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Why didn't JavaScript adopt the OO model adopted by C++/Java when it was designed? - bootload https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-JavaScript-adopt-the-object-oriented-model-adopted-by-C++-Java-when-it-was-designed/answer/Brendan-Eich?share=1 ====== bootload _" If JS didn’t make it into Netscape 2, we’d be speaking VBScript."_ source: [https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/793685578491437056](https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/793685578491437056)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facetime for the Mac - eddieplan9 http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/ ====== kgroll I'm definitely not suggesting that Facetime is, or will be, a failure. Thinking about it, however, reminded me of a passage from Infinite Jest about the failure of video chat. _(1) It turned out there there was something terribly stressful about visual telephone interfaces that hadn’t been stressful at all about voice-only interfaces. Videophone consumers seemed suddenly to realize that they’d been subject to an insidious but wholly marvelous delusion about conventional voice-only telephony._ ... EDIT: Instead of that wall of text, here's a link to the rest of that passage. Sorry about that. [http://stevereads.com/weblog/2010/06/07/iphone-4-facetimeinf...](http://stevereads.com/weblog/2010/06/07/iphone-4-facetimeinfinite- jest-mashup/) ~~~ commieneko Facetime, and video-phony in general, fits into a continuum of communication strategies. When you want to _see_ someone, you video them. When you only want to hear them, you audio them. When you don't want to hear them you text them. Then there's the whole time-shifting thingie. What I would like now is the video equivalent of an email, voice mail, or text message. I _could_ record a video, and email it, but... ~~~ jbrennan I agree, FaceMail or something would be incredibly nice, especially as I'm not always available to answer a video call, but would still like to see what's up eventually. I guess it would be used like like YouTube, only privately. That is, often you see an event and video record it for sharing with others. FaceTime would let you share this live, and leaving a message seems a natural progression. ------ fredleblanc We just downloaded it and tried it (bringing my total Facetime experiences to two, both of which occurred about 10 feet from the person on the other end). The interface is more iOS-y than normal for OS X. The picture quality was pretty good (the Mac being wired, iPhone 4 being wireless of course). Simple to use, pretty good stuff. ------ lukifer Is there a reason they couldn't have just folded this feature into iChat? ~~~ e1ven I wish they had- It loses several major features of iChat sharing- Screensharing, replaceable backgrounds, Multi-person chat... ~~~ johns Which are all features that would ruin FaceTime. ~~~ e1ven How so? Honestly? Why would it ruin Facetime, but not ruin iChat? ~~~ johns I bet there are already more non-geek users of FaceTime than iChat because it's so approachable. Adding features like those caters to the wrong audience. The beauty of FaceTime is its simplicity. (This sounds like an Apple fanboy thing to say, but I'm really not.) ~~~ slantyyz I would also say using iChat also dilutes the FaceTime brand. ~~~ derefr In the event video, the FaceTime icon had replaced the iChat icon's traditional position on the dock. ------ neovive Facetime could become a strong competitor to Skype once a Windows client is available as the UI seems very polished and well "integrated". Now only if my parents had a Mac so I can test it out. They always seem to have issues getting video chat working on Skype/Windows. ~~~ moe Not really. Skype is strong in businesses. In the office-setting people first and foremost use the text-chat, then the _audio_ calls, then the conference calls. Video calls come dead last. I wouldn't be surprised if even desktop sharing is used more than the video feature. ~~~ alphabeat The desktop sharing of skype has a long way to go to be used seriously. I can only assume from your comment that you haven't used it. They may have their audio codec down, and the video codec works for live video, but not for content. It's the same deal with JPEG for text for instance. ------ bobx11 called the wife from the mac to her iphone... she didn't know the difference. later she called me back on facetime to the pc and it just popped up - overall not bad! ------ philwelch Accounts are tied to the email address on your Apple ID. Interesting way of getting around having to create another IM account. ~~~ e1ven It's also portable to when there is a version of FaceTime for Android/etc. They had originally claimed it to be an open standard. ~~~ glhaynes Yeah, has there been any progress on publishing specs? ~~~ mikedanko According to the presentation, it's supposed to be made a standard. I'm assuming this would hit the IETF's Audio/Video transport working group, so that'd be where to keep a lookout. ------ dmpatierno My favorite feature of FaceTime for the Mac: it stays full screen even when you tab away to do work on another monitor. FaceTime is now my preferred video conferencing software. ------ pluies Why set the minimum OS to Snow Leopard? That sounds a bit of a far-fetched requirement for some videoconferencing software. ~~~ g_lined My guess is that it uses some newer APIs which were introduced in 10.6. This may be because they wanted to use Grand Central Dispatch (better multi-core support), a later addition to Core Graphics or simply an API which gave their GUI the more iOS feel compared to the GUI elements in 10.5. ------ eli It would be exciting if I'm proven wrong, but I'm not buying the hype about video chat. Even if/when I'm able to video chat anyone from my iPhone without being on wifi, I still don't imagine it being terribly useful. And the few times I've tried using video chat in a business setting have not been very fruitful. ~~~ gurraman Video chat is just one of those nice-to-haves in my opinion. I work remotely a lot and always choose audio chat over video chat. Video chatting, in that context, just doesn't add anything for me. Video chat was great when my girlfriend was living abroad for a couple of months though! ------ rflrob "the call rings through on every Mac you own, even if face time isn't running" Does this sound just a little too intrusive to anyone else? ~~~ ynniv Have you heard of a telephone? Do you know how they work? You can turn it off in the preferences. ~~~ Samuel_Michon You just made me laugh out loud, which I rarely do while sitting at a computer. I honestly thought rflrob's comment made a lot of sense, until I read yours. I have to say though: I absolutely loathe doorbells and ringing phones, they stress me out. Ideally, my doorbell would have a vibrate mode, making the floor gently purr. ------ nico I just wish there was a Facetime API. ------ todd3834 I like the icon. I am really glad to see they didn't go the same direction as the new iTunes icon. ------ thought_alarm Judging from this FaceTime app and the new iLife apps, it looks like there will be all sorts of new iOS-like UI goodies for Cocoa 10.7 developers to use. ------ hasenj Is this different from yahoo messenger's video calls? ~~~ zacharycohn iPhone <\--> Desktop ~~~ pt Both have platform limitations at this time: Facetime: iPhone <\--> Mac Yahoo Messenger : iPhone <\--> PC ~~~ contol-m Nope. Yahoo Messenger video chat works on a Mac as well. ------ eddieplan9 Unfortunately, it mistakenly points to iWork 09 trial download for now. ~~~ philfreo First 2 times it didn't work, then I got it: [http://appldnld.apple.com/FaceTime/061-9589.20101020.Mbgt5/F...](http://appldnld.apple.com/FaceTime/061-9589.20101020.Mbgt5/FaceTime.dmg) ------ CharlesPal Use the bottom link. The top link is pointing to iWork 09 ------ ceejayoz Can't get it to connect. @SteveStreza reports his doesn't work on a wired connection at all.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Run your own OAuth2/OpenID Connect provider - aeneasr https://github.com/ory-am/hydra# ====== simplify If you're interested in this sort of thing, Doorkeeper[1] is a robust, open source OAuth 2 provider that's been around for about 5 years. We use it as a standalone app, and have many other node.js apps that sign in using it. [1] [https://github.com/doorkeeper- gem/doorkeeper](https://github.com/doorkeeper-gem/doorkeeper) ~~~ arekkas Thanks, however Doorkeeper is an SDK, right? With Hydra, you simply boot the docker image and are done. If you're interested in OAuth2 frameworks, check out [fosite]([https://github.com/ory-am/fosite](https://github.com/ory- am/fosite)), which is like Doorkeeper for Go. ~~~ simplify Doorkeeper is closer to a full-package with customizable features, including a basic frontend. I'm not too familiar with hydra, but it seems Doorkeeper is best when you want to get the full OAuth app & user interface running (and customize later), whereas Hydra is best when you want to get a quick OAuth API app and build your own frontend. Would you say this is accurate? ~~~ arekkas Yeah I think that is valid. Hydra can also be put on top of existing infrastructures. Not sure how well that is possible with Doorkeeper. ~~~ simplify Doesn't the nature of an OAuth server imply that it can be added to existing infrastructures? Or is there an issue you foresee with non-Hydra libraries? ~~~ arekkas No, Hydra works with every existing solution :) You can read more on this topic in the guide: [https://ory- am.gitbooks.io/hydra/content/oauth2.html](https://ory- am.gitbooks.io/hydra/content/oauth2.html) ~~~ simplify You didn't answer my question. I think you may have misread it. ------ ethernetdan Also similar: [https://github.com/coreos/dex](https://github.com/coreos/dex) ------ defiancedigital Ask HN: Is "hydra" the most used open source project name ? ~~~ johns Unicorn ~~~ defiancedigital hydra vs unicorn dixit github : Hydra = 1,934 results ([https://github.com/search?utf8=&q=hydra](https://github.com/search?utf8=&q=hydra)) Unicorn = 1,878 results ([https://github.com/search?utf8=&q=unicorn](https://github.com/search?utf8=&q=unicorn)) Winner Hyra !!! ~~~ neilellis Hail Hydra! ------ Pyxl101 Nice! Lowering barriers to the use of technologies like these is important. Would anyone else be interested in hosting Mozilla Persona? [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/Persona](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Persona) ~~~ scrollaway Check out Let's Auth: [https://github.com/letsauth/letsauth.github.io](https://github.com/letsauth/letsauth.github.io) It's a successor to Mozilla Persona in development. Details in the readme and on freenode #letsauth (mirrored to gitter.im/letsauth/letsauth). ~~~ arekkas why is it written in python? why not something that compiles and runs well on all platforms? ~~~ scrollaway From the readme: > Let's Auth 1.0 will ship as a single, statically compiled binary. Pre-1.0, > we will use a variety of dynamic languages for prototyping. ~~~ arekkas nice :) ------ olalonde How do you integrate this with your existing API? Do you need to proxy requests through Hydra or do you just need to read and trust Hydra-signed tokens on every request? Is there any overlap with [https://getkong.org/](https://getkong.org/)? ~~~ arekkas Currently hydra issues opaque tokens but has the capabilities to switch to JWT in the future. There is a warden HTTP API endpoint that you can use to inspect tokens and use hydra's access control. I will probably add a more common token info endpoint or a OAuth2 Token Introspection endpoint ( [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7662](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7662) ) later on. I haven't used kong yet but from my first impression it should be possible to use hydra together with kong. ~~~ olalonde Ok, thanks. So let's say I wanted to use Hydra for authenticating requests made to my REST API, I'd have to make an API call to Hydra on each request, right? Would be interesting to have some integration examples with popular web frameworks (e.g. Express.js, Rails, Django, etc.). Thanks for releasing this by the way, looks really well engineered. I'm sure you've considered it already, but you could probably sell a hosted version (a la [https://auth0.com](https://auth0.com)) to make money and finance development. ~~~ arekkas Depends, if you use JWT you can cryptographically verify that the token and the token claims are valid. Right now, Hydra does not issue JWTs but it would be easy as pie to add that functionality. Writing an integration guide for this is a very good idea. Hydra's APIs are validating all requests using that technique, but it's not documented. Auth0.com is pretty cool, they have done some cool projects that help OAuth developers. However, they are overpriced imho. Hosting hydra is definitely something I will consider. Thanks! :) ------ akbar501 For anyone interested the Go client library is: [https://github.com/ory- am/fosite](https://github.com/ory-am/fosite) ------ welder OAuth is super simple, you only need two endpoints for an OAuth provider. It only took a few hours to write the WakaTime OAuth provider implementation[1]. No offense and serious question: why would you need a library for this? Isn't it more trouble to integrate an external OAuth provider with an existing api than to just write two api endpoints yourself? [1] [https://wakatime.com/api](https://wakatime.com/api) ~~~ arekkas The libraries (SDK) I used for my first project for had security flaws. OAuth2 is super simple to implement, but hard to get right. It's not just two endpoints, it's multiple specs with ~200 written pages. Some people for example don't even know that [rfc6819]([https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6819](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6819)) even exists. Most SDKs are also very limited or hard to extend (e.g. adding OpenID Connect). I believe that adding a docker container to your deployment and creating a consent token (JWT) is even less work than integrating with an SDK and implementing the missing parts every time you hit that new edge case. On top of that, you can be sure that it is backed by an open source community. ------ sakopov I know it's in the title but I don't see any OpenID capabilities here. Looks like Oauth2 spec implementation. Am i missing something? ~~~ arekkas OpenID has been deprecated in favor of OpenID Connect: * [http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html](http://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html) * [http://openid.net/connect/faq/](http://openid.net/connect/faq/) ------ StavrosK This looks very nice, but isn't it overkill to use RethinkDB when SQLite would do (and probably be about as fast)? ------ smw It'd be really neat to see an amazon lambda serverless version of this. ~~~ arekkas Integrating that in lambda should not be hard. If you want, create an issue on GitHub and I will try my best. ------ ClayM Would this or coreos/dex replace something like Auth0? ~~~ jon-wood Auth0's big feature that isn't provided by open source platforms at the moment is being able to request an OAuth token for third party services the user has authenticated with, so for example you can trade in an auth token that was issued when you logged in the user for a Facebook token. ~~~ arekkas Not true. Dex and Hydra both support it, although you need to implement a little bit more stuff when using Hydra. Read it in the docs: [https://ory- am.gitbooks.io/hydra/content/connection.html](https://ory- am.gitbooks.io/hydra/content/connection.html) ~~~ jon-wood I stand corrected. In that case Auth0 is even more overpriced than I originally thought.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools? - wallflower http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/15/what-if-finlands-great-teachers-taught-in-u-s-schools-not-what-you-think/ ====== edthrowaway As someone with a spouse who has taught for over 10 years in an impoverished, inner-city school, and who has won a very impressive array of grants, awards, certifications and national-level recognition, I could not agree more strongly with this editorial. Americans are under the misapprehension that all of their school woes stem from poor teachers. But even in poor districts like the one my spouse teaches in, which have accumulated a whole layer of apathetic teachers, the impact of both poor and excellent teachers is way overestimated, and the impact of poor and excellent administrations (both the school principal and the district leadership) is tremendously underestimated. A good principal, particularly one with strong school board backing, can almost single-handedly turn an entire school around (I've seen this happen twice now). An excellent teacher with a poor principal and negligent school board can do very little other than provide a strong role model for the most promising students, and (with great effort) pull a handful more of failing students up to the barely passing level than their less talented peers. Primarily, good principals act just like good engineer managers in corporations. Just as good managers keep engineers isolated from the bullshit of upper management and adjacent managers, and give good engineers space to do their jobs, so do good principals let their good teachers do their job, and intervene when poor teachers fail to meet expectations. Regarding the other factors mentioned, I do think poverty is a major hurdle, and the author of this piece rightly underlines its importance in poor school performance, but poverty is primarily an issue in that high-levels of poverty correlate strongly with lack of parental support and engagement (and not always due to a lack of care; often it's because these are single-parent households where that one parent is working all the time). But here an excellent principal can also make a major impact by rallying formerly disengaged parents around their kids and their kids' teachers, and supporting single-parent households where the parent is working multiple jobs. It makes me sad to see all this rhetoric around teachers in the U.S., not only because it's depressing for my spouse to be so unappreciated by people outside the teaching profession, but also because I know it will do little to fix the main problem: school poor administrations. Nor will it address any of the other major contributing factors, like poverty and the lack of respect in high school academic excellent so prevalent in our culture, rich and poor alike. ~~~ jwmerrill Really insightful comment. > the impact of both poor and excellent teachers is way overestimated, and the > impact of poor and excellent administrations (both the school principal and > the district leadership) is tremendously underestimated. Why do you think this happens? I'll speculate: most people form their opinion about what's important in a school by reflecting on their experience as a student. Most students attend only one school of each kind (e.g. elementary, junior, and high school), so they don't have a great frame of reference about the results of different school administrations. But everyone experiences many different teachers, and as a student, you really perceive the differences between the better ones and the worse ones. I bet if you reflect on your own experience as a student, leaving aside the context of your spouse's experience as a teacher, you will have much more vivid memories and opinions about teachers than administrators. I totally agree that it's likely to be much more effective to try to create environments that help all teachers do their jobs more effectively than it is to try to change who we're hiring. I wonder what the best way is to make people "feel" the difference between good administrators and bad ones like they "feel" the difference between their favorite teachers and their least favorite ones. ------ MarcScott I've worked as a teacher in both the UK and in Papua New Guinea, and from my perspective, the largest performance indicator of a child's success is the value their parents place on education. Maybe this is one of the reasons the Finnish education system works so well. If teaching is an occupation that is culturally considered in high esteem, then it probably follows that schools are considered an important aspect of a child's life. Children are therefore encouraged to do well in schools. In PNG, students had to pay to go to school. Often a single child was supported through their education by their extended family. Some villages could only afford to send a few students to school. Those students worked exceptionally hard, knowing that it was incumbent upon them to achieve, and eventually payback their family from the proceeds of their future careers. When working in rural schools in the UK I have encountered many students whose parents, and therefore their children, place little value on education. Often the attitude comes down to the single phrase "I've managed and I did badly at school". Regardless of whether the parent's are rich or poor, the children of these parents often struggle, and achieve below expected results in national examinations. If we want to raise standards in our schools (both in the UK and in the USA) I think the key is in changing cultural attitudes towards education. This means that we need to stop heaping blame on teachers, administrators, schools and local authorities for perceived inadequacies. We need to make sure that our children value the free education they are receiving. edit - for clarity of country name ~~~ aikah > the largest performance indicator of a child's success is the value their > parents place on education. +100 > This means that we need to stop heaping blame on teachers, administrators, > schools and local authorities for perceived inadequacies. Well sometimes authorities are to blame. Look, in my country,being a teacher used to be like being a lawyer or a doctor. It used to be a prestigious profession. Then some politicians,influencial thinkers came in and said,"we need to focus on children,they have special needs,they are always right and if they cant learn properly it's the adults fault". 30 years forward and the education here is totally broken,teachers are despised both by students and parents who want instant gratification no matter how dumb their offspring is. But hey,they cant be wrong,they've been told all their life they are "special" and always right ... > Regardless of whether the parent's are rich or poor, the children of these > parents often struggle, and achieve below expected results in national > examinations. The big difference is rich people can literally buy a career for their offspring even if they perform poorly at school. At worse, they'll have a job at mom and pop's business. ~~~ javert > The big difference is rich people can literally buy a career for their > offspring Details? Where do I go to buy a career? I'm not being sarcastic, I actually want to know. ~~~ jackvalentine Mom or Dad to business partner: if you want to make this deal with me, give my kid a management position somewhere on the project. Or "if you give my kid an internship then I'll give you the keys to my ski lodge for this season" ~~~ javert That is not buying a career. That's making a deal. The guy said: > rich people can literally buy a career I'm not being sarcastic here. It used to be possible to purchase a commission in the military. That is speaking historically. I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't careers today you can literally purchase. Franchising comes kind of close, and running a taxi in NYC comes close. In ancient times, you could purchase the position of tax collector. Anyway, that person should not have said "literally" unless he meant it. ~~~ jackvalentine Pedanticism of this nature is literally the key to living a frustrated and lonely life. You asked for a good faith reply and I gave it to you. You then decided to play your "trick" and point out that you're actually making a totally unrelated grammatical dispute with the original poster. I won't be falling for this again and replying to you further in the future. I hope it feels good to be "right" all the time. ~~~ javert I wasn't playing a trick. There are times when using "literally" in the figurative sense actually makes sense, even though I don't approve. But this is not one. So I thought maybe the person actually meant it in the non- figurative sense. If you want evidence that I'm an honest person, look at my comment history. I don't go around tricking people and trying to win arguments by deception. In fact, I frequently call people out for being nasty in various ways, much like you are doing here. I can understand why you think I'm trying to trick people and I was worried that would happen. That's why I talked about historical and quasi-examples of people buying careers. I didn't want you to think or feel that I was playing a trick. ~~~ throwawaymsft Please realize language has ambiguities and is not a program that is compiled. Deliberately nitpicking the meaning of words from someone who is generously offering to clarify a statement for you looks like a sign of bad faith. Use a charitable interpretation and figure out the idea he/she was getting at. Clearly, money/power/fame/beauty can "buy" things even if there is no currency changing hands. That is the point the previous poster was making. Wealth is influence, and influence gets you favors, like a foot into a career. ~~~ kybernetikos I disagree. aikah made a statement, which Javert wanted more detail on. jackvalentine claimed to explain what the other poster had said, but it didn't actually match up. He was probably right about what was meant, but maybe he wasn't and there's no real reason for the rest of us to assume it's an accurate clarification of what aikah meant. If it had been the original poster making the clarification then moaning about 'literally' would have been pedantic, but it was not, and so therefore it was justified - it was making the point that the interpretation given by jackvalentine did not actually clarify the statement as made, and that Javert had assumed something else, more interesting was being said. At that point the conversation depressingly quickly devolves into name calling, threats and patronisation. > Clearly, money/power/fame/beauty can "buy" things even if there is no > currency changing hands. That is the point the previous poster was making. According to you. Javert was actually using a charitable interpretation when he assumed that the original maker of the statement meant what they had said. As far as I can tell this entire subthread consists of people uncharitably failing to spot that Javert was _not_ in fact trying to score points, (or believes that language is a program to be compiled, or would benefit from a list of topics to meditate on about the evolution of language) and was merely asking for more detail, and getting upset that he is skeptical their trivial 'explanations' actually explain what was originally meant. It's mainly a lot of people freaking out about their hot button topics without actually spending any brain power on understanding what the other person is saying and why. ------ danso > _Most teachers understand that what students learn in school is because the > whole school has made an effort, not just some individual teachers. In the > education systems that are high in international rankings, teachers feel > that they are empowered by their leaders and their fellow teachers._ As a layperson, I agree with the OP...The focus on the quality of teachers -- and firing "bad" ones and hiring just the "good" ones -- has always seemed to me to be overemphasized, as it makes for a sexy, easily digestible political debate. Not that good teachers (whatever your definition of "good" is) aren't worth having, but it's doubtful that they alone can have a significant impact on student outcomes...in the way we should be doubtful that the well-behaved, well-equipped cops from a rich crime-free suburb would, when moved to the Detroit PD, would have a significant impact. I lived with a teacher and my best friend is a teacher, both are young and about my age and who work at impoverished schools, and I've been constantly amazed at how much of their talk is not about how bad the kids are, but how bad the administration is...over things such as playing favorites (among teachers) and squabbles over office space and, of course, having to buy their own supplies and books (some of which is reimbursed at the end of the year). You can chalk some of this dysfunction to the educational hot topics of the day: the power of teachers unions, teacher pay, standardized testing...but the bottom line is that passionate, effective teachers can be nullified by a weak system...in the same way that a great programmer may be ineffective in an engineering environment with poor testing/documentation processes and a terrible office environment. ~~~ TwoBit Reminds of how NFL coaches are so frequently fired when their teams do poorly. It makes for good press, but the teams usually do the same under the next coach. ~~~ bennettfeely FiveThirtyEight examined this in the NHL. > _Teams that fired their coaches performed exactly the same on average in the > following season as teams that kept their coaches. Notably, teams that were > sub-.400 performed 20 percent better on average the following season > regardless of whether they fired their coach or not._ [...] _Playoff > performance is no better under new coaches. Non-playoff teams go an average > of 0.5 playoff rounds the following season, whether they fire their coach or > not._ [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-predicts-if-an- nhl-...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-predicts-if-an-nhl-coach- will-be-fired-and-whether-it-matters/) ~~~ cheepin Shouldn't team performance decrease the season after a coach change since the players have to learn a new system? This seems to say that the cost of firing a poor coach is zero because at worst you will do the same as before in the short term, with a great potential upside for longer time spans. ~~~ seanmcdirmid These teams have large coaching staffs that don't get fired and change more slowly. I would guess that a coach's impact is often more long term (in training, recruitment of players and staff). ------ bko > Finland is not a fan of standardization in education. However, teacher > education in Finland is carefully standardized. All teachers must earn a > master’s degree at one of the country’s research universities. I don't think the author makes a convincing point as to why standardization is bad for students but somehow beneficial to teachers. > There is another “teacher quality” checkpoint at graduation from School of > Education in Finland. Students are not allowed to earn degrees to teach > unless they demonstrate that they possess knowledge, skills and morals > necessary to be a successful teacher. So prospective teachers would be tested on teacher quality prior to graduation in an academic sense but not while they're actually teaching? Not sure if you can test on paper or by demonstration whether someone is an effective teacher. It is certainly more easily visible in the field. It's a shame many in America don't respect teachers. Perhaps the resentment is due to the fact that most in America don't have a choice as to the primary school they attend. Like most Americans, I've had terrible teachers in the past and did feel some resentment. It was less infuriating in college since at least I had some choice as to the classes and school I attended. Coincidentally, I notice professors get a lot more respect. ~~~ pavlov _I don 't think the author makes a convincing point as to why standardization is bad for students but somehow beneficial to teachers._ I felt the author's case was clearly presented, so I'll try to summarize... Standardized tests for students are bad because they encourage bogus metrics like "teacher effectiveness". Requiring high qualifications for teachers is good because it improves public perception of the profession and reduces churn. (Initiatives like "fast track" teacher training increase churn, and this is bad because it can lead administrators to believe that churn is part of the solution: all they need to do is somehow weed out the bad teachers and replace them with good ones.) ~~~ mattmcknight You have to understand that the publisher of this piece (the blog curator, Valerie Strauss) is a paid supporter of the teacher unions. That is her primary agenda, and the agenda of many opposed to teacher evaluation via job effectiveness. If teacher effectiveness can't be measured, teachers can't be fired for performance. Union win. ~~~ rustynails77 If you don't standardise testing for students, you can't benchmark them. If you look at the relative performance of different countries, the US is WAY down the list of performers - and the relative scores of the US are _significantly_ behind. Start with this link for reference, [http://www.businessinsider.com.au/pisa- rankings-2013-12](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/pisa-rankings-2013-12) On reading and my own indepth observations, I've come across the same themes, \- teachers must be respected as professionals \- teachers must challenge themselves, constantly looking for better approaches to education \- principals must actively support the development and training of teachers to help them grow \- parents must support the teachers by re-enforcing the importance of education \- parents and teachers MUST treat the students as young adults rather than treating them as children ... I can't emphasise this enough. Based on my own experiences, one school we were at had terrible teachers and an average principal ... and terrible results. The other school was progressive and built confidence into everything the students did (eg. a school fair fund-raiser was completely organised and run by ALL of the primary school students). I now live in an area with one of the highest academic performance relative to the wealth of the families, Index of Community Socio- Educational Advantage (ICSEA). The attitude of parents, teachers and students is staggeringly different to the previous school we were at. It's no surprise that it's one of the best performing schools in Australia. You'll also notice that Australia is one of the better performing countries in the world. If you assume the problem is the teachers, or the parents, you're off the mark. You need ALL of them to work together. ------ Panino > _Most teachers understand that what students learn in school is because the > whole school has made an effort, not just some individual teachers. In the > education systems that are high in international rankings, teachers feel > that they are empowered by their leaders and their fellow teachers._ This is the exact opposite of my (previous) experience teaching high school, where the main purpose was clearly to provide daycare. ------ tokenadult I wonder what really would happen if the experiment were tried. It would be difficult indeed to find any credentialed United States schoolteachers who speak Finnish well enough to teach in Finland (but not insuperably difficult to find Finnish teachers who speak English well enough to teach in the United States, which tells us something right there). I would like to include a few more countries in the mix. Indeed, that is what I like about the new book _The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way_ ,[1] because the book follows some American exchange students over to other countries (Finland, yes, but also Korea and Poland) and examines a lot of different trade-offs that different school systems around the world have to deal with. The boy who traveled over to Korea to be an exchange student and was profiled in the book traveled over from the same school district in Minnesota I have lived in since I had children. Finland is not the only model of a different system, and we should be studying a lot of different models to make sure we aren't missing out on lessons we can learn from practice elsewhere. P.S. I am a teacher by occupation, and I know that the research shows that teacher characteristics matter for learners. The parental involvement or value placed on education by parents mentioned in several comments that preceded mine here are important, but I deal often (just today, in fact) with trying to help parents who are involved in their children's educations but are frustrated by what's happening to their children in United States public school classrooms. [1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Smartest-Kids-World- They/dp/145165...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Smartest-Kids-World- They/dp/145165443X) ------ thrownaway2424 The author's case is sensible and clearly presented but lacks context for the intended audience of the USA. It's pointless to say that Finland has a unified teacher preparation program, implying that other countries do not. There are in fact uniform teacher training regimes in the USA that are comparable in scale to the one in Finland. The New York City Department of Education has as many students as Finland has. LAUSD isn't much smaller. So instead of asking what lessons we could learn from Finland, would it make as much sense to cherry-pick some successful school districts from within our own country and learn lessons from them? Because that's essentially what you're doing when you use Finland as your exemplar instead of a similar-population area of Europe. How are the schools doing in Slovenia these days? ------ stcredzero _...education policies in Finland concentrate more on school effectiveness than on teacher effectiveness. This indicates that what schools are expected to do is an effort of everyone in a school, working together, rather than teachers working individually._ Or, as Hillary Clinton put it, "It takes a village." I suspect that it's a part of the plight of many immigrant parents who live in isolation from an ethnic/cultural community, to feel like asking, "What's wrong with you?" of their kids, because they keep noticing that things their kids don't know things that they "should know." My parents expected me to know many things I would've picked up in my environment, had I grown up in the same one my parents did. This kind of knowledge is illustrated in Frank McCourt's _Angela 's Ashes_ when the city born lads see a cow for the first time, and onlooking adults wonder if they are mentally deficient. "What are Cows!? Cows are cows!" Another example of this kind of knowledge: When my family engages in activities, like going somewhere, we generally imagine what all of the others are doing and optimize our activities to minimize crossing paths and causing each other wait times. This isn't something we were ever explicitly asked to do. My sister and I just picked it up from our parents. In stark contrast, an ex-girlfriend of mine would instead only perform narrowly delegated tasks and discharge whatever task I delegated as quickly and directly as possible, without regard for how that would impact my activities, even if that would mean covering a cutting board I was using with another ingredient. Apparently, her father would punish initiative as a matter of the principle of obedience, and order around his family like robots. Yet another example of this: in Japanese homes, people are expected to remove their shoes and arrange them in a neat and orderly array, optimized for exiting with a minimum of fuss and socks contact with the foyer floor. Also very significant, in Finland: _" teaching is regarded as an esteemed profession, on par with medicine, law or engineering."_ In the US, teachers are regarded as occupying a class between the working and professionals, esteemed lower than professions like medicine, law, and engineering. It says much about our society's priorities, that we say, "Those who can't do, teach." _becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic practice. And determining the reliably of ‘effectiveness’ of any teacher would require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically impossible._ This is somewhat the inherent dilemma of hiring for any skilled profession. Mentoring is probably key here. ~~~ fennecfoxen _It says much about our society 's priorities, that we say, "Those who can't do, teach."_ Is that the root cause of our society's teaching-related woes, or is the aphorism itself a consequence of glut of bad teachers? ~~~ stcredzero I'm saying neither. I'm saying that it's an indication of our society's true attitudes towards education. ------ MisterMashable If Finland's great teachers were to teach in U.S. schools, they would encounter significant pressure to conform from students, parents and administrators. The ones who tow the line and preserve the status quo would get to keep their jobs while the others would be mobbed, manipulated and discarded. Administrators would fabricate a false narrative using negative performance review. Parents would blame the teacher for failing to "teach" which means graciously ignore their child's poor behavior and hand out high grades. This is what would happen to the great majority of great Finnish teachers were they to work here in America. The few who by good fortune places themselves in American school communities which closely resemble Finland would fit right in. ------ guelo One of the ways racism expresses itself in the US is in child poverty. We can't offer public assistance to poor children because it creates "welfare queens", which is a stereotype that whites have about blacks that they are lazy and will cheat. ~~~ javert Child poverty is not a result of racism. Child poverty is a result of people choosing to have children that they cannot support. They choose to do this with the foreknowledge that society will not provide for those children. At least, not enough to life them out of poverty. People need to stop blaming everything on racism, and calling lots of things racist that simply are not. Conflating the issues hurts on all fronts. In other words, it makes it harder to identify and solve the real problem, and it makes "racism" meaningless in the public dialog. ~~~ artsrc Let's imagine you care about educational outcomes and child poverty, what kinds of things would help? Certainly free and easy access to sex education, contraception and abortion is something that is a good policy. People, even poor people, have always, and will always want children. Once children are born to poor parents, you need to address that poverty, or you will get poor educational outcomes for those children. Certainly stigmatizing poor people, rather than focusing on bad luck they have had, will provoke different policy outcomes. ~~~ javert I didn't stigmatize poor people. If you consider stating facts of reality to be stigmatization, you are fighting reality, and that is no way to deal with it. > rather than focusing on bad luck they have had One of the main point of the article is precisely that being poor is not bad luck: overall, it happens because a person didn't take education seriously because they were not taught to do so by their parents. I mean, you can say it's bad luck to be born to such parents, and I would agree there. ------ mschuster91 I believe that the background of students is the most important factor when it comes to education success. When you put a "world-class teacher" in front of 30 students who have totally different things on their mind that are NOT school-related - like e.g. having to support their drug-addicted parents, their own addictions, having to care for siblings, for food or sometimes even for a place to sleep - then even a squad of the best teachers will not help any of these kids achieve "good grades". Putting the blame for fucked up environments on teachers (like it seems to be done very often in the US) is unfair and stupid, because the teachers are in no position to change their situation. ------ cryptlord It always amazes me when these articles about the finnish education system pop up. I'm finnish and I've dropped out of high school twice, I don't consider myself dumb and have done very well in my life (Thank you, internet). A lot better than my peers, most of them are dropouts as well. The only people who have even got to an university level are people who already were from wealthy/academic families. It's the same thing everywhere, but I admit that education being free is a big deal, but it doesn't fix social problems. ------ xacaxulu There was an interesting study of IQs by college major, showing disciplines such as social work, education and gender studies being at the lowest end of the IQ spectrum. Seems like it would be counter intuitive to ask quite so much from members of those demographics when it comes to educating our children. [http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of- students...](http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students-by- college-major-and-gender-ratio/) ~~~ djur The post you link to points out that the IQ values are estimated from SAT or GRE scores, and that most of the difference is explained by the quantitative section of the SAT. What that ends up showing is that social work and education are low-paid, low-prestige fields, which tend to employ more women. ------ TwoBit Why is it that poor students fail so much more at education? ~~~ rayiner My wife was briefly a teacher on an Indian reservation. There were few jobs on the reservation and many of the kids' parents were unemployed, and even the ones that were rarely were in a position that required any education. That's a huge demotivator for kids--why sacrifice for education when you can't see in front of your face that education might yield any benefits? Then there was, of course, the social ills associated with poverty, which distracted kids from school: alcoholism, drug abuse, crime, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. I'm personally enormously skeptical of the idea that education is a solution to poverty,[1] at a large scale. There is a game theory problem in play. The fact is that it's unlikely that education will lift an individual inner city kid "out of the hood." A relatively excellent outcome for diligence and hard work would be going into debt to attend a third rate college, for the privilege of fighting for a low-paying service job. So it's totally rational for kids to be more preoccupied with whether joining the right gang will keep them from getting harassed on the way home from school. But if everyone worked hard and got educated, what might happen is that economic opportunities could be created "in the hood." That's the prisoners dilemma--the individually rational decision to devalue diligence and education leads to a globally worse outcome. This is where culture comes in. You see this with poor immigrant communities. They have little capital, but have cultural mores that create an incentive for education and hard work. A kid might not leave the neighborhood through education, but he'll get social standing in the community, among authority figures and peers. When everyone has that incentive, that creates economic opportunities within the neighborhood. After all, there are neighborhoods in Bangladesh far poorer on an objective scale than the worst ghettos of Chicago, that nonetheless have bustling local economies. [1] Poverty is, of course, relative. But I'm not talking about utopia, but just about raising the plight of the poor here in the U.S. up to that of some places in Western Europe. ~~~ james1071 I am not sure what you are saying. Those who are able to learn will do so, given the right environment. Those who cannot, will not, whatever help you give them. Poverty has nothing to do with it, though those who lack the ability to learn may well also be poor. ~~~ pixl97 It's unfortunate you are incorrect, statistically speaking. In general giving people a stable, appropriate calorie diet is the best way to increase IQ over a population. Poverty has a whole lot to do with that. Next, after you lift people out of poverty you still have the education problem. Uneducated parents don't have educated kids, statistically speaking. The first few years of life, before kids are ever sent to school define a person's learning capacity hugely. Babies that have working parents and have less personal care, less emotional closeness, and less exposure to a wide range of language are going to be disadvantaged to those kids that do. ~~~ james1071 I am from London, in the UK. Pretty much everyone has enough calories (too many in most cases). As for schools-of course the rich people send their children to much better schools. Those who can't send their children to local schools. What happens there depends on how bright they are, how hard they work and how committed their parents are to education. In the case of some ethnic groups there is a strong aversion to educating their girls properly. None of this has much to do with poverty, emotional closeness or whatever else you claim. ~~~ barrkel _Pretty much everyone has enough calories (too many in most cases)._ Sure; foods high in sugar and fat have no effects on concentration levels versus healthier food, right? _Those who can 't send their children to local schools. What happens there depends on how bright they are, how hard they work and how committed their parents are to education._ This is deeply ignorant. What happens when a smart kid is in the middle of a class filled with kids who have no interest in learning? Do you think the teacher will craft a whole special course specific to that kid? Or do you think the teacher will try to get something basic to stick at the lowest level, so almost all the kids get at least something from their education? What happens when a kid's peers mock the kid for being a swot? How socially integrated is the kid going to be, when all his friends do things in the evenings, and the kid's stuck doing homework and study? Ever heard of peer pressure? Gangs? Do you have any memories of growing up in a state school in a poor area, of the risk of being beaten up if you venture into the wrong area, wearing the wrong uniform? ~~~ james1071 It's always a pleasure to interact with people who respond emotionally, based on some other issue, than the one that is being discussed, so I congratulate you for your response. I presume that you're upset with life being unfair, which it most certainly is. It does not change the fact that lack of calories is not a significant factor in poor educational attainment in the UK. There are also many reasons for a pupil not getting top grades-but being dragged into gang life by anti-intellectual peers is not one that ranks highly. More common, in my experience, are boys wasting hours on playing computer games and smoking dope. As for getting beaten up by entering into the wrong area-I don't see how that stops them from doing their homework in their bedroom. ------ saranagati there's a lot of talk here about teacher/school standardization but I dont see any talk of what that standardization is, only whos at fault. students dont do poorly in school because the information to learn isnt there or even because its not encouraged by the students parents (speaking of the us education system). students fail at school because of how much its geared to teach square pegs when many students arent a square peg. sure some teachers may teach for square pegs while others teach for round pegs but the students dont get the option of attending the class for round pegs instead of the square peg class. instead the student is thrown into a teachers class and has to conform to however that teacher wants to structure and grade the class. class A may be graded mostly on tests while class B may be mostly on homework and even still class C may be a mix of both homework and tests. then other teachers like to throw artifacts such as attendance to skew the grade even more. finally theres the problem of subjects that people just arent good at or dont care for because they provide little real world use. subjects such as history or soke more advanced english or math. these turn into something that a student is not only forced to attend and contribute to but also be judged on. for a personal anecdote and one of ky sources of critisms, when I was a freshman in high school I was in an algebra class and aced both finals with the highest grade in the class while getting A's and B's on all of my tests. one thing I never did though was the homework (I turned in maybe two homework assignments the entire year). end of the year comes and I fail the class because I didnt turn in the homework and I had a habit of sleeping in the class. to top off all of that there are teachers who just suck and/or dont get along with certain students. teachers who are condescending to soke students or try to keep students in class during lunch. its not a teachers job to punish kids in any way. if the student is disruptive to the class then they should dismiss the student from the class and have the school take care of problem students. ------ tiatia "Competition to get into these teacher education programs is tough" Let me guess. They give their teachers a decent pay? ------ icantthinkofone I would presume they would teach as well as great teachers from the US. ------ bobcostas55 Something worth noting whenever Finland and education come up: Finnish- Americans in America do better than Finns in Finland. ~~~ arjie Isn't that generally the case income-wise? Immigrants are a self-selecting bunch. Picking up and moving to a different country is hard and you need to be fairly dedicated to cross that gulf and put up with all the differences in order to make it work. South Asian Indian-Americans are one of the highest earning ethnic groups in the US, earning about twice the median national household income. But the median income in India is awful. ~~~ bobcostas55 That's a very interesting question, and the answer isn't straight-forward. On the one hand, obviously we should expect some selection effects. On the other hand, there is a relative status effect counter-acting it. Long story short, people prefer to be relatively rich in a poor country than relatively poor in a rich country, even if their absolute level of wealth would increase. Stark & Taylor (1991)[0] for example found that, at least when it comes to Mexico, the relative preference trumps the absolute preference: poorer households were more likely to migrate. [0] [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2234433?sid=2110552233...](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2234433?sid=21105522338573&uid=2&uid=3738128&uid=4) ------ platz You'd need a lot of Finnish teachers ------ james1071 Haven't read the piece, but will say this (which is blindingly obvious to everyone except those in control of the system): All you need to do to get a good secondary education system is to hire good graduates,train them and support their professional development. What does not work is hiring idiots, de-skilling the job, filling the day with busy work and other pointless nonsense. ~~~ GabrielF00 I am suspicious of any comment about American education that contains the words "blindingly obvious" and "all you need to do". The problems that exist in American education are incredibly complex. We've tried a lot of big new things based on a simple, reductive approach (examples: testing and accountability for schools and for teachers, small schools, charter schools, Teach for America). I don't think any of these big new ideas have transformed a low-performing urban public school system into a system where educated white professionals would send their kids. ~~~ james1071 Well,each to their own. The US has proved spectacularly inept in a number of areas (healthcare, obesity, guns and education) and the causes are indeed blindingly obvious to anyone who is not an American. ~~~ adventured It's worth noting that 3/4 of the problems you list didn't exist 30 years ago. The US had a highly functional, cost effective healthcare system until the early 1990s, when costs began to soar. In fact it still has the best hospitals and doctors in the world to this day, along with the best technology and best drugs. The US also has by far the most innovative healthcare tech and pharma industries. The US did not have an obesity _problem_ until the last 20 or 30 years. The US still has by far the best universities on earth. There isn't even a close second. Make a list of the top 20 universities and the US will take 17 of those slots. It had a tremendous public education system, again, until about 20 years ago. And even now, half the country still does have an excellent public education system. If the US is so inept at education, how come US universities stand so far above the rest of the world, and have for decades? Quick, name five universities of equal quality to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale, Princeton - anywhere on earth, eg: Sweden, Switzerland, Norway. ~~~ james1071 Proving the point that Americans are totally blind to what everyone else can see. 1 Obesity-apparently not a problem because it didn't exist 30- years ago. That, I find hard to believe if I remember my first trip to the US in the late 1980s and the free food restaurants in Las Vegas. 2 Healthcare -an obvious disaster, due to lack of access and the lifestyle of a large part of the population. Oh, it will also bankrupt the country without major reforms. 3 The universities-rankings are based on research, which in turn are based on buying in talent.Don't kid yourself that they reflect the quality of undergraduates that are turned out or the population as a whole. 4 As for guns-no need to bother with that one. ~~~ adventured I never said obesity isn't a problem, so right off the bat you're misleading on what I said. In fact the US did not have an obesity problem in the 1980s. Between 1980 and 2000, the obesity rate doubled among adults in the US, per the CDC. What I originally said is accurate and easy to prove. The obvious point, is that America has only become "inept" in the last 20 to 25 years on obesity. It's a very recent problem. It can be reversed and solved as quickly as it become a problem. I'd argue that peak obesity has already occurred, the causes have almost all been clearly identified, and over the next 20 years Americans will get less obese measured by every five years that go by. 2) Total healthcare costs stopped increasing several years ago. In fact it's more likely that healthcare costs as a % of GDP and income will decline for the next 20 years. It's not going to bankrupt the country without major reforms. Not even remotely close. The US has among the highest disposable income levels in the world, healthcare expenses are a very manageable problem even at these elevated cost levels. Americans do not have a healthcare access problem. In fact Americans are the most over-doctored, over-tested, over-treated people on earth, and it's a huge contributing factor for why Americans spend so much on healthcare. Americans consume more healthcare services than any other people. Nearly 90% of Americans have health coverage now, and the majority of those in the 10% that do not, choose not to. The poor in America have had complete coverage for a very long time, via state medicaid, among a dozen other programs. Saying something is so, does not prove it. If you're going to make outlandish claims (the US will be bankrupted by healthcare costs), you should back them up. 3) The universities in the US outrank their peers in other countries across the board on a direct comparison basis (top vs top, middle vs middle). It's embarrassing how far ahead the US has been for the last 40 years. It's universally accepted that the US has by far the best universities. There's no debate to be had here, at all. ~~~ james1071 As I said, this is pretty much complete nonsense and a classic example of the phenomenon of American blindness to their problems. Take your ludicrous assertion that healthcare costs will decline as a % of GDP over the next 20 years. You are on another planet to the rest of us. ~~~ adventured And yet I'm the one backing up my position, meanwhile you stick to hurling insults. We're already at a point where healthcare costs as a % of GDP will begin declining. With the expansion of the ACA, the US Government has begun doing what every country in Europe does: squeezing unnecessary costs out of healthcare any way they can. You claimed healthcare costs would bankrupt the US without reforms. Now let's see you prove what you said, instead of relying on ad hominem attacks in place of actual data points. Per capita healthcare expenditure growth has been falling for about 12 years now, and is down to low single digits: [http://i.imgur.com/5ARcJ1s.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/5ARcJ1s.jpg) "Medical Costs Register First Decline Since 1970s" [http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/06/18/medical-costs- regi...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/06/18/medical-costs-register- first-decline-since-1970s/) "CBO: Declining Health Care Costs Will Lower US Budget Deficit" [http://www.voanews.com/content/us-cbo-estimates-slightly- low...](http://www.voanews.com/content/us-cbo-estimates-slightly-lower- deficits-as-health-subsidies-fall/1893114.html) "Republicans Hurt By Slowing Costs in Health Care In the 2014 election, Democrats seize on opportunity to talk about Medicare." [http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/26/republicans-h...](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/26/republicans- hurt-by-slowing-costs-in-health-care)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Streaming application log events to the Cloud from the Docker fire-hose - viklas http://www.emergingstack.com/2015/05/11/Cloud-Logging-and-the-Docker-Firehose.html ====== viklas SUMMARY: A kubernetes deployed 'logging container', running on every host, streams every docker-hosted application event to AWS Cloudwatch. Cheap, quick, real-time, re-usable and accessible anywhere.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What concepts in your field are the most difficult to explain simply? - Nuance ====== drakonka What I actually do. My job is super interesting, but I can't find a good way to explain it to outsiders. I am a software engineer in the games industry. If I worked on gameplay it would be a bit easier, but I work on core tech/central engine tools. A layperson has no idea what that means and any examples I can think of to give them are just as confusing unless they already have some familiarity with AAA game dev infrastructure and workflows. This is surely a failure of me not being able to find a good way to explain it yet; it feels like I'm working on so many different things in this area that there isn't a single clear-cut description I can come up with that an outsider would easily understand. ------ potta_coffee Why it's so difficult (impossible) to accurately estimate software projects and why programming does not fit the "assembly line" model. ------ pplonski86 I'm working mainly with machine learning field, if there is something difficult for me, then it means I dont fully understand it. Then I'm trying to improve my knowledge. The good test of understanding is to try explain it to the wife :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Things to consider when choosing an investor? - jpd750 HN-<p>I don't even have a product yet, but did a quick pitch on the phone to an investor and he is potentially interested in investing in a MVP-level version of the product.<p>What are the most important things to consider with choosing an investor (considering you have the choice) ? What should I be looking out for?<p>Thanks! ====== mchannon Terms, terms, terms. Also, ask yourself (and perhaps the investor) what would happen if in three years, that money's gone, your product tanks, and have to get yourself a job. There are many investors who get emotional and make it their life's work to torment you when things go south, no matter what they sign or what they promise. Some are even accredited, but making sure they're accredited will limit your exposure to this eventuality. (They should have forms they can fill out and give you to prove it). If the investor passes that test, then as long as you can live with the terms (convertible notes are always best if you can get them versus straight equity), close 'em and get building!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bitcoin - The Internet of Money - WardPlunet http://startupboy.com/2013/11/07/bitcoin-the-internet-of-money ====== vovantics Testing	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Girls Next Door - not_paul_graham http://www.5280.com/girlsnextdoor/?src=longreads&mc_cid=54948c4afe&mc_eid=99af5e345c ====== reubenmorais Took me a while to realize: you have to scroll down to see the content. ~~~ fernly In Chrome, it doesn't scroll. It appears to be only the image and the headline. (Edit: nope, nor Firefox either, for me) ~~~ jaredsohn It does scroll in Chrome. However, you have to scroll for a bit before anything beyond the scrollbar changes. ------ fit2rule Slavery in America is something that really needs to be discussed openly and in free society. People believing that slavery doesn't/can't exist in their modern world really need to be exposed to the truth: there is more slavery now than there ever was. ~~~ tmerr When you say there's more slavery now than there ever was I can't tell whether you're exaggerating or know something that I don't. As far as America goes, it seems like a stark difference between now and 150 years ago when 13% of the population consisted of slaves [0]. If you're referring to third world countries that's more understandable due to the number of young workers building products for wealthier countries. [0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_Census](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_Census) ~~~ fit2rule [http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/report/](http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/report/) It is estimated that the US has 60,000 slaves _today_ , per definition. So no, its not over yet in the US. However, world-wide: approximately 30 million people fit the definition of enslaved humans. One thing, though: the US Prison System is considered by some to be industrialized slavery. If this is included in the statistics, the US enslavement index goes way, way up.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Tabtation – A Chrome Extension to Manage Your 'Too Many Tabs Syndrome' - RishitKedia Hey there, HN!<p>My name is Rishit, and this is my first post here on HN.<p>Let me start off by asking you a question.<p>How many tabs do you have open in Chrome right now?<p>If you said less than five or ten: Congratulations, you’re not suffering from the dreaded 'Too Many Tabs Syndrome' (TMTS). Well, most probably! We all grow and start from zero.<p>What?! Say that again. Did I hear you correctly? 25? 50? 100? Maybe even more? Or you’re just too lazy like me and said ‘too many’ since you can’t count them on your fingers? Woah! Now we’re talking! Yeah, yeah, I know, we’re in HN land after all, so I may be over-hyping this.<p>But seriously though, you must have landed up in situations where the tab widths are so small, you can’t make sense of anything. So, what do you do? You start opening new windows. Wonderful. Few hours of work, and yup, you end up with the same thing again. Windows are nice. But a lot of them (with a lot of tabs) sucks even more. I just went through all of my five windows and all their tabs, and still can’t seem to find that one tab! Jeez. ️<p>So, I may have something that would be right up your alley, and help you manage your TMTS; Well, it certainly helps me with mine, so I’m stoked to find out if it does the same for y’all.<p>I’ve just launched Tabtation on the Chrome Web Store! (<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabtation/hdidaidpgcmfbkhcfhdpaehpfeilhfcb" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabtation/hdidaidp...</a>)<p>I’m offering a 7-day free trial, so give it a try and do let me know what you think! I’d love to hear your questions, thoughts, or feedback, and work on them to improve Tabtation so that we can all be more productive in the coming months. ️<p>BTW, Tabtation is also on Product Hunt today (<a href="https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tabtation" rel="nofollow">https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tabtation</a>). Yup, a lot of firsts for me today!<p>Cheers! ====== Jefro118 I've used Workona which I like but it seemed to be slowing down my browser and so I uninstalled it (although I haven't tested this carefully). Is Tabtation any more performant? ~~~ RishitKedia Hey there! Workona and Tabtation are trying to solve the same problem differently. Tabtation is just a bar at the bottom that loads on every tab, and groups/organizes your tabs based on the domain, for handy access to all your open tabs. From the very little that I've seen, Workona solves the problem a little differently by introducing Workspaces and opening/closing tabs each time depending on the Workspace you select. I'd love that you try Tabtation and see the difference. Hope that helps! ------ qnsi I will stick with workona ~~~ samanator Wow! Thanks for the tip. I've been using it every day at work since you posted this. Makes it much easier to compartmentalize things. ~~~ qnsi That's why I posted about Workona, wanted people interested to know about good alternative. I am glad you enjoy it as well as I	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
