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Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion | Here's the paper.http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...They would like to charge you $32 to look at it, nature-ally.The fusion yield is (?) 14 kilojoules (inferring this from physicist Mark Herrman's "5 million billion fusions" [WaPo], at 18 MeV per fusion), which is a moderate improvement over the 8 kilojoule achivement from last fall:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459289[WaPo] http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fusion...The "1%" energy efficiency figure [a] is misleading: 14 kJ is about 1% of 1.5 MJ of ultraviolet light hitting the fuel capsule. But creating that UV pulse consumed 3 MJ of infrared light, which in turn took 400 MJ from the flash bulbs driving the IR laser. So the system efficiency is more like 0.003% (and throwing in hypothetical turbines to generate electricity, 0.001%).https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility#NIF...[a] I'm referring to this: "while more energy came from fusion than went into the hydrogen fuel, only about 1 percent of the laser's energy ever reached the fuel."(update: from yosyp's link, the fusion figures were 14.4 kJ, and 17.3 kJ, on two different runs:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7227950 | > led NIF's critics to label the facility an enormous waste of taxpayer dollars> government shifted NIF away from its fusion goals to focus on its other mission: simulating the conditions inside nuclear weaponsI think right there lies the problem with our world. People take up more issue with a multi-billion dollar research facility for science than one for military applications. If we spent a small fraction of the world's military spending on these big, as Google likes to put it, moonshot projects we could probably solve some really fundamental world problems (i.e. energy, climate change) in the near future vs. waiting many, many decades (if not centuries). |
Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion | > led NIF's critics to label the facility an enormous waste of taxpayer dollars> government shifted NIF away from its fusion goals to focus on its other mission: simulating the conditions inside nuclear weaponsI think right there lies the problem with our world. People take up more issue with a multi-billion dollar research facility for science than one for military applications. If we spent a small fraction of the world's military spending on these big, as Google likes to put it, moonshot projects we could probably solve some really fundamental world problems (i.e. energy, climate change) in the near future vs. waiting many, many decades (if not centuries). | This sentiment is interesting "Over the past few years, NIF has been getting a fat 'F.'" Perhaps now that 'grade' will change.Actually, I think framing it as a grade is beyond silly; it is irresponsible. Giving a letter grade to long-term scientific project makes little sense. It is not a one-shot thing with a predefined notion of correctness. What can we compare such a grade to?Instead, we should be asking what we've learned and how the project has advanced science. |
Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion | This sentiment is interesting "Over the past few years, NIF has been getting a fat 'F.'" Perhaps now that 'grade' will change.Actually, I think framing it as a grade is beyond silly; it is irresponsible. Giving a letter grade to long-term scientific project makes little sense. It is not a one-shot thing with a predefined notion of correctness. What can we compare such a grade to?Instead, we should be asking what we've learned and how the project has advanced science. | This is newsworthy despite "They didn't get more fusion power out than they put in with the laser"?After decades of work they are orders of magnitude away from break-even. Makes me wonder if the goal is actually break-even and/or power generation. Not really; but it's a revealing question.I'm no great fan of the budgets these huge projects pull down; I think the bang-for-the-buck is greater elsewhere. But modelling nuclear weapons is an even greater waste of time. It's all kind of a sad epigraph about national science and technology initiatives.Assuming the modest proposition that fusion energy is possible, why not make fusion energy a 'man on the moon' kind of national goal? It's hardly in doubt that we need a large source of clean energy. Is it a failure of imagination? Is it a failure of the political system - Can't get Bubba to vote for no fusion thing. Is the status quo energy system resistant to change? Whatever, the NIF thing just makes me depressed. |
Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion | This is newsworthy despite "They didn't get more fusion power out than they put in with the laser"?After decades of work they are orders of magnitude away from break-even. Makes me wonder if the goal is actually break-even and/or power generation. Not really; but it's a revealing question.I'm no great fan of the budgets these huge projects pull down; I think the bang-for-the-buck is greater elsewhere. But modelling nuclear weapons is an even greater waste of time. It's all kind of a sad epigraph about national science and technology initiatives.Assuming the modest proposition that fusion energy is possible, why not make fusion energy a 'man on the moon' kind of national goal? It's hardly in doubt that we need a large source of clean energy. Is it a failure of imagination? Is it a failure of the political system - Can't get Bubba to vote for no fusion thing. Is the status quo energy system resistant to change? Whatever, the NIF thing just makes me depressed. | "Strictly speaking, while more energy came from fusion than went into the hydrogen fuel, only about 1 percent of the laser's energy ever reached the fuel. Useful levels of fusion are still a long way off."The rest was lost to energy conversion losses. Yeah, not the best breakthrough I've heard today. Their best breakthrough was this CAD-flythrough video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sp1sDpn_M0 |
Dropbox Hires Rasmus Andersson, Facebook’s Mobile Design Guru | It seems like they are scoring a lot of really big power players from other great companies. Does it seem like everyone is going there until it goes public for the payout? | Facebook has mobile design? Maybe he did the decent bits, and feel free to correct me, but by the evidence of my Android facebook app I'd be glad to be shot of anyone in that department. |
Dropbox Hires Rasmus Andersson, Facebook’s Mobile Design Guru | Facebook has mobile design? Maybe he did the decent bits, and feel free to correct me, but by the evidence of my Android facebook app I'd be glad to be shot of anyone in that department. | So a great programmer, a great designer and all round nice kinda guy. I already hate him :/ |
Dropbox Hires Rasmus Andersson, Facebook’s Mobile Design Guru | So a great programmer, a great designer and all round nice kinda guy. I already hate him :/ | Rasmus is also behind the original design of Spotify interaction design, branding and more. He is one of the most talented designers I know about, this is really good news for Dropbox! |
Dropbox Hires Rasmus Andersson, Facebook’s Mobile Design Guru | Rasmus is also behind the original design of Spotify interaction design, branding and more. He is one of the most talented designers I know about, this is really good news for Dropbox! | He's a developer as well. |
Ask HN: Require a sign-up or allow anonymous/guest users? | This is an interesting question that I'd love to hear other opinions on.My idea that I haven't gotten to implement yet: Make it possible for the user to get started without logging in, then force them to create an account after they've started playing around.The particular application that I specifically want to try this on is going to be a document-oriented application. I'll let the user jump in and start creating something without creating an account, but then make the user create an account (or log into an existing account) to be able to save their work. If you've already spent even two minutes creating something, having to type in an email address and password seems trivial compared to having to start over again if they want to come back later. (That's the theory, at least.)The key in my mind is to get the customer invested in the application (even slightly) before forcing them to make an account. | Depends on the product I think, however I do enjoy apps that I can "tour" without signing up. Especially if the sign-up isn't quick.If you can build value in your product without forcing me to login, I'm more likely to want your product more because I've been sold on it. I think thats important, I should want to sign-up. This could be via a product tour, guest account, even a demo video. Ultimately I'm window shopping so give me a reason to come inside.No matter what though whether you allow anonymous users or require a sign-up, measure the funnel between guest-user and registration. Find out where your users are bouncing and where you could improve the onboarding. Is the homepage persuasive enough? Is the sign-up page itself losing users? Measure, iterate, and repeat. I'm sure there's quite a bit to learn. |
Ask HN: Require a sign-up or allow anonymous/guest users? | Depends on the product I think, however I do enjoy apps that I can "tour" without signing up. Especially if the sign-up isn't quick.If you can build value in your product without forcing me to login, I'm more likely to want your product more because I've been sold on it. I think thats important, I should want to sign-up. This could be via a product tour, guest account, even a demo video. Ultimately I'm window shopping so give me a reason to come inside.No matter what though whether you allow anonymous users or require a sign-up, measure the funnel between guest-user and registration. Find out where your users are bouncing and where you could improve the onboarding. Is the homepage persuasive enough? Is the sign-up page itself losing users? Measure, iterate, and repeat. I'm sure there's quite a bit to learn. | We do not require sign-up to use our form builder web app. You can access all of the pages without login. You can create a form, copy it to your web site and get submissions by email. (The email address can be entered on the form setup.)This gives people a chance to try the product without making a time investment. We are getting close to 1 million users (not including guest users) so it seems to be working pretty well for us.Our product is JotForm if you would like to see how it works.
www.jotform.com |
Ask HN: Require a sign-up or allow anonymous/guest users? | We do not require sign-up to use our form builder web app. You can access all of the pages without login. You can create a form, copy it to your web site and get submissions by email. (The email address can be entered on the form setup.)This gives people a chance to try the product without making a time investment. We are getting close to 1 million users (not including guest users) so it seems to be working pretty well for us.Our product is JotForm if you would like to see how it works.
www.jotform.com | Not requiring signup makes development massively harder but I think it's worth it.All of the websites competing in my space require a signup except mine. Their products may be way better but I don't bother to check and neither do my users.In fact I think you can make a viable business just by taking popular websites and working out how to implement them without user accounts. |
Ask HN: Require a sign-up or allow anonymous/guest users? | Not requiring signup makes development massively harder but I think it's worth it.All of the websites competing in my space require a signup except mine. Their products may be way better but I don't bother to check and neither do my users.In fact I think you can make a viable business just by taking popular websites and working out how to implement them without user accounts. | You should provide a good reason for visitor to become a user. never block everything for guests(like many websites out there), you should provide a great demo or any strong reason for people to become a user.
That's clear nobody will fill forms and do activation process for just a sentence that you wrote on your home page.
"Find Friends" - Signup
"Live Chat" - Signup |
Should Your Start Up Go Static or Dynamic? | The definition given for dynamic and static languages is not very good. The main difference is that a statically typed language has type checks preformed at compile time and a dynamically typed language has them preformed at runtime. My intro CS professor had a really good explanation for this: in a statically typed language, the variables have types where in a dynamically typed language, the values have types.Also, his graph of languages doesn't really make any sense at all. If he just kept it as a division into groups, it would make sense, but it really looks like he's trying to say that C++ has a "weaker" (whatever that means) type system than C or that Haskell has a "weaker" type system than Scala.Also, static typing is not always for robustness; it can also increase performance. C is a perfect example of this--it is one of the easiest languages to write bugs in but is also really fast.Overall, I was not terribly impressed with this article--it gave poor definitions and little new insight (as far as I could tell, it just reiterated the same old cliches about static vs dynamic types without any anecdotes, experience or advice). | "Now if you are raging to some serious dubstep, its easy enough to miss that small typo, you go screw it and do it live, and deploy to production. Python will simply create the new variable and not a single thing will be said."Erm... Did the author test this code before making this assertion? >>> def get_first_problem(problems):
... for problem in problems:
... return problam
...
>>> get_first_problem([1,2,3])
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "<stdin>", line 3, in get_first_problem
NameError: global name 'problam' is not defined |
Should Your Start Up Go Static or Dynamic? | "Now if you are raging to some serious dubstep, its easy enough to miss that small typo, you go screw it and do it live, and deploy to production. Python will simply create the new variable and not a single thing will be said."Erm... Did the author test this code before making this assertion? >>> def get_first_problem(problems):
... for problem in problems:
... return problam
...
