that cooker? Google hires Derren Brown. You start to bank with Google Bank
because "it's the best free bank" (well, that's why you think you bank with
them).
5) It's 2025 and Google translate is as good as a human translator. All
international business phonecalls go through Google Translate. All
international _political_ phonecalls go through Google Translate. Tranlsate
isn't always completely honest and unbiased in its translations.
Information is power, Google's net is wide and growing wider. The more
information flows through them, the more scope there is for them to do bad
things, and the more incentive for legislative bodies, malicious employees,
hackers, spies, to try to get their hands involved too. The worst thing that
can happen is probably along the lines of you (us) being more and more a pawn
in someone's business and political games, or being caught up in some witch
hunt or having our lives ground up and spat out ruined by a juggernaut that
doesn't even notice us.
We are buffetted by massive tidal forces now. Google is paving the way for
those to be controllable, all the media forces synchronised and coherently
pushing in the same ways. A laser not a light bulb.
(And if a sentient computer appears, which company do you think will spawn it?
Which company has masses of computing power, masses of data, masses of smart
people, masses of money, a corporate culture of machine learning and megascale
processing? Such an AI would be constructed with implicit knowledge of you.
Have you read "I have no mouth but I must scream"?
[http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html)
;) )
R: jsz0
You forgot the obvious one: Google's secret robot army is unleashed and
enslaves humanity. I find this possibility to be as valid as some of the ones
you list. It could happen, sure, but Google ultimately cannot risk alienating
their customers so they wouldn't do it. Even at Microsoft's peak the doomsday
scenarios never came to fruition for the same reason. The first time Google
does anything unsavory with the data they collect is the moment when they open
the flood gates for their competitors to rush in.
I do think there's some value in keeping information offline and people should
consider that as a valid alternative. You don't really need to account for
every second of your life in Google Calendar. You don't need to upload every
single photograph you've ever taken. You don't need to geotag the photos you
do choose to upload. You may not want to use Google Docs to store your bank
account information. Part of this whole situation is consumers protecting
themselves.
R: rjurney
The problem here is that in combination with Wave, Google is setting the
platform that we are supposed to develop for a year or more before it exists.
That IRRITATES the hell out of me. It is the same kind of egotistical
douschebaggery Microsoft used to pull: pre-launching products to gain control
before contributing anything.
Watching the Wave introduction video... when I see that semi-euro, T-shirt
wearing trim-bearded fuck up there on that stage with his falsely elegant
peppy smart talk planning a 'boating trip', and the scripted passing back and
forth with 'the best project manager in the world,' I see one thing and one
thing only in my mind: Ballmer's sweaty bitch tits bouncing up and down, round
and round, as he stomps and screams, vibrating to the tune of "Developers,
Developers, Developers, Developers!"
At least Ballmer had the good sense to be ugly, which gave him an odd kind of
dignity.
I think I prefer this stagecraft <http://bit.ly/pwGXs> to this stagecraft
<http://bit.ly/15aSar> because Google's culture of arrogance is starting to
disgust me.
R: freetard
> It is the same kind of egotistical douschebaggery Microsoft used to pull:
> pre-launching products to gain control before contributing anything.
Well no, Google Wave will be open source and they already published the whole
protocol and API so people can build clones of it before it's even released.
Microsoft releases proprietary API ran on secret protocol no once can clone
unless they get sued or do crazy reverse engineering in a country where they
can't be sued. Not quite the same thing.
R: rjurney
Granted - FOSS is good. But the traffic will still be running through google
for almost all of this. And that, combined with their sole invention of
this... I don't like it. I'm tired of them. They are too big. The worship
bothers me. They've turned a corner.
R: stilist
Interesting theory. There have certainly been occasional questions about
exactly how trustworthy the company is, but no lasting negativity that I've
seen. I suppose it has been long enough - and Google is big and broad
enough - that a real backlash could begin to appear.
R: anigbrowl
Agree. Extra points for the cartoon, which I hadn't seen before.
R: dustice
I've seen many articles recently that suggest Microsoft's bundling of Browser
to OS is analagous to Google's bundling of OS to Browser. They miss the key
distiction that Google's offerings are /free/ and open-source. You don't like
the OS? No problem, you can run Chrome (or Chromium) on whichever OS you want.
No lock-ins, no harm to the user.
R: trezor
Chrome != Chromium. Anyone who has tried Chromium in Linux will instantly
notice they are using a much less polished product.
Chromium may be open source, but Chrome is not.
R: ljlolel
If I may ask, how is it less polished? I'm posting with Chrome for Linux right
now (and I used Chromium before, which is identical) and it looks beautiful.
Excepting of course external plugin type issues (printing and Flash don't work
yet), the browser runs super-fast, never crashes, and looks great. Some of the
configuration options aren't complete, but those are minor issues (oh and I
see they have added many of them).
R: trezor
It has gotten better recently, but it is lagging quite a lot compared to plain
Chrome.
Text rendering used to be horrible but it has gotten better. But if I can't
even configure proxy settings without hacky gconf editing, that tells you that
you are definitely using a browser in catch-up mode.
R: tybris
I thought we were past the short-sighted Microsoft is evil childishness. In
general, if you think a large group of people is evil or stupid (especially if
these people are known to be very, very smart), you are wrong and should be
wondering why.
If a company is growing its business is to be on the offense, challenging the
competitors products. When it becomes too big to adapt to the changing needs
of the customer quickly it needs to go on defense to protect its business. Has
nothing to do with stupid or evil, just business.
R: rdrimmie
The post isn't about evilness (and in fact Dash has frequently defended
Microsoft, as he states). The post is about a corporate entity growing past
the point where the internal concept of 'self' that its staff has differs
largely from the external concept of its identity that the public has. | {
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M: Over a Million Are Denied Bank Accounts for Past Errors - GabrielF00
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/over-a-million-are-denied-bank-accounts-for-past-errors/?hp
R: DamnYuppie
So if a person has an over draft, they repay the fees and interest, yet it is
still a reason to disqualify them? That seems a bit to harsh to me. Yet being
the NY Times is also likely that they left out other details of those they
profiled, such as bad credit history or other things that would preclude them
from getting a checking account.
It seems that businesses, and our society in general, are moving to a state
where all sins are held against you into perpetuity. | {
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M: Ask HN: What new skills have you learned since shelter-in-place started? - johndavid9991
We don't know yet when could COVID-19 pandemic ends, so picking up a new skill or learning a new programming language/technology could be worth the use of your time. What new skills have you learned or started learning so far? If you are a developer, what learning resources do you recommend?
R: pmdulaney
I've had the time to start writing a book in earnest. I've used LaTeX
extensively in the past -- albeit not in the past 5 years or so.
* Refreshed my knowledge of LaTeX using the lualatex engine
* Learned how to use the Memoir class
* Learned how to use the subfiles package (highly recommended!)
* Learned how to version control my chapters using Mercurial / MacHg
* Learned how to use the Zettelkasten tool The Archive
* Switched from Terminal to iTerm2
* Switched (mostly) from regular vim to MacVim (love it)
* Discovered and am using vifm, the vi-oriented file manager (the type of classic nerdy Unix tool I love!)
* Started using Typinator to ease work with The Archive
* Started using aspell - a great spell checker
R: johndavid9991
Wow, that's a lot!
Thanks for sharing, especially iTerm2 and MacVim.
R: pmdulaney
A couple of tips for iTerm2:
1\. iTerm2 looks in .bash_profile at start-up, not in .bashrc.
I imagine your system is the same, but I found the following advice in a forum
which was pretty clever, I thought. If you have both a .bash_profile and a
.bashrc and you're wondering which one iTerm2 is sourcing, type
export BASH_CONF="bash_profile"
somewhere in .bash_profile and
export BASH_CONF="bashrc"
in .bashrc. Then open up a new iTerm2 window and type
echo $BASH_CONF
on the command line to see which one got set.
2\. Being able to select something with the mouse and then paste it with a
right-mouse click is great. Here's the right way of setting it up:
a. Open iTerm's Preferences
b. General> Selection> Check "Copy to pasteboard on selection" (for me this
was the default)
c. Pointer> Bindings> Double-click on "Right button single click"; Select
"Paste from Clipboard"
The _wrong_ way to do it would have been to just set up the right button click
to paste from selection. That would be bad because you would lose the ability
to paste something that you had copied, say, using Cmd-C in a Word document.
R: krupan
I think I'm getting a better handle on my anxiety issues. Also, I played with
Legos for the first time in a long time.
R: johndavid9991
Good for you. This is the part that I struggle the most, I quarantined for
more almost a month and depression and anxiety kicks in the most when you are
alone.
R: DanBC
Baking bread using a sourdough starter instead of yeast; noodling about with
NodeMCU (really fun and dirt cheap) and BBC Micro:Bit (really fun, not as
cheap as NodeMCU but still pretty cheap, and really easy for younger people to
get started with); and I've just started pencil sketching. I'm an absolute
total beginner, but it's enjoyable.
R: pmdulaney
A nice sourdough bread recipe with hi-res photos:
[https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-
code/blob/master/bas...](https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-
code/blob/master/basics/sourdough.md) | {
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M: The Cookie Cutter Guide to Charting in the App Store - jsatok
http://www.taptaptap.com/blog/the-cookie-cutter-guide-to-charting-in-the-app-store/
R: wallflower
Aside from the preachy tone, practical advice on iPhone marketing - send out a
sexy rich HTML email the morning after your app is released to your targeted
mailing list that tastefully showcases your brand new iPhone app with the all-
important 'Available on the iPhone App Store' badge.
Not explicitly mentioned in the linked article is that the more gorgeous and
_non cookie-cutter_ your app's UI is, the better a chance it has of breaking
through into the top charts. How else to differentiate your app from the
standard UITableView/UITabBar drones out there? The best looking iPhone apps
combine good looks with focused functionality.
Weightbot
<http://tapbots.com/weightbot/>
Note: I've bought the MacHeist bundle before and I did recall getting the
Voices launch email blast (and GMail search confirms) so I assume it was sent
to Tap Tap Tap's (600k strong?!) mailing list only.
R: jsatok
The TapTapTap email was sent out to MacHeist's email list. When purchasing a
bundle, you can specify if you don't want to be part of the list, but by
default, you are: <http://grab.by/1n8R>.
