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Top journalists, tech, and government officials among hacked Twitter accounts - zlatanmenkovic
http://pandodaily.com/2013/02/04/top-journalists-tech-influencers-and-government-officials-among-hacked-twitter-accounts-says-peerreach/
======
bjorn_alm
You would think your psw was safe with Twitter, I guess not.
------
dirkdk
wonder how they store their credentials, seems like an old repository? Or
shard 1?
------
klup
this calls for better password policies.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Will Developers Ante Up for a Gambling API? - coloneltcb
http://blog.programmableweb.com/2012/07/09/will-developers-ante-up-for-a-gambling-api/
======
daeken
> According to Betable’s Griffin, social games average $1 of monthly revenue
> per user. Existing gambling games, which Griffin says are mostly boring,
> average $300 of monthly revenue per user.
That seems way, way off. $300 average would require either all of your players
are hardcore and put in a lot of money, or you have a decent number of players
at the high end skewing it. Assuming they're getting something out of it (at
least some of the time), this number seems to be quite... deceptive. I'd love
to see the data behind it.
~~~
TY
It's the latter. A small number of big spenders ("whales" in the industry
lingo) can easily skew average number. Median is a better metric than average
here.
~~~
hollerith
>Median is a better metric than average here.
Not in this case! Remember that the goal here is to maximize revenue (see
footnote) so it is a bad move to _ignore_ the existence of the whales --
because whales represent a big fraction of our potential revenue.
Footnote: since most of the costs for this kind of business are "fixed" costs,
e.g., the cost of paying the developers to built the site, the way to maximize
profit is to maximize revenue.
~~~
TY
I was replying Daeken's comment on why $300 seems to be a high number. This
number is not representative of average spent by a majority of users but
that's what most people assume when they hear "average $300 of monthly revenue
per user".
For you to maximize your revenues, by all means go after the whales as that's
where the money is. I worked in online gambling industry for a number of years
and have seen this happen quite a few times. I.e. an online casino with about
12000 of active users had 85% of its revenues generated by a dozen (as in less
than 12) high-rollers.
~~~
hollerith
OK. Looks like you no longer hold that "median is a better metric than average
here," which is what I was taking exception to.
>I worked in online gambling industry for a number of years . . . an online
casino with about 12000 of active users had 85% of its revenues generated by a
dozen (as in less than 12) high-rollers.
Thanks for the interesting info.
------
adamio
This is very interesting for use with a mock gambling game - one where users
cannot cash out. Users can buy in-app chips to keep playing. Is this the
entire purpose of it? I'd think actual gambling online, even with no house
edge, has proven to be a "den of thieves" (Full Tilt, Ultimate Bet) how would
this actually solve the problem of trust?
~~~
davidtyleryork
One of our primary goals as a company is to be entirely white hat and
trustworthy. Our investors, partners and the lawmaking body that granted us
our gambling licenses all fully support our product and the service it
provides. We worked hard to earn the trust of these institutions, and we will
work hard to earn consumers' trust as well :)
------
aslewofmice
I'm curious as to how this model will work if users can't easily deposit money
online. I can only imagine they will inevitably face the same problems as
online poker where credit card companies and banks will block any transaction
related to gambling sites or 3rd party eWallet proxies.
In the early online poker years, you could easily deposit directly from your
bank or credit card. Then banks started blocking these transactions. The
online casinos came up with the eWallet proxies such as Neteller that served
as an intermediary between the banks and the poker sites. Those too were
blocked. Then gift cards became the main funding source, and eventually those
were blocked. Eventually the process ended up with direct wire transfers or
payment-by-phone. As each deposit method was blocked, it became harder for the
casual players to get money online and they stopped playing.
~~~
davidtyleryork
You are correct, credit card companies in the US will block transactions to
gambling sites. However, I must make it clear that Betable does NOT facilitate
illegal online gambling. We only let players from legal gambling jurisdictions
play games for real money. All other players can still play, but for virtual
currency.
------
Kilimanjaro
For a couple of years I've been cooking a gambling API and while there is a
huuuge market for that, execution is what separates wheat from chaff. Here are
two key things I believe will make it a winner:
1\. Make it easy for developers to integrate in their apps.
2\. Make it easy for users to deposit/withdraw/bet money.
So, if I am playing online poker on my iPad, I may call, raise or go all-in on
very single hand. Can your API do that? What means all-in in that case? All I
have in the bank?
Allow me to move $100 from my account to any game I feel in the mood to play.
Let me deplete that bag and go for more or just quit in the middle and get the
rest back. Can your API do that?
Btw, call it iChips and put it on the app store (there is already one app with
that name, but fight for the name) and use colorful casino chips everywhere.
Again, execution is king...
~~~
Domenic_S
These are solved problems both in meatspace and online gambling. Your buy-in
is separate from your wallet:
> _I may call, raise or go all-in on very single hand. Can your API do that?
> What means all-in in that case? All I have in the bank?_
When you "sit down" at the table, you specify how much you're buying in with,
between $TABLE_MIN and the lesser of ($TABLE_MAX || $YOUR_WALLET). Your all-in
bet is a bet of whatever you've got at the table (not in your wallet). That's
a fundamental rule of poker games.
> _Allow me to move $100 from my account to any game I feel in the mood to
> play. Let me deplete that bag and go for more or just quit in the middle and
> get the rest back. Can your API do that?_
Again, that's a fundamental gaming paradigm that online gaming clients have
done well forever.
Making a gambling API is IMO a developer's dream because all the rules are
very clearly delineated already, and have been mostly agreed upon by decades
of IRL usage and regulation. In other words, the spec's been written, tried,
iterated on, and verified. As far as specs go, gaming rules are a thing of
beauty.
These are the two things that will make a winning API:
1) Trust and integrity (including auditing).
2) Easy transactions.
The big blocker here is _client integrity._ What if I wrote a slot machine
program that took 1% of winning rolls and displayed a loser to the player and
took the winnings for myself?
~~~
davidtyleryork
Hey Domenic_S
So you know, that example of poor client integrity is something that we 100%
prohibit. We audit every game before it goes live for real money on our
platform, and since we control the gambling transactions, we make sure players
get correctly paid out.
Also, we are audited by the UK Gambling Commission annually, so our gambling
licenses are testament to our own integrity as a service (the UKGC does not
take the license-holder commitment lightly!).
------
jjwoward
Interesting stuff and the ARPU generated from gambling revs will ofcourse be a
massive draw to devs looking to use the Betable API. We're working on a social
sports prediction game with a football(soccer) focus at launch but have
consciously avoided building in gambling mechanics. We will run with an
affiliate model where we can achieve around 15-30% of a users lifetime value
from the provider.
Our aim is to focus on the gameplay and have the cash betting as an extra.
With such tricky global regulations this frees us up to pick and choose
partners that meet local laws and expand into regulated markets with new
models.Of course Betable would prove a great expansion of our product in
future.
Interested to hear HN's thoughts (affiliate vs betable) and would love you all
to play and inform our beta later in the year: www.betstars.co.uk
------
seminatore
Interesting solution to the regulation "problem"
I think the big question here is not whether developers ante up for a gambling
API. Certainly some will, given the prospect of making more money. The real
question to me is whether it becomes 'required' in the sense that in order to
compete, they need to use it (or a competitor's equivalent). The social game
industry seems to be all about fast-following on features, especially
monetization
------
dminor
The main problem (as I see it) is you're limited by the types of games offered
by the API. It would be cool if you could provide your own logic for a game,
but of course that's a difficult problem for Betable to solve since they need
to know that the house has an edge.
Multiplayer games would also be fun but then you have to guard against
collusion and other exploits.
~~~
bhousel
Casinos regularly dedicate 80% or more of their floor space to slot machines
because those games are the most lucrative and easiest for people to play. The
Betable API probably offers a "good enough" solution for building these simple
games that make up the majority of what casual gamers will want to play.
------
drivingmenuts
That's a good question, but I don't think it's the right question.
It all depends on how secure it is. You can have a very unsecure API that no
one will touch or an incredibly secure API that no one will use because it's
too difficult.
Creating an API is not the problem. Finding the right balance of security and
convenience is the problem.
------
AsylumWarden
I'm curious how this would work. If I were to use this API to create, let's
say, Bingo for money. How would I use the API without going to jail for
running a gambling operation? I mean, I'm in the US so I guess I could always
find an indian casino to back but that isn't likely without them taking a huge
cut.
~~~
davidtyleryork
AsylumWarden, with us you don't need a gambling license and you run no risk of
"going to jail" in the US. Betable handles and hosts all of the gambling
transactions, so you don't touch any gambling. Therefore, you don't need a
license and can be anywhere in the world.
~~~
rprasad
That's not true in the U.S. If he uses your site's gambling API, he is engaged
in the business of gambling and must have a license. Since the U.S. generally
does not allow online gambling, it is effectively illegal _regardless_ of
where the servers are physically stored.
FultTiltPoker and Bodog were both hosted from offshore (and generally run from
offshore), but that did not help their U.S. owners in the slightest when the
FBI came knocking.
Moreover, by using a gambling API on your own site, you place all of your bank
accounts at risk of being frozen by your financial institution (if they are
U.S. based) as U.S. financial institutions are not permitted to transfer funds
to gambling sites. You could use an offshore bank, but this would increase
compliance costs and guarantee an annual audit by the IRS.
EDIT: This assumes games are played for cash. Games played for virtual
currency are not considered gambling unless they are easily convertible back
into cash.
~~~
davidtyleryork
> That's not true in the U.S. If he uses your site's gambling API, he is
> engaged in the business of gambling and must have a license. Since the U.S.
> generally does not allow online gambling, it is effectively illegal
> regardless of where the servers are physically stored.
It's perfectly legal for an individual or company in the U.S. to develop and
operate gambling software. What's not legal is offering services to players in
the United States or elsewhere where gambling is illegal[1]. Betable offers
the gambling services to players, not the developer partnering with Betable.
Furthermore, Betable does not allow real money play by players in
jurisdictions where gambling is illegal. Game developers in the United States
(or anywhere else) do not need to be licensed since the regulated bits of the
infrastructure are all developed and operated by Betable. We strive to meet
and exceed the regulatory standards that we're subject to and provide a
legitimate and trustworthy ecosystem for players.
> FultTiltPoker and Bodog were both hosted from offshore (and generally run
> from offshore), but that did not help their U.S. owners in the slightest
> when the FBI came knocking.
Full Tilt Poker and Bodog are both examples of online gambling operations that
flagrantly and publicly disregarded regulatory requirements and/or the law,
offering their services illegally in the United States or, in the case of Full
Tilt, (allegedly?) defrauding customers. Unsurprisingly, the FBI took offense
to these violations. However, there's really no comparison between those
operations and Betable. As I said before, Betable does not offer online
gambling to players in the US, which is the main issue the FBI took offense
to.
> Moreover, by using a gambling API on your own site, you place all of your
> bank accounts at risk of being frozen by your financial institution...
Betable manages all of the banking and accounting systems associated with
gambling using its own accounts. Developer accounts are not used for gambling.
Betable acts as the arbitrator of all gambling transactions.
1\. In fact, with the recent re-interpretation of the Wire Act even that
statement is now inaccurate at a Federal level, but that's another post.
------
smashing
Gambling winners are most likely money laundering* recipients. In the
overwhelming majority of cases, gamblers lose.
* <http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/97/03/Chapt11.html>
~~~
davidtyleryork
This is sensationalist, but I'll give you a little more background on what we
do (even though many of these practices are not nearly as prominent as the
article says they were in the 1960s - 1990s). In order to operate as a legal
gambling entity, we have to build and maintain a host of elaborate security,
anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist protocols (one of the things that
comes with the territory in the gambling space). We work with top partners in
the industry, who have decades of experience dealing with these problems.
While security and anti-fraud measures have improved significantly, this is a
very high priority for us internally that we've put considerable time into.
~~~
smashing
Sensationalist?
It is a link to the California State Library.
~~~
davidtyleryork
Right, I understand that. I felt that it was sensationalist in the sense that
it's unlikely to happen, but very "sensational" if it does. I should have
focused on my response to the points in the article.
------
Tichy
Do they want me to pay for a random number generator? I don't understand it?
~~~
Jare
The way I understand it, they handle money and regulations, i.e. collecting
money from the player, giving the player actual money back when the player
wins, in a way that is 100% legal considering gambling laws in all countries
involved in each transaction. That's a lot of stuff for a regular developer to
take care of.
The part where they also run the gambling logic & randomness is probably
necessary because regulations on gambling often require certain guarantees and
auditability that, again, a regular developer may not (want to) be aware of.
It's much simpler to be compliant if the dev only has to establish f.ex. win
rates for different actions, and the gambling provider runs the actual
processes with methods and random generators that comply with applicable laws.
~~~
davidtyleryork
Jare, you nailed it. My only clarification on your second paragraph is that
the RNG needs to be audited and certified in ordered to get your license
granted/renewed. The idea here is that it prevents shady gambling companies
from defrauding players.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Goats on Acid (2002) - tintinnabula
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/8/goatsonacid.php
======
justsaysmthng
> ... after administration of 15 micrograms of LSD per kilogram of body
> weight.
That's a huge amount. 15ug/kg would equate to 1200 ug for a 80kg human, which
is a lot.
That goat was tripping balls, no wonder it was painting the infinity symbol
(8) with its movement patterns :).
Also, the 7000 pound elephant who died, was injected with 297mg of LSD, which
would amount to 297,000ug/3175,15kg = 93.5ug / kg, which is insane.
Did those "scientists" even know what they were testing ?
But anyway, interesting results. I'm curious if they tried dosing an animal
and a human at the same time to see how human-animal interaction and
communication is affected.
~~~
nandemo
> _Did those "scientists" even know what they were testing ?_
They thought they did. Check out the original paper. They found that many
animals needed higher (relative) dosages to get affected, administered up to
1mg/kg to macaques (no death), and found that 6.5mg/kg was necessary to kill a
cat.
"Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: Its Effects on a Male Asiatic Elephant"
[http://www.psych.ufl.edu/~steh/PSB3002/LSDelephant.pdf](http://www.psych.ufl.edu/~steh/PSB3002/LSDelephant.pdf)
~~~
pbhjpbhj
Interesting read: It's quite surprising that they didn't start with a lower
dose for Tusko the elephant.
------
INTPenis
>One LSD-affected baboon or chimpanzee in a group of unaffected animals
creates havoc by disregarding the hierarchies of the group.
:)
~~~
eip
Now you know why it's illegal.
------
doomrobo
I find it interesting that this substance is psychoactive in so many animals,
from hornets to frogs to humans. Are there any other examples of something
like this?
~~~
emmelaich
Spiders on drugs:
[http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm](http://www.trinity.edu/jdunn/spiderdrugs.htm)
~~~
mp3geek
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc)
------
nsajko
A video would be nice :(
~~~
typetypetype
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpccpglnNf0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpccpglnNf0)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SimCity, Cellular Automata, and Happy Tool for HyperLook (2018) - stefanu
https://medium.com/@donhopkins/hyperlook-nee-hypernews-nee-goodnews-99f411e58ce4
======
ksaj
Looking back, I'm surprised at how well SimCity performed on an XT (monochrome
and only one screen at a time). Once the 286 came out, though, things _flew_.
It's interesting how game play hasn't changed all that much, and how many
newish games hearken right back to this era and genre.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Diaspora's opportunity: Model real life instead of SQL tables - mortenjorck
http://interuserface.net/2010/05/how-diaspora-can-succeed-model-real-life/
======
philschwartz
It's not as simple as building around social environments such as work or
school. Because there may be overlaps between all the environments, and not
all workmate, schoolmate, friends are created equal.
My strategy on facebook is having a friend group called "all pictures". I'd
imagine some people have even more fine-grained grouping of friends.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Toppcloud and Django - rmanocha
http://blog.ianbicking.org/2010/02/05/toppcloud-and-django/
======
cmcavoy
ian bicking is a really smart dude. i want him to live in my pocket, so that
when i have a python question, I can just shout it into my pocket.
------
Barnabas
I really really hope that toppcloud takes off. I strongly empathize the itch
that provoked its creation: deployment sucks, and a generalized Google App
Engine would rock. Using Django to demonstrate how his project isn't just
academic is a great move. Good job Ian.
~~~
gcheong
Have you looked at AppScale? <http://code.google.com/p/appscale/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Report: Russians Hacked White House - kirubakaran
http://www.newsweek.com/report-russians-hacked-white-house-320522
======
DigitalSea
Interesting. How interesting that this happens right after Obama signs a
couple of controversial cyber-crime/hacking executive orders, Russia
apparently hacks the White House (if you can even call exploiting stupidity a
hack).
The biggest joke of the story is this part:
"Experts told CNN the hack spread from the State Department to the White House
through a phishing email sent from a State Department email address."
Seriously? You hire people, give them security clearance and yet they're
opening up emails with suspicious attachments? What's next, we are going to
hear of White House staff being scammed by Nigerian 419 scams? How does this
even happen? If you're going to hire people (at the White House of all
places), make sure they have an above beginner level of using a computer. This
is the kind of thing I'd expect my dad or grandmother to fall for because
they're not tech savvy, not someone in the White House.
As usual, you can spend millions on security programs, scrape and retain
metadata, you can even read emails of other people but the weakest link no
matter what level of security or care you have taken is and always will be
people.
If the White House can't even protect themselves, how can we trust the NSA and
whatever other government departments are trawling our data and storing it
won't fall prey to the same attacks? Seems a lot of people that work in the
political architecture have been around before computers became mainstream.
I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist nut, but isn't it convenient the
Patriot Act is up for renewal on June the 1st? The White House conveniently
just gets hacked a few months out? Maybe it is a coincidence, I don't know. I
want to see logs, I want to actual proof this was Russia and not the Chinese
or whomever can pull off a move of this magnitude.
~~~
mukyu
The incident happened last October so those inferences are clearly spurious.
~~~
bob-2
OP could be commenting on the timing of the "White House hacked" headlines
being published. Certainly a convenient time for garnering public support of
those cybersecurity bills.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ottawa vows to cut wait times for foreign workers joining tech firms - drpgq
http://www.theglobeandmail.com//report-on-business/ottawa-vows-to-cut-wait-times-for-foreign-workers-joining-tech-firms/article30458187/?cmpid=rss1&click=sf_globe
======
spitfire
How about just making Canada competitive so Canadians want to stay?
------
drpgq
It isn't like Canadian tech salaries are that great compared to US one
already. Tech employers are the same all over.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are good writing tips for software developers? - soneca
I am thinking about all the occasions a developer writes words related to writing code. Pull requests descriptions, email communication with colleagues (devs and non-devs), commit messages, specifications, documentation.<p>Eventually a technical article or blog post too. But I am mostly concerned about day-to-day needs of writing that every developer has.
======
DannyB2
A preposition is a very bad word to end a sentence with.
But only a fool would begin or end a sentence with the word but.
And only a total idiot would begin or end a sentence with the word and.
Anyway, you should never use the word 'anyway'. Even worser to use 'anyways'.
And never utilize the word 'utilize' when you could utilize the word 'use'
instead.
Your doing it wrong if you're sentences confuse the words your and you're.
There are two many people doing it wrong too get to upset about confusion over
to, too and two.
~~~
rdiddly
Agreed. Also complete sentences.
~~~
DannyB2
and capitalization
~~~
anotherevan
Capitalisation is very important, if for no other reason then it means the
difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse...
~~~
DannyB2
A comma could also be an invaluable tool in that situation. Properly used. And
Walmart has them on sale in one dozen packs.
------
StriverGuy
I recommend getting three books and to begin writing at least 500 words per
day distraction free (technical, fiction, stream of conscious):
1) On Writing Well - William Zinser [https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-
Anniversary-Nonfict...](https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-
Nonfiction-ebook/dp/B0090RVGW0)
2) On Writing - Stephen King- [https://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-
Anniversary-Memoir-Craft...](https://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-Anniversary-
Memoir-Craft/dp/1439156816/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)
3) The Elements of Style - Strunk & White - [https://www.amazon.com/Elements-
Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/...](https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-
William-
Strunk/dp/020530902X/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=K0EXMXPXXTNQZ7K2AD0M)
The two most important points are concise style and active voice. Both of
these habits are critical for SEs to write concise emails, specs and commit
messages. You will even see improvement in more casual day to day interactions
(via slack, SMS etc).
~~~
soneca
I am reading " _Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace_ ", have you read this?
EDIT: link to the book: [https://www.amazon.com/Style-Lessons-Clarity-
Grace-12th/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Style-Lessons-Clarity-
Grace-12th/dp/0134080416)
~~~
itamarst
It's much more useful then Strunk & White in my opinion.
------
eropple
The two pieces of writing feedback I've received that I often regret not
following:
\- Most adverbs are superfluous. I am as guilty of ignoring this as anyone,
but most cases where you say "generally" or "usually" you're undermining your
point and the use of "very", "extremely", etc. are hyperbolic and breathless
and make it easier to regard what you're writing as unserious.
\- Avoid pronouns unless the antecedent is unmistakable. The use of "it"
should immediately be a reason to re-read that sentence and the one before it
for clarity.
~~~
shubhamjain
These prescriptive writing tips do more harm than good. The crucial question
is not whether you have adhered to all the tips but if what you wrote sounds
good. Following writing advice without critically analyzing it often leads to
writing which feels overdone.
~~~
eropple
I can write you a sentence that sounds amazing. I can also write it with an
unclear pronoun antecedent and make a hash of its meaning.
When you know how to write, you can break the rules. Until you do, guard rails
keep you from looking like an idiot.
------
motohagiography
Easiest wins:
\- "Start with why." (I use 3 layers of why, some more, some fewer.)
\- Get it out, then go back and reverse the order of the sentences in each
paragraph, so each one begins with the point you were getting to.
\- Kill your babies. Any turn of phrase you are working around to keep it in,
or make it work is not as good as you think.
\- Read a lot of quality, edited writing. The Economist, Financial Times,
Telegraph, and sometimes even the Guardian. Avoid cloying, sing-song,
editorial prose that is full of jargon and cliches.
Source: am a writer who codes.
------
3pt14159
1\. Try to have an identified audience. It makes the piece easier to write
because the language selection will be straightforward and you'll be able to
avoid explaining concepts that the audience is already familiar with so it
will be shorter.
2\. Keep paragraphs short.
3\. Unless you're part of the story, don't use "I" or "we".
4\. Avoid gendering an abstract person. "Flight attendant" over "stewardess" /
"they" over "he".
5\. For long reports put the three to five points in a numbered list on the
first page and bold one sentence or fragment per point. This makes the report
easier to forward to upper management. Upper management is where the bonuses
come from.
6\. Learn the precise definition of words. A software virus is not the same
thing as a software worm. Being at a higher risk does not mean that the
potential outcome has gotten worse (see risk vs hazard).
7\. Re-read / edit your piece (log(estimated number of people reading it) + 5)
number of times before publishing. This only applies to actual writing. Don't
waste your time doing this for Hacker News comments.
------
falcolas
I treat writing like I do programming. My goal is to get the interpreter (i.e.
the reader) to properly parse and understand the idea I'm trying to convey. As
such, I try and keep everything simple and on point, freely go back and
refactor sentences which don't make sense, and read the content back in my
head to see if the words I wrote even make sense to me.
The only other rule I really use is to write for as low level of an audience
as I can. This helps to reduce confusion for the readers, not all of whom may
have the same vocabulary or "state" as you. You don't want to write about
concepts from CS 401 when your readers are in CS 101, especially if the CS 401
concepts are not required for understanding.
Oh, and avoid un-delimited sarcasm. It travels really poorly through the
internet; someone will always take it at face value.
------
a5huynh
One of my favorite classes in grad school was learning to write about complex
topics in a clear and concise way.
Hopefully these reading materials are still useful!
\- "Science of Scientific Writing"
[https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~swanson/papers/science-of-
writing.p...](https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~swanson/papers/science-of-writing.pdf)
\- "Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace" [https://www.amazon.com/Style-
Lessons-Clarity-Grace-10th/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Style-Lessons-
Clarity-Grace-10th/dp/0205747469/)
------
tmaly
As a developer myself, I have wanted to improve my writing skill. I have found
an older copy of the The Pyramid Principle that I am working through. The
whole premise of the book is to better structure your ideas using the pyramid
pattern.
~~~
soneca
As a developer who received regular positive feedback on the quality of my
writing, I am starting a side-project to help developers like you. :)
This post is to try to get a more diverse opinion on what constitutes good
writing outside of my bubble.
Please check the kick-off post, maybe you find it useful:
[https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com/](https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com/)
~~~
tmaly
Thanks, how often would you send out an email for this newsletter?
~~~
soneca
My plan is to send it weekly, but with shorter texts than this first one.
The idea is to be more specific, like: "Tips for a good Pull Request
description", "Tips for a good feature deploy announcement email", "Tips for a
good user story".
What do you think? Any topic you are particularly interested?
~~~
alex_hitchins
I'm very interested in this - will be signing up. I've been told my
specification writing style is good if just a little repetitive. I appreciate
it's a technical document and somewhat dry, however keen to see ways I could
improve sentence structure.
Edit to say : Tips on effective email communication would be good. I seem to
either be too brief and appear curt or waffle on where I shouldn't.
~~~
soneca
Thanks, it will the topic next Monday! :)
------
munificent
0\. Give a damn. You're already doing this step, which is great!
1\. Every first draft is crap. Edit. Edit again. I do this for everything —
design docs, doc comments, HN comments, email, tweets. Writing is editing.
2\. Have a clear audience in mind that you are writing for, ideally a single
_person_ , sympathetic to your topic, but choose whatever audience makes
sense.
3\. Treat your audience with respect and try to give them as much value as you
can in return for the effort, time, and attention you are asking of them. When
you edit to distill and clarify your concepts, you are transferring effort
from them onto yourself, and they'll thank you for it.
4\. Unless you're writing for a venue that explicitly requires it, formality
is overrated. People will remember your writing better if they have some
emotional connection to it, and that requires an informal human element.
------
baron816
Always proofread what you write. Always. Even if it’s a short text message or
a giant email.
~~~
paulcole
Never write a giant email. Nobody's going to read it.
------
jbob2000
I think there is a distinction between formal writing (article, blog post,
docs, specs) and informal writing (commit messages, emails, pull request
descriptions).
I wouldn't apply formal writing strategies to commit messages, they would be
way too verbose. And I have different requirements for pull requests
descriptions than I do for specifications.
I'm not sure where to start with helping you, it's a big question! If there's
one thing that has always helped me it's re-reading what I've written; Write
something, read it top to bottom (out loud, even), revise it, and repeat.
------
ChristianGeek
Lots of good advice here. Here are a few more basic tips:
1\. Read it out loud when you're done. If it doesn't sound right, change it so
that it does.
2\. For the love of everything grammatical, please learn how to use
apostrophes properly. Especially its/it's, your/you're, and yours. "It's"
always means "it is." "You're" always means "you are." "Your's" is not a word.
3\. There is no shame in using a spellchecker. (There is often shame in not.)
4\. Know your audience. Don't use technical terms if you're writing for non-
technical users and don't dumb it down for a technical audience.
5\. Be concise. There's no need to prove you can use a dictionary or thesaurus
to stretch out a sentence or to try to sound more intelligent than you need to
be (it doesn't work anyway).
If you want a friendlier guide to grammar than some of the other books listed
in this thread (which you should also consider adding to your reference
library), check out _Grammar Girl 's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing_
by Mignon Fogarty [https://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Girls-Quick-Better-
Writing/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Girls-Quick-Better-
Writing/dp/0805088318)
------
ambivalents
Some general pieces of advice that I think apply to all writing:
\- Write like you would speak. Think of your writing as an extended
conversation with other developers.
\- Use the active voice wherever possible.
\- Strive for clarity and simplicity over overly-complicated industry babble.
The smarter you try to sound, the harder you will fail. Of course, there will
be some amount of jargon you will rely on, which is fine considering your
audience, but even with technical writing the Mark Twain axiom holds: don't
use a $5 word where a $0.50 word will do.
\- The best writing doesn't feel like writing. Take what you've written and
read it out loud (to yourself or a friend). Rewrite until there's a natural
rhythm and flow to your words.
\- Don't be afraid of shitty first drafts. Dump out all your ideas without
fear of judgment (no one's going to look!). Then go back and re-shape, re-
word, cut, etc. I think of it like a sculptor and clay - your first draft is
just a gathering of all the clay. The following revisions are about molding
and shaping it for your intended audience.
\- Finally, read good writing. Whether it be well-communicated emails or your
favorite SF novel, pay attention to what other good writers are doing and try
to emulate that.
~~~
V-2
> _read good writing_
That's sort of a Catch-22 right there. Can you tell if "your favorite SF
novel" represents good writing without having a grasp on what constitutes good
writing to begin with?
Is writing like cooking (where you don't really need to cook well yourself to
be able to tell)?
~~~
ambivalents
By virtue of it being your favorite, I would think it's doing something right.
But glibness aside, you could think about as you read: Is it fully engaging
you? Is it communicating a complex idea in a simple and/or novel way? Is it
making you feel something? Does it make you want to do something? These are
all good markers, because writing is really just about communicating ideas
well.
And if you don't trust your own judgment, you could look up some of the time-
tested classics. Some of my favorites: The Great Gatsby, To Kill A
Mockingbird, 1984 (fiction); Warren Buffett/Berkshire Hathaway shareholder
letters (business/sales writing).
~~~
V-2
> _By virtue of it being your favorite, I would think it 's doing something
> right_
That something doesn't have to be the quality of writing as such - eg. I can
enjoy a somewhat sloppily written book if the idea behind the plot is
captivating and compelling
------
garganzol
Hemingway App helps a lot:
[https://www.hemingwayapp.com/](https://www.hemingwayapp.com/)
~~~
52-6F-62
I was going to submit this as well. There's room for improvement with it, but
it really is great and a good launching point for reconsidering the structure
of your writing. Especially business writing or comms.
------
gargarplex
Writing is like backups. If you haven't done a backup restore, then it's not a
real backup.
Similarly, if someone can't read what you wrote and then explain it back to
you in their own language and concepts, your writing hasn't passed muster.
There's a reason there are always acknowledgments to draft-readers in books
and YC essays.
Good writing is a result of good editing.
------
ivan_ah
If you're writing a long text (over 2 pages), you should invest the time to
proofread it properly, and maybe get it read by a friend or colleague. When
the ideas in a text are not clear and logically structured, it can be
perceived as disrespect to the readers.
One thing that really helps me to catch typos in my own writing, is the text-
to-speech utility built into Mac OS X. It makes it really easy to "hear"
typos. Here is a doc with screenshots that explain how to set up a keyboard
shortcut for this:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem8qpMmnaBFYOgV32gdMc/edit?usp=sharing)
------
khedoros1
Keep your audience firmly in mind. Your dev colleague will probably warrant
more technical detail than your non-dev colleague (but the non-dev colleague
might need a different kind of detail). If the audience is future-you, you'll
remember a lot less of the context of the message than you assume you will.
You'll want to include sufficient detail to bring someone up to speed, link it
to an issue in a bug tracker, etc.
But the kind of detail, appropriate level of detail, and presentation will
change, depending on who is supposed to read it. An IM message to another dev
will look very different from customer-facing documentation.
------
j45
Writing improves from improved comprehension resulting from increased reading,
writing, conversation.
So, make sure you are getting better at understanding the needs of the user
and communicating them.
Have conversations with users - Solve problems that you have and make it
available to others.
Solve others problems by learning about them and helping them.
------
jdlyga
Pretend like you're explaining things to a smart 10 year old. Keep your
sentences well structured, only use jargon and abbreviations when necessary,
and don't be afraid to repeat yourself for clarity. It helps to give as much
background knowledge as possible.
------
agentultra
If you're an emacs user, try [https://github.com/bnbeckwith/writegood-
mode](https://github.com/bnbeckwith/writegood-mode)
~~~
lucozade
> writegood
This made me wince. I know it's perfectly acceptable American but that one's
definitely a low blow for an aging Englishman.
~~~
OhSoHumble
I'm fairly certain that the name of the project is tongue-in-cheek; it's not
uncommon to use "${X} good" as a comedic expression of poor English. For
example, "I done code good."
------
johnnyballgame
Have a very specific audience in mind while writing. Even go so far as to
write your content in an email editor with a friend or two similar to your
intended audience in the To: field.
------
pklausler
Get a good style guide, read it, and stick to it. I like the Dictionary of
Modern American Usage because its recommendations are presented with
justifications.
------
shogun21
Commit messages should start with a verb, and complete the sentence "If you
apply this commit, it will..."
------
zombieprocesses
Parsimony. Cut out the fat. Read Elements of Style for tips.
Also, read more and write more. You can only get better by doing more.
------
br377
The key to good communication is brevity
~~~
pklausler
"Omit needless words."
------
philip1209
I suggest plugging all of your writing into Grammarly and HemingwayApp!
------
moltar
Tools: Grammarly
------
sleepychu
Don't be afraid of being terse.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Man found guilty of using phone while driving even though device was dead - pmalynin
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/10/man-found-guilty-of-using-phone-while-driving-even-though-device-was-dead
======
elmerfud
This is what happens when new laws are made to invent new crimes. Driving
while being distracted is a problem that had appropriate laws before cell
phones were a thing.
------
_Schizotypy
so if you hold a block of wood while driving, can you be ticketed for using a
block of wood while driving? What if you plug headphones into a block of wood
that is sitting in the seat next to you?
~~~
ocdtrekkie
Driving while using a block of wood isn't illegal though.
~~~
_Schizotypy
Could the block of wood be considered a communication device if you write on
it to communicate with your passengers?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Gordon Moore Invented the Talent Economy (and Changed The World) - jason_shah
http://pandodaily.com/2012/02/19/how-gordon-moore-invented-the-talent-economy-and-changed-the-world/
======
jason_shah
The article claims that Fairchild Semiconductor was the first venture backed
startup and describes the "fundamental shift [venture capital] represented in
the relationship between capital and labor." Capital was now chasing talent.
A lot of valid points to support how an economy in which capital chases talent
is novel, including "Silicon Valley operates under a fundamentally different
system that continues to drive innovation by removing significant risk factors
for talent to work on new developments." And in the context of traditional
relationships between capital and labor, the author's point is valid that
capital, relative different economic models, chases talent in the VC industry.
Yet I wonder how this premise can fully accepted when so many entrepreneurs
are still chasing capital to fund their startups and even when money is 'so
easy' to raise in this market, VCs are still seemingly exhalted? Obviously for
the most competitive investment opportunities (e.g. to back a seasoned
entrepreneur with a stellar idea and early traction in a multi-billion dollar
industry) capital is certainly chasing talent. But it looks like this 'talent
economy' is still a two way street: talent continues to chase capital as well.
~~~
tatsuke95
> _Yet I wonder how this premise can fully accepted when so many entrepreneurs
> are still chasing capital to fund their startups and even when money is 'so
> easy' to raise in this market, VCs are still seemingly exhalted?"_
Because it doesn't really work like this author is describing. Silicon Valley
just likes to make claims that it's different.
Sure, because of the do-it-yourself minimal-capital requirement of software
(what now underlies what we know as SV), venture capitalists are able to fund
ventures on a smaller, more personal level. But at the end of the day, it's a
bunch of rich guys lending money to people who do the actual work. Always has
been, always will be.
Even the "angel funds" are becoming a commodity, and are adopting a "spread it
around and see what works" model. Just like banks do with mortgages.
------
rogerbinns
How Silicon Valley happened, the talent, ownership, personalities etc is far
deeper than that. This is an excellent hour long talk at Computer History
Museum titled "Secret History of Silicon Valley". It starts in the 1940s.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Farse, an iOS Client / Parse.com Service Clone Using Apache Solr and Obj C - kramden
https://github.com/ralph-e-boy/farse
======
kramden
I made this proof of concept clone of Parse.com / iOS sdk client thinking that
I could run Solr on ec2 and not have to deal with parse.com and maybe have
some more flexibility. It runs pretty easily on a mac if you download the solr
client. There is a pdf doc in the repo, I welcome all feedback that anyone has
on it, good or bad. I am particularly interested in whether or not anyone has
thought about creating the same type of thing in other ways and has done so,
or if anyone thinks this is a project worth continuing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What tiny computer without screen nor keyboard to choose for a cyclist? - sam_lowry_
I am cycling to work, and I'd like to bring my computer with me, but I do not need the screen nor the keyboard, as they are available on-site.<p>I was thinking of odroid-c2 or something similar, but mali video driver is horrendously bad on my 1920x1600 screens. Also, xrandr does not work with closed-source mali drivers, so multi-screen setups are not possible.<p>Are there RaspberryPi-sized computers with ~4Gb of RAM, eMMC or better and with decent 2D performance on a mainline kernel?
======
zer0w1re
Perhaps something along the lines of an Intel NUC?
[https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-
kits...](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-
kits/nuc.html)
~~~
karmakaze
Better yet the AND version of the form factor. NUC is branded.
~~~
karmakaze
Autocorrect: AMD
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sub-$500 47-inch smart TV runs Android - deviceguru
http://linuxgizmos.com/490-dollar-47-inch-smart-tv-runs-android/
======
vladimirralev
Miracast and Airplay built-in. Hope this makes it to UK soon.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chrome new tab console message – SW registered, what is it? - jpatel3
Today one of my colleague pointed that when you open the new tab on Chrome and check the console, there is message -
SW registered (newtab?ie=UTF-8:8)<p>What is it about?
======
gerardes
I think, it has something to do with Service Workers.
To see more, go (in your DevTools) to "Application" -> "Service Workers".
There you find the "new tab service worker" and which version it's running.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Concord, our GPL outliner - tjr
http://scripting.com/2013/09/16/concordOurGplOutliner
======
AaronFriel
GPL? How does this interact (legally) with other running JavaScript? Do I have
to make the rest of my site's JavaScript "GPL" as a result?
I'm curious, does the dynamic nature of JavaScript make browser-based GPL
Javascript essentially LGPL? Any lawyers or FSF advocates out there know?
~~~
tedivm
I've never seen a good answer to that question. I've emailed the FSF and
others and they all tell me to consult a lawyer for how the license works (if
they respond at all).
~~~
npsimons
IANAL, but the spirit seems to be "hey, here's this software, use it how you
like, but if you distribute it (including building on it or bundling it in a
product) please be kind enough to extend the same freedoms to those you give
it to."
Using Concord on your site? Offer a link to the source. Modify it to work
better with a framework? Offer that modification too. Build an entire product
off of it? Well, be prepared to release the source to that product under GPL
as well. If you don't like those terms, feel free to start from scratch and
not freeload off the original authors who were kind enough to share source
with you in the first place.
I don't understand how people can pay good money for things like game engines,
then turn around and think that OSS doesn't have a price too, or get upset
when they are asked to pay it. You just end up paying back to the community
instead of into a company's coffers.
~~~
davewiner
And most important, no gratuitous incompatibility or user lock-in based on
formats. Commercial developers esp ones that raise huge money, tend to try to
lock users in. If that's their plan, they can write their own outliner, should
that situation ever arise.
~~~
atan
Use of the GPL doesn't merely prevent commercial developers from creating non-
compatible formats -- it prevents them from using Concord _at all_. Let's say
I want to build a commercial app that happens to use Concord, and I'm happy to
use Concord as is (contributing back any patches or improvements I make) and
even make the outlines exportable (assume outlining is just one feature in a
much larger app, not the main focus). In that case, I'd have to make much or
possibly all of the client-side code GPL compatible, so I can't use Concord,
even though I'm not violating your rule about compatibility and am
contributing back to the Concord community.
GPL seems like overkill given your goal. It will be limited to a niche of
either fully open source public applications or completely private/internal
applications.
------
acomjean
I didn't know what an outliner was:
From the Git page: An outliner is a text editor that organizes information in
a hierarchy, allowing users to control the level of detail and to reorganize
according to structure. Your notes can have full detail, yet be organized so a
casual reader can get a quick overview. Outlining is a great way for teams to
organize work.
~~~
smoyer
And isn't this just a special case of an object graph where all the objects
are strings, the relationships sub-objects can't have two parents and the
traversal is over when you've reached a leaf?
What about hierarchies of objects that aren't strings? (I'd like to organize
them too).
What about hierarchies that aren't a strict tree? (I can't really do my
genealogy on this).
P.S. I like what Dave does with outliners but I'm not sure I'd apply them
everywhere he does.
~~~
jerf
I've fiddled with this extensively. The problem isn't data representation;
sure, "outlines" are "just" graphs. The question is, what on Earth does your
UI look like? Editing "graphs" is hardly more structured than creating a "data
editor"... ok, those are some nice English words you've got there, but how
does it actually _work_?
At least by limiting it to text and stuff that looks a lot like text, you can
produce a real application that does real things of real value. It may not be
suitable for everything, but your thing that is suitable for "everything" is
likely come out being suitable for nothing in practice.
~~~
smoyer
That's a hard problem - I haven't done any "fiddle" but I've spent a lot of
time doing Gedankenexperiment and haven't come up with anything I believe is
remotely applicable. The genealogy example I gave is simpler but I'm not sure
I've seen an editor for that use-case that's optimal either.
Maybe the problem just can't be simplified further? And as an aside, I wasn't
trying to disparage Dave Winer's implementation of tree editing at all.
------
davexunit
It's crazy to me that there seems to be a backlash against this project being
licensed under the GPL. Thank you for choosing copyleft.
Also, if I got it right, an outliner is a note taking application? The best
note-taking application I know of is, by far, org-mode in Emacs.
------
jerf
Ah, dwiner, at last my long Linux nightmare of having no decent outliner shall
come to an end....
Urf, budgeting the time for this may be a challenge, but odds are good that
this can be dropped into a XUL shell to obtain a traditional "local"
filesystem outliner with only a few hundred lines more of grease. I'll have to
see what I can do. (I've done it once before for something else.)
~~~
phaer
No decent outliner on Linux? [http://orgmode.org/](http://orgmode.org/) is by
far the best i have seen so far, so could use outline-mode if you do not use
any of the extra features. There is something similar to outline-mode for vim
users if i remember correctly.
~~~
ah-
Yes, I use VimOutliner, which is perfect when you already know how to use vim.
------
kemayo
Should really have a demo link somewhere.
You can click through to github, to be told that it's what their Fargo tool is
based on, and from there you can click through to that... to be told that you
have to link it to your dropbox account before you can even try it.
~~~
tjr
[http://littleoutliner.com/](http://littleoutliner.com/)
~~~
davewiner
And littleoutliner is an instance of Concord as well. ;-)
------
sinkasapa
I would like something like this that translates directly into JSON. Kind of a
cross between concord and
[http://jsoneditoronline.org/](http://jsoneditoronline.org/)
It will just have to be something I write myself, I guess.
------
hhuuggoo
hope you all don't mind. little self plug on the subject - I also have an open
source outliner
here is the source
[http://github.com/hhuuggoo/efficiently](http://github.com/hhuuggoo/efficiently)
and the demo:
[https://eff.iciently.com/docview/r/4ed70c031a7ba32edb000002/](https://eff.iciently.com/docview/r/4ed70c031a7ba32edb000002/)
But this one is an app, not a plugin, so it might be less useful to some.
------
Touche
3k LOC in a single file... ouch. Someone introduce Dave to makefiles.
~~~
andymoe
I'm almost certain he writes the code using an outliner tool as well like was
the case for the scripting language that shipped with frontier and the OPML
editor so that probably makes it easier for him to manage. At least it will be
easy to include into a project ;-)
~~~
davewiner
It's only a problem if you edit in a flat text editor.
If you look in the opml folder of the repo you'll find the source files for
all the js and css files.
~~~
andymoe
Ah, thanks for pointing those files out. I'll have to try loading them up in
Fargo for fun.
------
gatesphere
Leo is the last outliner you'll ever need.
[http://leoeditor.com/](http://leoeditor.com/)
------
Stratoscope
I've been browsing through the code a bit. It has a few problems.
First, the brace and indentation style is _extremely_ unusual and hard to
follow. I have never seen this style used in another curly-brace-language
project anywhere.
I realize that brace and indentation is a very personal preference, but I've
had no trouble following a variety of styles - until this one. Here's an
example:
if(c.op.inTextMode()){
c.op.focusCursor();
c.editor.restoreSelection();
}else{
c.pasteBinFocus();
}
The if block and matching else block have different indentation levels? What?
That does seem to be the pattern followed in a number of places.
How would you follow this style if there is a chain of else-if's? I don't see
any examples in the code, but it seems it would have to look like this to be
consistent:
if(a){
b();
}else if(c){
d();
}else if(e){
f();
}else{
g();
}
OTOH, this function follows _two different_ indentation styles for its two
if/else blocks:
this.callbacks = function(callbacks) {
if(callbacks) {
this.root.data("callbacks", callbacks);
return callbacks;
} else {
if(this.root.data("callbacks")) {
return this.root.data("callbacks");
} else {
return {};
}
}
};
Try this quiz: Without loading the code into a brace-matching editor, just
eyeball that function and see if you can tell which open brace matches with
which close brace.
The function could be much simpler too:
this.callbacks = function( callbacks ) {
return callbacks ?
this.root.data( "callbacks", callbacks ) :
this.root.data( "callbacks" ) || {};
};
Also in a half-dozen places or so, the code uses a for..in loop to iterate
over an array. This type of loop should never be used with an array for two
reasons: If any other code in the page extends Array.prototype the code will
break, and the order of iteration is not guaranteed. These loops need to be
converted to numeric for loops or $.each() or any similar alternative.
One last point that is just a matter of taste, but I think the code would
benefit quite a bit if it followed the popular jQuery convention of using a $
prefix on variables that contain jQuery objects.
I love outliners, and I'd really like to contribute to this project, but the
code is so strangely formatted that I'd have a really hard time with it. I
wonder if the authors would consider adopting a more conventional coding
style, or if they just like it the way it is?
~~~
davewiner
I think the programmer was just getting comfortable with coding in an outliner
when he wrote that code. I would consider that indentation a bug, when and if
I work in those areas, I'll fix the indentation there. Thanks for pointing it
out.