List of All Current TLDs - manjana http://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt ====== mike_d The IANA TLD list should never be used directly. What you really want instead is the Public Suffix List [1]. It will help you determine the "effective TLD" of domains like amazon.co.uk or sflawlib.ci.sf.ca.us, and gives you more insight in to how a technical allocation at the root transforms politically in to implementation. 1\. [https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat](https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat) ~~~ sleevi PSL maintainer here: please don’t use the PSL! Yes, it’s weird to have a maintainer asking people not to use their project, but the PSL was a very specific (and unfortunate) hack for a very specific (and unfortunate, and browser-created) problem. It is something we live with, not something we like. While the ideal world is “don’t use any list at all, use the protocols as God, the IETF, and IANA intended”, if you are going to use a list, using the IANA list, updated daily, is much better than the PSL. Do not use the PSL for anything that is not “cookies abusing the Host header” [https://github.com/sleevi/psl-problems](https://github.com/sleevi/psl- problems) ~~~ Lvl999Noob Are you still adding suffixes to the list? If so, wouldn't refusing to add new suffixes help with the issue? If no new organisation can make use of PSL to link their subdomains, then they are only left with SOP. Since the list stays like it is now, no existing websites, depending on the list suddenly break down. ~~~ sleevi We are. Deliberate sabotage like that would take quite a while before it was noticed, however, and it wouldn’t magically fix cookies and how people use them. To the extent it is used by cookies, we still want to maintain a fair and equitable solution. However, we also want to actively discourage any new users or use cases, to the extent possible, while we also try to fix cookies. Ideas _like_ [https://github.com/privacycg/first-party- sets](https://github.com/privacycg/first-party-sets) provide a possible model. While FPS doesn’t directly address this, as part of keeping a narrow scope, the approach to explicitly expressing boundaries is one that has the best viable path. However, that’s effectively “Deprecate the Host option for cookies”, so... that’s a big task. Simply sabotaging the PSL doesn’t force the problem to be solved, so mostly, it’s an education campaign of “We made a mistake; learn from ours, rather than repeating it.” ------ saaaaaam I worked with some slightly crazy businessmen who were tricked by an out-of- work “domain name consultant” into putting in an application for some new gTLDs. They got one, and cashed out another application to let someone else take it which got them all their application fees back plus a decent chunk of cash. They were genuinely convinced their terrible new gTLD was going to make them $100 million a year. My main job was to stop them from blowing what money they had in reserve on insane publicity stunts for long enough that they woke up and realised they had been conned. Eventually they woke up but had spent something approaching $2m finding that out. I stopped them spending at least as much again. “Tell me again why you want to hire ten hot air balloons to fly over this stadium...?” ~~~ treeman79 Worked Directly for a fortune 100 CEO. His attitude on advertising was it was better take all the money, put it in a pile and burn it. Had positive things about superbowel ads, but dissed everything else ~~~ andruby Nice typo. Superbowel. ~~~ anon73044 Could have been entirely intentional if he's not a sportsball fan. ~~~ treeman79 Let’s go with that. :) ------ gruez For comparison, the same file 10 years ago: [https://web.archive.org/web/20100502082201/http://data.iana....](https://web.archive.org/web/20100502082201/http://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds- alpha-by-domain.txt) There were only 279 TLDs back then, or 32 TLDs if you excluded all the country code TLDs. Now there are 1508 TLDs, or 1260 excluding country code TLDs. ~~~ zokier > There were only 279 TLDs back then, or 32 TLDs if you excluded all the > country code TLDs. Arguably that's about 30 too many and really the root of this whole mess. Imho Postel, for all the good he did, in retrospect mismanaged DNS by not establising really any structure or policy, in a way that feels now bit naive/idealistic (and US-centric). By the time ICANN took over dot-com bubble was already knocking at the door and laissez faire anything goes attitude of DNS pretty well cemented, so any drastic changes would have been difficult to accomplish. Essentially by leaving the legacy TLDs completely open and mostly without restrictions or hierarchy/structure their meaning was eroded away, and if the TLDs have no meaning then it's only logical to throw them away. ------ fanf2 One of my side projects is [https://twitter.com/diffroot](https://twitter.com/diffroot) a twitter account that publishes changes to the root zone (except for nameserver IP address changes). Alongside that I have a couple of Twitter threads commenting on the changes. The relevant one is [https://twitter.com/fanf/status/903709051606978560](https://twitter.com/fanf/status/903709051606978560) my collection of dead .brand TLDs which is now 3 years old (tho I didn't keep it very reliably the first year). It's also amusing to see if you can spot a .brand TLD being used for real services, where the brand is not an Internet company. The biggest one I know of is SNCF. ~~~ mike_d Thank you for this service. It is actually the only Twitter account I have push notifications enabled for (though I need to figure out a better solution when there is a lot of churn). FWIW, I know at least one non-tech company that was already using .brand as an internal TLD and spent the money to avoid a name collision. ------ nfoz ICANN sold out the internet. The namespace is all but ruined. .PHOTO, .PHOTOGRAPHY, .PHOTOS, .PICS, .PICTURES This should offend everyone. ~~~ codethief I'm more concerned about TLDs like: .ACCENTURE .AIRBUS .AMERICANEXPRESS .AMERICANFAMILY .AVIANCA .BAIDU .BARCLAYCARD .BARCLAYS .BENTLEY .BESTBUY .BLOOMBERG .BNPPARIBAS .BOEHRINGER .BUGATTI .CALVINKLEIN .CAPITALONE .CITI .EPSON .ERICSSON .FERRARI .FUJITSU .GMAIL .GODADDY .HDFC .HDFCBANK .HITACHI .HYATT .HYUNDAI .JAGUAR .JEEP .JPMORGAN .JUNIPER .KERRYHOTELS .KERRYLOGISTICS .KERRYPROPERTIES .LACAIXA .LAMBORGHINI .LANDROVER .LANXESS .LPLFINANCIAL .MASERATI .MATTEL .MCKINSEY .MICROSOFT .MITSUBISHI .NETFLIX .NORTHWESTERNMUTUAL .OLAYANGROUP .PANASONIC .PRAMERICA .SAMSUNG .SCHAEFFLER .SCJOHNSON .SONY .STCGROUP .SUZUKI .SWATCH .TIFFANY .TOSHIBA .VIRGIN .VOLKSWAGEN It's disgusting. ~~~ AmericanChopper If those TLDs were actually useful, then the domain name system would be in much better shape than it actually is. In reality, you have .gov for government, .com for business, .org for organisations who don’t care how much traffic they get, local country TLDs for if you operate a service for one country only, and tons and tons of garbage. com is the only TLD that has any value for international commerce. It doesn’t matter that .netflix exists, because it will never be used for anything productive. The problem is that you can only ever count on a person knowing .com and their local TLD. Everything else either won’t register with people as being an actual domain name, or will look like a scam to most people. The internet is locked into this system, and it’s one that cannot possibly scale. The explosion in new TLDs is an attempt to address that. But we don’t need to worry about how disgusting it is, because it’s an attempt that has failed. I would suggest two issues that are more concerning is that there is nothing that seems to be a realistic alternative or solution, and that the way this problem has played out has diminished the actual usefulness of domain names, with that gap being filled by the google search engine. ~~~ kohtatsu There were plans on potentially allowing [https://netflix/](https://netflix/) I can't recall the technical term for it though, and my search engine couldn't help me find it within a few minutes. ~~~ pantalaimon That would ruin local host names ~~~ pwdisswordfish4 Not if the final dot to denote the root zone were to be brought back, i.e. [https://netflix./](https://netflix./) ~~~ parliament32 Brought back? It's still a thing and required.. your OS's DNS implementation might not handle it in the way you expect though ;) ------ jacobjonz I agree with @jrockway below. There is no point in retaining TLDs the way are now. The original idea of TLDs were to have separate namespaces. For example, apple.com is the company apple and apple.fruit, may be a fruit seller. This never worked though. At the end, the companies ended up having to register all the TLDs or someone else would get apple.dong and pretend to be related to apple. ICANN decided to use the opportunity for money grab and started releasing new TLDs every now and then. It makes all sense to get rid of usage of TLDs as they are today. If apple is <any subdomain>.apple, that's it. People would know that apple.dong is something related to dong. It might sound to be far fetched, but it is not. Once people see the flooding of TLDs (like handshake TLDs which are easily and cheaply available to general public on Namebase (namebase.io) or Bob wallet(Bob wallet.io)) and when they realize TLDs are the new equivalent of .coms, they would realize that it's just the TLDs that matter for auth aspect and the subdomains are more functional within the company (like mail.google and chat.google) The only people to lose are the scammers and ICANN. ------ Bnshsysjab I’d love $myhandle.sucks but alas the domain registrar decided to charge extortion rates in the hopes that large companies register their own domain to prevent hate sites >_> ~~~ jasomill Incidentally, if the $185,000 you're about to spend on a new gTLD registration is bringing you down, you could use the money to register _icann.sucks_ instead: [https://www.rebel.com/search/?exact=false&q=icann.sucks&tldo...](https://www.rebel.com/search/?exact=false&q=icann.sucks&tldonly=sucks) Turnabout is, I suppose, fair play. ~~~ saagarjha Funnily enough, I tried to check dotsucks.sucks…they’ve thought through that already. ------ gfaure .calvinklein? .bananarepublic? A clear money-grab that has no benefit to users, complicates validation and security for developers, and seals off vast swathes of the namespace for the sole use of corporations. ~~~ ShakataGaNai A money grab for whom? ICANN, sure. But if a company wants to spend the $200k, what is the big deal? Some companies (ex [http://www.nic.ovh/en/index.xml](http://www.nic.ovh/en/index.xml) ) are using it for their customers. Some companies (ex [https://calculator.aws/](https://calculator.aws/) ) are using it for shorter URLs, while still being descriptive. Sure some are just doing it because they can, other's have no good use case yet. But I fail to see how .bananarepublic being in the hands of one company is a detriment to me... the average internet user. ~~~ gfaure It's a money grab for ICANN, precisely. Neither users nor developers have any say in this process, and the body that stands to benefit financially from accepting trademarks as TLDs is _not_ going to be acting in the interest of users or developers, are they? My argument wasn't specifically about .bananarepublic or .calvinklein. It was more that I don't believe trademarks should have been admitted, full stop. There's no way ICANN can make impartial decisions here that benefit the bulk of Internet users. I reserve judgement on generic TLDs, although I really don't like the implications to user confusion caused by .photo, .photos, .pics and the like. ------ jrockway I don't understand why we even have TLDs, and don't just register names at the root level. Sure, it's nice to be able to shard data structures among many providers (.com can be different servers/infrastructure/rules than .net) and might have been a technical necessity "back in the day" (though there weren't many shards, so I doubt it), but now it's actively harmful. You found a company called foobarcorp and register foobarcorp.com... and some jerk registers foobarcorp.net, foobarcorp.info, foobarcorp.sucks, etc. Why even allow this? Let there be one and only one foobarcorp. Yes, I'm bitter that Google gets google. but I'm stuck with jrock.us. Why does it cost millions of dollars to remove one dot from my domain name? There is no technical reason. Maybe it's time to overthrow the default root servers and start our own Internet. Also "." should have an A record. ~~~ puranjay > foobarcorp.net, foobarcorp.info, foobarcorp.sucks, etc. Why even allow this Because there can be multiple companies with the same name. Why cut them off from using their own name in a domain address? ~~~ account42 You already have that problem - there is only one .com and most companies will want to hog all others too. ------ randyreddig Maintainer of ZoneDB (zonedb.org or [https://github.com/zonedb/zonedb](https://github.com/zonedb/zonedb)) here: We extracted this project from Domainr ([https://domainr.com](https://domainr.com)), using tooling that updates the database each day. It’s formatted as a single text file (zones.txt) and associated metadata in JSON files. We also generate a Go package for our own uses (the tooling is written in Go). It’s similar to the PSL, but where the PSL has wildcards and inverted matches, ZoneDB explicitly lists each “known” zone, including retired or withdrawn names. [https://github.com/zonedb/zonedb/blob/master/zones.txt](https://github.com/zonedb/zonedb/blob/master/zones.txt) ------ palijer .GIFT .GIFTS Why have both? There is no way that isn't going to cause confusion. ~~~ james_pm Also .hotel and .hotels. And .photo and .photos (and .photography). Plus .ink and .inc. And many more "confusingly similar" despite ICANN rules that were supposed to prevent that. Money talks. ~~~ spcebar I agree there's serious potential for misleading customers, but also see the occasional merit of having both, ie, if you own Hank's Hotel you'd want the .hotel tld to correctly identify your business, and likewise helpmefind.hotels makes more sense than helpmefind.hotel. These are my arbitrary examples that do not outweigh the potential for the fraud of someone registering hanks.hotels maliciously. I think icann is a horrible entity and never should have existed. On a different note, I like how many tlds there are now. .pizza is my personal favorite. ------ NKosmatos Hi all, a question slightly related to this topic... Is there an easy (and free) way to get hold of all the registered domains under a TLD or ccTLD? I know that services like [0] exist, but they are paid for and the validity and collection of data is dubious. Why aren't zone files generally and freely available? Is there a way to download or mirror the DNS data? [0][https://zonefiles.io/cctld-domains/](https://zonefiles.io/cctld-domains/) ------ rerx I like how there are _two_ top level domains for my city of about a million people: .cologne and .koeln Is there any other town represented twice? OK, places like Berlin, Hamburg, London or Paris don't have the advantage of different spellings in English and a local language. But there's only .wien, no .vienna. How about .tokyo -- is there a puny-coded Japanese version? ~~~ SergeAx "cologne" may be referring to perfume) ~~~ rerx It isn't though :) -- just try [https://www.city.cologne](https://www.city.cologne) The company behind .cologne and .koeln is from Vienna BTW: [https://nic.koeln/en](https://nic.koeln/en) How could they let .vienna slip through the cracks? ------ ksec Here is another chance for people who may know more on TLDs. What happened to .Web? Verisign got it in 2016 and it has since been in endless legal battle and endless _Final_ decisions from ICANN. Anyone have any news on that? ------ Tepix I looked at the list and ZERO grabbed my attention. Turns out its a private GTLD for Amazon. Reading Amazons's application for the ZERO GTLD (linked at [https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/applicationde...](https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/934) ) makes me angry. It's completly bland. You could use their application to register any string under the sun. It's not clear what benefits it offers for the public. These types of domains should not be allowed. ------ ss64 and still nobody has registered .EXE ------ neiman What stops us, at 2020, to just allow possible string to be a TLD? What's the point of limiting it to this list? ~~~ umvi Nothing, technically speaking. But legally and economically speaking I think it's a bad idea. I personally think there should only be a very small handful of TLDs: com, edu, org, gov and maybe a few others. Having a limited number of TLDs communicates to the end user what kind of site it is (government, educational, commercial, non-profit, etc.) and reduces your domain footprint online. When you allow ".sucks" to be a TLD, now you've basically opened up a new market of squatters and blackmailers forcing companies and individuals to buy up every possible potentially damaging TLD of their trademark or brand[0]. If you allow any arbitrary TLD, be prepared to employ a full DNS police force because tons of people acting in bad faith are going to register every possible typo under the sun in order to capitalize on people's mistakes ("apple.con", "apple.cpm", "apple.vom", "f---.apple") [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.sucks_(registry)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.sucks_$registry$) ~~~ gabereiser I agree with this only so much as to protect the user with information on what type of site they are visiting. Org for non-profit or clubs, Net for networks, Com for commerce, nation tld’s and gov. The arbitrary TLD’s are really to keep certain organizations from owning the internet because of how name registration works. Humans are corrupt. ~~~ neiman .org could still be for non-profits and national TLD's could still be managed by governments. .com, .net, meanings btw, are completely irrelevant nowadays. My idea is not to cancel the meaning of .org, but rather create other possibilities for names. What's the difference really between a 1000+ TLDs and a 100,000+ TLDs? ------ wespeng I have wrote a perl module for this official IANA TLD database, please review it: [https://metacpan.org/pod/Net::IANA::TLD](https://metacpan.org/pod/Net::IANA::TLD) Thanks. ------ mmphosis .WTF ------ wheelerwj look at all that digital real estate thats not being used. So much opportunity! ~~~ gruez Ah yes, we were missing out on so much without TLDs like KERRYLOGISTICS, LPLFINANCIAL, or SANDVIKCOROMANT! ~~~ c22 I think .BLOCKBUSTER is the one that's really going to come in handy. ------ xwdv Why is there no .FACEBOOK? ~~~ tialaramex Presumably they didn't want to spend a tremendous amount of money for no clear purpose? Most outfits which registered a brand or company name as a TLD are purely throwing away money here, either because they didn't understand what they were doing or out of sheer vanity. You can _maybe_ make an argument for a handful of very big technology companies that have some sort of plan for what they'll do with a TLD, such as Google, but I don't think Facebook would be on that list. ~~~ xwdv If there’s any company that could have _tons_ of uses for a TLD it’s Facebook. Imagine a decentralized Facebook made up of custom websites all using the .facebook domain. Imagine the revenues. Zuckerberg are you reading this? What are your thoughts? ------ searchableguy There should be .anime or .uwu ~~~ james_pm Related, there is .moe ------ bhartzer My favorite site to watch: ntldstats dot com ------ gitgud What are all the TLDs prefixed with XN--? ~~~ kej Punycode for these Unicode names: कॉम セール佛山 ಭಾರತ 慈善集团在线 한국 ଭାରତ 大众汽车点看 คอม ভাৰত ভারত 八卦 موقع বাংলা 公益公司香格里拉网站移动我爱你 москва қаз католик онлайн сайт 联通 срб бг бел קום 时尚微博淡马锡ファッション орг नेट ストアアマゾン 삼성 சிங்கப்பூர் 商标商店商城 дети мкд ею ポイント新闻家電 كوم 中文网中信中国中國娱乐谷歌 భారత్ ලංකා 電訊盈科购物クラウド ભારત 通販 भारतम् भारत भारोत 网店 संगठन 餐厅网络 ком укр 香港亚马逊诺基亚食品飞利浦台湾台灣手机 мон الجزائر عمان ارامكو ایران العليان اتصالات امارات بازار موريتانيا پاکستان الاردن بارت بھارت المغرب ابوظبي البحرين السعودية ڀارت كاثوليك سودان همراه عراق مليسيا 澳門 닷컴 政府 شبكة بيتك عرب გე 机构组织机构健康 ไทย سورية 招聘 рус рф تونس 大拿 ລາວ みんなグーグル ευ ελ 世界書籍 ഭാരതം ਭਾਰਤ 网址 닷넷 コム天主教游戏 vermögensberater vermögensberatung 企业信息嘉里大酒店嘉里 مصر قطر 广东 இலங்கை இந்தியா հայ 新加坡 فلسطين 政务 ~~~ maple3142 I don't know Amazon and Google have their domain in Japanese too. アマゾン (Amazon) グーグル (Google) ~~~ NetOpWibby Oh that's clever ------ axaxs All because of an ICANN money grab. If it were really about 'having choice', applications wouldn't have cost so much. ~~~ hombre_fatal The end-game is that everyone is going to have their own suffix for their website. And the first part of the hostname will standardize into, I don't know, maybe "com" for the commercial part of your entity, "org" for the more community-oriented part, "net" for projects that have to do with interconnectivity, etc. Maybe even regional ones like "us" and "co.uk". For example, com.shopify net.battle org.wikipedia co.uk.bbc gov.whitehouse Maybe even some sort of routing system, just spitballing here. /my-shop/com.shopify /elections/gov.whitehouse Surprised nobody has thought of something like this. The only problem I see with this system is that the ICANN could get greedy and possibly sell this conventional "com", "net", "org", etc prefix system to the highest bidders and centralize them to just a few suffixes for us to choose between, then we'd be forced to register our websites as prefixes of a small oligarchy that owns the handful of suffixes. :/ ~~~ aserafini I think the end game will be that the domain part of a URL will become optional so that it is valid to enter just a TLD in the browser and the company that owns that TLD can redirect. So [http://google](http://google) would be a valid URL that redirects to [http://www.google.com](http://www.google.com) (for example). Essentially TLDs will become the new domains and only companies will be able to afford to buy one, but they will do it for the prestige (like the equivalent of owning your .com today). ~~~ squiggleblaz More likely, the whole system will just collapse and so we will use a private organisation who provides a service linking approximate names to websites, something like a telephone directory but it doesn't require you to correctly spell things and get the right prefix. It will occasionally be a problem where you search for "Honest Company" and it takes you to honest.co.fraud, but if it does that too often I guess we will switch to a competitor. I guess the main solution to that problem is to have a list of different possible matches, and require the user to pick the right one. ~~~ selfhoster11 > we will use a private organisation who provides a service linking > approximate names to websites You are describing Google. Lots of people already type in 'yahoo' or 'paypal' and then click the first link than type the URL. ~~~ navaati Woooosh !	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
It's Playtime - Light Table Playground released - ibdknox http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/06/24/its-playtime/ ====== Cushman Who thought "It's Playtime" was a better title for this than "Light Table Playground released"? Why does this keep happening to Light Table posts? Edit: Now "It's playtime - Light Table Playground released", after ibdknox altered the blog title. So... success? I still think it's ridiculous, though. ~~~ ibdknox I don't know, but it's starting to make me sad. It doesn't seem to fall under the "editorial spin" guidelines - if anything it was clarification. Hopefully the mystery will bring more people in? haha ;) ~~~ seiji It's either an auto-renaming script or a human with the personality of an auto-renaming script. ~~~ Cushman My current hypothesis is that it's an individual moderator (perhaps showing off) running a script without official sanction, hence the silence from the admins. The way the post on the subject[0] was buried without official comment after over 500 upvotes suggests a certain amount of institutional blindness. [0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102013> ~~~ why-el I think PG did comment on a subsequent post asking why post on subject[0] was taken down. I am not sure if commenting on a soon-to-be-killed post constitutes an official comment though, perhaps it was decided there is no need since according to policy meta-concerns should be dealt with using email. ~~~ JoeCortopassi So instead of having a thread pop up to address meta-concerns, they have to be dealt with privately causing any front page title change to now have 10-20 comments at the top discussing the title change. All the actual discussion about the article is well beneath the fold now ------ trotsky I understand you're working fast and it's early. But not providing hashes and using a two stage downloader and not using ssl and using auto updates and not using code signing means that your app will now be the weakest link in terms of security for all but the worst configured computers. While it's almost certain no one is targeting you or your users now, that could change when people see such a weakness or could leave people open to local attackers that you'll never have a chance to notice. ~~~ ibdknox It's early and we honestly didn't think down those lines. Ultimately, the deployment mechanism will look different than this, but this was the path of least resistance. At the very least though we can do a few of these things to remove some of the danger - we'll get on it. ~~~ anigbrowl Yeah, I am not that exercised about the security risk but it made a really bad first impression. I primarily use Windows, I wouldn't mind so much if I were Unix-based. Also, installing it in my Documents folder under Windows is weird. On the plus side, I like the prototype itself and will be interested to see where it goes. ------ alokm Is there any interesting piece of code that might help me see this working to its true potential? I tried the factorial function expecting it to show all the recursive calls. What can I expect to see here? Call trace over multiple functions? EDIT: Just tried this , atleast this shows the last calls made to the functions (defn my-add [a b] (+ a b)) (defn fact[x] (if (<= x 1) 1 (* x (fact (- x 1)) ))) (my-add (fact (my-add 3 3)) (fact (my-add 2 5))) \--------------- OUTPUT (defn my-add [\|\|720\|\| \|\|5040\|\|] (+ \|\|720\|\| \|\|5040\|\|)) (defn fact[\|\|1\|\|] (if (<= \|\|1\|\| 1) 1 (* \|\|1\|\| (fact (- \|\|1\|\| 1)) ))) (my-add (fact (my-add 3 3)) (fact (my-add 2 5)))\|\| => 5760\|\| ~~~ lmarinho A little example I've come up with is writing a bunch of tests for a function you are implementing and seeing them automatically executed. Try to fix fib by changing a, b and i values: (defn fib [n] (loop [a 1, b 1, i 1] (if (= i n) a (recur b (+ a b) (inc i))))) (= (fib 0) 0) (= (fib 1) 1) (= (fib 2) 1) (= (fib 3) 2) (= (fib 4) 3) (= (fib 10) 55) ------ why-el A quick search failed me but I am pretty sure my question has been discussing elsewhere, in which case I would appreciate a redirect/summary. Is there a difference between LightTable and Emacs' eval-last-sexp and similar functions? What is LightTable supposed to add? besides support for Clojure. ~~~ leif It's prettier. And it shows parameter expansion in some cases I think. And some day it will have some fancy-ass version of narrow-to-tag (which actually does sound like a real step forward). ------ mey Thanks for considering Windows user in this release. ~~~ mey Heads up, just sent an e-mail to feedback, with an error on starting up the system on powershell. Not sure if it's my environment or not. ~~~ madsushi For me, the issue was trying to load Light Table via the 64-bit version of PowerShell. Switching to the x86 version (and setting the remote code signing) had me working in no time. ~~~ mey I'll check on this, I use 64bit powershell and 64bit jvm. ------ munchor First of all, I'm using Linux and it opened on Firefox instead of Chromium. Secondly, it seemed quite slow, and I can't use Ctrl+Shift+Up to select a paragraph above and Ctrl+Shift+Down to do the same to the paragraph below, like on Emacs. Either way, the live interpretation of Clojure code looks really great, keep on working and good luck! ~~~ dmaz For Linux the script is doing "if chrome, else if firefox". Better to use xdg- open. ~~~ munchor So it's looking for Chrome, a closed source browser that I'd never use, instead of Chromium. Too bad. ~~~ sherbondy Seems like you can use any browser you'd like by going to: <http://localhost:8833/> once the server is up and running. ~~~ munchor Thank you, that's cool! How can I kill the server, though? ~~~ jurjenh light server stop if you look through the script file, it has a series of options. light table light server start \| stop \| restart light update [version] but as far as I can tell it always checks for updates first and will install them before it checks any of the arguments passed. ------ pyrhho So far the biggest annoyance is truncating results.. It's cute, but not very useful when exploring output. For example: (.. System (getProperties)) produces a lot of output, and I'd like to look through it to find a property. Maybe a way to expand the output (like chrome inspector's javascript objects) ? That said, it's pretty cool, and really interesting. ------ jasonjackson It works perfectly on mac. Great work Chris, this demo gave me a sense of an Apple product "it just works", i typed in code and immediately it just worked. ~~~ LaGrange Click the full-screen view. While this is of course a purely aesthetic impression, the clean-slate feeling is wonderful. ------ lispm I somehow fail to see how it does something useful for recursive functions. ~~~ kaonashi Clojure in general prefers the loop/recur construct over real recursion. You still can't see each iteration of the loop, though; perhaps that's what you meant by useful. ~~~ lispm anything where there is more than one invocation of a function ------ nyellin This is really sweet for a beta. If an inner function throws an exception, you should show the exception there, not just next to the toplevel function call. ------ lucian1900 The server starts up for me with: > light table --- Checking for updates... --- Starting server... (this takes several seconds) nohup: redirecting stderr to stdout --- Server up! --- Starting Chrome But then I get a blank window in Chrome pointing to <http://localhost:8833/>. If I reload, it loads forever. I've stopped and started it a few times, and once I got a dark background, another time I got some Clojure code loaded as plain text. Running this on Ubuntu 12.04 amd64. It happens with OpenJDK (Java 6), OpenJDK (Java 7) and Sun (Java 6). ~~~ Neener54 I ran into this problem as well, killed java and the light app and restarted (./light table) and it worked. ------ freyday Java being required means this is a complete non-starter for me. ~~~ edoloughlin Do you have an ideological or practical opposition? Java is cross-platform enough for it not to be an issue. Are you memory-constrained? ~~~ freyday Mostly due to the security risk. Especially on Windows. Even being a software developer (read: not your average computer user) and taking extra precautions (like click-to-run for java use in browsers) I've still gotten hit by malware that takes advantage of security holes in the Java runtime. ~~~ cnf I second the exact sentiment on OSX. And running a VM with linux (or windows, java is as much a pain on either platform) is a lot of effort for running an editor. As long as it needs java installed, I'm out... ------ Moocar Nice color scheme. Anyone know of a similar theme for emacs? ~~~ jkbr It's quite similar to Solarized [0] for which there is emacs support [1]. [0] <http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized> [1] <https://github.com/sellout/emacs-color-theme-solarized> ------ fdb The core Clojure language analyzer is open-source: <https://github.com/ibdknox/analyze> ~~~ ibdknox actually I don't use any of that anymore. I'm using some hackery around the CLJS analyzer to make it all happen. ------ _feda_ Is there an easy way to get the editor to evaluate a different language? It's just I don't really use lisp but would like to try it out properly. I've tried poking about int he ./light script but don't see anything. Fantastic software by the way. Could really see this having a big impact on a lot of people's development style. ~~~ madsushi Light Table is also being developed for Javascript and Python; but this alpha/early version is Clojure-only. ------ tzury I had to install Java on my Ubuntu box to evaluate this, and I am happy about it. In other words, it worth the effort[1]. Looking forward Python support. See how it will help me compose faster. [1] [http://rootzwiki.com/topic/23008-howto-install-java-7-on- ubu...](http://rootzwiki.com/topic/23008-howto-install-java-7-on-ubuntu-1204/) ------ endlessvoid94 Love it. As someone who's only played around with Clojure, it's a wonderful tool for learning / refreshing. ------ chrismetcalf Random, but does anybody know what color scheme his colors are based on? I'd love to crib that for Vim. ~~~ mapleoin They're using CodeMirror for the in-browser editor and that's the default theme: [https://github.com/marijnh/CodeMirror2/blob/master/lib/codem...](https://github.com/marijnh/CodeMirror2/blob/master/lib/codemirror.css) ~~~ ibdknox the parts that affect clojure have been changed a fair bit from the default theme. ------ gnarmis This is great! I'm doing some stuff with SICP in Clojure, and this should be helpful for that. Btw, I was wondering if Dr. Racket's style of automatic parens-closing by just repeatedly pressing ']' (regardless of '(','{','[') makes anyone else wish other editors supported that feature. ------ edwinyzh Good to see the progress, Chris. I'm a kickstarter backer and I'm watching this project. If I ever get any inspirations for LIVEditor (my own live html/css/js editor) I'll give the credits here: <http://liveditor.com/credits.html> ------ Estragon Is it open source at this stage? (Found the source in the jar file, wondering about publishing modifications.) ------ camelite Hi, I'm a beginner programmer, I've played around with learning Lisp various time & just started the 4clojure problems. I was having issues getting a nice workflow going & getting diverted with IDE issues etc. This is wonderful. Thanks. ~~~ vosper I recommend trying Clooj, it's a simple editor and REPL that requires virtually no setup or configuration, and it provides enough functionality to be useful when working on the 4clojure projects. <https://github.com/arthuredelstein/clooj/> ------ greggaree Once you start coding, the right side quickly gets cluttered. Maybe functions that get invoked by new code entry on left side should be brighter than non- invoked funcs/macros etc.. Or non-invoked funcs etc. should get dimmer? ------ ya3r I used it and it's not bad at all for a "playtime". But since I've no idea how to write code in Closure, it's not useful for me. What I want is a Python version. A Python enabled Light Table would definitely replace Python's REPL for me. ~~~ jfoutz Better start coding! ~~~ heretohelp Not quite, Granger committed to making a Python version in the Kickstarter. ~~~ Luyt ...and got enough funding for it. ~~~ heretohelp The funding floor for Python is the commitment. ------ samrat I'm really hoping someone makes something similar to this for Vim. ~~~ irahul VimClojure <https://github.com/vim-scripts/VimClojure> is _something similar_ for vim. LightTable seems to focus on showing execution trace which isn't always desirable(a function that delete files, gets file over the network, does a lengthy computation etc). VimClojure provides you completions, repl, looking up doc, going to source etc. ------ mrdmnd Script hangs on server launch process -- cat server.log yields a NoClassDefFoundError for java/util/concurrent/LinkedTransferQueue. That's pretty strange - any idea where my machine is borked? ~~~ puredanger That class was added in Java 7 - maybe you have older Java? ~~~ ibdknox it was compiled for java 6, but should run on 7.. I have no idea what's going on there. ------ wildfennecfox It seems the HTML rendering is not part of this release? I am seeing HTML printed as a string instead of being rendered. Is there something that I am missing? Thanks! ------ jkbr Promising. Already now it's quite useful for studying/debugging algorithms. Looking forward to Python support. Recursive call support would be awesome too. ------ arkx I wish the instarepl supported doc and source, something all other Clojure REPLs seem to support. I've found both invaluable when working with Clojure. ~~~ ibdknox (use 'clojure.repl) (doc map) ~~~ arkx Brilliant, thank you! ------ Suor Sorry, if this is a dump question, but how I can add some package and then require it in playground? I'm trying to (require 'http.async.client) ------ addisaden I really love the way, i can test coljuresnippets. Its really amazing and a really good expirience in debugging! ~~~ addisaden Tested this on linux and a windowsmachine. On Windows, is there a way to quit, without deleting the process? \- Lighttable get started in the background. Is there a shortcut for shutting down lighttable? ------ silasb I was highly surprised this worked for Snow Leopard and it being almost 2 releases old. Nice job. ~~~ ibdknox A fair number of people were still on Snow Leopard (because Lion is a bit of a disaster), so we were very intentional about making that work. ~~~ wiredfool I'm getting this on Snow Leopard (x86): --- Checking for updates... --- Starting server... (this takes several seconds) --- Server up! The application cannot be opened because it has an incorrect executable format. But, hitting localhost:8833 does bring up the app. ~~~ cellularmitosis I'm seeing the same on my hackintosh (Dell Mini 10v). ------ ReedR95 Does anybody know if his color scheme exists for Textmate/Sublime Text? ------ zgm Nice work, Chris! I can't wait to start learning Clojure with it. ------ nixarn Doesn't work on my iMac (from '11 all software up-to-date). :S ~~~ pianoben I also got the all-white window on first startup - MB Air with Lion, fwiw. ------ tlear Perhaps provide some interesting piece of code to look at? ------ le_isms I find this to be a very efficient way to learn clojure :) ------ eragnew I can't wait to try this when I get home. Thanks ibdknox ------ taylorlapeyre Everything so far works fanatically. Awesome job. ------ hoprocker Tossing us a bone! Thanks! ------ boggzPit Nice, works very well.... ------ dereferenced2 On windows, I had to run set-executionpolicy Unrestricted since the light.ps1 isn't signed.. ------ batista A quick off topic question -- this is Java right? I have 2-3 years to catch up on the latest developments, but the font smoothing seems quite nice on OS X. Is this Swing based? ------ tubbo That's REALLY cool.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is There Enough Meat for Everyone? - mhb http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Should-We-Eat-Meat ====== msandford Joel Salatin is one of the first people that comes to mind after reading the article. He might not rub you the right way (as he's an evangelical Christian, etc) but he sure does seem to have some interesting ideas about raising cattle in a natural way that's also highly productive. His way of farming seems to be about 4x as land efficient as his neighbors (if you believe him, I tend to) which is a big deal. It also seems to be relatively low input (not buying lots of feed) and low capital; he uses mostly cheap electric fence. If I sound like a fanboy it's because I'm leaning that way. It really feels like he's "hacking" farming and I have a big appreciation for that. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjzvtM- Wo4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjzvtM-Wo4c) ~~~ have_humility A BBC Horizons documentary with subtitle "How to Feed the Planet" (popsci--I'm aware) was posted to reddit a few months ago. The conclusion, IIRC, suggested that even the best hacks in beef farming don't hold a candle when compared to approaches that lean more heavily towards transitioning away from beef to other types of meat, especially chicken. ~~~ msandford Cattle have a FCR of between 5 and 20 or so. Chickens more like 2ish. If beef is bad because it takes 20 units of food to make one unit of beef and you have a way to make 4x the units of food per acre, then your effective FCR (relative to traditional methods) drops from 20 (at the worst) to 5. If it was at 5 then your effective FCR could be as low as 1.25 If it was more in the middle at say 10ish then the effective FCR could be at 2.5 which is pretty respectable. This is made better because you're also getting eggs from the sanitizing chickens and meat from the broiling chickens that are all making multiple passes over the same land at different times. This is of course predicated on grass fed beef with the farmer taking a substantial interest in raising as much grass as possible (sanitizing chickens and paddock system). It's not a lot of work, but it does take more effort than just throwing grain at cows in a feedlot. ~~~ have_humility I don't know what a sanitizing chicken is, and apparently neither does Google. I assume from context it means chickens bred to lay eggs? ~~~ msandford In this case it's chickens which get carted around a few days behind the cows. Cows eat grass. Cows poop on field. Flies lay eggs in poop. Eggs hatch into maggots, which eat poop. Chickens dig through poop looking for maggots. This spreads the poop out and gives the chickens an excellent source of protein. Cow poop is actually a good fertilizer for grass, but it's too concentrated normally. The chickens spread it out to a more reasonable concentration and produce eggs in the process. ------ beat A basic vegetarian argument is that meat is inefficient compared to grain, and there just isn't enough resource. But if this were true, then older cultures with far less resources would never have wasted food on raising meat. Clearly, they did. Animals are a way of turning inedible things into edible things. Grass? Well, you could till it all, or just turn sheep and cattle loose on it. Grain hulls? Throw them away, or feed them to the chickens. Spoiled garbage? Pigs will eat it. For as long as we've farmed, animals have increased rather than decreased the food supply. ~~~ pdx Exactly. I grew up on cattle ranches in Montana and Wyoming. The short growing season, rocky soil, and dry conditions would make any attempt at farming laughable, but the cattle did just fine. Driving them into the high mountains for summer grazing allowed the mountain grass to also be converted to beef. None of that land was appropriate to farming, which means that any beef grown there is extra food for the planet. What always amazes me about capitalism is how it often manages to allocate resources efficiently. Nobody is raising large cattle herds down in farm country. Land that can be farmed is generally farmed, because that provides the best return. Land that can't be farmed, is ranched. This idea that you have to give up farming to have meat doesn't take this into account. ~~~ beat This doesn't mean corn-fed meat isn't wasteful, of course. But it does mean that meat itself isn't the cause of hunger elsewhere. ~~~ Lawtonfogle If it is wasteful, I wonder how much is caused by corn subsidies. ------ sremani The way the US society discourages vegetarianism (even for people who a traditionally vegetarian) is mind boggling. When you ask for a vegetarian option, one would be lucky if he does not get stared like a space alien, esp. in the country. ~~~ ElijahLynn This is starting to change but yeah, it is saddening how many people think you need meat to survive and grow. Bill Gates left his intelligence behind on this one. All protein on this planet was created by plants via photosynthesis. ~~~ slayed0 Yes, (most) protein on this planet was created by plants, but not all protein is equal. Most proteins from plants are not complete proteins and cannot sustain a human being. This is not true of animal protein. Yes you can combine various plant proteins together to form complete proteins, but the answer is not as simple as: just eat plants. ~~~ astazangasta This is incorrect. What, pray tell, is a "complete protein?" There are no amino acids in animals that are not found in plants. You appear to be wholly misinformed on this subject. ~~~ slayed0 "A complete protein (or whole protein) is a source of protein that contains an adequate proportion of all nine of the essential amino acids necessary for the dietary needs of humans or other animals" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein) Many plants have "complete" amino acid profiles but one or more amino acids are too low to be completely adequate for humans. In this case, another protein source with a supplemental amino acid profile is required in order to balance out the deficiency in the first. ~~~ astazangasta Quoting from your own source: >Nearly all foods contain all twenty amino acids in some quantity, and nearly all of them contain the essential amino acids in sufficient quantity. You don't need to eat meat to get your protein. ~~~ JoeAltmaier But traditional foods in America included beans, corn, squash. Presumably to get a reliable source of protein. The natives weren't dieticians; they ate that because villages with that tradition thrived. So protein quality and quantity can't likely be insured by eating any old vegetables. Its not as simple as 'don't eat meat'. ------ MrDosu A personal experience I have made in trying to live off the land a few times autonomously is that it is quite sustainable when you are hunting animals. When you rely solely on plants you need to roam HUGE swatches of land in comparison and extract almost all of the plants you find. ------ GordonS Another issue is what parts of the animal we eat or don't eat. At least here in the UK, many wouldn't touch liver, heart, kidneys etc with a barge pole, despite never having even tried them. While offal has gained ground in restaurants in recent years, it's still absent from most homes. Offal makes up a decent chunk[1] of cattle and pigs, and fresh, well cooked offal is a delicious thing. There should be more effort by the meat industry to persuade people to try it. [1] [http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/147867/ldpm20901.pdf](http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/147867/ldpm20901.pdf) ~~~ gadders A lot of UK farmers are now shipping offal (or the "5th quarter") to other locations such as China and the Middle East. So a lot does get eaten, even if not locally. Source for this is Farming Today podcast on Radio 4. ~~~ GordonS A good point - people are not so 'scared' of offal in some other cultures ~~~ gadders I quite often eat liver, have eaten heart when a kid and happily wolf down a steak and kidney pie. I will not go anywhere near tripe. ------ jasonisalive As usual, Gates gets the true problem completely wrong. The real issue here are the numerous and significant unpriced economic externalities associated with animal flesh production, whose impact is rendered enormous by the scale of this industry. Animal rearing produces a major portion of global greenhouse gases, rivers of faeces, pollutes waterways and overtaxes water resources, not because of a lack of capacity to technologically innovate cleaner solutions, but because collective interests in these resources are not being properly acknowledged and protected through the negotiation and enforcement of pricing. This is a classic economic problem. Bill Gates does the issue no favours with his starry-eyed techno-optimism or his attempts depict food supply as a selfless global communal endeavour. No, food supply is a market of profit- seeking individuals using their resources to generate goods considered valuable enough to trade by other individuals. There is simply an overproduction of these goods because they are being sold without their externalised costs being factored in. Food producers can make their products too cheaply, so too many are made. Tackle the pricing problem and technological development to minimise environmental impacts will naturally emerge. Absent this step, efforts to develop and promulgate technological improvements will never get far. ~~~ bryanlarsen This is of course not unique to animal farming. Where I grew up animal farming is much more environmentally friendly than grain farming. It uses green water and native prairie, without chemical use or plowing. (Plowing is generally much more environmentally destructive than chemical use). In Saskatchewan, higher pricing of externalities would increase animal production, not lower it. ~~~ sleepyhead > Where I grew up Well that is the problem here. Farming has changed. Particularly so in America. A handful slaughterhouses, heavy corn use, chemically power washed eggs, all within a framework that is made for economical returns and not animal welfare or taste. And it is not a US-only problem. Denmark for example is facing huge issues with pig farming and here in Norway we are seeing problems with use of antibiotics in chickens. ------ sehugg The article briefly touches on this, but substituting more efficient (< 2 to 1 conversion ratio) meats like chicken and farmed fish seems like a good idea. The high price of beef right now certainly has changed my shopping habits, and I can't say I really miss it -- nor do other Americans according to some sources[1]. p.s. take chicken drumsticks, pat dry, salt and pepper, iron skillet for 1 hour at 450 :) [1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/chicken-vs- beef_n_4...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/02/chicken-vs- beef_n_4525366.html) ~~~ rotten 20 years ago we were talking about shellfish aquaculture as the answer to this problem (which was obvious even then). The lower on the food chain you go, typically, the lower the production costs. Filter feeding mussels, scallops, and oysters are about as low as you can get and still call it "meat". Many producers were touting these creatures as the answer to getting protein in the future. Since then water pollution has seriously curtailed the growth of that industry. It is still worth exploring as an option though. ~~~ delish > Since then water pollution has seriously curtailed the growth of that > industry. Interesting. I'd like to know more. Do you have a source for that? ~~~ have_humility The BBC Horizons documentary I mentioned above also looked into mussels as a source of meat. I don't recall pollution being mentioned as an issue, but it gave other reasons why even optimistic outlooks could only consider them a partial replacement, given the numbers we have for meat consumption today (not to mention decades from now). ------ gadders I love meat. My neighbours have cows and sheep and pigs and I own chickens. I've been up close with all those animals and they're pretty cool in their own way. I sometimes thing that if meat could be grown in a lab and animals didn't have to die, I'd be happy with that. But then I realise that arsehole food scientists from somewhere like Kraft would get hold of it and ruin it. ~~~ ocfx Meat infused with their yellow cheese powder ~~~ gadders Yeah, and hydrogenated vegetable oil, food dye, fillers, lego offcuts etc. ------ have_humility What are the numbers on the chart in the linked page supposed to mean? Average meat consumption per capita per year, organized by country? And the bigger question: how do this kinds of charts keep getting made, and how do articles that otherwise make no hint at their own charts' existence keep being published? ~~~ diego_moita It is a good question. I think it refers to carcass per person. This means that they're counting the weight of non-eaten tissue (bones, skin, intestines, brains, etc). The chart sounds odd to me. I am Brazilian and I know that Argentinians and Uruguayans consume a lot more meat than us, I believe even more than the Americans. When it comes to non-carcass, edible meat only we are at 37 kg per person/year. The Uruguayans are at 60 kg. ------ Rockslide tl;dr: no (at least not at the moment): > Returning to the question at hand — how can we make enough meat without > destroying the planet? — one solution would be to ask the biggest carnivores > Americans and others) to cut back, by as much as half. [...] > But there are reasons to be optimistic. For one thing, the world’s appetite > for meat may eventually level off. [...] I also believe that innovation will > improve our ability to produce meat. Cheaper energy and better crop > varieties will drive up agricultural productivity, especially in Africa, so > we won’t have to choose as often between feeding animals and feeding people. ------ rboyd I'm grateful Gates and others are funding meat alternatives. He briefly touched on the ethical issues (by proxy), but we hardly ever do here on HN. I remember in 2011 Zuckerberg resolved to only eat meat that he killed himself. I think more people ought to try that. I know I wouldn't be able to hunt and slaughter my own food, and I respect people that do much more than the status quo of outsourcing animal murder. It's pretty hypocritical of this society to elect ~4 species of animals that we endorse killing. But we think about eating dog or dolphin and rageface. ~~~ beat Oh, if people get hungry enough, they'll eat dogs and dolphins, all right. At the end of WWII, rats had been exterminated in Berlin. That was all there was to eat. ~~~ gadders I invited my 93 year old gran to a barbecue (she's 97 now) and asked her if there is anything she doesn't eat or wouldn't like. Gran: Whale meat Me: Er, OK. I can do that. Gran: We had it during the war on rationing. You didn't know if you were eating meaty fish or fishy meat. ------ gadders There is also this company: [http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/silicon-valleys- fake-eggs-a...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/silicon-valleys-fake-eggs- are-better-than-the-real-thing) that is planning to create synthetic eggs (even though eggs are pretty much are the perfect food). ------ shusain Like carbon caps, governments could introduce meat production limits if none of the other solutions pan out. ------ platz No	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple in bidding war to acquire Toshiba’s storage business - dmmalam https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/02/apple-toshiba-nand/ ====== thinkling First news that Apple is developing its own GPU, now they're trying to buy a NAND memory business. At least they're investing some of that huge cash hoard. What's missing? The biggest thing seems to be displays.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Archie Botwick, WWI Veteran Facebook Chatbot that uses NLP - shnere http://m.me/anzaclivearchie ====== theazmeister Is this like Siri? ------ petagilbert So awesome ------ chitopunk this is great	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
96 Technology Blogs That Will Make You Stop and Think - buttercupsmom https://www.sealights.io/blog/96-technology-blogs-that-will-make-you-stop-and-think/ ====== buttercupsmom Hey y'all, so a few things about this list: a) I created it because most of the roundups I've seen suck in my opinion. They mainly list obvious choices only. Safe. b) In my mind this will always be a work in progress so 100% there are blogs out there that I've never heard of - let me know what is missing! c) I'm considering moving this over to a site of its own if you all think that this is a good resource for the community worth maintaining - let me know what you think.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Angel Problem - lukas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_problem ====== nemo1618 This is the 1-Angel Problem on a hexagonal grid, yes? [http://llerrah.com/cattrap.htm](http://llerrah.com/cattrap.htm) Surprisingly tricky, even with a 1-angel! ~~~ mmanfrin Managed to find a strategy pretty quickly: begin from the _outside_ , opposite of the direction you want the cat to go in; then fill until you have 1 exit in that direction and begin to fill in the exits while the cat travels to the one open route, and when it's one step away you close it. You then have many more moves before the cat can get back to open area, in which case you can repeat until you have a closed loop. ~~~ chias I eventually found a strategy of basically trying to fill every "even" space around the edge, and then only filling in the odd ones when the cat was 1 space away from entering the edge-ring. This would allow me enough time to enclose the entire board, after which trapping the cat into a single space is just a matter of time ------ vessenes Mathé's 2-Angel proof is really nice, or at least the summary is appealing -- he imagines a 'nice' devil, shows it can be beaten, then proves that if you can beat the nice devil, you can beat the mean one. This is one of my favorite problem solving strategies -- reducing to a more obvious solvable situation, then filling in the chinks and gaps to expand back. ~~~ dsp1234 The Kloster solution[0] solves it in a more direct way, by showing that for each action the devil takes the angel can take a counter action by limiting it's own moves. In the one proof is the realization that sometimes it's easier to solve a smaller problem then prove equivalence to a harder problem, and in the other is the realization that sometimes voluntarily reducing the number of actions can lead to a simpler solution. Both are pretty good tools to have under one's belt. [0] - [http://home.broadpark.no/~oddvark/angel/kloster.html](http://home.broadpark.no/~oddvark/angel/kloster.html) ~~~ bduerst Seems like Kloster devised a mathematical proof for a _kiting_ \- a game strategy that involves staying just out of the effective range of an opponent while they chase you. ------ Kiro If the board is infinite, can't the angel just jump in one direction forever? ~~~ chias No. Lets say we're playing with a 2-angel. Lets place an angel, and without loss of generality assume the angel is moving left: _ _ _ _ _ A _ _ _ _ _ Then, perhaps the Devil goes here: _ D _ _ _ A _ _ _ _ _ Angel moves: _ D _ A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Devil places: _ D D A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ The angel must now change direction. For any given direction and any given angel power, as long as the devil starts placing pieces far enough away he can force the angel to change direction. ~~~ ewzimm Couldn't the angel calculate when it's necessary to change direction and then do so, forcing the devil to begin constructing a new trap, and then keep repeating the same behavior? I'm sure there's a reason why this obvious strategy wouldn't work, but I don't quite see it. ~~~ dragontamer It has been proven that a 2-Angel can. The difficult part of the problem is proving your argument to others. There-in lies the difficulty of mathematical proofs. ~~~ ewzimm I only read the part about pretending the left half is blocked and using the left wall as a guide, which seems a lot more specific than just "go in one direction until you're approaching a trap and then change." I understand that proofs are much harder than intuition, but it seems that the angel has such an advantage of choice that it would be easy to prove. At any point, the 2-angel can move to 8 spots on an infinite plane and the devil can block 1. I wonder how constrained the problem could get for the angel to have a winning strategy. Let's say the angel could only move in two directions. It would seem intuitively that this would still leave enough room to avoid traps. Devil starts creating a trap in the up direction, angel moves right. Devil starts constructing a trap in the right direction, angel moves up. If it were possible to constuct a trap that blocked both directions with an unknown rate of movement on an infinite plane, it might lead to some interesting applications to other things, but my intuition says it's not. ~~~ nandemo > Let's say the angel could only move in two directions. It would seem > intuitively that this would still leave enough room to avoid traps. Nope. Even if you restrict the angel to 3 directions (up, left, right), the devil has a winning strategy. This is mentioned in the linked article: > _If the angel never decreases its y coordinate, then the devil has a winning > strategy (Conway, 1982)._ There's a simple, informal proof in the references: Conway, H. "The Angel Problem" [http://library.msri.org/books/Book29/files/conway.pdf](http://library.msri.org/books/Book29/files/conway.pdf) ~~~ ewzimm Thanks for the clarification. I do wonder what other kinds of things this math could apply to. It's pretty abstract, but if you want to direct an unpredictable agent toward a certain behavior, knowing where to place control mechanisms might be interesting. ------ wodenokoto From the Wikipedia description it is bit vague how many blocks the devil put down each turn. Is it just 1? The same as angels power? ~~~ pc86 > The devil, on its turn, may add _a block on any single square_ not > containing the angel. ~~~ wodenokoto That phrase can mean both 1 block and one block only, or it can mean one block per square, on as many squares as needed as long as the block is not placed on a square containing an angel or another block. Particularly when read without emphasis. I think I leaned towards an ambiguous reading because I couldn't understand how one block per turn was enough to ever win. ------ mondoshawan Amusingly, a variant of this is present in Beyond Zork toward the end of the game.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
AlphaGo’s ultimate challenge: a five-game match against Lee Sedol - wyclif http://googleasiapacific.blogspot.com/2016/03/alphagos-ultimate-challenge.html ====== jamornh Wow, Lee Sedol just resigned. First game goes to AlphaGo. I wasn't sure who would win the 5 matches, but I never expected AlphaGo to win the first game! ~~~ CamperBob2 Lee was _rattled._ This match might end up 5-0. ~~~ awwducks Too early to tell, IMO. The next game will be the bigger game since Lee Sedol has a far better idea what he's up against. If the next game goes like this one did, I would be more inclined to agree with you for the remaining 3. ~~~ imglorp He has the human advantages of adaptability and intuition, the better to try a new strategy next game. ~~~ krastanov Adaptability is not all that human (plenty of machines learn from their mistakes and adapt to new settings). Intuition is so poorly defined that depending on what you mean machines easily have it (heuristics, Bayesian inference, etc) or it is just sufficiently vague of a notion that it does not matter. ~~~ arcanus > plenty of machines learn from their mistakes and adapt to new settings Curious what you see as examples of this. > Intuition is so poorly defined that depending on what you mean machines > easily have it (heuristics, Bayesian inference, etc) As a working scientist and a bayesian practitioner, I'm sceptical algorithms have intuition. From my perspective, almost all models that one codifies are extremely brittle and will produce catastrophic failures (or just nonsense) unless the user possesses enough expert knowledge or intuition to a-priori know not to use the model in this regime. However, I agree with the spirit of the text... go is a well-defined game and adaptability and intuition will be highly limited. For instance, the human can't just turn the board over, or unplug the game! ~~~ imglorp I guess I was referring to strategy specifically. The tactics are probably well in hand for both human and AI. For the AI, the result of the first match will result in one more game entered in the its database. If it's like chess history, it's probably slanted a little towards that player's history in particular. But the human player is well aware of the machine studying his strategic history and weighting it. If he's well studied like the chess guys are (is that how go players study?) he could employ a strategy he thinks would be surprising to the AI, or even plan to switch strategies in the middle. If one knows they are playing a pattern matcher, you can try to lead it to a local minimum and then leave it there. Just speculating :-) ------ awwducks A bit late, but this is the AGA feed. [https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=YZPKR7HzM_s](https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=YZPKR7HzM_s) No one can believe it. Myungwan Kim 9p says it's likely Lee Sedol feels like he could have won. He also says Alpha Go is likely stronger than he is. ------ colordrops I know it's not the focus of this game, but it would add to the presentation if a robot handled the stones for alphago. ~~~ sigterm and used computer vision algorithm to register the opponent's moves... ~~~ lisivka I saw this in an episode of the TV show, but I forgot name of the show. PS. "Person of interest": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkvukotSSms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkvukotSSms) ------ lostdog I wish they would highlight the most recent placements, so it's easier to watch intermittently. ~~~ matburt We are relaying the match with discussion and analysis on OGS! The most recent move will be highlighted on the board. [https://online-go.com/demo/114161](https://online-go.com/demo/114161) ~~~ makoz Thanks for this! Loved the discussion. ------ jsnk Amazing.. I think AlphaGo is going to win. ~~~ taneq Lee just resigned. O.o ------ awwducks Myungwan Kim 9p will be doing live commentary at the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles for game 3. The second game should be a doozy since Lee Sedol will definitely know what to expect and come in full force! ~~~ awwducks If you're based in LA, here's the event link. [https://www.kccla.org/english/calendar_view.asp?cid=4020&imo...](https://www.kccla.org/english/calendar_view.asp?cid=4020&imonth=3&iyear=2016) ------ nickpsecurity My money is on the human. This time. ~~~ CamperBob2 Hopefully there's still time to edit your comment before the robots notice... ~~~ nickpsecurity [https://twitter.com/mustafasuleymn/status/707469083458068480](https://twitter.com/mustafasuleymn/status/707469083458068480) (cough) Ok best 2 out of three before it counts. (cough) ------ cloudwalking Live on YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFr3K2DORc8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFr3K2DORc8) ------ pmontra Halfway through the game and it's difficult to say who's winning. AlphaGo has definitely improved during the winter. ------ djokkataja AlphaGo wins :) ------ magoghm AlphaGo won! ------ lololomg Lee seems to be ahead so far in game 1 ------ jorgecurio I am so stoked for this match, Lee Sedol is a child prodigy and a legend....I literally felt as excited as I was going in McGregor vs Diaz before the fight. I used to play Go when I was a kid on televised matches in Korea during the 90s and have woken up early on saturdays watching every game live on tv. Then I'd go to these Go school after class and there'd be like 30 students studying and fighting. Go is a hugely appealing game to intuitive people rather than logical people who prefer Chess. Go is an infinitely more complex and at these Pro levels a demigod like Lee Sedol have the same fanatic followings. ~~~ jorgecurio so I watched this last night and it was an earth shattering moment...like no fucking way sedol gonna get bamboozled by a computer right? AlphaGo winning was the cherry on top but what was really even more intense was the actual battle in itself. It was like Lee Sedol was playing himself but a version of him that would get better and better each time Sedol attacked. AlphaGo surprisingly chose the right strategy which was to be aggressive right back. Overall, I could identify with the commentator's excitement and sort of apprehension that the first battle against the Machines have begun and lost the first round. Lee Sedol must have been taken back at how good AlphaGo is I think he seriously underestimated it because he had a lot of hubris and over confidence going in like 'yeah imma smack the shit out of alphago' and then it after the match is like 'damn gg'. The biggest ground breaking realization is that deep learning has become so good that it is possible to outperform a human even in previously thought impossible problems....who would've thought a bunch of logic gates fast forward 40 years we have machines that beat us in our own games? 80 years from now what will things look like? It's a real reckoning and I really feel the drive to learn deep learning just don't know where to start	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
