For example, what do you think will be the Fundamental Applications for a Post-Pandemic World?
I believe that P2P, decentralization, cryptography and virtual reality will create a new universe of services that will become more and more present.
But this is just an assumption. What do you think?\n======\ntucaz\n\u201c I believe that P2P, decentralization, cryptography and virtual reality will\ncreate a new universe of services that will become more and more present.\u201d\n\nIf anything it will be the opposite. All you mentioned is a concern of a very\nsmall part of the population.\n\nI believe that in this regard we will be seeing more control and\ncentralization from governments in order to try to predict/prevent future\noccurrences.\n\n~~~\nmultiversecoder\nI fully support your thinking, and I believe that the high number of\nrestrictions will create as a consequence a greater number of distrustful\npeople who will suffer greatly from the controls and will look for\nalternatives to feel more protected and free. I mean as a feeling, even\nplacebo, of having full control and not being controlled.\n\nOf course there will be those who will not take care of these options and will\nnot look for them.\n\nBut now more than ever there is a human need to support the growth of these\nservices, at least I think, to ensure a safe area and a private space for\nanyone.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nRemembering Sydney Goldstein, Founder of City Arts and Lectures - chmaynard\nhttps://datebook.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/sydney-goldstein-founder-of-city-arts-lectures-dies-at-73\n======\necabraser\nBelated gratitude to Sydney Goldstein for the brilliant insight, impeccably\nand consistently implemented, that great conversation enriches the cultural\nand intellectual lives of all who listen- and she enabled us to listen in to\nsome of the most fascinating conversations ever. I got hooked on City Arts and\nLectures- and did my best to hook others, too- that was easy. We take our\ncultural riches, and those who labor to bestow them, for grated far too often.\nThank you Sydney from a city to whom you gave so much.\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nWhy were mid-century futurist predictions \u2013 like flying cars \u2013 so wrong? - JacobAldridge\nhttp://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3188/why-were-midcentury-futurist-predictions-like-flying-cars-so-wrong\n\n======\nGravityloss\nWhat if there was no global warming and oil costed a quarter of current? We\ncould have a lot more turbine machines for example, including aircraft.\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nWhy The \"Star Trek Computer\" Will Be Open Source and ALv2 Licensed - mindcrime\nhttp://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-star-trek-computer-will-be-open.html\n\n======\nm0nastic\nI don't have any kind of knack for predicting things, but I'd argue that it's\nat least as likely for the \"Star Trek computer\" to be what things like Google\nNow turn into (which as far as I can tell, isn't open source at all).\n\nI would be very surprised if the aggregation of technology required for this\ntype of interface doesn't require a company with a lot of services know-how to\nchampion (I could see Apple, for instance trying to go down that path, but I\ndon't think they've ever shown any aptitude for online services).\n\nMaybe after someone makes it, a shitty, open-source knockoff will show up; but\nI don't think what's laid out in this article is a foregone conclusion.\n\n~~~\nmindcrime\n_Maybe after someone makes it, a shitty, open-source knockoff will show up;\nbut I don't think what's laid out in this article is a foregone conclusion._\n\nPerhaps not. But nobody wants to read a headline like:\n\n\"Some reasons why I think that it's possible that maybe, just maybe, something\nlike the Star Trek Computer might come along someday and it might, with some\nluck, be open source, and it could be Apache Licensed, but maybe not\".\n\nAt some point, you have to say _something_ , and while I'm not big on\nheadlines that are outright \"linkbait\" if you write stuff, you typically want\npeople to read and comment on it, so the headline has to be somewhat catchy\nand maybe even a little controversial.\n\nThe key point here, isn't really the posit that the Star Trek computer _will_\nbe Open Source and ALv2 licensed, it's that a lot of awesome work is going on\nin various semi-related ASF projects right now, some or all of which could\nwell become part of something like the Star Trek Computer. But, again, that's\ntoo long and wordy for a headline.\n\n~~~\nobviouslygreen\nSo you're suggesting that articles without compelling content should still\nhave compelling titles?\n\nThe goal is certainly to gain readership, but adding controversy to a title on\nan article that doesn't contain any isn't a good idea. It's a\nmisrepresentation of your article, and what extra traffic it does bring you\nisn't likely to result in happy new readers.\n\nSome articles just don't appeal to a lot of people because of their content.\nThat doesn't mean a title that reflects what's in the article is a bad idea;\nit just means the author should either have realistic expectations regarding\nthe exposure their article can reasonably expect, they should be writing\nsomething that _is_ controversial, or they should be writing something else\nentirely.\n\nIf your goal is to communicate specific information and your title doesn't\nreflect it accurately, all you've done is fail at titling your work.\n\n~~~\nmindcrime\n_So you're suggesting that articles without compelling content should still\nhave compelling titles?_\n\nNot at all. Obviously this exists on a continuum and is somewhat subjective,\nhowever. I would never advocate posting low quality content with a flat-out\nlink-baity title like \"Learn About Bill Gates and Ada Lovelace's Secret\nLovechild: Mark Zuckerberg\" or something. But I think you have to create a\ntitle which is as compelling as you can, while being faithful to the content.\n\nBut, as in all cases, there will always be people who agree and some who\ndisagree about whether you've accomplished that or not.\n\nAll I'm getting at is that a headline shouldn't dissemble and be wishy-washy\nand say nothing. It's an opinion, that I'm asserting (that the \"Star Trek\nComputer Will Be...\"), but even I won't go quite as far as saying it's \"a\nforegone conclusion\". There is evidence to suggest that such a thing may be\nthe case, and that's what this post was about.\n\nIn this case, I'm perfectly happy with the congruence between the headline and\nthe content. If others aren't, then I'll be curious to hear their POV on it.\n\n------\nmindcrime\nOn a related note, there are two interesting (older) posts \"out there\" on \"How\nto build your own Watson\". And while you probably aren't going to win Jeopardy\nwith your garage built supercomputer, a lot of the basic technologies are out\nthere to enable you to do some pretty cool stuff.\n\n[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/21/ibm_watson_qa_system...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/21/ibm_watson_qa_system/)\n\n[http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2011/04/14/build-y...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2011/04/14/build-\nyour-own-watson-with-open-source-software/)\n\n~~~\nteawithcarl\nThank you.\n\n------\nsp332\nThe Star Trek computer is already here, and it's closed-source and owned by\nGoogle. It's in private alpha/beta/gamma/whatever right now (has some rough edges to clean up), but is more or less functionally complete and pretty stable. I'm a big fan of the Seinfeld calendar, and have seen other services which do similar things but were unsatisfying to use, either from an aesthetic or functional perspective. Streak.ly is designed to be simple, good-looking, fast, fun, (and hopefully addictive). (FWIW, it's also a place to experiment with user stickiness stuff I can potentially roll back in to Forrst.) There are also some in-progress social/game/motivational features I plan to roll out in the next few weeks that hopefully contribute to the enjoyment factor of the app. Streak.ly uses Twitter for authentication, and I've set up a URL to let HN folks in early: http://streak.ly/auth/twitter/start?secret=showhn I'd love any and all feedback and/or criticism you may have. Thanks!\n======\nil\nFor a simple webapp like this, please don't make me get a twitter account/sign\nin to use.\n\nGenerate a unique URL for me to use, or hash my email address or something\nlike that. Reduce friction, I want to be able to use this with 1 click.\n\n~~~\njm3\nreally? creating a twitter account takes about 15 seconds. if you're not one\nof the 150 million people with a Twitter account, then why not just be\npatient? i'm sure kyle will get around to supporting other login methods\neventually.\n\ni believe you're genuinely trying to be helpful with your suggestions, but\ncomments like this reminds me of the vocal 0.1% of users who exercise\ntroublesome preferences like disabling javascript, or installing ad-blocking\nplugins that break half the web, (which is fine!), but then complain that\ntheir (pathological) preferences prohibit them from enjoying the experience\n(which is not so helpful).\n\nfeedback like, \"i can't be bothered to log in to give you feedback because i\ndon't like your login\" isn't great feedback. it might even be viewed as a sign\nto you that you're not the intended user. yet.\n\n~~~\nil\nI wasn't aware not having a Twitter account was considered pathological in our\nWeb 2.0 world.\n\nWhy do I need to sign up for a microblogging platform to use a completely\nunrelated calendar app???\n\nAnyway, my comments about reducing friction aren't based on my own\npreferences, they're based on dozens of multivariate split tests I have\nconducted across many thousand unique visitors.\n\nEvery single time, forcing the user to sign up, login, enter their email or\nanything of the sort before getting to use the site SIGNIFICANTLY decreases\nengagement, time on site, conversions, and pretty much every other metric you\nshould care about.\n\n~~~\njm3\nThe \"signup friction\" argument's a straw men; no sane startup seeks to _add_\nfriction to the signup process. the bogus (implied) assertion in the comment\nis that requiring a Twitter account to use a new web app in beta is overly\nrestrictive / cumbersome.\n\nThe only way that would make sense is if beta testers don't have Twitter\naccounts, since OAuthing with an existing account _reduces_ friction.\nTwitter's been around for four years and seems fairly well established among\nearly adopters like HN readers, so counting on a critical mass of beta testers\nto have Twitter accounts hardly seems a stretch, even if those users aren't\nvery active tweeters.\n\ni for one was very glad not to need to enter an email address, pick a login\nname, etc; the oauth process handled that for me. ymmv\n\n~~~\nmichaelbuckbee\nI think the suggestion was to not require a form of authentication (email or\ntwitter) first. Instead, let the potential user \"test drive\" the app and then\nwhen they are a little invested prompt for a signup of some kind.\n\n------\nsraquo\nHere's my somewhat similar homebrew GTD system:\n Classic forums move the thread to the top each time someone responds, but they don't thread the comments. This seems like a much simpler solution, which is much harder to game. Yet I've never seen a site actually use it in the wild. How come?\n======\njosquindesprez\nI imagine for popular posts, you'd get way too many low-value bumps: lots of\nleaves in the comment tree would be low-effort back and forth replies of\nuninteresting content (e.g. Reddit). If there's a voting system, the top-level\nthread would get bumped a lot but it'd be difficult to find that low-value\ncontent. The signal that the bump is trying to convey (there's new and good\nstuff here!) wouldn't match the value of the information that the user gets\n(the scattered dregs of many conversations). If there isn't voting and you\nsort by newest content, the experience would probably be like 4chan in slow\nmotion: bump ordered blasts of low-value replies.\n\nIn a classic forum, since posting something not only moves the thread to the\ntop, but puts your post in a highly visible place (the end of the thread),\nit's a lot harder to have too many deeply branching side conversations with\nlow value replies: there's a social norm against polluting threads.\n\nFor something like HN where comment trees don't get too deep and the replies\nare always meaningful, I think threaded bump ordered ranking could work.\n\n~~~\nheartbeats\nNo, posting somewhere moves the whole subthread to the top.\n\nBefore:\n\n \n \n \u251c\u2500\u2500 a\n \u2502 \u251c\u2500\u2500 b\n \u2502 \u2502 \u251c\u2500\u2500 c\n \u2502 \u2502 \u2514\u2500\u2500 d\n \u2502 \u2514\u2500\u2500 e \n \u2514\u2500\u2500 f\n \u251c\u2500\u2500 g\n \u2502 \u251c\u2500\u2500 h\n \u2502 \u2514\u2500\u2500 *i* <- this is new\n \u2514\u2500\u2500 j\n \n\nAfter:\n\n \n \n \u251c\u2500\u2500 f\n \u2502 \u251c\u2500\u2500 g\n \u2502 \u2502 \u251c\u2500\u2500 i <- moved to top of its thread and its thread moved to the top\n \u2502 \u2502 \u2514\u2500\u2500 h\n \u2502 \u2514\u2500\u2500 j \n \u2514\u2500\u2500 a\n \u251c\u2500\u2500 b\n \u2502 \u251c\u2500\u2500 c\n \u2502 \u2514\u2500\u2500 d\n \u2514\u2500\u2500 e\n\n------\ngshdg\nI\u2019ve seen classic forum software that supports comment threading.\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nAgainst Tolerance - mbrubeck\nhttp://tim.dreamwidth.org/1844711.html\n\n======\nchrismcb\nThe author says \"But we know that Brendan has already inserted his views on\nour relationships where those views don't belong: into the workings of the\ngovernment, by means of making a political donation. \" Isn't the whole point\nof democracy to insert your views into the workings of the government. To make\npolitical donations to people that you think have similar points to you? If\nyou can't make a political donation, with your own money, then what can you\ndo?\n\nOne thing I don't get, do people think this guy is going to be a miserable\nleader and a bad businessman? Does the author think only people who believe\nthe same things as the author can lead?\n\nThe title was \"against tolerance.\" I thought the author was going to rant\nabout how intolerant some gays are. But instead he is saying he won't tolerate\nsomeone else having an opinion that differs with his own.\n\nI would be willing to bet every CEO out there has made a political\ncontribution or voted for someone that \"interfered\" with the authors personal\nlife.\n\n------\njedanbik\nIt's incredibly bold to make a public statement like this.\n\n------\nangersock\nAuthor notes that, while Eich doesn't enforce his personal beliefs at work, he\nmay be forcing them through his political donations.\n\nWhich raises the point: same criticism goes to anyone who votes for anything\nyou don't like--as long as you have democracy as well as acknowledging your\ngovernment's authority, you will from time to time find yourself put-upon by\nsomebody else voting to support something you don't like.\n\nTough shit--don't let it get in the way of your work. The old saying \"I\ndisagree with what you say, but I'll gladly defend your right to say it\" is\nperhaps more relevant today than ever before.\n\n~~~\nJoeAltmaier\nAuthor goes on to say this issue rises above normal political disagreement.\nIts not taxes or zoning laws at issue; its who's fully human, with full\nrights. Its easy for those not involved to give a pass to coworkers that\ndonate to restrict somebody else's life.\n\n~~~\nangersock\nA basic human right--one much less arguable than some idea of state-granted\ncivil union--is to have one's actions and words weighed thoughtfully.\n\nThrowing the technical leadership of Eich out over what amounts to a\ndifference of opinion (on perhaps an important matter) is rubbish.\n\nMarriage is a societal compact, and as such is a product of the community in\nwhich you live. We, somewhat luckily, live in community where we can vote to\nestablish norms. There is nothing wrong with having somebody else in the\ncommunity vote or contribute with an opinion different than yours, because\nthat is how the community comes to a consensus about its societal norms.\n\n~~~\nJoeAltmaier\nLots of whitewashing there. What if it was, for instance, slavery? Does that\nfit your definition of societal contract? Will you go quietly to the back of\nthe bus, if for instance, we vote that supporters of 'traditional marriage'\nmust do so?\n\n~~~\nangersock\nSo, your two examples there: one is denying me rights as a person (instead, I\nbecome property, which has no natural rights whatsoever), and the other is\ninfringing on my right to association and free movement.\n\nThere is no such thing as a right to \"marriage\", because such a thing exists\nonly as a construct of various institutions.\n\nIndeed, forcing churches or municipalities to marry people whom they don't\nwant to is infringing on _the members of the institution 's_ right of free\nassociation.\n\n(Now, the fact that they're close-minded homophobic shitheads is perhaps true,\nbut that's not important.)\n\n~~~\nJoeAltmaier\nPlease. Moving to the back of the bus is >> denying marriage? That institution\nthat has repercussions in housing, taxes, rights throughout our society? Vs\nwhere you get to sit?\n\nEvery 'right' is a social construct. I'm beginning to think you're trolling.\n\nAnd nobody is requiring churches to do anything. This is straw-man nonsense\nput out by the fearful.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nMalloc Never Fails (2012) - KirinDave\nhttps://scvalex.net/posts/6/\n======\ndooglius\nThe title here is just blatantly false; there are certainly some scenarios in\nwhich it won't fail, but many in which it will. The author is aware of this\nsince he fixes the claim toward the end:\n\n> To clarify, the surprising behaviour malloc has does not mean we should\n> ignore its return value. We just need to be careful because malloc returning\n> successfully does not always mean that we can use the requested memory.\n\nIt's worth pointing out that if you turn overcommit off\n([https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/vm/overcommit-\naccou...](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting))\nyou will, in fact, get this guarantee\n\n~~~\njoosters\nn.b. turning over-commit off comes with its own set of problems, such as\ncausing programs to fail long before all memory has really been exhausted.\n\nFor example, fork() will have to ensure that there is enough memory for a\ncomplete copy of the running process. If you have a large process, e.g. using\n4GB of a 8GB machine, then fork() won't be able to run, even if you just want\nto fork and run a tiny program.\n\nWith over-commit turned on, the fork() would work (because of copy-on-write)\nand the program could then happily exec() the new program.\n\nThe work-around is to allocate huge amounts of swap space so that the OS can\nbe confident that it can reserve all the potentially required memory from\nfork(), even if it never normally has to use all that memory.\n\n~~~\ncaf\nOr if you're just forking to exec a tiny program, use vfork().\n\n------\nbrynet\nThe malloc(3) family will absolutely fail on OpenBSD, for many reasons:\nlogin.conf/ulimits, calloc(3) for when integer overflow is detected (nmemb *\nsize), same for OpenBSD's reallocarray extension. And yes, because the system\nwas unable to satisfy the requested allocation.\n\nLinux overcommit, and developer mindset is a detriment to software quality and\nportability.\n\n~~~\njiveturkey\nThat's a needlessly confrontational statement. Yet I find myself in agreement.\nSigh.\n\n------\npornel\nThis assumption lead to Rust's standard library not having a way to catch\nallocation failures (which is only now being rectified, and only partially).\n\nIt's very Linux-centric and presumes a certain config+usage pattern. Not true\non Windows. Not quite true on macOS. Not true in WASM. Definitely not true on\nembedded platforms.\n\n~~~\nmmillin\nIs there somewhere to read about how rust is tackling this problem?\n\n~~~\nsteveklabnik\nA short overview:\n\n1\\. Rust the language knows nothing about allocation. If you care about this\nbehavior, it mostly limits the code of others' that you can use, but you can\nalways write your own versions of things that respect fallible allocations.\n\n2\\. Rust's standard library assumes memory is infallible. This is partially\nbecause it's a good default, and partially because our allocator API was not\nready yet.\n\n3\\. We've been working on the allocator API.\n\n4\\. We have a rough plan for parameterizing data structures over allocators.\n\n5\\. If this topic is of interest to you, [https://github.com/rust-lang/wg-\nallocators](https://github.com/rust-lang/wg-allocators) is where to get\ninvolved.\n\n------\nem3rgent0rdr\nMalloc allocates virtual memory. The original article had to issue a\ncorrection at the end: \"I was wrong about why malloc finally failed!\n@GodmarBack observes, in the comments, that x64 systems only have an address\nspace of 48 bits, which comes out to about 131000 GB. So, on my machine at\nleast, the malloc finally failed because of address space exhaustion.\"\n\n~~~\nmetrxqin\nThat's incorrect, 2^48 bits = 262144GB actually.\n\n~~~\nlifthrasiir\nBut x86-64 divides the 48-bit address space into two halves, only one of which\nis available in the user mode.\n\n~~~\nmonocasa\nTo be fair, there's nothing that says the higher half _has_ to be entirely\nkernel mode. Only that bits 63 through 48 have to be the same value.\n\nAnd Intel has a spec out for a PML5 page table, giving you 57 total virtual\naddress bits.\n\n------\njvanderbot\nWhat bothers me is that I read this train wreck without any red flags until I\nsaw his correction at the end. Even the headline was wrong given the article,\nwhich itself was wrong.\n\nI really should have coffee before HN\n\n~~~\ndragontamer\nWhat exactly is \"wrong\" about the article?\n\nLinux's Overcommit behavior is non-obvious to many programmers. Its one of\nthose issues that very few programmers I've come across in the workplace\nunderstand properly.\n\nThis blogpost properly understands the issues associated with Overcommit, and\nhave done some preliminary investigations that describe the behavior. Its a\nreally good blogpost.\n\nThe general point of the blogpost is that \"Malloc Fails due to address space\nexhaustion more often than actual memory-exhaustion\". Because actual memory\nexhaustion causes OOM killer code to be run... and OOM killer is a non-obvious\ncase of the Linux kernel.\n\n~~~\nshereadsthenews\nWhat's wrong with the article is that malloc is not even a feature of Linux.\nThere's mmap and brk, both of which have documented failure modes.\n\n~~~\ndragontamer\nMost typical programmers will be using malloc, or some mechanism built on top\nof malloc (C++ new). MMap and brk are useful for certain situations\n(explicitly getting Huge Pages), but I don't think that the typical programmer\nnecessarily needs to know about those.\n\nSince glibc malloc is built on top of mmap and brk, I think your distinction\nis mostly academic. For any programmer using Linux and glibc... malloc's\nfailure mode IS mmap and brk failure modes.\n\n~~~\nshereadsthenews\nIt is a mischaracterization to say that C++ operator new is built on top of\nmalloc. If your new is overridden by, say, tcmalloc, your program will never\ncall malloc.\n\n------\nantirez\nInteresting topic with many things to say about, but wrong content. The point\nis that in most C programs, it is not worth to handle OOM errors, because what\nyou can do during OOM is of very little value, on the other hand handling OOM\ncorrectly is _very hard_. However you can't do this in libraries, because you\ndon't know how the library is going to be used. So for instance in order to\nmake my Radix tree library resistant to OOM failures, I had to write a\nspecific fuzzy test that used a malloc failing with a given probability, and\ncheck if the tree is sane after some stress-work with such malloc. In general\nthe complexity of handling OOM in complex programs that deal with complex data\nstructures is not often recognized.\n\n~~~\nmonocasa\nWhen writing C libraries, it's good form to be able to init your instance with\nallocation and logging function pointers. That lets you play nice with most\nany env you're being pulled into, and gives your consumers an obvious place\nfor nice hooks for debugging.\n\n~~~\nantirez\nYep, that's what I do in order to be able to fuzz test with an OOM returning\nmalloc() in my lib. Agreed on the fact it's good form.\n\n------\nasveikau\nAnother thing to keep in mind, though 32 bit is less and less common over\ntime, malloc would probably fail on a 32 bit process that is out of address\nspace.\n\n~~~\nTorKlingberg\nRaspberry Pis almost always run 32 bit OSes, so that's a common place to\nencounter 32-bit.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nI had always thought they'd be running a 64-bit OS, given that the new\nhardware is 64-bit. TIL that Raspbian is still 32-bit!\n\n~~~\ngmueckl\nUnless you need the address space, there is little gain with a 64 bit OS. The\nwider pointers use more RAM and eat up more of the available memory bandwidth\nand caches. So not swotching to 64 bits is likely the best use if the\nhardware.\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nIt\u2019s a toss up, I think: actual results depend on the task at hand. 64-bit has\nthe benefit of more, wider registers, which can speed up certain tasks.\n\n~~~\ngmueckl\nI stand corrected. I missed the fact that ARM also introduced new registers in\nAArch64. I thought that such a change only happened in amd64.\n\n~~~\nasveikau\nThe other thing about amd64 is that amd64 code can safely ditch old features\nlike x87 floating point, which is much slower than more recent features. Also,\nfunction calls will more frequently pass by register. And I can think of one\nOS specific feature that is better on amd64: when MS ported to amd64 they took\nit as an opportunity to speed up the ABI for Structured Exception Handling\n(SEH). The x86 one incurred a time cost even for code that did not throw.\n\nOf course none of this applies to arm/aarch64.\n\n------\nphilpem\nI saw the title and thought \"oh heck this isn't right at all\"...\n\nSet VM Overcommit to zero on an embedded system with no swap (a Raspberry Pi\nwill do nicely).\n\nWrite a C program that malloc()'s all the RAM.\n\nWatch malloc start to fail when you hit the RAM limit and the kernel has\ndumped all the I/O cache it can.\n\n~~~\nKirinDave\nI think the author uses a hyperbolistic title, but if you read the article it\ns addressed that there are ways it can fail.\n\nThe larger point is that very few users of malloc understand its semantics,\nand in fact you _can 't_ know exactly how malloc will behave without knowing\nthings about the runtime configuration of the system (as opposed to the\nhardware availability as many people like to think the simple case is).\n\n------\nPaul-ish\nWhen I use Python sometimes I run into a MemoryError when working with large\ndatasets. How does the Python runtime know I am out of memory if the kernel\nwon't tell it. Does it try a write and catch the signal?\n\n~~~\namelius\nPerhaps any write can fail, and if one does then it triggers some code which\nfrees some pre-reserved space which allows the interpreter to continue, and\nproperly unwind the stack.\n\n~~~\nlalaithion\nI believe that the python interpreter creates a MemoryError at startup, and\nthrows that when you run out of memory.\n\n~~~\namelius\nOk, but while unwinding a try/except block, the interpreter might need some\nextra memory, I suppose, depending on the code in the except clause.\n\n------\nvbezhenar\nmalloc fails with ulimit\n\n~~~\ndullgiulio\nVery relevant, because containers are often under what basically is ulimit.\n\nNot that you can do much when malloc fails...\n\n~~~\nchrisseaton\n> Not that you can do much when malloc fails...\n\nTell the user they can\u2019t do that operation? Use on-disk storage instead? Re-\nuse memory you already have (such as evicting a cache and taking the memory it\nalready had allocated)? Abandon what you were doing if it was only an\noptimisation and wasn\u2019t essential (such as allocating memory as part of a\nspeculative execution)? Run a garbage collector and try again?\n\nLots of options available in some situations.\n\n~~~\nCrinus\nIn practice i haven't seen any application to _gracefully_ handle out of\nmemory situations. Even back in Windows 3.x days when running out of memory\nwas common, most applications simply hanged or crashed (which also took the\nentire GUI with them) and those that didn't often had a \"no memory, kthxbye\"\ndialog that shut down the application. A very few rare cases would try to\ndisplay some \"sorry, no memory, close some programs and try again\" dialog but\neven those were hit and miss, depending on the situation.\n\nOnce 32bit hardware-based virtual memory entered the picture, every single\napplication would just assume you have endless RAM - memory checks are\nreserved for \"common cases\" like trying to create a 100000x100000 image in a\n(32bit) image editor.\n\nThe reason for all that is simple: out of memory situations are stupidly and\nincreasingly rare and in most cases where they can happen there isn't much you\ncan do (e.g. what would you do if you run out of memory while making the\nfourth button in a toolbar?) and really in the 99% of the cases there might\nonly be five people in the entire universe that will encounter such a case\n(two of them will tweet about it though and amass a lot of \"lol, those garbage\ndevelopers\" retweets) so littering your codebase to keep those five people\n(and their Twitter followers) happy is not worth the effort. I mean, are you\nreally going to put a \"run out of memory\" check after every toolbar button\nallocation? And what are you going to do if that fails? What _can_ you do?\n\nAFAIK some modern languages nowadays even assume memory allocations wont fail\n(and if they do they just terminate).\n\n~~~\nchrisseaton\n> what would you do if you run out of memory while making the fourth button in\n> a toolbar?\n\nRollback what I\u2019d created so far, evict caches, ask malloc to trim, try again,\nif that failed roll back again and ask the user to reduce the volume of\napplication data open by closing views or documents or whatever before they\ntry again.\n\nBut yeah it\u2019s a lot of engineering.\n\n~~~\nCrinus\n> ask the user\n\nYou just failed to create a toolbar button, how are you going to ask a user do\nsomething if you already failed to create a tiny UI element?\n\n~~~\nhyperman1\nI guess you pre-allocate these UI elements when you start your application.\n\n~~~\nCrinus\nWhat if malloc fails at that point because some other application (we're in a\npreemptive multitasking OS) decided to gobble up all RAM?\n\n~~~\nfwip\nIf your application fails at start-up, you don't need to worry about saving\nstate and graceful failure.\n\n------\naetherspawn\nHow does one guarantee that allocated memory is real? Can you easily wrap\nmalloc to zero/poke the memory in a way that catches all exceptions and\nguarantees yay or nay ?\n\n~~~\nanilakar\nJens Gustedt suggested the following:\n\n \n \n memset(malloc(size), 0, 1)\n \n\nThe program will crash if malloc returns NULL or the memory is not writable.\n\n~~~\nhyperman1\nAnd then memory deduplication comes along, finds out a huge number of\nidentical pages (all zero) and decides to deduplicate them. So if you want\nyour memory to stay real, I suppose you'd better fill it with random data or\nsomething.\n\n------\nkazinator\nYou can arrange for malloc to fail. If overcommit is disabled with the right\nsysctl parameters, then mmap will fail if there isn't enough physical memory\nto materialize the entire mapping. Even under overcommit, very large malloc\nrequests that translate directly to large mmap requests can fail with a null\nreturn.\n\n------\nboomlinde\nYou can disable memory overcommit in the kernel, before any of you start\nassuming you can drop your malloc checks.\n\n------\nJasuM\nWhat happens if you really run out of physical memory (including swap) after\novercommitting? Does your process get a signal, or will OOM killer just run\nwithout notifying the process that triggered the condition?\n\n~~~\ngmueckl\nIg you try to allocate more than the system is willing to overcommit (e.g. a\nhuge block all at once), malloc will fail. But if phyaical memory gets\nexhausted by accessing previously allocated pages, the OOM killer will\nevebtuslly come around and kill processes without signalling. Signal handlers\ncould still make thenprocess (unknowingly) request more memory, so there is 0\nguarantee that a handler could even run successfully.\n\n~~~\nJasuM\nOh yeah, I didn't think of that. I wonder if you could write a signal handler\ncarefully to not allocate any memory, stack or otherwise, or is some return\naddress or an internal structure being allocated transparently...\n\n~~~\ngmueckl\nJust trying to allocate stack space for the signal handler may cause the stack\nto spill into a new page. That is absolutely out of anybody's control. And if\nthat new page cannot be provided, it's game over.\n\n~~~\nJasuM\nMakes sense. I was thinking that maybe signal handlers could use the regular\nstack of the thread, but that would of course make everything fall down if the\n\"real\" code would write to the stack before updating the stack pointer.\n\n------\nsaagarjha\n> Section III of this Phrack article is a down to earth description of how the\n> glibc malloc implementation works, if you\u2019re curious.\n\nThis is probably outdated, given that it was written in 2009.\n\n~~~\nmathieubordere\npocorgtfo 0x18 contains a more recent glibc malloc exploit which goes into\nquite a bit of detail if you're interested.\n\n------\nantisemiotic\nAnd then, some day, your code gets compiled for Windows under mingw/msys.\n\n------\nedoo\nI always assume malloc success and that if it were to return null the system\nis screwed anyway and the app will just abort. I write a lot of 'critical'\nC/C++ now on embedded systems with mere KB of RAM and just never use the heap\never.\n\n------\nlasthacker\nmalloc fails with a negative argument\n\n~~~\nsaagarjha\nmalloc takes a size_t, which is unsigned. A \"negative\" argument is just\nsomething that's absurdly large.\n\n~~~\nNullPrefix\nOn 64 bit systems it would result in a call to malloc asking for between 9.2\nand 18.4 Exabytes.\n\n------\nmehrdadn\nTranslation: This is a euphemism for saying Linux blatantly violates the\nlanguage specification with no remorse.\n\n(Yes, I realize Linux is the kernel, etc.)\n\n~~~\nsimias\nLinux is a kernel, not a C runtime so that's not really relevant. You say you\nrealize that but then what are you arguing for exactly? Arguably you could\ncomplain that the glibc (or whatever libc you're using) is not working around\nthat by, for instance, scrubbing the pages in malloc() to force the kernel to\nallocate memory.\n\nBut even then I'm not convinced that anything here is non-standard, at worse\nmaybe we're in a bit of a grey area. As long as the kernel maintains its smoke\nand mirrors whether and how it allocates memory is irrelevant from the point\nof view of the standard. The C language has a rather simplistic memory model,\nit doesn't impose a lot on the implementation.\n\nNow the problem occurs when the program attempts to access virtually-allocated\nmemory and the kernel realizes that it can't find any physical memory to map\nit to. In this situation several things can happen but in general the process\nwill be killed. Is it against the standard for the OS to kill a program for\narbitrary reasons? I can't imagine why. It could also freeze the program,\nwaiting for more memory to become available. Again, not against the standard\nas far as I can tell. Or maybe kill some other program to free memory.\n\nIf you have some specific part of the C standard in mind please do tell, I\nalways find these language lawyering arguments interesting, somehow.\n\n~~~\nmehrdadn\n> If you have some specific part of the C standard in mind please do tell\n\nSee here:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20145604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20145604)\n\nAlso note the POSIX standard:\n\n _Upon successful completion with size not equal to 0, malloc() shall return a\npointer to the allocated space. If size is 0, either a null pointer or a\nunique pointer that can be successfully passed to free() shall be returned.\nOtherwise, it shall return a null pointer and set errno to indicate the\nerror._\n\nIn neither case is there any provision for returning a non-null pointer to\nanything other than an allocated block of memory of at least the given size.\n\n~~~\nsimias\nThank you for your reply but I still don't buy it. As far as the program is\nconcerned it is returned a memory block, what this \"memory\" is effectively\nbehind the scenes is none of the standard's business. As long as the\nimplementation manages to maintain the illusion it's perfectly fine AFAIK. The\nproblem is when this breaks down and the kernel realizes that it can no longer\nmaintain the masquerade. If at this point it did something stupid like map\nthis block nowhere or remap something that's already been allocated and let\nthe program continue like this, then yes that would be a clear violation of\nthe contract. But it does no such thing, it kills the program instead. If\nthere's no program then there's no problem. At no point did a single C\ninstruction get executed in an environment that did not maintain a coherent\nmemory model. >In neither case is there any provision for returning a non-null\npointer to anything other than an allocated block of memory of at least the\ngiven size. A pointer to virtual memory is a pointer to memory. The rest is an\nimplementation detail. If, when dereferenced, the kernel issues an order to\nAmazon for more RAM and waits for it to be installed to resume the execution,\nthat's none of the C standard's business.\n\n~~~\nmehrdadn\n> If, when dereferenced, the kernel issues an order to Amazon for more RAM and\n> waits for it to be installed to resume the execution, that's none of the C\n> standard's business.\n\nWe're not, and we never were, debating the situation where dereferencing the\nnon-null pointer returned by malloc _succeeds_ but takes long time due to your\nAmazon order. We've been talking about the situation where it _fails_. malloc\nis not allowed to return a non-null pointer to a memory block that cannot be\nwritten to. Linux does it anyway, and in doing so blatantly violates the\nstandard.\n\n~~~\nsimias\nThat _is_ my point, it doesn't fail. Either the kernel finds out a way to map\nthe memory and it succeeds, or it kill the program and the instruction never\nruns. Code that doesn't run can't violate the standard. When the code is\nallowed to run all the invariants are guaranteed to be respected. If I write\nthis code:\n\n \n \n char *b = malloc(2);\n if (b == NULL) {\n return 0;\n }\n \n b[0] = 'A';\n b[1] = '\\0';\n \n printf(\"%s\\n\", b);\n \n free(b);\n \n\nThe standard tells me that if the malloc succeeds then the following code, if\nallowed to run, will display \"A\" on stdout. The C standard cannot and does not\nguarantee that a C program can't be interrupted however. For the sake of the\nargument we could imagine a kernel that instead of killing the program freezes\nit indefinitely on disk waiting for RAM to be available. It's functionally the\nsame thing. As long as the kernel doesn't let code run with broken invariants\nit's fine. This is completely outside of the scope of a language standard to\ndefine.\n\nOr, to try one last time from a different direction, if you consider that the\nC standard mandates that accessing memory returned successfully by malloc has\nto be successful and I happen to press ^C when that happens in a program,\nshould the kernel refuse to kill the program? This is obviously absurd, but\nit's effectively the same thing: the kernel reacts to some external state and\ndecides to terminate the program.\n\n~~~\nmehrdadn\nOkay this is a far more reasonable argument but I'm not convinced it's right.\nThe standard does define normal and abnormal program termination. It also\ndefines 18 months ago, I started my first job as an android developer in a fintech startup, after graduating with my Masters in a top 20 university. When I joined, I was the only android developer and built 2 relatively complex apps from scratch (designing architecture, app development, some security/crypto/api). \nMy CTO, to whom I report directly, knows since the day he hired me that I don't want to be doing front-end my whole life, and we agreed this summer that I'd be switching to the back-end. At the time, I asked him if there would be any salary change with the switch, and he reassured me that there wouldn't be, because he allows his engineers to move horizontally without any salary change. Since 2 months, I've been learning about the back-end language, Functional Programming, and other frameworks they use. All on my personal time in the evening and on week-ends. Last week, the CFO asked to speak with me and told me that we'd have to sign a new contract, and that they're going to decrease my salary (by over 10%). His argument is that he wants to align my salary with the other back-end juniors. This news came to me as a shock and I am very confused if this is a normal practice or not. I've explained the situation to some of my SE friends and older acquaintances and all of them without exception find it scandalous and have told me that I should not accept the offer and start looking for another job. I feel like the company is not valuating my work and my experience at their place. During these 18 months, I have shown that I am able to learn and adapt fast, that I deliver good results, and they have seen that I am highly motivated and positive in a very consistent way. (Continuing the text in comment)\n======\nknoblauch\n(Next part of the text):\n\nObviously, this career switch would be a great opportunity for me to move into\nthe back-end world, learn a lot of new stuff, broaden my SE skills, build a\nbetter CV and invest in my future.\n\nThere are many arguments that I can find on my side to find it disgraceful and\nwhy they shouldn't decrease my salary. I feel I shouldn't even have to defend\nmy salary in the first place in this situation, as decreasing my salary is a\nbit of a low blow.\n\nSome notes: \\- The startup has a lot of cash \\- We are ~20 software engineers\n\\- I am quite confident that I could earn more than my current salary with my\nexperience if I moved to a bigger city in my country \\- The other juniors\ndidn't have more professional experience when they were hired, and don't have\na better education \\- I absolutely love the the project, and the other\nemployees, our culture, and the office \\- Even if I do accept now, I don't\nknow why they'd want to do this to me when they know I am not happy with the\nsituation, as their are making me lose some of my loyalty to the company,\ntaking the risk that I'll leave when I get enough experience on back-end\n\nI feel like they are forcing the pay cut on me, after promising me a switch,\nthen promising there wouldn't be any salary change.\n\nHN, shed light on my situation and tell me what you think.\n\n------\n_ah\nSounds like this is a small shop. When you were off by yourself, your\ncompensation stood alone in its own category. If you join the other backend\ndevs, then your salary is compared against theirs and it \"looks bad\" on the\ninternal spreadsheet. This is an internal political game and your CTO is not\nwilling to spend his political capital on a junior developer. That may or may\nnot be a reasonable decision on his part. Your excellent work up to this point\n(and future potential) isn't being weighed as much as it should be and there's\nprobably very little you can do to change that.\n\nI wouldn't accept a pay cut. It's too early in your career for that.\n\nThe ideal option is to tell the CTO \"I can't take a pay cut. Keep me the same,\nand I promise I won't tell anyone.\" That might solve his political problem. If\nhe won't go for that, then your options are: (1) continue in your current role\n(unhappy, but better paid), (2) leave for a different position. You probably\nwill want to start planning for your eventual exit anyway, since this smells\nlike a place with limited growth prospects.\n\n------\nJamesVI\nI think it is reasonable for you to be compensated according to the skills you\nhave and the performance you demonstrate. I think it's reasonable for everyone\nwith similar skills and performance to be compensated the same.\n\nYou are moving from a role you have 18 months experience into one where you\nhave much less. Personally, I wouldn't cut your salary immediately, but I\nwould work with you to build a transition plan made up of SMART goals. At the\nend of the transition period (probably 3-6 months in this case), we would\ndiscuss your performance relative to the expectations of the role and level\nyou have transitioned into.\n\nIf, at that time, you were performing at a level more junior that you are\nbeing compensated, I would offer you the option of returning to your former\nrole (assuming we still had a need for someone in that role) or level you down\nand adjust your compensation accordingly.\n\nThe CTO was foolhardy in making a blanket promise that you could move\n\"horizontally\" without impact to compensation, but the CFO is also overly\nfocussed on what could be a small amount money (2.5-5% of your total salary).\n\nI'd suggest that you go back to the CFO and the CTO and propose a transition\nplan with an eval at the end to determine your level and compensation. You\nshould also ask what the promotion path forward would be like if you\ntransitioned and were leveled down. Will you be stuck there for a long time or\nwill you have a chance at being promoted back up once you have a year of\nexperience? Then you can decide if a possible (presumably short-term) decrease\nin compensation is a valid investment in your long-term career.\n\n\"my SE friends and older acquaintances and all of them without exception find\nit scandalous\"\n\nObviously, you need to balance an anonymous voice* on the internets against\nyour friends and acquaintances, but this really isn't that scandalous. Perhaps\nthey've just not experienced it themselves.\n\nActually, the biggest problems you have right now are that the CFO and CTO\naren't on the same page and that the CFO is making decisions about\ncompensation for engineers. The CTO (or whoever your direct supervisor is)\nshould be making your compensation decisions based off strategic decisions\ntaken in conjunction with the CFO (and others).\n\n*I'm actually the head of engineering at a growing startup, but maybe I'm lying :-D\n\n"}
{"text": "\nAny cool projects we could do on this state owned oil company database? - joshdance\nDatabase of state-owned oil companies. A project of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, pulls official data on nearly 100 metrics concerning 71 oil/gas companies owned by 61 countries. https://www.nationaloilcompanydata.org/\n======\nthedevindevops\nIt'd be great for anyone who does Infographics.\n\nMaybe a per country breakdown dashboard?\n\nPrediction/forecast engine?\n\nUse the National oil and gas reserves question and rank countries by estimate\nof when they'll be depleted?\n\nI'd love if someone linked this to a forestry or carbon capture by country\ndatabase to see the environmental deficit per country\n\n"}
