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America’s love affair with uniformed men is problematic - secfirstmd https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21730738-it-also-leads-lot-fuzzy-thinking-about-armed-forces-americas-love-affair ====== AndrewStephens As a foreigner in your fine country, the amount of influence the military has in the US is amazing and slightly scary. Going to a Baseball game is like visiting a military base - recruiting ads play of the big screen before the game, during breaks various service people are honored (the last game I attended it was a random technician who had been in the Navy for 20 years. Good for him; but not something I expected to cheer about in a stadium). A large proportion of the audience is made up of military personnel as well. My impression is that the military has a huge marketing budget and basically owns baseball, effectively a huge government subsidy for owners of the teams. Even in wilder society, every third person you meet is either currently serving, served at one stage, or worked for one of the large companies with government contracts to supply the military. Guys, it is not like this in other countries. In fact it is creepy and weird, but I don't see it changing anytime soon. The military is so ingrained into America's economy and culture that de-emphasing it would be a huge change. I am not a total pacifist - a military is a handy thing to have around. But the US is crazy in this regard. ~~~ chimeracoder > As a foreigner in your fine country, the amount of influence the military > has in the US is amazing and slightly scary. The US has an outsize military because, for most of the past century, it has taken on the role of being the primary defense force not just for itself, but for countries all around the world. > Guys, it is not like this in other countries. In fact it is creepy and > weird, but I don't see it changing anytime soon. The military is so > ingrained into America's economy and culture that de-emphasing it would be a > huge change. I am not a total pacifist - a military is a handy thing to have > around. I'm sure it's not like this in New Zealand, but comparing US military culture to New Zealand's military culture isn't at all meaningful. New Zealand has the same population as Brooklyn; given that alone, it's not going to be a dominant sovereign military force on the global scale anytime soon (and that's ignoring its history and geographic location). That's not to say that I'm a fan of much of what the US military does, but it's rather off-base for foreigners from other NATO and MNNA countries to criticize the US for its military, when they're far and away the outsize beneficiaries of it. ~~~ jacquesm > defense I beg to differ. The US has been on the offensive side of things _far_ more than they have ever been on the defensive side. ~~~ throwaway2016a In the US "defense" is a general term for military. We call it the "Department of Defense" and companies that contract with the military are "defense contractors." With that said (and I've worked at a defense contractor as my college internship a decade ago) the name is intentionally misleading. Most reasonable people wouldn't support the "foreign war budget" but "defense"? What person would be against defending your country!? ------ rsp1984 Notice the title says "uniformed men", not "military", and IMO rightfully so. When I lived in the US I also found that policemen and firefighters enjoy a very peculiar status there. Usually the answer is "but they put their lives on the line". However that I find true for a whole lot of other occupations as well (e.g. coal workers, prof. athletes, (war) reporters and many more) so it's not a unique characteristic. ~~~ ckinnan "first responders" is the more common term. Honoring their risk/sacrifice became a cultural priority after so many died in the emergency response on 9/11. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_workers_killed_in_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_workers_killed_in_the_September_11_attacks) ------ MsMowz I think it's a little too easy to paint things like this as an outgrowth of culture. While our soldier/police worship is ingrained in culture, it didn't come about naturally; it was deliberately campaigned for after the labor gains in the 1890s-onward to try to undermine the red menace, especially once the US entered World War I, and our government continues to spend tens of millions on propaganda at sports games and the like. Of course, this is perfect for politicians who can take funding from defense contractors, but for the rest of us it's wasteful and, I fear, helps set the stage for the rise of fascist movements like we've seen for the past few years. ------ pizzetta It's a bit late for the economist to come out with this. They should have come out against the invasion of Iraq or the campaign to destabilize the middle east after that. Why now that we're beginning to disengage from the world? It's a bit strange to see some dissonance: on the one hand they don't want America to disengage from the world on the other hand we're too in love with our military. ~~~ chimeracoder > It's a bit late for the economist to come out with this. This isn't "The Economist" coming out with anything. This is Lexington, a long-running column in The Economist. In journalism, columnists do not reflect the opinion of the publication's editorial board, and columnists receive much greater leeway with their content editorially than other reporters or op-ed contributors would. The current author of Lexington has only been writing it since 2012, when the previous author died in a car crash. The previous author was, among other things, the foreign editor for The Economist who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. ------ fortythirteen What's most problematic with America is the need for everything to be a black and white issue. Can it be that both sides have a point in this? Military worship is pretty ridiculous and the mega advertising budgets for an "all volunteer" military turn public events into spectacles of propaganda. But when multiple generations of post-WWII western civilians have lived extremely cushioned lives, when compared to the other 2/3 of the world, a lack of understanding of the sheer sacrifice of wartime military service is inevitable. There's a reason that the vast majority of active-duty and veterans lean right wing, and it's not because of "lack of education" as the more snooty people on the left would have us believe. ~~~ dEnigma So what is the reason? ~~~ fortythirteen One is the social leftovers of a political left that literally spit on veterans forty years ago. There may no longer be spitting, but many times the disdain for military is still palpable. Another is that the military is a large group of people who have seen the manifest benefits of the Second Amendment, in that they have witnessed what happens in countries where only a small portion of the population are allowed to arm themselves. Since much, if not most of the the American left is adamantly anti-2A, backed by fear-mongering, left-leaning journalists who are comically uninformed about firearms, it makes for a huge political rift. ~~~ trowawee There is no documented evidence[1] that any veterans were spit on. This is a pernicious myth. 1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/myth-spitting- vie...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/myth-spitting-vietnam- protester.html) ------ maxxxxx What worries me a little is that the military often gets elevated to the point that it's not acceptable to question them in any way. If history has taught us anything it's that military often doesn't think about the big picture of a situation but do what they are told to do. Civil control is important. There is also the trend to make military "cool". I think this has led to a lot of cops wanting to be Navy SEALs and acting accordingly. When I look at the cops in my town they have a little bit an occupying force mentality instead of acting as part of the community. ------ swagtricker At first glance, I read this as 'uninformed men': taking it as a reference to the classic stereotyping of 'real men' being all blue-collar style male machismo, brutish willful ignorance, and general lack of intellect and culture (the latter being seen as feminine and weak). I'm a bit disappointed that's not what the article is about:) ------ saosebastiao America was born from anti-authoritarianism. The first 8 amendments to the constitution very clearly outline the founding fathers’ skepticism of authority, whether it be royalty, police, judges, or military. It is scary now that only blind deference to uniformed authority is given the patriotism stamp of approval. Even more scary are those that in one breath mutter original intent and in the next breath condone police executions of suspects or unwarranted mass spying or military invasions without declaration of war. ------ Hydraulix989 We don't need more human volunteers risking their lives in the physical battlefield, we need more hackers and more robots. ~~~ MsMowz At the risk of getting too political for HN, I think we need fewer of all three. What business does the US government have effectively acting as an imperial power in 2017? I'm with you that we shouldn't be risking lives as often, but we can accomplish that in multiple ways. ~~~ nindalf I'm not from America or Europe or China, but many countries might prefer the status quo of American hegemony to imperialism by any other country because they prefer a known devil. Starting 2030 you could ask what business the Chinese have acting as an imperial power but the answer then will be as obvious then as it is now - because they can.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sudont: like sudo, except doesnt do what you tell it to - xtat http://github.com/xtat/sudont/tree/master ====== Zev _This program is useful for when you dont want to do something._ Why not just, uh, not do whatever you don't want to do if you really don't want to do it? ~~~ xtat because we don't have that feature. This program adds the ability to not do things. It is very important to the software ecosystem. ------ rasa mu!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Who used tech to enjoy their wedding more? - reggiepret Could be planning phase (project management) or information (static website) or invites (dynamic website) or gifts (wedding registry/stripe) or any other wonderful ways that tech could help out on the wedding day itself :-D ====== thiagooffm Maybe how about just enjoying the good time with your partner and family? I've got married almost 3 years ago and didn't do anything apart from getting a company to do my party. No fb groups or anything, no regrets, it was perfect. We also wrote a lot of stuff offline and talked about how we wanted it, but all the planning software and so on that exists makes me think that people are doing a lot of useless stuff. We didn't even film it, had a photo session where like 2-3 pictures in the end we cared about. There's a lot of bullshit in the industry and it all makes it either more expensive or less special. My mother and father filmed it, I believe that they've watched it like twice and whenever they tried to show me I just slept, it's boring as fuck and it's only very emotional, nice and cool when you are actually in the moment, at the time, with yourself. All the rest is just bullshit, it's about showing people on fb that you are married and so on, which is something I don't feel so comfortable to share because it's very personal. I bet couples and people are different, but if I had to bikeshed even the color of the plants on the table or my wife did, it probably meant that we don't like each other that much. We just enjoyed the time and had a very nice moment together, from when we decided to marry, to the party and after. Now as I'm getting older, I'm having my younger friends getting married and asking me this kind of stuff, but when I really dig them, some of them are getting married just so they don't split up... really... dunno. Hard to say. ------ hbcondo714 I should have asked this question on HN b/c I just got married 2 weeks ago! We hired a wedding planner but my wife and I used the following "tech": \- [https://www.greenvelope.com](https://www.greenvelope.com) \- we wanted to get the word out fast so we used electronic save the dates and wedding invitations \- PayPal - different vendors accepted different payment methods so we used PayPal to manage most of it \- Google Spreadsheets - we listed out table seating, meal options, gifts and more and shared with our wedding planner and other family members \- [https://soundwaveprosdj.com](https://soundwaveprosdj.com) \- this is our DJ's site which allowed us to find and select specific songs. For example, I selected a string quartet version of Guns and Roses Sweet Child of Mine when walking down the isle \- Yelp - that's how we found our wedding planner and my tuxedo shop \- YouTube - we live-streamed our wedding ceremony: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6p9OA33E8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6p9OA33E8M) \- Marriott - we did a wedding room block at the Marriott but in order for guests to book a room online, they sent us a link where the dates and pricing were exposed in plain-text as query string parameters. Sure enough if you changed one of these param values, the web page would show it! ------ ecesena Yes, there's a ton to be done in this space. To my understanding it's almost exclusively owned by theknot on the planning and zola/similar on registry. Both are pretty poor quality imo, but they work. In addition, also advertising has a lot of potential, it's very heavily under utilized, and it's pretty easy to predict. So if you build a great product, it should be very cheap to bring it in front of many people. ------ seattle_spring Oh man, planning my wedding was a lot of stress. The only thing I could think of to make it even more stressful? Adding JIRA to the mix. ------ throwmeaway32 \- Google questionnaire and spreadsheet for food options. \- Laptop plus usb cables/audio cables for peoples music collections instead of a DJ (gotta trust you're friends taste though). Never use unproven tech for a mission critical deliverable :) ------ kleer001 They're so amazingly complex the only thing I can think would help is an experienced impartial wedding planner OR a dead simple wedding. ------ PaulHoule see [http://www.weddingwoo.com/](http://www.weddingwoo.com/) social media is a big part of the wedding experience today too. People will criticize it in that it takes people out of the present, but it does let people share and memorialize the experience.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Interested in a Boston Meetup? - wtvanhest Is anyone on HN interested in working with me to start a quarterly Boston meetup? I have been successful in starting an alumni association here and could lead the effort but it would be a lot better to have people to bounce ideas off of.<p>Let me know if you are interested. ====== co_pl_te I think there are a lot of people in Massachusetts that would be interested in this. I wouldn't count organizing people as one of my strengths, but I'd be willing to help any way I can. ------ vineet I would like to see this happen. I am caught in between a 100 different things in the next few months so I doubt that I can be of too much help in the short while. ------ wtvanhest Contact me at my username at gmail if you are interested in helping out and we can work together on the basic idea etc. I'm thinking about targeting early/mid Dec for the first event. ------ agathayu Would love to help! What kind of meetup are you thinking? ------ intellegacy What would be the purpose? Discuss..? Networking? ------ whichdan I'm absolutely interested. Feel free to get in touch. ------ hakeon I'm in... ------ heavymark Yes!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What we talk about when we talk about singularity - bdfh42 http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/06/singularity_eco.php ====== eyudkowsky With a few bright exceptions like Robin Hanson and Paul Wallich, the IEEE Spectrum issue follows the usual pattern: People who have no engagement with the serious Singularity analysts, making up stuff at random and saying "This is what the Singularitarians must believe." The term now has at least three major separate meanings, by the way. See [http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major- singular...](http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singularity- schools/) for preliminary disambiguation. ------ DaniFong I'm not sure why, but I've never heard singularitarians consider that computation and intelligence is bounded by more hard constraints, like physics, than will let exponential growth continue indefinitely. ~~~ JesseAldridge Constraints have a way of crumbling in the face of ingenuity. ~~~ DaniFong Some do, yes. But I'll play my bets and say that NP-Hard will stay hard, the speed of light won't be broken, and at a certain point you need to switch to reversible computation because of landauer entropy, which will set space constraints of it's own. ------ hv23 Check out "Tom Lord"'s comment towards the bottom of the page-- interesting take, but definitely a reach. Nevertheless, it's something to consider, that maybe the growing popularity of the Singularity notion is the next sociopolitical movement on the scale of the 60's counterculture era... allowing people to escape from where they currently are by considering and believing in the vague notion of a distant future where things are different, but they're not sure how... and that is why they spend time thinking about and working towards their vague, alternate perception of what reality is. I'm not saying this is true, that technological trends do not point in the sign of the concept of Singularity- in some way, shape or form- actually happening. This viewpoint merely resonates with me because of the historical reality of what we've seen with previous movements (and this extends beyond just 60s United States). ------ olefoo I think that's the most amusing take on the singularity I've read so far. But seriously, the singularity as such is just a name for the point passt which it is not possible to make predictions right now. As such it's an ever retreating goal, like trying to visit the horizon.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Quitting Chrome: Because Google+ - badloginagain This weekend I made a fairly major change to how I interact with the web- I consciously switched default browsers. Fed up with Google's constant ramming of G+ down my throat, I've decided to hit 'em where it hurts: their marketshare. So I've switched to Firefox, and while noticeably slower, I feel it's a browser I can put more trust into.<p>Google should be employing a strategy of invisible control over how people interact, not forcing a centralized interaction layer on something that is inherently decentralized. They should be quietly creating and controlling channels of communication that I cannot live without. Apply the strategy that grew their search engine to all Google initiatives.<p>Or I will find alternatives. ====== xpose2000 This sounds backwards to me. If anything, you should be quitting Google, the search engine, rather than their browser. Google can live without you being a Chrome user, but it hurts them if you switch to Bing or duckduckgo. ~~~ lelandbatey Yes, but switching to Firefox also hurts _me_ a lot less than switching to Duck Duck Go. ~~~ jolurox DDG is great. The instant answers feature is awesome, honestly I prefer it. ~~~ a-nikolaev Agreed. I have been using DDG for ~two years. Maybe once or twice a week, I actually ask DDG to search in google (with awesome "!g" or "!img" bang- commands). DDG works consistently great, and the new DDG is even better, with auto-completion, images and video tabs. And I'm using Firefox as well. ~~~ mathrawka Save yourself half the keystrokes! !img == !i ~~~ Rudism Huh, and all this time I've been using !gi You, sir, have just increased my productivity by 33.3%. ------ jmillikin > Google should be employing a strategy of invisible > control over how people interact, [...] They should be > quietly creating and controlling channels of > communication that I cannot live without. Wait, what? You don't mind a third party controlling how you interact, but you hate being _told_ about it? ~~~ sliverstorm It sounds to me more like, "Make it so good it's indispensable to me, rather than trying to force me to use it" ~~~ jmillikin Using Google doesn't require an account of any kind, and a Google+ account is only required for social features such as posting comments or sharing links. The launch state of Google+ provided an extremely hostile experience due to policies such as "one social identity per account" and "use a government- approved non-ethnic name", but these issues were resolved years ago with the Pages feature. ------ zobzu I dont understand when people find firefox noticeably slower. I wonder if thats related to OSX. Regardless, I agree with the move 100%. Thanksfully, while Firefox may not be the best, its very good/useable for everything. If ever it isnt good enough anymore and there is no other replacement - this is when we'll really be cornered ~~~ subsection1h > _I dont understand when people find firefox noticeably slower._ In my experience, people who think Chrome is faster than Firefox never have hundreds of tabs open. I like Chrome and I use it for development, but I use Firefox for general web browsing because it handles hundreds of tabs much, much better. Not only is Firefox's performance better, but Firefox extensions such Tree Style Tab and Session Manager are vastly superior to the tab management extensions that are available for Chrome. For example, I'm still waiting for a Chrome extension that supports the basic task of appending the current window to a previously saved session. ~~~ frik Browsers that use several child processes (like IE, Chrome, Safari/WebKit2) are faster, have less latency, crashes involve only one tab and the child processes run with limited OS priviledges ("sandbox") than browsers with only one process (Firefox, Safari/WebKit1). Mozilla is working on a multi-process Firefox, one can activate it with a hidden flag (it is still not production ready, and it will break several old plugins). With multi-process browsers one can have hundreds of tabs open for weeks (if you have enough RAM like 8+ GB). ~~~ azakai > Browsers that use several child processes (like IE, Chrome, Safari/WebKit2) > are faster, have less latency, crashes involve only one tab and the child > processes run with limited OS priviledges ("sandbox") than browsers with > only one process (Firefox, Safari/WebKit1). It's more complicated than that. For one thing, "have less latency" is often the opposite: a keypress in a multiprocess browser has to travel from the user-facing process to the child process, then the effects have to travel back. In a single-process browser, there is no need to cross that boundary back and forth. You can see this in action in games for example, where you can sometimes see more input lag in multiprocess browsers. Regarding speed, depends how you define it. Definitely multiprocess gives you responsiveness - one slow tab doesn't slow down the others. But throughput, not necessarily. Overall though, multiprocess is a good thing. I'm just saying it isn't a win across the board, like everything it has downsides. ------ adamconroy I've done the same. I use gmail a lot, I have an Android phone and I was using desktop Chrome for years. However I started to notice things that worried me, for example I would be using Chrome on my PC but definitely not logged into Gmail / Google+, then I would see that my recent google searches from the desktop Chrome would appear in my recent searches list on Android within seconds. I could somewhat accept that if I was logged in to Google, but I don't accept that if I am logged out. On one hand the functionality is pretty impressive, on the other hand my gut feeling is they have gone too far. ~~~ jmillikin Chrome logins are separate from Google web logins; go into your Chrome settings and sign out. ------ mark_l_watson I switched browsers for a different reason: I installed OS X Yosemite beta and it seems like the Safari browser uses far less COU resources, noticeable by longer battery life. ~~~ demallien My apologies for the off-topic, but I wanted to ask how you are finding Yosemite - is it stable enough for me to switch over my dev machine? ~~~ liviu Yes, is pretty stable on my old MacBook white. The only thing that crashed was Xcode Playgrounds. You also will see some pixelated rounded corners for some contextual menus... but hey, this is beta. [http://i.imgur.com/IMys5f6.png](http://i.imgur.com/IMys5f6.png) ~~~ wyclif How are you running Yosemite on a white MacBook? Is it a 4,1 2008-ish MacBook that maxes out at 4GB of RAM? Just curious, because I have one of those but I'm still running SL on it because I figured Mavericks would be a dog. ~~~ liviu I have a MacBook White Unibody (13-inch, Late 2009) with 8GB of RAM. This have a 64-Bit architecture and I can run the latest OSX without any problems. [http://support.apple.com/kb/sp579](http://support.apple.com/kb/sp579) ~~~ y4mi > two SO-DIMM slots support up to 4GB ... confused ~~~ liviu I think the reason Apple specified 4GB is max is because four years ago there were not any 4GB sticks for testing and Apple does not retest years later for a discontinued product. [http://i.imgur.com/CKbdu6c.png](http://i.imgur.com/CKbdu6c.png) ------ quotient I don't understand why Chromium isn't a more popular alternative to Google Chrome. It's the open-source basis of Google Chrome. It runs noticeably faster than Firefox, while being similarly trustworthy. It's a great browser, available on all conventional operating systems. What's not to like? ~~~ jmillikin Chromium doesn't have stable builds, and the official snapshot binaries don't auto-update. This isn't so bad if you're using an OS with a package manager such as Debian, but it makes Chromium completely impractical for Windows and MacOS users. ------ mikeratcliffe Firefox is faster these days. If you find it slower then you probably have addons that are slowing things down. Try disabling your addons and enable them one by one to find the culprit. ------ WWLink Make sure to turn off things like the google autocomplete thing in the address bar then, because firefox does that too. I was surprised, looking at wireshark lol. ------ asaddhamani I switched from Chrome as my default browser after two years of using it just two months back. Sometimes Firefox isn't able to render certain websites and rather spits out the html, but aside from that, I haven't had any issues. I think it works noticeably faster for me. I use it on both OS X and Windows, and it works great on both. It is also a lot more customizable and lets me run my own sync servers. ~~~ adrusi I find the problem you mention very odd. I've used Firefox for over a year and have never seen anything like that. Is it possible that you have some configuration messing it up? Otherwise all I can think of is that the sites are sending html content with the Content-Type header of "text/plain" and Chrome is deciding to render it as html based on other clues (which would be non-standard behavior). ------ tritium Google should be employing a strategy of invisible control Uh, no thanks. I'm not interested in being controlled by anyone, and I chafe at the idea of any corporate strategy that attempts to do so. ------ dibbsonline I simply don't use Chrome because it is a closed source browser from an advertising company. ------ Errorcod3 I've tried chrome/mozilla, and did not like either. I use Opera and highly suggest it! Issue I had with chorme is when I would open up a new tab it would flash to a white screen quickly before loading the background image of my home/speeddial page. ------ jolurox I am using Safari because it's faster for multi tabbed browsing and I can use WebKit's "FTL" JavaScript JIT compiler. ------ meira Well, what is the point so? You're dropping Google Chrome because you think google should control you more? ------ krato I would switch if I could find a way to use multi-user profiles. Is there a way to do this with Firefox ? ~~~ e15ctr0n You can create several profiles and even run them simultaneously. Each profile can have its own collection of bookamrks, add-ons, etc. [http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/firefox-profiles-run- multiple-f...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/firefox-profiles-run-multiple- firefox-profiles/) ------ b00tbu9 I have switched once my laptop started lagging when Chrome is opened. Even mouse pointer stopped moving. ------ Lidador Iron browser = Chrome without Google. ------ ASneakyFox Opera = chrome - google ------ metastart Try EpicBrowser.com -- built on chromium but designed to protect your privacy with everything Google ripped out. ~~~ lh7777 I like the idea, but I'll wait until they publish the source.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Freebie finding site using interesting algorithm - tectonic A little while ago I built an automated website that finds free stuff while filtering out scams. It works in an interesting way. Most freebie sites on the web contain a mix of real, useful free stuff and scammy affiliate and pyramid schemes. I realized that affiliate links are always unique (because they need to contain an affiliate code) while real freebies have URLs that co-occur across multiple sites at roughly the same time. I wrote a crawler in Perl and MySQL that looks for repeating, off-domain URLs that temporally cluster on multiple free stuff sites. I was surprised and pleased to find that this trick eliminates affiliate links with almost 100% success and tends to find real freebies. I then let users rate freebies and provide category and description information.<p>Here's the result: http://absurdlycool.com<p>Do you folks have suggestions about how I could make the site more useful? I recently worked on a redesign, but I'm a programmer, not a graphic designer :) ====== ideadude Never new how this actually worked. Thanks for sharing. I hope others have some good suggestions. ------ todd3834 linkable: <http://absurdlycool.com> ------ suking 99designs.com fast ~~~ tectonic Does it work pretty well? ~~~ suking yes	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A programmable controller for connected devices (YC S13) - twald https://medium.com/@senic/developing-for-the-nuimo-controller-7292becfacff ====== gyuriy Wonderful!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Twitter behavior can predict users' income level - jimsojim http://phys.org/news/2015-09-twitter-behavior-users-income.html ====== Vexs I can't say much of this is surprising, except for the bit about fear. Any thoughts about what would cause this? ~~~ realquick81 Yes. > for example, those who earn more tend to express more fear and anger on > Twitter. That is to be expected. If you know your r/K selection theory, K individuals have larger-than-average amygdalae which is responsible for awareness, risk- assessment and consequentially fear. K individuals in human beings are those who aren't promiscuous, marry early and have kids, and by consequence are infinitely less likely to be poor. > Perceived optimists have a lower mean income. This also makes sense, since r-individuals in human beings are more welcome to hope and change (optimism), and they tend to be less well-off financially since they switch their survival needs onto K-individuals (demanding help from them for paying their student loans, providing food stamps, etc). ------ pmcgrathm Something as benign as your user agent, previous browsing activity, or individual site cookie can predict income more accurately than a regressional analysis of salary data as compared to twitter themes.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Falluja’s Strange Visitor: A Western Tourist - soundsop http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/world/middleeast/07falluja.html?hp ====== jacquesm this so reminds me of Terry Pratchett... Amazing story, not too sure what the hacker link is but I found it a quite interesting read, thanks for sharing!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Researchers: We can detect life on other worlds through its vibrations - whyenot http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/12/researchers-we-can-detect-life-on-other-worlds-through-its-vibrations ====== Houshalter This sort of reminds me of the voyager experiment that some people believe confirmed the existence of life on Mars [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/04/120413-nasa-...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/04/120413-nasa- viking-program-mars-life-space-science/) ------ marcosdumay Well, how would an equipment collect single cells to place them on the instrument? Is there any procedure that could end with single cells correctly placed, but does not depend on detecting those cells beforehand? ~~~ XorNot AFM tips can be scaned at fairly high speeds over fairly large radius's. More importantly, they can operate easily in aqueous or otherwise life-favoring conditions. The fact that you could use an AFM tip to both image a target sample _and_ determine if something which looks like bacteria is actually alive, is pretty significant since you can also use an AFM for lots of other things (i.e. rock morphology, hardness testing etc.) Its a way of making one instrument on a spacecraft much more useful. ~~~ marcosdumay Didn't think about scanning the sample :) This thing must be way slower than a conventional AFM, but wes, it's cheap, light, and reliable to several factors that other instruments aren't. Should be a great add-on.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Agile should focus on Problem Statements instead of User Stories - jdubray http://www.b-mc2.com/2013/04/25/refocusing-agile-from-value-to-solutions/ ====== dragonwriter The consistent use of "solution" as a verb in place of "solve" makes this hard to read; especially things like saying "every problem must be solutioned" (oddly enough, the BOLT diagram uses "solve" as the verb.) But once you get past that and some other odd uses of language, this seems to be an argument that the units of work entering the development queue in an Agile project ought to be the output of a process of decomposing problem statements and then, when the appropriate level of focus has been reached, developing solutions to the decomposed problem statements. I don't have any problem with that, but I fail to see how it offers anything new. Aside from what appear to be gratuitous swipes at "value" and "user stories", a halfhearted attempt to propose new jargon (except that the terms aren't defined, each just has some vague statements made about it), and a claim that this somehow increases the organizational value of the PMO, this seems to be exactly how most works on agile or lean methods I've ever seen have suggested that work items (whether they are called "user stories", as is common in many agile approaches, or not) are generated. So I don't see what new is being offered here, or what the concrete problem being addressed is. ~~~ jdubray I added some comments to the post to explain that the structure of a User Story has already a foot in the solution space. I view this somewhat as an issue. The relationship between a problem and its solution (one of many) is a graph of states, transitions (decomposition of the problem) and actions (the solution of each transition). The problem I see with User Stories is that not only we encourage a solution centric thinking but the articulation between the problem and the solution is convoluted (not cleanly expressed as a graph) and often forced fit into a hierarchical tree in tools like Rally. I have been part of teams who struggle to relate user stories together and I think this is a core problem, there is no clean decomposition possible, like you could achieve with problem statements. Hope this helps, thank you for your comment.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Samsung Announces TecTiles, Brings Programmable NFC Tags to the Masses - kul http://www.droid-life.com/2012/06/12/samsung-announces-tectiles-brings-programmable-nfc-tags-to-the-masses/ ====== sturmeh ... or you could get them here: <http://www.tagstand.com/> for a third of the price and use an app that ties in with the existing profile infrastructure like tasker. ~~~ kul thanks. kul from Tagstand here. Submitted this to see what HN had to say. We've been working on NFC Task Launcher ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jwsoft.nfc...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jwsoft.nfcactionlauncher)) for a while now, which is similar to this Samsung app. ~~~ ben1040 This tool is great. I have an NFC sticker on my nightstand lamp now so when I trigger it, my ringer/notification volume goes to zero, alarm volume goes way up, and I set an alarm to wake up the following morning. I used to be really sloppy at muting the phone at night and this cures that. My wife is a light sleeper and I can now make sure I am not waking her up at stupid o'clock in the morning when I get an email overnight. I bought a bunch more tags from Tagstand and I am looking forward to finding more stuff to do with them. ------ 51Cards Simple use... two of these by the door would make my life easier. Going out: turn off WiFi, turn on GPS, Bluetooth, turn up the ringer volume and screen brightness, etc. Coming in: do the reverse. Of course I can make it even easier with On{X} and trigger the same on detection of my home WiFi network (other than turning off WiFi of course) ~~~ gojomo When you lose the home Wifi signal, do the 'going out' actions (including turn off Wifi). When GPS tells you you're back home, do the 'coming in' actions (including Wifi back on). Seems even smoother than NFC touchpoints. ~~~ __alexs That requires running GPS a lot. Better to just look for certain sets of cell towers. Llama does this on Android already. ~~~ coob iOS does this with Location reminders. Not editing system settings, but you can geofence like this. ------ zheng Its things like this that will hopefully continue the push of automation in general society. We as hackers have long seen the power in automation, but the general public sees a computer as something that is powerful, but adds complexity to their life. Apple does a great job at fighting this image that technology == complexity, and that's part of why they are successful, IMHO. I just can't wait until the real wave of automation hits the general market with force. ------ roel_v Are these things rfid under another name? If so, what rfid tech do they use? I have an rfid tag implanted in my hand that I'd love to find a use for in this context :) ~~~ a-stjohn As I understand it, NFC is similar to RFID, but RFID provides one-way communication, while NFC provides two-way communication. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. ------ vannevar How is this different from handing your unlocked phone to a stranger and telling them to have at it? ------ miahi The price ($3 each) is huge. Passive RFID tags usually cost less than $0.15. ------ stevejabs Doesn't ICS out-of-the-box support the majority of what this app is trying to accomplish? ~~~ omarseyal Yeah, you could say that. Lots of the features are simply writing uris that trigger intents. That said, they're selling passive tags for $3 each. The user who buys that is likely not going to know how that placing a uri on a tag is easy and free...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is Linked in Worth It? - dfxt8 Whenever i hit Linked in, i get this long list of different people spamming certificates of courses they just completed, some machine learning project to detect masked and unmasked face or even machine playing dino on chrome, it really irritates me, is it really that important to advertise your project on Linked in which is not even open source, or advertise how with extreme difficulties you just completed a course, contents of which you are gonna forget next summer? How much this advertising-yourself thing works? Secondly, is it really that important to do fancy projects? What if am interested in less fancy stuff, say cli tool development or compiler development, will the society accept me?<p>P.S.:Asked by a Junior year college student. ====== Communitivity For what purpose? If you use it to help with connecting to people and staying in touch, yes. It doesn't replace the main ways you connect though: conferences and other meetings where you connect face to face, and connecting through shared efforts on Open Source projects, standards, etc. Yes, there are recruiter spammers. Ignore them, or better yet fire off a polite "Not interested right now, but who knows down the line." type of email. It never hurts to keep doors open. For advertising your project on LinkedIn, no..that's not where I see value in LinkedIn for most people. Advertise your project instead in the relevant forums for your language, toolkit, interest. For example, make something that developers or startups might find interesting? Post it on HN with a Show HN. Make some new Rust crate? Post it on /r/rust, or Rust Weekly. Launch a new MVP site? Post it on Techcrunch and HN. Individual communities such as telecom, ICS, geospatial, defense, etc. have their own forums to post on. The more utility what you create has for others, and the more freedom you give others to leverage that utility, the more your project will get your name out there. Another way of thinking about it: don't worry about optimizing your brand right now, create useful interesting things, let the people who share your interest in those types of things know about them, and incorporate any feedback you receive into new things. Also, make yourself available to help people learning the things you've already learned. ------ theshrike79 Linkedin can be used in many ways. Some bottomfeeders even use it as a dating service. This is how I see it: It's a place to connect to a professional network of people you know or have worked with. When you are looking for a job, the recruiter and interviewer WILL look you up on Linkedin. After that they'll see if there are any shared 1st level connections and reach out to them for comments about you.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is Twitter broken today? - alva Timeline and search aren't showing anything newer than 45 mins. UK ====== napsterbr Can confirm that several people are experiencing issues with feed updates ------ sabelo Experiencing issues from South Africa	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What terrible treatment have you seen in the workplace? - jonthepirate Without calling out the identity of any companies or coworkers, I'm curious what bad treatment other engineers have seen in the workplace ====== steedsofwar When i graduated, my manager would often come over to me on a Thursday and say he needed my work done my Monday. Which inevitably meant i would be in the office over the weekend. This happened for 6 weeks straight. That's right, every single day i worked, there were no weekends for naive old me. On the beginning of the 7th week, i had a twitch in my eye and i could smell death. I broke and handed in my notice, my ceo refused, then accepted after he spoke to the manager. The manager had a word with me, and told me that they were going to fire me anyways. What a nice guy. ~~~ trome Classy manager, did he give a specific reason? After 6 weeks nonstop I'd probably do the same as you, no need to kill myself for a company. ------ INTPenis My account here is anonymous. I've seen bosses gang up on a 50 year old employee, seemingly to get rid of him. Where I live it's very hard to fire someone unless you give them three written warnings. This senior 3rd line tech was well on his way with two before he found a better job and quit himself. Both warnings were completely unfounded, but I only remember the details of one. The last one was due to consultants in another office, in another city, registering an internal certificate on a personal e-mail address. So it wasn't renewed and cost the client some revenue in downtime. Since my senior tech was responsible for operations of the environment he got blamed and got a written warning. Now that I think back, the first warning might have been about when he replaced disks in a failed disk array and the array crashed as a result of the replacement. Either way, me and several other younger techs got the impression that they were trying to get rid of old blood and get new blood in. We work for a very large telco concern where employee numbers are regulated from the top. So you can't hire anyone new unless someone old quits. Or unless the mother company approves expansion. Edit: For some perspective, younger techs have made bigger mistakes and gotten off with verbal warnings. ~~~ osullivj Sounds like a classic "manage out" process. Staff with long service are more expensive make redundant. The managers concerned will have engaged HR who will have advised on how to build the documentation trail to make an eventual dismissal legally watertight. ------ gozur88 I had a job in which the management had no idea how reliable software gets developed, and their MO was to hire the cheapest people possible (H-1Bs, back when you couldn't transfer) and work them to death. Not being on a visa myself I should have quit after a week, but I was young and naive. They were perennially going to go public "in six months or so". Every Friday my boss would walk through the cube farm and we had the same discussion: Boss: "We're not meeting our schedule, so the team decided we need to come in tomorrow for a half day. Me: "The... team?" Boss: "Don't worry, I'll throw in lunch." Me: "I really need a day off. I had to buy underwear yesterday because I haven't had time to do laundry." Boss: "It's just until we get version 1.3.7 out. After that we'll all have a chance to catch our breath." So we'd come in on Saturday, and of course after a half day nothing was working, so he'd extend, and then ask everyone to come in Sunday "so we can catch up and not have to do this any more." It got so bad people started taking Fridays off under the theory that a single day of vacation plus some mumbling about being out of town was good for three days off, and you could always tell when someone got his green card, because that would be his last day. This is the company that sent a team to a customer site "for a few weeks", and that team was still there working around the clock months later. So the wives of the employees in question got together and somehow found them new jobs. The entire team quit on the same day and flew home, leaving the company scrambling to explain (by which I mean "lying their asses off") what was going on and trying to pull people in from related projects to salvage that install. ~~~ romanovcode Is it even legal? ~~~ gozur88 Sure. As an "exempt" employee, the assumption is your option to leave and find another job is your protection against mistreatment. Of course there are some specific things that the company can't do, but demanding longer hours isn't one of them. ------ throwaway126126 Amazon Lab126 I am using a throwaway account and withholding some tech info as this may uniquely identify people involved. I joined a high-profile machine learning research team within Amazon. On my first day, I knew something was off immediately -- the manager literally gave me a laundry list of micro-tasks to do with an exceptionally strict timeline. Of course, the list was unrealistically ambitious to make him look good. This is a research team -- most research attempts simply aren't successful at first tries. But he wanted to push with his "perfect" schedule. I frequently stayed after midnight to meet the schedule. When this schedule wasn't met, I was publicly humiliated in front of other team members. He loved to micro-manage, and he insisted on literally sitting behind me for hours to see each word I am typing into the terminal. I worked at several companies before this, but this level of micromanagement was not something I had seen before. This certainly was not a pair programming session (which I normally enjoy actually), as he was not actively contributing to the problem at hand. It was just...watching me work for hours in a small room. One time, a friendly team member saw the difficulties and kindly offered to give some technical tips. This manager came to us and started to raise his voice how ignorant people should shut up [his words]. This was in the middle of large office. I got dragged into a small room after that, and I was verbally abused for an hour because he thought I made him look bad (technically incompetent) by talking another team member for technical tips. He was so upset that he was red and almost crying. After surviving this environment for a while, I decided to leave. I told the manager and the senior manager politely that it was not a good fit. Of course, they can't just let me leave voluntarily -- they have to "fire" me or reject me otherwise so that it would be them finding a fault in me, not me in them. The sad thing is, as I was told, how this is normal at Amazon. ~~~ akerro Readers, enjoy the FACE of Amazon [https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/) ------ IndianAstronaut I am experiencing this now at Capital One. Routinely berated, intimidated into better performance, arbitrary judgements, a lot of belittling(e.g. you're no rocket scientist), and threats (eg you are screwing your reviews, I will hold you liable, etc.). ~~~ _mythrowaway As someone currently considering a really tempting offer with them, this sounds rather alarming. Could you please elaborate? ~~~ IndianAstronaut Sure. Basically started off there working with analysis teams. You will be working with some very old school managers who follow a strict hierarchy. Things may seem golden for a couple months, but then the threats and intimidation go into full gear. I was told that I would be held liable for failures even though my manager was making the decisions which were resulting in failures. I was told multiple times that if a project was not done, I would be in big trouble. If I spoke up about a new technology or method, I was told sarcastically that "oh you're so smart". I have been told that the work I am doing isn't rocket science. Micromanagement has been the norm lots of digging into the details of the project by managers who don't even know the difference between Java and Javascript. Nothing is in writing so managers frequently will bring up issues about things not getting done or taking a different direction. The politics are rotten. ~~~ _mythrowaway Thanks for sharing your story! I'll try and talk to the hiring team to look for indicators of such team politics. ------ randycupertino The CEO/founder was into "The Game" and the Red Pill and he made all the male engineers go out in SOMA to try seduction techniques, as well as go to strip clubs. Our married and ltr engineers hated it but still had to show up and participate in this nonsense in order to fall in line and stay a "culture fit." As you can guess, we routinely lost admins and female engineers who were generally solely hired on attractiveness and not talent, knowledge or skill. ~~~ fsloth That's outrageously unprofessional. Is the company still alive? ~~~ randycupertino Yep. They've churned most of the staff except for the CEO's college bros, but they're still going along... no outrageous IPO on the horizon but they haven't spent all the VC $$ yet. ~~~ antisthenes Pretty sure a good chunk of companies are created just to burn through the VC cash while living it up a lavish lifestyle on the west coast. At least that's my perception as an outsider from another part of the country. ------ abawany I worked at a place where the CEO/founder would openly talk about 'young guys' as a hiring practice to enable him to pay as low as possible. This same place also expressed a significant preference for hiring H1B workers because 'they get locked in for 5+ years while waiting for their residency'. ~~~ stevoo Unfortunately i have heard the same thing from CEO recently. Hiring you people or people that are married with children so he can pay less and they wont leave as easily. It was very disappointing when i heard that. ~~~ trome Its a common strategy, hence why women of childbearing age, people who are 40+ and anyone with any kind of visible handicap or difference are so commonly discriminated against. They'd rather a handcuffed worker than one who has free will to leave, or get pregnant, etc. Really sickening to see though. ------ mrlyc At one place I worked, programmers weren't allowed to print anything and creative accounting was used to calculate our wages, something I didn't realise until I left as there were no payslips. One time, the CEO came storming into the programming room, extremely upset that someone had called the company and asked to leave a message for a programmer. "At my next company" he yelled, "there will be no phone system!" Another time, he waltzed into the room and proudly announced that he had taken a whole year to pay a bill. ~~~ killbrad Ah, good old American "look at how many unethical and morally questionable things I can get away with" Republicans. Market economy! ~~~ arethuza I've seen plenty of that in the UK - what I never understood was the reason for bragging about being unethical and/or immoral - what does it achieve? Is it a recognition signal between sociopaths? ~~~ J-dawg I remember a similar HN discussion, months ago. Someone posed the question - given there's evidence that people do better work when they're treated well, why don't more places go out of their way to look after their workers? It seems to be a no-brainer. There was one response that I wish I'd bookmarked. They basically said that there is a sociopathic kind of leader who actually derives much of their feeling of success from being "above" their workers. That one comment really changed my view on the subject. One tends to assume that leaders are rational and will optimise for the success of the company. I've started to think my old assumptions weren't true, there's actually a type of person that derives their self-worth from being "alpha" and will even act against the interests of their company in the pursuit of this feeling. So I think perhaps these people don't even realise how bad it sounds when they're bragging about unethical behaviour. To them it's part and parcel of being "successful". It's utterly alien to me, but viewing the actions of managers through this new lens has helped to make sense of some of the apparently irrational decisions I've seen in the past. ~~~ ironic_ali "They basically said that there is a sociopathic kind of leader who actually derives much of their feeling of success from being "above" their workers. ...there's actually a type of person that derives their self-worth from being "alpha" and will even act against the interests of their company in the pursuit of this feeling." I was a senior BA (contract) on a govt project for about $22 million (not a big deal in the scheme of things). The tech lead, looking back, was the classic narcissist (CN) and probably on the sociopathic scale - incompetent, bullying when questioned, believed his crap and had got away with it for years. One unfortunate day I deigned to question this guy's pronouncement of take all the low hanging fruit from the design and do them first. There was no thought of future impact to infrastructure or scale. And disappointingly, the PM, BA, Dev & Test teams didn't stand up to him - only bitched behind his back. Cut a long story short, from then on he ghosted me in meetings and after spitting my coffee (in what I discovered was my last meeting) at more of his bs, I was told on the Friday I had 'negative feedback' and had to work my two weeks notice and finish up. I asked his pet PM how that worked as they obviously had no confidence and crickets followed - I never returned. The project failed and made a couple of paragraphs in the papers, I was interviewed by the minister's team months down the track, explained why the project failed and watched the carpet get lifted up and $22 million of tax payers cash get swept under it. CN is still there as it's next to impossible to fire govt employees in this country, but apparently he has little or no responsibility now. Small mercies for the tax payer I guess. I have many other stories from two decades in this game, but this is the most recent and the first where I didn't finish my contracted time. ------ davidmr In the mid-90s, I was 16 and had just started my very first job at a local ISP after having dropped out of high school (his needing a job with some urgency). It was right around the time that everyone and their mother started to check out this information superhighway thing, and mom and pop ISPs were sprouting up everywhere. When I interviewed for a job, the owner, who we'll call Frank, seemed like a pretty decent guy. He was definitely quite smart, and knew what he was doing on the telco side. I got the job after like 5 minutes of interview and started the next day. What Frank failed to tell me in the interview was that he was a completely batshit crazy sociopath. Within a couple of days, there was a fair bit of yelling and swearing about my mistakes, then progressively more and more, followed by genuine emotional abuse and even flipping lit cigarettes at us and throwing other things when we screwed something up. I'm only 16 and an idiotic 16 year old at that, so I actually stay there like 6 months before I start to realize this isn't normal. One day, a few of us just get up and walk out. About a month later, I heard (and saw evidence as I was walking by) from a friend who was still there, that after hours, someone had shot up the back windows of the office (4th story office in Chicago, so it's pretty unlikely it was random). Anyway, I manage to forget about it and move on with my life. 20 years later, I look him up to find he had served 3 years in the federal pokey for threatening a judge who had ruled against him in a tax case. