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Privacy Tools: Encryption against global mass surveillance - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.privacytools.io/
======
tptacek
It's fine if you don't want to use privacy tools run from the US. I wouldn't
use a privacy tool run from the People's Republic of China, for a bunch of
reasons.
But the logic this post uses to make the case against US privacy tools is
specious.
The United States Government didn't ruin Lavabit. Lavabit did that to itself.
Lavabit was a "secure" email system whose servers kept the keys to your email.
There is no safe way to design such a system, and Lavabit didn't even
approximate safety.
Lavabit didn't make this terrible decision to help the DOJ (although they did
help the DOJ, multiple times, before the Snowden case). Rather, they did it
because they wanted users. Building a better security system would mean
prospective users would need to download and install software on their
computer, and nobody wants to do that anymore. Lavabit chose user adoption
over security. We all see what that cost, not just them, but all their users.
So I'd submit that while making it's legit to make political statements by
carefully choosing the country of origin of your privacy tools, your first
priority is to select tools that are _actually secure_. It does you no good to
adopt a crypto tool from Iceland if it's using unauthenticated AES-CBC,
unpadded RSA, or bad elliptic curves --- and there are tools, probably some of
them quite popular, that make these kinds of mistakes.
If you're talking about how a chat tool comes from Switzerland before you're
talking in detail about how its security works, your priorities are out of
whack.
~~~
nickpsecurity
I've called out both Lavabit and jurisdiction-first claims on Schneiers blog
repeatedly with similar points. I totally agree with this comment. That other
companies were actively selling secure messaging or email services that
avoided Lavabit's foolish design just supports it further.
------
JohnStrange
Not choosing US-based hosting providers is sound advice for various reasons,
if not only for the reason that the US has invented crimes that do not exist
in other countries or the sentences for existing crimes are 10 x higher than
anywhere else. (I do not want to defend criminals but some of those "crimes"
also affect people who e.g. write p2p programs or decompilers. You get what I
mean.)
As for the value of encryption to keep governments from snooping -- no way,
that's not going to work ever. Endpoint security is a joke, PC and mobile
phone are insecure on all levels, from applications over OS to firmware and
microcode. And if Snowden's educational slide show leaks have shown anything,
then certainly that the guys at NSA know what they are doing in terms of side-
channel attacks.
Government snooping and privacy decay is a social and political problem and
should primarily be addressed at that level.
~~~
mindslight
> _Government snooping and privacy decay is a social and political problem and
> should primarily be addressed at that level._
Please don't attempt to bolster support for one approach by discouraging
another. There is no "primarily". _None_ of the approaches have worked so far,
so it's premature to say that fewer approaches are necessary.
Personally, I don't see how the NSA (never mind Google) would ever be
politically prevented from most mechanisms of surveillance. To the extent that
political power could be used to categorically end surveillance, it can just
be used to constrain the _application_ of surveillance. We can encourage
people to value privacy, but it's another thing to convince them to completely
dismantle the capabilities against everyone, including say child
pornographers.
But I'll still applaud you for trying.
~~~
chii
A social mechanism can work to prevent privacy invasion. It requires that
societal attitude change. Imagine how big a scandal it would be to have
bribery or corruption in the govt'. If we give these privacy issues the same
weight, then problems can get fixed
~~~
mindslight
My point is you've got to overcome the attraction to "only processed by a
computer or under lawful process".
For example, _NSA surveillance has no direct effects on the average US
citizen_. It is a setup for bad things to happen, has possible political meta-
effects, and is a worrying trend. But if the process is successfully
constrained by law, then to your average person it represents a _capability_
rather than a vulnerability. This has little to do with your average person
not understanding technology, but instead with their feeling safe as part of a
majority.
------
banku_brougham
whenever i turn on my VPN i imagine it was secretly set up as a honeypot by
the NSA. it would be a perfect strategy for them: implement a low-cost, high
quality VPN with great service and bandwidth, from a country with legal
privacy protections. how would anyone find out?
~~~
BurungHantu
"Never trust any company with your privacy, always encrypt." Source:
[https://www.privacytools.io/](https://www.privacytools.io/)
------
unstatusthequo
[https://github.com/jlund/streisand](https://github.com/jlund/streisand)
------
thinkMOAR
Nice list, knew many, but didn't really knew of their 'canary' files.
Though when checking a few i found,
"Statement VPNSecure has not been silenced by legal and or anti-democratic
law. Last updated Thur Jul 30 00:57:30 EDT 2016
If there is no statement, please proceed with caution"
It doesn't state how often/recent it should be updated, its august 2nd now,
did this canary choke in the mine?
~~~
nxzero
Canaries have no legal meaning as far as I know:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary)
Archive of the page your looking at maybe found here:
[https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.vpnsecure.me/files...](https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.vpnsecure.me/files/canary.txt)
(Given the pull date noted by the archive and the date listed in the related
cache of the canary are off in some cases by months, may guess is it is
meaningless that the current canary is off by a few days.)
------
matrixanger
A similar list: [https://prism-break.org](https://prism-break.org)
------
iuguy
IVPN are based in Gibraltar and should be considered to be on the UK list.
While they have separate courts and legal systems, their defence, including
intelligence gathering is run by the UK.
I'd also suggest striking anyone from the 14 eyes off the list too.
------
mk89
All great tools (ghostery is missing, although there is Disconnect), but the
lack of a _great_ search engine like Google _is_ a big deal. I don't use
DuckDuckGo regularly because, although I believe it's a great search engine
that works mostly fine, sometimes the results are somewhat unexpected, and you
need to be fast and focused. The rest is okay, there seems to be a good amount
of email providers, but Search Engines? :(
~~~
keeganjw
DuckDuckGo can still help somewhat here. You can search pretty much anywhere
via DuckDuckGo and it strips out some of your personal data when it redirects
you. It's not perfect but it helps. Also, the bang syntax (i.e. search google
with !g, google images with !gi, wikipedia with !w, etc.) is so damn helpful.
Whenever I'm using a browser without DDG as the default I find it so much
slower to search something.
~~~
mk89
I know, I have used and I still use DuckDuckGo. However, I have found that for
many queries I need, I end up typing continuously "!g query". So, I just don't
see the point. Many of the results are just not relevant - of course, I send
the feedback. It's not a criticism, it's just that in my case I don't want to
open 4-5 tabs, lose focus trying to understand whether the content is relevant
or not, and then use Google.
~~~
keeganjw
To be fair, I pretty much never go to the home page or use their actual search
engine except for unit conversions. It's pretty good at that. I end up
searching everything through !g for regular search results. But I'm constantly
searching other websites via DDG. It's just so much quicker.
------
mhogomchungu
Linux has a bunch of security tools that can be used to encrypt files locally
before they are uploaded to the cloud and cryfs-gui[1] provides a
single,simple to use GUI frontend to a range of fuse based tools that stores
data in encrypted folders.
[1] [http://mhogomchungu.github.io/cryfs-
gui/](http://mhogomchungu.github.io/cryfs-gui/)
------
emblem21
Securely share small files/folders via AES from CLI
6 lines of Bash
[https://github.com/codeotter/sharenow](https://github.com/codeotter/sharenow)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Genghis Khan's success was in due to his ability and willingness to innovate - delancey
http://delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=2905
======
bediger4000
But did he respect intellectual property when innovating? I'm told this is
Very Important. Also, did he have a process? I'm told that's Super Important.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Building Maintainable Software – Free O’Reilly Ebook - ingve
https://www.sig.eu/en/building-maintainable-software/
======
antouank
This is also a great book, from the creator of ESLint, with similar topic
[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920025245.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920025245.do)
.
------
Chris_Newton
I’m all for promoting maintainable code, but unfortunately I’d hesitate to
recommend this book after looking through some of the early material.
For example, the first main chapter is “Write Short Units of Code”, in which
the authors advocate a strict 15 lines per method limit. This sort of argument
is common, but not one that seems to be supported by evidence.
For one thing, arbitrary limits are rarely a good idea in programming. If I
take an 18 line Java function and translate it almost directly into Python,
where it’s only 14 lines because I don’t need a few closing braces, is it
suddenly now more maintainable? That seems unlikely.
More significantly in this particular case, various studies over the years
have _not_ supported the claim that short functions have better error rates,
nor that longer but otherwise reasonable functions have higher error rates; if
anything, the overall body of evidence seems to suggest the opposite
conclusion.[1]
As the book does note itself, the problem with longer functions often isn’t
their length, it’s that they are mixing up multiple responsibilities, which
can’t then be read, tested, or reused separately. A better guideline here
might have been to separate different responsibilities into different
functions, rather than focus on the amount of code required to implement a
specific responsibility cleanly. Of course, this will naturally lead to
shorter functions in a lot of cases, but without the correlation/causation
fallacy.
For similar reasons, I wish they had treated their second substantial example
(the one about the Pacman-style game board) differently. There are a few
maintenance hazards with the original code that perhaps could be improved, and
depending on the rest of the code there might be some useful ways to refactor
that function for ease of reuse. However, the original function wasn’t awful,
and it was reasonably clear what it did and how it worked. I don’t think it is
an improvement to replace that with three functions and a substantial amount
of shared state wrapped in a class. The code is still tightly coupled, so this
offers limited benefits in terms of testing or reuse, and now the reader has
to jump around different parts of almost twice as much code to figure out what
is going on.
To add insult to injury, there is then a horrible section on common objections
that tries to address the criticism that more spread out code may be harder to
read. I imagine my psychologist friends would cringe at the way it appeals
without evidence to probably one of the most misunderstood results in all of
psychology.
I haven’t read the whole book, but the subsequent chapters that I have read do
follow a similar pattern, in particular dismissing potential objections to the
authors’ preferred style with vague arguments that lack either logical
reasoning or citations of hard data. From authors who apparently have CS PhDs
and talk a lot about science and software quality in their biographies, this
lack of rigour is disappointing.
I applaud the authors for trying to raise awareness of an important and often
neglected aspect of programming, but unfortunately this book looks like a
missed opportunity: it’s more _Clean Code_ than _Code Complete_ , strong on
advocacy but light on evidence and with some questionable advice.
[1] For anyone who wants to explore real data in this area, I suggest starting
with the discussion in _Code Complete_ , which helpfully cites several
relevant papers from the relatively early research, and then using Google
Scholar to find more recent material based on what else cites those papers.
~~~
nimnio
"More significantly in this particular case, various studies over the years
have not supported the claim that short functions have better error rates, nor
that longer but otherwise reasonable functions have higher error rates; if
anything, the overall body of evidence seems to suggest the opposite
conclusion."
That's an oversimplification of the research, and misleading. After citing
five studies in Code Complete (including the one that shows an inverse
correlation between errors and function size), McConnell summarizes as
follows:
"That said, if you want to write routines longer than about 200 lines, be
careful. None of the studies that reported decreased cost, decreased error
rates, or both with larger routines distinguished among sizes larger than 200
lines, and you’re bound to run into an upper limit of understandability as you
pass 200 lines of code."
I wouldn't advocate for a strictly short functions either, but the overall
body of evidence definitely does _not_ suggest the opposite conclusion: the
opposite conclusion would be that we should endeavour to write long functions!
Anyhow, nitpicking aside, thanks for providing a quick review of this book.
I'm going to skip it based on your comments.
~~~
Chris_Newton
_That 's an oversimplification of the research, and misleading._
OK, I concede that I simplified there, though I think you’re being a little
harsh. When we’re discussing shorter vs. longer functions today, it seems fair
to say we’re usually considering scales of perhaps 5 lines vs. 25 lines vs.
100 lines. I did write “longer _but otherwise reasonable_ ”, and by the time
we’re talking about 200+ lines in a single function, I expect most of us would
consider most such functions undesirable for reasons other than their length.
_I wouldn 't advocate for a strictly short functions either, but the overall
body of evidence definitely does _not_ suggest the opposite conclusion: the
opposite conclusion would be that we should endeavour to write long
functions!_
Well, some of the evidence does seem to suggest that that might be a better
strategy, within the bounds of common sense and other things being equal.
However, in reality, I don’t think other things _are_ equal most of the time
in programming. Personally, I find criteria like having one responsibility and
clearly describing how it is met more useful for writing good functions than
crude metrics like the number of lines.
Given that there are a lot of correlations between otherwise undesirable
features and function length, we should be wary of assuming causal
relationships in any case. But we surely shouldn’t be advocating the trendy
very-short-functions approach as some obviously superior style when if
anything the balance of evidence is against it.
------
kluck
Great topic and from scanning the table of contents the guidelines are well
chosen. The matter maintainability is discussed far too seldom!
I would like to add that "maintainability" more often than not refers to
maintenance "by someone else other than who wrote the first revision of some
code".
~~~
crististm
Maintainability is not the first topic of discussion when mantra is "build
software to throw away".
We're in an age of consumerism in software. We reinvent large pieces of
software because we don't have a grip on existing ones to be able to repair or
extend them. All the known acronyms including NIH are at work.
~~~
adrianN
I guess it depends on your perspective. I'd argue the exact opposite; we're
entering the age of huge, ancient, yet mission critical codebases that nobody
really understands. Look at any piece of popular business software, eg SAP, or
the software controlling most computer powered machinery, like factories.
It's layers upon layers dating back to the 80s. The systems perform poorly
even on modern machines, and have terrible usability because changing them is
too hard.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google solved Android fragmentation and forgot to tell everybody - jnedum
http://ishouldhaveknownthisbefore.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/google-solved-android-fragmentation-and-forgot-to-tell-everybody/
======
OriginalAT
I chuckled when I got to the bottom of the post and saw the Windows Phone
fighting wedding commercial.
It seemed like every time Google announced something yesterday they mentioned
that it was part of Play Services and would be updated by Google instead of
OEMs. Every time they said that I kept thinking "BRILLIANT"!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Thursday was terrible, but I'm still smiling - rcavezza
http://bobstarted.com/startup-stories/thursday-was-terrible-but-im-still-smiling/
======
snitko
Reading this I was thinking how important it is to be able to run the demo
from any computer, but that's probably not always possible.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If (big if) the world was ending, how would you know? - mooseburger
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/c7wmkq/if_big_if_the_world_was_ending_how_would_you_know/
======
AnimalMuppet
That writer is a kind of a jerk (more in the replies than in the original
post). "I know, you don't, I'm smarter than you, you have to prove that you
follow what I'm talking about (and I'm talking as obscurely as I can) before
you're worthy of me having a real conversation with you." Yeah, spare me; you
aren't so amazingly, uniquely insightful that it's worth it for me to jump
through your hoops.
That said, there's an interesting question in there. If our society were
starting into a technological collapse, what would it look like? And how would
it look different than what our current world looks like?
I'm not sure I buy that this is what's happening. But looking around, I see
enough that might be evidence that I can't rule it out...
~~~
ewl4
Definitely kind of a jerk but I genuinely believe it's a big issue especially
in technology. Technology and science isn't self-improving, we improve
processes because it's passed on throughout generations. The core of software
itself in the past 20 years hasn't really changed much from the 80s. Sure we
have new languages and processes but it's just the same stuff repeated over
again but each time bits are lost.
Basically we wouldn't know that an ongoing collapse is happening but
everything would get slightly shitter and shitter with older legacy processes
being unfixable once they break because none of that knowledge is being passed
down.
Great video on this.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3OCFfDStgM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3OCFfDStgM)
~~~
mooseburger
Nice! You're pretty smart. But you think me being a jerk is somehow relevant
to anything? Hmm. A-.
------
simonblack
Decline (99 times out of a hundred) is so slow and steady that the only way to
discover that it's happening is to compare things NOW with things THEN.
So: Can a single-earner family today buy a house, a car, and send their kids
through a good education system?
Is the US still capable of launching men into space, let alone sending several
at a time to the Moon and back safely?
Can a normal wage-earner still afford several weeks of hospital care?
50 years ago, we would be answering 'Yes' to all three of these questions.
~~~
mooseburger
But the US is Trantor. Trantor is the last place the decline starts to hit.
The decline is already hitting me on Terminus.
~~~
simonblack
Where's a Mule when you need him?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lyft losing as much as $50M a month, president confirms - prostoalex
http://www.siliconbeat.com/2016/07/12/lyft-losing-much-50-million-month-president-confirms/
======
liquidise
What shocks me about both Lyft and Uber's enormous burn rates are that they
suggest the companies are heavily subsidizing their drivers. This subsidy is
in part to spur penetration in new markets (as all marketplace apps must do),
but also suggests that they have reason to believe customers will simply not
pay a rate that makes the business profitable.
Assuming the latter is the case, i'm not sure if they have reason to believe
this will change over time. Instead, it feels like the human drivers are
really just plays to keep the company growing until hypothetical fleets of
automated driving cars. In theory, such a fleet would deliver massive profits,
but those fleets will be enormously expensive to assemble. Even when they are
assembled each company should expect tumultuous legal battles in many areas.
When i try to make all the monkey math work, it doesn't seem to add up. Maybe
i'm not enough of a gambling man, but i really don't understand how the
venture market still supports business models like these.
~~~
niftich
They are absolutely excited about the time when self-driving cars will be
actually here.
But the real play here is to use taxi service as a pretext/generator for
building up an on-demand courier service [1] with superior returns -- and
performance that vastly dwarfs any incumbents.
[1] [https://rush.uber.com/how-it-works](https://rush.uber.com/how-it-works)
EDIT: after the introduction of courier services, picking up passengers serves
as a baseline load [2] (to borrow from electricity distribution terminology)
to keep drivers incentivized to be on the roads, but the real prize will be
the courier tasks.
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load_power_plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load_power_plant)
~~~
jahnu
I'm probably in the minority here but I'm not convinced we are particularly
close to real self-driving cars. It's definitely possible but I strongly
suspect there are more challenges ahead than most people believe.
~~~
puranjay
I feel that the hype for self-driving cars is the same as it was for VR in the
90s
We had to wait another 15-20 years for those feverished VR dreams to become a
reality
I reckon it'll be the same for self-driving. We are 20-25 years away, not 5-10
~~~
Noseshine
In addition, only a few days (one or two weeks) ago we had a much commented
story linked here on HN that VR is way too hyped. Supprted by quotes from
actual executives and/or investors in that business if I recall correctly, so
not just the usual negativism that can always be found for any topic if you
choose your source well.
~~~
puranjay
I don't think VR will ever be mainstream unless hardware costs come down
drastically and they can figure out a way to make VR headsets look less dorky
------
ejcx
This might be a dumb question. How does that compare to Uber? I see Uber has
been raising like a billion dollars every month I'm guessing their spending is
a lot higher (especially having something ridiculous like 5000 non-driver
employees).
~~~
Noseshine
I just googled "uber financials" and here is one link:
[http://uk.businessinsider.com/uber-financials-
for-2014-and-2...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/uber-financials-
for-2014-and-2015-2016-1)
This one might be relevant too:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2016/06/02/uber-
is-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2016/06/02/uber-is-breaking-
all-the-rules-in-its-25-billion-arms-race/)
\-----
EDIT: This is ridiculous. Why am I getting downvoted? I think the linked sites
clearly answer the question of the parent as well as is possible. If it's
about the "I googled" I was merely trying to show what search I used in case
the reader has a better idea for a search string that results in better links.
Some people here IMHO show ridiculous voting behavior. I made a serious effort
at trying to answer the question - with a very usable result IMHO.
------
yladiz
I'm somewhat more optimistic that Lyft will fare better in certain cities than
Uber because they seem more willing to work with governments and seem like
less of a "bully" (although they did act the same as Uber in Austin
recently...), but they also seem to wait until Uber goes into a city and kind
of lets them take the brunt of the assault in the hopes that they will fare
better.
However, hearing that they're losing up to 50MM per month is quite
disconcerting, and it makes me wonder how much time they have and if they will
break even. Even at a large valuation ($25 billion if I remember right?) they
seemingly can't continue at such a loss without a drastic change to their
business model or continuous large outside investment. I think one of better
things they could do is really use their positive PR as a strong advantage,
because they don't have major blunders like Uber (e.g. Uber gets $3 billion
investment from Saudi Arabian investment fund and adds one of their managers
as a board member).
~~~
dawnerd
I've been seeing nothing but ads around here for 50 dollars free and I know
some people that have been taking advantage of it. Maybe they should scale
that back.
~~~
stephengillie
Could they be giving away 1 million of these a month?
~~~
yladiz
It's probably a combination of those $50 free ride deals, which are likely
only available in specific markets, and the loss from having semi low cost
rides, as well as heavy marketing.
------
tastynacho
Can someone please explain how its possible to lose that much money? What
exactly does that 50M constitute?
~~~
tedmiston
1\. Giving generous discounts to get people to establish the habit of Lyft-ing
regularly.
2\. Subsidizing the cost of rides with VC money. For example, paying the
driver more than the customer is charged for a normal ride. Also, I'm not sure
if it's still this way but at one point Lyft Line in SF was a flat rate ~$5
even for long distances.
Tune the discount percentages to arrive at the maximum "losable" amount.
~~~
abrkn
It's working on me. I can't remember when or why I switched from Uber to Lyft.
Maybe it's the capped Lyft Line prices they used to have, or perhaps the
billboards. It's certainly not the fist bumps.
------
cft
Today marks the _fifth_ $50 subsidy that I got from Lyft in the last 12
months.
~~~
cuchoi
How did you manage to get that?
------
kin
It's kind of crazy that they lose so much money just so people could start
using Lyft but as soon as they can't afford to do that anymore Uber is just
going to capitalize. Unless there's some sort of Loyalty program (like
airlines) I'm just going to go with whichever is cheaper at the very moment
I'm interested in getting a ride. If one has Surge then I switch and vice
versa.
------
youngButEager
$50 million burn rate per month? Time to go public!
That president broke a cardinal rule of VC-backed startups -- never reveal
your numbers. Although some do, admittedly.
But at that rate of burn, it's pretty surprising he got approval to disclose
that. If I'm an LP -- looking at the #2 in the space -- and they're treading
water against #1 while losing $50M a month -- I'd rather check out the #1 in
the space.
Although Uber's burn rate is also quite high -- losing $1 billion dollars in
China alone: [http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/19/technology/uber-
losing-1-bil...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/19/technology/uber-
losing-1-billion-china/index.html)
~~~
tedmiston
Their burn rate is probably even higher than $50MM: presumably they are making
_some_ money.
Also, remember they've raised $2B [0].
If that is the burn rate, it's 40 months ~= 3.3 years of runway with
everything else constant (admittedly a bad assumption). That's a lot more
runway than most startups have. I'd suspect they have multiple alternative
burn rates paths to go down that are more/less conservative with burn rate,
like a 5- or 10-year runway before being profitable.
[0]:
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lyft](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lyft)
------
dotcoma
I thought 50 a week. 50 a month is "almost profitable" ;-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Andreessen Horowitz Backs SkySafe, Which Wirelessly Grounds Your Drone - cpeterso
http://recode.net/2016/04/20/skysafe-uses-a-wireless-signal-to-take-down-drones/
======
viperscape
So this might not work with totally custom drones, and that's a huge market in
done world. They'd have to continually track and build a database of new
controllers as they come out. Unless they plan on just saturating the 2.4ghz
air waves, is that legal? Any ways, seems kinda unsafe to see the drone fall
in disabled mode. Hopefully no one is near by
~~~
god_bless_texas
Yep I was coming here to post something similar. I imagine they are further
along than I am assuming. Or maybe they are OK with only being able to protect
against a certain percentage of drones out there.
~~~
rasz_pl
They probably count on clients being clueless or not caring. 'we stop 99% of
drones out there by sales volume' might by enough for the same people that buy
application firewalls and antivirus software pretending its a sound security
strategy.
------
snsr
I'm curious about the legalities of a product like this, FCC and otherwise.
~~~
NickNameNick
It does seem to run straight into the 'harmful interference' part of part 15.
I've seen people in previous discussions (mostly around the 'rogue ap
containment' feature of some wireless access points) try to argue that only
'dumb' broadband jammers fall afoul of the limitations on jammers, and that
'smart' or protocol aware jammers wouldn't. I don't agree, and based on the
ruling against the conference centre that was abusing the AP containment
feature of their wifi AP's to block other peoples wifi signals, I'm guessing
that the FCC doesn't think so either.
------
HoopleHead
So. What if you disable a drone and it hits someone as it falls?
~~~
falcolas
This is my thought as well. Not all drones (I hate that term, but that ship
has sailed) have return to home or even fail safe operations.
Imagine, for a moment, someone triggering this while there's a quad racing
event going on. All of a sudden, you have between 3 and 5 unguided projectiles
following unpredictable paths, usually with spectators present. All of them
are also carrying a fairly nasty incendiary device (also known to laymen as a
battery), which reacts poorly to being crashed.
Or a fly-in, where not only the quads, but all RC aircraft are affected. Some
of those move at well over 100mph, and are filled with jet fuel.
------
datalord
These guys have something similar:
[http://www.department13.com/](http://www.department13.com/)
Existing military contracts. Probably similar tech.
~~~
mrpants1
I think one difference though is D13 can take control of the drone, fly it
somewhere, and land it.
------
Klasiaster
Any details on what they are emitting to disable the drone?
~~~
headShrinker
My guess is it's a 2.4Ghz narrow beam jammer. It would likely have little
effect on say a 400Mhz receiver. Not to mention it is reliant on a predicable
failsafe. What if the failsafe is 100% throttle. It would be pretty easy to
make this device useless.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook - Broadcasting live video to millions - s4chin
https://code.facebook.com/posts/1653074404941839/under-the-hood-broadcasting-live-video-to-millions/
======
carterh062
I'm curious why Facebook was willing to sacrifice delivering adaptive stream
to get better latency. I guess they explain that for "Live for People," it
makes more sense to have less latency through RTMP, as opposed to possibly
worse video or connection. However, I know Periscope is using HLS for all of
their stream, save for Android where it looks like RTSP.
Anyone have any thoughts or insights on Facebook's decision to use RTMP as
opposed to HLS?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MailChimp now free up to 2000 subscribers - bjonathan
http://mailchimp.com/pricing/
======
lukestevens
Probably worth relinking their excellent blog post "Going Freemium: One Year
Later" <http://blog.mailchimp.com/going-freemium-one-year-later/>
Their 'reverse freemium' approach is really interesting -- rather than de-
emphasising the free and focusing on the [pre]mium side of their biz, they've
been slowly expanding their free options and growing rapidly -- in terms of
profit -- because of it.
~~~
zacharycohn
I think the major difference here is that it's easy to have to migrate from
free to paid. If your site/newsletter starts doing well, you hit a point where
you HAVE to start paying them.
~~~
petercooper
Yeah, and you're usually glad to as well :-) I have 8500 subscribers on my
account so far and it's $75/mo well spent.
(But boy, do they ratchet the tiers up fast. Once I tip over 10k subscribers,
it leaps up to $150/mo! A few more intermediate tiers please, MailChimp..
otherwise my 10,000th subscriber will cost me $75/mo alone ;-))
------
tapz
"No Credit Card Required. No Contracts." Thanks. A lot. \- a teenager
~~~
DenisM
I wonder, can't you buy a anonymous credit card from a department store?
~~~
showerst
That's not terribly common in the US. It's possible to buy VISA or AMEX gift
cards in some stores, but the markup tends to be significant (10%+).
------
marcusEting
Extensive list of e-mail marketing services, free and paid:
<http://techblog.willshouse.com/?p=522>
(Constant Contact, iContact, Vertical Response, StreamSend, and many more)
~~~
slig
Anyone with experience on Direct
Mail(<http://ethreesoftware.com/directmail/>)? I'd like to use it with
SendGrid and later move to SES.
~~~
jhammer
I'm the developer of Direct Mail, if you have any questions. We have several
customers using Direct Mail with SendGrid and they seem to be very happy with
the setup.
~~~
slig
Thanks for the reply, jhammer. I'll get the Pro version before the 50% off
ends and I'll try by myself.
------
timjahn
I love MailChimp. They're branding is so friendly, their people are so
friendly, and overall they just love their customers.
I'm a fan of their model. If you have more than 2,000 subscribers, you can
most likely afford to pay without issue.
~~~
jefe78
Well said! I'm pretty excited to use these guys again. My last job used them
and I instituted the template and stuff but it'll be nice to set everything up
from start to finish. Its a great product.
------
joelrunyon
MailChimp seems bound and determined to never let me pay for the service. I
guess I'm okay with that. :)
------
kevinburke
Awesome! Any chance you can get the site to load more quickly?
------
nhangen
Great for free users - my concern is that it won't scale or that they're not
as profitable as they'd like to be.
~~~
amdev
I work at MailChimp. I don't worry about that.
~~~
dlib
I've often wondered why MailChimp doesn't offer more support for transactional
mails. I know there is some stuff in the API but it seems bolted on (am I
wrong?). I would really like to use the standard templating for email
campaigns that MailChimp has, and use it for transactional mails. An API call
to MailChimp with some some arguments would then send a template, the
variables (dynamically) filled in, to the user.
Email campaigns are so easy in MailChimp and I'd like to maintain the look of
those mails in my transactional mails. Nonetheless, you guys provide a great
service!
~~~
gtuhl
We do have transactional support via Amazon SES now:
[http://blog.mailchimp.com/mailchimp-launches-
transactional-e...](http://blog.mailchimp.com/mailchimp-launches-
transactional-email-service-on-top-of-amazon-ses/)
It rolled out this very week.
------
ez77
Just curious: when they write "Unlimited", what exactly do they mean? Wouldn't
this be a spammer's good investement?
~~~
amdev
I work at MailChimp. The answer is nope.
~~~
ez77
Thanks for your answer. I imagined so. But I could also think of some
legitimate heavy-duty users who could threaten your profitability. Is there
any fine print for those cases?
~~~
cmorrisrsg
No fine-print. Our high volume plans for large email lists are not unlimited,
but smaller lists are completely free to send as much as they want. In
practice, you'll hit our anti-spam limits long before you hurt our
profitability if you try to send lots of email to a smaller list.
~~~
ez77
Thanks for the explanation. I'm glad you stopped lurking, and to have tripled
your karma!
------
jkahn
Does anyone know of an easy way to migrate to MailChimp from Aweber?
~~~
vaksel
You can just do a bulk import.
So download your aweber list csv and then just upload it to mailchimp.
The only problem is that autoresponders don't seem to work for old users
unless you do a dirty hack
~~~
jkahn
Does the bulk import send everyone a resubscribe message? I've got a very
small list (sub 100 people) of customers and prospects that I meet with IRL,
and I don't want to annoy them by asking them to subscribe again to a list
they've already subscribed to.
~~~
cmorrisrsg
No, bulk importing does not send a resubscribe message. MailChimp assumes that
if you have access to the address list, then you have permission to send.
------
mise
I wish they gave better campaign-like reporting for autoresponders.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Spanish actor detained after ridiculing 'God and the Virgin Mary' in FB post - paganel
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/12/spanish-actor-detained-after-ridiculing-god-and-the-virgin-mary
======
tropo
This is a shock. In modern times, this sort of enforcement is normally only
done for other religions.
Try it in the UK, and also an equivalently offensive statement for the most
popular alternative religion. The results will make clear who has power and
who doesn't.
------
squarefoot
What an idiot. He wanted to do the right thing but failed in the worst
possible way: if you want to attack power abuse by the religious mafia do it
rather the George Carlin way: make it creative, brilliant and choose wisely
every word so that anyone who is feeling offended by them would also ridicule
themselves just by replying with outrage.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Mercure: Server-sent live updates – protocol and reference implementation - based2
https://github.com/dunglas/mercure
======
based2
[https://linuxfr.org/news/mercure-un-nouveau-protocole-web-
po...](https://linuxfr.org/news/mercure-un-nouveau-protocole-web-pour-mettre-
a-jour-les-navigateurs-en-temps-reel-push)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Find the best time and place for a get-together - thomasskyt
https://www.campstarter.io
======
thomasskyt
I created this free site to help you find the best time and place for any kind
of event.
Create the poll and all the participants can vote for time and place.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
RAM instead HDD/SSD. - Sloven
http://www.hyperossystems.co.uk
I don't pursue any promotional purposes, but never heard about such drive before.
======
phamilton
Aside from the seek times, this guy gets destroyed by the latest crucial SSD
drive.
[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148349)
If you want high speed ram-based drives, FusionIO is the way to go
<http://www.fusionio.com/products/iodrive/>
------
iwwr
This may work if your server's RAM is already capped out. You can already use
RAM as virtual disk space, so this looks more like a way to add more RAM to a
system through the SATA bus (perhaps with some extra interface sugar).
Although, the main memory throughput can easily overwhelm a SATA bus.
It's an intriguing piece of hardware, I am waiting for some reviews.
------
orijing
I was following until I got here:
_It also offers 100% secure file deletion (disconnect both the external and
the internal power!). Flash drives can't offer this. Hard disks suffer from
magnetic remnance and so retain their data even after they have been
overwritten several times! But the HyperDrive5 is forensically wiped every
time the power is fully disconnected_
Wait a minute, if the drive gets accessed quickly or if it's really cold, RAM
actually retains its contents. You can't expect the charges to suddenly revert
to randomness!