>>> get_first_problem([1,2,3])
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "<stdin>", line 3, in get_first_problem
NameError: global name 'problam' is not defined | > Dynamic languages are languages that don’t necessarily need variables to be declared before they are used.Not exactly true. You do need to declare variables in some dynamic languages (var in JavaScript, for example), but you don't need to declare their type.Anyhow, the whole question is a little irrelevant. The language you pick for your startup is among the factors least important to its success. Just pick a reasonable language that you are productive with, that has library support for the stuff you need, and that works well on the operating systems you care about, and that will be fine. |
Should Your Start Up Go Static or Dynamic? | > Dynamic languages are languages that don’t necessarily need variables to be declared before they are used.Not exactly true. You do need to declare variables in some dynamic languages (var in JavaScript, for example), but you don't need to declare their type.Anyhow, the whole question is a little irrelevant. The language you pick for your startup is among the factors least important to its success. Just pick a reasonable language that you are productive with, that has library support for the stuff you need, and that works well on the operating systems you care about, and that will be fine. | This discussion is missing two key things: Go and Dart. They both combine the best of static and dynamic languages. There is no need to choose, you can have the best of both worlds, without the disadvantages.I'm using Go right now, it is amazing, blowing both Python and C# out of the water, with speed of development, robustness and maintainability. |
Should Your Start Up Go Static or Dynamic? | This discussion is missing two key things: Go and Dart. They both combine the best of static and dynamic languages. There is no need to choose, you can have the best of both worlds, without the disadvantages.I'm using Go right now, it is amazing, blowing both Python and C# out of the water, with speed of development, robustness and maintainability. | I am all for strong, static typing, but in fairness I don't see how C++ can be considered weaker than C?Or alternately how F# is less static than Haskell or weaker than Scala?Or am I just reading too much into the chart? |
Actually I use Rdio, Not Spotify, Your Link Is No Good To Me | This is exactly the problem that http://toma.hk and http://www.tomahawk-player.org are trying to solve.Their approach: your library becomes (title, artist, album) tuples, and then songs are found at whatever provider you use when you want to listen.The devs are mostly ex-Amarok and everything is on GitHub: https://github.com/tomahawk-player. | URL shortener for music links that then redirects to user's preferred music service (saved for future) anyone? |
Actually I use Rdio, Not Spotify, Your Link Is No Good To Me | URL shortener for music links that then redirects to user's preferred music service (saved for future) anyone? | I thought MusicBrainz had great potential in this area, as a common and open database of artists/albums/tracks - and Spotify used to have support in their API to search based on some of those.http://forums.musicbrainz.org/viewtopic.php?id=3463Ultimately unless someone uses MB and/or other data sources to create an aggregated 'music translation' service - whether it's entirely offline translation, translation-on-demand, or some kind of mix - I'm not sure how this is going to happen with so many proprietary platforms. |
Actually I use Rdio, Not Spotify, Your Link Is No Good To Me | I thought MusicBrainz had great potential in this area, as a common and open database of artists/albums/tracks - and Spotify used to have support in their API to search based on some of those.http://forums.musicbrainz.org/viewtopic.php?id=3463Ultimately unless someone uses MB and/or other data sources to create an aggregated 'music translation' service - whether it's entirely offline translation, translation-on-demand, or some kind of mix - I'm not sure how this is going to happen with so many proprietary platforms. | This is a big part of the reason why I like Grooveshark. It's totally beyond me why nobody ever mentions it in discussions about music services, it's easily the best thing around. |
Actually I use Rdio, Not Spotify, Your Link Is No Good To Me | This is a big part of the reason why I like Grooveshark. It's totally beyond me why nobody ever mentions it in discussions about music services, it's easily the best thing around. | Good point, I also like his idea at the end, though as a browser extension instead of a twitter client extension. |
How Bitcoins Involved in Crime Can Be Seized by the Feds | Hypothetical: Suppose you owned a car, and this was stolen. If the car were sold intact, then presumably you could reclaim the car from the buyer because of the nemo dat rule.But now suppose the thief sold the car to a salvage yard. The salvage yard breaks the car down into scrap metal, which is melted down and recycled for use in other products.I'm not very familiar with this area of law, but presumably you would no longer have a claim to the car or the scrap because the original piece of property to which you had title, the car, was destroyed. You might have a claim against the scrap yard for not checking title on the car and could recover the fair market value of the vehicle.Same with bitcoin -- once someone comingles the stolen coins with other coins, the original balance of coins has been destroyed. There is no action against parties further down the blockchain. Your only remedy should be to recover the fair market value of the coins from the party that "destroyed" the coins.<standard "this is not legal advice" disclaimer goes here> | The article seems to miss out a very key point: How do they seize them?Do you knock on your door and demand your private keys? How can they do that if you've broken no laws? How do they even know you have them in the first place? |
How Bitcoins Involved in Crime Can Be Seized by the Feds | The article seems to miss out a very key point: How do they seize them?Do you knock on your door and demand your private keys? How can they do that if you've broken no laws? How do they even know you have them in the first place? | I have US dollar bill B03542754F in my pocket right now. I wonder about its "blockchain" and how it has flowed into and through our economy. I wonder if it at anytime in its life has been a part of illegal activity. |
How Bitcoins Involved in Crime Can Be Seized by the Feds | I have US dollar bill B03542754F in my pocket right now. I wonder about its "blockchain" and how it has flowed into and through our economy. I wonder if it at anytime in its life has been a part of illegal activity. | > The FBI already owns 5 to 10 percent of [bitcoins], which are now out of circulation.Given that money laundering and drug transactions have become major parts of bitcoin's current use case, law enforcement's tendency to seize bitcoins puts yet another deflationary pressure on the system. The biggest obstacle to bitcoin becoming a currency rather than a speculator's darling is the stability of its value. Meanwhile, the system's incentives seem to promote hoarding in hopes of a price spike.Not that this is problem in and of itself. Bitcoin's decent anonymity creates very real value, and it looks poised to be a medium of exchange. It just puts a damper on the hopes that future transactions will be denominated in bitcoin rather than dollars. |
How Bitcoins Involved in Crime Can Be Seized by the Feds | > The FBI already owns 5 to 10 percent of [bitcoins], which are now out of circulation.Given that money laundering and drug transactions have become major parts of bitcoin's current use case, law enforcement's tendency to seize bitcoins puts yet another deflationary pressure on the system. The biggest obstacle to bitcoin becoming a currency rather than a speculator's darling is the stability of its value. Meanwhile, the system's incentives seem to promote hoarding in hopes of a price spike.Not that this is problem in and of itself. Bitcoin's decent anonymity creates very real value, and it looks poised to be a medium of exchange. It just puts a damper on the hopes that future transactions will be denominated in bitcoin rather than dollars. | Absurd. No one demands that you give cash back if it turns out to have been used in a crime. Imagine if your employer was accused of a crime, or sold something to a criminal, etc. |
Localtunnel.me | Author of the project here.I want to clarify why this project exists (as many seem to point out that other projects or methods exist for doing this).TL;DR; If you think of localtunnel as just a shitty ngrok (or name your project here), you are missing the point and probably don't have the same use cases I do.1. It was made overnight at some hackathon because I was not satisfied with the other tunneling options I found. They required either an account or some stupid ssh setup. I got to thinking of ways to create a tunnel that simply had an CLI tool and instantly get a tunnel no setup. It worked, I kept it.2. It is written as a library first, CLI tool second. This means it can be used to create tunnels in a test suite if you want to use services like saucelabs to run browser tests (see https://github.com/defunctzombie/zuul). This is leveraged by projects like socket.io and engine.io (among others). This is perhaps the main reason I keep it around despite there being alternative CLI tools.3. Both the client and server code are availably and easy to install and use. Companies do this when they want to run their own tunnels for privacy (or whatever their reasons... I don't care).4. Yes, I know the name is identical to the old ruby?python? one. Whatever. That one seems defunct now anyway. | You can also use ngrok.com which has been around for quite a while.
The developer even responds very quickly to support requests.As a bonus, you also get:- Custom (sub) domains- TLS tunnels if you want, not mandatory- Other protocols than just HTTP/S |
Localtunnel.me | You can also use ngrok.com which has been around for quite a while.
The developer even responds very quickly to support requests.As a bonus, you also get:- Custom (sub) domains- TLS tunnels if you want, not mandatory- Other protocols than just HTTP/S | I'm confused, there is an existing project called localtunnel that does exactly the same thing and dominates search results for "localtunnel". At the very least, pick a different name.http://progrium.com/localtunnel/ |
Localtunnel.me | I'm confused, there is an existing project called localtunnel that does exactly the same thing and dominates search results for "localtunnel". At the very least, pick a different name.http://progrium.com/localtunnel/ | This seems like a bad idea. localtunnel.me is redirecting non-tunnel'd subdomains to its main page, while inactive tunnel'd subdomains return "localtunnel error: no active client for 'adbc'". So, with a little poking, you find that tunnel'd subdomains seem to be [a-z0-9]{4}.localtunnel.me ... which isn't too terribly large of a search space to crawl. If it gets popular, it should be easy to find works-in-progress that might give up access to the user's computer, or keys to prod, or any of the other stuff that people are a little sloppy about on their work machines.edit: I was wrong, I should've been a little more thorough. Looks like it's [a-z0-9]{4,10}.localtunnel.me, which is significantly larger. |
