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HumanPredictions – Bootstrapping a SaaS app to $18k/mo in under a year - csallen https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/humanpredictions?utm_source=hacker-news&utm_campaign=interview-promotion&utm_medium=social ====== hiou He basically gets a spot in the family business which he uses as a launchpad to creating a SaaS product. Come on, this title is so far off from reality. No problem with what he did and it sounds like he does a great job, but let's at least keep the titles from indiehackers somewhat accurate. It gives a lot of people thinking about starting their own company really unrealistic expectations. ~~~ gregorymichael As someone who has known Elliot from the Chicago scene for the last ~10 years, I have to push back on this. Elliot hustled his ass off doing his own thing, working recruiting for Groupon, working as one of the founding employees of DevBootcamp Chicago to get graduates gigs (and doing so with great success), and then back to his own recruiting before launching Human Predictions based on feedback from his clients and experiences. He became, at least in my circles, the most trusted recruiter amongst developers. Many thought of him as more of an "agent" than a recruiter. Someone you could grab coffee with every six months who'd keep you in mind if the perfect gig came up. I referred friends to him all the time without concern that he'd spam them, hard-sell them, put them in whatever spot that was open just to reap the commission. He's always had the developer's interest in mind first and foremost. I understand the sentiment that these stories can sometimes over-simplify the journey. Yes, he had the privilege of learning the family business at a young age. But it's not as if "having a dad that does X" makes it a trivial effort to launch a SaaS that does X. In Elliot's case, there was at least ten years of self-motivated hustle in-between. ~~~ hiou Absolutely agree with you and my apologies if my comment made it out to sound like I felt like he did not work for what he has accomplished. _> No problem with what he did and it sounds like he does a great job_ My comment was about the indiehackers title and link. It seems to be a pretty common occurrence for that site to greatly exaggerate the 0 to $X and this article is unfortunately no exception. Much respect to Elliot for all he has accomplished. ~~~ csallen IH founder here. Why do you think the title is exaggerated? He did start his business less than one year ago. Of course, any business depends on the skillset and knowledge that its founders started to build previous to its founding, but how do you put a start date on that? To build a company, you need business skills, a network, money, programming knowledge... for that you probably need professional experience... for that you need the ability to read and write... etc. Where do you draw the line? Everything always depends on what came before it. People get this. They aren't naive enough to believe that founders are born on day 1 of their companies with no previous life experience or knowledge of the world. I agree it's dishonest to refer to a 5-year-old business as "an overnight success" as often happens, but how exactly is it misleading to call a 1-year old-business a 1-year-old business? ------ kpwagner Wow! Maybe just me, hearing about a company bootstrapping to success instead of raising large rounds of financing is all the more inspiring. ~~~ dave_sullivan 80% of the inc 500, the fastest growing private companies, haven't raised outside capital. ~~~ thenaturalist Do you have a source for that? ~~~ dave_sullivan Some inc article I saw on HN with Sam Altman talking about how important startups are to the economy, couldn't find exact one. ~~~ gexla Here is a link to the HN discussion to the article I assume you are thinking about. The wording was a bit different, which may have been why you didn't find it. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12625642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12625642) ~~~ dave_sullivan That's the one. The exact quote: > Only twenty per cent of the Inc. 500, the five hundred fastest-growing > private companies, raised outside funding. ------ 0xmohit The underlying assumption seems to be that everyone uses LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter. While it would be largely true, not _everyone_ uses those. What would your tool say about them? ~~~ dpick Unfortunately because we are just looking at public data online (including Github, StackOverflow, and Meetup) if people don't use those services (or contribute to open source) we won't discover them or be able to a make a prediction about their likeliness to leave. ~~~ 0xmohit Maybe you should start looking at Keybase [0] too. It might help you link personal websites, github, twitter, ... [0] [https://keybase.io/](https://keybase.io/) ~~~ dpick Thanks! We do actually use Keybase for discovering social accounts as well. ------ shostack I noticed the UTM tags you had on this link. How is Hacker News performing as part of your interview promotion? ~~~ csallen Just started using UTM query params a few days ago, so I'll have more data when I write my monthly review for November! But in October, direct links from HN accounted for around half of my total traffic. More details here: [https://goo.gl/FMxdpc](https://goo.gl/FMxdpc). ------ dpick Hey everyone, I'm the CTO and Co-Founder of HumanPredictions happy to answer any questions anyone has about the article or the company in general! ~~~ garysieling I'm curious if you've received feedback from software developers on what the experience is like being recruiting with your tool. The agency spam approach you mention is irritating, but I would imagine that if you're correctly predicting when someone is looking to jump that would be less of a problem. ~~~ dpick We actually do have a significantly better response from developers both because they're being reached out to at the right time, but also because a lot of our users are CTO's and Engineering managers who by the fact that they are technical can have a much better conversation with prospects. ~~~ garysieling Cool, that makes sense. I think a big part of the spam problem is mass template emails, so if your customers are emailing people directly it would be much better. ~~~ dpick Completely agree, one of our core goals from the beginning of HumanPredictions has been to kill mass template emails. ------ hueving Would it be possible for a dev to see their own prediction (to prove ownership maybe leverage oauth of one of the sites: github, linkedin, etc)? ~~~ dpick We don't currently support that through the application, but it is on our roadmap and something we very much want to build. For now though if you reach out to me at [email protected] I'd be happy to let you know what our current prediction for you is. ------ vsloo Great story and many great lessons. Being "intentional about the people you work with" is a great piece of advice and one that we usually like to stress too when talking to aspiring entrepreneurs. We wrote about some of this too in a previous HN thread [https://betterthansure.com/answer-hn-growing-a-side- project-...](https://betterthansure.com/answer-hn-growing-a-side- project-30f17f6a10da#.ntvqg0q7z). ------ desireco42 This is really cool idea, I like how it uses data to predict behavior. I have few recruiters that always hit me around the time when I get a little more free. They don't have this tool, just their spidey sense, but I bet they would like something like this. ~~~ 0xmohit I heard of such tools a couple of years back. So I'm sure those exist. How well do those work if an entirely different issue. ~~~ desireco42 Well, if people use twitter, github etc, they will be findable and their trace can be used to predict if they are 'jumping ship'. It is common to start blogging around the time you are looking to change work for example. ------ soheil Sounds like very similar to my start up NetIn[1] We also look at public profile updates and other signals to tell if a candidate is on the move. We also got to HN frontpage last night for our candidate job portal[2]. If there are people who would like to talk about what we've accomplished so far feel free to reach me at [email protected] [1] [https://netin.co](https://netin.co) [2] [https://netin.co/candidates](https://netin.co/candidates) ------ philip1209 It's great to hear about your success! For discussion's purposes, it's worth pointing out that there is a venture- funded company that is doing the same thing (but with a big data science team): [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/entelo](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/entelo) ------ iamleppert Now just let me come up with a product I can sell to developers that camouflages them to this product by simulating activity on these sites... I wonder what their next line of business is at this company...selling this data to current employers to see when their employee is about to jump ship? ------ gizmo This type of data mining of personal information feels kind of icky to me. ------ k2xl I wrote a similar tool for recruiters (only analyzes LinkedIn profiles that you are viewing). Mine is significantly cheaper at $9 per month: [https://recap.work](https://recap.work) ~~~ 0xmohit Your site redirects (301) from HTTPS to HTTP!

Famed mathematician claims proof of 160-year-old Riemann hypothesis - thomasahle https://www.newscientist.com/article/2180406 ====== ColinWright There is significant scepticism[0][1] surrounding this, and many, many submissions: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18044050](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18044050) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18042687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18042687) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18042513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18042513) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18042116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18042116) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18041616](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18041616) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18038790](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18038790) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036367) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18032207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18032207) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18029551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18029551) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18029459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18029459) ============================================= [0] [https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/9hl35w/sir_michael_at...](https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/9hl35w/sir_michael_atiyah_announced_a_proof_of_the/e6cxbin/) [1] [https://mathoverflow.net/questions/311062/sir-michael- atiyah...](https://mathoverflow.net/questions/311062/sir-michael-atiyahs- conference-on-the-riemann-hypothesis)

Show HN: RikClicker - colinramsay http://www.rikclicker.com/ ====== colinramsay This was a spoof of the original CowClicker [1] used to promote a Radio 4 play called "The Last Hurrah" starring the last British comedy legend Rik Mayall. It is a fork of my original highlandcowclicker [2]. Tech is basic: \- Github pages \- jQuery \- SoundManager2 \- A sprinkle of responsiveness Despite spending most of my time nuts-deep in SPAs and the like, this was something I did quickly and found it to be loads of fun. It's completely pointless, very rude, and certainly not perfect. I hope someone likes it. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker) [2] [http://www.heresyerfuckingcowclicker.com](http://www.heresyerfuckingcowclicker.com)

Help wanted for a new pretty printer and code editor - djalbat https://github.com/djalbat/yapp ====== djalbat There's some fun to be had in working with the grammars, even if you've never done this kind of thing before. If you take a moment to clone the repository and have a look at the examples, you'll see that you are able to work with them directly. I am especially interested in (and would be especially grateful for) contributions to the JavaScript grammar.Any contributions would be hugely appreciated, however.

Edsger W. Dijkstra’s list of advice - arikr https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1055A.html ====== arikr via [https://www.twitter.com/nolimits/status/1039326326493073408](https://www.twitter.com/nolimits/status/1039326326493073408)

Google's new drawing app can turn your terrible sketches into works of art - aaron_p http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/04/12/google-autodraw-can-turn-terrible-sketches-works-art/ ====== standardly Works of ClipArt __ _

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross' the Joy of Painting Free Online - cedricziel http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/watch-every-episode-of-bob-ross-the-joy-of-painting-free-online.html ====== Dangeranger One of the things that I like about Bob Ross is that when he was in the Air Force and stationed in Alaska as a Master Sergeant he had to act like a really mean character and yell at people for minor infractions and mistakes. When he left the military he decided that he never wanted to be the kind of person who yelled at others like that again. While his outward appearance within the show is one of a casual sort of hippie, he was extremely regimented and self disciplined. It has been reported that he would practice some paintings a half dozen times, while reciting the script along the way. Every moment of his program was planned to the second. ~~~ JustSomeNobody I always thought he had a painting off camera that he would look at. I remember seeing him look away from the canvas bit and just assumed that's what he was doing. ~~~ simongr3dal I don't remember where I heard or read this, but he made three copies of every painting, one for practice and to look at while filming, another while filming, and a third for the sort of timelapse they would have at the intro/end. ------ sahillavingia I highly recommend learning to paint. I started last year and I've already had a lot of insights that I am applying to running my startup, Gumroad, and designing our product. ~~~ anonymfus Your comment reads like a satire. ~~~ sahillavingia Most everything I write does. ------ artur_makly he is the single reason i paint today. god bless that man and his magic fro. ~~~ mlazos This just brought me to tears. That's inspiring as hell. ------ virtuexru I used to watch him on Twitch where they would play a bunch of episodes back to back. This man was a gift to the world, the episode with his squirrel really hits me in the feels every time. ~~~ atonse Yea as if that show wasn’t relaxing and lovely at the same time, he went and added that squirrel, which kicked it up to 11. ~~~ morganvachon When I was a kid in the 80s I'd watch on PBS, mesmerized, before I inevitably fell asleep. My dad called him the "human Quaalude" because his voice would put viewers into a peaceful trance. ------ pbalau Today we have the older gentleman from Tips from a shipwright, and the british guy that rebuilds Tally Ho, and that "redneck" Izzy Swan, and that other guy that works in constructions, whos name I forgot, and the Canadian guy with the wooden gears and the pantograph, and soo many others. All of this because the Internetz. Oh man, I love this age... ~~~ Doxin > the Canadian guy with the wooden gears and the pantograph Matthias Wandel[1]? [1] [http://woodgears.ca](http://woodgears.ca) ~~~ pbalau Yeah, he's the one ------ dewey If you have an Apple TV there's also a free app with the same content available there: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bob-ross-the-joy-of- painting...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bob-ross-the-joy-of- painting/id1115368661?mt=8) ------ lgats Almost as good as Lets Paint TV [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGgIHwH47d0n8idhR1MNpg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrGgIHwH47d0n8idhR1MNpg)

After 40 hours of free mobile music, you will have to pay Pandora - RougeFemme http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/after-40-hours-of-free-mobile-music-you-will-have-to-pay-pandora-01-03-2013/ ====== matt_heimer I've had a yearly subscription for a couple of years. They've replaced radio for me and I haven't touched my mp3 library in years. If I'm coding then Pandora is playing. We even have a Pandora channel that we used at our wedding reception. Between coding, driving, and the gym I probably listen to them 8-10 hours a day, everyday. That's not even counting how much the kids and wife listen to it (if only I could get them to stick with a naming convention for their channels) A subscription is $36 dollars a year, just pay for it already. ------ geetee You know what? If you're listening to over FORTY HOURS of Pandora per month, they deserve to be tossed a buck. edit: Glad to see the snarky title changed. ------ sharkweek Did they get rid of this 99 cent fee structure at some point? I switched to Spotify a while back, but when I stopped using Pandora over a year ago, this 99 cent fee for 40 hours+ of use was already the case. I never really felt like 99 cents was a ridiculous amount to ask for from someone like myself who was using their service a lot every month. ~~~ matt_heimer Yes, they tried going unlimited with ads. I think they might still be unlimited with ads using a browser and the return of 99 cents is for people using the mobile app. Out of curiosity, why the switch? ~~~ sharkweek Switched because I love having a giant library of music as opposed to radio- style playlists. Personal preference, really; as I think both services are great. ------ patejam So they're rolling back to their old payment structure? Sounds good, I was fine paying $0.99 sometimes when I went over.

Five Paradoxes of the Web - dym http://abandontheweb.blogspot.com/2005/10/five-paradoxes-of-web.html ====== RyanMcGreal _The client speaks one language (JavaScript), the server speaks another (usually not JavaScript). To cross the boundary between the client and the server, the code must be translated into a different language._ What does that even mean? Javascript is a _programming language_ , not a data format. To communicate with the server, all the client-side Javascript needs to do is exchange information with the server in a data format (e.g. JSON, XML) that both the client and server can parse. I can't imagine any architecture that would not require devices to communicate with each other using a common data format. ~~~ dym It means that as you move functionality (not data) between the server and the client, you need to rewrite your code. For example if you do input validation, you need to write the same code twice: once in {Java, Python, Ruby} or whatever the server side language is, and the second time in JavaScript so you can alert the user that the data in some fields doesn't pass the checks. This is not a problem if you are using GWT, or if you do serverside programming in JavaScript. ~~~ RyanMcGreal Okay, that makes more sense - but this still isn't as big a problem as you suggest. There are already plenty of options to generate client-side javascript via the server-side web application framework.

So you’re inexperienced, non-technical, and you want to work for a startup - aberman http://blog.wepay.com/2010/03/24/so-you’re-inexperienced-non-technical-and-you-want-to-work-for-a-startup-another-post-about-internships/ ====== gyardley Better answer: go to work at a slightly larger startup, one that'll legitimately hire you in a non-technical role for a real (although likely petite) salary. Customer support or account management. Then, work your ass off. Take all the responsibility you can grab. Try to transition yourself into product management, and learn enough about how your product works to get the respect of the developers. Make a couple of job moves to get product positions with more responsibility, and eventually become a product-oriented founder with some of the developers you worked with. I can tell you from personal experience that that route's worked at least once, and you get paid the entire time. Of course, I wasn't planning any of the above - I just dropped out of my grad program and needed to eat - and it took years. In my experience entrepreneurial non-technical undergrads who 'love startups' have no idea whether they love startups or not - instead, they're in love with the idea of founding a company and are rather impatient about it. ------ pvg The much simpler answer seems to be, if you're inexperienced and non- technical, there is simply no room for you in an early stage venture-backed technology startup unless you are someone's best friend, cousin or sibling. Failing that, get experienced or technical enough. ~~~ corruption Anyone who says you need to be technical in a startup is obviously not practicing much of 4 steps to epiphany. Having someone to make those face to face meetings, do all the phone calls, write up their research and iterate on the business model while you are developing is a _huge_ advantage. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't really gone out there and done the face to face research in my opinion. I noticed on days when I had to do both for various reasons my productivity dropped dramatically because a meeting either face to face or online is a huge context switch c.f. changing to a different programming task. ------ bullrunbear Killer post - I think this message really needs to reach the abundance of business students today. It's tough as nails to get something non-technical when you're fresh out of college and want to work in a startup. Everyone, often even the founder, is an engineer. You can teach an engineer business, but you can't teach a businessman engineering. ~~~ ABrandt _You can teach an engineer business, but you can't teach a businessman engineering._ I know what you're trying to say here, but it sounds slightly condescending to me. First, I firmly believe that picking up "business" isn't as easy as many make it out to be. Second, if a given businessman had chosen to pursue engineering I'm sure--all other considerations being equal--they would do just fine. These are two distinct disciplines that require two distinct ways of thinking. Until you acknowledge this fact I really don't think you can successfully make either a secondary skill set. ~~~ sigstoat i knew a lot of folks in engineering school who couldn't hack it and went one building over to business. never met anyone who made the opposite move, for any reason. maybe they all liked the b-school's swanky decor. ~~~ dpritchett I switched to and finished a BS in MIS from a business school because I wasn't enjoying my CS major. MIS offered me more project work, team building, and business skills. I followed it up with an MS in CS from the eng school at the same university. Now you know of one person! ------ jmtame this post is dead on. i was approached by an undergrad at the university of maryland last weekend, and i was instantly amazed by his initiative. this guy said "i want to help you with your project!" a bit skeptic at first, i gave him git access and we decided to have a phone call the next day where i would describe the code base. that night, before the phone call, i logged into github and saw him committing code. i was blown away that he was diving into the code without having been told what to do. and better yet, he had no prior experience in php. he was a python and ruby kind of guy. my reaction was: wow, this guy is definitely on that list of 2 or 3 people who i think of when i decide to start my next company. by the way, those 2 features were added in 2 days on hndir.com, and the post i wrote about it attracted 2k visitors (and something like 100 new hackers joined the site). this guy was technical, but he didn't know php. if you're non-technical, i'd say be willing to learn and use whatever you need to help (maybe not a language). this is how the technical guys get started. they just figure it out as they go. ~~~ mahmud You're calling a Python and Ruby programmer "non-technical" because he doesn't know PHP? I didn't know the technical-skills predicate had its result inverted since I last checked it out ;-) Kudos on reaching out to others, though. Can't recommend delegation enough, and I say that as someone who painted himself into a corner by hoarding work. ~~~ ryanwaggoner He specifically says "this guy _was_ technical" ~~~ mahmud I have neglected that fact in my rush to mock PHPers. Of course, the tone and context set by the submission story (how to contribute in the absence of technical competence) didn't help at all. ------ qeorge As pointed out in the comments on your last article: _Unpaid internships are illegal._ ~~~ aberman We are in a different position now than we were a year ago. We are happy to offer paid internships. That being said, if we (and other startups) _don't want to hire you_ because you are inexperienced, offering to work unpaid may make it easier to get some experience. If, for some crazy reason, you really want to work for a startup, you should do what it takes to break into that community. That's what I did in college, and for a year after college. No way I would have been able to found WePay without those experiences. ~~~ qeorge I'm not trying to give you guys a hard time. I'm glad you're doing well, and are paying your interns now. _However_ , you're still advising people to break the law on your blog. Its a weird, perhaps antiquated, and largely unknown law - but it was pointed out to you on HN last week and you're clearly aware of it. Thus, IMHO, its irresponsible of you to continue to encourage unpaid internships on your blog. ~~~ aaronblohowiak I do my best to be a good citizen and am a big proponent of workers' rights. Law is not sacred. Especially unenforced law that inadequately accounts for the realities of modernity. Personal responsibility does not oblige the individual to refrain from partaking in a socially-lauded tradition. ~~~ qeorge Alright, well can we at least agree that you should disclose when you knowingly give advice that violates US law? Surely you can see how this could cause problems for someone else who has the bad fortune of taking your advice at face value. ~~~ shadowsun7 So say that I'm a student. I take his advice at face value, I find a startup worth looking at, I hop in to help out for no pay. Maybe I do it in my free time, mid-semester; maybe I do it during the summer break. Whatever. I'm enlightened enough to know that I'm working for the education. The business doesn't advertise for it; it's a personal decision that I make to work for them. Cut to John Doe. John is the son of Mr Doe, who owns a law firm. He spends time off working at his dad's law firm, because he intends to become a lawyer. John is not paid. If I am told to cease and decease by a lawyer/my school/a policeman - no deal, I'll just stop and say: gee, I was in it because I wanted to learn stuff. Out of my own free will. I can't? No problem - I'll just stop. Ditto for John (though for some reason, I doubt anybody'd actually punish John, or even Mr Doe). I don't see how I'd get in trouble. His article is directed at the non- technical student, not the employer. (If it was written for an employer/startup founder, then perhaps you're right to suggest that he should disclose that he's giving law-breaking advice. I'd be fully behind you on that one, qeorge, I would.) But the article's fine as it is. And there's a corollary, of course. Entrepreneurs are relentlessly resourceful. If you're not relentlessly resourceful in figuring out a way to get into a startup for the experience, then you're probably not going to make it anyway. ~~~ tsally This is all irrelevant to qeorge's point. Wepay is a company (dealing with financial transactions, of all things). The company has a blog post. This blog post advocates something that illegal. The spirit of the law does not change the above facts. It's an article that belongs on the founder's personal blog, not the company's blog. ~~~ kristiandupont I agree - except the last line rubs me the wrong way somehow. I think that it implies that there is a political separation between a founder and the company. Blogging has helped remove this separation and shown us that all companies really consist of humans. ------ arethuza What about: \- Documentation \- Testing \- Support \- Competitive analysis All areas that technical people often hate to get involved in. ------ Omey101 I try my best to(and think I do pretty well to some degree) practise this very idea. I am a recent non-technical grad and have been trying my best to add value to a start-up I reached out to. The one thing that I have found to be my best attribute is owning a project I know I can do well. I present an idea, say how I will accomplish it, and execute. The thing I am battling at the moment is spending more time planning than executing. I spoke with a knowledgable friend once and he mentioned, especially in the start-up arena, that once you reach the point where you are 70% confident that an idea is a good one, you should execute right then. The energy and time involved in working on the remaining 30% confidence is simply too expensive for a start-up to afford. I now just need to take this to heart and practise it. ------ stevederico I love this mentality. Helped me get my job I have today. "Everybody can think of something they are good at; all you have to do is figure out how that relates to some aspect of what we do on a daily basis. " Don't ask, do. ~~~ iamwil Better yet, do. I have no patience for those that just floss big. ------ morisy "Most importantly, know how to answer the following question: 'What do you want to do if I hire you.'" Great advice, and not just for startups. I think every major internship I had, the hiring manager asked me that. A few times, I had no response and was shuffled around my first few weeks. Eventually, I realized that _probably_ wasn't the best way of going about things. And all that was at companies with thousands of employees: It's a much more vital question to be prepared to answer (even if you're not asked) at smaller shops. Great advice. ------ maxwin I definitely lost my respect and trust to WePay founders because of their seemingly support for unpaid internships. Their justification is that interns can gain learning experience though they're not paid. This is okay if none of the intern's work goes to production code. If the interns are doing real work that impacts the company's products, then it is not only illegal, but also unethical. ~~~ bullrunbear Maxwin, Check this out at my alma mater, led by a very respected valley veteran: [http://www.cob.sjsu.edu/bennet_s/196%20Spring%2010%20Syllabu...](http://www.cob.sjsu.edu/bennet_s/196%20Spring%2010%20Syllabus.pdf) ------ 100k I have coffee that needs fetching. Perhaps you can do that. ;)

Tail-call optimization proposal for WASM - chajath https://github.com/WebAssembly/meetings/blob/master/2017/CG-07.md#tail-call ====== Slackwise Didn't even realize TCO wasn't just an assumed featured, but wow, we need it. Frankly surprised it's not been added to JavaScript yet either. ~~~ chajath I agree TCO is an essential part of the Web ecosystem. What's interesting there is an ensuing discussion with panels from MS where they argue difficulties of having TCOs due to Windows calling conventions.

Linear Algebra and Applications: An Inquiry-Based Approach - henning https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=books ====== jcranmer Pedagogically, the challenge to teaching linear algebra is that you start with "here's systems of linear equations, we can put them into matrices and now here's row operations to solve them," and you end up with "now matrices are actually representations of linear operators on vector spaces, let's analyze the properties of this specific operator." Usually, this is also coupled with a reluctance to actually discuss vector spaces, since the meat of it involves abstract algebra, which usually comes after linear algebra. Failing to tackle this challenge appropriately can leave students confused about properties that seem apparently random (trace and determinant are big offenders here), or textbooks bringing something up only to never mention it again (null space is often an example here). On top of this, there is also the multiple notation problem (admittedly, not as bad as calculus, where there are too many notations for derivative) and the minor issue that many of the algorithms taught in the book aren't used in practice because of numerical stability issues. It has been so long since I've taken linear algebra, and I've taken abstract algebra courses since then, that I can't really compare this book to the approach that I learned. Skimming the book, the thing that jumps out the most to me is that LU factorization and determinants are shoved surprisingly late in the book [1], and eigenvalues are "previewed" quite early. I'm not sure that's a good approach: LU factorization is important because backsolving the L and U matrices is more numerically stable (and sparser, when you're dealing with sparse matrices) than the inverse matrix, and it works even if your matrix isn't square. Furthermore, determinants tie in better to row operations, and their weird application with Cramer's rule is another way to solve a set of linear equations: you don't want to introduce Cramer's rule months after you finished treating matrices as stepping stones to solving linear equations. The book does cover vector spaces, although in a bit of a dance around not covering abstract algebra. I'm not sure it's an effective introduction of vector spaces, although it could well suffice to ease the pedagogical trap mentioned earlier. On the other hand, if it's going to dive that far into vector spaces, it would probably be helpful to have some more sections on matrices over fields that aren't real numbers (i.e., complex numbers (make sure to mention conjugate transpose and Hermitian matrices!), rational numbers, and finite fields). [1] Strassen's algorithm for matrix multiplication is described before LU factorization, to give you an idea of how weird the ordering ends up being. ~~~ tonyarkles I went through EE and CS. EE we started using matrices exactly how you describe it: here’s a system of linear equations, here’s how you write them in matrix form, here’s how you invert them to solve the original system. Turn the crank, answer pops out. I had my trusty HP49G, and I could solve linear systems all day. Then in CS I took a computer graphics course and it was rotation and translation matrices all day every day. Then there was a digital communications course where we touched on orthogonal basis functions, and some matrix voodoo related to that and how to get orthogonal vectors out of the mess. And then finally I took the required CS linear algebra course offered by the math department, where we started from scratch. Here’s a vector (psh, I know vectors!), here’s a vector space (hmmm this is new), and building the rest of it up from there. I _really_ wish that had come earlier on, but I was very very happy to finally have a bit of a theoretical understanding of how these tools I’d been using actually worked. ~~~ jammygit I feel like my university only taught calculation, not theory, when it came to linear algebra. It’s like the equivalent of a “12 hacks to rotate a matrix” article. The theoretical books I find however give no explanation for the definitions etc, ie, WHY are the dot/cross products defined the way they are. It’s as though they feel matrixes are natural phenomenon that you should just memorize the properties of, which is also nonsense. The entire field is defined by such terrible books. I’d love to be wrong though if somebody has a recommendation ------ faizshah Along these lines, my stats professor recommended a really nice book that offers a case studies based approach for grad level stats: [http://www.statisticalsleuth.com/](http://www.statisticalsleuth.com/) I've been going through it by implementing the solutions in jupyter notebooks. They have the datasets and code in R so it's easy to work with and work out the solutions. ~~~ dmitryminkovsky Thank you for the recommendation. ------ Vaslo The fact that it doesn’t start with some unreadable mathematical notation that is just the author trying to show how smart they are give me hope. Looks like a really good introductory source just skimming the first few chapters. ------ anjc I haven't gone through this yet but I really like the idea of each new concept being described in the context of a useful application. Thanks OP ------ ch Cool. I want to try and work through this text, just to assess how useful it is. The approach is an interesting one. Looks like this will have to become a weekly goal. Maybe one chapter a week? Seems possible. ------ zhamisen Hopefully this topology book will be in the same style: [https://bookstore.ams.org/text-58](https://bookstore.ams.org/text-58) ------ melvinroest I have no clue how this is having 52 votes and no comments on it. How am I supposed to know this is a good book? I'll highlight the goals of this book as it explains more about the title. > We place an emphasis on active learning and on developing students’ > intuition through their investigation of examples. For us, active learning > involves students – they are DOING something instead of being passive > learners. I found this goal the most interesting. > To help students understand that mathematics is not done as it is often > presented. We expect students to experiment through examples, make > conjectures, and then refine their conjectures. We believe it is important > for students to learn that definitions and theorems don’t pop up completely > formed in the minds of most mathematicians, but are the result of much > thought and work ~~~ marktangotango The reason I upvoted was with intent to review later. I personally found that after two semesters of linear and a BS Mathematics I didn’t know jack about linear algebra. I came to the conclusion that I should’ve studied physics or engineering if I’d wanted to actually learn how to use it! ~~~ josinalvo for this use case, I use favorite rather than the upvote

Low Level Programming of the Raspberry Pi in C (2013) - mountainplus http://www.pieter-jan.com/node/15 ====== edoo If you need a little bit more determinism the beaglebone has a PRU (programmable realtime unit), a separate processor that can pass data back and forth to the main RAM. [http://beagleboard.org/pru](http://beagleboard.org/pru) I was able to use one to read in an 8 bit parallel bus at around 8MHz without having to build a separate board with appropriate MCU. ~~~ mikepurvis Had a quick scroll through the docs there, thanks for the link! One thing that's not clear to me is the degree to which the PRU has register-controller peripheral modules like an MCU, or are you essentially bit-banging everything (which definitely has its appeal after the hours you can spend wrangling with the stupid timers and DMAs on a CM3). How is the community? Are there ready to go modules for common tasks like actively rectified H-bridge control, CANbus control, etc? (I know the processor itself can do CAN too, but say I have a hard realtime requirement on my CAN network...) ~~~ edoo It is basically a raw MCU without any peripherals. I think the main purpose is so you can implement just about any basic peripheral and novel ideas in code, so it is essentially a bit bang but like most MCUs you can read/set an entire IO bank in one go. Since it is separate and basically deterministic except for some ram latency jitter whatever you implement that works should be as solid as any purpose built peripheral. It takes some assembly though. It is absolutely great for basic IO stuff that an arduino class MCU could do where the bandwidth is too high for dealing with the GPIOs with standard linux scheduler latency. I played with it a couple years ago and the community appeared small, but it is straight forward enough that the examples and docs are likely all you need. I bet the community is stronger but it isn't going to be on stack exchange. ~~~ rcxdude Yeah, they are excellent for bit-banging protocols, which is really handy if you come across some weird digital interface. I've used it for interfacing with a scanner head, which is a fairly quirky parallel interface. ------ jsd1982 Sure it's low level in that you're poking at physical memory registers, but to me, low level in this context (thinking microcontrollers) means replacing the Linux kernel binary with your own application that does its own direct memory poking. ~~~ jacquesm Low level: directly accessing hardware. To immediately equate low level with 'you need to roll your own kernel' is a redefinition of terms that makes no sense to me. After all, even a Linux device driver still makes use of all the facilities the kernel provides and yet it is _definitely_ low level programming. ------ sansnomme There used to be one in Rust but it seems that this year it reverted back to C. [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7pymd9/stanford_cs140...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7pymd9/stanford_cs140e_operating_systems_writing_a/) ------ codewritinfool Check out ultibo.org It is Pascal, not C, but runs down on bare metal. ------ SomaticPirate Is there a Raspberry PI emulator that exists that I could test my code on before attempting to load it onto the device? ~~~ torstenvl I use the pre-built image from Azeria Labs. It's a Linux VM with QEMU set up for Pi/Raspian out of the box. [https://azeria-labs.com/arm-lab-vm/](https://azeria-labs.com/arm-lab-vm/) ~~~ pm215 Those instructions are not using QEMU to emulate the Pi. They tell QEMU to emulate an entirely different piece of hardware (the versatilepb board) and run the raspbian userspace on it. You certainly won't be able to test any code for the Pi that directly accesses the hardware like that. (QEMU does have some limited real rpi emulation support, but those instructions don't use it.) ------ cpoile Is this the kind of thing that might be good for a kid (9) to learn as a first step into real CS? ------ jihadjihad Very cool! Has anyone seen a Rust equivalent of something like this? ~~~ glenda I came across this [1] a while ago. I haven't spent any time reading it yet so I can't exactly recommend it, but it seems pretty good. [1] [https://github.com/rust-embedded/rust-raspi3-OS- tutorials](https://github.com/rust-embedded/rust-raspi3-OS-tutorials)

Surprise graphene discovery could unlock secrets of superconductivity - mrfusion https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02773-w ====== classicsnoot I eagerly await the day when articles about graphene have simple, technical titles. So far, we've had years of, "graphene could cure cancer, provide free lunch, and solve world hunger soon" for a few years now. I fear the hope for graphene will turn into the pipe dream similar to fusion reactors.