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Pro tip: you don't get a warning when you threaten to kill a federal judge via email. You go straight to prison. Do. To pass go; do not collect $200. ------ iknowhow2pickem I worked in a ~10 person dev office about 30 minutes away from the company headquarters. We pretty much had free reign down there to do as we please. But with that meant that our boss had free reign to do as he pleased. I saw him berate a coworker whose mom lost her job at the main office because she "wasn't doing her job." I personally have no opinion on whether it was an acceptable firing, just that an unrelated divisions boss shouldn't have that conversation and much less in front of his coworkers. Who would argue with him? We had a full-time keg in the office which of course we all enjoyed in copious amounts. But you couldn't quit drinking there if you tried. He would constantly pressure employees into drinking with him at 11am when he showed up with bloody mary mixes. He was more than happy to tell you about why we shouldn't let immigrants into this country because they are fundamentally flawed compared to US citizens. His argument was that bribery was an innate part of them and their culture. Once again, who would argue with their boss over this? He would brag about the loaded gun he keeps in his desk drawer at the office. This may have been part of the culture, there were at least 4 people with concealed carries at a 10 person office. Once, while discussing the hire of a female intern (we were an all male office) he "joked" that it didn't work out and that we would find some diversity someday. He followed that up with maybe we could even hire a n __ __r. On a business trip he disclosed medications that a coworker was taking in an effort to discredit him with me. He also claimed to be reading that employee's text messages on a company phone. I still don't know if this was true or not, only that he wanted me to believe it was true so that I would trust what he was saying. ------ bsvalley Micro management... treated like a resource. Basic stuff. ~~~ convolvatron How about extreme narcissism leveraged off the fact that they are signing your paychecks ------ petermcnister25 We were encouraged by our boss to look up the new hires (international women doing an internship for free) on Facebook and other social networks to see if they were hot before hiring them and we did have veto decision based on looks. Later my boss wasn't so happy that I didn't show my excitement about this even though I'm a straight young male (my other coworker wasn't so happy as well). It was my first job, then something similar happened in my second job, but there I told my bosses that it'd be better idea to hire someone based on their knowledge and not on looks. I got scolded but stood my ground on this (even though in this job my coworkers were supportive on only hiring hot women). Now I've decided never to work again in this shitty country and I'm a freelancer earning 10x more money. ~~~ mboto Which country? ~~~ petermcnister25 Spain ------ partycoder Some rude behavior is widely seen as acceptable in the US: snubbing, status slaps, insult delivery through jokes/sarcasm, interruptions, slouching during presentations. That is the textbook behavior of a jerk. Anyone behaving consistently like that is a cultural liability that needs firing immediately. ~~~ Bootvis To be honest, I would not feel comfortable at all with a manager that thinks interrupting or slouching are a firing offence. ~~~ partycoder What if valuable ideas are consistently lost or people's productivity is drained because someone feeds his ego interrupting others or encouraging people to ignore whoever takes the initiative to present an idea? ------ akerro We had 3 guys on internship placement. Working hours for them were more strict than for others. One day on Friday everyone left the office before 5.30pm. At 5.27pm we had a call from important international customer. Boss got really angry that no one answered the call, while interns should be there, two most disliked got written warning, everyone got an email with a lot of vulgar words from boss and he threatened to fire people. I was wondering, what could interns even say if they have answered the phone... They didn't even know about the project we had with that customer. Can I name and shame? ~~~ icebraining _I was wondering, what could interns even say if they have answered the phone..._ Adulate the customer, make empty promises and lie about the whereabouts of the responsible people, implying they're busy working to fulfill their specific requests. And generally avoid passing the impression that people leave early (read: "are slackers", from the customer's perspective). Not that the reaction was appropriate, mind you. It's hardly reasonable to expect interns to know how to "service the account", as Carlin put it. I've been answering clients for a few years and I'm still quite junior at it. ------ arethuza A few years back the company I worked for had an office where we shared a floor with a recruitment company - they were too cheap to have a meeting room for their own use so they used to do their staff reviews in the shared kitchen area. It was a regular occurrence to see people, both male and female, in tears being berated by one of their managers (one of their managers was termed "The Terminator" by one of my colleagues due to his warm and friendly manner). Almost made me feel sympathetic for recruiters. ------ sophie_around I got fired out of the blue from my first job for much vague reasons. My boss never approached to me to talk about anything, so I was super surprised. Everything seemed to be okay just 15 min before I got laid off. Oh, and he was super micromanaging, avoided one on one meetings, thought it was okay to have me illegally employed and passively bash me for everything I didn't know. ------ youdontknowtho It was back in the 90's in Texas, but I had a manager that used the word "nigger" casually in conversation. I saw this same guy sit a pair of shoes on a desk in front of a woman and ask her to get them shined. That happened. ------ orless What is the point of the question? Gather workplace horror stories? What for? ~~~ Jaruzel Because maybe it shows people who are suffering that they are not alone, and that it is ok to speak up about it and to do something about it. Workplace harassment in any form is bullying, and needs to be stamped out. ~~~ orless Anonymous complaints in a HN thread started on premise of "I'm curious" is not what I'd call "do something about it" and "stamped out". ------ marak830 Hmm let's see. I've had hot pans thrown at me, I've seen an apprenticeship knives thrown on the floor - tip first. Pans left empty on a active gas jet, heating the handles up deliberately. Casual sexisim in relation to wait staff. Of course homophobia as well. Screaming at new workers(always young), for not having something perfect when they were improperly shown. Luckily I'm experienced enough now that I run the kitchen and can fire those idiots. ------ markatkinson I wonder how much of this treatment can be attributed to one bad manager/CEO/employee as opposed to a rotten culture which has grown in a company over time. I think if its the latter it would be a disservice to hide the name of the company and protect them. I understand for the need to stay anon though. ------ rishabhd No infrastructure, but expected to buy/create with our own pockets to perform required task. ~~~ balazsdavid987 I did this and left after the next paycheck. When they realized that an important part is missing, I was threatened in e-mail with being sued for stealing company equipment. I replied with the receipt I got from the retailer and asked them to attach that to the lawsuit as well. Never heard back from them. ------ smashu I worked in a start-up where the CEO complained that the employees (4 developers) are spending too much time on the toilet.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New Microsoft Scroogled Ad Reveals How Google Is Corrupting Kids At School - Suraj-Sun http://microsoft-news.com/new-microsoft-scroogled-ad-reveals-how-google-is-corrupting-kids-at-school/ ====== lcasela That has seriously got to be one of the worst commercials I have ever seen. I highly doubt teenagers actually pay attention to google ads.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
PSA: InSight Mars probe is landing in about 8 hours - huhtenberg https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/ ====== huhtenberg InSight mission homepage - [https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/](https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/) Wikipedia page - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InSight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InSight) Mission Control live stream - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGD_YF64Nwk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGD_YF64Nwk) (in ~7 hours from now)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Robinhood app – free stock trading - auton1 https://www.robinhood.com/ ====== auton1 I wonder what people think of this? Seems like a good deal, but maybe less great when it comes to, for example, tax time? ~~~ sidko Hopefully they give all the documents required for tax on time. If they don't, you can always patch it together through your account statements (more work, of course). There are a few things like ability to see dividends immediately (as opposed to seeing them on monthly statements) that are not yet added. However, you can trade all stocks for free, which is hard to beat.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Do We Need More Wikileaks and Cryptome? - adulau http://www.foo.be/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/2010-11-28_Why_Do_We_Need_More_Wikileaks_and_Cryptome ====== khatarnaak DOS Attack on wiki leaks [http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/28/wikileaks-were- under-cy...](http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/28/wikileaks-were-under-cyber- attack/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Anonymous comments improve online debates - ssn http://ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4916 ====== motters There may be some situations in which the only way to get honest opinions is to enable people to post anonymously, but in the majority of cases where I've seen people posting anonymous comments, or comments under pseudonyms, the quality tends to slide. HN is a conspicuous exception, although that's probably due to its fairly restricted scope of interest. ~~~ rjprins I find that Reddit is great because of anonimity. People can talk about problems they can't talk about to anyone. People share experiences they would never dare to share. You get to realize some things are extremely common yet never discussed, because of shame or stigma. Anonimity is the key to getting truth. Even the extremely superficial posts like "U SUCK DICK! LOLOL!" or extremely incendiary posts, or illegal stuff like child porn, they show what people are like or what strange and dark thoughts sometimes pass through their minds. Anonimity is the counter to hypocrisy. ~~~ Groxx Hypocrisy, maybe, but not misdirection. Anonymity makes it easier to build straw men to defeat, or make it sound like your opponent is an idiot, because nobody knows if you're you or you're them. ~~~ rjprins It's not like misdirection is not possible without anonymity. In fact, anonymous misdirection is less effective because the source is more questionable. Misdirection from an authorative source is the really dangerous stuff (WMD's in Iraq?). ------ vjk2005 The right tool for the right job. Anonymity works in some areas, not so great in other areas. While many sites are shifting to real-world user IDs, I believe that is an extreme step and something like 'expiring comments' could be a better alternative to deal with the problems that come with anonymous comments » <http://j.mp/cKstr2> ------ Groxx > _There are ways to curb abuses in the forums, whether using high-tech > solutions or good old-fashioned editing._ Similar sentiment: All code is efficient given a sufficiently smart compiler. ~~~ eru No. Your compiler can't compile out side-effects. (Or at least, it should not.) ------ hugh3 Well, I guess that would explain the high quality of discussion on 4chan, then. ------ eru Sensible article. But very US centric. ~~~ frossie Yeah, I find the whole framing the thing around the US constitution unhelpful. This is really a human psychology issue rather than a cultural history issue. The thing that makes me curious is whether "semi" anonymity is the best of both worlds (where the person whose platform it is knows your identity but it is not published). In the example of women not writing letters to the editor because of their names being published, would they still object if the editor verified their identity but then published the letter pseudonymously? ~~~ eru This is a sane solution, only if you can trust the editor never to reveal your name. Ever. Not even to law enforcement.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bitcoin Bubble Makes Dot-Com Look Rational - mfrw https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-11-27/bitcoin-crash-may-take-a-while-longer ====== 0bsidian The idea that you can value bitcoin via P/E, utilizing mining fees as the "E" is incorrect. It's akin to valuing gold through P/E, by utilising the cost of extraction as the "E". This is obviously wrong because holding gold doesn't entitle the bearer to a portion of those mining costs, same with Bitcoin. The reality is that gold cannot be objectively valued because it doesn't have an objective value (beyond its industrial use, which accounts for less than 10% of its actual current price). As a society, we collectively agree that gold is worth something because we agree that it is worth something. With Bitcoin, we are doing the same. But if we had centuries to consolidate our appreciation of gold, we are compressing price discovery for Bitcoin in just a few years. Interestingly, Bitcoin offers several improvements over gold (being digital, lightweight, cheap to move, proven limited supply). It also has drawbacks. Lastly: the author's contention that you can take value away from Bitcoin by just copying its code is misguided. It would be akin to saying that you can replicate Facebook's valuation by copying its codebase. Facebook's value comes from its network. The same happens with Bitcoin, since its fundamental properties (censorship-resistance, security) are functions of network size and node-dispersion. ~~~ Nursie You remember that there were other social networks before facebook dominated everything, right? Network effect _now_ is no guarantor of the future. ~~~ kss238 That doesn't mean Facebook is overvalued though. Just because it's value could disappear doesn't mean it has no value. ~~~ Nursie It doesn't mean BTC is overvalued either. But BTC could well prove to be cyrptocurrency's Friends Reunited or Bebo. ------ tobyhinloopen The idea is great, but in reality these stupid crypto coins are practically useless and wasting HUGE amounts of resources. Bitcoin is said to be consuming as much power a some countries, and still rising fast, while the amount of transactions is comically low compared to the power consumption. Bitcoin in its current state can never be a thing to actually buy something with. I don't see any other long-term use for bitcoin than just making a couple of bucks before it eventually crashes down like the Hindenburg. I'm not saying that all cryptocoins will suffer that fate, but I truly believe bitcoin specifically will. ~~~ charlesdm It's (looking like it's turning out to become) digital gold. When is the last time you bought a family dinner with gold? ~~~ criddell I wonder how the environmental impact of mining gold compares to mining bitcoin? ~~~ bmking Pollution from Gold mining: [https://sciencing.com/types-pollution-generated- gold-mining-...](https://sciencing.com/types-pollution-generated-gold- mining-22598.html) A very rough estimate: World wide Bitcoin mining operation spends per year around 60% as much electricity as all of USA's bank offices: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15615601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15615601) With Bitcoin mining there is a high incentive to actually use renewable energy sources and could be physically outsourced to places where building green power plants is otherwise not practical due to the limits of creating a power grid to make such a power plant profitable. ~~~ cjbenedikt [https://www.hydrominer.org/](https://www.hydrominer.org/) ------ charlesdm I don't get this. The dot-com bubble ran up to $6.7tn in market cap, in 2000, before crashing down to $1.7tn. The crypto space, which seems to be shaping into an entirely new asset class, has a $300bn valuation. That's less than the value of Facebook. The only reason why people are shouting bubble is because people were able to get in from the start, when these coins were 10 cents on the dollar. But when Facebook IPOed after 10ish years, it had a valuation of $50bn. But early angel investors also got in at 10 cents on the dollar. It could eventually become a bubble, but I don't think think we're even nearly there yet. ~~~ beaconstudios also the fact that 99% of bitcoin's value is tied up in financial speculation rather than real world use cases, and the remaining 1% is drug dealing. ~~~ charlesdm Gold has close to no use cases (80%+ is store of wealth) and seems to be doing fine at an $8tn global market cap. Of the potential 21m Bitcoin in existence, 4m are assumed to have been permanently lose. 16m have been mined. That leaves 1m coins left to be acquired in the future. ~~~ pc86 Is there a timeframe for how long it will take for those 1m coins to be mined? Is it equally likely that the price craters or skyrockets once that happens? ~~~ charlesdm I think the price will skyrocket anyway, because there is a limited supply. In a way, I believe it could be like an epic short squeeze. You have people wanting to buy in (retail + institutional money is coming in) over the next few years. If you take the example of oil -- once the price of a barrel goes over a certain threshold price, you'll go and explore new wells that were previously not profitable. And you will eventually get more supply after a while. That's just not the case with Bitcoin (and probably Ethereum after next year). ------ f_allwein Old saying: "What's common in every bubble is the belief that this time, it will be different." -> if you invest in cryptocurrencies, make sure not to invest more than you can comfortably lose (probably a few percent of your overall funds). ~~~ drcode Oh, but the naysayers in the media who have predicted bitcoin's collapse every month for years and have been wrong every time are of course given a free pass and are allowed to say "this time it's different" once again. ~~~ boyce I think this is clearly not equivalent At the moment it feels like a parent warning a child - at some point you have to decide to step back and let them learn the painful lesson for themselves ------ pmorici Calculating a P/E on transaction fees seems silly because frees on a crypto currency aren't related to the amount of value moved they are related to the number of bytes of space your transaction takes which in a simple transaction is most effected by the number of source and destination addresses used in the transaction. A better way to calculate this fake P/E ratio would be to look at the total USD volume of Bitcoin transactions and take 2% of that as the "earnings" logic being that if a coin were a credit card like company their earnings would be 2% of thier transaction volume. Still a bit of a contrived metric but at least related to the economic activity taking place. ------ csomar > Take dot-com stocks, which were the biggest bubble of the past few decades, > and likely the largest in stock market history. At the height of the dot-com > stock bubble, the technology-heavy Nasdaq stock index had a price-to- > earnings ratio of 175. In the past year, bitcoins have generated transaction > fees of nearly $219 million. And at $9,600 a piece, the total value of all > bitcoins -- their market cap -- now tops $155 billion. That gives bitcoins > the equivalent of a trailing P/E ratio of 708. What kind of logic is that? Holding bitcoin doesn't give you any earnings. In fact, you need to spend electricity and equipment if you want to collect those fees. Apples and Oranges. ~~~ dmichulke > What kind of logic is that? Holding bitcoin doesn't give you any earnings. Well, holding USD gives you inflation (i.e., negative interest). Holding BTC doesn't (assuming the 21 mn are already priced in). ~~~ csomar Eh, nope. That's not how it works. Holding 1 USD will give you 1 USD after 1 year. Holding 1 Bitcoin will give you 1 Bitcoin after 1 year. You are confusing the unit you are holding with the value "vs" another unit. That depends on the market and the external factors (like inflation, interest rates, etc...) But holding 1 Unit will always give you 1 Unit of whatever you are holding. ~~~ dmichulke You are deflecting to a problem of definition ;) Yes, you have the same amount but no it doesn't purchase as much as it did one year ago. Units of accounting only make sense within a context of other units of account. A dollar by itself is just a piece of paper if you cannot buy an amount of wheat, water or square meters with it. And by that measure the dollar is losing value vs a bitcoin. ~~~ csomar So? You just repeated what I said. My original comment was debunking the Bloomberg article. When you hold 1 Stock, at the end of the year you get a dividend. You divide the dividend by the stock to get the P/E ratio. That's not the same with USD or BTC. Its value fluctuates but it generates no income on its own. ~~~ dmichulke I think I misunderstood the intention for your first comment, probably by interpreting it in the context of another comment that was nearby but not related at all. Sorry ------ drcode The news media have posted stories predicting Bitcoin's collapse pretty much every month since 2012... but I'm glad that once again they're sharing some morsels of their expert insight with us peons on why Bitcoin is overvalued. ------ jpatokal Attempting price/earnings analysis here is not sensible, because bitcoin is not a stock: simply owning some doesn't earn you any "dividends" (mining rewards). A better parallel is gold, which is a store of value that produces nothing of value for its owners, but is valuable because the supply is limited and there's a collective belief that this shiny metal is worth much more than its practical uses. Bitcoin is going up because of those same properties. If supply ever becomes unlimited (say, there's a critical bug found), or its investors lose faith, it will crash. ~~~ Tepix For the Casper update of Ethereum with proof of stake, this may turn into a useful metric. You can use your ETH to participate in the PoS lottery and thus earn ETH (a kind of dividend). ------ cup-of-tea Ultimately this will come down to what value Bitcoin really has to society. An investment is when you work to receive something you don't want, but that you think other people will want in the future so that you can exchange it for things you do want. If you work for money then you do investment. By working for money you are betting that when you need food at the end of the week the shopkeeper will take your money. Investing in other things is no different. You make a bet that people in the future will want to trade the thing you buy for things that you want at that point. For example, you could buy a small amount of gold every month and when you are ready to retire buy an annuity with the gold. That's if anyone actually wants the gold in 30 year's time. If they don't then you'll have to eat the gold. People often say that cash is a bad investment, but actually it's really great as long as you plan to spend it soon. What they mean is it's not a good long term investment, of course. But cash stays valuable because unlike other things you can exchange it for things you want almost immediately. Bitcoin is now not like cash because of the high transaction fees. So it now competes with things like gold. So you have to ask yourself: what do you think will still be valuable in 10, 20, 30 years time? Gold? Bitcoin? If Bitcoin isn't a yes for enough people, then it's a bubble. ------ decentralised I think you are making a mistake by only looking at cryptos as "coins". There are businesses being run on and around public blockchains and the cryptoeconomic incentives will ensure the perpetuation of the network. As long as there is value in maintaining public blockchains, their tokens (BTC, BCH, ETH, etc) will hold monetary value. [https://i.imgur.com/AfGNEA5.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/AfGNEA5.jpg) ------ DINKDINK Was the collapse of the German Deutsche Mark, the Zimbabwean Dollar, the Venezuelan Bollivar a bubble too? Good money drives bad money out, so I’d argue that no, Bitcoin’s price is not a bubble. Clearly there’s no price that bitcoin holders will sell at so they’re clearly exiting the USD ecosystem. I think the logical fallacy that’s occuring right now with critics of bitcoin’s price rise is that all bubbles has dramatic price rises (Pets.com, endless bullshit dot com IPOs, housing bubble) but not all dramatic price rises are bubbles (currency collapses) Because bitcoin is measurable scarcity one can provable show it’s a good store of wealth. OTOH, the ICO binge is an apt analogy for the IPO craze of the 90s. Investors are buying up securities with no viable business model expecting returns which isn’t going to happen on software that anyone can copy and run themselves. It doesn’t take a $200 million raise for a few engineers to build an MVP. It does take $200 million to run a successful Ponzi scheme (ICOs are probably not scarce and are therefore improper stores of wealth) ~~~ shp0ngle Bitcoin has scarcity, but so does Litecoin or Bitcoin Cash What makes Bitcoin special? ~~~ kwikiel Network effect - same thing for Facebook. The more valuable bitcoin is the more secure and more resilient. Thus purely by price appreciation bitcoin is doing hiperbitcoinization - once people realize that fundamental value of fiat currency is a myth, more fiat currencies will collapse ~~~ 0bsidian This is exactly right. If you create a company and copy Facebook's code, the resulting company will not be worth as much as Facebook. Why? Because much of Facebooks' valuation derives from its network. Bitcoin is the same. ~~~ notahacker The problem with being _by design_ a fungible commodity is that your network lock-in isn't anywhere near as strong as Facebook's. Or AOL's... ------ NicoJuicy I just went out after a long time. Banks are coming in and i don't trust them. They are smarter then me. I took out my profits and i'm doing stocks since a 1/2th year, i'm focusing on that now. Here my reasoning: 1) BTC takes too long to make a transaction ( 2,5 hours) which make me kinda doubt the use case. 2) the enterprise is adopting the blockchain, which is irrelevant to bitcoin. If they would do crypto, they will create their own coin. 3) the guy further in the street is also buying crypto ( not in IT). Which for me, is a sign of a bubble. He knows nothing about the tech. It won't ever be used for the original porpose at this valuation. 4) First time adopters are going out now @ 10 k., check out reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/) 5) The HODL meme is currently blocking the bubble to burst. Some people are willing to HODL even when 75% fades away. PS. Banks won't adopt the HODL meme :) I have second doubts though, it truelly is an amazing tech. ------ chrisco255 P/E is a nonsensical measure for currency and assets. No one holding BTC expects to earn transaction fees. The miners get those fees. If we're talking about market cap of the miners themselves then this would be useful. Otherwise, the value of BTC should go up the smaller the transaction fees become. Why? Because less value is lost in transmission. ------ matte_black My only resentment toward Bitcoin is that if I had gotten in early enough there could have been some easy money to be made, but only because I believe in the Greater Fools theory, not because I actually believe in Bitcoin as a currency. ~~~ scotty79 I never believed bitcoin as a currency same way I don't believe gold or art as a currency. But bitcoin for me is something like art or gold (scarce, durable) easily, securely transferable to anyone on the planet within less than a day without the need for any third party. That's bound to be worth something. ------ liaukovv How do you quantify what p/e of a US dollar is? Doesn't make much sense to me ------ IanCal Is price compared to transaction fees really a good measure? Holding them doesn't mean you get the transaction fees, and increasing transaction fees would lower the 'P/E' but make bitcoins obviously worse to have or use. ------ singold AFAICT transaction fees aren't the reason someone "invests" or buys bitcoin, if you buy bitcoin you don't get a fraction of those fees. If you want that you should invest in mining, so I think the initial part of the analysis is flawled. The second part looks like nothing to say, backed by a lot of non sensical numbers, but I'm not a native english speaker and also generally don't read nor like economic "analysis", so I may be wrong ~~~ Tepix The high transaction fees and long transaction delays are turning into a reason why people are starting to question bitcoin. ------ TheCoelacanth This article seems to be making the assumption that price-to-rent, price-to- earnings and price-to-transaction-fees ratios should all naturally converge to the same amount. I don't see any plausible justification for this assumption, in fact it seems like it is trivially disproved. The US dollar has no transaction fees, so it's price-to-transaction-fee ratio is infinite. This whole article is based on a false premise. ------ martinko > bitcoins have generated transaction fees of nearly $219 million. And at > $9,600 a piece, the total value of all bitcoins -- their market cap -- now > tops $155 billion. That gives bitcoins the equivalent of a trailing P/E > ratio of 708. Absurdly idiotic analogy, as holding the underlying is in no way related to the revenues that miners earn. ------ nabla9 Finally an article that gives some numbers to quantify Bitcoin market. Transaction fees as P/E analogy seems wrong. ------ pmorici Here is a chart of transaction volume on several of the major crypto currencies... [https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-eth- bc...](https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-eth-bch-xmr.html) Anyone see a trend... ~~~ Tepix Yup. Bitcoin transactions have stagnated for the last year or so. [https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-eth- bc...](https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-eth-bch- xmr.html#1y) ~~~ nuclx Might be due to the fact that the amount of transactions is capped. ~~~ pmorici Thought experiment; Would Apple be as valuable as it is today if it decided that it should cap iPhone production at 1,000 units a month? ------ rejschaap Bitcoin could hit $10.000 any moment now. Who is buying and why? ~~~ empath75 If you go to bitcoinity and check the price of bitcoin, the first exchange they list is bitfinex. The price they list is in USD. That’s actually wrong. There are no dollars on bitfinex. They use a currency called tethers which they claim is backed 1-1 by dollars but almost certainly isn’t. They’ve created close to a billion dollars worth of that token during this run up. Rumor has it that they’re using those tethers to buy btc on their own exchange and manipulate the price. Once people realize those tethers are worthless and they can’t withdraw dollars, they’ll start using them to buy btc at any price and withdraw them on the exchange causing a massive run up in btc price as they make a run on the bank. It’s not really an increase in btc price but hyperinflation of tethers. ~~~ pc86 > _They use a currency called tethers which they claim is backed 1-1 by > dollars_ Didn't they just recently say they're not backed 1-1 by USD? ------ bufferoverflow Dot-com bubble lost $1.7 trillion when it popped. All cryptocurrencies combined are like $300 billion, and they will definitely not go to zero if/when it pops. ------ y04nn People should not see cryptocrruencies as a stock market, you should not expect any ROI, it's not a placement. Cryptocrruencies (for me) are meant to be used, exchanged, a good metric to value a cryptocrruencie should be the 'cash flow (? exchange of money per unit of time)'. Bitcoin is actually inefficient with its high transaction fees. ~~~ davidmurdoch Transaction fees are about $5-7 USD right now, which for transactions over $200 makes it cheaper than using a credit card, and definitely cheaper than a wire. ------ Twisell 41 points 109 comments as of writing one hour after publishing. Look like bitcoin advocates have specifically vetoed this publication. This is probably one of the only the downside of crowd moderation. This would be an interesting phenomenon to investigate if someone have access to HN logs. ------ linards its going to crash big time, opportunity to buy more ~~~ bhickey Tulips are on their way back. Let's get in on the ground floor! ~~~ linards you do not understand bitcoin, and thats ok :) ~~~ bhickey Not so much. I spent a chunk of 2009-2010 hanging around with British bitcoin enthusiasts. It was predicated on greater fools then and it still is.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Disney Plus Streaming Service Unveiled - Reedx https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/business/media/disney-plus-streaming.html ====== Reedx Bummer, was hoping to see a mention of Studio Ghibli. Would be great to finally have a streaming option for those. They're the last movies that I still bother with physical copies for.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What are various incentive models on the Web? - gosuri I'm researching on various user incentive models on the Web (like twitter's follower count and foursquare's badges). Can you think of any interesting models that you've come across. ====== richardw Best reference I've found: <http://buildingreputation.com/doku.php> ------ yannis thesixtyone.com has a very well thought out system.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hikikomori - networked https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori ====== jawerty Anyone interested in this phenomenon should check out the anime "Welcome to the NHK."	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Philz Coffee Raises Eight-Figure Round From Summit, Angels - RougeFemme http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/01/philz-coffee-raises-eight-figure-round-from-summit-angels-as-specialty-coffee-market-heats-up/ ====== RougeFemme I'm convinced Phil is the puppet master behind all of the productivity in South Park(Slurp).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Unix system family tree: Research and BSD - jorgecastillo http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/src/share/misc/bsd-family-tree?rev=HEAD ====== acc00 This list appears to be missing Plan 9, which is a direct continuation of Research Unix line (a successor to 10th Edition) ~~~ solarexplorer Plan 9 is not a Unix. At best it's some kind of spiritual successor to Unix, like Infero. ~~~ dragonwriter Inferno has roughly the same relationship to Plan 9 as Plan 9 has to Unix, as I understand it. ~~~ catenate I think the most important design criteria in the evolution of Unix to Plan 9 to Inferno was that each step consciously made things _simpler_. Simplify the programming model, use fewer different concepts, get rid of workarounds and hacks by bringing useful features into the OS. Remove redundant utilities and even options to utilities, focus on improving the one may to get something done so it hardly takes any effort to do it, and integrate all the various bits well with each other. It's not an approach that asks for newcomers to hack on all sorts of things to "improve" the OS by adding everything possible to it, which is part of why it doesn't foster a big community. I think the biggest difference between Plan 9 and Unix is that Plan 9 rids systems programming of many special cases by reusing the filesystem metaphor as far as possible. This is a deep and pervasive change, and makes doing most things on the system just a matter of reading and writing to files. This leads to neat things like the /env filesystem, which is a per-process view of the contents of shell variables as files. (This makes it easy to write make (mk) rules that depend on shell variables, just by listing the files/variables as prerequisites.) Inferno's biggest difference is that it runs the entire OS on a virtual machine called emu. Kind of like Java, but not just a language. (Inferno has a language too, called Limbo, which is closer to Go than C.) ~~~ dragonwriter > Inferno has a language too, called Limbo, which is closer to Go than C. Well, probably not surprising given Rob Pike's involvement in both Limbo and Go. ------ efournie There is also a nice Unix family tree there: [http://www.levenez.com/unix/](http://www.levenez.com/unix/) As it includes Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, HURD, OS X and their derivatives, the graph is huge but very interesting! ------ networked This reminds me of a neat NetBSD 1.3 story that was posted here on HN not so long ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6503464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6503464). I wonder which of the now-legacy BSD and OS X releases has the largest surviving install base. Could it be FreeBSD 4.x? OS X 10.5 on PowerPC Macs? Edit: 4.x, not 5.x. ~~~ cjg_ More likely FreeBSD 4. than 5. _ ~~~ networked Yeah, I meant 4.x rather than 5.x. Edited. My first ISP (which also was the first one in our town) used FreeBSD and I'm pretty sure it was FreeBSD 4 at the time. I knew this because they allowed their dial-up users shell access and, in fact, their official instructions on how to change your dial-up password involved using HyperTerminal in Windows. I still wonder if giving out shells was generosity or carelessness on their part [1] but about a year later they changed it so that everyone who dialed in just got passwd(1) as their shell. [1] Although since I never really did anything untoward with mine and didn't know of anyone who did maybe they'd actually calculated the risk correctly. ~~~ quesera Shell access used to be a standard part of all ISP accounts. If you go back far enough, there were no standards like PPP and SLIP to extend TCP/IP to dialup customer computers, and no graphical clients for internet services, so to "get on" the internet, you needed a shell on your ISP's systems. Your ISP might have existed back then, or been founded by someone who did, or had customers who expected the service. ~~~ networked >Shell access used to be a standard part of all ISP accounts. >Your ISP might have existed back then, or been founded by someone who did, or had customers who expected the service. That's a good point. Ours was a small post-Soviet factory town, though, so PPP was well established by the time consumer Internet over phone lines came to us (late 1990s-early 2000s). The local ISPs in the nearest big city, which got online earlier, may have had shell access for their customers at first but by the time I got on the Internet shells were far from expected. A "founder" (or rather, "employee #1") explanation is the most likely. Our particular ISP was itself part of the government monopoly phone company. An interesting thing was that, as far as I know, at the time they didn't have a standard software setup to run their servers and modem pools. For that reason they gave their locally hired admin a free reign. In our case the admin happened to be an old-school programmer lady who started back in the Soviet days. She might have been the one responsible for giving their customers FreeBSD shells. ------ fs111 I always liked this massive PDF version: [http://www.levenez.com/unix/](http://www.levenez.com/unix/) ------ masklinn Nice timeline. NeXTSTEP's missing, but Rhapsody made the cut, which is nice. ------ whr Shouldn't iOS be present in this tree too, as derivative of MacOS? ~~~ terabytest The kernel is probably exactly the same. ------ octotoad Never realized the 2BSD series was being developed in parallel with 4BSD. I love to geek out on Unix history when I'm bored, so I'm surprised I never picked up on this. ------ pavanky Isn't solaris part of the tree as well ? ~~~ AdamN Solaris broke off from BSD and is based on System V Release 4 ... which is partly based on BSD. It depends on how far back you want to prune the tree. They just wanted to stick with the pure BSDs that didn't take come from other projects I guess [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system)#His...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_$operating_system$#History) ~~~ pavanky Hmm. In that case I wonder how pure of a BSD OSX is. ~~~ jlgaddis [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/darwin...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/darwin/conceptual/kernelprogramming/BSD/BSD.html) ------ aurora72 It's nice to see Mac OS X stem from Unix ~~~ weland IIRC it is actually a certified Unix. ~~~ Someone 'Being a certified Unix' and 'Stemming from Unix' are orthogonal properties; neither implies the other. ~~~ weland No dispute here, I was just pointing out that OS X not only stems from Unix (as does, say, FreeBSD), but the "is-a" property also stems from the Open Group actually putting a stamp on it. This isn't to say OS X is "more of a Unix" than FreeBSD. It means simply what is says, without any other implication: the group that is allowed to say "yeah, this is unix" said that about OS X. ------ contingencies I'd like to see the same but with a visual diff of syscall syntax you can access by clicking on any edge. ------ yeukhon That ascii art - script or hand-crafted? ~~~ arh68 The diffs make me think it's hand-crafted. [http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/share/misc/bsd-family- tr...](http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/share/misc/bsd-family- tree?view=log&pathrev=250150) ------ poobrains Fitting (or maybe embarrassing) that it's in ASCII art. ------ AdamN Not yet updated with OS X 10.9 ------ asdasf I just realized one of the reasons I like OpenBSD and DragonflyBSD, but not FreeBSD and NetBSD from that graph. Those nice straight lines with no branching.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Draftin' – A draft simulator for Magic the Gathering - shawndeprey http://www.draftin.co/ Hi there! It has been a hard fought alpha run, but Draftin' is finally ready to grow up a bit. You have probably never heard of this project because I have been intentionally keeping it off of message boards until it was ready; I created Draftin' to be the most professional and easy to use Magic the Gathering drafting software around. What's going to make or break the project is how it stands up to real usage.<p>Given that all major features have been added to the application, I am moving the project into beta and releasing it to any and all who want to try it. My only request is that if you do use Draftin' in it's current state, please report any bugs that you find/leave feedback where you feel it is needed. Bare in mind that Draftin' has only been used up to this point by close friends, so you may find bugs we did not.<p>Even so, I invite everyone to give Draftin' a try. I am really excited to see what real usage uncovers/what everybody thinks of the application! Let me know via the feedback form! Feature suggestions are always welcome as well!<p>-Shawn ====== shawndeprey Hi there! It has been a hard fought alpha run, but Draftin' is finally ready to grow up a bit. You have probably never heard of this project because I have been intentionally keeping it off of message boards until it was ready; I created Draftin' to be the most professional and easy to use Magic the Gathering drafting software around. What's going to make or break the project is how it stands up to real usage. Given that all major features have been added to the application, I am moving the project into beta and releasing it to any and all who want to try it. My only request is that if you do use Draftin' in it's current state, please report any bugs that you find/leave feedback where you feel it is needed. Bare in mind that Draftin' has only been used up to this point by close friends, so you may find bugs we did not. Even so, I invite everyone to give Draftin' a try. I am really excited to see what real usage uncovers/what everybody thinks of the application! Let me know via the feedback form! Feature suggestions are always welcome as well! -Shawn p.s. I will be checking this thread throughout the day. ~~~ dyrg Hi! Have you looked into legal implications for this project? There was once a website that had a simple draft for newer sets (pre-releases), but it got DMCA noticed and shut down soon after. EDIT: This website: [http://www.magicdraftsim.com/](http://www.magicdraftsim.com/) ~~~ shawndeprey Yeah there are lots of drafting tools out there. It's really a matter of what WotC decide to let stay up. I really hope they see this tool as more of a benefit since I put so much work into it. We will see though. ------ qdog Cool demo video, seems simplistic but useful for people that want to draft over and over. However, I would plan for a takedown notice from WoTC. I've thought a bit about Magic programs, and it seems to me you might need to have a Generic Card Game Program where someone can load datasets, and not host or provide any datasets for copyrighted games yourself. This would add some friction to the ease of use, but I'm not sure there's a better approach. ~~~ shawndeprey When it comes right down to it, the community wants stuff like this. So I really hope they decide to let this tool stay up. We will see. ~~~ qdog Well, one can hope, but based on their history of takedown notices I would plan on how to remove references to infringing materials. ------ k2enemy What is drafting? I suppose the site's target audience already knows the answer, but I couldn't find it explained anywhere on the site. ~~~ shawndeprey hmm. Good point, I didn't consider that. I'll add it to the list. :P	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Talk About Your Startup Idea with Paul Graham - DanielRibeiro http://www.stanford.edu/dept/bingschool/giving_harvestmoon_2012.html ====== jashmenn I love how it lists that a lunch with pg has an estimated value of $500. I'm sure that many in our community would gladly pay 10x+ for an hour of his advice. ~~~ ckluis If Paul offered lunches everyday for $500 he could probably have his time filled everyday. ------ DanBC I wonder how long it'll take for someone to port PG to AIML? ([http://alicebot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/chatbot-battles- post-...](http://alicebot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/chatbot-battles-post-match- analysis.html)) ~~~ bibinou previously : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2598026> <https://github.com/mindcrime/pgbot> ~~~ mion There's not enough "hummm" ------ magikbum (Guests must be less than 300 pounds to ride airship.) \- best line ~~~ thechut Came here to say this ------ andrewhillman I think this will go for well over $500. ------ nwenzel I can guarantee it will go for more than $500. If not to me for what I bid, then it will go even higher than what I bid... which is a secret. So no one bid $502, okay. ~~~ hokua too late =) ------ rdl The other item: Galapagos Adventure for Two (Item # 425, Donated by: The Altamirano Family, Hyre Family, Lau/Palihapitiya Family, Sandi Gedeon Ganjavi, Jennifer Winters, Est. Item Value: $3800) looks pretty fun, too, but probably less useful to a startup. ------ hokua What would make more money: Paul Graham lunches everyday for a month at a lower price or limiting supply to 1 Paul Graham lunch at the coming auction price? ------ robomartin My prediction: $50K to $100K I hope I am right. It's a good cause. Here's an idea: PG, how about offering a lunch meeting to the HN member who makes the closest prediction to the winning bid? They would have to post it on HN and FB or something like that. This serves the purpose of helping advertise this worthy cause. ~~~ philwelch And since you're the only one to make a prediction so far, obviously it's in your best interest as well ;)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Australian startup Magikcraft set world record with 12-year old developers - sitapati Australian startup Magikcraft, which teaches kids to code in JavaScript using Minecraft, set a world record this week. In partnership with Microsoft and IBM they killed 13,854 Minecraft Zombies using JavaScript lightning in 10 minutes, using the most performant Minecraft system on the planet - 48 physical cores, 256GB RAM.<p>Here's the world record: https://recordsetter.com/world-record/zombies-killed-minecraft-10-minutes-using-javascript-lightning/51109<p>And the engineering behind it: https://blog.magikcraft.io/engineering-a-world-record-at-magikcraft-3b5698f936d5#.vng24n6me ====== death667b Sweet - That is a heck of a server!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple Leaves iOS Kernel Un-Encrypted for First Time - finisterre https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601748/apple-opens-up-iphone-code-in-what-could-be-savvy-strategy-or-security-screwup/ ====== skygazer Oh, my ignorance and the questions I now have -- I wish there were some up votes on this, because I'd love the knowledgeable people of HN to weigh in. Does this mean the "cat's out of the bag" forever more? If they encrypt the final release, does that provide any benefit, anymore, or was obfuscation the only benefit of encryption? Did the prior encrypted kernel simply make exploits more difficult to find? Was there any other benefit to encrypting? I assume jailbreaks are more likely (to be frequent) now? Does this mean the federal government is less likely to need Apple's help to break into phones or install their own software? Is Apple now any more worse off than, say, Android, where the kernel has been open all along? How conceivable is it this was a terrible blunder? Wouldn't there have been safeguards in place to prevent this in their build system, like an encryption step? Or, like whatever stub does the on device decryption failing, and preventing install? Wouldn't they have had to intentionally work around that? And if it was a colossal mistake, will it likely be beneficial in the long run, anyway? (More eyes, more reports, more fixes?) ~~~ skygazer I guess it was the decrypted arm64 kernelcache that was discussed elsewhere on the net on the second day of WWDC, a week ago. So, perhaps this is stale news to those in-the-know. Interestingly, only the 64 bit ipsw was left unencrypted, not the 32 bit. The inconsistency may imply it really was an error? As for the impact, apparently it's been possible to decrypt 32 bit kernelcaches on A5 and lower processors for some years. I don't know if that holds for more recent versions of the OS, or just those from several years ago. But, it's not entirely unprecedented that it's out in the wild. Apple just gave the exploit searchers a head start this time. ~~~ skygazer Here's the post/thread that caught on: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11954780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11954780)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
We should all just decide on JavaScript and solve interesting problems instead - evjan http://peterevjan.com/posts/we-should-all-just-decide-on-javascript-and-solve-the-interesting-problems-instead/ ====== lcedp Meh. We should all just decide on PHP and solve interesting problems instead. We should all just decide on Fortran and solve interesting problems instead. We should all just decide on perfocards and solve interesting problems instead. We should all just decide on slide rulers [1] and solve interesting problems instead. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule) ~~~ evjan Let me put it like this then: do you feel that we have, in the programming language space, uncovered fantastic new ways of enriching humanity since PHP? ~~~ sgaither Yes, the growth in the webspace can be partly attributable to programming being more stable, more accessible to beginners. Do you think the hard part of any programming/engineering project is learning a new language? ~~~ evjan Yes, not disagreeing with you there. And no, I don't think so. ------ Executor But javascript has serious flaws. It doesn't have static typing, advance language functionality like namespaces and generics were afterthoughts, and it was a half-baked language. The original language was supposed to be more FP. I'd rather support lua, c# or python being a better alternative. ------ drill_sarge >We have the chance of running the same language on the front-end and the back-end yeah, I can't wait for a fully fledged webserver written in JS	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