~~~
Stratoscope
Ah, thanks, Dave, and I'm sorry I went a bit overboard on my remarks about the
code! The project does look promising; now I'm encouraged to check it out some
more. :-)
~~~
davewiner
Not at all! :-)
I am a total bugger about formatting code.
The outliner approach is pretty good but not perfect.
If-then-else is the sore thumb, for sure.
Along with try-catch.
But overall, outliners are a huge win for writing code.
Let's be hardasses about this stuff, but also understanding.
I think your approach is perfect.
------
tzs
GPLv3, which will put off some people who would be fine with GPLv2.
------
the_mitsuhiko
I think more project should be this obvious with their choice of GPL, makes it
easier to dismiss :-)
~~~
vx-k
I think more comments should be this obvious with their trolling & stupidity,
makes it easier to flag :-)
~~~
the_mitsuhiko
Might not have been the highest quality comment but there are lots of
companies out there that outright forbid GPLv3 code to be used for anything
really.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Partner - mades
Hey Guys<p>I am looking for a partner who acknowledges api programming. The idéa is on paper, simple, fun and ready to go. I am based in Sweden, Stockholm. Please contact me for more information at:<p>[email protected]<p>Cheers
======
mbenjaminsmith
If it's that simple I'd suggest coding it yourself.
I'm a programmer/entrepreneur and was recently approached for a 3-way split in
a mobile game startup. As it stood 33% would go to an illustrator, 33% to an
idea guy and 33% to me. Reviewing the situation it was obvious that only I was
really bringing anything to the table (experience in the mobile market,
numerous shipped software products) and that I could replace the others easily
(plenty of ideas, ongoing relationships with freelance artists). Neither the
illustrator or idea guy had an experience in mobile or games. So, it was
likely to end up that I would contribute most of the knowledge and 80% of the
work -- all for 1/3 of what I would make doing it on my own.
My point is you have zero leverage as an idea guy. If you have more than that,
say, you're an artist, have plenty of money on hand or have some other skill
that will make your business successful, you should talk about that. I doubt
any programmer is willing to invest her time (which will be substantial,
"simple" or not) in order to figure out if your idea has legs.
If you have any chance of making your project successful, you probably also
have the mental tools you need to program something simple yourself. Try it
out!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask The VC - What are typical compensation numbers? - jkopelman
http://www.askthevc.com/2007/06/what_are_typical_compensation.php
======
jaggederest
There is something kinda funny about the numbers. I would expect to see more
like 30-30-30 for founders, with 10 options pool. Maybe these are post-
dilution numbers.
~~~
nostrademons
They are - I wouldn't expect any founder to take a $200k salary pre-dilution.
Squares with the other article on news.YC (forgot the title...) about how a
typical VC expects the founders to own 3-10% of the company at a liquidity
event.
One thing I don't understand: why does _any_ software startup take VC? 10% of
$200M = 100% of $20M, but you're much more likely to find a buyer for the $20M
two-guys-in-a-garage startup than the $200M startup with 2 dozen employees. It
seems like VC doesn't increase your best-case outcome at all, but
significantly decreases the chance that you'll reach your best-case outcome.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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TechCrunch is Clueless - Oracle's SVP. - parth16
https://blogs.oracle.com/TheInnovationAdvantage/entry/techcrunch_is_clueless_about_oracle
======
ianstallings
This is just following a growing trend of bad tech journalism. I'm no fan of
Oracle, because of their past practices, but the least TechCrunch can do is
ask them if what they are about to print is correct and get two sides to the
debate. That's basic journalism.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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EdgeML: Algorithms for edge devices - msolujic
https://github.com/Microsoft/EdgeML
======
eggy
Edge devices are what MS is calling IOT devices on cloud networks, I think:
[https://blogs.microsoft.com/iot/2017/05/10/microsoft-
azure-i...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/iot/2017/05/10/microsoft-azure-iot-
edge-extending-cloud-intelligence-to-edge-devices/)
~~~
rpeden
I used to work at a company whose software had to interact with security
cameras. In the security/surveillance industry, at least, the term 'edge
devices' has long been used to describe IP cameras and other devices like
motion sensors operating in the field, transmitting their data back to a
central server.
Interestingly, 'edge analytics' has been a thing in that industry for a
relatively long time, too. This is used to refer to cameras that do things
like motion detection, person counting, and other analytics in the camera
instead of having to post-process the video streams at a central location to
extract that data.
So in this case at least, is looks like MS is just using terminology that was
already widely used in IoT devices even before "Internet of Things" was even
really a phrase that was used to describe these devices.
------
zitterbewegung
This is a neat project and having this framework could really address two
things.
1\. If we bake all the intelligence on the device then it won't have to go
outside to a network which could increase security.
2\. If the intelligence is on the device then the users could control their
data better.
------
styfle
I assumed Microsoft EdgeML was related to Microsoft Edge browser...it is not.
It sounds like and “edge device” refers to an IoT device.
------
m3kw9
What is an Edge device??
~~~
tyingq
_" The trained models can be loaded onto edge devices such as IoT
devices/sensors, and used to make fast and accurate predictions completely
offline."_
Then, from: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/resource-
ef...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/resource-efficient-ml-
for-the-edge-and-endpoint-iot-devices/)
_" Our objective is to develop a library of efficient machine learning
algorithms that can run on severely resource-constrained edge and endpoint IoT
devices ranging from the Arduino to the Raspberry Pi."_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Arduino-driven orchestra plays TSO: Wizards in Winter (and scanners, floppies..) - jweather
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhChYJzw4FM
======
jweather
I made this! Technical background and build log is here:
[http://hackaday.io/project/3533-christmas-
orchestra](http://hackaday.io/project/3533-christmas-orchestra)
It's an Arduino RAMPS board (designed for driving 3D printers) driving four
floppy drives, three scanners, and a printer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Titan in Depth: Security in Plaintext - wglb
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/titan-in-depth-security-in-plaintext
======
BooneJS
This article is from 2017. Take a look at what is happening in open source
with OpenTitan. [https://opentitan.org/](https://opentitan.org/)
~~~
wglb
Cool, thanks.
------
thinkloop
Any idea where google manufactures the chips? Do they do it themselves in
their own fabs?
It's unfortunate that the company best poised to provide the world complete
end-to-end privacy and security, is also the one least likely to democratize
it.
~~~
shakna
> It's unfortunate that the company best poised to provide the world complete
> end-to-end privacy and security, is also the one least likely to democratize
> it.
Titan was open-sourced at the end of last year. [0]
> Any idea where google manufactures the chips? Do they do it themselves in
> their own fabs?
Whilst Google avoided confirming anything, I believe the actual fabrication
was probably done through Cypress Semiconductor, before Skywater Technology
Foundry spun out of them. The foundry and Google have a long and ongoing
relationship.
[0] [https://security.googleblog.com/2019/11/opentitan-open-
sourc...](https://security.googleblog.com/2019/11/opentitan-open-sourcing-
transparent.html)
~~~
thinkloop
Insightful reply! thanks.
Open sourcing a project, in my opinion, is far from spearheading a world of
privacy and security.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: Are you looking to fund startups? - ryanwaggoner
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dE5TQmVWaS1ERWJNWHctOWNXbTNHY1E6MA
======
e1ven
This seems very similar to the Venture hacks Angel List, which has recently
relaunched.
<http://venturehacks.com/angellist>
Several angels have tweeted about the list, as it's a good way to report what
they're interested in, who they want you to go through (Or if they prefer
direct contact), what types of communities they support, etc.
~~~
alain94040
Yes. AngelList is the way to go for reputable angels and provides the right
information for entrepreneurs.
I don't think this google docs is going anywhere. Improvisation and amateurism
is not a good idea in that field (sorry for the harsh comment, I don't know
how to express it more nicely -- but really, check out angellist and then _if_
you come up with something better, do it).
------
megamark16
I'll definitely be bookmarking this one, as I am not quite ready to put myself
out there for the whole world, but I'd love to contact people directly if they
were looking for something like what I'm doing (or who and where I am).
------
mattwdelong
Money isn't everything. It would be nice to have a section that lists the
angels experiences.
One can easily bootstrap, having little money but its much more difficult to
bootstrap having no experience. I would give up a portion of my venture just
for the right experience capital. Money is just a plus.
~~~
epi0Bauqu
Mentor spreadsheet?
~~~
dzlobin
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1105398>
I've been thinking of doing this for a few weeks, so I did it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: Intern staying on with company, is Salary Negotiation Appropriate? - cartogram
I've been extremely lucky to secure a paid summer internship this summer fresh out of my freshman year of college in a very exciting technical field.<p>I've been doing penetration testing and tool development for a startup information security company. They didn't have any internships listed only higher-level job postings. Encouraged by a mentor, I sent over my resume anyway with a cover letter indicating that I was seeking an internship. Needless to say, I got the internship. It's three months later, I have been given responsibilities on an equal footing as some of my much senior coworkers.<p>They initially offered me a job at the end of the summer asking if I wanted to "take a semester off", but I knew if I left college now i'd likely never go back. Instead they are offering me a telecommuting position.<p>I've been earning a bit above minimum wage, and this summer has been an awesome experience I wouldn't trade for anything, but how much is reasonable compensation for someone with a <i>LOT</i> to learn (c'mon I'm a rising sophomore), yet still creating immense value for a company? I've had the privilege of leading security audits for Fortune 500 companies who were later <i>very</i> satisfied with my analysis --- this was all closely supervised work and independently reviewed. My coworkers treat me as a peer, and my supervisor is very pleased with the quality of my work.<p>How much is "reasonable compensation" for a part-time telecommuting college student who's staying on after interning?
======
shorbaji
Use this as a negotiation exercise.
If you do, first things first. Know your best alternative to a negotiated
agreement (BATNA). Try to factor in the opportunity cost, i.e. what else you
can be doing with your time if you do not take the job.
With that in hand, accept any offer higher than the BATNA. Reject any offers
below the BATNA. Either way you are best off.
Of course it is easier said than done ...
(see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiate...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiated_agreement))
------
noodle
if you feel like you deserve a raise, ask for one. however, understand that
many companies have a policy set in stone for interns. you might not be able
to get anything more within the employment structure you're currently in.
however, if you like this job, you could use this situation as leverage for a
much higher starting salary if you want to continue working with them after
graduation.
~~~
cartogram
This is a relatively young bootstrapped startup which is now becoming rapidly
profitable. Still only at 9 employees, they've never had an intern before.
~~~
noodle
cool. ask them. especially if you feel like your work is valuable to the
company.
they won't fire you for asking.
------
stonemetal
I would say get paid per experience and degree. You have .25 of a degree and
approx 3 months relevant experience. Since relevant, in their company
experience is worth more than general education. I would say somewhere around
30-40% of what you would expect to be paid after graduation. So do your
research and find out what entry level salary for that field is perhaps from
your co-workers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: Great programmers and computer scientists of today? - playing_colours
Who do you consider the best programmers / computer scientists of today? Or, in other words, if you are familiar with Coders At Work [1], what names would you suggest for a new edition of the book?<p>[1] http://www.codersatwork.com/
======
dottrap
Roberto Ierusalimschy (best known as the creator of Lua).
On the science/research side, his work with Lua has explored language
interoperability in a methodical way. He also brought about the first real-
world implementation of a register-based virtual machine and gave an apples-
to-apples comparison of its merits (Lua 4 to Lua 5). His research also led to
the resurrection of the popularity of asymmetric coroutines and parseable
expression grammars (PEGs).
From an engineering standpoint, Lua is one of the cleanest languages ever made
and it has impacted the video game industry as much as John Carmack (in
different ways). The register based virtual machine white paper Roberto wrote
was also the inspiration of Apple's Squirrelfish Javascript VM, which kicked
off a tidal wave of Javascript VM wars.
------
geophile
Mike McMahon:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_McMahon_(computer_scientis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_McMahon_\(computer_scientist\))
------
geophile
Someone will mention Jeffrey Dean of Google.
~~~
playing_colours
Facts about Jeffrey Dean: [http://www.quora.com/Jeff-Dean/What-are-all-the-
Jeff-Dean-fa...](http://www.quora.com/Jeff-Dean/What-are-all-the-Jeff-Dean-
facts)
------
geophile
Fabrice Bellard
------
tokenrove
Arthur Whitney
------
phaus
John Carmack
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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They Live, We Sleep - blakeja
http://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/they_live_we_sleep_a_dictatorship_disguised_as_a_democracy
======
mirimir
> I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of
> bubblegum.
John Nada, walking into a bank, with a 12-ga pump shotgun ;)
------
romanlevin
> ... the subtle message of They Live...
Is this a joke?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How can you sell to people you don’t like? - dilemma1839
Hi guys. I’m a working guy with a young family. I need to get a side project started to bring in some more income to the house as we’re only just managing at the moment.
I have an idea for a SaaS which I have the skills to build and market but I’m at a conflict. They always say you shouldn’t sell something you don’t believe in. I believe in the value of the product I’m thinking about, I believe I could offer benefit to the customers and it’s not immoral or illegal. I just feel like the kind of customers it would attract aren’t people I would like. It would only really suit customers who are paranoid and self interested. Not the kinds of people I affiliate with or look up to.
Has anyone been in a position where they had to balance their own business aspirations and ambitions with a responsibility for making people do better, more enriching things?
Sorry if it’s a bit of a rant. I’m happy to answer as many questions as possible for context or to just take feedback. I’m just wracking my brains at the minute with this thing. Help appreciated.
======
itamarst
You're making some implicit assumptions:
1\. Your idea is a good.
2\. You will succeed at your business.
2\. You will make money quickly.
There's a good chance your idea won't work, and even if it does from what I've
read SaaS takes a long time to make real money. And during that time you'll
need to spend a lot of time talking to customers and trying to figure out what
to do improve things for them.
So basically you need the dedication to spend the next 1-2 years of your life
catering to people you don't like. On the face of it that seems unlikely. More
likely you'll give up in six months.
Instead of going "idea -> do work", try going in reverse direction. Pick group
of people you actually like, then do research on them, then get idea based on
what you learn about their problems. Benefits are your idea is more likley to
work, when you get discouraged you'll have evidence to look back to, and
you'll actually enjoy your work which again makes it more likely you don't
give up.
[https://stackingthebricks.com/](https://stackingthebricks.com/) has a bunch
of good advice.
------
DoreenMichele
_it’s not immoral or illegal. I just feel like the kind of customers it would
attract aren’t people I would like. It would only really suit customers who
are paranoid and self interested._
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
It might be helpful to come up with a broad variety of reasonable use cases
besides the one you are imagining and not liking. Some thoughts on scenarios
that might apply:
People fleeing domestic violence.
LGBTQ individuals, especially so in some parts of the world.
Other oppressed minorities, whether due to religion, ethnicity or any other
reason.
People in war torn parts of the world.
People with hopeless medical situations interested in pursuing proven
alternatives, like medical marijuana, that may not be legal in their location.
There are lots of situations where people are only trying to meet their own
needs, are not up to anything nefarious, nor even _questionable_ to my mind,
who need to take precautions because the world does not approve of them
getting their needs met for reasons that often boil down to prejudice and
malice.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: What does canonical have not reinvented - lothiraldan
Internal discussion that leads to this question, What does canonical have not reinvented?<p>So far:
- Graphical environment with Unity.
- Graphical server, Mir.
- Init system, Upstart but abandoned if I remember.
- DVCS, Bazaar.
- DVCS hosting, launchpad.<p>Am I forgetting something?<p>The real question is when will they work on their own kernel not based on linux?
======
freehunter
>The real question is when will they work on their own kernel not based on
linux?
Why would they? They have everything to lose (compatibility) and nothing to
gain from leaving the Linux kernel. Look at an arguably even more successful
Linux project that tries to reinvent everything: Android. They're still based
on Linux, even if they don't want to admit it that much. macOS is still based
on BSD Unix. It takes a lot of time and money to write a modern kernel,
there's no reason to not just use one of the pre-existing kernels.
------
digi_owl
And the problem was?
At least two of them are based on disagreements with established projects
about where things are heading (Gnome, Wayland), and one was pretty much an
experiment in alternatives to sysv (Upstart).
Why it is that everything has to come out of Fedora/Gnome/Freedesktop these
days?!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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In order to collaborate, is it important to be close to each other? - MEHOM
======
e1ven
I've found that for the design phase of projects, it's VITAL to be in the same
room.
There are tools to replicate so many things- You can use phone calls, and
shared whiteboards.. But they are half-way measures- They don't let you work
against each other, or argue back and forth easily, making changes to a
design..
I've worked with friends in other states before, and at times, we'd struggle
for a design problem for several weeks, before I flew down and we hashed it
out in one all-night session of pizza and caffeine.
If it's pure code to spec, perhaps you'll be able to get away without out, but
even then, working in the same place ensures that you stay friends, and that
you can talk over a design while going out for lunch.
If at all possible, I strongly recommend working in the same place.
------
TMR
For projects with well defined goals and methods of acheiving those goals, it
can work.
For more nebulous, complex projects where decisions frequently come down to
judgment calls, it doesn't work so well. For instance, startup founders need
to work together, literally elbow-to-elbow to give the best chance of success.
------
jaggederest
Some of my best work has been done with clients that I never met. As always,
ymmv, but if you can find a good person online, someone who you can trust and
be friends with, there's no reason it won't work.
------
petervandijck
Not at all. It's important to have trust, but I've had great collaborations
with people I've never met.
Timezone's do come into play, but they're not much of a problem either.
~~~
MEHOM
If you had a marketing person in France, a QA guy in Singapore, another pair
of developers located in NY city and London, England. How do you get everyone
collaborating as a team? Setting up a fair meeting time for everyone can be
challenging.
------
fpgibson
Trust can be harder to establish online. Online collaborations work when there
are measurable indications of commitment.
~~~
MEHOM
I agree with all of you. Have been in project management and product
development situations that most of you have been in. What I discovered is the
1st meeting. This initial meeting determines whether the project has a chance
to succeed or fail. The way I ran my meetings is that each and every
stakeholders must be there in person. This goal of this 1st meeting to have
everyone determines everything in terms of goals and objectives. During this
time, everyone gets the "feel" whether they believe in the project and whether
they believe in their future teammates.
From my experience, most people do not know what to do during this first
meeting. In most cases, it is their problem.
In my case, I believe in establishing a Tangible Plan (or Overview) that
everyone can unified with. It is about getting everyone to commit to the big
picture (the goal, its specific and to each other).
The question is getting everyone to work through specifics of the grand goal.
From my experience, not everyone are willing to be teamplayers. During the 1st
meeting, it is about seeing who wants to play teamball and who wants to play
"Lone Ranger".
Team collaboration is not about software, It is about a process of getting
people to collaborate. 100% team management psychology. ... Remember losers
promises while winners commit. Each of your success will be about getting
people to commit. .... Thank you very much for all responses.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Identi.ca conversion to pump.io: Fail - kseistrup
http://koldfront.dk/archive/2013/07/13-162144.html
======
kseistrup
I also used OpenID for identi.ca but had an email address associated with my
account. However identi.ca says it doesn't recognize my username and it won't
let me register [the old username or a new one]. :(
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Colonizing the Internet - lenkendall
https://medium.com/how-to-use-the-internet/8c548a28ad4e
======
evv
These internet-governments already exist, but we hardly think about them as
governments because they are built upon our national governments.
Companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon all count. I am looking at
the following corollaries here:
- Has physical dependencies (devices)
- Has citizens & well-defined relationship (users & tos)
- Has economy (app & e-commerce stores)
- Has communication (has APIs)
- Has higher-level information (surveillance & analytics of users)
------
malandrew
I'm wondering if there already is a directory of open source plugins and
projects that allow someone to quickly take any existing project (Rails,
Django, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal) and publish it on Tor with a .onion
address.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Joyvite – Referral Program for Your SaaS - ganis
https://joyvite.com/
======
ganis
Hi everyone, I'm co-founder / CEO of Joyvite. Joyvite is basically referral
program as a service.
I’m happy to have any feedback you may have! Thank you!
~~~
tixocloud
Hey Ganis. I reckon there must be a typo in your header "Customers" as opposed
to "Costomers"
~~~
ganis
Hi tixocloud, thanks for the correction. I have fixed it!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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“I must, sadly, withdraw my endorsement of Yubikey 4 devices” - v4n4d1s
https://plus.google.com/+KonstantinRyabitsev/posts/4a7RNxtt7vy
======
OJFord
From the Github issue [0]:
> Further hostility against the company or our users will
> not be tolerated in this forum, and will be met with
> bans.
Odd reaction. Especially when they've _changed_ from open to closed source,
and what benefit is there, really, to a closed-source 'OpenPGP'
implementation?
They're looking for a profit, sure, but they're blessed to be a hardware
company. It's not like I can just clone they're repo and not need to buy their
product.
[0] - [https://github.com/Yubico/ykneo-
openpgp/issues/2#issuecommen...](https://github.com/Yubico/ykneo-
openpgp/issues/2#issuecomment-219021710)
~~~
teraflop
"In this forum" being the key operative words. A bug tracker is supposed to be
a tool to help software developers to get stuff done, first and foremost. Even
at the best of times, it's not ideal to use it for end-user support, and it's
_especially_ bad for contentious discussions about product direction or
organizational policy.
Just look at bug trackers for large projects like Chrome. Any time there's a
bug report or feature request that attracts lots of attention, without heavy
moderation, the technical content is quickly drowned out by me-too-ing and
angry rants.
~~~
zobzu
They also do not own github issues. The tone and content of all the replies is
pretty bad, and, like, yeah, I'm no longer supporting Yubico either as a
result.
------
methou
I was seeking an alternative and cheaper OpenPGP solution to Yubikeys, then I
found that the OpenPGP card is essentially a Java applet lives on a chip runs
JVM, and JVM runs on top of JavaCard OS. Since all the programs follows
GlobalPlatform standards, communication with Java Cards can be
straightforward.
In the end, it's not difficult to burn opensource openPGP applet to your own
card. But there are 2 problems:
1\. Bulk sales. If you want to all the things by yourself, and you found an
ideal chip (recent NXP SmartMX2 cards has all the fancy stuff you want),
almost every reseller only allow bulk purchases, say 100 pcs minimum.
2\. Propriety software. For NXP cards, you need a propriety software to
initialize/unlock a card before you can use GlobalPlatform tools to flash your
own Applets. A reseller told me that his can be done by sending raw HEX code
with a Transport Key to workaround, but I'm not sure about it.
------
mgrennan
I've been disappointed in Yubico since I reported a Replay Attack, in their
server, to them and Steve Gibson a couple of years ago. They gave now reply.
Steve replied after a called him out publicly. I'm considering creating a like
process based on the USB Rubber Ducky. I'm thinking simple one time pad.
[https://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/usb-rubber-ducky-
delu...](https://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/usb-rubber-ducky-
deluxe?variant=353378649) 1s
~~~
DKnoll
Have you seen the USB Armory? Seems like you would be interested.
[https://inversepath.com/usbarmory](https://inversepath.com/usbarmory)
~~~
RRRA
How has the ecosystem evolved lately?
Any cool project you're aware of? :)
~~~
DKnoll
No... but I was hoping he would make one. ;)
------
nickysielicki
I've been looking into purchasing an OpenPGP card/stick for a while. Haven't
yet pulled the plug.
Here are some fully open Yubikey alternatives.
[https://www.sigilance.com/](https://www.sigilance.com/)
[https://www.nitrokey.com/](https://www.nitrokey.com/)
[http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/FST-01](http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/FST-01)
~~~
makomk
I actually ended up building my own OpenPGP stick a while ago using Gnuk:
[https://www.makomk.com/2016/01/23/openpgp-crypto-token-
using...](https://www.makomk.com/2016/01/23/openpgp-crypto-token-using-gnuk/)
Should probably write it up properly sometime and maybe ask about getting
support for my custom hardware merged upstream. (The official hardware's also
open, but the case it's designed for was only available from the US and I'm
not set up to solder QFN and 0402 parts. Not that fine-pitch TQFP is much fun
either...)
~~~
nickysielicki
This is extremely cool, I think you should submit this as a Show HN.
------
geofft
This is about the code running _on_ the YubiKey itself, not about the code to
interact with it from a general-purpose computer?
And if I'm reading the linked GitHub issue correctly, this is about a specific
plugin that runs in a sandbox on the YubiKey NEO, where the main codebase of
the NEO is still proprietary?
I don't understand the advantage of it being open-source then, at least as far
as security goes. (For user freedoms in practice, maybe.) What guarantee do
you have that the code on the device matches the code on GitHub, or that the
code on GitHub isn't subverted by other code on the device?
~~~
JoshTriplett
> And if I'm reading the linked GitHub issue correctly, this is about a
> specific plugin that runs in a sandbox on the YubiKey NEO, where the main
> codebase of the NEO is still proprietary?
No, it's the code for the new YubiKey 4, which has been closed off.
> What guarantee do you have that the code on the device matches the code on
> GitHub
Ideally, you can build and flash the firmware yourself.
~~~
nmikhailov
> No, it's the code for the new YubiKey 4, which has been closed off.
yk4 firmware was never released; that particular issue is about NEO's openpgp
applet.
>Ideally, you can build and flash the firmware yourself.
You couldn't do that with NEO(except from early dev version) as global
platfrom management keys are unknown, which makes it impossible to
delete/upload applets. I actually tried to get dev. version but they
redirected me to NXP who never answered.
------
awinter-py
whatever the conclusion here I'm very glad there are eyes on these devices.
Is there a central clearinghouse for security audits of hardware / software?
This is something the FOSS community can do _much_ better than msft or even
open source promoters like fb/goog, but not if the results are distributed on
the experts' blogs and tumblrs.
------
tmikaeld
Ah crap, why ruin something great just out of greed (What other reason could
there be?) :-(
~~~
danjoc
Could you elaborate on how this ruins the yubikey 4? As a security measure,
the software on the YK4 cannot be updated. Therefore, the software in question
could have essentially been implemented as hardware. It is hardwired and will
never change. I can't find the reference, but since there's no software update
functionality, I'm under the impression even Richard Stallman would be okay
with it under these circumstances.
Edit: Found it. [https://stallman.org/stallman-
computing.html](https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html)
"As for microwave ovens and other appliances, if updating software is not a
normal part of use of the device, then it is not a computer. In that case, I
think the user need not take cognizance of whether the device contains a
processor and software, or is built some other way. However, if it has an
"update firmware" button, that means installing different software is a normal
part of use, so it is a computer."
Straight from the big GNU's mouth.
~~~
kerkeslager
I won't comment on what Stallman might think about the Yubikey, but for _my_
goals, a closed-source Yubikey is useless, because it's security can't be
verified. You don't even have to believe in GNU Philosophy to prefer
verifiable security to unverifiable security.
~~~
oconnore
Were you going to put the microprocessor under an electron microscope? No?
Then nothing has changed.
I also think open hardware would be pretty neat, but software people who get
really upset about layers they can't verify implemented on top of layers they
can't verify sound pretty silly. Either you verify from the bottom or you
can't verify at all.
~~~
tadfisher
This is a common response but it's not addressing the core issue.
Bugs and vulnerabilities are discovered every day in the layers that _can_ be
independently verified. Your argument extends to every single piece of
software everywhere that runs on Intel and AMD microprocessors, for instance.
It's foolish to say that an OpenSSL instance shouldn't be examined because the
network interface it communicates over uses a proprietary firmware blob, or
runs on Windows, for instance.
I agree that the freedom to verify the behavior of (what amounts to) firmware
is not one of the Four Freedoms, but there is a non-zero value in being able
to find bugs and help the manufacturer improve the product, as well as being
able to use that information to inform a purchasing decision. Especially for
something which could potentially be considered to provide organizational
security.
~~~
oconnore
My point is not that you shouldn't verify OpenSSL code. My point is that you
shouldn't pretend that you don't implicitly trust Intel/AMD (or Yubikey).
~~~
mort96
So something _has_ changed in other words. You used to implicitly trust
Yubikey's word that they put the publicly available source code on their
devices, just like now, but you used to also be able to verify their code such
that you could be fairly sure that if the trust in the company is warranted,
their product is fairly secure, or more importantly, find security issues in
their code.
------
beezle
The problem with both Yubi and Nitro is that pin entry is by keyboard, not a
secure pinpad.
~~~
05
Though you'd need both keyboard and display built in to verify what exactly it
is that you're signing/allowing access to..
~~~
droffel
Not necessarily true, you can do it with just a display (and two buttons) like
the Trezor does[1]. You can probably even omit the buttons using this model:
1\. Send message to sign over the wire
2\. Display message to sign on the device's screen
3\. Send a message to continue or reject over the wire
4\. Device displays scrambled pinpad
5\. User enters PIN on the compromised computer, using a blinded pinpad (like
the Trezor)
6\. The blinded PIN is sent over the wire to the device
7\. The device verifies the PIN, and if correct, signs the message displayed
in step 2
8\. The signed message is sent over the wire to the compromised device
[1] [https://doc.satoshilabs.com/trezor-
user/enteringyourpin.html](https://doc.satoshilabs.com/trezor-
user/enteringyourpin.html)
~~~
j_s
I am curious about hardware Bitcoin wallets, because transferring from an
address reveals the public key. Do hardware wallets like Trezor do single-use
addresses?
~~~
droffel
Hardware wallets use the BIP32[1] spec to implement "Hierarchical
Deterministic" (HD) addresses. Using a single seed phrase (stored internally
on the device, and also written down external to the device, neither copy
should _ever_ be online), you can generate an infinite number of addresses for
your wallet. Every time you request a payment, you get a different address to
send to, there is no address reuse (unless you or someone else chooses to send
funds to an address that has already been spent from).
[1]
[https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki)
------
parent5446
The one thing that I find missing in Nitrokey is that none of their regular
keys support U2F alongside other 2FA methods, like Yubikey does. You need the
separate U2F device for that, and I don't want to carry around multiple tokens
if at all possible.
------
jc4p
While on the subject, does anyone know how to actually put a 4096 bit key on a
Yubikey 4? I've been trying for months and their support is non-existent.
~~~
confounded
You need to use gpg2 explicitly (gpg 1.x and 2.x are under independent active
development), e.g. `gpg2 --edit-key`.
~~~
jc4p
AHA! Thanks, I'll try this later tonight!
------
fapjacks
Locked to contributors. Surprise!
------
dopkew
I'm glad someone's using 'libre'; glad that i can easily refer to liberated
open-source software without ambiguity.
------
jbaviat
Glad to learn Nitrokey has ECC support, even if only 256 bits.
------
chinathrow
They arw pulling a MakerBot.
------
Dowwie
Hang on just a minute, hackernewsies. Put down your pitchforks and torches.
Do you really expect a leading company of security hardware to give the keys
of its kingdom away (pun intended)?
------
e12e
I don't really see what's new here, that made the author "withdraw his
endorsement". It's an issue from 2014, about a device that has always been
fully proprietary? Ok, so they make _other_ devices that was in some small way
open, and ran Free software. Great. But the yubikey devices have _never_ AFAIK
really been open in any meaningful sense. So, really this isn't so much
yubikey changing what they do, but rather the author not understanding what
these devices were in the first place?
As far as I can tell, if you got one of these in the mail, there'd be no
meaningful way you could verify that it hadn't been tampered with anyway. So
you'd just have to make a leap of faith, and assume it was "secure"? If you
were prepared to do that, then fine use the yubikeys. If not, perhaps you
should take a deeper look at your usb mouse and keyboard too. Did you verify
that your keyboard isn't running some code that might compromise your
security?
~~~
ownagefool
Presumably if you plug a keyboard or mouse in and it starts reading /secret,
somebody will notice and generally you can deny the device the ability to do
that technical means. I'll be honest, I'm not sure how open these things are
at the moment, but I imagine if a device registers as a mouse, it should have
limited functionality.
That said, your point is largely on the money that, were're taking great faith
that your computing device is secure. But at the same time, I'd put more stock
into a device that handles my super secret key and attempts to make reading it
and tampering impossible / unfeasible from the devices I plug it into.
Thusly, it's perfectly resonable to care more about your yubikey than your
mouse, from a security perspective.
~~~
JdeBP
> _I 'm not sure how open these things are at the moment, but I imagine if a
> device registers as a mouse, it should have limited functionality._
You should read all about "BadUSB". What you imagine is not the way that the
world, in particular USB, actually works.
~~~
ownagefool
Whilst that's interesting, it's not what I was talking about and it's actually
the opposite. For example, just because I can tell your device that it should
read /secret, doesn't mean the computer it's plugged into will let it.
With that said, I wouldn't be suprised if you were right either, but that's
going to need a different google search. Thanks for the link nonetheless.
------
fred_is_fred
I guess I should know this guy, but I don't. When I see the picture and a post
on Google+ it hardly seems like something that I should take seriously. I know
the fake mustache is there to show what a fun guy this is, but if you're
posting something you want people to take seriously, post it seriously.
~~~
pshc
Here is his very Serious LinkedIn where you may read his Serious resume,
including endorsements by Serious men with suits and beards:
[https://ca.linkedin.com/in/mricon](https://ca.linkedin.com/in/mricon)
~~~
jharger
That's not Serious enough. He's outdoors wearing a hat and backpack.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TPP Explained - signa11
http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/
======
tptacek
This comic is awful, and appears misinformed about fundamental aspects of TPP,
like, who the participants actually are (it repeatedly invokes China, who is
not a party to TPP).
------
samstave
[http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/3b2af4/for_the_t...](http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/3b2af4/for_the_those_of_you_that_still_dont_understand/)
It is mildly telling when /r/conspiracy is the largest /r/ upvote rate for
such things...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chuck Moore on the Lost Art of Keeping It Simple - gruseom
http://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/geek-of-the-week/chuck-moore-on-the-lost-art-of-keeping-it-simple/
======
penguat
I find this interesting:
"Second, it’s irresistible to anticipate the future and expect the problem to
grow in a certain direction. Thus code is added to facilitate future changes,
which rarely occur. This is a good strategy, but can be put off until the
future arrives."
Should we even know what the future is likely to hold? I'm in a big corporate
- perhaps that skews things where I am, but we have a relatively clear roadmap
for the next couple of months at least, and I am loath to ignore that,
although I am mindful of the problem mentioned as well: I don't try to solve
future problems before we get there.
Should I cease specifically allowing for them?
NB the organisation I am working in allows approximately 2% of developers'
time for refactoring.
~~~
protomyth
I found it harder in large enterprises to anticipate the future with any
certainty. One of the big problems was changing laws. Anytime the legislator
is in session can cause serious changes in software. I remember a whole
release totally shot because of changes in how reporting was done for the
government.
I often wonder what would happen if some fundamental change occurred that
affected a basic assumption of a lot of software. The nastiest example would
be civil unions allowing more than 2 partners. That would probably destroy a
goodly chunk of release schedules in most enterprises.
I think the simpler you keep it will help when you really need to change
something. Programming in Forth really let you feel that.
------
untangle
Chuck Moore is one of my heros, and has been since those '70s that he talks
about.
Try as I might, I have had a hellofatime using Forth (and now Factor) to get
nontrivial things done. But I keep trying, because I find the philosophy so
compelling. And I figure I'll learn something.
He has always considered Forth to be a 'personal leverage' tool rather than a
programming system suited to a team. Similar in this regard to Lisp and J I
suppose. The fact that he has never hired a programmer (!) reinforces this
notion.
I wish him luck with his chips....
Bob
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best big group [board] games - RevRal
Hello,<p>Partner and I recently decided to get married, and that the wedding will simply be a large group game and a non-ceremonial "Signing of the Documents". Most of our friends are geeks and board-gamers, so complexity is a plus. I'm having a hard time finding a site devoted to such an activity, mostly games for campers and the like....<p>All recommendations are appreciated, thank you :).
======
Someone
Large, and complexity is a plus? The Campaign for North Africa would be an
excellent choice, but its war theme may not be to your liking (1)
Seriously: why don't you let your guests design a game for you? Announce a
week or so in advance that there will be a 3D printer, CNC mill, good color
printer, pens, paint, etc, tell them your requirements (# of players, playing
time, and "we should like it" should suffice) and see what they come up with.
If the group is large, make teams that compete for the "best of show" award.
1) see
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Campaign_for_North_Afric...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Campaign_for_North_Africa)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gene Editing Tool Hailed as a Breakthrough, and It Really Is One - evo_9
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/12/28/460705645/gene-editing-tool-hailed-as-a-breakthrough-and-it-really-is-one
======
reasonattlm
Something to consider: it is now technically possible and within the grasp of
hundreds of clinics worldwide to run gene therapy. The only reason they aren't
yet doing this is that it takes some increment of time to get things lined up;
funding, customers, propagation of knowledge, etc. But all the pieces are in
place.
Myostatin or follistatin gene therapy is about as proven as these things get.
It exists in heavily muscled natural mutants, including humans (look up brute
whippets). Antibody myostatin blockade has just completed phase 2 clinical
trials, adding muscle mass to 75 year olds. Chinese labs are turning out
myostatin-free dogs. The BioViva CEO organized her own follistatin gene
therapy earlier this year in an overseas lab. Five years from now it won't
take starting a company level of networking to fly somewhere and do this.
But myostatin for muscle mass is just the best risk/benefit/knowledge picture
out of hundreds of alterations that could in theory now be run up in humans,
many of which are high risk in the sense that they've only been tried a few
times in mice and not followed for a long time. For example adding additional
lysosomal receptors to mice restores liver function in old mice to be the same
as in young mice. Increased GDF-11 sends stem cells back to work and improves
health in old mice.
And so on and so forth. The eager early adopter with a hundred thousand
dollars to spend ten years from now could spend the time between now and then
mining the research literature and organizing collaborators, making
connections with labs overseas and setting up for multiple gene therapies down
the line, many of which are associated with interventions shown to delay or
turn back specific measures of aging in mice.
This isn't SENS, it isn't repair of underlying damage, but it is a step ahead
of what is currently possible.
~~~
jforman
The greatest barrier here is the FDA. They don't let you perform medical
interventions (even breakthroughs like this) without going through a rigorous
process. Companies like Editas ($43M Series A) are going through those motions
right now.
~~~
mkempe
The inevitable consequence will be either the abolition of the FDA; or a chasm
between advanced medical therapy readily available in some places outside of
the US and sclerotic, bureaucratic "healthcare" in the US.
Long-term, where I live will depend on the above outcome.
~~~
jforman
CRISPR is far from being the first technology to be held up in the United
States while being available elsewhere. There is very little chance the FDA
will materially budge on their standards, and even less chance the FDA will be
abolished. Most people have a high degree of trust in the FDA (they have a 65%
favorability rating according to Pew).
Note that the FDA does allow some compassionate use of experimental
medications and technologies in extreme cases. I'm not familiar with Editas's
regulatory strategy but it wouldn't be crazy for them to pursue that avenue
for, say, a child cancer patient as an early step. But even they will be
cautious, as any misstep (i.e., harm to a patient) will have major negative
consequences for the technology as a whole.
------
fasteo
Although not usually mentioned, it is important to note that CRISPR is a
natural process that bacteria use as part of their immune system. For what is
worth, the mechanistic process and a specific functional result - defend
against viruses - have stood the proof of time.
"bacteria use Cas enzymes to grab fragments of viral DNA. They then insert the
virus fragments into their own CRISPR sequences. Later, when another virus
comes along, the bacteria can use the CRISPR sequence as a cheat sheet to
recognize the invader." [1]
[1] [https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150206-crispr-dna-editor-
ba...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150206-crispr-dna-editor-bacteria/)
------
smoyer
It's funny that this should appear on HN ... Sunday I just completed a bit of
software that looks for candidate CRISPR sites in a particular mouse genome
for my daughter. In our case, the real trick is to find repeats in the section
of the chromosome she wants to manipulate that don't also exist in the rest of
the chromosome - or any of the other chromosomes.
Like any "big data" project, the trick is representing your data in a way that
makes searching it trivial as well as parallelizable.
~~~
junto
That sounds like a very interesting and I'm assuming, a sad story. Do you mind
if I ask if you are sharing it publicly?
~~~
smoyer
It took me a few rereads of my original post to realize what might be sad
about it ... then I got it.
It's actually a happy story (for me). My daughter is a PhD candidate at the
Johns Hopkins school of medicine and is working towards becoming a researcher
(molecular genetics). I'm not sure I should comment on which lab she's working
in or what they're trying to accomplish.
It might not be fun for the mouse but I'm thankful for projects like this
because we get to work on something together. It's almost like going back to
when she was a girl doing a science project in elementary school.
------
miiiiiike
Radiolab had a great episode about CRISPR earlier this year:
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-
part-1-crispr/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/)
------
MathsOX
A quote that stuck with me from a molecular biology class taken a year ago,
"It's not who wins a Nobel Prize off of CRISPR work, it's how many there will
end up being".
------
leeoniya
From what I understand (from a PhD in biotech), the price for utilizing
CRISPR/Cas9 is extraordinary. So much so that only multi-million dollar labs
can afford to use it in any meaningful quantity. The price "per reaction" is
in the thousands.
~~~
zzalpha
Any insight into the source of those costs?
~~~
leeoniya
licensing the tech, plus no competition = charge what the market will bear
[http://labiotech.eu/crispr-patent-war-end-discovery-new-
edit...](http://labiotech.eu/crispr-patent-war-end-discovery-new-editing-
protein-cas9/)
~~~
zzalpha
So patents. That was going to be my guess.
So in 20 years it'll be pretty cheap. Meanwhile, China and other parts of the
world that happily ignore patents will use the technology without restriction.
~~~
mentat
There's a common sci-fi theme about China being way ahead in the future. I've
never heard a plausible explanation in book but ignoring patents is a really
interesting angle.
~~~
CamperBob2
That's how it always works. Early American industrialists weren't exactly
diligent at paying royalties to British and continental European patent
holders... and now it's China's turn to prosper by doing the same thing to us.
More power to them.
Patents are a racket that governments run against their own people,
exclusively for the benefit of a very few inventors and a whole lot of
lawyers.
------
entee
I've often wondered how CRISPR is actually useful, because at its core it's
just a nuclease. It allows to you precisely cut DNA where you want to cut it.
But for that to be useful you still have to put the DNA back together
afterwards. I found this article useful for understanding the different ways
that happens in practice:
[https://www.addgene.org/CRISPR/guide/](https://www.addgene.org/CRISPR/guide/)
Turns out you get some small mutations in the most common mechanism (non-
homologous end joining or NHEJ). This could be a problem for use in therapies,
but definitely not a huge issue for most research-based applications where you
can control which mutants you allow to proceed to the next experiment.
~~~
88e282102ae2e5b
This is one reason why Cpf1 could be interesting, since it leaves sticky ends
when it cuts:
[http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674%2815%2901200-3](http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674%2815%2901200-3)
------
thecosas
I am excited and worried about what CRISPR will bring about.
------
dekhn
The application of CRISPR/Cas to gene editing, while a breakthrough, is more
about technology than science. It just makes things easier- similar to the way
compilers make it easier to program computers than assembly language.
I also find it interesting that we consider this tool a breakthrough when
nearly all our tools for gene editing are just copped off bacteria that have
been using them for billions of years.
~~~
zzalpha
Yeah! Like, antibiotics, man. It was basically mold that invented that!
Totally not a medical breakthrough at all... no idea why so many people were
impressed by it.
~~~
bostonpete
Fusion was invented by the sun (at least in this solar system -- there are
theories that it was independently invented elsewhere too)!
~~~
zzalpha
Pfft, the sun just cribbed that idea from the big bang. Typical, unoriginal
sun...
------
kauffj
In the debate over the continued utility of human labor in the face of
automation, I suspect gene editing (and/or embryo selection) is the most
ignored countervailing factor.
~~~
circlecrimson
So all these truckdrivers that are being replaced with self driving rigs are
going to get into biotech now?
~~~
valarauca1
Nope. Self driving cars are gonna be a huge problem. I don't think many people
realize that nearly 9% of the US Employed workforce has no skill other then
driving a vehicle.
~~~
livingparadox
What exactly is to stop them from learning a new trade?
~~~
pc86
Nothing except time and money, but that's a _lot_ of people. Even occurring
over a decade or more it's going to cause the wages of a lot of those trades
to plummet.
~~~
livingparadox
The specific instance here was drivers, who in this hypothetical, will be
outcompeted by self driving cars, and and naturally find themselves with more
time on their hands whether they want it or not.
As to money, there are a number of trades you can learn without spending
money. And there are also jobs where you get on-the-job training.
I'm not saying it won't be a problem for these people, but eventually, most if
not all will adjust to the new situation and find themselves in a new job.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you deal with bugs in software you sell? - drc0
Legally, how do you deal with bugs that soon or later will appear in your product that you sell to clients and/or is commissioned by them?<p>Is there some way to tell the client,the software will have bug but still convincing them to buy your software?<p>I know that there exists various license that states that your software is "AS IS", how can I improve this legally and commercially when selling the product?
======
tbarbugli
Useful bit from BSD license:
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS"
AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR
SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER
CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY,
OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE
OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Passing On: 100 years ago, the last passenger pigeon died - lelf
http://thesmartset.com/article/article09171401.aspx
======
spullara
It was once the most abundant bird in North America, comprising 1/4 of all
birds:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon)
It appears that its peculiar communal mating and nesting behavior made it very
easy to kill them en masse and that plus their utility lead to their demise.
------
cookrn
The Long Now Foundation considers the Passenger Pigeon a (strong) candidate
for de-extinction [1]. There is also a recent reflection on the passing of
Martha from them at that link.
[1] [http://longnow.org/revive/what-we-do/passenger-
pigeon/](http://longnow.org/revive/what-we-do/passenger-pigeon/)
------
oddly
Even if cloned, these birds won't come back as a whole. The instinct and
habits of the original passenger pigeons are gone. It's like cloning a mammoth
from a elephant, only to see it live like an elephant.
~~~
Houshalter
Instincts and any other genetic behavior would come back. Only learned
behavior would be gone, but it can be relearned.