The Yale Problem Begins in High School - frostmatthew http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-begins-in-high-school/ ====== jseliger I've taught at two colleges and based on my (purely) anecdotal experiences and attention to the climate, I'd say that the number of students and faculty interested in stifling or censoring ideas is small but also very, very noisy. They also have no sense of humor and college administrators as a group have no sense of humor or perspective, and they're chronically worried about accusations of indifference or insensitivity (which are themselves as good as convictions). There is a strong economic and career incentive for administrators to take _everything_ seriously and to keep their heads down as much as possible. Brew this up and one gets a majority of students who are reasonable but a small minority who drive all the discourse. I don't teach at Yale and have never taught at Yale or schools with similar cultures, so I can't speak to the environment there, but William Deresiewicz did, and his book _Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life_ came out of that and I recommend it. His book _A Jane Austen Education_ ([http://jakeseliger.com/tag/a-jane-austen-education- how-six-n...](http://jakeseliger.com/tag/a-jane-austen-education-how-six- novels-taught-me-about-love/)) is also very good, even for someone like me who does not love Jane Austen. _Edit:_ Also, almost all of the censorship calls and nasty behavior / comments came from students on the left. Vox's "I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me" ([http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college- professor-afraid](http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor- afraid)) is congruent with my experiences. ~~~ nickbauman The problem with "balancing viewpoints" argument is that it isn't based on a critical ethos and so it cannot progress on the basis of logos. You can have a "balanced viewpoint" and still have debates about _" whether the moon is made of the body of Vince Foster or not."_ There are certain ideas that just don't belong in a university setting because they are _bunk_ and this has nothing to do with diversity of opinion. It similar to the bogus _fair and balanced_ media argument. News reporting is about reporting the facts _as they lead logically_ so that if anyone would perform the work of the journalist they would arrive at _similar conclusions_ regardless of their perspective or polity. It's very much like the scientific method. Focusing on opinion diversity is a red herring. ~~~ frotak You're missing the thrust of the argument entirely. The author does not advocate validating factually invalid statements - see his anecdote in the second article linked in GP regarding "whether or not the economic collapse was caused by poor black people": "I gave a quick response about how most experts would disagree with that assumption, that it was actually an oversimplification, and pretty dishonest, and isn't it good that someone made the video we just watched to try to clear things up? And, hey, let's talk about whether that was effective, okay? If you don't think it was, how could it have been?" In other words - in the case of "bunk" it can be summarily dismissed with a proper basis. Which is entirely different from vilifying and personally attacking a person for their beliefs or thoughts which are doing no actual harm to anyone else. People can have bogus ideas and those bogus ideas can be completely harmless no matter how much you might find them distasteful. Viewpoint diversity is entirely about bringing different perspectives and experiences to bear on a subject. It works in the hard sciences: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151124-kadison-singer- math-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151124-kadison-singer-math- problem/) Why shouldn't it similarly be applied in areas of morality, ethics, social science, etc? ~~~ snowwrestler I think the parent is on to something about the implications of the argument, although it is not how the post's author would look at it, of course. To really understand an argument, one has to start with its subject. Are we talking about viewpoints or people? What the blog post author focuses on is people: > Me: Now lets try it for politics. How many of you would say you are on the > right politically, or that you are conservative or Republican? This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how discourse is conducted and should be conducted. _People_ are not on the right politically, conservative, or Republican. People are people, and each might hold or articulate viewpoints or opinions that are on the right politically or conservative. They might be a member of the Republican Party. All of these are elective and potentially temporary. The whole point of discourse is that viewpoints, opinions, and memberships can change. So to start by framing those as elements of identity needing protection, feeds directly into a framework for discussion that is conflicted. If a discussion must validate and protect all viewpoints (conservative or liberal), then what is going to be discussed? IMO the right way to approach this situation is to explore the potential consequences of voicing an unpopular opinion. Often, they are far less scary than teenagers might suppose. We should focus on how to give each individual student the mental tools to effectively evaluate arguments, and to manage their anxiety about going against perceived social norms. Teaching kids to be brave in speaking up against prevailing opinion can help create positive outcomes throughout their lives. We _want_ citizens who will speak up for what they know is right, even if they know they will face trouble. ~~~ sanderjd > We want citizens who will speak up for what they know is right, even if they > know they will face trouble. I thought your comment was really good, but I don't think this conclusion is _quite_ right. The problem is that lots of different people "know" that lots of different things are "right". In my life experience (read: I have no data on this), we don't seem to have the problem that not enough people will "speak up for what they know is right" because they fear trouble, we instead have the problem that not enough people are willing to challenge themselves on what they "know" is "right". Sorry for all the scare quotes, but my point is that the entire idea that people can know that things are right, and then speak up for those things, is off-base. Certainly, it's a good thing to have a sense for what you think is right, and to be able to speak up for those things, but it's a much better and much harder thing to be open to being convinced that you are incorrect. That's what I don't see much of in our society, and what all schools, and universities in particular, should do a better of imparting to their students! Instead of teaching people to better manage their anxiety about speaking against perceived social norms, we would be better off improving peoples' skills of hearing things they disagree with, and of structuring their own arguments such that they don't drown out that disagreement (for instance, the all too familiar tactic of yelling and/or ranting continuously). ~~~ sanderjd Replying to myself, because I've found that my comment ended up supporting the original article, at least in part, which I didn't particularly like or find myself nodding along to. I guess where I find that I agree with the author is that we could all use to do a better job of really _listening_ to different opinions. But where the author was targeting that advice at the "victims" who shouldn't shout down their "oppressors", in my experience it is more often the case that people with brash opinions that tend to offend people are the ones who "know they are right" and are unlikely to really hear the other side. But I suppose there is plenty of closed-mindedness, lack of charity, and stubbornness to go around! ------ lumberjack These people act this way because they are elitist. They think they know what should be better than anyone else and therefore there is no need for debate or for rights like free speech. I find that quite ironic because presumably, these people subscribe to left leaning ideologies. But maybe there isn't so much of a contradiction. They are simply more elitist than they are anything else. They don't really stand for equality because they do not possess the humbleness to bring themselves to the level of the common person. They believe themselves to be intellectually and morally superior to the common Joe. And yet they want to dupe the common Joe into thinking that they will safeguard his interests while at the same time thinking so poorly of him! ~~~ BurningFrog The interesting part is not why these people do this, but why they are winning. ~~~ marcoperaza This is the most interesting part of the whole phenomenon. I think the answer is that everyone is scared to confront them. The modus operandi of this movement is to personally attack the character of anyone who disagrees with them. They've toppled university presidents, CEOs, and politicians. They got Rolling Stone to publish a completely unsubstantiated article falsely accusing a bunch of young men of a vicious gang rape. No one wants to be next. ~~~ gaius See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals) ~~~ MollyR Wow thank you for this link. Its interesting to see where these horrible tactics come from. It certainly frightening to see things like rule 13 “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. This is horrifying to see codified, and what I assume being practiced on purpose, like what those yale students did to their professor, or at least tried too. ~~~ gaius Yep once you know "the rules" you can easily analyze all these protests or incidents. ~~~ diydsp I am strangely relieved that their perception of power is this basic: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. ------ tosseraccount Look how Silicon Valley folks treated Brandon Eich when he made a donation to the majority side in a California proposition. It's not just academia where you can't speak freely. ~~~ dragonwriter The fact that other people are free to speak against you does not mean that you can't speak freely. Free speech does not mean freedom from having your speech acts criticized (quite the opposite; it includes freedom of others to criticize your speech acts.) And, yes, it means that your speech acts may affect your ability to hold a job where you are one of the major public faces of an organization (such as its CEO) and are not capable of dealing with the PR resulting from the association of those speech acts with a public face of the corporation (the same as it would if you couldn't deal with any other PR issue affecting the corporation, even if it _wasn 't_ resulting from your speech acts.) ~~~ DrJokepu This is a frequently repeated argument and I find it less and less convincing. It is true that America's constitution only guarantees the congress will not abridge the freedom of speech. However, an argument could be made that in a free society there's a fundamental right to have a dissenting opinion or voice; a right that is not codified by the constitution because it's simply irrelevant to a constitution. It seems to me that it's up to all of us to tolerate non-extreme dissenting voices, even if we disagree with them. ~~~ dragonwriter > However, an argument could be made that in a free society there's a > fundamental right to have a dissenting opinion or voice Of course, there is a fundamental right to have (and express) a dissenting opinion or voice. There is also a fundamental right to have (and express) _displeasure_ with an opinion or voice, whether dissenting or not. And there is no fundamental entitlement to a job whose responsibilities include managing the public image of a corporation, and if you are unable to do that in the real circumstances and public image problems the corporation faces, _whether or not_ your own speech acts are the _source_ of that PR problem, you shouldn't expect to continue to have that job. ~~~ ElComradio The problem is that the current system in practice legally protects certain opinions. E.g. If Eich was pro gay marriage and vocally so, firing him on that basis would have been very risky legally. Especially if he was gay, it would probably be impossible to fire him without losing an expensive lawsuit afterwards. ~~~ nkassis I don't think legally but more politically and PR wise. There a difference between firing someone for making donations to pro-X groups and firing someone for being X. In this hypothetical scenario, Eich would have to prove he was fired for being gay instead of for making a public donation that support a group and leads to potential blowback against the company. It's bad either way. Mozilla had a no win situation here. They got bad PR from both sides. ~~~ ElComradio Forget about whether it has blowback against the company- It's totally legal AFAIK to fire someone for their "off the clock" speech for any or no reason at all. In reality, though, I think a jury would be very skeptical of a company's claims that someone was fired for promoting the gay agenda (which would be legal) and not for being a gay person. ------ richard_mcp I was originally going to lump this article in with other "men's rights movement" stuff until I saw the author was Jonathan Haidt. I had the honor to take Psyc 101 with Prof. Haidt years ago at the University of Virginia. He was a wonderful teacher who expected the best out of his students. He struck me as a very intelligent man who had put a lot of thought into both what he taught as well as his opinions. When he bring up his own beliefs in class he was very open to letting others voice dissenting opinions. More importantly, he always seemed willing to consider alternative views. I know this is all anecdotal, but I put a lot of trust in his opinions and pay attention when he says something. Unrelated, but he gave a great Ted talk in 2008 about the difference between liberals and conservatives: [https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind](https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind) ~~~ id So it doesn't matter what is being said as long as it is coming from the right person? ~~~ Tarrosion Or more charitably, the grandparent comment author found a way to do the admirable (and for almost all of us, all-too-rare) task of reevaluating with renewed respect something previously dismissed. ------ Nickersf Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers has done some interesting research, and given many eye opening talks regarding this matter. Reading this article made my morning. It's time we step back and reevaluate the way we are raising the youth. This war on boys is wrong, and could have disastrous effects on our society in the future. ~~~ dudul Agreed. It is baffling to me that nobody seems to seriously consider that this war on men/boys is what creates this weird and uncomfortable social dynamic. Masculinity is not something to be feared or ashamed of, teaching that is what creates dysfunctional men. ~~~ kod No, social norms that - you're not allowed to show emotion (unless it's anger) - you must get all of your emotional needs met through first your mother, and then your girlfriend / wife are what creates dysfunctional men. ~~~ Retric As a tall, large framed man, I often get very strong negative reactions when I am physically fit. And I mean fit not weightlifting bulk. Keeping short hair and a clean shave while swimming regularly is a very utilitarian choice, but you get even stronger negative reactions. The way out? Growing long hair transformed rather negative skin head connotations with a far more teasing Fabio. Our culture really looks down on the strong male archetype. PS: Don't believe me? Try growing a natural aka full beard. ~~~ thomnottom As someone with a full beard, a father who wears a full beard, and several friends with full beards, what is the problem with them? ~~~ Retric For one thing it lowers the bar before people think your indigent. Depending on industry it can often make it harder to find a job. On the whole it's generally viewed as a low status symbol. Granted this is mostly from the east coast of the US (DC). And having a styled bearded seems to make a large difference. ~~~ thomnottom All I can say is that I and my friends in the NYC and Philly region working (mostly) in pharmaceutical and financial industries do not generally experience this. But obviously that would be anecdotal. ~~~ moistgorilla > financial Isn't finance the place where being clean shaven is almost necessary if you want to succeed? ~~~ remarkEon -> almost necessary Required. I'm in graduate school right now and you won't get a call back for 2nd rounds if you have a beard. It's some sort of irrational proxy for discipline. ------ mariodiana > Alumni should take it into account before writing any more checks. This is the key takeaway for anyone interested in getting this nonsense to stop. ------ econnors As a student at Dartmouth, I find this article to be extremely accurate and representative of the culture I've encountered amongst the protests here and (through conversations with friends) at other places across the country. As a white male, my friends and I are too intimidated by the Black Lives Matter protesters and their actions to try to initiate any sort of discussion on the matter in fear that we'll only provoke more anger and protest. ~~~ flopto If people are angry about X and you go up to them and try to tell them how much you like/support X, isn't that what you'd expect? To make people want to engage you in a thoughtful discussion, it's important to demonstrate humility and open-mindedness to their opinions. ~~~ remarkEon I recently tried to engage a BLM protester about the issues, hoping to have a thoughtful discussion about some policies and ways forward to improve the situation. 3 paragraphs latter, I was being told that my white privilege should exclude me from even participating in the discussion, let alone informing decisions about policy - ostensibly because I do not have a shared experience of discrimination. Disclaimer: I'm a white male from the midwest. ------ lanny While I agree with most of the article, the author tries to politicize it at points, which I think is a mistake. This is not an issue of liberals trying to silence opposition, indeed when we see the most vehement efforts at shaming differing views the language is not ideological but personal: "X was hurtful" "He/she felt threatened". I'm a true blue leftist not long out of a famously liberal liberal university and I would have raised my hands on the eggshells questions. I vividly recall a student proposing a test on candidates' general positions at polls and being literally shouted down before he could finish speaking. Despite its ugly history in the US it's not of liberals vs conservatives, at least not in the way we use those terms in the US. We have a problem with limiting discourse in schools but trying to shoehorn it into the usual political framework frankly alienates those of us in the left who are having to choose between apologizing for zealots on our side of the spectrum or aligning with groups that seem to inevitably take on repulsive undertones of intolerance and a whole other host of positions that have nothing to do with our own beyond being marginalized by the same extremely vocal group. ------ 1812Overture One thing that I haven't seen anyone mention is that this sort of walking on eggshells culture tends to build higher walls around the privileged and powerful group. How often do you think these privileged rich white boys go on to become employers and refuse to higher someone from an out group (consciously or unconsciously) due to fear that the slightest misinterpreted off hand remark could bring hell down on them, but if they hire the other privileged white guy they can comfortably be themselves without risk. I think even if you have the most leftist SJW views and objectives, you have to see this as counter productive. ~~~ vlehto I'm pretty sure some leftist SJW really can't see this as counter productive. It's not just employment, this shit cuts through everything. I can't imagine how this crowd could side with the white supremacists knowingly. But then there is Slavoj Zizek, who agrees with you and me. [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nd6rg](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nd6rg) ------ purplerabbit Thank you so much for posting this. It articulated a lot of the angst I was feeling in college that I felt like I couldn't express without sounding insensitive or offensive. ~~~ fleitz Sometimes it's best to be insensitive and offensive. ------ waylandsmithers This drove me out of the humanities completely when I was in college. The topic of discussion in a class freshman year was whether natural selection still or ever applied to humans. I said no, because decisions on how many kids you have tends to vary from culture to culture, and I mentioned specifically Catholicism and the 1 child law in China. And I was called racist. Never got accused of being racist in Calc. ~~~ GFK_of_xmaspast What does the 'one child' law have to do with natural selection, and how does your answer relate to the prior 50 years of life in China. ------ ps4fanboy HN suffers from this problem, and I have found it increasing over time. Sometimes I am afraid to upvote certain stories or comments as I fear the hidden moderators can see what people are voting on and punish them accordingly. I know that this is irrational but still those feelings creep in. Every time the hate mob takes someone down professionally and the more ridiculous the circumstances the more people self censor. The silent majority is the biggest political and social problem of our time. People forget that far left political movements have been just as bloody and hateful as far right. This stuff is dangerous. ~~~ steve-howard I've never liked appeals to a "silent majority" because it groups everyone who doesn't make their voice heard into a vague group that's assumed to be on the same page. I'm generally silent on these issues, for example, but my stance isn't as simple as "I disagree with those stupid college kids" or "all of you people are so privileged and ignorant." You definitely got at the thrust of the issue, though. I don't really want to present an opinion that's going to trigger an avalanche of hate that might not even relate to what I'm saying. I don't post the vast majority of the comments I start typing. ~~~ ps4fanboy Sorry I didnt mean to suggest that the silent majority has the same views more that the majority is silent, and I wanted to link that maybe they are silent because of the climate of going after people so aggressively for having the wrong brand (problematic) of views/beliefs. I prefer a society where people can be challenged on their beliefs, when people refuse to have a rational discussion using logic and real facts they are exposing themselves for what they are, hateful. ------ holmak The concept presented here of "seeking justice by appeal to the majority" reminds me of the Twitter phenomenon in which people learned that the only way to get customer service from Google/Ubisoft/Bank of America/(insert giant faceless company) was to tweet a grievance publicly. It seems to work well, at least in a few high-profile cases. At least, it worked a few times when private requests failed. Perhaps people are learning by example? The old-fashioned ("culture of honor/dignity"?) style of one-on-one negotiation is often futile when you are dealing with a company. ~~~ CM30 Well yes, they're learning by example. People are getting fired or ostracised by mobs on sites like Twitter based on things like this. It's an unfortunate pattern where instead of countering arguments or having a debate, a lot of people (especially in these SJW groups) tend to try and destroy someone's livelihood instead. And because a lot of companies seem to care more about their 'reputation' then any sort of principles, you end up in a situation where people are too scared to talk out in case a social media mob destroys their life. ~~~ thelastguy It's the classic witch hunt mob. Girl A: I like apples. Girl B: I don't like what you're saying. Hey everybody, she's a witch! Mob deals out punishment. You can clearly see that the mob is being played, being used like a pawn, by Girl B. The mob doesn't actually benefit form this. Girl B benefits from this because she got rid of her competitor. The same way those students protesting are being used by the person at the top. The students don't actually benefits. Meanwhile, the person calling the mob to action is actually the person that benefits (law suit settlement, patronage, donations, government funding, etc). ------ leroy_masochist For a while now I've thought that 4-year residential college is a dying model. Here's how I view the value proposition of college and how it is being replaced by tech: * Validation of raw talent by a third party (admissions office) --> can be done by technology today in ways impossible 10 years ago and hard to imagine 30 years ago * Socialization around other people in the top decile (or higher) of book-smarts --> can largely be done by online communities (not a full replacement for interpersonal interaction but better than what was available before) * Access to top-tier employers who didn't have time to look through every candidate out there, so economized their recruiting efforts at places where smart young people are concentrated --> this model made largely obsolete by internet * Access to lots of obscure books at college library --> made completely obsolete by internet * Access to great lectures --> made obsolete by internet / MOOCs * Access to a diversity of opinions, the exposure to which will make you a better and more informed person --> these days only applicable if you come from a very sheltered conservative background....otherwise college just reinforces existing biases If I had to choose between two candidates with the same proficiency in a testable skill set (JavaScript, GAAP accounting, laying brick, whatever else), at this point I'd probably prefer someone who spent four years working on a fishing boat, or trying to make it as a musician, or on a church mission, or hiking the PCT / CDT / AT, or in the Marines, or something else challenging, over someone who went to an elite undergrad institution. They just seem more and more like indoctrination mills that crank out entitled little whiners. //grumpy old man rant over ~~~ enjo _If I had to choose between two candidates with the same proficiency in a testable skill set (JavaScript, GAAP accounting, laying brick, whatever else), at this point I 'd probably prefer someone who spent four years working on a fishing boat, or trying to make it as a musician, or on a church mission, or hiking the PCT / CDT / AT, or in the Marines, or something else challenging, over someone who went to an elite undergrad institution._ I reach the exact opposite conclusion. Give me a student who has spent four years learning how to learn. Someone who has had forced exposure to a whole lot of different disciplines. Who was forced to study things they don't much care about, because the value in doing so is so high. Spending four years pursuing a passion, or working on a boat.. is.. great I suppose. But a well-rounded college graduate is something the tech crowd really doesn't value enough these days. ~~~ leroy_masochist I actually agree strongly with your point, I just think that the pursuits named above are better at teaching people how to learn than many colleges are these days. ------ msie I liked the following comment. The speaker himself is probably biased as to what happened to him: _As a student of ‘centerville high school’ as well, I can assure you this comment is completely true. While multiple questions were phrased as attacks towards Haidt personally, many of them were completely rational. In response to one question (about his annoyance towards people who are pushing women to be in more stem positions) he stated a very vague position on how women, no matter their environmental conditions in childhood, are still predisposed to not be in stem positions (genetically). This was not the only ‘sketchy’ point he made. The question about his condoning of rape, while completely unnecessary, was founded on his insensitivity towards the subject (which continued into many subjects, including race and gender). His careful picking of data allowed his points to made clearly and succinctly in his mind. Questions that were too long or that had follow ups were completely ignored. In response to one of the first (albeit angry and unnecessary) questions, Haidt’s response was to tell the audience that in order to fully look at an argument, one had to look at both sides, something I (as someone who did believe in a large amount of what Haidt was saying) had to scoff at. His entire argument was founded on the idea that everyone being free to say whatever they want is the best thing possible for American schools, while being politically correct in all scenarios is the worst thing possible for American schools. Obviously there are positive and negative aspects to both. This completely contradicts his belief to look at both sides of an argument dispassionately, not to mention being hard, as students who do care about their education, to listen to. Haidt’s talk was difficult to listen to. Even though I believe in almost all of his points (despite being part of many, although not all, of the minority groups mentioned) his inability to speak to us effectively (in a way that didn’t seem like he condoned rape) made it so that his argument was not relayed to us clearly. His blatant misunderstanding of his audience put him in the position to be attacked. One can say that he did that on purpose, to prove his point about shaking those who do walk on eggshells. But that doesn’t work. Telling defensive people their wrong doesn’t work. Sorry._ ------ at-fates-hands The one thing that perplexes me more than anything is nobody ever thought free speech allows us to monitor the people who have radical ideologies and ideas that threaten our country. When you silence opposition simply because it offends somebody or some group, you lose the opportunity to monitor these people and their ideas. I want to know if there's skinheads who want to start a race war or the black panther party leader who advocates violence against non-whites. Sure it's offensive to me, but I want to KNOW these people are out there and know what they're thinking. ~~~ CM30 This is one of the reason governments and police forces aren't trying to complete wipe terrorists groups and extremists off the internet. Because if their posts are publically viewable, then it's easier to watch what they're up to and stop anything dangerous occurring as a result. If they take them down, then these people simply go 'underground' and becomes it a lot more difficult to check whether they're planning anything. Of course, there's also a downside (that a certain few people might be inspired or encouraged by extremist content they see online), but it's better for security to let such people give themselves away before anything can happen. ------ alexandercrohde Thank you for posting this article. I've often felt the "walking on eggshells" phenomenon you describe, but I've never even felt able to call it out without risking being labeled an "enemy" of a cause. Seems you found a great way to do so. ------ balls187 South Park's Stunning and Brave did a great take down on this intolerance of intolerance culture that is growing among US youth. ~~~ rglover Came here to post this as it's hands down the most brilliant indictment of this culture I've seen to date: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXF8MIG_HQI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXF8MIG_HQI) ------ bwanab Prof. Haidt was also the co-author of this piece in The Atlantic Monthly: [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/greg- luk...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/greg-lukianoffs- story/399359/) ------ Aqueous as long the definition of the word 'safety' has been expanded to include removing any risk of emotional distress from day-to-day life, we might as well call the current campus climate 'unsafe' for anyone who doesn't hold the prevailing views. i know i certainly didn't feel 'safe' to express the occasional disagreement with the majority opinion while at wesleyan, even though i was 99% in agreement with those prevailing views. i felt paranoid about (either accidentally or deliberately) saying the wrong thing and therefore provoking mob justice. 'walking on eggshells' was an understatement. that paranoia felt more than justified when people who had expressed contrary opinions were the subject of campus-wide mockery, derision, and ostracism. being reflexively deferential to every conceivable sensitivity causes us to disproportionately look out for the safety of some at the expense of the overall atmosphere of civility, dignity, respect, and yes, 'safety,' of the campus. it really hit home when recently Wesleyan's campus newspaper lost a good portion of its funding because it dared to publish an op-ed criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement on effectiveness grounds [1]. After all, students no longer felt "safe" knowingly attending the same school as someone who disagrees with them (rightly or wrongly). i am completely embarrassed. [1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/free-speech-is- flunk...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/free-speech-is-flunking-out- on-college- campuses/2015/10/22/124e7cd2-78f5-11e5-b9c1-f03c48c96ac2_story.html) ------ aikah An excellent article. I hope people actually read it instead of dismissing it because someone influential on twitter doesn't like the fact that it doesn't fit a specific narrative. I'm glad academia is starting to wake up on that very specific issue. Good luck to its author, he is going to need it, because some people will be out eager to destroy his career. ------ matthewowen I have extremely mixed feelings about all of this. On the one hand, I think the whole point of university is debate, discourse, critical thought. The apparent trend away from liberalism is very distressing. On the other, I sympathize with the notion that liberalism can often be a way for the privileged to entrench their privilege, and that unprivileged voices don't benefit from it equally. If you're black and you believe that black americans are owed reparations, you probably can't say that freely without expecting some negative repercussions in your future life: you'll be judged and categorized, marked as "uppity". Liberalism doesn't exist in a vacuum: we have to take into account other societal truths when we're evaluating its effects. I don't have a great handle on how to reconcile all of this. ------ ericjang Meta: In the last few weeks I've noticed that articles about the recent college protests trending up on HN, only to be flagged and vanish. I'm struggling to understand why these articles should be flagged and removed, rather than downvoted or debated in the comments. Thoughts? ------ thegayngler I guess you could argue the up/down voting on this forum is a question of group think or bulling type of behavior. ~~~ thelastguy It's a type of group think. BUT, it is NOT a type of bullying. Bullying requires that people shame/harass/doxx the op. Which they do not. Compare to the universities, where students bullies other administrators to fire other administrators for defending freedom of speech. ------ thucydides This article Haidt links on the sociology of the new culture of victimhood is very insightful: [http://righteousmind.com/where-microaggressions-really- come-...](http://righteousmind.com/where-microaggressions-really-come-from/) ------ eecks Does this stuff happen outside of America? It's all very crazy. ------ z3t4 The problem is that this also goes on in adulthood and even in board meetings. Even if you have the majority on your side they will sit quietly and watch you take a beating! Then think about what happens if you try to have a discussion about something that is not "politically correct". The problem with not allowing discussion about extreme topics is that the extremists will end up only discussing among themselves. And that's where it can become dangerous. ------ erikpukinskis There's nothing wrong with what is being said here. Except that there are just as many "climate" issues that woman and people of color have to face, if not more. This person is cherry-picking discussions about race and gender and saying "it's horrible that climate issues are making it difficult for these white/male students from participating" but the same level of outcry doesn't exist even though in almost every other field you can say the same kind of thing: "it's horrible that climate issues in computer science are making it difficult for these students of color" and the same people are silent. And I realize I am doing a form of derailing right now, because the matter at hand is white boys being heard. But we're actually talking about white boys being heard during advanced discussions of race and gender. And honestly I feel a little bit the same about it that I feel about girls being heard during advanced discussions of parallel CPU architectures. I wish there were more women who were in those discussions, but I don't think the solution is "just let them participate even if what they say is totally ignorant". Frankly, most white boys are not skilled enough to participate in discussions about race and gender. It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with them, the pipeline is just letting us down completely. Most of us get almost no education in race and gender, while girls and people of color get it for free just because of their gender or race. The solution in my mind is the same as the solution to getting more women and other disenfranchised groups into computer science. Everyone just needs to take a little bit of responsibility for the part of the pipeline that's one step upstream from them. You can't just have boys who have never thought about what colonialism actually feels like diving right into university-level gender politics classes. But as a university professor I think you can support summer programs for teenage boys to help them do really basic level gender analysis stuff so that when they do get to college, they can actually participate meaningfully with the girls, and not be seen as second-class citizens just because they have less direct experience. We shouldn't think of these boys as "bad gender theorists" we need to broaden our understanding of what gender theory is, and make sure we are creating opportunities for disenfranchised novices to get involved. But this naive affirmative action approach OP is advocating, of "just make sure the boys participate equally" is not taking the problem seriously. Proper affirmative action requires you to get in and take responsibility for your recruitment process and the social issues surrounding it. ~~~ thelastguy >You can't just have boys who have never thought about what colonialism actually feels like And now, you're just assuming that white boys have no empathy. Wow. >Proper affirmative action requires you to get in and take responsibility for your recruitment process and the social issues surrounding it... If everybody just stop fighting, there would be world peace. BUT, the reality is, not everybody will stop fighting. And there is nothing we can do to change that. We can make fighting illegal. BUT, nothing can change the reality. The reality is, people will still fight. >Proper affirmative action requires you to get in and take responsibility for your recruitment process and the social issues surrounding it... I know of a way to solve the economic problem we're facing. If we just make all CEOs of all companies competent... >Proper affirmative action requires you to get in and take responsibility for your recruitment process and the social issues surrounding it You may be responsibility in your recruitment process, but that doesn't mean others will be. >But if everybody just be more responsible in their recruitment process... Again, if the world just stop fighting wars, there would be no wars. But really, I don't see how that is an implementable solution. How are you going to implement something like that? How are you going to implement "world- stop-fighting-wars"? How are you going to implement "everyone-is-more- responsible-when-recruiting"? ------ l33tbro My stock retort always is "Well, I find your narrow-mindedness offensive". Questions, logical and calmly asked, also swiftly dismantle those flapping on about misplaced social concerns. Almost feel sorry for them, like these views are thinly-veiled insecurities about some aspect of themselves or trauma experienced. ------ sremani The Intolerance of the those crusading against Intolerance is funny until it is not. ~~~ lexcorvus It's also a lie. Try engaging the "I'm only intolerant of intolerance" crowd on, say, climate change, abortion, or the death penalty. It takes tortuous logical contortions to frame any of these issues in terms of "intolerance," and yet you'll likely be met with vitriol nonetheless. ~~~ nonsenselies It's even more dishonest to take all of the opinions held by individuals of some ill-defined cohort, and pretend that any inconsistencies between different individuals means that all members of the group are irrational and should be ignored. ~~~ lexcorvus _ill-defined cohort_ The group I mentioned is precisely defined, and 100% opt-in—it's the set of all people who say "I'm only intolerant of intolerance." _all members of the group are irrational and should be ignored_ Are you accusing me of thinking that? Because I didn't say that, and I don't think that. Reread my comment: saying "you'll _likely_ be met with vitriol" implies that the converse—that you _won 't_ be met with vitriol—is also possible. ~~~ nonsenselies Pedantry is a poor defense. ~~~ lexcorvus "Group X tends to do Y." "How dishonest. You're saying all members of Group X do Y and should therefore be ignored." "I said none of those things. I said Group X _tends_ to do Y, which implies that some members of the group _don 't_ do Y." "Pedantry is a poor defense." Calling me dishonest or pedantic is pure projection. If you have trouble seeing it, here's a mirror: [http://www.amazon.com/SJWs-Always-Lie-Taking- Thought-ebook/d...](http://www.amazon.com/SJWs-Always-Lie-Taking-Thought- ebook/dp/B014GMBUR4) ------ pedro_delfino Great post. We have the same thing in Brazil. But I am unsure with this problem really starts in high school. Actually, I think this problem starts on Facebook... ------ wcummings I don't think college students being involved in radical politics and protests against their school is a new trend. ~~~ avn2109 I didn't downvote you, but I think other people are because the article's central thesis is that this social phenomenon is at its core neither radical politics nor anti-school protests. Rather, the article claims that it's merely a new coat of paint on the same old gang bullying/identity politics/being mean to outsiders to increase one's own social status. ~~~ RodericDay That's how those movements were portrayed back in the day, too. ~~~ wcummings Exactly, this isn't the first time a progressive social cause has been called "political correctness gone mad." ------ coreyp_1 This directly relates to us in tech. Specifically, there is a huge push to reach out to women and girls in CS. I am not opposed to females in CS at all. I will encourage males and females alike to pursue it, because I see CS as the great equalizer; the only thing that matters is what you produce. What I _can 't_ stand are these "Women in technology" conferences and workshops to "close the (gender) gap". Why? Because if you focus on one group, then you are actively _not_ focusing on another. Given the dichotomy defined by their stated purpose, they are actively dismissive of men (boys). That is wrong. I don't care about the men/women ratio. People will choose whatever path they enjoy and want to work at. I do care very strongly, though, about treating people equally. If I say this publically, then I, too, will be ostracized. _That_ is why this article is so very important! ~~~ astroalex I might agree that "CS is the great equalizer" if everyone is given an equal opportunity to pursue it. But I don't think they are. Boys are given the focus by default: just watch any Hollywood movie with a "hacker" \-- are they a man or a woman? I believe girls are taught from a young age that CS isn't for them. How many potentially brilliant female computer scientists are we missing out on as a society because our media and culture barrages them with images of male programmers? It's in my selfish interest as a white male to promote CS among underrepresented groups -- because one of them might come up with the next innovation that changes my life. But they don't get the chance, because they're told they can't be programmers. That's why I think outreach focused on young minorities & girls is important. ~~~ coreyp_1 What movies/tv shows are you watching? Try Supernatural. Try the old movies from the 90's like Hackers and The Net. Even the Matrix. All of them featured women hackers as well as men. I was not given "the focus" by default. My Jr. High and High School did not have a CS program at all. I taught myself how to program (Pascal and Assembly) by READING BOOKS, because we lived in a rural area and dial-up internet is slow! Is it so wrong to believe that if I can do it, so can others, regardless of their gender? Maybe I have a higher confidence in women than they do! ------ daveguy It is strange to me that the SJW-callers seem to be the most vocal and active group trying to bend speech and criticism to their own idea of "right". ------ peter303 Poorly written article. Title undefined until last paragraph. ------ zekkius I find the underlying premise of this article and the claim that there is a "war on boys" absurd. It's a old argument from the same old set of people who have the same old intolerant (and dying) paradigm. Not sure why it is on HN at all as the content has nothing to do with tech... ~~~ ccernaf I'm pretty disappointed in the article and the comments, and how like Reddit this website is turning out to be. I'm not going to make any judgements (though I really really am), but this same article has been posted to 10 subreddits, among them such gems as: SJWsAtWork, ThisIsNotASafeSpace, sjsucks, and sjwhate. ~~~ bmelton Not affiliated (except that I follow him on Twitter), but the author, Jonathan Haidt, is one of America's pre-eminent social psychologists. He is (or at least was) a liberal who has engaged in some very serious social psychology that gives massive insight into how people tick, especially where those ticks are related to or concerning political party affiliations. If the idea is to dismiss him as an anti-SJW, or anti-free speech, then I would posit that you're simply inclined to dismiss no matter what. If the complaint is that his work is spreading to, or being adopted by the anti-SJW crowd, that's hardly his fault. He may not be right, or he may not have done appropriate research, or he may be based (his own studies would suggest that it's inevitable that he is), but any dismissal predicated in part on that he's trolling is almost certainly knee-jerk. ~~~ ccernaf I don't doubt at all Haidt is qualified. My complaint was more to your second point, that "If the complaint is that his work is spreading to, or being adopted by the anti-SJW crowd, that's hardly his fault." I do see a problem with how one-sided the comments on the page (Heterodox Academy) are, and I do think that he should have stepped in. Then, when I came to Hacker News, I saw similar comments, and that was disheartening. My distaste really came from comments like these, on the main page: "My white male sons are now 30 and 28. I’m so happy they escaped public high school relatively unscathed, but I could see the beginnings of the nonsense, led by a faculty of activist females and male eunuchs. Public schooling in this country may have begun with noble intent; kids are now truly being inculcated rather than educated." and "You state this like it is an article of faith that women would be totally rad in STEM if only men would stop holding them back. What makes this “sketchy”? There is an abundance of evidence that men and women are different and think differently. There is almost no evidence that women will change that position based on upbringing." and then on hnews itself: "#KillAll(White)Men is literally calling for ethnic / gender purging." (though it was downvoted). It would be great to have a conversation with Dr. Haidt, but I was turned off by how both Heterodox and Hacker News turned into "amen" forums. There were two students who posted on Heterodox, and they had some interesting points, some of which disagreed with Dr. Haidt. ~~~ henshao The commentators are self selecting - if they strongly agree, they comment, which they have. You're still trying to dismiss the article based on people having opinions different than yours, rather than critiquing the article itself. ~~~ ccernaf Would you agree with me in saying that the comments are at least disappointing? In terms of the article itself, I agreed with this part, "High schools and colleges that lack viewpoint diversity should make it their top priority" which seems like a pretty progressive viewpoint. Let's make sure everybody's voice is heard, and let's make sure that voices that are usually silenced outside the classroom have equal footing inside. But a sentence later, bam - "Schools that value freedom of thought should therefore actively seek out non- leftist faculty." I'm not sure how exactly that flows, and that's what led me to be disappointed. Moreover, the idea that students and faculty are living in "fear" and we have to accommodate their fears is also just a tad hypocritical. I also have a problem with victimhood culture being a thing, but that's a whole different argument. ~~~ bmelton > "Schools that value freedom of thought should therefore actively seek out > non-leftist faculty." Any argument that can be made in favor of cultural diversity should necessarily extend to left-right diversity as well. FWIW, as I stated earlier, Haidt is leftist. Perhaps less so now than 7-8 years ago, but he is indeed a leftist, but one who appreciates that non- leftists are not evil, but who have different gradients of right/wrong, and different associations with which to be entrenched. If you want children to have freedom of thought, then you should try to accurately present a range of ideas to students wherever possible. Students learn that 2+2=4, at least in some small part, because teachers say that it does. They later learn how and why 2+2=4, which mitigates the need for teacher acceptance as canon, but regardless, they learn that teachers ideas are to be given weight at the least, and that their expressions, even not necessarily strictly academic ones, are right. Would you find fault with your children's education if every teacher were a Rush Limbaugh clone, or would you prefer them be exposed to a variety of thoughts and given the tools and knowledge to inform themselves and form their own viewpoints? If the answer is the latter, then you should reject the notion of your children being subscribed to any narrow ideological view, and adding non-leftist ideologies can only broaden it. Edit: And yes, I would agree that if the comments are as you say they are, that is disappointing. I caught this article shortly after it was posted, and there weren't any other comments at the time, so I thankfully did not have those comments color my opinion of the article itself. ------ genericresponse Just for everyone's awareness, there is a broad astroturf and professional political push that has been happening for over a year by FIRE, a right leaning think tank. This is a concerted effort to bring controversy around campus free speech into the news. My perception is that this is an effort to weaken student's ability to speak freely, but is coded as a "free speech" issue. Similar to how many churches coded marriage equality as trampling on their freedom of religion. Just to remind everyone how free speech works: You are free to say whatever you want. I am free to choose to speak out against you or even pull my support from you if I disagree with what you say. My freedom extends to let me voice my opposition to you just as loudly as you voice your opinions. That is not censorship. ~~~ nerfhammer I don't think Jonathan Haidt is an astroturfer.

Beep security update - DyslexicAtheist https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4163 ====== garethrees The author of beep needs to read the POSIX specification on async-signal- safety [1]. In particular, it is not safe to call exit, free, ioctl, putchar, or perror from a signal handler. [1] [http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/V2...](http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/V2_chap02.html) ~~~ madez > In particular, it is not safe to call exit, free, ioctl, putchar, or perror > from a signal handler. Why is it accepted by the compiler, then? ~~~ simias I'll be quicker to blame the signal API than the programming language on that front. Dealing with unix signals correctly and robustly is far from trivial and rife with footguns. For instance I believe that Rust still doesn't have a good general purpose solution for handling signals that doesn't involve the libc and unsafe code. Signal is basically the crappiest form of IPC available on a modern operating system short of emulating a mouse and keyboard and typing into the other application's terminal window. ~~~ cryptonector The simplest way to write safe signal handlers is to only ever: - write(2) to STDERR_FILENO - write(2) to a "self-pipe" (i.e., a pipe where the same process is waiting on in its event loop), thus turning the async signal event into an async *I/O* event that can be handled without any constraints regarding async-signal-safety - _exit() Yes, there are other async-signal-safe functions that can be called from a signal handler, but it's generally not worth it. Adhering to my more constrained approach will keep your code safe and will make it easier to always get it right. ALSO, while we're at it, the only global or thread-local variables you can read from or write to from a signal handler _must_ be of type volatile sig_atomic_t (or else volatile of any other integral or pointer type that you can use with atomic operations). This is very important. E.g., imagine using SIGUSR1/2 to manage verbosity levels... ~~~ bkeroack Option 2 is very similar to how signal handlers work in Go. When a signal is received, a value is written to a channel and the library user is responsible for reading values from the channel and responding appropriately. [https://golang.org/pkg/os/signal/#example_Notify](https://golang.org/pkg/os/signal/#example_Notify) ~~~ cryptonector It's the only sane thing to do. A write(2) to STDERR_FILENO for verbosity/debugging is fine, but mostly you don't want to do this because it _will_ interleave with any non-line-buffered stdio writes to it... An _exit(2) is also OK if you really want to do that, but generally you want to do some cleanup, so might as well do the self-pipe thing _every_ time. The only tricky thing is when you use SA_SIGINFO and you want to pass the siginfo_t data to the event loop. You can write(2) that to the self-pipe, but you have to be careful of the possibility that it will fill up. You can always create a new pipe(2), write(2) the siginfo_t to it, close(2) the write end, and send the read side fd via a socketpair(2) that the event loop listens to. ~~~ JdeBP It is not the _only_ sane thing to do. kevent() is another way to handle signals. It puts handling them into the program's main event loop, which is done synchronously with normal event- dispatching mechanisms and so does not have worries about asynchronous signal safety, because with kevent() they are just another type of filter. ~~~ slrz Sure, if you're going to use non-portable constructs, there're better alternatives to the self-pipe thing. Linux has something roughly similar with signalfd. The nice thing about the write-a-byte-to-the-pipe thing is that it works virtually everywhere. ------ peoplewindow From the beep readme: _By default beep is not installed with the suid bit set, because that would just be zany. On the other hand, if you do make it suid root, all your problems with beep bailing on ioctl calls will magically vanish, which is pleasant, and the only reason not to is that any suid program is a potential security hole. Conveniently, beep is very short, so auditing it is pretty straightforward._ [https://github.com/johnath/beep](https://github.com/johnath/beep) ~~~ exikyut And all this time I've read that and thought "well at least you're putting it out there, just in case - almost for the sake of it" Heh ------ akrasuski1 Also see [https://holeybeep.ninja/](https://holeybeep.ninja/) ~~~ voltagex_ I've got a couple of problems with that page: * curl | sudo bash for two lines of script * said script just checks if you have beep installed, not if you're vulnerable ~~~ simias Not sure if you're aware of that but it's a joke page made as a parody of the recent "branded vulnerability" craze. I would definitely advise against running random scripts from joke pages, especially through sudo. In that regard notice the "TODO" line from the script: #!/bin/sh # TODO: Backdoor this machine? modprobe pcspkr beep -l 1000 -r 3 -f 44000 ~~~ jstarks Just recently the script said this instead: #!/bin/sh curl https://l0.re/hb | bash modprobe pcspkr beep -l 1000 -r 3 -f 44000 And then that embedded URL says: echo ohai But only after a long delay -- perhaps it is using one of the previously documented techniques to determine whether it's being piped to bash and behaving differently. And now that I try the original curl again, that first line is gone completely: #!/bin/sh modprobe pcspkr beep -l 1000 -r 3 -f 44000 Strange. ------ jfindley I'd love to hear the backstory. Who on _earth_ goes looking for vulnerabilities in beep?! ~~~ alxlaz If I had to guess, I'd say they were doing it because it is often installed with suid root. Edit: also, there's a challenge about this in the program's README :-) "Decide for yourself, of course, but it looks safe to me - there's only one buffer and fgets doesn't let it overflow, there's only one file opening, and while there is a potential race condition there, it's with /dev/console. If someone can exploit this race by replacing /dev/console, you've got bigger problems. :)" ~~~ DCoder It should be pointed out that the README is wrong about the race condition – it is not limited to /dev/console, you can use the -e option to point it to a different output device. ~~~ jwilk It doesn't open /dev/console by default either (the default device is /dev/tty0). I don't see where the race condition is, though. ------ nxtafan [https://github.com/johnath/beep/issues/11#issuecomment-37838...](https://github.com/johnath/beep/issues/11#issuecomment-378383752) ~~~ jwilk The Debian patch with diff highlighting: [https://gist.github.com/jwilk/561ae35894756aae1e31503d0c52db...](https://gist.github.com/jwilk/561ae35894756aae1e31503d0c52db7e) AFAICS, it does this: 1) Fixes use of uninitialized memory. 2) Fixes double-free in the signal handler. 3) Makes sure that the device is opened only once. I still don't understand what exactly the bug is supposed to be. I also don't understand what is the purpose of 3). With this fix applied, it's still possible for a user to open arbitrary file for writing with root privileges, which is bad. ~~~ terom My speculation on the race condition fixed in the patch: The while loop in `main` calls `play_beep` multiple times. Each call to `play_beep` opens the `--device` and sets the global `console_fd`, and _then_ sets the global `console_type` based on the `ioctl(EVIOCGSND)` error, before calling `do_beep`. This normally prevents the user from writing to arbitrary files with `--device`, because without the `ioctl(EVIOCGSND)` succeeding, `do_beep` with `BEEP_TYPE_CONSOLE` only does a (harmless?) `ioctl(KIOCSOUND)`, not a `write` with the `struct input_event`. However, the signal handler calls `do_beep` directly using the globals set by `play_beep`... So I image that with something along the lines of `beep --device=./symlink-to- tty ... --new ...`, you can rewrite the symlink to point to an arbitrary file during the first `play_beep`, and then race the open/ioctl in the second `play_beep` with the signal handler such that `do_beep` gets called with `console_fd` pointing to your arbitrary file, and with `console_type` still set to `BEEP_TYPE_EVDEV`, resulting in a `write` to your arbitrary file. Exploiting that for privesc would require control over the `struct input_event` for the `write`... `handle_signal` calls `do_beep` with a fixed `freq` of 0, so all of the initialized fields are set to fixed values... However, there's an unitialized `struct timeval` at the beginning of the `struct input_event`, and it's allocated on the stack... Seems like a curious security vulnerability, I'll assume the debian security team must have a working PoC in order to actually call it out as a local privesc vulnerability... I'd love to see the actual PoC eventually :) ~~~ terom There's now a PoC exploiting this race, seemingly placing the 32-bit -l option value into the uninitialized part of the `struct input_event` to modify a shell script that runs as root: [https://gist.github.com/fkt/5f8f9560ef54e11ff7df8bec09dc8f9a](https://gist.github.com/fkt/5f8f9560ef54e11ff7df8bec09dc8f9a) Remains to be seen if the PoC actually works though, I've been unable to win the race so far, although the varying ioctl errors indicate it might be close? ------ Y_Y Can't one just sudo echo -e "\7” anyway? Or if you're trying to do something fancier there is snd-pcsp which lets use use the piezo as a normal ALSA device (quality may vary). Not that many modern machines even include such a useful device. ~~~ dblotsky Nitpick: on my machine, that's: sudo echo -e "\07" ~~~ FreeFull Simply displaying a character doesn't need sudo at all anyway, so just echo -e "\07" ~~~ laumars `sudo` isn't there for displaying the character, it's there for ioctl to have permissions to play the beep on remote terminals[1]. I think some terminal emulators (eg Konsole) will just read char 7 and play a system defined WAV or other workaround but your more classic terminals (eg xterm) would potentially have difficulties calling the system bell. [1] for reference: Xorg terminals are also classed as remote terminals (eg check the TTY column in `w` to see how Linux assigns pseudo-tty's to terminal emulators inside X). ~~~ FreeFull Even in that case, you'd have to run the terminal as root. Running echo as root won't do anything. X11 also has beep functionality built in, which is what I'd expect xterm to use. ~~~ laumars > _Even in that case, you 'd have to run the terminal as root. Running echo as > root won't do anything._ To be honest that was my assumption as well but I didn't test that theory so was only reporting on the rationale of the GPs post > _X11 also has beep functionality built in, which is what I 'd expect xterm > to use_ X11 runs as root though (that said Xorg may not anymore now as there were talks about patching Linux so it didn't have to be) so Xorg could easily still use the standard ioctl bell (that's possibly all Xorg is doing behind the scenes in fact?) But as I said earlier, some GUI terminal emulators avoid ioctl entirely and play a WAV tone instead. ------ 0x0 Does GPL say anything about distributing source via git repositories? I mean, it talks about "preferred form of the work for making modifications". But when I click through to the Debian PTS page for Beep at [https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/beep](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/beep) it shows a git link to [http://git.deb.at/w/pkg/beep.git](http://git.deb.at/w/pkg/beep.git) which was last modified 23 months ago, so obviously does not contain this security fix. How is the GPL upheld if security fixes aren't available together with the main git repository? I don't mean to cause drama, because I think the Debian security team does an awesome job of keeping an eye on patching everything in the distribution. But I'm really curious about how one would go about with further development on a package like this when the git commits aren't available? There's probably a source tarball for the .debs in the apt repos (hard to tell from a mobile web browser) but is that good enough if it doesn't contain git commits? Also I really just wanted to read this security patch source diff on the go :) ~~~ lwf (N.B.: I'm on the Debian ftpmaster team, which reviews all new software in Debian to ensure it matches our policies and commitments) > Does GPL say anything about distributing source via git repositories? Nope. > I mean, it talks about "preferred form of the work for making > modifications". This is generally interpreted as a fancy way of saying "source code" — e.g. a minified JavaScript program or something that _could_ be decompiled isn't the "preferred form… for making modifications". Source for all Debian packages can be retrieved via `apt-get source PACKAGE`, and via sources.debian.org[3]. Historically, the only hard requirement was that all patches be made available as a `.diff.gz` applied against the upstream, although for many years packages have since standardised on using `quilt`[2]. Some maintainers may also use git (and wrappers around it) to make things easier to manage, but quilt is sufficiently straightforward to work with that it's acceptable for most purposes. The VCS page on the BTS points to the repository for the package. It contains an unreleased version (1.3.3-5), the security update only is a patch on the previous version released in Debian. The last _upstream_ release was 1.3 (2010), available on GitHub[1]. This is a Debian-specific patch against beep. We'd like all patches to make it upstream, and ensure maximum clarity, but we have limited time, and our first priority is the users of Debian. Sometimes, upstreams lose time, or there are coordination issues that prevent it. (not saying that's the case here) [1]: [http://github.com/johnath/beep/](http://github.com/johnath/beep/) [2]: [https://wiki.debian.org/UsingQuilt](https://wiki.debian.org/UsingQuilt) [3]: [https://sources.debian.org/src/beep/unstable/](https://sources.debian.org/src/beep/unstable/) ~~~ 0x0 Thanks for your detailed reply. I'm still curious about the general case of GPL and Git. If I were to hack on some GPL-licensed software, my "preferred form of the work for making modifications" would hands-down be a .git repository, because all the individual git commits and commitmsgs are important (meta-)information, almost as important as the source code files themselves. It also makes collaborating on improvements much easier when you can work on git commit objects, with their parent(s) commit hash references. Without those, determining where and if a .patch should be applied to a source code dump becomes much harder. In other words, if there exists a .git repository for a given piece of software, and all one gets is a .tar.gz flat source dump snapshot, I feel like... something has been left out? ~~~ lwf This came up when RedHat stopped breaking out their patches against the Linux kernel: [https://lwn.net/Articles/432012/](https://lwn.net/Articles/432012/) Relevant parts quoted: > While there can certainly be arguments about what "preferred form" means for > source code distributions, Red Hat's actions here don't seem very close to > the line. The basic idea is that the code be released in digital form, along > with any build scripts, so that downstream developers can reproduce the GPL- > covered binary that is being shipped. It is partly meant to prevent > recalcitrant vendors from releasing the source on paper—or stamped into clay > tablets in cuneiform. One could argue that those methods do provide the > source code, but it certainly isn't in a form preferred by anyone—nor does > it adhere to the "medium customarily used for software interchange" > requirement. > Obfuscated source code, where all the variables and function names get > turned into unintelligible gibberish, or the source is deliberately split up > in ways that are harder to work with, are a bit more of a gray area—but not > much. Those kinds of actions should be seen as clear attempts to circumvent > the GPL requirements. But that's not at all what Red Hat is doing. > The tarball that Red Hat is releasing may not be the preferred form for the > Red Hat kernel developers to use, but that is not part of the requirement. > Tarball releases of GPL code are a longstanding tradition in the free > software world. Many projects still do it that way and the FSF itself has > made releases that way in the past. While it is nice to get some visibility > into the version control system of a project, it certainly isn't required > for GPL compliance. No one complained that Red Hat didn't provide access to > its Git repositories back when it was still providing the broken-out > patches, for example. A Git repository is definitely the preferred form for > Red Hat developers to use, but there are lots of reasons that the company > might want to keep its repositories to itself—something that is obviously > within its rights. ------ tejasmanohar Is it worrisome that the Debian distribution comes with a package with this note in the README Decide for yourself, of course, but it looks safe to me - there's only one buffer and fgets doesn't let it overflow, there's only one file opening, and while there is a potential race condition there, it's with /dev/console. If someone can exploit this race by replacing /dev/console, you've got bigger problems. :) It also appears /dev/console is overridable, [https://github.com/johnath/beep/blob/master/beep.c#L149](https://github.com/johnath/beep/blob/master/beep.c#L149). ~~~ jesboat FWIW, that comment was written before the option to control the path beep uses was added. Without the option to control the path, the potential race is only exploitable by somebody who can write to /dev, in which case that person is already root. ------ oh5nxo There's the common minor error with perror(). Intervening printf("\a"); can foul the errno and you get the beep: open: not a typewriter ------ alex_duf That's hilarious ------ baybal2 Next, somebody will find a security hole in True (1)

Ask HN: What do you think of open office floor plans? - att159 Good for promoting collaboration, or merely an obstacle to privacy and productivity? Seems like it&#x27;s very difficult to find a Bay Area tech company these days which doesn&#x27;t use the open office plan. Facebook now has a 2800 person room in its headquarters, for example. ====== chrisbennet I'm not a fan of _working_ in a open plan office - but I think they are a _great_ idea for the companies I compete against. ;-) A tiny team (2-4 developers) with some sort of walls (so you aren't looking over your monitor at someone else) is probably a good compromise between getting things done (concentration) and "collaboration" i.e. keeping others from concentrating. I concentrate really well but it's still hard for my brain not to react to hearing my boss asking another engineer in the next cubicle say "What's the kind of matrix where the inverse is also its transpose?" That actually happened to me once and I blurted out the answer. When he then asked me directly, "Hey, you know about matrix math?" I smiled and told him "Not as far as you know." :-) ------ NameNickHN I think it's poison for a developer. I work(ed) for two companies with open floor plans as a freelancer and I try to minimize my onsite time as much as possible. Either I get close to zero work done or I have a splitting headache at the end of the day. Phones ringing, people talking, people walking, music playing - it's distracting as heck. In my home office, which is a couple of miles outside the city, all I hear is birds chirping and rustling tree leaves. I guest I'm a bit spoiled in that way but it's a great working environment. In my opinon, open floor plans serve only two purposes: lowering the costs of building and maintaining an office and keeping the staff monitored. > Facebook now has a 2800 person room in its headquarters [...] That sounds like a complete nightmare to me. ------ staticautomatic Some people really enjoy open floor plans and get a productivity boost out of them, particularly if they are often working as part of a small team or across multiple small teams. However, others much prefer and are more productive as solitary workers and would legitimately benefit from having stable offices. Sitting in an open area with your headphones on is not a serviceable substitute for an office. Accordingly, I think a mixed floor plan including both dedicated offices and some open space is ideal. I frankly don't understand why so many people tend to approach these as mutually exclusive things. ------ tvm Open office is a deal breaker for me, because it simply underlines the ignorant approach of the company towards their employees - especially coders. I have yet to see someone that performs better when constantly distracted or interrupted. Socializing ? I do that in my free time at other places and with people that I choose on my own. Employee monitoring ? If you need such desperate measure to ensure that workers actually do their work, there's something terribly wrong. Best setup from my personal experience are small 2-4 person offices. ------ rubyfan I do my best work when uninterrupted for long periods. My productivity suffers when I am interrupted seemingly at random by the needs of those inconsiderate enough to assume their need trumps whatever I am working on at the time. Email, texting and instant message are controllable mediums. The only acceptable barrier to the real world interruptions accompanying open concept is a pair of headphones and that is too light a defense in my experience. ------ sheepmullet Part of the reason you get so many differences in opinion for these kinds of questions is it depends on the type of work and environment. For example there are thousands of HN users who work in companies with <20 people. I personally have more than 5x that number of people on my floor. There are companies where anything not directly work related is discouraged and then there are companies where having a 20min coffee break with co- workers, or having weekly team events, etc is encouraged. In the first kind of company it would be isolating to work in a private office, whereas in the second kind of company it could work well. Etc, etc. Personally I hate open offices... but I work next to sales people and a few very loud co-workers. ------ nazuk I find that having about 20 people in room is a good number, above this many people, after discussing with them, find that larger rooms makes you less likely to collaborate due to being self-concious of so many people listening to the conversation ------ Avalaxy I really love them. I may be a programmer, but I still like have SOME social interaction and daylight. I could never work in a cubicle, that's really what hell looks like to me.

British cave diver sues Elon Musk for defamation over “pedo guy” tweets - tolien https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/british-cave-diver-sues-elon-musk-for-defamation-over-pedo-guy-tweets/ ====== GoToRO "Vernon Unsworth, the British cave diver who played a key role in rescuing a dozen teenagers and their coach from a flooded cave in Thailand." I've got the same reaction when I criticized the design of a coleague. Devs are just big childs. ------ honkycat Why Elon Musk even bothers with a twitter is a complete mystery. And fucking up like this is baffling. Social media is a toxic cesspool and if I was famous and rich enough to require a social media presence, I would pay someone else to do it for me. ~~~ curtis I understand why he does it, but the guy needs to relinquish direct control of his Twitter account to some trusted lieutenant who can serve as a sanity check before tweets go out. In fact this might be a good idea for any people on Twitter with large numbers of followers, especially those with significant responsibilities.

Blockupload.io: Upload Files to Bitcoin Cash Blockchain(LZMA and OCB3-ChaCha20 - MCCCS Hello HN community,<p>I&#x27;d like to present you my tool (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blockupload.io) that allows embedding files up to 1 MB in Bitcoin Cash transactions. The tool uses WebAssembly to compress files using LZMA, and optionally encrypts files using a combination of OCB3 and ChaCha20. If you wonder how it does this, it&#x27;s by not including a checksum in the ChaCha20 layer, which shouldn&#x27;t be a problem since it&#x27;s intended for chosen-ciphertext invulnerable, un-side-channeled personal computers. Anyway, you can see how it encrypts here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;DesWurstes&#x2F;BlockUpload&#x2F;blob&#x2F;7d0e247b7f5e01d1d84932a780156a590ec7f844&#x2F;exports.c#L67<p>(This tool is intended for legal use only)<p>I&#x27;d like to hear your comments on this, HN community. You can also look at r&#x2F;btc&#x27;s reaction here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;btc&#x2F;comments&#x2F;bah8zw&#x2F;store_files_up_to_1_mb_in_bch_blockchain_onchain&#x2F;<p>This tool is useful for: - Static CDN - Personal immutable file storage ====== yyyyip cool project, expected response from BCH crew. permissionless is permissionless. they need to suck it up. ------ ddtaylor Neat idea. Keep working on it.