I've worked on some MacHeist developer relations projects before, and one of
the benefits is the massive email list. Dan Grover, the developer of ShoveBox,
participated in one of the bundles recently, and sums up his feelings in this
comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=945891>. | {
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M: Asynchronous Multi-Threaded Parallel World of Swift - leogdion
https://learningswift.brightdigit.com/asynchronous-multi-threaded-parallel-world-of-swift
R: alfanick
7x "How can I deliver a better user experience with asynchronous operations?"
sign-up form, impressive! | {
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M: Ask HN: Stemmers in ruby, any good? or should I just go ahead and write my own? - arindam_
The most popular option seems to be https://github.com/aurelian/ruby-stemmer. But its kinda outdated and gives poor-ish results.
"why" becomes "whi", "people" becomes "peopl" and a lot lot many incorrect ones.<p>Something like Solr's reduction to stems is what I was hoping for to be able to use it in my project.<p>Thinking of going for a full port of Porter's stemming. Thoughts?
R: danso
Thanks for asking this, I'd also be interested in knowing...
Did you try the uea-stemmer? Also pretty old: [https://github.com/ealdent/uea-
stemmer](https://github.com/ealdent/uea-stemmer)
Also, there's the treat gem, which is an all-in-one package...it uses both the
stemmer you mentioned and the uea one...so maybe that's it for Rubyists.
[https://github.com/louismullie/treat](https://github.com/louismullie/treat)
R: boyter
[https://github.com/raypereda/stemmify](https://github.com/raypereda/stemmify)
Not a Ruby guy so no idea if its any good, but it is the implementation linked
from here
[http://tartarus.org/~martin/PorterStemmer/](http://tartarus.org/~martin/PorterStemmer/) | {
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M: Algorithms and Bias: Q. And A. With Cynthia Dwork - v4n4d1s
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/upshot/algorithms-and-bias-q-and-a-with-cynthia-dwork.html
R: Trombone12
"Q: Whose responsibility is it to ensure that algorithms or software are not
discriminatory?
A: This is better answered by an ethicist. I'm interested in how theoretical
computer science and other disciplines can contribute to an understanding of
what might be viable options."
Weird response considering the (mild) advocacy for regulation later since
regulation presumes target to be regulated... Hard to shake the feeling the
response is influenced by her employer. | {
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M: A Start-Up Says It Can Predict Others' Fate - jmorin007
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/technology/18vc.html?em&ex=1203483600&en=e905b7a83fc460e5&ei=5087%0A
R: jdueck
I'm skeptical. At best, they'll have 20/20 hindsight. At worst, these are two
kids who haven't yet enrolled in the School of Hard Knocks. | {
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M: Being Overweight in the Workplace an Advantage for Men, Not Women - atlasunshrugged
https://www.syracuse.com/news/2020/02/cornell-study-being-overweight-in-workplace-an-advantage-for-men-but-not-women.html
R: quotemstr
> A new study at Cornell University found overweight men in the workplace are
> perceived as more persuasive than their thinner male co-workers, according
> to the Huffington Post.
This study fails the common sense gut check. This study will not reproduce: it
smacks of the same p-hacked, publication-bias social psychology nonsense
that's plagued us for a decade.
It's plausible that men experience a smaller penalty for being overweight than
women do, but to imagine that there's an _advantage_ in being portly? That
flies in the face of prior work (and much better-established work, though
still shaky) on halo effects, but more importantly, it defies common sense and
daily experience.
When will we stop believing that studies like this actually tell us anything?
R: downerending
Indeed, it's very hard to believe that being fat works as some sort of
advantage.
(Source: am fat.) | {
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M: Features Of SQL Server 2012 - KarenLopez
http://mcpmag.com/articles/2012/03/14/top-12-features-of-sql-server-2012.aspx
R: stevear
SQL Server has been one of my favorite software products of all time. As an
admin it has been rock solid and not produced any headaches that weren't our
own fault.
With that said, to really get the most out of SQL Server (and most likely most
other SQL implementations) you really have to do your homework and put in the
time to go through the features. Perhaps more than anything this is why NoSQL
has taken off-- it's very simple to get going. At user groups I hear a lot of
people saying they selected MongoDB because "They had millions of rows and SQL
just couldn't keep up" and to me it just sounded like no one in their
organization had any solid SQL experience.
It's too bad MS didn't build a 'SQL Admin' into their product that sent an
email on occasion to say things like "You have a query that is called
frequently and could be sped up if you simply included this column in this
index. Here are some details!"
R: einhverfr
_SQL Server has been one of my favorite software products of all time._
I feel the same way about PostgreSQL, along with the bit about learning all
the features. I suspect that most decent RDBMS's are this way.
_At user groups I hear a lot of people saying they selected MongoDB because
"They had millions of rows and SQL just couldn't keep up" and to me it just
sounded like no one in their organization had any solid SQL experience._
hahahaha. I have customers with db's with 10's of millions of rows (And I
expect hundreds of millions or rows in the foreseeable future) and I can't
imagine MongoDB keeping up in terms of reporting......
R: nwatson
Purported new feature: "Columnstore Indexes -- This a cool new feature that is
completely unique to SQL Server. They are special type of read-only index
designed to be use with Data Warehouse queries. Basically, data is grouped and
stored in a flat, compressed column index, greatly reducing I/O and memory
utilization on large queries."
Many DB engines such as Vertica, SenSage, Sybase IQ, all use column-oriented
storage. Perhaps the only novel-but-obvious thing here is that these "read-
only" indexes are implied to live alongside the regular DB table data, though
I'm not sure how these "read-only" indexes would mesh with the need to support
deletion on regular tables.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column_oriented_database>
R: mgkimsal
Perhaps the engine will update the "read only indexes" when the corresponding
data in regular tables are deleted, but not in realtime, but only on demand or
on a predetermined schedule?
R: orcadk
The columnstore indexes are purely read-only; they will not be updated without
requiring a rebuild.
However, you can create columnstore indexes on specific partitions, and thus,
by partitioning your source data, you can continue to add new data in new
partitions. As most DW/"big data" solutions use partitioning anyways, this is
a usable solution, giving you the benefits of the readonly performance as well
as the maintainability aspects, while still allowing you to feed in new data.
Columnstore indexes are not meant for OLTP type solutions, so there's no need
for realtime regular data deletion; it simply doesn't happen on this kind of
historical data. You might switch out a partition of your data, or you might
switch in a partition of new data, but you won't change the actual data
itself.
Comparing SQL Servers columnstore index implementation with other columnstore
based databases doesn't make sense. I won't laud columnstore indexes as a
revolutionary new feature, but the way it's implemented is new, AFAIK.
Comparing it to "normal" columnstore based databases will make SQL Server look
bad - but the thing is, it's not meant to compete with those. Use it where it
makes sense.
R: gizzlon
A little OT, but this was very surprising:
_"MS is making a push back to the command line for server products). Core is
the GUI-less version of Windows that uses DOS and PowerShell for user
interaction. It has a much lower footprint (50% less memory and disk space
utilization), requires fewer patches, and is more secure than the full
install. Starting with SQL 2012, it is supported for SQL Server."_
R: KarenLopez
What is surprising about it? Server core is for specific situations.
R: NDizzle
I'd be happy with simple syntax for things like OFFSET/LIMIT and GROUP_CONCAT
at this point.
R: mgkimsal
if they gave you that, it'd be too easy to port a lot of basic stuff away from
sql server.
I worked someplace that was primarily a SQL Server shop, although was still
largely Java and some PHP at the time. I was tasked with building something to
paginate through records. There were several hundred thousand to paginate
through, and I had to resort to getting the DBA to build some weird sproc with
cursors and junk in it.
"I just need _some_ of the rows"
"Why would you need that?" (honest to goodness question from the DBA)
"Well, because I only need to show 30 items on the screen, not 400,000.
Showing 400,000 might take a while."
"Just use TOP. SQL Server lets you do SELECT TOP(30) already!"
"Umm... but I might need to see the second 30, or the 99th 30."
"Why? No one does that!"
Insane. They experimented with some monstrosity of nested TOP() queries. They
refused to allow MySQL to be used ("it's just a toy"), when it was perfectly
capable for the requirement, and had developer-useful stuff like LIMIT in it.
I got some overly engineered sproc that had to be updated whenever I needed a
change, and I ended up leaving a few months later. Not specifically because of
that, but that culture was one I couldn't fit in to. I've heard it's gotten
better, but I don't really believe it's better so much as the people who've
stayed there have adapted and worked around the cognitive dissonance it
triggered.
R: saryant
I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I've implemented pagination in SQL
Server and it wasn't as complicated as that. Maybe I produced the world's
worst pagination technique but I don't think I ever resorted to TOP. The
ROW_NUMBER() function takes care of this.
R: steverb
Yes.
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/548475/efficient-way-
to-i...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/548475/efficient-way-to-implement-
paging)
R: Smrchy
Now if only MS would sit down and create a useable NodeJS client for MS-SQL.
The lack of a good clients outside the Windows world is what makes me move
away from this otherwise great product.
R: locusm
There is some great features there but Reporting Services is a turd that
should have been flushed, not polished.
R: reagan83
I disagree. Reporting Services in 2008 (especially with R2 and Report Builder
3.0) is great. It serves as a great alternative to Crystal and it comes
included with the SQL Server license.
IMHO SSRS in SQL Server 2012 has matured more than I expected and offers a lot
of the same functionality that comes with others in the Enterprise Reporting
space. It's worth giving it another shot.
R: cosha
Microsoft is so last year | {
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M: Donald Glover Is an Innovator and Advocates for Coding - thefifthprint
https://festivalpeak.com/donald-glover-jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-most-of-them-c3595f297e38#.24ve4q6it
R: thefifthprint
He also has a line about coding in his freestyle here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKB66pjw-
JA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKB66pjw-JA)
Around time 2:50 in the video | {
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M: Arsenic life does not exist after all... - t3rcio
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328493.300-arsenic-life-does-not-exist-after-all.html
R: tokenadult
The claim that living things could use the usual molecules, just with arsenic
switched for phosphorus in their DNA, was an extraordinary claim, and such a
claim requires extraordinary evidence.
[http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2008/01/extraordinary-c.h...](http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2008/01/extraordinary-c.html)
But the first report about "arsenic-based life" was no more than a preliminary
research finding announced in a press event by the study sponsor, and such an
announcement is not enough to establish a new body of scientific fact.