------
mschuster91
The question is: is the DNA contained inside the stuffed pigeons enough (and
of good enough quality) to clone the birds entirely or merge the DNA with rock
pigeon DNA?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The realities of 'owning' a Japanese convenience store - Ultramanoid
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/27/national/behind-scenes-24-7-service-realities-owning-japanese-convenience-store/
======
CydeWeys
I was just in Japan two weeks ago, and convenience stores were omnipresent.
I'll admit, it was incredibly convenient, as I never went for lack of food or
water, and I got into habit of grabbing a beer and a snack every night to take
back to my hotel room before bed. I was relying on them (and vending machines)
pretty heavily for coffee and green tea throughout the day as well.
There were way too many convenience stores that were open in the middle of the
night, though (and apparently this is a requirement on the franchisees). There
was a 24/7 convenience store on the first floor of my hotel, and then another
one down the block, and then several more within a two block radius. There's
no reason they couldn't all coordinate better so that each individual store is
only open through the night a couple times per week. That would make a lot
more sense. Most customers would still be able to reach an open convenience
store, even in the middle of the night, within a few blocks walk. It'd be nice
if stores had posted the hours of nearby stores so you'd know where else to go
if the one you wanted was closed, but that's probably unnecessary now in the
age of apps (I had no problem finding opening times for places on Google
Maps).
~~~
gambiting
Pharmacies in Poland all operate on this rotating schedule, where at least one
pharmacy in town is open 24h(they always post a sign saying where the nearest
24h pharmacy is). I have no idea if it's by law or just a thing that everyone
does.
~~~
ovi256
Yes, this is by law and it's a requirement for having a pharmacy operating
license.
Fun fact: in most of the world, medical personal like pharmacists can't go on
strike.
~~~
bkor
Are you sure about that fact? Pharmacists went on strike in Netherlands this
year. Another reply mentioned Poland. It seems there's no EU rule, or maybe
it's more that some still need to be open.
The majority of what a pharmacy provides is repeat customers anyway. Despite
regular customers planning badly pretty much all the time, the majority gets
their medicine for a minimum of various weeks.
The participation of the strike in Netherlands wasn't high. It was pretty last
minute idea by one frustrated worker. The reason was the increase in the
aggression towards the people working in a pharmacy.
Source: I know someone working in a pharmacy.
~~~
mariuolo
> The reason was the increase in the aggression towards the people working in
> a pharmacy.
What kind of aggression?
~~~
Wohlf
Aggression towards pharmacists is usually from addicts who want drugs.
------
ferros
Don't underestimate the safety factor. Walking around late at night past
scores of open stores presents a significantly different backdrop to other
cities around the world where everything is closed and all the lights are off.
------
RyJones
I also just came back from Tokyo and Osaka; I was blown away by how many 7/11s
there were and how close they were.
The vending machines are amazing. One other thing I would like to import: the
widely available, clean bathrooms all over the place. That was super nice.
~~~
CydeWeys
Free public bathrooms everywhere was nice, but there was still a dearth of
free public water fountains -- which, admittedly, most cities don't have
enough of. Rome is kind of the gold standard in this regard.
I loved how some of the vending machines and convenience stores sold _hot_
canned drinks. I've never seen that anywhere in the US. Now the hot canned
coffee wasn't actually good (I had to try it), but it was interesting to have
that as an option. There were also plenty of vending machines that would make
coffee for you (which I didn't use because I opted for free coffee in the
hotel in the morning and cold green tea thereafter, which I must say was
delicious).
~~~
Freak_NL
> Now the hot canned coffee wasn't actually good (I had to try it)
You just have to find the one type of can that doesn't have added sugar or
milk. Once you know those nothing beats pulling a warm can of black coffee
from the machine.
Really, the first company to introduce these on stations here in the
Netherlands (or anywhere these don't exist) will turn a handsome profit if
they stick to the Japanese formula for 自動販売機: small cans, low prices, decent
selection, warm coffee, and located on train platforms. The novelty factor of
the warm cans will take care of initial promotion.
But leave out that one warm corn drink.
~~~
masklinn
> Once you know those nothing beats pulling a warm can of black coffee from
> the machine.
I'd say pulling a bottle of warm lemon / lime tea was even better, especially
with travel-sore-throat.
> low prices
Aside from providing warm drinks, that's the big ticket right there: IME,
european vending machines are basically predatory, they're way overpriced for
what they provide and rely on necessity or impulse rather than just doing good
business.
Japanese vending machines are omnipresent, well-stocked, with good selection
of useful stuff, but more importantly you don't feel like you're throwing
money down the drain when you're buying from one. The prices are obviously
higher than in a 'mart, but they're not "$5 for a bottle of coke" overpriced.
~~~
Kurtz79
"Aside from providing warm drinks, that's the big ticket right there: IME,
european vending machines are basically predatory, they're way overpriced for
what they provide and rely on necessity or impulse rather than just doing good
business."
Absolutely agree: I don't remember the last time I bought something from a
public vending machine (or even seeing someone else doing so) here in Spain.
Prices are anywhere between 2/3 times the price you would buy at a
supermarket, an Airport shop kind of markup: whatever you get tastes bad as
you feel swindled.
When I was in Japan it was rare if I didn't get something from a machine any
given day.
~~~
irq11
Believe it or not, but even in Japan, vending machine prices are 2-3x what
you’ll pay in a supermarket. You just don’t notice it as much because prices
are low in general.
A supermarket can coffee will cost maybe 60-100円 for what you pay 120-200円 in
a vending machine.
~~~
CydeWeys
I didn't find that to be true to such a degree.
I was tracking the prices of vending machines pretty closely in Japan, and if
you didn't jump at the first one you saw and waited until a more out of the
way one, you could typically find almost anything in the 100-120 yen range. My
favorites were the "100 yen special" machines where most or all items were 100
yen. The prices were in large red lettering to emphasize the deal. Prices
could go up to 160 yen or higher in the vending machines in tourist areas,
especially the ones inside ticketed attractions.
100-120 yen was around the price you'd pay for those same drinks in a
convenience or grocery store, with the only exception being bottled water. You
can find bottled water much more cheaply in the grocery stores than anywhere
else, well under half the price by volume. This is a pretty universal rule of
travel that I've found holds true everywhere.
~~~
irq11
Those 100 yen machines are rare. I lived in Kyoto, and can recall seeing only
one in the city. People would go out of their way to use it. More typically,
you will see machines that have 120円 prices by reducing sizes. Buy the same
drink in the conbini next door, and you’d get twice the volume.
Regardless, if you’re in a place where vending machine prices are lower than
usual, it only means that the store prices are lower still. There’s no magic
here; the vending machine operators are making a healthy profit.
~~~
CydeWeys
For what it's worth I saw more of them in Kyoto than in Tokyo. I was staying
around here:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0086507,135.7541648,17.51z](https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0086507,135.7541648,17.51z)
It did bother me that I could never tell what the actual size of the drink was
going to be. Is it in kanji, or is it just not listed at all? I definitely had
a situation where I was expecting a full normal sized bottle of green tea but
got a smaller one.
------
bane
Just came back from Japan and man are there too many convenience stores.
Within any given area there is probably 6 to 7 stores within eyeshot and an
easy walk. It's weird thinking that they are too convenient, but honestly they
start to become pointless. More than once we simply walked by a few knowing
that there would be another one just a minute or two more down the street.
It's great that we could find something to eat at 2am when jet lag messed with
our eating schedule and nothing else was open except the four 24-hour chain
restaurants, 6 full-service Izakayas and a late night curry shop within a 5
minute walk. What would we have ever done without a choice of 6! different
convenience stores within the same area?!
Oh and on the way there's vending machines literally jammed into every
available urban crack that can fit one where I can service most of my beverage
and a few food needs.
I couldn't figure out how these places earn enough money to keep the lights on
given the competition, now I guess I know.
~~~
ekianjo
> Within any given area there is probably 6 to 7 stores within eyeshot and an
> easy walk.
That's just Tokyo and it's a very biased impression. Most places in Japan
don't have that kind of density of combinis. I there there are about 55 000
combini in Japan, and there's probably 20% of that in Tokyo alone so you were
in an area that's not representative of japan as a whole. In most other other
cities there's rarely more than one combini at the same place, and you would
not see 5-6 of them just by walking 5 minutes.
> I couldn't figure out how these places earn enough money to keep the lights
> on given the competition, now I guess I know.
Of course they earn money. They sell products with a high markup (like 30%
more than everything you find in a supermarket), they have their own lines of
products with even higher profit margins, and there's usually a density of
population that guarantees a minimum of business viability anyway. Never seen
a combini owner that was poor or having a hard time to make ends meet.
~~~
karaokeyoga
From my place in suburban Kyoto, there are five 7-11s within a ten-minute
walk. Ten years ago, there was one.
~~~
Kurtz79
I was in Kobe a few weeks ago and it was the same, all over the city center.
As a consumer honestly there is little to complain, they ARE very convenient.
But grandparent is correct: a lot of items are expensive for what they are
(some of the "fresh" meals cost as much as a eating in a normal ramen/noodle
place on the street), so you pay for the convenience.
~~~
ekianjo
> I was in Kobe a few weeks ago and it was the same, all over the city center.
That's only in Sannomiya. Go in Suma, Nada, Rokko, you won't find that many
combinis within a very short walking distance. The city center is appropriate
for this kind of density because there's 3 different train lines (and 4 if you
consider the metro) stopping right at the same place transporting hundreds of
thousands of people every day.
------
frequentnapper
I currently stay in japan. The competition here is intense when it comes to
food and drink. Every alley, even in residential areas in the back of the
houses, has some mom & pop operated hole in the wall eatery. I never see more
than two customers at many of these places at a time, but they stay open
ungodly hours. I can't imagine they would be making more than $2-3 an hour on
the average after all the costs.
~~~
SenHeng
A lot of family run retail shops all over the world/Asia seem to have this
misconception that family labour is free, thus their
employees/children/siblings are effectively working for below minimum wage.
~~~
granshaw
It’s an arrangement. Low paid labor now for ownership of the business in the
future
------
wiggler00m
One advantage of the prolific Japanese convenience store (or "konbini") is
that any improvement in the underlying franchise system can be rapidly
deployed to all franchisees (like nodes in a network). This is true of many
franchises, but the konbini are exceptionally prolific, so this effect is
magnified.
For example, if there is an opportunity to increase efficiency, or reduce
costs or environmental impact, it would be relatively easy to deploy this
throughout an entire franchise, as compared with heterogenous stores.
As for the issue of opening hours, labour shortages and demographic trends
(the population is aging and decreasing) are significant. I am only aware of
two likely solutions which are not mutually exclusive: (1) immigration; and
(2) automation, ie. robots. Increasing the fertility rate might also address
this issue, but seems less likely to happen.
~~~
pyrale
I guess smaller opening times would also solve the issue. I have yet to
understand why societies tolerate such things as stores open at 3am, given the
productivity it has, and the implications for workers.
~~~
TulliusCicero
There's nothing inherently wrong with stores open odd hours. Some people like
to keep odd hours, some have to because of the nature of their job (a lot of
maintenance/repair/cleaning stuff is done at night), so some stores being open
works with that. And of course there are places like clubs where night hours
make more sense.
This situation in Japan seems unusual, usually a business would only stay open
late if there was actually a reasonable amount of demand at that time.
~~~
pyrale
The "Some people like to work odd hours" is pretty tired in my opinion. Most
people who work these hours are doing it out of necessity.
If execs were forced to work whenever some of their employees work, their
imagination about who likes what would change dramatically.
------
hrktb
It’s a bit brushed over and sprinkled in the article but this part was brutal:
> Last year, when Fukui Prefecture was hit by the heaviest snowfall in
> decades, it was discovered that a 7-Eleven franchise store was banned by the
> parent company from closing temporarily even after the store owner’s wife
> fell ill from overwork.
> He lost his wife in May last year and he “was on the verge of falling ill or
> dying from karōshi (death from overwork),” he said.
It summarizes for me how extreme the relation is between franchise and the
owners, how little escape they have from that abusive bind.
------
baroffoos
The problem seems so obvious. There is far more supply than demand. Why do
people keep opening these stores when it is clear no one wants them?
~~~
patio11
It’s not clear no one wants them, since there is little data available to an
ex-salaryman looking to open one in a particular neighborhood and if you do an
unsophisticated “just watch a store all day” competitive analysis both a
thriving store and a struggling store appear busy at all hours of day and
night.
The franchisor is basically uniformly in favor of more locations since the
franchisee bears most startup costs and the franchisor gets an effective call
option on their cash flow.
(It’s also not clear to me that convenience stores are oversupplied relative
to demand; there are probably some geographic mismatches but in e.g. this
neighborhood in Tokyo you can find 3 in a Us city block and they’re self-
evidently very viable. Which you might ask “How is that self-evident?” and I’m
left to say “Trust me.”)
~~~
michaelt
I guess it depends on how much data you'd expect someone to gather before
opening a store.
I was under the impression opening a convenience store cost $50,000 or more,
not an investment to make lightly IMHO. A few visits will tell you if the
owner is working 16 hours a day 7 days a week, and you can estimate markups by
looking at prices on the store shelves. And that's without looking for
franchisees complaining online, or asking them in person.
------
jen729w
See also: Australia. 7-Elevens are _everywhere_ [1] and the stories of
underpaid workers are commonplace [0].
[0]:
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/12/7-elev...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/12/7-eleven-
is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-in-worker-exploitation-so-whos-turning-a-blind-eye)
[1]: In the major metropolitan areas.
~~~
baroffoos
I'm in Adelaide and convenience stores are not super common. There is usually
one on each major street but nowhere near as much as the other states. When I
was in Sydney it was a massive shock to see 711 everywhere. It was quite often
to have 2-3 of them within my field of vision.
~~~
avinium
The first time I went to Sydney (late 90s) I remember thinking the same -
7-11's everywhere.
There was definitely an explosion of convenience stores across Adelaide -
perhaps 2010 until 2015? But they then all shuttered in quick succession.
------
jorblumesea
I don't understand the demand from the parent company to stay open late, given
the lack of customers they clearly have and the oversupply of combini. I was
at a 7-11 in Osaka by the dotonbori and it was basically vacant.
Like many things in Japanese society it seems to be because "this is the way
it's done".
~~~
patio11
You live in a country with franchises, right? What would you articulate as the
brand promise of a McDonalds? McDonalds has a very clear internal
understanding of that brand promise: it includes clean bathrooms, a smile,
extremely low prices available, and very consistent food.
7/11 also has a brand promise. It includes, prominently, “If you need it, 7/11
is open.”
The LTV of a conbini regular is very, very, very high and the brand does not
want you to sour on it for reasons specific to Store 6548 in May 2019.
~~~
jorblumesea
I understand what a franchise is. McDonald's regularly changes its menu,
removing items that do not perform. McDonald's franchise owners can run menu
items in areas that make sense for them. Hours for McDonald's are set based on
demand and largely up to the franchise owner.
There are many examples of franchises allowing flexibility within the brand
while still adhering to the brand ideals.
It sounds like 7-11 corporate for JP is uncompromising to a fault and
unwilling to meet owners halfway.
~~~
aidenn0
Talk to any McD's franchisee about all-day breakfast if you want a comparably
"unpopular with franchisees" brand requirement.
~~~
TulliusCicero
I like the all day breakfast because it can be nice if I stayed up really late
the night before and I'm getting "breakfast" at noon. I don't see the point of
it past, like, 1 or 2 though.
~~~
asdff
The 24h mcd by me stops serving dinner at 2am, right when the drunks flood the
lines and there are two people working the entire store. Possible reason right
there.
------
raverbashing
7-11 is not friendly to Franchisees in the US either. There have been some
lawsuits even
Owning a convenience store is a hard proposition
~~~
PhantomGremlin
It's not just 7-Eleven. I wouldn't want to be a franchisee of any sort in the
US. The power dynamic is horrible.
McDonald's is probably one of the better ones. But you're still beholden to
them. They often own the land under the building, if not the building itself.
They tell you exactly what you must do. They tell you when to remodel. They
make you buy from their suppliers. They can decide to open another store a
mile away from yours.
But longer term I think the worst franchise to be in will be car dealerships.
Once EVs become mainstream, the service revenue will fall by about 80%.
There's just so much less to go wrong. How will dealers be able to pay for the
overhead of their giant buildings?
~~~
AmVess
Chick-fil-A and McDonald's are two of the better ones. They don't give them to
just anyone, and are careful about locations, too. To become a franchisee with
them ,you have to have a proven record of success and have plenty of money in
the bank.
Rule of thumb: the easier it is to obtain a franchise, the less it is worth.
~~~
WarDores
Every CFA owner/operator (you technically don't franchise) I know (n=3) says
those are basically money-printing machines.
------
coldtea
How close another franchise would allowed to be should have been part of the
contract when opening a store.
E.g. "no second franchize store in 1 mile radius" (of course this could differ
from place to place based on market and population density).
~~~
esrauch
When I was in Japan there were some cases of four 7/11s visible at once
without turning my head, so I think you can set your sights a lot lower than a
one mile radius.
------
Causality1
I admire the courage of people who run their own business but I don't think
that life would ever be for me. I love working 40-48 hours a week and leaving
my work at work when I go home.
~~~
h1d
If you have confidence in your skill, can stay in the field you like and get
double the average, why not?
------
mft_
It would seem that this is ripe for automation, no?
In fact, I've been surprised for some time that there hasn't been a greater
development/proliferation in this area. It would seem that a large (room-
sized) refrigerated vending machine offering a range equivalent to a small
convenience store is already highly technologically feasible, and would
probably be far more cost efficient (smaller footprint, much lower staffing
requirements) than running a convenience store.
~~~
typeliftr
I feel like vandalism and theft would be a big problem in this scenario.
~~~
kibibyte
Outside of Japan maybe, but it's something that would work in that culture.
From my last trip to Japan a couple of years ago, I saw vending machines
everywhere. In urban areas, there would be one every couple of city blocks in
urban areas; I even encountered a few in the middle of park trails in
relatively more secluded areas (e.g. more or less the middle of a forest). All
these vending machines appeared unattended, but they always had inventory.
------
tokyoHacker
Inspite of having 7/11 at every nook and corner ( specially in
Tokyo/Yokohama), it would be hard to get a sandwich, obento(お弁当) or onigiri if
you go to a convenience store (コンビニ) just after peak lunch time.
------
SenHeng
Has anyone noticed how FamilyMart seems to be in a war of attrition with 7-11.
There's always one nearby another.
Lawson seems pretty fine being on their own.
------
fnord77
> The owner, in his 40s, said he works 500 hours a month.
how is this even possible? That would be almost 17 hours a day, 7 days a week
for a 30-day month.
~~~
hudibras
It's not; he's lying.
~~~
zimpenfish
Do you have a source for that claim? The article doesn't give me enough
information to judge but I might have missed something.
------
Mikeb85
It's a pretty solid assumption in economics that in an industry with perfect
competition, profit margins eventually converge with the benchmark interest
rate.
------
vkou
The irony is, of course, that the chain is named "Seven-Eleven" because it was
originally open from 7 am to 11 pm.
> One Monday night in late March, only 10 customers came to the man’s store in
> the three hours before dawn, and the sales during that time were a little
> more than ¥6,000. The store will be in the red if he hired someone for night
> shifts.
Smart management would close the store during those hours. Of course, the
franchise doesn't care for smart management - when the operator eats the loss.
~~~
microcolonel
I think what they're getting at is that if you want to operate a 7-Eleven, you
ought to be absolutely reliably open at the expected hours. The intended
alternative is to shut down the store. This man made a terrible business
decision and is now stuck between a sunk cost and probably not a lot of
alternatives for work.
~~~
ranrotx
That’s the problem with a lot of franchise agreements. So many things are set
and specified for you that you have no room to optimize your business as an
operator.
In a way, you’re almost just like an employee of the franchisor, but without
any of the benefits and a lot more liability. But it’s a great relationship
for the person selling the franchise.
~~~
Scoundreller
Depending on the tax system, being able to structure yourself as a « business
owner » can mean more money in your pocket than being a salaried manager.
------
ilaksh
It seems like 7 Eleven could help coordinate hours so that one owner could
rest but a nearby store would be open at that time.
~~~
bkor
The article specifically states that 7/11 is preventing various stores from
not being open 24/7\. E.g. small store, wife is utterly ill, 7/11 doesn't
care; store needs to stay open.
It seems they like the owner exhausted so they cannot do the things which
makes sense. E.g. to sell the food which is close to the expiry date instead
of throwing it out. Yet another example from the article.
~~~
SapporoChris
The article specifically states that 7/11 was preventing various stores from
not being open.
“We will let the owners (of franchise stores) make the final decision (on
whether to shorten operating hours),” said Seven-Eleven Japan President
Fumihiko Nagamatsu.
There is a 7/11 near the Sapporo Zoo that is closed early in the evening.
------
delhanty
Even for HN, these are some of the most empathy-deficient comments that I've
ever read.
Yes, it's true that there is a huge problem with overwork for the franchisees.
But those stores aren't there (just) for you.
Imagine this scenario: you're over 80, living on your own and not very mobile.
The fact that there's a 7-eleven within 100 metres that sells a large variety
of foodstuffs and essential items in single portion sizes allows one to
maintain one's independence, which is a godsend. Try that in LA!
Japan values social-cohesion. Many of us who live here long term do too.
Edit: admit there's a problem for the franchisees.
~~~
blazespin
Right, but the solution is probably automation and not overworked to death
franchise owners.
~~~
rangersanger
Overwork is better than no work. Automation may be part of the solution, but
on its own it fails.
~~~
adventured
> Overwork is better than no work.
No work is rarely the trade-off issue in Japan. They operate for quite
different margins and labor practices than eg the US.
They haven't had an unemployment rate over 5.5% in 40 years. The typical rate
has been 3% to 3.5% for the last 30 years - a time in which they've suffered
from perpetual economic stagnation and zero net growth. It's around 2.5% right
now.
Japan is losing population while simultaneously having an extraordinarily low
unemployment rate. Automation is the only path forward, they should be
pursuing it with as much vigor as possible. If you're Japan, as your
population contracts, the ideal is to wipe out all convenience store jobs and
push the labor force higher up the ladder whenever possible.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
> Automation is the only path forward, they should be pursuing it with as much
> vigor as possible.
Well, they could always do more immigration. Its not like they don't do some
already, and I think the Japanese will become much more open to it in the
future.
~~~
m_mueller
As far as I understand Japan is already opening. Their new Visa score system
is quite broad.
~~~
MarkSweep
Wow, they made the point based thing quite a bit easier: [http://www.immi-
moj.go.jp/newimmiact_3/en/pdf/171110_leaflet...](http://www.immi-
moj.go.jp/newimmiact_3/en/pdf/171110_leaflet.pdf)
For example, you get points for JLPT N2 (previously only N1) and for patents
you only need one (previously three, if IIRC).
~~~
Scoundreller
The Ministry of Justice operates their immigration system???
------
blazespin
The problem is capitalism and not really 7-11. If 7-11 didn't do this, family
mart would and the guy would probably lose his store altogether.
Capitalism doesn't care about people or the distress they feel during
transitions. It's very effective at generally raising up the living standards
of all people, but can be pretty inhumane at times when dealing with certain
groups of people who's skills and services are becoming obsolete.
The only choice really is retraining and switching careers and having social
safety nets. The other alternative, socialism, just spreads the pain across
the entire world.
Our only realistic chance at reducing global poverty anytime soon is via
capitalism. Sucks for this 7-11 owner, but that's how it goes.
~~~
ako
Are you really sure that capitalism will reduce _global_ poverty?
The core of capitalism is competition. This may result in higher quality and
larger choice, but if these are sufficient enough it will in the end result in
lower prices. This has to be done through efficiency but will also result in
lower wages.
I think unconstrained, uncontrolled capitalism will result in 90% of the
global population working very low income, replaceable jobs, or being
completely replaced by automation.
~~~
icebraining
> I think unconstrained, uncontrolled capitalism will result in 90% of the
> global population working very low income, replaceable jobs, or being
> completely replaced by automation.
I think that's likely; after all, capitalism already replaced the jobs of 90%
of the developed world population with automation and other efficiencies:
that's why most of us no longer work in agriculture.
Now, was that a net negative development?
~~~
Moru
It was for the unemployed farmers help that is no longer needed and is now
stuck with a house in a town where the prices have dropped way below the
mortage on the house and 60 km to the closest store/gas station.
~~~
Camas
That some people might be worse off says nothing about the net effect.
------
ixtli
The problem isn't convenience stores (I lived in japan for 1.5 years and lemme
tell you, they're wonderful and everyone loves them.) It's capitalisms
completely unregulated growth in situations where no one could possibly
benefit. They call it competition, but that's not what this is in practice.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tweet Roulette feature helps Twitter users with common interests break the ice - symptic
We posted FriendFury on HN a few days ago and there seemed to be interest in the project, but we noticed users weren't interacting much. The original version only let users choose a few topics they care about and then we showed other FriendFury users who share the same interests. Last night we added a Tweet Roulette feature to help encourage exploration and to help people break the ice and initiate relevant conversations through Twitter.<p>After joining in (using the Twitter API), you'll now see that we've already selected a person to message and let you know which topic you both share. Just send a tweet asking their favorite musician or show them your new project to break the ice. We think it's a really novel use of the "roulette" style feature, and I'd love to hear HN's thoughts!<p>URL: http://friendfury.com
======
massarog
clickable link: <http://friendfury.com>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google now scraping GMail for your Amazon purchases - burningion
https://twitter.com/burningion/status/628730345584766976
======
Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0
This is not a new thing: their Inbox app automatically picks up my amazon
purchases and tracks its progress. The items show up with a picture of the
item inline as well, which I thought was a rather nice touch. It also picked
up emails from Eat24/Yelp and showed them with the restaurant's own photo of
the item I ordered, which is rather astonishing. Nice job, whoever implemented
that
~~~
Gustomaximus
It does this for Ebay and flights too. I quite like the Google Now updates
from this. That said the Now service seems to be stagnating. I've not seen any
improvements for a long time. I quite like my early experience with Cortana on
a new MS phone. Looking forward to the software wars on developing better PA
devices.
~~~
scribscrob
They just added the ability to hold down on words in any android app and get
information on the word. For example if you press and hold "chinese food" it
will pop up with yelp reviews of nearby places. This is not available on all
flavors of android IIRC.
------
greenyoda
It's not clear from the sketchy evidence provided that they're specifically
scraping GMail for your Amazon purchases. It might be that they're looking
into your GMail for search results in general. It would be interesting if that
user sent himself a message with the same search terms in it to see whether
the results are specific to emails from Amazon.
~~~
TD-Linux
No, they directly scrape. I've noticed this feature for over a year in Google
Now. They include the delivery time and status.
------
snowwrestler
Google is now _telling you_ that they have scraped your email for purchases.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Security vulnerability in str.format in Python - forsaken
http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2016/12/29/careful-with-str-format/
======
ReedJessen
The author proposes a change that we as the user can implement between now the
the time this issue is patched.
Having never worked on the core source code for a language like python, I
would like to know what the Python 3.6 maintainers might do to patch this
vulnerability? How would they fix it at the core level?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Malaysia will return contaminated plastic waste to the countries that shipped it - DoreenMichele
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/asia/malaysia-plastic-waste-return-intl/index.html
======
docker_up
This is a good thing. I had no idea we weren't recycling our plastic and just
shipping it across the world, only to get dumped in a forest or into the
ocean.
We need to stop producing so much plastic. We need laws to standardize
plastics so that only purely recyclable plastics exist and no more single-use
plastics, or compostable containers. Anything else should be banned.
I don't care if it runs some companies out of business because the costs are
too high. I would rather those companies fail than keep piling up with all
this sickening useless and ultimately poisonous garbage from single-use
plastics.
We should also make it illegal to ship our garbage outside of the country.
That will force us to deal with our own problems.
~~~
JulianMorrison
Also it seems likely at this point that the danger has been wildly
underestimated.
The rallying cry against plastic used to be that "it takes hundreds of years
to break down".
But now we know that when it breaks down, it gets _worse_. Microplastics are
suspected to be bioaccumulating, carrying poisons and bacteria, and possibly
could get into cells like asbestos. And the only way to dispose of the stuff
that won't eventually become microplastic is incineration - putting all that
carbon into the atmosphere, along with other unpleasant combustion products.
~~~
docker_up
Yes, as usual those of us that told us the risk was low or non-existent were
wrong again. How often do we have to be duped by so-called experts before we
realize that the "experts" have actually no idea how to calculate risk, and
that we can't rely on their "assurances"? It goes both ways, where scientists
told us that salt and high fat diets were causing heart disease and now both
of those have been walked back.
~~~
JulianMorrison
The experts were working with the facts as they were known at the time.
Microplastic wasn't obvious. Most things, when they break down, aren't
harmful. This isn't a problem of experts. This is a problem of hubristically
creating a never seen before material and assuming it would have no impact.
------
Waterluvian
The president of the Philippines recently threw a tantrum, threatening to
declare war on Canada if they didn't take back their garbage.
I dug into it and found that the president is completely justified in being
pissed off. A Canadian company shipped "recycling" which turned out to be
undisputable trash. Diapers and such.
What pisses me off is that I cannot find the name of this company anywhere. So
Canada is taking all the blame for some company that shipped them trash and
labeled it recycling.
~~~
linuxftw
If the agreement was Canada as a country ensures their recyclable exporters
will only export things that conform to some standard, then the burden would
be on Canada, yes.
But, what kind of bizarre world do we live in where we ship our trash to
overseas places to be 'recycled' ? It just doesn't make any sense. We are
exporting our waste and pollution to developing nations, those people are
probably facing much worse environmental conditions than those in the
developed world. It's truly despicable.
~~~
Waterluvian
Yeah that's a good point. It's unusual that the articles keep mentioning "a
Canadian company" but never names it. Maybe the agreement was at a national
level.
And yeah, it's absurd. I just moved somewhere in Ontario where every garbage
bag I put at the curbside costs $2. It's absolutely amazing to stand out on
garbage day and see just how little people have set out. The system works.
The recycling is still "free" but I would love to see the same happen.
~~~
mcny
> And yeah, it's absurd. I just moved somewhere in Ontario where every garbage
> bag I put at the curbside costs $2. It's absolutely amazing to stand out on
> garbage day and see just how little people have set out. The system works.
And I'll continue to advocate that nobody except perhaps the 1% should have
children in developed countries. A baby won't poop any less because trash
costs $2 a bag. From what I understand diapers by nature don't break down for
a long time.
~~~
jeromegv
Except there are re-usable diapers.
~~~
Thlom
Tried those. They work, but require some work. The diapers must be washed,
depending on the diaper type you might have to separate the fillings and the
diaper before washing and put together again afterwards. You also need to
insert a rice paper for the poop ...
It works, but it’s more work with them than with disposable diapers. We tried
reusable for our two first, but the last one we have only used disposable
diapers.
------
hammock
Malaysia's real estate is too valuable for them to be storing plastic trash on
it. The entire place is being aggressively deforested to make room for more
palm plantations and that's way more important than whatever they get for
taking in garbage.
~~~
A2017U1
Palm oil produces 4x more per hectare than nearly all other types of vegetable
oil.
There's no easy fix here, the developed world is basically saying don't cut
down your forests not long after we did so ourselves to make way for
agriculture. Not to mention lecturing a bunch of poor people to pay more for a
cooking staple.
Malaysians get quite defensive about their palm crops.
~~~
bunderbunder
It's also starting to look like palmitic acid has about the same
cardiovascular health effects as trans fatty acids. So, yeah, in the long run,
might as well leave the forests, because there's a good chance that the
current fad for palm oil isn't going to last all that long.
That said, 100% agreed that it's ridiculous that developed nations are tut-
tutting developing nations for economically exploiting their own resources,
not only in a way that mirrors what developed nations have already done, but
also in response to economic demand that largely originates from those same
developed nations.
~~~
diveanon
There is a growing movement in Malaysia to use healthier oils instead of palm
oil.
I have been to several restaurants in KL recently that are openly advertising
that they use no palm oil.
When traveling in Malaysia it is impossible to ignore the environmental impact
of these plantations and the local population are becoming more aware every
day.
------
stunt
This is really bad. Many are just dumping them into the ocean.
As long as it is cheaper to export waste, we are not going to build a better
recycling system or even better stop producing so much plastic.
East Asian countries should stop taking plastic waste.
------
apacheCamel
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. I am happy that Malaysia is taking
a stand and is refusing to be a dumping ground for trash. I am sad that all of
this plastic is coming back to the US where I am honestly unsure on what they
will do with it. I am mad that it has gotten this far and there doesn't seem
to be an end in sight.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
They’ll just incinerate it, which is probably what they should have done in
the first place. Companies in third world countries bidding unrealistically
low for recycling contracts has made recycling seem more viable than it
actually is.
~~~
dalore
Landfill is better then incinerating. Burning it releases toxic chemicals and
is effectively dumping it in the air (vs dumping it in the ocean). Landfill
(dumping in the ground) is the least worst of all the options. From what you
may believe there is plenty of land available.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
Incineration works well when modern technology is brought to bear. It also
doesn't create later water/land pollution problems. In any cases, one solution
might work better than the other depending on the context.
~~~
joe_the_user
Burning, recycling or burial all could be OK if they were done right. But
doing them right involves more costs than doing them wrong. The US and other
countries hire companies and pay them to do the disposal. Sure, the companies
get paid for the estimated cost of doing the disposal right but companies make
all their extra profit from doing the disposal wrong. The entire approach of
subcontracting is misguided but given vast vested interests behind the
subcontracting approach, given you know this stuff is going to be done wrong,
which wrong to do you do want? Pollution of the air, the earth or the water?
------
Causality1
Good. Dumping American trash in Malaysia isn't any better than emptying your
kitchen trash can on your bedroom floor.
~~~
dev_dull
They don’t dump it there. People from Malaysia are buying it.
~~~
NullPrefix
They weren't buying used diapers, they were buying recyclable plastic.
You wanted a new TV in your living room? Let me throw some puke and used
diapers instead.
~~~
dev_dull
You seem to be implying there's some kind of cheating happening in what is
ultimately a business deal. I wouldn't buy a new TV with puke and diapers
unless it was my business reselling the TV and disposing of the rest.
~~~
whatshisface
> _You seem to be implying there 's some kind of cheating happening in what is
> ultimately a business deal._
In the article, it was revealed that the contracts were for recyclable
materials not worthless toxic garbage, and Malaysia was actually being
scammed. (That's why their president made such a big deal about it).
------
princeb
malaysian recyclers, as far as i know, were fairly profitable despite paying a
much lower rate compared to chinese recyclers. there are companies out there
squeezing a fortune out of rubbish. the visual impact on the landscape is
notable, although not much more can be said about the sime-darby fields of
palm trees and container housing that dominate the rest of the rural
countryside.
while i feel bad for them, the reality of business in malaysia is that you are
at the mercy of politicians and their policies. these change like the squalls
at sea.
~~~
linuxftw
IMO, this is effectively the same thing as buying conflict diamonds or
conflict oil. Too much of our economy relies on serf or outright slave labor
by doing business with despotic governments.
Note: I'm not making comments about Malaysia specifically, I don't know
anything about the place, and parent's comments might not apply to them, IDK.
------
zaroth
Yesterday I was opening up yet another Amazon white bubble wrap envelope when
I took a closer look at the recycling logo.
“Please remove paper label before recycling.”
Mind somewhat blown. How often do you think that actually happens? But also,
really shows you how hard this stuff is to process. Of course peeling off the
label is nearly impossible.
I wish after tearing the perforation off, there was another flap in there
waiting to be deployed to cleanly reuse the envelope (versus the tape monster
which you end up with if you try to reuse it by folding it over on itself).
And then another row of perforation. And another flap. All the way from 8.5x11
or so, down to 8.5x5.
Some of the clothes mailers I get are designed like this, with an inner flap
and adhesive strip designed for sending back what didn’t fit.
Would that be worth it in the end at scale? I for one would definitely save
the bubble envelopes if they were cleaner to reuse.
But then that label would also have to peel off easier too (different type of
adhesive).
------
marcusjt
According to [https://youtu.be/SnB6iRDoJ90](https://youtu.be/SnB6iRDoJ90)
(7:45 onwards) even before China started refusing recyclable waste only 9% of
what went into blue bins in the USA was actually being recycled, the other 91%
was being incinerated or landfilled. what the stats are now I don't know but
they're almost certainly worse not better.
~~~
Joakal
Not the country's fault but Chinese companies definitely should take back the
waste. They produced it in the first place. If not, they should not be allowed
to sell.
------
toss1
My first thought is to wonder how this issue is related to this recent
finding:
10 Rivers Contribute Most of the Plastic in the Oceans
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-
plas...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic-
tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/)
------
objektif
Do we have a solution for taking care of such waste in a clean way? I saw a
company that claims to convert it to fuel.
~~~
Joakal
Not that I know of. But there's a simple policy solution. Producers must take
back waste as a condition to sell.
If they're brand new companies, then simply ask for a bond until they've been
around a while.
All this is risk free but single use waste cost is priced in for consumers.
Countries that don't adopt this policy will have higher taxes to deal
environment costs which is worse than prevention. Companies affected by this
can bypass conditions by only using list of approved materials; recycable,
biodegradable, etc.
------
taksintikk
Can the Scandinavia trash>energy plants handle “contaminants”?
~~~
Thlom
They claim there’s no pollution from our local plant at least, but we don’t
burn plastic.
------
whenchamenia
If by dumped, you mean sold, sure. They will also have to sell it on if they
don't want it.
~~~
bilbo0s
The people who agreed to buy it did so illegally. It's just that now, Malaysia
is implementing a more robust and wholistic police action to enforce their
mandates in that regard.
Sucks for us, but entirely within the rights of the government of Malaysia. If
we have a problem with the scammers who took our money, then we're free to
take that up in court with the scammers. But that has nothing to do with the
government of Malaysia.
~~~
dev_dull
I actually don’t think it sucks for us. We’re better equipped to recycle or
properly dispose of the waste. It will definitely cost more but I think it’s
something that most people are willing to accept.
Even now I’m hesitant to put things like plastic bags and straws into the
recycling rather than trash. Only by placing it in the trash can I be more
sure it doesn’t end up floating near some reef.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mainland China sees rise in new coronavirus cases - kerng
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-toll/mainland-china-sees-rise-in-new-coronavirus-cases-idUSKBN21N009
======
rdtwo
Why do we even report this fake news. China’s numbers are all bogus. Might as
well just phrase it as today the Chinese government decided they had 30 cases,
yesterday they felt like 19 was the right number.
------
kerng
This is scary. But as Bill Gates suggested, as long as there is no vaccine
that can be rolled out world wide, we will have to continue living
differently.
~~~
noad
How about No. How about Bill Gates and his friends sell a few jets and start
building free clinics in every major city?
It's been two months of contradictory advice and hypocritic pontificating from
experts. I'm getting real sick of all the "torture everyone forever" advice
from our dear leaders, how about all these billionaires actually do something
instead?
~~~
kerng
Not everything can be solved with money. Developing a vaccine will take time
and tests, Bill Gates even said the foundation is developing 7 factories for
different approaches in parallel and likely only 1-2 of them will be useful.
Normally this is done sequentially to not waste money.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: A Twitter clone app built with getstream.io - tbarbugli
https://github.com/GetStream/django_twitter
======
tbarbugli
Disclaimer: I am the author of the linked app and a founder of GetStrean.io
(TS'15).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tell HN: New Google homepage, A/B testing gone crazy. - Loic
Today, I was served the new Google homepage, the first that struck me out was how inconsistent it was. I started to look at all the inconsistencies and found many of them:<p>- 3 different arrows for the more links.
- mixed use of upper/lower case for the "M" in the more links.
- the position of "advanced search" between the home page and the results page.
- the position of the search button (kind of within the input field on the results page but below with space on the home page).
- you see "Everything" with an icon in front of it (why the icon?) and then you have a link with more, what is more than everything?
- etc.<p>It can be a game to find so many design errors, things totally wrong when looking at the whole page.<p>I asked myself, why? Then I found, it is simply A/B testing gone crazy. They have tested gazillions of independent small changes in their multivariate tests, found the <i>optimal</i> combination, but, forgot the big picture.<p>So maybe the new home page and results page are the optimal ones, but they are inconsistently optimal. For the first time in many years, the Google pages now "feel wrong".<p>This is annoying me a lot, for 2 things:<p>- I hate it when I search.
- It will spread like wild fire because if Google has done it, it must be good, so bad designers will just copy the design without thinking twice (so I will need to support that in many other websites).<p>And you, what do you think about it?
How are you designing your A/B tests not to fall in this trap?
======
jacquesm
It is the first time for me that I think that changes to the google homepage
are really a step in the wrong direction. In the past they seem to have had it
together on this one, if there were changes they were subtle and did not seem
to get in the way of getting the job done.
Now they've gone overboard on the 'b(l)ing' factor, presumably to compete with
other search engines that look 'spiffy'.
I'd rather have 10 text links (or even 30) per page without adornment than all
the stuffy they've been adding lately.
Duckduckgo could easily capitalize on that, give us the very early google
interface with better results.
That would make me switch, their scroll-down-to-get-more trick already is very
elegant.
~~~
Loic
Thank you for reminding me about Duckduckgo, I always dismissed it because of
the javascript requirement, but trying again today I found it pretty clean. I
will need to commit myself to a one week long test to better assess how good
it is.
~~~
jacquesm
While you're testing, try gigablast.com as well, they're pretty impressive.
------
msy
Looks like Douglas Bowman was right and its only got worse since he bailed.
<http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html>
~~~
jessriedel
Bowman is more describing why he doesn't _like_ working there; he really
doesn't make a claim that Google is making poor design choices from a business
standpoint. He criticizes the use of data (aka, you know, _evidence_ ) as a
crutch without giving a single example, theoretical or otherwise, of how
reliance on data rather than the gut instinct of a good designer leads to a
bad outcome.
~~~
lzimm
I think its the same difference between investing in company lead by a former-
consultant/bean-counter/"professional"-CEO and a real founder.
data is important, but it only gets you so far: table stakes. the thing that
differentiates us is the ability to use intuition.
don't forget that your "gut" has been developed over millions of years of
evolution to keep you alive, and its done a pretty good job. playing with
numbers? couple thousand?
~~~
jessriedel
Intuition/experience is important when there is some aspect of reality that is
hard to measure. Insofar as the data tracks your target, intuition is
unnecessary. That's why I would want an example in which data was failing.
For instance, a fast food chain might take some data and find that they can
decrease the quality of their ingredients without immediately loosing
customers because people have habits and don't really notice right away (and
because consumers will chalk up a few bad experiences to variance at a place
they know well). But, over time, the chain develops a reputation for lower-
quality food, and customers slowly leave.
The problem with this example is that the data can easily measure long-term
effects, especially the subtle damage to reputation. This is a case where
intuition may be needed to override data.
But where's the similar example with Google?
------
endlessvoid94
I mean....
these are such tiny gripes. Some arrows are different because they aren't of
the same priority..people will click "More" more often than they'll click
'more search tools', so that arrow is smaller. makes sense to me.
How exactly is the search button inconsistent with the homepage? You think it
would look better BELOW the textfield on the SERP?
I don't see any mixed case anywhere.
Not trying to be a troll or bust balls or anything, I just find your
criticisms a bit nitpicky. The overall design of the site is incredibly simple
and easy to use.
~~~
Loic
What really annoys me is that you have no space between the input field on the
SERP (first time I discover this acronym) and the search button. On the
homepage you have some space.
Also the advanced search link is now below, not anymore right from the input,
it kinds of make this new SERP cluttered. Note that when logged in, it is even
worse, I have another link for the safe search.
Also you will note that you have 4 or 5 different size of fonts.
I agree with you, roughly it is working (it what the data prove anyway, else
they would have not done it) but nevertheless for me it feels wrong.
<http://xhtml.net/documents/images/logged-in-google-serp.png>
------
kyro
Here's my problem with the design: With the old one, my eyes could act like
magnets, being quickly attracted to either the left or right side, sliding up
and down either side when viewing search results / ads. Now I have to do this
balancing act, putting in quite a bit of effort to keep my eyes on the center
column. Whereas I previously just let the magnetic forces direct my attention
with the old design, I now have to resist the pull from both sides to keep
center focused, making it extremely uncomfortable. Part of me thinks this new
design probably yielded more ad revenue because now people can more easily
succumb to the pull from the right. It's a lot less polarized than before.
~~~
adam_feldman
This is exactly how I feel. I have Adblock, but there is still a very strong
pull to the left column that's distracting as I'm searching.
------
_delirium
This is commonly talked about in the design field as well (since at least the
1960s, probably earlier). On the one hand, there's a very industrial-
psychology-derived HCI tradition, based on user-testing everything with
statistical significance and so on, that tends to do relatively small changes,
e.g. assuming that most of the design will stay as it is, how about widget A
versus widget B? Against them, there's more of a _design_ tradition, derived
from architecture, graphic design, art, and other areas, that looks at more
holistic sorts of issues, and tends to think that doing 1000 A/B tests does
not add up to "design", and isn't likely to produce good outcomes either. HCI
hasn't really resolved the issue over several decades, and it flares up now
and then (my impression is that the main HCI conferences/journals are ~80% the
industrial-psych sort, but the 20% dissenters have persistently stuck around
for decades).
~~~
msy
There is a fundamental misunderstanding of design at play here though. We're
talking about a culture that doesn't understand that when it comes to design,
1+1 should equal 3 or more. You cannot separate out individual elements and
A/B them without looking at the bigger picture. The net result is this - a
kind of unsettling, uncomfortable inconsistency. The element level granularity
of design hierarchy & planning is obvious. I love agile and I'm a fan of fast
iteration and lots of user testing but a strong, consistent design requires
top-down discipline and bold decisions, you cannot increment your way there.