Tesla Is Facing a Crucible - allenleein https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-16/tesla-is-facing-a-crucible ====== neonate Here's this article in a format that makes no noise: [http://archive.is/wCQls](http://archive.is/wCQls) The WSJ article it refers to is called "Tesla’s Make-Or-Break Moment Is Fast Approaching": [http://archive.is/ucf9q](http://archive.is/ucf9q) The CNBC article it refers to is called "Tesla employees say automaker is churning out a high volume of flawed parts requiring costly rework": [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/14/tesla-manufacturing-high- vol...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/14/tesla-manufacturing-high-volume-of- flawed-parts-employees.html) ~~~ dang Since the CNBC article is by far the most factual, and doesn't seem to have been discussed yet on HN, I'm going to try burying this submission and rolling back the clock on the first post of that one: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16587249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16587249). The Bloomberg article isn't bad, but it's so generic that the discussion is generic as well (Tesla in general, short selling in general). That's the main trouble with articles that don't contain enough factual fiber. ------ TaylorAlexander My bullish position on Tesla goes like this: They had the same production problems on the roadster, the Model S, and the Model X. Each time, the new vehicle was a “make or break” for the company. Each time, there were reports of how these production problems would sink the company. The company never sank. Tesla is now apparently “good” at making the Model S and Model X. I always assumed they would have similar nightmarish production problems with the Model 3, so all of these reports are sort of expected for me. But I also know that Teslas are extremely popular in Silicon Valley, where I live. That to me indicates that those with the means really like the cars. So it stands to reason that once they are good at making an affordable car, they’ll sell like hot cakes. Musk mentioned recently that two things really stress him out: Artifical Intelligence and what to do about the risks is poses for humanity, and the Model 3 launch. I still have a lot of faith that Elon can make it happen. And personally I really want Tesla to succeed. I think a lot of other people do too. ~~~ slg I do wonder if Tesla's biggest problem around the Model 3 launch was starting by establishing very aggressive production targets. According to Bloomberg's Model 3 Tracker linked in that article, the Model 3 already is the top selling electric car in the country. It outsold the Chevy Bolt by over 2x in January and February. That should be a huge accomplishment, but it is viewed as a failure because it is a small fraction of what Tesla initially predicted. ~~~ nopriorarrests Those production targets were established for a reason. Tesla is burning unbelievable amounts of cash [0], and they need to convince investors and bond holders that they will break this trend soon. Showing very agressive production targets for M3 is the only way to do it. [0] [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/02/tesla-loses- another-675...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/02/tesla-loses- another-675-million-in-q4-its-biggest-quarterly-loss-yet/) "Tesla loses another $675 million in Q4, its biggest quarterly loss yet" ~~~ slg Tesla's bond offerings are routinely oversubscribed. The market is clearly willing to continue to give them more and more money. I therefore find the idea dubious that Tesla needed to be super aggressive with their production targets or else they would run out of cash. ~~~ nopriorarrests If I recall correctly, their last offering was more or less positioned like "according to our production estimates, this is, probably, last time we ask capital markets for cash infusion", and it was at the height of excitement about the Model 3. As of now, however, these bonds (1.8bln, issued last August) are trading underwater [0]. They will probably tap the market once again this year, and we will see what happen. [0] [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/teslas-junk-bonds-are- trad...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/teslas-junk-bonds-are-trading- under-water-and-it-could-spell-trouble-for-elon-musk-2017-11-10) ~~~ slg Those were junk bonds in August. Tesla is still having success with other types of bonds. Here is a more recent offering from January with lease backed bonds [1]. Tesla sold $546m worth but had orders for roughly $7b. [1] - [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-31/when- it-c...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-31/when-it-comes-to- tesla-car-bonds-buyers-simply-can-t-get-enough) ~~~ Nokinside Lease backed bonds don't scale. He can't tap to lease again and again. Tesla is burning $4.2 billion per year now. ~~~ nopriorarrests >Tesla is burning $4.2 billion per year now. Where is this number is coming from? Their 2017 loss was around 2 billions, half of what you say. ~~~ Nokinside It comes from Barclay's analysis (they are very bearish). Model 3 is not small volume luxury car as previous models. They are investing wast sums for large scale production. Burning trough vast amounts of cash is OK only as long as the production volume ramp up really happens in limited time frame and quality and recall numbers are similar to Audi 4A. Tesla must ramp up the production volume within a year or Tesla is financially in the ropes. If Tesla pays back debt $1000 for every car it sells. It must sell 4 million cars to pay this year's projected cash burn. Tesla made a bet that it can become large car manufacturer with Model 3, there will be no second changes. ------ gfodor I have a model 3 and it basically feels like the iPhone of cars. Financial issues could take them down, but you'd have to be a fool to bet against them. Comparing the model 3 to other electric vehicles reminds me of when people were comparing the iPod to other MP3 players based upon tech specs. At this stage, the electric nature of the car just bolsters the design and UX of it. Comparing it to other EVs because they happen to share the same type of motors is stupid. They should be comparing the Model 3 to high end luxury combustion vehicles because from my vantage point you're getting that kind of driving experience, better even, for half the price. The only place where the electric nature of the car creeps into your life in a negative way is when you consider long trips. And even then, the impact is minimal because of the supercharger network. (You are going to stop regularly on long trips for breaks anyhow, so just charge the car.) Beyond that, the only way the electric nature of the car impacts your life is beneficial -- no more trips to gas stations and less cost of ownership. At some point you stop even making the comparison because it's just a plain better ownership experience so you don't think about it anymore. ~~~ BoorishBears Out of curiosity, what’s a car you had before the Model 3 that you’d compare as the “MP3 player”, and is it a recent car? I ask because the Model S can’t compare with the S Class or 7 series on comfort and luxury, yet you’re saying the model 3 should be compared ~~~ gfodor I've never owned but have been in a relatively recent S class. It's personal but the 3 is basically a pretty pure distilled car. If you hate buttons and like symmetry and simplicity they basically took the car to what feels like the logical extreme. Reminiscent of Apple it's a design that shows they agonized over every button and additional degree of freedom for the user. There is no dashboard, no key, the whole car is controlled through the center console. The only buttons are entirely flush with the surfaces they are on. They don't even have door release handles on the inside the door pops open when you grab and depress the button flush on the handlebar to exit. Rip the steering wheel out and there is no longer a clear driver's seat just two symmetric front passengers. I find the design refreshing enough and the torque of the engine responsive enough (with no transmission pullback) to say it outweighs other potential creature comforts on a feature level. My last car was a BRZ and I don't miss it too much :) ~~~ BoorishBears ... going from a BRZ to a Model 3 would give someone a little bit of bias. All the things you described are very subjective. It's not "pure" it's barebones. It's not "distilled" it's optimized for cost savings in a way that would insult the average luxury car driver. A mid-range luxury car these days often comes with a DCT or a very advanced non-DCT transmission that's capable of mind blowingly quick shifts and creamy smooth power delivery. This is all coming from a guy who had a first month reservation for a Model 3 and went for a Volt instead after some hard thinking and a few... Tesla antics... I disagreed with, so it's not like I'm one of the people who thinks EVs "can't be enthusiast cars" like some people. I feel like people are overstating what a change in drivetrains will do to car manufacturers. It's true this drivetrain adds requirements for space for batteries and infrastructure for charging, but car making will still be car making (ironically, as Tesla has shown with it's production issues). My money is on Tesla becoming the next Porsche as far as volume and market. That's not a bad place to be, but it's not where the market has priced them at. ~~~ gfodor Yeah that's why I said it's personal. I feel the design of the car is extremely forward looking and was primarily driven by good taste not cost constraints. I hate to keep making the comparisons but it reminds me of Apple ripping out all but essential components -- easy to see through the lens of costs in the short term but in the long term provides freedom to take the design further in the next iteration. The 3 represents a foundational design that transitions elegantly to autonomous control (imho) and will provide the vantage point Tesla needs to design their first from-the-ground up autocar. ~~~ BoorishBears The problem for me is it feels like the market (and Tesla to an extent) has jumped the gun. Tesla hasn't demonstrated enough self-driving progress (and imo, no one has yet) to justify the car's design to me, nor being a company with a 54 billion dollar market cap. It's one thing if FSD was just on the horizon, but there are an incredible number of very hard problems to solve before we get there. Yet Tesla is designing a car that requires FSD for justification of it's interior and charging for FSD as a feature. ------ sunstone In the run up to model 3 production Musk mentioned that "the production line is the product" because it was needed to be highly automated to make a great car at a low price. Clearly getting the production line wrinkles ironed out has been a much bigger challenge than Musk expected but that is typical of almost every thing that Musk as done: Envision a way to make things an order of magnitude better. Work like a bugger (while blowing through a dozen deadlines) to make that happen. Eventually, come out the other side smelling like a genius -- because the original vision had merit and was not just a pipe dream. The model 3 fits this mold. In terms of finance and cash flow, unlike previous near death experiences with Tesla and SpaceX, now Musk could quite easily sell of a chunk of equity in SpaceX to finance what's yet to be done in debugging the production line if the markets won't oblige. But likely the bigger problem right now is time rather than money before things come right. Most of the upfront production line expenses will have already been spent, now it's a learning curve to make it tick along as expected. ------ crowbahr And how many times has this happened before? Musk plays the edge of these things. If it wasn't way too ambitious it doesn't seem like he'd do it. ------ Zigurd Tesla is facing a test. There are some bad signs that point to deferring profitability longer than expected, such as high defect and rework rates. On the one hand, despite the challenges, Tesla has built more Series 3s than Chevrolet has built Bolts. On the other hand that's about 15% as many per week as Tesla thought they could do. The reason this isn't a fatal disaster is that nobody else is yet willing to try to beat that. There is no real replacement for a Model 3 available. Building hundreds of thousands of cars per year is not something that industry newcomers have managed to do for a very long time, nevermind electric aluminum cars. This is a different challenge than competing against high-end BMWs and Mercedes that also have relatively small production runs. The advantage Tesla has is that they started the learning process early. The competition is still a couple years from profitably selling a direct alternative. But every month Tesla is late is a month of sales runway and revenue gone. ------ xattt Worse comes to worst, Tesla is bought out by whatever car company that has the biggest gap in autonomous and electric tech. ~~~ resource0x At what price? According to google, market cap of Ford: 44.30B, GM: 53.14B, Tesla: 54.28B. ~~~ goshx The "worst comes to worst" scenario will not likely be priced at 54.28B ------ brian-armstrong Let's say Tesla does go bankrupt. What would happen next? Would GM acquire it? Could they fix the production issues? Also, would that endanger Musk's other projects? I seem to remember he's pretty leveraged in Tesla, but I assume financially each company is separate? ------ vondur I’m guessing if it came down to it, Tesla would be sold of for their battery tech and battery manufacturing capabilities. ------ mcbits Warning: This page will automatically blast audio without asking, potentially ruining whatever you were recording, damaging your ears, waking the baby, annoying the boss, etc. ~~~ tom_mellior I'm with you on this, autoplay is evil. But I'm curious about the "ruining whatever you were recording" part. Why are you clicking random Internet links if you're in the middle of "recording" something (presumably, audio or video)? ~~~ Groxx Looking up stuff as needed is relatively common for the more free-form podcasts I've listened to in the past. There are also quite a few vlogs out there, a Tesla segment showing site content wouldn't be too surprising. I assume there are other formats where this comes up too. Podcast-like stuff seems pretty natural tho. ------ antonkm I find the concept of short selling a bit confusing, even though I've Googled. Can someone explain this in an easy to understand way? ~~~ ams6110 I understand short selling, but the guy in this story says he's been shorting Tesla for years. In that time, the stock as done nothing but go up, AFAIK. How can he afford to still be shorting? As I understand it, a short position is not something you can hold indefinitely... there's a point in time where you need to provide the shares. ~~~ philipwhiuk You just buy a new short position. Also you can have a short position lasting a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month. ~~~ philipwhiuk (typically a broker will insist you have sufficient collateral period to indicate you can fulfil the short position). ------ userbinator I read the entire article and didn't see anything about crucibles. ~~~ traek crucible noun cru·ci·ble \ ˈkrü-sə-bəl \ 2: A severe test ------ Someone1234 That's a pretty terrible article title, the mods should consider changing it from "Tesla Is Facing a Crucible" to e.g. “Tesla’s Make-Or-Break Moment.” which was the much better title of the article this article is based around. I cannot tell if it was titled this to add an air of mystery or trying to be too clever for its own good, but it is pretty shoddy either way. ~~~ freehunter Crucible isn't a super common word, but it's not a super uncommon word either. It means "a severe test where many things combine to influence the end result". It is an entirely correct word to choose for this situation. ------ username223 The Model 3 seems like it was premature. It gets mediocre reviews ( [https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-3](https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-3) ), they have 180,000 orders, and they're fulfilling them at about 3200 a month, i.e. 4.6 years to satisfy the current backlog. For scale, Toyota sold about 32,000 Camrys a month last year just in the US. Heck, BMW sold about 34,000 3-series a month. Tesla should have stuck to high-end markets. It looks like their foray into mass production will end badly. ~~~ ams6110 And that's where some people were predicting Tesla would stumble. There are dozens of boutique high-end car manufacturers. Ferrari, etc. Price is not really too important for buyers of those cars -- in fact it can be part of the attraction (a Veblen good). Making "mainstream" cars targeted at middle-class buyers is an _entirely_ different thing. Sales price is a huge factor, and at that volume saving a dollar or two on any given component is something you spend time trying to do. Optimizing the manufacturing process is also critical. Chevy and Ford and Toyota know how to do all that. Tesla doesn't, yet. ------ fictionfuture Tesla is another "solution looking for a problem" type of company. They make nice cars but the electric engine concept has yet to provide a real benefit over combustion. (They say less solution but that's not really true is it?) Another concept looking for a problem is crypto; as the only problems crypto really solves are the ones faced when doing illegal transactions or hiding money. ~~~ matthewmacleod _They make nice cars but the electric engine concept has yet to provide a real benefit over combustion._ That comment has absolutely no merit whatsoever.

There's No Protection In High Ports - CrazedGeek http://bsdly.blogspot.ca/2013/02/theres-no-protection-in-high-ports.html ====== mistercow >obscuring your login service via non-standard ports or even a requirement to try several ports in sequence really only buys you security equivalent to lengthening your password by two characters per port. Not even that. It's like a _separate_ two-byte password because you get to guess and confirm the port separately from the password. Lengthening your password by N bits _multiplies_ the number of necessary guesses by 2^N. Having a _separate_ N bit password _adds_ 2^N to the number of of necessary guesses. So if your real password's effective key length is more than 16 bits, using a random port effectively adds less than 1 bit of entropy. Also, rate-limiting port scans is way harder to do than rate-limiting authentication. ~~~ cpressey It occurred to me that if you want to multiply the number of necessary guesses by running sshd on an alternate port, you'd need to run multiple sshds. (Of course all but one of these sshds should be decoys.) Doubling the number of sshds is then like adding one bit to the password. ~~~ cynwoody The likely result of that would be that a smart hacker would cross you off his IP list upon discovering you are running a bunch of sshds. After all, if you are devious enough to do that, it's unlikely your real sshd will fall to his script in any case. You are a waste of bandwidth better spent chasing low- hanging fruit. ------ darklajid While I'm not sure if you can argue 'no protection' while at the same time admitting that the number of attacks was greatly reduced for a while: I always hated that advice with a passion. No, do not run SSH on a non-default port. It's nothing but an obscurity hack, does little good and breaks a lot of workflows (routers that prioritize port 22 as interactive traffic, firewalls that explicitly allow ssh - on port 22 of course, tools that are awkward to use as soon as you need to use a different port than the _standard_ one). I admit that I mocked people recommending that practice in the past. That's childish of course, but if the data of this submission is correct I can now add a more serious 'Please do not do that' argument to my list. ~~~ guiambros There's a strong reason for advocates (like myself) for running ssh on non- standard ports: it reduces 99% of automated attacks and bots. Yes, you could use fail2ban and ban half the internet, but that just clogs your filtering rules and makes your system waste memory and cycles. Case in point: one of my servers with ssh on port 22 had +9,000 denied IPs over less than one year. On a non-std port, ~100. There's almost no drawback to using a non-standard port. Everything that uses ssh allow port customization (and I wouldn't trust something that doesn't). _> routers that prioritize port 22 as interactive traffic_ Internet routers don't typically do any QoS (except to _reduce_ the priority - bittorrent/etc), let alone prioritize 22. And within your own network, you have control over QoS anyway. Also, I disagree with the OP: _>...those who have moved their main login service to a non-standard port pay less attention to their logs than the rest of us_ I believe it's exactly the opposite. When you're used to carefully inspect your logs on an ongoing basis, you don't want to see it polluted by automated attacks. Now when you use a non-std port and discover people doing port scans, you'd better pay attention... ~~~ darklajid Thanks for the elaborate answer. My take: If the fail2ban solution bans 9000 IPs - why would you care? If password authentication is disabled (is it?), who cares? What's _gained_ here, except for a potentially smaller log file? Everything that uses ssh allow port customization (and I wouldn't trust something that doesn't). Sure. I agree. The problem starts, if you mix a lot of clients. Say, I'm using two different OS' (Windows, Linux). For Windows that means putty for me (one interface) or WinSCP (two interfaces to manage). On Linux I'm using ssh (ssh foo@host:port) or scp (scp -P port ..). I certainly CAN manage .ssh/config files and reduce that mental overhead a bit. But my argument is that this makes no sense. It - in my world - doesn't buy you security, but might cause mental laps and cache misses that annoy you. So, I still fail to see a reason to do that.. ~~~ guiambros _> What's _gained_ here, except for a potentially smaller log file?_ \- Smaller and easier to parse log files \- Less time wasted parsing log files (or creating scripts to filter out automated attacks) \- Less RAM & CPU cycles (particularly important when running low memory VMs) _I still fail to see a reason to NOT do that._ It won't increase your overall security, but it doesn't _reduce_ it either, so why not do it? Just to save you from adding 'alias ssh=ssh -P xx' to your .profile? ~~~ viraptor You can redirect ssh failure messages to a specific log file, separate from all others, so that shouldn't be an issue. Also you don't need to alias - .ssh/config should work more transparently here. ~~~ guiambros > You can redirect ssh failure messages to a specific log > file, separate from all others That's exactly the point. Now you redirect ssh failure messages to a specific log file (with all the garbage and automated attacks), and you'll very soon start to ignore it. And then your overall security is reduced, simply because you aren't paying attention. Or, you can spend time combing through hundreds of invalid messages, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Either in one or multiple separate files, it doesn't really matter. Anyway, not trying to convince anybody here. I respect the opinion that some may prefer to leave everything as the default. For me, I just vehemently disagree with OP's point that using a non-std port doesn't have concrete benefits and/or reduce the security. To me it's exactly the opposite. At least if you know what (and why) you're doing. ------ charonn0 Port 22 should only be used if the SSHd needs to be accessible to strangers; I think a lot of people use alternate ports. Go a step farther by running Kippo[1] (or other SSH honeypot) on port 22 to accept SSH traffic and waste attackers' time. Not only do attackers forgo scanning for the true SSH port, but they believe they've successfully intruded into the system and leave keystroke-by-keystroke logs of their actions in the decoy shell. [1]: <https://code.google.com/p/kippo/> ~~~ martinced Very interesting. A cool variant would be to, by default, offer the decoy shell on port 22 but _also_ run the real SSH on port 22... But only activating it temporarily for the IP that just did succesfully port-knock. This should be trivial using some local redirection rules (so you'd run, say, SSH on port 19381 but use a transparent redirect to port 22 when an IP succesfully port- knocks in). ------ AnthonyMouse >As I've argued elsewhere, obscuring your login service via non-standard ports or even a requirement to try several ports in sequence really only buys you security equivalent to lengthening your password by two characters per port. After all, TCP and UDP port numbers are limited to 65536 distinct values, within the scope of a 16-bit value. Moving your service to a non-standard port means that the would-be intruder has to guess a two-byte value. Introducing a sequence of ports buys you the added obscurity of two bytes per port. It needs to be pointed out that it is actually worse than that. Guessing a password is O(2^n) on the length of the password. Making the attacker guess a random m bit value before starting to guess passwords is O(2^m + 2^n). To put numbers behind this, a password with 32 bits of entropy has ~4 billion possible combinations, 16 bits of random port + 32 bits of password has 65536 + ~4 billion possible combinations (also known as ~4 billion), while a 34 bit password would have ~16 billion possible combinations. ~~~ casca It's true that just changing the port doesn't add much to protect against brute-force attacks, but it's not the full story. Many automatic scanners try port 22 and then give up for that host. I've found that changing the port means that I'm hit but far fewer scans. One could also use port knocking. Using just a single port it would add the 16 bits of randomness making it 32 bits of extra randomness which is significant. Another advantage of using a different port is that it's often quite easy to detect port scans against a host so an automated tool can easily just block the scanning IP. Slow scans exist but if someone is willing to take that amount of time then there's not much you can do to stop them from eventually finding your service. ------ drudru11 The whole hi/low ports as security was always bogus. From day one. Ask those who implemented it from that era, and they will now agree. If someone had a shell account on a machine, they could have 'root'. If they had root, they can bind low ports (and anything else). The fact that Linux still requires a root user to bind a listener to a <1024 port was just the Linux guys being conservative. They wanted adoption, not someone saying 'Linux is insecure because they let non root bind to low ports'. They now have adoption, and quite a bit of legacy decisions still in there. I used to fume about 15 years ago. These days, I'm much more zen about this. (or trying to be zen). Also, I welcome posts like this. I've come to understand that what was once understood by many, may not be when you add 10 or 5 years. For example, the recent HN post from dadgum.com about C's most powerful operator being 'switch'. This is well known. However, maybe there are 17 or 15 year olds who lurk HN. In order for them to learn, they should be exposed to that knowledge. So, while we are trying to help one another, here is some advice. One _really good_ way to run sshd securely is to use a different operating system other than Linux. This isn't because Linux is bad, it is just that certain decisions were made that will not change. People might extrapolate what I just said too far. Let me illustrate this as a conversation for entertainment. world says: 'drudru just said don't run linux anywhere' drudru says: 'Nope. What I'm saying is if you need high security, yet open to the world, sshd install, don't run it on Linux. Run it on an OS and config designed for security. You can still use Linux and other OSs for other things.' world says: 'Ok, if I do that, how do I ssh to my Linux hosts?' drudru says: 'Since your sshd host is running not on Linux and it is secure, you can use it to login to your other hosts. You should run it on a static IP address. Then you will only allow ssh in to all your other hosts from that known secure IP and host key. You can have multiple jump machine/static IPs, say 2 on different networks for redundancy.' world says: 'I've heard OpenBSD was secure. I don't want to learn OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc.' drudru says: 'You should just run on Heroku or something equivalent. It will allow you to outsource the entire problem.' world says: 'I cannot run my Hadoop,Cassandra, etc. on XYZ cloud platform.' drudru says: 'I am pretty sure you can. There are a lot of new solutions out there if you get a moment to search.' ALTERNATE ENDING world asks: 'Can I run sshd on Windows securely?' drudru says: 'You should just run on Heroku or something equivalent. It will allow you to outsource the entire problem.' RING RING drudru says: 'hey, good luck with that. gotta go.' ------ bpatrianakos As we all know security through obscurity only buys you time like the article points out. Please correct me if I'm wrong but a pretty simple solution exists here. I run SSH over port 22 and do the following which I think is a pretty reasonable and safe solution (again, please correct me if I'm wrong): 1\. Configure a decent firewall, edit iptables and disable anything you aren't or don't plan to use. 2\. Disable root login completely. 3\. Install fail2ban just in case and set it to block IPs of failed attempts for 2 to 24 hours 4\. Use key based authentication and disable SSH logins using passwords altogether. I'd recommend going a step further on number 4 and put a strong password on your key. A lot of people believe that key based authentication in and of itself is enough but if you somehow leak your keys and there's no password on them then an attacker has just easily gained access to your machine. Now I'm guilty of not using a password with my keys because like a lot of people it feels like it defeats the purpose but you can actually set things up so that you only need to enter your password once and it won't ask you for it again for a while just like the sudo "grace period" which lets you sudo without a password after you've entered it once. I do plan to give my keys a password and stop being so lazy in the very near future. I know the Linode library as well as a few posts that have made it to the front page here explain how to do this. Here are the links: <http://feross.org/how-to-setup-your-linode/> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4618808> (Discussion of the above which has some more helpful hints) <http://library.linode.com/securing-your-server> ~~~ martinced _"As we all know security through obscurity only buys you time..."_ No. Your definition of "security through obscurity" is totally wrong, so your sentence makes zero sense. If I say: _"This server uses port-knocking, you must on three ports between 1..65535 in the correct order before you can attempt to login using SSH on an unknown port"_ There is absolutely _zero_ security through obscurity here. Just as there's zero security through obscurity when someone says: _"I've got a server with SSH on port 22 open, you need a login/password to get in"_. Attackers do not know the login/password but that is still certainly not "security through obscurity". Just as attackers do not know which three-ports knocking sequence they should use to log in. All they know is that they'll first need to try to find the correct port-knocking sequence amongst the 65536 exp 3 possibilities before being able to try to find the SSH port and then try to force the login/password. Just as using a random SSH port is certainly not "security through obscurity". Security through obscurity is when there's a design or an implementation detail that is obscured. Like when a snake-oil vendors creates a "one-password to store them all" website and doesn't say how it's doing the storing / encryption / authentication / etc. _That_ is security through obscurity. Saying: _"You need to know the secret root password to login"_ or _"You need to know the secret port-knocking sequence before the SSH port shall allow"_ is not, has never been and shall never be _"security through obscurity"_. ~~~ lmm Bruteforcing 65536^3 sequences is trivial compared to bruteforcing an actual ssh login; what protection you get comes from the fact that the attacker doesn't know there's port-knocking at all. So it really is just obscurity. ------ dchest Related: Protecting sshd using spiped [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-08-30-protecting- sshd-u...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-08-30-protecting-sshd-using- spiped.html) ~~~ stock_toaster The only downside to this is that you send more data with spiped. """ Can significantly increase bandwidth usage for interactive sessions: It sends data in packets of 1024 bytes, and pads smaller messages up to this length, so a 1 byte write could be expanded to 1024 bytes if it cannot be coalesced with adjacent bytes. """ -- https://code.google.com/p/spiped/source/browse/trunk/README More secure, but more overhead. That said, I love spiped. I use it to secure a few mysql replication streams and a couple other things. Works great. I wonder if there is anything like spiped that provides something similar to openvpn's tls-auth (HMAC auth) functionality, for protocols that already provide encryption. ------ Udo It would also be nice if SSHd had an option to block an IP address after a certain number of failed attempts. Sure, you can hack something together with iptables but that's just horrible. ~~~ sirclueless That's why I use fail2ban, pretty much everywhere. ~~~ barrkel Fail2ban is massively heavyweight on a cheap virtual server however, easily consuming half your memory if you aren't careful, and still obscene amounts of RAM for the functionality, with tight ulimits. ~~~ ars Turn on a swap file and force it out. On one server it's (supposedly) using 192m - but only 5m is resident, the rest is swapped out or unused. On other 52m virt, but only 4m resident. ~~~ barrkel Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I find even 4MB complete overkill for the required functionality. All the damn thing needs to do is keep a couple of running counters on a short buffer of IPs and run iptables when limits are met, and a periodic parse of a log file. This feels like something where 64k ought to be enough for anyone, much less 640k! Sure, we can get by with a fifth of a gigabyte of swap space for this task. Ugh. I've spent too much of my life in debugger CPU views. Jack's quivering tower of abstractions writhes in repulsion. ~~~ ars It's written in python, which takes about about 2m-5m just to get out of bed with nothing loaded or running. (I don't consider that a lot BTW, not a ding on python.) There's about 200K of source code, but basically all the overhead is the python runtime. (The memory usage of python doing nothing varied on different machines, but was always virtually identical to the usage of fail2ban.) Also, the virt usage is mostly large memory mapped logfiles, not actual swap usage. ------ jfb Another thing that occasionally cheeses me off is the restriction on canonical ports < 1000 to user 0. Yes, I know it's standardized. Yes, I know that when it was codified the world looked very, very different. It's still annoying and requires cargo-cultish hoop-jumping (albeit well understood hoop jumping) to run a decently secure service. ------ rellik I like some mix of the following: \- disable passworded logins (only keys) \- ssh bastion host \- decoy ssh honeypot on port 22 (<http://www.plainlystated.com/2013/02/ssh- honeypots-dataviz/>) ------ pwg This is useful to protect sshd from random scans, but to still allow you access from anywhere when you need that access: <http://www.pkts.ca/ssh-faker.shtml> ~~~ julian37 Do yourself a favor and use public key authentication rather than passwords. It's both more secure and (together with ssh-agent) more convenient. Unless you're logging in from other people's machines a lot that is (where you would need to access your private key from a USB stick) but that's obviously not a good idea anyway. ~~~ pwg Already do. But further protecting sshd is beneficial even when using public key auth to login. ------ eps Ok, fine. Now give me _one_ reason why I should actually run sshd on port 22. ------ tquai SSH is rarely a public service. What's the motivation for making it so public? ~~~ lmm The whole point of ssh is to be able to log into one's machine from elsewhere on the wide internet. I find it's precisely when I'm somewhere public (i.e. coffee shop or public transport wifi) that I want access to my home machine - on my work machine (i.e. in the office) anything I need is already there. If you don't need it to be publicly accessible, why would you be running sshd at all? ~~~ tquai Before I can respond to that, I think there's a misunderstanding about what "public service" means. HTTP is a public service: you open it up to the world, and want anyone to be able to connect to it. It is intended and hoped that as many people use it as possible. If your website is slashdotted, then that's GREAT! In contrast, I don't want 100000 people to try logging in over SSH to my private server. To put it another way, SSH is only a public service in the cases of: * CVS over SSH * rsync over SSH * Commercial SSH tunnels Logging into my authoritative nameserver over SSH, however, is not a public service. And since it's not a public service -- that is, intended for the public -- I don't treat it like one. ~~~ lmm If you're trying to tell the rest of us something you're going to have to be more concrete. So you "don't treat it like a public service". Great. What does that actually mean? ("I don't make it accessible on a public port from the public internet" was the most obvious technical interpretation, but it sounds like you didn't mean that)

The thing I remember most about the Apple ][ was the sound of the disk drive - colinprince http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/08/22/c600g ====== joezydeco Aha! He forgot 6^P as the original way to boot the disk. Newbie. The funny thing about the Apple ][ disk was that homing sequence itself. It was aligning the head to track 0 by SLAMMING it against a metal backstop. Primitive, but took very few opcodes to make it happen, especially since the apple disk format had no encoding in the tracks to tell the head where it was. One of my first forays into 6502 assembly was copying that home routine off the card and changing the delay between pulses to the servo. You could actually make music with that metal backstop if you made the delay small enough. ------ zandorg I once found out on a BBC Master (which we borrowed from school) you can control the relay that controls the tape interface. A relay clicks on or off. So we had a BASIC program which clicked it at random, and it made a lovely clattering noise. Can't emulate that! ------ nitrogen This needs to have a recording of the Apple II disk drive at the beginning of the video. ~~~ neilk <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQoA9Ul-YS0> You might think the scraping sound the floppy drive makes is due to it being in an attic for 15 years. No. They always sounded like that. The program that runs (from the bootable floppy in the drive) is an introduction to Apple computers. Note how the whole thing is designed to relax the user by showing the Apple's similarity to a typewriter. ~~~ aw3c2 Actually that video makes it sound worse. The "real" sound has a lot more dynamics and details in it. I love it, it was my first computer. ------ alanthonyc The beep comes first though! "Beep" + whrrrr + chackachacka... I'm driving up to my parents' place in a few weeks so I can pick up my old Apple //e from their garage. ------ malkia When my drive got busted, I went to the monitor (CALL -151 was it?) and typed in assembly something that me and a buddy of mine come - basically changing the speed of the disk, based on the key you pressed - something like a piano. But the sound was important. Normal DOS directory track was number 11, so it sounded one way, while the cool stuff sounded differently - games, apps, etc. It was awesome time, back then, before teh internet... ------ zcat Taipan. Yes, that was the game that started me on Apple ][. I started programming after discovering Beagle Bros. Oh the pokes and the peeks. ------ teeja The thing I remember most about Apple ][ is the friendly manual and the shiny,shiny hardware. Wide open, waiting for you to do your mods with a smile... the Woz way.

John Gruber’s hypocritical and off-base Google attack - apress http://theorangeview.net/2011/03/john-grubers-hypocritical-and-off-base-google-attack/ ====== DeusExMachina John Gruber is an Apple pundit and fan? Yes, we know. His attack is hypocritical? Maybe. Off base? I don't think so. Yes, as the article says, Android is still far more open and customizable than iOS (and it's not that hard, actually). Still there is another definition of open that matters to some people, and that definition applies less and less to Android, giving to all this a taste of bait and switch. I know a lot of Android developers that believe in open software not on merely his advantage from a market point of view, but also from a philosophical one. These developers are all disappointed. I am an iOS developer, I like Apple products, I agree with some of the arguments for a more closed system even if I disagree on a lot of Apple's decisions. I look at Android as a good competitor to iOS that keeps raising the bar and as a possible future market for what I do. I thought from the beginning that Android as a platform would have benefitted from a little more closed approach. Still, I'm disappointed too, looking at Google's behavior. It angers me a little, even if I'm not an Android fan. Because I think about all those Android developers that now feel somewhat betrayed. This has a bitter taste not because Android is becoming more closed, but because this was not done from the beginning, luring people to the platform with different promises. Am I an hypocrite too? ~~~ refulgentis How is he hypocritical? The problem here is Google employees have consistently and constantly pushed that Android is open and thus inherently more pure than iOS (see Vic's behavior last Google IO, Andy Rubin's infamous 'definition of open' tweet). Apple has _never_ claimed to be open or anything, Google has, and they're not. ~~~ ZeroGravitas How is he hypocritical? How about claiming he saw the bait-and-switch coming when he's a professional pundit and all he ever said while commenting on it was a) open is bad for consumers and b) Android isn't open. Note that even a) and b) don't even make sense together, so the fact that he's revised history yet again to claim that he always thought they were open, but only so they could later become closed is even more laughable. ~~~ roc He's been pretty consistent in calling out the OEMs and carriers as incompetents who won't produce phones in Google's best interests. And jumping on how useless all their 'added value' has been. Simultaneously he's been suggesting Google needs to make its own devices to really push a compelling Android experience. And he's been saying that for ... christ, about as long as Android has even been publicly around. He's never really said "Google's going to give up on this 'Open Source' thing" that I recall, but he's been terribly consistent in saying things like this: _Android, on the other hand, strikes me as needing a course correction. There’s a separation between the software and hardware, and to date the hardware vendors are letting the platform down. It’s unproven whether this model can even work in the long run (where by "work" I mean "produce a phone and software platform with a state-of-the-art user experience")._ [http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/android_opportunity_addend...](http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/android_opportunity_addenda) ------ tptacek Android is more open than iOS. It is less open than Ubuntu. We just saw a story today about Google playing favorites with access to early releases of operating system code; when you're shipping multi-billion-dollar SKUs based on that code, this isn't a minor detail. The fact is, Android is "open" to end- users, but not completely "open" to vendors. It's frustrating to watch people try to reconcile this, because not only is everyone using different definitions of the word "open", but they change definitions from day to day. Meanwhile: this is second-order punditry. It's a critique of a pundit. And it's a pundit who wears his bias on his sleeve. It's boring. People don't read Gruber for the unvarnished truth about the mobile market. If you want to right whatever wrong you feel is being committed because a gifted writer has overtly taken Apple's side (gasp!), write an excellent blog advocating for the Google ecosystem. But don't waste our time litigating against Gruber. Nobody cares! ~~~ dman I think the word "open" is now just too overloaded. What does open mean ? Does it mean that I can read the source? Does it mean I can read the source in a timely fashion as soon as the product is available? Does it mean that I have the right to modify and execute the source? Does it mean that there are reasonably good chances that if I make a valid and valued change to the code it will be integrated upstream? While Gruber has a biased take on things, there is some truth to the fact that there are definitions of open by which Android is not an open system. ~~~ rbarooah I find it hard to come up with a definition by which Android _is_ an open system. It seems to pretty much boil down to: Some of the time, some people can see some of the source, but some of those people may be restricted in what they can do by licenses'. If that's what passes as 'open' we need a new word. ~~~ recoiledsnake By the same metric, we need new definitions for what Apple is doing. For example, the forced 30% cut of all subscription content. That isn't 'closed' anymore, like we say 'Windows is closed'. Maybe 'Locked down' is more like it? ~~~ Cadsby This isn't about Apple, as has been pointed out repeatedly. There are a lot of criticisms about iOS which are valid, however I don't recall them ever claiming their platform was even remotely open. If "Open" is now a convoluted word, we have Google to thank for that, because that's what happens when you launch an entire marketing campaign around a single term. ~~~ recoiledsnake >..you launch an entire marketing campaign around a single term. They did? Maybe I was the only one who missed it. Links? Android is definitely way more "Open" than iOS, by almost any metric, even with the latest changes. Care to dispute that? And it's not helping that Apple is going to even more closed via forced cut of subscriptions. ~~~ m0nastic You can watch this video for starters: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89xc_1Vv69k> (Google IO 2010 Android Keynote) One selected quote: 1.) "So if you believe in openness, if you believe in choice, if you believe in innovation from everyone†, then welcome to Android." † Everyone, depending on where the innovation is, being Google employees, and select partners who are given access to the Android source before public release. ~~~ recoiledsnake That seems pretty true compared to the alternate platform which results in things like this [http://blog.robrhyne.com/post/659211315/almost-on-the-app- st...](http://blog.robrhyne.com/post/659211315/almost-on-the-app-store) and this [http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9207641/Apple_rejects...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9207641/Apple_rejects_Sony_e_reader_app_Is_Kindle_next_) And it seems like nothing has changed with the latest changes to Android. Care to elaborate? Edit: And how is a IO keynote 'an entire marketing campaign' ? ~~~ cube13 >Edit: And how is a IO keynote 'an entire marketing campaign' ? How is the text on <http://source.android.com/> not? ~~~ recoiledsnake A web page on the internet is an entire marketing campaign? What percentage of Android users even visited that page in their lifetime, forget about being swayed by that statement on it? 0.005%? ------ joeminkie _It is getting tiresome to hear Apple fans, having long bashed Google's Android because "open" was bad, now bash Google for being somewhat less "open."_ From my admittedly Apple-fanboy perspective, I always thought the argument wasn't that open = bad, just that that Google shouldn't use it as a marketing point if they're not 100% open. _And Apple makes just as big a deal about the advantages of iOS being closed as Google does about the openness of Android._ Right, but with Apple closed means closed. No one says that Apple is a "almost closed" and argues they should be totally closed. Google is half-assing their definition of open — which is fine, do what you want — but people are calling BS and rightfully so. The argument should be what is better: 100% closed or less than 100% open? This is where the shades of grey come in. ~~~ isleyaardvark _It is getting tiresome to hear Apple fans, having long bashed Google's Android because "open" was bad, now bash Google for being somewhat less "open."_ _From my admittedly Apple-fanboy perspective, I always thought the argument wasn't that open = bad, just that that Google shouldn't use it as a marketing point if they're not 100% open._ Here's my admittedly Apple-fanboy perspective: Apple took a "closed" approach which helped in quality control. Google took an "open" approach which allowed others to add or modify their OS in ways that did not benefit the consumer, or just plain sucked. This resulted in multiple products that either simply lack polish or just stink to use. Google found this out the hard way and is now trying to tighten their control, and Apple's approach is being entirely vindicated. ~~~ jokermatt999 I agree partly, but not entirely. Some lock down is good, such as preventing the modifications from carriers that usually users don't like (from what I've seen, at least) and delay updates. However, allowing the user choice to apply their own modifications like custom homescreens and skins is a good thing, and has actually improved the default product for me. Some control is good, but I think Apple takes it too far. ------ wtn I think Gruber's point is spot-on. A lot of people prefer Android because they want it to be open and open-source, and Android companies market to the public on this specific point. So I don't think it's off-base to point out discrepancies between the ideology and the reality. Gruber would absolutely like Apple to be more open. However, in this case, it is Google that contradicted itself with words vs deeds. ~~~ nextparadigms That's not really spot-on. Most Android users would rather see Google put a stop to deep skins and doing gross things like the carriers are doing with the Android phones by not letting you uninstall their apps, or charging you for features already built-in, and so on. ~~~ rbarooah Are you saying most Android users don't want it to be open? ~~~ neutronicus A more charitable interpretation is that most developers would like Google to protect the Android _trademark_ a little better, perhaps by tightening up on what modifications of Android are still eligible to be called "Android", so that both users and developers could count on more consistency when hearing the name. ~~~ bergie The way this was set up with MeeGo is that there is a formal compliance process backed up by the trademark (owned by Linux Foundation). If you make a product based on MeeGo you can add whatever you want. As long as it passes compliance, you can call it MeeGo. <http://wiki.meego.com/Quality/Compliance> ------ mellis Openness is indeed a continuum and different degrees of it make sense for different people and different situations. The problems arise when you claim to be more open than you are or become less open than you were. Apple is clear that it offers proprietary platforms; Google claims Android is open but isn't acting accordingly. ~~~ nextparadigms It's not so clear on Apple's side either. They _can_ be even more closed if they want to, and they proved it recently with the subscription tax, which also wasn't in place since the the beginning when those developers made their apps for iOS. ------ roc A fair observer might allow that "Android" is still an Open source project, but only inasmuch as they explicitly identify Honeycomb as currently a closed- source fork of Android. Honeycomb may _become_ open, but to discount the facts of today involves assumptions about future. If our hypothetical fair observer were to disregard the assumed future altogether, things lean more toward Gruber than Google. Google _has_ gone out of their way to disavow pre-Honeycomb releases on tablets, and _is_ withholding Honeycomb to only those tablet-makers who sign their agreements. They're currently doing exactly what Gruber asserts will become SOP and what they're currently doing with Honeycomb simply doesn't fit any fair definition of "Open Source" development. Not even their own. ------ seanx Gruber is an Apple fundamentalist, preaching to the choir. There is only one true way and all facts will be interpreted or ignored in favour of that way. Dissension is not allowed in his church, if you disagree with what he says then do so elsewhere. If you need an analysis of what Apple is doing, or where they are going then he might be good at that (I don't know, I don't care) but you absolutely cannot rely on him for unbalanced coverage on anything else. Arguing about whether google marketing is deceptive is a waste of time. ALL marketing is deceptive. Go watch an Apple keynote for example. Arguing about whether android is "open" is also a waste of time. Open is not a bool, it's a float. If Linux is 100% and Windows is 0% then Android is maybe 60% and ios is somewhere in the single digits. In the past 14 months, I have used WM6.5, ios, Android and Win Phone 7. The only reason I could use Android is that it is open enough that it could be installed on my HD2, a WM6.5 phone. ~~~ bonch You can attack Gruber's position as an Apple advocate if you want, but that doesn't really address his points about Google. The thing I've taken away from this is that Android advocates are now defining openness in terms of degrees. It's no longer about being open; it's about being "more open," a vague idea that only gets to be defined by Google, the gatekeepers of Android. Requiring licensees to agree to "non-fragmentation clauses" that give Google final approval over source changes is against the spirit of open source. ~~~ seanx Personally, I'm not an android, or open source, advocate. I don't use it at the moment and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to someone else. All the phone oses I have have used are flawed to some extent and picking one is a matter of deciding which flaws you can tolerate or not notice. Gruber doesn't care about openness either, he uses an iPhone. His argument is is simply a way to bash android without addressing anything that is substantive to most people. Last month he was trolling that android wasn't open because motorola hadn't provided a froyo update to an older phone, completely ignoring the fact that the comunity had already provided multiple updates. Next month he will be complaining that android isn't open because google hasn't provided the source to something else. To most people, it doesn't matter if android is 65% or 70% open. What matters is how well it meets their needs. If openness helps meet those needs then it's important, if it doesn't then it's irrelevant. Finally, if Gruber was interested in openness, he would allow comments on his blog. Without that, he is just a troll with a pulpit. ------ inffcs00 The problem here is that Google used the word "open" as a feature of Android and marketing term against iOS/Apple. But don't forget that a lot of parts of iOS are open source and several parts of Android are closed (Google branded apps). Does the percentage of opennes matter? Gruber might be biased but that doesn't mean he is wrong or off-base. ------ joebadmo I think the most annoying thing about Gruber is that he mixes fantastic insights with near-propaganda. He's also got a razor-honed voice. Generally I tend to pay close attention to him when he writes about Apple products, eco-system, and culture, and ignore him when he writes about anything else, especially Google or Android. ------ JCB_K "The biggest joke is that the Businessweek article ends with a quote from Nokia CEO and former Microsoftie Stephen Elop saying that Android is no longer open and that's why he chose the more open Windows Phone 7. YIKES! Not good company, Mr. Gruber." All good and well, but this is just guilt by association. Very bad way to end a fairly good article. ------ guywithabike If you want a tl;dr of the article, take the last bit: _Both approaches have their merits and their failings. How about we focus on that instead of which system is open or closed?_ What is he referring to when he says "both approaches"? He's talking about open versus closed. ------ koko775 >Any fair observer would have to conclude that Android is still "open." In my opinion, any fair observer would have to conclude that Android is still about as open as it always was. This isn't necessarily hypocritical; I have never viewed Android as "open". Now, personally, I think that it's more customizable and flexible because it isn't mature enough as a platform to be able to afford to lock down APIs. Not that I think that the end result of an API should be to lock it down, but orthogonality in a SDK can be very beautiful, as it is with Cocoa touch. ~~~ rbarooah Google: "We wanted to make sure that there was no central point of failure, so that no industry player can restrict or control the innovations of any other. That's why we created Android, and made its source code open." The fact that they're now restricting and controlling the innovations of other industry players by keeping the source code closed seems pretty much like the definition of hypocrisy. ~~~ rbanffy You are still free to fork any code that was previously released under a free license. All of the source code they release can be used. ~~~ rbarooah How is that relevant when they are giving the latest source to people they approve? ~~~ rbanffy It's their source. You are free to pick the last released version and improve it yourself. The source they didn't release may not be completely theirs (we can't know this because we don't have it) and before releasing it under an open source license they may be required to clean it up. ~~~ rbarooah If it's not theirs, how can they give it to some of their approved partners? ~~~ rbanffy Android is Google's. They don't have to release anything except the kernel (which is a lot already). They can give it to whoever they think will improve it and make it more popular. The kernel is GPL, but the rest is Apache. Google can keep it to themselves and their preferred partners forever. It's their software and they own it. ~~~ rbarooah Exactly - they own it, and they are free to give it to whoever they like and withhold it from whoever they like. What part of that isn't about controlling other players? ~~~ rbanffy Are you under the impression Google can take 2.3 away from anyone? They own it and they can't. What they are doing is saying they won't release 3.x _for now_ source and not really disclosing the reasons. Anything can be behind that decision, including the inclusion of non-Google code in the specific products. I prefer to think along those lines. ~~~ rbarooah I'm not under that impression. I am under the impression that they have given the 3.x source to some people and not to others, thus choosing who gets to use it. Normally we refer to that as 'control'. They didn't say _Android 2.3_ is open. They said that _Android_ was open and the purpose was so that no one entity could control the innovation of other players, and yet that is exactly what they are doing. You seem to be defending Google on the basis of their freedoms. If you read what I've written, you'll see that I haven't argued they don't have the right to do what they are doing. I haven't even argued that it's bad. I am merely pointing out that they have gone back on what they said. You haven't said anything that refutes this. ~~~ rbanffy > they have gone back on what they said. Point me, please, where did they say Honeycomb will not be opened. As it is now, it probably has some code that went in to meet launch deadlines and that prevents a full release. They may also want to tidy things up before pushing it out because if they push out a defective API (and there are lots of new APIs in HC) they will have a lot of heat when they fix it. ~~~ rbarooah That has absolutely nothing to do with what I've said. I'll leave it to you to read the thread. ~~~ rbanffy You complain Android is not open when a lot of Android is (there are closed source apps - like Gmail and Google Maps - that run on Android) and a small part that's not _yet_ (Honeycomb - Gingerbread) without any definitive announcement on whether it will be exclusive to their initial partners or not (with a strong impression this is temporary). Everyone can download and build most of what goes into an Android phone or tablet. Most important on the software freedom (to programmers, that is) you can fork it, build your devices and sell them without ever asking Google for their blessing (much like they hadn't to ask Linus for his blessing when they used Linux for Android's core). Unfortunately, for users (me included - I own an Android and a Palm Pre) I cannot _demand_ source code from you with the exception of the parts that are GPL'ed and thus I am not effectively independent from the software provider. I don't quite like this - I'd love to be able to build Gingerbread and burn it into my Android handset (I'd prefer to keep the Palm as it is), perhaps, even building the parts above Bionic and grafting it on top of iOS, just for the kicks (unfortunately, Apple doesn't like that and, in order to distribute this to other iOS users I'd have to ask for their blessing, which would never come). You are right. Honeycomb is not free right now. And that's what I don't quite like about Apache-like licenses: the developer can withhold software from me. But I am convinced this is a temporary stance and soon enough not only other manufacturers will have full access but I will too. ------ rbarooah "We wanted to make sure that there was no central point of failure, so that no industry player can restrict or control the innovations of any other. That's why we created Android, and made its source code open." How is Google _not_ restricting or controlling* the innovations of other industry players? <http://source.android.com/> ------ nexneo Honeycomb isn't desert so named well by purpose -- Sweat honey is caged in honeycomb and protected. ------ ryandvm John Gruber has a very specific audience: people that adore Apple products. His narrative is extremely well tuned to please these people and to keep them coming back for more. I can't fault him for his success as a niche blogger, but his material is so predictable and formulaic that I stopped reading long ago. ------ bonch Google exploited the buzz of open source philosophy, so it's fascinating seeing the open source community's reaction to their stricter control over Android. Personally, I always saw the trumpeting of "openness" as an unrealistic marketing ploy. ------ jinushaun Honest question: Why do people listen to and retweet Gruber? Everything I've read from him is pure biased hypocritical garbage.