WIndow 7 virtual XP is a marketing stunt - daniel71l http://design-to-last.com/Technical/windows-7-virtual-xp-solution.html ====== jodrellblank 1\. Was a reason people went back to Win98 too; it didn't last forever. 2\. Don't argue about win7's projected speed and resource use buy extension from vista when those are specifically being addressed by MS in win7. 3\. The real reason for virtual XP is probably backwards compat. for ancient business apps, and that sort of wrecks your whole post. MS want you to play games in Win7, not virtualXP.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Introducing A/B testing + Cross Browser testing rolled into one - paraschopra http://www.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/multiple-browsers-preview/?source=hn ====== cloner Looks great. Still wish you had a pay-as-you-go plan though. E.g. buy testing of 10,000 visitors, 50,000 visitors etc. Its not all of us that has a need to test all the time (really) and thus a subscription is inconvenient. ~~~ paraschopra Thanks. We have a concept of pausing subscription, so that your account, reports and test data remains intact. It is just that you are not able to create tests. And when you're ready, simply purchase a paid plan again. You could pause your account any time and any number of times. ------ lxt Interesting product. But wow, your website really looks like <http://puppetlabs.com/> in color scheme and layout, but most especially the logo. ~~~ paraschopra Interesting. Yep, I see some resemblance. Though we got our design developed from the scratch from one of the best designers we have worked with: <http://www.31three.com/> ------ ivabz Good work guys. I'm already a big fan of feasibility of product. This addition really made it double. ------ vaidik Awesome guys! +1 For the amazing work. ~~~ paraschopra A big kudos to you as well! You helped us kickstart the development of the whole stack of browsers for this feature. We are very creatively satisfied with developing this technology in house :) ------ playhard Good work Paras! ~~~ paraschopra Thanks! We are planning to blog about challenges involved in automation of cross browser testing. Getting screenshots on browsers from IE7 to iPhone Safari and everything in between was certainly very challenging. Very proud of our engineering team.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Regulate Facebook and Twitter? The Case Is Getting Stronger - pseudolus https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-14/regulating-facebook-twitter-and-instagram ====== throwawaysea I would definitely not want the government to be able to control what ideas/speech is allowed on these platforms and what isn't. Nor do I want a single entity (as Facebook/Twitter exist today) to have that control. What we need is more effective anti-trust legislation and enforcement, so that a number of platforms can coexist and compete even though there is a strong network effect to having a single platform. I would also support laws requiring that these social media platforms a) protect consumers' data b) don't censor beyond what the law requires minimally. But it might be easier to go the competition route. ~~~ kodablah > I would definitely not want the government to be able to control what > ideas/speech is allowed on these platforms and what isn't. Nor do I want a > single entity (as Facebook/Twitter exist today) to have that control. I have come to the admittedly sad conclusion that you can't reside in the middle here. I mean, you can idealistically, but slope will slide to one side or the other in practice. At least at this time I think you can ask for government interference or not. I would like to think that you could trust each side to know its boundaries, as we see in other regulated industries, but time has shown either side cannot. Which side would you want to give an inch to, because a mile will be taken (or according to some doomsayers it already has)? ~~~ kokokokoko The US government has censored the broadcast media(tv, radio) since their formation. So we do have some fairly solid evidence that the US government has not wildly abused that power. I'm not sure this has to be an all or nothing thing. We have some reasonable protections built into the Constitution and case law that back that up. I understand your hesitation about having the government involved as there are plenty of examples of government influence on the media around the world. I share the same fears. With that said, do we really have any real world proof that the US government in recent years has over stepped its boundaries in regards to media restrictions? ~~~ kodablah We don't all publish TV content. We can see from retransmission fees for over- the-air content to the decimation of business models like Aereo what happens when content is governed. I see the Aereo business model as very similar to what's happening w/ article 13 in the EU right now. But in general I don't think you can compare broadcast mediums to bidirectional ones (e.g. words on the telephone or text on the internet). ~~~ pjc50 That's not really driven by the government so much as the media companies. ~~~ cobbzilla Big media companies have weaponized the government to serve their interests, it makes sense that social media companies will do the same. They’ll write the rules together, make the barriers to entry even higher, and pat each other on the back. Then it’s on to the next moral panic, this one’s been fixed! ------ kauffj As I posted previously when this topic came up ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19079526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19079526)), it makes little sense to regulate these companies while there are still federal laws on the books actively encouraging the centralization of big tech. Quoting from that post: Why not start with relaxing the federal laws which forbid the development of third-party applications? The limits on third-party apps are legal, not technical. It is not technically challenging to build an application that collects Facebook credentials and then presents alternative views and features. It could, for example, finally be possible to see a time-ordered view of your friends' posts (Facebook doesn't allow this since it reduces engagement). The development of such applications would serve as a threat and check on the market dominance of Facebook. A popular third-party application could consider adding its own features that Facebook does not have. It would also reduce Facebook's revenue. What stops this? In the US, it is primarily the CFAA ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act)). Once Facebook formally tells a company to stop accessing their servers, they are in violation of federal law if they continue to do so. It seems premature to pursue legal action while we still have federal laws that encourage and cement the dominance of a single provider. ~~~ whatislovecraft > It could, for example, finally be possible to see a time-ordered view of > your friends' posts (Facebook doesn't allow this since it reduces > engagement). Am I missing something? This has always been a feature on Facebook right? I might be crazy but I thought that this was the only way I've been using FB for years. They call it "Most Recent" News Feed, isn't that the same as "time- ordered"? I'm quite sure they more than "allow it", they spend significant money on supporting it. > It seems premature to pursue legal action while we still have federal laws > that encourage and cement the dominance of a single provider. Why? The laws are generally meant for different things (protecting trademark/quality of service/etc issues, vs. destabilization of society by having too much direct influence. We can - and must - do more than 1 thing at at time, it's not premature to take action on Thing A while Thing B is still in-progress. ------ danShumway I honestly feel the opposite is true -- that the case was reasonably strong in the past and it's gotten steadily weaker. Go back 5-8 years ago, and I might have felt like Facebook and Twitter were unstoppable monopolies. Nowadays I feel reasonably confident that post- millennial generations are going to widely abandon Facebook. And I feel reasonably confident that as Mastadon matures, it will take an increasingly large amount of market share from Twitter. Mastadon in particular is surprising to me, because I did not think it was going to work. And sure, it's still minuscule right now, but I'm willing to bet that usage is going to steadily trend upwards. Right now, you kind of need to care a lot to switch to Mastadon, but there exists a tipping point where the user base becomes big enough that for certain communities it makes sense to just switch en-mass. I think people underestimate how hard it is to get a small-to-medium number of users to switch off of a network, and overestimate how hard it is to get _everyone_ to switch off of a network. I guess I'm willing to bet that the fake news/foreign bots panic will last longer than those platforms, but I also can't think of how regulation is ever going to fix that. Maybe in Europe, but in America 1st Amendment protections are going to get in the way. Facebook has _more_ power to ban hate speech and bots right now than it would if it were a public utility. ~~~ soziawa > Nowadays I feel reasonably confident that post-millennial generations are > going to widely abandon Facebook. You are probably forgetting Instagram and WhatsApp which completely dominate the respective market. There is literally no competition for Facebook at all. ~~~ danShumway That is a very good point. I'm not sure I agree that those apps are untouchable, but I would agree that Facebook as a company is in a much stronger position than Facebook as an individual product, and the company is probably a long ways from going away. ------ max76 I'm disappointed that Bloomberg published an article that points out all of the problems with unregulated social media but doesn't purpose specific regulations that could be helpful for most of the problems they point out. What can the goverment do to help prevent foreign interference with domestic elections via social media? If Facebook is a natural monopoly what regulations would make it's use more fair? They suggest a user's bill of rights, but only one item that would fit in it. A bill of rights naturally would include multiple items. To make matters worse the ToS lets users know how their data might be used which is the only item suggested for the user's bill of rights. All companies in the United States are subject to a barrage of regulations. In my opinion some are good and some aren't. Purposing more regulations without the details of what those regulations are is like a blank check. ~~~ joe_the_user The thing is that deciding how to regulate social media is extremely difficult. So someone arguing for such regulation can't begin by saying what they want. They have to take a broad "it should be regulated" "look how terrible, can't we DO SOMETHING??" sort of approach. Then argue regulation isn't bad by looking at different examples. Only once there's a huge ground swell can specific proposals be laid down. But all this is makes it sound like a giant power grab. And yes, that's what I'd call it. Not because all regulation is bad but because this particular thing is far outside the purview of the Federal Government. ~~~ philpem I think I'd start with forcing advertising transparency on any social network (and probably search engines too -- actually, make that any site with advertising). And then force any company paying for political advertising to list every single one of their donors publicly. Chuck an unlimited personal liability clause in there for the company directors, so they can't just wind the company up to avoid any fines. ------ avar The president of the US uses Twitter to make statements to the public, and so do a lot of other officials. So the argument that it's a purely private platform is getting harder to make than just the Facebook use-case where "all my friends use it", which you could also say about iPhones, or Coca-Cola. Should a private company be allowed to ban you from what's becoming a de-facto platform for interacting with officials? But the article lazily likes to pretend that this problem could be solved within the borders of the US with proposed FCC regulation. That still leaves the most interesting problem, which is how are we going to square the free and open Internet with the interests of nation states and their individual citizens. There's complaints about Russian election interference. But right now US- sponsored election interference is happening in Venezuela via Twitter. What's to be done about cases like those? Is Venezuela's only recourse going to be to ban Twitter? ~~~ datenhorst > But right now US-sponsored election interference is happening in Venezuela > via Twitter. Do you have a source for that? ~~~ docbrown Not sure on his source or argument but my guess would be accounts advocating for Maduro to be displaced by Guaido. If you look at it from that POV, you will clearly see how Twitter is playing a vital part in an US-backed coup against the Venezuelan people because currently, Maduro still has support from some of his allies and from his own military. [1] These are mucky waters to wonder through. 1: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-aid- id...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-aid- idUSKCN1Q325K) ------ athenot The downside with this is the "regulatory moat". If this hypothetical regulation becomes hard to meet, then only a few companies are able to comply with it and it inadvertently reinforces their position. What I would like to see is a requirement for platforms to be open, so they can't take data and networks of people hostage by locking things down. An analog is portability of healthcare data: one hospital or EMR vendor can't lock up data for themselves, they must make it open to others (though they still drag their feet and don't always make it convenient). ~~~ chillacy This tends to be the bargain for natural monopolies. You’re limited by regulation but you basically cease to have competition (like.. Comcast). ------ sovietmudkipz I get uncomfortable with this line of thought. I would much rather let the market produce alternatives products when companies do things customers object to. The best thing about the internet is that it is so easy for another product to spring up to serve a new need or compete with ensconced businesses. Regulations increase cost of business and dissuades other companies from competing. ~~~ scarface74 It's surprising to see how much many posters on HN want more government regulation over a tech company. It's about how so many are in favor of "taxing the rich", not realizing that to Middle America with an average household income of $70K, if you make over six figures, you are "the rich". And from the political skew of HN, I wonder how many actually trust _this_ government with more power? ~~~ ocdtrekkie The problem is, right now _Facebook and Twitter_ have significant power. And the question is whether or not you trust the government, but which you trust _more_ : A company with a slogan of "move fast and break things", or a bureaucracy purpose-built to move very slowly and purposefully. ~~~ Frondo It's not just a bureaucracy built to move slowly and purposefully, it's one that we all, by design, have a say in operating. Don't like how Facebook runs its data collection on you whether you have an account or not? Tough. There's no, and will never be, a town hall for Facebook. Don't like how the county runs its health services departments? Well, you can show up at county council meetings, you can get involved politically, you can vote, etc. Fundamental difference. ~~~ scarface74 Theoretically, yes. But if you live in a larger state like California, you have much less say in the federal government on a per capita basis than someone who lives in Rhode Island between the Senste (2 senators per state regardless of population) and the electoral college, not to mention gerrymandering. ------ jimkleiber I would prefer that tech companies come up with solutions to these problems and therefore not require law to try to solve them. And yet, I think regulations are often a sign that an industry had conflicts and just kept avoiding the issues, so people got tired of waiting. I personally am tired of watching Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others give the impression that they didn't know fake accounts were being used to manipulate the actions of individuals--either to hate someone, vote against someone, send money, download a virus--as this seems to be the storied history of spam. I'm tired of interacting with someone who appears real but may be fabricated to trick me into doing something. This problem is not slowing down, as the This Person Does Not Exist site showed us the other day here. I yearn for the tech company that creates a platform where I interact with people who are verified to be who they say they are. Please, tech companies, let people verify their accounts. Let the overall verified users on your platform increase. Please do something before regulators step in so that they don't believe they have to. ~~~ pixl97 How do you verify a user in the age of identity theft, across all nations on the platform? And how do you stop retaliation against non-popular options, like homosexuality in particular countries? ------ imh As someone who doesn't use Facebook, Twitter, or their subsidiaries, the debate is kinda laughable. Sure break them up for antitrust. Write privacy regulation. But regulating the content shared there? If you don't like it, it's so easy to opt out, and it feels great. People write like these are utilities necessary for a good life, which sounds crazy from the outside. ------ desc Trusting any government to regulate massively-powerful information clearing houses is a mistake, because they will inevitably, eventually, and maybe even (best case) unintentionally abuse it for their own ends, as history has demonstrated. Trusting those clearing houses to regulate themselves is a mistake, because they have already abused their power for their own ends (profit). We should never _trust_ any organisation to work against its own interests or those of its members. They must all be required to be utterly transparent in relevant actions and reasoning behind those actions. ------ tracker1 I think it might become necessary to create an antitrust class for effective media monopolies like twitter and facebook, as well as financial institutions (paypal, mastercard, etc) that includes provisions for aknowledging and preserving first amendment rights. While nobody likes speech that they don't agree with, or feel is vitriolic against one's own ideology, it's exactly that speech which needs to be protected. PC outrage is maximizing online censorship in ways that should send chills down anyone's spine. ~~~ tracker1 Perhaps something along the lines of, "Any company with more than 5 (or 10?) million monthly users in the system," as a baseline for provisions regarding protected speech. I don't like censorship in general, but can respect those that would want to build smaller communities with proactive moderation vs the likes of twitter/facebook etc with very little effective moderation in practice. Also, similar provisions ensuring that policies against classes of speech are used regardless of backing ideology. ------ imgabe > Everyone now knows that foreign governments, most notably Russia, have been > using social media aggressively to promote their interests. And if _anyone_ is going to be using social media to manipulate public opinion in the US, it should be the _US_ government, goddamnit! ~~~ ForHackernews Maybe, yeah. I'm not a cultural relativist: Democracies are better than dictatorships; freedom of expression is better than repression; pluralism is better than chauvinism. Every major technology platform in the West exists as result of small-l liberal enlightenment values. Maybe I wouldn't name the current United States as my ideal champion for those values, but I don't have any problem with the general suggestion that Western tech companies should be promoting liberal values around the world. ~~~ zaarn If a single corporation can control the primary means of communication and only allows "corporate-sanctioned" messages, then we will no longer be a democracy in any meaningful sense. Yes, maybe that is alarmist, after all they are only concerned about corporate influence, but this isn't the first time in Facebook history where you could just accuse someone of being a bot to shut them up if you don't like what they say. ------ rdiddly _" If federal officials are going to regulate social media, they should be independent of the president."_ You're in luck, the legislature (where regulations are supposed to come from) is a whole separate branch from the President. Any time you've got the executive branch handling it, the President is in charge of it. ~~~ dantheman Except that the legislature writes general polices and defers to the executive to work out the specifics. ------ Illniyar That sounds like a minefield. How do you regulate a service where two people from different countries can interact? Which countriy's law should be followed when a person from country Y posts on a feed from country X? What if the laws contradict eachother? Multinationals had to deal with multiple regulations before, but most time that was solved by using the visitor's residency, but that might not be so clear cut when we are talking about social networks. ~~~ ilovetux A good example to watch is with the ramifications of the GDPR playing out in the EU. I'm still not sure how I feel about the actual wording and effects of the GDPR, but it does provide a test-bed of sorts. ------ SketchySeaBeast > If federal officials are going to regulate social media, they should be > independent of the president. The simplest course would be to give new > authority to the FCC rather than to a whole new agency, though the latter > option also deserves consideration. I was just thinking I hadn't seen a picture of Ajit Pai's ridiculous coffee mug for like 15 minutes now. ~~~ ocdtrekkie His coffee mug (or something equally ridiculous), would not be out of place in a Silicon Valley office of any kind. Is his coffee mug your objection, or do you dislike the man (and his political views), and hence, ridicule everything about him as an ad hominem sort of attack? I find this very irritating, and we see it also with Donald Trump, where it suddenly becomes okay to body shame someone, make suggestive comments about their relationship with their wife or children, or attack them in other ways unrelated to their politics, because of their politics. I wouldn't say I'm a fan of either individual by any means, but I think we should aim to do much better, especially here on HN. Can we talk about a corporate-owned bureaucrat and an incompetent president as a corporate-owned bureaucrat and an incompetent president? ~~~ SketchySeaBeast I apologize for Reese shaming. I think there's a difference between body shaming and making light of someone's obviously deliberately chosen self image. ~~~ PavlovsCat In context of the criticisms of these people (and more importantly, the interests they represent) that actually matter, they are functionally the same, silly distractions. Ocdtrekkie didn't equate bringing up that cup with body shaming, they simply mentioned that as another result of what I would call the same inability to be serious, even about fires that are still raging, causing suffering, and for which we have no answer and no plan. It's like some kind of pressure release valve I guess, and IMO that pressure needs to find a better route. ------ prepend I think regulating Google is more important. Sure social media has a lot of noise, but Search is actual reality. Google’s potential to shape worldview and commerce based on search result would have much greater impact from regulation. Imagine a single company selling 90% of all tv ads in the country? Or a single company selling 90% of all the ads in newspapers. ------ kethinov I would go much further. Break up Twitter into a bunch of Mastodon instances. Break up Facebook into a bunch of Diaspora instances. The internet should be open. Imagine if email or HTTP was proprietary like Facebook and Twitter are. This is a nightmare and we should end it. ~~~ SketchySeaBeast > Imagine if email or HTTP was proprietary like Facebook and Twitter are. This > is a nightmare and we should end it. Email is a means of communication, twitter is a platform. Anyone is free to implement a 140 character messaging service, the only problem is that these particular social media platforms have gotten monstrous. I don't like them, but the comparison between HTTP and Facebook doesn't seem right. ~~~ kethinov What is classified as a "means of communication" or a "public utility" and what is "a platform" is itself language that is a consequence of political conditions. If HTTP or email were proprietary and owned by a single entity, they would refer to their ownership of it as "a platform" just as Facebook and Twitter do now. There is no technical reason these services cannot be reduced to mere "means of communication" or a "public utility" by means of breaking them up into separate services that are forced to federate with each other over a common protocol, e.g. Mastodon/Diaspora. ------ exodust I hope the future is one where you can pack up your social profile and move it to another service provider, or host it yourself. All without any of your contacts, friends and associates knowing or caring which service provider or host your profile is on. Just like telcos are now. Keep your phone number and move to another provider. In other words, running with the grain of how the open web works best, rather than against it. Until that happens, I will never join FB or any other walled junkyard. ------ mattbeckman Decentralized social networks are a thing, and will become a much bigger thing, fueled by the catalyst of the aforementioned monarchs of social media taking things way too far. ------ pcstl Allowing the government to regulate Facebook and Twitter is opening a door for the government to claim it has the legal right to regulate anything on the Internet. While Facebook and Twitter indeed might be used for nefarious things, dissidents and social activists depend on the unruly nature of the Internet for a lot of their operation. You can have both or none. ------ Animats Regulate content, no. Break up de-facto monopolies, yes. Facebook should be forced to sell off Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp, for starters. ~~~ civicsquid Not agreeing or disagreeing, but I don't think Snapchat is owned by Facebook. ~~~ Animats Right; Facebook tried, but failed. ------ dontbenebby I thought this was going to be an article about corporate taxes (or lack thereof). So now we're going to introduce the perilous hand of federal invention, and it's not to make gigantic companies pay their fair share, but to stifle speech? ------ ArtDev There are serious consumer protection issues that need to be addressed. Laws establish individuals rights and individual freedoms. We need some good well- written laws by people who know what they are talking about. ------ pochamago I don't understand how Twitter and Facebook can simultaneously be accused of Monopoly. They're competitors in the same market ------ bargl I struggle with this concept. One of my problems with these platforms is that de-platforming someone can be argued to be a violation of free speech (there are valid counter arguments as well). I don't know how to solve that because I think that no one forces news papers to accept articles from people they think are crazy. Can we separate the "data storage" at this scale from the message delivery. Where de-platforming someone doesn't mean losing your hosting of the videos but instead pushes you to a fringe "subscription and recommendation" tool? This is a massive hand waiving over simplification so please correct gross assumptions I'm making here. Youtube has services that could be broken into separate "categories" if you would. Platform to post videos. Platform to subscribe to videos. Platform for recommendations of videos. Platform with "top" videos as watched by everyone. Then you've got Google Search which doesn't control the data but caches it and it has a database of the inter-relationships between sites and you and can recommend sites to you. Up until they started customizing data to a user I'd say there was only one issue here. But now that they customize, you actually have two sets of data in search. Your data. The Internet's interconnected relationships. I don't know how you break this data apart in a reasonable way. I mean Google did create all of it or buy a platform and expand it in the case of YouTube. They deserve to be rewarded for their innovation (obviously my opinion) but we need an equal ability to compete. I am obviously concerned when you can be "de-platformed" for a TOS violation and silenced. Especially when some of these platforms are so ubiquitous that being de-platformed from them all could completely silence an individual. But at the same time a company should have the right to choose who their customers are if there aren't fair regulations that address this. So it's complicated and I think this sort of thing deserves a lot of conversation. I still think action isn't appropriate because if we did have twitter owned by the government we'd also need to keep free speech on there. It'd have to get a court order for data to come down as libel or something similar. ~~~ dalbasal _I don 't know how to solve that because I think that no one forces newspapers to accept articles from people they think are crazy._ I don't think this is tangential... I don't think this necessarily resolves to a perfectly fundamental principle, in a philosophically loophole-free way. Maybe a newspaper isn't a good analogy. Here's one example. A large portion of elected officials around the world communicates with (and mostly to) their electorate mostly on social media. It is how they get elected, argue positions, etc. The argument (I'm not sure I agree, but I think there's an argument) is that twitter, fb, etc have crossed some sort of the threshold where there is a lot at stake. ~~~ bargl This is a good point. I think some people treat facebook and twitter as their main news source which is why I drew that correlation. The twitter blast out by politicians is a new thing, that hasn't really existed before from what I can see. It's common to try to draw a parallel to something that arleady exists (like I did). I think you're right that my example was a miss. ~~~ dalbasal Cheers bargl. I don't think it is a clear miss. The way we think of law, and right-and-wrong generally, tends to be principled. Rules and laws as embodiments of abstract principles that are consistently true. That's what the analogy does is check for inconsistencies. That's what lawyers do, argue by analogy. High judges can invalidate laws if they create inconsistencies. But... the laws aren't really abstract truths. They tend to be point solutions to specific problems. Social media has created new realities that just didn't exist in as meaningful a firm before. Personally, I'm happy that proprietary social media platforms just get replaced by open platforms a la WWW or email. There's no real reason to have a multi billion dollar company behind twitter, text messaging and such. That'd make the choice between bureaucratic or monopolistic control moot. ------ eachro Suppose Facebook or Twitter were incorporated as a non-US company. Would the US gov still be able to regulate them? ~~~ rgarrett88 Can Europe regulate google? ------ airocker How about Google? Force them to give us a search engine for 50$ a month and Android for 100$ a piece? ~~~ ucaetano How do you force someone to sell you a product they don't sell? ~~~ airocker What they sell should not be saleable? ~~~ ucaetano What do you mean? Are you suggesting we force Google to offer a paid version? "Law number XXXX: Google must offer a paid version of its search engine to end users". ~~~ pixl97 Why not law YYYY, you cannot own the search engine, video distribution platform _and_ ad platform at the same time. The ad platform must be spun off as a separate non-colluding entity. ~~~ ucaetano "non-colluding entity" Colluding? What the heck are you talking about? ------ ucaetano It's an opinion piece, not a news article, keep that in mind. ------ rblion How exactly could they be regulated? ~~~ justinmchase With a law. Perhaps one saying that they cannot ban or block anybody or their content, except for content already deemed illegal by a governing body or upon receipt of a court order. ------ bad_user The case is getting stronger for a balkanization of the Internet. I don’t want the US or the UK to censorship my Internet, any more than I want China. It’s bad enough that nudes are being censored due to US companies pushing the US conservative Christian values on the rest of the world, while violence gets a free pass. Also do you really think that the fake news promoting Trump or Brexit would get censored? That would be so extremely naive. ------ carrja99 Yes.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google is now a certificate authority? - gary4gar http://i.imgur.com/waCb4.png ====== gary4gar It seems google is using self-issued SSL certs which do not generate warnings/promts to the user. Domain: plus.google.com Browser:Google Chrome 14.0.835.202 ~~~ sp332 The "Certification Path" goes to Google Internet Authority, issued by Equifax.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Mou is one year old - chenluois http://chenluois.com/blog/mou-is-one-year-old/ ====== alexcabrera Mou is the single best purpose-built Markdown editor I've ever used. I've tried all kinds of Markdown-centric workflows, but keep coming back to Mou. Split-screen editing and preview windows make all the difference, and Mou doesn't seem to ever have any performance issues. Mou has become essential. Donated $50, worth every penny and then some. ------ pudgereyem I also think Mou is by far the best Markdown editor I ever used. But even better is it's creator @chenluois. I asked him if he was to support Math Syntax, and ~2 months later it came. As he writes on this post; > __That's why donated users' suggestions are on my highest priority, because > it is them who are supporting Mou's development. __ Thanks so much, and I really hope ppl keep donating for every feature that ships (if they benefit from it). I know I will. ------ obilgic I just started using mou for my lecture notes. But I have a question, when I export it to html it looks awesome, for some reason when I export it to pdf to print, texts get bigger it looks all different than html. What would be the reason for that ~~~ chenluois You can write a PDF specified custom CSS inside the @media print rule, assign the font size you want. Take this post as an example: <http://chenluois.com/blog/mou-pdf-export-page- break/> It's talking about the page break, but the principle is the same. ~~~ obilgic Thanks, I actually just printed 15 pages a minute ago. I will definitely try it. P.s. I actually spent so much time on that css. and I was thinking about a live showcase/gallery for different markdown css files. I am sure people are using Mou because of it's beauty and simplicity. Do you think that kind of website would be useful? ~~~ chenluois You are planning to make a CSS showcase website? Then go ahead and make it, I think it would be useful. ------ Protonk I love Mou. I _could_ use textwrangler for markdown work, but Mou's simple interface and live previews make it a snap. It's a great middle point between a general text editor and a markdown focused document editor. ------ jaykru I love Mou. I've been using it for several months as I've been getting accustomed to using Markdown (which I'm fairly new to) for my class notes. It just keeps getting better and better. Thanks Chen Luo!!! ------ rocu Happy birthday. I also love Mou! Keep up the good work. ------ maxjacobson This is a great Markdown editor.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Would you publicly call out an non-paying client? - jentulman I just found this via twitter..<p>http://bsglogistics.co.uk/<p>Here a developer has suspended hosting and publicly called out a client for non payment of bills. Personally, whilst I might suspend a clients service, I don't feel that this kind of name and shame tactic would reflect well on me professionally.<p>Would you do the same? ====== damoncali Ask yourself this: What good does it do you to publicly air this stuff? Take the site down if you must, but enraging your clients, even deadbeat clients, I would guess is bad for business overall. You have to leave them room to save face. ------ JoeAltmaier Anything can be done gracefully. A simple announcement that due to failure to make payments, service is suspended. Kind of like those emails about Ken 'pursuing other opportunities'. ------ asto Yes I would call them out. People do these things because they believe the consequences are painless. I wouldn't do what this guy has done though because I doubt clients publicise sites before they are live, so no one's going to see that notice anyway. ------ mrkmcknz What 'freelance' developer would build a site, host it and put it live without one payment. ~~~ bjplink This was my first thought as well. This is a good reason why you need to take down payments. There probably isn't a freelancer out there that hasn't wanted to do what this guy has done to a deadbeat client. I just don't see how going this route benefits you in any way though. Now everyone involved looks like a jerk. ~~~ marquis Downpayments aren't often enough. I've had friends whose clients never paid the last installment and the owner has changed the access credentials. It's a difficult path - what can you do when the site is live and you can't get access anymore, and the client won't pay the last installment before it's live? ~~~ JulianMiller520 first and foremost you can host the site yourself which gives you unfettered access and secondly don't ever give admin credentials to a site that wasn't fully paid for??? ~~~ marquis Not all site jobs are self-hosted, for example site upgrade projects. ~~~ JulianMiller520 right in which case I'm assuming you'd remove your work and leave the original version instead of pulling down work which wasn't yours. ~~~ marquis My point was: I have seen clients receive work, change the password on their site and not pay for it. In relation to the topic, it is not possible for the developer to remove the work so whether it is ethical to denounce the client publicly otherwise is the dilemma (personally I would not do this and send a debt collector, but then again you're not always in the same country). So what do you do, put a bad review on Yelp? ~~~ mrkmcknz You could try to recover the costs legally. In the UK we have a swift procedure which could make it a legal matter with payment due immediately or a plan to clear balance arranged. It is a very difficult situation indeed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hackers dump data for 2.3M Patreon users online - wymy http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9439077/patreon-hack-user-database-2-million-users ====== sigmar >Patreon revealed earlier this week that it had recently been hacked, compromising the email addresses, usernames, and shipping addresses of its users. Were passwords not breached? Or is it just that they haven't publicly released the passwords from the breach? ~~~ 21echoes passwords were leaked, but were per-user salted & 12-round bcrypted, so there has not been a mass password breach. with significant computing power and weak enough passwords, obviously some passwords that are extensively targeted (say, a famous or infamous creator) will be compromised in the coming weeks & months. which, of course, is why the initial announcement suggested all users change their passwords as a precaution.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Gödel and the limits of logic - ColinWright http://plus.maths.org/content/goumldel-and-limits-logic ====== jaysonelliot As an aside, if you look at the photo credit on that great color photo of Einstein and Gödel, it was snapped by Oskar Morgenstern, one of the fathers of game theory. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Morgenstern> Morgenstern and Einstein were Gödel's closest friends, I've just now learned. It gives me goosebumps looking at that photo and imagining the three of them on that lawn. Semi-related, here's an account of Gödel's "pent-up lecture" about the inconsistencies in the American constitution that he told to his citizenship examiner: <http://morgenstern.jeffreykegler.com/> ~~~ why-el Thanks for the links. I read the account. I was surprised to see that Morgenstern didn't mention Gödel's arguments. It only made a reference to the steps leading up to Gödel's own findings, like what he read on and how much time it took him, but never mentioned the substantial argument, which is what I wanted to read. ------ vbtemp When I first became fascinated with incompleteness (following initial coursework in theory of computation), it kind of became my "religion" of sorts for a while. But as many mathematicians lament, the Incompleteness Theorem is one of the most popularly abused proofs of all time - used for non-experts to assert their own half-baked pseudo-philosophy (of course, the same goes for quantum mechanics as well). These are a few books I recommend: "Incompleteness - The proof and paradox of Kurt Gödel" by Rebecca Goldstein "Gödel's Proof" by Ernst Nagel (it's a tiny book, not too technical, but technical enough for anyone with a solid CS background to appreciate and understand) ~~~ rgower I have no background in CS or Math, but a lot of philosophy. In other words, I'm a highly interested layman. What's my best plan of action to understanding Godel's theory? Maybe the best approach would be an entry level book on CS? ~~~ vbtemp At the very least a good course in discrete mathematics is a good start (it's also a good start for anything technical as well - one of the most valuable math classes anyone can ever take, as far as I'm concerned) Following that, a good class in the theory of computing: understanding what exactly a generative grammar is, properties of classes of languages (e.g., understanding what "regular languages are closed under complimentation" means), pumping lemma, diagnalization proofs, halting problem. The incompleteness theorem is intimately tied to this. This is the "CS-route" to getting a good understanding in Incompleteness, I'm sure math or physics majors come to approach it in each their own way. Being a little blunt, a background in philosophy (whether it's academic or not) without a solid discrete math background, doesn't help you out at all. This isn't philosophy, it's just a fact about properties of formal systems of sufficient complexity. If you're looking for philosophy you won't find anything too deep in the proof of Incompleteness. The philosophical implications are not clear. However, I do recommend Rebecca Goldstein's book. It's not technical, and she's a Princeton philosopher who will indulge you with possible philosophical ramifications of the theorem (along with a good narrative). I also recommend her other books as well, especially her first novella "The Mind-Body Problem". From a philosophical perspective, the dispute between Goedel and Wittgenstein who never accepted the Incompleteness Theorem "whereof we cannot speak we must pass over in silence", which, ironically, speaks of something of which we cannot speak. ~~~ praptak > At the very least a good course in discrete mathematics is a good start I believe that the best starting point to get to incompleteness is formal logic. This is the basic set of concepts that lets us make terms, statements and finally proofs the subject of formal mathematical study, thus tying the loop (formally mathematically defined reasoning about formally mathematically defined reasoning :-) ) that leads to Goedels proof. Discrete mathematics is helpful but it is rather low level, the core concepts in incompleteness come from formal logic. ~~~ vbtemp I consider a solid discrete math curriculum to provide a reasonable background in first and second order logic ~~~ neilc I would be surprised to find second order logic discussed in an introductory discrete math curriculum. ------ ColinWright Related: Logicomix <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3991687> <http://www.logicomix.com/en/> Mentioned in glowing terms here on HN many times: [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=logicomix](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=logicomix) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=846451> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=870762> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=874471> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3690254> It was my present for proofing an early draft of "Here's Looking at Euclid" / "Alex's Adventures in Numberland" ------ ionfish "It's like an ill-designed jigsaw puzzle. No matter how you arrange the pieces, you'll always end up with some that won't fit in the end." I really don't understand this analogy. The first incompleteness theorem shows that there are statements true of the natural numbers which aren't provable from any sufficiently strong recursive theory. It's more like Th(N) (the set of statements true of the natural numbers) being a jigsaw puzzle from which many pieces will always be missing if you start with a recursive set of pieces and try to lay down only those pieces which a provable from your initial set. Nothing "won't fit": there aren't inconsistencies or incompatibilities at work here, but _incompleteness_. ~~~ stiff I think the point is that if you try to add those unprovable theorems to the system to try to make it complete it becomes inconsistent. See for example: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistency_proof#Consistency_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistency_proof#Consistency_and_completeness_in_arithmetic) _Moreover, Gödel's second incompleteness theorem shows that the consistency of sufficiently strong effective theories of arithmetic can be tested in a particular way. Such a theory is consistent if and only if it does not prove a particular sentence, called the Gödel sentence of the theory, which is a formalized statement of the claim that the theory is indeed consistent._ ~~~ ionfish "I think the point is that if you try to add those unprovable theorems to the system to try to make it complete it becomes inconsistent." Eh? No it doesn't! If you add Con(PA) to the axioms of Peano arithmetic you obtain a stronger system. That system can't prove its own consistency, of course, but if you have a proof that the system PA + Con(PA) is inconsistent then you're probably in line for a Fields Medal. Alan Turing worked on precisely this issue, developing ordinal logics in his PhD thesis (with Alonzo Church) to try to overcome incompleteness. Soloman Feferman, who in the 1960s proved a stronger result than Turing obtained, has written about this extensively. An accessible paper is this one: <http://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/turingnotices.pdf> ~~~ stiff Yes, but in your example the system is still incomplete and the moment you would add an axiom that would make it complete, it would become inconsistent (so either you never finish your puzzles or you finish them and exactly the same moment they fall apart). From Wikipedia again: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems) _Gödel's theorem shows that, in theories that include a small portion of number theory, a complete and consistent finite list of axioms can never be created, nor even an infinite list that can be enumerated by a computer program. Each time a new statement is added as an axiom, there are other true statements that still cannot be proved, even with the new axiom. If an axiom is ever added that makes the system complete, it does so at the cost of making the system inconsistent._ ~~~ ionfish Right, but the point here is that we're not just talking about extensions of the system, we're talking about true but unprovable statements—that is, statements that are true in the standard model of arithmetic but not provable in PA (or whatever other arithmetic theory strikes your fancy). This is why Turing looked not at single formal theories but at a hierarchy of consistency extensions of the initial theory. In other words, the game changes from formal provability to _informal_ provability, and from provability relative to a set of axioms to absolute provability. Turing showed (very roughly) that given a tree of consistency extensions (which branches only at limit stages) every Pi_1 sentence was decided at some point a with \|a\| = ω + 1. Feferman then proved in the 1960s that there is a path through the tree of ordinal notations that decides every Pi_2 sentence. These are completeness results, albeit for progressions of formal systems rather than individual systems. So certainly the puzzle can never be completed _within a single formal system_ , but by restricting to sentences of limited complexity, there is an ordinal-time operation which decides each sentence (obviously there are numerous philosophical problems with this, although I'm afraid my expertise in this area is extremely limited so I can only give a sketch of the issues involved). ------ haliax On a related note, does anyone know where I would look to understand reducibility of formal systems to one another? I'm really interested by questions like: Why is second order logic irreducible to first order logic if I could use first order logic to reason about the behavior of a turing machine running a second order logic theorem prover with whatever inputs I like? How do I get something that can do what I can do, which is to say take _any_ formal system and prove theorems with it? How do you determine what formal systems are "valid" logics? (Leading to sensible conclusions rather than nonsense like A & ~A) ~~~ ionfish 'Reducibility' in general is an informal notion, and as such there are many different technically precise ways of capturing aspects of it. Mutual interpretability and bi-interpretability are two of these, but they apply to formal systems with the same underlying logic (that is, the same semantics and proof theory). There are also many other notions of translation between different logics like Gödel–Gentzen negative translation between classical logic and intuitionistic logic. I'm not sure if there is a good introduction to _all_ of these different ways of capturing reducibility, but you could try asking on math.stackexchange.com, there are usually helpful responses to reference requests there. Second order logic does not have a complete proof theory, so your Turing machine will not be able to compute the consequences of a theory formulated in second order logic. This can be avoided by employing Henkin semantics, but then you're not working with full second order logic anymore. Stewart Shapiro's 2000 book, _Foundations without Foundationalism: A Case for Second- Order Logic_ has the technical details should you be interested. ~~~ haliax > Second order logic does not have a complete proof theory Is this different from saying that second order logic contains unprovable true statements / that the incompleteness theorem applies? Also thanks for the really well informed response! ~~~ ionfish One of the features of first order logic is that the provability relation is _recursively enumerable_ : given any recursive first order theory, there is a Turing machine that can list every theorem of that theory (although of course it will run forever). Additionally, first order logic is _complete_ : for every statement true in all models of a theory, there is a proof of the statement from the theory. These two constraints cannot both be satisfied in a sound deductive system for second order logic. To see that this is so, consider that in second order logic we can prove Dedekind's categoricity theorem: there is only one model (up to isomorphism) of the second order Peano axioms (PA2). Let's assume that the provability relation for second order logic is recursively enumerable. We know from Gödel's incompleteness theorem that the set of first order sentences true of the natural numbers is not recursively enumerable. So take a sentence of the form "If PA2 then _" for some sentence _ which is in that set but not in the extension of the provability relation (this is a legitimate statement since the PA2 axioms are finite so we can just take their conjunction). This should be a logical truth of second order logic, but it's not provable (by the argument just given), so second order logic is incomplete: there are statements which are logical consequences yet are unprovable. So in other words, yes, the incompleteness theorem is very much at play in this limitation of second order logic. For the technical details I very much recommend chapters 3 and 4 of Shapiro's book; it's not terribly expensive, and any decent university library should have a copy. (A small footnote to my earlier post: Shapiro's book originally came out in 1991, not 2000—that's just the date of the paperback edition, and I'm unsure as to whether there are any substantial differences between the two.) ------ Fice Stephen Hawking «Gödel and the end of physics» <http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/events/strings02/dirac/hawking/> ------ SoftwareMaven GEB sits on my nightstand with too little time to be read. It might have to get bumped up the priority queue a bit. ~~~ oz Same here. Got through most of the foreword, but haven't found time to continue. ~~~ andybak I read it a long time ago (late teens/early twenties) but it changed my intellectual world and gave me an insight into things that I might never have been introduced to. Hard to know whether it would have the same impact now or the same impact for others but I rate it very highly for personal reasons. Also - Rudy Rucker's 'Infinity and the Mind'... ------ ttttannebaum "Another result that derives from Gödel's ideas is the demonstration that no program that does not alter a computer's operating system can detect all programs that do. In other words, no program can find all the viruses on your computer, unless it interferes with and alters the operating system." I think I just heard a 'pop'ping sound.. but really, writers try too hard sometimes to make this stuff accessible to people. I don't think someone who is going to get a whole half-way into the article is going to need such reductionism to catch their interest; I'd honestly be more excited if the actual symbolic definition of the theorem was shown to me at that point. ------ jpdoctor _In 1949 he demonstrated that universes in which time travel into the past is possible were compatible with Einstein's equations._ Wait, what?! Anyone have a ref? Edit: Thanks to andyjohnson and vbtemp. TIA for others too. ~~~ andyjohnson0 He discovered a solution to Einstein's field equations that permits closed timelike curves if the universe is rotating. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godel_metric> "This solution has many strange properties, discussed below, in particular the existence of closed timelike curves which would allow for a form of time travel in the type of universe described by the solution. Its definition is somewhat artificial (the value of the cosmological constant must be carefully chosen to match the density of the dust grains), but this spacetime is regarded as an important pedagogical example" ------ tluyben2 For people interested in the original from 1931: <http://www.w-k- essler.de/pdfs/goedel.pdf> (in German). Work of art IMHO. ------ lcargill99 While that's biographically interesting, you really don't get off the hook from understanding that he used basically the same approach of Cantor's diagonalization. ------ rmATinnovafy Its always fascinating to read about Gödel. I have not read GEB, yet reading about his findings has really changed the way I think about things. Thanks for posting this article. ~~~ ibrow You may find the Reddit discussion about GEB of interest. <http://www.reddit.com/r/geb> ~~~ rmATinnovafy Thank you! ------ ChrisHugh What I get out of Goedel is this: There are some things that are true that cannot be proved. ~~~ vbtemp Be careful. That's a naive view, and drawing more conclusion than I think you mean. This it more like it: For any consistent, finite axiomatized formal system that is sufficiently expressive (such as the Principia Mathematica), you can construct a sentence in the language of that formal system that asserts its own un-provability. Therefore, there _does not exist a mechanistic method for enumerating over all true statements in the language of that formal system_. By stating "there are some true things that cannot be proved" goes too philosophy deep, and is outside of our pay-grade. Just consider: humans don't reason based on mechanistic principles - and there's no proof as to the expressability of natural language (though we can be sure it's aggravatingly inconsistent) EDIT: I just want to say that in general, if someone does not really grasp the technical notion of a formal system, consistency, expressiveness, provability, soundness, or recursive enumeration, then it is basically impossible for them to appreciate the incompleteness theorems, and they are very likely to grossly misrepresent it. ~~~ haliax > humans don't reason based on mechanistic principles Do you support an empiricist view of logic then (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_logic_empirical%3F>) ? That we justify logical rules because they so strongly correspond with our own experiences? ~~~ vbtemp Not really. I'm just saying we don't go around all day doing logic-algebra in our head and saying _only_ true, consistent things :) ~~~ haliax Ahh, fair enough. I'd have to agree with you there. My guess is that that plus being able to inductively generate axioms from experience are largely what let us escape that particular weakness of formal systems.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
‘Virtual Pharmacology’ Advance Tackles Universe of Unknown Drugs - rbanffy https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2019/02/413236/virtual-pharmacology-advance-tackles-universe-unknown-drugs ====== daddylonglegs When I see a paper like this one of my first thoughts is "What will Derek Lowe say about this?" He is a chemist in the drug industry and excellent writer. On his blog he regularly tears apart overhyped claims for how software searches for targets and automated synthesis of chemicals are going to find perfect cures for everything at the press of a button. His take on this paper is actually positive, though with some important caveats: [http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/02/11/vir...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/02/11/virtual- screening-as-big-as-it-currently-gets) ~~~ higginsc I have been out of this space for a few years (transitioned to data science from drug discovery), but from my time doing in silico and in vitro work, a major issue with docking was rank ordering. His comments are right on the mark IMO. Especially this paragraph: >Another point is that high-middle-low effort on the D4 case. The binding assay results compared to the docking scores are shown at right. You can see that the number of potent compounds (better than 50% displacement, below that dashed line) decreases as the scores get worse; the lowest bin doesn’t have any at all. But at the same time, there are a few false-negative outliers with binding activity at pretty low scores, and at the other end of the scale, the top three bins look basically undistinguishable. So the broad strokes are there, but the details are of course smeared out a bit. These methods can filter millions of compounds down to hundreds, but as an academic lab, it's still a herculean effort to synthesize hundreds of compounds. And out of those hundreds, you might get a couple that are active. This study is a combination hard work, yes, but also a lot of money and luck. That being said, good for the team, and good for science. I have nothing but respect for Shoichet and Roth. Didn't ever cross paths with Irwin. ~~~ cowsandmilk > I have nothing but respect for Shoichet and Roth. Didn't ever cross paths > with Irwin. This makes me laugh since Shoichet was childhood friends with Irwin and they've worked together on almost everything together since 2000 when Irwin went to Northwestern to join his lab. ~~~ higginsc That is pretty funny. The more you know. I was just a grad student and met Shoichet at conferences. ------ arkades Link to the actual article, not the press release; [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-0917-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-0917-9) ------ roomey "The four structures of AmpC determined with the new docking hits are available from the PDB with accession numbers 6DPZ, 6DPY, 6DPX and 6DPT." Are we in a situation now where, if I have a bad anti-botic resistant infection I can just order these molecules on the off chance that they will help me? Can I order a toxin? Or are these molecules just impractical to use outside of a lab setting ~~~ fabian2k They only determined whether those specific molecules bind to the target. They didn't test if they are toxic, if they are able to actually get to the target, how stable they are under real conditions, into which metabolites they are processed in humans, ... This is the very first step towards developing potential drugs, it's very, very far from an actual drug. And drug development wasn't the goal of this paper anyway. And the idea behind this paper was to find molecules that aren't in any catalogue, so you would still have to synthesize them yourself or pay someone to do a custom synthesis for you. ~~~ daddylonglegs I thought the point of the library of molecules used was the supplier (Enamine) has a systematic method of synthesizing the molecules they've listed. It appears that, in practice, they can supply 90% of the molecules they offer, synthesized on demand: > Of the 589 molecules selected, 549 (93%) were successfully synthesized > (Supplementary Table 10 and Supplementary Data 11, 13) I fully agree your main points. ~~~ fabian2k That's still custom synthesis and not off-the-shelf compounds. No idea how expensive they are in this case. ~~~ daddylonglegs About $100 apparently: > Over the past decade, Kiev-based Enamine Ltd has innovated an efficient > pipeline to produce any of over a billion never-before-made drug-like > compounds on demand — at a cost of about $100 per molecule — by combining > any of tens of thousands of standard chemical building blocks with one > another using over a hundred established chemical reactions. ~~~ justtopost 'Per molecule' gives no real indication of cost, that appears to be a 'tooling' charge, to design the reaction chain. I doubt $100 will buy you any useful quantity of any research chemical, much less a custom mfg one. ------ melbourner as a computational chemist I must say end-use might differ significantly from these screening studies, it is more of a statement on current computing capabilities and a little bit of science icing ~~~ dekhn it's not even a statement of current computing capabilities if they used 1 CPU-day on 1,500 machines. That's a pittance. ~~~ momeara Co-author here (AMA)--A large-scale docking screen of 116M molecules takes ~1100 cpu days on our cluster, working out to about 1 mol/sec, which is very fast for virtual screening. What this doesn't account for is this requires about 30 minutes per compound to precompute information (conformations, partial charges, etc.). So this works out to ~6M cpu/hours to prepare the library for screening, which is a substantial amount of computation. We're loading about 1M molecules a day and have a 2-3 year backlog of compounds to load from Enamine. The good news is that once the library is prepared, it is quick to screen at more targets--and we make the pre-computed library available at zinc15.docking.org. Interestingly, as the library grows a limiting factor is storing the library on disk. It is now ~20T. We've set up several mirrors around the world for groups that are actively using it. An interesting problem will be to see if preparing compounds for screening on the fly (e.g. with machine learning models) can overcome this limitation to keep up with library growth. A big question for us is what will the return on investment in screening larger and larger libraries be? One of the take aways from this work is if docking has moderate enrichment, than screening larger libraries not only gives more hits but actually can increase the hit-rate for the top scoring compounds. ~~~ cing I know that docking using GPU is about an order of magnitude faster than CPU (see today's Schrodinger 2019-1 release notes, [https://youtu.be/K4AYdBvuOe4?t=90](https://youtu.be/K4AYdBvuOe4?t=90)). Is there a way of doing GPU accelerated precomputation though? ~~~ momeara Hey Chris--We're right now using a mix of commercial and open source software like Omega, Corina, AMSOL, and Mol2DB. Probably the slowest step is generating the partial charges for each conformer with a reasonably high quality semi- empirical forcefield. I'm not sure if there are competitive (in terms of quality) GPU based methods, but if there were methods that were ~1000 times faster as can be the case for GPU based methods, it would definitely speed up the pre-computation or make on-the-fly prep feasible. Do you have any ideas of where we should look? ------ radicaldreamer This is right up Zymergen's alley, at least when it comes to in vitro testing of these compounds.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Visualize positions of a string - Thimo https://github.com/ThimoKl/StringViz ====== welder You shouldn't be using character offsets when parsing HTML or XML... ~~~ silentOpen Your lexer emits buffer positions which you then put into error/diagnostic messages. Afaict, this tool makes it easier to visualize cursor positions in buffers. Personally, I'm not sure about its approach but it's not an unreasonable goal. ~~~ Thimo I parsed many strings from a website today. These strings were created by a user. So they didn't have a structure. It seemed easier to search for some keyword (like €/$) and extract substrings than writing a grammar. Working with positions can be compilcated, so I created this little tool to visualize it and make it a bit more easy and to save some time. ------ ExpiredLink Have you seen this? <https://github.com/laktek/extract-values> ~~~ Thimo Looks like a good and simple tool. In some cases it's just easier and faster to work with buffer positions. I can be tricky though. ------ fidz Simple, but i think it would be very useful to teach substring to very young programmer. Thanks, starred for future purpose.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Arbitrary Code Execution on Pokemon Stadium for the N64 - pizza https://github.com/MrCheeze/pokestadium-ace ====== dimodi9 I see a pipeline error message on the bottom left.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Help I need advice on fraud - eam I run a web site (side project) where users can use their credit card to send money to a friends checking account as a gift. It seems a user created multiple accounts with fake names then proceeded to send money from stolen credit cards. All the charges to the stolen credit cards where then sent to one final destination checking account which I have all the information on. I detected all this activity a bit too late (2 days late) so the money has been transferred from the credit cards to my marketplace to the destination checking account. Overall there were 5 different stolen credit cards used with over $2,000 in charges! As a side project this a big loss for me. I'm already starting to receive some chargebacks and it's stressing me out. As a result I have permanently shut down my project because this is a major loss, more than I have ever made from the actual side project itself.<p>I have visited the local police department, but they said since I'm not the victim they can't do anything about it (presumably the owners of the stolen credit cards are the victims here, so they have to file a report). They referred me to the FBI. So I filed a complaint with the IC3.gov. After submitting the form, it said that it may be a while before I hear anything since they have limited resources and they receive thousands of complaints each day.<p>What's really frustrating is that I have the checking account details where the stolen money was sent to! So it seems it would be an easy case to break. The authorities would have to subpena the bank account since I have the bank account number and bank name, it's not like they used bitcoins.<p>Can anyone with experience in this situation before chime in with some advice? What should I do? Please help, any information would be greatly appreciated. ====== callmeed I have dealt with this exact scenario in our photography ecommerce product ([http://nextproof.com](http://nextproof.com)). Ours just happened to have an extra 0 on the end. We almost lost our merchant account because of all the chargebacks. (I'm thinking of writing an ebook on the topic) Through some social engineering, I was even able to get the name and location of the checking account owner and _get him on the phone_. I was actually quite close to visiting and beating the crap out of him. Turns out he was just some poor rube from Arkansas who answered a craigslist ad. In the end he was actually more of a victim than me (basically had his identity stolen, credit ruined). Law enforcement at all levels were completely unhelpful (I dealt with CA police, AR police, and feds). Once I located the bank and got them on the phone, they at least were able to freeze the checking account (I believe they are required by law to do this once fraud/cybercrime is reported). That's really only a temporary fix though. Any time you're doing payment aggregation or money transfers, _you have to do as much verification as possible_. We learned that the fraudulent charges had very predictable patterns (international cards, fake websites, very specific range of charge amounts, etc.). At a small scale, you should just manually verify all accounts, require phone/address verification, and more. I've seen some bitcoin startups that even require you to submit a photograph of your card + ID via WebRTC. This is what you should do right away. Once fraudsters realize they have to do work, they will move on to the next target. Our chargeback rate is now near zero and never fraud-related. At scale, you can have in-house people write code to detect fraud patterns. There are also startups like Sift Science with APIs. Hope that helps. ~~~ jasontan Hey there, I'm the CEO of Sift Science. Unfortunately, callmeed is spot on -- law enforcement typically won't get involved unless it's in the tens of millions of dollars, at least. Even trickier if it's across international borders. This means that you're left to defend yourself. Typically, you'll start implementing some basic verification and rules in your code base. For example, "if num_credit_cards_per_destination > 5; flag_as_suspicious()". But, it's tough to be accurate with this approach, so you'll want to manually review activity flagged by rules, so that you don't insult your good customers. As your business grows, it's more challenging to scale these fraud detection rules and manual review operations. While adding more verification helps, it does negatively impact the experience for innocent customers. It's a delicate balance. I wish I had better news. In some sense, seeing fraud means that you're on the map. Unfortunately that means you'll only attract more and more attention as your business grows. I'm happy to be a resource, even if we don't work together - jason at siftscience dot com. ------ jmount Down vote me on this, but here is my honest opinion (that may actually help others) phrased as a question. Why would you as a hobby run a payment site linking credit cards and checking accounts when you appear to not have done any research in to how important loss prevention is in such an activity? If you were not interested why did you start? If you were interested how could you not know what steps to take? ~~~ wpietri Hi, John. I'm not the poster, but the way I look at it, everybody has to learn caution sometime. If this guy's lesson costs him just $2k and a little headache, I'd say he got away cheap. I can think of a number of important business lessons I learned that cost me more time or money. E.g., "be careful picking business partners", "don't start work without a signed contract", or "crazy clients don't get saner". All things I should have known, or could have discovered reading. But had I waited until I had read and appreciated all business lessons, I never would have started anything. And I appreciate him sharing the lesson with Hacker News. It reminds me of the Despair, Inc poster on mistakes: [http://www.despair.com/mistakes.html](http://www.despair.com/mistakes.html) "It could be the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others." So thanks, eam, for getting a bunch of young entrepreneurs to say, "Hey, maybe I should double-check our fraud prevention." ~~~ jmount Always good to hear good calm advice from somebody I know and respect, Will. I admit I make tons of mistakes (and also would never start anything if I always "thought it through"). But I still really don't like what the original poster presented. ~~~ eam Hi OP here, thank you for your opinions. I just wanted to say that I thought that I had "thought it through" but apparently I didn't, it was more complicated than I thought it was. This is not the first time in my life that I thought I had thought something through, there have been numerous times actually in all aspects of my life. A year or so ago, I watched a Malcolm Gladwell talk on TED ([http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce](http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce)) where spaghetti sauce companies thought they had thought things through, but really didn't it. Of course I could have spend lots of time reading books, but even then I might have missed this. I just wanted to share my experience and ask for any advice (not legal) just advice/tips in general from others who had been in the same boat. So far the comments have been excellent and invaluable. They have taught me many things I didn't think of before, but more importantly it will help others who might be looking or are doing that same thing I was doing already on my side project. ------ mey I work in fraud management in the payment space for my day job. (Unfortunately we not have a publically available option yet for someone at your scale). - You are most likely violating OFAC/KYC regulations in the US (Assuming you are in the US with references to the FBI) - It is easy/cheap to buy on the black market complete combinations of credit cards/cvv/social security info - People who buy/have these stolen cards want a cash exit - Verification of both sides of the transaction are really needed for what is essentially a money transfer, to keep fraud down (steps beyond CCV to prove someone is in control of a CC) - You are lucky, that $2000 was probably an initial probe to see what checks you had in place. Shutting down was the right thing to do. If you had left it open, you could've added three zeros to the damages - CC's are not secure and the "merchant" is always the loser in fraud. Visa/Mastercard will always make their cut. Additionally ACH/echecks doesn't provide much in the way to claw back funds (any really). Edit: Oh some other notes, the local PD are simply not equipped to handle this, even though you _are_ the victim as you have been defrauded. Chargebacks can continue to roll in down the line, typically 30-90 days after the transaction. You may have violated your MCC code on your merchant account by doing this, as getting an MCC code to do a balance transfer like this is not a simple thing. ------ noonespecial Run from this. You've been lucky. 1) You are almost certainly operating a money transmitting service (like Western Union). If you are an intermediary between people giving each other money, there are piles of regulations and compliances you _must_ deal with just to stay out of jail! 2) Anything dealing with money and internet is HARD. This is like complaining that you tried to be a veterinarian on the side and some animals died. There is a minimum amount of knowledge you need just to start. You presently don't know what you don't know in this space. Its dangerous. Sorry for the downer, but pick a different side project. ------ dminor You were basically providing a cash advance, which is against the credit card companies' TOS, so chalk it up as a lesson learned and move on. I can pretty much guarantee that no one in law enforcement will do anything about your situation. I work for an online retailer and we've been down that road. Everyone will mumble something about jurisdiction and hang up on you. ------ eli If you're looking for legal advice, you absolutely must ask a lawyer. Most good lawyers will give you an initial consultation for free. If you're looking for business advice, I don't think there's any practical or safe way to run a business that allows people to charge a credit card and return cash to a bank account. If that's necessary for the functioning of your site, you may need to rethink your site. ------ KhalPanda What makes you think the bank account's details you have that the (presumably) stolen funds were sent to are those of the actual criminal? It could very easily (and extremely likely) be an account opened under a stolen identity. I'm afraid it's likely you're going to have to put this one down to experience... You haven't gone into specifics, but your side project sounds like a money-launderer's dream. ~~~ pbhjpbhj > _What makes you think the bank account 's details you have that the > (presumably) stolen funds were sent to are those of the actual criminal?