~~~
_delirium
Yeah, I agree with that. It's not even particularly surprising from a
scientific perspective: any scientist knows that if you measure A, B, C, and
D, you don't necessarily know anything about union(A, B) or union(A, B, D),
unless you also measure pairwise and higher-order interactions. At some point,
instead of doing more A/B tests than there are atoms in the universe (since
this explodes exponentially), it might be worth thinking about the problem
using human intelligence.
------
samd
Perhaps another way of saying this is that Google's A/B testing has merely
taken them to a local maximum, but they need a strong, coherent design
discipline to reach the global maximum.
------
pbhjpbhj
You should provide some image links when commenting on visual appearance
especially WRT A/B testing as other users will get a different experience by
definition.
Google homepage is like <http://imgur.com/sc5h6.jpg> for me so I'm guessing
you mean the logged in personal home?
~~~
Loic
Your screenshot is for the home page before moving the mouse, of course you
see nearly nothing, so it is consistent. Anyway, here is a commented
screenshot of the search results page (not all the comments fit in, especially
the font size on the left for the tools, so I did not include them). This is
especially this one annoying me because I access google through the search box
of my browser.
<http://xhtml.net/documents/images/new-google-page.png>
~~~
isleyaardvark
I don't like inconsistencies either, but I don't mind them as long as they're
consistent within a conceptual section.
The arrows on the sidebar, for example, cause a different behavior when
clicked than the arrows up top. The pipes between the links on the right are
between links relating to your personal settings as opposed to the links on
the left, which are filters for the search results (with the exception of
Mail, which is inconsistently placed).
Overall I like the new look but I can see how it may not be the most cohesive
design.
------
alayne
Well, I'm losing my religion. I already have a Greasemonkey script to stop the
fading top row. Look at the results page for "cat toys" in Bing and Google.
Maybe Google should just redirect to Bing.
I get that they're trying to satisfy a diverse user base and drive UI changes
from testing, but it sure came out ugly.
~~~
thorax
Yeah, what struck me was that if style was your differentiator for using
Google versus Bing, you just lost your motivation to stick with Google.
Some examples:
Bing's style: <http://www.bing.com/search?q=mortgage>
New Google style: <http://www.google.com/search?q=mortgage>
Compare to the old google look:
[http://www.darrinward.com/img/articles/screenshot-google-
sea...](http://www.darrinward.com/img/articles/screenshot-google-search-
mortgage.jpg)
~~~
puredemo
Excellent post. I had no idea how similar the Bing and Google result pages are
now. What is up with that? It couldn't have been unintentional, could it?
------
nate
What exactly are they optimizing or testing for here? Just number of searches,
or clicks on that feature. Have they eliminated that people might be clicking
on all these odd ball changes because its novel? I know I've expanded some
menus and clicked on stuff and hovered over shit I wouldn't normally just
because these changes were all shiny and I wanted to see what they do.
But in the end, the only change I like is the logo. Everything just looks a
little odd. But my only real gripe is the location of the search results. Is
it just me, or have the serps been left justified or were they much more in
the center of the screen before? Every friggin machine is getting wide
monitors, so to make stuff go left these days and just give me all this
whitespace in the center and the right, makes me a little nuts.
------
piramida
Just a thought - it may feel uncomfortable because people never accept
changes, we all need time for brain patterns to rebuild. My first impression
was - get the old page back. Second impression was - it now exposes some
functionality I usually had to go to advanced for. I'd wait a month before
jumping to any conclusions.
Yes there are inconsistencies but nothing 3 lines of code won't fix.
------
mahmud
I have been stuck in an A/B hell myself, there is a fat sidebar to my left
that I can't get rid of. Googling for a fix turned up a page saying it was an
experiment and will be over soon.
For the last week I have been using Bing.
~~~
oneplusone
Delete your cookie for google.com. It drove me nuts too.
~~~
mahmud
I have some of the most aggressive security settings. And to be sure, I went
back and deleted all cookies again. No dice.
Well, this will give me an excuse to sample other search engines. I was a
heavy Altavista user until I found this new search engine out of Stanford ..
~~~
paraschopra
May be they were sampling based on user (you must be logged on?).
While doing such large A/B tests, they should definitely give an option to
opt-out. Or at least a prominent feedback button to tell them how bad is their
new design. It is as if Google will A/B test a new design and no-one will
notice it?
------
mr_justin
Nobody else in the world has anything even close too as many visitors as
google, so it's really hard to apply normal logic to this testing they are
doing. My feeling is that every single tiny and seemingly insignificant change
will have an impact on their bottom line. If it affects 0.1% of their users,
that's still a whole ton of people. I see nothing wrong with this multivariate
a/b testing.
------
Keyframe
Google is know for many things good, design not being one of them. Sure,
minimalism was their thing and it was good, but once they went in for design
it showed that they have no clue. Usability yes/maybe, but aesthetics
definitely no.
------
arihant
Talking about the new sidebar, I really think it doesn't blend very well with
the rest of the page. Compare this to the sidebar at www.clusty.com which
feels so much "at home".
------
swah
I kept adjusting the contrast of my monitor until I reailized the logo was
changed.
------
drKarl
I guess it's probably easy to create a Stylish user style to revert changes.
------
udfalkso
Who uses the Google home page anymore?
------
joubert
Experimenting on customers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Type House Divided - maguay
http://nymag.com/news/features/jonathan-hoefler-tobias-frere-jones-2014-6/
======
eps
I am partial to type design and I used to frequent Typophile and few other
places where type designers hang out. It was always everyone's understanding
that Hoefler and Frere-Jones were equal partners. H however has always been
big on self-promotion and he generally had this aura of a cocky know-it-all,
while FJ was more down to earth and approachable. FJ is 100% in the right here
and H is just a greedy asshole. I lost all respect to him as I suspect did
many in designer circles.
~~~
_delirium
_It was always everyone 's understanding that Hoefler and Frere-Jones were
equal partners_
The fact that the company was named "Hoefler & Frere-Jones" sure seems like it
was designed to give that impression to the public, at least.
------
jschulenklopper
The original claim (filed on Jan. 16, 2014) can be found here:
[https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet...](https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=ydQwzs4EZjDkplRrBmkkwA==&system=prod)
Sad to see a (implied) partnership end with: "In the most profound treachery
and sustained exploitation of friendship, trust and confidence, Hoefler
accepted all of the benefits provided by Frere-Jones while repeatedly
promising Frere-Jones that he would give him the agreed equity, only to refuse
to do so when finally demanded."
Earlier discussion on the complaint and the fall-out of the partnership on
Quartz (also Jan. 16): [http://qz.com/167993/frere-jones-is-suing-hoefler-for-
his-ha...](http://qz.com/167993/frere-jones-is-suing-hoefler-for-his-half-of-
the-worlds-preeminent-digital-type-foundry/)
~~~
jacquesm
Something similar happened to me when I was young and stupid and I still have
a bad feeling about that decades later.
This should serve as a warning to anybody in a similar position: promises of
shares are worth nothing, if you are in a vesting arrangement make sure you
get the actual shares on the promised dates, otherwise you are being taken for
a ride, if you are a co-founder and there is no vesting make sure you get your
shares _right now_.
Particularly galling here is this paragraph from the linked text:
"Update (Jan. 17, 2:45pm ET): HFJ released a statement, set in the firm’s
Mercury typeface, denying Frere-Jones’s claims and saying the company will
henceforth be known as Hoefler & Co.: "
So, as long as you're working without a stake in the company but on vague
promises your compensation is limited to your salary + having your name as an
equal partner on the company letterhead but as soon as you so much as try to
enforce your rights you're being removed as if you never existed. Classy.
I sincerely hope that this suit will be resolved amicably, and if it isn't
that the firm will be named Frere-Jones Inc. when they're done.
Hoefler is going to have a hard time arguing that Frere-Jones was only in the
masthead for decorative purposes, it certainly seems to spread the message
that Frere-Jones is to be considered a full partner in the venture.
Beware of power asymmetry in relationships like these.
~~~
_delirium
_Hoefler is going to have a hard time arguing that Frere-Jones was only in the
masthead for decorative purposes, it certainly seems to spread the message
that Frere-Jones is to be considered a full partner in the venture._
Their webpage as of a few months ago also listed him as a "Principal" [1],
which isn't a precisely defined term, but usually implies something like a
partner or co-owner.
[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20131028065322/http://www.typogr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131028065322/http://www.typography.com/about/biographies.php)
~~~
jacquesm
That might be worth saving somewhere as a pdf or as a notarized screenshot or
something to that effect. The archive will remove pages if requested and this
could come in very handy during the lawsuit.
------
Isamu
Ah. Typography.
Please tell me I'm not the only one that expected some discussion of static
vs. dynamic typing, etc. But was wondering why nymag would cover it.
~~~
Agathos
The only reason I clicked was that I was wondering, "no, that couldn't be it."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Task – a Sweet.js macro for CSP in JavaScript - sriharis
https://github.com/srikumarks/cspjs
======
juliangamble
It looks there is already another CSP implementation in Javascript by James
Long (@longster) [http://jlongster.com/Taming-the-Asynchronous-Beast-with-
CSP-...](http://jlongster.com/Taming-the-Asynchronous-Beast-with-CSP-in-
JavaScript) [https://github.com/jlongster/js-
csp](https://github.com/jlongster/js-csp)
He did a talk on it at ReactConf here:
[http://conf.reactjs.com/schedule.html#communicating-with-
cha...](http://conf.reactjs.com/schedule.html#communicating-with-channels)
The difference seems to be that James' was strongly influenced by the Clojure
CSP implementation in core.async. It's not clear what this implementation was
influenced by.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
2000+ Goodies for Nerds - sciencenut
https://github.com/rsapkf/goodies
======
mysterydip
Nice list. This kind of thing used to just be a (personal) website. Is it on
github for hosting, versioning, because it's trendy, or something else?
~~~
sciencenut
Author here. Currently, it's only on GitHub. I am planning to create a website
in the future with search functionality and better categorization for everyone
to go and use the resources listed there.
~~~
aaronax
I just went through this transition myself. For the past year or so I had been
compiling technical content on GitHub and writing long-form content (updates
on my year long vacation) for family and friends on a Facebook Page.
Now a couple weeks ago I started putting all of that content into my own
website and it feels great! Part technical challenge of getting my CMS set up
and customized, and part a feeling that this is more "right" than putting
stuff in walked gardens.
One delicious irony is that I had a blog in college and had Facebook set up to
automatically pull those posts into Notes using the RSS feed. Then at some
point I didn't care about that server anymore and did not preserve the blog.
So to fill in my old content I actually had to source that from the tool that
I have sort of judged as inferior.
So it is a real commitment to run your own site, on a decades timescale I
would say. Or pay $5-10/month to WordPress.com (etc.) long-term, or trust
WordPress free tier (etc.) to be around long-term.
~~~
mxuribe
> ...I started putting all of that content into my own website...
The web needs more people like you!
------
wycy
The "Coding Challenges" list could use Advent of Code[0].
[0] [https://adventofcode.com/](https://adventofcode.com/)
~~~
the_duke
That's the beauty of a resource hosted on a code repository. You can just open
a PR.
------
noisy_boy
Massive Open Online Courses
([https://github.com/rsapkf/goodies/blob/master/docs/moocs.md](https://github.com/rsapkf/goodies/blob/master/docs/moocs.md))
is returning 404 for me.
~~~
sciencenut
Fixed it: [https://github.com/rsapkf/goodies/blob/master/docs/moocs-
and...](https://github.com/rsapkf/goodies/blob/master/docs/moocs-and-
courses.md)
Thanks for pointing the error.
------
sheinsheish
Thanks !!!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Does ad-blocking mean that in the future what we read will be the ad? - davidhariri
https://dhariri.com/posts/570a9ec3d1befa66e6b8e1d0
======
a3n
> I think I'll still read the New York Times, but as entertainment; not as
> news.
I read all news as entertainment; the global pratfall.
EDIT: like this: "How a federal spy case turned into a child pornography
prosecution" [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/how-n...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-
national-security-powers-are-underpinning-some-ordinary-criminal-
cases/2016/04/05/1a7685f4-fa36-11e5-80e4-c381214de1a3_story.html)
> During his initial appearance in a federal courthouse in Santa Ana, Calif.,
> the prosecutors indicated a willingness to reduce or drop the child
> pornography charges if he would tell them about the C-17, said Sara Naheedy,
> Gartenlaub’s attorney at the time.
------
J_Darnley
That is a distinct possibility (but not that different to the current
situation). On the other hand you could be reading something that someone
wanted published without any thought of anything in return.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A digital currency that works to the benefit of everyone - seak
http://www.projectubu.com/
======
continuational
Interesting, but how are they going to verify that every recipient is an
actual, living human? And do we have to trust a central authority for this
verification?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Smart people don't think others are stupid - cheeaun
http://sivers.org/ss
======
coffeemug
_There are no smart people or stupid people, just people being smart or being
stupid._
The same could be said about almost all behaviors, such as courage,
promiscuity, or whathaveyou. However, over time people tend to display
consistent patterns of behavior. As a consistent picture emerges, we tend to
switch from thinking of people as _acting_ a certain way, to thinking of
people as _being_ a certain way. Whether you want to say someone is acting
stupid all the time, or someone is being stupid is just semantics.
~~~
bitops
_> As a consistent picture emerges_
I've found that the length of time most people take to form a "consistent
picture" of someone else is very short. Generally, it is whatever is the
shortest length of time required to determine "are they acting in accordance
with my desires or not?".
If the person is generally helping to make things happen which you want to
have happen, you form a favorable impression of them quickly.
If they are unhelpful, you tend to think negatively of them. There is rarely a
deep consideration of who the person actually is, or what might motivate them
to behave the way they do.
Of course, if they are not only helpful, but are creating new opportunities,
we call them "visionary" or "leaders". Great people.
If their actions are opposed (directly or indirectly) but very obviously to
what we think our needs and desires are, we label them "enemy" and push them
into that definition.
I'm having a hard time articulating what I want to get across, but it boils
down to this: after a while, we stop acting on information that might change
our perception of who someone is. We just think of them as _"being a certain
way"_ and observe all behavior from there on out as solidifying that
definition in our minds.
I think a truly "smart person" is someone who is always staying open to the
possibility of people changing radically, however unlikely that may seem.
~~~
goblin89
> I've found that the length of time most people take to form a "consistent
> picture" of someone else is very short.
Indeed. I believe this is called the illusion of asymmetric insight:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:youaren...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-
illusion-of-asymmetric-insight/&strip=1) (cache since the site seems
inaccessible).
~~~
Killah911
Thanks, that was an awesome read. I'm going to get the book. While this post
was short & to the point, I felt there was a lot of generalizing going on... I
mean, what the heck is "smart" and "stupid" anyways? Don't we all define that
in our own minds? Asymmetric insight; now that's some serious stuff to reflect
on...
------
lotharbot
Smart people don't think others are stupid _merely because of the beliefs they
hold_. That is, being a [Southerner, Northerner, Republican, Democrat, Indian,
American, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Tauist, Piist, vi user, emacs user, ...]
does not mean a person is stupid. There are smart people who really have
thought things through and ended up at each of those positions for good
reasons.
But smart people might conclude some specific individual is stupid because of
_consistently erroneous patterns of thought and analysis which do not improve
with experience_. There are a few individuals who I've spoken to on a variety
of topics over the course of years who, as a rule, develop beliefs based on
sketchy evidence and then retain those beliefs even in the face of mountains
of contrary evidence. Even when they hold essentially the same views as I do,
it's often for bad reasons; there isn't really a coherent thought process or a
body of evidence that got them to that point. Such people really are stupid.
~~~
jseliger
_Even when they hold essentially the same views as I do, it's often for bad
reasons_
I noticed this too, and for a long time it bothered me. But I recently read
Jonathan Haidt's book _The Righteous Mind_ , and in it he points out that a
lot of people appear to hold believes about a wide array of issues (politics,
religion, consumer products, and so forth) that they don't really hold based
on logic and evidence, but to signal group identification and affiliation.
In addition, he points out that, on a wide array of issues, people tend to
have gut, intuition-based reactions first, _then look for evidence to support
their intuition_ , while a lot of us assume or want to assume that it works
the other way around.
I probably learned something from _The Righteous Mind_ on every page, and I
say this about very few books; I also wrote at more length about it here:
[http://jseliger.com/2012/03/25/jonathan-haidts-the-
righteous...](http://jseliger.com/2012/03/25/jonathan-haidts-the-righteous-
mind-and-what-were-really-arguing-about) .
(BTW, I agree with your basic point and think it's well put.)
~~~
hsshah
To your first point, some scientist believe it is hard wired in our DNA to
associate with any form of group (as this played a role in evolution). Here's
a related interesting talk on TED that I recently saw:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html)
~~~
jseliger
. . . that scientist is Jonathan Haidt, who wrote _The Righteous Mind_.
------
Eliezer
Sometimes people appear to me unskilled, sometimes they appear
unknowledgeable, sometimes they're thinking in twisted ways that they picked
up from their environment, sometimes they're falling prey to cognitive biases,
sometimes they're making one of a hundred other mistakes I happen to
recognize.
And sometimes, so far as I can tell, they're stupid. Sorry.
Original article's error: The fact that a conclusion sounds nice does not save
it from being patently false.
~~~
jacquesm
As a rule people are a lot smarter than they may appear to be at first
contact. And people that think they are very smart are typically smart along
some fairly narrow field and then extrapolate their smartness in that one area
to all areas.
Thinking is interesting that way, if you're 'smart' it usually means that you
know a lot about some subject but that isn't actually being smart. Being smart
means that you can use the knowledge you've got in creative ways when
presented with unforeseen problems or situations.
And there are plenty of people that would not normally be called smart that
excel at that.
Being smart or not has nothing to do with making mistakes or falling prey to
cognitive biases. The first is typically evidence of people trying things a
little bit outside their envelope of experience, in turn they'll acquire new
knowledge because of this. Guilty as charged, I make mistakes _all the time_.
Your environment has nothing to do with you being smart or not either.
Otherwise, how would you ever be able to recognize someone from a society with
different levels of development as smart.
The fact that someone does not appear smart in a way that you recognize does
not mean they are not.
~~~
StavrosK
My favorite thing to learn is to recognize a cognitive bias in myself. I might
know one, theoretically, but if I recognize it consciously when I fall victim
to it, I feel like I've grown a bit.
~~~
sylvanaar
I have this link on my bookmark bar. I do the same thing.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases>
------
delinka
He's right - smart people _know_ others are stupid.
Seriously though, people do Stupid Things. And I call them stupid when they do
them. Change lanes without signaling, without looking - maybe you're not an
idiot all the time, but at that moment you're acting like an idiot and
endangering other people.
~~~
scottw
I think the point is that we vigilantly distinguish "that was stupid" from
"that was a stupid person". Judging someone as stupid means we've stopped
thinking about possibilities. Derek wisely says there's always more to the
story (reminded me of this: [http://garrysub.posterous.com/what-does-it-feel-
like-to-be-s...](http://garrysub.posterous.com/what-does-it-feel-like-to-be-
stupid-an-anonym))
Labeling people is nearly always a substitute for thinking and empathy (both
hard things).
~~~
delinka
Lest I forget, there is also ignorance-- willful cluelessness; can't be
bothered to learn something; won't have a reasoned discussion. I do label
these individuals "stupid." Don't get me wrong, it's not immediate prejudice,
but it doesn't take much time talking to some people to learn that they are
willful in their efforts to remain uninformed.
------
donaq
That's provably wrong. In the first place, both his definitions of "smart" and
"stupid" are wrong according to the dictionary. You can't just redefine words
so that they suit your argument. If that's an acceptable approach, I can just
as easily say all living humans are stupid by defining "stupid" as "not
Einstein".
Secondly, even if we allow that his private definitions be used for the
purposes of this argument, he's still wrong. People do exhibit consistent
behavioral tendencies, after all. Some people consistently think things
through, while others consistently jump to conclusions. So I think there is
pretty good justification in applying the heuristic of thinking a person is
stupid if he consistently jumps to conclusions.
I hate to say this, because I have much respect for Derek Sivers, but this
post was pretty stupid.
------
Swizec
I used to think people are stupid.
Then I stopped being a teenager and realized that, hey, most people are
actually pretty cool. When they're being stupid it's usually just a lack of
information and when you educate them a bit, they get better.
But then the internet reminded me that there are, in fact, stupid people all
over the place, they just don't live in my IRL filter bubble.
Evidence: <http://notalwaysright.com/> <http://clientsfromhell.net/>
<http://textsfromlastnight.com/>
------
mgkimsal
Perhaps OT because of the age involved, but... as a kid, I was 'gifted' (not
sure if that label is still used today or not). I would get people (adults or
other kids) saying "you're so smart", and I would naturally try to
deflect/downplay that - was never really told how to react to statements like
that as a 7 year old. "Thanks" just sounds so bland, but, I didn't even think
that far ahead.
Instead, I would usually protest some - "no, I'm not really". But eventually I
adopted the attitude that yes, there was a difference between me and many
other kids in my classes, but it wasn't that I was smart - it was that they
were dumb. Relative to me, most of them were. But it wasn't so much a 'dumb'
as in 'you're a lesser person', it was just hard for me to realize people
didn't retain as much info as I did, nor could they make mental connections
like I could, nor as fast.
I do remember having that line of thinking for a few years, and it wore off by
early high school age.
~~~
Inufu
This, except I'm in college now and it works that way. At times, I still have
to consciously remind myself that X is not completely obvious to everybody.
~~~
mgkimsal
It will probably go away in time. As I get older, it's more apparent to me how
much I don't know any more, and my expectations for others knowing things I
consider obvious has tempered some.
------
Jach
Indeed, for only a smart person can come up with a twisted and convoluted
rationalization that a person with an IQ of 75 is not stupid and a person with
an IQ of 125 is not smart. You'll find some of the most passionate arguments
about the problems of IQ testing from people with IQs over 115. If you really
think it doesn't matter, well, I'm sure there are some interesting ways to
knock down your IQ quite a bit that you might want to try as a personal
experiment. As a safer experiment, find someone with an IQ in the 90s or less
(do you know anyone with sub-100 IQ?) and try to teach them Haskell.
Of course, we're all _intelligent_ on a species-scale, but that's a separate
distinction.
~~~
kitsune_
I heard that learning to "game" IQ tests is a common exercise in psychology
classes. According to my friend it's fairly easy to get very high scores with
the appropriate preparation.
A very good old friend of mine is a professionally trained waiter and never
had "advanced" math classes. His knowledge of math was limited to the rule of
three.
One day I tried to teach him functions, quadratic equations, basic analysis
and other stuff. He grocked it immediately. Much much faster than most of my
class mates when we had to learn these topics back at school.
I think it is important to distinguish between "knowledge" and "intelligence".
A good life lesson was given to me by my English teacher in high school. He
always told us that when you notice that you have more knowledge in area than
the person you are talking to, then it is your job to adjust your way of
communication. Not the other way round. It's of no good to be smug. In fact if
you fail to communicate your ideas, you might not be as smart as you might
think.
~~~
qohen
Related: <http://xkcd.com/1053/>
------
speg
The dictionary defines stupid as: _Adjective: Lacking intelligence or common
sense._
and intelligence as _The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills._
Perhaps the author does not often meet people who lack _the ability to acquire
and apply knowledge and skills_ but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
------
enobrev
I can't imagine anything more apt than a conversation about this subject on a
forum made up of people who hold their own intelligence in a high regard.
I assure you that your definition of "stupid" is short-sighted. I've pre-
judged a good many of people in my life as such and have been proven wrong
almost every time, provided I'd spent enough time to try to understand what
makes that person think the way they do.
We all have our methods. You might call them madness - or stupidity - but the
moment you do, your ignorance becomes your bold weakness.
tl;dr: Get over yourself.
Downvotes... Let's continue the point...
"Sometimes, so far as I can tell, they're stupid. Sorry." [1]
"people do Stupid Things. And I call them stupid when they do them." [2]
"Smart people also triage their time so as to not waste it going down likely
unproductive avenues." [3]
"Maybe politically correct people don't think others are stupid, but smart or
not, there are definitely some morons out there." [4]
"Define usually. More often than not when I hear "I don't know" it is offered
as an excuse/explanation for laziness and shirking responsibility" [5]
"Odds are that the all of the people from the article, and the author, are
relatively stupid." [6]
"Smart people don't think others are stupid as the truely smart know that
others are stupid." [7]
"at LEAST 15% of the world is stupid. That's just getting started." [8]
1: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985594>
2: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985040>
3: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985265>
4: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985575>
5: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985050>
6: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985118>
7: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3984894>
8: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3985224>
------
lani
>So when someone says “They are so stupid!” - it means they’ve stopped
thinking.
Don't listen to this !!
If you don't stop thinking , pretty soon you'll be deconstructing socio-
economic behaviour of wage employees, thrashing between cultural/societal
programming and why that is so, then you will move on to swarms surviving and
problem-solving in groups and why programming is necessary for this, then you
will proceed on to variety in nature, and degrees of freedom and
'coincidental' interlocking of such degrees of freedom of various entities
leading to formation of stable ecosystems of assemblies of moving parts . By
this time your soup would've gone cold and the opportunity to tell the
establishment that this is not what you ordered would be far gone.
------
kappaknight
Maybe politically correct people don't think others are stupid, but smart or
not, there are definitely some morons out there.
I for one, do not need to be PC to be smart. I don't claim to know everything,
but that doesn't mean there aren't people who know less who also decided a
long time ago to stop learning/embracing new ideas.
------
ArcticCelt
Therefor, according to his own rules, the author of this a article is stupid.
Before someone concludes the obvious about my comment I'll point out that
those are not my rules.
------
reitzensteinm
Interesting choice including Republican and Democrat, there.
I don't think they're stupid, but if someone identifies themselves as "a
Republican" or "a Democrat", as opposed to "the Republican party best fits my
views", or "I'm a registered Democrat", I pretty much write off any chance of
having a decent political discussion with them.
A large segment of the population follows politics the way they follow
football, except without even watching the games, just the commentary and
opinion pieces afterwards.
Smart people also triage their time so as to not waste it going down likely
unproductive avenues.
But it's just a numbers game; there are invariably going to be people a level
above me intellectually who this will filter out. But I can live with that.
~~~
scarmig
Well, one argument is that politics _is_ essentially a football game. The
stakes are far, far higher, but fundamentally it comes down to all the
institutions of a society self-organizing themselves into coalitions for the
assumption or protection of power. "Reason" amounts to a way to mask
rhetorical flourishes to convince dupes that they're morally better or smarter
than the other side.
And if you're turning to the Wall Street Journal or New York Times to learn
about the finer points of Nozick's critique of Rawlsian liberalism... well,
then you're the dupe, even if it's of a "pox-on-both-your-houses" variety.
Thinking too hard about whatever outrage-of-the-day Mitt or Obama has done is
a similar waste of time--it's not that there isn't conceivably some correct
position about whether eating a dog or strapping them to your roof reflects
worse on your character, it's just that it's all a smokescreen.
Given that, I'd say you have to pick a side. If you end up rejecting politics
because it isn't the Oxford debating society, you've essentially let the other
side deprive your own side of a valuable resource. It might suck that you're
stuck in a game not of your own choosing, but if someone's kicking you on the
ground, you don't quietly accept it because they're not following Marquees of
Queensbury rules.
~~~
fusiongyro
I agree with your first two paragraphs. The position you advocate in the third
would make sense if political affiliation conferred a tangible benefit or our
participation in the process affected the outcomes. But neither of those is
true, and it undermines your case.
Affiliation is rife with intangible benefits of a vaguely religious character:
believing that you're right, believing that you're benefiting the righteous
and confounding evil, etc. But there is no 10% discount for Democrats at the
Toyota dealership, and Republicans don't get a $1500 tax deduction simply for
being Republicans. The only tangible benefit to affiliation is the ability to
vote in the primary—a benefit so dubious we all personally know people who
affiliated opposite their beliefs just to muck up the process.
~~~
daeken
> The only tangible benefit to affiliation is the ability to vote in the
> primary—a benefit so dubious we all personally know people who affiliated
> opposite their beliefs just to muck up the process.
OT: I don't know anyone who's done that, but I've long wondered if the most
effective way to get the result you want is to simply destroy everyone
opposing it, rather than promoting the result directly. It seems that it'd be
much easier to manipulate the system (and the people) using a negative
influence than positive. It's definitely not _right_ , but seems like it could
be _effective_. Then again, as I write this I realize that this is half of
what happens already.
------
hansef
In an ideal world with infinite time for arguing with... well, I'll avoid an
ad-hominem when responding to an argument about ad-hominem attacks, but... in
an ideal world it would be worthwhile to drill down through the onion layers
of rationality, irrationality and emotion which drive any argument we disagree
with, every time.
Sometimes this spelunking is both constructive and instructive.
Sometimes though, dismissing the assertion that the earth was created 6000
years ago or that the world will be ending next month with a quantitative
assessment of the intellectual capacity of the asserter is a completely
appropriate shorthand.
The key is judicious application. ;)
------
barbazfoo12
Isn't this the crux of infamous "ad hominem" argument: attacking the person
instead of their reasoning?
Even smart people sometimes make stupid arguments.
And good arguments can be made by anyone.
It's very difficult to be right 100% of the time.
It's also quite unusual to be wrong 100% of the time.
Evaluate the reasoning, not the author.
Stupid argument, not stupid person.
Look at what Alsup said to Boies.
Still, this is easier said than done.
------
blackhole
It is more accurate to say that the difference between stupid people and smart
people is that smart people can be proved wrong.
~~~
dave1619
you mean smart people are more open to be proven wrong?
~~~
blackhole
I am implying that stupid people don't listen to rational arguments.
------
alvarosm
Sorry but no. Most people are cattle. Utter retards. The only thing missing
them is drooling on the floor and making feces. They're little more than
animals that can speak. Anyone even remotely smart knows most people are
stupid compared to himself.
Of course, smart people don't go around whining about it. But they do KNOW
they're surrounded by retards.
~~~
jacquesm
> Of course, smart people don't go around whining about it. But they do KNOW
> they're surrounded by retards.
Indeed...
------
rizzom5000
I disagree. Labels are sometimes derived of prejudice and bigotry. But if
someone is obese, and I call them fat - it's not a label that I invented
because I'm "not thinking" and "I don't realize the possibilities". I am
thinking, and I do realize the possibilities, and the person is still fat and
the person might be me looking at the mirror. And if I don't _know_ I'm fat
because I'm afraid that by admitting it; I've jumped to a conclusion, which
would in turn mean that I've avoided thinking and have jumped to a conclusion
- wait, I mean stupid -- then how am I ever going to know that I can do
something about it? Bleh. Fallacious logic is not logic at all.
------
dfc
_"That’s why saying “I don’t know” is usually smart, because it’s refusing to
jump to a conclusion."_
Define usually. More often than not when I hear "I don't know" it is offered
as an excuse/explanation for laziness and shirking responsibility.
~~~
moistgorilla
When a smart person says "I don't know", It's usually followed with a "give me
a second to figure it out." or "let me look that up real quick.".
~~~
wccrawford
I've given up on 'I don't know'. I only say that when I'm at the end of the
line and there's nowhere to go.
Instead, I usually use anything else that indicates that I'm going to make
inquiries. "That's a good question. I'll have to look into that." comes out of
my mouth a lot now. Sometimes without "That's a good queston." at the start.
------
kulkarnic
In my experience, I think smart people often think others are smart. And
that's sometimes a problem-- because they believe that others are smart as
well, they should think everything through the way they do (Also, I'd really
like to say we here, but pride is never good karma :-))
Then you start wondering why they are doing something so obviously unwise, and
then tend to rationalize it with some enormously complicated theory. Perhaps,
this is the reason why Hanlon's razor is useful and recognized-- without it
smart people are kinda lost.
------
3pt14159
Generally I agree. But there is a huge weasel clause in this whole line of
thinking: Ultimately, I could always end up with "they haven't done the
research or connected the dots because [insert something reasonable that is
stopping them] so they are not stupid, just lesser informed or emotional" but
essentially there will always be reasons that people do hard drugs or get
involved in scams or get in fights at bars but "they are just so stupid" can
sometimes suffice.
------
andyjohnson0
The article should maybe have been titled "Smart people don't _assume_ others
are stupid". But even then the argument is wrong.
It seems to me that what this comes down to is: is it justifiable and
appropriate to categorise a person according to their behaviour (including the
holding of opinions)? The author doesn't seem to deny that people can exhibit
stupid _behaviour_ , but argues that its wrong to categorise a person who
exhibits such behaviour because you will (inevitably) never have enough
information about the person or situation to make a judgement about the
intrinsic qualities of the person. This might be true in some theoretical
sense, but it doesn't really sit well with human nature or needs. We all have
finite lives and stuff to be done in those lives. Making judgments about
people is necessary to avoid a frustrating life spent (as in 'used up')
dealing with people who behave stupidly.
And really, how long do you have to evaluate someone's behaviour before you
are no longer 'jumping to conclusions' about them? Strangely, the author
doesn't say. At some point you have use the history of a person's behaviour to
decide[1]. A purist might say that such a decision should always be tentative,
but in reality I think they soon become fixed. We are talking about people
here.
For what its worth, my approach is that if I decide to think of someone as
being stupid (or smart) then I try to be conscious and mindful of the
decision, allow myself the opportunity to change my mind (while recognising
that I probably won't), and always respect their dignity as a person.
[1] I suspect that how soon this happens will mainly depend on the social
relationship between the people involved.
~~~
brc
I would argue that personal effectiveness includes the life skill of being a
character judge, and then having the courage to take action based on those
judgements.
Ie, if you judge someone to be a dishonest time waster, then politely brush
them off and don't have anything to do with them. This is true whether in a
work situation or a social situation.
Taking it even further, it means leaving a job or an area if it dawns on you
that you're surrounded by people who are either stupid or lazy and going
nowhere.
As you say, life is short. Learning to sort the wheat from the chaff is a way
of spending better time with more interesting people.
------
aoiao
Nearly 15 percent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their
lifetime and 10 percent think the Mayan calendar could signify it will happen
in 2012, according to a new poll.
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/01/us-
mayancalendar-p...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/01/us-
mayancalendar-poll-idUSBRE8400XH20120501)
^at LEAST 15% of the world is stupid. That's just getting started. That's one
poll, about one thing.
~~~
codeonfire
All evidence suggests that the universe/world will end upon my death in any
sense that matters to me. Once my brain has stopped functioning it will be
impossible to ever receive stimulus from pysical phenomenon again for all
eternity. So, if you can agree with that then you could agree that the world
will end sometime during most people's lifetimes assuming I don't outlive
them. So from my point of. View they are right, but for the wrong reasons.
------
chousho
The author makes an interesting point; however, he seems to make the same
assumptions that he is actively protesting. If smart people do X, then would
not doing X mean people are not smart?
This generalization that can be inferred from the article--as well as
demonstrated in this comment section--seems to fall into this same trap.
As a reader of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", I think there is
a better way to go about this. Rather than "smart people do X [therefore if
you do not do X, you are not smart]"; it should be: people do X, which is
smarter than doing Y.
People can change. If they have a consistent ability to do stupid things, it
just means they are acting in poor judgement and possibly could use help. If
they fail to accept help, or are too headstrong/temperamental/can-never-be-
wrong then it just means that their behavior and mindset should change [in
order to be more productive].
Although, I would sometimes choose a less-intelligent person that is of no
fault of their own, than a willingly ignorant person who should know better,
but does not act it.
------
bryze
Can we find better things to write about than this? It is getting really
boring reading about how other people think we should all behave.
~~~
Mz
Um, what kinds of things do you want to read about? (Completely serious
question. Honest.)
~~~
bryze
I like to read about new ideas, advances in science and technology, and
political developments, especially where the Internet is concerned. I accept
that people have different lifestyles and viewpoints, and if variations on
those sorts of things are presented as "hey, here's a different way to live",
then that's alright. On the other hand, if the message is "hey, do it this way
because I'm right" then I'm inclined to stop reading.
~~~
Mz
Thanks. I like to write about personal hacks -- debugging the wetware, fixing
health issues at their roots that doctors claim cannot be fixed, effective
parenting for challenging children. So you are probably not my target
audience. Trying to think such things through for myself, I guess. I agree
with your distaste for what amounts to lecturing. I have a half formed thought
for a piece about that which might get written, or at leasted started, today.
Thank you for the feedback.
------
pradocchia
Sivers has it right, and I'm disappointed by the reaction here. People are
smart. This should be your baseline. From there, people may do or say stupid
things. It may become pathological. But the person has not lost his capacity
to be smart (barring some physiological damage). It may have atrophied, like
an unused muscle, but the capacity is still there.
But even this is getting ahead of yourself--how would you know they _are_
stupid? _Acting_ stupid is at least multi-dimensional: the act+stupid. It's a
limited claim. To _be_ stupid, though, now that's a very broad claim, to
reduce things to a position on a single axis. And that is pure hubris, an
intellectually indefensible position, an argument from apathy: "well I don't
care about all those things, to me the guy's just dumb". Ah well thanks for
clearing that up!
And there's the inverse: you casually judge others as stupid, and you have
shown yourself to have poor judgment. You are _being stupid_ with judgment.
~~~
rickmb
I completely disagree with the conclusion.
If I go along with the premise that people are merely "acting" stupid, that is
all the more reason to casually dismiss them. I can have patience with people
that have limited capabilities, but people who _choose_ to act stupid?
Being semantically correct isn't particularly relevant. It's how you deal with
consistent stupidity (and I'm not talking about the occasional brainfart or
error of judgement).
Whether or not casually dismissing stupidity is the right thing to do depends
completely on the context, not on whether you use the correct semantics to do
so. I people are being viciously stupid (as in "gay people shouldn't have
equal rights"), I will dismiss them as stupid, and I don't give a flying fuck
if they are _acting_ or _being_ stupid.
And on the flip side there are also situations in which it is useful to figure
out why people do or say stupid things. It's context that determines if my
judgement is poor, not semantics.
~~~
pradocchia
_I can have patience with people that have limited capabilities, but people
who choose to act stupid?_
You assume it's a choice, as if at the brink of decision, someone says, "I'll
do the stupid thing." But in real life, you see people motivated by ambition,
pride, fear and desire. And if that drives you do stupid things, to argue for
stupid positions, does that make you stupid? Well, if limit ourselves to
"stupid" always being contextual, if we understand "is stupid" as "acts stupid
in a given context", then sure.
Likewise, if someone doesn't care about the things you care about, and
consequently doesn't focus their attention on them to the same degree you
might, does that make them stupid? Or just uninterested?
It's not a semantic issue. You are dismissing people outright, you are
creating an alternate universe in your mind that through hubris drifts further
and further from reality. Invariably, there's something else going on,
something more interesting and more true to reality than just "he's stupid",
and you miss that. I'm not arguing that you necessarily should _engage_ with
such people, but neither should you box them off with pat pronouncements on
intellectual capacity.
------
marcoi
Very good post. In fact, thinking in terms of smart / stupid is fairly
pointless. Firstly, there are numerous forms of intelligence (as the first
phrase of its wikipedia entry confirms). Secondly, sticking to the IQ kind of
intelligence, most tasks require only a sufficient amount of it (say, more
than 90 or so), more of it doesn't necessarily help. The guy with the highest
IQ I ever met (180 or something) had a junior job (at 40yo) as a statistical
analyst in a bank. This applies also to developers: for instance, getting
things done is more important than being IQ-smart. Thirdly, and I think this
is the poster's point, the form of intelligence I came to admire the most (and
I find most useful) is the one that makes you humble enough to know what you
don't know, and capable of listening to and appreciating people who think
differently from you. Hard to really learn anything new without that one.
------
asto
I think others are stupid. Oh noes, I guess I'm the stupid one then.
Jokes apart, there's a consistent pattern in how I judge intellect. The people
who I consider smart _get logic_. Some of them do it intuitively; Some of them
are familiar with formal theory. The most common logical error made by those I
consider stupid is a non-sequitur [1] Ex: "He doesn't use vim. He must be
stupid". The biggest mistake you can make is judge people by knowledge, rather
than intelligence. Ex: "A is really good at programming. He's definitely more
intelligent than B who's a singer"
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29>
------
rch
This is absolute BS. Odds are that the all of the people from the article, and
the author, are relatively stupid. Maybe one or more of them isn't, but the
odds are against them - that is just how it works.
~~~
rjd
I totally disagree. I get a lot of people saying crap to me about being smart
or intelligent, I even got bugged into joining MENSA by other members. I still
hold that I'm not really smarter than other people.
Most people are average, I get a lot of attention for things I do that people
don't understand. But I'm not really a smart person, I just like puzzles and I
do them quite often. There plenty of situations where I appear like a bumbling
idiot.
Heres how I see it. People who have an interest in something invest lots of
energy into understanding it. Judging someone by there ability not to
understand something that they have invested a lot of time into doesn't make
you smart, it makes that person a jerk.
And heres the reason. Calling someone stupid is an insult, a way of asserting
a dominant position i.e. "I am better than you because my understanding is
more advanced." Guess what, thats one hell of arrogant position to have.
As someone who usually runs teams I'd probably ask to someone who used
statements like that to be transferred. If said person held an attitude like
that, its not helpful to the team, potentially damaging to someone trying to
get up to speed, undermining confidence. And lastly it wrecks of someone who
would hold a something over someone else to look better rather than cooperate,
build needlessly complicated code that half the team couldn't work on at a
decent speed.
Anyway theres a quote attributed to Einstein I'm sure you've heard which sums
it up nicely for me "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its
ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is
stupid."
------
evilbit
Pedantic nonsense. What exactly is the difference between "he's stupid" and
"he's acting stupid"? The only one I can spot is the latter avoids labeling
the person while still condemning them for the act. PC nonsense without
substance, IMNSHO.
However, he does touch on something Dan Kahneman in his 'Thinking, Fast and
Slow' talks about: most people stop thinking at first intuitive answer (aka
System 1) and don't bother engaging in the tiring deep thought (aka System 2).
------
nyddle
Love the title of this post. Smartness and stupidity are a matter of
motivation and interest in the subject. Most times being stupid is doing what
you are not meant to do / reasoning about what doesn't truly interest you.
There are many activities that meant to be done by "smart" people like math or
high stakes poker or programming. But most people are just scared of these
things because they don't know they are smart enough to succeed.
------
gench
Calling others stupid is just a toxic thinking which tricks our brains to rely
on easy and quick-fix pseudo “feel-good" but it is an addictive dangerous
practice for our mental and general health in long term.
[http://blogs.psychcentral.com/relationships/2011/07/seven-
to...](http://blogs.psychcentral.com/relationships/2011/07/seven-toxic-
thinking-patterns-to-break-how-pseudo-feel-goods-trick-your-brain-2-of-3/)
------
es20641
I recently graduated from college and found a job. My manager is one of those
people who is a brilliant programmer but doesn't help the greenhorns like me
adapt to the working world.
I believe I have potential to be a great programmer, but it's difficult when
you're being told your code is "all sorts of wrong."
This was exactly what I needed to read right now. Thank you for posting it.
------
sev
Although not a fascinating topic nor anything new, I think the main point of
the article is a good one, and one that everyone should consider before name-
calling, yelling, or interrupting for that matter. Many use these _techniques_
to supposedly win arguments just because the other shuts up, or is offended.
------
davidcollantes
One doesn't need to be smart to find stupidity (in others or in our own).
"Stupid is as stupid does."
------
EricDeb
I don't know I like to think I'm of above average intelligence and I would
generalize and say that some religious groups are "just so stupid."
Then again, religion is a great way to cope with the paradoxical and
absolutely absurd reality we live in so maybe they aren't that stupid...
------
antihero
I agree on the most part, however there are certain situations where you just
get sick of explaining stuff (see: Feminism 101) to people who have done no
research or have ignored the research because they are so headstrong about
their issues.
------
mns2
This has quite a bit of information on the subject:
<http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Map_and_Territory_(sequence)>
------
bennesvig
Very few people act without good motivation to do so. So when most people see
someone engaging in an act that is "stupid" they are generally failing to see
their motivation for the act.
------
loceng
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a
tree,… it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." — Albert
Einstein
------
elchief
No.
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html>
------
rmATinnovafy
But insecure people do see others are stupid.
------
Zenst
Smart people don't think others are stupid as the truely smart know that
others are stupid.
Thinking is not 100% knowing. Think about that.
Also there are two types of stupid, those that are naturaly gifeted in such
arts and those that work at it. It is the later that are truely stupid and the
former who are just limited.
------
eyko
This article will resonate with stupid people's feelings.
------
its_so_on
You know, I've been teaching my dog a few tricks, and when I do I always think
about how smart EVERYONE IS. Man, humans are so smart. If this were a human -
really, practically any human that isn't currently comatose, even a baby, I
would be done by now.
Smart means smart compared to something. Everyone is very smart - compared to
a dog. But when you use the word smart about people, it means smarter than
other people. Does that make other people stupid? In actuality, it _has_ to.
When you say "smart people don't think others are stupid" either you are
really saying "smart people never know they're smart. They think everone is
just as smart as them". (This is a possibility.) Or, you are saying, "Smart
people never acknowledge the fact that they're smart. Even thought they know
others are not as smart, they never mention this fact."
This second possibility is probably closer to the truth. When I'm trying to
get my dog to realize it can step over its own leash when it's tangled in it,
it doesn't help me to think about how much smarter I am and how I never get
tangled in anything.
I think smart people know very well that they're smart. Sometimes they just
have better things to worry about than pointing this out. (Sometimes they
don't. Linus Torvalds was quoted here calling someone a moron a few days ago.
Obviusly, he's still a smart guy.)
------
adviceonly
A total opinion piece with nothing backing it up. You can just type some
things in bold letters and make it true. Show us the data.
~~~
sivers
:-)
~~~
ktizo
Was thinking that the smiley face was not much of an addition, but then
clocked that you are probably the author of the piece, in which case the
smiley face was probably fairly tactful.
~~~
mgkimsal
We certainly know he doesn't think adviceonly is stupid :)
------
georgieporgie
I think it's a good attitude to take, particularly when dealing with peers.