Plus, this presents a major issue if someone wanted to sabotage you... If it's
really that easy to clear the contents, someone may just come and clear it for
you while you aren't looking.
------
binarray2000
SATA2 interface and DDR2 RAM... A major OUCH! That's like putting Bugatti
Veyron Super Sport on a narrow and curvaceous country road: A pinhole that's
just stopping it from literally flying (well, speed-wise, not altitude-wise).
On the top of my list as a consumer grade drive (thou, we're considering to
put it into the Win2008/SQLServer server on our LAN ) is OCZ Revodrive X2 PCI-
Express SSD ([http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodrive-x2-pci-express-
ss...](http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodrive-x2-pci-express-ssd.html)).
------
Sloven
I'm looking for new config for my home pc. Before this article I thought to
build RAID-0 with 4 sata drives, but now i would better buy this device.
------
astrodust
This is an interesting product, and there have been others like it before, but
what a shady looking company to be selling it.
------
lukev
Very nice. But what happens when the power fails? RAM can't preserve state
without power...
~~~
zdw
Most of these units have an internal battery and CF card or other flash
storage - when the power goes out, the battery lets them write the contents of
their RAM to the permanent storage.
There are also other options than the one linked:
<http://www.ddrdrive.com/> \- pcie card, favored by many people running ZFS
[http://us.test.giga-
byte.com/Products/Storage/Products_Overv...](http://us.test.giga-
byte.com/Products/Storage/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2678) \- Gigabyte's
i-RAM, very similar to what's linked.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is Data Visualization Art? - co_pl_te
http://blog.visual.ly/is-data-visualization-art/
======
kordless
Yes, because it can bring joy!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Vue.js debugging in Chrome and VS Code - lobo_tuerto
https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-recipes/blob/b906210b75e157b1e4138a5598758b87e15fab3b/vuejs-cli/README.md
======
ramon
Nice job! I love the performance of VS Code, now with Vue debugging
capabilities it's rocking!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scaling your application on AWS - roshanpaiva
https://medium.com/@roshanpaiva/scaling-your-application-on-aws-3f210ef18693#.44ac3mcej
======
eugeneionesco
Spam, here's the talk this was taken from.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg5onp8TU6Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg5onp8TU6Q)
~~~
chrisnorman
The link is already shared in the article. Good notes and good read.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
David Foster Wallace on Life and Work (unabridged) - rms
http://web.archive.org/web/20080213082423/http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html
======
rogerthat
Essay in the Times on this address:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/books/review/Bissell-t.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/books/review/Bissell-t.html)
Nicer (IMHO) WSJ format of Foster's address without the extraneous stylistic
emphases found in the Marginalia version:
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html>
_"lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all
creation"_
It may seem inconsistent but I find it nicely complements Will Ferrell's
commencement speech at Harvard:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVu8jfhcO9k>
~~~
rms
This essay came up yesterday in response to a short PG essay.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=781583>
The WSJ one is certainly easier to read and doesn't lose much but the almost
excessive stylistic emphasis is what Wallace does; I'll talk the unabridged
version. I do wonder if Wallace himself edited the essay for publication or if
it was edited externally.
~~~
rogerthat
Marginalia received a DMCA takedown notice for their original copy of the
speech:
[http://www.marginalia.org/log/archives/2009/05/so-very-
sorry...](http://www.marginalia.org/log/archives/2009/05/so-very-sorry.html)
But in the comments on their apology page at the link above, there's a
reference to a book in which the address was published with Wallace's
permission, as well an interesting note about an edit that Wallace made to the
speech before publishing it:
_An essay on April 26 about David Foster Wallace’s commencement address at
Kenyon College in 2005, which has now appeared in book form as "This Is
Water," misstated the speech’s publishing history. It was included in the
collection "The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006"; it is not the case
that Wallace, who died in September, "never published" the address.
The essay may also have left the incorrect impression that both of the
following sentences in the speech were omitted from the text of "This Is
Water": "It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide
with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the
terrible master." In fact, only the second sentence was left out._
------
bkovitz
Oh, come on, folks. The DFW piece is ignorant whining. Some problems:
1\. The great many people who live "unexamined lives" tend to be much happier.
According to the research, conservatives are happier than liberals, people in
the Midwest are happier than people on the coasts, etc.
2\. The default settings are really, really good. You should be extremely
skeptical whenever anybody tries to sell you that everyone is born "wrong" and
needs to be "fixed" (circumcision, original sin, chiropractic adjustments for
all children, etc.). (Vaccination and water fluoridation are the only
exceptions I know of, and those are supported by actual science.)
3\. Same with anyone saying, "If you don't do this one thing (which almost
nobody does), your whole life is going to be HORRRRRRIBLE!!!"
4\. Standard religions most certainly do eat people alive: the people who
desperately obsess about them the way his (mostly imaginary) targets obsess
about money, power, etc.
5\. The real message of the article is the style, and what it says, sentence
after sentence, is: "The older, wiser fish knows that life is crap, crap,
crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. And BTW, you know I'm the
older, wiser fish, because I'm such a soul-sapping drag. Oh, and BTW, I'm the
older, wiser fish, and you're not, and if you can't see that, that only proves
what a naïve little twit you are. One day, all you goddamned self-centered
little successful optimistic goddamned twits will all be sorry!!!"
------
rogerthat
Another great Wallace essay:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fede...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)
"Federer as Religious Experience"
~~~
rms
Aaronsw compiled the complete list. <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/offline2> I
have the .pdfs of some of the paywalled ones, anyone reading this can email
me.
~~~
unalone
That link you put up doesn't mention any DFW articles.
~~~
rms
Sorry, I must have pasted the wrong link.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AaronSw/David_Foster_Walla...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AaronSw/David_Foster_Wallace_nonfiction)
~~~
rms
Actually I'm pretty sure that I AwesomeBar'd aaronsw and copy and pasted the
first thing that came up without looking at what the URL actually was. The
right URL was second under my AwesomeBar for aaronsw.
------
springcoil
I think this is a very powerful post. Something I regularly thinking about.
Especially the powerful self centered posted ideas. I like PG's idea that we
should embrace randomness and avoid our self centered ness. Its something I do
struggle with evry day. this article unfortunately at times reads like a
suicide note.
------
michaelneale
I had never heard of David Foster Wallace before this. Thanks for sharing it,
has really made my day.
~~~
brentvwilliams
If you haven't checked it out yet, you should definitely read his essay "A
Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again."
[http://harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-000...](http://harpers.org/media/pdf/dfw/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf)
~~~
tptacek
You should buy the book; the Illinois State Fair essay is worth the price
alone. Also highly recommended is the audio version of "Consider The Lobster",
in which DFW implements inline footnotes _in audio_.
I'm halfway through Infinite Jest right now (putting me many weeks behind
<http://infinitesummer.org>, and I recommend it as well.
~~~
jraines
The opening essay on television (E Unibus Pluram) is a great read as well.
Another great one (from "Consider The Lobster"), if you're interested in
linguistics and who gets to decide what is "acceptable" English, is here:
<http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html> (Extremely long
-- if any of the shorter pieces really grab you, you really should just go to
Amazon and snag both nonfiction collections.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Flaws in Tor anonymity network spotlighted - kmfrk
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/flaws-in-tor-anonymity-network-spotlighted.ars
======
bengross
I wish the article's author had done a little bit of background work to find
references to the CCC presenter's research.
Here is the paper published last year describing the research on
fingerprinting. The second URL at uni-regensburg.de does not require an ACM
account to download the paper.
Website fingerprinting: attacking popular privacy enhancing technologies with
the multinomial naïve-bayes classifier
<http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1655008.1655013> [http://epub.uni-
regensburg.de/11919/1/authorsversion-ccsw09....](http://epub.uni-
regensburg.de/11919/1/authorsversion-ccsw09.pdf)
Dominik Herrmann, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany Rolf
Wendolsky, JonDos GmbH, Regensburg, Germany Hannes Federrath, University of
Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
"Privacy enhancing technologies like OpenSSL, OpenVPN or Tor establish an
encrypted tunnel that enables users to hide content and addresses of requested
websites from external observers This protection is endangered by local
traffic analysis attacks that allow an external, passive attacker between the
PET system and the user to uncover the identity of the requested sites.
However, existing proposals for such attacks are not practicable yet.
We present a novel method that applies common text mining techniques to the
normalised frequency distribution of observable IP packet sizes. Our
classifier correctly identifies up to 97% of requests on a sample of 775 sites
and over 300,000 real-world traffic dumps recorded over a two-month period. It
outperforms previously known methods like Jaccard's classifier and Naïve Bayes
that neglect packet frequencies altogether or rely on absolute frequency
values, respectively. Our method is system-agnostic: it can be used against
any PET without alteration. Closed-world results indicate that many popular
single-hop and even multi-hop systems like Tor and JonDonym are vulnerable
against this general fingerprinting attack. Furthermore, we discuss important
real-world issues, namely false alarms and the influence of the browser cache
on accuracy."
Also related (no account required to download the paper):
Compromising Tor Anonymity Exploiting P2P Information Leakage
<http://fr.arxiv.org/abs/1004.1461>
Pere Manils, Chaabane Abdelberri, Stevens Le Blond, Mohamed Ali Kaafar, Claude
Castelluccia, Arnaud Legout, Walid Dabbous (All - INRIA Sophia Antipolis /
INRIA Rhône-Alpes)
"Privacy of users in P2P networks goes far beyond their current usage and is a
fundamental requirement to the adoption of P2P protocols for legal usage. In a
climate of cold war between these users and anti-piracy groups, more and more
users are moving to anonymizing networks in an attempt to hide their identity.
However, when not designed to protect users information, a P2P protocol would
leak information that may compromise the identity of its users. In this paper,
we first present three attacks targeting BitTorrent users on top of Tor that
reveal their real IP addresses. In a second step, we analyze the Tor usage by
BitTorrent users and compare it to its usage outside of Tor. Finally, we
depict the risks induced by this de-anonymization and show that users' privacy
violation goes beyond BitTorrent traffic and contaminates other protocols such
as HTTP."
------
mike-cardwell
This exact same flaw exists for HTTPS. Well, SSL in general. It's not Tor
specific.
~~~
jmillikin
HTTPS/TLS doesn't try to anonymize which site a client is accessing; any
intermediate can read the address of outgoing packets to determine the
server's identity. It's a little trickier when a server supports SNI, but few
do.
TOR is supposed to prevent intermediaries from determining which sites a
client is browsing, which is why this technique is interesting.
~~~
mike-cardwell
You can use this technique with Tor to make a reasonable guess if a user on
your LAN is visiting a certain website.
You can also use this technique with plain https to see if a user that visits
a certain website is downloading certain files from it, or accessing certain
pages inside the website.
It is an interesting attack, but it's not one to get seriously worried about.
~~~
getsat
> You can also use this technique with plain https to see if a user that
> visits a certain website is downloading certain files from it, or accessing
> certain pages inside the website.
How do you do this when all the HTTP headers (the Server: and actual GET/POST)
are part of the encrypted stream of data? You can't even see the specific
domain they're trying to access, only the host/ip of the server.
Am I missing something?
~~~
mike-cardwell
I explained this in a comment further up. I'll repeat here:
It's just simple traffic analysis. A page load generates a certain number of
request/responses. Each request and response is a specific size, and will be
transferred in a specific order. You create a fingerprint of that and it
doesn't matter if the page is opened via a plain http channel, or https, or
over Tor, The fingerprint will be the same (almost).
~~~
getsat
Thanks for the explanation. I misunderstood the context of your comment.
------
jmillikin
I'm doubtful of their 55-60% accuracy claim; how could a statistical analysis
of encrypted traffic differentiate between samizdat and benign text? Or, more
relevantly, whether someone browsing Wikipedia is looking up Tienanmen or just
porn?
~~~
mike-cardwell
It's just simple traffic analysis. A page load generates a certain number of
request/responses. Each request and response is a specific size, and will be
transferred in a specific order. You create a fingerprint of that and it
doesn't matter if the page is opened via a plain http channel, or https, or
over Tor, The fingerprint will be the same (almost).
~~~
justsee
But it's not that simple if the client is running as a relaying node as well,
is it? The mixture of client traffic and relay traffic would make traffic
analysis much more difficult.
Of course if you're that interesting that your ISP is doing traffic analysis
on your connection you quite possibly have more pressing security issues.
~~~
gwern
Merely reduces the statistical power, doesn't make the inferences go away
completely.
And there may be techniques for filtering out relayed material - perhaps relay
traffic emerges from the node quickly enough that an observer can then figure
out what entering traffic was just being relayed and remove it from
consideration (always a concern with a high-performance mix network since you
can't randomize retransmission as strongly as you could with email mix
networks like Mixmaster where you could wait hours, without rendering it
unusable) or relay traffic is constant enough that one can assume any 'spikes'
are the user's traffic.
------
jondos
Note that we at JonDonym will have developed a strong countermeasure within
the next few weeks...
------
aresant
I don't get Tor - doens't the risk that somebody does something illicit that
appers to originate from your IP render its value questionable?
EG the German arrested when a bomb threat was posted via Tor but traced back
to his IP?
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-9779225-46.html>
~~~
getsat
A handful of the highest throughput Tor exit nodes (named "blutmagie") are run
by a single German fellow who is technically/legally his own ISP. Since it's
not the same person, I'm assuming the one mentioned in the article did not go
through all the same precautionary steps as the blutmagie admin.
<http://anonymizer2.blutmagie.de/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GDPR ante portas - liveweird
http://no-kill-switch.ghost.io/gdpr-ante-portas/
======
_o_
There is also one point that he missed. The internet is full of advices that
are comming from half studying GDPR and are deadly wrong.
31 days to GDPR. I hope you at least understand it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Shakespearean Insult Generator Web App in Go - bruston
https://github.com/bruston/insulter
======
MegaLeon
Love it! I'll send this to my Theatre buddies - we actually have the last
showing of a modern reinterpretation of Midsummer's night dream and as you
like it tonight - I'm sure they'll love it too!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why do I see jobs posting about Mino Games all the time? - phtrivier
Meta: I keep seeing headlines like "Mino Games is hiring developers in Montreal".<p>Am I the only one ? (I always assumed the frontpage was not personalized, is that the case?)<p>If it's the same for everybody... why ? Is there some soft of partnership between ycombinator and them ? Are they simply abusing the submit button ? Does this violate the guidelines of HN ?
======
minimaxir
YC Companies, and only YC Companies, can place ads on HN, subject to certain
rules.
------
lostgame
I, too, wondered this. Thanks for asking.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SwiftTools: Find well maintained swift libraries - timkaechele
https://swifttools.dev/
======
timkaechele
SwiftTools.dev helps you to find well maintained swift libraries for your next
iOS/macOS/tvOS project.
Just like the [https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/](https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/)
but for swift.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google, a ‘school official?’ A regulatory quirk can leave parents in the dark - opheicus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/30/google-a-school-official-this-regulatory-quirk-can-leave-parents-in-the-dark/?postshare=2671451564669854
======
golergka
Yes, if you use software to work on some sort of information, this software
will have access to this information.
Yes, if you use SAAS software, this information will be processed by remote
servers.
Yes, if you use proprietary software, you will not know exactly how is this
information processed.
And finally, if you have someone who is willing to work as school clerk, given
how much do these jobs pay and how interesting they are, this person will
likely not understand the complexity of these issues and will be a little bit
lazy with their job, so she probably will not present parents with all the
relevant information.
Now, every single one of these facts seem obvious; how is combination of these
facts warrant an article in one of the biggest newspapers all of a sudden?
~~~
danieldk
_And finally, if you have someone who is willing to work as school clerk,
given how much do these jobs pay and how interesting they are, this person
will likely not understand the complexity of these issues_
I think that is naive -- the general population understands perfectly that
Google tracks users and uses that information to display ads. The GAFE apps
are covered by different terms of service that restrict the collection of
information, but Google draws the line in plain English in their GAFE/GAFW
copy:
_We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other Google Apps
services. Google does not collect or use data in Google Apps services for
advertising purposes. The situation is different for our free offerings and
the consumer space._
I think the reason why schools go for GAFE is clear and simple: the choice is
between having personnel on staff for maintaining servers, computer labs, and
troubleshooting students' devices; or outsource it nearly for free to Google.
~~~
pdkl95
> for advertising purposes
Which neatly leaves out non-advertising purposes. The statement even admits to
collecting data _for other purposes_ in the negative - otherwise the would
simply say they "scan ... collect or use" the data at all.
This is just like the word-games the NSA likes to play when they insist they
aren't collecting data "under _this phone records program_ ".
Both Google (for collecting and aggregating data) and the schools (for giving
the data to a 3rd party) should be held liable for anything that happens from
this data collection.
~~~
michaelt
Well, presumably Google scans the e-mails for search indexing, for virus
detection, and for spam filtering; and collect the e-mails for when the user
asks to search or retrieve them.
~~~
newjersey
Exactly! I want to support stronger privacy but this just smells like someone
wants one big payout for themselves. IF it were found that Google were sharing
student information with anyone, including the government, things might be
different (well not the government anymore thanks CISA) but I could understand
if they were caught selling the information to others or snooping on their
users' emails and using that in a court case (looking at you, Microsoft you
can't undo that).
Articles like these hurts privacy because they cause noise where none is
deserved and people just get tired of hearing things like this that they
ignore legitimate worries like CISA.
~~~
kuschku
> IF it were found that Google were sharing student information with anyone,
> including the government
Well, Snowden has shown us exactly that. Google participating voluntarily in
PRISM.
------
MikeNomad
What I find far more... something than FERPA being described as "an obscure
law," is how brazen and obvious Google is about breaking it.
If Google is a "School Official," their FERPA obligations do not stop at any
point short of/when operating in that capacity.
Further, the idea that they can somehow "switch hats," and somehow maintain
discrete sets of both FERPA and non-FERPA behaviors is at best naive, and at
worst a conspiracy to commit various felonies.
The money shot of the article: EPIC didn't have standing when they filed their
lawsuit, not that they were wrong with regard to laws being broken. With that,
I hope entire school districts of parents with school age children file suit.
~~~
tamana
The judicial branch's abuse of "standing" to refuse to hear cases is one of
the great injustices in USA.
This was a huge deal in the USA PATRIOT domestic spying cases, where courts
refused to hear lawsuits about spying, because plaintiffs couldn't prove they
were being spied on before they won the right to collect evidence, because it
was illegal for libraries/banks/IT companies disclose the spying!
~~~
themartorana
I completely agree. In civil suits it may make sense, but when someone brings
up a possible violation of federal law by another party, they shouldn't have
to be harmed directly, they're helping prevent their fellow citizens from
being harmed by someone or something breaking established law.
It's really sad.
------
mikegerwitz
Related: [https://www.eff.org/issues/student-
privacy/](https://www.eff.org/issues/student-privacy/)
As a parent with a child entering Kindergarten this upcoming school year, and
as an avid privacy and free software advocate, I'm not looking forward to the
types of discussions that I'm likely going to have to have with our schools.
The reality is that these aren't systems that are easy to roll back---it costs
a lot of time and money to implement, and then you have vendor lockin.
So while I can hope for a receptive district, action is probably going to be
more difficult. My hope is that they haven't ddone anything too disagreeable
yet.
Does anyone else have any personal experiences working with their schools?
~~~
analog31
Is there anything that a kid could install on a school owned Chromebook, that
would protect their privacy? Tor?
~~~
userbinator
_school owned_
If it's the school's, then I would just say no. It's theirs, they can do
whatever they want with it. How about giving your chid a real general-purpose
computer instead, running completely free software:
[http://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200/](http://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200/)
Just as Google et al. are trying to get kids conditioned to their ecosystems
at a young age by pushing their product, those who advocate against them
should do the same.
------
rubyfan
I'm as adverse to reinterpretations like this as anyone but what might be more
interesting or actionable would be evidence of what data Google are collecting
and how Google are using this data.
~~~
timonovici
How is that gonna work? You can't just sniff the traffic between Google and
the students(SSL & stuff), and I very much doubt that Google itself will let
you take a look in their datacenter.
~~~
tombrossman
You most definitely can sniff traffic between Google and students, this is
widespread and completely normal behaviour at schools and also on many
corporate networks. School computers have a MITM certificate installed which
allows decryption and re-encryption, usually for the purpose of content
filtering and malware detection.
~~~
timonovici
Oh. I haven't thought of that :) Yeah, given that the school has root on those
laptops, they definitely can do that.
------
cs702
"Trust us. It's OK. We won't use it for evil purposes, because one of our
corporate goals is not to be evil."
------
Animats
All we want is your firstborn child.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Update on Internet Censorship in Iran - Tor Blog - cosgroveb
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/update-internet-censorship-iran
======
jdp23
The number of directly connecting Iranian Tor users in Iran has dropped from
10000 or so to virtually zero -- they've blacklisted all the known Tor nodes
and bridges. It's the latest twist in the arms race ...
"In a short few months, Iran has vastly improved the sophistication of their
censorship technologies. Right now, the best option is to use tor through open
socks/https proxies."
------
yogsototh
May the next level will be steganography.
------
alanh
Once again, consider where Iran is buying its networking equipment from.
Aren't Western companies directly at fault?
------
bigwally
A lot of Tor use is so people can connect to US websites that are blocked
"voluntarily" by US companies.
Google code, Sourceforge and many others block Iran.
------
samic
I'm in Iran and the only left way to access free internet is now UltraSurf!
government is banning every opportunity to access websites. some of banned
sites in Iran are: facebook, myspace, twitter, youtube, rapidshare, wordpress,
bbc, cnn, voa, thepiratebay and LOTS of other ones!! now you can imagine how
essential was having tor!
~~~
mahmud
Contact me privately and I will give you a VPN and unfettered access to the
net, IF you promise me not to get yourself in trouble.
Regards.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
We Need Cruel and Unusual Punishment - whack
https://outlookzen.wordpress.com/2016/06/18/we-need-cruel-and-unusual-punishment/
======
dalke
It starts with the false premise that a psychologist can say that someone "is
of no further danger to society."
If that were true, then the solution is easy - psychological evaluations for
everyone and rehabilitation until they are no threat!
It then posits that a new criminal system would choose "a prison system,
similar to what we currently have in the States." Which is a horrid system;
what sort of people, working with a fresh slate, would decide _that_?
> "Sounds too good to be true? It shouldn’t be."
Or, why not choose the Norwegian approach? Low crime rates, jail programs to
help rehabilitate, and their prisons don't "cripple the convict's future."
It's almost as if there were other alternatives between choosing the US prison
system or caning.
> But what does that really mean? Instead of carelessly tossing around that
> term, as though it’s supposed to end all debate, let’s critically analyze it
> for a second.
All that analysis, and not one link to the US Supreme Court cases on that
topic or other legal definitions?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruel_and_unusual_punishment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruel_and_unusual_punishment)
says "There are generally tests that can serve as a guide to what cruel and
unusual punishment is according to various legal textbooks in accordance with
the law. These are: 1) the frequency at which the punishment occurs in
society, 2) overall acceptance in society, 3) severe (the punishment fits the
crime), and 4) if the punishment is arbitrary."
Caning in the US does not fit #2.
> Our current system of mass incarceration is horribly broken.
Agreed.
> But in order to truly punish and deter criminal behavior, and do so in a
> manner that imposes minimal long-term costs on both society and convicts,
> it’s time we started considering other forms of punishment.
Or, you know, a strong social net, more social equality, a reform of the
prison system to treat prisoners as people and not a modern form of slavery,
and other things which _aren 't_ simply a shift in how we punish people.
~~~
whack
You've nitpicked a large number of details but failed to address the central
point. If you have a convicted mass-murderer, and a wonderful rehab program
that has succeeded in rehabilitating the murderer, what do you propose should
happen next?
If you say the prisoner should be released on some sort of parole, you've just
broken the hearts of the families of every one of the murderer's victims, and
also sent a chilling non-deterrent message to anyone else considering a life
of crime.
If you say that the prisoner should continue to serve a substantially long
prison term, and eventually be released decades later with the prime years of
his life taken away from him, you've just wastefully crippled his long-term
prospects and potential.
Taking all the punishment that is spread out over a long term prison sentence,
and compressing it into a short period of time, is the only sane approach that
avoids both of the above problems. If you disagree, we'd love to hear you
describe how you'd handle the above scenario.
~~~
dalke
I think it's proper to nitpick by pointing out when scenarios are highly
artificial and therefore should not be use to make policy decisions. Why not
use actual examples, rather than make one up?
Look to Norway. They have a mass-murderer, Breivik. They have a wonderful
rehab program. If they are convinced that it doesn't work, then the state will
place him in custody for longer than the 21 year maximum sentence, in order to
protect the population.
If they believe he is rehabilitated, and his sentence is over, then he will be
released. But don't confuse punitive punishment for preventive detention!
Now, you argue that we should not break the hearts of the families of the
victims.
We surely cannot use that as our primary guide, for that means that killing an
unloved homeless man would carry less punishment than killing the beloved
mother of 8. Is that what you want?
How much weight should heartbreak place on the decision? If the family hated
their abusive father, and had no remorse over his death, should the murderer
get _less_ of a sentence?
I don't agree with the importance of "prime years of his life taken away from
him". Do you think Breivik should have been caned then set free? Or that if
Norway had caning for mass-murder that Breivik wouldn't have done what it did?
Given that Breivik can play X-Box and is a full student in the bachelor degree
program in political science at the University of Oslo, can you really say
that his prime years are "taken away"?
What do you think are Breivik's "long-term prospects and potential", should he
have been caned instead of being placed in prison?
Feel free to explain the likely long-term prospects and potential of any other
mass-murderer you are thinking of, had they been caned instead of imprisoned.
Does your argument change if the mass-murderer is past the prime years of
life? Specifically, Andrew Philip Kehoe, at 55 years of age, who killed his
wife and 43 other people (including 38 children). Now, he committed suicide,
so it's clear that no amount of punishment - caning or otherwise - would have
affected him.
But if he had been sentenced, is your argument that it would have been okay to
put him in jail for the rest of his life, because the prime years of his life
were over?
And you'll notice that nothing - caning, prison, preventive detention, etc. -
can deter a mass-murderer who plans to commit suicide, so it's not like the
threat of punishment (even corporal punishment) can be convincingly
dissuasive.
So, rather than construct artificial scenarios about a young mass-murderer who
kill people from loving families, why not point to real-world examples
instead, and argue how institutionalized caning would have improved things?
And why not use as your baseline a country like Norway, with a human prison
system, instead of one which is inhumane, like the US?
~~~
whack
_" They have a mass-murderer, Breivik. They have a wonderful rehab program...
If they believe he is rehabilitated, and his sentence is over, then he will be
released."_
I'm glad you bring up this example. There are 2 conditions here for his being
released:
1) They have to believe that he is rehabilitated.
2) He has served his minimum sentence, which in his case, is 10 years.
There is no reason to believe that 1) cannot happen at an earlier point in
time, compared to 2). Ie, he might be considered to be rehabilitated after
spending just 4 years in prison. According to the Norwegian justice system
which you're holding up as a role model, he would then be forced to spend
another 6 years in prison, even though he's already been rehabilitated by
then.
If you don't believe in punitive punishment, then why do we need 2) at all?
Why should Breivik be given any minimum sentence at all? Why shouldn't he be
released as soon as officials believe him to be rehabilitated, no matter how
quickly that may occur? Are you really going to endorse such a reform which
will allow murderers to be released, as soon as they are rehabilitated, no
matter how soon that may occur?
If you answered yes to that question, I refer you to the outrage over the
following: [http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/06/us/sexual-assault-brock-
turner...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/06/us/sexual-assault-brock-turner-
stanford/)
If you answered no to that question, then you too believe in punitive
punishment, even though you may not like to admit it.
The only question remaining, is what form that punitive punishment should
take. You seem to believe that the best form of punitive punishment is locking
someone up in prison for many years/decades. I believe that the best form of
punitive punishment is taking all of the unpleasantness that the prison
sentence is designed to inflict, and compressing it over a shorter time
period, so that the prisoner can move on with his life as soon as possible.
~~~
dalke
> "If you don't believe in punitive punishment"
Please define "punitive". According to [http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/punitive](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/punitive) there are two meanings:
Definition #1: "intended to punish someone or something". I'm for that. But
c'mon, a fine for $1 is a punishment. An order to stay away from someone else
is a punishment. Is that what you mean by punitive punishment?
Definition #2: "extremely or unfairly severe or high". I'm against that. I
don't believe in cruel and unusual punishment. Like caning. I don't believe in
inhumane punishment. Like most prisons in the US.
Just because I am against "extremely or unfairly severe or high" punishment
doesn't mean I am _for_ no punishment. I can still be for moderate or measured
punishment. Which I am.
> "The only question remaining what form that punitive punishment should take"
I do not agree with "extremely or unfairly severe or high punishment", no.
As the essay points out, some people are much more affected by certain forms
of punishment than others. The "extremely or unfairly" may be hard to
determine. This is why Breivik is allowed to plea for a change of his
conditions.
This is indeed a question. It's a well studied question, with a long history
and associated court cases from multiple jurisdictions.
But as I complained, the essay ignores the existing concept of "cruel an
unusual punishment", and makes things up out of whole cloth - literally, by
positing a new culture which just happens to reproduce the US prison system
and also happens to consider caning as something other than "cruel and
unusual."
~~~
dalke
P.S. Caning doesn't solve everything, even in Singapore.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Singapor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Singapore)
> Capital punishment is legal in Singapore. The city-state had the second
> highest per-capita execution rate in the world between 1994 and 1998
Including
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_(Singapore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_\(Singapore\))
:
> The statute's penal provisions are draconian by most nations' standards,
> providing for long terms of imprisonment, caning, and capital punishment.
If caning is so effective, why is there _also_ capital punishment? Surely that
will take away decades of the "prime" years of someone's life. Like Van Tuong
Nguyen, killed at age 25 for drug trafficking.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
::<> - JoshTriplett
https://turbo.fish/
======
sp332
No Javascript, all the animation is in this CSS file:
[https://turbo.fish/turbofish.css](https://turbo.fish/turbofish.css)
------
tmaly
is this like animated perl operators?
~~~
JoshTriplett
Animated Rust operators. This is the Rust operator affectionately known as
"turbofish", used in the unusual case of needing to disambiguate a type.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Announcing longjohn: long stack traces for node.js - mattinsler
http://www.mattinsler.com/post/26396305882/announcing-longjohn-long-stack-traces-for-node-js
======
jameswyse
This is a great package and I thank you for it, but why not submit pull
requests to the original project instead?
~~~
tlrobinson
I'm curious too :)
I admit I've neglected it a bit recently, but I'd be happy to have
contributors.
~~~
mattinsler
Sorry Tom! Feel free to take my code, haha. I'm actually making my own version
of the kegbot right now for our sales team. It seems like I keep working on
similar projects to you.
~~~
tlrobinson
No worries, I certainly appreciate the credit. It's a small amount of code,
but I like to think it's pretty clever, so I'm pretty proud of it.
If your kegbot works it will be more successful than mine ever was!
------
eldude
Glad to see long-stack-traces is getting an update! Any chance you benchmarked
it? I'm curious how the various long stack trace solutions compare.
Anyone that's interested in this should checkout domains, now shipping as
experimental in v0.8 or the async trycatch module (mine),
<http://github.com/CrabDude/trycatch>.
~~~
mattinsler
No benchmark, but it's been running in production for over a month and I
haven't noticed any significant speed problems. Though admittedly I haven't
looked for them.
Domains look awesome!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Inside the haywire world of Beirut’s electricity brokers - sygma
https://www.wired.com/story/beruit-electricity-brokers/
======
pboutros
I grew up in a village 20 minutes outside of Beirut. We had 3 different power
sources: (1) the 'baladiye' (local municipality), (2) the 'dawle' (regional
government), and (3) the diesel generator by our house.
Between those 3, we averaged 8-20 hours of electricity per day, but that was
out in the mountains. "UPS" to me still means "Uninterrupted Power Supply" \--
a battery box connected to my desktop so that I could save my files and shut
down quickly when the power went out.
People who lived on the same power grid as hospitals were typically the
luckiest -- they had (almost entirely) uninterrupted power. I have no idea how
you're supposed to have a modern economy these days without reliable internet,
let alone access to cheap communications (which Lebanon also doesn't have).
~~~
pboutros
Also, @Wired:
>Raham, like other operators, complains about repair costs; under-the-table
operating fees—essentially, bribes—to the local municipalities in which they
operate; the unpaid bills by some of the country's Syrian and Egyptian
refugees who are using an estimated additional 486 megawatts; and the
increasing cost of diesel fuel to run the generators.
I think you mean Palestinian?
~~~
danielvf
Syria is in the middle of a civil war, and borders most of Lebanon - it's
estimated there are a 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrians_in_Lebanon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrians_in_Lebanon)
~~~
weber111
Yes.. GP is correcting _Egyptian_ to Palestinian
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
No More Boilerplate Code - corecoder
http://blog.thecodewhisperer.com/permalink/no-more-boilerplate-code
======
vmorgulis
Linq is a good alternative to reduce SQL noise.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Integrated_Query](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Integrated_Query)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook "Open Compute Project" nothing but hot air - gnufs
http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2011/04/09/#20110409-facebook_opencompute_hot_air
======
randall
Anyone share the same perspective? As someone who's only casually seen the
project, I'm curious to know what EEs think.