<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>
The specific preliminary finding was criticized right away for sloppiness of
technique and a rush to reach an unwarranted conclusion,
[http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arseni...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arsenic-
based_life.php)
[http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2011/08/first-
evidence-...](http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2011/08/first-evidence-
refuting-wolfe-simon-et.html)
so the journal slated to publish the preliminary finding had to invite in
critiques of the finding to save its own reputation.
[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/science-
publishes-...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/science-publishes-
arsenic-is-life-responses-game-on/)
Science is all about reproducible results, so much so that there is a humor
magazine for scientists called the Journal of Irreproducible Results.
<http://www.jir.com/>
The headline in New Scientist, a British popular magazine about science
(something like Scientific American in the United States), which has been
published since before I was born, is correct. There isn't any reliable
evidence of arsenic-based life living anywhere within reach of scientists on
earth. Not now, and not last year. The best summary of the current evidence,
after the efforts of many more careful researchers, is "arsenic life does not
exist after all," period (as an American would say), full stop (as a Briton
might say).
R: robinhouston
I don't think the scientific community really bought it in the first place.
The original experiment wasn't especially rigorous; e.g. see Rosie Redfield's
review [http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2010/12/arsenic-
associa...](http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-
bacteria-nasas.html)
And then the authors declined to respond in detail to any of the specific
criticisms that had been made by other scientists, which is very rarely a good
sign.
R: biasedstudy
Serious biologists were very skeptical from the start :
[http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-and-new-
micro...](http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-and-new-
microbes.html)
Soon, there were lots of questions :
[http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/06/01/return_of_th...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/06/01/return_of_the_arsenic_bacterium.php)
I'm thinking NASA is good at space exploration, not so good at biology.
R: rylz
The title is a bit misleading. One other lab's failure to reproduce the
results does not prove invalidity of the original publication. It certainly
raises some eyebrows, but it makes sense to wait and see what comes of Wolfe-
Simon's further analysis before we declare that arsenic life definitely does
not exist.
R: Tim-Boss
Agreed; a sensationalist title adds nothing to an otherwise accurate article!
R: nwatson
Even if the organisms were shown to swap out phosphorus for arsenic in some
instances in their DNA, would that be surprising? Arsenic comes from the same
column in the periodic table as phosphorus, and exhibits many of the same
macro chemical properties as phosphorus.
It would be like a software engineer swapping out their optimized, say, C++
string library, for one that was less optimal but perhaps took less space or
ran better in a constrained embedded environment. Arsenic might not be optimal
but it's what's available, what can be used.
In the software case you'd probably be OK but run more slowly than otherwise,
or else maybe you'd stumble when for some strange reason the sub-optimal
string library didn't guarantee thread-safe read operations. The arsenic could
similarly trip up the organism in some cases.
R: synparb
I think your analogy is not quite right. Although seemingly similar, inserting
Arsenic into DNA would be like taking a very large and complicated piece of
software that was fundamentally dependent on the precise API of a component,
and then changing that API to make it largely incompatible, thus requiring a
large piece of your software to be re-written. It is not just like swapping in
a suboptimal component that has no downstream effects.
R: veyron
I've never heard of new scientist. Is it a real science journal or
sensationalist? (based on this article I'd guess the latter)
R: corin_
It's an English magazine that's somewhere inbetween your two options.
Generally their reporting is pretty good and they avoid headlines for the sake
of headlines, however they do put a lot of focus on making their content
understandable to non-scientists - it's aimed at smart, curious people, not
scientists.
An example of this is their "last word" feature, where they take a question
from a reader and let anyone write in with answers - these are usually random
questions like "Why is the sky blue?" or "If it's raining, will I get less wet
if I run than if I walk?" They've also released two or three Last Word
compilation books.
R: coob
If anyone is interested in the sound of this there is something similar over
on this subreddit:
<http://reddit.com/r/askscience>
R: SilasX
More direct, permanent link:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/oxz9b/arsenic_life_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/oxz9b/arsenic_life_does_not_exist_after_all/)
R: coob
I wasn't talking about the article, but the 'ask for a scientific answer' type
service.
R: geuis
Summary: Scientist B failed to replicate the results of Scientist A. Scientist
A stands by her continuing research. Research continues and is not definitive
yet. New Scientist has a slow news days and publishes said results, mucking up
an extra controversy for the day and getting a few more clicks through to
their website. | {
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M: EFF Applauds Amazon for Pushing Back on Request for Echo Data - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/eff-applauds-amazon-pushing-back-request-echo-data
R: M_Grey
The EFF must feel totally hopeless at this point. People are _buying_
microphones with internet connections and sticking them in their homes.
They're making the _choice_ to buy "smart" IoT shit that spies on them.
They're at a point of defending a major company selling that stuff, because
they didn't instantly roll over when approached by law enforcement.
It's like... PETA complimenting a butcher on a clean kill. I don't blame them
though... who knew the great battle over privacy would be lost before it even
started, because people want their toaster to go online?
R: kardos
> who knew the great battle over privacy would be lost before it even started,
> because people want their toaster to go online?
I really despise this sentiment, it's quite defeatist and comes across as the
"resistance is futile" talking point from the "privacy is dead" camp
What we need is some kind of spousal privilege [1] or secrecy of
correspondence [2] for the internet age, ie, for IoT things. Surreptitious
recordings from phones, messaging apps, "amazon echo"s, xbone cameras, etc,
should be impermissible in court (or some variation on this theme). We struck
a balance in the past, we can do it again.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spousal_privilege](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spousal_privilege)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence)
R: M_Grey
It's easy to accuse people of "defeatism", or "alarmism", when really you just
don't like the simple truth. Your idea is nice, but unless you're capable of
producing a workable roadmap and seeing it enacted, who really cares? Everyone
has "good ideas" and many people have good intentions, but if you can't
produce results that differ from the next guy it just doesn't matter.
Unless you're Churchill rallying a nation to fight, you're in no position to
accuse anyone of defeatism for pointing out the reality we live in.
R: kardos
My point was more along the lines of "lets stop repeating the 'give up'
mantra" and move forward to "lets explore how we might rectify the situation".
But alas you are also right, I did not present a shovel ready legal pathway to
success.
R: M_Grey
I'm not suggesting that anyone give up, I was suggesting that the EFF must
feel despair in the context of their efforts. I would argue that there is more
need than ever to fight, but that fight hasn't _really_ materialized yet.
Outside of places like HN, so few people appreciate that there even is a
fight, and fewer care.
That may change, but until it does, the best you can do is educate people.
R: gkoberger
While I'm glad Amazon pushed back, it did set some precedents and isn't
exactly a victory.
They eventually handed over the data (at the owner's consent), which does two
things: 1) confirms they do have data and the ability to turn it over 2) makes
anyone who doesn't hand over the data seems guilty (hey, if you have nothing
to hide...)
Privacy is eroded one step at a time.
R: Xorlev
> 1) confirms they do have data and the ability to turn it over
Not necessarily. We don't know what they handed over. For all we know right
now, it literally could be a single request to start a timer or check the
weather.
The use of the data seems dubious assuming that Alexa has to hear the trigger
word before sending data to Amazon. Judging by the traffic on my network, I'd
say that's the case. I don't see a persistent stream coming from my Alexa
device beyond periodic pings.
R: M_Grey
Keep in mind that a key piece of evidence in the murder case in question is a
single datapoint from his smart water-meter.
"Why did you use 140 gallons of water around 2AM? Long shower bud?"
R: icebraining
How is it not relevant whether someone used a lot of water after the homeowner
was dead?
R: M_Grey
_According to police records, a city utility billing and collections manager
told detectives that, on the night of Collins 's death, 140 gallons of water
were used at Bates's home between 1 and 3 a.m., an amount of water usage that
exceeded all other periods there since October 2013.
"In comparison, while all four [men] were together earlier that evening, they
never used more than 10 gallons of water in an hour," police reports said.
"The amount of water used between 0100-0300 hours was consistent with spraying
down the back patio area, which may have resulted in the wet concrete patterns
observed on the morning of November 22nd."
The utility department's source? Each home in Bentonville was on a smart
meter, police were told, to measure and record the exact consumption of
electricity and water every hour._ -Washington Post
The homeowner wasn't the one who died.
R: codedokode
Would not it be better if Amazon didn't keep those data at all and maybe even
made sound recognition on a client?
R: tannhaeuser
I absolutely support EFF, but it must be said that privacy and
decentralization can be in conflict with Free software. Namely, by flooding
the world with GPL and liberally-licensed web software, it becomes a commodity
item, making "the cloud" possible in the first place, and enslaving people.
R: kardos
Ehh, not really, the cloud is similarly possible without free software. Indeed
much of the big name cloud provider's backend software would be in-house
anyway. Windows VMs exist too.
I guess your point is closer to 'free software makes the cloud cheaper', which
in turn makes it easier to ensnare people.. | {
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M: Egyptian Cryptocurrency Exchange Coming This Month - MasterTokens
http://www.cryptocoinstockexchange.com/egyptian-cryptocurrency-exchange-coming-this-month/
R: MasterTokens
Last month, the Central Bank of Egypt has shot down rumours that suggested it
would allow banks to handle cryptocurrencies. | {
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M: Show HN: A Go implementation of TensorFlow's streaming quantiles estimator - seiflotfy
https://github.com/axiomhq/quantiles
R: tsenart
How does it compare to
[https://github.com/tdunning/t-digest](https://github.com/tdunning/t-digest)?
R: vvern
Aren't the goals of t-digest a little bit different?
T-digest seeks to have a bounded size and an error proportional to q*(1-q),
hence it gives up quantile accuracy in the middle of the distribution when
under load. This algorithm seems to provide total bounded error without small
but unbounded size.
R: tsenart
Could you elaborate on the differences a bit deeper? I'm really interested in
understanding.
R: seiflotfy
[http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~weiwang/paper/SSDBM07_2.pdf](http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~weiwang/paper/SSDBM07_2.pdf)
is the paper its mostly based on Figure 1. Actually describes how big the
datastructure can get. It keeps getting bigger the more data you feed it.
R: gonyere
TensorFlow's implementation is looking great - RAM usage is fantastic!! | {
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M: Ask HN: best music background to work? - creonik
For example, I am finding I prefer <i>not</i> to listen to songs I know since I would try to follow the lyrics and that would take part of my brain and distract me.What's your favourite music when you code,design or work in general?
R: kroger
Like many people, if I'm thinking and designing I prefer to have no music. If
I'm doing these things in a noisy environment I may listen to some rain
recordings such as [1].