Bulletproof validation for Sass functions and mixins - Skoks http://sassmeister.com/gist/cad7bc024664d2e4e15d ====== Skoks Download - [https://github.com/SassySuit/sassy- validation](https://github.com/SassySuit/sassy-validation) Documentation - [http://sassysuit.github.io/sassy- validation](http://sassysuit.github.io/sassy-validation) #Sass #SCSS #CSS #Helpers #Utilities

The Dwarven Computer - A programmable computer built in Dwarf Fortress - samd http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-8269 ====== jmillikin This is an example of a mechanical computer. There are other popular computer implementations in Dwarf Fortress, including fluidic (pumping water around) and biological (enclosing creatures in specially-designed mazes). Once the basic logic gates are designed, it's easy (though tedious and time- consuming) to build arbitrarily large computing devices. One famous example is a multifunction calculator, documented at < <http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/User:BaronW> >. ~~~ ejames Building amazingly complex (if tedious and time-consuming) objects in Dwarf Fortress is pretty much what the game is about after you manage to get past the early learning stages. This is the kind of game I would recommend to hackers - it definitely supports the mind set of figuring out the rules in a system, then exploiting them to build something incredible. For example, I remember discovering that if you build your dwarf fortress in certain freezing climates, it was possible to take water from a flowing source underground, then release it aboveground, whereupon it would flash-freeze into solid walls that dwarves could stand on, tunnel through, or build on top of. That immediately led to Operation: Build An Enormous Ice Palace, a plan to create an aboveground megaplex by making dwarves haul unfrozen water bucket by bucket and pour it, like concrete, into a planned mold. (I was exploiting the loophole that water carried in a bucket does not freeze until dropped from the bucket.) It was ridiculous, arbitrary, and destructive of my free time - but most games are anyway... so why not take a game that also challenges your hacking mindset? ------ ghotli I have long assumed that it will eventually be a moral quandary as to whether or not it will be ethical to turn off dwarf fortress. ~~~ prodigal_erik I think the question will be whether it's ethical to _start_ a game that commonly ends in mass starvation, riots inspired by the rotting corpses of one's closest friends, and sometimes even running out of booze. ~~~ mkramlich Some believe that God has already created just such a game. ------ phoboslab Some years ago someone figured out how to build logic gates in Quake 3 maps out of doors and shooters (entities that shoot a projectile when triggered). This was actually used in some single player maps and to create special game modes that aren't present in vanilla Q3. I guess this could, in theory, be used to create a Turing Complete computer. It might hit the entity limit of Quake 3 though. PDF: <http://www.skore.de/images/stories/Q3A/Q3A_Electronics.pdf> ------ sasmith Presumably the next step is to write Dwarf Fortress for this. ~~~ mustpax My first CS course in college was Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. It was quite a thrill when we finally got our hand-written Scheme interpreter to run itself and give us a REPL prompt. Turtles all the way down. ------ kaddar I think the question we are all wondering is whether or not the computational engine here can be used to aid the dwarf decision making and increase automation and profit margins? ------ mkramlich It's interesting that from a design complexity standpoint, what he did was way more difficult than say building Craigslist. Perhaps that leads to his next challenge: upgrade the computing power of his DF contraption enough that he can reimplement Craigslist on top it! ------ shabble I particularly liked kitten logic: <http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/User:Bidok#Animal_Logic> ------ dzuc Semi-related: LittleBigPlanet 8-bit calculator: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiRgYBHoAoU> ------ mhd ...and begins to learn at a geometric rate. ------ RodgerTheGreat I suppose it would be vaguely on-topic to mention the WireWorld computer, a particularly pretty MOV-machine implemented in the WireWorld cellular automaton: <http://www.quinapalus.com/wi-index.html> ------ jared314 This is right up there with the Universal Turing Machine implemented in Conway's GoL (<http://rendell-attic.org/gol/utm/index.htm>). ------ robobenjie Dude, I totally implemented Reddit in a weekend in Dwarf Fortress... ------ mkramlich Now he should port his DF-based computer to run on the iPhone, that way he could use it as a sort of "intermediate layer" with .... _looks at 3.3.1_ ... oh, nevermind.

FDA halts sales of 23andMe DNA test kits - bmahmood http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/25/23andme/3699329/ ====== cjensen Over reach -- 23andMe provides no medical treatment which can be regulated. Rather they simply measure and recite a fact: your genome. That looks like a pretty clear 1st Amendment case to me. Especially if they can back it up by demonstrating that they only advertise things that are facts; for example, study by X links SNP-N to condition Z and we can tell you if you have SNP-N.

Whatever happened to Gallium-Arsenide? - rbanffy https://www.quora.com/Whatever-happened-to-Gallium-Arsenide-Why-did-the-need-for-GaAs-go-away-What-technology-solved-the-problem-it-was-supposed-to-address?share=1 ====== gaspoweredcat Thank you for this, i remember reading about it back when single core chips were hitting absurd temps (if memory serves the headlines were something like "top end p4 produces more heat per mm2 than a thermo nuclear power plant") before they managed to find another way there was much talk of GaAs just for fun id love to see what a GaAs Bitcoin mining ASIC could do but i seriously doubt anyone will be producing one of them

15kb of CSS is all you’ll ever need ️ - mattei https://medium.com/@philipardeljan/15kb-of-css-is-all-youll-ever-need-%EF%B8%8F-634da7258338#.s7ejsmt0l ====== marssaxman Forgive me if this is a stupid question, since I've been avoiding any involvement with web design or web services for the last ten or fifteen years, but - isn't this the same thing we were all doing before CSS came along? Why use a stylesheet at all? ~~~ coffeepixelcode Inline styles don't work for a number of reasons: \- No pseudo class support \- No media query support \- Specificity issues \- You'll never stop writing CSS, bloat becomes a problem. That being said, the approach functional CSS takes is quite similar to inline styles. It takes the main benefit of inline styles (being able to see what styles are applied to an element without having to look at a CSS file and do a lot of context switching) with the benefits of having a stylesheet. Best of both worlds.

Latvian hackathon winner reinvented Pacman into real life game - ragnars http://garage48.org/blogger/projects-in-progress-at-garage48-riga ====== eps Don't know about PacMan, but LoveLock made me think of the following. Make a bracelet that has a pulse sensor and a couple of tiny LEDs, pair it with the iPhone and the further connect it to another iPhone/bracelet combo over the Internet. Use one LED for the owner's pulse, and another - for that of a better half on the other end. PS. Deluxe version could also show a distance between the bracelets. ------ mmahemoff See also <http://pacmanhattan.com/> (a 2004 experiment) and <http://cityrace.me/> (signup page - a Warsaw based startup). ------ solnyshok I think that one of the most interesting projects is <http://groupocracy.org/> this is much better, honest and at the same time, technical take on the process of democratic elections and 4-5 years that follow after elections. Better than what? Better than <https://www.votizen.com> ~~~ Abundnce10 I too thought this was the most interesting idea coming out of @ G48 Riga. Granted it is just an idea still but imagine the implications of something like this -- especially in the wake of all the uproar from the Occupy Wall Street movement. ------ smartman Dont forget <http://gateme.com> that offers full solution to nightclubs and developed QR payments in garage48. ------ tweetdeleter Guys, you were one of the best competitors! We see, there is still lots of work to do to build up great gameficiation and stuff, but thats what we all have to do! Thanks and wish you good luck developing the project! Keep in touch, www.tweetdeleter.com @tweetdeleter ------ spyder Augmented Reality Pacman: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIX6wJ1Wv90> ------ niels Cool. I think the "Scotland Yard" board game as an augmented reality mobile game would be a great idea also. ------ kookiekrak This seems dangerous... People are going to walk into cars/people/poles etc ~~~ knieveltech The world is a dangerous place, and fortunately there's nothing anyone can do about that. Risk averse people don't typically realize that avoiding risk and avoiding life are synonymous. ------ TruthElixirX Maybe I am missing something but lots of these ideas seem pretty poor? ~~~ jkaljundi This is not an ideas contest, more about networking and having fun while learning new stuff. All about execution. After events like these people are always hugely motivated and in high moods. Hard to describe it if you have not participated yourself. Still 2 previous Garage48 hackathon teams have won investments from Seedcamp, the leading startup accelerator in Europe. If even 1-2 teams from each event become real startups, that´s a big win. If not, people meet others and it often happens they start other projects after the event based on new ideas. Everybody wins.

Show HN: Manage remote working IP whitelist in AWS - scanr https://github.com/jamiemccrindle/aws-access ====== scanr Author here. This is a pretty simple script and I suspect there may be smarter ways to do this but it's been useful for me and others, so thought I'd share it. ~~~ taf2 thanks this looks really useful... what are your thoughts on continuations? ~~~ scanr haha, you're the first person to ask! I once wrote a BPM / Workflow engine using serializable continuations and it worked quite well. I've since been surprised that they don't seemed to be taken off.

SFHN Presents: Pirates of Silicon Valley - lowglow Hi HNers,<p>San Francisco Hacker News group is throwing another movie night this Monday January 14th at 10:30p at The Roxie.<p>We'll be showing: Pirates of Silicon Valley -- a great movie about the struggle between Microsoft and Apple.<p>So come out and enjoy a movie and support your local Hacker News meetups!<p>http://valleypirates.eventbrite.com ====== lowglow Clickable: <http://valleypirates.eventbrite.com>

A thought stream on XKCD click and drag - brosner https://thoughtstreams.io/jtauber/xkcd-click-and-drag/ ====== waterlesscloud I want to do a thoughtstream on thoughtstreams. I like the idea. A lot. And yet I don't want to pay for it. Which is a reaction worth exploring a bit more. ~~~ jere Maybe I can interest you in my new startup: Paragraphs.io It bridges the gap between single sentences and never ending wall-o-texts. With a single keyboard shortcut (tap 'return' twice), your content is partitioned into easily digestible _Paragraphs_ ™ All this and no more for only $50/year. ~~~ melvinmt > Maybe I can interest you in my new startup: Paragraphs.io Do you mean paragraph.io? And how is your startup supposed to solve his unwillingness to pay? ~~~ jere >And how is your startup supposed to solve his unwillingness to pay? It's not. It was just throw away snark meant to demonstrate my complete lack of understanding of the problem thoughtstreams is trying to solve. ------ vineet Thoughtstream is cool. But it needs atleast a 30-day evaluation for me to get a sense of how easy it would me to use. But perhaps even take the idea further. How about the ability to create up to 30 thought streams for free. Anyone who has created that much will see its value and will want to pay? ~~~ TillE Freemium is almost always a losing model for small businesses. A trial would be nice, though. ~~~ vineet I don't know. There are many people who just expect freemium to solve all their problems. Freemium needs to be carefully applied, and needs to make sure to be aligned with evaluation needs of potential paying users. Most times startups do not work on the details to make it happen. 30-day evaluations are really helpful when an urgency exists to use a product - in my experience for lots of business sales. But now-days I often get distracted with some project and am not really able to evaluate the product the first time around. I look at freemium as an evaluation license for as long as you are not doing anything serious with the product. Ofcourse, you need to define the terms of the freemium part. Companies like Heroku do a great job with it. ~~~ jtauber Heroku was able to do it because it had a lot of funding in the beginning (and is now part of a public company). Very hard to _bootstrap_ freemium, especially if there are per-user costs like with hosting. (I run gondor.io so I understand :-) ~~~ vineet Very good point. I am a big fan of what you are trying to do with Gondor.io. Yes, bootstrapping freemium is hard. I would love to see discussions on how to do it right. Don't get me wrong. I am revenue driven. I am not crazy about freemium. But I see way too many entrepreneurs not putting themselves into the mind of their target users. I would trivial Gondor.io as a more specific Python oriented version of Heroku. The benefits are hopefully more obvious, and I would argue that freemium is not important for Gondor.io. However, the problem I have had with micro-blogging platform is in the details, which often results in me not using it more than twice or thrice. I would easily pay $250/year if ThoughStreams worked for me, but I don't know that. Currently the site looks great and it makes me really want to try it, but I doubt that I will be able to make a decision in 30-days. I am willing to try though. Best of luck! ------ s_henry_paulson And here I came to the comments to read about people's thoughts on the article...

Ask YC: Recording the Startup School talks? - edgeztv This is a request to the organizers of Startup School to arrange for soundboard recordings of the presentations at this year's event.<p>The audio recordings from 2006 and earlier have been gems in my car CD inventory on many long drives. Unfortunately last year's audio recordings were really low in quality, to the point of being unintelligible.<p>It would be a shame for these amazing talks to not get preserved for posterity! ====== jl Omnisio (<http://omnisio.com/>) is doing the honors. ~~~ arasakik They're also potentially planning to overlay the comments from the Chatterous real-time chatroom: <http://www.chatterous.com/landing/ss08/ss08/> ------ gregp Where are the 2006 recordings located? ~~~ RichardPrice Yes I would love to know that too. ~~~ robinhoode Thirded.. ------ schoudha We should put it on Justin.TV ~~~ immad I wonder how many other YC startup products we can use for startup school :) ------ inovica Some great stuff in here. Very inspirational - especially when you're hitting a tough spot it can help to pick you up

Six percent of online adults use reddit (15% of young men) - iProject http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/reddit/Findings/Six-percent-of-online-adults-use-reddit.aspx ====== mooism2 Note this survey was carried out in America: the conclusions are not valid for adults of other nationalities.

‘Ads’ are dead. Use advertising instead. - kanebennett http://www.startupproject.org/2011/04/advertising/ ====== retube I don't understand. The difference between "ads" and "advertising" appears to be one of targeting/focus. It's hardly a revolutionary insight that the more targeted the ad the higher the conversion rate. And the author appears to be taking issue with how banner and adsense ads look. But he doesn't say how a more targeted ad should look, other than "simple". Basically marketing puff for the firms he mentions. ~~~ drats Indeed, there is no meat here. Upvoted you, and flagged the submission to save other people from wasting their time. ------ duck If you are a smaller site can you even get into any of those programs though?

Ask HN: Front End Development - lachyg To all front end developers, specifically ones that take PSD files and convert them into HTML/CSS templates, how do you think we could speed it up?<p>Do you think we need a special framework? A new slicing tool? Additions to Photoshop? Do you think it can be completely automated?<p>I've been doing it for quite sometime and I'm looking for a way to rapidly speed it up! Any ideas, anyone!? ====== systemtrigger > Do you think it can be completely automated? I think that will always depend > on how complex a page/site we're talking about. If the design is standard > and our toolbox (in this IDE) has all the standard "prims" then yes it's > maybe automatable. But if what you're trying to build is edgy those primary > building blocks might not be in the toolbox. So unless the web reaches some > kind of technical limitation our tools will always be behind the creativity > of designer-developers. As for which framework to use I think the answer may be to move away from Photoshop toward something like Fireworks. I'm in the same boat as you, I get designs in PSD and have to make pixel-perfect html - and like you I notice the friction points (e.g. text sizing in pts vs. pixels, drop shadows don't copy- paste easily, every copy-paste manuever is a "manual" operation). Photoshop is probably the wrong tool for web design. It's great for photos and for going into creative heaven but Fireworks is Adobe's product for mocking up web sites, and I think it's more practical than Photoshop for web designers. As far as the html/css it generates, I would have to learn to trust it. Today I hand-write all the markup myself but there are a lot of tools that are tempting me, especially when they promise cross-browser compatibility. ~~~ christiancoomer I agree with the suggestion regarding Fireworks. The designers and developers at my office use Fireworks instead of Photoshop and it seems like a speedier process. ------ oneplusone The answer in improving seed is not in more frameworks (especially crappy CSS ones), but in improving the actual browser with support for box-shadow, border-radius, and border-image, etc. which takes a significant amount of time to implement. Getting the core CSS and HTML right is such an important part of performance and a vital investment in future development that I cannot even comprehend letting a program auto-generate it for me. ------ ScottWhigham I think Adobe has the chance to just totally own the whole market if they will just improve the slicing/HTML output of Photoshop. At this stage of the game there aren't likely to be any new players on the graphic design side (not without significant investment). That means that it's either the graphic design software companies improve their output options or someone writes a tool/add-in that improves it. ~~~ kls I always though a good feature for Photoshop would be a way to select areas of a file and mark them as dynamic content and non image content, that way PS knows what all of the static content "or template" is. Then PS could analyze and auto slice the image and generate the template HTML file that you can then go back and add any non image HTML to. As well it wild be nice to be able to define groups on the template so that PS would slice them out separately for items that may be repeated on the page or that may be used on several pages. My thought was that all this could be accomplished by tagging a layer to be ignored for generating the auto slice. ~~~ lachyg Personally, I don't think Photoshop will ever be able to automaticly slice a document into valid, standardized, optimized HTML/CSS. I think a human has to be involved in the process, unless HTML changes completely. In the meantime, tools that can copy the CSS styles of text to the clipboard, and things that can generally decrease time spent developing will be a plus. ------ nunb <http://www.medialab.com/sitegrinder> seems to do exactly that. They have client website links in their gallery, and somewhere they claim that they make creating dynamic sites possible as well. ------ hellotoby I've found the quickest way to speed up front-end development isn't necessarily with the slicing but more with having a robust library of my own code, and my own custom (pseudo) framework of html & css templates with which I begin every job.

Barclays Center freight elevators: each can carry a loaded semitruck (2015) [pdf] - owenversteeg http://www.meielevatorsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/BARCLAYS-CENTER.pdf ====== couchand Very interesting read. I was confused about the specific location the document desribes. "They enable semi-truck or bus drivers to drive straight into either elevator from the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues on the southeast side of the arena." At the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush is a large pedestrian plaza and the main entrance to the building, they would have a hard time driving a truck through there. The actual entrance is on Dean Street (and indeed at the southeast corner of the arena): [https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6816292,-73.9748135,3a,75y,6...](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6816292,-73.9748135,3a,75y,6.88h,82.79t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sXQCxa91lYzKNOFTVKsqRww!2e0!7i16384!8i8192) ------ owenversteeg Video of them in action, including the 100,000lb turntable here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm19yMKVqOs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm19yMKVqOs)

Show HN: Eirify – Creative Marketplace - eljbutler https://eirify.com/ ====== AbatPay Anytime i hear about marketplace i think of trust issues. How can a consumer deal with a merchant confidently? ~~~ eljbutler Hi AbatPay. Do you mean in terms of where the funds are held between the transaction? Or more generally like trusting that merchants product?

Why can’t we read anymore? - subnaught https://medium.com/@hughmcguire/why-can-t-we-read-anymore-503c38c131fe ====== Schwolop Part of the problem is articles like this. There were perhaps five interesting sentences of content in that entire piece, and several hundred entirely redundant words and personal examples used only to set the tone. If modern writers have such disrespect for their audience, is it any wonder some of that audience hasn't the attention span to stick with it? Older, serious, and timeless literature requires deep concentration because the authors use their thousands of words to express deep pathos that can't be trivialised. It takes practice to commit oneself to a book like that for long enough to get into a flow wherein it can be understood and appreciated. It's _easier_ to read fluff because the dopamine hits quicker, but (for some people) it's worth the effort to read something more meaningful. In some ways there's an analogy to coding; some books I can't read unless I've got the time to be isolated from distractions. Similarly, some coding problems I can't make progress unless I know I've got more than a half hour to pre-load my brain cache. Given that I'm railing about redundant words, this seems an appropriate point to stop. ~~~ klipt > If modern writers have such disrespect for their audience As opposed to whom, paid-by-the-word Dickens and his amazing menagerie of circumlocutions? ;-) ~~~ panglott Perhaps, but the further back you go, the starker the shift in reading habits becomes. I skimmed this article in 5 minutes and probably won't remember it tomorrow. Compare two centuries ago, when the only books most people had were the Bible and Milton, and they memorized every word. Or three centuries before that, when the people who could read might have to travel across Europe to read a particular book, and might commit each page to a memory palace. ------ jasode I've read over 500 fiction books and 2000+ non-fiction. I've read many of the big thick classics like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Infinite Jest. I've kept a spreadsheet of all the books I've read somewhat like Art Garfunkel[1] (of Simon & Garfunkel music duo). I've also read Nick Carr's "The Shallows"[2] and other authors about about the web's effect on attention span, distractions, etc. With all that said, I'm not convinced that people "should" read long form books. I read all those books because I personally enjoyed it. I just can't say with confidence that others should do the same or they will be "missing out" on some unquantifiable intellectual nirvana. I also enjoy getting lost in Wikipedia articles and jumping around hyperlinks without fully finishing the wiki article I was reading. (Wiki articles are not ever "finished" anyway so there's no guilt trip in leaving the page to head down another rabbit hole.) 15 years ago, I read a dozen of C++ books cover-to-cover. Can someone today get similar levels of knowledge jumping around quality blog posts and watching youtube videos? I think so. I don't hold my traditional reading method for C++ to be superior; it's simply what I did before the internet was available in 1995. I certainly did not learn Golang by reading a book cover-to-cover. Books certainly have benefits but I think they are overstated in relation to non-book forms of consuming words. [1][http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library/list1.html](http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library/list1.html) [2][http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing- Brains/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing- Brains/dp/0393339750/) ~~~ Retra Whenever I real long-form books, my mind will occasionally wander into other areas, while my eyes keep reading on. I'll have to continually go back and re- read what I feel like I've just read. This isn't just an internet-fueled lack of attention, it's how I've always read, and how I image most people read most of the time. The difference is with a website, you can go investigate your immediate thoughts rather than committing to the re-read. It is lazier, maybe. It's probably not great if you want to learn something in depth and stay focused on it for long periods of time. ~~~ jader201 _" I'll have to continually go back and re-read what I feel like I've just read."_ This is me. _" and how I image most people read most of the time."_ I wish I knew if this were true. I've always felt that I have some sort of "disorder" or some form of ADHD or something that causes my mind to wander anytime I try to read a book. I'm a terribly slow reader for this reason (at least when it comes to books -- internet articles, for some reason, don't seem to have this same effect on me), and as a result, I've not read too many books at all. I mostly get my information in smaller bursts. Come to think of it, whenever I see what I consider super long articles posted on HN, and a ton of discussion about how great the article was, I feel terribly inadequate that I can't read said article in less than an hour (or more). Short articles I'm fine with, it's the longer ones -- and books -- that I struggle with. And it's certainly not the result of any "conditioning" from reading short internet articles all the time -- I've been like this since long before the era of blogs and HN. Would love it if someone could shed some light on this. ~~~ noir_lord Not for me, when I read I get lost in the book and it gets dark outside, the cats come and sleep on me, the street lights go on and I look up at 10pm and I've read half a novel. It's a sense of peace I get from few other things in life. ~~~ sukilot This, or even watching a slow paced movie (the kind more common before 1990) is incredibly refreshing break from the modern distraction filled world. ~~~ jmccree As I've gotten older and have less free time and there's so much more content out there, one practice I've come to accept is reading the wikipedia page and plot synopsis for a book/movie before starting watching something. In the same way I read HN comments before deciding whether to read the original article often times. Before wikipedia I would read the last chapters of books first. I'm more worried about my time being spoiled than the plot being spoiled, and after all a good movie/book is even better the 2nd time around. This has allowed me to commit to watching or reading things I never would have before as I'd get bored (read: worried this is a waste of my time) 10 minutes into a slow moving movie. ~~~ Tycho But how does just reading the synopsis indicate if something is any good? Wouldn't you be better just looking at the IMDB score? Or are you looking out to avoid things with 'dumb' endings? ------ borgchick I'm honestly a little surprised at some of the comments here. I thought most people on here would agree that many of us do suffer from this. I mean, how many of you actually read through the entire article, WITHOUT checking your email, or flipping to twitter/fb to tell the world about this good article you just found? I had to really force myself to read the entire article first, and not give in to that urge to get a hit of dopamine. But of course, YMMV. I think the ability to concentrate and focus on a single task is going to become more and more useful, because it is so easy to give in to that temptation to flip away, just for a quick moment. I've been working on practicing mindfulness through meditation, and have thought of reading a book as a form of meditation (nice to see the author allude to that a little). So your TL;DR: good article, read more books, re-learn how to focus on single tasking. ~~~ colechristensen I'm frequently disappointed when I do finish a web-published article to the point where I don't think there's anything wrong with skipping though most of them. Most of them are poorly written or written in a way to make money. That is * clickbait titles when the bulk of the information in the article could be summarized in the title instead * lack of introduction / thesis / abstract at the beginning summarizing or outlining the actual content * meandering content with no clear overarching goal * content padding – lots of words addling little information So why should I feel bad about not finishing things I think aren't worth finishing? ~~~ rf_guy I agree here. I began to read the article but the format completely deterred me from finishing it. I assume the format was on purpose to prevent it from becoming the very thing that it was saying the people have a hard time reading. But in the end, at least for me, I had a harder time reading the choppy, repetitive wording than a well thought out set of paragraphs. I have read many books and also started many and never picked them back up. There is no reason to force yourself to read something that does not capture your attention. ------ Red_Tarsius > _Last year, I read four books_. Since January I read +-25 books. It's not necessarily a good thing. Every book, no matter how short, is a commitment. It requires time and effort you could spend in other, more productive things. As a matter of fact, reading is how I procrastinate. _The road to mediocrity is paved with good books_ : I've been reading quite a lot on entrepreneurship... let's say 300 hours worth of reading. I could have spent that time by testing ideas and hustling, but I lacked confidence. It was always " _1 more book... and then I 'll start doing it_". ------ tinco The author conflates two things that are only half related. This sentence is a big hint to why he's not reading books: > "And it’s exhausting. I was usually asleep halfway through sentence number > five." Reading books isn't exhausting, you can read books 16 hours per day. If you fall asleep after reading 5 lines, that means you are dead tired and shouldn't even have opened that book in the first place. And maybe the reason why you're too weak to keep yourself from checking your information sources every 5 seconds during all the other activities you (or your boss) care about is because you're tired during the day as well. The author suggests 5 solutions, I think that's a bit extreme. If you just do 3 and 4, you'll get more sleep and everything will probably be better. Coincidentally that advice is what you'll find everywhere for sleep related issues: "No computers 2 hours before sleep". ~~~ danneu All my life, within a chapter of text, I'm either falling asleep or lulling at the cusp of it. Moving my body or locations temporarily wards it off like a snooze button, but the struggle also keeps me from losing myself in a novel. To this day, if you fast-forwarded a video of me reading on my couch, I'd like look a fish flopping out of water to stay awake until the next chapter. My best solution so far has been to read more in the morning with my coffee before I begin my work, which also happens to be a good time to read in general: it's before the barrage. ~~~ vlasev What if you read while standing? Do you have trouble doing other activities while lying down, like using a computer? ------ brandon272 I read a lot. I just happen to do most of my reading online. I don't follow the notion that what we read online by default has less value than what is available to us in books. I have learned a lot from what I've read online, whether it's long form articles, Wikipedia articles, piecemeal submissions that make up online forum/community sites or even IRC logs. The mere fact that something is available in book form is not a guarantee of it's accuracy nor a guarantee of the author's credibility. ~~~ cortesoft I don't think the author is arguing that that books are more accurate or more credible than other forms of writing. What the author is arguing is that books provide a different sort of experience than those other forms of writing. ------ visakanv I've memorized a relevant XKCD just for this occasion, because it comes up so much: [http://xkcd.com/1227/](http://xkcd.com/1227/) > "Intellectual laziness and the hurry of the age have produced a craving for > literary nips. The torbid brain... has grown too weak for sustained > thought." – Israel Zangwill, The Bachelor's Club, 1891 I highly, highly recommend everybody read "The Information: How The Internet Gets Inside Us" by Adam Gopnik: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the- information](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-information) It points out how this 'Why can't we X anymore", "in the past it was better", "the future will be amazing", "the future will be horrible", and "everything is kinda the same" perspectives have been repeated, remixed, rehashed over and over again. ~~~ basicallydan While it does appear that the perspective you're talking about has been repeated over and over, it's important to recognise that it's a perspective which applies to whatever time in which it was held. Therefore, it's relative. Maybe the past _was_ amazing and wonderful, and perhaps _that_ past's past was even _more_ amazing and wonderful. It's possible things _are_ getting worse and worse all the time, only society has failed to heed the "warning" of the doomsayers, leading even greater decline in "wonderfulness". ~~~ Vraxx Except most of the activities that are cited as "dying" in the late 1800s are still alive and well. Long walks? Check, still here and valued. Letter writing? Not as prevalent, but still done. Conversation? Still existent, despite naysayers in the 1800s and people claiming text is the death of conversation. I think the difference people are noticing is that as some things begin to have an alternative, the minority (or majority) that would prefer said alternative can now express that desire where it was not possible before. Take the quote about sitting down and enjoying long meals. Maybe that's not everybody's cup of tea, but now it's a lot easier to get a quick meal on the go and some people prefer it. ~~~ therealdrag0 And 2000 years ago people decried writing because it weakened memory. ------ brownbat I read maybe one book in the last half of 2014. I wasn't proud of this number. Then I took a trip with only a kindle, no hotspots. I read nine books in two weeks. I felt so energized and accomplished. I vowed to keep it up when I returned to a world with internet. I have not. An Internet fast is an interesting experience. People might drop off the grid for backpacking trips, or trips to monasteries... I think it's legitimate to drop off and take anything you think might be your hobby but for internet. Take books, like I did, or maybe a typewriter. Or a musical instrument. Canvases and paint. A sharp knife and some pieces of wood. Yarn. Give your mind some idle stretches, a few days without constant distraction. See what happens, you'll probably be amazed. ------ Htsthbjig This man should talk for himself. I am an avid reader. I am part of readers clubs and meetings. I don't see less people today there than 10 years ago, in fact I see way more(probably something to do with the economic crisis). The world does not end because we can read online and distract ourselves. A person does not need this for distraction, in fact just a fly making noises around you or thinking on your partner-son-mother while looking at the wall is enough. The same was said about TV decades ago, and radio before it, even about books when it became cheap centuries ago. The Quijote is a book about someone that reads instead of living and wants to live at the end of his life. At the time cheap books were a novelty because of the printing press, remember that before it it took a year to copy a single book. ~~~ droopyEyelids I'm in your camp. I almost see "hand wringing about attention" as a meme, a common blogger's trope to stir up concern similar to a trashy evening news broadcast about "the new way teens are getting high." Everyone who I knew liked to read while growing up still likes to read. Some people don't, and thats fine too. What annoys me is people who don't like to read, but feel like they should, and therefore go looking for a scapegoat. And something tells me that some people have struggled to read and felt inadequate about that throughout history. ------ gregrata I've found the opposite, if you'll allow that eBooks are real books. To me, it's a golden age of books - with self publishing and eBooks, there are more books coming out ever day than ever before. I personally read AT LEAST two books a week (usually not technical - I enjoy sci-fi). I've always been a avid reader, but generally had to re-read a lot (I have about 5k physical books, to support that habit). Theses days, I'm ALWAYS reading new books. The selection is amazing, a lot of the books are very good! ------ yason One reason I've observed is that the quality of printed text isn't necessarily that good. I can't not let go of a good book, I'm only bounded by the time of day and night: if I weren't, I'd read it on one sitting. Or an interesting textbook that I can't wait to get back to even if it's slow to read because it's just so interesting. But there are lots of books that just aren't that good in comparison to really interesting articles on the internet. There are a even a lot more articles, so the reader must develop the skill of skimming quickly and deciding early whether there's any meat in it. But good articles are really good and they're easy to find. Books that aren't bad and books that are just all right but not really, truly good can't simply compete: earlier they could because there was no alternative. But now there is. Nothing can beat a good book but there's so many other things to read that are incredibly good too, so the partitioning of our reading time will simply change. ------ sosuke Reading takes all of your attention, all of it. I can't have a conversation while reading a book, I can't watch a movie while reading a book, you have to be ready to give everything to that book for whatever period of time you want to read it for. I am watching Chopped, skimming articles like this one, I just stepped up mid- typing that last bit to help my wife with something and finally I'm programming. I was interrupted again after finishing that sentence. Reading is a luxury. ~~~ calinet6 I think the point is that _attention_ is a luxury. These days, the currency is attention. The amount of attention required for reading of any substance is very high, and with thousands of apps, sites, shows, brands, and everything else pulling at us in a way that's engineered to be ideally visceral and tailored to our animal impulses, the lack of attention left over is no surprise. ------ arihant Hard to see problem with this behavior. It is the same reason we don't ride horses to work anymore - better stuff available. We didn't read at all, then we read leaves, then we read scrolls, then we read books, now we read the internet. Books have been around for extremely small percentage of our species' span. Moreover before the internet, the general public showed more interest in reading up more current affairs/entertainment than traditional books. Newspapers and magazine numbers are still strong. Frankly, I would rather have a race of people reading up on general knowledge and keep themselves aware than a race of people wasting time trying to read story books just to fit in. It is not that the books have been replaced. Better stuff has brutally shown that books were truly appealing to only a few. If, given chance, most people flea, it is a failed product. ~~~ coldtea > _Hard to see problem with this behavior. It is the same reason we don 't > ride horses to work anymore - better stuff available._ Only in this case we abandoned cars for hoping along barefoot on one foot while wearing a diving suit... > _Frankly, I would rather have a race of people reading up on general > knowledge and keep themselves aware than a race of people wasting time > trying to read story books just to fit in._ We have that former thing, and its producing a race of people who have no understanding of anything substantial, be it politics, world affairs or arts, and jump from BS celebrity tweet to twerking videos. Of course one can resort to the classic "People have always complained about new technologies and trends, hence there's no problem with them". For one, "people always complained about new technologies" is not such an obvious and true fact -- how many people and how seriously complained is not measured, nor is their reasoning examing. We're just given some examples of people complaining for some new technology/trend, and are told that all those examples are of equal zero validity, just "get off of my line" kind of affairs). Second, even if "people always complained about new technologies" that doesn't automatically mean that they were always wrong (nor is proof offered, besides "and yet, those technologies stayed with us and we now are ok with them" as if that proves anything qualitatively). A more nuanced approach would have been to check whether something was indeed lost (a tradeoff) in adopting those technologies, something that we could maybe preserve if we adopted them with less abandon. And in fact a lot of our subsequent behavior --which is usually ommited when glorifying technology-- points to that (e.g. the adoption of cars lead to huge cities built around driving like L.A., which we now find less than great. Or the city noises and environment led to a flight for the suburbs. Examples are numerous). ------ officemonkey It's a skill. But unlike riding a bike, if you don't use it, you lose it. On the other hand, if you practice, it gets better. I started keeping track of my reading in 2011. Here's my history: 2011: 11 books 2012: 16 books 2013: 29 books 2014: 54 books 2015: 26 books (to date) I did this while not significantly changing my lifestyle. How? 1. I read to and from work. 45 min each way. 2. I read at lunch. 1 hr. 3. I chose reading instead of watching TV or playing video games. 4. I use eReaders, so I have dozens of books to read next. 5. I log my reading (obsessively?) on goodreads.com. One thing I didn't do: I don't even try to read before bed. If I'm lucky, I get three pages read and then I'm nodding off. "Why can't we read anymore?" I dunno. Maybe because _you_ aren't reading anymore. ~~~ will_work4tears Logging what you read is, oddly enough, a new idea for me. One I'll have to seriously consider doing. In 2003 I started college, and an exercise in a class I had we had to tell two truths and one falsehood and let the class guess the falsehood. I don't remember what the falsehood was or the other truth, but the truth one that everybody thought was the falsehood was that I had read over 2000 books. I only know that I read that many because I owned that many books (and didn't own every book I ever read). I was 26 then, and reading since 5-6, so that's really only 10 books a year. The real number of books at that point might have been more like 3000 - but I did re-read a lot of the books I owned so maybe not. Since this time last year, I've probably read 30+ books. Gotta love the Kindle and Kindle Unlimited. ~~~ officemonkey 10 books/yr x 20 years = 200, not 2,000. Setting up a goodreads account is simplicity itself. And since it's owned by Amazon, you can import all your books with a click. There's also a bookmarklet that "Adds book to Goodreads" from the Amazon page. Once you get used to logging progress and marking completed books, you will really see the pages and books mount up. ~~~ will_work4tears Oops, you are right. I'd say I hadn't had my coffee yet when I wrote that, but even that's not a good excuse. How embarassing. 100 books does seem right though, I thought the 10 seemed a little too light. I set up an account yesterday and did like that Amazon import feature. I wish It imported all the books you read with Kindle Unlimited though. Thanks for the heads up with the bookmarklet, I'll check it out. ------ WA _Last year, I read four books._ Last year, I read 25 books. And the year before, too. And the year before. Then I stopped reading this blog post. The number of books is a weak benchmark, because I read books as thin as 100 pages up to 1,300 pages. I read blog posts that have 50 pages and some that have 140 characters. Reading is enjoyable, but still a form of consumption. There are only so many ideas per week you can think a lot about and thus, you can read only so many books that really benefit your life and make you change your mindset. ------ calinet6 This is an amazing article, if you get to the heart of it (though be warned, that requires actually reading it). One of the amazing insights: _new information is a drug._ It causes a dopamine rush. The influx of all this new information, alerts, everything tugging at us every day is the new legal high, and we're all addicted, with thousands of external entities profiting off the act, dealing out notifications. I highly recommend reading it fully! ------ davidgerard This is a terrible article of the variety "I do something therefore everybody does something": typical mind fallacy on crack, nary an actual numerical statistic to be seen. I mean, I could play anecdote wars (I read ridiculous numbers of books now I have FBReader on my phone) but that would be feeding the foolishness. ~~~ jayvanguard That is my take as well. Vague allusions to current research but no hard cites. Seems like recycled trope of "modern life is too busy and our brains are rotting". I read a great excerpt from something published in the 1800s complaining about the same thing... I'll have to dig it up. ~~~ jayvanguard [https://xkcd.com/1227/](https://xkcd.com/1227/) There they are... see 1894 and 1895 in particular. ------ rwc I believe one of the problems with digitally minded brains tackling books is opportunity cost. In a blog post, a tweet, or email I can quickly decide if it's worth my time -- does it pique interest, make me feel more connected to the world. With a book, the investment of time and energy is much greater for an uncertain (but perhaps marvelously more meaningful) payoff. ------ tarequeh This is a difficult problem a lot of us face. I personally have a habit of glancing through hundreds of articles that pop in my RSS reader everyday. Often after reading a handful of those articles, some of them providing certain bits and pieces of knowledge, I feel like it would have been better to focus on a single topic and learn more about it. That's where I miss books. Although I have many of them sitting in the shelf right next to me, it has become more difficult for me in the recent years to pick one up and start reading. I think it's time for a change. Thanks OP for sharing this. ~~~ rwc One of the great tests for me personally is can I even remember the last 10 headlines or articles I read? The dopamine hit is in the discovery, not necessarily the comprehension. ------ Animats Because the layout on medium.com, which purports to be a "long form" site for people who read, is for short-attention-span people. Scroll through the article linked. It's painful. ------ nemexy His points are mostly true, at least for some people, but I think we should go deeper than that. There are people who hate reading tech books and prefer to get the information in concise/shorter way through internet/SO. I am one of them, I have tried reading different software engineering books(widely recommended ones), but I just can't get into them. And yet I can easily digest an article about specific issue I have, try it out and if it works the article goes into my Pocket so I can check it again in the future, if something similar happens. But give me a good fantasy novel, I will devour it. Wheel Of time (13 x 700 pages) was completed in 3 months. Chronicles of Amber? Done. ~60 books of Pratchett, a lot of them multiple times? Done. Tolkien? Done. There were countless of times, where I couldn't sleep before finishing a book, staying up to 4-5 am, when I usually go to sleep around 23-24:00. That's why I feel it is really hard to start a book, when you don't know what type of books you like. Some people enjoy fantasy/sci-fi/romance/action/prose and many more. Maybe something non-fiction? And I feel that schools should somehow help students discover their favourite authors and their favourite ganres. Good article, but he could have given his point in one/third of the content length and it wouldn't have lost anything. ------ bsder Well, I simply find that concentration takes _practice_. And we simply don't practice it much anymore. I also think that we have forgotten that the point of email and text messaging was so that we could be asynchronous, rather than interrupt driven like a phone call. ------ eskimo87 I couldn't even finish reading this long article. Just a para or two, after that simply skimmed through till end. :-( ~~~ alexashka Meh, I think it's fine. What is he/she really saying? There's a thousand and one problems one could be solving in his/her life. Checking twitter/facebook less often and reading words printed on paper is priority number 356 for me. I don't know why it ranks so high for the author to warrant a blog post. The real issue is not having your priorities straight that you are worrying about your allocation of time/resources. Surely there's bigger fish to fry in your own life - where's the blog post on that? ------ coliveira The difference between books and Internet articles is depth. A good book can take you from knowing nothing to a relatively deep understanding of a topic -- by nature of its format. Consider for example one of the classic books of all time: Newton's Principia. You can start reading that book with just a basic knowledge of geometry, and in a couple hundred pages later you'll know more about physics then you ever thought possible. And that book was presenting physics _for the first time!_ That's not something you can replicate with Internet articles. It would be much more trouble to do that over the Internet, and you would cry "please, write a book and send it to me so I can read all this information in a easier way". Other books are like that, not only in science but also in literature, philosophy, computing (e.g.: TAOCP) and so many other areas. The problem we have nowadays is that, because it became so much easier to write books, we have more and more books that don't add much to human knowledge. In the old times, writing and publishing a book was hard, which meant that the threshold for acceptance was much higher. Our society views this downgrading of book quality as a sign that books are not a good format, when in fact this is just an unintended consequence of our technology. ------ netcan I think the changes are inherent to interactivity and the infinite volume of the internet. These change everything. Once you can respond, you are a part of the fray and your thinking changes. When you read an interesting nonfiction book today, you can also check wikipedia, listen to podcasts, watch the author giving a Ted talk and jump into the infinite sea of informal online commentary. IE, reading on HN is not reading in the sense that reading some book in 1991 was. It's being in a conversation, for better and worse. Your mind is operating in a different context. I also think that writing is adapting more slowly than reading. Many nonfiction books I find interesting are 250-400 pages when they could be under 100 and just as effective. I think that's some side effect of paperback books published by the publishing industry, the medium and its economic ecosystem. In any case, if you want to maintain reading of that kind as a habit or pursuit, you need to create an environment for it. Have a reading room in your house, go to a cafe or park or your garden and read there. Set and setting. You also need to be somewhat honest about what you like and how. Are you so engrossed that you read for 3hrs when you meant to read for 30min? Are you doing something that you need to discipline yourself into doing? ------ gumby I don't know if the author can reasonably conflate the issues he does. I often (but not always -- perhaps 50/50) "fail" to listen to a song all the way through -- but I really only did that in the album, cassette and CD days because the tech sucked. Now I can easily jump to the part I want, just listening to i. I only listen to podcasts when trapped on a long drive. Them I tend to listen to end-to-end again because the tech sucks. I've always found it hard to sit and watch a film, or even a youtube video, linearly. It's generally just _way too slow_ (and occastionally too fast) and I like to be able to skip around. But the tools suck. _Books_ , on the other hand, are ideal. In so many I luxuriate in them, especially fiction which can be so multimedia compared to a film, generally reading linearly. Others I skip around, skipping over boring bits, coming back to them, going back to parts I loved, or just reading something interesting over and over. It's not that "the digital" caused me to lose my ability to concentrate, rather it allowed me access to media in a way that _supports_ my enjoyment: sometimes intense, sometimes casual, and sometimes intense just on the parts that matter. How can this be bad? ------ khorwitz Shallows is a great book about this and "what the internet does to our brains". This chrome extension is supposed to combat the internet's unquestionable ability to mess with our work focus: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/focusr/fgdcnfgmneb...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/focusr/fgdcnfgmneblnnldmaffhbniomfajlah?hl=en) ------ Nursie This is interesting, and I have been thinking about this quite a lot recently. I used to read books by the dozen. Sometimes literally, in about 2006 I discovered Gollancz/Orion's "Sci-Fi Masterworks" series and was getting through more than one per week, in addition to holding down a job and having a pretty active social life. Now I don't think I've read a book since I motored through my second reading of the "Song of Ice and Fire" stuff last year. I, like the author, also find myself putting on some of the best TV there has ever been, and then doing something else while it's on, like checking email or facebook, or reading HN. So I don't really absorb it. I don't want to cut out tv, but I do want to be able to concentrate on it, and I do want to read more books again. And get control of my sleeping patterns which have always, always been up the wazoo anyway. So perhaps I shall join in and try to do as the author of this post has - start reading, deny the instant-gratification urges and reclaim my brain and my attention span. ------ codeulike Distraction might be a problem for some of us, but its important to remember that people are reading more books now than they ever have at any point in history, even if you only count paper books and especially if you count e-books. [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the- ne...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-next-time- someone-says-the-internet-killed-reading-books-show-them-this-chart/255572/) [http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/05/tech/gaming- gadgets/e-read...](http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/05/tech/gaming- gadgets/e-reader-survey-pew-gahran/) [http://www.buzzfeed.com/krystieyandoli/facts-that-prove- youn...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/krystieyandoli/facts-that-prove-young-people- are-reading-more-than-adults#.do18qjKwW) ------ FinnDS I thought this was well-written, and pretty much spot on for most of us. The 'onto-the-next' part is scarily true for me. I always want to finish something, so I can continue onto whatever's next. Maybe this is normal. I know for myself that, when putting something on the television, I'll pop out my mobile not too much later after, just to check up on things. It's very much the modern day curse, I think, and we seem to have no real constraint. We get these positive reinforcements ("Ooh, new e-mail. Ooh, new message from a friend. Ooh, something new and unknown and exciting.") from constantly not being present, so that's why we keep doing it. Personally, I bought myself an e-reader and I already read a full book in a week or so. I'm not an avid reader, but I love books. The key was, for me at least, to read one chapter at a time. That way I always got progress each time I read. ------ Silhouette It's probably quite a compliment to the author that I did actually read the whole thing -- about 2,500 words in a little under 15 minutes -- without switching away, other than a short pause when an e-mail arrived and a notification message popped up that I had to clear to carry on reading. Normally these days I find much over 1,000 words or 5 minutes on a screen and I'm losing concentration. I don't even use things like Facebook and Twitter, but I do have a habit of reading the front page of HN/Reddit/whatever and opening a dozen different interesting-looking discussions and their corresponding articles all at once. Perhaps this attempt to be a bit more organised is actually more like the example mentioned in the article, where you're reading something but know you have a new mail waiting and it knocks 10 points off your effective IQ. ~~~ kiba I don't get notification messages like you guys, or check my email for such short rewards. Instead, I check my email or certain websites for substantial updates to my favorite fanfic or web serial. 3K words is heavenly. 10K words even more so. The more words the better. If you can update faster than I can read, that'll be awesome. ------ delinka Why I don't read non-technical things very often: I have "better" (to me) things to do. I want to read about boost. I want to study LLVM. I want to write code. I want to set up a Linux server running node.js. I want to compare some NoSQL datastores to an RDBMS or two. When I want distraction or to rest my brain, I'll take entertainment in short spans. I really don't want to invest weeks of two-hour nights reading a work of fiction. I'm not terribly interested in reading someone's biography. And unless a non-fiction topic is currently meaningful to me (for example, books about the human mind when I was in my early 20s), then I'm not likely to Just Read. I feel like if I Just Read for reading's sake, I'm not honing the craft that's important to me. I feel like it makes me a "jack of all trades" and therefore "master of none." ------ cthalupa For some time I thought I definitely had a shorter attention span due to the internet - I'd be reading something, and compulsively have to go check my email, facebook, forums I visit, hacker news, my frequented subreddits. Read a bit more. Check everything. Repeat. But I didn't find it all that hard to just close my laptop and put my phone facedown more than an arm's length away. I thought it would be a titanic struggle - but as soon as I made it slightly inconvenient to distract myself, I found myself once again able to read through hundreds of pages of books. It's anecdotal, of course. But for me, being able to "read" again was as simple of giving myself the slightest barrier to getting distracted. ------ deadfece In many instructional and self-help books, I find that the author's attempt to hit appropriate word-count for the book format bores me to no end. Even worse, it wastes my time. I bought your book, please don't waste 10% of your page count in selling me the book. I think notable exceptions to this are found in 'The Practice of System and Network Administration' and 'Time Management for System Administrators.' Fiction, I can read at times. For the last book I read, 'The Mote in God's Eye', I read the first four chapters or so, then put it off for 5 months, and then finished it in a week. That one does start off pretty slowly. ------ ChuckMcM Fundamentally there is a sense of not wanting to 'miss' anything, I believe that was the original force behind 24hr news channels, you watched because if you didn't then something could have happened HOURS ago and you wouldn't even know it yet. I have a slightly different problem which is reading too much. It is embarassing when you miss your stop on the train because the article you are reading has distracted you. I also am something of a completionist when it comes to books, so I find even when I don't "like" the book I'm compelled to finish it. ~~~ zaphar I'm the same way. It's bad enough that I can't read on the train because It's guaranteed I'll miss my stop. I can't read in the evening or I'll be up till 4am finishing the book. I limit my reading to times when I have an open stretch of several hours to avoid it colliding with some other appointment or something. ------ Apocryphon I was reading this article when the urge to check HN's comments to this article struck me. Then I decided to write this comment about it in the browser, to paste when I would be done reading. ------ sametmax We do read. We just read in other formats. I never read has much as now, because when you browse the internet, you essentially read. You are just becomming picky about the format, because when there is a lot of quantity, your brain decides what quality it wants to prioritize. If something is long, complicated and unpleasant to read, it often can be reformated so it's not. All text are not essais. And you don't need to read or write an essay everyday. So it makes sense to me. Readers to the contexte, we optimize, and writters should too. ------ mirimir I didn't find the article very insightful, because it lumps all "books" together. I haven't read a technical book in several years, because it's so much easier to find what I want online. But I read nonfiction whenever I have the time, or want to decompress. I have no problem switching between hyper- multitasking and deep focus. Perhaps the author never fully learned that. I wonder if it's age-related. Or maybe I'm the odd one: ADHD/bipolar with hard-won focusing skills ;) ------ Quanticles Online articles are like junk food - it's more appealing but has little substance. If you can get used to reading real books again then the online stuff is a lot less appealing. ~~~ mhurron Does that include this article that said something very similar? ------ tomjen3 We can. I set a simple goal of reading 100 pages a week and was stuggling with reaching that number for quite some time. Then I started to read books that were better written and the pages started to fly by (and it is not exactly that the books were easier - The Strategy of Conflict is an academic book written by an academic but it is still well written). My guess is that the same is the case for others, which makes for a simple solution: don't read badly written books. ------ mjrbrennan I don't get this either, I think if you're finding it really difficult to read a book then maybe you're not reading the right book. A book should suck you in and not let go until you are finished. I love reading, and I just finished The Stand which was a long book at ~1300 pages but I just could barely put it down over the week or so that I was reading it, even with full time programming work, commutes, and caring for a child with my partner. ------ jayvanguard They said the same thing about television 50+ years ago. And then video games and MTV 30 years ago. As far as I can tell people are doing just fine and books and reading continue along uninterrupted. People are as intelligent as they were a generation or two ago and are able to concentrate and solve problems just fine. The "research" on how our brains are affected by media has historically been incredibly speculative and shoddy. Is it any different this time? ------ mjklin My life was changed when I found out I could use smartphone apps to read texts to me, and tell me exactly how long till I finish. I used to be too annoyed to start a book because it seemed to drag on forever. (That plus I could never find the right chair, lighting, etc). Now, in contrast to other comments on here, I find the best time to listen is just before bed on my evening walk. If I really want to get through quickly, I listen on my commute also. ------ ojbyrne I have found that since reading Aaron Schwartz's "I Hate the News"[1] I can read more. I consciously try to avoid the morning news routine, replacing it with a chapter of whatever book I'm reading. [1] [http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews) ------ Messiah_ I agree with this articles and I struggle with this. I'm asking for help, I identified this issue: all this browsing/facebook/YC/reddit is making my attention span and ability to focus weaker. How to get it back? I want to have a killer attention span and ability to focus on one task. I started meditation in order to do this, any other recommendation? ------ gdubs My experience has been the opposite this year. There's a great library near by and we had our first child. A desire to minimize electronics around the little one, to wind down in the evenings, and to balance my digital life with something more physical has resulted in me reading way more books in the past year than many before it. ------ chjohasbrouck I think reading books is a waste of time, and I'm a little tired of people telling me I should read them. Books are archaic, and the idea that you aren't intelligent or informed or cultured unless you read them is just pure dogma at this point. We have internet-connected devices now. Content can be published, peer- reviewed, and disseminated to an international audience in under an hour. I can have a dialogue with the person who wrote it, ask questions and submit corrections that can be published 10 minutes later. To me that is such a __massive __improvement over the old model that I no longer have any time for the old model. I don 't have to wait for content from a small handful of people at a publisher in New York, and I'm extremely thankful for that. I can appreciate some books as works of art or just for entertainment, but books are an incredibly inefficient method of pursuing knowledge and culture, and for that purpose I wouldn't recommend them to anybody. So to answer the question posed by the title of this article: We can, we just shouldn't, which is convenient because we don't want to. ~~~ nextos It depends. I think both have their place. Online content tends to be much shallower. But it allows you to explore a much broader content quickly. Books tend to be deep, and good ones have gone through many iterations. Do you think you can get the ideas presented in, say, SICP or Principles of Mathematical Analysis by going through online material? I think it may be possible, but it's actually harder. ~~~ eellpp > Do you think you can get the ideas presented in, say, SICP or Principles of > Mathematical Analysis by going through online material? The parent was making the point that it's possible to have a much better system where the book authors communicate with the readers online which improves both the quality and ease of understanding. As of now, it may not be the situation but in future there surely will be better ways to do things. Also if we go by the literal meaning, book is defined as "a written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers". The part which requires "approval and published by a publisher" is a model of a book making and there may be better models out there. ------ holri The problem is not only with reading, but uninterrupted concentrating on a single cognitive task. Children do have the same behavior, before they learn to sit down and concentrate. We are becoming children again. Everything should be super easy. This is what sells. A tablet for example has the haptics of a babies device. ~~~ benrhughes IME, children (I have 4 of them) have extremely high concentration levels, if they choose the thing they're concentrating on. My 8yo will read for hours, uninterrupted. My 6yo reads for 30min+. Even my 3yo will happily look through picture books for 15-30min. ~~~ holri Well, if you happen to be a music teacher for kids you see the very poor concentration levels of the average kid. You also see the progress of it over time and age. And that nearly every parent is overestimating the skills of their own kids. ------ digi_owl I don't have a problem reading when it is properly paginated like a book or ebook. But when i read a online article it becomes something else because it is just a very long scroll of text. Perhaps the one thing the web really need is a pagination API... ~~~ woah I prefer a long scroll of text. Less distraction. Books are paginated arbitrarily, and it's quite a large aspect of the experience to be left up to random chance. ~~~ _asummers I agree. Having a scrollbar as a percentage completion indicator is a very nice thing. I can also highlight the text on the page where I was at in the likely event I get distracted and have to move on to something else. At this point, I do this out of habit on any article longer than a few paragraphs. Side note, if your site pops up a stupid SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER when someone highlights text, I most likely won't read your articles. I didn't read this one because Medium does this; SBNation articles do this, too and my browser now loads custom Javascript on their pages to remove it. It's distracting and serves no real purpose, except to take me out of my flow of reading. ~~~ digi_owl After posting the initial comment i found a most interesting Firefox extension. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/column- reader...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/column-reader/) It allows me to single out the main text of a site, and break it into screen height sized columns. These can then be paged through much like a book. Seems to make it much easier for me at least to get through a long article without jumping between paragraphs. ------ transpy The author makes no considerations about writing for the web. He would hate to hear that, of course, but there's no way I am going to read that. Well, maybe if I feed it into a summarization app, maybe. ;) ------ tby Since I've started to meditate a few months ago, I really read a lot _more_ than before.. It seems to lessen my need to procrastinate and feelings of "fear of missing out". ------ cafard We? I'm pretty sure I've finished four books since February. ------ classicsnoot [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9443897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9443897) ------ debacle What if we're reading less and less today for the same reason we no longer have town criers or pictograms? ------ rahilsondhi I wanted to read this post, but it was too long and I moved on to something else. ------ snickerdoodles I read about 2 books per week on the Kindle, more if I have to wait on Trend Micro (thanks Security!!). ------ lrvick Can someone TLDR this for me? ~~~ wtf_is_up I would, if I could still read. ------ amit_m tl;dr ~~~ srjk why is this grey? Don't people have a sense of humour anymore? ~~~ Silhouette HN is not Reddit. Plenty of people make humorous or entertaining comments, but distracting joke threads full of obvious one-liners and no real content aren't generally welcome. ~~~ visakanv There's actually a really interesting discussion on Quora, I think, about why they had something along the lines of a no-humor policy. The problem isn't that people are humorless– it's that when you reward people for humor (often resulting in puns and pithy one liners), after a while, people start competing to be as funny as possible– and that's all that ever rises to the top. It crowds out more deliberate, thoughtful discussion. I love humor and comedy myself, but it makes sense to me why a discussion forum might deliberately choose to discourage it.