~~~
wcsun
I think Facebook does not need to layout, test and contract manufacture
motherboard for the servers. Each iteration in hardware cost lots of money.
This is not agile. Better make the specs and have ODM companies handle that.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Design_Manufacturer>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LinkedIn launches incubator to turn employees into entrepreneurs - turoczy
http://www.fastcompany.com/3003818/linkedin-launches-incubator-turn-employees-entrepreneurs
======
mooreds
I think this is a great idea, though I would have loved for the article to be
more in depth and actually had some quotes from one of the 5 teams that have
been greenlighted. Autonomy at work can be so very precious.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Making the case for that payrise the hacker way - mdisraeli
http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/
======
mdisraeli
While reading <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1591225> about asking for a
payrise, there was lots of talk of finding your market worth before asking.
This is the tool I use for that (Not mine, obviously). It gets source data
from job adverts, so I assume that the upper bound might be inflated, and
personal experience says that the lower bounds are typically shown as being
higher than in practice. But the figures feel about right, and there is a lot
of other nice bits of information too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: are there any good reads on how to motivate others? - nathankot
======
ch00ey
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie has been recommended to
me several times
[http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-
People/dp/06...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-
People/dp/0671723650)
------
wallflower
[http://scottberkun.com/2009/top-ten-reasons-managers-
become-...](http://scottberkun.com/2009/top-ten-reasons-managers-become-
great/)
Especially #8
"8\. Self aware, including weaknesses."
------
caw
If you want to go more of the Psychology route:
Predictably Irrational (Dan Ariely, he has some TED talks as well)
[http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-
Expande...](http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-
Edition/dp/0061353248)
Influence, the Science of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini)
[http://www.amazon.com/Influence-
ebook/dp/B002BD2UUC](http://www.amazon.com/Influence-ebook/dp/B002BD2UUC)
------
Reallynow
I like two books by Dan and Chip Heath called (1) Switch: How to Change Things
When Change Is Hard (good summary here :
[http://www.veganoutreach.org/advocacy/switch](http://www.veganoutreach.org/advocacy/switch)
.html ) and (2) Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (good
summary here: [http://www.engineerguy.com/white-papers/made-to-
stick.htm](http://www.engineerguy.com/white-papers/made-to-stick.htm) ).
------
jfasi
Google has an interesting way of setting goals for their employees, which is
part of group motivation:
[http://startuplab.googleventures.com/public-
workshops-2013-0...](http://startuplab.googleventures.com/public-
workshops-2013-05-14)
~~~
notahacker
which likely inspired... [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/dave-
eggers-ficti...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/dave-eggers-
fiction.html?smid=tw-nytmag&_r=1&)
------
dbla
I thought this was a great TED talk on the subject. How Great Leaders Insire
Action.
[http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspi...](http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html)
------
rk0567
Search Inside Yourself
And the videos : [http://www.siyli.org/take-the-course/siy-
curriculum/](http://www.siyli.org/take-the-course/siy-curriculum/)
------
LoneDev
Good luck there...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party - JDulin
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-republican-party-isnt-really-the-anti-science-party/281219/
======
MaysonL
Maybe not, but it sure does play one on TV.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fifty or Sixty Years of Processor Development for This? - curtis
https://www.eejournal.com/article/fifty-or-sixty-years-of-processor-developmentfor-this/
======
nostrademons
Wonder what this means for system software and application development.
There's a factor of 10-40x speedup by going from an interpreted language like
Python/Ruby/PHP to a tight compiled one like C++/Rust/Ocaml. 2-4x going from a
good JIT like V8 or Hotspot (or Go's runtime, though technically not a JIT).
Probably another 10-100x by cutting out bloated middleware like most web
frameworks or the contents of your node_modules.
All this was irrelevant when you could get your 2-4x speedup by waiting 18
months, and your 10x speedup by waiting 5 years. It's very relevant when your
2x now takes 20 years and 10x takes a lifetime. Maybe this is why Rust gets so
much attention recently.
~~~
jashmatthews
I run a production Rust web service. The speedup for this service over using
slightly stripped Rails was only about 5x. As you said, you can gain like
50-100x performance improvements from not using the default Rails JSON
serialization and skipping ActiveRecord.
After that, you're lucky to gain 5x performance from re-writing the whole
thing in Rust. Most of the hot spots of serving web applications using Ruby
are already written as native extensions.
I think Rust is fantastic. I'm writing a tinyrb like "Ruby" VM in Rust at the
moment. But... it's just not worth the hassle for plugging web services
together. Maybe if you're at Google scale and already have web services in C++
it'd be a good choice.
~~~
0xffff2
I find the fact that anyone can speak dismissively about a 5x speedup
disheartening. Has anyone ever done a study on how much CO2 we are emitting in
the name of "developer productivity"?
~~~
nostrademons
It's probably less than you think. Humans - just by virtue of existence -
produce a _huge_ amount of CO2, both through the air they breathe, the meat
they eat, the automobiles they get to work in, the heavy machinery used to
build those roads & buildings, the manufactured goods they consume, etc. And
the CO2 cost of a developer isn't just that one developer's emissions; it's
also those of all the support staff needed, from managers/admins/HR at work to
the food service workers that serve them meals out to the
doctors/lawyers/therapists and other service providers they visit to the
parents that raised them.
It's almost certain one developer generates more CO2 than any reasonable
number of servers that run their code. Anything that reduces manpower costs is
a net positive for emissions. Besides, when the equation changes (say, when
the software enters maintenance mode but the servers stay up), they'll be a
strong economic incentive to spend the developer time to rewrite it more
efficiently.
~~~
nkurz
_It 's almost certain one developer generates more CO2 than any reasonable
number of servers that run their code._
I'm not so sure. Let's do a back-of-the-envelope estimate.
Assume a single really hefty server that consumes 1 kilowatt. Over one year,
this is about 10,000 kw hr. 1 kw hr of electricity produced by a coal fired
plant generates about 1 kg of CO2 ([https://carbonpositivelife.com/co2-per-
kwh-of-electricity/](https://carbonpositivelife.com/co2-per-kwh-of-
electricity/)). Thus that big server running for a year produces about 10
metric tons of CO2.
An average American lifestyle (all in, total country production divided by
population,
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/carbon-
emissions-per-person-capita)) involves the production about about 20 tons of
CO2 per year. So if you write code that full-time on more than 2 really big
servers per year, your code might be producing more CO2 than the rest of your
lifestyle.
I'm guessing that most of the errors in this are probably overestimating the
code's CO2 (probably not coal fired, probably less than 1 kw, a year is less
than 10,000 hours), so more realistically maybe it's 4-8 servers to be break-
even? Still, I think it's fair to say that there are some participants in this
forum whose running code probably generates more CO2 than the rest of their
lifestyle.
------
narrator
Speaking of Moores law being dead this time, check out this old article from
2012 predicting we would be at 7nm Intel chips with 5nm on the way:
[http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-cpu-
processor-5nm,175...](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-cpu-
processor-5nm,17578.html)
Intel is still trying to figure out 10nm because it is rumored that there are
material science problems that are causing yield issues. Remember the 1960s
when rapid gains in space tech made everyone think we'd be travelling around
the solar system by 2000? The tech hit a plateau and stopped. Maybe we're in
that situation with chip technology...
~~~
atomicnumber1
Why do we have to go below 10nm at all? We'll have hard physics limitations.
Can't we improve on other frontiers? Say more cache?, better design ? More
cores? Etc. I don't know.
~~~
tremon
Probably the #1 area that can produce results is avoiding/conquering the
processor-memory gap: while processor performance has been growing
exponentially, memory (bandwidth) performance has basically grown linearly.
There is now a factor 1,000 difference between processor/memory speeds
compared to 1980.
One of the areas that I have much hope for is near-data processing: since
processors scale so much better, pretty much every peripheral device already
has its own microcontroller. The idea behind NDP is basically to offload some
data-heavy processing to the data layer. What if your disk layer could already
preselect your data so the database wouldn't have to read and discard so many
rows for each query? What if the network controller could evaluate your
firewall rules itself, so dropped packets wouldn't have to interrupt the main
CPU?
~~~
CountHackulus
So NDP is essentially what Commodore did with their 1541 disk drive. That disk
drive had a 6502 in there to complement the 6502 in the actual VIC-20.
From what I remember, the IBM System Z mainframes also do this sort of thing
and have dedicated IO processors that can decode XML on the fly for you and
other fun things like that.
~~~
jacquesm
Every modern hard drive is a computer in its own right.
~~~
sliken
Seagate had a cool project where each hard drive ran linux and they used the
physical sas cable to run a 2.5 Gbit network (or two actually) per drive.
So you could use that as block storage for luster, hadoop, or similar and
enable things like direct disk to disk copies.
Cool idea, seems unlikely to hit a reasonable price point though.
------
api
The thing that really killed plain vanilla RISC is memory latency. Compared to
on-die registers and cache memory might as well be disk. True RISC is more
efficient to execute but it results in more instructions and hence more code
that has to be read from RAM.
Modern CISC chips that immediately unpack CISC into RISC micro-ops are really
something that I've termed "ZISC" \-- Zipped Instruction Set Computing. Think
of CISC ISA's like the byzantine x86_64 ISA with all its extensions as a
custom data compression codec for the instruction stream.
We got ZISC accidentally and IMHO without us realizing what we'd actually
done. The x86_64 "codec" was not explicitly designed as such but resulted from
a very path-dependent "evolutionary walk" through ISA design space. I wonder
what would happen if we explicitly embraced ZISC and designed a custom codec
for a RISC stream that can be decompressed very efficiently in hardware? Maybe
the right approach would be a CPU with hundreds of "macro registers" that
store RISC micro-op chunks. The core instruction set would be very
parsimonious, but almost immediately you'd start defining macros. Of course
multitasking would require saving and restoring these macros which would be
expensive, so a work-around for that might be to have one or maybe a few
codecs system-wide that are managed by the OS rather than by each application.
This would make macro redefinition rare. Apps are compiled into domain
specific instruction codec streams using software-defined codec definitions
managed by the OS.
The neat thing about this hypothetical ZISC is that while 99% of apps might
use the standard macro set you could have special apps that did define their
own. These could be things like cryptographic applications, neural networks,
high performance video encoders, genetic algorithms, graphics renderers,
cryptocurrency miners, etc. Maybe the OS would reserve a certain number of
macros for user application use.
~~~
deepnotderp
I agree with a lot of what you said, but ZISC already stands for zero
instruction set computing.
Also, RISC and CISC instruction cache hitrates are pretty similar.
~~~
api
Ahh I forgot about zero instruction set computing. Maybe CISC should just
stand for Compressed Instruction Stream Computing because on today's chips
that's exactly what it is.
Cache hit-rates being similar may just show that the ad-hoc evolved
compression codecs represented by CISC instruction sets are sub-optimal, hence
my point about what might happen if we intentionally designed a CPU with on-
board compression codec support for the instruction stream.
------
hinkley
At the end of this he says transistors are now doubling every twenty years(!?)
and it reminded me of another law Patterson doesn’t include in his graph:
Proebsting’s Law: improvements to compiler technology double the performance of typical programs every 18 years.
~~~
marvy
The derivation of that law is very suspect:
[http://proebsting.cs.arizona.edu/law.html](http://proebsting.cs.arizona.edu/law.html)
(go on, it's just a paragraph.)
The key issue that this ignores in my opinion, is that a compiler optimization
will rarely make last year's program faster, but it will make next year's
program faster. Why? Because if the compiler can't make an optimization,
programmers will do it by hand, even if it makes the code worse in some way.
For instance, if your C compiler can't inline small functions, you would use a
macro instead. When it finally starts learns to inline, your program won't get
any faster, but the next version will be able to use functions in places where
macros are a bad fit.
Pile up enough of these optimizations, and eventually it starts to feel as if
you're coding in a higher-level language than before, even though the syntax
that's accepted by the compiler never changed.
~~~
hyperpallium
> programmers will do it by hand
Only if better performance is needed.
Thus, corrollary: compiler technology will double program performance every 18
years, _but only if it doesn 't matter_.
~~~
hinkley
Developers have a nasty habit of convincing themselves that things aren’t
needed when they see them as too difficult. Even if the rest of the world
thinks your code is too slow you can convince yourself it’s good enough.
And in a world where we rely more and more on libraries, my ability to improve
on a piece of code is greatly curtailed. Sending in the compiler to help might
be my best option.
------
Animats
Yes, we're kind of stuck on individual CPU power. Clocks have been around 3GHz
for a decade now.
There are now architectures other than CPUs that matter. GPUs, mostly. "AI
chips" are coming. And, of course, Bitcoin miners. All are massively parallel.
What hasn't taken off are non-shared-memory multiprocessors. The Cell was the
only one ever to become a mass market product, and it was a dud as a game
console machine.
~~~
PostOnce
Perhaps it (Cell) would not have been a "dud" as you put it had IBM not been a
morally bankrupt villain.
I've read that Sony was under the impression that the licensing agreement
meant that IBM would market Cell tech to other customers, those customers
being in other computer markets like datacenters and stuff, rather than to
Microsoft, for the 360, at the same time that the PS3 was still in
development.
"As the book relates, the Power core used in the Xbox 360 and the PS3 was
originally developed in a joint venture between Sony, Toshiba and IBM. While
development was still ongoing, IBM–which retained the rights to use the chip
in products for other clients–contracted with Microsoft to use the new Power
core in their console. This arrangement left Sony engineers in an IBM facility
unknowingly working on features to support Sony’s biggest competitor, and left
Shippy and other IBM engineers feeling conflicted in their loyalties."
from [http://gamearchitect.net/2009/03/01/the-race-for-a-new-
game-...](http://gamearchitect.net/2009/03/01/the-race-for-a-new-game-
machine/)
(it's a book, and worth reading)
~~~
slavik81
I have not read the book, but I have a hard time imagining any world in which
the Cell could possibly be successful. Its heterogeneous architecture thrust a
huge amount of complexity onto software developers in exchange for meager
gains. Writing good code for it was difficult and expensive compared to other
platforms. Sony was just completely out of touch with reality.
In 2007, Gabe Newell famously complained that the Cell was "a waste of
everybody's time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no
long-term benefits. There's nothing there that you're going to apply to
anything else. You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the
architecture they've created."
~~~
wolfgke
> I have not read the book, but I have a hard time imagining any world in
> which the Cell could possibly be successful. Its heterogeneous architecture
> thrust a huge amount of complexity onto software developers in exchange for
> meager gains. Writing good code for it was difficult and expensive compared
> to other platforms. Sony was just completely out of touch with reality.
This was a different time. At that time researchers tried to build clusters
out of PS3s - because the speed advantages of the Cell made it worth and
"regular" Cell clusters were much more expensive. Some years later GPGPU
became feasible and one could forsee that it will become faster than the Cell,
too, in near future - and at that time the same kind of researchers dropped
their PS3 clusters and built GPGPU clusters. Don't tell me that particular in
the beginning GPGPU was easier to program for than the Cell.
It was also the time when Apple switched to Intel CPUs. I know at that time
IBM was also trying to sell the Cell to Apple, but Steve Jobs refused and
decided for Intel instead.
This decision of Apple and the decisions of researchers to stop tinkering with
PS3 clusters and build GPGPU clusters instead were in my opinion the two
landslides after which the fate of the Cell was destinied.
~~~
slavik81
I'm sorry, but I pretty much entirely disagree.
> Don't tell me that particular in the beginning GPGPU was easier to program
> for than the Cell.
The alternative was to use bog-standard homogeneous cores.
Yes, the air force bought a compute cluster of PS3s for some specialized
calculations. I wouldn't read too much into that. It says little about the
suitability of the architecture for more general purpose computing.
Supercomputers were always weird.
> It was also the time when Apple switched to Intel CPUs.
I don't believe there was much chance of Apple moving to Cell. Their switch to
Intel was because IBM could no longer seriously compete outside of a few
niches. There's nothing positive to infer from IBM's unsuccessful pitch to
Jobs.
> This decision of Apple and the decisions of researchers to stop tinkering
> with PS3 clusters and build GPGPU clusters instead were in my opinion the
> two landslides after which the fate of the Cell was destinied.
You're assigning far more importance to research group purchases than I think
is warranted. They don't buy enough to create economies of scale. That's why
researchers so frequently adopt consumer products already manufactured at
scale, like the Novint Falcon, Microsoft Kinect, and gaming graphics cards.
The Cell was best-in-class for a few specialized use cases, but it was never
going to take the world by storm. If we turn to a heterogeneous architecture
in the future, it will be begrudgingly, after all simpler alternatives have
been exhausted.
~~~
wolfgke
> You're assigning far more importance to research group purchases than I
> think is warranted. They don't buy enough to create economies of scale.
> That's why researchers so frequently adopt consumer products already
> manufactured at scale, like the Novint Falcon, Microsoft Kinect, and gaming
> graphics cards.
This is true, but in the consequences I have to disagree: Very often from this
kind of "abusing" consumer products for research purposes there emerge quite
interesting applications that _do_ become quite popular and economically
important. For example from such research there came the idea to use the
Kinect as a 3D scanner - from this commercial applications emerged. Or from
GPGPU (which at the beginning NVidia was quite the opposite of enthusiastic
about) CUDA and later OpenCL emerged (which is much better to program for than
abusing vertex and fragment shaders).
That is why I considered it is quite important for the future of the Cell when
researchers went from tinkered PS3 clusters to GPGPU and called this a
"landslide event for the future of the Cell".
------
monochromatic
Mirror:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180404023027/https://www.eejou...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180404023027/https://www.eejournal.com/article/fifty-
or-sixty-years-of-processor-developmentfor-this/)
~~~
jaytaylor
Also here: [https://archive.is/tY5Cl](https://archive.is/tY5Cl)
------
tfmkevin
The problem is that we have designed ourselves into an architectural cul-de-
sac when it comes to processors. We have fifty-plus years of evolution on
programming methodologies built on top of von Neumann architectures. Moore's
Law has given us decades of exponential gain without significant challenge to
that architecture, and now that Moore's Law is reaping diminishing returns in
terms of compute performance we are in the situation where we'd have to go
backward forty years on our programming model in order to take advantage of a
superior (given today's technology) architecture. For example, FPGAs can in
many cases outperform von Neumann machines by orders of magnitude in terms of
compute performance and (more importantly) performance per watt. However, the
programming model and ecosystem for FPGAs is worse than primitive. Something
you could write in a couple hundred lines of C code could take months to get
up and running on an FPGA. We need a way to transition from von Neumann
computing to alternative architectures without starting over on computer
science. Or, perhaps recent trends in neural networks will eliminate the need
for that?
~~~
scroot
Just this afternoon I finished reading David Harland's 1988 book "Rekursiv:
Object-Oriented Computer Architecture". It describes a completely different
way of designing machines at the low level that can support better programming
environments at the high level. You might want to check it out.
I believe we are going to see further balkanization between different
operating systems / programming systems and computers based upon what they are
use for. Cloud services will be the domain of what today we call "systems
programmers" who work in compiled languages and care about speed. In contrast,
we might now be able to get real "personal computers" running environments
that teach their users how to peel back the layers and manipulate them — the
long sought personal computing medium. This all could have happened back in
the 80s, but we didn't have widespread or fast use of the Internet. Now it's
different, and both of these types of systems can interop together in the
blink of an eye because of it.
Both will require completely new computing architectures.
------
mcjiggerlog
It's not all bad - one upside is that you don't need to upgrade your hardware
anywhere nearly as often as 10 or 20 years ago.
I put this PC together in 2013 for maybe £500-600 total and apart from adding
some RAM I haven't needed to upgrade anything and can still run games on
highish settings.
~~~
criley2
You can probably run 2016-2018 games on medium settings if you are not
interested in 60fps. I imagine you can play no graphically intense game @60fps
at any respectable resolution.
I say this because building a computer which can play say Assassin's Creed
Origins or Far Cry 5 at 1080p60 High Settings would easy run you over a $1000
right now, due in no small part to the extravagantly over-priced GPUs.
Heck, it costs $400-600 to get a GPU to play those games on medium to medium
high right now. Not a computer, JUST the graphics chip to get 60fps on medium.
Crypto has destroyed affordable PC gaming and it makes me so sad. I can
recommend Alienwares on sale that are dramatically cheaper than self-built.
What happened to this industry :(
~~~
mort96
60 FPS? I had a desktop I built in 2014, with a 4770k and an r9 290x, run
Overwatch at 144 FPS at 1440p with low settings. The machine could still play
Just Case 3 and GTA 5 (2015 games, but I didn't really play any graphically
intensive 2016+ games on it) at 1080p 60 FPS with decent graphics settings, if
I recall correctly.
I have since upgraded to a 6700k and 1080Ti, but that 2014 hardware lasted
well into 2017 - and the current GPU cost just under 3/4 the price of the
entire 2014 computer, despite the r9 290x being a top of the line GPU. High
end PC gaming definitely isn't affordable anymore.
~~~
AstralStorm
That is mostly due to cost of GPUs having been inflated by miners and perhaps
the expense of having a huge monitor.
Neither CPU nor GPU are progressing as fast as some predicted anymore.
Additionally the shift to consoles as stable hardware platforms over time has
put a damper on computing power required by economically viable games.
The remaining outlets are VR and huge resolution (same thing actually) - and
high quality and fidelity simulations. (Including AI.)
------
steve_musk
What is the limit on creating bigger chips? If some of the money/effort was
focused on being able to fab larger chips instead of decreasing feature
size... I don't know much about lithography so maybe the answer is obvious to
those that do.
~~~
KaiserPro
Chips are fabb'd on a large wafer, which is then split up (see here:
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/003/150/280/9b6a64c4d8ed...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/003/150/280/9b6a64c4d8ed23068b87cd56737810ca_large.jpg?1421462097)
)
Now, the process isnt perfect, and you hear a lot about "yield" Which is
basically how many chips on a wafer are not working to spec. Now, as you make
a chip bigger, you increase the chance of a mistake. This reduces the "yield"
and drives up the cost. (I'm not sure if its actually possible to make a full
sized wafer without a mistake, I'll defer that to someone who knows)
In some cases those broken chips arn't all that bad, so they are shipped with
the broken bits deactivated (This could be lies, but I think some AMD procs
were done like this )
yes, there are other factors like propagation time, but thats solved by not
having chip wide cache coherency.
~~~
sp332
You don't increase the chance of a mistake, you increase the cost of a mistake
because each little defect means you're throwing out a whole chip. The larger
each chip is, the more expensive each little defect is.
Sony had a hard time when they were ramping up Cell processor production, so
they designed the chips with 8 SPEs but only shipped them with 7 activated.
That way if a defect happened to be in one of the SPEs, they could just turn
it off and still ship the chip.
------
fouc
Found an older youtube video that touches on the same topic:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtEGIp3a_M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtEGIp3a_M)
------
rstuart4133
There is a lot of focus on the end of Moore's law here, but it isn't main
driver of what's happening. The slow down we are seeing is driven by the end
of Dennard scaling.
There is a thermal dissipation limit of 200W per chip for air cooling. We hit
that decades ago of course, but it didn't matter while Dennard scaling kept
dropping the power consumption. Once that stopped we squeezed a bit more of
stuff by being more power efficient, which boiled down to two things - turning
stuff off when it wasn't needed and devoting the transistors Moore's law gave
us to specialised tasks (like silicon dedicated to encryption or h264
encoding) that did the job more efficiently. However, that doesn't get you
very far.
Which is probably why he didn't mention 3D, even though we have it 32 layers
of it now and they are talking about 256 layers. What is the point of having
128 CPU's on a single die just running 4 of them exceeds your power budget?
Indeed, what's the point of spending billions perusing Moore's further?
Or to put it another way again, the human brain fits roughly the same number
of synapses per unit volume as modern 3D silicon has transistors. The brain's
raw switching speed is roughly 1,000,000 times slower than silicon (1ms vs
1ns), but power consumption of a synapse vs a transistor is roughly 100,000
times better.
So while AlphaZero learnt to play Go between than any human in a few days, it
used more energy that an entire human (not just their brain) would use in
several life times to do it.
------
jtbayly
I wonder what will happen to the CPU, especially if it’s not speeding up much
anymore. Perhaps with Apple doing its own chips, the CPU will just have less
and less of the work assigned to it.
~~~
ianai
At some point it was going to be germanium to replace silicon.
~~~
resource0x
Remember GaAs? It was the Future in 1980.
~~~
deepnotderp
He's talking about germanium channel FinFETs, GaAs was intended to entirely
replace silicon, which probably was never going to happen.
~~~
Tobba_
GaAs logic is probably happening at some point, just not yet. All improvements
like that which would be incredibly expensive to develop will be held off on
until all cheaper options have been exhausted. It does seem to be slowly
moving though.
------
hyperpallium
So Moore's Law really is dead this time. And TPU's are only faster than GPU's
through lower precision.
Will compute at least keep getting _cheaper_ , perhaps through economies of
scale?
Is Kurzweil's magical next information technology, to carry on the
exponential, anywhere in sight?
~~~
nootropicat
Imagine asics for everything. I mean everything, like implementing a
javascript engine directly. The energy efficiency could go up 2-3 orders of
magnitude (looking at the difference in bitcoin mining between gpus and
asics).
Old gaming consoles had cartridges (with memory); I can imagine a future in
which complex software is transported in the same manner, except cartridges
contain specialized asics. Or perhaps a step forward - a chip making device in
every home, an equivalent of sorts of burning music to cd.
~~~
iainmerrick
_I mean everything, like implementing a javascript engine directly._
In that case, rather than a Javascript engine, wouldn't you have an ASIC for
the script itself?
~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
You wouldn't want a new chip per website. Maybe hardware handling of a
standard library, though.
~~~
AstralStorm
Or even just of the expensive operations like synchronization, context
switches, DMA to cache from network interface...
Wait. We have most of that already. :)
------
strainer
This should be a sobering account to the remarkably popular theory, that given
enough time we should inevitably make powerful enough processors to model a
universe in sufficient 'detail' that creatures within it will be convinced
they live and are as important as we find ourselves, in this one.
~~~
quickthrower2
If I were to do that, I'd put some constraints in to limit how much the
creatures can explore of that universe. For example a maximum speed at which
any matter can travel, for one.
~~~
strainer
Even with the parallelism afforded by speed limits, a computer many trillions
of times as powerful as we have today could not model the thoughts and life
experiences of the billions of human beings and other creatures in this
planet.
Its not even clear that modelling thought in a virtual world has any
equivalence to thinking in this world.
It is clear that we are unlikely to ever model anything nearly as complicated
as this.
~~~
eloff
I don't think it's clear. How long before our digital neural networks exceed
the complexity of our human biological ones? It's possible today with a super
cluster of sorts. That is to have roughly the same number of connections
between neuron type thingies - it still wouldn't be able to match our brains
functionally - that's another problem. And yes our biological neurons are way
more sophisticated than what we use today for AI, but again that can be
overcome eventually.
This suggests that it's possible one day to have computers some orders of
magnitude better. If you look at it from first principles, of course it's
possible. The brain is unlikely to be the most efficient design of neural
network allowable in this universe. So given enough time, we'll learn how to
build it better.
Then it's just a manufacturing and energy problem to match the number of human
minds on the planet. So no, I don't think it's impossible at all.
Just ridiculously freaking hard, and not likely to happen in our lifetimes.
~~~
mjburgess
It's not a matter of it being "hard". Nor is it a matter of "complexity" (how
many parts something has).
A simulation is a model which picks out a tiny subset of regularities in the
target to _model_. There is an infinite density of such regularities to pick
upon, because _we_ are imposing the structure on the target in order to model
it.
The target of the model has no "model structure" it has causal structure. That
is, when light interacts with the surface of a mirror its interaction isnt
"abstract", ie., some description. It is an actual photon interacting with an
actual electric field, etc.
To "model to infinite density", ie., to have every single test that can
possibly be applied to a model come out identical to that test of the target,
the model needs to be just another example of the target.
The only thing which can be investigated in _any_ way to behave as light
hitting a mirror, is light hitting a mirror.
A digital computer is just an electric field oscillating across a silicon
surface. It cannot be programmed into being a mirror, nor into being light.
Programming gives the electric field a "model structure". Chalk gives a
blackboard a "model structure". Lego gives a bridge a "model structure".
Programming cannot not -- it is _impossible_ \-- give silicon the causal
structure of light interacting with a mirror.
Model structure is actually just an observer-relative isomorphism: when the
user of the computer (chalkboard, lego,...) looks at it, the _user_ , is able
to inform himself of the target by use of the model. To do so the _user_
identifies certain aspects of the model with the target. The model is not _at
all_ causally alike the target.
No amount of lego will make a lego brain. No amount of oscillation in an
electric field will make a thought. Neurological activity, and indeed every
causal mechanism of the universe, is only _described_ by a model.
~~~
narrator
My argument against simulation is similar in thst certain algorithms for
modeling physical processes can only run in exponential time. Protein folding
is a good example. How could a computer simulation perform exponential time
operations efficiently? It wouldn't work no matter how big a computer was made
because the complexity would explode very quickly while reality can do it in
real-time.
~~~
adrianN
Quantum computers can solve protein folding efficiently.
~~~
ziotom78
"Can" or "could in principle"?
~~~
adrianN
"Can" as in quantum chemistry is one of the best applications for quantum
computers.
~~~
ziotom78
Sorry for the naivety, I am not an expert of quantum computing, therefore I
asked. I am quite interested in the topic, might you give me some references,
please?
~~~
adrianN
Googling for "quantum chemistry computers" yields a number of interesting
results, e.g.
[https://www.chemistryworld.com/feature/quantum-chemistry-
on-...](https://www.chemistryworld.com/feature/quantum-chemistry-on-quantum-
computers/3007680.article)
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603794/chemists-are-
first...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603794/chemists-are-first-in-
line-for-quantum-computings-benefits/)
Or if you like something by Feynman:
[http://doc.cat-v.org/feynman/simulating-
physics/simulating-p...](http://doc.cat-v.org/feynman/simulating-
physics/simulating-physics-with-computers.pdf)
------
aap_
> Maurice Wilkes first conceived of microprogramming in 1951
Zuse's Z1 was microprogrammed in 1937.
------
mtgx
> _Consequently, the x86 processors in today’s PCs may still appear to be
> executing software-compatible CISC instructions, but, as soon as those
> instructions cross over from external RAM into the processor, an instruction
> chopper /shredder slices and dices x86 machine instructions into simpler
> “micro-ops” (Intel-Speak for RISC instructions) that are then scheduled and
> executed on multiple RISC execution pipelines. Today’s x86 processors got
> faster by evolving into RISC machines._
Going by that and the graph, then we can conclude that Intel saw the rapid
90's and early 2,000's gains because it was converting its chips into RISC
chips?
Also, that paragraph is basically saying that Intel's architecture has an
extra layer of abstraction - so now we actually see that there _is_ indeed an
"x86 bloat" and why ARM chips seem to be so much more efficient (assuming all
else, including process node is equal). It also looks like Intel may have made
a "mistake" going with CISC decades ago, and it tried to rectify that in the
90's.
~~~
blattimwind
Which is not true, since ARM processors - the faster ones anyway - use micro-
ops as well. Arguably µops are not RISC, either, unless you consider "very
wide instruction word whose bits map to control lines" RISC.
~~~
Narishma
ARM isn't exactly your typical RISC either.
------
JoachimS
I found this article from a Synopsys User Group meeting to be very
interesting. The steps and changes needed to get to 7, 5 and 2 nm are really,
really big:
[https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333109](https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333109)
------
Const-me
I don’t think the main reason for Moore’s law slowdown is technical one. Intel
enjoyed no competition for quite a few years. They simply lacked incentive to
improve performance of their chips.
In areas with healthy competition, mobile processors and GPUs, Moore’s law
still doing OK.
E.g. here’s a graph I recently made for top of the line single-chip nVidia
GPUs: [http://const.me/tmp/nvidia-gpus.png](http://const.me/tmp/nvidia-
gpus.png) The numbers represent single precision floating-point performance.
The graph is in logarithmic scale and it looks pretty close to the exponential
growth predicted by Moore’s law.
------
PeterStuer
Couldn't find a video of the event, but probably this talk comes close?
"Past and future of hardware and architecture"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9KRq2Ns0ZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9KRq2Ns0ZE)
------
awiesenhofer
So, whats the way forward? FPGAs on Die? Asics? Or doubling down on EVU,
Germanium, etc?
~~~
Tobba_
I think we're far from the ceiling on CPU performance so far, but we seem to
have hit a (micro)architectural dead end. Currently a _lot_ of time and
transistors is spent simply shuffling data around the chip, or between the CPU
and memory, while the actual computational units simply sit idle. Or
similarily, units that sit idle because they can't be used for the current
task, even if they _should_ be - the FPUs on modern x86 cores are a pretty
good example of this. FP operations are just fused integer/fixed-point
operations, but it's been designed into a corner where it _has_ to be a
special unit to deal with all the crap quickly.