{"text": "\nA $35 keyboard for children transformed me into a novelist - danso\nhttps://onezero.medium.com/this-35-keyboard-for-children-transformed-me-into-a-novelist-436a55370ee5\n======\nbenjohnson\nThe Japanese have modern devices like this - this one is about $250 and had a\nE-ink display and a folding keyboard. You can put the keyboard in English mode\n- a few keys are in odd places but bearable. It's increased my output by\nseveral orders of magnitude.\n\n[https://www.kingjim.co.jp/pomera/dm30/](https://www.kingjim.co.jp/pomera/dm30/)\n\n~~~\ninyorgroove\nThere is also the Freewrite, its a little expensive but is targeted to English\nspeakers: [https://getfreewrite.com/](https://getfreewrite.com/)\n\n~~~\nDigory\nBeautiful, but $400 is steep for a monotasker. I'd gladly let students use\nthese in a class, though, as an alternative to notepads.\n\nWhich probably says something about the rise of keyboards and the fall of\nhandwriting; I get that ASCII is more useful than paper, but $400 buys a lot\nof luxurious pens and paper.\n\n~~~\nBolexNOLA\nProduces a lot of lost pens and paper in waste bins though!\n\n~~~\nsplintercell\nCheck out the fountain pen thread from last week.\n\n~~~\ncarterschonwald\nLink please ? :)\n\nGranted I\u2019m a huge user of fountain pens and note books already :)\n\n~~~\nsplintercell\nThere you go:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497259)\n\n------\nJoblessWonder\nI have a very special place in my heart for the AlphaSmart brand. When I was a\nkid in the 90's I had atrocious handwriting. No one could figure out why or\nhow to fix it. In middle school, one of the counselors had been given an\nearlier model of the AlphaSmart as a demo unit and let me use it. It also\nturned me into a writer. Instead of my teachers glossing over my chicken\nscratch, they were able to read my typed assignments and offer me real\nfeedback. My confidence as a student and an intellectual returned. All because\nI had a little keyboard to type on. Pretty crazy.\n\n[Technical side note: Back in the day, to transfer what you typed you used to\nplug it into the PS/2 keyboard port on a computer and press \"send.\" It would\nthen recreate each keystroke for the computer, regardless of what program you\nhad open so if you hit send before opening up a word processor it would be\nchaos until it finished transferring.]\n\n~~~\nfrequentnapper\nLucky your teachers actually cared about you.\n\n~~~\ndividedbyzero\nAnd had the resources to act on that. I've had the impression a bunch of my\nteachers did care when kids were struggling, but didn't have a lot of options\nto help really.\n\n~~~\nJoblessWonder\nI agree. I think that teachers are relatively\npowerless/underpaid/underappreciated/overworked (during the school year) and\nthat makes it so hard for them to help kids that are struggling. Let alone\nhelp the kids who are struggling without interrupting the rest of the class.\nIt reminds me of the season of The Wire where it shows just how many systemic\nissues there are in the education system.\n\nMy teachers were frustrated and sent me to the counselor, who lucked into a\nsolution for me. Combined with the fact that I was lucky enough to have a\ncomputer at home to use, parents who supported me, and teachers who wanted me\nto succeed was what made it work. Most people aren't as fortunate.\n\n------\ndougmwne\nI think this is a worthy read because it looks a computing product from a\nuser's perspective instead of a engineer or an MBA. Multi-function everything\ndevices with the addictive potential of nicotine may be engineering marvels\nand business rockstars, but this person wanted to write without distraction\nand needed to reach into the past to find a product that met their needs.\n\nAnd it's a fun exercise to take this user's need and whiteboard out a new\nproduct for them. How are those ergonomics; could we hinge the display or\nproject it somehow in a way that will let them type longer without discomfort?\nHow's that LCD's readability; would eink be better? Should the device be doing\nincremental backups to the cloud? Should it offer dictation?\n\n~~~\ntonyedgecombe\n_Should the device be doing incremental backups to the cloud?_\n\nI think one of the key features would be no network connection.\n\n~~~\nnaikrovek\nSo a Linux machine (like an old laptop) booted into single-user mode seems\nlike a good approach here. Single shell, single application at a time, no GUI.\n\n~~~\nphone8675309\nI have an old Linux laptop (an old iBook G4) that boots into a non graphical\nenvironment and starts emacs in text mode on login with no network\nconnectivity by default.\n\nIt's my go-to for focus.\n\n~~~\nanythinggoesbay\nThis is so good. Can you please share how it can be done?\n\n------\nnate\nIt's wild what constraints can actually open up for your creativity. I love\nmaking videos but ran out of the time I used to have to spend on it. And so\nlargely gave up trying. But I decided instead of complaining about it or\ntrying to find more time to pile on some constraints:\n\n\\- only film AND edit on my phone \\- only create a movie as long as a single\nsong track. don't edit the song track besides muting clips of the song. \\-\nonly spend < 60 minutes on editing the video \\- publish daily\n\nSo now there's little workflow pauses waiting for files to transfer. It's now\nimpossible to spend too much time in a rat hole of an edit. Of course this\nlimits things I'd love to achieve with it, but on the other side, I get to\npublish so many more ideas and feel insanely more creative with it.\n\nFeeling stuck? Probably need a good dose of giving yourself what seems like\narbitrary and ridiculously limiting constraints.\n\n~~~\nmunificent\nI've been getting into making electronic music and figuring out a workflow\nthat balances these constraints is really challenging.\n\nThe most powerful, expressive, flexible, and affordable way to make music, by\nfar, is to do everything in a DAW inside a computer. Ableton + a few software\nsynth plug-ins is a _ridiculously_ powerful platform to make music in. You\ncould produce albums for the rest of your life and never run out of\ninspiration. And the user interface for Ableton is just an absolute delight.\n\nBut it's _so_ powerful that it takes me forever to get anything done. It's\neasy to spend three hours tweaking reverb settings and never finish anything.\n\nThe other approach is to do everything in dedicated hardware with real\nsynthesizers. It's expensive to buy gear and a hassle to wire everything up.\nDecide that you want delay on your bass instead of the lead? That's five\nminutes of futzing with cables versus a single drag-and-drop in Ableton. Want\ntwo different reverb settings for the pad and the clap? Better shell out\nanother $300 to buy a second reverb pedal. Undo? You're lucky if your\nsequencer supports it.\n\nBut because the set of options is so much narrower and the cost for rethinking\nchoices is higher, the hardware environment pushes you forward and makes you\nwant to finish things.\n\nThe tricky part is that, to a listener, the music made on hardware often just\nisn't as good in many ways as that made in a DAW. Listeners today are used to\nlots and lots of layers and very surgical production and mixing. That's easy\n(but time-consuming) in a DAW, but very difficult (and expensive) in hardware.\n\nFinding the right balance here is hard.\n\n~~~\nfb03\nThat is totally my experience with my hobbyist music making endeavour too!\n\nI thought owning more plugins and getting better gear would mean I'd make lots\nand lots of music.\n\nWhen I started out 9 years ago, I had Renoise, zero paid plugins (only free\nvsts like Synth1 and friends) and a cheap pair of earbuds. I didn't even\nunderstood basic things like translation, gain staging and etc, and I'd always\nwonder why my tracks wouldn't play correctly on other people's speakers\n(channels would clash frequencies, elements would downright disappear and\netc).\n\nYet, my most creative, layered and musical (data amount, transitions and\noverall creativity) time was at that period. And I typed it all in using the\ncomputer keyboard. In a computer in the middle of the living room.\n\nNow I have a huge desk with a pro usb audio dac, Yamaha Hs8 Monitors\n(excellent, btw), all plugged in with proper balanced xlr cables, 2 midi\nkeyboards, an ATH-m50 pair of cans for when I can't be noisy in the Study\n(small kids), lots of paid plugins like Sylenth1 and Serum, a plethora of\nsample libraries scavenged and assembled painstakingly through the years...\nonly the good stuff, categorized, ready to double click and peruse.\n\n....It's been two years since the last time I actually used all this stuff\n\nYou guys are right. I need to get back to the basics.\n\nWhat use is to be able to put 80+ tracks in your software because now you have\na good pc that can handle that many if you can't even write the first part\ndown because there are soooo many options and you're lost tweaking knobs.\n\n\"tweakititis\" is a thing in music making.\n\nOne of my tracks, btw, if any of you got curious at what kind of music I make:\n[https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03/ibu-\nkid](https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03/ibu-kid)\n\n~~~\nmunificent\nYes, I'm 100% with you. I've finished two tracks using Reason and Ableton with\ndozens of unfinished things laying around. And those two tracks took weeks.\n\nMeanwhile, with my little Electribe 2 and a couple of guitar pedals, I\nfinished three tracks in like a tenth of the time and _enjoyed_ it a hell of a\nlot more.\n\nBut, on the other hand, those two tracks I made on the computer are, I think,\nmuch better songs for someone to listen to.\n\nSo a big part of this dilemma is how much do I optimize for _my_ enjoyment of\nthe _process_ versus the _listener 's_ enjoyment of the _product_? The two are\nnot purely orthogonal. It's hard to make something people like if you're\nmiserable doing it. But they aren't entirely aligned either, as can be\nwitnessed by all of the many many ambient modular jams that I'm sure were fun\nfor the artist to make but are just pointless boring noodling to the listener.\n\n _> One of my tracks, btw, if any of you got curious at what kind of music I\nmake: [https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03/ibu-\nkid](https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03/ibu-kid) _\n\nI like it! The filter sweep on the drums is I run a forum site with MILLIONS of visitors and about 5,000 TB of traffic per month.\nNamecheap.com suddenly sent me a link warning that they will suspend my domain completely within 24 hours, if I did not delete two problem images (which were inappropriate/troublesome images but in the context of the forum posts, "a very poor attempt at humor").\nI deleted the images and avoided being suspended, but the way they threatened to suspend my domain due to two images was ridiculous. If I missed the warning email or checked my email after 24 hours they would have completely suspended my domain.\nI'm talking about a site with MILLIONS of visitors per month and ten thousands of posts per day, not some small blog. They may be suitable for some blog, but I can now say to NEVER use them for any enterprise site.\n======\nLorenzoLlamas\nMaybe I missed it, but did someone point to the actual site with \"millions of\nvisitors and 5 PETABYTES of traffic per month\"? Is that right?\n\nDon't want to seem harsh, but I don't care for unqualified rants against a\nnamed entity, when the \"accuser\" doesn't name his own source.\n\nAnd using vague words like \"inappropriate/troublesome\" seems a bit mysterious.\nWere they ISIS propaganda posters, nudity of celebs, or penguins making out?\nMight make a difference.\n\nAnd as others have already stated, it's pretty SOP for hosting and domain\ncompanies to have this standard in place. Hate to say it, but it's in the User\nAgreement. Else, run your own servers and domain name registrar (oh, and also\nbe liable for those same posts possibly).\n\nWhy we insist on not understanding that DNRs and hosts are, basically,\npublishers, who have some rights, is beyond me.\n\nLet me guess... this guy is upset because he might have not gotten the email\nwithin 24 hours (in 2017... yeah, right). Is he off-the-grid hunting sea lions\nin the north sea? And if his site is so big, he has no one to help him and no\nbackup staff except... only him?\n\nThis same crowd will balk that FB didn't remove that last murder video in 12.3\nseconds, but demand that THEIR host or registrar give them 30 days.\n\nSheesh... internet shenanigans never stop, do they?\n\n~~~\nhighclass\nI have actually run a domain registration/reseller business in the past, with\n20,000 domains registered (which is a lot).\n\nI did not \"police\" a single one of those domains.\n\nLike I said below, I was NOT using namecheap DNS or hosting.\n\n> And using vague words like \"inappropriate/troublesome\" seems a bit\n> mysterious. Were they ISIS propaganda posters, nudity of celebs, or penguins\n> making out? Might make a difference.\n\nI don't care how much problematic the images were. 24 hours warning for\nthreatening to suspend a domain is ridiculous.\n\n> Let me guess... this guy is upset because he might have not gotten the email\n> within 24 hours (in 2017... yeah, right).\n\nYes that is reasonable reason to be upset. I thought the email was\nspam/phishing at first. The email also could have easily have been deleted by\nspam filters.\n\n------\nploggingdev\nSend them an email asking for an explanation and also let them know why this\nis not a good way of dealing with inappropriate content. Also reach out to\ntheir customer support asking for an explanation. Let us know when you hear\nback from their support team.\n\n~~~\nhighclass\nI agree the two images were problematic, but they were mixed into millions of\nforum posts...\n\nAnyways, if your domain sites contents break the AUP at\n[https://www.namecheap.com/legal/universal/universal-\ntos.aspx](https://www.namecheap.com/legal/universal/universal-tos.aspx) , it\nseems they will suspend your domain that fast...\n\nAgain ridiculous. They even replied \"Yes, we have checked the content of the\nweb-site and based on its not deliberate nature we have provided a reasonable\ntime-frame for removing the illicit content.\"\n\nReasonable time-frame being 24 hours. More ridiculous.\n\n------\ncoreyp_1\nWere they hosting the site, or are they just the domain registrar (and your\nsite is on servers from another company)?\n\n~~~\nhighclass\nI was using a third party DNS AND my own hosting/network. They threatened me\non a Registrar level, which is nearly unheard of.\n\n~~~\ncoreyp_1\nIndeed. I would suggest that you leave them immediately.\n\n------\nSlaul\nInteresting, I hadn't heard of any problems like this when I decided to use\nthem for my last few domain name purchases. Maybe I should look into\nswitching. Do you have any recommendations by any chance?\n\n~~~\nhighclass\nI'm looking around right now. The registrar for reddit.com and ycombinator.com\nboth are [https://www.gandi.net/](https://www.gandi.net/)\n\nI am considering them and a few foreign registrars right now.\n\nI still am in shock how namecheap might have suspended my domain.\n\n~~~\nfinid\nI think they were just been paranoid about potential legal penalties, so take\nit easy.\n\n~~~\nhighclass\nThat is ridiculous. They threatened to suspend my domain within 24 hours if I\ndid not delete two images.\n\nI don't even use their nameservers... They threatened to yank my domain in a\nregistrar level which is so amateurish it shocked me.\n\n------\nidoh\nWhere are you planning on moving your domain to?\n\n~~~\ntinalumfoil\nI've heard good things about Gandi. Since they host reddit I'm sure it would\ntake a lot for them to shut down a site.\n\n------\ntarikozket\nAmazon has the same procedure with hosting.\n\n~~~\nhighclass\nI don't have anything hosted on namecheap. Not even the sites DNS uses\nnamecheap.\n\nb.t.w. hosting and DNS registration are totally different, legally and\ntechnically.\n\n------\nmagma17\n4chan\n\n~~~\ngt2\nI would think a site like 4chan would get these kinds of issues daily.\n\n------\nandrewmcwatters\n> They may be suitable for some blog, but I can now say to NEVER use them for\n> any enterprise site.\n\nIf this is action they take at scale with millions of visitors I wouldn't even\nrisk it with something so intimate as a blog.\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nBloom Filter (Python recipe) - jcsalterego\nhttp://code.activestate.com/recipes/577684-bloom-filter/\n\n======\nhaberman\nOne thing that takes a minute to sink with Bloom Filters is that the size\nrequirements are independent of the size of the individual elements! Storing N\nelements with a given false positive probability has a fixed cost, whether\nyou're storing integers or 100MB strings.\n\nIf you are concerned with speed, a bloom filter is exactly the kind of thing\nI'd never implement in Python. Twiddling bits is orders of magnitude more\nexpensive than in C.\n\n~~~\nraymondh\nPython is written in C and the time consuming parts of this algorithm are\ndelegated to C modules (random, sha256, long int bitshifts, etc). Also, the\nspace efficiency (which directly related to effective use of high-speed cache)\nis language independent.\n\nIf you care about the cost of the Python glue code, the PyPy project nicely\noptimizes that away. Unless you're writing for a Google production server, the\nprogrammer time writing this in C will likely never be paid back in saved CPU\ncycles.\n\n~~~\nhaberman\nWhat you have said is theory. Here is practice.\n\nI wrote a simple bloom filter in C. It took about an hour, including\ndebugging. Here is my bloom filter vs. CPython and PyPy doing 1M lookups:\n\n \n \n $ time ./bloom\n real 0m0.027s\n user 0m0.022s\n sys 0m0.002s\n $ time python bloom.py\n real 0m32.876s\n user 0m32.693s\n sys 0m0.119s\n $ time pypy bloom.py\n real 0m42.280s\n user 0m42.054s\n sys 0m0.178s\n \n\nIn other words, C was 1216x (or 121,600%) faster than CPython, and 1564x (or\n156,400%) faster than PyPy. If it took 1 second in C, it would take 20 minutes\nin Python. Put another way, Python runs this algorithm about as fast as a the\nC algorithm would run on an 8086 from 1978.\n\nHere is my C implementation: I suspect this is some sort of anti-spam measure. Has anybody else experienced this? I am asking Hacker News for help because there doesn't appear to be any way to get in contact with Google regarding gmail problems. We've already employed everything in their FAQs about avoiding their spam filters. We use DKIM and have a healthy standing with all email blacklists. I'm really not sure what other options we have left.\n======\ntherealmarv\nI've found out what is reason for this! It only affects text mails: Gmail is\nanalyzing the links in text mails and when it is adult content it refuses to\nmake them clickable! For me this is censorship. I'm an adult and I can decide\nmyself what I want to see and what not. I do not want Google to filter out\nadult links (categorize them!) and make them not clickable!\n\nSolution: Make HTML Emails\n\n~~~\ne79\nFrom something I posted on our site:\n\nFrom my experience, unless a change in a Google product degrades functionality\nfor a large portion of end users they aren't going to publicly acknowledge it.\nThey don't seem to have the same policies regarding transparency that other\ncompanies like FetLife do (we acknowledge when we mess up and break stuff!).\n\nWhen ReCAPTCHA went down last year I looked and could not find any\nacknowledgement of the issue from a Google employee. This was while FetLife\nand other large websites tweeted about it and posted in Google's product\nforum. All we had to go with was speculation and helping each other out with\nrecommendations for temporary solutions.\n\nLikewise, this change in Gmail may never be officially acknowledged. It may be\nrelated to the arrival of Google's new Inbox product or it may be related to\nsome sort of spam filtering they deployed into production. It doesn't appear\nto be specific to adult websites. Other large community websites are affected\ntoo. The result is that affected websites using plain text emails are now\nforced to switch over to HTML-based email. I could see a conspiracy theory in\nthere about Google pushing HTML-based email for a nicer looking Gmail/Inbox\nexperience. No matter what, I think it's very unlikely we'll ever know what\nchange caused this or why.\n\n------\ne79\nSomeone e-mailed me to let me know that a discussion forum they post on has\nrun into the same issue. Seems like we are not the only one...\n\n------\ndangrossman\nUse a link shortener (perhaps buy a domain of your own for it) to avoid\nlinking to your domain?\n\n~~~\nSomeone1234\nLink shorteners are pretty heavily penalised in email since spammers use the\nsame trick to bypass the same filters.\n\n------\nChristianBundy\nIs your domain name fetlife.com?\n\n~~~\ne79\nYes. (Site is NSFW, by the way)\n\n"}
{"text": "\nAsk HN: Are we overcomplicating software development? - ian0\nI have recently been involved in the overhaul of an established business with poor output into a functioning early/mid stage startup (long story). We are back on track but, honestly, my lessons learned fly in the face of a lot of currently accepted wisdom: 1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for the job 2) Avoid microservices where possible, the operational cost considering devops is just immense 3) Advanced reliability / redundancy even in critical systems ironically seems to causes more downtime than it prevents due to the introduction of complexity to dev & devops. 4) Continuous integration seems to be a plaster on the problem of complex devops introduced by microservices. 5) Agile "methodology" when used as anything but a tool to solve specific, discrete, communications issues is really problematic I think overall we seem to be over-complicating software development. We look to architecture and process for flexibility when in reality its acting as a crutch for lack of communication and proper analysis of how we should be architecting the actual software. Is it just me?\n======\nSatvikBeri\nMany of these practices are popularized by Google/Facebook/Amazon but don't\nmake sense for a company with 100 or even 1,000 people. I try to focus on\nwhether a practice will solve a concrete problem we're facing.\n\nSwitching from Hadoop to Spark was clearly a good idea for our team, even\nthough it required learning a new stack, but there isn't a strong reason to\nswitch to Flink or start using Haskell.\n\nAgile makes sense when your main risk is fine-grained details of user\nrequirements, but not when you have other substantial risks, such as making\nsure a statistical algorithm is accurate enough.\n\nMicroservices probably reduces the asymptotic cost of scaling but add a huge\nconstant factor.\n\nRelational databases are the right choice 95% of the time, non-relational\nstores require a really specific use case.\n\nTDD is good for fast feedback in some domains, but for others, manually\ninvestigating the output or putting your logic into types is better. E.g. a\nlot of my time comes from scaling jobs that work on 10gb of data but crash on\n1tb, TDD is not that helpful here.\n\nContinuous integration mostly makes sense when you're making a lot of small\nchanges and can reliably expect a test suite to catch issues.\n\nIn short, ask the question \"when is practice X useful?\" instead of \"is\npractice X a good idea?\"\n\n~~~\nkosinus\nOne thing that bothers me is the 'relational databases are good enough'\nstatement, that is repeated in other contexts as well.\n\nBut especially here, where we're talking about reducing complexity, it feels\noff to me. PostgreSQL and MySQL seem to me like incredibly complex packages.\nSQL, the language, is not easy to master either; most programmers I meet know\nmostly basics. On top of that, there's a long ongoing history of security\nmalpractice.\n\nWhen talking about reducing complexity, CouchDB and Redis are far easier\nalternatives, in my humble opinion, though they go slightly against 'use the\ntools developers know'.\n\n~~~\npg314\nThe implementation of PostgreSQL is complex, no doubt about that. But if you\nneed strong data consistency and durability guarantees, it provides a rock-\nsolid foundation.\n\nSQL might take some getting used, but it is also not rocket science. It\nshouldn't take more than a week's study to master the basics. There is of\ncourse a lot of awful SQL code out there, exactly because most programmers\ndon't even know the basics. You can do incredibly powerful things in it that\nwould take 10x the code in an OO/procedural language. In my opinion dumping an\nORM on top is also not the best way to leverage the strengths of an RDBM.\n\nIt is slightly ironic that you bring up security malpractice in the context of\nPostgreSQL, when in the next sentence you advocate Redis as a far easier\nalternative. As was recently in the news the Redis defaults were for a long\ntime insecure (google for Fairware ransomware).\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\n> _In my opinion dumping an ORM on top is also not the best way to leverage\n> the strengths of an RDBM._\n\nI agree. Unfortunately, the way I see people usually using them is pretty bad\n- you should not let ORM-generated stuff dictate your business model. Database\nis a database. A storage layer. Business objects will _not_ map 1:1 to ORM\nobjects. Approaches like \"let's inherit from ORM class and add business-\nrelated methods\", in my experience, lead to total disaster. One has to respect\nthe boundary between storage layer and business model layer.\n\n~~~\nicebraining\nI'm aware of the different approaches (mostly from reading Fowler's PoEAA),\nbut currently we use an Active Record-style ORM with a few extra features\n(like Class Table Inheritance) and we haven't found any major issues with this\napproach. What was the worst case scenario you experienced with the 1:1\napproach?\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nOver the past 5 years I've been in two projects using 1:1 ORM Active Record ==\nbusiness model base approach. One completely failed in part because of this,\nsecond is barely manageable, but I managed to save it by moving business code\nmostly to the outside of Active Record classes.\n\nThe problem I encountered in those projects is the mismatch between storage\nmental model and business mental model, which lead to explosion of crappy code\n(AKA technical debt). In particular:\n\n1\\. the classes I need for business model _may_ have initially mapped well to\ndatabase tables, but over time they stop; business logic and model changes\nmuch faster than you'd like your DB schema to\n\n2\\. since many things in AR can fire SQL queries, you have to keep in mind the\nworkings of your database when doing almost every operation on your model;\nit's an abstraction leak\n\n3\\. code shooting off SQL queries is randomly called from all over your\ncodebase; it's harder to keep track of it and, if needed, optimize those\nqueries\n\nI like AR as a convenient API to get data from/to database, but given the\npoint 1., I eventually learned to isolate AR layer as something _below_\nbusiness model layer, so that the pattern is that business model is explicitly\nserialized and deserialized from database, instead of the database being\ncoupled with the logic of your program.\n\nNow I vaguely recall complaining about this before on HN and getting my ass\nhanded back to me by someone who pointed out that these are all ORM n00b\nmistakes. I wish I could find that comment (pretty sure I noted the link down\nsomewhere). Yeah, I admit - in those two projects I mentioned, we were all ORM\nnoobs. So we've learned those lessons the hard way.\n\n------\nPaulHoule\nContinuous integration is a good thing. Back in the bad old days you'd have\nthree people working on parts of the system for 6 months and plan to snap them\ntogether in 2 weeks and it would take more like another 6 months.\n\nAgile methods are also useful. If you can't plan 2 weeks of work you can\nprobably not plan 6 months.\n\nWhen agile methods harden into branded processes and where there is no\nconsensus on the ground rules by the team it gets painful. The underlying\nproblem is often a lack of trust and respect. In an agile situation people\nwill stick to rigid rules (never extend the sprint, we do all our planning in\n4 hours, etc.) because they feel they'll lose what little control they have\notherwise. In a non-agile situation people can often avoid each other for\nmonths and have the situation go south suddenly. In agile you wind up with\nlots of painful meetings instead.\n\nAlso I think it is rare for one language to really be \"best for a job\". If you\nwant to write the back end of a run of the mill webapp, you can do a great job\nof that in any mainstream language you are comfortable in.\n\n~~~\nreacharavindh\n> Agile methods are also useful. If you can't plan 2 weeks of work you can\n> probably not plan 6 months.\n\nHmmm. I was just thinking the opposite yesterday. I'm a performance engineer\nworking closely with two teams. One doing Agile and the other basing on wikis\nand Adhoc in-person whiteboard discussions. I find the non agile team more\nproductive, efficient and dare I say happy. The Agile based team makes me sit\nin on their daily scrum meetings. Although every one uses it to sync up on\ntheir dependancies, it just drags for an hour almost every day. I can visibly\ntell the devs walking out of the room spend more time worrying about\n\"velocity\" and \"organisation of work\" than the money making work that needs to\nbe done. It almost feels like the agile process gives them \"one more job\" of\npicking the doable things from the list of stuff that needs to be done so they\nlook better than their peers with better velocity.\n\nSimply put, I was thinking if Agile is just not a good method when you can\nstrive for good leadership and a healthy collaboration among individuals of\nthe team?\n\n~~~\niainmerrick\n_One doing Agile and the other basing on wikis and Adhoc in-person whiteboard\ndiscussions._\n\nThe ad-hoc approach also sounds quite agile (at least with a small 'a'). It's\ncertainly closer to Agile than to Waterfall, assuming they didn't do a big\ndesign up front before writing any code.\n\nI think the ad-hoc agile approach can work very well with a good team. But\nScrum fans always seem to warn against cherry-picking just the bits of Scrum\nyou like and not using the whole process.\n\n~~~\nbtilly\n_But Scrum fans always seem to warn against cherry-picking just the bits of\nScrum you like and not using the whole process._\n\nBut of course. If you just cherry-pick and experiment, then you won't have any\nreason to pay an expensive expert to tell you how to do it right!\n\n------\nBjoernKW\nNo, it's not just you and yes, we often do overcomplicate software\ndevelopment.\n\nIt's been that way long before agile methodology or microservices though.\nComplexity-for-the-sake-of-complexity EverthingHasToBeAnAbstractClass\nframeworks have been plaguing the software development business since at least\nthe 1990s and I'm sure there are similar stories from the 80s and 70s.\n\nIt's hard to find a one-size-fits-all easy method for not falling into that\nover-engineering / over-management trap. I try to focus on simple principles\nto identify needless complexity:\n\n\\- There is no silver bullet (see \"microservices\"): If the same design pattern\nis used to solve each and every problem there probably is something amiss.\n\n\\- Less code is better.\n\n\\- Favour disposable code over reusable code: Avoid the trap of premature\noptimisation, both in terms of performance and in terms of software\narchitecture. Also known as \"You aren't gonna need it\".\n\n\\- Code means communication: By writing code you\u2019re entering a conversation\nwith other developers, including your future self. If code isn't easily\ncomprehensible again there's likely something wrong.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nI think the tendency to over-engineer is a symptom of retrofitting an\nassembly-line 9-5 shift onto the creative process of writing code.\n\nYou sit a guy there 5 days a week for many years. He has to look busy, he has\nto do something with all of that time. He's not going to get paid if he writes\nthe code in the most simple, concise, and straightforward way possible and\nthen goes home until they're ready to make a new feature two weeks later. He\nhas to sit around and make up something for himself to do.\n\nContrast with side projects. I have many simple weekend projects that continue\nto work well and provide their promised utility years later. Because you just\nwrite what you need and stop, you don't get sucked into the disastrous\ncomplexity spiral that every company-internal software project ends up as.\n\nThe other factor here is that people need some signal to say \"I'm good at my\njob\" (because no one can actually tell). That signal has to go to colleagues,\nsuperiors, and peers outside the workplace. People therefore invent artificial\ncomplexity or take intentionally convoluted approaches so they can sound\nfancy. In the most extreme cases, this is a conscious decision designed to\nblock out \"competitors\" (colleagues). In many cases, it's a subconscious way\nto ego-stroke (and to mix in a little bit of variety per point one above).\n\nThis is especially true when a household brand like Google or Facebook pushes\nout some new esoteric thing; everyone wants to see themselves as a Google-or-\nFacebook-in-waiting and it makes it easy to pitch these things to the bosses,\nwhen the fact is that the kinds of things that work at large public companies\nlike Google are probably not going to work in small companies.\n\n~~~\nnathanaldensr\nThank you for shining a light on the psychological side of this discussion. I\nlike to highlight psychology when I have these discussions with peers because\ntoo often technical folks view the world through technology lenses instead of\nhuman ones.\n\n------\ncorysama\nOne of my fav tech talks ever (and I watch a lot of tech talks) is Alan Kay's\n\"Is it really 'complex'? Or, did we just make it 'complicated'?\" It addresses\nyour question directly, but at a very, very high level.\n\n[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY)\n\nNote that the laptop he is presenting on is not running Linux/Windows/OSX and\nthat the presentation software he is using is not OoO/PowerPoint/Keynote.\nInstead, it is a custom productivity suite called \"Frank\" developed entirely\nby his team, running on a custom OS, all compiled using custom languages and\ncompilers. And, the total lines of code for everything, including the OS and\ncompilers, is under 100k LOC.\n\n~~~\nGnarfGnarf\nThat is absurd. You can't write an OS in 100KLOC.\n\n~~~\nsrpeck\nCheck out stats on the kOS/kparc project:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9316091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9316091)\n\nThere is also a more recent example of Arthur Whitney writing a C compiler in\n<250 lines of C. Remarkable how productive a programmer can be when he chooses\nnot to overcomplicate.\n\n~~~\nnickpsecurity\nEverything I saw in the link looks like K, not C. Do you have a link to the C\ncompiler done _in C language?_\n\n------\nmajewsky\n1) False dichotomy. Developer familiarity is one of the most important metrics\nfor choosing \"the best tool for the job\".\n\n2) Conway's Law applies in reverse here: If your organization consists of a\nlot of rather disjoint teams, then microservices can be quite beneficial\nbecause each team can deploy independently. If you're one cohesive team, there\nis not much benefit, only cost.\n\n3) Depends. If you have a well-designed distributed system, it can be\namazingly resilient and reliable without introducing much administrative\noverhead. (From my experience, OpenStack Swift is such a system. Parts may\nfail, but the system never fails.) There are two main problems with\ndistributed systems: a) Designing and implementing them correctly is really\nhard. b) Many people use distributed systems when a single VM would do just\nfine, and get all the pain without cashing out on the benefits. See also\n[http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm#heavyclouds](http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm#heavyclouds)\n\n4) Continuous integration was not meant to help with complexity. Its purpose\nis to reduce turn-around time for bugfixes and new features. If your release\nprocess is long and complicated, the increased number of releases will indeed\nbe painful for you. Our team sees value in \"bringing the pain forward\" in this\nway. Your team obviously puts emphasis on different issues, and that's okay.\n\n~~~\nUK-AL\nI find microservices can help in just keep everything small and focused. I\nknow you can do this with a monolith. But having a process boundary really\nenforces it.\n\n~~~\ncrdoconnor\nI find that the boundary creates operational headaches. A function call won't\ntime out, deliver a 502 error, have authentication/authorization issues,\nrequire load balancing, etc. etc.\n\nA REST API will.\n\nPlus, once you've debugged a problem that involves crossing 5 microservice\nboundaries you'll start to wonder if it was all worth it.\n\nMonolith is also a wrong (and somewhat derogatory) word to describe a non-\nmicroservice architecture. There's nothing monolithic about loosely coupled\ncode running on the same machine.\n\nI really think that microservices are a hack to deal with conway's law in\nlarge corporations. Operationally it's inefficient but it fixes a nexus of\ntechnical and political problems when the correct boundary is picked.\n\n~~~\nUK-AL\nExcept most applications are monolith. Monolith code can still be loosely\ncoupled. However it is harder.\n\n~~~\ncrdoconnor\nNo, not at all.\n\nThe only difference I noticed with respect to rube goldberg (what you call\n\"microservices\") systems and coupling is that tight coupling between\ncomponents of rube goldberg systems was much more painful: particularly\ndebugging across multiple service boundaries.\n\n------\nmhotchen\nMany of the programmers I have worked with actually love complexity, despite\ntrying to convince others (and most likely themselves) that they hate it.\n\nAdvice tends to be cherrypicked to suit an agenda they already have (with your\nexample on microservices, the vast amount of resources saying they're very\ndifficult, should be driven by a monolith first approach, and solve a specific\nset of problems is largely brushed under the rug).\n\nI think because our industry moves so fast there's a fear of becoming\nirrelevant. Ironically companies are so scared of not being able to employ\ndevelopers that they're also onboard with complicating their platform in the\nname of hiring and retention. I think this is down to the sad truth that most\ndeveloper roles offer very little challenge outside of learning a new stack.\n\n~~~\njamesmccann\n> I think this is down to the sad truth that most developer roles offer very\n> little challenge outside of learning a new stack.\n\nThis is a gem observation from this thread. In my own tech sphere the first\nthing developers are talking about with each other is the new x,y,z lib or\nframework they're using to accomplish something relatively banal. There's\nstill a lot of work out there that really boils down to basic CRUD and\nreporting at the end of the day, and developers naturally begin to invent\ncomplexities on top of that CRUD to make the work interesting and challenging.\nI'm absolutely guilty of this first hand.\n\nI've found personally it also doesn't help that past work on projects e.g.\nlarge Rails apps that were never architected well turn out to be such\nnightmares to work on. The memory of the end state of these projects lingers\nwith developers as they move onto the next piece of work, and they're inclined\nto say \"no that doesn't work\" and pick up shiny new-tech to do the old job\ninstead.\n\nAs a side analogy: most small business construction jobs, e.g. building a\ntimber frame house, don't involve the builders arriving on site and are\nstumped by the challenge of how to put up the framing for the bedroom walls -\nthere's also very little challenge in these projects, yet the reward is in the\ncompletion.\n\n~~~\nbrwr\n> There's still a lot of work out there that really boils down to basic CRUD\n> and reporting at the end of the day, and developers naturally begin to\n> invent complexities on top of that CRUD to make the work interesting and\n> challenging.\n\nI'd go so far as to say that _most_ work today (at least in startups) is\nbuilding CRUD apps. The technology has changed, but the work hasn't. Inside of\nbuilding CRUD apps in Rails, we now build them in React.\n\n------\nDanielBMarkham\nYou've thrown together a bunch of buzzwords and asked if we are over\ncomplicating things.\n\nBuzzwords can mean freaking anything. I've seen great Agile teams that don't\nlook anything like textbook Agile teams. Microservices can be a total\nclusterfuck unless you know what the hell you're doing -- and manage\ncomplexity. (Sound familiar?) CI/CD/DevOps can be anything from a lifesaver to\nthe end of all life in the known universe.\n\nSo yes, we are over complicating software development, but the way we do it\nisn't through slapping around a few marketing terms. The way we do it is not\nunderstanding what our jobs are. Instead, we pick up some term that somebody,\nsomewhere used and run with it.\n\nThen we confuse effort with value. Hey, if DevOps is good, the more we do\nDevOps, the better we'll be, right? Well -- no. If Agile is good, the more\nAgile stuff we do the better we'll be, right? Hell no. We love to deep dive in\nthe technical details. If there aren't any technical details, we'll add some!\n\nSoftware development is too complicated because individual developers veer off\nthe rails and make it too complicated. That's it. That's all there is to it.\nThrow a complex library at a good dev and they'll ask if we need the entire\nthing to only use 2 methods. Throw a complex library at a mediocre Dev and\nthey'll spend the next three weeks writing 15 KLOC creating the ultimate\nsystem for X, _which we don 't need right now and may never need_.\n\nIt has nothing to do with the buzzwords, the tech, or software development in\ngeneral. It's us.\n\n------\nsebringj\nIt never seems complicated when I am doing my own side work for some reason.\nThere are no design meetings, no hours tracking, no arguments on best\npractices, no scrum, no testing frameworks, dev ops, etc. I do use git and\nminimally create bash scripts to simplify repetitive tasks for deployment but\nits just a huge contrast to working in teams where something simple takes\nabout 50 times longer.\n\nI think keeping things as simple as possible and always going for that goal\nwill increase velocity overall. Everything should be subject to scrutiny for\npromoting productivity and open to modification or removal. I know there is a\nbalance where you have to increase complexity in a team environment but\nkeeping friction as low as possible in terms of process and intellectual\nweight couldn't hurt.\n\nThe most productive place I've seen so far is a huge athletic brand I worked\nfor where they kept teams at max 5 people in mini projects. This forced the\nidea of low overhead and kept the scale of management needed small. The worst\nplace I worked for in terms of unnecessary complexity is a well known host,\nalthough it is the best place to work in terms of people, hired offshore that\nhas a one-size fits all mentality and layered in as much shit as possible to\nslow down development to a mud crawl. I don't buy into process over\nproductivity.\n\n~~~\nashark\nOne of the things that helps when you're developing your own projects is that\nyou can single-handedly decide to ruthlessly cull parts of the project that\ntake lots of time but provide little value, and you (probably) have decent\ninsight into what those are. You're also probably not at a scale where doing\ncertain really crappy, slow parts of the job can pay off, so you can skip\nthose.\n\nDefault form elements with some basic, nice styling to fit your theme? Form\ndone in one hour. Special snowflake version of the same thing from the design\nteam, which has no idea what the platform can and cannot easily be made to do,\nbut the client is absolutely in love with? Two _days_ , a third party\ndependency or two, some extra environment-specific bugs to track down later,\nand generally increased fragility (so more time lost in the future). This has\nslowed you down now and increased the resources required for the project\nindefinitely. But the client looooooves it.\n\nSupport Android pre-5.0, at the cost of 20% more development time, a pile of\nextra bug reports, an uglier, harder-to-maintain codebase, and a much much\nlonger testing cycle, for a side project? _Hell_ no. Client says that will\ncost them $4 million/yr not to support those? Ugh. FINE.\n\nAnd so on, and so on.\n\n------\nmschaef\nContinuous Integration is (with a reasonable test suite) one of few elements\nof software development that I would consider almost essential for any long\nrunning project. It's just too useful to have continual feedback on the\nquality of the system under construction. (And this is before bringing in\nmicro-services or any other complicating architectural pattern.)\n\nWhere I might agree with you more are on points 3 and 4: 'Advanced\nreliability' and 'Microservices'. While I have no doubt that these are useful\nto solve specific problems, I think as a profession we tend to over-estimate\nthe need for these things and under-estimate the costs for having them. To me\nthis implies that there needs to be a very clear empirical case that they\nsupport a requirement that actually exists. I'd also make the argument that\nthe drive for microservices within an organization has to come from a person\nor team that has the wherewithal to commit resources over the long-term to\nactually make it happen and keep it maintained. (ie: probably not an\nindividual development team.)\n\n------\nrolodato\nI think the \"learn to code\" movement as well as overly-technical interviews\nfor developers are partly to blame for this. It's well-known that developers\nare tested on how to do something that's considered technically difficult,\nsuch as abstract CS problems or a complicated architecture, but they are\nrarely asked why certain tools, practices or architectures should or should\nnot be used. Comparative analyses to make objective recommendations between\ndifferent solution alternatives are also rare in my interviewing experience,\nbut they are one of the most valuable skill a competent software engineer\nshould have.\n\nI don't agree on point 4 though - CI can be something as basic as running a\nmonolith's tests on each commit, which makes sure that builds are reproducible\n(no more \"works on my machine\").\n\n------\nbluejekyll\nNo. You are correct. Honestly I think you can solve a lot of that by following\non from one of Deijkstra's core priniciples: Seperation of Concerns.\n\nWhen you practice good seperationof concerns, specific choice in different\nareas can be more easily fixed later. It requires having decent APIs and being\nthoughtful on the interaction of different components, but it helps immensely\nin the long run.\n\nMicroservices are one way to practice seperation of concerns, but it can also\nbe practiced in monolithic software as well, by having strong modular systems\n(different languages are stronger at this than others).\n\n------\nmarcosdumay\nWell, yes, we are overcomplicating it. Except on the parts we are\nundercomplicating... And I still couldn't find anybody that can reliably tell\nthose apart, but the first set is indeed much larger.\n\n1 - Do not pick a new language for an urgent project. Do look at them when you\nhave some leeway.\n\n2 - Yep.\n\n3 - There's something wrong with your ops. That happens often, and it is a\nbug, fix it.\n\n4 - If CI is making your ops more complex, ditch it. If less complex, keep it.\nIn doubt, choose the safest possible way to try the other approach, and look\nat the results.\n\n5 - Do not listen to consulting experts, only to technical experts. The agile\nmanifesto is a nice reading, read it, think about it, try to follow, but don't\ntry too hard. Ignore any of the more detailed methodologies.\n\n------\ndwc\nMuch of the problem in the things you mention is that those things are\nspecific solutions that have been confused with goals. I.e., \"we're supposed\nto build microservices\" is a horrible idea, as opposed to \"given this\nparticular situation a microservice is a great fit\".\n\nUnderstanding the _possible_ benefits and drawbacks of any solution is\nimportant. It's important in whether or not that solution is selected, but\nalso to make sure that the implementation actually delivers those benefits.\n\nIt's very common in our industry to use \"best practices\" without understanding\nthem, and therefore misapplying the solutions.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\nAs you've intimated, most people have a very superficial mental model.\n\nFacebook == respected tech brand == someone I should copy. The end.\n\nGuy I know uses Cassandra == developed by hot tech brand Facebook == cool by\nmental association with Facebook.\n\nGuy I know uses MSSQL or Oracle == developed by crusty old Evil Empire Company\nthat cool people don't want to work for == bad.\n\nConclusion: We must use \"big data\" so we can be like the cool people -- err,\nbecause we really have some big data.\n\nThis doesn't sound like the outcome we'd expect from technical people making\nthese decisions, but we can obviously see that it's what we're getting.\n\n------\nkekub\nI am working in huge non-IT company as a software developer. I guess that is\nwhat gives me a totally different point of view on your lessons:\n\n1) Without a unified technology stack and a common framework we would not be\nable to build and maintain our applications. We decided on C# as it works best\nfor us. Currently we are 5 developers. Not a single one of us has ever written\na line of C# code before entering the company - learning the language from\nground up enables us to pick up patterns that our colleagues who joined the\ncompany earlier found to be best practices.\n\n2) If you are not introducing a whole new stack with every micro service that\nyou develop the devops costs are quite low.\n\n3) I agree with you on that - I think redundancy always introduces more\ncomplexity. However there are systems that handle that job quite well (e.g.\nSQL Server). For application servers we use hot-spares and a load balancer\nthat only routes traffic to them, when the main servers are not reachable.\nThis works for us, as all our applications are low traffic applications.\n\n4) Continuous integration works brilliant for our unified stack. In the last\ntwo years we went down from 1d setup + 20min deploy to 10min setup + 20s\ndeploy.\n\n5) We use agile methodology whenever possible and it works like a charm.\nHowever we had a lot of learnings. Most recent example: Always have at least\none person from all your target groups in any meeting where you try to create\nuser-stories.\n\nPlanning our software architecture has been a key element in my teams success\nand I do not see a point where we are going to cut it.\n\n------\nbeat\n1\\. What problem are you optimizing for? \"The job\" encompasses code, but it\nalso encompasses staffing. It's a lot easier to hire Java developers than\nScala developers. In a leadership role, your responsibility isn't just the\nday-to-day code - it's the whole project.\n\n2\\. Microservices vs monoliths is a see-saw. You build a monolith, find it's a\nbrittle, incomprehensible hairball, and you break out microservices. You build\nmicroservices, find that operational headaches are killing you, and start\nconsolidating them into monoliths. Which kneecap do you want the bullet in?\n\n3\\. Fix what breaks.\n\n4\\. Continuous integration is _vital_. But it needs to be evolved along with\nthe system. There's this thing I say... \"Have computers do what computers do\nwell, have humans do what humans do well\". Handling complex and _repeatable_\nbehavior (i.e. builds and test suites) should absolutely be automated as much\nas possible. Think continuous integration sucks? Try handing it off to humans\nfor a while! You'll learn whole new levels of pain.\n\n5\\. All process is about (or should be about) specific, discrete\ncommunications issues.\n\n~~~\nmisha67\n> Which kneecap do you want the bullet in?\n\nFunniest thing I've heard all day!\n\n~~~\nbeat\nThat's the fun of working with me. I say funny shit!\n\nI occasionally refer to the final steps of a project as \"bayoneting the\nwounded\" too.\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nYes we are over complicating it, but that it primarily about trying to take\nwhat is essentially an artistic process and turning it into a regimented\nprocess (a known hard problem).\n\nRob Gingell at Sun stated it as a form of uncertainty principal. He said, \"You\ncan know what features are in a release or when the release will ship, but not\nboth.\" It captured the challenge of aspirational feature development where\nsomeone says \"we have to have feature X\" and so you send a bunch of smart\nengineers off to build it but there is no process by which you can start with\nan empty main function and build it step by step into feature X.\n\nThat said, it got worse when we separated the user interface from the product\n(browser / webserver). And you're rants about microservices and continuous\nintegration are really about releases, delivery, and QA. (the 'delivery time'\nof Gingell's law above).