When I'm coding I mainly listen to classical music. The problem is that I need
to listen to things I know very well or I'll get distracted, so I end up
listening to the same compositions over and over again, to the annoyment of my
wife ;-)
These days the compositions I list the most while coding are:
\- Beethoven String Quartets, for instance [2] (I really like the fugato at
5:00 ;-)
\- Mahler Symphonies, for example [3]
\- Ravel music
\- Some Monteverdi madrigals [4]
I like to use headphones, either a Sennheiser PX 200 [5] or a Sennheiser
HD-280 PRO [6].
[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvRv-243Cmk>
[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55PIXCQgEfE>
[3] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkoeH5BtLyQ>
[4] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkDyNzPUQbo>
[5] [http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-PX-200-II-
Headphones/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-PX-200-II-
Headphones/dp/B002VPDOHS)
[6] [http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro-
Headphones/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro-
Headphones/dp/B000065BPB)
R: creonik
Thanks.I am switching to classical music and works much better. Right now I am
listening to Yo-Yo Ma and Ennio Morricone playing Moses and Marco Polo Theme.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssoQbusZ7os>. It's beautiful (when not
interrupted by Spotify ads!)
R: hboon
I've tried white noise, Naturespace, Kap Slap mixes, Pop mixes, Gregorian,
etc.
I've found that I am pretty productive in a cafe these days, so I started
listening to tracks of cafe background noise when I work from home recently,
such as "People Talking in Coffee Shop" by Finnolia Productions [1].
Might write more about this if it works well enough.
[1] iTunes affiliate link: [http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-
bin/click?id=dE0y3GuqVK4&...](http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-
bin/click?id=dE0y3GuqVK4&subid=&offerid=146261.1&type=10&tmpid=5573&RD_PARM1=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Falbum%2Fpeople-
sound-effects-2%2Fid582685672&u1=h)
R: radq
I usually listen to one of the Music for Programming[1] mixes, and when I'm in
the mood for more ambient music I listen to Brian Eno.
[1] <http://musicforprogramming.net/>
R: creonik
I did not it. Thanks for the link.
R: deathwithme
Depends on your work. For instance, if you have a good software design a web
application, you can code it with heavy metal music because listing metal
music with programming is improving the velocity of coding.
R: creonik
You are right. As I listen to a lot of classical music, I realize I am
thinking better but also slowing down too much. Thanks
R: jlengrand
Best site I could find was created by a fellow HN follower :)
<http://www.getworkdonemusic.com/#>
I listen to it everyday and never get bored :)
R: rex64
I usually listen to slow tempo piano jazz or rainymood.com
R: whichdan
There are a couple threads on this already.
turntable.fm's "Ambient Chillout & Trip Hop" room is usually quite good.
R: keva161
I usually just go on 8tracks and listen to the first 'coding' or 'programming'
playlist that shows up.
R: vojant
Depends on the mood I'm in. From slow piano/classic to techno.
R: anons2011
soma.fm - Mission Control, Space station or Drone Zone
di.fm - Chillout, Minimal or Ambient
bassdrive.com (liquid dnb) | {
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M: Physicists create hole in Time to hide events - ekm
http://blogs.forbes.com/alexknapp/2011/07/18/physicists-create-a-hole-in-time-to-hide-events/
R: glimcat
Normally I'd blame the media for putting a sensational spin on things, but the
paper is really at fault here.
The usual metamaterials cloaking trick involves spatial-domain cloaking. You
make the probe beam go around the target.
They're doing time-domain cloaking by selectively altering the velocity of the
beam. Not time cloaking.
R: evilswan
Awesome. | {
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M: Show HN: I made an extension that adds time cost to Amazon products - vilvadot
https://moneyistime.vilva.io/
R: vilvadot
Hi everyone, author here! I just released this project I made for fun for
myself, I had the idea in my mind for forever now and wanted to try my best at
building and extension over it. So here it is. Hope you like it and
contribute!
Right now it only supports Amazon since it is the site I use the most, but it
is pretty trivial to add more shops.
BTW, I just searched for myself on the Chrome Store and found a surprisingly
identical extension O_o. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/time-is-
money/oopp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/time-is-
money/ooppbnomdcjmoepangldchpmjhkeendl) it seems it's more mature than mine,
so here you have another option!
R: elwell
I like the idea, what are the chrome permissions like? Is the code open-source
so I can analyze?
R: vilvadot
Sure, you can find the repo in the site, here it is:
[https://github.com/vilvadot/money-is-
time/](https://github.com/vilvadot/money-is-time/)
Only explicitily asks for storage access to set a flag when the extension is
enabled and to save the hourly rate.
It does have access to execute the code on amazon too, which basically is
reading info from html and inject another html node. | {
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M: Ask HN: Is the stock market the AI paper clip machine? - sharemywin
R: SirLJ
How AI Could Destroy The Universe... With Paperclips:
[https://hackernoon.com/how-ai-could-destroy-the-universe-
wit...](https://hackernoon.com/how-ai-could-destroy-the-universe-with-
paperclips-a5b19901056e)
R: bulatb
Not just the stock market. Money is a measure that became a target, with the
usual results.
Goodhart's law is always in effect.
R: yasp
no?
R: sharemywin
obviously not literally. If jobs are paper clips. If the goal of the stock
market is to maximize corporate profits. The best way to do that is through
automation. Both, physical and mental. Doesn't that create a machine that
controls most of the wealth and eliminates a need for humans. | {
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M: Why Good Visualization Matters: Rethinking the Food Label - apievangelist
http://blog.infochimps.com/2011/09/23/why-good-visualization-matters-rethinking-the-food-label/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+infochimps-blog+%28blog.infochimps.org%29
R: hugh3
I'm not sure this is great visualization.
Firstly, trace ingredients are often what's important to the consumer. Fine, I
know my peanut butter is mostly peanuts, but how much salt is there?
Secondly, these are simple examples. What do you do with, say, a can of
chicken and vegetable and noodle soup, which could easily have thirty
ingredients before you even start counting the potentially-nasty additives
down in a tiny box in the corner.
Thirdly, apparently labellers aren't obliged to split up certain categories
(eg broccoli, sugar snap peas, green beans and carrots are all in a single
green square). So presumably this doesn't even solve the specified problem of
not knowing how much white vs whole wheat is in your food -- why would you
split up white and whole wheat into separate categories when beans and carrots
are the same?
R: calebmpeterson
> Secondly, these are simple examples. What do you do with, say, a can of
> chicken and vegetable and noodle soup, which could easily have thirty
> ingredients before you even start counting the potentially-nasty additives
> down in a tiny box in the corner.
How about inverting the tree-map such that the smaller the amount, the greater
the portion of the tree-map taken up? You're going to need all of that space
anyway for the names of those potentially-nasty additives to be printed in a
legible font size...
R: hugh3
Ah, the homeopathic approach to food labelling. I'm gonna sprinkle a grain of
gold dust on every twinkie I sell, just to screw with the label.
R: oscilloscope
A few friends of mine built something similar. Loaded the USDA nutrition
database in a dropdown, and scaled 24 vitamins, nutrients, calories, etc by
recommended daily intake:
<http://exposedata.com/intake/foodpick.html> (takes a minute to load)
Many people have told me an added layer of discovering foods with particular
nutritional qualities (filtering, sorting) would be very appealing. A
recommendation engine for food.
If you're looking to hack on the dataset, check out this JSON version:
<http://ashleyw.co.uk/project/food-nutrient-database>
R: andreyon
wow, that's really cool!
can they make a side by side comparator? it doesn't have to actually compare,
can be just another frame ( or frames) where I can select the same and do the
comparison myself.
For example I want to see the differences in raw broccoli and steamed
broccoli.
R: oscilloscope
Open two browser windows ;)
Here are a few other concepts we messed around with:
<http://fleetinbeing.net/intake/web/rdi.html> (stacked bars)
<http://fleetinbeing.net/intake/web/groups.html> (hover to see
vegetable/nutrients)
<http://fleetinbeing.net/intake/web/matrix.html> (matrix plot)
R: SeanLuke
This is pretty bad I think. The amount of substance by mass is nearly
completely unimportant. Consider a package which has 99.999% Organic Apples
and 0.001% Plutonium. But hey, it's 99.999% organic! Look at all that red!
Much better is a simple ordered list of ingredients, so we're not bamboozled
into ignoring certain ingredients just because they're not the majority of the
content. But wait, thats ... what we already have on our packaging? What good
visualization!
R: rossriley
The new food labelling in the UK is based on a traffic light principle and,
imho seems to be clearer:
[http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44434000/jpg/_44434134...](http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44434000/jpg/_44434134_foodlabel203pa.jpg)
The problem with this exaple is that it's hard to see quickly what the key
points are, since prominence is automatically given to higher scores, whether
they're good or bad.
R: aaronblohowiak
IMHO, the Nutrition Information box is actually a shining example of good
design already. It is very, very legible and has a clear information
hierarchy.
R: astarwithin
I like knowing how much of things is in my food. :)
R: notatoad
it's a cool idea, but i believe most manufacturers would claim 'trade secrets'
protections before putting proportions on their labels.
R: jzb
They'd claim something to avoid having to make it easy to visualize just
what's in processed food...
R: rorrr
His example with 5 ingredients in unreadable already. What will happen with
10-20? | {
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M: HN Roundup: Hacker News Hacks - rcfox
Between browser extensions, Dotjs, Greasemonkey, etc., there are many ways of hacking HN. Most of them seem to be crappy or esoteric.<p>Let's round up all of the hacks that we actually find useful!
R: jawns
Highlight new comments on HN homepage (Greasemonkey script):
[http://coding.pressbin.com/74/Update-on-Greasemonkey-
script-...](http://coding.pressbin.com/74/Update-on-Greasemonkey-script-for-
Hacker-News-homepage)
R: rcfox
HNCommentTracker (Chrome extension) - Highlights comments you haven't seen
before, and shows an indicator of how many new comments exist for comment
pages that you've previously read.
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imeeonmdbakdmilnnc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imeeonmdbakdmilnnccaddiplgjjhbog)
R: rcfox
Hacker News Collapsible Comments (Chrome extension) - Lets you collapse entire
comment threads.
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjhafgjncjpodihkd) | {
"id": "2709920"
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"text_len": 1051,
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M: Ask HN: Why are Americans always the good guys in video games? - turkthrower123
R: zabana
This is a very interesting question.
