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Please check out our side project, OhLife (from MeetingMix, YC S08) - sgupta http://ohlife.com/ ====== aw3c2 Quick first glance feedback on the page, take it or leave it: a) "the easiest way to" lowercase start and then "Write your life story" uppercase start. Seems weird to me. The other way around or both uppercase. b) Top bar seems empty, maybe an actual logo (that adds some other color/shade) would chance that. c) "See an example" needs no-Javascript fallback. I assumed a video behind it. Pleasant surprise to see something that finally showed me what it is all about. I strongly suggest not hiding that. It is below the break for me and adds a lot. d) Ned Flanders takes away the credibility and earnesty the page build up so far. Bad! e) "private, secure, & friendlier", the comma after secure seems out of place to me. I am not an english native but from what I know it would be more normal without it. "friendlier" is not a word, is it? Also, how is it secure if you do not tell me how you actually secure it (both for normalos and hackers please)...? f) entry is a bad empty word. I guess you already tried to find a better one. Can't think of one myself. :-( g) "a personal journal that you'll love to use" = you love the journal "why you'll love us" = you love the company h) "Oh snap, remember this?" same as Ned, does not fit the otherwise very noble theme at all. i) The open book has a weird shape. Does not feel right to me. Maybe if it was taller? x) No privacy policy (as a techie "only you can see your entries" screams for encryption against YOU (and/or hackers, this is important)), no contact, no nothing to make it human. y) Privacy tainted by Google Analytics. ~~~ ugh Re: e) (This is purely my personal opinion, but …) Anyone who uses the serial comma [1] must be seriously insane. How can you? Doesn’t your brain explode? (Calm down, calm down … [2] … there, better.) Friendlier is indeed a word, the comparative of friendly. Amazing idea, by the way, beautifully executed and immediately captured my imagination. [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma> [2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g> ------ adammichaelc I notice that a huge part of my daily life is recorded in email conversations with other people -- it would be cool if I could forward a conversation to [email protected] and it would automatically make it a part of my journal and make it aesthetically pleasing at the same time. Great job on the execution of this app. I have talked to others who have had this same idea, but their execution was ugly/unexcting/etc. This is clean and simple. ~~~ jbail Taking your thought a step further, let's also save the comments you make on others' blogs and bring them into your journal/blog as well. At the end of the day, I don't need another blog or a slight variation on blogging technology. I need something that basically blogs for me. If I can add value to my site by adding comments like this one to other people's sites (then pressing this "magic" button (maybe a bookmarket?) to automatically save it as part of my blog), that'd be pure awesomeness. Beyond saving boatloads of time for everyone who used it, it would create a more connected blogosphere by allowing people to link their commenter accounts (like HN, Reddit, etc) to their primary blog...effectively giving people more ownership over the things they write on others blogs, increasing author recognition, etc. ~~~ Lewisham _I need something that basically blogs for me._ Tumblr is pretty close to doing this, but the problem is its just context-free noise. It's echoes from a very, very noisy set of interactions that you perform. I had a Tumblr blog that harvested photos, blog posts, Twitter, last.fm etc etc. and it all meant absolutely nothing. This isn't really blogging, it's journaling. Writing a diary is supposed to be therapeutic because you're writing down the things you dare not talk about with others (maybe not even your SO). It's not about what you do, it's about how you feel. That's why I would like to see encryption mentioned somewhere, and pushed hard. I wrote one entry to see how it works, but I'm going to disable the notifications until I know that my personal outpourings are not actually being read by others. ------ sgupta Hey HN - we made this in our spare time, just because it was something we wanted to use. When we told some friends about the idea though they wanted to use it too, so we decided to release it. Many thanks for checking it out. ~~~ evandavid I love the idea. Love it. Like, really excited. However, I'm not prepared to use a service like this in a hosted environment. Too many risks: you go out of business, security, privacy, etc. Plus the information just feels to personal to be sitting on someone else's server. I would love to see a quick daily prompt like this added to Macjournal or similar software. ~~~ evandavid That said, I'm sure there is a target market out there who will be more than willing to use the product in its current format. I'm looking forward to seeing where this idea goes. ------ pesco Accept PGP-encrypted mail seamlessly and you won't need a privacy policy except for those who like throwing their lifelog at random strangers. Be sure to use PGP/MIME to include the old message in your mailing. Of course, setting up PGP, let alone remembering the passphrase (gasp) is a lot to ask of the typical user who needs to use his mail client as a text editor. Otherwise, it's a cute idea, really. Please excuse cynicism. ------ ryanwaggoner The design is beautiful, but why would I use this over WriteRoom? For years now, I've been writing at least 500 words in WriteRoom every single weekday, and I'm closing in on a year of doing it (and a bunch of other habits) without missing a single day. It's not that hard, I know I'll probably never lose my entries (time machine + dropbox backups), and my privacy is more assured. I'm just not sure I see the advantage here... ~~~ Terry_B Writeroom + timemachine + dropbox. I don't think you're the target market :) ~~~ ryanwaggoner Touché. Can't believe I didn't stop to think about this :) ------ iampims No privacy policy is a no go for me. ~~~ KevinMS I have never read a privacy policy, EVER. Am I missing something good? If they violate their own privacy policy do I have legal recourse? And is it even possible to write a privacy policy without loopholes? ------ mrduncan First of all, fantastic design! Is there any way to export posts - for example, if I wanted to share them with a significant other or another family member? Also, and this is mainly curiosity, how do you handle sending posts from the past for the first few days where there really isn't much history? ~~~ sgupta Thank you! We don't have export yet, but we've definitely wanted to share some of our entries with close friends and family too. We'll be brainstorming around this! Regarding past history: For your first week, we just send you your entry from the previous day. After you've been using it for a week though, and some history has built up, we'll show you entries from a week ago (and then a month ago, etc.). Thanks for checking it out - really appreciate it! ------ thingie It'd be nice to have some export feature. After few months, if I will use this, you are going to have quite a lot of entries from me, and all of them are important to me, I don't want to lose them, so I'd like to be able to easily make backups to my own computer. ------ jasongullickson Pardon my French but; fucking beautiful. ------ vessenes I like it, and I signed up. I don't want to get emailed at 8pm -- that's after my internet cutoff, so I faked a timezone. But, it would be nice to just choose a time. Also, who did your webdesign? I like it! ~~~ sgupta We'll be adding the ability to change when the email is sent, and it should be out by next week. Clever workaround though! And thanks for the design compliment! We did it all in-house, so we really appreciate the kind words. ------ pclark This is really cool. I'm curious if _you_ can read the entries? ~~~ sgupta Thanks for the kind words! We're currently working on encrypting the entries - this is an MVP and we initially wanted to see if people like the idea. ~~~ martey It does say on the home page that "Only you can see your entries." If they are not currently encrypted, that would seem to be untrue. ~~~ colonelxc Even if they do encrypt it, they will have to be able to decrypt them server side to send you your month old posts. That means the owners are technically capable of also reading all of your posts. ~~~ mbenjaminsmith That's not entirely true. If this were purely a web-accessible blog, there's no reason you couldn't encrypt/decrypt this in the client (sending and storing encrypted text). You'd have to throw out email posting in that case though. ~~~ andreyf I think you're on to something. I look forward to the day when we are shocked by unencrypted private data accessible on the server as we do un-hashed passwords. ~~~ dublinclontarf There are a number of online password stores where all the information is only decrypted on the client. Nothing new, just not widespread. Can't remember the name. ------ hooande OhLife is one of the few apps that I use every day. If you've ever tried to keep a journal or any kind of organized daily log, I highly recommend it. ------ mdolon I'm going to try to call this one now: my gut instinct says this will be a huge success. Hopefully I remember to check back a few months down the line to see how my prediction faired. Great work guys! Edit: I just noticed lists I email don't get formatted correctly. It's slightly annoying for such an otherwise beautifully designed layout. ------ ajcronk There is a typo in the url at the end of the How did your day go? email. Should be ohlife.com/today, not ohlife.come/today ~~~ sgupta Thanks for the heads up! ------ a3_nm How exactly is this service better than, say, a simple text file on my own machine with a daily reminder set up through some other means? Why would I want to use some third-party website for something so simple that I might as well do it myself? I can see some pretty annoying downsides (need to have a crypto layer because I don't want you to be able to read my journal, need to export regularly the data to my own computer because I don't want you to be able to lose my journal), but no real advantages (it's not even more convenient!). In any case, I believe that the two following statements, at least, are plain wrong: \- "The easiest way to write your life story": no, the easiest way is to fire up a text editor and start writing. \- "Only you can see your entries": should read "Only you and us can see your entries". ------ d0m I'm not really sure I would use this. However, I really love the website design.. It's so clean. The colors are nice. The forms are simple. Maybe a little video would be nice on the frontpage. ------ blitzo You wanna drop that ned flander out, not everyone know him ------ proexploit I like it. Many times I've wanted to start a journal, just to record memories, but I detest writing. This makes it feel easy. We'll see how it goes. ------ pesco In reaction to the fact that I adore the idea despite the fundamental privacy problem (see earlier comment), here is my spin on the theme in the form of two really simple Unix shell scripts. :) <http://www.khjk.org/log/2010/jul/journal.html> Thank you for the inspiration! ------ cvg Really like the simplicity of the idea and clean look of the site. Already replied to the welcome message - waiting for it to post to the site. I like the daily emails as I don't visit too many sites daily, apart from HN and Gmail. This will be an easy way to log all that I'm up to. I'm not sure how regularly I'll do this, but time will tell. ------ fizzfur great now I have des'ray in my head. interesting idea... I'll give it a go for a while until someone realises I email myself everyday. Does it get angry if I don't reply? mini feedback on home page: The 'see example' link needs to scroll the page down for me, I didn't spot the page grow and was waiting for it to load. ------ yequalsx I think the vertical spacing between the various components is too much. If you could move things up a bit it would work real well. The colors, fonts, and graphics are very soothing and welcoming. I just didn't expect to scroll down so much. ------ techietim I know your homepage says that all your posts are private, however, adding a privacy policy page which outlines that in legal speak would probably be good idea. Otherwise, this looks great, and I'm looking forward to using it! ~~~ alttab Yes, please! Tell me in no uncertain terms you will not give away, sell, or crawl my data. I will then use it as a personal journal for work purposes. Perfect for filling out during the morning with a cup of coffee. ------ Glide Love the design. I just signed up. Can't wait to see how well it'll help me keep a journal. One thing I noticed: on the login page can you make pressing tab in the login box go directly to the password input box? ------ cheesey Pleasing, private posterous? ~~~ sami_b That is what I was also thinking. You could do that on Posterous with privacy on, you can also attach files to the email. ------ dublinclontarf "Once you have a few entries here, we recommend printing them out, sitting by a fireplace, and reading them in Morgan Freeman’s voice: " Like a twinkie, like a twinkie. ------ Tichy Ok, nice enough, but why would I mail my private thoughts to the cloud? Writing a small script that mails a random email by me to myself should be easy enough. ------ yeti Well done, great concept and already I see a practical use for it in my life (tracking a new fitness program) Thanks guys ------ chamza Love the idea. Good work fellas ------ faramarz Very cool. Does that mean YC has a vested interest in your side project? ------ someone_here May I ask how this is different from, say, private wordpress.com blogs? ~~~ pclark I think they clearly articulate this on the home page

Kinect automation controller, sparked by HN, adds WebGL, available for purchase - nitrogen http://nitrogen.posterous.com/webgl-new-features-added-to-kinect-powered-ho ====== carbon14 Watched the video. Looks very solid. I'm interested in getting this setup for my HTPC/server and lamps. It could certainly save some energy as well as look cool.

New data supports finding that 30% of servers are ‘comatose’ [pdf] - r721 http://anthesisgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Case-Study_DataSupports30PercentComatoseEstimate-FINAL_06032015.pdf ====== dang Url changed from [http://www.computerworld.com/article/2937408/data- center/1-i...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2937408/data- center/1-in-3-data-center-servers-is-a-zombie.html), which points to this.

Amazon S3: New pricing model - unfoldedorigami http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2007/05/01/amazon-s3-new-pricing-model/ ====== vlad Additional info (from the e-mail I received) in case anybody cares: "P.S. Please note that the reduced bandwidth rates shown above will also take effect for Amazon EC2 and Amazon SQS. The bandwidth tier in which you will be charged each month will be calculated based on your use of each of these services separately, and could therefore vary across services." ------ yaacovtp Can anyone tell me what bandwidth costs a month once you need over a terabyte a month? How would you host a 5-10 mb movie that may be viewed millions of times without using a 3rd party video host like youtube etc? ~~~ especkman Lots of dedicated hosts will include a 2-5 TB of transfer a month for $100-500. Media temple will sell 1TB chunks on shared hosting for $20/month. I've seen dedicated hosts that price bandwidth above their included allotment at $500 per TB. You can also buy based on peak bandwidth. You'll see quite a range depending on business models, peak transfer caps, etc. Mediatemple, for example, is clearly hoping that most people will never need their full allotment, and when they do, they only need it occasionally.

The Secret Lives of NYC Mega-Projects - aaronbrethorst http://gizmodo.com/the-photographer-who-documents-the-secret-life-of-nyc-m-1697968505 ====== partisan I recently spoke to a few people who have worked on these large scale municipal projects. We think we have a hard time managing active software projects. These projects have change orders alone worth well into the 10s of millions. There are so many moving parts, literally, that it is a miracle they get completed at all. I don't find the choice of photos particularly inspiring, from an artistic sense, but it is nice to have a peak into that world. ------ danjayh These projects are amazing. Seeing the work that goes into just a single subway line makes it absolutely mind blowing to me that China has managed to build entire metropolises, complete with subway systems, in well under a decade. These photos are absolutely fantastic, and I'm happy to have had the opportunity to see some of what goes into this kind of work.

First photograph of light as both a particle and wave (2015) - ThomPete http://m.phys.org/news/2015-03-particle.html ====== msimpson This article is much more clear on what the image actually represents: [http://www.livescience.com/50019-image-light-wave- particle.h...](http://www.livescience.com/50019-image-light-wave- particle.html) "A clever technique and an ultrafast electron microscope have caught an image of light behaving as both particle and wave at the same time. Here, the wave nature is demonstrated in the wavy upper portion, while the particle behavior is revealed below, in the outlines showing energy quantization." Credit: Fabrizio Carbone/EPFL Also, this was all published on March 2, 2015. ------ deckar01 It took me a few reads for this to sink in. Quantum interference causes standing waves. Electron-photon particle collisions cause detectable energy release. The particle collisions occur in an interference pattern. ~~~ EarthIsHome Yes, and the colors describe the speeds of the particles as a result of tbe electron-photon collisions. It's not necessarily the particles we're seeing, just the particle behaviors from their collisions. ------ _nalply Swiss here. The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where this experiment has been carried out, is one of the two federal institutes of technology, the other one is the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_F%C3%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_F%C3%A9d%C3%A9rale_de_Lausanne) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Zurich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Zurich) ------ nsxwolf It didn't explain the picture. ~~~ leksak Yeah, I don't know how to interpret it. It's not immediately obvious to me that I'm looking at a wave and particles at the same time. ~~~ URSpider94 What the image represents is the energy loss/gain of a whole bunch of electrons that interact one at a time with a light wave traveling along a tiny metal wire (we call this kind of captive light wave a "phonon"). For each electron fired at the wire, it can either pass through unscathed, or it can interact with an electron and scatter off with a different energy, like two billiard balls hitting each other. The collision is fundamentally a collision between two particles. However, the fact that the properties of the collisions vary sinusoidally along the length of the wire imply that the photon is also acting like a wave oscillating up and down the wire. I disagree that this is the "first time" that we've observed simultaneous wave-particle behavior, you can see the same thing by firing photons at two narrowly-placed slits. This results in a diffraction pattern as if the photons were interfering like waves, but we can confirm that we're detecting single photons at the detector, and you can even confirm that each photon travels through one slit or the other ... See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double- slit_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment) ~~~ AnimalMuppet One nit: A phonon is a vibration of a lattice, not light. ~~~ URSpider94 Yep, that should have said "plasmon". I messed up all of my comments on this thread. A plasmon isn't technically light either, it's an oscillation of the electric field in a conductor -- but it has wave/particle duality like a photon. ------ emerongi It's hard to grasp what was really captured on that image, but this still doesn't rule out the pilot wave theory. I think it's misleading to call it a photograph of light "as both a particle and wave". ------ amelius I have a question about QM, which perhaps somebody here can answer: Is quantization an inherent property of the photon, or is it a property of the material (or of the interaction with it)? ~~~ URSpider94 The other answers posted here are not quite right. Light energy is indeed inherently quantized, and a photon is one quantum of light. In other words, you can't have a half-photon of light, only even multiples. Einstein wrote the equation "E = h*(nu)", where h is the so-called "Planck's constant", and nu is the frequency of light. Translated, this means that each photon carries an amount of energy proportional to its frequency, higher- frequency photons (IR -> red -> blue -> UV -> X-ray) carry more energy. tl;dr: Quantization is an inherent property of light. ~~~ amelius > E = h*(nu) Yes, but the question is whether that is due to the material not being able to produce non-quantized photons. Stated differently, suppose we had a different way of generating photons, then could we theoretically create them in a non- quantized way? ~~~ lisivka Yep. They called "radiowaves". ~~~ amelius Sounds logical, but then again, how fundamental is the "Q" in "QM"? ~~~ lisivka Extremely. Broken quanta will release its energy. Check solitons (example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD32kkoFU3Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD32kkoFU3Y) ). Soliton wave can cross ocean, but if you broke it pattern, you will have regular waves, not a half of solition. ------ shshhdhs This is really cool! What's the reason for the blue & violet colors to be raised more than others in the wave? Is it just the timing of the snapshot? As in, another picture might show another color at the top of the wave? Or is the standing wave "stuck" in that position? ~~~ mdturnerphys That's just the color scale they've used for the z axis. ------ mzs [https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-03/epfd- tfe0301...](https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-03/epfd- tfe030115.php) ------ Koshkin > _an exchange of energy "packets" (quanta) between electrons and photons_ I thought that photons _are_ the energy quanta (that electrons can _absorb_ or lose). ------ posterboy Darn the ambiguous english language, do they mean the photograph is a particle-wave? because that wouldn't be a first. /s

Ask HN: What are the best Bay Area programming meetups? - fuqted Specifically for someone looking to learn. I&#x27;m in Oakland and pretty open as far as languages go.<p>What meetups do you guys go to? ====== dhruvkar The east bay python meetup is pretty relaxed, and has grown quite a bit in the last year. It's at Lost and Found on Telegraph on the 1st Tuesday of every month. [http://meetu.ps/e/.chxnhlyvpbcb/9Plqj/a](http://meetu.ps/e/.chxnhlyvpbcb/9Plqj/a) ~~~ fuqted Ok, I'll check that out thanks. I've gone to the weekly Js meeting at L & F.

Switch generic icon to negative feedback for non-https sites - diafygi https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1041087 ====== codezero There have been a few times when I've got a legitimate red icon for bad certificates and what not. Pushing this to the rest of the web will mean I'll miss real errors through the noise because they happen so infrequently that I'll just stop checking if every website has a red icon. ~~~ briansmith Browsers completely stop the page from loading and show a full-page error for a certificate error. There's a huge difference between that and a small icon in the location bar. Plus, if the red icon that is suggested in that bug report is too loud, a less loud indicator could be used instead. There's a lot more to designing a UI for this than just changing the icon. For example, when you type "foo.com" into the address bar, browsers generally default to "[http://foo.com"](http://foo.com") instead of "[https://foo.com."](https://foo.com.") And, consequently, browsers tend to show "[http://foo.com"](http://foo.com") as "foo.com" to suggest that you don't need to type the "[http://"](http://") part. All of that needs to change to become a lot smarter in order for this type of idea to succeed. However, it doesn't seem completely unreasonable to consider making all those changes. In fact, I think these changes should be a high priority for browsers makers. tl;dr: I suggest people brainstorm ways to improve upon the idea to make it workable, instead of trying to shoot it down. ~~~ codezero Honestly, I'd prefer a heuristic that could determine whether https was significant on the current URL. Are there submitted values, cookies of importance, get parameters? There are a lot of reasons https is important and there are a lot of places where it's totally not important. If you draw people's attention to something that isn't seriously important, then those times when the whole screen sends a warning you go, "oh well, I had that red warning going all along and it didn't matter, so why do I care?" I am saying that by pushing a warning where it's not necessary, you diminish the value of any warning. ~~~ briansmith > There are a lot of places where it's totally not important. See my other replies on this page for some reasons why I think there are no pages where HTTPS is not important. I agree with you regarding the UI issues and the potential to generate apathy by crying wolf. That's why I think that the specifics of the linked-to proposal won't work. But, I think the general idea is worth investigating. It just requires some user research. Also, the fact that browsers support a non-HTTPS mode at all is really the bigger UI issue. Imagine if HTTPS was the only option. The biggest UI security problems would instantly vanish! That's a big reason why a lot of people are actively working so hard on finding ways to make HTTPS work for everybody on every site. ------ mplewis Putting a red icon on 90% of all websites means the meaning of the icon will just saturate and people won't pay attention to the red icon any more. ~~~ briansmith FWIW, ~33% of all pages are loaded over HTTPS already in Firefox, according to the metrics collected by the browser. And, over 50% of all HTTP requests (including subresources like images and scripts embedded on a page) are over HTTPS, again according to the usage data collected by the browser. ~~~ scrollaway I'd be willing to bet quite high all these HTTPS requests are all on the same specific services (facebook, gmail, google would already take most of them). ------ danso No. Not all sites exchange data worth the SSL-layer...let's say, 30-50% of the sites...that means for roughly half a user's non-email/social-networking web- browsing, they're going to either be saturated with a warning message that, if psychology research is to believed, is going to be promptly ignored like your apartment's super-sensitive smoke detector or the boy watching out for wolves. What's the actual reasoning in OP's mind here? That the average web user is someone who, when the computer gives some warning sign that is disconnected from any kind of discernable threat, that the user will automatically take it seriously? That they'll demand to know why they're in danger, and then will rise up and petition the Internet regulatory commission to make all sites do what it takes to make that red icon go away, and the web will be more secure? I don't want to be overtly negative towards well-intended idealism, but this is such a bizarrely naive viewpoint that it must be openly challenged. That, and it just blithely ignores all the research showing what happens when humans are overloaded with impotent warning signs. This is the kind of idealism- without-consequences that can end up causing more harm than good. ~~~ scrollaway This is not a user-oriented proposal, this is clearly directed at the website owners which are not going to want _their_ users to see red stuff on the URL bar. ~~~ danso Not a bad strategy. Until the website owners take the path of least resistance between: A. Reconfiguring their stack to use SSL. B. Putting a Javascript-powered banner helpfully informing all Firefox users that their browser has a security flaw ("that's why that red icon is there") and they should follow the included hyperlinks to install the latest versions of Internet Explorer or Chrome and then delete Firefox from their systems. ~~~ scrollaway That B strategy might have worked a few years back for grandmas that got Firefox installed by their geeky grandson, but Firefox is popular now. And people (geek or no geek) don't like being told the stuff _they_ use is not good. Here's an experiment you can do at home: Try telling an emacs user Vim is better. ------ omni Why should my blog of static pages need to be served over HTTPS to avoid having Firefox slap a scary red icon next to it? ~~~ scrollaway Why shouldn't it is the real question. There's a parallel universe where ssh is plaintext, and only "sensitive commands", such as "sudo", are encrypted. In that universe though, plaintext HTTP doesn't exist and they're making fun of us. ~~~ mynameisvlad Because no sensitive content is being transferred. Why put the extra hassle of getting and installing a non-self-signed certificate for a blog where the user doesn't even submit data? There's no reason for that connection to be secure. ~~~ scrollaway > Because no sensitive content is being transferred. You're answering "why" instead of answering "why not" again. "Why should you lock your door if you don't have anything expensive?" Plaintext HTTP should not exist, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. I wouldn't have to come up with elaborate scenarios where having HTTPS from the get go would have saved lives, and you wouldn't have to come up with crazy "but that'll never happen" retort to them. Unfortunately, plaintext HTTP exists, so here we are, with me telling you that the pro-gay rights piece you wrote on your static blog contains keywords that make it be viewed as extremism/terrorism by Russia's automated monitoring systems and anyone reading it gets immediately added to a watchlist. Unfortunately, a few of your readers are from russia and six months later those readers join a political protest against the killing of kittens or something. Their government notices that and makes sure to "take action". And to think HTTPS could have avoided that. ~~~ Yver > "Why should you lock your door if you don't have anything expensive?" Locks come standard on every door, they don't expire after a given time and every child knows how to use them. See how your comparison to acquiring, setting up and maintainning an SSL certificate is nonsensical? > And to think HTTPS could have avoided that. If the NSA tags people who look for info on TOR as extremists, an hypothetical state might tag people who use HTTPS. And to think that HTTP could have avoided that! I mean, if every argument is an hypothetical, anything is possible. ~~~ scrollaway If HTTPS is used globally, people can't be flagged for using it (or the flags end up being useless). Right now, you are correct, people could hypothetically be flagged for using HTTPS. This would not happen if every static blog and what not out there would use it. Thank you for reinforcing my point, I appreciate the help. ------ rcthompson What about warning the user when they start to type in a login box on a non- https site? Browsers should already know what is a login box, since they know how to prompt you to remember the password. ~~~ timmclean Sort of like what IE used to do the first time you submitted a form? [http://bmlinks-committee.jbmia.or.jp/eng/image/EnDlg03.gif](http://bmlinks- committee.jbmia.or.jp/eng/image/EnDlg03.gif) ~~~ scrollaway Talk about full circle. ------ john2x The proposed icon is hard to parse. Better an open lock? And maybe in orange instead of jarring red. Or even better, make the secure icon something universally positive, like a green smiley face or a check mark. Then the insecure icon can be an orange sad face or X mark. (Lock icon can be ambiguous to non-techies. i.e. why is the url locked? or is that a suitcase/purse?) ------ Karunamon Greeaaaat. Just what everyone needs. An extra expense and further entrenchment of our exploitative CA system. I like this idea, but not when it puts more money in the pocket of the CAs. ~~~ scrollaway If a better/broader alternative to CAs comes along and is adopted (say, such as SPDY), I take it the icon would behave the same way. Your comment is really unwarranted... Not to mention this is just some random guy. It's not like mozilla is actually thinking about this (they really should). ~~~ Karunamon >Your comment is really unwarranted... Not really - changes like this don't exist in a vacuum. Anything that makes the existing CA's more indispensable (say, by driving customers their way by making it appear bad to not do business with them) is a net negative. ------ kbaker They should at least wait for DANE + DNSSEC, which is a tangible (and free) alternative to the CA system, even though it would still be quite a bit of effort. I'd be curious to know how this would affect local servers in the intranet. Surely we wouldn't want to have to start issuing certs for everything inside the firewall as well? I think this is a bit too shortsighted of a bug report. Anyways, since this is not an official proposal, I think it will just be closed as invalid by Mozilla. ------ peterkelly I vote for the NSA logo

Michael Arndt to Write Screenplay for Star Wars: Episode VII - jwallaceparker http://starwars.com/news/michael-arndt-to-write-screenplay-for-star-wars-episode-vii.html ====== lazugod ...you posted this eleven times. ~~~ dfc Twelve times. I flagged 11 of them.

The New Mind Control: How the Internet Flips Elections and Alters Our Thoughts - Jerry2 https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts ====== dc2 "Google and its top executives donated more than $800,000 to President Barack Obama and just $37,000 to his opponent, Mitt Romney." Did you just Alter My Thoughts? How much of that $837,000 was Google versus its top executives (based on their personal preferences)?

Which is better on Android: divide by 2 or shift by 1? - zdw https://jakewharton.com/which-is-better-on-android-divide-by-two-or-shift-by-one/ ====== anyfoo Thorough work. Going back to the premise, I want to offer an alternative viewpoint by asking whether, in the case of binary trees implemented by arrays, “integer division by 2” of the array index is necessarily the best interpretation of what you are trying to do here? Instead, you can also see the array index as a bit string, where every bit tells you which path to go down, left or right. In that case, “shifting right by one bit” moves you up to the parent. “Shifting left” moves you down to the left child. Flipping one bit flips you over to the other child. Bit wise operations indeed seem more natural with that interpretation. A lot of “power of 2” multiplication/division has similar interpretations. For example, when walking page tables, you could see walking down the levels as “dividing by the size of the granule”, or simply as “shifting right to select the index on that level”. No contest on anything where the power of 2 is coincidence, i.e. for non “computery” things where there is no such underlying structure. ~~~ yiyus I had a slightly similar experience at work. We deal a lot with angles and binary angles are often the most efficient representation. Many colleagues find it annoying because they insist on converting every binary angle to radian or degrees, but if you actually interpret the bits as successive divisions of a circumference, I actually find the binary representation way more intuitive than a floating point number. ~~~ slavik81 That method is exactly equivalent to using revolutions as the unit with a fixed-point numeric representation. Maybe your skeptical colleagues would find that perspective more palatable? ~~~ yiyus That's some good advice. Unfortunately, most of the people I work with do not have a computer science background (they are materials scientists and mechanical engineers), so they are not familiarized with fixed-point arithmetic neither. ------ twoodfin I appreciate the thorough exploration and resulting detail in this article. Still, I find it a little sad that either the state of our toolchains or the perception thereof prevent it from being self-evident that basic strength reduction will always happen, and developers need not worry about the cost of expressing simple arithmetic operations in the clearest way. ~~~ bsder I would go further in that many programmers don't understand the difference between logical and arithmetic operations and why they exist. I have had to puzzle over far too much code doing adds/subtracts/multiplies/divides instead of and/or/xor/shift _FAR_ too often. I blame Java not having an unsigned type. There are apparently some weird tricks you can do with arithmetic in Java that operate on things like an unsigned type without having to go up to the next higher integer width. ~~~ vbezhenar What exactly do you miss in Java? It's possible to treat int as unsigned for all the necessary operations. ~~~ blibble plus Java's had various unsigned integer operations on Integer for years ------ lgessler Question from a perf noob: it seems like this in principle only shows that there's no difference for a Pixel 3 because other Android machines could have processors that have/lack an optimization for shift or divide. Couldn't a different Android phone have different performance characteristics? ~~~ lgg It is not that the processor that contains an optimization per se. The thing to understand is that shift is fundamentally a simpler operation than multiply... a shift can be implemented with a few transistors per bit and done in a single cycle trivially. A multiply unit takes tons of transistors, and often takes multiple cycles (this is a trade off you make when you design a multiply unit, you can save space by making it work on smaller integers and reusing it multiple times over several cycles to do multiplies of larger integers, just you like you iteratively multiply digits one you do it on paper by hand). Even on processors that have single cycle multipliers it takes a lot more power to do a multiply than a shift because of all the extra hardware you need to engage. Since shifts are fundamentally simpler than multiplies it always makes sense to do this transform. This is one of a number of transforms that are generally called "strength reductions" <[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_reduction>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_reduction>), converting for a more general expensive operation into a more constrained cheaper operation. In this case it is the equivalent to knowing that if you want to multiply a number by 10 you can just add a 0 at the beginning instead of having to write all the work by hand. The only reason not to do this transform would be if you had a CPU that literally does not have a shift operation, but I cannot think of any such part. Even if you did have such a part, the odds are you could emulate a shift using other other instructions and still outperform the multiply. This has been a standard optimization for half a century. The original C compiler for the PDP-11 did these transforms even when you turned off optimizations <[http://c-faq.com/misc/shifts.html>](http://c-faq.com/misc/shifts.html>). ~~~ cogman10 > This has been a standard optimization for half a century. The original C > compiler for the PDP-11 did these transforms even when you turned off > optimizations Consider this, a common easily applied optimization that compilers have been doing for half a century MAY have made it's way into modern CPUs. Transistors aren't nearly as power hungry as you paint them and CPUs aren't nearly as bad at optimization. There is no reason to switch a multiply or divide for a shift. The ONLY reason to make that switch is if you are dealing with the simplest of processors (Such as a microwave processors). If you are using anything developed in the last 10 years that consumes more than 1W of power, chances are really high that the you aren't saving any power by using shifts instead of multiples. It is the sort of micro-optimization that fundamentally misunderstands how modern CPUs actually work and over estimates how much power or space transistors actually need. ~~~ reitzensteinm Since it's what I'm typing this on, let's look at Skylake. Multiply: Latency 3, Throughput 1 Shift: Latency 1, Throughput 2 If the ALU contained an early out or fast path for simpler multiplies, the latency would read 1-3. You can verify this by looking at div, which does early out and has a latency of 35-88. Any compiler that doesn't swap a multiply to a shift when it can is negligent. [https://www.agner.org/optimize/instruction_tables.pdf](https://www.agner.org/optimize/instruction_tables.pdf) ------ necovek I am really struggling to understand the benchmark output quoted. Can anyone elaborate what does benchmark=3/4 ns mean, and the count? Is the set-up part of the benchmark (test structure suggest not, but just to make sure)? The only way I can read it is that 4000 divisions takes 4ns, and 4000 shift- rights takes 3ns, but that only has 1 digit of precision, which makes it unusable for comparison, but even then suggests a 25%/33% difference, which is not insignificant. Also, the VM seems to optimise multiply out, so it must be doing it for a reason. ~~~ thechao It's definitely not 4000 divisions per 4ns — that'd imply a terahertz computer. I think it's saying that the amortized cost of 4000 divisions is 4ns per division. Small integer division is an "easy win" for a dedicated HW path, so it doesn't surprise me that it's only a little slower than a shift-right. Variable length right shifts aren't that fast. ~~~ bonzini It's not small integer division that is being benchmarked, the JIT compiler has reduced it to an addition, a conditional move and a right shift. This sequence is then benchmarked against the right shift. ~~~ saagarjha ART is an AOT complier, is it not? ~~~ monocasa It's both AOT and JIT. [https://source.android.com/devices/tech/dalvik/jit- compiler](https://source.android.com/devices/tech/dalvik/jit-compiler) ~~~ pjmlp With a PGO cache updated across execution runs and devices (since Android 10 PGO data is shared across the Play Store). ~~~ ignoramous For anyone like me wondering what a PGO is: [https://source.android.com/devices/tech/perf/pgo](https://source.android.com/devices/tech/perf/pgo) ------ MithrilTuxedo Now I'm wondering if there's a power usage difference between the two. It stands to reason that if two operations take the same amount of time, but one requires more transistors to compute, power usage should diverge. ~~~ wmf For scalar instructions, most of the energy is consumed in scheduling not executing them. This means that cycles is a good proxy for total energy. ------ saurik Everyone is talking about this microoptimization on the math of the access but all I can think about is how the data structure you are building using this is probably memory bandwidth limited and powers-of-two storage is almost definitely going to cause some kind of cache line aliasing, so maybe you should try something non-obvious like "division by 3" (after doing three key comparisons instead of one) and see if it makes your algorithm much much faster than messing around with a division by 2; there was even some good analysis of this effect a while back I can reference. [https://pvk.ca/Blog/2012/07/30/binary-search-is-a- pathologic...](https://pvk.ca/Blog/2012/07/30/binary-search-is-a-pathological- case-for-caches/) ------ sambe Am I mis-reading this? The article keeps claiming there is no difference but the way I read it the compiler(s) are transforming mul/div to shifts. i.e. it very likely _is_ faster on the hardware but it won't matter for this particular toolchain because of the conversion. ~~~ chrisseaton > Am I mis-reading this? The article keeps claiming there is no difference but > the way I read it the compiler(s) are transforming mul/div to shifts. i.e. > it very likely is faster on the hardware but it won't matter for this > particular toolchain because of the conversion. There is no difference... because of the conversion. ~~~ sambe Right: for now, in certain situations, on the tested toolchain. Even ignoring those caveats, several commentators seem to have got the impression that this applies to the CPU. ~~~ uluyol These types of transformations are simple to detect, well known, and applied by ~every compiler. Unless you have evidence otherwise (ASM differences or benchmarks), there is no use in manually transforming your arithmetic into something more complex but faster. The compiler will do it for you. ~~~ sambe I think that's a point which is bordering on religious - many people would debate trusting the compiler, especially over time and more complex situations. I'd certainly tend to agree with you in general but more for the reason that the compiler can abstract over hardware changes across time. I'd take that benefit over the risk of the optimisation not being applied for most code I write - non-optimisations would be considered bugs and probably/eventually fixed. I'd strongly disagree the code is more complex (in this case). ~~~ merlincorey It especially seems religious to me because it's saying that somehow "/ 2" is simpler than ">> 1" because it has one less character for the symbol, and because division is a more commonly known operator to most people than bitwise shifting. It seems to me that they are equally simple if we assume that programmers dealing with low level or performance intensive code know what a bitwise shift is and ignore the extra character, then they are literally equivalently complicated expressions with 1 symbol and 1 value applied to the symbol. ~~~ kadoban Code does not happen in a vacuum. Which is more understandable/simple depends on the domain of the code in question. Usually that's going to be the multiply or the divide. ~~~ merlincorey Right, but my statement was that the domain would be low level or performance intensive code -- do you disagree that in that domain they are equally simple? ------ remcob Another fast way to double a number is to add it to itself. ~~~ fyp Isn't that the wrong direction for the optimization? I would assume you would want to compile adding two numbers into shifting by one, not the other way around. (I know nothing about hardware, it just intuitively seems like moving a bunch of bits over by 1 should be faster than dealing with xor and carries) ~~~ jcranmer In hardware terms, adders are simpler than shifters. You can usually do both in a single cycle, but it's going to be lower power to do the add instead of the shift. To put this in more concrete terms: an N-bit adder involves N 1-bit stages to add each bit, and then a 1-bit carry network on top of that, which has N stages in it. So overall, it's O(N) in terms of hardware. An N-bit shift unit is going to use lg N N-bit muxes--or O(N lg N) in terms of hardware. Total gate delay in both cases is O(lg N), but adders have O(N) hardware (and thus energy consumption) while shifters have O(N lg N). A secondary consequence of being larger area is that a superscalar architecture may choose to have one execution unit that has an adder and a shifter and a second that only has the adder. So an addition may schedule better than a shift, since there are more things it can execute on. ~~~ Tuna-Fish > To put this in more concrete terms: an N-bit adder involves N 1-bit stages > to add each bit, and then a 1-bit carry network on top of that, which has N > stages in it. So overall, it's O(N) in terms of hardware. O(N) adders cannot meet the latency demands of modern high-frequency CPUs. The actual complexity of adders in real CPUs is usually O(N²). ------ Animats He did this in Java? In one case, running on an emulator? That's removed too far from the hardware for this kind of benchmarking. Try in a hard-compiled language. Using shifts for constant divide has been a compiler code generator optimization for decades. This is not something programmers have needed to worry about in source code for a long time, unless targeting some small microcontroller that lacks fast divide hardware. ~~~ pjmlp Java is a hard-compiled language on Android since version 5.0. ART, which replaced Dalvik on 5.0 (available as experimental on 4.4), was AOT only up to version 7.0. As it was proven that Android users lack the patience of a C++ developer when updating their apps, Google adopted another approach with version 7.0. A multi-tier compiler infrastructure, composed by a very fast interpreter hand written in Assembly for fast startup, a JIT compiler for the first optimization level, with gathering of PGO data, then the AOT compiler runs in the background and when the device is idle gets that PGO data and just like a C++ compiler with PGO data, outputs a clean AOT compiled binary for the usual user workflow. In case of an update or changes in the workflow that trigger the execution of code that wasn't AOT compiled, the process restarts. As means to reduce this kind of de-optimizations, since Android 10 those PGO files are uploaded into the Play Store and when a user installs an application that already has PGO data available, it is downloaded alongside the APK and the AOT compiler can do its job right from the start. In any case, he used _dex2aot_ which is the AOT compiler daemon on Android. Microsoft has gone through similar process with .NET for UWP, with the main difference that the AOT compiler lives on the Microsoft store and what gets downloaded is already straight binary code. Apparently mixing language capabilities with toolchains keeps being an issue. ------ renewiltord How come the division is almost the same as the shifting? Is the CPU pipelining the operations between iterations of the loop or something? There is a direct data-dependency in those operations but not between iterations so perhaps that's it? AFAIK there's no fused add-shift op that could be used. ------ esnellman Given the number of execution loops. The profiler applied an optimization. Don't expect this optimization during initial executions or seldom used code or cases where properties of the method do not allow it to be optimized; be it on Android VMs or JVMs. ------ pacman83 Apart from the fact that compilers are really good and generally will choose the best option for you, it seems like it boils down to what processor is used. On Android aren't ARM processors the most common? ~~~ pjmlp Yes, followed by some Intel and MIPS survivors. ------ jejones3141 If it's signed int, unless you know the value is positive you can't just shift right 1--if the result of the shift is negative, you have to add 1. ~~~ chrisseaton Can't you do an arithmetic shift-right? That takes the sign into account. ~~~ jcranmer No. An arithmetic shift right does a division that rounds down; an integer division operation instead truncates (rounds to zero). The easiest example is -1 / 2: -1 / 2 is 0, but -1 ashr 1 is -1. To replace a signed division with ashr, you have to know that for all negative inputs, the value of the bits shifted out are all 0. ------ Too I thought this discussion was settled 30 years ago? Write what you want to do, not how to do it. There is no difference. ------ nicetryguy ...So the Dalvik VM sucks? ~~~ pjmlp Yes it sucks, that is why it was replaced by ART on Android 5.0. ~~~ nicetryguy Ah, i haven't kept up. Anyway, a right bit shift should absolutely be quicker than floating point or even integer division. If it isn't, that is an implementation problem. ~~~ pjmlp ART as of Android 10, combines an hand written interpreter in Assembly, a JIT compiler that generates PGO data as well, and an AOT PGO based optimizing compiler capable of doing bounds check elision, de-virtualization, auto- vectorization, escape analysis and a couple of other traditional optimizations. The PGO metadata files also get shared across devices via the Play Store as means to steer the AOT compiler into the optimal level of optimization across all users of the application. I assume that at the current level of ongoing ART optimizations, the team would consider that a compiler bug. ~~~ nicetryguy Awesome info! Thanks! What would you recommend for an IDE? I used Eclipse some years ago. Is that still common? I may want to experiment with some Android flavored Java again. ~~~ pjmlp Android Studio is the official IDE, it is a merge of InteliJ with Clion and Google specific plugins. ------ madhato Is there an advantage of using multiply by .5 versus divide by 2? ~~~ fox8091 Multiply by 0.5 would be slower, as it's a floating point operation rather than simple arithmetic. ------ nipxx if these kinds of optimizations make a difference for your applications write it in native code, dammitl ~~~ pjmlp Which pretty much means Assembly, given that Java and Koltin go through JVM and DEX bytecodes to machine code, and C and C++ on Android go through LLVM bitcode to machine code. ------ temac TLDR: it is the same, like it should. We are in 2020. Don't shift by 1 instead of /2 if you mean to /2. ~~~ OrgNet lol... if you care about optimizing, you should care about all possible optimizations... (even if most of today's platforms don't) ~~~ temac Yeah but you should also then understand what will yield real results, and >>1 instead of /2 has become useless to write manually a long time ago, whereas e.g. continuous memory is more important than ever. You will not optimize a lot by attempting micro techniques from 30 years ago. Other random example: in some edge cases, integer division replacement by a multiplication _can_ still be relevant today (depends on if its a constant, the compiler, and if nothing optimized also on the exact processor, though, because last models are already ultra-fast with the real integer divide instructions), but I suspect in 15 years (maybe even 10) this will be completely irrelevant, at least for high perf targets. ------ drivebycomment News at 11 - someone learned strength reduction exists, which have been in use for the past 4 decades. ~~~ anyfoo Had you read the article, you would have known that the question answered here was whether, and where in the process, strength reduction was actually applied. ------ fefe23 A few points. 1\. Looking at the Java bytecode is practically meaningless, you would have to look at the machine code the JIT is creating. 2\. A division by 2 is identical to a shift right by 1 only if the integer is unsigned. Java integers are signed. Try this program in C to see for yourself: int foo(int a) { return a/2; } int bar(int a) { return a>>1; } Run gcc -S -O2 to get assembly output in text form. Basically, the problem is this: 5/2 -> 2 (ok, rounds down) 5>>1 -> 2 (ok, same) -5/2 -> -2 (ok, rounds down) -5>>1 -> -3 (oops!) 3\. The question is really about the JIT backend for the target platform, which means CPU platform, not OS platform. So "on Android" does not make much sense here, as Android exists for x86 and ARM and those JIT backends might behave differently. ~~~ anyfoo All things directly addressed by the article. ------ devit Honestly, it's hard to read this article and not question the author's mental state or intelligence. He literally presents x86 and ARM assembly dumps where shift right generates one instruction, and divide generates that same instruction plus several others. Then, he feels the need to run an unnecessary benchmark (most likely screwing it up somehow) and concludes there is no difference! But how can there possibly be no performance difference, in general, between the CPU running an ALU instruction and running that same instruction plus several other ALU instructions?!? It's almost unbelievable. As to how he screwed up the benchmark, my guesses are that either he failed to inline the function (and the CPU is really bad), or failed to prevent the optimizer from optimizing the whole loop, or didn't run enough iterations, or perhaps he ran the benchmark on a different VM than what produced the assembly (or maybe somehow the CPU can extract instruction level parallelism in this microbenchmark, but obviously that doesn't generalize to arbitrary code). ~~~ brianyu8 While I think that there is merit to your argument, I feel like it could have been presented without questioning the author's intelligence or mental state.

WinAntiRansom – Prevents encryption of your files - spaceboy https://www.winpatrol.com/winantiransom/ ====== eyer2016 Lol

Leaked north korean documentary exposes western propaganda. - daralthus http://superchief.tv/leaked-north-korean-documentary-exposes-western-propaganda-and-its-scary-how-true-it-is/ ====== draq How do you imagine a world without "propaganda"? Mine would be one without this documentary. ------ stefantalpalaru It's propaganda about propaganda and it seems targeted at westerners. Too many sensitive subjects for Dear Leader's flock. ------ bediger4000 The definition of "reality tee vee" given: shows about "talentless narcissists who like to talk about themselves and go shopping". This is the kind of material that has endeared North Korea to propaganda cognoscenti everywhere. ------ ericxb The film was produced in New Zealand. Here is a link to a video report which includes an interview with the producer: [http://ondemand.tv3.co.nz/Media-3-Season-1-Ep-16/tabid/59/ar...](http://ondemand.tv3.co.nz/Media-3-Season-1-Ep-16/tabid/59/articleID/8890/MCat/540/Default.aspx) ------ calciphus Let's take a moment here and wonder a "documentary team" in a country with the kind of dictatorial control that North Korea has would have access to so much American TV footage. "Leaked"? You mean "released by the North Korean government"? ~~~ ChuckMcM If you read the back story the translator believes exactly that, which is to say that the DPRK created it for westerners. What is interesting is that the website its on has completely bought into the message. They say things like "And jesus, is it on the f&k*g money." That suggests that it was targeted exactly to the sort of non-critical thinker/reader that the site "superchief" represents, and by all indications manages to hit on all of the sensitive spots. That is the point of propaganda, and whether it is anti-Semitic white supremacist crap or DPRK crap it requires that the person reading it check their assumptions at the door.

Dropbox: The hottest startup you've never heard of - slinky http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/16/cloud-computing-for-the-rest-of-us ====== 51Cards I think this article is perfectly valid. What everyone here is forgetting is that we are a pretty focused demographic of technical people. If you ask the average CNN user what Dropbox is you'll probably get a blank stare. The fact that an article like this is BEING written is just another sign of Dropbox's success... it may be crossing the tipping point to main-stream media and adoption outside of the tech community. I bet if you looked you would have found something similar about Twitter at some point where social media savvy people were going "WTF? I've used it forever" ~~~ JonnieCache _> cloud computing -- that catchall phrase corporations use to describe services delivered via the Internet_ With this line they are streets ahead of most pure tech sites in terms of accuracy. ~~~ ch0wn I love Dropbox for not using this horrible term. ~~~ nbashaw Horrible term? Just because it's the catch phrase du jour doesn't mean it's totally meaningless. I get annoyed with the buzz and malapropism just as much as the next guy, but like it or not, cloud computing is a major global phenomenon. ~~~ iamdave It IS a meaningless phrase in the sense that it's being used. When I was studying network engineering, "the cloud" used to encompass the broader network environment that INCLUDED the Internet as an extension of your enterprise infrastructure. Now? It's a hyperbolic, singular phrase that is limited to using the internet as an extension of your operating system without fully explaining or at least detailing for the end user why it matters. Especially in the case of those god.awful Microsoft commercials. In their case, the way it's presented, the cloud is nothing less synonymous with social networking. Change your Facebook status from Windows? That's the cloud. Upload a picture to Flickr? That's the cloud. It's no better than that phase of 'web 2.0' that was nothing more than superficial design elements that included shiny buttons, dropping vowels and slapping the term 'beta' on everything. The web is cyclical and this is the latest cycle. While that in and of itself isn't BAD per se, it's a phrase that's come synonymous with "rockstar" and "ninja" when talking about hiring developers. A total and complete non sequitur. ------ SwellJoe I've been shocked at how often I see the Dropbox icon on friend's systems. I no longer live in silicon valley, and so I am completely out of the echo chamber (except what I read here at HN). These are not nerds, not techies, and not people who follow TechCrunch. These are artists, musicians, old folks, nomads, and all sorts of folks that just don't do technology. But, they get Dropbox. Admittedly, my parents aren't using Dropbox, but my parents don't read CNN.com, either, and I can't imagine what they would even use Dropbox for. I can't even get them to use flickr for photos, despite buying them a digital camera (my mom still uses a film camera when she travels because she's afraid she'll lose or break the digital one). If I could invest in Dropbox, I would. But, that wasn't always true. I met Drew at a YC party before they had anything to show, and were still figuring out the diffing/versioning problems, and all the underlying hard problems. And, I came away thinking, "Well, that's been done before. A lot. And it never went anywhere." I had even built a little web-based file manager and sharing app as a RoR practice app, a couple weeks before. So, I thought I knew a business that wouldn't go anywhere when I saw it. I thought highly of Drew, but not much of the idea. I was obviously very wrong about the idea. Anyway, my point is, Dropbox hasn't been something "you've never heard of" for quite some time. ~~~ daeken My dad is using Dropbox to share his songs. He saves to Dropbox, and then shares links on Facebook. All his masters are backed up there as well. ------ krschultz Major news outlet learns about cheaper way to share files from their intern who uses it at school like everyone else: News at 11 ------ rayvega >> _"...And there's little to stop...Amazon (AMZN), with its own Amazon Web Services, from making a greater push into Dropbox's territory...."_ Dropbox actually runs on AWS by using Amazon's S3 for storage. This is what allowed them to get up and running quickly and cheaply without needing a lot of venture funding. I would not be surprised with Dropbox's continued growth, if they in the future were to set up and manage their own data centers to avoid being dependent on Amazon or anyone else's platform. This would be advantageous if Amazon were to decide to compete directly with a similar product. ~~~ bradleyland Someone questioned whether Dropbox could compete with Amazon at scale, but decided to delete it. This is a really valid question. I recalled a while back that Backblaze asked a similar question and came up with a really cool solution. [http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a- budget-h...](http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how- to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/) I see this as Dropbox's future. PaaS is good for getting started, but with numbers like what's shown in that blog post, it's hard to argue that something like S3 is really priced at commodity levels. ------ 6ren counterpoint: Dropbox is a great product, clever tech, insightful marketing etc. Even the YC application was great. And I think there's a large market (even its present size is more than enough to sate my own avarice), but... it doesn't seem that it could become a truly _huge_ company (like Xerox, Google), without launching a series of increasingly unrelated products. Though perhaps that's true of many huge companies (e.g. Apple, Sony, HP - even Microsoft has Office). ~~~ lemon_pie possibly. that said, 100m in revenue 4 years after launch with a fairly unbounded market (every consumer), looks like quite the promising start. ~~~ 6ren > Benioff predicts sales could hit $100 million this year. (The company > declined to comment.) Unfortunately, a prediction; and also by someone not privy to actual figures... > Dropbox reportedly experiences well over 10 times year-over-year growth... Sounds pretty good! > ...and positive cash flow. The mildest expression of profitability possible. Though I'm pretty sure they're doing way better than >0. From scanning many acquisitions, my feeling is of the order of $200 million. Though I'm basing that mainly on business acquisition (e.g. by Oracle), so I might be very off for consumer acquisitions (considering youtube, facebook, twitter etc). ~~~ wlievens With their kind of scalability, any positive cash flow is awesome news. ------ spatten When we were trying to figure out if Dropbox would be a good sync tool for Leanpub, Peter went in to a local coffee shop and asked a bunch of people if they'd ever heard of Dropbox. All of the baristas and everyone else in their 20s had, and had accounts. About half of the people 30 or older had heard of it, and most of them had accounts. We were pretty impressed with the numbers, and we ended up going with Dropbox, and we've never regretted it. ------ technomancy > The hottest startup you've never heard of I wish this were true; unfortunately I hear lots and lots about them when they run a "spam your friends for more free space" promotional. ~~~ jrockway Get better friends. ------ justinxreese Expected an article from 4 years ago... ------ djacobs Excellent, if my non-technical friends ever ask why I don't go to mainstream media for tech news, I'll point them to this article. ------ danielha My dad uses Dropbox and I didn't even tell him about it. Such a badass company. ~~~ rokhayakebe Even more badass is your dad. ------ flexd My mom came to me earlier asking me to help her install Dropbox. She's about as informed about computer stuff as i am about fashion. That's a good sign for Dropbox :-) ~~~ Tomek_ My mom did the same, except she called using Skype :) ------ zaidf While I'm sure Dropbox has their work cut out, you know they are onto something when you run into their flyers outside college dorms cross country in Chapel Hill, NC. ~~~ tom_b Hey, there are even old boring people walking around on campus who are users . . . heck, even in _Carrboro_ If it wasn't a HIPPA issue, we might be using Dropbox for more internal projects here Love, love, love dropbox. You undergrad at Sitterson? ~~~ zaidf Nah, just got my communications(!) degree and moved up to NYC :) ------ zandorg Today I was at a University small business lecture. Someone asked one of the entrepreneurs "What was your biggest mistake?". The guy said his laptop had been stolen, but luckily it was all auto-backed up onto Dropbox. A nice anecdote and good press! ------ jprobert I love dropbox and we use it personally and for our company (we are paid subscribers). But it seems to me that this space has fewer barriers to entry than say Groupon. People argue that Groupon has little barriers to entry but the fact is that it cost a lot to sell and get merchants on board. Dropbox is a very unique and helpful product but what will stop the competition from creating something similar and possibly better? ------ joeag Now is maybe the really scary time for Dropbox - here come the "me too's" including corporates who will say "Hey looks like people are starting to want this file storage and sharing thingy" - we can do that too and offer it to our own customers. Should be interesting. ~~~ DufusM Microsoft already tried their hand at it with Windows Live Mesh. Technically Apple's MobileMe is the same thing. The 'corporates' are already on it :) ------ didip Dropbox is awesome, I use it, I love it. I had the same thought as SwellJoe around early 2008: That's been done, it ain't gonna go anywhere big. Obviously failed prediction on my part. So the question is, what made Dropbox successful? There are plenty of players in this area (some of them are older than dropbox): box.net, mozy.com, Windows Live mesh, backblaze. Furthermore, techies can easily do backup to their own S3 account, but they love Dropbox. What's the success factors? YC? Being MIT graduates? The clever "Tell your friends and get more space for free" email? The market is just HUGE? I know that 1 of them is using Python. =) ------ orionlogic I like Dropbox but i use it less often. What i am waiting for is the same solution from Apple. Their cloud facility has been just finished and they will probably offer similar service not later than this year. It might not start as pure storage facility but will start by account and device activation from cloud, iphoto & music backup and then after figuring out how this cloud thing work will probably offer similar subscription fee based service. After all why they still didn't buy Dropbox? Probably they are working on it. ------ sunqiang There is a PyCon video about Dropbox: PyCon 2011: How Dropbox Did It and How Python Helped <http://pycon.blip.tv/file/4878722/> ------ bfe I'm glad the article pointed out the cartoon dinosaur riding a shark on the jobs page, even though they mistook it as not taking things seriously, instead of convincingly signalling, by the fact of its nature and presence (as an awesome and surprising drawing on a recruitment page that's subversive of conventional expectations for a potential employer), the claim made in the heading on that page, that Dropbox is a pretty sweet place to work. ------ ubercore We've been using it for our band, and it's been working great. A really useful tool that the non-techy members have had no trouble adopting. ------ RRiccio Dropbox it's certainly one of the most helpful startups for the average guy. I put into use at the last company I was working for (a non-tech company) and everyone got immediately hooked on Dropbox. It made their file-sharing much easier. So I honestly understand this article, even though for us it's been around for so long. ------ akent Any media outlet tempted to use a "you've never heard of" headline should seriously reconsider. Guaranteed to irritate everyone who HAS heard of it instantly. ~~~ whatusername I heard a radio report in NZ over summer about the kids these days using words like Cool and Wicked in ways that weren't their original meaning. Someone deserves a medal for epic trolling. (I don't know what the station was -- I was in a hire car and channel surfing and decided to listen to the news broadcast) ------ kylelibra This is why traditional / mainstream media is fighting a battle to remain relevant. ~~~ Vivtek This they call fighting? ~~~ Tomek_ Certainly better than their previous attempts: [http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon- february-28-2011/the-b...](http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon- february-28-2011/the-biggest-newser) ------ jpr Finally something I can be hipster about. ------ petervandijck Eh, "you've never heard of"? ~~~ Florin_Andrei It's CNN, it's for normal people. ~~~ petervandijck Ah normal people. Got it.