Tell HN: Check out my new note taking app, ScribbleJot - unfug http://www.scribblejot.com<p>I've been playing around with Google App Engine for a few weeks and this is the result. My goal was to design a really simple app for quickly jotting down notes. It uses Markdown so that you can easily style/format your notes.<p>I've got several plans for version 2.0, most notably a dedicated mobile version. Let me know what you guys/gals think. ====== teeja Hope this is helpful: your front page doesn't tell me why I shouldn't just use my desktop text editor. (Or 'Stickies' on the Mac.) Why is SJ a better choice? ------ unfug Clickable Link: <http://www.scribblejot.com> ------ boundlessdreamz please put in a higher resolution screenshot/screenshot gallery.

Rogue Wave acquires Zend - mgkimsal http://www.zend.com/en/resources/news-and-events/newsroom/press/3683_rogue-wave-software-acquires-enterprise-php-leader-zend-acquisition-broadens-enterprise-strength-across-top-five-development-languages ====== plorkyeran I didn't realize Rogue Wave still existed, since I haven't heard of anything they've done since their C++ STL implementation that was once popular. Looks like they've been on a bit of an acquisition spree with about one per year since 2009. This probably won't have a huge effect on PHP since it's much less Zend- dominated than it once was. ~~~ nwatson I used the Rogue Wave pre-STL C++ libraries. I developed a poorly-performing NoSQL-like DB library using their BTree, serializer/deserializer, file-interface, and collection library components. Records had a primary index (for storage order), multiple indices, arbitrary binary data payload, arbitrary-sized values in index "columns". It worked reliably but there were file fragmentation issues and delays during "vacuum" operations. This was in 1995 / 1996\. I was junior and didn't know enough about system-level concerns, having come from a more computer-graphics / algorithms / math background. The company didn't want to shell out for expensive canned solutions. Our product sold well enough, but I learned a lesson. ~~~ andyjohnson0 Me too, at around the same time. Mine was an object storage backend for desktop applications. It had MFC-style object graph serialisation and, IIRC, simple indexing. It also had similar performance issues to the ones you mention. I recall enjoying working on it. However primitive it looks now, Tools.h++ was ahead of its time back then. Just having a decent string class (with copy on write) was nice to have. ------ languagehacker This is great news for the steadily diminishing population of PHP engineers who haven't heard of PHP-FPM+Nginx or PHPStorm ~~~ mikey_p Not sure what you're referring to, are you thinking of HHVM? FPM is part of the standard PHP implementation and uses the Zend engine. ------ rch Seems like a bizarre acquisition to me. Where's the overlap in Rogue Wave's libraries and PHP? There's good people at Rogue Wave though, and I'm sure they'll be good stewards whatever the strategy turns out to be. ------ ehmuidifici I really don`t know who is Rogue Wave. But I wish them good luck and hopes that they heps Zend to achieve new goals, for the sake of php. ------ ck2 Glad Zend open sourced their PHP opcache before this, well that and their PHP7 work too.

Are you ready for iOS 7? Get flat in 7 days. - jenntoda http://blog.scoutzie.com/post/52631288358/ios7-flat-design-fast-professional ====== potatolicious Let's hang on for another hour or so and see the thing first, yeah? There are many conflicting and competing definitions of flat design. It's generally agreed that Apple will go flat, but nowhere near as flat as Win8 or even a lot of the web. Don't worry about anything until you see the keynote. If you want to mesh with Apple's new visual design, you really can't do anything without _seeing_ said visual design. ~~~ aroch Oh, pish! Why wait when they can make all the sweet, sweet ad money from linkbaiting ~~~ posabsolute Yes! Please follow every design steps Apple make so all apps look like the other one and individuality has completely disappeared. Seriously a well thought app is a well thought app, you don't need to go flat just because it will be the next 6 months crave before textures pops back again.... ------ freshyill I don't get this flat vs. skeuomorphic debate. They're not necessarily opposites. Skeuomorphic doesn't necessarily mean photorealistic. Flat doesn't necessarily mean white text on bold colors. I believe you can have a design that is both skeuomorphic _and_ flat, though I don't expect them to do that. I think it's safe to say Apple will move away from skeuomorphism, but that doesn't necessarily embrace some pure form of what we've been calling "flat" design. ------ aliston Assuming that Apple does go flat, my understanding was that it will be, for the most part, taken care of for developers. Unless you were already doing a lot of custom skinning, building for iOS 7 with native widgets should just "work," no? ------ marknutter Flat is such a ridiculous design fad. Good design implements both flat and "skeuomorphic" (another word I wish would just go away) elements. Can we stop running back and forth from one side of the room to the other? ~~~ jenntoda Yes, good design is how it works. We aren't against skeuomorphism and don't think flat is opposite of it either. In fact there can even be flat skeumorphism. I think Layervault's post on flat interface design, and Sacha Grief's flat pixels post are the best out there to read up on what IS flat design. Or Almost flat design. [http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/32267022219/flat- interface...](http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/32267022219/flat-interface- design) [http://sachagreif.com/flat-pixels/](http://sachagreif.com/flat- pixels/) ------ fla We will finally be able to jailbreak our iDevices again! ------ stevewillows Does having a flat UI allow the apps to scale better between phones and tablets? ~~~ nooneelse I'm not in the domain, so this is probably naïve thinking, but it seems to me it could lend itself that direction. Considering that many skeuomorphic designs involve a layout which spatially mimics some particular object. One can't scale that up and down in size to fit on any screen without also changing the size of the actionable interface areas (buttons, toggles, and such). And since the controls have their meaning implied/explained to the user by where they are on the layout of the mimicked object, rearranging the location of control areas takes away from the meaning that the mimicry is made to communicate. If the physical object mimicked is larger than the screen, and the layout and control area sizes must be preserved, then scrolling the entire view or something like it is needed. With a flat interface, the actionable control areas can be grouped, for example by type (do they alter something global, domain related, context- specific, or only a single item). Membership of a control in a type could be communicated to the user by something like grouping all the controls of that type together in a box with a particular background color. Since the scope meaning of the controls is encoded by which color box they are each in, but not at all by where in that box they are, nor necessarily what shape that color box is, nor the box's location relative to any other color boxes which hold controls of different types, then the color/type boxes can be reshaped and reflowed to fit many screen sizes while keeping the size of the controls themselves constant (easy to hit with a finger, or mouse, or whatever). Edit-addendum: Of course, this line of thinking simplifies skeuomorphic design too much. Such designs allow for more conceptual or cartoonish representations of the controls from familiar objects, so that the scaling factor used for any given control doesn't have to correspond to the scaling factor of other controls or the overall mimicked object. Still, flat design gets a great deal of rearrangement of controls for the price of the user learning to associate the box with color scheme foo as holding things that change the global context of the app. And the amount a user needs to learn can be smaller still. Even just using the principle of up-and-to-the-left is more general while down-and- to-the-right is more specific can give flat designs some structure (enough for many uses) while allowing a great deal of rescaling of the screen. ------ jaigouk iOS7 icons make my eye soar. Seriously... I wish they spent more time with UI and make whole thing consistent.

Worse Than China? U.S. Government Wants To Censor Search Engines And Browsers - sdizdar http://act.demandprogress.org/act/protectip_docs/?source=fb ====== jgershen This article, like the headline, is light on facts and high on sensationalism. However, the bill (full text available at [1]) does look pretty ugly. [1] [http://leahy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/BillText- PROTECTIPAct....](http://leahy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/BillText- PROTECTIPAct.pdf) ------ bluedanieru We need a new constitution. ~~~ HedgeMage The Constitution is fine; the government's habit of ignoring it is the problem. EDIT: The Constitution is fine; our habit of letting the government ignore it is the problem.

French company suing Apple to open iOS to other browsers - pfooti http://www.recode.net/2016/10/7/13201832/apple-sued-ios-browser-limits ====== pfooti I would love to see this suit succeed at least a little bit. While I understand the battery ramifications (and I'm sure other stability / security issues too) behind Apple's closed-off ecosystem, it is _hugely_ frustrating to have to develop web applications for iOS. before the obligatory "web pages should be simple", I'm mostly interested in web _applications_ rather than pages. I'm a big fan of simple, easy-to-use pages on the web. But it's also possible to use html5 tech as a platform for real applications, provided you mostly ignore iOS. Which is frustrating. Having an open platform would likely lead to a short term fragmentation "page best viewed in Chrome" and a rapid re-leveling as all browsers end up with feature parity and then start competing again on battery life and so on.

Austin Was Destined to Replace Silicon Valley. Then the Pandemic Hit - enraged_camel https://marker.medium.com/austin-was-destined-to-replace-silicon-valley-then-the-pandemic-hit-6d5f5a332e04 ====== enraged_camel Y'all, it would be great if we could avoid the "actually, Austin would never be able to replace Silicon Valley" takes because they are rarely interesting or original.

Ask HN: Can you posit some examples of civil discourse? - ahdroit I understand this is not a political forum and am not looking for your political opinion rather examples of effective communication.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=9DvmLMUfGss Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: Vietnam and the Intellectuals<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Civil_discourse<p>I am aware that: &quot;Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they&#x27;re evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle or talking points.&quot; and also: &quot;We ban accounts that use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle, regardless of which politics they favor. &quot;<p>But would be interested in what makes effective dialog in your opinion.<p>other discussions (Buckley): https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?query=William%20F.%20Buckley&amp;sort=byPopularity&amp;prefix&amp;page=0&amp;dateRange=all&amp;type=story<p>(Chomsky) https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?query=Chomsky&amp;sort=byPopularity&amp;prefix=false&amp;page=0&amp;dateRange=all&amp;type=story<p>I am not interested in your opinions on the specific speakers or their point of view. Rather examples where each speaker is able to communicate their point of view to the best of their ability within a context that allowed for a dialog. ====== wu-ikkyu There are various intellectuals who have recorded debates and lectures on youtube. It just depends on who you're interested in. If you look up any of these names on youtube or elsewhere you'll find some interesting and eloquent discourse (at least it is to me) with considerable political implications: -Marshall McLuhan (media and communications theory) [https://youtu.be/ImaH51F4HBw](https://youtu.be/ImaH51F4HBw) -Buckminster Fuller (futurism and socioeconomics) [https://youtu.be/elVGz_VR3eU](https://youtu.be/elVGz_VR3eU) -Alan Watts (psychology and religion) [https://youtu.be/eV7FLlRmuf0](https://youtu.be/eV7FLlRmuf0) -Joseph Campbell (mythology and culture) [https://youtu.be/aGx4IlppSgU](https://youtu.be/aGx4IlppSgU) -MLK (sociology and human rights) [https://youtu.be/9SfH2uMayks](https://youtu.be/9SfH2uMayks) ~~~ ahdroit just wanted to say before this gets lost... all heroes, had not seen all of these, i think i am also interested in implicit animosity but at the same time coherent dialog¿? that said whom ever you are i lov u. in the truest sense of the world.

Godot Engine Awarded $50k by Mozilla Open Source Support Program - wyldfire https://godotengine.org/article/godot-engine-awarded-50000-mozilla-open-source-support-program ====== wishinghand This is heartening news especially in the wake of the licensing that Unity and Unreal have rolled out in recent years. Sure, the terms aren't too onerous, but it's always great to have at least one truly open source foundation in your corner. Interesting that Phaser was also a recent recipient of a Mozilla grant. Even though it targets a completely different developer audience, it's cool to see Mozilla take game making seriously. ------ ValleyOfTheMtns If you want to dabble with prototyping games, Godot is the way to go in my opinion. I've played with Unity and Unreal a bit, each with their own pros and cons, but for me Godot is the one I found most intuitive and easy to test new ideas with. Worth checking out. ~~~ crocal Thanks for the tip. Did you have a chance to compare with gamemaker? ~~~ hasahmed Godot doesn't enforce any structure like game maker does. Additionally Godots default language (Gdscript) is awesome and intuitive, whereas gml doesn't really feel like a real language (argument0-15. Come on) ~~~ krapp >Additionally Godots default language (Gdscript) is awesome and intuitive, whereas gml doesn't really feel like a real language (argument0-15. Come on) I agree with the comparison to GML, but whether one finds Gdscript intuitive depends on one's existing background. I personally found it frustrating because I was used to C/C++, but with time I can see getting used to it. It's not a _bad_ language by any means. Also, both Game Maker and Godot share the problem of their scripting language being essentially a form of lock-in, since no one is going to use Gdscript anywhere else, and any code you write it in is no longer portable. Also, they use their own shader script rather than GLSL, which means your shaders aren't portable either. Godot can support different languages (unlike Unity or Game Maker), but IIRC that requires recompiling the engine and may break the editor. ~~~ luladjiev from Godot's documentation: >Finally, one of our brightest additions for the 3.0 release: GDNative allows scripting in C++ without needing to recompile (or even restart) Godot. [https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.1/getting_started/step_by_...](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.1/getting_started/step_by_step/scripting.html#gdnative-c) ~~~ pjmlp Given that Unreal only now added such support via [https://molecular- matters.com/products_livepp.html](https://molecular- matters.com/products_livepp.html) partnership, I wonder how Godot is actually doing it. ------ PinkMilkshake Nice one! Such a great project. Every time I go and have a play with Godot my mind is blown that the whole program is a single ~45MB executable. ------ pkalinowski Godot approach to game development with nodes is superior to other solutions IMO. I think the biggest blocker for wider adoption is 3D performance and Inverse Kinematics now. Without it, nobody will ever produce high profile game on Godot. ~~~ gouh Yes, if you come from Unity like me you will find Godot amazingly intuitive and clean compared to Unity. No more weird workflow, no more prefab. Just nodes in a tree and scenes. With Unity you have many features, a big asset store that allows you to very quickly prototype, the render engine is powerful, but the architecture & organization is just a massive mess. It's really the kind of editor were you can do everything because the dev added all the popular shiny features to make fancy trailers but nothing is planned & well organized, all features are just put one of top of another with no coherence. Not only the the architecture feels complicated but the editor itself is super heavy : mandatory Email & account, installation size of several GBs, etc. Godot has less tools and the asset store has almost nothing on it right now. The current render engine is not powerful but it is temporary, everything will get re-written with Vulkan to be on par with other engines. While it has not as many features as Unity, the foundations of Godot are really solid & clean, I think this will be a huge advantage on the long term ------ vanderZwan > _The WP also includes work to make the editor work on mobile browsers, such > as touch screen gestures, responsive UI, etc. This should also make it > possible for us to port the editor to Android and iOS natively to tweak your > projects on the go._ That sounds very ambitious, UI and UX wise. Wonder how that will turn out in practice ------ forkLding Used Godot 3.1 for a game project recently, really surprised at how good it is. ------ ggambetta FWIW, there's a semi-official Godot-SpatialOS integration by an Improbable engineer: [https://improbable.io/blog/godot-spatialos-and-engine- integr...](https://improbable.io/blog/godot-spatialos-and-engine-integration) ------ MordodeMaru So happy for these guys. Met them at GDC 2019 and their project is wondeba! ------ speps I was thinking "why not use bgfx?", thankfully it's already been discussed: [https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/19602](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/19602) However, the arguments against bgfx seem to amount to "I want to do it myself", a classic "not invented here" issue. EDIT: found this too [https://godotengine.org/article/godot-3-renderer-design- expl...](https://godotengine.org/article/godot-3-renderer-design-explained) > Added to that fact, Vulkan still has years to go until it's properly > supported in most desktop and mobile platforms, which makes it unattractive > to implement for us (as it means considerably more effort to write, debug > and maintain). And then they're talking about the Vulkan PI in TFA which probably won't be ready for some time too... ~~~ csdreamer7 > However, the arguments against bgfx seem to amount to "I want to do it > myself", a classic "not invented here" issue. I disagree. It has been 9 months since that post. bgfx still does not list support for Vulkan. They already implemented DX12 and Metal. They still claim support for Windows XP and Vista. Godot says it will get Vulkan support in 3.2 which comes out in a few months. Otherwise they would have to wait and work on bgfx to get it working. DX9, XP, Vista, feels like a lot of baggage for what Godot is right now. A very quick and easy to use game editor that easily deploys on both Win and Linux. Also, your edit links to a pretty outdated article (2017). See Godot's about face on Vulkan here: [https://godotengine.org/article/abandoning-gles3-vulkan- and-...](https://godotengine.org/article/abandoning-gles3-vulkan-and-gles2) > Vulkan was always a tempting alternative to solve them and to ensure we are > much safer from driver bugs (after all, this is what the API was intended > for). Still, the lack of support on macOS made it unappealing. Having to > write a Metal backend to support this OS is a lot of effort for a platform > not used very much. > in a completely unexpected turn of events, it seems Valve has found an > arrangement with the developers of MoltenVK (the commercial and proprietary > Vulkan over Metal wrapper), ported Dota 2 to it, and got it open sourced. > It seems to be a mostly complete Vulkan implementation that runs on macOS > and iOS. This pretty much lifts the only barrier we had for moving Godot to > it. ------ wastedhours Fantastic - whilst I need to run before I can walk with the dev I'm doing with it, increasing the focus on multiplayer work using web tech should make it easier to achieve some of the ideas that have been laying in notebooks for years. Congrats to the team! ------ krizzo This is great news. I recently just found out about this and have tried a few things with ease. I can see this going as the standard game Deb for open source if you don't want to or are unable to create your own engine / libraries. ------ cyborgx7 Godot is my game engine of choice. As a patron, I am now in very good company. ------ shmerl Godot is growing to be quite interesting. Hopefully they'll implement well parallelized Vulkan support in some near future. ~~~ ValleyOfTheMtns It's coming up. [https://godotengine.org/article/abandoning-gles3-vulkan- and-...](https://godotengine.org/article/abandoning-gles3-vulkan-and-gles2) ~~~ shmerl Yes, but hard to say how soon it will be implemented. ~~~ ValleyOfTheMtns Late reply here, but in a recent post Juan said that he would begin working on the Vulkan port in May. [https://godotengine.org/article/godot-32-will-get-new- audio-...](https://godotengine.org/article/godot-32-will-get-new-audio- features) (at the bottom) In the post I previously linked he said he expected the port to take a "couple of months", so we could expect it in any release made in the 3rd or 4th quarter this year, maybe as early as July? ------ sitzkrieg Godot is great and im glad they secured some funds they will put to good use. Right minds in the right place ------ harryfcallahan Great news! Love the PROJECT <3 ------ orliesaurus Godot is ABSOLUTELY great, especially if you are a python developer! Thank YOU! ------ p0nce Godot is a very impressive project.

Tim Cook Says Apple Is 'Very Committed' to the Mac and to 'Stay Tuned' - doener http://www.macrumors.com/2016/09/09/tim-cook-very-committed-mac-email/ ====== chmaynard Assuming this email is authentic, I think Cook is hinting that rumors of an October announcement are too optimistic. (I hope I'm wrong, because I'm impatiently waiting to purchase a new MacBook Pro.) ~~~ midnitewarrior Actions speak louder than words. If Apple were that committed to Mac, then it wouldn't be 3 years since new mbps were released. ~~~ DerekL Huh? There were updates to the MacBook Pro in March and May of 2015. Are you talking about the fact that the quad-core models are still using Haswell chips?

1Password and the Case of the XARA Bandit - mnem https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/10/15/1password-and-the-case-of-the-xara-bandit/ ====== manicdee Link is broken for me. Two seemingly related blog entries from Agile Bits: Discussion of the vulnerability — [https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/06/17/1password-inter- proces...](https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/06/17/1password-inter-process- communication-discussion/) Version of 1Password with increased security: [https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/10/15/1password-5-4-for- mac-...](https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/10/15/1password-5-4-for-mac-the- convenience-edition/)

Why cheap customers cost more - sgdesign http://sachagreif.com/why-cheap-customers-cost-more/ ====== patio11 For Appointment Reminder, approximate per-account customer support incidents per month. I've taken the liberty of scaling them to X, where X represents the number for the highest publicly available account plan. Personal ($9): 7X Professional ($29): 4X Small Business ($79): 3X Office ($199): X The character of the questions is also different at the various plan levels. Most common question for Office: "What's the timeframe on integrating this with ..." followed by "Our $TITLE would like a report saying $NEEDS, can you make that happen?" Most common question for Personal: "How do I schedule appointments?" followed by "The system is working exactly the way it says it does on the screen. Can you please tell me why that is happening? I thought it would work in a way completely opposite to the way described on the screen. It would be convenient if you could fix that. No, I didn't read the 'If you want this to work in the opposite fashion...' text on the screen to change that setting, I have more important things to do than worry about computers." Your mileage may vary. If I were doing the math based on phone calls waking me up in the middle of the night, the numbers get skewed due to one pathological customer in the $29 bucket, who has literally called me more than every other customer combined. P.S. I have fairly exact privileged information regarding this question at a handful of companies and anecdotal evidence from dozens of my software buddies. It is our universal experience that the support load for cheap/free customers crushes the support load for the higher plans, both on an absolute and per-customer basis. ~~~ zobzu But I bet you have many more $9 and $29 than $199 customers? I'm sure the equation still favors your theory, but I'm also sure by a lower number than what you'd like readers to believe. ~~~ csomar For Appointment Reminder, approximate _per-account customer_ support incidents per month. I've taken the liberty of scaling them to X, where X represents the number for the highest publicly available account plan. ~~~ ibotty you are certainly right with your scale, but i guess zobzu's point is, that your non-support costs (say: development) is mostly paid by your 9$ and 29$ customers (in absolute terms). so you cannot just get rid of every customer but your high paying ones. ~~~ joshuahedlund Good point. Of course it's possible that 7X is a cost that cancels out the revenue from those customers, in which case it would be better not to offer the option, but as long as it's not, it's still profitable to offer the plan. Depending on the ratios, the cheap customer bracket could even be more profitable (in absolute terms, as you say). You just have to build the extra support cost into your pricing. $9 customer - $5 support = $4 per many customers $199 customer - $1 support = $198 per few customers ------ citricsquid I share the view, however: > So it’s not that cheap people require more support. It’s that people who > require more support are more likely to make their decision based on price > alone. What evidence is there of this? Surely if you have a plan for $10, $50 and $100 you're going to have more customers at the $10 price point simply because it's so cheap and therefore more support will go to people at that price point. Has anyone even actually released any sort of statistical analysis of price points and support taking into account the pricing, total customers and the amount they use the product? Also who the price point is aimed at matters. For example if your product has a $10 price plan aimed at individuals and a $50 price plan aimed at businesses you could see the $10 price plan requiring more support (on average) simply because the personal users use the product more actively, not because they're paying less. I as a customer won't pay $50/m if your $10/m plan suits my needs. ~~~ sgdesign I don't have evidence, sorry. It's just something I've heard repeated often by many different people. Maybe Patio11 can chime in? ~~~ sequoia I think the gist of the post is intriguing but I felt that there were too many of these seemingly thin-air sourced assertions for me to take it without a grain of salt. I think a lot of the stuff could be true and it makes sense to me, but my intuition on such complex topics as human behavior is frequently wrong, so I don't trust it w/o supporting evidence. :) ~~~ sgdesign You should definitely take it with a grain of salt! I'm not so much saying "this is the way it is", as "this is the way it could be". ------ jmitcheson I remember reading somewhere about a theory that people who pay more for a service end up committing more time and energy into learning it, because it seems more important to them. If you signed up for a $50/mo service, you would probably feel pretty special about it and possibly spend a few hours learning. If you paid $5/mo you would probably skip through all the documentation as fast as possible, race into trying something out, and upon encountering a problem would probably fire off a support request without searching (hey you're a paying customer now, right?) Of course none of the above is terribly scientific.. but I thought it post- worthy anyway. ------ gridspy My take on this was actually that many high end customers 1\. Trial / buy at the lowest possible price point 2\. Ask lots of annoying questions 3\. Master the system 4\. (finally) move to a higher price bracket 5\. Understand the system and stop hassling support. Perhaps it would be worth correlating support requests with the age of the account and seeing if that was a better predictor of support burden than the price plan. ~~~ patio11 It is the opposite of the truth that high-end customers start at the cheapest plan and move up. High-end customers start at the most expensive plan and stay forever. They will frequently not downgrade even if they have a multi-month dry spell in using the software because e.g. $250 a month is not a meaningful amount of money for them. Free accounts upgrade to premium accounts essentially never. (1% ~ 2% is quite common.) Cheapo-plans upgrade to higher plans very, very rarely. For Appointment Reminder, I've had _one_ person ever transition from Personal ($9) to something higher and then actually pay for a month of it. ~~~ nl This is fair, but it's worth pointing out that freenium-type plans _can_ be designed to optimize for the upgrade. For example, I'd imagine the Dropbox upgrade rate is much higher than for other apps because people will naturally grow into needing it. ~~~ bartonfink Sure, but with Dropbox you aren't getting additional functionality - you're just getting more of the same. ~~~ nl Yeah, but that is because of deliberate choices on their part. An alternative product model for Dropbox would be to partition the product on one or more features. Something like the ability to share files is an obvious choice, as is things like selective sync. In retrospect it seems obvious to give all the features to everyone, give away a base level of storage and sell storage upgrades. Before anyone says _who'd be stupid enough to sell backup software any other way_ look at things like Norton Backup[1], where the license is limited on both the number of computers you can install it on _and_ the size of online storage available. Good ideas often are obvious in retrospect... [1] [http://buy.norton.com/mf/productDetails/listPriceGroupId/0/p...](http://buy.norton.com/mf/productDetails/listPriceGroupId/0/productSkuCode/20052318/priceGroupId/1000000000000000584/slotNo/-1/) ------ bambax The "dummy" concept is really interesting. It dwells in "information asymmetry"; markets where sellers know more than buyers tend to not function properly (shameless plug: I have written about this here <http://blog.medusis.com/are-you-a-lemon>). Now, what can a given small company do about it? I think the two opposite strategies of trying to "drive away dummies" or "embrace them" are valid; what isn't as effective is trying to serve both dummies and experts by offering plans with wildly different pricing. You probably need to make a choice: choose a positioning in either the "dummies" or "expert" space and serve only this population. ~~~ sgdesign Funny, I thought about illustrating the post with 30 Rock's Liz Lemon (as a famous "dummy") but thought people wouldn't get the reference. But after reading about this "Lemon Effect", I'm starting to think maybe her name is not a coincidence… ------ gscott Going above and beyond on end user self-service support helps. 1\. Mouseover help on every input field 2\. Searchable help system with screen captures, it has to be comprehensive. 3\. Video help, Camtasia style walk throughs. Your users are not dummies. They need support, on the feature they are using, when they are using it. You can either provide that support self-service or you can provide it via email/phone. One is far easier for the user (self- service) and the other is much harder on you (answer emails on how to use basic functionality). I ran a free crm system for about 10 years, it took refining how each feature worked and creating all of the different ways of self-service support but I was able to get technical support down to 1 question per week. That was with about 1,200 unique daily users... users who would be in the system all day because they had all of their calendars, files, contacts, and other things online in the system. They didn't want to wait for support, they wanted the answer right away and I made sure they could get it without contacting me. Average Joe user, he looks at this and is just guessing: [https://dmhx3adjqsy1o.cloudfront.net/assets/marketing/shots/...](https://dmhx3adjqsy1o.cloudfront.net/assets/marketing/shots/1-b954de2035a66bb26761228df51989a9.jpg) I see a support link but I bet that link goes to a generic support page and not support for that page in particular. So now the user has to jump through hoops to find support and might give up. The user needs to understand the the benefit (of each admin page), what the page is doing, some ideas of how to read the data, and get the most out of it. There can be no assumptions that the user knows anything... they are going to have to be taught and you want that done by self-learning. The user signed up because of the top 1/3rd of the homepage with the marketing talk. Just because they sign up doesn't mean they fully understand the system, how to use it, and how to dig deep into each page and get the benefits. ~~~ sgdesign Can I ask how you made money if the CRM was free? ~~~ gscott Sadly I was great at making things easy to use, I was great at making new features, I had no problems getting into things like Twiistup and being nominated for the Webware 100, etc... but making money I am not good at. For example I had a two year head start on Basecamp and they are living high on the hog and I am just barely living :) I had to just abandon the crm (I just cut off the signups but all of the old users are on it still using it) and I am going in a new direction. ~~~ ovi256 Have you tried simply charging for it ? Put in a pricing grid with the corresponding app restrictions. Of course, grandfather in all existing user to a free tier with a generous grace period. The free tier may or may not accessible to new signups. Call it the "end of beta". Seriously, try it. You obviously are providing value to users. I'd love to hear from you on how it goes. ~~~ gscott I have been thinking about making everything super encrypted and charging $100 a month. I have had a number of defense contractors come and try it but not use it because I could see their data. Then I wouldn't need to upgrade the interface which is a bit aged. But I am burned out right now, maybe in 6 months. The current users, I hit them up for some donations but I attracted people who don't really want to pay. ------ casca With the masses of metrics being collected in all the lean startups, it would be spiffy if this assertion could be supported by something other than rampant speculation. This might feel true because a small number of customers generate the most support calls and the majority of customers are expected to be on the cheapest plans so you'd expect an overlap. ~~~ jusben1369 One of the fascinating parts of true startups for many people is that there aren't concrete definitive answers. Rampant speculation is a fun exercise that can lead you to discoveries that you never would have found if you didn't start down that path. Embrace the rampant. ~~~ ktizo _Embrace the rampant_ But be very careful of doing so in public lest you fall foul of indecency laws. ------ rmATinnovafy This is just a sympton of the real problem. A fair amount of startups (and other small businesses) don't have a clue about who their average customer is. They go and build their MVP without ever thinking about how the sell the darn thing. After the code is written they set out to find someone who will pay for their product. This just leads to them creating some ridiculous pricing schemes that will never prove to be sustainable. They think this is some sort of loss-leader strategy, but its not. Loss-leaders must actually turn a profit to be considered as such. Add in the highly used but seldomnly tested freemium model, and what you get is a bunch of people who are great at writing code, but are pretty bad at selling. And how can you improve your selling skills if you don't even know who you are selling to? Now, Sacha does make a good point. Cheap people are a pain in the behind to deal with. They have an overgrown sense of entitlement, most of the time they are rude, and will nickel and dime you till death. But you know whose fault is that? Yours. You did not do your homework. Cheap people are a market, and they are profitable if you know how to work them. The minute you offer them support, the minute they will treat you like their personal punching bag. Pricing yourself out of the "cheap zone" is the best strategy you can have if your product is not aimed at them. I would not call these people dummies either. They are smart. In fact, they will argue and nitpick every little technical detail so much that it will leave you thinking if you are the dummy. These people know their stuff. For them this is not only a game but a way of life. You cannot educate them. They will not listen. Anything you do will seem like an attempt to raise your prices. How do they react? They double their complaining. Trying to model their behaviour will drive you crazy. One company that went through this is Pep Boys. They had an offer for a free oil change with any other service. Cheap people started taking their busted old cars to them. The cheap-o's would buy the lowest priced service that would give them the free oil change. Then come back to complain about unrelated problems. They would even go as far as suing Pep Boys for damages not related to the services performed. But small claims courts always sided with the poor abused customer. Cheap-o's actually made money on this. Go figure. After years of this, Pep Boys finally saw the light and discontinued the practice. But it doesn't stop there. What did cheap-o's do? They complained to corporate HQ about the change. Another point Sacha makes is that people who pay more ask for less support. Do you know why? Because they are your target customer. They ask for less support because they need the product, and trust you. They know that if something goes wrong you will be there to fix it. They show their trust in you by paying more. Its so simple. They also use your product as intended. And because your prodcut worked, no complaints arised. When people give you money they are not only buying the product, but they are placing their trust on you. Cheap-o's don't trust anybody. So they complain until they get their moneys worth (in the mind). Your target customer will be glad everything worked out, and will just be silently happy. I'm going to copy and paste part of the conclusion to make a point. _No matter which strategy you choose, remember to consider the impact pricing will have on your customer base and your support costs. For example, a good strategy might be to start off with high prices, and then only lower them once you’re ready to scale your support infrastructure._ I'm sorry Sacha, but you cannot start with high prices and then lower them. You start with fair prices and then raise them. If your support infrastructure requires higher costs, but your target customer cannot afford it, then the problem began when you chose to build your product. You need to figure out the costs of scaling before even starting. No need to be precise either, you can just make an estimate. Just make sure to err on the high side. I would also say that pricing does not impact the customer base. It is the other way around. The customer base (or your average customer) is the key metric to set the price. Not your costs, but the customers. Companies in the make-up industry know this. Most of the makeup out there is made by the same companies. The big difference is the customer they target. You can pick the same basic product from two different brands, and the prices will be very different. In some cases even downright insulting. What does a $200 lipstick have that a $10 one does not? A customer that will pay the price. Sacha, good call on getting this point out in the open. This stuff needs to be discussed more by startups and hackers. ~~~ dmitri1981 > What does a $200 lipstick have that a $10 one does not? A friend of mine used to work in a cosmetics factory and explained that the main difference between a cheap and an expensive lipstick is that the expensive version makes a satisfying click when you put the lid on. ~~~ rmATinnovafy Yes, that is true. Not only the click, but the mechanism to bring out the actual lipstick usually requires more effort. ------ GigabyteCoin "I think cheap plans disproportionately attract a special category of users: dummies." I don't think they are "dummies". They are simply less invested in your venture than the higher paying individuals, and thus read less of your FAQ and spend less time getting to know your website before making a purchase. I run a SaaS, just lowered the minimum payment to $5 the other day, noticed a large influx of questions to my inbox as a result, and deduced the above. Somebody who comes along and deposits $100 into my service has probably been reading the FAQ for a few days, using my free trial, and really getting into/really liking my website and service. The person who comes along, see's "backlinks for $5!" and immediately makes the payment without using the free trial obviously doesn't know or care as much about my website as much as the guy who just deposited $100. Most every question I receive to my inbox is from a non paying customer or somebody who has deposited $5. It's annoying, but I think it's a necessity for my business. Sales have gone up across the board and it's not a bad tradeoff if you ask me. $5 customers do turn into $100 ones eventually. ------ ericfrenkiel "Cheap" is really a values judgment by the author - a business should consider every customer valuable. If the customer is 'cheap' for the amount of effort/support, then the product/service is priced too low. If competing on price, support should reflect the model, i.e. self-serve methodologies. Especially for digital products/services which have essentially zero marginal cost, the customer is really paying for your time. If customers are overloading support channels, it probably means the product is priced too low and the price curve should be accordingly adjusted to lower the number of paying customers while maintaining profits. Of course, the product/service can have an artificially low price point to encourage eventual upsell/cross-selling opportunities, but all the more reason to have a measured funnel before losing most of your time to support. ~~~ sgdesign Good points. But what I meant by "cheap" is "customers who choose the lowest price point", not "customers who have less value". Although it seems uncommon, it's very possible that the lowest price point would also be the most profitable. So "paying less" != "less valuable". ------ rs The "dummies" reasoning seems pretty sound. But I've got two comments on the "costs" which have to be factored in to the "total cost" and decide whether "cheap customers really do cost more": 1) Costs should really be calculated relative to your margins. I.e. I would hazard a guess (due to economies of scale) your cheapest price plan would have higher margins than your larger price plans. 2) The actual cost of support issues - I've found (running xp-dev.com, which mind you, should really not have that many "dummies") that while the cheapest customers do submit more support requests, these requests tend to take much quicker in resolving, than say the larger customers. So, I think its not as easy as saying "Cheap customers cost more". I think its better to say "cheap customers request more support" Just a thought ... ------ jakejake I'm sure it has something to do with the types of services that might be offered for free as well. Higher priced services are generally more in the domain of business customers who are likely to appreciate how much work goes into a quality product or service. Free services may apply to either, but you're going to also get customers who are not really in business yet and they may have unrealistic expectations. I think of myself when I was younger and I thought of all companies as faceless corporations, rather than actual people just trying to provide a good service. ------ crosh Chinese menus should only be offered when you are trying to further segment your core market, not to try and create a market. A significant issue for companies is not identifying the true costs of serving specific types of customers. Those that require many additional resources (that you are not charging for), particularly for a SAAS product, should be respectfully cut. Sometimes it is cheaper to not serve a client and not have some revenue come in than to serve those that are resource sucks and pull your time/focus away from your primary market. ------ btipling It's a pretty decent article but: > Now being a dummy is not the same thing as being dumb. ... I think if I had found myself about to write the sentence above I would try to find a better adjective and not post something this silly. ~~~ sgdesign That's not a very constructive comment. What's silly about it? ~~~ ableal <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dummy>: "Origin of DUMMY 1dumb + 4-y First Known Use: 1598" (GP is right, the phrase is clunky and distracts the reader.) ------ lsc Huh. My experience is the opposite. I mean, the smallest plan gets a lot of questions, but that is because, with the default install I give you, it just doesn't work very well (which is why I make ordering it... harder. I guess it was kinda a joke, mostly 'cause I like the feel of the five dollar price point; irrational, but it ended up working out quite well[1]) My second smallest plan (that's all of a dollar more with twice the ram) is pretty quiet, as are the 256 and 512 plans. Really, I think it's a matter of setting expectations, and then sticking to your guns when people want more support than you are selling. "If the service is unsuitable for your needs, I can cancel your account and give you your last month's payment back" - most people, especially on the low end, seem to find this attitude acceptable. It's really important, I think, to make sure that you don't treat your difficult customers better than your easy customers... I don't think I'm 100% on this yet, but I think it's super important. You choose your customers; if you give better service to people that are hard to deal with than the quiet easy customers, what sort of customer do you think you will end up with? That's one of the reasons I'm really generous with the 'if you want to no longer be my customer, I can give you back your last month' - I also try really hard in the case of outages that if I give anyone a credit, I give all effected customers credit. I find that the smaller customers are much more accepting of my "I handle the (virtual) hardware, you handle beyond that" support model; usually it's the higher dollar customers that keep coming back wanting me to tune their apache config or re-install the os. I mean, they can do all those things (at least if they could do all those things on a dedicated server with a boot-cd in the cd- rom drive.) The larger customers are also (quite rightly, I think) far more likely to make noise when disk I/O is suboptimal. I mean, to be fair, it is a problem. (I do not know if it's a worse problem with me than with other providers; I doubt it. We're all using pretty similar hardware. I do know that it is a big problem with shared 7200rpm disk in general. Disk shares poorly.) But the smaller dollar customers? they don't complain nearly as often as my high dollar customers; if you are using it as a shell replacement, a little disk latency just isn't that big of a deal; I mean, ram is cheap enough that a whole lot of stuff can be stuck in pagecache, and that's way faster than the fastest disk. But if you are running a fifty gigabyte MySQL database that is under heavy use? well, perhaps a virtual environment is not the best place to put it. I also have a much higher margin (cost of goods sold, anyhow) on the small guests; I charge $1 per 64MiB ram plus $4/account/month, so the total cost per megabyte drops pretty sharply with volume. When I started, my under $10 VPSs were unbeatable deals; at this point, my cost per megabyte ram is still pretty competitive for my larger guests, but I'm getting overtaken on the low end, so I think it's time for me to drop prices and/or increase resources on the small guests. I'm not sure what I'll do with that yet, but I do know I need to do something. I feel like that used to be /my/ market and I want it back. [1]news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3865250 ~~~ ibotty i guess you make it pretty clear that you only serve people who know their stuff in your cheap offerings. that is a different audience than a "send email cards" audience would be. ~~~ lsc well, yeah; I'm going for people that know how to use the product I'm selling, and that understand the line I'm drawing between what I handle and what they handle. Without that strong line between my responsibility and yours, every support question becomes a negotiation; finding people that are both good at negotiation and good technically is extremely difficult, at least without spending just gobs of money. But the important bit, I think, is that I'm concisely explaining "my product does X" to a certain group, then I'm attempting to exclusively market to that group. I don't know how you would do that with a email card sending service, but I bet that if you figured out how to do that, the "concisely explain to a certain group what exactly your product does and does not do, then market exclusively to that group" process would lower support costs, by reducing the number of people expecting non-standard services. ------ famousactress Woah. I stopped reading at "Patrick McKenzie’s podcast" (but Instapaper'd for later, promise). I had no idea, but am thrilled and off to iTunes... ~~~ patio11 I have not organized myself to getting it into iTunes yet, but I think you can import <http://www.kalzumeus.com/category/podcasts/feed/> and that will work. (Worked for me, but can't read you the buttons you have to push since they're in Japanese. Alt-A, P, copy/paste?) ~~~ joshuacc In iTunes, just click the Advanced menu, click Subscribe to Podcast, and paste the RSS feed url into the box. ~~~ famousactress Perfect, thanks!! ------ clickzilla How about not including support for the cheapest price plan? ------ billpatrianakos The reason that the ones who make their decisions based on price alone require more support isn't always due to the fact that they're dummies. The article doesn't really give too clear a definition of support here. It can mean honest to goodness help required or it could mean complaints and demands (often veiled as questions). People who pay the least simply don't value the product as much. They're not willing to put in the time required to learn how to really work it and they're always the first to complain that the one feature just out of their chosen plan should be included. Their lack of perceived value for the service isn't always attributable to price alone either. The fact that they chose the cheapest usually means that they're either just plain cheap or they don't understand how valuable what they're getting is to begin with which leads to the, acting like dummies and being demanding. Now, when I say value in this case I don't mean money. I'm talking about their perception of how useful the product theyre getting is. Besides that minor clarification I totally back this up. The higher priced item will always have more features and attract people who know the value of those features because they're already educated about their benefits most likely because they've used similar solutions before. ~~~ sgdesign That may be true as well, but I feel like it's easy to resort to blaming the customer as "cheap" or "demanding". Again this is all speculation, but I think the fact someone is ready to pay for your product _at all_ already means they value it a lot. ------ powertower > when you offer multiple plans for a service, the cheapest plan’s customers > tends to require the most support. True in my experience. > So it’s not that cheap people require more support. It’s that people who > require more support are more likely to make their decision based on price > alone. The reason is simple. Cheapest plans attract people who are just starting out and don't know what they are doing. And in turn those plans attract them because they don't _require_ the greater X or Y or Z of the more expensive plans. They're not at that point yet. ~~~ klodolph > The reason is simple. Cheapest plans attract people who are just starting > out and don't know what they are doing. This sounds like you are agreeing, not disagreeing.