We've probably optimized silicon transistors to death though; that's why it's
coming to a stop now. GaAs or SiGe are some of the alternatives there.
Although there's still quite a lot of advancements there that simply aren't
economical yet. For example, SOI processes at low feature sizes seem to be
suitable for mass-produced chips now, but it hasn't made it out of the low-
power segment yet. MRAM seems to be viable and might be able to provide us
with bigger caches (in the same die area), but right now it's mainly used to
replace small flash memories (plus some more novel things like non-volatile
write buffers, but it's horrifically expensive). So we've probably got a few
big boosts left there, but it's not gonna last forever.
The next obvious architectural advancement right now is asynchronous logic. In
theory, it's superior in every way - power and timing noise immunity, speed
isn't limited by the worst-case timings, no/reduced unnecessary switching (i.e
lower power, meaning higher voltages without the chip melting itself). On
paper, you run into some big problems on the data path - quasi-delay-
insensitive circuits need a _lot_ more transistors and wires, and the current
alternative is to use a separate delay path to time the operations, which is a
bit iffy. You do at least get rid of the Lovecraftian clock distribution tree
that's getting problematic for current synchronous logic. In practice, the
tools to work with it and engineers/designers that know how to work it don't
exist, and the architecture is entirely up in the air. So it's many years of
development behind right now and a huge investment that nobody really bothered
with while they could just juice the microarchitecture and physical
implementation.
~~~
nominatronic
> You do at least get rid of the Lovecraftian clock distribution tree that's
> getting problematic for current synchronous logic.
No, you don't. You make it even bigger and far more complex.
You can take any synchronous design, and refine the clock gating further and
further, to the point where no part of it gets a clock transition unless it
actually needs it on that cycle.
And then when you're finished, congratulations, you've made an asynchronous
circuit.
Fully asynchronous design and perfect clock gating are one and the same thing.
The clock distribution and gating approaches we already have are actually a
sign of progress towards asynchronous design; they're just quite coarse-
grained.
Of course, it's probably not the case that a clock-gating transform of an
conventional synchronous design is also the best possible solution to a
problem, so there's clearly still scope for improvement. But a lot of the
possible improvements are probably equally applicable, or have equivalents in,
optimising clock distribution and gating in synchronous design - because
that's ultimately the same thing as moving towards asynchronicity.
So talking about clock distribution issues as a problem that will just go away
with asynchronous design is misleading.
------
guitarbill
Hmm, doesn't mention ARM once. A bit of an oversight, or a convenient omission
when one is advertising a new RISC instruction set for "purpose-built
processors"?
~~~
_chris_
"Purpose-built" means you can change the ISA to suit your whims, which for ARM
requires you to A) pay for an architecture license and B) pay for the
privilege of changing the architecture.
~~~
guitarbill
I'm sure RISC-V has merits, in fact as a hacker who used microcontrollers I
think that would be great. Certainly ARM isn't the be-all and end-all.
Technically it's not even 1 ISA, but you still know what I meant. Not
mentioning the most* used architecture though? Come on.
* most = number of CPUs shipped
------
XenophileJKO
I seriously wonder if cryogenic computing won't break out of this. From what I
hear it is very promising by several orders of magnitude both in terms of
power and speed.
~~~
hyperion2010
I heard a rumor that the big guys did the math on the energy costs for running
the compressors to keep nitrogen or helium liquid and compared it to their
projected cooling cost for normal computers and found that the compressors
were cheaper. Trick is, apparently no one has a good story for super
conducting circuit parts, so everyone has to start from scratch.
------
kokey
It's also interesting to note that Fabrice Bellard has developed a RISC-V
emulator [https://bellard.org/riscvemu/](https://bellard.org/riscvemu/)
------
tempodox
Is the host down? I can't open that page.
~~~
krylon
It worked for me, but the page took a very long time to load (1 minute or
longer).
------
dannymulligan
Is there a video of this talk available anywhere?
~~~
fouc
Not sure, but this one might be similar:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtEGIp3a_M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtEGIp3a_M)
------
excalibur
So the moral of the story is that everyone with a grand vision and an
ambitious project is doomed to failure, but there's still plenty of success to
be had for those willing to quickly slap some junk together.
~~~
cwp
To put it more positively, progress is made by stringing together many small
incremental improvements. Even the RISC revolution started as a special
purpose project that stripped away the inessential to achieve a specific,
narrow goal.
------
srcmap
"Moore’s Law are Dead" only for CPU.
Moore's Law is alive and progressing at the same rate for GPU.
Applications such AI, Crypto-Currency are leveraging that.
~~~
martinpw
Actually not true. Perhaps surprisingly, CPUs and GPUs are progressing at
about the same rate if you look at the high end. GPUs are all about massive
parallelism, and if you compare against high end Xeons, the CPU core count
increases plus things like AVX512 & FMA means they have been scaling similarly
to GPUs over the past 10 years or so.
Nice analysis here (URL says 2013 but he has updated his numbers to end-2016).
Looking at the graphs, you might even conclude that CPUs are improving faster
in some respects.
[https://www.karlrupp.net/2013/06/cpu-gpu-and-mic-hardware-
ch...](https://www.karlrupp.net/2013/06/cpu-gpu-and-mic-hardware-
characteristics-over-time/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nonprofit Community Stands Together to Protect .ORG - jonah-archive
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/nonprofit-community-stands-together-protect-org
======
jonah-archive
Here's the initial letter being sent from EFF & others to ICANN and the
Internet Society: [https://www.eff.org/document/coalition-letter-sale-public-
in...](https://www.eff.org/document/coalition-letter-sale-public-interest-
registry)
And here's the site for the campaign:
[https://savedotorg.org](https://savedotorg.org)
(Disclaimer: I work for the Internet Archive, and we are one of the initial
signatories to this letter.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Misfortune - runesoerensen
https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/misfortune
======
chollida1
If you've never used the Tesla autopilot its a weird feeling.
It's not a fully self driving car and its obviously not strictly human
controlled. Unfortunately it ends up being more mentally taxing to use this
hybrid approach than to just drive yourself.
Consider highway driving, with normal human powered mode you are in full
control so if you see brake lights a half kilometer up ahead you can disengage
the cruise control and react on your own, everyone who has driven is
comfortable with this.
With this assisted driving the car doesn't slow down right away, and its not
clear if the car just can't see the tail lights lighting up yet or if its
decided it doesn't need to react yet and as such you start to second guess the
car,
\- should I drive or should I leave it to the car?
\- what if it turns when I grab the wheel? Will I make things worse by
driving?
\- does the car even see the object up ahead? How can I tell, its impossible
to expect the car to tell you of an object that it cant' even see.
It becomes just more taxing to use the hybrid approach to driving and as such
I don't use it at all. I have no doubt that the Tesla auto pilot is safer than
driving, but I also have no doubt that it can royally screw up.
I've come to the conclusion that some assisted driving, like auto braking for
obstacles that you will imminently hit is good but the kind of assisted
driving where it can almost automatically drive for you is not really anywhere
near ready, if you follow Tesla's rules on how to use it, it actually makes
driving harder:(
~~~
eclipxe
I have a completely different opinion. What do you have your following
distance set to? I have mine set to 6 or 7 and it starts slowing down well
ahead of when I would slow down.
I think you're over thinking things - just let it do its thing, but be ready
to resume control if needed. I drive 90% of the time in Auto Pilot, and it
makes driving exponentially more relaxing and safer.
~~~
argonaut
Yes, but that's the problem. Just "letting it do its thing" and
relaxing/trusting/ _expecting_ it to "do the right thing" is what leads to
accidents like this.
And if you trust Autopilot to do the right thing, and get into a fatal
accident, Tesla will say you should have been paying attention!
~~~
sethjgore
Isn't that similar to saying horseless carriages cannot be as good as horses?
Our experience in driving is never compared to the experience of riding in a
carriage or even harnessing a horse. Driving is considered a discrete
experience in its own class. Perhaps our fears and expectations of mechanical
error is ignorant of our own overconfidence in our own driving control. Are we
always in control of our attention? Do we always make the most accurate
observations as we drive?
Why do we establish the experience of being driven by autopilot as something
comparable to the actual action of human, hand-feet-sight-controlled driving
(steering wheel-acceleration/deacceleration-dashboard/windshield/mirrors)?
We cannot trust the horse to do the same things as the car nor can we trust
the car to do be same as horse.
We are on the cusp of moving responsibility from the human engineered
transport (car) to the machine engineered (autopilot) transport, which
transfer was previously animal to human engineered transport (horse to car).
We will believe what establishes our worldview and ignore what demolishes the
same foundations.
~~~
argonaut
No, it's not the same. Not sure why you think that analogy even makes sense.
------
thesimon
Context is probably [http://fortune.com/2016/07/06/tesla-autopilot-crash-
material...](http://fortune.com/2016/07/06/tesla-autopilot-crash-material-ceo-
elon-musk/)
SEC statements are usually covering a lot of stuff, so I doubt it's very
surprising.
But I'm still not convinced by their argumentation on the safety of the
Autopilot.
>That contrasted against worldwide accident data, customers using Autopilot
are statistically safer than those not using it at all.
I can only cite German data [0], but on the Autobahn there is a death every 90
million miles driven. But that includes drunk drivers, old cards, old drivers
etc. Teslas Autopilot being save in over 100 million miles doesn't really
sound that much better, especially considering the smaller sample size. And in
this case, the death could've probably been avoided by not using autopilot.
[0]:
[https://www.adac.de/_mmm/pdf/statistik_4_5_Unfallgeschehen_S...](https://www.adac.de/_mmm/pdf/statistik_4_5_Unfallgeschehen_Strassenarten_42780.pdf)
~~~
jsprogrammer
Tesla itself claims knowledge of a statistical inevitability that a collision
will occur while Autopilot is engaged.
Some questions now are: What did Tesla do to warn of this inevitability? What
did they do to mitigate it? What are they doing to mitigate it? Is there any
way for users to reduce their chance of being a count in the collision
statistic, other than reading and following all relevant disclaimers and
warnings?
~~~
eclipxe
Yeah they can pay attention, even while AutoPilot is engaged
------
suprgeek
Note that another possible Autopilot Crash is now being investigated:
[http://electrek.co/2016/07/06/nhtsa-probing-tesla-model-x-
ro...](http://electrek.co/2016/07/06/nhtsa-probing-tesla-model-x-rollover-
accident-pa-autopilot-involve-tesla-updates-statement/)
As I have noted before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=12012688&goto=item%3Fi...](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=12012688&goto=item%3Fid%3D12011419%2312012688)
TESLA really needs to tread carefully here to avoid giving the whole Self-
Driving Tech a bad name.
You CANNOT move fast and Break Things in this particular case.
~~~
cocotino
>TESLA really needs to tread carefully here to avoid giving the whole Self-
Driving Tech a bad name.
What does it matter if it cannot be proven to be better than regular driving?
~~~
jsprogrammer
Valuations of companies in the space may drop unless they can provide an
alternative prospectus.
~~~
cocotino
As someone who owns no stock, I don't care about that. I thought we were
talking about advancing the mankind and that kind of thing...
~~~
Aelinsaar
Talk is just talk, follow the money.
------
vessenes
Tesla is surprisingly aggressive with media organizations. I think it's one of
their hallmarks actually -- I'm not sure why they are this way, but I would
guess that they have over the years hardened up in response to one-sided press
(I'm thinking of the NYT article claiming their car died and Top Gear in
particular).
At any rate, it's refreshing to read rebuttals to journalists. My own
experience is that it is very rare that journalists both want to get a story
right and have time to get it right; the vast majority of modern 'news' is
written by glorified bloggers on a deadline.
~~~
poof131
Personally, I think Tesla and Musk should shut up. This bantering back at the
media might have been “new” and “cool” with other topics, but not when it
involves somebody’s death. While it’s fine to respond to inaccurate facts, the
catchy headlines (“Misfortune”, “A Tragic Loss”) and the condescending and
confrontational tone is totally out of place. Stick to the facts. Talk about
how you take this very seriously, are going to look more into it, but do
believe the autopilot is safe.
After a decade in the military, where bad things happen frequently, I couldn’t
imagine public relations acting in this manner: "We bombed the wrong house,
but this happens, it's war, the media just doesn't understand". Don’t give
people the impression you care more about your business than their lives.
Don’t dismiss someone’s death as a statistic.
I want Tesla to succeed, but they are starting to leave a bad taste in my
mouth. I remember my XO saying, “never get into a shouting match with an
idiot, bystanders can’t tell the difference.” Ignore the media if you can’t
respond appropriately. The real misfortune here is that somebody died in what
was probably a preventable accident, not a poorly sourced Fortune article.
~~~
etendue
Wanted to say that, in addition to agreeing with what you wrote here, I've
noticed myself frequently nodding in agreement with your other nicely worded
and considered comments.
I prefer your version, but I would like to share a slightly different
formulation of that aphorism that is equally amusing: never argue with idiots,
they'll bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
------
iamleppert
The numbers he quotes of "world wide accident deaths" and "do the math" is a
totally ingenuous argument. It's nowhere near an apples to apples comparison.
The fact of the matter is, a Tesla driver is not your regular driver. A better
test would be to give everyone with a Honda Civic some kind of autopilot.
The data that they do have is a curiosity at best, and cannot be compared vis
a vis regular joe blow accident data.
~~~
sverige
Wait, what? Do you mean that buying a Tesla makes you a good driver, or the
kind of driver who watches Harry Potter movies while tooling down the highway?
------
joshdickson
These comments are absurd.
Fortune did not "assume that Tesla had complete information from the moment
this accident occurred." Fortune merely noted that there was a long period of
time between the time of the accident and when the information was disclosed.
Fortune is not saying that Tesla _did_ have knowledge of what happened, it's
saying that Tesla _should_ have had knowledge. And Fortune is saying that
Tesla should have investigated more quickly _especially_ considering the
impending stock sale. Perhaps they did not because Tesla feels as though the
death is not "material." Musk's logic on whether the death was material is so
convoluted it defies any sort of logical counterargument, and is ultimately
for the courts to decide.
Regarding whether or not the accident was not an Autopilot failure, of course
_technically_ it appears that the truck should not have turned, but this is
what happens in normal traffic. We do not design autonomous driving systems
with the idea that nobody ever breaks driving rules or laws, rather we design
them with the idea that every crazy situation that we can think of, and a lot
that we cannot, are likely to happen and we should attempt to avoid or lessen
the impact of a crash whenever possible. When Musk says that there is "no
evidence to suggest that Autopilot was not operating as designed and as
described to users," I seem to have missed the marketing material where they
say that the features work only when other drivers follow traffic laws. It's
one thing if a construction crane drops on top of the vehicle (cannot be
reasonably avoided); it's another when a truck crosses in front of you (where
we can take various evasive measures to lessen the impact of the crash even if
we cannot entirely stop the crash from occurring, none of which were taken in
this case).
Regarding vehicle accident statistics, as someone who worked in active safety
for several years (i.e. systems like radar-based crash avoidance that did not
trigger in this case), when we look at these numbers to make comparisons, the
entire idea as of 2016 is that when we combine a human driver with a lot of
electronic help, you are far safer than driving without that assistance or if
the electronics were driving for you. But Musk only compares autopilot, which
is only usable in certain scenarios, with the entirely of vehicular death
information (which by the way, is largely much cheaper, older cars with worse
safety systems that lead to more deaths). We know for a fact that autopilot
lulls drivers into becoming distracted and doing other things, taking their
eyes off the road, etc, because it does not enforce drivers to keep their
hands on the steering wheel (See NYTimes report today). The simple, obvious
fact of the matter is that a Tesla would be far safer if it were using all of
its accident avoidance technology _and_ required the driver to be engaged with
the steering wheel. Yet it does not.
As someone with experience with this technology (though not at/with Tesla), I
would greatly like to see them push a software update that requires you to
have your hands on the wheel while autopilot is engaged. Saying that you
should do so is not enough when the tools to enforce it are there. Is is clear
and obvious that that would make the technology even safer. Yet rather than
accept even the tiniest shred of responsibility, Tesla has entirely closed
ranks and blamed everyone else. I, for one, am disappointed in Tesla as a
whole and Elon Musk in particular.
~~~
omarforgotpwd
Tesla is pretty clear with users that auto pilot is little more than an
advanced cruise control feature and you can't rely on it. The whole Auto pilot
name is just marketing. It is really no different than a Mercedes with the
same features getting in a crash. As these systems are widely deployed people
will continue to die. What's important is that the deaths per million miles is
lower than with auto pilot off, and that's already true today's.
~~~
joshdickson
I worked on the Mercedes system and have driven it for thousands of miles. How
the systems approach enforcement is entirely different. If you remove your
hands from the wheel for more than a second or two, the system turns off. I
can watch dozens of videos of people with their hands off the wheel of their
Tesla while speaking into a camera on YouTube. I consider that very different.
~~~
omarforgotpwd
Perhaps but at some point software has to let people take their hands off the
wheel. It's very hard to say when the software is "good enough" to let people
do that but it's a leap we need to make to get to where we're going.
~~~
studentrob
> at some point software has to let people take their hands off the wheel
At that point, drivers shouldn't be expected to put their hands back on the
wheel. They should be in the backseat, which is Google's plan.
There isn't time to put your hands back on the wheel in the event of a car
accident. Planes get minutes to react to errors. Cars have seconds. Car
drivers are more akin to train conductors who, these days, have complex
deadman's switches that guarantee the conductor is still focused on driving
the train.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Java.next() - Clojure: The Return of the Lispers - bozhidar
http://batsov.com/Clojure/Java/2011/05/12/jvm-langs-clojure.html
The third chapter of Java.next() series. A glance at the Clojure programming language, a modern Lisp-1 dialect for the JVM and .Net.
======
efsavage
I'd love to be sold on a new language, but using it by showing me ridiculous
examples of a language I know reduces the credibility of the seller. It's an
otherwise good looking article but when I see this:
public boolean hasUpperCase(String word) {
if (word == null) {
return false;
}
int len = word.length();
for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
if (Character.isUpperCase(word.charAt(i))) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
Where it should be this:
public boolean hasUpperCase(String word) {
return word != null && word.matches(".*[A-Z]+.*");
}
It casts doubt on the other examples. I'm not saying Java isn't a verbose
language that can get tedious, but let's use some decent examples.
~~~
swannodette
It's doesn't cast doubt on the examples at all, your code is less generic:
(defn has-uppercase? [string]
(some #(Character/isUpperCase %) string))
This code can deal with _any_ sequence of characters: String, Array,
PersistentList, PersistentVector, Cons, LazySequence, etc. Your example only
deals with String.
~~~
efsavage
Fair enough, but mine was not an alternate to his Clojure code, but to his
Java code (which only checks String). Perhaps he should have focused on the
functional efficiency like you did, rather than just bloated lines of code.
~~~
seabee
It's still not an alternate to the Java, since there are more upper-case
characters than the 26 your regex matches. But I'm sure there is an
appropriate Unicorn character class you could use instead.
------
dotcomsmarties
I've been coding Java/Python for 10+ years (C/C++ before that), and recently
started on Clojure a few months ago. I'm having trouble grokking Clojure since
I'm not a Lisp guy, but after stumbling around like a blind rat I find that
Clojure's syntax is quite extraordinary. I hope Clojure will become more
mainstream as more people use them, and creates more tutorials for a layman
like me.
------
d0m
I feel like when people are comparing languages, they are exaggerating.. For
instance:
public boolean hasUpperCase(String word) {
if (word == null) {
return false;
}
int len = word.length();
for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
if (Character.isUpperCase(word.charAt(i))) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
or
public boolean hasUpperCase(String word) {
if (null != word)
return any(charactersOf(word), new Predicate() {
public boolean apply(Character c) {
return isUpperCase(c);
}
})
else
return false;
}
~~~
swannodette
Small inconveniences add up fast. For example
[https://github.com/clojure/core.logic/blob/master/src/main/c...](https://github.com/clojure/core.logic/blob/master/src/main/clojure/clojure/core/logic/minikanren.clj).
It's a 1000 lines of Clojure, I strongly doubt that this could be implemented
in anything less than 5000 lines of Java split across 10 files.
------
th0ma5
I've been playing a lot with Kawa (Scheme) for Java, it's rather nice.
~~~
rikthevik
What are the cool things we should know about Kawa?
~~~
cjenkins
One cool thing is that the Google Android App Inventor is built out of Kawa.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_App_Inventor>)
I believe Kawa is also currently a bit friendlier on Android as Clojure has
some overhead. (More at
<http://dev.clojure.org/display/design/Android+Support>)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ralph McQuarrie Remembered - voodoochilo
http://www.starwars.com/news/ralph_mcquarrie_remembered.html
======
samstave
Such amazing art in that slideshow. Its amazing how tightly the live action
scenes of the movie matched those pics. Were all of these drawn prior to the
movie?
~~~
commieneko
The paintings for the first movie were pre-production visualizations done well
in advance of filming. In fact, well in advance of the story. In the painting
of Luke on the cliff looking down on Mos Eisley, you may notice that "he"
seems a bit wide hipped. That's because at the time this painting was done,
the "Luke" character was a girl.
If I remember correctly, most of the paintings for the other movies were done
mainly as marketing and promotional items, for books, posters, and art sets. I
don't think he was as involved with the rest of the original trilogy as with
the first. By then Lucas had a whole army of artists working for him.
The original trilogy owes most of its look and feel to McQuarrie.
I always liked the original set of paintings, where things looked different
and strange. I actually saw many of them _before_ the movie came out, as they
were used to promote the film in science fiction fan magazines. (The first
movie came out between my junior and senior years of high school.) The later
paintings are much more "on model" than the original, exploratory paintings,
and not as fanciful.
My cousin was a film critic at the time, and somewhere my brother has a press
kit that my cousin gave to him that included a lot of goodies, including a
very nice, oversized black portfolio of the original set of paintings. I
wouldn't be surprised to find it's worth something these days, but my brother
and I spent _hours_ pouring over those paintings, and enjoying every detail.
It's one of things that got us involved in the special effects industry years
later. So I feel I own Mr. McQuarrie quite a bit.
~~~
hammock
That's incredible. Going through the art for the first movie, I imagine in my
head a movie that is much more "fantasy" (the genre) than what came out. Like
something a little more Labyrinth and a little less Princess Bride (not that
Star Wars is anything like those two movies, just trying to articulate)
~~~
commieneko
The original _Star Wars_ was a mish-mash of everything George Lucas liked when
he was a kid, and some of his later adult obsessions. Old movie serials,
children's stories, space opera science fiction are in there as well as a
_ton_ of references to Japanese cinema in general and Kurosawa in particular.
He was later to generalize this into a more general set of archetypes, but it
seems to me that the first movie was very naive, in the literary sense, and
very much a reflection of his love of the fantasy narratives of his youth.
------
citricsquid
Not related to the story, but the starwars.com website is really very nice. So
very easy to navigate.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Looking for a Bluetooth stack hacker - explorer9
Dear YC hackernews members: We are looking for a bluetooth Guru to join our team, either as a consultant or a full time employee. Please let me know if you might be the one or have a lead. We are a medical device startup based in Los Gatos, trying to build a device that would help millions if not billions of people. You can reach me at [email protected]
======
jcr
Hiya neighbor! I'm also in Los Gatos, well the mountains actually, but close
enough.
Your post/request needs to define _what_ stack(s)?
i.e. operating system(s)?, hardware hacking (design)?
There are a number of security concerns caused by the fundamental design of
bluetooth itself. Given you mentioned your device is for medical use, the
security concerns might wreak havoc with HIPPA requirements.
EDIT: I realize you're using a brand new account, but putting some contact
details and info in it would be wise.
~~~
explorer9
Hi JC, the key stacks that could be involved include HCI, ACL, L2CAP, and
RFCOMM. It is an embedded system with no OS. hardware design has already been
done, but we are open to changes related to the bluetooth part. Folks with
security background would be even better (right now our plan is to handle
security at the app level.) Thanks also for the contact info suggestion.
------
jey
Please be more specific. Are you looking for someone to do hardware design,
firmware development, create drivers, something else, or all of the above?
~~~
explorer9
All of the above is best. :-) We are looking for (1) someone who is familiar
with the bluetooth stack, e.g. please experience with the stack source code.
The objective is to port some existing stack to a specific hardware (radio).
(2) Also someone very familiar with bluetooth chipset on the market.
~~~
jey
To me it sounds like you have two separate but related tasks:
1\. You need an embedded systems programmer who has experience with porting
complicated things like network stacks to new hardware. I doubt you
specifically need "experience with the stack source code" (sic).
2\. If I'm parsing this one correctly, you need someone who could match your
requirements and needs to the currently available hardware and find the
appropriate chipset to use.
Do you already have the hardware designed?
~~~
explorer9
Thank you Jey. Yes, we already have hardware designed, but open to changes if
necessary.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Broccoli: Syncing Faster by Syncing Less - daniel_rh
https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/-broccoli--syncing-faster-by-syncing-less
======
daniel_rh
Hi folks, I'm Daniel from Dropbox, and I am happy to answer any questions
about this tech.
~~~
Osiris
When are you going to offer a cheaper plan with less storage for people that
only need <50GB?
I lucked out and have 2 free plans that have bonus storage from various
promotions. I get about 25 GB per account. I haven't maxed either one.
I absolutely love the product. My wife scans a file, I can grab it right away.
I'm at work and need some document (e.g., my driver's license photo), I hop on
the website and download it.
I pay $5 for backblaze to backup 5TB. I don't want to spend $10 a month for
storage I'll never use (I couldn't even keep that much synced on most of my
devices) but I'd gladly pay $3-5 a month for 50-100GB.
For now, I'll keep mooching with my free plan.
~~~
daniel_rh
There's the family plan which offers up to 6 members an account for a great
monthly price.
[https://help.dropbox.com/accounts-billing/plans-
upgrades/dro...](https://help.dropbox.com/accounts-billing/plans-
upgrades/dropbox-family-plan)
With Dropbox Family, each member of the plan has their own Dropbox account. A
single person, the Family manager, will manage the billing and memberships for
the entire Family plan.
------
manigandham
This is why I continue to use Dropbox for daily work and constantly changing
files. The syncing is unmatched. It’s surprising how bad the others like
OneDrive and google drive are in comparison.
~~~
signal11
OneDrive completed its rollout of differential sync in April 2020[1], after
beginning in Sep 2019. This should improve OneDrive’s sync speed
substantially.
[1]
[https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/office-365/onedrive-c...](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/office-365/onedrive-
completes-roll-out-of-differential-sync/td-p/1343279)
~~~
manigandham
They already had this for Office files, it's just finally extended to all file
types after several years. It's still nowhere near as fast as Dropbox,
especially for complex directories, and the fact that it took until 2020 to
finish this feature shows how far behind they are.
------
AaronFriel
I'm more of a security-focused engineer so I'm most interested in the
"specially crafted low-privilege jail". What protocol gets data in and out,
not shared memory I'm sure? Do the jail processes also have to implement an
RPC server (protobuf/gRPC/HTTP?) or is there another mechanism for giving them
work and receiving results?
~~~
daniel_rh
Dropbox uses a similar toolbox as
[https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/s...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/sandboxing.md)
And yes, much of the overhead stems from the RPC server that needs to be
implemented. For lepton we used a raw TCP server (a simple fork/exec server)
to answer compression requests. For Lepton we would establish a connection and
send a raw file on the socket and await the compressed file on the same
socket. A strict SECCOMP filter was used for lepton. It was nice to avoid this
for broccoli since it was implemented in the safe subset of rust.
~~~
AaronFriel
Thank you for the technical answer!
------
rspoerri
In my opinion broccoli does not go so well with bread (brötli = bread roll in
swiss german), so some more matching name suggestions are: gipfeli
(Croissant), weggli, pfünderli (500g bread), bürli, zöpfli
:-)
~~~
daniel_rh
Savory with a touch of sweetness, Broccoli Bread cooks up like cornbread but
offers fiber and calcium. The original name was Brot-cat-li (since files could
be concatenated and compressed in parallel), but when we said it fast it
sounded like "Broccoli" and the name stuck.
------
vmchale
Surprised they didn't look more at zstd.
IME it's faster than brotli and often has a better compression ratio.
~~~
repiret
It looks like they did, but having an implementation in a memory-safe language
was one of their requirements. Learning _that_ was for me the most fascinating
part of the article.
~~~
JosephRedfern
Surely Dropbox would have the engineering power to re-implement zstd in a
memory safe language if it was sufficiently beneficial.
~~~
nawgz
I'm sure they could implement it technically speaking, but if a compression
protocol is not widespread enough to have others doing such a thing, they can
probably consider that a sign of how supported it is.
------
kevincox
The header on the page keeps hiding and reappearing as I scroll making it
incredibly difficult to read.
------
lifthrasiir
> Maintaining a static list of the most common incompressible types within
> Dropbox and doing constant time checks against it in order to decide if we
> want to compress blocks
There is also a format-agnostic and adaptable heuristic to stop compression if
the initial part (say, first 1MB) of the file seems incompressible. I'm not
sure whether this is widespread, but I've seen at least one software doing
that and it worked well. This can be combined with other kinds of heuristics
like entropy estimation.
------
no_wizard
This is a really interesting write up of their use of Brotli! Makes me wonder
if there might be a novel way I could leverage it beyond HTTP Responses.
I never realized the advantages of brotli over zlib could be so extensive, in
particular, it appears they're getting a huge speed boost (I think also in
part that its written in Rust)
>we were able to compress a file at 3x the rate of vanilla Google Brotli using
multiple cores to compress the file and then concatenating each chunk.
Side note: I admit, at first I thought they were talking the Broccoli build
system[0]
[0][https://github.com/broccolijs/broccoli](https://github.com/broccolijs/broccoli)
------
jeffbee
The tradeoff between client CPU time and upload speed is interesting. If they
need to be able to output compressed text at 100mbps, that gives a budget of
~100ns/byte, or pretty much what they would have been spending with zlib in
the first place. But on my fiber connection I only have a budget of 10ns/byte.
Does that mean you'd use the equivalent of `brotli -q 1` for me? If so,
doesn't the march of progress continually erode the advantages of compression
in this use case?
------
shadykiller
Is it possible to use this as rsync replacement ?
~~~
zmj
They aren't on the same level of abstraction. Rsync currently uses zlib for
block compression on the wire. Brotli/broccoli would be an alternative option.
~~~
celias
New compression options were added in rsync 3.2. From
[https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/NEWS#3.2.0](https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/NEWS#3.2.0)
Various compression enhancements, including the addition of zstd and lz4
compression algorithms and a negotiation heuristic that picks the best
compression option supported by both sides.
------
lanius
Is there a pun between Broccoli and Brotli I'm not aware of? There's another
Brotli compression tool called Broccoli (written in Go), just a coincidence?
~~~
nerdponx
_We codenamed the Brotli compressor in Rust “Broccoli” because of the
capability to make Brotli files concatenate with one another (brot-cat-li)._
------
tyingq
Curious if there's enough of any one type of file that a specialty compression
for it would be worth the added complexity.
~~~
daniel_rh
Great question! We developed and deployed Lepton to losslessly encode JPEG
image files. Lepton continues to deliver substantial storage and cost savings
every year. You can read more about it here
[https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/lepton-image-
compression...](https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/lepton-image-compression-
saving-22-losslessly-from-images-at-15mbs)
------
andrewshadura
I wonder whether syncthing can use it.
------
Scaevolus
None of the images are loading. :(
~~~
jainr
Should be fixed now :)
------
rmhorn
Good supporting data
~~~
ksoong2
Yeah, I really like how well the performance is quantified
------
myrloc
Middle out compression has shown considerable performance over the
investigated options listed in the article. I wonder why it was not mentioned?
Just kidding :) great article. As others have said, supporting data was very
informative.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to use GitHub effectively for your project - franckcuny
http://lumberjaph.net/dancer/2011/03/06/how_to_use_github_effectively_for_your_project.html
======
thurn
Feature and Review branches are a great idea. It just makes it so easy to work
in parallel on different things, and to context-switch when you get blocked.
Honestly, I can't remember how we used to solve these problems with SVN. If
you're in the middle of developing a feature and need to wait for someone to
get back to you, the options for switching to a different feature with SVN are
pretty limited.
------
icco
This is interesting. What I'm curious about though, is how does this workflow
scale to thirty developers? 100?
I tend to believe with six people or less, you can really work together with
any system and it will work fine. Some will obviously require more work than
others, but once you get to a larger team, some systems just won't work,
AFAIK.
~~~
mkilling
From my experience with working with 50+ developers, organized into teams of
3-8 people: Feature branches are the way to go. We used an adapted version of
the git-flow workflow and it does scale pretty nicely.
~~~
SkyMarshal
I like Gitflow alot, how did you guys adapt it? Was anything major required to
get it to scale up to 50+?