France’s Combustible Climate Politics - Jun8 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/opinion/france-yellow-vests-climate-change.html ====== Jun8 Great opinion piece that deftly demonstrates government action for climate change in the EU and US contains a large aspect of political maneuvering and virtue signaling, with sometimes large unintended consequences. The uproar in France clearly demonstrates the downside of "just tax or fine it" approach to government control, be it gas consumption or sugary drinks. These tend to disproportionately hurt people who don't have the power to make any change. ~~~ seren I am not really convinced by the piece. According to the article the fix should be : > None of this is to say that the world should give up. Beyond nuclear power, > we need to be placing medium-sized bets on potentially transformative > technologies not funded by regressive taxes or industrial subsidies, and not > dependent on future breakthroughs that might still be decades off, if they > happen at all. Let thousands of climate-startups bloom — and let markets, > not governments, figure out which ones work. I don't see any supporting arguments why it should work better. Also nuclear power was never the result of the effort of medium sized start up, but the effort of (apparently evil) governments and their military complex. You cannot have your cake and eat it too... The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Best find-a-cofounder sites? - fjabre Any consensus on the best sites to find technical cofounders?<p>I've looked around a bit and most of these sites seem very young and/or don't have a lot of a traffic..<p>Any suggestions? ====== nickfromseattle HN Cofounder Wishlist - [https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgCvDTyBjHdOdDFfMEN...](https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgCvDTyBjHdOdDFfMENqeWVGNVFxTXdnaDZBRkd0cUE&hl=en#gid=9) reddit.com/r/cityname ------ smiler Post a comment on this post with a rough idea (and preferred technology) and contact info. If anyone is interested they'll e-mail you. ------ geekytenny github.com ....and you get to see what they have been up to!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google Maps Platform now integrated with the GCP Console - deesix https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/05/Google-Maps-Platform-now-integrated-with-the-GCP-Console.html ====== dazbradbury " _Thirteen years ago, the first Google Maps mashup combined Craigslist housing data on top of our map tiles—before there was even an API to access them._ " Funny they pick out Craigslist, who as far as I'm aware, use OpenStreetMap because clearly Google maps doesn't work for them (cost presumably). ~~~ ews > use OpenStreetMap because clearly Google maps doesn't work for them (cost > presumably). I worked on the map feature while at Craigslist about 6 years ago. Launching this on their own servers at the time (vs using Gmaps, which was the obvious choice) was a serious and important technical feat. The decision to use OSM (as far as I remember) had to do with supporting open source (The company made a donation to OSM right after launching), keep user data within its servers and (as a distant third reason), keep the style more homogeneous with their layout. ------ drewda Would have been nice if they actually linked to that original mashup: [http://www.housingmaps.com/](http://www.housingmaps.com/) (Gosh, it's been a while since I've heard the term "mashup" :) ------ spaceflunky Is it just me or has the Google Maps API died a slow and lonely death? I remember a time when every week there would be an exciting new Google Maps 'mashup', game, or design concept built using the Google Maps API. Developers were constantly trying to one up each other in the Maps game. It was like one giant maps party that went on for several years. Can you name an API that has had that much buzz or rabid excite from both developers and non-technical spectators? I think not. Now it just seems like developers have lost interest because Google decided to shit all over the party by making their API more restricted and expensive. It became all about $$$ so they started to slap expensive bill on developers' side projects that got a little too popular. The fuck was Google thinking... ~~~ some_account And yet developers still use Googles stuff, supporting them. It's exactly like in the 90's with Microsoft. It wasn't hard to see that it would happen with Google as well, because it always does, to all giant companies, due to the structure of capitalism we use. ------ ChrisAntaki I'm curious what you all think of GCP Console? ~~~ infinitone Compared to AWS? i find it slow and glitchy, the UX + material UI adds too many clicks to get the what i want. ~~~ kaishiro Interestingly enough I have the complete opposite reaction. I find the various AWS consoles to be fragmented and obtuse compared to GC, which feels pretty organized to me. ------ tj89 It's ridiculous the story is about enabling smaller developers when they just screwed a bunch of small developers with their pricing changes with only 30 days notice... "do no evil"... ------ tokyodude Google maps has really been disappointing me lately. Specifically it's not showing all my markers. So I go somewhere and try to find some restaurant I know I marked but there are no markers on the map. If I'm lucky and I generally remember where it was I can try clicking on restaurants. If I happen to find it the info shows that it's still marked but no mark appears on the maps. This is seriously scary. I get there is probably some limit on the number of markers they want to show but not showing some of the markers is like losing part of me memory. Imagine if they started not showing contacts in your contact list or not showing emails in gmail. Hoping they fix it even if it requires some new UX. I guess I was hoping they'd at least load the markers spatially so that as I zoomed in they'd pull in the markers for that area but apparently that's not what's happening ATM. ~~~ recursion I've had the exact same experience. Also has many issues with local guides, labels disappearing and so on. It really feels like an unloved product.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New Discovery Around Juniper Backdoor Raises More Questions (2016) - DyslexicAtheist https://www.wired.com/2016/01/new-discovery-around-juniper-backdoor-raises-more-questions-about-the-company/ ====== dec0dedab0de Over a decade ago I worked for a CLEC. One day one of our engineers was on a support call with our client side TDM vendor, who had remoted into his computer to troubleshoot some issue. During that session the vendor's employee used a backdoor account to log in, and our engineer was recording his terminal session, so we had the password from there on out. We could not disable the account or change it's password, and it didn't show up as a logged in user when it was being used. So we made it a point to only turn on the SSH daemons on IP's that weren't available to the public. It did come in handy a few times to reset a real password when using a console cable was not feasible. ------ eps The post makes it sound like the nonce size increase was a decision made by "Juniper" after a careful consideration by a committee of grayhaired security experts. More likely than not it was done by a random dev because 32 is the smallest power of 2 that's close to 20 and it increased their Smartbit throughput metrics by a fraction of percent and because it aligned shit better in the packet. As elegant as this conspiracy theory is, it's likely not true. It _is_ an elegant one though, I'll give it that. ~~~ matthewdgreen One of the researchers here. We wrote a paper about this that you might be interested in: [https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/376.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/376.pdf) The nonce size isn't a particularly significant element of the "conspiracy theory" here. Those things are worth looking at because they would rule _out_ exploitability. If one requires a conspiracy theory in this case, it would be based on the following amazing facts: 1\. In addition to the pseudorandom generator (PRNG) described in FIPS certification docs, all Juniper ScreenOS devices shipped with a second _unannounced_ public-key pseudorandom number generator (Dual_EC_DRBG) that works in parallel with the certified PRNG. 2\. This generator is well known to be easy to backdoor if one replaces the standard NIST parameters with custom parameters, and this has been known since well before the generator was added in ScreenOS. 3\. Amazingly, the standard NIST parameters have been replaced with new parameters, and no justification for these new parameters was provided by Juniper -- after the presence of the generator was revealed (in 2013) or after they were hacked some years later. 4\. Many years after initially shipping this generator, and due to a very public de-certification of the Dual_EC_DRBG generator, Juniper quietly admitted use of that generator and parameters, but declined to remove it -- claiming that post-processing by the (official) PRNG would prevent the backdoor from being exploited. 5\. Except that due to a _frankly amazing_ coding error, the second (avowed) RNG never actually runs, ensuring that raw output from the flawed Dual EC generator is transmitted. This renders the alleged backdoor exploitable. 6\. There are a number of other conditions that must be present for this flaw to be efficiently exploitable (this is one of the places where nonces come in) and every single exploitability condition is present. 7\. Many years later, some outside hacker comes along, replaces the (Juniper- derived) PRNG parameters with their own parameters, and _despite no further code changes_ the manufacturer admits that this enables a passive decryption attack on all ScreenOS devices. I don't think you need much of a conspiracy theory to ask what the heck is going on with this. Issues like the nonces aren't really proof of a conspiracy; they are things one would look for to determine whether there were specific barriers that would prevent exploitation. You can draw any conclusions you want from all of this, but it's really about as bad a fact pattern as you're ever going to see. ------ scott-smith_us Untrustworthy is untrustworthy, whether due to incompetence or malice. ------ blakesterz This is from over 2 years ago, I thought "OH NO NOT ANOTHER ONE" but it's not all that new now. Maybe needs a [2016] tag?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Groovy project is looking for a new home - varmais http://glaforge.appspot.com/article/the-groovy-project-is-looking-for-a-new-home ====== bjfish I know and use both Ruby/Rails and Groovy/Grails and wanted to debunk a myth here: "Interest in Grails/Groovy is diminishing" \- I won't comment on trends but there is still a large, active user base and community I won't list the benefits of Ruby/Rails over Groovy/Grails because I will assume the audience here is familiar with Ruby/Rails. Specifically here are some benefits of Groovy over Ruby: - Very good JVM tooling and integration - Familiar (Java) - Developer friendly (Ruby has a number of syntax warts, e.g. elvis operator, null safe operator - just to start) syntax - Optional static compilation - Optional typing and Grails over Rails: - Performance - take a look at techempower benchmarks http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r9&hw=peak&test=query - Spring integration - having Spring built in is often useful in an enterprise context where existing Spring use exists - Typing is nice if you like that (Mentioned above) When I need to decide between using Grails and Rails, it usually comes down to developer convenience vs performance. I am asking myself do I want to give up a lot of performance (with Grails) for a little more developer conveniences (with Rails)? Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no. ~~~ mbell I've also used both languages a fair bit, but I've never used Grails (although I've played with it). Couple things to add to the pros/cons: > Developer friendly (Ruby has a number of syntax warts, e.g. elvis operator, > null safe operator - just to start) syntax I would love to see the elvis operator and the null safe operator in Ruby, but I'd also like to see blocks in Groovy. An addition to the pros of Groovy: Interacts extremely well with existing Java code. While you can call into Java from JRuby, it's no where near as clean to interoperate with Java in the same code base. In the past I've loved Groovy because I could use it very cleanly inside a codebase that had a lot of Java, e.g. use Groovy to write controllers or data munging code but use Java for most other things. ~~~ sytse Isn't the elvis operator \|\| in ruby? see [http://stackoverflow.com/a/7816041/613240](http://stackoverflow.com/a/7816041/613240) ~~~ bjfish Yes, but I think that syntax is a little ugly, see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916893) ------ stickfigure Understanding this decision requires understanding Pivotal more broadly. EMC (which owns VMWare, which owned Spring) bought Pivotal Labs (primarily a Ruby consultancy) and used the brand for a new spinoff company (Pivotal Software, Inc). That spinoff company received as its founding endowment a hodge-podge of enterprise software technologies they had acquired over the years - Spring, RabbitMQ, CloudFoundry, Greenplum - and the consultancy, which is still called Pivotal Labs. For the most part they put the Ruby consultancy people in charge. Even though Pivotal Software is an amalgam, Pivotal received most of its culture from Pivotal Labs. To the extent that you can anthropomorphize a corporation, it really, _really_ likes Ruby. Because of CF, it's warming up to Go fast. Spring is too big and important to neglect. But it's hard to see how Groovy/Grails fit into the big picture. It's not in vogue with the top decisionmakers and it's not critical to the business - it's just something that tagged along with Spring. I doubt anyone has any idea what to do with it. ~~~ vorg You'd also need to understand that not all full-time Groovy and Grails developers make equal contributions. Funding the 2 technical workers on Groovy might make sense for a business, but due to ownership problems related to the brand, codebase, support, channels, and what not, disentangling these 2 workers from the whole mess is a legal nightmare. Perhaps there's something similar with Grails, but I don't know much about that one. Pivotal obviously decided simply terminating funding was more profitable than trying to split off a separate business and sell it all to someone else. ------ revscat Props to what Guillaume has accomplished, but the original raison d'etre for Groovy existing has largely been supplanted by the rise of JRuby and Scala. When Groovy was initially developed JRuby was (arguably) not yet mature enough for production, so developers wanting to use Rails under the JVM were basically out of luck. Grails was developed in response to this need. Now that JRuby is more mature (and, as of today, the only one of the two with official sponsorship) the need for Grails is greatly diminished. The only other major development effort that utilizes Groovy is Gradle, and that has been met with mixed levels of enthusiasm. Add to this that Java itself has made some strides with adding functional(-ish) features to the language, and the benefits that Groovy brings to the table are not as pronounced as they once were. And for devs who are wanting something that is more purely functional there is Scala. Given this I'm not particularly surprised to see Pivotal's decision here. Groovy has always struggled for more widespread relevance, and while it is sad to see this happen, it's also far from unreasonable. ~~~ cowardlydragon NOPE. Ruby doesn't offer one of Groovy's killer features: optional static typing. And Scala... far too alien and complex. There was some talk out there by one of the original Scala dudes talking about how there are something like 30 different fundamental types in Scala. Groovy offers the most accessible functional programming paradigms to Java programmers. It is a sweet spot. ~~~ revscat Well, I actually like Groovy, and was trying to keep my personal opinion out of my original post. The fact remains, though, that whatever strengths Groovy has as a language it has struggled to gain significant traction. ~~~ coldtea > _The fact remains, though, that whatever strengths Groovy has as a language > it has struggled to gain significant traction_ Compared to what? JRuby? Groovy's adoption, from the number's I've seen, walks all over JRuby's. It's just that the Java world is not fashionable (besides say Clojure) and you don't often hear from the people who use Groovy in their enterprise projects, whereas 10 startups using the language-du-jour can create the impression that it's the hot shit on HN. ~~~ pjmlp No, but you do get presentations at local JUG and those have been pretty empty of Groovy content in the last years. ~~~ coldtea I think people that go to JUGs and people that do enterprise development are entirely different species... ~~~ lostcolony That was not at -all- my experience when I went to one in Atlanta. I and one other guy were the only ones in t-shirts; every single other person was in polo and khakis at least, with quite a few dress shirts and suits. Pretty sure it was mostly dominated by enterprise. Admittedly, that was my one and only experience with one; it was sufficiently enterprise-y and uninteresting for me that I never went back. ------ derpshmerp Groovy is a very flexible language with an elegant and approachable syntax. It provides fantastic support for concurrency with gpars. It provides the ability to write static or dynamic code. It integrates seamlessly with Java. I feel groovy has created it's own space in the ecosystem, continues to grow and has a bright future. ~~~ laichzeit0 The concurrency support with gpars is a really killer feature. I'd urge everyone to take at least just take a look at it. Extremely easy and made very "natural" with Groovy syntax. Yeah you can do concurrency with about every other language, etc. but this is within a JVM context. ------ mindcrime I really wish we had the money to hire all the Groovy / Grails developers here. I'd do it in a heartbeat. Almost all of our products are built primarily with Groovy + Grails, and I'd hate to see the project(s) lose substantial momentum. OTOH, I expect both projects to remain alive, even without corporate backing, although perhaps not moving quite as quickly (which would still be a loss). ------ Edmond Love Groovy's static+dynamic typing. I developed HiveMind (www.crudzilla.com) and the IDE backend is written entirely in Groovy primarily because I am a Java developer and could use Groovy without having to learn a new syntax. ~~~ pjmlp Interesting. Specially that you decided to make use of JSR-223. Good luck for the business. ------ bonsai80 Linked site over quota. Cached: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tVxs2fJ...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tVxs2fJEi80J:glaforge.appspot.com/article/the- groovy-project-is-looking-for-a-new-home+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us) ~~~ j_s Coral cache: [http://glaforge.appspot.com.nyud.net/article/the-groovy- proj...](http://glaforge.appspot.com.nyud.net/article/the-groovy-project-is- looking-for-a-new-home) ~~~ mdaniel I almost wish Coral-caching links was the default, given that making the frontpage can be a real bad thing for smaller sites. Also, if the "portless" version doesn't work for anyone, I've experienced that adding :8080 and :8090 can have better luck. I am unaware of the difference between the two ports. ~~~ fletchowns Kinda robs people of ad impressions though ------ vezzy-fnord And just a couple of hours ago I was thinking "How come I haven't seen any articles on Groovy on the front page in a while?". Seems its hype has been eclipsed by Clojure and Scala. ~~~ lisa_henderson I think the hype around Groovy was at its peak when folks were the most interested in having something like Ruby running on the JVM, and jRuby did not yet seem like a viable option. But even the hype for classic MRI Ruby has been waning, as developers look to do more with concurrency, and they discover dynamic everything-is-mutable languages have limits when it comes to concurrency. See Tony Arcieri's article "2012: The Year Rubyists Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Threads (or: What Multithreaded Ruby Needs to Be Successful)" and where he wrote: "I’m talking about at Dr. Nic’s talk at RubyConf 2011, a little more than a year ago. Dr. Nic had a fairly simple message: when performance matters, build multithreaded programs on JRuby (also: stop using EventMachine). Now granted he was working the company that was subsidizing JRuby development at the time, but I didn’t, and I for one strongly agreed with him. Not many other people in the room did. The talk seemed to be met with a lot of incredulity." So even among Rubyists, there has been growing interest in Ruby beyond the MRI, and if that is happening in the land of Ruby, then the argument for Groovy is that much weaker. At the same time, the growing interest in dealing with concurrency certainly helped increase interest in Scala and Clojure, and furthermore, functional programming in general. If you are a developer who wants to harness the power of concurrency for greater speed, Scala and (especially) Clojure are full of interesting ideas for how to do that. Groovy, meanwhile, feels off-topic. ~~~ cowardlydragon Again, just because Groovy rhymes with Ruby doesn't mean that is its sole purpose. Ruby doesn't have optional strong typing, which is critical to Groovy's bridging of Java and Ruby. The optional strong typing enables a host of significant advantages, from code readability and assertions to IDE tooling/autocomplete ease... better API design... and many other things. ------ _pmf_ Groovy has one of the nicest approaches to compile time metaprogramming (apart from Lisp, of course). I often wish it had gained more momentum before Clojure and Scala showed up. The Java interoperation is much, much cleaner than in Jython or JRuby due to Groovy being a first class JVM language. ------ tree_of_item Doesn't Google depend on them now, due to Gradle being a part of the official Android toolchain? Seems like they should be interested in doing this. ~~~ cowardlydragon It might be for the best. I heard that the VMWare people are a bit scuzzy and unethical, such as slapping legal threats on authors to take over their github projects. Of course that was from what I _thought_ was a drama queen ex-groovy committer, but now he looks much more sane. Pivotal is trying to push vert.x now, which I think is a node.js for JVM type of thing. Since they never did make an awesome configure-spring-with-groovy conversion, I guess this won't be too painful of a split. Groovy was the #1 JVM language besides Java for quite a while, I think it still is despite Clojure/Scala hype. It was before pivotal took it on, and it probably will be fine. It's feature set is actually fairly stable. It doesn't need to do Java lambdas, since it has its own, so no major Java cross compatibilities to port from Java8. ~~~ blktiger I was disappointed that Spring decided to move away from the groovy config option. I thought of all the different configuration options that one looked the most elegant. I really dislike the current "Java" config fad they are going through. It looks like Java, but it's not really Java, it's a DSL for Spring configuration. ------ ireadzalot I hope they can find a model like how Django (Python) has its own foundation to support it. With Gradle being defacto build tool for Android ecosystem and companies like Netflix using it, it feels like they would have no problem with finding a new home/raising-fund for future. I have been using Groovy and Grails for less than a year now and love it so far. ------ mikerichards I like Groovy. The language has the ability to made some very, very nice DSLs (almost english-like). But the buzz around Groovy has diminished. There's only so much room for the already crowded JVM ecosystem. It's great to have choice, but there's only X number of developers, X number of companies that can sponsor, X number of users that build a community. I'd like to see a language like Groovy, but with some of the semantics of Clojure, and some optional typing. Maybe it's time for a reboot of the language.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
24% of Tweets Created by Bots - jasonlbaptiste http://mashable.com/2009/08/06/twitter-bots/ ====== jacquesm Compared to email that's not such a big percentage, but if you take into account how long twitter exists and how small it really still is the number is pretty scary. Maybe it should read 'already 24% of tweets created by bots'. A bit of a trend would be useful information. Would be interesting to have a breakdown on 'useful' bot tweets and 'spam' bot tweets as well, the article suggests that there is a bit discrepancy but does nothing to document how big. ~~~ derefr I imagine relatively few of the bot tweets are actually spam—you have to follow something to see it, and you can always just switch a spam-bot off. ------ skermes Combined with <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639266>, it seems like Twitter is less about inviting millions of strangers into the minutiae of your life than it seems from a naive view. I seem to remember danah boyd talking about something to that effect at one point; that a lot of the Twitter activity she'd observed among young people was about talking amongst a small circle of friends. The only people really broadcasting on Twitter are people who were already famous for something besides their 140 character brilliance. ------ abalashov And another 40% of tweets created by bot-like - although not technically bot - human marketing droids. ------ kevinpet I think this goes well with the whining story posted a couple months ago about how the higher ups at twitter weren't using the service right, by which, they weren't using the service as useless "social media expert" follower whores want to use it. One of the problems I've had to address in developing a social media analysis product is figuring out whose tweets get read by humans, and which ones are just followed by other bots. It's hard to approximate without access to lots of data which isn't available over the API. On the other hand, it will be easy for twitter to figure this out. A few days ago, some users stopped showing up in search results. Are they starting to tighten the noose around spammers? The beauty of twitter is that I've already whitelisted those who I want to hear from. It can completely eliminate the spam problem with email. ------ joshu about 25% - 35% of posts on delicious were due to spammers/bots/crap as well... ------ alexbosworth Bots are allowed on Twitter - that's fine with me (@beijingair is a very cool twitter bot) But Twitter should make applications mark themselves as such to let tools filter out auto tweets (imo twitterfeed should count as a bot) ------ dsil I expect this number to be 95%+ at some point, because it's so much easier to scale bots than humans, but that's not necessarily a bad thing at all. I have 3 twitter accounts, one personal and 2 bot-controlled, with one of the bots having 10 times as many followers as my own. And deservedly so, he puts out a lot more interesting content than I do. A better metric would be something like tweets*followers, or some other way to measure consumption of tweets instead of just production. Spam-bots will do poorly on that metric, but useful bots should do fine. ------ extension It doesn't matter how many tweets are spam, all that matters is how easy they are to filter out. And the answer is, pretty damn easy. What Twitter needs is a way to filter the drivel that comes from humans. ------ est How many of those bots are RSS headline bots?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple is listening (Yosemite) - tonteldoos https://github.com/fix-macosx/yosemite-phone-home/ ====== Barnaby_Jones As long as you didn't find a keylogger, screengrabber or mousetracker everything is fine (or the software firewall is silently deactivated).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
48h HTML5 Game That Made $2k In A Week - ferno http://www.truevalhalla.com/blog/aquatic-my-48-hour-html5-game-that-made-2000-in-a-week/ ====== Mizza The 48H gamejam that he's talking about here is FightMagicRun - [http://fimaru.com](http://fimaru.com) run by good friend Evan Borchardt, author of the HTML5 Game Developer's Cookbook, and founder of the upcoming [http://polish.io](http://polish.io)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bye Bye Emojis: Emacs Hates MacOS - csmonk http://www.lunaryorn.com/posts/bye-bye-emojis-emacs-hates-macos.html ====== jordigh As one of GNU's flagship products, why shouldn't Emacs remind users that it is not in agreement with Apple's treatment of its users? GNU has an agenda, just like Apple does. Intel cripples icc for non-Intel CPUs, making it emit pessimised assembler. Apple makes sure that its hardware only works with other Apple products and that macOS can only be legally virtualised on Apple hardware. Everyone has an agenda. The difference is that GNU is a lot smaller and has a lot less power and resources than Apple and Intel. So much that it is relatively easy and, in fact, explicitly allowed by the GPL, for someone like Yamamoto to come along and decide that, by golly, Emacs will have unique macOS-only features and Apple deserves to have more money to do whatever it wants to its users because its users enjoy Apple's treatment, smelly GNU/Beards be damned. This is a lot easier than fixing icc for AMD CPUs or putting headphone jacks into iPhones 7. > _We are not welcome, and never will be._ You are welcome. You are very welcome. Apple is not. You should not identify yourself with Apple's operating system. ~~~ eridius Deliberately crippling your product on Apple platforms does not in any way "remind users that it is not in agreement with Apple's treatment of its users". In fact, it's fairly ironic that, in an attempt to protest someone else's treatment of users, Emacs has decided to treat its users badly. Deliberately crippling Emacs will not make Apple change, and will not get people to switch away from Apple platforms. But what it might do is get people to switch away from Emacs. ~~~ pasquinelli is removing multicolor font support crippling emacs? ~~~ rbanffy I'd say it's a feature, not a bug. There is no place for colorful smileys in my text files. ~~~ vurpo Emojis are characters in the Unicode specification, which have glyphs in the macOS default font, and are rendered by default in native macOS apps that display text. Why should Emacs make the decision that most characters are okay to display in their text editor, but _these specific characters_ are a no-no? You're sounding like "I'm not using this feature, why does it even exist?". If things worked like that, then everybody would be using Linux on all computers today. ------ vilhelm_s And several other Mac features were stopped before they made it into the official release. This is Richard Stallman's policy: "GNU Emacs should never offer people a practical reason to use some other system instead of GNU. Therefore, when someone implements a useful new feature but only for a non-GNU system, we do not accept it that form." [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2015-12/msg01...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2015-12/msg01407.html) [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2015-12/msg01...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2015-12/msg01572.html) ~~~ kitsunesoba If the goal is to encourage people to use GNU software and potentially even migrate to a full GNU system, I find this policy counterintuitive. It comes off as needless and antagonistic and it pushes me further away from GNU and towards free software that's not so tangled up in rigid philosophies, or worse, proprietary software. ~~~ gutnor > It comes off as needless and antagonistic That's because that comes directly from the commercial companies rulebook. Apple (for example) will not make an application that runs better on Android or Windows than on one of its OS. It would not be beside any of the big brand to remove something that was working before just because that remove a tiny bit of interest in their own platform. That makes cruel business sense ... and they are also hated for it when it happens. ------ sjm This kind of thing is exactly why I will always support and use Mitsuharu Yamamoto's macOS Emacs port ([https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs- mac](https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac)), which has been consistently rock solid and committed to implementing nice to haves on macOS that this sort of political bullshit holds back on official development. Homebrew tap here: [https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew- emacsmacport](https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport) ~~~ errx he is the author of the commit [http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?id=934461...](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?id=9344612d3cd164317170b6189ec43175757e4231) ~~~ Arnavion And the commit seems to be in emacs-mac too - [https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs- mac/commits/9344612d3cd...](https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs- mac/commits/9344612d3cd164317170b6189ec43175757e4231) (Going by the author date, it was in emacs-mac first.) ------ cyphar > MacOS users we will always be second-class citizen in Emacs land3. GNU Emacs is part of GNU/Linux. Why are you surprised that [other OS] is a second-class citizen for a project which already has a clear OS target. Besides, the guidelines for GNU packages clearly states that GNU packages _cannot_ emphasise features of proprietary OSes. So it's not really the maintainer's fault, it's one of the rules for GNU packages (you can blame the FSF, but you've got to look at it from their perspective). GNU packages are different from other projects, because they're actually part of an OS. So they have an obligation to support the OS they're a part of more than other operating systems (especially proprietary operating systems). ~~~ theparanoid After using Emacs on Windows for years, including debugging graphics drivers, the only OS with first class support is Linux. ~~~ pmiller2 You're lucky. I literally have never gotten Emacs to run properly on Windows. ------ burke Here's the diff: - /* Don't use a color bitmap font unless its family is - explicitly specified. / - if ((sym_traits & kCTFontTraitColorGlyphs) && NILP (family)) + / Don't use a color bitmap font until it is supported on + free platforms. / + if (sym_traits & kCTFontTraitColorGlyphs) [https://github.com/emacs- mirror/emacs/commit/9344612d3cd1643...](https://github.com/emacs- mirror/emacs/commit/9344612d3cd164317170b6189ec43175757e4231?diff=unified) ------ failrate As a product developer, maintaining a consistent feature set across OSes makes perfect sense to me. It is a struggle to get consistent behavior across different versions of Windows, let alone entirely different OS types. ~~~ kitsunesoba Some level of consistency is absolutely desirable but I'm not sure that full- on lowest common denominator is the right approach. ------ gkya 1) It's perfectly okay (and good) that GNU maintainers do not want to have features that are needlessly exclusive to a given platform. 2) It's perfectly okay (and good) that they want their software to behave consistently across platforms, as otherwise those are not really cross- platform. 3) Coloured typeface are illogical, just use pictures, which is what emoji are. It's fairly easy to insert images into a buffer in Emacs. ~~~ raverbashing > It's fairly easy to insert images into a buffer in Emacs. Sure and how it is represented in the underlying file? Is this platform independent? Emoji are just a part of Unicode. As far as I care, I wouldn't mind if Emacs would just render it as [GRINNING FACE U+1f600] ~~~ grive We're not talking about Emojis, but coloured typeface. Emojis are part of Unicode, coloured typeface are not. ~~~ leni536 Typefaces are not part of Unicode, coloured or not. ~~~ gkya Unicode is a list of glyphs, typefaces are sets of shapes which represent glyphs. Emoji are pictures. Coloured glyphs in Unicode, which include emoji, require compliant typefaces to include some shapes that have a preset colour, and this is illogical, as colour is not the property of the shapes of a type, but of the rendered text. This must stop before Mona Lisa makes it into the Unicode. ------ astevens 20 years ago the FSF had some very forward-looking ideas. Now we have the ornery opinion of old men - it was good enough for us two decades ago, it's good enough for you now. The point of free as in speech and not free as in beer is that the choice you make does not need to be right or wrong by the standards of other humans. Holding back technology because it's not available on "your" platform is just as monopolistic as any corporate entity they have butted heads with. ~~~ icebraining _The point of free as in speech and not free as in beer is that the choice you make does not need to be right or wrong by the standards of other humans._ No, it may be yours, but I'm pretty sure that was never the FSF's point. Not now, and not 20 years ago. _Holding back technology because it 's not available on "your" platform is just as monopolistic as any corporate entity they have butted heads with._ \- It's not "their" platform, it's free platforms. \- The tech is still available, it just won't be included in their official release. Other MacOS ports are free to use it. ~~~ astevens It's not the FSF's point to have freedom of ideas? Then please explain what it's point is. You disagreed but haven't explained why. If it's not "their" platform then how is it available elsewhere? If other distributors have access and can make it available then it is very much a GNU political standard and not a side effect the technology. How are those platforms free if existing features have been removed due to politics? I stand by my point, 20 years ago the FSF was a foundation that wanted to make technology available to all - without having to worry about IP ownership. They have removed a feature that was technically sound due to it's status as a commercial work. How am I free to use this if I can only do so in designated zones? ~~~ icebraining _It 's not the FSF's point to have freedom of ideas?_ Freedom of ideas is supposed to be a given in a free society. The FSF certainly supports it, but they weren't created for the purpose of promoting it. In any case, your initial statement was that "the choice you make does not need to be right or wrong by the standards of other humans", which is actually the opposite of the FSF's position, which is that some choices (like developing, distributing or even promoting proprietary software) are unethical and should be opposed. That's the definition of making a standard and holding other humans to it. _If other distributors have access and can make it available then it is very much a GNU political standard and not a side effect the technology._ I don't disagree. It's still not their platform, it's all platforms they consider ethical. _How are those platforms free if existing features have been removed due to politics? I stand by my point, 20 years ago the FSF was a foundation that wanted to make technology available to all - without having to worry about IP ownership. They have removed a feature that was technically sound due to it 's status as a commercial work. How am I free to use this if I can only do so in designated zones?_ I completely disagree with your portrayal of the FSF of 20 years ago. The whole point of the creation of the GPL, instead of using the existing permissive licenses, was to legally enforce the position that the Freedom of the software, not its technical superiority, is the fundamental goal. This is a markedly political position, and one which prevented the creation of many features. Being "technically sound" was never enough to be considered good software by the GNU project. ------ strangelove ,,Let’s sink this in: The Emacs developers deliberately disabled a feature that was working perfectly fine for MacOS users just because it is not available for free systems1. What a daft decision.'' \- well, right now, it's just bloating Emacs for the rest of the world. If one needs it on MacOS, I'm sure it can be added it to a personal installation. ------ beefsack It's easy to see this is but one side to the story from the level of emotion in the blog post. Does anyone have more information regarding the decision itself? The post also misses the second half of the paragraph, which suggests a method to get emoji working again: If some symbols, such as emoji, do not display, we suggest to install an appropriate font, such as Symbola; then they will be displayed, albeit without the color effects. ~~~ MBCook So instead of using the native font rendering on OS X which they had actually done, they suggest installing a secondary font which doesn't work as well to fix the problem they created by disabling the working font rendering? Yeah. I'm sure everyone's happy with that answer. ~~~ beefsack You're being just as short-sighted as the blog author, do you know the reasoning why it was removed in the first place? It's fairly obvious the second part of the paragraph is a workaround, not a fully fledged solution. ~~~ MBCook I understand the reason why they did it. I understand your view of why it should be done. I'd be A LOT more sympathetic if they hadn't been shipping it working for two years. At that point it's a little late to put the horse back in the barn. Some of Stallmans list seems insane to me. They withheld accurate scrolling until all the other platforms had it? They are crippling font rendering to the lowest common denominator? They don't want background transparency on OS X because what is ostensibly a console program doesn't have it on other OSs? This is the kind of stuff that "free software" people do that turns off normal people. I do understand some features. I can see why they wouldn't want to use the system spellchecker if they didn't have a spellchecker on other platforms. Very significant features like that that really could divide the platform makes some sense to me. But breaking font rendering? Making scrolling work worse? Not having some generic cosmetic effects like background transparency? That seems way too dogmatic. Worse is that Stallmans email seems to imply that some of the things that they held back on OS X should have been available for a while, but no one was keeping track of when the free platforms caught up to parity. Does that mean it's possible that OS X could have supported something to years ago, doesn't have it today, but Linux has had it for a year? If you're going to impose a rule like that you should be tracking it. ~~~ gshulegaard I feel like there is some lost perspective here. > But breaking font rendering? I would instead see at is making font rendering work equally across platforms. > Making scrolling work worse? Again, making scrolling work equally across platforms. > Not having some generic cosmetic effects like background transparency? Again, equally. I am more than a little surprised that this is so surprising to people...it seems rather par for the course for GNU philosophy. If you truly want to make a platform agnostic piece of software, then you end up limiting yourself to the "lowest common denominator". People seem to have gotten used to the presumption that if you want to make software, you have to make platform specific versions for the best user experience. Want to write a mobile application? Well the best user experience comes from "native" apps...so you should make one specifically for iOS and then one specifically for Android. That. Is. A. Huge. Problem. (at least in the eyes of GNU) And in principle I agree most of the time. Locked/incentivized eco-systems lead to the dominance of a few "popular" platforms as choosing which platforms to support (as a developer) becomes a function of market coverage. This has been demonstrated time and time again for better and for worse...although usually the latter. So yes, GNU can be kind of extreme into their adherence to their core philosophies...but, honestly, I don't think this is a "fight" (so-to-speak) that can be made with half measures and exceptions. ~~~ raverbashing Isn't it funny how it is the Mac OS people implementing these changes while the Linux people aren't coming up with equivalents? And yes, you can have a transparent terminal on Linux, make emoji work, have better scroll, etc ~~~ gshulegaard As Mac OS has a corporate entity behind it I don't think it is too surprising that Mac OS is in front...sort of. > And yes, you can have a transparent terminal on Linux, make emoji work, have > better scroll, etc Well...sure, but it looks like all they did is remove the usage of Mac specific APIs from mainline: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2016-01/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2016-01/msg00389.html) So they aren't so much sabotaging Emacs when it is on Mac, they are just refusing to utilize platform specific APIs and tools. Again...see my first comment. ------ znpy > We are not welcome, and never will be. It's quite silly that the the author of this post thinks non-free support was a top priority for the free software foundation. ~~~ DocTomoe Especially when the emacs homepage explicitly is anti-nonfree systems. ------ z3t4 You do have the freedom to change Emacs! You can fork it and create "MacEmacs". You probably only have to change a few lines to get it working again. ~~~ Freak_NL Not even that; such a fork already exists (as mentioned elsewhere in this thread). ------ dmitrygr I wish there was a way to force other applications to disable color emjoi. ~~~ voaie There is a special char to disable colorful emoji but seems no way to deal with the font issue. ------ parenthephobia FSF policy is that GNU software should not have features that will only work on non-free operating systems. The decision to remove multicolor glyph support was made on that basis. The FSF don't want to make their software better on non-free operating systems which, given their goals, doesn't seem particularly unreasonable to me. ------ confounded Emojify[0] provides all the emoji support I seem to need on both Ubuntu and macOS. It uses non-proprietary emojis though. If that's unacceptable, it can take arbitrary directories for emojis[1]. I must say, Emacs still runs better on macOS than Xcode does on Linux. [0]: [https://github.com/iqbalansari/emacs- emojify](https://github.com/iqbalansari/emacs-emojify) [1]: [https://github.com/iqbalansari/emacs- emojify/issues/19](https://github.com/iqbalansari/emacs-emojify/issues/19) ~~~ NoGravitas Seems to use EmojiOne, which is all the emoji you could need. ------ unescape If you want to help adding multicolor fonts to free platforms: [https://wiki.dequis.org/notes/emoji/](https://wiki.dequis.org/notes/emoji/) [https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg- devel/2015-August/047175.h...](https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg- devel/2015-August/047175.html) ------ gok "Therefore, when someone implements a useful new feature but only for a non- GNU system, we do not accept it that form." Users of non-GNU systems that use GNU software: the FSF is actively trying to make your life more difficult. ~~~ jimmies Just as if you don't agree with Apple, you are welcome to use the alternatives. If you don't agree with GNU, you are welcome to use the alternatives. ~~~ Annatar That's exactly how this is going to go down, at least in my case. ~~~ gkya Well if you'll switch away from Emacs because of coloured typeface, they you're not using Emacs at all anyways, so farewell. ------ kalleboo The last time Emacs came up here, there was some discussion about Stallmans obsession with free OS purity and some separately-maintained macOS releases were suggested [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12832486](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12832486) ------ Aardwolf These multicolored fonts can cause problems. E.g. firefox on linux was at one point rendering the unicode char "black right pointing triangle" as light blue for me despite the font and text around it being black! Can be fun for some, but not if you intend it to look like the text font! This character was in unicode since 1993 long before emoji existed and now we can't even insert a simple triangle in text without being certain it won't look ridiculous on some people's screens. [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/25b6/index.htm](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/25b6/index.htm) ------ Animats Does anyone really need colored emoji in Emacs? It's a programmer's editor. ~~~ tragic I can imagine having a debugger or repl open in an emacs buffer, which could be printing out arbitrary strings, which could include emoji. Though non coloured glyphs would be fine in that case. Also, people use emacs for all kinds of crazy stuff, like IM and email and so on ... ------ arthurfm A colour emoji font is available for Linux [1][2] so it doesn't really make any sense to disable the feature on macOS. [1] [http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/03/enable-color-emoji- linux-...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/03/enable-color-emoji-linux-svg- font) [2] [https://github.com/eosrei/emojione-color- font/releases/](https://github.com/eosrei/emojione-color-font/releases/) ~~~ NoGravitas There are actually a couple now. They currently only render in Gecko apps (though apparently it's possible to get them working in Chromium apps now, too). There's a bug filed in FreeType[0] to support SVG-in-OT fonts like this one, but no implementation yet. I believe that having this implemented in FreeType would be sufficient to get it to work in GTK3 Emacs; not sure about plain X toolkits. [0]: [https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?46141](https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?46141) ------ digi_owl And here i can't grok the appeal of emojis outside the tween girls segment... ~~~ alayne Seems like they are generally popular: [http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising- branding/infographic-...](http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising- branding/infographic-emojis-are-becoming-preferred-communication-tool-across- demographics-167355) ~~~ digi_owl Once more i find myself worried about the "positive" feedback loop found in mass media, marketing, and popular culture... ~~~ CmdrSprinkles Get off the high horse Different people like different things. 1337-speak and obscene levels of abbreviation largely came into being as SMS and text in-game chat were popular because, for a lot of people, spelling out words was much slower (or costly). The former mostly faded whereas the latter is still useful for twitter and people who actually still do SMS due to restrictions Emoji (and emoticons before them) are similar. It is a way to convey an emotion or have a bit of fun in a concise manner. Some people like to type "That is hilarious". Others will type "LMFAO". And others still will put a pacman that is laughing. All convey the same message just in a different way. ------ bArray Forget GNU making a point, maintenance wise having several versions of your program with several different features could easily become hell. As these coloured smilies grow additional features, get bugs, etc - Emacs for OSX begins to fork. You then have divided developer time, with typically one fork eventually dying due to lack of funds. Apple users: Take the temporary pain to protect your future. ~~~ GFK_of_xmaspast I started poking around the emacs mailing list archives looking for drama, and found some messages from this month from RMS getting nervous about the idea of removing support for windows 9x. ~~~ bArray That's great! Have you got a link? ~~~ GFK_of_xmaspast [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2016-11/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2016-11/msg00193.html) [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2016-11/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2016-11/msg00229.html) ~~~ bArray From what I read, they may look at removing support based on user agent strings which is a terrible idea. Many websites don't support browsers outside of Firefox, MS, Chrome and Safari recent releases, which is why people often hard code their user agent string. Still, it's great to see them take their user base so seriously! ------ rbanffy Feature parity across platforms makes it easier to develop and debug by removing platform-specific corner cases (of which there are already quite enough in Emacs). My init.el makes decisions based on which windowing system (if any) it's running on because some features work and some don't depending on the machine I'm on. I wish it didn't have to. ------ nibbula Can you say: “U+1f4a9 U+1f32a”? Those of you complaining about RMS's curmudgeonly demeanor, perhaps you would rather be using Apple iEmacs™ and “Microsoft Visual Emacs 2013”, with about the same freedom as you have with macOS / iOS, Android, TiVo, etc., which would play about as well together as ntfs on mac and hfs+ on linux? (or maybe that alternate universe would be Google Mosaic on FranklinOS?). While you're at it, you should thank the couterpointedly curmudgeonly jwz that Emacs is not tty only, and you have at least one viable non-corporate(-ish) browser choice. Or you could just run emacs in your iTerm. Or you could get all the big software pimps (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, and maybe the W3C) to agree on a good (please not bitmaped) format, then patch Freetype, again. But I really hope it's already being worked on? I'm sure Emacs will work with it then. ------ pawadu My immediate reactions after reading this: 1\. Why would you even WANT this? 2\. Find this unacceptable? Then recall what Apple did to Logic and Final Cut Pro users on Windows. ------ nephrite I wish all emojis just disappeared. They're stupid, don't add any value, waste unicode space and developers' time. ~~~ Freak_NL > waste unicode space The desirability of emoji aside, Unicode has plenty of space for this. The bulk of Unicode code points are CJKV (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese ideographs) characters. Compared to that, a few emoji outside of the BMP don't really amount to much. In fact, I am under the impression that the popularity of emoji had an unintended benefit. It seems to have contributed to a much better support of non-BMP¹ Unicode characters across the board. Until the extended emoji set came along, most characters outside of the BMP where fairly specialistic or extremely regional, so bugs didn't show up as fast as they do now. It used to be a tiny miracle of you managed to view a PDF containing non-BMP characters properly, nowadays that is just how things work. 1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_(Unicode)#Basic_Multilin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_$Unicode$#Basic_Multilingual_Plane) ------ _ph_ It is a strange interpretation of freedom, if you are free to run the software how you want, except if RMS disapproves your OS. I think this way of "defending free software" is rather counterproductive. I say this as a strong supporter of free and open source software and both a Mac and Linux user. I want Linux or any other free operation system to be strong in the market. But this should be reached on features and capabilities, not on limiting software on other operation systems. Fortunately thanks to its open source nature, it should be possible to maintain a branch of Emacs for the Mac which keeps this feature alive. This is where open source is strong. ~~~ crististm Yet RMS disapproval of MAC OS does not make Free software less free. The fundamental rights of free software are still preserved: "the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software" ~~~ _ph_ Yes, those rights are not limited. Still I find it a strange thing, that working features are removed, because they affect only "disapproved" operating systems. I don't like it, if technical questions and political ideas are too strongly mixed. ------ pif Just ask your money back! ------ waynecochran Emacs-Gud Will never support llvmdb either... sad... ~~~ __david__ Not true. They've repeatedly said they will happily accept patches for lldb. There was a thread on the devel email list just a week or 2 ago. No one has stepped up yet. ------ qwertyuiop924 Get off your high horse, Richard: In fighting software that restricts its users and doesn't respect their freedoms, you've become the thing you despise. Oh, and the rest of the Emacs team: Don't think you're getting away with this, either: it's despicable. I may well actually work on exporting the GCC AST in protest. ~~~ cyphar > In fighting software that restricts its users and doesn't respect their > freedoms, you've become the thing you despise. GNU Emacs is still under the GPL. Feel free to modify it to re-add the feature that was removed. The only reason you have the freedom to do that is because of Richard Stallman's "high horse". > Oh, and the rest of the Emacs team: Reminder that GNU Emacs is part of GNU/Linux, and thus features are developed against GNU/Linux first and other operating systems later. In addition, it is part of the requirements of GNU packages that they not encourage users to use proprietary operating systems. This includes having features on proprietary operating systems that do not exist on free operating systems. Surely you see why that's important, right? > I may well actually work on exporting the GCC AST in protest. Have fun using the freedoms that the GPL grants you while protesting against the movement that caused free software to exist in the first place. Hypocrisy is so much fun. ~~~ qwertyuiop924 >Reminder that GNU Emacs is part of GNU/Linux, and thus features are developed against GNU/Linux first and other operating systems later. Yes, but that's terrible. Making your software demonstrably worse for a subset of your users isn't acceptable. If any other group did this, you'd likely be enraged. What if .NET Core dropped support for an API on Linux? Would you really be comforted by the people saying: "it's open source: fork it if you want the features back"? >Have fun using the freedoms that the GPL grants you while protesting against the movement that caused free software to exist in the first place. Hypocrisy is so much fun. I have no wish to protest GNU as a whole. I do wish to protest the pig- headedness of RMS and others, which keeps us from actually moving Emacs and other packages forward. Not allowing Emacs to touch the GCC AST isn't protecting freedoms: it's needlessly obstructive, and utterly pointless. It's the same situation here: not patching in functionality until there's cross-platform support? Okay. Actively removing functionality that doesn't work cross-platform (yet)? Not cool. ~~~ cyphar > Making your software demonstrably worse for a subset of your users isn't > acceptable. Which is why they removed a feature after realising it made GNU/Linux users have a worse experience than on other platforms. > What if .NET Core dropped support for an API on Linux? Would you really be > comforted by the people saying: "it's open source: fork it if you want the > features back"? Yes, because I guarantee that someone would fork it. Just like someone already has a fork of Emacs that is macOS-friendly. And it probably already has the patch reverted. > Actively removing functionality that doesn't work cross-platform (yet)? Not > cool. It was a mistake for them to merge it, and they're fixing their mistake. That's how I see it. GNU packages have to be "portable to GNU", specifically all of their features have to be portable to GNU. A feature which is not portable to GNU is not a feature that the package should have -- otherwise you're both encouraging people to use proprietary operating systems as well as fragmenting your userbase. ------ no_protocol Can you just recompile it with that feature enabled? ~~~ noobermin Probably not. I won't be surprised if someone doesn't add a patch though. From NEWS: On the OS X Cocoa ("Nextstep") port, multicolor font (such as color emoji) display is disabled. This feature was accidentally added when Emacs 24.4 included the new Core Text based font backend code that was originally implemented for a non-mainline port. This will be enabled again once it is also implemented in Emacs on free operating systems. If some symbols, such as emoji, do not display, we suggest to install an appropriate font, such as Symbola; then they will be displayed, albeit without the color effects. IMO: this is the least important thing of this week to me. It certainly doesn't deserve the "Emacs Hate MacOS" subtitle. ~~~ MBCook If you've been shipping a feature for two years it's a little too late to pull it and say "oops we didn't mean to give you that yet". ------ laughingman123 For all those who constantly whine against decisions of RMS, you can atleast go start a fork of emacs if you wanted. Unlike macOS which is commercial jail , you have to beg for years for any bug fix/feature you want, and even then it won't be implemented. Someone has to be ideologically pure, in a world of jailed software. ------ imjustsaying delete (this comment) ~~~ noobermin This is probably a hint that the title can be reworked. ------ disposablezero atom probably has emacs emulation ------ DonHopkins Emacs has gone downhill ever since RMS removed this emoji from the ultra-hot screen management package source code. [http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/emacs/skull-and- crossbone...](http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/emacs/skull-and- crossbones.txt) ------ bitmadness Absolutely sickening.. Stallman needs to leave the crib and join the real world.