Localtunnel.me | This seems like a bad idea. localtunnel.me is redirecting non-tunnel'd subdomains to its main page, while inactive tunnel'd subdomains return "localtunnel error: no active client for 'adbc'". So, with a little poking, you find that tunnel'd subdomains seem to be [a-z0-9]{4}.localtunnel.me ... which isn't too terribly large of a search space to crawl. If it gets popular, it should be easy to find works-in-progress that might give up access to the user's computer, or keys to prod, or any of the other stuff that people are a little sloppy about on their work machines.edit: I was wrong, I should've been a little more thorough. Looks like it's [a-z0-9]{4,10}.localtunnel.me, which is significantly larger. | I suggest you don't use it until they have upgraded OpenSSL...WARNING: server returned more data than it should - server is vulnerable! (Heartbleed) |
What I would like to see from Microsoft regarding OSS | I was going to say stop using the Ms-PL[1] license but when I checked both ASP MVC[2] and TypeScript[3] are licensed under Apache. Good decision.[1]http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/openness/licenses.aspx[2]http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/license[3]http://typescript.codeplex.com/license | The problem isn't just the relationship that Microsoft has with OSS, but with developers in general. As developer in their "ecosystem" for years, I've come to the conclusion that the majority of the Redmond management is totally out of touch with the third party developers. Crap like Windows 8, "flat" interfaces, abandonment of APIs, NIH, reinventing the wheel, ignoring requests and feedback, etc, doesn't make it better. |
What I would like to see from Microsoft regarding OSS | The problem isn't just the relationship that Microsoft has with OSS, but with developers in general. As developer in their "ecosystem" for years, I've come to the conclusion that the majority of the Redmond management is totally out of touch with the third party developers. Crap like Windows 8, "flat" interfaces, abandonment of APIs, NIH, reinventing the wheel, ignoring requests and feedback, etc, doesn't make it better. | - License the complete .NET stack under an Apache license.- Disclose the patents they allege Linux infringes.- Apologize for what they did to ISO.- Make the ability to add personal keys to secure boot a requirement for having a Windows logo. |
What I would like to see from Microsoft regarding OSS | - License the complete .NET stack under an Apache license.- Disclose the patents they allege Linux infringes.- Apologize for what they did to ISO.- Make the ability to add personal keys to secure boot a requirement for having a Windows logo. | One area they still have a stronghold is in Office and productivity software. There was an entry on HN about this :http://linuxaria.com/article/the-biggest-failure-in-open-sou...If any of those were to be made open source, MS would effectively corner the open source office market as well. I'm not holding my breath though.I'm actually shocked at how quickly the Microsoft stack in my daily work has now gone down in use from where it was only about 5 years ago. With the exception of Office as in above and Windows for Photoshop (almost daily use) and Visual Studio (some projects still need it), the rest is entirely Open Source from OS and on. Currently I'm using Mint and Debian with OpenBSD on the side.As much as people bash MS for all sorts of (well deserved) things, the bottom line is that they do get a lot of things right. It's not just political wrangling that allow them to stay in business, obviously, since if the products are really lacking too much, they'd be hurting too. I do think the culture in the company is changing, hopefully for the better.Edit: I think, by and large Windows 8 is a mistake, but not in the way it was designed. The way it was marketed. Win 8 makes sense on mobile/touch devices and no where else. And that's all I have to say about that. Hopefully, they don't plan on keeping the trend into the next version of Windows, but we'll see.Even though joysticks are arguably a better means of control, there's a reason cars still have steering wheels. |
What I would like to see from Microsoft regarding OSS | One area they still have a stronghold is in Office and productivity software. There was an entry on HN about this :http://linuxaria.com/article/the-biggest-failure-in-open-sou...If any of those were to be made open source, MS would effectively corner the open source office market as well. I'm not holding my breath though.I'm actually shocked at how quickly the Microsoft stack in my daily work has now gone down in use from where it was only about 5 years ago. With the exception of Office as in above and Windows for Photoshop (almost daily use) and Visual Studio (some projects still need it), the rest is entirely Open Source from OS and on. Currently I'm using Mint and Debian with OpenBSD on the side.As much as people bash MS for all sorts of (well deserved) things, the bottom line is that they do get a lot of things right. It's not just political wrangling that allow them to stay in business, obviously, since if the products are really lacking too much, they'd be hurting too. I do think the culture in the company is changing, hopefully for the better.Edit: I think, by and large Windows 8 is a mistake, but not in the way it was designed. The way it was marketed. Win 8 makes sense on mobile/touch devices and no where else. And that's all I have to say about that. Hopefully, they don't plan on keeping the trend into the next version of Windows, but we'll see.Even though joysticks are arguably a better means of control, there's a reason cars still have steering wheels. | It would be lovely for MS to promote alternative open source frameworks and make it as easy as possible for .Net shops to use them.That way .Net programmers will get a nice cost saving when someone inevitably ports the whole lot over to Mono/Linux. |
Sunsets in Google Calendar using R | I always miss meteor showers. I live in the city so I have to drive for about 30 minutes to see one BUT if the sky cover is over 10% covered it isn't worth it and the moon needs to be gone. I think I might try to figure out a way to let me know when the conditions of a meteor shower, the cloud cover are just right and the moon is not present in the sky and post to my Google Calendar.Thanks for inspiring me. | Great idea. There's a lot of calendar apps out there, but the data feeds powering them are the same old crap. The concept of an agent doing stuff with the app feels like 60's-ish virtual assistant futurism.I wonder how usable an "intelligent" autonomous agent putting things on a calendar would be. (That is, to extend the generation of a calendar feed with more clever bits.) Say there was a weather component that would only schedule sunsets when the weather would be conducive for photography. |
Sunsets in Google Calendar using R | Great idea. There's a lot of calendar apps out there, but the data feeds powering them are the same old crap. The concept of an agent doing stuff with the app feels like 60's-ish virtual assistant futurism.I wonder how usable an "intelligent" autonomous agent putting things on a calendar would be. (That is, to extend the generation of a calendar feed with more clever bits.) Say there was a weather component that would only schedule sunsets when the weather would be conducive for photography. | Reading the title made me think that someone wrote a script that would create sub-calendars of various colors and then schedule events using those calendars so that it'd emulate a sunset across the Google Calendar interface. |
Sunsets in Google Calendar using R | Reading the title made me think that someone wrote a script that would create sub-calendars of various colors and then schedule events using those calendars so that it'd emulate a sunset across the Google Calendar interface. | Man, I totally forgot about my idea for a website until reading this post. I put this into evernote last week:> A service/website which lets you know when a beautiful sunset or sunrise is likely, and the best time / place to view them in your area. Includes a photo sharing feature where people can upload their sunsets, rainbows, etc. Would use weather forecasts to predict red skiesDoes anyone know if this already exists? If it does, I won't even be disappointed, I just want to use it |
Sunsets in Google Calendar using R | Man, I totally forgot about my idea for a website until reading this post. I put this into evernote last week:> A service/website which lets you know when a beautiful sunset or sunrise is likely, and the best time / place to view them in your area. Includes a photo sharing feature where people can upload their sunsets, rainbows, etc. Would use weather forecasts to predict red skiesDoes anyone know if this already exists? If it does, I won't even be disappointed, I just want to use it | Got it to work! Great writeup Hilary.For others like me who know nothing about R, I did a little writeup for doing this yourself: http://blog.samsandberg.com/2014/06/04/sunsets-in-google-cal...Hope this helps at least someone out there |
Don't Store Passwords, Generate Them When Needed | However, this IS a master password only with a salted hash added on top. From the FAQ it uses a phrase like "Tubby loves tacos!facebook" runs it through SHA1 and spits out Facebook's password. Someone who shoulder surfs your keyphrase can now use this technique to generate passwords for any site, whereas using something like Password Safe or the various other password storage methods would need to both shoulder surf your master password as well as obtain your encrypted password file. | I've been using HMAC-SHA1 as a basis for my passwords for awhile. I call my algorithm "Passy". It works like this (pseudocode'ish). # generate our HMAC
hash = generate HMAC-SHA1 (facebook.com, passphrase) (String)
hash += SHA1(hash) # just need the extra length
# transform hash into a Passy
passy_chars = "ABCDEFGHabcdefgh23456789#$%*+=@?"
passy = ""
foreach octet in hash (starting with MSB)
passy += passy_chars[octet % 32]
# figure out the length of this passy
for i in 16 to passy.length
if passy.substr(0,i) is "good", return passy.substr(0,i)
where good means includes at least one from each of [A-H], [a-h], [2-9], and [#$%*+=@?]
I've implemented this in CoffeeScript, and have a minified version up here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11596/passy-tiny.htmlI have evolved this algorithm over the past decade. My requirements: 1. minimum of 80 bits of entropy (16*32=80)
2. must include at least one symbol, one uppercase, one lowercase, and one digit
3. base it on cryptographically secure hash algorithms
4. avoids confusing similar symbols O and 0, l and 1 and !, etc.
I realize that requirement #2 does nothing to increase entropy. It's simply there to satisfy (idiotic!) password requirements.With any of these systems, your generates passwords are still only as good as a) the strength of your passphrase, and b) the secrecy of your passphrase. As well as the obvious (physical security, keyboard sniffers, etc.) |
Don't Store Passwords, Generate Them When Needed | I've been using HMAC-SHA1 as a basis for my passwords for awhile. I call my algorithm "Passy". It works like this (pseudocode'ish). # generate our HMAC
hash = generate HMAC-SHA1 (facebook.com, passphrase) (String)
hash += SHA1(hash) # just need the extra length
# transform hash into a Passy
passy_chars = "ABCDEFGHabcdefgh23456789#$%*+=@?"
passy = ""
foreach octet in hash (starting with MSB)
passy += passy_chars[octet % 32]
# figure out the length of this passy
for i in 16 to passy.length
if passy.substr(0,i) is "good", return passy.substr(0,i)
where good means includes at least one from each of [A-H], [a-h], [2-9], and [#$%*+=@?]
I've implemented this in CoffeeScript, and have a minified version up here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11596/passy-tiny.htmlI have evolved this algorithm over the past decade. My requirements: 1. minimum of 80 bits of entropy (16*32=80)
2. must include at least one symbol, one uppercase, one lowercase, and one digit
3. base it on cryptographically secure hash algorithms
4. avoids confusing similar symbols O and 0, l and 1 and !, etc.