Ask HN: Living as a hacker in the bay area. - dvcat I will be moving to the bay area once I graduate in a few months. One of the big plus points for me to move to the bay area will be to try to interact and learn from a bunch of smart people by going to hacker dojos, user group meets and conferences (mainly in machine learning and other data related things). My day job will involve some travel (within the bay area) so I probably have to get a car. Keeping this in mind, can people comment on some good places where I should live, how much I can expect to pay each month in food, rent, utilities, insurance etc (I want to keep irrelevant expenses as low as possible just because I want to save some $$$ for a rainy day), things I should sign up for to get to know about hacker like events (apart from read HN)?<p>Thanks! ====== steventruong Rent has gone up significantly in the past year or two. Especially in the city (SF). If you're trying to keep expenses down, find as cheap as possible (while livable) studio or room up with roommates. Otherwise rent can be quite expensive if you never lived in this area. The best way you can see how much rent costs for the conditions of the places is to just browse through craigslist for a feel (it'll be better than any numbers I throw out here). San Francisco: <http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/> Peninsula which includes Silicon Valley: <http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/> Best places to live are San Francisco or Palo Alto. If you can't afford either, live in nearby cities. Mountain View is a great alternative to Palo Alto that is more affordable. Having said that, if you're willing to commute via public transit or by car, it matters less. Just be aware rush hour can be brutal between SF and the Valley. There are a TON of events both in the valley and in SF. For language specific events/meetups, most of the better ones are in the city i.e. python meetup, php meetup, etc... For hacker mixers and various other speaking events, those are more in the valley. There are usually some sort of event happening at Microsoft and Google as well that you can look out for including GTUG at Google. The best way I find events outside of people sending me links or what not is to join meetup groups via meetup.com, join the StartupDigest email list, join Plancast and follow people/friends, and browse Eventbrite. Once you're here, you'll be plugged into more private events and stuff as well, that aren't found in the above. Hope that helps. ------ murrain For housing, check out <http://www.padmapper.com>

Bringing improved PDF support to Google Chrome - jancona http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/bringing-improved-pdf-support-to-google.html ====== s3graham Oh sweetness. I was using this [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nnbmlagghjjcbdhg...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nnbmlagghjjcbdhgmkedmbmedengocbn) but the plugin seems better. Only problem is that now .doc/.ppt via extension is gone because I had to disable it to get plugin support. Need a rev of that extension to remove pdf support, and then we're saved! Update: hmm, miss regular context menu too. ~~~ e40 I disabled the extension, but pdf's just download... I have 6.0.437.1, which should be the dev channel version. Windows. Ideas? ~~~ rictic You also need to go to chrome://plugins and enable the experimental PDF plugin. ~~~ e40 Thanks! ------ mattchew This is fantastic news--mostly because of the sandboxing. Once burned, twice shy--I'm not allowing 3rd party plugins in my main browser any more. But I'm willing to trust Google to sandbox these features correctly. (Don't let me down, guys.) ------ singular Brilliant. The idea that loading a PDF won't cause a horrible browser freeze- up then require controls unrelated to the rest of the browsing experience is quite a lovely one. I wonder what impact this will have on scribd, at least the 'avoid pdf pain' side of their business? ~~~ sliverstorm > I wonder what impact this will have on scribd, at least the 'avoid pdf pain' > side of their business? There's a way to answer that. What is their userbase like, and do they run Chrome? If the primary browser is still IE (and it kind of seems to me like 'easing PDF pain' is incongruous with people who have total understanding and control of their interaction with the internet) then scribd will be safe for... how long did it IE6 last? Probably about that long. ~~~ singular True, true. Perhaps Google can use this as a selling point to ordinary users? Though of course a large number of these are going to be using computers at work which usually means IE[6-8]. ------ timdorr The one thing that I've _hated_ about Chrome is now fixed. I never have a reason to go back to Firefox now. See ya, Mozilla! ~~~ pavs There are plugins both in Chrome and FF where any PDF links automatically opens it up using google docs. Much more faster smoother than native PDF loading. I just tried out this new integrated PDF on Chrome Dev channel (6.0437.1), and as mentioned it doesn't have all the PDF features, it loads PDFs on the left hand corner, instead of center. Much much faster though. ~~~ btmorex My experience has been that downloading + opening pdfs with a decent pdf viewer is much faster than google docs. I personally use evince, but probably anything other than acrobat would work. ------ riobard The rendering quality is sub-standard compared to Safari on OS X at the moment, but I'm really excited there is another browser vendor trying to solve this problem! ------ InclinedPlane I like this so far. On a few experiments it rendered pdfs well, very fast, and didn't feel nearly as clunky as reading a pdf in the browser usually does. ------ devinus Looks like it's using at least libtiff and lcms from running `strings` on the plugin... ------ ramidarigaz Mmmm... Sounds really cool. Waiting on the Linux version. ------ sliverstorm I can't decide if Chrome is leading the way, or pulling ahead, but the gap is widening considerably. I, for one, welcome our small round red-yellow-green-blue overlords. ~~~ wyclif Chrome 5.0.375.70 on Ubuntu Lucid still leaks memory terribly, forcing me to kill processes (tabs). Anyone here with insight on this? ~~~ sliverstorm I have been running the dev build for a long time (6.0) and I leave it and some particular tabs open for days at a time, never had a problem. ~~~ sliverstorm I forgot to clarify, running the dev build on Ubuntu. I am using 10.04 right now.

The Systemd Project Forks the Linux Kernel - dezgeg http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20150330#community ====== hleszek Checking the calendar: not yet first april... ~~~ computer Looks like a weekly magazine, so this edition would cover April 1st. ------ sspiff This is not the real systemD repository. This is just some random guy on the internet who snagged the GitHub username "systemdaemon". Have a look here: [https://github.com/systemdaemon](https://github.com/systemdaemon) A profile created two weeks ago, with a single repository, 0 stars and 1 commit over its entire lifetime. This is a transparant hoax, and I don't understand how Distrowatch (and the HN community) has not seen through it yet... ~~~ 616c Thanks for shedding real data on the issue. I was skeptical myself. I checked out Poettering's Google+ profile and see no mention of this yet, and I was kind of surprised. ------ 616c I am kind of disappointed that there is some baity qualities to this article, specifically referencing how Linus chewed out a systemd developer. He did that, but I recall it not being directly related to his work on systemd and it negatively impacting the kernel. Kay Sievers is a well-known problem causer as Linus is concerned, so this is not news. Keep in mind if you find the mailing list thread referred to, Greg Hartmann (gregkh), the release maintainer of the Linux kernel, arguably part of the inner echelons, is responsible for the kdbus branch eventually getting merged into the mainline kernel, that is the kernel driver that will internalize dbus as a main (if not only) IPC of the kernel and reducing the overheard of using dbus now (reducing 12 operations per dbus call to 3 inside the kdbus driver, IIRC from Lennart's video). Again, this is the work of Lennart Poettering pulseaudio fame, and now much more heated systemd fame. So to pretend the Linux kernel is opposed systemd work is not truthful. Some core devs have taken it on and are staking themselves on it. If this gregkh tidbit does not make that obvious I do not know what does. Can someone who knows more comment on what the substantive changes are thus far? Is the kdbus work a prime motivator of this? I love systemd hate as much as the next guy, but I was hoping we would get more facts from the HN crowd. (EDIT: I know I will get downvoted, but I do use systemd and I am not its biggest fan; I just used Arch and got used to it; everyone has a right to choose their tools, and init systems ain't different.) ------ thaumaturgy Debian forums concludes it's a joke too: [http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=121167](http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=121167) _sigh_ Guess my news blackout period is gonna have to start extending from March 30 to April 2 now. Lame. ------ joosters They're planning on getting rid of NetworkManager, so they can't be _completely_ evil :-) ~~~ digi_owl Bah, sounds like a cure worse than the disease. ------ raverbashing Here's a group that can take criticism nicely... Let's feign surprise. Of course the kernel is GPL and forking is allowed, but I have yet to see such an idiotic case of tail wagging the dog. Maybe the guy that wanted to "prove" he's better at managing the Redis than Antirez is a strong contest ------ fsniper April fools or the real intension faces water at last? ~~~ networked >[...] According to Ivan Gotyaovich, one of the developers working on systemd[...] I'd say it's a prank but I don't think it's April 1st anywhere in the world yet. ~~~ digi_owl A quick search comes up blank on that name. ~~~ palmer_eldritch Just a quick note about that name "Ivan Gotyaovich": Got ya! -ovitch. It sounds much more like a prank than a real name. ~~~ slikts Yeah, there's no such surname as "Готяович"; it's made up. ------ simgidacav The fork won't last long I guess... ------ hias so they finally jumped the shark ;-)

Social experiment - single thoughts on programming that made an impact - RiderOfGiraffes With the indulgence of the regulars, I'd like to try an experiment. Recently, as a result of an item here, I read an article from which a single line has stuck. It wasn't the most profound, it wasn't the most amusing, it wasn't even necessarily the most valuable, but it's one that has immediately made me think differently, and will be with me a long time.<p>I'd like to create a collection of such things. I'm pretty sure things that affect you guys will be of varying value, but if we make a list and then let them float up and down as they get modded, maybe we'll get something interesting.<p>Replies are discouraged. These will not be universal truths, they will not be unarguable, but I suggest that this is not the place. Perhaps if you <i>really</i> disagree you can blog about it and submit a link. But perhaps not here - perhaps as a main item.<p>Worth a try? Who will play along? I'll start ... ====== RiderOfGiraffes You can't make your program run faster, you can only make it do less. ------ anamax Almost any problem can be solved by adding a level of indirection. Almost every program can be sped up by removing a level of indirection. ------ reddiar The hardest bugs are those where your mental model of the situation is just wrong, so you can't see the problem at all : B. Kernighan ------ bayareaguy The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer system are those that aren't there. -- Gordon Bell ------ anamax Someone reading/modifying a program is never as smart as the person who wrote it, even if they're the same person. ------ anamax If you don't know the tradeoffs that you're making, how do you know that you're making the right ones? ------ asimjalis Make it beautiful even if you are just hacking together a quick spike. ------ hboon Make it run, make it right, make it fast. In that order. ------ anamax All programming is an exercise in caching.

Show HN - SuggestMeLearn, My first web application - hhimanshu - After starting and quitting so many times, I finally decided to start small project and created SuggetMeLearn - This is my first ever attempt to a complete web application - The idea is to - let people suggest the way they learnt a particular language or technology - let people seeking to learn decide based on the suggestion to pick resources and start learning rather than browsing through infinite search results. - people can vote if they think they also believe that a particular suggestion is a great resource(and suggestions are sorted by votes) - All suggestions are welcome. - URL : http://suggestmelearn.appspot.com/ ====== tstegart Clickable link: <http://suggestmelearn.appspot.com/> Good luck! ------ nurik I love it! We are doing a similar thing here in Germany. Would you be interested in working together on the project? ~~~ hhimanshu Hi Nurik! Sure, let me know how can I help! ------ Kevindish Super cool, but miss a lot of data, maybe you should start by filling something out yourself.. :) ~~~ hhimanshu I will definitely add some more content. thank you ------ rcavezza Hey - one small bug I found, when I suggest a resource, i can upvote my own suggestion. You do allow only one upvote, though. Seems like the error is that the initial suggestion doesn't count as an upvote. This is a nice start. Are you testing any assumptions with this first version? Also, may also want to add something that auto finds urls and auto changes them to links. ~~~ hhimanshu Hey rcavezza, I fixed the bug that you found, now you can no longer upvote your own suggestion. Thank you for pointing that out I will look for auto url finder thing now Thanks again!

The Facebook of China - GBond http://www.fastcompany.com/node/1715041/print ====== smoody formatted version of the article with photos: [http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/152/the-socialist- networ...](http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/152/the-socialist- networks.html)

The ad tech renaissance - taylorbuley http://bokonads.com/the-ad-tech-renaissance/ ====== oxymoron I'll concede that the analysis isn't completely without merit, but having spent the last few years in ad tech, I sincerely hope that there won't be a revival. It's a race to the bottom. Publishers are struggling and are increasingly willing to accept ever more outrageous ad products. Advertisers are desperate for advertising that actually works, but will mostly only do what agencies tell them, and the agencies are only interested in maximizing their own margins. In the middle we've got any number of middle men scrambling for some pieces of the cake, sometimes but usually not providing some value, leaving the publishers with a pathetic fraction of the advertiser spend. So essentially we've got a whole bunch of companies with no growth desperately vying for the attention of 23-year old media buyers who in turn are mostly interested in getting someone to take them clothes shopping and picking up the bill. These companies are doing it mostly by doing ever more intrusive things, since advertisers can't accept that the reason their ads don't perform is that nobody wants their stuff and keeps looking for a silver bullet. I've come to believe that the only reasonable justification for most advertising is that it's in some sense a way for other industries to subsidize journalism. Since that's going away, I'm looking forward to the inevitable ad tech carnage ahead, and if a potential next wave actually brings higher quality advertising and better end user experiences I'll happily eat my shoes. ~~~ vosper All of this, plus the vast amounts of bot traffic that no one wants to look too closely at, because everyone except the advertiser is making money off of it... ~~~ ec109685 Bot traffic is accounted for in the price advertisers pay for ads. Advertisers don't run unprofitable ads. ~~~ simo7 Advertisers do run unprofitable ads and marketing campaigns all the times. And they are fine with that too. That's the case of VC-backed startups: they accept a negative ROI to get the chance to start making money one day. Then you have the less consciuous ones, which might be big brands who want to experiment a bit with new media/ad formats. In any case, if you think about it, the real losers are...the honest publishers. Because the money on the table is not increased by fraud, it's just shared in a way that takes something away from good publishers to bad/fake ones. ~~~ ec109685 I agree honest publishers are at a definite disadvantage. Advertisers aren't because the roi calculation they come up with judges their campaigns based on its performance, which incorporates good and bad clicks over time. ------ djur I don't see any mention of ad blockers. Are these seen as having a significant effect on the online advertising industry? Are there any serious proposals to deal with them other than continuing the ad-blocker-blocker-blocker... arms race? It seems that there's an increasing understanding among publishers that low- quality and intrusive ads encourage their visitors to use ad blockers or another site. Several relatively high-profile sites (like The New Yorker) have stopped using networks like Outbrain and Taboola. (Obnoxious ads from the latter, along with autoplaying video ads on numerous sites, resulted in me finally installing an ad blocker after resisting for years.) Adblock Plus offered a way forward with its "Acceptable Ads" program but it seems like that has been roundly rejected by both advertisers and blocker users. Maybe publishers and advertisers could work together to develop a stricter set of advertising guidelines that show respect for users? I suppose such a program is essentially doomed without cooperation from Google and Facebook, and I don't know if they'd be willing to work with the little fish (or each other). It seems like an intractable problem. I'm not convinced technology (machine learning! the solution to all problems!) is capable of providing the solution. ~~~ tomjen3 The problem is that most ads suck. Facebook knows more about me than I do, but they can't come up with ads for things I want. What possible chance does a random newspaper have? ~~~ pascalxus I completely agree. 99.99% of the ads I see on facebook are for things I don't want. They really need to get more AI and more information about the user for better targeting. They may have world class targeting, but it still sucks compared to advertisement that can read my mind (doesn't exist yet). ~~~ pdkl95 A common misconception is that targeting is about _your_ interests. An AI won't select ads for things you want. Instead, it will use all of that tracking data to select ads that are more effective at misleading you or _changing_ your interests. ~~~ tomjen3 What is easiest? Sell me things that I already want but don't know about, or changing my interests and then convince me to buy a particular product? Incidentally 5 years after moving into an apartment I still need a good curtain for the kitchen. If I see an ad for a place I can upload measurements and get the results sent to me I would be very happy to pay. ------ niftich _> The end of impressions and banners in favor of views and "publisher rendered" (aka native) creative_ Native advertising, which I'd re-phrase as 'sponsored content' or 'content placement', I can actually enjoy, if the sponsorship is made clear and the topic is genuinely relevant to the audience. After all, who better to tell what kinds of content readers want to see besides the publisher who puts it out there? But it _has_ to fit -- out-of-place content will be painfully obvious, and cause further user aversion for ads. But the thing is: all of this can be accomplished without ad networks that track your travels through the web. The client can engage the publisher directly or through a broker. Where does that leave today's adtech? ~~~ andygates That seems unduly optimistic. The content will be uploaded from the same old terrible content farms, and be the same old rubbish only with a heavier local server load. ------ soared Very interesting read, thanks OP! I've started using some platforms with integrated ml, and it seems to be much better. Its difficult to get used to starting a campaign, and instead of meticulously setting up targeting (males, $50k income, denver, into football and skiing, etc) the ml lets you just .. upload an ad and a web page. No targeting. Click GO and it will find your customers. If Google or facebook can get into this space they'll succeed greatly because they have so much data and users already trust them. ~~~ mars4rp can you please name those platforms ??? ~~~ soared I'm at an agency and have access to some closed betas, but I've been pretty impressed with StackAdapt for their native. They just added video and display I believe but I haven't used them. You do a little bit of manual targeting but their ml really does well. ~~~ fumar When you say "does well," what type of goal or kpi are referring to? ~~~ soared White paper downloads for elderly people. For some reason their interface underreports conversions though. But we've tied their traffic directly to purchases! One note though.. like some other channels you're buying a mixed bag. There is a lot of low quality traffic, but the diamonds in the rough do make up for it. ------ keldaris Since there's rarely any widely interpretable public data available, articles like this and many others are my best gauge for noting that even the Internet advertising industry itself recognizes that it's dying. This is very pleasant to observe. Personally, I can't remember the last ad I've seen while browsing. The combination of AdBlock Origin (with a very generous combination of various blocklists), Ghostery / Privacy Badger and NoScript effectively renders most adtech useless. The few remnants that refuse to be blocked I happily skip outright rather than enable. As far as I'm concerned, the only acceptable form of advertising consists of things like hardware companies supplying free samples to review sites without any preconditions and even there a slippery slope exists, as evidenced by the sad state of the games "journalism" industry, where corruption is endemic. And the best part is that, unlike many political and social issues, users really do have all the power here, and it's trivially easy to exercise it. Install a few trusted browser extensions and you've helped hasten the demise of a harmful parasite of an industry, and improved your own security at the same time. And nowadays it's easy to persuade even non-technical users to do this due to how disgusting and intrusive ads have become. ~~~ kirso Congratulations! You are in the 10% of people who have adblock :) Within the 600B advertising industry. You get the point right? Normal people think different. In addition, mobile is overtaking everything and adblocking there is more tricky, thats why Facebook is generating 80%+ of their revenues via mobile ads (fun fact, in 2010 it was 0%). You can ask your parents for instance whether they know how to limit ad tracking. ------ lcw I _feel_ like another piece missing from why these companies are "flat" year over year is the fact that they are running into a wall of what people will tolerate. I don't think that there will be a renaissance like the author concludes. As a guy who worked in ad tech these tricks have been exhaustively tried. I think right now the industry trend is to pay for premium content rather then be inundated with Ads especially when it comes to games, video and music. I imagine we will see this pattern continue especially with the mobile gaming industry figuring out the key to everyone's wallet: in app purchases. ------ manigandham This article is mostly bullshit. AppNexus is one of the major SSPs (sell-side platforms) but they still have major fraud and legacy tech issues. They are also one of the primary causes of miserable user experiences across the web. They will not be part of any adtech renaissance. Google won't flinch if margins really do go down to single-digit margins. They're already built for worse conditions than today and are just pacing the market, as seen with the whole header bidding scenario. They also have Google Cloud rapidly scaling and will likely be a bigger source of revenue than their entire ads division in a few years. Meanwhile AppNexus can barely survive on their current margins and will be out of business if it hits single-digits. The disintermediation mentioned in this article will also apply just as harshly to AppNexus. The lame insights about machine learning and formats aren't anything special. This is why Google and Facebook get all the money already, because they have a much faster, cleaner, more relevant, and more effective ad experiences. The renaissance is already here and it's getting increasingly harder to compete with these data behemoths. It's not impossible though and there are several niche focused ad startups, but there's no big sea change about to happen. This is all just business as usual. ------ awongh This is a space I wish I knew more about- but it seems like it has it's own sub-culture that to me, is hard to parse. Can someone tell me what some of the things are that he refers to in this article? \- dfp, dsp, ssp, gdn, dbm, adx, dcm, dfp Is there a good technical-minded rundown of all the players in the ecosystem and what they do? Internet ad industry information is impossible to google because it mostly turns up spam..... ~~~ wastedhours I've tried to find a long form piece on it (ideally a physical book as reference), but failed. DSP: Demand Side Platform, is the tool agencies and advertisers use to buy the ad spots automatically based on tracking profiles. SSP: Supply Side Platform, is the tool publishers use to sell their ad spots (publishers push an impression to an SSP, a DSP will evaluate it and an agency will buy an ad on it - Google is main SSP and DSP [I think?] so people are wary about them.) DFP: DoubleClick for Publishers perhaps, as in, ad tech for media sites to manage the display process (guess it could be called Google's SSP). DBM: DoubleClick Bid Manager, is Google's DSP ADX: guessing just an ad exchange, so a place advertisers and publishers do the deal. GDN: Google Display Network, posh AdSense where you can place your ads across 3rd party sites, not just the SERP. Then we get into the world of Header Bidding (which, as far as I understand it, is even more tech to bypass your usual SSP/DSP process to get the best deal from different ad exchanges) and that whole murky world... I've only been on the advertiser end, speccing a programmatic campaign through a specialist agency. It makes me nervy as our only marketing attribution is last touch and that rarely works with broad reach display. Retargeting is a much more valuable one to explore. If anyone would be interested in a guide, I can look to put one together with definitions and a few anecdotes from some players? Username @ gmail. ~~~ ssharp I think it's worth adding how DSPs and ADXs fit together. There are only a handful of ad exchanges out there -- Google ADX, OpenX, AppNexus, etc. Some brands and agencies are large enough to buy inventory directly through these but for most brands and agencies, it's too expensive and cumbersome to do so. This is where DSPs fit in. DSPs buy large batches of inventory from the ad exchanges and resell them to brands and agencies and try to add value where they can. ------ intrasight I've come to believe that this isn't a technology problem. It's a people problem - specifically a "publisher people are lazy" problem. That lazyness made them hand their value over to Google and Facebook, and now there's just no easy way to get it back. ------ cm2012 85% of new ad dollars are going to fb and google. Everyone else is fighting for scraps. ~~~ kirso Not actually true, these scraps are still worth billions => google AppLovin ------ petercooper I know it's not for everyone but I hope more publishers can work out a shift to a no-graphics-needed-to-render-this "advertisers<->publishers" approach. Are your readers the sort of people advertisers want to connect with? Great! Sell space and support to them. Or is your audience so diverse and ephemeral that advertisers don't care? Move into publishing stuff that's useful to an audience advertisers value, because when everyone else is slipping down the ladder, it's a great time to try climbing it. ------ na85 >The internet needs an ad tech renaissance, one based on creating real value for publishers and marketers, Could not disagree more. Advertising as a whole needs to die in ignominy. Obviously that'll never happen, but we should be working towards ways to make advertising obsolete or unprofitable, and we should be ostracizing people like the author who try to or want to make things better for advertisers. The promise of the internet was users as first-class citizens, not users as mindless consumers of hostile advertising. ~~~ SerLava Hostile advertising and advertising in general aren't the same thing. I'd be the first to point out that advertising has motivated a wide array of terrible things, especially in the last few years. But advertising at its barest sense can be and usually is a net positive force. ~~~ na85 >Hostile advertising and advertising in general aren't the same thing. Are you sure? ~~~ SerLava Good point. ------ monochromatic We don't need an ad tech renaissance. We need to burn it to the fucking ground. ~~~ HugoDaniel ^ this. ------ majewsky > The tracking tech renaissance FTFY ------ TheAdamist I don't know if it was due to manual ad reviewers being on holiday or what, but i was getting a bunch of ad hijacking or malvertisements over the weekend from legit websites. If even legit sites can't keep up with this then no wonder everyone is running ad blockers just to keep safe from legit sites. ------ dedalus really nice article detailing some nuances ~~~ dedalus really surprised by the downvote without any reason. so much for tolerance of opposite views. The author is an authority in adtech (CEO of App Nexus). I expressed an opinion of the piece (which you are free to disagree with and maybe the disagreement is downvoting??) ------ fieryeagle Very good read that highlighted the current state of the industry - G and FB reign as kings. I'd expect the fraud cycle to restart in gaming industry seeing that display and mobile are essentially saturated.

Ask HN: Best encrypted cloud storage option? - kotrunga What is the best option for storing my files in the cloud, completely encrypted and secure?<p>Not like Dropbox, or other services where a government entity could force the company in giving up someone&#x27;s files. Completely secure.<p>If rolling my own from home is the best option, any software recommendations?<p>Thanks! ====== nokcha I use Tarsnap for storing backups of my files. Data is encrypted client-side, so the server can't decrypt it. Tarsnap is designed for backups, though, not for general file storage. Some encrypted cloud storage offerings are mentioned here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16451396](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16451396) ------ mtmail I'm using [http://duplicity.nongnu.org/features.html](http://duplicity.nongnu.org/features.html) incremental backup with GnuPG encryption.

Show HN: Yet another Hacker News Reader for Android. - jamhed https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ncom.yahn Hopefully doesn&#x27;t suck. ====== lumelet Switching between article and comments and display of nested comments are great.

Is Artificial Intelligence Good? - Anon84 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2019/10/14/is-artificial-intelligence-good/#6073e28e6f70 ====== motivic Are nuclear bombs good? In the end it largely depends on how they are used.

How Google Deals With A Recession - nreece http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/how-google-deals-with-a-recession-goog ====== nostrademons I just tried the same query he has in the screenshot - no ads in the suggest box. Same with a bunch of other queries that I thought would likely come with ads.

Things a text editor must do - davweb http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/11/verity_stob_text_editor/ ====== bcoates Before you all get too angry about the scandalous lies about your favorite editor note that this is a Verity Stob column. If you're reading it for a sober, fair-minded review of the various tradeoffs involved in the very serious business of text editing, you're doing it wrong. ~~~ michael_h I'm not sure how someone can read past ...press Ctrl + Shift + L (if you are following along on your Mac, just press squiggle squoggle shift Home) and not pick up that this is _satire_ , or perhaps just plain humo(u)r. ~~~ yen223 It's so obviously satire - I mean, which Mac has a Home button amirite? ~~~ Samuel_Michon My Apple keyboard has a 'Home' key... [http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/...](http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/HT1216/Pasted%20Graphic.png) (And of course, all iOS devices have a 'Home' button.) ------ kaoD The article could've been titled "I hate emacs for no particular reason". It's probable more accurate. ------ jussij > It turns out that my brain was only fitted with 72 bytes of "finger memory"; > furthermore it turns out to be EPROM, not Flash. I need to wipe out all the > WordStar keystrokes from 1986 (Ctrl+Y to delete a line, anyone?) before I > can add any more, and I have lost the ultra-violet wiping-out gadget (ask > your dad) needed to achieve this. If he'd taken a look at the Zeus editor he would have found all the features mention (except the multi-cursor thing) and by selecting the WordStar key mapping, he wouldn't even have to erase the EPROM in his fingers. Jussi Jumppanen Author: Zeus ~~~ lotsofcows Verity Stob is a laaaadddddy. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verity_Stob> ~~~ jussij My apologies to Verity for the gender error. ------ jtheory I must say this isn't nearly as funny as much of the Verity Stob posts, but no problem. Mostly I was amazed to see that the _same_ horrible bug in Notepad++ that seriously bit me once (the text replacement buffer silently truncated... aargh!) is the one mentioned here. ~~~ JonnieCache It's hard to beat her history of computing, "8086 and all that" [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/22/verity_stob_8086_and...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/22/verity_stob_8086_and_all_that_revisited/) ------ Jgrubb I'm often taken a bit back by how bad text looks in screenshots of Windows whatever. I really wouldn't want to look at that all day. Just my preference... ~~~ swah It's ok - we feel the same about OSX font rendering. ------ NateDad I like Sublime, but I think it's criminal that it can't show line endings. That's right up there with syntax highlighting in my list of must-have features. How often do line endings screw you? Since I tend to work on a lot of cross platform stuff, for me, it's all the time. I pretty much keep Notepad++ around just so I can pop things into it to look at their line endings. ~~~ thezoid I'm pretty sure you can turn that on. Though I think it shows all whitespace characters unless he's changed some more recently. ------ Samuel_Michon _"Another giveaway [of Sublime's Mac influences]: Sublime comes with a set of colour schemes with names like Dawn, Expresso Libre, Monokai, Slush & Poppies and the Smell of Napalm in the Morning (I may have made one of those up). Contrast this with an equivalent list from a Windows product (in fact Delphi VCL skins): Carbon, Charcoal Dark Slate, Emerald Light Slate, Golden Graphite, Slate Classico and Dark Beige Slate Classico Carbon (I may have made one of those up)."_ To me, the second list comes off as more Mac themed. _Carbon_ is a set of Mac APIs, _Charcoal_ was the system font for Mac OS 8, and _Graphite_ was the nickname of the Power Mac G4. As for the first list, OS X has a desktop picture of poppies and Expresso[sic] could be Java inspired (like Cocoa, Gianduia, Espresso, Chocolat, Cappuccino, etc.) I doubt Apple would call anything 'Libre' in their English branding or documentation. ------ Ensorceled Well. At least he was pretty clear this was all his opinion. But that's a couple of minutes of my life I'd like to get back. I'm soOOooo glad I learned ed as my first editor which lead to a 30 year love affair with vi. Both of those editors sound painful to use. ~~~ swah OTOH Vimscript is painful to use compared to Python... ~~~ MatthewPhillips That's a feature, instead of customizing your text editor you spend your time coding the thing you originally wanted to code. ~~~ swah Heh, that's true. But most Vim users also want customization, as shown by bundles like <http://vim.spf13.com/>. ------ malux85 "No support for Object Pascal ... minus 1 million points" "How can I possibly use this as an IDE for theregister.co.uk backend systems when it doesn't support _object pascal_ " Get off my lawn! What smells like Mustard? The president is a demi-crat! ------ binarymax I will say TexPad is an amazing editor (as long as you don't need to do any unicode). Like verity I've been using it for many many years, and I have yet to find a replacement that I enjoy as much. When I switched to Linux, I tried to learn all kinds of emacs and vi, and never enjoyed them as much. LightTable seems like it will finally answer my prayers, however. ------ mattfieldy For an article that prefaces it's dialogue with a desire to "leave the right- thinking reader with an impression of calm, reasoned rationality", it reads like opinionated tosh. How the author arrived at these six criteria as a reasonable litmus test for the applicability and usefulness of a text editor absolutely boggles the mind. ~~~ alanctgardner2 Verity is usually satirical; at best he's overblown and ridiculous. I don't think the Reg's editorial staff expects you to take this as gospel, it's mostly for entertainment value. ------ jhawk28 Sublime Text 3 fixes most of the problems mentioned in the article. It starts up fast, handles large files better. Still no option to show newline characters. ------ oneeyedpigeon Sublime is generally great, but it desperately needs one fix before I'll ever really love it: make page up/down commutative. ------ martinced What an opinionated piece of crap TFA is. This kind of stuff is precisely why I stopped reading The Reg a long time ago. Seriously: _"4. The editor should contain no implementation of Lisp."_ Why do they do that? Because of course Emacs totally rocks in their last example, where you need to apply the same modification to various lines (in Emacs you'd probably use a macro repeating some search and replace using a quick Lisp substitution). How do you even want to talk with people who argue for their own limitation? Appeal to authority: I urge people to read _"Beating the average"_ from pg. ~~~ lotsofcows It's a joke! How is it possible, given the URL, that it's the Reg, the author's name, the layout and the content to miss that it's a joke? This particular line is a reference to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspuns_tenth_rule>

Letters and Symbols: How I designed the Keen IO logo - micahwolfe https://keen.io/blog/43496487388/letters-and-symbols-how-i-designed-the-keen-io-logo ====== alexdevkar The more I hear from designers, the more I realize how much more thought I should be putting into design choices. ~~~ mwetzler no kidding. The branding process was much longer than any of us expected (fellow Keen IO employee here). So much to think about, from Tshirts to favicon.

How Militaries Should Plan for AI - jonbaer https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/how-militaries-should-plan-for-ai ====== CitizenTekk We cannot stop technology, for as we know, we'll heading to a star "war"-ish era if that happen. One thing we must do is, if military will use it to betterment of humanrace and not extinction, then why not? The innovation of technology today also produce psychopats on our way.

Lincoln Assassination Eyewitness on 1956 Episode of I’ve Got a Secret - barredo http://laughingsquid.com/lincoln-assassination-eyewitness-on-1956-episode-of-ive-got-a-secret/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+laughingsquid+%28Laughing+Squid%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ====== JangoSteve This is amazing, I had never even connected the two points of data in such a way as to realize that someone alive when Lincoln was president would still be alive when TV is on the market. Aside from the intense tobacco ads (the big banner and the participation gift), I find it interesting that they were playing for the amount of $80. Accounting for inflation, that's around $650 in today's dollars. Meanwhile these days, game shows play for a top prize usually around $10k to $1mil per episode. I guess in 1956, TV itself was enough to keep people entertained and tuned in. I wonder if 50 years from now, they'll be playing for people's lives or something equally crazy to keep jaded video audiences tuned in. ~~~ burgerbrain Actually, there are still plenty of gameshows around where people play for (generally) sub-thousand dollar prizes. Cash Cab (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_Cab>) comes to mind. $50 payouts on that show are actually surprisingly common, although that is considered doing poorly. I suspect that the perception of the cash prize size is related to the perceived commitment the contestant has to put forward. So they are fairly large on shows the contestant has to go out of their way to be a part of, but low on shows where the contestant just happens to "stumble upon" the contest. ~~~ JangoSteve That's a very good point, and Cash Cab is sweet. Also, I was under the impression that the people guessing in that gameshow were celebrities. Are there any game-shows today that play for sub-thousand-dollar prizes with celebrities? ------ kbutler It's interesting to note links to historical events by very young observers. The last of the civil war widows passed away only a few years ago (2008). As young women, they married octogenarian civil war veterans - and continued receiving the widow's pension for decades... [http://www.radiodiaries.org/transcripts/OtherDocs/civilwar.h...](http://www.radiodiaries.org/transcripts/OtherDocs/civilwar.html) <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/16/national/16widow.html> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maudie_Hopkins> ------ xefer I'm reminded of this: "Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who had served on the bench into the nineteen-thirties, had in his long lifetime shaken hands with John Quincy Adams and also our new incumbent, John F. Kennedy." "Old Country" by Roger Angell. The New Yorker; September 11, 2006 [http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/09/11/060911ta_talk_an...](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/09/11/060911ta_talk_angell) ~~~ strait He lived long enough into the era where his speech or interview could have been filmed. I couldn't find anything on YouTube; perhaps he was too frail by the 1930's to be doing such things. I like finding these old film clips featuring performances from ancient legends. Thomas Edison (born 1847) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftii6D68Veo&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftii6D68Veo&feature=related) Sir Ian Hamilton (born 1853) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlRruY4WRjw> ------ siglesias I know this is what is referred to in Midnight in Paris as "Golden Age Thinking," but I can't fight the feeling when I see television programs and interviews in the 50s and 60s that the level of "popular" discourse was much higher then than it is now. That is, interviewees of all ages are much more well spoken, articulate, and informed. I can't imagine the panel of American Idol judges (much less the audience) being able to drill down so quickly to a historical event like that, or even care to take a serious crack at it. Am I off? Ex, a 60s era CBS documentary on rock--fair from and to both sides: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSq1ca__cRA> ~~~ neonscribe Did you notice the last word spoken by the host Garry Moore was "withal", meaning "nevertheless". Can you imagine a game show host using the word today? ~~~ jerf Yes. Or rather, the temporally-updated equivalent. Withal sounds erudite because _now_ it's dead, and a sign of sophistication to know the word at all. Much less so then, albeit perhaps not zero. The problem with some modern game shows isn't vocabulary. It isn't even necessarily spectacle _qua_ spectacle, because if they could have done it and afforded it in the 50s their shows would have been bigger, too. Humans haven't changed in the past 60 years. The problem with modern game shows is something more like they have more resources than they know what to do with, competing against ten other shows with the same "problem". I'm not convinced there's a good argument for modern people being more relatively degenerate than people of old... the set of which, I would remind you, _really does_ include actual, factual people who considered combat to the death fit entertainment. ------ hugh3 "But apart from that, Mr Seymour, how was the play?" ------ hook I think Matt Damon has a time machine. ~~~ hugh3 The Matt Damon looking guy is fifties game show fixture Bill Cullen: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cullen> and he looks less Matt Damonish in higher resolution. ~~~ pyre He looks more like Drew Carey at that resolution. ------ starpilot On a related note, the last surviving Civil War veteran (though he never saw combat) also died in 1956. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Woolson> ~~~ splat Interestingly, the last widow of a Civil War veteran died only three years ago. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maudie_Hopkins> ------ ck2 It's easy to forget the United States is "only" 235 years old. Columbus sailed over TWICE as long ago. Some countries would laugh at that <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10+oldest+countries> (added: _actually, wait a sec, Wolfram is very wrong, Portugal Italy and Spain all existed when Columbus first sailed_ ) Mechanical steam power, automobiles, airflight, television, computers and landing on the moon was all accomplished in that relatively tiny timeframe of US existence. ~~~ justincormack Italy did not exist then as a country. It was unified by Garibaldi in 1861. Portugal is older, Spain, depends how you count it, but it was Castile and Aragon until 1469, and Granada was reconquered in 1492... ------ scottyallen Wow, that's truly fascinating. Seeing that 5 minute clip gives me a much better feeling for how long ago Lincoln's death really was. Deeply understanding timelines was always my weakness when it came to history, which is part of why high school history was thoroughly boring to me. Now I can saw, when my parents were 5, they saw a really old guy on TV who was 5 when he saw Lincoln shot. A lot more digestible than 1865 or 146 years ago. ~~~ matt1 Hey, just a quick plug: I run a web app called Preceden [1], which specializes in creating multilayered timelines. You could easily use it to plot the significant events in your life and anyone else's to see how they overlap. Lots of teachers use it to solve the same problem you have had; visualizing time can be very difficult without the right tools. [1] <http://www.preceden.com> Edit: Just for fun, here's a timeline of the Civil War, Mr Seymour's life, the I've Got a Secret Episode, and today's date using Preceden: [http://preceden.com/timelines/15108-i-ve-got-a-secret--- linc...](http://preceden.com/timelines/15108-i-ve-got-a-secret---lincoln- assassination) ~~~ alanfalcon Very cool tool. But it appears that the "article appears on Hacker News" is cut off. ~~~ matt1 Thanks -- FYI you can scroll over by dragging the timeline around. Edit: Added a 25 year zoom level to the timelines, which makes this timeline (and I'm sure others) fit better. ------ cma If you are older than 23, you have been around for more than 10% of the US's history since the constitution was ratified. Pretty crazy to think about. The oldest living American has been around for more than 50% of it. ------ dabent The fact that I could see an eyewitness to that event was overshadowed by the huge cigarette ads. It reminds me of the current state of online ads, only it's huge banners for electronic cigarettes instead. ~~~ there i'm currently reading _the master switch_ (<http://amzn.to/qvgGrx>) which talks about how early radio and tv were forbidden to have commercials because they were supposed to be public services, but that programs could be sponsored like you see in the video. in early radio, companies weren't allowed to directly mention their products, so for example, gillette's first radio ad was a lecture on the history of beards. after seeing that video, i much prefer commercials to that style of sponsored programming. when a commercial comes on, you can get up and do something else, change the channel, or mute it. with sponsored programs, everything is so integrated that it makes it hard to ignore. ~~~ chollida1 Non minified and non link code to the above amazon link: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003F3PKTK/> ------ DanielBMarkham Wow, this is amazing. I can't help but want to ask him questions -- what was DC like during and after the war? How did Marylanders view the assassination (after all, Booth hid out in MD for most of his run.) Did the huge numbers of Union troops make a lasting impact on DC? Did his family know people on both sides of the war? Did he see any of the heroes from war later on in his life? Attend a speech they made or a book-signing? Did he see Grant on any of his famous carriage rides through the city? Know anybody who had personally spoken with any of the presidents? (Back then you could just show up at the WH and ask for an audience.) What did he think of the many civil war reunions and joint parades that previous fighters from both sides participated in? You know, there's a finite number of these questions, and they can be broken down into an ontology and recorded. You could even make such and information system interactive, and 3D. It's a shame we don't have startups that could record and organize this same type of information from present-day folks who witnessed history -- like those that saw the D-Day invasion, or the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. We are losing precious pieces of our past, and we have tech that could make a big difference here. We spend more time worrying about polygon counts on shooters and less time about capturing these incredible stories that are disappearing all around us. ~~~ matt1 Similar to this idea, Steven Spielberg established a foundation called the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to interview holocaust and warcrime survivors. According to their about page, they've done over 52,000 video testimonials so far. You can check it out on the University of Southern California's website here: <http://dornsife.usc.edu/vhi/> ------ tormentor Its amazing we actually got to see an eyewitness of something this historical on tv. The fact that tech had evolved this fast in this man's 96 years of life is amazing in itself. Just imagine going from a time where you didn't have electricity in your home to having a camera recording you. The cigarette ads are irrelevant.

LLVM’s garbage collection facilities and SBCL’s generational GC - lispm https://medium.com/@MartinCracauer/llvms-garbage-collection-facilities-and-sbcl-s-generational-gc-a13eedfb1b31 ====== pcwalton > I hope I explained why “one size fits all” does not really do it in garbage > collection. Great to see people acknowledge this. Garbage collection is full of tradeoffs; be skeptical of any claims to the contrary. I also like the way the author emphasizes the importance of inline bump allocation in the nursery. In the fast path, allocation of memory doesn't need to be any more than 5 or 6 instructions. This speed advantage is huge, and GC schemes that throw it away need to have a _very_ good reason for doing so. ~~~ maximilianburke > In the fast path, allocation of memory doesn't need to be any more than 5 or > 6 instructions. This speed advantage is huge, and GC schemes that throw it > away need to have a very good reason for doing so. I have some experience writing garbage collectors and with the situations I was targeting the handful of instructions quickly fades when multiple threads come into the equation. 1\. Using atomics for bumping the pointer had some luck but contended atomics on the platforms I was targeting meant that the low-instruction-count allocation was still slow. 2\. Using locks (futex-style) was slow, as expected. 3\. The best results I found for my use case (precise garbage collector for a runtime targeting video game consoles) resulted in per-thread nursery-type allocation arenas, selected by TLS, with no locks in the fast-path. This was slower than the ideal single-threaded fast path because of the TLS overhead. ~~~ pcwalton Yeah, the canonical solution for multithreaded GC is the third option (TLABs). The TLS overhead is annoying, but on some architectures you can get away with burning a register to save the TLS load. It might well be worth it on AArch64, with its 32 GPRs... (TLABs are the recommended solution for multithreaded malloc implementations like jemalloc and tcmalloc as well.) ~~~ cwzwarich AArch64 has a dedicated register (TPIDR_EL0) for TLS. ~~~ pcwalton Didn't know that, thanks! ------ eschew At least two of the article's statements about LLVM are false. In particular: 1) LLVM doesn't place any restrictions on how a language runtime allocates memory. 2) LLVM doesn't "expect" a stack map -- it provides infrastructure to compute them if the front end wants to, but the front end is completely free to ignore that infrastructure. ~~~ fao_ Are those corrections to the incorrect statements, or the incorrect statements themselves? It's not very clear, I'm sorry. ~~~ sinistersnare So I wouldnt say that LLVM places restrictions, but I will say a little of my experience doing LLVM + BoehmGC BoehmGC uses the stack for its root set (where it starts to find live memory). With LLVM, you dont ever need to explicitly use the stack, you can use registers for everything and make LLVM figure out if it should go on the stack or not. If you want to use Boehm with LLVM, you are forced to explicitly allocate everything on the stack, and not just on a register, so that Boehm is guaranteed to find the memory. So I wouldnt say restriction, but definitely you need to think about how LLVM operates with the GC and other runtime components of your language. ------ twoodfin I love the idea of a “liberal” GC that occasionally throws away bits of memory still in use in the name of raw performance for restartable tasks. ~~~ johncolanduoni How do you know when to restart the task? Or that your output isn’t the product of an out of range memory access? ~~~ eslaught You unmap the memory when you free it so that it causes a segfault if you access it, and then if a segfault occurs you know something went wrong. ~~~ littlestymaar > so that it causes a segfault if you access it No, this is UB. It can cause a segfault, but it can also allow _bad things_ ™ to happen. ~~~ barrkel Let's be clear on the difference between C and C++ undefined behaviour, and machine behaviour that GCs and runtimes can use for implementation. It is not unusual to rely on triggering a hardware exception in runtimes and GCs, up to and including segfaults. For example, a check for safepoint might be implemented by attempting to read a particular address. When the GC needs to stop the world, it could change the protection bits on the page that contains that address. This technique minimizes the amount of code in the safepoint test and doesn't require any branching logic. See e.g. [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46394575/safepoints- in-j...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46394575/safepoints-in-jvm) Another technique: a runtime can support dynamic growth of the stack by keeping an unmapped or protected page at the limit, and extending it when hit. This is how stacks work on Windows, and it relies on help from codegen: compilers targeting Windows need to generate code that performs a loop touching every page in its stack frame allocation one at a time in allocation order, if the stack frame is larger than the page size. See e.g. [https://geidav.wordpress.com/tag/stack- probing/](https://geidav.wordpress.com/tag/stack-probing/) ------ masklinn > Another example where you want to keep for-GC bookkeeping overhead in > mainline code low is if you can “GC-by-fork”, which is basically throwing > away processes as they would need to GC That's one of the common options in Erlang/Elixir: spawn a worker process for each task with a `min_heap_size` high enough that most workloads would not trigger a collection (the default is fairly low), let it die after it's handled the request. More complex/memory intensive tasks will fall through to normal GC-ing behaviour once they breach the `min_heap_size` limit. ------ Tarean > it is copying, however other passes that just punch holes into existing > cards (to wipe pointers that are not pointed to anymore without moving a lot > of memory) have and will be added I have a basic understanding about card tables and promotion but couldn't find anything about hole punching. Pretty sure I have heard the term before and was just as confused, could someone point me into the right direction for this? From context I'd guess that it means the gc doesn't copy unless x% of the block is unused? ~~~ cracauer I use the "punch holes" phrase in the following situation: \- GC is copying/compacting \- GC is at least slightly conservative \- allocation is fast/inline/increment-only \- that leaves you in a situation where you cannot move/compact some part of the heap You cannot move the possibly (conservatively) pointed to thing because you cannot adjust the pointer to it (because it might be a non-pointer thing such as an integer. Now you have some GC unit worth of space occupied by one unmovable object, otherwise it's empty space backed by physical pages. What do you do with the rest of the space? In a C/malloc scheme you are aware of such holes and fill them from new allocations. When you have a fast allocation scheme not involving complex code to find holes you will keep these "hole" as long as the conservative-pointer looking thing exists. You do wipe all the other pointerish things in that GC area, though, so that they don't hold down additional space. Still, now you "waste" a whole GC card worth of physical RAM on a single object, the tradeoff being that you do not want to move to an allocation scheme that spends time thinking about fragmentation. You could use the empty space in those GC cards as a target for the next moving GC, however that has drawbacks as you know continue to have to special- treat such regular objects co-located with possibly conservatively pointed to objects. If there is a better term than "punching holes" for this I would be interested. ETA: now that I think about it, you could give back all physical pages in that GC card that do not contain the held down object. This assumes that GC card size is more than one VM page. ------ cracauer (author here) Just wanted to say that I have seen the comments and will address them when I have a chance. My post turned out to be a lot more popular than I anticipated and I was busy yesterday and today. I wrote most of this in summer 2017, so given the popularity I will also provide a refresh with today's state of LLVM. Please keep corrections to my post coming, the time to determine and influence GC design restrictions in LLVM is now. Before a popular GCed language comes along and then tramples whatever its current GC happens to be into the status quo.