Joe the office mate - abecedarius https://github.com/lukego/blog/issues/32 ====== apo > Joe wrote amazingly simple programs and he did so in a peculiar way. First > he wrote down the program any old way just to get it out of his head. Then > once it worked he would then immediately create a new directory program2 and > write it again. He would repeat this process five or six times (program5, > program6, ...) and each time he would understand the problem a little better > and sense which parts of the program were essential enough to re-type. He > thought this was the most natural thing in the world: of course you throw > away the first few implementations, you didn't understand the problem when > you wrote those! I thought I was the only one who did that. ~~~ kabdib Good code isn't written, it's re-written. It is scary when something "works the first time", because it probably doesn't. ~~~ erikpukinskis There's different ways to re-write though. I tend to assume I couldn't come up with the right design if I tried. So I will leave my naive implementation in place until USE shows me a bug or a new feature and then that IMPLEMENTATION shows me where my architecture is clunky, and how to fix the original thing. Over time, everything important gets a full rewrite or four, but only piece by piece. Generally I assume in an implementation vacuum the long term spec isn't even well defined so I would never just rewrite something immediately. Sometimes if a module proves difficult to amend I will start over from scratch. But usually by then I have tests and use cases I am confident in. I love the idea of people doing these rewrite series though... not trying to be evangelical. Just describing a different kind of rewrite. ~~~ kabdib Back when rocks were young, one of my hobbies was writing assemblers because the ones available were generally terrible. My first few attempts were pretty bad. The fifth or sixth assembler that I wrote was commercial quality; it was fast, had macros, supported most of the different microprocessors that our platform had, and became widely used. It's been forked and is still in active development today, 35 years later. I'm still proud of it. But those first efforts were indeed awful, and those were preceded by even more false starts; it took 2-3 years of iteration [not full time!] to get to something that was good. (Simple assemblers are, well, simple. But if you're in an industry where it's common to write a _ton_ of assembly -- like the early gaming industry was -- you start gauging assemblers by the creature comforts they provide, such as a decent macro capability, cross-reference and listing support, performance, and support for chip manufacturer assembly syntax). ~~~ erikpukinskis I've been trying to build a web-based IDE for more than 10 years. The first one was a PHP script that had write access to change the files in its own directory. I've started over completely, at least 6 times, trying entire new languages, entire new feature sets, entire new hosting paradigms. Each time I try again, I get closer to something professional. Each time the hacks get a little too messy and realize I'm out of my depth. But lately less and less changes with each rewrite. I am able to pull entire chunks of code in from a previous iteration and have them work well, with little modification. The process of writing software that's beyond one's ability is fascinating. ------ _hardwaregeek A little selfish of me, but I'm very sad I never got to meet him. Programming is in a rather unique state where most of the foundational people are kept alive in living memory. There's people who can recount working with Dijkstra, or Dennis Richie or Joe Armstrong. Heck, there's probably some people who can remember Von Neumann (Peter Lax?). I really hope we can keep these memories alive. There's nothing really comparable for other fields. Nobody alive today can remember working with Gauss or Riemann. This may be a gross exaggeration, but I believe we'll look back on programming during the mid to late 20th century like we do for physics in the early to mid 20th century. We'll marvel at the amount of talent alive at the same time. ~~~ shocks TIL Dijkstra died in 2002. I don't know why, but I always thought he was much older than that! ~~~ hombre_fatal Probably because he's cited with the frequency, authority, and timelessness of any major philosopher. ~~~ Stratoscope It's amusing to note that Dijkstra's most famous quote is something he never wrote. Dijkstra submitted a letter to the editor of the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (CACM) that he titled "A Case Against the Goto Statement". Niklaus Wirth was editor of CACM at the time, and he changed the title to the infamous "Go To Statement Considered Harmful". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful) Here's the story in Dijkstra's own hand (scroll to the last page of the PDF): [http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd13xx/EWD1308.PDF](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd13xx/EWD1308.PDF) This is a good reminder that when you read an article with a clickbaity title, don't blame the author, blame the editor. ------ filleokus One thing I've thought about a lot when people like Joe pass away is that it's somewhat sad that they never are able to receive all the appreciation people give after they are gone. In a parallel culture timeline it is easy to imagine the announcement of someone soon to die (when possible of course), and all these kind words of appreciation from strangers being passed on to the one dying. On the other hand, I guess that the time is better spent with close family, but regardless, I hope that he somewhat understood his importance to so many people all over the world. ~~~ pbourke This seemed to happen with Gord Downie of the Canadian band The Tragically Hip. He was given a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer, but had the energy for a cross-Canada tour a few months later. He was much loved across the country, and though the band’s arena-sellout days were mostly behind them, they blew the doors off with sold out shows at the country’s top venues, culminating in a nationally-televised concert. I’ve always marveled that he got the chance to have this touching denouement to his career, and I’m glad he did. And I’m very thankful that I managed to see them in Vancouver. ~~~ revvx Similar thing happened to Wilko Johnson, guitar player in Dr. Feelgood and actor in Game of Thrones. But in the end he surprisingly ended up surviving his terminal cancer, thanks to his doctors. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilko_Johnson#Cancer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilko_Johnson#Cancer) ------ snazz I can’t say I’ve ever seen someone use an issue tracker as a blog before, but it does make sorting the posts dead easy. ~~~ giancarlostoro I wish he would of called it an e-zine. Then "Issues" would match the use case... Bring e-zines back dang it! _raises wrinkly millennial fist_ ~~~ giancarlostoro A fun side effect of his approach is you can see people who forked off the idea, there's at least two people blogging using this format as well: [https://github.com/lukego/blog/network/members](https://github.com/lukego/blog/network/members) ------ redleggedfrog I hope when I die I'll be worthy enough to ascend to whatever is the programmer Valhalla and I'll see Joe there, amongst the other greats. I have never written a line of Enlang, but as I've seen the advantages of loading binaries at run-time as swappable components I get an inkling of the beauty of the idea. It's not near so easy in C# as it appears to be in Erlang. Also, I nominate the name of programmer Valhalla to be called "Greenfield." ------ toomuchtodo If anyone related to Joe has access to his home directory and knows someone managing his estate who could grant a copyright release, I'd be interested in adding it to the Internet Archive (out of respect). Email in profile. ~~~ saagarjha I’d be very cautious as to what from my home directory I’d be ok with going online, even after I died. Much of the material might still have relevance to others, and they might not want it published… ~~~ sleepychu > _Joe 's home directory was a treasure trove of new and old ideas…This was > all openly shared over NFS and exciting to explore._ Agreed but I suspect that this home directory as exposed on the NFS might be appropriate. ------ codr7 Sounds a lot like the stories I've heard about other software legends, or any kind of legends really. Sadly there aren't many places left with enough margin for creativity, it needs space and comes without guarantees. ------ djhworld I've only seen glimpses of this great man from his conference talks on YouTube, but he came across as a very intelligent, relatable and humble person. It's a great loss. ------ smnplk I can't believe he died. What a loss.

Brand/Marketing Advice Available - Reformed Ad Guy - tdslj Creative Director for top-5 global digital ad agency based in SF offering marketing advice to startups. First session is free. If you like what you get, we can discuss how to take things from there. My background: First, ten years of traditional, madison avenue type agencies in the USA, Netherlands and UK. Now deeply involved in digital, social and mobile marketing for Very Big Brands that you have heard of.<p>I have to be coy as I have a day job. But if this ends up being interesting, I might just leave it.<p>To be clear, I have little to no Valley experience. I don't know any VC's. But I'm smart,I've created and planned brand launches and ad campaign for beers, cars, shoes, software and even razor blades for chrissakes. I'm brand-literate and I get technology. (most of it at least. I still can't figure out what Hadoop is)<p>Interested parties should reach out to @reformedadguy ====== tirrellp Im interested. I reached out to you via twitter.

How to Design and Persist Aggregates – Domain-Driven Design with TypeScript - stemmlerjs https://khalilstemmler.com/articles/typescript-domain-driven-design/aggregate-design-persistence/ ====== bellsandwhis Not related to the article (which is great), but I love the site design. OP should look into making this a Gatsby Theme.

HN Being Fair - unimpressive https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=%22to+be+fair%22 ====== niggler To be fair, "to be fair" is a common phrase that many of us use in face-to- face conversation ~~~ unimpressive It is, I just find these little quirks in language fascinating.

Have an idea for an IPhone Game, Looking for other developers - dottertrotter If anyone has some experience in IPhone development and has some spare time, I have an idea for a game that takes advantage of the IPhone's unique user controls and should be fairly simple to build.<p>I am a developer, but have no experience in the apple world so I am looking to work to with someone on my first app.<p>For the game I can provide the idea, the art, and programming.<p>If you are interested, my email address is bradleyt.marsh at gmail.<p>I will of course provide a much more complete outline of the game to those that are interested. ====== bozone888 Well we do have engineering resources on iphone, and have been doing iphone app dev for quite some time. Here's what we've done and issues we're having: (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=466840>). Check out our site for more info: www.BokanTech.com/iphone/

Google to dumb down Android search to escape Apple's patent - vibrunazo http://phandroid.com/2012/07/03/galaxy-nexus-denied-temporary-ban-lift-samsung-and-google-working-on-software-patch/ ====== Blumenkohl I, disagree with Apple's stance on this issue, but at the same time I would be interested in hearing a valid argument for the continuous stream of comments around the web that essentially say: "Apple is destroying innovation through its Android lawsuits." This is, as far as any rational argument is concerned, false. Innovation refers to the process by which something is rendered more effective by changing or being different. If we accept this definition, Apple is driving innovation through its aggressive pursuit of its patents. They are forcing competitors to do things different, to change, in order to compete. That's innovation. What I think people actually mean to say is Apple is destroying IMPROVEMENT via its aggressive use of patents. There is a subtle and profound difference between innovation and improvement. ~~~ fieryscribe How would you define "improvement" if not rendering something more effective by changing it or making it different? In this particular case, search on Android is being made more effective by searching contacts and apps. As Steve Jobs said, "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." They just want to stop everyone else from doing it too. ------ swang This is why we can't have nice things. Pretty ridiculous that this is happening. ------ bookwormAT I wonder if there will be a different version of Google's search app for the US, or even a different ROM? I am really sorry for you guys in the US, but I hope not all of us have to share this downgrade with you.

Mint.com for Networking - dfuhriman http://signup.xfluential.com ====== wushupork I would have been more inclined to provide my email if I knew or saw more about the product. I understand people want to do customer development and such but I think I have launch rock fatigue. Without more info this feels too much like testing out an idea to see if people even care. ~~~ dfuhriman I am part of this team. We are already funded and building the product right now. I understand the concerns about just testing out an idea. But we will be rolling out the launch in the next couple of months. ~~~ QuantumGood Thanks for replying. After registering, a link to "blog" appears, but there is no blog. Will there be? And if so, when? Is there anywhere else to find information about xfluential beyond your 207-character comment above? I see no status updates on Facebook nor tweets on Twitter. ~~~ dfuhriman Yes, we will begin posting on the blog in the next couple of weeks. Plan on sending out updates to the emails that register for updates. These updates will also include at times screen shots and additional information on the feature set. ------ miles_matthias This is a subject that nerdy hackers could always use help with. This launching page doesn't say much about the actual product though.

Show HN: c4bot – Connect Four Chatbot - kenrick95 https://github.com/kenrick95/c4bot ====== nstart This was actually a lot of fun. Walking through the code to learn more about it :) . ~~~ kenrick95 Glad that you've enjoyed it :) I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.

From Zero to React - lajr https://www.liamross.me/from-zero-to-react/ ====== darkruby501 Thanks, this was helpful! ------ metoprolol Does anyone have any good intro posts to redux? Something like the above parent that’s easy to read trough casually for an engineer who won’t be using redux in the workplace ~~~ acemarke Hi, I'm a Redux maintainer. Please see my suggested resources for learning Redux: [https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/12/blogged-answers- le...](https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/12/blogged-answers-learn-redux/) [https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux- links](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links) Also, FYI, we do also have plans to heavily revamp our docs in the near future as well.

There’s no money in 3D printing - iamwil http://voxelfab.com/blog/2013/01/theres-no-money-in-3d-printing/ ====== evincarofautumn I use the arrow keys to scroll when reading web pages. This site uses JavaScript to add behaviour to the arrow keys for a reason I cannot fathom. Web developers, please avoid JavaScript at all costs. Unless you know precisely what you are doing, you will only mess up a user’s experience. As for the actual article, this: “3D printing will be poised to suck the value out of manufacturing.” Sounds like a good thing to me. If we make all our own jobs obsolete, then our economic model will have to change so that we don’t starve to death in the ensuing abundance and leisure. Of course, just because manufacturing and, say, agriculture can be done by automatons doesn’t mean they _should_ be. Even if some can’t fathom it, a lot of people genuinely enjoy getting their hands dirty. Will they be allowed to farm for pleasure when the robots do all the necessary farming? ~~~ mistercow Another annoying "feature" of the page is that ctrl-f is overridden to take you to their FeedBurner page. Why that would ever need a keyboard shortcut is beyond me, but assigning it to ctrl-f is just crazy. ~~~ PJones And it breaks the back button when it does it. ------ columbo <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needful_Things> I see the future of 3d printing as the golden era of the service industry. I want a semi-portable laptop with a mechanical keyboard and e-ink display. This would be my ideal rugged travel laptop for doing work. I really like how e-ink looks when I write code and I like the clickity-clackity of my mechanical keyboard. But I don't want this to be some hodge-podge mixture of almost-fitting components. It should open and shut like a car door, not a cardboard box. I also have a strange clothing size, everyone does for that matter. Maybe I'm a 1/4 inch between the sizes. My shoes never fit correctly and my hats are either too tight or too loose. I also want to design my house in a specific way. Right now my bookshelves end a foot before the wall when I would really like them flush. The same for my couch, coffee table and television. I also want something to hold all of my daughter's drawings, a nice ornate book with her name engraved on it, maybe I'll even pay someone to take some of her drawings and carve them into the book itself. How many wants do people have that can be serviced when you are willing to take someone with talent (a 3d designer) and a universal making machine? My dream e-ink laptop is worth $2000 to me, the parts are probably in the ballpark of $250, that leaves a nice profit for the designer. My little book for my daughters drawings would be worth a few hundred. If all you can do is print out forks the maximum amount of money you can buy is related specifically to the number of forks you can sell. However, if you can build the random things that people want that they cannot find in stores, well you'll have a very sustainable business on your hands. ~~~ smokel A downside of customizing products is that you have to think about and describe what you actually want. Personally, I would prefer somewhat less freedom of choice, and more free time :) An interesting read might be "The Paradox of Choice" by Barry Schwartz (2004). ~~~ rogerbinns You are assuming customisation remains static. One solution I can think of is a site (eg bestforks.com) that has 2 fork choices - you pick one and you are done. (The web means that you can show different catalogues to each user.) Another solution is that they figure out the customisations automatically. For example stand in your room (eg kitchen) and take panoramic photo/video. Based on that it is possible to figure out appropriate colours, sizes and other design criteria (eg sleek/simple versus ornate). Again it can offer you one or two right choices. Yet another brings people back into the process. You have a "design/customisation consultant" and they make the choices/customisation for you. ------ jivatmanx "Just a little heads up. In the long run there is no money in 3D printing." It's a basic principle of economics that all mature, competitive market segments have 0 profit. I thought this was common knowledge. The generalized nature of 3D printing is what can/will make it so competitive, as opposed to manufacturing equipment which is very specialized to a specific industry, and therefore much more likely to be monopolized by a single company. ------ dan-k This article is poorly thought out and has little-to-no conception of the difference between theory and reality. For example, many things cannot be made in smaller pieces and then assembled, so size could become a huge barrier to adopting 3D printing for something like, say, construction. Not to mention the energy that such a machine would use. 3D printing will lead to lots of changes in design and democratization of production, I'm sure, but there's still a bigger picture that's completely absent from this article's consideration. ------ bradshaw1965 This... Well, theoretically such a machine could be worth billions but actually you’d probably sell a few to research institutes and then one to a commercial company and then it is game over for you. sure sounds like I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. I've got no predictions on the future world wide market for 3D printing, but big predictions on future tech are usually wrong. ~~~ kybernetikos Not really. He's not saying that there would only be a few of them deployed, he's saying that once you've deployed a few, those few will be used to make more, and you won't be able to sell yours for more than the cost of materials, since anyone who has already bought one from you can undercut you. I think this will not be a real problem for a really long time, but it's actually an audacious vision rather than a too limited one. ~~~ bradshaw1965 You're correct in the quote being the inverse in intent. It's still a big call on a nascent tech. Big calls on nascent tech tend to be wrong. ------ zhouyisu There's no money in 3D printing, and also, no money in everything since everything can be made by this Universal Making Machine. This article's argument is nonsense. If the Universal Making Machine is made, not there's no money but money can be abandoned. One can use this machine to get anything he want, so why we need money anyway? ~~~ evan_ Raw materials would still cost something, or at the very least electricity would cost something. Services would still cost something, and you can't print an internet. ~~~ waterlesscloud "you can't print an internet" Why not? ------ forgottenpaswrd I disagree completely. This is like saying that because mainframes were being replaced by personal computers, there was not going to be money with them, when in fact the opposite thing happened with Apple being one of the biggest companies in the world. Computers like the Rasperry Pi cost now $45 and are more powerful that million dollar IBM machines of the past. The same is going to happen with expensive industrial equipment like laser cutters, 3d printers or metal discharge model making tools as patents expire. Different quantities, different margins, but a business after all. ~~~ greggman I think the guy has a point but I agree it's premature. It's like saying their us no point in making printers for computers because eventually we'll be a mostly paperless society. His point seems correct that ultimately you'll just use the 3d printer you have to print another 3d printer. But that day is a long long way off. There's at least 10 or 20 years ahead for companies to make money selling 3d printers. ------ ukoki "There's no money in 3D printing" I'm skeptical. For example, developing seeds is another industry potentially vulnerable to the "customers could become the producers" dilemma but Monsanto is doing pretty well. Similarly you can use Microsoft products to download, crack and freely reproduce Microsoft products - but they're not doing too bad either. I wouldn't underestimate the combination of legislation, monopolies and/or powerful branding. All it would take is for your Acme 3D Printer to have its own a Acme 3D Template Store and a large market share. ~~~ amalag Monsanto is not a good comparison because they force you to buy seeds from them the next year. You are not allowed to collect seeds from the plants you grow and they will sue you. And our judicial system agrees with Monsanto because we think DNA is patentable. This will hit the supreme court in February. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which ruled that "once a grower, like Bowman, plants the commodity seeds containing Monsanto's Roundup Ready technology and the next generation of seed develops, the grower has created a newly infringing article." Learn more: [http://www.naturalnews.com/037589_monsanto_saving_seeds_farm...](http://www.naturalnews.com/037589_monsanto_saving_seeds_farmers.html#ixzz2H8Nfro7c) ------ Zenst I disagree with the articles conclusion. It does make some good points about costs and how a dedicated tool is better but if we just go back a little in time and look at laser printers and other types of home printing over using a comercial print shop and you see alot of parralels, ink cost being one that still holds with us today, even with `major` players in the feild. Another way to look at this is people today spend alot of money on craft tools and materials and we even have dedicated shopping channels for such products. Finaly I think if you look at the cost of lego brick and the respective volme of 3D ink, then I suspect you will see that 3D ink works out very comparable and cheaper in many area's. People spend a lot of money on Lego and with that alone the market for 3D printers has a place. Not saying rip of Lego bricks but that people like to play and create things and whilst Lego is targeted at children it still endures with many a adult. Initialy with the costs of a good printer that can use robust 3D ink we will see your local printers embacing the new avenue and many other outlets offering a 3D printing service. The home consumer market will grow, costs will drop but. As I said with the initial introduction of laser printers and other printing types, initial they were expensive, but only got better and cheaper and permuated into more purchsing budgets/needs over using your local print shop. With markets most people will work out the direction and then end up dooming it all as it does not happen as quickly as they can think about it. Markets are funny slow beasts that operate on various timelines and with new technology the initial market is the niche that opens the crack or not into larger markets. I certainly see a larger market given the ever expanding craft market and with the same insight into how laser printers started and ended up at, let alone coloured printing, which was many years ago the work of a dedicated print shop. ALso worth remembering that industry today has milling machines and flow-jet which will take a solid block of metal and turn it into your defined shape. 3D printing is not metal and with that is targeting different markets and we are a long way from the univeral replicator perception most seem to think 3D printing is. That is a long way off, heck how long has it taken to get the perfect monitor, close but still not there as a ideal. But they sell and with that the ability for somebody to print out a 3D object be it a chess set, replacement part for some broken plastic bit in a product that you can't replace without purching the entire module/section. Many DIY tasks would have a use for such an item, even customised plastic washers, so many usable area's even with todays technology. So that is why I disagree with the conclusions as they are based upon a ideal with todays limitations impossed and not taking into account printing technology adoption within markets historicaly, let alone the bleed over markets in craft, DIY and many more others will probably be aware of. For me the acid test is when you can print out a plate, knife and fork and use them to eat with practicaly and saftly as good as disposable cutterly today. Then we have a robust enough technology that consumers will start to embrace if the price is right. I also expect the 3D-ink's will follow inkjet prices, but the printers will carry a margin until the saturation is at the level which enables a large company to make enough margin on the ink over the printers. It will be when all printers end up offering more or less the same functionality at various price points at comparable levels to other manufacturers. ------ zachrose I thought the remark about Mexicans was rather tasteless. ------ wlievens This is all very theoretical, but makes no sense in reality. This guy should take a look at the complexity in manufacturing for instance an image sensor, and then think twice about his "universal maker". ~~~ cbennett haha, very much agree agree. his initial arguments about a 'universal printer' diluting the market in time seem to hold more water in the realm of hypothetical machines than real ones (for some reason the mental image of self-replicating Universal Turing Machines with a printing functionality came to mind :P) in reality, there a number of principles in the realm of material physics that might constrain a machine simply 'printing itself'. In the near and medium terms, 3D printers that transform 3D CAD renderings into smaller objects will command a real market niche. In the long term, we will be talking about molecular fabrication (matter compilers a la "Diamond Age")-- but that is a whole other ball game :p ~~~ wlievens Yes indeed. I work in the image sensor business (writing test software) and it surprises me when I hear that it's often times next to impossible for a sensor design to be reliably produced in _another fab_. ------ zeynalov I'm dentist. Dentists pay dental labors billions of dollars yearly to print their teeth. Did you hear about CAD/CAM teeth? We don't model teeth manually anymore, we use 3d printers instead. There are also other industries where 3d printers are used intensively. ------ pixl97 I guess that means there is only a market for one lathe[1] and one milling machine[2] since when you buy one, you can then make your own. Anyway, a universal machine maker would likely run of nano technology, and once we reach that level of technology, all bets are off. The game changes and suddenly a lot of businesses are buggy whip manufactures. [1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathe> [2}<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milling_machine> ------ digitalboss The money made to be made (and saved) is based off the prototypes of products created using 3D printing that are mocked up and tweaked, before the designs are handed over to a production line to mass produce. 3D printing has created a useful and affordable process for engineers/creatives/etc to mock up products that would've otherwise been very expensive to outsource, especially with the back and forth between vendors to modify designs. ------ RRRA I think we've already heard this type of argument about the world needing 3 computers or that the FOSS world is not going to make any money or ... come on... ------ jstultz It seems to me that the same logic could be used to argue that there is no money in software. I think we can all agree that's pretty bogus, right? ------ czbond The author's arguement makes grand leaps of logic that sound great - but won't hold up in the short term of the next 10 years. In 30 years, the price of such a service will become a commidity - like our ink jet printers today. The author uses language that could easily be used in the same vein as describing the creation of the Earth as a non-event. ------ DanBlake Rather silly article on many fronts. Not everyone has enough cash to get the machine. Those who do, can profit off their downpayment by renting or selling the goods it makes. To say that model wont turn a profit is silly. Its a rather old business model... (landlords, rentacenter, new car leasing, etc..) ------ justincormack There is a much more interesting set of scenarios about how 3D printing might work out economically here <http://jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures/> ------ pazimzadeh But you have to get the raw materials for somewhere. Who will be the Akamai of 3D printing? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akamai_Technologies> ------ dccoolgai That's like going back to 1971 and saying "there's no money in computers". ~~~ fixedd You can use SOFTWARE to copy SOFTWARE, so noone will make any money on it. ~~~ kybernetikos Yup. In the absence of government sanctioned monopolies, software _will_ tend towards free, and it's already amazing what software you can get for free. There'll always be niches, where people will make money creating bespoke software, but the kind of software that everyone uses will eventually be free, because once someone creates something free and sticks it on github, it doesn't get lost, it can only go in one direction - better. ~~~ forgottenpaswrd "because once someone creates something free and sticks it on github, it doesn't get lost, it can only go in one direction - better." Well, it could follow different directions, like "bloated", or like GNOME "better for us, but not for you", or "easier to maintain, but slower" ------ InternalRun So much cognitive dissonance in this thread... ------ frogpelt Don't we already have enough discarded plastic floating around the earth without giving the whole world access to their own miniature plastic manufacturing plant?

Google Zeitgeist 2012 - sethbannon http://www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012/#the-world ====== chrisacky Op op op op oppan. So, I was browsing through the source of the Zeitgeist pages (as you do), and I saw some pretty cool stuff. I started off by just wanting to know how the explore map was done [1] But then I saw #easter-egg in the source, and also easter-egg.css file being included. If you look at the very very bottom of the page on the right, you will see the Google colors. Hover over that for a Gangnam dancing character[2]. [1] : http://www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012/#explore [2] : http://www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012/#maia-signature (Easter Egg Here) I just made a JS Fiddle and posted a new submission on HN. <http://jsfiddle.net/Layke/7hjTC/show/> <\--- View the Easter Egg ~~~ Surio [Moved comment to other thread...] ------ _sentient That video was beautiful. It's easy to develop a narrow focus on your immediate surroundings. Sometimes it helps to take a step back and get a broader perspective of this wild, diverse and beautiful planet we're fortunate enough to live on. ~~~ aidos Definitely puts things in perspective. With that thought, I'm going to stop work for the day and go and pick up my daughter. ~~~ thesis I had never seen the video of the soldier and his son. After a quick search I found it. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqPlBy2-abA> The whole Google video is great. But this clip / video really got to me. Very touching. ~~~ kristofferR The story about the little girl briefly shown in 2:26 is also incredibly touching. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoZ2BgPVtA0> ------ rwos Is this censored? There's nothing related to copyright infringement or porn in there. Also, the categories and trending/most-searched selection seems arbitrary. Every country has a different set of data. ~~~ josefresco Where's DDG with an unfiltered Zeitgeist for 2012? ~~~ Surio That was supposed to be my line too. Seconded ;-) P.S: I am actually semi-serious in a way. I have actually witnessed the search bubble on colleagues' PC vs. mine so, I'm all for it. ------ barredo There is no way "iPhone" or "iPhone 5 is not on that list. <http://cl.ly/image/0u0R2r12402a> ([http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=iphone%2C%20iphone5%2...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=iphone%2C%20iphone5%2C%20ipad%2C%20ipad%20mini%2C%20samsung%20galaxy%20s3&cmpt=q)) <http://cl.ly/image/2l2I1b3G4328> ([http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=iphone%205%2C%20Galax...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=iphone%205%2C%20Galaxy%20Note%202%2C%20Microsoft%20Surface%2C%20Nokia%20Lumia%20920&cmpt=q)) It's not even close. Note 2, Surface, Lumia 920, iPad 4 and iPad mini are 2 month old on the market. iPhone 5 it's been rumored and re-rumored for months before releasing it, then with all the problems attached to the iPhone 5 release, Apple Maps, record sales, or whatever... people must have searched for it quite a lot (as Google Trends data suggest) ps. Also, "Lana del Ray" ('Rey' is the correct) (sic, performing artists)? These lists doesn't seem quite right. ~~~ andrewcooke she has released an album under both names - lana del ray was self-titled; born to die was lana del rey. and she's one of only 3 names i recognise from that list. but i agree that the lists appear to have "complex" selection criteria. ~~~ barredo Thanks for the correction ------ patrickaljord [http://www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012/#the-world/consumer- ele...](http://www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012/#the-world/consumer-electronics) iPhone is not in the top 10, it was #2 last year. iPad is #1 though. [http://www.googlezeitgeist.com/en/top- lists/global/fastest-r...](http://www.googlezeitgeist.com/en/top- lists/global/fastest-rising-consumer-electronics) ~~~ trendnet This year iPhone is trending on Twitter (<http://2012.twitter.com/en/trends.html>) and Facebook ([http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/12/3758102/facebook- stories-...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/12/3758102/facebook- stories-2012-pictures#3904655)) but not on Google. Something is not right. [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=iphone%205,%20samsung...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=iphone%205,%20samsung%20galaxy%20s3) ~~~ nrp Trending reflects the difference between the results for 2011 and 2012. Recall that until the iPhone 4S was announced, the assumption was that it would be called the iPhone 5, and was searched for by that term. ------ cfontes My country sometimes embarrasses me. Brazil is having the biggest trials against corrupt politicians in our history lasting almost 6 months now with several big figures being arrested and condemnt, and this is not even in the TOP 10, and the nº1 is Facebook followed by BBB12. ~~~ Surio >> and this is not even in the TOP 10, and the nº1 is Facebook followed by BBB12. You will have to wait for the competition to make _that video_. It will be aptly titled "search bubbles zeitgeist" 2012 ;-) (semi joking, ... I have witnessed the "search bubble" and I love the fact that there are companies like DDG, Lycos and Blekko providing search and curated results! Wish them all well) I know what you mean though. It is definitely a sign of our times. Huxley won and Orwell lost the crystal ball gazing contest. 1984 is gone (well, not entirely IMO) and we are all living in the Brave new world now. ;-P ------ yarapavan Full List (PDF): [http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//zeitgeist/2012/download/google- zeitgeist-2012-en.pdf) ~~~ killahpriest Ironically, I cant seem to be able to use `cmd + f` on that PDF. ~~~ smackfu Yeah, very odd. It seems like the characters in the search index are offset from the real characters. d=a, e=b, etc. At least in Chrome's PDF viewer. ------ benburleson Why do I get Error 503? ~~~ speedyrev So am I. ------ corporalagumbo My main thought watching the video: "Holt shit that is some good advertising." A slickly-produced, epic, emotional and humble tribute to the richness and absurdity of human life - all inconspicuously presented through a panorama of Google's entire product portfolio - tying the sweeping feelings stirred in you either consciously or subconsciously to everything Google... ------ scotty79 Fails on iPad with 404 after watching the movie and clicking the "Begin journey" button. It tries to redirect to <http://www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012/explore-tablet.html> that seems to not exist. ------ majani One of the top searches in my country, Kenya, is 'how to abort.' What an eye-opener for a reportedly Christian country where abortion is illegal. <http://www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012/#kenya> ------ shortlived Russian HN'ers, I realize this is not the Yandex zeit but this entry puzzles me: что такое холокост The question: is this a meme? or why the sudden interest now? There were a bunch of videos associated with that query, none of which I could understand very well. Are they people just giving stupid answers? The other results paint an interesting picture of ru-net: Russians want to know meaning of "bro" and "mainstream", want to draw roses and are very interested in hacking email aka soap (soap is мыло, which sounds a bit like mail). ------ friendly_chap I am quite surprised nobody searches for porn on the internetz. ~~~ teach Oh, I'm sure they still do. But it's not "trending". That is, searches haven't noticeably increased / changed from previous years. ------ zavulon <http://www.google.com/zeitgeist/2012/#the-world/tv-shows> This is really sad. ~~~ smackfu I'm actually very surprised Homeland made it to that list. I thought it was critically acclaimed but not that popular. ------ mlapida Does anyone find it completely insane that the iPhone (4/4S/5) doesn't show up in the top 10 for Consumer Electronics? A little bit of massaging going on there? ------ magikbum I like how they are co-opting the idea of "hashtags" as being a Google + thing. With their this year in "Google+ Hashtags" is that even a thing? ------ kinofcain It's amazing but not all that surprising how geeky the google plus hashtags are. I wonder if we'll see social networks splinter into cliques. ------ didsomeonesay Zeitgeist 2012 -> Germany -> Trending Car Brands 1\. Opel 2\. BMW 3\. Audi 4\. VM 5\. Mercedes ... 4\. VM ?? O_o ~~~ JBiserkov I'm guessing VM is a common typo for VW made by Dvorak users. ~~~ jonknee I'm guessing there are no way near enough Dvorak users to have any typos show up on the zeitgeist. ------ eze When I lived in the US I was puzzled to find, say, May magazine issues available in newsstands as early as mid April. Similarly, it seems not only acceptable, but indeed expected, for major companies to review the year before it's over. Can Americans (or else) shed some light on this phenomenon? ~~~ yan Marking a magazine with a date in the future simply increases its shelf life. As for the year-end reviews, I assume people like to look back at a year toward the end and set goals for the new year at the start. Jan 2013, people don't care much for 2012 anymore. ------ vitorarins Watching that, I couldn't stop thinking.. "Google is ruling the world..Google is ruling the world.." ------ rubergly "Play Station"? I assume they're aggregating similar terms, so is this just a case of choosing the wrong aggregate name? Google Trends reports "playstation" is MUCH more common than "play station" (looks like at least 10:1). ------ krharper So sad to see the triviality that constitute the majority of our searches. ------ pdeuchler So essentially we are obsessed with triviality, materialism and celebrity. ~~~ hnriot and this surprises you? you forgot porn ------ denzil_correa 503. That’s an error. The service you requested is not available at this time. Service error -27. That’s all we know. I receive a 503 error on the page. ------ frankydp Was surprised by this one 8\. Donate to NASA ------ Aardwolf Why is the #1 query never something I ever type? ~~~ polyfractal Because you are not the majority? ------ Centigonal Trending airlines? O_o ------ jezclaremurugan and India's no. 1 search for people is Sunny Leone... ------ cookiecaper Am I the only one who can't see any video? Only sound plays in both Firefox and Chromium.

Ask HN: What tech stack would you choose to bootstrap a side project in 2020? - yagodragon I&#x27;m a college student trying to choose a language&#x2F;framework to build some side projects. Other than the classic CS languages(java,python,c&#x2F;c++), I&#x27;ve learned some JS and Vue.js and now I&#x27;m looking into a proper backend language and framework.<p>After searching online and asking friends I&#x27;ve gathered some feedback on the most popular solutions.<p>Rails: Proven and mature. 3rd party gems that can help you with anything web-related. The ecosystem is thriving and most developers are happy using it.<p>Laravel: Made PHP cool again. Took lessons from Rails and probably provides the best Developer Experience when it comes to building a monolith app from development to deployment. PHP is also the most popular backend language.<p>Django: People love python. I hear that Django Rest Framework is a great tool, plus, the ability to add ml features on your existing app is a big plus.<p>Node.js: Full-stack Javascript is great but the backend landscape is a mess. Probably a thin backend without complex rails-like structure.<p>Phoenix&#x2F;Go&#x2F;Rust: Good options for specific use cases where performance matters.<p>Java&#x2F;C#: Complex and enterprisey. C# is gaining traction but the 3rd party ecosystem is still lacking behind other options.<p>Backendless: SPAs, Next.js&#x2F;Nuxt.js&#x2F;Ember, JAMstack. Use services like Firebase&#x2F;Auth0 and 3rd party APIs for backend logic or serverless functions.<p>What would you suggest someone learn in 2020? I know the answer is &quot;it depends&quot; but I know that for example Rails, Laravel and Django are basically tools for the same job, building CRUD applications on the server. Would you suggest someone to learn Ruby or PHP in 2020, though many consider them dead? ====== mindcrime It doesn't matter. Pin a bunch of names on a dart board, throw a dart, and pick the one closest to the dart. Seriously, it really just doesn't matter. Not even a little bit. At least not in terms of whether or not your side project succeeds. You will NOT succeed or fail based on whether you chose Node over Ruby, or Java over Erlang, or Angular over React, or PostgreSQL over MySQL, or Mongo over CouchDB, etc., etc., yada, yada, yada. Now if the question you're really asking is "which one should I learn from a long-term career standpoint?" or something along those lines, the equation changes a little bit. BUT even there, the simple reality is, you can be gainfully employed, making good money, doing fun work, using any technology you listed, and plenty you didn't. If you're coming at it from the career / long-term perspective, and want an objective measure, then scan the job boards, and see what you find the most open reqs for. Go with that. Otherwise, pick two or three off your list, dabble in each, and see which one feels right to you. The only thing I'd explicitly advice against is going with something really outside the (modern) mainstream, like COBOL, or some really new'ish languages which may or may not catch on (Nim, something like that), or any "esoteric" languages: Brainfuck, Intercal, Whitespace, Befunge, etc. As to what _I_ personally would pick? Groovy and Grails, along with PostgreSQL, and one of the popular JS frameworks for front-end (React, Vue, Angular, etc.). But that's just down to familiarity and personal preference. Edit: let me add one bit of clarification... I don't mean to slag Nim, or any of the other newer'ish languages. And I don't mean "don't learn it" in the general sense. I just wouldn't "bet the farm" one of those just yet. By all means, dabble with lots of different languages, and constantly pay attention to how they are evolving over time, and how they are (or are not) gaining industry acceptance. ------ omarhaneef If I wanted to answer your question, I would basically repeat everything you said. Not sure what you need to know beyond what you know. It depends, and depending on your use case you should pick from the options you laid out for the reasons you laid out! Having said all that, obviously the right answer is Django. ------ otras What are your goals? If your goal is to build something to have a product/service/business, build what you know. That will let you build and iterate quicker. Startups don't fail only because they were built on <framework A> instead of <framework B>. If your goal is to learn a new framework, just pick one and give it a shot! There are many concepts you can learn that extend across stacks. If your goal is to list languages/frameworks on your resume, that's a little tougher. One not very scientific way to decide is to do a brief search for job listings in your target location and pick the BE mentioned most frequently. ------ davidw Rails is hard to beat for getting something up and running quickly and then iterating on it. > though many consider them dead? Anyone who says that, you can safely ignore. ~~~ mindcrime Agreed. Well established technologies seem to rarely (if ever) truly _die_. They will become diminished, to be sure, but even to this day, people are making money writing COBOL, RPG, PL/I, etc. Somewhere out there, there are still a few people getting paid to work on the newest iteration of "whatever OS/2 is called now". Etc. ------ tmm84 Based on the year 2019, I think learning Python (AI/ML, Scripting, etc), Java (legacy code, enterprise systems, etc) and JavaScript (ES6, Node and a bundler because JavaScript has turned into something that is more than just some simple script on a page at this point.) are worth it. I say learn PHP if you are aiming for entry level rudimentary stuff. PHP is still out there and there are loads of clients asking for people to work on it. Anything else will revolve around how experienced of an engineer they want and the market you live in. Aside from languages/frameworks, I would say focus on the container/orchestration area of development. This is becoming the real focus I am seeing from someone who has been working in software development for over 5 years. More and more it is containerized micro services that are being produced and it is people who can weave them together with kubernetes or similar software that is the real ticket. ------ Antoninus I don’t think it matters. Learning a stack because there are a lot of hot job postings for it will only keep you in framework hell. If you had to choose, choose the one with a community that you like and want to be around. I’m happy I stuck by Node’s side all these years, sure its not perfect but part of the journey is growing with a technology as it matures in the market. From my experience, mid-range developers with a few years of experience working in different stacks rarely make high quality contributions to the project. The only exception is if they’re gifted cs students first. The devs with for eg. 10+ years working with Perl Dancer projects have so much you can learn from. So my advice would be to pick one and commit to it for as long as you can. To the point where you both love and hate it. Get to a point where you can contribute to an well known open source project that is built in it’s domain. ------ cdnsteve My advice, look at what employers are actively hiring for and work backwards. Generally speaking, many value an MVC type frameworks, specifically Rails/Django, they are well-known, easy enough to hire for since they are "standard" and have broad application use and are quick to work with. Most of the knowledge is transferable between them. Understanding database migrations, app structure, authentication, etc is common. I'd focus on that first, then when you're comfortable, move towards front-end. Again, focus on what employers are hiring for, React being top of the list, Angular is loosing market share. Node isn't very complicated to develop in, front-end experience like ES6/7 will help you figure out JS and you can learn the event loop model later on. This way you'll have a solid foundation in backend, front-end and can expand out from there as needed and specialize but this is a good starting point to be a full-stack developer. Spend time looking at development workflow, learn Git, write tests, etc. ------ philipkiely I built a few applications using Django in college (still am, actually) and it gave me the foundational skills I needed to pick up other frameworks later. I think it balances convention and configuration well for both learning and doing and provides an intuitive learning curve for web development. While most tutorials are for server-side rendered CRUD-based applications you can use DRF to build an API for a single-page app and the framework is flexible enough to build all sorts of applications. Django set me up with the tools and skills I needed a couple years ago. The other ones probably would too. Echoing other commenters you can build anything in any of these frameworks and shouldn't spend too much time choosing stack. Despite it not mattering, my vote is for Django. ------ EnderMB I think the main thing you can take from the language/framework descriptions above is that you should outright ignore what people say about tools they don't actively use. Java and C# absolutely do NOT lack a third-party ecosystem. If anything, both have immensely powerful frameworks behind them and thriving package ecosystems. IMO, your choice only matters if the product you're building is tied to a given library. For example, you might have more luck doing ML in Python/Java than in Ruby, although there is no reason why you can't mix and match depending on what you need to do and what you're trying to accomplish with each. ------ snyena If you are uncertain, perhaps one extra factor to consider would be the future earning potential. I am in a somewhat similar situation (albeit considerably older, almost 41) and still considering my options. I have used plain PHP + MySQL to build web applications in the past but I am now trying the same with Python's Flask and liking it so far. Later down the road I'll either try Django or go fullstack Javascript (Node, React, Express, ...) because it is in such a high demand and not going anywhere. ------ muzani I'm surprised Parse Server doesn't make anyone's list. It takes about 30 mins to set up. It's easy to scale, free to start with. It fills the complexity hole left by Node/Express. It's a lot faster to code than using APIs. It's been used by enough people for long enough that all the stability bugs have been ironed out.

Ask HN:Relocate to India - throwaway08 Hi, I 'm currently working in USA on H1B visa. Would love to relocate to India. My dilemma is that cannot pack up and move back without any job offers in hand. My current employer does not have an office in India. One of the options that i have is find employment in a company which has office. Finding jobs in India through job portal is difficult given non availability for in person interviews. Would like to network with some fellow hackers to find job in India. Any other suggestions would be great. thanks Sorry for the double post...didnt have the correct title ====== statictype Are you a native Indian? If not, then getting employment visa is another headache you'll have to deal with. Also, you may want to try this site :<http://hackerstreet.in/news> ~~~ throwaway08 yes, i m. thanks will check the link out.