I realize that requirement #2 does nothing to increase entropy. It's simply there to satisfy (idiotic!) password requirements.With any of these systems, your generates passwords are still only as good as a) the strength of your passphrase, and b) the secrecy of your passphrase. As well as the obvious (physical security, keyboard sniffers, etc.) | I use passwordcard (http://www.passwordcard.org/en) as my password manager,1) All my passwords are stored on a piece of paper, in plain text. There is no need to encrypt, because only I know how I use it.2) I don't need to back it up regularly. Just one backup, in case I lose the card, is enough.3) Because I have to type in the passwords from it, I actually remember the ones I use regularly, so even if I lose the cards, I can log in to most things.4) There is no "master password" to be exposed.5) If I'm stupid enough to read it out loud, or run my finger along it whilst someone is watching, I might expose the parameters of one password, but everything else is still secure.6) It is a piece of paper, the browser integration goes via my eyes and my fingers. |
Don't Store Passwords, Generate Them When Needed | I use passwordcard (http://www.passwordcard.org/en) as my password manager,1) All my passwords are stored on a piece of paper, in plain text. There is no need to encrypt, because only I know how I use it.2) I don't need to back it up regularly. Just one backup, in case I lose the card, is enough.3) Because I have to type in the passwords from it, I actually remember the ones I use regularly, so even if I lose the cards, I can log in to most things.4) There is no "master password" to be exposed.5) If I'm stupid enough to read it out loud, or run my finger along it whilst someone is watching, I might expose the parameters of one password, but everything else is still secure.6) It is a piece of paper, the browser integration goes via my eyes and my fingers. | Here is what I do: require 'digest/sha1'
puts "doubly troubly"
thing = gets.chomp
base = Digest::SHA1.hexdigest(Digest::SHA1.hexdigest(thing))
puts base
puts base[0..3] + "^!!^E" + base[4..-1]
puts base[0..3] + "^!!^E" + base[4..6]
puts base[0..3] + "^!!^E"
For any site I input the domain (so "zach.tumblr.com" + my_salt would be inputed) then I copy one of the four outputs based on what security level I think the site deserves. THEN (and most critically) I add a password that rotates key characters based on factor X of the site. Think about this like a normal password, but it changes.I then expose this little piece of code on every one of my computers as well as on a protected server that lives only on an IP.I 100% agree with this article, but I have my own system and it works well. |
Don't Store Passwords, Generate Them When Needed | Here is what I do: require 'digest/sha1'
puts "doubly troubly"
thing = gets.chomp
base = Digest::SHA1.hexdigest(Digest::SHA1.hexdigest(thing))
puts base
puts base[0..3] + "^!!^E" + base[4..-1]
puts base[0..3] + "^!!^E" + base[4..6]
puts base[0..3] + "^!!^E"
For any site I input the domain (so "zach.tumblr.com" + my_salt would be inputed) then I copy one of the four outputs based on what security level I think the site deserves. THEN (and most critically) I add a password that rotates key characters based on factor X of the site. Think about this like a normal password, but it changes.I then expose this little piece of code on every one of my computers as well as on a protected server that lives only on an IP.I 100% agree with this article, but I have my own system and it works well. | How is remembering the pass-sentences different from remembering passwords? |
Steve Wozniak gives jailbreaking the thumbs up, wishes iTunes supported Android | BREAKING: hacker nerd who has had nothing to do with Apple for 3 decades takes positions markedly different from Apple orthodoxy.Woz always takes very predictably pro-hacker positions; I'm not clear why we regard it as news when he does. | The itunes thing is actually pretty interesting. There may be the same case as there was before for an exception.I have a work mac, work pc, home mac, kobo, ipod & android. Sounds like a lot when I list it out. I'm not really a gadget person and some of those are pretty old. I use them all though and every one or two years I expect to add or replace a "device". Apple will be considered and sometimes chosen.That's not unusual. Most Apple customers are not monogamous. Realistically, Apple have never been the company with so many options you never need to go anywhere else. They have been the company that's reluctantly good at bringing devices together and connecting them with a marketplace.They don't like harmonizing elements they don't control. They would prefer the world divided nicely into Apple people and non Apple people. That's not realistic.To improve Apple users' experience they need to support foreign devices. Mac users use android and many avoid itunes altogether (they need to think in terms of 'files' anyway). Ipod users use android and their ipod never has the podcasts they've been listening to. iPad users can't read the book they are halfway through on sony reader.They wanted ipod users to just plug them into a mac, but that wasn't realistic so they released itunes for windows. I think its time for another compromise. |
Steve Wozniak gives jailbreaking the thumbs up, wishes iTunes supported Android | The itunes thing is actually pretty interesting. There may be the same case as there was before for an exception.I have a work mac, work pc, home mac, kobo, ipod & android. Sounds like a lot when I list it out. I'm not really a gadget person and some of those are pretty old. I use them all though and every one or two years I expect to add or replace a "device". Apple will be considered and sometimes chosen.That's not unusual. Most Apple customers are not monogamous. Realistically, Apple have never been the company with so many options you never need to go anywhere else. They have been the company that's reluctantly good at bringing devices together and connecting them with a marketplace.They don't like harmonizing elements they don't control. They would prefer the world divided nicely into Apple people and non Apple people. That's not realistic.To improve Apple users' experience they need to support foreign devices. Mac users use android and many avoid itunes altogether (they need to think in terms of 'files' anyway). Ipod users use android and their ipod never has the podcasts they've been listening to. iPad users can't read the book they are halfway through on sony reader.They wanted ipod users to just plug them into a mac, but that wasn't realistic so they released itunes for windows. I think its time for another compromise. | Does anyone really care what Woz says these days? Really?I know he accomplished some cool stuff 30-odd years ago, but why is his opinion still relevant? What technology is he actually working on now?He just seems to be a reliable semi-controversial rent-a-quote for busy journalists. He's not even that insightful.I realise this will cost me karma, but whatevs. |
Steve Wozniak gives jailbreaking the thumbs up, wishes iTunes supported Android | Does anyone really care what Woz says these days? Really?I know he accomplished some cool stuff 30-odd years ago, but why is his opinion still relevant? What technology is he actually working on now?He just seems to be a reliable semi-controversial rent-a-quote for busy journalists. He's not even that insightful.I realise this will cost me karma, but whatevs. | I'll be honest, I'm so, so glad iTunes doesn't support anything but the iPod/iOS lines as it's already a headache of overdone and unneeded functionality.Quote! "It’s better to think constructively about what can be done with our mobile platforms to improve our lives more, rather than trying to throw darts and insults". And this is why Woz is still relevant. He understands that it's not about the iPhone or the Galaxy S3 or which ever device you have, but about what it does for you. They've all been drastically transformative in day to day life for a huge amount of the population of the Western world. Tech blogs and geek circles spend that much time sniping at each other that we seem to forget how quickly things have progressed. They're all great devices. |
Steve Wozniak gives jailbreaking the thumbs up, wishes iTunes supported Android | I'll be honest, I'm so, so glad iTunes doesn't support anything but the iPod/iOS lines as it's already a headache of overdone and unneeded functionality.Quote! "It’s better to think constructively about what can be done with our mobile platforms to improve our lives more, rather than trying to throw darts and insults". And this is why Woz is still relevant. He understands that it's not about the iPhone or the Galaxy S3 or which ever device you have, but about what it does for you. They've all been drastically transformative in day to day life for a huge amount of the population of the Western world. Tech blogs and geek circles spend that much time sniping at each other that we seem to forget how quickly things have progressed. They're all great devices. | iTunes supporting Android would be great for Apple. Unfortunately, it would also be good for Google, so it's never going to happen. |
On software communities, "Rock star" programmers, and... Linus | This is a low-quality essay that is not worth discussing directly. (Meta-note: see, it's possible to have firm opinions without being abusive).I just want to add that there are plenty of outstanding engineers with very high standards who lead projects without going on the kinds of abusive rants that Linus is known for. For example: Roberto Ierusalimschy (Lua), Matz (Ruby), Ian Lance Taylor (Binutils, GCC, Gold linker), Shawn Hargreaves (Allegro, works at Microsoft now), Jeff Dean & Sanjay Ghemawat (two of Google's most senior engineers), just to name a few.These guys don't compromise their opinions or let crap into the code-base just to be nice. But they're all really nice guys who don't rip into people for being wrong. When you see messages from them on a mailing list, you get a warm feeling because you know they are going to be insightful, accurate, terse, helpful, and friendly.Some people like the machismo that comes from people like Linus. It's like watching superhero movies and rooting for the guy who kicks ass against the bad guys. But I think ultimately this is not a healthy way to lead a community. If you speak in a way that triggers people's defense mechanisms, you make it harder to rationally evaluate the issues. If you ridicule people for their opinions, you aren't giving them an out that lets them change their mind later; a person is inclined to dig their heels in rather than look foolish. | This has nothing to do with Linus... feel free to ignore.A few years ago, oh hell looks like more than a decade ago, I was working with a brand new project manager. This guy was pretty fresh, saw the world "manager" and got all glossy eye'd. He walked around the office "cracking the whip" and liked to make statements such as "I'm not here to make friends" and "I'm here to get these projects done".Do you think, if this was ProjectManagerNews instead of HackerNews this person would be idolized? Would be held in high regard? Would other ProjectManagers stick up for him? What if he led a successful project or two? Would that validate his decision to act that way?...more importantly: Would you want to work for him? Is success a solid defense on being an asshole?I'm perfectly happy to sit down and discuss a problem but I've got not time for assholes, tempers, or rockstars for that matter. |
On software communities, "Rock star" programmers, and... Linus | This has nothing to do with Linus... feel free to ignore.A few years ago, oh hell looks like more than a decade ago, I was working with a brand new project manager. This guy was pretty fresh, saw the world "manager" and got all glossy eye'd. He walked around the office "cracking the whip" and liked to make statements such as "I'm not here to make friends" and "I'm here to get these projects done".Do you think, if this was ProjectManagerNews instead of HackerNews this person would be idolized? Would be held in high regard? Would other ProjectManagers stick up for him? What if he led a successful project or two? Would that validate his decision to act that way?...more importantly: Would you want to work for him? Is success a solid defense on being an asshole?I'm perfectly happy to sit down and discuss a problem but I've got not time for assholes, tempers, or rockstars for that matter. | This is a false dichotomy. It is possible to have an opinion and not be an asshole. It just takes more work to do so.The real argument should be "I'm glad <insert name here> is a jerk because it allows him to spend more time doing <insert cool thing here>."Personally, I think the extra work is worth it, but I'm also not the hub of a project like Linux, a movement like the FSF, or a company like Apple.Above and beyond everything else, the most interesting question is: Can you get into the hub position without being a prick? |
On software communities, "Rock star" programmers, and... Linus | This is a false dichotomy. It is possible to have an opinion and not be an asshole. It just takes more work to do so.The real argument should be "I'm glad <insert name here> is a jerk because it allows him to spend more time doing <insert cool thing here>."Personally, I think the extra work is worth it, but I'm also not the hub of a project like Linux, a movement like the FSF, or a company like Apple.Above and beyond everything else, the most interesting question is: Can you get into the hub position without being a prick? | I just think the arguments fall on two spectrums.On one end is that Linus is God and that he's untouchable. On the other end is that Linus is a asshole that tells everyone off.The more reasonable middle being that Linus is a pretty smart guy with an incredibly history of accomplishment. He's should be respected and his way of conversing with people is particular to personality. Like, we deal with people with personalities all the time. I don't think Linus has ever, despite all his cursing, personally attacked anyone. He just attacks stupid ideas. I find his comments refreshing. You just need to give him some trust to understand why he is saying whatever he is saying.I don't think that also implies that people should be unwelcoming or that people should have new ideas/opinions on what should be what. I think that Linus isn't some selfish jerk who doesn't want people to get involved with Linux. I think he just has reasonable expectations and isn't afraid to call you on your shit.Cool post though. |
On software communities, "Rock star" programmers, and... Linus | I just think the arguments fall on two spectrums.On one end is that Linus is God and that he's untouchable. On the other end is that Linus is a asshole that tells everyone off.The more reasonable middle being that Linus is a pretty smart guy with an incredibly history of accomplishment. He's should be respected and his way of conversing with people is particular to personality. Like, we deal with people with personalities all the time. I don't think Linus has ever, despite all his cursing, personally attacked anyone. He just attacks stupid ideas. I find his comments refreshing. You just need to give him some trust to understand why he is saying whatever he is saying.I don't think that also implies that people should be unwelcoming or that people should have new ideas/opinions on what should be what. I think that Linus isn't some selfish jerk who doesn't want people to get involved with Linux. I think he just has reasonable expectations and isn't afraid to call you on your shit.Cool post though. | What frustrates me is you young bucks confusing Linus' personality with his technical prowess. He is not (only) his code.What if you found out Mozart ate little babies. Some of you would say that his music sucks. Some of you would say "Well, Mozart had to eat babies, to fuel his creative genius!" Few would accept that Mozart was a flipping musical genius who ate babies.From what I've read online, Linus can be a churlish little bitch, obviously ignoring the issue at hand when it suits him. Sometimes, he calls someone a moron, because they have done something he doesn't like, for some social reason.But he's a damn fine programmer, and can logic it up with the best of 'em. Often, when you get the the moron blessing from Linus, you have made a grave technical error, and you should be called on it. I wouldn't use the same style as Linus, but ey, to each his own.Just enjoy him for what he is, and leave the cult of personality stuff for others. |