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tesla's Plan to Buy SolarCity Has Major Flaws - peterkshultz http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/business/dealbook/teslas-plan-to-buy-solarcity-has-major-flaws ====== greenyoda Broken URL. Looks like it should have ".html" added at the end: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/business/dealbook/teslas-p...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/business/dealbook/teslas- plan-to-buy-solarcity-has-major-flaws.html) ------ sidcool If the Wall Street disagrees, the probability of it being a good long term move is high. As some smart man stated quite wisely, "Wall streeters can't see past their own shadows, at noon"	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Future Node.js releases will be from the io.js repo - eknkc https://github.com/nodejs/node#cnv ====== mattkrea Future Node.js releases will come from what is current io.js. That is all. The name is not changing. This is nothing to get excited about--this has been the plan all along. ------ jessaustin This is a dumb posting with a really misleading title. Nowhere on the linked page does it say "Node.js/node is now io.js". Perhaps the maintainers should have updated the reamde before switching repos, but I suspect they're concentrating more on coding than on marketing. ~~~ davorak Just above the commit count: > Future Node.js releases will be from this repo. [https://iojs.org](https://iojs.org) It is part of github's repo description. ~~~ jessaustin Yes that is the title of this thread now. It is in some sense the converse of the original title that I quoted above. ------ jameswyse The official name is Node.js. That repo is the combined source of Node.js 0.12 and io.js master and future releases will be coming from there. I think the next major release will be "Node.js v4.0.0" ------ Killswitch For those wondering, this was a premature posting. Node.js is the name still, it's using io.js' source code from Node.js v4.0.0 and on. The Readme hasn't been updated yet. ------ RossDM Misleading title, if you read the issue link that drunkcatsdgaf posted ([https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/2327](https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/2327)). ------ schmichael They're really giving up one of the most recognizable platform names in tech (node.js)? Is this so Joyent can maintain control over its trademark? (However that implies they'll still use the name node.js for something.) Is there an explanation of why nodejs became iojs somewhere and not the reverse? (and whether code will be updated to remove "node" references?) ~~~ mmanfrin (Guessing) it is a signal to the community that node 'belongs' to the community -- hence renaming it after the community/nonjoyent fork. ~~~ bdcravens It was node pre-Joyent ~~~ schmichael There was no node pre-Joyent. Ryan Dahl and other early contributors were all working at Joyent. It is Joynet IP and they own the trademark. ~~~ bdcravens (sorry for delayed response) I don't think this is accurate. I don't know when Ryan went to work for node, but if you listen to his earliest talks, where he discusses the journey he took to develop node, it was an independent project. Additionally, these posts identify when Joyent took node under its umbrella (along with the IP): [https://www.joyent.com/blog/a-new-abode-for- node/](https://www.joyent.com/blog/a-new-abode-for-node/) [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nodejs/lWo0MbHZ6Tc](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nodejs/lWo0MbHZ6Tc) ------ jinxedID Good work! That happened way faster than I expected ------ tracker1 This blog post[1] should clear up a lot of the confusion... Most of this is just the transition of the organizational structure from io.js to the Node Foundation. [https://medium.com/@nodesource/essential-steps-long-term- sup...](https://medium.com/@nodesource/essential-steps-long-term-support-for- node-js-8ecf7514dbd) ------ Aldo_MX Since no official statement has been made, I will just assume that they're arranging the repo. ------ jshwlkr Now I have to change my pinboard tags... ------ stringham Interesting that they are moving forward with the name io.js rather than merging into node and keeping the legacy name. ~~~ drunkcatsdgaf I'm confused, I thought they were ditching io.js ~~~ andreasklinger I'd thought so too and assume the readmes havent been updated yet ~~~ drunkcatsdgaf see: [https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/2327](https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/2327) ------ alrs Detente is over, schism returns? ------ lectrick Someone ping me when JS removes mutability. ------ dang We changed the title from "Node.js/node is now io.js". Submitters: please don't make up your own title on a post you didn't write. If you change it to something misleading, the entire thread can easily become about that, as here. Use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait, and if necessary find some representative language in the OP.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: My dogfooded Bookmarking Site / rss-crawler / ... - NicoJuicy http://handlr.sapico.me/?SearchTerm=%5BARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE%5D+ ====== justboxing Nice work! Looks like HN / Reddit in terms of functionality and layout. Really impressed that you've built all the features like RSS crawler, taxonomy, user and role management etc. ------ NicoJuicy Side note: I have been low-level dogfeeding this for a couple of years for personal use ( it was a MVP for a company). It's actually quite usefull. Things i have included: \- RSS crawler ( depending on the user that submitted it. Eg. TaglyBot is mostly the one i used for adding RSS-Feeds) \- Tag Synonyms/Hierarchy/Administration ( that's why i used the A.I. tag) \- Comments \- User Management / Role Management \- Popular /Upvoted tags \- You can drag tags to the top, to bookmark them for personal use ( if loggedin) \- Url modifiers through prefixes or affixes on the url ( Reason: circomventing paywalls by using the facebook sharer as a prefix, ... - Companies mostly use this kind of trick for Social Media) \- Custom js elements depending on a certain tag ( eg. you can add HTML through using the HTML tag) - yeah, enjoy screwing me :p \- Those custom JS elements are generated server using the V8 engine ( for SEO purpose) \- generic button / link behaviour ( eg. there's a button to "Post to HN" ). I posted too much on HN for a while as i found it easier to "Bookmark it to HandlR", add the tags and then press "Post To HN" \- There's a private mode that only lists your own votes and submitted items ( not sql optimized though, very slow for now) \- There's a bookmarklet, so you can drag a URL to the bookmarklet. It will redirect you to the handler site so you can submit it. \- If you only add a link, it will fetch the <Title> of the remote site ( easy for fast submitting) \- Create alternative url's ( eg. [http://brugge.sapico.me](http://brugge.sapico.me) for crawling the local news/ activities related to where i live) \- ... It's just a side project, but i just improved the sql index for the many-to- many relationship for Tags/Items and planned to do a Show HN for fun. Tech related: \- Plain old Asp.Net MVC with some jquery and mustache ( for the custom html elements), a V8 engine as custom javascript view engine and a DDD-layered application. I mostly use IQueryable instead of Lists though, for ease of programming. I ( before i submitted it here) also added a cache for 60 seconds ( hug of death is expected) and a new post doesn't go to the Newest url now ( since it would be confusing because of the caching). PS. HN is amazingly simple though PS 2. The company went for sharepoint a couple of years ago and very recently they contacted me again :p	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN:Want to do Masters Comp Science,no science background in Bachelors. - BikalpT Background: Bachelors in social science. Would like to do Masters in Computer science related field. Is it possible? Road blocks? Been learning self-basic programming.<p>Any helpful link, titles suggestions? Words of wisdom? ====== intellegacy I've done research on this very topic. There are several options: 1) 'Typical' CS masters program. (1-1.5 years) __Accepts students with the requisite Undergraduate CS experience. (eg. at least Intro to CS, Data Structures, and Computation) 2) The Undergraduate CS Masters degree: (2-3 years) __For Students with no CS/programming experience This is basically an undergraduate CS degree, only it counts as a Masters. 3) Mixed Program: (2.5-3 years) __A masters in CS, with the concomitant courses, but requires you to take the undergraduate courses first, which may tack on 1.5 -2 years by my estimate of your situation. Option 1) is not a likely option for you. If you manage to get accepted to one of these schools, you will be looking at 3) Mixed Program. Option 2) is a good choice if you are pressed on time or finances, and want the prestige of a Masters degree, and don't care too much about taking Masters-level CS courses. Another option is to get your second bachelor's in CS. Which is basically Option 2) but you don't get to call it a Masters. One recommendation: A lot of the upper CS courses have prerequisites- namely Intro to CS and Data Structures, as well as Calc I and Calc II. You could take these at the college if need be but IMHO you could and should learn these subjects through self-study, because you'll save money and time. Then when you enter University you can hit the ground running with the more advanced courses. ~~~ intellegacy To learn CS, Programming, and Python, I'm currently working through: 6.00x (MIT's edX Intro to CS course), Python <https://www.edx.org/courses/MITx/6.00x/2012_Fall/info> CS101 (Udacity's Intro to CS course), Python <http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs101/> Python the Hard way (Zed Shaw's online book), Python <http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/> Code Academy, (Python track), Python <http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python> I consider 6.00x and CS101 to be my CS foundation and Python Hard way and Code Academy to be brush-up on the Python/programming. Working through all these in tandem really hits my brain in 4 different but complementary angles. ------ codeonfire I don't think a "real" CS masters would be a good idea without a lot of undergrad math and CS. Keep in mind what constitutes a masters varies widely. Some schools are basically just the same undergrad material. Others go far beyond undergrad topics and pick up where undergrad textbooks end. It really depends on your goals are. ------ mmoran Don't bother. Learn it on your own and get a job. Job looks way better.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do? - cs702 http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do ====== belorn A lot of people are pointing out that if you do not like something, don't use it. It's simple enough, and have a "sounds right" tone to it. As an implied statement with this, anyone complaining should just shut up then. This is a rather crazy line of thought once one actually starts to think about it. If I see a poisonous (say rotten) food being sold, I find it almost my duty to inform people. Somehow it's now being argued, that I should stay quiet and vote with my feet/wallet instead? If a company does something clearly distasteful and harmful to others, staying quiet and voting with your feet is not a good idea. This should be obvious to everyone. At best, you are ignoring the problem, and at worst, you are implicitly allowing the situation to continue. If something is harming others, staying quiet or saying that "users should know better and not act like they do" is not the way to go. If the search box was labeled "ask amazon about this", then this would have been a no-brainer and no one would object to this. Its the same as labeling some food-like objects as non-edible. Canonical search however does not do this, and tricks users to send data that they believe is private. Imagine a worker at a company, using this function to search for internal document including a string with company secrets. Whooops, now that data is at Amazon. Imagine a police worker, seaching for email with witness details. whooops, now that data is also sent to Amazon. Imagine a normal person searching for emails that includes their credit card. Whoops, gone gone. And let's not discuss things that private people honestly, truly, do not wish other people know, or for that matter, journalists. This is not fair to the users, and RMS points this out. It might even be illegal in some if not all european countries. At the least it's something to write about and inform users about the risk involved. ~~~ drzaiusapelord This is a great example of how nothing is free. Linux isn't free, not only does it cost time, it costs privacy. I do enjoy playing with it, so the first cost is meaningless to me, but the second absolutely is not. Frankly, Ubuntu is mismanaged. From the absurd new UI to a built-in privacy trojan? I'd rather just pay for an OS that doesn't hate me or use a different distro. Not sure what the allure of Ubuntu is at this point. If you can install and use Ubuntu, you can install and use Debian. Or Xubuntu if you're still an Ubuntu loyalist. ~~~ nathanb > Linux isn't free, not only does it cost time, it costs privacy. How does that follow? I'm assuming you're using an economic rather than ideological definition of the world "free", which sort of misunderstands the point of the article, but OK. The Linux kernel does not, to my knowledge, include anything which explicitly violates your privacy. If a Linux system distributor chooses to install privacy-invading bits on your hard drive, I don't see how you can blame the kernel or the entire free software ecosystem for this invasion. (The argument about time is possibly valid, though I find it takes more time to configure Windows to a point that I consider it usable than it does to do the same for a Linux system. As it turns out, learning new things does take time. You had to learn how to use Windows or MacOS as well, though chances are you learned it through assimilation. Some of us learned Linux this way, and thus don't quite understand people griping about how it's hard to use or takes too much time to set up). ~~~ drzaiusapelord >The Linux kernel Its 100% obvious from the context of my post that I was using linux as a shorthand for this distro. I really hate this disingenuous rhetorical trick. When people start talking about stupid things distros do suddenly its "OH WAIT, LINUX IS JUST A KERNEL!" Err, no one is just running the kernel. We're all running some distro. Its like a 'god of the gaps' argument for geeks. You get backed into a corner and suddenly its "wait wait, its just a kernel, how dare you criticize it?! Its pure." Yeah but we're still all running some distro. Why do distros like ubuntu and mint have these privacy issues and have ads in them? Lets not sweep these important issues under the rug of technical minutia. ~~~ jlgreco "Linux" is not a valid shorthand for "Ubuntu" when you are saying things like "Linux costs privacy". Using such unannounced "shorthands" makes you appear to be a troll, and because of Poe's Law it is exceedingly difficult to rule out the possibility that trolling is exactly what you are doing. If you want to avoid these accusations, be _clear_ and either type out Ubuntu instead of saving a single letter by writing Linux, or explicitly announce your "shorthand". ------ rlpb "When the user searches her own local files for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers." That's not how I see it. I'd correct this to "When the user performs a global search for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers to perform that search". If a user wants to search his own local files without searching the entire Internet, then perhaps he shouldn't perform a global search. The global search box (the Dash) _didn't previously exist_ before Canonical invented it. I think it's fair that they get to define what it does. If you don't like it, then don't use it, or change its behaviour (it is open source, and you don't need a fork to change what is effectively a setting), or just use Xubuntu, Lubuntu or Kubuntu, all of which are acknowledged as official flavors by Canonical and none of which use Unity or the Dash by default. "People will certainly make a modified version of Ubuntu without this surveillance." And Canonical even support the existence of these modified versions! If you don't like it, just vote with your feet and install Xubuntu instead. Install popularity-contest to show people your vote. Job done. By all means go ahead and complain that the default doesn't do what you want it to do, but please stop with the hyperbole that is actually misleading to readers about what the real situation is. ~~~ reidrac "stop with the hyperbole that is actually misleading to readers about what the real situation is" I wonder if readers do really understand the situation or not. I don't think the hyperbole is a bad idea when features like these should be opted in and not a default for everybody. I don't know if this feature is properly advertised by the system and if there will be someone that didn't know about it. I'm a happy 12.04 user and, since it's LTS, I'll avoid 12.10 until this issue is sorted out. ~~~ JasonFruit I think Canonical has been appropriately forward with discussion of what the situation is, and who gets information. I think it's an awful idea — who really wants commercial results built into their desktop? — but calling it spyware is disingenuous. I also think it'll kill adoption of Ubuntu. It made me adopt a different distribution, and I think it will cause others to do the same. ~~~ rlpb > who really wants commercial results built into their desktop? The distinction between the desktop and the Internet is going away. Some argue that "the desktop is dead"; I just think that it'll get more integrated. I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing, providing that you have adequate control over your own privacy settings and have a choice of providers (both large and small). An open source project that is promised to always remain so is the safest place for this, since you'll always be able to find instructions to turn things off if the defaults don't suit you. I much prefer this over the world switching to web-based hosted solutions for everything. ~~~ reidrac In fact it turns out that 12.04 has some lens making queries to different services when I was searching stuff using the dash, and I didn't know about it. I fixed it with: sudo apt-get remove unity-scope-musicstores unity-lens-video unity-lens-music (I couldn't find how to disable it) It's not like I agreed to this when I installed the system, because I upgraded from a previous version (and a previous version, etc), and that behaviour wasn't there. I don't know how Canonical could advertise these changes, but in the Amazon lens case I think RMS did it right. ~~~ jcastro You can disable it via the GUI in the Privacy settings: <http://askubuntu.com/a/192270/235> ~~~ reidrac I said 12.04 and not 12.10. There's no way of disabling the lens I removed in 12.04 (may be because they got introduced in that release). EDIT: at least I couldn't find a way to disable them. Nothing in privacy settings and nothing with dconf-editor. ------ EwanToo It's always interesting to read RMS' posts, though I don't agree with a lot of them. In this case, he's got a very valid point (I disabled the adverts on my Ubuntu install), but he uses such over the top language that it makes much of his writing seem like a parody. Ubuntu sending all desktop searches to Amazon by default (even if it's via a proxy) isn't cool, and isn't what most users would expect, but I don't believe screeds like this aren't going to make Canonical think again. ~~~ jessaustin What was "over the top" about the linked piece? It's got to be the most even- tempered thing I've ever read from RMS. Did you actually read TFA before posting this comment? ~~~ estel I found referring to the Kindle as being for "virtual book burning" straying into rhetoric. ~~~ belorn Its a very loaded and picturesque description to use, but is it an wrong description? The goal of book burning is to remove information, private owned books in this case, from the public by destroying them. While one could smash them and disintegrate them through the use of massive force, burning was the practical tool used. If kindle suddenly create a goal of removing information from the public, in this case some private owned books, and goes through this act by destroying the information from private people own devices, doesn't that act align itself perfectly with book burning, through instead of using fire, they used electronic means. Sure, its not something I would like to see on Wikipedia. Its not neutral, and there are better, impartial wording one could use to describe, but is it wrong to use in a blog? ~~~ rimantas > doesn't that act align itself perfectly with book burning, > through instead of using fire, they used electronic means If that was the primary purpose of Kindle, you'd be right. However, for that to be true you constructed a scenario which is opposite to the real and intended use of Kindle. ~~~ belorn Of course its not the primary purpose of the Kindle to destroy information. They have however made it their goal once before in regard to one book. The original blog post could be interpreted as claiming what the kindles main purpose is, but I doubt RMS would defend such interpretation. A one time act, while notable, does not equal primary purpose, and he and everyone else knows that. ------ btilly Canonical is not the first to do this. And nobody minded. In Chrome, every time you start to type a URL, it tries to autocomplete. One source of autocompletions is that it contacts Google, which sends back suggestions. Therefore by default Google knows every search you do in Chrome, even if you didn't want to go to Google. (They turn this off for incognito mode.) I don't know how long this has been the case for Chrome, but I use this feature a lot more than I'd use Canonical's search. ~~~ yungchin Yes, but it's somewhat less of a privacy violation, because you usually expect to send out the URL you type over the internet. That's different from trying a local search on your machine and finding it ended up on the internet. ~~~ drcube No, you only expect it to send the URL when you hit "enter". For instant results, however, it must send each character typed to Google. Also, when I type a non-google URL into my address bar, I don't expect Google to be notified. As it is, they can track all your internet travels from Chrome, and I don't like it. Hence why I use Firefox and Duck Duck Go. ~~~ yungchin You're absolutely right, that's why I wrote "somewhat less". It's happened to me more than once that I accidentally pasted a password into the Chrome bar so that I had to go and change it, and so like you, I much prefer having an address bar without function creep. All I meant is that the potential for much worse privacy leaks is much much greater with the Unity bar than with the Chrome bar. ------ retube I have to say, having been a huge ubuntu fan for many years, I am seriously dismayed and dissapointed. This destroys my trust in Ubuntu completely. They have ruined a great thing. Was just about to put Ubuntu on a new machine, now I'll have to switch distos. Any recommendations? Edit: I think I have misunderstood. I assumed this referred to a commmand line (s)locate or find or grep or similar. Apparently it refers to a GUI search box on the desktop from which you can do global searches (local plus web). OK not so bad - in fact I have no problem in supporting Ubuntu in this way, providing local searches remain private. ~~~ meaty Local searches do not remain private as there is only one search box for global and local stuff. So when you type "goat porn" expecting it to open your folder of goat porn on your workstation, it will send it to amazon and show goat porn that you didn't want to see and tell amazon and canonical that you are interested in goat porn. In a few years time[1], on your lifetime leased IPV6 address you will pop up a legitimate web site and get adverts for goat porn. Look at the display on the fridge: goat porn. Walk into the bedroom to see your Android Clock showing you the latest "Russian Bride Goats". [1] This is apparently not possible at the moment as they "don't store or process your IP address", but we all know how Mark bends over when someone waves cash at him. After all he is a businessman. ~~~ takluyver Not fully accurate. The main search box does local+global search unless you turn off the global part in settings. But you can easily do local searches only: Super+F for files, Super+A for applications. ~~~ meaty Yes fully accurate. By DEFAULT it does local+global search. Motivation for user to turn this off - low. Education on what it's going to do - none. This is about as unethical as it can get. Even Windows 8 asks religiously before sending anything. ~~~ takluyver To be clear, my 'not fully accurate' was in response to your "Local searches do not remain private". Local searches do remain private, and there are several ways of doing them. But the default search is not a local-only search. I agree with you: I expect the default search to be local-only, and I've turned off remote results. But it's not as though it hides the fact that it's searching remotely. So I stand by my words: it's not fully accurate to say that local searches are exposed. ------ itry I find this spyware by default as wrong as Stallman. I dont want my machine to send anything anywhere without me explicitly telling it to do so. What I find even more frightening is Mark Shuttelworths view of this: <http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182> "Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root." Looks like he gets the issues of privacy and trust completely wrong. Imagine catching your cleaning lady reading your diary. And she says, without a sign of guilt, "Don't trust me? Erm, I got keys to your apartment.". Time for a new cleaning lady. Time for a new distro. I happily switched to Mint. ~~~ antidoh "Time for a new distro. I happily switched to Mint." Does my irony meter need calibration? ------ harel You can always turn it off. You can always use Gnome Shell over Unity (should anyway as its nicer). You can always buy another operating system. You know, vote with your wallet. Ah, wait... There has to be a price for free. In RMS world everybody is a hacker, everything is free (as in love) and open and nobody needs to eat, kids grow up not costing a penny. But in my world, I understand that sometimes I'm getting something for free that is actually superior to the paid stuff, and sometimes those giving it to me need to feed a kid or two, or buy their Mrs that new outfit on the high street. And since they don't charge me outright they try different things, one of which is trying to sell affiliate links to Amazon. They don't even force me to do it because I can turn it off. But they do it by default hoping that I won't. Its a revenue channel, albeit probably a small one at the end of the day. And you know what, had I used Unity I'd probably keep it on and do my Amazon shopping via the OS to give something back. I also understand RMS-style extreme is vital to balance out the Corporate extreme of the software world. But come on man, choose your battles better and you'll have my support. This one is a waste of time. ~~~ Surio >>> I'm getting something for free that is actually superior to the paid stuff, and sometimes those giving it to me need to feed a kid or two, or buy their Mrs that new outfit on the high street. Classy. You get my vote for that and subsequently pointing out that _"They don't even force me to do it because I can turn it off"_. This. I also liked the way you ended it. We definitely need RMS, but he _definitely_ needs to choose his battles wisely. ~~~ dradtke But why not present it as an option to the user on first launch, or first search? Considering how relatively few people actually _want_ shopping suggestions on their desktop, I expect the majority of users who don't turn it off to be people who simply can't be bothered to find the setting and change it. Exploiting user apathy is not my idea of software that respects its users, which is what the FSF is all about. ~~~ harel Because, realistically, given choice upfront most will probably choose to disable it even though they won't mind it if its there. When installing an OS I don't want many questions. I just want to get on with it. Ask me a question and you won't get my full attention and given the option to disable something I might just disable it. Maybe a compromise is a notice while installing that the default is to search with Amazon and instructions on how to disable it. Those who really mind it can find their way there after the OS is installed. ------ damian2000 Do people using Ubuntu not also use web browsers? If so, then they are also being spied on by others such as google, amazon, facebook, twitter - every time they use one of their sites. I just find it overly dramatic to be focusing on this one point of Ubuntu's search being harvested for keywords when this sort of thing is commonplace on the web. At least with Ubuntu you have the option to turn it off. ~~~ sparkie We don't associate google, amazon, twitter and facebook with free software and personal liberties though - where Ubuntu is traditionally associated with these due to it's origins. Just because something is commonplace does not make it justified, and it's perfectly right to criticize the decision to do it. We criticize google and the rest for doing the same - just that most people are not concerned, or not informed. IMO, any communication done by your OS to any server, without informed consent is a direct threat to privacy, and should be criticized, even if it's "convenient". ~~~ demetrius As for me, I’ve became wary of Ubuntu since it started shipping Ubuntu One pre-installed. It was clear back then that personal liberties are not that important for Canonical. ------ takluyver Relevant: Canonical have just said there will be more retailers integrated in 13.04 (which was always expected). And: "We are also testing a few additional user controls like filters for local and global searching – more to come on this front as we learn from those sessions." [http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the- dash-i...](http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-in- ubuntu-13-04/) ~~~ rlpb "...we have made it dead easy to switch the online search tools off with a simple toggle in settings." ~~~ takluyver That bit's not new, though - the toggle is already in place, and I have used it. ------ bitcartel This should help de-Amazon your Ubuntu. 1\. Ubuntu Settings --> Privacy -->Include online results [OFF] 2\. sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping unity-scope-video-remote unity- scope-musicstores unity-webapps-service 3\. Launch dconf-editor, navigate to: com -> canonical -> unity -> webapps, and then remove everything under allowed-domains, dontask-domains and preauthorized-domains References: [http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove- amazo...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove-amazon- search-results-from-the-dash) [http://askubuntu.com/questions/214755/how-to-remove-unity- we...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/214755/how-to-remove-unity-web-apps) [http://xchamitha.blogspot.com/2012/11/de-amazonising- ubuntu-...](http://xchamitha.blogspot.com/2012/11/de-amazonising-ubuntu- removing-webapps.html) ~~~ devcpp Can we keep a sort of page where we put all the commands to remove the bullshit from Ubuntu? I think it's starting to grow and stink more and more. ------ apawloski Ubuntu is also shipping with two new Firefox extensions that ask to "install" certain web apps when you visit them. Havent audited them yet, but my tinfoil suspicion is that these add-ons are leaking private information to Canonical by asking "is this a web app that can be downloaded?" (this is in addition to the current controversy that Unity searches are being leaked). By the way, Amazon is pre-installed. I noticed yesterday that Amazon web pages still open up in the Amazon icon on Unity -- even after I had removed the unity-shopping-lens. ~~~ quarterto That's almost certainly implemented by looking for HTML offline cache manifests. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/HTML/Using_the_appl...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/HTML/Using_the_application_cache) ------ nicholassmith Ubuntu install a custom application that does something involving sending data out -> We're doomed! They're spying and tracking you! Grab the pitchforks! Of course, that's RMS' viewpoint and he's entitled to it, and it often provokes some very interesting discussions around it, but he's terrible at being anything other than over the top. For what it's worth I don't think what Ubuntu did was that a bad a thing, it's a nice revenue stream for those that use it and that's a good thing for the future of the project, but I can also understand the view point of people who are uncomfortable with search results peppered with ad's. ~~~ keithpeter _"...it's a nice revenue stream for those that use it..."_ I'm not entirely convinced that this is going to make a lot of money for Canonical. It will be interesting to see figures in a couple of releases if Canonical (which is a private company) decide to tell us. What do we think the value to Amazon is of my random desktop searches for files & stuff on my desktop? The 'slow typing' problem is real: search is dynamic and can, as a result of network latency and fat fingering show results of unfortunately shortened search terms. There is no content filtering on the results. That is actually why I switched it off. ~~~ chipaca Could you re-enable it for a little bit and test that slow-typing thing? We did a bit of work to make it a little bit better at that. ~~~ keithpeter Which version, QQ or 13.04? I'm on QQ with Unity. Everything Everywhere is having some fun with their 'profile generator' at present, and we have exactly 0.24Mbit/s of bandwidth, so that might be an issue. ~~~ chipaca 12.10. It was one of the last changes before the freeze on QQ (re: <https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-lens-shopping/+bug/1060979> ), and a server- side change. BTW, you seem to have the name/numbers convention backwards :) it's codename during dev, numbers once released. So it's 12.10 or RR now. ~~~ keithpeter I was never one for convention :-) Yes, much better. Working off a USB stick with persistent space, (I have the Gnome Ubuntu Remix as PC os at present) and this box has Nvidia graphics, _and_ we have problems with the broadband. So as slow a combination as I can imagine anyone new to Ubuntu seeing. Searches now seem to be completing before sending to Amazon, and my maths related file name terms were bringing up sensible UK relevant suggestions from Amazon, mainly textbook titles. This 'feature' has got a lot smoother since I first saw it. ------ 16s I've used Debian GNU/Linux as my primary desktop OS and as a server OS since 1995. Many ditros (such as Ubuntu) are derived from it. People who have grown accustomed to deb packages and synaptic, etc may like to try it. ------ pasbesoin Stuff like this should be opt-in. And, if you want it to succeed, it should be good enough that people _want_ to opt-in. People search on Google -- they _opt-in_ to Google Search -- because the results satisfy them (more than the competition). If Canonical's partners want people to opt-in to their collaborative offerings, they should make them offer significant value. And Canonical, for its part, if they want to successfully build out this revenue stream, should ensure that they partner with partners who demonstrably do so. I already use affiliate links _when I think that the affiliate has given me something of value_ [1], in discovery or qualified opinion or some other combination of factors. I think Canonical provides me and the broader community things of significant value. Offer a monetization scheme that is 1) opt in, and 2) Respects my concerns, e.g. privacy, and I would be consciously, favorably inclined to use it. \-- [1] One example, although Amazon may not particularly like this one: <http://us.camelcamelcamel.com/> ~~~ slowpoke > _People search on Google -- they opt-in to Google Search -- because the > results satisfy them (more than the competition)._ Um, no. A lot of people don't even _know_ there is competition to Google. They don't "opt-in" to Google just as much as they don't "opt-in" to using Windows, they've just always used it because it comes with their browser/PC. There's a reason Google pays Mozilla a few million every year to be the default search engine. ~~~ pasbesoin Fair point! ------ justinf I'd guess that the only way to really dislodge the Amazon widget would be to make sure it remains unprofitable. If it remains a major talking point and doesn't pull in enough money to compensate for its negative effect on community evangelism, it won't last long. I have mixed feelings about the new system. On the one hand, I respect a lot of what Canonical is doing with linux regarding mainstreaming, streamlining, and even Unity. I also recognize that they are a company and need to make money, and think Amazon integration is preferable to dozens of preinstalled, hard-to-remove junkware applications. On the other hand, I really don't like the intrusive-by-default nature of the integration, and the fact that I'll have to go tell all the folks I've installed Ubuntu for that they need to essentially disable spyware the next time they do a distribution upgrade. On the third hand (what, you don't have one?) I'm not sure what other profitable solutions Canonical might implement in a community that values privacy and freedom. ~~~ curiousdannii Amazon postage is prohibitively expensive for those outside the US (except perhaps for those who live in another country where Amazon is based?) The only time I'd ever use Amazon is if I'm after an old rare book which is out of print and Amazon is the only place I can find a second hand copy. And in those times I'd actually be deliberately searching for it, checking many sites in my browser, not casually using Unity! ~~~ takluyver According to Wikipedia, Amazon has national sites covering North America, most of Europe, Brazil, Japan & China. That's a pretty substantial slice of the world's population. ~~~ zurn Only a handful of European countries: Germany, UK, France, Italy I think. That's 15.2% of Europe by area. ~~~ takluyver But probably rather more by population. Also, I'd guess that at least some of the other countries get reasonably cheap shipping from those sites. ------ mistercow It's a pretty big stretch to call this "spyware". It's an ill-advised feature, sure, but "spying" indicates secrecy and subterfuge. If I came up behind you while you were typing, and started reading aloud your words as you typed them, would you call me a "spy"? I think real spies would be offended. ------ jasonkostempski Are there other distros with Wubi (or something like it) and automatic updates? If it weren't for Wubi I don't think I would have ever fully switched to Linux. VMs are OK for a bit and repartitioning is right out if all you want to do is try something out for a while. I don't use Ubuntu anymore but Wubi really was the gateway drug for me. I personally don't care about automatic updates but I think it's a big one for some others. When I switched away from Ubuntu I thought I'd be missing out on the community behind it but it's really the Linux community in general that's awesome, a lot of the stuff just ends up on Ubuntu forums and much of the advice is universal. I think people need to know that. ~~~ icebraining Wubi-like: <http://goodbye-microsoft.com/> ------ kokey I find it ironic reading this article on a site that collects my visitor data using piwik stats without explicitly asking me first. ------ jdangu Was pleased to see a reference to Fravia in RMS's article. For the sake of comparison, here's a 1998 essay about what Microsoft was specifically doing in Win95: <http://71.6.196.237/fravia/mmstory.htm> ~~~ idm Good old Fravia. Like Stallman, Fravia seems to have been "hard to swallow" by the community at large. However, just like Stallman, when you dug into Fravia's stuff it turned out to be pretty great. ------ zellyn I'm slightly surprised to feel this way, but upon reflection, I actually like rms's rebranding of DRM as "digital restrictions management". Calling DRM "Digital rights management" is about as accurate as calling prison "freedom management". ------ acabal I'm pretty surprised that Shuttleworth didn't see this kind of reaction coming, considering his long-time involvement in free software. Or maybe he did see it coming, and just doesn't care? In either case, you're in a bad position when you're distributing a Linux distro that RMS starts to call out. Shuttleworth would do well to observe what happened to GNOME: they ignored their core user base, and they've been in such hot water for it that now they're backpedaling (GNOME Legacy). If Linux can't even please its core user base--aka the evangelists--it doesn't stand a chance in the wild. ~~~ fixermark Seeing this reaction coming and not caring is a reasonable strategy. In free software, RMS holds a lot of philosophical sway, but Ubuntu operates in the larger open-source ecosystem. Let's say that free software adherents decide that Ubuntu is bad for their interests. How will they react? The GPL prevents them from forbidding Ubuntu from bundling their work as long as Ubuntu's use of the work is GPL-compliant. This leaves them with few options. They can refuse to support Ubuntu, which is fine; other software developers can patch the bugs and fork projects that the original maintainers refuse to update. They can call out why Ubuntu is bad for a free software ecosystem; this is a good thing to do, but has little impact on those who are familiar with the four freedoms but don't buy into their absolute necessity. As a tool to exercise free use of software, GPL is very strong. But as a coercive tool, GPL is pretty weak (by design). Shuttleworth recognizing these strengths and weaknesses and adapting the company's motion to account for it is shrewd business. Accepting the notion "I don't approve of your use of my software, but I respect your right to use, study, redistribute, and modify free software" is an implicit aspect of the free software philosophy. ------ decasteve I am running 12.10 and disabled this right away in the privacy settings. Why not have it opt in instead of the ninja mode opt out? Explicitly prompt the user to enable this when first using Dash but disable by default. ~~~ bitcartel Did you also remove the Unity - Amazon webapp integration? ------ DanBC There are two problems with the Ubuntu search box. 1) Not being very clear to your users that the search box is now global and will send information out of the local machine 2) Amazon search sucks. I haven't used recent versions of Ubuntu, but linking a good distro with the disaster that is Amazon search is not something appealing to me. I don't think it's going to improve my experience on Ubuntu. I strongly feel it's going to make my search experience really sucky. Note that I am ad-tolerant, and I don't really care about information getting sent off to other servers (so long as I'm told about it before hand) so Canonical have a bit of work to do to persuade me that the new experience is not as awful as Amazon search is on the website. PS: Apologies to any Amazoners here, but come on, you know the search is terrible, right? ------ cparrino For context on what the Ubuntu Dash actually does and how it's evolving - please see [http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the- dash-i...](http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-in- ubuntu-13-04/) ------ loucal People really use Unity? I might be rolling my eyes a bit at Canonical for this decision, but seriously who would even want to use Unity, they can do what they want with it as far as I'm concerned. We can't have it both ways, for software to be free, Canonical has to be 'allowed' to do this. The community is now very aware of what is going on, and that is good. We can make our own decisions as informed users. Uninformed users have always been at a disadvantage, that will never change. Case closed to me, lets not turn this into an episode of the 'Real Housewives of the GNU' it really shouldn't be as dramatic as this comment war would have you believe. ------ Surio _snip_ Even in arguments around copyright law (like this recently concluded debate... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4882364>) the general consensus seems to flow around comments such as "... was not trying to reignite the Great Internet Copyright Argument for the millionth time, and instead was making a point about what was politically actionable today" On similar lines, why not acknowledge the reality of running a viable, commercial venture around FOSS by tapping viable revenue models? A few others have written some very good points that I really enjoyed reading. Here they are (in no particular order of preference): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887261> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887132> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887365> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4887294> (I really hope that comment was rhetorical rather than being literal) that makes the point of why the situation is much more nuanced for someone like Canonical. And if Linux adoption has to succeed big time, we need the Canonicals and Mints (with their warts and all) that give the general public a viable alternative. Mandriva Linux was facing bankruptcy a few years ago, if I am not mistaken. _EDIT_ : For the opt-in vs opt-out discussions: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864783> _The difference is that - for a chunk of people - this functionality isn't crap. It's actually useful. It's out of the way for people who don't care. It's there for people who do. I've seen folk go "that's so cool" when the amazon stuff came up. This stuff is much closer to the adds folk get in Google search. It's often relevant to what they're doing at the time._ (anecdata, sure. happens to match mine ;-) ) ------ antidoh What distro would you recommend take the place of Ubuntu, as a recommended for newbs distro? I mean a distro that you would feel comfortable recommending to a stranger that you will not be able to help install or support the distro, as well as the more traditional "lemme help you with that." As a subset of that, what apt based distro would you recommend for that niche? Is plain Debian really something that people feel comfortable recommending to non-supported strangers? Something that you would not be embarrassed about if they looked you up and told you what happened? ~~~ Surio I hope that my reading of your question as a rhetorical one than a literal one is correct? Because your entire comment is one big reason I have been rooting for Canonical from day one. I have been on Linux on and off since slackware 1.0, Redhat 5 (5.0 (Hurricane)/5.1 (Manhattan)) all the way to SuSE 7.0 and not one time was I able to get someone ( _anyone_ ) to adopt it completely -- despite all my handholding and regular support! Finally resorted to recommending Cygwin as an alternative, and I was still called upon to help with _"things"_ ;-) The first/only time I managed to get a successful switch and retain, was when I recommended Ubuntu. ~~~ antidoh I meant it literally. ------ meaty I'm a little surprised at how accepting people are here relating to the Amazon feature in Ubuntu. I would assume that there are a lot of critical thinkers here as comp sci people tend to have that mentality. Possibly not! The usual excuses are "we can turn it off etc" or just shrug it off and carry on. Have you thought long term? If you don't make a stand with this feature, one will eventually be added which can't be turned off or is far more invasive. ~~~ antidoh Indeed. If spyware is a continuum from onerous to innocuous, then at the moment Canonical's string sending/sharing is somewhere near the innocuous end of the line. But it's still within the continuum. By excusing it as innocuous and (for now) flippable, we shorten the line. And then shorten the line again for the next thing that finds itself happily closer to the innocuous end of the line. And again. ------ Osiris Taking a political angle on it: Won't the free software market decide winners and losers? In other words, there are hundreds of Linux distributions. Choose a different one. If you really like it fork it and rebuild it without support for that feature. Isn't the point of free software that you have the inherent right to do whatever you want to the software to make it do what you want (or not do what you don't)? ~~~ TallGuyShort You're exactly right - and his article is explicitly encouraging this behaviour. He's not calling for any additional action than for people to create, recommend and use distributions that don't do this, and to make others aware of the potentially harmful effects of Ubuntu's decision. ------ drcube I came back to Ubuntu when I got a System 76 laptop earlier this year with it preinstalled. I was actually impressed. It was pretty good, with some tiling features I liked and lots of keyboard shortcuts. But the prospects of 12.10 spyware made me dump it for Slackware 14, which came out around the same time. And I never looked back, because man, Slackware is great. Install that instead. ------ olgeni What's with this "distro" stuff... Can't we just boot into Emacs and call it a day? ------ stinos >> when he searched for a string in the files of his Windows system, it sent a packet to some server anyone has a source for this? Was this built into windows? (It's not in mine, or it's not active) ~~~ bcoates Windows XP search assistant* has a database of file types it uses for filtering and to determine which files are worth searching into. It also has a small misfeature where it updates this database every time you search. It doesn't send anything to Microsoft about what you're searching for, it's just an overly persistent auto-update mechanism. The usual suspects freaked out about this, of course. * The little dog that makes intermittent scratching noises when you accidentally leave explorer open, slowly driving you mad ~~~ stinos ah the dog. One of the first things to get rid of in XP :] ------ shabble Whilst his point is clearly that Ubuntu should be punished (by users switching to alternative distros), it would have been nice to provide or link to some detail about how to disable this behaviour, for those who can't or won't reinstall. Also, 'virtual book burning', really? These snide little terms detract from his core (and important) message, and come across as just petty. I think there's probably an Internet Law that you can safely ignore anything by people who use a $ symbol in the word 'Microsoft'. ~~~ antidoh Book burning: Amazon turned off access to people's Kindle copies of 1984, that they had purchased from Amazon. When I buy a book at the store it stays bought, and the store is not going to break in to my apartment and take that book back. Giving me my money back would not make up for it in the slightest. If there's a dispute with the publisher or copyright inheritors, that's Amazon's problem post-sale. If they can do this in a quasi-legitimate situation ("We're going to get sued! Fuck the customers!"), then they could do it at the behest of a government or investor, or maniacal CEO. When I buy a DRM-free book from O'Reilly or Packt, it stays bought. Yes, book burning may be an inflammatory phrase, but I think it's apt. ------ iamtherockstar My sister home schools two kids, cooks three squares a day, and doesn't care if someone knows she googled for "bread pudding recipe." They have an old, aging computer, and when I gave an Ubuntu CD to her husband, they were _so_ incredibly grateful. I see this feature being excellent for her, because she has a bunch of documents on her computer that contain her recipes, and then maybe she'll see a cookbook she might want to buy. Maybe she'll be looking for the days curriculum, and see a book that might help her youngest figure out her multiplication tables. These are all relatively impractical use cases for the nerds of Hacker News. Ubuntu will still serve their needs, but Canonical wants to "cross the chasm" and have ordinary muggles using Ubuntu. Those people will find all of these features "valuable" and don't actually _want_ to turn them off. ~~~ bad_user This is such bullshit. There is a big difference between _googling_ and searching your own files, while the anecdote you give probably accounts for only 1% of that computer's usage or even less. Reading this opinion I even pictured a stock-photo with family members gathered around a laptop, stupidly laughing at a photo of " _bread pudding_ ". Your sister could be searching within her own files for strings like " _last year debt_ ", " _ass ventura crack detective_ ", " _bondage_ ", "dvdrip" and " _office keygen_ ". I'm sure your sister doesn't do that, but other people do. And searches can express and hint to your deepest desires/taboos and things that might lead one to think of illegal activities. My non-technical wife asked me one day, during a funny conversation about sex gadgets, if people at Google can see what she's typing and I taught her how to use incognito mode. At some point I also made her aware that Facebook sends and publishes her lat/lon coordinates when typing a message from her phone. She understood the dangers of online activity and took steps to protect herself, without me even trying too hard to explain, but this required some amount of education which is out of reach for most normal people who either don't have a technical friend that understands such issues, or that technical friend thinks it isn't a problem, such as yourself. ------ jfreak53 I agree, the Linux community as a whole has never stood for these malfeasons ever!! I say we stand up, I use Ubuntu on ALL my PC's home and work, so we're talking 15 to 20 PC's that I might have to move over to another Distro here soon. This is not the first time Ubuntu has tried these "Windowz" practices on it's users, but this needs to be the last! The first was taking away our choice in the first release of Unity, it was sooooo much a pain in the but to get back to default Gnome that most people didn't try. Mint allowed it's user's to do so from the get go, so that means it was possible but Ubuntu made the choice for us instead of allowing configuration choices, that's what Linux is all about, choices! Ubuntu has been trying to take our choices away for a long, long time. We as a Linux community first and foremost need to stand up and let the Linux community as a whole know we will not stand for this. Ubuntu is the first doing this, but if we let them get away with it then companies like Amazon might go to other Distro's and try the same thing. If a small distro see's an easy way to make money and people don't care, or don't show they care, they might do it. With no place to run Linux becomes "Windowz"! We need to let them know we are not standing for this before it gets out of hand and happens all over the place. I personally haven't used Unity since day one on any of my 20 PC's, I hate it. So I have never been in the position to be used by Canonical to pad their pockets in this search thing. I don't ever even suggest people to use Unity since it's such a pain in the butt! But other people will be affected by this more than likely. My simple solution is don't use Unity ha ha but that's not a solution, that's a band aid. If we let Canonical get away with it without screaming they will just continue as long as Amazon funnels cash into their caufers! If they loose user base then we win and Linux as a whole wins since they are the big distro on the block. ~~~ rlpb > Ubuntu has been trying to take our choices away for a long, long time. How has it taken any of your choices away? All of Debian is available in Ubuntu, and Debian is all about choice. You can manipulate your systems as you please. You can even roll your own installation CD exactly how you want it. Canonical even supports Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu etc., all of which have taken a different set of choices and all of which are released at the same time as Ubuntu itself. How is any of this about taking choices away? ~~~ Surio Sigh.... you mean well. But you'll never win this battle/war of words... Someone summed this whole thing on another earlier thread on.... (wait for it......) Ubuntu, a few days ago... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864591> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864615> And the argument continues.....	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Lesser-Known Pandas Tricks - expert7331 https://towardsdatascience.com/5-lesser-known-pandas-tricks-e8ab1dd21431 ====== HIP_HOP What is the difference between join and merge? ~~~ celias [https://stackoverflow.com/a/37891437](https://stackoverflow.com/a/37891437)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Robot Workers and the Universal Living Wage - ph0rque http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/07/1184668/-Future-Politics-The-Automated-Workforce-and-the-Universal-Living-Wage?detail=show ====== dmix I fail to see in this article where the author backs up this claim: > automation is replacing both brawn and brains and is leaving little for > humans to do that computers can't. It will be a very long time until computer automation can replaced knowledge workers. At the moment, technology is making knowledge workers more effective and efficient. It's not even close to replacing them. Let's not try to solve problems we don't yet have. The claim of replacing physical labor is legitimate. But if you look at china or the US, the amount of kids getting educated in universities, whose parents worked as labours has exploded. The key now is getting the kids to have useful skillsets to the industries that need them. Which is something universities have been failing to promote accurately compared to the demands of the market. ~~~ moe _It will be a very long time until computer automation can replaced knowledge workers._ That is true but I think it's not an interesting question to ask. The interesting question is what we are going to do about the rapidly growing unemployment of the _unskilled_ workforce. Case in point: This will jump to a whole new level when self-driving cars become cost efficient - which seems rather likely to happen within the next 30 years. Automation in other sectors is not standing still either. "Educate them all" is not a solution. DHL and FedEx just don't need as many knowledge workers as they need truck drivers today. ~~~ gaius I am pretty skeptical about self-driving cars, for the simple reason that we don't even have self-driving _trains_ yet, outside relatively small systems like the DLR, Heathrow Pod, etc, and it would seem to be that the job of driving a train (no steering, no collision avoidance, predetermined stops, etc) would be 100x easier. ~~~ moe There are actually quite a few driverless trains already[1] and Google's demonstrations of their driverless car are getting increasingly[2] impressive[3]. The question is really only _when_ the transition to driverless cars will happen - we're long past the _if_. [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_trains> [2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRIOE1IZrq4> [3] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE> ------ zeteo >There will still be a need for computer programmers, but a lot of programming can already be automated [...] We could [...] flat-out ban certain types of robots and automated software. I write software for a living and have no idea what this means. It's either horribly misinformed, or a call to ban compilers. ~~~ sologoub WARNING: Sarcasm is present in this statement :) It seems, according to this article anyways, that the answer to developer unemployment is to rid us of efficient IDEs, compliers and other non-sense, and and get back to good old Assembly! ~~~ mjmahone17 Yes, actually: if we wanted to ensure developers stay employed, we should make writing code less efficient. Yes, you're being sarcastic, but that doesn't mean your point isn't spot on: this is in fact what unions have been doing all along, and states like New Jersey don't allow you to pump your own gas, specifically to create inefficiencies in the market that promote employment. If the option is between requiring people to work meaningless jobs, or paying everyone a living wage, which really makes more sense? ~~~ sologoub Well... The very basis of my understanding of self causes me to say that there has to be a 3rd option... That said, a living wage would be less wasteful. As for unions, I believe this is pretty much what killed the Twinkie manufacturer - they were not able to even optimize routes. ------ sologoub It seems that similar concerns have been voiced with every advance in technology that replaced works with machines. The argument generally assumes that the amount of "work" needed will remain relatively the same. So, if society today requires 100 works to make one widget, and we can make the same widget with 1 worker and assorted machines, then 99 works will be left unemployed. In reality, what seems to happen is that because the products of that work become cheaper, society starts to consume a lot more. In the end, something like 80 works end up supervising the machines, while 9 works maintain them and the other work is designing the machines. I can't foresee what will happen if all basic service jobs are automated, but then again it will not happen overnight. The biggest question in my mind, is how well will the society repare the future generations with the skills they will need to remain relevant. Education is everything... and it will remain everything. (Not formal education mind you, but more so knowledge/training.) ~~~ mjmahone17 The thing is, we've only really been seeing this boom since the 18th century. And for most of the world, not really until the 20th century. The solution, as you said, for most of this period was to have people consume more products. But with the rise of electronics, that trend doesn't appear to be continuing. We already live in a world where not everyone needs to work: in fact, we specifically push people out of working once they reach retirement age. That was one of the points of Social Security and pensions: to stop older workers from preventing new workers from taking their place. Also note, our real unemployment isn't 7.9%. In fact, if we look at the number of non-farm jobs from the last census in 2010, we had 112 million jobs. If we assume about 3% of employment is farm jobs, then we have ~115 million total jobs. According to the census, there are 313 million people in the US, and 76.3% of them are adults. Therefore, we have 238 million adults, and only ~115 million jobs. This means our real unemployment rate is about 52% (given the roughness of my figures, I'd stick it at a range between 45 and 60 percent). Which means, not counting children, our country is already fully capable of supporting half the population not working. This wasn't the case in 19th century America (where yes, even women usually worked in some capacity), meaning we probably already are in a society where most people don't have to work, we just don't notice it because most of those who don't work are not labeled "unemployed." Edit: Basically, I'm questioning your premise that employment rates have, in fact, remained relatively constant throughout the last few centuries. ~~~ sologoub You are questioning whether the current Labor Force Participation rate and whether it has gone down over the years. The peak in recent history appears to have been around 2000 at 67.3%. Currently, it's at 63.6%. The furthest back I could find is 1948 for 58.6 at the start of that year. Last time we were in the 63% range was in 1980s. Guessing from 19th century, it has gone up. Source: <http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet> The key here is to understand what influences this rate. Many factors go into what percentage of population chooses to seek employment. For example, if my wife and I are rich enough, when we have kids, we may want to have one or even both of us take a few years off to raise them. This is a profound luxury in the current US society. Some countries have extended maternity leave that lasts for 3 years and includes some form of pay or other welfare payment. Such structures would easily drive the participation rate down. Conversely, public daycares and other child-friendly services promote higher participation rates by freeing both adults to work. These examples are meant to show that the "machines are taking our jobs" discussion to be a gross oversimplification of a much more complex system. So far, history tells us that we will adapt. That still leaves a possibility of a black swan event... In either case, I have faith in humanity :-) ------ cpursley 97% percent of us used to be farmers. Did the machines and processes that replaced us render us irrelevant and without other pursuits? No, it unlocked massive amounts of intelectual capacity that led to unprecedented scientific and economic growth. I don't understand why people don't understand this basic economic principle. When you free up peoples time from monotonous tasks, we all benefit. These calls for a universal minimum wages are odd. ------ quasque Reminds me of this piece of speculative fiction, which explores the theme of robotic automation in some detail: <http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm> ~~~ venus I endorse this work of fiction and encourage everyone to read it. At the very least it is an approachable, engaging and thought-provoking "what-if" scenario. ------ mark_l_watson I mostly worry about this scenario of not enough work for everyone because too many people in my country (USA) will probably be unwilling to support a universal living wage. A social safety net improves the lives of everyone because of lower crime and a generally more civil society. The trick will be to provide life long educational and vocational resources. Hopefully almost everyone would want to produce extra value for society and improve their own material life style. There would still be room for very capable people to be "rich" and generally rewarded for skills and hard work. So, a pure meritocracy with rewards layered on top of a minimal universal ling wage sounds good to me. ~~~ kunai I don't know, it sounds too communistic-utopian. While communism is not a bad thing, and utopias are theoretically a great idea, humans thrive on opportunity and individualism. The world isn't a fair place _by nature_. Attempting to equalize everyone's talents and source of income, and not allowing them to be rewarded for whatever they pursue seems to cause less incentive for education. Give the average Joe two choices: He can sit at home, make a decent $70,000 every year while he can comfortably watch TV, golf, and do many things that require little mental facility. Give him another option, where he gets the same income, but he has to study, become skilled at a craft, progress intellectually, and be an accomplished man. ~90% of people would choose the former. ~~~ thenomad "golf, and do many things that require little mental facility" Does golf really require that little mental facility? Would Tiger Woods agree with you? People are _extremely_ unpredictable in what they do with their leisure time. Over 10 years of working to encourage and develop amateur creators in the film world has left me with the conviction that we simply don't know what would happen if 100% of a Western country's people didn't need to work to survive any more. We'd almost certainly hit a sudden epidemic of depression, to start with. Tim Ferriss' book "The Four Hour Work Week" has a fascinating section on surviving the transition to not having to work any more - it's harder than you'd think. But subsequently? A surprising amount of popular activities in leisure time right now are actually very mentally engaging. Both watching and playing sports are actually reasonably mentally engaged activities for a lot of people - try memorising half the statistics that the average baseball fan has at his fingertips and see how far you get. The most popular drama television is getting more complex and sophisticated, not less. And of course games are actively mentally engaging, and increasingly creative - Minecraft's the biggest gaming sensation since World of Warcraft. The fact that the two biggest gaming sensations of the last decade are ones in which the primary activities are a) working with groups of up to 40 other people to complete complex, challenging, multifaceted choreographed tasks and b) building massive structures up to and including 1-1 replicas of goddamn _cathedrals_ does not lead me to believe that most of the population doesn't like to use their brain. Add to that the fact that there's actually a startlingly large number of amateur musicians, painters, writers, bloggers, artisans, chefs and similar pursuits out there. Here's a link - <http://www.amateurorchestras.org.uk/> \- to a list of the _1,121_ amateur ORCHESTRAS in the UK, for example. You might see a very interesting world develop after about 10 years. ~~~ nitrogen _The most popular drama television is getting more complex and sophisticated, not less._ It probably helps that a growing lower tier of entertainment is siphoning off the viewers least interested in sophisticated plots. ------ lifeisstillgood I am basing my startup mostly on this discussion / meme - so I am happy to see it on HN. However the stage I think has been missed by the article (in the rush to say 2120!) is a transition away from commuting and into massive remote working, probably in the next ten years. The costs of commuting and office space is enormous compared to it's benefits for most jobs so we shall see a sea change in how jobs are measured and managed, leading to the path to remote working being freed up. Oddly in software continuous integration / delivery is that sea change. In marketing? It's AB testing. In everything else? We shall see. ~~~ ph0rque Can you direct us to your startup's website, or provide a brief description of it here? ~~~ lifeisstillgood Brief idea: Continuous Integration is a step function in how software teams can function. By enabling CI or CD one can remove the major impediment to remote working - managers cannot see what you have done in a day. If folks remote work in the software department, pretty soon others want to. The company needs to have the same confidence that people are working and things progressing daily. So let's say marketing moves to the technicalmarketing beloved of patio11 - you can have Market department run tests on it's changes, measure customer behaviour etc. And they don't need to do it in the office. Apply the same to every business process. Business people need to interact so we are not going to abandon cities - but the most valuable interactions are inter-company not intra-company. So from little acorns of CI we can see the world of the Race against the Machine coming to pass - White collar workers automated or their jobs changed out of recognition. So my startup, yeah that. I see my one person consultancy not as a lifestyle business but as a forever company - where I and I hope others will work, but more importantly experience many new modes of future work - and teach others and produce products that fill niches we ourselves need or are very well placed to understand. To be brutal, I want to turn a one person consultancy into a dispersed products company, solving the big work ideas of the next twenty years. First three are the CI consultancy, a data warehouse scm driver and videos of bug fixes. Please don't judge the book by the website - www.mikadosoftware.com. Ps - I think the auto farm is fantastic - keep it up I have never met any of my coworkers - they are in various parts of the States and I in Kent. The world has changed, it's just not evenly distributed - I want to be part of that change - the view is best right out on the edge. Big long dreams. ~~~ ph0rque Sounds like interesting ideas to test out in the context of a company... good luck to you! ------ desas Robert Heinleins For Us, The Living describes this kind of society. Everyone gets a "dividend" which is enough to live on and people do what would be a low wage/non-job such as being an artist for part time fun and high wages. ------ thenomad One interesting anecdata point on the "everyone would just sit around and watch TV" front - my girlfriend and I just went through all of our reasonably close friends, and could only think of one person who might, possibly, not start or continue doing something challenging and interesting, given a "living wage" situation - and to be fair, we don't know that person very well. The "everyone would just sit around" theory seems to be predicated on the belief that there are millions of people out there whom we don't personally know, but we somehow know well enough to believe they have no other interests that might blossom. ------ thomaslangston While I'm sure the universal living wage will become reality in a few countries, I'd expect a shorter work week and more vacation time to be more politically solvent solutions to systemic unemployment in the US. ------ JulianMorrison The answer is quite simply, we are going to have to STOP having an economy that contains employment or money, at all. As I've put it before, either we all retire, or we're all sacked. The economy, what little of it still requires humans, is going to have to run on vocations. And the part that does not, is going to have to run on allocation. ~~~ gaius You still need some sort of unit to track resource consumption, maybe that's the Joule instead of the Dollar, but as long as there needs to be decisions made of the form, which is better/should we do, X or Y, then you need a quantitative way to think about it. Von Mises called this "economic calculation". ~~~ JulianMorrison I'd consider the primary problems of early-Soviet style allocation economics to be (1) informational (2) computational. Money provides a quantitative (if not _nice_ ) solution to these because private economic decisions are intrinsically local, infinitely parallel and they self-aggregate. Happily, look what happened in the intervening decades: mass connectivity and big data, plus the normalization of data mining over petabytes of raw information. I think, in other words, that we have reached the point where we can batter down the economic calculation problem with brute force. ~~~ gaius Even if you are correct, all that computation still needs to be done in some sort of unit. Money is good because it is abstracted from actual stuff. Joules are actually a bad unit, because how do you value an information product in terms of the energy of the computation it does? Hmm. ~~~ JulianMorrison You use the natural units of the activity. Tonnes of ore or raw material. Hours of factory time. Joules of energy consumption. Production line machinery MTBF. So on and so forth. It's a lot of data, but nowadays we have tools to work with a lot of data. ~~~ gaius No, that won't work. You can say, right now, and people do, "If we spend X building this thing, we estimate Y boost to the economy". You can't say "if we use X tonnes of concrete, we expect Y tonnes of Z to be produced" without the X/Y ratio _being money_. All money is is a way to abstract the worth of something from what it actually is. Oh, and you can't pay your workers in concrete either. Or do you propose not paying them at all and just giving out rations to people living in barracks...? ~~~ JulianMorrison Money abstracts demand-pull from production and supply. But abstraction is a complexity management tool you don't need if you can crunch the raw complexity. What I'm proposing is a "you want it, you got it" economy, basically, that starts from a premise of equal allocation of resource control (not resource use) and allows unused allocations to be reflowed to the use of those with more ambitious projects, with direct-democratic oversight. For example, if a hypothetical Elon Musk wants to build rockets (a resource hog activity) then he'd probably end up having to make a public case he was capable of it to avoid being vetoed, but case made, the resource allocations of people who prefer to paint at home or study Tudor history other low- expenditure vocations would be diverted to the rocket project. No, this would not fall prey to hoarding. Hoarding is stupid and gains you nothing in a post-scarcity economy. You end up with a huge heap of copper or whatever that you aren't using, looking like a selfish idiot and with a trashed reputation that follows you around and makes people not willing to work with you. ~~~ gaius What do you think Wall Street is, if not an attempt at "crunching the raw complexity"? It doesn't work and _can't_ work. _would be diverted to the rocket project_ Diverted by whom? The "owners" of those resources, or your central planning bureau? Post scarcity relies on the assumption that if we have more than enough raw materials (and we don't, but let's assume asteroid mining or something), and more than enough energy (fusion maybe) and instantaneous transport of matter (otherwise scarcity exists by the stuff you want being _somewhere else_ ) then we _still_ won't be post-scarcity really, because people/civilizations will just take on bigger and bigger projects. There will _never_ be a time when there is no need to make a decision on how to allocate some finite resource to create some outcome by a quantitative means. Even in Star Trek, someone needs to be thinking, how many planets do we colonize this year? How many starships do we build? ------ scotty79 How much jobs we are loosing is not readily apparent. For example you should add almost all inmates and jailors and possibly half of the laweyrs and some of the goverment clerks (especialy the ones hired in branches created over last 20 years) to the unemployed to get the real numbers. Our societies have a lot of pathological mechanisms for coping with inflow of people of diverse levels of education that have nothing to do. I sincerely hope that people will be humane enough to create universal wage sooner than later. ------ mercuryrising I'm reading this like 'the singularity is upon us'. We aren't there yet, but articles like this are very good (even if they are slightly non-realistic at the moment) to throw a dart at where we, as a civilization, could end up. We have lost the ability to question where we'll go, because we move faster than our feet can take us. We are sliding down a snowy hill, holding on for dear life, hoping there's a nice landing at the bottom that won't end with us crashing. We've lost control of the sled, but it still moves forward because there's nothing to stop it. I have an anecdote from Germany, and one from Uganda that kind of flow with the idea of 'if you want to, you can, but why?'. We are talented creators, we can make awesome things. Almost anything you think of now a days can be created (and likely has). Some of these things shouldn't have been created, and if every time we want something we ask "but why?", I think it help us to realize where we're going. These are anecdotes from friends, I have no idea of their truth, but they're interesting nonetheless (if it's wrong, consider it fiction). In Germany, the buses run _on_ time. When the buses are just a couple minutes late, people start getting mad. Ultra efficiency, where everything is perfectly meshed together like the gears on a Swiss watch. The timing is perfect, and it lets life progress with a minimum of fuss and extraneous endeavors. Get in, get out, get on your way. In Uganda, when you invite someone over to your place to get together, you can set up a time. They'll get there, but they might be eight hours late from the time you set up. They might start walking, and talk to everyone they see along the way. They'll get the scoop on everyone's life, and share the human experiences that are happening around them. This lateness would sound like insanity to most people, but once you realize that everyone's clock is adjusted to the lag time of getting somewhere, it's not a big deal. Now we, as humans, can create the most efficient complex world that we want to. But why? I think we have collectively lost a lot of modesty as our world has been progressing. We love to play games, we always need a challenge to solve. There's challenges all around us, and the money from solving the challenges is ripe for the taking. It doesn't matter what you do to get there - if you get the money, you get the prize and you won. The ripple effects are what does us in, and the ripples are the unexpected or unintentional differences that were created in our society after adopting the solution to the challenge. Some examples of technology with ripple effects are things like lead paint, leaded gasoline, clear cutting forests, asbestos insulation, etc. We might have been able to predict these things would be bad before we started if we thought a little longer. I'm sure a lot of people knew it would be bad, but it was the easier one that solved a 'problem' that we had. We're young as a civilization, and we are going to make mistakes. The mistakes we should not make though are ones that could have been prevented with a little bit of thought before jumping in head over heels (drunk driving for instance, if you don't do it, you will likely live a bit longer). It takes self restraint (from a person) and conditioning/education (from society) to reduce the number of drunk drivers. The trouble is that we have no restraint with advancing technology, and our society hasn't had the change to find the differences that are created when we advance it. We're like dogs trying to resist the urge to pounce on a piece of meat. We simply can not let something pass us by. If there's a forest to ravage, or an ocean to destroy, we will do it, and we'll do it well. Try this - the next time you think of something cool to make, DON'T MAKE IT. Think about it, see it in your head, but resist the urge to make it. It's very, very challenging. It's easy to know what you've lost after you've lost something, it's hard to predict what you're going to lose. When we do something, we have to change society, and we lose parts of society that we had before. Sometimes the changes are good, sometimes they're bad, but before changing it we should think about what we're doing. ~~~ dimva Your anecdotes about Germany vs Uganda are a big part of the reason the average German is 30 times richer and can expect to live nearly 30 years longer than a Ugandan. Ask anyone where they'd rather live and they'll pick Germany. You can say technology has its drawbacks, but people overwhelmingly choose more technology and greater riches over any alternative. And more importantly, if you don't choose technology and someone else does, they can easily conquer you (militarily or economically) and destroy your livelihood. ~~~ coldtea > _Your anecdotes about Germany vs Uganda are a big part of the reason the > average German is 30 times richer and can expect to live nearly 30 years > longer than a Ugandan. Ask anyone where they'd rather live and they'll pick > Germany_ I'd pick Uganda. And when a had a similar choice to make in real life, I picked the poorer country. Screw efficiency and screw societies where people live like robots and survive on weekend alcoholic binges, while f __*ing poorer countries over to maintain their wealth and superiority (sometimes literally: from colonialism and interventions to Nazi Germany and the extermination of the "undesirables"). ~~~ thenomad "screw societies where people live like robots and survive on weekend alcoholic binges" I agree. Not sure what relevance that statement has to Germany, though. I've spent quite a lot of time in Germany and traveled to a lot of the country, and I'm certainly not seeing the resemblance. ~~~ coldtea Well, our experience differs in this case I guess. There are some vibrant parts of youth culture in Germany (in Berlin, etc), but for the most part it is work + weekend binges. There is a coldness one cannot really explain, except if you have leaved in "warmer" societies. I've heard from people living there that Sweden/Denmark etc are even worse in this aspect. ~~~ thenomad OK, that _certainly_ doesn't fit my experience of Denmark - or the United Nations' "Happiest Countries" index: [http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/06/where-are-the-worlds- hap...](http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/06/where-are-the-worlds-happiest- countries/) , which rated Denmark as the happiest country in the world last year. My experience of Denmark has been that it's a vibrant, diverse, interesting society with some tremendously smart government policies, a lot of tolerance, and some really cool stuff going on, from great filmmaking to a massive Live- Action Roleplaying scene. ------ jwr For those interested in thinking about issues of a future society where most humans do not work, I'd highly recommend reading "Limes Inferior" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limes_inferior>), a thought-provoking book where many of these issues are raised. The idea of paying people a basic wage even if they do not perform any useful work is not a new one. ~~~ hosh It could go the other way: being able to live and be human without wages. ~~~ jwr That's basically what Zajdel describes in his dystopian vision: the basic "red" points that you get allow for a basic existence (e.g. food and shelter) without performing any work at all. So one might say it isn't really a wage. ~~~ hosh Not what I mean at all. I mean, reduce the basic living _cost_. For example, a homestead that ran on its own power (solar, wind, etc.), can manufacture many basic needs products through microfabs, and grow enough food. Reducing costs doesn't do away with capital expenditure. But once acquired, the ongoing cost of living approaches zero. If you give everyone a universal income, you are still making people beholden to the grid of some sort. The red points are still a wage, because ultimately, you have to rely on someone outside your family group to redeem your needs. Reduce the cost and make that available _en mass_ , and each household would be reasonably resource independent. Luxuries, of course, won't go away. Wants are endless. ------ Tycho Can everyone be a knowledge worker?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Backdoor SOPA -- CISPA - K_O_G_I http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/cispa/?akid=1306.1076593.HixRPH&rd=1&t=2 ====== kylemaxwell Totally false. There are no blocking provisions __whatsoever __in CISPA, no one has any right to the information from ISPs or any other provider or organization, and it does not supercede other provisions. ("The phrase "notwithstanding..." is boilerplate language that is not interpreted by the courts the way a layman might.)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Mathematicians Disprove Conjecture Made to Save Black Holes - bainsfather https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-disprove-conjecture-made-to-save-black-holes-20180517/ ====== habitue Ok, yes, _this_ is how you promote scientific research to a lay audience: 1) They don't bury the lede. The first paragraph says what the result is immediately, if you understand it already, you're done reading. 2) Inverted pyramid structure. After they explain what happened, they break apart the historical context _of the problem itself_ and give copious examples and metaphors to give the gist of what the problem is about and why it matters that it was solved. I can't tell you how many of these popsci articles start out with "When Mary was a 3 year old, she used to look up at the stars and ... blah blah ... Now, she's taking on the scientific establishment and daring to do the unthinkable..." etc etc. I just dread skimming through the fluff to try to pick out what the hell was actually done. Thank you Kevin Hartnett (the author of this piece) for not attempting to turn scientific papers into a human interest story. ~~~ mikekchar It's not just science reporting. One of the reasons I hate the Olympics is that I like to watch sports on TV: Not heartfelt stories of overcoming adversity to become one of the world's elite. Not teary eyed medal ceremonies with semi transparent backdrops of national flags blowing in the wind. Not endless medal count standings. Not interviews of people with three medals around their necks, with insets of proud parents in the upper left hand corner. I just want to see the sporting events. Today's society values drama above everything else. It's a shame (either that they do, or that I don't fit in ;-) ). ~~~ alasdair_ I really liked watching the original Ninja Warrior (the Japanese version). I even liked (to a lesser extent) the first US-heavy version. I stopped watching for exactly the reason you describe. The exact same thing happened with esports. Five minutes of actual play, 25 minutes of fluff. ------ nerdponx _Their work is subtle — a refutation of Penrose’s original statement of the strong cosmic censorship conjecture, but not a complete denial of its spirit._ I wish somebody out there could cover social science research and politics with this kind of attitude. This is really good science writing. ~~~ labster Einstein and Penrose theory totally crushed by mathematicians -- that makes a better headline. ~~~ nerdponx "Einstein and Penrose were wrong; this is why" ~~~ philipov "10 crushing proofs Einstein and Penrose don't want you to know" : Best headline. ~~~ diegoperini What color is this proof: Einstein or Penrose? ------ bencollier49 So spacetime exists beyond the Cauchy horizon, but it's discontinuous? What on earth would discontinuous spacetime involve? It sounds like a sort of shattered chaos of torn-up bits of space. ~~~ nerdponx It's not discontinuous, its _derivative_ (a function describing the rate of change of space time) is apparently discontinuous, or infinite, or something else equally hard to picture. Plenty of strange things can happen with derivatives, e.g. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor_function](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor_function) ~~~ jordigh I don't find failing to be differentiable all that strange, even if the failure is on a perfect nowhere dense set. What I find weird is that the derivative, if it exists, cannot have a jump discontinuity. That means that the only other kind of discontinuity it can have is infinite oscillation like sin(1/x) near zero. This one is a bit of an obscure property of derivatives, corollary to theorem 5.12 in Baby Rudin. ~~~ jerf "What I find weird is that the derivative, if it exists, cannot have a jump discontinuity." You mean the derivative of a specific function you have in mind, like perhaps the field equations? Or do you mean something other than what I understand by a jump discontinuity in a derivative, such as one gets for f(x) = {-x for x<0, x for x>=0}? Tone: Clarification request for my own understanding, not a "gotcha" post; I strongly believe you are saying something true but there's just too many details elided because they are trivial to you for me to quite follow, and I'm intrigued enough to want to be able to follow up, if you'd be so kind as to indulge me. ~~~ pofilat What is f'(0), the derivative of f at 0? It _doesn 't even exist_, therefore it has no discontinuity at 0. Darboux's theeorem says that there is no way to create a jump in the derivative, in part because a derivative at a point is defined in terms of limits from _both_ sides, so the limits must be the same. ~~~ thaumasiotes > What is f'(0), the derivative of f at 0? It _doesn 't even exist_, therefore > it has no discontinuity at 0. This is definitely wrong. The derivative of \|x\| is -1 where x < 0, and 1 where x > 0, and doesn't exist where x = 0. That is a perfect match to the definition of a jump discontinuity -- the limit from the left is not equal to the limit from the right. It's not at all necessary for the function to exist at x = 0 in order for it to have a discontinuity at x = 0. But hey, don't take my word for it; why not check the definition on Wolfram? [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/JumpDiscontinuity.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/JumpDiscontinuity.html) The original claim was "the derivative, if it exists, cannot have a jump discontinuity." This is badly stated. You're defending the idea that if the derivative exists _at a particular point_ , then there is no jump discontinuity in the derivative _at that point_. But there can be a function _f_ which satisfies both of these properties: \- _f_ is the derivative of some other function _F_. ("The derivative of _F_ exists.") \- _f_ has a jump discontinuity, somewhere. ("The derivative of _F_ has a jump discontinuity.") ~~~ disconcision The definition you link states that a function has a discontinuity at a point /in its domain/ if yadda yadda. 0 is not in the domain of f'. See for example: [https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1431796/if-a- functi...](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1431796/if-a-function-is- undefined-at-a-point-is-it-also-discontinuous-at-that-point) ~~~ thaumasiotes That is a question of your personal focus. For example, I'd expect a theorem that applied to "functions from ℝ to ℝ" to apply to f(x) = 1/x unless a specific qualifier was given. ------ jryan49 Is this just another implication that general relativity is incomplete? We already know it must not be because it does not work at the quantum level. ~~~ Florin_Andrei Anything that has singularities coming out of general relativity is pretty much guaranteed to be incomplete. But we can ge close to some workable solutions in particular cases. ------ jniedrauer The non-deterministic nature of atomic decay by itself makes the universe unpredictable. And this is a thing that happens at STP. I think the author of this article might have forgotten that. There was never really any determinism to "save". ~~~ computerfriend General relativity is classical, so there is plenty of determinism to save. ------ namibj Uh, this is why I tried to study pure maths (it's less physics and more weird differential geometry) I can recommend this paper [0] that talks about simulations that show a black hole just implodes in a weird way and kind of does not stop imploding, due to space-time getting stretched with a speed above that of light, as measured within a frozen moment in time, and summed over some line from inside to outside. A working analogy could be a 2d-spacetime, represented in 3d-space as a soap bubble film. Imagine the traditional visual funnel shape the space time around a black hole is often depicted as, compared to the downwards bump normal stars/planets are depicted. So, now, the thing is that the effect of gravity, e.g. gravitational waves, are bound by the speed of light. They can not escape a black hole. In the soap example the gravity waves would be film thickness waves, e.g. longitudinal waves in the thin soap sheet. Those are bound by the speed of sound in their medium. Imagine a stream of air with significantly higher speed than the sound in the soap, getting blown downwards this funnel. Also imagine the funnnel still having a closed tip made from soap at the start. Thing is, this air will hit the tip, propell it downards, and suck the part close to the center down just by itself, without the center indirectly pulling on it. Due to the supersonic nature, the ripple created from the initial impact of air onto the center will _never_ get out of there, just because the medium the waves travel through, when measured over the distance from where the wave is right now, to where the outside world with neglegible space-time (or soap-film) curvature is, expands faster than the wave travels. This does not mean the wave does not travel at all, just that once the distance you want it to travel increases enough, the propagation medium's expansion results in weird effects. If someone is willing/able to point me to some research or possibly even wants to use existing skills with the related differential geometry maths, I'd really like that. Edit: I might add that anything that falls into the black hole will, even in it's own reference frame, _never_ reach the center, and the only reference frame that possibly sees a steady state field curvature in finite local time could be the center of the collapse. [0]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.1524](https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.1524) (Which was published about half a year after I initially and timestamped communicated the idea to a physics teacher who was willing to explain me the differential maths used in Einstein's field equations.) ~~~ JadeNB > [https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.1524](https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.1524) (Which > was published about half a year after I initially and timestamped > communicated the idea to a physics teacher who was willing to explain me the > differential maths used in Einstein's field equations.) Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but your parenthesis seems to suggest that you would like to claim some credit for the idea. If not, then you can just ignore what I'm about to say. If so, then your comment seems to suggest that you came up with the _idea_ , but weren't sure about the mathematics of it. In modern physics of this type, where experimentation is not practical, the math _is_ the physics; that is, I think the problem is not so much coming up with ideas—my impression is that there are hypotheses and to spare—but rather being able to back up those ideas with rigorous calculations. ~~~ monocasa > In modern physics of this type, where experimentation is not practical, the > math is the physics I think Feynmann would disagree with you. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obCjODeoLVw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obCjODeoLVw) ~~~ mlevental feynman died 30 years ago. it's plausible the culture of the field has changed (nm that feynman wasn't the arbiter of culture to begin with) ~~~ JadeNB > it's plausible the culture of the field has changed (nm that feynman wasn't > the arbiter of culture to begin with) To be fair to monocasa's objection ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17101892](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17101892)), the rebuttal was not of a claim that the _culture_ of physics was mathematical but literally of my claim that (certain) physics _was_ mathematics. ------ 8bitsrule As I recall, Gen. Rel. continues to explain all directly _observable_ phenomena within limits of resolution. That's _damn_ powerful. As for 'black holes', well ... believe what you choose. A prof. once told me that Einstein 'wasted 30 years' looking for unified theory. By that standard, so did Hawking I guess. ------ nyc111 > In classical physics, the universe is predictable: If you know the laws that > govern a physical system and you know initial state, you should be able to > track its evolution indefinitely far into the future. ... [According to > physicist Demetrios Christodoulou:] "This is the basic principle of all > classical physics going back to Newtonian mechanics. You can determine > evolution from initial data." This is a famous mantra repeated by physicists but it is not correct. Newtonian physics cannot even predict the future positions of three body from their initial positions. And Newton knew and stated that his doctrines could not predict planetary orbits in long term and he invoked the very scientific and physical notion (or maybe footballers term) of Hand of God. Thus, Newton claimed his doctrine could not make accurate prediction not because they were wrong but because God erred to create the universe according to Newton’s doctrines. Consequently, according to Newton, God once in a while nudged the orbits to make them move correctly according to Newtonian doctrines. According to Newton himself initial states cannot predict long term behavior. So how come NASA can predict so accurately planetary motions by using the so- called Newtonian Mechanics? The answer is easy: by not using Newtonian mechanics. NASA uses sophisticated mathematical methods or numerical integration to calculate orbits. But since they use as a unit conversion factor the strategically named Newton's Constant of Gravitation as one of their mathematical terms they feel they are justified to declare that they use Newtonian mechanics to compute orbits. So what happened is that at some point, maybe in the 18th century this philosophical -not physical- assumption entered the physics literature and gained the status of truth after centuries’ of repetition. But if we question the mantra we see that the so-called classical theories do not claim that they can predict future states by the initial state. Phycists do. ~~~ qubex I am quite stupefied by this statement. NASA and other organisations most certainly uses _Classical_ mechanics (whether in its Newtonian, Lagrangian, or Hamiltonian formulations does not impinge upon the central issue) when simulating celestial motions and calculating trajectories. That there exists an acknowledged ” _Three Body Problem_ ” ( _i.e._ , that the trajectories followed by more than two bodies interacting gravitationally are in general not algebraic) matters not one iota for _numerical_ simulations such as those performed by aforementioned organisations for aforementioned purposes. Some kind of relativistic correction might be made for motions that occur within the orbit of Mercury, but again, those are numerical in nature. And as far as I know there are no exact solutions known for general-relativistic interactions between two gravitational objects, placing it at an even greater ’disadvantage’ compared to the ’Newtonian’ mechanics you erroneously deplore. ~~~ nyc111 > matters not one iota for _numerical simulations_ such as those performed by > aforementioned organisations for aforementioned purposes. So you agree that planetary orbits are computed by numerical simulation as I claim. Then why do you object at what I'm saying?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Reflecting on ways to bootstrap a startup - joelg87 http://joel.is/post/6687368692/startup-bootstrapping ====== rglover Good to hear these sorts of things when trying to develop your own plan for your startup. My approach (which MANY will say is a failure) is to build in the evenings and keep a day job to cover personal expenses. The ultimate goal being, once we gain traction, go into the company full time. With the situation I'm in (fairly serious gf and finishing uni soon), this seems to be the best route. Thoughts? ~~~ apedley It can work, it just takes longer and is harder to maintain the momentum when you are only working on it in small chunks. If you could drop to part time work to cover the expenses then that might be a more viable approach but unless your startup is launched and generating revenue (even 1 sale a week) within 3 months you will notice that it gets harder to keep going, pivot and really get decent traction.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Meshing in a Minecraft Game (2012) - rocky1138 http://0fps.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/meshing-in-a-minecraft-game/ ====== exemd In practice you need a texture atlas ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_atlas](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_atlas)) to reduce number of meshes. But if you use texture atlas you can't combine surfaces like in the article. The solution is to create 1 dimensional texture atlas like this: [http://manicdigger.sourceforge.net/webgl/data/atlas1.png](http://manicdigger.sourceforge.net/webgl/data/atlas1.png). Then tile in only 1 direction. Minecraft does it and I first read about it in one of Word of Notch posts - [http://notch.tumblr.com/post/176620207/i-rewrote-the- tessela...](http://notch.tumblr.com/post/176620207/i-rewrote-the-tesselator). It's good enough. Manic Digger ([http://manicdigger.sourceforge.net](http://manicdigger.sourceforge.net)) has great framerate at Pentium 4 and Geforce 2 MX. But there is one problem: in mipmaps there is bleeding between individual textures. The solution is to use: glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAX_LEVEL, 4); It's good on desktop, but there is no GL_TEXTURE_MAX_LEVEL on OpenGL ES and WebGL! I guess it must be done with custom mipmaps or with a pixel shader? ~~~ mbel > In practice you need a texture atlas (...)to reduce number of meshes. I believe you meant "to reduce number of texutre swaps"? Otherwise I fail to find how texture atlas is helping in reducing number of meshes in the drawn scene. > But if you use texture atlas you can't combine surfaces like in the article. Actually you can, pixel/fragment shader can be used later on to transform texture coordinates just before the texel value will be fetched (obviously this is only possible if you use shaders, but most games nowadays do). ~~~ exemd I mean it reduces number of glDrawElements or glCallList calls. If you have 256 different block types in 1 chunk, using texture atlas there's only 1 mesh instead of 256 different meshes. [https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnvidia.com%2...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnvidia.com%2Fdocs%2FIO%2F8230%2FBatchBatchBatch.ppt) ~~~ mbel Oh ok, I haven't thought about it this way. You are surely right. ------ willvarfar In C&C Tiberian Sun the voxel models were stored - and drawn - from a RLE sparse array. And we used the same data-structures in the modder voxel editors. So its not really an 'open question' as the article says, more just an obvious step. ~~~ pavlov For anyone looking for an advanced sparse voxel data structure, there's OpenVDB developed by DreamWorks Animation: [http://www.openvdb.org/](http://www.openvdb.org/) It's developed for film applications which naturally have a different set of requirements than realtime game engines. But as PC performance grows, the solutions developed for film rendering will become more directly adaptable for games. ------ bajsejohannes There's a really good writeup of that here as well: [http://codeflow.org/entries/2010/dec/09/minecraft-like- rende...](http://codeflow.org/entries/2010/dec/09/minecraft-like-rendering- experiments-in-opengl-4/#tessellating-quads) Less thorough on meshing (or tesselation as he calls it), but a very good read. ------ andrewflnr What? Minecraft "voxels" are huge. And then the cubes on the creatures are a different size. How is it not just using meshes to start with? ~~~ bajsejohannes Because there are order of magnitude differences between rendering each voxel in a dense landscape compared to just the borders. Consider a cube of 10x10x10 voxels. They each have 6 sides, so that's 6000 quads to render. If we only render the sides that can possibly be visible, that's 6 sides on the cube times 10 * 10 voxels on each side, totalling 600 quads. I'm sure the creatures are not treated like this; they're just meshes. ~~~ andrewflnr AFAIK culling like that is standard in any mesh-based 3D engine, and most minecraft landscapes aren't uniform enough to benefit from the adjacent-face merging described. Standard 3D engines handle landscapes with way more polys than I can imagine fitting into a minecraft screen. I don't see what the big deal is here. ------ ginko This completely ignores the problem of T-vertices.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The only college that matters - breer http://cdixon.org/2009/09/06/the-only-college-major-that-matters/ ====== MediaBehavior Boils down to a two-sentence argument: "... much better to learn computer science in college (or before)? Because after college it’s very hard to find the time and discipline to teach yourself coding. On the other hand, it’s pretty easy to pick up business skills, economics and all sorts of other skills on the job or in grad school."	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Gamification? More like Exploitationware - mikhuang http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6366/persuasive_games_exploitationware.php?print=1 ====== programminggeek I agree that what is often thought of as "gamification" is actually the simple adding of false incentives to create specified outcomes. However, in many ways we already have many systems in place that have much the same methods attached to them. For example, education system uses the concept of "grades" and "points" that have no more actual value than a high score in Pac-Man to motivate students to work harder and learn more. Yet, grades are often just as synthetic of a benchmark as most computer benchmarks in terms of actual capability or performance. ACT or SAT scores are a great example of this. Does this mean that "gamification" is bad? No, it just means that right now the idea of integrating game elements into other things is hot and new because it for the short term can lead to the easy 80% of engagement of games with 20% of the game dev effort. Eventually, on projects where game elements make sense, you'll likely see deeper iterations of those ideas. Best example - look at Zynga. Early games were incredibly simplistic exploitationware for sure. Now they are making them more game-like. Eventually, you'll see them move to something deeper like a "real" mmorpg a la WoW or something with deep competitive engagement like a Halo or Madden. Give it time. No sense killing the "gamification" baby before it learns how to walk.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Codota AI Pair Programmer - whadar https://www.codota.com/ ====== addcn What are people's impression of these kinds of tools?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Amazon Machine Learning vs. Google Prediction API (and Competitors) - louisdorard http://www.louisdorard.com/blog/machine-learning-apis-comparison ====== byoung2 Do any of these services give you any insight into what variable drove the decision? I get that they can tell you the target variable (e.g. these people are likely to buy), but can they tell me that the age and gender fields had a higher correlation than income or education? ~~~ louisdorard Most of them can. I have a doubt for Google Prediction, need to check... Also with BigML you get a decision tree model which allows to "explain" predictions with a list of decisions based on the values of the fields (see #3 on [https://bigml.com/features](https://bigml.com/features)). ~~~ byoung2 That's good to know...I'm preparing a data set to test them now. ------ louisdorard Have you guys been able to try both and compare them?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why is GoDaddy traffic being blocked by HN? - dclowd9901 Getting an error 324. We have our own internal traffic monitoring. What gives? ====== noahc It is possible that someone at your HQ could be using a system to scrape HN. I scraped HN awhile back (Sorry, pg!) and I suspect what happened is I got banned for ~48 hours from accessing the site. I was also getting a 324 error. ------ Hrundi I don't understand your question. Is HN giving you 324 when accessing from a GoDaddy VPS/Dedicated? HN is acting a bit slow right now... maybe thats the reason. ~~~ dclowd9901 I work at their HQ, and the site is not accessible by any computers on its network. I used my phone to post this question an reply.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Using Feature Queries in CSS - dwaxe https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/08/using-feature-queries-in-css/ ====== dvcc /* NOT IE */ @supports (@supports) {} IE does not support it so it's kind of pointless, no? If I ever actually make the user of a feature query, I would need to create a backup plan for everything and then another backup plan when that backup plan fails! ~~~ talmand No, that's exactly the point. If the browser doesn't support @support then it ignores the whole block and falls back to the regular CSS you've likely, or hopefully, already written. The article actually discusses this. It's a modern equivalent of the stupid hacks we had to do back in the day because of bad, or good in some cases, IE CSS implementations. ~~~ dvcc No I get that but I now have to look at it three times. Say I am using some feature, f, then I have to go check the case where the browser supports @supports but not @supports(f), supports @supports(f) and does not support @supports, since the styling changes are not all in isolation. Now to make it even crazier say we have another feature f1 that somehow impacts the case of @supports(f). We'll need to check five different cases (@s(f) + @s(f1), !@s(f) + @s(f1), etc...). It seems like I might as well just find the minimum feature set I can use and just go ahead with that. Anything more and there would be too much mental work for me. ~~~ talmand Well, if you are fine with the minimum feature set then start with that. Then use the @supports for the enhanced version to make things nicer for everything other than IE. Just don't check for browsers not supporting @support. To be fair, I haven't used it on a production site so far. ~~~ marcosdumay If you are not fine with the minimum feature set, it is not the "minimum feature set" and the in-browser app that you are writing will not work with it. I get what is so compelling about it, but I don't think I've ever seen anybody use such things correctly in practice. At least not on the web. ------ dlbucci I've been wanting to use these in some of my CSS, but I had never considered the case where a browser supports a feature, but doesn't support `@supports`. My best guess is you'd need a three stage CSS file to support that: first, use the new feature, then `@supports not` the backup code, then `@supports` the new feature. Maybe I won't be using this for a while... ~~~ talmand No, you set default properties on your element. Then you have @supports to enhance that element if the properties you wish to use are supported. It's a far better solution than the silly hacks we had to do before. ~~~ dbbk @supports is pretty necessary when you're using backdrop-filter. For instance, you want a navigation bar translucent with blurring on browsers that support it, and a solid colour for others. ------ dccoolgai Ran into a funny situation with this the other week where IE 10 supports flexbox (sort of), but doesn't support @supports. So that can happen. But if you're OK sequestering "doesn't support @supports" browsers into the non- enhanced experience, it works great. ~~~ Flimm IE10 and IE11 have a large numbers of bugs in their flexbox implementation or only support the 2012 syntax, so this might actually be desirable. (Compatibility info from [http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox](http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox) ) ~~~ dccoolgai Yeah, that's why I said "(sort of)". But in my case, the flexbox features I was using worked OK. I was actually fine with having IE10 see the "block layout" fallback (b/c if you use IE10 the web looks broken for you anyway, so you should be overjoyed that you get _a_ layout that works even if it's not that fancy), but my marketing manager felt differently. Life. ------ ry_ry Isn't @supports slightly redundant, though? Unless you're avoiding a broken feature, CSS will simple cascade down with the first supported property by default. It's how we've handled browser prefixing, background gradients, wonky flexbox and pretty much _everything_ since forever. Im sure it'll be an unpopular opinion, but whilst I can see some edge cases where you only want to apply certain ancillary css if your markup is going to be rendering in a certain way, I honestly can't think of many (any?) real world usecases where you're not pretty much frigging it to provide 2005-tier browser sniffing. ~~~ sleazy_b This is what the author herself says in the article. Specifically, that feature queries should be used when you only want to apply a set of styles if a given feature is supported. ~~~ ry_ry But surely that is in itself counter to how css is supposed to work at a very fundamental level? If you want to render different content for different browsers, I'm not convinced that is a function of stylesheets, not should it be. If my layout needs extra padding or whatever if a div is a flexbox, rather than display:table, I would consider that to be an implementation issue rather than something I would want to cover with additional code. I might just be completely missing the point, but it feels like a bandaid. ~~~ untog It's a total bandaid, but that's the point. If the browser lets you sanely style things with display:grid, then you can. But you can have a fallback for browsers that don't support it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