Do you remember TJ Holowaychuk? - volument TJ (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tj) used to be a significant JavaScript contributor and could easily be labeled as the &quot;rockstar&quot; of the time. In 2014 he switched from Node to Go (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@tjholowaychuk&#x2F;farewell-node-js-4ba9e7f3e52b) and I haven&#x27;t heard of him ever since. Is it just me, or is there a correlation? ====== hazza1 [https://www.quora.com/Has-TJ-Holowaychuk-been-as-prolific- in...](https://www.quora.com/Has-TJ-Holowaychuk-been-as-prolific-in-the- Golang-community-as-he-was-in-the-Node-js-community) "my new goal is to live a better life. In the end open-source doesn’t pay the bills so it’s best to focus on other things if you can, or if you just enjoy the project then that’s cool." ~~~ malthejorgensen This. IMO he's still a "rockstar". It's just the Node and JS community that hypes everything disproportionally (they used to at least). The fact that he single- handedly built Apex ([https://github.com/apex/apex](https://github.com/apex/apex)) show that he's still prolific, and a programmer of note. There's a similar story for Sindre Sorhus, who moved on from the JS community to Swift. ------ recurser I’m a customer of his uptime service ([https://apex.sh/ping/](https://apex.sh/ping/)), and following up framework ([https://up.docs.apex.sh/](https://up.docs.apex.sh/)) with interest, but haven’t used it yet. Perhaps he is more focused on career and family, and less on open source? If so, good for him. ------ samblr Honestly, I would pay to see video-screen-share of how guys like TJ code. ------ martimatix Isn't he working on apex up? [https://github.com/apex/up](https://github.com/apex/up) ------ zimpenfish He's been posted to HN a bunch of times since 2015-01-01. [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=holowaychuk&sort=byDate&prefix...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=holowaychuk&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=custom&type=story&dateStart=1420070400&dateEnd=1548979200) Seems to be working on a startup which might explain the lack of noise. ------ zoba There was a whole conspiracy theory that he was a collective rather than an individual. [https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-TJ-Holowaychuk-is- real-I-...](https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-TJ-Holowaychuk-is-real-I-dont- think-someone-can-be-as-productive-as-he-is?ch=10&share=73bce5cf&srid=hIhw) ------ sdwisely I remember him from the Ruby community before that. Is there a correlation? probably not. Life happens. ------ fpaboim Apex up is nice, cool to know he's behind apex. ------ eulalila Genuinely inspirational that, looks like he’s now living in London with a hot Russian girlfriend working with sane, stable tools on small, developer focused products, _and_ his homepage is still photography vs a bunch of shite little blog posts. Difference between living to code and coding to live kids, take note.

Tesla Model 3 teardown points to $28k in potential material and production cost - hippich https://electrek.co/2018/05/31/tesla-model-3-teardow-material-production-cost/ ====== Someone _”They claim that their cost analysis resulted in materials and logistics costs of $18,000 and labor costs of $10,000 for a total cost potential cost of $28,000.”_ If a factory worker costs $10,000 a month, that would be a person-month of labor per car, or 4 persons to produce a single car in a week, or 20,000 to produce the 5,000 each week that Tesla aims for. Because of that, I doubt that $10,000 labor costs number is correct. Reading the referenced [https://www.wiwo.de/technologie/mobilitaet/elektroauto- zerle...](https://www.wiwo.de/technologie/mobilitaet/elektroauto-zerlegt- tesla-model-3-kann-gewinn-abwerfen/22625806.html), it talks of _production_ rather than _labor_ costs, so I think my suspicion is right. ~~~ forkLding I have visited the Toyota factory in Ontario, Canada. What stood out to me was how little people was involved, literally everything was automated and the only labour people were doing was testing the cars by driving it (or even just checking the colour) when it came out or standby mechanics to maintain the machines. I see Tesla as incorporating more labour than regular cars but not extensively as modern car plants have pretty much eliminated the need for humans. ~~~ dogma1138 Labor does not mean only people but the cost of assembly. Robots aren’t free they need to be maintained by highly skilled and in the current market also highly paid workers and theya aren’t free to run either. They have expensive consumeables and they need to undergo constant maintenance for even basic things as maintaining their zero. ~~~ forkLding Yea I included the mechanics who do maintenance in my paragraphs when I was talking about labourers, you might have to reread that part, when I was there, they largely hang out in one roofed area within and arent utilized as heavily as you expect. I think from a layman perspective we expect mechanics to be constantly busy and fixing and maintaining but they only fix if there are issues and with a company like Toyota the realization is that they're so experienced and familiar that the maintenance costs reduce with time simply because its cheaper and much more efficient that way and because its much easier to fix the same issues. As well, a mechanic that is fully utilized is actually a bad thing as that means you plant is constantly being shut down to fix things and not producing cars, as thats how you fix things in a TPS system. Also car plants nowadays are wonderfully automated, the materials were being shipped around using driverless carts with sensors and music to alert people or things in their way. Its also suprisingly devoid of human noise aside from the machines clanking. ------ pasta The biggest cost of any car is R&D. So this article doesn't tell us much. ~~~ toomuchtodo It tells you what Tesla's margins are going to be, as R&D cost per unit decreases/is amortized over more units as production scales up. Check out their free cash flow [1]. You'll see that it's always in the red before production scales up (Model S first, then the X, and now the 3). TL;DR If production continues to scale up, the Model 3 will be wildly (relatively speaking for the auto industry) profitable (and the battery cost is possibly under $100/kw, which would be big if true). Sidenote: Elon's enormous pay package [2] that was approved requires one final condition be satisfied; four consecutive quarters with 30-percent gross margins. If I had to bet real money, I'd say 2018Q3 is when those margins begin to be realized, his compensation delivered 2019Q4/2020Q1, and his plan to go to Mars accelerate (possibly as a direct SpaceX customer). Sidenote #2: The Model 3's battery pack has the lowest amount of Cobalt in the industry (2.8%, known state of the art is ~8%). Panasonic (Tesla's battery production partner) is currently working to remove the need for any Cobalt whatsoever [3]. Good for margins, good for production throughput, mixed bag for conflict areas Cobalt is sourced from. Can't win 'em all. [1] [https://i.imgur.com/HjyKxTm.png](https://i.imgur.com/HjyKxTm.png) [2] [http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/21/investing/elon-musk-tesla- pa...](http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/21/investing/elon-musk-tesla-pay- package/index.html) [3] [https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKCN1IV14Y-OC...](https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKCN1IV14Y-OCABS) Usual disclaimer: TSLA investor ~~~ notenoughstuff > _Check out their free cash flow [1]. You 'll see that it's always in the red > before production scales up (Model S first, then the X, and now the 3)._ That's a charitable interpretation. From your link it's nearly always _significantly_ in the red, outside of a couple anomalous quarters 5 years ago, and the one quarter they sold a bunch of ZEV credits. It certainly doesn't look like "it's positive, except when they're scaling up!" to me. I guess one sees what they want to see. ~~~ martythemaniak This is because they're always spending money to grow. They do this because they want to grow and are growing. This graph shows you they spent money to launch the Model S, then went profitable. After this they invested to launch the X, then went profitable. Then they invested to launch the 3, and now this year they aim to be profitable again. And you know what they're going to do after that? Spend money to launch the Y and Semi, then go profitable. Can they use the profits from S/X to deliver the 3? Yeah, but not on the timelines that their customers and the market demands. People want their Model 3s today. One sure mark of a hater is that there doesn't exist a configuration of reality that will satisfy their objections. Is Tesla spending borrowed money to accelerate their growth and deliver products sooner? They suck, they should be profitable. Are they using solely their profits to expand more slowly? They suck, because they're having trouble delivering their products on time. Great, awesome contribution. ~~~ notenoughstuff > _This graph shows you they spent money to launch the Model S, then went > profitable._ The graph doesn't "show" anything. You are interpreting it in a specific (favourable) way. I don't agree. Also, free cash flow positive is not "profit". > _One sure mark of a hater is that there doesn 't exist a configuration of > reality that will satisfy their objections._ Oh, there it is. Any criticism means you're a hater. I'm looking at the numbers. That's reality. You, on the other hand, are operating on future assumptions that may or may not come to pass. "Becoming profitable" isn't a given, just because Elon said so. As of right now, they are losing money at an accelerating rate. I guess we'll see. And by the way, I'm not hater. I can see Tesla being the next Mazda, who make some of the most popular cars in my area. Great cars, great company. Do you know what its market cap is? $8BB. At Tesla's current market cap they need to build millions and millions of cars at substantial profit. You can believe that they'll achieve that and an investment today still wouldn't be worth it. Does that surprise you? ~~~ martythemaniak What you're missing is that Tesla does not want to be a Mazda, nor a Ford, nor even a Toyota. They want to be an industrial behemoth that powers every part of the carbon-free economy. They want to be a GM, GE, ConEd, Exxon and Uber rolled into one. This is not some bizzare internet conspiracy, this has been stated in plain English multiple times and has been voted on by their board. Now, you might think that's too risky, too ambitious, or they'll never be able to execute etc. Whatever. But you can't judge them based on your own made-up ideas and standards. ~~~ Semirhage He already pretty clearly said what he thought. _I 'm looking at the numbers. That's reality. You, on the other hand, are operating on future assumptions that may or may not come to pass_ Meanwhile your counterpoint is a very vivid fantasy of what Tesla wants to be beyond a car company, which is something it’s not doing particularly well. You’re engaging in just the kind of fantasy “Future assumptions” in question, and really just buying into empty PR and marketing. The evidence suggests that Tesla is a car company, and struggling to be _just_ that. It’s an act of intense mental gymnastics to say that no, they’re not just a car company, they’re a whole economic sector that started as a car company... before they’ve even pulled off step 1. Maybe they will be, but the odds are not in their favor, and it’s going to be a moot point if they can’t even turn a profit on their cars. Arguing from an imagined future should be the job of marcom, not you. It’s not a failure of imagination or a lack of faith for rational people to look at what is, not a vision of what may or may not ever be. ------ parvenu74 And it's only selling for $35k? I thought the rule-of-thumb was that you charge 3x the "bag of parts" for a product you make, sell, and service. Apple certainly got this memo... Elon is leaving a lot of money on the table. ~~~ rgbrenner Thats for smaller ticket items. Boeing isn't 3x'ing the cost of a plane, and neither are car manufacturers. Toyota makes an average of $2800/car, and GM makes only $654/car [0]. Porche makes $17k/car... but that's on an average price of $100k.. so only 17%[1]. 0\. [https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2015/02/22/...](https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2015/02/22/toyota- per-car-profits-beat-ford-gm-chrysler/23852189/) 1\. [https://www.autoblog.com/2017/03/21/porsche-17250-profit- per...](https://www.autoblog.com/2017/03/21/porsche-17250-profit-per-car/) ~~~ briankelly But the parent said "bag of parts" which implies only the cost of materials, not the full per-car cost of production, and I can't tell if that also includes things like R&D, marketing, insurance, etc. ------ holychiz It's not clear from the article if this cost figure includes software engineering cost which would be significant in Tesla's case. ~~~ bryanlarsen No, gross margin doesn't include R&D. That money's spent and gone, so is pretty much irrelevant towards future costs & profitability. Relevant from an academic perspective, but not from a business perspective. Or at least that's the traditional view; purchasers of Model 3's now expect OTA updates so there is a little bit of R&D cost in the future but it's very minor compared to what's already been spent. That also doesn't include self-driving R&D, but that's not included in the $35K base model so is also irrelevant. ~~~ notenoughstuff > _purchasers of Model 3 's now expect OTA updates so there is a little bit of > R&D cost in the future but it's very minor compared to what's already been > spent._ Toyota spent almost $10 billion on R&D last year. Ford $8 billion. VW spent $15 billion. Tesla spent $1.5 billion. What is it that makes people think that Tesla's R&D spend is so significant, and that it will diminish drastically in the future? This is an R&D intensive industry. ~~~ bryanlarsen Toyota will spend roughly $0 in R&D on the 2017 Camry in 2018. ------ Nokinside The cost of the car for manufacturer might be: 60% goes into into the factory and tooling, 20% into the parts and 20% is the rest. If parts alone cost $28k and the car is sold for $35k, there is no profit in the Model 3 even if the car is successful. What I really want to know is how much Tesla pays for product recall insurance per car. ~~~ mikeash The one they tore down has a price of at least $49,000. They haven’t started producing the $35,000 version yet.

Why I'm Learning Node - b14ck http://rdegges.com/why-im-learning-node ====== wickedchicken Not many people know this, but Javascript: The Good Parts is available online as a PDF, for free! [http://www.rose- hulman.edu/Users/faculty/rickert/OldFiles/Cl...](http://www.rose- hulman.edu/Users/faculty/rickert/OldFiles/Class/csse/csse403/201010/Papers/UngarSmith87.pdf) ~~~ andrewflnr I think you have the wrong link there. It goes to a paper about Self. ~~~ noelwelsh It's a joke, except it points to the wrong link. It should be have been to <http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/r4rs_toc.html> ------ hasenj The problem with node is it decreases your productivity tremendously. The most important thing about the choice of programming tools is productivity. Node.JS does _not_ promise you any productivity gains. Node sells itself as a solution to "slowness" caused by "blocking IO". What's the solution? All I/O is evented! This means you have to write everything with callbacks. You may see some very nice libraries/tools coming out around node.js, like jade, coffeescript, and stylus. These are all nice and good, and they _do_ increase your productivity, but, _only on the client side_. If you're looking for performance and non-blocking IO, use Go, it's much better at that. ~~~ karterk _You may see some very nice libraries/tools coming out around node.js, like jade, coffeescript, and stylus. These are all nice and good, and they do increase your productivity, but, only on the client side._ I disagree. Firstly, CoffeScript is not confined to the client-side. Besides, there are some modules like socket.io for which you will hardly find any substitues in other eco-systems. You're also discounting the effects of context shifts between two separate languages - one on the client side, and the other on the server side. Lastly, I would like to know what you find productive about Go, that's not the case with either CS/JS on Node. ~~~ hasenj The decrease in productivity with node comes from having to write everything with callbacks. Programming asynchronously is crazy, it makes very simple algorithms very annoying to write. I'd say it's almost like writing in assembly. You have to write your code in some pseudo code first, synchronously, then translate that into the asynchronous callback spaghetti than node requires. > Lastly, I would like to know what you find productive about Go, that's not > the case with either CS/JS on Node. Not having to write everything asynchronously? I haven't actually used go, but the way goroutines communicate (and synchronize) with channels suggests to me (from what I've read/seen) that this callback spaghetti problem is non-existent in Go. ~~~ guelo It cracks me up that you haven't tried Go but you're still recommending it, is there a web framework? Edit: Found web.go. Screw it it's a long weekend, I'll give learning Go a go. ~~~ chrisbroadfoot You don't really need a web framework with go. net/http is just fine for most use cases. ------ karterk _After reading so many negative things about nodejs, I'm completely surprised to report that it is actually pretty damn cool._ Most of these negative things were (are being?) written by people who target Node's shortcomings without giving due concern to the areas it shines in. Good Parts is definitely a good read. If anyone is looking for more reading materials on JavaScript, I had written a post about it recently: [http://kishorelive.com/2012/02/23/my-javascript-reading- list...](http://kishorelive.com/2012/02/23/my-javascript-reading-list/) ~~~ b14ck Thanks, this looks like a really great list. I'm adding these to my reading queue :) ~~~ zecho You should add Eloquent Javascript to the list really good JS books, if you haven't already read it: <http://eloquentjavascript.net/> ------ nnythm If the point is to learn front-end development, it seems like you're still sticking to your strengths instead of challenging yourself and delving into actual front-end DOM manipulation stuff. ~~~ lunaru Agree. It seems the OP is just moving from one language to another rather than from one domain (back-end) to another (front-end). If you're learning JavaScript to get familiar with front-end and UI, Node.js is just a distraction. Instead, my advice is to learn raw HTML/CSS/JS without frameworks. You know those cheesy web-based "OSes"/Desktops that no one really uses? Building one is actually quite helpful to developing JavaScript skills. Try building a Window manager in HTML/CSS/JS. You'll go through the entire gauntlet of what JavaScript has to offer (e.g. closures, prototypes) while dealing with a practical front-end problem (DOM manipulation, CSS styling) while learning a lot about why the modern js frameworks are so useful (e.g. jQuery for DOM, backbone.js for MVC). You'll also start getting exposure to some basic decisions that make up the foundations of a good UI sense. I consider this sort of exercise much more appropriate for polishing front-end skills. Other possible exercises include re-implementing common jQuery UI components - drop-down menus, trees, tabs, etc. But do them without jQuery. It might sound like reinventing the wheel, but learning fundamentals sometimes requires retreading worn out paths. ~~~ 4as198sGxV Sure. Then he will want to kill himself when trying to use of all those inferior and mismatched technologies for any kind of complex application (achieving crossbrowser support will ensure many nights of fun!). He will then go back to coding server-side where at least you can use sane language and tools so you can be as productive as possible. However, he will be thinking about this glimpse of hell for the rest of his career. ------ doc4t _If you're an experienced programmer looking to learn Javascript, you probably can't do any better than reading Javascript: The Good Parts. It's extremely short, concise, and enjoyable to read. Highly recommended._ Any experienced programmer should definitely start elsewhere so he can make up his own mind about Crockfords ideas about how programming should be. While the book is ok-ish almost half of the material is about Crockfords personal preferences for coding style and can be applied to any language. JavaScript - The Definite Guide by David Flanagan is in my opinion the best book on the subject. No other JS book comes even close in clarity and thoroughness. [http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide- Activate-G...](http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide-Activate- Guides/dp/0596805527/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333877087&sr=8-1) ~~~ maga Agree. Moreover, the Good Parts is a bit dated since it's written in 2008 and things had changed noticeable with ECMAScript 5 in 2009. The last 6th edition of The Definitive Guide covers ES5 and has a chapter explaining Crockford's ideas. ------ gabordemooij Javascript can be quite daunting. I have seen many disasters with Javascript applications. This is why I now teach Javascript differently, I have written down a minimalist JS approach. This way of writing Javascript allows you to implement almost any OOP design yet it only uses 10% of the Javascript language thus shortening the learning curve. I wrote this initially for co- workers but because it's such a success I've decided to put it online. <http://www.gabordemooij.com/articles/jsoop.html> This approach also makes it possible to treat JS more like a traditional OOP language and it does not require external libraries, sugar code or new browser technology. It works in the most ancient browsers. ------ Aaronontheweb The author echoes many of the same reasons I really dived into Node - I'm a strong C# back-end developer but really hadn't had much experience designing web UI (HTML5/CSS/JS.) I can say without a doubt that my experience with Node has translated to some upside in terms of my front-end JavaScript abilities - being able to really master the ins and outs of JavaScript language itself has made it much easier for me to work with even some pretty nasty front-end bits. In addition, you pick up a lot of tools in Node that are translatable to client-side JS development. Many of the unit testing frameworks work just as well at testing client-side code as they do server-side. ------ Alexandervn Starting with Node is a very poor choice if you want to learn front-end. But you can't go wrong with The Good Parts and you at least now know what's all the fuss about Node. But now let's really start learning front-end. Begin with semantic HTML. It's really the basis. The best front-enders I know first write all the HTML for a project, and only _then_ start adding CSS and JS. Learn why <b> is wrong and <strong> isn't. Make sure you're HTML validates. Now go to CSS. It's really easy to add some colours or fonts. You learn CSS as you go. But there is one hurdle here: the box model. Learn about float:left, position:absolute, display:block and how they entangle. This will be harder than you think. You will need to learn some tools to debug this. Install Firebug and the Webdevelopers Toolbar in Firefox and see how you can fix your layout. Browsers aren't that scary. We're only learning here, so skip IE for now. That one is actually kinda scary. Though if you really want to learn front-end, it's all about browser differences. And then Javascript. Now it will be easy. Stick with jQuery and connect with your Node instance with socket.io. Learn Backbone if you want to make snappy web apps. There's a lot to learn in this 'grey field' between back-end and front-end. But at least you now know front-end. ~~~ iso8859-1 Might as well make sure you're grammar validates too. Anyway, I don't understand why the front-end is relevant at all. It's not the same problem, and the fact that most people do both doesn't mean that learning to do a good front-end will teach you to do a good back-end. ------ danbmil99 As a longtime Python guy, mostly back-end (but I knew JS pretty well) -- I did a quick demo site recently in node, and was surprised by how it felt. There was much less context-switching as I went back and forth between the client and server. That sounds obvious but it was kind of a shock. I always wanted Python on the client (here's looking at you, Jython!) -- js on the server may be the closest thing I'm going to get. ~~~ jdc Have you tried Pyjamas? ------ gbog As noted somewhere else learning node is not learning front-end. Something that bothered me recently is that on the back-end we are used to big oop frameworks when in fact the stateless nature of http do not match oop so well. On the front end however we have a gui so oop is a good paradigm. ~~~ cwp Huh? What does the statelessness of HTTP have to do with OOP, particularly on the server, but not the client? ~~~ HeyImAlex Because most server side languages take a "throw away the world" approach to web programming; none of your objects persist in memory through requests, which means every time a request comes in you have to reload a part of the user's world from the db, service the request, and then destroy the world you've just created. For structural things like MVC, objects are great, but you really don't see much of the "object as vehicle for data encapsulation" that's drilled into every new programmer when they're first taught OOP. The client, on the other hand, _can_ persist data and objects through requests, and the only time it needs to be fully refreshed is on a full reload. ~~~ cwp Ah. But that isn't an issue of language or object-orientation. There are server-side frameworks that _don't_ throw away the world, and client-side frameworks that do. (Notice how your javascript state is thrown away everytime you load a new page in the browser). That's a design decision that's made possible by the statelessness of HTTP, but not required by it. ~~~ gbog Certainly, but throwing away the world is natural on server side code and it means that your carefully crafted object don't live long and many of them don't need too be objects, they are micro namespaces for a set of methods. I never tried node.js for real but one good side off it could be that you are not pushed towards objects like you are with Python, Ruby, Java, etc. ------ leephillips The author refers to this seething criticism of node (<http://teddziuba.com/2011/10/node-js-is-cancer>. html), that I've seen before, and then just soldiers on without addressing it. I'm not well versed enough to know whether Dziuba's analysis is not the mark or not. What do the javascript/node experts here have to say about it? The criticism, after all, would seem to be so damning that it either needs to be refuted or to stand as a definitive reason to never seriously consider using node in a real project. ------ octotoad Just read around two thirds of 'The Node Beginner Book'. I've only briefly played with node.js before now and I still don't really have an immediate use for it personally. I could see myself using it to whip up rough scaffolding to support prototypes of personal projects written in other languages. I did learn something from its event-driven callback system though. Made me realize I was approaching things the wrong way in a libevent-based daemon I'm developing in C. ------ munyukim Congrats,it really sucks having to rely on other people to complete your project.Also you might want to learn Coffeescript and jQuery. ------ devin No justification required for learning another language. I sometimes wonder how often the ends justify the means. ------ smallegan I like the though process but I think where you may fall short is the UI Design aspect. HTML/CSS/Javascript isn't all that hard, it is creating a good looking and highly usable user interface that is challenging. Good luck! ------ stcredzero Formatting on this site is terrible for iPhone reading. It prevents zooming, thus forcing a very small font on the reader. ------ pyrotechnick browserify (<https://github.com/substack/node-browserify>) is great for providing require() and bundling necessary dependencies for the browser. ~~~ Aaronontheweb Thank god for this - I've been doing a lot of work with some NPM packages that I want to use on the client but for the life of me couldn't figure out how to do it. This looks like it'll do just the trick. Thanks!

CommonMark Is a Useful, High-Quality Project - chubot http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2018/02/14.html ====== ggm Two things in one story (I see this a lot. Its good actually. stories don't have to have only one story-arc) one story is a bloody good C implementation of a parser for common markdown. Thats wonderful! I wanted something simple and focussed. the other is common markdown as a value proposition in itself. I like this, and I would welcome pandoc fronting up and saying _yep, we commit to keeping in line with this_ because I think it does everyone good to get to a common core. I try to do everything in markdown now. I sometimes wish the tools I use (visual studio code) did a better job of distinguishing * this * and * * * this * * * for instance. Actually, I sometimes wish HN did a bit more too, but then simple is pretty compelling. I think if you want richtext in a feedback system beyond denoting quotes, you might be off-beam.

Ask HN: Whats your favorite YouTube tech channels but not famous? - giis Recently came across this relatively little known channel[1]. Though it has only 6 videos and &lt;50k users, its good. Do you know such channels?<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;PieterExplainsTech&#x2F;feed ====== rafzzz Jesse Warden was really helpful for me when I was starting out programming. He has a great series called 'Beginners Guide to Software Development' which got me started and he's especially helpful with JavaScript testing and tooling [https://m.youtube.com/user/jesterxl](https://m.youtube.com/user/jesterxl)

Ockam built a JAMStack site and it's 100% Open Source - mattgreg https://www.ockam.io/learn/blog/ockam_website_is_open_source/#the-ockamio-open-source-stack ====== ChymeraXYZ I don't know but somehow the ockam.io page being blank except the menu somehow does not inspire confidence... ------ chrisacky Code looks really clean. What's the naming reasoning behind `mdxComponents`. Does mdx mean something? `Blockqute` is that a typo? I like how you handle MenuItems on mobile. ~~~ miedziak Yea, it's related to [https://mdxjs.com](https://mdxjs.com). All .md files can contain valid jsx code. This `mdxComponents` folder name, refers to components that could both be - used directly in markdown files or used to generate html from markdowns. ------ stabbie_mcgee That's all good and well, but the actual website fails to render on Firefox (OSX Catalina) ~~~ mattgreg Thanks for the heads up...Maybe the build we did this morning has a bug for firefox. Let me take a look. ~~~ stabbie_mcgee Sorry I should add - Works fine for me in Safari and Chromium, in Firefox the header and footer render fine, but the content fails to display. There are no console errors. ------ ithrow _There are two primary advantages for the ockam.io site to use JAMStack: No need for a database or complex backends Building and hosting are decoupled_ I don't get it, since when building a static site requires a database? Are they referring to eliminating some kind of CMS? ~~~ miedziak I think the point is that ockam site requires a flexible layer to manage its data, which is focused mostly on .md documentation files. So Storing, updating and managing these files through a database could be quite hard and annoying, since all of them are stored across many different github repos. Moreover, all these files, have to be shown in a user-friendly way. This data from .md files, have to be converted to HTML at some point as well. So what we have done is we keep all data on their place ( depended github repos ), grab them before build time, and generate static content based on it. Moreover, we have some mechanism to target particular branches/commits on depended repos, and control when we want to trigger our pipelines. So, replaying directly to your question - no, building a static site not require a database. JAMStack architecture is helping us to provide and manage our specific data sources. ~~~ mattgreg ...exactly! ------ yingw787 I really want to find a great open-source JAMStack documentation site for APIs. Does one exist somewhere? ~~~ chrisacky I'm planning on migrating all our Postman documentation away to [https://github.com/slatedocs/slate](https://github.com/slatedocs/slate) if that's what you mean. PS. The reason why we're moving away from Postman is due to some tiny issue[1] that has caused lots of "you need to click here to see everthing" conversations. [1] : [https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app- support/issues/57...](https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app- support/issues/5789) ~~~ yingw787 I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Postman documentation". Is this Postman's documentation or documentation for other APIs (not sure if Postman has an OpenAPI spec?). I found slate, and it's super cool, but I haven't used it myself. There might be some pipelining involved, from my understanding of projects like [https://github.com/Mermade/widdershins](https://github.com/Mermade/widdershins) where you convert OpenAPI specs to markdown? I think the good folks over at getstream.io used slate as a base for their docs CMS and loved it enough to write about it, and I'd love to read more about slate in production. Looking forward to when you finish your migration and if you write about it! ------ sobi3ch This is a great platform for IOT!

Facebook Will Let People You Don't Know Message Your Inbox For $1 - OJKoukaz https://mashable.com/2012/12/20/facebook-pay-for-messages/ ====== pudquick I think Facebook is on the right path with this as a potential money making idea. However, they need some modifications if they don't want to piss off their users in implementing it. Here's my suggestion(s): Let users specify how much it should cost to contact them, and let them keep a percentage of every dollar over $1. Then let marketing messengers set a 'maximum cost' amount - if it's too costly, they won't send. Don't want to be messaged? Set your price insanely high. Don't mind being messaged as long as you get something out of it? Set it to $2-$5. Win for everyone. ~~~ mattj One big issue here (solvable, but something to think about): this would make messages a source for money laundering, which I'd bet fb would like to avoid. Then again, they already deal with this with fb credits, so maybe this wouldn't be too taxing to deal with. ~~~ wtvanhest If the percentage kept by facebook is higher than the cost of money laundering this won't be a factor. For example, there are probably few people willing to launder money at a cost of 90%, and 10% seems like the amount FB would pay. ------ loceng Direct Mail spam. Even if this is something some businesses will pay for, and even if it isn't a lot of messages, it is still an annoyance. Would there be 1,000 businesses willing to spend $1 million each to send a message to a million people? That's $1 billion. Can messages be targeted enough and give a good enough ROI? Will users be pissed off and dismiss businesses that put ads into their private inbox? More negatives than positives, IMHO.. ~~~ lukasb Set caps on spam and auction the space, then. If the price of getting to your inbox is $10 people will have to have a really good reason for getting in touch. I'm usually anti-FB but I'm curious to see where this goes. ~~~ gcr Or, set the price to be a function of the number of messages the sender sent per day. E.g. If I've sent `s` messages per day averaged over the last N days, the next message that I send should cost (rounded to the nearest penny): 1.01^(s-1) That'll put a damper on it right quick. Sending 100 messages will cost $168.79, sending 200 will cost $625.35. ~~~ loceng I don't see this happening, as Facebook has no trouble abusing the userbase. ------ brudgers Think of every company that has sent you at least three pieces of junk mail. That's the barrier to entry imposed by a dollar on direct marketers. ------ 6ren So expensive, this would need to be targeted extraordinarily well for it to be worthwhile for advertisers. Which is possible, because fb knows so much more about you than even google. When ads are targeted _well enough_ , they stop being spam, and start becoming a welcome service. The question is whether they have reached that threshold. ~~~ jmillikin Unsolicited commercial mail is _always_ spam. If I post a message to my private about my fridge making funny sounds, that doesn't mean I want to receive a FB message from HardwareStore about their appliance selection. ~~~ jQueryIsAwesome Its not technically mail (is an internal message system) and you don't hold that strict standard for anything else do you?, e.g. all tv commercials are spam because they show unsolicited commercial information, all billboard are spam... ~~~ pepr Actually, yes in my viewpoint pretty much every billboard is spam. I've yet to see a billboard that informed me of something useful to me personally. (Let alone at an appropriate time! Is me driving on a highway an appropriate time to let me know that I should buy something? Hell no.) ------ blueprint This sounds just like a recently posted startup, "Want to chat with inaccessible people? Pay them, not Facebook" <https://www.gramicon.com/pages/howto> ------ tedunangst So Facebook implements an anti-spam measure that people have been clamoring for since the early days of slashdot and that makes them the bad guys? ~~~ georgemcbay How do you figure this qualifies as an anti-spam measure when it is giving spammers a tool to reach me that they didn't have before?

Killing Off American Cows to Keep Milk Prices High - walterbell http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-08/cow-killing-and-price-fixing-in-your-supermarket-dairy-aisle ====== PavlovsCat Ah, the the alienated joys of capitalism.. and the bloody stumps we call hands and minds.

8 Steps Two CS majors Took to Becoming Powerful Speakers - ciscoriordan http://bases.stanford.edu/2010/04/07/8-steps-two-cs-majors-took-to-becoming-powerful-speakers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+stanfordbases+%28StanfordBASES%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ====== ciscoriordan Copy and paste job since it's down: from Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) by wesleyleung As two guys who love to code, we have noticed a not-too-exciting stereotype floating around our fields of study: CS majors are poor speakers who have traded their interpersonal relationship and communication skills for technical expertise. This label is unfortunate because on the whole, CS majors truly do indeed publicly speak worse than those in other fuzzier fields. To break out of this stereotype and reach our full potentials, we decided yesterday to participate in some Speaker Training 101 to improve our public speaking skills, because, to be blunt, CS Majors who speak well do better than CS majors who don’t speak well. Here are some useful tips we took away from the training: 1\. Silence is powerful. It might sound ironic, but the most powerful speakers are those who can employ pauses in their words. During short bouts of mental hiccups, everyone will want to fill gaps in their speech with the two most spoken words in the English language. Yeah, that’s right: “Umm…” or “err…” Avoid these. Be conscious of your umms and errs. See if you can catch yourself in the act and replace them with some thoughtful, contemplative silence. You’ll be surprised. 2\. Use your hands. Using your hands to emphasize key points or to articulate what you need to say is extremely effective. Don’t let them hang limp at your sides, hiding uselessly in your pockets, or tucked away behind the podium. You have them for a reason. Be lively and energetic! 3\. Don’t touch the podium! People may not think about this at all, but their natural instinct is to grab whatever is in front of them while they are speaking. On-stage, people will psychologically want to seek some sort of security. Remember that stand-up comedian who kept fiddling with his microphone? Or maybe that nervous speaker who appeared to be humping the podium. Neither took tip #3 into account. Be confident, poised, and keep your hands off the podium! 4\. Listen to your introducer. As the main event, everyone will naturally have their attention on you. Show some courtesy and give your introducer your undivided attention. The audience will naturally follow you. When the introducer gives you the stage, don’t just start speaking and talk over him. Ease your way into your speech and set the pace for your audience. It can be as simple as “Thank you [name] for introducing me tonight…” 5\. Interact with the audience. Reality check: who are you speaking to? Your audience. They are here to learn from you, so it’s best to know your audience and involve them in your speech. For example, this can be accomplished by doing simple tasks such as asking questions — “raise your hand if…” Follow tip #5, and you’ll keep the audience refreshed and engaged. 6\. Pull yourself out of a tailspin. During the speaker training, I choked up during my improv and forgot the name of an organization I was supposed to describe. After five seconds of misery, the name came back to me and I made my recovery by graciously and humorously accepting the fact I made my mistake. Surprisingly, the audience felt that this contributed to the power of the speech. Apparently some speakers even plan out things to fail during their speech so they could similarly pull themselves out of a tailspin. This tactic is supposed to connect the audience to the speaker and create this bond because the speaker becomes more human, down-to-earth, and on the same plane as the audience. 7\. Don’t hold back your energy. For unknown reasons, many equate speaking with less energy to increased technical expertise. That actually doesn’t make you look more sophisticated, that just makes you look like a poor speaker. Release that energy and don’t hold back! Capture your audience’s attention with all the power you have to make your speech more effective. 8\. Critique yourself and have others critique you. This may seem self-explanatory, but when you are practicing your speech, take turns with others to point out positives and negatives in your speech. When addressing your own negatives, see if your audience agrees with you. Surprisingly, audiences may not notice a lot of your mistakes. What feels like hours of mess-ups on your part are actually unnoticeable seconds for your audience. Keep running drills immediately afterward to incorporate the constructive criticism. Our public speaking is nowhere near perfect, but we recognize it as a valuable skill to have and hope to improve in it quickly. Try out these small tips, and you’ll be surprised at the difference it’ll make. Most of the world fears public speaking more than death. Master these tips and you will absolutely amaze. It’s the first step to being able to throw an event that will make a 2nd year Stanford GSB student jealous. Ambitious? No problem. ~~~ sjf That's all good advice, but I don't think it gets to the heart of most speakers' problem, which is simply fear. Clutching the podium, speaking too quickly, blanking - these are all side effects of nervousness. I don't think the solution is as simple as 'stop doing that', controlling unconscious behaviour under pressure is difficult. Unfortunately I don't know the secret to great public speaking, but I suspect no. 8, practice and critique, should actually be top of the list. It is the only thing I've found which helps. ------ mmorris If you're interested in becoming a better speaker you should check out a local chapter of Toast Masters. Despite the name, it's more about speeches than about toasts. <http://www.toastmasters.org/> ~~~ dpritchett I just joined the local chapter at my office in hopes of hedging my technical skills with a better set of social / presentation skills. The cost to join was about $60 up front and another $30-40 for each six months thereafter. I have enjoyed all three meetings I've attended thus far. Speaking makes me nervous, so I figure working through it will be good for me. ------ cpg HN'd? "Error establishing a database connection" How do you say slashdotted for HN? :) ~~~ strooltz yeah - it's down for me as well. anyone have a mirror?? ------ swombat Powerful speakers? Like, 200W each? Recognised speakers, perhaps? Famous? Effective? I know it's just a quibble, but it really seems to me that "Powerful" is not the adjective you want here. That said, I can't read the article, since the site is down, so who knows, maybe Powerful is a really clever pun that I'm not getting.

90% of software developers work outside Silicon Valley - douche http://qz.com/729293/90-of-software-developers-work-outside-silicon-valley/?imm_mid=0e5d09&cmp=em-prog-na-na-newsltr_20160716 ====== ratfacemcgee >90% of the world lives outside the United States ~~~ brudgers I agree the submission could use a title change. ------ sunstone Gotta be true. I imagine quite a few of them work in China, not to mention India.

Spry Metrics - dbwieler https://sprymetrics.com ====== dbwieler Spry Metrics was built from the ground up to give you easy access to your website or app analytics. Track anything at anytime, and get instant feedback and metrics from your users in real time. We're looking for beta testers and feedback, so if you're interested in becoming a would-be adopter, we would love your help and thoughts on our new product.

JetBrains CLion licenses: what is what - dsr12 http://blog.jetbrains.com/clion/2015/04/clion-licenses-what-is-what/ ====== h43k3r There is nothing in the market that is at par with VS as an IDE. I am in the hope that CLion will give me an alternative of Visual Studio for C/C++ on Linux.

Notes on making JGit (Java Git) fast - gcv http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/118034 ====== gcv There's also a follow-up post in the same thread with a few more comments: [http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version- control.git/1180...](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version- control.git/118035) ------ ropiku The most surprising part for me was: "But, JGit performs reasonably well; well enough that we use internally at Google as a git server." ~~~ jrockway Why would you find this surprising? C is usually less than 10x faster than the next tier of languages; Java, SBCL, GHC, C++, etc. 10x sounds like a lot, but considering languages like Ruby are often 300x slower than C, and they still perform just fine, you can see that Java's "slowness" is almost irrelevant. Also, git spends a lot of time doing IO -- waiting for your hard drive to spin around is as fast in C as in Java. (BTW, this is not advocacy for Java, rather, it's advocacy against using C when extremely good languages, like Haskell and Lisp are nearly as fast and are much easier to write.) Edit: Ob-shootout-link: [http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=al...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=javasteady&lang2=gcc&box=1) For these benchmarks, Java is as fast as gcc. Git is a different workload, so I'm sure JGit is not equally fast as C-git, but it's not going to be unusably slow either. (As time goes on, C is a solution to fewer and fewer problems.) ~~~ ropiku I was referring to the fact that they use it at Google as a Git server, not the speed of Java. LE: I am a Ruby developer and know what "fast enough" is. Also I know that Java/JVM is quite fast, JRuby is sometimes faster than Ruby 1.9. ~~~ cdibona Shawn is the author of Repo, Gerrit 2 and we use those tools and jgit quite a bit for distributing and developing Android. He's pretty awesome. (works for me, I'm proud to say) ------ 10ren Taking x2 as long as C is a great achievement, especially with Git, which is already extremely fast. But they've done it by optimizing hell out of Java - it's far from idiomatic java, more like the C-style java you see in the standard Java libraries (but to be fair, C-Git has also had hell optimized out of it).

Four Months After a Concussion, Your Brain Still Looks Different Than Before - aronvox http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/11/four-months-after-a-concussion-your-brain-still-looks-different-than-before/ ====== ASpring I've sustained between 2 and 4 concussion in the past 6 years. 2 were clinically diagnosed and I self-diagnosed 2 more after smaller accidents that had similar week-long symptoms. All occurred during soccer practices and games. The prospect that I've done cumulative lasting damage to my brain absolutely terrifies me. Similar to the way a model would be terrified if they sustained burns on their face. My brain is what makes me money, my brain is what makes me proud, my brain provides pleasure through reading, writing and programming. It's horrifying to think that I've somehow caused my brain to be performing at a lower level than it would be otherwise. I don't know why I'm writing this. It's just scary. I still play sports (no longer soccer) and bicycle everywhere but I'm far more careful and reserved than I would be otherwise. Be careful out there, wear a helmet, and take care of your brain. ~~~ rooshdi It is concerning. I've been concussed by a baseball to the head as a teenager and these emerging long-term effects to the brain kind of freak me out. Probably shouldn't have took a few more headshots after that, but tis life I guess. Funny how our strongest asset is also the most fragile. ~~~ ASpring Well said. Finding the balance is a struggle for me. Is increased risk of dementia and other disorders when I'm older worth it for me to continue mountain biking while I'm still young? I don't know. What risks are worth taking? ~~~ darkmighty Here's something I don't get about some high-risk sports: is the feeling you get doing that really irreplaceable? Aren't there a ton of other things which given some time would be just as fun? ------ mitchty About 5 years ago I suffered a concussion from a motorcycle accident (I had a helmet, only thing that saved me). All my friends said it took me almost 2 years before I was back to "my old self". It was weird experiencing it firsthand as well. My last memories of the accident was planting my left hand on the pavement trying to save the fall. Thankfully my nice Held gloves have tacks on the palm so it wasn't a big deal but the next memory I had was waking up with a cat on my chest staring right at me in my buddies girlfriends house. I think the cat wanted to eat me, those eyes /shudder. Anyway, PSA is always wear a helmet, that and hip armor, wear lots of that, I walked like an old man for a month. But for a few years after that accident I basically felt a fog in my brain. I really don't like the idea of sports like football after that where people pile on concussions. I just don't see how it could be a thing that couldn't be detrimental. ~~~ anigbrowl _I really don 't like the idea of sports like football after that where people pile on concussions. I just don't see how it could be a thing that couldn't be detrimental._ There's a high school that I pass on the way to the dog park, and on Mondays the team is always outside for football practice. Watching them damage themselves right in front of the school breaks my heart. I am convinced that American Football is going go suffer the same drop in popularity as boxing within the next decade. ~~~ cglace For a more barbaric sport like MMA? ~~~ tomsthumb According to the (nat geo?) video below mma and boxing hits should be about the same with all else being equal. Combing this with mma's grappling and one almost wonders if, despite the increased blood, it might be less concussion inducing. No doubt their bodies are being hammered and worn down though. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRmOOWPTRBs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRmOOWPTRBs) ~~~ sanoli Among the MMA community it used to be common knowledge that MMA was safer, concussion-wise. There were no good studies to back that up, however. Now they're starting to come by, and it seems they might be just about the same. Here's one: [http://www.cagepotato.com/myth-busting-is-mma-really- safer-t...](http://www.cagepotato.com/myth-busting-is-mma-really-safer-than- boxing/) ------ Balgair I've had quite a few in high school and early college. The best part is the manic and depressive episodes. After a really bad one during wrestling in high school, I had some pretty amazing highs and really bad lows. Best time of my life was sitting on the back porch and giggling at the sun for 2 hours. I was totally ecstatic about the sun. The worst was all the suicidal thoughts. Think a heart monitor. The highs were soooo good, but most of the time it was bad depression. I agree with the other posters here, it took me about 2 years after each bad hit to get over it and return to normal. I'd say it's a logarithmic curve to a new percentile. IE you never really get all the way to the new normal. I also have lasting short term memory loss, problems discerning things apart at close distances, and hearing issues in loud and chaotic environments like bars and family gatherings. My mind is just not there and will likely never be. Oh well, I guess I'm just stuck in Hard Mode. I don't play rubgy anymore, but damn I want to. I know I can't but I miss the pitch everyday I am here. I loved it all, and I still do. Again, hard mode. ------ Pxtl A bit offtopic for HN, but it really does drive the point home: Football? Boxing? Hockey? These are blood-sport. There may be a technological solution, there may be a rules-revision solution (hockey in particular does not _need_ to be brutally violent to be a good game) but the current approach isn't right. ~~~ Balgair i agree with you that they are bloody sports and there are inherent major risks in them. I posted above about my experiences with wrestling and rugby, arguably very violent sports. I want to say that I know they are 'blood sports' and I love them even through what happened to me. Though I cannot play rugby these days, there is not one that goes by that I do not wish to be out on the pitch. I am having trouble explaining this, I think. But even though these sports are bloody, and probably because they are, I want to play them. The thrill, the camaraderie, the team and the struggle, the pitting of man against man in an arena, it all is what I want. I can prove myself on a rugby pitch or a wrestling mat in a way I cannot elsewhere in life. Again, words are failing me here. But I want you to know that I know the risks, I knew them before my concussions, I have lived with the results of the decisions, and I still miss it and yearn for it. I love playing these 'blood' sports. ------ jph I've helped friends with this. The most important item is for patients to get copies of their MRIs and related records. These are crucial for long term follow up. ------ moe And if you're very, very lucky, the new look is an improvement: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/22/lachlan-connors- mus...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/22/lachlan-connors- music_n_4324245.html) ------ dreamdu5t Is your brain supposed to look the same after four months without a concussion?

How Bitcoin Ends - dpapathanasiou https://www.fastcompany.com/40537404/how-bitcoin-ends ====== tristanho This article makes pretty blatant errors: > We thought the net would break the monopoly of top-down, corporate media. > But as business interests took over it has become primarily a delivery > system for streaming television to consumers, and consumer data to > advertisers. Weird thing to say about an era where traditional publishers and news networks have been entirely disrupted by random folks posting on twitter/facebook. > At its core, bitcoin is just an extension of the old PGP, or Pretty Good > Privacy encryption protocol. I've never seen the word "just" do so much work. Bitcoin, notably, solved the Double Spending problem[0] seventeen years after PGP was created. > In essence, bitcoin is money built and maintained by nerds, based on the > premise that good nerds will outnumber the bad nerds. This is patently false. The _entire_ point of bitcoin is that miners and node operators acting in _their own self-interest_ will secure the protocol, not "good nerds". You can argue if the system fails this will be the case, but not that this is the premise. [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double- spending](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-spending) ~~~ brianpgordon Yeah I'm also pretty critical of their narrative of how centralized currency came about. Their timeline is _wildly_ wrong. The author makes it seem like states started minting coinage in the middle ages, when the advantages of a standardized coin with a mandated-by-fiat face value (possibly different from the actual value) were well-known - and famously used to great effect by - even the early Roman Empire. Then there's this sentence, which is just nonsense: > All money was borrowed from the central treasury, at a rate of interest set > by the king. ------ shiado I have no doubt that Bitcoin will end someday, most likely from QC breaking ECDSA, but this is perhaps the most illiterate and uninformed takedown I have ever read on the subject. ~~~ kinghajj That's not really a problem. Addresses aren't the entire ECDSA public key, but a hash digest of it. The entire public key is only revealed once a transaction is made from an address to another. So an address that has only received coins, but never sent any, is entirely immune from QC. (This, by the way, is why you're never supposed to reuse addresses, since once you move coins from an address once, it's possible for someone offline to try and break the key.) ~~~ tromp It is a real problem. Millions of BTC are locked in addresses with known public key, due to either the formerly popular Pay-to-Public-Key script, or the ever popular practice of addresses re-use that you also mentioned. ------ quocble Aside from the flaws of the article, there are something to be said about how centralized bitcoin has become. Most of the bitcoins are held by centralized exchanges, or "qualified" custodian (locked up in ETF and other exchanges). They essentially act like centralized banks, the exact thing we're trying to avoid. The only saving grace is we can send to native wallet, giving us some freedom from the institutions. ------ HashThis This is how Bitcoin ends up... * Bitcoin and Ethereum are grandfathered into not requiring KYC and AML. They are the rare currency with zero friction. * All new currencies require KYC and AML. This is happening right now * Other currencies can have some positives (backed by revenue generating assets, etc.). But they can be confiscated by governments * Bitcoin always has a place, as the zero friction, no-KYC currency. EXAMPLE: I did a wire transfer from the USA to India. Since it was sent in Indian rupees, the receiving bank kept rejecting it. They claimed it didn't pass AML. The real reason is that they wanted to take huge fees for the USD to Rupees conversion on their receiving side. So they kept rejecting it, until it is sent in US Dollars and they can scalp me on the conversion rate. I had 8 weeks of failed transfers. That AML hostage taking can happen across all currencies BUT Bitcoin and Ethereum. In the future, people in China are taking their money out in bitcoin. People across Africa, South America, also often move it into Bitcoin. They can cross justidictions with nobody to stop them. There is a place to cut around the hostage stakers at the AML level. ~~~ toomuchtodo Have you tried TransferWise? I just tested in app, and they’ll convert $1000 USD to INR for $9 USD immediately. I have their Borderless account and hold balances in several currencies at once, with access using a debit card, wires, ACH (US), SWIFT (EU) etc. Highly recommend! ~~~ polyakoff There is plenty of services like this nowadays. I recall TrensferGO and Revolut. There is even a service for fees comparison amongst those services, developed be hackernews fellow reader: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20819538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20819538) ~~~ toomuchtodo Excellent resource! ------ TooSmugToFail So much nonsense in this article, don't know where to start... ~~~ IshKebab Yeah I stopped reading after this: > At its core, bitcoin is just an extension of the old PGP, or Pretty Good > Privacy encryption protocol. ------ basicplus2 This is also about getting out of being "locked into" a larger overall economy run for the benefit of a few and creating local economies. People with land and/or skills could create new economies by trading directly with each other with what they produce and opt out altogether.. In a way it is the final defence of a people against control and oppression or insane hyperinflation, but is more dificult to do if you are stuck in a city or additcted to modern technology. ------ anm89 Are they trying to say Bitcoin will not remain a totally unregulated, totally compromised and idealistic cryptoanarchocapitalist utopia forever? Are they trying to say that Bitcoin won't solve all of the world's problems and bringing on a new utopian era?? I refuse to believe it. Because if that were true bitcoin would surely vanish into thin air. ------ Sargos This article makes a good case about Bitcoin but even the original Bitcoin enthusiasts and crypto community as a whole has admitted that it was a great experiment but is now obsolete and settling in for a temporary (years) store of value role. I would like to see these same discussions after understanding the Ethereum ecosystem which solves most of the problems listed in articles like these. There's a stable form of value in DAI, high velocity and cheap money transfers, and decentralized financial protocols that replace traditional gatekeepers like banks and payment processors. A long but interesting article by David Hoffman really sums it up in the best way possible and is worth a read: [https://thedefiant.substack.com/p/ether-is- the-best-model-fo...](https://thedefiant.substack.com/p/ether-is-the-best- model-for-money)

Ask HN: Why doesn't Google provide an option to open .txt files in Google drive? - rpathangi ====== accordionclown nobody seems to want to serve files. dropbox once offered, but has stopped. github is about the only place that'll do it nowadays. just avoid the middleman and get your own site. -bowerbird ------ lwlml Or Markdown for that matter. Or YAML.