Android is Winning - speg http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/android-is-winning/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 ====== factorialboy Of course Android wins as a platform. Apple still makes good money for share- holders. Win-win?

Coco Color – A coloring stylus for kids - hughnjbell http://cococolor.com ====== psychogenic Not sure what I think of a tablet "coloring book" but the tech is intriguing... According to [https://cococolor.com/pages/instruction#best- results](https://cococolor.com/pages/instruction#best-results) it seems the apps just listen in on the mic and the stylus emits some sort of (ultra?) sound/sequence of audio pulses for each of the 4 buttons. Anyone know if that's correct? If so, I wonder what the frequency is... are all Android devices responsive to these sub/ultra sonics?

Music streaming platforms' audience sizes compared - marcadam http://www.ventureharbour.com/which-music-discovery-platform-has-the-most-effective-marketing/ ====== quahada Among the bleeding edge tech community, Deezer and Spotify are considered the poster children. It's interesting how big Pandora's following is, and how this will change over time as awareness for the newer services builds among the general population. It will also be interesting to see a trend comparison of pure internet radio platforms, like Pandora and Songza. ~~~ marcadam Yep - the thing about these numbers are that they're obviously based on _registered_ users, not active users. For example, which Spotify may have 33 million users, only 20 million of those are active. Pandora may have an impressive 150 million registered users, but I imagine the drop off rate of active users is relatively high given the increase in popularity of other services. ~~~ quahada yeah, and with these streaming services there's also free vs paid users. And Pandora is not profitable. I believe Pandora loses money with each user- hour, which means more users == more losses.

Dallas Siren Hack Done by Radio, Not Computer – Dallas Observer - lightlyused http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-siren-hack-done-by-radio-not-computer-9358087 ====== lightlyused "By hijacking the signal going into the transmitter, the hacker seemingly managed to trigger all of the sirens at once." This sentence doesn't make sense, more than likely they figured out the system needed to trigger the sirens and broadcast it to trigger them. Reminds me of the old days when all it would take to hack a radio stations remote broadcast or a drive-thru order was an opened up vhf/uhf ham radio.

Pakistan blocks YouTube website - muriithi http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7261727.stm ====== Electro Hmm, I'd have thought the recordings of webcam girls and clips of porno's and people talking about sex would have been the reason. Go figure, religion doesn't censor on the basis of morals or the logic descending from their morals, but on an abstract basis of insult.

Docker: Not Even a Linker - nkurz http://adamierymenko.com/docker-not-even-a-linker ====== btrask Fantastic article. We need more deconstruction of "fads" (which I don't mean in a pejorative sense) so that we can quickly understand them without sacrificing tens of thousands of man-hours slowly coming to terms with each one. It would be much better if we could reason about the exact differences and benefits instead of getting bogged down in new terminology, etc. More examples I've been thinking about: \- Goroutines (fibers are equivalent to threads, but coroutines are different) \- Safety and the unsafe keyword in Rust (not sure but the effective difference seems to be default-allow versus default-deny) ~~~ pjmlp Regarding those two examples, more than having explanations about them, it would help if people cared about IT history and it was more accessible. Coroutines are easily explained in Modula-2 literature. Safe keyword in Rust goes back at very least to Ada and Modula-2. Also in Oberon and its derivatives, Modula-3 (which inspired C#). The literature for those systems also has lots of examples. Being an old IT dog, that started when those technologies were new it is sometimes hard to me to see how new generations fail to find such information, even though it is available on the web. I guess the main cause is thatbone needs to know what to search for. ~~~ pjc50 Tech is strangely ahistorical. Not just practitioners not reading the literature, but it seemingly being forgotten entirely. Possibly this is a side effect of so many of us being self-taught. In another thread I've just been arguing with someone who thought that the DOOM code should have been thread-safe. ~~~ wslh I would say cyclical. Every day we read about a similar framework working in a popular language when that solution already existed for long time. But this happens in other areas outside computer science. For example, modern medicine rediscovering old medicine "recipes". The problem in our field is when people talk all day about Docker while surpressing LXC from the discussion. ~~~ digi_owl I think it happens for different reasons though. With medicine it boils down to a dismissal of folk remedies as placebo. But with computing its because the old ways were developed on mainframes and minicomputers in an environment that current generation may only have heard stories about. This because the micro-computer era was pretty much a mental reboot for computing, as little if any software crossed over (until fairly recently). ------ vezzy-fnord It's been said several times before that a large incentive for Docker's adoption was to get around the dynamic linking hell that is present in most modern Unix-likes. It's funny the author mentions a "world without linkers" with my posting of an article about the TAOS operating system today. Go look there if you want some primers on achieving that. That said, the author greatly oversells Docker's novelty. ~~~ Galanwe > "the dynamic linking hell that is present in most modern Unix-likes" WTF are you talking about... There has never been a "hell" of dynamic linking problems on Unixes, this used to be a Windows problem. Even the "most modern unix-likes" doesn't make sense, since "most modern unix-likes" do not even use similar linking models. ~~~ fapjacks We have dependency management built into the package managers which hides that from us these days. Unix and Linux before package managers was kind of a pain. Now, I will totally give you that it was nothing like the "DLL hell" of Windows. ~~~ reidrac Then how can be that an incentive for Docker's adoption? Honest question; if, as you say, this is a solved problem thanks to package managers. I can't even remember the last time I had a real dependency problem deploying an application (using Debian; and CentOS before that), other than myself not doing things right (read: installing RPMs I found online and I shouldn't install). ~~~ fapjacks Well I wasn't originally speaking wrt Docker, but Docker doesn't magically lose all the hard work done by package managers. You have total access to them in your containers. ------ amirouche > Had their developers known what they were actually writing, perhaps we'd > have a lean and mean solution that did the right thing. I am surprised nobody mentionned nix, nixos and guix. ~~~ pron Can you explain what those are and what they do? ~~~ davexunit Nix and Guix are purely functional package managers, meaning that software builds are treated like a mathematical function: Input the same source code + dependencies and receive the same build as output. They have features such as reproducibile (often bit identical) builds, transactional package upgrades and rollbacks, and unprivileged package management. They solve the dynamic linking problem by allowing each package to refer _precisely_ to the dependencies that it was built with. With this mechanism in place, it becomes very easy to use applications that require different versions of some C library, or a different Ruby/Python interpreter, or whatever else. Furthermore, it can do this without relying on a specific type of file system, and without requiring that applications be run inside containers or virtual machines. This makes it very composable and general-purpose. [https://nixos.org/](https://nixos.org/) [http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/](http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/) ------ riquito > Instead of building and filing away heaps of immutable (read: security > nightmare) containers [...] Is there a consensus on what is(are) the best method(s) to handle security patches automatically in Docker? For example, the official images at [https://registry.hub.docker.com/](https://registry.hub.docker.com/) are fixed in time and you should apply security patches before using them? ~~~ amouat The official images aren't fixed in time, assuming you're pulling using a tag e.g redis:3.0. That image may be updated at any point and should be updated with minor patches and security updates. Rather than manually apply patches, just pull the image again to get the updates. If the image hasn't been updated, complain loudly. If you want your image to be "fixed in time", pull by digest instead. ~~~ riquito Thank you very much ------ craneca0 Very interesting. I'm not convinced this captures the core value of containers though. Or at least not the only core value. Calling containers an evolution of configuration management tools seems like an oversimplification just to make a point. This may be one aspect of building a micro-service driven architecture that containers make easier, but there are other very important ones. Portability comes to mind. It's not just that you can build your stack once and save it, but that you can then run that stack anywhere, and it becomes much easier to share/borrow bits and pieces of other people's stacks. ~~~ falcolas > you can then run that stack anywhere Anywhere that runs Linux, at least. > it becomes much easier to share/borrow bits and pieces of other people's > stacks. At the cost of not knowing what's really in them. ~~~ andybak To a certain degree I don't _want_ to know what's in them. If I want to add search to my stack - initially I'd rather not have to have an intimate knowledge of Elastic Search, a task queue and whatever other moving parts there are. In many cases a black box that just works would be a fantastic option. The reason hosted services are popular is for exactly this reason. A wide understanding of different technologies is a wonderful thing but sometimes you just need to ship. ------ bgilroy26 For any 'Early coders' like my self who want to learn more about linkers and loaders based on this write up, Programming from the Ground Up by Jonathan Bartlett is a good book. ~~~ vezzy-fnord As well as Ian Lance Taylor's 20-part blog series on linkers: [https://lwn.net/Articles/276782/](https://lwn.net/Articles/276782/) ------ twblalock Shared libraries were considered a bad idea in Plan 9, and I really wish that point of view had made it into commercial Unix and Linux. ~~~ davexunit Shared libraries are a fantastic idea. Static linking wastes system resources and makes system-wide library updates problematic. Docker's approach to things is essentially a higher level form of static linking, which is to say that it's not a very good approach. It's papering over the package management problem. We need general-purpose package management systems that allow for different applications to use different versions of shared libraries without interference. Luckily, the Nix and GNU Guix projects solve this problem very well, if only they could get some more "mindshare." ~~~ e40 Yeah, having to rebuild every app that uses OpenSSL when a new advisory is issued... wow, that would be expensive! ~~~ adricnet Thousands of mobile app developers feel this pain now, from that particular library. Not updating these applications is not acceptable to most organizations / device operators. Just in case anyone thought the parent was sarcasm or theory, some refs: [http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/heartbleed-bug-apps- affe...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/heartbleed-bug-apps-affected- list/) [http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security- intelligence/b...](http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security- intelligence/bundled-openssl-library-also-makes-apps-and- android-411-vulnerable-to-heartbleed/) ------ berzemus What's with the light-grey-text-on-white-background styling ? It may look good, but it's a pain to read. ~~~ cthor It looking "prettier" is pretty arguable. The body text is as close to black as it is white. #444 is borderline acceptable. #888 is absurd. ------ kstenerud Sorry, no. I don't want a dynamic linker for my software stacks. I want a complete, ready-to-deploy chunk of code, FROZEN IN TIME, that has a known and predictable state that I can trust. If I need to apply security fixes, I'll rebuild the chunk of code, also frozen in time, and deploy. Ideally, I want no dependencies between container and host, or container and container. Or at least I want them kept to an absolute minimum. Even more ideally, I want isolation to be so complete that I'd be able to run my built stack 100 years from now and have it operate exactly the same as it does today. That's a bit hyperbolic, of course. Docker is not a linker; it is a system from which you build deployable code. In fact, there's no reason why in theory you couldn't add support to deploy Windows or BSD stacks (other than the fact that Windows and BSD kernels haven't been added yet). ------ BurritoAlPastor This is an interesting take, but it doesn't entirely make sense. Ierymenko's 'save your work' metaphor is a little misleading, since (I certainly hope) nobody is creating docker images manually. But I like his idea that dockerfile creation, by which you set up a stack in a way that's automatically reproducible, is equivalent to the role of a linker in a compiled program. Where he loses me is when he suggests that Puppet et al are closer to a 'pure' linker. Configuration management systems are doing the _same thing_ as a Dockerfile: instead of setting up your XYZ stack by hand, you write a Puppet manifest that calls the modules for XYZ and sets them up the way you need. Your final result isn't a server with the XYZ stack: it's an _abstracted process_ that will _reproduce_ your XYZ stack. The main difference is the implementation; Docker reproduces your stack in an isolated environment, and configuration management tools reproduce your stack on an arbitrary platform. But nobody thinks of Docker as a configuration management tool, and for the most part I don't think people even think of Docker as a _competitor_ to configuration management. Hell, Docker is a core component of many Puppet CI workflows. So there's something else going on here. What's the secret sauce? Is Docker just two great things (config management + virtualization) glued together so cohesively that it becomes greater than the sum of its parts? ------ d2xdy2 That's a very clever metaphor for that aspect of Docker. I hadn't considered looking at it that way before. ------ williamsharkey The author writes: "Sometimes (unless I am writing in Go) I don't want to bundle all my code together into one giant hulking binary." I am unfamiliar with Go - can someone please offer why this technique might especially desirable/feasible with Go? ~~~ agrover Go only supports static linking. No dynamic linking means no linking issues when deploying the same binary across a billion machines in the Googleplex. ------ glifchits Is "gerschnorvels" really a word in any language? ~~~ digi_owl My first though was that it was some sort of compound word. ------ leephillips According to this article, Docker is a way to save your work after configuring your server. Can't I do that with rsync -a /etc /whatever backupserver:/backups/server1 ? ~~~ fragmede First off, rsync -a / backupserver:/backups/server1 would be a better comparison; full server state never properly stays in /etc. Do you actually do that though? Multiple times a day? How easy is it to roll back to a previous state? Given Dockerfiles, a better comparison would be rsnapshot, since intermediate steps are important, and maybe that last "yum upgrade/apt-get update/whatever" broke something (on dev, of course) and you want to roll back. How do you compare two related file system images? Is there something more advanced than "diff -u"? How does that handle binaries? Will that map backwards and say what command resulted in changed binaries? Can I submit a code review for the changes between the two states like I could for a Dockerfile which is plain text? Docker isn't quite a configuration management system like Chef or Puppet, but there's a lot of overlap. ------ ForHackernews > perhaps some quantum superposition of those that has yielded a New Thing. Ugh. That's not what quantum superposition means.

Howard Schulz, CEO of Starbucks, joins Groupon's Board of Directors - mjfern http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/changes-to-the-groupon-board-of-directors/ ====== longarm It's more impressive when companies add people to their board who add a perspective other than the entrenched (dare I say evil) mindset of their competition. An example: Chipotle adding Bill Niman, an advocate against factory farming, fast food and cheap meat. A good move for Groupon would be to add someone who speaks for small businesses--the main Groupon customers-- instead of a major corporation.

Ask HN: Designing a Database - bgnm2000 I'm primarily a designer with a good amount of code experience (classes in school, messing around on my own etc.) I started to learn rails over the summer, and built one pretty messy app. That said, I'm gearing up to build my second app, this time around I've been thinking a lot about the database and how everything needs to connect etc. rather than doing it as I go.<p>So far I've drawn it on paper (looks like something out of MS Access) but I was wondering if there are any other recommended steps I should take before I start coding this all out (besides the usual flow charts etc.)?<p>Thanks!<p>-bgnm ====== tom_b Do you need your system to be transaction-oriented (think ATMs and banking) or analytic (for doing slice and dice reporting of data)? You'll do well to check out normalization for the first and understand star schemas for the second. It's awesome you are thinking about db design upfront, just think about what your data will be, how it will be used, and how you will want to move it around for your app. Don't discount not using a db at all (and I'm a db guy for work) - for one of my current projects, I'm simply dumping small data objects into individual JSON files. Easy to fetch with Ruby/Sinatra and easy for the GUI part of the app to play with (Javascript eats up JSON on that side). Not to discount Rails at all, but going with a minimal toolset like Ruby/Sinatra/Sequel might be just the ticket for you roll simple web apps really quickly. Heck, this forum uses flat files for storing submissions, comments, and user data. ~~~ bgnm2000 Thanks for the reply! I'd say the data is definitely going to be analytical - but some parts will be transaction oriented, if that makes sense (people will be able to pay for greater functionality). I don't think I know enough about flat file systems to code one up myself at this point either (not that I know enough about DB's - but enough to create something). Any good resources for understanding star schemas? ~~~ tom_b Sure, grab one of the data warehouse books from Kimball. Inmon is the other big data warehouse author out there, but I'm not as familiar with his texts. Kimball's stuff is an easy read and not platform focused in any way. If you are aiming to do business visualizations with the data, you might want to check out Stephen Few - he's written several books on business data visualization (think Tufte distilled for charts and dashboards). ------ fragmede Make sure you've read Wikipedia's article on normalizing databases. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization> ~~~ pbhjpbhj If you understand such gems as: _[For 3NF ensuring that] Every non-prime attribute is non-transitively dependent on every key of the table_ Then that's the perfect reminder article. I did an undergrad course in db design covering db normalisation (years ago) and still found that page to be a bit dense. I'd look elsewhere for a primer. <http://www.databaseprimer.com/normalization.html> is a bit too simplified but makes it easy to understand what's happening. This [http://www.databasejournal.com/sqletc/article.php/1428511/Da...](http://www.databasejournal.com/sqletc/article.php/1428511/Database- Normalization.htm) appears to be a good overview using a realistic worked example db.

It's complicated: Facebook's terrible 2018 - sahin-boydas https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2018/dec/24/facebook-2018-timeline-year-in-review-privacy-scandals ====== ethiclub Does anyone have any good devil's advocate information on Facebook? \- The company does not seem to have an appropriate ethics board (for the size of company). There is some mention of an 'ethics AI board' but no real governance over Ethical conduct and compliance. If there are internal review boards ([https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/17/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/17/facebook- ethics-but-is-it-ethical)), then it appears that they are thoroughly compromised, and not providing a level of accountability or serious thought that anyone will take seriously. \- There seems to be no intention or effort in achieving ISO standards (apart from a single ISO:27001 certification for FB Workplace, which was arguably to provide a 'feature' for the application rather than any ethical move). Granted, the value of standards and frameworks will always be in dispute, but these exist for a reason and are a neat 'package' that organizations use to ensure they are not reinventing the wheel and acknowledging a list of considerations. \- Facebook do not seem to maintain an ethics page. \- They do not seem to have an ethical voice - Nor do they appear to have anyone even pretending to have an ethical voice. PR from facebook (usually) manifests as 'We do what we do, and it's fine' rather than 'we will be introspective about this'. It seems strange that there isn't even any posturing here. \- The two types of FB employee that seem to voice insight on public forums are either a) discontent and being ignored by management or b) drinking the koolaid and refusing to admit that their practice is unethical. Ignoring Occam's razor for a moment - Surely there is something to cling on to here, to provide the principle of charity for Facebook. FB sure are making it hard for consumers to paint them in any reasonable light.

File System Hierarchy 3.0 RC1 Proposal - JustinGarrison http://www.linuxbase.org/betaspecs/fhs/fhs.html#usrshareArchitectureindependentData ====== grigio I'm still waiting `/Users` `/Applications`. Only Gobolinux has it

Name.com Responds to HTP Security Breach - Judson http://pastebin.com/We3xgT4J ====== 3JPLW Interesting that they don't talk about any action they have taken in response (beyond asking their customers to perform some action and implementing vague "security measures"). I would hope that they've identified and fixed the core security issue that HTP exploited.

How to get stuff done, automatically - acoleman616 http://www.alexpcoleman.com/productivity/get-stuff-done/?hn ====== digitalsushi I get a db error with the query string referrer [http://www.alexpcoleman.com/productivity/get-stuff- done/](http://www.alexpcoleman.com/productivity/get-stuff-done/) works for me ~~~ theg2 Looks like it went under and the sites down for me. ~~~ acoleman616 Always something fun and new with the server when on HN. Working on getting it back up now... ------ startupclarity I'm sure the irony of reading these sorts of blog posts isn't lost on you all. However, I do believe that some of these strategies and techniques can actually work. I even wrote about it on the post 'how to make time for your side-project'. The key is not _just_ to break things down and to create tiny, regular actions. It's also to _start_. Most of us like to talk and talk and not actually do anything at all. This procrastination and hyperbolic discounting means that we often go for the quick fix rather than the ongoing journey to success. Starting and overcoming our own psychology is often the hardest part. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_discounting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_discounting) [http://www.startupclarity.com/blog/make-time-side- project/](http://www.startupclarity.com/blog/make-time-side-project/) ~~~ bentcorner Personally, I've found that the process of breaking down a task and writing it down is incredibly useful. As I multitask throughout the day I forget where I am in a particular task item, and having a list of things I'm supposed to do all I need to do is go to the next list item and do that. I also try to have high-level items for the day so that I know what I'm focusing on. Anything that I need to do but can't do today I put on a list for the next day. It seems to be working out alright for me. I currently just throw it all into OneNote, although it's not the greatest for dealing with lists the way I use it, but the freeform writing surface and search it provides makes up for it. ~~~ read _I forget where I am in a particular task item_ Forgetting is my number one problem right now. I also noticed there's some kind of unconscious filtering going on in your mind. Even if you write down the tasks your mind prioritizes them on its own. What I wish list software had was a way to push those less important tasks in the background. ~~~ bentcorner Be religious about writing down what you're doing, make a habit of referring to this list when you find that you're bouncing around from task to task. Sometimes I'll hit HN if I'm waiting for something to finish, and if I was in the middle of something complex I've needed to write down what I was doing, even if it was only for _literally_ a minute. Also, when incrementally learning something it can help. Writing down in your own words how something works can help you if you only have small chunks of time to learn something. ~~~ read Thanks for this, I'll try it. I found writing down things I learned (or typing them in) makes them more likely to stick in my mind. Particularly small phrases that pop out. ------ socrates1998 I have always struggled with automating my life habits. It's not that I don't have goals, I have them in plenty. I have problems with the dehumanizing, machine-like feeling it puts on life. Doing the same thing everyday at the same time sounds horrible. I don't want to program myself. I want to live my life according to how I feel at the moment. But, as you can imagine, this has created problems. You don't keep jobs by living for the moment or doing what you feel like doing. I am not sure if I have a point, but I think there is more to life than becoming a programmable robot. Maybe balance is the key. Have good habits, but try to build some flexibility into them. ~~~ monkmartinez So you say that you want to live as you feel, but this also creates problems. Emotions are the problem. Better stated, lacking control of your emotions is the problem. You are in control of your thoughts and how you react to them. Knowing this and practicing control has been life changing for me. /r/stoicism, my friend. ------ owenversteeg Site's down with a 404 for all pages right now. Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LwUoGcd...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LwUoGcds- okJ:www.alexpcoleman.com/productivity/get-stuff- done/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us) ------ jqm Good article. Ben Franklin's schedule shot was interesting. 8-6 workday with a two hour lunch (so 8 hours of work). For some reason I always assumed people toiled very long hours back in those day. ~~~ bhousel Most people _did_ toil very long hours back then, but Franklin was one of the first to make the jump from common class into pseudo-nobility. Class mobility was a new thing back then. The idea of "work" was considered very uncool at the time, especially to upper class, or social climbers like Franklin who mixed with them. I heard somewhere that this is why old school scientific publications have names like "Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c." Because we're not _working_ , we're just _observing_. ~~~ josephjrobison A few counterpoints: "These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind."[1] But also: "Based on the amount of work performed — for example, crops raised per worker — Carr (1992) concludes that in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake region, “for at least six months of the year, an eight to ten-hour day of hard labor was necessary.” This does not account for other required tasks, which probably took about three hours per day. This workday was considerably longer than for English laborers, who at the time probably averaged closer to six hours of heavy labor each day."[2] [1] [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html) [2][http://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s- history/](http://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/) ------ elwell > If you only come away with one thing after reading this, let it be this: > focus on the process. Don’t focus on your output. That kind of flies in the face of the hacker mentality and lean startup methodology. The growing trend seems to be: _focus on creating value_ ; not how many hours you spent working today. And I must agree with the trend in this case. ------ philip1209 The author added a "?hn" to the URL to track referrals from here - I believe that this violates the HN ToS and should be removed by the mods. ~~~ rockdiesel why would a referral parameter even be needed in this case? can't a person just go into their analytics and look at all the referrals from news.ycombinator.com without the need for a parameter in the URL? ------ agueroooo Any ideas about the habits of the brilliant programmers of past and present? e.g. Trovalds, Sysoev etc etc? ~~~ derekp7 There's been posts about daily habits of other accomplished persons (not necessarily programmers), and the conclusion from that discussion was that although these techniques work for them, they would not really apply in general. For example, some would have a glass of wine before starting work on a project, whereas that would put me to sleep. Some athletes eat a big steak dinner before a game, while with others it would hamper their performance. My take on it, is that people that are good at what they do are good because they are good, not because of any rituals.

Lazy Loading in Java - twotriangles http://mlapadula.com/blog/2011/08/28/lazy-initialization-in-java.html ====== sidcool Getting 404 ~~~ chromejs10 same

12 things I learned from pitching VCs this past week - scrollinondubs http://www.scrollinondubs.com/2007/12/12/lessons-from-vc-pitches/ ====== dhouston good stuff. sam altman told us the most important thing for him was to remember #8 -- they need you as much as you need them. they _want_ to believe that you're the next google; think of how much it would make their lives easier if you were, and think of how hard it would be to spend your life saying no 90+% of the time and telling people their babies are ugly. they want to say yes. i'd also say spend a lot of time coming up with a story and framing your opportunity in the biggest possible way. this was something i really underestimated -- initially we'd just show a list of features and expect everyone to arrive at the vision we had in our heads, but really it's the other way around -- the features drive a more important story and vision. a story is also a lot easier for an investor to retell and get other people excited about than a laundry list of "um, it does this, and this, and this..." remember, VCs have to then turn around and sell their own general partnership on the idea, so give them the ammo they need to do this effectively. also -- practice your pitch until it becomes mechanical. not so much by standing in front of a mirror (though that helps too) but rather by debugging it with individual angels or mentors, so that by the time you pitch the investors you really want you've already seen most of the universe of possible objections and surprises and can handle them effectively. ~~~ scrollinondubs dhouston- good call on having a big story. The VC's could literally care less about the features of your product, they want to know how it's going to be thing that will be a common-place word in 4 yrs and you have to paint that picture vividly for them. I would disagree on the pitching in front of a mirror thing. And actually i should add this as #14- I recommend that you _don't_ have a scripted pitch. Have a deck of slides that serves as a framework for the conversation but just talk about it naturally. If you truly believe in it, this should become second nature and they'll smell the candidness whereas a scripted pitch comes off as brittle and less engaging. You want it to be anything but mechanical IMHO. sean ~~~ aswanson The pimped out mouse gives you instant cred, scrollin. ------ brlewis Much of this article seems like good advice about pitching in general, not only to investors. I like it. ------ jsjenkins168 Valuable lessons, thanks for sharing them! You mention in #4 that a quality referral is critical. Do you mind sharing your experiences meeting/using a referral to get face time with VCs? ~~~ scrollinondubs sure, in generic terms. Our lawyer was instrumental in getting 3 - we splurged a bit and hired a very reputable firm in Palo Alto that is well-connected. We paid more than we would have liked for the legal work a year ago but it's paying dividends now in terms of introductions. The other intros came from just random networking. We live in AZ but I drove my truck up to SF and couch surfed the past month just going to events, shaking hands and meeting people. I had a list of people I know through various user group involvement and presence on listserv's so i contacted them and tried to have a different lunch lined up everyday. I used Meetup, Upcoming and googled "Bay Area User Groups" and tried to lineup a different event every night. I actively used Facebook and my blog to solicit intros and tell people what I was doing, switching my network to Silicon Valley temporarily and finding events via that. I met great contacts at the Startup Weekend that was held in SF. And the whole time I was writing a series of posts on my trip essentially live-blogging it to meet more contacts. You can read those here if you're interested-> <http://www.scrollinondubs.com/tags/sfroadtrip> There is no "typical intro" to describe - they happened in the most unpredictable/serendipitous ways, but having the conversation-starter of "so I drove here from Phoenix and have been sleeping on friends couches so i can be in the mix for our startup" was a powerful lead-in to be able to talk with people and get them to listen. I know PG is a big fan of the idea you should really be in the Bay Area to give your startup the best chance of success. We have our company in AZ right now and moving wasn't an option so this was the next best thing we figured we could do. Definitely very happy with the choice. sean ------ davidw > one meeting that ran 30min over- the VC was deferring calls from his wife > who was waiting for him in the parking lot Nice guy:-/ ~~~ mrtron The wifey can complain when she is driving her new Bentley. Sometimes business has to come before pleasure, I know my lady would wait in the parking lot for 3 days if she knew it was important. But if I was a VC, I would give everyone X amount of time, but have a plan B to talk all day if things went well. ~~~ davidw It would have cost him nothing (and he's the one with the money, in any case) to say "hey, I'm running late, it's important, it'll be a while longer" rather than simply not answering, as the article seems to say. ~~~ downer Ah, but interrupting business for personal _looks bad_ ; and the thing about (possibly most) women is they _want_ you to have something that's more important than them. If you drop everything for them they won't respect you. So he did the right thing from both perspectives. Which is probably why he's rich and has a (presumably) hot wife. (I know that sounds politically incorrect, but alas, reality often is. To be fair, it probably works both ways: a man won't respect a woman who drops everything for _him_ , either.) ~~~ davidw I have a hot Italian wife, and would never leave her stewing like that. It's not about dropping everything for the other person - I don't think anyone can expect that. It's about picking up the phone and saying "sorry, got to keep you waiting, it's important". Communicating and managing expectations. It's a pretty minor quibble, I guess, but it just struck me as something rude. ~~~ scrollinondubs guys, lemme clarify this- when i said "deferring calls from his wife," he was politely saying "honey, gimme 15 more min" because he was so into it. It really wasn't rude at all and perhaps I should have better explained it or left that out altogether. sean ------ edw519 On a subject overflowing with "advice", this seems like a particularly helpful post. I especially like the running theme of "putting yourself into their shoes". Great stuff! Thank you.

Show HN: Bon – programming language designed for simplicity, performance, safety - FBMachine https://github.com/FBMachine/bon ====== ngcc_hk Have a quick look. Quite easy to read. Just not sure does it have an advantage over swift which seems quite easy to read, cross 2 platform at least (linux and macOS, the windows seems not on equal footing and five code not working), target llvm. The basic features of a new language is hard as you can see the posting what expected. Macro (may not be lisp level but template), memory Managrment, purpose (embedded, os, driver and application, ai library, CUDA, mobile app etc.), library, platform, examples and q&a under stackoverflow etc. ... wonder what is the point of learning a new one. ------ ubertaco This is really neat! I'm a big fan of Crystal-lang, and I dig the similarity in the sense of "let's start with Ruby-like syntax, and add more static structure". I can see the difference here as being that Bon appears to _behave_ more like Haskell or OCaml rather than like Ruby, which means that there's still a good niche here. I hope this neat language finds success! ~~~ FBMachine Thanks, I really appreciate it! ------ chrislopez How is memory managed? I'm assuming some form of garbage collection. So this can be used in any instance C or C++ can? Can it use C and C++ libraries because it runs on clang? Sorry if these are n00b questions. Bon seems like it could be a nice mix of the wonderful syntax of a python or ruby, and the speed of a C or C++ (or at least a compiled language) ~~~ FBMachine Hi Chris, thanks for checking it out. The first code push for Bon was today, so many things are of course rough around the edges. Memory will be garbage collected, though I am aiming for zero-cost as much as possible. At the moment it just leaks memory like a sieve as I work out the semantics. You can indeed import standard c library calls by using a cdef. You can find examples in the stdlib, e.g.: cdef sqrt(x:float) -> float Thanks again for taking a look! ~~~ bendmorris What is "zero-cost" garbage collection? ~~~ swiftcoder I've seen both Rust's lifetimes/borrow-checker and Objective-C/Swift's automatic reference counting described as "zero cost" (since the bulk of the work is done at compile time). ~~~ m0th87 Rust's borrow checker is zero-cost because it's not doing runtime analysis. But it's not a garbage collector, unless you're using Steve Klabnik's "static garbage collector" terminology [1]. Reference counting is definitely not zero cost. It reduces GC runtime latency for most workloads, but not to zero, and it does so at the cost of reduced bandwidth. 1: [https://words.steveklabnik.com/borrow-checking-escape- analys...](https://words.steveklabnik.com/borrow-checking-escape-analysis-and- the-generational-hypothesis) ------ CJefferson Simplicity, performance and safety? That's everything! What's it bad at? ~~~ orthoxerox Having an stdlib, having a dependency manager and overall stability. ~~~ giancarlostoro Yeah Rust and Go (and D) all have: decent standard libraries (Go exceeds the other two, somewhat resembling Python), a package manager of sorts (Go needsa improve in this aspect, but the strong standard library makes up for it for now, and they are working on it atm), and they're all usually stable. I think the biggest game changers for any new language is a highly competitive standard library out of the box: web server of sorts that can somewhat scale out of the box is usually a must, but at least a simple enough one is ok too, file IO, crypto, etc are also useful, the less code I have to write the more productive I feel. Package management is a must too, even if primitive at first (Go's approach is clean and decentralized to some degree, I love that). ------ charlesetc It seems a bit premature to claim high performance without having a story for memory. I'm sure ocaml, swift, and basically all languages that do any type of runtime garbage collection would be significantly faster without it. ~~~ bunderbunder It's complicated. The best runtime GC nowadays tends to take on some of the performance characteristics of a stack, including that finding a new memory slot is O(1). Heap allocation in many non-GC languages, by contrast, ends up involving some sort of relatively gross search for free memory. The same mechanisms also mean that, if you aren't doing anything in particular to manage your memory layout, the GC language is likely to achieve better locality of reference at run time. This isn't to say that better performance isn't achievable in languages with manual memory management, but doing so often requires a special effort that just isn't going to happen most the time, for reasons of practicality. That said, there are certain classes of program where the story is different: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Language_Benchmar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Language_Benchmarks_Game#Benchmark_programs) ~~~ zokier I think the point was that you can make memory allocation _very fast_ if you do not care about ever freeing memory, but obviously that is not exactly sustainable strategy. So that is why making claims about performance before figuring out memory management story is bit premature. ------ Q6T46nT668w6i3m Is this an extension of Kaleidoscope (the language implemented in the LLVM tutorial)? ~~~ FBMachine I wouldn't call it an extension, but I did use the tutorial to quickly prototype from. There are still some remnants left in the code, but I don't expect much if any to be left in the near future. ------ zestyping I'm curious about scoping. How come `main` in the typeclass.bon example gets to call `norm()` unqualified? Do all the functions in all `impl` definitions just get tossed in one global namespace? If `Norm` is a class, then why are there no `Norm` objects? ~~~ perfunctory This seems to be straight from Haskell. `class` here doesn't mean what it means in oop languages. ~~~ FBMachine Yeah, 'class' in Bon defines a typeclass. While I plan on adding x.norm() as syntactic sugar for norm(x), typeclasses in general are a bit more flexible. For example, while you can use it for polymorphic operator overloading [0], you can also overload a function by changing the types of multiple parameters [1] (as in multiple dispatch). [0] [https://github.com/FBMachine/bon/blob/master/examples/equali...](https://github.com/FBMachine/bon/blob/master/examples/equality.bon) [1] [https://github.com/FBMachine/bon/blob/master/examples/multip...](https://github.com/FBMachine/bon/blob/master/examples/multiple_dispatch.bon) ~~~ bausshf You should look into UFCS from dlang, maybe that can give you some inspiration. [https://dlang.org/spec/function.html#pseudo- member](https://dlang.org/spec/function.html#pseudo-member) ------ FBMachine For those who had questions about how memory is to be managed, the documentation for that work is being tracked here: [https://github.com/FBMachine/bon/blob/auto_mem/docs/ch02-01-...](https://github.com/FBMachine/bon/blob/auto_mem/docs/ch02-01-memory.md) Thanks for all of the feedback! ------ RivieraKid I would love if there was a language combining the strengths of Julia and Swift. Swift has: much nicer handling of optional values, static typing, better for OOP, function calls via dot notation, zero-based indexing. Julia has: better ecosystem for scientific computing, the standard library makes lot of things easier, better REPL, working with arrays is easier. (Just from the top of my head, there are other things.) ------ tropo This is a terrible name conflict. Bon, along with New B, was an immediate ancestor to C. The history gets more confusing with another Bon showing up half a century later. Bon was created for Multics by Ken Thompson. His wife Bonnie, like this other person's mother, was the inspiration for the name. Ken Thompson has naming priority. ~~~ chrislopez Ken Thompson is a person, plain and simple. He is not a god. Naming priority doesn't matter when most programmers haven't heard of old Bon. No one is going to think that new Bon is old Bon if no one knows about old Bon. Maybe there will confusion looking at the history if new Bon takes off, but when is there not in computer science? A simple footnote could suffice to avoid confusion. ------ rurban I esp. like the multiple dispatch and the unifying typesystem. I'll definitely steal something from it ------ IshKebab Looks nicely designed, but are lists really implemented as linked lists? That's surely going to be very slow. ~~~ FBMachine Thanks for checking it out. They are currently implemented similarly to OCaml, so yes they are linked lists. This was purely for simplicity (they can be implemented in a couple of lines of code with algebraic data types). Simplicity of implementation is certainly not my priority, just a short term drive, so it will be revisited in the near future. Thanks! ------ chrislopez Looks interesting! I'll give it a spin.

The State of JavaScript on Android Is Poor - megaman821 https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-state-of-javascript-on-android-in-2015-is-poor/33889 ====== voltagex_ > It just means over time you'll lose Android users as they get fed up with > the huge speed disparity (if they care, or notice) but you'll retain and > grow iOS users. > If Apple's overall market share keeps increasing, this wouldn't necessarily > be a bad strategy. Not my favorite, and not really in harmony with the > original vision for Discourse, but I'm limited in what we can do with the > resources that we have. We can't build two distinct applications (web, for > iOS, and native, for Android) without destroying the company in the process. >It could also be that over a long time scale (e.g. five years out) Android will fix this. But it clearly will not be fixed in a year or two. Sigh. I wonder if Android M has been benched. ------ voltagex_ See also [https://code.google.com/p/v8/issues/detail?id=2935](https://code.google.com/p/v8/issues/detail?id=2935) ------ macrael The State of JavaScript on Android Is Poor ... we need to start considering alternatives for the Discourse project. Really buried the lede there.

Americans Are Receiving Unordered Parcels from E-Criminals - monsieurpng https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/27/americans-are-receiving-unordered-parcels-from-chinese-e-criminals-and-cant-do-anything-about-it/#4399dca873da ====== fapjacks I had an interesting experience recently. I ordered a cheap $20 multimeter from Amazon (which was highly rated on EEVblog), which was shipped from China. Interestingly, the Chinese seller shipped me a single little worthless plastic packet of heat-shrink remote control covers (which somewhat humorously I can imagine totally being a thing in Asia, heat-shrink-wrapping all the remotes in plastic, sort of like a couch in plastic). This was what the tracking number package was for, and so I _immediately_ hit my bookmark to chat with an Amazon rep to report fraud. I went through all the motions, they refunded me the amount, I left a negative review. But then that night, I got an email from the seller saying "That was your free gift, the multimeter should be there soon" and indeed, the actual multimeter showed up _the next day_ , albeit with another tracking number. The multimeter was definitely shipped from China the same as the garbage package (via epacket, the subsidized, dirt cheap, glacially slow shipping method), so the seller had to have shipped the stupid garbage package at around the same time as the actual product I ordered. Other reviews mentioned the exact same thing ("They sent me garbage, but I got the thing in another package"). I've spent time thinking about what kind of fraud they're committing, because it doesn't make sense to me why they would send the garbage package with the tracking number from my order -- which _screams_ fraud -- but then _also_ send me the _actual_ thing I ordered. They're sending two packages to the same address, but it doesn't make sense why, since they're obviously not committing the most straightforward kind of fraud ("We shipped the item, you can see the tracking number", which incidentally, only works on eBay and not Amazon). ~~~ ggm Well.. this story directly provides an answer (potentially) -they get an additional marginal ranking benefit inside some market appraisal score because they double their international successful completion count, for low marginal cost of posting negligible weight content to you successfully. The benefit to them is fraud, but not against you: its against the ranking engine inside some digital marketplace like alibaba. You are an unrelated third party who validates (by accepting) delivery. Since you don't know if the package is shrinkwrap "free gift" or the $20 meter, you accept. Are you willing to monty- hall reject the random package :-) ~~~ pyoung So if I understand this right, they are creating a fake account on some other site (aliexpress, etc...) with his address attached. And then they ship the 'gift' from the Amazon tracking number, so that he is more likely to accept that package, and then ship the multimeter from the fake account tracking number, allowing them to leave themselves a positive review on that site. I always suspected something was going on with the aliexpress ratings. If you look at the reviews it is a lot of one liners like 'i got the item as described!' with a 5 star rating. ~~~ leggomylibro This is the most convoluted thing I've had to think through in awhile. Jeez. Honestly, I mostly ignore reviews on Chinese listing sites unless they're low. It's all about two things: 1\. Is the price in line with other listings? From both directions? 2\. How many people have ordered it in the past 90 days? Sometimes that does mean taking a risk with specialty items, or foregoing them. But hey, if it's a critical application I'm not going to source it from sketchy international cheap-o listings. ------ drawkbox I wonder why we have the USPS Chinese subsidy? [1] Seems this makes the shipping fraud too easy as it is low cost. _It was a small epacket -- a special subsidized shipping option that the USPS offers Chinese merchants, effectively enabling them to ship a parcel from China to the U.S. for less than it costs to send that same parcel domestically_ _Due to the unbalanced pricing policies of the United Postal Union and subsidies from the U.S. Postal Service, it costs people in China virtually nothing to ship small packages to the U.S._ [1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how- the-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how-the-usps- epacket-gives-postal-subsidies-to-chinese-e-commerce-merchants-to-ship-to-the- usa-cheap/) ~~~ pravda I think a better solution would be to lower the outrageous prices charged by the USPS to us. If you want to send a 1oz 'package' to, for example, France, it will cost $13.50. It used to cost closer to $3.40, and then they doubled it overnight to $7, and now it is freakishly high. Why is this? Because the USPS has a monopoly and is allowed to rob us! ~~~ Scoundreller It a nutshell, that's why I've stopped buying American* and just wait patiently for the 4-week free shipping from China. *I'm Canadian. ~~~ pravda As an American, I can't blame you. I have noticed that the Chinese shipping is getting quicker. I ordered two of these [1] from China on the 7th. Showed up on the 28th. Only 3 weeks! ($1.32 for two, shipped) If I wanted to send one to Canada, it would cost $2.29 for postage (because is it a 'flat', so it is cheaper. If it was bulkier, it would cost $9.50). [1] [https://github.com/jdesbonnet/RCWL-0516](https://github.com/jdesbonnet/RCWL-0516) ~~~ xellisx I've had stuff actually show up in a week from China (Actually my 3D printer - FLSun Cube was one of those items). Of course, I've been having stuff show up in about 4-6 weeks as of late. ------ WalterBright It's the free shipping subsidy that's the underlying cause. It's the same reason we all receive enormous amounts of email spam (for me it's a couple hundred per day) - the cost of sending email is zero. I bet the email spam problem could be solved at a stroke if senders were charged $.01 per email. ~~~ AckSyn No. It would be solved if people could run a whitelist that was directly tied to your address book, and any address you sent email TO would automatically be added to this address book/whitelist. I wish mail could operate on a similar method ~~~ WalterBright Thunderbird mail does that. ------ tgsovlerkhgsel Title makes it sound like people are getting shipped drugs and at risk of getting into trouble, not basically empty envelopes. ~~~ minxomat The mention of empty boxes reminds me of _One Point O_ (2004)... ------ theossuary I find it funny the article implies this only happens across international borders, and would otherwise be policed and stopped if it only happened within the US. I receive unwanted junk mail daily and it isn't even addressed to me, but to 'Current Resident'. The real solution is to allow residents to whitelist or blacklist mail. Or better yet tie mail to people and organizations, not places, and allow people to route whatever mail wherever they want. ~~~ evincarofautumn I don’t know if this’d work at all, but I’ve idly considered the possibility of starting a grassroots “return to sender” campaign for junk mail. As it is, the postal service is paid to deliver all of that spam—but maybe it would no longer be cost-effective if everyone just said “nope, send it back” whenever possible. As it is, I just recycle all of it, but it still probably represents a sizable environmental impact in terms of materials, printing, delivery, recycling, and landfills, which we could entirely do away with. ~~~ oasisbob When I was in college I would do this with all the credit card offers received, or anything else I found offensive, if it had a return envelope. All the paper they sent would go back in the return envelope, along with a handful of pennies, and maybe a guitar string or two taped across the top flap. I'm sure most of them cost several dollars in postage to get back. ------ dchichkov Interesting. As per Washington Post in 2014 USPS was losing about $1 per every package shipped as ePacket from China. These spam shipments effectively are harming USPS. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/the- postal-service-is-losing-millions-a-year-to-help-you-buy-cheap-stuff-from- china/?utm_term=.b5be91c00d80) ~~~ rahimnathwani You mean 'as per an internal report compiled by USPS, quoted in the Washington post'. ~~~ ksk Well shouldn't a newspaper standby their reporting? ~~~ rahimnathwani When a newspaper prints '{statement}, according to {source}' there's a reason: they don't independently verify those facts. They're printing it in the hope that it's useful, and giving you their source as a cop out or, if you're being charitable, so that you can decide whether you want to believe it or not. The statement "In 2012, USPS was paid only 94 cents on average for each piece of Chinese ePacket mail, according to a February report from the Postal Service’s inspector general’s office." is probably 100% accurate, in the same sense that "Rahim is the best dad ever, according to his son" is true, could be 100% accurate. You could stand by either statement. And both could be accurate. But it doesn't mean they're not misleading (in that the fact being discussed might not be true). If you look for it, you'll see similar patterns scattered all over newspapers. One of the most common examples: '{company} reported 4th quarter earnings of {amount}'. There's a reason they don't simply say ''{company} earned {amount} in Q4'. ------ ared38 Dumb question: Why are the vendors bothering to send anything? ~~~ nerdponx So Alibaba doesn't figure out that it's fraud, probably. ~~~ captaindiego Exactly. Often the shipping weight will be measured as it is shipped (likely because most of these are coming by air). Alibaba and others pass this shipping information on to the customer and would likely notice overly low shipping weights. Fraudulent sellers will also use a similar method in certain countries where the delivery address is not tracked but weight and delivery status are. They can send a nonsense package to the right country/state, have it appear in China post tracking as delivered, but the fake package was actually went to a random address with a roughly expected weight. If customers try to file claims on sites like aliexpress they'll likely rule in the favor of the seller unless you can somehow get your local post office to provide proof it was never delivered to your specific address. ------ sowbug This must be why I got a flurry of empty envelopes from China a couple months ago. A+++++ would throw out again. ------ Shivetya The epacket mailing is very common on low cost items you can find on ebay. I have seen it on items costing pennies and actually have won such an auction for less than a dollar and received what was listed. Now apparently the ebay buying has been safe for me and those I know who also have bought epacket delivered items, now they don't come fast but they all have arrived. so which retailers are they skimming for addresses? ------ codewritinfool This is happening to a coworker but the packages are from Amazon. The stuff inside is mostly junk. ~~~ seanmcdirmid If its from amazon in the USA to a USA address, it is illegal and easily reported. ~~~ anonymous5133 Easily reported but not easily verified. There are many cases of people getting shipped drugs and then having the police called on them once the package arrives. It could happen to anyone really. It is also fairly common that people ship drugs to anti-drug politicians. ~~~ JumpCrisscross > _It is also fairly common that people ship drugs to anti-drug politicians_ Source? ------ JorgeGT It is not only happening in the US, my SO in Spain received these a few months ago - unsolicited envelopes from China containing a single hair tie each (and once very cheap-looking sunglasses). ------ curtisblaine Wait, can't we do the same? I mean, make money exploiting legal loopholes at the cost of Chinese people and government? After all, the borders work two ways. ~~~ sverhagen Wait, what? Are we upset with China then? So that we want to target innocent Chinese people? As the article clearly states: it's illegal in China too. Is disrespecting the personal mailing address of a random, innocent Chinese person less valuable than the personal mailing address of a random, innocent American? Unless you have personal mailing addresses lying around of the specific people who are brushing the system from China now? But then... while the article talks about stuff being sent _from_ China, I didn't get the idea that it necessarily had to be (exclusively) Chinese people who did it? ~~~ curtisblaine No, I was just wondering if these border loopholes were one-way or could be played from West to East, too. ------ randyrand I got one of these for the first time about ~1yr ago. ------ zeep at least, they don't use USPS to deliver bio weapons yet...

Are We Reaching the Limits of Silicon Valley’s Venture Model? - ot https://medium.com/@bryce/are-we-reaching-the-limits-of-silicon-valleys-venture-model-f7b7f3708a50#.tmp1sm3u2 ====== FiatLuxDave It seems to me that the big issue with the SV venture model is the geographic limitation of its current implementation. The reason that there is too much money chasing too few deals is that the money is 'stuck' in certain places (SF, NY, Boston, Austin). The assumption is that if you want to play the VC game, you go where the money is. But not all good opportunities are in those locations or are capable of moving there. And that is why we have mad inflation in the money centers, while the rest of the country is living with deflation. I'm waiting for the next wave of VCs to figure out how to overcome this geographic limitation and grab those opportunities which are currently being ignored.