~~~
mkilling
We experimented with team branches to integrate work of the subteams before
merging into develop, but that did not work out very well
------
codenerdz
We also follow feature development workflow with git:
[http://reinh.com/blog/2009/03/02/a-git-workflow-for-agile-
te...](http://reinh.com/blog/2009/03/02/a-git-workflow-for-agile-
teams.html#feature-development)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Tornado Web Server - ajbatac
http://www.tornadoweb.org/
======
andreyf
While relevant on its onw, right now, this is also linked to from both the top
two stories...
~~~
jeremyw
Hackers don't need expository, they just want the goods. :)
~~~
andreyf
Hehe, touché :)
------
Hexstream
Why isn't most server software (that can expect lots of simultaneous users)
non-blocking yet? Are there any significant disadvantages with this method?
Can we expect a lot more non-blocking servers within a few years?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Skype 5 for Mac, but without the whitespace - roder
http://pongsocket.com/experiments/skype5mini
======
jamesaguilar
A "before" image would be helpful.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Please Replace Credit Cards - seanmonstar
http://seanmonstar.com/post/81400378235/please-replace-credit-cards
======
onion2k
I have a better solution: keep everything exactly as it is now, but have
credit card companies accept that the system is _slightly_ susceptible to
fraud, and consequently have them take the hit if your card gets stolen. The
customer (people who buy things and merchants who take cards) shouldn't ever
lose out if they're victims of a crime.
Currently credit card companies charge (some) users to have a card, charge all
merchants a fee and a percentage, and take none of the risk. That's the thing
that ought to change.
~~~
dalke
They do take the hit. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, your responsibility
for unauthorized charges is $50, and if you report it before any unauthorized
charges are made, then it's $0.
~~~
onion2k
Things are not the same here in the UK. Since we got chip and pin cards the
onus is on the cardholder - it is assumed that you didn't keep your pin
secure.
~~~
seanmonstar
And what about online shopping, where you just typed in your card number into
a site?
~~~
onion2k
There an "online pin" system called 3DSecure (also known as Verified By Visa)
that uses a system of tokens passed by JavaScript to present the user with a
form that's held on their bank's servers. Implementing it is optional for the
merchant, but if they choose not to then they're accountable for any fraud. If
they do then liability is passed to the customer.
It's all very favourable to the credit card companies.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Populations - meri_dian
http://m.genome.cshlp.org/content/11/6/994.full
======
shanth
Why is the article biased more towards Hindi???? Even Telugu is cited more but
there isn't any word about Tamil?? Our history from literacy works says
different!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Resizing images before upload using html5 canvas - josefrichter
http://www.rubydesigner.com/blog/resizing-images-before-upload-using-html5-canvas
======
oliwarner
It's cool (it is) but if you just want to deploy something similar and don't
want to get involved in the browser politics (IE/Safari/Opera don't support
direct access to the filefield, and oh yeah, IE in general) you could do worse
than to look at <http://www.plupload.com/>
It supports HTML5 canvas resizing as well as offering
Flash/Silverlight/Gears/BrowserPlus for resizing, and if the user doesn't have
one of those, it falls back to standard upload form.
And all under GPLv2 (only becomes an issue if you're distributing closed-
source websites - eg a template, and perhaps not even then)
~~~
josefrichter
thanks. I know plupload. I just don't always want a huge do-it-all beast with
garbage like flash, silverlight, etc.. And feel like experimenting myself. My
code works in chrome/safari/firefox. in IE the upload will just go the old way
(no resizing will happen).
------
mgkimsal
Did this a couple years ago: <http://kimsal.com/shrinker/>
Code doesn't work 100% of the time - it was a rough draft - no error handling
- but it's up on github - pull requests welcome!
~~~
josefrichter
yep that's similiar. many things changed though. the first thing I can see is
that I work with multifile input, filereader and blobs.
~~~
mgkimsal
I'd hit some snags then the project I was doing this on didn't need it
anymore, so... it's sitting in limbo.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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InPulse (YC W11) Adds A Smartphone-Like Experience To Your Wrist Watch - citizenkeys
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/inpulse-adds-a-smartphone-like-experience-to-your-wrist-watch/
======
erohead
In response to some of the comments from our post in Feb
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2221579>), we've updated our Terms and
released local build instructions: <http://www.getinpulse.com/guide/local/>.
------
citizenkeys
I've met these founders. They seem cool. InPulse is hosting a hackathon at
Hacker Dojo next Saturday. See you there! <http://hackinpulse.eventbrite.com/>
------
modeless
Man, the day these get a sunlight-readable always-on display and capacitive
touch I'm buying one immediately.
------
pgbovine
Obvious question: How are they going to market these to women (if at all)?
Women's watches have to be much smaller than men's watches, and that will mean
less pixels.
~~~
citizenkeys
I really like your marketing question. Women do seem to enjoy accessorizing.
They also like to shop and spend money. I think the size of the watch itself
isn't important. What's important is whether the watch uses a standard size
band. Unless they're goth or emo, most women aren't going to want a black
watchband. They're going to want something that's pink with sparkles.
The ability to use a different band is important. The GetInpulse FAQ (
<http://www.getinpulse.com/faq/> )should answer whether the watch uses a
standard size band and, if so, what size.
------
hugh3
Interesting-looking product. But a hardware product, already in beta, sounds
like an unusual match for a YC session that hasn't even started yet.
~~~
anateus
They were in the YC session that just ended.
~~~
hugh3
Oh yeah. Sorry, I've been switching hemispheres too many times recently, and
got confused by the seasons.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Show HN: Member Since: Find out when you created your Yahoo account - quanganhdo
Http://www.membersince.pw
======
quanganhdo
I made this over the weekend to answer a simple question: When did I create my
Yahoo account? For many, it was one of the first services they registered for.
I was able to look for that piece of information easily in the past, but now
it's been increasingly difficult to do so. Hence, this web app was born.
Member Since asks for your Profile information, but don't worry, I store none
of them. The permission was used to make one single request to retrieve your
account creation date — that's it.
Let me know if you've got any questions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook facing class action lawsuit from Kansas lawyer over tracking cookies - tilt
http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/10/06/facebook-facing-class-action-lawsuit-from-kansas-lawyer-over-tracking-cookies/
======
natural_order
Privacy 1 : Vanity 50?
It's a start I suppose.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How saturated is the market for offensive security/pentesting? - hd4
Answers relevant to the UK would be good, but if not then any info at all would be better than nothing.
======
erikb
I don't think that's the right question. The better question is "How strong is
the competition in the <XYZ> market".
If the market is saturated but companies are weak you can easily grab market
share. If the market is unsaturated but a very strong competitor currently
aims it your attempt will probably just lose money.
And the answer is often analysing google keywords, requesting a few security
checks yourself from the google leaders, investigating who appears often in
related media, and asking possible customers who they know and how they
evaluate their options.
PS: If you "Ask HN" your market research, you'll either find out about
together with us that there's no opportunity in the given market, or you
create competitors by highlighting an opportunity.
~~~
amorphid
Another factor to consider is how unsaturated a market is (how much unmet
opportunity is available). It's easier to break into a field, and get good at
working in that field, if you're competing with anyone. Most (all?) fields
have room for people at the top of their game, but some fields are simply
lacking enough people to do the work.
~~~
erikb
Agreed. Also unsaturated markets may mean that there is either not enough
potential or there is a huge problem that isn't resolved yet. So yeah, I agree
that having at least some saturation is necessary.
------
wvh
I used to be in security auditing. I don't know about market saturation – that
would depend heavily on your location, as it often requires some face-to-face
discussion – but I think for security the saturation is less relevant than
your credentials. Once a company decides to spend some money on outside
security, they tend to go for a name-company with good credentials and
certifications such as approval for PCI-DSS compliance checking. Once you
provide the needed services, your name needs comes up as one of the go-to
companies. Reputation and word-of-mouth are pretty important. For instance in
the CC and banking sector companies are very aware whose services are being
used by other companies. No company wants to give a good chunk of money away
on something as sensitive and invasive as security checks without being sure
they're receiving quality service and not some random script-kiddie with an
automated security scanner.
If your company (or the company you want to work for) floats up as one of the
top security firms in your region, you will probably get a lot of business. If
you start from zero with no reputation, you're going to have fight hard to get
your name on the map.
~~~
quadcore
Naive question: what if you just hack your prospect, without causing
unrecoverable damages and show them you've hacked them, do they hire you?
EDIT: ok thats illegal but isnt it in the interest of the prospect to hire you
more than seeing you in jail? Also, I was wondering if there were some
loopholes or field practices one can use to hack for being hired? Something
like: "I may have hacked you, do you wanna hire me?"
Just curious, because it seems to me every company should welcome that. I
might be wrong.
~~~
erichurkman
If you want to try that route, there's an ethical way: look for companies with
vulnerability disclosure programs on HackerOne or Bugcrowd.
Being well-written in your interactions with companies on those platforms
would go a long way in improving your credibility.
~~~
martenmickos
Sign up here: [https://www.hackerone.com/resources/hack-learn-
earn](https://www.hackerone.com/resources/hack-learn-earn)
------
mysterydip
My perspective comes from doing hardware and vmware installs at businesses for
a Dell partner in the US. The problem is that, as far as many small businesses
are concerned, there's only two options: get a full, comprehensive, money-
paid-if-we're-wrong-guarantee-backed pentest that's way too expensive, or do
nothing.
There's a lot of places that would just like some idea how vulnerable they are
on the basics. Something the IT admin can show management. If you can come up
with a decent suite for a reasonable price with the legalese to say this is
for informational purposes and a starting point but not comprehensive, you
could carve out a sustainable niche.
Edit to say: in person. Shake hands, tour the facility, ret to know how they
operate, and test inside and out. Online automated scanners are a dime a dozen
and no one would seriously trust them.
~~~
iamacynic
of course there's a third option, one that small businesses are opting for en
masse: pay for a well-known 3rd party to run a simple remote vulnerability
scan, pass the results (full of false positives and just plain wrong
information) to someone else to deal with, and pretend like you just
accomplished something useful, and reject all recommendations for anything
that costs more.
------
dsacco
The market is not nearly saturated with firms capable of delivering security
assessments (penetration tests + source code reviews) with high technical
proficiency. I started a consultancy several years ago which has done very
well among smaller tech companies, and I know of at least two new consulting
practices started this year by ex-NCC folks.
There are many, many firms that bill for web scanning and static analysis.
Their business model boils down to, buy a bunch of tools for <$10,000, resell
their usage on engagements for >$5,000 per week. They leave a trail of horror
stories in their wake eventually. Starting a consulting shop is a great
opportunity if you have the requisite skill/experience, and can differentiate
yourself from the snake oil salesmen of the industry and the monolithic firms
everyone knows.
The industry for internal security engineers as well as outside security
consultants is growing at a healthy pace. In my circles, people usually need
to widely advertise a position to get it filled by someone qualified. In one
case, a friend of mine at a tech company informed me that he had only one
candidate pass the phone screen in three months despite posting the position
here on HN, on /r/netsec, etc.
Consulting firms are a different sort of beast because they are usually always
hiring. Every security consultant added to a growing firm directly increases
the total amount of potential revenue, and most successful firms have to start
turning away work at a certain point (for example, I no longer take on work
for network security because I find it unenjoyable, I would much rather work
on reverse engineering and application security engagements).
Everything I've said is US-centric, but hopefully it's reasonably helpful and
relevant to you in the UK. I know a few bug bounty-turned-security-consultant
people in the UK and they seem to be reasonably well off, but they could be
outliers (in fact they are, skill-wise).
~~~
PerfectElement
As a small company with limited budget who is looking to have its application
tested, how can we differentiate between good firms and firms that will just
run a scanner and charge you $5000?
Also, is it a good idea to hire a freelancer to pen-test your application?
~~~
dsacco
_> As a small company with limited budget who is looking to have its
application tested, how can we differentiate between good firms and firms that
will just run a scanner and charge you $5000?_
Reputation, mostly. It's easier for the large firms that everyone is familiar
with. For smaller firms, you probably want to get a strong referral from
someone who has been through this before. Also, ask the consultant(s)
performing the assessment what they'll be doing in some technical depth to see
how familiar they are with a penetration test/source code review outside of
running Acunetix or Burp Suite Scanner. They shouldn't shy away from talking
about what specific technical vulnerabilities they feel they're likely to find
when you describe your app and its stack off the top of their heads.
_> Also, is it a good idea to hire a freelancer to pen-test your
application?_
Theoretically, this is a good cost savings versus a firm. But in practice,
it's hard to do correctly because you really need to be sure that the person
knows what they're doing. If you want to hire a freelancer, I would suggest
looking for very well-known/successful bug bounty participants and security
researchers who opened their own solo shops.
Also, shameless plug: if you're looking for a security assessment I'm happy to
help you (and if I can't directly, I am nearly positive I can refer you to
very competent smaller firms for your budget). Feel free to get in touch.
------
aidos
Interestingly most of the comments in this thread are about the quality of
existing organisations in this space. My experience echoes this sentiment.
Over the years I've worked on systems that have been pen-tested and it's
always been the same thing. The testing picks up a bunch of standard/generic
and not all that important issues, while missing much worse and glaring
specific issues. I've sat in meetings with people from pentesting companies
who couldn't describe the attack vector/risk of an exploit they'd said needed
patching.
I'm sure there are some companies that do it properly but I guess the good
ones charge a load more money. Then again, as a lay-enterprise, how do you
know who to hire? I know that if I was hired to pentest various systems I've
had to work on in the past I'd have picked holes in them all over the place.
------
Benichmt1
I am a professional penetration tester right now in the US. I got into the
field from education, but once I got my OSCP I had multiple offers from
different companies.
There are a ton of "boutique" firms in the space right now, but there are
quite a few who seemed to be popular and then died off right away.
One of the big market gaps I see is the ability to provide really good
tactical feedback but also package it in a way that it provides value to the
actual decision-makers at the top. There are so many pentesting firms that are
extremely talented at breaking in, but are really lacking at helping to
actually implement cultural and program-level changes so that it doesn't
happen again. There are also firms whose idea of a penetration test is just
running Metasploit/Nessus/Acunetix and then packing it up without a lot of
insight.
Compliance is a huge driver right now, meaning some companies just want to
check the boxes and be done with it. However, just because you are PCI
compliant doesn't mean you are actually secure. It takes a special set of
"soft skills" to be able to help companies truly improve their posture.
------
danieltillett
The problem appears to be how to sort the bad security assessment firms from
the good. There are thousands of firms out there that make grand promises, but
how does anyone without the required knowledge to not need such a firm know
which ones are good and which one are bad. Rather than add yet another firm,
it would be better to work on a startup than can objectively sort those that
already exist.
Edit. If anyone wants to work on this problem I have a clever way of solving
it (I of course don’t have the time to work on it myself).
~~~
askz
Can you share more thoughts on this ?
~~~
Benichmt1
Say you need to get a penetration test for PCI compliance. There are literally
hundreds of vendors that offer these services. Your CTO would like to use X
vendor because he read a paper / saw their name at Defcon / recommended by a
partner.
When the vendor comes to perform a penetration test, they launch a Nessus scan
against the target ranges. They compile the results and manually validate the
findings to ensure they are not false positives. The end product is a report
that looks something like a checklist: SSLv1 in use, self-signed certificates
internally, missing the latest third party software patch on a server.
According to the penetration testing firm, you are probably at a low / medium
risk level. The tacit implication is that as long as you fix those issues, you
should be good to go.
The problem is that first, a vulnerability scanner is an imperfect piece of
software and does not test anything a real attacker would. A real attacker
might try phishing, or guess "Password1" on a user account. Maybe the attacker
would attempt a man in the middle attack or set up an evil hotspot. Once you
have AD credentials, now you can find which users have local administrator
access, which then you can see if there is a shared Administrator password
across all workstations.
The other problem is that the first penetration test does nothing to address
potentially systemic issues for why the security vulnerabilities occurred in
the first place. The patches could have been missing because there is no
formalized patch management program, or inaccurate change management, or an
issue with their Puppet config.
Currently there's no way to separate the "good" (read: thorough) from the bad
other than direct referral or looking at a sample report.
------
danpalmer
My notes from working at a pentesting consultancy during an internship (in the
UK):
\- There are plenty of SaaS offerings, but they aren't VC-backed with flashy
websites, they are much more corporate.
\- Lots of the SaaS offerings are just an automated Nessus or equivalent, and
only really look at servers/operating systems, not actual web apps.
\- The consultancy side is pretty saturated, but most of them are crap, new-
grads, pentesting Java/PHP apps.
\- There is a strong market for the trickier stuff – hardware pentesting,
pentesting more interesting environments/languages, etc.
\- Pentesting is ridiculously expensive, to the point that the startup I work
for would never consider it at our size – making that more affordable is a
hard problem, but would be very valuable to lots of companies.
~~~
whatusername
Veracode was VC backed and had a $600million exit this year.
~~~
lawnchair_larry
They were not just a pentesting shop though.
------
spydum
There are thousands of firms who will happily run a vuln scan or webapp
crawler and send you a crappy canned report. There are less who can really
perform a comprehensive test and document the hell out of it.
I personally think pen testing is not very useful, except as a 3rd party check
to tell you if you've done a reasonable job at protecting your software (and
if you get a bad tester, you literally won't know!). We need more people in
InfoSec who can explain how to build defensible software - finding holes is
the easy part.
~~~
philjr
These things are not really mutually exclusive. Defense in depth. Getting more
information on building defensible software does not preclude the need to have
someone knowledgeable try to rip it apart afterwards.
~~~
spydum
I don't disagree on this, but the mentality of pentesting (as I have seen it
conducted) is wrong. Typically a firm wants to find a way in, and snatch the
Crown Jewels. Once they achieve that, the level of effort goes way down, and
they often leave a lot of surface area unchecked.
Or maybe more succinctly: they are incentivized to find SOMETHING quickly,
rather than EVERYTHING.
I think it can help if the testers are internal and not quite under the same
time pressure / engagement limits though.
------
ryanackley
Consumer of pen testing services here. I feel like it's saturated with sales-
driven companies. Basically, "call us so we can figure out how much to charge
you".
If there was a pen testing company with no annoying sales people and
transparent pricing I think it could do well.
------
iuguy
I've been in the UK pentesting market since the closing of the dotcom days,
and run a small boutique pentesting outfit.
In all honesty, this is not an industry you want to build a company around.
There's a lot of smaller players that are getting by on a small client base
and subbing. There's a massive amount of box-ticking compliance companies out
there that offer differing shades of the same awful service. There are a
smaller number of larger companies that offer box ticking and bespoke stuff,
then right at the top of the market you have NCC Group.
The market itself is dominated by compliance work. I spent several years
trying to scale the company I run up by working towards getting more badges,
then doing more compliance work, and repeating. In the process I ended up
realising that we were turning into one of those mid-tier box-tickers, and
that's not where I'd want to be, any more than if I was a mid-sized
accountancy. Unless you enjoy mediocre work, it's not a good look.
If you're an experienced tester with a bunch of friendly customers, I suspect
you could set up something small and go contracting, but you're unlikely to
grow too quickly without going through that box-ticking phase.
The main box ticks to get are (in no particular order):
* CHECK
* CREST
* PCI
* Cyber Essentials Plus
Check licenses you to do certain types of government work. Most of the market
is sewn up by outsourcers and big boys thanks to government cuts and it puts
massive constraints on employment.
CREST is an odd-fish. It's built mostly by mid-large size CHECK companies fed
up with the way that scheme was going when it was run by CESG (now NCSC).
There's a few things they've build to seal off parts of the market (like CBEST
and STAR) from non-CREST players. Competing schemes like Tiger and Cyber
schemes offer equivalence for CHECK-type roles but lack some of the market
advantages CREST offers. It's best to think of CREST as a one-stop shop for
Meta-box-ticking in some respects. To be fair, they've done a good job in some
areas, come across as a little bit cartel-like in others but on the whole have
done what other standards bodies have failed to achieve, which is to have a
cross-discipline certification curriculum that's respected at a technical
level.
PCI is for payment data and is absolutely saturated with low-end box-tickers
flogging rebadged Qualys scans. The Local Authority market (good god, the
horror) is the closest thing to this in terms of sheer volume of WTFs per
minute you'll encounter.
Cyber Security Essentials is a scheme that nobody wanted, that CREST picked up
with IASME and is now being rolled out by force via backdoor programmes like
DCPP.
OSCP is gaining, but not really popular here because of the abundance of other
schemes.
Prices are all over the place, but depend on market segment and the box being
ticked but have generally been relatively stagnant or lowering since around
2004. When I went full time pentesting, average rates were around £1250-£2000
per day. These days expect between £700-£1250 depending on the market in which
you're operating.
So, in a market that sells things people don't want to buy at prices they
don't want to pay to tick boxes nobody enjoys ticking, is it worth going into?
There are a lot of companies looking to consolidate testing firms into their
portfolios. Blackberry bought Encription a while back for a fair old wedge.
Digital Assurance were recently acquired by F-Secure. NCC appear to have
stopped acquiring companies at the rate they were previously, possibly
connected to decreasing profits.
You _could_ spin up a company and if well connected grow it to about
500k-1million in revenue, possibly sell for 750k-2 million and work for about
5 years extending a services portfolio at a Cybersecurity distributor or
reseller before cashing out.
Realistically, the money in the compliance end of the market is in services
that support the compliance management side, while the money in the technical
end of the market is going to be in making tools that do something new for
people who consume testing services as well as the testers themselves.
A good example of the former is probably Canopy[1] or Dradis[2], reporting
toolsets that integrate various scanners. The best example of the latter is
Burp suite[3], which is a web app testing tool used by both testers and
developers. A lesser example would be Nipper (for network infrastructure
config review) or Matasano playbook (sadly now gone).
So, in conclusion:
1\. The market is highly divisible based on compliance targets, with
associated badge-based barriers to entry, low margins and high salary costs.
2\. There are a huge amount of companies (e.g. scanner firms) in some areas of
the market. There are few in certain niches but they tend to have barriers to
entry.
3\. It is still possible to build a small firm that is a cheap acquisition
target for a larger firm and make out and there is scope for consolidation.
4\. You are more likely to have longer term growth looking at the market and
seeing how to provide to it rather than providing the service yourself.
[1] -
[https://www.checksec.com/canopy.html](https://www.checksec.com/canopy.html)
[2] - [https://dradisframework.com/ce/](https://dradisframework.com/ce/)
[3] - [https://portswigger.net/](https://portswigger.net/)
~~~
petecooper
Not OP, but this was really insightful and useful. Thank you.
------
ccddss
You could also ask: Is the market saturated with electronic calculators or
guitars. It's depend on what you do with such a tool and if you are able to
decide between the several variations. And sure there experts and there are
experts. Some are better to impress other are better in doing.If you make a
good and honestly job you will not fail. Mostly.
~~~
snissn
I love your answer. I always use restaurants as my example! If you want to
open a restaurant, do it! Don't let the fact that there are already a lot of
restaurants stop you! (Or don't open one!)
------
1ba9115454
If you look at it in terms of open positions then the market appears to be
growing.
I imagine finding experienced people would be difficult for employers. The
learning curve is relatively small for an experienced developer to pick up
something like metasploit. Finding someone who can creatively come up with
zero days etc probably very difficult.
~~~
hd4
This is exactly my position on it right now, thinking about a pivot into
security from application programming as it seems to be dawning on industry
that it's no longer a nice-to-have.
~~~
1ba9115454
I would recommend some Metasploit tutorials on YouTube. There's already a
metasploit module for some of the NSA stuff that got released. Topical.
------
avaer
I think it greatly depends on the kind of pentesting. A military network is
different from a bank, or an AWS site, or a social network.
It's a guess, but I would suspect the market is saturated -- by opportunists,
not talent -- leading to necessarily high-touch sales and high barrier to
entry, but not oversupply.
~~~
hd4
What sorts of barriers to entry? Purely the fact that there is a lot of noise
vs. signal in terms of low-grade operators? Or is it more to do with learning
the requisite skills?
~~~
PeterisP
Selling the service to end customers has a high barrier of entry, in part due
to chicken-and-egg problem of reputation and connections.
Doing work for/with someone who is doing the sales part well doesn't have a
big barrier of entry IMHO.
------
tptacek
For consulting work? Not at all saturated.
------
mighty_warrior
There are plenty of companies who perform pen testing and security. Their
biggest deficiency right now is understanding new emerging cloud technologies.
We have been working with some pretty big name security companies around the
globe and very few of them understand AWS or Azure adequately.
------
rdslw
Hey hd4. Can you leave your contact details here or on your profile? Or
contact me (keybase in my profile).
~~~
hd4
Sure, I'll have to wait till I get home to use keybase, this is a work
computer.
------
safetyscissors
I'm in the same position thinking of making a pivot into the security sector
(coming from a mobile developer background). I think if you're good and always
on top of infosec stuff and contribute to the community, you'll always have
work.
------
ig1
The market for infosec in the UK and internationally is pretty healthy, if
that's where you want to build your career I wouldn't worry about the size of
the market, but finding yourself a good consultancy firm to start your career
at.
------
darksim905
Oversaturated as hell. Everyone & their mother that thinks just because they
can code or use a computer, they can use metasploit or (insert tool here).
There's more to it than that.
------
jjguy
I spent twelve years as a "security guy" before becoming employee #1 at a now-
wildly-successful security startup five years ago. I've spent a lot of time in
the last year "professionalizing" our security program, now that we've grown
large enough to need repeatable security procedures. I am intimately familiar
with the domain.
Three things to segment the space:
\- Clients are typically driven by compliance or practical security value.
Understanding who you cater to and qualifying your customers will save a lot
of pain.
\- Many/most "pentesting" firms are focused on the corporate enterprise and IT
people, not SaaS and dev people. Recognizing the difference in yourself and
your customer needs will save a lot of pain.
\- Many/most of the traditional IT enterprise security best practices & tools
do not apply to a well-managed SaaS platform. e.g., I do not need a
traditional vuln scanner to check for unnecessary and vulnerable services when
I have one domain that's terminated at an AWS ELB.
Some industry color:
\- The 2013 Target compromise root cause was not Target themselves, but their
HVAC contractor who maintained trusted access. As a result, third party vendor
risk assessment is becoming "standard practice" during the procurement process
of any technology vendor, including SaaS applications.
\- The vendor risk assessment teams expect all vendors to have mature security
programs - SSAE-16 SOC2 audits, full Secure Development Lifecycle practices
and customer-facing documentation to describe it all in detail.
\- The result is a growing demand amongst smallish SaaS vendors for more
professional security guidance.
With that context, some commentary on your original question:
\- There are very few firms that provide good "practical security value." I
cannot find enough good pen-testing firms that are a reasonable proxy for a
capable attacker.
\- The market for firms providing "compliance" services to "corporate
enterprise IT" shops is noisy and full. The market for providing similar
services to smallish SaaS vendors/developers is very sparse.
\- The security tooling for dev is pretty good - static & dynamic source code
analysis, tied into the build pipeline, etc. The security tooling for devops
is not. There is a large gap in security tooling for devops/SaaS vendors -
distinguished by automation and focus.
Finally, commentary on the question you're really asking:
\- If you are world-class good, or can build a world-class team, you can build
an outstanding company providing practical security value pentest services.
Scale will be limited by the number of world-class staff you can hire/train.
\- There is a gap in providing higher-level services to smallish startups to
help them navigate third party risk assessment procedures from their
customers. HN's tptacek and elptacek recently launched a new consultancy with
this focus. They _nailed_ the product/market fit. [a, b] Again, scale will be
limited by the number of staff you can hire/train, but it is an easier team to
grow than world-class attackers.
\- There is a gap in security toolchains for devops/SaaS providers. Review the
public projects from Netflix, Facebook and the other SaaS heavies for specific
gaps _they_ had to fill. Every one is a product waiting to happen.
Cheers, and good luck.
a - [https://latacora.com/](https://latacora.com/)
b -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12567578](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12567578)
------
kapauldo
No one has bottled this yet and made it cheap. If you could do a saas of
automated kali and ssllabs scans, for example, I think there is a huge market.
If you want to start a consultancy, the market is saturated.
~~~
darksim905
services like penteston.com will make bank doing this. It should be free, but
I'm very biased. It's geared toward smallest pentesting consultants or people
who don't know what they are doing. Seems to do a lot of the heavy lifting.
Saying nobody has 'bottled' it is silly. People here in YC have done half the
work, or will figure out how to do half of it for you as a pentester. The rest
is validating those results, which is where a bulk of pentesting comes in.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Artificial Intelligence, Poker, and Regret - matco11
https://medium.com/@RemiStudios/artificial-intelligence-poker-and-regret-part-1-36c78d955720
======
Moncefmd
Well written and very interesting. There is a small typo in your article
(there is both positive regret and positive regret).
~~~
jbg_
There are many typos, in fact. I personally find it really distracting and
wish authors of articles with interesting content would get someone to
proofread before publishing them.
~~~
jaymzcampbell
I'm grateful authors take the immense time required to write something like
this and then publish it free for all to read. I personally could care less if
there are typos.
~~~
jsweojtj
*couldn't care less
~~~
jaymzcampbell
Not to start an argument but relevant
[https://xkcd.com/1576/](https://xkcd.com/1576/)
~~~
Fuzzwah
Is like to see an xkcd where one character ponders of another character is
doing something just to get a certain reaction that they have just the right
online comic to counter with.
------
everdev
Despite the title, it's a tutorial on how to build an AI for Rock, Paper,
Scissors.
~~~
user5994461
Isn't this game solved by game theory?
~~~
VHRanger
Yes, you can solve it "by hand" in a few lines of algebra.
You can't solve Texas Hold'em by hand, though, because there are too many
parameters.
The same technique they used there for RPS can be used on poker to create
strong strategies
~~~
user5994461
Sadly, the blog is only about rock paper scissor.
I too wish it were about Poker, as the title suggests.
------
whack
> _" Unlike many recent important breakthroughs in A.I Research, like
> Deepmind’s AlphaGo, CFR does not rely on Neural Networks to calculate
> probabilities or the value of a particular move. Instead by playing itself
> over millions if not billions of games, it can begin to sum up the total
> amount of regret for each action it has taken in particular positions."_
If the goal is to build a general-purpose AI, this approach seems like a dead-
end. The distinguishing feature of a general-purpose AI is knowing what to do
when it encounters novel situations. In contrast, the CFR algorithm above
sounds more like a training program where the "AI" teaches itself using
empirical results, what to do for every single scenario.
Such an empirical approach may work well for scenarios that have been
frequently encountered in the past, but when dealing with novel scenarios, it
seems to me that a deductive approach is what's truly needed.
~~~
vikiomega9
True, but search algorithms are the foundation for most game playing AIs. What
I would take out of this is that there is a missing component that would
bridge specialized AI to general purpose AI that mimics humans. For example a
trained professional player is aware of the history of plays prevalent to a
game and I doubt most professionals can/eventually invent new plays, and this
affords by-passing the brute force millions of games needed to train an AI.
------
splonk
For those who want to read more about CFR, I'd start with some of Michael
Johanson's papers. I think his thesis was specifically on CFR and poker, but a
reasonable amount of searching on the UAlberta site will probably find you the
right papers. You can also look at his Quora answer here for a (much more
readable, IMO) overview:
[https://www.quora.com/What-is-an-intuitive-explanation-of-
co...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-an-intuitive-explanation-of-
counterfactual-regret-minimization?share=1)
In the same vein, you might want to look up "fictitious play" as a related
topic for finding Nash equilibria in two player games by iterating through
best-response strategies.
------
nodesocket
Does it manage betting as well? Betting obviously is a large part of poker and
requires analyzing other players bets.
~~~
VHRanger
Generally you "abstract" betting to a few sizes (2-4 usually), and create a
mapping back to real sizes when using the bot you created.
~~~
xapata
In no-limit poker the abstraction is a few fixed multiples of the blinds if
you're leading out from a reasonably sized stack (1x big blind through maybe
6x big blind) or a few fractions of the pot if you're raising or betting in a
later round (1/5, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4 or 1x the pot, or all-in).
~~~
imh
That's really interesting and something I never knew. Is that just something
to simplify writing a decent bot, or is that something human players think in
terms of?
~~~
xapata
Humans need to simplify the game more than bots do, really. Bots can calculate
exact odds ratios. Humans do rough estimates, because that's faster. Also, you
don't need exact odds as it's common to bet such that your opponent doesn't
have the correct odds to call.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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I Build Supercomputers in My Spare Time - stevesalevan
http://www.parallella.org/2014/06/03/my-name-is-brian-and-i-build-supercomputers-in-my-spare-time/
======
onalark
This is a misleading title. Brian builds Supercomputer Models, not
Supercomputers. It would be like if I had a model of a Ferrari I put together
at home and wrote an article about how I built sports cars in my spare time.
Yes, these are awesome, full-featured models, but the differences between this
and a supercomputer, which costs tens of millions of dollars, requires high-
density power and cooling, features multi-dimensional, low-diameter networks,
and contains hundreds of thousands to millions of compute cores is... _quite_
vast.
~~~
vidarh
I get what you are saying, but what is a supercomputer today is a pedestrian
little home computer tomorrow.
The cylinder design he's using is inspired by the early Cray models. Cray 1
had a performance of 80 MFLOPS. Cray X-MP had a performance of 800 MFLOPS. The
Cray 2 (which looked substantially different) reached 1.9 GFLOPS in 1985.