_ // Did he say that? I thought he was just saying as he had the account number then the bank could easily stop that money; the implication being that someone trying to retrieve the money could be traced. ~~~ KhalPanda Maybe you're right (that that is what he meant)... but all it takes is the criminal to withdraw cash (or have someone do it for him) and that money is long gone. I was more getting at the fact that the money is probably not retrievable. ------ bluedino >> 2000 was basically the year of fraud, where we were just losing more and more money every month. At one point we were losing over $10 million per month in fraud. It was crazy. —Max Levchin, founder of PayPal ~~~ hcentelles Where this quote came from? ~~~ maxmcd [http://www.foundersatwork.com/](http://www.foundersatwork.com/) ~~~ wpietri A book that any founder should read. It's a great set of interviews with founders telling relatively unsanitized versions of their startup stories. It serves as a great antidote to the business press's "all winners are perfect geniuses" school of reporting. ------ blakerson You were running a money transmitter, and once you learn the regulations and liabilities that come attached to that you'll be glad you shut it down before the gap widened any further. ------ beat My spouse works as a BA/project manager for a large e-commerce player. The efforts they go to in order to handle fraud are crazy. Fraud management is an _entire department_ in any e-commerce organization. They're fighting not simple scammers, but international organized crime syndicates. My not-a-lawyer advice? Drop your "side project" as fast as you possibly can, before it destroys you. ------ eam I actually even called the destination bank fraud department which is where the checking account resides. They seem to not care. I called them 2 days after the transactions happened and asked if they can reverse the transactions though the agent that I spoke with said he would work on it and call me back. He never called me back, so I called him back and he said he's still has to get to it and told me to have my payment processing company call him. My payment processing company has tried to call the bank agent for 2 days with no avail. I even tried to call him and many times I was sent to voicemail. It has been 11 days and I haven't heard back. ~~~ mtamizi > My payment processing company has tried to call the Ally Bank agent for 2 > days with no avail. Ally isn't going to help you in this case. Ally doesn't know you, and you're asking them to give you money from one of their customers. Who is your payment processor? You can issue an ACH reversal. You would get your money back __if __the money is still in the recipient 's bank account. It's worth a try since they may not be expecting you to reverse the transaction and will still have money in the account. ------ scarmig Someone will say, "use bitcoin instead!" So follow the directions here to help your situation: 1) Set up an exchange. 2) Wait for people to deposit >$2000 worth of bitcoin. 3) Run away. Problem solved. More seriously, I think you're more or less in a very unhappy place without good options. Chalk it up to experience and consider yourself lucky that you only lost $2k. Though, a question for the legally-minded: if this project had been done in a corporate structure, could the poster just walk away from it and be insulated from the loss? ~~~ aioprisan As long as you're incorporated, you're personally shielded from incurring those loses yourself or anyone going after you for those losses, as long as you didn't personally guarantee those accounts (i.e. AMEX business cards are guaranteed with your personal SSN vs company EIN). ~~~ eli No offense, but that sounds like terrible advice. Please consult a lawyer or accountant with questions, but corporations do not magically and universally shield your side business from incurring debts you have to pay. (And your business credit cards would almost certainly be personally guaranteed -- who would give a credit card to a business with no credit history?) ~~~ aioprisan Again, I should have prefaced this with stating that I am not a lawyer and do not provide legal advice. With a DUNS number, you can open business cards if you have an established history of paying your suppliers and can show sales to other companies. > And your business credit cards would almost certainly be personally > guaranteed -- who would give a credit card to a business with no credit > history? Not true. While it is easier to get a business credit card if you personally guarantee it from day 1, you can get one using you business identification information. You can get Citi business cards with a DUNS and EIN number. [https://www.citicards.com/cards/wv/html/cm/business/know- the...](https://www.citicards.com/cards/wv/html/cm/business/know-the- rules/business-credit.html) You can also get corporate AMEX cards once your business has $10M in revenue a year. Employee cards only require a SSN to verify identity, not to guarantee them (the regular, business amex cads, however, do). ------ dragonwriter Credit Card companies basically tell merchants (in their merchant guides) not to (1) deposit funds from CC transactions in any account but their own, or (2) allow CC users to extract cash or the equivalent from CCs as by cash refunds, and highlight that these things are wide open gates for fraud, money laundering, and high chargeback rates. [1] This sounds like a grossly irresponsible "side project". [1] example: See "Laundering" on p. 11, "No Cash Refunds" on p. 13 of [https://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/card-acceptance- guid...](https://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/card-acceptance-guidelines- for-visa-merchants.pdf) ------ genericresponse You lost $2000 in stolen goods. Someone defrauded you by knowingly using fake cards. Your police department should see you as a victim as well. If they don't you might want to think about talking to a lawyer to get things moving. Actually- just go talk to a lawyer about getting the wheels of justice moving for you. ------ daseong I am not a lawyer, this is no legal advice. You have to be careful. Depending on your country's laws you might have been running a financial service. These services usually require you to register, fulfill tons of requirements (at the least hold enough reserves) etc. Offering a financial service without registration might get you in a lot of trouble. The only course of action you have is to try to reverse the transactions to the checking accounts. This will largely depend on your provider. Talk to a lawyer. Make sure you haven't been running a financial service. ------ kapnobatairza I know this is not what you want to hear right now but this is where the importance of KYC requirements for any company dealing with financial transactions comes in. I imagine you made a trade-off between providing a frictionless service and best practice, but that's a trade-off you need to pay for eventually. EDIT: I would also like to add that typically those who dabble in credit card fraud are sophisticated enough NOT to link their own bank details to the cards. What they will do is either buy some unknowing person's account for a few hundred dollars or steal details of an otherwise inactive account. Then all they have to do is use any ATM to withdraw the money, and it can be nearly impossible to catch the culprit without committing significant police resources. ------ pktgen IMO, you would probably be best speaking to an attorney. They may also be able to get more cooperativeness from the FBI. ~~~ tdicola Unfortunately at a normal rate of $300/hr or so you're going to rack up well over $2000 in attorney fees. ~~~ daseong IMHO he should still talk to an attorney. If he provided financial services without a proper license, he might be in a world of hurt. ------ larrydag Card-Not-Present online commerce draws fraud and that is a reality that you need to address. There are methods to mitigate the losses from fraud. You could collect webserver, internet traffic data and credit card data to filter your signups to prevent this happening in the future. One such company that could help is siftscience.com. ~~~ larrydag I'm curious to those that downvote how they would address online fraud. It is a real problem with online commerce. ~~~ aioprisan You can request strict full address validation and request that charges fail on CVC mismatch. On the cashout side, you can use a system like [http://www.idology.com/](http://www.idology.com/) for identify verification, which can be either as complete or as superficial as you want it to be (think credit card application level verification, with questions about past employers, loans and monthly payment amounts). If this person has all the information to steal your customer's identity, then you can't really defend yourself against that scenario and that customer likely has to deal with larger identity theft issues. ------ LeBlanc I would highly recommend that you contact the banks for whatever accounts the money went to. If you are able to prove fraud, you may be able to work with them to freeze the accounts and then recover enough funds to cover the chargebacks. You can use the routing numbers to figure out which banks to talk to. When I was at WePay, we used this to help recover fraud losses. It's not 100% effective (because often the account has already been drained/closed), but it's better than nothing. In the future, I would also recommend using a PSP like WePay, Stripe, or PayPal that will handle KYC and fraud detection for you. [https://www.wepay.com/api/payments-101/preventing-losses- fig...](https://www.wepay.com/api/payments-101/preventing-losses-fighting- fraud) ------ iddav I've lost 2 merchant accounts in the past due to a high chargeback rate involved with selling web hosting online. Most chargebacks are a result of orders from people with stolen credit cards, usually from international IPs. To mitigate this, I ended up using: 1\. A service called MaxMind, which includes automated phone verification (e.g., ensuring the person owns a phone number in the a area code matching the credit card zip code). 2\. Using payment providers like PayPal or 2CO since they have their own built-in fraud prevention systems. Of course, this does not prevent chargebacks for non-fraudulent reasons (e.g., unsatisfied customers). For large orders, you may need to get the customer's signature on a credit card authorization form, to enable you to win the chargebacks if they occur. ------ yardie 1\. Consider this a very expensive lesson for you. Loss prevention isn't easy. It's why I stopped using Ebay and do local direct (CL, gumtree, leboncoin, etc.) sale. 2\. FBI cybercrimes division will eventually want to hear from you but the fraud was small potatoes compared to what they are up against. Your local PD is right, this is out of there league. Most likely this is across county, state, and international borders. ------ raverbashing And that's why you _don 't_ consider money payed with CC an immediate part of the balance. Unless you can swallow the loss. As an example, some airlines require that you present the Credit Card used in the purchase upon check-in. ------ uptown Just curious - who'd you take the transaction costs from? The sender? ~~~ eam Both, from sender and receiver.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Building an HTML5 WebGL game with GLGE, Part 1 - statico http://statico.github.com/webgl-glge-game-part-1.html ====== statico The game itself is here: <http://statico.github.com/webgl-demos/ducks/>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What Programming Languages Engineers and Employers Love and Hate - rbanffy https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/what-programming-languages-engineers-and-employers-loveand-hate ====== JohnFen Apparently I'm an unusual engineer, because I dislike Python. ~~~ tincholio You're not alone, brother ------ temporallobe It’s funny that Clojure is not even on this list. Is it completely off employers’ radars? I have Clojure experience but I am finding that libraries and projects are getting abandoned by the dev community, so maybe nobody even cares about it any more? ~~~ blain_the_train What's a lib or feature are you missing in the language? ~~~ temporallobe Sorry for the late response. I didn’t mean that I missed a lib or feature. It’s just that many of the libs I see on Github are sometimes several years old and have been abandoned. Clojure seems to be incredibly featured and rich, but I find very few devs who have even heard of it (I often have to reference Lisp for context). ------ bencollier49 Seems odd that the global rankings are so out of step with local rankings. Given the local demand, I would have expected to see something like Typescript at the top. Scala looks like it's in completely the wrong position. But what does jump out is exactly what this is measuring - it's languages listed on the CVs of people who got interviews. I'd wager that Scala and Ruby are up there as they indicate a level of experience, Ruby because it's been around a while, and Scala because it has a slightly steeper learning curve and generally isn't a "first language". That's probably also true of Go. ------ aboutruby Has anyone successfully downloaded the report from [https://hired.com/page/state-of-software-engineers/key- takea...](https://hired.com/page/state-of-software-engineers/key-takeaways) ? edit: Got it: [http://pages.hired.email/rs/289-SIY-439/images/2019-State- of...](http://pages.hired.email/rs/289-SIY-439/images/2019-State-of- SoftwareEngineers-Report.pdf) ------ drallison Given the methodology used and the lack of supporting data, I do not believe that any weight should be given to the results, interesting though they may be. ------ expertentipp > programming languages > HTML I argued with people over this. ------ nigwil_ No Rust either.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What Do Investors Look for in a Game Developer? - rocky1138 http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/182962/what_do_investors_look_for_in_a_.php ====== sami36 if you're a decent game developer, in this age of digital distribution (Steam), you should forgo the whole venture thing & look at Kickstarter. Not only do you get to keep all your equity, you can crowdsource ideas & feature requests, fine-tune your marketing strategy & build a community of loyal gamers who will sustain you through the ups & down of the dev lifecycle al for a measly 5 % commission. As long as you have good communication skills, the right attitude & talent. You'll find unrivaled rewards. ~~~ jakozaur Well, Kickstarter might be a bit rough if you don't have loyal fans already. However, there are multiple marketplace where you could start (iOS, Android, Steam...). However, still keep in mind that if you don't absolutely love creating games, there are a lot of other hard problems to be solved as a programmer. Game market tends to be over saturated and I know ppl who earn half of what they could in non-gaming company.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them - walterbell https://gcemetery.co/google-product-lifespan/ ====== jedberg I noticed in the "recent deaths" section, YouTube for 3DS. This made me laugh, because at Netflix, supporting the 3DS was always a big pain. Regardless, Netflix still supports it to this day. In fact, as far as I know, Netflix has only ever killed support for one platform -- The PS2. And that was only because there were only about 10 people left using it. So we sent them all Rokus and told them we're discontinuing PS2 support. ~~~ sct202 Netflix is the last app that works on my Sony Google TV from 2011. The YouTube app shut off after like 2015, but 8 years later Netflix is still trucking. ~~~ dmurray Why don't these devices run Android? Pretty sure you can run YouTube on a 2011 Android release. That's not important to Sony, of course, but even for new hardware it seems easier to make it run Android and shovel your bloatware on it than to develop your own half-assed OS for each TV model. ~~~ sorenjan Youtube's required Android version is listed as varying depending on device on Google Play, but on apkmirror.com it says that the minimum version is Android 4.4+. That was released in 2013. [https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google- inc/youtube/youtube-14-...](https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google- inc/youtube/youtube-14-43-55-release/) ~~~ londons_explore That's for the latest version of YouTube, but I believe an old version of YouTube will still work fine with today's servers, at least for basic video watching (commenting etc. broke in the big Google plus debacle) ------ codyogden Okay, so the page/statement is inaccurate, and not just because it's been spammed to HN three times before today (seven months ago). Since I run Killed by Google, I feel it's important to clarify that the average Google product lifespan is much longer than four years thanks to flagship products like Gmail, Maps, Docs, etc. I can't actually get a solid number despite a lovely spreadsheet of products that I actively track because I haven't even compiled them all yet. Anyway, I made a choice not to draw stats in killedbygoogle.com for a reason, and it's because they're misleading to most people. When I'm asked about it, I say, "The products listed lasted an average of about four years." KBG is cynical view of Google's product strategy by any measure, but at least it's not drawing empty and misleading conclusions. ------ ThatPlayer Like always, I have issues with these lists. Project Ara is there despite never actually launching a product. Or Google Glass is on there despite a new Google Glass hardware that was released this year. They also list Google Sky Map ( [https://gcemetery.co/google-sky- map/](https://gcemetery.co/google-sky-map/) ) which they call discontinued because Google released it as open source and handed over reigns to another group of developers, but looking at the github it still gets updates too, so I can see this one being either way. [https://github.com/sky-map- team/stardroid](https://github.com/sky-map-team/stardroid) ~~~ joshuamorton About a quarter of the projects in the graveyard had replacements, and often automated transfers to the new tools (writely, a bunch of analytics tools, songza, etc.) Another quarter were explicitly experimental (labs, glass, ara, etc.). And another handful are products that no longer make sense in the modern world (google desktop, various toolbars, browser sync, the gmail notifier, etc.) Hell, one of them is apparently the webconferencing software google employees used internally in like 2012, it wasn't a product. ~~~ anoncake > Another quarter were explicitly experimental (labs, glass, ara, etc.). How many years was Gmail in "beta"? ------ cookie_monsta Not a Google fanboy by any means, but couldn't this be read with the opposite conclusion as well - that the average time that Google keeps marginal products alive is 4 years? Of course it's possible that everyone has some personal favourites amongst those 164, but if an idea really has legs what's to stop people from exhuming it from the Google graveyard? ~~~ underwater It's probably more like a year with actual support and updates, two years where it's left to whither and slowly die, and then a year of notice before sunsetting it. ~~~ Pxtl Yeah. By that logic MS has eternal support for everything, because MS has a legendary hardcore approach to backwards compatibility that they will release a product, push it hard, and then abandon development on it... but still have it "officially supported" for a decade while it bitrots into a nightmare... but never tell their users "stop using this, it's deprecated". As much as I hate Google sunsetting products, I hate even more the companies that keep their zombies shuffling along in a state of undeath forever. ~~~ wvenable That makes no sense. Nobody is forcing you to use an abandoned product. So you're obviously better off with the Microsoft model than the Google one. A good example is VB6, the runtime is still supported in Windows 10 -- and necessary for one our largest vendor products to run -- yet the VB6 IDE only runs in XP. Our business would have been really screwed if they just dropped support for it. We are, of course, working to move to a different product and have the luxury of time to do that. ------ heavymark I imagine Google views this as a positive thing, trying a million ideas, so that hopefully it increases the chances of having at least one good and popular idea. The downside is, a lot of products they killed were good ideas, but its sink or swim and they don't get the products the needed love and attention so they don't take off and thus they kill them. And now even when releasing a good idea or good piece of hardware people will always be worried if it will be gone tomorrow, which leads to less adoption and more axing of products. ~~~ jsight Maybe, but some are exceptionally bad. Why did Allo exist at all for example? And the merging, demerging involved with Messages, Hangouts, and Voice have been a complete mess. There's more there than just trying some ideas, as some of the ideas actively damaged older ideas. ~~~ sct202 I don't understand why they announced that Google Hangouts (classic) is closing to move to Google Hangouts Chat, like it's a chat app am I going to notice a difference, but now you just made me think that the whole service is shutting down? ~~~ journalctl This is what happens when companies are disorganized and don’t communicate internally. ------ jedberg I wonder what this is the _average_ of? It is the average of just things that were killed, or the average of all products, including living ones like Search? And is it really average or is it median? > based on discontinued products listed on our website This makes me think it is only dead products, which seems like it would skew things a bit. If anything this tells me it takes them a long time to make a decision to kill something. ~~~ steren Exactly. This website is either making a very basic mistake or is just plain misleading. ~~~ codyogden This is part of the reason why I decided not to include stats at killedbygoogle.com . When you included flagship products things like Gmail, Maps, Drive, Docs, etc the 'average lifespan of a Google product' rises significantly. ------ jVinc While some might be seeing 212 potential youtube scale success stories that google killed "for no apparent reason", I'm seeing 212 potential wework scale disasters that google avoided by killing off successful pitfalls and focusing on their core. The truth is somewhere in between, but obviously with google being what it is today, none of these cases chip-ed of anything from their success. ------ privateSFacct Meanwhile on AWS I was using SimpleDB until recently on a small project - I make AWS _NO_ money - but they seem to still support SimpleDB even though it is not actually marketed? It's 12 years old and can't be generating a lot of new signups because it doesn't actually show up anywhere I don't think. Does anyone know how AWS handles depreciating items on AWS. I've yet to be bitten despite beng a long time user (S3 still going / Simple DB was going last time I needed it etc). ~~~ kedean As I've understood it, AWS keeps things alive as long as someone is using it. Once they want to get rid of it, they take it off the catalog of items you can provision, and start encouraging users to move to it's successor, and once it's abandoned fully they get rid of it. That's how they've always done old ec2 instance types, for example. ------ Waterluvian It surprises people that Google kills products because people them as traditional products. But they're exploratory vessels for selling ads. Of course Google's ads are the product. It's unsurprising, to me at least, that they explore lots and lots of ways to sell ads. That's exactly what you do with whatever widget your company peddles. ------ asdfasgasdgasdg Average lifespan of products that have been killed, when they are killed. The actual average lifespan is probably much longer. ------ ortusdux As I understand it, a successful product launch is a strong addition to a "promo packet". What we are seeing is the inevitable result of a system that prioritizes new products above all else. If google wanted to combat the stigma that they kill 3 out of every 4 products they launch, they could just start rewarding promo packets that demonstrate maintenance and growth. I still have Reader bookmarked as a reminder to not get to invested. Show people that they are committed to the longevity of their products and you might just get more early adopters for you next big launch. ------ com2kid I'm upset about Google Trips. Trips was one of the few examples of how letting Google know everything about you lead to a great experience. It'll automatically figure out my time tables, hotel reservations, and flight times. The ability to download city info and store it offline was wonderful, and its recommended itineraries, while often silly in their listed time tables, were a great jumping off point. Nothing else _can_ exist that does the same job, because only Google has access to literally everything about you. ~~~ Florin_Andrei I never heard of it, and I'm one of those people who would definitely use it. ------ steren Nobody is pointing the massive flaw in the headline ? This count does not consider products that have not been killed (e.g. Gmail) It's only the average lifespan of killed products. ~~~ gwern If you'd like a formal survival analysis which takes into account that right- censoring, I did one a while ago at [https://www.gwern.net/Google- shutdowns](https://www.gwern.net/Google-shutdowns) ------ skunkworker RIP Google Inbox. I still think it was the best mobile email client they've made. ~~~ papito Hear hear! ------ dang [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18509735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18509735) ------ jrochkind1 "The average lifespan of a discontinued Google product is 4 years and 1 month." "The average lifespan of a _DISCONTINUED_ Google product..." Note this does not mean the average lifespan of a Google product is 4 years. There numbers do not include products which have NOT been killed. ------ at_a_remove "... they might develop their own emotional responses. You know: hate, love, fear, anger, envy. So they built in a fail-safe device." "Which is what?" "Four-year life span." \-- _Blade Runner_ Here, though, the emotional response is our attachment to a Google service. ------ wolco Most of these could have been a success but google has no idea how to connect with customers. An idea and a product is what we have. If customers accidently start using the product and it becomes a success it stays but if it doesn't meet some corporate goal it gets killed see g+(first they pushed it everywhere making everyone hate it, the moment groups of people started using it google saw it would never reach facebook and killed it. If they would have left it could have pivoted). I don't know what many of these products are either. Cloud VR cloud, but it doesn't sound like something I would shutdown maybe sell.. maybe rethink. ------ mroche Reminds me of the Autodesk Graveyard: [https://www.cadnauseam.com/autodesk- graveyard/](https://www.cadnauseam.com/autodesk-graveyard/) ------ notadoc I'm still disappointed they killed off Google Reader, it was an excellent product as it was, and it had so much potential to be more. ------ bduerst A better metric would be rate of death, not total deaths. For example, how many products does Google have now vs 2004 Google? ~~~ jobigoud Not only a better metric, but the only way to actually compute life expectancy. We need the mortality rate for each year, then we can know the expected remaining time for any particular "age". ------ egfx I interviewed at YouTube and I kid you not, the interviewer had no idea what YouTube Leanback was. As wrong as it sounds, I had to school her, a team lead at YouTube on their own product. YouTube Leanback is awesome and will be missed. I integrated it in a chrome extension I made called YouTube Share Enhancer. ------ JohnJamesRambo Does no one at Google HQ ever have the guts to raise their hand and bring this up? It's a meme by now. ~~~ ethbro There have been some comments on here about how career advancement optimization at Google involves hopping between projects, staying long enough to launch, and then moving on. Whereas doing good work on product maintenance or evolution is much less rewarding. True or not, it would explain a lot about how Google (as a whole) behaves towards products. ~~~ dogprez That's not a Google only problem. It's a cultural problem in Silicon Valley (ex drive to disrupt) and America (ex not respecting stay-at-home parents). See the artwork of Mierle Laderman Ukeles: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mierle_Laderman_Ukeles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mierle_Laderman_Ukeles) ------ ekianjo I did not know that Chromecast audio was discontinued. That was pretty fast. ------ meesterdude my theory: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62sHBHq3pc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62sHBHq3pc) ~~~ james_s_tayler Nice. So this is effectively what is keeping skynet at bay. ------ burke_holland Inbox still hurts	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Are You Lightest in the Morning? [video] - yincrash https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL2e0rWvjKI ====== yincrash Essentially a video form of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9416062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9416062) where the host investigates what the public thinks as well as animation of the actual mechanisms.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
If you're going to do good science, release the computer code too - rglovejoy http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/05/science-climate-emails-code-release ====== lutorm I am not surprised that people find errors in code written by researchers and grad students who have little training in software development and, perhaps more importantly, are doing so in a culture which values them writing papers, not good code. (See for example <http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0903.3971> for a discussion of this situation in astronomy/astrophysics.) I find it much more surprising that professionally developed software used for scientific research is also error ridden. And while it might be difficult to convince individual researchers to release their code, that's nothing compared to the difficulties of convincing Wolfram research to release the source code to Mathematica... But I do think that research is somewhat undeservedly singled out for this, just _because_ some academic software is open for inspection. Like the article mentions, it certainly seems like the financial software has caused a lot of badness. How about flight control software used by NASA that crashed the Mars orbiter? Who knows how many innocent lives have been lost due to software errors in military systems like UAVs and missiles. Maybe none, but we can't know because it's all secret. Shouldn't they be required to show their code, too? ~~~ smallblacksun But the military and NASA don't claim to be generating reproducible knowledge through the use of their code. In particular, the military doesn't WANT other people to be able to reproduce what their code does. Also, there is a difference between operational code (code that runs a physical object like a lander or a UAV) and analytical code. NASA makes some of their code available here: <http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov> ~~~ lutorm Cool, I didn't know about the NASA open source project. You are right that knowledge production isn't the purpose of those other entities, of course. However, in my mind the purpose is less important than the outcome -- why is it more harmful to society if scientists produce a flawed scientific result than if the military kills innocents or the financial sector brings on a market crash because of flawed models? They all hurt society and could all benefit from more scrutiny. I admit the military case is a stretch, but certainly the financial sector seems like a relevant example. ------ jackfoxy If science is to remain science, and not devolve into mysticism, data and computer models must be available to other researchers in order to repeat experiments and provide knowledgeable criticism. Calling anything "settled science" which is not openly available to all researchers is not scientific. ~~~ kurtosis I have no beef with open audits of published science that is used in decisions of economic consequence. But I would only add that sometimes you learn a lot more from trying to reproduce a result without the code/schematics of the original experiment. If you implement it yourself and get a different answer, you should publish it and not bias yourself by paying too much attention to the original authors interpretation. As long as you can justify your methods you should be fine. Also, I feel that it's a lot more fun to design an experiment knowing that it's possible than it is to merely copy someone else's published procedure. A month in the lab spares you a day in the library! ------ regularfry A sound idea. While I can imagine any number of reasons people might post facto not wish to release code, if it were developed from the start with the intention of releasing it, I think we'd all benefit. Inevitably, the cost of doing so would increase the cost of the research, but I believe it would be worth it. ~~~ anamax > Inevitably, the cost of doing so would increase the cost of the research, > but I believe it would be worth it. I'm not convinced that it would increase costs. I'll bet that there's a lot of reinvented code in science. If every project released their code, new projects would start reusing code from current projects. In some cases, that sharing and reuse would reduce costs. ~~~ JunkDNA I have seen code reinvention in my career a number of times. In one instance, I was actually asked to code up a method where the code and method had been published in a scientific journal. When I asked why I should implement this on my own, instead of using code developed by the group who published the method, I was told, "Because you can't trust anyone else's code. It's better to write everything from scratch so you know it's _right_ ". I don't personally have the hubris to think I can code up a method better than the people who invented it in the first place. That aside, it's just so wasteful. So instead of spending time on novel work _we_ were doing, I spent a month implementing a half-baked version of something _other_ people had done. ~~~ btilly As silly as the explanation was, there is actually a good reason to re- implement. And that is that if nobody does, then any bug in the original code will survive to cause problems with nobody knows how many results before anyone catches the bug. Reimplementing from scratch then comparing with the original gives an opportunity to find such bugs. ~~~ barrkel Yes, but such arguments apply at different levels of abstraction. I doubt one would rewrite the OS, compiler or runtime libraries because they couldn't be trusted; though all these can also have bugs. ~~~ btilly One would probably not rewrite them. However people both can and do take their software and run it on a different operating system, compiled with a different compiler, linked with different run-time libraries, on a different type of hardware. And yes, I've seen bad software assumptions flushed out by doing so. (Don't use floating point for complex financial calculations please. OK??) ------ Lewisham It's surprising how few Computer Science papers release code as well. I don't care if it's platform-specific and it requires ridiculous numbers of obscure libraries and only operates on proprietary data that you can't release. I don't care, I want the code to be open-source. I want to see what you did, and whether I believe that it does what you claim it does in the paper. Where possible, I open-source everything I try to be published. There's only one project I haven't (a scraper for the WoW Armory), but even then I released the library I built for it. There's no excuse to not do so. Unless you have something to hide. ~~~ lutorm _There's no excuse to not do so. Unless you have something to hide._ Not true, for the same reason that commercial ventures don't like to release source code even if they don't have something to hide. Having a capable computer code can be a substantial competitive advantage and make it possible to do studies no one else can. While this is less than desirable from the standpoint of science, it's perfectly understandable given the career pressures that individual scientists operate under. ~~~ j_baker This creates a conflict of interests though. Is the research legit or has it been "enhanced" to help a business venture the researcher has in the works? ~~~ lutorm Oh, for sure. But I wasn't even talking about any business ventures (those are rare in astrophysics...) but more about keeping your code under wraps to prevent others from benefiting from your hard work. Especially, when (as I said in another post), code development is not especially beneficial for your career. Though it's hard to find a situation where people don't have a (short-term) incentive to make their work _look_ good. One can hope it will catch up with them in the long run, but more likely by then they have a new job (and, in academics, tenure) that will never hear about their past shoddy work. ~~~ btilly The solution is to make peer reviewed code produced for a paper be considered equivalent to a paper in tenure decisions. And for all papers in peer reviewed journals that do computer analysis to be backed up by peer reviewed, published code. That makes code development beneficial for your career, gives an incentive to not keep it under wraps, improves quality, and is likely to reduce the number of published incorrect results. Of course that is a pipe dream at this point, but what's wrong with dreaming? ------ maurycy Finally. Finally a discussion about this. ~~~ timr Enough with the false melodrama, please. Aside from the fact that your comment is content-free and inane, scientists have been discussing this subject since computer simulation first became a part of science. A lot of scientists _do_ share their code (I'm one of them, and I believe in sharing code). But there are good arguments on the other side. Among them: 1) Papers describe methods in enough detail to reproduce them. If they don't, there's a _serious_ problem. 2) Independent lines of verification. If simulation code becomes a reference, it's inevitable that the same bugs/bad assumptions will contaminate an entire field. Independent re-implementation of the same algorithms is a strong hedge against this phenomenon (even if it means that there are more bugs overall). 3) Money. A lot of scientists fund their research in part through licensing of implementations of their algorithms. I don't like it, but until someone gets around to repealing Bayh-Dole (a _real_ scientific travesty, IMO), this is going to continue to be a problem. In short, what you really meant to say was that finally someone wrote a _newspaper article_ about this subject. It's not a new discussion. ~~~ DaniFong Closed academic publishing is intellectually bankrupt, and is probably one of the greatest problems effecting research today. People don't share code, and put a paywall between themselves and the public. There are open journals, but they are rarely as prestigious, and so are not as valuable to those seeking tenure. These academics put tenure before fruitful scientific discussion. ~~~ lutorm So would you rather people publish in "low-impact" journals and then leave science completely because they can't get a permanent job? "Intellectually bankrupt" is a pretty strong term to use for people who work for a small fraction of the amount of money normally talked about on this site. I'm not saying there aren't issues, but blaming the individuals who are trying to make a living by doing science isn't going to help. The success rate of getting permanent jobs in science might be higher than that of startups, but the "payoff" is a small fraction. ~~~ DaniFong I have not left science completely: I've made my own job. It is possible but it is only made harder because of the closed system. There are many of us who've left academia and still do science. We're generally maligned, and removed from the ability to even participate in a discussion due to a variety of academic access restrictions, and why? What's more, day by day people are showing how to achieve scientific credibility and influence through their blogs and paper hosting services like ArXiv or, as Michael Nielsen points out, open journals like PLoS Biology. The majority of scientists still bow to tenure pressure, and frankly I don't understand why. There are other opportunities if you want to gain status, and one doesn't even have to gain traditional academic status if one wants to do real science. There are other options. ~~~ lutorm Which academic access restrictions are you talking about? I know people who have started independent "institutes" but the only reason you need to do so is to receive federal funding. It's true that if you brand yourself as an "independent researcher", people might be inclined to think you are a crackpot, but publishing real papers should take care of that. I'm not sure blogs are a relevant source for scientific studies though. Not necessarily because I think peer review is the greatest system, but having your paper published in an actual journal (open journals are fine) at least means you managed to convince a few other people that it's worth looking at the paper. ------ merraksh There are a few examples of how this can be done. One of them is Mathematical Programming Computation (MPC), a journal where articles submitted must be accompanied by the source code that was used to produce the results. The article is peer-reviewed, and the code submitted is tested by "technical editors" to verify that the results are correct. See <http://mpc.zib.de> ------ moron4hire Opening the source for research software is absolutely vital to the concept of reproduceability. However, this fact of the level of programming training for most scientists is a major issue. A lot of novice programmers tend to fall into a trap of "it runs without error, it must be right." Even expert programmers struggle with verifying that their results are correct; technically, program verification is a mathematical impossibility. So it's a daunting task to start with, reproducing results of software-based research. This is only compounded by the fact that reading source code sucks. Source code is an end result of multiple processes that occur in feedback loops. With just the source code, you never see _how_ the code got that way. It's like showing someone a maze with the start and end points marked but the middle of the map blocked out. Different programmer's conceptions of what constitutes good code varies widely. One man's golden code is another's garbage. Just because the source code is available doesn't mean anyone is going to understand it or be able to work with it effectively. Compounding this all is the fact that few people are going to _want_ to read the source code. Analyzing source code is dull work, maybe the worst job a programmer can take while still doing programming. Most programmers are far happier to discard old code and start from scratch. This is often a bad idea and doesn't lead to a better product, but at least you don't want to kill yourself while you're doing it. When it comes to reproducing algorithmic results, I would prefer having a description of the algorithm, a set of inputs, and a set of outputs. I would then write the actual code myself and see if I get the same results. This, I think, is much closer to the concept of reproducing lab results in the physical sciences. You wouldn't use the same exact particle accelerators if you were verifying the results from a paper on nuclear physics. I'm afraid having access to the raw source code will be used as a crutch where logic errors are missed from reusing portions of code without much thought about the consequences. Take, for instance, the subtle differences in implementations of the modulo operator across programming languages: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modulo_operator#Common_pitfalls> It would be great if scientific software were open. Unfortunately, it won't matter a lick if it is. ------ jgrahamc Yes, tell me about it: [http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/02/something-odd-in- crutem3-sta...](http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/02/something-odd-in- crutem3-station-errors.html) ------ eshi I might be alone in this, but this seems like a symptom of the problems of IP laws. ~~~ artsrc One problem with IP laws is that to fully enforce them you need a police state. I don't know precisely what you are thinking, but my view is that the IP framework should be: For a published work to be eligible for copyright, source code must be published. Something like a cross between github and the library of congress. Publishing source code does not currently relinquish all rights. This would add greatly to our societies store of knowledge and would help prevent the IP theft in the code of published works. ~~~ eshi This is sort of what I was getting at. I agree that releasing source code shouldn't be a matter of giving up property rights. In fact, plenty of commercial systems and software do allow source code access. However, it always seems to be through messy licenses and cumbersome legal agreements to not divulge anything. As it stands, companies seem more motivated to protect their IP rights than to produce tools that would keep science reliable. IMHO, companies view source code as the product of their investments and secrets worth protecting. The main fear seems to be that if these secrets are published competition could use them against them by receiving a boost in their own R&D efforts by deriving methods and processes from their own work. This doesn't seem like just a software problem since I've heard wetware horror stories from biotech and agriculture folks. It honestly makes me wonder if software should be something you can patent. At some level, it seems disturbingly similar to companies that patent colors, genes, or derived living organisms. ------ albertcardona The title contains the reason on why we created Fiji (<http://pacific.mpi- cbg.de>): so that instead of releasing a Matlab script without documentation on its many parameters and exact Matlab version used, as a print out (or nowadays, downloadable .m file as supplementary material), we could offer instead a ready-downloadable, version-controlled and fully working program. A colleague of mine made similar remarks recently: "... if you can’t see the code of a piece of ... software, then you cannot say what the software really does, and this is not scientific."	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
ClojureC, a compiler for Clojure that targets C as a backend - terhechte https://github.com/schani/clojurec ====== mullr This is neat. What worries me about this and similar efforts (like <https://github.com/takeoutweight/clojure-scheme>) is that clojure's standard library design assumes that the underlying runtime will be do some kind of polymorphic method inlining. For example: the sequence library is all defined in terms of ISeq, which basically requires a "first" and "rest" to be defined for the data structure in question. These are polymorphic: there are different implementations of these for different data structures (list, vector, map, etc). So a dispatch step is required to choose the right one. In clojure-jvm, this is implemented using a java interface; this means the jvm will inline calls to said methods when they're being used in a tight loop. And if you use the standard library, calls to 'first' and 'rest' are going to be inside nearly all of your inner loops. Compare this to a normal lisp or scheme: 'first' and 'rest' (or 'car' and 'cdr', whatever) are monomorphic. They only work on the linked-list data structure. So compiling these directly down to C functions makes perfect sense and incurs no performance penalty. So in summary: clojure assumes theres a really smart JIT which is helping things along. This means it's not as suitable for alternate compilation targets as you might want it to be. I wonder if there's something clever you could do here. Vtables could be reordered based on expected usage, certainly. Clojure can already do some measure of type inference, so this could be used for AOT inlining when it's available. Even if it's not, perhaps several versions of a call could be speculatively generated based on what the compiler _does_ know already. The normal polymorphic inline caching technique could perhaps be abused to apply here. But it's hard to see how any of this can work in absence of a profile or heavy hinting. (not a compiler writer, just interested in the problem) ~~~ vidarh You can do polymorphic method caching/inlining with a hybrid ahead of time / JIT compiler targeting C _reasonably_ easily. The code fragments required for caching at least will be small, and code to generate them at runtime is not a big deal. I'm playing with a Ruby compiler, and Ruby badly needs these type of optimizations to get fast, so I've spent a fair amount of time looking at it. For a fair amount of cases you can do static analysis to get good guesses at likely types, even for cases where you can't be sure. E.g. speculatively even looking near call sites by method _name_ to see if you can guess the type of objects that will get passed in looks to get you a reasonable chance at guessing at the top contenders to let you speculatively generate inlined versions without creating too much junk. But to get the most performance out of this you're likely to need to be prepared to do some very basic JIT. ~~~ mullr >E.g. speculatively even looking near call sites by method name That is devious and fantastic. > But to get the most performance out of this you're likely to need to be > prepared to do some very basic JIT. Yeah. But the attractive targets here are places where you can't have a JIT: embedded systems and iOS. ~~~ vidarh When you spend a few years speculating about what it would take to efficiently compile Ruby as statically as possible (I love Ruby, but I hate moving parts), devious becomes second nature... The idea of speculatively looking at method names comes from testing that to create vtables ahead of time for Ruby classes, to avoid hash tables in the common-case. As it turns out, most method on most Ruby classes are the ones inherited from Object or other standard classes, and the number of classes is usually fairly constrained, so again speculatively looking at method names in the compile- time available source and allocating sparse vtables for the most common names results in relatively little waste. And it reduces typical method lookup to a vtable lookup for common methods, with expensive method dispatch becoming much more rare. There's the tradeoff between theoretical horrible blowup in vtable waste from apps dynamically adding tons of methods and tons of classes, with a unique vtable slot required for each method name across all classes, vs. falling back to doing hash-table lookups all the way up the inheritance chain for "unusual" method names ones you reach certain thresholds for waste. You do incur the cost of propagating vtable changes down the inheritance tree when methods are dynamically redefined in other places than leaves, but it is fairly rare to see apps where this happens at a very high rate, and the number of subclasses usually fairly small, so it is likely to be quite cheap. Doing it that way is something I first saw in a technical report by (now) prof. Michael Franz from '93 or '94 on "Protocol Extension" for Oberon. You can probably also get some decent gains by adding heuristics to give preference to names that appears to be used in loops when picking names for the vtables to reduce the need of any JIT'ing. ~~~ lobster_johnson Out of interest, are you actually working on something like this for MRI? As you say, Ruby is in desperate need of optimization. ~~~ vidarh No, I've been off-and-on, toying with writing a "as static as possible" Ruby compiler (see <http://www.hokstad.com/compiler>) - it's been about two years since I last posted an update, but I have one new part complete and another one mostly complete. Just holding off posting for a bit longer because I want to have a bit of a buffer (3-4 complete parts) before I get peoples hope of regular posts up again... What is there uses vtable's exclusively - I effective punted on the slow path (and so on adding methods at runtime) completely, but keep track of how much of the vtable allocations is wasted space. If/when I get there, the goal is to use various mechanisms like this to determine when to fall back on a slow path, and couple both with polymorphic inline caching when suitable. EDIT: I don't see MRI as very interesting to work on, largely because interpreters aren't much fun, and ironically given the amount of time I spend using Ruby, I prefer compilers to be as static as possible. I also prefer my compilers to be bootstrapped in their target language. Hence my "ideal" Ruby compiler would be written in pure Ruby, do a ton of static analysis, with minimal fallback to JIT when users user features that are too dynamic to analyse fully ahead of time E.g. there's a ton of annoying uses of eval() in Ruby code where a more complete meta-programming API would make it trivial for a compiler to do full ahead of time static analysis, so one big thing an AOT Ruby compiler really need to do is to provide a library of compiler specific meta-programming facilities with a fallback that uses eval() as needed, and either convince people to use it, or provide monkey-patches for a number of popular projects. Some of these uses don't even need eval() in the first places, but uses it just as a quick shortcut because it's simpler... Just to make clear, I'm not sure when or even _if_ my compiler project will ever get to a state where it's even remotely _useable_ to compile Ruby. I started it out without even having decided to compiler Ruby, mostly to write about various parts of the process of writing a compiler that I find interesting. I find compiling Ruby as incredibly fascinating from a theoretical point of view because of the complexity involved, but unfortunately working on it takes a lot more time and effort than thinking about the problems. ~~~ lobster_johnson I see. Sounds like an interesting project. Sure, MRI is boring, but it's the best implementation right now (though some may argue that JRuby is better), and it's in desperate need of VM innovations. Any new compiler/VM starting from scratch will be years away from being available for use in production environments. By the time it's finished, we'll all be using Go. (Sigh.) ~~~ vidarh I think we need both. MRI can keep getting better, as can JRuby (which is an amazing feat, but to me, running on top of the JVM makes it a non-starter) or Rubinius, but they're fundamentally side-stepping the really hard problems. E.g. nothing will stop MRI from having to interpret thousands of lines of code each time because it can't draw a line between runtime and compile time, while for an ahead of time compiler for Ruby, finding a pragmatic line between what needs to be executed at runtime vs. compile time is essential (consider for example the tendency to do stuff like getting the list of files in a directory and require all of them in turn). ~~~ lobster_johnson We do need both. But some of the things you mention (like constructing vtables) could be applied to MRI's VM model without writing a compiler from scratch. Frankly, I would much rather have large performance improvements now than in 2-3 years. (I agree about JRuby. I also wonder why Rubinius, which showed so much promise at the beginning, has stagnated. Is it simply the lack of developers?) ~~~ vidarh I agree the performance increase would be great, but I think it needs to come gradually to MRI. E.g. trying to do anything fancy with the old AST-based interpreter would've been pretty pointless. After YARV, it is probably starting to get more attractive, but at the same time they've added method caching which gives a decent amount of the benefits. A vtable will still get faster, but it might not be the most immediately expedient way of speeding things up vs. e.g. Sasadas latest project of adding a generational gc. Regarding Rubinius, writing compilers for dynamic languages is hard. Most textbooks you'll find cover techniques most suitable for statically typed languages (the best resource I know for starting to catch up on compiling dynamic languages is actually the Self papers). So you need more than an unusual level of interest in writing compilers to be likely to try to tackle a language like Ruby which is tricky even for dynamic languages (e.g. my favorite pet problem to meditate on: What constitutes 'compile time' vs. 'runtime' for ahead of time compiled Ruby?), and even more to actually persevere until you start getting proper results where you can get decent results in _days_ with a simpler language. It's made worse because of Ruby's _horrendous_ grammar. And I mean that from a compiler writers perspective - as a developer I love to _use_ Ruby to a large extent because the complexities of the grammar means it reads and writes better 95% of the time. But MRI's bison based parser was 6k-7k lines with ugly parser/lexer interplay last time I checked... There are full compilers substantially smaller than that for other languages... To me, these complexities are part of what makes it fascinating. I firmly believe you can parse Ruby fully with a much, much simpler parser for example. A lot of the ugliness can be abstracted away, and C parser code is rarely good examples of succint code. I _did_ start playing with MRI years ago, specifically the parser, actually, and started chopping out redundant pieces, but got frustrated and bored with it. That's part of the problem - it's one thing to play around with a toy compiler like I've done, and another entirely to put in the effort to push a major change to MRI through to production quality given the number of years of accumulated history encapsulated in it. Doing the latter as a hobby is a daunting task. ~~~ lobster_johnson Just a note on Rubinius: The PyPy guys seem to have done pretty well at this. I don't know how similar they are to Rubinius; PyPy reduces to a RPython as an initial step, whereas I believe Rubinius compiles to LLVM's LI. ------ saosebastiao So if I wanted to write CLI applications in Clojure, is this my best bet? Cause the JVM is about the least suitable platform I have ever worked with for CLI apps...which is most of what I do. I'm constantly in this pickle of wanting to use Clojure but defaulting to Ruby because the JVM is so terrible at it. ~~~ bbq If the startup slowness is your problem, look into Nailgun: <http://www.martiansoftware.com/nailgun/> If that's not your problem with the JVM, what is? ~~~ Rayne Nailgun is not a good solution to the problem. If the JVM startup speed is a problem, your best option is to use something not on the JVM and not use hacks that make it feel faster. ~~~ bbq That's not true. Yes, it's worth considering outside of the JVM if being on the JVM means your application isn't interactive enough (startup speed doesn't matter for long running, fire & forget tasks). At the same time, splitting your application into a client/server architecture is not a hack but an engineering decision. There are times when this decision is natural e.g. Music Player Daemon (MPD)[1]. For most CLI applications, there's no clear benefit (but the general approach has no clear downside either - the code overhead of this approach can be brought very low). Certainly, in a production application you would want to secure the messaging channel (Nailgun doesn't). [1] A music playing server: <http://www.musicpd.org/>. Some of the clients happen to be command line: <http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients#Command_Line_Clients> ------ jgalt212 As someone who doesn't use Clojure, but watches it fairly closely, I'd say the least appealing part of Clojure is its reliance on the JVM. As such, I'd say efforts such as these are greatly welcomed. ~~~ pjmlp > As someone who doesn't use Clojure, but watches it fairly closely, I'd say > the least appealing part of Clojure is its reliance on the JVM. Like it or not, this is what made Clojure successful in the enterprise, at least when compared against other Lisps. ~~~ lispm Is that based on numbers or a guess? How many Clojure applications are there in comparison to Lisp or Scheme? ~~~ pjmlp Based on guess. I see lots of Java shops now having Clojure code and talking about it at JUGs and how it enables their business. You just need to have a look at InfoQ, Skills That Matter, Devoxx or Jax for ongoing talks. ------ billsix For those interested in Lisp implementations which compile to C, providing cross-platform benefits and a nice FFI, gambit-c and chicken are performant, mature implementations of the Scheme programming language. ------ densh Why C but not llvm? Structured code generation is always better than string- based one. ~~~ pat_punnu Can you show a proof for that claim? I believe it to be nonsense. ~~~ bratsche I'm not sure if this is what the previous poster was talking about, but clang has some APIs that let you get access to the AST pretty easily. It's been a really long time since I've looked at it, and at the time I don't think it was exposed as a library API for general consumption. But for example: [https://github.com/bratsche/clang/blob/gtkrewriter/tools/cla...](https://github.com/bratsche/clang/blob/gtkrewriter/tools/clang- cc/RewriteGtk.cpp) ~~~ pat_punnu What is his definition of better? It sounds like he thinks it's entirely objective, so he should be able to express it clearly and logically. Does he think that it's technically more powerful? Again he should be able to prove that if that's the case. Otherwise he's just giving a shitty opinion, and should say that. I think the claim is nonsense because with inline assembler there is nothing that you cannot express in C that you can with LLVM. So the decision between the two is opinion. ~~~ coldtea > _Does he think that it's technically more powerful? Again he should be able > to prove that if that's the case. Otherwise he's just giving a shitty > opinion, and should say that._ It's not like it's some controversial opinion what he said -- it's both self evident and common place. It's you who offers the more controversial opinion (and in a rude way, to top). > _I think the claim is nonsense because with inline assembler there is > nothing that you cannot express in C that you can with LLVM. So the decision > between the two is opinion_. It's not about "expression", and nobody argued that you can express more in LLVM. This is missing the point by miles! It's about having more structure and less of an ad-hoc pipeline, which helps with better tooling, error prevention, etc. (Not only what you wrote is wrong, but even if the original argument was about expression, your opinion would still be wrong. Two things offering equivalent expressive power, does not mean that they are just as good to use in practice at all. Might as well ask "why invent new languages, when assembly can express everything"). The only benefit to using C for something like this is portability, which is something else altogether. ~~~ vidarh > It's not like it's some controversial opinion what he said -- it's both self > evident and common place. As someone who has written more than one compiler, I don't see how it is self- evident at all. It's also not at all that common-place compared to generating C or asm output textually. > It's about having more structure and less of an ad-hoc pipeline, which helps > with better tooling, error prevention, etc. Those provide some benefits, sure. At the cost of massive amounts of complexity in the case of LLVM. > The only benefit to using C for something like this is portability, which is > something else altogether. Now it is you who are wrong. Other people have already pointed out, for example, that C provides an easy-to-read intermediate format, and is simple to generate, as other benefits. Not having to deal with a massive C++ codebase is another. You may disagree that these other benefits are worth it, but for me at least they are (just taking a break from a compiler that generates textual _asm_ because I find even that preferable to dealing with LLVM). ~~~ coldtea Sure, I agree about this: "C provides an easy-to-read intermediate format, and is simple to generate, as other benefits. Not having to deal with a massive C++ codebase is another.". So portability and less dependencies, plus easier. ------ akkartik _"Before you can run anything make sure you have GLib 2 and the Boehm-Demers- Weiser garbage collector installed."_ Wow, that's a pretty skimpy list of dependencies. But.. _"Make sure you're using Leiningen 2."_ ..argh, installing that on ubuntu that requires 110 packages. All that just for a build system? ~~~ uvtc > ..argh, installing that on ubuntu that requires 110 packages. All that just > for a build system? Don't install lein using the OS packaging system (apt, rpm, yum, etc.). Instead, just grab the `lein` script (linked to from <http://leiningen.org/> ), put it into your ~/bin, set it executable, and you're all set. ~~~ michaelochurch This. It's a lot easier to do it that way. ------ timbaldridge sadly, this doesn't seem to support any sort of multithreading. Even something as simple as swap! isn't thread-safe in this implementation. So that kills one of the main reasons to use Clojure in the first place. ~~~ swannodette Lack of multithreading seems like a result of the implementation being heavily based on ClojureScript ;) (it's actually pretty cool to see how reusable core.cljs is IMO). I imagine ClojureC will have its uses like ClojureScript does when the JVM is not an option. ------ iso8859-1 How does this compare to Chicken Scheme? ------ pjmlp This is quite nice, on the other hand, one could just use one of the many Lisp compilers existing since years.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