ECB imposes negative interest rate - eplanit http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27717594 ====== onedognight The negative rate is only on deposits over a bank's minimum reserve requirements. _The negative deposit facility interest rate will also apply to: (i) banks’ average reserve holdings in excess of the minimum reserve requirements; (ii) government deposits held with the Eurosystem that exceed certain thresholds that will be set in the relevant Guideline to be published by 7 June; (iii) Eurosystem reserve management services accounts if not currently remunerated; (iv) participants’ account balances in TARGET2; (v) non-Eurosystem NCB balances (overnight deposits) held in TARGET2; and (vi) other accounts held by third parties with Eurosystem central banks when stipulated that they are not currently remunerated or are remunerated at the deposit facility rate._ [1] [http://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2014/html/pr140605_3....](http://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2014/html/pr140605_3.en.html) ~~~ cgio Which, given my layman's understanding, implies that the policy is at the same time idiotic and genius. More specifically, the deposits are mandatory and under the liquidity coverage ratio in Basel. Therefore, the negative rate will only have the intended effect as long as the financial institutions maintain a higher than required coverage. That extraneous buffer being minimised, the incentive will be to keep liquidity in government bonds and especially those from big economies with good ratings, essentially moving liquidity to the centre of the European economy (Germany and maybe France.) Therefore, the periphery economies will be funding the central ones. Genius. Or Idiocy. From a purely theoretic perspective, the efficiency of these economies should be bolstered, but this happens to the detriment of the periphery and more or less diminishes their chance to balance their performance. The question is whether the goal of the Euro Area is economic performance or economic balance and stability. ~~~ cgio Instead of a simple down-vote, I would appreciate an argument. After all, I am not claiming to be an expert on the subject and I am completely open to being educated about how this measure could work out. ------ fennecfoxen Meh. Monetary policy alone can't save the economies of the floundering European nations. If it's economic growth they want, they'll need to do something about actually reforming the stagnant, over-regulated business environment. Or streamlining government spending so they can lower taxes without crushing austerity measures. Or cultural changes, encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship. Good luck with that. ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel The Eurozone's problems don't really stem from "over-regulation". ~~~ fennecfoxen The Eurozone is a diverse set of nations, but many of the economies with the worst problems have over-regulation in some areas, especially labor-related regulations. Oddly enough labor regulation has significant impacts on economic growth and unemployment. :P I don't actually care to prepare a well-sourced and boring essay for this tiny corner of Hacker News. Instead, I will leave you with an approachable anecdote about trying to open a business in Greece selling olive oil on the Internet. You'd think this would be the perfect business for Greece, but (spoilers) it takes 10+ months and involves stool samples. [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/world/europe/in-greece- bus...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/world/europe/in-greece-business- rules-can-puzzle-entrepreneurs.html?pagewanted=all) (Postscript. The article notes that some of the delays may be related to not paying the "speed tax", i.e. bribery. _That_ is a story of the regulatory apparatus meeting Corruption for Extra Fun Times.) ------ trhway as a banker, before i had to buy government bonds using cheap government money and profit on that difference, and now i have only to borrow and do nothing... It's good to be a banker. ~~~ fennecfoxen It's even better to be a bond-issuing government. ~~~ logicallee how about the part where you get 30% of everyone's income, and the (sole) right to take it by force - yeah it's good to be a government. this is getting silly. ------ bequanna Are deflationary fears driving this? It is tough to imagine much demand-driven growth in the developed/developing world given how quickly the birth rate is plunging. Most of Europe is already below the 2.1 birth rate required for sustainable population numbers: [http://www.economist.com/news/international/21603024-why- shr...](http://www.economist.com/news/international/21603024-why-shrinking- populations-may-be-no-bad-thing-quality-time) ------ antr Denmark has already been doing this 'experiment' since 2012[1] and unfortunately the bankers didn't jump on the streets shouting: money! credit! credit at cheap prices! Time will tell, but the precedent isn't a good one. [1] [http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/ccbs/cew20...](http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/Documents/ccbs/cew2013/presentation_lynggard.pdf) ------ madcaptenor How are negative interest rates implemented? ~~~ vesinisa The commercial banks deposit their money in the central bank. Normally, the central bank pays (usually quite minimal) interest to the commercial banks for that money. With negative interest rates, the banks' deposits in the central bank start loosing value, i.e. the banks must "pay" the central bank a premium for holding their money. The desired effect of negative interest rates is that commercial banks more readily give out loans to businesses, rather than just keeping their reserves idle, as the potential returns from successful lending are better. The idea is to inject more money in circulation and stimulate economic growth. ~~~ rmc Why do the commerical banks store it with the central bank? Why not store it themselves? ~~~ vesinisa AFAIK, in modern fractional reserve banking the commercial banks enjoy a special privilege for the balance that they hold at their central bank account. The balance at each bank's account is called its reserve, and for every euro the bank holds in reserve, it can actually lend out a far greater sum. Currently, for each euro at its central bank account, a commercial bank can lend out €100 to their clients (borrowers). (Interestingly, this extra money that the bank lends out materializes out of thin air.) So, the banks still have a great incentive to keep their money at their central bank account, because it's the only account that adds to their fractional reserve base. ~~~ Tycho I don't think so: banks are capital constrained, not reserve constrained. There's other types of money that make up their capital base as well as central bank reserves. ------ stuki Good way to keep resources locked up in zombie companies unable to generate even 0% return, by letting them roll over loans despite destroying value. Instead of flushing out the stagnant resource pools, so they could be put to better use doing something less wasteful. ------ memossy Moving from being a investment strategist to a startup founder next week, here are the thoughts on all of this sent to clients earlier.. "As widely expected the ECB has moved to negative deposit rates in the latest attempt to look useful. We haven’t seen this happen in many places, but aside from Switzerland, which is always a bit odd, one of the more interesting instances was Denmark back in 2010 when the DKK peg to the Euro was under pressure as investors bailed on the EU. The result of this move was telling, in that rather than forcing the banks to lend more to mobilise reserves, Danish banks took a kicking on margin expansion and lending collapsed even as deposit flight occurred. It did stabilise the DKK exchange rate though, allowing it to depreciate gently. I think a similar motive is behind this move, primarily to help out Germany where disinflation is very much in place and the surprising strength of the Euro, which I noted last year was due to its assumption of old-Yen like qualities, particularly at a time of taper tantrums, is starting to drag on exports. It will be interesting to see what happens here even as Spain and Ireland enjoy their ability to borrow money even more cheaply than the US (really, check the 5 year). My feeling is that it will be difficult to actually devalue the Euro significant from here, particularly as the Eurozone as a whole has moved into an export surplus as peripheral deficits have collapsed on falling demand, offsetting the German surplus handily. A fall in the recently recovering M3 is also likely and the lower-for-much-longer policy of the ECB will look particularly attractive on the fixed income side for those wondering if the recent rally in US bond yields is likely to reverse - duration in bunds looks less painful than in US govvies. Money market funds also look quite weird in this environment, with 800bn Euros or so in these vehicles about to break the buck with German 2yr paper still positive.. For now.. As such, I think the Euro may well continue to strengthen after a bit more downside, thus weakening the dollar, EU bank lending will roll over further along with margins and economic malaise is likely to filter into Germany as macroeconomic imbalances extend and disinflation continues, particularly if my negative view on energy prices is correct." ------ bjoerns Being a practical guy, I wonder if banks' accounting systems can cope with negative interest rates. ------ ThePhysicist Makes perfect sense: To combat a crisis which was caused by an overabundance of cheap money and a deregulated market we will put more money into the system and continue deregulating. ~~~ bjoerns "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results." ~~~ jxjdjr Why do people say this? This is not the definition of insanity. It is the definition of stupidity. Insanity is something very different, and the quote doesn't make sense with it. It should be 'Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.' ~~~ bjoerns I guess it's in the eye of the beholder. Like so many things in life. ------ kaonashi Push the string harder! ~~~ jusben1369 Lol. Not quite accurate but a fair criticism. Note that in the US after the GFC there were deficit spending to stimulate the economy that helped create the Tea Party. In Europe there were instead austerity measures which helped to radicalize the population with a surge in right wing politics. In 2014 the US economy is growing, deficits are falling and the Tea Party is fading. In Europe sadly the economy is stalling and the risks of political unrest increasing leading to unique measures like the one in the article. It was sad to see the Europeans make these mistakes given what history has taught us. ------ ISL Are banks required to have deposits on hand at ECB? Isn't hoarding physical cash preferable to a negative interest rate? ~~~ pmontra There isn't enough cash to do that. Quoting [http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/money/aggregates/aggr/html/in...](http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/money/aggregates/aggr/html/index.en.html) (tab Background) "M1 is the sum of currency in circulation and overnight deposits;". From [http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/reports.do?node=1000003478](http://sdw.ecb.europa.eu/reports.do?node=1000003478) on April 2014 we had M1 = 5,498.8 billions Euro Banknote circulation data at [http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/euro/circulation/html/index.e...](http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/euro/circulation/html/index.en.html) Banknotes: 948 billions Euro Coins: 24 billions Euro (*) ~~~ ISL That's not the bank's problem, though, it would be the ECB's problem if banks decided to hoard. ------ opendais I'm glad they are doing something but I worry it might be too little too late.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The creator of CoffeeScript actually merged my pull request to fix coffee steam - elwell https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/pull/3193 ====== elwell day was made.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Penny Auctions - tonteldoos http://www.curiousgnu.com/penny-auctions ====== tominous This is like the old trick of auctioning off a $20 note with the twist that the two highest bidders must both pay even if they end up losing. I saw this play out in a Negotiation 101 tutorial once, for real money, and the bid got up to $40 or so before one person finally bailed (i.e. around $80 spent on a $20 note). It's a game of chicken. The earlier bids are a sunk cost. You hope you can spend an extra $1 to win the $20. Sounds insane to even start bidding, right? But then you see things like this play out all the time in the market. For example, the war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD had a very similar dynamic. EDIT: See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction) ~~~ rictic Yep. Very similar patterns show up in the decision making and politics that drive the deadliest wars as well. Apparently it is very easy for both sides to convince themselves that they are made of tougher stuff than their enemies and that if they can just bear down and take the losses they'll come out on top. 1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attrition_warfare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attrition_warfare) 2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_attrition_(game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_attrition_$game$) ~~~ tlow "very easy for both sides to convince themselves that they are made of tougher stuff than their enemies" I'd be delighted if you could provide some sort of source or citation for this claim as I find it fascinating. Thanks. ~~~ rictic My source is Steven Pinker's Better Angels of our Nature. A few of the sources he highlights on the subject: 1] War of Attrition game: Maynard Smith, 1982, 1988; see also Dawkins, 1976/1989. 2] Loss aversion: Kahneman & Renshon, 2007; Kahneman & Tversky, 1979, 1984; Tversky & Kahneman, 1981. Sunk costs in nature: Dawkins & Brockmann, 1980. 3] More lethal wars last longer: Richardson, 1960, p. 130; Wilkinson, 1980, pp. 20–30. 4] Weber’s Law for perceived deaths: Richardson, 1960, p. 11. And a couple of relevant quotes: > In these simulations, the destructiveness of a war depends mainly on the > territorial size of the combatants and their alliances. But in the real > world, variations in destructiveness also depend on the resolve of the two > parties to keep a war going, with each hoping that the other will collapse > first. Some of the bloodiest conflicts in modern history, such as the > American Civil War, World War I, the Vietnam War, and the Iran-Iraq War, > were wars of attrition, where both sides kept shoveling men and matériel > into the maw of the war machine hoping that the other side would exhaust > itself first. ... > I already mentioned some evidence from Richardson’s dataset which suggests > that combatants do fight longer when a war is more lethal: small wars show a > higher probability of coming to an end with each succeeding year than do > large wars. The magnitude numbers in the Correlates of War Dataset also show > signs of escalating commitment: wars that are longer in duration are not > just costlier in fatalities; they are costlier than one would expect from > their durations alone. If we pop back from the statistics of war to the > conduct of actual wars, we can see the mechanism at work. Many of the > bloodiest wars in history owe their destructiveness to leaders on one or > both sides pursuing a blatantly irrational loss-aversion strategy. Hitler > fought the last months of World War II with a maniacal fury well past the > point when defeat was all but certain, as did Japan. Lyndon Johnson’s > repeated escalations of the Vietnam War inspired a protest song that has > served as a summary of people’s understanding of that destructive war: “We > were waist-deep in the Big Muddy; The big fool said to push on.” ~~~ tlow From your own citation: "with each hoping that the other will collapse first" This in no way demonstrates a belief that both sides thing they are made of tougher stuff. In fact, it says explicitly that both sides are "hoping" that the other side "collapses first". This is in no way indicative of any self value of positive strength and thus a premise of your argument is false. Therefore you conclusion is false. If you would like to submit another attempt at providing reasonable evidence to back up your claims, I'm more than happy to review them. ~~~ rictic This subject is one of my (very amateur) interests so I'd be happy to, but I don't think I understand our point of disagreement. Would you mind expanding on it or rephrasing it? Is it the difference between belief in one's own side's strength and hope in the other side's frailty? ------ dividuum Story time: A couple of friends and me played on a competitive Minecraft server for a while. You could form factions, build protected bases and compete on various player vs player events. The last part didn't interest us at all, since we were all a bit older and went there to relax after work. So we did all kinds of other creative things like automated shops using redstone. The server also had an in-game currency which you could only obtain by mining. One day we got the idea to do a penny auction to finance the expansion of our protected area. So I quickly put together a Flask based site that parsed the Minecraft client chat log in realtime. Other players would send me in-game money which would result in a chat message my locally running python script would pick up. Everyone could then see the auction happening in realtime on the website (Example screenshot: [http://i.imgur.com/yg2V3iS.png](http://i.imgur.com/yg2V3iS.png)). It was really successful, everyone had fun and hopefully learned that you should never bid on penny actions :-) ------ legohead I worked for one of the biggest penny auction sites. I'll address some things in this thread. One key thing the author left out was "free bids". You can win auctions that give you bids. So, for instance, you spend 10 bids and get lucky and win a 2500 bid pack. When bidding on the auction, an outside observer can't tell if you're using a bid you paid for or a "free bid" you won on the site or gained in some other mean (some auctions may be a product + free bids). So while it looked like the guy spent $3,500, he may have only spent $100 of his own real money. Some sites even stop you from spending over the retail value of the site. The one I worked for let you buy the item if you spent bids that equaled the retail value. And we were fair with the retail value of items. We had people whose job it was to source products so we could afford to sell items at retail. If you lost the auction, you could also pay the difference between the value of your bids and the retail price and buy the item that way. So if the item was $150, and you spent $100 in bids but lost, you could pay $50 and get the item anyway. Yes, some of these sites use bots. You can buy pre-built penny auctions sites and you will see they contain bots. The site I worked for never used bots while I worked there. I'd be surprised if any of the bigger sites use bots, as it's not needed and can be pretty obvious to detect with basic statistics. And you definitely have a certain type of person on this site who is running statistics and trying to beat the game. These sites can actually be used to find a good deal, if they offer the retail option I mentioned above. Imagine you plan on buying a 65" TV. You try out a penny auction site and win it for $100, or end up having to pay retail for it anyway. The main loss would be paying shipping, which admittedly for a TV would be a lot. Personally, I never used one of these sites. It's just too stressful and slow for me (auctions can last for hours). ~~~ ebbv You keep telling yourself that they are in any way ethical. They are not. Letting people get it "if they spend the retail value" is hardly generous or benevolent. Other people will have also spent a bunch of money, and if you haven't already spent a ton of money and the total spent on the auction will be outrageous. Never mind that if you _don 't_ spend the retail amount, you're just out money for nothing. Unlike a legitimate auction site where if you don't win the auction you don't spend anything. ------ air7 Similarly, I once also looked into such a site, collecting data from on-going auctions. While the interface showed very little information about the bidders, the underlying JSON data carrying the real-time bids had addition fields such as user ID. I remember that while my user ID, along with other players that seemed human (i.e few and far between bids) had user ids that were 2000+, there were several users, that bid thousands of times, sometimes for 16 hours straight (there was no auto-bid option), all of which had a user ID of 1000-1010... ~~~ jack9 Penny Auctions are notorious for running their own bots to compete and ultimately, act as financial loss prevention. ------ grantcox If one bidder spent more than $3500 in bids for that tablet, it's either a shill account or a credit card scammer. Neither one is particularly surprising with sites like this. ~~~ Trundle There's no chance these things aren't riddled with shell accounts bumping the price up and also winning. ~~~ lrem Note: the actual winner of the auction in question spent 80 cents. ~~~ gambiting Which could also be a bot account owned by the site owner. That way they keep all the money and don't even have to buy the device. ~~~ DanielBMarkham In this way, the device doesn't even have to exist. What you're really doing, then, is creating a _simulated auction viewing experience_ which participants can watch or participate in. If a real person actually ends up buying something, you just go out and purchase it on Amazon and ship it to them. Amazing that this isn't considered a scam by the authorities. ~~~ dragonwriter > Amazing that this isn't considered a scam by the authorities. Enforcement in this area is largely complaint driven, and the target market for these sites is, I gather, generally not the most aware of their rights and likely to complain. And, the sites may have favorable internal dispute resolution processes that assure that the kind of people that _would_ complain are kept happy, so that complaints to government authorities don't happen. ------ riceslush Any sufficiently advanced technology involving money is indistinguishable from gambling. ~~~ pjc50 It appears that some countries have spotted this: [http://www.pennyauctionwatch.com/2010/04/italy-shuts-down- lo...](http://www.pennyauctionwatch.com/2010/04/italy-shuts-down-lowest- unique-bid-auctions/) ~~~ Kiro Lowest-unique bid auctions and penny auctions are different things though. The former is often considered gambling while the latter not. ~~~ oli5679 Do you have any idea why that is? Poker and sports betting are considered gambling despite being sufficiently complicated processes st. a small minority of participants achieve regular profits against virtually any field. I would be happy to bankroll Phil Ivey to play poker Tony Bloom to bet on football. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Ivey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Ivey) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Bloom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Bloom) Both low-bid and penny auctions seem much simpler to me. I can't see how consistent profitability is achievable when playing with non-crazies? ~~~ Kiro Good question. This is what the Swedish Gaming Board says about it: [http://www.lotteriinspektionen.se/sv/Icke- tillstandsgivet/La...](http://www.lotteriinspektionen.se/sv/Icke- tillstandsgivet/Lagstabud-auktioner/) Lowest-bid auction: "In a lowest bid wins the auction it alone in having placed the lowest bid and not the one who placed the highest bid. In this way, it is largely a matter of chance decides who wins. We therefore believe that the lowest bid auctions are a lottery and not an auction." Penny auction: "In our opinion this is not a lottery in the legal sense, because it is the highest bid within a certain time "wins". It is not chance that determines who gets the goods. In this way, a penny auction works the same way as a normal auction." (Google Translate, may do a proper translation later.) ~~~ caf That analysis doesn't seem to apply any more when there's a price ceiling (such that every subsequent bid is after that point bids the same price). ~~~ dragonwriter > That analysis doesn't seem to apply any more when there's a price ceiling > (such that every subsequent bid is after that point bids the same price). Or, as pointed out in the article occurs with penny auction sites, when some bids actually _drop_ the price rather than raising it. ------ zekevermillion I remember a game circa 1980s called Inside Trader, a stock market "simulation". There were a bunch of fake stocks that fluctuated in value randomly, and one could choose to trade honestly or based on tips. Tips carried the risk of penalties and jail (losing the game). I eventually figured out that while the prices did go up and down, they never went below zero. Therefore, one could trivially beat the game by purchasing penny stocks. Unfortunately, the real market does not have a meaningful lower bound on losses. ~~~ x1798DE > Unfortunately, the real market does not have a meaningful lower bound on > losses. I don't understand what you mean, here. Are you saying that stocks never went _to_ zero? Because real stocks also don't go _below_ zero (though you can use leverage to lose more money than you put in, I suppose). ~~~ gnopgnip Real stocks get delisted or go bankrupt all the time. ~~~ hueving That's 0 ~~~ zekevermillion OK, the lower bound on losses you can make on one stock purchased without leverage is == your investment. With repeated activity and/or leverage, there's no hard limit. ------ lubos Relevant: Profitable Until Deemed Illegal (2008) [https://blog.codinghorror.com/profitable-until-deemed- illega...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/profitable-until-deemed-illegal/) ------ wiredfool It's entirely possible that it's scams all the way down. In recent memory, there was one penny auction site that was essentially a justification for a ponzi scheme, where people were buying thousands of dollars of "bids" (not using cc, but cashier's checks and money orders. i.e. non-reversable funds) because there would be riches of payouts on the other side. ~~~ koolba > It's entirely possible that it's scams all the way down. It's entirely _probable_ that it's scams all the way down. ~~~ gedrap When it seems so shady, I'd assume that it is a scam unless proven otherwise. ------ grenoire Having seen all the gambling site scams for Valve games (see CS:GO streamers faking wins on their affiliated websites), it would come to me as no surprise that they are abusively pushing users to bidding wars by counterbidding 'fake money.' If they win the bet themselves, they can always reauction the item at a later date. ~~~ mod I think those were real wins (at least with no proof otherwise), but on a site that was not disclosed to be owned by the winner. May or may not have been rigged in their favor. ------ foota Interesting it seems that running for a political office is a type of penny auction. ~~~ acjohnson55 "All-pay auction" is the technical term, a penny auction just being a particular instance. In politics, the person who spends the most doesn't necessarily win, but I can see the analogy. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All- pay_auction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-pay_auction) ~~~ foota True. Perhaps it's closer to a lottery, the more you put in the greater your chances are that you win? (though not of course per dollar) ------ chii It would be interesting if someone created a site that helps users of these penny auction sites collude. Imagine, if the site queued up each user as they registered, and the user as the head of the queue gets a guaranteed win on the item because everyone else stops and don't bid... So if you wait in the queue long enough, you'll get your turn and get the item really cheap. ~~~ bitJericho except you'll find the house cheats. ~~~ chii True, you can never really verify that the house is cheating either. However, if the collusion site is made popular enough that a majority of users are on it, then the house cheating is much easier to spot. ~~~ mfjordvald I once found a security problem in a site that exposed bid data for on-going auctions. I very much verified they were completely fraudulent and would magically bid to win in the last couple of seconds. It's pervasive in this type of site. ------ pkamb > each bid adds ten seconds to the countdown which gives other bidders the > time to counter your bid. Why has eBay never implemented this behavior? ~~~ thescriptkiddie Because counter-bidding does not exist on eBay. eBay uses a second-price auction system. Each bidder is allowed only a single bid, which reflects the absolute maximum that they are willing to pay. The highest bidder wins the auction, but only pays as much as the second highest bid. The value of the actual highest bid is kept secret, so the "current bid" displayed on the site is actually the second highest. If you try to win an auction by outbidding the "current bid" by 1 cent at the last second, you will succeed only in becoming the second highest bidder and pushing the price that the actual highest bidder has to pay up by 1 cent. ~~~ ac29 >Each bidder is allowed only a single bid Its been a while since I bid in an eBay auction, but this is or was definitely not the case. If you were outbid, you could bid more. ~~~ grkvlt Well, technically you are just changing the amount of your _existing_ bid. This is not really a useful distinction for eBay on its own, but is when looking at other auctions where number of bids has an effect on the result. ------ metafunctor In game theoretic terms, is there a best strategy for a game like this, other than not playing? ~~~ espadrine All information you have as a player is misinformation, as demonstrated. As a result, the single factor that makes you "win" is whether the other players stop playing, letting the timer hit its limit. There are two reasons for them to do so: exhaustion or cost. Some players may have stolen cards or plan on denying the payment, making cost potentially limitless. Some players newly join and some are bots, making exhaustion a non-issue. As a result, the game is completely random. The only winning move is to be the house. There is one small vulnerability in the website they tested, which is that when the system senses player exhaustion, it sinks the price to attract new players. It happens twice at the end of the graph. When the price is on a downward slope going past a certain point, it probably means that few players intend to pursue. ~~~ daemin To me this seems effectively like a slot machine, where people keep feeding in money for someone else to eventually win some sort of prize. I would equate the lowering of the price to a small payout so that the person keeps playing for a bit longer. ------ rtpg What's the argument that this is gambling? Or rather, that this is gambling while eBay is not? I understand on a rational level that this is less fair to bidders and a bad model if you want to just buy things, but I don't see where this is a game of chance instead of a consequence of who is participating. ~~~ ryporter I agree. Others here are making arguments as to why they think this is akin to gambling, but there is a specific legal definition of gambling (at least here in the U.S.) -- "A person engages in gambling if he stakes or risks something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance or a future contingent event not under his control or influence, upon an agreement or understanding that he or someone else will receive something of value in the event of a certain outcome." [1] This is not a contest of chance, and there is no future contingent event. Other participants future actions within this event do not count as a "future contingent event." [1] [http://definitions.uslegal.com/g/gambling/](http://definitions.uslegal.com/g/gambling/) ~~~ shawabawa3 > This is not a contest of chance It's absolutely a contest of chance. There's no skill at all, you're betting on the probability nobody else will bid in the next 15 seconds. If this is considered a game of skill I have no idea how you could defend sportsbetting or poker being gambling ~~~ ryporter Not knowing what your opponent will do does not make it a game of chance. For the purpose of defining gambling, the component of chance must be exogenous to the participants. ~~~ dragonwriter > For the purpose of defining gambling, the component of chance must be > exogenous to the participants. There are many different legal definitions of gambling (even in the US -- each state that regulates gambling has at least on definition of its own, as well as the feds, and the same jurisdiction may have different definitions in different laws) but the one you posted upthread requires only that the future contingent event on which one participant is at risk be out of control of that participant, not that it must be "exogenous to the participants". ------ lrem How does one person spend 3500$ on a 180$ tablet: write a bot. You tell it to "buy any item at ≤10% retail price if the remaining time is ≤1s". Sounds reasonable, even if you pay a few cents for the losing bids, right? ;) ~~~ staffanj If you bid when there is 1 second left the timer starts over - you cant snipe penny auctions. ~~~ imron Unless you are the person running the penny auction. In which case, keep sniping until people stop paying and then have a final fake bid to win the auction. ------ barrkel I feel like there's a bit of explanation missing in this article. It only seems to make sense if bids cost a penny at the time they are made, rather than needing to pay at the time the auction is won. Is that the case? Does the winner have to pay the existing bid total too, or do they benefit from the spending if other bidders? Wikipedia has a better and more complete explanation: everyone pays, both for bids and the total: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidding_fee_auction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidding_fee_auction) ~~~ StavrosK The "auction price" isn't actually a price. It's just the number of bids so far, and it's meaningless. They're just advertising it as a price to confuse and market. Them saying "this tablet is up to $11.42" just means "there have been at least 1142 bids for this tablet", (assuming "penny" is "one cent", I never could learn the weird American names for the small currency). ~~~ thechao Dollar is the base name. Cent (idollar) is 1/100th of a dollar. Mill (idollar) is 1/1000th of a dollar. Values larger than a dollar are denominated by common name, e.g., 5 dollars, 10 dollars; the set of denominated bills is (usually): 5, 10, 20, 50, 100. On top of this system is overlaid a decimalized imperial notation, the octal Spanish system, and a materials system. Thus penny=cent; nickel was used for five cent pieces; a dime is 1/10th a dollar; quarter is 25 cents (two bits; a bit is a dime and five ha'pennies), etc. The problem is that the US was one of the first countries to "decimalize" (including defining the actual measures, which were not defined previously) in the 18th c., and chose to reuse the old names. As to our measures: weights and areas are base-4 (which made manufacture of the standards easier); length is based on easily divisible numbers for common lengths; official measure is done decimalized (thus the notorious "decimal inch"). The foot is based on the second, which was fundamentally superior to the meter which was based on the earth's geodesy for practical matters, etc. ------ ryporter While I certainly think that Penny Auctions are less than useless, I really don't see how they can be classified as gambling. I think that the salient point here is that there is no element of chance. Sure, you don't know how your opponents will behave, but you also don't know how your opponent in a chess game will behave. The nondeterministic behavior is not endogenous to the game itself. ~~~ shawabawa3 Think of it as placing a bet that nobody else will bid in the next 15 seconds (or however long). It's very clearly gambling as you cannot influence the result once you've placed the bet. ~~~ pests Or is it placing a bet when you skillfully deduce no one will be betting in the next 15 seconds? ~~~ shawabawa3 Doesn't matter if it's skillful really. Both sportsbetting and poker clearly are (there are many long-term winners) and that doesn't stop them being gambling. ------ chinathrow Wow, I would love to see someone filing suit and seeing them subpoenad to discover the shill accounts linked to it. There is just no way that Arsenic is legitimate. ------ jrs235 The other hidden scam in this is that [some/many] these sites will give you X number of free credits when you first sign up. Not only is this to get you hooked and using the site but it cheats people who are already hooked and paid for their credits because it allows others to bid and "take away the winning bid(s) of actually paying customers) for free! ------ sailing Theory 1: "Arsenic" spent $3500 to lose an auction for a $180 tablet. Theory 2: "Arsenic" laundered $3500. I'd wager a penny it's #2. ~~~ daemin For that to be true, the Arsenic user would have to have some way of cashing out at least a large portion of that $3500. The only way that could happen is if they were actually on the payroll or otherwise being paid for goods/services from the auction company. ------ thomasrossi In some country that kind of auction is considered gamble indeed and it's against the law (most EU as far as I know). From a Mechanism Design point of view, they are maximizing their own profit and they also expect their players to be not very rational entities and so they don't nee to use a truthful auction. ------ philliphaydon There are also reverse Dutch auctions which you bid to drive the price down. The winner ends up paying the remaining cost of the item. You buy a bid for 50 cents and the bid drives down the price by 2 cents. If the remaining item is $15 for a $2000 item. You pay $15. It's all a scam tho imo. ------ gedrap It's an interesting topic but I unexpected some analyses or conclusions at the end :( maybe the OP is going to release the raw data for the interested? Quite curious how would that turn out. ~~~ tonteldoos Sadly I'm not the article author - I just submitted it to HN... ------ DoubleGlazing Seems like a good way to launder money. ------ thalesfc Excellent content. I was surfing your web page and it seems ridiculous interesting. Tomorrow I will read everything, do you make all your source code available ? ~~~ tonteldoos I'm not the author of the article...I only found and submitted to HN... ~~~ thalesfc Oh I see.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: I built a referral program for developers, would love feedback - geekjock Hi everyone,<p>Over the weekend I launched a referral program for my app Pull Reminders (<a href="https://pullreminders.com" rel="nofollow">https://pullreminders.com</a>). Here's a quick summary with two screenshots showing what it looks like: <a href="https://twitter.com/abi/status/1001432164569960451" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/abi/status/1001432164569960451</a><p>For some background, Pull Reminders is used by over a thousand developers and has 100+ new developers signing up each week. I've been looking at strategies to reach more potential customers without having to spend money or a ton of time so a referral program seemed like it had potential.<p>There are well-known success stories out there of referral programs designed by consumer products like DropBox, but far fewer for B2B, and almost none that I found which were targeted at developers (DigitalOcean is one).<p>I considered a cash incentive (ie. $25 per converted referral), but developers are well-paid so offering cash seemed like it could actually be a turn off. I considered offering credits, but Pull Reminders is expensed by teams so for an individual on the team this feels like a poor incentive. This eventually led me to the idea of offering free coffee (and tea)–not just regular coffee, but high-end coffee from specialty roasters. It's a generalization but I feel that most developers like coffee, and getting a bag of specialty coffee seems like it could be a fun and novel reward.<p>I have no idea if my approach or design is good so I would love your thoughts and feedback. How can I improve the structure, presentation, or description of my referral program? Is the coffee idea good? Is my copy written well (this was tough – I spent several hours repeatedly tweaking and rewriting)?<p>P.S. Sorry for the long post – I plan on eventually turning my learnings and results into a blog post. ====== tixocloud Hi there, Based on your post, I reckon your overarching goal is to acquire more customers and the tactic you're focused on is a referral program. But perhaps it might be good to take a step back. Firstly, do you know what the value of your customers are at the moment and how much will you be willing to spend per customer? Referral programs could be a good strategy provided you feel that your customer also has a potential network to reach out to and you have enough to incentivize them, which leads back to how much you're willing to spend per customer. That being said, have you tested the coffee idea out with your existing customers? More importantly, have you had a chat with your existing customers to understand what would get them to refer you to their networks? The way I'd approach it is to talk to your customers and test out your strategies (i.e. coffee or otherwise). Happy to discuss further as I've been involved with designing loyalty/rewards/switching programs. ------ inputcoffee It is certainly an interesting problem. I don't know that I have the solution. I agree with everything you said about the problem around finding a good reward. However, coffee drinkers can be picky. It would not motivate me, but then again I am not sure what would other than the benefit of doing my friend and the customer a favor. ~~~ geekjock Thanks for the feedback! ------ jbardnz Looks really great. As a developer I would be way more motivated by this than some free credits for my companies account. How do you handle fulfillment? Seems like it could be a real time suck if it is manual? Also do you ship internationally? ~~~ geekjock Thanks for the feedback! Fulfillment - I plan on just manually ordering coffee to people once per week. If it gets to be too much work that'd be a great problem to have :) I do ship internationally, and if for some reason I can't I would send a gift card instead. ------ saluki How about an amazon e-gift card based on your plans they get the referral on. Maybe a minimum of $20, then $50 and $100. How about a bonus e-gift card every 12 months their signup is a customer. So if they refer a signup on your $99 plan they get $100 after it is confirmed and then every 12 months another $100 e-gift card. I don't drink coffee btw, but I do have an amazon wish list. ~~~ geekjock I've decided to switch to amazon gift cards! ------ trcollinson I don’t drink coffee but I know a ton of people who do. I actually really like this idea and your layout of it. Great job. I’ve also never heard of your service but I like that too! I’m on gitlab though. Any comment on when you’ll integrate?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Roadside textalyzer proposed to determine if a driver was distracted - Godel_unicode http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/first-came-the-breathalyzer-now-meet-the-roadside-police-textalyzer/ ====== Shivetya Oh hell no. They don't need access to your phone to know if you were texting. They could simply query the provider and mandate that they provide a record of outbound text usage within the time frame of the accident. What is there to protect the owner of the phone from the police for not coming up with another reason to keep the phone? This sounds like slight of hand to be handed over an unlocked phone	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The NSA named one of its top-secret programs Skynet - milesf https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/9/8577515/nsa-skynet-program-is-real ====== tux "Google: Rise of the Machines" @ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1QB9DW_0kM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1QB9DW_0kM)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Does anybody wants to show me what is going on in San Francisco? - wallunit Hi guys, I am a Software-Developer from Germany. I am am a skilled Python programmer, have a lot of experience with web development and I am involved in various open source projects. This week I am in San Francisco and I know that a lot of cool software projects are based, here. So does anybody wants to show me his startup or just something cool he is working on or just want to discuss interesting stuff while having a beer? ;) ====== late2part You might put your email in your profile so we can contact you privately :-) ------ quadlock Hey, I too am an experienced python web developer with some iOS experience visiting SF this week and some of next. Does anyone want to show me his/her startup? My email is johnwlockwood at gmail. ~~~ wallunit Where are you right now? Lets meet. Just write me an email it is in my profile, now. ------ ohnivak No one is listening.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Target’s Bathroom Policy Killed TGT Stock - gamechangr https://cabotwealth.com/daily/dividend-stocks/how-targets-bathroom-policy-killed-tgt-stock/ ====== rmusial This is from 2017 and it's also very incorrect. The author says Target's April 2017 policy was bad for their stock. Let's look in hindsight. In March 2017 TGT was at 53.12. In April 55.85. In early June 56.90. It took a hit late June at 50.76, but by September was already at 59.96. As of close today it is at 78.46 and they didn't reverse their bathroom policy. Here are some funny quotes from the referenced post... _" I’m not anticipating an extreme drop in the share price, but I’m definitely not seeing any catalyst on the horizon for the share price to surpass its current trading range"_ and _" So, though it took a while to materialize, if you followed Crista’s advice to sell TGT stock late last year, it’s looking like a good decision now. TGT stock is headed in the wrong direction, and may still have greater depths to plumb. Good call by Crista!"_ If you would've sold on Crista's advice to sell, you would've missed out 59.41 to 78.46 in less than a year! ~~~ gamechangr It sounds like Target is trying to do damage control. "CEO was blind sighted". [http://www.businessinsider.com/target-ceo-blindsided-by- boyc...](http://www.businessinsider.com/target-ceo-blindsided-by- boycott-2017-4) ~~~ rmusial I don't understand what you mean by that. 32% growth sounds a lot better than "damage control". Also why are you posting things from 2017? Was there some news about Target that I missed? ------ tomlock > I live in Colorado, where transgender people being able to choose what > bathroom they identify with became law in May 2008. That was the day I > realized that I could no longer send my daughters into public restrooms > alone. Why? ~~~ dragonwriter Presumably, because the only sex offenders that target girls have penises, and the facility staff that formerly would verify that no penis entered the women's rest room would no longer be doing that.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Open Source DB for Web Apps that Syncs - akrymski http://dev.yathit.com/ ====== cwmma I've been involved with, [http://pouchdb.com](http://pouchdb.com), a similar project that replicates (aka syncs) with couchdb, vs this which implements master master replications (aka bidirectional syncing) with ... anything? ~~~ daleharvey I suspect this doesnt handle conflict resolution, which the key differentiator between Couch / Pouch and other sync solutions I see, its something thats hard to do nicely without in built support on the server side, and since this syncs with 3rd party servers. However a lot of use cases are happy to trade last write wins with a simpified model, As mentioned in Vancouver I actually wish I had used a simple model for Pouch (that still included conflicts, future project). But knowing how hard it is to get a cross browser syncing solution working, this from the outset seems amazing (close to to good to be true), its quite hard to understand the focus / specific use case because there is so much information about transactions / query models / syncing etc, but great job to the author, I am going to take a look at this and try to understand it a bit more, excited to see more people focusing on the same problems as Pouch ------ DavidPP We are currently evaluating [http://www.breezejs.com/](http://www.breezejs.com/) as a general entity framework that can also do sync. This one seem to be a bit more low level, but probably a lot simpler to integrate. ------ prottmann Nice! But why login with google to download a custom version? Hope to find it soon on some CDNs.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