\n\nThese are complexities introduced by delivery capabilities that enable\ndifferent constructions. The story on HN a few days about about the JS\ngraphics library is a good example of that. Instead of linking against a\nlibrary on your computer to deliver your application with graphics, we have\nthe capability of attaching to a web service with a browser and assembling _on\ndemand_ the set of APIs and functions needed for that combination of client\nbrowser / OS. Its a great capability but to pull it off requires more moving\nparts.\n\n~~~\nakamaozu\nLink to the post about the graphics library please?\n\n~~~\nChuckMcM\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13419665](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13419665)\n\n------\nemeraldd\n\\- 1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool\nfor the job\n\n95% of the time, a language that your developers are familiar with is the\ncorrect tool for the job simply for that reason! There are cases where it is\nnot the case but those involve special case languages and special case\nsystems. If you don't know what special case means then you're situation is\nalmost certainly on that list.\n\n\\- 2) Avoid microservices where possible, the operational cost considering\ndevops is just immense\n\n\"If your data fits on one machine then you don't need hadoop ...\" Same thing\napplies here. Microservices have place and putting them in the wrong one will\nbite you bad.\n\n\\- 3) Advanced reliability / redundancy even in critical systems ironically\nseems to causes more downtime than it prevents due to the introduction of\ncomplexity to dev & devops.\n\nThen there's probably something wrong or limited with the deployment that\nneeds to be reviewed (2 node when you need a 3 node cluster, bad networking\nenvironments, etc.) If you have a reasonable setup with solid tech under it,\n_deployed per specs_ then this should not be true. If, on the other hand,\nsomething is out of whack (say running a 2 node cluster with Linux HA and only\na single communication path between them) you're going to have problems and\nthe only way to fix them is to get it done right.\n\n\\- 4) Continuous integration seems to be a plaster on the problem of complex\ndevops introduced by microservices.\n\nI'm not sure about this but, if your deployment system requires CI you have a\nproblem. An individual, given hardware and assets/code, should be able to spin\nup a complete system on a fresh box cleanly and in a reasonable timeframe.\n(Fresh data restores can take longer of course but the system should be\nrunnable barring that.) If this _requires_ (i.e. it can't reasonably be done\nmanually) something like an CI script or ansible/chef/etc. script then you're\ndeployment process is probably too complex and needs to be re-evaluated.\n\n\\- 5) Agile \"methodology\" when used as anything but a tool to solve specific,\ndiscrete, communications issues is really problematic\n\nAgile is commonly used to gloss over a complete lack of structured process or\na broken. Even with Agile there should be some clean process and design work\nthat goes into things or you're hosed.\n\n~~~\njondumbau\n4: if my stack requires a message broker to run, how is setting one up\nmanually supposed to be better to using the ansible scripts.\n\n------\nhd4\nFor me, the trinity of development as a solo developer seems to be:\n\n1\\. Writing code while using as many useful libraries and tools as possible to\navoid recreating wheels\n\n2\\. Continuous integration set up early on to handle the menial work and to\nlet me concentrate on 1.\n\n3\\. Constantly evaluating and researching what technology is available and\nnewly appearing to give me an edge, because having an edge is never a bad\nthing in this field.\n\nAgree with some of what OP said, especially with methodologies become\nhindrances and HA tools becoming points of failure.\n\n------\nrb808\nI've seen the addition of unit testing is a big cause of complexity.\nPreviously simple classes now have to be more abstracted in order to unit\ntest. Add mocks, testing classes & test frameworks. Some unit tests are handy,\nbut I dont think it justifies the additional complexity. For the apps I write\nI'd like to see more emphasis on automated integration testing and fewer unit\ntests - so we can write simple classes again.\n\n~~~\njulsonl\nIn my experience, it's usually not the existence of unit tests themselves\nthat's causing an issue, but that most of them are badly written. One telltale\nsign is when writing the unit test becomes overly painful (like too much code\nsetting up mocks), it usually means that your class is not simple enough or\nhas too many dependencies.\n\nProper unit testing also complements integration testing in that corner cases\ncan be handled at the unit test level, therefore reducing the amount of\nintegration test code which arguably is much more brittle, runs slower and\nmore complicated to write.\n\n~~~\njononor\nMany unit tests are just written to test code, which is at best irrelevant. At\nworst your codebase is 2-3x bigger and more abstract than it needs to, where\nuseless tests keep code alive and useless code keeps tests alive. Test\nfunctionality, as close to the promises given to outside consumers as is\nfeasible. Be it API or UI for other people/projects/services. This is the\nstuff that needs to work (and thus often need to be stable). No-one cares\nwhether a function deep down inside the code, used a part of the\nimplementation of promised functionality works. Delete it if you can.\n\nOnly case where I'd support \"unit tests\" as typically practiced (small units,\nisolated functions/classes) is around _core_ competence (defined as narrowly\nas possible). But then I'd argue that this functionality should be put into a\nlibrary anyways, which is used by products codebases. And then the tests are\ntests for the functionality promised to the products.\n\n~~~\njulsonl\nI'm not arguing against writing integration tests, they are as important if\nnot more important, as you've said. Maybe I've only seen badly written ones,\nbut my issue was against integration tests that check for example if this ever\nso important, but hidden, flag is being set properly after an API call when\nthat can be checked at the service level. Someone eventually decides that flag\nis unneeded, and a whole host of tests fail and someone has to dig several\nlevels deep to figure it out.\n\nI guess I shouldn't have used the word 'brittle', but this is what I was\nthinking of.\n\nAnd of course, I think unit testing anything and everything is absurd and not\na good use of developer time.\n\n~~~\nNomentatus\nI don't think you can avoid meta-debugging. That is, debugging your asserts or\ntests that you hoped would detect bugs instead of being the bug. Sometimes\nbecause more realistic tests unveil a bug, sometimes (as in your example)\nbecause underlying code functionality has changed. This is unavoidable but\nalso often enlightening. To my mind, it's even okay if most of your bugs are\nmeta - because these are usually very fast fixes, and it probably means you\nhave a lot of checks. But by the same token, I would agree with you that all\nsuch tests have to be well-written, not mailed in, for just the reasons you\ngive. It's too easy to assume that writing tests is somehow a fairly trivial\ntask. Until you end up debugging the test.\n\n------\njMyles\nMy first reaction to your (very thoughtful) review is that #4 seems out of\nplace.\n\nCI _can be_ a way of enforcing the simplicity of the others - it can be a way\nof tunneling the build process into assuredly straightforward steps and\npreventing individual team members from arbitrarily (or even accidentally)\nadding their own complications into build requirements.\n\nOther than that, I think you are definitely on to something here.\n\n------\nadamnemecek\nThere's this book that I've been mentioning around here called Elements of\nProgramming [https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming-Alexander-\nStepan...](https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming-Alexander-\nStepanov/dp/032163537X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&sa-no-\nredirect=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=akgg-20&linkId=66e61085fdce329bbcf6f12f2d180b57)\nthat makes exactly this claim, that we are writing too much code.\n\nIt proposes how to write C++-ish (it's an extremely minimal subset of C++\nproper) code in a mathematical way that makes all your code terse. In this\ntalk, Sean Parent, at that time working on Adobe Photoshop, estimated that the\nPS codebase could be reduced from 3,000,000 LOC to 30,000 LOC (=100x!!) if\nthey followed ideas from the book\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4moyKUHApq4&t=39m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4moyKUHApq4&t=39m30s)\nAnother point of his is that the explosion of written code we are seeing isn't\nsustainable and that so much of this code is algorithms or data structures\nwith overlapping functionalities. As the codebases grow, and these\nfunctionalities diverge even further, pulling the reigns in on the chaos\nbecomes gradually impossible. Bjarne Stroustrup (aka the C++ OG) gave this\nbook five stars on Amazon (in what is his one and only Amazon product review\nlol).\n[https://smile.amazon.com/review/R1MG7U1LR7FK6/](https://smile.amazon.com/review/R1MG7U1LR7FK6/)\n\nThis style might become dominant because it's only really possible in modern\nsuccessors of C++ such as Swift or Rust that have both \"direct\" access to\nmemory and type classes/traits/protocols, not so much in C++ itself (unless\ndebugging C++ template errors is your thing).\n\n~~~\nGregBuchholz\nHave you looked in the STEPS program by Alan Kay? Trying to recreate modern\ncomputing setup from the OS up in 20k lines of code...\n\n[http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf)\n\n\"If computing is important -- for daily life, learning, business, national\ndefense, jobs, and more -- then qualitatively advancing computing is extremely\nimportant. Fro example, many software systems today are made from millions to\nhundreds of millions of lines of program code that is too large, complex and\nfragile to be improved, fixed, or integrated. (One hundred million lines of\ncode at 50 lines per page is 5000 books of 400 pages each! This is beyond\nhumane scale.)\n\nWhat if this could be made literally 1000 times smaller -- or more? And made\nmore powerful, clear, simple, and robust? This would bring one of the most\nimportant technologies of our time from a state that is almost out of human\nreach -- and dangerously close to being out of control -- back into human\nscale.\"\n\n...and of course if you haven't seen it, you'll want to check out the Forth\nguys who want to do everything with 1000 times less code:\n\n[http://www.ultratechnology.com/forth.htm](http://www.ultratechnology.com/forth.htm)\n\n~~~\nadamnemecek\nI'm aware of this but Alan Kay's work and this seem to be orthogonal. Alan Kay\ntalks about reducing real systems that have compilers, inputs etc whereas\nElements talks about like the day to day ways of writing code. Alan Kay might\ncome up with a new keyword whose semantics magically lets you cut out 30% but\nElements shows you that if you make your types behave certain way, generics\nwill let you cut out a lot of code.\n\n~~~\nbuzzybee\nI would counter that this appears to be a repeatedly emerging consensus,\nincluding Stepanov, Kay, Simonyi, and a number of other \"greats\", that an\napproach that involves some degree of metaprogramming, guided by domain\nproblem, is the way forward. They differ on terms - cooperating systems,\nmodel-driven, intentional, generic - and focus - whether to create new syntax,\nor to guide the creation of specific algorithms or data structures - but they\naren't debating the power of the approach.\n\n------\njosephv\nThe only way to have any sense of a good or solid development platform or\nlifecycle is, to me, to look at your specific situation and tailor everything\nto your deliverables and needs. Doing anything because of industry trends or\nacademic pontificating will lead you towards the solution someone else had\nsuccess with in a different circumstance.\n\nMicroservices work fine in some situations, agile works fine in some\nsituations, but until you find that you are in one of those situations trying\nto bend your deliverables to meet a sprint-cycle or some other nauseating\njargon will cause, as you put it, over-complication or just poorly targeted\neffort. (It can also cause enough stress to dramatically affect your health, I\nknow better than most)\n\nThose moments of solidarity between product and effort are real gems that I've\nonly recognized in hindsight.\n\n------\nsolarhess\nYou are right. Agile, languages, CI, devops are all tools not solutions to\nproblems. Blindly applied, they will not get the results promised.\n\nFirst focus on identifying the primary job to be done: build a valuable piece\nof software with as little effort as possible given your current team and\nexisting technology.\n\nSecond, consider how valuable the existing software is and whether it really\nneeds to be rewritten at all. Prefer a course that retains the most existing\nvalue. It is work you won't have to repeat.\n\nThird, choose tools that maximize the value produced per hour of your team.\nCI, Devops, Microservices, Languages all promise productivity and reliability\nbenefits but will incur complexity and time costs. Choosing the right mix is\npart of the art of software management.\n\n------\nmhluongo\nYou're right, though you should end most of your comments with \"for us\".\n\nWe've been burned by the microservice hype, and it took a while for us to\nrealize that most of the touted benefits are for larger organizations. These\n\"best practices\"\" rarely include organizational context.\n\n------\nharwoodleon\nFatal problems that hit start ups seem left-field, but they are baked into the\ndesign choices we make, often without discussion - because they seem part of\n\"current accepted wisdom\".\n\nMy major issue for startup software development is that often software is\ndeveloped too discretely - with a utopian 'final version' in mind. Developers\ndon't think holistically enough - they focus on details at the expense of\ndesign. \"current accepted wisdom\" is intangible, ever shifting, whereas the\nfailure of a system is very real and can lead to loss of income etc...\n\nLots of start up companies don't design systems with humans in them, they\nwrite code as if it was a standalone thing - they often leave out the human\nbits because they are hard to evaluate, measure and control - variety of\nskill, ideas, approaches, mistakes, quality of life etc.\n\nIn my experience, this variety (life) often comes back to bite companies that\ncan't handle eventual variance because of poor system design - not because of\na choice of platform / provider / software etc.\n\nI have been reading a lot around the viable system model (VSM) for organising\nprojects. It seems to fit with what my view on this is. I am trying to\nimplement a project using this model currently.\n\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model)\n\n------\nnojvek\nAs everyone is saying: do what is reasonable and useful.\n\nE.g let's make an online shop.\n\nIt has browsing, purchasing and admin sections.\n\nBrowsing is simple. Query dB and show html. It's probably the most used as\nwell and needs to be reliable. Having as different service means admin section\ncould break while users are still able to browse. Same for payments. Sometimes\nit's crazy complicated. I think of microservices as big product feature\nboundaries that can work independently. A failure in one doesn't affect the\nother.\n\nContinuous integration: once you have your tests, and some auto deploy\nscripts, you have an engine. You push code, tests auto run, a live staging is\ncreated for latest code, you play with it. Looks good? Merge with Master. It's\ndeployed to production. The idea is deployment is effortless and you can do it\nmultiple times a day just like git push. Tests just don't only have to be\nunit. We run integration testing features on dummy accounts periodically from\ndifferent regions in the world on production. This means you are alerted as\nsoon as something breaks. Fast deployment and great telemetry mean you can\nalways revert to last known good state easily.\n\nInvesting in tests is a pain but it pays off in the long run. Especially if\nyou have other developers working on same code base.\n\nJust don't over do it. I believe these ideas came from pain developers\nactually faced and they used then to solve it. If you're not feeling the pain\nor won't feel it then you don't need the remedy.\n\n------\nTheAceOfHearts\nI think in many cases complexity just comes from lack of experience and poorly\nunderstood requirements.\n\nI've had my fair share of cases where I ended up implementing something\nneedlessly complicated, only to later realize my approach was terribly\nmisguided. I'd like to think I'm slowly improving on this as time goes on.\n\nThe software world has a big discoverability problem. Even though I know\nthere's probably prior art of what I'm working on, I don't always know where\nto look for it.\n\n~~~\nmisha67\nHonesty.\n\n------\nQuantumRoar\nI think you wanted to say: \"Are we simplifying things in software\ndevelopment?\" All of the points you have made are actually simplifications of\nwhat might be the optimal solution.\n\nImagine the solution space as some multidimensional space where there is\nsomewhere an optimal solution. The dimensions include the habits of your\nprogrammers, the problem you are trying to solve, and the phase of the moon.\nMicroservices, a special form of redundancy, continuous integration, agile\ndevelopment are all extreme solutions to specific problems. Solutions which\nare extreme in that they are somewhere in the corner of your multidimensional\nsolution space.\n\nThey are popular because they are radical in the way they conceptualize the\nshape of the problem and attempt to solve it. Therefore they seem like optimal\nsolutions at first glance when really they only apply really well to specific\ntoy models.\n\nTake e.g. microservices. Yes, it's really nice if you can split up your big\nproblem into small problems and define nice and clean interfaces. But it\nbecomes a liability if you need too much communication between the services,\nup until the point where you merge your microservices back together in order\nto take advantage of using shared memory.\n\nDon't believe any claims that there is a categorically better way to do\neverything. Most often, when you see an article about something like that, it\nis \"proved\" by showing it solves a toy model very well. But actual problems\nare rarely like toy models. Therefore the optimal solution to an actual\nproblem is never a definite answer from one of the \"simplified corner case\nscenarios\" but it is actually just as complex as the problem you are trying to\nsolve.\n\n------\nsolipsism\n1) No way. Absolutely not. Not if what you're building is intended to last.\nAny language/ecosystem you choose has costs and benefits. You will continue to\npay the costs (and reap the benefits) long after your developers could have\nbecome fluent in a language.\n\nCertainly the language your developers already know is better than one they\ndon't, all things being equal. But your rule is way too simplistic.\n\n2) Of course. Avoid every complex thing where possible.\n\n3) This means the cost/benefit ratio was not considered closely enough when\nplanning these features. Again, avoid every complex thing where possible.\n\n4) this is a strange one. Most people doing CI are not building microservices.\nCI is really more about whether you have different, independently moving\npieces that need to by integrated. Could be microservices, could be libraries,\ncould be hardware vs software. If you only have a single active branch\neveryone's merging into regularly, you're doing CI implicitly. You just might\nnot need it automated.\n\n5) take what you can from the wisdom of agile, and then use your own brain to\nthink. And don't confuse agile with scrum.\n\n------\nbiztos\n1) Sounds like there's a lot more to the story.\n\n \n \n * Was the \"best tool\" what the devs thought it was?\n \n * Was it something they would hate using? Say, Java for Perl devs?\n \n * Was there a steep learning curve? An obscure language?\n \n\n2) How big is the system? How complex is the business? How ops-friendly are\nthe devs to start with?\n\n3) You (or someone) must know how much system failure would cost.\n\n4) CI can help with your devops, but its main point is to help with your\nsoftware quality. See #2.\n\n5) Totally agree, though you can also try being agile about \"Agile\" and taking\njust whatever parts work for you.\n\nMy $0.02 anyway.\n\n(Aside: years ago I worked on a team doing ad-hoc semi-agile, which worked\npretty well. I'm 99% sure I could have double our output and launched a\nmanagement-consulting career if I could have credibly held the threat of Real\nCorporate Agile Scrum over their heads. But that was before the flood. One of\nthem works for Atlassian now, ironically enough.)\n\n------\nmsluyter\nThough perhaps it's considered a component of 2), one could add\nDocker/containerization. I've watched folks spend weeks and weeks getting\nDocker setup for a service that probably didn't need to be containerized at\nall. And then once it's Dockerized, introspection/debugging/etc... seem to\nbecome much more difficult.\n\n~~~\nadictator\nAnd what sort of services were those that didn't need to be containerized?\n\n------\nsydd\nI agree with you, but not fully.\n\n1) Well, this is only a case if the project is short enough that its not worth\nswitching. Learning a new tech for a team takes months, only switch if the\nproject is taking years.\n\n2) Again, only use them for bigger (>2 years lifecycle) projects\n\n3) Depends on what you need. We build a full stack apps with around 99.95%\nuptime (a few hours of downtime/year) in around 3 months of architecture dev\ntime, this was good enough for us. Getting more would have hugely increased\ndev time, but this number was good enough for us.\n\n4) Disagree. You can build simple CI pipelines in a matter of weeks, which\nwill pay for themselves in a few months thanks to better uptimes, happier\nemployees, shorter release times. Again its only needed if your project lasts\nfor more than a year.\n\n5) Disagree. Agile is very good, if someone knows it well (takes a few days to\nlearn). Its not needed for very small teams (<6 people), they can self-manage.\n\nBut I think there are problems:\n\n\\- People getting hyped about the latest trendy stuff. Use bleeding edge/new\ntech for hobby projects not for money making.\n\n\\- Do not switch technologies unless really needed, dont fall for the hyped\nlibrary of the week.\n\n\\- Do not use a dynamic language for any project that will have more than 5K\nLOC in its lifetime.\n\n\\- Do not overengineer. For example if the code is clean, works, but has that\nugly singleton pattern its OK. Dont introduce the latest fancy IOC framework,\njust because you read it in the clean code book that its better.\n\n\\- Unit test are overhyped. Use them for critical components on the server,\nand thats it. IMO the hype about them is because dynamic languages scale so\nbadly that you need test otherwise you're fucked. Rather choose a well proven\nstatically typed language, a good IDE, and take code reviews seriously.\n\n------\nyawz\n\"Perfection is Achieved Not When There Is Nothing More to Add, But When There\nIs Nothing Left to Take Away\" \\- Antoine de Saint-Exupery\n\nIMHO, it takes technical and personal maturity to come to the conclusion\nabove. Good architecture (or software or dev process or anything) should only\nhave/contain the simplest things that are necessary.\n\n------\noutworlder\n> Avoid microservices where possible, the operational cost considering devops\n> is just immense\n\nIs it, though? There's more complexity due to more moving parts, sure. But\nbeing able to solve issues by just issuing a \"scale\" kubernetes command in the\nCLI is priceless. As is killing pods with no drama.\n\nHowever, what are we talking about here? Small business ecommerce? Your\nmonolithic app is probably going to work just fine.\n\n> Advanced reliability / redundancy even in critical systems ironically seems\n> to causes more downtime than it prevents due to the introduction of\n> complexity to dev & devops.\n\nSystems can and will fail. If you can eat the downtime, by all means forget\nabout that.\n\n> Continuous integration seems to be a plaster on the problem of complex\n> devops introduced by microservices.\n\nCould you stop singling-out microservices? We have deployed continuous\nintegration with old school rails apps before and it was extremely valuable.\n\nAgree about agile.\n\n~~~\ncookiecaper\n>Is it, though? There's more complexity due to more moving parts, sure. But\nbeing able to solve issues by just issuing a \"scale\" kubernetes command in the\nCLI is priceless. As is killing pods with no drama.\n\nOn the contrary, getting to the place where you can issue commands over k8s on\na project not specifically designed for it has a very real and very\nsignificant cost. Companies are killing themselves trying to do this for no\ngood reason.\n\nNeed a new node? Fire up whatever it is that you fire up: Ansible, Chef, AMI,\nbundle of custom bash scripts, whatever. No need for the _massive_ complexity\nof k8s.\n\nSpecifically, what benefits are you seeing from k8s (i.e., what unique utility\ndoes the \"scale\" or \"delete pod\" command bring that is not reasonably resolved\nby less complex solutions)? It's just causing me a lot of frustration right\nnow. I can see Google's need for it. Not having much luck seeing its use in\nnon-Google-scale businesses.\n\nIf you're doing a from-scratch thing that you can architect around k8s and\nthink that's more convenient than more traditional approaches and can accept\nits currently-quite-serious limitations, that's whatever. If you're talking\nabout some tangible objective benefit that most companies need to be able to\nenjoy here, please do elaborate.\n\n------\napeace\nI think #5 is the most problematic here, and was stated perfectly.\n\nOne method I have used successfully is sending surveys to people outside\nengineering. Send it to department heads and anyone else who seems interested\nin what engineering does. Ask them if they feel engineering is transparent,\nand whether they feel important bugs/features get followed up on. Let the\nresponses guide you, and make the minimal process changes you need to in order\nto satisfy people's real concerns.\n\nOne other piece of advice: if certain people seem obsessed with process, it's\npossible they are poisonous to your whole organization and should be let go.\nSome people want process to be there to give them work (e.g. \"managing the\nbacklog\" or \"writing stories\"), instead of doing actual work like programming\nor product research.\n\n------\nconradfr\nAs someone working at a Scrum company transitioning from PHP \"monoliths\" to\nDDD microservices shielded by nodejs gateways and apis and even CQRS/ES on the\nhorizon I will answer yes.\n\nBut I guess that'll look cool in our resumes.\n\nI must say sometimes I envy our mobile developers that are a bit immune from\nall that.\n\n------\nfeyn\nToo much to say, so I did a blog post:\n[https://neilonsoftware.com/2017/01/18/my-response-to-are-\nwe-...](https://neilonsoftware.com/2017/01/18/my-response-to-are-we-over-\ncomplicating-software-development/)\n\n------\nalex_hitchins\nI agree with most of your comments. I think as a fairly new profession we are\nstill finding our feet when it comes to best practices. I don't think there is\none system that will work across the board for all trades. I mean I would\nthink it took longer than 30-40 years to work out the best way to plumb, wire\na house etc.\n\nSometimes when estimating work, I think how long would the same project take\nto build 5, 10, 15 years ago. It's not often that time spent coding today is\nany quicker than before.\n\nArguably we get better quality software now with unit tests, better compilers\nand better tooling. Perhaps I've just got some massive rose tinted glasses\non!.\n\n------\nhacker_9\nAll problems revolve around structure, and as customers want more features,\nand capital builds, the structures get more complex. So we build even more\ncomplex structures to offset the complexity, but now things that were once\nsimple get brought along and become more complex. Eventually the company hits\na breaking point and re-invents it's structures to better suit their needs,\nbut these grow in complexity once again given time. It is a never ending\nbattle, and every business is at a different point in their complexity cycle.\n\n------\ncontingencies\nChoose languages _and_ frameworks that developers are familiar with.\n\nMicroservices are fine if you can rely on shared CI/CD infrastructure and\nautomate execution properly, maintaining rapid build/test cycle times. They\nstart to suck if people aren't familiar and everyone's laptop has to hold\ntheir own parallel multi-topology service prom regression test (^releases)\nevery time you change a line of code... developer focus, flow and efficacy\nwill be reduced.\n\nI agree that redundant HA systems are usually not required. In the past it was\nexpensive to get. However, tooling is now so good that with reasonable\ndevelopers and reasonable infrastructure design, you can get it very, very\ncheaply if your services are packaged reasonably (CD-capable) with basically\nsane architecture and your infrastructure is halfway modern. This truly is\nexcellent, because gone are the 1990s of everyone-relies-on-grizzled-sysadmin-\nand-two-overpriced-boxes-with-failover.\n\nI don't think CI is a plaster, it is a great way to work, but like any tool or\nworkflow is not appropriate in all situations.\n\nWe do over-complicate. Methodologies are too meta: programmers are already\noperating at max concurrent levels of abstraction. Better to incrementally\nadjust workflow (CI/CD on the workflow for the CI/CD of the workflow!). That's\nnot to say that there's no value to some people thinking at this level some of\nthe time, but Yoda told me \"desk with agile literature much, sign of untidy\nmind be\". I think he was right.\n\n------\nAzkar\nI feel like all of this just comes back to judgement calls. You can't pick\ntechnologies in a vacuum, and you can't generalize technology choices.\n\nIt's not very fair to make these claims without knowing all of the details\naround the situation. Microservices CAN be a pain, but it might offset a\ngreater pain of trying to coordinate a monolithic deployment. It depends on\nthings like team size, budget, and technology available to you.\n\nThis is where I see the disconnect between employers and most developers.\n\"Programming\" isn't a job. Your employer doesn't pay you to write code. They\npay you to solve problems. The good employers don't care what tools you use to\nsolve the problem, just that you solved it. The bad employers will force you\nto use technologies and buzzwords that probably don't apply to your situation.\nYou should be able to defend all of your decisions and have good reasons for\nthem.\n\nOn the flip side, not everything you try will work - that doesn't mean that\nit's a bad option, just that it didn't work for your situation. You don't need\nto have a redundant low-priority memo system because you don't get enough\nvalue out of it to justify the overhead of maintaining it.\n\n------\npeterwwillis\nI think you confused trends for wisdom.\n\nIt used to be wise to wear bell bottom jeans and perm your hair. It also used\nto be wise to wear colored suspenders, or pocket protectors. And shoes with\nlights in them, and color changing shirts.\n\nGranted, those same weird misguided trends were probably followed by the same\npeople who accomplished everything we have today. I think it's the effort you\nput into the work that determines its output, not the details of its\ndevelopment.\n\n------\nlolive\nPoint 5 is really insightful. When you read it carefully, it implies that\nagile \"methodology\" will soon become the prevalent methodology. Because a\nsuccessful project is all about managing a massive amount of \"specific,\ndiscrete, communications issues\". And doing so on a daily basis is the best\noption.\n\nOff-topic note: point 5 is also the way to go with your\nwife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend, your kids, your friends, etc.\n\n~~~\njs8\nInteresting idea. I think dinner is the best place for an evening family SCRUM\nmeeting.\n\n~~~\nlolive\nSCRUM meetings with cheese and wine. THIS - IS - BRI-LLI-ANT !!!\n\n------\ncthulhuology\nHonestly, it is probably just you (and your peers).\n\nQuite frankly chances are the team you have sucks at operations, lacks the\nnecessary experience to design complex systems, and probably doesn't do the\nfundamental engineering to make a reliable software product.\n\n1 - false dichotomy, the best tool is one you have mastered, your team has\nindividuals with 20+ years of development experience on it right? (Probably\nnot)\n\n2 - micro services are supposed to have small areas of concern and small\nfunctional domains to minimize operational complexity. Your services are\nprograms that fit on a couple screens right? (Doesn't sound like it)\n\n3 - redundancy's goal is to remove single points of failure, you should be\nable to kill any process and the system keeps working. (The word critical\nsuggests you have spfs)\n\n4 - CI is a dev tool to avoid merge hell by always be merging. CI is often\nused by orgs with massive monoliths because of the cost of testing small\nchanges, and too many cook trying to share a pot. Ultimately if you don't have\nwell defined interfaces ci won't save you. (You had well defined published\ninterfaces with versions right?)\n\n5 - agile is a marketing term for consulting services to teach large orgs how\nto act like small effective teams of experts. (Hint you need a team of self-\ndirected experts with a common vision and freedom to execute it, you got that\nright?)\n\nMost problems in tech are related to pop culture. Because we discount\nexperience (because experienced developers are \"expensive\") we get to watch\npeople reinvent existing things poorly. Microservices, soa, agile, ci, these\nthings are older than many devs working today. The industry fads are largely\njust rebranding of old concepts to sell them to another clueless generation.\n\nComputers are complex systems, networks of computers are complex systems.\nComplex systems are complex. Some complexity is irreducible, and complex\nsystem behavior is more than just a mere aggregation of the parts. People tend\nto over complicate their solutions when they don't understand their actual\nproblem. They see things they are unfamiliar with as costly and overly\ncomplicated (as in your examples above).\n\nYour problem is a culture that doesn't value experience and deep\nunderstanding. You and your team will over complicate things because you don't\nknow better yet.\n\n------\nvirgilp\n1) Yes, except that you should try some languages sometimes. E.g. if you use\nSpark in production as a critical part of your system... take the time to\nlearn scala.\n\n2) Is a pet peeve of mine. Theoretically microservices are good, but we don't\nhave a way to orchestrate them. What's lacking (in programming languages\nterms) is a \"runtime\" and \"debugger\" and of course a widely-tested & reliable\nset of \"libraries\" for most common tasks. I think it's possible to do\nsomething like that, as long as you start imposing some restrictions on what a\n\"microservice\" is and how it talks to the outside world. Also, in this frame\nof thinking, it becomes apparent that \"deployment\" is actually \"programming\nthe system, at a high level\". It's not \"just configuration\", configuration is\ncode - if you moved the complexity from your \"code\" to your configuration, you\njust moved the complexity into a language that has very poor tools to work\nwith.\n\n3) My rule of thumb for most systems is \"avoid redundancy in the control\nplane; you can and should have redundancy in the data/data processing plane;\ndon't plan for 100% uptime in the control plane, plan for very short\ndowntimes/ for fast recovery when something goes wrong\"\n\n4) My experience is that continuous integration is good for all but the very\nsmall teams. For multiple reasons, not just \"microservices\"\n\n5) \"Agile\" is horrendously misused, the cargo cult is in full force. It should\nbe about prioritising & doing the important things, reducing overhead to the\nminimum necessary. It has become an overhead in itself, with \"sprints\" reduced\nto ridiculously low periods, meeting over meeting at each sprint, etc.\n\n------\n6DM\nI think micro-services was your big issue. But yes, getting into the politics\nof pure scrum, kanban, whatever is a big drag.\n\nDevOps has it's merits and will work well if you're team can stop trying to\ndevelop newer better scripts and learn when to say it's good enough. I saw one\nteam revise their scripts over and over for a whole year when they could have\nbeen using that guy for new features/bug fixes.\n\n------\nhalis\n1) Choosing JavaScript for a Math heavy project would likely be a mistake.\nThere are plenty of other examples of picking the wrong language for the wrong\njob. That's where this statement falls apart.\n\n2) Depending on how you bring them all together, yes this can be true. If you\nhave something like AWS API Gateway, then microservices may be manageable. If\nyou're rolling your own custom solution with something like nginx or haproxy,\nyou're probably wasting a ton of cycles.\n\n3) Again, I tend to agree with this. Premature optimization seems to be the\nnorm these days. Especially when you get devops people involved. Do we need\nevery single layer in our stack to be \"highly available\" if we have zero\nusers? The answer is NO.\n\n4) Well, this sounds clever, but I'm not sure it really means anything.\nSetting up something like Jenkins to watch your GitHub repos and build the\nbranch and run the tests can alert you to issues early and really isn't that\ndifficult to setup.\n\n5) Nothing wrong with TDD as long as you don't go overboard. Nothing wrong\nwith standups, planning or retros. Nothing wrong with short sprints.\n\n------\nYZF\nThe rule is there are no rules. The answer is \"it depends\".\n\nIf the only language your developers are familiar with is Ruby and you're\ndeveloping a real-time, high-performance, system, then you shouldn't write it\nin Ruby.\n\nIf you need the kind of availability/scalability/encapsulation that\nmicroservices provide in your application/use-case then you should use them.\nDon't break you application into micro-services just because everyone says\nit's a good idea. An Angry Birds app on an iPhone doesn't need to be split up\ninto micro-services running on said iPhone.\n\nIf you don't have redundancy and you lose your server then you're hard down.\nIf you're OK with that fine. If you want to continue operation with one server\ndown then you need redundancy. Redundancy doesn't necessarily add as much\ncomplexity as you seem to imply.\n\nContinuous Integration is usually a good idea regardless of all other\nvariables. If you have more than a single developer working on a system it's a\ngood idea to keep building/testing this system with every change so you can\ncatch issues earlier. You start very light-weight though with a small team.\nEven a single dev can do CI, it's not that hard.\n\nAgile is just a buzzword but it doesn't hurt to familiarize yourself with the\nAgile Manifesto while making sure you're aware of the context in which it\narose. It's really mostly about understanding that requirements often change\nand that we're dealing with humans. Again different projects, team sizes,\nsituations will require somewhat different approaches. Sometimes the\nrequirements are well understood and will change very little. Sometimes you\nknow nothing about what the software will do when you're done.\n\n------\nMaulingMonkey\nA certain amount of complexity or complication is required to solve problems.\nSometimes, you will undershoot the mark, and not fully solve the problem.\nOther times, you will overshoot the mark, and create problems in the form of\novercomplicated answers.\n\n> 1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for\n> the job\n\nIt's a tradeoff - rampup time vs efficacy once ramped up. It's probably okay\nto let your devs rock it old school with vanilla Javascript for your website\nfrontend - it's probably _not_ okay for them to try and write your website\nfrontend in COBOL, even if CobolScript is apparently a thing, just because\nthey don't know Javascript.\n\n> 4) Continuous integration seems to be a plaster on the problem of complex\n> devops introduced by microservices.\n\nCI is great plaster for all kinds of problems, not all of which you'll be able\nto solve in a reasonable fashion. Of course, you may have problems which would\nbe better to solve that you're using CI as a crutch to avoid solving - or to\nsimply deal with the fact that you haven't gotten around to solving those\nproblems _yet_.\n\nIn game development, I use CI to help 'solve' the problem of my coworkers not\nthoroughly testing all combinations of build configurations and platforms for\neach change. 5 configs and 6 platforms? That's already 30 combinations to\ntest, so it's no wonder...\n\n> 5) Agile \"methodology\" when used as anything but a tool to solve specific,\n> discrete, communications issues is really problematic\n\nOn the other hand, other companies rock \"flat\" management well past the point\nit's effective, and may lack any kind of methodology to keep progress on track\n- which is also problematic.\n\n------\nkingsawlamoo34\nWhy not all peoples are searching actual software?Its so difficult how many\nyears in making system anyone cannot knowing of all of app or platform or app\nor plug in or device or codechar all things are supporting each other if one\napp is not update directdownload from google play store,windos for microsoft\nstore how to give the part way of moving simple all App or Apk have in their\nbasic code ID company .how about they making of you will be use one app or apk\nand then you sign out App and delete software but your using activity remain\nin more sure you can next time you reuse same app you will be seen or not your\nhistory this is one things but alittle difference in fre game app how about\nyou play inside but you will be exit and then you replay this you can see or\nnot your recent play section if you make log in account connect sure you can\nmaking or not resume game section game.all of game have in prevent and resume\nsection already contain but you are not own create you cannot open this\nbackground codechar or security for example...\n\n------\nsteven777400\nKeep in mind, as others have said, the \"accepted wisdom\" is coming out of\nhigh-income, high-velocity, technology companies. However, a lot of\ndevelopment is done at companies whose primary business is not software (or\nnot technology). Additionally, many established businesses care less about\nvelocity than hungry startups.\n\nIn that case, I think a different set of wisdom applies: 1\\. Choose languages\nthat are easy to hire for, easy to train for, have lots of 3rd party support,\nand easy for junior developers to use (and that your developers already know).\nThis generally means Java, C#, or Python (on the backend)\n\n5\\. First it's important to define \"agile\" in your context. Agile, in terms of\nthe agile manifesto, is almost always beneficial to the project, although it\nwon't speed it up. Agile, in terms of cargo culting specific artifacts, is\noften just a waste of time and source of confusion. If your organizational\ndefinition of agile is \"no project manager needed\", then you're in trouble.\nGood project managers are essential.\n\n------\nbuzzybee\nThere's a great discussion to be had in scaling your practices to the human\nfactors.\n\nFor a solo developer, just breaking things out into modules and massaging the\nformatting is likely to be a net negative - something you might do once you've\naccumulated months of cruft and are ready to start handing it off to others or\nrepurposing it for a new project, but also a chore that will get in the way of\nthinking about the job in front of you _right now_ , a temptation to think\ntop-down planning will come to your rescue. Your advantage is in being able to\nchange direction immediately, and there are a lot of ways to give that up by\naccidentally following a practice for a larger team.\n\nAs a team gets bigger, it's more important to be cautious because of momentum;\nany direction you pick for development will be hard to stop once it gets\ngoing.\n\nAt the same time, there are processes and automations that help at every\nscale, and at the small scale they're just more likely to be little scripts\nand workflow conventions, not ironclad enforcements.\n\n------\nStreamBright\nWell, I think there are 6 points to answer here:\n\n>> 0, Are we over complicating software development?\n\nYes, in many cases we are over complicating software development. I think a\nlarge part of OOP too complex to produce reliable services easily, still\npossible though. Simplicity is not as popular among developers as it should\nbe. I often run into complex code that can be replaced by 10x smaller code\nbase that is much clearer than the original.\n\n1, Sure\n\n2, I am not sure why you think that, you need services that can few things\nwell and individually scalable units. This used to be SOA (service oriented\narchitecture), and micro-services lately. There are cloud vendors out there\nwho make it super easy for you to run such services for reasonable price on\ntheir platforms without a devops team.\n\n3, See point 0. Complex systems fail more than simple ones. Failure isolation\nand graceful degradation should be properties at design time. The best is to\nhave stateless (no master slave service or registry that is required for\ncorrect operations) clusters where you can scale the capacity with the number\nof nodes.\n\n4, Continuous integration is way older than the term microservices. It\ncontains patterns that a company figured out by shipping code that had to be\nreliable and it is optimised for frequent changes aka when you developing a\nnew service or product. It is just a way of giving instant feedback to\ndevelopers.\n\n5, There are so many talks and videos about agile used bluntly is harmful on\nthe web that I think this is a well understood question. Use a method that\nworks for the team, it provides the insight to the business what they are\ndoing and you are good. I use Kanban for almost 10 years with distributed\nteams (software and systems engineering) and it works perfectly for us.\n\n+1 for simpler code and simpler software\n\n~~~\ndceddia\nRe: #2, what are some such services?\n\nAWS seems to be the go-to standard but it's amazingly complicated.\n\n------\nSammi\nYou are basically say much of the same as Dan North is saying in his newest\ntake on Agile:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFLBG_bilrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFLBG_bilrg)\n\nAgile is dead, long live Agile. The difference now, is that we understand\ntrade-offs. There's no silver bullet and there are no absolutes.\n\n~~~\nYhippa\nDid people honestly think that Agile was going to be a silver bullet? If so\nthe consultants won.\n\n------\nrymohr\nCan't agree enough!\n\nI actually wrote an article [1] last week exploring single-tenant SAAS\narchitectures because I was annoyed with how complicated our multi-tenant\nplans were. Was bummed the HN post [2] didn't get any traction because I was\nreally hoping for some critical feedback.\n\nFor me, the holy grail is a cost-effective system that doesn't back you into\nscaling issues down the road and is simple enough to be run by a single\ndeveloper (on the side) rather than a dedicated team of sysadmins. Pipe dream?\nMaybe. But it's worth a shot.\n\n[1]: [https://hackernoon.com/exploring-single-tenant-\narchitectures...](https://hackernoon.com/exploring-single-tenant-\narchitectures-57c64e99eece)\n\n[2]:\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13385474](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13385474)\n\n------\ngrok2\nFrom what you are describing, it seems like there is more a problem associated\nwith your team than with anything else. Maybe you don't have the right set of\nexpertise in the team and people tend to work better with what they are\ncomfortable with. Microservices/redundancy support/CI at a fundamental level\nincrease the complexity of how you go about things, but they do have benefits.\nThey require a way of thinking and developing that should be a cultural fit\nfor the team for it not to feel like you are constantly fighting the system.\nOne way to get there is to incrementally add these after the primary project\nis done. When tackling one thing at a time, things end up being simpler and\nand the need for these things gets into the working habits of everyone better\nand they are no longer fighting the system.\n\n------\nburo9\ndevops is good stuff. Just apply to the developers the same standards (and\ntypically answers) as you would to your deployment world. You should be able\nto answer questions like: \"How does a new developer get going within 5\nminutes?\" in the same way that you answer \"How do we build and deploy a new\napp?\" and both the local developer and remote system should be debugged and\nmonitored in the same way.\n\ndevops isn't bad, and will speed up onboarding new staff, growing, and helps\nyour devs and ops people immensely.\n\nOn the rest I'd largely agree with you... other answers may only apply at a\ncertain scale, or complexity, or some other set of parameters that may not\napply to you now.\n\nSolve the problem you have now, and the problem you'll definitely have in the\nnext 6 months.\n\nThe rest is for the future.\n\n------\nvcool07\nYou need to work in an environment devoid of any practices like agile / CI etc\nand then you would know the difference. It might slow down your progress, but\nmakes up for it with consistency, discipline eventually leading to development\nof better(reliable) software !\n\n------\nzitterbewegung\nIf you keep on following every hype-train yea you will get over complicated\nsoftware development.\n\n------\nseangrogg\nFrom my perspective, the problem is that others _believe_ everyone else is\ncaught up in the same trends they are. If someone starts to prosthelytize\nsomething - whether that's build management, microservices, or even pairing\nReact with Redux by default - individuals start to think it's the \"new thing\"\nand adopt rather than critically think about it.\n\nPersonally, I tend to shy away from tools unless they seem to do something of\nsignificant value for me that outweighs their cost on my development process.