LibreOffice 5.3.0 - ronjouch https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.3 ====== chrisballinger > Firebird has been upgraded to version 3.0.0. It is unable to read back > Firebird 2.5 data, so embedded firebird odb files created in LibreOffice > version up to 5.2 cannot be opened with LibreOffice 5.3. Since a future > version of firebird will have a backwards compatibility module, some future > version of LibreOffice (embedding this future version of firebird) will also > be able to open these older files. > ODB files created by LibreOffice < 5.3 can be manually converted to > LibreOffice 5.3 format by using Firebird 2.5 to convert the data to archive > format, and replacing the database data within the ODB by the archive format > version. To do this, install a stand-alone Firebird 2.5, and use its "gbak" > tool to convert the file "database.fdb" to "database.fbk" within the odb > file. Don't forget to remove the .fdb file. I don't use this feature so I don't know how popular it is, but it seems like this could cause a lot of problems for people. They probably shouldn't have updated to Firebird 3.0.0 until they had an automated migration process in place, instead of instructing end users to manually convert their old files from the command line. ~~~ grandinj Firebird was experimental in 5.2.x so it's unlikely there are many such files in the wild. ------ hysan Have the fixed the missing grow/shrink feature in the GUI? [1] The bug that's now a decade old? No? Well that's disappointing... I'll keep using LibreOffice, but I still can't recommended it to my non-technical friends who seem to love that effect. [1] [https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48918](https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48918) ~~~ ac29 Not fixed. Just tested in 5.3. ------ znpy My complaint against openoffice/libreoffice is about their programming/scripting interface: it is a total mess to deal with. A couple of weeks ago I had the task to dynamically update the value of two cells in a calc spreadsheet. I did it, but ended up using a library that build on a library that builds on ... that build on UNO or whatever it's called. The api is a mix of C++ and Java, documentation is pretty much non-existing and code examples are incomplete and ridiculous. If I had been using excel I could have been using the win32 com api and get it done in a couple of hours at most. But don't get me wrong: when doing non-programming stuff it works great! ------ ronjouch Linking to the release notes; downloads live at [https://www.libreoffice.org/download/](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/) ------ compsciphd So I want to like libreoffice, but its really terribly maintained. features come and go, practically at whim. For instance, custom motion paths seem to come and go at whim (still not fixed in 5.3, and as this bug shows has been a recurring problem) [https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76916](https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76916) It's hard to rely on it when basic functionality constantly breaks. ~~~ dublinben I would hardly call that "basic functionality." I've been using LO as my primary office suite through several schools and jobs, and never felt like it was broken. ~~~ compsciphd to me custom paths are a basic function of making interactive/dynamic presentations. ~~~ keithpeter I agree with both comments up the tree. I use LO daily under Linux to produce handouts, simple screen based materials and spreadsheet models for teaching. My colleagues are blissfully ignorant of the fact that the materials they sometimes use where _not_ produced in MS Office on Windows. I would really like a stable interface for creating interactive materials, but I'd settle for being able to export a full range of hyperlinked objects in Impress as a pdf file so that the hyperlinks work. That would get me 95% of where I would like to be. ------ coolspot Using it every day. Great product! ------ brianzelip OT; there's a recent Changelog podcast[0] that features the dev who translated LibreOffice to the native tongue of Paraguay. [0][https://changelog.com/podcast/235](https://changelog.com/podcast/235) ------ shmerl Did breeze-dark icons make it in? ------ elyrly Great alternative to Office ~~~ gima I think anything is a great alternative to the Office at this point. In hindsight, LibreOffice's name must've been chosen by a fortune-teller..or a <strike>pessimist</strike> realist ;) ~~~ symlinkk what's so bad about Office? I just switched from LO to Office and it's felt like taking a huge weight off my shoulders - all the weird little UI quirks and bugs are gone, and everything just works. ~~~ gima My apologies. My reply was an attempt at political humor. No connection to the LibreOffice software.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tachyum Starts from Scratch to Etch a Universal Processor - rbanffy https://www.nextplatform.com/2020/04/02/tachyum-starts-from-scratch-to-etch-a-universal-processor/ ====== rpiguy Beautiful example of design driven by physics. I love it! However, like all VLIW processors, no one knows how this will work on real workloads until they are in the wild. I’m principle, it’s great just to see something different.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What's the most orthogonal programming language? - BlackJack http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/103567/27757 ====== johnm Cracks me up that Lisp/Scheme have so many votes/comments when the Tcl entry is getting none. And nobody's even mentioned Io.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Collapse OS – Why? - ColinWright https://collapseos.org/why.html ====== ncmncm I also am predicting collapse by 2030. The mechanism follows from climate disruption. As the tropics become uninhabitable and/or unfarmable, millions will migrate (mostly) north, crossing borders and driving fascist / jingoist governments into power. (We see this beginning already.) Global war follows, disrupting all kinds of global trade, shattering supply chains. Famine ensues, and more war. Preventing this requires preparation to absorb millions of refugees, and food aid to places not entirely uninhabitable. Temperate agriculture will be badly disrupted too, so we also need mass agriculture less dependent on clement conditions. ------ glial Here is an interview with the author cited in the article: [http://www.cadtm.org/The-coming-collapse](http://www.cadtm.org/The-coming- collapse) ------ gregoreous I disagree with his argument of the end of cheap energy. Even if oil were to become very expensive, we could use nuclear power. It is more expensive than natural gas, but it can power the economy. Also, countries with hydro power would have an economic advantage in a post oil world. Countries with these power sources would become manufacturing hubs.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Appops reloaded – Istio, Kubernetes home-lab, Prometheus and pause-lab - alexellisuk https://tinyletter.com/mhausenblas/letters/appops-reloaded-47 ====== alexellisuk Absolutely packed with tech this week from Michael Hausenblas. Good read and wanted to share.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Follow the White Ball: The torments of snooker’s greatest player - jonathansizz http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/follow-the-white-ball ====== sakri I've been a fan since 1992. Possibly the most beautiful video for me on youtube : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpeBugHSCnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpeBugHSCnU) Ronnie O' Sullivan Fastest 147 in History - 5 minutes 20 seconds - 1997 World Championship (mostly because I watched it live, and still remember how it blew my mind, still does) ~~~ coleifer Absolutely incredible the suspense must've been crazy. ------ JacobAldridge From a timing perspective, O'Sullivan lost overnight - knocked out in the Quarter Finals of the World Championship. "I'll go for a run in the morning and sparring in the afternoon. Life has to go on and will go on." [http://m.bbc.com/sport/snooker/32524542](http://m.bbc.com/sport/snooker/32524542) ~~~ corin_ Relevant quote from the article about a game 5 months ago: > _In the semifinal, O’Sullivan found himself 4–1 down and on the brink of > losing to Stuart Bingham, the ninth-ranked player in the world. “That was a > match where I just thought, I’m not going to be pushed around by someone > like Stuart,” O’Sullivan told me afterward. “I’m not ready to accept that > role yet. I fucking hated that match.” He won, 6–5._ (Bingham being the same player who just beat him) After this defeat it sounds like he's thinking of quitting again, but I certainly wouldn't put money on him staying away. ~~~ ed0wolf He always sounds like he's quitting the game. ~~~ corin_ That was my point. They said, one of these days he actually will quit for good, but I hope not soon. ------ jonathonf You could argue he's one of the greats. But the greatest? "Many wonder whether O’Sullivan can equal Hendry’s record of seven world titles and officially become, in his forties, the greatest player the game has ever known." Not yet. ~~~ jdietrich When O'Sullivan is on form, he has an ease and fluency that no other player can match. His maximum breaks are rightfully legendary, and give a glimpse of his immense talent. O'Sullivan doesn't really compete against other players, but against his own psyche; For this reason, he is both the most exciting and the most frustrating player to watch. ~~~ jonathansizz There was a nice passage describing O'Sullivan in an article [1] posted on r/snooker recently: "For years, the main frustration for the keen snooker fan was the apparently immutable dichotomy between the monotonous winners and the flamboyant losers. It seemed that we could either have the unflappable resolve of a Steve Davis (six-time World Champ) or the charismatic fragility of a Jimmy White (six-time runner-up), but we couldn't have both in one player. By only self-destructing either before the start of a tournament or after winning one, O'Sullivan has cleverly defied this convention. He doesn't fall apart in the crucial stages of a match; he plays consistently throughout, either like the greatest player in the world or only, say, the twelfth best. It all depends on which Ronnie shows up." [1] [http://www.ianbgibson.com/on-snooker](http://www.ianbgibson.com/on- snooker) ------ gadders As a Brit, it seems funny to see Ronnie O'Sullivan profiled in the New Yorker. Who are they going to cover next? The Crafty Cockney? [1] [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Bristow](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Bristow) ~~~ thorin I'd prefer Jockey Wilson. ~~~ gadders I was going to suggest him, but he has the disadvantage of being dead. ------ jbrooksuk > O’Sullivan is frequently described as a genius. But he does not see how this > can be so. Ah Imposter Syndrome, we meet again.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Need book recommendations for programmer to product developer transition - paperwork Some friends, distributed across a few states and continents, are developers. They have one or two products being used by clients and a couple more in the pipeline.<p>It is becoming obvious that they are following into the same trap as many techies before them. The products are not fully defined and new features keep getting added. When an obstacle comes up or if a client has an idea, work shifts to a different product, the first one being left unfinished. Sometimes the vision of the product is not clear to the team. The look & feel and usability is left to the personal likes of the developer implementing them. The people involved know computers, programming, databases, system administration, etc. They are all intelligent, curious, etc. They have the kind of skill set any employer would kill for, but they are their own employers now! They are not the kind of folks who read blogs or new.ycombinator posts so, on their own, they don't know if zynga is a good model to follow or twitter.<p>What are some good, to the point, books which will help coders become the kind of people who are good at "building stuff?" Manage team, develop vision, manage process, avoid typical pitfalls (like constant requests for proofs of concepts which earn no revenue), etc., etc.<p>Look forward to suggestions! ====== russtrpkovski Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan ~~~ paperwork The table of contents looks very interesting. Thanks!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Where can we find a cofounder for a promising & growing product? - razasaeed We are a growing software consulting company and to fulfill our own hiring needs , we built a very simple & easy to use(inspired by 37signals) applicant tracking system called Simplicant for small to medium sized companies (especially startups). Over last 2 years, without any marketing or sales staff, it has been growing slowly. We get a lot of customer interest (and at times from VC's too) and those who start using it totally love our product. We think the product is a great utility for its target customers.<p>However, since we are not based in US (our target market), it's very hard for us to take this product to the next level without on ground market & sales team/personnel that can help aggressively market this to potential customers. We want to partner with a passionate entrepreneur who would be willing to join as a co-founder of this product and lead the marketing/sales effort in the US while we provide strong engineering/product development.<p>What's your feedback on this approach ? What's the best possible way to advertising this opening ? How should we evaluate people who show interest in this proposition ? Thanks for the help. http://www.simplicant.com ====== hotmind posting here is a good place. Have you tried <http://www.partnerup.com> and Cofounder.com? ~~~ razasaeed Not yet, thanks for the links, will do it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apply HN: Hostable, Reskinnable, Domainable, Searchable, Forum Software - andy_ppp So while hacker news is used in very flexible ways (like this!) and the community is amazing I'm really really exhausted with how badly the actual software used to host it works.<p>I see a lot of opportunity around a piece of forum software integrated into a piece of crowd funding software. Wait, what? How the hell would this work?<p>So imagine we go completely meta and start thinking about how hacker news is being used today, what do we need:<p>1) Custom Tagging of thread titles (Apply HN, Show HN, customisable via the setup).<p>2) Works on mobile<p>3) Skinnable<p>4) Hosted/Can create your own DNS/Community/Rules/etc.<p>5) Conclusion mode - was there anything suggested/tagged as a conclusion?<p>6) Conclusion ordering mode - call for actions - you can turn you comment into an action point (maybe with a suggested cost against it).<p>7) Given a set of conclusion/actions a crowdfunding campaign could be started. We could for example all cough up to hire a lawyer to start a class action lawsuit or pay someone in our local area to organise with the local authority to fix a part of our area or we could get together and build a crazy piece of installation art.<p>8) Grouping of threads by tag and different tag types.<p>9) Not sure about money yet but I guess you could take a fee from any successful crowd funding.<p>10) Directory of Volunteer/Recommended Helpers/Past history of having done stuff!<p>11) Think about it like github issues for the real world!<p>12) Successful campaigns running through tools like this and a playbook for managing them.<p>13) Multiple post admins who have to agree/action stuff.<p>Name suggestions welcome, I have to go to bed now so please vote, sorry for the lack of further discussion! I will be on it tomorrow! ====== jay_kyburz Hey Andy, when I went shopping for forum software last year I discovered Discourse. Perhaps you could talk about how your forum would be better that it? ~~~ andy_ppp Ouch! $100 per month minimum plan... for me to get started building my replacement for local government that is a high barrier to entry. I suppose at least I can host it myself though, it is very impressive software. I guess what I want is to take over all the branches of the government and replace them with forum software. But not the forum software we have seen today, an as yet unrealised possibility of what forum software could be! So thus far having looked at Discourse how does it implement my ideas: 1) Nope, tagging in the HN style doesn't exists AFAIK. 2) Yes, mobile 3) Yes, Skinnable 4) Hosted/Can create your own DNS/Community/Rules/etc 5, 6, 7) It seems more focused on finding solutions to specific problems (I'm using the twitter API does it do X) rather than having a broad discussion and them being able to select answers from that discussion to refine into a crowd sourcing campaign. 8) Grouping of threads by tag and different tag types. 9) Discourse have a business model that's pretty sound. Charge for hosting. 10) Directory of useful people on each forum who can be paid to do stuff... 11) How are we discussing these YC programs - I think there is a lot of room for improvement being able to tag posts to the top of the thread and give a TLDR of the salient points in a thread. Maybe people can summarise questions and break things down into pieces that can be answered in a more coherent package. If deemed suitable by the community the thread could then be acted on through a crowd sourcing campaign. Imagine if we were to organise society with a piece of forum software how would it look and what would people get in return for helping their community - probably more voting rights and better ability to change things/make a difference. ~~~ qopp You might consider implementing the features you seek as a plugin to discourse. As for the hosting expenses, there are 3rd party services that will host it for you. ------ bestattack To get started with an idea like this, you really need a specific use case or customer who wants something. Then you build it for them. You've dumped a big list of features, but at the early stage it's important to only work on the ones which actually create value for a specific user or use case. Do your customer development first. This is a really ambitious project so paring it down is probably your best bet. I do think "works on mobile" is a really great thing, few forums work well on mobile and it's definitely the future :) ------ sideproject Hey Andy, Interesting, I'm working in a similar area (but not in crowd funding space) - would love to chat on some of the things you've mentioned in regards to forum software. Do you have a contact point I can reach out to? (me - hello at hellobox.co)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Are you running Windows XP? - neur0mancer http://amirunningxp.com/ ====== Piskvorrr No, but the page loads so slowly it brings memories of dialup. (What is it with 20 MB backgrounds anyway?)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Which companies are working with/on the coolest technology? - cjbarber Also any thoughts on how I could capture this in a website? ====== lanna You have to start with a proper definition of "coolest technologies".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Futures Site Coming to Bet on Movie Ticket Sales - unignorant http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/business/media/11futures.html?ref=technology ====== chasingsparks _"If the distributor shorts a $100 contract and the movie grosses $50 million, the distributor will make $50, thereby limiting the company’s total losses from a film."_ From what they have said, this does not sound like a viable hedging strategy for those in production. There is unlikely to be enough contracts traded. Instead, it seems more like a gambling operation with a CFTC gambling shield. I'm surprised they did this, given how much general anger there still is regarding derivatives and speculation. ~~~ steveplace The two differences between financial speculation and gambling are your odds and whether you wear a fancy tie. The odds are the more important one. If you can make statistical methods that show the risk of loss, you can then assign a premium to that risk and put it on the market. Whether it will get enough liquidity to get past the smalltime remains to be seen. ~~~ ericwaller At least in NY state, the exact odds and payouts are published. So you can certainly assign a premium to the risk involved, and you can do so exactly. But since everyone knows the odds, the lotto market is perfectly efficient and no one can win in the long run -- this is what makes it gambling. ------ jsm386 I remember playing the old Hollywood Stock Exchange (non-cash version) back in middle school. This seems like a fun idea, but how do you rule out the heaps of insider information that exist? ------ bryanh I am curious if the technique described in this paper (<http://www.cam.cornell.edu/~sharad/papers/searchpreds.pdf>) would give an advantage over the long run. I would imagine that if the majority of bets are placed for entertainment value based on guesses, this could be a quick way to rake in some dough. ------ mhb Seems like Netflix might have some insight into this market. ~~~ Aron Definately. 12M Customers can add movies to their queue prior to it even coming out at the theater. I would wager this is substantially predictive. Netflix could either bet themselves, or as perhaps more likely, sell this information directly. ------ jasongullickson This will certainly have a positive impact on the quality of films coming out of Hollywood.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why does flat Earth belief still exist? - RobertSmith https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/why-does-flat-earth-belief-still-exist/ ====== LinuxBender Why does anyone believe it is round? I have no horse in this race. I'm merely suggesting that this could be a simulation. We could all be in a space ship, plugged into some computer that is keeping our brains from going insane on our journey to another galaxy. Or perhaps our ship ran out of fuel and the system is just "keeping us happy" until the last power generators or solar sail power converters go offline. I have seen way too many people that look and act related. It can't be in- breeding? I chalk it up to lazy programming. The best developers are lazy, right?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Could ImGUI Be the Future of GUIs? - tokyodude https://games.greggman.com/game/imgui-future/ ====== overgard Really probably not. I love them and they're very handy in certain situations (debugging tools, quick UIs) but once you need a lot of customization they become extremely cumbersome. Also really kind of makes it impossible for designers or less technical people to do anything. Also, while I think separating view logic is slightly overrated, it is useful, and it's very hard to do that with IMGUI. Also it doesn't thread well. Also... Look there's like a million downsides. Also saying there's no memory allocation is really misleading. There's PLENTY of memory allocation, per frame, you're just not explicitly doing it yourself. It's actually much worse than an RMGUI in this regard, because at least with an RMGUI you get the allocations over with once. With an IMGUI you're allocating things all the time. They're probably much smaller allocations, but lots of small allocations does not make for good performance. One final note, the Unity 3D example always gets used. If you've ever written a plugin for unity or a custom editor, you're very familiar with the fact that it's editor gui system is extremely limiting and kind of sucks. I mean, it's an example, but once you're past the basics it's kind of a bad example. ~~~ josephg On the allocation point, the efficient way to handle this is to use a per- frame memory pool. Because nothing in the IMGUI can persist between frames, you can allocate a single arena of memory for any UI elements that need to store bounding boxes or callbacks or whatever. Each frame just reset your next_ptr to the start of the arena. Technically you are allocating memory, but in practice your allocations are free. ~~~ geezerjay Adding a separate complex ad hoc memory allocation scheme is not what I would call free. Granted, computationally-wise it may be relatively cheap but it does add multiple forms of complexity to a problem that doesn't exist in rmguis. ~~~ loup-vaillant Arenas are the simplest allocation scheme ever. // Start of frame void arena = malloc(LOTS_OF_MEMORY); void next_ptr = arena; // Allocate something object = *next_ptr; // return that value next_ptr = object_size + alignment; // crash if out of memory // End of frame free(arena); By the way, such "separate complex ad hoc" memory allocation schemes are the reason why manual memory management is faster than garbage collection. If you did everything with malloc(), it would be slower (unless the GC language allocates much more than C, which they often do). ~~~ Keyframe No need to malloc each frame. Malloc at startup and memset each frame (don't even need to do that, tbh). ~~~ maccard Nope, just set the pointer back to where it started from. You do need to be super careful doing this though, as anything that relies on RAII (in c++ land) will be busted. You could manually call the destructor on the object in that case, but kind of defeats the purpose of the "no allocation" goals ~~~ geezerjay C++ includes it's "placement new" feature specifically to cater to the memory pool needs. There's no allocation, and only constructor and destructor calls. ------ yonilevy FWIW, Unity are moving away from ImGUI (to a classic retained mode UI system) [https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/04/23/whats-new-with- uielemen...](https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/04/23/whats-new-with-uielements- in-2019-1/) ~~~ CreepGin Also to clarify, UIElements (Unity's new retained mode UI framework) is available now in 2019.1 for Editor UI. Runtime UI will also be using UIElements in the future. ------ theclaw In the context of creating debugging UIs for games and graphics applications, Dear imGUI is a godsend. Programmers love it because there is literally only the code to worry about. It's very easy to get it up and running, and all the code that handles the UI drawing and interaction is in one place so it's easy to reason about. It works very well in the context where you already have fast graphics and an update loop, and you're already expecting to redraw the whole screen every frame. It does not really suit more complex, text-heavy UIs where you're rendering thousands of glyphs with proper kerning and ligatures and anti- aliasing, etc, and want the result of that hard work to be retained in the framebuffer unless it absolutely needs to change. ~~~ pedrocr > want the result of that hard work to be retained in the framebuffer unless > it absolutely needs to change I think immediate mode GUI libraries can get around this issue by still caching and reusing between frames. Conrod does this by still having the state in the background although you are programming to an immediate mode API: [https://docs.rs/conrod/latest/conrod/guide/chapter_1/index.h...](https://docs.rs/conrod/latest/conrod/guide/chapter_1/index.html#is- conrod-immediate-or-retained) ~~~ sly010 That's a bit antithetical, given the other side of the debate being Retained Mode GUIs. That said it's a good middle ground. Use whatever API you prefer over a well optimized implementation. ------ mindfulplay The author does a good job explaining some benefits of an immediate mode renderer but vastly misses the disadvantages. The immediate mode renderer is great for toy programs. Similar to how you could reproduce 'look here is how simple it is to write hello world and compute the millionth digit of PI' in a new esoteric language... Occlusion, hit-testing, state changes, scrolling/animations even in the simplest forms will fall over. Infact, that's why we have every major browser move their touch and animation systems into a layer based compositor system (into a separate thread / process). The author also grossly misses their own example of 'how a spreadsheet with many rows and columns will update faster using ImgUI' and how Instagram styled apps will fare better ImgUi. A retained mode renderer will use virtual scrollers, efficient culling of nodes for both display and hit-testing (scale to billions of virtual cells) and more importantly help a team of people coordinate their work and get things done. We are no longer in the 90s. ~~~ btown In fact, with Javascript JIT engines (whose teams deeply understand the use of libraries like React) relentlessly attacking the overhead of DOM nodes and their initialization, and with users who actually expect the design flexibility provided by CSS... a system like React is actually an ideal layer of abstraction for modern UI implementation on practically any platform. Sure, if you're on an embedded platform, somewhere a JIT can't run, or if you're doing something with real-time rendering requirements (and honestly modern React Suspense should even make that feasible), you may want to use something lower-level. But most people won't need to do this. ~~~ overgard The DOM being slow is really more an artifact of browsers/HTML and the history behind doing document based layout. React is a nice solution to that specific problem; but this article suggests immediate mode gui's are the future, which, I don't think that's really the case. And I'm not sure I'd really call React an IMGUI anyway. It's similar, but it's also pretty different. ------ mooman219 This is really reads like someone trying to sell you something. I've done work on frameworks for both immediate mode and retained mode GUIs. They both absolutely allocate memory behind the scene. There absolutely is state being marshaled around. Caching commonly used state is important. Performance can be bad and great in both. You're really just subscribing to different sets of opinions ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel Any moderately complex “immediate mode” GUI system is going to do something equivalent to constructing a “retained mode” GUI on the fly I'm guessing. ~~~ tom_ It will. In fact, even a simple one will require this. But it's not much of a problem - 99% of the time, the UI is the same from one frame to the next, and it isn't much work to detect this. So even if every change requires a complete rebuild of everything, it's not much of a problem. (I've written systems like this for Cocoa and Win32, and it never turned out to be necessary to do anything other than just regenerate the entire UI any time anything changed. The update runs at 30Hz or 60Hz, and when anything is changing, the UI gets regenerated a lot! - but so what? Most of the time, the UI doesn't get regenerated at all. Then something happens, and the code spends 2 seconds getting absolutely hammered continuously, malloc malloc malloc malloc malloc, god help us all... and then, once again, nothing. The operator puts their fingers to one side and stares at the result with their eyes. Repeat.) ------ seanalltogether I think the author is over exaggerating the problem of object creation and destruction in traditional gui frameworks. List/collection views are designed to reuse objects as you scroll. Secondly I think the author is also downplaying the fact that retained GUIs can also cache object rendering. Just as the gpu doesn't have to draw the whole screen when only the cursor is blinking, it also doesn't have to redraw widgets unless their size changes. Immediate vs retained is a simple case of budgeting against cpu usage or memory usage, and it should be considered in that light. (immediate uses more processing, retained uses more memory) ~~~ charlesetc Thinking about this decision just as a performance one disregards the fact that the code is substantially different. It does seems likely that one way is more intuitive / easier to work with than the other, I wouldn't know which though. ~~~ gmueckl It depends on the probkem younare trying to solve with your GUI, I suppose. Sometimes, it is better to just recreate the whole GUI to adapt to a model change (e.g. the user moved half of the tree nodes somewhere else), sometimes it is easier/faster/... to just update the existing GUI (e.g. update the text of a label inside a complex dialog widget). ------ geekpowa Retained GUIs vary wildly in implementation. Many of authors most significant criticisms on retained GUIs are implementation considerations. GUI frameworks exist that solve his key criticisms of complexity and are pleasant to work with. Criticisms that target core architecture of retained GUI I don't consider to be valuable design goals, at least in settings where I work on GUIs. e.g. memory usage. Alot of things are glossed over that remain challenges in both, e.g. layout management. HTML is an interesting example. First iteration of HTML was essentially immediate mode if you think about a single client/server interaction as a GUI update cycle. Server sends draws to client browser and client browser sends back to server user selections. There is no retained state on gui side. Now with programmatic access to DOM, ability to attach events to DOM elements from client side it is now a retained GUI. Seems to be where things evolve to naturally. The GUI framework I use nearly daily is retained and very pleasant to work with in terms of ease of belting out screens & readability/maintainability of code. The simplicity comes with compromises though as there are limits on GUI idioms that can be expressed. Occasionally run into those boundaries and resulting GUI does look a little plain and unexciting, but for something that is substantially about data entry its fine. ------ arianvanp Recently I started playing with [https://github.com/ajnsit/concur- documentation/blob/master/R...](https://github.com/ajnsit/concur- documentation/blob/master/README.md) which has been the most refreshing UI paradigm i've used in a while. and it reminds me a lot of this ImGUI approach, but behind the scenes it uses coroutines instead. The idea is that a button is a UI element that _blocks_ until an event is fired. You can then compose elements in time like: button "hey" >> label "clicked" which is a program that displays a button, you click it, the button goes away and the text "clicked appears" Or you can compose programs in space: (button "hey" <> label "not clicked") this is a program that displays both a button, and a label at the same time. Now, by combining both space and time, we can create a program that changes the label when clicking as follows: program = (button "toggle" <> label "off") >> (button "toggle" <> label "on") >> program This is an application that toggles a label on and off when you press a button. (Note that the definition is recursive) ------ RandyRanderson There's a difference bt poor impl and poor design. As the author points out, HTML has a poor design (eg. if you want to have a 1000x1000 cell table, you have to have 10^6 actual cells - that's a lot of tds or whatever to parse). Modern OO GUI frameworks don't do this - they say something like: cellRenderer.draw(target, row,col,position,size) No creation of objects required. Of course since it's so easy to create OO programs a lot of code isn't great... and then others copy that code and so it goes. Seems like we keep re-creating software b/c we haven't taken the time to look at what exists and only then decide on what to keep and what to change. "This is too complex - I'll re-write it!". 10 years later: "We added all the features that the existing software had and now the new one... is just as slow... but we did sell a lot of conference tickets and books so... totally worth it." When I was 20 I also thought I knew better so I get it. ------ babel_ I feel that the future lies in combining retained and immediate interfaces, preferably with the granularity to allow deeply nested retained interfaces that are fast for complex ui (or for a realtime system with memory to spare), whilst still allowing one to go the other direction, such that a simple ui can be written cleanly and logically for low-memory systems (such as embedded or boot guis). It would need a very well designed api for this, but I feel the benefits are worth the effort (and I'll probably look into this next time I have the freedom to choose ui apis). A balance may be letting people define it either way, so that manually written ui still can have auto-layout yet intuitive code (following control flow primitives), whilst allowing generated retained uis to be manually editable -- perhaps even allowing one to then embed one within the other, a boon for scripted interfaces that perhaps have people of various levels of experience producing ui elements, such as a musician with little experience being able to add a simple visualiser in an immediate manner to a deeply retained daw gui. Of course, there's a lot here that is implementation, and some criticism either way can be optimised out. Immediate mode can still cache its rendering, we've had optimised blitting since the early days, and is only usually a problem with complex ui. Retained would get fewer cache misses if we weren't allocating madly across the heap and took a more disciplined approach allocating to contiguous memory -- which is almost entirely a language/api problem (in my experience) that can also happen with immediate but we typically don't see since it's often done in a more procedural style that is allocating to some pool. Other api elements, such as handling lists etc aren't really a differentiation between retained and immediate, those can be made in either. For me, I often find that the ability to write out prototype ui code in an immediate style in very quick and satisfying (exactly what I want in prototyping), however once I start to expand upon a ui, I find it best to over time refactor towards a retained style, since by then I will typically have some templates for what ui elements look like, and so I just have to pass a string and function pointer to fill in the template. Can't see why we can't have nice things and let both coexist... ------ pedrocr Conrod is an immediate mode GUI library for rust[1]. I've been using it for an image processing app[2] and have enjoyed the way the code turns out. Everything is much more straightforward as you don't have to reason about callbacks interacting with a loop that's not yours to control and the performance seems good. [1] [https://github.com/pistondevelopers/conrod](https://github.com/pistondevelopers/conrod) [2] [https://github.com/pedrocr/chimper](https://github.com/pedrocr/chimper) ------ thrax Immediate mode uis are fine for debug displays or for displaying data that's changes every single frame, but for anything else, in a shipping product they are just a waste of resources. The primary wasters are excess memory allocation, string generation, and the sheer amount of redundant function calls. Anything you do to address those problems result in converting your ui to a retained mode UI. For those advocating react like approaches to solving this.. similar problems are involved. Diffing state is wasting cycles unless it's done so optimally and carefully that it becomes a technical feat and ends up being as complex as just doing something retained. Source: game developer for 25 years on console, desktop, and mobile. ------ seanmcdirmid Probably not. With technologies like React that make retained-mode UIs look more like immediate-mode ones, there is less need for full blown immediate- mode UIs. React achieves the programmability of an immediate-mode UI without sacrificing the performance of a retained-mode UI (at least, that’s the goal). ------ weinzierl > A few problems with this GUI style are: > You have to write lots of code to manage the the creation and destruction of > GUI objects. [..] > The creation and destruction problem leads to slow unresponsive UIs [..] > You have to marshal your data into and out of the widgets. [..] My biggest pain point with the retained mode GUIs I worked with was none of the issues mentioned above. It was always the centralized GUI thread and the consequential synchronization complications. I don't know if this is an inherent problem of retained mode GUI frameworks and if there are some that don't force all widgets into a single thread. If not, this alone is a reason to for me to find immediate mode interesting. ~~~ overgard Immediate mode, if anything, makes this harder. (You absolutely have to run the GUI on one thread, for instance). Really though you can get around that on either of them by spawning a worker thread/coroutine/etc. on button clicks and so on. ~~~ weinzierl The real problems start, when the worker thread needs to update the GUI, for example to advance a progress bar. With the frameworks I know I have to build a communication channel between the threads and tell the GUI thread to show and update the progress bar. My hope was that with an immediate mode framework I could just show a progress bar on top of the existing GUI right from the worker thread. I don't know enough about immediate mode to say if this is really possible. It would simplify a lot of my code though. ------ Klonoar I recall reading this article in your comments on the last GUI-specific link posted here... where you just kept disagreeing with comments that took the time to point out how this stuff is largely off base. We moved away from WM_PAINT for a reason. ------ amluto Here’s a downside that wasn’t mentioned: if (ImGUI::Button("Click Me")) { IWasClickedSoDoSomething(); } This forces Button to be stateless, which limits the possible quality of implementation. If you mouse-down on a button and the button changes before you mouse-up, it shouldn’t register as a click. Similarly, if you mouse-down on a button, drag to the button, and mouse-up, it shouldn’t be a click. Implementing this in a fully immediate-mode GUI with this interface is either impossible or requires gross hacks. ~~~ bdowling A naive implementation would have the problem you describe. However, a smarter library implementation avoids this (e.g., by generating an id for the button, saving the id on mouse-down, and checking the id on mouse-up). The user of such a library won't have to worry about it. ~~~ amluto And how, exactly, is the id created? Some hash of the button’s text and coordinates? I would call that a dirty hack, no to mention being implicitly stateful. ~~~ HelloNurse But a stateful GUI is not a sin: the program as a whole has state, application code needs to process GUI inputs to update application-level state (e.g. currently set game options) while tracking mechanical details like whether a button is "half clicked" is suitable for automation at the GUI library level. Regarding IDs, they can (and must) be provided by client code, as client code is responsible for managing widget identity (i.e. whether the button that might have a mouse up event this frame is "the same" that received a mouse down event some frames ago). In C or C++, string names could usually be autogenerated with trivial macros relying on __LINE__ and __FILE__. ------ jbverschoor Can we please just stop moving around in circles in the tech industry? Nobody seems to learn anything from past methods, tech and everything. ~~~ analognoise LOL. My favorite part of it was the last line: "More research into ImGUI style UIs could lead to huge gains in productivity." Don't tell this cat that the research on this stuff goes back >40 years and that the introductory chapter of any book on computer graphics would have talked about all of this. Not like it would help him - he hasn't read anything about it, didn't even do a cursory Google search. Sheesh. A low, low bar. ~~~ tom_ Do you have any recommended links? ~~~ analognoise I do! One of my favorite is "Don't Fidget with Widgets, Draw!" ([https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq- DEC/WRL-91-6.pdf](https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/WRL-91-6.pdf)) It's modern enough to be understandable, and while it's referencing Ezd (a Scheme drawing system) it greatly influenced Tk (which is still used in all kinds of heavy-hitting EDA software). That one's only been around for 28 years though (well, the paper was published in 1991, so code was before that...) but let's go further: The drawing system(s) that greatly influenced Ezd came largely from Xerox PARC, such as ALTO: [https://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/xerox-alto-source- code...](https://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/xerox-alto-source-code/) There's code in there for a vector drawing program (in 1980!), as well as interacting widgets. Let's go back further... Finally, we have to mention the Mother of All Demos, in 1968: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos) Which if you haven't watched MOAD before, give it a spin. It will still blow your mind, but the interactive graphical drawing mechanisms will be recognizable. Also, this "paint the screen every time" method is how a tremendous number of people who cut their teeth on DOS did things on the screen. DOS release date: 1981. So you don't have to have been an academic (which I am NOT) to have tried these techniques while solving practical problems. As far as books: Computer Graphics Principles and Practice in C (later editions use C#/C++/etc. - the ideas are the same) The 1995/96 one talks about retained mode graphics directly. That book has been standard in "intro computer graphics" courses for as long as it's been out. So at least 20+ years it's been the "start here" book. So yea, this stuff has been around for a while... ------ jayd16 IMGUI must sound appealing to people who have never done UI work. Just try to implement a responsive UI in an IMGUI. Layout code is not fun. ------ laythea I got fed up of ImGUI when I wanted to route events to my application instead of the GUI. Its good "out the box" ut when you need to get down and dirty to customise, it can be awkward. Nowadays I do a hybrid approach, so I have use NanoGUI and create my own "live data" "retained mode" controls. Now I have either the best of both worlds or the worst of both worlds. I think the best: Pros: \- I don't have to bother with data binding. As the control is passed a pointer to the actual memory for he value, it can "go get it" when rendering, rather than my application setting its state. \- I still have classes to represent elements and state, so its conceptually simple to build controls on controls. I found this difficult with Imgui. Cons: \- renders 100% full speed, but I am working on way to speed up and slow down render loop depending on user activity, so that when sitting idle, the cpu is not burning. ~~~ ahaferburg This is the exact issue I'm running into right now with dear ImGui. There is no event propagation. You can either transfer control over to ImGui, or you retain control. In Qt it would be possible for the focus widget to not accept events, so they would bubble up the hierarchy. Considering how the hierarchy is tied to the callstack, this seems difficult to achieve with an ImGui. ~~~ laythea NanoGUI + live data custom controls = happy days ------ sago I have implemented a bunch of UIs for games. Immediate mode sounds good, but each time the thing that has bit me has been layout. Sometimes you need to traverse the hierarchy to figure out where things will be placed. Before traversing it for render. If your hierarchy is implicit in a call graph, you have to either duplicate your calls, or implement some kind of backend retained system so you can defer rendering until after layout. Beyond the absolute simplest of toy UIs, immediate mode doesn't work in my opinion. ------ golergka Every time a developer decries some abstractions and tools as unnecessary complicated and too "enterprise", it probably means he haven't encountered a problem that this solution was created to address. As a Unity developer, I love immediate mode GUI for debugging. But I would never in my right mind attempt to use it for actual in-game GUI. Project I'm working on right now is not incredibly complicated, it's just a typical mobile match3 game. But a typical screen here has: (1) background that has to be scaled over all screen, eveloping it around while keeping aspect ratio, (2) frame that has to be scaled to screen without keeping aspect ratio, (3) a "window" background that has to be scaled somewhat to screen (with margin), being enveloped by it, (4) interactive elements, that have to be scaled down from the "safe area" (so that there are no button under the iPhone bevel), (5) match3 game field that has to be scaled according to physical sizes of the screen, (6) pixel-perfect elements that have to be chosen according to pixel size of the screen (1x, 2x and 3x options) and scaled appropriately. So, no, immediate GUI is definitely not the solution here. ------ ahaferburg From dear ImGui's mission statement: _> Designed for developers and content-creators, not the typical end-user! Some of the weaknesses includes: > \- Doesn't look fancy, doesn't animate. > \- Limited layout features, intricate layouts are typically crafted in > code._ It may not replace retained mode GUI toolkits, but it can certainly make the life of devs easier. If all you need is to quickly hack together an internal tool, or some quick debugging interface, keep ImGui in mind. ------ zzo38computer I have seem other programs doing stuff like that before, and I have also done some of that in my own programming (although not with this or any other library). I did not know what it is called, until I read this today. It look like good to me. Also, you will still need to add some extra variables if you are doing such thing as tab to focus, I think. ------ 4thaccount Anyone experienced with ImGUI ever use Rebol and Red's DRAW DSL? I believe Rebol's GUI support is even easier to use than ImGUI, but of course it can't be embedded and used in the same way as ImGUI either. I wonder if non Red projects could possibly hook into Red's system once Red/System gets closer to C level performance? ------ nh2 > ... people scroll almost constantly in which case the ImGUI wins by a > landslide I think this is a misrepresentation of how fast scrolling is usually implemented. For fast scrolling, you render the page (which is larger than the viewport = "what fits on the monitor") ONCE onto a GPU texture, and then all scolling happens on the GPU side (the CPU just tells the GPU the offsets into that texture). Immediate mode has to recreate the texture every frame, instead of once for multiple frames. So "It might use more CPU" is quite certainly true. ~~~ nh2 You can also do some simple math to arrive at a justification: Assume a 4k x 2k display at 60 FPS. Compute the throughput needed (Bytes per second) to draw an RGB framebuffer. That is: 8M pixels x 3 Bytes x 60 fps = 1.44 GB/s Note how we haven't done any computation yet to decide what the colours should be, this is just the CPU effort to do IO to tell the GPU about the new colours to show. This would incur significant CPU usage, and your device would get hot quickly. In contrast, if you let the GPU scroll, you have to send two floats (for X and Y offset) per frame, and the GPU just does a hardware-parallelised lookup. This is why we have GPUs, and why scrolling immediate-mode would make your device burning hot while a GPU does the task with minimal energy usage. ~~~ hevi_jos Following the same logic that you use... have you calculated how much memory do you need to store the memory of a single treeview, or a single scrolling document of just several pages? Two floats? You are using a memory that is a CPU memory, a big chunk of memory. That does not exist in the GPU. In the GPU the memory is distributed so it can be used in parallel. Immediate GUI exist because of GPUs, because with GPUs you can draw frames fast. If you look at Imgui code it uses GPU drawing for everything. In fact it uses only two drawing functions copying small rectangles in the screen. It is drawing a single big chunk of memory what is extremely slow, and you need to do that before you do offsetting. And if you work with variable data, like a treeview, you need to allocate for a finite amount of memory in the GPU buffers. ------ 627467 I'm having a hard time to understand what is ImGUI (and what is the opposite RmGUI)... any could help me with ELI5? It sounds like ImGUI is reactive while RmGUI is not? ~~~ revvx Games (normally) re-render the whole scene every frame. ImGUI exposes that to their API users: you have to re-render and check for clicks on every frame. The code looks like React, (but not as optimized, it re-renders every frame!), and normally you have to keep state by yourself. Code example: [1]. Retained Mode is closer to the DOM, Cocoa or WPF: you create objects and there's an abstraction between the API and the renderer: they get re-rendered every frame for you. Componentes normally have events and state by themselves. Sometimes there's a visual editor too. The main difference is the API. One is lower level than the other. In practice, the APIs aren't that different, except when it comes to event handling. [1] - [https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/gui- Basics.html](https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/gui-Basics.html) ~~~ floatboth > Games (normally) re-render the whole scene every frame They don't re-upload the whole scene to the GPU every frame, they don't recreate objects all the time. Immediate mode was only used in, like, the GL 1.x times. ~~~ revvx But I never said they did? ------ dang Related recent thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19744513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19744513) ------ dwrodri Great find! I haven't done much work GUIs myself, but I would love to read more about alternative design philosophies in human-centered computing and their downfalls. ------ cotelletta React hooks is the closest you'll get in practice, once you factor in async, layout measurements and other practical things. But useState is pretty much just imgui with built in getters/setters rather than external state. ------ polytronic The single most important factor when it comes to UI is text rendering. Immediate mode UIs are based on text rasterization, ie polygon creation for each character of the text while retained mode text is usually featuring texture atlases containing all characters in upper and lower case. This of course introduces a limitation on the number of fonts available to the developer, font sizes, etc. My 3D engine is using an immediate mode UI for the editor and tools while it allows for creation of retained mode UI for in-game UI components by automatically generating texture atlases for the selected font types ------ etaioinshrdlu Didn't Firefox put forward a big plan to basically implement the browser as an immediate mode UI designed to redraw everything on every frame? ~~~ floatboth WebRender is not just a "plan" but a real thing (I'm using it right now), and it's fully retained. Immediate doesn't mean just redrawing everything on every frame, immediate means what's described in the article — not keeping state. WR _aggressively_ relies on kept state to optimize rendering of each frame as much as possible. ~~~ etaioinshrdlu Very interesting, thank you. ------ Vanit I hadn't heard of ImGUI, but after reading the definition realised that's exactly how you made custom menus in RM2k/3 :) ------ abledon Say I want to make a program, X, that draws a 50x50px square over another program, Y, at (200,100) and only program Y. Do i need a low level stuff for this, can imGUI be used here? or is it possible with electronjs etc... Also, would program Y be able to detect, with administrator privileges that another program was targeting its pixel space and drawing over it? ------ grifball >programmers find it more performant >plusses speed >minuses uses more CPU what? ------ qwerty456127 Are any implementations of this approach available for high-level languages? ------ pjmlp ImGUI is the past of GUIs. That is how we used to do it on 8 bit and 16 bit platforms, before frameworks like Turbo Vision, GEM and Workbench came into the scene. ------ rambojazz Could somebody please ELI5 this? How is this different from traditional UI approaches and why would I want to use this? ------ dzonga this feels more like drawing UI's using state charts in terms of expressiveness. ------ ianrathbone Isn't the future of GUIs to have no GUI? ------ 781 It's important to point out why games use immediate mode GUIs: 1\. The GUI needs to be overlaid on the game image (OpenGL/DirectX). This is difficult with traditional GUIs like QT. 2\. The GUI needs to be updated in sync with the game, again, it's difficult to integrate traditional GUIs event loops into the game loop, especially with stuff like double/triple buffering. 3\. The GUI needs to be as fast as possible, games are severely CPU bound. A retained mode GUI is typically easier to use, convenience is not why people use immediate mode GUIs. It's worth pointing out that the immediate/retained split doesn't apply only to the GUI - there are retained mode graphical APIs - DirectX used to have one. They are only used in low-demand games, they sacrifice a lot of speed for the convenience of using a retained mode. ~~~ invokestatic I've written real-time game UIs before so I think I have some relevant experience here. 1\. It is very possible to write a retained-mode GUI in a graphics API like DirectX or OpenGL. In fact, a retained GUI would typically wipe immediate GUIs in terms of performance in this context. In immediate mode, the GUI's vertex buffers need to be completely reconstructed from scratch every single frame, which is _slow_ , CPU bound, and cannot be (easily) parallelized. It's like reconstructing the game world every frame -- that would be ludicrous for any non-trivial game. 2\. I don't think there would be that much of a difference between the two UI models, since data updates can be dispatched from the event loop. It would be faster, too, because only UI components that need updating could be redrawn. This is far faster than updating the entire UI every single frame. 3\. As mentioned earlier, immediate mode GUIs are going to be a lot slower than retained mode, when implemented properly. Immediate mode GUIs put most of the work on the CPU instead of offloading most of the work to the GPU like in the retained model. I think developers that are using immediate mode GUIs are doing so because of their ease of use. I think retained mode is typically harder for a game developer to conceptualize because immediate mode is conceptually similar to a game loop. Also, I don't know of any free & open source retained mode GUIs for DirectX and OpenGL and the like. Also, DirectX at least (and probably OpenGL) encourages a retained-like model for general rendering. The only way to get decent performance is to re-use vertex buffers between frames and only update them when something changes. ~~~ tom_ I've written real-time game UIs too. I think you underestimate just how ludicrously fast CPUs and GPUs are, and overestimate the complexity of your average GUI. What does your average screen's-worth of GUI consist of, after all? How many widgets are there? I double dare you to tell me that a modern computer or games console can't handle 500 widgets per frame. And I now triple dare you to tell me that your UI designer has put that many damn widgets on one stupid screen in the first place. (Every UI I worked on actually did redraw everything every frame anyway. It's really not a big deal. Your average GPU can draw a monstrous amount of stuff, something quite ridiculous, and any sensible game UI that's actually usable will struggle to get anywhere near that limit.) ~~~ invokestatic I'm sure many games can get away very well with an immediate mode GUI. I think the question is not _can_ you, but rather _should_ you. My last project used a custom immediate-mode GUI. At the absolute pinnacle of optimization, it was pushing 2,000+ FPS on my machine with something like 3-4k vertices, with heavy texture mapping and anti-aliasing. But the problem was that even with peak optimization, the CPU was spending 15-20% of its time every frame recreating the UI's vertex buffer. Now imagine if we had done a retained-mode GUI instead. That 15-20% overhead would be reduced to near 0% on a typical frame. For nearly any type of game, that kind of savings is really significant. Think of how many more vertices your artists can add, or cool gameplay elements you can add that you didn't have the CPU time available before, and how much better it will run on lower-end hardware. Why settle for "good-enough" performance? ~~~ revvx > The CPU was spending 15-20% of its time every frame recreating the UI's > vertex buffer. Not saying it is easy, but it's possible to optimize and cache vertex buffers by using something similar to React's VDOM. ~~~ smallnamespace Doesn't your cache just become a limited retained mode with a somewhat hacky, opaque API? ~~~ DougBTX Basically yes. If an immediate mode API is much easier to use, and a retained mode underlying implementation has much better performance, then putting a React-style VDOM layer in-between could get the best of both worlds, depending on how well the middle layer is implemented. ------ layoutIfNeeded So basically go back to WM_PAINT ~~~ pjmlp Not really, it is a go back to mode 13h. ------ chaboud No. ImGUI could not be the future of GUIs. GUIs are multi-process, multi-system, multi-clock, multi-network entities, or at least they have the potential to be. Immediate Mode GUIs are almost non- scalable by design. Imagine a multi-system asynchronous AR collaboration environment. Now imagine that as an Immediate Mode GUI. If we had enough horsepower to do that, we'd be doing something far better with it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Jeff Dean on Large-Scale Deep Learning at Google - charlieegan3 http://highscalability.com/blog/2016/3/16/jeff-dean-on-large-scale-deep-learning-at-google.html ====== hartator It seems to work fine for me, a link to the actual talk on YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSaZGT4-6EY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSaZGT4-6EY) Jeff Dean - Chuck Norris for us nerds - fact as a bonus: "The rate at which Jeff Dean produces code jumped by a factor of 40 in late 2000 when he upgraded his keyboard to USB2.0." ------ return0 Tangentially, watching the pace of papers coming out in machine learning is insane. It's so fast, people may literally cite powerpoint slides when the paper doesnt exist yet. The culture of openness seems to have fostered this insane pace. Contrasting that with the reclusive culture of life sciences explains why there is slow progress there. ~~~ hackuser If someone with technical expertise wanted to keep up on this field, but it wasn't their profession - i.e., they don't need to know every detail and don't have time to read a lot - what would be a good source? ~~~ p1esk Follow Yann Lecun's posts on Facebook. ------ milesward If you like this talk, come see him talk about what's even beyond that at GCP Next: [https://cloudplatformonline.com/NEXT2016.html](https://cloudplatformonline.com/NEXT2016.html) Disclaimer: I will be there freaking out because I work at Google on Cloud and Jeff Dean is rad. ------ YeGoblynQueenne >> If you’re not considering how to use deep neural nets to solve your data understanding problems, you almost certainly should be. This line is taken directly from the talk And this is exactly why Google's hype of their tech is getting dangerous for everyone else, who is not Google. Because they advocate, nay, they preach, that everyone should abandon what they're doing and do what Google tells them works. And, oh, look, we just released those nice, free tools you can use to do it like we do! Which is insane. Google is a corporate entity. It has financial interests. The purpose of its existence is to sell you its stuff, it doesn't give a dime if you'll solve your problems or not. This piece of advice is like Bayer, back in the day, selling its Aspirin as the cure of all ills: "If you're not considering how to take Aspirin to solve your health problems, you almost certainly should be". ~~~ dekhn Although Google is a corp and has financial interests, I think it's in Google's interest to share these ideas in workable form with the world. It can (and I hope it will) contribute a lot to improving a number of things that are wrong with the world. When I was an academic scientist in the mid 2000s, I ended up with more data than I could deal with, and none of the computing systems in academia at the time dealt well with that (they were tuned for HPC/supercomputers). The bigtable, mapreduce, and GFS papers were huge to me, because they provided a nicer framework for data processing. Although Google made those tools for Search and Ads (and profited greatly from them) they also published them, and Doug Cutting and others incorporated them into Hadoop. A similar thing is happening now, but Google got better at releasing their codes as open source, which reduces the time between publication of a good idea, and replication of that work by others outside the corp. (eventually, I went to google to get direct access to its infrastructure; built Exacycle, gave away an enormous amount of free computing time that cost Google rather than profiting it, the leadership _loved_ it even though it cost money, and I even managed to get Googler to apply machine learning to academic problems I cared about). So I don't think Google solely acts in its own short term financial interests. Also, aspirin has turned out to be amazing at solving a wide range of health problems, so I think bayer was probably right (if not for the right reasons) on that one. ~~~ YeGoblynQueenne >> So I don't think Google solely acts in its own short term financial interests. I think what your experience shows is that on the one hand individuals within Google (or any big corp) can and do align their own personal interest with that of the corp and on the other hand that the corp can benefit the community as long as it is making profit and serving its own purposes. Nothing surprising there. As to releasing its tools, here's my Thought for the Day: There's no such thing as a free lunch and the only people who pretend there is are the ones who want to steal your lunch money. Google releases its tools when it is in the interest of Google to do so, not when it's in the interest of anyone else. Yes, they're doing better now than in the past in open-sourcing stuff and I can't know what's on their mind. But I can tell that it doesn't hurt them to get people adopting their tech even as Google itself develops it further and further to something that can only be used by a corp with Google's resources. In short, I'm pretty sure that their friendly offer of, frex, TensorFlow is just some trick to get people roped in to their technology, in the same way that other corps have tried to do before- except that they also made you pay for the privilege. ^ ~~~ dekhn Did you really say that making TensorFlow open source is a trick to get people roped into Google technology? That doesn't make any sense to me. Another big point I think you missed is those individuals within Google influence the decisions about what gets open sourced. We have an entire team that facilitates taking Google-written code and opensourcing it. ~~~ YeGoblynQueenne OK, with the hindsight of a good night's sleep I admit that the bit about giving away TensorFlow does sound a bit tinfoil-hats on. Let me rephrase that then: I can't possibly hope to know why Google is giving away free stuff. I can certainly know that they don't do it out of the kindness of their hearts though. That said, I am indeed very concerned that Google is trying to shape, not only the market, but the science also, to suit its own interests. That could be really bad for everyone, including Google; if research stagnates, they too will find themselves unable to deliver on their big promises about ever speeding progress. ------ return0 He gave a similar talk at stanford a few days later: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7YkPWpwFD4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7YkPWpwFD4) ------ yeukhon Nice. Forbbiden. Did we manage to crash the site? highscalability.com supposed to be pretty high-volume site. ~~~ toddh Sorry about this. It means Squarespace has black listed your IP for some reason. Unfortunately I can't do anything about it. If you can try from another address it will probably work. ~~~ yeukhon Wow :-) I am working from corp office. But thanks! ------ goc I am very interested in AI that can teach itself(sounds too great). Where can I learn up about such AI(related concepts and the whole 9 yards) to start reading papers in the field? I am just looking for comprehensive sources(preferably textbooks). ~~~ knn AI by Russell and Norvig. Machine learning by Murphy, Elements of Statistical Learning by Hastie et al. Just a few good ones out of many! ~~~ gnahckire AI by Russell and Norvig is one of my favorite textbooks of all time. ------ sounds I wish I had more than one upvote for this article. Read the article. If you have the time, just watch the video. ------ unexistance you need to understand the data before it can be made to good 'use' [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11272473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11272473) ------ giardini From the article _"...it seems like an excellent time to gloss Jeff’s talk..."_ "gloss" a talk? WTF? ~~~ npalli To gloss is to annotate some text (or talk)[1], the word glossary comes from that. That meaning is overshadowed by the more modern association with shininess but the annotation meaning seems appropriate here. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloss_(annotation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloss_$annotation$)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Thrift vs. Protocol Buffers - peterb http://floatingsun.net/articles/thrift-vs-protocol-buffers/ ====== markkanof For me the most important point in this article is that Thrift includes an RPC implementation while Protocol Buffers does not. This was very helpful while writing an iPhone application that records audio and sends it to a server for voice recognition processing. Thrift allowed me to setup the iPhone client and the Windows/C# server in only a few lines of code. Protocol Buffers required that I establish a socket connection, send the audio data across, and then reassemble the data on the server side. Not the worlds most difficult problem, but being new to Objective-C at the time it was a bit tricky. I wish I had known about Thrift when I was building my initial implementation based on Protocol Buffers. ~~~ bretthoerner I'm (honestly) curious why a custom serialization format and RPC was a better fit than HTTP for this problem. What was the payload like that made this a better fit? ~~~ atamyrat I don't think network overhead is the problem here, it is about ease of development. Thrift generates working server code and you just have to implement RPC functions. On PB, you need a stack to handle connections, parse messages, dispatch, etc. ~~~ lobster_johnson Note that Thrift supports HTTP as a transport. ------ jbert When I first read about protocol buffers, I was surprised at the similarity to ASN.1/BER: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Encoding_Rules> Basically, they're both nested type/length/value data formats with primitives for numerics, strings, etc with an human readable description language and toolsets to auto-generate language types + (de)serialisers etc. Given that the ASN.1 toolset exists (even if a little dusty, SNMP and X.509 keep it alive) I don't see why google bothered to re-implement. The FAQ: <http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/faq.html> mentions ASN.1 but it's main argument (being tied to a particular form of RPC) doesn't apply to ASN.1. ~~~ wladimir Indeed, it has all been done before with ASN.1. ASN.1 was invented for the exact same reason: data-efficient, fast communication. Currently it is mainly in use by telecom. I've also wondered why so many re-inventions of the wheel what is basically ASN.1 and did some research: The main reason which I found was that, according to developers, for reimplementation ASN.1 was too complex to get right (it has a big legacy) and that the current toolsets had or not the right license, not the right languages, etc. Also, they didn't like the ASN description syntax. ------ sambeau Although not mentioned in the article Go now has support for Protocol Buffers: <http://code.google.com/p/goprotobuf/> ~~~ uriel Go also has gobs which according to Rob Pike improve on protocol buffers in several ways: <http://blog.golang.org/2011/03/gobs-of-data.html> And while gobs are (by design) Go-centric, there are already implementations in C for example: <http://code.google.com/p/libgob/> And Go also has the rpc package, which uses gobs (but can also use json or other encodings): <http://golang.org/pkg/rpc/> ------ ankrgyl The serialization/deserialization times are _dramatically_ different for Python. Thrift has an accelerated binary serializer written in C with Python bindings, while Protobuf's is pure Python. While there exist third party C++ wrappers for Protobuf in Python as well, they are buggy (segfaults). ~~~ TillE export PROTOCOL_BUFFERS_PYTHON_IMPLEMENTATION=cpp python setup.py build_ext It's "EXPERIMENTAL", but it seems to work well. ------ andymoe I personally really like mspack and msgpack-rpc. There are a tone of well supported implementations for various languages and there are some speed and other advantages over thrift and Protocol Buffers. The core implementation is written in C++. <http://msgpack.org> ~~~ ankrgyl The Python RPC libraries seem to rely on Twisted. Does it support generic code generation to fill in your own RPC implementation? ------ al_james I am very cautious of Thrift's custom network stack. We have a java backend service that gets thousands of requests per second per node and where latency is of upmost importance. We tested thrift for communication between the backend service and the front end web code, however we saw an increase in failed requests and latency compared to a server written using netty. For us, using netty and Protocol Buffers works much better, but maybe we were using Thrift wrongly. ------ kaib Some of the protobuf implementations are a bit more official than others. We are using the Go protobuf plugin at Tinkercad and it's maintained by Google for internal use. Given the importance of protobufs in communicating across Google is pretty safe to assume that the implementation is solid (disclaimer: I used to work at Google and know the folks maintaining the Go plugin). That said, we are starting to miss a Javascript protobuf implementation. There is a lot of binary data to serialize across the client/server boundary and not all of it requires a custom format. It would be nice to just drop in server side protobufs and have them work seamlessly on the client. I do understand the criticism about the missing RPC library but I've always found that you need to write your own anyway. ------ vegai I like how this thing looks <http://msgpack.org/> more than each of the aforementioned. Perhaps I'm missing something, but Thrift and protobufs both seem very lacking in comparison ------ tadruj Protocol Buffers are versatile, allowing nesting and includes but performance we got on Java server and PHP/iOS client was pretty poor and PHP libraries do not support whole specification. So we switched to Thrift and whole FB stack with HipHop and Scribe and we're thrilled. Documentation is a problem just at the beginning when setting up the stack. Everything else later is self explanatory. ------ 6ren > But thrift and protobuf are by far the most popular [citation needed] _(seriously, I'm interested)_ XML seems far more popular (in the sense of market-share/adoption, not in the sense of being liked). ~~~ ankrgyl That's a good point, but I think by "most popular" the author was referring to popularity in the hacker/startup community. One could make a similar argument about operating systems ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Operating_system_usage_sha...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Operating_system_usage_share.svg)) or web browsers (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers>), but I don't think anyone on hn would call Windows XP or Internet Explorer "popular" ~~~ 6ren That makes sense, since most startups are technology users, rather than technology seller. e.g. for a startup selling tools/middleware, technology market-share is customer market-share. Thinking further, startups might be early-adopters of new technology, that will eventually become mainstream. But it doesn't seem to be a reliable predictor, since many (most) new technologies don't reach critical mass before being replaced by the next new thing. eg. ASN.1 binary serialization format. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Syntax_Notation_One>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Elon Musk inviting John Carmack to work on rockets - iffyuva https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/588167701069230081 ====== avmich Wonder if JC will decide to make a comeback? I assume AA was suspended for lack of funds to expand the development program - but, say, fuel tests were wonderful. What Mr. Mueller would say? :) ------ chrisbennet I get "Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!" Can someone share what the tweet was? Thx.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Creating a Lightsaber with Polymer - Everlag https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/case-study/lightsaber ====== whoopdedo I can't be the only person who's had just about enough of these cross- promotions. We get it. There's a new movie. I almost feel like not watching it out of protest for how over saturated the advertising has been. ~~~ isolate It's not a movie, it's a marketing event. ------ krebby Fun app, but it's like they chose all the buzzwordy tech from two years ago that frontend devs no longer use. Bower? Jade? Gulp? CoffeeScript? Polymer? And for what? The mobile page is just a single button with an accelerometer listener and websockets / webrtc glue, it shouldn't need any of those. The desktop page is mostly Three.js for loading and rendering the textures, and also the communication with the phone. What advantage does Polymer have over just writing normal ThreeJS and some vanilla js? ~~~ th0br0 What do devs use instead then? React/(ES6\|TS)/jspm/System.js? ~~~ krebby Not necessarily. It's just funny that they're bragging about choosing these particular technologies when they've all fallen out of favor in the last year and a half or so. Odd to see in a tech demo writeup like this. My point (downvotes aside) is that Polymer (or any UI library -- react, angular, whatever) is overkill for this type of application. Without digging too deep into their source, it seems like it could've been done easier and cleaner in vanilla JS and ThreeJS. ------ osxrand How does this site stop the tap on the top of the screen / title bar of safari from scrolling up to the top? Rather irritating.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is free college an existential threat to ISA-funded schools? - tempsy Thinking from the perspective of an ISA funded school like Lambda, would free college effectively destroy, or at least severely limit the growth potential, of those types of schools? ====== LeoSolaris Theoretically, free colleges would eliminate 90% of the colleges. Only the high end, Ivy League, and exclusive colleges would be able to survive as private paid colleges. There wouldn't be much of a point to cost saving or tuition sharing colleges if state run colleges were free. ------ clintonb It depends on how free college is implemented. If it’s a voucher system, where students get a certain amount to spend, the ISA night go away if the voucher covers the full cost of education. Otherwise, an ISA could still be used to cover the excess funds. If the money goes directly to the institution, and the price exposed to students is always $0, the ISA goes away completely. Regardless of how we implement free college, there will most likely not be a restriction on the existence of programs that are not free. These programs may have a drastically smaller market, but a market of some sort may still exist. This is primarily due to [my guesstimation] that we simply don’t have enough seats and beds to cover every high school student going to college.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sweden closer to being the first cashless society with negative interest rates - ogezi http://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-cashless-society-negative-interest-rates-2015-10 ====== draw_down > Credit Suisse says the rule of thumb in Scandinavia is: "If you have to pay > in cash, something is wrong." I hope people don't start talking like this in the US. Something about that statement is very disturbing. ~~~ geon How? You are not forced to pay electronically. You just have an option to cash. The only time I use cash would be if I buy something from the swedish equivalent of craigslist, or in a farmers market. And even there it would be common to use Swish/Square. ~~~ x1798DE I read that statement more as, "If you refuse to pay electronically" than "if you have no electronic means of payment." I know it's contrary to the literal meaning, but it feels like the unstated assumption is that you would only pay in cash if you _must_ , not out of a general preference for privacy. ~~~ geon > I know it's contrary to the literal meaning Also contrary to reality (source: me, being Swedish), and logic; A retailer will hardly refuse to accept cash (although buses do refuse cash to avoid the risk of robbery), while you might avoid buying if you need to handle cash. ~~~ x1798DE That phrase is literally linked to an article called "Sweden: 'We don't accept cash'" ([https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/news-and- expertise/econo...](https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/news-and- expertise/economy/articles/news-and-expertise/2015/03/en/sweden-we-dont- accept-cash.html)). It seems like what you are saying is that they are just making some sort of pun, but you can see why this would seem like it's about people being _suspicious_ of cash. ~~~ geon At least 60 % of the "facts" in that article are made up. ------ gizi It will not work. If there is a need for fiat cash in the economy, they will start using euros or dollars instead of Swedish crowns (SEK). Injecting foreign cash back into the cashless SEK economy amounts to selling these foreign banknotes at any, available exchange point. They cannot reasonably ban these transactions, because foreigners bring these foreign bank notes along with them when they visit Sweden. If they insist on addressing that issue anyway, they will end up introducing Venezuela-style, self-defeating, absurdistan regulations that will make the situation only worse. They will be up against a growing number of people trading against them, in order to defeat such regulations, and to make money in the process of doing so. As always, it will be full of opportunities to thoroughly bleed them while making a killing. So, a Swedish economy without SEK bank notes is possible, but not necessarily one without cash. If that is the situation that materializes, they will have made the situation worse for them (foreign cash) instead of better (Swedish cash). You cannot outsmart economic fundamentals, because there will always be lots of money in punishing off such attempts. ------ HappyFunGuy It is a national security issue to have cash available for use during a time of war, or general internet failure, or natural disaster. Tying your national security to the health of the internet is unwise. ------ crimsonalucard This makes more sense economically. Physical products in general degrade in value over time. Cash by itself does not degrade in value over time. Using cash to represent products is a sort of mismatch. If the products' value degrades so should the value of the instrument representing said product. I don't know why they use negative savings interest rates when the government can provide the same service through QE or lowering loan interest rates. ~~~ cyrus9020 Cash can "degrade", it's called inflation. ~~~ crimsonalucard That's different from value degradation. Additionally if you read further you'd see that I addressed inflation. Interest for loans and QE are all methods the government uses to inflate cash. ------ wodenokoto Well, they can (hopefully) still buy foreign currency and Gold coins, such as Krugerrands. ~~~ digitalengineer Executive Order 6102: "forbidding the Hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States". ------ geon Extremely sensationalized headline. The only source for the microwave thing is hearsay from some policeman. ------ yAnonymous So in a cashless society, what happens when you cancel your bank account? ------ f3llowtraveler Bitcoin. ~~~ maxander The suggestion that Bitcoin would act as a replacement for _government bonds_ in any foreseeable future would reduce most economists to tears of laughter. The interest rate tweaks being discussed here are negligible compared to the market rate fluctuations of Bitcoin on a typical week.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Meteor adding first-party support for GraphQL - sergiotapia https://github.com/meteor/data/blob/design-overview/design/high-level-reactivity.md ====== sergiotapia MDG is currently discussing their initial approach integrating GraphQL support in Meteor. Once this lands the sky is the limit! Everybody is really excited. ~~~ djmashko2 I think the most exciting part of this project for the HN crowd is that it's not Meteor-specific. We really want this project to be used outside of the integrated Meteor platform, in all kinds of production applications. So hopefully it's more like "Meteor is building a reactive GraphQL system anyone can adopt" rather than "adding GraphQL support to Meteor".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