Giving others the benefit of the doubt and not assuming that everyone should
know everything you know goes a long way toward making the world a better and
more tolerable place. Also, when discussing matters of principle it's
extremely valuable to be able to understand and argue _for_ the opposition,
rather than merely dismissing opposing views as 'stupid'.
However, the author is fundamentally wrong. There _are_ stupid people. I
didn't believe it until I got out of my college/career track and met a few of
them.
------
adamsilver
Human brain capabilities differ, just like computer processors. Failing to
realize that is stupid.
~~~
snikolov
Right, but brain capability is not a one dimensional quantity, and
measurements of it are time-varying and noisy. This suggests that one
shouldn't jump to conclusions before careful measurement, and that it is not
trivial to compare measurements from different people along just one axis.
------
wissler
So according to him, if you think others are stupid, then you are stupid. What
irony.
~~~
natep
No, try reading it again. "So if you decide someone is stupid, it means you’re
not thinking, which is not being smart."
"Not being smart" != "is stupid" is exactly the distinction he is making.
~~~
wissler
I'm well aware of the words he chose. I am referring to his actual meaning.
The fact is that there are stupid people on this planet. The fact is that we
can know there are stupid people. The fact is that we can identify a stupid
person. And it is utterly stupid to pretend otherwise. He's made a very stupid
generalization based on the behavior of the masses -- yes, most people who
call others stupid are themselves stupid. But that doesn't mean we can't know
who is stupid nor does it mean that it's wrong to call someone stupid.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Polly: LLVM Framework for High-Level Loop and Data-Locality Optimizations - luu
https://polly.llvm.org/
======
misnome
This sounds interesting, but the documentation is really sparse, basically
only how to turn it on. Am I supposed to be thinking of this a bit like
Intel’s Parallel Studio’s Advisor tools for analysing threading and
vectorisation? How do I tell what it’s doing with e.g. adding OpenMP calls
since it seems to insert them between parsing and object code without
oversight?
Basically, how easy is it, and how do I approach using this, as a non domain-
expert?
~~~
boulos
The best resources on _understanding_ Polly are probably various LLVM
developer conference talks (it’s come up at nearly every one since at least
2010 or so).
_But_ just like not needing to worry too much about how GCC does this unless
you’re a compiler engineer, I’d say just either let it try or not.
Edit: Here's the 2011 talk
([http://llvm.org/devmtg/2011-11/Grosser_PollyOptimizations.pd...](http://llvm.org/devmtg/2011-11/Grosser_PollyOptimizations.pdf))
that I think is a good yet old intro. Tobias's more recent work (say
[http://www.grosser.es/bibliography/doerfert2017optimistic.ht...](http://www.grosser.es/bibliography/doerfert2017optimistic.html))
is a good "what's possible now-ish". But again, these are both compiler-
researcher papers.
~~~
eslaught
> The best resources on understanding Polly are probably various LLVM
> developer conference talks
I don't suppose there are videos available?
~~~
wyldfire
There are!
[https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCv2_41bSAa5Y_8BacJUZfjQ](https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCv2_41bSAa5Y_8BacJUZfjQ)
[https://youtu.be/A8E5KgzZPMM](https://youtu.be/A8E5KgzZPMM)
[https://llvm.org/devmtg/](https://llvm.org/devmtg/)
~~~
crunchiebones
these are great! thanks
------
gnufx
I'd intended to submit this after seeing the results recently while referring
to it apropos BLAS implementation. I've quoted matmul here as the classic
example of compiler optimization failures and won't again, at least until I've
understood these results. I couldn't see how to reproduce the results and it's
not clear what the various matrix sizes are, related to the dips in MKL
performance that I don't understand where polly wins. Also, it's not clear
what the POWER results are, as BLIS doesn't support it other than via the very
slow generic configuration; I haven't got round to enquiring.
------
fulafel
This sounds very good, just what's been missing from compiler optimizations.
Anyone know if this is alive, or has it been merged to LLVM? The news seem to
end a year ago.
edit: found some activity at the Polly Labs website, eg
[http://www.pollylabs.org/2018/08/15/GSoC-2018-final-
reports....](http://www.pollylabs.org/2018/08/15/GSoC-2018-final-reports.html)
~~~
mahatt
Yes. It works nicely. If you want to enable it on clang, check cmake enable
flag for clang compilation.
------
mpweiher
When I first looked at this, there was a comment stating that (from memory)
despite ~10 years of research and numerous PhDs, papers and conference talks,
polly just doesn't work for production code. That comment is now gone.
Was it retracted because it was inaccurate? Seems to me like an important part
of the conversation, whether true or not.
~~~
fooker
It is still true.
General purpose code does not have the the kind of pure loops doing arithmetic
that polyhedral analysis reasons about.
~~~
gnufx
Yes, but likewise for the classical loop optimizations that this is aiming to
improve on. They clearly do work -- to a lesser extent? -- for production
code, just not the sort that many commentators give the impression of thinking
is all that matters. Linear algebra does crop up all over the place. (In
contrast, I would say gcc's -floop-nest-optimize "experimental" implementation
doesn't work on matmul, at least.)
~~~
fooker
>Linear algebra does crop up all over the place
True. Almost everyone who does matrix/vector operations in production code
uses libraries though. That is why it is tricky to see results from these
kinds of projects on production code.
~~~
mpweiher
And those libraries tend to have been hand-built and/or with special-purpose
tools.
~~~
gnufx
I looked up the Polly reference concerning discussion of BLIS missing
optimized implementations, and GCC and clang apparently failing on BLIS-type
loops. (It mentioned examples of people not using the relevant libraries in
national labs, not that I'd defend that.) It might also have been other types
of kernel that don't exist for ARM or POWER, say. Surely it would be good to
have an effective general-purpose tool (compiler) that could replace
labourious hand-optimization or building special-purpose tools.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are some gray area industries you know? - andreygrehov
Examples of what I mean by gray area industries:<p><pre><code> - Programmatic advertising with its privacy issues
- Cryptocurrencies with its KYC issues
</code></pre>
What else?
======
hemlokc
I was a developer at a blockchain company based out of Seattle Washington. We
did an ICO (still unsure if it was legal), we built cool shit, I left for a
better job offer, learned a lot about blockchain development, dapp
architecture, solidity coding, erc token standards, and the legal spaghetti
that crypto companies inevitably find themselves in if they are based in the
U.S.
------
bediger4000
I always wonder about the places that pay for scrap light metals, open to the
public. This seems like an industry that has to deal with a lot of sketchier
people, that drive up in a pickup full of materials whose provenance is
impossible to determine. I'm certain that recycling is legal, I just wonder
how much the recyclers have to ignore from their suppliers.
------
jolmg
Web search? Because it requires scraping websites and redistributing their
content in the form of text excerpts and images on search result pages. I
mean, isn't that technically against copyright?
------
TheAdamAndChe
Payday loans, the vaping industry, poultry and cattle farming,
pharmaceuticals, electronics manufacturing... I could keep going, but most
industries have rough spots somewhere along the chain.
------
yasp
weed industry, ignoring federal law
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you prefer “engineer” or “developer”? - crcl
To the people in software, do you prefer calling yourself (or others) a "software engineer" or "software developer"? Is there even a difference?<p>Assuming there's no difference in meaning, what are the pros/cons of the abbreviations ("eng" vs "dev")? I'm asking because I'm building a developer tool and want to include one of the abbreviations in the domain name (e.g. "eng-tool.com" or "dev-tool.com").
======
interatx
It's not always a choice. I'm in currently Canada where the term "Engineer" is
protected
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineer#Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineer#Canada).
So I'm a developer here.
------
bovermyer
To me, that's like asking if I prefer "scientist" or "artist," respectively.
I usually identify publicly as an engineer, but really, I'm a developer.
"Engineer" implies a greater degree of mathematical and theoretical
understanding and application than I possess.
------
laveur
This really greately depends on the kind of work one does. Many people working
on websites prefer developer, while people working on mobile or desktop apps
prefer engineer. As someone that writes mobile apps for a living I greatly
prefer engineer. I don't simply develop an app I engineer it. I do greatly
think that the term developer also is looked down on in the industry by many.
We do a lot more then just "develop" an app. We engineer how everything goes
together, the tools to build it, the tools we use to write code. Also the
title engineering usually comes with time for many. You start off as a
developer, your job is mainly to write code based on another engineers design.
Eventually you get good enough to do the engineering bit yourself.
------
sloaken
I know back in the day, the use of Engineer verses Developer was about 10%
pay...
To me: Programmer - works on a team, is handed assignments Developer - might
lead a team, but is resposible for the entire developement of a solution. On
really large project will be focused on one aspect (DB, web, etc) Engineer -
Coordinates multiple parts, ensure all phases of the SDLC are completed. Of
involved with PM. Has an engineering notebook.
------
SamReidHughes
Software engineers use "dev tools" because they develop software. But also
because it's less awkward to pronounce than "eng tools."
I like a non-hoity-toity attitude towards what constitutes engineering so I
say go for engineering if it has a better ring.
------
xenocratus
I think they're interchangeable but to me "engineer" sounds too formal so I'd
go with developer for myself (I actually studied electronic engineering and
didn't enjoy the hardware side, so I'm happy to stay away from the engineer
label!)
------
rajacombinator
I consider them interchangeable but find it really annoying how they have very
subtle different connotations that are not universal. For me programmer >
developer > engineer but I wish there was a clear uniformly better option...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple's Tim Cook: 'I don't want my nephew on a social network' - colinprince
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/19/tim-cook-i-dont-want-my-nephew-on-a-social-network
======
anoncoward111
"But I definitely won't block Instagram and FB and Youtube from my platform,
like I've done to other apps."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Should we build our religious prayer app? - jonnybegood
http://invite.get-prayer.com
======
Metatron
I've always seen prayer as personal relationship with God, not one to be
turned into a popularity contest. Putting prayer into social media kind of
sickens me.
If you want to channel good will and enter into a conversation with God about
an issue by way of prayer then you should do so fully committed.
You should not be able to touch a button and 'upvote' a prayer by a stranger
who has tugged at your heartstrings from only a glance. That is shallow and
lacking in love.
God's grace may cover many things, but this? I think not.
------
jondcampbell
What problem is this solving? Do people not know what to pray for? Is their
really a need for me to get prayer requests from whomever is the most popular?
Would the site being trying to get people off the site(and into prayer) or is
the goal of the site to have people on it, browsing, etc(and not praying)?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Today’s Google Doodle is a fun game in honor of Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary - iamtechaddict
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/11/22/todays-google-doodle-is-a-fun-game-in-honor-of-doctor-whos-50th-anniversary/
======
marquis
Direct link to see it: [https://www.google.com.sg](https://www.google.com.sg)
I grew up watching Doctor Who, hiding behind the sofa when there were Daleks.
I can't play this game without shivering.
~~~
untothebreach
That's awesome. I heard an interview with Neil Gaiman where he describes a
similar response to the Daleks. I have heard that DW is technically considered
a kids show in the U.K., which surprised me because it seems a bit scary for
kids, at times.
~~~
arethuza
Being scared witless by DW at a tender age is practically a national tradition
here in the UK.
~~~
awjr
A cushion was a mandatory tool while watching it as a kid. I can even remember
hiding behind the sofa.
For some reason I have an image of some sort of jelly fish monster, a
lighthouse, Tom Baker, and myself hiding behind the sofa.
What's quite funny is that my daughter loves it but refuses to watch ANY
episode with the Angels in it, well not without me in the room. That's the way
it should be :)
(Blink get's to me. Awesome writing.)
~~~
mayanksinghal
Blink was a awesome episode. I have used it to convert at least 4 civvies into
Whovians. However, I think Doctor Who is getting less and less scary and more
and more dramatic/epic. Oh the other hand, I started watching DW when I was
already 20 years old - I don't think Daleks are that scary to 20 year olds as
they are to 8 year olds :)
~~~
arethuza
I don't remember being scared by Daleks - but the giant maggots in "The Green
Death" scared me silly.
~~~
walshemj
Dito it was the cybermen and the macra terror that really scared me rather
than the daleks.
BTW the BBC program on the early days of Dr Who is amazing and the ending is
properly tear jerking (Hartnels last recoding and he looks across and sees
matt smith)
------
epo
Doctor Who was first broadcast in the UK on November the 23rd 1963. To be
accurate the Google doodle shouldn't be visible in your country before the
23rd. That said, it is early afternoon of the 22nd in the UK, the doodle
wasn't visible on google.co.uk late morning but it is now.
------
martijn_himself
Not to spoil the fun but does anyone know if there is a URL I can use that
will display the plain Google search page without the Doodle?
~~~
untothebreach
I guess it depends on where you are...here in the U.S., www.google.com doesn't
show me any doodle, I had to go to the link in the article to see it. Maybe
try [[https://encrypted.google.com/](https://encrypted.google.com/)]?
------
sbisson
It's somewhat reminiscent of the ROM-based BBC Micro game Doctor Who and The
Mines of Terror. Minus the programmable robot cat.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_and_the_Mines_of_Ter...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_and_the_Mines_of_Terror)
------
rohitv
And here's the js source:
[https://www.google.ca/logos/2013/drwho/drwho13-3.js](https://www.google.ca/logos/2013/drwho/drwho13-3.js)
------
aaron695
Having had this for 8 hours at work it was a pain in the arse (Especially
since I use chrome)
Google is not a game, if I want to play games I'll do it in my own time. I
don't need more distractions shoved down my throat.
[edit] And for those who don't get it, it's a massive image continuously
moving on your browser you can't easily get rid of. (Ironically I changed to
the uk version of Google to get rid of it)
~~~
simias
Why don't you use your browser's search bar? I hadn't seen this doodle until I
saw this post on HN because I never ever load google's homepage anymore.
~~~
aaron695
On chrome, same same. Default blank tab is image.
------
pvnick
Oh. My. God. it's almost here. Snuck up on me! Gotta quickly rewatch the last
couple episodes.
------
uptown
Except in the US.
~~~
timje1
There's a link in the article. It's not even a very long article...
~~~
uptown
I'm not disputing that - just pointing out that I'm surprised they didn't
include the US in this one since there's a non-trivial percentage of the
population that would have enjoyed it.
~~~
jasonlfunk
Today is also the 50th anniversary of the assignation of JFK. There probably
would have been backlash to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Dr Who instead,
so they decided to just do nothing.
~~~
maxerickson
It's (nearly) tomorrow in Singapore. I imagine the U.S. will see it when we
get there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What will happen to cryptocurrency in the 2020s? - PatrolX
https://nakamoto.com/crypto-in-the-2020s/
======
0xspace
I think cryptocurrency will be around for awhile. But, it's very difficult for
anyone to use it as intended..a decentralized currency.
Massive swings in value, easy manipulation of value/little regulation, and all
of the hacks we've seen of major exchanges have scared off the average non-
tech user.
My brother, who is tech savvy, had about 30 bitcoin on a hard drive when it
was worth sub $50/bitcoin. He formatted the drive accidentally and completely
lost them all.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Riak is dying, what are you replacing it with? - rexfuzzle
======
eip
People use Riak?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Super Mario 64 was built with a system written in Lisp - old_sound
http://www.franz.com/success/customer_apps/animation_graphics/nichimen.lhtml
======
agavin
Mario 64 wasn't itself written in LISP at all. It's models were built in
Nichimen graphics, a SGI based 3D design tool written in Allegro CL.
As far as I know, the games we did at Naughty Dog (Crash 1-3, Jak 1-3 + X),
and later Uncharted were the only major console games which large amounts of
runtime Lisp. The Jak & Daxter series was 99% written in my Scheme dialect
GOAL, including all the assembly. The only parts that weren't were libs
talking to Sony's libraries (C++).
<http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/category/games/>
~~~
JabavuAdams
Much respect!
Reading about GOOL and GOAL is what got me into Lisp.
Working at a previous game company, on a PS2 title, we spent a lot of time
oohing and aahing over J&D's beautifully fluid animations.
I'm actually still playing through the game as part of my "PS2 classics"
backlog. Very nicely done!
I didn't realize Uncharted used any runtime Lisp -- could you elaborate?
/gush
~~~
ginsweater
Uncharted uses a DSL for gameplay scripting. The compiler is implemented in
Racket. You can see what it looks like in Jason Gregory's 2009 presentation:
[http://www.gameenginebook.com/gdc09-statescripting-
uncharted...](http://www.gameenginebook.com/gdc09-statescripting-
uncharted2.pdf)
The compiler is written on top of the low-level system in Dan Liebgold's 2008
presentation: [http://www.naughtydog.com/docs/Naughty-Dog-
GDC08-Adventures-...](http://www.naughtydog.com/docs/Naughty-Dog-
GDC08-Adventures-In-Data-Compilation.pdf)
More or less, the sexps that define a state-script get run through a maze of
Scheme macros - there's even a pretty decent expression language in there
which is compiled to bytecode - and the result is big honking C++ structure
which is fed to the Uncharted runtime and interpreted.
In particular, note all those wait-blah-blah calls; those are using call/cc to
implement coroutines. Which is something you really really want in a game but
which C++ of course doesn't have. (GOAL had native coroutines.)
It's also nice to be able to iterate on the language syntax without having to
fool with BNF grammars and so on.
------
neonscribe
In 1983, Rescue on Fractalus and Ballblazer, the first releases from Lucasfilm
Games, were built with a system written in Lisp. It was a 6502 assembler with
Lisp syntax and a Lisp-style macro facility, written in Portable Standard
Lisp, running in Berkeley Unix on a 4MB VAX 11/750. Unfortunately it was
eventually abandoned because the developer had left and it was a bit of a
strain on the VAX that was shared by the whole development team.
Yes, I wrote it. Yes, it was my first non-academic programming job. Yes, the
users complained about the parentheses, and the slowness. But, they also took
advantage of the powerful macro facility.
~~~
pstuart
Fond memories of Ballblazer. An amazing creation for a ~2 MHz 8 bit cpu.
~~~
neonscribe
Written by David Levine, <http://grokware.com/dl/resume.html> who credits the
Lisp-based Macro Assembler in his resume!
------
jlongster
I built an iPhone game with Scheme, and I have to say, it was the best
debugging/development environment I've ever had.
~~~
Vekz
jlongster I was closely following your blog posts about Gambit-scheme on the
iphone and was even inspired to try it myself. However this was shortly before
Apple changed the developer agreement to add the "stuff that compiles to
objective c is not acceptable" clause.
It appears as you have discontinued this project. Was that clause the reason?
here is his blog for reference: <http://jlongster.com/legacy/scheme-iphone-
apps.html>
~~~
euccastro
FWIW, Gambit C compiles to C, not to Objective C. I'm not sure that makes a
difference, though.
------
thought_alarm
Doom was built with a system written in Objective-C.
Clairvoyant, those 90s game developers were.
~~~
jbrennan
Can you describe it? I thought the code was all C? Or were the tools written
in Objective-C? Either way, that's very interesting (big Objective-C fan,
here).
~~~
thought_alarm
John Romero wrote up a pretty cool post about the use of NeXTSTEP and
Objective-C at id Software during the 90s.
<http://rome.ro/2006/12/apple-next-merger-birthday.html>
------
bcaulf
It's a little disingenuous for Franz to claim any credit for Nichimen.
Nichimen N-Graphics was the spinoff of the Symbolics S-Graphics system,
written in ZetaLisp. Symbolics ceased new development and there were customers
for the graphics system, so it needed to be ported to a Lisp environment that
would run on available hardware.
Franz Allegro CL is a further development of Maclisp, developed during Project
MAC at MIT. ZetaLisp was also a direct development of Maclisp. I'm guessing
this shared ancestry helped in the software porting and made Franz the natural
choice for the N-Graphics. But the press release just blows a lot of smoke
about the speed and scalability of Franz.
~~~
e40
> Franz Allegro CL is a further development of Maclisp
You are completely wrong. "Franz Lisp" was written to be compatible with
Maclisp so that it could run Vaxima. "Allegro Common Lisp" was written from
scratch with no relation to Franz Lisp or Maclisp.
~~~
bcaulf
I see now after more reading that I was wrong and you are right. Franz Lisp
was a new implementation that was compatible with Maclisp and Allegro Lisp was
a later new implementation. I'm sorry to have posted bad information.
------
st3fan
It is cool but I wonder how many customers you get with a story that is 15
years old. The world has moved on.
I did some really early Apple Newton development work in around the same
timeframe ('96, '97) and the early Newton development tools were also all
written in Lisp. Probably Mac Common Lisp.
Not so strange of course since many people on the Newton team had a strong
OODL (Object Oriented Dynamic Language) background. These are mostly the same
folks with SmallTalk, Lisp, Scheme and Dylan experience.
Awesome times. But not much of it is left.
~~~
old_sound
I've posted the link. I've have no affiliation with the guys from that site.
Just wanted to share an interesting story.
------
mtogo
The Jak and Daxter series (PS2) was also written (almost?) entirely in Lisp,
too.
~~~
notlion
Or more specifically, GOAL -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp>
~~~
notlion
..which incidentally is how one of the villains got his name:
<http://jakdaxter.neoseeker.com/wiki/Gol_Acheron> :P
------
TeMPOraL
Thanks for sharing this link. I'm giving a talk on Lisp and computer games at
my university in less that two weeks from today. It's great to have more
examples to share.
BTW. Abuse is a half-C, half-Lisp game.
~~~
ericlavigne
Good timing. You can also use the results of the Lisp Game Jam that starts
today.
<http://lispgames.org/>
~~~
rbanffy
> NEW: Lisp Games Development Screencast 1
Oh please, use something like blip.tv, as it handles podcasts properly. This
way I can watch it on my TV and hack from the couch. I need to get away from
my desk to get the creative juices flowing.
------
old_sound
I've also found this resources talking about Lips in the gaming world:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp>
<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LispInJakAndDaxter> <\-- regarding Jack & Daxter
mentioned in the comments.
------
tzs
Note that the article seems to be talking about the tools used to build the
game, not the game code itself. I'd guess this means things like texture
editing, level design, and such.
~~~
Luc
As far as I can tell N.World was a modelling and animation (and rendering)
package comparable to Maya. See this press release from 1996:
[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1996_August_6...](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1996_August_6/ai_18562821/)
"[... ] our tools were used to model the characters for Super Mario 64".
I bet SM64 was written in C++.
EDIT: ... and possibly large chunks of it in C, too, since the C++ compilers
always seemed to lag several months behind the C compilers on new platforms,
and SM64 was a launch title.
~~~
ajg1977
It was written in C and assembly.
------
cageface
This seems like pretty old glory to trumpet in 2011.
~~~
e40
Or, that's been on their website for a long time and someone found and posted
it here.
------
rcneel
Haven't you ever unlocked Lambda Mario? I thought this was pretty clear... ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
System shock: A story of a 25-year-old font coming back with a vengeance - 0x10c0fe11ce
https://medium.com/@mwichary/system-shock-6b1dc6d6596f#.v0lk6vj4x
======
torgoguys
Windows still has well over 80% of the desktop market and IT WASN'T TESTED?
How can that be? It's not like this is an obscure Windows issue. View any page
on your site and it would have been glaringly obvious...
Thanks for the fun write-up though. Overboard rage aside, it's a good reminder
that we all should double-check our QC processes.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Microsoft recently folded their test engineers into the general population.
I.e. everybody is supposed to test their own code. Which means, testing
dropped to negligible levels. That's why our IT dept has to vet every update
now; some of them break your machine.
~~~
zaphar
It's not on Microsoft to test Mediums web font rendering changes for them.
Medium should have tested on a windows desktop with a multiple browsers. If
they had they would have caught this before shipping to consumers.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Ah I see.
------
seren
The main takeaway for me is the lack of testing before releasing a new major
version. I know that the market is pretty fragmented between desktop and
mobile, but you should expect that some people will access from a Windows
machine. Maybe I misunderstood but it was launched without being rendered once
on Windows ?
~~~
eterm
I'm cynical enough to believe that this was caught in testing and someone
thought it would make an interesting blog post so wrote it up as if it went
live.
------
lmorris84
Can someone who does more UI work than me explain why you would want to future
proof css like this in the first place?
Even forgetting the undesired outcome and lack of testing, it's css...if
browsers implement this feature, release it when the time comes. Not sure
what's to be gained from adding something like this now. Feels like over
thinking the issue a little.
~~~
WorldMaker
Today's browser development preference/"wisdom" is to always include the
unprefixed CSS even if you include a vendor prefixed version. The reasoning
for this is the realization that maybe vendor prefixes were a bad idea all
along. For better or worse, there are a bunch of -webkit prefixed CSS terms
that will likely live on the web "forever". So the decision has been (by Edge
and Blink [Chrome, Opera], at least) that instead of vendor prefixes browsers
should use experimental flags (that are off by default) and unprefixed CSS.
(This way devs can still test and evaluate new features, but are much less
likely to litter the web in the wild with such experimental features as they'd
have to explain to users how to turn the flags on.)
Of course today's wisdom may also be tomorrow's folly and the winds could
change again, but I think a lot of us would prefer to forget that vendor
prefixes ever happened and not worry about prefixing/autoprefixing/prefix-
fixing ever again, so I for one appreciate today's wisdom. Even if we do find
weird edge cases in Apple's choices with regards to vendor prefixed CSS.
~~~
Eric_WVGG
I don’t understand this perspective at all. If transitions and transforms had
been introduced this way, it would have taken many years longer for them to
bleed into commonplace use. No normal user is going to jump through the hoops
necessary to turn experimental flags on.
The blink tag disappeared, table-driven design disappeared, unnecessary vendor
prefixes will gradually disappear too. That's a small price to pay for
progress.
~~~
WorldMaker
> No normal user is going to jump through the hoops necessary to turn
> experimental flags on.
That's the feature, it's not a bug.
It's a technical debt issue for the web. Some of those early -webkit prefixed
CSS features changed between when the prefixed version was introduced to
Webkit and the final spec. Because enough of the old version exists in the
wild on the web, the nonstandard versions effectively have to be supported
forever or someone's aunt's favorite website mysteriously breaks.
Ultimately the change here is to trust in the standardization process. We, as
the web development community, can solve the root cause problem: standards
take too long from proposal to "recommendation". We don't need to use the hack
of using experimental/prototypal/unfinished features for years, if we can
speed up the process for features the web wants.
The benefit of a little bit of patience (or the usage of smart polyfills) with
respect to the latest and greatest features is _hope_ for a better web where
we can all spend less time worrying about cross-browser quirks like which
vendor prefixes are supported/not-supported and whether or not they use some
ancient nonstandard form.
------
jameshart
No mention of the fact that CSS actually has a mechanism to use OS system
fonts? 'caption', 'menu', 'message-box' are all, for example, available system
fonts.
This is actually a bit of a quirk in the syntax of the CSS 'font' property -
[http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/fonts.html#font-
shorthand](http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/fonts.html#font-shorthand) \- in that
it's not strictly only a shorthand for size/style/family properties, because
you can use 'message-box' as a complete font specification, but you can't use
'20pt bold message-box'. On the other hand, you can stack 'font: message-box;
font-weight: bold; font-size:20px;', so thats not actually a limitation.
Not sure what the browser support situation is, as 'caniuse' and 'quirksmode'
haven't dug into the details of support for the CSS 'font' property, but it
looks to be doing what you'd expect in chrome on OS X. YMMV.
Looks like this isn't the first time someone's missed this?
[http://furbo.org/2015/07/09/i-left-my-system-fonts-in-san-
fr...](http://furbo.org/2015/07/09/i-left-my-system-fonts-in-san-francisco/)
~~~
leephillips
These shorthands don't seem to do anything on Chrome/Ubuntu.
~~~
jameshart
Ah. But to be fair, nor will font-family: -apple-system, San Francisco, droid
sans, Segoe ui.
~~~
addandsubtract
He did add ".SFNSText-Regular"
------
harryc2011
And, somewhere within the depths of modern versions of Windows, there lay, dormant, an old-fashioned System font from 1990 — alongside some vintage software routines necessary to render it.
I mean it's hardly hidden in the depths of Windows - it's right there in every
single font selection menu.
~~~
mariusmg
Apparently for the people who test their shit only on Macs it's "hidden" all
right.
------
to3m
I always quite liked the Windows 3.1 fonts. They were nicely put together -
very crisp, and easy to read. Good use of the grid.
None of the screen grabs show them at their best, though, because they've been
scaled unevenly. Zoom in on the Program Manager shot - if you can't spot them
as-is - and you'll see the telltale signs. Tastes differ, but it makes my eyes
slightly uncomfortable just looking at it.
Wikipedia has a much better 1:1 shot:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6b/Program_Manag...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6b/Program_Manager.png)
\- just look at it! Aren't those pixels glorious?
~~~
SixSigma
Yeah, it's made me consider switching to "system" as my daily font
~~~
to3m
Well, I hope you're not using Windows 8.1, because you don't get the option
any more. Luckily, the default - 8pt Segoe UI on mine, I think? - looks decent
even with ClearType off and antialiasing disabled.
~~~
SixSigma
Nor in my Windows 7 :(
------
trymas
Does it mean that none of the devs/designers in medium.com use Windows?
IMHO it's just interesting coincidence, nothing more. Even though I am not
Windows user and I am not for eternal software backwards compatibility (this
topic can evolve into a huge rant). Though somehow medium.com staff tries to
prove, that having old font is a bad thing and shouldn't be installed today.
They released a major update (even calling it version 2.0) and have not it
tested it with users (remember that the goal was to use native fonts, so they
must have tested it with Android, iOS, OS X, Windows, Windows Phone, Chrome
OS, etc.)?
Article was very interesting, showing how can long history of computing
produce interesting outcomes. But I felt that author is very annoyed by this
coincidence, and somehow this is Microsoft's fault and not medium's and IMHO
author is not right.
~~~
dublinben
Are you really surprised that none of the developers or designers at a hip
startup in San Francisco are running Windows? I'm sure even the receptionist
is on a Mac.
~~~
mixmastamyk
Yes, and just like the old days, when Windows admins tried to eradicate
anything not Windows due to admin costs, it works both ways.
------
jorams
I'm a bit confused about the use of "just give me a system font", then several
named fonts and then "sans-serif". Isn't that exactly what "sans-serif" does,
giving you a sans-serif system font?
~~~
dot
How does a system know wether a font is sans-serif or not?
~~~
drivers99
It's a browser setting. For example, I'm using Firefox 41 on Windows 7 and in
Options->Content->Fonts&Colors/Advanced... it has "Times New Roman", "Arial",
and "Courier New" as the defaults for Serif, Sans-serif, and Monospace
respectively.
In Chrome, it's under Settings->+Show advanced settings->Web content/Customize
fonts... (Times New Roman, Arial, Consolas on mine.)
In IE 11 under Tools (gear icon)->General->Appearance/Fonts it has "Webpage
font" and "Plain text font" (Times New Roman and Courier New on mine). It's
weird that they don't let you pick the default sans-serif font.
------
CGamesPlay
So, there's obviously a miss on testing this here [1], but I wanted to make
another point about the wisdom of embedding code that you cannot test,
thinking that it would have no effect, with the expectation that at some
arbitrary date in the future (which you don't control) it will change the
visual appearance of your landing page to something else... that you haven't
tested. When iOS 9 came out, it wasn't like people were just resubmitting
their apps without ever running them once.
[1] I'm willing to buy that Windows represents a minority of browser share to
Medium, although it still seems doubtful that it's such a small share that
making visual changes to your global CSS doesn't merit testing on that OS. Was
this just a line in some larger diff? "By the way, I changed all the fonts;
works on localhost"?
------
UK-AL
How can you not test on windows before release? It's still the most popular
operating system?
~~~
igravious
Do not take this as snark. Not meant as such. Just observation, begrudging
admiration is as negative as it gets :)
My guess is that trendy internet start-ups have a Mac culture. I'm not sure,
I'm not in trendy internet start-up land. The same is true in academia though,
which is my land. Go to an academic conference and we're talking predominantly
Mac.
I love the way they spin the "did not test on Windows, the most popular
desktop OS" fail to "isn't System so cool and retor, isn't it awesome?". That
takes a fair amount of chutzpah and a serious inability for stuff like this to
faze you. Which is probably a great character quality for a dev team whose
software touches millions.
~~~
sagichmal
> I love the way they spin the "did not test on Windows, the most popular
> desktop OS" fail to "isn't System so cool and retor, isn't it awesome?".
> That takes a fair amount of chutzpah and a serious inability for stuff like
> this to faze you.
I don't understand. Why should this faze anyone? The website still worked, no
harm was done. It barely registers as a bug!
~~~
davegardner
In this case it certainly wasn't a serious bug. However it suggests that they
did no testing at all on Windows, so in the future they may not be quite as
lucky.
------
mattbee
Heh, I thought the punchline was going to be people seeing _this_ San
Francisco font
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_(1984_typeface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_\(1984_typeface\))
~~~
revlucio
Didn't read until the end did we?
~~~
jacquesm
Someone commenting on the punchline most certainly did read to the end.
~~~
tgb
The punchline commented on was significantly before the end.
------
swah
I love these articles assuming everyone has retina Macbooks. Which matches the
price of a car in third world countries...
~~~
54mf
You're being disingenuous. For starters, from the second paragraph: "In
between Roboto on Android, San Francisco on iPhones and Macs, and Segoe UI on
Windows..." Clearly, they're targeting all major platforms. Not to mention,
retina MacBooks start at $1299—which is on par with other HiDPI PC laptops,
mind you—and I can buy a car on Craigslist here in the first world for like
$500. (And I have.)
If you don't like Apple, that's fine, but don't disguise your displeasure as a
stand against class warfare.
~~~
elros
The cheapest Macbook you can find with a retina display costs $3200 in Brazil.
That's more than double the price you quote, and we're not even accounting for
purchase-power differences in the currency itself.
To put it in perspective, the minimum wage is $300, and I don't know anyone
making more than $1500 over there – including developers.
You could literally make a living off of buying Macbooks in the US and selling
them in Brazil for double the price; it'd still be much cheaper than in the
stores.
~~~
54mf
What does this have to do with the article?
[Edit] I'll be less terse. Yes, I know computers are more expensive in some
countries. Are you accusing the author of being, in some way, discriminatory
towards people with lower incomes? Did he say they were only designing for
Retina displays? (Or only for Apple hardware?) This response feels like an
even larger straw man than the parent comment I responded to, and even less
about the article itself.
~~~
elros
I'm not accusing the author of anything, I'm accusing you of thinking retina
Macbooks are somehow cheap and accessible.
I also dont't think the comment you were replying to was expressing a dislike
of Apple.
Basically, I think you're not even wrong. :-)
~~~
JustSomeNobody
When did he say they were cheap and accessible? He actually said, they were on
par with similarly equipped PCs. Not at all the same thing.
~~~
elros
He was replying to a post that matches the price of a computer to a car, with
the implication that that's expensive. He replied saying that a rMBP "starts
at $1299", and he was disagreeing with the post he was replying. Thus his
implication was that this is a cheap price.
~~~
54mf
I'm willing to retract that entire line of thinking, because the author never
ever actually said anything about designing for Retina hardware, so why are we
talking about it in the first place? Their explicit approach was to make
Medium's typography work _on as many platforms and devices as possible_ , and
this OS X (not _Retina_ , just OS X) bug was an edge case that they missed.
~~~
elros
Oh, I fully agree with you on this one!
------
davotoula
All sounded great until
> And, since –apple– is a typical vendor prefix for an experimental feature,
> we included a more future-proof system as the first entry
Adding system as font should have rang a few alarm bells with any designers
older than 30!
~~~
rockdoe
So this is an Apple WebKit extension that can't sanely be un-vendor-prefixed?
~~~
bcg1
Browsers could just implement it like:
font-family: system; /* does what the author expects */
font-family: "System"; /* does what they expect on MS backward-compatibility fantasy island */
~~~
praseodym
Except that all browsers that don't yet understand the new meaning of 'system'
will then fall back to the old behaviour, that is, the Windows font.
------
gherkin0
Semi-related question:
The author posted this image of him recreating the old System font as an
OpenType vector font:
[https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*gwDg2tz2R22D...](https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*[email protected])
The offset pixel on that look horrible, but they also look like a lot of the
web fonts I see day-to-day when I have font smoothing disabled. Are modern
fonts actually being designed like that for some reason?
~~~
wmil
You need to spend a lot of time tweaking font hinting to make a font that
looks good at low res without smoothing. Designers don't bother anymore.
------
pjc50
I suspect the author (and possibly everyone in their office) is younger than
this font. What was that discussion we were having the other day about
ahistoricity?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10412284](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10412284)
~~~
kps
No idea how old he is, but it would be a mistake to accuse Marcin Wichary of
ahistoricity.
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/tags/computerhistory/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/tags/computerhistory/)
[https://www.google.com/doodles/30th-anniversary-of-pac-
man](https://www.google.com/doodles/30th-anniversary-of-pac-man)
------
amyjess
By Marcin Wichary. That name brings back memories... I recognize his name from
a site he ran called the GUIdebook [0], which documented a number of GUIs in
screenshot form going back decades. Unfortunately, he stopped updating it in
2006, but the site is still up for anyone who wants to check it out.
[0] [http://www.guidebookgallery.org/](http://www.guidebookgallery.org/)
------
grhmc
Man, those screenshots with the `system' font look great.
------
luxpir
This is reassuring. Designers choosing system fonts. As a non-designer, I
opted for site-wide Georgia usage recently and was really happy with the
result. I was doing it initially partly for performance reasons, and to stop
external calls on a HTTPS-only site, in the end it felt like it was more
fitting and more characterful than the (pretty, but generic) Source Sans Pro.
------
matt_morgan
Sounds like they need to have a few people older than 26 on staff. I would
have totally expected that to happen.
------
ashmud
As of Windows 7, Windows still likes to fall back to System font if it is
running low on UI resources. I see this on a regular basis in the "Find in
Files" results in Visual Studio.
Further down the rabbit hole:
On Win2k, if you used non-default DPI settings, programs using System font
looked particularly atrocious.
------
jacques_chester
> _we included a more future-proof system as the first entry_
This is a classic example of why YAGNI is a slogan.
------
shirro
Sometimes it doesn't pay to overthink things and do more than is necessary. It
doesn't seem likely that without the vendor extension "system" is going to
become an official or defacto cross browser standard any time soon. Without
that font name being reserved by either a standard or common usage a collision
would seem inevitable.
------
kazinator
> _It was not even a vector font… most personal computers couldn’t use vector
> fonts yet._
What are the exceptions? What "personal computers" from the Windows 3 era had
a UI with vector fonts?
(I'm assuming that institutional workstations costing upwards of $15K don't
count as personal computers.)
~~~
wmil
Adobe Type Manager on the Mac created raster system fonts from postscript
fonts. So you could sort of argue that case.
~~~
Stratoscope
I'm not 100% sure how ATM for the Mac worked, but I seem to recall it was the
same as ATM for Windows (which I worked on). It didn't actually create raster
fonts, but instead rasterized on the fly the glyphs that each app was actually
using.
------
Sleaker
Saw 'System shock' and was expecting the video-game tie in. Disappointed :( oh
well.
------
gotchange
I don't know if this could be of help to them in their specific case but have
they tried something like this
font: caption | icon | menu | message-box | small-caption | status-bar
to reach the desired result?
------
joshu
I had the pleasure of chatting occasionally with Marcin when I was at Google.
I love that I hear more of the exploits now than I did then.
------
debacle
How do I get this to render in CSS? I tried using "System" (Windows 7 Firefox)
and it didn't appear to work.
~~~
moron4hire
Wow, that's a good question. I see that I have the font here on a clean-
install of Windows 8.1, but if I use the element inspector in Chrome to try to
change the font on some of the text here on the screen, it seems to render as
Times New Roman. And I have to eliminate the fallbacks. It will fall-through
System, but it won't pick up the body font.
------
pantalaimon
Umm, what about Linux? The page displays fine on Ubuntu, but what font does it
use?
~~~
yrro
Whatever is printed by `fc-match system`.
------
intrasight
Nothing wrong with a little bit of accidental nostalgia now and then.
------
J_Darnley
You mean you used a perfectly sharp font that renders correctly? What's so bad
about that?
------
fit2rule
The web sucks. Completely borked. Time for a rewrite.
~~~
krapp
PEBDAC
(Problem Exists Between Developer And Keyboard)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
FREE BEER - neur0mancer
http://freebeer.org/
======
sigvef
> FREE BEER is a beer which is free in the sense of freedom, not in the sense
> of free beer.
Now that is confusing!
~~~
pan69
It's a pun on a way to explain open source: Free as in freedom, not free as in
free beer.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_as_in_Freedom:_Richard_Sta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_as_in_Freedom:_Richard_Stallman%27s_Crusade_for_Free_Software)
So Free Beer isn't beer you don't pay for but it's recipe is freely available,
i.e. open source.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Press for Startups: 10 tips - drusenko
http://david.weebly.com/1/post/2008/02/press-for-startups-10-tips.html
======
immad
nice advice. Found the point about tuesday-thursday and how early to tell
press most interesting.
David, obviously weebly has received a lot of good/big coverage, how much of
it was through your direct affect (i.e contacting the reporter) and how much
through serendipitous circumstances?
~~~
drusenko
\- Newsweek was through YC generally, but not all companies in the round got a
mention in the article, so it certainly had some to do with our effort.
\- Time reporter contacted us initially, but she sent out the same email to a
lot of startups. The real effort was in (first) just getting back to her, and
(second) properly selling the start-up and vision. She made the original email
sound as if it wasn't a big article at all.
\- NBC, BBC were serendipitous, but most likely as a result of our growing
user base (more people out there who knew about us/recommended us).
\- The rest were all as a result of us contacting reporters (TechCrunch,
GigaOm, VentureBeat, Mashable, etc)
------
colellm
Put together a short list of bloggers that are appropriate for your product!
I think bloggers and press can help when you have a niche consumer product
(like a user generated travel website) but you need to get your name in the
relevant (i.e. travel) news/blogs.
What I don't think works for a general consumer site (site that is not
necessarily geared towards techies) is spending a lot of time trying to get
covered by techcrunch because your time could be better spent targetting more
relevant media (yes techcrunch readers travel but not all travelers are
techies).
------
webwright
Great article.
I'd add a reference article:
[http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew_chens_blog/2007/11/why-...](http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew_chens_blog/2007/11/why-
bloggers-an.html)
In short, think hard about whether there are ways you can spend your time in a
way the KEEPS GIVING you traffic/attention (SEO / viral). In the world of
startups, if you are doing something it is invariably at the expense of
something else.
~~~
drusenko
With all due respect to Andrew Chen, he's wrong. He makes a good point --
viral traffic is the best kind -- but there is definite use to press traffic
as well. All of our growth has been based on press. I'm planning on writing a
blog post in a few days (need to get some work done now!) that shows a graph
of our growth and talks about how press has impacted us.
~~~
webwright
Heh-- I'm not saying press/bloggers aren't important,,, but that Andrew's
point is as important (or more). The number of startups focusing on getting
onto TechCrunch far outnumbers the number that are focusing on their SEO/viral
strategy.
My last job was at a funded startup that spent boatloads on PR and got lots of
press (TV, newspapers, blogs). Just about every time there was a great
spike... Followed be traffic dropping back to "normal" levels.
~~~
drusenko
From what I've seen of PR, it's not very effective, especially not for the
$/results ratio. The point of Andrew Chen's article is indeed good -- viral
growth, if you can achieve it, is awesome. But press is far from useless.
I have no idea what the product did at the last startup you worked at. A lot
of times companies think pounding the press will bring them success, which is,
again, not true (a shitty product that gets press won't go anywhere). However,
a good product that receives press should settle down at more signups/day than
before the coverage. Enough exposure, and a good product should eventually
take off: people keep telling people about products they recommend, slowly,
over time. You eventually build up a base of enough people that are
recommending you that you really start to grow.
If it doesn't, I'd take a hard look at the product.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tufte in R - trengrj
http://motioninsocial.com/tufte/
======
minimaxir
I've done a lot of work writing how to make nice plots in R/ggplot2
([http://minimaxir.com/2015/02/ggplot-
tutorial/](http://minimaxir.com/2015/02/ggplot-tutorial/)), but I admit that a
lot here is new to me.
As the Tufte code samples indicate, plotting using base R graphics can be
headache inducing, though, which is why the inclusion of a ggplot2
implementation is helpful. The other themes included with ggthemes seem pretty
interesting as well.
An important thing to note about plotting with R is that if you can, you
should use R in OS X for antialiasing. It makes a very notable difference for
high-res charts (see my post), and it's clear that there's a lot of pixelation
around the text and lines in the OP. Here's the Tuft line ggplot2 plot
rendered on my MacBook:
[http://i.imgur.com/DC6TgW9.png](http://i.imgur.com/DC6TgW9.png)
~~~
jacobolus
Can’t you just export a vector file and then let whatever other renderer (e.g.
a browser) handle the antialiasing?
Edit: I don’t think I understand your complaint. The graphics in the original
article are antialiased. Are you just saying their antialiasing algorithm
isn’t as good?
Here’s what your version (on the left) looks like when rescaled (using Preview
on OS X to rescale) to about the same size as theirs; the two seem roughly
comparable: [http://i.imgur.com/LWCeAPj.png](http://i.imgur.com/LWCeAPj.png)
(I think the reason for the difference in apparent line/font weight in my
picture there is that Preview properly downscales in a linear (not gamma-
encoded) color space, whereas most vector antialiasing/rasterizing algorithms,
including both Quartz and Cairo AFAIK, work in a gamma-encoded space). If you
had generated the image at the same original size, I suspect it would look
extremely similar to the one in the blog post.
~~~
otsaloma
> Can’t you just export a vector file and then let whatever other renderer
> (e.g. a browser) handle the antialiasing?
You can. In my experience, for good quality, it's best to output graphics from
R as PDF and if you need a rasterized version, do that separately with
pdftoppm or something with a dpi chosen based on where it will be shown.