\nThe \"best tool for the job\" is the one that allows me to finish a project in a\ntimely manner, not one whose memory footprint is 10% lower.\n\n------\nEricson2314\nIt's all about long-term vs short-term. _Everyone_ architects software for the\nshort term, I'd say the industry at large has collectively lost/never had the\nvision and wisdom to do anything else.\n\nNow maybe if you are a tiny-ass start-up, sure, but for a big established\ncompany, this is just bad economics.\n\nWhy do we talk about \"disrupting\" the \"behemoths\"? Why is everything done in\ntiny-ass largely-parallel teams? Very few companies have had serious thoughts\nabout programming at scale.\n\nI don't dispute that doing things the right way is often a huge up-front\ninitial investment, but you do eventually get over the hump.\n\n~~~\nflukus\n> Everyone architects software for the short term, I'd say the industry at\n> large has collectively lost/never had the vision and wisdom to do anything\n> else.\n\nI think everyone architects for the long term, they just do so poorly. The\nproblem is that architecture has become synonymous with \"more layers\".\n\n~~~\nEricson2314\nOK, so in the beginning there were no layers. People occasionally wrote a\nlayer but it was common to just say \"fuck it\", and through it away. As late as\nthe 90s, you read about C programmers writing hash tables all the time, wtf.\n\nThen, somewhere along the way I don't know exactly when, we hit an inflection\npoint where there were some layers that didn't work quite right, but were hard\nto do without, so we'd try to shim it.\n\nReally good long-term engineering means also ripping up the under-performing\nlayers, attacking the unneeded complexity. This does not mean giving up on\nabstractions altogether.\n\n------\noblio\nContinuous Integration on any project which will be developed for more than 1\nyear by more than 1 person should provide a positive return of investment.\n\nThe rest are debatable, but I feel that the point above is close to an axiom\nthese days.\n\n------\nAnimats\nI've used microservices, but on QNX, where you have MsgSend and MsgReceive,\nwhich make message passing not much harder than a subroutine call, and not\nmuch slower. UNIX/Linux was never designed for interprocess communication. You\nhave to build several more layers before you can talk, and the result is\nclunky.\n\nIf you're crossing a language boundary, it's often better to use interprocess\ncommunication than to try to get two languages to play together in the same\naddress space. That tends to create technical debt, because now two disparate\nsystems have to be kept in sync.\n\n------\nzzzcpan\nI think these problems are not about software development, but are\ninfrastructural and architectural. Lack of good people to handle those things\nis certainly a problem. But you do need quite a bit of infrastructure for\nmicroservices, for resilience, for continuous integration and all of that\npaired with some good architectural decisions. Resilience is probably the\nhardest thing among them, as it requires some expertise in distributed\nsystems, operations, infrastructure, so you wouldn't do something, that has\nalmost no impact, but requires a lot of engineering effort.\n\n------\nprotomyth\nAt this point, I think a lot of software development problems are complicated\nbecause we are building on a platform that really isn't designed for the apps\nwe want. The web makes everything a lot more frustrating and hard. It\ncomplicates testing and requires a lot more process than is justified by the\napps. At some point the era of the web will come to and end then maybe we will\nget a net gui (probably based on messaging) that will hopefully take the\nlessons of the web to heart.\n\n------\nmakmanalp\nI think this is where a lot of varied work experience (small / large / old /\nnew companies) is key, because it gives you perspective. You can then ask\nyourself, \"why does this process suck so much, and why didn't it when I worked\nat X? In my experience, people who come from a monoculture background usually\nseem to not question dubious software, architecture and methodology choices\nthat end up killing productivity and sanity.\n\n~~~\nAnimalMuppet\nYeah. If you're going to use languages, methodologies, and architectures\nwithout understanding, and without evaluating them for how well they fit your\nsituation, many things will be painful. Don't follow the fads, whether\nmethodologies (Agile), architecture (microservices), languages, or frameworks.\n_Use what 's appropriate for what you need to do._\n\n------\nraverbashing\n1) The best tool is useless if people can't avail of its power\n\n2) True. Microservices are usually premature optimization\n\n3) True\n\n4) CI is a good idea regardless of using microservices or not\n\n5) You might elaborate this item\n\n------\nchetanahuja\nNo it's not just you. In general, \"follow latest trends blindly\" has never\nbeen a winning strategy in software development at any point in computing\nhistory. Now, that is not to say that you never change your tools or\nmethodologies once you've mastered your existing tools. But the new\ntools/techs need to pass a very high bar before you subject your team to\nthese.\n\n------\nwickedlogic\nYes, we are over complicating software development.\n\n------\nmybrid\nAnother way of saying this is it is not science.\n\nUsability needs to be applied to more than just the end user experience: but\nthe entire SDLC experience.\n\n------\nrb808\nThe biggest issue I have is the current fashion for functional languages\nresulting in mixed style code bases. I've been working on established\napplications written in Java/C#/Python that have OO, imperative and now\nfunctional code all mixed together.\n\nIf I had it my way we'd choose one or the other but no one can agree which is\nthe best way to write code.\n\n~~~\nnathanaldensr\nThe style takes a backseat to readability and maintainability. Try creating\ncomplex object queries in .NET without LINQ; good luck at reading and\nmaintaining that code. I'll take my lambda expressions any day over that,\nthank you. I remember \"the good old days\" of C# 1.0 and you'd be crazy to want\nto go back there.\n\n------\nbluestreak\nIt isn't new when I say that it is hard to come up with simple solution.\n\nIn most cases people tend to work under pressure, which ends up with problem\nnicely fitted to tool at hand. You can hardly blame anybody for that. What we\nare not doing enough is going over \"solution\" again and again. Solving a\nproblem second time around is always easier.\n\n------\nbjourne\nYes. What you have discovered is the same epiphany most developers have as\nthey get more experienced and better at their jobs.\n\n------\nswift\nI'd like to push back on continuous integration being over-complicated. It's\neasy to do using off-the-shelf software and it makes life a _lot_ less\nstressful when you have confidence that your changes are good before landing\nthem in production. It's such a win that I'd set it up even with a 10 person\nteam.\n\n~~~\nnathanaldensr\nI use TeamCity to automate running my unit tests and generating/publishing\nNuGet packages to my private NuGet server... and I work alone. It has value\neven there. :)\n\n------\nkoolba\n> 1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for\n> the job\n\nThe language that you're familiar with generally is the best tool for the job.\nMost software work can be equally done well (or at least greater than\nacceptably well) in a number of languages. Not having to learn a new one (or a\nnew framework) is a plus.\n\n------\nGurrewe\nAll development teams or products are not the same. Sometimes microservices\ncan improve the quality, and sometimes the opposite.\n\nIt is important to know why you do some things, instead of applying Hype-\nDriven-Development.\n\nDo what is best for _you and your team_ , instead of what is best for _someone\nelse_ (with a different product, problem, and team).\n\n------\nlukaszkups\nAre You a front-end developer? :D\n\nYes, I think very often we over complicate even simple things. But sometimes\nit pays in the long run.\n\n------\npmontra\nMost of the time we're creating complexity when we can avoid it and we're\noften proud of it.\n\nThe problem is that's very difficult to find the right compromise between\ntime, cost, an architecture that can support the growth of the service so\neither we build something too thin or something too complicated.\n\n------\ngreyman\nContinuous integration is also necessary for bigger projects with many inter-\ndependent parts. I worked in such a project, we had about 100 developers on it\nand I just can't imagine how it could be efficiently developed without CI. But\nfor small projects it maybe isn't that critical.\n\n------\nagentultra\nJust linking my comment to the other thread in response to this post:\n\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13429618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13429618)\n\ntldr; simplicity is a great virtue and difficult to achieve in practice.\n\n------\nbassman9000\nCould also be interpreted as: \"devops is not yet mature/lacking tooling\".\n\nDon't get me wrong, complexity has grown. Agile is a joke. But, e.g., build\nsystems have been maturing for 30+ years. Their cousins, deploy systems, have\na long way to go.\n\n------\ncorecoder\nAlways worth mentioning: [http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Programming-\nSucks!-Or-At-Lea...](http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Programming-Sucks!-Or-At-\nLeast,-It-Ought-To-)\n\n------\neikenberry\n> 1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for\n> the job\n\n+1\n\nProgrammers have affinities for languages. They will work better with some\nlanguages than others and they know which languages fit them well. Those are\nthe best ones to use.\n\n------\nmbrodersen\nNo you are absolutely right. 95% of problems in software development are\ncreated by the software developers themselves. At least that is my experience\nhaving worked in software for 20+ years in companies all over the world.\n\n------\njoelthelion\nI think one cause of the problems is that what is good at Google scale is not\nnecessarily relevant for a team of ten people.\n\nI think the lesson here is be critical of \"best practices\" and think about\nwhat will work in YOUR context.\n\n------\ntboyd47\nYou are correct. We cargo-cult Google and Facebook so much that we forget to\napply lessons learned decades ago. People and interactions over processes and\ntools. There is no silver bullet. You Ain't Gonna Need It.\n\n------\nusgroup\n... I'd agree. Put briefly, if you're trying to save the day, people first.\n\nBut when you stop needing to save the day and want to build something will\nparticular properties , you may find that process has to come first.\n\n------\nuser5994461\nSo... that big list is the lessons learnt at the startup IR the big company?\nIts really not clear to me.\n\nSame problem with all the comments that begin with \"at my last company\". Which\nkind was it?\n\n------\njasonlotito\n> lack of communication\n\nYou can't talk about lack of communication and blame \"devops\" at the same\ntime. If there was a lack of communication, you aren't \"doing devops.\"\n\n------\ncamus2\n1/ What language did they choose? why? what made them think language X or\nframework Z would give them a competitive advantage at first place and what\nwas the result of that choice?\n\n------\ndood\nThe issue is that solving real problems is hard, but making things complicated\nis easy, fun, and looks a lot like solving real problems if you aren't paying\ncareful attention.\n\n------\nsapeien\n1) Doesn't always work if you want to target embedded systems or need\nperformance, and all you know are scripting languages with huge overhead like\nRuby, JS, Python, etc. Some languages really are better than others.\n\n2) Could say avoid distributed computing if your problem is not distributed.\nThis is more about being a blind follower of the latest hype.\n\n3 & 4) Complicated DevOps are a bad idea in general. Stuff that seems to\nsimplify things on the surface like Docker are actually hiding tons of\ncomplexity underneath.\n\n5) To most people, Agile = JIRA = Sprints = Scrum. It's corporate mentality\ncodified, so it's no surprise that a lot of startups avoid it.\n\n------\nGnarfGnarf\nSoftware development goes off the rails because there are no physical\nmaterials involved, so there is no built-in limitation to prevent costs from\ngoing out of control.\n\n------\nd--b\ntruth is: you're young and you're becoming an experienced developer... You\nsomehow have to go through these stages. In the end, you'll be all right.\n\n------\npknerd\nSome people have got so used to of complicated architecture and workflow that\nthey are finding your questions odd. Just check comments.\n\n------\nTurboHaskal\nHey, we gotta eat. If people won't pay for software licenses then we'll make\nthem pay for training and consulting services.\n\n------\ndevdad\nHi, I'm happy to be posting anon right now. Can someone ELI5 the difference\nbetween libraries and packages and a microservice?\n\n------\ngraphememes\nI have seen Microservices be the death of a lot of startups / corporations.\nProceed with caution.\n\n------\nz3t4\ni think the best way is to start backwards in the future. what are the\nrequirements. then plan towards today. what do you need and when ... thats how\ni did plan my training program as an athlete. the most important question is\nwhat do i need (to do) right now\n\n------\nr4ltman\nas a guy whose idea was successfully pitched to a successful tech company of\nwhich i am still connected, i'm going to say yes. the classification aspects\nof specialty training keeps the process from being as fluid as it needs to be\nin order to be truly game changing rather than merely, whatever expectation is\nexpected.\n\ni know this sounds different to everyone, here's the point,\n\nThe User Needs to Use It. The focus is always on everything else. Only when\ntheres' been 'some' success does the user and by user, I mean, the entire\nfield the program is for, is an influence, this lack of empathy keeps any\nleadership from ever happening when everything is based on 'past successes of\nother companies' rather than trying to lead effectively.\n\n------\njbverschoor\nYES!\n\n------\nmadhadron\nFiguring out how to do things simply is remarkably hard. After twenty years of\nthis, I feel like I'm beginning to be able to design simple systems some of\nthe time.\n\nThe problem with much \"currently accepted wisdom\" is that it doesn't explain\nexactly what is being balanced. \"Works for my organization\" is the equivalent\nof \"works on my machine.\" For example,\n\n1) \"Best tool for the job\" when applied to languages nearly never is a\nquestion of the intrinsic merits of a language design. There have been quite a\nfew discussions recently on Hacker News on the virtues of a boring stack, that\nis, one that everyone else has already beaten on so much that you can expect\nto hit fewer issues.\n\n2) Microservices are a tradeoff. If you have an engineering team of five\nhundred shipping a single software as a service product, one of your biggest\nissues is coordinating releases among all those people without having your\nservices ping-ponging up and down all the time. Microservices are an answer to\nthat. At that scale you've already had to automate your operational troubles,\nso it doesn't impose that much additional operational cost. If you have an\nengineering team of ten, then none of this applies to you.\n\n3) High availability, like all concurrency, is hard. Try to write your own\ncode so that it scales horizontally by simple replication and depends on stock\ncomponents such as Kafka, Zookeeper, etcd, or Cassandra to handle\norchestration. In many cases your reliability budget may be such that you can\nrun a single system, automate some operations around it, and be just fine.\nIt's only when your reliability budget doesn't allow that, or your workload\nforces you to orchestrate parallel work, that you have to go this route.\n\n4) Yes. Nearly all discussion of agile software development that I've seen\nfocuses on rituals without the applied behavior analysis underlying them. For\nexample, a standup meeting has a small set of goals: establish a human\nconnection between everyone on the team on a regular basis; air things that\nare blocking individuals in a forum where they are likely to find someone who\ncan unblock them quickly; have everyone stand up and take responsibility for\nwhat they are doing in front of their team; and serve as a high bandwidth\nchannel of communication of important information (the build is going to break\nthis afternoon for an hour, etc.). If those outcomes are being achieved in\nother ways by your group, then there's no reason to have a standup. If you're\ndoing a standup and it's not accomplishing one or more, you need to revise how\nyou do it. Human behavior and interaction is something to be designed and\nshaped in an organization. What works in a team of three with excellent\ncommunication may not work in a team of ten or fifty or five hundred.\n\n------\nlngnmn\n_looking at some react-todo-demo and its dependencies_ \\- complicating? not at\nall!\n\nJ2EE will soon look like a reasonable thing.\n\n------\nsiphr\nYES WE ARE-\n\n------\nshitgoose\nit is not just you, but we are hopelessly outnumbered.\n\n------\nbtilly\nThere is a lot of BS in software development. Always has been, probably always\nwill. Everything is a tradeoff. Understand the tradeoffs that you are taking,\nlisten for the principles, and you can ignore most of the noise.\n\nOn to your questions.\n\n _1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for\nthe job_\n\nHow familiar developers are with the language is part of what determines what\nis best for the job at hand in a real organization.\n\nIt isn't the only factor. For example if you're doing something new (to you),\ndoing it in the language that you find wherever you are learning it from makes\nsense because you'll be more likely to get help through complex issues.\n\nThat said, do not underestimate the support advantage of using a consistent\ntoolset that everyone understands.\n\n _2) Avoid microservices where possible, the operational cost considering\ndevops is just immense_\n\nSee\n[https://martinfowler.com/bliki/MonolithFirst.html](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/MonolithFirst.html)\nfor emphatic support.\n\nIf you go the microservices route, think ahead about predictable challenges\nwith debugging failures 3 calls deep, and plan in advance for monitoring etc\ntooling to solve it.\n\n _3) Advanced reliability / redundancy even in critical systems ironically\nseems to causes more downtime than it prevents due to the introduction of\ncomplexity to dev & devops._\n\nAs the old saying goes, DBAs are the primary cause of databases going down.\nReliability is not something that you just plaster on top blindly. An systems\nare good at finding failure modes that you never thought of.\n\n _4) Continuous integration seems to be a plaster on the problem of complex\ndevops introduced by microservices._\n\nNo. Continuous integration is actually a fix for developers checking in\nclearly broken code and then nobody discovering it later. That said, it does\nlittle good without a number of other good practices that are easy to ignore.\n\n _5) Agile \"methodology\" when used as anything but a tool to solve specific,\ndiscrete, communications issues is really problematic_\n\nThis one generated the most discussion. I would say sort of, but you went too\nfar.\n\nAny set of poorly understood principles, dogmatically applied, is going to\nwork out badly. Agile is actually a set of good principles that addressed a\nmajor problem in the common wisdom back in the day. But the pendulum has swung\nand it is often applied poorly.\n\nThat said, there are other problems in organizations which are prone to,\n\"poorly understood principles, dogmatically applied\"...\n\n------\ncrispytx\nYes\n\n------\nbrilliantcode\n1997: I created my first website on Netscape Navigator. I was 10.\n\n2007: I created a textbook trading RoR web app. I was 20.\n\n2017: I'm struggling to create my first front-end website on Chrome and I\nhaven't decided on the back-end. I'm 30.\n\nThe barrier to entry is indeed very high and no signs of slowing. I blame the\nexplosion of low-interest capital from VC's fueling this fracturing.\n\n~~~\nbrwr\nBuilding a website doesn't have to be complicated. You build a Rails site 10\nyears ago. You probably used jQuery, if you used JavaScript at all. Why can't\nyou do the same today?\n\nThe real problem here is that not enough developers understand that \"just\nbecause you can, doesn't mean you should.\" Once more of us get a handle on\nthat, life will be better.\n\n~~~\nbrilliantcode\n> You build a Rails site 10 years ago. You probably used jQuery, if you used\n> JavaScript at all. Why can't you do the same today?\n\nYou can and I do. However, I am thinking of using polymer or vue.js as I think\nthey are a much lighter candidate than react.js & angular.\n\nThe power of marketing is underrated in the developer circles.\n\n~~~\nbrwr\nIf you still use Rails and jQuery, why both with Polymer or Vue? What is the\nbenefit they give you?\n\nPromise I'm not giving you a hard time. I'm honestly curious if there's\nsomething I'm overlooking.\n\n~~~\nbrilliantcode\nI asked the same question last year and to be honest, building a SPA is tough\nwith just jQuery. It's more of my needs changing, I don't think SPA can be\nignored in 2017, the progressive web app and AMP will put a huge dent in the\nnative apps space.\n\nI just like to think that I'm developing a mobile app with front-end\njavascript framework....it's just the tooling and prerequisite knowledge is\nquite chaotic. Finding the right articles (up to date) is half the battle, as\nit's scattered in endless git repo pages.\n\n~~~\ncodingdave\nI'm not sure why an SPA with jQuery is tough. $.ajax. Send data. Do stuff in a\nback-end. Return data. Update divs. If it is tough, you might be trying too\nhard. I'm not trying to be glib... it just sounds like you might be buying\ninto the over-complexity that the original question was talking about.\n\n~~~\nflukus\nThe problem with jquery is that the state is stored in html elements. It makes\nit hard to debug, maintain and learn bigger applications. Things like\naccessing a hidden variable become DOM traversals rather than property\naccessors.\n\n~~~\ncodingdave\njQuery is just a framework, if even that. If you choose to use it to store\nstate in html elements, that is your choice. And yes, a common one. But the\nframework does not force it. If you make an AJAX call in jQuery, you get JSON\nback. (Or, I use it to get JSON back... you can send whatever you want back.)\nYou can do whatever you want with that JSON.\n\nFrequently, I do store metadata in a DOM element because the next event I will\nreact to is a click on that DOM element, so I already have a handle on it from\nthe ui element jQuery gives me... I do not have to traverse the DOM. But if\nthe future use of the data is NOT going to be a response to a click on a\nspecific DOM element, then no, I will do something else with the data.\n\nAgain, just because everyone else does it doesn't mean you have to, and\ndoesn't mean it is inherent in the tools. I'm not saying jQuery is the best\ntool out there... I'm saying that complexity in an SPA doesn't come from\njQuery itself, but from design choices made with it.\n\n~~~\nflukus\nTrue, it would be better to say that it's not great to build an SPA with just\njquery. It compliments a number of other frameworks that are good for SPA's.\n\n------\njustinlaster\n1\\. I think this is rather obvious, work with what you have. Maybe think about\nhiring specifically for areas your team is in lacking in, as long as the team\nas a whole will see decent benefit from it.\n\n2\\. I hate to say you're doing microservices \"wrong\" but I'd really question\nproject structure and practices being the culprit behind the cost of doing\ndevops with microservices.\n\n3\\. This seems like an engineering fault, rather than some implicit principle\nbehind those concepts causing more downtime.\n\n4\\. How is CI a plaster on the problem of microservices? CI is useful with or\nwithout microservices.\n\n5\\. Agile was always meant to be a _guideline_ , not an end all and be all.\nIt's meant to get your team to figure out how it wants to work, and write code\nbefore process. See: [http://agilemanifesto.org/](http://agilemanifesto.org/)\n\nThe problems you are describing seem like big problems with your team,\nengineering and management. No amount of process and technology is ever going\nto fix a dysfunctional (sorry if that's too blunt) team. What I get from this,\ninstead of having processes in place that make it easy to move code out,\nyou're removing tooling to slow things down intentionally with the superficial\nresult of \"stabilizing\" the entire development effort. The solution appears to\nbe to get your team to write less code, and force management to bow down to\nthe new reality of these \"stabilizing\" changes. Both of which can and\nsometimes should be done regardless of processes and tooling in place.\n\nThe best code is the code you don't write. But don't blame the tooling on\nmaking it easy for a team to be lazy and remove the all important\ncharacteristic of a team self-critiquing (i.e, \"Do we really need this\nfeature\", \"That'd be nice to have but right now we're managing to get things\ndone.\", \"Did I actually test my code, was it reviewed, or am I just counting\non the fact that I can shove something else out later while our redundancy\nsystems pick up the slack?\")\n\n~~~\nmhluongo\nQuite a few of these issues are common in other orgs. \"You're doing it wrong\"\nisn't great advice :/\n\n~~~\njustinlaster\nI would say in a lot of cases understanding that there are some basic failures\nis probably a great starting point to cleaning up the development effort.\nThere's not much else I can say other than that, considering how vague OP's\npost is.\n\n\"Good\" engineers will get things done and use common tooling to their\nadvantage. This requires actually understanding the principle behind the\ntools, not just shoving things in and hoping it all magically works.\n\nIf you have a lot of \"good\" practices that are supposed to make it easy to\nmove code around and you find that things just keep breaking, one could\nreasonably assume that it's simply highlighting an underlying issue. I'd start\nfiguring out which engineers (and management) is causing more work for our\norganization than they're putting out.\n\nWhat I think we're seeing from OP is lot of \"in name only\" practices.\n\n~~~\nmhluongo\nSome good practices aren't a good fit for a particular organization. Moving\nthe discussion to whether your engineers are \"good\", rather than whether they\nunderstand the organization's needs, is reductive.\n\nIf you want to develop better practices in an industry, saying the\npractitioner should be \"good\" isn't very helpful. Of course they should be\ngood! But unfortunately, despite the trope, we can't all hire the best, and\npart of the reason we have best practices is to work well without only hiring\nthe top 1% of engineers.\n\nAn example from my experience (mentioned in another comment)- microservices\nare a good practice in many larger orgs, because a big piece of what they\nsolve is political- but the overhead of running a distributed system at a\nsmall org often isn't worth it.\n\n~~~\njustinlaster\nI put \"good\" in quotes for a reason. I never said \"hire the best\"; that isn't\na requirement for anything that was stated.\n\nThere shouldn't really be a measurable overhead of running a distributed\nsystem, at least in the context of microservices. I strongly disagree with the\nsentiment that a distributed system isn't \"worth it\" at smaller organizations.\nI'm part of one, and it helps keep things flexible while increasing\nreliability of the \"overall\" system(s).\n\nBut that's neither here nor there. One shoe size won't fit everyone, but OP\nran down a gambit of things and seemed to have issue with each one. It is\nexceedingly unlikely they are doing anything eccentric enough to the point of\nproclaiming CI is just a bandaid on the broken concept of microservices. I\nwill contend that the source of OP's insights are... misappointed, and by\nbreaking down efficiencies and flexibility they're merely masking certain\nunderlying problems.\n\nWhat's more probable? An organization hired some wrong people, or a generic\nlist of strongly supported practices over the course of two to three decades\nare to blame for an organization's failings? I guess that's my take on it.\n\n------\nEdHominem\nNo, but your rules don't resonate with me even though I feel the same overall.\n\n1) Not the best language, but not the worst either. There's no excuse except\nmicrocontrollers for C these days (even though I still like it) and the fairly\ndecent JVM can't excuse Java. I think people can come up to speed in a new\nlanguage pretty easily. It's paradigms that are hard to learn, not syntax.\n\n2) Sounds like you don't have devops. That's a solve-it-once sort of problem.\nAnd you have to solve it soon enough for some pieces so it shouldn't be put\noff. You need to be good at it.\n\n3) It certainly can. It is increasing the size of your system considerably -\nnot just the original system, but also the debugging rules for that system\nplus (as noted) the debugging rules for the debugging rules ad-infinitum. But\nwhat do you propose as a solution? Perfectly trained humans on-call? A\nprocedures manual as detailed as the hypothetical code?\n\n4) Well, lack of CI seems insane regardless of what sort of architecture you\nhave. It's a symptom of not understanding the tools.\n\n5) Capitalized anything is always bunk. But if I hear agile as meaning \"short-\nterm goals inside long-term goals, and continuous re-evaluation\" then it makes\nperfect sense and has helped as a consultant and in industry.\n\n------\nGFK_of_xmaspast\nI don't do anything approaching microservices but a good CI setup combined\nwith a good test suite is an absolute blessing that verges on a 'must have'.\n\n------\nkmicklas\n> 1) Choose languages that developers are familiar with, not the best tool for\n> the job\n\nThis is probably true but also the root cause I think. Enough developers\naren't familiar with the right tools and abstractions (modularity,\nabstraction, purity, reproducability, etc.) that we just keep rehashing the\nsame bad ideas in a never ending stream of new languages and frameworks that\npush the same decades old ideas.\n\n------\ndraw_down\nUltimately, though complexity is a real thing, the word is mostly used to mean\n\"what I personally don't like\".\n\n------\ndiminoten\nJust to add to this a bit, what do you all think of the idea that \"code is a\ncode smell\"?\n\nIn other words, if you're writing code, make sure you actually need to write\nit, and can't otherwise find someone else who's written/released/maintains it.\n\n------\nhmans\nYes, we are; no, it's not just you. Next question.\n\n------\nbbcbasic\nHorses for courses.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nOur Approach to Privacy - fjk\nhttps://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/\n======\nwyc\nApple sells hardware differentiated by integrated software for premium\npricing. They want to build better and more expensive products through\nsuperior design and quality control. Collecting and analyzing personal data\nisn't the most important thing for their business. They might see more benefit\nby eschewing personal data collection and marketing a privacy-focused message,\nwhich they seem to be doing.\n\nIn contrast, Google and Facebook are companies that sell advertising. The\nvalue they can offer to publishers and advertisers completely relies on how\nwell they know their users. Their competitive moat involves collection of\nproprietary data to continuously improve their products. These are clear\nincentives to be sticky and greedy with your information, but also to keep it\nprivate and proprietary for their own sake.\n\nWith these incentives in mind, I more readily trust Apple when it says that it\nwill not collect my data compared to data conglomerates, and Apple hasn't done\nanything to aggressively betray that idea in its history (to my knowledge).\nCombined with the technical security advantages of iOS, I'm inclined to\nbelieve Apple products to be the least-bad option for the security-minded\ntoday.\n\n~~~\nmirimir\nI do like Apple's approach to privacy. A lot. And I love their phones. While\ntheir PC hardware is still pretty, it's getting more-and-more outdated and\noverpriced. But that's no longer their focus, so hey.\n\nAnd indeed, Apple seems to handle privacy well, in practice. I've managed to\ncreate pseudonymous accounts at Apple's online store, and fund them with\nanonymized Bitcoin. And I've managed to make digital purchases.\n\nHowever, I haven't tested buying physical devices, for pickup in meatspace. I\nwonder if they'd require official ID, or just proof of purchase. Anyone know?\n\n~~~\nlxmcneill\nThe last time I went to pick up a product (AirPods) it required government\nissued photo ID (Australian driver's license), even though I had the Apple\nStore app which made the purchase installed on my phone.\n\n~~~\nmovedx\nThat's an issue with Australian law, not Apple. You can also buy such devices\noverseas.\n\n~~~\nmirimir\nAh, thanks. What sorts of purchases in Australia require ID?\n\n~~~\nadambrenecki\nAnything over 10,000 AUD (about 8,000 USD) purchased with cash. AirPods are\nexpensive but not _that_ expensive.\n\nMy guess is that they paid online for in-store pickup, and Apple asked for ID\nto confirm they're the one that made the purchase. In which case that's an\nApple thing, not a government thing.\n\n~~~\nmovedx\nBought my AirPods from Apple in the UK: no ID required.\n\nBought my iPhone 6S from Apple in Ausralia: ID required under Australian law.\n\nVery likely the person also bought a phone with a sim/service, hence being\nasked for ID (under Australian law.)\n\n------\ngreggman\nI'm happy Apple is at least trying hard to deal with privacy but honestly I\ndon't think they are doing enough, at least for me.\n\nFor example, I don't really want to give most apps constant access to my\nphotos, my camera, or my mic but I really don't have a whole lot of choice if\nI still want to use popular apps and services like Facebook, Instagram,\nMessenger, Hangouts, Line, WhatsApp etc..\n\nI really wish that every time they wanted a photo they had to get it through\nsome OS level UX and they only got to see the photos I selected. As it is they\nget to see all my photos the moment I want to give them a single photo.\nSimilarly if I take a photo in one of them they require permission to read all\nmy photos when all I want them to be able to do is save the photo.\n\nAs for the Camera I don't give any of those apps access to the camera because\nI don't trust them not to spy on me in some way (I assume camera = mic access\nso they could be doing the subsonic listening for ads things etc...). Instead\nI take the picture with the built in app then access that picture from the app\nI want to use the picture in. Of course that leads to the problem above.\n\nMic access is more problematic. I don't want any of them to have mic access\nwhen I'm not using the mic function directly but I can't talk to my friends\nwho use all those services to call me if I don't give the apps mic access.\n\nI feel like if Apple was more serious about privacy they'd handle these issues\nin some way. The photo one seems mostly straight forward for most use cases.\nDon't let the app access them at all, only the OS. The camera one is less\nstraight forward. I get that there are innovative things apps can do with the\ncameras by using them directly. On the other hand most of the current use\ncases could be handled by letting the OS access the camera only, not the app,\nand then just giving the result to the app.\n\n~~~\nguyfawkes303\nI think you mis-understand how iOS privacy controls work. An app doesn't get\nto 'see all your photos' just because you grant photo access, you still have\nto select which photos to put in the app. Same goes for camera, that just\nlet's the app pull up the camera interface, not be able to access it 24/7 for\nwhatever purpose they want. Same with the mic.\n\n~~~\nLeoPanthera\nI don't think this is correct. The Facebook app regularly shows me all the\nphotos I have taken today and asks if I want to post any of them.\n\n~~~\nodammit\nI can't tell you how many times I've definitely had a photo show up in the \"do\nyou want to post this\" preview that I most certainly would never want to post.\n\nI feel like I'm having a heart attack every time thinking I posted it already.\nThat feature sucks.\n\n~~~\nmixmastamyk\n_uninstalls app and uses website_\n\n------\njacksmith21006\nApple chose to let the China government into their China data center and\nGoogle chose to leave the country instead. So not so simple on who you trust.\nPersonally I trust Google more as they are just a lot better at keeping things\nsecure, imo. Plus governments getting into data is a bigger deal to me than a\ntargeted ad. But it is a personal decision.\n\n\"A Local Chinese Government Will Oversee Apple\u2019s New iCloud Data Center\"\n\n[http://fortune.com/2017/08/14/apple-china-icloud-data-\ncenter...](http://fortune.com/2017/08/14/apple-china-icloud-data-center/)\n\n~~~\net-al\nWhy was this downvoted? It's a relevant point to the discussion.\n\n------\nmaxpert\nAt least one company is \"trying\" keep my photos private. The other day Google\nPhoto told my wife it had prepared an album for our trip to SFO. We were\nsurprised because she already disabled Geo-tagging but whataya know... Google\nstill figured it out!\n\n~~~\npetepete\nIf you have location enabled on your phone, Google appears to cross reference\nyour location with your photo timestamps to work out where you were. I know\nthis because when I import my DSLR images to Google Photos it estimates the\nlocation, usually _very_ accurately.\n\n~~~\nben1040\nI've also seen it geotag things based upon the content of the image alone.\n\nI went to the photo store not long ago and had dozens of rolls of negatives\nscanned, from a vacation to Europe 20 years ago. I uploaded them into Google\nPhotos and it geotagged many of them automatically.\n\nThey have a public API that does the same, it detects landmarks in images and\ncan give you a lat/long position for it as well as a confidence score.\n\n[https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/detecting-\nlandmarks](https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/detecting-landmarks)\n\n~~~\nmit65\napple cloud did release a lot of celeb pics over the internet...let's not\nforget that\n\n~~~\ngbear605\nThat was a phishing attack, nothing to do with Apple other than that the\npeople attacked by it were iPhone users.\n\n------\ngallerdude\nPrivacy is one of those things I can't tangibly describe why I like it, but it\njust feels good to know that nothing is being saved, even in contrast to just\ntargeting you for ads and nothing else.\n\n~~~\nJumpCrisscross\nWe have a track record of things going south, fast, for societies that\nsacrifice privacy. It makes sense to tread warily with it.\n\n~~~\nzachlatta\nCan you give a few examples?\n\n~~~\nJumpCrisscross\nPretty much every authoritarian overthrow that became genocidal relied on a\nprevious bureaucracy's meticulous record keeping.\n\n~~~\nzachlatta\nCan you please give a few examples?\n\n~~~\nJumpCrisscross\nThe classic ones are Pol Pot and Hitler. With the latter, the Danish example\nis useful.\n\n~~~\nzachlatta\nIn your original comment, you were implying that societies that lose privacy\ngo south very quickly. As in that loss of privacy is causal.\n\nI can't speak for Pol Pot, since I'm not very familiar with his regime, but\nwith Hitler and the Danish, my understanding is that record keeping aided in\nthe German occupation. Not that the Denmark went downhill after it started\ndoing meticulous data gathering.\n\nCan you give causal examples?\n\n------\nnewscracker\nA few things have struck me really strong on Apple's stand and implementation\non protecting users' privacy:\n\n1\\. Though it's understandable that Apple earns money primarily by selling\nhardware, it's sort of amusing and alarming at the same time that a\nproprietary almost-closed-source software company is focusing on protecting\nand preserving privacy whereas partially open source platforms competing with\nApple seem to be nowhere close on this aspect. Do any of the Android forks try\nto do as much as Apple does for privacy right out of the box (something a non-\ntechnical lay person could get)?\n\n2\\. It's abundantly clear that a lot of thought has gone into the foundations\nof a design focused on protecting privacy and in creating silos of information\nin/with different SDKs and features.\n\n3\\. It's a bit unclear to me as to why Health data is stored encrypted in\niCloud whereas messages aren't. Is there a distinction here between iCloud\nsync and iCloud backups? The documentation on messages suggests turning off\niCloud backup as a protective measure.\n\n4\\. To me, the weakest link in the ecosystem seems to be third party apps,\nwhere Apple relies more on them adhering to the developer guidelines and on\npublishing a privacy policy.\n\n~~~\nwyc\nRegarding your first point, it's difficult to implement some security schemes\nat the operating system level alone. With full vertical control of the\nproduct, you can have nice things like secure enclaves and de-facto hardware\ncryptography acceleration.\n\nSee here for details:\n[https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)\n\nA lot of the features would be very difficult to implement in Android without\ncooperating hardware, and hardware is notoriously expensive to get right and\nscale up. Projects like neo900 and Purism regularly encounter delays,\nunexpected costs, and pricing issues. It's really tough.\n\nOn a broader note, people are spending more and more time in data-hungry apps\nanyway, which can send almost anything they want to the network. This is sure\nto chip at any device-level security, pushing it towards irrelevance. I wish I\nhad a log entry every time an app used the location service on my phone along\nwith a database containing a history of Internet-transacted data.\n\n~~~\nnewscracker\nThanks for the explanation on the Android side. It still seems weird that\nnobody wants to take this up as a USP for their devices (referring to non-\nGoogle entities).\n\n> On a broader note, people are spending more and more time in data-hungry\n> apps anyway, which can send almost anything they want to the network. This\n> is sure to chip at any device-level security, pushing it towards\n> irrelevance. I wish I had a log entry every time an app used the location\n> service on my phone along with a database containing a history of Internet-\n> transacted data.\n\nI've long wished for network access permission on iOS, allowing the user to\ndecide which apps can never connect to any networks. To reduce the total\nattack surface, I'd want to keep many apps (especially games) running only\nwithin their sandboxes and having access to only the data they create/generate\non-device and no other external resource/server.\n\nAFAIK, Android has had this even in the days of permission requests at app\ninstall time. I don't know if granular control is available on this from\nAndroid 6 onwards.\n\n~~~\nwyc\nI know that Samsung is trying to push its Knox product to enterprises. I'm\nunsure about their technical or financial success. I don't know of anyone\ntrying this in the consumer space either, but I'd definitely love to see more\nactivity in this long-neglected sector.\n\nKnox: [https://www.samsungknox.com/en](https://www.samsungknox.com/en)\n\n------\nwhathaschanged\nApple's approach to privacy also includes being a partner in PRISM, a fact\nwhich they chose to vigorously deny as false allegations until it was proven\nto be true.\n\nEvery story about Apple and privacy chooses to omit thus huge piece of info.\n\nWhy should anybody trust them now? What has changed to make anybody believe\nthey aren't still lying about privacy?\n\n~~~\ndclowd9901\nIf their technology is built such that even they themselves cannot peer into\nthe inner workings of your content, what good is their association with PRISM?\n\n~~~\nuserbinator\nHow do you know Apple is telling the truth?\n\nOne thing we're certain of, however, is that Apple has the signing keys. They\nalso encrypt their firmware and even other apps to hide how they work.\n\n~~~\ndclowd9901\nI believe if they weren't telling the truth, _somebody_ would've caught on by\nnow. We have lots of people in sec watching court cases involving police\ntrying to break into iPhones. If somehow a department was able to access a\nphone without a user complying and no known backdoor was exposed, I'm sure we\nwould've heard of it by now.\n\nI hope you're not expecting them to open source the secure enclave.\n\n------\nspsful\nI wish the EFF still made those \"Who has your back\" infographics, they were\nreally helpful if you wanted to find out which companies respected your data\nboth online and in the courts. But IMO Apple is the only large multinational\ncorporation that is actually taking steps to protect my privacy so I'm way\nmore inclined to trust them with my personal information. Can't say the same\nfor Google or others.\n\n------\ntitanomachy\nHow much of this can be independently verified? I suppose we just need to take\ntheir word for it?\n\n~~~\nShank\nIt all boils down to what you see in the public. The FBI was trying to get\nApple to create an iOS variant to extract data from a device, to the point\nwhere Tim Cook wrote a letter refusing to do so and was willing to fight it in\ncourt. In a similar fashion, Apple has given talks and white papers on iOS\nsecurity. In tandem with these well documented white papers and talks\ndiscussing the internal functions of iOS, we haven't seen any well known or\ntrivial exploits appear to surface that demonstrate flaws in them.\n\nIn the case of the FBI fiasco, for example, we know that the FBI later paid\nCellebrite for an exploit that allowed them to unlock the device. We don't\nknow the details of how that happened, but the FBI had to reach out to an\nindependent company and exploit an older device to do it.\n\nTo be clear: if they were lying about the lengths they go to with encryption,\non device security, and user trust, this story would have been different. The\nFBI would have already had a backdoor or been able to trivially break the\ndevice, or they would have complied and created an iOS variant to break in.\nAll we know is what they stood their ground on, and the effort that was\nrequired for the FBI to get in.\n\niOS 10 security white paper:\n[https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)\n\nTalk about iOS security at Black Hat:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGFriOKz6U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGFriOKz6U)\n\n~~~\nlern_too_spel\nWe know that they lied to customers claiming they couldn't help law\nenforcement get data off customers' devices.\n\n\"Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore\ncannot access this data. So it's not technically feasible for us to respond to\ngovernment warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their\npossession running iOS 8.\"[1]\n\nAfter it became clear that it _is_ technically feasible for Apple to assist\nwith those data requests, they quietly removed that claim from their\nwebsite.[2]\n\n[1] [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/apple-expands-\ndata-e...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/apple-expands-data-\nencryption-under-ios-8-making-handover-to-cops-moot/)\n\n[2] [https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-\nrequest...](https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-requests/)\n\n~~~\nmillstone\nBy \"technically feasible\" are you referring to Apple's ability to build a\nsoftware update that allows for quicker brute-forcing of the passcode?\n\n~~~\nlern_too_spel\nYes. Brute forcing pin codes can be done very quickly. Apple realized it was\ntechnically feasible too, which is why they no longer make that claim. That\nthey didn't apologize to their users and offer refunds demonstrates the\ndisdain they have for their customers.\n\n------\njvican\nAfter reading this, I have two questions:\n\n1\\. Are there any statistics showing the ratio of security issues between\nAndroid and iOS?\n\n2\\. What's the most common phone among security researchers?\n\nTo be honest, I'm wary of believing this, but I own a Nexus and if I had to\ngive the benefit of the doubt to either Google or Apple, it would most\ncertainly be Apple because they don't make business out of my data (or, not as\nmuch as Google, at least).\n\n~~~\npcurve\nI'm an Android user, but I feel the same way.\n\nI sometimes wonder what would happen if I were to create a new Google identity\nand start fresh. Would they try to re-establish my old email's profile and\ndata to the new one without my consent?\n\n~~~\narunmib\nI tried this as an exercise when they were pushing Google+. Created a new\naccount, was very cognizant to read through all settings and ensured that\nnothing from my old account can be traced back to this new one. I'm not joking\nwhen I say nothing from my old account and tracking: 1\\. I timed my move (to\ndifferent city inside bayarea) 2\\. Changing ISP to wave from comcast 3\\.\nBought new computer 4\\. Closed my old phone account and only started using\nwork phone. Never used hotspot in my work phone 5\\. Even changed my coffee\ndrinking habit + free wifi access locations from Starbucks to Peets. Only\nthing I couldn't change was my name + SSN. Serious paranoid level of things\nfor my online life, but they still populated my digital life with same info\nand recommendations. After about 10-15 days of doing all this, I enabled\nGoogle+ (because at that time to use youtube account, I had to enable it). You\nknow who the first contact recommendation that was there for me under my\nfamily - my brother who is living in a different country. I just gave up at\nthat point. Probably I did something wrong during the setup (or) slipped and\nused the accounts for some period of time on same computer or browser (or) the\ndata companies which sell my offline data have really rich data about me.\nWhatever the goof-up was, it was just disheartening to learn that after all\nthat work my online privacy just lasted at the max 15days. I really wish there\nwere better ways. Considering the number of security/data breaches (e.g.