I've always wondered what the backlash would be if a studio were to release a
Call of Duty style game from the point of view of middle eastern factions
resisting the illegal invasion of their land and massacre of their people.
Because it seems to me that these FPS war simulations are very close to
reality (ie using real location names and sometimes actual 3D rendered
versions of said locations) and are somehow being used as a propanganda tool
to get most people on board with whatever the political agenda is at the time.
I know this sounds very conspiratorial and I'm open to counter arguments but I
can't shake off this feeling. Hope I'm wrong though because this is rather
depressing.
R: viraptor
> I know this sounds very conspiratorial
Not really. Some games got American military funding to promote the army.
> wondered what the backlash would be
For examples, look at backlash to farcry 5. See
[https://www.change.org/p/ubisoft-cancel-far-
cry-5](https://www.change.org/p/ubisoft-cancel-far-cry-5) where people just
can't handle white American Christians being the bad guys.
R: non-entity
> Us Gamers have had to endure a lot of crap over the last few years. The
> targeted harassment by the mainstream press through Gamergate, the terrible
> launch and outright lies of highly anticpated video games, the outright
> censorship of art through "localization" policies, the continued rejection
> of romantic partners when they find out our hobby, the appropriation of our
> culture by so-called "gamers" on twitter. NO MORE!
This has got to be satire. This reads almost like the gamers rise up memes.
R: viraptor
I remember seeing a lot of this kind of ideas at the time farcry 5 was
released. This site may be satire itself. But if it is, it's heavily inspired
by reality.
R: ajeet_dhaliwal
Because they _are_ the good guys of course :-) Almost all triple A games are
made in the US itself or allies (UK/Canada/Japan/EU) so it's expected these
games will have a positive view. Same reason it's true in Hollywood. Most
people just want to get on and have fun with a game, not overthink politics
and ethics and I don't see it as an issue. The more annoying thing is when
you're nudged to know random guy is evil due to generic Russian/Middle East
accent.
R: iDemonix
Because the Americans make a lot of those types of video games, and if you
want to pander to your biggest market, you make them the good guys.
R: LUmBULtERA
I've played a lot of video games where they aren't. In fact, I'd posit most
video games don't take place with real-world geopolitics/national boundaries
at all. And where they do, I don't think it's unusual that the antagonist may
be an American.
R: blaser-waffle
Because the US won the struggle against the USSR and now the global economy is
loosely based around US-style liberal capitalism. Most countries and their
place in the international order is relative to their participation in this
system. This is best explained in Jihad vs. McWorld by Barber[1].
What this means is that those who want to buy-in to this global system have to
deal with Western (US) media, Western (US) norms, and even the language of the
West (the language most common in the US). English is the new lingua franca,
and is the language of business. This creates huge incentives to develop media
(games, movies, whatever) that can be ported into English and sold to wealthy
US consumers (something the Japanese figured out in the 90s -- think of bad
Final Fantasy translations a la FF7). Plus many studios are in the US and make
games for the US market, and to a lesser degree the export market (Chinese and
Korean gaming leagues being the biggest pushes, IMO).
That said, I remember one of the Medal of Honor games (WW2 themed) which has
you killing Japanese in the Pacific -- and was still hugely popular in
Japan.[2]
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad_vs._McWorld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad_vs._McWorld)
[2] [https://slate.com/culture/2004/02/why-japanese-gamers-
love-a...](https://slate.com/culture/2004/02/why-japanese-gamers-love-
avenging-pearl-harbor.html)
R: tsukikage
Because, as an English speaker, most video games you play are of American
origin.
R: turkthrower123
As a Turk, I Believe that _all_ games I play are of American or Japanese
origin.
R: krapp
There are European game studios as well.
R: stuxnet79
But European game studios have to cater to the American market or they risk
going out of business. The simple answer to OPs question is: Americans are
always the good guys in gaming because the American market is a large one for
gaming and a lot of what's trendy and tasteful in gaming has to have an
American bias for this very reason. | {
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M: What should Apple do with the iPod? - barredo
http://www.splatf.com/2011/09/apple-ipod/
R: dpcan
Market it against the Nintendo DS.
I bought iPod Touches for my 2 oldest kids and my wife last Christmas. So,
this year, instead of buying $30-$40 games, they have been able to buy several
$2 games throughout each month.
It's been a blast, the savings are starting to really show, and they even like
the games better.
R: georgemcbay
"they even like the games better."
That's just what they tell you so you don't feel bad for getting them iPod
touches. They secretly play Nintendo 3DS games at friends' houses.
R: ericd
Yeah, I really wish people would start making some meatier games for the
iPhone to go with all the 5 minute junk food distractions that are about as
entertaining as bouncing a ball. There have been a few games of more
substance, but for the most part, it doesn't hold a candle to the DS' library.
R: mdemare
For "extremely meaty", try King of Dragon Pass, an indie PC hit from 10 years
ago just released on iOS.
R: ericd
That looks like what I was talking about, thanks! I just downloaded it. Any
other recs?
R: Gring
Carcassonne is also very complex and rewarding to master. It's also a great
social game when everybody sits around one iPad.
R: daimyoyo
I think as long as it remains profitable, they should keep it. The R&D costs
are already well recouped so it's basically little more than a profit center.
I understand Apple doesn't exactly need the money, but I think it would be a
bad idea to kill off a licence to print money like the iPod.
R: qq66
Apple likes to keep a limited product lineup, so if a model isn't particularly
necessary they can replace it with another product (such as an Apple TV
variant), as well as consuming display space in stores.
R: skizm
Please please please make a waterproof one. The only reason I use my ipod over
my phone for music is because I do not like to sweat all over my phone when I
work out. Also for running in the rain (maybe for battery life on a long plane
ride). If they made a waterproof ipod nano that would solve all my problems.
Also if they for that direction just make headphones and a case that I can use
to swim with. There is h2oaudio.com (which is awesome) but I would rather it
just come straight from apple.
</2cents>
R: gry
It will become like the Mac business. Routine updates with nothing to announce
unless it's special; unibody fabrication or designs like the Air.
That is until they reset their business.
The iPod product will be rebranded and remain iOS device that does everything
but have a phone. iPod rebranded with iPhone form and function, except no
phone functionality.
A Mac line, iPad line and a handset line. Face it, calling is now a feature on
a computer. It's not a phone with features.
R: tomelders
The only graph that matters there is the first one, and no one should be
surprised that units have dropped. They should be surprised that they've
dropped so little since the iPhone does everything the iPod does and more.
% of revenue presented like that is misleading. The iPhone and the iPad are
selling like hot cakes and making a ton of money, but they're not iPods.
Revenue growth at around -6% may look bad, but that just means they're making
1.48 billion minus 6%. If you don't think that's a lot of money, you're mad.
iDevice revenue breakdown.... what's the point of that graph?
Here's what Apple should do with the iPod. Keep innovating. $1.48 Billion is a
lot of money. It's a business in it's own right.
IT'S MORE THAN A BILLION DOLLARS!!!!
R: Steko
Obviously they don't have to do anything with it, it's still profitable and
has high margins. There's obviously some potential to grow though.
The touch is basically a prepaid phone with no phone chip. They could add that
phone chip and absorb the margin hit through scale in China, etc. Bound to
happen sooner or later.
The nano is a redesign away from assaulting the global watch market (over $40
bln this year).
The shuffle, I could seem them innovating the form factor, why not abstract it
right into the earbuds.
The classic is dead, growth wise so they can keep selling it but don't think
it'd shock anyone if they shut it down tomorrow.
R: ROFISH
I think the classic will die when you can fit 256GB into an iPod Touch, either
through flash memory or a thicker hard drive version. Otherwise the iPod
Classic still sells to those that _HAVE_ to have 200+ GB of music with them at
all times.
R: Steko
Yeah well there was still a market for x-serves but it wasn't big enough so
eventually they killed it.
The only way I can see them getting growth out of the classic would be to put
the massive memory to work hauling HD video around instead of music. That does
suggest an interesting iOS device maybe aimed at high end camcorders if they
can find a tiny 1 TB drive in the pipe somewhere.
R: nknight
They're probably selling 20-30 times as many iPod Classics/year as they ever
did xserves, even at their peak. The xserve also didn't do anything to act as
a draw toward other Apple products, and required frequent revisions to keep
up. I bet ongoing iPod Classic R&D budget is statistical noise.
R: Steko
I'm not making a close analogy and I'm not saying they should shut it down.
I'm just saying Apple will know when the classic isn't worth the
time/energy/shelf space and I wouldn't be shocked if they announced this is
the case in weeks rather then years.
And I guess I'm making a wild guess as to how they might keep an HDD based
idevice relevant although I don't think that's particularly likely either.
R: whichdan
For what it's worth, I have a relatively large music collection (100gb+) and
used an 80gb iPod for two years before getting a 32gb iPhone. The difference
in usability was /huge/, to the point where I didn't miss the 50gb of space.
If I didn't have a smartphone and had the option of a 128gb iPod Touch, it
would be a no-brainer for me.
Personally, I don't think anything would be lost by discontinuing the iPod
Classic, as long as something with a sizeable capacity replaced it.
R: jcampbell1
Apple would be nuts to get rid of the shuffle. Keeping the iTunes ecosystem
strong is really important, as the kid with a shuffle today is best served by
an iPhone in the future.
R: TallTalesOrTrue
Keep it around. Its a hook to get people to use the mac ecosystem. That's the
product that started the resurrection of mac. I'm sure Apple will keep it
around and keep on making minor changes to it overtime.
R: bkorte
They should do nothing. Keep upgrading the capacity upgrading periodically.
I bet that in the same keynote as the next iPhone release, Apple will rename
the iPod Touch to just "iPod".
R: signalsignal
With the iCloud service ramping up, I suspect that the iPod classic may get
PC-less syncing at some point. But then it would have to include some sort of
wireless option as well.
R: glhaynes
I'd be surprised if they spent the engineering dollars on writing the non-iOS
code to do that and integrating wireless equipment into what I _think_ is the
lowest-selling model of iPod, a product whose sales are rapidly being replaced
by iOS-based iPods and iPhones.
R: sliverstorm
If they thought about this ahead of time, perhaps developing for both
platforms is similar enough they could add the feature to both the
iPhone/iTouch and the iPod Classic at the same time?
R: marze
200M iPod users are nothing to sneeze at: they represent an enormous pool of
potential iPhone and iPad users, and Apple has been using the iPod Touch as a
"gateway drug" for iOS for years now.