------
johnminter
I am certainly no fan of "chartjunk" and value clear graphics, I do not see
the value of removing the lines on the axes. I find them to be valuable visual
cues. I would also note that Tufte used them in his books, for example:
([http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0003uk)).
~~~
rout39574
A couple points:
First, DAPP is 1974; _VISUAL DISPLAY_ was 1983. Critique based on "once, you
did something different" seems misplaced.
Second, if you read _VISUAL DISPLAY_, you'll see that there's plenty of room
for individual judgement in the principles he espouses. Tufte is no dogmatist.
If you think the chart needs more ink, put it in and don't worry about the
response from ideologues.
Third, it would be useful for you to attempt to articulate to yourself the cue
value of the line, (as opposed to the tics). You might find that, when you try
to describe to yourself what it does, that you're describing comfort with
common pattern.
------
100k
This looks really nice. The resources linked to are also cool:
[http://www.daveliepmann.com/tufte-css/](http://www.daveliepmann.com/tufte-
css/)
[http://sachsmc.github.io/tufterhandout/](http://sachsmc.github.io/tufterhandout/)
------
vonklaus
I've been using Tufte all day today. First to make an email template for my CV
and then a theme for MOU so i can take some clean notes. Man, this is just so
good, like really really good, I am almost embarassed by comparison. Super
cool, great job.
~~~
hudibras
What do you mean by "an email template for my CV?"
~~~
vonklaus
I used tufte css and some added styles and made an email template. It has a
heading and signature, and allows for annotated notes in the body. I am going
to write a cover letter and send it that way.
~~~
hudibras
So the body of the email is formatted like a CV? If so, sounds like a good
idea.
------
naboonga
Anyone know how hard this would be to do in python?
~~~
Lofkin
I would suggest either using this:
[https://github.com/yhat/ggplot](https://github.com/yhat/ggplot)
or this :
[https://github.com/bokeh/bokeh/pulse](https://github.com/bokeh/bokeh/pulse)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hacker News Daily (announcement) - cperciva
http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2010-07-14-hacker-news-daily.html
======
niyazpk
cperciva, I really appreciate the effort you put into this.
One thing I find a bit depressing is that even though this scheme hugely
reduces the time one spends on HN by filtering the articles according to
votes, the top voted articles are not the ones that I would want to read. I
usually come here for that "hacker" hacker news (hackerhackernews.com used to
be something like this, but now the domain name has expired it seems). Anyway
I am sure there will be people who find your service really useful.
~~~
Kilimanjaro
That's exactly why I created <http://www.hackerblogs.com> if you check HN
frontpage right now, there are zero posts by hackers, all come from PR blogs
like techcrunch, readwriteweb, thenextweb, etc.
I highly recommend you giving it a try, it is still growing and I hope someday
it may become the new source of real hacker news.
* I dare you to find an article like "Flipping arrows in coBurger King" on the news sites right now.
~~~
giantfuzzypanda
Nice site, just added my blog. Only problem I see is that if it does keep
growing and becomes popular, then people could add feeds of irrelevant blogs,
and like most social news sites it would turn into a digg/reddit.
~~~
Kilimanjaro
I am the curator, I check it every ten minutes (I am that addict) and believe
me, I hate fud, payperpost and propaganda to death.
If I see one blog incurring in a fault, they're banned for life.
~~~
xsmasher
I tried to register <http://deadpanic.com/blog/> , but apparently didn't make
the cut. Any suggestions for improvement, or insight into the criteria you
use?
~~~
Kilimanjaro
Sure it did. I checked the logs and it is registered and ready to serve your
posts as soon as you publish them.
------
troels
This doesn't really solve the problem though. There's still to much
information to manage it.
I wonder if any social-links-sites (hacker news, reddit etc.) have tried with
an algorithm similar to that which last.fm uses, where you get suggestions on
stories based on which previous stories you have shown preference for? (I'm
sure this sort of ranking has some fancy name as well)
If not - Why?
~~~
panacea
Reddit certainly attempted this a few years ago. They had a 'recommended' tab
in their main navigation. It worked about as well as their search at the time
(ie. completely useless).
If I recall, it was based on your activity (this was pre-subreddits) so if you
interacted with lots of political stories, for instance, similar political
stories would be suggested.
The problem was if you downmodded a bunch of articles involving Ron Paul, your
recommended links would be Ron Paul articles.
~~~
alexandros
can anyone find references as to why the feature was removed?
~~~
zck
I don't know, but I imagine the resources they needed to commit to it were
pretty hefty.
------
jackowayed
I really like this idea and will give it a try, but FYI
<http://news.ycombinator.com/best> serves a similar purpose.
I'm not sure of the exact criteria for it, but its basically very highly-voted
articles that are fairly recent.
I've been thinking of limiting myself to /best to keep my HN time in check, so
you're definitely onto something.
~~~
cperciva
The problem with /best in my view is that links gradually come and go -- it's
the right format for "what are the recent interesting stories", but it's not
the right format for "what are the most interesting stories since the last
time I was here".
~~~
sliverstorm
If there is an RSS of /best, the answer is like 10 keystrokes away.
------
alexqgb
More evidence that curation, not creation, is the point of sharpest demand in
the media business. The immediate challenge, I suppose, is finding the right
mix of focus and serendipity.
More broadly, the challenge is having my own life modeled well enough so that
information relevant to short, medium, and long terms plans gets reformulated
appropriately.
I could see this leading to a point where 'news' is not something I check in
the morning over coffee. Rather, it's a feature that presents itself whenever
I shift my attention to doing another thing (e.g. working on project A,
planning weekend B, etc.)
The really fascinating thing would be getting updates about apparently
tangentially related items. It's the classic 'local angle', only with regard
to activity, not place.
------
Jun8
Thanks for doing this, interesting tool but I won't be using it! Let me
explain.
I have often found that the articles I enjoyed most at HN were the outliers,
i.e. not the ten most upvoted ones (anecdotal evidence, never tested this
quantitatively). In fact this is what makes HN interesting: the quirky
entries. My guess is that most of the 10 articles you select will be already
covered by other such sites, diminishing the value of coming to HN in the
first place.
The end effect will be similar to Hollywood blockbuster effect. It's not that
I don't like to go a blockbuster movie, but I don't want to watch those _all_
the time.
------
smork
I subscribed to the RSS feed but somehow the content in google reader is
truncated to this:
"The 10 highest-rated articles on Hacker News on July 13, 2010 which have not
appeared on any previous Hacker News Daily are: "
Would be nice to have the full post in there with the 10 links :)
~~~
cperciva
My blog code defaults to only putting one paragraph into the RSS feed -- for
most of my blog posts this works well. I've adjusted my script so that future
dailys will include the list of links in the RSS feed.
~~~
smork
Cheers, thanks for the quick fix :)
------
epi0Bauqu
Another one I made for myself a while ago: <http://hacker.watrcoolr.us/>. It
includes some other feeds as well as the stories that reach #1 on HN. If you
just want the HN stories that reach #1, use
<http://feeds2.feedburner.com/HNWatrcoolr>
------
bsd_junkie
There are a number of article recommendation engines out there that can fill
the need for "outlier" articles fitting even the most peculiar tastes. I
personally use <http://www.euraeka.com> and even though it aggregates news
from less hardcore programming sources I find it an incredibly powerful source
of science and technology news that fit my taste. I tried Digg and Reddit
recommendation engines but they all work on user-to-user based recommendations
and most of the time i get either inaccurate or trivial recommendations.
------
barkmadley
you beat me to it! I should have a prototype working by the end of the week
for something similar (but hopefully better as well). It was a learning
exercise for me so I didn't really lose any time.
------
pclark
Is there a service that aggregates all the hacker news aggregators?
~~~
mkramlich
since everyone's ideal is diff prob the most surefire and arguably easiest way
for you to get the particular aggregated and/or curated view is for you to
write a small script that does exactly what you want. if others might want
same then make the code avail with a link from your HN profile. If a
particular service or view hack becomes popular perhaps PG will add an equiv
feature to HN itself, etc.
------
roadnottaken
This is a pretty cool idea and a perfectly simple implementation. However, I
think you're solving a problem that doesn't exist: If I wanted efficiency, I
wouldn't be reading blogs and news aggregators in the first place. I come to
websites like HN to relax and browse through interesting articles and
discussions -- sort of like leafing through a good magazine. If you distill it
down to 10 articles then suddenly I'm finished reading and I can get on with
my work... Too soon!!!
------
andrewtj
I'd like to PayPal you $5 toward obtaining daily.hn ($62 + whatever the tax is
on gandi.net) — anyone else?
~~~
jrockway
My browser has a working bookmarks implementation, so I don't care what the
domain name is.
~~~
andrewtj
My bad, I get excessively terse when I'm tired. I wasn't suggesting it out of
utility but out of appreciation — nothing says thank you quite like a
superfluous vanity domain.
EDIT: Just noticed my other post has garnered at least one down-vote so
although I'm pretty sure this idea doesn't have legs, on the off-chance you
dear reader are one of ~13 other folks who'd like to see this happen, drop me
an email to express your interest.
------
aptsurdist
You might be interested in checking out the page -
<http://news.ycombinator.com/best> Sounds a lot like what you're doing.. I'm
not sure if others know about it already - I think I stumbled upon it by
accident.
------
cperciva
Discussion about direct link (I'm not sure which people will vote for, the
site or the announcement of the site):
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1514039>
------
elai
Could you make it that the actual news articles show up in the RSS feed when
displayed on google reader? I don't want to have to click the page and then
click the article to actually view it.
------
revorad
How do you decide the top 10 links of the day if you scrape every 5 minutes?
(the top links keep changing). Couldn't you just scrape once a day?
~~~
cperciva
The /news page ranks links based on score and time since submission. I'm only
ranking links based on score (and whether it has been on a previous daily).
I _could_ scrape the entire site at midnight each day, but I think PG would be
very unhappy with me if I did that. Scaping /news every 5 minutes imposes much
less load, and since highly ranked links get almost all of their votes prior
to falling off the front page, this gives me almost as much information.
~~~
revorad
I'm guessing that for your purpose, you might catch more interesting stories
from the /classic page than /news.
Do you mind sharing the scraping code?
~~~
cperciva
I'd prefer to not post the code publicly, simply because I don't want to
encourage people to put extra load on the HN server -- but if you want a copy,
send me an email and I'll provide it.
~~~
revorad
Thanks. Just emailed you.
------
nuclear_eclipse
Thanks Colin, I just added this to the feed list for <http://planethn.com> :)
------
tel
The RSS feed doesn't actually display the links, which makes this sort of
thing nearly useless to me. Is this just a bug?
------
joubert
Are points of a story only a sum of direct up votes? Or does it already factor
in age, number of comments, etc.?
~~~
giantfuzzypanda
Yes, but according to the FAQ they're ranked like this:
"On the front page, by points divided by a power of the time since they were
submitted. Comments in comment threads are ranked the same way."
------
kloncks
I'd be interested to know what you programmed this in. Do the .HTML pages mean
you used PHP? If them, cURL?
Lemme know.
~~~
cperciva
I use FreeBSD's fetch(1) to download the page, but curl or wget would have
worked just as well. Extracting the data I want (item #, score, and link) is a
few lines of perl. Managing the data over the course of the day and writing
out the final HTML is done using standard BSD text utilities (sort, join,
comm, cut).
~~~
kloncks
Thanks!
------
hackermom
Part of the problem is how Hacker News seemingly have turned into something
more akin of News. The hacker tidbits are far and few between, and the overall
amount of new submissions have skyrocketed.
~~~
duck
I agree. I wonder how it would work if it cost you X karma points for every
submission? Maybe X varies based on keywords in the title too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Where can you ask Stackoverflow questions but for money - vim_wannabe
I feel a bit bad about asking this question here for free, but is there a version of Stackoverflow where I could offer people money for answering?<p>I have a dumb question about a popular PHP framework that I seriously am not able to Google. But I also cannot ask the question on Stackoverflow because I have no reputation (or points or whatever) to offer. Plus I would probably get slain by the mods for asking a dumb question.<p>I'm not looking for a subscription service, just a place where I could offer 20 bucks or so for answering a single question, kind of like Bountysource.
======
ng-user
You can try HackHands [0]. I got $20 credit with them through the GitHub
Student Pack and only ever used it once. It seems like it might be the service
you're looking for!
[0] - [https://hackhands.com/](https://hackhands.com/)
------
seanwilson
> I have a dumb question about a popular PHP framework that I seriously am not
> able to Google. But I also cannot ask the question on Stackoverflow because
> I have no reputation (or points or whatever) to offer. Plus I would probably
> get slain by the mods for asking a dumb question.
If you can't easily Google the answer and it's not obvious it's not a dumb
question. What have you got to lose by asking?
------
mars4rp
Stackoverflow should start selling reputation, so you can ask a question and
add a bounty to it. if you are serious enough to pay for it, it should be
useful to somebody else too.
I've been in the same situation and didn't have much reputation to offer!
~~~
jetti
It would have to be a different sort of reputation though. Otherwise you get
people with very little knowledge that have similar amount of reputation as
somebody like Jon Skeet. Also, I feel like that would make rise to more very
niche issues that people would feel entitled to an answer because they paid
for it.
------
artpar
There was a "Who's mentoring" thread about 2 weeks ago. You can pick someone
from there
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148619](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148619)
------
dumbmatter
It's fine to post dumb questions on Stack Overflow. It's not fine to post
questions that are either incoherent or obviously have been previously asked.
And you don't need any reputation/points/whatever.
------
gspyrou
[https://www.pluralsight.com/product/mentoring](https://www.pluralsight.com/product/mentoring)
------
vim_wannabe
I tried posting the question on Stackoverflow, but having had no responses I
had to pay another user to place a bounty.
Then I got a response and it's all good.
------
brad0
Could you give us an example of the problems you're not getting answered?
We might be able to give you tips to get it answered without needing rep
points.
------
ralmeida
Codementor.io would also fit the bill, in addition to what has already been
mentioned.
------
jklein11
Isn't that what stackoverflow bounty is for?
------
nodelessness
You can find someone on airpair to help you with it?
------
soulchild37
Try posting at reddit r/webdev
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Transfer Learning Will Radically Change Machine Learning for Engineers - hsikka
https://medium.com/modeldepot/transfer-learning-will-radically-change-machine-learning-for-engineers-78732b2bb415
======
ea016
For those of you who want to play with transfer learning, Keras has a nice
collection of models for computer vision available here:
[https://keras.io/applications](https://keras.io/applications)
Shameless plug: And if you want to try them out in your browser, I made a
website that allows you to try pre-trained models:
[http://pretrained.ml](http://pretrained.ml)
~~~
singularity2001
change angular src? {{model.name}} {{model.description}}
------
ekianjo
That's a PR piece that has very little depth to it.
~~~
singularity2001
it is a PR piece that rightfully talks about the "most underrated trick in
deep learning": transfer learning.
~~~
sgt101
Oh come on - surely ever since Microsoft published that paper about roman
alphabet recognition being improved by using chinese trained networks everyone
has been using it as a default
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sugar: The Bitter Truth (UCSF lecture) - chipsy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
======
gregwebs
This guy is a great presenter. The hypothesis behind the damages of fructose
actually gets worse than what is presented here, as fructose is implicated in
the creation of toxic AGE. For a more in depth overview of the science behind
fructose that is accessible, I would recommend Good Calorie, Bad Calorie by
Gary Taubes. Aside from fructose, I would actually recommend that book to
anyone concerned about their health.
I think it is important to differentiate between normal (hunter-gatherer)
levels of fructose consumption (< 5% of total calories, normally closer to 1%,
except perhaps in the summer when fruit is more abundant) and the amount we
are eating today. That is, if fructose is harmful, the dangers only seem to
manifest at the high levels of intake seen today.
Pragmatically, we may not need to be concerned about fructose at all, as
eating refined sugar is obviously bad for health, so it should be eliminated
anyways. (You need vitamins and minerals, and refined sugar doesn't have
any!). Unrefined sources of sugar are not very good nutritional resources
either.
Tragically, the damages of fructose may have been multiplied by the government
recommendations to replace saturated fat intake with polyunsaturated fat.
[http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2009/12/cirrhosis-and...](http://high-
fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2009/12/cirrhosis-and-corn-oil.html)
~~~
earl
I have to second this recommendation. Everybody concerned about nutrition
should read
* Good Calorie, Bad Calorie;
* The Omnivore's Dilemma
* The End of Overeating.
In order: the science of fat and weight, as best as can be explained today;
what's in your food, and what you should be eating; and how companies
influence your eating decisions and how to take control of them.
In particular, the last book summarizes research showing that, for certain
people, there is a reward conditioning feedback mechanism in the brain
triggered by the intake of fat, sugar, and salt. see
[http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/07/end-of-overeating-
th.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/07/end-of-overeating-th.html) for
a longer review. In particular, if you have lots of willpower elsewhere in
your life but struggle controlling your food intake, I can't recommend this
book strongly enough.
In any case, I think everybody should read the above 3 books; you'll be a long
way closer to being a well informed consumer of food and of it's effects on
your body.
~~~
stephen
Good Calorie, Bad Calorie was great, except that 90% of it was a history
lesson where he explains, in a very detailed manner, how other nutrition
theories of the last 100+ years were wrong.
Anybody know of another source that describes the book's views on fat
metabolism, blood sugar, etc. but is shorter and more to the point?
Not only for my own benefit to review, but I have a hard time recommending
Good Calorie, Bad Calorie to friends who are only marginally interested in
nutrition, but would still benefit from reading the book's core ideas in a
distilled form.
~~~
gregwebs
I have wondered the same thing, but most people's first response is they can't
believe that the government and scientists have it so wrong, and the only way
to truly explain that is to talk about the history. Perhaps there is a middle
ground, though, or there could be a smaller version that referenced the larger
version. Taubes is working on a much shorter version of GCBC.
~~~
stephen
Awesome that he's working on a shorter version. I poked around his site after
finishing the book to suggest just such a thing. Thanks for the heads up.
------
pg
I highly recommend watching this.
~~~
rarrrrrr
The natural health community has been screaming this for decades. Few take
heed.
My family has spent many years studying human health. The well-researched
conclusions are so far from mainstream American beliefs that the ignorant
dismiss them as absurd.
I'll get down voted, but in the interest of countering groupthink, here are
some examples anyway:
\- Food basics: Avoid hydrogenated oils, sodium nitrite, MSG/yeast extract,
artificial colors, high fructose corn syrup, all artificial sweeteners, all
grains that aren't whole. Replace sugar with agave nectar or stevia. Know the
smoke points for the cooking oils you use an don't exceed them.
\- Any multivitamin which packages B12 solely as "cyanocobalamin" is cheaply
manufactured. Quality vitamins package hydroxocobalamin. You'll probably have
to look online or at health food stores to find good quality vitamins. Many of
the options sold at pharmacies are little better than candy.
\- As much as 60% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D. The body makes it
in response to skin exposure to direct sunlight (not through glass.)
Sufficient vitamin D reduces risk of nearly all cancers by around 70%. Why
isn't the American Cancer Society screaming this message?
\- A cup of blueberries a day is more effective at reducing cholesterol than
current pharmaceuticals. Tastes better, too.
\- Eating refined carbohydrates depletes the supply of B vitamins. For women,
this contributes to the discomfort of menstruation.
\- A number of plants have strong cancer prevention or anticancer properties.
Examples: turmeric with black pepper, maca root, garlic.
...a few thousand more little details.
~~~
JulianMorrison
You do realize that agave nectar is basically pure fructose, right?
Also, MSG has been unfairly accused. Wikipedia says "a statistical association
has not been demonstrated under controlled conditions, even in studies with
people who were convinced that they were sensitive to it".
~~~
hachiya
A natural form of MSG is found in one popular variety of edible seaweed:
kombu.
Interestingly, some canned beans, e.g. Eden Organic (unsalted), come with
kombu in the can.
All the debate over things like artificial/alternatives sweeteners and MSG
seem like a severe case of not seeing the forest for the trees. The issue of
which sweetener to use is not so big as _how much_ of any of the sweeteners.
And for those who eat a diet of only whole foods, the answer is even easier:
none.
The controversy over issues like these has the general public all worried
about things they don't need to worry about so much, instead of being
concerned about things they really should be, e.g. what foods make up the diet
and their nutrient density. Worrying about MSG in my junk food, organic vs.
conventional pizza, or HFCS vs. cane sugar soda, is not likely to have much
benefit if these items make a regular appearance in my diet.
~~~
JulianMorrison
Glutamates are in Kombu, soy sauce, Parmesan, Marmite, peas...
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutamic_acid_(flavor)#Sources>
------
rdouble
Jack LaLanne tried to warn us about this 50 years ago:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJVEPB_l8FU>
------
chipsy
I was struck by the allusion Lustig makes to sugar being as poisonous as
alcohol. It makes ours look like a world of drug fiends.
~~~
gregwebs
This is an interesting anecdote from someone who claims to have cured his
alcohol abuse problems by going low carb. [http://fathead-
movie.com/index.php/2009/04/30/primal-body-pr...](http://fathead-
movie.com/index.php/2009/04/30/primal-body-primal-mind-primal-tools/)
~~~
shiny
The paleo diet is awesome. I've lost a considerable amount of weight on it,
and feel and look much better.
Also, a diet with staples like grass-fed beef, pastured butter (or any other
healthy animal fat), avocado, and fish is my kind of diet. No more forcing
down bitter grain or soy products in fruitless attempts to go "healthy". Plus,
my meals are so substantial and high in fat that I only need to eat once or
twice a day.
For anyone interested, there's a lot of good paleo sites out there, but I'd
start with <http://paleonu.com> and <http://freetheanimal.com>
And if you can, pick up Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.
------
nearestneighbor
Someone will have to answer for sapping and impurifying our precious bodily
fluids!
------
scotty79
Eat food. No too much. Mostly plants.
~~~
kingkongreveng_
The whole video is about how fructose is toxic. Many, many plants are rich in
fructose. It's not as simple as "eat plants." A modern variety apple or orange
is a blast of fructose.
It's also perfectly healthy to eat predominantly meat, organs, and dairy if
the animals are properly pastured. So the "mostly plants" claim makes little
sense without a lot of qualification.
~~~
scotty79
'Mostly plants' refers to the only piece of diet world that has been proven by
science. If you eat more plants you have lower risk of many severe diseases.
That's all we know about diet for sure. The rest is guesswork and wishful
thinking.
~~~
kingkongreveng_
I assure you "mostly plants" has no scientific backing. There are plenty of
randomized intervention studies introducing more fruit and vegetables into
diet and they all show a null result. Well controlled studies within
populations also do not show any longevity advantage to eating more
vegetables.
~~~
scotty79
To my knowledge there were numerous studies confirming that eating plants
often lowers risk of diseases such as cancer.
Maybe you can achieve similar effect with some other precise diet but eating
mostly plants is the easiest way to improving your health and lower you
calories intake.
~~~
kingkongreveng_
Go try and find a randomized intervention where more vegetables improved
health. Many have tried, all have failed.
~~~
dingle
These studies aren't randomized interventions, but I think it's a bit of a
simplification to say that all have failed.
"Dietary and lifestyle determinants of mortality among German vegetarians"
found that "A longer duration of vegetarianism (> or = 20 years) was
associated with a lower risk, pointing to a real protective effect of this
lifestyle"
"Vegetables, fruit, and cancer prevention: a review" states that "the evidence
for a protective effect of greater vegetable and fruit consumption is
consistent for cancers of the stomach, esophagus, lung, oral cavity and
pharynx, endometrium, pancreas, and colon. The types of vegetables or fruit
that most often appear to be protective against cancer are raw vegetables,
followed by allium vegetables, carrots, green vegetables, cruciferous
vegetables, and tomatoes"
"Nutrients and food groups and large bowel cancer in Europe" found that "most
vegetables, including pulses, were inversely associated with cancer of the
colon and rectum."
------
pkrumins
I watched it a while ago but I did not understand what was the key idea that
he wanted to say.
Okay, the corn syrup is just fructose, and as I understood from the lecture
it's equivalent to poison so we should avoid it.
But then sugar from plants and fruit also contains fructose! For every gram of
natural sugar there is half a gram of fructose. If we eat natural sugar it
seems equivalently bad? I don't get it.
So what does the lecture tell? Does it say we shouldn't be consuming sugar at
all? Or should we only be consuming glucose part of sugar? Or what?
Can anyone explain?
Thanks!
~~~
gaius
IIRC T-nation had an article on this. Fructose in an apple is OK because the
fibre etc means it is absorbed more slowly. The body isn't designed to have a
huge amount of fast-digesting carbs dumped into it in one go - even if the
total calories are the same.
------
voidpointer
This was really very interesting. I for one was mostly ignorant to the big
difference there was between glucose and fructose. Also the bit on ethanol was
quite interesting in itself.
The fact that HFCS is made from normal corn syrup (almost 100% glucose), which
is processed into fructose seems almost ironic.
------
dustineichler
If you want the jist of this lecture, around 1:15:00 is a good place to start,
he rants about Gatorade and McD's. Otherwise, it's O-Chem(?) up to that point.
Very interesting stuff. Less Fructose, more Fiber. Less Frankenburgers, more
Fruits.
~~~
dustineichler
He also mentions the paleolithic diet as a cure of type 2 diabetes. Link here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet>
~~~
CamperBob
Ah, yes. To live longer, eat like people who were lucky to see the far side of
30.
------
Freebytes
Wow. I just read a lot about sugar last night. I wanted to know if glucose was
truly the only sugar the brain needed. I found that processed sugars are used
almost immediately by the body; whereas, the sugars from natural sources are
released at a later time in smaller quantities. I read an article that stated
that these large doses of sugar cause a sudden, large increase in insulin
which can actually starve the brain from getting all of the sugar it needs as
the body tries to dispose of excess sugar. It was a very interesting series of
articles that I might hunt down again and post on HN at some point.
------
jeremyw
So this is another odd failure case for science, where researchers from many
areas selectively ignored (since the 1970s, let's say) a roughly-worked-out
biochemistry. Add political chilling effects and mix.
Given that there aren't particularly impervious ties in either political party
to sugar/carbs (activists being health advocates on the left and anti-subsidy
advocates on the right) I hope this set of research pathologies gets a kick in
the pants when sugar support detonates.
~~~
camccann
The sugar lobby is the corn lobby, because that's where most refined sugar
comes from. In other words, Midwest farmers, particularly in Iowa. See the
problem now?
~~~
jeremyw
Understood -- I'm saying there are growing factions in both parties that will
make these old allegiances obsolete.
------
johnl
If you are going to see grandparents this holiday, a good discussion might be
to ask them about their sugar consumption, prevalent health problems now and
then, and compare those to your own. Bet there is a big difference.
~~~
CamperBob
If they're honest, what they'll report is that their own grandparents died
about 20 years younger than they are now.
------
nearestneighbor
I watched the whole video. I thought he was going to explain why they put salt
in coke, but it seems he never did. Was he just implying that they are trying
to get people to drink more?
~~~
onoj
salt is hygroscopic - it sucks water from your body making you thirsty / sets
off a mechanism which makes you feel thirsty. This is why beer and coke etc
have salt in them (also explains free peanuts and pretzels in bars)
~~~
m_eiman
Salt also tastes good, which is why people _want_ to eat/drink it (and there's
probably an evolutionary reason for this - the body needs it). Try peanuts
without salt, it's not quite the same.
~~~
nearestneighbor
Besides those who lived by the sea, where could our ape-man ancestors find
salt?
~~~
m_eiman
In the blood of other animals, apparently. <http://www.salt.org.il/main.htm>
The fact that we like it so much, as with sweets, suggests that it was hard to
find - a significant mental reward was required to make us make the effort to
find it.
~~~
hachiya
Why would the fact that we like things that taste sweet indicate that they
were hard to find?
Our bodies run on sugar; sources of sugar, such as fruits and starches were
not hard to find.
Availability and use of fruit in our diet long ago is hardly anything new. It
certainly was not hard to find.
<http://www.health101.org/art_diet2.htm>
Research Yields Surprises about Early Human Diets
Teeth Show Fruit Was the Staple
By Boyce Rensberger
May 15, 1979 issue of the New York Times
~~~
m_eiman
_Why would the fact that we like things that taste sweet indicate that they
were hard to find?_
Assuming that nothing in how the body works happens for no good reason:
The fact that we enjoy it means that our body rewards us for eating it,
something that most likely means that it's something the body wants us to do.
If it was abundant, though, that'd make us eat too much of it (which is what's
happening today) unless there was something to stop us. With salt it's
possible to eat too much: that makes us feel bad. That suggests that salt was
abundant, otherwise we wouldn't need the counter system. The lack of a counter
system for sweets suggests that it wasn't abundant, at least not to the degree
that we could eat enough of it to prevent us from reproducing.
_Our bodies run on sugar; sources of sugar, such as fruits and starches were
not hard to find._
Eveything we digest is converted to sugar, be it fruits, bread or meat.
Regarding the link:
That some of our ancestors two million years ago might have, or might not
have, eaten mostly fruits doesn't say much of anything about how Homo Sapiens
work. In the article they say that even the Homo Erectus were omnivores, and
that was 1.5M years ago. Things have happened since then...
~~~
hachiya
First you speculate that salt was not easy to find:
> The fact that we like it so much, as with sweets,
> suggests that it was hard to find.
Then you claim salt was abundant:
> With salt it's possible to eat too much: that makes us
> feel bad. That suggests that salt was abundant,
> otherwise we wouldn't need the counter system.
Which is it - according to your speculative theories, was salt abundant or
not?
Your speculation on sweet being difficult to find is also nothing more than
(poor) speculation. The link I provided above is just one example showing that
fruit WAS abundant, as regardless of what those creatures were, fruit was
easily accessible.
It amazes me how much people use "evolutionary theories" to speculate about
just about anything to reach just about any conclusion.
~~~
m_eiman
_Which is it - according to your speculative theories, was salt abundant or
not?_
I revised it to abundant, but not as abundant as say air or water.
_Your speculation on sweet being difficult to find is also nothing more than
(poor) speculation._
Of course it is. However, you also need to take into account that (most)
natural fruit is far from the sweetness of the cultivated fruits we can buy in
the stores today. Compare wild apples to shop apples, for example.
_The link I provided above is just one example showing that fruit WAS
abundant_
It _might_ have been abundant 2M years ago, where those ancestors lived. That
says nothing about what happened the next 2M years, which is a significant
period of time in evolutionary terms (at least 100k generations). If something
changed, e.g. there was less fruit, the ancestors might have started eating
other things - maybe become omnivores (like the next step in the chain towards
Sapiens, the Erectus). Sounds like something that fits pretty well with what's
known about our ancestry.
Going back to an arbitrary point in our history and saying that that's when
Things Were Right(tm) and ignoring what's happened since then is no better
than my speculations. At least choose at time nearer to now if you're going to
do that, maybe 10k years ago when the latest major change in our diet
occurred? Even that is 500 or so generations ago, so we should have had at
least some chance to adapt to a farmer's diet. And by the way, the farmer's
diet is what's allowed us to get where we are today in terms of civilization.
_It amazes me how much people use "evolutionary theories" to speculate about
just about anything to reach just about any conclusion._
It's fun! Doesn't actually say a whole lot without actual research though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
When would be a good time to quit an Internet startup, and how do you know? - Sharel
When would be a good time to quit an internet startup, and how do you know?
======
rick888
1pm on Friday. It's always better to quit on a Friday.
~~~
Sharel
:)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Law firm made famous by Panama Papers document leak announces it's closing - salad77
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/panama-papers-law-firm-closes-1.4578329
======
ggg9990
That’s one thing an oligarch’s lawyer is paid for... to take the fall when the
shit hits the fan.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Phony Islam of ISIS - dtawfik1
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/what-muslims-really-want-isis-atlantic/386156/?single_page=true
======
venomsnake
I wonder what the reaction would be if we call the Christianity of any
christian group phony. Especially if their views are extreme.
My feeling is, that spinning a no true scottsman piece on a lot of topics,
will be high growth industry in the next couple of years.
We live in times in which there are many crazy people, willing to do crazy
stuff in the name of the crazy voices in their heads. Deal with it. Some of
them will claim identity close to someone else's. Also inevitable.
"How many fingers Winston?" \- if Daesh is showing 4 fingers, but saying they
are five, and there are people that are willing to see there five, they are
indeed showing five.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
H-1B visa lottery changing to favor those with advanced degrees - prostoalex
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/H-1B-visa-lottery-changing-to-favor-those-with-13574410.php
======
masonic
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19041303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19041303)
220+ points
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Dear Self-Driving Car AI, Who Should Die? - jgill
http://blog.jonathangill.org/self-driving-car-ai-who-should-die/?ref=hn
======
jgill
Curious about the HN community's thoughts on this self-driving car AI
conundrum.
~~~
dalke
HN readers have had many opportunities to voice their thoughts.
This was discussion about this 9 months ago, when there were 15 different
links to the article "Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill" \-
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Why%20Self-
Driving%20Cars%20Mu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Why%20Self-
Driving%20Cars%20Must%20Be%20Programmed%20to%20Kill&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)
, with about 30 comments across all postings.
A bit over a year ago there were 70 HN comments at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9725288](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9725288)
to the story "Will your self-driving car be programmed to kill you?"
8 months ago there were 71 HN comments at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10709264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10709264)
to the story "Will your driverless car kill you so others may live?"
There's almost certainly more that I've forgotten.
------
nowarninglabel
You're thinking too far ahead. Right now these cars are mainly focused on
staying on path and collision avoidance, not making "3 Laws" type decisions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Your waitress, your professor - nvader
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/opinion/your-waitress-your-professor.html
======
rayiner
The other day my wife and I were at a baby clothing store. We were chatting
with the young woman at the counter, and she was complaining about her student
loans. I asked her what her major was, and she said it was physics. I said
"oh" with a degree of surprise that made me cringe. I mentioned my brother had
majored in physics. She asked me where he went to school, and I told her he
went to Yale. She said "oh, my parents went to Yale, but I went to MIT."
I felt bad about the encounter, and I couldn't figure out why. Statistically,
you're safe in assuming that any random person working at a clothing store
isn't an MIT grad making pocket money while working on her PhD. I realized
later that I felt bad that it mattered to me. That when she revealed she was
smart and educated, in my head I moved her from one class of people into
another.
~~~
waterlesscloud
I have a hard time reconciling the idea that we need more STEM graduates with
the difficulty that actual STEM graduates have finding work in their fields.
Even if it's part time work while pursuing a PhD, if there was anything
resembling a real shortage, these things wouldn't happen. And it's not a rare
story.
~~~
morgante
The problem is one of miscommunication between tech and media/government.
There is definitely a shortage of developers, a shortage which tech companies
have regularly been complaining about.
Unfortunately, politicians and journalists just hear "we need more nerds" so
assume there is a STEM shortage (in their non-technical minds, nerds are all
equivalent). Thus the broad and pointless push for STEM graduates when what's
really needed is a specific subsection of Technology.
~~~
bicknergseng
I wouldn't even say we have a shortage of "good developers." Like commenters
pointed out a few days ago on the "how to make it in the tech mecca" post,
there is a shortage of "ideal" developers willing to work for less and a
strong employer willingness to pass on 100 or 1000 "ok" or "good" candidates
that they could train in favor of that "ideal" candidate.
So I would argue that it's a problem with an asymmetrical job marketplace and
poor long term decision making on the part of employers.
~~~
philwelch
Training doesn't always turn an "ok" or "good" candidate into a great one. The
requirement is for developers. Either junior developers or senior developers.
Hiring a trainee actually costs you developer time in the short run, for no
guaranteed output in the long run as many of the trainees will just wash out.
Besides, all you need is some books and open source software and you can train
yourself, at least to the level that you're hirable. OK, some things you have
to learn from experience in ways that are hard to accomplish outside of
working for a big company (large scale distributed systems) but most of the
companies that _have_ large scale distributed systems are willing to hire
straight out of college and, effectively, train them!
So, the rational thing to do is to let the "ok" developers develop their own
skills and then hire the ones that end up being good. But then, I don't think
the standard is unreasonably high in the first place.
~~~
logfromblammo
You're correct in that most "good" developers can self-train on whatever stack
the employer uses. The problem is that many employers are not even willing to
buy one book and wait two weeks. If the candidate cannot be instantly
profitable from day 0, they are deemed to be "not qualified" for the position.
There are too many tech fads and trends for a developer to self-train on
everything a potential employer could possibly want _before_ knowing exactly
what that is.
In my opinion, tech employers should stop being so specific with their
requirements and simply allocate some time for the new people to adjust to
their in-house way of doing things. As many of us know well, every development
team has its own slightly different way of doing things, which has to be
learned in order to work more effectively. Nobody "hits the ground running",
because the tech skills are hardly ever the limiting factor in hitting full
productivity.
And I assure you that any company that wants to hire people to "hit the ground
running" will forget to mention their new hires will be doing that running as
a steeplechase over mismanagement hurdles.
Training doesn't improve the quality of a candidate. It assures the candidates
you can find at the price level you have chosen are familiar with the specific
technologies and processes that your company uses.
~~~
philwelch
Then there's a pretty big disconnect that I've seen. The bigger companies that
try to hire all the best programmers--Google, Amazon, Microsoft--don't
actually care much about tech stacks unless they're hiring for a senior
specialist in some specific technology, and even then it'll have more to do
with a problem domain than a programming language. The employers who care
about tech stacks tend to be either mediocre large companies (who by
definition aren't very clueful) or small companies and startups (who really do
need you to hit the ground running because they really do have limited
resources).
~~~
logfromblammo
I think it comes down to whether the person directing the hiring process knows
anything about programming or not. At large, development-heavy companies, the
person hiring may actually have been a 100% software developer at some point,
before taking on management responsibilities. Then there is a big doughnut
hole, where the company is large enough to need developers, but too small to
want to promote any of them, and that is a wide wasteland of frustration
before you get down to small companies and start-ups whose business is so
strongly focused on tech that they can afford to have a full time developer,
but not so much that they can afford a bad one. Those tend to be split between
companies that hire for competence and those that want to hire someone that
they can use up fast and burn out. If the latter have fewer numbers, they need
to hire more people, so their influence in the hiring market is larger.
The mix is very heavily influenced by geographical locale. Around me, the
market is mostly the large-but-not-huge companies that hire a lot of software
developers but never promote them. So there's my bias. Google, Amazon,
Microsoft, et al. do not have a presence here, so they cannot improve the
behavior of other companies with their competitive pressure.
------
jetskindo
We go to school because it is a tradition. Parents wants to see their kid in
the funny hat. You are almost shunned when you drop out.
Not to say that school is useless, I loved learning. But I knew that the
computer science degree I was working towards wouldn't make much a difference
in the field I was hoping to work in.
Going to school should be an investment. It is too bad that most of us are too
young to understand the risk we take when taking loans or choosing an
education path.
~~~
meowface
I wish there were more options for technical "trade schools" in the US. At my
university I knew I wanted a career in information security and development,
and I had a choice between Computer Science and Information Systems. Computer
Science was mostly theory with not that much hands-on programming, while
Information Systems had some more hands-on real-world programming but was
heavily business/management oriented and essentially assumed only the most
rudimentary programming and technical skills even in the highest level
classes. I ended up going with Information Systems, which I'm still not sure
if I regret or not.
I was fortunate enough to be a pretty self-motivated learner and become
skilled at the things I was interested in through the Internet and self-
teaching, and landed a pretty good job straight out of college, but I can't
help but feel I wasted 4 years of time and money.
I would've loved to go to a university with practical Information
Security/Assurance and Software Engineering programs at the undergraduate
level, but sadly 1) none were anywhere near my area and 2) they're
considerably more expensive, and college is expensive enough already in the
US.
~~~
marincounty
It's too bad that schools don't prepare graduates for real world jobs.
Especially, for what they are charging. Personally, I don't know if most 10
yeared professors could keep up with the pace of change in the real world. I
think what a lot of people leave out, when they are espousing their college
degree, is the amount of self-learning, or who they know after graduation in
order to keep/get their job? We still have a lot of naive Sheep who will judge
you whether you finished that degree; so you will probally be glad you stuck
it out and graduated? As to the dude above me who automatically put that Sales
Person in a different "class" once he found she was a graduate of MIT--I'll
give you a break, but repeat a quote I will never forget; "Chubby--you need to
stop judging people on they way they look?" by Louis Medlock(Deliverance).
When I was in college I knew it was 90% B.S., but society expected me to
finish the degree. Would I go today, I'm not sure. You need to be exposed to a
few facts in life, so you don't end up believing in things that gave no
scientific validity. On the other hand my sister is a multimillionaire, and
believes in Psychics? She is also once very attractive, and thinks nothing of
taking advantage of people for what they can offer her--she used to call it ,
"They would make a good contact!" Now--they call it Networking. Personally, I
couldn't stomach it, but my sister doing great financially. Now if she could
get her family to like, or trust her, or a partner who actually liked her for
personality; she would have it all. Happy Holidays!
~~~
ryanmonroe
Just fyi, the word you're looking for is " _tenured_ professors could keep
up..."
------
vitno
The logic here seems... hypocritical, or at least inconsistent.
At the beginning: "In class I emphasize the value of a degree as a means to
avoid the sort of jobs that I myself go to when those hours in the classroom
are over."
At the end: "My perhaps naïve hope is that when I tell students I’m not only
an academic, but a “survival” jobholder, I’ll make a dent in the artificial,
inaccurate division society places between blue-collar work and “intelligent”
work. (also, that diaresis...)
It feels to me like the first statement says "I lie to my students and present
them with unrealistic expectations of the world" and the second says "If I say
something, I'll let them know that they are deriving little value from their
education... and thus put my career further behind."
~~~
pcunite
That may be the intent of the article. To lead you into the thinking that the
author wrestles with each day.
------
Mz
I dropped out of college when I was 21, in part because I knew two different
people with bachelor's degrees who had jobs like delivering newspapers or
selling shoes at a department store. Everyone around me seemed to think I
needed a degree in order to have a career and that a degree automagically
would give me a career. The lives of these two personal acquaintances
suggested otherwise.
I am currently personally acquainted with two other people who completed
college and they thus are saddled with huge student loans. Neither one is
making enough money to deal with those loans, much less justify them. One owes
$100k the other owes $250k. Even if you successfully declare bankruptcy, you
cannot write off student loans. These two people may never manage to get their
loans paid off. I cannot imagine how awful that must be and I used to have
more than $50k in personal debt, which I have been slowly resolving in recent
years. (Part of mine is also student debt, but not all of it. It is one of the
reasons that although I have considered declaring bankruptcy, I have never
pursued it in earnest. Part of what I owe has to be paid regardless.)
There is something very wrong with the system here in the U.S. A college
degree should not be a path to permanent poverty because you cannot really
afford the student loans you wracked up getting it.
~~~
jrs235
Contrary to popular belief, while it is difficult, it is possible in certain
situations to have student loans forgiven, canceled, or discharged.
[https://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-
cancellati...](https://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellation)
Edit:[https://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-
cancellati...](https://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-
cancellation#discharge-in)
~~~
Mz
Thank you.
------
noelwelsh
Anyone running an online business will tell you that words are valuable. Text
is the primary way we communicate with our customers. Carefully chosen words
can have a massive impact on revenue. The author possesses a valuable skill
but is not fairly compensated for it. What's going on?
Inequality is increasing in the US
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States))
and many other countries. Technology is giving capital an increasing advantage
over labour. A job as, say, a doctor, lawyer, or University professor, which
used to guarantee you a position at the top of the social hierarchy, no longer
does. Inequality is generally regarded as a bad thing, both socially and
economically (see, e.g.,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality))
Addressing inequality at a macro scale is beyond my knowledge, but I do know
how to address it at the micro scale: own your work.
Technology contributes to inequality by allowing successful businesses to
scale further with fewer employees. However, you can use the same
infrastructure to scale out your microbusiness. Within our community, patio11,
Amy Hoy, Brennan Dunn, Nathan Barry, and others have show how to do this. It
is noticeable that many of the above have made a substantial chunk of change
from publishing a book. (E.g.
[http://nathanbarry.com/2014-review/](http://nathanbarry.com/2014-review/)
~$260K from book sales.) The OP is in a great position to replicate this --
they have all the skills, namely command over the written word, to produce
great content and great copy to sell it.
On a wider scale, I think we can use technology to redress some of the growth
in inequality. Presently it mostly allows relatively few businesses to
concentrate wealth. If more people retake ownership over their work, which
technology in many cases enables, then perhaps we can do something to address
inequality. It's not the whole solution but it might be part of it.
~~~
erikpukinskis
Somewhat off topic, but to your question about why we don't value certain
kinds of work...
Culture provides a kind of distributed wage-fixing. The free market fallacy
gives people the idea that wages are optimized and reflect true economic
value. But in reality employers pay as little as they can get away with.
Imagine two societies. In the first, its generally accepted that people in any
position, including nurses and receptionists and customer support people, can
create immense business value if they accel at their jobs. A customer service
agent who makes big impacts on retention could expect to make a six figure
salary. Others who are less useful might make minimum wage.
Now imagine another world where the general social consensus is that your job
title implies a ceiling on how much value you can bring to an organization. In
this world a programmer can make millions but a customer service rep is capped
at $25 or so per hour. General belief is that if you want to make more you
can't just create more value, you have to get a different job title.
In the first world, corporations have to compete for every employee, and
overall compensation costs are higher. In the later world, only the top slice
of jobs are subject to market forces, and costs go down. It also has social
side effects that appeal to the ruling class, but that's another story.
I would argue that businesses who think this way are actually leaving money on
the table, and that by removing title-based compensation caps, you have a more
accurate picture of the economics of your business and can harvest more value,
but most people don't seem to think that way.
~~~
philwelch
> In the first, its generally accepted that people in any position, including
> nurses and receptionists and customer support people, can create immense
> business value if they accel at their jobs. A customer service agent who
> makes big impacts on retention could expect to make a six figure salary.
> Others who are less useful might make minimum wage.