\nrecent equifax one) I feel like, I have little to no control on things.\n\n~~~\npcurve\nThat is pretty frightening.... thanks for sharing your story.\n\n------\nmtgx\n> While we do back up iMessage and SMS messages for your convenience using\n> iCloud Backup, you can turn it off whenever you want.\n\nWouldn't they be able to hold that privacy promise much better if they\nactually allowed people to keep iCloud backup on let's say for pictures, but\nstill be able to disable iMessage messages? I think many people would like to\nuse iCloud but without it backing up personal conversations, too.\n\nAlso, iMessage's end-to-end encryption was rather flawed last Matthew Green\nchecked, compared to other end-to-end messaging apps.\n\n[https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2016/03/21/attack-o...](https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2016/03/21/attack-\nof-week-apple-imessage/)\n\nAs for their use of differential privacy, when they introduced that it was\nessentially a hidden way of gather _more_ of your data than before, not less,\nbut while still being able to say \"hey, we may gather more data than ever on\nyou starting with the new iOS, but it's _pretty_ private, so it's cool, don't\nworry about it\".\n\nAll of that said, I know Apple is still miles ahead of Google on privacy. If\nanything, over the last 1-2 years, Google has become increasingly bolder and\nmore shameless about tracking users without them realizing (except in the EU,\nwhere they are _forced_ to make it a little easier for users to understand how\nthey are being tracked, and even that happened because of the anti-trust\nlawsuit).\n\nHere's just one example of Google's increasingly privacy-hostile behavior:\n\n[https://www.extremetech.com/internet/238093-google-\nquietly-c...](https://www.extremetech.com/internet/238093-google-quietly-\nchanged-its-privacy-policy-no-longer-promises-to-anonymize-your-personal-\ninformation-when-selling-ads)\n\n~~~\nAccacin\nI agree it's not perfect. I kind of get around it by disabling iCloud backup\n(which includes iMessage, etc.). I just use iCloud to back up photos, and I\nback up my phone locally.\n\n------\nimron\n> Apple has no way to decrypt iMessage and FaceTime data _when it\u2019s in transit\n> between devices_\n\nWhat about when it's _not_ in transit between devices?\n\n~~~\nalex_g\nWell they decrypt it on your behalf when it's on your device. The point is\nthat couldn't do that without your device/account.\n\n~~~\njw1224\nThey then go on to say:\n\n> While we do back up iMessage and SMS messages for your convenience using\n> iCloud Backup, you can turn it off whenever you want.\n\nSure, I can stop backing my data up - but presuming I don't (like the vast\nmajority of people), does that mean if they got a wiretap order they could\njust read the data straight from their backup servers?\n\nI'm not sure if this was just phrased poorly, or if backing up your iMessages\neffectively undoes any protection your messages once had.\n\n~~~\nDavideNL\n\"The iCloud Loophole\" (article from March-2016):\n[https://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/02/icloud-backups-less-\nsec...](https://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/02/icloud-backups-less-secure-for-\nrestoring-data/)\n\nAlthough in a link in this HN article Apple says backups _are_ encrypted:\n[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303](https://support.apple.com/en-\nus/HT202303)\n\nSo, a little confusing...\n\nEDIT\n\nbah, found this:\n\n\"Right now, although iCloud backups are encrypted, the keys for the encryption\nare also stored with Apple. \"\n\n[https://9to5mac.com/2016/02/25/apple-working-on-stronger-\nicl...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/02/25/apple-working-on-stronger-icloud-\nbackup-encryption-and-iphone-security-to-counter-fbi-unlock-requests/)\n\n------\nbgrohman\nOn the subject of privacy, I'm interested in migrating away from Google\nservices, but I have years' worth of data tied up there (email, photos, music,\nmovies, etc). I know Google offers ways to download your data, so it's\ntechnically possible to migrate, but it would be tedious and time consuming,\nto say the least.\n\nDoes anyone have suggestions for making that process easier?\n\n------\nquadrangle\nApple does so many things well, actually. I would return to them for some\nthings and even recommend them (versus exclusively GNU/Linux and LineageOS) if\nthey'd only change the stupid iOS terms that prohibit GPL software.\n\n~~~\nnnutter\nIsn't the issue that the App Store doesn't have a mechanism to redistribute\nthe source in a way that is compliant with the GPL? Is it fair to say Apple\nprohibits the GPL? Anyway that tried to sell GPL licensed software on the App\nStore is \"breaking the law\" so Apple prohibits it? Or is there more to it?\n\n~~~\nsheetjs\n[http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-\nstore-...](http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-\nenforcement) goes into more detail, but the summary is:\n\n> Apple's Terms of Service impose restrictive limits on use and distribution\n> for any software distributed through the App Store, and the GPL doesn't\n> allow that.\n\n------\ncyphunk\nWake me up when they let one sync contacts without giving icloud cleartext\naccess in the process\n\n~~~\nmercutio2\nCan you say more about why this is important to you?\n\nI mean, more stuff encrypted without provider escrow keys is a generally good\nthing, but are your contacts specifically more important than, say, you\ncalendar events?\n\nWhat threat model are you worried about with your personal, curated contacts?\n\n~~~\ncyphunk\nall data is important, indeed. contacts are just an easy to access example.\nI'm worried about countries creating laws, secret and public, that force Apple\nto hand over my data. Specifically those governments that I spend time in and\nthat I also spend time criticising or protesting within as an activist. I'm\nworried about regime changes. I'm worried about 3rd party data breaches. I'm\nnot worried about how my data exposure would effect me now but how it would\neffect me in the future when mining and correlating data to use against\nactivists will be much easier.\n\n------\naub3bhat\nOn Android you can Sideload VPN apps, iOS on the otherhand banned them in\nChina. Apple mounted the most successful attack on General Computing with it's\nwalled garden. The whole Apple is good for privacy is marketing.\n\n~~~\ndisconnected\nAndroid and its community are sorta schizophrenic towards security.\n\nOn one hand, users are told that they should never ever, ever install\napplications from untrusted sources. They should always use the play store\nbecause applications are scanned for vulnerabilities and whatnot.\n\nOn the other hand, we have people telling us that one of the great advantages\nof Android is that you can sideload apps - bypassing the store security model\ncompletely.\n\nOn one hand, a VPN needs root access for transparent proxying (or at least TOR\ndoes). Changing the hosts file needs root access. Changing gps.conf requires\nroot. Lots of useful operations need root access, so if you are concerned\nabout privacy and security, or just want more control, you probably want root.\n\nOn the other hand, root is stupidly hard to obtain, and users are strongly\ndiscouraged from doing it anyway because it opens all sorts of attack vectors.\nUnless the manufacturer provides a legitimate method to do it, the operation\nof obtaining root itself, like on iOS, often relies on an unpatched local\nprivilege escalation vulnerability. Note that any application can exploit\nthis, not just the rooting app.\n\nI don't support Apple's walled garden approach, but we can't argue that they\nhave a much clearer picture with regards to security, and the results speak\nfor themselves. Malware in the Apple devices is rare, whereas in Android it is\nrapidly becoming routine. Unfortunately, you sacrifice flexibility for\nenhanced security.\n\n~~~\nnnutter\nMy perception is also that malware ends up in the Google Play Store with much\nhigher frequency than the App Store. Just do a news search for \"Google Play\nStore malware\" and \"App Store malware\" and compare.\n\nAlso, one can sideload apps, if you have a Mac, onto iOS. Obviously, that's\nnot anywhere as integrated but maybe that's a good thing. Heck, maybe Apple\neven added that so people in China could sideload VPNs. Maybe iOS VPNs are\ngood enough (no root, no TOR?)?\n\n~~~\nlern_too_spel\nAdd up all the malicious app installs on Google Play Store, and it doesn't\neven come close to the 500 million[1] (conservative estimate) users affected\nby XCodeGhost. It looks worse when you consider that the 500 million is on an\norder of magnitude smaller total iOS userbase vs. Play Store userbase and when\nyou consider that Google allows third party security researchers to\ninvestigate and publish research on the Play Store while Apple does not, so\nXCodeGhost is likely to be the tip of the iceberg.[2]\n\n[1]\n[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.macrumors.com/2015/09/20/xc...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.macrumors.com/2015/09/20/xcodeghost-\nchinese-malware-faq/amp/)\n\n[2]\n[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cultofmac.com/128577/apple-...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cultofmac.com/128577/apple-\nkicks-security-researcher-out-of-app-store-and-developer-program-after-ios-\nvulnerability-demonstration/amp/)\n\n~~~\nevgen\nLOL, let's start with StageFright (1 billion+ pwned with just a text message),\nmove on to StageFright2 (because patching is hard...), and then just keep\nrunning down the list of malware in the Play store that is still there months\nafter being discovered. XCodeGhost OTOH, seemed to have hit around 40 apps so\nthat would probably not even get it into the top-100 list of Google Play\nmalware families. Malware families. The Play store is such a shitshow that you\ncan actually have different strains of malware running around in fake apps,\nlike some sort of digital syphillus spreading through the brothel that Google\nforces everyone to visit if they want the shiny apps...\n\n~~~\nlern_too_spel\nThe number of people actually affected by StageFright malware from Google Play\nStore (which is what we were discussing) is very likely to be zero. It simply\nblocks the payload. We know for a fact that 500 million+ were actually\naffected by XCodeGhost, an order of magnitude more than the sum total from all\nmalware seen in the Play Store.\n\nDon't conflate unpatched Linux systems with the Play Store. Anybody who uses\nAndroid and cares about the security of their device (like anybody who uses a\nLinux-based router and cares about the security of their network) uses vendors\nwho deploy timely security updates.\n\n------\nicomefromreddit\nI don't trust Apple. It's a matter of trust, so I have nothing else to say,\njust I can't trust Apple.\n\n------\nshmerl\nI wouldn't trust on issues of privacy to the likes of Apple. Who can audit\ntheir software? It's not FOSS.\n\n~~~\nachamayou\nYou can still contemplate their incentives, their business model, and their\nreputation/track record.\n\nIt's not as good as auditing the code (and making sure the code you see is\nwhat actually runs), but it's a lot less effort, and depending on the extent\nto which you are ready to dedicate resources to improving your privacy, may be\nan acceptable tradeoff.\n\n------\nphoe-krk\nSo a cop can put your phone in front of your face while you're tied up and\nunable to do a thing. Boom, phone unlocked.\n\nMarvelous.\n\n~~~\nR4nger\nAFAIK if you keep your eyes closed, it doesn't unlock.\n\nAlso, its still an improvement from when cops borrow your thumb. At least this\nway, you have less chance of getting hurt.\n\n~~~\nmegous\nI'd rather lose my finger than my head, thank you.\n\n------\nwilliamle8300\nAll the anti-constitutionalist people at the NSA are getting heartburn as we\nspeak.\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nLuis von Ahn: Outsourcing My Research Group - Rod\nhttp://vonahn.blogspot.com/2010/06/outsourcing-my-research-group.html\n\n======\nthisisnotmyname\nThere probably ought to be fewer phd students around, and more research tech\njobs. But, I was under the impression that the current glut of grad students\nwas because they were so much cheaper than techs?\n\n~~~\nRod\nIt depends on the schools. A graduate student at a UC school is way cheaper\nthan a graduate student at Stanford or Caltech. It also depends on the PhD\nprogram, or more to the point, on the course requirements. If a PhD student\nalready has a MSc when he enters the program, he can start doing research\nright away, and his advisor get a return on his grant money way faster.\n\n------\npvdm\nI suppose I am too naive to think Ph.D advisors would not treat advisees like\na piece of meat.\n\n~~~\nRod\nThere's a reason I used to love reading _PhD Comics_... until I started my own\nPhD. It used to be fiction, now it's non-fiction (sigh)\n\n------\nkunjaan\nThe next advisor meeting with him is going to be pretty awkward.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nKanban \u2013 The Secret Engineer Killer - bdehaaff\nhttp://blog.aha.io/index.php/kanban-the-secret-engineer-killer/\n======\nraisinbread\nIf you just read the subtitles, I'd almost think your article was a piece in\n_favor_ of Kanban.\n\nEngineers aren't assembly workers: so why do other methodologies seem to be so\nprescriptive on what can be accomplished in a given time frame? New problems\narise, priorities shift, and unexpected news arrives. I appreciate the\nflexibility of a pull-type system because it lets me transparently show what\nI'm working on.\n\nI've really hated telling people no or watching a manager struggle to change\nup something we really need just because it doesn't fit in the right shape\ntime box or might affect the current sprint's plans.\n\nYou can't trust yourself: I always ended up hating sprint planning meetings\nwhere \"points\" are a constant source of conflict between stakeholders and\nestimates are fantastical. These sort of meetings just allow the quality knob\nto turn down while scope and schedule remain fixed. Having an entire team\nminimizes estimates problems, but for the effort involved I'm not sure the\ngains are worth it.\n\nAlso, I think you may have inadvertently taken Anderson's quote out of context\nas well\u2014Kanban isn't a way to run software. It's merely a way to expose your\ncurrent process so you can improve it. Kanban is something that sits on top\nand allows you to identify bottlenecks, be realistic about results (instead of\nestimates) and provide immediate transparency into what you're working on. It\ndoesn't specifically prescribe what the steps are.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThanks for the quality comments. I want to pick up the last one in particular\nand respond. I think that while you appreciate that Kanban is not a \"way to\nrun software\" the folks who I have spoken with do not understand that. They\nconsider it to be a leaner and more pure form of \"agile.\" So, they do not use\nit to improve an existing dev methodology, rather they think it is one -- and\nthere is the crux of the problem.\n\n~~~\nraisinbread\nI should say I totally agree with one sentiment from the original post: _don\n't blindly pick up Kanban as a magical solution for your problems!_\n\nIf your underlying process (or lack of process) sucks, then you'll still be in\ntrouble. Fix your process first.\n\n------\nbhattisatish\nI am a fan of Kanban, so whatever I say will be through the rose tinted\nglasses of a fan. There maybe various reasons why Kanban has failed for many\ncompanies. I haven't worked in those teams so I have no way to say is it\nbecause of Kanban or is it because of management misunderstanding kanban.\n\nFrom your article, the main reason touted is that the Marketing loses it's\nway. Which to me sounds strange! In fact I have seen it the otherways. We\neffectively delink marketing cadence from engineering cadence! Thus resulting\nin derisking the whole big bang releases.\n\nFor e.g. Marketing decides that they are going to make a big marketing push on\na conference or a tradeshow. So the PM come up with a list of features they\nwill showcase for the given event. (say 10 features are decided upon). The\nengineering team works on these features as a que. Releasing each of these as\nand when they are done. But do note an engineering release to production does\nnot mean a marketing release. This allows the PM to experiment on features,\nbuild up case studies, etc ... for these features.\n\nAnd as the marketing releases dates come closer, everybody knows that we\nalways have a working copy with only the pending items in the que. This\nresults in a high confidence level within the marketing / engineering on what\nis being touted about. There are no last minute scramble to get a working\nsystem. etc ... The most valuable feature was heavily tested and used by\neveryone before the big bang marketing release.\n\nIt also allows the PM to make A/B experiments before the actual marketing\npush. Thus adding another confidence layer to the whole process.\n\nIn a worst case scenario the least valuable features never get released for\nthe marketing push.\n\nI see this as an effective way to derisk the whole marketing push and reduce\ntheir dependency on the engineering team to deliver stuff when they said they\nwould.\n\n~~~\nsnorkel\nUnfortunately not all of us are blessed to work with well organized\nstakeholders who are able to plan ahead rather than wait until the last minute\nto request whatever they need from engineering. Agile only works when the\nentire organization abides by its rules, sure engineering teams can train\ntheir stakeholders to some degree but upper management can just overule the\nprocess and insist engineering should be like a service desk that responds to\nwhatever is needed today. Sucks, but it's a reality in many workplaces.\n\n~~~\nbhattisatish\nI agree. That's the reason I love Kanban. It allows us to capture metrics on\nwhat is being done, how long it took and where are we spending most of our\ntime. This numbers in turn allow us to push the story to management on what\nthey are doing wrong.\n\nFor e.g. We worked on a team where Sales made a feature request (1 day, PM and\ndesign team worked on it and released it to engineering (5 weeks) and\nengineering released it to sandbox (2 weeks), qa tested it and released it to\nproduction (1 week).\n\nGuess where the bottleneck is? The whole cadence for the feature was 8 weeks.\nObviously Sales where jumping on us for not getting it done on time. This way\nof looking at the whole board, allowed us to identify a bottleneck and push\nfor changes on how the whole company operates. If you kanban a board only for\nengineering then you lose the big picture, How is the system as a whole\noperating.\n\n------\njacques_chester\nThe 95%-of-diets-fail number comes from a single study in an obesity clinic\nperformed in 1959. Followup studies, also at obesity clinics, found comparably\nhigh rates of recidivism.\n\nBut when you take the most pathological cases of obesity in a time before\nobesity was the norm, unsurprisingly those cases are ... _pathological_. There\nis a _pathology_.\n\nThese aren't normal people who grew overweight under conditions of stunning\ncaloric abundance.\n\nSo let's stop quoting this statistic because the sample bias is kindly\n_stupidly important_ to its interpretation.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThanks for the comment. I actually spent a considerably amount of time looking\nfor a meaningful reference. I found the Popkess-Vawter 1998 reference, but\ncould not find the original text. Do you have a better number for \"failure\" or\nreference that I could use? I would be happy to update the post.\n\n~~~\njacques_chester\nHard to say. Either you rely on clinical studies, which give you\npathologically-skewed sample bias, or you use the National Weight Control\nRegistry, which will be skewed to people wanting to report successful weight\ncontrol.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThanks. I am not an expert in this area (diet success data) and was simply\ntrying to use an analogy. I guess I will leave it as is. I am not sure what\nelse to do -- it seems that leaving it with no reference would be worse.\n\n~~~\njacques_chester\nWell at least you can join the noble ranks of folk whose writing was\ntangentially nitpicked in the very first HN comment.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nHappens every time. I have learned to expect it. It does make me spend a\nlittle more time though thinking through the counter arguments that are likely\nto be fired like spears.\n\n~~~\njacques_chester\nComments like mine are why I always answer \"please no\" in those hypotheticals\nabout meeting yourself.\n\n------\nbernardom\nAs an industrial engineer, this is the equivalent of a developer walking into\na factory and hearing about how \"the mythical man-month\" is a terrible\nbook/idea because it allows for waste.\n\nRight. The Mythical Man-Month is a great book/concept for creative/engineering\nprojects. Kanban is a wonderful way of implementing a Just-In-Time\nmanufacturing system.\n\nProps to the OP for explaining the origin of kanban. May this post help fix\nthe co-opting of an IE term for something totally different.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nI appreciate that. I really do. It's rare to receive an ounce of props on HN.\nI must admit that I was totally surprised to learn that it was not designed\nfor software development and that the author of the Lean Methodology has been\ntrying to convince folks to stop using it.\n\n~~~\nagileramblings\nWhat do you mean the author of the Lean Methodology has been trying to stop\nfolks from using it? Are you suggesting David Anderson wants us to stop using\nKanban for Knowledge Work?\n\n~~~\nbernardom\nFrom TFA:\n\n \n \n David Anderson, the creator of The Kanban Method (discussed above) wrote the following in late 2010.\n \n \u201cKanban is NOT a software development life cycle or project management\n methodology! It is not a way of making software or running projects that make software!\u201d\n\n~~~\nagileramblings\nUnfortunately, the tendency to overload terms with multiple meanings is\nconfusing the situation. It is very common for the word kanban to be used\nincorrectly because there are three commonly confused meanings for the word.\n\nkanban - visual signal, signboard kanban system - pull-based, wip limited flow\nmanagement system Kanban Method - an approach to incremental, evolutionary\nprocess and systems change for organizations\n\nSo yes, the Kanban Method is not an SDLC method. It is a meta-method that will\nallow for the emergence of an appropriate SDLC within an organization. That\nSDLC may be Agile (very good things in Agile mindset), may be waterfall, may\nbe Scrum or Scrumban-ish, but it should be appropriate for then context.\n\nPlease refer to this wikipedia entry:\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_\\(development\\))\n\nYou don't see any SDLC specific tactics or guidance in there. That is true.\nYou don't see any Agile language in there. It doesn't provide any specific\nAgile guidance.\n\nDoes the Agile Manifesto have any specific SDLC tactics? Please refer to\n[http://www.agilemanifesto.org](http://www.agilemanifesto.org)\n\nYou won't find any specific tactics for software development in the Agile\nManifesto either. But out of the mindset comes specific SDLCs that are aligned\nto the manifesto like Scrum or XP or any of the million \"custom\" Agile\nmethodologies that have no name but are used by IT organizations everywhere.\n\nDavid Anderson absolutely wants the Kanban Method to be used (as appropriate)\nin organizations that do knowledge work (software development is knowledge\nwork) to help those organizations develop the best workflow and capability for\na given context and to create a culture of learning, growth, and continuous\nimprovement. I've talked to him many times about these very topics! Many of\nthe case studies that we quote in our work are from software development\norganizations.\n\nThe quote used above has been taken out of context, isolated, and used to\ncreate fear, uncertainty and doubt about The Kanban Method and I find that\nkind of behaviour negligent at best.\n\n------\narkades\nWhat the heck do kanban have to do with project management? Speaking -as- a\nLean Six Sigma Black Belt (still can't type that with a straight face) in the\nhealthcare sector, I can't even imagine how someone would set out using a\nkanban to run a company.\n\nThat's just so wildly divorced from what it is or what it's for that that\narticle made no sense to me.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThis is somewhat the point. Engineering managers have started to reach for\nKanban -- and it does not fit.\n\n------\nthrowawaykf02\nI'm loath to take this on faith without better description of the dataset. 150\ncompanies sounds impressive, but, where are they based? What areas do they\nwork in? How long have they been doing it? Have other factors, such as the\nhealth of these companies, been considered?\n\nStill, many of these points resonated with me.\n\nI started recently on a team that follows kanban-ish practices. Fortunately\nnobody here is that process-focused that we follow it exactly. Also, there is\nnothing that says you have to work on only one thing at a time, and we\ntypically don't. In fact, I work part-time on _another_ team, and the other\none does not do kanban.\n\nBut I don't much like the kanban system: Give me a satisfyingly large\ncomponent, and let me work on it entirely.\n\nSo for kanban in general, here's another facet to consider, and one that\nprobably explains why engineers are \"leaving in droves\": As TFA says, you end\nup working on many small pieces of a larger whole. The good part is, you could\nend up becoming aware of all parts of the system that you touch.\n\nBut! When you interview elsewhere, or heck, even when you're updating your\nresume, and it comes to answering the inevitable question, \"What did you work\non in this project\", the honest answer is, \"Uhh, many parts but nothing\n_overarching_ as such...\"\n\nAnd right then, even to yourself, that sounds like such a weasel-wordy answer.\nYou could go on and explain, \"Well, I wrote method A of component X, and\nfeature B of webpage Y and an implementation C of interface Z for cases where\nQ is R.\" But to an interviewer, I'd guess it all sounds like \"I worked on\nnothing worthwhile.\"\n\nOn the other hand, since you have better awareness of the project as a whole,\nyou could say you worked on _all of it_ , and make up more impressive-sounding\nresponsibilities as you go along.\n\nBut I find it much easier if I just do something impressive and be\nstraightforward during interviews.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThanks for the comments. The companies have been distributed across the\ncountry (with a few outside of the US as well). They have been of different\nshapes and sizes, but I did not do a good job tracking all of their\ncharacteristics. The purpose of the calls was to discuss Aha! -- not different\nengineering methodologies. A few trends jumped out at me and this was one of\nthem, so I decided to write about it and try to be fair that the ideas are\nbased on qualitative research (discussions). I appreciate your thoughts and\nthe idea that engineers should own large components of a project or entire\nprojects resonates with us. We think it creates real pride of ownership and\ninterest in customer success and it has been how we have organized our\nengineering teams at three different companies now. It's clearly better for\nindividuals (as you mentioned) and the companies they work for.\n\n------\nmdehaaff\nReally interesting piece. It is amazing that a technique used to optimize shop\nfloors has been applied to the engineering field which I believe to be so\ncreative versus \"industrial.\"\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThat surprised me as well. I think engineering managers are willing to try\njust about anything to regain some control and deliver software more\npredictably. My sense from talking to many companies is that it is\nunfortunately having the opposite effect.\n\n------\nparasubvert\nThis is a confusing argument.\n\nKanban/lean is a pretty simple idea (not always easy to execute): eliminate\nwaste in your work by smoothing the flow of requirements/changes. This treats\nyour end-to-end delivery capability as a syatem and one that should not be\noverburdened.\n\nThe clearest sign of being overburdened is when you have a lot of work in\nprogress but nothing to show for it. So instead of a genius PM/business\nanalyst/product owner handling out a tome of requirwments from on high with a\nthud, you break the work down into a minimally useful / marketable chunks,\nminimize work in progress, deliver according to some priority, and iterate and\nlearn from the results.\n\nThis is the philsophical foundation of lean Startups (customer development),\nlean development, and much of the work on Devops.\n\nSo the article rails against Kanban ... And almost seems like its advocating\nfor the same thing with its goal-driven approach to delivery (?).\n\nAny methodology or process framework is subject to misinterpretation or abuse.\nThis is why \"agile\" and \"scrum\" are dirty words to many - it's hard to tell\nwhat you're getting, as the term has been twisted to suit vested interests. It\nlooks like it is Lean and Kanban's turn to be trashed due to ersatz versions\nbeing forced on teams.\n\nBut articles like this aren't helpful unless they explain what they mean\nKanban, and what aspects are ineffective - clich\u00e9s like \"software is\ndifferent\" don't illuminate.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nI tried to clearly define Kanban as a \"Kanban (meaning signboard or billboard)\nis a scheduling system for lean and just-in-time production. It\u2019s a system to\ncontrol the logistical chain from a production point of view. Kanban was\ndeveloped by Taiichi Ohno, at Toyota, to find a system to improve and maintain\na high level of production. The Kanban Method was later added to as an\napproach to incremental, evolutionary process improvement for organizations.\"\n\nThe point is that it is a mistake to take a methodology that was created for\nincremental process enhancement along a manufacturing line and apply it to\nsoftware development.\n\n~~~\nparasubvert\nSo, I've had the opposite experience: lean-type incremental process\nenhancement has had dramatic improvements on the end-to-end results of more\nthan one company I've been involved with.\n\nI look at a book like The Phoenix Project, written by some fairly respected\nsoftware industry folks like Gene Kim, and they also recommend the opposite:\nthat software development and IT operations actually are a lot like an\nindustrial shop floor and benefit from being organized in an end-to-end pull\nflow like Kanban.\n\nI look at Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, or Lean Startup by Eric\nRies, while they aren't specifically dictating a Kanban board in their work,\nthey're clearly philosophically in the camp of a pull-based approach to\norganizing work and limiting work-in-progress.\n\nSo, what I haven't determined from your article is, what specifically is\nflawed with these authors views and my experiences? Am I being over-broad in\ntheir inclusion? My interprtation of your article this far is a well-meaning\nbut under-argued philosophical aversion to being lumped in with other\nindustrial engineering practices.\n\nEdit: clarity\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nFrom my experience and from what I am hearing it (meaning Kanban) does not\nwork for most folks or companies. That's it. It might work well for you and\nthat's great too. I don't think Kanban and Agile philosophies are the same\nthough - but that's at least another long blog post.\n\n~~~\nparasubvert\nFair ball. I'd say if its being latched onto as a panacea, almost all\napproaches to process will fail if you lack the basics: a good market, an\ninsightful product owner/manager, good engineers, and at least an adequate\nmorale in the company.\n\nI've seen companies/projects with all of those things still fail because of a\npoor process. This is where something like Kanban can help, IMO. Not trivial\nto implement though.\n\n------\nmczepiel_\nAs others have noted the definition of kanban comes too late in your article.\nAlso, I think a citation to wikipedia is in order if you're going to copy it\nand simply expand the initialisms.\n\nRegardless, it's not a particularly helpful definition for anybody that's\nnever heard of kanban, and certainly doesn't help anybody familiar with kanban\nto know what specifically you're evaluating; you need to get everybody on the\nsame page from the outset.\n\nGiven lack of concrete examples and your previous posting history I would\nconsider this more of an advertisement for your product, to which I've now\napplied for an invitation, but you seem to be genuinely responding to comments\nhere and nobody else has complained. I suppose either way, well played.\n\nI have other comments but I'll hold them until I find out exactly what you\nmean by kanban, because I've been admittedly self-identifying the process I'm\nusing as kanban and maybe it's not.\n\nI will say this much though, the practices of kanban (visualization, limited\nwork-in-progress, managed flow, feedback loops, etc.) are all valuable in my\nopinion and I wonder which of these you see leading to, or how you see them\nleading to, the problems you've cited. Also, I wouldn't mind some more\nconcrete metrics to back up such an inflammatory title.\n\n------\nforloop5150\nPick the right tool for the right job. For a product team Kanban does not make\nmuch sense. I agree with your comments in general. But for a PS or Custom\nDevelopment team, where most projects are integration type projects or custom\nreports and tend to take 2-3 days to complete, it is a good way to go.\n\n------\njasonlittle\nSummary of this article: Kanban sucks, use our tool to make roadmaps! To me,\nthis is clearly a case of trying to stir up controversy to get people to sign-\nup for his tool.\n\n------\ntantalor\nWhy wait until the sixth paragraph to define the term?\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nFair point. I was not certain where to add it. My belief, based on my\nconversations was that many have heard about it -- so I did not want to bore\nthose in the know.\n\n------\nrparet\ntl;dr: author of the article is laboring under many false assumptions about\nKanban (and lean software development in general) likely due to a combination\nof inexperience using such methods personally and unfamiliarity with the\navailable literature. The following is a rather long attempt to correct the\nbase misunderstandings in the article, with pointers to relevant source\nmaterial. Enjoy!\n\nFirst, an operational definition: Kanban as it's used in lean software\ndevelopment is 1. visual representation of the work that's in the system and\nwhat state it is in and 2. an opportunity to limit the amount of work that can\nbe in each state.\n\nThat's it.\n\nAlmost every organization that writes software uses something to keep track of\nthe work, and what state it is in - by this logic the title of the article\ncould be \"spreadsheets - the secret engineer killer\", or \"JIRA - the secret\nengineer killer\".\n\nAccording to the article though, Kanban is ruining engineering teams in\n\"nearly every company\" that has adopted Kanban out of the 150 companies the\nauthor talked to in the last 60 days. (Some numbers on how many of them are\nusing Kanban, and for how long, would have been nice facts to include, btw.)\n\nSo, let's unpack some reasons why this is:\n\n\"Engineers are not assembly line workers\" \\- Implying Kanban and pull-based\nsystems only work for \"widget producers\" and forces engineers to focus on the\nindividual trees, not the forest. I think this sort of highlights the author's\nmisunderstanding of Kanban (and to an extent any pull-based system) and what\nrole it serves in an organization. Kanban isn't magic - it not an\norganizational design, it's not a product development strategy, and it's\ndefinitely not a substitute for leadership. It's a chart on a wall that shows\nwhat the work of the product development organization looks like, right now.\n\nFor an example of an overall software product development strategy that\nincorporates pull-based systems as one component, I recommend checking out\n\"Principles of Product Development Flow\" by Don Reinertsen.\n\n\"It teaches you that you and your engineers cannot be trusted to estimate work\nor handle complex multi-faceted projects.\" \\- How does it do this? Nothing\nabout Kanban implies no estimates. In fact if you use Kanban and measure cycle\ntime, you will be doing evidence-based scheduling which will allow you to make\n_better_ estimates. As for \"complex multi-faceted projects\" \\- I don't know\nwhat the author is talking about. Please read \"Scaling Lean & Agile\nDevelopment\" by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde for some actual evidence and\nlessons learned on lean / agile approaches being used on huge software\nprojects. Also \"Scaling Agile at Spotify\" by Henrik Kniberg is worth a read,\nas Kanban features there (by team choice!) as one small component in a lean\nsoftware development org design / product development strategy.\n\n\"Kanban forces a 'one work item at a time' mentality and resists milestones.\"\nThis is simply not true and such a basic misunderstanding I have to wonder if\nthe author of the article has taken the time to read any of the introductory\nliterature. If not, I suggest the aptly titled \"Kanban\" by David J. Anderson.\nKanban wants you to limit work in progress, which is one of the basic goals of\nany product development system. It doesn't say how much it should be limited,\nor where it should be limited. Every system, everywhere, already has limited-\nWIP in the form of bottlenecks. The hopeful goal of pull-based systems in\ngeneral and lean software development specifically is that you'll use these\nsimple tools to look at your process and eliminate wasteful activities and\nstreamline those bottlenecks that must exist to deliver maximum value to your\ncustomers. In this sense, you can use Kanban as a tool to maximize the whole\nof the product development process which is certainly a macro (org level) goal\nand outcome that stands in stark contrast to the claims in the article that\nKanban in general promotes micro optimizations and misses the big picture.\n\nFor more general reading on why limiting work in progress is a good idea, I\nsuggest \"The Goal\" by Eli Goldratt or more recently \"The Phoenix Project\" by\nGene Kim. As far as milestones go, nothing in a pull-based system is\nincompatible with milestones of fixed date or fixed scope. If your idea of\nmilestones is chucking arbitrary dates on a calendar based on an estimate\nbefore work begins and then stubbornly refusing to adapt those milestones when\nthe situation on the ground changes (i.e. milestones of fixed date and fixed\nscope), then I could see the potential nature for conflict, but surely you're\nnot out there doing that in real life, right? (Right???) If you are, and\nthat's the issue - Kanban isn't the problem, the problem is the assumptions\nyou are operating on are faulty - nothing will work for you. Smarter folks\nthan me have written about the perils of fixed date and fixed scope\ndevelopment, I suggest googling for Neil Killick's thoughts on the matter.\n\n\"High performance individuals and companies are goal and date driven.\"\nCitation needed. I know many people really, really believe this but you should\nreally verify. Also, see Fred Brooks \"Mythical Man Month\".\n\n\"Kanban was never intended for software development\" \\- What? Again, the guy\nyou quote actually wrote a book on using Kanban with software development\nteams. You should read it, as it would probably correct 90% of the\nmisunderstandings in your article.\n\nThose are the key arguments in the article about why Kanban is \"the secret\nengineer killer\". Hopefully by now it's clear that these arguments aren't very\ngood and it certainly wasn't any trouble for me to refute them along with a\nbibliography for further reading. That doesn't mean Kanban or lean are perfect\nthough - there still is no silver bullet. Hopefully this inspires some folks\nto launch a more throughly-researched critique of lean, kanban, or pull-based\nsystems in the future as I think that kind of discussion can be really\nbeneficial.\n\n~~~\ncuriouscats\nWell said. I find it is very common to use the straw-man criticism technique\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)\nabout bad management practices. The quality of management is often bad. The\nquality of management, even of good practices, is often bad.\n\nCriticizing those implementation of the practice is perfectly fine. But\nclaiming that the practice is suppose to be something different than it is, is\nnot fine. I agree with you here, that is the biggest problem. If you\nunderstand how kanban for software is suppose to be done, the criticisms don't\nmake sense.\n\n------\nkneu\nI agree. It doesn't allow the engineer to really own a project from start to\nfinish. Thanks for a great post.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nThanks. I appreciate the thought. It's rare on HN to have someone write\nsomething nice.\n\n------\nfleitz\nLike 'fad diets' most of the reasons that kanban fails is because the\norganization was sick to begin with and kanban would have helped if not for\nthe structure of the organization in the first place.\n\nFad diets mostly fail because people go back to eating the same shitty way\nthey did before, just as when a team adopts kanban marketing and product go\nback to the same stupid way of doing things they did before.\n\nThe sad part is that in the vast majority of organization engineering actually\nknows more about the product than product or marketing.\n\nThe core of it is that most engineers don't want to work on the stupid fucking\nideas that product and marketing come up with instead preferring to make the\nproduct 'good' instead of creating feature parity with some competitor.\n\nIf product and marketing were actually good at their jobs they should at least\nbe able to convince the engineers in their own fucking company that what they\nare thinking is a good idea. Right now I'm picturing the eye-rolls at Porsche\nwhen product and marketing announced the idea for the Panamara.\n\n[http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2012/09/of-course-we-\nneed...](http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2012/09/of-course-we-need-a-\nporsche-station-wagon.html)\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nI agree with your thoughts around dysfunction as it relates to fad diets and\npoor habits. I also think that many engineers think they know best, but in a\nwell functioning org PM actually knows the customers and market and has a\ncollaborative relationship with engineering. Do you think that PM has no role\nor that in most cases they just don't do it well?\n\n~~~\nbhattisatish\nOn the contrary in the Kanban process, PM is the pivotal role. They control\nthe que, the cadence of feature releases, etc ... Without an effective PM, the\nwhole thing will fall as a pack of cards.\n\n~~~\nbdehaaff\nTrue. But PM needs to pick its head up and think more broadly. A \"one in one\nout\" queue is contrary to delivering winning product.\n\n~~~\nbhattisatish\nAs I have said below\n([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6119175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6119175))\nYou need to delink engineering releases from marketing releases. Where is it\nwritten that when the engineering releases a feature you need to make a\nmarketing push? When you have a collection of features ready which as a whole\nmakes sense for marketing, then you make a marketing release with all the\nrelated PR, hype cycle, etc ...\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nAsk HN: Good forum for hobbyish ARM(industrial) design discussions and advice? - trotsky\n\nHave some embedded, board level integration experience, nothing really - getting simple boards masked for low density shit. Broadly interested in learning about the next level in ARM board level design (call it cubbie board esque). But I've zero luck finding such a place - it's either raspi/arduino folks (not a diss), folks mostly repurposing android mobile or net tops for software, or the people who are really on the supply side - either they are talking about building the newest open mobile designs with the cheapest bom in chinese i can only half follow, or they are the real deal talking about modular soc components and electronic interface issues with off soc component count vs oem ability to implement. And high cost IP. I am hoping to for something in english (ha! I'll survive) or just anything that might be suitable. An HN sorta thing where people often have a clue would rock, but the big missing piece is picking soc->minimal reference board revisions->build or source some custom stuff to give the arm some supervoisor like qualities on the x86. To balance a zero content post, I provide my rough plan to amuse to reader. Basicially I want to combine a SFF server (think HP microserver or so slash less for mini. Most are essentially low end x76 roll your own nas that make do with 150w and 4 sata bays, 2 dimms and 1 eth. I want to see what I can do if I meld that kind of platform together with a few low poer arm linux servers all in one case. I imagine the arm sections being able to utilize some kind of pci/pci or similar bridge as well as monitoring, reset, ipkvm etc that could leave them as super programmable debuggers more or less, that could always easily act as low power satndins for much of the traffic that wakes up your typical low use server - ntp, ping, mild file serving, ldap, etc. Anything harder and they could provide a superior holding pattern as the main box woke up from deep sleep.\n======\nmschuster91\nActually, the idea of coupling together a ARM SoC, a Ethernet switch, a USB\naudio interface and a bit of power-monitoring circuitry (and some relais) to\nmake a dead-cheap desktop remote management solution has hit me too. Maybe\neven add a battery to provide a buffer against +5VSB outages (due to \"real\"\npower out); after all, a tiny ARM doesn't suck really much power.\n\nBut I'm a software guy, not a hardware developer - I can get a basic circuit\nboard done, but no BGA or SMD mounted stuff...\n\nI think the market for such a card - especially if built in half-height to fit\ninto existing servers - is very very great. Wake on LAN just isn't enough for\nmanaging thousands of desktop computers, and \"true\" IPKVM systems come at a\nhundreds-of-$ price tag, and they're an external box nonetheless.\n\n~~~\ntrotsky\nHey, glad to hear from a like minded soul. It's true they'd likely make quite\ngood ipkvms as long as you're OK with having CVE's pop on your ipkvm gear. I\nguess they probably already do.\n\nI think even just embracing it as an ipkvm++ opens up a lot of potential\nadditions to the current approach. There's no reason why you wouldn't want to\nbuild in remote power and triggers to go into S3/S4 powersave. There are still\nplenty of shops that prevent sleep to make maintenance easier. And It'd be\nsuper easy to hook a usb port up as a usb client and software fake whatever\ndvdrom you happened to want to boot.\n\nIf you ever feel like shooting the shit, i'd be down to hear what parts of it\ndoes it for you or whatever else was on your mind. I have the same nick on\ngithub.\n\n~~~\nmschuster91\nActually all of the bigger SoC families bring USB gadget support with them...\nthe Linux kernel has at least support for USB mass storage and networking (of\ncourse, networking is useless, because of low speed) - so it should be\npossible indeed to internally connect the USB jumpers to the ipkvm board to\nprovide HID and storage.\n\nThe only thing is now to get a cheap way to adapt VGA (or better yet, DVI) to\nan SoC. Video encode is supplied with the chips, the real difficulty will be\ngetting the signals to the CPU, though.\n\n------\nippisl\nMaybe there are some guys at reddir: /r/electronics or /r/ece that do high\ndensity pcb's and arm.\n\n~~~\ntrotsky\nThanks for the tip! I really appreciate the response. While they're probably\nnot the spot, I'm pretty sure it's a way batter place to ask the same\nquestion. Cheers,\n\n"}