After a year of using Node.js in production - 0xmohit http://geekforbrains.com/post/after-a-year-of-nodejs-in-production ====== placebo I usually don't respond to anything which I feel is just another "language war" provocation, but whenever I see these type of reviews I'm mystified. I've developed in many languages and frameworks, both well known and lesser known - decades of client and server side of C/C++, Javascript, Lua, Java, Python, PHP, Perl, Lisp. Pascal (just to name a few) in projects of all sizes, and not once did I have the thought "this language sucks". I think there are a few reasons for this: 1) Even after all these years, I'm still passionate and excited at the ability to sculpt logic, regardless of the "material" I need to use. 2) A "keep it simple" approach - no way to overemphasise this. Know the advantages and limitations of the language and stick to what works. Keeping things simple should be like a fractal - existing at all levels of abstraction. 3) I'm very wary of hype. New, shiny and trendy does not necessarily mean better, especially when the hype is in conflict with keeping things simple. I find that when you understand the playing field, mark the areas to avoid and keep things as simple as possible, the elegance of the design and implementation usually makes the advantage of language X over Y insignificant, and I feel that blaming failure on the language used is like blaming a bad novel on the word processor used to write it. ~~~ astrobe_ > I feel that blaming failure on the language used is like blaming a bad novel > on the word processor used to write it. Sure. If you're a good novelist you can write something great even on a keyboard with a broken 'e' key (btw, your 'I' key is about to break; you should replace it asap). But novelists don't have deadlines and when the novel is done, they usually don't take reader requests to change this or that part of the story. "The advantages and limitations", what works and what doesn't, "areas to avoid" are precisely the point of that kind of review. ~~~ placebo > (btw, your 'I' key is about to break; you should replace it asap). haha - touché, point taken :-) Deadlines seem like a great excuse for compromising quality. Sure, life is complicated, the boss is demanding, the mortgage has to be paid, the children need to be supported etc. etc. but compromising quality and enthusiasm (they usually are correlated) because of the "terror" of a deadline will just leave you at the mercy of the next "terror", only this time you'll even have even less enthusiasm to fix the spaghetti. Doesn't sound like an enjoyable existence. Of course, very few people have the privilege of never having to compromise, but it's never black or white and there are many more degrees of freedom to choose the path with more quality than are implied. >"The advantages and limitations", what works and what doesn't, "areas to avoid" are precisely the point of that kind of review. The "area to avoid" in the review is Node.js and considering that large and impressive projects have been written in it, it seems that this is another case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. ------ beders Now all of a sudden, having types and some standards to gather around doesn't sound like a bad idea anymore ;) I agree with one of the commenters: Lessons already learned by older engineers (who went through similar woes with other languages/tools) are being re- learned again and again. The software industry is in a sorry state. Unless you are a very disciplined team with a very strong sense of writing modular code, don't use Node.js for any larger project. And even then, the single-most useful function in an IDE 'Show Call Hierarchy' will never be available when using a dynamically typed language. That is not an issue for smaller projects. However, long before you even get close to the the million lines of code project size, your tools will fail you. Your debugging/refactoring times will explode and adding a new feature will seem unsurmountable. Instead, let's just re-write everything from scratch because the cool hipster that wrote your backend a year ago has left for greener pastures... I won't even try to guess the amount of technical debt produced with Node.js and the likes each day in the bay area. And, yes, I just used Node.js to write a Slack-bot. It was fun, took me two hours and got me up and running quickly. That's the beauty of it. Just be aware of the dangers. ~~~ encoderer I've worked in three million+ loc codebases, in PHP, Python and Java. I don't share your opinion that you need static types in these circumstances. You need discipline, modularity, and most importantly you need to have been blessed with gardeners and maintainers throughout the life of a project and not just after a mess has already taken hold. ~~~ beders Did you read what I wrote? I already said that you need a disciplined team. Good luck keeping that team together for years to come. Not sure if you are disputing the fact that keeping code around is a challenge, or not. ------ tylerlh The Netflix.com site and webapp runs on Node (and talks to a number of services written in mostly JVM based languages). While we encounter challenges just as we would with any other language -- it works for us and I would argue that it's a pretty big application. There's always a multitude of ways to get something done, and it's up to you to decide what tool will do it best. Don't treat any one language as an end- all-be-all and you might find yourself much happier and more productive. Of course, YMMV. ~~~ ChrisAntaki > There's always a multitude of ways to get something done, and it's up to you > to decide what tool will do it best Well said. By the way, what is Netflix's take on Promises vs RxJS? ~~~ ZoeZoeBee I'm pretty sure Netflix is in the Observables camp, as Ben Lesh over at Netflix is RxJs ~~~ Akkuma I watched one of the recent Netflix engineering videos where they moved to a customized version of React and I could have sworn in that talk they actually moved away from Observables[1]. What was confusing is that the other talked released at the same time they talk about enhancing RxJS. [1]: [https://youtu.be/5sETJs2_jwo?t=5m32s](https://youtu.be/5sETJs2_jwo?t=5m32s) ~~~ mikeryan A friend of mine runs some UI engineering at Netflix from talking to him reactive JavaScript is still heavily used. ~~~ Akkuma I'm sure it is still heavily used, but it looks like there are two very opposing views with one going so far as completely removing it. ------ joshmanders These types of articles make me laugh. Typically a dev with many many years experience with one language, learned all it's quirks, standards, etc decides to try Node.js because it's the "new hot fun toy", and expect it to work like their old language, and realize that is not how it works, doesn't know where to find what and fails real hard to realize that JavaScript in general is in a huge influx of updating at this moment, which by nature propagates to Node.js. The end result is they get frustrated and go back to their old language. ~~~ eva1984 Yeah, so some js devs might need to stop overselling javascript to everyone, pretending it is the one language that people are waiting for years...Just saying. ~~~ joshmanders You should try to surround yourself with developers who don't have such attitudes. I am a fan of JavaScript, I love Node.js and I will often times suggest it to newbies. But I don't pretend it's the be all/end all of languages. Just like any other language it has its strengths and weaknesses. It's up to you to decide if it's the right choice for you. ~~~ uptownJimmy It is one of my most cherished professional goals to avoid ever working with people who think like this. The message this sends to junior devs is so backwards and wrong-headed that it defies discourse. ~~~ jackweirdy Why? It seems like a reasonable statement - surround yourself with people who think critically, not evangelically? ~~~ uptownJimmy But I see your point as being precisely backwards: it's the JS crew who constantly evangelize for their way of doing things, and that way of doing things is completely inappropriate for anyone who isn't already expert. "Choose your own tools" is advice for experts, and literally nobody else. It smacks of the cowboy attitude, and that attitude is wildly unhelpful to almost anybody doing professional work in software. Frameworks and coding standards exist for a reason: not to be unreasonable strictures, but to provide guidance and sanity in a staggeringly complex field of endeavor. Many new devs and junior devs are flocking to the JavaScript ecosystem, and it is one of the most troubled and chaotic ecosystems in all of software right now. Anyone who is not a complete JS badass is simply not going to find Node to be even a decent choice for learning best practices pertaining to the larger world of application development. And I feel I'm stating that politely. So: yet another JavaScript Pro tossing out the "choose your tools like a Pro" advice-morsel is part of the problem, as I see it. I don't want to work with people who toss the kids into the deep end and hope a few can learn to swim real quick. I think people deserve a helping hand and a reasonable set of expectations. The JavaScript ecosystem has become self-parodying. Anyone who is oblivious to that fact is inherently NOT a trustworthy witness. That is not to say that the whole thing is rotten and worthless, but it IS messy as heck, and refusing to acknowledge that is a sign that one is in denial about some pretty blatant facts. ------ spion > Coming from other languages such as Python, Ruby or PHP you’d expect > throwing and catching errors, or even returning an error from a function > would be a straightforward way of handling errors. Not so with Node. > Instead, you get to pass your errors around in your callbacks (or promises) > - thats right, no throwing of exceptions. Promises let you throw errors normally. They will propagate up the call stack in a similar manner. With bluebird, you will also get full stack traces in development mode and the performance penalty for that isn't too bad. > The last thing that I found frustrating was the lack of standards. Everyone > seems to have their own idea of how the above points should be handled. > Callbacks? Promises? Error handling? Build scripts? Promises are in ES6 (i don't think it gets more standard than that) and have well defined semantics, including error handling, shared between libraries: [https://promisesaplus.com/](https://promisesaplus.com/) I know that Bluebird's promisifyAll might seem like a bit of a hack, but just try it out. It works surprisingly well, and its really painstaikingly tuned for near-zero performance loss. It will probably be both less painful to do and more performant than any manual attempt to wrap a callback based API into a promise one. ~~~ pjungwir I gave a talk about handling errors in Node a few years ago: [https://github.com/pjungwir/node-errors- talk](https://github.com/pjungwir/node-errors-talk) At the time the solution was "use domains", but I think domains are deprecated now. It was painful enough that I have stuck with Rails since then. I'm glad to hear that Promises are an improvement! ~~~ koolba Domains have been deprecated since at least 0.10. As of yet there's no replacement for them and all node apps should be using them. There's no other way to catch " _But ... but ... that can 't happen!_" type errors. ~~~ spion There is no replacement because they're a fundamentally broken idea. They require the following to happen, in that order: * V8 needs to optimize try-finally * Node core needs to add try-finally at every single place where callbacks are invoked and make sure all state and resource cleanup is properly done to support domains * Popular libraries need to also add try-finally handlers for the above. As to why this is a problem in node and not so much in other languages, its because with node callbacks, the call stack goes both ways. In other languages, libraries mostly call their dependencies' code. In node's CPS style, you call the library but the library also calls your closure code. The semantics for the 2nd part aren't well defined in node - the loose law basically says: I wont call you twice, I'll try not to call you synchronously, and you wont throw (and if you do the behavior is undefined). With promises there is a contract and its enforced by the promise implementation. Since Promises actually have error semantics, you can build resource management strategies on top of them. [http://promise- nuggets.github.io/articles/21-context-manager...](http://promise- nuggets.github.io/articles/21-context-managers-transactions.html) \- and consequently there is no reason to crash your server on errors. ~~~ lobster_johnson Domains are used for another reason: To emulate thread-local variables. I hope that support is not going away, because it's really handy. ~~~ spion Its interesting that the same problem (TLS) can also be solved with something similar to promises :) ------ Corrado I agree with this article and find the Node.js community, and to a lesser extent Javascript itself, exhausting. It seems like every 2 minutes there is a "more" proper way to do something, which tells me that the architecture is not yet mature, even though it's pretty old by now. On a related note, it seems like every time you find something that doesn't quite work correctly or conveniently in Node.js there is a "fix". Don't like callbacks? Force Node.js to look more like other "normal" code and use Promises. Having trouble getting Node.js to concentrate on one thing at a time? Force Node.js to look more like other "normal" languages and use the "async" library. And it just goes on and on and on. If I have to use all of these other pieces and parts to be productive in Node.js I may as well just use some other language. I really wanted to like and use Node.js, but Javascript and the community are holding it back. ~~~ eagsalazar2 Yes, the Javascript world is quickly evolving both on the front end and backend, and of course that can be exhausting but I have to disagree with both conclusions that (a) this means the tech is immature, and (b) the community's readiness to make changes is "holding it back". The js world is very unique in its ability to evolve quickly and things have improved _massively_ over the last few years. Now, apart from the churn itself and precisely because of that rapid evolution, front end and backend development in javascript is amazing compared to most other options (especially on the front end). So while you do have to be realistic about the cost of the evolving ecosystem, it is just a tradeoff for rapid progress, not a flaw. If you crave stability, agreed, this rollercoaster probably isn't your ride. But the evolution of node, the emergence of react/redux, es6, etc is amazing and beautiful IMO and I'm totally enjoying every bit of it compared to the staid mediocrity of my Rails, C/C++, and Java history. ~~~ rimantas The problem I see that in this case "evolving" looks suspiciously like running in circles without going anywhere. ~~~ royjacobs A good example mentioned in the article is the "npm scripts -> grunt -> gulp -> npm scripts" evolution in best practices for building. ------ programmarchy Never had the problems with Node described in the article. Node forces thinking about modularity and composition though, which I'd wager is what the author is actually struggling with. Write functions that do one thing and they're pretty easy to compose, even if they're asynchronous. It's really not hard to debug what went wrong in the stack trace when you name your functions. And I think exception handling is much worse than passing errors up through callbacks. It forces you to think about edge cases. Not sure how python handles this, but I can't tell you how many times I've seen Java or C# code swallow exceptions which is much harder to debug IMO. People really seem to have a problem with there not being "the one true path" in Javascript, but it's not something that gives me much anxiety. Javascript is incredibly moldable, which is part of what makes it so powerful. ------ eknkc TLDR; Author actually wants to use Python. Used Node.JS regardless, for whatever reason.. It did not work the way Python works. Author is frustrated. Complains that JavaScript is not Python. ~~~ fredrb This. You can't apply some other language paradigms in every programming language just because it's the only thing you know how to do. ------ Wintamute > You use Grunt!? Everyone uses Gulp!? Wait no, use native NPM scripts! Although couched as a criticism this is actually the community fixing itself. The evolution from Grunt > Gulp > npm scripts is movement away from needless complexity towards simplicity. Npm scripts are effectively just Bash commands that build and manage your project, which sometimes employ small, unixy tools written in Node. This self correction was pretty quick, it happened within a few years. > Unfortunately, there isn’t any one “standard” (like everything else in > Javascript) for implementing or using Promises. Yes there is. It's called the Promises/A+ spec, and its built into ES6. ~~~ Touche NPM scripts are just a different problem. See: [https://twitter.com/sindresorhus/status/724259780676575232?l...](https://twitter.com/sindresorhus/status/724259780676575232?lang=en) [https://github.com/ReactiveX/rxjs/blob/a3ec89605a24a6f54e577...](https://github.com/ReactiveX/rxjs/blob/a3ec89605a24a6f54e577d21773dad11f22fdb14/package.json#L14-L96) Already people are coming up with new "solutions" to this problem that looks more like Grunt. It's a repetitive circle. Personally I just use Make. ~~~ Wintamute So somebody found a project somewhere on the internet with an exceptionally complicated build process, and you use it to say npm scripts are broken? Sorry, that's absurd. Looking at that particular build process, I don't think a Makefile could have been crafted to make it much simpler or smaller. In that example, the problem lies with the complexity of what they're having to do, not the tool. Npm scripts are really just shell scripting, which means all the real progress happens in the unixy Node tools that do the heavy lifting, where it should be. It's a future proof and scalable approach for the vast majority of projects imo. ~~~ Touche It's an inflated example of what all npm script projects become, imo. First you just have "test", then you add "build", then you separate your "test" into one for the browser, one for Node, one for CI, then you need scripts that combine those together; then you create different "start" versions depending on environment... It blows up quickly. > Npm scripts are really just shell scripting, which means all the real > progress happens in the unixy Node tools that do the heavy lifting, where it > should be. That's fine, but you're missing critical features that Make provides; make won't even rebuild a target if no files have changed. ~~~ Wintamute Admittedly, my first 2 or 3 npm scripts based build processes did start to get a bit ugly. But I'm much better at writing them now, so they stay pretty sane. > That's fine, but you're missing critical features that Make provides; make > won't even rebuild a target if no files have changed. WebPack does this for me too. Also my ava tests don't rerun for files that haven't changed while watching. Genuinely curious, what scenarios precisely do you find this feature of Make useful? Also, Make isn't truly cross platform ... and since I sometimes work with Windows devs this would be a problem. ------ kcorbitt I've spent a lot of time writing Javascript on the front-end in the last year using both React and React Native. I've found the React ecosystem to be a sane, productive and enjoyable development environment. Interested in sharing more model logic between our front- and backends, I also investigated writing some new backend features using Node (we're currently developing with Rails). But after days of research and playing around with the available options, I came to a conclusion similar to Gavin's -- any reasonably complex backend requires you to either roll your own everything, or try to cobble together literally hundreds of tiny dependencies that weren't built to go together, and then somehow keep track of all of their regressions and breaking changes. Node's fantastic performance and unique ability to share logic between client and server are enticing, but I just don't trust the community and "best practices" around it enough to bet the farm on it for now. ~~~ wrong_variable The same problems you cite for node.js are the reasons why a lot of devs love node.js. Its much easier to do your own research and find the best module to solve a particular problem you are having then to shoehorn into some larger monolithic framework. Also its a lot more fundamental then that - Node.js has prolly the fastest iteration cycle for any platform out there since its so easy to create your own module - it leads to some sort of Cambrian explosion of innovation and experimentation. EDIT: Also OP seems to think callback hell and async programming is bad. The important thing is those things are problems for python/.... too ! Its just that python doesn't have a good programming model to even begin to address those concerns. JavaScript at-least tries to say - "hey this is a problem we need to deal with - concurrency is a issues we all face " So when devs complain about callback hell - its just that they have never tried to use python to do async in a neat way. ~~~ empthought > python doesn't have a good programming model to even begin to address those > concerns This isn't even close to true. Anything JavaScript has to express logic in the face of asynchrony, Python has too. There are a half-dozen asynchronous web servers written in Python. There's not as much of a culture of writing APIs that way in Python because it's generally a terrible way to program, and threads/OS processes are good enough for basically everything except HTTP servers with absurd numbers of concurrent connections. ~~~ wrong_variable > There's not as much of a culture of writing APIs that way in Python because > it's generally a terrible way to program I would love to see evidence for you making that statement. Almost every programmer would put out their fav programming language as the 'right' way to program. > everything except HTTP servers with absurd numbers of concurrent connection Once you introduce async operations in your code - you need to follow the execution path through. http request can be async - but then what if the http request results you doing a db lookup or some form of file handling ? you need to make the whole thing event driven. ~~~ empthought It's not like we didn't have cooperative multitasking for 50 years. Having threads/processes and a scheduler is easier and safer, full stop. Potentially long-running portions of the program don't need to be arbitrarily chopped up to yield control back to the server, because they are pre-empted. Your system is no longer at the mercy of the worst code within it. Both nginx and Apache's event MPM handle HTTP connections with events while the app backends are still using preemptive threads for running the HTTP handler code, so it's clearly not the case that "you need to make the whole thing event driven." You just need programmers who don't think, "well since the browser doesn't expose threads to JavaScript programmers, clearly they are useless." ------ narrator I'm using NodeJS on a pretty big project. Things I like: * Async libraries make it easy to make things high performance. * I like Sequelize as an ORM, once I figured out how the async everything works. * The testing support is pretty good, both mocha and e2e testing using selenium * The angular-fullstack generator was really helpful for getting started and setting up the deploy to Heroku. * everything is open source. If I get confused with what a library is doing while I'm debugging I can just stick a print in the lib temporarily. Things I don't like: * "undefined is not a function". When something goes wrong. This is the error I get 80% of the time. * async stuff silently swallows exceptions unless I put try{} catch(err) { console.trace(err) } everywhere * There's a bit of a learning curve with promises. * Needs a lot more automated testing than a really strongly typed language like Scala. * Single Threaded. I know how to program using threads, so I view this as a disadvantage. * No types. I have a lot of type checking asserts at the beginning of dao functions. If I did it all again and my teammates would oblige, I would have probably chosen Play/Scala. I actually reimplemnted things from a Play/Scala project I did a while back (login/signup/forgot password/confirm account) and it took less time in Play/Scala, even without passportJS and friends. I have about a years worth of experience learning Scala before I started that project, so it would probably take longer for a new Scala developer. ~~~ rhinoceraptor > async stuff silently swallows exceptions unless I put try{} catch(err) { > console.trace(err) } everywhere Huh? That's not how async errors work in Node. Try/Catch is not async, the catch block will not magically transfer to your callback function. You check for the error as the first parameter in your callback, that's the standard way of error handling. Throwing errors in Node is considered by most to be an anti-pattern. ~~~ narrator That's nice in theory, but third party libraries may throw exceptions if unexpected things happen at runtime. You'd still have to put the try catch block there and call the callback in the catch block everywhere. ~~~ rhinoceraptor That's only for non-async stuff, which is very rare. If you're using some wacky 3rd party code which throws an Error instead of the accepted convention of (err, response) callback arguments (or returning a promise), I suggest not using it. ------ mrmondo We couldn't even stand 6 months let alone a year. Broken pack depts make it hard to CI, poor performance, memory leaks, huge docker base images due to deps, lots of single cpu only tasks that were too hard to scale out, an ugly language compared to ruby or Python and on top of all that how poor the package management with NPM has been. We've just ditched it and gone back to Python/Django/flask and ruby for the ops tooling. ------ silviogutierrez Same experience as the author. Tons of reinventing the wheel, and hundreds of dependencies. The majority of established companies that say they use Node in production are doing so as a fancy proxy. All the "serious" stuff is done on backend services written in other languages. Moreover, asynchrony is a concept far more advanced than most people think. We will likely continue to leverage Node as a fancy proxy. Adding Typescript will only help. But it's likely that as Node grows into a mature platform, other platforms will continue to fill in the gaps that Node filled. See for example Node constantly adding [foo]Sync versions of methods, while Python adds first class sync support. ------ firasd I've been on a similar learning curve with Node over the last year, and it has certainly been a rougher incline than other languages I've used. The whole async situation needs to settle down, it's completely unacceptable to write code with callbacks, promises, etc. This is because they are not just challenging to deal with, but intrinsically wrong in concept. I have to wait for a database query to complete, then pass the next thing to do to the callback of the query? That can't be right. Interesting article I found: "Async/Await: The Hero JavaScript Deserved" [https://www.twilio.com/blog/2015/10/asyncawait-the-hero- java...](https://www.twilio.com/blog/2015/10/asyncawait-the-hero-javascript- deserved.html) ~~~ Silhouette I find that JS often seems to tie programmers in the most extraordinary knots just to implement even quite simple logic, because of the single-threaded nature of the language. In the programming model used by most other mainstream languages today, if you've got some work to do that interacts with some external system and might take a while, you'd probably start another thread for that task. You'd write the required logic in the usual linear fashion, and just let the thread block if and when it needs to. Modelling this using fork/join semantics and techniques to co-ordinate access to shared resources from different threads are reasonably well understood ideas. Because there is no general support for concurrency and parallelism in JS, you only get one thread, and so in most cases you can't afford to ever block it. Consequently, you get this highly asynchronous style that feels like writing everything manually in continuation passing style, just so you can carry on with something else instead of waiting. That in turn leads to callback hell, where you start to lose cohesion and locality in your code, even though usually you're still just trying to represent a simple, linear sequence of operations. Async/await help to bring that cohesion and locality back by writing code in a style that is closer to the natural linear behaviour it is modelling. However, even those feel a bit like papering over the cracks in some cases. Async/await kinda sorta give us some simple fork/join semantics, but as the blog post linked from the parent shows, we have a lot of promise-based details remaining underneath. Fundamentally, the problem seems to be that JS is increasingly being used to deal with concurrent behaviours, but it lacks an execution model and language tools to describe that behaviour in a natural, systematic way as most other widely used languages can. Being strictly single-threaded avoided all the synchronisation problems in the early days, when the most you had to worry about was a couple of different browser events firing close together and it was helpful to know the handler for one would complete before anything else started happening. I'm not sure it's still a plus point now that we're trying to use JS for much more demanding concurrent systems, though. ~~~ Touche > Modelling this using fork/join semantics and techniques to co-ordinate > access to shared resources from different threads are reasonably well > understood ideas. Writing thread-safe code is anything but easy in languages that support threads. ~~~ Silhouette I respectfully disagree. Dealing with _shared state_ is not always easy when you're working with multiple threads. If you can't reasonably avoid that sharing because of the nature of your problem, and if your choice of language and tools only provide tools on the level of manual locking, then I agree that writing correct, thread-safe code has its challenges. However, there are plenty of scenarios where you don't need much if any state to be shared between threads. That includes almost every example of JS promises or async/await that I've seen this evening while reading this discussion and the examples people are linking to. There are also plenty of more sophisticated models for co-ordinating threads that do need to interact, from message passing to software transactional memory. These are hardly obscure ideas today, and I don't think anyone could reasonably argue that for example message passing makes things complicated but async/await/promises make things simple. ------ deedubaya For all the comments on here about how unfair the author was, there sure is minimal feedback on the problems they highlighted. ~~~ snappy173 the feedback is: stop expecting javascript to act like python ~~~ deedubaya How productive! ~~~ snappy173 sorry if that came off harsh, but that is actually the feedback, and it's valid. whether or not javascript/node is better or worse than python, it's pretty clear that bringing a python style approach to nodejs is going to cause problems, especially with error handling and async stuff. ------ mrgalaxy I have used Node.js in production for about 5 years now and I must agree with the sentiment that JavaScript is "Easy to learn, impossible to master". Yes, error handling is a little confusing at first but it stems from JavaScript's asynchronous nature which is naturally complex for the linear mind. My personal sentiment is to just use Promises, like everywhere. ES7 async/await will really help with this too. ------ clessg For web applications, I've been very happy with the up-and-coming Phoenix[0], a framework for the Elixir language. Very well-designed and thought-out, fast, productive. Leans functional and immutable rather than object-oriented and mutable. It's kind of like Rails but without most of the problems. [0] [http://www.phoenixframework.org/](http://www.phoenixframework.org/) ~~~ deedubaya I've found Elixir to be a delightful language with very palatable syntax compared to ruby. It has been a really enjoyable transition, with some vague reminders of the parts I really like about JavaScript. ------ emilong I've been using Node in production for a few months now, having come from Ruby (Rails & Sinatra) immediately before, but having used JavaEE and PHP before that. I find it... fine. For error handling, bluebird's typed error catching ([http://bluebirdjs.com/docs/api/catch.html](http://bluebirdjs.com/docs/api/catch.html)) is working well for me and I'm finding it analogous to my experiences with Java and Ruby. I'm rather used to using ORMs as well and I use Bookshelf ([http://bookshelfjs.org](http://bookshelfjs.org)) on top of Postgres for this as well. It definitely has room to grow, but it's also fine. I've also gained a dependency injection container (Bottle.js, see my write up here: [https://blog.boldlisting.com/declarative-dependencies-for- un...](https://blog.boldlisting.com/declarative-dependencies-for-unit-testing- node-js-services-45542ceb5703#.gaf9om7zj)), which I sorely missed in my Rails days and which gives a lot of structure to the application. I think the biggest concerns on which I'd agree with the author are the pace of the community and lack of agreement on things which are well-decided in other, more well-established development environments. That being said, there's huge potential with Node because of that. There are more coders in the world than ever (I'm assuming) and Javascript is a great low barrier to entry language that encourages people to explore various runtimes. In 20+ years of coding, I've not seen this level of excitement and engagement in a development environment. While it may be rocky for another few years yet, I suspect we'll end up with a very productive platform, simply because of the amount of involvement. Of course, it's totally understandable to want to wait for that before jumping in. :) As a relatively new Node developer, I'm much more concerned about the single- threaded nature than the development environment, but so far even that hasn't been a problem. ------ Touche A lot of this is residual effects of the (slow) evolution of JavaScript. It was thrust into the spotlight missing a lot of features and these features have only recently been fixed by the language itself. But Node has been around since 2009. 2009 JavaScript was missing _a lot_ of features. It was basically a runtime only advanced users should use. The Node maintainers had to make a lot of decisions that now conflict (to some degree) with fixes that have come later to the language. They chose their callback style; now we have Promises. They chose to throw in methods rather than return an error in the callback (this makes it awkward to use fs with Promises without a wrapper library). They chose to implement their version of CommonJS, now we have the .mjs issue arise. ------ nevi-me Been on Node and Mongo for 4 years now. Both have worked well for me. JS has evolved a lot in the past few years, and with it came all the new shiny tools that left us confused. I think a year was too short for the author. Sounds like they were chasing after every cool thing to make life easy. Error handling is a pain yea, I've seen amateur folk try catch this and that, I think that lends itself to being terrible. One of the things I appreciate the most about JS is JSON. Crafting tens of classes in Java irritates me. I find Python sometimes tricky also when dealing with structs VA lists. I've always stuck to the basics when I was learning how to JavaScript with Node. I used only callbacks for 2 years until I understood what my code was doing. Granted, I'd have spaghetti at the end of complex async queries, but I understood what was going on. I moved to caolan::async and have been using async whenever necessary. I barely use promises as I got confused by the early adoption craze. I learnt how to use Backbonejs, and a bit of Angular+React+Ember, but I found myself comfortable using vanilla JavaScript. Only thing I use is Underscore templates. I know I could benefit from shadow DOMs etc, but I'm content where I am. I think a good way to learn is to take things at bite sized chunks. I've started using RxJS recently, and I'm loving it! I'll keep using JS as my primary tool, but I'm slowly moving to Kotlin. ------ kartickv If this article is true, it paints a concerning picture. I don't want to research libraries, understand the pros and cons of them, run into problems, then switch to another library, and so on. I want there to be a default that works out of the box for the majority of use cases. There can be alternatives, as long as there's a default that works out of the box for most people and most use cases. ------ eldude I train enterprise node.js for a living. My recommendation is to just use songbird (which exposes the forthcoming promise API from core, built on bluebird), async/await and the async `trycatch` library so you don't have to worry about a 3rd party package's choice of asynchrony. It also comes with optional long stack traces. ~~~ snappy173 >async/await in my experience, async/await is a great way to layer indirection and obfuscation over what is still callback hell. it may look better in the editor, but it's hell to debug. ~~~ raarts When I initially encountered event -based processing (libevent in C), those callbacks were indeed difficult to wrap my mind around. But I learned to structure the code in the editor, keeping everything together which made it manageable. I 've worked with node for a couple of months now, and I find promises to be more confusing, because it obfuscates the callback in my mind, and makes it look like ordinary function calls. ~~~ spriggan3 The advantage of promises is that you can return them as a type, you can't do that with a callback. If you fetch something from a database , your data access object can return a promise and let the client code deal with the result. Promises are composable by nature, callbacks are not. ------ SiVal Really, just learn to use callbacks properly. Well, wait, actually, you should skip that and start getting used to using promises instead--a big improvement. Well, I mean, until next version is ready, and we can start using async/await...until wasm makes better thought-out languages available. Despite the sounds of this, I do like the idea of having an experimental platform with which to gain experience using wildly different approaches to the wildly changing world of web apps. I don't take it for granted that old language concepts will turn out to be the most useful for the web platform. So, I'm okay building a website for the PTA or ceramics club with this, and I'm very interested in the experiences of others using a wide variety of technologies and approaches, but I'm not sure Node.js would be a sensible foundation to build a business on. ------ tonyjstark This article definitely matches with my experience. I did two not all too complicated projects on the side with Node.js and the the first steps where so easy that it completely convinced me to go with it. After a while I tried to dig deeper and went to meetups to see whether I do things right as in a community accepted way and if I use the right tools and so on. Since then I refer to the Nodejs community as the most hipster programmer community I've ever seen. As soon as a framework was getting near a 1.0 version nobody wanted to use it anymore, experimental features were used in production code, it was horrifying. For me that ended this endeavour, I just could not keep up with the pace. I always wondered if it would be different if I would have worked full-time on Nodejs projects. ------ ldehaan From reading the comments there are Still a lot of misconceptions about Js. javascript is not new, it's been around since before most of the web devs out there started working in computers. nodejs supports multiple CPUs. nodejs is stable. JavaScript is retarded fast, and it's not c or c++ or any Compiled language, and shouldn't be compared to them because that's unhelpful as a measure. it is the only language for the web which enables you to work in the same language on both fronts. frameworks aren't JavaScript. nodejs isn't JavaScript. JavaScript is so flexible that it can be changed to suit the needs of those writing it, so much so that you get whole new dsl's like typescript. there are more conversations on the internet about JavaScript than any other language being used today. oh and nothing scales if you don't know how to write scalable software, that's on you, not the language. ------ bschwindHN Interesting analysis. I just finished a year of using Node for implementing an HTTP API and a chat server, and found it to be actually pretty pleasant. I'm not chasing the latest and greatest things, there's no ES6, no ORM, and I'm on an older version of Node. But it works and has actually been quite stable! The things I've missed are static type checking at compile time, and execution speed (which is less of an issue when you're talking with databases all the time). I'd be happy to write in more detail if anyone has any questions, but I found I had the opposite experience of this author. The situation makes all the difference though. ------ Chris911 Most of the problems described in the articles can be solved by simply using promises. Error handling is centralized in your chain and any function can throw and just like Python or Ruby you can catch anywhere you want. As for consistency between callbacks, promises and generators, just pick one. We switched from callbacks to promises and it was a great move. Error handling greatly improved and the code looks a lot nicer. No more callbacks hell. Ever. We switched our backend from Python to Node almost 2 years ago now and it was a great decision for us. If you handle a code base that deals with a lot of async requests Node is definitely a top contender. ------ cyberpanther I think by reading the comments here and the article, its apparent that Node.js just isn't as mature yet. If you know what you're doing, it can be great, but for the noobs the right way to do things is not easily apparent. Couple this with the huge choice in libraries and frameworks, makes Node.js harder for now. I think the base is good though and given more time it will become more easy to wield. This is typical of any new tool. And yes Node.js has been around the block for a while, but it is still newish compared to Python, Ruby, PHP, etc. So you're going to pay a new adopter tax still. ------ jrapdx3 Can't fully agree with the article re: using nodejs in production. A couple of years ago I decided to use nodejs for a rewrite of a web/database app that had gotten to be complex and hard to maintain. As so often said, it was true for me that the abundance of modules and choices in node was at first very confusing. I eventually figured out that keeping things as simple as possible was my best approach. What I came up was a server relying on very few module dependencies and written using consistent if not so elegant components. Sure it's kind of verbose and far from totally DRY but fairly easy to understand, modify and extend. Key issue was node's "callback hell" style of async programming. Of course, it's not just node, other languages (Scheme, FP, etc.) can be mind-bending in a similar way. The callback "inside-out" locality inversion was initially hard to grasp, but once I caught on it was possible to get the server working the way I needed it to. The more recent development of promises, etc., certainly provides reasonable ways to reduce the high barriers implicated in using the nodejs style of async programming. ~~~ zyxley Callbacks definitely become much, much less of a problem once you can turn everything into promises. ------ EdSharkey In my opinion, JavaScript is a toy language. Looking at it, and the Node.js ecosystem by-extension, that way has really helped me be effective with it. Tooling has never been more important to my productivity with a language as it has been with JS. I constantly search for tools to paper over the warts and potholes. ------ gedrap The only clear, objective advantage of using nodejs is that if your application is I/O heavy (e.g. tons of sql queries which can be executed in parallel), nodejs event system is helpful and everything you need is pretty much out of the box. Other thing... it largely depends on personal taste and a matter of convention. Reading his "Why I’m switching from Python to Node.js", doesn't seem like he was having an issue with that. And I don't really buy into the "same language everywhere" argument because come on, how hard is it to learn python, ruby, etc enough so that you can be productive? Not hard at all, unless you have hundreds of cubicles filled with drones. Anyway, it's good to see that he made some reasonable conclusions after the experiment. That's a good sign :) ~~~ MichaelGG Same language, in theory, is great. Reuse structure definitions. Reuse rendering logic or even validation logic (perform checks on both, but make it easy to get into client-side). In general, keeping things "in sync". Also can make it easier to write in SPA style but offload rendering to the server when you need it (particularly first-page or reloads). Whether or not tooling is good enough to allow this (either with JS or compilers) is another issue. ------ Clobbersmith We use NodeJS pretty extensively at Yahoo for both front end and back end services and it works well. While some of the complaints are valid, it's not worth flipping tables over. Promises are standard in ES6 and it is "the way" to handle errors. At least if you want to stay sane. ------ btomar Though I agree with what you all explained with the big issues with NodeJS, you have to understand its not all of Javascript. Its only server side JS. The creators have clarified, for heavy CPU intensive services, go away from NodeJS. As far as frontend is concerned, AngularJS and React are just sugar candy for user interaction and structure. Node filled the gap with an async network application in pure JS without the heaviness of Python or traditional languages. It is a hack as in every day people are finding new ways to use NodeJS but I agree, there has to be best practices and less boilerplate (plus less silly npm packages for trivial JS tasks). ------ nodesocket I prefer to just use async ([https://github.com/caolan/async](https://github.com/caolan/async)) for all control and error flow. Namely async.auto() can do almost any crazy flow. ------ dustinlakin I think the switch to an async back-end can be more initial work than many expect. It may take some time to feel as productive, but promises become powerful and became a game changer for me over my previous work with callbacks. Error handling also becomes manageable. What I really enjoy is jumping into new community and getting to work with tools that have built. Choosing the right ones can make or break an experience. I personally enjoyed working with Express and Bookshelf.js/Knex. I appreciate the authors perspective, but I also don't think this should deter anyone from trying out Node. I personally have no overwhelming preference to using a Python or Javascript stack. ~~~ xentronium > Bookshelf.js/Knex After ruby orms, Bookshelf felt very, very underdeveloped. Anything I tried to do beyond "hello world" only brought me pain, especially dealing with associations, but honestly just about everything. I guess I've been spoiled, but getting anything done in express/bookshelf combo seemed like a chore. ------ billmalarky Just FYI, the Koa framework makes node sane again. Callback hell and error handling are no longer issues in node if you just embrace generators or async/await. We use Koa in production and serve billions of requests just fine. If I had to go back to Express I'd say no. ------ velox_io There's a very fine line between between removing too much essential complexity, and leaving programmers with too many limitations. Or the other end where the language overhead overshadows the original task at hand. For instance multithreading should be handled by languages and frameworks 99.9% of the time. Take reading a file (something that should be handled by the language/ framework). Read it asynchronously, structure any dependant code clearly (which JavaScript does pretty well), if any problems are detected they display/ log the appropriate error. You shouldn't be kneck-deep in callbacks. ------ spriggan3 The biggest problem is dealing with callbacks (and yes even promises use callbacks , and generators need to be wrapped in a cor-routine framework in order to work as cor-routines ). I want to write a quick script doing some busy work , I now have to think about synchronicity even though the script does not need to be non blocking. Of course in these circumstances, I want to move back to Ruby or Python, which actually let me code the thing I want to code without forcing callbacks on me. So when you have to do 20 i/o operations in sequence, using nodejs becomes really tedious. ------ jtchang Node is one of those platforms that makes me shudder every time I go looking for solid best practices. It seems to change every 3 months. It's scary (and cool) how fast things are changing. ------ peterashford I think the basic problem is that JS is not the right solution for every task but for the web, it's often the only tool available. I had similar experiences to the OP. I had lots of code written in JS that I was happy with to some extent, but all of it would have been easier / cleaner / more maintainable in a less crap language. ------ arisAlexis Using babel without async await is a mistake IMO should solve almost all your problems and errors. Also the main argument for using js in the back end is that you have the same team working in the front-end too and in any case in the same langage. ------ throwanem tl;dr: "I really miss Python's bondage and discipline, so I'm going back to it, and I'm going to hate on Node on my way out because I genuinely can't wrap my head around the idea of a paradigm other than the one with which I'm familiar and comfortable." It's not even about Node. It's about anything that isn't Python, and doesn't have the Python community's strong "there is exactly one way to do it" tradition. I'm glad OP has realized that's what works for him. It's a shame he lacks the perspective to understand that it's _about_ him. ------ igl Async-functions are the answer to all his problems. I generally agree on his conclusion though: Do small things, don't build big systems. I hate that JS trys to be this OO-FP hybrid. Jack of all trades, master of none. ------ swivelmaster This articulates my fears around switching to node very clearly. I've played with it in the past and felt like it would become too difficult to manage with a large project and lots of contributors. ------ paulftw A year ago one of the reasons to leave Python was poor MongoDB & JSON support, 12 months later the same author complains about the lack of a decent SQL ORM library in js <scratching my head/> while JS is far from perfect, his problem was he was a little bit ahead of time- babel, standard promises & sequelize solve most of the problems. I think Python is still superior for serverside, but JS isn't as bad as portrayed in this post, if you slowdown for a couple of weeks to learn how to use it properly (just like any other popular language or framework). ------ sb8244 I mused on similar things after getting a _very_ small project shipped. It is based on my experience with Node, Ruby, and Node as of 4 years ago (when I first learned it). [https://medium.com/@yoooodaaaa/reflections-on- node-698abecce...](https://medium.com/@yoooodaaaa/reflections-on- node-698abecce1b3) ------ z3t4 I think the problem is they chased the latest and greatest. tips: Always throw errors! Use named functions! ------ jv22222 Uber has done pretty well using node as their core dispatch architecture. ------ tempodox I find this a valid assessment of Node and JS. ------ co_dh welcome back :) ------ vacri Small company ops guy here - a bit over a year ago, I used to joke with my devs, asking them "So, what's this month's recommended way of installing node?". More recently we've been experiencing dependency hell, which is exacerbated by our small team not having enough time to upgrade to the latest LTS release. Node is definitely a language that you have to _manage_. It doesn't sit in the background and let you get on with writing stuff. Is it the right tool for X or Y? I can't say, I'm not a dev. But it does require a lot of hand-holding and keeping current with the zeitgeist. ------ hasenj Everyone and their aunt wants to publish an npm module. That's why you get a ton of badly written poorly thought-out packages. ------ wizard_class doesnt node support modules? thats a way to avoid callback hell ~~~ fredrb How so? ------ JabavuAdams Thanks for this. The Node / Javascript ecosystem just seems like one I don't want to be a part of. I feel so lucky to have avoided the whole disgusting web stack. ~~~ bdcravens Like the author said, Node isn't a great fit for certain apps. It sounds like yours is one of them. ------ bricss Author plz, uninstall Node.js, use your so lovely Python and don't make people concerned. ~~~ tobltobs Because being concerned is a bad thing? ------ santoshalper Node.js, meteor, et al. is a great example of what happens when you let inexperienced developers design a platform and run an ecosystem. Almost every ounce of focus in this community goes to increasing developer productivity. Operational concerns like scalability, security, monitoring, are given the bare minimum of focus. In many years of programming in many languages on many platforms I have never seen a worse platform and ecosystem than Node.js in a very popular language (obviously some obscure languages hardly have anything built around them at all). I really think it is setting the programming world back a lot. Not to mention what a thoroughly shitty language JavaScript is. Being able to code your web app in one language is a neat trick, and the ability to talk back and forth between client and server so seamlessly does kind of feel like magic, but otherwise, this is a meaningfully worse language/platform that Visual Basic. ------ jondubois \- The dependency instability can be avoided by specifying specific versions of your dependencies inside your package.json. \- The fact that the ecosystem is evolving quickly is a good thing. Node.js is still one of the fastest growing software development platforms according to Google trends so you should expect it to change faster than other ecosystems. \- ORMs suck (in every language) - They always sucked; ORMs are a massive hack intended to fix the impedence mismatch between relational DBs and RESTful APIs. If you used a NoSQL DB with Node.js (such as RethinkDB), your life would be much easier. Nobody in the Node.js community except your grandma cares about ORMs because they're considered legacy technology. If you don't like it, then you can stick to your COBOL and Oracle database. \- Node.js lets you choose how you want to handle errors. JavaScript offers an Error class which exposes a name property (which you can overwrite for each error type) and you can also attach custom properties to Error objects (to carry back more detailed info specific to each Error type). JavaScript is really easy to serialize/deserialize so you can even design your error handling system to be isomorphic (same error handling on the client/browser and server). I really enjoy error handling in Node.js/JavaScript - You just have to put some thought into it. \- The way of writing async logic is changing. The fact that Node.js is keeping up is a good thing. There is no single right way to handle async logic. Most well-maintained libraries will keep slowly evolving to use the newer features of the language but it's mostly backwards compatible (many libraries support both callbacks and promises). \- The standards are not bad; they're evolving and you can choose your own styleguides for your projects. Most JS developers will adapt to new styleguides as they move between companies/projects. ~~~ flamethroeaway Is package.json webscale?

BlogKeenja: Ready to post Blog images for your Startups - TahaKhan http://blogkinja.d5gravity.com ====== TahaKhan Free stock photos are great, however, they fall short on fulfilling the exact requirements of most of the startups. Let's say a startup wants to blog about A/B testing they will not be able to find a relevant image from stock photos. Considering many such similar scenarios, we decided to solve this problem by providing images for specific individual topics of any Startup blog, covering topics such as: Launch, funding, analytics, customer, technology, support, mobile, email, marketing, content, ecommerce etc P.S. I am not a designer, I have made all these images in Google Slides using basic shapes such as square, circle, triangle etc. Hope you guys like it

The Most Powerful Sales Tool at Lowe's: Satellites - 1337biz http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-26/lowes-most-powerful-sales-tool-satellites ====== maxerickson The actual information is less exciting: _Laura Champine - Canaccord Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Your close rate performance was impressive, how do you measure that? Bob Hull - Chief Financial Officer Laura, so a couple of different ways, so of late, we have been using satellite imagery. So we take pictures of parking lots throughout the course of the year. We max that up with actual transaction counts in stores. Of late we have been actually using some technology that involves traffic counters in the stores, which gives us close rate by day, by hour, which is going to further allow Rick and the team to optimize labor going forward. We have tested both methodologies for the same stores and got similar results. We are pretty comfortable with the methodology. It allows us to forecast and see actual improvement in close rates_ From the earnings call: [http://seekingalpha.com/article/2051323-lowes-companies- ceo-...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/2051323-lowes-companies-ceo- discusses-q4-2013-results-earnings-call-transcript?page=7&p=qanda&l=last) ------ gadders >> "A little creepy? Yeah. Smart? Definitely." Is it creepy? They're only looking at car park occupancy in aggregate. They're not tracking car number plates. ~~~ protomyth I don't get the creepy either. It seems like an ok plan to judge volume[1] of traffic compared to sales. Might even do some analysis of what vehicle types are going to the store. 1) I am with other posters and would have put up security cameras and done my count that way ------ dmd I'm puzzled why they would go to the expense of using real time satellite imagery for this, versus mounting a camera on a light pole in the parking lot. ~~~ kfcm This is the exact same thought I had when reading the story. Not only would it be cheaper, but you could follow each vehicle through the lot and figure out the traffic flow patterns better. Plus, to tie in with this other front-page story ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7346629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7346629) ), you could track the plates of the cars, and tie that in with retail cellular tracking ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5154089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5154089) ). Facial recognition still needs a couple of years. Over time, you could tie the cellular phone, vehicle, and electronic payment (debit or credit card) to an individual. Continual tracking. And all brought to you by technology. In the words of Pogo: "We have met the enemy...and he is us." ~~~ k2enemy That, and you can see the parking lot on cloudy days too. ------ joebo Why not track how many times the entrance/exit doors open or close? Or add a laser(?) that cuts across the entrance that counts each time it's line is broken. Directional but also simple to do. ~~~ Naga A lot of companies do this actually. Sure its not perfect, but it gives a good enough estimate. ------ rollthehard6 It doesn't sound like it would make sense to do this given that stores generally have counters on the readers that detect stolen tagged items on exit. Surely it would be easier to use this data to figure out when the busy periods fall? ------ mrfusion How about if a hardware chain used satellite imagery to detect new structures being built, like sheds, barns, etc, and mailed targeted coupons out to the property owners? ~~~ TheCraiggers Isn't that a bit late in many respects though? The holy grail for a hardware company would be knowing when a person was _thinking_ about building a new shed, barn, etc, not when they've already bought all the wood and nails to begin construction. That said, we already know they're trying their damnedest to track just that. ~~~ vailripper Isn't permitting info in the public domain? I wonder why they don't leverage that? ~~~ TheCraiggers A good question. My assumption is that even though it's considered public knowledge, there is still a cost for it and it's not electronic. For instance, in my state and/or township one can go to township office and request a copy of all the property taxes for any piece of land, no matter who owns it. It costs something like ten dollars and in return you get a hardcopy with a bunch of numbers on it. Assuming the process for getting copies of new permits is similar, the biggest downside is cost for the information and paying for some intern or whatever to type it in. Even if it's five dollars plus intern is decent chunk of money (I have no idea what the profit margin is on lumber, etc). And then you have to factor in the cost of the promotion which will eat into yet more profits. ~~~ drone In Houston, it's electronic and searchable. See: [http://www.cohtora.houstontx.gov/ibi_apps/WFServlet?IBIF_ex=...](http://www.cohtora.houstontx.gov/ibi_apps/WFServlet?IBIF_ex=online_permit_start) ------ incision Neat. Satellite imagery isn't terribly expensive and Lowes has 1830 stores. I'd bet it's a lot more efficient in the end to just buy a consistent set of images for X stores of interest, X times a year than worry about the installation, maintenance of location specific concerns of cameras/sensors at every store. ------ mkmk Kroger uses infrared near the checkout lines to similar effect: [http://www.timesdispatch.com/business/retail/infrared- techno...](http://www.timesdispatch.com/business/retail/infrared-technology- cuts-kroger-checkout-time/) ------ squigs25 really cool? yes. Impractical? probably? Scanning earth using satellites is really cool. Maybe they're outsourcing this to a central company, and paying a hundred bucks per store per month. fine. But to be honest, there are some more effective low tech ways to catch these numbers, for example by looking at the number of transactions, or installing sensors on every entrance to count the number of people entering. Seems like they're shooting a pigeon with a cannon. ~~~ kej >But to be honest, there are some more effective low tech ways to catch these numbers Heck, just have someone count cars and write down the time whenever they retrieve shopping carts from the parking lot. ------ suprgeek "Satellite imagery" is the most powerful Sales Tool? I understand the need for "link-baity" headlines but this is flat-out wrong. The very same article goes on to state some numbers - 1% improvement vs 2% reduced labor. If they can attribute it ALL to Satellite Tracking as opposed to say other promotions/general economy & barring other accounting tricks, it is still too little to be even attributable. ~~~ lostlogin At the hospital I work at we correlate 'sales'in a similar way. Just we found a cheaper way. We noticed that at night less people come in. So we reduced staffing at night. ------ gstar I don't understand why they don't correlate EPOS, door and aisle counters, put it in their data warehouse, and have precise close rate based on 1) visits 2) store departments I'd have thought this was totally standard practice! Still though, really cool that they have confidence that satellite imagery is a good proxy for this. ------ rickdale Hm, what the article doesn't say is that Lowes are typically located near Home Depot. Definitely close enough to get a snapshot of competitors parking lot too.

IOS app store has created unrealistic pricing expectations - kgutteridge http://appcubby.com/blog/5-is-the-new-10/ ====== jeremymcanally I think I prefer an open market with prices that have naturally fallen to this point than something with artificially inflated prices. There are two things at play here. One, the competition in the app store right now is so voluminous and so fierce that it's driving prices down. It's a natural phenomenon that will happen in nearly any "free" market. To complain about it is to complain about the essence of free market pricing. Second, these lower prices allow for higher volume of sales. The prices have settled here because this is what users see as the value of these apps. No offense to these guys/gals, but I wouldn't pay $10 for something to track my gas mileage. I'd find a free web app (if they exist) or just keep it in a note. I get the value-add of IRS compliant reporting and such, but that's a niche problem to solve. Charging $10 for that is fine, but don't expect mass market appeal or uptake. I think the biggest problem is that people who write niche apps like these apps expect to see numbers like "Fart-O-Matic 9000" or "Angry Birds." You won't. Accept that and then figure out what's going to make you the most money. The trick is figuring out if pricing at $10 and making (x) sales is more profitable than pricing at $1 and making (y) sales. For some developers, pricing higher with lower volume is much, much better, and these developers are typically niche applications (take a look at some of the "pro" audio apps on iPad especially) that can handle the price difference because the people seeking them REALLY need the value that they're offering. An MPG tracking app that gives me nice Excel sheets might not be enough to warrant $10 in the eyes of users, and I don't think that's necessarily Apple's fault or the market's fault. Maybe it's just that the niche you're targeting won't sustain the price you want, and unfortunately, that's the way the cookie crumbles when selling software like this. ~~~ cageface As an author of one semi-pro audio app, I can tell you that even the "pro" apps are selling for as little as 1/10th of the price of a similar app on a Mac. I really doubt the sales volumes compensate for that. The big problem with the app store is that the people on the very high end of the power distribution dictate a pricing structure for everyone that only really works for those moving huge volumes. People now have a preconceived idea of what an app should cost that often has nothing to do with how much it must actually sell for in order to turn a profit. ~~~ technoslut I'm assuming that you mean prosumer apps. I haven't seen these on iOS. The only app that I've seen that is better on iOS is the official Twitter app. Then again, I haven't seen traditionally big devs on the Mac release Acorn, Flare, and Pixelmator on iOS. ~~~ cageface For example, an excellent synth app like this would probably sell for at _least_ $99 as a plugin for Mac/PC: <http://beepstreet.com/horizon> I don't know for sure but I'd be very surprised if it's moving 20x the units it would as a plugin. But if you price something like this above $10 you'll get all kinds of user outrage because that's not what an "app" should cost. ~~~ technoslut I'm listening to the link of the app and it is good but people have to be aware of it. This is the third synth app I've seen. I've also seen Animoog that was posted on The Verge. The fault is that these apps need more advertisements. I'm willing to bet that most don't know that they can create music with a low-priced app. Consumers need to be made aware of this. There are YouTube videos destined to be made with these kind of apps. For example, I saw an Sprint iPhone ad yesterday (maybe you've seen it?) where a guy is talking to his girlfriend while watching a game. All I gathered from the commercial was that the iPhone was on Sprint. They didn't give me the app or whether the game was live. The commercial became immediately insignificant. ~~~ cageface I don't think marketing is the answer here. Every musician I know with an iOS device knows about this app. The problem is that the potential audience for something like this is never going to be big enough to make the Angry Birds pricing model work. ~~~ technoslut I've seen some that hate movies or TV but I've never seen anyone who doesn't like music or wants ti create it, even on a superficial level. Angry Birds is an outlier. Their success had as much to do with quiet advertising than any blog could do. At the end of the day, everyone wants to create – even it is something different with an usual set of apps. Some believe that iOS is only meant to consume. I don't believe that. Apple has essentially released iWork and GarageBand in subsequent iPad releases. ------ MBCook The kick the tires problem is a big one for me. I've downloaded enough free apps that are junk. Downloading a paid app that has all sorts of problems is very annoying, so I usually wait quite a while before buying something for review to come in. This makes me a little hesitant to try $ and $2 apps, even though realistically that's a trivial amount of money. But if an app is $5 or $10, then I really want a chance to try it first. Many apps don't have 'lite' versions (since, IIRC, demos are forbidden). Just having some kind of 2 hour return/refund policy would really help. ------ crazygringo I think a lot of people may have a "mental budget" for apps -- e.g. spending $5/mo. on apps seems reasonable to me, while spending $50/mo. is not. So if apps were $10, I would buy 1 every couple months, instead of 2-3/mo like I do now. For example, I'll buy a $0.99 remote desktop connection app to connect to my server from anywhere, that I will use maybe 3 times ever. But I will not buy it for $10. So I'm not convinced that higher app prices would necessarily translate into higher revenue. Also, remember that we can't compare piracy-free iPhone app pricing (ignoring jailbreakers) with normal software pricing. Every purchased copy of Photoshop "subsidizes" n other people who use it for free. So on any piracy-free platform, you might expect prices to be lower. ------ jiaaro This will fix itself -- _if_ he is correct that people _want_ iOS apps (read: games) that reach parity with other handheld devices. 1\. Developers will start making simpler games to maintain profitability at the $5 price point. 2\. Once the vast majority of iOS games are $5 and relatively shallow in comparison with other devices, deeper more complex games will once again contrast in value to the $5 games, allowing them to charge more money. 3\. Because of the "monthly budget" effect, I'm guessing the way this will work is in-app purchases. X-Box has been very successful with this model. Sell a full (but somewhat short) game for $5. Then allow the users to buy more "content" for $2 per unit. a $5 game That allows you to buy multiplayer content, additional story, or other mods for a dollar or 2 at at time could easily get their average lifetime sales per game up to 7 or 8 dollars. (and the big name games could start at $10 and total 12 to 15) __One more thing __ \-------------- I think it's worth pointing out that price decreases in the longer term don't prove anything. This happens everywhere. Even on game consoles (Xbox, PS3, wii, etc) where the games start out costing upwards to $40. You can always to to a game store and find older games on sale for $15. ------ gdilla This article was written over 2 years ago, before Apple introduced in-app purchasing. Downward price pressure is a lot worse now than then. It's more accurate to say Freemium is the new $5. But bundling, and try and buy is now available. ------ technoslut From the post: >Because of this, most developers I spoke with at WWDC (even the VERY successful ones) were looking to spread risk among several small apps rather than creating one amazing app. This is their loss. This garbage of having 15 different apps to accomplish a job that can be done with one will eventually be finished whether it is on the iPhone or iPad. Much of the App Store is about word of mouth and less about price. If you give a comprehensive app that is worth the price and has proper dev support, the payers will be there. Today, I need an incredible amount of apps just to do what would take 5 minutes on Photoshop. An opening is left on iOS by Adobe to fill the solution. Virtually no one is doing this. Jobs' intention was not to hurt devs, but to kill piracy, reduce software pricing and make it safe for people to get apps without worrying about malware. Some devs may no longer exist because they can't adapt but that is not his fault. The main mistake Apple has made so far is not allowing a trial period for apps or offering refunds within a certain window. ~~~ rogerchucker I thought those "lite" versions are essentially the "trial period" apps. Refund window is problematic as Google witnessed (and thus stopped it); but then again, if your app cannot provide me long term value then may be you deserve a refund. ~~~ jiaaro What they really need is a way to link the demo and full version together in the app store. Apps with a "demo" version should have a seamless upgrade-to-paid-version experience. Some apps have done this with via in-app purchases (check out living language for example [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/living-language-spanish- for/i...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/living-language-spanish- for/id453341418?mt=8)) which does a great job of this and manages to get $15 out of you by demonstrating the value the app provides very effectively before asking for money. ------ jyap Firstly, as someone else pointed out, this was written over 2 years ago. Pricing must also take into account the distribution power of the app store and the actual usage medium. iPad app prices are higher is a good example but then again this was written pre-iPad. ------ PhuFighter Bah. There are so many apps that I purchased that are complete junk, that, IMO, paying a $0.99 for an app that I do use seems to even itself out. And what about completely fraudulent apps (e.g. search for "blacklist" in the App Store). How are they even getting in? Given the huge amount of crap in the App store, the only real way of finding things that are decent is to go to specialized aggregators. I go to BoardGameGeek in order to find reviews of games. The detailed reviews there mean more to me than the huge stinking pile of games in the App Store. There needs to be a better way of sifting through the stuff in the App Store than using the App Store Application itself. ~~~ drbarnard Don't you see the problem there. The developers who build crap apps end up being rewarded the same as those who build great apps. Essentially, you're saying that you do pay $5 for a great app because you buy 5 and keep 1, but the developer who built the app you like gets just $1. That sucks. ~~~ erichocean That's the situation with "entertainment" content generally., e.g. all movies at the theater cost the same. And just like with movies, review sites, massive advertising to move units and create awareness, and a general distrust of new things is where I'd expect the App Store model to continue to go. ------ crazygringo Also, I'd love to have a way to pay for apps _after_ I've been using them for a while. For example, I would never have bought Instapaper in the first place for $10, but now that I use it every day, I would be very happy to contribute even $20. It would be fascinating from a psychology standpoint to see what kinds of results this might have. ~~~ gharbad At a large scale, it approaches $0/user. ~~~ crazygringo Citation? For example, the business model of Evernote would seem to suggest otherwise. ------ prpatel There's one thing that everyone has missed so far, and I've said it to anyone who will listen: free apps are undermining both the app store(s) and the developer. Before you brush me off as crazy, please think it through... ~~~ drbarnard I started to reply to your comment and ended up writing a whole blog post in agreement: <http://appcubby.com/blog/free-and-low-cost-apps/> ------ jemeshsu App programmers are turning into like recording artists, where tunes are at 99cents a pop. The only way to survive then is to have hit app, like in hit songs. Maybe there will be a billboard type of chart for apps soon. ~~~ rogerchucker If you wanna stick to that analogy, what would be the equivalent of a "live concert" in the app world? ------ NameNickHN It has nothing to do with pricing in itself and all with competition. Look at the gps navigation software. They cost more than the average app. Obviously because there is no real or very little competition in that area. ~~~ geon Map databases are very expensive. You can't just use Google Maps for navigation, because of the licensing. ------ drbarnard I just finished a followup post, since the one originally linked is over 2 years old. <http://appcubby.com/blog/free-and-low-cost-apps/> ------ gcanyon Everyone realizes this article is from 2009, right? ------ huhtenberg That's a very well designed blog if you don't mind me saying. ~~~ drbarnard I don't mind. Thanks! Since the site is mostly an ad for my apps, I thought I'd have some fun with a graphics heavy approach.