The Retina display 16G iPod touch has to be the lowest margin product in
Apple's lineup, due to its place as a low cost stepping stone to the more
expensive iOS devices.
It would be cool if they made the Nano a wrist mounted remote display for the
iPhone, though.
R: p4wnc6
They should make it into a phone.
R: SurfScore
Apple has always been one to do what THEY think is best, and then make
everybody follow along. They did it with iOS and flash, basically saying "hey
we don't like this, you shouldn't either, so we aren't going to let you use
it." for better or for worse, this has always been Apple's Modus Operandi, and
whether or not you believe in it, judging by their stock prices, it's worked.
One of the biggest killers of the iPod is the fact that the iPhone is no
longer exclusive to AT&T. How many millions of people bought an iPod because
they had Verizon and didn't feel like dealing with AT&T? This is only going to
get worse with the iPhone 5, which will presumably be on all major carriers.
I think the emergence of Android has made all altogether killing the iPod
unrealistic. I have yet to see an Android phone that handles music as well as
the iPod does, and Apple knows this. I think what is going to happen is that
Apple will revamp the line again in a year or so, and do something to make it
relevant. I would say the iPod touch, ironically enough, is the one in the
most danger of being killed off, what with it's big brother iPad owning the
tablet market and the iPhone doing everything that it does and more.
R: smackfu
I still see a lot of nanos at the gym, but there are also a lot of people just
using their iPhones / Droids. (And for actual street running, the nano is a
bit better being smaller and lighter and not $600 to replace when you drop
it.)
R: georgemcbay
For street running I personally prefer my phone to a small dedicated music
player. Having a phone means having access to all of my music via Google Music
plus gps with apps to track my speed/distance progress.
R: smackfu
I just think it's a little heavy to strap to your arm, and holding it in my
hand seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
R: rob08
I actually hadn't thought of the rumored new iPhone 5 design as a possibility
of it being the next iPod Touch. Maybe that's why we haven't heard any iPod
Touch rumors yet?
R: jmmcd
The ipod shuffle is awesome, I use it everyday because it's tiny and I don't
care what happens to it. I almost never use my ipod touch or classic.
R: Apocryphon
Not everyone needs or wants a smartphone yet. Keep it.
R: pointyhat
I think they should bring back the "old" Nano. A lot of people haven't bought
the new one as they still like tactile controls and want a screen large enough
to watch a video. They also don't want an iPhone or to pay for the touch. They
shot themselves there.
There has been a lot of innovation with the iPod but some of it hasn't always
been that great. Consider the "stick" shaped shuffle which reverted back to
the old design in the latest revision. I consider the touch-based iPod Nano to
be the same sort of unnecessary crock. | {
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M: Safari's text-shadow Anti-aliasing CSS hack (applies to Chrome as well) - coderdude
http://www.komodomedia.com/blog/2009/03/safari-text-shadow-anti-aliasing-css-hack/
R: robflynn
I noticed this a while back when I mocking up a few designs in Chrome. It's a
pretty neat trick that I make use of on occasion when things look rougher than
I'd like.
Be sure to test in multiple browsers, though, as I actually ran into a
situation once where it looked great in webkit based browsers but looked oddly
blurry despite my settings in Firefox. That may have improved with recent
updates.
R: coderdude
Here's a convenient way to test it out: <http://www.elfboy.com/text-shadow/> | {
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"max_line_length": 86,
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"perplexity": 776.7,
"special_char_ratio": 0.2284866469,
"text_len": 674,
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} | 3,035,186,725,307,451,400 |
M: Edward Tufte - Technophilis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte
R: mwexler
Forgive me for asking, but why is this link here on HN? I mean, he's a great
guy and all, but what is the relevance to HN at this point?
R: elblanco
Lots of companies/projects work in the field of information visualization, on
the bookshelves of almost all of them, you can find Tufte's books. He's
largely considered the leader in the theory of displaying information in as
dense and as clear of a method as possible than enables people to perceive the
encoded information as rapidly and as correctly as possible.
He's best known for sparklines we all enjoy when looking at tables of stock
prices, but those are likely the the least of his contributions to the field.
references:
<http://www.palantirtech.com/>
<http://www.futurepointsystems.com/>
<http://www.caida.org/tools/visualization/walrus/>
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visualization_(computer_graphic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visualization_\(computer_graphics\))
<http://www.esri.com/>
<http://nvac.pnl.gov/> | {
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M: People Keeping Mold-A-Rama Alive - artsandsci
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mold-a-rama-archive-retro-plastic-mold-a-matic
R: justinph
I grew up collecting these from the Milwaukee County Zoo. I never realized
they were a somewhat regional thing. Neato!
R: muttech
Just seeing the picture of the machine brings back the melted plastic smell. I
remember trying to collect each one at the Milwaukee zoo, and inevitably
breaking the head off of them before long.
R: hahamrfunnyguy
I've always found these machine fascinating, never seen one in person though.
I am surprised the molds are aluminum instead of steel. Typically aluminum
molds are considered suitable for smaller runs only. If they do 100 parts a
day that's 36.5K cycles per year.
R: anfractuosity
Why is aluminium considered suitable for smaller runs only out of interest?
R: mcphage
Aluminum is softer than steel, so the mold wears out quicker - the models lose
details.
R: anfractuosity
Ah cheers that makes sense. One thing I was wondering would they use stainless
steel for moulds, to prevent them rusting?
R: TylerE
Nope, "real" molds are made out of tool steel. Corrosion isn't really a
problem since machines are typically stored indoors.
R: mcphage
They have several machines at the Lowry Park Zoo, in Tampa, Florida. I got one
a few years back - the hippopotamus that is shown in the article. I love it, and
if I ever get back there, I'm going to get a few more. It was cool to do!
R: the_trapper
They're all over the San Antonio Zoo as well. My kids loved making them.
R: zafka
I am actually coveting one of those little plastic toys. I need to think on
this for a while :)
R: ChuckMcM
I find myself coveting a Mold-a-rama machine to make molds for it :-).
Injection molding is pretty expensive to do in small quantities, I would like
to have a 'table top' machine where I could trade time for money.
R: cr0sh
Combine this:
[https://makezine.com/projects/make-41-tinkering-toys/diy-
inj...](https://makezine.com/projects/make-41-tinkering-toys/diy-injection-
molding/)
With this:
[http://www.instructables.com/id/Home-Plastic-Injection-
Moldi...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Home-Plastic-Injection-Molding-with-
an-Epoxy-Mold/)
Alternatively, you can purchase a hand injection molding machine as mentioned
in the above instructable, if you don't want to build your own:
[http://www.easyplasticmolding.com/model_150/home.html](http://www.easyplasticmolding.com/model_150/home.html)
...for $1800.00. So - if you have more money than time, materials and skill -
well, it's possible.
R: ChuckMcM
And they are reasonably close in Scotts Valley. I'm definitely going to have
to get one of those.
EDIT: Interesting that the Makezine article has a pretty big problem. It
doesn't actually show you how to make the 'second half' of the epoxy mold. To
make the second half, you would have to assemble the mold and then pour epoxy
into the assembled mold. Depending on the material you'd probably end up some
how pumping that epoxy in, and you would need to pull a vacuum on it to avoid
bubbles.
Its a nit of course, but worth considering.
R: monocasa
Oh wow, I totally forgot I had one of those (the T Rex) growing up.
Ended up being one of my favorite bath toys.
Memories. | {
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M: Dilithium crystal fusion impulse engine in development - aneth4
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57523867-1/star-trek-fusion-impulse-engine-in-the-works/
R: uvdiv
The other article has a nonzero information content, for a change:
[http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-
tre...](http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-trek-
researchers-to-begin-fusion)
Summary: it's nuclear pulse propulsion (riding the shock wave of a nuclear
explosion). _Small_ nuclear explosions in this concept: they hope to create
small (~1 ton TNT eq.) pure-fusion explosions using nanosecond bursts of
extremely powerful electric currents (plasma Z-pinch). Basically, it's the
same problem as fusion power plants based on "inertial confinement" (euphemism
for "explosion").
Lithium is a progenitor of tritium. This is common D+T fusion.
This concept is not remotely close to practicality. Which is why the reported
goal ("a mind-bending 62,600 mph") is bizarre; it's only a small factor better
than chemical rockets. It's just as bad as e.g. nuclear thermal propulsion,
which was designed and built 40 years ago. So I really don't see the point.
R: WiseWeasel
The fuel has a much greater energy density than chemical rockets, making
longer distances practical, and the process is safer than nuclear fission.
R: uvdiv
That's my complaint, it _doesn't_ have much greater energy density, or more
precisely it's not usefully translated to momentum. The speed target in the
article is extremely low ("62,600 mph") -- only a small factor higher then
what chemical rockets achieve, and comparable (as I mentioned) to nuclear
thermal rockets. (It looks like they edited their article to mention NTRs.)
They have extremely energetic fuel, but they don't get any meaningful specific
impulse out of it. Maybe they don't easily extract momentum from high-energy
radiation. Or maybe they lose too much mass to radiation damage or
vaporization ("ablative shield") -- their mass consumption could be dominated
by shielding, not fuel.
_Their ultimate goal is to develop a nuclear fusion propulsion system by 2030
that can spirit spacecraft from Earth to Mars in around three months - about
twice as fast as researchers think they could go with a nuclear fission
engine, another scheme that is being investigated but has not yet been built._
R: WiseWeasel
The speed doesn't tell us the whole story. If a chemical rocket can only
practically carry enough fuel to burn a couple times on a one-way trip to
Mars, while this has fuel to burn for maneuvers and a return journey, then it
is a big advancement. We weren't given enough info, so it's a bit early to
discount it as worthless.
R: sitharus
Dilithium crystals weren't used in the impulse drive though, they're used to
catalyse the matter/antimatter reaction through their crystal structure.
Also it seems to be fusion pulse propulsion. Pretty good for going fast.
R: Hoff
Original article:
[http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-
tre...](http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-trek-
researchers-to-begin-fusion) | {
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M: I helped reposition a database product that went on to make $1B in revenue - saadalem
https://www.thefxck.com/interviews/product-positioning-april-dunford
R: gk1
Agh.
April is terrific, and I agree that the right messaging and positioning can
have disproportionately high impacts on revenue (speaking from experience with
Netlify, Gravitational, and others), but this click-bait title is a huge
disservice to April, other marketers, and founders who may be dissuaded from
trying new messaging and positioning.