The Moore's Law blowout sale is ending | Whenever I'm wondering if Moore's law is still prevailing as a trailing indicator, I check out: http://www.top500.org/statistics/perfdevel/If that (logarithmic) chart starts to flatten - particularly for device #500 (more price sensitive than the first part of the list) on the list, then we're running into real obstacles.Let's check back in 2020 and see if Device #500 is running at 10 Petaflops. | Here's my impression of the future of CMOS:(1) Scaling will be technically feasible for many more years. (Intel's roadmap goes to 5 nm, and researchers have already made transistors as small as 3 nm.)(2) However, even if scaling is technically feasible, it may not be financially feasible. Quadruple patterning may get you smaller feature sizes, but at a very high cost. The alternative to quadruple patterning, x-ray lithography (called EUV), is also quite expensive, but at least there's some hope that its costs will drop.(3) Only if scaling is both technically feasible and financially feasible, we will continue to scale. But even then, the benefits of scaling will diminish (as they've been diminishing for years). Traditional scaling hasn't done much for silicon performance in years: recently most improvements in CMOS have come from straining the silicon with germanium. And the other beneficial side of scaling, cost, is also ending. Shrinking transistors gets you more chips per exposure/wafer, but at the same time it raises the costs of each exposure/wafer. We're finally reaching the point now where the increasing costs of each exposure/wafer are matching the savings of scaling.In light of all this, it's hard for me to see performace per dollar per year (which is not technically Moore's law I grant you) continue at the rapid pace of the past, even if technologies like x-ray lithography, III-V semiconductors, optical interconnects, and whatever end up panning out. |
The Moore's Law blowout sale is ending | Here's my impression of the future of CMOS:(1) Scaling will be technically feasible for many more years. (Intel's roadmap goes to 5 nm, and researchers have already made transistors as small as 3 nm.)(2) However, even if scaling is technically feasible, it may not be financially feasible. Quadruple patterning may get you smaller feature sizes, but at a very high cost. The alternative to quadruple patterning, x-ray lithography (called EUV), is also quite expensive, but at least there's some hope that its costs will drop.(3) Only if scaling is both technically feasible and financially feasible, we will continue to scale. But even then, the benefits of scaling will diminish (as they've been diminishing for years). Traditional scaling hasn't done much for silicon performance in years: recently most improvements in CMOS have come from straining the silicon with germanium. And the other beneficial side of scaling, cost, is also ending. Shrinking transistors gets you more chips per exposure/wafer, but at the same time it raises the costs of each exposure/wafer. We're finally reaching the point now where the increasing costs of each exposure/wafer are matching the savings of scaling.In light of all this, it's hard for me to see performace per dollar per year (which is not technically Moore's law I grant you) continue at the rapid pace of the past, even if technologies like x-ray lithography, III-V semiconductors, optical interconnects, and whatever end up panning out. | The end of Moore's law will probably come at about the same time true human-like AI appears. i.e. It seems like it will always be just a few decades in the future. e.g. Here's an economist article (sadly, paywalled) predicting that the end was nigh in 1995!http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-17272668.htmlIf you extrapolate current designs out then, yes, a size barrier is approaching. So, we should expect new designs to start appearing. For example, non-planar designs offer a lot of potential to reduce average trace-length, which could reduce power dissipation and increase speeds in turn. There are huge challenges to solve, but it is reasonable to expect that they will be met so long as the demand is there. In this light, Moore's law is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. The demand for computational resources grows exponentially, so a way to meet that demand is always found. |
The Moore's Law blowout sale is ending | The end of Moore's law will probably come at about the same time true human-like AI appears. i.e. It seems like it will always be just a few decades in the future. e.g. Here's an economist article (sadly, paywalled) predicting that the end was nigh in 1995!http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-17272668.htmlIf you extrapolate current designs out then, yes, a size barrier is approaching. So, we should expect new designs to start appearing. For example, non-planar designs offer a lot of potential to reduce average trace-length, which could reduce power dissipation and increase speeds in turn. There are huge challenges to solve, but it is reasonable to expect that they will be met so long as the demand is there. In this light, Moore's law is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. The demand for computational resources grows exponentially, so a way to meet that demand is always found. | Hopefully the end of cost-effective process shrinks will mean programmers start cleaning up the mess of hugely inefficient everyday software.The party may be winding down for full x86-64 cores, but there's still some room for improvement by increasing efficiency of instructions on those cores and adding new instructions for common tasks (like hashing acceleration instructions, sse9000, etc). Intel already does that with each new processor family.There's a large one-time improvement available for computation-heavy workloads by integrating many simpler high-performance low-power cores into everyday machines (like the epiphany architecture: http://www.adapteva.com/). Intel seems to think only servers will go that route (Xeon Phi), but I don't know about that. |
The Moore's Law blowout sale is ending | Hopefully the end of cost-effective process shrinks will mean programmers start cleaning up the mess of hugely inefficient everyday software.The party may be winding down for full x86-64 cores, but there's still some room for improvement by increasing efficiency of instructions on those cores and adding new instructions for common tasks (like hashing acceleration instructions, sse9000, etc). Intel already does that with each new processor family.There's a large one-time improvement available for computation-heavy workloads by integrating many simpler high-performance low-power cores into everyday machines (like the epiphany architecture: http://www.adapteva.com/). Intel seems to think only servers will go that route (Xeon Phi), but I don't know about that. | I like Kurzweil's backtrapolation over non-transistor computing hardware [jpg] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/PPTMoores... (IC, transistor, tube, relay, mechanical)His future predictions can be fanciful, but his data from the past is solid. He thinks it could be nanotubes next. But it seems fair to say it could be as surprising to us as vacuum tubes were to people using relays... |
Into the Bitcoin Mines | Whenever I see advances in mining rigs I just hope that someone invents a cryptocurrency where the mining actually does some useful work, like protein folding. | Couple weeks ago these photos from a Hong Kong based mining facility floated up, pretty crazy setup.https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=346134.msg3709913#ms... |
Into the Bitcoin Mines | Couple weeks ago these photos from a Hong Kong based mining facility floated up, pretty crazy setup.https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=346134.msg3709913#ms... | "Today, all of the machines dedicated to mining Bitcoin have a computing power about 4,500 times the capacity of the United States government’s mightiest supercomputer, the IBM Sequoia, according to calculations done by Michael B. Taylor, a professor at the University of California, San Diego."This is obviously wrong. Where did it come from? |
Into the Bitcoin Mines | "Today, all of the machines dedicated to mining Bitcoin have a computing power about 4,500 times the capacity of the United States government’s mightiest supercomputer, the IBM Sequoia, according to calculations done by Michael B. Taylor, a professor at the University of California, San Diego."This is obviously wrong. Where did it come from? | Not a bad place for a Bitcoin miner. There's cold Arctic air for cooling and cheap geothermal energy for power. |
Into the Bitcoin Mines | Not a bad place for a Bitcoin miner. There's cold Arctic air for cooling and cheap geothermal energy for power. | Question: If BTC were to disappear overnight, could all these machines be retooled to do something else? Or are they so specifically made that their only possible purpose is coin mining? |
Greenspan Says Bitcoin a Bubble Without Intrinsic Currency Value | Who is Greenspan? Oh right, the fella who advocated for 1999 banking deregulation [1] and 2001/2003 tax cuts that encouraged a historic boom (and subsequent bust) -- cleverly calling the direct consequences of his own policies "Irrational Exuberance".[1] http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/1999/199911... | 1.1) A alternative to Paypal1.2) An alternative to Square / Venmo1.3) An alternative to Level Up1.4) A method of cheaply moving money between currencies without going through a financial institution.1.5) An alternative to buying Gold1.6) A way for libertarians / alternative currency advocates / people who are angry at wall street / The Fed to opt out of fiat currency, and lets remember, these are large movements with very little other outlets for popular expression.1.7) Provide non-reversible transactions1.8) Provide transactions that do not require trust on the part of either individual.1.9) Provide transactions that do not require any financial institutions. |
Greenspan Says Bitcoin a Bubble Without Intrinsic Currency Value | 1.1) A alternative to Paypal1.2) An alternative to Square / Venmo1.3) An alternative to Level Up1.4) A method of cheaply moving money between currencies without going through a financial institution.1.5) An alternative to buying Gold1.6) A way for libertarians / alternative currency advocates / people who are angry at wall street / The Fed to opt out of fiat currency, and lets remember, these are large movements with very little other outlets for popular expression.1.7) Provide non-reversible transactions1.8) Provide transactions that do not require trust on the part of either individual.1.9) Provide transactions that do not require any financial institutions. | I'd say that the US Dollar also has "no intrinsic value." Should the military might which props up the USD suddenly be mitigated, and the world then decided to abandon trading in USD, then the true "intrinsic value" of that US Dollar will be realized. |
Greenspan Says Bitcoin a Bubble Without Intrinsic Currency Value | I'd say that the US Dollar also has "no intrinsic value." Should the military might which props up the USD suddenly be mitigated, and the world then decided to abandon trading in USD, then the true "intrinsic value" of that US Dollar will be realized. | Partial reactionary says something partial and reactionary, more news at 11. |
Greenspan Says Bitcoin a Bubble Without Intrinsic Currency Value | Partial reactionary says something partial and reactionary, more news at 11. | > There is no fundamental issue of capabilities of repaying it in anything which is universally acceptable, which is either intrinsic value of the currency or the credit or trust of the individual who is issuing the money, whether it's a government or an individual.I wonder how many people skip right over this in the article thinking that's just another pointless or no-substance sentence.It pretty much sums up everything that makes Bitcoin unsutable for any type of real world (at scale) transactions and trade. |
How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight | No. I work for an OTA (not Kayak). First of all airlines file their fare rules and OTAs don't change the prices, and generally airlines pay around $10 to us to book a RT fare so there is little room to discount. Kayak is a meta which means all they do is present prices they are given from their partners (either via a feed or scrape) and then send them to the partner who shares the fee. Southwest (as others have mentioned) is not available in the US as a business choice. Kayak also heavily caches the fares (everyone does to make performance better) and inventory changes a lot especially in close by dates. Seeing cached prices of a cached price means the actual price can change a lot from searching to booking. Note the final price is only determined when you hit a booking page, everything before that is cached and might be fairly stale. Of course they can be errors in pricing since the fare rules are crazy complicated and often the difference in fares might be all the taxing entities. Each country, county, city, airport and cow pasture might affect the final price so it's possible that a country where you are booking might affect this (our customers are mostly in the US) but I doubt it.tldr - lucky "hacker" | Like someone else said, it’s because it’s a Southwest flight… Southwest isn't shown on the results of the big airfare search engines (kayak, expedia, orbitz) when searching from the United States because it refuses to pay those websites' fees.Looks like you’ve found out that they are shown on Canada based version of the Kayak site. Most likely because the fee arrangements are different or because Southwest is willing to pay them, probably to get exposure to markets that wouldn't otherwise know about them because they don't have a marketing presence there. |
How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight | Like someone else said, it’s because it’s a Southwest flight… Southwest isn't shown on the results of the big airfare search engines (kayak, expedia, orbitz) when searching from the United States because it refuses to pay those websites' fees.Looks like you’ve found out that they are shown on Canada based version of the Kayak site. Most likely because the fee arrangements are different or because Southwest is willing to pay them, probably to get exposure to markets that wouldn't otherwise know about them because they don't have a marketing presence there. | Looks like the cheap flights were on WN (Southwest) and the expensive flights were on DL (Delta).I just did an example flight search to fly later this week (Jan 24-30 round trip) from SLC to OAK, a route that both DL and WN fly direct. Kayak shows me fares from $492 on US and B6 changing planes in Phoenix or Long Beach (doubling distance and quintupling flight time) and direct flights from $532 on DL.Kayak doesn't show me any WN prices in the USA, but might have some sort of pilot program or contract to show them outside the USA. Iflyswa.com shows direct flights from $526.Meanwhile ITA Matrix (matrix.itasoftware.com, made with secret alien technology [0]) shows flights on US for $318 which violate the rules for domestic connection times and cannot be booked. It's strange that those flights are shown since Matrix is usually very reliable.Going directly to US's website reveals fares of $440 for flights with a connection in Phoenix.So what's the lesson here? Check the WN site directly instead of depending on search sites. Check both ITA Matrix and Kayak if you're depending on search sites; they don't have the same flights listed. Sometimes you need to check individual airline websites even though it's a pain because they have better flights and prices than search sites have; there's no reliable way to know when that's the case.[0] http://www.lisperati.com/logo.html |