Show HN: Unskew My Search, a web extension for peaking into the Google black box - Unskew https://www.unskewmysearch.com/ ====== Unskew Unskew My Search is an experimental browser extension that seeks to help you discover how your personal search results are being skewed by Google recommendation algorithms. Problem: Google notoriously collects and leverages an immense amount of user data to better improve ad targeting, click through rates, and ultimately their bottom line. These algorithms are largely a black box, meaning we as users don’t have insight into how our personal data is being leveraged within them. Unskew is an attempt to identify how our search results are being impacted by unique data associated with our accounts. How it works: When a Google search is run with the extension installed, Unskew takes the search term and sends it to our servers. From there, we use a network of proxies to run the same search from a user agent with no connection to you or your account. We scrape these unaffiliated results and return them to your browser where the extension compares them to the results you yourself received. Hypothesis: By controlling for the variable of user identifying information and removing it from the equation, disparities in search results represent attempts by the recommendation algorithm to personally tailor results. Identifying the extent to which this occurs is vitally important, given Google’s near monopoly on the search space. Potential negative impacts could involve users increasingly becoming encased in an echo chamber of their own making in order to maximize click through rates, or could indicate the willingness to engage in even wider scale manipulation of search results across user accounts which are more difficult to detect. Feedback: We hope to hear and engage with feedback regarding our methodology, UX, and how this tech could be better leveraged to benefit users and the UX, and answer any questions. Outside of our immediate peer network this is our first attempt at gaining wider feedback. ------ na-na I tried it on firefox and chromium without another extension, it doesn't seem to work and only shows the message meeasuring skewing... ------ evanmaynard1 If it's mostly focused at news, why doesn't it work on google's news tab?

What will robocars actually be like? - cstross http://singularityhub.com/2015/10/07/robocars-are-at-peak-hype-heres-what-theyll-actually-be-like/ ====== ph0rque Personally, I'm looking forward to owning (or even building) a self-driving tiny house sort of vehicle.

Google tweaked algorithm after rise in US shootings - marvindanig https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/02/google-tweaked-algorithm-after-rise-in-us-shootings ====== entropea Is there any way to know this is being used only in positive-to-society ways? When Google has a near monopoly, is them having the ability to selectively censor or hide content and basically 'form' society's thoughts not something to be concerned about? ------ rasz My first guess would be “authoritative” ranking ignores $$profit$$ when assembling results, that means counteracting effects of certain videos(viral, clickbaity, "hot" controversial topics, designed to rail you on/shock) being pushed in recommendations and forgets all the autoplayed "up next" clips, only counting organic conscious traffic (clicks in subscription, search tab and from external sources). TLDR it overlooks usual YT manipulation techniques designed to make you keep clicking/watching ads. I wish I as a user could manually trigger this hidden ranking on my search queries.

Maze62: a dense and speedy alphanumeric encoding for binary data - DenisM http://blog.altudov.com/2011/05/16/maze62-a-dense-and-speedy-alphanumeric-encoding-for-binary-data/ ====== andfarm I'm having trouble thinking of any situations where you're free to use any alphanumerics, but you absolutely can't use anything else. The closest thing that comes to mind is DNS, and that's a 36-character set, not 62. Ascii85 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base85>) uses a similar concept, but using the majority of the printable ASCII characters. It gets a hard-to-beat 20% expansion on binary data (4 bytes in 5 chars) without requiring bigint math. ~~~ deweller I'm pretty sure the canonical use case for this would be for including complex binary data in a URL. A URL shortener might be a good example. ~~~ DenisM Another thing people don't talk much about is copy-paste. Double click on an alphanumeric will select the entire thing, whereas other characters might cause selection to end prematurely, and differently so in different text editors. ------ waterhouse I think this has the drawback that if you want to look up, say, bits n through m, you'd need to process the whole string up to that point. Lookup would be O(n) rather than O(1). Is that a problem? (I don't know, maybe people only use base64-like encoding in places where they'd just read the data in once at the beginning, convert it to a better internal representation, and never touch the base64 version again.) On the other hand, if it is a problem, how's this idea: Use strings of 129 base-62 digits to represent strings of 128 base-64 digits. I pick 128 because it might be convenient, and 129/128 is close to optimal: arc> (* 129 (log 62 64)) 128.01522067331783 Or if decoding 128 digits at a time when you just want a couple is excessive, you could use 17 base-62 digits for 16 base-64 digits (which has a space inefficiency of 1/16th, or 6.25%), or 9 for 8 (inefficiency 12.5%), or whatever. ~~~ DenisM Random access was not a priority, yes. In fact it didn't even occur to me, not even for a moment :) As to your proposed algorithm, yes, it could work. It's discussed in passing a bit earlier in this thread, here's direct link: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2554726> Not sure about comparative space efficiency of this vs Maze64, but we're likely splitting hairs at this point :), it should be very close. Yes it could work. Converting 128 characters from base64 to base62 would cost N^2 time, where N is 128. Not sure if it's a big deal. Just another approach. ~~~ waterhouse Hmm, and one could extend this chunking approach to Maze62. Consume 12 bits (aka two base64 integers), but if the resulting number is in the range [62^2=3844 to 64^2-1=4095] or [0 to 64^2-62^2-1=251], then add that extra quotient bit to the next input (from which you'll consume only 11 bits). That would make the worst case only take 12/11ths as long, or 109%, instead of 6/5ths as long, or 120%, as the best case (which would be the same as before). One could extend it upwards as far as desired (probably approaching log_64(62) worst-case and average-case space compared to base64[1]), though the integer arithmetic would become a pain eventually. 12/11 or maybe 18/17 (105.8%) or 24/23 (104.3%) is probably good enough for most purposes. The relatively hardcore might use 60/59 (101.7%), which x86_64 machines can still do with CPU arithmetic (an integer multiply of two 64-bit integers stores the results in two 64-bit registers, and you can then do an integer divide on that, which stores the quotient and remainder in those registers). [1] Average case: I analyze it like this. If you encode n base64 integers at a time, then you'll encode 6n bits at a time, but 6n-1 bits if you're unlucky and get a number in the ranges [62^n, 64^n - 1] or [0, 64^n - 62^n - 1]. These two ranges, taken together, make 2 * (64^n - 62^n) numbers out of 64^n possible n-digit base64 numbers. Thus, on average, you encode 6n - 1 * [2 * (64^n - 62^n)]/64^n = 6n - 2 * (1 - (62/64)^n) bits for every group of n characters, or 6 - 2/n * (1 - (62/64)^n) bits per character. (Note that this analysis only applies while 62^n < 64^n < 2 * 62^n, so taking n -> ∞ gives misleading results.) The original Maze62 proposal has n = 1, and this yields 5.9375 bits per character on average, which is pretty good. (Check this: 5 * 4/64 + 6 * 60/64 = 5.9375.) The next few values are: 1 5.9375 2 5.9384765625 3 5.939432779947917 4 5.940369129180908 ... 10 5.945595231334425 Theoretical limit: 6 * log_64(62) = 5.954196310386876 So I guess there's really not much to be gained for the average case by increasing n. But someone pointed out that all-0 and all-1 sequences happen frequently in real situations, so it may be worth it anyway. ~~~ DenisM That's a great idea, and it will probably speed up possible native implementations (though likely at the expense of scripting languages). To deal with large runs of identical numbers (e.g. all zeroes) someone suggested in my blog comments to XOR the input array with a result of a chosen pseudo-random function. This will bring any dataset into the realm of average (5.9375) except for the dataset that is specifically targeting the chosen pseudo-random function. :) ------ jerf Claiming this is dense, OK. That's just math. But how can you claim this is "speedy" when you have an unpolished _Python_ implementation in hand? You need to bench against best-of-breed Base64 implementations, not some pure-Python comparison you may write up in the future, and for that you're going to need to go at least C, and I wouldn't be surprised down to the assembler. Just stick with "dense" and claim "speedy" when you've got some numbers. (I suspect you won't beat or even tie Base64, but I'm prepared to accept that you only got within X% of base64 but that X% is worth it in some scenario. And maybe if you get clever enough you can prove me wrong.) ~~~ DenisM It's speedy compared to base62. See, the problem is that Base64 is linear is speed, but has large (non- alphanumeric) charset, while base62 has small (alphanumeric) charset but is quadratic in speed (at least in its straightforward implementation, the only one I was able to find). Maze62 is the encoding that is both constrained in charset and liner in speed. Hence, the title. Does it make sense? ~~~ jerf OK, that's fair. Thanks. ------ Acorn If you don't mind using - and _ then the implementation is very simple. I posted an example in Python and CoffeeScript to SO recently for doing this exact thing. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5940416/compress-a- series...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5940416/compress-a-series- of-1s-and-0s-into-the-shortest-possible-ascii-string/5941361#5941361) >>> bin_string = '000111000010101010101000101001110' >>> encode(bin_string) 'hcQOPgd' >>> decode(encode(bin_string)) '000111000010101010101000101001110' ~~~ DenisM FYI, it seems to be known as this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64#URL_applications> ~~~ Acorn Hmm, looking at python's base64.urlsafe_b64encode(s), padding is still used. So it sounds like it doesn't fully implement the "modified Base64 for URL" spec. Base64 encoding also seems to result in quite long ascii strings compared to what I threw together. Or is there a way to use Base64 which would give results of a comparable length? ~~~ DenisM It's a lot longer because it doesn't know your have encoded your input data in, essentially base-1. If you to convert it to base-256 (that is, and array of bytes, instead or array of bits as you have now) it would produce the same length. Yes, there is base64 implementation in pretty much any language, though they usually use + and / for the two extra characters. As wikipedia says, padding can be added or removed as a matter of taste: _From a theoretical point of view the padding character is not needed, since the number of missing bytes can be calculated from the number of base64 digits._ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64#Padding> ------ nkurz My first impression is that this algorithm is going to be much slower than Base64 due to all the branching. This probably won't be visible in Python, but I don't think there's any way to make it really fly when optimized. There are probably cases where this is acceptable, but I'm inclined to think that Base32 is a better choice if larger size is acceptable, and that Base64 with domain appropriate characters is better where performance counts. ~~~ colomon Really depends on what you want to do with it, doesn't it? He mentions character limits in URLs as a motivation, and at reasonable lengths for that I imagine Maze62 in Python will be plenty fast.... ------ peterbotond recently, i needed to encode/decode similar data, and base64 with a variable 64 chars seemed to work just as good. say, - or / are problem chars, then make another set of 64 chars which would have a comma and a dot or alike and there you go. keep the sets in a table or somehting and use the first 2 chars as indicator which set of 64 to use for that data. ------ jtchang Cool stuff. Can you post a few examples of the encoding? ------ andrewcooke why is base62 quadratic? ~~~ dfox Naive implementation certainly is, as it involves one multiplication (of number whose size depends linearly depends on number of previously processed bytes) for each input byte and one division for each output byte. But on the other hand I have this feeling, that more effective implementation is possible (and actually used by modern compression algorithms like RAR and LZMA). ~~~ andrewcooke but couldn't you have a stream algorithm with modular arithmetic? [edit: i thought i had a good demonstration of this. actually, two. but both were wrong. so it does seem to be non-trivial...] [edit 2: open stack overflow question: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3545931/efficient- algorit...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3545931/efficient-algorithm- for-conversion-between-numeral-system) ] ~~~ DenisM If we could, we wouldn't call it base62, as base62 normally means converting the entire "bigint" (all bytes of input data as one big number) into base-62 representation. At least that's how baseXX has been used to far (I searched the web before doing this), and I am in favor of sticking to that naming convention. Agreed? Now, whether we could come up with such streaming algorithm I'm not sure. I tried solving this problem, and this is what I came up with. Maybe I haven't tried hard enough to go the other route... I guess you could simply slice the incoming stream into a set of chunks, each small enough to make bigin base62 conversion fast (which is square of the size of the chunk), and yet large enough to obscure the occasional loss of space at the chunk boundaries... I guess that would be an option...

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How I got into Y Combinator and fathered a child, almost simultaneously - antongm http://adgrok.com/pseudorandomness-or-how-i-got-into-y-combinator-and-had-a-child-with-a-woman-i-barely-knew-almost-simultaneously ====== abstractbill I enjoy reading posts like these for the perspective they give me on how differently some people do things. My wife and I by contrast are ridiculously over-prepared. Dated for a year before moving in together, lived together for two more years before deciding to get married, waited another two years to have a kid, and then invested enough time into learning about childbirth that every medical professional we talked to though the whole pregnancy and labor assumed that we were both in the medical field (seriously, I know way more about the anatomy of the female pelvic area than any other part of the human body because of this). She's a month old today (coincidentally also named Zoe). ~~~ sgoraya Congratulations - The journey only gets better! I've got a 8 month baby boy and wonderful wife that are the center of my universe right now. I got a chuckle about the time invested into the childbirth process; my wife teased me about knowing more about having a baby than she did ;) That said, I am spending less time on my business - whereas in the past after coming home from the office I would take a break for dinner, the gym, then get back to my desk at home and work into the night. That schedule has changed drastically - I would rather spend the evening playing with my son and hanging out with my wife than working. After the little one goes to sleep though, I try to put in a couple hours of highly focused work. Overall, I think I'm almost as productive (after the first 4 months) - when you have a child, the need to maximize time and effort are amplified. ------ runjake Getting a woman pregnant and fathering a child are two entirely different things. I hope you have found the perfect balance between being a father and running a startup. Hint: the proper balance is heavily leaning towards the child. ~~~ tptacek I upvoted you, since I've had the (apparently not so) unique experience of having my first kid at the same time as my first "real" startup, and it was fraught with peril. I agree that the preachiness of your comment is grating, but the tone of the blog post you're commenting on kind of warrants it. That said, the real risk in this scenario isn't to the child; the risk is that you'll demolish your relationship with the other parent. The kid will be fine for the first year or so. They're basically very smelly houseplants until they get to crawling age. You're constantly terrified that they're going to randomly die on you, but the rules for preventing that outcome are straightforward and hard to forget. ~~~ m_eiman _You're constantly terrified that they're going to randomly die on you, but the rules for preventing that outcome are straightforward and hard to forget._ Changing the recommendation from sleeping face-down to sleeping on the back has reduced the rate of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or something like that) in Sweden by roughly 80% since 1992. There was a peak at 1.1 per 1000 live births in 1991, and it's now at 0.25 or less (in 2008 it was down to 0.13)[1]. Some babies sleep better face down, but I prefer somewhat uneasy sleep for six to nine months (until they can turn over by themselves) to a tenfold higher risk of death. [1]: (Swedish) <http://www.internetmedicin.se/dyn_main.asp?page=1466> ~~~ jaxn I have 4 kids. They all slept face down. They all lived. The point being, even the stuff we fear in the western world is really pretty unlikely. Feed them, don't drop them and you are pretty much good. (for the first year) ~~~ ekanes For things that occur so rarely, you can't extrapolate based on your experience. By your logic, we shouldn't get vaccinated because "my 4 cousins didn't, and they lived." ~~~ runjake I think that was the OP's point. SIDS is rare and probably has nothing to do with a baby's position.It's a medical guess, at this point. I almost feel irresponsible mentioning this, so let me say that one should always listen to their doctors. ~~~ m_eiman _SIDS is rare and probably has nothing to do with a baby's position._ There's a bunch of research on the subject, and the resulting recommendation is that sleeping on the back is preferred. I haven't read the actual studies, but a bunch are mentioned in the article I linked to: Alm B, Lagercrantz H, Wennergren G. Stop SIDS - sleeping solitary supine, sucking soother, stopping smoking substitutes. Acta Paediatr. 2006 Mar;95(3):260-2. Swedish Medical Research Council State of the Art Conference on the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Proceedings. Gothenburg, 3-5 June 1992. Acta Paediatr Suppl 1993;389(1):1-129. Alm B, Milerad J, Wennergren G, Skjaerven R, Øyen N, Norvenius G, et al. A case-control study of smoking and sudden infant death syndrome in the Scandinavian countries, 1992 to 1995. The Nordic Epidemiological SIDS Study. Arch Dis Child 1998;78(4):329-34. Alm B, Norvenius SG, Wennergren G, Skjaerven R, Oyen N, Milerad J, et al. Changes in the epidemiology of sudden infant death syndrome in Sweden 1973-1996. Arch Dis Child 2001;84(1):24-30. Alm B, Möllborg P, Erdes L, Pettersson R, Aberg N, Norvenius G, Wennergren G. SIDS risk factors and factors associated with prone sleeping in Sweden. Arch Dis Child. 2006;91:915-9. Wennergren G. Prevention of sudden infant death syndrome. Pediatr Pulmonol 2004;37 Suppl 26:110-1. Carpenter RG, Irgens LM, Blair PS, England PD, Fleming P, Huber J, et al. Sudden unexplained infant death in 20 regions in Europe: case control study. Lancet 2004;363(9404):185-91. American Academy of Pediatrics, Task Force on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Policy Statement. The changing concept of sudden infant death syndrome: diagnostic coding shifts, controversies regarding the sleeping environment, and new variables to consider in reducing risk. Pediatrics 2005;116:1245-55. [edit: google the names of the studies and you'll find abstracts or more] ~~~ runjake I've read some of the actual studies you've quoted (and others), and they seem to indicate that infants that sleep on their backs fair slightly better in statistics. Some also blame heavier blankets and "bumper pads" (the pads that wrap around the bars at the base of the mattress). As I mentioned elsewhere, my understanding is that it's merely a recommendation based on statistics with no direct correlation. My babies went on their backs, because even a %.001 difference is enough for me to play the game, seeing as I don't know what I'd do if one of them passed away. ~~~ nl _a recommendation based on statistics with no direct correlation_ "a recommendation based on statistics" usually means there is a correlation. I think you mean that it may not imply causation, which is true of course. ------ alexophile If you didn't make the jump to the footnotes, I thought this was great: "One of the Y Combinator questions asked you to name one non-computer system that you’d hacked in some interesting way. My answer concerned a man-in-the- middle attack I once did on Craigslist personals. I placed an ad as a woman seeking a man, and as a man seeking a woman, and then simply crossed the email streams by forwarding mail from one to the other, and vice versa. Most Craigslist personals didn’t even have photos back then, so the switch went undetected, even after the couples had met. I handed off the relationship by telling one that the other’s email address had changed, from my fake one to the real one, and likewise vice versa. For all I know, those couples are still together and having kids. They probably don’t know to this day what happened or what brought them together." ------ Nate75Sanders So...2nd encounter leads to a "pornographic scene on her kitchen counter" after you already ran into her with her ex and you make no mention of a paternity test? How do you know it's yours? ------ maxawaytoolong I have to comment... One interesting aspect of dating in the bay area is that the woman's ex- boyfriend always happens to be on the set of the first date, every time. Every single time. ~~~ antongm Hahahaha... Really? I haven't had that happen, other than this one time. And this time it was weird, because both ex and I were sailors, and our boats happened to be next to each other in the yard...total fluke. And then of course Girlfriend showed up in the middle of it, making it even more comical. Anyhow, didn't know it was a local trend. ------ leif Minor edit: gmail's file limit is not 30GB, and there's no way a 1m 10s video fills up that much space. ;-) ~~~ antongm Actually, it sure as hell did fill it up. I'm not big into digital media, so I can't quote the real specs, but my machine is a late model MacBook Pro using the stock camera, filmed with iMovie at what are probably default settings. And the file limit was certainly 30GB, or in the neighborhood. Trust me. I was shitting bricks when it happened....waiting to upload a file, watch it bounce because it's too big...rinse, repeat..... ~~~ bjonathan 30Mo maybe? ~~~ leif Yeah I think 30MB is correct. 30GB is about 7 DVDs. ------ dbrannan The most important thing you can do for your child is love their mom. ~~~ araneae How could he possibly do that if he got her pregnant on the first date? 95% of the people I have gone on first dates with would have made disastrous life partners. It's kind of a lot to ask of him. ~~~ my_account He doesn't love the woman, you can sense it in the writing. Probably doesn't even like her that much. I picture a scenario where he drifts toward his man- cave aka start-up, when domesticity comes calling. Michael Lewis wrote a book about his domestic situation, but one never doubts he puts wife and kids first. That said, he and the wife were a little more conventinal given their approach. ~~~ antongm I won't comment on the love angle, other than to comment that our current notion of love is a 19th century European invention that doesn't really exist in most traditional societies. There's ways of getting along that don't involve long courtship, touching poems, or passionate romance. And it's funny you mention Lewis. The mother gave me that book as a present last March. Great book. I should note, he didn't particularly love his children at all at first...until the child was stricken ill and he had to care for him. ~~~ araneae Our "current notion" of love may certainly change, but the neurophysiological fact of love does not (at least, not on the same timescale). I don't know what the original commenter was referring to when he said love, but I rather think he meant the emotional connection, not poetry (who think that has anything to do with love nowadays anyway?) ~~~ dbrannan Love has many meanings, yes. If love is a stretch for you (or does not come naturally) at least try your best to respect their mother, treat her kindly, speak well of her, support her the best you can, and encourage her. These simple steps will do more for a child than you might realize - I don't care what the media says, parenting is really a team effort. ------ tptacek Ew. That was... vivid. ~~~ atomical Vivid? Seems more casual to me. ~~~ theycallmemorty "I watched with increasing alarm as red streaks traced bloody spiderwebs across her thighs." Vivid. ~~~ Sukotto Actually, compared to what I saw at each of my kid's births, that _was_ casual. ------ stevederico Amazing showing of drive and determination. I admire your focus and level- headedness in a time of great stress. If I can achieve half what you did in those 9 months, in the next year I will be happy. There is no better time than now. Thank you for the inspiration. ------ JacobAldridge I just finished reading _The Time Traveler's Wife_ and this post gave me flashbacks. Pseudorandomness or unalterable fate? Neither provides guaranteed success, so I wish you much luck with both ventures. ------ rgrieselhuber That was awesome. ------ create_account My first reaction was: "oh no, not _another_ post from this guy." It was better than his earlier stuff, and makes him seem less of a jerk. Still, his is the only YC company I'm not really rooting for to succeed; an IPO or acquisition would turn him into an insufferable lout. ~~~ azymnis Your comment is priceless... What I find really interesting is that you actually sat down and read the whole post despite it being "from that guy". I don't understand trolls...

K-Nearest Neighbors from Scratch - craigkerstiens https://lettier.github.io/posts/2016-06-10-k-nearest-neighbors-from-scratch.html ====== Radim While the topic may seem trivial and the execution/implementation a bit too naive, it should be noted the author is a _graphic designer_! Check out David's homepage [0] -- original, if not very practical :-) I personally think it's great to see such cross-pollination between various fields. It helps other newcomers to read about this stuff "in their own language", using a perspective of someone from their own field (as opposed to the usual academic / old-hand angle). [0] [http://www.lettier.com/](http://www.lettier.com/) ~~~ hugh4 Maybe, but if the new cross-pollination just confuses the issue rather than clarifying it, what's the point? "Suppose you have a bunch of flowers in a field, and they're planted so that the east-west direction corresponds to the diameter of the flower and the north-west direction corresponds to the length of the leaf." "Huh?" "Suppose you have a bunch of data points in an n-dimensional space" "Oh, gotcha" ~~~ spdustin What an exclusionary thing to say. Was that your intent? ~~~ hugh4 That's not even a word. ~~~ spdustin [http://www.dictionary.com/browse/exclusionary](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/exclusionary) Of course, I did hear that _gullible_ was removed from the dictionary during an annual meeting of linguists in Leeds last year. ------ henryw Pretty neat for implementation used as a tutorial. A more industry standard implementation would probably use a tree of some type to reduce the space and search time. For example [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-d_tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-d_tree) in [http://scikit- learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.nei...](http://scikit- learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.neighbors.KNeighborsClassifier.html) ------ bra-ket very nice write-up. if you're interested in this, the next logical step is to look at 'locality-sensitive hashing' and some simple state-of-the-art methods: [https://github.com/spotify/annoy](https://github.com/spotify/annoy) ------ leecarraher this description of linear scan kNN may be a bit tedious for the hacker news crowd. here's the gist (in python): def knn(y,X,k): d = len(y) least = [(float('inf'),[float('inf')]*d) for i in xrange(k)] for x in X: d = 0.0 for i in xrange(len(x)): d+=abs(x[i]-y[i]) if d < least[k-1][0]: least[k-1] = (d,x) least.sort() return least Sorting even for linear isn't the best idea but keeps the algorithm terse. A data structure like a priority queue should probably be used instead of an array. and one should use a kd tree or ball tree for exact, and LSH-knn for inexact in practice. ~~~ thomasahle You can use `heapq` from the standard library to at least go from `n k log k` to `n log k`. ------ theoracle101 Why not just use a kd tree or voroni? ~~~ jeena How would you learn how to implement that algorythm if you'd just use an existing implementation? ~~~ AReallyGoodName Read the wiki page on it, run through the psuedocode on pen and paper a few times and then implement it. Source: I did this when I wrote a library for reverse geocoding which uses a kd tree. [https://github.com/AReallyGoodName/OfflineReverseGeocode](https://github.com/AReallyGoodName/OfflineReverseGeocode)

Automatic server hardening framework - dewey https://telekomlabs.github.io/ ====== allendoerfer Seems like a nice and comfortable way to set sane defaults for nginx, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL and some Unix stuff - but they really should have been set by each software in the first place. I like, the private touch the screencast and the developer-designed website gives the project, even if part of a big company. This actually raises its credibility. ~~~ ams6110 _they really should have been set by each software_ Yes, and it seems to me that distros (at least those intended for "enterprise") should be hardened by default also. If I install RHEL or OEL and then have to run a Chef or Puppet config to "harden" it, something is wrong. ~~~ jlawer Well, thats been tried and rejected by the user base. If you harden too much it becomes a real PITA to do anything productive (SELinux running in strict mode). RHEL aims to be secure, while also remaining fairly compatible with previous versions. Red Hat do have documentation on how to harden, but most users don't use it and instead turn SELinux completely off as one of the first configuration steps. ------ iand675 Very cool, but seems like it would be nice to have the hardening steps documented outside of code too (for those of us with more exotic provisioning tastes). ~~~ mikegioia I completely agree. I was looking for the SSH settings but I don't use Puppet or Chef. This is why I prefer shell scripts so I can see what's going on and run parts of it on my own. ~~~ metatron31 You can check the references here in the lifecycle section: [http://telekomlabs.github.io/docs/](http://telekomlabs.github.io/docs/) ------ virtuallynathan Seems bad that it disables IPv6 "for security". ~~~ ownagefool Disable anything you don't use. I wish it weren't so but IPv6 is probably a safe assumption there. ------ crymer11 Ansible support would be spiffy. ~~~ kieranajp I was looking for the same thing; however I can't find any acknowledgement of Ansible's existence anywhere on the site or in the docs :( ------ zobzu tldr its a set of open source puppet/chef/others modules to harden the default configuration of common daemons. ------ codezero The audio on the demo video is really choppy, is that just me? ~~~ dewey The same is happening for me, didn't notice it when I watched it before I posted it though. Maybe Vimeo is having problems. ~~~ markcampbell It's not vimeo. Downloading the video and playing it locally with VLC yields the same problems. ------ Alupis It this an arm of T-Mobile (the US carrier)? Their logos are strikingly similar, but their websites make no reference to each other. Telekom Labs logo: [http://www.laboratories.telekom.com/public/Deutsch/Pages/def...](http://www.laboratories.telekom.com/public/Deutsch/Pages/default.aspx) T-Mobile logo: [http://www.t-mobile.com/](http://www.t-mobile.com/) ~~~ dsl T-Mobile is the US subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. ~~~ pluma Nitpicking: T-Mobile is the international mobile branch of Deutsche Telekom, not just in the US (though there is a US subsidiary). Other branches include T-Online (private ISP, actually a former subsidiary), T-Systems (subsidiary proving services to the public sector and larger corporations) and T-Home (which I have trouble telling apart from T-Online). There may be other branches too, but in practice most people in Germany just lump them all together anyway.

SimCity should do a galactic sim to design species - vtempest After playing SimCity, I think: Why not go galactic? Imagine a version where you are the god-like consciousness of the universe. You input various characteristics of how you want the universe designed and the species that live on various planets. You watch them evolve (like Conway&#x27;s game of life) and eventually they will contact each other and compete for planets. SimStar Wars. It&#x27;s like Starcraft but you get to design the way planets and various species are structured, instead of playing for a side. Would a more Star Trek Borg-like species beat a logical Vulcan species? Ah what a video game that would be, the grandest of them all. ====== iandanforth You mean Spore? ~~~ yareally I not sure if the OP is being serious or not after reading his description and realizing he does not mention spore once. EA is honestly not the company I would want to make this kind of game though. I played Spore when it came out and although it had a lot of potential, you could feel it was rushed and limited to what was envisioned. Combined with the way EA has changed their business model in recent years, I fear for what a reincarnation would look like. If I had to choose a AAA studio/publisher over alternatives, would go with Firaxis, makers of Civilization. An Indie developer though would be the best bet to getting a game that isn't made for just casual gamers. Kerbal Space Program[1] has a some of what the OP might want, but with a more narrow, realistic scope. Also allows modding for extending the game. Also Civilization 4 had some great mods (including several Star Trek ones)[2]. They were good enough, you actually felt you were playing a turn based space sim and not one on a planet. Not sure if any are out for Civ5 yet. I own it, but I have not had time in a while to to play much. [1] [http://store.steampowered.com/app/220200/?snr=1_5_9__205](http://store.steampowered.com/app/220200/?snr=1_5_9__205) [2] [http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=233074](http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=233074) ------ SomeoneWeird I would love this.

New male contraceptive may be submitted for Indian approval this year - rihegher https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-29/a-new-kind-of-male-birth-control-is-coming ====== WA This is big. This is the future of contraception, because it works, it's incredibly cheap, it has (almost?) no side effects. All current solutions are a joke. Hormone-based contraception feels like something from the middle ages. It has serious side effects, it has "harmless" side effects that aren't even related to the pill anymore after years of intake, but still an annoyance (migraine, headaches, yeast infections, high blood pressure, ...) Non-hormonal contraception has its own negative aspects: \- Copper IUDs can cause a lot of pain, inserting them isn't that easy, they are ethically troublesome (eggs can be fertilized after ovulation, but the copper IUD prevents nidation) \- Natural family planning methods are way safer than many people believe (the sympto-thermal method), but don't allow unprotected sex during fertile days \- Condoms are way safer than many people believe as well (as long as you use the correct size) and won't go away because of STDs, but are a bit annoying in relationships And there really aren't any other alternatives right now. The state of contraception in 2017 is incredibly sad and RISUG is the first attempt, which truly can _disrupt_ (and I don't use this word lightly) the entire industry. It will require some social shift. Men must be willing to take responsibility for contraception, but it's already happening: Recently, the pill for men was stopped because of side effects, but the men were disappointed. They WANT to have alternatives to condoms. ~~~ jwdunne Bang on. Me and my partner were planning on me getting a vasectomy in a year, when her implant runs out. We've had to bring that forward a year because one side effect is also a symptom of cancer or polyps. After removal, she experienced a huge lift in energy levels and greater stability of mood. I have 2 children so a vasectomy isn't so bad an idea. Even still, it is an invasive and permanent treatment and I'd prefer something less so. Nobody likes the thought of a scalpel down there. Even a physician who wants to get it done. ~~~ darklajid As a father of two: Said procedure is incredibly harm- and painless. I understand the fear, but I've seen people (even here) spread a lot of FUD about it. If you prefer something else: Sure! If you're merely uneasy about the process: Don't be, it's so common, fast and easy. ~~~ 5ilv3r Isn't that a normal response to a voluntary procedure? Fear? Uncertainty? Doubt? Mine hurt for more than a month. It's worth it and I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but hate it when people go around telling everyone that it will all exactly be the same. It ain't. Muzzle velocity is lower and the ammunition is visibly no longer standard issue. Further, the recoil action is quite a bit less intense. There's a lot of psychological stuff going on in this mind space, and discounting people's feelings about what is ultimately a primal urge is just foolish. ------ ph0rque There's Parmesus Vasalgel that is going through trials in the US, based on this tech. Also, a startup whose name I forget is developing the same kind of tech. They were part of YC Fellowship Batch 3. ~~~ ckastner The article mentions this, although it's not quite clear to me how they differ (and by how much). Parsemus apparently got started by licensing the technology from Guha, then developed its own solution inspired by that technology. ~~~ 24gttghh The tech in this article allow sperm through but damage the sperm. The Parsemus tech seems to block the tubes entirely. ~~~ tgtweak Untrue, actually they both use the same system (and almost identical formulation). The difference being the focus on the FDA process and US market that vaselgel is taking, you can see the cleverly worded non-answer on their own FAQ, quoted below. They do "filter" the vasdeferentia and not block it. This is actually preferential as it can alleviate a small chance of pain or sperm granulomas after a vasectomy, also quoted below. _Although Vasalgel and RISUG® are based on the same concept of using a polymer gel injected into the vas deferens, the formulations are not the same. And RISUG has been developed and tested in India over multiple decades, while Vasalgel is being developed in the United States to conform to the latest FDA and international codes of production and safety._ And _only a small percentage of men who have had a vasectomy experience chronic pain (1-2% according to the American Urological Association). Our current understanding of Vasalgel is that fluids can pass through the gel, but sperm cannot. This will likely reduce the incidence of back-pressure. Sperm granulomas are formed when the vas deferens is severed in a vasectomy and sperm leak into surrounding tissue. Since injection of Vasalgel does not involve cutting the vas deferens, this should not be an issue._ Notice the non-answer below: _Our understanding is that Vasalgel works by blocking or filtering out sperm. In the past, RISUG (a different product) was described as working by shredding sperm by an electrical charge process as they went past the contraceptive that lined the walls of the vas deferens. Vasalgel makes no such claims._ [https://www.parsemusfoundation.org/projects/vasalgel/vasalge...](https://www.parsemusfoundation.org/projects/vasalgel/vasalgel- faqs/) ------ earlyriser I remember reading about this maybe 6 years ago. What was memorable was that the gel was even cheaper than the syringe. It's sad how slow these things move and that we're not going to have that in North-America for a good time. ~~~ Broken_Hippo I wish it could go faster, but the truth is this is exactly the sort of thing that should go slowly. It is much better for birth control to have a certain effectiveness, after all. Since this is an injection, probably best to have good tests with longevity as well. It isn't bad to go back every couple years for this, but this is the sort of information one needs to know upfront. Unfortunately, finding this initial stuff out takes time. ~~~ TheAdamAndChe A problem in the US is that the company that wants to sell this is the company that needs to pay for the studies required to make it legal. However because it is so cheap, it's difficult for the company to make a profit. The same thing can be found with many supplements. For example, N-acetylcysteine has shown to be helpful in several forms of addiction and mood disorders, but because it is so cheap, no company will front the money needed to make it a medication. We need to change the system so that the research is paid for by the government somehow, in my opinion. ~~~ aianus > However because it is so cheap, it's difficult for the company to make a > profit. Why does it have to be cheap for the consumer? They can charge $5k for this (honestly a bargain) even if the gel and syringe cost $5 to make. Isn't that what patents are for? ~~~ TheAdamAndChe Many of these drugs are cheap because the patent has expired. Many times, it's not until the patent has expired that they learn the new use for the drug, but by that point, they can't make money off of it. It shames me to think that we have a for-profit healthcare system. ------ k-mcgrady I wonder how this would effect STD rates in areas with bad sex ed? I could see a lot of people thinking 'don't need a condom because I can't make someone pregnant now'. Not that this product is a bad thing, very useful for people in monogamous relationships. ~~~ torrent-of-ions I can't see how it would have a positive effect. HIV infection rates in the gay community have shot up in recent years unfortunately as people have become complacent with condoms. Without the risk of pregnancy one can only assume the same thing will happen in the straight community. ~~~ digitalsushi To be fair, the straight and gay communities are really just opposite sides of the same fish tank, not two fish tanks, as a metaphor for compartmentalizing the sharing of diseases. ~~~ JshWright It's still reasonable to differentiate the primary motivation for condom use in the two 'communities'. ------ Markoff Sounds like interesting option, but 98% efficiency seem pretty unreliable, so I will still be at risk 2 times out of 100 intercourses when not counting other factors. Personally I consider immediately after having second child vasectomy, though if wife would agree I would do it already now (one child is more than enough for me) plus store sperm in bank just in case if changing mind, since I heard reversing vasectomy ain't that successful. Seem safer with 0.15-1% failure rate than this method. ~~~ taejo > Sounds like interesting option, but 98% efficiency seem pretty unreliable, > so I will still be at risk 2 times out of 100 intercourses when not counting > other factors. Efficacy for contraceptives is almost always measured _per year_. That is, of every 100 couples using this method for a year, two will become pregnant. As the article says, this is about the same level as (perfect use of) condoms. ~~~ Markoff seem very inaccurate since every couple has very different frequency of sex per year, some couple can have 100 intercourses, other will have 20 and they have same odds according some average couple? ~~~ scott_karana The inaccuracy would depend on the sample size of the test groups. It might be useful to get standard deviation, or maybe the methodology excludes outliers? ------ Batro This seems quite perfect in theory. Not invasive, lasts for a long time, just one shot and then you're done... I hope the clinical tests will bring good news for that project, because this is something I would do if it comes on the market one day. ~~~ JshWright While it is far _less_ invasive than some options, it is still an invasive procedure, and not without risks. Obviously, for many patients, the benefits will massively outweigh the risks (assuming the clinical testing bears out the initial results). ~~~ Batro Yeah, I spoke (or rather typed) too fast : it's still an injection, you're right, but at least it's not a complete surgery operation. ------ Ericson2314 This would seem to be the best birth control for either sex. Fingers crossed it makes it to market. ~~~ _archon_ I currently believe that birth control should be actively employed by all parties. I look forward to a viable male contraceptive making it to market. ~~~ Ericson2314 Technically I beleive the only efficient systems are those where it is known a priori who employs birth control. That basically means it must be the responsibility of one sex or both. I agree with you: both sexes may be overkill but is the only fair option. ~~~ manmal I don't get it - what does that kind of fairness buy you or society? If it's enough when one side takes contraceptives, what logic argument is there that the other side must do the same? Economically (time, resources, even environmentally; the pill and condoms eventually end up in our water or the sea) this does not make sense. ~~~ nommm-nommm To minimize the risk of failure. Same reason why you'd have a backup parachute when you jump out of a plane even though you strictly only need one. ~~~ manmal Sure, I get that. Grandparent mentioned fairness as driving factor though. ~~~ Ericson2314 Ah yes should not have forgotten redundancy being good. Fairness is obvious: cost of procedures, risk of side effects, time spent in operation, etc is born by both parties. ------ elastic_church > Stories like that encourage Guha to persist with the project, he said, even > though patents on his invention have long since expired and he won’t see any > personal financial gain even if it takes off worldwide. Hm, in America you can get a patent term extension due to regulatory delays in bringing a product to market at other agencies, such as the FDA Does that not exist in India? ------ ams6110 The reason male contraceptives don't get a lot of traction is that men don't get pregnant. ~~~ cheez Nope, that is not the reason. The reason is that they don't know it exists. Condoms are OK, but for that drunken one night stand, not necessarily good enough. Female birth control has the problem that you have to trust your partner (spoiler: not everyone is trustworthy.) When my son has his first girlfriend and if it is getting serious, I would get this done for him if it was available. ------ jlebrech I thought it was going to be a pill, we already have vasectomies. ~~~ aianus They will not give you a vasectomy in the US as a young childless man. Something about 'changing your mind later'. It's very patronizing. ~~~ cr0sh Definitely patronizing! Not only that, but even when a woman is in obvious pain and having issues which only a hysterectomy will solve (ovarian cysts) - if she is under 30 or so, they won't give it to her. My wife and I made the decision not to have children a long time ago. In the meantime, she's had times where she went into the hospital ER for pain caused by ovarian cysts. She attempted to inquire about a hysterectomy from her doctor after these episode, only to be rebuffed about "what about having children later", etc. To this day she still has problems, but it has waned greatly now that she's approaching menopause. She'd still like to do it just to stop having a period, but it's no longer the crazy amount of pain that it was. I found it frustrating for her that as an adult, she was being restricted from making choices about her own body to improve her health and quality of life. ~~~ nommm-nommm Stupid question but why would a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) prevent cysts from forming on the ovaries? The ovaries are the hormone producing organs. ------ MichaelGG Testosterone will also do this. There are long release esters so you only need an injection every few months. Even with a bimonthly shot, it costs about $10/mo. (On mobile, but there was a study in China with T undecanoate showing amazing effectiveness.) Downside is that in the US, testosterone is, hilariously, Schedule III. But 5 minutes with Google should have you sorted. Can get OTC in other places. ~~~ mohaine No thanks. No way I'm offsetting the cost/work of having a child vs the reliability of a Hackernews doctor and a Googled drug source. ~~~ MichaelGG ... Obviously my comment was meant as a suggestion to look into things and note the availability of a well known substance that already accomplished birth control in men. It wasn't intended as a "read this comment and start injecting yourself". You're of course free to attempt to convince a doctor to prescribe. Or you can buy the drugs and get a $100 blood test to verify it's real as well as do a fertility test. It's just an affront to liberty to pay a gatekeeper to allow you to change your own hormones. Here's a study: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15126550](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15126550) ------ imloquacious This article fails to realize the true reason men would never use this product: You have to inject it into your testicles. ~~~ glibgil > You have to inject it into your testicles You need an anatomy lesson or you need to read the article before commenting ------ neuralk Cyberpunk headline of the day! ------ duopixel Should I have children, I see myself walking my teenage son to the clinic to get this done. A rite of passage of sorts. It is difficult to understate the importance of bringing only wanted children into this world, and that both parents agree on it. The cultural importance of this invention will be revealed in time, I hope. ~~~ nvahalik Indeed, the cultural "importance" will be revealed in time. However, I fear not in the way you intend. There used to be a time when we as a society valued things like self-control, discipline, and tradition. No more. What you are alluding to here is a world where we are ruled by our emotions and our basest desires without the fear or potential for having to deal with our actions. To divorce sex from children is to misunderstand intimacy, the family, and the entire underpinning of our society. EDIT: Yeah, I know conservative positions on HN are ways to make your Karma go down, but hey, that's what forums are for right, to have your opinions regarded as trolling instead of interacting with them, right? ~~~ pjc50 Marie Stopes would like a word with you from beyond the grave. Seriously, we've had modern birth control for a century. Not only has society not collapsed but a whole number of hidden evils have been abolished (Tuam passim), and needless poverty avoided. It's our perfect anti-Malthusian weapon. This is Hacker News in the 21st century. Tradition alone is a terrible reason to do things. I'm astonished that your comment seems to have been upvoted here. Edit: I'm trying to keep it civil but I'm really disappointed not just that this appears on HN but it's sitting at the top of its thread tree not greyed out at the bottom. Oh, and it's "alluding" not "eluding". ~~~ gum_ina_package Sure society hasn't collapsed, but we've lost a lot all in the name of "progress". ~~~ YCode What all have we lost due to birth control? ~~~ tlb Before birth control, it was an accomplishment one could be proud of to have children at the right time. It required stable relationships and self-control. Your family and church would give you a lot of respect if you succeeded, and contempt if you failed. It was a test that separated the virtuous from the lazy, weak, and sinful. When such hardships are made optional by technological or social progress, most find new challenges to conquer but many regret their loss. Birth control is old news in the Western world. But the cycle will repeat with new technologies. Suppose you're serious about fitness, you spend hours every week spinning and cross-fitting, and your abs are rippling. And tomorrow, a pill is developed that lets everyone be perfectly fit with zero effort. What do you get for all your hours at the gym? Can you imagine being bummed that everyone else is getting for free what you worked so hard for? That might give some idea what pre-birth-control nostalgia is like. ~~~ idreyn The problem with this lovely wheat-from-chaff heuristic is that "failure" results in the introduction of a new human life into a world that may not be prepared for it and will be strained ecologically for its existence. I would much rather have a world where the lazy, weak, and sinful pop pills towards an ecologically sustainable population than one where the virtuous are lauded for bringing five or six new people into existence, but, you know, at the "right time". ~~~ tlb Me too. The failure mode of pre-contraceptive society (unwanted children) was terrible. But human nature is what it is, and many people are willing to accept terrible externalities in order to have a means to display their comparative virtue. The recent attack on universal health care in the US is an example. Many voters seem to desire a world where people who have their financial shit together will live, and others will die. For a clear-eyed view of these less inspiring aspects of human nature, read _Sapiens_ and _Homo Deus_ by Harari. ~~~ YCode Reminds me of a Steinbeck quote: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." ------ patrickg_zill There is a lot of social commentary on this thread. Unanswered however is, "How will this affect relationships between men and women"? The "MGTOW" crowd laud this development, arguing that once control of fertility is in the hands of men rather than women (a woman can always "forget" to take the pill)... something good, as they define it, will happen. (IANAMGTOW - I am not a MGTOW) In terms of total fertility rate, what does this mean for a country/nation when one population group greatly restricts having kids in terms of moral suasion, societal acceptability, etc. while offering money to those who do have kids? e.g. upper middle class (children discouraged, at least beyond 2 kids) vs. other classes in society (have a bunch of kids). Living in the USA I have often heard complaints along the lines that we seem to be "discouraging the smart and hard-working people from having kids, while paying stupid people to have them". ~~~ SamBam How is any of that different from the contraceptives that already exist? Further, your notion of "Idiocracy" (believing that the "smart hardworking people" have fewer kids) doesn't match at all with the fact that IQ keeps rising in every generation in the US, and fewer people are poor or jobless than they were in the 50s or before. ~~~ patrickg_zill I would point out that you are relying on government statistics for your "poor or jobless" point - and many have pointed out sources of bias that call those stats into question; and also, you are assuming that the Flynn effect will be ongoing rather than just reflecting a topping-up due to better nutrition and more widespread education. Others have calculated that USA/UK have lost as much as 14 IQ points since Victorian times. see [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2730791/Are-S...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2730791/Are- STUPID-Britons-people-IQ-decline.html) . ~~~ tptacek Do you have a more authoritative cite for this than a tabloid article? ~~~ patrickg_zill In less time than it took you to type this comment, I clicked on the embedded link in the article: [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329830-400-brain- dr...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329830-400-brain-drain-are-we- evolving-stupidity/) The Richard Lynn they quote, has been published in Nature, amongst many other other publications: [http://www.rlynn.co.uk/](http://www.rlynn.co.uk/) The Prof. Woodley they quote, is also a real person: [http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/cgi- bin/homepage.cgi?email=michael...](http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/cgi- bin/homepage.cgi?email=michael.woodley03%5Bat%5Dgmail.com) As is Jan te Nijenhuis: [http://www.uva.nl/en/about-the- uva/organisation/staff-member...](http://www.uva.nl/en/about-the- uva/organisation/staff-members/content/n/i/j.tenijenhuis/j.tenijenhuis.html) Sorry, but I don't think your comment added anything to the discussion. ~~~ SamBam You quoted "USA/UK have lost as much as 14 IQ points since Victorian times" and cited a tabloid article. Presumably the reason that the parent commenter thought it appropriate to to mention that it was a tabloid article was because it used the standard tabloid technique of putting a sensational notion in a headline that is almost entirely unsubstantiated in the text. You offer as support several links, mostly just proving that people exist. But your first link, with actual information, completely refutes your statement. [1] It refers to the effect that IQ has risen by 3-10 points per decade for several decades, and in the past few years it " _may_ " have leveled off, or dropped by 1.5 points. The actual author of the study has said that leveling off is to be expected, and any "decline" is quite likely noise due to chance. But _regardless_ of whether the 1.5 point decline in the past couple years is true, the entire article the opposite of the claim that we have lost "14 IQ points since Victorian times," since you cannot reconcile that with the Flynn effect actually being discussed in the article. Combing down through the tabloid article, almost every other study refers to a decline of "about 1 point." Your headline claim is one single interesting (though bizarre) study that uses reaction time to try to estimate IQ, and tries to compare it to reaction times in studies from the Victorian era. [2] As you can imagine, published responses to this article from other scientists has been that of skepticism, to put it mildly. [3] 1\. [http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2014-September/015965.html](http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2014-September/015965.html) 2\. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000470) 3\. [http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/nettlebeck201...](http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/nettlebeck2014.pdf) ~~~ patrickg_zill I covered this in my original statement with the comment about "topping up" the Flynn effect. The rest of your comment doesn't apply to my point, seeing as I was pointing out that it was easy to find the actual people at the actual uni's quoted, via simple Google searches, and that their published papers did in fact make the various claims. Thus the original response of "this is from a tabloid" added no value. ~~~ tptacek I think the only value it sought to add was to point out that the source cited was, in fact, a tabloid. I don't mean that in the sense of "it's a trashy, tabloid-like article". It may be that, or it may not be. But what I can say for sure is that it appeared under the masthead of The Daily Mail, which is, literally and uncontroversially, a tabloid. ------ TheAdamAndChe It's definitely too popular to blame everything on middle-aged white guys. It's sad that even bloomberg is jumping on the bandwagon. ~~~ foepys It doesn't even make sense. Women have the possibility to abort a pregnancy while men have no say whatsoever (in regions where the big pharma companies are coming from). So the argument that women would do more for male birth control is somewhat strange considering they have all the power in their hands right now. ~~~ colanderman That's adversarial thinking. If the man and woman are in a trusting relationship, the question changes from one of "power" to responsibility. Today, most reversible contraceptive methods (pill, rhythm, IUD, abortion) rely on the _woman_ owning responsibility (one which they may be unwilling or unable to carry out). Male contraception relieves women of that burden. ~~~ chongli _Male contraception relieves women of that burden_ You would think so, but... there are women (maybe a lot of them) who think the loss of power over conception would be bad for women [0]. Read the column. I don't know about you, but it gives me a very queasy feeling. Like there is some subtext that this woman believes she should be able to force parenthood on an unwilling partner. [0] [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/apr/28/malepi...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/apr/28/malepillwomensloss) ~~~ nommm-nommm Contraception isn't a zero sum game. Giving men more contraceptive power doesn't take anything away from women. ~~~ colanderman You are right, but that's not what the article the GP linked is about. It's based on two (IMO very flawed) arguments, one, that men having the option of birth control forces women to trust them (which may be true, but is a problem faced by men today), and two, the – quite creepy – belief that women should be able to unilaterally decide when a couple starts having offspring. (As if men were not legally beholden to care for their offspring.) ------ nailer I can imagine the early adopters: male actors, athletes and other men of high social value as a way to enjoy sex without the chance of unwanted offspring. ~~~ frandroid Promiscuous people should be using condoms at all times, first of all. ~~~ nailer If your sperm is a meal ticket for life, then condoms might not be enough. And condoms decrease the pleasure of sex for many people. ~~~ thraway2016 In the US, the meal ticket typically only lasts 18 years, not a lifetime. ~~~ aianus The court doesn't enforce that the woman spends all the child support money. So if you get impregnated by a rich enough man it can certainly be a meal ticket for life. ------ jlebrech at first it doesn't seem as convenient as a pill but I don't think any man would want to "oops i forgot my pill", or say they took it but didn't and if they did that it's not fair on the woman isn't it. ------ chadlavi Shut up and take my money/sperm! ~~~ chadlavi Not a lot of Futurama fans here I guess. This seems like a very good thing, and I'm excited for it to be available in the US. ~~~ JBReefer No, it's that this isn't the place for memes ------ wayn3 \- I'm not paying money to have needle injecting chemicals with unexplored potential (longterm) side effects into my private parts when the potential success rate is that of a condom. Condoms kind of work. \- "The pill" is a bit more than just a contraceptive. A variety of issues, ranging from skin problems to hormonal imabalances are regulated through the pill, which quite efficiently normalizes outliers in female hormone levels alongside acting as a contraceptive. The pill is rarely "just" a contraceptive. It reduces menstrual pain significantly and allows women to forego the pleasure of planning for a week of unnecessary discomfort every month. Every woman I've been sufficiently intimate with to have such conversations describes the daily pill as a small price to pay for all the benefits it comes with. A male vasectomy is 800 bucks and certainly reversible. ~~~ creepydata Stop your patronizing bullshit! I have taken the pill for years I feel like I am ruining my body. I have side effects. I switched brands, I switched to the shot (that was much worse), every one is awful. I put up with it because I won't risk unwanted pregnancy. It's the less of two very evil evils. You're also ignoring the large population of women who the pill is contraindicated for. It also requires regular doctor visits and requires you to to remember to take it. I'm not saying it's great for some women, it certainly is. People also take it for non contraceptive reason. Not great for everyone and not for me. ~~~ Dylan16807 Being wrong about side effects is not the same as being patronizing. ~~~ orthecreedence His tone is very "Male contraceptive is ridiculous because it already works just fine for women! Here's some shitty anecdotal evidence to support my claim!" I'd classify that as patronizing, and as a male, I had the same reaction to his comment as the responder...I've known lots of women, partners included, who avoided the pill because of its horrible side effects. ~~~ Dylan16807 I don't get that tone. He suggested a vasectomy was good too. The critique of this method was only the effectiveness, not that it was unnecessary. There's a lot wrong in the comment but I don't see what you see in it.