Ask HN: How do you measure risk with an open source project? - bazMVP If you&#x27;ve found a new project on GitHub that you want to use, how do you quantify the associated risk of using it in a &quot;production&quot; application? For example: the project is only open for 6 months, or has many more open issues vs. closed issues, or has negative sentiment in commit messages. Of course it&#x27;s a case-by-case basis, I&#x27;m looking for examples of what factors are deemed important when making this type of decision. ====== kazinator * I look at the code and determine, subjectively, whether this was written by first-rate developers or monkeys. I will consider this from various angles ranging from the overall program organization, to the details of how the programming language is used. If I spot bugs in this inspection, I will skip the project and look for something else. In particular anything that is a security flaw or could cause a crash is an instant deal-breaker. Not because everyone should be perfect and write error-free code the firs time, but because I was able to find it just by casually looking, whereas the maintainers have been working with that code for months and are blind to it---that erodes my confidence in the developers. * I will look for a regression test suite: how extensive is it? If you don't see any tests, that's a big warning sign. * If you don't see any documentation, another warning sign: the behavior is not specified and could change. * Who _uses_ it? If the code is reasonably widely used, that de-risks it for you quite a bit, particularly if the existing uses resemble your intended use. They trod through the code paths before you and uncovered the bugs. * Lastly: if need be, can I just maintain this myself? How easily forkable is the thing? This point can overcome some other issues. If some code is 95% of the way there, and is organized in a good way that I can take it the last 5%, I might just do it. ~~~ partisan Keep in mind that the last 5% might mean a heck of a lot of time. There is usually a reason why some things go unimplemented in open source projects and the complexity and time required are usually high on the list. ~~~ kazinator The last 5% is _my_ last 5%, not (necessarily) the project's 5%. I.e. the difference between what is there and what I require, not between what is there, and the project's goals. ------ Gratsby If there's an IRC channel, mailing list, issue tracker, etc., I have a look at it. Active communities are bonus points regardless of the bug list. I also look at how friendly the project is to pull requests and outside development. If a bug is important to me, I will spend the time to code a fix, but if there's no hope for getting any changes made, that represents a large risk to me. It's not a bad thing if the team in charge pushes back for higher quality code, code style, or solutions practical for wider audiences. If there's continuous integration in place with automated testing and static code analysis that is fantastic. It's not a deal breaker if it's not, but having it in place is a good sign. Depending on the project, I may have a look at the source itself. I certainly don't look the source of every application I use. I have found that online recommendations in developer communities are not always good. More than once I've tried out projects based on people evangelizing them only to find out that they are pretty far from acceptable. There are differences in how I judge things that will be customer facing or that I'm going to have to support operationally. I'm a lot more critical at that point, but my top 3 points are: 1\. Can I put it in a container. 2\. Are the developers committed to long term support. 3\. Will they give me a t-shirt. ------ cweagans I evaluate it the same way that I evaluate any other code that I'm bringing into our project: is it robust, extensible, free of obvious errors, covered by comprehensive unit/functional tests, etc. I would say that "project is open 6 months" is a pretty poor metric, because 6 months is a _lot_ longer than the handful of days that your custom code will have existed when you add it instead. ~~~ bazMVP That makes sense, any time period is probably less valuable than looking at it relative to commits or issue resolution rate. ~~~ cweagans Even evaluating it on historical commits or issue resolution rate is not very productive, IMO. They really aren't an indication of future activity unless there are at least 10s of developers working on it constantly for a long period of time (say, > 6 months). I've been burned too many times by getting hopeful about what a project maintainer is going to do in the future, so my criteria is basically taking the code in it's current state and evaluating it like I would any other code. If it's a matter of opening a PR or two to get things cleaned up, and PRs seem to be merged relatively quickly, I might chance it, but I can't wait on an unresponsive maintainer to merge things. I have deadlines to meet. Ain't nobody got time for that. ------ thealistra 0\. Is README in good shape and the API is sane? 1\. Last commit date in last month 2\. Number of stars depending on the complexity of the lib ------ twunde When was the last time the code was updated? How many people have contributed to it?Really I'm looking to see whether the project is being actively maintained.

Stream you terminal in real-time with anyone – without installing anything - snooty https://streamhut.io/ ====== nviennot Author of tmate here. This is really cool. Bravo ------ hildenae Could this solution be extended with a openssl pipe to offer encryption? ------ seesawtron How do you shut it down or delete the session after you are done? ~~~ mritzmann With exit.. ~~~ seesawtron does it delete the session video from server? It seems like not. ------ lunatuna This looks like a security breach for most companies. ------ LogicX I was recently looking into ytalk/talkd which is the old-school way to do such things... Very cool, now I must decide between tmate and streamhut! ------ Operyl Very cool! I'll have to stick with tmate because I do need encryption. Keep up the work though! ------ coolspot Wow, such an elegant solution! Very impressive!

Analyse Asia Podcast #6: From Adventures to Communities in Southeast Asia - bleongcw http://blcw.me/1sBUxgP ====== bleongcw Synopsis for Episode 6: In this episode, Kristine Lauria, the country manager Elance-oDesk in Singapore joined us for a conversation on her interesting work in building and managing communities in Singapore (TheList.SG and Walkabout.SG). Starting from San Francisco, she told the story of her adventures in Asia through her blog: UrbanHikers. After settling in Singapore, she created two major initiatives which have infused the culture of community building and engagement in the Singapore entrepreneurial ecosystem (and they are still in running today): TheList.SG and Walkabout.SG. She also discussed her thoughts on Blk 71 and the startup real estate in Singapore, best practices on community building and engagement and on a larger scale, on her thoughts about other rising entrepreneurial ecosystems across Southeast Asia.

Are you misusing Alexa numbers? (Probably) - andrew_null http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew_chens_blog/2006/11/are_you_misusin.html ====== Tichy I thought the advertising companies would just track how many ads are being downloaded from their servers? Also I don't understand how the comScore approach is better than Alexa? Both seem to be applications that run on unwitting user's desktops and monitor their behaviour. Lastly, why are VCas looking at Alexa numbers if they could simply look at the server logs instead?

Git from the Bottom Up (2009) [pdf] - brudgers http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/git.from.bottom.up.pdf ====== jonahx Web version: [http://jwiegley.github.io/git-from-the-bottom- up/](http://jwiegley.github.io/git-from-the-bottom-up/) A nice resource in the same vein -- build a bare bones git in javascript: [http://kushagragour.in/blog/2014/01/build-git-learn- git/](http://kushagragour.in/blog/2014/01/build-git-learn-git/) And finally, Linus's one page explanation of git's central concepts for the initial commit of git: [https://github.com/git/git/tree/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23ca...](https://github.com/git/git/tree/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23ca2e25604af290) ~~~ rezzo I have just created EPUB and MOBI versions from the latest commit on the original book's repository (2015-08-03): [https://github.com/johnrezzo/git- from-the-bottom-up-ebook](https://github.com/johnrezzo/git-from-the-bottom-up- ebook) ------ erikb This is the right way to learn Git. I don't know how good this is, but I feel most of the strange unintuitiveness of git went away and was replaced by a feeling of productivity since I understood what happens under git's hood. ~~~ brudgers The big take away for me was the idea of blobs and trees as Hickeyian values and commits as Von Neumann places. [1] If there is one weakness is the article it is ending with _stash_ , which to me seems to be a bit of a feature in search of a workflow more than something that enhances distribution and sharing among a team in so far as the class of problem it addresses seems to result from larger issues of team structure and workflow [if it's worth saving then the whole team should know about it and have access]. It's useful to know about, but placing it at the end makes it seem like a high order bit rather than something for a corner case. [1]: [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Value- Values](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Value-Values) ~~~ JoshTriplett I find stash useful primarily as a place to hold things for a few minutes, and no longer. In particular, I frequently use "git stash", followed by "git pull --rebase", and if all went well, "git stash pop". I could just as easily do "git commit -a -m 'WIP'", "git pull --rebase", and "git reset HEAD^", but I find stash more intuitive. ~~~ brudgers That sort of gets at my point, stash makes sense in a corner of a high disciplined workflow. But the article presents it as approaching "best practice" and as a belt to sport with one's lederhosen. By analogy it's a bit like multiple inheritance in C++, on occasion and for some people it might be just the thing, but it's probably not a good starting assumption at the design phase. Though again, it's a minor criticism and mostly related to the impression of importance positioning it at the end of the article suggests [i.e. placing the strongest point in paragraph four of the five paragraph essay]. ~~~ davvolun > as a belt to sport with one's lederhosen That sounds to my American ears like the most German thing I've ever heard. ------ userbinator Talking about merges in Git always reminds me of this Linus post: [http://marc.info/?l=linux- kernel&m=139033182525831](http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=139033182525831) _there 's clearly a balance between "octopus merges are fine" and "Christ, that's not an octopus, that's a Cthulhu merge"._ (Also, GitHub's logo is reminiscent of the "octopus merge".) ------ TechieKid Related, for visual learners, Git for ages 4 and up: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ffBJ4sVUb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ffBJ4sVUb4) ~~~ m1keil this is awesome, thank you! ------ ziyao_w Seems to be down ATM. Archive link: [http://web.archive.org/web/20150906053023/http://ftp.newarti...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150906053023/http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/git.from.bottom.up.pdf) ------ bhaumik There's also Git from the Inside Out: [https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/two/git-from-the- inside...](https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/two/git-from-the-inside-out) *Part of a new publication by Recurse Center/Hacker School ------ xjia Related: [https://git-scm.com/book/en/v1/Git-Internals-Git- Objects](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v1/Git-Internals-Git-Objects) (and other sections in that chapter) ~~~ ben_straub This chapter was updated for the 2nd edition: [https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Git-Objects](https://git- scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Git-Objects) ------ kranner My favourite introduction to Git internals is by Scott Chacon: [https://github.com/pluralsight/git-internals- pdf/releases](https://github.com/pluralsight/git-internals-pdf/releases) ------ carltonf This is the document got me really understand Git. It's really helpful to know the internals as the surface of Git is too many to comprehend on their own. ------ lukego This was the first explanation of Git that made sense to me. ------ e19293001 What tool was used to create this document? ~~~ copperx Could be pain Tex, but I doubt it. Could be troff, but because it was easily converted to html, I doubt that to. Best bet is Markdown + some typesetter. ------ hasenj Old but gold. This is how I learned git, and I think it's the only proper way. Actually I did `git help tutorial` first to get started.

Show HN: An opinionated markdown-to-HTML tutorial publisher - sixhobbits https://ritza.co/experiments/opinionated-tutorial-publisher.html ====== sixhobbits Hey HN! There's been a bit of talk on here recently about the bloated web and minimalistic publishing platforms. This won't host your tutorials for you, but it will convert them from markdown to HTML in an opinionated (and I think aesthetic) way. Feedback welcome

On CPU backdoors - Trusting hardware - emillon http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2009/03/trusting-hardware.html ====== nicholas_tuzzio This touches on what I think is one of the more interesting technological problems that we have to worry about right now. As a disclosure, most of the reason I think that is because I'm a PhD student doing research on hardware security. Anyways, there has been a lot of interesting discussion on the topic. DARPA has had at least two programs dedicated to trying to solve this problem, IRIS and TRUST [1]. Both of them seemed to be more interested in tampering by third-parties, perhaps because it's not in their best interest to accuse the people designing their ICs of attacking them. In the long run, verifying the functionality and intentions of software and hardware are probably roughly the same problem, with no clear solution to either in the foreseeable future. [1] <http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/08/problem-from-hell/> ~~~ mindslight > In the long run, verifying the functionality and intentions of software and > hardware are probably roughly the same problem Both require trusting the source code (a languages problem), as well as trusting the translator. In the case of software, the translator is an end- user accessible compiler/interpreter which is itself more software, thus recursively auditable. In the case of hardware, the translator is an entire _institution_ , which can only be trusted if you have recourse against said institution. As an individual end-user (uber alles) can then never fully trust their hardware, it makes sense to draw a line in the sand and proceed from that assumption. (and suuure, put a picture of a pic16f84, the chip that started the revolution of microcontroller DIY, at the top of an article on dodgy hardware..) ------ conductor Indeed, a russian security specialist has proofs that there is a backdoor in Intel's virtualization technology: <http://www.xakep.ru/post/58104/> And here is the Google translated version of the article: [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http://www.xakep.ru/post/58104/) ~~~ jakeonthemove That's pretty interesting - I wonder if there are any other people/companies who've delved into this matter? ------ microarchitect DARPA and others are concernced about this exact scenario and are funding research into reverse-engineering chips to detect these types of backdoors. There are two parts this problem. One part is using electron microscopes and lasers and whatnot to go from silicon to a netlist of gates. The second part, which I'm a little more familiar with, is "decompiling" these gates into higher-level structures like ALUs and multipliers. The hope is that we can identify maybe 80% of the circuit to be good/recognized using purely algorithmic techniques and then a human can dig in and look through the remaining 20% for anything suspicious. They do seem to be more concerned about chips the US buys from certain other countries than about the likes Intel/AMD building in backdoors. EDIT: I should also mention that this is not just a concern of the american defence. I'm aware of the indian govt also funding this sort of research with similar motivation. However, in this instance, the professor was trying to attack the problem through the lens of formal techniques. I think the idea was to prove that if the chip interacts with the outside world through these limited set of channels then you can't sneak data out through some sort of covert channel hiding in the "regular" communication. The specific concern here was about routers/switches and the like equipment sneaking sensitive data out of a secure network. ~~~ sliverstorm Doesn't the government already make use of IBM's manufacturing capabilities for Top Secret+ chips to try and mitigate the risk of this scenario? ~~~ microarchitect I'm not sure but I think you may be right because the researchers have been granted access to some IBM cell libraries. (I was wondering why IBM agreed to this, but this probably explains it.) My understanding is that the main concern here are chips in COTS equipment bought from countries that are considered by some to be untrustworthy. ~~~ sliverstorm _I was wondering why IBM agreed to this_ Allegedly the government requiring a domestic fab for some chips is one of the biggest reasons IBM's fab remains funded. All hearsay though. ------ js2 2009\. I'm surprised this hasn't been on HN before. Related - <http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html> ~~~ conductor I just remembered another related case, the "Induc" virus which was infecting a library file from the Delphi distribution, and then every compiled program was infected. There were several pretty popular programs compiled on infected computers of the developers and spreaded by the world. [http://delphi.about.com/od/humorandfun/f/w32-induc-a- delphi-...](http://delphi.about.com/od/humorandfun/f/w32-induc-a-delphi- virus.htm) <https://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001752.html> ------ mistercow > So, if we buy a laptop from vendor X, that might be based in some not-fully- > democratic country Like, say, the US... ~~~ knieveltech I have no idea why this is getting downvoted. The current political climate in the US is fucking abysmal, and bears little resemblance to a representative democracy. ~~~ grannyg00se Probably because the comment didn't contribute to the discussion at hand and had a high troll potential. It's unfortunate that the author decided to throw that comment into the article because it is naive sounding and seems quite out of place there as well. ~~~ mistercow I suppose it doesn't open up much possibility for discussion afterward, but I wasn't intending to troll. I just think we need to remember that we don't have to imagine some undemocratic international threat to understand why these issues are important. ------ lukeschlather Never mind us. Why should Intel trust Intel? Like any good computing company, I would imagine they are mostly self-hosting. The chips they built last year are the chips they use to run simulations and design the chips they put out next year. Backdoors can be exploited by any employee who knows about them, and it would be extraordinarily damaging for Intel to allow backdoors into hardware they depend on. Even if they built in some sort of a kill-switch, how could anyone confidently say that a rogue engineer involved in the design couldn't bypass it and use the chip against Intel. Ultimately, I think there's so much danger that I have to assume Intel is competent enough not to do something so foolish as introduce deliberate backdoors. ~~~ javert But there are SO many chipsets they put out. e.g. I have a Core 2 Duo system, but the exact chipset is T9400. Intel could keep track of which chipsets are vulnerable and which are not, and carefully pick which kind gets released to who. Obviously, Intel employees aware of the strategy would only use the invulnerable chipsets themselves. ------ lmm I'm expecting someone to produce a fully open hardware stack sooner or later - there's already a freely available sparc processor design, and I recall some open-source people working on a fully open graphics card. (Of course you still have to trust your fab, but that's not very different from trusting your compiler). ~~~ andylei how is trusting your fab any different than trusting Intel? > that's not very different from trusting your compiler if you were paranoid enough to be worrying about CPU backdoors, why would you trust your compiler? ~~~ lmm >how is trusting your fab any different than trusting Intel? You increase the cost of an attack - it's harder to change a processor's behavior by editing the mask than the VHDL. If you were super-paranoid you could source to multiple different fabs and run the chips you get back in parallel, with some sort of trap that goes off whenever you get different results from one or other processor. >if you were paranoid enough to be worrying about CPU backdoors, why would you trust your compiler? If you don't trust your compiler, why are you even bothering worrying about CPU backdoors when you've got a much easier attack vector open? ~~~ javert _run the chips you get back in parallel_ Who's to say you're going to trigger the condition that causes the backdoor? Seems very unlikely. If you have ideas on this, though, I'd be interested. _If you don't trust your compiler, why are you even bothering worrying about CPU backdoors when you've got a much easier attack vector open?_ You may not trust your compiler, and therefore do certain things in a VM where e.g. access to network is limited. See [1]. [1] <http://qubes-os.org/Home.html> ------ javajosh The irony is that electron microscopes run on computers, too. And they are probably even networked. So really you can only trust an analog, optical microscope. Which, also ironically, is not quite good enough to resolve individual transistors (being limited to about 200nm or so, in green light.) Last but not least, our CPUs are always designed by other computers, so it's theoretically possible that a backdoor could propagate itself forever. ------ zokier One thing to note is that having good perimeter security makes exploiting hardware backdoors much harder. I mean if you are monitoring all of your internet traffic then even if somebody with an access to a hardware backdoor tried to steal data or log your activities the traffic caused by those attempts would be caught at the perimeter. ------ robot Problem is real, solution not so much. By hardware memory protection drivers will be isolated, but you cannot protect yourself from backdoor logic built into the hardware. ~~~ wmf An IOMMU does protect against rogue peripheral devices, just not a rogue processor. ~~~ simcop2387 Yes a driver written that uses IOMMU/VT-d for firewire devices will prevent attacks over it from dumping memory and recovering keys, assuming that the memory isn't reused and contains it already etc. Having this combined with a quick way to zero out whatever DMA region is being used would be about as foolproof as you could expect anything to be for protecting you from this kind of attack. ------ kabdib Note that you also have to trust the /tools/ that generate the circuits. Nobody's doing to check every single gate on the chip against the source code; it would be easy for a VHDL compiler to lay down extra stuff. Shades of "Reflections on Trusting Trust," but in hardware. Doesn't have a complete replication loop, though, which would have the compromised hardware re-infecting the very VHDL compilers that generated the chip backdoor :-) ------ orblivion I bet this is where Stallman does another 180 (like with cloud computing) and will claim that open hardware is paramount. ~~~ SkyMarshal What was his 180 with cloud computing? ~~~ orblivion At one point I remember he said it doesn't matter that we can't see the source code running on remote computers because they're not rightfully in your control. It's just something you're connecting to with something you do control. You have the potential to check on your safety because you can see everything going in and out of your computer. ------ arnoooooo Regarding open source, I think the point about security is not so much that you will read the entire source yourself, but that the reading of the source is, like its writing, a collective enterprise. If there's a backdoor, somebody at some point will see it. ------ breakyerself Aren't there laws against companies making Backdoor like this? Not that I'm naive enough to think that means it won't happen. ------ VMG typo in headline ~~~ emillon Fixed - thank you !

Pikini just launched – App to find your friends' bikini pictures automatically - mosselman https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pikinis/id715969584?utm_source=Launch+%28wave+13%29&utm_campaign=b3a794a37b-Launch+email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_aa9fcb934b-b3a794a37b-79962533 ====== jaegerpicker Jesus, and people in this industry STILL fight the idea that it's an incredibly gross and sexist environment. This is what we can achieve with some of the greatest technologies that humanity has created, really!? ~~~ mosselman As it says on the app page "Pikinis is for everyone – men or women, straight, gay, or bi-sexual, human or vampire!". You are making it about sexism; surely shows in what types of categories you think about people. Also, phones are not the greatest technology. Medicine is the greatest and even that is debatable. All other technology is just aimed at killing each other and shallow fun. ~~~ jaegerpicker Right, that's why all of the pictures as of women in the Apple store, it's sold as a bikini search app (which is very much mostly a women's swimsuit), and there is no overbearing culture of sexism in tech? None of those things matter, is that really what you are trying to say? And yes internet equipped devices and the sum total of most human knowledge at your finger tips is CLEARLY one of the greatest if not the greatest advancement(s) for human kind. It enhances and makes possible nearly every other branch of human discovery possible. Because you are shallow in your use of it does not mean the tech is aimed at shallow fun. ------ FroshKiller I like how the link you submitted appears to have come from a "please please please let me know when this app launches" mailing list. That's not a good look. ~~~ mosselman I see. Posting it here to begin with was a classy move, but using the link is what makes it a bad look? ~~~ FroshKiller Well, understand that the context matters. It's definitely something worth discussing! But whether it's a good look or a bad look depends on the discovery. If you'd found it from, say, Jezebel's critical preview versus a heck-yeah-sign-me-up announcement list, your audience could take it differently. :) ------ geophile The TV series Silicon Valley has proven eerily prescient. First Weissman scores turn out to be real, and now Nip Alert comes to life. ~~~ jaegerpicker I know it's one of the things that makes that show pretty awesome, and makes me pretty sure that it can be a long running show. A SHIT-TON of spoof worthy material.

Amazon is shipping expired food - juokaz https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/20/amazon-is-shipping-expired-baby-formula-and-other-out-of-date-foods.html ====== Shivetya The sad part is compared to Amazon sellers on ebay have a reputation they need to protect and on Amazon it is more of an anonymous minefield. I have tried to buy items from candies, coffees, and cookies, and it is too hit and miss. With regards to the cookies; needed a batch of fortune cookies and they arrived stale but on ebay there are sellers who make them! Coffee and candies are much safer sourced from a provider such as nuts.com who has their reputation to maintain. Amazon nor its sellers have that issue. Amazon simply can point at the sellers and the sellers are too anonymous to care. Out of curiosity, is there a standard in labeling for expiration dates? Surely if fulfilled by Amazon they can scan everything ------ fortran77 > By the time Andrea Wilson realized her Hostess brownies were more than a > year old, she had already eaten one. She contacted Amazon about the order. > The issue wasn’t resolved until she tweeted at the company. She got her full > refund but said she’s done buying food on Amazon. She _ate_ one! ~~~ krapp >>She got her full refund but said she’s done buying food on Amazon. After working at an Amazon fulfillment center and seeing how disgusting the bins can get when food is involved (leaks, maggots, bugs, mice, etc.) and how quality control can slip when incentives are skewed towards volume and speed, I came to the same conclusion long ago - I'm never buying food from Amazon.

Stop sharing stuff you didn’t read thanks to a responsible design - HipstaJules https://medium.com/@giuliomichelon/stop-sharing-stuff-you-dont-read-thanks-to-a-responsible-design-c65e77e0a53f ====== sp332 Personally I don't do this and here's my trick. Just remember how much you hate reading that junk, and then think of your poor followers who don't want to read that junk either. Then just keep scrolling instead of clicking the share button, it's that easy. ------ shshhdhs 5 upvotes in 8 minutes? The irony is most probably didn’t read this.. Not criticizing, just ironic :) ~~~ HipstaJules It's a three-minute read according to Medium. I think it's alright ;)

Optimize your site's images - geuis http://www.smushit.com/ ====== eli Is there a description of what it actually does? ~~~ billturner From the site: Smushit.com is a service that goes beyond the limitations of Photoshop, Fireworks & Co. It uses image format specific non-lossy image optimization tools to squeeze the last bytes out of your images - without changing their look or visual quality. You'll get a report of how many bytes you can save by optimizing your images and all the changed images as a single zip for download. ~~~ eli Yes, but how?

Show HN: Page of HN links - kgermino http://hnlists.pen.io/ ====== kgermino I wrote this up after the earlier discussion at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2496527> It's nothing fancy, but I figure it might be a nice reference. Let me know if there is any pages/links you want added.

Fortune Asks 'Why Does America Hate Silicon Valley?' - wallflower http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2013/10/fortune_asks_why_does.php ====== jcrites > But there's not much gentrification going on, since Twitter keeps hundreds > of staff inside, with free gourmet meals, plus a slew of free services, dry > cleaning, even cleaning staff apartments. It is competing with local > businesses rather than helping support them — it's the opposite of > gentrification. It's not as if Twitter or Google provide those services via their own full time employees, right? They hire local companies to provide these services. We're talking about catered food from local companies, apartment cleaning from a cleaning company, etc. If anything, we'd expect a _greater_ level of commerce with local businesses, since employees might not choose to spend their own income on those services. By providing the services to all employees, those companies actually create more demand for local business than would probably otherwise exist. The fact that they're being provided as benefits is irrelevant - they are increasing demand. The article seems to ignore this, and as a result it does not make sense to me. ~~~ wmf The article is not talking about creating jobs in general, but about cleaning up certain neighborhoods. Nice restaurants aren't opening in the Tederloin because the catering is being brought in from elsewhere in the city. ------ malandrew Many people in the Tenderloin actively avoid gentrification[0]. For many of the people who live there, it is a beacon of hope. The one place in the center of many major US cities, where many of the outcasts of modern urban society can still remain in the city. They like their life. They have been living there for years and hope they can continue to live there for many more. There is no delusion that once they give in to gentrification, they will be forced out of the city and most will never again be able to afford living again. And in the process neighbors who have grown up living together in the same place for decades will be ripped apart while they have to move elsewhere, but not in a way where they can preserve the communities they currently have. If I counted myself among those who have called the Tenderloin home for years, I would despise the people who seek to terraform my home making it inhabitable to me while they make it habitable to themselves. [0] Read about Carolyn Abst's attempts to arborize the Tenderloin. ~~~ WildUtah "terraform my home making it inhabitable to me while they make it habitable to themselves." Inhabitable means habitable. [0] You may need the word "uninhabitable." [0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO3Wfenv4Mo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO3Wfenv4Mo) ~~~ malandrew Doh! Thanks for the correction. ------ Steko You might as well ask why Americans hate Southerners or Southern Californians or Midwesterners. Or why hipsters from Portland and NY are made fun of or why Americans hate Canada and Mexico and Europe and East Asians and of course Central Asians and Semitic people. We're a nation of haters. ~~~ adventured I've had the exact opposite experience. I don't personally know a single American that hates Canada or Mexico. In fact, I would say the opinion of Canada is between neutral and quite positive. They've just about never done anything to wrong us, have been a good border partner, and an amazing trade + energy partner. I also don't know a single person that hates Silicon Valley. Most Americans, in my opinion, are clueless about Silicon Valley, outside of knowing that there are technology companies there. Why? Because the people / culture and politics of Silicon Valley don't matter to them and their day to day lives. ~~~ Steko My post was partially tongue in cheek. American's don't universally hate Canada or Mexico or Silicon Valley. In the right context though many of them might sneer at Silicon Valley (or for many at least the ultra-liberal bay area). Ask most Canadians living in the states and you will hear innumerable sad stories of being the butt of not very funny poutine and maple syrup jokes. ------ nattaggart I get the sense that this author is misinterpreting what a someone from the Silicon Valley means when they say they're going to change the world. To the silicon valley, "to change" means "to improve by eliminating inefficiency." If the complaint is that the Silicon Valley should be more charitable, the author is missing the purpose of their goal. Charity rarely, if ever, improves efficiency and often detracts from it. I'm not trying say that charity is wrong. It's just the wrong standard of success in this case. ------ abhinai If I could downvote this article, I would. ------ GeorgeOrr Haters Gonna Hate

API to Generate fictitious customer names, addresses, birthdates, etc. - SQL2219 https://anonymize.strd.co ====== nwrk For selfhosted folks there is great faker library. [https://github.com/marak/Faker.js/](https://github.com/marak/Faker.js/)

ChesSkelet: Micro Chess Game for ZX Spectrum in 365 Bytes - sohkamyung http://chesskelet.x10host.com/ ====== reeagbo Hi! the author here. I really dig your comments, including the criticisms. I see some people even looking at the code. My current intention is to work on it a bit more. The version online is not the final one yet. First thing: maximum respect for earlier implementations, especially 70s and 80s ones, which seem to me much more difficult to complete with the resources of that time. And for 1K programs like Toledo's, I´m fully aware it would smash my code, but I´m not trying to do something playing well, you ave tons of good playing programs. If you allow me, let me give you my opinion on the "full set of rules" discussion. First of all, let me warn you that none of the 1K implementations fulfills a full set of rules, be it Nanochess or any other. Long term draw situations, some stale mates and others require much more development. This said, probably the discussion is: how much can we trim the rules and still call it chess? My pieces are letters and the board is dots! That discards my program before moving any piece. Now, I agree that missing castling is a bad one and I intend to add it to the "full" version later on. The funny thing about castling is that I only need to allow the human side to do it. With such small AI on the computer side, it would never know when it shall use it. For the other rules most people can live without en-passant or under-promotions for this type of informal playing. You still think it cannot be called chess? Well, I respect it but other people are not so worried about FIDE compliance and enjoy moving letters versus a 300 byte program. Also, I already got feedback that allowed my to reduce code by 12 bytes, so if anybody feels like digging into the assembly I'm sure it can be shrunk a bit. Alex ------ flurr Playing either of two the minimal versions, the following moves produce a crash (yielding the "C - Nonsense in BASIC" only supposed to happen during a checkmate). (deterministic responses from computer in []s) 1. e2e4 [e7e6] 2. e4e5 [d8h4] 3. g2g3 [h4d4] 4. c2c3 [d4e5] 5. d2d4 [CRASH] (v 0.703) ~~~ kosmickanga The minimal versions don't check human move validity (see the "Read before playing" section), and d2d4 is illegal as white is in check. ------ tcbawo This is very cool. I've been playing Nanochess since it popped up on HN ([http://www.nanochess.org/chess.html](http://www.nanochess.org/chess.html)). He has a similarly sized and restricted version, but remarkably includes the full rule set and competitive AI in a 1k Javacript package. ------ aj7 Not chess if no en passant, castling, etc. It’s a prototype that’s demonstrated when the programmer realizes the “exceptions” double the code length, or aren’t worth it because he’s not a chess player. ~~~ sago These 'minimal chess' programs trace their lineage (and mostly their rules) back to ZX Chess [0] for the ZX81, which was a significant accomplishment, and remains notable in the history of personal computing, cropping up from time to time in lists of the greatest program ever written. It says this at the top of the page. It is not a naive prototype. I'd be very surprised if the programmer couldn't play chess. It's a part of computing history. And the competition to reduce the number of bytes is > 35 years old. [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess) ------ guru_meditation Moved white queen in front of black (computer) king under the cover of the white knight. Computer went ahead and captured my queen using its king. Was tempted to capture the king with my knight, closed browser window instead :) ------ comnetxr I played a short game; I captured black's queen on black's back row with my queen, in which the black king could have taken my queen or moved out of check. Instead, black moved a different piece (invalid given that it is in check). So I captured black's king... ------ imglorp Side question about this site: Does anyone know why the FF back button (Alt left arrow) and Page-up/down is disabled and why this would be desirable? ~~~ shakna Seems to be a consequence of JSSpeccy, the Spectrum emulator embedded into the site. Perhaps to let the emulator grab those sorts of shortcuts for any hosted program. ------ benj111 Re "C - Nonsense in BASIC" This isn't a Basic program, does it just use that string to save embedding text, or does it actually use Basic for some things? ~~~ sago The machine doesn't have error messages for machine code. And it would be a waste of space to code a graceful endgame state. In the larger version it changes border colour and reinitialises the board. In the smaller version, it just blows the call stack (edit: with an unexpected return value), and that is interpreted by the machine (which has no clue whether it's running BASIC or not) as the error given. ~~~ benj111 Ok interesting thanks, so Basic's error handling was basically the machines error handling. The spectrum had more of a (what would you call it? Bios?) than I thought. I didn't think there would be anything to catch and display an error, I assumed it would be more a case of just resetting. I suppose it shows just how built around Basic the spectrum was. ~~~ sago > (what would you call it? Bios?) I stumbled over what to call it too. I should add I have only basic experience in both ZX machines. I was a kid at the time and just learning, so my memory may be dubious. But yes that's basically my understanding. ~~~ avian > I stumbled over what to call it too. People at the time just called it "ROM or "ROM routines". There's the BASIC interpreter, but there's also a lot of useful functions you can call from assembly (like the ROM tape loader for example). > it just blows the call stack It seems to me this is an unintended side effect. The game code is entered using USR, which is the BASIC expression to call into assembly code [1]. A normal "ret" opcode should just return to the prompt, but apparently the game messes up some internal BASIC interpreter state, which results in this error upon return. [1] [http://www.worldofspectrum.org/ZXBasicManual/zxmanchap26.htm...](http://www.worldofspectrum.org/ZXBasicManual/zxmanchap26.html)

Dear ITU, please don't bill Internet use like phone calls - mtgx http://www.arstechnica.com/business/2012/12/dear-itu-please-dont-bill-internet-use-like-phone-calls/ ====== zb The whole concept of "sending party network pays" is just an elaborate wordplay. Relay-switched telecommunications networks are inherently symmetric. The concept of a "sending" party is meaningless; the _originating_ party pays. This makes a lot of sense, since the originating party is the one in a position to decide whether to place the call and therefore should bear the cost. By renaming the originating party to the "sending" party, they can redefine YouTube/NetFlix/whoever as the "sending" party even though the user is the originating party. Thus they attempt to justify denying the user the service _which they already have paid for_ unless they receive the appropriate kickbacks^W "fees" from whoever is serving the data. ------ nitrogen With regards to Quality of Service, what's wrong with letting the packet flags decide QoS, with customers paying for a guaranteed percentage of high-QoS bandwidth during peak network load? In other words, when the network is underutilized, all packets would be transmitted with high priority and low latency, with QoS flags allowing packets to jump ahead in packet queues. When the network is heavily loaded, high-QoS packets beyond the customer's quota would be relegated to best effort. ~~~ eridius In this situation, what's stopping all traffic senders from marking their packets with the QoS flag? After all, they don't want their traffic getting stuck behind some other sender's traffic. ~~~ belorn Each customer only has a limited amount of QoS high priority traffic. If someone flags every packet with high priority, all the QoS mean is that the first packages get improved priority and everything else get default low priority. That mean a customers software can balance the use of QoS for time sensitive traffic, and maybe even flag some data as below default to get bonus high priority traffic points. If its the software that runs on the consumers device that decide priority, the software developer can pick the exact needed QoS his program or service need. The bonus effect here is that if the QoS fail and the program breaks, its the software developer that are liable and not the ISP. Currently, if a ISP QoS software breaks, the ISP is actually quite open for lawsuits from both the user and the service that get effected. ~~~ eridius The customer isn't the one flagging the packets with QoS, the sender of the traffic is. So sure, if you're talking about outbound VoIP traffic from the customer's computer, they could do that. But what about inbound traffic, which for nearly all customers is the bulk of their traffic? There can be no way to put controls on who sets the QoS flag, which means everybody needs to set it or they risk having their own service degraded because someone else decided to inappropriately set their own QoS flag. Basically, it's tragedy of the commons. All incoming traffic is going to end up with the QoS flag set, and thus the internet will basically behave as if it didn't exist. ~~~ belorn Put a stateful table in there, and there is no problem identify most inbound traffic as high priority if the receiver first initiate the communication with high priority set. There is a bit of issues with mutli-path routing, but its a rare issue that could likely be ignored as non-QoS worthy packages. Of course, that only work inside one ISP and its customers, or between ISP which agree to respect each other limited use of QoS, both this approach would not fall for the tragedy of the commons. So long the end-user who initiate the traffic ends up deciding what priority is needed, limited use of QoS could help solve problem of voip vs bittorent. ~~~ vy8vWJlco Routers (and bittorrent clients, and operating systems) allow households to prioritize their traffic already. (IMHO, any "solution" to bittorrent vs voip should live at the edge where it only affects the person who chose it.) ~~~ 18pfsmt Read the Republic Wireless forums to see how many people actually understand the QoS settings of their router. These people are seemingly power users at the least, and certainly early adopters. Perhaps it's the acronym soup engineers expect the laymen to know, or perhaps it's the laziness of the typical end user, but I suspect it is a little of both. ~~~ wmf That's just because many existing routers have bad UI. Some of them just have a checkbox for automatic QoS that works fine. AFAIK the bufferbloat/CeroWRT people are working on open source QoS that just works with no configuration. Downstream QoS really needs to be done at the ISP, though. ------ smsm42 I'm not sure I understand this idea at all. To me, it sounds a bit like gasoline companies asking from Walmart or Costco to pay them because a lot of people drive to Walmart and Costco using their gasoline. That may be true, but they pay exactly for that! Moreover, the only reason why people buy gasoline is to drive to places, so where the idea that somebody owes them extra for that comes from? In the same way, internet access is a commodity and the only reason I pay for it is that I need to get to Google or Netflix or such. Where the idea that Google or Netflix get "free ride" comes from? I pay for my access, Google and Netflix pay for their connectivity. If the connectivity is not enough, customers would complain and depending on where the problem is, end up paying for better local access (if they know it's slow for them but fine for the neighbor next door that uses different provider) or have their provider (i.e. Netflix) upgrade their connectivity by telling them to improve delivery or they stop paying/visiting/clicking on ads. This all should work as it works now, where the idea of a "free ride" and additional payments due comes from? ------ hardik988 I'm pretty sure I'm exposing my extreme ignorance on the matter, but how does the ITU have the authority to take decisions like this? Shouldn't W3 have a say? Or somebody else? ~~~ nitrogen For one thing, the ITU is a governmental body (that is, its members are governments; it is an agency of the UN), while the W3C and IETF are open membership organizations that anyone can join. In other words, the ITU is run by people whose job is to _run_ things. The IETF and W3C are run by people whose job it is to _do_ things. Groups of the former category tend to want to control those of the latter. Edit to add: the different outcomes of the ITU vs. IETF/W3C can also be attributed to the purpose of existence of their members. People who _run_ things (e.g. governments) want to _keep running things_. Thus, their work tends to result in new laws and treaties. People who _do_ things (e.g. engineers) want to _keep doing things_. Thus, their work tends to result in voluntary, consensus-based agreements. ~~~ hardik988 Thanks. That clarifies it up a bit. So could this summit result in a real threat to net neutrality? ~~~ wyck The summit can result in more then net neutrality threats, it includes censorship, monitoring, archiving and usage regulations. The ITU comprises of 193 countries and over 700 private-sector entities. It has become more transparent due to public outcry, but who knows what is discussed over dinner ( aka there is a lot of money and control being looked over as though it's a map to the new world). ------ jrockway I can't help but wonder why they didn't try this 20 years ago. As it stands now, it seems hopelessly out of touch with reality. Why would people start paying more for online services when the price of everything tends to decrease over time? And why do governments think that the big internet companies are going to pay for this? They have shareholders too, after all. ~~~ derleth > I can't help but wonder why they didn't try this 20 years ago. 20 years ago, nobody cared about the few, the unusual, the networked. 15 years ago, people damned well did care, but everyone was in 'run in circles, scream and shout' mode and business plans were more-or-less optional. 10 years ago it was definitively too late. Does that seem like an eye blink to you? It does to a multinational bureaucracy. My life fades... the vision dims... all that remains are memories. Looking back over the history of the Internet, from about 1991 to 2001, I remember a time of chaos, bizarre dreams, and the growing suspicion that the average people more-or-less snuck online too quickly for anyone who could have been said to have been 'in charge' to notice. ------ hn-miw-i Despite efforts of the EU and the ITU to put the Internet genie back in her bottle, she grows louder and prouder every day. She is still in her formative days, as the old world money tries to tame her radical free spirit. Let's hope decisions made by old men in new Dubai doesn't keep her from constantly changing humanity. ~~~ mtgx It's not the "EU" as in the EU Parliament. In fact they've passed a resolution to oppose this sort of changes at ITU's WCIT. The article talks about ETNO, an European telecom association. So it's the ISP's and carriers from Europe pushing for these changes. Nothing to do with the EU Parliament or EU governments (well, Russia and China's censorship proposals are entirely different from this). Just corporations being greedy. The EU Parliament has actually legislated their roaming prices twice in the past (downwards), because they thought roaming prices should be much smaller than they were, within EU's borders. ------ KaoruAoiShiho A bunch of different corporate entities getting together with governments to jack up prices, how is this any different from a cartel. ------ mariuolo I really don't understand. I thought the planned ITU involvement was supposed to be limited to the ICANN/IANA bailiwick. ------ ef4 While we're at it, don't bill phone calls like phone calls either.

Red Hat's biggest enemy (VMWare) - g-garron http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/red-hats-biggest-enemy-vmware/9468 ====== rbanffy I am not sure this analysis holds. While Red Hat threatens VMWare (or, more specifically, its proprietary products alongside KVM threaten VMWare's products) I think the threat against Red Hat comes from other Linux (OpenSolaris-derived) distros that also offer the same KVM technology coupled to somewhat simpler, open-source, management tools. VMWare doesn't really sell virtualization tools. They sell management tools for virtualized infrastructure. The sooner they get it, the better it will be for them. ~~~ technomancy Also odd that there's no mention of Xen, the free software virtualization layer that powers AWS. ~~~ rbanffy Red Hat plans to transition to KVM. I suppose AWS will, eventually, do the same. And nobody will notice.

A Breakdown of Selected Government Surveillance Programs (2013) [pdf] - cmurf https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/Government%20Surveillance%20Factsheet.pdf ====== cmurf Decent three page summary from Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Are They Allowed to Do That? A Breakdown of Selected Government Surveillance Programs (2013)

Ask HN: Science for the very young? - timwiseman My son is just about to turn 5 and I am looking for "science experiments" or projects we can do together to help get him interested (and give me an excuse to do some of them).<p>Any suggestions, especially on a budget? ====== zoba I think anything that "looks cool" will be good for getting a kid interested in science. Once you've got him/her hooked, then you can start on the actual scientific method. To that end, science things that look cool: Cymatics: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iXY2BE1S8Q> Ferrofluid: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpBxCnHU8Ao> <http://www.gaussboys.com/ndfeb-magnets/FerroFluid25> Non Newtonian Liquids: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5SGiwS5L6I> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XQ97XHjVw> Microcontrollers: [http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=211799...](http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2117994) (maybe not the best for a 5 year old, but in a couple years) Make a Speaker for cheap (haven't done this one myself): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m8fbnShPcw> Electromagnets: <http://education.jlab.org/qa/electromagnet.html> Finally, one project I did with my little brother that I thought was cool. I got a frequency analyzer for my computer ( <http://www.relisoft.com/Freeware/freq.html>) and then filled glass cups with varying amounts of liquid. Then we ran our fingers around the lip of the glass to get it to "sing" and measured the frequency. We were able to come up with a function for X amount of liquid gives you X frequency. I thought this was great because: it was really appealing to my brother (he was 10 or so at the time) because all kids like making cups make noise, we got to do scientific method (hypothesis being more water in the glass) will make a lower frequency, I got to teach him about graphing, how to get a forumla for a line on a graph, and finally we could use that line to predict things to see if we were right. ------ sga You could have a lot of fun with an inexpensive microscope (look at a number of different materials, bugs, etc..) or even a set of magnifying glasses. Get your hands on some polarizers, play with the affect of one and your ability to look into bodies of water (pool, lake, etc) show him that if you cross the polarizers you can't see through. Couple the polarizers to the microscope and do some polarization microscopy. You could also play with prisms and look at the dispersion of light. Lots of good optics stuff out there. I would highly recommend staying away from lasers until he's older. You might also consider doing some crystallization experiments (google "crystal projects for kids"). ------ Aron Throw some pepper on a bowl of water, and touch it with a soaped finger. ------ blender Also Baking Soda + Vinegar, add some red food coloring for lava effect ~~~ timwiseman Great suggestion. First one we did. He loves it. If you add a drop of dish soap it gets more bubbly and looks more like lava. ------ zck Show him videos on youtube of various science experiments or lectures. When he seems interested in an idea, work with him to create an experiment, find the items, and perform it. ------ aheilbut That photosensitive paper that lets you make 'photographs' of objects (like leaves and rocks) was pretty fun. ------ aheilbut Get him one of those one-volume kids' science encyclopedias to carry around. ------ aheilbut You'd have to build it, but how about model rockets? ------ blender Diet Coke + Mentos

Reiser Prosecution Jolt: Victim's Ex-Lover Confesses to Eight Killings - brk http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/05/reiser ====== davidw Dude, that article is nearly a year old...

Hall Design Tour – From 0% to 30% Weekly Retention - bretthellman https://hall.com/blog/hall-design-tour-from-0-to-30-weekly-retention/ ====== ronadams Focusing on creating the single page app and forgetting the pretty factor really was a key to increased retention. I feel like that was a huge learning for us. Form follows function. ------ bretthellman Hopefully these learnings will help other early startups.