{"text": "\nCreating a low-latency high-availability network for voice calls - moxie\nhttp://www.whispersystems.org/blog/low-latency-switching/\n======\nScramblejams\nNot enough detail here, but I'm surprised when I see the terms \"voice\" and\n\"TCP\" together. Do they use TCP to set up the call, then UDP to handle the\naudio?\n\nEdit: Yep, they use UDP for the audio:\n[https://github.com/WhisperSystems/RedPhone/wiki/Signaling-\nPr...](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/RedPhone/wiki/Signaling-Protocol)\n\n~~~\nbradleyland\nWith the traditional VoIP stacks, yes. There are two components to making\nphone calls: messaging and media. The messaging part sets up and tears down\ncalls. The media part passes the audio.\n\nI'd imagine they're doing the same.\n\n~~~\ndkhenry\nbut typically you use something that can have at least some intelegent\nbehaviour like RTP not UDP. Why did they choose that when literally every\nother pure VoIP service uses RTP ?\n\n~~~\nmoxie\nWe use RTP (actually SRTP and ZRTP), but the transport is still UDP.\n\n------\njpollock\nThe next problem will be when they get to having large numbers of servers in a\nregion.\n\nThen two problems will manifest themselves.\n\n1) The client will take long enough to work through the list of servers that\nthe wrong server is chosen simply because the connection is initiated first.\n\n2) This design has all servers seeing all calls. The load represented by all\nthe TCP connections hitting all of the servers will consume more and more of a\nserver.\n\nNeither is a problem you can solve by adding more servers. In fact, they are\nmade worse by adding servers!\n\nHowever, if you're charging per call, that's what they call a \"good problem to\nhave\".\n\nNifty solution to the problem though.\n\n~~~\nmoxie\nAgreed. We haven't run into this yet (and aren't charging at all, this is an\nOSS project), but I think that would be the point where you have to do one of\ntwo things:\n\n1) Architect your DNS response to include a small sample of the total result\nset for the region, where the sample includes at least one switch from each\nmicro-region.\n\n2) Break down and introduce load balancers, so that there's on load balancer\nper micro-region, which fronts all of the switches within that micro-region.\n\nFortunately an individual switch doesn't really do much (just shovel packets\naround), so the number of simultaneous calls a switch can handle is high\nenough that redundancy is more about availability than load.\n\n~~~\nJshWright\nI don't see how the license the software is released under is related to how\nmuch you charge to use the service...?\n\n~~~\nmoxie\nFair enough, I should have been more specific.\n\nI was trying to imply that this is not a for-profit project, but you're\ncorrect, that's not what a software license communicates.\n\n------\ngz5\nThe server architecture is nice but my favorite part is the simple signaling\nprotocol, as opposed to SIP or any other overly complex (for this use case)\ntelephony signaling protocol. Nice work.\n\n------\nandrewcooke\ni'm confused (which is not too surprising as i am no expert on this). why\ncan't they hole-punch through nats? then they would avoid the extra bounce-\nthrough-server latency and would hugely reduce the load on servers. i thought\nthat was how skype worked, for example.\n\n(i realise this doesn't stop their \"fastest first\" idea being useful - i got\nkind of sidetracked by the explanation of how servers are used near the start\nof the post).\n\n[ah, ok. thanks for the explanation.]\n\n~~~\nmoxie\nYour NAT traversal strategy is limited by the type of NAT being employed.\nTraditionally, the worst case scenario for NAT traversal is \"symmetric NAT.\"\n\nSymmetric NAT means that each tuple of (source_ip, source_port,\ndestination_ip, _destination_port) gets its own unique (external_ip,\nexternal_port) tuple. This is bad because it means that STUN is ineffective:\nyour STUN server will see a different external port than what your actual\ndestination would see.\n\nMobile data networks are actually _worse_ than symmetric NAT. Not only will\nyour external port change based on your target, but your external IP likely\nwill as well.\n\nThis makes NAT traversal, AFAIK, basically impossible.\n\n~~~\nvy8vWJlco\nAnd there's no real reason to do it either given the availability of global\nIPv6 addresses and any of the free tunnel brokers/teredo/etc, other than the\nsimple lack of adoption/momentum. Most ISPs will need a push, but from an\ninfrastructure perspective it just boils down to a new gateway router or a\nfirmware upgrade. It doesn't even need replacing the end-user equipment if\nISPs simply set up a tunnel server for their own customers as a transitional\nmeasure.\n\n------\nmtrimpe\nSo it's basically a very pragmatic tradeoff for getting 80% of the value of\ngeo-based DNS with only 20% of the effort.\n\nNice work ...\n\n"}
{"text": "\nUnited will offer up to $10,000 to bumped passengers - smaili\nhttp://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-united-airlines-dragged-passenger-bumping-changes-0427-biz-20170426-story.html\n======\nmariuolo\nKeyword being \"up to\".\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nCo-founder or no co-founder? - sum_itsin\nhttp://www.roundbreak.com/2012/06/05/co-founder-or-no-co-founder/\n\n======\npedalpete\nCompletely agree, but I think PG assumes that anybody who is smart/good enough\nto get into YC is going to have a solid co-founder.\n\nI wonder how many YC companies have failed due to a co-founder break-up.\n\nOutside of YC, I hear a co-founder break up is one of the top reasons a\ncompany fails.\n\n~~~\nsum_itsin\nThat's true. But I am somewhat skeptical about the fact that a smart person\nnecessarily is the one with good networking skills or the one capable of\nforging sound relationships. There are times when a truly smart person, either\ndue to his own eccentricity or the environment, doesn't get to have a chance\nof having a good co-founder unless he relocates himself which is hardly\npossible in many cases.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nPandoc Markdown and ReST Compared (2013) - hidden-markov\nhttp://www.unexpected-vortices.com/doc-notes/markdown-and-rest-compared.html\n======\negh\nThe really nice thing about ReST is that it has provided generic syntax for\nextensions, one for inline text: :foo:`hello world` and for blocks:\n\n.. extension:: hello world\n\nIn markdown, on the other hand, you have multiple, incompatible versions which\nhave entirely different syntax because there is no generic extension\nmechanism.\n\nReST feels more well thought-out, generally.\n\nThat said, I've pretty much given up advocating it, because markdown seems to\nhave won and has so much more tool support.\n\n~~~\nBruceM\nI like ReST as well. With Sphinx, it is great for producing documentation. A\nproject that I work with has converted hundreds of pages of books of technical\ndocumentation over to Sphinx and a custom Sphinx extension.\n\n~~~\nfprintf\nI like ReST as well.\n\nIt's more powerful and looks much cleaner\n\n// e.g. how do you write footnotes in markdown? And how do you do this in\nmarkdown?\n\n \n \n +------------+------------+-----------+\n | Header 1 | Header 2 | Header 3 |\n +============+============+===========+\n | body row 1 | column 2 | column 3 |\n +------------+------------+-----------+\n | body row 2 | Cells may span columns.|\n +------------+------------+-----------+\n | body row 3 | Cells may | - Cells |\n +------------+ span rows. | - contain |\n | body row 4 | | - blocks. |\n +------------+------------+-----------+\n\n~~~\nmercurial\nSince basic Markdown is so basic, multiple incompatible flavours of Markdown\nhave cropped up, including Pandoc-Markdown, which can do footnotes.\n\n------\nbiscarch\nPandoc is actually a really powerful tool for converting between different\nformats. As an example, I recently wrote a book using Markdown (Pandoc's\nversion) and was easily able to export .html, .pdf and .epub from my markdown\nfiles. The addition of footnotes and built-in syntax highlighting (with\noptional line numbers, etc) was also very useful.\n\nPandoc can be as simple as `pandoc input.md output.pdf` but can also handle\nthings like a Table of Contents, different highlighting styles, latex engines\nand fonts:\n\n \n \n pandoc --toc --variable version=0.0.1 -N --highlight-style=tango --latex-engine=xelatex --variable mainfont=Helvetica --variable monofont=\"Meslo LG L DZ\" --chapters $(ls -d -1 `pwd`/_input/*.*) -o _output/book.pdf\n \n\nI tend to set the more complicated command as a build file or alias and I've\nbeen considering using local markdown files and then using pandoc to convert\nthem to .html for my WordPress-based blog.\n\n------\nfrou_dh\nThe Markdown ecosystem reminds me of shell scripts in a bad way. There are a\nbunch of subtly and not so subtly different dialects and environments out\nthere, and not many people have a strong awareness of these while writing, so\nif something seems okay \"on my computer\" or in Markdown's case \"on my preview\"\nthen off it goes.\n\n------\nteleclimber\nAm I the only one who feels like they were teleported back to the early 1990s\nupon seeing these text files with code intermingled everywhere?\n\nI am not bashing markdown and friends, as I understand there is a use for\nthese tools in some cases, but I am surprised they are so widely embraced and\nloved.\n\nTo me they just evoke the days of typing an essay on dad's 386 with Word\nPerfect 5.1 installed, and having to hit \"reveal codes\" to figure out what is\ngoing on. MS Word won against WP when they completely did away with these\ncodes.[1]\n\nNow it's 2014 and we're loving building tables by hand-crafting ASCII art.\n\nAm I the only who thinks we can do better?\n\n[1]\n[http://www.theoligarch.com/microsoft_vs_apple_history.htm](http://www.theoligarch.com/microsoft_vs_apple_history.htm)\n\n~~~\ngkya\nMost the tools we have for WYSIWYG document creation lacks _determinism_ and\n_portability_. For the latter, one could argue that there are open formats,\nbut still, there should be a program that can interpret the format; whereas\nwith plain text, such a need is void, as it is possible to view the document\non any decent system. For the former, the argument might be that the modern\nword processors provide the facilities to deterministically lay out a document\nthrough the user interfaces they sport, but then because the formats they save\nare either are endemic to themselves or badly supported in other software*\nthis feature is not of much use.\n\nI can open a Markdown/ReST/Textile/... file with any text editor, including\nNotepad, Vim, Emacs etc., and also view it through _more_ or _less_ programs,\nor just _cat_ them. I can pass them through _head_ or _tail_ ; search them\nwith common utilities and even edit them with some others. I am not bound to\nany programs in order to edit my program. If, on a computer I have to use,\nthere is no Word, or Writer or Pages, I can still edit/read the document. I\ncan read it online, via a browser. I can use programs that are decades old,\nand I also will be able to read the file decades later. When I send the file\nto someone else, I can be sure that they will be able to read it. Any usable\noperating system has a text editor bundled. This level of portability is just\na dream for WYSIWYG editors. For these advantaged, I happily trade editing\nconvenience off.\n\n* Last summer, my cousins needed to use my computer for editing a _docx_ document that was important for their undergraduate education. I was running Ubuntu OS at the time, so I told them to use the LibreOffice's word processor. The experience was bad; the document did not render properly, editing was problematic. This is the only case I can provide as an example to support my argument, as it has been multiple years since I used a word processor program.\n\n~~~\nteleclimber\nI agree with what you said. I understand the advantages of markdown and why it\nis adopted (particularly in dev environments).\n\nBut you seem to agree with me that the markdown editing experience leaves a\nlittle to be desired (\"...I happily trade editing convenience off\").\n\nWhat I don't get is why that editing experience doesn't annoy people more.\nThere are tons of markdown-powered blogging platforms, editors, commenting\nforms coming out every day, but you almost never see projects that try to\nsolve the original problem.\n\n~~~\ngkya\nDesirability of the editing experience is a function of the kind of editing\none does: I mostly write text-heavy stuff, blog posts, README's and similar\nstuff. For these stuff, I am quite happy with markdown, vim and the general\nworkflow of mine around these tools; and I like that workflow. I do not need a\npiece of text to be red, or be centred, or wrapped around an image. Still, me\nand alike are the minority; _normal_ people want these kinds of stuff.\n\nFor instance, I've deployed (!) a couple WordPress blogs and a PhpBB forum for\na friend (yes, I'd touch none of these for my projects). When it was time to\ntest-post in the forum, I started explaining him the markup for PhpBB. His\nreaction was this: \"But in vBulletin, there is a text editor. I think I'll pay\nthem $400 for that.\" He wants to centre the text, and emphasise phrases via\ncolouring them red. Because he can. He is a normal person.\n\nWhile I like my workflow, with markdown, vim, and a static site generator; I\ndo not find markdown and alike useful for any major inscription, e.g. papers\nand books and alike. I'd rather use a suitable tool that takes away the burden\nof manually writing the markup, and allow me to focus on content for such\nwork. iA Writer makes me _horny_ , but unfortunately I do not own a Mac. I\nadmit that I'd go nuts should I need to write a book in, say, LaTeX (or\nhowever it is spelled). Yet, the problem of portability of files is a superior\nproblem than lack of convenience while editing. If I write my book with iA,\nand if it goes next year, what'll I do?\n\n~~~\nteleclimber\nThank-you for the thoughtful response.\n\nYes, clearly the markdown thing is natural for developers. After all devs\nspend all their time in cryptic text files that get transformed into something\nmore useful and beautiful That's their (our) thing.\n\nAnd since developers are the ones who create forum software, blogging\nplatforms, one can only expect that their personal preferences would bleed\nover into these projects.\n\nBut it's unfortunate because in the meantime we're not really advancing the\nart of editing content, which is something the \"normals\" would appreciate.\n(And I think even a number of developer-types would appreciate writing content\nwithout markdown if you gave them something that actually worked and worked\nwith static site generators.)\n\nRegarding IA, I don't have it but it says that it saves files as plain text?\n\n~~~\nbowerbird\nlet me try again.\n\nif you have _specifics_ on \"the art of editing content\", and the interface you\nwant, i would like to hear them...\n\n-bowerbird\n\n------\nspecialist\nThose ReST examples reminds me of the ASCII docs I'd write for my shareware\nsoftware. Fairly typical for the time.\n\nNot so different from the IEFT Document Conventions. [http://www.rfc-\neditor.org/rfc/rfc3.txt](http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3.txt)\n\nOr the RFC guidelines. [https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc-style-guide/rfc-\nstyle](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc-style-guide/rfc-style)\n\nI wrote a markdown renderer for my web dev stack. And I've been \"cross\ncompiling\" to markdown, screen scrapping docs and persisting it to markdown.\n\nNow I realize choosing markdown was rather arbitrary (personal preference,\nfamiliarity). Any document structure would suffice.\n\nNice comparison, thanks.\n\n------\nbeagle3\nMarkdown has always looked limited and incomplete to me.\n\nBut I can't decide between ReST(+Sphinx) and AsciiDoc(+?) - ReST seems to me\nlike it was better thought out, but somehow my AsciiDoc documents turn out\nlooking better, even though I like ReST more.\n\n~~~\nlambda\nNote that this article compares Pandoc Markdown to ReST; Pandoc adds a lot of\nfeatures that vanilla Markdown lacks.\n\nOf course, this is one of the big problems with Markdown; there are a bunch of\ndifferent implementations, each of which adds its own extensions. Actually, if\nyou take a look at the Pandoc homepage, you'll see that it implements 5\ndifferent Markdown flavors:\n[http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/)\n\n------\njoaomsa\nFor me Markdown wins just because I'm used to dealing with it daily on GitHub.\n\nSidenote: Wish Github Flavored Markdown would adopt some nice things from\nPandoc, like multiline tables.\n\n------\nballadeer\nPandoc and ReST are extensive, flexible, and simply complete. They are great.\nI have never understood the fetish behind Markdown and the cult-like fan-\nboyish approach to it. It was not needed. It would have been rather good to\nstandardised an existing markup (or a combination of them) than copy the\nexisting one and pretty much release it with a different name.\n\n~~~\nTuring_Machine\n\" I have never understood the fetish behind Markdown\"\n\nFor one, there are multiple (and good) implementations of Markdown in\nJavascript, so it's trivial to embed Markdown in web pages and do all the\nprocessing client-side -> faster and better user experience + much lower\nserver load.\n\nPandoc a) only runs locally/server-side and b) requires a 200 MB Haskell\ninstall before it will work.\n\n------\nnsomaru\nAlways wondered how Pandoc MD, ReST compare when my document type is slightly\nmore complex, for example: a question and answer session?\n\nI ended up entering notes from such sessions into handwritten XML, which I am\nreconsidering. What is a good format to store one's notes? I am transcribing\nfrom handwritten text.\n\n------\nbowerbird\ni am in the process of releasing \"zen markup language\".\n\nit's \"lighter\" than all the other light-markup languages.\n\nit's more _powerful_ than the others, including asciidoc.\n\nit's also far more agile, and much easier to understand.\n\nand i won't allow it to be fragmented, like markdown is.\n\ni've coded converters in javascript and other languages.\n\nthe javascript minimizes well for inclusion in web-pages.\n\ni have cross-plat apps, and a web-app converter with a.p.i.\n\noutput formats include .html, .epub, .mobi, .pdf, and more.\n\nif there's anything i haven't thought of, do please tell me.\n\nyou can reach me at my e-mail address given in my profile.\n\n-bowerbird\n\n~~~\nprairiedock\nI Looked at the site for z.m.l\n([http://www.z-m-l.com/](http://www.z-m-l.com/)). It doesn't seem to do math,\nso it's a nonstarter.\n\nBTW, Pandoc (which does do LaTeX math) really needs no improvement, only more\nwidespread implementation (e.g., an online site, and/or a chrome extension\ncoded in javascript.) I suppose its being written in Haskell has been an\nimpediment.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nShow HN: JsonBatch Playground \u2013 A site to play with JsonBatch Engine - rey5137\nhttps://jsonbatch-playground.herokuapp.com/sample1\n======\nrey5137\nHi. I'm the author of JsonBatch library - an Engine to run batch request with\nJSON based REST APIs. I have setup a small site so you can test out\nJsonBatch's feature.\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nKickStarting a Revolution - dajbelshaw\nhttp://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/08/16/kickstarting-a-revolution/\n\n======\ncomputer\nI know that it's superficial, but I have an extremely hard time taking a blog\npost interspersed with large meme pictures seriously. I think you should only\nuse them if your target audience is teens, and when you're near their age as\nwell, trying to write something \"popular\". Definitely not when attempting to\nwrite a serious post.\n\nNote that this is the same blog that recently started a post[0] with:\n\n \n \n TL;DR? Why not just go watch another five second video of a kitten \n with its head in a toilet roll, or a 140 character description \n of a meal your friend just stuffed in their mouth. \u201cnom nom\u201d. \n This blog post is not for you.\n \n\nwhich makes this seem quite ironic.\n\n[0]: [http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-\nco...](http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/)\n\n~~~\npearjuice\nThese are not \"meme pictures\" but rather image macros[0].\n\n[0]:\n[https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_macro](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_macro)\n\n~~~\nglomph\nThey are both.\n\n------\nthisiswrong\nGreat article, just one major inaccuracy concerning the Pirate Party:\n\n> they have a silly name and their focus seems to be solely on \u2018sharing\n> culture\u2019 at the expense of everything else.\n\nThen you go on to say:\n\n> What we need in this country is a protest party that campaigns on the issues\n> of Internet privacy, censorship, copyright/patent reform and computer misuse\n> laws.\n\nThe Pirate Party campaigns precisely on these issues. For those that think the\nPirate Party is just focused on protesting against unfair monopolies, please\nlook up their actual ideas.\n\nA good illustration is given on Rick Falkvinge's blog:\n\n[http://falkvinge.net/files/2012/manual/PirateWheel-2012-11-1...](http://falkvinge.net/files/2012/manual/PirateWheel-2012-11-10.pdf)\n\n~~~\nMarcScott\nThanks. I'll have a think about this and then edit the article to give a\nfairer representation to the Pirate Party.\n\n~~~\ncabalamat\nThe Pirate Party's manifesto\n([https://www.pirateparty.org.uk/media/uploads/Manifesto2012.p...](https://www.pirateparty.org.uk/media/uploads/Manifesto2012.pdf))\nspecifically addresses privacy. On p.25 it says:\n\n _We feel that citizens ' right to private and confidential communication is\nvital, but at present it is not respected. We will forbid third parties from\nintercepting or monitoring communication traffic (i.e. telephone calls, post,\nInternet traffic, defend the right of citizens to expose emails) and require\nspecific warrants to be issued by a court before the police are allowed to\nmonitor communications traffic._\n\n------\nmodernerd\nWhy not raise \u00a3338,568 for the Open Rights Group\n([http://www.openrightsgroup.org/](http://www.openrightsgroup.org/)) instead?\nThey're a British group who actively campaign and defend privacy, freedom of\nexpression, and innovation. They could do with the financial support,\ntechnical help, legal aid, and public awareness.\n\nPutting your time and money behind groups like ORG\n([http://www.openrightsgroup.org/](http://www.openrightsgroup.org/)), the EFF\n([https://www.eff.org/](https://www.eff.org/)), and Privacy International\n([https://www.privacyinternational.org/](https://www.privacyinternational.org/))\nfeels more productive to me than playing an expensive system for a one-off\npolitical statement. We need to support and create sustainable groups with a\nvested interest in putting pressure on the policy makers in power. Groups who\nare well-established, who share your views, and who have a head start.\n\nExpressing your distaste for existing parties is valuable. But it is easily\nignored, especially if you do not intend to fight for seats.\n\nIf the EFF and ORG grew as big, influential, and sustainable as other pressure\ngroups such as the National Rifle Association, then privacy and technology\nmatters could start to influence policy makers pandering for votes.\n\nIf you're reading this from the UK, go ahead and join ORG today:\n[https://www.openrightsgroup.org/join/](https://www.openrightsgroup.org/join/)\nThey need more members. \u00a35 a month can make a big difference to them.\n\nYou should donate to the EFF while you're at it:\n[https://supporters.eff.org/donate](https://supporters.eff.org/donate)\n\n~~~\ncabalamat\n> Putting your time and money behind groups like ORG\n> ([http://www.openrightsgroup.org/](http://www.openrightsgroup.org/)), the\n> EFF ([https://www.eff.org/](https://www.eff.org/)), and Privacy\n> International\n> ([https://www.privacyinternational.org/](https://www.privacyinternational.org/))\n> feels more productive to me than playing an expensive system for a one-off\n> political statement.\n\nI agree that a one-off campaign in the 2015 general election is unlikely to\nbear much fruit. However, having said that, the Pirate Party's strategy of\ntackling these problems by being a political party and fighting elections _is_\nalready bearing fruit.\n\nFor example, one reason the European Parliament decided not to go ahead with\nACTA is that they fear it would give a major impetus to the Pirates, who the\noldparties would rather not see getting bigger in the 2014 European election.\n\nThere is no reason, of course, why digital rights activists cannot do both --\npolitical parties and campaigning organisations -- together.\n\n------\nthenomad\nI care about this issue quite a lot, and the central idea - Kickstarting a new\nparty - is a good one.\n\nHaving said that, there are an enormous number of problems with this\nsuggestion.\n\n _\" There should be no need for local campaigning. I\u2019ve never had a politician\nknock on my door to discuss who I\u2019d vote for, but I have had plenty of\nleaflets and fliers put though my letterbox and they end up straight in the\nrecycling. \"_\n\nGood - because everyone else thinks the same as the OP, right? If we promote\non Twitter and YouTube, everyone who matters will learn about the party?\n\nNot so much. A project like this is going to need a marketing budget, and a\nbig one - as well as volunteers on the ground, whether the OP likes it or not.\n\nMost people don't even have a Twitter account. Most people don't follow\nYouTube particularly closely.\n\nAnd as many, many marketing professionals over the years have noticed, you\nneed to tell people about your product a lot more than once for them to buy\ninto it.\n\n _\" There are 650 constituencies in the United Kingdom.\"_\n\nAnd for each of these, you're going to need a candidate. That's 650 people you\nneed to find, who can appear credible to the media (so, they'll need to be\nskilled public speakers who can handle a debating environment as well as a\nmedia interview focused on soundbites), who don't have any skeletons in their\ncloset or non-standard lifestyle choices that the other parties can use to\ndiscredit the entire organisation (\"GEEK WHO WANTS TO BE PM IN BISEXUAL ORGY\nSHOCKER!\"), and who are willing to give up their current careers should they\nwin.\n\nOne of the biggest problems the mainstream parties have is finding qualified\ncandidates - and they've got 100+ years of experience and network to do so.\nFor an upstart party like this, it's going to be a far, far bigger problem\nthan finding the money.\n\nNone of which means that this idea should just be disregarded, but it\ndefinitely needs more consideration.\n\n~~~\ndoctorfoo\n> That's 650 people you need to find, who can appear credible to the media\n\nThey don't need this; I think the idea is purely protest, with no intention of\nthe person actually getting voted in.\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nAs long as the candidates are not batshit crazy some controversy might\nactually be a benefit in getting PR, as long as everyone knows to answer\neverything with \"You know as well as we do that we don't stand a chance of\ngetting elected and anyone trying to make a point out of that are just trying\nto score points; the point of this campaign is to give people an opportunity\nto show their displeasure with the big parties stance on privacy; [launch into\ninfo about the point]\"\n\n~~~\nAndyPPUK\nI would invite readers to consider just how non-trivial the following task is:\n\nHere is a list of 650 people that are almost as geographically diversely\nlocated as it is possible to be while remaining in the UK. Demonstrate that\nnone of them are \"batshit crazy\".\n\n------\nFrojoS\nI followed the, quite successful, foundation and raise of the Pirate Party of\nGermany very closely. Many of my friends and follow activists from our privacy\nmovement, AK Vorrat, became members. I can not recall, money ever having been\na major problem. This was certainly true for AK Vorrat* and I think it was\ntrue for the PP as well.\n\nSure, you would always like to have more money, but it never stops you from\ndoing sensible moves. On top of that, not having boatloads of money makes you\nlook authentic and fresh. When you campaign, you spend so much of your own\ntime and energy, that you happily spend some of your money as well. The listed\ncosts in this article are peanuts for any group of people that can afford to\nstart and propel a political movement. You certainly don't need Internet\ncrowdfunding for that though it might be a good idea for financing an election\ncampaign. In my experience, there are many, many people who want to support\nyour politics but don't think they have the time. Those people are very\nwilling to support you financially with what ever amount they can easily\nafford.\n\nSo, at least in Germany, starting a political movement is not limited by\nmoney.\n\nPS: There was actually some crowdfunding. The company Spreadshirt included\ndonatations for every T-Shirt with the popular Stasi 2.0 logo.\n[http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi_2.0](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi_2.0)\nAbout 11,000 Euros were raised very quickly and I remember the many discussion\non \"How shall we spend all this money.\"\n\n~~~\nM2Ys4U\nPolitical parties in Germany receive state funding, which doesn't happen in\nthe UK.\n\n~~~\nFrojoS\nFair point. But again, even if you are not a party, your political movement\nwill have to overcome a lot of major problems. I wouldn't count money as one\nof them.\n\n------\nmozboz\nCan someone enlighten me as to how this achieves anything, other than a count\nof people who abstained?\n\nIf you want to reform something, it seems like the required action is to\nreform it. Saying on record 'i want reform', or 'i don't like the old system'\ndoes not achieve anything, and in fact wastes everyones' time. The hard part:\nworking out reform and enactioning it, still needs to be done.\n\nAm I missing something?\n\n~~~\nraesene2\nI think that what this could achieve is stating the importance of the issues\nto the main political parties. Most \"mainstream\" political parties that I've\nseen will change their positions on things if they think it will get them more\nvotes.\n\nSo what would this achieve. Well having a \"privacy reform\" party candidate on\nall the ballots would draw attention to the problem, in that voters would see\nthe name and potentially hear about the platform. Also getting on the ballots\nwould be likely to draw some mainstream media attention (heck the Monster\nraving loony party gets attention in the UK when it's on the ballot at by-\nelections)\n\nThen if the party actually gets a decent number of votes, it may persuade\nmainstream parties to change their positions. My feeling is that at the moment\nnone of them think it's that important a topic, so aren't formulating policies\non the topic.\n\nPersonally I think it's a good idea to try and do something about this now, as\nonce the idea that PRISM etc are fine and accepted gets embedded into culture,\nthe next steps are likely to follow (e.g. what the US seems to be seeing with\nDEA and other law enforcement areas getting access to data). How long would it\nbe before your local police are trawling your smartphone GPS data to see if\nyou were speeding...)\n\n~~~\nrmc\n_Most \"mainstream\" political parties that I've seen will change their\npositions on things if they think it will get them more votes._\n\nYep, this has happened before. 25 years ago the Conservative party brought in\na law banning the \"promotion of homosexuality in schools\", now they are\nlegalising same sex marriage.\n\n------\nspindritf\nI'm not a Brit but how can a country be run by corporations if the government\nis telling them what to do? Whether through judicial orders on what to filter,\nlegislation on how to filter even more, and extraditions at the request of US\nfederal _government_.\n\nThere is a legitimate concern about regulatory capture, about large entities\nhaving an unfair advantage... However, whenever I see the whole \"OMG\nCORPORATOCRACY\" shtick nowadays I just think that the author has seen one too\nmany scifi movie from the 80s about how we will be ruled by some Japanese Omni\nMegaCorp and it has forever tainted his world view.\n\nAnd then there's the signalling. UKIP is, of course, racist. The Pirate Party\nhas a silly name. \"What would my peers and colleagues think? We need a party\nthat would make me, a constituent, look good to my friends!\"\n\nOn the other hand, moral preening as a primary political concern surely is a\nfirst world thing. So that's a good illustration.\n\nNot to mention that this article is yet another political manifesto with\ntenuous connection to technology at best.\n\n~~~\nlukifer\nThe relationship between corporations and governments can be seen as roughly\nanalagous to that of the King and the Church 400 years ago: both colluding and\ncompeting for power.\n\n------\nchestnut-tree\nI think the biggest problem is that single-issue parties never gain widespread\nsupport. I may be interested in internet privacy and technology issues but I\nmight also be interested in education, transport, housing, the economy and\nmany other issues. If these subjects are secondary (or presented as secondary)\nto your party's main focus, how can you ever gain broad support among the\nelectorate? Unless the real goal of starting a party is to make the main\npolitical parties sit up and take notice of the issues you're campaigning for.\n\nThe alternative to creating a party is to create a campaigning body or\norganisation - which of course may struggle to get noticed.\n\nRaising and highlighting important public issues, questioning official claims\nis also the role of the press, but we can never expect that from the utterly\nabysmal UK press.\n\n~~~\nvidarh\n> Unless the real goal of starting a party is to make the main political\n> parties sit up and take notice of the issues you're campaigning for.\n\nThat's exactly what this blog post argued for.\n\nConsider that in 2010 there were 40+ seats where taking less than 1000 votes\nwould have been enough to spoil the incumbent party's chance at winning the\nseat.\n\n------\npcx66\nI am from India, and our parties do not give a shit for the ideals engraved in\nour constitution. Like the ones in most(all?) other countries, they have\ntransformed from leveraging a shitty status quo to enforcing a shittier status\nquo.\n\nBack to your post. What I understand is, you want to show to the existing\nparties that a sizable population wants something the parties are not\noffering, and hope that they will notice. And you yourself cannot support any\nof the existing parties because you disagree with several of their policies.\nWon't your proposed party face a similar problem? It probably will be less of\na problem because the degree of disagreement on issues won't be so big,\nbecause the kind of people you will gather think similarly of most issues,\nhave a similar (modern, liberal?) morality.\n\nBut I think you have to relay the implicit message of your post explicitly.\nLETS STOP BEING FUCKING LAZY.\n\n------\nwikiburner\n_> Kickstarter won\u2019t allow crowd-funding of political parties from what I can\ngather.\n\nKickstarter cannot be used to raise money for causes, whether it\u2019s the Red\nCross or a scholarship, or for \u201cfund my life\u201d projects, like tuition or bills.\n\nIndiegogo has no problem with it though._\n\nDoes anyone know why that's the case? Why would Kickstarter be so restrictive?\n\nKickstarter also requires each project team to sign up for their own Amazon\npayments account. Why wouldn't Kickstarter just collect the money and then\nwire it / cut a check to the funding recipient?\n\nAlso, why does Indiegogo charge upfront while Kickstarter waits until the\ncampaign is successful.\n\nThe whole crowdfunding space seems to operate pretty illogically. Are there\nlegal complexities that aren't apparent to an outsider that force their hand?\n\n~~~\nmjburgess\nI think it's more a \"who we want to be\" kinda thing. Kickstarter doesn't want\nits brand associated with any potentially controversial/etc. topics.\n\n~~~\nwikiburner\nThat's true, some of the Indiegogo campaigns I've seen do sort of have an\n\"off-brand\" feel to them.\n\nStill, I wonder why Kickstarter has each project set up their own Amazon\nPayments account and not collect the money themselves? Could it be a legal or\ntax reason? And how do they extract their 5% if the payment is processed with\nthe campaign owner's Amazon account?\n\n------\nsklivvz1971\nThis is such a bad idea.\n\n(a) null voting is already a \"none of the above\" option\n\n(b) they ask to give money to do... what exactly? Why give this guy 300k\u00a3 to\nbasically waste? Give it to charity FFS.\n\n~~~\nsoult\nDoes null voting leave the seats in parliament empty? Or do the other parties\njust get a bigger share?\n\n~~~\nsklivvz1971\nLeaving empty seats is much worse than null voting. It doesn't accomplish\nanything more, as in either case your vote doesn't go to a real, voting\npolitician. It surely wastes more money as the corresponding parliamentary\nstipends are given to - I guess - the party for _doing nothing_. Surely doing\nnothing has a much better price point at \"free\".\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nWhy do think they'd do nothing? Do you think Sinn Fein does \"nothing\" with the\nmoney it receives for it's Westminster MP's?\n\nIt's certainly possible for it to be a total waste, but in Sinn Fein's case,\nfor example, whether or not you agree with their goals, it is a very clear\nprincipled stand: They don't believe Northern Ireland is rightfully part of\nthe UK, nor that the queen is their rightful head of state, so they can't in\ngood conscience give an oath of loyalty to the queen.\n\nVoters who vote for them know full well that this will the outcome, yet they\nstill vote for them because it accomplishes something to these voters: It\n(now) gives funds to Sinn Fein _and_ it keeps sending a signal that a\nsubstantial number of people in these constituencies see British rule as\nunjust.\n\nSurely there can be any number of other causes where the signal effect can be\npreferred by voters who otherwise don't see sufficient difference between the\nmajor parties to believe it makes a difference which one of them gets their\npolicy through.\n\nThe reality anyway is that in the vast majority of votes in the Commons, the\nsmall parties votes have no bearing on the outcome at all because the first\npast the post system means the big parties has such a disproportionate portion\nof the seats, so most votes for parties outside the big three are still\ntotally \"wasted\" by similar logic.\n\n------\nvixen99\n\"There\u2019s a single protest party, the UK Independence Party, but UKIP and I\ndon\u2019t really see eye-to-eye, due to the fact that I am married to a\nnaturalised British citizen and together we have three mixed-race children.\".\n\nRather than cast an unpleasant slur on UKIP (what nasty visions your comment\nconjures up) it would be helpful were you to identify the perceived problem.\nAs far as I am aware, UKIP are not planning to discriminate against my own UK\nnaturalized marriage partner or my child.\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nUKIP may not \"plan to\", but there's been plenty of unpleasant connections\nbetween people involve in UKIP and organizations like BNP and EDL, and with\nEDL endorsing UKIP candidates for upcoming local elections etc.\n\nEnough that as a non-UK citizen with a UK born (and hence citizen) mixed race\nson, the thought of UKIP getting anywhere near power would make me consider\nleaving the country.\n\n------\nsvnee\nWhy not start with a smaller country like Luxembourg. We are currently running\nin elections and want to make of Luxembourg a privacy save heaven. We have a\npretty good chance of making it into parliament and every support helps!\n\nLook we even made a video ;)\n[https://donate.piraten.lu/](https://donate.piraten.lu/)\n\n------\nvehementi\nI'd love to see an idea like this flourish.\n\n------\ncabalamat\nIt's much, much, more important for a party that cares about digital rights to\nfight the 2014 European election than the 2015 general election, for two\nreasons:\n\n1\\. the Euro election is fought using PR, meaning it's possible to actually\nwin seats\n\n2\\. a lot of the relevant issues are decided at Brussels as much as at\nWestminster.\n\n------\nDanBC\nI would be very interested to see people running the numbers on past\nelections, and seeing what the results would have been under different voting\nsystems.\n\nThe UK has a weird 'first-past-the-post' system, and it'd be neat to see what\nthe different results would have been.\n\n~~~\nvidarh\nThe UK's \"weird\" first-past-the-post system is very close to the US and French\nsystems, and many others.\n\nUnfortunately re-running data on past elections would be wildly misleading, as\npeople vote with the knowledge of which parties stand a chance in their seat,\nand hence a lot of votes that might have gone for smaller parties in a more\nproportional system goes to one of the biggest parties.\n\nBut you might look to the EU Parliament elections for a demonstration of how\ndifferent people here _might_ vote (with the caveat that the issues are\ndifferent, and so people might certainly vote differently) with a proportional\nsystem:\n\n[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2009_\\(United_Kingdom\\))\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nMona Lisa heist of 1911 concealed a perfect\u2014and far more lucrative\u2014crime - sublemonic\nhttp://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/05/mona-lisa-excerpt200905?printable=true¤tPage=all\n\n======\nmattm\nWow, what a great story!\n\nI'm surprised the thief only served seven months in jail. I can't imagine it\nbeing that lenient today.\n\n~~~\nreitzensteinm\nI was half expecting some crazy penalty like life imprisonment or death. Made\nme realise how out of touch I am with early 19th century Europe!\n\n~~~\ngraywh\n20th century\n\n~~~\nreitzensteinm\nOK that's embarrassing!\n\n------\naresant\nJust spent 10 mins reading, good story but abridged version:\n\n\\- An Italian Louvre worker, Vincenzo Perugia, stole the Mona Lisa, claiming\nhis motivation was that the French had stolen works from Italy.\n\n\\- Years later he attempted to give it back but claim a reward. He changed his\nstory a few times about how he stole it.\n\n\\- The revelation of the larger crime was that a slick con-man claimed he\nhelped Vincenzo steal the work for the purpose of selling credible fakes to a\nhandful of American millionaires since it was widely reported that the\noriginal was stolen.\n\n~~~\nknown\n Premise: Write funny stories with random strangers... one sentence at a time. My Design Goals: 1. Be a true MVP - test the idea without wasting any time 2. Go from idea conception to deployment in 1 day (I nearly achieved that) 3. Try to develop something with some viral marketing potential 4. All content to be user generated 5. Moderation sessions should be fun 6. Try out heroku.com to see if it would be a good fit for another product 7. Do something silly and fun (I come from the enterprise software world) You can follow my thinking through the process at http://twitter.com/finishstart All feedback more than welcome. Especially in the areas of: 1. Conversion - I consider a conversion to be someone who adds some\nwell thought out content and who submits their email address to get a\ncopy of the story sent to them on completion 2. Viral Marketing approaches Cheers\n======\ndamoncali\nA few thoughts:\n\n1\\. You need a reason to keep people coming back - some sort of hook to keep\npeople interested. Off the top of my head:\n\n-private stories (restricted to a group)\n\n-solo stories (one sentence a day for one user)\n\n-stories limited to people with a certain birthday\n\n-graduation class stories\n\n-drama/english classes\n\n-let people upvote/downvote/move sentences\n\n-publish a blog of anything that turns out good\n\n-allow combination of random sentences from different stories into new stories\n\n2\\. The \"Anything Goes\" section could easily turn into porn/adult content.\nThat can make advertising revenue difficult and make it unusable by schools,\netc.\n\n3\\. If you get a lot of traffic, this blows up and becomes hard to manage. A\nstory could grow very rapidly if you're not careful. Although on the edge of\n\"premature optimization\" I would keep an eye ont his as you work.\n\nFun site. It will be interesting to see if you can take it from \"interesting\ncuriosity\" to \"something I check when I'm bored\".\n\n~~~\nfhub\nGreat feedback! Thanks.\n\n------\nzaidf\nDude I had the very idea =) Except mine was one word at a time. It came from\nan exercise we did in improv101.\n\nI think you can make the UI a lot tighter. Imagine just a WHITE screen with\nTHE story...constantly refreshing. Along with an inputbox at the top to add\nyour contribute to it. Perhaps integrate with twitter.\n\n~~~\nfhub\nThe UI does need some work but I probably won't invest too much effort until I\nwork out if the idea is viable.\n\nOne story is a bit hard for lots of people to concurrently work on\nunfortunately. Part of my strategy is to have short stories so that I can\nemail it to the contributors when it is completed (hopefully within a day or\ntwo). Then I'm hoping they will forward the funny story to their friends (with\na link of course).\n\n------\nresdirector\nGood work, esp idea-to-deployment in about a day. I found this to be pretty\naddictive. i.e. I started filling out stories rather than hammering HN, Google\nNews when I've got time to kill.\n\nSuggestion: email users once per week/fortnight with a partial story +\nembedded form so they can play via email, especially if they haven't played\nfor a while. Increase/decrease frequency of email sending depending on how\nthey respond to playing via email.\n\n~~~\nfhub\nThanks for your feedback. I'll have a ponder about your email idea. Ta.\n\nI think I'm up against a lot of tough competition in the time killing market\non the web :)\n\n------\nrevorad\nI had the exact same idea a long time ago. I just kept toying with it in my\nmind. It's so awesome to see someone actually make it.\n\nYou've made a very good first version. Just get lots of people to use it to\nwrite at least one line and then publish and popularise the finished stories\non social networks. You will get to see if the stories are actually any good\nand also might get ideas on improving the app itself.\n\n~~~\nfhub\nThanks. The idea is fun, but getting people back is tough. Let alone getting\nthem to share the link with their friends. I had fun building it and iterating\nit over the last few days.\n\nI'm going to give it a couple more days and if I don't see much traction I'll\nprobably let it pass away quietly.\n\n~~~\nrevorad\nI wonder if this is better suited as a Facebook or twitter \"game\", at least\nfor a start. For example, some friends dragged me into playing the name game\non facebook and although I hardly check Facebook, that thing made me go back\nquite a lot. Once you get a good base of users you could get them to an\nindependent site which is more usable and focussed.\n\n------\nnailer\nWhat does mvp mean in this context?\n\n~~~\nshrikant\nI had the same question, and\n The question is really good because very few people have experience dealing with fractions in non-decimal base, so it forces them to really work on the answer. It also a very quick way to separate \"hackers\" from hackers :)\n======\nejs\nI never understand these types of questions, is that really important to job\nfunction? Maybe ask them to do it in octal too? Or just use a random number as\nthe base, how about base 47? Will that weed out the slackers?\n\n~~~\nbkrausz\nI find that interviewers are more interested in the method than the\nanswer...if you just sit there and say \"I was never taught this\" you probably\nwon't get the job. On the other hand, if you stand up, go to the whiteboard,\nand start writing things down, while talking them through your train of though\n(\"Well I'm not positive how to do fractions in other bases, but this way makes\nsense to me\" and then proceed to work out the problem as best as you can) then\nyou show more motivation and enthusiasm.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nBoeing Fought Lion Air on Proposed Max Simulator Training Requirement - berkut\nhttps://aviationweek.com/air-transport/boeing-fought-lion-air-proposed-max-simulator-training-requirement\n======\nmcv\nBoeing was already plenty culpable for these disasters, but this underscores\njust how much they pressured they pressured their customers to avoid training\nthat could have mitigated the problems and prevented the crash, just to keep\nup the illusion that they wanted to present to the world: that it was\neffectively identical to the NG when it really wasn't.\n\n~~~\nrob74\nOn the other hand, Boeing was also under pressure from other customers\n([https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-airplane-\nsouthwest...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-airplane-\nsouthwest/u-s-lawmakers-question-boeings-1-mln-rebate-clause-for-\nsouthwest-737-max-orders-idUSKBN1X92D4)) who wanted to avoid simulator\ntraining for their pilots. Which doesn't excuse them of course, but I think\nit's important to see the whole picture...\n\n~~~\nCaptainZapp\nSorry, but: So what?\n\nIf you're not able to keep promises you shouldn't make them in the first\nplace. The buck stops with you, period.\n\nNo pilot training was often used as an argument. But I think the problem was\nactually much more severe.\n\nIf Boeing would have designed a completely new plane (which they should have)\nthey would have lost a decade to Airbus' offerings in their most important\nmarket.\n\nThat, in my opinion, was the real reason for that shoddy hack of a plane.\n\n~~~\nEntalpi\nSo Boeing was slow to react to the market forces at play and lost out to a\nfaster moving more adaptive competitor. When that happens in a market you\ntypically lose money and try to stage a comeback by reinventing yourself or in\nsome way try to work your way back. Boeing chose to rush and is now paying the\nprice for being a slow and complacent behemoth of a company at a market where\nothers are innovating and competing.\n\n~~~\nwu_187\nThis has nothing to do with markets and everything to do with ethics. It is\nnot ethical for a company to knowingly risk lives to rush out a new product.\nIn the airline industry, it is unheard of for this to happen. Everything is\ntriple redundant for a reason. Typically you would cut corners elsewhere that\nis not a risk for human lives. Boeing already tried that by outsourcing the\nconstruction of the 787 and it was riddled with failure. They should have\nlearned their lesson there.\n\n------\nameen\nIn a way, Boeing\u2019s plight underlines American work culture vs. European and\nother relaxed but stringent work cultures.\n\nAmerican businesses are constantly churning output with not much to show for\n(relative to effort vs results) as the employees are burned out, investors and\nC-suite demand more of the middle-management and they in-turn pressure\nengineering and sales teams, etc.\n\nThe results have spoken about which one works and which doesn\u2019t. Toxic work\nculture starts from the top.\n\n~~~\ndatenhorst\nI believe Harvard Business School and its ilk deserve a lot of blame for the\ninstilling of a profit-at-any-cost culture across the US.\n\n~~~\nneuronic\nI studied abroad in the US as a European and the first sentence the\nmicroeconomics professor blurts out: \"Greed is good.\"\n\nAt that point I wasn't as gobsmacked anymore because several days before some\n17 year old girl yelled in a 300 person biology lecture at the professor to\nstop telling lies about evolution (first week of college).\n\nBut \"greed is good\" struck me as an oddly American way of viewing the world.\nEurope isn't free of greedy people, by any means, but it's sort of not the\nfirst rule you learn in school.\n\n~~~\nmsiemens\nI guess it depends. I have a German engineering degree and took a business\nadministration course as a part of that. And in one of the first lectures our\nprofessor told us that _The formal goal of the company is to maximize profit_.\nWhich seems to be just a more formal way of expressing _Greed is good_. But\nthen again, this might be influenced by American business culture\u2026\n\n~~~\nneuronic\nAgreed, and I obviously suffer from some bias since I could not experience\ncollege in both countries.