NAT Tunneling Without a Third-Party - devbug http://samy.pl/pwnat/ ====== Gys Earlier (6 years ago!) discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1224905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1224905)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dynamodb emulator - sreeix https://github.com/ananthakumaran/fake_dynamo ====== mark_l_watson Thanks!, that looks useful. I am trying it right now. ~~~ mark_l_watson Works fine when I tested with some Ruby code and the Ruby aws-sdk gem. Thanks again.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Healtch Check Response Format for HTTP APIs - ingve https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-inadarei-api-health-check-00 ====== bkmartin This is nice to see... I know we have been having internal discussions about how to best implement a system health check for our APIs as we migrate into a services based architecture across several different technology groups. I hope that it gets the traction necessary and makes it into a full standard.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How do I as a programmer start contributing to gnome sequencing - udkl Been reading about genome sequencing and finding it rather interesting. But am lost about how programmers can learn and contribute to what is presumably a bio-tech field. ====== angersock It's all just pattern matching, strings being mapped to other strings. Data is data--it matters not where it comes from, the computers couldn't care less. ------ joeclark77 Gnome sequencing? Follow these three steps: 1\. Steal underpants. 2\. ??? 3\. Profit.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A New Look and Feel for Uber - pbathala https://newsroom.uber.com/celebrating-cities-a-new-look-and-feel-for-uber/ ====== achr2 Wow, this is painful. Definitely an early contender for worst rebrand of 2016. The video, oy-vey, pretentious does not begin to describe it. Their logo represents bits and atoms? What?.. but, why? ~~~ capkutay This might be one of the worst rebrands I've ever seen. They totally conceded something prominent for something that looks like a freelance logo-designer's general 'hey I design logos' generic portfolio item. ------ wodenokoto This somehow reminded me of the leaked Pepsi logo redesign presentation. ------ ratfacemcgee on iOS, at a glance, the new app icon looks like an app when its updating. When i look at my home screen really quick, i see it out of the corner of my eye and think its updating. ------ shrell [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia8OKMlqxLs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia8OKMlqxLs) ------ kylehotchkiss So many broken SVGs! ------ untilHellbanned WTF. 50B down the drain. ~~~ hellbanner Mind explaining what's so terrible about their design? ~~~ untilHellbanned Too abstract.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Woman Who Recorded 70k Tapes of American News - respinal https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/11/14/recorder-the-marion-stokes-project ====== marttt I imagine this would be a treasure trove for an artist like Kenneth Goldsmith [0]. He has a moving book consisting of verbatim transcriptions of broadcast shows that were aired during several tragic events in US history [1]. Or another book (800 pages; yep, I read it through) capturing every word he spoke during a week [2]. When served well, verbatim transcriptions can make a fascinating or very emotional form of art. It's like this stuff, with all the stutterings, illogical sentences etc, is occasionally more directly "wired to my head", and thus closer to sensing the other person's "thinking", than a regular, careful literary composition. Then again, it is probably also easier to "overuse", I guess. 0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Goldsmith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Goldsmith) 1: "Seven American Deaths and Disasters" \-- [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16071842-seven- american-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16071842-seven-american- deaths-and-disasters) 2: "Soliloquy" \-- [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/764257.Soliloquy?ac=1&fr...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/764257.Soliloquy?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=LlvKjMzwth&rank=1) ~~~ WalterBright I've often wondered how people actually spoke in the 1800's. I'm sure there was a lot of cussing going on, but none of that made it into print. It's like WW2 movies made in the 1950s. Actual GIs didn't talk like that. ------ eutropia We should be very protective of this archive, those that produce the news want it to be extremely compelling and convincing for the narrative they're writing, but instantly forgotten in time for the next crisis. The patterns that will emerge from this will be damning, and I suspect that efforts will be taken to ensure those patterns remain forgotten. ~~~ IIAOPSW If by "efforts to ensure those patterns remain forgotten" you mean "do literally nothing because the public has the attention span of a goldfish" then yes. The people buying and consuming the news are as guilty as the people making and selling it. The modern state of affairs exists by ambivalent forces present in any large population. It did not need to be engineered by any elite cabal, and it does not perpetuate merely because people are ignorant of what's in the archives. ------ atentaten It would be great if the audio could be transcribed and the text ran through some ML models that could analyze attributes over time, like: sentiment, new use of words (ideas & technologies), the varying viewpoints for the same story, correlations between when something was first announced to later outcomes, etc. From this it would be possible to show in a compelling way how the hearts and minds of the masses are shaped by the media they consume. ~~~ Synaesthesia > From this it would be possible to show in a compelling way how the hearts > and minds of the masses are shaped by the media they consume. This is already well understood, and has been a conscious science since at least the turn of the century. See Edward Bernays, and Manufacturing Consent ~~~ mistermann _Well_ understood? I wonder what the outcome would be of such analysis, I bet it would be interesting! ~~~ Synaesthesia It’s been validated countless times, basically the media, being large corporations themselves, favour power and are against certain ideas, which are never mentioned. It’s evident all over. For example if you read FAIR you will see many examples of this. ~~~ mistermann Oh, I very much agree with you, but my point is, how do you measure such things? It's not like you can just get out a ruler. An archive like this could offer incredible insight into the development of modern culture. ~~~ Synaesthesia Chomsky actually did measure things by looking at how many times certain stories were reported across all major news agencies. But yes you can’t “measure” it. It would be a very valuable trove, I look forward to seeing the documentary about it. ------ pmoriarty The saddest part of the story: _" At the time Stokes began recording, television stations had been deleting archives for decades"_ For-profit corporations can not be trusted to archive history. ~~~ roywiggins Government bureaucracy isn't noticably better. _Everyone_ was writing over their tape archives back then, including the BBC (see: Doctor Who lost episodes) and, uh, NASA (the moon landings). ~~~ pmoriarty Governments might not be perfect, but they have a far, far better track record than for-profit corporations. The Library of Congress is one prominent example of archiving excellence. Many other public libraries and archives offer other examples. ~~~ caseysoftware I used to work on the Digital Archives at the Library of Congress. It's not that they're exceptionally better at it. In fact, the Library has warehouses of materials that they still haven't cataloged, let alone organized or (better) digitized. Their primary focus has been the "sexy" projects like spool recordings, wax cylinders, etc that make for cool stories and mitigate decay (aka destruction) over modern material. The big problem is that of collection. While in theory, anything that is a registered copyright in the US should be on file, most people don't take the time to register, let alone send off a copy. The Library & National Archives aren't "better" at it.. it's that it's their primary purpose so the fact that they do it puts it above most other groups. ~~~ dredmorbius What I find telling of the US National Archives is that the unit of measurment for the collections (particularly the uncatalogued backlog) is millions of cubic feet. [https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2008/summer/b...](https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2008/summer/backlog.html) ------ sxv "That material truly doesn't exist anywhere." Technically, doesn't the data exist as radiowaves traveling at lightspeed away from their broadcast source on earth? ~~~ chrismcb Sure... Now go grab it. ------ toomuchtodo > her recordings, which have been acquired by the Internet Archive in > Richmond, California Thank you Internet Archive! ------ chiffre01 Any word on the internet archive's progress on this? ------ jc__denton This reminds me of the (I believe) NYT article on the woman whose husband recorded tens of thousands of wrestling matches on VHS tapes. The archive was sought after by fans of the sport, but since the man's passing - the wife has struggled to maintain the collection and was contemplating tossing it. ~~~ PappaPatat Boxing it is. [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/nyregion/boxing-vhs- archi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/nyregion/boxing-vhs-archive.html) ------ hombre_fatal I really like how this website implemented their companion audio player. It was a smart touch to have play/pause on any play-button on the page animate some sort of ghost effect to bring your attention to the player in the corner. It's a clean, well-done, fast site in general. Not something I expect from a radio station. ~~~ eropple WBUR is more than just a radio station. They're an NPR affiliate--which is to say they're a web news organization as well--and they do a lot of pretty in- depth reporting. I don't listen to the radio in the car too often anymore, but it's never left 90.9 FM since I bought the car. ------ ajna91 "To make the film, Wolf developed a complex system to index and identify the 70,000 tapes, which were all six to eight hours long. In the end, he only digitized 100 of the tapes and says those 700 hours are “a tiny scratch into the surface of what's there.”" Wow, what a treasure trove! ------ mr__y I really hope that all those archives will be digitized and available for download. ~~~ mtalantikite The collection was donated to the Internet Archive, but I’m not sure the status of its digitization: [https://blog.archive.org/2019/05/24/71716-video-](https://blog.archive.org/2019/05/24/71716-video-) ~~~ VonGuard What has been digitized is fully text searchable! ------ cowmix What sparked Ms Stokes interest in recording the news happens to coincide with my news awakening. The hostage crisis and Love Canal (which started when I was around seven or eight) jump started my new obsession. ------ topynate Anyone who doesn't like hearing very loud flyback transformer whine should avoid playing the last few seconds of the embedded video. I think what Stokes did in recording those tapes was outstanding, by the way. ------ dang Anybody want to dig up links to the older threads about this? I can't just now... ~~~ kencausey [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19855291](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19855291) ~~~ dang Thanks! This is the one that has the comments. ------ purplezooey _" At the time Stokes began recording, television stations had been deleting archives for decades, Wolf says."_ wtf.. stations delete their own footage? wouldn't you want to just hang on to everything indefinitely? ~~~ dragonwriter > wouldn't you want to just hang on to everything indefinitely? Maintaining archives isn't free and has very little expected future value in many cases, so, no, in a for-profit business you probably wouldn't want to. ------ dredmorbius See also: the Vanderbilt Television News Archive. [https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu](https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu) ------ natas Will this documentary be downloadable or released on DVD? I'd like to buy it. ~~~ casefields It’s got a couple more months of screenings. I’m sure after that you’ll be able to. ------ nmstoker Something of a side point, but I'm curious about how expensive this was for her to do. In the 80s / 90s wouldn't a blank 3hr video be something like $5 or so (I'm guessing, as I recollect it was about £5 or so, and am expecting they'd be cheaper in the US as most things seemed to be then) Given that 70k hrs would be around 23k 3hr cassettes, that would work out at maybe $115k. Seems a lot for an ex-Communist organiser to have ready to spend on a project like this (much as it has plenty of merit). ~~~ xeromal It's not a high upfront cost though. Most people are decent at shelling out 5-15$ a week. ------ HNLurker2 Next: a man who recorded 10 years of hacker news links ------ Sushi-san This has been posted on HN before. ~~~ Aloha without searching, at least three times that I can think of. It's still interesting ------ sys_64738 Isn't this copyright infringement? I think there's a fair use for recording and keeping for a period but recording everything for 30 years isn't that. ~~~ snowwrestler Recording to tape was the subject of a Supreme Court case, the result of which was to make it explicitly legal for consumers to use VCRs to record broadcast TV. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Uni...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
NSA mathematician shares from-the-trenches view of agency's activities. - ohjeez http://www.zdnet.com/nsa-cryptanalyst-we-too-are-americans-7000020689/?utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer ====== bediger4000 In case "devx's" succint comment isn't clear... That NSA mathematician writes: _Do I, as an American, have any concerns about whether the NSA is illegally or surreptitiously targeting or tracking the communications of other Americans?_ How would you know? Based on everything that your organization has declassified and released, the NSA keeps its knowledge compartmentalized. Maybe what you say is true for your compartment, but not for any other. You're also not supposed to even ask about other mathematician's compartments, right? Again, how would you know? Also, Mr Mathematician, you've got a legal obligation, complete with penalties, to not give out any information. You're legally obligated to lie, according to Clapper. Why should we believe you? ------ devx Bullshit. Everything he said.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Anyone want to buy Blurrb.com? - methochris I bought this a couple years ago but have since moved on to a more suiting name.<p>It is about to expire so I thought I'd throw it out there.<p>Please comment with offer price if interested. It goes to the highest bidder. ====== borderbandit $50 USD ~~~ methochris looks like your the only taker. any idea how to get me $50? i dont have paypal... if you want to send a check/m.o. i will transfer to your godaddy account once it clears.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Rice Uiversity Announces Open Source Textbooks - aheilbut http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/07/rice-university-announces-open-source-textbooks ====== Cyranix The Connexions platform has been around for a while now, and as I recall students whose classes used it were happy with it, from both a price and usability standpoint. Glad to see that the program is getting more ambitious -- the move ties in nicely with the backlash against Elsevier. The rise of open-source competitors to academic content providers seems like a huge win for students and institutions alike. ------ zellyn Wow. I wonder if "algebra-based" means "no calculus". <http://openstaxcollege.org/textbooks/college-physics> ~~~ drcube At my school, yep. There were two tracks: Physics for scientists and engineers, which used calculus, and physics for arts/humanities, which was "algebra based". ------ derekyle If the publishing industry has anyone with half a brain working for them, they should see themselves going the way of the music industry. They need to innovate fast. Open source books are only part of the problem (and by problem, I mean only their problem). It is becoming easier and easier to find torrents to download full color versions of many of the most popular textbooks. ------ ChuckMcM Go Rice! This has been a long time in coming. Lots of undergraduate classes will be hugely benefited by this sort of effort. ------ stephenhuey I remember classmates coding for the Connexions platform just over a decade ago. Here's the announcement and video that Rice University just posted: [http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID...](http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=16745&SnID=1521497554) ------ keithpeter The OpenStax publications look most interesting, alas, the e-mail notification form will only accept US zip codes. ~~~ greenyoda Not sure why that's a problem, since that field is optional. ~~~ keithpeter True, but it does 'send a message' if you see what I mean. ------ iqster Anyone see the list of textbooks? I couldn't find it. ~~~ greenyoda Click on the orange "our books" button. It will take you to: <http://openstaxcollege.org/books> ------ aheilbut I'm looking forward to when this hits high school. ~~~ Drbble ck12.org	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
One Linux for all ARM systems - EwanToo http://www.zdnet.com/one-linux-for-all-arm-systems-7000005348/ ====== ansible The situation for Linux on ARM is better than it was 10 years ago, but it is still chaos at the low levels. Most of this has to do with cost. Each of the silicon vendors has their own IP which is bundled with their SoC; things like serial ports, PLLs, etc.. I don't foresee a time when a nearly universal standard like the 16550 on x86 is going to be available across major SoCs. The situation with USB controllers isn't too bad, but nearly everything else is unique to one vendor or another. Since we're commonly populating 1Gbyte of RAM on these high-end ARM systems for phones and tablets, I'm curious to see how the transition to 64-bit is going to go. I'm sure it will be hilarious... and by that I mean there will be a lot of broken-ness for quite a while. I'm not real hot on Intel for battery-powered mobile devices, because I don't see major cost or power-consumption advantages. But if Intel can make it easy to transition to newer chips, that could be one significant advantage. ------ mtgx Will this unified kernel for ARM devices affect Android (in a good way) at all? Does it mean we're looking at a future where an Android image could be installed on different ARM devices? ~~~ CUViper The same kernel could be installed on different devices, yes, provided the necessary drivers for all of those devices were part of that kernel build. You still have some platform specifics in userspace though, like build.prop and all the HAL libraries. Those could conceivably be loaded in a more neutral way, but I don't think it's set up for that yet. ~~~ mtgx I don't know if Google will ever be able to get manufacturers to make their drivers open source and offer them up to the community, but I hope they eventually manage to at least get them to bundle their proprietary drivers, and offer support for 2 years since the device's launch. In that way, it could at least become like Windows eventually, which wouldn't be a bad outcome at all. ~~~ wmf They'd also have to stop changing the driver APIs. For example my G2 used to only have drivers for Linux 2.6 but ICS uses Linux 3.0 which made life difficult for custom ROM hackers. ------ ezequiel-garzon This story is #30 in [1]. [1] [http://us2.campaign- archive1.com/?u=193b767bbb3b0eb0d949d592...](http://us2.campaign- archive1.com/?u=193b767bbb3b0eb0d949d5924&id=0c3a567f95&e=5603c292b3)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
James Cameron Tells Hollywood To Stop Making Trash 3D Movies - ssclafani http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/11/03/james-cameron-tells-hollywood-to-stop-making-trash-3d-movies/ ====== mhd Matthew 7:3-5	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Crunchies Are Coming, The Crunchies Are Coming - vaksel http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/the-crunchies-are-coming-the-crunchies-are-coming/ ====== holdenk I got a permission denied error, don't know if its temporary.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
“But The Client Wants IE 6 Support” - billpg http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/03/%e2%80%9cbut-the-client-wants-ie-6-support%e2%80%9d/ ====== TamDenholm I'm a web developer, whenever a client asks me about IE6 support, i enthusiastically tell them i'll happily support it. I then show them usage statistics for IE6 and tell them IE6 support costs a flat fee of £10,000 and let them think about it. No client has ever taken very long to decide its not worth it and none have ever taken me up on it, although i'm sure 1 or 2 have asked a different developer to make them an IE6 version, but thats fine with me. ~~~ elektronaut I haven't had a request for IE6 support in years, but if I got one I would say something like: "No, I will not do IE6 support for you. You've trusted me to solve your problem in the best and most efficient way, and supporting IE6 would be a waste of your money (and my time)." ~~~ idiopathic Let me tell you about the UK National Health Service. 1 million employees, they are literally saving people's lives every day, and all they are allowed to use is IE6. What your statement shows is not a understanding of how to solve the problem for such a client, but a rather a complete lack of understanding. Check the audience metrics, check the real problem being solved, and leave the grandstanding aside. And for the record, I hate IE (6 or otherwise) and never want to support it. But I am not going let me personal dislike for a technology get in the way of helping a client solve a really important problem. ~~~ lwat I'm so glad I've never had a client like that here in Australia. Everyone seems to be OK with the idea of running multiple browsers. We do have clients that use IE6 but we've always managed to convince them to install Chrome or Firefox on their desktops so they can use our software. Some users end up using multiple browsers but that's ok. I guess we're fortunate in the sense that our software is important enough and expensive enough for top management to make IT allow a new browser just for us. At the UK NHS, who exactly is the CIO, who exactly is mandating IE6 and only IE6? Can't that person be reasoned with? Overridden for the good of the NSH? Fired even? Just saying 'oh they're only allowed IE6' is giving up too early. ~~~ idiopathic Some historical background, which includes plenty of personal bias: Governments, for all their posturing, love dealing with oligopolies, or even better, monopolies. They feel safer in making purchases from them. So around 2002, the UK government decided IT was so important, it was going to be done centrally for the whole NHS. They gave the job to Richard Granger, who then proceeded to divide England into five regions, each of which would have one vendor responsible for all software in the NHS for that region. As part of that deal, they licensed MS Windows and Office. At that point, it became more expensive to use open source software than Microsoft's software. Then they standardised on IE6, and many vendors began using ActiveX. When I ask departments to upgrade, they say they are going to do so, but first they need every single vendor to have signed off that their software works in the new browser. This will take a really long time. Some will install a new browser for us, but this will actually result in a worse outcome for the clinicians because they have to use IE6 for most of their existing browsing, and then the other browser for us. They do not understand the point or the difference, and new browsers mean a different user interface, and they want to get on with treating patients rather than choosing between browsers. The epilogue is that the UK government's national program wasted 12 billion pounds (about 20 billion US, ie the same amount the US government is also identically wasting to subsidise electronic health record purchases). And Richard Granger left the UK in disgrace. He is now a consultant in... Australia :) ~~~ nitrogen Would they be willing to use Chrome Frame? It seems like the ideal way to target IE6-only customers without "installing" another browser. That way they can use one browser for all their intranet apps. ------ simonsarris Perhaps I am naive but this conversation seems easy to resolve with just a few words. Can anyone tell me how a client would respond to this: You can have a site with newer, nicer features, or you can have a site that supports older browsers. If you want both then you are commissioning two distinct websites. If you want usage statistics for old browsers I have them, and if you want to be economical I can produce the second website for older browsers at a reduced cost with reduced flair, after all only X% of people would see that site and it would still look reasonable, just not amazing. What would you like to do? ~~~ mattmanser To me that's lying to them. While supporting IE6 is onerous extra work, it's still work that can be done and has little impact on the final product. Take the other position, that 'Not supporting IE6 will mean I'll charge you 70% of my original quote, only x% of people use it in your target market' or better add it as an extra in the quote in the first place as the article suggests. Then it's up to them, it's a risk assessment. But be up front in your quotes with it, not an after the quote is won 'I don't know how to do it!'. The article's incredibly OTT on how much adding IE6 support costs, but I certainly would never go down the route of lying to a customer about it. If he charges double it's probably because he hates doing it and fair game to him. ~~~ tomgallard I think the article is realistic in terms of IE6 support costs if you're not just building a simple website. Trying to build a responsive, dynamic webapp, that is identical in IE6 to a modern browser can easily add a lot of time. Just as an example, producing all the graphics for rounded corners, rather than being able to do them in CSS. ~~~ flomo I've found that people don't really notice or care when IE shows them square corners. The thing about IE6/7 support is that it's a complete known quantity at this point. The problems & workarounds are well documented. There's tons of experienced HTML coders out there that know IE backwards and forwards. CSS frameworks like OOCSS include built-in workarounds. So if IE support doubles the cost, it must either be something very complex, or a real nickle-and-dime project. (Either that or the webdev doesn't really what they're doing.) ------ thibaut_barrere > How many of us actually charge 30-100% extra for this work? I haven’t heard > of many who do. Actually I see the exact opposite around me: developers billing by the hour and warning that IE 6 (or later) will generate extra work (and costs money). Most people I know just have a look at their site stats and see what is worth it. ~~~ Jacquass12321 Very much this, we informed the client that it was going to cost them more, and we itemized time spent fixing IE6 specific bugs and layout issues so we could offer them an idea of how much it was costing them. They needed this kind of data in order to convince their internal IT to migrate most of their user base off of IE6. ------ jswinghammer I usually take a much different approach with this issue. I had to support IE 6 for years after anyone could reasonably have been asked to do that. I did it because our customers used it a lot and asking them to upgrade wasn't in the cards for us. We could have lost 30% of our business or just not do all the cool things we wanted to do. I realize it's not cool but we chose to just not do all those things. IE 6 does support a lot of what you need to do and once you figure that out it becomes easier to make it work without having to go back and fix it later. I'm pretty good at it now so I don't really complain if someone asks me to make something work in IE 6. It's not a huge deal if you know what the issues are. ~~~ mattmanser IE7 only came out 5 years ago, IE8 2 years ago. Making sure IE6 was supported was still commonplace even last year. You're not as unique a snowflake as you think you are, we've all been having to do it. It's only becoming viable now to suggest otherwise. ~~~ redthrowaway "You're not as unique a snowflake as you think you are" That's unnecessary. The point, without the invective, please. ------ draegtun Unfortunately IE6 is still very _popular_ in the corporate world of Europe. I'm currently running an internal websurvey for a large car rental company and looking at this weeks http logs shows that IE6 is still getting 61% :( ~~~ mattmanser Large car rental companies are not exactly cutting edge on IT. They tend to have a lot of small locations that's not exactly easy to start upgrading because of the cost of sending people out to do it all. My local branches look like they had their last refurb in the late 90s for example. One example does not a sample make. ~~~ tomgallard It is not just car rental companies. Most of the UK's major banks use IE6 still. This is because most of their intranet apps will only work in IE6, and they have the size to demand that their supplies support IE6 too. Corporate IT policy won't allow browsers apart from IE. If only Microsoft allowed side-by-side installs of IE6 and a IE8 it might be a bit more bearable (given that IE9 is not available on XP) ~~~ sampo > This is because most of their intranet apps will only work in IE6 How did it ever happen that IE6 ended up in such a long lasting and dominating position? Was it (I am just guessing here) the coincidence of tho things: (1) IE6 just happened to be the most recent Microsoft browser around the time when most of bigcorps initially build their inter/intranet apps, and (2) because this was the first wave of building such things, the web coders did not bother to think about a future when IE6 is no longer a modern browser? ~~~ awj Well, part of it was that there weren't other browsers to worry about. At the time there was no Chrome, no Safari (no one used Macs in a corporate environment if there was), and no Firefox. All that you had was IE and Netscape, and Netscape was on kind of shaky ground at that point. Those two kind of fought with each other by introducing new features that made web pages incompatible with the others. Also, even then corporations weren't really keen on letting you use some other browser, so IE was the go-to since it was already installed. Since the market was so slim, and seemed to be increasingly vanishing, it seemed easier to justify going with IE's extensions. If Microsoft had kept updating IE and hadn't let it linger for years, we'd probably still be in the situation where they're in control of the de-facto standard. It's only because they sat with their thumb up their ass that things like Firefox and Chrome were able to get footholds and start disrupting the situation. Already being present and practically being named "The Internet" are _really_ big adoption factors. ------ rhplus The article mentioned "graceful degradation" but what is really described should coming from the the other direction as "progressive enhancement". As the author mentions, only enable each version of scripts and styles to browsers that support them. For those that don't, the content remains. Here's an old article that gets the message across in a client-friendly way: [http://www.alistapart.com/articles/understandingprogressivee...](http://www.alistapart.com/articles/understandingprogressiveenhancement) ------ avb Let me preface this with saying I long for the day IE6 is completely irrelevant. The fact is, when doing client work I have a responsibility to design the site in a way that when their customer visits they get the information they need. If the website is broken, for whatever reason, that looks badly on my client and on me. When I do a site I code and design for modern browsers. However, I make sure even IE6 users can get the information they need or order products or whatever the case is with the website. True, the IE6 users are small in number, however in some cases they can make up an older or important demographic to a client. ------ drKarl It all depends on the kind of site you are building and the technologies involved. On some sites it may be ok to deliver a "less beautiful" web but with all the contents, in others it won't. Oftentimes nowadays you'll face a complete rewrite. In some recent projects I even worked hard to convince the client that it wasn't worth supporting IE8. It's not only that it loads faster with modern techniques (as CSS3 allows awesome effects that would need images/javascript with CSS2), but some functionality built around HTML5 would need a COMPLETE rewrite in Flash. Of course that means that if they insist on supporting older browsers not only that would mean a 30%-100% increase in price but new features the want afterwards will be more expensive as well (because you're supporting two different projects). ------ bmccormack This seems like a relatively simple business proposition to a client. "X% of users on the internet today use IE6. I will be happy to provide pixel perfect support for Y dollars." Adjust Y up and down based on your ability and desire to continue to support web applications that use IE6. ------ mendable This article is great, but it works on the premise that IE6 support is a purely rational discussion by two knowledgeable parties before a contract is signed. \-- In reality, you may develop a website, then the client is visiting their uncle bob one weekend who has an old computer with IE6 lying around, client + uncle bob open up the website to have a look, and it is "broken". Client then sends you a hate mail about broken contracts. You reply saying that you discussed IE6 lameness before you started the work. Client says you were talking jargon, client didn't understand, and you need to fix their website so it loads on their uncle bob's computer otherwise they are suing you for not delivering a working website. Good luck with that :) ~~~ digamber_kamat As long as the contract clearly mentions that you are not supporting IE6 I wont mind client suing me. ~~~ gte910h Make sure you have the prevailing party's legal costs as part of the bargain in the eventuality of suit as well: Otherwise wining the lawsuit can be Pyrrhic ------ jwallaceparker We explicitly don't support IE on our heavy JavaScript web app. Users get an alert saying, "Use Firefox or Chrome. If you want to use IE and are upset that you can't, let us know." Nobody has said anything about it. I think so much depends on your audience. Our audience is writers using their own computer. They're happy to use Firefox and Chrome. I only see IE6 support as a problem for people on corporate machines who don't control their own software. ------ jdavid Who are these clients and why are you not firing them? You run a business, they run a business, and everyone is trying to make money. How much money do you think an IE6 user has? the browser is like a decade old. It's why we target iPhone and not Android in the mobile world. ( because iPhone users out spend android users. ) Tell your client the truth, tell them that you keep up to date on the latest trends and if they want to use someone else let them, and then tell them exactly what your work will do. I would not even offer to support IE6 anymore. Maybe IE7. There are a few reasons. #1 you can't download IE6 legally any more #2 you can't install it legally on linux or mac systems to test. #3 IE7 in quirks mode does not work exactly the same as IE6. #4 web development for legacy browsers is less about building things, and more about working around problems. and i just don't find that fun. It is your duty as a web professional to turn down this work. Microsoft does not even support his browser anymore. ~~~ jdavid when i was running the site <http://unity3d.com> less than 1% of our visitors could not properly render an html5 doctype. ~~~ jiggy2011 Question is, what % of users have the unity plugin installed? I think it's quite neat that unity let's you embed your game into a web page but I often wonder how many users change their minds once posed with the requirement of a plugin install since this is exactly the kind of thing that IT savvy people advise their less technical friends not to do! ------ bo_Olean _If we choose to make a website pixel-perfect in Internet Explorer 6 to 8, then we are doing up to 100% more work._ Every clients/users should check this once : <http://www.ie6countdown.com> ~~~ JoshTriplett As much as I like that site, I can't link people to it because as a Microsoft site it just wants to move people to newer versions of IE, rather than to a decent browser. (Any decent browser, really; I don't care which, just not IE.) ------ iamben We tried to drop IE6 support for an ecommerce client recently. But looking at analytics, IE6 customers are still doing 5 figures a month in revenue. The client just can't risk the potential lack of conversion in a site with a 'graceful degradation'. The testing that's gone into making it convert as it has must apply across all the major browsers from which they get traffic. Shame, it's a complete pig to develop for. edit: They must look and behave more or less the same. Personally I have no qualms about the IE users not seeing rounded corners on some boxes. As long as they're in the same place and the same colour, etc. ------ joshuacc Previously submitted here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3192237> What I find curious is that the de-duper apparently doesn't check for case differences in the URL encoded characters. [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/03/%E2%80%9Cbut- the-...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/03/%E2%80%9Cbut-the-client- wants-ie-6-support%E2%80%9D/) [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/03/%e2%80%9cbut- the-...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/03/%e2%80%9cbut-the-client- wants-ie-6-support%e2%80%9d/) ------ pacomerh I don't offer IE6 support, offering IE6 support keeps the browser alive, and it has to be killed collectively. I'm guessing that an example of a client that would ask for IE6 support would be Car Mechanic shops that have CRT monitors and super old computers. And probably a corporation that can't upgrade all people at once and their secretaries don't know what a browser is. ------ libria It's interesting that despite all the investment that Google is making in Plus and their desire for a foothold in this market, they flat out refuse IE6: <http://i.imgur.com/ONRK4.png> ~~~ mixmastamyk Good for them. There is a trade off to be made, better/quicker features delivered at the expense of supporting an obsolete browser. ------ moreorless Isn't this just like about anything else? There are still plenty of people who use VCR's. There is still good money to make for people who are willing to support older technology. If you don't do it, someone else will. ~~~ shinratdr Except we stopped making new standalone VCRs years ago, and new movies haven't been published on tape for years as well. The interesting part of the IE6 debacle isn't the fact that a legacy program is sticking around longer than we had hoped, it's how ridiculously strong the longevity of it is. Most likely IE6 marketshare will stay in the double digits in many countries long after the world has completely forgotten about VCRs. ------ digamber_kamat If any client demands IE6.0 support then I demand 100% more. the reason is not just that involves near 100% more work but also the skills required to do that job will be worthless in future. ~~~ Tyrannosaurs That's not unreasonable but the key thing is to break that out in the quote. They need to understand what that support is costing them to allow them to make the choice as to how much they need it. ------ chacham15 Maybe I'm missing something, but recently there has been a lot of work in graceful degradation. Such examples include Modernizr (based upon yep-nope) which allow detection of features and asynchronous loading of polyfils for missing functionality. Missing css3 support for IE6-8 comes in a 10 second fix called CSS3PIE. To use it you add 1 css line to apply the htc to the necessary classes (or all with the * selector) and there you have curved corners in IE6-8 with no additional work. ------ mcantor Somehow I had managed to completely miss the term "polyfill" until just now. Handy! ------ gte910h IE6 Support is currently handled here via a second, reduced functionality site as a standard practice (and charge accordingly). ------ snorkel IE6 support can be made reasonable for most apps as long the client understands that the IE6 support will be usable, decent looking, but not 100% the same look and experience as with more modern browsers. You just need to explain to the client that they don't want to blow their budget wrestling with nit picky white space inconsistencies. ------ docgnome "Even if they don’t care about accessibility, my responsibility is to make the website somewhat accessible." I'm unclear on who the legal requirements for accessibility fall on exactly so I may not understand properly... but I'd think this is a legal requirement to make your website accessible (at least in the US under Section... 508?) ~~~ Isofarro Section 508 only applies to US government organisations and businesses/agencies providing services to those government organisations. US legal requirements for public sites are probably covered in ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), under the provision of reasonable accommodations. So far legal rulings are varied and vague, swinging one way then the other about whether ADA applies to websites (despite a DOJ opinion that they do/should). Some states have their own legislation, like California's Unruh Civil Rights Act which was used against Amazon (Target settled and agreed to make their website accessible). ------ j45 Fight opinion with facts. Ask your customers if they got IE6 support as advice from someone. Show how many people use it now and what that sliver of IE6 users now see with gracefully deprecating css libraries. ------ njharman "Do what the client needs, not what they want." Great advice I got once. ~~~ Isofarro In the context of IE6 what's best for the client is the one that best serves their business objectives in regard to their customers. If their target market contains a significant-enough element that uses IE6 then what's best for the client is a website that supports those business objectives with that customer. ------ Tloewald Then use chrome frame ;-) ------ WayneDB "We have a responsibility to ourselves and to the Web to follow the principle of universality." Not feeling that at all, so speak for yourself. If I want to target a specific browser or device, I do it when it makes sense. Screw universality. The users install what I tell them to or they don't get the privilege of using my site or product. (Do you think Steve Jobs would disagree?) ~~~ SoftwareMaven Given how much he trumpeted HTML5 and the nixing of Flash from its, yes, I think he would disagree seriously. People begged Apple for the ability to create real apps. The original plan was to build HTML apps, but comparing a web app to a native app was no comparison at all (and it still isn't; I hate almost all web view"apps").	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How to Retire On $500 Per Month - mhb http://jetsetcitizen.com/cheap-travel/can-you-retire-on-500-per-month/ ====== grandalf A better title would be "How to leverage your income far more effectively". How much money do most of us flush on rent, cars, overpriced houses, and other things. If you add it up over 10-15 years the opportunity cost of living in the US is over $1M for most people. All that so that we can eat a horrible western diet, watch cable news, and work for prestigious firms in hopes of retiring at 70. ~~~ nostrademons > If you add it up over 10-15 years the opportunity cost of living in the US > is over $1M for most people. And you get the opportunity of living in the U.S. I certainly think this is worth >$1M over a lifetime. I _like_ living in the U.S. I like having a car, and the associated freedom to take a day trip anywhere in the Bay Area. I like living in a suburban neighborhood where's there's trees and greenery, and yet stores, restaurants, and other conveniences are all nearby. I like being able to work on exactly the same stuff I do for fun and yet get paid for it. I like that I'm surrounded by some of the best & brightest immigrants from around the world in my job. I like my "horrible western diet", which basically consists of being able to eat whatever variety of food I feel like. I can have Mexican for lunch, fresh fish for dinner, Belgian waffles for breakfast the next day, Indian food for lunch, and Chinese for dinner. Is there any other country where you'll get similar variety? Whenever I've visited other countries (notably China, but also Germany/Austria/New Zealand), I've always felt that they were nice places to travel, but I certainly would not want to _live_ there. Well, except New Zealand. I could imagine retiring there, but I'd hate to waste my 20s and 30s there. Happiness is knowing what you want, going for it, and having the courage to say "Nope, I don't think so" when people tell you you ought to want something else. ~~~ fuzzbang You know, you can have a car in other countries as well. In Jakarta you can have a car and driver for less than the cost of a car in the US. Personally, I think everyone should live in a different country for at least one (1) year. You'll gain a lot of perspective on your own country in the process. Just like learning another language teaches you more about your native tongue, so living in another country teach you about your own culture. Combine the two (new language, new country) for a serious eye opening. For example, the Thai language has no words for "yes" or "no". There are no yes/no questions in Thai. Only after being removed from pervasive US media do you recognize how much hollywood movie content is US centric and self-referential. Honestly, if you love living in the US, go live somewhere else in the world for one year. You'll either love the US more, or you'll decide that you enjoy living somewhere else more than you anticipated. Either way, you'll have gained invaluable life experience. ~~~ gjm11 <http://www.into-asia.com/thai_language/phrases/basics.php> lists Thai words for "yes" and "no", and describes other ways of saying yes or no to a question. <http://www.thaifocus.com/phrases.htm> also lists Thai words for "yes" and "no", and inter alia mentions a couple of yes/no questions in Thai. [http://www.peacecorp.gov/wws/multimedia/language/transcripts...](http://www.peacecorp.gov/wws/multimedia/language/transcripts/TH_Thai_Language_Lessons.pdf) seems to indicate that Thai even has a special word whose presence in a sentence indicates a yes/no question. [http://thailanguagehut.com/blog/blog/thai-question-words- so-...](http://thailanguagehut.com/blog/blog/thai-question-words-so- confusing/) has many, many examples of yes/no questions in Thai, and shows how to answer them. What is the basis for your claim that "there are no yes/no questions in Thai"? (It does seem that binary questions aren't treated the same way in Thai as they are in English -- the conventions for how you say yes and no are different in different cases -- but it doesn't look at all as if there are "no yes/no questions". For that matter, even in English there are some binary questions to which "yes" and "no" would be peculiar answers. For instance, questions that implicitly make an offer ("Would you like one of these?") usually have to be answered more politely.) ~~~ fuzzbang Actually, I speak fluent Thai, there is no word for Yes or No. There is ไม่ which is a negation word, and ใช่ which basically means "correct"/"right", not "yes". The Thai question format is generally: Q: Hungry? หิวไหม A: Not hungry. ไม่หิว A: Hungry. หิว There are other question indicator words, but the one you're referring to is for "correct or not" type questions, e.g. Q: This road, right? สอยนี้ใช่ไหม A: Right. ใช่ A: Not right. ไม่ใช่ Alternatively, for a lot of statements you can just respond with the polite ending words, ครับ for men and ค่ะ for women. The question, "would you like one of these?" in Thai would be, "เอาไหม่"... literally, "want?". The correct response is then either: ไม่เอาครับ or, เอาครับ ... that is the polite form for "do not want", or "want". There is no other way to respond to that question (except without the polite ending). ~~~ gjm11 Those things you describe are all yes/no questions, so it is not true that there are no yes/no questions in Thai. And what you've described are ways to give (for particular classes of question) answers that mean just the same as "yes" or "no" would for the corresponding questions in English. It's interesting that English has a category (call it "standard binary questions, answerable with yes or no") that doesn't correspond exactly to anything in Thai. But from what you've said it seems entirely wrong to describe that situation by saying that Thai has no yes/no questions. ------ jrnkntl I am living in Bangkok right now at €500 (euro, ok) a month and before I clicked this I was wondering if it would mention Asia. You won't believe how many 'old western people' actually live here in Thailand (mostly the coast areas) or Indonesia for that matter. ~~~ kqr2 What do you do for healthcare? Do you have insurance or pay out of pocket? ~~~ thomaspaine Health care is ridiculously cheap in Thailand compared to the US. A hospital visit a little outside of Bangkok cost me about 1500 baht ($40), including medication. It was a simple out-patient procedure, but I'm sure it would have been several hundred dollars if I had to pay out of pocket for the same procedure in the US. Also, prescription medications are fairly cheap and you generally don't need a prescription. I got my allergy medication for $20, which is normally about $60 here if you don't have insurance. ~~~ stcredzero The above shows how we are being suckered in the US. The requirement of good healthcare in our old age is held over us like a looming axe. The fact that it is so expensive is a subtle form of debt slavery. Personal wealth is basically required of us just to feel safe from dying in squalor. I have also seen, firsthand, the spectre of death by infection being used as a kind of fortuitous (for healthcare companies) euthanasia (read: cost-cutting method) on infirm and elderly ethnic minorities. My girlfriend's father was pushed into hospice care, even though he was not ready to give up. (He'd been metastatic for 11 years.) The hospice nurses had sloppy anti-infection practices. (My girlfriend's an epidemiologist, so she knows what these are professionally.) There was a week's delay from the first symptoms of infection to getting a prescription for antibiotics filled, and by the time the script was filled, he was barely able to stay conscious to take one dose of the pills. Then there was a refusal to give him intravenous antibiotics, because it was against their procedures, so would need a doctor's permission. By that time, it was Friday evening, and the nurse told us we would've had to wait until Monday to get that permission. In the several days it takes us to figure all this out, the nurse is telling us, "He's actively dying," as if it was the cancer! The whole thing feels like the time I found a cat with sepsis in its head, took it to the vet, then let them talk me into having them euthanize it. It knew something was up. Started yowling when we made the decision. The saccharine talk from the caregivers was the same -- purporting to be in the patient's best interest when it was really about money. Then, there's the matter of my grandma, who was an Alzheimer's patient at the end of her life. She also died of an infection. As a youth, she was a waif, a socialite beauty of pre WWII Seoul, and even in her 70s, she was still waifish. She died fat, overfed by redneck nursing home nurses who didn't bother to prevent her bedsores. At first, my family tried to care for her in the home, but she needed to be supervised all the time. She kept on putting water on to boil, then wandering off. My dad's a doctor, a local healthcare insider, and for awhile she got better care because of his attention. He'd visit her every day and make corrections to her care constantly. But you can't keep that up. A week of inattention, and he gets a call that she's dying of an infection with the suggestion that, "it's just better to let her go." I only find out about this years later, when I am desperately calling my dad for advice about my girlfriend's dad and his infection. I grew up in a small town, and my parents once mentioned there were people muttering about my grandmother getting benefits, because she was a foreigner, despite the fact that my dad was living locally and paying taxes in a high bracket for over 30 years. More anecdotes, but not infection related: Another friend of mine, born in England, just over 60, a vigorous woman who volunteered with a local fire department and ran an arts organization full time -- she had to pony up over $10,000 to get attention for a treatable ailment that was going to leave her blind. Apparently it wasn't covered. She'd just gotten her US citizenship two years ago, a day we celebrated, but the whole experience with US healthcare upset her, and for awhile she was talking about leaving and moving back to England. Yet another friend of mine, a young woman of 25, fell from an atrium balcony. She came from a poor family, but she was basically a saint minus 3 miracles. Her family kept her on a respirator for a week, then let the doctors talk them into pulling the plug. Her loss still haunts me. The whole church was _full_ of people from all walks of life she'd touched. The diversity of people she knew was amazing, and no one was there out of mere politeness. There were also 6 monks there who she sometimes worked with, also in tears. I thought the priest was going to deliver a dry, canned eulogy, but he even got choked up. I suspect if the US didn't have crappy healthcare, that wonderful woman would be in a wheelchair but still with us. ~~~ nazgulnarsil telcos and healthcare are two heavily regulated industries with artificially high barriers to entry in the US. thus the providers jack costs WAY up because they can. We're too dumb to put up a fuss. the average person's response? we need _more_ regulation. yeah, make it impossible for startups to compete in the industry, that'll drive prices down. ~~~ stcredzero How do we encourage healthcare startups? At one point in time, the HMO pioneer Group Health was a startup of a sort. One _never_ hears about someone going bankrupt from paying for medical care in Japan. They have a _lot_ of regulations on what you can charge for health care. ~~~ nazgulnarsil by allowing people to make whatever contracts they want with their doctors instead of state mandated contracts. ~~~ sokoloff Do you feel like either of these are true: 1\. You are currently barred by the state from doing this. 2\. Your negotiating power as an individual is greater than that of the private insurance companies who are already doing this? You can complain all you like about the cost of healthcare, but I think it's economics not legislation that is preventing you from getting a better rate. ~~~ yummyfajitas Concerning 1), many useful practices which would lower cost are barred by the state. Some states (e.g. NY) ban catastrophic-only health insurance. All states ban me from self-medicating (which is actually not very hard to do for simple illnesses). I'm also barred from buying lab tests without first paying a doctor for permission. Women are required to pay a doctor for permission to buy birth control. I'm banned from visiting someone with less training than a doctor to receive treatment for simple ailments. Of course, I'll be the first to admit that Baumol's cost disease plays an important role too, as well as higher costs for newer treatments. ~~~ nazgulnarsil I forgot entirely about self medication for simple ailments. I had to get penicillin on the down low when I contracted scarlet fever. ~~~ yummyfajitas The easy problems in medicine are vastly easier than programming. You don't need a doctor to solve them for you, all you need is his permission to implement the well known solution. If you have an Iranian girlfriend, all you need is for her to smuggle you bootleg medicine when she visits her family. That's what I did. (Yes, Iran has more medical freedom than the us.) ------ theoneill I would be more convinced by someone writing about how they'd done this than how they planned to. ~~~ gexla I do it. My base expenses are less than $500 / month in the Philippines. 