1993-1996, Numerical Wind Tunnel - a 140 CPU vector computer, was at the top
most of the time. It reached it's all time peak at around 235.8 GFLOP/s
Even ASCII Red, which held the top spot until the end of the 20th century,
only reached 1.3 TFLOPS.
So unlike if you built a model of a Ferrari at home, this thing actually
substantially outperforms the fastest supercomputers up until the mid 90's.
~~~
onalark
This is a little bit of a straw man. As Jack Dongarra will happily tell you,
an iPad can outperform some of the supercomputers from the beginning of the
Top500 benchmark. You don't get to be a supercomputer today by beating
supercomputers from two decades ago, that's not how technology works. I'm
taking umbrage at the linkbait title because I'm a grumpy old man, not because
I don't think this project isn't cool (and admirable!)
~~~
vidarh
My point is that the "super computer" term in itself is quite meaningless.
It's pretty much just saying "we thought this thing was fast when it came
out".
And while this thing doesn't really meet _that_ label at its present scale, it
is conceptually far closer to those early supercomputers than what an iPad is,
both in how it's structured, the parallel nature of it (16 ARM cores; 128
Epiphany cores), the shared memory (within each Parallella) etc..
So yes, you're being grumpy about a title where it takes about 10 seconds to
figure out that this isn't _actually_ about someone building stuff aiming for
the Top500.
~~~
onalark
An iPad _does_ resemble the supercomputers of yore, between its superscalar,
vector processing (GPU), and multicore architecture.
The Parallella brings distributed-memory programming in, which is a very
important development.
You and I strongly disagree on the meaningfulness or definition of the term
supercomputer. Here's an easy definition: A supercomputer is any single,
unified, computer system that is currently one of the fastest 500 in the
world.
~~~
jacquesm
Another grumpy old man here. I disagree with your classification. By your
analogy, you'd be building a _classical Ferrari_ capable of the speeds of that
classical Ferrari, not a model. The fact that it can't measure up to _today
's_ super computers does not mean that it isn't constructed along some of the
same lines and shares a lot of traits with it. Back when Beowulf clusters
first came into vogue all the 'real' supercomputer people were saying 'but
that isn't a real supercomputer, you're using multiple CPU's' and we all know
how that discussion ended.
Give the man a break, wait a couple of years and he'll give you a 4K core cpu
_supercomputer_ for little money, that needs to be encouraged, not talked
down. It's early days.
------
supermatt
Having read through the documents, I see that it is capable of ~200 GFLOPS.
Obviously, this outshines my macbook performance of ~50GFLOPS, but it is
substantially less than my workstations GPU, an Nvidia GTX 770, capable of
~3000 GFLOPS.
I suppose my question is why would I choose to build something like this over
using a GPU?
~~~
bri3d
Here's some previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4702456](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4702456)
In terms of raw GFLOPS, you shouldn't.
Parallela offers something halfway between a multi-CPU cluster, differing in
terms of memory access, and a GPU, differing in that each core is a real core
and can be independently making calls, branching, etc.
Another point to note is that every GPU architecture is different and that
some support a different degree of control flow parallelism vs. data
parallelism.
Ultimately it depends on the kernel you're working with - if you're to a point
where you've got strictly linear SIMD and you depend entirely on floating-
point math throughput or memory bandwidth, it wouldn't make sense not to use a
GPU instead.
~~~
moconnor
Although if you like or have code suitable for a multicore architecture you
would get better performance from a Xeon Phi or the forthcoming Knight's
Landing from Intel, both of which run x86_64 Linux.
Between ARM, OpenPower and Intel's Phi successors this is becoming a hyper-
competitive space. Interesting times ahead!
------
coreymgilmore
For anyone running into the DB connection error and the page not loading:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.parallella.org/2014/06/03/my-
name-is-brian-and-i-build-supercomputers-in-my-spare-time/)
------
contingencies
Isn't the architecture of real world supercomputers essentially dependent on
their expected load?
The very notion of a 'general purpose processing supercomputer' essentially
conjures one of those modern data center visions: a large array of identical
consumer-grade hardware, with its high price/performance ratio: accessioned,
wired, tested, commissioned, allocated workloads, managed over time and
finally decomissioned by a combination of carefully developed human procedures
and highly automated processes?
For instance, nobody in their right mind would install an OS on every such
node by hand: it has to be PXE or similar (can you boot root-on-iSCSI direct
from BIOS these days?).
I'm curious how many fellow HN'ers out there are doing this.
------
hunt
I can see one fan at the top of the cylinder- is only one fan really
sufficient? It looks like this would generate a large amount of heat.
I would be quite interested to see the temperatures this gets up to.
~~~
vidarh
A single 16 core Parallella can run with just passive cooling. It takes next
to no cooling to bring both the ARM and Epiphany chips down to near room
temperature.
~~~
BaryonBundle
While the 16 Parallella can run with just passive cooling, you still need to
ensure proper airflow over the unit.
Units have been known to overheat with just passive cooling, and they even
advise that you install a fan with the official case (that they sell on their
store/provided to backers), even though there is nowhere to screw a fan in,
etc.
Cases and Cooling: [http://www.parallella.org/2014/04/30/cases-and-
cooling/](http://www.parallella.org/2014/04/30/cases-and-cooling/)
(parallella.org) _April 30, 2014_
The point that a cluster of parallellas is _relatively_ easy to cool is
definitely aided by the form factor.
------
tomberek
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nBNJrRz...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nBNJrRzmjUMJ:www.parallella.org/2014/06/03/my-
name-is-brian-and-i-build-supercomputers-in-my-spare-
time/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)
------
lemcoe9
Your LEDs use 20W of power? I would immediately scrap those - they serve no
real purpose and use an insane amount of power, compared to their computing
counterparts.
------
deutronium
Wouldn't it be quite hard to benchmark something like Parallela as it contains
an FPGA/ARM/Their own multi-core chip.
~~~
rjsw
Not really, you have to make it explicit where any program would run.
------
manuw
"Error establishing a database connection" *scnr
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CryptoPHP: Analysis of a hidden threat inside popular content management systems - arb99
http://blog.fox-it.com/2014/11/18/cryptophp-analysis-of-a-hidden-threat-inside-popular-content-management-systems/
======
ecaron
Can someone tag the title [2014]?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Apple doesn’t care about professional Mac users anymore (2016) - smacktoward
https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2016/10/why-apple-doesnt-care-about-professional-mac-users-anymore/
======
arthurofbabylon
A lot of people who complain about hyperbole in the press seem to enjoy
hyperbole applied to their favorite and least favorite tech brands.
Really? You really think Apple “doesn’t care about professional Mac users”?
Not only does this exaggeration/absurdity denigrate the author, it also makes
it really, really hard for reasonably-minded people to pay attention to
possibly valid arguments. The best authors tend to be candid and precise.
~~~
monksy
What happened to their server line?
~~~
techjuice
They discontinued the xserve in 2011, was nice buying the last three of them
directly from Apple.
~~~
monksy
I was using that to point out that they have abandoned their audience before.
This would not be that surprising.
------
013a
Apple really only has two major issues with the MBP right now: thermals and
the update cycle.
Its absolutely unacceptable that we have to wait a full year after Intel's
mobile chip releases before we see them trickle to the MBP. I understand that
Apple operates on a scale other manufacturers don't match, but we saw 8750H
laptops release to the public months before WWDC, but Apple will sit on their
7th gen laptops for another 6-8 months before releasing. Because "release
cycles".
But even when they do come out: Apple doesn't understand professional grade
thermal management. They put fans (or, fan) (or, no fans) in the machine that
can spin up pretty high, but you'll never see the machine do it on its own.
Instead, they prefer to thermal throttle the CPUs under any sustained
workload, while the fans just spin at a whisper quiet whrr and the underside
heats up to an uncomfortably hot level (because the machine itself is a
heatsink, which conversely makes your lap part of the heatsink, thanks Apple
[1])
I don't believe them for a second when they say that they still care about the
Mac, as an organization and at their leadership levels. Its immensely
frustrating. But the biggest frustration is that they (and Microsoft) are the
only companies still making laptops with screens other than 16:9, which is a
major component to professional sales. So even if you can get over not having
MacOS (which is pretty darn easy to leave with how lackluster the latest
releases have been), you're still left with a subpar hardware experience.
[1] [http://time.com/4938530/can-laptops-cause-
infertility/](http://time.com/4938530/can-laptops-cause-infertility/)
------
jiggliemon
Who are professional Mac users? These are the ones I’m thinking of off the top
of my head.
\- Developers
\- Adobe Suite users
\- Video Editors
\- C-Suite Professionals
I think they abandoned video editors when they dropped Final Cut. So they
didn’t care about those professionals.
Adobe Suite users is a large group of professionals. Photographers for one;
Apple ditched the SD card port - seems like they don’t care about
photographers. Illustrators; Wacom/tables all use standard USB style ports;
and several other ports at the same time; like external hard drives or now,
external video cards I guess. Less ports seems to mean they don’t care about
people who use additional hardware. Musicians, Video editors, I’m sure I’m
missing a few other “pros” who require external hardware.
The iPad Pro has that pencil thing; and maybe the adobe software for the iPad
is good enough to do professional illustration and photo editing. Although i
don’t know any photographer editing 1Gb files on an iPad Pro. They’re hard
enough to edit on a MacBook Pro.
Who does the touch bar serve? Maybe it’s just because I’m in that demographic
who doesn’t understand Snapchat - but I just don’t nderstand the touch bar. It
doesn’t feel “pro” to me.
You can’t charge the Apple mouse while you use it. Somebody needs to explain
that logic to me.
So all the Mac pros are really good at - is jobs for professional typists.
Programmers, writers, emailers; but the new keyboards seem to be pretty poor
at their core function. Typing.
It’s clear in my opinion that Apple doesn’t care about today’s professionals.
Maybe they care about tomorrow’s. I guess I have to ask what problems is Apple
helping to solve for tomorrow’s professionals - today? Wire problems?
Edit: added the iPad Pro, and Apple mouse
------
dwc
The rise of the iPhone explains a LOT about where Apple puts their attention.
What it doesn't really explain is why the changes they do make to Mac products
seem designed to annoy. Since they're not upgrading the processors couldn't
they just leave things completely alone and keep selling the old models? I'm
not sure they'd take any more heat for that than they do for dropping
connectors and such.
~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _leave things completely alone and keep selling the old models_
That would trash the brand. You can't be selling cutting edge out of one side
of the company while milking legacy products out the other. Perhaps more
fatally, it spoils Apple's incredibly effective "make your product obsolete
before someone else does" philosophy.
~~~
geerlingguy
> You can't be selling cutting edge out of one side of the company while
> milking legacy products out the other.
Except that's exactly what's happening with the MacBook Air, Mac mini, Mac
Pro...
~~~
andrewmcwatters
Additionally, iPhone has been their core focus for a long time now, and yet
prior to the X, they basically shipped the same phone for the last 4 years.
What have they been doing at Apple for the last half decade or more besides
building a GCHQ replica?
~~~
sdhgaiojfsa
Making money hand over fist, for one thing. It is _smart_ to change slowly if
you've achieved market saturation and your customer base has no viable
alternatives. It means more profits.
------
filesystem
Especially given the recent launch of the iMac Pro, I don't think we can say
this definitively until we see the next release of the Macbook Pro.
~~~
threeseed
Except we largely know what the next MacBook Pro will be.
Same design. Same TouchBar. Same display. Same keyboard but with covers on the
key to prevent dust (refer to recent patent). Upgrade to 6-core for 15inch,
4-core for 13-inch. Possibly 32GB maximum on 15inch.
Tim Cook has himself said it takes years for Apple to switch directions in
their product line. And so since the current MacBook Pro is only a couple of
years old it isn't likely we will see a dramatically different product.
------
mullingitover
I think Apple's concern for Mac users is roughly proportional to Macs' share
of Apple's revenue breakdown. Currently this is in the single digits[1].
[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-
re...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-revenue-of-
apple/)
------
Animats
And just as phone sales went flat.[1] The computer business may become more
important as phones become a commodity.
[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-
ipho...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-iphone-sales-
since-3rd-quarter-2007/)
------
tcfunk
I think Apple makes some top-notch computers, but I also think I am no longer
the target audience for those computers.
------
jacinabox
I realized something like this a while ago; that Apple is catering to casual
users and neglecting its upscale offerings, not pushing its desktop software
business forward. The problem in the long run is that the loyalty of
smartphone users is fickle; there's no vendor lockin. Suppose someday people
decide that X smartphone maker is the next big thing; what's tethering them to
Apple products?
~~~
threeseed
> there's no vendor lockin
Really ?
200+ billion apps sold, which on average are more expensive than Android.
iMessage/Facetime which are iOS only and are likely top 3 messaging platforms.
Apple Watch which is the leading wearable and is iOS only. HomePod and AirPods
which are iOS only. Apps like Notes, Photos etc which are iOS/OSX only.
If you spend ANY time using the functionality of iOS you are slowly but surely
cementing your feet in the ground.
------
bayfullofrays
This is absolute crap. Apple cares about their pro users, they just want them
using products that are much more accessible and easier to use. We just
transitioned to iPad Pros in our recruiting office and some of our developers
are recommending that we just push everything into Google Cloud and using the
iPad to do development on.
This argument is like saying that Tesla doesn't care about petrolhead and
horse carriage enthusiasts. The only people that I know who care about Mac
hardware are the same people who waste powerful machines on web browsing and
like to boast about how fast their computer is. Just toxic.
~~~
pokemongoaway
Right, it was so hard to use magsafe, keyboards with key-travel, non-touch
screen laptops, and all of those annoyingly varied ports on the side! I think
OSX and iOS should become the same thing so no one has to manage their own
software - let's get everything from their appstore, it's wonderful! I'm also
really glad they incentivize smaller hard drive space so more people decide to
use their cloud offerings; cloud is the future! Also, anyone who liked the old
non-reflective displays just doesn't understand graphics; a company shouldn't
listen to all customers, just the correct customers. USB is a great example of
where most customers are wrong.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Work on Stuff that Matters: First Principles - agrinshtein
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-that-matters-fir.html
======
russell
The article is a revisionist feel-good view of history. He talks about
Microsoft's vision of "a computer on every desk", but the reality was that
Gates always wanted to make money from the the Traf-o-matic days. I am sure
that in the early days O'reilly himself was just as interested in making a
buck as he was in publishing Unix books.
Most entrepreneurs have a non-monetary vision of something great that they
want to build, but they usually have to keep financial viability right up
there in the priorities, otherwise they don't get to play very long.
~~~
gruseom
But the two are not mutually exclusive, and many people need more than just
money motivating them in order to stay in for the long haul.
~~~
russell
I agree. I think most entrepreneurs are motivated more by their vision than by
immediate rewards. My point is that, if you want a successful company, you
need to keep the financial side in focus too. Gates, Jobs, and Ellison had the
business focus from the beginning.
OTOH if the monetary side is of little or no consequence, the Open Source
community is the way to go. Make what you believe in and share it. And the web
allows a sideline to lead to riches depending on how the wind blows.
------
stcredzero
The publishers of "Deck" recording software on old MacOS Powermacs used to say
"Consume the minimum, produce the maximum."
I think that's good advice for anyone. It's good advice for any nation in
times like this.
------
Goladus
I love that gas station analogy, but I have to say it is a bit hard to
swallow. One might spend 5 minutes at a gas station for every 5 hours on the
road. If I could work 3 weeks a year and make enough to pay for rent and food
for the other 49 I wouldn't care too much about money either.
------
boris
Based on the quality of books O'Reilly publishes, it's hard to view him as
worthy of giving this advice.
~~~
rw
Many would say O'Reilly books are good or great. How did you come to your
opinion?
~~~
boris
I own a few. I also own some from Addison Wesley, Prentice Hall, Morgan
Kaufmann, etc. For example, "XML Schema" by van der Vlist is just
incomprehensible (I don't understand how it got passed the editor). Plus the
author is by no means an expert in XML Schema. That's actually the gist of the
problem with O'Reilly books: they are written by non-experts and the editorial
work is poor.
~~~
rw
Your sample size sounds small, given the collection of books O'Reilly has.
Regardless, even idiots can say wise things (perhaps accidentally). So, your
initial complaint amounts to an ad hominem attack. Do you have a problem with
the post, itself?
~~~
boris
You mean, it is ok for a publisher to release poor quality books now and again
as long as the average stays good enough? I feel that people with this kind of
approach are not worthy of giving this kind of advice. So I didn't read the
post itself.
~~~
mechanical_fish
_You mean, it is ok for a publisher to release poor quality books now and
again as long as the average stays good enough?_
Yes. I doubt there is another way.
Do you know how tech book publishing works? It's not fiction publishing --
publishers aren't deluged with a large pool of manuscripts from which they can
pick out the best ones. The financial incentives are very poor: Unless they
target a very broad audience ( _see_ : David Pogue) tech book authors don't
make enough royalty money to reimburse them for their time. So publishers must
approach potential authors in advance, woo them, and sign them to book-
publishing contracts before the books are written. Since they can't offer
enough money, the publishers must approach people who have other incentives --
e.g. existing experts or inventors who want to promote themselves or their
tools. Unfortunately, the skills required to become an expert in something
like XML are not necessarily correlated with the skills required to write a
good book about it. And, of course, it can be hard to identify an expert in
advance. And it's often better to hire a lesser writer, or a lesser expert,
than to have _no_ book on a particular topic in your product line.
Once a book is delivered ( _if_ the book is delivered -- a lot of authors burn
out in the process), the publisher can work with the author to edit it, but
the option of rejecting the manuscript is probably difficult and expensive and
politically nasty. So, once written, I suspect that a tech book tends to be
published. Might as well let the reviewers and the public do the dirty work of
deciding that it's bad. Particularly since there are many subspecialties where
a badly-written book is far better than no book at all.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
UK Announces the “Google Tax” - Robadob
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/12/03/latest-in-europe-vs-tech-co-battles-u-k-introduces-the-google-tax/
======
nextw33k
Of course a 25% tax on profit leaves them in exactly the same position. The
tax scheme is to have no profit by pay it as IP rights to another company in a
low tax country.
It sounds like they are doing something but in fact they are not.
They just need a sales tax 25% for multinationals. That would be a level
playing field.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Three Reasons To Use Disqus - dshah
http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/05/three-reasons-t.html
======
mosburger
OK, this might be a really stupid question. If so, I apologize, but...
What happens if Disqus goes out of business? Do all of your comments
evaporate? Or are the comments stored locally somehow?
~~~
bootload
_"... What happens if Disqus goes out of business? Do all of your comments
evaporate? ..."_
A quick look at the website would reveal, _"No"_ ~
<http://disqus.com/help/#faq-6>
I use Disqus because it gives me
"the freedom to leave" at anytime
Understand that data _"Lock-in"_ is the new _"Lock-out"_. If Disqus does
collapse, I still have my data because I have access to it now. To understand
why this is important read about _"The zen of free"_ ~
[http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/06/simon-phipps-on-zen-of-
free...](http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/06/simon-phipps-on-zen-of-free-
osbc.html) by Simon Phipps.
------
fortes
What about the loss of page rank and search due to content not being hosted on
your server? Could disqus perhaps allow you to use a custom subdomain (such as
disqus.yourblog.com)?
~~~
quellhorst
Disqus comments are included via javascript, so you don't have outbound links
that diminish pagerank.
Comments won't be indexed by Google but your article text and links to the
article from other blogs will have a bigger impact on where you appear in
SERPs.
------
jwr
One bit of information is missing:
what's the price?
~~~
aneesh
Disqus is free for bloggers
~~~
kyro
I don't think he's talking about a monetary price, rather sacrifices that
bloggers might be making to use their service, as others have pointed out here
- page rank, etc.
~~~
jwr
Actually, I was talking about both. It's all good and great that they'll host
my comments, but how do they make their money?
I need to know this in order to migrate.
~~~
DougBTX
Hmm, no obvious way to make money, do we assume they last until they run out
of VC money?
~~~
ivankirigin
An obvious way to make money: Persistent reputation is extremely valuable.
Extended and deep information about a user from their writings and the sites
they visit is extremely valuable. Think about the targeted advertising down
the long tail, where eCPM will be huge.
~~~
DougBTX
I'd hope their plan is more than to reach some critical mass then start
inserting ads into people's blogs. Will it be "put our ads on your blog, and
we'll split the profits" or "pay for Disqus or we'll put ads on your site"? I
guess we'll wait and see, perhaps they'll manage to productise it, if they've
not reached the maximum price point yet.
~~~
ivankirigin
There are many ways for them to make money. My point was to counter your
comment that there were no obvious ways.
------
gexla
I am not convinced. I do see the advantages but I would rather have the text
on my blog. The comment text gives your blog a little more life in the eyes of
Google and adds just a little more content.
If I don't want to mess with creating a comment system then why did I build my
own blog in the first place?
I think a good compromise to make things easier for the commenter is to use
Clickpass for easy login.
I don't mind that my blog is being commented other places (like we are doing
here for this entry) but if a commenter is at my site then that is where I
want my text to live.
~~~
ssharp
It's a two way street - a long discussion on a topic with a specific keyword
can hurt your ranking for that keyword if the discussions aren't using the
phrase you're targeting.
I love the quick and easy functionality that Disqus has and am using it on a
few of my blogs. I'd like to set it up for my companies web properties but am
reluctant because we already have our own login and user systems.
------
gaika
And the biggest reason not to: javascript is required. It causes really bad
problems in IE: [http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/04/23/what-happened-
to...](http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/04/23/what-happened-to-operation-
aborted.aspx)
~~~
ssharp
I'd have to think that they are working on an API solution that will have MT
and WordPress plugins that use it...The JS problem is just too big not to be
addressed.
------
Xichekolas
He forgot the most important reason (to me): You can stick a fully functional
comment system on anything without doing it yourself. Why reinvent the wheel
and deal with managing your own when you can just tack on an excellent system
by someone else?
~~~
gexla
How far do you want to take this though? Why not just use Blogger or
Wordpress.com? Why custom code your own blog?
BTW, I assume you are talking about a custom coded blog (or whatever is being
commented) because systems like Wordpress or ExpressionEngine make adding
commenting trivially easy.
~~~
Xichekolas
I have coded my own blog in the past, and yeah, after a while it's boring and
so I just use Blogger now. But you can stick comments on more than just blog
entries.
At least I was under the impression that you could put Disqus comments on
anything really (is that not true?). It would be trivially easy to make a site
like HN... just a list of links and with disqus comments for each of them. I
am working on a project right now where people can suggest strategies for
something and others can comment on them. Disqus would be an easy fit there as
well.
You could host your own photos with some quick gallery code too, but why not
let Flickr do it? I think Disqus is in the same category.
~~~
brlewis
Yes, you can put Disqus comments on anything that's for public consumption and
has a permalink.
If you enable Disqus comments on OurDoings, any photo you deem worthy of a
caption will get its own comment thread.
------
njetx
We've been looking at adding CoComment to our site which I think is very
similar. I have been using it and I like the way it records all the comments I
make which I can then go back and refer to. However, it feels like we provide
them with new customers and we don't get a ton back in return.
Anyone implement it or Disqus?
------
DenisM
I'm surprised at the number of websites that hide, or as in this case do not
have search functionality. Isn't that the first thing you want to do when you
arrive at a forum and have a question?
------
andybelike
do any social web apps use disqus?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Being a Musician and Writer Fucking Sucks So I’m Going to Learn JavaScript - 6stringmerc
https://medium.com/@6StringMerc/being-a-musician-writer-fucking-sucks-so-im-going-to-learn-javascript-8e02ed2cf382#.ouru49ol0
======
vogt
Good luck to you.
I gave up on the dream of being a FT touring musician at 24 after a handful of
part time college fail/drop outs to become a designer full time. I had studied
it in high school (I went to a Vo-tech HS) and practiced a bit of web design
to make a little money between college and playing in bands. I've been working
as a designer / front end developer for 5 years now and my work has taken me
from my hometown in New England to Texas(where I met my wife), Nevada, and now
Washington. About as far from home as I could have ever imagined.
It is indeed still a creative existence, but in a much different way. I don't
play music at all in my free time anymore, but I now play a lot of D&D, write
(currently working on a screenplay and a book), record a podcast, and have
creatively fulling software side projects that touch on interests I like. Dog
related, mostly.
Most of all, money isn't an issue anymore. A low point in my life was on tour
digging change out of vending machines to get tacos from jack in the box. That
life is behind me now and a lot of the folks who looked down on me for selling
out are pushing 30 and living on their parents couch still, feigning
rockstardom.
------
Johnny_Brahms
I had a job as principal bassoon in a symphony orchestra (80 musicians, so not
a "full" orchestra with 4 in each wind group, but still decently sized).
Tinnitus ruined that and I had to look for another job. I worked as a
librarian in the royal music library in Denmark while studying CS. I did not
end up doing what I wanted (Jesus Christ, I work in Pascal!) but I have a
great job. I would throw it all out of the window to work with music again
though.
The core thing for me is that music is all about "spiritually" feeding
yourself. Employers realise this, and give you time to do that.
I find that for programming this is not the case. I have to struggle to keep
my soulby continuously struggling to have fun side projects.
~~~
tomcam
I love Pascal! But the tinnitus is a nightmare. Sorry you got it. What caused
it? How do you cope with it? I know modern instruments are much louder than
they were a few decades ago.
~~~
Roboprog
I get the impression that most European shops dodged the C/C++ bullet. They
seem to prefer sane Algol derivatives with bounds checking.
Here in the US, instead of getting something like "Eiffel", we got "Java",
after the insanity of connecting C++ to the internet was demonstrated. It's
all cowboy country on this side of the pond :-)
... and yeah, hearing issues are much more serious than problematic
programming languages.
------
Roboprog
It's funny. I was thinking Friday how much I hate Java, and should have been a
rock star :-)
But you gotta keep on keepin on (about 30 years as a developer if I include
part time work back in school days), and pay the bills for the kids :-(
Good luck with those web page layouts and actions and such.
~~~
pawadu
Java is lame. You should have co-invented USB, thats what a real rockstar
would do
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=intel+rockstar](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=intel+rockstar)
~~~
Roboprog
:-)
Java _is_ lame. There's actually a lot of things I like about Javascript
better, but it's hard to get people to paradigm shift...
And I really liked hanging out in the music department back in my college days
(too many years ago).
------
kafkaesq
_" I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who
poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the
supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating JavaScript..."_
\-- Allen Ginsburg
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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YouTube Launches Site Specifically for Teachers - tilt
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/09/youtube-launches-site-specifically-for-teachers/
======
JonnieCache
The video at the bottom of that article is amazing. There's several rap covers
about biology on their channel, obviously made originally for the purposes of
their own revision.
This one, about natural selection, is particularly superb:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hUNBhRiKCI>
The original track (From 93 Till Infinity by Souls Of Mischief), so you can
see how good a version it is: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mt3vZHDiM8>
------
tokenadult
The power of branding is illustrated by my mind reading that as "Khan Academy
launches site specifically for teachers," and not noticing that YouTube was
mentioned (and NOT Khan Academy) until I followed the KQED link submitted here
to YouTube Teachers and then registered on that site. It will be interesting
to see what this new degree of teacher-friendliness prompts by way of changes
to Khan Academy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Air Force Looks for ‘Core Algorithms’ of Human Thought - vaksel
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/air-force-looks-for-core-algorithms-of-human-thought/
======
russell
The article is skeptical and superficial, but if I were to assemble a research
program to create real-world, operates-out-in-the-wild intelligence, my one
page executive overview would look a lot like the Air Force requirements. This
set of problems is going to be nibbled away a bit at a time. Some of them may
be horrendously difficult and some may be low hanging fruit.
I think that this will be open research and not filed away in some secret
warehouse a la Raiders of the Lost Ark.
------
inigojones
So this is kind of like the study of how humans think ... or their
"cognition", say. You could call it a ... cognitive science.
I only mention this because the phrase "cognitive science" isn't mentioned
once in the linked article or the call for proposals. Cognitive scientists
have been working on the problem of finding the "algorithms of thought" for
decades. Look at Marr's Vision, or Randy Gallistel's body of work (in
particular his new book Memory and the computational brain) for examples.
------
stcredzero
Noah Shachtman gets a downmod for no research. We have _some_ idea of what the
components of the mind are now. We can relate all of the branches of
mathematics and science to specific areas of function with an evolutionary
basis.
[http://www.amazon.com/How-Mind-Works-Steven-
Pinker/dp/039333...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Mind-Works-Steven-
Pinker/dp/0393334775)
------
ajross
Reading only the headline: how many thought this was a joke? I mean, really, a
huge AI/neuroscience crossover result coming out of ... a DoD project?
Sadly, it's not a joke; just a really bad idea and a not-funny-enough blog
post making fun of it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Why Singapore has yet to produce a truly innovative startup - williswee
https://www.techinasia.com/talk/innovation-where-art-thou
======
lazylizard
there was creative..and that popiah skin manufacturer?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: I'm a startup founder with 2 near deaths, what do I do? - anononyc
http://inetpro.org/pastebin/10964/view/raw<p>Expires on may 11th
======
ColinWright
<http://inetpro.org/pastebin/10964/view/raw>
I've been trying to work out how I can best help, what advice I can offer,
because I'd like to help. However, I hesitate because I've never been in your
position. I've never had seed or angel funding, and I've never fallen out with
colleagues. My funding situation has been significantly different, and my co-
founders and over 20 employees have always got on well.
But I can offer some advice. I think you need to explain your case and
situation much, _much_ more coherently. You need to separate independently
verifiable facts from feelings and opinions, and you need a better narrative,
a better presentation of your quandry.
I suspect that those who are genuinely in a position to help will simply give
up part way through and find themselves unable to care, but you need to give
yourself the best chance you can.
Good luck, I hope it ends well.
------
sandyc
Get a lawyer - thats what you really need by the sounds of things.
~~~
ColinWright
Lots of people say that in all sorts of situations, but it never seems to me
that it ever helps. It seems that lawyers always make things more adversarial,
they extract money whether they make things better or not, and there's rarely,
if ever, any way to change your mind once you've got them in.
When I was a part of a semi-hostile management buyout the lawyers only ever
made it worse. Things were rescued more than once by talking directly with the
other parties despite the lawyers' advice.
But if it seems irrecoverable, usually I'd rather just walk away. YMMV.
~~~
JoachimSchipper
Knowing that "if he doesn't give in, I'll take him to court and take
everything he owns" can be a real advantage in negotiations. For that matter,
"she's totally within her rights" or "that clause is not enforceable" are good
to know too.
This is more about a BATNA than about letting lawyers negotiate for you,
though.
------
pclark
Could you just walk away from this company and launch a competing one? It
sounds like you've had a terrible run of luck with jerk investors/business
people, and sometimes a clean cap table and such is just what you need.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves - prostoalex
https://qz.com/work/1541822/the-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-is-backtracking-on-year-long-parental-leaves/
======
simonsarris
> [heading] How do they manage in Canada?
> In Canada, companies have had no option but to make 52-week parental leaves
> work, when requested, since 2000. The question Canadian companies ask isn’t
> “Can we do it?” but “How do we do it?”
Okay, so... how do they do it? They never answer the question.
If you have say, a CFO or a specialist mechanic (that you only need 1 of, but
definitely need) and they take a year off, what do you do? Just go without a
CFO/mechanic for the year? Or do you start the hiring search, bring in another
person as a temp CFO for a year? What if you can't find a temp, so you hire
someone? Is the person entitled to their old job back? Do you fire the new
person or the old one?
What if the person takes parental leave again after 1 month back? Do you
accept that you've torpedoed some role? Do you try to slowly phase out this
person's job description and offload their work onto their coworkers?
More succinctly, what if someone is definitely necessary in the near-day-to-
day, and does not do work that is interchangeable with other employees?
I'm not trying to make some kind of gotcha. I really don't know the answer,
and I figured the article would answer what seem like extremely obvious
questions that arise, but it didn't.
I _suspect_ that firms _have_ learned to deal with it, but by doing things
like passively selecting against women and younger people for critical roles.
Is _that_ how they manage? Is that an improvement?
There's also something unsettling about "here's how [countries where the
native birth rate is pretty much 0 or 1 babies] do parental leave!" feels a
bit like... the women already did half the corporation's work for them.
~~~
unavoidable
Surprisingly few people are actually trying to answer this question on this
thread. The answer is straightforward: you either structure your organization
so that there are enough overlapping responsibilities to account for parental
leaves (e.g. good business practice of not making a fragile organization), or
you hire a temporary employee explicitly on a 1 year "parental leave"
contract.
The labour market is quite good, and there is no shortage of qualified
individuals for almost all positions (CFO, specialists included). Often, a
good temp ends up getting another position at the same company after doing the
1-year contract. There is also a small cottage industry of successful
individuals who basically take such jobs.
Maybe hard to accept for some, but the world doesn't end when people go on
leave to have kids.