Sorry, but as a matter of real-world fact, individual receptionists and
customer service representatives _can 't_ create immense business value. Or
rather, the individuals in those roles might be able to, but only if they are
moved to different, higher-leverage roles. (If you can retain hundreds of
thousands to millions of dollars worth of business by talking to individual
customers, "customer service" is not your job title. Maybe "sales" is.)
The market has two parts: supply and demand. If you do a job that just about
anybody could do, you don't get paid much because there are a lot of people
who can do a job just about anybody could do.
~~~
eli_gottlieb
That's largely because of the deliberate deskilling and commoditization of
labor by capital. If you structure your business so that most labor roles have
low requirements and low productivity, you shouldn't be surprised when you
have low productivity.
Of course, this model fails to account for all the low-paid but high-skilled
employees in technical, high-productivity roles, who are being quite simply
exploited.
~~~
philwelch
> That's largely because of the deliberate deskilling and commoditization of
> labor by capital. If you structure your business so that most labor roles
> have low requirements and low productivity, you shouldn't be surprised when
> you have low productivity.
Is anyone surprised by this? Is anyone expecting receptionists to deliver
millions of dollars of value to their business? There are just some roles that
have to be done where the value delivered per worker is very low. Labor
intensive work. And, in fact, some of it _is_ paid proportional to the value
delivered. Fruit pickers are paid proportional to the amount of fruit they
pick, for instance.
> Of course, this model fails to account for all the low-paid but high-skilled
> employees in technical, high-productivity roles, who are being quite simply
> exploited.
Who might these be?
~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Who might these be?
The geneticists, molecular biologists, and chemists in your average
biotechnology company.
------
palimpsests
I find it fairly surprising how certain the author seems to feel that getting
a doctorate would somehow equate to higher income and job stability -- English
Ph.Ds aren't exactly a credential in high demand. In fact, reality indicates
the opposite is true.
~~~
philwelch
People get stuck in bubbles. In the academia bubble, the only people making a
living are professors and to become a professor you need a Ph.D. So they are
the example people follow. They don't realize that becoming, say, an
accountant might be a better move because there aren't any accountants in the
academia bubble.
~~~
Dewie
People who get into PhD programs should have the general intelligence to
realize that every PhD candidate can not become a professor. It doesn't add up
in any hierarchical organization like that.
~~~
eli_gottlieb
If you understood how people _actually_ think, in a cognitive-science sense,
you would understand why "X should have the general intelligence to realize Y"
is a complete load in almost all cases.
~~~
Dewie
I'm sorry. Clearly some of the self-appointed smart people of HN were offended
by my naive remark, uninformed by any research in cognitive science or other
relevant discipline.
------
jrells
I like this article, but I wish it would do more to point out that high-
education low-wage workers, like adjunct university teachers, are usually in
their low-wage jobs by choice, and their education gives them a lot more
opportunities even if they don't take them. They are in a way very financially
secure, since they could easily give up on academics and move into high-wage
industry jobs (at least in the applicable fields). There are a lot of people
who really want academic jobs anyway, so schools are happy to pay low.
Note: I'm an academic and I have a second job to supplement my income. I have
often considered moving into industry where I would make 5-10x my teaching
income.
~~~
jpindar
But, but, there is no industry left in the US!
(Or so the internet tells me. Meanwhile I drive past half a dozen bustling
factories every day on my way to work at an electronics manufacturer.)
------
bsder
The real problem is that _neither_ of her jobs affords her a career.
Why should her teaching position be just above the poverty line? People should
regard that as horrific.
Why should her service job not be a career? People should regard the fact that
service jobs are so unstable as horrific.
------
imaginenore
I just don't get all the complaints.
Since when did we become entitled to a well-paid job?
If, let's say, tomorrow they invent an AI that can write great code, putting
me out of business - I will say, well, time to switch to something that pays.
And there are still TONs of jobs that pay - electricians, plumbers,
carpenters, construction equipment operators, elevator repairmen,
illustrators, real estate brokers - they all make good money. For now at
least.
Why would I even waste my time as a waiter? That time can be spent learning a
skill that's in demand, not something literally anybody can do.
~~~
anigbrowl
Because neither your landlord nor your supermarket proprietor is going to wait
around while you learn the skills to become employable in some other field.
You don't just decide to take up plumbing and bootstrap yourself from fixing
leaky buckets to running your own plumbing company. As well as the skills, you
need a pile of equipment, a vehicle, you probably need to be licensed in some
fashion, you need to be bonded or insured before people will do business with
you, and you need to spend a good bit of time networking.
You can of course bootstrap yourself into a lot of jobs, I've done it in more
than one field. but it can take quite a while to break even, and it's not like
there isn't competition. I was perticularly perplexed by your mention of
illustrators - for sure some illustrators can make a lot of money, but I'm
pretty sure that like every other branch of the arts, the average illustrator
starting out is beset with requrests to work for free or on spec on the
grounds that 'this will be great for your portfolio!'
~~~
imaginenore
I have savings and my credit history is nearly perfect. I'm pretty sure I can
take out a loan and start one of the above businesses.
It's important to have other skills in life as a backup plan. That, and
because it's interesting :)
I did wedding photography for fun, so I can tell you for certain - nobody who
does it professionally bills less than $2K per wedding (which is 6-8 hours of
shooting plus around 20 hours of photo editing). It's mostly $3-6K. If they
want a professional looking album, it's another 5-10 hours of laying it out
and ordering, and you can bill them another $500+ on top of the album cost. Of
course, you need a portfolio, and you need skills, but I billed for my second
wedding shoot - the first one was free for a friend.
How long will it take me to start a full blown wedding business? I'd say I
will land my first one within two-three weeks. I will probably not have many
clients at the beginning. In 6 months I will have more than I can handle. It's
true of every single good wedding photographer - they are booked months in
advance.
------
transfire
Not to worry in 10 to 20 more years robots will take your survival job away
too. Then you can teach college and be one of the homeless at the same time!
------
zxcvvcxz
>English instructor
The most important piece of information was at the end of the article! The
whole read I kept thinking "what type of professor is being economically
valued at a third that of a cocktail hostess?"
While this is ridiculous and seems like an example of the free market gone
wrong, I think it's very particular to Vegas. Serioisly, I know friends doing
the equivalent of 50/hour thanks to tips. However if this were true, in say,
Seattle, then I'd be much more worried.
------
lolwhat
Not surprised when 1% of the country holds 40% of the wealth.
------
morgante
I find it hard to sympathize with these articles.
She was aware that the academic job market is bleak, especially in English,
yet chose to pursue it nonetheless. Thus, her plight is squarely on her
shoulders. It also doesn't mean her students will fair worse: some of them
might be making rational choices to get degrees in useful, lucrative fields.
Especially at a third-rate university, nobody really has the luxury to major
in English.
Nothing in our economic system entitles you to making a living at something
just because you like it and practice it. I could train for decades to be the
world's foremost expert on modern cave painting, but that doesn't entitle me
to a cent of wages unless the market deems that skill is useful.
~~~
wfo
Any halfway decent programmer I've ever met or heard of loves programming.
They'd do it even if it didn't happen to be hyper-lucrative. We just got
lucky; we're passionate about something that the owning class happens to
currently consider fashionable. Enjoy it while it lasts and try not to pretend
it makes you better than anyone else.
~~~
meowface
>We just got lucky; we're passionate about something that the owning class
happens to currently consider fashionable. Enjoy it while it lasts
I imagine programming and related fields (networking, system administration
and integration, other IT operations) will still be very lucrative in 100 and
200 years from now. It might be slightly less lucrative (or it could be more
lucrative, who knows), but programmers will likely be very important to
organizations for at least a few centuries, if not millennia.
~~~
Chinjut
A few centuries is a long-ass time; far too long for such cocky predictions to
be taken seriously. (And millenia? Jesus...)
~~~
meowface
Unless you think computers are suddenly going to vanish forever or will
achieve absolute sentience and hyperintelligence in under a few centuries, I'm
not quite sure how I could be wrong.
~~~
altcognito
> I'm not quite sure how I could be wrong
Supply eventually will greatly exceed demand. The bar for entry will be
lowered.
Being able to write well is a good skill, probably comparable to computer
programming as being able to communicate with other humans is yknow,
important. But it seems to be that humanities majors and other degrees for
which writing and understanding writing is a critical skill aren't exactly in
high demand.
~~~
jimmaswell
>Supply eventually will greatly exceed demand.
This could only come true if there was a shift in programming technology that
made it a lot easier for someone without aptitude for programming as we know
it, or the average person started to end up with more programming aptitude
(maybe due to a revolution in early education or parenting methods).
Programming as we know it is very highly dependent on aptitude. Read this:
[http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-
fr...](http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-
programming-goats/)
------
jgwest
Okay, Brittney Bronson, it is what it is... You teach the young grown-ups /
old kids at the college, and then you shuck it in your part-time service
job... It is what it is...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Trillion-Dollar Annual Interest Payment - westurner
https://www.cpajournal.com/2019/04/26/the-trillion-dollar-annual-interest-payment/
======
westurner
> _Given the recent actions of Congress, and the years of prior inaction in
> changing the nation’s fiscal path, the U.S. government’s annual interest
> payment will eclipse annual defense spending in only six years. By 2025,
> annual interest costs on the national debt will reach $724 billion, while
> annual defense spending will reach $706 billion. To put that into
> perspective, in the 2018 fiscal year, the U.S. government spent $325 billion
> in interest payments and spent $622 billion in defense (Exhibit 2)._
Why would you cut taxes and debt finance our nation's future?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Feedback on my online store builder collecting payments in ETH - federiconitidi
As the title says, I built a little editor that allows you to easily create a personal/project page, sell products and and collect payments in ETH. Customers can simply buy via Metamask.<p>The project stemmed from my experience with uniswaproi.com, where I allow users to purchase paid plans with Metamask. It has been working great.<p>I hope this will be useful for some of you experimentaing with web3 and connected business models! If you give it a spin and have any comments or feedback, I'd love to hear them!<p>https://www.1eth.me/
======
federiconitidi
Clickable link: [https://www.1eth.me/](https://www.1eth.me/)
------
davidajackson
Protection against volatility? Why not try USDC, DAI, etc?
~~~
federiconitidi
Great observation, these are in roadmap if there is demand
~~~
davidajackson
Also, infra with tx's on ETH is very finicky. Error handling for dropped tx's
etc. You have probably thought about that.
~~~
federiconitidi
Yeah you’re right, it’s pretty messy. There is a fair amount of thinking that
went there
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Zen of Missing Out on the Next Great Programming Tool (2016) - bhalp1
https://dev.to/ben/the-zen-of-missing-out-on-the-next-great-programming-tool
======
lafar6502
Modern ui is a mess and frameworks + stackoverflow make it messier. Old
desktop APIs , even Win32, were at least built around a model that made some
sense and allowed you to use correct abstractions, and there was a logical
path to a working solution. Today you try to glue together some random SO
answers and some ugly jquery plugins, with no idea why it has to be done this
way or how to approach a task in a correct way. Look at basic things like
drag&drop, keyboard shortcuts, menus, tab order, field focus management and
all stuff that’s important in application ui - why it’s always an ugly and
painful hacking with messy and half-baked js , we already had much better
tools and replaced them with something that only pretends to be general
purpose ui runtime
~~~
megaman22
It's a breath of fresh air when I get to get away from our "modern",
overwrought JS web stack and go bang out some internal tools with good old
WinForms. So much less friction and magic all around.
~~~
lafar6502
Maybe this is the only reason why new js ui frameworks are created- to run
away from the mess and unintentionally find yourself in even bigger pile of
junk
------
luckydude
Couldn't agree more as a manager for ~25 years. Engineers, and I am one, a
decent one, love the new shiny stuff. Me too.
As a manager who has to ship product that works? Not so much. That made me
switch gears. My team used to joke that if it happened in Unix after 1980 I
don't like it. That's not true, we used mmap, and a bunch of other stuff that
happened later but the docs I used to program were old. I let new stuff in
grudgingly.
I think it worked. We're dead so there is that (BitKeeper) but we had an
almost 20 year profitable run with no VC in the valley so there is that too.
Our support was over the top, I would challenge you to find a company that had
as many users as we did and had the support that we did. Our 24/7 average
response time was something like 22 minutes and the only reason it was that
long was we went to bed. When we were awake the response time was measured in
seconds or single digit minutes.
I credit the response time to being boring. No shiny stuff, just stuff that
works, be boring. The mantra was "drive towards zero support costs, that's how
we scale". That didn't mean not support people, it meant make the product so
good that there were no support issues. We didn't get there but we got closer
than a lot of companies.
tl;dr: don't beat your management / leadership up so much for not wanting the
shiny new stuff. You are in this to make money or change the world or
something. All of those somethings are not well served by unproven new stuff.
If you have to use new stuff choose very very carefully and think about the
costs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Casting Glass from 3D Printed Molds - dezork
http://amosdudley.com/weblog/Casting-Glass-from-3D-Printed-Molds
======
waiseristy
Also see 3d printed aluminum casting molds:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVgPM1ojyLw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVgPM1ojyLw)
~~~
donquichotte
Myfordboy is an excellent mechanic and engineer, and one of my favourite
youtube channels.
VOG [1] runs another channel that does a lot of (artistic) metal casting with
mostly 3D printed positives, called "lost PLA casting".
He uses casting plaster and built his own vacuum chamber and furnace to
improve the quality of his casts.
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkEYj8wtK3aEW8vSGhlB43g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkEYj8wtK3aEW8vSGhlB43g)
------
msds
I taught a similar course at Pilchuck in 2015, which was the first
3D-printing/digital fabrication course taught there, and was also up there
taking a flameworking course when Amos was TA'ing for Yoav and Angela.
First off, Pilchuck is amazing, and if you're at all interested in glass, you
should seriously consider taking a course there.
Second, modulo a few tricks for clean burnouts, if you can print it, you can
investment-cast it in whatever material you want. It's amazing how powerful
cheap printers become when you combine them with a little casting skill - you
can access nearly arbitrary geometry in some useful, high-performance
materials without a $100k printer.
~~~
greeneggs
Do you know what kinds of results are possible with a standard consumer 3D
printer? (A PLA printer?) The page says, "Any layer lines in the print end up
transferring through to the glass, which makes polishing a lot more
difficult," but does "a lot more difficult" mean impossible?
(I have an Ender 3 printer, and a microwave, so it looks like I can possibly
get started for <$100. But both because of price and turnaround time, I am not
very interested in using online resin printing services.)
~~~
samplatt
I've got no practical experience with 3D printing, but surely dremel +
grinding/sanding bits = no more layer lines?
~~~
wlesieutre
Yep, sanding is an option. I've also seen people fill the valleys with some
sort of goop filler and then start sanding from there, just to get it a little
closer to smooth. But I can't say if introducing different materials like that
might interfere with casting. They were doing it to paint over.
Another approach is vapor smoothing - you can use acetone vapor to smooth ABS
prints. Acetone won't do anything to PLA though.
I've heard of other chemicals being available for smoothing PLA, but they're
nastier than acetone and I don't know anyone who's actually tried them.
~~~
namibj
You should be able to use acetone. See the solubility table [0] for PLA. It
takes longer, but it works.
[0]:
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/app.38833](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/app.38833)
~~~
dezork
Acetone really don't work well for PLA. You need tetrahydrofuran to smooth PLA
in the same way that acetone smooths ABS.
------
swiley
Glass is definitely my favorite material to work with. I started messing with
it after following the instructions for setting up a lab in “The Golden Book
of Chemistry Experements.” (I can’t believe that’s a children’s book haha)
------
bariumbitmap
> Once you have a model, the problem you need to solve is how to make a model
> with no undercuts. Undercuts will make it impossible to remove the 3D
> printed positive
Is there a mathematical term for solids with this property? It reminds me of
the vertical line test, but in 3D.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_line_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_line_test)
~~~
b_tterc_p
Convex perhaps?
~~~
FreeFull
There are non-convex shapes that don't have undercuts. I think convexity
implies that you don't have undercuts, though.
------
itsEtai
This is great stuff!! As a hobbyist glassblowing and 3d-printer, this is
exactly the kind of content I’ve been looking for. Thanks!
~~~
itsEtai
I did some pate de verre lost wax casting to make glass armguards a while back
but they turned out too rough to wear. 3d printing might be the answer! (Check
out my attempt here:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk45IFqBhbL/?igshid=16fgxi4oubho...](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk45IFqBhbL/?igshid=16fgxi4oubhod))
~~~
samplatt
I'm curious about the too-rough-to-wear bit. Would an extra (leather/plastic)
layer below the glass be impossible?
~~~
dezork
Pâte de verre is typically rougher than kilncasting from a larger billet,
because you're fusing glass granules without fully melting them together. So
you could get a smoother surface just by adjusting the peak kiln temperature.
But yea, certainly you could add a leather wrap underneath.
------
alittletoolate
Here is another artist who uses the technique.
[https://mtyka.github.io/art/2016/12/11/lostpla-casting-
glass...](https://mtyka.github.io/art/2016/12/11/lostpla-casting-glass.html)
------
oceanghost
This is fantastic. I've been wanting to make some custom liquor bottles. One
step closer :)
------
drewroberts
This would be fun to get with our company logo in the last photo of the snake
head. If only we weren't paperless and could use a paper weight...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nick goes to jail, but his promotors remain free - DanBC
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nick-goes-to-jail-but-his-promoters-go-scot-free-7kzzmckw9?shareToken=0c473ece28cb69ee572b819e803c2549
======
DanBC
Some notes:
In England there's no difference between prison and jail. Some prisoners are
on remand -- they haven't yet had a trial and they aren't convicted. "Nick" \-
Carl Beech - had a trial and was convicted.
The sentencing remarks for the Carl Beech trial are here. It's worth reading
because it sets out what he did and the effect it had on his victims.
[https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/sentencing-remarks-of-
mr-...](https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/sentencing-remarks-of-mr-justice-
goss-r-v-carl-beech/)
Here's a detailed run down of what Beech did, but also how he managed to
spread his blatant lies (apologies for the shithole Quillette):
[https://quillette.com/2019/07/25/the-many-lies-of-carl-
beech...](https://quillette.com/2019/07/25/the-many-lies-of-carl-beech/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TensorFlow 1.11 released - jamesblonde
https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/releases/tag/v1.11.0
======
jamesblonde
The main highlight is a new version of AllReduce native to TensorFlow. This,
like Horovod, builds a ring and has both native and NCCL implementations.
Early results (albeit on a single host) show that it outperforms Horovod:
[https://groups.google.com/a/tensorflow.org/forum/#!topic/dis...](https://groups.google.com/a/tensorflow.org/forum/#!topic/discuss/7T05tNV08Us)
~~~
minimaxir
And it looks like it's natively supported via Keras too?
[https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorf...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorflow/contrib/distribute)
~~~
jamesblonde
Yes, and with the estimator API, too.
------
breckuh
> Add multi-GPU DistributionStrategy support in tf.keras. Users can now use
> fit, evaluate and predict to distribute their model on multiple GPUs.
Is this different than the existing multi_gpu_model?
([https://keras.io/utils/#multi_gpu_model](https://keras.io/utils/#multi_gpu_model))
------
SloopJon
Looks like Python 3.7 is not supported yet:
[https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/20517](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/20517)
Somewhat off topic: I'm rediscovering the dance required to set up a new
Windows 10 laptop with Python, CUDA, and TensorFlow. If I understand
correctly, pyenv does not work on Windows. Is there something similar?
Also, if I installed TensorFlow in WSL, it wouldn't be able to use the GPU,
would it?
~~~
breckuh
Python 3.7 is supported if you build master from source. But that can be a lot
of work and though it may solve your TF problem, it may create other problems
with other Python packages.
In my experience conda is the way to go for setting up your environment. I did
not have great luck with pyenv, YMMV.
I don't know about WSL. Maybe setup a dual boot with Ubuntu on your system?
------
dairychris
Does it still have that horrible java build dependency?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to Get IT Job as an Medical Doctor? - drcompute
Hello,<p>I'm a medical doctor with medium IT skill (soft dev,network management) working in Algeria (north africa), and I want to change my career.<p>I want to have an IT Job in the western world (french or english speaking countries) , but I have 02 obstacles.<p>1) No IT degree
2) No prior IT experience
3) Immigration limits<p>So here is my questions.<p>0) Is my profile valuable ?
1) Can I find a job + immigration opportunities without a degree (ex: Healthcare IT sector) ?
2) Which is better (online or offline) bootcamp or IT certification so I can immigrate ?
3) Should reply to job offers or is it better to contact management directly ?<p>Thanks.
======
anoncoward111
Due to your country of citizenship, I think the main option for you is to find
remote devops work for a company that will take a chance on you :) A
certification won't be too helpful-- you'll just need to convince the owners
of a company that you can do what they need.
Alternatively of course you can marry an American and find legit corporate
work as a traditional W2 employee :)
Our immigration system is horrible and a national disgrace-- I apologize that
the government isn't more welcoming to you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New imagery of Port-au-Prince - wglb
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-imagery-of-port-au-prince.html
======
joubert
Seems like OpenStreetMap has more (accurate) resources w.r.t. latest Haiti map
changes: <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Paying $15 to Send $25 Has Bitcoin Users Rethinking Practicality - mbgaxyz
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/paying-15-to-send-25-has-bitcoin-users-rethinking-practicality
======
freech
You know how much I'm justified to spend to protect myself from loosing 2% of
my money in one year, due to the central bank adding 2% to the money supply?
If my time horizon is 1 year?
That's right: 2%
If my time horizon is x years?
-0.98^x + 1
15$ in transaction fees is nothing.
Also, props for the title, which mentions the money sent as if that were
relevant for the transaction fee, as if the transaction were a percentage of
that.
~~~
ramblerman
For a lot of people Bitcoin was what was going to disrupt the online payments
market, removing the monopoly of the credit cards. Ridiculous transaction fees
and slow payments don't help that goal.
The digital gold narrative is newer and perhaps more powerful but I wouldn't
call the transaction fees irrelevant.
~~~
CyberDildonics
> The digital gold narrative is newer and perhaps more powerful but I wouldn't
> call the transaction fees irrelevant.
The digital gold narrative comes from the blockstream|core|/r/bitcoin
narrative that is desperate to keep the block size limit from expanding
because their entire business plan is based around it. Anyone with common
sense can see that a currency without fluid transactions is not very valuable,
but with the constant and excessive censorship on /r/bitcoin and bitcoin talk
some people have bought into thinking this somehow makes sense.
------
Rallerbabs
Baloney. Transactions have been very cheap for the past few months.
Fees only go high when big blockholes are logjamming the mempool with spammy 1
satoshi transactions, in a misguided attempt to further their big block
agenda.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Programming with Categories - kercker
http://brendanfong.com/programmingcats.html
======
yearoflinux
As someone who respects functional programming (because it removes geniuses
from competing in my space) here's a nice video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADqLBc1vFwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADqLBc1vFwI)
What is the beautiful monospace font in the pdf here
[http://brendanfong.com/programmingcats_files/cats4progs-
DRAF...](http://brendanfong.com/programmingcats_files/cats4progs-DRAFT.pdf)?
~~~
mindcrime
> here's a nice video
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADqLBc1vFwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADqLBc1vFwI)
OMG. That might just be the funniest god-damned thing I've ever seen in my
life. Thanks for sharing that!
On a separate note: does anyone know where this footage is originally from?
Some WWII movie, I would guess?
~~~
Tainnor
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall_(2004_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall_\(2004_film\))
Probably one of the best "WWII movies" (it's really only about the final days
in the bunker) ever.
~~~
abrookewood
Just seconding that Downfall is brilliant. Totally off-topic now, but also
extremely good is Das Boot.
------
mncharity
When taught in January at MIT, a highlight was something I'd not seen
elsewhere: someone called it the "aftermath" (3-pun). After the one-hour
traditional-ish lecture (on video), the room was reserved for an additional
hour.
When previously taught, people would remain afterwards to ask questions,
discuss math, and chat. So this was an iterative-improvement formalization of
that.
People would gather in front of the blackboards in fluid discussion clusters.
Catalyzed by the three instructors and wizzy others, not all having to stay
for the entire hour, but drifting off as discussion died away. They could show
material they had pruned from the lecture, for want of time. Or got dropped as
they ran over. Alternate presentation approaches they had considered, before
selecting another. They could be much more interactive. One commented roughly
"If I was tutoring someone, I'd never present the material this way". It was a
delightful mix of catching the speaker after a talk to ask questions, a
professor's office hours, a math major's lounge, an after-talk social,
tutoring, an active-learning inverted classroom, hanging out with neighbors in
front of the hallway blackboard, chalk clattering and cellphones clicking to
snag key insights... It was very very nifty.
So, the book is nice. And lecture notes. And videos. But... the best part
isn't there. Perhaps the next iterative improvement is to capture the
aftermath on video, and share that too.
And as we look ahead, planning distance-learning and XR tools... maybe
something like this is a vision to aspire too. The insane ratio of expertise
to people learning is not something one can plausibly replicate in meatspace.
But as conversations in front a virtual blackboard gradually become
technically feasible, something like this might pay for the cost of it, with
transformative impact.
~~~
Meandering
This is the most valuable part of the in person learning experience. Free form
discussion and building intellectual context around a subject. I experienced
this in a community college environment. This should be encouraged in any
learning environment.
~~~
quickthrower2
This is what I sort of dreamed university would be like. But alas it wasn’t.
Just lectures and students doing the minimum to get through the week and hit
the bars.
------
sideeffffect
If you're interested in how Category theory and Algebra can inform the design
of software, have a look at ZIO Prelude.
[https://github.com/zio/zio-prelude](https://github.com/zio/zio-prelude)
It's a brand new library for Scala that contains reusable mathematical
structures. Still based on algebra and category theory, but it expresses them
more or less differently than how they've been expressed in Haskell (and
similar languages). For example, unlike Haskell (and Scala's own cats and
ScalaZ), it doesn't present the "traditional" Functor -> Applicative -> Monad
hierarchy. Instead, it presents the mathematical concepts in a more orthogonal
and composable way.
One example out of many, you don't have a Monad. You have two distinct
structures:
* Covariant functor, with typical map operation `map[A, B](f: A => B): F[A] => F[B]`
* IdentityFlatten which has a flatten operation `flatten[A](ffa: F[F[A]]): F[A]` and an identity element `any: F[Any]`
When combined together (Scala has intersection types), you get something
equivalent to the traditional Monad.
The project is in its infancy, so it may still change significantly, though.
Look here for more detailed explanation:
[https://www.slideshare.net/jdegoes/refactoring-functional-
ty...](https://www.slideshare.net/jdegoes/refactoring-functional-type-classes)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwmHgL9F_9Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwmHgL9F_9Q)
~~~
tsss
Are there any useful types that have `flatten` but not `map` or `contraMap`?
~~~
sideeffffect
If I understood John's motivation from the video, it's that this enables the
Flatten structure to be inspectable, because the innards are not hidden behind
an opaque closure (A => F[B]), as is the case in regular Monad.
Btw, this is a problem that the "Selective applicative functor" too aims to
alleviate.
You can read more about the inspectability problem (and Selective) at
[http://eed3si9n.com/selective-functor-in-sbt](http://eed3si9n.com/selective-
functor-in-sbt)
The context there is sbt, which is a build tool, but I'm sure the
inspectability plays role in many other areas. Note, how he contrasts
"Applicative composition" and "Monadic composition".
------
linkdd
I've read a lot about Category Theory, and I'm amazed at the abstraction level
that lets you compose with different mathematical domains (geometry, topology,
arithmetic, sets, ...).
And yet, the current mathematics relies heavily on the ZFC set theory. Why is
that ? (Is that assumption even correct ?)
From what I've learned so far, the set theory suffers from Russel's Paradox[0]
(does the set of all sets that does not contain itself, contains itself ?).
That's what motivated the formalization of Type Theory and the invention of
Type Systems in programming languages.
According to wikipedia[1], __some __type theories can serve as an alternative
to set theory __as a foundation of mathematics __.
It seems to me that the Category Theory fits the description. So why don't we
see a huge "adoption" in math fields ?
Thank you in advance for your clarifications :)
[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_paradox)
[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_theory)
~~~
johncolanduoni
ZFC does not suffer from Russel’s paradox, since it doesn’t allow a “set of
all sets”. If it did, the search for new foundations would be much more
widespread. New foundations are usually only considered seriously once they
can be shown to be relatively consistent with ZFC or the slightly stronger but
still uncontreversial TG set theory.
There are people working on categorical foundations, but the main reason for
lack of broader popularity or drive is that most mathematicians don’t do work
that is “foundational” in that sense. For example, if you’re an analyst, you
generally don’t care exactly how your real numbers are built (dedekind cuts,
Cauchy sequences, etc.). You only care that they satisfy a certain set of
properties, you can define functions between them, and that’s about it. Most
mathematical reasoning at this level is insensitive to differences in proposed
foundations, except “constructive” foundations that don’t have the law of
excluded middle (that are unpopular since they make many proofs harder and
some impossible).
What is very popular in mathematics is using category theory at a high level;
basically every field uses its concepts and notation to some degree at this
point. New foundations are only really relevant to this program in that they
may make automated proof checking easier, which is also not a widespread
practice in mathematics.
~~~
spekcular
It is not true that "basically every field uses its concepts and notation to
some degree at this point." In particular this is false for mainstream
combinatorics, PDE, and probability theory, to give a few examples.
In fact, I would suggest that most mathematicians don't care about category
theory at all.
~~~
bitdizzy
This all hinges on "mainstream". For example, in combinatorics, combinatorial
species are a vast organization of the all-important concept of _generating
function_. They were developed by category theorists and are most tidily
organized along categorical lines. If you don't think this is close enough to
mainstream, I can't dispute that. It's a value judgment.
There is often an undercurrent of category theory within a subject that maybe
most people are not privy to. Anything to do with sheaves or cohomology (which
I know factors into some approaches to PDEs) are using categorical ideas.
Every generation, it seems, has some contingent of serious mathematicians who
consider category theory marginal in their field of interest. But every
generation, that contingent grows smaller as more mathematics as practiced is
brought into the fold. Maybe they're coming for you next :)
~~~
spekcular
Respectfully, I disagree. The question of what's mainstream and valued by the
community is empirical and can be answered by looking at what's published in
the leading combinatorics journals. And anyone can check those out and see
that categories are basically absent. So as a sociological fact, I maintain
it's far from the mainstream.
Whether combinatorialists _ought_ to elevate certain work is of course of a
question of value, but it's also a different question.
Also, in no way are sheaves or (co)homology essentially category-theoretic
ideas. It's possible to develop and use these ideas without mentioning
categories at all (and e.g. Hatcher's introductory textbook does just this,
although he mentions in an appendix the categorical perspective later). In
general I think it's good to remember that homological algebra and category
theory are not the same subject. Sure, I can develop a theory of chain
complexes over an arbitrary abelian category, but most of the time you just
need Hom and Tor over a ring. (Again, see Hatcher.)
Finally, I'm not sure there has been a serious uptake in category theory in
the mainstream of some field of mathematics since, I don't know, at least 50
years ago? We've understood for a while now what it's good and not good for.
This hasn't stopped people from trying to inject it in fields where it doesn't
do any good (e.g. probability), but for that reason those attempts are mostly
ignored.
~~~
bitdizzy
> Respectfully, I disagree. The question of what's mainstream and valued by
> the community is empirical and can be answered by looking at what's
> published in the leading combinatorics journals. And anyone can check those
> out and see that categories are basically absent. So as a sociological fact,
> I maintain it's far from the mainstream.
I think it is also a reasonable interpretation to take "mainstream" as
"pertaining to the main subject matter of the field". Anyway, I think it is
the case that the mainstream of combinatorics or probability is yet so big
that a particular researcher or even group of researchers can be comfortably
in the mainstream and yet have never cared for or even heard of some other
line of research that is also mainstream.
The founding paper of combinatorial species [1] has hundreds of citations
including many in what I gather are top journals in combinatorics, and even
some in the Annals of Probability. So, what are we to make of that? Some
people who are serious enough about combinatorics or probability to get
published in serious journals have read, perhaps understood, and maybe even
taken seriously some of these categorical ideas?
In any case, I respect your viewpoint. In my youth I was a bit category-crazy,
trying to use it to organize _all_ of my mathematical knowledge. I'm much more
prudent about it these days but I'm still an optimist that we will find more
unifying ideas in mathematics through it.
[1]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0001870881...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0001870881900529)
~~~
spekcular
It may the case that combinatorics is large, with mathematicians focused on
their own particular sub-specialities, but I still don't believe category
theory can properly be construed as "mainstream combinatorics" in any real
sense.
Regarding your claim about that paper being cited by papers in top journals, I
checked the first five pages of citations in Google Scholar for combinatorics
and probability journal papers.
It's cited once in an offhand way in the concluding discussion of "The Cycle
Structure of Random Permutations." No categorical concepts are used there.
Ditto for the "Independent process approximations" paper (except now cited in
the introduction). Another one-sentence mention in the context of background
literature appears in "Tree-valued Markov chains derived from Galton-Watson
processes." Same for "A Combinatorial Proof of the Multivariable Lagrange
Inversion Formula" and "Bijections for Cayley Trees, Spanning Trees, and Their
g-Analogues."
There's a one-sentence mention with actual (slight) mathematical content in
"Limit Distributions and Random Trees Derived from the Birthday Problem with
Unequal Probabilities." But you don't need categories to prove the bijection
they're referring to, from what I understand.
In none of these instances is the work used in a substantive fashion, and
unless I missed something no paper features the word "category." It's getting
cited because authors have a duty to survey any potentially related background
literature.
(On page 6 I found "Commutative combinatorial Hopf algebras," which does use a
functor form that paper. It was published in a journal that is decent, but
very far from the top.)
So, I think we can reject the notion that Joyal's paper has seriously
influenced the fields of combinatorics or probability.
I'm sorry to harp on this, but I see claims like yours about the importance of
category theory thrown around a lot on here, and often I feel that they're
clearly wrong. So I thought it would be good to provide some details this time
around.
~~~
bitdizzy
I should have demonstrated my picks. I didn't just look for citation but also
looked for at least some nontrivial review of the results of the paper^.
I pick these two papers. The first is literally about adjunctions pertaining
to combinatorial species whereas the second devotes an entire section to
reviewing the theory and stating results that it uses in a way that I don't
really understand. I'm going to read the first paper though because it's
relevant to my interests :)
Rajan. The adjoints to the derivative functor on species
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0097316593...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/009731659390073H)
Panagiotou, Konstantinos; Stufler, Benedikt; Weller, Kerstin. Scaling limits
of random graphs from subcritical classes.
[https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aop/1474462098](https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aop/1474462098)
The fact that I have to go rummaging around for these examples kind of proves
your point, doesn't it? I don't think category theory will lead to any
fantastic new results in the fields we're discussing, but the bar is quite low
for it to be useful as an organizational tool.
^ I searched for the word functor of course! :)
~~~
spekcular
OK. The first paper is indeed literally about species and in a good but not
top journal. But it's not connected to the mainstream of combinatorics in any
way, in the sense that if you aren't _a priori_ interested in species, there's
no reason to be interested in the paper.
The second paper is interesting because it's in an excellent journal and about
a problem not obviously connected with species. So I agree that it counts as a
good example for your case. I also agree with your conclusion – it's an
exception that proves the rule, so to speak. Most probabilists have no need
for category theory, and most AoP papers don't use categories. (I feel that
may literally be the only one?)
I also agree that, to the extent it's useful, it's useful as an organizing
principle and not "substantively." I suppose this explains why I feel it's
overhyped: mathematicians care about solving problems, and the insights that
solve the problems ultimately have to come from some problem-specific
observations.
------
mcalus3
"We will assume no background knowledge on behalf of the student, starting
from scratch on both the programming and mathematics."
This is a fantastic "side effect" of the fact that category theory isn't built
on any other mathematical knowledge. You don't even need even any arithmetics
for that.
~~~
spirographer
At a meta level, Category Theory requires some comfort with abstraction, which
really only comes with a mathematical education. So while it may stand apart
from much math, it relies on your strong mathematical foundations.
~~~
dkarl
As so many undergraduate math textbooks say, "No background is assumed beyond
sufficient mathematical maturity."
~~~
inopinatus
Tautological sufficiency/necessity relativities for an absolute measure are a
pet peeve:
“How much salt should I add?”
“Oh, not too much.”
Practically guarantees a withering glare from me.
~~~
dkarl
That's a really great analogy, actually. You can't tell a brand-new cook "salt
to taste," but you can tell a cook with an intermediate level of experience
"salt to taste" even if it's a recipe they've never made before. You can't
impart the experience in words, pictures, or symbols. You can't add a chapter
zero that gets them there. But the right kind of experience will get you there
pretty quickly.
I admit it's kind of frustrating that it can't be boiled down to a list of
discrete things you need to know, but if I had to explain the difference
between me before I had "sufficient mathematical maturity" and me after, I
would explain it in terms of habit and confidence and other squishy things
that aren't mathematical at all.
~~~
richthegeek
Giving a precise value for this doesn't work in any case. "Salt to taste" is
inherently qualitative.
Most pizza dough recipes quote around 5g of salt for 250g flour. Personally I
prefer double that amount, and this is the case with many recipes.
Perhaps specifically with salt there is an insane amount of paranoia about
blood pressure. In many ways it feels as irrational as Korean worries about
fan death.
On the other hand, giving a "5g of salt" value is a good starting point, to
avoid undersalting due to paranoia or oversalting due to inexperience.
~~~
dkarl
What they really need is someone to tell them to add less than they probably
need, then taste, add more, taste, add more, and expect to over-season and
under-season some dishes as they get experience. Salt quantities in recipes
have to be short, sometimes way short, so you're stuck learning the process
with or without the quantities. I've never seen this explained in a cookbook,
at least not in a way that made an impression on me.
Edit: A piece of advice that has stuck with me for a long time, long after I
forgot where it came from, is it's a mistake to look for the state in between
"not salty enough" and "too salty." That state doesn't really exist,
especially when you're feeling nervous! Instead you should look for the
overlap where you can perceive the dish as alternately "not salty enough" and
"too salty," like that ambiguous drawing that your brain can resolve to either
an old woman or a young woman[0]. That advice really works for me, but my
wife, who seasons like a pro, thinks it's nonsense, which I think illustrates
how subjective the process is and how it isn't information you can impart but
rather experience you have to guide someone toward.
[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Wife_and_My_Mother-in-
Law#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Wife_and_My_Mother-in-
Law#/media/File:My_Wife_and_My_Mother-in-Law.jpg)
------
iso8859-1
Videos of the lectures from last year:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUBEB9QlNCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUBEB9QlNCM)
~~~
nwallin
Here's the full playlist: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhgq-
BqyZ7i7MTGhUROZy...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhgq-
BqyZ7i7MTGhUROZy3BOICnVixETS)
------
max68
These guys wrote "An Invitation to Applied Category Theory." It's an awesome
book, and I'm super excited for these lectures.
------
gumby
For those who might not realize: IAP is the period between semesters at MIT,
roughly most of January. So this is is a quick, accessible introduction, not a
heavy semester-long slog.
------
hawkice
In my experience, Monad, Applicable, and Monoid are probably the only ones I'd
use in Haskell, and maybe none of them in languages without good inference and
general support.
Pretty wild ideas, though. Fair chance they'd be more confusing than using
more specifically named instances, but solid ideas where the class instance
documents that you're using the pattern, instead of describing the preferred
interface.
~~~
smabie
You've definitely used Functors or Semigroups as well, you just didn't realize
it.
~~~
tsimionescu
Here is my problem with these ideas in programming: if you recognize that some
common construct is in fact a semigroup or functor, does knowing this actually
buy you anything?
I suppose it might help sometimes when designing an abstraction, to guide you
to some nice properties, such as easy composition.
~~~
rotifer
While playing around with a problem at work involving Markov chains and graph
connectivity, I found it useful to know that I could write (in Java) a generic
method that performed "exponentiation by squaring" on semigroups.
So, in addition to being able to raise numbers to powers I could also use it
on matrices whose elements belonged to a semiring.
That is, I could use the same code on a matrix of doubles with "times" and
"plus" (for the Markov chains), as well as a matrix of booleans with "and" and
"or" (for the graph connectivity).
(Of course, I could have used special purpose libraries, but these were small
problems and it was fun. :)
------
aeontech
For a humorous use case of types, nothing has beat Aphyr's (of Jepsen fame)
"Typing the Technical Interview" here: [https://aphyr.com/posts/342-typing-
the-technical-interview](https://aphyr.com/posts/342-typing-the-technical-
interview)
If you haven't read it, take a minute...
------
random3
Wow, what a combo! I'd be interested in anything from each of the lecturers,
but all 3 at the same course, is amazing.
Category Theory could be the rosetta stone of many things(this is relevant
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.0340.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.0340.pdf)).
------
razster
What an odd coincidence that this was posted and on my YT subscribe page:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUBEB9QlNCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUBEB9QlNCM)
\- Just posting the video for others to see.
------
apkallum
David Spivak and other folks at Azimuth Forum[0] have been great at providing
high quality discussions on ideas in this course and others. Many thanks.
[0] [https://forum.azimuthproject.org](https://forum.azimuthproject.org)
~~~
read_if_gay_
Is this Spivak related to the author of the famous Calculus book?
~~~
dan-robertson
David and Michael Spivak are not related
------
LockAndLol
This doesn't work at all with HTTPS Everywhere. Just get a page about
DreamHost site not found.
------
Myrmornis
Will the course be taught live again and if so will those geographically
elsewhere be able to attend?
------
SJC_Hacker
Does it compile to WebAssembly VM? Any compilers on Android or iOS? Will it
work with Docker? Is it deployable on AWS or Azure?
------
mortdeus
the second i saw haskell i started saying eternally, "ABORT ABORT!"
You are going to have to revive jesus to come up with a functional language
that simplifies coding over a procedural one. Especially over an object
oriented one.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Elastdocker – Elk on Docker, with Preconfigured Security, Tools, and Monitoring - SHERIFABDLNABY
https://github.com/sherifabdlnaby/elastdocker
======
tmikaeld
This is really useful, especially with the preconfigured S3 keystone.
Could be used even for small docker nodes given enough RAM (elastic is hungry)
------
sieabahlpark
Why this isn't a helm chart I'll never know.
~~~
toomuchtodo
Because you haven’t submitted a PR yet.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don't be mean, it's stupid - yesplorer
https://news.layervault.com/stories/2052-dont-be-mean-its-stupid
======
Udo
I can't claim to have followed the LV fiasco on HN in all of its detail, but
the parts I saw were mostly respectful and pretty well balanced. The "Designer
News sucks" post was not, but that particular battlefield is a distraction.
The main thing is still the Flat UI debacle, without which none of this would
have happened.
Is Flat UI a ripoff? Yes, sure, and they come across as more than a bit
sleazy. _But_ are they in clear violation of LV's copyright? Absolutely not.
In design as well as in pretty much every other human endeavor, all things are
derivative. That's a core truth about technology and civilization in general.
The Flat UI dude did not straight-up copy LV's stuff though. Still, he re-
implemented it and he deserves to be called out for it. He should at least
have given LV some credit for inspiring him.
That's where it ends though. The rest is _all_ on LV. That DMCA abuse was
stupid and unnecessary. Sure, you can blame HN for making that observation but
that doesn't change the fact that it's not the observers fault you screwed up.
Failing to admit that (and apparently making DMCA jokes on Twitter in bad
taste) only serves to emphasize why people are upset with you.
LV, you used a bad law in questionable circumstances to shut up something that
was no threat to you. Then you doubled down, smugly and with not a small
amount of self-righteousness, when people called you out on your ethics.
The saddest part of this is that you could have easily turned this into an ad
for your stuff. If you simply had come out and graciously acknowledged the
similarities between Flat UI and your icons, people would have sided with you.
Your implicit counter-argument that it doesn't matter if you're acting badly
as long as it's _the other guy_ who broke the law is interesting, but it's
also far from certain things will actually turn out this way in a court of
law.
This was a failure on many, many levels. Doubling down on bullying while at
the same time crying "not fair!" is just one of them.
~~~
raganwald
If you're using words like "asshole," you are definitely adding fuel to the
fire. I sense you know this. In general, your argument strikes me as a "Tu
Quoque:" They are bullies, so it's wrong for them to point out when we are
mean.
You then go on for a while about what makes them bullies, all of which is
tangential to whether or not HN is mean.
I caution against this kind of rhetoric. It leads to a place where the rule
is, "It's ok to be mean to people we don't like, for whatever reason."
Civility is a form of justice. It should be extended to those we respect but
also to those we don't respect. Extending justice to the guilty is part of
what makes a nation just. Extending civility to those we disrespect is what
makes a community civil.
~~~
Udo
You're right, actually. I'm going to change that single word. I hope that
enables you to see my post in another light, because I don't really recognize
your characterization of what I said. To make it absolutely clear: at no point
did I mean to imply that LV deserve to be bullied only because they are
behaving badly. I did use the "a word" to describe behavior, not personality,
but I acknowledge that was misguided.
~~~
raganwald
I was just about to add that it's important to distinguish between "harsh" and
"mean."
"Dude, you fucked up" is harsh but not mean, and while it isn't to everyone's
taste, it can be a bitter pill that provides the cure. It doesn't really cross
the line to mean until the intent becomes more of making someone feel bad than
pushing them to get better.
~~~
Udo
I just realized I come from a country where "don't be an asshole" is a common
phrase that is considered harsh but not mean ;-)
~~~
wuest
Disclaimer: I didn't read the original post, so I'm not sure where it was in
your post that the word 'asshole' used to live.
In my circles, at least, 'don't be an asshole' and 'you are being an asshole'
is harsh-not-mean, while 'you are an asshole' is mean-maybe-harsh. The
explicit declaration of state of being, rather than observation of behavior is
the differentiator.
------
mixmax
I don't think people are intentionally trying to be mean, but sometimes it
appears that way to others. Generally this site is full of smart people with
strong opinions, and for the most part that's a good thing that drives some
interesting discussion.