My experience with using cp to copy 432 million files (39 TB) - nazri1 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2014-08/msg00012.html ====== fintler I wrote a little copy program at my last job to copy files in a reasonable time frame on 5PB to 55PB filesystems. [https://github.com/hpc/dcp](https://github.com/hpc/dcp) We got an IEEE paper out of it: [http://conferences.computer.org/sc/2012/papers/1000a015.pdf](http://conferences.computer.org/sc/2012/papers/1000a015.pdf) A few people are continuing the concept to other tools -- that should be available at [http://fileutils.io/](http://fileutils.io/) relatively soon. We also had another tool written on top of [https://github.com/hpc/libcircle](https://github.com/hpc/libcircle) that would gather metadata on a few hundred-million files in a few hours (we had to limit the speed so it wouldn't take down the filesystem). For a slimmed down version of that tool, take a look at [https://github.com/hpc/libdftw](https://github.com/hpc/libdftw) ~~~ laymil And it's interesting and useful for scientific computing where you already have an MPI environment and distributed/parallel filesystems. However, it's not really applicable to this workload, as the paper itself says. _There is a provision in most file systems to use links (symlinks, hardlinks, etc.). Links can cause cycles in the file tree, which would result in a traversal algorithm going into an infinite loop. To prevent this from happening, we ignore links in the file tree during traversal. We note that the algorithms we propose in the paper will duplicate effort proportional to the number of hardlinks. However, in real world production systems, such as in LANL (and others), for simplicity, the parallel filesystems are generally not POSIX compliant, that is, they do not use hard links, inodes, and symlinks. So, our assumption holds._ The reason this cp took such large amounts of time was the desire to preserve hardlinks and the resize of the hashtable used to track the device and inode of the source and destination files. ~~~ encoderer Sure, but if you read that article you walk away with a sense of _thats a lot of files to copy_. And the GP built a tool for jobs 2-3 orders of magnitude larger?! Clearly there are tradeoffs forced on you at that size... ------ pedrocr How about this for a better cp strategy to deal with hardlinks: 1\. Calculate the hash of /sourcedir/some/path/to/file 2\. Copy the file to /tempdir/$hash if it doesn't exist yet 3\. Hard-link /destdir/some/path/to/file to /tempdir/$hash 4\. Repeat until you run out of source files 5\. Recursively delete /tempdir/ This should give you a faithful copy with all the hard-links with constant RAM at the cost of CPU to run all the hashing. If you're smart about doing steps 1 and 2 together it shouldn't require any additional I/O (ignoring the extra file metadata). Edit: actually this won't recreate the same hardlink structure, it will deduplicate any identical files, which may not be what you want. Replacing the hashing with looking up the inode with stat() would actually do the right thing. And that would basically be an on-disk implementation of the hash table cp is setting up in memory. ~~~ derefr If you cp your data onto a Plan9 machine, what results is pretty much exactly the process you've outlined. Plan9's default filesystem is made up of two parts: Fossil, and Venti. \- Fossil is a content-addressable on-disk object store. Picture a disk "formatted as" an S3 bucket, where the keys are strictly the SHAsums of the values. \- Venti is a persistent graph database that holds what would today be called "inode metadata." It presents itself as a regular hierarchical filesystem. The "content" property of an inode simply holds a symbolic path, usually to an object in a mounted Fossil "bucket." When you write to Venti, it writes the object to its configured Fossil bucket, then creates an inode pointing to that key in that bucket. If the key already existed in Fossil, though, Fossil just returns the write as successful immediately, and Venti gets on with creating the inode. Honestly, I'm terribly confused why all filesystems haven't been broken into these two easily-separable layers. (Microsoft attempted this with WinFS, but mysteriously failed.) Is it just inertia? Why are we still creating new filesystems (e.g. btrfs) that don't follow this design? ~~~ pedrocr _> Honestly, I'm terribly confused why all filesystems haven't been broken into these two easily-separable layers. Is it just inertia?_ The penalty for doing content addressed filesystems is of course the CPU usage. btrfs probably has most of the benefits without the CPU cost with its copy-on-write semantics. Note that what you describe (and my initial process) is a different semantic than hard-links. What you get is shared storage but if you write to one of the files only that one gets changed. Whereas with hardlinks both files change. ~~~ derefr In effect, hard links (of mutable files) are a declaration that certain files have the same "identity." You can't get this with plain Venti-on-Fossil, but it's a problem with Fossil (objects are immutable), not with Venti. Venti-on-Venti-on-Fossil would work, though, since Venti just creates imaginary files that inherit their IO semantics from their underlying store, and this should apply recursively: 1\. create two nodes A and B in Venti[1] that refer to one node C in Venti[2], which refers to object[x] with key x in Fossil. 2\. Append to A in Venti[1], causing a write to C in Venti[2], causing a write to object[x] Fossil, creating object[y] with key y. 3\. Fossil returns y to Venti[2]; Venti[2] updates C to point to object[y] and returns C to Venti[1]; Venti[1] sees that C is unchanged and does nothing. Now A and B both effectively point to object[y]. (Note that you don't actually have to have two Venti servers for this! There's nothing stopping you from having Venti nodes that refer to other Venti nodes within the same projected filesystem--but since you're exposing these nodes to the user, your get the "dangers" of symbolic links, where e.g. moving them breaks the things that point to them. For IO operations they have the semantics of hard links, though, instead of needing to be special-cased by filesystem-operating syscalls.) ~~~ ori_b You seem to be confusing venti and fossil. ~~~ theworst Can you explain further? I am not a plan9 expert, by any means, but I'm stuck at where GP made the confusion. Thanks! ~~~ yungchin He just swapped the names I think - Venti is the block store, Fossil is the file system layer. ------ rwg _Disassembling data structures nicely can take much more time than just tearing them down brutally when the process exits._ A wonderful trend I've noticed in Free/Open Source software lately is proudly claiming that a program is "Valgrind clean." It's a decent indication that the program won't doing anything silly with memory during normal use, like leak it. (There's also a notable upswing in the number of projects using static analyzers on their code and fixing legitimate problems that turn up, which is great, too!) While you can certainly just let the OS reclaim all of your process's allocated memory at exit time, you're technically (though intentionally) leaking memory. When it becomes too hard to separate the intentional leaks from the unintentional leaks, I'd wager most programmers will just stop looking at the Valgrind reports. (I suppose you could wrap free() calls in "#ifdef DEBUG ... #endif" blocks and only run Valgrind on debug builds, but that seems ugly.) A more elegant solution is to use an arena/region/zone allocator and place potentially large data structures (like cp's hard link/inode table) entirely in their own arenas. When the time comes to destroy one of these data structures, you can destroy its arena with a single function call instead of walking the data structure and free()ing it piece by piece. Unfortunately, like a lot of useful plumbing, there isn't a standard API for arena allocators, so actually doing this in a cross-platform way is painful: • Windows lets you create multiple heaps and allocate/free memory in them (HeapCreate(), HeapDestroy(), HeapAlloc(), HeapFree(), etc.). • OS X and iOS come with a zone allocator (malloc_create_zone(), malloc_destroy_zone(), malloc_zone_malloc(), malloc_zone_free(), etc.). • glibc doesn't have a user-facing way to create/destroy arenas (though it uses arenas internally), so you're stuck using a third-party allocator on Linux to get arena support. • IRIX used to come with an arena allocator (acreate(), adelete(), amalloc(), afree(), etc.), so if you're still developing on an SGI Octane because you can't get enough of that sexy terminal font, you're good to go. ~~~ _delirium Adding some kind of arena-allocation library to both the build & runtime dependencies _solely_ to keep valgrind happy, with no actual improvement in functionality or performance, doesn't seem like a great tradeoff on the software engineering front. I'd rather see work on improving the static analysis. For example if some memory is intended to be freed at program cleanup, Valgrind could have some way of being told, "this is intended to be freed at program cleanup". Inserting an explicit (and redundant) deallocation as the last line of the program just to make the static analyzer happy is a bit perverse. (That is, assuming that you don't need portability to odd systems that don't actually free memory on process exit.) ~~~ andreasvc I don't see why you assume arenas would be added "solely to keep valgrind happy". Arenas have better performance when allocating a high number of small chunks, because an arena can make better performance trade-offs for this use case than the general malloc allocator. ------ mililani This may be a little off topic, but I used to think RAID 5 and RAID 6 were the best RAID configs to use. It seemed to offer the best bang for buck. However, after seeing how long it took to rebuild an array after a drive failed (over 3 days), I'm much more hesitant to use those RAIDS. I much rather prefer RAID 1+0 even though the overall cost is nearly double that of RAID 5. It's much faster, and there is no rebuild process if the RAID controller is smart enough. You just swap failed drives, and the RAID controller automatically utilizes the back up drive and then mirrors onto the new drive. Just much faster and much less prone to multiple drive failures killing the entire RAID. ~~~ halfcat This can not be stressed strongly enough. There is never a case when RAID5 is the best choice, ever [1]. There are cases where RAID0 is mathematically proven more reliable than RAID5 [2]. RAID5 should never be used for anything where you value keeping your data. I am not exaggerating when I say that very often, your data is safer on a single hard drive than it is on a RAID5 array. Please let that sink in. The problem is that once a drive fails, during the rebuild, if any of the surviving drives experience an unrecoverable read error (URE), the entire array will fail. On consumer-grade SATA drives that have a URE rate of 1 in 10^14, that means if the data on the surviving drives totals 12TB, the probability of the array failing rebuild is close to 100%. Enterprise SAS drives are typically rated 1 URE in 10^15, so you improve your chances ten- fold. Still an avoidable risk. RAID6 suffers from the same fundamental flaw as RAID5, but the probability of complete array failure is pushed back one level, making RAID6 with enterprise SAS drives possibly acceptable in some cases, for now (until hard drive capacities get larger). I no longer use parity RAID. Always RAID10 [3]. If a customer insists on RAID5, I tell them they can hire someone else, and I am prepared to walk away. I haven't even touched on the ridiculous cases where it takes RAID5 arrays weeks or months to rebuild, while an entire company limps inefficiently along. When productivity suffers company-wide, the decision makers wish they had paid the tiny price for a few extra disks to do RAID10. In the article, he has 12x 4TB drives. Once two drives failed, assuming he is using enterprise drives (Dell calls them "near-line SAS", just an enterprise SATA), there is a 33% chance the entire array fails if he tries to rebuild. If the drives are plain SATA, there is almost no chance the array completes a rebuild. [1] [http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/choosing-a-raid-level- by...](http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/choosing-a-raid-level-by-drive- count/) [2] [http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/05/when-no-redundancy-is- mo...](http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/05/when-no-redundancy-is-more- reliable/) [3] [http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/one-big-raid-10-a-new- st...](http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/one-big-raid-10-a-new-standard-in- server-storage/) ~~~ Forlien I think your calculation on failing an array rebuild is wrong. Can you show how you got those numbers? ~~~ halfcat Sure, there were two statements I made. > _On consumer-grade SATA drives that have a URE rate of 1 in 10^14, that > means if the data on the surviving drives totals 12TB, the probability of > the array failing rebuild is close to 100%._ 10^14 bits is 12.5 TB, so on average, the chance of 12TB being read without a single URE is very low, and the probability the array fails to rebuild is close to 100%. I was estimating 10^14 bits to be about 12TB, so the probability is actually 12/12.5 = 96% chance of failure. > _...he has 12x 4TB drives. Once two drives failed, assuming he is using > enterprise drives...there is a 33% chance the entire array fails if he tries > to rebuild. If the drives are plain SATA, there is almost no chance the > array completes a rebuild._ A RAID6 with two failed drives is effectively the same situation as a RAID5 with one failed drive. In order to rebuild one failed drive, the RAID controller must read all data from every surviving drive to recreate the failed drive. In this case, there are 10x 4TB surviving drives, meaning 40TB of data must be read to rebuild. Because these drives are presumably enterprise quality, I am assuming they are rated to fail reading one sector for every 10^15 bits read (10^15 bits = 125 TB). So it's actually 40/125 = 32% chance of failure if you try to rebuild. ------ vhost- These are the types of stories I love. I just learned a boat load in 5 minutes. ~~~ 3rd3 Is there maybe an archive website dedicated to these kind of stories? ~~~ breadbox At one time there was; it was called the Internet. The archive still exists, but it's been made harder to browse through due to being jumbled up with javascript and cat gifs. ~~~ jayvanguard It's true. We should have never let the public on the Internet. It has been downhill since then. ~~~ taeric False choice, isn't it? I mean, the complaint isn't that the public now has sites with massive javascript and related technologies. The complaint is that it has muscled out useful sites that did not use those technologies. And it should be heavily noted that the heavy muscles that have pushed out many of these sites is not necessarily "the public." ~~~ thinkling Kind of funny to say that on a text-only JS-free site that seems to be alive and well, linking to an article on an old-school mailing list archive site. :) ~~~ taeric Oh, certainly. I just can resonate with the sentiment that these sites aren't the majority. Even this site, honestly, is less than easy to deal with on a recurring basis. (Consider, hard to remember which was the top story three days ago at noon.) Specifically, sometimes I lose a story because I refresh and something plummeted off the page. Hard to have any idea how far to "scroll back" to see it. ------ calvins I would usually use the tarpipe mentioned already by others for this sort of thing (although I probably wouldn't do 432 million files in one shot): (cd $SOURCE && tar cf - .) \| (mkdir -p $DEST && cd $DEST && tar xf -) Another option which I just learned about through reading some links from this thread is pax ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_%28Unix%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_%28Unix%29)), which can do it with just a single process: (mkdir -p $DEST && cd $SOURCE && pax -rw . $DEST) Both will handle hard links fine, but pax may have some advantages in terms of resource usage when processing huge numbers of files and tons of hard links. ~~~ tedunangst You know how tar handles hardlinks, right? By creating a giant hash table of every file. ~~~ dredmorbius How's that going to scale with memory? In-memory hash tables were the downfall of cp here. ~~~ tedunangst It's going to scale just like you'd imagine it would. All the people saying "oh, tar was built for this" obviously haven't actually tried replicating the experiment using tar. ~~~ dredmorbius Pretty much as I'd suspected. ------ pflanze I've written a program that attempts to deal with the given situation gracefully: instead of using a hash table, it creates a temporary file with a list of inode/device/path entries, then sorts this according to inode/device, then uses the sorted list to perform the copying/hardlinking. The idea is that sorting should work well with much lower RAM requirements than the size of the file to be sorted (due to data locality, unless the random accesses with the hash, it will be able to work with big chunks, at least when done right (a bit hand-wavy, I know, this is called an "online algorithm" and I remember Knuth having written about those, haven't had the chance to recheck yet); the program is using the system sort command, which is hopefully implementing this well already). The program stupidly calls "cp" right now for every individual file copy (not the hard linking), just to get the script done quickly, it's easy to replace that with something that saves the fork/exec overhead; even so, it might be faster than the swapping hash table if the swap is on a spinning disk. Also read the notes in the --help text. I.e. this is a work in progress as a basis to test the idea, it will be easy to round off the corners if there's interest. [https://github.com/pflanze/megacopy](https://github.com/pflanze/megacopy) PS. the idea of this is to make copying work well with the given situation on a single machine, unless the approach taken by the dcp program mentioned by fintler which seems to rely on a cluster of machines. There may also be some more discussion about this on the mailing list: [http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2014-09/msg00013...](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2014-09/msg00013.html) ------ jrochkind1 So it was all the files in one go, presumably with `cp -r`? What about doing something with find/xargs/i-dunno to copy all the files, but break em into batches so you aren't asking cp to do it's bookkeeping for so many files in one process? Would that work better? Or worse in other ways? ~~~ xchg_ax_ax This page may be useful: [http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/44247/how-to-copy- di...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/44247/how-to-copy-directories- with-preserving-hardlinks) The main issue is that there's no api to get the list of files hard linked together: the only way is to check all the existing files and compare inodes. If you're doing a plain copy over 2 fs, you cannot choose which number the target inode will be, so you need to keep a map between inode numbers, or between inodes and file names ("cp" does the later). ~~~ sounds pedrocr's comment above suggests a good solution: 1\. Copy each file from the source volume to a single directory (e.g. /tmp) on the target volume, named for the source volume inode number. (edit: I suggest using a hierarchy of dirs to avoid the "too many dentry's" slowdown) 2\. If the file has already been copied, it will already exist in /tmp - looking up the inode is a vanilla directory lookup 3\. Create a hard link from /tmp to the actual path of the file 4\. When all the files have been created on the target volume, delete the inode numbers in /tmp ------ pedrocr Unix could really use a way to get all the paths that point to a given inode. These days that shouldn't really cost all that much and this issue comes up a lot in copying/sync situations. Here's the git-annex bug report about this: [https://git-annex.branchable.com/bugs/Hard_links_not_synced_...](https://git- annex.branchable.com/bugs/Hard_links_not_synced_in_direct_mode/) ~~~ asveikau Wow, it's not every day I hear about a filesystem feature that Windows has and Linux doesn't. (On a recent windows system: _fsutil hardlink list <path>_ \-- you can try any random exe or DLL in system32 for an example of a hard link.) I forget what the api for that looks like if I ever knew. Might be private. I am surprised, usually Linux is way ahead of Windows on shiny filesystem stuff. ~~~ peterwwillis Linux just has more filesystems, and sadly a lot of them have various flaws. I'm surprised when people are surprised that Linux isn't some completely superior technical marvel. BSD and Unix systems have been more advanced for decades.. Everyone on Linux still uses _tar_ for god's sake, even though zip can use the same compression algorithms people use on tarballs, and zip actually stores an index of its files rather than 'cat'ing each record on top of the next like an append-only tape archive. (Obviously there are better formats than 'zip' for any platform, but it's just strange that nobody has moved away from tar) ~~~ beagle3 tar is good enough for many uses, so people did not move on. And it doesn't help that tar.gz / tar.bz2 compresses way better than zip in most cases (thanks to using a single compression context, rather than a new one for each file; and also compressing the filenames in the same context), and that it carries ownership and permission information with it - whereas zip doesn't. The HVSC project, who try to collect every single piece of music ever created on a Commodore C64, distribute their archive as a zip-within-a-zip. The common music file is 1k-4k, goes down to ~500-1000 bytes zipped; The subdirectory+filename are often 100 bytes with a lot of redundancy that zip doesn't use, so they re-zip. Had they used .tar.gz or .tar.bz2, the second stage would not be needed. ------ pixelbeat I found an issue in cp that caused 350% extra mem usage for the original bug reporter, which fixing would have kept his working set at least within RAM. [http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2014-09/msg00014...](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2014-09/msg00014.html) ------ gwern > Wanting the buffers to be flushed so that I had a complete logfile, I gave > cp more than a day to finish disassembling its hash table, before giving up > and killing the process....Disassembling data structures nicely can take > much more time than just tearing them down brutally when the process exits. Does anyone know what the 'tear down' part is about? If it's about erasing the hashtable from memory, what takes so long? I would expect that to be very fast: you don't have to write zeros to it all, you just tell your GC or memory manager to mark it as free. ~~~ mjn Looking at the code, it looks like deallocating a hash table requires traversing the entire table, because there is malloc()'d memory associated with each hash entry, so each entry has to be visited and free()'d. From hash_free() in coreutils hash.c: for (bucket = table->bucket; bucket < table->bucket_limit; bucket++) { for (cursor = bucket->next; cursor; cursor = next) { next = cursor->next; free (cursor); } } Whereas if you just don't bother to deallocate the table before the process exits, the OS will reclaim the whole memory block without having to walk a giant data structure. That's a fairly common situation in C programs that do explicit memory management of complex data structures in the traditional malloc()/free() style. Giant linked lists and graph structures are another common culprit, where you have to pointer-chase all over the place to free() them if you allocated them in the traditional way (vs. packing them into an array or using a userspace custom allocator for the bookkeeping). ~~~ ritchiea Why exactly is it necessary to to free each hash entry instead of exiting the process? ~~~ mjn If it's the last thing you do before you exit the process, it isn't necessary, because the OS will reclaim your process's memory in one fell swoop. I believe that's what the linked post is advocating 'cp' should do. (At least on modern systems that's true; maybe there are some exotic old systems where not freeing your data structures before exit causes permanent memory leaks?) It's seen as good C programming practice to free() your malloc()s, though, and it makes extending programs easier if you have that functionality, since what was previously the end of program can be wrapped in a higher-level loop without leaking memory. But if you really are exiting for sure, you don't have to make the final free-memory call. It can also be faster to not do any intermediate deallocations either: just leave everything for the one big final deallocation, as a kind of poor-man's version of one-generation generational GC. Nonetheless many C programmers see it somehow as a bit unclean not to deallocate properly. Arguably it does make some kind of errors more likely if you don't, e.g. if you have cleanup that needs to be done that the OS _doesn 't_ do automatically, you now have different kinds of cleanup routines for the end-of-process vs. not-end-of-process case. ~~~ epmos I tend to do this in my C programs because in development usually have malloc() wrapped so that if any block hasn't been free()'ed it's reported at exit() time. This kind of check for lost pointers is usually so cheap that you use it even if you never expect to run on a system without decent memory management. As an aside, GNU libc keeps ( or at least used to keep, I haven't checked in years ) the pointers used by malloc()/free() next to the blocks themselves, which gives really bad behavior when freeing a large number of blocks that have been pushed out to swap--you wind up bringing in pages in order to free them because the memory manager's working set is the size of all allocated memory. Years ago I wrote a replacement that avoided this just to speed up Netscape's horrible performance when it re-sized the bdb1.85 databases it used to track browser history. The browser would just "go away" thrashing the disk for hours and killing it just returned you to a state where it would decide to resize again an hour or so after a restart. Using LD_PRELOAD to use a malloc that kept it's bookkeeping away from the allocated blocks changed hours to seconds. ------ sitkack I appreciate that he had the foresight to install more ram and configure more swap. I would hate to be days into a transfer and have the OOM killer strike. ------ angry_octet The difficulty is that you are using a filesystem hierarchy to 'copy files' when you actually want to do a volume dump (block copy). Use XFS and xfsdump, or ZFS and zfs send, to achieve this. Copy with hard link preservation is essentially like running dedupe except that you know ahead of time how many dupes there are. Dedupe is often very memory intensive, and even well thought out implementations don't support keeping book keeping structures on disk. ~~~ steveh73 "Normally I'd have copied/moved the files at block-level (eg. using dd or pvmove), but suspecting bad blocks, I went for a file-level copy because then I'd know which files contained the bad blocks." ~~~ angry_octet I was simplifying... dump backs up inodes not blocks. Some inodes point to file data and some point to directory data. Hard links are references to the same inode in multiple directory entries, so when you run xfsrestore, the link count increments as the FS hierarchy is restored. xfsdump/zfs send are file system aware, unlike dd, and can detect fs corruption (ZFS especially having extensive checksums). In fact, any info cp sees about corruption comes from the FS code parsing the FS tree. However, except on zfs/btrfs, data block corruption will pass unnoticed. And in my experience, when you have bad blocks, you have millions of them -- too many to manually fix. As this causes a read hang, it is usually better to dd copy the fs to a clean disk, set to replace bad blocks with zeros, then fsck/xfs_repair when you mount, then xfsdump. dd conv=noerror,sync,notrunc bs=512 if=/dev/disk of=diskimg See Also: [http://xfs.org/docs/xfsdocs-xml-dev/XFS_User_Guide/tmp/en- US...](http://xfs.org/docs/xfsdocs-xml-dev/XFS_User_Guide/tmp/en-US/html/xfs- repair.html) [http://xfs.org/index.php/Reliable_Detection_and_Repair_of_Me...](http://xfs.org/index.php/Reliable_Detection_and_Repair_of_Metadata_Corruption) ~~~ Rapzid If the risk of keeping the system running while the array rebuilt was deemed to high, I would have just gone with a dd/ddrescue of the remaining disks onto new disks and then moved on from there. +1 for mentioning ZFS. It's really quite amazing. Almost like futuristic alien technology compared to the other freely available file systems. ------ minopret In light of experience would it perhaps be helpful after all to use a block- level copy (such as Partclone, PartImage, or GNU ddrescue) and analyze later which files have the bad blocks? I see that the choice of a file-level copy was deliberate: "I'd have copied/moved the files at block-level (eg. using dd or pvmove), but suspecting bad blocks, I went for a file-level copy because then I'd know which files contained the bad blocks." ~~~ fsniper Also there is no mention of unrecoverable file analysis like error handling of cp operations in the article. And with this many files it would not be feasible without using an error log file. So going with a simple block copy should suffice IMHO. ~~~ rbh42 I'm the OP, so I can shred a bit of light on that: Dell's support suggested a file-level copy when I asked them what they recommended (but I'm not entirely sure they understood the implications). Also, time was not a big issue. I did keep a log file with the output from cp, and it clearly identified the filenames for the inodes with bad blocks. Actually, I'm not sure how dd would handle bad blocks. ~~~ fsniper Thank you for clarification. I was about to bet on "read fail repeat skip" cycle for dd's behaviour but, looking into coreutil's source code at [https://github.com/goj/coreutils/blob/master/src/dd.c](https://github.com/goj/coreutils/blob/master/src/dd.c) , if I'm not mistaken , dd does not try to be intelligent and just uses a zeroed out buffer so It would return 0's for unreadable blocks. ------ IvyMike Interesting. In Windows-land, the default copy is pretty anemic, so probably most people avoid it for serious work. I'd probably use robocopy from the command line. And if I was being lazy, I'd use the Teracopy GUI. I think my limit for a single copy command has been around 4TB with robocopy-- and that was a bunch of large media files, instead of smaller more numerous files. Maybe there's a limit I haven't hit. ~~~ noinsight > Teracopy I've used FastCopy for GUI based larger transfers, it's open source and can handle larger datasets well in my experience. It also doesn't choke on >MAX_PATH paths. Haven't had problems with it. Supposedly it's the fastest tool around... The only slight issue is that the author is Japanese so the English translations aren't perfect plus the comments in the source are in Japanese. ~~~ gizmo686 ">MAX_PATH paths" How does this happen? ~~~ xenadu02 Technical debt that keeps on giving. Today there are N applications. "We can't increase MAX_PATH because it will break existing applications!" Tomorrow there are N+M applications. "We can't increase MAX_PATH because it will break existing applications!" Repeat forever. Any time you are faced with a hard technical decision like this, the pain will always be least if you make the change either: 1\. During another transition (e.g. 16-bit to 32-bit, or 32-bit to 64-bit). Microsoft could have required all 64-bit Windows apps to adopt a larger MAX_PATH, among other things. 2\. Right NOW, because there will never be an easier time to make the change. The overall pain to all parties will only increase over time. ------ pmontra Another lesson to be learnt is that it's nice to have the source code for the tools we are using. ------ dredmorbius The email states that file-based copy operations were used in favor of dd due to suspected block errors. Two questions come to mind: 1\. I've not used dd on failing media, so I'm not sure of the behavior. Will it plow through a file with block-read failures or halt? 2\. There's the ddrescue utility, which _is_ specifically intended for reading from nonreliable storage. Seems that this could have offered another means for addressing Rasmus's problem. It can also fill in additional data on multiple runs across media, such that more complete restores might be achieved. [https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html) ~~~ pflanze OP said "I went for a file-level copy because then I'd know which files contained the bad blocks". When you copy the block device with ddrescue (dd doesn't have logic to work around the bad sectors and the only sensible action for it is thus to stop, but don't take my word for it), the result will just have zeroes in the places where bad blocks were, and, assuming the filesystem structure is good enough (you should run fsck on it), will give you files with zones of zeroes. But you won't know which files without either comparing them to a backup (which you won't have by definition if you're trying to recover) or with a program that verifies every file's structure (which won't exist for the general case). Whereas cp will issue error messages with the path of the file in question. So the OP's decision makes sense. ~~~ dredmorbius I've played with ddrescue very lightly. From the GNU webpage linked above, it appears it creates logfiles which can be examined: _Ddrescuelog is a tool that manipulates ddrescue logfiles, shows logfile contents, converts logfiles to /from other formats, compares logfiles, tests rescue status, and can delete a logfile if the rescue is done. Ddrescuelog operations can be restricted to one or several parts of the logfile if the domain setting options are used._ That might allow for identification of files with bad sectors. ~~~ pflanze That would need either a hook to the kernel or a file system parser. Even if you manage to do that, I'm not sure it would be a good idea to continue to use a file system that has lost sectors, even after fsck. Are you sure fsck is fixing any inconsistency? Are there any automatic procedures in place that guarantee that the fsck algorithms are in sync with the actual file system code? (Answer anew for any file system I might be using.) You definitely should do backups by reading the actual files, not the underlying device; perhaps in this case it could be OK (since it was a backup itself already, hence a copy of life data; but then if OP bothered enough to recover the files, maybe he'll bother enough to make sure they stay recovered?) ------ icedchai For that many files I probably would've used rsync between local disks. _shrug_ ~~~ ajross And hopefully you would have written up a similar essay on the oddball experiences you had with rsync, which is even more stateful than cp and even more likely to have odd interactions when used outside its comfort zone. Ditto for tricks like:(cd $src; tar cf - .) \| (cd $dst; tar xf -). Pretty much nothing is going to work in an obvious way in a regime like this. That's sort of the point of the article. ~~~ icedchai Or maybe not. He mentions rsnapshot in the article, which uses rsync under the hood. This implies rsync would have a _very_ good chance of handling a large number of hardlinks... since it created them in the first place. ~~~ sophacles That doesn't follow. If backups are for multiple machines to a big file server, the backup machine will have a much larger set of files than those that come from an individual machine. Further, each backup "image" compares the directory for the previous backup to the current live system. Generally it looks something like this: 1\. Initial backup or "full backup" \- copy the full targeted filesystem to the time indexed directory of the backup machine. 2\. Sequential backups: a. on the backup machine, create a directory for the new time, create a mirror directory structure of the previous time. b. hard link the files in the new structure to those in the previous backup (which may be links themselves, back to the last full backup. c. rsync the files to the new backup directory. Anything that needs to be transfered results in rsync transfering the file to a new directory, the moving it into the proper place. This unlinks the filename from the previous version and replaces it with the full version. So yeah, the result of this system over a few machines and a long-timeframe backup system is way more links on the backup machine than any iteration of the backup will ever actually use. ~~~ icedchai Yes, it has more links, I realize, but this still doesn't mean it wouldn't work. Give it a shot and report back. (Hah.) ------ dspillett _> The number of hard drives flashing red is not the same as the number of hard drives with bad blocks._ This is the real take-away. Monitor your drives. At very least enable SMART, and also regularly run a read on the full underlying drive (SMART won't see and log blocks that are on the way out so need retries for successful reads, unless you actually try to read those blocks). That won't completely make you safe, but it'll greatly reduce the risk of other drives failing during a rebuild by increasing the chance you get advanced warning that problems are building up. ~~~ rbh42 Glad someone noticed it (I'm the OP). Reading the drives systematically is called "Patrol Read" and is often enabled by default, but you can tweak the parameters. ------ mturmon The later replies regarding the size of the data structures cp is using are also worth reading. This is a case where pushing the command farther can make you think harder about the computations being done. ------ grondilu On Unix, isn't it considered bad practice to use cp in order to copy a large directory tree? IIRC, the use of tar is recommended. Something like: $ (cd $origin && tar cf - ) \| (cd $destination && tar xvf - ) ~~~ dmckeon Use && there, not ; - consider the result if either of the cd commands fails. ~~~ grondilu fixed ------ sauere > While rebuilding, the replacement disk failed, and in the meantime another > disk had also failed. I feel the pain. I went thru the same hell a few months ago. ------ maaku Another lesson: routinely scrub your RAID arrays. ~~~ jewel On debian-based systems, /etc/cron.d/mdadm will already do this on the first Sunday of the month. ------ 0x0 I wonder how well rsync would have fared here. ~~~ sitkack Rsync can die just from scanning the whole directory tree of files first. ~~~ chadcatlett The incremental option(enabled by default) introduced in rsync 3.0 greatly reduces the need for scanning the whole directory structure. ------ ccleve Maybe this is naive, but wouldn't it have made more sense to do a bunch of smaller cp commands? Like sweep through the directory structure and do one cp per directory? Or find some other way to limit the number of files copied per command? ~~~ caf No, because then it wouldn't have replicated the hardlink structure of the original tree. That was the goal, and also the bit that causes the high resource consumption. ------ Andys A problem with cp (and rsync, tar, and linux in general) is there is read- ahead within single files, but no read-ahead for the next file in the directory. So it doesn't make full use of the available IOPS capacity. ------ davidu This is not, not, not how one should be using RAID. The math is clear that in sufficiently large disk systems, RAID5, RAID6, and friends, are all insufficient. ~~~ lysium Can you elaborate? ~~~ davidu [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/why-raid-5-stops- working-i...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/why-raid-5-stops-working- in-2009/162) ~~~ lysium Thanks for the link! The article says, that due to the read error rate and the size of today's disks, RAID 5 and RAID 6 have (kind of) lost their purpose. ~~~ davidu Yep, mathematically no longer safe. ------ dbbolton >We use XFS Why? ~~~ cnvogel I personally still consider XFS a very mature and reliable filesystem. Both in terms of utility programs and kernel implementation. If I remember correctly, it was ported to linux from SGI/Irix where it was used for decades. It also was the default fs for RedHat/centos for a long time, so it might still have stuck at many shops. Heres my anecdotal datapoint on which I base my personal believe: From about 10-6 years ago, when I was doing sysadmin-work at university building storage-systems from commodity parts for experimental bulk data, we first had a load of not-reliably working early raid/sata(?) adapters, and those made ext3 and reiserfs (I think...) oops the kernel when the on-disk structure went bad. Whereas XFS just put a "XFS: remounted FS readonly due to errors" in the kernel logfile. That experience made XFS my default filesystem up to recently when I started to switch to btrfs. (of course, we fixed the hardware-errors, too... :-) ) Also, from that time, I got to use xfsdump/xfsrestore for backups and storage of fs-images which not even once failed on me. ~~~ Eiriksmal As a blithe, new-Linux user (3.5 years), I was bumfuzzled when I saw RHEL/CentOS 7 switched from ext4 to XFS, figuring it to be some young upstart stealing the crown from the king. Then I did some Googling and figured out that XFS is as old as ext _2_! I'm looking forward to discovering how tools like xfs can make my life easier. ------ limaoscarjuliet Rsync seems a better tool for this. Can be run multiple times and it will just copy missing blocks. ------ nraynaud it reminds me of crash only software. ------ gaius I would probably have used tar\|tar for this, or rsync. ~~~ thaumaturgy You're right to recommend a tarpipe. I've had to copy several very large BackupPC storage pools in the past, and a tarpipe is the most reliable way to do it. (The only downside to BackupPC IMO...) For future reference for other folks, the command would look something like this: cd /old-directory && tar czvflpS - . \| tar -C /new-directory -xzvf - Tarpipes are especially neat because they can work well over ssh (make sure you have ssh configured for passwordless login, any prompt at all will bone the tarpipe): cd /old-directory && tar czvflpS - . \| ssh -i /path/to/private-key user@host "tar -C /new-directory -xzvf -" ...but tarpipe-over-ssh is not very fast. I have a note that says, "36 hours for 245G over a reasonable network" (probably 100Mb). Disk-to-disk SATA or SAS without ssh in between would be significantly faster. ~~~ LeoPanthera The prompt goes to stderr, the pipe only pipes stdout, so a prompt should not cause excessive bonage, as long as you're there to respond to it. Also, don't use -z locally, or even over a moderately fast network. The compression is not that fast and almost always makes things slower. ~~~ thaumaturgy Good to know! Also, re: bonage, I agree that it "shouldn't", but it definitely did. From my sysadmin notes file: > The tar operation kicks off before ssh engages; having ssh ask for a > password seems to intermittently cause problems with the tar headers on the > receiving end. (It _shouldn't_, but it seems to.) ------ RexM Is this where a new cp fork comes about called libracp? ------ brokentone Feels like a similar situation to this: [http://dis.4chan.org/read/prog/1109211978/21](http://dis.4chan.org/read/prog/1109211978/21) ------ lucb1e > 20 years experience with various Unix variants > I browsed the net for other peoples' experience with copying many files and > quickly decided that cp would do the job nicely. After 20 years you no longer google how to copy files. Edit: Reading on he talks about strace and even reading cp's source code which makes it even weirder that he had to google how to do this... Edit2: Comments! Took only ten downvotes before someone bothered to explain what I was doing wrong, but now there are three almost simultaneously. I guess those make a few good points. I'd still think cp ought to handle just about anything especially given its ubiquitousness and age, but I see the point. And to clarify: I'm not saying the author is stupid or anything. It's just _weird_ to me that someone with that much experience would google something which on the surface sounds so trivial, even at 40TB. ~~~ sitkack Because the man is wise. He also didn't kill a job that appeared to be hung, he started reading the code to figure out why and determined that it would in fact, complete.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How mosquitos deal with getting hit by raindrops - davi http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/24/raindrops-keep-falling-on-my-head-a-mosquitos-lament/ ====== developer1 Of course the video doesn't show anything interesting, the mosquito's leg is hardly even grazed. I was definitely hoping for the version where a drop smacked the insect dead on target. Fairly strange for a lab result - if that's the only video that was captured, it really doesn't seem to divulge much at all. Where's the cool video? :D ~~~ e2e8 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ88ny09ruM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ88ny09ruM) ~~~ lucb1e Direct hit just after the minute mark: [https://youtu.be/LQ88ny09ruM?t=1m3s](https://youtu.be/LQ88ny09ruM?t=1m3s) ~~~ mordrax Watching it several times, it looks like only the left most mozzie came out unscathed. The other two took it hard and went down... definitely didn't 'walk off the bus' :\ ------ upofadown >A study says a mosquito being hit by a raindrop is roughly the equivalent of a human being whacked by a school bus, the typical bus being about 50 times the mass of a person. That is not a sensible comparison. When you scale something mass changes as the cube of dimension. Strength changes as the square of dimension. So small things are inherently stronger with respect to their mass. ~~~ abandonliberty [Citation Wanted] Very believable; how does the math work out? ~~~ troymc Galileo. _Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences_. 1638. It's known as the square-cube law. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square- cube_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law) ~~~ abandonliberty Thanks - I hadn't realized that muscle strength was proportional purely to cross section. ------ dgemm > But because our mosquito is oh-so-light, the raindrop moves on, unimpeded, > and hardly any force is transferred. All that happens is that our mosquito > is suddenly scooped up by the raindrop and finds itself hurtling toward the > ground at a velocity of roughly nine meters per second, an acceleration > which can’t be very comfortable, because it puts enormous pressure on the > insect’s body, up to 300 gravities worth, says professor Hu. Interesting article, but in the span of one paragraph here we have confused velocity, acceleration, and pressure - and there are similar errors in the following one. For an article about physics, I would expect this to at least be proofread. The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect: [http://harmful.cat-v.org/journalism/](http://harmful.cat-v.org/journalism/) ~~~ joncameron From your link: > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in > a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and > read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about > Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what > you know. Which is of course intriguing, since cat-v.org hosts frothing-at-the-mouth vitriol about topics like women in tech and gay marriage in the always trustworthy and well reasoned medium of reposted reddit and slashdot comments. And presumably I'm supposed to click over to the technical stuff with a straight face. ~~~ roghummal It's telling that you'd apply a derogatory label and attack the source medium rather than say anything of substance about the content that offended you. cat-v is chock-full of food for thought. You don't have to agree with any of it and in fact disagreement is a large part of the site. "Other than total and complete world domination, the overriding goal is to encourage and stimulate critical and independent thinking." ------ daniel-levin From an io9 article on the same research: >> [Hu] and Dickerson constructed a flight arena consisting of a small acrylic cage covered with mesh to contain the mosquitoes but permit entry of water drops. The researchers used a water jet to simulate rain stream velocity while observing six mosquitoes flying into the stream. Amazingly, all the mosquitoes lived. The researchers used _simulated rain drops_ on _six_ mosquitoes. There are more than six species of mosquitoes. They controlled for wind effects (which are part and parcel of rain). So they excluded horizontally travelling raindrops. My immediate reaction to the conclusion that mosquitoes can fly in rain was "Really? Not always". Here is a methodologically lacking and wholly unscientific anecdote: I have lived in Johannesburg my entire life, where mosquitoes are quite prevalent during the summer months. When it is raining heavily (it is usually quite windy as well), the local species of mosquito that feeds of humans do not present a problem as the number of airborne mosquitoes tends to zero. ~~~ joeyspn ^This I live in a mediterranean zone near a huge lake and during summer mosquitos are your every night companions (specially if you're working during late night hours). But when a summer storm brews the mosquitos disappear for two or three days. Why? This has been for me a recurrent question, and the answer has been always obvious: few of them survive being hit by raindrops. You can make 1000 theories about how our tiny vampire friends deal with raindrops, but it's pretty clear that intensive rain (>3hours) wipe out mosquitos population for several days... ~~~ soneca I also agree. > _" And yet (you probably haven’t looked, but trust me), when it’s raining > those little pains in the neck are happily darting about in the air, getting > banged—and they don’t seem to care."_ I have looked and I don't trust you. I live in Brazil where mosquitoes are present all the time, even in the city (obviously, on a smaller scale than places closer to nature). I do notice that whenever is raining there is a sharp drop in mosquitoes number flying inside our homes. They don't completely disappear, but is notorious they are in much smaller numbers. As this is common knowledge over years and years, across basically all the people, I don't consider it anecdote, but empirical observation. I cannot answer if that is because raindrops kill them, or they just preserve themselves sheltered in their nests, or they breed less in rainy days, or whatever. But the article (not sure about the research) is based on a false premisse. ~~~ daniel-levin Well, no, it's not empirical until we design some experiments to test the theory, make predictions, test them, come up with potentially observable data that would falsify our hypotheses, publish our results and let them be peer reviewed, reproduced elsewhere etc... The jump from anecdotes to empiricism is a large one that is not to be undertaken lightly. ------ nippoo "Had the raindrop slammed into a bigger, slightly heavier animal, like a dragonfly, the raindrop would “feel” the collision and lose momentum. The raindrop might even break apart because of the impact, and force would transfer from the raindrop to the insect’s exoskeleton, rattling the animal to death." Has anyone actually done any research on dragonflies being hit by raindrops, or is this just speculation? ------ chrismorgan The drawings in this article tend to be absurdly large, with the outcome that the document is, transferred, around 23MB, for no good reason. _Sigh._ ~~~ Jgrubb Because editors. ------ Kiro > In most direct hits, Hu and colleagues write, the insect is carried five to > 20 body lengths downward > If you want to see this for yourself, take a look at Hu’s video What? Nothing like that happens in it. ~~~ dasmoth Are you confusing wing span with body length? In the right hand panel of the video, the insect certainly moves several body lengths, and is still moving downwards at the end of the clip. ~~~ Kiro No, it says "20 body lengths downward, and then [...] gets up and “walks” to the side, then steps off into the air". In other words 20 body lengths while being in the raindrop, which doesn't happen in the video. In fact, the raindrop barely touches it. ------ ebbv If it wasn't for the cute child like drawings this would be a truly terrible piece of link bait. As it is it's still pretty and, and I expect better from NatGeo. Anyone who lives in a mosquito heavy area knows that mosquitos (like almost all airborne insects) go into hiding during heavy rain and/or wind. ------ jbert Does this places a reasonable selection pressure on the kinds of flying insects we can have? Big enough to shrug off a raindrop hit, or small enough to surf along the surface tension until it can slide off? ~~~ baddox Butterflies just seek shelter. [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-do- butterflie...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-do-butterflies- do-wh/) ------ theVirginian It would appear they haven't yet evolved to deal with being hit by cars quite as gracefully. ~~~ whoopdedo I think this can be approached the same as the "ants can lift 50 times their own weight" bit of trivia. It doesn't translate to "if a human were as strong as an ant he'd be able to lift an elephant" because size doesn't scale that way. Ants and mosquitoes get away with larger forces relative to their mass because the skeleton and muscles needed are still within reasonable material and fuel costs. A human-sized animal that wanted to survive being hit by a car would need to spend much more energy per mass than the insect does. ~~~ eru I think theVirginian was commenting about mosquitoes getting smashed on a car's windshield, not about cars and humans. ~~~ whoopdedo Oh, right. I thought it was a reference to "the equivalent of a human being whacked by a school bus" from the article. ------ rokhayakebe I just realized how making things fun and funny can help to teach anything. The drawings and the comical tone made this seem so approachable. I wish they had a series of 1000 of such lessons I could read. ~~~ KnightOfWords Here's his old blog on NPR: [http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/](http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/) Probably not 1000, but perhaps getting on for it. ~~~ rokhayakebe Thank you for sharing. ------ jokr004 Not really important but.. "nine gravities _(88 /m/squared)_" I don't get it, the scientificamerican blog that they are quoting has the right units, where did they come up with this? ------ mordrax > But because our mosquito is oh-so-light, the raindrop moves on, unimpeded, > and hardly any force is transferred. So if the mosquito's weight is insignificant compared to that of the heavier and denser water drop and that's what keeps it from having the force transferred, would this equally apply to hailstorms? (Where our mosquitoes are pelted by small hail balls the size of raindrops) ~~~ acyacy You don't really find mosquitoes where you're likely to find hailstorms. ~~~ RBerenguel In Spain we definitely have mosquitos, and most Augusts we have these summery storms, sometimes bringing also hailstorms (sizze varies though between drop sized ice and golfball sized ice) ~~~ acyacy You find them in these areas. When it gets cold there tends to be far fewer of them. And compared to the equators its nearly incomparible. ~~~ Dove Cold isn't required for hailstorms. The ice forms at altitude. We have a lot of hailstorms in the spring and summer in Colorado, and while it isn't the mosquitoiest place I've _ever_ lived, there _are_ mosquitoes. ~~~ acyacy Compared with where its mosquito haven like by the Equator? I suppose raindrop vs hailstone is a reason is one of the reason's the density issues are so different. ~~~ Dove Yeah. Mosquitoes are densest in the tropics where hailstorms are rare, but just about everywhere on earth short of Antarctica has _some_ mosquitoes. I'd think mosquitoes would meet hailstones occasionally, though I can't really see the mosquito surviving it. ------ mleonhard The article embedded a short video. Here's longer video with explanations: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ88ny09ruM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ88ny09ruM) ------ state Can't help but immediately notice: "Drawing by Robert Krulwich" ~~~ sohkamyung Yes, Robert Krulwich has joined the Nat Geo Phenomena blogging platform [ [http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/blog/curiously- krulw...](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/blog/curiously-krulwich/) ] ~~~ k_brother I think the commenter meant that Krulwich actually illustrated the piece too. Who knew Krulwich could draw! ~~~ sohkamyung Ah, I see. My bad. Yes, Krulwich does draw pretty well. ------ dharma1 if you like watching slo mo videos, recommend this channel: [https://www.youtube.com/user/theslowmoguys/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/theslowmoguys/videos) ------ bnolsen so if mosquiotos are oblivious to rain is there some way to make artificial rain with different properties that could destroy mosquitos en masse? ~~~ chinathrow Yes, it's called poison and it's being done a lot. [http://www.local10.com/news/plane-to-spray-for-mosquitoes- ov...](http://www.local10.com/news/plane-to-spray-for-mosquitoes-over-south- fla/27244642) Ah you mean different mechanical properties ;) ------ stillsut Send this to Bill Gates, that guy _HATES_ mosquitoes. ~~~ Kluny A man who thought, "When I'm a billionaire, I'm going to dedicate my life to getting rid of those nasty fuckers (mosquitoes)" and then _did_ it. ------ cJ0th very interesting article. It is a pity that his column has no rss feed. ------ blumkvist A commenter on the site says that some type of mosquitoes (Texas) are used in oil drilling. I tried googling "texas mosquitoes oil drilling" and variants, but didn't find anything. >"Why, one species even secretes an enzyme to dissolve the organic matter in blood leaving only the iron in haemoglobin. Then another enzyme causes the iron atoms to join to form biological drill pipe! These structures are known to be as much as 6 inches in diameter and to extend a mile deep." Is there something to it or he just went to on the internet to tell lies? ~~~ coconutrandom That is a joke that makes more sense once you've been bitten there. ~~~ briandear In Texas, we'd call that a tall tale. ~~~ dalke Up north a few winters back the weather was so cold that words froze up as you talked. People had to stand around a fire to have a conversation. When spring thaw finally came the sound of all the melting conversations was deafening. Then there was the time that Pecos Bill lassoed and rode a twister, but that's a tale for another time.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The first ever accurate molecular simulation with quantum computing by Google - gri3v3r http://www.sciencealert.com/google-s-quantum-computer-is-helping-us-understand-quantum-physics ====== selimthegrim dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12132700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12132700)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
25-Year-Old Textbooks and Holes in the Ceiling: Inside America’s Public Schools - SQL2219 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/reader-center/us-public-schools-conditions.html ====== awat I wish I could upvote this more than once. Both my parents were teachers. The disparities that children face from day one neighborhood to neighborhood are so large it makes me sigh so hard when I hear people say things like just work harder. ~~~ mncharity I'm not sure whether the following thought makes that better, or even worse. Even the best of pre-college science education is wretched. Chemistry education research describes chemistry education content as "incoherent". There's limited evidence that it's possible to do much much better. But it's hard to create such content, and there's little incentive, so it largely doesn't exist. Even in expensive private schools in states with the best public education. So one perspective is, if by dint of extraordinary societal efforts, the disparity were eliminated, then science education would achieve... a uniformity of wretchedness. Useful for student opportunity and mobility, but, sigh. Another perspective is, that if changing technology and incentives makes transformatively better science education possible, it need not follow the existing pattern of disparity. For illustration, if the best lab experience becomes a virtual lab experience, then having a well-stocked lab vs a moldy closet, suddenly matters much less. Another perspective is, of course, that the pattern could live on (ducktaped broken obsolete VR?), and thus the barrier grow even larger. :/ But in such a transition, there's at least a hope for piggybacking a change in disparity.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