How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight | Looks like the cheap flights were on WN (Southwest) and the expensive flights were on DL (Delta).I just did an example flight search to fly later this week (Jan 24-30 round trip) from SLC to OAK, a route that both DL and WN fly direct. Kayak shows me fares from $492 on US and B6 changing planes in Phoenix or Long Beach (doubling distance and quintupling flight time) and direct flights from $532 on DL.Kayak doesn't show me any WN prices in the USA, but might have some sort of pilot program or contract to show them outside the USA. Iflyswa.com shows direct flights from $526.Meanwhile ITA Matrix (matrix.itasoftware.com, made with secret alien technology [0]) shows flights on US for $318 which violate the rules for domestic connection times and cannot be booked. It's strange that those flights are shown since Matrix is usually very reliable.Going directly to US's website reveals fares of $440 for flights with a connection in Phoenix.So what's the lesson here? Check the WN site directly instead of depending on search sites. Check both ITA Matrix and Kayak if you're depending on search sites; they don't have the same flights listed. Sometimes you need to check individual airline websites even though it's a pain because they have better flights and prices than search sites have; there's no reliable way to know when that's the case.[0] http://www.lisperati.com/logo.html | I've been doing this for years. After I noticed most places are cheap to get to but flights are expensive back. I noticed the same business model was in place from the other direction. So just fake the country of origin and you get cheap to and back.The other one is clear your cookies before booking. Places create fake demand by disappearing the cheap flights on you if you shopping around. If you clear your cookies the cheap flights will return. |
How I “hacked” Kayak and booked a cheaper flight | I've been doing this for years. After I noticed most places are cheap to get to but flights are expensive back. I noticed the same business model was in place from the other direction. So just fake the country of origin and you get cheap to and back.The other one is clear your cookies before booking. Places create fake demand by disappearing the cheap flights on you if you shopping around. If you clear your cookies the cheap flights will return. | This has nothing to do with the VPN, unfortunately.The price difference comes from Southwest's price being different than Delta's. Southwest flights wont show up when searching Kayak's USA site, but they do show up on international Kayak pages. It sounds like that's because they don't want to pay the brokerage fees for flights booked through the USA versions of Kayak/Expedia/Travelocity -- but I'm not sure of that.Interesting experiment though! |
How I Made Porn Video Streaming More Efficient with Python and C | Agreed that RTMP is an abomination that needs to be exorcised from the Earth as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it is probably here to stay until something like WebRTC gains critical mass.It's not clear what the article means by "repackaging" a stream or "pointers" to tags (especially in the diagram that shows tag pointers being transported between users). While RTMP is cumbersome, shoving media data (tags) under a per-session protocol header is essentially the standard way of moving data from one session to another.So I'm not really following this. Is this cutting out the RTMP entirely for receiving clients, and instead sending the FLV down via another transport, like HTTP or whatever? Or is it more of, "I wrote my own RTMP streaming server in C and Python", along with some implementation details which I'm not understanding? (Not that there's anything wrong with doing so. Options are limited in the streaming-server space.) | I love reading articles about technical issues and solutions in the Porn industry. It's like getting a peek inside a youtube scale company as they grow. |
How I Made Porn Video Streaming More Efficient with Python and C | I love reading articles about technical issues and solutions in the Porn industry. It's like getting a peek inside a youtube scale company as they grow. | >The aggregated bandwidth of the clusters was around 50 Gbps, from which they used around 10 Gbps while at peak load.Now that is a lot a porn.Also, the illustrations look really good! How did you make them? |
How I Made Porn Video Streaming More Efficient with Python and C | >The aggregated bandwidth of the clusters was around 50 Gbps, from which they used around 10 Gbps while at peak load.Now that is a lot a porn.Also, the illustrations look really good! How did you make them? | If anyone is interested in an alternative to the usual RTMP servers (FMS, Red5, and Wowza), I highly recommend EvoStream (http://www.evostream.com). Compared to the alternatives, EvoStream is much more efficient. I believe TinyChat published a whitepaper discussing their transition from Red5 to EvoStream, which resulted in a decline in the number of required servers.EvoStream is a highly scalable streaming media server written in C++ based off of the open source RTMPD (http://www.rtmpd.com). The commercial company, also called EvoStream, is a relatively new startup and they do great custom work for those not familiar with streaming media/RTMP. |
How I Made Porn Video Streaming More Efficient with Python and C | If anyone is interested in an alternative to the usual RTMP servers (FMS, Red5, and Wowza), I highly recommend EvoStream (http://www.evostream.com). Compared to the alternatives, EvoStream is much more efficient. I believe TinyChat published a whitepaper discussing their transition from Red5 to EvoStream, which resulted in a decline in the number of required servers.EvoStream is a highly scalable streaming media server written in C++ based off of the open source RTMPD (http://www.rtmpd.com). The commercial company, also called EvoStream, is a relatively new startup and they do great custom work for those not familiar with streaming media/RTMP. | It's easy to underestimate the power of switching to a better language by just doing it - guess at the syntax until it works, then refactor as you start to understand the language and its culture more. In fact I've found I learn faster this way than any other. |
Typewriters live on in New York police department | There's one argument in there that's semi-sensible: in case of a power outage, it would seem important for the police to be able to continue processing data. Yes, aggregates help, but keeping everyone's desktop computer running isn't as effective as limiting it to critical systems (and extended power outages shouldn't be crippling either). The good old pen and paper will only take you so far, especially with the atrocious handwriting of people these days (accustomed as we are to mashing buttons of all shapes and sizes for communicating).To use them in the day-to-day business seems foolish, because most of it could be far better handled electronically. But considering the massive amount of paper and toner bureaucracies waste printing out information because the business processes don't evolve along, switching to such a system isn't necessarily an improvement in the short term. And of course there's a very significant initial cost that will be harder to justify to management than just maintaining the old system. Many and unsubtle are the stories of IT systems that are built to replace an existing "analog" process which end up delayed, inefficient, feature-crippled and way over budget. This is the sort of inglorious government-budgeted project that's especially prone to attract overpaid, unmotivated bunglers (no offense to the underpaid, highly-motivated geniuses out there working on such systems :-)Whether the $0.5-$1M budget is warranted is another matter. The argument that they have a $4B total budget will sooner make people question whether the $4B is entirely needed than reassure them that the typewriters only take up a minuscule fragment of said budget. This also doesn't factor in the very real but hidden cost in terms of time and frustration for the users -- imagine the police department using no computers or typewriters at all, but requiring that all information exchange go through hand-written forms. The ballpen budget might be very small, but personnel costs would balloon.Now, let me tell you about this voice recognition software I've been working on... | Doesn't really surprise me. I've worked at banks where typewriters were still in use, for filling out certain infrequently-used forms and preparing titles and deeds.It costs a significant amount of time and money to construct an electronic form and integrate it into the existing automated workflow; if the users only see a form a few times a year, and it changes every year, you might be talking about several thousand dollars per use to computerize that form. There's no way that's cost effective, and it's cheaper and more efficient just to keep a typewriter around.It's a basic diminishing-returns proposition. In a forms-heavy environment (which I'd imagine a police department is), you get great ROI automating the most commonly-used forms. Then you can breakeven or get some ROI on most of the rest of them. But in almost every situation there's always going to be one or two forms that just aren't worth automating. In some places that means just hand-filling them, but in others that means a typewriter.A typewriter is a totally acceptable solution to the problem in some cases. It's a bit silly that some people freak out so badly when they see them; if you see a typewriter in a workplace that also has a modern electronic-forms system with automated workflow and everything else, chances are somebody did the analysis and realized that it just doesn't make sense to get rid of the typewriter for the sake of getting rid of the typewriter. |
Typewriters live on in New York police department | Doesn't really surprise me. I've worked at banks where typewriters were still in use, for filling out certain infrequently-used forms and preparing titles and deeds.It costs a significant amount of time and money to construct an electronic form and integrate it into the existing automated workflow; if the users only see a form a few times a year, and it changes every year, you might be talking about several thousand dollars per use to computerize that form. There's no way that's cost effective, and it's cheaper and more efficient just to keep a typewriter around.It's a basic diminishing-returns proposition. In a forms-heavy environment (which I'd imagine a police department is), you get great ROI automating the most commonly-used forms. Then you can breakeven or get some ROI on most of the rest of them. But in almost every situation there's always going to be one or two forms that just aren't worth automating. In some places that means just hand-filling them, but in others that means a typewriter.A typewriter is a totally acceptable solution to the problem in some cases. It's a bit silly that some people freak out so badly when they see them; if you see a typewriter in a workplace that also has a modern electronic-forms system with automated workflow and everything else, chances are somebody did the analysis and realized that it just doesn't make sense to get rid of the typewriter for the sake of getting rid of the typewriter. | Mind boggling. And I thought The Wire might have been exaggerating for dramatic effect.I wonder how these maintenance costs compare to the costs of a typical IT setup? If it's actually cheaper, then it looks like a classic case of being stuck in a local minimum. |
Typewriters live on in New York police department | Mind boggling. And I thought The Wire might have been exaggerating for dramatic effect.I wonder how these maintenance costs compare to the costs of a typical IT setup? If it's actually cheaper, then it looks like a classic case of being stuck in a local minimum. | "...mainly used for filling out property vouchers..."It's a pain in the ass to fill out paper forms with a laser printer.Yeah, sure, they should probably have a new system that just prints the form filled out, but they don't. |
Typewriters live on in New York police department | "...mainly used for filling out property vouchers..."It's a pain in the ass to fill out paper forms with a laser printer.Yeah, sure, they should probably have a new system that just prints the form filled out, but they don't. | Mark of the true policeman: if technology melts down, they'll still be able to do their paperwork. |
Prediction: This Statement Is Going To Come Back To Bite Microsoft In The Ass | Comment in question“It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that.“ -Microsoft COO Kevin Turnerfor people who like me aren't fan of TCSource: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179164/Microsoft_exe... | A more apt comparison would be Red Ring of Death on the Xbox 360. An annoyance but the product is compelling enough for people to put up with it. There are lots of other fun parallels like Microsoft's slow response to admit there was a problem and their suggestion to put the 360 into a vertical position for better cooling (your entertainment center is holding it wrong) |
Prediction: This Statement Is Going To Come Back To Bite Microsoft In The Ass | A more apt comparison would be Red Ring of Death on the Xbox 360. An annoyance but the product is compelling enough for people to put up with it. There are lots of other fun parallels like Microsoft's slow response to admit there was a problem and their suggestion to put the 360 into a vertical position for better cooling (your entertainment center is holding it wrong) | Apple has 25%, Microsoft has 15%, RIM has 43% of the smartphone platform market share.That comment will only ever "bite microsoft in the ass" on techcrunch where consumers gossip about the cool new gizmos, and nobody cares about market share.http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/3/c... |
Prediction: This Statement Is Going To Come Back To Bite Microsoft In The Ass | Apple has 25%, Microsoft has 15%, RIM has 43% of the smartphone platform market share.That comment will only ever "bite microsoft in the ass" on techcrunch where consumers gossip about the cool new gizmos, and nobody cares about market share.http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/3/c... | The real wtf in this article is the incredibly sexist comparison. |
Prediction: This Statement Is Going To Come Back To Bite Microsoft In The Ass | The real wtf in this article is the incredibly sexist comparison. | Hardly. People will mostly forget that statement, if they even heard it in the first place. |
Runa is hiring Clojure developers | What do people on HN think of the idea behind this startup? Do you think it has the potential to be huge and/or a good acquisition target? Would you apply/Are you applying for this job? Why or why not?It certainly sounds like they have everything (business case /tech etc) well laid out. If I were a potential employee I'd have liked some information on what kind of equity a new employee could expect - RethinkDB set the standard here (http://www.rethinkdb.com/jobs/), but other than that very very minor quibble i think this is as good a recruiting pitch as I have seen.(Due Disclosure: (a) Amit Rathore is a good friend of mine. (b) I have nothing to do with Runa or this ad. I am just curious as to how people here perceive the opportunity). | Cool, sounds like an interesting project and the perfect use case for Clojure.How do you intend to differentiate yourself from Direct Edge (my take is you're specifically looking to target CTRs rather than build a recommendation engine?) as well as a start-up in San Mateo the name of which escapes me which does something like this (but is well funded and more enterprise focused)?Best of luck! |
Runa is hiring Clojure developers | Cool, sounds like an interesting project and the perfect use case for Clojure.How do you intend to differentiate yourself from Direct Edge (my take is you're specifically looking to target CTRs rather than build a recommendation engine?) as well as a start-up in San Mateo the name of which escapes me which does something like this (but is well funded and more enterprise focused)?Best of luck! | Putting location on the hiring page would be helpful. Spoiler: http://runa.com/contact-us/ |
Runa is hiring Clojure developers | Putting location on the hiring page would be helpful. Spoiler: http://runa.com/contact-us/ | I'm quite intrigued by the solicitation for FPS experience on the Clojure developer page. |
Runa is hiring Clojure developers | I'm quite intrigued by the solicitation for FPS experience on the Clojure developer page. | They need someone to optimise their landing page. In particular put the call to action -- i.e. the apply now link -- on the front page. |
Say “no” to import side‐effects in Python | Would anyone like to share their experiences avoiding this sort of problem in the context of web frameworks and building the back end for larger web sites/apps?As an example for discussion, the first time I wrote a Flask-based back-end, I backed myself into a corner almost immediately in the following way.Firstly, the WSGI file that the web server uses to start the application followed the suggestion in the Flask docs by doing this: # webserverseesthis.wsgi
from yourapplication import app as application
That’s not so bad, but then I started doing application configuration and loading various Flask plug-ins as side effects of that import: # yourapplication/__init__.py
app = Flask("yourapplication")