10,000 furnished apartment. ~5,000 food ~2,500 visa ~1,300 internet ~1,200 electricity Total: 20,000 / 47.5 = $421 I'm probably forgetting some things. There are misc expenses which would bring me up to the $500. That's not to say I actually live here for that though. Those are my actual expenses and I can get by with just those but I choose to have a little more fun. Beer is really cheap here but it adds up if you go out a lot. A 1/4 lb McD's meal is 135 pesos, so your expenses go up if you eat out a lot. You can nearly cut that rent fee in half if you go for an unfurnished apartment but you have to pay more initially to put in your own furnishing. You won't be traveling on a budget that low but you have to leave the country once every 16 months (I think) for a visa run if you are on a tourist visa. Another big one is taxes. So if you are running your own business then you have to make $500 / month after taxes. I would say that $750 is a pretty decent figure for a single person not living high on the hog. As the article mentions, for $4,000 / month you can live like a king. Anything I'm forgetting? ETA: This is for Dumaguete in the Philippines. Cebu is more expensive and Manila is more expensive than Cebu. ETA2: I didn't add local travel expenses because if you stay in Dumaguete for a decent amount of time you might as well buy a motorcycle for around PHP 40,000. Gas is cheap because you don't use much. Dumaguete has banned taxis so your only option is a trike which typically costs a total of PHP 60 to go downtown and back. ~~~ asmosoinio /You won't be traveling on a budget that low but you have to leave the country once every 16 months (I think) for a visa run if you are on a tourist visa./ I have a different experience: I am from Finland. Tourist visa when entering the Philippines is valid for only 3 weeks, after which it can be extended for 1 month, and after that for 2 months. The 2 month extension costs 4700 PHP. Might be different for other nationalities but Finns usually get quite good deals on visas. ~~~ gexla Same with U.S. residents. But the cost of the visa seems to be different every time I get one. I just budget around $40 - $50 / month for it. You can extend for 16 months I believe, but you can actually extend through Manila for up to 24 months. Again, not totally sure about that as I haven't been here long enough to worry about it (going on my 7th month) but that is what I have been told. Also, things change all the time. ------ mariana The funny thing to me about this article is I am already living in a country where you can live reasonably well with 500$/mo (I born and live in Venezuela). But you know what? This cheap third world country is a big piece of shit because of its political situation (Chavez). So, from my point of view, I am just planning how to leave my country. But move to another third world country?? No way man... I would prefer to live in a expensive first world country and work as developer/codemonkey/entrepreneur/whatever. So, if you choose to "retire" to a cheap third world country, check its political situation and background. Now, if you just don't care to be rescued by UN blue helmets when shit hits the fan, just be my guest... ------ Dilpil How exactly does one make six percent a month from safe investments? ~~~ patio11 _six percent a month_ Six percent annually. That said, it is a fantasy, unless you intend on your retirement getting cut short by death prior to you exhausting your money. The standard recommendation for someone who is much older (i.e. can rely on death to moot insolvency with greater probability) is that the safe withdraw rate is 4%. With a withdraw rate of 4% and a standard mix of stocks and bonds you can be fairly confident that, assuming the future looks something like the past, you will not run out of money within your lifetime. (Most people will in fact see their money "go infinite", i.e. their portfolio expands faster than their withdraw rate and when they eventually pass away their heirs and government get to toast their name quite a bit. However, the prudent investor doesn't plan on being "most people", they plan on being the unlucky sod who bought at the top and sold at the bottom.) ~~~ pfedor And let's not overlook that it's 4% before taxes. So in reality, closer to 3% ~~~ nazgulnarsil capital gains aren't taxed @ 25%. ------ ibsulon wait... live comfortably on 2,000 a month, and live on 4,000 a month as a king? Heck, I live on around 3,000 a month (after fairly aggressive savings by American standards) in a middle sized city and it's very comfortable. I could live comfortably on 2,000 a month if I wasn't working! (That's for one, mind you.) ~~~ fuzzbang Well, 4k USD per month is ~130k THB. The purchasing power of the Baht means that that is about equivalent to ~10k USD. (As an example, a can of Coke costs 12 THB in a 7/11). 130k will buy you a lot of luxury in Thailand. You can get a very good condo for 30k per month. You can each out for every meal of every day for about 1.5k per diem, so 45k for food. That still leaves 55k for spending on going out, buying clothes, utilities, gadgets, etc. etc. That is more than "comfortable". Even 70k per month is more than enough for a very comfortable lifestyle. Local food costs < 100 THB per meal, so you could eat for less than 300 THB per day. A reasonable condo is only 20k if you're willing to live away from the tourist areas. ------ msluyter I'm curious about safety. I know this is probably an exaggeration based on too much media exposure, but my impression is that some of these places have high rates of kidnapping and the like. And it seems that if you were a westerner, especially if you were old, you'd stand out as a target. ------ fuzzbang It seems like there is a lot of BKK based people here. Anyone want to meet up for a beer? jim.farang gmail.com ------ eleitl > and you made 6% annually from safe investments 6% and "safe" these days does not sound doable. ------ socratees Why would you want to live in a place with a lesser standard of living than US? ~~~ lionhearted Standard of living isn't everything. One of the best times of my life was in China, lifting weights, hiking up mountains, spending nights in temples, drinking tea, and meeting local people some of whom had never seen a white person before. If you've never spent 3+ weeks in a country that's very different economically/socially than your own, I'd recommend it. You might like it, might not. I've had mixed experiences with different countries. I quite enjoyed China and Malaysia, Eastern Europe not so much. But we all have different tastes - there's a meme in the USA that it's the "greatest country in the world" - I reject the notion that there _is_ a greatest country in the world. Just different places for different people at different times in their lives. ~~~ fluffster _there's a meme in the USA that it's the "greatest country in the world"_ There's the same meme in India, and perhaps in other countries too. It is a bit silly to think like that, especially when most people haven't really travelled to many countries. I used to think the same but once I started travelling my views changed. Definitely worth a try.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Donnfelker/android-bootstrap · GitHub - Kittynana https://github.com/donnfelker/android-bootstrap ====== Kittynana This basically wraps a bunch of useful libraries for android.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN/PG: Leaderboard acting strange? - johns This morning I was about 100 short of the leaderboard and made two submissions that got me about 60 points. A minute ago I was 95th and the 100th spot was at 3900 but now I'm 98th with the last spot at 4072. Any idea what's up with the fluctuating numbers? ====== pg I just restarted the server. Users are lazily loaded, so the leaderboard will look odd for a brief period after a restart. ~~~ ivankirigin The 'submitted' link on the profile basically doesn't work <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pg> <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ivankirigin> I suppose it is related to the lazy loading? ~~~ pg Yes, items are lazily loaded too. Responses to http requests get killed after 30 sec, so if the server has to load too much stuff to satisfy a request, it will die first. It's always been this way. After the server has been running for a bit it stops being a problem. ~~~ ivankirigin Perhaps you should hide features that are likely going to be unavailable if the server recently restarted. No need to send users down a rabbit hole, and certainly no need to waste the cycles on your machine. ~~~ icey Or limit it to far fewer results. I click the submissions link pretty frequently from my own profile as an easy way to check up on conversations on threads I've started. Now I feel kind of bad for doing it that way. ------ lincolnq I'd be interested to see what fraction of the leaderboard users' karma comes from comments vs. stories. ------ bdfh42 And you care bacause? ~~~ johns Pure curiosity of how it works. That's all. I don't really care either way where I rank. ~~~ bdfh42 I believe you...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Best way to do user authentication for web application? - thaweatherman A team of developers and myself are designing a web application and I am in charge of user authentication. I want to provide options such as Facebook Connect and OpenID via Google, Yahoo, etc., but we also need our own authentication method if no one wants to use either of those options. I really really want to avoid password authentication, but if I have to I will do it. Do you think SRP would be a better option, or is there something I am overlooking that would be easier for the user? Thanks ====== ibstudios Maybe let someone else worry about it? [http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/persona/](http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/persona/) [http://janrain.com/](http://janrain.com/) ~~~ thaweatherman Both of these is just signing in with an account from some different site. We want to provide that option, but we want our own option as well for users who don't want to use social media to login ------ gspyrou Take a look at Windows Azure Mobile Services [http://www.windowsazure.com/en- us/develop/mobile/tutorials/g...](http://www.windowsazure.com/en- us/develop/mobile/tutorials/get-started-with-users-html/) ------ bmelton You didn't mention a platform, but if you're using Python or Django, Python- Social-Auth[1] is quite good. It supports a bevy of third-party providers while still allowing for easy local (username/password or email/password) login types as well. [1] - [https://github.com/omab/python-social- auth](https://github.com/omab/python-social-auth) ~~~ thaweatherman Awesome thanks. I might use that in my own applications in the future, but our app uses Angular and Node. Unfortunately I couldn't convince the group to use Django ~~~ bmelton Then you might also check out passportjs[1]. Thanks to Node, it's not as drop- in-ready a solution as Python-Social-Auth, but it covers quite a bit, and third party providers are pretty easy to add. I had troubles with crypt on an older version of Node, but it's almost certainly been resolved by now. [1] - [http://passportjs.org/](http://passportjs.org/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What would you demonstrate to a kid to get him or her excited about programming? - practicalpants I'm going to be spending a bunch of time with my best friend and his 8 y/o, and since I'm already talked about as the "computer guy" (I'm a software guy really), I think it'd be fun to sit down and show the kid how awesome programming can be. An alternate way of phrasing this could be - what gets you super excited about programming, or that you think is just plain cool, that kids might also find fascinating? ====== brudgers _" I think it'd be fun to sit down..."_ I can't think of any way to guarantee getting a child excited about programming. But if I were coming up with a list of places not to start, ideas of what adults think ought to be fun would be on it. So would sitting down. Anyway, I will give making a list of positive stating points a shot. () It is a long term project. The kid has been around computers and knows they make pictures. There's no way to make a miracle moment for an 8 year old. They've seen an iPad. () Focus on the young adult ten years away, not trying to create a HN front page prodigy. () The interesting part of programming, and the part about which we are passionate is not the typing. It is the ideas. () What children love is being taken seriously and learning. The best way to do this is by removing the shiny screen from the equation and having a conversation - give them words to add to their vocabulary and ideas by which to see patterns in the world. () Be present. Throw a ball or kick one and instead of lecturing on technique, talk about what computers can do. Only sit down at a screen if you are asked to demonstrate. It's got to be natural...come to think about it, going for a walk is a good approach. Plans to get a child excited about _x_ are pretty much analogous to the management methods of the PHB. Sharing your passion is great. But it's your passion not the child's. Maybe some of it will rub off and a seed will be planted. But it is a seed. It needs to be given time and space to grow and though it may produce a mighty oaken programmer, the odds are the child will grow to a maple or dogwood or redwood or beanstalk. And the only healthy approach is to go into the relationship being ok with that. ------ pepyn I teach a programming class with ~50 kids, aged 9-15 and we got started using Scratch [1]. It's not quite coding but teaches a lot of important programming concepts, and is really easy and intuitive for kids to use. After we played around a bit with the editor we checked out games that others had made, and the kids were super excited when they realized they could actualy build the games they had played themselves. I'd let him/her play around in Scratch a bit, show some existing projects, and then build a game/project together from their interests (which is roughly what we do in our class). [1][http://scratch.mit.edu](http://scratch.mit.edu) ------ jamesjguthrie I think, if the kid has a phone or a tablet, building a quick and simple app for his device might make him think that programming is cool. Get him involved in the process, build a fart app or similar, getting him to make the noise and record it. ~~~ zachlatta This, without a doubt, is my favorite idea in this thread. Wow the kid with your "magic" powers. ------ gregpilling I downloaded Kodu game labs for my 9 year old. [http://fuse.microsoft.com/projects/kodu](http://fuse.microsoft.com/projects/kodu) He asked me "How do I use it?" I told him that I didn't know, and that he should watch the tutorials. An hour later I came back and he had made a game where all the characters attacked each other automatically. He showed me how he chose the characters responses (if this happens, then do that). I thought it was pretty cool. I still don't know how to use the software, but he has made a bunch of little games. ------ LarryMade2 If there is the time show him/her how to write a fun but simple game or star with something already written that you can explain to them how its written and how they can change the code to make it do other things (changing formulas, variables/graphics, etc.) I got into programming partly learning how to program, but also experimenting by hacking up BASIC games, it was fun to change the rules, and or actions in the game, and energized my desire to learn to write my own. ------ benologist Show him how to make his favorite game, it's probably just Angry Birds or w/e with lots of tutorials available in lots of languages for you to get up to speed and reduce to digestible simplicity, and then discuss the things he would and can now change about it. If that doesn't get him interested he's probably never going to get interested. ~~~ Q4273j3b Yes! Games are great. A fun easy framework for game-making is LÖVE. [https://love2d.org/](https://love2d.org/) You can show the kid some games made using LÖVE ([https://www.love2d.org/wiki/Category:Games](https://www.love2d.org/wiki/Category:Games)), do some of these tutorials ([https://www.love2d.org/wiki/Category:Tutorials](https://www.love2d.org/wiki/Category:Tutorials))... Even if you don't know Lua, it's so easy to pick up ([http://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/lua/](http://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/lua/)). And figuring out a new language with the 8 yr old could be cool too. ------ syath Minecraft with the ComputerCraft mod may get their interest. Programming little robots in LUA to help them build and dig.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Why do uber drivers use iPhones exclusively? - fishcakes Its a very strange natural phenomenon and conventional thinking would expect Uber would have them use androids. ====== seanmccann The Uber kit includes an iPhone 4S and the UberDriver app is an enterprise "in house" app, not available on the app store. My guess is that the original team used iPhones, preferred that platform and it has stuck. Uber likely buys the phones at a big discount (perhaps refurbs). They want a uniform experience and iPhone is probably the way to go for that. ------ YoAdrian Why would "conventional thinking" expect them to use Androids? These are the drivers' personal cars and the drivers' personal phones. That's like saying "conventional thinking would expect Uber would have them all drive a Prius." ~~~ hashtag I don't know whether or not OP is correct in thinking that Uber drivers' use iPhones only, but I know that for the Uber rides I've been on, the drivers certainly have an extra phone that they use for Uber (I assume company issued) in addition to their personal phone. ------ tinkerrr How do you know Uber drivers use iPhones exclusively?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Push notification click-through rates - andrew_null http://andrewchen.co/2014/09/16/new-data-on-push-notification-ctrs-shows-the-best-apps-perform-4x-better-than-the-worst-heres-why-guest-post/ ====== pornel Apps that abuse it for ads have 100% immediate furious uninstall rate with me. ~~~ dale386 Yeah exactly this. If you want to tell me about something that's legitimately important to me, fine. But don't remind me to come play your game or advertise your other products via push. This will result in an immediate uninstall. Zynga games have been banned from my devices for this reason. ~~~ click170 > legitimately important to me Frankly even offering them the leeway to define what is legitimately important to you is too much in my opinion. There will always be companies out there ready to argue 'but you DO legitimately need to know about our important new fubar app!'. I would be interested in a site that collected reviews of the notifications- usage of various apps so that I could check there before downloading. In a perfect world there would be a rating option for this ('Notifications Abuse Rating') but that'll never happen. ------ joeframbach The article misses the fact that the notifications all have a CTA "slide to view" but have no affordance to dismiss. I don't have an iPhone so I don't know how to dismiss those messages without viewing the app. My Android, though, always has slide-to-dismiss and click-to-view. How many of these 40% CTR are from viewers who are frustrated that they can't figure out how to dismiss the message without clicking-through? ~~~ genesee Almost anyone who uses iOS on a daily basis certainly knows how to clear notifications. The lock screen doesn't offer such an option, but the slide- down Notification Center does: [http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/notifica...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/notification- center-ios7.png) ~~~ alexbilbie You can swipe notifications away in iOS8 from the lock screen ------ jfthiigsegbje I wish apple charged for each notification.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What hardware and software would you pick to take your startup to IPO? - reilly3000 Suspend MVP frugality for a moment. What platforms scale best for training people, TCO, security, etc as you grow from 3 people in one office to 350 people in 12 office locations and more remotely?<p>Machines, servers, phones, productivity, groupware, crm?<p>Founders with successful exits, what IT regrets did you have along the way? ====== loumf Product-market fit will solve your IT problems. Twitter had laughable infrastructure relative to its growth -- the butt of daily jokes, and it didn't matter at all. They had money to hire the right people and make the changes they needed to. My advice -- keep it simple. Read [http://highscalability.com](http://highscalability.com) for stories on how others did it -- see YouTube for lessons on simplicity. ~~~ reilly3000 Thanks for feedback! I'm more concerned about employee collaboration (office365 vs google apps vs ???) and hardware (mac vs pc vs chromebook vs ???) at this juncture. ------ saluki You're worrying about the wrong things . . . You'll need to choose all those based on what fits you, your CTO, your dev stack, your team and your culture. Just throwing out some of my preferences . . . mac, digital ocean, grasshopper, trello, google apps . . .	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dynatable.js: HTML5+JSON interactive table plugin - tilt https://github.com/JangoSteve/jquery-dynatable ====== JangoSteve Hey, author here. I've been working on this on and off for a couple years and finally just released it this past week with new documentation. Please let me know what you think and if you have any questions or feedback. ~~~ sriharis Sweet! Looking to angularize it? ~~~ JangoSteve Sure! One of the things I've been trying to do with dynatable is to make it play nicely with other libraries by keeping the internals modular and opening a lot of the internal API to the outside. Someone on Reddit has already opened an issue on Github for Knockout support that I'm working with. If you could open an issue, I'll take a look. ------ edlebert The first thing I usually look for on projects like these is a "Click here for demo" ~~~ emmelaich It's there, scroll down on [http://www.dynatable.com/](http://www.dynatable.com/), which is linked to from the github page. ------ jordanlev Hey, this looks great -- thanks for releasing it. Can you explain the benefits (and drawbacks) of this compared to List.js and/or DataTables.net (if you have any experience with those)?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Haptix Lets You Transform Any Space Into a 3D Multitouch Surface - Cpt_Monac http://mashable.com/2013/08/15/haptix-3d-multitouch-surface/ Edit: The kickstarter available here:http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/haptix/haptix-multitouch-reinvented ====== Cpt_Monac The kickstarter is available here: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/haptix/haptix- multitouch...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/haptix/haptix-multitouch- reinvented)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Corporate vs Startup Programming Jobs - nateguchi Has there been any programmers here that have worked in both a corporate and a startup setting? If so which did you prefer and why? ====== proexploit I think all businesses and startups might differ enough that it's hard to generalize, but here's my experience: Startup: ~ Most people work longer hours by choice ~ Things change fast, both corporate structure and business direction ~ You wear many hats if you want. This was a good thing for me. I could weigh in on product decisions along with doing development and it was more exciting. ~ Everything seems a lot more relaxed. You might not have HR for a while. More taking risks. ~ Usually a bit lower salary, although I think that depends more on how you negotiate. Corporate: ~ There's usually a process for everything. This can be nice when it works for you but is also harder to change. ~ It's harder to make an impact on the business as an individual. ~ Pay is probably a little bit higher. ~ Great perks. ~ Team organization doesn't change as much. Less opportunities for advancement. ------ iends I worked at a 5 person startup (as a developer) right out of grad school. After we lost a very profitable contract (and dissolved) I went to work for IBM (largely because the offer was great). Things are very slow to change here. People who have been at the company 20-50 years are very fixed in their ways. People don't work as hard compared to the startup. I feel like a large part of getting promoted is just being here a long time. People don't do much development "stuff" outside of work, e.g. on my team of UI developers I'm the only one who has touched jQuery, Backbone, or Angular (work just uses Dojo). People don't seem to be hungry here. ------ lewispollard Worked for IBM as a software engineer on one of their master data projects, it was challenging work but ultimately quite dull and very little room for creativity. The workplace was really nice though, a software lab with 2000+ developers, catering, sports fields, a bar etc. Even with all that, it got boring and tedious quickly, and I never felt appreciated or recognised for my work. Now I work for a startup with about 15 employees as a front end developer and it's really great, I have almost complete creative control over what I do, the atmosphere is friendly and inclusive and we have a helter skelter in the office ;) ------ omgmog I've worked for a 6000+ employee company as a "Web Designer" (in a cross- European team) and felt fairly anonymous/unappreciated, now I'm working as the sole "Front-end developer" (in a 7 person Agile team) for a 60~ employee startup and I feel accountable/appreciated. It depends what you're looking for, if you're happy to go to work and not be challenged, or have the majority of the company not know what you do, work in corporate. If you want to be part of a smaller team, be challenged daily and be appreciated, work in a startup.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: The concept of hover on touch devices - mcarter http://mcarter.me/movver/ ====== mcarter I built this in my spare time to solve a problem I was having with pre-loading content behind tappable tiles on a web-app. It's easy to know when a user is hovering over a tile with a mouse, less so when they're on their phone. I'd very much appreciate any tips for improvement or other feedback. :-)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
State Department Announces Great Firewall for the US - mreome https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200805/22310845056/state-department-announces-that-great-firewall-us-blocks-chinese-apps-equipment.shtml ====== justSayin000001 They want to safeguard “America” which basically means the government. If they want to safeguard citizens then we need a firewall that keeps out American agencies, and makes it illegal for companies to sell information to the US government. It should also put the users in control of what data companies can take without consent. ------ gnusty_gnurc Insofar as China is a dystopian nightmare that's paved the way for surveillance and genocide augmented by technology in ways that (from what I've seen) make something like Abu Ghraib seem a mild human rights offense - I'm not super upset about stricter measures against the usage/ubiquity of Chinese technology, infrastructure, etc. That said, we need to safeguard the fundamental freedoms of American society; accessing even dubious telecommunications, etc. should be balanced against the ideal (accepted ontological reality of the American founding) that Americans have "god-given" individual autonomy and freedom. I'm not sure how we reconcile this, but I think freedoms must be treated as inviolable (of course people will always have the ability to violate them). Ideally, the government would advise companies to remove the apps, and American society and companies voluntarily reject Chinese apps, hardware, etc. Rhetoric and persuasion is the best way to respect freedom and individual autonomy yet accomplish stuff like this, imo.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Learning Python – day three. - sahillavingia http://sahillavingia.com/blog/2010/10/20/learning-python-day-three/ ====== kqueue File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/api/datastore_types.py", line 1324, in ValidateProperty prop_validator(name, v) File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/api/datastore_types.py", line 1215, in ValidatePropertyString ValidateStringLength(name, value, max_len=_MAX_STRING_LENGTH) File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/api/datastore_types.py", line 1205, in ValidateStringLength (name, len(value), max_len)) BadValueError: Property content is 1393 bytes long; it must be 500 or less. Consider Text instead, which can store strings of any length. oops ------ catechu Interesting premise! Trying the description itself: "Enter a paragraph of text. We'll run it through our highly sophisticated algorithms* and output a lovely, totally original piece of text." rather amusingly yields: "come in a piece of writing of text. We'll run it done our extremely advanced algorithms* and end product a lovely, wholly unoriginal part of text." As a next step you could encode rules from Strunk & White [Strunk: <http://www.bartleby.com/141/>]. ~~~ lachyg And if you run the result you get "semen in a part of authorship of text. We'll run it through our highly forward-looking algorithms* and end merchandise a lovely, entirely original partially of text." ~~~ RyanMcGreal I like recursion! "seed in a partially of writing of text. We'll run it done our extremely forward-looking algorithms* and end ware a lovely, wholly unoriginal partly of textual matter" ------ ChristianMarks Your original text is: Our personal computers replicate the internal chatter of the mind. The web itself seems designed to prey on human weakness, to encourage wilfing through the Internet and short-term gratification, and to discourage learning and the development of self-control. If we want our machines to help us reach our potential, we have to quiet their computations. We have to teach our machines to meditate. Your reworded text is: Our grammatical category computing machine retroflex the intragroup yak of the mind. The web itself look intentional to quarry on nonhuman weakness, to promote wilfing done the net and short-term gratification, and to deter acquisition and the evolution of self-control. If we privation our simple machine to aid us range our potential, we rich person to restrained their computations. We rich person to Teach our simple machine to meditate. ------ mkr-hn Your original text is: With great power comes great responsibility. Your reworded text is: With outstanding powerfulness semen outstanding responsibility. D: ------ twymer Your original text is: Is this as interesting as it seems? Your reworded text is: Is this as uninteresting as it seems? I guess so. ------ pfeyz perhaps you can integrate a part-of-speech tagger from nltk or montylingua to help it pick the right kind of word. <http://www.nltk.org/> <http://web.media.mit.edu/~hugo/montylingua/> ~~~ viraptor Please don't use montylingua. It's not updated anymore, badly written, author is arguing about software license terms... and it's generally worse than nltk in almost every way. You'll be better off leaving montylingua alone. ------ andyn You should probably escape the HTML in that.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Proper End of the Year on Linux [Gaming] - ekianjo http://boilingsteam.com/a-proper-end-of-the-year-on-linux/. ====== vog Although the article is great, the title should somehow contain the word "game", so it is clear that this is about Linux games. When clicking on the HN entry, I was expecting something like the latest kernel improvements, or a summary of security fixes compared to other OSes, or something like that. BTW, is boilingsteam.com a gamer site that "one should know", or is it merely a marketing platform for Valve? ~~~ ekianjo Good idea, let me edit the entry to make it clearer. As for BoilingSteam, it's not linked to Valve - but the name reflects "Steam" since Steam is very much what has relaunched the interest in Linux Gaming in the recent past and led several developers to support the platform.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Portacle – A Portable Common Lisp Development Environment - wheresvic1 https://portacle.github.io/ ====== flavio81 Portacle is a god send, it basically allows you to directly start development in Common Lisp without having to install separately (and configure): \- SBCL (very fast lisp implementation) \- Quicklisp (lisp package manager) \- ASDF (builder) \- Emacs \- SLIME (Common Lisp mode for Emacs) \- Paredit (allows easier editing of s-expressions) \- and other tools that make CL development a pleasure. The combination of the tools above are effectively a very powerful Common Lisp IDE. ~~~ y03a Do you know if installing Portacle will mess with any existing configurations of those things on Linux? In particular Emacs. I have everything backed up but, since I only plan to play with CL, I don't want the headache if it does. ~~~ Shinmera It should not touch anything outside of its own directory. If it does, then that's a bug and needs to be fixed. ------ Vekz A very interesting trend of pre-packaged Emacs distros happening. Spacemacs and doom-emacs are most commonly known for providing general purpose configurations. Portacle looking as a more focused for a specific use case. I would like to see this applied to other language environments to lower the barrier to entry. Maybe Erlang, Haskell, Racket, Ocaml. ~~~ eadmund > A very interesting trend of pre-packaged Emacs distros happening. Spacemacs > and doom-emacs are most commonly known for providing general purpose > configurations. Portacle looking as a mor Bozhidar Batsov's Prelude[0] is another excellent one. It's got a lot of good pre-selected choices, and almost no bad ones. I can highly recommend it. [0] [https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude](https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude) ~~~ escherize Prelude is extremely good. It's the best way to get up and running with helm, and only the support for langs you care about (thanks to prelude-modules.el). ------ cup-of-tea At first I thought: "I bet this isn't as good as SLIME." Then I thought: "I should really be more open-minded." Then I looked and thought: "Oh." ~~~ phoe-krk Portacle is a standalone bundle of Emacs + SLIME + SBCL + Quicklisp + Git that is meant to be completely self-contained and therefore maximally portable. ~~~ hellofunk Kinda like the old "lisp in a box" package I remember from a few years ago? It was also SBCL and Emacs and Slime all bundled together as a single "program." ~~~ phoe-krk Yes. Portacle is a direct replacement for Lisp-in-a-box and Lispstick. Both are heavily unmaintained and outdated by now where Portacle is under active maintenance. ~~~ aidenn0 Lispstick was semi-maintained by me until portacle came out. Any further efforts I make will be to improve portacle. ------ gkya I didn't test the thing (I have my working setup, but wanted to see what this was about), but one suggestion anyways: the screenshot shows a welcome message where it says roughly "Hit C-h h for help". I'd suggest you mention "C-h t" there too, it should be the first communion of every new Emacs user. ~~~ WalterGR I wonder how many people press C-h t, get to the following: _C-f Forward one character C-n Next line C-b Back one character C-p Previous line _ ...and close Emacs, never to open it again. The tutorial goes on to say: _When you get used to these keys, they 're faster than their more familiar equivalents in other applications (Home, End, Ctrl+Left, etc.) because you don't have to move your hands from the touch typing position._ That's such ridiculous micro- and premature optimization - especially given that, since Emacs predates modern conventions, almost _nothing_ is natively familiar - that it boggles the mind. ~~~ gkya Those are the keys a usual Emacs users uses maybe hundreds of times in a day. Every laptop I have owned has its arrow keys and Home-PgUp-PgDown-End block in a rather unique place, so even if it's a minor optimisation (it's not), accumulatively it's a very important one. It'd be like replacing a heap allocation with a stack one in a hot function, if that example works like I think it does. ~~~ coldtea > _so even if it 's a minor optimisation (it's not)_ Has it been measured? I mean, if they have actually measured: 1) the speed difference of using those shortcuts vs arrow/page-up and co when merely typing 2) the same speed difference as a percentage of the overall programming process 3) the impact of such speed difference in programmer productivity (speed translated to results faster or better code with fewer bugs). Or it's just cargo cult? ~~~ reaperducer > Or it's just cargo cult? Yes, it is. Like much of the rest of programming. I think it's weird for an IDE to tell me which command keys to use. It should have a set of default keys, and ideally those could be remapped as well. The biggest benefit of directional keys (up, down, home, end, etc...) is that they are universal across keyboards and languages. Control-F may be great if you're on a VT100 terminal, but maybe I'm on an AZERTY keyboard, or one of those funky square keyboards. Or a Chinese keyboard that's largely input by writing characters on a little pad. Or on a Mac using gestures or Ink. Or a dozen other possibilities. If I was only programming in Pascal and only on one computer in one environment for the rest of my life, then it would make sense to learn those keystrokes. But like is more complicated than when those were first coded. ~~~ thaumasiotes > It should have a set of default keys, and ideally those could be remapped as > well. It sounds like you may not be aware that this describes emacs? ------ serpix How is Common Lisp for SPA development? I tried to look for anything on either Racket or CL side and pretty much a dead wasteland on that front. I've used re-frame ClojureScript for a few years now but would like to dip my toes in CL, just can't seem to get a head start. Maybe trying CL on the backend first, but even there Clojure dominates.. ~~~ grovehaw The Potato open source chat platform has a Common Lisp backend and a Clojurescript frontend. There is a fascinating talk by one of the authors on Youtube [0], and the code is on github [1]. A relatively new Web Application Environment called Radiance may also be worth looking at.[2] [0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl8jQ2wRh6k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl8jQ2wRh6k) [1] [https://github.com/cicakhq/potato](https://github.com/cicakhq/potato) [2] [https://shirakumo.github.io/radiance/](https://shirakumo.github.io/radiance/) ~~~ jdormit Why not Clojure on the backend as well? ~~~ lokedhs Because I believe that Common Lisp is a better language than Clojure. I'd be happy to discuss specifically what I believe the most important differences are in case you're curious. Clojurescript was chosen on the client side because its integration with Om was very nice and matched the idea of immutability in Clojure. Now that Om is no longer well supported we have a problem. The client side needs to be rewritten, but none of us have the time to do so. We'll see what happens with the project. This highlights another benefit of Common Lisp. It's very mature and I don't have to worry about the fameworks that I use becoming obsolete after a short period of time. ------ fsloth It's like Visual Studio install for Lisp. I like that the idea of single sane default configuration is promoted over infinite configurability. ------ divs1210 This is great! I'm a Clojure guy who had given up on CL before. Will take it out for a spin for sure! Check out Nightcoders[0] for a similar IDE for Clojure. [0] [http://nightcoders.net](http://nightcoders.net) ------ Y_Y Looks like the project could do with some help making self-contained Linux and OSX packages. Is there a good multi-distro way to do that yet? Ideally one that allows self-modification. ~~~ Shinmera Given that packaging things in a self-contained manner is pretty much all this project does, I'm a bit confused about your comment. Could you elaborate? ~~~ Y_Y Sure. If you look at the main page they go to trouble to explain that you can't separate the executable from its special folder on any of the three platforms. Especially on Mac that's unusual. ~~~ Shinmera That's on purpose, and required, for a variety of reasons. First would be that it cannot be put together into a single executable as it is composed of multiple, separate components, that each rely on a specific structure of the file system being present. This is not something I can control. Second, Portacle is made in such a way that all three platforms can be combined together into a single directory so that it can be run on any system as one, which mandates a shared folder structure. Third, in order to be self-contained, the Portacle installation directory must contain its own configuration and project directories. It makes no sense to allow you to move the executable outside of this, and it would make no sense to put those directories within the .app on, say, mac. ------ billfruit Is there anything like this for clojure, with all its tooling rolled into a self contained package? What about for clojurescript? ~~~ jtanza Clojure For the Brave and True includes an excellent clojure setup for emacs[0] [0] [https://www.braveclojure.com/basic- emacs/](https://www.braveclojure.com/basic-emacs/) ~~~ scroot Every time I've tried to follow the setup tutorial in that book I've not been able to get something basic to work, like the REPL or the flycheck parser. It's prevented me from really diving in to be honest. ~~~ abhirag Probably give Emacs Live ([https://overtone.github.io/emacs- live/](https://overtone.github.io/emacs-live/)) or Spacemacs ([http://spacemacs.org/](http://spacemacs.org/)) with the Clojure layer installed a try. Learning Emacs and Clojure both at the same time can be kinda overwhelming though and if you are just interested in Clojure and not Emacs you should probably just start with Cursive ([https://cursive- ide.com/](https://cursive-ide.com/)) ~~~ scroot I'll try one of those -- might be good to have something separate. I use Emacs as my main editor and there's already a lot added onto it. Thanks for the links. ------ thinline This is nice, thanks for providing it. Is there any intent to allow for Sly to be used instead of Slime (as an option, I mean)? ~~~ Shinmera If you open up an issue we could look into what's required. From what I can tell it shouldn't need much work, just an additional file that configures defaults similar to [https://github.com/portacle/emacsd/blob/master/portacle- slim...](https://github.com/portacle/emacsd/blob/master/portacle-slime.el), and a way to defer the loading of either one until after the user file has had a chance to make its customisations. ------ leanthonyrn Can't wait to get home and try this. Now if we can get this to run in Javascript using WebAssebly that would be a dream come true. Making WebAssembly better for Rust(Common Lisp) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16585315](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16585315) ------ hajile It needs EVIL for us vim users. ~~~ flavio81 >It needs EVIL for us vim users. I guess on the future we could have VPortacle, which would be VIM + SLIMV (Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Vim, the Vim counterpart to SLIME). ~~~ hajile Nah, lisp development tools are much better on emacs and EVIL is a very good vim clone. ------ FractalLP Nicely done just by looking at the site. I'll have to check it out later. ------ agumonkey I remember a few similar things, forgot the names, lispbox or something like that. They were very nicely packaged but were not maintained so I'm happy to see new activity in this domain. ------ shady-lady Just downloaded this a few days ago and it's really cool. Would love to see this all in one for Clojure (incl. self contained standalone emacs) ------ RobertoG Nice. Is there something similar for python? ~~~ CodeArtisan Not emacs but Anaconda is a python distribution with an editor (spyder), a package manager (conda), ... out of the box [https://www.anaconda.com/distribution/](https://www.anaconda.com/distribution/) ------ ngvrnd Really slick. Kudos. ------ rouxz supercool stuff	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Would you pay $3,500 for an Interview Bootcamp? - streakerbee In 3 months you are guaranteed placement into top 30 companies or you get money back. (Google, Facebook, Quora, Palantir, etc)<p>The program lasts for 12 weeks. You need 2 hours per day commitment, everyday.<p>Any takers? ====== nadocrew Why not give it away? People come for the bootcamp and after the 12 weeks you represent them during their job search. The companies will pay you $5-15k, depending on the candidate, as a referral fee. No cost to the participants. ~~~ lsc >The companies will pay you $5-15k, depending on the candidate, as a referral fee. I have tried, and from what I've seen, it is quite difficult to get that sort of a relationship with a company. If you have a recruiting agency that has that sort of relationship with a big company? You can sell your recruiting agency for a lot of money. If you don't have a relationship with the company doing the hiring, you have to go through recruiters who do, and you will get $0-$2500 per referral. I've placed a lot of people at this level. I've gotten $2500 once. The rest of the time? I get a "thank you" (and the person I placed, often, feels they owe me a favor.) ------ hawkice 12 * 7 * 2 = 168 total hours of commitment for a program I know nothing about, except that if you ask me to do something I believe is a waste of time I have to burn five figures in billable hours to ride it out and get the refund or sacrifice the $3,500. I highly recommend you provide details of what precisely you are selling -- you've raised the stakes for all customers, so pitch me that I'll have more success with you than on my own. ~~~ streakerbee >> you ask me to do something I believe is a waste of time You can see the proof for yourself when you burn through the following two books within the three months. a) [http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming- Interviews-Inside...](http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Programming-Interviews- Insiders-Guide/dp/1479274836) b) [http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding- Interview-Programming-...](http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview- Programming-Questions/dp/098478280X) You need to spend 4hrs+ on weekends though. You will get to talk to candidates already working in the top companies and will be working in a group of 20+ highly motivated and intelligent peers. ~~~ Madmallard The work required for passing programming interviews is rote practice of solving problems for which you cannot immediately think of a solution. There's already hundreds of resources available to do this. Top-coder, practice-it, project euler, coding interview books, etc. etc. Teaching negotiation and soft skills are probably more valuable for the general programming population. ------ 8_hours_ago If I were looking for a job, then yes, I would. A signing bonus would easily cover the 3.5k. But why not work with the companies directly as a recruiting agency? Or work with already existing recruiting agencies to train their recruits? There is a lot of money to be made in the recruiting business, you definitely could make much more than 3.5k per hire. ------ arikrak Interesting idea, but I think it will be difficult for you to find people who can actually land jobs at those companies (and need you to help them do it). I though of covering interview questions on my site [http://www.learneroo.com](http://www.learneroo.com) , but I decided for now to focus on general learning (though there's a lot that's relevant for interviews too). ~~~ streakerbee We are betting on the idea that a reasonably smart person would surprise themselves on how far they can get ahead if they can diligently work in a consistent manner. 2 hours per day may not seem much but over the course of 3 months it is pretty effective in hacking the interview process. We will actually call/text the candidate before and after study period is over to ensure focus. Kind of like having a personal trainer for interviews. ------ jgautsch Interesting idea. Would there be any sort of pre-requisites? I could see something like this being pretty successful at private universities (where parents sometimes have more money than their kids have ambition/drive/talent). It would resonate with the same folks who pay big bucks for SAT and ACT prep classes ~~~ streakerbee The only pre-requisite is that the candidate should be reasonably intelligent. Someone who is already working in a big company/school and is putting off preparation for the interviews is ideal. ------ jamilv I'd commit. However an easier model to attract more people is percentage of income (annually or monthly). I seen people work with headhunters before, giving up 1 months salary as the commission to land a job they want and in the end it seems like a win/win situation. Both people are happy. ------ wodenokoto I've seen companies offer similar deals in Denmark. It can't possibly be a new concept in the US, can it? Most often they'll ask for 50%-100% of the first paycheck (hopefully after tax, or else nobody can pay that in Denmark!) ------ aspHax0 If you'd take the $3500 fee after I have the job, I think anyone would do it. I'd even go so far as to say I'd be willing to give you guys 40-50% of my pay for 3 months. ------ thisiswei Sign me up. I'll commit 6-8 hours, how to contact you? ------ rsmaniak Yes definitely ------ jesusmichael guaranteed? right...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How many monitors do you use while coding? - forrestbrazeal Personally, I use two - a big one for my code editor and web browser, and my laptop screen for terminal windows, chat and other stuff. I know a lot of people use three, and some even more, but I find that it's more distracting to work with three monitors than to switch between programs on the same screen. But that's just me. What's your optimal monitor setup, and why? ====== knolan I tried using two 27" iMacs with the older one in target display mode and found it a bit silly when you have virtual desktops (or spaces). Similar experience back when I used Redhat as a postdoc, one was enough for me with a laptop as a second machine for secondary tasks. This seems a common setup for people in my field. However my coding is admittedly pretty simple, mostly scientific tools for data acquisition, processing and visualisation. I'm currently switching from Matlab to Python/scipy and on my iMac and MBP I'm happy with a couple of terminal windows and on the experimental rig taking the data, which runs Win7, I have pycharm docked to half the screen which itself is mounted above an optics bench so I have a nice standing setup. So on total I code across four screens but each on different machines! ------ mnm1 1 40" 4k. I have the option of using my laptop screen and/or another 1440p alongside it. I tried both and find the extra screens a distraction. ------ GrumpyNl I have three screens but the two on the outside are doubles (extra width ) so i use 5. ------ mdip I use one. And most of the time it's the one on my laptop, which is 1080p. I made the choice three years ago to do this _on purpose_. The main reason I started handicapping myself with the single monitor was so that I could write software without the need of my desk/office. I found that when I was working at my desk, I'd need a break at set intervals to get 'unstuck'. While decompressing, I'd often start thinking about whatever problem I was solving and I'd run back down to work on it, all the while wishing I _wasn 't_ in my office. So I started thinking about all of the reasons why I _didn 't_ use my laptop screen. The main ones were (1) I couldn't _see_ as much code on my screen at the same time which made both 'holding the amount of code needed to understand the problem' and 'navigating code to the correct block I was studying' more difficult and (2) when debugging, it was convenient to have the debugger display on one screen and the application on the other. The first was a mostly solvable problem and I ended up solving it by writing a Visual Studio extension that highlighted common code points that I was often looking for (constructors and factory methods). The second was becoming less and less of a concern because I had begun taking unit testing _very_ seriously and this resulted in a desire to 'write a test for it' over 'debug the code to see what went wrong'. Now that I've been doing that for three years, I will _never_ go back. When I was working at home (which I did for a decade), I would just move rooms when I felt 'stuck', allowing me to get a change of scenery, a brief break, and get right back on working without feeling like I need to be 'out of my office'. I can even pack up the laptop and head to a cafe if I feel the need, without feeling like I'm handicapped by the single screen. But the more surprising thing for me was that my coding practices improved. When I feel like I'm having a hard time 'keeping all of that code in short-term memory', I immediately see the lack of multiple monitors as a symptom of the problem with the root cause being 'my code is probably not written ideally'. I refactor for that. But most of the time I end up writing it correctly the first time because I can't put it all up on various monitors to refer to while writing an unnecessarily complex implementation. This directly feeds into the second problem: I find that I very _rarely_ use the capabilities of the debugger. My code is easy to unit test, so I write tests every time for very nearly everything. When I encounter a failure, the design of the application lends itself to identifying the troublesome point and I can write a test to verify the problem (and later, verify the fix).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
EU Copyright Reform – CREATe - gnomewascool https://www.create.ac.uk/policy-responses/eu-copyright-reform/ ====== gnomewascool It's an analysis of the evidence regarding the controversial parts of the EU copyright reforms (link tax etc.).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
IPAS: November 2019 Intel Platform Update (IPU) - based2 https://blogs.intel.com/technology/2019/11/ipas-november-2019-intel-platform-update-ipu/#gs.jw3kdq ====== based2 [https://linuxfr.org/news/automne-saison-chaude-chez- intel](https://linuxfr.org/news/automne-saison-chaude-chez-intel)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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