The Infinite Set: On '2001: A Space Odyssey' - prismatic http://reverseshot.org/symposiums/entry/2013/space_odyssey ====== GuiA What a great essay. Worth the read. _" Upon reaching Jupiter, Bowman is guided into a wormhole, triggering Trumbull’s bravura psychedelic sequence. On either side of a perpendicular line dividing the screen, two vertical planes of brightly colored lights and shapes emerge, rushing past and out of frame, giving the illusion that Bowman (glimpsed in a juddering cutaway shot and then in paralytic stills) is racing through a corridor of infinite dimensions at speed-of-light intensity. Modeled in part after the avant-garde films of Jordan Belson (who later created special effects for The Right Stuff) and fraternal animators James and John Whitney (collaborators with Saul Bass on Vertigo’s title sequence), Trumbull recreated screen space with his slit-scan technique, combining long exposures of circuit board diagrams, Op Art prints, film negatives, and electron microscope photographs for this sequence, which cleverly exploited the simple x and y axis geometry of an ideally proportioned widescreen frame."_ That scene is probably my favorite movie scene of all times. My dad was a big fan of _2001_ , and made me watch the movie when I was 13 or so- I missed a lot of the subtleties, but that last part of the movie added a new layer to existence that I could have never conceived of before. For a nerdy teenager who was really into science and sci-fi, it was mind blowing to be exposed to such an artistic depiction of the subjectivity of the human perception of time and space, and the ambiguity of reality. It's interesting to read the techniques that went into making it - it's a very creative use of the medium. I can't help but feel that CGI has put special effects designer into a box of vertices and polygons, resulting in special effects that all look the same. I certainly can't think of a single movie that has something as unique and distinctive as the wormhole scene in _2001_. I had high hopes for _Interstellar_ , but it fell very flat (there are some groups doing very cool work in more traditional animation however - I really like Studio Laika, for instance). ~~~ TheOtherHobbes They were probably the best optical effects ever made. Also interesting is the way they echo and expand on the imagery of the scenes inside HAL 9000. [http://metaspatial.net/conferences/io/hal9000.jpg](http://metaspatial.net/conferences/io/hal9000.jpg) Kubrick was a genius photographer before he was a genius director. It's well worth hunting down the images he took in his pre-Hollywood career. E.g. [https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/photograph...](https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/photographs- by-stanley-kubrick-look-magazine-life-in-new-york-40s-6.jpg?w=800&h=823) ~~~ ghaff A good case could also be made for the original Star Wars--albeit in a faster- paced and more action-oriented--as opposed to perfectly composed--way. ------ lostgame There is basically a point in cinema history before this film and after this film. So much of what Kubrick did here has never been replicated, few have even come close to the impact he created on the industry and the level of professionalism he created. However, that's not to say the end result is particularly enjoyable for me to watch. It's long runtime wears down on me and by the first hour I find myself wanting to watch many scenes at 1.5x speed just to feel like I'm watching a movie and not staring at slightly-moving still photography. ~~~ Animats Films have been speeding up for a century, in two ways. Editorial geography disappeared in the 1960s. Editorial geography example (not mine): Bogart gets phone call. Bogart gets up, walks out door. Bogart walks out door of building, gets into cab. Scene of Bogart in cab. Bogart gets out of cab, pays cabbie. Bogart walks into apartment building lobby. Pushes elevator button. Shot of elevator indicator coming down. Doors open. Bogart gets in. Shot of elevator indicator going up. Elevator doors open. Bogart gets out, walks down hall, rings doorbell. Lauren Bacall opens door. Bogart goes in. That's editorial geography. At one time, it was felt that audiences would get lost without such a sequence. Today, writers and directors would skip directly from the phone call to an interior shot of the apartment. Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" (1960) is said to have put an end to that. Related to this is average shot length as a metric.[1][2] "2001" has an average shot length of 13 seconds. At the other extreme are the Bourne movies, which are now down to around 1.1 seconds per shot. James Bond movies have sped up over the years, with "Dr. No" at 7 seconds and "Die Another Day (2002)" at 2.4 seconds. This is an industry-wide trend. Trailers are insane. Trailers routinely break the 1 second barrier today. So there's been a speedup in two dimensions - removal of unnecessary context, and shorter shots. To a modern viewer, 2001 looks quite slow-paced. With enough short shots, films can conceal the lack of a plot. (This is a problem with effects-heavy movies. After you leave the theater, you realize the plot made no sense. But it was a great effects demo reel.) [1] [http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php](http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php) [2] [http://unspokencinema.blogspot.com/2007/01/average-shot- leng...](http://unspokencinema.blogspot.com/2007/01/average-shot-length.html) ~~~ reedlaw That's why I can watch trailers of new movies and feel like I've seen enough. Usually you get the gist of the plot (or lack thereof) along with plenty of spectacular scenes making the rest of the movie unnecessary. ~~~ taneq The problem is that most trailers actually _don 't_ give you enough to really understand the movie, and they're generally pretty good about not giving spoilers... but they're produced to give you the _impression_ that you've basically seen the whole movie. So it's really easy (I do it too) to dismiss an entire movie based on a 15-second trailer. Unless you're talking about the Tomb Raider movie. The trailer with the fight between Lara Croft and the robot is basically the first 5 minutes of the movie and you can stop watching after that. :P ------ erdevs As regards the wormhole sequence, one must appreciate the innovation in technique, meticulous execution, groundbreaking visuals, and also the incredible cinematic boldness in showing such a long, strange sequence in theaters at the time. Truly impressive and meaningful work, which left an indelible mark on cinema over the past 5 decades. That said, a part of me has always wished this sequence gave more thought to the physics and what it might be like to visualize the experience of traveling through a gate/wormhole like this. I don't think the coloration, visual patterns, or sequencing represents much understanding of the then-current physics theory on what this sort of thing might possibly be like, and I'm not sure it even captures it well in the abstract. Amazing cinematic work which moved the industry forward in a positive direction. I just always wished they'd somehow been able to go even further and applied the same brilliance of vision and execution in technique to an even more refined concept that incorporated some viable notions of the possible/theoretical physics involved in traversing through space-time like this. ~~~ Florin_Andrei > _That said, a part of me has always wished this sequence gave more thought > to the physics and what it might be like to visualize the experience of > traveling through a gate /wormhole like this. I don't think the coloration, > visual patterns, or sequencing represents much understanding of the then- > current physics theory on what this sort of thing might possibly be like, > and I'm not sure it even captures it well in the abstract._ 'Interstellar' did some of that, and they had to hire Kip Thorne as a consultant, and run a render farm to raytrace the relativistic effects. I'm not sure the theory was quite at the same level in the '60s, and the cinema technique was definitely not the same. It would have been a lot harder to do any degree of realism. ~~~ erdevs Yeah, Interstellar definitely scratched this itch for me, and I appreciated it for doing so. Certainly the theory has developed greatly since then. But being even somewhat informed about the contemporary physical theory would've made the sequence even more impactful and satisfying, for me personally. I don't think technique would've necessarily required greater complexity or difficulty. For example, one might have used the same planing technique, but used different patterning and colorization, based on more mathematically derived outputs. Not suggesting any kind of simulation or super-advancement. Just using the same technique, but informing the visuals based on more physical theory. ~~~ TheOtherHobbes I think that would have been literally impossible in 1969. Firstly there was no theory of wormholes back then. Black holes were incredibly obscure mathematical abstractions in physics journals that weren't accessible to most people. Secondly, this was 1968, when the world's faster supercomputer ran at 36MHz. Evans and Sutherland were just getting started when 2001 was being made. There were no GPUs, no digital frame stores, and monochrome bitmapped displays were still exotic. It's easy to take computers for granted today. You can plot and animate almost anything, and you can do it at home - or on your phone. Not so in the late 1960s. Mathematically derived animations would have needed a mountain of cash to pay for computer time just to get something very rough and approximate. ~~~ erdevs Why do you assume computers would've needed to be involved? One can plot space-time warping by hand. Indeed, Einstein had no benefit of computer assistance in developing his theories of relativity and gravity warping. Why assume a complete theory of black holes or wormholes was necessary? Clearly the _concept_ existed. Clearly we had General Relativity. One could imagine a more speculative but still physics-based visualization of what might happen in traveling through such a nexus of space-time. ------ chiph The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin has a 70mm print of 2001, and I was lucky enough to get a ticket to a viewing two summers ago. They even kept the intermission in place for a 151 minute film, a length today that would barely raise an eyebrow (LotR - The Two Towers is 179 minutes). It really is a mind-blowing film. He changed the design language for space from jump-suits and ray-guns to something cleaner and more logical. As well as spaceship design, clothing and the space suits. And reinforced IBM's design language as _the_ way a computer should look (even the non-homicidal ones). ------ js2 I think this has probably been submitted separatly to HN, but also worth reading is the Typeset In The Future entry on 2001: [https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/01/31/2001-a-space- odyss...](https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/01/31/2001-a-space-odyssey/)

Three-Factor Authentication Using EEG Earbuds - johnnybaptist https://biosense.berkeley.edu/portfolio/brainwave-authentication-and-brain-computer-interface-using-in-ear-eeg/ ====== johnnybaptist Security overkill but a cool proof of concept for using brain waves as an authentication method. More technical details here: [http://maxtcurran.com/files/Curran_PhyCS2018.pdf](http://maxtcurran.com/files/Curran_PhyCS2018.pdf)

The Big Book of Bitcoin - An introduction - alphydan http://alvarofeito.com/articles/the-big-book-of-bitcoin/#.UUxY7MrTvGw.hackernews ====== willholloway This is a great intro to bitcoin. It made me feel more optimistic about the prospects of the currency. It highlights many of the risks and benefits but misses out on what I think is the Achilles' heel of bitcoin, the ability for sovereigns to shut down the exchanges. Without the ability to convert bitcoin to fiat easily, the currency loses its usefulness as a proxy for fiat currency. Does anyone have a convincing argument for how the exchanges are not vulnerable? ~~~ meta-coder The situation is like the chicken-and-egg dilemma. Definition 1: 'Good producer' is a producer that accepts bitcoins. Definition 2: If all the good producers together produce all that you need, then the number of producers is 'enough'. Definition 3: 'Ideal state' is when enough good producers exist. Theorem 1: A producer will accept bitcoins if either of the following is true: i. Ideal state has been attained. ii. There exists exchanges that trade you physical currency against bitcoins. Observation: Once we are in the ideal state, we no longer need to have bitcoins converted to physical currency. So we don't need the exchanges to exist forever. We need exchanges only till enough producers have started accepting bitcoins. ~~~ aneth4 Except the only ideal state is when you can buy anything in the world, not just "enough." The great thing about good currencies is they can be exchanged for almost any currency and therefor can be used to purchase almost any good or service that is for sale. ------ jstalin Does anyone know of an explanation of the bitcoin protocol in plain English? I'm a non-math guy who's trying to write a legal treatise on the use of bitcoin, and I'd like to give some background on how it works to my readers. Can anyone help? ~~~ eof Have you tried just the original white paper? You can understand without understanding the underlying algos. bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf ~~~ jstalin I have, but it doesn't seem to discuss how mining works, for instance. ~~~ arpp but it does, check it again: 4. Proof-of-Work ~~~ eof Yes. 4. Proof-of-work combined with 6. Incentive ------ mikemoka "Bitcoin is obviously not the solution to these issues, nor will it be a key enabler to crime. It is just a currency with some interesting features on top: peer-to-peer, security, public transactions and potential anonymity." Not a key enabler, but I think criminals would definitely appreciate a hardly traceable and potentially anonymous currency, don't you think? It's not an opinion unfortunately, there is already evidence floating around that they are using it or that they are very interested about it. Because of this I don't think bitcoin should replace a national currency anytime soon, can you convince me otherwise? ~~~ alphydan I can't. I think criminals will find their way with Bitcoin or without it. It's easy to fall for the easy argument: "the standard banking/monetary system is even worse, so bitcoin is ok". As a small example HSBC was considered too big to jail (they laundered last year about twice the size of the Bitcoin Economy, helping criminals, drug lords, etc), and only got a slap on the hand (a $1.8bn fine). The powerful can launder their money, do tax evasion, use tax havens ... now it's available to all technicaly skilled ones (good or bad?). Drugs sold on silk road were evaluated (<http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7139>) last year to about $14m/year ... a good 20% - 30% of the bitcoin Economy, so yes it's looking pretty tainted so far. I would however highlight one innovative point: If you slip (leave any trace, don't use TOR, use a physical address, leave your IP), the community can track you down! And I think it will happen. Because ledgers are public, you can make algorithmic criminal enforcement :)(for those criminals or corrupt politicians who are not careful enough) ~~~ gregpilling Well said. I also think criminals will avoid it like the plague. Bitcoin could conceivably tell law enforcement everywhere you received money from and everywhere you spent it. I realize it is one long number transacting with another long number, but law enforcement have computers too, and they have time on their side. Using bitcoins could be like leaving DNA on the scene of the crime - probably not a good idea if you want to get away with whatever you are doing. ~~~ gcv If I understand the idea correctly, using a different key pair for every transaction should help mask user histories. Not sure if this is easy in practice. ------ disclosure < The bitcon economy is growing fast. > The bitcoin economy is growing fast. ------ tocomment I just got to wondering, how would charging for a monthly service work in bitcoin? A user can't just give you an account number and say bill me $X every month, right? Any thoughts on how to design such a system? ~~~ melvinmt Technical details aside, I don't want to be tied into paying for a service in a currency that fluctuates 30-50% a month. I think that's by far the biggest problem bitcoin currently has. ~~~ mhartl The price will eventually stabilize (possibly at 0). ------ DavidSJ A few minor issues: a b is a bit, a B is a byte. A satoshi (not satochi) is 0.00000001 BTC, not 0.000000001 BTC. Not sure where the $6,000/BTC comes from for $80b in annual transactions per 10m BTC, but consider velocity of money. A BTC can be spent multiple times in one year. Also consider that monetary base (raw currency) is not the same as a credit account, but you can spend either. So in practice, you might only need 0.1 BTC per 1 BTC in annual transactions. ~~~ alphydan Good points about velocity and monetary base. "satochi" spelling and decimals corrected. Thanks. The $6000 is just an order of magnitude >>>(80/12)*1000. Too many unknowns for anything beyond guesstimates: What percentage of the currency is hoarded by then (1/2? 1/3? 3/4?). How many bitcoins are lost forever? As you point out velocity, or even limits on transaction speed from block-size ... ~~~ DavidSJ Even for a wild guess I think you're off by at least an order of magnitude if you don't take into account velocity (typical dollar is spent four times per year; edit: and bitcoin, as a digital currency, is likely to have higher velocity) and the different types of money (monetary base is maybe one fifth of total money supply). Note also that your math involves 12m BTC but your page says 10m. ~~~ alphydan I may very well be off by a factor of 10. Agreed. But what is your estimate? and what exactly would M2,M3 and M4 be? Let's assume 12m has been mined, 1m has been lost forever, 8m are hoarded, and a velocity of 10. You then have 30m bitcoins in transactions but 3m bitcoins circulating. In this case my estimate is off by a factor of 2 - 2.5 (but it could be 10, sure). But What if it doesn't take over half of paypal's transactions, but rather 4 times all of paypal's transactions? That's why I think any estimate is pretty hopeless. A good order of magnitude is ... if it reaches paypal scale it will be in the thousands. Since there is no fractional reserve banking (yet, anyway) in the bitcoin economy, I don't see how the monetary base can be 1/5th of the money supply (but I might be missing something). ------ xhrpost Is the part about it costing $25,000 Million to "trick the network" true any more, given the advent of ASICs into the mining arena? User 67117 on BTC Guild is currently processing 6,348.98 GH/s, or roughly 10% of the entire mining network. While not cheap, it appears it could be relatively affordable to hit the 50% mark. ~~~ alphydan As of today, you can't buy the ASICs because they don't exist, so I guess it's true (plus minus a lot of millions as it is a rough estimate). But it will be a lot cheaper very soon for a brief period of time before miners up the arms race [-- see reply below for clarification --] ~~~ xhrpost So how is this one user mining 10% of the network? [http://mineforeman.com/2013/02/15/67117-identity-reviled- its...](http://mineforeman.com/2013/02/15/67117-identity-reviled-its- asicminer-now-at-2-ths/) ~~~ waterlesscloud My understanding (and it could be wrong) is that ASICMiner has made their own asics for their own use. They are not selling them. Their business model is that they have a sub-pool in a larger mining pool, and they financed their operation by selling shares (denominated in Bitcoin). The shares pay out weekly dividends, based on the awards the mining pool provides to them. There's a couple (very, very tiny) bitcoin denominated stock exchanges, and on some of them you can buy ASICMiner "passthroughs". These represent shares in ASICMiner that are controlled in large blocks by an individual. That individual passes through the dividends to the passthrough shareholders, minus a small management fee. It's an elaborate system, but I guess money finds a way, even when it's bitcoin. ~~~ mrb That is correct. ASICMINER went through an informal IPO, selling at the time the equivalent of $200k or so of shares. With these funds plus the project's creators own investments, they designed a custom 130nm ASIC. <http://bitcoinmagazine.com/asicminer-starts-hashing/> ------ tmflannery The article talks about crowd processing eliminating falsified balances, but it doesn't go into some exchanges getting hacked. Hasn't that been a security concern? Haven't people lost money that way? I know my credit card numbers can get stolen, is that the right comparison? Do exchanges just make you whole? ------ RustyRussell "The bitcon economy is growing fast." Perhaps it is, but don't think it's what you meant :) ~~~ alphydan thanks for the typo notice. I really hope that's not what it becomes ... but who knows? :)

Build An Animated Chart In 19 Lines Of Code With d3.js - louischatriot http://needforair.com/blog/2012/05/09/d3-tutorial/ ====== TwistedWeasel I've been learning d3.js myself lately, and i'm very impressed. As it's popularity increases it's worth reading this article from Mike Bostock, the creator of d3 proposing some conventions to follow when building charts with d3... <http://bost.ocks.org/mike/chart/> ------ ajtulloch A few months ago I learned d3.js and made myself an interactive site logo for myself with it. It's an awesome library. Check out the logo (try clicking it and dragging the letters) and tutorial at <http://tullo.ch/2012/making-the-site-logo/>. ~~~ oulipian Your logo doesn't work. I'm using the latest Firefox on a Mac. Error: strengths is undefined. ~~~ ajtulloch Hmm strange, just tested then and works on my end with Chrome 18 and Firefox 12.0 on OS X. ~~~ fceccon I'm on Chrome 20 on OS X and I got this error: Cannot read property '0' of undefined d3.v2.js:5166 ~~~ rralian I got this too. It's reproduceable for me if I click on any of the nodes before the page is ready for it, and once this happens I can't use it at all. But if I wait a second or two before doing this it works fine. Using latest chrome. ------ vlandham Also plenty of really good beginner d3 tutorials from Scott Murray: <http://alignedleft.com/tutorials/> ------ stephenlee Beautiful chart, I want to make some interactive charts and d3.js is just suited for me. But I can't dive into JavaScript though it looks like easy. I'm familiar with Python. Anyone can suggest enough JavaScript tutorials to hack d3.js. Thanks! ~~~ monkeyfacebag I would get yourself a copy of The Good Parts. As someone who also went from Python to JS, it didn't fully click until I sat down and read through the book. Now there are aspects of JS I actually prefer over Python. ~~~ stephenlee Thanks, the book is fantastic. ------ dm8 D3 is awesome but I've always felt it is more suitable for complex visualizations. For simple stuff like line graph etc. Existing graphing libraries are pretty cool. Anyone using it for common visualizations like line chart or pie chart? ~~~ louischatriot What I like in d3 is that it leaves completely free to do whatever you want, be it simple bar charts or complicated stuff. I don't like integrative libraries that don't allow you to make your graphs evolve. I used it to build animated line charts but those are a bit more complex (you have to use SVG paths with Bezier curves which are a pain to calculate ...) ------ cdomigan Pfft. I can Build An Animated Chart In 1 Line Of Code With DoesEverythingForYou.js ~~~ louischatriot Of course, but the point here is that d3.js really is not "doeseverythingforyou.js" : it only takes care of the "boring" stuff (manipulating DOM, binding data) and lets you do whatever you imagine. So it's more like "build this chart writing only the 19 lines of javascript that matter". ------ dgabriel Alas, the site is down. I'd love to see this. ~~~ louischatriot I just checked and it is up, you can retry!

French CEO Prisoned After His Policies Resulted in Suicides of 35 Employees - chirau https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/12/23/french-ceo-sent-to-prison-after-his-policies-resulted-in-the-suicides-of-35-employees/ ====== akerl_ If 4 months in jail and a $16k fine is their idea of a severe punishment for an intentional strategy that led to 35 employee suicides, I doubt this is sending the hash message to other CEOs that the article suggests.

GluePrint - Implement Designs Pixel Perfect - koenbok http://glueprintapp.com ====== avelis Slick tool. There are scenarios where this does work and work well (e.g. static layout) but for responsive web layout design involving transitions this falls a little flat. ------ killing_time This looks like a neat tool, with a nice simple solution to a common UI development problem. What image file formats can be used as mockups? ~~~ koenbok Pretty much any image format OSX supports. ~~~ killing_time Thanks for making this - seems to work with PSDs so that's great. This tool has already saved me a bunch of time this week! One feature request would be to make the app automatically refresh the overlay when the source file changes, or to have a keyboard shortcut to refresh from the saved file. This would be useful when toggling layers on/off in Photoshop to look at different states of a screen. Cheers! ------ mannylee1 Any Linux alternative to this? Nice work. ------ zapt02 Windows version plix. :( ------ thebiglebrewski Amazing! Nice work!

Xkcd 1110 high res PDF (moved away from dropbox) - reinierladan http://s.rlink.co/JZPY ====== reinierladan Dropbox says "This account's public links are generating too much traffic and have been temporarily disabled!" so I put it on Cloud app as a backup.

Rust 0.8 released - steveklabnik https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust-dev/2013-September/005804.html ====== chrismorgan If you were wanting to use Rust but also wanted to use HTTP (client _or_ server), I've got [https://github.com/chris-morgan/rust- http](https://github.com/chris-morgan/rust-http) which has rapidly become the _de facto_ HTTP library (although it started after Rust 0.7 was released). It's far from complete—but that's an opportunity for you to join in, if you want. ~~~ erkose "far from complete" and "de facto HTTP library" doesn't say much for rust. ~~~ chrismorgan It's good enough that the Servo team decided to use its client (and now do), but the approach I've taken (implementing the HTTP spec thoroughly, putting Rust's type system to good use) will take quite a long time before it's _really_ polished (e.g. we must implement types for every type of header, rather than just using strings and leaving it to users to interpret them [often incorrectly]). It's still a little experimental, but it's the only really serious HTTP library there is for Rust out there. Just wait until it's done. It will be a _really great_ HTTP library. ~~~ chamakits I haven't taken a look at your library, but as a developer that has always wondered "Why use strings for these things that could be enums, contants, or types?" in API's, I appreciate your effort and your thoroughness. ~~~ mbreese The answer is because that's what's in the spec. For HTTP, it's probably a mistake to hardcode header types. They are defined as key/value pairs of strings in the spec. There are a few keys that are specified, but how they actually work in practice (upper? lower? quoted?) is difficult to predict. There are just too many variations. So you end up with proper types for the most common ones, and then throw the extras into a separate "others" type. Which is great, except that now you have two places to check for things. In this case (HTTP), it's easier (and more correct) to just leave them as stings. The general principle with network protocols is to be strict in what you send, and forgiving in what you receive. ~~~ chrismorgan The headers are data, not text. Somewhere along the way you'll need to interpret them; doing a good job of that at the system boundary is the only _sensible_ approach. (It's not the approach the majority of tools have taken, but it _is_ the only sensible approach). If it gets into the system as text, people will start pulling it apart in even worse and less consistent ways. I agree with you that the parse behaviour for HTTP headers is poorly defined. That's something I'll be wrestling with all the time. Supported headers will be in one place and uncommon extension headers in another. Such, alas, is life. But really, the only time when I would expect this to cause any trouble at all is when new headers are added. Compare it with things like the CGI standard and how it handles headers and you'll realise it's not such a bad system. I should make it quite clear that the specs are (unfortunately) only a starting point for rust-http. Where there are deviations, more leniency may be added. But it'll be added thoroughly and properly. ------ devx If they make their next-gen browser using Rust, I hope they make it 64-bit- _only_ , and optimize it as much as possible for x64 and ARMv8. None of that "support back to Windows XP!" stuff. It wouldn't be necessary (will still have Firefox a few years longer for that), and it would just hold them back in terms development time, maintenance, performance and security. Then it would be not just great PR for their "highly-optimized no legacy cruft 64-bit browser", but would also give people a reason to switch from _Firefox_ to it. It would also give Mozilla an excuse to not make a 64-bit Firefox anymore. I assume it's going to take them at least 2-3 years to do it (if they ever plan to release it), and by then Microsoft will probably release a 64-bit only Windows 9, iOS will be 64-only, too (probably not relevant to Mozilla, but could be in the future), and at least half of all Android smartphone users will have ARMv8-based devices. Mozilla should take full advantage of this, and really push for performance (and security), and they should only make it available from Android 5.0 (probably the first 64-bit Android version) and Windows 7 x64. Support for Linux kernel should probably start with no lower than 3.10 LTS (contains all the ARMv8 support). ~~~ marshray Note that Windows XP 64 bit was a thing. :-) Very few of today's apps actually benefit from having more than 3GB of address space. Nothing on my desktop PC is using more than 300MB at the moment. All else being equal, 32 bits will be more efficient, particularly on portable devices which tend to have far less memory bandwidth. ~~~ jfb All other things are not equal, however. ~~~ marshray True, there can be address space fragmentation issues on large 32-bit processes. What else did you have in mind? ~~~ Tuna-Fish The extra registers and other advancements in instruction sets help a lot. x86 has some enchancements, but if you think that 64-bit is bad for mobile, I strongly suggest looking at the A7 32 vs 64 benchmarks. ( [http://anandtech.com/show/7335/the- iphone-5s-review/4](http://anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/4) ) Of course, the performance gains have really nothing to do with 64-bit addressing alone, but ARM took the opportunity to almost completely redesign the ISA, and A64 is in general a better and faster ISA than A32. So all else is not equal. ~~~ sanxiyn I actually find this 64-bit-has-better-ISA-than-32-bit situation annoying. I would like to have better ISA, without making pointers larger. There is x32([https://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/](https://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/)), will there be something similar for ARM? ------ mcpherrinm Remember that Rust is still a rapidly changing language, and releases have very little connotation of stability, support, or any other guarantees. They're released on a schedule, not by features. They're useful to be able to refer to periods of time in Rust's rapidly changing lifetime, but not much beyond that. ~~~ ternaryoperator This! I so want to play with Rust. I want to explore it over programs that are several thousand lines long, so I can get a real flavor for it. But the rate of change especially to important elements of the language is still too great. I don't want to rewrite the code to stay abreast of revs. Not a critique by any means--I admire the language and the work being done. More of a wish that the core language syntax would settle down soon. ~~~ steveklabnik To be clear, the syntax changes in this release were very minor. It's mostly the standard library and runtime that are changing at this time. That doesn't mean that your sentiment is wrong; if you don't want to be keeping up with the langauge's changes, certainly don't write projects in Rust. That said, there are more libraries than you'd expect, including a few that are several thousands of lines. ~~~ dbaupp _> To be clear, the syntax changes in this release were very minor_ Yeah, _only_ the _entire_ for loop syntax changed. ;) ~~~ steveklabnik And it was fixable with a regular expression. :) ------ ww520 Rust is pretty good as a language but things are still changing a lot, especially on the library side. I did a project in Rust as a learning exercise. The language is easy to pick and I was able to hit the ground running from the start. The major learning hurdle I think is the memory model, which is different from most languages out there. Here's my first Rust project after two weeks of on and off hacking. It's a Memcached client library implementing the Memcached protocols in pure Rust. [https://github.com/williamw520/rustymem](https://github.com/williamw520/rustymem) ------ calinet6 I just want to note, if you ever release something (anything, be it a version or a whole startup), copy their first paragraph intro! I didn't know what Rust was, but after just 8 seconds I did. Fantastic and all too rare. ------ metajack Release notes are here: [https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Doc-detailed- release-no...](https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Doc-detailed-release- notes) ------ glesica I've messed around with Rust a little and I love what I see! The documentation is still poor (understandable given how quickly the target is moving) but that seems to be changing. This is a really exciting, multi-paradigm language and I wish Mozilla all the best in developing it further! ~~~ steveklabnik Ive been making it my mission to improve the docs, especially as the language settles down. Any suggestions welcome, here or via email. ~~~ saosebastiao 1) I think I've had 4 different people try to explain lifetimes to me and I still don't think I understand. 2) The use of pointer dereferencing in closures is still quite confusing to me. For example, from the tutorial: let square = |x: int| -> uint { (x * x) as uint }; no pointer dereferencing, yet: [1, 2, 3].map(|x| if *x > max { max = *x }); uses pointer dereferencing. I can't figure out any rhyme or reason behind it. 3) How do you create traits that can be automatically derived? How do you implement a default method? 4) How do you create and use macros, and in what situations are they the appropriate solution over other forms? (I'm used to using macros in lispy languages, but using them as pervasively in other languages seems to be a form of code smell). ~~~ pitterpatter Maybe this will be useful to understanding lifetimes: [http://static.rust- lang.org/doc/0.8/tutorial-borrowed-ptr.ht...](http://static.rust- lang.org/doc/0.8/tutorial-borrowed-ptr.html) As for the pointer dereferencing, perhaps putting the type there will make it clearer: [1, 2, 3].map(|x: &int| if *x > max { max = *x }); Now you can see that x isn't actually an int but a reference to one. As for automatically derived traits, those are actually slightly more powerful macros implemented in the compiler itself. You can see it at rust/src/libsyntax/ext/*. For default methods, you just put the code you want in the trait itself. Like so: trait Animal { fn sound(&self) -> ~str; fn make_sound(&self) { println(self.sound()); } } The make_sound method is what's called a default method. If you implemented that trait, at the very least you would have to define the sound method and if you wanted to, you could override the default make_sound method. Macros are actually created with another macro called macro_rules. I'll defer to the tutorial for them: [http://static.rust-lang.org/doc/0.8/tutorial- macros.html](http://static.rust-lang.org/doc/0.8/tutorial-macros.html) ------ bjz_ Those interested in using Rust for game development can check out our list of resources: [https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Computer-Graphics- and-G...](https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Computer-Graphics-and-Game- Development) If you want to chat feel free to stop by `#rust-gamedev` on irc.mozilla.org. We're very nice! ~~~ dbaupp There's also #rust and #servo on the same server. _We_ 're very _very_ nice! ------ continuations Is there an actively developed web framework for Rust, kind of like Revel for Go? I have a toy web project I'm starting. Would love to play with Rust. ~~~ steveklabnik Not yet. As chrismorgan points out above, the http library is still being developed, once it's more stable, web frameworks can be built on top of that. ~~~ zokier Wouldn't web frameworks be using something like fastcgi rather than raw http? ~~~ chrismorgan Why? FastCGI is slow. Controlling the entire HTTP stack is fast, and makes deployment much easier (only one piece of software to configure, not two or three). ------ portmanteaufu Congrats on all the progress, guys! I'm really looking forward to getting to work with Rust. I have a couple of questions: Is the new fixed-stack FFI arrangement the end goal, or is it a stepping stone to a different system? It seems as though always using a big, fixed stack would cause performance/memory issues. Could the compiler detect which Rust fn's call extern "C" functions so I don't have to write annotations? Thanks! ~~~ kibwen Fixed-stack is not the end goal. The intent is to migrate back towards small, growable stacks. There were long discussions over how "smart" the extern stack-size strategy should be. The current arrangement is, as ever, a compromise. In practice, most people writing bindings to C from Rust will wrap the C call into a very thin wrapper function whose job is to handle type conversions and managing the necessary `unsafe` bits. The hope is that putting the annotation on these wrapper functions won't be very onerous, with the result that any Rust code that calls the wrapper functions won't ever have to bothered with remembering the annotations. ~~~ portmanteaufu Makes sense, thanks! As an outsider it can be tricky to know which things in the release notes are "This feature is ready" vs "This is simply the present state of things." ~~~ steveklabnik Rust is basically entirely 'this is simply the present state of things.' :) ~~~ chrismorgan Plus there's also rather a lot of non-codified knowledge about what's happening and going to happen. But if you pay much attention to the mailing list and stay in #rust you'll pick up an awful lot of it. ~~~ dbaupp (Also, TWiR: [http://cmr.github.io/blog/categories/this-week-in- rust/](http://cmr.github.io/blog/categories/this-week-in-rust/)) ------ saosebastiao Anybody know when there will be a regex library? ~~~ zokier rust has relatively nice FFI, so I suspect using PCRE shouldn't be too difficult. ~~~ skorgu Or re2 [0] [0] [https://code.google.com/p/re2/](https://code.google.com/p/re2/) ------ pjmlp Congratulations! When will we be able to compile Rust using a standard LLVM instalation, instead of compiling LLVM with it? My poor netbook takes almost 3 hours to compile it. :( ------ dodyg What do people use for editing Rust source code? ~~~ steveklabnik We have syntax files for vim, emacs, kate, gedit. [https://github.com/mozilla/rust/tree/929b75e220f6fced42dcfe2...](https://github.com/mozilla/rust/tree/929b75e220f6fced42dcfe2146700ceba1e2cebe/src/etc)

Why I've built an alternative to Github - fnando http://blog.codeplane.com/why-ive-built-an-alternative-to-github.html ====== mechanical_fish I don't understand this use case: _These projects are mainly side projects, or small freelance jobs I've done through the years, and I want to save them for posterity; who knows when I'll need them, right?_ My solution to this problem is called _tar_. Just clone the Git repos to /tmp, tar up the results, and push the tarball to S3. Done. Archived for posterity for a few cents per month. This isn't SVN anymore: It doesn't take special voodoo to host a repo. If nobody needs to push or pull from a repo, tar it up and archive it. If _one_ person needs to push and pull from a repo, store it on that person's local hard drive (with backups, of course). If _two_ people need to push and pull from a repo... Well, this is no longer an archive for posterity, this is an active project, and can the team really not afford to pay Github something like $5 per month per repo? ~~~ jpeterson I imagine part of the use case is "quickly and easily getting back to a snippet within one of those old files", in which case the tarball and archive method won't really work. ~~~ bruceboughton He's talking about tarring a local git repository. You can still use all the git history stuff, you're just backing up using tar rather than via git push/pull. ------ micheljansen While I do agree that Github leaves space for a model like this, I think the value of Github is that it offers a great community and awesome toolset (online and offline). Then I read this: "I also wanted to do almost everything from my terminal, so I built a CLI, that you can use to manage repositories, public keys and collaborators. For daily usage, you probably won't have to go to our web interface ever again, and that's awesome!" And I think "that's what I have with Gitosis on my VPS" (Gitosis uses git to manage user accounts and keys, so it pretty much doesn't get simpler than that). Companies pay for Github for the tools, developers who use CLI are probably not that interested in forking $9 a month for something they already have. Just my two cents, but I wish you the best of luck :) ~~~ fnando Yeah! One can always set up the whole thing, but for small shops and freelancers it makes no sense to manage something like this. Maybe for hackers like us... ;) ~~~ StavrosK Who did your design? It's beautiful! Who does all these amazing designs? ~~~ fnando In this case, I did my own design. I always liked design my own stuff. So, I spent only time on this one! ;) ~~~ StavrosK It's brilliant, well done! ------ mrcharles I just use bitbucket.org + Mercurial. More than enough for personal projects, or more, given that it's unlimited. The only limit is amount of users. Switching to Hg was a bit of work, but I've actually learned to like it more than Git. Really though, it's the same kind of thing and I just use both. So I ended up at bitbucket for the same reasons OP built a new site. My way was quicker though. ~~~ StavrosK I use github for the network effects, but how does hg compare to git, speed- wise? I switched to git from bzr because bzr felt awesomely slow, although git is a real pain to use, even when you're familiar with it. I understand that bzr and hg are almost identical, command-wise, but hg is about as fast as git, is that correct? What my workflow consists of is diffs/statuses/commits/pushes/pulls in projects with working trees of a few MB at most. ~~~ eropple Hg is marginally slower, but not so you'd really notice. If you're crunching 20,000-line files on a regular basis it might be a concern. On repos of that size, I doubt you'd notice. Git is a great tool for what it was built for and the group of users it was intended for--that is, rapid, tons-of-merges-and-pulls development on a gigantic codebase, for users for whom it is acceptable for man pages to serve as reminders rather than instructions. However, I appreciate the additional attention paid to tooling and user-friendliness in Mercurial-land that make it more pleasant for me to use. ~~~ StavrosK The fact that all the tools can push to github make it easy to switch, which I just might do again. bzr was great, except for the fact that it just doesn't have that much traction... ~~~ eropple I found bzr to be much as you described it - like hg, but slower. Nothing objectionable about the workflow (though the tools on Windows were very poor, I wasn't using Windows much at the time), just the perf on a particularly large chunk of code. ------ masnick You can set something like this up on any VPS with gitolite (<https://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite>) pretty easily. gitolite lets you set up very fine-grained per-user/repo/branch permissions, manage your users' SSH keys, and gives you nice clean [email protected]:repo-name access to your remotes. I've done this for myself with a $48/year VPS from prgmr.com specifically because I needed more private repos than Github could offer (my setup instructions are here: <https://gist.github.com/1035834>). Granted, if codeplane.com existed six months ago I probably wouldn't have bothered with gitolite. It appears they do nice things for you like backups. ~~~ gvb ...or gitosis [http://scie.nti.st/2007/11/14/hosting-git-repositories- the-e...](http://scie.nti.st/2007/11/14/hosting-git-repositories-the-easy-and- secure-way) Gitosis does not have as fine grained control as gitolite nor is it as well documented (config file errors are hard to debug), but it works well within its limitations. Both are now available as Debian/Ubuntu packages (gitolite was not when I started using gitosis). The other obvious difference is that gitolite is written in Perl and gitosis is written in Python. This should be a superficial difference, but sometimes the world isn't rational. ~~~ nuclear_eclipse Gitolite is a fork of Gitosis that has been both improved and actively maintained. It even has a script to automate converting your old gitosis.conf to the new format. ------ senthilnayagam I run a services company. I am near my limit for 125 private projects with mega plan. I have 100+ private repositories,with about 100 collaborators(many are my clients) and consume just 2.3 gb and pay 100$/month, about 15-20 of the projects are live/active, others are projects which have been delivered or on hold. Organization as a concept was brought pretty recently on github, my account dates 2008, charging double for just that is not attractive. I love github, they are coming with awesome features, but in terms of certain features many service firms need, a way to archive the project not counting them for active projects. github is lacking. instead of doubling the service plan every 6-9 months I am willing to give the competing git hosting services a try ------ fizx From another perspective, Heroku has unlimited free git hosting that happens to optionally serve webapps. ~~~ bad_user GitHub is also a free hosting service for static websites, that happens to optionally host git projects :) ------ nicpottier Github's pricing model really is a painpoint for little consulting shops. We drive next to no traffic and storage on there, but we do a few projects every quarter. Haven't quite outgrown our paid plan yet, but we will in a bit. Just wish Github would revise their pricing to support peeps like us, I hate to use different interfaces. May choose to just archive things to codeplane until then, keeping things we are actively developing on github. ~~~ trustfundbaby Try unfuddle, their hosting includes both svn and git ... doesn't have most of the thrills and spills of github but I find their pricing very reasonable. ------ pdenya Same feature set as <http://repositoryhosting.com> with a higher price point (they're at $6/month now for 2GB). They don't have a CLI or anything as far as I know but they do offer more storage space at $1/GB/month which is pretty nice if you just need a little extra. ~~~ slig +1 for RH. They are awesome and I couldn't be happier. I've never had problems except when AWS went down. Also, they offer git, mercurial and SVN. ------ arturadib I think CodePlane is very cool, but it seems to solve a different problem than the one advertised on the blog. To save my repos "for posterity" on Github without incurring a $100/month bill, I simply create a master repo (say old-projects/) with all my unused repos in it. On the other hand CodePlane seems to be a great solution for collaborative work on lots of private repos. This can save big bucks. I love to see projects like this. I hope it gains some traction and forces Github to change their business model to a more manageable per-GB price. ~~~ sant0sk1 The one-repo-for-old-projects solution works in some cases, but not really for mine. As a contract developer I often have projects that are under active development for a few months and then go into "maintenance mode". In this case I want separate repos for when maintenance needs to happen. Otherwise that one repo is a mess. I believe this is the kind of problem that CodePlane solves. And I agree with you that its great to see projects like this present competition and make GitHub better in the long run. ~~~ arturadib It's a hack of course, but if the changes are really that occasional, the pain is negligible: all you need to do is to commit twice for every project change (once for a sub-directory containing the project repo, once for the root repo). If a project becomes active again, simply take it out of the master repo and push it as a new repo. It's really not that bad. But then again, things change if you have collaborators... ------ zck It's Mercurial, not git, but bitbucket offers unlimited private repositories: <https://bitbucket.org/plans> ------ jamesgeck0 What does the UI actually look like? Is it just the list of repositories? I'd be more likely to spend money if there was a tour, or an example project I could look at, or an annotated example session with the CLI tool. ~~~ fnando Yeah, I'm working on it! Just had to do some things first before really working on "selling the product". ------ grandalf This is a very desirable use case. For those who don't get it, I'd say the following: \- it's nice to use git for all the small side projects one creates, but putting all of them on github is crazy expensive if you like keeping your musings private (though not necessarily b/c you're committed to a closed source ideology :) \- the cost factor creates an incentive to misuse git (not using submodules where appropriate) just to save money. \- There are a lot of awesome Git UI programs that run locally on my laptop, gitk is one. \- FWIW his fills the niche between github and gist. ~~~ lucian1900 Your first two reasons, and liking hg, is why I prefer bitbucket. ------ angrycoder Maybe I'm not fully understanding this.. If I don't need the web interface and public code sharing, why would I use this verse getting a Linode instance and installing git there. ~~~ masnick > If I don't need the web interface and public code sharing, why would I use > this verse getting a Linode instance and installing git there. Private code sharing. You have to install something like gitolite (see my other comment) to do private code sharing with git on a VPS, or you'd have to create a system-level user for every person you want to share code with. ~~~ joshfinnie Webfaction actually allows you to create a git repo with web interface that can be shared privately. It is one of their "one-click" installations and I have been pretty happy with it for my limited use. ------ xbryanx I am currently frustrated with Github's private repository hosting plans. When I switched from SVN to Git, what was initially one repository became six, because of Git's "you can't checkout part of a repo" philosophy. So now, I have to buy a fairly expensive plan even though my usage is pretty small. Cheers, to you for adding some competition to the marketplace. I hope it provides some pricing pressure on Github one of these days. ~~~ cool-RR I find $12 a month to be really cheap. ~~~ xbryanx And it is, if you somehow have less than 10 private repos. I personally have over 25, and our group has over 50...putting us in the $100/month range ------ yakto Anyone else happy with Assembla? 2GB, unlimited repos and users, source browser, etc.: <http://offers.assembla.com/free-git-hosting/> ~~~ barkingcat The UI at Assembla is awkward to work with. I participated in a project that used Assembla, and I kept getting a flood of emails attached to tasks and revisions that I didn't want to follow. ~~~ Revisor You can change the email notifications, BUT: I couldn't find it for 5 minutes! A similar thing happened to me a few weeks ago when I was looking for a way to add more repositories to a project. Luckily I got an answer quickly on their support forum (and yes, it was there). So yes, the UI and information hierarchy is lacking, but ultimately it can do a lot of things. (For future reference, you can change the settings under Stream - Email Notifications). ------ edw I hadn't gotten around to commenting, and I'm glad it took me a while, because while I first went to Codeplane and set up a trial account, pushed my Github private repos therem and downgraded my account from a paid to an unpaid account — thereby netting myself a free cheap beer a month — I went on to read some of the comments here, set up gitosis, and am now free of any sort of paid git hosting fees beyond my existing Linode virtualized server — upgrading my free monthly drink from a PBR to a Hendrick's martini. Thank you, fellow Hacker News citizens. ------ programminggeek Good for you for building this and then charging for it. There certainly is a place in the market for what you are doing and the price you are doing it. Good job. ~~~ fnando Thanks! ;) ~~~ FlowerPower I too wish you luck! What about security? If i sign up, is my code safe if I want to keep a repo only for me? ~~~ fnando I can say that's is pretty safe. Backup is not an issue: copies of all repositories are stored on S3, CloudFiles and Linode's backup solution. People can't access your repos, unless you allow them to. ------ flocial I've always wondered about this. The real expenses are disk space and bandwidth. I don't understand how they can't just provide a space-based plan (oh yeah, that would cut into high margins). It's a wonderful service and they've done so much to keep many open source projects from stagnating. They outshine SourceForge and Google Code by a large margin. Still, if BitBucket was git, I might migrate my stuff. The thing is "social coding" isn't that big of a plus for your own private stuff. I definitely see value in a service like this. ------ kgtm Is it really necessary to disguise a Linode referrer link using bit.ly in the homepage? I would be more inclined to click it if it wasn't masked... ~~~ fnando I just wanted to see how many clicks that would have, but you're right. Just removed the link since I just don't care. ;) ~~~ mcantor You might be able to do a quick happy medium by generating a "vanity url" such as bit.ly/sneaky-affiliate-link or something. ~~~ JonnieCache Or perhaps a sneaky bit of javascript to track click events on that link via ajax. ------ taphangum I REALLY don't think that github's plan is unreasonable. I pay for it quite happily. But good on you for DOING something about how you felt ~~~ unshift for updated-infrequently-if-ever repos, github's pricing doesn't make a lot of sense. i have plenty of small, one-off repos i'd love to back up on github but it doesn't make sense for me to upgrade plans for them. i just back up to multiple boxes, but i can understand why someone would want something centralized and specific. ~~~ watty I agree. My small company has many 1-2 week dev efforts that we'd like to have on GitHub but simply can't afford it. I've tried creating a "small project" repository and using different branches to host the different projects but am definitely not satisified. GitHub NEEDS a size-limited hosting plan. ~~~ Luyt As soon as GitHub introduces size-limited plans, will Codeplane be able to attract new customers? ------ sirn Your blogpost mentioned using Git with Dropbox was too much of a hassle, could you elaborate why? I want to know since all my private repos are `git init --bare` within Dropbox directory, which works very well so far. What's the main benefit if I were to switch to Codeplane? ~~~ fnando My problem with Dropbox was when I had to share a repo with someone. How to do that? I created a shared folder. And then it becomes really hard to manage all this stuff. For 1-person usage, Dropbox works really great. ------ comechao The "one price" is an awesome feature for indie developers and small companies. ------ veeti Looks like a more polished version of <http://repositoryhosting.com>, which I'm using at the moment. Will definitely give this a try! ------ brown9-2 The title of the page at www.codeplane.com is "Unlimited private Git hosting", yet it appears that you are limited to 2GB of repositories for your $9/month. How is this unlimited? Are there other plans that you can sign up for? If so they seem impossible to find on the site. ~~~ jimktrains2 I think he's referring to the absence of a limit on the actual number of repos, which is only bound by the space given. If you can git 1000 repos in there, good for you, he doesn't care. Granted, something like "2GB private git hosting" might be more accurate. ------ rsobers Fog Creek has a product called Kiln, which is like Github, but is based on Mercurial. It's very polished and has lots of great features that focus on private repository management (but has public repos, too). It's free for up to 2 users. Unlimited repos and disk space. ~~~ watty And then it's $25/user/month!!! ~~~ rsobers Yes, but if you're solo freelancer or student, you can't beat it. ------ cool-RR I think that anyone who complains about GitHub's price has gotten way too spoiled, or perhaps underestimates the amount of effort required to maintain a service of that quality and reliability. I find this to be another symptom of HN tunnel vision. ~~~ M1573RMU74710N I don't think anybody is "complaining about GitHub's prices" per se...at least not the way you are implying. That is, I don't think anyone is saying GitHub is greedy, or not worth it ever or something like that.... However, the fact of the matter is they have a particular pricing plan, and that pricing plan is such that for certain people it becomes not worth it. When you go to a fast food place, they generally offer you varying sizes of soda. For most people that's fine....but for some people their needs may fall JUST in between two sizes...for example they want more soda than a medium, but they don't really need a large. So they start buying a large...because that's a reasonable compromise. Sure, the large may be a _very good deal_ , but that's completely besides the point. It's more soda than they really need, and they are wasting money by buying it. When someone offers a size of soda that happens to fit their needs exactly, there's no reason they shouldn't switch to that. If their needs change they can always go back to their old size, or even a newer one. Or to pick another soda analogy, imagine that the fast food place only charges for the soda cup. It's a dollar a cup for everyone. This is a _GREAT_ deal for most people...they come in pay a dollar and get a cup of soda, with free refills. The fast food place does alright because it all balances out in the end, the people who drink a little soda subsidize the ones who drink a lot. Even people who only drink one cup of soda get a reasonable deal. Now imagine you come in with 100 kids who only need a thimble-full of soda each (for the sake of argument). You're paying 100$ for the amount of soda everyone else is paying 1$ for! Overall, the pricing plan is reasonable...but for certain people it falls apart. Why should those people go with a deal that doesn't work for them? It's better all around for them to find a better fit. The fact that github is awesome and a great deal is completely irrelevant re the issue at hand. The point is some people don't need all the github awesomeness, they just want somewhere to stick their code. If that's all you need, there's no reason at all not to go with a cheaper option. That's not to say that the cheaper option is this guy's service....it could be any number of things. For some people this codeplane is a good fit, for others...not. ~~~ cool-RR _"Sure, the large may be a very good deal, but that's completely besides the point. It's more soda than they really need, and they are wasting money by buying it."_ You actually put your finger right on the fallacy. It _feels_ that you're wasting money by buying a GitHub account with 100 private repos when your repos are largely inactive. But the way to make smart economic decisions is not by measuring hypothetical waste (i.e. how much of the account you are using) but by comparing the options side by side. You pay more for GitHub, yes, and you pay for stuff you might not use, but if it saves you a few hours per month then it's a better choice than going for a service like CodePlane. ~~~ M1573RMU74710N >, but if it saves you a few hours per month then it's a better choice than going for a service like CodePlane. ...and that's the hole in your reasoning. That is not a forgone conclusion at all...in fact it's a non-sequiter. In the analogy these people aren't getting ANYTHING for paying the 1$ per cup (vs paying 50 cents for the actual soda used)...there is a theoretical benefit of free refills, or it being a reasonable price for the cup of soda...and for the people who use it, it's great. ...but the __whole entire premise of this discussion __is that for some people that's no benefit at all since they're not using it. We've already eliminated all the people who are getting their money's worth out of Github, that's the premise of the conversation....we're talking about a service that is designed to cater to people for whom Github's pricing plan doesn't work for their needs. Additionally, to argue that these people don't exist is a specious argument. I think it's an incredibly dubious proposition that there is _ANY_ service which precisely fits the needs of it's entire target market. >. But the way to make smart economic decisions is not by measuring hypothetical waste (i.e. how much of the account you are using) but by comparing the options side by side Yes, precisely. You make smart decision by weighing your own personal needs against your options. Everyone has different needs, and while Github works for many people, it does not work for everyone. Again, I'm not prepared to say codeplane represents a solution for all these people...many will simply go to bit-bucket, handle it themselves, etc... but I think it works for at least some of them. ------ selectnull One plan, one price seems like a good tagline, but what if a user needs more than 2GB? I guess you'll want to charge them more money for more space, and eventually will have more plans, or will charge per GB? Btw, I like both the idea and execution. Good luck... :) ~~~ fnando Yeah, There will be a way for buying additional storage. You'll by a whole GB. Don't want to have different plans, though. ------ Zolomon <http://blog.codeplane.com/> ------ bad_user I configured a Git server on my EC2 micro-instance and just use that. I was a paying GitHub customer until I decided that I spent too much money on online subscriptions. But when I'll pay for a Git hosting service again, I'm going back to GitHub, as I'm still a happy user of their free account. GitHub rocks. Sure, competition is good, but I don't get what codeplane.com is offering, considering that configuring your own in-the-cloud repository is so easy on a VPS (that you're likely to have anyway and be left unused to its full potential otherwise). ------ jjm Must admit I do like the price. ------ js4all I like the idea. If there is a niche for a git hosting alternative, you guys have found it at the right time. I wish you all the best. ~~~ fnando Thanks! ;) ------ guivinicius I'm using codeplane for quite a month ... it's really good. I think the only thing i will miss from github, is the feature to view your code online. ------ sktrdie how do these startups get beautiful page designs? hiring those level of designers would require lots of $$ if you ask me. ~~~ fnando Actually, I did it by myself. I have a BS, but I always liked design and I've being doing my own designs through the years! ;) ~~~ teyc It is stunningly beautiful. Can you sell it as a theme, on Themeforest? say? ~~~ fnando I don't think I wanna do that! :) ------ hunvreus Interesting; I actually have an Github organization account for my company but I could definitely see myself using that service. I could easily Gitosis or Gitolite on one of my instances but tend to prefer focusing our sysadmin man power on our products and clients. ------ happypeter Thanks for building a low cost alternative. Here is my advice. What github looks charming to me is the wonderful service for free plan users. I think this is wise, build a huge audience, and then "out-teach" them to be their potential customer. Success comes after the fame. ------ udoprog I don't get it, why is setting up a private git repository on your own server a hassle? Assuming you have ssh access (compacted for clarity): ssh server "git init --bare repo/project.git" git clone server:repo/project.git Am I missing something? EDIT: mkdir superfluous ~~~ JonnieCache That doesn't handle the multi-user authentication/authorisation. ~~~ udoprog Yes it does, however it doesn't provide granularity for multiple users of the same server, and unless you go for vanilla could be troublesome to customize through something like pam. I simply commented on the non-issue with creating private repositories. A service like this is nice if you don't have the ability or time to setup your own environments, but in my opinion could be risking a very slim user scenario. ------ jarin I just use Assembla for "dead" projects. Unlimited free Git repos, as long as you don't need any of the fancy management stuff: <http://offers.assembla.com/free-git-repo/> ------ patrickod Great looking product and very much like your way of thinking in assigning space and not a set number of repos. I'm a github user and have been for a while but such competition would make me reconsider in the future. best of luck with it. ------ jvandenbroeck The Github price structure might not be the best for this use case. But Github is simply the best to manage your repo's, I don't think this is going to change anytime soon. It might be a better idea for Github to allow projects to be archived. ------ oceanician I think this site is better value: <http://www.svnrepository.com> However you may well have something on the keeping it simpler approach. I'm very happy that more people are going to compete with github :) ------ adharmad I use rsync.net with git: [http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/02/git- and-subvers...](http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/02/git-and- subversion-support-at-rsyncnet.html) Works pretty well. ------ trustfundbaby More screenshots of the web interface (or a walkthrough video) would be nice. ------ atrain34 (honestly afraid to comment, but what the hell.) i know its not git, but bitbucket (mercurial, same type of dvcs as github) has free private and unlimited repository hosting. ------ whather I would make the dotted homepage background a little fainter. It makes the text a little hard to read and I find myself squinting. ------ j15e I like repositoryhosting.com for 6$/month you get unlimited users/repositories and support for git, svn, hg ------ rs There is <http://xp-dev.com> for unlimited repos as well ------ kevinburke Bitbucket offers unlimited numbers of repos for free (they only care about number of committers). ------ dlikhten please note: slsapp.com already has features you ask for. You have lots of archive repos. You are allowed (even on free account) unlimited view-only repositories and they charge mainly by space/active repos. However I still see the value in this service, and I like it. ------ swah Just curious... are you brazilian? ~~~ fnando Yes, I am! :D ------ tuna I liked that I dont need to do this setup myself and that I can integrate with S3. ~~~ fnando Exactly my point! People can always set up their own stuff. The question is "is it worth?" ------ Create <http://www.gitorious.org/> ~~~ thomasfl Gitorious is both a free site and an open sourced project web app. Strange this hasn't been mentioned before in this thread. ------ veyron Is there a way to link this with a project management tool like basecamp? ~~~ fnando Not yet! Basecamp and some others tools like Pivotal Tracker will be integrated at the right time. ;) ------ shapeshed Git is simple enough to set up with some basic unix skills and with something like gitosis you can manage access to repos. GitHub has added many more features and make collaborating super simple. Totally worth it IMHO. Git is not just Github though. ------ tommoor Great idea, well executed - im sure you will do well! ------ Limes102 Really beautiful and easy to use. Very impressed! ------ n9com fyi - it's already been done few years ago, <http://repositoryhosting.com/> ------ gcb 30 day trial for a long term usage pattern? give me free accounts with a few MBs and you have yourself a user base. github didnt get that size with 9/mo plans... ------ andrewnez If your developers are spending more than 5 minutes a month managing, monitoring and looking after their repositories then you are doing it wrong. Github's monthly fees are so much cheaper than the cost of your developers time and happiness.