# Do some general application configuration.
app.config.from_pyfile("/path/to/configuration/file")
# Set up some overarching security things that modify application behaviour.
from flaskext.securityplugin import SecurityPlugin
sp = SecurityPlugin(app)
This seemed at the time like the obvious place to put such things, but of course, this is really just a variation on the mistake we’re discussing here.To compound the error, I then used Flask’s decorators to wire up routes from various URLs to the relevant parts of my code. Those decorators work on the application object (sticking with ideas common to many Python web frameworks and avoiding getting into anything more Flask-specific like blueprints) so I was effectively creating circular dependencies from almost everything to that top-level package: # yourapplication/pages/home.py
from yourapplication import app
@app.route('/')
def home_page():
# Render home page
and then from the top-level package onto almost everything so all those decorators could take effect: # After setting up the application object in yourapplication/__init__.py
import yourapplication.pages.home
Now, as long as this kind of code only ever runs as a WSGI application behind a web server, you get away with these dependencies up to a point. In practice, your WSGI set-up imports the top-level application package, which in turn sets up the application object everything is going to depend on and only then imports all the supporting modules/packages, and everything “works”.However, as soon as you want to write tests or otherwise reuse any of the code in a different context, the entire system is a big bowl of spaghetti with all the usual problems. The moment you import any part of the system to run a unit test on something in it, you get much of the rest of the system as well, complete with the side effects of any imports therein.This was of course all horribly naïve on general programming principles, but the nature of these frameworks tends to push in this direction, and even Flask’s own documentation features various simple examples that follow a similar approach, so I’ll forgive myself for falling into the trap the first time. I’ve since experimented with various techniques to break the cycles and avoid the side effects on imports, with some success, but frankly I’ve never found a satisfying, general strategy for organising larger code bases built around a web framework.How is everyone else doing this? | On one machine I tried, help('modules') actually worked successfully with no substantial delays or apparent side effects.On another, it apparently tried to set up an MPI cluster: *** The MPI_Init() function was called before MPI_INIT was invoked.
*** This is disallowed by the MPI standard.
*** Your MPI job will now abort.
[hostname:14114] Abort before MPI_INIT completed successfully; not
able to guarantee that all other processes were killed!
On a third, I get the following and then it just hangs: Python 2.7.6 (default, Mar 22 2014, 15:40:47)
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> help('modules')
Please wait a moment while I gather a list of all available modules...
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gobject/constants.py:24: Warning: g_boxed_type_register_static: assertion 'g_type_from_name (name) == 0' failed
import gobject._gobject
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: cannot register existing type 'GtkWidget'
g_type = info.get_g_type()
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: cannot add class private field to invalid type '<invalid>'
g_type = info.get_g_type()
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: cannot add private field to invalid (non-instantiatable) type '<invalid>'
g_type = info.get_g_type()
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: g_type_add_interface_static: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_INSTANTIATABLE (instance_type)' failed
g_type = info.get_g_type()
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: cannot register existing type 'GtkBuildable'
g_type = info.get_g_type()
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: g_type_interface_add_prerequisite: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_INTERFACE (interface_type)' failed
g_type = info.get_g_type()
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: g_once_init_leave: assertion 'result != 0' failed
g_type = info.get_g_type() |
Say “no” to import side‐effects in Python | On one machine I tried, help('modules') actually worked successfully with no substantial delays or apparent side effects.On another, it apparently tried to set up an MPI cluster: *** The MPI_Init() function was called before MPI_INIT was invoked.
*** This is disallowed by the MPI standard.
*** Your MPI job will now abort.
[hostname:14114] Abort before MPI_INIT completed successfully; not
able to guarantee that all other processes were killed!
On a third, I get the following and then it just hangs: Python 2.7.6 (default, Mar 22 2014, 15:40:47)
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> help('modules')
Please wait a moment while I gather a list of all available modules...
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gobject/constants.py:24: Warning: g_boxed_type_register_static: assertion 'g_type_from_name (name) == 0' failed
import gobject._gobject
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: cannot register existing type 'GtkWidget'
g_type = info.get_g_type()
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: cannot add class private field to invalid type '<invalid>'
g_type = info.get_g_type()
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: cannot add private field to invalid (non-instantiatable) type '<invalid>'
g_type = info.get_g_type()
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: g_type_add_interface_static: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_INSTANTIATABLE (instance_type)' failed
g_type = info.get_g_type()
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: cannot register existing type 'GtkBuildable'
g_type = info.get_g_type()
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: g_type_interface_add_prerequisite: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_INTERFACE (interface_type)' failed
g_type = info.get_g_type()
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/module.py:171: Warning: g_once_init_leave: assertion 'result != 0' failed
g_type = info.get_g_type() | I do most of my work with Perl, rather than Python, but in Perl there are several kinds of stock import-level side-effects which are actually quite helpful. These are pretty light-weight though. They boil down to:1. Global lexical changes to Perl. Sometimes this is the whole point of an import (for example Carp::Always, which typically turns any warning or exception string into a full stack dump). I can't imagine doing something like this in Python. However making soemthing like this work properly without breaking too many things requires a heck of a lot of forethought Yes, even Carp::Always may break something.2. Manipulation of the importing module's symbol table. This is important for lexical extensions to Perl that you don't want to be global (for example Moo, Moose, and PGObject::Util::DBMethod). Among other things this allows MOPs to be added with greater sophistication than the language typically allows. I am not a Python guru but I could imagine metaprogramming side effects to be useful in setting up a consistent and powerful environment.The problem the author describes is something which is different though, which not only is a side effect issue but also a violation of separation of concerns. There are certain problems you do not want to solve at import time, and connecting with/configuring external components is almost always one of them.Why? Because integration with external components is almost always something you want the fine-tuning and decision-making to reside with the application developer. That's very different than setting up a consistent lexical programming environment for use (which is what the acceptable side effects do). |
Say “no” to import side‐effects in Python | I do most of my work with Perl, rather than Python, but in Perl there are several kinds of stock import-level side-effects which are actually quite helpful. These are pretty light-weight though. They boil down to:1. Global lexical changes to Perl. Sometimes this is the whole point of an import (for example Carp::Always, which typically turns any warning or exception string into a full stack dump). I can't imagine doing something like this in Python. However making soemthing like this work properly without breaking too many things requires a heck of a lot of forethought Yes, even Carp::Always may break something.2. Manipulation of the importing module's symbol table. This is important for lexical extensions to Perl that you don't want to be global (for example Moo, Moose, and PGObject::Util::DBMethod). Among other things this allows MOPs to be added with greater sophistication than the language typically allows. I am not a Python guru but I could imagine metaprogramming side effects to be useful in setting up a consistent and powerful environment.The problem the author describes is something which is different though, which not only is a side effect issue but also a violation of separation of concerns. There are certain problems you do not want to solve at import time, and connecting with/configuring external components is almost always one of them.Why? Because integration with external components is almost always something you want the fine-tuning and decision-making to reside with the application developer. That's very different than setting up a consistent lexical programming environment for use (which is what the acceptable side effects do). | Of course you should do this in any language. I once used a Ruby library that, when loaded, would try to connect to a database on a remote machine. Programs which required this library would take several seconds to display their --help output.Because of that and similar incidents, I've learned to import argparse up front but nothing else unless necessary. Once argument parsing is done, then importing other modules begins. |
Say “no” to import side‐effects in Python | Of course you should do this in any language. I once used a Ruby library that, when loaded, would try to connect to a database on a remote machine. Programs which required this library would take several seconds to display their --help output.Because of that and similar incidents, I've learned to import argparse up front but nothing else unless necessary. Once argument parsing is done, then importing other modules begins. | This in no way invalidates the point of the post, but I can't imagine going back to installing everything globally instead of using virtualenv. If you do that, at least you won't have every package you every looked at in your path. |
How Twitter Killed My Fish | Hi everyone. Author here. Gotta say I loved all the comments. My blog followers are all so nice. It feels good to get some real criticism for once :)Relying on Twitter was a truly bonehead move, to be sure. Truly a "bang head here" kind of moment.However, if trusting Twitter was the only "poor engineering decision" I had made I'd be a very happy man. It was just one of dozens of bonehead mistakes I made in building and operating my first aquaponics system.Aquaponics is one of those things where the path of least resistance is definitely following a set of plans that are known to work. You can find one of those on my site, and some other places too. But I've never one to follow the path of least resistance (eg. Screw the round wheel - I'm making mine with fractals).In case anyone's interested, I'm a former electrical engineer who used this as my first attempt at something with Arduino. More of a power-systems and lighting guy, software development was and still is a foreign land to me.I could have tested and researched the reliability of different notification platforms, but at the time I was building it I was already staying up late fixing plumbing problems and trying to get those d*&$ one-wire sensors to work consistently.Thankfully I eventually got my plumbing and sensors working, and bungled along into into Zapier which has been absolutely bulletproof.I think the truly useful lesson here is that if you ever meet anyone in aquaculture who can tell a good story at a party, plop yourself down and ask them if they've ever killed fish in any bizarre and interesting ways. Don't get up for drinks either because you won't want to miss anything. You'll be there all night. | From the Twitter terms of service:"The Twitter Entities make no warranty and disclaim all responsibility and liability for: (i) the completeness, accuracy, availability, timeliness, security or reliability of the Services or any Content; (ii) any harm to your computer system, loss of data, or other harm that results from your access to or use of the Services or any Content; (iii) the deletion of, or the failure to store or to transmit, any Content and other communications maintained by the Services; and (iv) whether the Services will meet your requirements or be available on an uninterrupted, secure, or error-free basis."Clearly it was never meant as a reliable communications channel for any sort of M2M application where failure could result in significant economic loss or a threat to human health or life. |