As Tesla struggles to exit 'production hell,' buyers complain of delivery limbo - Aloha http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-sales-delivery-problems-20180912-story.html ====== chmaynard Is it legal for a company to require full payment before the product has shipped? Most businesses don't operate that way.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Optical Illusion That’s So Good, It Even Fools DanKam - cmrx64 https://dankaminsky.com/2010/12/17/mindless-equals-blown/ ====== cmrx64 I'd seen the optical illusion before, it was one of the more impressive ones in my middle school design class. Very, very interesting to see how it "fools" a computer program. I wonder how other computer vision systems compare.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Firm fat-fingered G Suite and deleted data, escalates support ticket to lawsuit - gilad https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/05/musey_v_google_lawsuit/ ====== markgavalda So let me get this straight: they deleted their own account and because they didn't have any backups (because why would they) they're suing Google now. That's gonna end well.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dogescript - RossPenman http://zachbruggeman.me/dogescript/ ====== steveklabnik What's funny about this is that every comment here is calling this useless, yet it's something that's very much in the hacker spirit. Utility is not the end goal of everything. ~~~ victorf I recall when LOL Cats were actually pretty funny, way back around "I has a flavor". Then people who didn't understand the language [1] overran the Internet with cats that had incredible vocabularies and immaculate grammar (they just didn't know how to spell and were evil). The only thing that bothers me about Dogescript is that the joke is too forced. The typical Shibe pictures are just "wow", "such X", "very Y", "wow"; when one adds in the "shh", "plz", and "rly", and (even worse) starts crafting a coherent sequential story, it removes the humor from the doge meme. [1] [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004442.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004442.html) ~~~ jamesaguilar Things stop being funny over time. There's no reason to be concerned. There will always be a next funny thing, and there's really very little you can do about it. ~~~ victorf I'm not concerned. This was my response to the claim that it is "very much in the hacker spirit". I find it neither utile nor humorous. I think compiling it to Javascript is trivial and not worth our attention. ~~~ girvo While I may disagree with your conclusion here, I'm quite chuffed that I have now learnt a new word: "utile". Neat! ------ remixz Hiya! I'm the creator of this. I did not expect this to be here (nor did I especially want it to...). If it isn't painfully obvious, this is a joke, so please don't take it too seriously. Thanks! ~~~ RossPenman Hey dude. I submitted this link. I'm really sorry if you didn't want it to be here. I just saw the link on Twitter and thought it would be a cool thing to share. I feel awful now knowing that you didn't want it to be here. ~~~ remixz Hey, no problem! _Please_ don't feel bad (makes me feel bad :P). I mostly said that because of knowing how HN can respond to jokes. I'm totally good with it though. Thanks for enlightening HN with doge! ~~~ RossPenman Thanks, that's a relief. :) Congratulations on getting to number 1, anyway. ------ possibilistic In case you aren't familiar with this meme, it's the Shiba Inu meme, termed "Shibe" or "Doge". * [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/doge](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/doge) * [http://reddit.com/r/shibe](http://reddit.com/r/shibe) * [http://www.reddit.com/r/supershibe](http://www.reddit.com/r/supershibe) ~~~ ufo why do they even have two separate subreddits for that? ~~~ theorique such popularity so doge wow many reddit ~~~ AsymetricCom This caused me to exhale air sharply through my nostrils. ~~~ Cthulhu_ Welcome to the internet! ------ harel This is really funny. I quite enjoyed it. I wouldn't take any serious comments here seriously. Unfortunately the distribution of sense-of-humour in the world is not even. Some get a bigger chunk of it than others. The next time anyone mentions CoffeeScript to me, I'll send them here. Much better. ~~~ eudox "At least Dogescript has reasonable scoping!" ~~~ DonPellegrino Sadly true. ------ Lockyy Yay, looping just for those who're upset. very mad is true many mad plz console.loge with "rawr rawr stop posting amusing/funny things" wow ------ andrewcooke [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/doge](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/doge) [https://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en- US#q=doge&cmpt=q](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en- US#q=doge&cmpt=q) ~~~ ryeguy More to the point: [http://www.reddit.com/r/supershibe](http://www.reddit.com/r/supershibe) ~~~ benatkin Well, that subreddit is written by fans of supershibe, so someone who isn't into it might not be interested in what they have to say. Google Trends is already a trusted source for many. ------ eudox All it needs now to be perfect is Hindley-Milner type inference. ------ dpcan I like it. And I always wondered why a programming language couldn't exist to work as follows: Start Run at 60 frames per second and do Clear the screen Draw a rectangle at (10,10) with size (100,50) and rotate it 20 degrees Repeat End Or something along those lines - hopefully you get my point. This would be fun for prototyping. I could just speak to my computer and have it translate my plain english into a working program :) ~~~ nightpool [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_programming) Plenty of things already work like this. For example, check out Inform 7 [http://inform7.com/](http://inform7.com/) or the Robot C natural language module [http://www.robotc.net/NaturalLanguage/](http://www.robotc.net/NaturalLanguage/). Or, more generally, LOGO [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%29) ~~~ icelancer LOGO was exactly what I thought of when I saw his post. 'pen up' and 'pen down' and so forth jive very well with "natural" language. ------ arvidkahl The thing that made me crack up was "console.loge" \- love it. ------ code_duck I like the syntax! Reminiscent of [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE) but probably more usable. ------ minimaxir The logical next step would be to write a wordcloud generator in Dogescript. Which always includes a "wow". ~~~ curiousdannii A word cloud of all words in all doge images. Wow. ------ ddp What's funny is that it reads a lot like COBOL. ------ thiderman such plug very terminal shibe so hax many monads [https://github.com/thiderman/doge](https://github.com/thiderman/doge) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6667414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6667414) ------ georgeoliver Am I the only one who read the title as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge) script? ~~~ andrewflnr At first I got "dodgescript", but yeah, then I was thinking, "what the heck does this have to do with doges?" ------ robot_ I got a huge laugh out of this. I love how some of the statements I ended up writing could almost be interpreted as poetry, hilarious poetry. ------ crabasa This is totally awesome. I was already excited about Zach's upcoming talk at CascadiaJS [1] but now I can't wait to see what he's got up his sleeve. [1] [http://2013.cascadiajs.com/speakers/zach- bruggeman](http://2013.cascadiajs.com/speakers/zach-bruggeman) ------ twodayslate Are there any tutorial that go about implementing your own compile-to-js language? ------ daemin It seems to me that a lot of these toy/joke languages are just thin wrappers around existing languages. Something that can be accomplished by a few #defines or regexes to transform it into a runnable language. ------ jiggy2011 Challenge for the month, persuade your boss to use this in production. ------ guerrilla Well, you made me smile :) ------ agrias Haha this has made my day ------ davidw As someone who lives in territory that belonged to the Republic of Venice for longer than Italy has been a going concern, 'Doge' means one of the leaders of that Republic. ------ jawerty I think it's pretty funny. This is firsthand codecomedy. ------ zamnedix Reminds me of LOLCODE. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE) ------ whalesalad The console.loge had me laughing pretty hard. ------ gcatalfamo I want the Kittyscript plugin of Dogescript ~~~ kalleboo [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE) ------ piracyde25 Reminds me of LOLCODE [1] [1][http://lolcode.org/](http://lolcode.org/) ------ 10098 BUT DOES THIS WORK WITH NODE.JS?!1 ~~~ becojo Yes. It's even a Node module. ------ Pot I'm not a js coder but this is really fun to take an eye on the dogescript ------ heyandy Very funny. Maybe useless but amusing. ------ davexunit Thank you, doge. I love it. ------ hawleyal This lang gave me cancer. ------ namuol Somebody had to do it. ------ nickthemagicman Is it turing complete? ------ lukehorvat Comedy is dead. ------ tylerlh so wow. much smile. Great job on this. Made my day ------ jk211e so useless ~~~ smosher People missed the joke. Have an upvote. ~~~ deoxxa Unfortunately, I don't think it was a joke. Such negative, very disappoint. ~~~ smosher He did a better job of aping doge than you did, and not everyone needs to love it. ------ a8da6b0c91d Many of these internet memes are genius hilarious. People know the good Monty Python bits 40 years on. The good doge pics bust my guts just like that stuff. Will anyone get or remember this in 20 years? Interesting times. ~~~ chrismonsanto All your base is still funny 20 years later! ~~~ chinpokomon That can't be 20 years old yet can it? I loved how AYBIBTU was used to torment many talk shows, like Love Line and Tom Green. Good times. ------ thenerdfiles Is the point that we need a transpiler for any idiolect to JavaScript? ------ thenerdfiles I don't even ------ T3RMINATED pure gargbage ------ Option_User_ Absolutely disgusting, may I request that you reddit/manchild honeypot users please refrain from posting your degenerate garbage on here. ~~~ dannytatom such anger wow ~~~ becojo so mad ------ lemiffe rly? ------ koala_advert I hate this bullshit. ~~~ lowboy Wow such angry. ------ jbeja Ok....why? And please don't replay "Why not?" ~~~ monkeyspaw Why build it? Because it appealed to the author, perhaps in a way you can't understand. Why share it? From the comments, I understand that it was shared by someone else, and the original creator didn't intend for it to be put on HN. Why judge it? That's the question I'm trying to figure out while reading this thread. ~~~ jbeja That doesn't answer my question :p ~~~ monkeyspaw My point was that your question wasn't very interesting.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Payola – A Rails engine for Stripe - zrail http://www.petekeen.net/introducing-payola ====== aculver Congrats, Pete! You literally wrote the book on Stripe integrations and it's awesome seeing you embrace open source as a way of sharing your knowledge. I _love_ how well thought through everything you've done is. I can't wait to see what you do with subscriptions! As the author of the Koudoku gem[1] that Pete mentions, I'd encourage people familiar with it to keep a close eye on Payola as well. Given Pete's technical excellence, great implementation choices, and broad experience with different types of Stripe integrations (my primary interest has been SaaS products,) Payola could very well supersede Koudoku when he tackles the subscription side of things. [1] [http://github.com/andrewculver/koudoku](http://github.com/andrewculver/koudoku) ~~~ itengelhardt As a minor contributor to the Koudoku gem, I have to say that the structure and especially the test coverage of payola are amazing. Well done, Pete! Looking forward to how you integrate subscriptions into this ------ tarr11 Seems like this is a little bit cleaner than using stripe-ruby + stripe_event + checkout.js. I've never tried stripe-rails. I get the idea behind making this code async. I've never experienced slowness with Stripe's API, but I'm sure it happens! One of the pain points for me is keeping all of my Stripe data in sync with my AR models. Would would be helpful for me would be a generator for a set of ActiveRecord models representing all the stripe data, and have all the webhooks populate those tables(and maybe rake tasks as well to initialize things). ------ pjungwir This looks great--thank you! Does anyone use ActiveMerchant? I looked at it several years ago and it seemed to be just a mess: scanty documentation, hard to install/set up, lots of bugs. So I've always gone with rolling my own payment code (usually Stripe, sometimes PayPal), and it'd be nice to stop that, one way or another. It seems like ActiveMerchant will be Payola's main competitor. ~~~ boucher ActiveMerchant's entire purpose is about abstracting all the different payment gateways into one API. If you know for sure you're going to use Stripe, or if you want to use Stripe specific features (of which there are quite a lot worth using) ActiveMerchant is less valuable to you. It's also worth noting that ActiveMerchant hails from a time long before Stripe or even Braintree, and so it supports gateways that are quite a bit more complex. (disclosure: I wrote the ActiveMerchant Stripe support). ~~~ pjungwir Yes. Now that I look over the ActiveMerchant docs again, I have a few observations/questions: \- With AM, you have to accept the credit card details (even if you don't store them), and then send them on the the payment gateway. Even with AM's Stripe implementation, it's your Rails app sending the info to Stripe. There is no Javascript sending the details straight from the user's browser. (Or am I mistaken about that?) So you have a higher PCI burden than if you used Stripe in the normal way. \- AM doesn't provide any persistence, just an API to the payment gateway, so you would still have to roll you own tables/models for payment success/failure. \- I don't see support in AM for subscriptions. Looking at AM again now, perhaps my previous comment was too harsh, although that's how I remember it when I checked it out long ago. Even now, I'm tempted to say that Payola's landing page _already_ has better documentation than AM. ~~~ thezoid ActiveMerchant is just an abstraction layer around various gateways. It's goal was never to provide a full-stack solution, but to simply making working with numerous gateways easier because you have a common interface for working between all of them. As for subscriptions, that's a feature that could be added but many of the Gateways that ActiveMerchant supports don't have subscriptions baked into them (compared to say Stripe). You could of course have your application store the credit card information and manage the charges yourself using ActiveMerchant, but that opens a bunch of PCI compliance and such. If you just need to accept money and aren't already bound to a specific merchant account, then plain ole Stripe or Payola are a better option. ------ neurotixz The main thing preventing me from using stripe directly in my applications is that it does not calculate sales taxes. The added complexity to do so makes it complex to integrate. That aside, thanks for the book, I am buying it as I am sure that the advice will be relevant for the payment platform I will use (hesitating betweek Chargify and Recurly right now). ------ PhilipA I look forward to when the gem will be updated with the possibility for subscriptions. ~~~ joshmn Was just about to say the same. Commenting here so I don't forget. ------ dTal Can't speak to the code, but the name seems unforunate: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola) ~~~ zrail It's money related and customers are never going to see it so I thought it worked well. If people think it's offensive I'll think about changing it. ~~~ aarondf There's a food product named Soylent... So I wouldn't worry about it too much. ~~~ spacehome That's a poor choice of name, too. ------ rizzy Awesome! I'm about a month away from adding Stripe into my app. Thanks for the work on this. ------ michaelbuckbee This seems pretty great: like an open source Gumroad or Cargo service. ------ studiofellow Love that this gem does things the right way, like including background jobs. As a Rails newbie trying to build billing, all the code/tutorials/gems I could find weren't nearly this high quality or robust. ~~~ weaksauce He wrote the book on payments with stripe. Which also happens to be a high quality book and worthy of a purchase. ------ msie So, is this only needed if you want to do asynchronous processing with Stripe? I vaguely recall integration with Stripe was really simple probably because it was synchronous. ~~~ zrail A basic Stripe integration is pretty simple, but to do anything more advanced you end up writing a lot of boilerplate code. Payola (and the other projects mentioned in the post) attempt to simplify and eliminate the boilerplate that you'd otherwise have to write. ------ tessierashpool Like many others, I've read Pete's book, and it's very good. ------ namidark Does anyone know of something similar for Paypal? ~~~ zrail Right now things are Stripe-specific for expediency, but there's no reason why Payola couldn't be extended to multiple payment providers, as long as they provide the same basic capabilities. ~~~ studiofellow This would be nice because it's always a good idea to have a fallback payment processor.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What we lose by reading 100,000 words every day - pepys https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/what-we-lose-by-reading-100000-words-every-day/2018/10/04/72dea000-b212-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html ====== dpark > _“My grafted, spasmodic, online style, while appropriate for much of my > day’s ordinary reading, had been transferred indiscriminately to all of my > reading, rending my former immersion in more difficult texts less and less > satisfying,” she writes. Wolf soon tried again, forcing herself to start > with 20-minute intervals, and managed to recover her “former reading self.”_ Translation: I stopped reading novels and then found it difficult to start again. The problem isn’t the fluff we read online. The problem is that _when you go long periods without reading novels, it’s harder to pick up a novel and enjoy it_. Reading fluff online doesn’t make you stop reading novels, though, any more than watching TV makes you stop reading novels. It’s entirely possible to do both, with the caveat that everyone’s time is limited. But there’s nothing about browsing online that intrinsically makes it hard to read novels. ~~~ Taylor_OD This. I consume books endlessly and almost always have... Unless I stop. A few times in my life I've started reading a book and when it didnt hold my interest I stopped picking it up. 3 months to a year later I would come across an interesting book and then it was back to constantly reading. To help avoid this situation I've made it part of my morning routine to read for 15 minutes every morning (keeps the world/story alive in my head) and if I don't pick up a book for 7 days I move on to another book. Using this method I'm at 27 books for the year and I've moved on from 2. ~~~ kbenson I actually limit my exposure to novels because I find it extremely hard to stop reading once I start. I'll stay up _way_ too late, and sneak reading in throughout the day, basically doing whatever I have to to continue and finish the story. I enjoy this process, as it keeps me immersed, but it's not healthy. ~~~ WalterSear Someone should create a book that helps us manage this harmful technology! We should, at least, keep novels out of the reach of children. ~~~ walshemj Indeed "Is It a Book That You Would Even Wish Your Wife or Your Servants to Read?" This is a Quote from the LadyChatterley’sLover Trial in the 60's ------ daveslash This reminds me of Ray Bradbury's _Fahrenheit 451_. Many people believe the story to be about censorship, but Bradbury himself (in his later years) publicly claimed it was about peoples' increasingly short attention spans. In _Fahrenheit 451_ , people were afraid of books because the stories, thoughts, and concepts were more than mere sound-bytes and were thus unintelligible to the masses with shortened attention spans. _Radio has contributed to our ‘growing lack of attention.’ .?.?. This sort of hopscotching existence makes it almost impossible for people, myself included, to sit down and get into a novel again. We have become a short story reading people, or, worse than that, a QUICK reading people._ ~Bradbury Source: [https://www.laweekly.com/news/ray-bradbury- fahrenheit-451-mi...](https://www.laweekly.com/news/ray-bradbury- fahrenheit-451-misinterpreted-2149125) [Edit] Punctuation & typos. ~~~ tinalumfoil I tried reading 451 once, since it seemed up my alley. I got about a chapter in, put it down and never picked it up again. It wasn't that I didn't like the book (I don't remember if I did), but I just happened to get really busy right after that and just forgot that I ever started reading. Maybe if I had read it I would understand the importance of having an attention long enough to finish the book. Thing is if I had that attention span the lesson would be lost on me since I'm already reading the book. In other words, a book teaching the importance of reading books is teaching a pointless lesson. ~~~ daveslash Good point. I enjoyed it, but never picked up on the attention-span lesson at all; I read it thinking it was about censorship. I know now that the author's intent was to write a story about attention-span. I now take it to be a social commentary. Side-note: after reading the book, I rented the movie on DVD. The DVD had a scratch on it -- a scene faded out, the player hit the scratch and skipped ahead... it landed on a fade in scene. I didn't even notice. The movie _I watched_ was only about 20 minutes and I thought " _man, they left out a lot of stuff_ ". ~~~ bllguo bradbury's stance on _Fahrenheit 451_ is what convinced me that authorial intent is irrelevant. ------ sjg007 Hopefully, some aspiring psychologist or neuroscientist will be able to quantify the effect. My hypothesis is that this is driven by an information seeking dopamine reward cycle and that for some reason we lose the capacity in our executive function to regulate it. Much like an addiction. There is so much digital distraction. Similar to ADD perhaps? You can also see this in modern movies, shows and cartoons where the pace has quickened. It's hard to watch old movies or older cartoons etc... Watch old episodes of Sesame St vs new episodes and you can see the shift. And even then kids get bored of new episodes with the ultimate addiction being youtube. I actually don't find youtube too bad in moderation because kids do take ideas and try to play with them in the real world. You just have to be sure they aren't overexposed and exposed to ideas that are not healthy. What I am saying is that I do see imaginative play despite youtube or that incorporates youtube. So in this hyper digital world it feels like we have less time. Even though time remains the same. There is always something seeking our attention and for the most part it is unimportant but we can't ignore it. ------ gdubs After the 2016 election, during which I spent an inordinate time online, constantly searching for some 'new' piece of information like a smoker lighting up a cigarette before the last one had finished burning, I realized that I was having a harder time than usual getting through the books I was reading. The effect was two-fold: not only was I spending more time online, I was fragmenting my attention; when I sat down to read a book, I found my brain was pausing for interruptions. I was training myself to self-interrupt. The book, "The Distracted Mind" goes deep into the science behind this phenomena, and is really worth checking out. ------ Aeolun It sounds a bit silly to assume that reading a hundred reddit posts a day would interfere with my reading of a good novel. I haven’t encountered anuthing even close to it, but I guess it might be different for others? ~~~ bootsz I've definitely noticed it myself. I have a much harder time reading novels or any long-form content these days, and I suspect it's due to consuming lots of very-short-form content on a daily basis. On HN and elsewhere on the internet you can consume a huge number of distinct ideas in a very short time. This causes me to now be impatient with long-form pieces where I find myself wanting to just "get to the point already". It's a quantity vs. quality problem. The internet tends to favor quantity. It's something I'm trying to work on because there's obviously immense value in books and long-form reads (and a lot you get out of them that you can't get out of little snippets and quick articles). ~~~ jodrellblank " _there 's obviously immense value in books and long-form reads_" Is there? Or are you just saying that because it's expected and you'd feel embarrassed if you said otherwise? Humans are pattern matchers, what if we see patterns more easily from many examples, rather than one? What if we extract patterns more easily seeing them from many points of view instead of just one author? Is a neural network better trained on one high detail photo, or a dataset of many photos? ~~~ jodrellblank Someone's got to have a better comeback than a downvote. You know where there's "obviously immense value"? Oil fields. People literally kill to control them. Nobody kills to take control of a library. At best you could say people get into massive debt for education. But at the same time, education is clamouring for online courses, videos, conferencing, teachers, interaction, and textbooks are widely considered a problem - low priority, low quality, a racket, going back years since Richard Feynman's famous story about reviewing them at least. Books, especially academic books, are increasingly given away for free online - when people will pay for entertainment. How many people learn from a teacher, a course, or learn by doing, vs how many actually learn from books? People don't treat books the way they treat things they value. There may be immense value in books, it's not "obvious". ------ jasode First off, I haven't studied Maryanne Wolf's neuroscientific research on "deep reading" and its claimed benefits. But, as a person who has read most of the major thick books like Moby Dick, War & Peace, Les Miserables, Middlemarch, Proust, and reading _cover-to-cover_ the old computer books like the 3-ring binders of C Language[1], my lifetime reading experience could offer counterpoint to why "deep reading" seems to be a lost activity: _Most of the text out there is just not good quality that deserves or rewards deep reading._ My pet theory is that the rampant skimming or "shallow reading" is basically the brain performing a hidden Bayesian probability that any random text put in front of us isn't worth the effort of deep reading.[2] This is why many of us go to HN comments first instead of reading the actual article. The Bayesian priors told us that the "tldr" in the comments got to the point where the article all-too-often had a self-indulgent author that meandered all over the place and wasted our time. Therefore, "shallow reading" isn't bad for us... it's our way of optimizing against "information overload". Even college professors who are used to heavy reading workloads skim new work. I'd argue this is another manifestation of Bayesian priors. To back to my C Language example. I didn't really learn C by reading those binders cover to cover. (Deep reading.) I _really_ learned it when I did _shallow reading_ across fragmented sources like USENET comp.lang.c forum and playing around with toy programs. So maybe deep reading isn't the answer but the attention restriction from not being distracted with Twitter and Instagram notifications. In other words, maybe we're conflating benefits "uninterrupted study" with "deep reading". [1] [https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33794](https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33794) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law) ~~~ EGreg For anyone who found the above too long, basically she means that deep reading often wastes too much time and you don’t know ahead of time what to read. She didn’t mention that you can check other shorter sources before you commit to reading, like reading this comment before hers. ~~~ jasode _> , basically she means that deep reading often wastes too much time _ I apologize that you found my text length was too long but I thought the extra background was necessary to state _why_ deep reading is often a waste of time. If I _only_ state a 1 sentence punchline in my original post, it can seem like a cheap hit-and-run comment and therefore not really engaging with the article's arguments. (Or the extreme brevity would just invite snark such as _" you probably don't have deep reading skill"_. Therefore, a writer's reflex is to defensively preempt that with extra words that try to establish street cred.) I thought it would be interesting to share that many of us can do "deep reading" and yet we don't bother with the effort -- _and that behavior is not a contradiction_. Instead, it's an optimization of limited reading time. This tradeoff doesn't seem to be reflected in Maryanne Wolf's research. _> She didn’t mention that you can check other shorter sources before you commit to reading,_ I actually did and I specifically used "HN comments" as an example of readers trying to find a tldr summary and why it's a rational strategy. ~~~ StevenRayOrr > _I apologize that you found my text length was too long but I thought the > extra background was necessary to get state why deep reading is often a > waste of time._ I read @EGreg as poking a bit of fun, rather than raising a legitimate complaint: simultaneously supporting your point, but also gently pushing at the limits of shallow reading. ~~~ ninju <sarcasm> We need a digest of HN comments for people don't have _time_ to read the comments about an article regarding people not having time to read everything that they come across </sarcasm> ------ mapcars answer is: time :) ~~~ trukterious It's more like 'thinkjuice'. The act of making all the perceptual discriminations required to consume 100,000 words cuts into the cognitive budget. ------ casper345 Also might just be easier and more convenient to read the articles online. We have laptops, phones, tablets, emails as mediums to read "100,000" words but a novel (preferably on canvas) is physical and limited by nature. I can read hacker news at work but I cannot just whip out Oliver Twist when I'm 'sneaking' a break. ------ hyko _the average person “consumes about 34 gigabytes across varied devices each day” — some 100,000 words’ worth of information_ \- seems like an odd and misleading statistic. ~~~ tw1010 The precise number doesn't really matter. The strongman interpretation is that we just read and skim too much each day. ~~~ jgtrosh If so, the title of the article is meaningless clickbait. From reading the article it seems to me the author takes the phrase at face value as they imagine skim reading a third of Middlemarch in a day. I'm surprised they describe different modes of reading as a skill future people will have, since afaik it's normal for most people to approach different types of texts at different speeds and paying attention in different ways. I can skim quickly over comments and articles just building an understanding of the context and basic information and conclusions people are using, while I will read a scientific article anywhere between ½ and 3 pages per hour if I'm actually trying to understand a difficult concept. ------ jillav Reading that "online content destroys the old way we used to consume information" kind of observation always remind me of that : [https://xkcd.com/1601/](https://xkcd.com/1601/) ------ neonate [https://outline.com/HRfAnU](https://outline.com/HRfAnU) ~~~ sbr464 I was just thinking a service like this would be useful, and the large sum I would pay to not be inundated with animated ads when reading articles. ~~~ Cthulhu_ If it's just the articles, ad blockers work, as does reader mode(s). Even AMP would if they offer it, but AMP is an evil hostile takeover attempt from Google. If it's the subscription paywall, just get the subscription. Else, don't read it on a site infringing on copyright - you're not entitled to the content. ~~~ kd5bjo How about illegally charging more if you don’t want to consent to their tracking regime? ~~~ heyyyouu How is it illegal to charge? ~~~ kd5bjo See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18199132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18199132) .	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Verifications.io Leaks Personal Records of 2B Users - cybarrior https://cybarrior.com/blog/2019/03/28/verifications-io-leaks/ ====== jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj Why are so many MongoDB databases left unsecured? Are they extraordinarily hard to secure? I imagine the people who are working with these databases must be aware of the numerous leaks, and pay close attention to securing the data, no? ~~~ Twirrim Historically, MongoDB was unauthenticated and insecure by default. Because _that 's_ always a good idea. You should never assume anyone is going to use your product in a secure fashion, and make it so that they have to at least make _some_ effort towards security. Other than that, writing new features is fun, and you can get so many developers (that don't think about security) for the same amount of money as a good security professional, or a developer with even half an ounce of security sense, commands. Security is always inconvenient, takes extra effort, and is invisible. So many companies and managers deprioritise it over more visible feature work, forgetting that security in and of itself _IS_ a feature. ~~~ jdsully A lot of databases have this weird idea that there is some secure "internal network" and its OK to just pretend its 1995 in there. Antirez actively blogs about how "insecure" Redis is but its OK because just don't put it on the internet [1]. Others just avoid the subject completely. Never mind that internal networks get infiltrated all the time. Security in depth is just not a thing a lot of people think about right now. [1] [http://antirez.com/news/96](http://antirez.com/news/96) ~~~ jchw Okay, let's be fair, and I'm sure you realize this: having network ACLs that prevent unauthorized access is absolutely a good idea. "Internal networks" are not dead - they've become more advanced with "VPC" services and software defined networking. Tunnelling Redis protocol over mutual TLS or something like that sounds like a good idea, but I don't think I've seen anyone doing that :( Frankly, I would love it if there were a simple, open standard for authentication so every database didn't have to redo it. Maybe mutual TLS is that answer, though traditionally getting the infrastructure for that correct has been difficult. ~~~ viraptor > I would love it if there were a simple, open standard for authentication so > every database didn't have to redo it There is: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Authentication_and_Secu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Authentication_and_Security_Layer) ~~~ jchw I've only ever seen it used with IRC but this most certainly is the closest thing. Guess I hope for more adoption in the future. ~~~ X-Istence SASL is also used with Dovecot/Postfix for example. ------ kitotik “However, after further investigation and examination, DynaRisk updated its report to state that the combined number of emails leaked is 982,864,972 to be exact, and not 2 billion as previously reported.” The headline seems wrong. ------ jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj Source [https://securitydiscovery.com/800-million-emails-leaked- onli...](https://securitydiscovery.com/800-million-emails-leaked-online-by- email-verification-service/) ------ chrisbolt [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19333600](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19333600) ------ skilled How exactly did this get pushed to the front page? This adds _nothing_ new to the conversation and consists mostly of quotes from another article. I was expecting an actual follow-up, and this is not it. ~~~ pmoriarty From the HN Guidelines: _" Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) ~~~ skilled Oopsie! Thanks for the heads-up.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What Is Functional Programming? - asp_net https://thomasbandt.com/what-is-functional-programming ====== rajman187 The author quotes a definition > A functional language is a language that supports and encourages programming > in a functional style. Seems rather circular ~~~ hans1729 > Seems rather circular * recurrent seems more appropriate in this context :-)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Can I learn to be a programmer/developer without going to university? - lookitzpancakes I've been wondering lately if there are any comprehensive resources (oustide of a formal college or university) that can take you from being a computer enthusiast to a fully knowledgable developer/programmer? Figured this'd be the place to ask! Thanks in advance, HN! ====== lumberjack I'd go as further as saying, that if you aren't able to self teach yourself programming, then you can't be a programmer, no matter what classes and universities you attend. Programming involves a lot of continuous learning anyway. ~~~ benawabe896 I would agree with this only to a point. Sometimes there is a wall that you run into that you can't make over by yourself. The little hint, nudge, or push in the right direction can open up understanding that maybe wasn't attainable alone. ------ lmm My personal experience is that the only way to learn is by doing it. "Scratch your own itch", build programs to do the things you want. The funny thing is that while few of my formal university classes had anything to do with programming, it was still a great environment in which to learn - mostly because of the people I met there rather than anything else. ~~~ printerjam Agreed. You gotta just start programming things that matter to you. I know many good programmers who have non-CS degrees but have been hackers since they were kids. Through trial and error, and a lot of reading on the side, they've turned out to be phenomenal programmers. And each job they've held along the way, they've learned a ton from other people on their teams. ------ goldvine I never took any university courses on programming/computer science, and I'm working full-time as a product developer at a digital agency. In fact, when I interviewed at FreshForm, I wasn't asked any questions about my college/courses. Everything was based on the work I'd done, which came as a result of learning over about 4 years. I started slow with html, css, etc. Then moved on to PHP/MySQL, eventually started building crappy web apps. And now I'm building better web and mobile apps with Ruby, etc. Year 5 is really when everything clicked for me, but I was going through school and not focused 110% on it. I learned mostly from online tutorials, and building side projects that kept me interested. Books were/are helpful at times, but most of the time you will learn the most by jumping in over your head and figuring everything out the hard way. But there are fundamentals that need to be learned up front and books are a great medium for that. ~~~ lookitzpancakes Awesome, and this goes for everybody else, too: thanks for the replies! ------ USNetizen I actually got into Software Engineering this way. I started off working as a Systems Administrator, which required me to script jobs on servers/clients and, eventually, I inherited the entire intranet for the company which forced me to learn PHP and Java. Prior to this, I mostly dabbled in HTML, CSS, etc. since I was a teenager. Since this, however, I have completed my Computer Science degree (while still working) and learn new languages, technologies and methodologies mostly from online documentation and tutorials. I went from being a low-level sysadmin to a senior software engineer to a program manager for software engineering within a span of four years by spending every free moment I had learning, adapting and experimenting with new apps. ------ khyryk Are you assuming that a university grad is necessarily "a fully knowledgeable developer/programmer"? ;) Independent study of new concepts, programming languages, libraries, etc., is almost a requirement in order to be a successful programmer, but it's ultimately experience that brings one closer to what you describe, and I think that many people on HN would agree with me that independent study is sufficient to bring you to a position from which you can begin to acquire said experience. Oh, and the customary nod to SICP: <http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/> ------ JackpotDen University was a terrible choice for me. It boils down to this : Do you prefer a structured learning experience and being in a meatspace community away from where you were living? Do you prefer having a crappy job and tutoring yourself during that time period in an unstructured fashion? ------ kabuks Absolutely! We just graduated our first cohort, and after 8 weeks, they've learned enough to get entry-level ruby jobs techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-boot-camp-is-a- ruby-success/ There are also less intense courses out there like bloc.io ~~~ SilasX Or, in my case, entry-level Python/Django jobs :-) ------ franze books if you are really a beginner, start with "head first programming" (which is python), after this go forward with "head first javascript" (if you like the head first approach). do all tasks. after this choose your language, read the best books on that topic (go to amazon) front to cover - while coding lots of really tiny projects (one after the other). try to create one simple script per day. publish them on github. two to three years later you will be a "programmer", you will probably be able to get a job in this area much sooner.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Music Icon Prince Dead at 57 - aaronbrethorst http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/prince-dead-dies_us_57190013e4b0c9244a7b2a5b ====== kintamanimatt As tragic as his death may be, HN just isn't the venue for mainstream celebrity gossip or news. Oh, and downvoters, is this really what you want HN to become? ~~~ Jaruzel I've recently finally jumped in with both feet and registered a HN account because I got sick and tired of what passed for 'news' on other so called 'tech' sites. I want be part of above-average-IQ community that is interested in the same things I am. If wanted celeb news or gossip, I'd go to the E! online site. Yes it's sad that Prince is dead, and I'll be playing When Doves Cry later on, but this is not the place for this news. ~~~ Delmania Both this comment and the parent comment appear in some form when a celebrity related articles appears. Neither one takes into account the fact that Hacker News is a site for new of interest to hackers. That means occasionally, there will be articles that aren't focused on either technology or startups. Prince was an extremely talented musician, and many people of all walks enjoyed his music. For many people, his music was a part of their development. I'd say news of his death is of interest. ~~~ kintamanimatt I'm sure 30 minute healthy recipes are also of interest to hackers, after all, what time-starved hacker doesn't want to eat good food? Just because it might be of interest to hackers doesn't mean it's appropriate for HN. ------ jgrahamc Thanks for the music, Prince. RIP ~~~ bcook He also had a damn good sense of humor (album cover); [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_Can_Wait](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_Can_Wait) ~~~ jmspring And composed/wrote many songs for others. I think recognizing talented icons when they pass isn't unfit for here. ------ Delmania I'll be listening to Purple Rain and 1999 in a few to remember his music. ------ arrpeegeee R.I.P. Ƭ̵̬̊ ------ poorman How is this HN relative?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why did Quora choose Python for its development - Alex9762 http://www.quora.com/Quora-Infrastructure/Why-did-Quora-choose-Python-for-its-development ====== waiterZen Python is good choice	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Postmortem from getting kicked out of college for hacking - getbackto https://medium.com/@wololodev/fdd85b99e0c5?hnattempt=2 ====== lun4r The encryption method is a simple XOR cypher. It uses the key "581fad87738939". <?php function encryptSID2($sid) { return dechex(0x58 ^ $sid{0}) . dechex(0x1f ^ $sid{1}) . dechex(0xad ^ $sid{2}) . dechex(0x87 ^ $sid{3}) . dechex(0x73 ^ $sid{4}) . dechex(0x89 ^ $sid{5}) . dechex(0x39 ^ $sid{6}); } ?> ------ JoshTheGeek ?hnattempt=2 is the query string of the URL...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Need to list related videos along with their published date in YouTube? - divyumrastogi https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-video-list-dater/mbaflkdlneldejanggphlhcepncjfaco ====== divyumrastogi check it on github: [https://github.com/divyum/youtube- dater](https://github.com/divyum/youtube-dater)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Norwegian lawyer had visa withdrawn after private chat with client on Facebook - Deestan http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vg.no%2Fnyheter%2Finnenriks%2Fartikkel.php%3Fartid%3D10104089&act=url ====== belorn Be you a lawyer talking privileged to a client, a priest talking privileged to a follower, a hot-line worker talking privileged to someone thinking about suicide, or a social service person talking to a child who been sexually assaulted, every ones communication is equally collected. This is after all the result of ubiquitous surveillance. When people learn about it, the reaction is very simple. people stop talking. They do not call the lawyer. They don't call the priest. The person thinking about suicide won't call the hot-line, and the sexually assaulted child will stay quiet in fear of people finding out. After Germany introduced their ubiquitous surveillance law, this was exactly what the statistics ended up showing. I wonder, while hoping not, if the same result will happen in the US too after the current wave of news. ~~~ nikatwork Bizarrely, this whole scenario is very similar to the privacy issues explored in Brunner's 1975 book "The Shockwave Rider"[1]. Perhaps, as in the book, we need to setup an independent encrypted communication service where people can vent their frustrations at pervasive surveillance. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider) ~~~ Zigurd Never mind PRISM. The week before the PRISM leaks, the news was full of hack attacks by state actors against US business and government targets. Why are we emailing and talking in the clear? That's just dumb. Moreover, the toothpaste can't be put back in the tube. Short of transformative change in government, how do we know there isn't another PRISM at another TLA? The only way to restore confidence in communications is to secure them against all attacks. ~~~ fnordfnordfnord You're right, but I'd still like to see us make a giant collective bowel movement on the spilled toothpaste, and generally make it so undesirable for a government agency to use the toothpaste that they'll only do so when no other alternative exists, or only when it's actually very important to do so. ------ Vivtek Ah. This one is actually kind of credible. But if the client was already accused of terrorism, then this monitoring was on his end, and surely covered by a specific warrant. So this isn't (presumably) the kind of massive data hoovering that is the primary concern; every country does this kind of thing. (Back when I was running Despammed.com I'd get requests from various LEOs - one came with a real live subpoena for information related to an identity theft ring, and one was from Italian authorities pursuing an insult to Mary.) Where it gets to be a concern is revoking a guy's visa because he's defending a terror suspect. ~~~ drrotmos I know this isn't an opinion shared by the current US administration, but having a fair trial for one's crimes is a human right. It's a right guaranteed by articles 10 and 11 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Part of having a fair trial includes having legal representation, and the ability to communicate with your legal council in confidence. Eavesdropping on privileged lawyer-client conversations, regardless of legality is outrageously indecent and _should_ be illegal. Revoking a lawyer's visa because he is representing a particular client is equally outrageous, especially due to the chilling effects it causes upon the legal community making it much more difficult for suspects of serious crimes to find good legal representation. ~~~ rayiner It's not the view of any administration. The client was Norwegian-Chilean. Foreigners not in the US don't have A right to counsel (which is the constitutional basis of attorney client privilege in the US). And I'd argue that's the way it should be. Every time courts declare something unconstitutional, they use up limited political capital. I don't think defending the "human rights" of non Americans is a valid use of that political capital. ~~~ meepmorp > Foreigners not in the US don't have A right to counsel (which is the > constitutional basis of attorney client privilege in the US). Do you have a cite for this? I know that there's no right to counsel in civil trials, and this includes immigration courts (say in a deportation hearing), but thought that criminal trials do guarantee right to counsel regardless of citizenship. Edit: sorry, I misread what you wrote. It's totally reasonable and doesn't deserve downvotes. FWIW, web searching does seem to indicate that there's no explicit constitutional basis for attorney client privilege, and that it's just provided for by US (and often, state) law. ~~~ DannyBee Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U.S. 228 (holding that noncitizens charged with crimes are protected by the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments) Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698 ((concurrence arguing that noncitizens are protected by the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments) Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266 Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135, 161 etc. The only holding otherwise is the 4th amendment one of a number of appeals courts. ~~~ meepmorp Thanks. I kind of assumed that those protections extended to non-citizens, but it's nice to have actual case law. ------ anologwintermut I'm shocked, shocked to find that the NSA is spying on a foreign terror suspect in a foreign country communicating with another foreign person.* Actually, I am shocked. Why'd the lawyer use Facebook for privileged communication? Why does the NSA care about someone who posted a threatening video in Norway? Hint: they don't. If they looked, it's probably because Norwegian Intelligence asked them to.( Which might well be a huge legal problem, for Norway) In fact, it seems there is little evidence that any of this happened. Marking messages as spam does not seem like something the NSA would do and as to denying him entry into the US: if US gov is in the habit of denying visa's to those who represent a foreign terror suspect, they didn't need Facebook to establish that. Note, attorney client privilege doesn't apply to cases completely out of US jurisdiction with lawyers who are not lawyers in the US ~~~ polemic It's hard to say without knowing what was said, but the fact that his visa was withdrawn on the basis of a conversation between a laywer and his client is alarming. In other words: did the US government consider him a threat, or was it a tactic to infringe the alleged terrorist's right to a fair trial? If the latter, then it's an abuse of surveillance privileges. ~~~ spinlock It would be alarming if a lawyer and his client were using facebook for privileged communications. That's your first hint you need a new lawyer. If they can't understand Facebook's TOS they can't possibly defend you. But, seriously, these are foreign nationals. We've had a longstanding distinction between foreign and domestic surveillance. Think of it this way, would you really want to need permission from Pakistan to surveil Osama bin Laden? He was an enemy of the USA and he was being harbored by Pakistan. Different rules apply in that case than in a domestic case. ~~~ cmircea Horrible example. In the case of Osama the US could have broken each and every law in Pakistan and nobody would give a shit. This is about a suspect, at best. Not the world's most wanted terrorist. ------ vidarh Here's a rough/quick manual translation: \--- Private Facebook-correspondance between John Christian Elden and a client charged with terror offenses was monitored by American security services (NSA), the lawyer claims. Elden was discussing scheduling of the case with the Norwegian-Chilean client (20), who was charged with publishing a video where he threatened Norwegian officials and the royal family. Elden says that he has documentation that it was American authorities that were snooping on his Facebook-profile, TV2 writes. \- That we as Norwegians are under surveillance by American authorities, I am not particularly happy about. It is uncomfortable to know that someone continuously reads what you write at communicate with other persons via what one believes is a closed channel, says the lawyer. The messages of the person in question got deleted on an ongoing basis, and in the chat-log they are now marked as "identified as offensive or marked as spam". Four days after the conversation, the well known lawyers visa was withdrawn. Elden says his client wished to show up in court, but that he no longer is able to contact him after the Facebook-profile was deleted. Facebook is one of the websites mentioned in The Guardian and Washington Posts revelations of NSAs surveillance of foreign citizens in the PRISM project. Ministor of Justice Grete Faremo has sent a request to the US, where the justice department requests a clarification about whether or not Norwegian citizens have been under surveillance. \--- The main thing to note is that the bit about the deleted Facebook profile was unclear in the machine translation. It appears quite clear in the original article that the reason his communication with his client ceased was that the client used Facebook as his only communications-channel with his lawyer, and so the deleted Facebook profile means Elden is _unable_ to communicate with his client. It is not made clear whether he suspects or claims that American authorities caused the profile to get deleted too, or if the client got spooked by the deleted messages. ------ Deestan Summary: Lawyer conversing with client accused of terrorism, via private Facebook messages. Client's messages suddenly deleted as "spam", and 4 days later the lawyer was notified that his US Visa had been revoked. ~~~ smartician In other words: A Norwegian lawyer notices something weird going on with his private Facebook messages, and four days after this, his visa gets revoked. Later, after reading about PRISM in the morning newspaper, he's convinced that the NSA has been spying on him. It's obvious! After all, spy rule #1 is "make sure your subject knows he's being spied on by marking his messages as 'infringing or spam'". And it's totally impossible that the visa thing coincided with this. ~~~ einhverfr Twice in my life I have noticed things that made me wonder. The first time I currently think was in my imagination. This time I am not so sure. I am noticing for example a cell phone whose battery level drops when connected to the charger and not in airplane mode. Google chat messages apparently long delayed. That this started after the Snowden leak makes it even more suspicious to me. I am an American citizen residing abroad. I could just be seeing things that aren't there. However as a vocal opponent of this sort of surveillance, it would make sense that I would be caught up in some sort of filter especially as the hunt for Snowden continues. (So note: If you are listening I think you might be. I am a patriot, as I believe Snowden is. I have not provided any active assistance for him, but I applaud those who do. My wife thinks I am too political but at some point my loyalty to my country, the United States, compels me to stand up to this sort of thing.) ~~~ Filligree Battery levels will drop when connected to the charger - because of code in the battery controller. It's bad for the battery to stay at 100% for any amount of time, so the controller will cycle it in the 95-100% area. Smarter controllers will hide what they're doing. Google chat messages can be delayed for any number of reasons, ranging from internal glitches to "Your network connectivity was bad at the precise moment the message was attempted to be delivered, thrice, and it retries at exponentially longer intervals." ~~~ einhverfr But go from 5% to 0%? I am used to glitches but there are oddities here that are either hardware issues (battery discharging while low and connected to the charger), network issues. This is beyond what I am used to. Again, I could be connecting the dots incorrectly but I would not be surprised if I am right :-P ------ woof The lawyer John Christian Elden defends several terror suspects, including Arfan Bhatti (now arrested in Pakistan) who was charged for terror planning agains the US embassy in Norway several years ago. * He disucussed a court meeting with another client on Facebook, it was not a attorney–client privileged discussion. Elden was briefed by the FBI on their e-surveilence in 2005 (with a group from Norwegian Justice dept.) so he probably has a good grasp on how private Facebook really is. * His US Visa was revoked four days after the conversation, the US embassy in Norway cites "Homeland Security" * Eldens comments gives the impression that he believes he's automaticly flagged, while still beeing a friend of the US. More facts: [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&tl=en&u=ht...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dagbladet.no%2F2013%2F06%2F11%2Fnyheter%2Finnenriks%2Fovervakning%2Fusa%2F27658066%2F) ------ werid This lawyer is a known figure in Norway and not some guy looking for his fifteen minutes of fame. He has defended people on terrorism charges in Norway before, and gotten them acquitted on those charges (while other lesser charges still stuck). On his twitter, he claims that the US embassy doesn't know why his visa was revoked, only that "Homeland security's computers" are telling them it's revoked. This is then connected to NSA leak by journalists. He is still waiting for a proper explanation from the US embassy. ------ Zimahl Isn't the NSA supposed to be for foreign intelligence only? I don't find it shocking that the US would track the messages of an accused terrorist. What I find funny is that a lawyer used Facebook for privileged communication. ------ einhverfr Just remember, if you ever want to visit the US and you are not an American, you must be much more supportive of American foreign policies than most Americans are! ------ tropicalmug Isn't this a bigger deal than just monitoring supposedly private Facebook communications? This would also violate attorney-client privilege too, right? EDIT: This is just naïveté on my part. ~~~ saraid216 Why would the not-an-American-citizen lawyer speaking to a not-an-American- citizen have attorney-client privilege from the perspective of an American governmental organization? Edited to add: It's remarkably difficult to quickly find information about attorney-client privilege in settings other than US, UK, Canada, and Australia. I found a brief mention that the privilege does not apply to in- house counsel in the EU, and that Brazil breaches it with a court order, but that's all. I'd hope I could find more given some more time, but I need to get back to work. ~~~ anaptdemise Ha. Also, what kind of attorney would have the kind of conversation covered under attorney client privileges on Facebook, PM or otherwise? ~~~ nullc The same kind that run third party provided spyware on their personal computers in order to take exams in law school. (In other words: Practically all newly minted attorneys in the US) There is no education in law school in the US at least on responsible data handling, and— in fact— schools often direct students to behave irresponsibly with respect to data security. ~~~ andreyf _The same kind that run third party provided spyware on their personal computers in order to take exams in law school._ Do you have a specific case in mind? _schools often direct students to behave irresponsibly with respect to data security_ Why would they do that? Reference? ~~~ nullc Sure, the practice is ubiquitous Example software and policies are things like: [http://www.exam4.com/](http://www.exam4.com/) (used by Harvard, George Washington, etc) [http://www.law.wisc.edu/help/for_students/securexam/](http://www.law.wisc.edu/help/for_students/securexam/) [http://www.law.columbia.edu/academics/registrar/Laptop_Exams](http://www.law.columbia.edu/academics/registrar/Laptop_Exams) [https://www.law.umich.edu/currentstudents/registration/exams...](https://www.law.umich.edu/currentstudents/registration/exams/Pages/default.aspx) Most (all?) schools offer students the ability to take their exams on paper, but doing so is a substantial competitive disadvantage because examinations are usually timed and writing on paper is much slower, students are marked down for legibility and copy-editing noise, etc. I don't have a citation studying it— but by all appearances it's only a small minority of students that opt out of using their laptops. ("Most Stanford Law School students take their examinations on laptops") IIRC the California bar exam now also uses one of these spyware exam packages. I'm mostly amused that we have a whole information-security critical profession who is nearly required to behave negligently wrt information security from day one. :P ~~~ andreyf Wow, no kidding. Why the heck could it need "Administrator level account permissions" (both on OSX and Windows [1])? I guess you could run it in a VM and wipe it afterwards. 1\. [https://www.examsoft.com/dotnet/Default.aspx?f=mtlaw](https://www.examsoft.com/dotnet/Default.aspx?f=mtlaw) ~~~ nullc You're prohibited from running it in a VM, and at least some law schools have the students sign some form under penalty of the school ethical code yadda yadda that you won't do that. (And then— some students do it anyways, because thats the only way to use it on their otherwise non-supported system or because of some other incompatibility. And nothing comes of it... I guess until something does. Better not make too many enemies) ~~~ andreyf A friend in law school to explained that this software is used for in- classroom exams and prevents any other programs from being used while a student is taking the exam, as well as saving all the work incrementally (in case the computer crashes). It's certainly not the most secure thing to do, but they need to focus on studying law, not securing systems. I imagine that when lawyers are working on cases, they might end up using more secure devices than their old college laptops. ------ etchalon This story reeks. None of it makes any sense (the messages were marked as SPAM?). I'm filing this under the same rubric mentally as all those tea party lunies who suddenly swore their legitimate, random audit was caused by their membership in the Tea Party. ~~~ Filligree Elden is a top-flight defence lawyer. He's not any good with computers (clearly..), but I'm sure he told the truth as he understands it. ------ platz Two Facebook articles on foreign privacy events in one day? Where were these reports before Snowden hit the news cycle? ~~~ stackedmidgets Before that, you'd be voted down and hollered at because there would be little credibility for it among common idiots. This has been the case for years, because a lot of the information about the NSA published by journalists was built on anonymous sourcing. Now, there's more documentary evidence available to support it, so the US government no longer enjoys the benefit of ignorant doubt. Now, these stories can gain traction. ~~~ untog Conversely, these stories were previously ignored because of a lack of supporting evidence. Now that US surveillance is a talked about topic, these stories are gaining traction without people going through the critical thought processes they otherwise would have. Neither of these options are provably false. ------ XorNot Ok can anyone who reads Norwegian actually translate this properly? Because the Google translation certainly doesn't capture the nuance, and their are some notable inconsistencies in it - namely, why is someone's lawyer "no longer in contact now that their Facebook profile has been deleted". ------ deshmane what I am curious about in this and similar stories is whether the officials actually carry out due diligence in making sure the profile actually belongs to the person in question. after all, anybody can get an email and spoof a profile. ------ gcb0 This is the same a lawyer sending private information via a post-card. Plain irresponsible. But then again, which layer knows how to send PGP'ed emails? ------ brown9-2 Worth noting that the lawyer says he has evidence but has not presented it, and until then it's just his word. ------ mariuolo Just tell me what kind idiot would use Facebook for a private conversation. ~~~ vidarh Who are you talking about? Elden or his client? The article implies Facebook was Elden's only way of reaching his client, so the "idiot" appears to have been the client. If the client is not very technical it is not unreasonable to assume the client felt Facebook was easier for him to use to communicate covertly with Elden and didn't want to give out a phone number or other details. ~~~ mariuolo Either. Facebook retains forever anything done or written on their platform and that's a well known fact. Why anyone would use it for anything remotely confidential, is beyond me. ------ ttrreeww This is the generation in which freedom was lost. ~~~ hughes Or perhaps the generation in which freedom is to be reclaimed? It's too early to tell. ~~~ TillE It's extraordinarily difficult not to be pessimistic when you see the abuses initiated by one party continued and expanded by the other, after bleating on about their supposed opposition to such programs. I'm convinced that the Democratic Party is the biggest roadblock to accomplishing meaningful change in the US. It exemplifies the mushy, frightened middle in the worst possible way, and should be reviled by anyone with principles. For example: [http://www.people- press.org/files/2013/06/6-10-13-4.png](http://www.people- press.org/files/2013/06/6-10-13-4.png) ~~~ nikster It's hard to see any difference between Democrats and Republicans at this point. The entire system needs to be thrown out. I remember Ralph Nader was once asked why he is running for president when his candidacy might take away crucial votes from the Democrats and let the Republicans win; Wouldn't it be better if the lesser of two evils won? His answer: The difference between the Republics and Democrats is "the difference between Humpty and Dumpty". At the time, I didn't agree with him. But when I see what's going on now; how the Obama administration is basically run by the CIA and US big business; then I have to think of this quote and how right he was.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
N2O: Erlang Web Framework - andreygrehov http://kukuruku.co/hub/erlang/n2o-erlang-web-framework ====== rdtsc This framework is really out there. It is well ... different and interesting. Here are some not so conventional things going on: * Write your page in Erlang. * Even translates Erlang to JS as a parse transform. * Websockets (with a fallback mechanism) is the default connection mechanism. * Don't want to use JSON for some crazy reason? That's alright, user Bert (and ship binary encoded Erlang terms to the browser!). * Can render stuff on the server and send the whole thing over the websocket connection. [https://github.com/5HT/n2o](https://github.com/5HT/n2o) ~~~ hackerboos >Websockets (with a fallback mechanism) Not enough frameworks make this as seamless as it should be. So it's refreshing to see it done here. I've been looking at Phoenix (Elixir not Erlang) but the problem is that I'll have to do logic to detect when WS are available and do the fallback myself which results in more code server side. I think this is something that should be handled by the framework itself. ~~~ chrismccord I'm the author of Phoenix. I'm glad to hear you're giving it a look! I spent a lot of time thinking about the WS layer and fallback support. Ultimately I settled for standard WS with a small multiplexing layer on top. For those that need fallback, they can drop in websocket-js (flash fallback, compatible with native WS api). Have you taken at look at this for your fallback support? [https://github.com/gimite/web-socket-js](https://github.com/gimite/web- socket-js) Phoenix is still far from 1.0, so any and all feedback is welcome. ~~~ findjashua I'm new to Elixir (and FP in general), but I really like the language. I came across a couple of youtube videos on Phoenix , and it looks really nice (reminds me of Rails). I think something like Sinatra would be even nicer, for 2 reasons: 1\. the standard these days is to have a rest api serving json to web/mobile clients, so a Rails-like framework seems overkill 2\. Pretty much all my friends who are learning web dev on their own, find Sinatra/Flask way easier to get started with than Rails/Django. Regardless, Elixir (and Phoenix) is a great leap forward compared to the other options for building concurrent, reliable servers. I hope more people try it out before falling for hype/marketing ( _cough_ node.js _cough_ mongodb _cough cough_ ) ------ davidw I think there's still room to innovate in the Erlang/Web space. Chicago Boss was a nice improvement because it ties so much different stuff together. It does have a few issues though, like not being very 'Erlangy' in places: it uses lots of parse transform magic. I think it's the right direction though, in that it's fairly general purpose.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What are some good developer portfolios? - mattm I'm setting up a personal website and want to include a portfolio page to showcase the work I've done. Does anyone have any good examples of portfolio pages for developers? I'd like to look through some to gather ideas for setting up mine.<p>I've come across this one - http://thinkcage.com/portfolio/ - but he is a designer, not a developer.<p>Feel free to promote your own. ====== vorador I just show my github page.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How to focus amongst all the noise - mashhoodr https://medium.com/@mashhoodr/how-to-focus-amongst-all-the-noise-47d75f8dae44#.dpyt3qkva ====== mashhoodr Focus is a thing hard to come by in our offices these days. We are constantly badgered by people and apps, and this is my take on how we can control a bit of the app part and a bit of the people part. This is essentially a movement towards creating a culture where you can get to focus on the important stuff for a greater time period. This was partly inspired by Jason Fried's talk on TED ([http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried_why_work_doesn_t_happen...](http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried_why_work_doesn_t_happen_at_work#t-760426)) and his amazing book "Remote: Office not required".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