Lawyer who argued for Internet sales taxes admits he doesn't pay them - gnicholas https://medium.com/@nicklum/the-attorney-who-convinced-the-supreme-court-to-allow-internet-sales-taxes-just-admitted-that-hes-a7ef9ce8ae35 ====== edbaskerville I see this as a great argument for his side, actually. State governments need to be able to enforce taxation at the time of the transaction, because it's going to be impossible to collect otherwise. Without an effective collection and enforcement mechanism, of course individuals won't go out of their way to make extra payments! Even the tax lawyer arguing the case isn't going out of his way to pay! The question of whether states should be able to charge this tax in the first place is another conversation. But if you accept that levying these taxes is the right choice for society, there needs to be a viable collection mechanism. ~~~ gnicholas Yeah good point, though probably one could make this point by showing statistics about how much tax is due versus paid. I’m sure the numbers are stark. ------ chrisbennet While the implementation of the tax may be poor (expecting everyone selling something on the internet to know the tax for 1000’s of addresses) it certainly seems fair that the tax should be paid. As a compromise, if the only the state tax was due, that would be something. ~~~ gnicholas That does seem like a much fairer compromise. In the law at issue, a business could be required to charge and remit taxes if they had just 200 transactions with residents in the state. If this means compliance with dozens or hundreds of county laws, that could be burdensome. ------ gnicholas Note: I'm the author. I used to be a tax lawyer, before getting into the startup life. Hopefully this piece appeals to non-lawyers and general-purpose readers. Would love to hear comments from fellow HNers!

Reaching and re-engaging users on the mobile web - cjdulberger http://blog.chromium.org/2015/04/reaching-and-re-engaging-users-on.html ====== untog This is pretty interesting. I remember some time ago Vox Media (who make The Verge and Polygon along with Vox itself) declared that they were going web- only: [http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/2/6096609/welcome-to- verge-2-...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/2/6096609/welcome-to-verge-2-0) It doesn't seem to have hurt them - but push notifications are probably the #1 feature that differentiates between webapps and native apps in a context like this. I wonder if they'll take advantage. (as with all things mobile web, this comes with the huge caveat that Apple have no intention of doing this (despite having similar functionality on desktop), and want to force everyone to use native apps, so it's unlikely to be a complete solution any time soon) ~~~ sosborn Personally I can't think of anything I want less than push notifications from websites. ~~~ untog Why, though? Or, put another way, why are push notifications from apps fine when push notifications from web sites are not? ~~~ sosborn Honestly the only notifications I care about are email, text messages and phone calls. The rest can all go to hell. Again, this is just my personal taste. ~~~ kinlan I think that is fine. You can disable notifications and push completely, and you can not accept the prompt if you don't want to go that far. We are trying to be careful and make this opt-in only and clear to the user about the value that they can get from it (if they choose it) ------ themodelplumber This is cool to see. The other day a client with about zero technical expertise told me she had won a grant to develop an app, then went on to explain "it has to be a web app that can be used offline; it can't be a regular app." I was pretty blown away and immediately offered to code it for her, just because I'd much rather build and promote this kind of app. These new Chromium features give me hope that it might be even easier to enhance web apps across the board, in the future. The downside (or frustrating side) with this project is that 1/4 of the grant money is set aside for coding the web app, and while it's not a teeny sum, I'm wondering just how much "app planning expertise" is being brought into the game by whoever's getting the other 3/4. ~~~ karmelapple You are part of that 3/4. A proof of concept or mockup to verify that you've correctly captured requirements? Sounds like planning to me. Determining which technology stack is best, including building (to be clear, I mean coding) some basic systems to test out if your assumptions about performance and writing the pieces are correct? That's planning. And so on. Hours spent writing code are not mutually exclusive to hours spent planning for the success of a software project. ------ chimeracoder It's kind of interesting to see Android, Chrome, and FirefoxOS all rushing towards the same point, though from different directions. Chrome is trying to "nativify" the browser, and making the browser a more seamless part of navigating Android[0]. With FirefoxOS, the webapp is already native, and the goal is to browserify the native OS (in other words, to make the operating system itself inside the browser). [0] I say Android specifically because this integration already goes much deeper on Android than on iOS, simply because it can. ------ dublinben It would be a significant step towards "reaching and re-engaging users" if Google would make it possible to actually build a functional Chromium browser for Android. Since they've completely abandoned the default AOSP browser in favor of Chrome, there is no longer an up to date browser in AOSP. ~~~ kinlan My understanding is that there is a up to date Browser. The browser app has always been built with a WebView and the latest WebView is pointing to almost the tip of the development tree of Chromium. ------ kadder interesting , wonder how quickly will sites like HN, reddit jump on the bandwagon. Will be interesting to compare the experience to native push notifications ~~~ kinlan If you know people at HN, then I am happy to work with them to get a test implemented.

Ask HN: How to prepare for an interview at a startup - mmackh I've been contacted a few startups, who noticed the Open Source work I had done this year. They had requested to speak to me via phone to do an interview. What is the best way to prepare for such an interview? Is there a resource that I could refer to?<p>The problem is that I have not had a formal CS education. I started coding ~1 year ago, and algorithms are not my strong suite. What kinds of questions do you like to ask and interviewee, what questions have you been asked?<p>Thanks! ====== nayefc Here's what I've learned from talking to many startups: 1- First step would be a casual phone call to learn about each other. Make sure you also learn about them and ask them tough questions about their business. Both of you are interviewing each other: it's not just that they're interviewing you. You don't want to suck up to a startup which you don't believe in and end up signing an offer there. 2- If all goes well, most will schedule a Skype coding interview. You just have to be prepared for those and that comes from experience (which you should have from your open source experience). Don't pull an all-nighter learning algorithms as they will almost certainly ask you a question that you couldn't cover the night before. Hints: learn a dynamic interpreted and use it (Python, Ruby etc...). I made the mistake of doing those in C in the beginning and got stuck on the details / writing more code that they wanted in an hour long interview. Some were impressed by my C skills, but that's not exactly what they're testing here. Instead, most are looking at the bigger picture at this point. i.e: they're seeing if you can you write a quick draft solution, and optimize it later instead of seeing if you can properly allocate a struct in C and place different struct types in one list. (Writing such an array takes quite sometime --> they might be interested in how you'd design it instead of actually doing it at this point). 3- Then comes the onsite interview. This is where you get to meet the team, see the office, the location and experience a day at that startup. This is very important. Your initial gut feeling is more important than you think. If you don't feel comfortable, then do not sign an offer. You'll be at that office at least 40 hours a week with the same people. You MUST be very comfortable working with them. Startups will often interview you for at least a few hours on different areas. Design, coding, algorithms etc... Just do your best and the single thing that they care about here is that you can actually write code that works and make good decisions. It does not have to be perfect, but it has to work. They're looking for someone who can build something roughly in a few hours, and then explain the shortcomings (so that it can later be optimized). Someone who can get things done, and perhaps become a leader later on. Since you've contributed to open source, you should have absolutely no problem here. Good luck! ------ relaunched I'll let you in on a dirty little secret. While you find amazing brains at startups, most of those guys spend 80%+ of their time writing non-sexy code. As such, most startups are looking for people that can crank out well organized, simple code, with outstanding test coverage and thorough documentation. The number of man-hours that are dedicated to the fancy stuff you read about on HN is a very small percentage of the work that's being done. And, unless you are brought in for your very specific expertise (which doesn't sound like it's the case), you won't be getting to do the fancy stuff anyway; though, you'll probably get an opportunity to learn from those who are. Get a lot of sleep, make sure you keep in mind that they are looking for someone who can work within a distributed code base and practice explaining your thinking related to why you decided to do one thing over another. If you do that, you'll be fine. ------ alphast0rm If you have enough time I would highly recommend reading "Cracking the Coding Interview" by Gayle Laakmann McDowell [1]. She does a very good job covering all aspects of the interview process and the problems and solutions will most definitely help you improve your algorithm and data structure skills. [1] [http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview- Programming-...](http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming- Questions/dp/098478280X) ------ shail I think you already have something to offer to them. That's why they contacted you, so my suggestion would be to focus on what you have achieved until now (open source projects). What you did, Why you did, what mistakes you made, what you learned from them etc.

Microbes that eat and breathe electricity - gnrlbzik http://www.popsci.com/node/223292/?cmpid=enews012215 ====== gnrlbzik Still can't wrap my head around this.

Show HN: Txr – Transfer files/directories to others with WebSocket streams - whatl3y https://github.com/whatl3y/txr ====== cannedslime Interresting but it really doesn't seem that simple. I usually just use rsync whenever I need to move some stuff from one machine to the other. I can't really take your word for it that you won't store any files, furthermore that might not even be legal, depedending on your country you must log transactions as a service provider. What about SSL / encryption if you want to run the server your self, I took a peek at the source code and it be nice if certificate was configurable through the config files or ENV vars. I think WebSockets should stay in the browser, but maybe that is just me being pedantic. ~~~ whatl3y Thanks for the feedback and recommendations. I agree I could add support for an SSL cert to be used within the express server (today the Heroku dyno is just using Let's Encrypt, which is abstracted from the app itself). I imagine I could add this over a weekend that I have time in the near future. > _Interresting but it really doesn 't seem that simple..._ Thanks for the feedback, but can you elaborate on how you feel it's not? I'm not sure it could get any simpler to send files than `txr listen username` and `txr send -u username -f filepath`, but I'm willing to listen. Maybe you mean setting up the server isn't simple? Even that is as easy as `txr-server` from the command line though with the package installed... > _I can 't really take your word for it that you won't store any files..._ I appreciate this sentiment, but that's why the server component is included in the package. If you don't trust the default server on Heroku (which is primarily just for someone to quickly gain an understanding of how to use it, not to actually use permanently moving forward), set up a server on your machine or local network and use it instead :) ------ saganus Interesting. Would it make sense to pair this with WireGuard, to provide end-to-end encrypted file transfer? If we setup a WireGuard connections between two nodes, then run the server and client through this link, it should work seamlessly, right? ------ xori Well fucking done. I wanted to build this ~5 years ago, but nodejs wasn't mature enough. I tried in Java but doing your own UPnP implementation is no fun. ~~~ whatl3y Thanks! Yeah nodejs streams and async IO seemed like an ideal use case for this type of tool, plus I wanted to have the easiest approach to passing files between 2 people as possible (we use it at work all the time). Obv a lot has happened in 5 years with nodejs, so I realize it was likely an order of magnitude easier for me to get up-and-running in the last couple months with this tool than it would've been for you 5 years ago haha. ------ kazinator Name taken almost nine years ago by the TXR Language. ~~~ whatl3y Thanks for the heads up on the name clash (obviously never heard of the TXR language before this). I named it based on a couple of factors being 1. something that's easy to remember and makes sense (txr ~ transfer) and 2. the NPM module name wasn't taken yet :) I can change the name, but our projects are pretty much totally different and I'm not trying to make any money off this tool so would prefer to just leave it as is if it won't confuse too many people. ~~~ kazinator > _obviously never heard_ In 2009, I didn't rely on what I heard of or hadn't heard of; I googled very thoroughly before naming my project and its principal executable. A name clash is a problem for any FOSS distro that builds both packages. People don't directly choose and use everything that is installed in a distro. A lot of is is pulled in by dependencies, for instance.

Cooking in Silico: Heat Transfer in the Modern Kitchen [video] - phreeza http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGKSdQJrIWY ====== Synaesthesia All-round genius Nathan Myhrvold shows a classroom a preview on his new tome on the science of cooking, obtained with state of the art techniques. Great video thanks! ------ Synaesthesia Love the ice-cream they make at the end!

Librem 5 Hardware Update - kgwxd https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-hardware-update-2/ ====== zunzun Has any technical comparison been made of the Librem 5 and the Pine64 hardware or development kit performance? I know that Pine64 will also release a tablet- only version of their phone, but have not seen whether this is planned for the Librem 5.

A year and a half with Alexa - raimundjoss https://medium.com/@sawaba/a-year-and-a-half-with-alexa-amazon-echo-9d04e0e2041b#.7m710asve ====== esthermun The key to get _magic_ from Alexa long term will be get unsupervised learning working on it, and then shared back across the entire Alexa user base. The Brazilian real to USD is a great example. If by the 3rd try it gets the right answer, it should notate that and equate the first 2 questions as similar ones. I am surprised it couldn't catch the first 2. The word2vec output should be fairly similar. ------ VLM "In fact, I’ve had to avoid turning into ‘that guy’. I encourage my family to use Alexa, but then I started admonishing them for not recalling the precise sequence of words that unlocked the dusty tomb filled with knowledge of exchange rates and types of currency." Its interesting that in the last 30 years we've gone from unworkable text adventure interfaces to the same unworkable interface in verbal form instead of typed/read text. A lot of his story reads as a parody of an Infocom game but spoken instead of typed. ------ jmcdonald-ut I'll add my two cents on top of the author's. I have both the Amazon Echo and the Amazon Tap. This article was spot on. I'm perhaps less forgiving than the author. If Alexa can't answer a question on the first try I'll just give up. When Alexa does answer a question or a request she usually does a phenomenal job and it's just really cool. It really feels futuristic. Echo is cool, it can be pretty useful, but it hasn't realized its full potential yet. I bought the Tap as a portable speaker to take with me on bike rides with friends. Well I took it out the other day and the minute it lost WiFi connection it just wouldn't work. I'm sure this was a problem on my end, but I had already paired the devices and I wasn't going to spend time fiddling with it while I was out with friends. EDIT: Also it doesn't happen too often but Alexa has definitely accidentally triggered. It even woke me up at 2 AM after the power went out temporarily to tell me that it had no WiFi. ~~~ wccrawford We've only had our Echo a couple weeks, but we've already found that characters named Alexa in TV shows are a problem, and that at least once it has responded to something that wasn't "Alexa" from the TV. So yeah, it definitely has false positives. ------ spdustin I don't know what the hell is going on at the author's house, but I have both an Xbox One (with active Kinect) and an Amazon Echo in the living room, along with two kids, and I can count on one fist how many times either of them have activated accidentally. That is to say, zero. ~~~ uslic001 I occasionally have it activate accidentally. Maybe once a week on average. Usually when the TV is on or when my wife and I are talking. For how much the TV is on in the room where she is set up this in not too bad. ------ giovannibajo1 Consider that Google and Apple get those questions right at the first time; so it's not that we need to wait for science from the future to have a "working" digital assistant in the home; we just need one from one of those two company. And if that still paired with my Amazon account for the shopping pat, it'd be great :)