\n\nBut the microeconomics angle seemed more personal - as in attempting to\ndescribe interaction between people with some extrapolation to larger\nentities.\n\n------\ntoast0\nEven if Lion Air had done simulator training, it seems unlikely to have\nhelped, unless there was specifically material on MCAS or at least stabilizer\nrunaway by the electric trim system.\n\nOne airline demanding and getting simulator time doesn't help if the decision\nhas already been made to not inform pilots about MCAS. Boeing's flight rules\nmodel has always been around the pilot(s) having situational awareness and\nbeing in absolute control; the problem with MCAS is not what it does, or that\nit's needed to avoid stalling, the problem is that it was not known to pilots,\nthat it operates without any clear indication that it's operating, and that it\ncan only be disabled by disabling electric trim, and that manual trim is\nextremely difficult to impossible to use if the stabilizer is at full nose\ndown (there was an old 737 procedure for this, but it was removed some number\nof redesigns ago, it was reportedly not in the 737 NG manual)\n\n~~~\nwillyt\nHere is a video explaining how difficult the manual trim procedure is:\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoNOVlxJmow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoNOVlxJmow)\n\n~~~\ntzs\nNote that the video is about manual trim in extreme conditions.\n\nIf pilots knew about MCAS and that in the case of a runaway trim due to MCAS\nthey need to disable electrical trim and switch to manual trim early and keep\nit manual for the rest of the flight, they would not get into the conditions\nwhere it is hard to turn the manual trim wheels.\n\n~~~\nwillyt\nBut even if they had known about MCAS, I think I read somewhere that they had\n30 seconds to diagnose the problem before it put the trim in this\nconfiguration.\n\n------\njakobegger\nCan someone explain how Airplane Simulators for pilots work?\n\nDo simulators have the same hardware as real planes, or do they have a\nsoftware model of the airplane?\n\nIf you simulated a broken AoA sensor, would the simulated plane behave similar\nto the real plane? Would the MCAS system have the same bugs in the simulator\nas in the one in the real aircraft?\n\nCan you try new scenarios in a simulator, or can you just try scenarios that\nthe simulator was designed to run?\n\n~~~\nphugoid\n> Do simulators have the same hardware as real planes, or do they have a\n> software model of the airplane?\n\nIf you're looking at the highest fidelity level D simulators, the instruments\nand controls in the cockpit are either the same parts as the aircraft, or\nfunctionally identical (but cheaper).\n\n> If you simulated a broken AoA sensor, would the simulated plane behave\n> similar to the real plane? Would the MCAS system have the same bugs in the\n> simulator as in the one in the real aircraft?\n\nOne of the big costs in building a simulator is buying the data package from\nthe aircraft manufacturer, with the aero model and details of system\ninternals, things like electrical and hydraulic schematics. Sim makers build a\nsoftware model of these internals at a pretty low level. For the most part, if\nyou introduce a fault in some part of the system it will behave the right way\nas an emerging property, not because you're forcing the system to have the\nright outputs.\n\nSome software components from the aircraft get installed on the simulator with\nthe same hardware platform from the aircraft, others get run as executables on\nthe simulator's computers, and others get re-implemented from scratch (lots of\nFORTRAN and C).\n\nThat kind of detail comes into play when the instructors introduce multiple\nfailures at the same time - pilots have to take corrective actions to make the\nfaults go away or manage them - if you don't model the systems at a pretty low\nlevel you'll never high fidelity.\n\n> Can you try new scenarios in a simulator, or can you just try scenarios that\n> the simulator was designed to run?\n\nThere is a list of malfunctions available to the instructor, who runs the\nsession from the back of the \"cockpit\" on touch panels. For the most part,\nthese malfunctions cover failures that are anticipated by the aircraft\nmanufacturers, and the corrective actions / system behavior are well\nunderstood. Each fault is tested to make sure it works properly. You don't go\nand fail some random component in the system.\n\nWhen an important failure happens in the real aircraft, it might get added as\na training scenario to simulators already in operation.\n\n~~~\nNotCamelCase\n> You don't go and fail some random component in the system.\n\nI always wondered if they did that, something akin to fuzzing tests in SW.\nWouldn't it be useful to detect unexpected situations that'd be catastrophic?\nOr the benefits from it wouldn't outweigh the cost/time loss?\n\n~~~\nphugoid\nEven with a pretty good model, if you introduce new failures that were not\nanticipated/tested, there's a risk that the system will not behave as per the\naircraft. Now you're giving \"negative training\" to your pilots, maybe worse\nthan no training at all.\n\nAlso, imagine you're an airline with thousands of pilots and dozens of\ninstructors: you're running an airline and a school at the same time. You need\nto build a curriculum of training and testing that will standardize your\npilots. There's room for thinking outside the box but not too much.\n\n~~~\nNotCamelCase\nGood point, thanks for your insights!\n\n------\nhhas01\nJesus.\n\nPardon my French, but seeing that photo makes me fully appreciate two things:\n1. Just how incredibly low 737 sits to the ground (obviously a feature from\nback in the days when luggage was manually loaded), and 2. How _anyone_ would\nthink pushing those enormous engines forward like that could be any less\ndisruptive of its proven design than lengthening the undercarriage to give\nthem the clearance they so desperately need.\n\nDeath of a thousand cuts. Indeed. Hope the monster never flies again.\n\n~~~\namyjess\n> how incredibly low 737 sits to the ground (obviously a feature from back in\n> the days when luggage was manually loaded)\n\nPeople, not luggage. Specifically, the 737 was designed to cover short-haul\nroutes between regional airports that didn't have gates, where people had to\nget on the plane by walking up portable steps.\n\nBoeing never expected the 737 to be the low-cost plane of choice between major\naviation hubs.\n\n~~~\nalistairSH\nNot always portable steps. The 737 has (optional?) steps built into the\nchassis.\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ-6PDYRj80](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ-6PDYRj80)\n\n------\nkonspence\nThis whole thing looks like a disaster. As other commenters are pointing out,\neven if the pilots did the MAX simulators, would they have been trained to\nrespond to the AOA failure? Unlikely.\n\nIt seems like Boeing completely missed serious cases on the testing of the\nplane, and is hoping that the \"UAT\" phase (simulator training) would have\nuncovered the issues.\n\nBut UAT never underwent the condition of an AOA sensor failing.\n\n------\n_Codemonkeyism\nKey take away\n\n\"There is absolutely no reason to require your pilots to require a MAX\nsimulator to begin flying the MAX,\u201d the Boeing employee replied. \"Once the\nengines are started, there is only one difference between NG and MAX\nprocedurally, and that is that there is no OFF position of the gear handle.\nBoeing does not understand what is to be gained by a three-hour simulator\nsession, when the procedures are essentially the same.\u201d\n\n~~~\nAthas\nI still think it's interesting to reflect on the mindset that leads to this\nconclusion. As far as I have been able to determine (although I'm not in the\naerospace field), the 737 MAX _is_ procedurally identical to the NG, _except\nwhen something breaks_. The failure modes are slightly different, with\npotentially lethal results. As a computer scientist, I'm not accustomed to\nthinking about functional equivalence in the presence of hardware failure, and\nmaybe this Boeing employee was not sufficiently drilled on the need to\nconsider such aspects for aeroplanes. It is of course the fault of Boeing\ncorporate culture and internal procedures that this can be overlooked.\n\n~~~\nsalawat\n>As a computer scientist, I'm not accustomed to thinking about functional\nequivalence in the presence of hardware failure...\n\nHow are you not?\n\nI mean, I get it 90% of the time we screw up the programming somehow, but as a\ncomputer scientist, I never ignore the possibility of hardware failure. Memory\ngoes bad. Devices fail. Networks die. Semiconductors transiently in strange\nways if you don't take the right precautions...\n\nIt's the entire impetus behind GIGO. If you shove garbage into a perfectly\nworking software system; (corrupt data from a malfunctioning input source),\nyou still get out garbage.\n\nIt's why life and safety critical automation is so fundamentally different\nfrom lower stakes programming tasks where \"reboot the damn thing\" is a viable\noption.\n\nIf your sensor goes bad, and you're in the air, you can't do squat to fix it.\nYou have to detect the error, and fail the system gracefully by taking it out\nof the loop, informing the operator of the system failure, and most\nimportantly, _never allow that system to do anything that could jeopardize the\nability of the operator to continue operating_.\n\nThis is or at least I thought it was basic Control Systems 101...\n\n~~~\nAthas\n> How are you not?\n\nI research compilers and type systems. If the RAM dies while the compiler is\nrunning, you rerun the compiler on a new machine. A lot of computer science\nabstracts away the notion of hardware failure, because otherwise it becomes\nenormously cumbersome to talk about anything. This is fine as long as you\ndon't actually build real high-reliability systems with the same approach.\n\n~~~\nacqq\n>> How are you not?\n\n> I research compilers and type systems.\n\nI hope it's obvious that the software you work on is not supposed to be run\nduring the flight.\n\nThe critical software is supposed to do as little as possible, and everything\nis expected to be in already compiled (and thoroughly verified) state.\n\nAnd even for the product of yours, as soon as it is not used only for the\nresearch but as a production compiler which produces a firmware for the plane,\nit would have to be proven much more than what is expected from it while it is\njust an artifact of a research.\n\nIn short, even if you are lucky to just do the research, you should be aware\n(and thankful) that the critical software has other expectations. Including\nhow it responds to failed sensors: different response to the external inputs\nis _a fundamentally different_ software, even if you never thought about it\nbefore.\n\n~~~\ngknoy\nI think his main point was that for most of us, hardware failure is considered\nan adequate excuse for why something works -- most of us are not expected to\nhave software that _continues working_ when things break.\n\n~~~\nacqq\nThe \"failures\" of the sensors are simply the \"less common\" inputs. The proper\ncontrol software should simply be written for all possible inputs, which\ninclude inputs from faulty sensors, and the result of the processing should\nnot have some catastrophic consequences.\n\nCompare to the web app that awaits the username, but when the username is not\nthe \"most common\" (e.g. contains some new unicode symbols, or is of zero\nlengh) it allows catastrophic security failure and intrusion.\n\n------\nGenericsMotors\nAround the time just before the MAX was grounded, I remember there being lots\nof unfounded speculations (here on HN as well!) that Lion Air's and\nEthiopian's pilots were somehow substandard and lacking the training of their\nfirst world counterparts. Meanwhile it was Boeing actively keeping vital\ninformation and training from pilots.\n\nThe lesson from this is still not learned, and can see at least one apologist\non this thread repeating this same BS again...it's infuriating.\n\n------\nummonk\nOn the specific issue of simulator time though, if the simulator behaves\nbasically the same as a Boeing 737 NG, what is the point of putting them\nthrough the MAX simulator? It does seem like a pointless exercise that\nwouldn't have provided the pilots any extra practice (or crucial knowledge of\nactual differences like MCAS).\n\nObviously, now that they're adding checklist practice for emergency scenarios\nrelevant to the 737 MAX, it makes sense to require simulator practice, but I\ndon't think that would have previously made a difference.\n\n~~~\ninferiorhuman\nHere's the ASRS entry I was thinking of:\n\n _I had my first flight on the Max [to] ZZZ1. We found out we were scheduled\nto fly the aircraft on the way to the airport in the limo. We had a little\ntime [to] review the essentials in the car. Otherwise we would have walked\nonto the plane cold.\n\nMy post flight evaluation is that we lacked the knowledge to operate the\naircraft in all weather and aircraft states safely. The instrumentation is\ncompletely different - My scan was degraded, slow and labored having had no\nexperience w/ the new ND (Navigation Display) and ADI (Attitude Director\nIndicator) presentations/format or functions (manipulation between the screens\nand systems pages were not provided in training materials. If they were, I had\nno recollection of that material). _\n\n[https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/heres-what-was-\non-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/03/heres-what-was-on-the-\nrecord-about-problems-with-the-737-max/584791/)\n\n~~~\nummonk\nWow, that is pretty damning.\n\n~~~\ninferiorhuman\nYeah, I'm curious which airline this was. For obvious reasons ASRS anonymizes\ndata but this seems like an end-to-end failure and it's pretty disappointing\nthat the pilot(s) didn't feel comfortable rejecting the plane.\n\n------\nBrave-Steak\nI'd _really_ be interested in knowing at what level these two employees were\nat. How deep does the rot go? Even if the CEO is gone, these people are still\naround.\n\n------\nvmchale\nWhat a shitshow. The entire thing is graft, and the US government turned a\nblind eye because it's deemed an important industry.\n\n~~~\nmrtksn\nIsn't it also unfaithfulness to capitalism to protect an industry in such a\nway? I would have assumed that if someone believes in the mechanics of\ncapitalism would have let it be.\n\n------\ntriceratops\nCan anyone experienced in aviation ballpark how much retraining a pilot on a\nnew plane costs? How does it compare to a pilot's annual compensation or other\nfigures of importance (e.g. annual airline revenue or profit, operating\nexpenses of a plane etc)? Helping airlines avoid retraining seems like the\ndriving factor behind all these apparently shortsighted decisions that led to\nthe MAX but, assuming everything had gone well, what were the actual potential\nsavings? I'm just trying to understand the stakes.\n\n------\nEntalpi\nWhat ever happened to \u201dsafety first\u201d.\n\n~~~\nxiphias2\nIf you ask the Boeing CEO about it, safety was always the top priority.\n\n------\nepicgiga\nLion: \"we'd like to practice using this plane so we don't crash it\". Boeing:\n\"no\". Lion: crashes it. Hundreds die. Boeing: \"not our fault, their pilots\nwere untrained\".\n\nHow is no one is prison again?\n\n~~~\nmattacular\nThe Boeing CEO exited the company with just 60 million dollars, which is a lot\nlike being sent to prison.\n\n~~~\nAloha\nIn fairness to the guy, he came from the Military side of the house, the\nprogram was basically ready for flight by the time he took over the CEO slot.\nBasically all of the fatal design decisions were made before he became CEO.\n\nThe 737 MAX was a failure of process, not by specific choices made by a leader\n- he was fired however for his poor response to the crashes, he committed many\ntactical and PR errors, which made the restoration process longer than it\nshould have been.\n\nIf still you want to lay blame at any single persons feet, lay the blame at\nthe feet of James McNerney, the CEO who ran Boeing while the bulk of the\ndevelopment of the MAX was done, he's the one who kicked the MAX program off.\n\n~~~\nstefan_\nWhat do you mean? The policy set here was literally set at the highest level,\na specific choice - \"no training, no certification\" was the precise goal for\nthe 737 MAX. How can you claim that is a failure of process.\n\n~~~\nAloha\nI'll argue that making the MAX behave the same as a non MAX 737 is a reachable\nand reasonable engineering goal, the process failed because it didnt do it\nsafely.\n\nAirbus absolutely uses its fly-by-wire system to change the handling\ncharacteristics of its airplanes, to make them fly the same - I see no reason\nwhy Boeing couldn't do the same thing.\n\n~~~\nacqq\n> I'll argue that making the MAX behave the same as a non MAX 737 is a\n> reachable and reasonable engineering goal\n\nAnd I argue the opposite: it can\u2018t be made to behave exactly the same as soon\nas the failure scenarios are considered.\n\nIn computer speak, you just look from the point of view of a \u201cmost common\u201d\nrun, not all the special cases, exceptions etc.\n\nThere are other impossibilities too, directly related to the certification\nrequirements, already documented in the news articles before.\n\n~~~\nYawningAngel\nThe normal failure scenario for safety critical electronics on an aircraft is\nthat you have an entirely redundant system that takes over. I don't see why\nthat approach wouldn't have been sufficient here.\n\n~~~\nacqq\nIt is documented in the articles: failure modes have to be trained if they\naren\u2019t the same, and with MCAS as it should be (not as if was and failed\ncatastrophically twice) they can\u2019t be the same. New devices have to be\nrecertified. Two sensors can\u2019t be redundant, three would be again not the same\nplane. Newer computers won\u2019t be the same plane etc.\n\nWait to see what the final opinion of European agencies are once the latest\nchanges are evaluated and you\u2019ll see that it\u2019s not the same plane, even if\nBoeing all the time bent over backwards over the dead bodies of others.\n\n------\nhurricanetc\nThey wouldn\u2019t have trained on an MCAS failure so this is irrelevant as far as\nthe actual crashes are concerned.\n\nIt\u2019s just more evidence of Boeing being a corrupt organization.\n\n------\njustinclift\nThis is why Boeing shouldn't be allowed to have anything to do with new Space\ncontracts (ISS, etc) until this MAX issue is a solved, faint memory. eg for\ndecades\n\n~~~\ntzfld\nSpace hardware development is heavily supervised, and there are no issues\ninduced by mass production.\n\n~~~\njustinclift\nSo, exactly like aviation, and it hasn't worked out there. :(\n\n------\ntzfld\nThe way Boeing seems more and more evil as the story is folded out, makes me\nthink that all these article may be heavily one sided and never hearing\nBoeing's own version and motivations.\n\n~~~\ncjslep\nYou can always read the prime source material yourself: Boeing's own internal\nemails and chats they released about the 737 MAX.\n\nAnd do note: those released items are Boeing putting its best foot forward.\nAnd it's a low bar. Imagine the emails and chat transcripts that were not\nreleased.\n\n~~~\nwahern\n> And do note: those released items are Boeing putting its best foot forward.\n> And it's a low bar. Imagine the emails and chat transcripts that were not\n> released.\n\nMy guess was that the new CEO was trying to get out ahead of developments by\nairing the remaining dirty laundry. It makes him and Boeing look sincere and\nstarts the clock on the public forgetting the bad news. The constant drip of\nbad publicity made the previous CEO look like an idiot.\n\nI don't expect Boeing to actually clean up their act, but I bet they're going\nto be smarter about things going forward. I doubt there are going to be any\nmore damning reveals about the 737 other than what can be mined from these\nlatest disclosures. 777X is another matter, but I bet any revelations will\noccur more quickly and cleanly.\n\n------\nredis_mlc\nTo give you an idea how big a tragedy an airliner accident is in Indonesia ...\n\nThe average Javanese person I've talked to knows 900 relatives by name.\n\n------\nWalterBright\n> and that an erroneous MCAS activation would be quickly diagnosed as a\n> runaway stabilizer. The 2013 memo casts doubt on the former, and the two MAX\n> accident sequences disproved the latter.\n\nThis does not mention that an Emergency Airworthiness Directive was sent to\nall 737MAX crews after the LA crash explaining exactly how to resolve the\nrunaway trim issue, which is:\n\n1\\. restore normal trim using the column trim switches\n\n2\\. cut off the stabilizer trim with the console cutoff switch\n\nThe text is:\n\nBoeing Emergency Airworthiness Directive\n\n\"Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any stabilizer\nnose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be used to\nneutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT\nswitches to CUTOUT. Manual stabilizer trim can be used before and after the\nSTAB TRIM CUTOUT switches are moved to CUTOUT.\"\n\n[https://theaircurrent.com/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2018/11/B737-MA...](https://theaircurrent.com/wp-\ncontent/uploads/2018/11/B737-MAX-AD-1107.pdf)\n\nBoth the LA and EA crews repeatedly successfully countered the runaway trim\nwith the electric trim switches. The LA crew never took the next step of\ncutting off the trim. The EA crew did cutoff the trim, but did not trim to\nnormal first.\n\nDealing with runaway trim is a \"memory item\" for the 737, meaning the pilots\nare supposed to know about the cutoff switches that are prominently placed on\nthe center console in easy reach.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nPeter Thiel aims to purchase Gawker's archives - scandox\nhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/12/12/if-you-miss-gawker-dont-let-peter-thiel-buy-its-archives/?utm_term=.dc77956cc23a\n======\nscandox\nIs this a case where a quick scrape and an IPFS version might make the whole\nthing moot? I presume that isn't legal - but is it viable and will it prevent\nthe loss of the material?\n\nNot that I have a strong moral view either way. Just interested.\n\n~~~\nQAPereo\nTo be fair, if you find yourself taking a strong moral stance opposing Thiel,\nyou\u2019re probably in the right.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nWhat contextual information would best improve HN discussions understanding? - antpls\nHello! I'm from France. I find myself misinterpreting some of user's comments because of lack of context or introduction to the comments or personal experiences of authors. Comments currently have 4 pieces of information so far beside text : author's username, vote count, date time and, implicitly, parent comment. According to you, what 5th piece of information would help to better understand author's point of view? As an example, each post could also have the continent or country where the author is currently living in (at the time of writing and posting)\n======\nantpls\nTo better explain why I suggested country : with that information and the\ndate, we can for example infer what was the political system at the time of\nwriting the comment, among many other inferences we could imagine.\n\n~~~\nantpls\nAnother example could be the field in which one declares working in : legal\n(no more IANAL required :-)), science, driving, engineering, programming,\ncook-chief, investment, etc\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nWhy Healthcare.gov was sunk by \"Iceberg-style\" delivery - rjmarvin\nhttp://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=66402&page=2\n\n======\nsqqqrly\nOne of the less useful links on HN.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nHackers went undetected in Citrix\u2019s internal network for six months - marcc\nhttps://techcrunch.com/2019/04/30/citrix-internal-network-breach/\n======\nbenmarks\n> Citrix said in a later update on April 4 that the attack was likely a result\n> of password spraying, which attackers use to breach accounts by brute-\n> forcing from a list of commonly used passwords that aren\u2019t protected with\n> two-factor authentication.\n\nHow did Citrix not have 2FA in place?\n\n~~~\nSCHiM\nHaven't read the article, don't know anything about their network. Assuming\nthey use a Windows domain for their corp infrastructure.\n\nLower level Windows authentication mechanisms can't be configured for 2FA. If\nyour active directory domain is functional at all then at the very least your\nsystems need to be able to talk via SMB and ldap to a domain controller. With\nsufficient privileges you're able to execute code on other machines via either\nprotocol.\n\nYou only need an infected machine, not even user credentials, to be able to\nperform password spraying or kerberoasting attacks.\n\n~~~\nsbr464\nNot sure what you meant by lower level mechanisms, but you can protect console\nlogins and RDP with 2FA: [https://duo.com/docs/rdp](https://duo.com/docs/rdp)\n\n[https://help.duo.com/s/article/1084?language=en_US](https://help.duo.com/s/article/1084?language=en_US)\n\n~~~\nw8rbt\nnet commands, kerberos tickets, etc. You can really only 2FA web interfaces,\nVPNs, RDP and interactive console logons. You can 2FA LDAP, but it's a real\npain to do so (I've seen it done).\n\nJust think of any backend protocol that the system uses. The vast majority of\nthose can't be 2FA'ed. This is not Windows specific either. The same is true\nfor most all protocols.\n\nThis is why most companies buy firewalls and VPNs and only 2FA the VPN. That\nmeets most compliance requirements and is simple to do. Is it secure? Probably\nnot, but it checks the box (makes audit happy), so buy compromise insurance\nand move on.\n\n~~~\nynniv\nYou can firewall the backend services and use 2fa to temporarily open them for\na specific workstation.\n\n------\ntodd3834\nI fully assume there are more hacks we don\u2019t hear about that ones we do. Not\nonly because of cover ups but it can\u2019t be that hard to cover your tracks if\nyou know what you are doing.\n\n~~~\npandapower2\nIts an interesting question. If someone unauthorized was on your network\nexfiltrating data how would you know?\n\n~~~\ncmroanirgo\nEven more interesting is how the FBI knew they'd been infiltrated before they\nthemselves did? (There's the obvious conspiracy style accusation in that they\nwere already in there poking around... but that doesn't seem to ring true in\nthis regard)\n\n~~~\nauiya\nSame way any criminal investigator uncovers stolen goods.\n\n------\nm3nu\nSecurity is hard. On the upside, every breach is a chance to learn for\neveryone else. I hope they release more details on how it happened.\n\nIs there any blog or news that summarizes such post-mortem lessons? Could be a\nnice project to collect that.\n\n~~~\nh2odragon\nThere's always\n[https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/](https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/)\n\n~~~\nm3nu\nSubscribed. Also found [https://securereading.com/category/news/latest-\nhacks/](https://securereading.com/category/news/latest-hacks/)\n\n------\nrobbiet480\nHas anyone gotten that kind of call from the FBI and can shed light on how the\nprocess works? Would be fascinating for a outsider and provide a guide on what\nnext steps look like for those poor souls that receive the call in the future.\n\n~~~\n4s2A1tD5\nI've been on this call (both sides of it) probably a dozen times by now. Gov\nagencies are decent at doing research so it's pretty unlikely that the FBI\njust called their 1800 number or whatever.\n\nMost small start ups don't get to the level where anyone that \"big\" is looking\nat them but in the event that something does get flagged the agency will go\nfind their CEO/CTO/counsel on LinkedIn and either message them there or email\nthem. I've never seen an actual vulnerability disclosed in email, if it's a\npotential legal issue (hello SEC and fintech) they may ask that your lawyer\nresponds to them in writing but more often it's just \"this is Agent XYZ with\nABC. I have information about your company, please call me immediately.\"\n\nFor someone bigger (like Citrix) the company is _hopefully_ big enough to have\na team that is connected to the agencies in someway. Either the agency knows\nsomeone who knows them, or they have a designated Security and Compliance team\nthat can handle these inquires.\n\nThe real problems come when you're in the middle of sizes - too big to have\neyes on every email but too small to have a real security team.\n\nAbout 5 years I was working for a SaaS company and one of our clients\naccidentally discovered a pretty serious hole in another company's product.\nThis client wasn't overly tech savy and was basically like \"hey is this how\nthis is supposed to work?\" when it very much was not... so we killed the API\nconnection and told the client we'd take care of it. It's about 7pm ET by the\ntime we figure out what's going on so we call and email the other company but\ncouldn't find anyone. In the end we got the home phone number of their CTO and\nhad our CTO call him at around 10pm. He thought it was a prank call but once\nour CTO convinced him this was a problem he was able to get their on call eng\nto patch it within hours.\n\nNowadays almost any company involved in security work either has a direct line\nto FBI/DHS or has a vendor who does. ie if I'm some medium consumer platform I\nprobably don't get to talk to the FBI directly, but if I called up Crowdstrike\nor any security consulting firm they could do that. In the event that my\nmedium consumer platform was infiltrated by Fancy Bear (and the government\ndecided to tell me, sometimes they don't) an FBI agent would email/call the\nmost likely point of contact for the fastest resolution without causing panic.\nLots of time the damage is already done, two vs four hours on a response won't\nmake a big difference in the long term so no need to email info@ or anything.\n\nOver the past 6-8 years the corporation on public/private cyber investigations\nhas definitely changed as red tape has decreased in sharing of info has\nincreased - even more the last 4ish years since the DNC email hacks. I've had\na clients get a casual \"just a heads up, you should check this out\" from the\ngovernment without no paperwork and no follow up, something that would have\nbeen virtually unheard of 8 years ago.\n\nDHS gets a lot of shit in the media (lots of which is deserved) but they've\ndone a pretty good job just opening basic lines of communication and training\nother agencies that spending 20 minutes looking at a random tip, and following\nup if needed, is actually a pretty good use of time.\n\n~~~\nrobbiet480\nThanks for going to the trouble of creating a new account just to reply,\nappreciate it!\n\n------\nrmason\nIf you'd like a full perspective of the Citrix hack three security people from\nDetroit discussed it on a recent episode of their show, How they got hacked:\n\n[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMgdrq0xMLk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMgdrq0xMLk)\n\n~~~\nIncRnd\nDid you watch that? They mentioned that they don't know any more than is\npublicly disclosed how the attack occurred and that they were speculating.\nThat was literally their first sentence about the attack.\n\n------\naxaxs\nHaving worked with Citrix, I'm shocked. Shocked that they detected it at\nall...\n\n~~~\nda_chicken\nI was going to say the same thing, but it sounds like it was the FBI that\nnoticed it:\n\n _> [T]he hackers had \u201cintermittent access\u201d to its internal network from\nOctober 13, 2018 until March 8, 2019, two days after the FBI alerted the\ncompany to the breach._\n\n~~~\nlawnchair_larry\nThis is extremely common. 6 months is not that long, even among competent\ncompanies that have good security. You usually hear about it from the FBI. I\nthink the FBI forwards tips from agencies like the NSA, but they don\u2019t tend to\ngive much information.\n\n~~~\naxaxs\nIt may be common, but I'll disagree it's common for companies with \"good\nsecurity.\" Password spraying doesn't work with good 2FA, nor sane login\nlimits. I set off a flag anytime logging in from a new IP, for example.\n\n~~~\ndub\n2FA and login limits alone aren't likely to stand in the way of state-\nsponsored hackers.\n\nLots of companies still haven't upgraded to zero trust / BeyondCorp AuthN, and\nlots of companies don't have reproducible signed build artifacts from CI/CD\nwith automatic policy enforcement regarding the properties that those build\nartifacts must have before they can be deployed.\n\nHigh-profile companies that think VPNs and networking rules are a security\nsolution have probably already been hacked and just don't know it yet.\n\n------\nempath75\nIf you have anything of value, I absolutely guarantee you that there are\nhackers in your network right now.\n\nOne thing that frustrates me more than anything else is people assuming that\ntheir corporate network is safe. Your firewall and your vpc or whatever is a\nspeed bump at best. You have to assume that you have an attacker on the desk\nright next to you, because you will eventually.\n\n~~~\nviraptor\nThat's a really defeatist attitude. There are different levels of \"value\" and\ndifferent levels of protection. Not everything is internet facing. Not\neverything is managed like a corp where turnover requires lots of access\nchanges. Not everything allows you persistence in the network. And not all\naccess is \"access\".\n\nI really wish we moved past the \"everybody's owned\" idea. Your defence should\nbe proportional to the value you can lose. You can monitor for the rest. And\nyou can't guarantee the are hackers in my network. (Unless you're saying\nyou're guilty of breaking in? ;-) )\n\n~~~\nhibikir\nI don\u2019t think the grandparent says that everyone is owned, but that if your\ndata is interesting enough, your threat model must include employees that are\nwillingly exhilarating data, sometimes for nation states. That your first\nbarriers are therefore assumed to be breached to those attackers.\n\nThis of course does not apply if you are not holding on to anything\ninteresting, but it\u2019s very easy to become interesting at a certain size, or if\nyou have interesting customers. Still, not everybody.\n\n~~~\nmandevil\nYour threat exposure is not just your network. It's all of your customers and\nall of your vendors as well.\n\nRecall that the Target POS hack back in 2014 happened because someone hacked\nthe largest refrigeration contractor in western Pennsylvania, then bounced\nfrom there onto the Target Partners Online portal with legitimate credentials,\nand then from there in unspecified ways got onto the POS system. Obviously\ngoing from TPO to POS is a failure of Target's network security, but their\nnetwork perimeter was much larger than just Target computers.\n\n------\nngcc_hk\nYou need network sniffer and pattern recognition. Otherwise basically you hope\nsome of the unusual activities will affect ids/ips (or touch internet).\nHowever if it is normal account you need some sort of intelligence to\nrecognise and alert.\n\nNot many software can do this.\n\n~~~\n6wKZhFkquv\nThrowaway, worked at Citrix. The unfortunate thing about this comment is that\nthey sell Citrix Cloud as having the intelligence to detect anomalies exactly\nlike this in your network.\n\n~~~\nzild3d\nOuch. This page [0] hurts a little bit to read now. Feel free to grab their\nfree ebook though! You'll learn how advanced analytics can help IT identify\nuser behaviors, determine risk profiles, and assess and address potential\nthreats\n\n[0] [https://www.citrix.com/analytics/prevent-security-\nbreaches.h...](https://www.citrix.com/analytics/prevent-security-\nbreaches.html)\n\n------\nmarkholmes\nThis might not be the right place for this, but where should one get started\nwith security research?\n\n~~~\nrando444\nI feel like an answer to this would depend largely on your age, background,\nand what you are looking to learn.\n\n------\nqaq\naverage is 206 days\n\n~~~\nGodel_unicode\nAccording to whom? That's significantly above what fireeye says (71 until\ninternally discovered):\n\n[https://content.fireeye.com/m-trends](https://content.fireeye.com/m-trends)\n\n~~~\nqaq\nAccording to Google search snippet I am totally ready to trust that FireEye\nestimate is much more accurate\n\n------\ninapis\n>Citrix said in a later update on April 4 that the attack was likely a result\nof password spraying, which attackers use to breach accounts by brute-forcing\nfrom a list of commonly used passwords that aren\u2019t protected with two-factor\nauthentication.\n\nWow. This simply reinforces the fact that humans cannot, and should not, be\ntrusted with actively maintaining security of a system especially if there\ncould be significant economic consequences.\n\nWould a password manager help in this? I don't know.\n\nProbably a hardware token which controls all and any access to a system.\n\n*Removed some ambiguous sentences.\n\n~~~\nGodel_unicode\nI was with you up until the last paragraph, but no. That's not 2fa, that's\nswitching one factor for another.\n\nPeople should use a password manager with an rng to generate and store\npasswords. IT departments should run password spraying attacks themselves as\nwell as blacklisting known-compromised passwords. There's really good tooling\nfor this (likely the same tooling this adversary used!)\n\nSeparately from this, people should use hardware 2fa tokens whose weakest link\nisn't the cell phone company support.\n\nEdited for clarity.\n\n~~~\nu801e\n> People should use a password manager with an rng to generate and store\n> passwords.\n\n[...]\n\n> Separately from this, people should use hardware 2fa tokens whose weakest\n> link isn't the cell phone company support.\n\nWhat would be better is to support certificate based authentication in\ncombination with a username and password. Then you have 2FA without having to\nshare the private key. You can even get 3FA if the private key requires a\npassphrase to decrypt it.\n\nUsing SMS or email based 2FA is not secure (or is only as secure as the email\nor cell phone account as you already pointed out). Using TOTP requires sharing\na secret between the device and the server.\n\n~~~\nIncRnd\nA passphrase doesn't make it 3FA, since that is an already used factor class,\nwhat you know. 3FA is one from each category of what you know, what you have,\nand what you are. Depending on the implementation, what you describe may only\nbe 1.5 factor auth.\n\n~~~\nu801e\nI believe we can agree that just using a username/password for authentication\nis 1FA (single factor authentication). If we add a one-time token sent via SMS\nor email, or generated via TOTP, that's generally considered 2FA (with the\nusername/password considered what you know and the one time token being what\nyou have, I believe).\n\nWhat I proposed was using a client-side TLS certificate in combination with\nthe username/password for authentication. If the private key corresponding to\nthat certificate requires a passphrase to decrypt, then it should be more than\n2FA. What you know is the username/password, what you have is the private key.\nWhether the passphrase for that private key is considered what you know vs\nwhat you are is debatable (since, unlike the username/password or one-time\ntoken, the secret isn't shared by transmitting it over the network).\n\n~~~\nIncRnd\nMany security people will discount everything that someone says once they see\nthat person misapply marketing-phrases to describe security technology.\n\n2FA does not become 3FA when adding a new passphrase to a system that already\nhad a knowledge based entry.\n\nA password for a private key is _never_ considered what you are. You are\nseverely misusing security terms and will mislead people to believe that a\nproposed solution has greater strength than it really possesses.\n\n~~~\nu801e\n> [You] will mislead people to believe that a proposed solution has greater\n> strength than it really possesses.\n\nThen explain how authentication via a username and password validated server\nside, a client-side TLS certificate validated during the negotiation of a TLS\nconnection between the client and server, and a passphrase validated locally\non the client's device is not a better solution compared to typical 2FA\nimplementations using email, SMS, or TOTP.\n\n~~~\nGodel_unicode\nKey-logger on the box your soft cert is on. Soft cert is comprised\nimmediately, fully, and permanently. And you might never know. With email/sms,\nat least it's possible for you to realize they're compromised, and with TOTP\nthe underlying keymat is likely not on the device so the attacker has to\nrepeatedly win the race.\n\nMore importantly, this is also a false dichotomy, as the correct answer here\nis hardware protection of the private key, e.g. yubikey.\n\n~~~\nu801e\n> Key-logger on the box your soft cert is on. Soft cert is comprised\n> immediately, fully, and permanently.\n\nThat essentially means the entire machine is compromised and logging into any\nservice would allow the adversary to access them. That would compromise the\nemail and SMS routes. If they have root access to my phone (or whatever I use\nto store the TOTP secret), that would allow them to generate the correct one\ntime token to log into any service that I use TOTP 2FA with.\n\n> With email/sms, at least it's possible for you to realize they're\n> compromised\n\nThat's assuming I check carefully and often enough. If someone brute-forces my\npassword over IMAP, then they could read my messages without me ever knowing.\nBut I could always check the process list on my computer to determine if a\nkeylogger is installed.\n\n> and with TOTP the underlying keymat is likely not on the device so the\n> attacker has to repeatedly win the race.\n\nIt depends on the application. If someone got access to my phone, they could\neasily get the TOTP secret out of my GAuth app.\n\n> the correct answer here is hardware protection of the private key, e.g.\n> yubikey.\n\nExcept that it's not universally supported. It's not going to work with my\nemail client nor will it work with my IRC client.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nFreedom, the US Government, and why Apple are still bad - zdw\nhttp://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/39999.html\n======\nIBM\nHuh. The fact that Apple are the only ones that can sign software that runs on\nan iPhone may just allow them to defeat the DoJ in court.\n\n[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-24/apple-\nfbi-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-24/apple-fbi-fight-\nasks-is-code-protected-as-free-speech)\n\nApple has indicated that they're going to continue to keep increasing the\nsecurity of their products in the future, which may make it impossible to\nupdate firmware to the Secure Enclave (or at least require the user's\npermission first), but that's actually a weak measure.\n\nI'm not sure why tech people think that technical means to accomplish zero\nknowledge is the holy grail, that will never trump having the law on your\nside. Congress could pass legislation (like CALEA for tech companies) that\nwould require everyone to design their products to make them accessible to law\nenforcement any time they want.\n\n~~~\nspiralpolitik\nAt this point you might as well kiss goodbye to the US tech industry as nobody\noverseas will by anything that has a US government mandated backdoored.\n\n~~~\nIBM\nI'm pretty sure if Congress passes legislation mandating it they can influence\nplenty of non-American businesses by withholding their ability to do business\nin the US.\n\n~~~\nthrowaway2048\nIf they don't buy American products? I don't think so.\n\n~~~\nIBM\nDo any of those businesses want to sell their products to Americans? Maybe\nthey can sell different SKUs with those capabilities but they'll have to do it\nfor every market they sell to because the US won't be the only government that\nwill want backdoors.\n\n~~~\npjc50\nIndeed. This already works the other way round: companies selling into China\nhave to comply with their \"great firewall\" requirements.\n\n------\nthothamon\nI agree with all the ideas in the article, but at a bare minimum, Apple should\nconfigure devices so that no firmware update can be installed unless the user\nenters their PIN first. This would be an easy move that would make this whole\ndebate moot. The problem is that Apple only partially protected users from\nApple itself.\n\n~~~\nteacup50\nThere's a much bigger elephant in the room, though:\n\nUpdates to the OS and applications are encrypted, completely opaque, signed by\nApple instead of the original developer, can be granted additional\nentitlements for arbitrary permissions, and cannot be audited by anyone but\nApple without a jailbreak.\n\nWhen coupled with push updates, Apple already _has_ a targeted backdoor into\nevery iPhone anywhere connected the network.\n\nThis is a much more difficult problem to solve, as securing against that\nthreat model requires an diverse ecosystem of 3rd-party audit/review,\nsoftware, and tools.\n\nI don't see any way of solving that issue while also maintaining their\nstranglehold on the platform via DRM.\n\n~~~\nikeboy\nDon't users need to confirm OTA updates?\n\n~~~\nsaurik\nThis person is talking about for applications, to which many users have\n\"automatic updates\" turned on; this is one of the places where Android is\nfundamentally by design more secure than iOS (though by implementation has\noften been weaker :/ see the Master Key family of vulnerabilities).\n\n~~~\nikeboy\nAh. Missed that point.\n\nWhat's the highest permission an app can have? Wouldn't that be the limit of\nthe vulnerability here? Also, many permissions require manual granting, e.g.\ncontacts, camera.\n\nEdit: also, that could be mitigated partly by requiring user approval of any\nupdates adding permissions.\n\n~~~\nsaurik\nThe kinds of permissions that can be granted to an application by way of\nentitlements is pretty brutal and go well beyond the permissions that people\ntend to think of applications as being able to have: there are entitlements\nfor things like \"can install other applications\" and \"can obliterate all data\nstored on the device\". I'm not certain if some of these are blocked to\napplications of certain kinds, but I know that a lot of them are available if\nApple chooses to deploy them.\n\n------\nupofadown\nI don't have anything against Apple retaining control of the firmware on an\nApple phone. It _is_ their closed system after all. It's just that Apple\nshould not imply that their phones are somehow secure. The FBI thing reminds\nus that they are all effectively backdoored by Apple.\n\n------\npjc50\nOn this topic I have a large unfinished essay:\n[https://github.com/pjc50/pjc50.github.io/blob/master/pentagr...](https://github.com/pjc50/pjc50.github.io/blob/master/pentagram-\ncontrol.md)\n\n------\nbcook\n... _is_ still bad? /grammarnazi\n\n~~~\nRedoubts\nThe British tend to use plurals with corporations.\n\n~~~\nbcook\nInteresting... the plural says to me \"all the individuals at Apple\", vs the\nsingular referring to the company as a single, faceless entity.\n\nI wonder if that was intended by the author.\n\n~~~\nokonomiyaki3000\nSurely not. Just a weird British thing. Like how they write \"math\" as \"maths\"\nand pronounce it \"mafs\"...\n\n------\nzekevermillion\nWhose logo is on your i-thing? Render unto Apple the things that are Apple's,\nand keep private what is truly private in the first place.\n\nIf you'll forgive the abuse of an old parable...\n\n"}
{"text": "\nWWDC 2020: Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon Macs and Virtualization - miles\nhttps://www.macobserver.com/news/wwdc2020-rosetta-2-apple-silicon-macs-virtualization/\n======\nsgerenser\nI still can\u2019t figure out what the deal will be with Virtualization on Apple\nSilicon. If they just mean that you can run the Arm version of a Linux distro\nit\u2019s not that useful (At least for devs like me who need to write native\nsoftware for Windows and Linux). But if it actually means you can continue to\nrun x86-64 versions of Windows and Linux at near native speeds, that sounds\ngreat. Although I would wonder how that\u2019s possible.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nGuestToGuest Gets $35M - anjalik\nhttps://skift.com/2017/03/10/guesttoguest-travel-startup-funding-this-week/\n======\nnerdponx\nI didn't know Couchsurfing had raised any money. What had their monetization\nplan been?\n\n"}
{"text": "\nScrutiny of 'Truthy', a university project that studies trends on Twitter (2014) - diyorgasms\nhttp://thehill.com/policy/technology/221565-five-things-to-know-about-truthy\n======\npnathan\n> One study highlighted an attack on Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) when he was\n> first running for his seat in 2010. It found that one social media campaign\n> criticizing him for spending taxpayer money on dinners and fashion shows was\n> largely the result of 10 Twitter bots.\n\nThis is an interesting finding. I think part of the broader question at hand\nin our society is that the relationships and communications are becoming\nworld-readable, with significant consequences for shifting the flow of\ndiscourse.\n\n------\nChuckMcM\nI expect a strong correlation with authoritative overreach :-) But more\nseriously, the study of information flows to uncover information sharing\nnetworks is not new, that the networks want to protect themselves from being\nexposed is also not new. I don't agree with a lot of what Assange says but I\ndo agree with him that conspiracies hate light, and what is more making it\nharder for them to communicate makes it harder for them to be effective.\n\n------\nelevenfist\nThis article talks about a research project studying the virality of\npropaganda in social media. The article paints a political picture, the only\npaper cited by the article (one of at least 30 published by the project)\ndiscovered that a viral social media attack/campaign against a democratic\nsenator was the result of about 10 twitter bots. The article then cites the\nrepublican congressman who launched the investigation into this study.\n\nNo mention of the FBI, and the NSF provided funding but the project has made\nstatements to the effect that the NSF is not involved, as listed in the\narticle.\n\nThis title is very misleading...\n\nfrom the article: ' \u201cTruth about Truthy.\u201d In a series of bullet points, the\ndepartment said the project is not a \"political watchdog, a government probe\nof social media, an attempt to suppress free speech, a way to define\n'misinformation,' a partisan political effort, [or] a database tracking hate\nspeech.\"\n\n\"There is a good dose of irony in a research project that studies the\ndiffusion of misinformation becoming the target of such a powerful\ndisinformation machine,\" the research department wrote. '\n\n~~~\ndiyorgasms\nYeah I was reading a few articles about this and one mentioned that the FBI\nwas involved. Turns out it rant this article, and turns out not to have been a\nreputable source. However it's too late for me to edit the title, and I can't\nfind a way to delete the post. Please feel free to flag our downvote.\n\n------\ngolergka\nGood.\n\nI don't know how effective it'll be, but after witnessing first-hand how\nsuccessful government-sponsored social media manipulation have been in the\nlast decade, I'm really glad that western world finally reacts to it and at\nleast tries to do something about it.\n\n------\n__david__\nSimilarly to the irony mentioned in the article, many of the other comments\nhere clearly commented without reading the actual article, which has caused\nmisinformation to spread due to the misleading title.\n\n------\ndiyorgasms\nI apologize, I read the FBI part in another article and I can't seem to\ncorroborate the claim that the FBI is involved. As such I am editing the\ntitle. Apologies for the sensationalism.\n\nEdit: it would seem I can no longer edit the title.\n\n------\nhackuser\nThat's not the article's title and the article says nothing about the FBI. The\ntitle should be changed.\n\n\"NSF funds Indiana University study of social media misinformation\" would be\ngood. The actual title, \"Five things to know about 'Truthy'\", isn't helpful.\n\n------\nbobwaycott\nThis could use a (2014) in the title.\n\n~~~\ndang\nSo it could. We also changed the title to a representative phrase from the\nfirst sentence.\n\n------\nDowwie\nThey need to turn their sensors towards their own political parties and\ncampaign advertising\n\n------\nmtgx\nAnd it's called Truthy, too? What - \"Ministry of Truth\" was trademarked?\n\n"}