It also turns out that most people (that I know) are quite happy to buy into
this particular social contract. There is a tacit understanding that you might
have to pick up the slack a bit for someone else, but one day you might need
the same in return - borrowing against the future is another way to think
about it.
Source: Canadian, have worked in organizations and involved in hiring policies
where this is successful.
~~~
bluecalm
It's surely doable in big organizations but small businesses it's an
overwhelming cost even if the government pays the salary of the worker on a
leave (the only way it can really work). Maybe the answer to that problem is
that really important employees who make a lot of money shouldn't be hired as
normal workers but as contractors. Something like: if you get 3x more average
salary then you are important but you only get paid if you work and standard
protections don't apply. If you get a normal salary standard protections apply
but then we will hopefully be able to find replacement for you at reasonable
cost. It would be nice if I at least don't nee to re-hire you after covering
big costs of getting your replacement up to speed.
If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not
risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they
contribute value is a huge cost. If I am hiring a cleaning lady or social
media specialist then I won't have problems because I will easily find the
replacement on the market and they can be productive from day one. If you
think it's immoral, think again. I have responsibilities towards my family to
provide for them. I won't take risk which can ruin my source of income for the
sake of someone's children. What is immoral is forcing employers to cover that
risk.
~~~
lhorie
> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not
> risk hiring a young woman
Ignoring the fact that this kind of discrimination is flat out illegal, you
are forgetting to consider that the Canadian policy allows males to take
parental leave as well, so the excuse for the discrimination isn't even
logically consistent.
Personally, having lead teams of people ranging from experienced professionals
to interns still in school, I find it extremely hard to imagine a small
business that is such a special snowflake that "getting a new employee to the
stage where they contribute value is a huge cost". I could get interns to be
productive in a day or two. In many fields of work, such as early education,
there are standardized accreditations so an employer can basically just pick
and choose from a pool of qualified individuals who will be ready-to-work on
day 1.
As the other poster said, standard fare in parental leaves is to hire a
contractor for a 1 year contract. By the end of the year, worst case is your
business grew 0%, you get your full-time employee back and it's business as
usual. A more realistic scenario is your business grew by some amount that now
allows you to hire the temp person full time.
~~~
Mirioron
> _you are forgetting to consider that the Canadian policy allows males to
> take parental leave as well, so the excuse for the discrimination isn 't
> even logically consistent._
But they are much less likely to take this parental leave.
> _Personally, having lead teams of people ranging from experienced
> professionals to interns still in school, I find it extremely hard to
> imagine a small business that is such a special snowflake that "getting a
> new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost"._
Well, everyone else doesn't get to always run wildly successful small
businesses. Most small businesses fail. I imagine that if you yank out a
significant portion of their workforce that they'll be even more likely to
fail.
> _By the end of the year, worst case is your business grew 0%, you get your
> full-time employee back and it 's business as usual._
Aka your small business shuts its doors, because the market has moved on and
you couldn't keep up. Half the businesses fail within the first 5 years. Only
a third of businesses survive 10 years.
~~~
lhorie
> But they are much less likely to take this parental leave
If you want to talk about likelihoods, consider that in most companies, the
chance that an employee of any gender will leave for a random reason is much
higher than someone of any gender taking parental leave. Trying to skirt the
law to "optimize" for least parental leaves is kinda like sending a memo to
your employees telling them to always run red lights and jaywalk to get to
work faster. It's one of those "not even wrong" kinds of things.
> Most small businesses fail
This is a non sequitur. Businesses fail for all sorts of reasons. Your
restaurant staff ghosting you, not enough clients, spending stupidly after
raising money, etc. If your business fails due to a parental leave of all
things, let me tell you, you were probably severely delusional about its
viability to begin with.
> Aka your small business shuts its doors
I believe I mentioned a fitting example where this could not be farther from
the truth (early education)
~~~
Mirioron
But none of the things you mentioned are different between men and women.
Parental leave is simply a risk factor on top of what you mentioned.
> _If your business fails due to a parental leave of all things, let me tell
> you, you were probably severely delusional about its viability to begin
> with._
Let's take an extreme case: a 1 person business. If I, the business owner,
take parental leave then my business is pretty much guaranteed to fail. The
rate gets lower the more employees and capital you have, because you can
mitigate the risk, but many businesses are susceptible to this risk, because
they simply don't have the resources to mitigate it. That doesn't really tell
you much about the viability of the business. It says much more about the
resources the business had available. Not everyone is born with a silver spoon
in their mouth.
~~~
lhorie
I actually have a friend who runs a restaurant with her husband. It's an
_extremely low margins_ business with brutally long hours. She got pregnant
and eventually took time off (she went back to China for a few months to get
her parents to help with the baby). When she came back a few months later,
surprise surprise, the business was still there. Did they have worries? Sure,
stress from wait staff turnover, an air conditioner that was too expensive to
fix, chairs. But leaving for an extended period of time to decompress from
work stress was something her husband supported despite the temp long distance
relationship and the extra burden on himself because he knew that would help
them cope better in the long term.
Let's be honest, anyone can come up with ridiculous hypothetical situations
where "obviously" parental leave is the only evil in the world and must be
banished. But at the end of the day, they're just that: hypotheticals with no
basis in reality. I've seen businesses succeed and fail and I've seen parental
leaves in these businesses. Parental leaves are simply not as deciding of a
factor as one might like to fantasize, and anyone who wants to argue against
them might want to look at the silver spoons in their own mouths before
casting stones at others.
~~~
Mirioron
Restaurants aren't exactly businesses where people become difficult to
replace. Imagine you had a company that was trying to start a video service
and the expert on ffmpeg goes on parental leave half way through. Good luck
replacing somebody like that if you're not in a tech hotspot.
~~~
lhorie
> Imagine you had a company that was trying to start a video service and the
> expert on ffmpeg goes on parental leave half way through
Typically you get like 3-6 months notice on a parental leave, so you've got
plenty of time to find a contractor/consultant, compared to the standard 2
week notice from the much more likely scenario of your expert quitting for
greener pastures. If you have such high risk riding on a single employee,
you're probably the one to blame: why aren't _you_ (or an equity partner) the
expert? Do you not have anything else whatsoever that could be done in the
meantime if core development halted/slowed for 6 months? Do you realize an
ffmpeg expert can earn twice as much just about anywhere other than your yet-
to-be-profitable startup and gets recruiter spam from big tech companies on
linkedin every month? Can you even afford benefits and severance for a full
time employee in the first place? etc.
Blaming a hypothetical business failure on a parental leave is really just
finding a scapegoat for one's inability to take responsibility for their own
failings.
Being in a tech hotspot is irrelevant. I've worked remotely for people in
Boulder with a coworker living in Vermont. Again, if you want to run a high
tech business from rural Wisconsin with no remote workers, that's on you, and
has nothing to do with parental leaves.
------
erentz
To be somewhat fair this is still an _amazing_ benefit: “It’s now capping
parental leaves at six months and giving parents a taxable $20,000 stipend to
defray the costs of childcare.”
In the context that they are doing this while few other American organizations
do it, and not that many other countries do something this generous.
~~~
hesdeadjim
Yea, the article title can practically considered clickbait when this is the
resultant change in benefits. Neither my wife or I had a need to be home for
an entire year with our child. Three months for me would've been perfect, six
would've been a vacation, and six months plus $20k to cover my daycare
expenses for the year would've been... well, words fail me.
~~~
bargl
OK, I read this felt a wave of relief. I'm not the only one. 1 year off sounds
like torture to me.
I'm not saying 1 year with my kid is torture. 1 year in the Caribbean would
also be torture to me. I get cabin fever after a few weeks.
My company did give me 1 month and it was awesome. I was also very happy to
return to work after 2 (1 month unpaid). It was refreshing to engage that part
of my brain again.
~~~
hesdeadjim
Yea I have zero desire to be off from work for that long.
I took a sabbatical/break between projects from May until around September
this year. I put myself under no real pressure to do anything, and during the
weekdays I was free to go mountain biking and do whatever else I felt like.
Yet still I worked on random projects for about 60% of the time the entire
break. I just crave the deep flow state that comes from building things too
much.
------
bargl
The fact that after they backed off of the leave they are giving out a 20K
bonus for child care is amazing in and of itself.
I'm surprised that's not emphasized more. They probably also have very
flexible work environment for parents so that when daycare's are closed and
other issues crop up the parents can get back in there.
I'm a dad of 2, 2 years and 5 year. I don't know if I'd want a year off to
stay home with the kids. I'd have loved to get 3 months instead of the 1 month
i did get but a year... That just sounds like a lot of cabin fever to me. I'm
sure a lot of people would appreciate it, so I'm 100% not knocking it at all.
This new benefit is more attractive to me at least.
~~~
fastbeef
I have to say, the first day at work after 9 months of parental leave is...
sublime. To be able to go to the bathroom and close the door is a pleasure you
don’t know until you have to go without.
As an aside, what happens to children in the US between 1 month until they
start kindergarten (and at what age)?
~~~
dyarosla
Private daycare or nannies fill the gap.
~~~
bradlys
There is also stay at home parents. Somewhere around 20%.
[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/24/stay-at-
home...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/24/stay-at-home-moms-
and-dads-account-for-about-one-in-five-u-s-parents/)
------
fastbeef
I’m not surprised. This is so different to how workplaces are usually run in
the US that organizations, or society even, has no institutional memory on how
to deal with it.
In Sweden, where 400+ days of parental leave has been mandatory for years
organization have adapted and learned patterns and ways to deal with people
dissappearing for around a year.
It’s a shame the Gates Foundation didn’t research this better before diving
in.
~~~
chrisco255
People aren't easily replaceable...especially high talent individuals. It's
also a big burden for an organization to pay for non-productive workers. And
if someone has several children in a row...then what? What are the limits?
~~~
fastbeef
Its paid by the government, funded by taxes, at the same level as sick
leave/disability. Some (most) companies actually chip in a little (or a lot)
to ease the income loss as a perk.
------
alkonaut
“How do other countries do it?”
Well it’s not an employer deciding whether it’s done so organizations just
deal with it. And yes it does give effects that last years and disrupt
organizations three layers deep. But it happens to _all_ organizations, so
it’s not a competitive disadvantage.
~~~
chrisco255
Except on a global scale.
~~~
chefkoch
In Germany we have 12 months parental leave and it seems the country is doing
quite well.
~~~
ar0
Salaries especially for specialist jobs tend to be quite a bit lower in
Germany (as is the case in Canada) than in countries like the U.S. or
Switzerland which have much less generous parental leave, though. Of course,
parental leave is just one variable here, but in a way this is the obvious
trade-off: You can have more parental leave and lower salaries, or less
parental leave and higher salaries. (The same is true for all other non-
monetary benefits of a job such as job protection etc.) On a country-level,
both options can work equally well.
Me, personally, I would pick the "more parental leave and lower salaries", but
I get that other people might feel differently.
(Edit: This cuts the other way around, too, by the way. Often people in
Germany will complain that people across the border in Switzerland -- or in
Silicon Valley -- will earn much more, but they ignore that working days are
longer, with less vacation time, less parental leave etc.)
~~~
chrisco255
Yeah it would be amazing if people could understand that there are big trade-
offs with every socialistic policy.
U.S. GDP per capita [1] (2018): $65,060 Germany GDP per capita [1] (2018):
$49,690
The U.S. earns 22% more per capita than Germany.
Imagine if the U.S. implemented policies such that our economy slowed to
Germany's per capita rate. At our current GDP of $20.66 trillion, it would
wipe over $4 trillion from our GDP. Seeing as the U.S. is the biggest
marketplace in the world (in terms of dollars), it would have trickle down
effects that would dramatically depress the world economy.
[1]:
[https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/USA/DEU/...](https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/USA/DEU/SWE)
------
beart
As a parent, I would much rather take that year and use it to shorten my
normal working week for as long as possible.
With 260 working days a year, you could work 4 days a week for the first five
years of your child's life.
~~~
Haydos585x2
In Australia that's not unheard of. Plenty of women (and men) will go to a 3
or 4 day work week for a longer stretch rather than taking a full 12 months
off.
~~~
AmericanChopper
I know a couple of people who permanently negotiated 4 day working weeks after
becoming parents. One of them has his daughter at some sort of parent run day
care, where each of the parents spends one day a week staffing it, so they all
work 4 days (at most) and spend at least one day looking after all the kids.
------
rb808
I once worked with a guy who had 4 children in 5 years. He took a lot of
parental leave, sick days and often slacked off early. As soon as the last
baby was stable he quit for a new job. Companies and teams that are too
generous get shafted.
~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Sounds like he's the sort of guy that would work the system no matter what -
he could be an argument against sick days or flexible hours as well.
There will always be people like that, but if the societal good outweighs the
few bad apples, I'd argue that's a plus in general.
~~~
cheesymuffin
Yeah, it's really unfortunate when someone cares more about raising well-
adjusted kids than the Company.
~~~
SketchySeaBeast
That's true. Not only is one person being bad not a strong argument for not
endorsing something, but this person could be actually doing good for his
family - caring for his kids or something, and just not sharing the
information.
------
randyrand
It seems very odd to me that parental leave is paid for by companies and not
by taxes/society. It completely messes up incentives.
Should it really be the case that if you're unemployed when you give birth
that you have go a significant time without work?
Or if you start you 1-year leave 5 weeks into a new job that the company has
to pay you for a year?
~~~
duderific
> It seems very odd to me that parental leave is paid for by companies and not
> by taxes/society. It completely messes up incentives.
Indeed. The same could be said for health care.
------
sergers
In Canada you can now take 18 months shared paternal leave.
First 12 months you are entitled to employment insurance which is a certain
percentage of your income.
The next 6 months are unpaid.
Our recent company ethics training had a interesting scenario on maternity
leave discrimination and comments.
Some work places if you are key employee in some aspect entice you with pay,
more flexible working conditions or provided daycare for coming back early.
My company deals with it by hiring contract workers.
Some content could take years to learn, so we recently shifted the core duties
to remaining members and gave the contract worker remedial/administrative
tasks which we all hated any ways.
Overall things still function smoothly
\- however we have an interesting scenario coming up in the next few months
where one employee is retiring and two are going on paternity leave (me being
one, but only taking a month off using vacation as my wife plans To hog the
paternity leave lol... it does make sense financially.
It will be interestinghow my company handles losing 3 key members of a 7
person team(atleast I will be gone a month only)
------
bradlys
Didn't know they had such an extremely generous benefit. 52 weeks of paid time
off is a huge benefit. I think people here are underestimating how huge that
is - it is far better than _any country_. I don't see any countries that offer
100% PTO for parental leave. Most cap it at $XXX/week or some percentage like
50-66% that is a far cry from 100%. (Which I assume still has a true upper
limit but isn't well documented in articles)
Personally, I can't imagine having kids here in the bay area unless I finally
hit big startup riches or get a job at FAANG. A month isn't enough time off
and unemployment is going to be severely financially draining when state
benefits won't even pay half my rent (And the financial burden of health
insurance will probably devour most of that before it even gets to paying rent
anyway). C'est la vie.
~~~
maaaats
Most employers of high-skilled/paid workers in Norway pay the gap between your
current salary and what the government pays.
------
zaroth
Guaranteeing a job opening (and presumably the same position, or at least the
same salary) for a year is a huge ask.
I suppose there are two problems. One is paying partial or full salary during
the leave, and the other is getting a job when you’re ready to return.
The first problem is easy to solve just like unemployment, except that in this
case it’s paid based on voluntary leave. Since companies don’t make the
decision, companies wouldn’t be penalized for having employees take the leave
like they can be with unemployment though.
The second issue of finding a place to work when you’re ready to return is
tricky. It’s absolutely unfair in certain situations for the company and
particularly the specific team for someone to take a year leave and have to
hold their spot. But I also understand you want to minimize friction of
returning to work.
In many cases the person taking leave isn’t doing anything particularly
specialized and it’s a complete non-issue. I don’t know how you might try to
codify how specialized a position is other than a salary cap. For example, if
you’re paid less than $X and the company has over 50 employees, your position
is guaranteed. Over $X or 50 and under employees and you have a job search at
the end of the paid leave.
------
groestl
We (Austria) have up to 1063 days of paid parental leave (paid for by social
security), if both parents decide to take it. It seems our companies manage :)
~~~
bpicolo
> paid for by social security
This seems to be the key in countries with similar policies. You wouldn't see
that system grow in the US as it stands, because companies pay for leave.
------
throwawaysea
I'm fine with this. They have to strike a reasonable and sustainable balance.
Thinking more broadly, I am not sure it makes sense to subsidize having more
children. Sustaining the standard of living we expect today with the
population numbers we have is simply not viable, since those standards carry
heavy externalities.
------
nottorp
Summary: countries with mandatory parental leave have the parents paid at
least partially by those high social security taxes, so it's no problem to
hire a replacement.
If the company has to pay the parental leave _and_ the replacement, it's of
course more difficult.
Easy enough...
------
torpfactory
Isn’t a solution to allow parents to work part time instead of being
completely off or on?
I feel like most people could still make valuable contributions at 50% time,
at least for knowledge workers. Maybe like build up from time off back to full
time over many months?
------
wittedhaddock
They ought to receive overwhelming congratulations and support for testing the
idea
How do we create a culture that totally celebrates the process of
experimentation even if the results from the result test aren't the pie in the
sky we hoped for?
------
tathougies
I am against one-year parental leaves. My wife and I want ten children. That
means ten years off work? How can a company manage? What if I were a less
moral man and got two women pregnant a year? I mean, it's not that difficult.
Even for faithful men, we plan on trying again (last baby born in December) in
a few months. Is it really fair to ask my company to pay for my sex life?
More worryingly, what kind of incentive does this set up? Obviously, it would
force companies to adopt policies that overall reduce the reproduction rate of
society. This can hardly be said to be a good thing. The number of children my
wife and I have should be determined by our ability to support them and our
willingness to have them. I am perfectly able to support children with my
salary, and I'd prefer to spend my time making that salary, rather than having
it handed to us.
Nevertheless, the main reason I am against them is that it removes all
incentives from employers (and government, by extension) to make things better
for parents that are actually _working_. I'd rather have a more flexible
schedule and more vacation than one year of parental leave. Or to live in a
society where only one parent has to work.
~~~
perfmode
Your argument is so convoluted that you were probably better off not saying
anything at all.
It seems like you're starting from a conclusion and providing all of the
things that support your conclusion. Instead, consider all the data and see
what conclusions are revealed.
You haven't conceded a single merit to the counterargument.
~~~
tathougies
I started from a conclusion (that one year parental leave is a good thing) and
then argued it leads to a number of outcomes which I deem unsatisfactory.
Thus, I reject the initial conclusion.
This is a form of argument by contradiction, or reductio ad absurdum. Part of
it, is actually assuming the conclusion and then showing that it contradicts
itself or leads to other unsavoriness.
One criticism of reductio ad absurdum is if the arguer sets up a straw man,
but I'm not sure you've successfully pointed out any straw man in my argument.
~~~
perfmode
Using Latin terms doesn’t change the fact that your argument is intellectually
dishonest.
Name a single, unqualified societal benefit to a one year leave.
~~~
tathougies
> Using Latin terms
Reductio ad absurdum is an English phrase. Derived from Latin certainly, but
it does not require understanding Latin (a language which I do not speak) to
comprehend.
> Name a single, unqualified societal benefit to a one year leave.
You are demanding I argue against my argument as evidence for my own argument?
That seems to me the height of intellectual dishonesty.
A single unqualified social benefit is that people like me would be able to
take many years off work, which I think would just be grand, because I'm
rather lazy and other people paying for tathougies to play with babies sounds
great! Is that a social benefit?
~~~
perfmode
> Intellectual honesty is an applied method of problem solving, characterized
> by an unbiased, honest attitude, which can be demonstrated in a number of
> different ways:
> One's personal faith does not interfere with the pursuit of truth;
> Relevant facts and information are not purposefully omitted even when such
> things may contradict one's hypothesis;
> Facts are presented in an unbiased manner, and not twisted to give
> misleading impressions or to support one view over another;
> References, or earlier work, are acknowledged where possible, and plagiarism
> is avoided.
------
garyrichardson
This is the same level of horseshit as Medical coverage for all and single
payer.
Maybe it wasn’t working the foundation because the US has such a pent up
demand for parental leave that people who want to have families target working
there. My company recently rolled out some pretty sweet parental policies and
lo and behold we have a bunch of people taking advantage of it.
Here in Canada, there is always someone on parental leave. You just deal with
it.
Generally speaking, execs and c levels operate at a different financial level
and parental leave is not as life changing as it is for your typical middle
class worker.
America, get it together and start treating your people with dignity and
respect. You’re a first world country. Your people deserve better.
------
randyrand
My mom had 4 children within 7 years. It's crazy to think someone could be
employed somewhere 7 years and only work 3. You'd have to hire 2.3 people to
get 1 full-time employee!
~~~
Pfhreak
> It's crazy to think someone could be employed somewhere 7 years and only
> work 3.
Alternative take: It's humane to think that someone who had four kids wouldn't
lose their job because they had four kids.
~~~
randyrand
Is it? Having 4 kids is not exactly something anyone _has_ to do. Where we
spend our time is a choice. If someone decides to spend significantly less
time working to raise 4 kids, is it really inhumane to allow the employer to
replace them with someone who wants to spend more time working?
~~~
qgsrw3fd
Actually yes, we definitely must encourage having more kids.
------
tgtweak
I kind of feel, and this is simply based on the personal observations of a few
dozen parental leaves (including a few in my own family) that it's not so much
the duration of time, but the ease back into work that is the important factor
in reaching maximum balance for the family and company. I think 6 months off
(26 weeks) is a good number, but spreadable over 18 months at the will of the
parent. I feel this would make things much better than a cold-cut 6 months
then back into the fire that a traditional 6 month leave would garner. I see a
3 months of full time off, followed with 2 days a week for 3 months, then 3
days for 2 more months before returning in full would be more beneficial to
most companies and families to avoid the "that resource is gone for more than
a quarter and needs to be replaced" conflict that happens during a 6 or 12
month "cold turkey" approach. I've also seen noticeable anxiety in mothers
about returning to the workplace after a 12 month absence, compared to a 3
month.
I see the Canadian system being praised a lot in these comments, and in fact
there are many laudable benefits to the system, but several acute shortcomings
which are often overlooked when touting socialized parental leave. The system
is firstly paid by deductions made to all salaries, which differs from an
employer-paid system where the employer pays the leave. Under the Canadian
system, if a company decides to pay an employee for the period, the government
contributes that much less. This has a chilling effect on companies paying for
leave, where almost all do not since there is no credit to employees working
for a company which offers this, and individuals are still taxed the same on
this portion. Additionally, it is a maximum of 12 months split between the
father and mother, and depending on the duration and the % of father or
mother, is a sliding scale between 50% and 75% of either your trailing salary
for 6 months or a maximum of $60,000 per year, whichever is less. This makes
it very difficult for a single breadwinner to support a family of 3 for a
period of 1 year off of this benefit alone. In the majority of cases I'm
familiar with, those individuals who took their 2 weeks and returned to work
simply because the proposed benefit is not enough to pay the bills, thereby
forfeiting tax benefits that they paid for and will continue to pay towards
for the rest of their salaried life. And while you do stop contributing to
this for the year once you pass $60,000 in pay for the year, there is no
"exemption" if you don't use it and certainly no "payout" if you don't. In
addition to this, you are taxed at your marginal tax % on any benefits you
receive from this program, making it even less palatable for someone in a high
tax bracket looking to take several months of leave. Someone in this tax
bracket is usually working in a role that requires specialized knowledge or
skills and are by that very nature harder to replace/restaff - even looking
away from the impact to the company, taking that leave in many cases results
in making some career sacrifices for that parent. A 3 month fully paid leave
(to both parents) with no tax deduction would be preferable to the current
system in almost all cases I've seen.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How we do coding assignments (hiring engineers) - digitalbase
https://medium.com/@gijsnelissen/how-we-do-coding-assignments-dad420e0573e
======
coreyp_1
It should probably be pointed out that, even if you are paying them for their
time, you must also have some sort of IP agreement for the code that they
produce.
~~~
digitalbase
hmmm good comment. I don't plan on using their code so do we really need an IP
agreement ? (don't like paperwork)
~~~
coreyp_1
If there is ever a chance that you might use it (or something similar to it in
the future), I would most definitely do the paperwork.
If you don't do the paperwork, then that means that they own the code (laws
may vary on this, of course), and can use it in their own product or sell it
to someone else.
Of course, IANAL, but IP management has become an important topic lately, and
this is one of the issues.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: If Facebook was written today, what language would you recommend? - tiuPapa
Note: Not the fb with millions of LOC but the initial one with a few thousands that started it all.
======
taprun
Whatever you are best at writing. Scale doesn't matter much compared to
traction early on.
~~~
hellbreaker
By far the best comment about programming. It really doesn't matter until you
get into the millions of users. And the chances of that are slim. So focus on
traction before scale.
------
matchmike1313
I agree with taprun, whatever you are proficient in. I would build it with
Node.JS probably or a VueJS front-end with a Go backend.
------
meric
Typescript, react?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Cliplingo – turns YouTube into spaced repetition language learning - Ondrej72
https://www.cliplingo.com
======
Ondrej72
What was originally a simple tool for my own learning and memorising, turned
into a real project for everyone.
Youtube is full of great content for learning videos. But there hasn’t been a
way to organise them with spaced repetition. I love to learn the grammar or
collocations from YT videos but then I fail to remember what I’ve just
learned.
Cliplingo automatically prompts the video from the lesson that need to be
revised, by the rules of spaced repetition. Each repetition will play a
different video with the given topic, so you will not see the same video over
and over again.
~~~
BukhariH
Currently working on my French - was super interested to use this but it's not
working.
Looks like the request to:
[https://www.cliplingo.com/lesson/start?id=18](https://www.cliplingo.com/lesson/start?id=18)
Returns an empty video id:
[https://pastebin.com/8JemA2T3](https://pastebin.com/8JemA2T3)
Hopefully you can fix it soon - super excited to use it!
~~~
Ondrej72
Thanks for heads up! It is fixed now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What is the quickest way to implement user management for my SaaS - cs747
Implementing user management functionalities such as<p>- user registration
- email/phone number verification
- user login
- forget username or password
- account deletion
- etc
For SaaS is a common requirement. What are the best ways available today to implement these functionalities quickly without wasting the resources?
======
brudgers
File based access under a Unix with users and groups. Assuming you know or are
willing to learn a Unix.
------
phynax
Perhaps take a look at auth0 or amazon cognitio.
Google will find you lots of usage examples in your language.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Better Vim – How to Configure Neovim - superskierpat
http://patrickmarchand.com/posts/neovim-tuto.html
======
superskierpat
My first blog post after a request on lobsters. Commentaries, suggestions and
insults welcome.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Strange Russian Spacecraft Shadowing U.S. Spy Satellite - davedx
https://time.com/5779315/russian-spacecraft-spy-satellite-space-force/
======
ColinWright
Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207683)
Other sources for the story:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204838](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204838)
: thedailybeast.com
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200881)
: Extended Twitter discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22229130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22229130)
: interstellarspecies.blogspot.com
Other submissions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209705)
: theverge.com
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22196710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22196710)
: twitter.com
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22287833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22287833)
: technologyreview.com
------
simonblack
_at times creeping within 100 miles of it._
OMG! Within 100 miles! Oh the humanity!
Wake me up when it gets to within ONE mile.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Paint the earth - tosh
https://what-if.xkcd.com/84/
======
qubex
My family business is in the paint manufacturing sector. This is quite
amusing. Paint is literally one of the most boring things in the universe.
However, I must point out he has not thought of manufactured objects that need
to be painted.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CoffeeScript and Progress - focusaurus
http://peterlyons.com/problog/2012/03/coffeescript-and-progress
======
dustingetz
he's missed the point. people aren't saying that "CoffeeScript is a priori
somehow wrong or inferior or a bad choice". Coffeescript is an abstraction,
and abstractions have potential to leak, so some people are questioning
whether the benefits of coffeescript - namely, prettier code - are "worth it"
for production-scale projects.
as your project gets big, does coffeescript help us write more maintainable
code, better abstract our solutions so we can keep less things in our head at
once, resulting in higher agility and fewer bugs? When you look at the deep
reasons why a large codebase went sour, you're not blaming it on things like
list comprehensions, you're blaming it on things like "Java strong-arms us
towards building abstractions with only OOP, which over the course of a few
years builds into indecipherable layers of implementation inheritance, causing
high defect rates and much decreased agility".
The difference between CoffeeScript and Javascript, in terms of what a team
can accomplish, hasn't been proven in production-scale projects. they may be,
or maybe only for some teams, or maybe they aren't, but you can't debate
something without being able to articulate the opponent's position.
update: interestingly, ClojureScript may be a language where the productivity
delta from javascript is much larger, and is better worth it. clojurescript
introduces new ideas and idioms to the js community, where coffeescript is an
incremental update to javascript with no new ideas.
~~~
focusaurus
I think programmer productivity is also linked to happiness given one's own
tools. My experience thus far is I'm happier when working with CoffeeScript.
Not "OMG P0nies" happier, but significantly happier. I think the amount of
boilerplate CS removes is significant, but indeed whether it is worthwhile
depends on many factors in any given situation.
Given how CS maps to JS, I'm not too worried about leaky abstractions.
~~~
dustingetz
> programmer productivity is also linked to happiness given one's own tools
so i certainly agree with this, but in my experience, as the problems get
harder, my happiness isn't determined by syntax.
the things that make me mad are "i have to fix this defect but this code is a
fragile mess which i'm afraid to touch, so i bandaid on more hacks to have the
minimum possible area of impact so i know for certain that i can give this to
the client and it won't make things worse". that makes me fucking furious,
man, the artist in me dies a little bit every time I do it. We have this issue
in our large javascript codebase. CoffeeScript would probably help a little
bit, but a speculative 2x improvement in "fucking furious" is still furious.
This opinion is probably along the lines of those who think CoffeeScript is a
toy. List comprehensions don't fix our problem; we (my team) just don't care.
investing in education, growing the teams ability to craft well factored code
and stable code, that will have exponential payoff.
Now you can get meta here and say a language like ClojureScript which brings
Clojure's strong opinions about managing complexity and crafting good
abstractions - you get better just by using it, its sort of self-educating.
ClojureScript has my attention.
------
unoti
If you're considering trying Coffeescript, here are a few thoughts for you.
Remember that the Vim plugin for Coffeescript compiles your Coffeescript to a
js automatically every time you save, and it even shows you immediately if
there are any errors. I've had difficulty setting up other Vim plugins, but
this one was blessedly simple to get going.
An awesome tool for helping you to learn Coffeescript is the "Try
Coffeescript" tab on <http://coffeescript.org/>. This lets you type a little
bit of stuff, and see how it translates into Javascript, in realtime, while
you type. I still use this today when I'm trying to verify I'm on the right
track with a bit of punctuation (meaning, leaving punctuation out, usually).
~~~
lloeki
Also, a bunch of shortcuts[0] and Syntastic (which Just Works) makes it
absolutely blissful.
Note that although :CoffeeCompile operates on the whole file by default, it
also works on buffer regions, so _vai,c_ shows me the current block as JS (
_i_ is from indent-object plugin)
[0] [http://esa-matti.suuronen.org/blog/2011/11/28/how-to-
write-c...](http://esa-matti.suuronen.org/blog/2011/11/28/how-to-write-
coffeescript-efficiently/)
------
robterrell
_Ouch, my eyes! All those closing punctuation groups!_
This seems to come up often, the purported ugliness of JavaScript. To rebut,
I'll use one of his own arguments:
_I don't really know why people bring this up so often. It's just a non-
problem for me._
------
jcampbell1
> The few who responded seemed to dislike it, not for any particular technical
> objection to the language or its features, but simply to its existence at
> all, which surprised me.
It seems that the author is surprised by rational human behavior. A new
language introduces a tradeoff between having a new tool that may better solve
your problems, and introducing fragmentation where the developer must invest
time learning a new language and tooling or the developer faces a smaller body
of code that he can work on.
I like and use CS, but the author's philosophy that more languages in use
always better for everyone, is fundamentally flawed.
~~~
focusaurus
So let me clarify that my general take on the state of programming languages
today is that they are all pretty terrible and we don't have a good track
record of fixing known flaws with them. With tend to just live with them.
Given that, most new languages offer a shining chance at progress toward
something better. They indicate someone is thinking about the problem and
trying to help. Thus by default I like new programming languages per say. But
yes, each does add to the total body of stuff out there, which has a cost.
------
showell30
This is Rob Pike's take on FUD toward new programming languages:
[http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2011/12/esmereldas-
imagina...](http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2011/12/esmereldas-
imagination.html)
------
ajuc
If f g h x boils down to f(g(h(x))) and [1 2 3] boils down to [1, 2, 3]
Then what is the meaning of [f 1] ?
EDIT: I've tried on <http://coffeescript.org/> and it seems a = [1 2 3]
doesn't work? EDIT2: newlines instead of spaces works, my bad
~~~
focusaurus
Right, array elements separated by new lines works, but CS requires commas
between elements in 1-line arrays. I would like to see CS remove commas
between array elements but most folks like commas there, it seems. And yes, I
guess there's a syntax ambiguity with function arguments that is not easily
resolved. I love omitting parens for calling a single function, but doing it
more than once per line should be avoided I think.