The actual story is that the person (April) was asked by a manager to
interview a bunch of customers. When they brought back the data, the manager
(or the team, collectively) acted on it by coming up with new product
positioning.
Some years later, after countless product iterations and _three_ acquisitions,
the product landed at a tech giant that does $30B/year. The author speculates
it was then responsible for $1B in revenue, though doesn't know for sure.
So...
It's fair to say "I was there early and it was neat to solve these problems
for a DB that later ended up at SAP." But to imply that your work directly
resulted to $1B in revenue--as this title does--is just nonsense. What the
F*ck were the editors thinking.
R: whack
Why so angry. The title reads:
> _How I helped reposition a database product that went on to make $1 billion
> in revenue_
It doesn't say _" How I single handedly repositioned"_ or even _" How I
repositioned"_. The author literally _helped_ in the process that led to
repositioning. By uncovering a key use-case for the product, which then became
the key feature and selling point of the updated product.
And regarding the comment about $1B in revenue, is there any good reason not
to give her the benefit of the doubt? She literally worked with the team and
rubbed shoulders with them every day. A lot of non-public numbers get talked
about casually at the water cooler.
There seems to be a trend where people are hyper-obsessed with nitpicking
titles and calling out "clickbait". In this case, the article title is a
pretty great representation of the article's contents - or at least as great
as you can get in one sentence. I personally enjoyed the article, and was
hoping to read a discussion about the main points raised in the article, or
similar stories others may have. Instead, the top comment is an angry rant
nitpicking the article's title.
R: smnrchrds
Two points:
1\. The title does not make huge claims directly, but strongly implies it.
That's how I read it when I was skimming the front page of HN. It's like
writing an article with the title "I taught Michael Jordan basketball" and
then explain how you showed him how to throw a ball for 30 minutes when he was
the 5 years old. Or the old maxim that if you are a cashier at McDonald's, you
can technically say that you "process high-frequency cash transactions for
multi-billion dollar company on rotating supply-demand cycle".
2\. I don't like how the common advice for writing resume, which I can only
presume reflects what hiring managers want to see in someone's resume, says
you must quantify your achievements. You cannot just say I wrote the login
system. You must somehow tie it to a business objective and achievement
(increases sales by 7%, reduced support calls by 12%, etc). In reality,
projects are often team efforts and except for certain niches such as sales
and consulting, there is rarely a clear correlation between an individual
employee's actions and business's results. I don't like writing pretending
there is and writing it, and I don't like reading it.
R: noch
> I don't like how the common advice for writing resume, which I can only
> presume reflects what hiring managers want to see in someone's resume, says
> you must quantify your achievements.
It's not about résumés but about how the skill of measuring/estimating one's
own effectiveness/impact/productivity is positively correlated with successful
outcomes and rate of progress in life in general.
Recall Mike Acton's principle questions[0] that a goal-orientated individual
must answer:
>> \- I can articulate precisely what problem I am trying to solve.
>> \- I have articulated precisely what problem I am trying to solve.
>> \- I have confirmed that someone else can articulate what problem I am
trying to solve.
>> \- I can articulate why my problem is important to solve.
>> \- _I can articulate how much my problem is worth solving._
[0]:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/doiq8ovho1k9d4b/fired.pptx?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/doiq8ovho1k9d4b/fired.pptx?dl=0)
R: bonoboTP
Or more cynically, keep on doing your thing at your core, but do know that
people expect to hear stuff like that so consciously sit down and architect
some answers to those things. You can reinterpret and rewrite the story later,
but you need to have one. Also you don't have to get too attached to it and
believe it too much. Think of it as your interface towards society. They
cannot all have time to actually latch onto your inner person. You must
present to them all the handles you want to be grabbable by.
R: andygcook
April Dunford's book, Obviously Awesome, is very good and worth reading if
you're a founder or marketer (or both.) We reverse engineered her workshop and
did it as a team at the end of last year for my startup. Was very much worth
the day.
R: kristianc
Second this - it's a great book, and one of the few truly actionable guides to
doing positioning (a lot of them get pretty academic).
Accessible to founders, and helps lay out the art and science of positioning,
and give a methodology for actually doing it. Would recommend it also to
technical people who are sceptical of marketing in general.
R: richsherwood
Do you have any similar books that you would recommend? I am always looking
for good marketing books but these days it's all some guru trying to sell
their book so hard to identify the solid through the noise.
R: kristianc
Josh Kaufman's 'Your Personal MBA' is excellent - its rare that you have one
book which goes through all of targeting, segmentation, positioning, marketing
planning, and how it all sits together. Often books will focus on one small
piece (like positioning, or value propositions) but without understanding how
these pieces sit into the wider whole it's hard to put them to really
effective use.
Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow is also a great book from one of the world's
leading marketing professors, and aims to lay out some iron laws about buying
behaviour. Byron is quite a spiky and contrarian personality, which makes the
book a lot of fun to read, but he also really knows his stuff.
R: redis_mlc
I'm going to give a lot of credit to April for this, and say the title is not
click-bait.
Long before sqlite, or CouchBase, there was SQL Anywhere.
And SQL Anywhere had something in the 90's that's still rare even today -
hands-off built-in production-ready replication.
(MySQL struggled for a decade to ship reliable replication after Yahoo paid
them $40k for the original statement-based replication, and Postgres still
doesn't have a great story out of the box.)
It's that multi-source production-ready replication that April shone a
spotlight on that made Sybase worth $5.8 billion when it was sold to SAP.
[https://www.zdnet.com/article/sap-acquires-sybase-
for-5-8-bi...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/sap-acquires-sybase-
for-5-8-billion-but-why/)
So kudos to April for finding a huge diamond in the rough.
I've been to lectures on SQL Anywhere, but I hope some day to use it in a
project. It's a killer embedded database.
Source: DBA.
R: icedchai
I worked on some systems in the 90's that used Sybase SQL Server (AKA Adaptive
Server Enterprise, not the Anywhere version.) Maybe "Anywhere" is okay, but
you'd be laughed at if you suggested using Sybase SQL for a project these
days. It's legacy tech.
R: redis_mlc
> Sybase SQL for a project these days. It's legacy tech.
1) SQL Anywhere is not "Sybase SQL." Different products, with SQL Anywhere
being an embedded database that can run on a smartphone and replicate
bidirectionally to other masters.
Not many alternatives, even in 2020.
2) Legacy tech - when you care about your data, accept nothing less.
Fun fact: the #1 most popular and regarded RDBMS for the past few years is
considered to be MySQL, and it was the key technology that powered both Web
1.0 and 2.0. If that's legacy, I want more legacy.
Source: DBA.
R: icedchai
Yes, I know they are different products.
Early on, MySQL was known for anything but caring about your data. I've been
using it since the 90's. Without "strict" mode, fields would be truncated and
data types would be silently converted. Never mind the <5.x days where MyISAM
was the default table type.
R: wyck
This happened at the first start-up I worked at, 3 years in and almost
bankrupt, one large customer kept using the product for a different reason (
kinda hacking it all together), so we completely pivoted to survive with this
customers needs and it became a huge success. That pivot was towards such a
niche market that no one was really in the space, and no one outside it would
have really even know about it.
R: achow
Can you please give a link to the product page - assuming that you
commercialized it for others as well.
R: wyck
No sorry, but I can tell you it provides video/text/meta data archiving for
many countries' parliaments and state legislatures.
R: willart4food
It was the year 1999, remember that? I was working at a startup and we were
preparing to IPO. I got a cold call from a - I kid you not - "Color
Consultant"; I don't know why but I listened to her instead of hanging up, her
spiel was:
"Do you know [Inser name of recent IPO]? Well they hired me and I changed the
color of their corporate identity from Black on Green to Green on Black; well
4 months later they IPO's raising $250 million at a $1+ billion-dollar
valuation".
WUT?
Her implication was that she was taking credit for the successful IPO.
So, there it is.
I am not saying that April's contribution was not useful, but... everything in
a long process is useful, but not 1 single contribution is responsible for the
entire (or majority) of success. Except for grit!
R: pkaye
This reminds me of an early job. It was my first job as a mechanical engineer.
I was lucky enough to work in a R&D team on an entirely new product line.
Crazy but rewarding work from months on end. Near completion, I was moved to a
side team to help out with other smaller projects. At this point the marketing
guy comes in to decide on the name and color of the machine. So they bring in
the consultants and in the end decided to stay with the name the engineers
gave it and the same color as older machines (beige and black.) And the kicker
was at the launch party they forget to invite me but invited the marketing guy
who spent a couple days helping out. What a punch in the guts it was.
R: abraae
I've been in more than one meeting where, after lengthy discussion about
product name, the group circled again back to the original (temporary) name
created by the developers.
And in that time it had somehow subtly become adopted by marketing as theirs
:)
(To be fair, picking names is hard, even if you are in marketing. I'm sure
there's plenty of science, but one of the best ways IMO is to just blather
them all around for a while and see what feels right/sticks after a day or
two).
R: dblohm7
I did my first internship working at Sybase on SQL Anywhere. Some great people
worked at that office. Even some of the original Watcom guys were still there.
Fun fact: SQL Anywhere was still compiled using Watcom C++ long after the
latter was discontinued as a commercial product. Most of the people who worked
on the compiler still worked there, so they maintained it internally until SQL
Anywhere finally switched over to MSVC.
R: zaphirplane
> MSVC
I thought it ran on multiple operating systems
R: dblohm7
It does. I'm referring to the Windows builds.
R: astroalex
Completely unrelated to the content of the article, but I find it so annoying
when interview responses are rendered in italics.
For contrast, here's a nicely typeset interview from the NYTimes:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/25/magazine/hann...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/25/magazine/hannah-
gadsby-interview.html)
R: huangc10
Not sure why you're downvoted. I completely agree. I couldn't get past the
first answer because of the italics. Why would someone do that. I'm sure it's
an interesting Q&A, but I just can't read it.
R: tigerstripe
I searched online - seems that when SAP bought Sybase, net revenues of Sybase
were around $1b - this was only one product in their portfolio.
Is it true that the product was making $1b / year?
R: jcampbell1
It looks like the product was conceived in 1992, Watcom was first acquired in
1994 by Powersoft, which was bought by Sybase in 1995. SAP bought Sybase in
2010.
I'd bet the product has seen significant growth in the mobile / IoT era.
Applications that work offline and synchronizes later are a pain to build.
Seems like the kind of infrastructure that exists in every police car these
days.