{"text": "Ask HN: Do you keep a journal, and why? - zabana\n======\ntrykondev\nI do! I started one in the summer of 2013. I originally started it as a way to\naggregate links & helpful information for my game development endeavors, but\nit eventually evolved into more of a recounting of what I did or how I was\nfeeling on a particular day. I now have daily entries for the entire time\nperiod since I started it, and I consider my journal to be one of my most\ntreasured possessions. Sometimes I'll get busy and not add entires for a few\ndays at a time, but I always go back and at least put a one-liner of why I was\ntoo busy to write anything.\n\nI've found it to be a slightly more structured & useful way to essentially\ninteract with my own brain -- it's a place for me to vent, a place to record\nnot-so-important but still fun-to-have memories, to keep notes & sort out\nplans for the future.\n\nIt's a lot of fun to be able to scroll back and say \"hey, what did we do for\nmy birthday three years ago?\" :) It's also fun at times like new year's to\nflip back through my journal and remind everyone what they listed for a\nresolution last year.\n\n------\ngrep_name\nFunny, I just ordered a pocket notebook for the first time in years today. I'm\ncurious to see what contingent of people on HN still use a physical notebook.\nI also use orgmode extensively to keep track of my intentions, media\npreferences, notes, and stray ideas, but it doesn't really scratch the same\nitch as a physical notebook.\n\nThe reason I had to order a physical notebook online is because I wanted a\npocket notebook with no lines, dots, or grids on the pages, which is\nsurprisingly hard to find. I'm attracted to the non-linear approach to\nnotebooking, and plan to fill this one with content in a random page-order as\nthings strike me. Sometimes I just have a cool thought or sentence, or just\nwant to slowly fill a page with something, and it can really help your\ncreativity solidify to have a trailing log of your weird random inspirations.\nSometimes I just transcribe lines from a song or book I like, or write down\nsomething someone said. Some pages are just geometric shapes. Rarely, I'll\nmake a simple \"today this happened and this is how I felt about it\" page. By\nthe time you fill it up you have a really organic document that can help you\nunderstand what makes you unique and what you like / care about in your daily\nlife, without the stress of writing a cohesive or linear work.\n\n~~~\njolmg\nI've also used org-mode and tried to make the switch to pocket notebooks[1].\nMy reason was that org-mode just wasn't as accessible to me. It's not as\npractical to use when away from a keyboard as a physical notebook is. However,\nwriting as much in the physical notebook as I do in org-mode would fill it too\nquickly. I also can't be as structured in the physical notebook as I can in\norg-mode.\n\nI guess I'm still figuring stuff out. Lately, I've been mostly using the\nnotebook for taking notes of measurements or prices at the store. Maybe in\nreality my reason for trying a physical notebook is that I missed using a\nwriting utensil.\n\n[1]\n[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J535NN2](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J535NN2)\n\n------\nPragmaticPulp\nYes, but with constraints.\n\nJournaling is an efficient way to elucidate your stray thoughts and feelings.\nWriting forces you to distill everything into cohesive paragraphs, which in\nturn forces you to put some structured thought around otherwise nebulous\nmental energy.\n\nHowever, journaling is only helpful so long as it's supportive. If you get\nstuck in reinforcing thought loops or you find it just amplifies your\nfrustrations, it's time to change your approach to journaling or find another\noutlet for your thoughts.\n\n------\ndhagz\nI do. It's rather minimal, but I like it. I use a Rhodia Goalbook, which has\nnumbered pages and a nice month/day view in the front. I can jot down events\non specific days, or I can do more longform stuff on the regular pages. I'm\npretty loose with how I journal, and I don't require myself to do it every\nday. I'm a fan of Merlin Mann's \"The first page is profound\" method to get\nmyself in the mindset of putting whatever I want in the journal.\n\n------\nslipwalker\nafter reading this thread sometime ago (\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20244848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20244848)\n) i decided to start one. It's been an on and off endeavour, when i am most\nbusy, that's when i _should_ be taking those notes, and that's exactly when i\ncompletely forget about it... :/\n\n"}
{"text": "\nWhat Should We Call the Language of Mathematica? - mh_\nhttp://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/02/what-should-we-call-the-language-of-mathematica/\n======\nquink\nWithout even reading it (and avoiding looking at the comments here), I predict\nthat he'll advocate 'Wolfram'.\n\nEdit: Yep... We were motivated to create the app based on a lack of quality \"hard news\" sources (for lack of a better term) on the iPad. There is no shortage of \"social\" news apps such as Flipboard and Pulse, and there exist a slew of quality RSS readers (Reeder is indispensable to me). But I also crave conventional, un-sexy, non-web2.0 journalism; a simple reporting of the news of the day. I used to spend obscene chunks of my day parked on CNN.com, click the refresh button incessantly... before the quality of their reporting diminished. And while there are iPad apps for individual news outlets (the NY Times, CNN, etc all have their own apps), the great thing about Google News is the fact that they aggregate content from news outlets around the word, from the Times to Al Jazeera to my tiny local newspaper. Google News doesn't have a spectacular web interface, especially when accessed on the iPad. We thought we could do better... and purely for our own use (at first), we built an app on top of their API. At this point it's 80% completed; here are some screenshots: https://s3.amazonaws.com/jackadam_broadsheet/broadsheet.jpg Now that the API is being shut down, we have an app with no data source. What do we do? On top of spending all that development time seemingly for naught, we love using our app, and don't want to go back to the old way! So we're making an appeal to the HN community, in search of creative ideas on how to proceed. We haven't been able to find any great news API alternatives. Yahoo News recently shut down their news API, and the Bing news search is missing a couple critical features. But maybe there are others? [Also: I'd like to keep the conversation pragmatic and avoid the (perfectly valid) question of whether it's wise to build an app entirely reliant on some third party's good graces.]\n======\nmaresca\n_We haven't been able to find any great news API alternatives._\n\n _avoid the (perfectly valid) question of whether it's wise to build an app\nentirely reliant on some third party's good graces._\n\nIn my opinion, it isn't wise to build an app entirely reliant on a 3rd party\nAPI. Looking for a new API to migrate to says you haven't learned from the\nmistake you made. I've made the same mistake with an attempt at a SMS to\nSocial Message tunnel on facebook/myspace back in the day. Then facebook made\nit a native feature. It was an important lesson to learn.\n\nIf I were you guys, I'd stop looking for APIs and start building your own\nbackend. This way, you can pull in more than one source of data. Also remember\nthat there are other ways of getting data.\n\n------\nNonEUCitizen\nBuild your own backend so you can declare independence.\n\n~~~\nMatthewPhillips\nI think building your own backend before you have funding when a simple API is\navailable is a pretty bad idea. You don't know if your site/app will ever hit\ncritical mass, why waste the time and money in building an elaborate backend\nsystem when you can develop that down the road when/if you have something\nworthwhile on your hands.\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nIf seeing is believing... never point your smartphone's camera at a propeller - benz145\nhttp://www.carrypad.com/2011/07/25/if-seeing-really-is-believing-never-point-your-smartphones-camera-at-an-airplane-propeller/\n\n======\nRonkdar\nThis isn't a revelation for most people (or maybe I'm biased, a lot of my\nfriends are pilots), but the second video there is the best demonstration I've\nseen so far of why this occurs.\n\n------\nColinWright\nFrom 15 months ago: So, how about pros/cons of each.\n======\nSwellJoe\nDeployment of Rails sucks.\n\nDjango is far better thought out, and can be deployed in a very sane manner. A\nfleet of Mongrels is just an embarrassingly bad way to handle concurrency. \"I\nknow, let's write a crappy barely functional web server, spawn a metric ass\nton of them, and then balance between them with a proxy. It'll be most leet\nand super fast! We'll call it a Best Practice. It'll be awesome.\" In fact,\nit's fragile, doesn't scale very well, and is complicated to configure. It's\nalso a huge distraction from solving the problem in a sane way--people seem to\nthink \"deploying Rails\" is solved by this and Capistrano, when really, it's\njust a new stack of problems.\n\nOtherwise Rails kicks ass, and I like Ruby better than Python (but I'm a perl\nmonger, so I might be brain-damaged into not seeing the beauty of Python). But\nI do tend to feel like Django is being written by grownups who've got years of\ndevelopment experience, while the Rails folks are making it up as they go\nalong...sometimes going down really poorly chosen paths (I believe Mongrel is\nan example of this, but I'm no expert).\n\nThen again, I think if I were starting an app from scratch I'd pick Catalyst.\nBut I haven't spent enough time with any of them to know which one is really\nmost productive for the way I work. I think you'll want to try them out, and\nnot take advice from random dudes at news.yc.\n\n~~~\ndavidw\nI went for rails myself, and agree about Mongrel. It seems like the Rails guys\nare all anxious to throw the Apache baby out with the bathwater, and spend a\nlot of time fooling around with dodgy ways of doing things.\n\nFor now, I use the mod_fcgid Apache module, and it seems to work ok for what I\nneed.\n\n~~~\naltay\ni heard through the grapevine that zed shaw, the dude who wrote mongrel, is\ndown on it and isn't actively developing it anymore. hopefully someone else\nwill pick up the slack, but i'm afraid that 95% of the folks using ruby+rails\nare know-nothing newbies (like me). =P\n\nanyone have any experience with lighttpd + rails?\n\n~~~\nlojic\nOh really? Why don't you either stop spreading FUD, or back up that statement\nwith some reality. \"heard through the grapevine\" - give me a break.\n\n------\nhsiung\njesusphreak has a pretty good writeup that's worth reading on the pros of\nusing django: - Which one will worth my time? - which ones are reliable or relevant? Eventually I open infinite amount of tabs and close them without browsing. Finding right material and resource is hard in this era. Yet we believe lifelong learning is a meaningful way to live your life. I'm Firat co-founder of Jooseph: https://www.jooseph.com/ Jooseph is basically playlist for learning. You can follow modules curated from different resources. You can also your learning journey to guide other users. Curate list of resource and share on the relevant topic. If you're an infinite learner, we would like to hear from you. Thank you HN community.\n======\nhmlwilliams\nWhy not embed the videos into the site? It is a bit of a hassle having to\nswitch between tabs all the time.\n\n~~~\nfiratcan\nThis is our MVP and we have only demo modules right now. We'll be launched in\n2 weeks. There'll be embeded videos and more features such as goals and\nprogress bar.\n\nIf you leave your mail from site or send me a mail at firat@jooseph.com I\nwould be happy to reach you when we launch.\n\n------\nsvsashank\nThis is interesting... How do you monetize this if all the playlists are\nYoutube links? Also how is it different from Youtube playlists that many\neducators have created?\n\n~~~\nurupvog\nCan you guide me to one such playlists? Quite interested.\n\n~~~\nfiratcan\nActually there are few demo playlist on Jooseph right now.\n\nYou can check from\n\n[https://jooseph.com/modules](https://jooseph.com/modules)\n\nI recommend\n\nUI/UX Go-lang Simplicity\n\nYou can also contact me at firat@jooseph.com\n\nIf you have a topic in mind that you want to learn we try to create module for\nthat.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nIn-App Purchase Scams in the App Store - okket\nhttps://daringfireball.net/2017/06/in-app_purchase_scams_in_the_app_store\n======\nfred256\nSee also the discussion at\n[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156)\n\nI just can't fathom why any $5k/year in-app subscription should be legitimate.\n\n~~~\nkranner\nYou think an app can't provide more than $5000 in value to a customer in a\nyear? Under any circumstances? Any kind of app?\n\n~~~\ndanielhooper\nIt should be enough to raise a flag for someone at Apple to thoroughly review\nthe app before approving it for release. Not to mention that software worth\n$5,000/yr isn't often, if ever, paid for through an app store.\n\n------\ndkarapetyan\nIsn't it in Apple's financial interest to look the other way? The scam\ngenerates money for Apple so the incentives here are misaligned.\n\n~~~\nUnfalseDesign\nI highly doubt that these apps are generating such a significant amount of\nincome for Apple (when taking into account their entire income from the App\nStore) that they would consider looking the other way.\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: Movienr - Discover Movies You Will Actually Enjoy - Made with Meteor - ccan\nhttp://www.movienr.com\n\n======\nUdo\nI quite like it!\n\nMy criticism is that after a while movies that I already marked as \"liked\"\nstill appear in the Discover tab. By the same token, simplify the 5 different\nratings modes into at most 3:\n\n \n \n - liked it\n - dislike(d) it\n - put it on the \"to watch\" list\n \n\nThe rationale for this being that I'm not going to rate all the things I\nwatched with 0-10 stars, and if I heart an entry that should train the filter\nand it should imply that I already watched it.\n\nI get that you want as much data as possible about who watched and liked what,\nbut if it's tedious to provide all that detail people won't do it.\n\n------\njs7\nDoes it just show everyone the same stuff? Or is it personalised to my\nratings?\n\n"}
{"text": "\nA man who is ageing too fast - imartin2k\nhttps://mosaicscience.com/man-who-aging-fast-werner-syndrome-japan-epigenome-epigenetics\n======\nRichardHeart\nSummary of pro death arguments, one of which I've seen in this thread\n(immortal tyrants.)\n\n \n \n Fairness\n Only rich people will get it. (No tech has ever done this.)\n Better to give money to the poor than science. (family, city, state, nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.)\n Bad for society\n Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.)\n Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistent)\n Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.)\n Stop having kids\n Worse wars (nukes are more dangerous than having your first 220 year old person in 2136)\n Dictators never die (they die all the time and rarely of age)\n Old people are expensive (50% of your lifetime medical cost occur in your final year. Delay is profitable.) \n Old people suck. (death is an inferior cure to robustness.)\n Bad for individual\n You'll get bored. (your memory isn't that good, or your boredom isn't age related)\n You'll have to watch your loved ones die. (so you prefer they watch you?)\n You'll live forever in a terrible state. (longevity requires robustness.)\n Against gods will (not if he disallows suicide, then it is required.)\n People will force you to live forever (They already try to do that.)\n \n\nDo you think less people make progress faster? What's your target level of\ndepriving life of existence? How do you plan to keep mankind robust from\nextinction events on a single planet? You might just need more people. What do\nyou think our technology would look like if we had 10x less people for the\nlast 100 years?\n\nMore people make more progress faster. Aren\u2019t you glad your parents didn't\ndecide the world would be prettier or work better without you in it? If great\nminds like Einstein, Bell, Tesla, Da Vinci etc., were still alive and\nproductive today, the world would be a better place. You're literally asking\nfor others to die out of your fear. The burden should be higher. Have courage.\nIf living longer comes with too many disadvantages, we'll know 100 years from\nnow and decide then.\n\nMan up, save your family, save yourself.\n\nP.S. Curing aging isn't immortality. You die at 600 on average by accident,\nand if the parade of imaginary horrible things comes true, even earlier.\n\n~~~\ndanieltillett\nOften wondered why deathism is so popular and I have come to conclusion it is\na protective mechanism against disappointment. People really don\u2019t want to\nage, but they don\u2019t think anything can be done so they come up with all sorts\nof reasons it is good.\n\n~~~\nmemling\n> Often wondered why deathism is so popular and I have come to conclusion it\n> is a protective mechanism against disappointment. People really don\u2019t want\n> to age, but they don\u2019t think anything can be done so they come up with all\n> sorts of reasons it is good.\n\nOne reason\u2014not one I necessarily endorse, but a possibility\u2014might be a\nconviction that people really aren't very good, deep down. Perhaps its cousin\nconviction that I'm not really all that good deep down.\n\nPut another way, it may be rooted not in a protective mechanism about\ndisappointment as much as a persuasion about human nature.\n\n------\ndyeje\nI really like the random blocks forming around the highlights effect.\n\n~~~\nhombre_fatal\nI came here to say the same thing. Not overused, but unique and a cute take on\n\"mosaic\" branding.\n\n------\nzan2434\nThis is unbelievably sad. What a tragic existence.\n\n \n \n Beneath, his skin is raw, revealing red ulcers caused by his disease. \u201cItai,\u201d he says. It hurts. Then he smiles. \u201cGambatte,\u201d he says \u2013 I will endure.\n\n------\nxvector\nI hope I live to see the day when we humans can die on our own terms rather\nthan it being forced upon us.\n\n~~~\nASalazarMX\nIt would be cool, but I fear some world leaders (be it politics, economy,\nscience, etc.) would never want to die, stagnating the status quo for\ncenturies until they die from accidents.\n\n~~~\ntaneq\n\"Humans should only die on their own terms... except for the most influential\npeople, who shouldn't live longer than I say they should.\" Hmm.\n\n~~~\nnitwit005\n\"Dictator for life\" is definitely less of an issue than \"Dictator for\neternity\".\n\n------\nausbah\nI hope the time is soon that we have some way of detecting and, hopefully,\nfixing generic abberations like this in embryos (or even among those diagnosed\nwhen they are older), anyone having to endure this is truly heartbreaking.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nShow HN: Extract main ideas in your texts with SummarizeBot - postagger\nhttps://www.summarizebot.com/\n======\nmichaelmior\n> Hi, I am AI and Blockchain-Powered SummarizeBot!\n\nI assume the expected reaction is \"Cool! They use blockchain.\" My reaction is\nmoreso, \"What on earth does this have to do with blockchain?\"\n\n> We apply decentralized architecture to train and test our AI models. Using\n> blockchain technology helps us not only to get more training data but also\n> to improve the trustworthiness of our algorithms.\n\nI still don't understand what this has to do with blockchain.\n\n~~~\nlibdjml\n> I still don't understand what this has to do with blockchain.\n\nFunding from VCs?\n\n~~~\ncodegeek\nTrue story. I met a guy who was looking for a tech co-founder and had an idea\nthat will use blockchain. I challenged him on the reason behind the use of\nblockchain and he literally said \"Investors like to hear buzzwords and at this\ntime, I am looking to raise funding\". His idea wasn't bad but he couldn't\njustify using blockchain to implement it. I pressed him further and asked if\nhe was willing to implement the idea without blockchain and he just wasn't\ninterested. he said \"blockchain is the hot thing right now and I want to build\nthis using blockchain\". So in other words, it was more important for him that\nblockchain was used than focussing on the actual idea.\n\n~~~\nadtac\nHonestly, that's hysterical even for HBO's Silicon Valley. As someone who has\nnever lived in or experienced Silicon Valley, I always assumed the show was a\nbit of an exaggeration. But people like this are proof that it's not. It's a\ndocumentary with a comedic element.\n\n~~~\nmiketery\nAssume not, many of the moments in the show have been lived by myself and\nothers. More so - I think the reality is that the truth goes even further than\nthe fictional works we see.\n\n------\ntxcwpalpha\nA couple thoughts:\n\n1\\. Summarizing entire bodies of text down into \"bite-sized\" chunks isn't\ninherently a good thing. It seems the main use case (and at least the one\nsuggested in the demo) is to be used for news articles. Now, I'm totally\nunderstanding of the fact that not everyone has the time to read every news\narticle, but as it is, only reading part of the article (or more commonly,\nonly reading the headline) is a _huge_ issue with current consumption of\ncontent. This attempt to further summarize articles into small, context-less\nbites seems to be going in the wrong direction.\n\n2\\. On the demo page, there is a \"Fake News Detection\" feature. I threw a\ncouple of articles at it and it left me with so many questions I don't even\nknow where to begin. For a few articles, it just gave me a binary \"Real:1 ,\nFake:0\" output. For others, it spit out a couple of numbers for stats like\n\"conspiracy\", \"irony\", \"bias\", \"pseudoscience\". Why are these the attributes\nchosen to measure? How are they calculated? Is something like \"irony\" even\nmeaningful when trying to detect fake news?\n\nViewing the documentation section of the site, there is a small blurb claiming\nthat it uses \"custom AI classifiers\", \"custom machine learning models trained\non fake and biased articles\", and \"database of trusted and biased websites\ncreated by our experts\" to calculate these numbers. AKA, there is absolutely\nzero meaningful explanation as to how these numbers are calculated and why\nthey should be trusted. This entire feature is a complete black box, and for\nall we know, the \"database of trusted websites\" could be created by Russian\nspies trying to sow misinformation.\n\n~~~\nTeMPOraL\nHere's a summarization I'd like (and would pay for[0]): chats. I mean IRC\nlogs, Slack & Telegram groupchat logs, etc. Between work and local\nHackerspace, people produce so much text on IM that I can't really keep up\nwith it. I'd love a solution that I could feed such chat logs, and get back\ne.g. list of topics covered.\n\n\\--\n\n[0] - as long as it wasn't a cloud SaaS where I have to share my data with\nvendor's machines.\n\n~~~\ncharris0\nTotally agree, I tried to prototype this but the datasets to train ML\nsummarizations from are pretty much all from news articles. Trying to take\nthat model and summaries chats resulted in gibberish for me. The salient take-\naways from Chats and other non-factual / loosely structured text seems so\ndependent on what _you_ care about, summarisation is difficult.\n\n------\netaioinshrdlu\nIs it abstractive or extractive?\n\nWhat exactly does this have to do with blockchain?\n\nThe landing page is more marketing than technical and may not really be a good\nfit for this site.\n\n~~~\nBjoernKW\nFrom their \"Technologies We Use\" page (\n[https://www.summarizebot.com/summarization_business.html#tec...](https://www.summarizebot.com/summarization_business.html#technology)\n) I gather that they use a Blockchain for storing their training data and\nlanguage models.\n\nIn theory that makes the language models auditable and tamper-proof. I'm not\nso sure about the supposed benefit of that, though. Yes, it means that the\nmodel itself cannot be tampered with (in order to introduce bias to the\nsummaries, for instance) but as long as the algorithm itself remains closed\nsource you could still alter the results by for example boosting some values\nwhile attributing less significance to others.\n\nSimply publishing both the algorithm and the model as open source alongside\nwith an SHA-2 hash to make sure neither has been tampered with would achieve a\nlot more in terms of reproducibility and trustworthiness.\n\nThen again, they would've had one buzzword less in that case ...\n\n~~~\ntherein\nRight but you could also commit your changes to your model into a Git repo and\nuse the \"blockchain\" that Git provides.\n\nWhen people say blockchain the meaning that there is a distributed consensus\ncomes into the picture. In this case, there is no reason for a distributed\nconsensus on ordering or anything.\n\nBut if you are suggesting there are many text parsers that train the model,\nand there is a central modal that's held by the network state, sure. But I\ndon't know what's the benefit to that as I don't think simply training on more\ntext will allow this bot to produce better summaries.\n\n------\nanon1253\nAs others have mentioned, I have no idea what any of this has to do with\nblockchain, or how it could even conceivably help with anything other than\nriding a hype train. That being said, would be curious to see how it holds up\nagainst the standard state of the art (e.g.\n[https://github.com/sebastianruder/NLP-\nprogress/blob/master/e...](https://github.com/sebastianruder/NLP-\nprogress/blob/master/english/summarization.md)) as summarization (especially\nthe abstractive kind) is very hard, but also has a surprising amount of useful\napplications\n\n------\ndiegoperini\nIs Show HN becoming more and more a \"roast my buzzword aggregator project\"\ntool or is it my selection bias?\n\n------\nwj\nI guess it is like that software that Yahoo bought from a 15 year-old that\nsummarized articles:\n\n[https://gizmodo.com/yahoo-shutters-that-30-million-app-it-\nbo...](https://gizmodo.com/yahoo-shutters-that-30-million-app-it-bought-from-\na-te-1796375197)\n\n------\nmelicerte\nThis page. Summarized. For your consideration.\n\n[https://www.summarizebot.com/api/378d4eec8d0e4ddeb8142c84433...](https://www.summarizebot.com/api/378d4eec8d0e4ddeb8142c84433b7afd.html)\n\n------\nbryanrasmussen\nWhat kind of a person writes enough that it becomes useful to summarize what\nthey write, but is incapable of summarizing what they have written so that a\nsummarizebot becomes useful to them?\n\n~~~\nproxygeek\nIt probably would be more helpful on the pull side rather than the push side\nof the channel. Useful for consumption of content in certain situations by\ncertain segments of readers.\n\nSay, someone scanning through a list of legal docs to identify the most\nrelevant ones. A short blurb would be pretty helpful.\n\n~~~\nbryanrasmussen\nsure, I was obliquely referring to the headline - Extract main ideas in YOUR\ntexts... - seemed to prompt the question.\n\non edit: fixed misspelling, just woke up from nap.\n\n------\namelius\nAre there any benchmarks for this kind of task, and how well does this tool\nperform w.r.t. them?\n\n~~~\nteam-o\nIn terms of measurement, there's ROUGE\n[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROUGE_(metric)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROUGE_\\(metric\\))\nIn this paper they discuss a few benchmarks in their introduction and describe\na new benchmark.\n[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.08745.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.08745.pdf)\n\n------\nabhisuri97\nIdk about the blockchain stuff, but it is semi-featureful since it can extract\ntext from images (I'm assuming its just using Tesseract OCR. At least it could\nget the text out of this\n[http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/msword_...](http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/msword_text_rendering.png)),\nand I assume audio (but I am having difficulty testing it out). Tbh the\nformats it accepts as well as the fact that it is available over messenger are\nhuge \"selling\" points for me and should be way more emphasized on the product\npage than blockchain and AI.\n\n------\nArtWomb\nThe end goal is wider distribution of content. Here, for example, are\nsummaries (json) of all 1008 academic papers accepted to NeurIPS 2018:\n\n[https://github.com/contentinnovation/NeurIPS-2018-papers](https://github.com/contentinnovation/NeurIPS-2018-papers)\n\nIt would be really cool to be able to translate via ML high level AI progress\ninto standard American journalistic english. To some extent Bloomberg TicToc,\nJinri Toutiao are already generating short form video for breaking news\nstories.\n\n------\nanotheryou\nWhy not have a paste text field for a quick demo on the landing page? Best\npre-filled (some cherry picking is ok :) ).\n\n------\ndecentralised\nI'd be curious to learn more about the use case for blockchain here.\n\nFor instance, Ocean Protocol plans to use TCRs for data quality, meaning that\ndata providers and data consumers evaluate the quality of a dataset in a\ncontinuous way, so that certain assets can be moved up/ down the ranks in near\nreal time.\n\n------\ndominotw\ncan i see an example\n\n"}
{"text": "\nChange Your Old Amazon Password Now To Avoid Cracking Risk - fwdbureau\nhttp://consumerist.com/2011/01/old-amazon-passwords-have-big-security-flaw.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter\n======\nmdaniel\nIs it short-sighted of me to think that a web presence the size of Amazon\nwould have detection measures in place to notice a brute force attack, or are\nthe so busy that one can hide in the noise?\n\n"}
{"text": "\nDo Not Track Me - hanspagel\nhttps://scrumpy.io/blog/do-not-track-me\n======\nluckylion\n> We don't use tracking. For example, there is no Google Analytics installed\n> in this blog.\n\nSure, but there is Google Analytics installed on the main page. \"We don't use\ntracking ... on this particular page where we boast about not using tracking\"\n\n~~~\nhanspagel\nYou're right, we have to remove it there. We removed it from the app a year\nago and the blog is new and never had Analytics or similar tools.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nShadowBrokers Bitcoin Transactions: Now There\u2019s Some Taint for You - sjreese\nhttps://krypt3ia.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/shadowbrokers-bitcoin-transactions-now-theres-some-taint-for-you/\n======\nnickodell\n>If you were the gubment and you wanted to maybe trace these fuckers would you\nmaybe try to chum the bitcoin waters to see what wallets are used for any\nliquidation of the bitcoins later?\n\nThe address of the auction is public. Sending more bitcoins to the address\ndoesn't make sense. The only way it would make sense to send Bitcoin to the\naddress is if you waited until the Bitcoins had been spent, and send a bit of\ndust to the address, in the hope that their wallet spent it along with some\nother Bitcoins.\n\nThe more likely explanation is that somebody is messing with the people\nobserving the auction. By my count, there are only two serious bids that\nfollow the rules set out by the shadow brokers.\n\n------\nmoyix\nI haven't been following the Silk Road coins, but I thought they'd been\nauctioned off?\n\n[http://www.coindesk.com/four-winners-44000-bitcoins-final-\nsi...](http://www.coindesk.com/four-winners-44000-bitcoins-final-silk-road-\nauction/)\n\n------\nJumpCrisscross\n> gubment\n\nWat.\n\n> I am LOVING the l337 status on those transactions hahaha\n\nWhat does this mean?\n\n~~~\njameskilton\nThe screenshots are low quality, so here's a link to the transactions page\nitself\n\n[https://blockchain.info/address/19BY2XCgbDe6WtTVbTyzM9eR3LYr...](https://blockchain.info/address/19BY2XCgbDe6WtTVbTyzM9eR3LYr6VitWK)\n\nYou'll see a bunch of transactions for 0.001337 BTC, which apparently can be\ntraced back to coins in government agency-seized funds. That's what the post\nmeans.\n\n~~~\nmattcanhack\nAlso happens to be a rickroll if you look at the addresses.\n\nOther source: [http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/someone-rickrolled-\nth...](http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/someone-rickrolled-the-bitcoin-\nauction-for-nsa-exploits)\n\n~~~\nHillRat\nThis is surely the weirdest governmental communication _ever_. I'm fascinated\nby the idea that someone had to tell the NSC and White House, \"NSA wants to\nrickroll the Russian government using DoJ-owned bitcoins seized from a dark\nweb drugs-and-assassinations forum.\" Evidently our branch of the multiverse is\na pasteup being collaboratively written by Grant Morrison, Charlie Stross and\nNeal Stephenson.\n\n~~~\nkakarot\nI just feel like clarifying that it was in no way an \"assassination forum\"\n\n"}
{"text": "\nNo CEO needed: These blockchain platforms will let \u2018the crowd\u2019 run startups - maxwellnardi\nhttps://venturebeat.com/2017/12/03/no-ceo-needed-these-blockchain-platforms-will-let-the-crowd-run-startups/\n======\nwesturner\nMentioned in the article are Aragon, District0x, Ethlance, NameBazaar, Colony,\nDAOstack; all of which, IIUC, are built with Ethereum and Smart Contracts\n(DAOs).\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nShow HN: \u201cActive Code\u201d in Markdown - chriswarbo\nhttp://chriswarbo.net/activecode/\n\n======\nonaclov2000\nI really like this, I imagine it would be really helpful if you were writing a\nbook/blog post, you could \"print\" the code you were using as an example, then\n\"run\" it and output all of that into your generated HTML, this would ensure\nyou have a \"working\" example at all times.\n\n~~~\nNullabillity\nA while ago I wrote something similar (though only for Scala) for a school\nproject. It would basically fake a REPL session, which had the con of being\npretty tightly coupled to the language, but it would give you nice automatic\noutput that would match what the user would get.\n\nExample:\n[http://www.kodknackning.se/gettingstarted/types](http://www.kodknackning.se/gettingstarted/types)\n\nSource: [https://github.com/teozkr/scala-repl-\nsampler](https://github.com/teozkr/scala-repl-sampler)\n\n------\napenguin\nI love the idea of Literate Programming, and moreover pandoc is one of my\nabsolute favorite tools. As such, I find this very interesting.\n\nHowever, I take issue with your complaint about Emacs being so huge -- pandoc\nis right up there, too (134 vs 89MiB on my system). Not to mention its\nseemingly endless stream of dependencies (50 packages according to my\nmanager), as well as GHC which is over 700MB on its own. If you work with\nHaskell, this might not be too big of a deal, but otherwise you might need all\nthis for pandoc alone. This is actually an issue for me with my tiny laptop\nSSD (this ends up consuming more than 5% of my root partition) -- I'm always\ndebating removing pandoc, but never do because it's just such a great tool.\n\n~~~\nchriswarbo\nPandoc doesn't seem as bad as you suggest. GHC, dependencies, etc. are only\nneeded for compiling; according to\n[http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/installing.html](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/installing.html)\nPandoc can be compiled into a standalone binary. The Windows build on\n[https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases](https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases)\nis 17.1MB and the Debian package in Wheezy is 18.9MB with reasonable-looking\ndependencies.\n\nThe scripts I've written (PanPipe and PanHandle) require a Haskell\nimplementation and the Pandoc library in order to be compiled or interpreted.\nOnce they're compiled with GHC, they're completely standalone.\n\nMy plan is to have my server recompile my site when changes are pushed to Git.\nI like having Emacs, GHC, etc. on my laptop, but not on my server.\n\nI actually tried to integrate Babel with Hakyll originally, but hit a bunch of\nproblems. I didn't include that in the page since I thought it would be\ndistracting. Most of it boils down to Org-mode's HTML exporter being awkward\nto invoke as part of a UNIX pipeline:\n\n\\- Emacs can't handle stdio\n\n\\- Org-mode has breaking changes between the version bundled in the latest\nstable Emacs (24.3) and that in ELPA (which I use)\n\n\\- Syntax highlighting depends on the current Emacs theme\n\n\\- Whole HTML pages are generated, which makes templating harder\n\n\\- Anything which uses the filesystem leaves artifacts around\n\nI did manage to hack together a shell script which created and switched to a\ntemporary directory, saved /dev/stdin to a file, opened Emacs in batch mode,\nloaded Org-mode, opened the temp file, tangled the file, exported the file,\nexited Emacs, ran the result through some XSLT transformations and Python\nscripts to extract the data needed for templating, spliced the results through\nthe templates, spat the result to /dev/stdout, switched out of the temp\ndirectory then deleted it. Needless to say, it was _very_ fragile, and much\nmore complex than writing these Pandoc filters!\n\n~~~\napenguin\nRegarding the Windows build: I just installed it, post-install size is 69.1MB.\nI feel like a factor of two means my point about emacs not being _that_ big\nstill stands :)\n\nStatic builds also pose somewhat of a problem when it means I have to rebuild\nall the dependencies for every update... I've run into this on Arch when\nclearing out makedeps for hard drive space (those 50 packages probably aren't\nall hard deps but I don't want to go against the will of my package manager).\nI know this is a solvable issue, I just wish it was easier.\n\nAlso, I recognize the issues it poses here, but syntax highlighting inheriting\nfrom font-lock is one of my favorite things about the HTML exporter.\n\nEDIT: Accidentally duplicated a predicate by duplicating a predicate.\n\nEDIT2: I'll just expand my response\n\nThe whole-page templating thing is a problem I've been trying to work around\nmyself, but I've had too much fun thinking about it to actually get started on\nanything. At some point writing another HTML exporter feels kinda mundane and\nI get the idea that I need to work on a ConTeXt exporter since it hasn't been\ndone before.\n\nI like Markdown's syntax more than that of org-mode, but I don't like the lack\nof standardization. I kinda wish all the (popular) flavors were a subset of\nPandoc Markdown so as to keep compatability... But that's never going to\nhappen.\n\n------\nhk__2\nThis reminds me of \u201cPastek\u201d, a markdown-inspired language created by a friend\nof mine which supports the inclusion of the output of some code run through an\nexternal command, with a similar syntax: [https://pastek-\nproject.github.io/cheatsheet.html](https://pastek-\nproject.github.io/cheatsheet.html)\n\n~~~\nchriswarbo\nInteresting, although I specifically avoided defining a new language. The\nsource to these pages is all written in Pandoc's version of Markdown, detailed\nat [http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/demo/example9/pandocs-\nmarkd...](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/demo/example9/pandocs-\nmarkdown.html)\n\nIf the PanPipe and PanHandle filters aren't used, the code blocks will just\nappear in the output verbatim. The `pipe=\"abc\"` attribute and `unwrap` class\nwill become regular HTML attributes and classes, just like any other.\n\nPandoc also supports more formats than just Markdown. These filters operate on\nthe parsed AST, so will work for any format where Pandoc can parse a 'Code' or\n'CodeBlock' element, with the ability to attach 'attributes' or 'classes'. The\n\"native\" and \"json\" formats can do this, since they're just Pandoc's\nintermediate datastructures. I just tried it on HTML and it works there too!\n\n \n \n $ echo ' It just makes you look like an asshole. Be more tactful and civil in your discussions. I promise you people will respond more favorably if you don't come out the gate blaring a buzzer like a game-show host.\n======\nseiji\n_Be more tactful and civil in your discussions._\n\nNot every opinion is valid or deserving of civil rebuttal. It's a result of\nmodern \"every opinion is equally valid as fact\" syndrome. We don't have time\nto cordially try to rewire your brain to think the sky isn't green.\n\nAlso, when trolls are trolling, they _want_ elaborate thought out responses to\ntheir drivel. It's easier to shut them down with \"wrong.\" And, as we know, you\ncan't distinguish an intentional troll from someone with sincerely warped\nviews of the world.\n\nIn short, shut it all down. They should be inspired to research their\nwrongness to turn into more right-thinking apes.\n\n[relevant life story: one of my high school math teachers had a big \"WRONG\"\nstamp (with red ink) he would enthusiastically smash onto your work if you\nwere, well, wrong.]\n\n~~~\nmgallivan\nWe should shut down other people who are being needlessly facetious.\n\nBut to suggest that rejection should be our default behavior is absurd.\nDiscussion should be encouraged because, more often than not, neither side is\n100% correct. The way we further ourselves is by talking to those people with\ndissimilar views.\n\n~~~\nseiji\n_more often than not, neither side is 100% correct._\n\nYou are very right. The problem is when one side stands up and says: \"We are\nobviously right. We will never change our opinions or ideas. You must agree\nwith us or die.\"\n\nAt that point, the reasonable side doesn't have any options left. You can't\nargue with crazy.\n\nTake the current US Congress situation. One side is saying, \"We want to hurt\nyou.\" The other side isn't saying \"Okay, how much do you want to hurt me?\nLet's find a compromise where you can just cut off my hand.\" No. The only way\nto stop American elected terrorists is to tell them \"No.\"\n\nIf people have valid points, you can draw out truth. If they have points based\non pride, ego, or falsely implanted childhood memories, you can't do anything\nproductive except stop them. If that doesn't work, ignore them.\n\nTopics of note which regularly draw out crazy people from one side: nobody\nneeds college, X city is better for startups, religion Y is right, bitcoin is\na \"currency,\" (or anything else getting 400+ comments around here).\n\n------\nifyoumakeit\nI'm dealing with that right now. Completely negating someone's opinion only\nshuts down communication. It's all in the phrasing and makes it sound like you\nare on different teams, especially in a work environment.\n\n~~~\npalidanx\nWhen doing consulting and engaging a sensitive issue, I always begin with,\n\"Correct if I'm wrong, is this how this feature is supposed to work...\"\n\nWhat this does is diffuse a tense situation and allow the client to issue a\ncorrection without feeling bad.\n\n~~~\nifyoumakeit\nI think that's a great approach, especially when handling a new client. The\nworst situation is landing a client who also personally designed or developed\nthe last iteration of their website or app. They need to be dislodged from the\nwork they've done and sometimes that takes kid gloves.\n\n------\nkohanz\nOf any of the proponents of the \"Wrong. ...\" response, I wonder how many would\nuse this phrasing face-to-face as opposed to online. Unlike my younger days, I\ndo my best now to converse online as I do and would IRL and I find that this\nis one of those phrases that does not pass that test. IRL it would be\nconsidered plain rude and obnoxious.\n\n------\nfrou_dh\nIf this is pet peeve time then I'll go with the alarming number of sentences\npeople want to start with the word \"So\". It makes you sound like you're in\nconstant rebuttal mode and trying to lay out the one true world view.\n\n------\nmarssaxman\nYeah, I've noticed this. It doesn't work.\n\n------\ninformatimago\nWrong. People should learn to make the difference between an sentence they're\nissuing being wrong or false, and they being bad. \"wrong\" does not mean\nthey're bad persons. Perhaps at most that they're lazy or bad thinkers. That's\nall. In any case when something is wrong, it would be wrong not to stop it\nimmediately, telling it wrong.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nIf Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef - screamingninja\nhttps://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/if-everyone-ate-beans-instead-of-beef/535536/\n======\njbdigriz\nKind of telling the article makes no mention of what degree this shifts\n\"greenhouse gas\" generation from cows to people. Quite ironc considering they\nare suggesting beans to be used.\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nKrugman reviews Geither's book - mooreds\nhttp://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jul/10/geithner-does-he-pass-test/?insrc=hpss\n\n======\nwarmfuzzykitten\nThe man's name is Geithner.\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nTeam USA Giant Robot Duel - cjm\nhttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/megabots/support-team-usa-in-the-giant-robot-duel?new=yes\n\n======\nJoeAltmaier\nCool; but what are Suidobashi Heavy Industry up to in the mean time? This will\nbe epic.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nAsk YC: How Big Is the HN Team? - Kinnard\nHow big is the HN team @ Y-Combinator?\n======\nmtmail\nBest way to reach the moderators is to email hn@ycombinator.com. They've been\nquiet responsive in the past. Personally I think it's one person only.\n\n~~~\nMz\nNo, it is not one person. There is one paid moderator who is the face of HN.\nBut, I know there are others who do moderation work.\n\nI am not clear on the details. My impression is they have no plans to divulge\nall the details.\n\n"}
{"text": "\n\nExclusive Interview: Hacking The iPhone Through SMS - edw519\nhttp://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hacking-iphone-security,2384.html\n\n======\ntptacek\n_Charlie: The iPhone bug has to do with telling the phone there is a certain\namount of data, and then not sending it as much as you said you would. The\nfunction that reads the data starts returning -1 to indicate an error, but the\nother parts of the program don't check for this error and actually think the\n-1 is data from the message. This shows how complex it can be to write secure\ncode, as separately, each part of the program looks correct, but the way they\ninteract is dangerous!_\n\nOUCH.\n\nIf there's an industry contest I'd like to referee now, it's fuzzers vs.\nstatic analysis. Industry spends a cubic shit-ton on static analysis (for\ninstance, find an F-500 that doesn't have a couple copies of Fortify gathering\ndust). But fuzzers appear to be kicking ass in terms of actual findings, and\nvendors don't invest nearly as much into them.\n\n(Static analyzers parse and symbolically analyze source code or binaries\nagainst rules, like taint propagation and API blacklists; fuzzers mimic actual\ninputs to real running systems and vary those inputs maliciously over minutes,\nhours, or days).\n\n~~~\najross\nI continue to find it amazing that people don't routinely fuzz their protocol\nhandlers. It's a test that you can literally write in 10 minutes.\n\n~~~\ntptacek\nEspecially if you're the actual developer. 80% of the time it takes to write a\nthird-party fuzzer goes into reconstructing the target's protocol or API from\nscratch.\n\n------\neuroclydon\nThe SMS handling process runs as root. The protocol is used for all kinds of\ndevice <\\--> network traffic. Developers have the ability to make these SMS\nmessages look however they want them to. Users have no indication when a\nmalicious SMS is received.\n\nI think we may see some real exploits happen soon.\n\n"}
{"text": "\nThere Are 13 Quotations in a U.S. Passport. Guess How Many Are from Men? - cbhl\nhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/travel/american-passport-quotes-women.html\n======\ndownerending\nGiven that nobody even looks at these, it doesn't seem very important.\nPersonally, I'd prefer a raise instead.\n\n"}
\nA written test version asks for 3 digits after the dot; in person interview version - for 2. Write Pi in a hex base\n
' | pandoc -f html -t html --filter panpipe\n ls /
\n\n~~~\nhk__2\nReally interesting, thanks for the explanation!\n\n"}
{"text": "\nInstant 8-bit alpha PNG converter - ck2\nhttp://www.8bitalpha.com/\n======\npornel\nI've got improved pngquant that gives significantly better results than\noriginal version, gd2 library and often rivals pngnq:\n\nbin\n boot\n dev\n etc\n home\n lost+found\n media\n nix\n proc\n root\n run\n sys\n tmp\n usr\n var\n