How Twitter Killed My Fish | From the Twitter terms of service:"The Twitter Entities make no warranty and disclaim all responsibility and liability for: (i) the completeness, accuracy, availability, timeliness, security or reliability of the Services or any Content; (ii) any harm to your computer system, loss of data, or other harm that results from your access to or use of the Services or any Content; (iii) the deletion of, or the failure to store or to transmit, any Content and other communications maintained by the Services; and (iv) whether the Services will meet your requirements or be available on an uninterrupted, secure, or error-free basis."Clearly it was never meant as a reliable communications channel for any sort of M2M application where failure could result in significant economic loss or a threat to human health or life. | This is absolutely ridiculous. Why on earth would you rely on something like Twitter to get critical messages delivered? |
How Twitter Killed My Fish | This is absolutely ridiculous. Why on earth would you rely on something like Twitter to get critical messages delivered? | More accurate title would be: How I Killed My Fish By Mistaking Twitter For A Reliable Messaging Platform. |
How Twitter Killed My Fish | More accurate title would be: How I Killed My Fish By Mistaking Twitter For A Reliable Messaging Platform. | This is just the beginning. Connecting things to the Internet is a whole new kettle of fish and there is lots for the novice developer to learn. There will be disasters of all scales. So we need a new school of thought. |
Ask HN: What language should I learn? | Asking which language you should learn is like walking into a wood shop and asking which tool you should learn to use. Screw the tools, just build something and grab whichever tools you feel are right for the job along the way.I never could learn a programming language for the sake of learning. I always had some idea of something I wanted to build and then used that project as my learning experience. Hopefully at the end I had something which could possible be useful for me.You should probably be doing the same. If you have no ideas of what to build, then you should probably change your thinking. NOW is the best time to start thinking about which direction you feel you would like to go and start working on something in that area.Games? Security? Mobile apps? Web apps? Systems administration? The list goes on. You need to get dirty so that you start to itch. Once you start itching, let that carry you. At that point, all other questions are answered. | French. Or Arabic. Or whatever you don't already speak.Snark aside, the standard answer is something like "Learn a language in each of the different kinds or programming (functional, procedural, etc)". Really, though, programming is not about a particular syntax. It's about learning how to think and deconstruct problems.So that brings me back to the spoken languages. Learn new things that will challenge you (spoken languages are great), and learn how to deconstruct problems. And above all, have fun doing it. |
Ask HN: What language should I learn? | French. Or Arabic. Or whatever you don't already speak.Snark aside, the standard answer is something like "Learn a language in each of the different kinds or programming (functional, procedural, etc)". Really, though, programming is not about a particular syntax. It's about learning how to think and deconstruct problems.So that brings me back to the spoken languages. Learn new things that will challenge you (spoken languages are great), and learn how to deconstruct problems. And above all, have fun doing it. | 1. It ultimately depends on what you aim to do. A large part of HN will recommend Python (myself included).2. If you do a quick search, you'll realize this has been covered an endless amount of time with more in depth answers to help. |
Ask HN: What language should I learn? | 1. It ultimately depends on what you aim to do. A large part of HN will recommend Python (myself included).2. If you do a quick search, you'll realize this has been covered an endless amount of time with more in depth answers to help. | Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. Or something else, it's up to you :-) |
Ask HN: What language should I learn? | Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. Or something else, it's up to you :-) | just build something yo'it will come to you eventually |
Which web development framework has largest and active community? | You might want to be aware of this too:
http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r7&hw=i7...Interpreted language-based frameworks tends to be the slowest ones to perform | Just going on community size is rarely a good yardstick for framework choice.Look at the team you have today, the team you want tomorrow, the scale your app is likely to grow (both in terms of traffic and code base size). |
Which web development framework has largest and active community? | Just going on community size is rarely a good yardstick for framework choice.Look at the team you have today, the team you want tomorrow, the scale your app is likely to grow (both in terms of traffic and code base size). | You will never go wrong if you start your project with django(Python framework)...it has been so active in the recent years and promises to be the future because even the python language itself is so active. |
Which web development framework has largest and active community? | You will never go wrong if you start your project with django(Python framework)...it has been so active in the recent years and promises to be the future because even the python language itself is so active. | I think you shouldn't care so much about community, because in every case it is big enough.I thing question is which stack (PHP/Ruby/Python) is the best for your project. |
Which web development framework has largest and active community? | I think you shouldn't care so much about community, because in every case it is big enough.I thing question is which stack (PHP/Ruby/Python) is the best for your project. | Any of these will do just fine - they all have active communities, good docs and have proven themselves again and again - choose what your team is most comfortable with/efficient in. |
A Critique of “Don’t Fuck Up The Culture” | I wonder if this is just a strong contrarian streak in me, but I've always been extremely suspicious of "company culture" anywhere I've worked. Almost any real culture is implicit; it's not designed. I think it's because growing up watching a lot of cable news, I've learned to be sensitive to narratives that don't have a lot to do with reality, and frequently "culture" and "values" are used to try to suggest a narrative to employees that also has very little to do with reality. I don't need a culture of "integrity" not to do evil things, I have a conscience. Nor do I need a cultural value of "innovation" to come up with new ideas -- a lot of times the pleasure of doing something well is more than enough.It makes me also think about how uncomfortable I felt during high school rallies. I mean, I didn't even particularly choose to be in that place, why should I have "pride" to be part of that institution? And why do I need to express that "pride" by yelling in a mob? I always found it somewhat creepy how easily people went along with all of that. I guess it's better than being lonely. | Pardon a silicon valley long-timer for this rant.With minor exceptions whenever a company goes on and on about its culture, it is time to leave.Culture has become a by-word for:
1) Rejecting older applicants while hiring "He is not a Cultural fit"2) Making females uncomfortable in an all-male Bro-culture by cracking "anatomy" jokes3) Getting people with families to put in insane hours and justifying it by pointing to the younger crowd and its culture4) Fig leaf to cover up blatant exploitationRarely has company culture ever meant anything positive |
A Critique of “Don’t Fuck Up The Culture” | Pardon a silicon valley long-timer for this rant.With minor exceptions whenever a company goes on and on about its culture, it is time to leave.Culture has become a by-word for:
1) Rejecting older applicants while hiring "He is not a Cultural fit"2) Making females uncomfortable in an all-male Bro-culture by cracking "anatomy" jokes3) Getting people with families to put in insane hours and justifying it by pointing to the younger crowd and its culture4) Fig leaf to cover up blatant exploitationRarely has company culture ever meant anything positive | We specifically talk about how nobody, even myself as the CEO, is "above the law" with regards to our values. We've had several instances where values were invoked as reasons why we shouldn't want to do something that was against what I wanted to do. It was a surprise when it happened, but I deeply appreciated it. It's part of teamwork as sometimes people can lose site of things or by omission or oversight make decisions which aren't the best or aligned with a company's true mission. We talk a lot about this and I really hope that it continues. |
A Critique of “Don’t Fuck Up The Culture” | We specifically talk about how nobody, even myself as the CEO, is "above the law" with regards to our values. We've had several instances where values were invoked as reasons why we shouldn't want to do something that was against what I wanted to do. It was a surprise when it happened, but I deeply appreciated it. It's part of teamwork as sometimes people can lose site of things or by omission or oversight make decisions which aren't the best or aligned with a company's true mission. We talk a lot about this and I really hope that it continues. | A very long time ago, I worked for a company that was having growing pains. They tried a few things, one of which was codifying the 'culture' in a list of present-tense statements that management wished to be true. It was originally called "the 40 points" but by the time I left, it was up to 66 points.I asked my boss ('ask' is a euphemism, as I remember it) what was up with this list (given that the statements were almost entirely false in the moment), and he told me that there are two ways to guide people when an organization hits a certain size: with detailed and explicit rules like the military, or with concepts to guide smart people to make decisions roughly in line with the direction chosen by management.With experience, I have found that there are more than two options (that was my first 'real' job after working at a gas station as a teenager). The "N points" were deprecated after a few years, and amazingly (to me, anyway), the company still exists.As many people have said, culture usually comes from the leaders' actions, not from their wishes. Or their lists. |
A Critique of “Don’t Fuck Up The Culture” | A very long time ago, I worked for a company that was having growing pains. They tried a few things, one of which was codifying the 'culture' in a list of present-tense statements that management wished to be true. It was originally called "the 40 points" but by the time I left, it was up to 66 points.I asked my boss ('ask' is a euphemism, as I remember it) what was up with this list (given that the statements were almost entirely false in the moment), and he told me that there are two ways to guide people when an organization hits a certain size: with detailed and explicit rules like the military, or with concepts to guide smart people to make decisions roughly in line with the direction chosen by management.With experience, I have found that there are more than two options (that was my first 'real' job after working at a gas station as a teenager). The "N points" were deprecated after a few years, and amazingly (to me, anyway), the company still exists.As many people have said, culture usually comes from the leaders' actions, not from their wishes. Or their lists. | Also, "culture" (in the modern, anthropological sense of the world) is mostly ugly and bad, because people are mostly ugly and bad. Foot-binding was culture. Religious and racial bigotry are culture. Almost every social injustice that ever occurred came out of some cultural prejudice. People on Hacker News are quick to bash religion, but it's pre-baked thinking in general (which is much of what culture is) that is the cause of so much suffering.When "culture fit" is used to justify not hiring a capable, 43-year-old woman out of the fear that she'll justify the money-making machine that exists when 25-year-old, male, clueless commodity programmers are stapled together into an underpaid, overworked team, the word culture isn't being misused. That's exactly what culture is.Most companies that have a strong cultural identity have a negative one. It's also not necessary that a company have one. Banks don't trumpet "our culture" but (excluding analyst programs, which are hellish) are decent places to work in spite of the weak cultural identity.A corporate "culture" eventually realizes that it must defend itself against perceived enemies. And it inevitably ends up being the worst kinds of people-- passive-aggressive, malevolent sorts-- who acquire the position to decide who those enemies are going to be.Culture also tends toward arrogance, injustice, and hubris as it develops exceptionalism, which is what it will fight hardest to defend. I still have people from Google, three years after I left, going out of their way to fuck up my life because they perceive things I've said as being threats to their culture's exceptionalism. (Never mind that I've been gone for 3 years and have absolutely no power over anything that happens at Google.)A commercial enterprise like a business will never have a balanced, full-fledged culture. Culture is immersive, not something people participate in for 8 hours per day in order to make money. I would say that, as much as possible, you don't want a strong culture (or, more dangerously, a strong cultural identity) at your place of work. You want people to get in, do good work, be paid well, and be happy. But once you have people start talking about "culture fit" as if it were a real thing, you've hired too many passive-aggressive assholes, and you need to cool it with the "culture" nonsense. |