R: teleforce
Despite the promise of Starlink of pervasive internet connection, there are
always blind spots where connection just do not exist or just pain
intermittent.
Personally I think the future of desktop applications should be designed
around the premise of localhost first and cloud second. The ability of the
locally host application to synchronize to the cloud or central repository
(similar to rsync and Git) should be the default not the other way around (I
am looking at you Microsoft Teams). Technically there should be no different
between people working independently with their local copy of data to be
merged centrally later, and an offline application with an intermittent
internet connection.
Now with readily available VPN tools like Wireguard becoming more popular the
notion of using web applications for distributed authoring and collaboration,
etc, is not necessary anymore. But if you insist to use web based technology
there is always protocol like webdav to the rescue. If you do not want either
of them (VPN and webdav), the recently announced SMB over QUIC can be a very
good alternative solution [1].
[1][https://redmondmag.com/articles/2020/03/02/microsoft-smb-
ove...](https://redmondmag.com/articles/2020/03/02/microsoft-smb-over-quic-to-
windows.aspx)
R: nojito
survivorship bias in full swing here.
Can't find any followup successes after this product repositioning
R: haltingproblem
Yes, more like narrative fallacy akin to sayin that one feature we added to a
product was responsible for its success.
R: andai
To read the article normally, open the web inspector and add
em {
font-style: normal;
}
R: yuvalr1
I think that the talk here about taking the credit for the 1 billion is
missing the point. What I think she wanted to emphasize is that they almost
shut down a product that made more than 1 billion, and that she took part in
the process that saved it.
R: Traster
I think a lot of the discussion in here is about how whoever wrote the title
managed to destroy any chance of this interview getting any meaningful
discussion. Which I think is appropriate, because it's a blog about marketing
that manages to market their blog about marketing with the kind of deftness I
expect from my 8 year old daughter's rendition of _Let it go_.
R: haltingproblem
tl;dr version - Desktop DB product. She called customers, found most were not
using, one was and was crazy about the product. Product "repositioned" around
that use case. End of story.
I am sure there is a lot more to Dunford's book that this article reveals but
IMHO product positioning is the wrong takeaway.
Product positioning, which sounds management consultancy speak like "product
strategy" is top-down. Implies near perfect knowledge of the marketplace,
customer use cases, existing alternatives..... Anti-thetical, if not opposite,
to the Lean Startup method. Lean implies you have incomplete information but
you map out the profitable niches by experimentation. You want to build that
which is needed, not build and position it later.
Recommend Robert Fitzpatrick's Mom test instead.
[http://momtestbook.com/](http://momtestbook.com/). He also has an youtube
channel.
R: hodgesrm
SQL Anywhere was an amazing product. What's left out in the article is that it
was also really fast.
I had an assignment in 1998 to benchmark it against another pocket database.
SQL Anywhere was 100x faster. On the Excel throughput graphs I had to use
right and left Y axes for each product. Otherwise product #2 was just a flat
line on the X axis. ;-)
R: listenallyall
This is a strange story. Did the company really believe there was a large
market of people who "had to manipulate some data and write structured
queries, but you didn't want to do it in Excel"? What was the actual incentive
or opportunity that the product was meant to fill? Did anyone acknowledge the
popularity of dBase, FoxPro, FileMaker (with Access coming soon)? What was the
product failing to do for the 90% of customers who bought it then abandoned
it, surely some common themes must have arisen via all her cold calls -- and
why didn't they address those issues? On the other hand, Oracle compatibility
and sync surely weren't trivial to build, how were these features not already
a major part of the marketing strategy?
R: blunte
Lesson: know your customers and their needs.
R: sankalp221
Please add RSS to the site. Would've loved to subscribe via my Feedly reader.
R: nstart
They do have RSS. Unfortunately it's truncated at /interviews/rss.xml
R: suyash
Click Bait Alert
R: ykevinator
This is stupid
R: abiogenesis
> And we had almost killed the product!
Well, one could argue that you _killed_ the product. You just reused the
source code for a new product. A product is much more than the software. | {
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M: Bitcoin Backlash: Back to the Drawing Board? - rbcgerard
http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2017/10/bitcoin-backlash-back-to-drawing-board.html
R: tzakrajs
Orthogonal, but related: Bitcoins are used in illegal arbitrage and they are
traceable to the current holder. Why shouldn't a Bitcoin holder worry that
their local government won't compel them with laws to relinquish their
Bitcoin? | {
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M: CompTIA - A malicious site? - eznet
http://flickr.com/photos/mattezell/sets/72157606012121192/
I recently got my A+ certification so that I can nab a job to hold me over until I can get a programming gig (no one wants to hire a CS major for tech work). I headed to CompTIA's website to download my certificate and was presented with a Firefox's "Reported Attack Site" warning. According to Google's Safe Browsing Diagnostic report, there are 2 pages being hosted at CompTIA that result in the installation of Malicious content without users consent... Maybe the CompTIA organization needs to brush up on their security information...<p>http://blog.eznet.frih.net/?p=88
R: eznet
I recently got my A+ certification so that I can nab a job to hold me over
until I can get a programming gig (no one wants to hire a CS major for tech
work and no one wants a programmer with 'no' experience). I headed to
CompTIA's website to download my certificate and was presented with a
Firefox's "Reported Attack Site" warning. According to Google's Safe Browsing
Diagnostic report, there are 2 pages being hosted at CompTIA that result in
the installation of Malicious content without users consent... Maybe the
CompTIA organization needs to brush up on their security information...
<http://blog.eznet.frih.net/?p=88>
R: icey
This isn't really related to CompTIA, but in regards to nobody wanting to hire
a programmer with "no" experience.
If you're having a hard time getting an entry-level gig somewhere, I would
suggest building a code portfolio. It should contain code samples (in multiple
languages, if you can) as well as some working program code.
Web development is going to be the easiest place to get your foot in the door,
so maybe you should build a web page with some forms, some javascript, etc etc
etc.
There are entry level jobs out there, you just have to put yourself ahead of
everyone else trying for them.
R: eznet
Thanks for the pointers... Yea, I have recently acquired a rough understanding
of Python and am picking up Django at the moment to hopefully increase my
marketability and show my ability to pick new skills...
R: icey
As someone who does hiring of entry level people from time to time; making the
effort and being enthusiastic has been the deal-sealer more than a few times.
Employers like to know if you're interested in the work or the paycheck. (At
least your primary interest - everyone wants to get paid lots and lots of
money, but for the real geeks like us; reading YC on a Sunday, we're in it
because we love to hack.)
R: eznet
Called CompTIA today - at first they said I was mistaken... Then I sent links
to my flickr account and to the various tech/certification sites making the
"maybe they should increase their Security+" crack. I was called back this
afternoon and told that their tech dept is working with Google (?) to resolve
the issues... | {
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M: Jsteg, a package for hiding data inside JPEG - aloknnikhil
https://github.com/lukechampine/jsteg
R: aloknnikhil
More about the JSTEG algorithm:
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8893/ba76f2e358e80ef5bd93e4...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8893/ba76f2e358e80ef5bd93e42b9c454cfb7770.pdf) | {
"id": "20948496"
} | {
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"text_len": 293,
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} | 12,164,150,221,924,465,000 |
M: Sept. 23, 1846: Neptune Right Where They Said It Would Be - danso
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2011/09/0923neptune-discovered-where-predicted/
R: bdhe
The orbit of Neptune takes it ~ 164 yrs and 9 months and indeed, earlier this
year Neptune completed its first orbit around the sun since its discovery.
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/07/12/ha...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/07/12/happy-
birthday-neptune/)
This simultaneously puts into perspective how recent our knowledge of the
solar system is and how large the orbits of the outer planets are.
R: hugh3
Newtonian gravitation: it approximately works, bitches! | {
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"perplexity": 2022.2,
"special_char_ratio": 0.2630014859,
"text_len": 673,
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M: Airobotics has built a Transformer-like base station for its drones - JSeymourATL
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/21/11989734/watch-this-robotic-arm-swap-fresh-batteries-into-an-autonomous-drone
R: sharemywin
what would be neat is to have drones that can pass a package from one to the
other while in flight using a battery charging base station like that. sorta
of like an internet router for things. | {
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"special_char_ratio": 0.2326732673,
"text_len": 404,
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} | 9,763,333,789,239,878,000 |
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The Pile -- HackerNews (refined by Data-Juicer)
A refined version of HackerNews dataset in The Pile by Data-Juicer. Removing some "bad" samples from the original dataset to make it higher-quality.
This dataset is usually used to pretrain a Large Language Model.
Notice: Here is a small subset for previewing. The whole dataset is available here (About 1.8G).
Dataset Information
- Number of samples: 371,331 (Keep ~99.55% from the original dataset)
Refining Recipe
# global parameters
project_name: 'Data-Juicer-recipes-HackerNews'
dataset_path: '/path/to/your/dataset' # path to your dataset directory or file
export_path: '/path/to/your/dataset.jsonl'
np: 48 # number of subprocess to process your dataset
open_tracer: true
# process schedule
# a list of several process operators with their arguments
process:
- clean_email_mapper:
#- clean_links_mapper:
- fix_unicode_mapper:
- punctuation_normalization_mapper:
- whitespace_normalization_mapper:
- alphanumeric_filter:
tokenization: false
min_ratio: 0.2 #<3sigma
- average_line_length_filter:
min_len: 15 # >3sigma
- character_repetition_filter:
rep_len: 10
max_ratio: 0.3 # >3sigma
- flagged_words_filter:
lang: en
tokenization: true
max_ratio: 0.05 # >3sigma
- language_id_score_filter:
min_score: 0.2 # <3sigma
- maximum_line_length_filter:
min_len: 20 # >3sigma
- perplexity_filter:
lang: en
max_ppl: 10000 # >3sigma
- special_characters_filter:
max_ratio: 0.7 # >3sigma
- text_length_filter:
min_len: 100 # > 3sigma
- words_num_filter:
lang: en
tokenization: true
min_num: 30 # > 3sigma
- word_repetition_filter:
lang: en
tokenization: true
rep_len: 10
max_ratio: 0.8 # > 3sigma
- document_simhash_deduplicator:
tokenization: space
window_size: 6
lowercase: true
ignore_pattern: '\p{P}'
num_blocks: 6
hamming_distance: 4
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Size of downloaded dataset files:
513 kB
Size of the auto-converted Parquet files:
308 kB
Number of rows:
100