So What If New York Is Unaffordable? That Helps the U.S - linkregister https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-22/so-what-if-new-york-is-unaffordable-that-helps-the-u-s ====== linkregister It might benefit the rest of the U.S., but the rate of job expansion outside the Bay Area is excruciatingly slow compared to the rate of rent and house price increases.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How to Make a Computer Operating System - hitr https://github.com/SamyPesse/How-to-Make-a-Computer-Operating-System ====== joelg Another great free OS resource is MIT's 6.828: Operating System Engineering. "This course studies fundamental design and implementation ideas in the engineering of operating systems. Lectures are based on a study of UNIX and research papers. Topics include virtual memory, threads, context switches, kernels, interrupts, system calls, interprocess communication, coordination, and the interaction between software and hardware. Individual laboratory assignments involve implementation of a small operating system in C, with some x86 assembly." Lecture notes from 2012: [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering- and-compu...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-828-operating-system-engineering-fall-2012/) Video lectures from 2014: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDRHsNauoxk&list=PLfciLKR3Sg...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDRHsNauoxk&list=PLfciLKR3SgqNJKKIKUliWoNBBH1VHL3AP) ------ Jeaye Note that this book is half-finished and work on it has been discontinued (as of 2 years ago). If you want a good resource on OSdev, start here: [http://wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page](http://wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page) ~~~ dreta Got another great resource here [http://www.brokenthorn.com/Resources/](http://www.brokenthorn.com/Resources/) ------ OJFord > Chapter-1 > Chapter-2 > ... > Chapter-8 > chapter9 Aaargh!! ------ k_sze I wish people would stop teaching C/C++. I want a book that teaches writing OS using Rust. ~~~ pkaye And what is a good book on writing an OS using Rust? ~~~ dbaupp There's [http://intermezzos.github.io/](http://intermezzos.github.io/) ~~~ steveklabnik Maintainer here! We actually have more developed than the tutorial lets on; at Rust Belt Rust next week, we're running a six-hour class, so focus has been on material for that, rather than on writing more book chapters. I hope to get them out afterwards, though. There's also some open PRs with more functionality too! Basically, check out the kernel repo if you finish the book and want more :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Famous Fluid Equations Are Incomplete - retupmoc01 https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150721-famous-fluid-equations-are-incomplete/ ====== vhffm If you are interested in some of the details: The Navier-Stokes equations can be derived from the Boltzmann equation by applying a slight perturbation, expanding the result as a series, and taking the moments. Taking the moments is essentially an integration, which comes with the implicit assumption that the system you're describing has sufficiently many particles. When running low on particles, this integration does not make sense. This is why the resulting equations do not apply at low densities. The Navier-Stokes equations are the second order expansion of this procedure. The result of the first order expansion are the Euler equations. This is called the Chapman-Enskog procedure. It's really quite illuminating when you see it for the first time. There's a great derivation in [1] if you can get your hand on it. [1] [http://www.uscibooks.com/shu3.htm](http://www.uscibooks.com/shu3.htm) ~~~ orbifold When I saw this derivation during a course Theoretical Astrophysics it was indeed very enlightening, what is interesting is that it easily generalises to magneto hydrodynamics and other more complicated situations (mixture of multiple different fluids, fluids that react with each other etc.). I believe Landau Lifshitz contains some of them. ------ MyHypatia The best commentary I have seen on the article comes from a coworker, who took the time to dissect why the conclusion from this article is not surprising: The notion of a fluid is more generally related to the concept of a continuum which allows for the PDE description the Navier-Stokes equations offer. It is taken for granted that density or velocity are point- quantities in space, but there can be no such simplifying description in rarefied situations or more precisely when the Knudsen number is not small. Batchelor 1967 has a good discussion on this. In addition the notion of viscosity which relies on writing the deviatoric stress as proportional to the gradient in velocity relies on dropping the higher order terms in the velocity gradient Maclaurin series assuming they are small (which they usually are for very small Knudsen number).A Boltzmann-like description will always be more general because it is a pdf-based description which is really just fancy counting and doesn't have the Knudsen number limitation. Therefore calling the Navier-Stokes equations incomplete is a bit imprecise. It would be more accurate to say that the labels (fluid, material, continuum) are great simplifications which are incredibly useful when they apply. ~~~ vanderZwan > _Therefore calling the Navier-Stokes equations incomplete is a bit > imprecise._ Oh, those sloppy mathematicians... ;) (for the non-physicists/mathematicians: a running gag between mathematicians and physicists is that the former accuse the latter of being sloppy, because the latter take a _lot_ of mathematical liberties. Allegedly, in my old university there was a joint class between physics and mathematics (I never got that far to see for myself), and the professor would start the first lesson with "I brought barf bags for the mathematicians. You're going to need them." I even have a friend who switched from physics to maths because he claimed to be disgusted by the way physicists "proved" their "theorems". Luckily he mellowed out a bit after marrying an applied physicists - they even published a paper together.) ~~~ MyHypatia Haha, yea. From an engineering perspective... you can spend all day debating the philosophical implications of taking a derivative and have very interesting conversations, or you could just take the derivative because it's useful and go make things. ------ habosa Fluid dynamics is hard. "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." \- Werner Heisenberg ------ PeterWhittaker Summary: Navier-Stokes cannot translate to Boltzmann, because Navier-Stokes is incomplete... ...and even the best candidate to replace it fails at extremely low pressures. This is very, very exciting, because it means our theoretical understanding of fluid dynamics is flawed. Flawed theory often (usually?) leads to radical rethink and wildly different perspectives. ~~~ danbruc I never thought about this before reading the article but now it seems pretty obvious to me that both descriptions can not yield the same results under all circumstances. The Navier–Stokes equations are based on quantities like density and flow velocity which are only really meaningful if you have sufficiently many particles to average about. In consequence I am hardly surprised that one gets disagreeing results under extreme conditions like very low densities. ~~~ semi-extrinsic I'm also quite surprised that this article tries to spin it as very novel. We've known this for literally a hundred years. Moreover, there's no mention of the pioneers in the field - Chapman, Engskog, Burnett, Knudsen, etc - much to my dismay. The recommendation is for major revisions including a detailed literature review. </grumpy-reviewer-mode> ~~~ tanderson92 I was also dismayed when they referred to KdV (Korteweg de Vries) theory as a "relatively unheralded" theory. KdV theory is an incredibly well known and thoroughly studied area of Mathematics. ~~~ vanderZwan Well, those two statements aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, because it can still be _relatively_ unheralded. But only because _every_ physicist knows of Navier-Stokes. ------ dnautics "The terms in the series quickly become unruly, however; energy, instead of diminishing at shorter and shorter distances in the gas, seems to amplify." This sounds a whole lot like the ultraviolet catastrophe. The solution there was quantization of energy packets and a statistical treatment of the fewer amount of packets that come through. ------ Xcelerate > He began by rewriting the complicated Boltzmann equation as the sum of a > series of decreasing terms. Theoretically, this chunky decomposition of the > equation would be more easily recognizable as a different, but axiomatically > equivalent, physical description of a gas — perhaps, a fluid description. > The terms in the series quickly become unruly, however; energy, instead of > diminishing at shorter and shorter distances in the gas, seems to amplify. > This prevented Hilbert and others from summing up the series and > interpreting it. Nonetheless, there was reason for optimism: The leading > terms of the series looked like the Navier-Stokes equations when a gas > becomes denser and more fluidlike. “So the physicists were happy, sort of," > said Ilya Karlin, a physicist at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. “It’s in all the > textbooks.” This reminds me a lot of perturbation theory, a method used to solve the complicated equations of quantum field theory. The technique basically involves summing up a bunch of Feynman diagrams (of decreasing significance), and it has been used to calculate the value of the gyromagnetic ratio of an isolated electron to within 10 decimal places of its experimentally measured value (which is absolutely amazing, both from a theoretical and experimental standpoint). However, what's peculiar about this summation is that it _fails to converge_. You would think that by adding up smaller and smaller terms, the series would eventually reach some limiting value, but that doesn't occur. So the most predictive theory that mankind has ever created (quantum electrodynamics) works only as long as you don't keep adding up more terms. (*Technically speaking, this isn't a failure of QED, but of the method used to solve its equations. There are other solution techniques that don't have this problem.) ~~~ plus The issue isn't that an infinite sum of tiny terms don't converge -- the issue is that individual terms of perturbation theory diverge. An example can be found in J. Chem. Phys. 112, 2000, 9736-9748 "Divergence in Moller--Plesset Theory: A Simple Explanation Based on a Two-State Model" DOI 10.1063/1.481611 (Note that this is specifically in reference to Moller--Plesset Perturbation Theory, but the divergence is a general phenomenon) I'm not saying that _all_ perturbation theories diverge. Moller--Plesset perturbation theory doesn't even always diverge. But the divergence behaviour is not in the form of an infinite sum of tiny terms being infinite, but rather the individual terms of the perturbation theory increasing without bound (and oscillating sign). Also note that it is possible for truncations of perturbation theory to diverge with increasing order, but for the infinite sum of all (divergent) PT terms to converge and be finite. ------ GregBuchholz The linked article is not related to the quest to determine whether the Navier-Stokes equations are capable of supporting Turing machine-like computation: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140224-a-fluid-new-path- in-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140224-a-fluid-new-path-in-grand- math-challenge/) ------ amelius If one says "X equations are incomplete", that means that there is more than one solution to X. However, somehow I suspect that is not what is meant here... ------ kunstmord Some thoughts: expansion-in-series-based methods (including Hilbert's, which is not used in practice) and the Chapman-Enskog method work only for moderately rarefied gas flows (where you can neglect higher-order collisions; this can be derived explicitly using the BBGKY hierarchy). Also, since the Chapman-Enskog method is asymptotic, it is not guaranteed that higher-order equations (inviscid Euler equations being the zero-order equations and Navier- Stokes equations being the first-order equations) will provide an accurate description of flows. Indeed, the second-order equations (Burnett and super- Burnett equations) seem to fail in some cases, while providing more correct results in others. But given the complexity of the equations themselves and the complexity of the boundary conditions, no one really uses them. The cool thing about the Chapman-Enskog method is that it gives a closed set of equations, so you don't need empirical models for heat conductivity, viscosity, etc. That's the first point – that methods depending on series decomposition might never guarantee a solution that's accurate in all cases. There are also moment-based methods (Grad's method, for example, being one of the most famous), which have additional equations for parts of the stress tensor (I think; never really read much about them). The second point is that the equations correspond to conservation laws: mass, linear momentum, energy. The equation corresponding to the conservation of angular momentum is usually neglected: the terms related to internal angular momenta of particles are considered to cancel each other out (which seems logical, since unless there's some magnetization happening, the particles will be chaotically oriented and the average of the angular momentum will be 0), and in that case, the equation is satisfied since it just follows from the equation corresponding to the conservation of linear momentum. However, there's been some research recently on whether this equation can actually be neglected and what implications it carries, whether it's connected to turbulence or some other effects. The third point is that in high-altitude hypersonic flows, there are far more complex effects going on in flows that just simple collisions between particles – there are transitions of internal energy (which is a quantity described by quantum mechanics), chemical reactions (dissociation, exchange reactions), and this all complicates the Navier-Stokes equations – additional terms appear (bulk viscosity, relaxation terms, relaxation pressure). And correct modelling of these terms requires solving large linear systems with quite complex coefficients, and to complicate things further, for many of the processes mentioned, there aren't any easy or even correct models (to take into account dissociation, for example, you need to know the cross-section of the reaction for each vibrational level of each molecular species involved in the flow), since these models are either computed via quantum mechanics (which takes enormous amounts of computational power) or are obtained experimentally (which limits the range of conditions under which the results are obtained). DSMC methods have being increasingly popular as of late, but of course, they can't provide theoretical results, while it is possible to observe some interesting effects even in theory using the Chapman-Enskog method. So the problem is not only getting more "correct" equations, it's also being able to correctly model everything that goes into the equations we currently have, and then being able to solve them (for a simple flow of a N2/N mixture, if you use a detailed description of the flow, you get a system of 51 PDEs). And in engineering applications drastically over-simplified models are often used, and yet it's not like every high-altitude air/space-craft has burned to a crisp because of this. While new, "more correct" equations are interesting, of course, there's enough work to be done with the current ones. Source: I do theoretical research and numeric computations of rarefied gas flows for a living (at the Saint-Petersburg State University). ------ sizzzzlerz No wonder I had such a tough time in my Fluid Dynamics class. The material was incomplete! Do over! ~~~ pdonis lol -- I should go back and demand a recount for all those exams I sweated through...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
HN Jobs: NYC startup Minus (min.us) is hiring - mindotus Minus is hiring! We are on a mission to simplify sharing and to create the simplest universal sharing platform. We are seeking tech fanatics, passionate enthusiasts and self-driven individuals in our New York City midtown office.<p>Positions include full-time, part-time, and interns in design and software engineering.<p>- Our stack is built on python, django, javascript, jquery, css, and html.<p>- For designers, Adobe PS, AI, CSS/JS and UX experience is essential.<p>We're an all-star team with the founders being Carl and myself.<p>Carl is a serial entrepreneur and ex-principal engineer at Amazon.<p>John Xie is the founder of Cirtex.com, a leading web hosting provider.<p>Interested?<p>Shoot us an email at [email protected] with your info, work experiences and let’s get started! ====== mindotus Looking forward to hearing from everyone, preferably in NYC area :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Skype IP Lookup - lobovkin http://skype-ip-finder.tk/ ====== zhovner Ok, so I'm develop this. It based on deobfuscated Skypekit runtime that write clear debug log. Wrapper just make vcard refresh from p2p skype network and then parse debug log. Here is the sources of python wrapper <https://github.com/zhovner/Skype- iplookup/> ~~~ zhovner Lol, skype banned my account. ~~~ dennisgorelik Why banned? ~~~ ashconnor Why do you think? This probably violates a _few_ terms of use. ------ zhovner It is work for you? ~~~ bryanlarsen Please don't downvote this. This is the actual developer asking for failure reports etc. English is not his first language, either, so please don't downvote because of brevity or poor grammar, either. ~~~ artursapek English may not be his first language but he seems to know the basics. <http://i.imgur.com/ADxK3.jpg> ------ Wilya Skype is at its core a p2p idea, so this is expectable. That's sort of the same thing that was done for bittorent users, except with a single centralized authority. The interesting thing is that they do this without making a call. They only request contact information. This could be avoided. Skype can mitigate this, but in the end, there is little more to be done. If you want a p2p network where anyone can be reached, at some point, you _will_ need ips. ~~~ corin_ What they could do is have contact requests go through Skype master servers, not p2p, that way you could only look up the IPs of people you are connected to. But is it a big enough issue that they will make such a big change? I doubt it - and I'm not sure they ought to have to do it, either. ~~~ acqq Yes there would have to be master servers to close this hole, but I can't imagine how it can be done without everybody upgrading to the new client, so we can assume that every Skype user's ip is known or will soon be known. The current state will last for a while. You don't have to be even logged in for this to work(!) according to some already published research. ------ JohnnyFlash Really scary. I wanted to see if i could find someone. Went onto twitch.tv. Picked a random stream. Got email. Looked up Skype id from email. Searched for skype id which gave me the IP and the small town where they currently reside. Its worrying how easy this makes it to find someone. ~~~ TomGullen Honest question, why is it scary? My IP resolves to a location ~20 miles away. I don't see why having a Skype contact and knowing a 20 mile radius where they live is anything to worry about? ~~~ jeff18 Most residential internet connections don't have any sort of DDOS protection, so privacy issues aside, at the very least you are open to a simple denial-of- service attack. This was a huge problem for the popular progamer "Destiny" in the Starcraft 2 community. ~~~ TomGullen So is it also really scary that the mods/admins on the Starcraft 2 forum could also see his IP address? The risk of being DDOSed when you share a contact on Skype and they find out your IP address is hyperbole. ~~~ jeff18 There is a pretty substantial difference between a few Blizzard employees knowing your IP address and the entire public knowing your IP address. ------ hanbam Here [1] is an interesting paper regarding P2P networks and privacy --- "Exploiting P2P Communications to Invade Users’ Privacy" [1] <http://cis.poly.edu/~ross/papers/skypeIMC2011.pdf> ------ Mizza Not sure why people are surprised by this.. what did you think P2P meant? ~~~ aw3c2 that calls/communication would be p2p (direct connections) but not that looking up my nickname would disclose my current ip. ------ bemmu Could you somehow scrape all users and get an IP address -> skype name mapping? You could then know the Skype usernames of all visitors to your website. ~~~ zhovner No this not possible. Only skypename -> IP, and only email -> skypename. You can parse whole skype network and store all IP's if you can handle so many data. ------ vsviridov Cool, my router lacks decent DynDNS support, but I have skype signed in at home, so I can always check what my IP is and VNC myself in :D ------ driverdan If you're not currently logged in it still discloses the last IP you used. I can't think of any good reason for it to do that. ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel It doesn't work if you're not logged in. ~~~ driverdan I was logged out for over 5 hours when I tested it and it showed my IP. ------ aw3c2 [http://skype-open-source.blogspot.de/2012/04/skype-user- ip-a...](http://skype-open-source.blogspot.de/2012/04/skype-user-ip-address- disclosure.html) ------ rjsamson So yeah, this has me more than a little perturbed. I generally don't have a problem sacrificing some privacy in return for functionality (the terms of service of several popular social networks come to mind), but this... is a bit of a different situation. Does anybody have a good short-list of Skype alternatives? I don't know that its possible for me to stop using it altogether, but I'd certainly consider cutting back... ~~~ 18pfsmt I would point you toward Jitsi: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitsi> But, it doesn't support the Skype protocol, and it runs on Java, with which some people have an issue (but also allows for cross-platform compatibility). ------ ilya2 should be easy to do file sharing over skype when you have the receiver's ip and an open udp port through the firewall. maybe someone will release an app. can the mpaa sue microsoft? ------ option_greek Something worth 8.5 billion got to be a little more secure. ------ ajross Any insights into the exploit? Obviously the bug here is that they got the IP without any confirmation from me; ideally Skype should be popping up the "new buddy request" dialog, but it's not. So is this a fixable leak, or something core to the protocol (i.e. do you request a buddy P2P too?) ------ myared It's interesting that I can lookup people at my company who are behind the same connection that I am, but my account doesn't give away my IP. They also seem to get a lot more SPAM calls whereas I get fewer. I wonder if it's a privacy setting that I setup in the past or just the fact that my account is older. Either way, it's great to know that this is possible. ------ alexchamberlain Reasonably impressive and scary. ~~~ mcs Yeah, now you can obtain an IP by name by searching for their name in the contact search of skype to get the username, then using this tool. ~~~ zhovner Search by email also work. ~~~ mcs This isn't exactly patchable by skype, is it? Obviously skype could turn off some printfs from the log, but the fact the client needs the IPs and Ports to attempt connecting locally, and then over WAN, makes me think that a tool like this can exist forever. ------ sek That's why Google didn't bought Skype, their P2P is not state of the art. Your client is also a server for someone else, they obviously need your IP address and a proxy would not reduce traffic for Skype. Why the heck did MS pay so much for it? ~~~ bdonlan > Why the heck did MS pay so much for it? Skype has a huge userbase. They can always migrate that userbase to a different technology later if they think it's worth it. ------ tutre it even show my local 192.168... weird BUT HOW? ~~~ zhovner Skype announce both your IP's into network. ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel Presumably for LAN efficiency? If you have two people on LAN using Skype it goes via LAN IP? ------ skypeopensource This is more informative description. [http://nickfurneaux.blogspot.com/2012/04/skype-ip- addresses-...](http://nickfurneaux.blogspot.com/2012/04/skype-ip-addresses-in- clear.html) ------ antirez Using the IP is for instance possible to locate, roughly, where the user is, that is already a big privacy concern... ~~~ revelation Skype is P2P. No way to fix it, you can only hope to mitigate it. ------ kevinpacheco "This domain and website have been suspended because of abuse or copyright reasons." ------ tdr Can it be used like the invisible scanner for Yahoo Messenger? (see who's invisible) ~~~ zhovner No, after disconnect it still show IP few hours ------ ilya2 this is not an "exploit". as the man says, your IP is being sent out to the network. others on the network are using your machine's resources. that's how skype works. he's just showing you this fact. ------ mikelnight5l technikboy04 ------ gitarr Well this is scary for Skype users and very embarrassing for Skype developers/owners aka. Microsoft. I sure hope they fix this before they get sued into oblivion for this blatant privacy breach. ~~~ viraptor Why is that? You get the same thing with emails / IRC / some IM protocols / VoIP. What's so "scary" about someone knowing your current IP? I mean - it's one thing if Skype was advertising itself as a privacy protecting, identity hiding service... but they don't. They provide convenient A/V connections. ~~~ rhplus Let's say A wants to find B's IP address. In the case of email, A would need to trick B into replying to an email (and also use an email service that adds the client IP header). In the case of most IM servces, B would need to accept a friend request federated from a server. If I'm understanding this correctly, with Skype, A merely has to query B's status to get B's IP address. ~~~ daeken In the case of email, the easiest way to get a user's IP is to have them load an external image. ~~~ michaelhart Not true if you use a secure/intelligent email client, like Gmail. It will prompt you with a yellow bar above the email before loading any images. It also implies that they'll open the email, which most average people won't do unless they know the sender or are otherwise expecting an email. ------ AnonCIO I am firing our security consultant for not telling us about this. Our entire organization is exposed. We have just learned that the man behind Skype is the same person who was behind Kazaa. And he knew this all along. ~~~ steve918 Or maybe you could resign for being an uninformed CIO. P2P is 1990s technology.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheet or Excel for? - daolf It is often said that where there is a spreadsheet, there is a product waiting to be built.<p>The more complex the spreadsheet, the more needed is the product. ====== plumsempy I use Google Sheets a lot and I love it. From the common uses like task management to using it as mvp for a web app or a database for an mvp. What's interesting about Sheets is that the tables can be thought of as a database with columns and records, or a CSS grid and you can put buttons and everything on it. Currently I made a task queue for myself in sheets. There are a lot of things I want to do and I find out about these interesting stuff while in the middle of something else; so I just put the mew thing on the queue and forget about it. Works great. I also tag these tags in case I want to analyze them later. Finally, for fun, and also shameless plug, I made a Tetris using it. It even has animation when the tiles disappear. See it here: [https://plumsempy.com/2018/09/17/tetris-on-google- sheets/](https://plumsempy.com/2018/09/17/tetris-on-google-sheets/) It is a very powerful tool. ------ DoreenMichele The insurance industry probably needs new products, but when I worked at Aflac, they did a lot in house, so I don't know if you could readily market it. They did tons in spreadsheets and I kept angling to improve stuff and actually got an award for a thing I did, and then had to harangue people to actually get it made available department-wide and then someone else took it over and promptly screwed up the formatting with the very first update. I left insurance years ago. My knowledge is not current. But if you want product ideas, insurance is an industry drowning in information overload and if you could figure out how to throw them a life preserver and get them to pay for it, you could potentially make a killing. ------ ploika I think you'd find some fascinating answers on accounting, finance and actuarial forums, that might not turn up on HN. A few years ago I worked on a couple of different financial services projects that involved porting massive Excel-based jobs over to sturdier setups. Even the relatively simple spreadsheets (for people with a finance background) were long, complex projects that needed an RDBMS, an R or Python program, and a web app to do what Excel was just about handling on its own. ~~~ huhnmonster This. The stuff I am working on is mostly glorified ETL. Some sheets of course are user facing and will have a nice sheet inside the workbook where everything is summed up. Generally it looks like this: 1\. Get data from a central source (data warehouse/other departments) 2\. Transform/combine different sources etc. (mostly with pivot tables) 3\. output to a sheet 4\. add some sort of automation so it runs on its own the next time ------ nocubicles I use Excel when i'm developing SSAS analytics Cubes to test them. Also using it sometimes to get data from Odata feed. Maybe also some times to make some quick calculations of something.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Free Cardiac Monitor Simulator (with embeddable plugin) - th3o6a1d https://monitorsim.com ====== th3o6a1d Hey everyone, I'm a physician who likes to code. For a while, I've thought it would be cool to be able to pull up a free cardiac monitor simulator in a browser for teaching purposes. Would be even better if you could somehow control a monitor window remotely using your phone to simulate a case in realtime. Some of the existing sim software is ridiculously expensive (like everything in healthcare), or requires a software download. With that in mind, I give you: The Site: [https://monitorsim.com](https://monitorsim.com) About It: [https://jt.netlify.app/posts/monitor/](https://jt.netlify.app/posts/monitor/) Tech: * React, Firebase (for remote control), D3.js, Netlify Features: * control simulated scenario remotely using phone or other browser window (uses Firebase) * supports a variety of tracings (needs more work) * embeddable plugin for blog posts - just pass a JSON object Future directions: * add more waveforms (heart blocks) and finetune the existing ones * add arterial blood pressure waveform and styling Collaboration/Feedback: * Feel free to fork on github: [https://github.com/th3o6a1d/monitor](https://github.com/th3o6a1d/monitor) * Hit me up on twitter for feedback: [https://twitter.com/th3o6a1d](https://twitter.com/th3o6a1d) Disclaimer: * Some of the wave forms are the best approximations I can make at this time, and I've tried to keep them to scale. There's plenty of room for improvement. Go easy on me!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Man Trap - SirensOfTitan https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-man-trap ====== dnautics > Women who behave like their male colleagues may be disliked for being > “pushy” or “bitchy”, but these penalties are offset by the fact that they > are also likely to enjoy more power and greater financial rewards. When men > adopt the jobs and behaviours associated with women, however, they typically > experience a loss of status with fewer perks and more social sanctions, > especially from other men. I think older (straight) men do not care about loss of status or social sanctions from other men. They care about loss of status from women. Especially when in long term relationships, there's the fear of an incorrect narrative where their partner often _says_ that adopting feminine roles is appreciated, but subconsciously leads to less attraction. (with acknowledgement that the reverse is sometimes true for women's perceptions in the eyes of men) [edit: it's actually in the article too ~3/4 of the way down, I should have been more patient] ------ socrates1998 Yes, I agree. Men are often told they need to be everything: Successful yet don't work too much. Help with the kids, yet don't be feminine. Be strong, yet sensitive. Have hard employable skills, but also be an artist. Don't play video games, but be fun to be around. All of these are difficult to balance. The scary part is the a majority of divorces are ended by women. I don't know the answer, but as long as we acknowledge the fact that both modern men and modern women have a long list of conflicting demands on them, I think we can show everyone more compassion. ~~~ dionidium _" Don't play video games, but be fun to be around."_ I was nodding along until I got to this one. What in the world do video games have to do with being a fun person to be around? ~~~ greglindahl I think the point here is about interacting with a computer vs interacting with the people in the room. ~~~ dionidium Yes, except _those two_ ideas are strikingly compatible :) ------ scarface74 Why the focus on married women earning less than single women instead of focusing on household income? Even if the single woman earns more than a married woman. For the most part, a married couple should have more disposable income after living expenses than her single counterpart. Married couples have a greater per capita net worth than their single counterpart. In our case, because of choices we made together, my wife earns a little over 10K less than she did when she was single 5 years ago, but because I could depend on her to carry health insurance and she has more flexible schedule, that helps our family, I was able to switch jobs aggressively and I earn roughly $50,000 more than I did before we got married. We are both better off. [https://www.forbes.com/2006/07/25/singles-marriage-money- cx_...](https://www.forbes.com/2006/07/25/singles-marriage-money- cx_tvr_06singles_0725costs.html) [https://www.google.com/amp/www.today.com/amp/money/why- marri...](https://www.google.com/amp/www.today.com/amp/money/why-married- people-tend-be-wealthier-its-complicated-1C8364877) _Once they are married, the couples also are able to take advantage of economies of scale – anything from buying just one dishwasher to relying on one another’s health insurance. That allows them to build wealth more quickly than their peers who are single, divorced or living together romantically._ _For example, a married man may be able to work 12 hours a day to please his bosses and get promoted, because he and his wife can divide household duties so he can get ahead. That’s not as much of an option for a single parent._ ~~~ watwut I think that money are simple and crude measure of achievement and social approval. E.g. If part of your motivation is competitiveness or passion for your profession, she is losing after each child. My husbands higher salary won't make up for my missed promotion or less interesting project, it won't make me proud of my skills, basically. The article however was about men primary. Which I found interesting, because perspective of male who would prefer different tradeoff is rarely available. ~~~ scarface74 Isn't that a lifestyle choice that spouses make together - whether to have kids, devote more time to each other, pursue their careers, etc.? ~~~ Mz When you are married AND have kids, one thing that can happen is that the parent who is most concerned about the welfare of the kids has no choice but to simply buck up and do what is necessary for their sake. Quibbling with another grown adult about "fairness" and "equality" can be a great way to see the kids get shortchanged. So, once there are children involved, it is not unusual for the wife to just suck it up and do what the kids need at personal cost to her. It often makes little sense to try to hold hubby's feet to the fire and insist on him doing his fair share at home or whatever. This is not man-bashing. I am a woman and former homemaker. I do a lot of even-handed writing that tries to consider both sides of the picture. But this is a reality in many marriages. I do not self-identify as a "feminist" in part because, to me, "feminism" is about women wanting careers and to hell with any other considerations. This ongoing argument about equality of the sexes seems to mostly leave out the critical detail of the welfare of the children. Unless and until we start talking about what works for the family as a whole, including kids, and society as a whole, including families with legal minors, this entire argument about men vs. women and so-called equality will continue to be sick and twisted and will tend to continue to crap on any parent that actually cares deeply about the welfare of their kids, regardless of gender. ~~~ lactau >to me, "feminism" is about women wanting careers Second-wave feminism lasted from 1960s to 1980s. ~~~ Mz I don't know what relevance that has to anything I said. Aside from the cherry picking aspect of how you (mis)quoted me, I was a homemaker for a lot of years. I am 51 years old. I deal routinely with women who look down upon me because they chose to put their careers first. In some cases, they chose to not have children at all. In their eyes, I absolutely am not their equal and unequivocally not deserving of any real respect. Dealing with such women is usually a worse experience for me than dealing with most men. Such women are typically pretty toxic. ~~~ watwut Because these choices are very personal and people are very insecure about them. Does you staying home and being alright with it really means she is bad egoistic mother? Does some women liking staying home signify that world is moving back to homemaker side? Does me staying at home (and having to fight changes situation push on you) really means I am naturally lazy or less capable as conservatives like to suggest? In a sense, no one talks about these considerations openly, ever. So it comes out indirectly through attitudes. Everyone is supposed to be motivated only by positive things, you are supposed to stay because you are caring and loving not because you are sucking it up. That idea insults people. You are supposed to work because you love career, not because you don't want to be the lazy nagging stereotype - which you are pretty sure you would turn into if forced to stay at home. ~~~ Mz I have plenty of hypotheses of my own as to why other women do this sort of crap to me. In the end, I don't think it matters. If you want to talk about making the world a better place and "equality for all," then shitting all over me because I made different lifestyle choices from you and this hits some nerve of yours -- well, get therapy and quit making it my problem that you aren't actually happy with the lifestyle choices you made. If you want to call yourself a feminist and talk about getting equal rights _for women_ , then I don't want to hear your crap about how your ideals only actually apply to _women like you_ but still exclude large groups of women. I think these are just bitter people who felt "It's a man's world and the least worst option for a woman is to not have children." That's not an idealistic solution. That is not about making the world a better place. That is not about expecting more of the world. That is basically saying "No point in fighting evil. You can't win." Turning around and shitting on me because you gave up years ago makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution. ------ Pxtl I'm always iffy about articles like this because so much of the ground has been utterly salted by online "men's rights" activists that are more motivated by misogyny and antifeminism than actually righting wrongs. It seems like a good read, but I would loved more data to crunch. The numerics of working long hours was a great example of how the mathematics of the situation make this stuff happen. Anyhow, my wife and I actually do the fully-equal thing - she makes a bit more than me (teaching in Ontario is paid well and I'm not working in one of the Big Tech Market cities) so we have get to split things 50/50. This actually presented a great opportunity: She wanted to go back to work early from her parental leave after the birth of our 3rd kid. So I did something new: I took the other half of the leave. 7 months off with my kids. If you have the opportunity, do this. It actually made _more_ money for us, in terms of strict income. Both of our employers provided a several weeks of top- up parental leave in which the government unemployment-insurance benefit is supplemented up to your full weekly paycheck. So by both of us taking time off, we got to double-dip on this. And the experience with the kids was fantastic. I got to play boardgames with my son and teach him to ride his bike, and took my two daughters jogging in a double-stroller every other day. I practically _lived_ in a ring-sling, even getting the stink-eye from greasy guys on a family trip to Manhattan. I got to properly get to know the parents of all my son's best friends and we're all still close. I was in the best shape of my life and had a great time, and my wife likes her job so she was happy to be at work. I'd considered doing it on our 2nd kid, but friends and family had talked me out of it because of worries about my career. I don't even _work_ in the same place I did when my 2nd was born. I quit that job later on anyways, so I missed out on that time for nothing. To me, the biggest tragedy is the every-upwards climb of working hours for the household. There was a time when a family would live on a single 40 hour workweek. And what have we gained? I mean, for people who work retail, does the fact that they work on Sundays and every night to 10PM mean they actually sell more goods? Or does it just mean that retailers need to pay staff less per-hour because they're selling for more hours? ~~~ emsy >"men's rights" activists that are more motivated by misogyny and antifeminism than actually righting wrongs. What you think or told they are motivated by and their actual motivations are different things. ~~~ vacri If MRAs were primarily motivated by actual concern for men's lot in life, they'd do more proactive work. Instead they are mostly reactive, coming out of the woodwork when something is mentioned about women. They bitch about how bad men have it in order to deflate the issue de jour, then are not to be seen until the next time someone talks about women. The OP is utterly right in saying that the ground has been salted by these man-children. Men do face problems, but MRAs do little work and mostly just armchair whine. How many of them create working groups or petition politicians or similar? Compare to feminism, where while it has a share of whiners, is mostly pro-active; organising events, talking to stakeholders, starting discussions instead of derailing them. You see it here on HN, where a topic is about women, and the whiners come out to derail... yet these same MRAs don't post their own articles about men. ~~~ Pxtl I always like to point at Movember. A solid men's-issue foundation with no whining, no association with mras, and it generates an pantsload of money for a good men's-issue cause with relentless positivity. MRAs complain while the real men concerned by men's issues are actually doing something. Worried about the discrepancy between funding for breast cancer vs prostate cancer? Well you can moan about the nasty feminists and how society cares about women's suffering more than men's, or you can make a difference. ~~~ ar15saveslives How to be "proactive" with widely accepted discriminatory practices and affirmative action? ------ wcummings >Chase, a father in his late 40s who is a partner at an international law firm in Chicago. “When I see a woman who has children and I know she and her husband are working like crazy, that concerns me for the sake of the kids,” he says. “But when I see stay-at-home dads, I don’t think very highly of them. Call it sexist, call it whatever you want, but I think it’s kind of wimpy to do that. It’s checking out, not being in the game, not fighting for success. Those are the traits I value.” Wow, Chase sounds like a real turd, I feel bad for his kids. ------ phd514 >> Coltrane has found that after controlling for variables like age and education, married American men earn significantly more than their unmarried or divorced male peers, and their earnings go up with every child they have. Marriage seems to make men more productive at work because it allows them to outsource much of the housekeeping to their wives.<< I don't see how that last sentence makes any sense. Since when does one's earnings have anything to do with whether the housekeeping for one child or three children is "outsourced" to wives? I think it's far more likely that being a father to more children is correlated with being older and more experienced and therefore more highly compensated. ~~~ icewater "...after controlling for variables like age and education." ~~~ phd514 Hmm, fair point. It just doesn't make any sense then that more children correlate to higher income because the housekeeping responsibilities fall to the wife. ------ gozur88 >Coltrane has found that after controlling for variables like age and education, married American men earn significantly more than their unmarried or divorced male peers, and their earnings go up with every child they have. Marriage seems to make men more productive at work because it allows them to outsource much of the housekeeping to their wives. That's an assumption. IMO it's more likely to be that men with families out- earn their single and divorced counterparts because they're motivated to do so. Particularly as compared to divorced men. There's no point in killing yourself at work if the ex is going to take half the money. ~~~ micahbright Luckily, in Texas, child support is capped and alimony is politically unpopular. So there is a motivation for divorced men to make more. ------ jondubois I think that in a couple, there is always some form of resentment towards the partner which does not work (is not pulling their weight) but I think that the level of resentment is many times higher if the non-working partner happens to be a man. ~~~ killjoywashere When I was in med school, married with two kids, every member of my wife's family told her to divorce me, not once, but on a regular basis. They all think I'm great now and wonder why we don't visit them much. ------ samirillian I think a big part of reckoning with these social pressures may be simply expressing them out loud. It seems to be a truism of therapy that "you should never be ashamed of your feelings," but the very real benefits that white men continue to reap on one level tend to preclude an emotionally honest reckoning on another level. A lot of the negative effects documented in this essay seem to purely relate to cognitive dissonance. For example, the essay said that men would be more willing to accept certain "child-friendly policies" if they believe that it would not decrease their socially-perceived masculinity. I can only believe that it would also help men to openly express these fears, to state out loud the dissonance in their self conception that (largely positive) social change has wrought. ------ monksy > misogyny and antifeminism What's wrong with anti-feminism? Also, misogyny is one of those catch-alls that's being abused to mean: "Does not complement women" as of late. ~~~ dang Please don't post like this. The unsubstantive+ragey combo forms an inflection point at which threads go from bad to much worse. When a discussion turns into "yay label" vs. "boo label", there's no information left in it, and flamewars are the only thing left to do. We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337198) and marked it off-topic. ~~~ monksy I disagree with your view of what I posted. (it was not done with a unsubstantive+ragey stance) What I posted was a disagreement with the exaggeration of the alternative point of view they had. (Any article that doesn't agree with the popular ultra liberal women's positive view is "salted by mens rights [insert derogative terms etc]") Being anti-feminist is not a bad thing. It is a conversation that could be had (is it good, is it bad, etc), the topic of the original poster leads to a conversatoin about this. My concern with Hacker News is that it claims to be technology focused, and founder focus. However articles dealing with gender issues, like this, get promoted and kept up. I completely respect and understand your stance that those topics tend to go badly.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
For sale: an Enigma machine - epo http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&intObjectID=5370959&sid=5d471a41-553e-4a2d-b9ee-cf27e36133b8 ====== Robin_Message Also, the next lot is even more exciting: Some offprints of Turing's papers and manuscripts, formed by Prof. Maxwell Newman, guide price _300 to 500 thousand pounds!_ Apparently these are extremely rare; none have appeared in auction for 35 years! [http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=sal...](http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&pos=10&intObjectID=5370960&sid=5d471a41-553e-4a2d-b9ee- cf27e36133b8) ~~~ KoZeN [http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=sal...](http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&pos=5&intObjectID=5370965&sid=5d471a41-553e-4a2d-b9ee- cf27e36133b8) I'm surprised this hadn't had more attention here! _APPLE-1 -- Personal Computer. An Apple-1 motherboard, number 82, printed label to reverse, with a few slightly later additions including a 6502 microprocessor, labeled R6502P R6502-11 8145, printed circuit board with 4 rows A-D and columns 1-18, three capacitors, heatsink, cassette board connector, 8K bytes of RAM, keyboard interface, firmware in PROMS, low-profile sockets on all integrated circuits, video terminal, breadboard area with slightly later connector, with later soldering, wires and electrical tape to reverse, printed to obverse Apple Computer 1 Palo Alto. Ca. Copyright 1976_ ~~~ asmithmd1 Wow! a the Apple-1 is estimated to go for £100,000 - £150,000 I wonder if there are any artifacts from todays companies that we should be grabbing up ~~~ asmithmd1 Now I see why - it comes with the optional cassette interface and BASIC on a tape :) Seriously it is an exceptional artifact: original invoice (Salesperson: STEVEN) and a typed note from Steven Jobs explaining how to hook-up a TV and keyboard: [http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/ZoomImage.aspx?image=/lot...](http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/ZoomImage.aspx?image=/lotfinderimages/D53709/d5370965) ------ user24 I hope a museum gets it, but I think it will probably go for much more than the estimate. By the way, any UK HNers should definitely try to get down to the museum at Bletchley park and the national computing museum. Geek heaven :) edit: wow, they also have the first published ENIAC patents: [http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=sal...](http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&intObjectID=5370963&sid=b1077a41-474f-47b4-8f48-25f5c24fca97) ~~~ shrikant Visitors might want to be a bit patient on the guided tour - largely seems a waste of time initially, with the guide talking a lot about the history of the land/park itself, and the WW2/code-breaking info being somewhat superficial. Then he takes you into the National Museum of Computing and demonstrates the machines, and sometimes lets you touch and feel as well - awesome! The guided tour ends on quite the high! ~~~ user24 depends on the guide I guess, I've been there about 4 times (used to live just down the road, and the ticket is for a whole year!) and took the tour twice, the code-breaking content wasn't highly technical, but it was covered in a decent amount of depth I felt. Riddle from the tour: What must you add to nine to get six? (and no, it's not -3) ~~~ user24 replying in case someone years from now reads this: Gur nafjre vf f. avar va ebzna ahzrenyf vf vk, nqq na f naq lbh trg fvk ;) ------ cromulent One day, I'd like to have a library like Jay Walker's to add this to. He's even got a Sputnik in there, along with his Enigma. [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker...](http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker?currentPage=all) ------ wgrover Bay Area folks who've read down this far, you'll absolutely love the Computer History Museum, <http://www.computerhistory.org> ------ Luc That would look nice on the living room cupboard, but you can't beat this one for glamour: <http://www.tatjavanvark.nl/tvv1/pht10.html> Perhaps someone here will be able to decrypt that encoded Haiku... ------ pbhjpbhj I was interested in the many manuscripts in that sale. I wonder if Google would buy them, scan them and resell them ... they could buy through a third party/anonymous bid and only release the scanned copy after the resale to avoid a negative effect on price. ------ ljf Amazing piece of kit that would be great to own - but what would /you/ do with one? ~~~ brk You could probably gut it and put an Arduino inside of it that played MP3's. ~~~ astine With all due respect, wouldn't that be a little like upholstering your couch with the Bayeux Tapestry? While the Enigma machine isn't exactly one of a kind, it is quite rare and has a great deal of historical significance. ~~~ brk Sorry, I had a feeling the sarcasm in my initial post wouldn't fully come through :) I probably should have gone with the steampunk-themed comment I was originally planning. ------ tomjen3 30-50k pounds. Shit thats a high price. ~~~ user24 You think? I wouldn't have been surprised to see it fetch twice the high estimate. It's got appeal to people interested in: Computing Codes/Ciphers WW2 That's pretty broad appeal. I mean even if it was only of interest to Turing fans that's still a huge market, and Turing fans are only a small subset of those larger markets. Just my opinion, I've no idea if these things come up fairly often or not. ~~~ tomjen3 It may still fetch more, but honestly that doesn't change that it is a very large amount of money. ~~~ shabda > that it is a very large amount of money. Compared to what? People pay 100K$ for rocks which have no intrintrinsic value.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Did posting your startup in HN give you users or only competitors? - thisuseristaken I can't understand why anyone would want to post their startup in an early stage, when their codebase is probably quite small and easily clonable . Unless, of course, they want the professional feedback and brainstorming that this forum provides . Did any of you who posted your startup here gain a decent amount of real users (clients) ? ====== iamwithnail I've mentioned mine on here a few times, and it's picked me up a few users, although i've never done a 'Show HN' type thing. Most startups, I'd hazard, are specific enough in implementation, market and niche that you need to find someone who cares enough about all of those same things _and has the skills, time and wherewithal to land it_. Lots of people have ideas, few land them - there are probably 50 teams working on the same idea as you, but most won't land them. (On my example - the site's in beta, it's a soccer stats site so probably barred in a lot of non-UK domains as gambling related, of niche interest in any case, etc. My site's a clone/improvement, in many respects, on others that I've used in the past - fixing my own problems.) If you've got a world-changing, hugely scalable, easily copyable concept, then yeah, probably don't post it here. But otherwise, it's all in the implementation, and posting it on HN probably won't change that. ~~~ Mankhool I echo this completely and I have done a "Show HN" and a "Share Your Startup" on Reddit. ------ yellow_and_gray Speaking openly about a problem is a sign of strength, not a weakness. It's a sign of a weakness to avoid showing signs of weakness. You want to be educating people of what you are doing. Copying an idea has little to do with the codebase being either small or clonable and more with the people behind the idea. And I don't mean just about having courage. Ideas by themselves are roughly worthless. There's no market for them. There's no place where one can go and buy an idea. Describing your idea in detail doesn't mean other people will copy it. First they'll have to be convinced it's a good idea. If you ever tried to change anyone else's mind you know by now how hard that is. Not even founders themselves can predict how well their own ideas will do. Larry and Sergey originally tried to sell Google to Yahoo for $1m. And even if people are convinced your idea is a good idea, they'll still have to compare it to the existing idea they are already working on and see which one they're more likely to do well with. A better, more ambitious idea might seem frightening. A simpler idea might seem more tangible. It could be at least a year before one can convince themselves it's ok to let an old idea die, and at least two years to pursue an ambitious one. Ambitious ideas really are that frightening. If you are not convinced choosing between two ideas like this is hard, here's a simpler test that doesn't even involve a good idea. When you have only a bad idea and no good ones, how long does it take you to stop working on it? Regardless, good ideas will have competition anyway. You can't avoid it. So actively working on the next step of getting feedback on what you have is a sign you are strong enough to take the next steps, however small they seem, as opposed to hiding to avoid competition. Dropbox launched on HN ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)) and their biggest gain wasn't the number of users they got from HN. Their biggest gain was probably that they became less frightened by the idea of one day evolving into a startup with 300m users. ------ satvik1985 I think the biggest disservice you can do to yourself as a startup is to be protective about your idea and being afraid of getting cloned.. Ideas by themselves don't mean anything.. Its the execution of this idea that makes for a good venture. I personally meet so many people who don't speak or talk about their idea because they are afraid it will be copied. It just stops them from getting help from others. On the other hand I have been open about our startup idea and what we are developing, and an amazing thing it has done for us, is the feedback it has gotten us and more importantly connections to right places and people.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Extinct Startups Tees - signaler http://extinctstartups.com/ ====== pstevesy Clever. I'd like to see an Enron or Compaq tee.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hacker News Chicago meetup Wednesday 3/31 at 8pm - ccg Chicago hackers: Please join us for the next Hacker News Chicago meetup on Wednesday, 3/31/2010, at 8:00pm at the Hophaus (646 N. Franklin, 312-280-8832, http://www.thehophaus.com/). Please join our mailing list (http://groups.google.com/group/hn-chicago) for announcements and hacker discussions, and follow us on twitter or identi.ca (@hnchicago). ====== tptacek Wow, maybe a little more than 20 hours notice next time? Glad you're getting this together and all, but can you all figure out what the April date will be and announce it this week too? ~~~ j053003 Agreed. Wish there was little more notice. ~~~ danielzarick There is a Google group that we all use to discuss when the next event was a few weeks ago. We must have all just forgotten to post it on HN. Join the group though if you want to help choose when the next date is. <http://groups.google.com/group/hn-chicago>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A wiki for anecdotal or useless informations - lawyearsdw http://www.bt-wiki.net/Main_Page ====== ende How is this different from Wikipedia ?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bringing back the PC - ibrad http://idiallo.com/blog/2014/05/bringing-back-the-pc ====== ivan_ah The personal cloud built on FOSS is a very nice idea. We need this real bad. I think the technological complexity of implementing this is quite serious--- setting this up for the average non-technical person would be an impossible task. If we can get past the Dynamic DNS + opening ports on the home router, this will be immediately useful. Then again maybe "my personal cloud" could be on AWS to begin with, see [1]. Are there any efforts for the "personal cloud" platforms that have traction? I'm interested particularly for easy-to-use ones---possibly focussing on a single application, e.g., share pictures with your family from the old PC in your closet. [1] [http://minireference.com/blog/a-scriptable-future-for-the- we...](http://minireference.com/blog/a-scriptable-future-for-the-web-and-home- servers/) ~~~ buckbova For non-technical folks this is pretty difficult. The average person can purchase an off the shelf personal cloud and probably get somewhere with storing and accessing files but going beyond that requires help. As a test I set up owncloud and personal email on a digital ocean droplet just last night on their lowest tier. So far so good. But it needs some help on the user friendly aspects, like sharing a photo gallery. ~~~ scarecrowbob I'm pretty non-savvy about servers, but I have been trying to learn ansible, and at the same time I wanted to consolidate some personal servers, so I used this to deploy more-or-less the same thing on DO the other day: [https://github.com/al3x/sovereign](https://github.com/al3x/sovereign) My experience was that it wasn't impossible, and faster than spinning up a postfix/dovecot server by hand... but it was really buggy and lots of little problems. As far as I could tell, there were some problems using the encfs with the kernal DO uses, and that took a lot of troubleshooting. I am thinking that at some point there will be a setup that is as easy as, say, spinning out a wordpress site on shared hosting. ------ danelectro Back in the late '90's I thought lots of aspiring computer scientists were already using Windows or Linux as they VPN'd from their remote laptop back to home so they could access their personal files and full desktop through VNC. Not much differently than people would do on a commercial scale to their company network when they were away. Mainly dial-up except for the few who had broadband. I was too preoccupied with natural science, but by 2003 I got a cellphone containing a regular USB GSM modem and would use that plugged in to my laptop to log in to my own desktop PC network using dial-up my dang self. From anywhere having cellular service, no need for a wireless data plan which was not available in most coverage areas anyway. Was good to have a nationwide calling plan which most people did not have either, and it still used up minutes of your monthly allowance. No FOSS on the laptop back then for me usually, but if you had broadband at a remote location too, Windows XP had everything you needed to VPN back to a regular home Linksys router which normally contained its own VPN endpoint in those days with a new service called DynDNS already preconfigured in the router's firmware. Too bad DynDNS is not free any more but with the router handling VPN, you could still access a home network that was barebones Windows9x, Linux, even DOS. No need for software, just common hardware and regular Windows features. Unless you wanted the automated "Assistant" type stuff like in the article, then you would need software, regular users would never call it apps. Later once 3G wireless arrived, I got a phone supporting that and could get better speeds (when available) than dial-up, and without even needing the laptop when I just wanted convenient recreational use on the small-screen. Never did want to lose the regular dial-up cell modem from my toolbox though, but a number of years ago Tmobile walled it off. So much for Plan B when there is no 4G, which is still not everywhere. Plus, no faxing for you[1] directly from a laptop through a cellphone any more, without having to go through a web service. Clouds got in my way. [1] I realize now the '80's called and they want their facsimile machine back, but I was out of tape on my telephone answering machine ;-) ------ mmphosis I like the ideas in this article. Rather than the big footprint whitebox/blackbox from PC 1.0, instead I imagine PC 2.0 being a very small board, no fans, no spinning drives but having very fast CPUs and GPUs driving big monitors. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettop](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettop) Or, the very fast CPUs and GPUs with or without fans would hide quietly away in a closet but with a connector hub on my desk. It could draw a lot of power if required. It would be like an iMac, but with an open and modular PC 2.0 board that is separate from the big dumb monitor(s). Rather than UEFI or UEFI-like so-called "secure" boot, instead PC 2.0 would be instantly on, and support virtual "smart" bootloaders as an option. So without a config card (swipe or whatever), it would default to turning on instantly. With a previously used config card it would turn on instantly using that previous configuration. For any new config card to would actually "boot" up the new configuration and create a new "instant on" configuration. There would be options to backup and remove old configurations, and to set the default instant on configuration. Sort of like Virtual Box snapshots, but using hardware for the snapshots to actually make the computer "instantly" turn on. ------ jacquesm Super nice article. In some ways a next step compared to 'The Mother Of All Demos', in some ways a step back. But still quite neat. One thing all those 'always on' devices could use their unused cycles for is to create things like federated search engines, peer-to-peer encrypted backups (for instance, seed a torrent of your own encrypted data with a key only you know, boot your 'assistant' afresh and the first thing it could ask you is to restore from some torrent). ------ computerslol I am totally behind the spirit of your article. I also believe it's a travesty that we have so much power that can be attained so cheaply, yet we aren't using it at home.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Suggested backend(s) for JavaScript MVC tutorial? - eliot_sykes I'm considering writing a tutorial on JavaScript MVC frameworks, and a large part of it would ideally use a backend for server dependent demos like signing a user in and making RESTful API calls.<p>What do you suggest as ways of making this backend easy to run locally for a range of developer experience and operating systems? The only thing the developers would have in common is that they know some JavaScript. ====== facorreia PHP is known for being widely supported and easy to get running. It does require integration with a web server, though, which can present some complexities for novice installing it on random environments (which may already have a web server running, so configuration instructions become complex). Node.js would be an interesting alternative because you could keep it JavaScript-only across the tiers. It is supported across operating systems and it's easy to install. For instance, on Windows it can be installed as "cinst nodejs". For database I recommend SQLite since it would avoid a lot of friction associated with database servers (ports, permission, etc.) ------ poissonpie Try [http://www.redbeanphp.com/](http://www.redbeanphp.com/) and [http://redbeanphp.com/extra/beancan_server](http://redbeanphp.com/extra/beancan_server) specifically - it's a minimal bit of php with some magic that will probably mean you won't have to get too much into the server side of things with your tutorial. ------ bennyp101 For quick testing rest Apis I use [http://sailsjs.org/](http://sailsjs.org/) ------ kissmd if static data is enough, you can simple place it to files and serve as simple http ~~~ eliot_sykes Is there a particular server you'd recommend? ~~~ kissmd sry for the late answer. you don't even need to run apache or a node.js file server for this. just put your responses into files on a relative path according to your request. eg: api/product/31.json api/product?orderby=name api/product?orderby=price so if you have a demo webapp just package the static data with your app and redirect/configure api calls to the service in the live app	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Could the IPad make computer science obsolete? - Mongoose http://geomblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/could-ipad-make-computer-science.html ====== gprisament This guy completely misses what computer science is about. Sure, nobody studies "Toaster Science" just like nobody will ever study "iPad Science". But plenty of people study mechanics, electrical engineering, thermodynamics and other fundamental academic fields that have enabled humans to design and mass- produce toasters. At it's core, Computer Science is the mathematical study of computation and algorithms. Some of the most important results in CS were discovered before computers even existed (like the Church Turing Thesis). A new device with a slick form-factor and usable interface will not at all make CS obsolete. If it could efficiently solve NP problems...THEN perhaps some computer scientists would out of work ;)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Yahoo Should Buy Microsoft - naish http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/yahoo-should-buy-microsoft/ ====== gjm11 What he's actually claiming is that Yahoo! should buy _MSN_ , so that MSN gets the benefit of Yahoo!'s alleged knowledge of how to make money online, and Yahoo! gets the benefit of having MS as a significant minority owner, which supposedly would stop them doing silly things that, er, stop them making money online. The whole thing seems to depend on two contradictory ideas about the relative cluefulness of Yahoo! and MS. The nearest I can come to making sense of this is: Cringely thinks that Yahoo! understand _how_ to make money by doing business online, but that the management of Yahoo! doesn't really care whether they make money or not and therefore doesn't bother to do the right things rather than the wrong things. In that case, having MS as a substantial shareholder might enable MS to pressure Yahoo! into trying to make money. But this strikes me as very silly indeed. Anyway. Can some kind person with the necessary awesome powers please change the HN title to "Yahoo should buy MSN"? ------ jacquesm What total nonsense. MSN is losing money, sure. But the combined power of MSN and MSNBC give microsoft mindshare that you could only dream of if you had to go and buy advertising to get the same effect. Last I checked it was Microsoft looking to buy Yahoo, not the other way around. Between MSN and live.com they have traffic galore, and it would certainly help to solidify microsofts position on the internet. Especially given that long term they will have to go head to head with Google, every little bit will help then. The blatant anti-trust violations that Microsoft practiced in the past will no longer be tolerated, and the opponent is actually 'qualified' this time, and has a very solid business model. ------ jyothi Random ramble.. One, a company's assets (let alone possible innovative deal terms where yahoo don't have to spend much) should seem like it can buy another company. Which in this case is a clear no. Secondly, given the way yahoo screwed up overture and many other great acquired products and people, they definitely cannot run a serious OS or software business, not even half as good as MSFT runs it today. The only good thing that can happen is someone really focuses on the huge content and community portals that yahoo has been a leader in well. ------ tom_rath Wait a second... Cringely is concerned about Microsoft screwing up Yahoo? Yahoo. The company which has been incapable of implementing business-friendly search advertising after more than a decade of trying? _That_ Yahoo?!? Heck, if Yahoo's Sponsored Search provided the same limited functionality Microsoft Live delivers today, we'd be happy to shovel buckets of advertising dollars their way. Yahoo is definitely not the zombie one would want in charge of that business partnership. ------ bdfh42 The post title is "link bait" to front up the begging letter at the bottom of the item. ------ lionhearted I read a great article about an airplane manufacturer that had tight operations and grew at a solid, relatively slow rate. They had a really solid engineering corps, and didn't hire new engineers for certain But wasn't hiring much on certain parts of their engineering corps. Then they look around, and realize in a decade, everyone's going to retire and they'll lose all the knowledge that wasn't handed down. All that expertise, know-how, common sense, and hard lessons learned were going to evaporate if they didn't have young people working on it, and veterans handing down the valuable lessons. Microsoft absolutely needs to be developing and growing online business for the innovation and expertise that come from it. Even if they lose money on most of their online ventures, they _still_ need to do it. Who thinks the desktop OS and business software is going to be a huge cash cow in 20 years? MS needs smart people learning, building, experimenting, and doing cool stuff online to keep going.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook is not worth $33B - abhi3 https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2585-facebook-is-not-worth-33000000000 ====== mikro2nd Missing __[2010] __flare. ------ enjoyitasus great look-back. Love reading these and putting things into context. you can only connect the dots looking backward	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Pokémon Go proves investors were clueless about augmented reality - jflowers45 http://venturebeat.com/2016/07/12/pokemon-go-proves-investors-were-clueless-about-augmented-reality/ ====== beat I remember a friend of mine talking about a horror game working on the same principle as Pokémon Go, three or four years ago. Unfortunately, he's not technical and lacks resources, so it never went anywhere. But the idea is perfectly sound. Focusing on VR displays completely missed the point in the industry. It can be done with just GPS and a camera phone. VR displays actually get in the way, by making it hard to perceive your non-VR surroundings.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Animals can inherit traumatic experiences, study shows - 001sky http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study-finds-that-fear-can-travel-quickly-through-generations-of-mice-dna/2013/12/07/94dc97f2-5e8e-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html ====== anigbrowl This is pretty mind-boggling stuff. Also, an impressively well-written science article for a daily newspaper. ------ aneeshm If this turns out to be true for human beings (and I can't think of a reason, a priori, why it shouldn't be), then it has massive implications for both practical ethics as well as more abstract ideas of morality. If what you do to someone affects not just him, but also all his descendants up to N generations....	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How are you keeping your kids occupied at these times? - imalolz Dear HN parents,<p>With the current situation, our entire region is under strict lockdown.<p>Both my spouse and I are now working from home, and since there's no school and people are discouraged from going outdoors we have to find solutions to keep our kids - aged 3rd grade & kindergarten - occupied throughout the day.<p>We're really trying hard not to have them watch TV or use tablet/phone/computer all the time; we bought plenty of arts and crafts and the teachers emailed some worksheets and assignments, but it's VERY difficult for them to be so socially isolated, constantly indoors, without their friends and teachers, and sitting down and working through take home tasks all day just doesn't work. Both sides are frustrated and with good cause.<p>We find that we're constantly giving up and letting them use screens since we need some time to get work done (meetings, calls, writing docs and code, etc). Afterwards we feel terrible, saying we have to come up with a solution. I thought about starting my workday after they go to sleep (9PM), but that doesn't scale well unless I sleep 2 hrs/night. I realize this is a new reality for many people, and we have to adjust.<p>How are you dealing with this situation - keeping your kids engaged, doing something positive and still making time to work? ====== kinj28 The surprising element is that kids have adjusted to this fact of "Staying at home" without access to parks and outdoors. I have made sure from start that they wont get more than 3 episodes or 1 movie a day. Mostly they are busy with \- Lego (Ask them to build some new thing..like park one day, mall another, water play area, etc) \- Then there is pic painting event of the day. (Topic is assigned) \- Few rounds of cycling / skipping \- 500 piece puzzle is out down \- took out lots of games which ever dumped in attic \- worksheets on math & english \- most importantly get them involved in house old chores At times I take a break and hand over the assignments, check their paintings, show some patterns to copy, introduce a new game. Hope you find some of it useful in your situation. Let me know your tips.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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