------
btbuilder
I agree with pretty much all of his points. But the argument that code will
'never align' with line numbers seems like a dismissal that debugging exactly
what you wrote is very valuable when tracking down subtle bugs.
~~~
focusaurus
Fair enough. I don't need line numbers specifically when I have a full-on in-
browser graphical debugger so I can debug exactly what is being interpreted.
There's work underway to handle mapping back to source files, and when that
arrives, it will be "nice". However, listening to NodeUp podcasts, people
think that line numbers not lining up is an absolute deal-breaker, which I
just don't find to be the case at all in my personal experience.
------
drumdance
I don't have an opinion pro or con on this.
However, I'm old enough to remember when JavaScript was first introduced as
LiveScript and it was mostly seen as a toy for simple stuff while Java was the
Real Deal. (I started my first company largely on this premise.) The big
competition back then was ActiveX. Remember that? Amazing how things have
evolved.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ToyJVM: An Experimental Java Virtual Machine - sagartewari01
https://github.com/ozy/ToyJVM
======
DannyB2
It's not immediately obvious, but what class library does it work with? Gnu
Classpath? Something else?
If this doesn't have a good deal of the rest of the built in Java ecosystem,
then does it have much value or usefulness?
Does it have a possible advantage without a JIT, like being able to run in
constrained amounts of memory?
------
abc_lisper
This is amazing! This would be very useful for people (esp. students) who want
to get to the core of the internals without getting bogged down by details and
optimization.
------
quangio
When seeing VM, I think about JIT, GC... This is "just" a bytecode interpreter
(I don't mean to tell the project isn't worth sharing but it's quite
misleading)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
On being a woman linux kernel developer - tathagatadg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dro2v44wvs0
Linux developer Sarah Sharp shares her story about how she became a Linux kernel developer, as well as what it means to be a woman today in the open source software community.
======
eknuth
Cool, I saw her garden automation talk at osbridge!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: I think my co-founder is freaking out about getting sued. - gitgo
I think have a serious problem with my co-founder and I’m not sure how to handle it. We just launched an adaption{1} of the popular Yo App and we are getting lots of downloads. But now, he is freaking out about getting sued for using a similar name and layout as the Yo app.
Mostly he is worried about having Yo in the app title, which I don’t see any problem with. However, now he changed the app title in our play store account a second time without telling me so in response, I blocked his access.<p>His main argument for not using Yo in our name, is that we shouldn’t be gaining traction from what others have built. However, I think tries to make up arguments why we should change the name. Also, in my opinion our app is significantly different to Yo and he is simply getting worked up about us getting sued for copyright infringement or intellectual property theft.<p>Moreover, having yo in the name is crucial for our app to gain traction as it communicates to people that they can do “one-word” communication to their friends similar to Yo, just in a bit of a different way.<p>I think my question is, is there any way we could get sued realistically? The thing is that we’re in German jurisdiction, so there is not much anyone can sue us about outside of Germany and if it goes through, it would take a year or so, wouldn’t it?<p>{1} https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.messenger.labs
======
moduloo
i think it depends on the terms&conditions of google's playstore. just because
you are german doesnt meant you cant ge sued by american laws, and i know that
german and american laws are quite dirrefent when it comes to compensation
(schadensersatz).
suggestions: delete references to "Yo" from your product-name (name it Jo
instead); "Yo" is a registered trademark; you wouldnt name a chocolate you
created "ritter sport", even if your name was armin ritter
------
throwaway420
a) Not a lawyer, but the worst you'd likely get is a cease and desist letter,
not a lawsuit out of the blue. Especially if you're located in another
country.
b) It's ok to have a difference in opinion, but your co-founder should not be
making major product decisions without you. That, to me, would be most
concerning.
c) How should you handle it? Decide on clear roles, and develop the product
further so that there's a clear difference between you and other products.
~~~
ColinWright
Expanding on (c) ...
There will be times when you have a difference of opinion. The person who
specifically and explicitly has control has, indeed, got control. It's the
other person's job to try to convince them. Working together well means taking
the time to listen to concerns, then making a decision. Sometimes that means
changing your mind. This is not a competition between you. Changing your mind
or not changing your mind is neither victory nor loss.
But for every decision, someone should have control, and their job, in part,
is to keep the other person informed. That feeds back to point (b) above.
------
sharemywin
I'd be more worried about getting permanately banned from the app store. using
your logic why not put imessage in your title?
------
paulhauggis
I'm going create an app called "yo2". Where's my million dollars?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Agent - Go-like concurrency in Ruby - dpaluy
https://github.com/igrigorik/agent
======
dpaluy
<http://vimeo.com/49718712> Concurrency is not parallelism by Rob Pike
~~~
dustybenshee
It's true that concurrency is not parallelism... but why did you bring it up.
This project is about concurrency. Nobody has confused it with parallelism.
The linked pages doesn't even mention parallelism.
So why did you bring it up?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Will Banning Cryptography Keep the Country Safe? - lanecwagner
https://qvault.io/2020/02/05/will-banning-cryptography-keep-the-country-safe/
======
bediger4000
Article does not answer the question posed by its headline, but it is a short,
yet good discussion of moral panics, and legislation driven by moral panics.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Remote freelance jobs - kaizensoze
https://github.com/kaizensoze/remote-freelance-jobs
======
kaizensoze
If you know of any additional remote friendly dev shops or sites with direct
clients, feel free to submit a pull request!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Searching for Dark Matter with Cloudant, part 3 - mbroberg
https://cloudant.com/blog/searching-for-dark-matter-with-cloudant-part3/
======
vonnik75
So, have you found dark matter yet? :) what's up with that?
~~~
gadamc
Ha! That would be a much bigger headline. Well, in a sense, its already been
detected, but just not directly detected in a lab, produced by the LHC, or
observed via any self-annihilation process. We know something it exists
through cosmological observations - so in that sense its been found.
~~~
gadamc
.. having said that, there are a few experiments that have data which some
have claimed or interpreted as direct evidence for dark matter. but the
community is far from agreement on that. in fact, most people are skeptical.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HyperRogue 11.2: Thurston Geometries - mathgenius
https://zenorogue.blogspot.com/2019/09/hyperrogue-112-thurston-geometries-free.html
======
db48x
Hyperrogue continues to surprise me. The price ought to be going up over time,
but it never seems to.
~~~
zenorogue
It does. The first version on Steam was $0.99 (it was a tiny game too). Then I
think it was $2.99 for some time, then $4.99. The price on itch.io stays at
$2.99 because their system does not allow us to increase the price without
taking the updates away to those who have already paid the lower price.
Probably the price will increase when 3D modes become less experimental.
~~~
db48x
Always a minuscule price for an amazing game.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Lyrics generator for over 40 artist styles - mrkarezina
https://www.freshbots.org/lyrcis-generator
======
mrkarezina
I made this web app for generating lyrics in the styles of over 40 artists.
Why? I had two goals with this project: 1\. I was curious to see if the model
will be able to generate entertaining lyrics. Pretty lighthearted but still
kinda fun. There are quite a few artist styles to try. 2\. Make a material ui
web app to play around with the lyrics generator.
Each artist has a Markov model trained on lyrics from Lyrics Beast. You can
also specify the target number of syllables.
Somethings i’d like to try in the future: Mix artist styles by combining
models.
It’s a lighthearted project, but I would still love to hear what you thought
of it
------
byoung2
Some of the lyrics are real gems, like this Drake verse:
And you know wassup
Like how to blast up,
Whatever you wanna go
Peace sign in the underground though
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What is the best way to handle student loans as an entrepreneur? - the_watcher
I dropped out of law school after year after hating it. It left me with roughly $40K in loans. My monthly payment is manageable with my current income, and I could reduce it by changing my repayment plan to one of the lower monthly payment options, but I doubt I could get it below $200/month. I'd really like to join a startup in its early stages, potentially one that only pays me in equity and my absolute necessity bills (housing, food) to begin with (I have one in mind that is promising). Has anyone on here started a company with student loans and not had the income to repay them? Is starting a company "unemployed" for the purposes of loans, since I won't have an income?
======
the_watcher
I'm not wild about my current job, and I'd like to do something more
rewarding. I've also considered places like App Academy.
------
kayhi
I'd put the student loan in the 'absolute necessity bills' and pay it back.
~~~
the_watcher
I didn't propose not paying it back. I asked what my options would be for
deferring it so that I can pursue other options beyond my current job.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New gene found: helps prevent heart attack, stroke; may block effects of aging - evo_9
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160517094208.htm
======
cjbprime
Please (everyone) stop posting scientific press releases regarding a single
study. They are always massively suspect. If this work is correct then there
will soon be replications and meta-studies and we can talk about it then. The
assumption for an unverified single study, especially one using phrases like
"scientific dogma", should be that it is probably incorrect.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Your phone number is becoming the online identifier of choice - lgomezma
http://blog.messagebird.com/2015/12/your-phone-number-is-becoming-the-online-identifier-of-choice/
======
henningpeters
> Hacking someone’s phone number is almost impossible to do, as someone would
> need to steal the physical SIM card or clone it at least. An almost
> impossible venture for the majority of fraudsters.
Wiretapping/redirecting SMS is actually surprisingly easy and doesn't require
stealing/cloning SIM cards. Not sure how it compares to wiretapping
unencrypted IP networks, but based on a demo I saw today I would guess it's
easier.
~~~
lgomezma
Any link with more info to that demo? It sounds interesting.
~~~
henningpeters
Demo was in RL, hence no link. Search for SS7/MSC attacks for more info.
~~~
lgomezma
Thanks, I will take a look, it seems quite interesting...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HN Discusses: Lets talk about replacing HTTP in the browser. - bradhe
HTTP has been a solid workhorse for, what, 20 years? It can pretty much be considered ubiquitous -- any platform worth its salt has a robust HTTP client. HTTP is reasonably light weight and extensible and is generally well understood.<p>But is it still appropriate for "modern" uses? As web apps become more and more interactive, larger, and have different constraints on connectivity is there a better alternative to base our stack on?<p>We have a few interesting solutions to those problems that have been built on top of HTTP. Comet, for instance, overcomes the interactivity bit and web sockets could be cool if it ever get full support but those both seem like hack-y solutions -- solutions that required a lot of energy that likely could have been mitigated if we used a different protocol in the first place.<p>Lets just consider, for the purposes of this discussion, what the ideal technology would be. We don't necessarily need to talk about adoption or deployment or feasibility -- obviously its pretty damn infeasible to ACTUALLY replace HTTP thanks to its ubiquity -- but just ideally, what would you like to see?<p>Anyone know if any feasibility studies or scoping of a technology has been done on this topic?
======
yanw
The SPDY protocol is a potential replacement: <http://www.chromium.org/spdy/>
~~~
bradhe
Yeah, that is kind of what sparked this thought in my mind...there are a
couple of things that are good here. Multiple files per request is a pretty
cool idea and server-initiated requests could solve a lot of problems.
One thing that immediately comes to mind as a bummer about SPDY, though: Lack
of native full-duplex duplex communication.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Create website in easy way using simple Drag and Drop tools - amritsinghlotay
http://www.codelator.com/blog/2014/aug/webflow-create-website-in-easy-way-using-simple-drag-and-drop-tools.html
======
amritsinghlotay
Webflow is one of the best website builder tool available on the internet. It
uses simple drag and drop tools for creating custom, responsive and
professional looking websites. If you are not a web designer and you don't
want to write thousand lines of code then WEBFLOW is the perfect tool for you.
Webflow provides complete set of tool for creating stunning looking websites.
It allows you to create all the necessary elements such as <div>, social
widgets, video embedding, maps, buttons, section, container, columns, images,
menubar etc. It provides a very clean and beautiful environment which makes it
easy to find the desired element you want to add in your webpage. You don't
need any skills for building a website using Webflow, but you need some basic
understanding of HTML and CSS concepts. Once you will start using Webflow, you
will automatically learn all the concepts.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Verisign Buyout of Thawte Consulting Challenged (2000) - yuhong
https://slashdot.org/story/00/01/11/1029235/verisign-buyout-of-thawte-consulting-challenged
======
yuhong
I believe Mark later used this to fund Canonical (it was worth $575 million).
This is a good example of the debt based economy being flawed, including how
it encouraged extracting more money from "consumers" (remember that for
example IE did not support anything other than VeriSign, Thawte, and GTE
CyberTrust until the then recently released NT4 SP6 and IE 5.01).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Effective A/B Testing - luu
http://elem.com/~btilly/effective-ab-testing/
======
bgun
There may be useful information here but the presentation format is
incomprehensible. And do the images on the right bear any relationship to the
content?
------
caminante
Is there a way to advance by complete slides and not have to click for every
intra-slide transition?
It took 47 clicks to get to slide 11 and the deck has 115 slides.
~~~
byamit
[http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/features.html#controlchart](http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/features.html#controlchart)
A couple useful shortcuts there depending on what you're trying to do.
~~~
caminante
I saw that. Typing '1'+<RIGHT ARROW> advances slides, but doesn't load the
full slide.
Bad presentation design.
------
Matumio
There seems to be a lot of experience behind this presentation. But I wonder,
how does all this G-testing compare to Thompson sampling? (Which was not
mentioned at all in the presentation.) For example, is there any drawback with
adapting the A/B probabilities on-the-fly, instead of having a hard decision
point?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Reverse Engineering the MOS 6502 CPU - wglb
http://www.pagetable.com/?p=512
======
Luc
Well, this is going to be an awesome talk (on the 28th in Berlin), but other
than the title and a pretty picture, there's nothing in the link...
~~~
alanthonyc
Click the picture and you get this:
[http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4159.en.h...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4159.en.html)
~~~
ygd
But that's it. I hope they post the slides/video/text to the talk once it's
done.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NASA wants your help with a simulated lunar mission - novas0x2a
http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/desertrats/vote
======
novas0x2a
More information about the Desert RATS project:
<http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/analogs/desert_rats.html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
T. Rex Might Be the Thing with Feathers - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/101/in-our-nature/t-rex-might-be-the-thing-with-feathers-rp
======
themartorana
I feel silly even writing this... but I wanted more pictures. I know the
imagination is a powerful thing, but an artist's rendering based on a
scientist's description helps me a lot.
What can I say. I like picture-books :)
------
mhurron
Obligatory xkcd [https://xkcd.com/1104/](https://xkcd.com/1104/)
This leads me every time our budgies or finches or the birds outside do
something odd or silly, I nudge the wife, point at them and say "Dinosaurs."
------
ArkyBeagle
Evolution sort of makes the whole idea of extinction and "survival" blindingly
complex.
The simple idea that "birds==dinosaurs (maybe)" led to us having pet birds for
a while ( through the influence of our youngest ), which was very rewarding.
With smarter birds, there's more of a sense of a cognitive "there" there than
most animals. Almost what you get with dogs - although dogs have been
...engineered so heavily as our "familiars" that this takes some of the fun
out of it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Coronamaison - vvoyer
https://coronamaison.now.sh/
======
vvoyer
Hey HN!
Here's my second covid19 related project: #coronamaison
I got really impressed by all the art drawings of the #coronamaison project
where, starting with a blank template, you then draw your ideal
#staythefuckhome place.
It all started with a tweet from Pénélope Bagieu
([https://twitter.com/PenelopeB/status/1239186251833630720](https://twitter.com/PenelopeB/status/1239186251833630720)),
a French artist, and then a lot of artists started to send their own drawing
on both Twitter and Instagram.
Very soon I wanted to create a website to organize all those magnificent
drawings. Because I felt otherwise they would be lost in the social media
noise. This is what I have done this week and the result is here.
Enjoy browsing them all and let me know what you think!
------
ChrisArchitect
pretty amazing! so many, and lovely mix of drawings
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What is the next big thing after 'Big Data'; 'Big Sensor web Era' - abdullahisham
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensor_web
======
abdullahisham
The idea is that sensors will transmit data at the speed of light (taking into
account delay on networks). If an earthquake was to have its epicenter 20
miles away, you could know about it 10 seconds before you felt the ground
shake. [http://www.bigdata-startups.com/the-great-sensor-era-
brontob...](http://www.bigdata-startups.com/the-great-sensor-era-brontobytes-
will-change-society/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Dilemma of Anti-Semitic Speech Online - Pharmakon
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/internet-you-can-scream-fire-all-you-want-unless-something-burns/574243/?single_page=true
======
xkcd-sucks
Apparently China's figured this one out
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Largest Number of Scientists in Modern U.S. Is Running for Office in 2018 - ericdanielski
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/entry/science-candidates_us_5a74fffde4b06ee97af2ae60
======
nonbel
Be careful, there are lots of people passing themselves off as scientists who
aren't these days.
It is all over the place. From medical research where they call people who try
to check the data analysis "parasites"[1], to psychology where they call
people who do replications "bullies"[2], to physics where they want to get rid
of the need for evidence altogether[3].
[1] [http://researchparasite.com/](http://researchparasite.com/)
[2]
[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/07/replication_controversy_in_psychology_bullying_file_drawer_effect_blog_posts.html)
[3] [https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-and-
philosophers-d...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-and-philosophers-
debate-the-boundaries-of-science-20151216/)
~~~
jtmarmon
That parasite website is so weird. It sounds so negative, like a piece of
satire, but then you read the actual text and it sounds like a serious award
whose goal is to encourage rigor in scientific research.
Whose stupid idea was it to call it the Parasite Award
~~~
tw1010
Maybe natural scientists are more accustomed to using the strict, cold,
definitions of biological concepts without being emotionally influenced by any
cultural value judgement attached to them.
~~~
Avshalom
Good thing we live in a strict cold culture-less world then.
~~~
tw1010
I think it's too much to ask to expect every little scientific niche, every
subculture, to have to adapt their local personalized context-aware
terminology to the global culture, just because a random person coming from
outside the niche might be confused by their language. It's like demanding
that no part of a public speech should be able to shine a poor light on the
speaker when a substring of it is taken out of context. It's an unnecessarily
harsh constraint.
------
mc32
Many current congress members are lawyers and physicians. I welcome additional
people with backgrounds demanding rigor. For example, in SF we have policies
to help the homeless, but often fail to live up to their expectations.
Politicians push through feel good measures that aren't based on rigorous
studies.
Npr will often cite some idea based on a small study somewhere which hasn't
been replicated elsewhere. Maybe technologists will require more rigor than we
now do.
~~~
Quanttek
Why would technologists do that? Especially in those circles there's an
incredible belief in easy solutions (i.e. technological solutions). For your
homeless problem sociologists and anthropologists would probably be most
appropriate
------
mobilefriendly
This is nasty business, the turning of "science" into a partisan wedge issue.
After all, no need to debate if you can just call someone "anti-science".
There's no significant difference in the number of STEM candidates this cycle,
this is fake news stuff generated by a left-of-center advocacy group and
HuffPo.
~~~
sergiotapia
"Settled science" has become a curse word to me. "Science" used to be a
method, now it's a belief system in the first world. It's disgusting.
~~~
merpnderp
It used to be fun sport on Facebook to kid those who followed "I fucking love
science" for not having the first clue about science. But as science became
more and more a partisan word, it just became sad - the birth of a new
religion who's adherents didn't even care to learn their new dogma.
------
merpnderp
A lot of atrocities of the 20th century were purposefully committed in the
name of science and progress, claiming over a hundred million lives.
I much prefer candidates who care more about ethics the rights of individuals
over those who's primary concern is the scientific method.
[EDIT] As a modern example, John Holdren wrote in a 1977 book, Ecoscience,
that forced abortions and mass sterilizations were required to save the
planet. Being a good enough scientist to become appointed president Obama's
scientific advisor, doesn't mean you can't easily rationalize atrocities on a
wide scale.
------
rhino369
Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover were the two engineer POTUS's. Take from that
what you may.
~~~
moonka
Wasn't Carter a submariner followed by peanut farming?
~~~
rhino369
Nuclear submariner.
~~~
Turing_Machine
As one of his duties, he personally entered a melted-down experimental reactor
as part of the team that disassembled the damaged core.
------
rsuelzer
I worked on the special election campaign for Bill Foster (D-Il). Seeing him
win was one of the most memorable moments of the last decade for me.
------
badcede
"The fact is that a mere training in one or more of the exact sciences, even
combined with very high gifts, is no guarantee of a humane or sceptical
outlook."
[http://orwell.ru/library/articles/science/english/e_scien](http://orwell.ru/library/articles/science/english/e_scien)
------
heisenbit
Here in Germany we literally have a nuclear scientist running the government
and frankly politics have become a bit boring. Now that may be a good in a way
but vision is not really her thing.
~~~
im_down_w_otp
Doesn't that allow you to treat your government as infrastructure and your
culture as your source of vision though?
Granted I don't live there, but that sounds appealing to me. A boring,
efficient, and well-run government would be like giving your society a great
COO. Which then opens up the possibility for the people of the society to be
their own visionary CEO.
------
starpilot
Is this a good thing? Governing is at its essence people management, and the
best scientists don't always make the best managers. They may not be
persuasive enough to rally others to their cause, or see the importance in
doing so, or understand the give-and-take of politics, just the crusade for
"truth." A scientist may be better and smarter, but impotent and walked over
if he can't actually do politics with other messy humans.
> I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the
> first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society
> governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.
~~~
throwaway7645
My company has two engineering departments. 1 that has a very traditional
management chain (non-technical) that is very bureaucratic with lots of
meetings. The other promotes only the best technical engineers with ~10 years
of experience and people skills. The latter typically performs far better
finishing all projects on time and under budget. My boss's boss knows every
table in our database, how each interface to our various apps works...etc. All
our management in that department can speak on the same level as our vendors
and drive key design and architecture decisions and the next day be talking to
shareholders in the political realm. When someone asks them a question they
can give an answer down to the lowest level of granularity if need be. So my
experience based theory of management is to take high performing domain
experts with people skills and put them in management in lieu of typical
Harvard MBA types. Then pay for them to take some finance classes to round off
that skill set if needed.
~~~
nightski
In this case the domain is politics not science. If anything your argument is
in agreement with the parent.
~~~
throwaway7645
I know what you're saying, but I don't think you're catching my meaning. I
believe good leadership involves specific skill sets applied to a particular
area and that very few people can truly serve in the generalist role that the
MBA & politicians try to sell you.
------
adamsvystun
Define scientists...
------
stryk
No doubt we need to get rid of the climate change/global warming/call-it-what-
u-want deniers, and the outright false information being disseminated without
batting an eyelash is pure insanity, but I still have to wonder if folks who
have spent their lives in academia are compatible with government?
It is possible to swing the needle too far in the opposite direction and end
up with just as many problems.
~~~
jessriedel
Ha! The overwhelming majority of congressmen and senators are lawyers or
businessmen. The number of scientists, between both chambers, is in the low
single digits.
[https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44762.html#_Toc49835...](https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44762.html#_Toc498356618)
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2013/01/17/an...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2013/01/17/an-awesome-diagram-of-the-113th-
congress/?utm_term=.9328c871a4d8)
I don't think we're remotely close to "swinging the needle too far in the
opposite direction"...
~~~
stryk
All I'm saying is, academia and government are 2 different ballgames -- I'm
sure there are lots of similarities, but the stakes are on 2 vastly different
levels. I'm not saying having scientists in the government would be bad, to
the contrary -- right now that's what we _need_.
But replace all the lawyers and businessmen in government right now with
professors and administrators from academia and we would still have lots of
issues.
~~~
heurist
I doubt the bureaucracies of academia and government are all that different at
their cores.
------
legionof7
This could go really well or really badly. Scientists are good for making good
scientific decisions, but they might (probably?) not be the best at managing a
country. I think the best thing would be more people with political experience
to run with the position of having lots of scientists as advisors.
~~~
fermienrico
This is such a cliche criticism of scientists running for public office and
frankly I’m tired of it as it detracts from the fundamental truth.
There is no reason why scientists cannot run for public office. Reason, logic
and strategic thinking is what we need - doesn’t matter if it’s a scientist,
engineer or an accountant.
Compared to the shit we have today, this would be a huge step forward.
Plenty of scientists have leadership and political skills. It’s not like
scientists are just completely incapable of dealing with people - that is the
cliche and we need to objectively think about this.
~~~
pavlov
I honestly think Mitch McConnell employs a lot of “reason, logic and strategic
thinking”. Those things are not enough by themselves — you need to have
something to build towards besides short-term partisan points.
Gerrymandering is another example of the abundance of misguided cleverness in
the American system.
~~~
fermienrico
All I am saying is that "Reason, Logic and Strategic thinking" is minimum that
a scientist offers.
There are so many scientists and engineers that lead multi-billion dollar
corporations. They have, in addition to reason , logic and strategic thinking
- organizational, political and people skills.
My point is that just having a scientific background should in no way be a
limiting factor. In fact, it should be a positive thing.
------
gaius
Wasn’t this an episode of The Simpsons?
------
RickJWag
Highly politicized article.
If it were balanced, there should be some mention of medical scientists who
have concerns for humans in development. Science has made tremendous progress
in this area, but they are not covered in the media often.
------
microcolonel
> _President Donald Trump has yet to name a science adviser, leading some to
> declare that Fox News is filling the position._
This is petty drivel, from the pointless and nonsensical jabs, to the bizarre
assumption that PhDs make better politicians.
~~~
tsomctl
I don't think it's bizarre to assume that a PhD is best to be a science
adviser.
~~~
LeifCarrotson
Only in the sense that PhDs are often extremely specialized. They are experts
in one field, not general-purpose "science" experts. It may not be immediately
clear why someone with the most advanced knowledge in the world on an esoteric
organism in Indonesia would be a good advisor to the President.
A PhD functioning as an advisor does have valuable experience that would help
them understand how some desired research needs to get done, or discern
whether a particular study is quality or junk, or be able to communicate
effectively in an environment full of technical jargon. Indeed, those are the
characteristics that are really needed - but those are merely qualities that
are hopefully picked up on the way to a PhD, not the research project which
the PhD certifies.
~~~
soVeryTired
A PhD alone wouldn't necessarily make a good scientific advisor, but someone
who came from a high-level position in a university might.
Beyond a certain level, scientists become managers rather than practitioners.
The successful ones have insight into the process of raising funds, the
politics of large-scale research facilities, and sometimes the process of
major international collaboration.
Discerning whether a given study is junk probably doesn't fall under the remit
of Science Advisor. That's more of a tactical issue that would be delegated to
a specialist policy wonk.
------
SapphireSun
Scientists are running because they feel their class interests are being
threatened. Typically, scientists are apolitical because they feel they get
more benefits by maintaining the status quo (e.g. military and civil funding).
In the face of a bald attack on the EPA and climate science, scientists are
attempting to show class solidarity.
Unfortunately, many of the problems we have are not technical problems, but
are clashes between left and right. The favored positions of both sides have
long been established. Science will help implement an ideological solution,
but will not replace ideology. To the extent that the scientists running are
leftists compared with centrist democrats, this will be somewhat significant.
However, I suspect that many established scientists are ignorant of politics
and see the current struggle as some kind of surface level fact vs fiction
debate. They will be disappointed.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Performance comparison of CUDA and OpenCL on Nvidia FERMI Tesla C2050 - dgibsontx
http://blog.accelereyes.com/blog/2010/05/10/nvidia-fermi-cuda-and-opencl/
======
anateus
That's quite promising as far as OpenCL is concerned. I've seen a lot of
scientific packages that run on CUDA, but not many that use OpenCL, but I've
been averse to the vendor lock in.
Despite the overheads at small dataset sizes, this seems to make OpenCL not
just a viable alternative, but a preferable one for general applications.
------
liuliu
Do they have a comparison of OpenCL performance on AMD 5970 HD with Nvidia GTX
480? The two graphic cards seem more commercial viable for me.
~~~
mzl
I think the article was meant to compare software libraries for GPGPU
programming, not the performance of different hardware platforms.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How the NASCAR-like experience of new PCs hurts customer confidence - terrellm
http://www.keepingitrural.com/nascar-pc-experience-hurts-customer-confidence
======
noonespecial
All those decals are there on your windows pc for the same reason they are
there on the racing cars. To subsidize the cost of the machine. You got your
windows computer for $500. How much was your mac?
If I ever become obscenely wealthy, I'm going to buy a NASCAR team 100%
myself. My car will be all white and on the hood, in large friendly black
letters (Helvetica no doubt), it will say _"Racecar"_. That ought to drive
those red-staters nuts.
~~~
trafficlight
That would be awesome.
------
jrockway
I like all that crap. It makes me feel smug as I scratch off the logos, remove
the decals, and erase the stock OS.
If it was just a blank machine with nothing on it, I wouldn't get that
feeling.
I do feel sorry for someone that thinks the default install on their laptop is
suitable for actual use, however. Sometimes these techie jokes go a little too
far...
------
gamble
The problem with PCs is not the existence of cheapo systems like this, but the
absence of machines that compete with the Mac for industrial design and user
experience. It doesn't seem to be possible to buy a PC that isn't butt-ugly
and comes loaded with crapware, regardless of how much you're willing to pay.
My theory is that when Apple builds a computer, they know they're going to
sell millions of a particular model, so it's worth spending the time to build
it properly. PC makers have higher volume, but it's spread across thirty
models with a dozen variants each, updated yearly, so they can't waste time
making any of them particularly good.
~~~
terrellm
I wonder how a Mac-like PC (no trialware, no excessive stickers, minimal
blinking lights, etc) would sell. The kind of people who appreciate that and
are willing to pay a premium buy Macs. The kind of people who don't or can't
appreciate that save their money and go with a PC. It's almost a cultural
issue.
I agree that when Apple can use a specific model design for years, simply
changing out the internal components for several revisions, they can put more
money into a solid design.
| {
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Build a Compact Cryptocurrency System Purely Based on PoS - YAYERKA
http://eprint.iacr.org/2014/330
======
josephagoss
The paper should be titled "POS Cryptocurrency with no blockchain" as that is
the most innovative idea they are talking about.
There already exist pure POS coins, Nxt through a concept called transparent
forging may be capable of resisting anything up to a 90% attack.
I'll have a read of this properly when I get home.
~~~
darkFunction
The Nxt sourcecode is really terribly written, which is a shame.
~~~
Sambdala
The developer was also very secretive about how it worked as he was scared
someone would copy it and release a clone. It was impossible for the longest
time (when the price was actually much higher than it is now) to find out how
the thing actually worked.
Much of this was because there was no white paper or documentation, and when
pressed for details beyond the most basic, the developer just told you to read
the source code once he open-sourced it.
------
jeangabriel
Unconvincing.
The proof of convergence is also not correct. The inequality at the top of p.7
(ever heard of equation numering...?) should be reversed, which effectively
establishes that convergence probability is smaller or equal to 1.
------
jsmcgd
I think most cryptocurrencies will begin to shed their blockchains. They're
beginning to get unweildly, especially for Bitcoin (17GB). There's no need to
retain a list of all transactions. You only need a consistent set of balances.
Also the energy cost of mining is beginning to become a legitimate
environmental concern. I think the new slew of proof of stake currencies are
going to give the proof of work currencies a run for their money (pardon the
pun).
~~~
kolinko
Shedding effectivity depends on the amount of unspent outputs. E.g. If there
are 1.5M transactions, and 1.2M addresses still containing money, replacing
transactions with account ballances won't give you much.
As for the environmental concern - read up about the tragedy of commons. Few
people will abandon a better protocol into a worse one if the only benefit is
ecological.
------
Hopka
PoS = Proof of Stake
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-
stake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake)
------
higherpurpose
Aren't all PoS systems a "rich get richer" system?
~~~
DennisP
"Rich get richer" would be if people with larger shares of the total money
supply tended to increase their share.
But with Peercoin, for example, everybody earns annual interest of 1% of their
holdings, paid in new coin. Let's say instead we have DennisCoin which pays a
whopping 100% and is worth $1 per coin.
If you start with 10 coins and I start with 90 coins, then after a year you'll
have 20 coins and I'll have 180. I still have nine times as much as you.
Since the number of coins has doubled, the currency value drops in half. So in
dollar terms, you still have $10 and I still have $90.
------
im3w1l
They suggest an exponentially declining price during the distribution year.
Unless I am missing something this will lead to everyone buying on the very
last day when the price is the lowest. Why would you want to create those
incentives?
~~~
kolinko
I think they say that the distribution should stop at a random, unknown and
decided in advance moment within a year.
So nobody knows when is the very last day.
Btw. The moment can be determined in a secure way (think satoshi-dice style)
~~~
im3w1l
Ok, so it is basically a complicated and slow way of holding an auction with
secret bids?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Understanding Memory Usage in Docker Desktop on Mac - pooya72
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ZiQC1Tp9iH320K-uqVLyiJmk4DHJ3c4zgQetJiKYQM/edit
======
chmaynard
> Activity Monitor in MacOS Mojave has a double-counting bug, causing it to
> report double the actual memory allocated.
Ouch. Assuming this bug was introduced in Mojave, a basic regression test
would have caught it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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