Unfortunately, smart people with an opinion sometimes have a problem seeing
the other side of the coin, and tend to see their point of view as the only
right one.
A good example is yesterdays 'PHP is the right tool for the job'
post.(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5337498>) The authors point that
PHP is a great tool for getting something up and running quickly without
having a lot of knowledge of servers and software was spot on, but he got a
lot of hate from the HN community. As a bad programmer (programming is not
what I do, I've only learned it to be a better manager, strategist and
sparring partner) I can tell you that PHP is by far the easiest thing to get
up and running for a fool like me. Yet noone seemed to accept this fact, and
came up with a whole lot of 'ruby is just as easy, you just need to install
[something I've never heard of, and probably wouldn't understand], or in
python you just run [stuff I don't know] on the command line [which I haven't
got a clue how works] and you're good to go.
These comments weren't meant to be mean, but from my perspective they were,
because I'm at a very different skill level than the peolpe making the
comments. They totally missed the point that PHP works for a lot of people
because Ithey have no idea how a command line works, don't know how to edit
configuration files, and don't care.
The problem isn't that people are intentionally mean, it's that some people
are so knowledgeable in their area of expertise that they have problems seeing
how it could be hard for others, and thus end up making remarks that seem
mean, but really aren't meant to be.
I bet a lot of people on HN still don't see why PHP is so popular, even though
the answer is unbelievable obvious. To me.
~~~
emiliobumachar
This is tangential to your very relevant comment, but FYI, a command line is
somewhere you type a command (a 'line of code') and it executes as if it was
in the middle of a running program.
Very useful when you want to see or confirm how somethig works. Type it and
press 'Enter'. It comes with the python installation, and it's commonly called
Interactive Interpreter.
~~~
mixmax
Thanks for the comment, I know what a command line is, I just find it
incredibly confusing and unintuitive. To exemplify here are a few of the
problems I run into when faced with a command line:
\- what can I do here? There are no tips, clues, or any other way of knowing
what to write. The answer often given is that there are MAN pages, help files,
etc. that you can bring up by typing more cryptic commands. I just don't have
the motivation to sift through a whole bunch of documents that may or may not
have the answer I'm looking for.
\- On a windows machine CLI doesn't work out of the box. I need to install
cygwin, configure it, and do all sorts of stuff I don't know about and don't
care about.
\- I get no feedback. When I've typed some cryptic command into the
commandline and hit enter I'm presented with a prompt. Maybe everything went
well, maybe it didn't. Maybe I now have a virus since I found the cryptic
command somewhere on the Internet. i just don't know.
\- I can't undo stuff. When I type a command and then find out it was wrong, I
have no obvious way of undoing it.
The point isn't that command lines are bad, on the contrary it's quite obvious
that it's a really powerful tool. It just has a steep learning curve, and not
all people are interested in spending the time it takes to master it just to
get a wordpress installation up and running.
The point is more that it's hard for experts to see why it's so hard to just
type 'grep -lsm (er /:rt) disc -f' to make the computer magically do
something. There are a whole lot of assumptions that take years to master
before you can type a command like that and not have your heart skip a beat
when you hit enter.
And that's okay, it's why good hackers are worth a lot of money. The majority
of people however, just want that wordpress blog to work.
------
carlisle_
While I can appreciate the sentiment of being friendly, it's something I
strive to do, what this post actually does to accomplish it is nothing. It's a
fairly sweeping generalization of a community, and to top it off you try to
admonish the naysayers with "don't be stupid," and accusations of arrogance.
It comes off as petty with low effort.
If you want people to be more positive, that's admirable. That being said,
this post accomplishes nothing to encourage people to be more friendly.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
...and this kind of comment is probably what was being called out. Its typical
of HN comments - it deconstructs what was going on, and ranks it.
A sensitive person (read: designer) would call it mean. I think its just a
different mode of discourse. It is not sweet or kind; it just is. No more mean
than a compiler error message.
~~~
carlisle_
I don't really think it's fair to say designers are sensitive. I understand
your sentiment, but generalizing personalities by profession is stereotyping
and fans the flames.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Well done! Another deconstruction, and an analysis. You must be an engineer
(Kidding!)
I think personality and profession are mightily correlated. To discriminate on
that basis would be wrong, but to use that correlation for analysis can be
very helpful.
------
jrajav
Don't be mean, find a more positive and constructive output for your feelings
instead - like a passive-aggressive, poorly disguised excuse for bashing
another community.
~~~
knowtheory
What you have just done is not an actual defense of your community and its
behavior. It is an attack on the OP. the OPs conduct has no bearing on the
justifications and motivation of _your_ conduct.
We should all endeavor to be more humane to others, and I'm sad to see a
comment like this leaning towards a persecution complex more than an
understanding of others.
~~~
crusso
_What you have just done is not an actual defense of your community and its
behavior._
Was that a requirement for posting to this thread?
I thought TFA was ironic - criticizing others for wasting their electrons
typing something non-productive while it was basically criticizing others and
wasting electrons typing something non-productive.
Seriously, nobody is curing cancer in TFA or this thread.
~~~
knowtheory
Spreading misery and bad feeling does not require a substantive topic to be
conveyed or middle school would be considerably more pleasant for everyone
involved.
You're right in the following fashion. I assumed that folks who participated
in this thread might want to be self-aware enough to check themselves before
they wreck themselves in a thread about nastiness.
Some folks (i would probably dub them trolls) might just double down on the
nastiness. I'd rather assume some good faith in discussing the topic.
Even if you disagree with the OP, it is possible to point out the substantive
facts over which you disagree, or to point out the flaws in the OP's premise
without _attacking_ the OP.
If there's no problem, then there's no problem.
But I don't think that's the case. HN's sharp edges occasionally protrude, and
maybe it's just my nostalgic memory, but it feels to me like people have been
getting nasty just for the sake of being nasty (or edgy, or funny, or
whatever).
People can be wrong, mistaken, misguided, misinformed, but unless they're
being _malicious_ I wish that people would more often give others the benefit
of the doubt.
There is a person on the other end of that keyboard (at least as far as we, or
Turing knows).
~~~
crusso
What I objected to was your automatic assumption that there was something to
defend and your condescending tone in obligating the GP to defend it.
It's really hard to be critical of criticism without committing the very act
you're claiming to be attacking.
~~~
knowtheory
Regardless of whether there's something to defend or not (as i said earlier),
that doesn't excuse attacking others, _especially_ in a conversation about
civility.
Aside from arguing over the contours of whether something is or isn't
hypocrisy, all being mean does is drag you down too. I'm not telling GP that
he is obligated to do anything. All I've said is that his response to OP makes
him come off as poorly as OP does and will not further his goals.
You can call that condescending if you want, but that doesn't really pertain
to the discussion, if you assume that GP is participating in the conversation
in good faith, and is addressing the OP's point.
------
skore
Here is the thing about Hacker News Comment Threads - They are precisely as
mean as the subject/object allows.
HN Commentators take pleasure in dissections (and even more pleasure in
dissecting those dissections). That can be tough for people, especially if
they submitted their content because they wanted feel-good feedback or some
kind of community exchange.
It is very easy to burn your fingers around here - one slip of technical
details, get one fact of history wrong and you will be told. Ruthlessly and
again and again. If _anything at all_ about your content is distracting, that
will be what users latch onto.
Of course it's kind of bad, of course people are often dismissive because of
trivial bits to the point where they actively obstruct themselves of
interesting discoveries.
But I value it's Zen-like quality. I know that if I ever were to submit
something to HN, should it find its way to the frontpage, I _would,
definitely_ find out every single flaw about it. Quickly.
From a technical perspective, that is kind of neat. From a social perspective,
it's about as emphatic as a meat cleaver.
~~~
edem
I understand your opinion but I think that this won't change soon. This site
is used by a lot of technical people and by definition their behavior tend to
be like what you described above.
~~~
skore
Didn't mean to imply a point on how this would develop in the future. I agree,
it probably won't change and I think that's alright.
------
smoyer
Hmmm ... if I offer what I believe as a valid criticism (constructively) but
it offends someone, they're going to tend to think of me as mean regardless of
my intention.
But I also think you can offer both compliments and criticism respectfully ...
and I think that may be what the writer really wants. What value would there
be to a "Show HN" if all you got were platitudes?
As an aside, I quit swearing (completely) when I was 18 or so, because I
realized that I knew enough language to articulate my feelings. It's led to
people assuming I only have nice things to say when the reality is that I can
be (I think) more scathing (in other words, the tone of what you say is
important too ... especially on the Internet).
~~~
ScottWhigham
* Hmmm ... if I offer what I believe as a valid criticism (constructively) but it offends someone, they're going to tend to think of me as mean regardless of my intention.*
Just because something offends someone else does not force that person to
think of you as "mean". I don't buy into that argument at all. I can be
offended but think "That guy's just a jerk - that's the way he is" (jerk !=
mean). Or I can choose to think, "He maybe was a bit harsh in how he said it,
but ultimately his point is correct."
You aren't "wrong" in your other ideas, but I just don't agree that offending
someone causes them to think you are mean.
------
leothekim
Asking someone not to be mean is passive-aggressive bullying.
If someone is being mean, you _confront_ the behavior it by:
1\. Tell them you don't like their tone and that it isn't constructive. Make
sure you criticize the behavior, not the person.
2\. Ask them if they want to share their point of view instead of trashing
someone else.
3\. Empathize with their point of view (the Internet makes this really hard)
If none of the above works, ignore the person (the Internet makes it very easy
to not make other people's feelings your problem). Not the adult thing to do,
but silence is a signal to trolls that they aren't going to be fed any time
soon.
------
davidroberts
A few years back, I took the second semester of a photography class with a new
instructor. The first semester we had critique sessions, but people were so
supportive it was hard to see where I needed to improve. The new instructor
changed that in a hurry by forbidding the words 'What I like about your
photo...' or the equivalent. We had to say what we didn't like. He said every
photo can be improved. It really opened my eyes to the defects in my photos,
and I got better in a hurry. Some of the other photographers were very
talented, and had great photos from the start. Their photos improved even
quicker.
I try to look at the community on Hacker News like that. There are a lot of
very talented people here, and very busy. It seems most people here don't want
to waste time to writing or hearing what's good about something they wrote or
did. They've gone beyond the stage where they need hand-holding. People are
working on the edge and they _want to get better_ , whatever that means to
them, and are willing to endure some criticism to get there.
Postscript: I love the fact you almost never see a TL;DR attitude on HN.
------
struppi
Unfortunately this seems to be the way the world is working. People who like
what you did do not speak up. People wo do not like it complain as loud as
possible. Maybe it's because complaining is more likely to lead to responses.
Or because when you have a negative feeling about something you feel more urge
to speak up.
I know this should not necessarily result in _mean_ complaints, but often it
does. So, what can we do against it? Simply ignore mean comments? Take care to
write better comments? Or should we just shut up when we have nothing to say?
~~~
bengillies
I think mean comments, such as you get on Hacker News often have a grain of
truth to them. That such emotion is attached to that grain of truth suggests
that someone likes your idea or cares enough about your product or the area
you're focussing on that it's worth pursuing.
Better then to count the meanness as validation of what you're working on and
to extract the grain of truth as constructive criticism suggesting how you can
improve.
------
C1D
If you go and remove someones work for no damn reason and I criticize you,
that makes me mean; there is absolutely no logic in your post. The whole post
was idiotic and was trying to deflect the fact that they filed a DMCA takedown
when there was no evidence that the work (flatUI) belongs to them.
~~~
argonaut
Ironically, this post perfectly fits the what the submitter is talking about
since you don't even have your facts right. The submission appears to be as
affiliated with Layervault as any HN submission is affiliated with YC (that
is, not at all).
~~~
schrijver
Of course they are associated. Y combinator gets cred for hosting a platform
for ‘real hackers’, the hacker news users like the association with a
prestigious incubator. The domain name chosen for hacker news reflects this.
Layervault is trying to do the same trick for their brand.
~~~
drivebyacct2
Do other people go around bragging to their friends "Yeah, I comment on HN
stuff all the time!"... or is there some other benefit I have from "being
associated with a[n incubator]" (I'm quite sure HN wouldn't want me to go
around saying I'm "associated" with them.)))
~~~
schrijver
Hacker news reputation means something mainly in the context of the hacker
news community, surely. But the Hacker news community manages to centralise a
lot of discussion in the tech community, and how does it work that people are
attracted to and stay loyal to HN? I do think the Ycombinator / Paul Graham
brand has played a part in that.
------
Irregardless
Sometimes the truth hurts. I think we're all mature enough to handle that. And
I personally prefer when people are blunt/honest instead of sugar coating
everything or refusing to state their opinion because they're afraid it will
offend. There's nothing more annoying than someone who's too weak to speak up
and tell the truth -- they can do just as much harm as the people who are
mean.
For what it's worth, I just re-read the top 5 comments on the post he's
referring to and couldn't find a single one that was mean. Negative, sure, but
mean and negative are entirely different things.
> And why are you making the arrogant assumptions that we want to invest our
> time and energy in reading your comment too?
Well if that's not the definition of irony right there...
~~~
JoCoLa
Reminds me of I saw a documentary that followed students through med school.
One of them was a former mechanic (not to mention a child prodigy and a biker-
interesting guy) but he disliked the approach of med school where he would
give a wrong diagnosis and his instructors would always tip toe around
everyone's feelings and preface criticism with things like 'It's really
interesting how you came to that conclusion..." but when he was a mechanic,
someone would just say "You're doing it wrong - do it this way." And that's
all he wanted - to be told if he was doing something wrong and how to do it
right, but there was always this buffer of bullshit politeness in med school.
------
chimpinee
Asking somebody not to be mean seems reasonable but he only gets mean after he
has already "lost it". He then unfailingly perceives the _other_ guy as the
mean one and himself as the victim. If he had the self-awareness necessary to
monitor his emotional state then he would not become mean in the first place.
Combine this with the fact that most people come to news sites for validation
rather than enlightenment and one can expect mean comments to grow in
proportion to the popularity of the site
------
jtheory
Out of curiosity, where's the discussion the OP is talking about?
I do think meanness is worth calling out, FWIW, though in my experience HN
discussions are better than most I see online (though far from faultless, of
course).
...which in turn gives me faith that when there really are unduly mean
discussions, someone calling them out can actually improve things (whereas I
imagine an article calling out meanness on /. or similar and can't imagine who
would even read it).
~~~
thaumaturgy
Probably <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5341679>
~~~
Terretta
Definitely the post in question.
However, what I see in that thread are valid criticisms. The article and
author were self promoting the author's expertise in UX -- with the promotion
rather more prominent than the article content. Meanwhile, aside from the, um,
"self aggrandizement", the site violated cardinal UX rules.
Readers called him on it without using faux polite weasel words, and he says
he'll fix it.
Pretty sure constructive feedback is what submitting _your own_ material to HN
is for.
~~~
huhtenberg
Criticism-shmiticism.
That discussion lacks basic civility. A good half of comments there is not
something that their authors would've been willing (or have guts) to say to
guy's face. Hilariously, they _are_ in fact being mean.
~~~
pessimizer
There's a lot of things that I truly believe that I wouldn't say to someone's
face, depending on the size and belligerence of the someone, and whether I
care at all whether they agree with what I believe to be true.
Using that as a metric is silly. Is that too mean?
------
onze
Ironically this article describes what I started feeling while reading it:
I was wondering myself, why? Why consume time, energy to write something that
adds no value whatsoever. Why consuming that little amount of electricity
required for you to type and that little amount of storage required to host
your (destructive) boring comment. And why are you making the arrogant
assumptions that we want to invest our time and energy in reading your comment
too?"
------
jamestc
I've never seen much ad hominem or meanness in the comments here. In fact, I
think this place is awfully civil. People here have no problem calling one
another out on something that is incorrect or dubious, and I like that. I'd
rather a spade is called a spade than a bunch of people skirting around the
issue in the name of politeness.
------
nikcub
The worst part of HN and the ecosystem isn't being mean, its people reverting
to a meta discussion about how useless and silly HN is when they don't have a
response to valid criticism or argument.
~~~
TillE
That's what drove me off Daily Kos five years ago. Meta responses to meta
responses to petty bullshit. The endless complaining was invariably far worse
than the original issue, and it never resolved anything.
You can't change the behavior of a bunch of strangers with simple argument. If
that's your goal, you need to actually do something more substantive.
------
Tichy
I think people defend the things they are invested in. For example if you have
bought Macs and invested time in learning to use OS X, you are invested in
Macs and will defend them against competition. It is not just about personal
preferences, but about the value of your investment. If nobody uses Macs
anymore, your investment in Apple knowledge loses a lot of value.
Likewise, if you have invested in building a Facebook network, you have an
interest in Facebook remaining useful to you. It's more than just personal
likes and dislikes, it's long term investing.
------
ak39
What's worse than people "wasting electricity" making ostensibly mean
comments? I know. It's writing an entire blog post about it!
The anti-dote, usually, for a "Don't be mean ..." request is "Don't take it
personally".
To defend HN comments ... The comments are the reason why I, and I'm sure
many, come here to read. Most times HN comments far out-value the original
articles posted.
------
edem
I tried to register on DN but it is invite only. I can understand that but
they don't even have a "Contact us" link so I can ask how to get an invite or
ask any question for that matter.
I remember reading the HTML Hell page: <http://catb.org/esr/html-hell.html> It
is really annoying when someone (or groups of people) wish to be heard (that
is the reason they are on a publicly available site right?) but they don't
give a damn about their visitors' opinions.
I can't call a site like that friendly either. Correct me if my point of view
is flawed.
------
nasir
In terms of mean comments, I think that's just a way of people to express
themselves in something they don't agree in order to seek some attention. A
person who has high amount of knowledge in different areas it does not matter
what newbies use and probably they even encourage them with positive opinion
because they don't need an approval from other members of the community.
The main problem is that every community gets biased toward certain trend or
way of thinking and they suppress opinions against them. HN is less biased in
this sense but still that exist.
------
josscrowcroft
Nice attempt to deflect their current DMCA clustercuss. Makes good points but
this is rather poorly written and not well–considered... and seems kind of
unnecessary for a company blog.
~~~
argonaut
Umm... Are you even aware that the submission is a forum post on "Designer
News" (a Hacker News for designers) by someone who does not appear at all to
be affiliated with Layervault. It's basically the Designer News equivalent of
a Tell HN post.
~~~
drivebyacct2
Not that I commented, but, no, I didn't know that. "news.layervault.com"
sounds official to me.
Also, Is this a rip off of the HN visual redeux extension that was posted, or
vice-versa, or is it the same person?
edit: Well, I feel sufficiently stupid after thinking this through: I'm
posting a comment on "news.ycombinator.com" after all...
~~~
schrijver
Well, at any rate it is a ripoff of Hacker news :) They do the same as
ycombinator..
Which in itself of course is a perfectly valid course of action but it makes
their outrage over a supposed clone of their work a tad less convincing :)
------
friendly_chap
I don't know which is the older, Hacker News or that Designer News forum, but
I think the similarity is striking:
Both sites are on a company domain, added a "news" subdomain, and named the
forum "XYZ News", where XYZ is a description of their audience, a positive
one, to appeal to industry members.
I hope Hacker News was first, because if not, they will start harass this
board over the naming thingie...
~~~
Pent
Good observations! Hacker News was indeed before Designer News, but there have
been many iterations of this style of social news over the years.
------
hakaaaaak
"Whenever you are thinking about writing a comment ask yourself, is this
helpful, is this funny or is this a question? If you get no positive answer
don't post it."
Yes, but take out the "is this funny". I've been funny many times and gotten
downvoted. By the way, a penguin, a priest, and a rabbit went into a bar and
ordered a drink...
------
SethMurphy
Coders attacking designers attacking coders ... this happens too much. I often
wonder if the underlying problem is the rift between designers and coders
constantly reinforced by pure business people who keeps us at a distance and
call us each the most important in private. Can't we all just get along?
------
pascal07
A Hacker News comment thread about a post about Hacker News comment threads.
It's meta all the way down.
~~~
lurkinggrue
It's So Meta, Even This Acronym
------
hso9791
So, people who are mean - by this person's judgement - are stupid?
For fear of being mean (and stupid) I shan't put words to what I think about
this.
------
jstrate
Not much to this post for being on the front page, I guess I'll follow up with
grow some thick skin. It's stupid not to.
~~~
jtheory
This isn't a thin skin problem.
Mean comments are a waste of space; they take up the space on the page where
actually valuable content should be.
I've always hated the "grow a thicker skin" comment, regardless -- it shifts
the blame onto the victim, and is simply impossible for some people and some
situations -- but the problem here is that one person gets hurt (more or less,
depending on thickness of skin), and lots & lots of readers get crap instead
of brain food.
~~~
jstrate
<https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75>
I reckon this is 'mean and a waste of space' then?
~~~
jtheory
That's debatable, to be sure, but do you have a similar example from an HN
discussion?
I don't think I've ever seen a mean post in the context of an HN discussion
that wouldn't have been improved by removing the meanness, or simply deleting
it.
------
taligent
No we shouldn't be personal. Period.
What I've always thought set HN above other sites like Reddit is the quality
of the arguments. At the end of the day we all learn and grow by putting
forward our positions on various topics and issues and seeing what comes out
of it. And those positions can and should be aggressively defended as need be.
If you take it personally then clearly that is your problem and no one else's.
When we start attacking the person everyone loses.
------
Buzaga
This reads like a child's rant to me.
It misses all the fair points everybody is arguing over and jumps to his
conclusion that 'being mean is always bad :( why is there conflict in the
world?'
pff, yes, I'm mean.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Code School Launches - PStamatiou
http://codeschool.com
======
norova
I'd recommend putting the price for the level next to the "Buy Now" button
after the level description. The price already exists in the top right, but
after I've scrolled down and read everything, I'd rather see the price next to
the button I'm about to click, rather than having to scroll back up to the
top.
------
austinB
I am excited to give this a try. As someone who did not study CS or MIS at
school (in fact far from it, accounting & finance) I am open to any resource
to assist code education online. I have found a few decent offerings such as
w3schools.com, Mozila's p2p school of webcraft, and dreamincode.net but don't
know if these will give me all I need..
On a side note if anyone has any other sites I should be considering, don't
hesitate to shout them out!
~~~
Nat0
Stanford has some top quality material up for CS. I have completed cs106a and
am working on cs106b and they are both top notch!
<http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx>
If you are looking at more web based stuff then David Malan (Harvard) has some
great free stuff as well. <http://cs50.tv/2010/fall/>
------
gacba
I'd like to be able to see more about the classes & the site before you demand
with a stop-screen to "You must login to continue"...I think you'll have
stronger conversion rates if you let people look around a bit first.
Registering just to check it out is a bit of a barrier.
~~~
nigelsampson
Agreed, given the home page says "featured courses" I'd love to be able to see
the other courses available without having to sign up.
------
Mafana0
More discussion is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2354776>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
macOS X GateKeeper Bypass - raimue
https://www.fcvl.net/vulnerabilities/macosx-gatekeeper-bypass
======
Someone
_”The second legit feature is that zip archives can contain symbolic links
pointing to an arbitrary location (including automount enpoints) and that the
software on MacOS that is responsable to decompress zip files do not perform
any check on the symlinks before creatig them.”_
Is that truly legit? It’s very similar to having web servers accept URL paths
containing full paths or “../“, both of which have been the cause of many
security vulnerabilities.
~~~
cjcampbell
I don't believe this feature is specific to macOS and the zip format. I'm
reasonably certain it's possible to `tar` a symbolic link in Windows, Linux,
or macOS.
------
silvestrov
I can really not see any reason that NFS automounter should be enabled by
default on a macOS system.
That should be disabled by Apple, if not removed completely.
~~~
ohithereyou
It is also specifically allowed outbound through Little Snitch 4 to the entire
Internet by default which seems very insecure to me.
------
cjcampbell
I may not be entirely right about this, but I believe that Gatekeeper relies
on xattr to mark files as quarantined. This is a feature that I wouldn't
expect to be available when mounting non-Apple filesystems.
If this is the case, a potential solution is to track external mounts and to
prompt a user when accessing a new drive for the first time, especially in the
case that the OS has read or written a new symbolic link pointing to an
external file system.
I agree with other commenters who say that the NFS auto-mounter should likely
default to off on fresh installs. If there is a concern about this breaking
enterprise configurations, set NFS to default into a prompt before mounting
mode.
As far as the issue of symbolic links in zip files, I'm not sure there's much
to be done (except perhaps issuing a warning that would be difficult for most
users to parse). I mentioned elsewhere that this functionality is not unique
to macOS or to zip.
The final issue that I see is that Finder hides so much metadata (which could
be useful for a reasonably sophisticated user). I'd like to see a prominent
indication of a cross-filesystem symbolic link. Likewise, it'd be worthwhile
to have a clear visual indication when browsing a remote file system.
------
smelendez
Why are external drives and NFS shares considered trusted to begin with?
~~~
Someone
Internal drives are, too.
Gatekeeper (in a wider sense) actually is two things:
Firstly, it is a user setting choosing what software to trust: only software
downloaded from the Mac App Store, everything that’s signed, or ‘everything’.
The first two settings require applications to be signed. That doesn’t say
anything about whether they are safe to run, but it does allow Apple to find
out who developed malware, if it is discovered.
Secondly, applications that download executables can opt in on signaling to
Gatekeeper “the first time the user runs this executable, ask for user
confirmation”. They do that by setting an extended file attribute on the
executable. Gatekeeper removes it if the user indicates the executable can be
run.
Neither feature cares from where the executable is launched. External drives
are very common (think USB drives), so they ‘had’ to be included. I would
guess NFS shares slipped through the net, but possibly, there are companies
that use NFS shares.
Of course, that “opt-in” is a weak point. They couldn’t do a lot better
because, when Gatekeeper was introduced, users already had lots of
executables, and they didn’t want users to pick the ‘everything’ option after
being bombarded with Gatekeeper dialogs.
------
judge2020
The author says it works "<= 10.14.5", but no mention of the current beta
available, 10.14.6. I wonder if the beta fixes this.
~~~
saagarjha
FWIW, on macOS Mojave 10.14.6 Beta (18G29g), /etc/auto_master still looks like
this:
#
# Automounter master map
#
+auto_master # Use directory service
/net -hosts -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid
/home auto_home -nobrowse,hidefromfinder
/Network/Servers -fstab
/- -static
------
musicale
I noticed that automounter entry recently and was like "wait, why did I have
this?"
OTOH I might have left it in there to make it easier to mount NFS volumes.
------
hypervis0r
The author disabled resizing (zooming) on mobile, leaving the text unreadable.
Why do people do this at all? I've seen it happen so often.
~~~
knolan
Zooms fine for me on my iPhone 7. Reader mode also works, which is like a
magic fix crappy website button nowadays.
Tangentially, had anyone noticed a weird zooming bug on mobile safari that
appears to cancel a zoom gesture and jump back to the unzoomed view? Quitting
the app from the app switcher appears to fix it.
~~~
clairity
> “Tangentially, had anyone noticed a weird zooming bug on mobile safari that
> appears to cancel a zoom gesture and jump back to the unzoomed view?
> Quitting the app from the app switcher appears to fix it.”
yes, it happens on my ipad pro running ios 12.2 (16E227). have been meaning to
upgrade thinking that would fix it, but maybe that’s not the case?
~~~
lstamour
Happens on my iPad Pro in the latest 12.4 betas, I can only bypass it by
slowing down as I’ve zoomed in, a quick gesture snaps back and is ignored, but
a quick gesture followed by waiting a second seems to preserve the zooming in.
It happens most often on this site, for me, probably because I’m trying to
zoom in to click tiny links, even on an iPad Pro.
~~~
knolan
I had noticed that it appears to happen a lot here on HN but I didn’t want to
say incase of confirmation bias.
------
OldHand2018
This is an interesting bug. But is it a good idea for an attacker to allow for
wide-open NFS mounting of their attack server?
~~~
Karliss
It isn't really a problem. Attacker would probably not run it on their own
computer but some other compromised computers instead. It also doesn't have to
be full NFS server but only the minimal functionality to deliver single file.
------
circa
Someone should inform the KeyMaster
~~~
enraged_camel
Are you the KeyMaster?
------
mosselman
“Since Apple is aware of my 90 days disclosure deadline, I make this
information public.”
Great, so now, potentially, there are lots of people who will lose all of
their baby photos, lose money or even their contact with people who are
important to them just because of some arbitrary number of days you made up
and because you feel slighted by apple.
This could have real consequences and you can’t expect a big company to move
faster just because you want them to. I have now knowledge of the internals of
the development of MacOS, but maybe this isn’t trivial to fix.
~~~
outlog
"..This issue was supposed to be addressed, according to the vendor, on May
15th 2019 but Apple started dropping my emails."
I believe Apple could easily have asked for an extension, if solving it was
complex.. Apple chose not to.
(from the information available to us..)
~~~
mosselman
"on May 15th 2019 but Apple started dropping my emails"
What does that mean? Is there proof? How long do you wait before you call not
getting a response 'dropping'?
The potential consequences require more than this.
~~~
simondedalus
You would have a point if the exploit were more serious, and looked harder to
fix than it does.
As is, this is a phishing type variant that it’s not at all clear gatekeeper
was even designed to stop. However, the default behavior described (especially
making symlinks to NFS shares without any sort of warning or special graphic
when following them in Finder) seems sufficient for forceful language when
complaining about it to Apple / giving a disclosure deadline then publishing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Woz comments on the "Jobs" movie - ohjeez
https://plus.google.com/+CarmsPerez/posts/GnVTvQNgvpf?utm_content=buffer39a9a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
======
sp332
Already on the front page
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7086411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7086411)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Was I just offered horrible convertible note terms? - throwawayuc
Was just offered $120K investment w/ a $500K cap; and 25% discount.<p>Some background: This is my first time taking money for my startup, so I ran it by my "silicon valley advisor" (a buddy from college who runs a notable tech startup in SV). I asked him what he thought of the terms, and he said that they are the most entrepreneur-unfriendly terms he has ever seen. His main concern was how low the cap was set at. He said I should insist on a $4M cap, and not accept anything under $2M.<p>My dilemma though, is we're currently pre-revenue; and I need this cash injection to propel my startup through our launch.<p>Isn't the cap on a convertible note akin to a pre-money company valuation? If so, I honestly agree with the investor that we are only worth ~$500K. I mean, we're pre-revenue, so $500K is optimistic IMHO.<p>Personally, I have a proven track record of building and exiting companies. Nothing huge; my last business was acquired for $250,000 last year.<p>I'm confident that I can make this business successful; but I don't want to screw myself over by taking this cash now, when in a year or so I may be seeking Series-A financing from a large VC; and don't want to turn them off by having accepted such poor seed investment terms.<p>Couple questions:<p>1) Do you feel like $120K with $500K cap, and 25% discount is really that bad of a deal?<p>2) If I take this deal as-is, do you anticipate backlash from future investors?<p>3) Where do I have negotiating leverage? Should I tell him I want a $2M cap but am willing to increase the discount to 30%? Should I offer to pay interest on the note?<p>4) I realize posting to HN is no substitute for bonafide legal counsel; so is there someone you would refer me to?<p>Thanks everyone.
======
danieljeff
I'm no expert but that sounds pretty bad.
You say you "need" the cash. What do you need it for? At the very early stages
you may need cash much less then you think you do. Cash feels like it will
remove headaches but you are adding an investor to the mix at terrible terms
which could add headaches. Could be a wash.
~~~
throwawayuc
I've got a team of 8 full time people (half are salaried and half are only
commission). We're hemorrhaging cash as we roll out our marketing plan. Plus
we have features on our site like "Refer a friend, earn $10 when their first
order ships." That money has to come from somewhere.
My only other option is to get as many personally-guaranteed credit cards as I
can and just use them instead of taking on an investor. But this seems more
high-risk.
------
argonaut
-This is a bad deal. The discount is sort of bad; it's somewhat unfriendly as it's on the high side, but it's not unheard of. The cap is pretty bad, though, and you combine both of those and you have fairly unfriendly terms.
-Convertible debt notes already come with a (low) interest rate.
-It's pretty clear _the reason you are getting such bad terms is because you have no leverage in the negotiation_. You've made it clear that your company desperately needs the money; the investor probably knows you're desperate and that's why you get such bad terms. There is a lot of truth to the saying that it's best to raise money when you don't need it: because then you can afford to walk away from the deal or spend more time finding other offers. Firstly, try to negotiate better terms. When someone presents a term sheet to you, it's meant to be the beginning of a longer discussion. Ask for a $4MM cap at 25% discount, and work your way down from there if you are refused. While that's happening you need to explore other options: 1) Find a better offer (get competing offers), 2) Position your company in such a way that you can afford to go without funding (firing people, cutting expensive programs), 3) If you're desperate you'll have to bite the bullet and take the deal.
-Keep in mind that if you don't get better offers and can't negotiate a better offer, and if there is absolutely no way your company can survive without funding, then obviously you need the funding.
-I'm not able to refer you to a lawyer, but keep in mind that you should involve a lawyer in the negotiation. Your friend probably knows more.
Other points:
-Why the hell do you have 8 full-time employees? How are you paying them? How can you justify that expense? What kind of business are you running that has such a high burn rate?
-Can you raise money from non-traditional sources such as family & friends?
-Are you actually truly pre-revenue (as in negligible revenue)? If so, that again begs the question as to why you even have 8 employees and expensive marketing referral programs. Those are not things you do without already having lots of funding.
-Since you're "pre-revenue," why do you even think you've found product-market fit? Is it your daily active users number or monthly actives?
-I wouldn't consider a $250k exit a "proven track record of building and exiting companies." Though it is a positive for investors, I don't think investors would consider it a proven track record.
~~~
narayankpl
New to term sheet...
Can I ask what does discount mean in this context... "$4MM cap at 25%
discount"
~~~
throwawayuc
It means if another future investor makes an investment where the pre-money
valuation of the company is LESS THAN $4MM (like, $350K for 10%), then the
initial investor's shares would convert at 1.25x the rate of the new money
coming in. So new investor would get 10% for $350K while past investor's
convertible note would convert to 12.5%.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Non programmers reading code (code as documentation) - smokeonline
https://github.com/JpOnline/Blog/blob/master/language.md
======
smokeonline
This idea passes through BDD, Ubiquitous language, code as documentation and
single source of truth.
Do you think is possible and desirable to have code so idiomatic that a domain
specialist would be able to understand a functionality by looking at the code?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Confirmationist and falsificationist paradigms of science (2014) - cbkeller
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2014/09/05/confirmationist-falsificationist-paradigms-science/
======
outlace
Article summary: Many scientists (particularly social scientists) think
they’re doing Popperian falsification of their hypotheses by using null
hypothesis testing. That is, they posit a hypothesis that e.g. IQ is
correlated with happiness and then setup a null hypothesis that says IQ Has
zero correlation to happpiness and reject it if their data does not have zero
correlation. Gelman argues this is confirmation-seeking not falsificationist
since the scientist never posited a precise model of how IQ correlated with
happiness that could be falsified. They only reject a straw man null
hypothesis and then claim that this supports their hypothesis. He also notes
that this has nothing to do with frequentist vs Bayesian statistics since null
testing can be done using either approach.
My own added view: Gelman never elaborates on what “making a hypothesis
precise” means in this article but I think this is the key. A lot of social
science is really about estimating model parameters and not positing new
causal explanations (theories) of phenomena. If you hypothesize that IQ
correlates with happiness, that is not a theory, one could say it’s not even a
hypothesis, it’s really asking “how much does IQ correlate with happiness?”
Anything can correlate with anything else, in principle so this “hypothesis”
is not a new causal model of reality, it’s just a parameter estimation. So it
doesn’t make sense to use falsificationist reasoning here since there’s no
theory to falsify only a parameter to estimate. This is why null hypothesis
significance testing (NHST) is so wrongheaded because 1) most social science
is not about new causal models but about parameter estimation 2) when you do
posit a new causal model you should falsify the predictions of your model not
some straw man null hypothesis.
------
hirundo
There's a good case for stating the hypothesis, and summarizing the evidence
that could falsify the hypothesis, right in the abstract of a paper. Or at
least a separate section on falsification. Whether the authors' views on the
falsification of their prediction are correct or not, they say a lot about
their standard of evidence and therefore about their level of rigor.
If they state that falsification isn't relevant to this particular paper, or
give an impossible threshold, it's a way to sort it into a category other than
science.
------
User23
Science is a deductive method, which means that it can never "confirm"
anything unless it can disprove the complement. Strictly speaking that is
impossible in real world cases. For example, quantum electrodynamics, one of
the most well tested theories ever, holds up in the lab to some absurd number
of decimal places (I recall the figure 9, but I read that years ago and it's
got to be more now), but we can never be quite sure than the theory won't fall
down with the next improvement in measurement. None of this detracts from QED
being one of the great human intellectual achievements.
From a programming perspective, there is an analogy to software testing.
Testing can only prove the presence of bugs, it can't prove their absence,
except in the case of exhaustion. Since on (most?) modern systems exhaustive
testing is impossible, we're left with an imperfect solution that still works
quite well when applied properly.
~~~
cbkeller
Well, we like to say science is deductive, because induction doesn't give you
perfect certainty -- but in practice induction and parsimony are and have been
absolutely critical to scientific progress..
I think QED provides a nice example. I don't know if there are any formal
mathematical constraints on the size of theoryspace, but for practical
purposes we can probably agree that one may conceive of arbitrarily many
hypotheses that fail to be falsified by a given set of observations. If
deduction is all we have at our disposal, how do we choose among all these
options? And should we really not have any more confidence in a theory like
QED which as been tested many times and "failed to be falsified" to nine
significant digits, versus one that has only "failed to be falsified" at 5%
relative?
In practice, I would also claim that parsimony is (and has been historically)
absolutely critical in culling away the dross of theoryspace, yet this can
hardly be presented as a deductive method?
I think induction has been given an unnecessarily bad name lately. The
falsification-centric paradigm that is popular today was proposed by Karl
Popper as a solution to Hume's "problem of induction" [1] -- but Hume, and the
rest of the Empiricists that laid the foundation for the scientific method,
would have considered this entirely backwards. While Hume did claim that
induction could not be justified by reason alone, Hume's conclusion was not to
reject induction, but rather to _prefer induction over deduction_!
> _It is far better, Hume concludes, to rely on “the ordinary wisdom of
> nature”, which ensures that we form beliefs “by some instinct or mechanical
> tendency”, rather than trusting it to “the fallacious deductions of our
> reason”_ [2]
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hume%27s_problem_of_induction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hume%27s_problem_of_induction)
[2]
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/)
~~~
User23
I hope "None of this detracts from QED being one of the great human
intellectual achievements" made it clear that I agree completely. Thank you
for elaborating and providing a nice reference.
------
mxwsn
I recommend [https://aeon.co/essays/a-fetish-for-falsification-and-
observ...](https://aeon.co/essays/a-fetish-for-falsification-and-observation-
holds-back-science) for further reading on how falsification has interacted
with science historically and philosophically. In principle, it's absolutely
crucial for good science. In practice, hypotheses that are not directly
falsifiable (they require additional technological development) have
contributed greatly to science in the long run. This is interesting since it's
simultaneously reasonable and correct for contemporaries to label these
hypotheses as non-scientific work since at the time they had little to no
evidence supporting or denying the hypothesis and no way to test them. In
practice, the distinction between "falsifiable" and "unfalsifiable" is a messy
spectrum.
~~~
cbkeller
Thanks, I hadn't seen that one before - some really interesting historical
context. That's about the clearest articulation I've ever seen of the contrast
between the idealized purely-deductive hypothesis-falsification paradigm and
the way science has actually progressed.
------
themodelplumber
> So I think it’s worth emphasizing that, when a researcher is testing a null
> hypothesis that he or she does not believe, in order to supply evidence in
> favor of a preferred hypothesis, that this is confirmationist reasoning. It
> may well be good science (depending on the context) but it’s not
> falsificationist.
A very good point.
------
chrstphrhrt
We need to bring back abductive/retroductive inference (to the best
explanation) as if it were its own mode of reasoning to complement deduction
and induction. This is how scientific discoveries are often made IMHO but
often chalked up to some kind of intuition. There is actually a logical
structure even though is is hard to formalize and prove.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning)
I am working on dialog management stuff as an engineer who sits between data
scientists, NLP, and product people. It is understandable that trained stats
people see everything as a stats problem (induction), but we forgot about
GOFAI & symbolic AI (deductive) systems along the way.
Philosophy has actually been ahead of the curve on this one for over 140
years. Maybe the "3rd wave" of AI will be to synthesize.
[https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/AIFull.pdf](https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/AIFull.pdf)
I personally have not had a chance to read Norvig or dive into LISP or Prolog
much, but am using CLIPS expert system in a project and have toyed with
core.logic in Clojure back in the day. Lots of opportunity to resurrect some
of these older methods that may be superior to imperative/bespoke code given
modern hardware and infrastructure.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MSNBC’s Joy Reid Claims Her Website Was Hacked, Bigoted Anti-LGBT Content Added - snakeboy
https://theintercept.com/2018/04/24/msnbcs-joy-reid-claims-her-website-was-hacked-and-bigoted-anti-lgbt-content-added-a-bizarre-story-liberal-outlets-ignore/
======
snakeboy
> According to Reid, she was the victim of “hackers”: somehow, nefarious
> disinformation agents managed to hack not her blog (which is now deleted),
> but rather the Wayback Machine and its digital archive. They penetrated the
> Wayback Machine and then, according to Reid, added some anti-gay content.
This excuse seems entirely implausible, right? There would be massive negative
consequences if the Wayback Machine were breached and able to be altered like
this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What do you think of our model? Applying Open Source to online gaming - antoviaque
http://community.hackit.cx/blog/2010/09/25/a-few-excerpts-from-an-interview/
======
wccrawford
Developers only has 1 p in it.
The ideas for the games don't excite me.
I am an avid gamer and I only signed up for Facebook for the games. (I have
since left.) I had 'completed' Mafia Wars in that I had done everything you
could do in all 3 or 4 areas that were available. (I forget how many now.) I
played many other games.
I own every game console currently on the market, and I buy and rent games
avidly. I play everything from casual Hidden Object games to hardcore FPS's.
So don't take it lightly when I say that your game ideas fail to excite me. I
like games.
Now, it's possible you haven't explained them well enough, and they could be
fun... But so far, they do nothing for me and when I leave this page, I'll
have forgotten about them.
~~~
antoviaque
Agreed, the document doesn't say much about the games themselves - the
question was more on the mixing between open source and videogaming.
For the description of the main game, you should rather see
[http://community.hackit.cx/blog/2010/09/12/the-future-of-
hac...](http://community.hackit.cx/blog/2010/09/12/the-future-of-hackit/) and
[http://community.hackit.cx/blog/2010/09/16/ever-heard-of-
alt...](http://community.hackit.cx/blog/2010/09/16/ever-heard-of-alternate-
reality-games/) , you should get a better picture. Interested by your opinion
there too btw...
Probably we're not doing a good job conveying this part in the YC application
though. It's rather difficult to explain what the experience will be when you
are still in the prototyping phase. That's why you usually don't hear much
from games until they are at a point where they can actually show gameplay
footage (I can say that it's an alternate reality game with a MMO-like
leveling structure, but until you experience it yourself, you can't really
know what I'm talking about...).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Meet the CamperForce, Amazon's Nomadic Retiree Army - SwellJoe
https://www.wired.com/story/meet-camperforce-amazons-nomadic-retiree-army/
======
quuquuquu
Wow, what an awesome read.
This guy spent 40 years of his life going from janitor to branch manager at
McDonalds.
He saved up 250k, and then Wells Fargo sold him an investment that (somehow)
lost 100% of its value in 2008.
He and his partner then bought an RV and attempted to live off of $1,100
dollars in social security payments.
Which I thought sounded doable, but they apparently really like to work, so
they now work entry level jobs at Amazon.
Color me confused and jaded.
It's an absolute shame that Wells Fargo conned this guy into an investment
that took this guy's nest egg of 250k! I mean buyer beware and all, but the
guy lost 40 years of savings!
There's no reason he should be working at Amazon right now, and neither should
his partner who also lost 200k! They should be sitting on the beach enjoying
their golden years, not begging for a factory floor job.
~~~
mythrwy
He had 250K invested and was expecting 4K a month in returns. That's nearly
20% interest year over year!
If you are expecting those kind of returns you can hardly be surprised when
you lose _all_ your money.
We don't know if it was a con or a bad risky decision. Either way, it is a sad
story but still.... if you get to that age and life/management experience and
expect the above to reliably happen (regardless of what someone tells you)
it's not a wonder when you wind up in poverty.
------
theSpaceOctopus
Great read, thanks for sharing it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Principles of designing Go APIs with channels - nishs
https://inconshreveable.com/07-08-2014/principles-of-designing-go-apis-with-channels/
======
kevindeasis
This one too:
[https://github.com/astaxie/gotraining-1/blob/master/08-concu...](https://github.com/astaxie/gotraining-1/blob/master/08-concurrency_channels/03-channels/documentation/channels.md)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Node graph 3D modelling: Antimony - fezz
https://vimeo.com/125111378
======
fezz
links:
[http://mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony](http://mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony)
and [http://github.com/mkeeter/antimony](http://github.com/mkeeter/antimony)
Python scripting too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cuil, semantic search by ex-Googlers - markbao
http://mashable.com/2008/07/28/cuil-search-google/
======
presty
Semantic search? That's the first time I've seen that word used with Cuil.
But then I read the article and it says "semi-semantic approach (Cuil’s engine
recognizes the relations between certain words on a web site, which helps it
rank pages better)".
Semi-Semantic.. different from this misleading title.
And btw, "Hell, they even pulled the energy-saving trick: the front page of
Cuil is completely black, in contrast to Google’s eye-poking whiteness.".
Hasn't this already been dismistified (i.e. it's only true on old monitors)?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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