Ask HN: How do detect a crappy boss / toxic environment when interviewing? - isuckatcoding I am currently working in a position that felt like a great startup to work at during my interview. However, a few months into the job I realized my boss was a complete and utter asshole. Given this is my first job out of college, I&#x27;ve stuck with it and I am looking for a new role. How can I detect during the interview &#x2F; research phase to avoid such situations?<p>Some things I&#x27;ve been doing is looking at Glassdoor but the problem with that is the reviews are highly dependent on the role, or the department or some manager who may or may not still be at the company.<p>I am a pretty average developer which is why I was kind of desperate for that first job out of college but after getting more experience, I know I can do better than this. ====== bpchaps -If respect isn't reciprocal, run. -If you only get canned questions, run. -If questions are machine gunned without any followups, run. -If the hiring/interview process is needlessly complicated, run. -If they give you an IQ test or similar, run. -If they're not paying attention [0], run. -If a pattern exists of mistakes (forgot to call, etc), run. -If, when discussing pay, HR says "Yeah, sometimes we hire people knowing they won't last and only fit a political agenda."..... run. True story. -If the recruiter tells you, "The path you're going down will lead to failure unless you do a startup. Frankly, I don't see you doing a startup"... run. Also true story. ..Ultimately, it comes down to gauging how "human" they are towards you. If the interviewer[s] lacks empathy, it's a sign somewhere up the chain that something's not right. Mind you, that's not to say that the interviewer doesn't necessarily have empathy. [0] Seriously, this happens at about 20% of my interviews. Put away your fucking laptop and just listen, interviewers! ~~~ jotux >If you only get canned questions >If they give you an IQ test or similar, run. I ran across this study a few months ago that says IQ-like tests, structured interviews (canned questions), and work-sample evaluations were some of the few useful interview tools for selecting good employees [1]. [1]. [http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...](http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf) ~~~ jraines Curious about OP's assertion on this as well. Only one I ever got was from a company widely regarded as one of the best to work for in Atlanta (I ended up not taking their offer so I can't say). Unrelated to that -- one of my personal red flags is poor handling of the post interview follow up. If a company drags their feet, gives conflicting signals about next steps, etc., they probably are a mess. ~~~ pfooti Speaking as someone with a cognitive science background (and yes, probably too lazy to dig up specific references), I'll say that there exist a _lot_ of poorly designed or poorly implemented tests of "intelligence". Even the concept of intelligence is poorly defined, and lots of different measures are just proxies. Even if the test is good and has some psychometric utility, often giving the test is a giant pain to do well. Even if the test is good, it's probably calibrated on WEIRD [0] subjects, so is really only good as another kind of gatekeeper - you can probably use old- school IQ tests as an excuse to reduce diversity. People who aren't WEIRD may not do as well on these tests (even though they're just as "intelligent" (parenthetically bracketing the ill-defined term for a moment)), so you have your reason that you only hire white dudes. But that's a cynical extension of logic there. Most people, when approaching a psychometric test like one of intelligence or personality make the first incorrect assumption that modern cognitive science can actually form a construct like "personality type" or "intelligence" that's stable across all cultures and norms, testable, and repeatable. That's just not really true, and by and large what makes it to public consumption is pseudo-science. Diverting just a little bit here, but MBTI [1] is another good example of bad use of psychometrics in business. There's about as much science supporting Myers-Briggs tests as there is astrology, yet people still use MBTI for actual decision making. Types aren't shown to be stable and they're not well- clustered (meaning you can be a mix of introvert and extrovert, or show signs of both depending on the day, context, mood). Zodiac Sign and MBTI Type should only be used as pick-up lines in a bar. "Hey, babe, I'm an INTJ, so I'm not going to say anything else." There are good uses of psychometrics, but they're rare enough that I take any reliance on any kind of psychometric during hiring as kind of a bad sign. 0: [http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/the- weir...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/the-weird- evolution-of-human-psychology/) 1: [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/give- and-take/201309/go...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/give-and- take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-die) ~~~ disgruntledphd2 To be fair, I think that Raven's matrices probably get around this. If someone explains the process to you, you don't actually need to be able to read to do well on the test. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices) I do find it surprising that Raven's appears to be more susceptable to the Flynn effect (people keep getting better at IQ tests, for an unknown reason). Completely agreed on the MBTI, but its surprisingly difficult to convince people that's its useful. FWIW, I agree with most of what you said above, I was just pointing out a counter-example. (Psychologist/psychometrician here). ~~~ pfooti Yes, I agree that Raven's matrices are pretty good at measuring something in a way that's not super-reliant on language. I'm not inherently opposed to the notion of generalized intelligence as a construct either, I just think measuring it is pretty tricky. The Flynn effect is another great example - these instruments are nuanced, and it's important to really understand them in order to interpret their results. ~~~ disgruntledphd2 Totally agree, I'm somewhat in sympathy with Shalizi's argument that g is just the result of iterated factor analysis. That being said, done well, these kinds of tests can provide useful data, especially if you're willing to randomly hire to calibrate performance (which no one ever is, sadly). ------ salsakran On some level, you never really know. People often behave differently when interviewing (or trying to close you) than normally, let alone during stressful periods. The low hanging fruit here is: * ALWAYS spend time with your future boss prior to accepting. Ideally try to spend as much time as you reasonably can. If this isn't possible push back pretty hard about why. Your direct manager is usually the biggest reason for your unhappiness at a job. "People don't leave jobs, they leave bosses" is a cliche for a reason. * If people seem unhappy when you interview, don't assume it's just how they feel that day. * Make sure you get a sense for the culture and whether you want to be part of it. If you're not into constant group activity, make sure you're not joining a hyper-intense "everyone hangs out with each other all the time" sort of place. Conversely if you're new in town, don't join a company where everyone is focused on working hyper efficiently and bouncing to go home to their families. Neither is right or wrong, but they can definitely be right or wrong for you. * If you're connected, track down people who left the company and ask about your future boss. Were they hard to work with? Do people like them? If you have friends at the company (ideally, not reporting to your potential boss) ask about how your boss (and the department) is perceived by the rest of the company. * Hit up linkedin and track down ex employees, ideally in the same job role. See where they ended up, and hit them up and ask why. Good luck! ~~~ mundo > ALWAYS spend time with your future boss prior to accepting. Agreed, this is really effective albeit sadly not very common. You could say something like, "Hey, I thought the interview went really well, but I'd like to get together for an hour or so and just talk about software methodology and about your company's products to see if we're on the same page," but what you're really doing is interviewing your new boss. I don't think any good hiring manager will turn down a request like this. ------ Homunculiheaded Here's an interview question I always ask that has worked pretty well: "If you could wave a wand and instantly change one thing about this company/job/team, what would it be?" This is similar to "what is wrong" but frames it in a positive light, so people are more open and creative. If the answer is anything about people "I wish communication was better", "It would help if more people were on board for this project", "A change in management wouldn't hurt, haha j/k" etc. That's a red flag. If it's about non-people "I wish we didn't have so much legacy code", "I would love it if we could get our testing setup better", "There are no good places to get coffee around" that's a good sign that aren't major people problems. If they can't think of one, that's a real cause for concern! This is one of my favorite questions in general because what people wish for tells a lot in many ways about the major problems, but without people begin guarded. They're fantasizing not venting. ~~~ f0rfun Can you explain why if it's anything about people, it's a red flag? If anything, the social aspect of a job is equally or more important in my search for a job. ~~~ ridgeguy Don't know wrt the OP, but I think people problems are much more difficult to remedy than problems rooted in technology. ------ geoelectric One basic way is to ask your interviewers what they like about their job. You're going to get a positive response, but is it hand-wavy or specific? Is it too specific, like they're just cherry-picking the one thing that keeps them employed there? Is there light in their eyes or are they reading a script? Another way is to ask how decisions get made. Again, the specific answer is going to probably be something pretty non-controversial, so look for the subtleties. Sometimes it's just obvious that it's too risky. I had one interview where the hiring manager's boss managed to freeze him out of his own loop. I ran from that one. Also, you should be very skeptical if you felt like your interviews with individual contributors were lukewarm or poor but you still get the offer. That's very possibly a boss overriding flags from his team, or a team that's deadened enough to not throw flags in the first place. If _you_ don't feel the interview went well, trust your gut--might not be just your fault. ~~~ phonebanshee Yes - and be very direct about this. Ask them "So why do you like this job? Why is this a great place to work?" I've had someone pause, look at me and tell me why it was a bad place and I should run away. ~~~ geoelectric I had a hiring manager make me an attractive offer--and then in the next breath tell me that he was planning on leaving the company, and I should run. The gist was "my boss is watching so I have to make the offer, but he'll pop into your office at 4PM and tell you you're working until 9PM on a regular basis and otherwise interferes constantly. I've been unable to protect my team from this. You can do better." I sent him an explicit "thanks for the generous offer, but I've chosen to go elsewhere after consideration" email so he had something to forward, thanked him kindly privately, and ran like hell. It's pretty amazing what you'll run into across a career. I've probably seen more WTFs from the hiring side of the table than from the people I've interviewed to hire. ------ throwawaytrain I too have recently started a new job. I had a phone screen with the hiring manager, then met with him for a two-hour 1-on-1 interview. Some time later I was given the offer and accepted it. I never met any of my future team members. I asked the hiring manager during the interview to introduce me to the team, but he said this wasn't going to be necessary. Now, a few months into the job, I must say that I've never worked on any team composed of such antisocial people. Pretty much no one here communicates effectively. Cliques are demarcated along racial lines; there Chinese and Indian groups don't really talk to each other, and don't "accept new members" that don't speak their language. This is the loneliest place I'd ever worked. What's surprising is that I never thought I could be so lonely at work of all places. So, lesson learned: if you aren't allowed to do a meet-and-greet with the team before accepting an offer, don't even think about taking it! ~~~ balls187 > Chinese and Indian groups don't really talk to each other, and don't "accept > new members" that don't speak their language. This is pretty common among both racial groups. And, if we're talking about the US, it was common across pretty much every ethnic group that emigrated here. ~~~ dba7dba In this context it's the fault of managers. Sure racial lines exist but such hostility should not be allowed to exist by management. ------ grandalf Bosses can fall short in a lot of ways. While your intuitions might clue you in to some failings, others are very difficult to spot. My advice would be: \- Do the others on the team seem happy? Did you get to meet any during the interview process? Do they seem to be happy to work there and comfortable in the environment? \- Does everyone seem to get quiet or smile officiously around the boss? That's a big warning sign. It probably means the boss is a bit of a tyrant or maintains an unhealthy power differential with the team. There is absolutely no room for this kind of posturing in a startup. \- Do you witness anyone coming to the boss for help with something? If so, and if the boss responds in a positive way, it's a great sign. A good boss is someone who is there to help everyone succeed and lend expertise when asked. \- Does the boss say anything disparaging about the other team members during the interview? Look out for indignant, judgy sorts of comments that indicate that the boss feels shortchanged by the team he/she has (unless you are explicitly being hired to single-handedly turn the team around). \- Is the hiring manager, founder, etc., transparent about runway, the cap table, and turnover rates? Playing it close to the vest about any of the three is a very bad sign. \- Do you see any VCs or investors stopping by uninvited and just hanging out? If so that's a good sign and means there is transparency with investors (which doesn't happen in all startups). \- Are there "big company sounding" organizational titles like "Senior Director", "Senior VP of x", "Senior Engineer", etc? If the company has fewer than 200 employees, titles like these indicate a wide array of culture problems, usually starting at the top. ~~~ HappyTypist The last point can be unreliable, so use your own judgement. At my current company people make up their own titles, so we have a "Vice President of Engineering" and a "Chief Alcoholic". ~~~ grandalf Those are fine, I'm referring to the minor gradations on each role, as in Senior Manager Level 5, etc. Those are necessary in large, bureaucratic organizations where working one's way up a predictable ladder is the goal. In a startup, anyone who is more concerned with his/her title than with experience and results is likely better suited for a large, bureaucratic company where those HR-concocted titles are respected. ------ djloche The best way is to interview your future boss in the interview process. Ask about their management style. Ask about how many meetings they are in each day, and the average meeting length. Ask about how they stay organized, ask about what tools or systems they use. Ask about what recent technologies they're excited about. Ask about the team and the individual team members. When you are interviewing somewhere, treat it as if they are trying to convince you and you need to ask a ton of questions to figure out if they are a good fit or not. Frame these questions in positive, generous light so you seem like you genuinely want to work for them and are just trying to get all the details. "What is the thing that most pleasantly surprised you when you started working here?" ~~~ bostik > _When you are interviewing somewhere, treat it as if they are trying to > convince you and you need to ask a ton of questions to figure out if they > are a good fit or not._ As someone who interviews quite a lot of engineering candidates: we ARE trying to convince you. That is no secret. We want to know what kind of an engineer you are. If you're good enough, or show aptitude to make up the lack of any otherwise expected skills, we are interested. Even if we decide to pass, you _still_ deserve the same attention as any other candidate. Treating a candidate poorly for any reason is bad PR, and perhaps more importantly signals internal consent that it's okay to be rude. That sets a bad example. (You do that once, don't get told off, and soon enough others have picked up on it because who would want to spend any more time on candidates we won't hire?) When it comes to hiring, _everything is PR_. ------ noah__ I have about 12 years of exp. Have worked with all kinds of companies startups\bluechips\valley\wall st etc. Over time I have reduced paying attention to what they are dangling in front of me, be it compensation or interesting stuff I want to work on. I now mostly pay attention to the people. Specifically the quality AND loyalty of people to the firm\manager\founder etc. The AND is critical. If its just one or the other I walk. So for example, if its a 3 year old team and there is no one "smart" who has lasted atleast 2 years its a good sign to walk. If its a 6 year old firm and there is no one who has lasted atleast 2 years it's a great sign to walk. If there are people who have lasted and aren't "quality" its also not worth it. My definition of quality is they are smarter than me, or have done something I have respect for. If its a new company I don't work with them unless I personally know the people involved. Why these rules? Cause if the people are "right" the interesting work and adequate compensation follows. Doesn't matter if the project fails your time with such folk is never wasted. ------ crispyambulance No, No, No, NO, No (to all the tips and shortcuts) Your first job out of college has a high probability of being a bad fit and this is especially true if you're desperate to just get hired. So, it didn't work out... happens a lot. The important thing to do is to figure out what YOU want out of a job/workplace and to assess what that potential job can do for your career. I think its a waste of time to try to figure out some minimal set of "red flags" to use for future interviews. Just look at the big picture, there's no single red-flag that will tell you definitively that a place is miserable (nor is there a single observation that signals an awesome place-- foozball and snacks won't make up for asshole-driven management). Perhaps even more important than what you observe during an interview is to really examine your own needs and expectations. SOoooo many people are unhappy WHEREVER they go and always blame it on management, co-workers, the industry or whatever. This kind of serial discontent is a sign that the there's something wrong with the individual rather than their workplace(s). ~~~ judahmeek Do you have statistical evidence to support your claim regarding serial discontentment? ~~~ crispyambulance No. I don't know why anyone would even attempt such an experiment. These are very subjective topics and it would be hard to even pose a testable hypothesis. My claim is based strictly on life experience. All I am saying is that people who take on one job after another and remain unhappy would benefit from some serious introspection. In other words, as important as it is to evaluate potential employers, it is just as important to carefully examine one's expectations and career intent. ~~~ seeing Your words: _" I think its a waste of time to try to figure out some minimal set of "red flags"_ Do you truly believe there are no signs for anything? ------ tomtomAmazon Lots of good advice here. I'd like to add a key phrase thrown around a lot, 'A-players'. As in, "we only hire A-Players for our team." Or "Our team is made of only A-Players. If we hire anything less then the world ends." Beware when managers/cofounders/leads/directors say this. Your bullshit detector should be going off at this point in the process because what they're really saying is that they only hire people like them, egotistical, shallow, puts others down, don't ask for help since you're suppose to know everything, expect them to talk about themselves ALL the time, expect a lot of bullshit (i noticed that a lot of 'A-players' resemble the 'bro' attitude). It is difficult on the first 'pass' to avoid such a situation especially without experience. A company I worked for explicitly targeted young developers because of the long hours, cheap labor (coder monkey?), the koolaid is easier to drink without experience. good luck out there. ------ fapjacks I always ask my go-to "red flag" question to all my interviewers. Remember that _you_ are the one that determines what red flags even mean. This works on everyone but the CEO: "If you could change one thing without veto, what would it be?" If the person describes a technical problem, that's usually a good sign. Long silence is usually good (but can also be a very bad sign if they just can't pick one thing). Trivial nitpicks are a good sign. _Any_ complaints about communication are a very big red flag. Also any complaints about leadership. Obviously, if the problem your interviewer describes is repeated by any other interviewers, that is a big, red flag. Piece of advice when firing this atomic weapon at your interviewer: Do not fill the silence while they think with any talk. Let them think. Let the silence hang. That makes people more likely to dig deep for something they really don't like. ~~~ JoshTriplett If you were the interviewer, how would you answer that question yourself? ~~~ fapjacks I think I know where you're going, but the point of this question is that it is unexpected, which demands honesty from people in most cases. You can't trust a recruiter's answer, but if you're a programmer being interviewed by programmers, you can usually trust the answers. ~~~ JoshTriplett > I think I know where you're going No, I was genuinely interested in the answer. I wanted to see examples of how someone might answer the question. > You can't trust a recruiter's answer, but if you're a programmer being > interviewed by programmers, you can usually trust the answers. I'd also be interested in the answer to that question from a first-line or second-line manager. Whether they answered it honestly or not, the answer would likely be helpful as part of the interview. ~~~ fapjacks Oh! If someone asked me that question, I would describe the one change I would like to implement the most! You're exactly right, there are a few things you can measure with this question. ------ fma I've read through most of the answers...and this is one of the few times I'll say it but most of the responses are flat out wrong. Employees at a toxic company will bullsh-t the answer. I know because I've been the one to bullsh-t. The company sucked so bad, the turnover rate was high and the ones left said anything to hire good employees to try to turn projects around. It wasn't that the coworkers were bad, or the managers were bad. But it was executives with unreasonable timelines. So how do you prevent this from happening? I personally avoid a company where I don't know someone in it, or know someone that knows someone. Additionally, there's a nice hidden feature of LinkedIn. You can search for people who used to work there. At one company I interviewed at, I searched and found that those who used to work there...the majority left within a year. It tells you something. I had a sense during the interview that the turnover was high, and again they would BS me about their wonderful culture. Then I spoke to someone who used to work there and he confirmed my thoughts. Oh yeah, the fact they were going to throw a lot of money at me raised a red flag too (the toxic company I was at threw a lot of money at people too). Good luck. ------ atom-morgan Questions: \- What do you hate about your job? \- How unlimited is unlimited vacation? \- What's the mean/median number of vacation days taken last year? \- How have you shown that you value your employees? \- How do you handle disagreements with potential hires? \- If the team is split on a technical issue, how would this be resolved? Company bullshit (bad signs): \- "We want people who _want_ to work here. If salary is important we aren't for you." Uncomfortable answers to any of the questions, run! ~~~ techman9 The first one is especially important, I find. When I ask the question, "What do you dislike most about your job?" or "If there was one thing you could change about the work environment?", I expect an interviewer to have an immediate answer prepared. If they don't, I assume that they either lack critical thinking skills and are unable to independently drive change or are expected to just follow orders. I don't have any desire to work at a company where management does not respect input from employees and employees are not encouraged to think about how things could be improved. ~~~ biot Or management is very receptive and they have opportunities to point out what does and doesn't work, and the things that don't work get addressed. Once something is addressed, you tend to clear it from your mind unless the place is filled with employees who really like to hold grudges, in which case being able to instantly recall all the little wrong things might be a sign you could end up with terrible coworkers. Or having a canned answer means they've encountered this before and have an acceptable response ready to go in order to cover up greater faults. If you ask them and they immediately blurt out "Sometimes we work too hard" how honest are they being? It's no different from interviewing a prospective employee and they say "Sometimes I work too hard". Thus, an immediately prepared answer is a very unreliable indicator. Just maybe they have that answer prepared as experience has taught them to avoid being forthright about the actual problems going on, because then they'd never hire anybody. (Just playing devil's advocate. I really do think it could go either way, dependent on their personality, how their mind works, how management operates, etc.) ------ codingdave Ask them directly -- don't phrase it "Hey, are you an asshole?", but ask them questions that will help inform you of their approach to the organization: 1) What is your leadership style? 2) How do you resolve conflicts on the team? 3) Tell me about the communication style of the team. If you get a chance to talk to team members without the boss being present, ask similar questions - conflict resolution, communication, collaboration styles, etc. This should give you enough information to judge for yourself if it is a healthy team environment, or not. ------ BurningFrog When I'm interviewing people, I won't come out and say what's bad about the place, but when asked I will be honest with a future peer. I think a lot of programmers are the same, so I'd ask the non managers interviewing me what's the place is like to work at. But... it's easy to "fight the last war" about things like this. So if for your next job, you're 100% focused on finding a boss that's a decent human, you'll probably succeed. But something other major will be wrong. ~~~ visarga It's always something unexpected. You can only prepare for things you can imagine. In hindsight, you realize you care deeply about some particular aspect you carelessly glossed over in the beginning. ------ edwcar13 I previously left a company that I thought was great until I realized they just wanted cheap work and a moldable individual for both emotion and creativity. I too just got out of college and tried to find my first job out of school and took the first offer. These are the signs that I picked up on. \- Arrived to interview to find that what I applied for was not what I was interviewing for ... RUN! \- When trying to get a straight answer about benefits or how long individual training may be and getting a lot of "I'll get back to you" and no one does... RUN \- When waiting for your interviewers and recruitment has to come in and ask you if you have already spoken to your interviewers (i.e. their late or no show) ... RUN either they are way to up their own ass or just terrible at time management which if it's your future boss means they will have no time for you \- Last one promise, when interviewing and you get asked questions that you know the answer you gave to be 100% and they say it's wrong and tell you an answer that isn't correct. Run! That interviewer or interviewers indirectly just told you that they dont follow or are going against what the documentation stateted.(in my case how elasticsearch is configured) I.e. you will work in an environment that will leave you with knowledge that is incorrect and useless to use in another interview. ------ HelloNurse Apart from egregious assholes and dysfunctional relationships (like the mentioned husband and wife teams), there are milder and more "diffuse" kinds of toxic environment. For example: within the company, IT is a second class citizen compared to production, so as a new developer you would start at the bottom of the bottom with no valid career perspectives. Low budget, bad offices, low pay, appearance of overwork are clear signs. For example: aberrant company culture. Excessive secrecy and/or security measures (who do they think they are?), extravagant recreational resources (are they actually working?), excessive luxury (not bad by itself, but you want them to spend that money on your salary), excessive conviviality, etc. There is a meta-warning sign about company culture: refusal to show working conditions and procedures to you because of conscious "discretion" and subconscious shame. Also, you could like, accept as normal, or justify because they make sense in context some of the bad attitudes you are aware of, failing to see they are a problem. ------ MalcolmDiggs When I walk into a company (for an interview), I try to get a good look at the faces of the developers there, and gauge whether or not they seem happy. I figure "In 6 months, my disposition is likely to be the average of the ones in this room right now". So if the average person is happy, I'll probably be happy too. If everyone is sleep-deprived, pissed off, and miserable, I'm probably gonna be that way too. I always try to go out of my way to meet the team and shake their hands (even if the interviewer didn't plan for me to meet anyone). You can gauge a lot from just a brief interaction with people. ------ woodcut You're looking for personality flaws more than anything, it's hard it detect them if they're charismatic enough to paper over their lies. First off, protect yourself, ask to see the contract, guarantee any agreements for future pay/bonuses are in there, the contract must specify working hours, time off and notice period etc. Ask to see the resume's of the team you would be working with. Orange flags come to equipment, books, resources. A good company will give you whatever you need. Red flags are arrogance, delusion, recklessness, bullying. Ask tough technical questions, see if they admit they don't know it or rubbish the question. Ask about ventures, projects things that went wrong, do they blame everyone but themselves? How many people have left in the last 12 months? Ask to speak to them. How much runway do they have left? less than 3 months is a massive no. Has anyone ever been paid late? Honestly, if they're smart enough you can't tell until you're knee deep. ~~~ mrud I think all your requests are good and can help identifying issues except the teams resume. Meeting your team etc. is fine but asking to see the team's resume would be a orange flag for me. ------ unit91 I've had pretty decent success just being straight with people about my goals and seeing what they say. If I'm talking to other programmers and not management, I generally ask: \- Are you happy here? Why? \- Every job has little annoyances (important preface). What are some of the things you wish you could change? \- Do you believe your leadership is interested in your feedback? I also REALLY try to observe the body language of the employees interacting with each other. Even if I can't hear what's being said outside the interview room, it can tell you a lot about the company culture. ------ trcollinson So, what makes your boss such an "asshole" as you put it? I am not by any means trying to prove whether or not your boss is actually an asshole, but trying to find out why you think your boss is. I have had bosses who I thought were horrible and many others around me liked them. I have had bosses that I would go to the ends of the earth with and my co-workers thought I was crazy. A lot of times it is personality and confidence (in yourself and in your manager) which dictate how well you will get along. How to find the right match when you are interviewing? Well, how many dates does it take for you to decide who you'd like to marry? Do you marry everyone you date? In this business, I think it's best to not get too emotionally tied down. You're going to move, and that's ok. ~~~ isuckatcoding Ok so I can guarantee you this isn't all in my mind or some relativist bullshit. This boss is the kind of person who walks into a meeting late, often clueless about the topic of discussion, then yelling ensues because he's confused or some feature wasn't implemented as he supposedly requested and then he berates my team members in front of others and you can sense the vibe of dog shittiness in the room by the utter silence that follows. He is notorious at the company for being _the_ asshole boss. Just mention his name once to employees (especially those who've been with the company for 2-3 years for instance) in other departments and while some won't say it out loud, you can tell from their face they know and they feel for you. I apologize for the swearing. In reality, I am actually the kind of person who avoids swearing at all but this job is changing me in such terrible ways. Yes I am angry and I am desperately searching for a decent company to give me an opportunity where I can grow and contribute in a more positive environment. I am not asking for a stress-free environment (stress doesn't signal the job is bad necessarily) , I am asking for basic human courtesy and professionalism. ~~~ spinlock Wow. Is there anyone ay the company you can talk to about changing teams? Someone who's your boss's peer that you like and trust? Tell them it isn't working out and ask if you can use them as a reference. You might be able to change teams in the company but, if you can't, its always good to have a reference. ~~~ isuckatcoding This is going to sound like paranoia (and some part of it probably is). I've thought about talking to perhaps HR or recruiting to see if I can move to another department. However, I feel as long as this individual is at the company, it will be difficult. This person is unpredictable. One day he is happy. Another day, he is totally on edge and ready to shout. He might decide that my lack of "loyalty" to him as a personal offence. He is close with upper management (CEO, etc.) and he can easily influence them and potentially make my life miserable. You know its so funny. I love the company itself and the product. They truly have some innovative technology (as cliche as that sounds).Though, I think the lesson I've learned from all this is that I need to look at my manager(s) as MUCH as (or more than) I look at the product or my salary. ~~~ spinlock That sucks. Oh well, looks like you'll need to go outside of the company. Just remember: don't badmouth your current company when you apply for jobs; just say that your ready for a new challenge. No matter how unbearable your position is, it never comes off well to gripe about it to the next person that you're asking for a job. ------ AndrewUnmuted For me, the _big one_ is whether or not the employer offers to give you a tour of the workplace. If this is not offered up as a default, request it. If there is any refusal whatsoever, run away and don't look back. ------ YeGoblynQueenne >> I am a pretty average developer I don't have much advice to offer with your main question, after all I'm only a few years out of uni so I'm barely a step or two ahead of you on the same road. But I have this to say: you're not "pretty average"; you're just starting out. You'll get a lot better and then things will get a lot better for you. I also valued myself pretty low when I started out so I ended up with jerks for bosses a couple of times, but eventually I built up the skills to have a bit more choice on the teams I was working for. At that point I found a team with a senior engineer who became a true mentor to me and taught me a metric ton of shit I'll be using to the end of my working days. I think folks in this industry make the mistake of valuing innate talent above hard work. It's true there's people who have that sort of magical talent and godspeed to them. The vast majority of us though have to slog it out, and learn as much as we can on the job and as we go. What "pretty average engineer" really means is "bursting at the seams with potential to be a great engineer with strong skills" a few years down the line. Also: good luck out there. It gets better :) ~~~ isuckatcoding Thank you for this comment. ------ AnimalMuppet When I interviewed for my current job, the whole (4 person) team did the interview at once. Several times they talked smack to each other in the interview - not mean, just having fun. Well, I can enjoy that, so I talked a bit of smack to them during the interview. They hired my anyway. When it's not done in malice, that can be an interesting indicator. It means that the people on the team trust each other - trust that they can say such things and have it received in the right spirit, and trust that the one saying it isn't saying it in malice. I wouldn't make this the only indicator, but it's an interesting data point... ------ hendler Maybe interviewing elsewhere is only half of the solution. We all end up in situations we don't expect. While bad leadership is hard to overcome, it's a great learning opportunity. Now that you are there focus on improving yourself. \- improve your coding, on your own time or not \- help your boss not be an asshole. or go above them. or manage them. That's a skill too. \- enjoy your paycheck, but save money Hope that adds a slightly different perspective. ------ junko Just got hired myself. And I consider myself quite average too so here's my experience. My first job fresh out of uni was in a corporate environment and while I appreciated the professionalism that came with it ("Keep an activity tracker" etc ... might horrify some people but I love making lists haha) but in the end I only stayed for 6 months. It got too corporate and suddenly I realised that a lot of people were actually feigning cheeriness when underneath they were under mighty pressure from politics. I decided quite firmly never to work for corps (that activity tracker should have warned me after all) and for a few months I freelanced until I got broke. I thought I'd give big organisations another chance and I'm glad I did. When I had the interview, it was typically based on a set of questions but the interviewers were relaxed and made warm- but-not-wacky jokes. I also remember the time when I had a sudden mind blank during a presentation and they were really amiable with it and said that it's probably better if I spend a day with the team and see if we're a match. That was probably the moment when I knew that this workplace could be a nice place to work in, because they seemed to recognise and appreciate humanness and that the interview is not just about testing _me_ but also vice versa. So if it's possible, asking to meet your future team and seeing what the reaction to that is like could be a nice indicator of the type of culture there. And of course the actual team meeting. I don't think there's a proper list of how to detect toxicity, so I guess you just need to keep an open eye and ear on everything which is why it's important to spend some time in the workplace. Keep alert but at the same time keep an open mind. Interestingly, a week after I joined my new workplace, the organisation did some ruthless restructuring, but which top management was very organised and empathical about it, for example there was an emphasis that we could talk about it, and comfort those who are leaving etc. It was unpleasant and initially I panicked thinking that I picked the wrong workplace again, but in the end it was educational - a couple of weeks later, the emotional negativity dissipated. I'm still new but 1.5 months later and I'm still chirpy ... well I'll take that as a good sign. ------ studentrob For me, over the years I spent a lot of time looking for the right atmosphere, changing jobs once every one or two years. Then I noticed / worked towards a change within myself and I think I am now better at recognizing a good match. Unexpectedly, I am now also more open to more relationships in which I wouldn't have engaged previously. I know the ways in which I work best and I'm not afraid to let people know. That confidence makes a big difference not only in who I choose to work with, but also in how I work with others. When gauging a new employer or coworker I decide mostly on feel. It's easy to _recognize_ a matching relationship once you know yourself. That doesn't mean it's easy to _find_ one. It might not be true for everyone. In my experience, knowing myself helped a ton, and I was the only one who could figure that out. I was always told this growing up and had no idea what it meant. People telling me to "be yourself" made little sense to me until I learned more about myself. ~~~ iamcreasy How do I learn about myself? (Serious question) ~~~ studentrob Maybe try changing some things up and see if you're more happy or less happy afterwards... If I had a solid answer that worked for anyone I'd be rich! Many self-help books try. 7 Habits (Covey) and How to Win Friends & Influence People (Carnegie) are two I liked. Ultimately the question is individual, so the answer is too. I'll just say, when you know, you know. If you don't know, keep looking. So long as you're on this earth you have a chance to answer that question and many interesting others. When you do, you'll look back and be glad you tried. I'd also say that it's a lifelong process and it seems equally possible to lose yourself. For me I was not always aware of when I started slipping. I started doing meditation recently and found it helps settle my thoughts and become aware of when my brain was thinking things I didn't want it to. The book Mindfulness in Plain English [1] was recommended to me, and I'm about halfway through it. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in becoming more aware of themselves and others. [1] [http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html](http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html) ~~~ iamcreasy What's the first thing you notice when you start slipping? Now that your know yourself better, are you more aware you slipping and take preventive measures early on? ~~~ studentrob Q1: Covey would say there are some basic human needs. Physical health, money, opportunity to be creative, challenge, social interaction. For me, absence of creativity/challenge and onset of boredom has been a common theme. In the future I'd guess I will be okay on that front and struggle with others. Q2: Definitely. Some awareness comes from taking time to meditate, and some comes from experience. I'm not going to argue I can anticipate everything or that I've met all of life's challenges. That would be silly. But I do feel more comfortable dealing with things day-to-day and feel less of a need to plan/control the future. ------ CyanLite2 1\. When they're more interested in why you're leaving a company, run. 2\. When they negatively recruit ("Oh that other company sucks, you don't want to work for them!"), run. 3\. When you look around the work environment and see everybody on 15 inch monitors, run. 4\. When they have an applicant tracking system and they don't respond to you after an interview, run. 5\. If they ask "What are you weaknesses?", run. 6\. When they ask "How much are you making now?", run. 7\. When their Glassdoor reviews are below a 3.0, run. ------ jbob2000 Trust your gut. No seriously, if you have a bad/weird/odd/sketchy feeling when interviewing, that's all you need. Your subconscious picks up on WAY more than your conscious does and it notifies you through that "gut feeling". So don't listen to what others in this thread are saying. Their advice comes from their experiences, which may not match yours. Only you truly know what you want. ~~~ seeing It's bad advice to say "don't listen to what others in this thread are saying". Having more data is better than having less data. It's good advice to trust your gut; but as Nobel prize winning psychologists discovered, trust your gut as an additional parameter to your existing rubric of tests. Don't trust your gut while excluding everything else. ------ hibikir There are red flags to bad environments out in an interview, if the place is really horrible. But looking very hard for problems in an employer during an interview is a bit like looking very hard for problems in a candidate during an interview: The more you have been around the block, the easier it is to let those signals that aren't necessarily very strong to just take over, and that leads to failure. The interviewer with the least red flags is probably the one that is best at lying to you, or to himself. So what I do, outside of tiny startups (where I'd not go regardless, as you are in for years, and chances are you'll just be underpaid for the duration) is to go look for former employees, and ask them why they left the place, what sucks, what doesn't, and how generalized the problems are. People that have left might overestimate how bad the place is, but better an overestimation that you can temper than talking to someone that is still in love with the place, right? This mechanism has been pretty good for me, and you can show you are a well prepared candidate by asking pointed questions about what the people that left considered the place's most glaring weaknesses. I have been fortunate enough to be able to do this a few times in my career: In some cases, talking to my would be predecessor. It's helped me dodge big bullets, either by avoiding employers altogether, or by letting me ask for a different department/team in advance, avoiding terrible managers. ------ jankedout During an interview it's pretty hard to gauge whether the environment is a fit for you. You're focused on performing well and you often brush aside things that would irritate you otherwise. This is why I recommend "courting" the company. I've had ~10 jobs and 4 of them had intolerable environments. In the past few years I started vetting the companies I wanted to work at by getting in touch with current and past employees. This can give you some insight on how the place functions. I also request to visit the headquarters/office. Most companies will accommodate this. If they don't, I end the recruitment process because it's a big red flag for me. bpchaps's bullet list is pretty good too. I've run into each of the line items in interviews. Particularly bad for me was Twilio, where the pre-screen phone interview consisted of two developers asking me trivia questions about various technologies. After the first 10 minutes I wanted to hang up. I was glad to not get an onsite. Right before Digg went under I interviewed there. There was no receptionist when I showed up, so the first interviewer (lead dev) didn't even know I was there. We started the interview 15 minutes late, and the interviewer took phone calls during the interview. I was extremely irritated, but I kept my cool. Just remember, if you are treated in a way you don't like during the recruitment process, then you'll probably be treated in a similar manner if you become an employee. ------ mattzito Here's my checklist: \- If I'm asked a question, or asked to offer an opinion, do they seem really interested in my response? Do they challenge politely/with an intent to gain more info, or do they dismiss it? \- Whats' the average tenure on the team? How long have people been there? \- When asked the negatives or the challenges with the job, do they offer substantive responses, or platitudes? \- Are they interested in me as a person? Or is it just my skills and background? \- For the rest of the team, are they engaged? Do they seem to care about what they're doing? Do their concerns/negatives about the job match what their boss said? \- What's the ratio of leadership to worker bees? Are there lots of VPs for no apparent reason? Red flag. It's largely qualitative, but I like to see consistency in temperament, enthusiasm, understanding of the challenges. Example: I interviewed at a company a number of years ago for an executive leadership position. I met with four different execs, each of whom had a different cagey answer as to why business wasn't doing as well as it could. I opted not to join, as it "felt weird". Later I ran into someone I knew who happened to have taken a job there who confirmed my suspicion that it was a disorganized organization with a toxic atmosphere. Trust your gut. If something feels wrong, it probably is, and don't let desire to get the job override your instincts if you can avoid it. ------ RKoutnik I wrote up an article about probing for culture in the interview [0]. Here's the tl;dr: It's really hard to pull out the truth sometimes. Those that aren't looking through rose-colored glasses are outright lying to you. No company sends disgruntled employees to interview. It's important to figure out if the company has a plan for you. If the plan seems like "Change everything, but without any power to do it", book it outta there. It's totally OK to ask folks what they think about management. Again, rose glasses, but folks usually don't have a cached answer for this one so you could catch them by surprise. I find one of the biggest indicators of "Do I like this place" is how disagreements are resolved. Ask about those. Press for details, don't take sweeping statements for an answer. Actual examples are best. Finally, lots of folks make bad decisions right out of college. I certainly did. Very few folks will hold it against you if your first job is a short one (~six months). If you've got any further questions, contact info is in my profile. I can run a mock interview if you're up for it. Hope I helped! [0] [https://rkoutnik.com/articles/Questions-to-ask-your- intervie...](https://rkoutnik.com/articles/Questions-to-ask-your- interviewer.html) ------ ben_pr I have hired two to three dozen developers over the last 15 years for a fairly boring developer job (finance) in a very big city (Atlanta). Here are a few tips I had for making candidates feel comfortable. 1\. Find out as much about them as possible before they show up. Look them up on Github, LinkedIn, etc. 2\. Target questions that are appropriate and related to the job. If the candidate offers any sort personal info about interests follow-up with questions and find out what they are really interested in, you should already have a clue from point 1. If their primary love is talking about airplanes or something else then writing code is not their first love. 3\. Make the candidate feel at ease as much as possible. Offer Water, coffee, comfortable chair, etc. 4\. Have someone on their level take them to lunch. They can find out what their potential future co-workers think of you and you can get some valuable feed back from your devs. If the person interviewing you doesn't do most of these things then you probably want to run the other way. Remember your managers job is partially to help you be successful and if he can't help you have a successful interview then he most likely can't help you have a successful career. When you leave the interview you should feel that this person has your back and will help you out if you ever need it. ------ PaulKeeble Everyone has different hangups in regards to how a company will treat them. My personal tracer shots are always in regards to whether I can use the equipment and tools and processes I want. Obviously the interviewer can give away that the place might be bad to work with their questioning but I ask the questions that matter to me to make sure they care about my productivity and autonomy and if they don't I reject the job there and then. ------ timwaagh I have never worked in an environment which might be called toxic or anything that comes close. we don't do that this side of the ocean. however there are still things to keep in mind. -if they do scrum use jira have an open plan office or talk about estimates then those are big contra-indicators. if you get freedom about work times that's good. -scrum is there to have better control over you aka big brother is watching you. same for an open plan office (especially if the entire team sits together). this makes for an environment where you feel watched all the time. \- if they want you to come in at a specific time that's also because they want to watch your entire work-day. \- if they talk about estimates this often means a focus on efficiency and a lot of pressure. \- if they use jira then you won't have a say about what you will do and are probably just a code monkey. \- on the other hand, if they give everyone their own office, let people work from home or give you more freedom about which time you come in then this means they trust their employees and are a good choice. \- if they ask you your opinion about things that matter then this is good too (it means they are not just hiring you as a code monkey). ~~~ LoSboccacc > _tons of niceties_ do place like that still exists? ------ mathattack It's very hard to use black and white heuristics, because life is frequently shades of gray. And there's a big difference between work as presented in recruiting presentations, and what's it's really like. That's called Life, and it's why we get paid. 2 things I've found that work: 1 - If it's a backfill for an existing role, find out if the person is still is with the company. 1a - If the person who had it is still in the company, it's generally a good sign, but ask to talk to them anyway. You may not get full information, but you'll get some. (If they're just doing something else for the same boss, also a good sign.) 1b - If the person who previously had the job left the company, reach out to them and ask about the role. They'll usually be more honest. 2 - Find a friend, or a friend-of-a-friend who works there, and ask them. This will get easier the more you work, as your network will expand. It's also a good reason to keep in contact with everyone you meet. (LinkedIn helps a lot on this, despite all the bad press that it receives) ------ BobTheCoder I would add to other comments to watch out for people that believe their own bullshit. My current company I could tell that when the team lead talked about it being Agile and using latest tech that he really believed it. Because he believed it I joined, but now I realise he was willfully deluded. So don't forget to watch out for this and verify what their practices are with questions. ------ ares2012 This is common in your first job, so don't feel bad for missing the signs! Until you have been in the professional world it's hard to know what environments are right for you. The good news is that now you'll know what to look for when you interview at new companies. Some things I look for: 1\. A well organized and well run recruiting process. If they can't communicate, schedule and work with you during recruiting it's unlikely they can do so when you work there. 2\. Great employee retention. People don't stick around for a long while at companies they hate. Look for places where people stay for the long haul (at least 3 years). 3\. Personal connections. Talk to the people you know in the industry and learn about where they work. At this point I would have a hard time joining a company where I didn't know anyone since there is so much risk involved. Good luck with your next adventure! It only gets better. ------ isuckatcoding Hello all. I want to thank you all for you amazing responses. Based on your feedback, I have an excellent set of possible actions/questions I can take to avoid my current situation. I know there is no fail-safe method but at least I have some guidance now. Also just realized my question has a typo. :facepalm: Looks like isuckatgrammar too. ------ evanwolf On the employers' side, a few studies showed very low correlation between interviewer scores of candidates and employee performance ratings after 60-90-360 days. I suspect it's nearly as true in the other direction: that interviews are little better than a coin toss in helping you know if this is a great fit. So this suggests a strategy to screen out obvious mismatches, sign on, then abandon or confirm when you have enough information after a month or so. This is one of the advantages of freelancing or starting under contract: both parties have a chance to see how the other performs in the real world instead of the artificial job interview setting. So extract what clues you can from the hiring process but don't attach too much confidence in their relevance to your ability to enjoy your work, to perform well, or to advance your career. ------ LargeWu One thing you can do is ask to see the space where developers are working. Do developers there look generally happy? This is highly subjective and prone to false-positives, but in general if everybody kind of looks like they'd rather be somewhere else, take note of that. Is there another developer in the interview besides the hiring manager? Do they seem engaged and are trying to sell the job to you (a good sign), or are they kind of disinterested (a bad sign)? Are the interview questions adversarial? ("Solve this problem. Ha ha, that's not right" \- bad) Or are they asking about you and your experiences and trying to relate them to what you'll be working on. (good) What specific aspects of your current workplace do you view as toxic? ------ kelukelugames One question I've always asked after an offer is "Is there any reason why I shouldn't take this job?" One manager felt insulted and got angry. I took the job for other reasons but he turned out to be petty. ------ peterwwillis Ask about the other employees. Executives, middle-managers, future co-workers. What is their background? How long have they been working in their group? Do they have significant prior experience working in a position such as this? What is their day to day like? Ask to talk to people in the group you're going to be working in. What do they think of the company, their boss, team lead, other team members? Are they often asked to do more than should be expected of them? Do they love their position? If they don't offer or won't let you meet with the future team, this indicates they really don't care whether the team likes each other personally, OR that they're so busy they have no time to meet you - which is not good either. It should also be face to face; nobody gets to know someone over the phone. Finally, you can use probing questions to see how your future boss reacts. Make a joke and watch their body language. Ask them both professional and personal questions. Ask them how they would handle different work scenarios - would they throw a direct report under the bus, or try to cover for them? Do they micro-manage or are they hands-off? How responsive are they to communication, and in what forms? Do they work with many teams or just the one? Are they customer-focused or task-focused? Is their primary motivation to get ahead in the company, or merely to be helpful? Sometimes there's no way to know if a boss is going to be a jerk. But 9 times out of 10, either someone else working there has noticed it, or they'll act like a jerk to you with the right prompting. ------ munchkinlk As a recruiter, I can tell you about the work environment but often times it's only an overall view. If you have the opportunity to speak to employees that is usually the best way to get information about the environment. If speaking to other employees is not an option you will really have to lean on the questions you ask during the interview. I would encourage you to have standard questions for the people interviewing you, that way you have a consistent way to rank a company or team. Hope that helps! Lisa ------ kkapelon The best way to detect this is to see the working conditions for current developers. Then notice the vibe around the room. Smiling people are a good sign. People that come to greet you and talk to you (even if you are not yet hired) are also a good sign. Refusal of that tour is a bad sign. People that seem grumpy, tired, or angry is a bad sign as well. You could also find a developer in the company cafeteria (or something similar) after the interview finishes and ask him/her about the company ------ p4wnc6 Some of the main things I've noticed: \- Lazily using "full-stack development" for every position as a means of avoiding the hard work of actually managing people, providing meaningful job descriptions, and respecting specialties. A company with a huge army of undifferentiated full-stack positions is a major red flag. \- Unwillingness to negotiate regarding private offices or remote / work from home options for people who are not compatible with the noise & productivity loss caused by open-plan offices. \- Hyper focus on your salary expectations early in the process without reciprocal willingness to share the budgeted salary range. This extends to hyper focus on relocation costs or other compensation items too. \- Jobs that don't provide relocation. Sometimes there are good reasons, but many times it's because of cliquish culture and/or extreme cheapness. \- Paternalism: does the management act like your vacation time, your pay, other forms of compensation, or other perks are "generous gifts" doled out by the company? Do they act like the company "is a family" and have weird workplace cultural norms about key management "principles"? \- Are all of the recent Glassdoor reviews 5-stars with unrealistically glowing reviews that sound like they were written by a PR firm, and all of the bad reviews are buried at the end and sound like what an actual human would write? \- Any unreasonable demands for access to private data about you, such as statements about past income or addresses, test results for things like IQ or personality tests. I agree with other comments that even asking for test results is a bad sign, but even if the test results were legitimately useful for hiring (they aren't), there's still the issue of distrusting some random company with private data about you, or being skeptical of their network security. \- If anyone tries to talk you out of your financial requirements with lame excuses, it's a red flag. For example, when I've countered lowball offers before, I've had HR reps debate with me exactly which apartment buildings and locations nearby I could live in at the wage they countered with. Anybody prying into your private life like that ("hey I know where you should choose to afford to live") is nuts, and you should run away. ------ nickconfer The simple answer is realize your more nervous than the person or group interviewing you. You may not be completely yourself as your nervous, but they are being themselves. If they act aggitated, aggressive, nervous, rushed, etc... Thats most likely either their true personality or a real problem of their workplace. When you ask to meet your coworkers are they nervous or friendly. Does their boss say anything nice about them... Etc... ------ hacknat Ask straightforward questions. The way people answer them is more important than what the content (mostly) of those answers are: Examples: 1\. Do you like working here? You should get an impression that the person genuinely likes working there. If you have to drag enthusiasm out of them that's not a good sign. 2\. What's your management philosophy? They should have one, or at least be able to sound like they've given it some thought. 3\. Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager or somebody senior, what did you do, what did they do? What ended up happening? What your looking for is a manager who is willing to admit some degree of political prowess. You DO NOT want to report to someone who cannot stand up to their seniors, it can be just as bad or worse than the overly political managers (the overly political managers at least get somewhere sometimes, you and your team will get resources, project wins, etc). More like this. Whatever question you'd like a direct answer on. Ask it, most likely you'll never get the whole truth, but the way these questions get answered matters. ------ CM30 Look around on the internet beforehand, since it's filled with sites where employees can post experiences they've had at other companies. You mention Glassdoor, but perhaps some of its alternatives might be useful as well: Like Rate my Employer ([http://www.ratemyemployer.ca/Home](http://www.ratemyemployer.ca/Home)), Job Advisor ([https://www.jobadvisor.com.au/](https://www.jobadvisor.com.au/)), Kununu ([https://www.kununu.com/](https://www.kununu.com/)) and The Job Crowd ([http://www.thejobcrowd.com/](http://www.thejobcrowd.com/)). Yes, all these sites can be gamed if the company is persistant enough and floods them with fake or coerced reviews, but they can also give some impressions on what working there might be like. You should also check social media sites (LinkedIn and Twitter might be good places to find people's opinions on this stuff), as well as general mentions of the company's name in general. After all, if a bunch of articles start talking about how terrible the environment is on Medium, then that's probably a giant red flag right there. If you can find out, knowing the general level of staff turnover might be a useful metric too. Does the company often get people who work there for a couple of months and then quickly move on? That's a pretty good sign it's not a great place to work. If you see a bit of talk online about how a large amount of the team quit at once, or that staff turnover is high in general, it often means something has gone pretty wrong in recent weeks. As for what to see in the interview... well, I guess pay attention to the working environment, the behaviour of the staff, etc. If it looks chaotic or the employees look utterly miserable, then those could be warning signs in of themselves. Of course, you might not be able to tell this (if a company is very careful about their interview process), but that's pretty rare for startups and small businesses. Hearing a lot about 'culture'or 'company fit' might be a warning too, given how often it means 'acts like the boss/other staff and shares views/background'. As might the usual complicated interview procedures, suspiciously low pay, the office being in the middle of nowhere, etc. And ------ analog31 Just an additional note: If they start disparaging past employees, competitors, etc., run. They will have the same attitudes about you. ------ dba7dba From my experience, I was lucky to have good managers that seemed ok during interview and even after I started working. What changed my situation for worse was new manager, either replacing my direct manager or being put above my direct manager due to merger,change-in-structure,etc. Then my situation took a dive. New managers usually don't like non-super-star employees already there when they are brought in from outside. They didn't hire you themselves. And they are under pressure to do better. So if you are an average worker, you have a big fat target on your back. All points on this thread were great. But you never know about life, what will happen tomorrow. So don't feel too secure or cocky when things are going well. And don't feel too down when everything seems to be going against you. ------ agjacobson By the way Glassdoor is subject to subversion by a company's HR. Go to Theranos' Glassdoor postings and ask yourself whether the glowing reports sound like they were written by employees, and further, whether it is reasonable that they coexist with some of the rotten ones. ------ laxatives Ask for something a little outlandish and maybe unrealistic, like taking a sabbatical/working remotely for a few months while you travel (this probably only works at a startup without a formal hiring process). If they are willing to at least entertain the idea, its a good sign. ------ MagicAndi Basically, you have to treat the interview as a two way process - they are interviewing you, but you are also interviewing them. You need to look at how the company has treated you from the moment you applied, and pick up on any indicators that the organisation you're applying to is toxic. I would look at the following: (1) How has the company communicated with you since you applied to the position? Has it been a single person communicating to you, or several, or an automated process? (2) How did you find it – personal or completely anonymous? (3) Was there a telephone screening interview with HR? (4) How were you tested technically? Were you sufficiently tested? (5) Did you have to write code as part of your interview process? If not, this is a major failing. If the company doesn’t know if you can code or not, what is the point hiring you? (6) How large was the interview panel? This is most visible way of assessing how important a company views recruiting developers. The interview itself: (7) Were the questions asked relevant to the work you believe you will be doing? (8) Did the questions asked match the advertised job? If it doesn’t, it is likely that the job advertised won’t be the job you will actually be doing. (9) The interviewer’s personality and behaviour. Were you treated with respect? (10) Would you like to work with these people? Remember, in an interview, people are on their best behaviour on both sides of the table. If you come out of an interview thinking that one of the interviewers was a pain, then they will be most likely be a complete bastard to work with. You need to trust your gut instinct about people. (11) How was the outcome communicated to you? I've blogged about this previously at [http://www.andyparkhill.co.uk/2015/04/the-software- developer...](http://www.andyparkhill.co.uk/2015/04/the-software-developers- guide-to.html) ------ alkonaut Simplest way I know is asking about the employee churn. "How many have quit in last N years"? If it's uncomfortable to ask a manager or recruiter then find a team member and ask. This is culturally and geographically dependent though. In a tech hub kind if area, holding a job less than a couple of years isn't strange, in my home town where an average tech employee is 45 and not 25, I'd run if the average employment was lower than 5 or 10 years. So it depends. If a third of the team quits quit last year that's a pretty good sign that the environment is toxic. And it becomes only more toxic since usually the talent leaves first. Oh: also if you have kids - the killer question is "does everyone in management have kids"? ------ Spearchucker Some great answers and advice here. I'd add questions about behaviour when things go wrong. For example, what happens when a deadline is missed? Who is accountable (correct answer being "team", or "everyone")? How do lessons learnt affect subsequent projects? Took me a while to find a good formulation for these questions - during an interview I now say something like "Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and the like still miss deadlines, so it's a given that smaller outfits will, too. How do you deal with missed deadlines, and how are teams affected by that?" I look for more occurrences of "we" and "us", and fewer of "I", "he", "she" and "you". ------ Bogue First, Now that you have an understanding of the type of boss you don't want, I would suggest trying to understand the type of boss that fits you. A bad boss to one might be motivating to another. Ask questions like: How do you support your team to be successful? Tell me about a time when an employee impressed you? I'm an average developer now but want to be great, can you help me get there? How? How do you protect your team from outside distractions? (most importantly) Why did you come to work here and what are you looking to achieve? Not that these questions will fully determine the quality of the boss, but you can get a sense for the empathy previously mentioned by how they answer the questions. ------ sadadar I'd probably recommend you use the same tricks a good interviewer does to determine if you are a good culture fit. 1) know your requirements 2) use behavioral questions instead of hypothetical 3) trust your intuition 4) hold a high bar ------ fazza99 I interviewed at one place where the manager who was supposed to see me turned up an hour late, sweaty from a cycle ride and said I was too early. He consistently got my name wrong during the remaining half hour, and poured scorn on his current reports. \- If during the interview, they ask you if you have 'firing skills' and how you motivate unmotivated staff, that's a strong indicator also. The company was based 20 seconds from the edge of a airport runway. Repeatedly during the interview, we had to stop talking as the noise from jet engines wouldn't allow normal conversation. ------ matttheatheist What do you mean by "asshole"? During my first engineering job out of college, I had a crazy angry boss whom you could hear yelling at people all the way across the building. I used to dread having to meet with her (at least) once a week. I literally had to remind myself that "no matter what, she cannot take my life". Yes, this was ACTUALLY a recurring thought. It didn't take long after I had already left that job, that I realized how good she made me. Among my peers, I'm the top engineer, and she's the reason for that. Check out my company: www.evolutionarynetworks.com Good luck! ~~~ bartvk I feel you had to endure abuse, but in hindsight are telling yourself that something good came out of it. ------ matchagaucho Determine if they are a Manager or a Leader. Only work for Leaders. "Boss" is just another word for Manager, so look in the mirror and make sure you're using the right vocabulary to find what you seek. ------ pinewurst I'd like to know the inverse. I accepted my current job because I really liked and respected my boss (and still do) - enough that it obscured how dysfunctional and mediocre the company was in general. I even turned down another offer with more responsibility at another (name brand) place because their hiring manager was such a dud by comparison. I'm looking again to escape my current abyss but am just so paranoid that I'll end up in another mess due to simply liking my boss & coworkers during interviewing. ------ shin_lao I use this rule for business, it never failed me: If you have a doubt, there is no doubt. ------ soham Always treat interviewing like dating, of-course sans the romance; especially the one with your future manager/tech-lead. How do you tell if the person you're "dating" is crappy/toxic? That judgment is very subjective, by definition. e.g. I've had my fair share of people I've found "crappy/toxic", that others have not. And vice-versa. You want to find the person/manager that _you_ get along with. The only way for you to truly tell, is to 1\. Spend more time with them _at the right time_ : \- The best time to do so, is when the offer is made, but before you've accepted it. That is your best time; most companies will do pretty much everything they reasonably can, to keep you interested in that phase. Make use of that time, to ask for more conversations with the potential manager/team. I used to work in engineering at Box for several years. Box is very thoughtful about their interview process. We used to invite candidates we liked, for dinner with the team and multiple conversations with the manager. They were also very selective about promoting people to management positions. 2\. Do backchannel references: \- Hit up past employees on linked-in. Especially the ones who stayed at the company for a long time. They'd likely know your potential manager and will be able to correlate them with the culture. Don't feel shy in doing so; it's routine. Of course, BNBR with their time. Generally speaking, in interviews, you have to optimize for "fit" with "you". Do the best you can in the time that you have, and then leave the rest to chance. There are many good people and strong teams out there. [I make these observations based on my past life as an early engineer at a couple of companies, as engineer and Director of Engineering at Box and as someone keenly interested in interviewing as a topic. These days, I pour myself into running a bootcamp for technical interview preparation: [http://Interviewkickstart.com](http://Interviewkickstart.com). We believe that all good engineers deserve a chance to work for best companies of their time, and interview preparation should not stand in their way] ------ munchkinlk As a recruiter, I would say the best way to judge a company is by what the current employees say. It's not always possible to speak to employees and then you have to lean on the responses to questions you ask during the interview. Have a set of standard questions you ask so you have a consistent way of ranking the responses. Before you walk into an interview or even have a telephone interview decide for yourself what kind of company, culture and environment you want to work in for a lengthy period of time. ------ nasirdani Adding to what most of people said: 1) look how hard the technical part of the interview is, if you don’t get any challenging questions (technical and to some extend behavioral); you are most likely not going to learn and grow that much if you get the job. 2) how the interviewers treat you when you are trying hard to answer tough questions? If you see sympathy, it is a good sign; if they play bad cop and good cop, run. 3) if they don’t ask you any personal questions it means they will not care about you. ------ purpleD I think this is the biggest factor when I take a job. Do I like the boss? I say the beer test - would I enjoy hanging out with this boss socially. I'm not saying I would, in fact I rarely have with my bosses, but someone who seems like I could be friends with is someone I want to work for. This has lead to me mostly working for bosses with good people skills which is rare to find in tech. I hate working for socially obvlivious robot programmers who can't solve people problems. ------ lhnz There's no foolproof way of detecting bad bosses and environments. What you need to learn is: (1) How to deal with difficult people. It's very likely that you'll have to deal with personalities and egos like this at some point no matter how carefully you attempt to situate yourself. (2) How to make yourself marketable enough that you can easily walk from uncomfortable workplace cultures. At some point you're going to work with a colleague or in a company that you cannot stand, so be ready for this. ------ cubano Well then, do better and don't look back. There is no shame in taking a first job out of college and realizing it wasn't meant to be. Working at your age should be akin to dating...you should have no guilt or issue with realizing you acted without having complete information and perhaps jumped into something that wasn't, in the end, right for you. Why not start actively shopping a resume and talking to colleagues your age to see where you could possibly land next? Good luck, and keep moving towards a better tomorrow. ------ xivzgrev What did your gut tell you? You said it was a great startup but what was vibe from hiring manager? I'm willing to bet you didn't feel excellent about him or her. Its the best tool. I had a certain feeling about my curemt boss (like this, don't like this) and its right on the money 4 months later. Just get a sense from what they focus on (and what they gloss over), how they talk, their body language, and more. Next time ask how excited you are to join that person's team ------ tsax Since this is your first job out of school, this tip won't help you unfortunately. In any case, it's good to keep a buffer of 6-months spending handy in savings (outside of retirement accounts, those should preferably NEVER be touched outside of TRUE emergencies). Having a buffer-fund, you will find, will keep your mind at ease and give you options to walk away from very toxic environments. Good luck buddy! ------ tdicola Assuming you're doing a typical full day interview loop pay attention to the first few interviewers, they're likely more of the junior employees. Ask them lots of questions about the work environment, boss, etc. Obviously don't come out and ask 'is your boss an asshole?', have more subtle questions like 'what's the work/life balance like?'. ------ dr_jay I compiled a list of questions and answers from this thread, around the web, books, and personal experience and put them here: [https://gitlab.com/doctorj/interview- questions](https://gitlab.com/doctorj/interview-questions) It's in machine-readable format (YAML) with metadata so you can filter and sort. Would love comments and suggestions. ------ asimuvPR If you want to practice interviewing, feel free to drop me an email. I like to help others prepare for interviews and get new jobs. :) ------ peteretep "So what do you do if you're coming to the end of a sprint and it looks like you might miss a deadline?" ------ pcunite We can tell you experiences we've had, but going through this yourself is how you will know. You need this moment. ------ breathesalt Don't ask the interviewers what they hate about their jobs. That's easy, everyone hates their job. The best advice here is you should find someplace willing to give you a small token project to work on. Find out for yourself if you hate the place in that period of time. ------ edwingustafson You can ask how long team members have been with the organization, to tactfully get a sense of turnover. At a young company you might ask how team came together: was it through past working relationships and friendships? or the internet equivalent of putting an ad in the paper? ------ lnanek2 That happened to me recently. Everyone seemed great during the interview process, but the company was a disaster. Once I got in the door I found out all the code was originally produced from outsourcing in Russia. So it had no comments and it had layer after layer after layer of unneeded abstraction. So figuring out the behavior on an error in the BLE back end communicating with a fitness tracker required tracing through half a dozen unneeded classes like screen config beans, screen states, the fragment state generators, to to error codes, to error messages, to fragment subclasses, to flow subclasses, to activity subclasses. All with if/else's for special conditions jammed everywhere even in things that should be mindless DTOs and many parts never actually used and deep inheritance hierarchies. It could all have been easily done with 40 classes instead of 120, with much simpler, more reliable code. Lesson: ask the company about outsourcing history and plans. Software engineering has known for a long time that abstraction over composition really hurts maintainability and reliability, but clearly this company never heard of that. Normally this sort of thing is fixable, but the couple staff developers they had brought in tended to just write whatever they thought would work, shove it into the app, then call it a day, not even smoke testing, let alone writing unit tests. Developers frequently pushed code that didn't even work in real testing on a device then left for vacation for a week leaving others to deal with their mess. If you sent them an email with logs or even fix commits, they'd call a meeting with management to try to discredit you and block the fixes rather than working to fix the problems. And their stuff simply didn't work on the devices, so there was no possible end goal to their politics that would leave the app functional. It made no sense. Even ignoring things that could be considered "style" they didn't have much technical ability either. They thought changes to variables would be visible on all threads as long as they used an Android Handler class on a background Looper, but that's only true if both threads where it is read block on the underlying event queue, which wasn't happening in their code. But they fought the synchronization blocks that would make the value changes visible to their UI logic despite logs proving their code was blowing by changed values without seeing them. Lesson: their developers will give you a technical interview, but be sure to ask your own questions and determine their level as well. OK, outsourcing, we can clean it up. Clueless junior developers, we can train them and pair code with them and clean up up their messes. But management was completely screwed up as well which kind of prevented any fixes. My manager left at 4PM every day to go ride his bicycle and never came back. Meanwhile, I took a 45 minute bicycle ride midday and worked until 8PM to finish a project for the company during a month we were encouraged to exercise and be healthy - he fought to get me in trouble for "long lunches". Similarly, my wife drove two hours once to get me in without standing an hour on the BART, so my back wouldn't hurt. She did everything properly, got a guest badge, stayed out of restricted areas where we were working on unreleased products, and got kicked out by the manager for talking quietly at my desk with me and a coworker. He was panting heavily and claimed she was too distracting for him to work. She left and never came back to the company ever again, but he went right back to harassing me about her week after week, talking about her and making up new rules despite the fact that she never came back. Meanwhile he had reserved an entire conference room for his friend's family to visit the entire day. Lesson: not sure how to avoid this one. The manager said all the right things during the interview, that management is supposed to help employees get things done and get along with their team, but he spent what little time he was on site harassing people. I guess because the company had just IPO'ed the management was basically rich from their options and didn't give a damn about actually working. I put in a transfer request with HR who immediately fired me instead of looking into it. They claimed all their managers were the same, which was a lie, since I walked around and asked. So no clue of the right lesson for that one. Sometimes you just end up with a bad company despite doing everything right. ~~~ theworstshill What a shithole. Hope you got out there with some sanity left. ------ xupybd There are some simple interview tips in the video below, I'd say if you get these down you'll have nothing to worry about. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38cUwnkoDxk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38cUwnkoDxk) ------ dbcurtis Look out for a paranoid culture. It should be easy to detect. When you ask questions, are there places people just won't go with their answers? Do you get deflective answers? Are there people who don't seem to want to talk to each other? ------ thefastlane i once got through the entire interview process (salary negotation etc etc) interacting with the person i thought would be my boss. i specifically wanted to the job because i liked this person. but when i received the offer letter, i discovered that someone else would be my supervisor -- it definitely caught me offguard. and turns out it ended up being the worst job i'd ever had. i wouldn't call the supervisor bait-n-switch a red flag, but now i'm now hyperattentive to even the tiniest of hiccups during hiring. surprises during the interview process can equal surprises on the job as well. ------ Abdirahman Well I'm looking for a cofounder now so perhaps you'd be a nice boss to some people if you start a promising startup with me. Drop me a line at rahman (dot) aspro (at) outlook (dot) com if interested. ------ trhway assume by default that it is "a crappy boss / toxic environment" and try to find solid evidence to the contrary. >However, a few months into the job I realized my boss was a complete and utter asshole. well, that is view from your side. Are you sure that you aren't the one too? It is just a frequent situation that people are defensive in response to your [as perceived by them] "offenses". It is one of the most important skills if you're going to develop your career as corporate drone is to get used to work with different people around you. ------ SideburnsOfDoom The single best way is to have a quick off the record chat with someone who works there or has worked there recently in a similar role. This isn't always available, but it's worth a lot if you can get it. ------ kidlogic Ask about the company's culture and ask whether or not you can talk to other employees; their immediate response will be a tell-tale sign of whether or not they're toxic or not. ------ kidlogic Ask about company culture - also ask whether or not you can talk to other employees; their immediate response will be a tell-tale sign whether or not they're toxic. ------ verst Try to find out who has worked for this boss (or CEO / founder) in the past. Reach out to them to hear about their experience and find out why they really left. ------ mcs_ If you don't want to work with them, for them to improve their system... just run. If you don't want to meet assholes.. Change industry. ------ outside1234 Demand to interview at least your manager and your manager's manager. I ask for the 3rd level as well. ~~~ joelberman Agree, but also some of your future co-workers. If you think you hit it off with one of the interviewers ask if you can call or meet for coffee. Having an asshole boss sucks, but if boss also hired a bunch of assholes it is even worse. ------ andy Ask to speak with people who would be your peer. Ask them about the culture, day to day life, etc. ------ known Don't burn the bridge; Polish your CV and start applying for a job; ------ Jhsto Ask for a raise from whatever they offer and see how they react to it. ------ the_cat_kittles i think im pretty good at detecting it now, but i dont think there is a simple way other than to work at alot of places. i will say that if things seem toxic, they aren't going to get better (in my experience), and most likely will get worse. so quit asap. ------ oldemployee66 best of luck ------ oldemployee66 1.)go with wisdom, NOT with truism rules -If respect isn't reciprocal, run. be thankful you have a job. Some bosses are psychotic a--holes AND power alleged SADISTS. 2.)read the book [https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/22/hubspot- book...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/22/hubspot-book- unflattering-portrait-old-school-corporate-politics-new-tech- economy/FVh4ayJZ5LMLdjoGXd9oIN/story.html) 3.)always ask about possibilities of TRANSFERS and other departments, even contractors. 4.)give email address with I LOVE TO GET ANONYMOUS MAIL. 5.)sometimes you have to visit the bars and party places where the employees hang out for some 'human tips' \-- know what i mean 6.)over age 54 or was it 49? first career out of a few was electric - gas grid. FIRST YEAR IN FIELD, about three persons GOT KILLED or ?? and what waz intereesting was they were not necessarily accident prone. 7.)look up the govbuerment stats. electric - like after the hurricane out is up there next to coal mining. 8.)the CRAPPY boss is part of the overall package. define your framework - ecosystem, QUANTITATIVE assessment of factors, etc. You are an A student in Math, for top university, right??? sure?? 9.)it's gonna sound real harsh. insert quote by Nitzzzkieche. the responsibility AND THE ATTITUDE is yours alone. I've been amazed at how bad and even how out of date SME subject matter expertise - great coding skills in Microsoft VB - the crpola-boss gets and they rotate and TAG TEAM YOU. sometimes, Its a 'sisten-in-law' who married the key customer VP so BOSS is 'royalty' YOU CANNOT TELL. rule #10 - be really suspicous, if the 'secretary - admin assistant, receptionist? doesn't give you the REAL RULES and culture of the company? It's UP TO YOU to ge the truth out of them as in the book Disrupted. oh s __ __ _t, no rules that are too easy to say. _ buy the management books. Find out what the CRAPPPITO lord is reading. Only then, plan your strategy. -If they give you an IQ test or similar, run. no dumpkofff, I used to practice IQ tests and I go to Mensa, but no real good lookers there - if you know what I mean. THE NEW AGE is the PSYCMETRIC babble test. if you are not a 'quality focus PERFECTIONIST' then maybe U SHULD gib up 'developer position'? Conclusion - Sadists?, possible racists?, sexists? been there done that - both employee, consultant, manager, no I am not 'racist'... I think a __ __hole, since I am a minoarity and used to STICKING OUT LIKE A SORE THUMB rolling with da punches, mon! don 't let them know you have been hurt. Sometimes, it helps to suggest other possible VICTEMS for the Mr. CARPPY-hole to attack. the best books seem to be FBI related as to open questions and sniffing for dirty dirties. The CODE is the company and the code smells? according to book reviews on internet, the KGB uses the medieval tortures; the CIA uses the outsource or rendition to other a-hole tortures like fine democracy Egypt; the DEA uses the highly reliable informants paid for in cash. the local sheriff grew up in the same high school, so he knows the ART-holes as kids and has not changed his mind in 20 years, while he tries to get rich on the fracking boomlet. please refer to Fred Reed, lew ______rock __ __well __*com for useful travel and adventure writings as old time journalists? used to bounce around quite a bit. hey, I like writing - code only in hh aa ss kk ee ll or give advice to 'nephews like you' or virtual sons making all the same mistakes I did when I was young loooooong time ago. fellow Art-hole in training! remember, it 10% personal. U have been selected by fate. it is ALWAYS, THAT IS THE RULE, 90% not personal. 55% divorce rate in USA. it still is 90% NOT personal, its the system.... PS. Research is ongoing. I LOVE DATING BAR-MAIDS because they tell such interesting stories. PS. If you work in Wall Street, NYC, why are the go-go dancer bar close-by? PPS. sure, I'm just an old, kinda introverted consultant. did startups, and did part-time startups - sure I failed but some friends did succeed. IT AINT PERSONAL, I just did the best I could. with the crabby bosses i got. ~~~ 746F7475 These are like ramblings of a mad man ~~~ osgrimmy Sometimes it's one small thing! I had a senior member interviewing me not a manager ashe recently quit. at the time I noticed he seemed annoyed and unimpressed. At the time I didn't think much about it but after 3 months working there I realized I made a big mistake. There had been 5 others before me that lasted less than a year, some less than 6 months. This senior guy was a cranky, controlling, and micromanaged everything I did. he was just a d$@k! we finally got a manager at 6 months who seemed nice at first so I stayed in hopes of change. after a month he started isolating individuals in the team. he would start with one at a time and would start talking bad about them to everyone in the dept. he would ignore them and isolate them from the team. he then would start pulling work away and only give them boring tasks that was well beyond their pay grade. one-by-one each individual would quit! After 3 had left I was next in his hit-list. I took bullying and abuse for 6 months, I refused to let him win, and it was brutal. Isolating me from the team by moving me to a corner section of the office. he would argue with me on anything and would pull work away from me constantly. basically I was sitting there with nothing to do, and if I did anything I would get in shit for not asking for approval and if I did he would say no. unfortunately for him I was well liked in the company and that seemed to Pisa him off more. On my last 2 months I had enough and I would do whatever I wanted regardless of what he said and he didn't know how to handle it! He would say "I told you NO@ and I woild say "I'm tired of sitting there doing nothing all day so if you have a problem with me working fire me!". it was so bad the HR manager asked me why he has treating me like that for 6 months I told him he's a bully and he's a terrible person. the HR guy agreed but said there was nothing he could do but talk to a VP.. nothing happened. One day, totally bored and miserable, I said to myself "why are you still here?". I left, and I should of left at 3 months. they HR guy threw to a of money at me to stay but I said there isn't enough money in the world to keep me in this environment. I keep I touch with a few individuals and he started bullying others and one- by-one they left. actually one just asked me for a reference as he was miserable and being isolated. there are a lot of terrible people out there!

Strategy: Front S3 with a Caching Proxy - pbnaidu http://highscalability.com/strategy-front-s3-caching-proxy ====== jm4 I'm not sure this improves the situation much. In fact, it probably will only make things worse since you've got an additional point of failure. The proxy will keep your site up if S3 goes down, but if the proxy goes down you're done. This strategy hinges on the assumption that your caching proxy is going to be more fault tolerant than S3. The recent problems Amazon has been having aside, that's not a gamble I'd be willing to make. Nevermind the fact that even under the best circumstances this is only useful for reads.

Show HN: How to integrate and automate iOS deployments in TFS environment - trvd1707 http://www.nonstandardsolutions.com/2014/07/my-quest-to-automate-mobile-deployments.html ====== trvd1707 I have a need to integrate my iOS development with TFS repository. The dev ops that only use Windows boxes need to be able to build and deploy iOS code to TestFlight and App store mainly accessing remotely a Mac Mini server.<p>My solution was to add some script steps to the scheme and a build script to each project that can be executed from a TFS task accessing the Mac Mini via ssh. I describe my solution in more detail on the url above. I'm wondering to hear other solutions to similar problems and suggestions to improve my solution. Thanks

In 2005 Creative beat Apple, whose side you took then? - atirip http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/08/7575/ ====== pan69 We took Apple's side since these sort of lawsuits are petty. It's the same reason we now take Samsung's side. ~~~ shimsham oh look, the wind just changed direction... ------ y2kenny What was the patent? What are the prior art for Creative's patent? ~~~ calciphus The patent was on the nested menu style of media organization. So that familiar artist/album/genre drill-down UI that the original iPods had and made them so famously usable. I don't know of any direct prior art, since apparently a slightly different form factor yields patent protection. If I recall, the Creative product was the first to do this on a mobile device, however it was a familiar media access technique for a number of players on computers, including Winamp.

Floating offshore regulation free tech incubator interests over 100 startups - leejw00t354 http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-05/10/floating-city-attracts-more-than-100-startups ====== stephengillie One of the "secrets" is that all the above-ground space is already within someone's jurisdiction ;) ~~~ dgit No it isn't: <http://bit.ly/wXJM9> ~~~ iwwr Not sure it's legal to set up land-based economic activities without the blessing of at least one Antarctic-Treaty member countries. Even then, it's not legal to do mining or related activities. ~~~ mchusma I'm actually curious why you think this, have any more info? My presumption is that outside of legal jurisdiction anything is game. I guess existing land powers claiming whatever they want, such as the moon, may be legal but practically impossible to enforce.

Production Rails Tuning with Passenger: PassengerMaxProcesses - itsderek23 http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2009/12/08/production-rails-tuning-with-passenger-passengermaxprocesses ====== jeremyw _Generally speaking, you want to fill up as much RAM as possible with passenger processes without utilizing swap in order to maximize you performance and throughput._ Uh, what? On a single-app box with real traffic (as the article implies), look first to CPU. If your average request spends 50% time in db/services and 50% time in processing/render, using more than 2-3 passenger procs per core (i.e. 100% core utilization) is less efficient and a waste of memory. Multiply by cores. (Back off a bit for db on the same machine.) You want plenty of spare memory for OS cache, to keep your code and static files in memory -- that is, your disk reads should be zero. And don't do swap, kids. ~~~ jnewland Excellent point, Jeremy. This article didn't talk at all about the CPU/RAM balance, which is a important to consider when scaling any application. In my experience, a large number of Rails apps are more RAM bound than CPU bound due to large gems/libraries/codebases. Having additional Passenger processes available even when CPU bound will allow for greater throughput (if at a less-than-ideal speed) than having requests back up on the queue, however - especially if those requests spend a good amount of time waiting on DB, memcached, or other external API calls. ~~~ jeremyw If you're CPU-bound, you can't have greater throughput, by definition. Once you calculate your non-cpu latency (50% in my example) ceil(1/latency%) is your limit per core, before you start wasting resources. ~~~ jnewland You can't gain any more cycles, of course, but you _can_ gain throughput by adding processes to an already cpu-bound app by giving faster incoming requests a place to go instead of sitting on the global queue while waiting for other requests to process.

Show HN: How we built our new Help site: API-powered, client-driven, responsive - progolferyo http://blog.chartboost.com/post/36221629171/web-3-0-help-site?hn ====== SeoxyS Hey guys, it's the author here. Working on this site, I really wanted to try all of the modern best practices and try to make something really awesome. I hope you all like it! ------ mariusandreiana How did you solve SEO? With JS disabled, help.chartboost.com has no content.

Alan Perlis: Epigrams on Programming (1982) [pdf] - tosh https://www.gwern.net/docs/cs/1982-perlis.pdf ====== braythwayt Alan Perlis's own page listing the epigrams, in HTML for ease of readability, copying, and accessibility: [http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis- alan/quotes.html](http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html) Herbert Klaeren's list, which includes some meta-epigrams: [http://pu.inf.uni- tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epigrams.html](http://pu.inf.uni- tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epigrams.html) ~~~ tosh Interesting that the Yale website omits the last 10 ~~~ gwern It also has some subtle transcription errors, which is why I got a copy of the original to host & link instead. For example, I forget which, unfortunately, but one of the later ones makes zero sense in the HTML version, because it's based on some wordplay and the transcriber got a word wrong. (I always thought I was simply not getting it, until I got the original and rereading, realized that the problem wasn't me.) ~~~ tosh #116 on the Yale Website: > You think you know when you _can_ learn, are more sure when you can write, > even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program. in the scanned original: > You think you know when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even > more when you can teach, but certain when you can program. ~~~ gwern That might be it, yes. ------ tosh > Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new > machines to behave like old ones. Made me think about backwards compatibility. Backwards compatibility often is what allows a new platform to be successful (or to have a shot at success) and yet it can hold it back from what it would have become without it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence) Related a recent comment by munificent on all the effort that goes into JavaScript runtimes: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20413090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20413090) ------ dang A dozen threads but no real big ones: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=epigrams%20programming%20comme...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=epigrams%20programming%20comments%3E0&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0) ------ vok A favorite Alan Perlis quote that's not included here: "If Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be a programmer, and he’d be writing one-liners in APL." [https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/APLQA.htm](https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/APLQA.htm)

NZ Auction Site Bans iPad-Lookalike Tablets - Semteksam http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/nz_auction_site_bans_ipad-lookalike_tablets/ ====== digiwizard lickspittle sycophant: awesomest description of the day.

Takipi – Java debugging reinvented - nivstein http://www.takipi.com/ ====== steve_barham I want to test this product, and I'm in a position where I could spend real money on a purchase or subscription to this service in the event that it does what we need. Unfortunately, as soon as I see that data is sent off-site, I immediately discard this as a product which my organisation can use. Reasons 1\. I am an engineer, working in a highly regulated environment. Regulated environments excel at buying things, or subscribing to things - we have whole teams of people that are delighted to spend money on our behalf. They also tend to have immense amounts of process overhead, whenever you interact with third parties on subjects relating to intellectual property or the confidentiality of client data. Your assurances on encryption, confidentiality, etc. are irrelevant to me; you could have invented a perfect cryptosystem, but regulations would still prohibit me from exporting data outside of our organisation. 2\. I don't want to build reliance on something which is outside of my control. This might be the greatest tool ever built, but if I'm building monitoring systems for production systems, I need to have confidence that they are available, irrespective of your schedule for upgrading / supporting / maintaining your product. Why should a tool fail, just because the people that built the tool are no longer around? Short takeaway - my suggestion is that you consider those of us who are not fortunate enough to work in unregulated industries, and produce a self-hosted version of your application (as GitHub do) which can be run on our own infrastructure. There's revenue there which is being ignored. You might feel that centralising your service means that crackers can't steal your tool and use it for free. I would argue that the people that actually care about running this locally are the sort of people that will be paying you, handsomely, for it. ~~~ nivstein Hi Steve. These are some valid points you're making. We are currently considering an on-premises solution for precisely this situation you are describing. ------ DaveLond This looks interesting, but the lack of any pricing information makes me nervous - am I missing it? ~~~ nivstein Takipi is in open beta, so it is currently free. ~~~ DaveLond A not unattractive price point, I find. When are you planning to start charging for it? ~~~ nivstein Nothing is final, but we should remain in beta at least until the end of the year. ~~~ hga I'm afraid I have to agree with brazzy; you're asking people to invest a fair amount of time, and potentially come to depend on a tool that they have no idea if they will be able to afford once you start charging money. ------ farmdawgnation This seems pretty legit. I really like the personality you gave the site with its design. Do you have any plans to support GitHub repositories as a location to pull source from in the event we don't really want to deploy a jar with our source in it? ~~~ nivstein This is actually a feature which is currently under consideration. ------ namdnay How well would this handle Spring code (in full autowired, horrible stack trace glory)? ~~~ nivstein When you install Takipi, you are asked to enter your top packages (e.g. "com.mycompany;org.foobar.common"). Code outside of the filter will not be shown to you when viewing stack traces. In addition, if, for an example, an exception is thrown by Spring AND caught by Spring, you will not receive an event for that case. ------ rsanders Is anybody using this for Clojure? I'm very interested in how usable it is for that. Clojure runs on the JVM using JVM bytecodes, but that doesn't mean Takipi will be able to show me anything but mangled gibberish. ~~~ nivstein Takipi lets you attach your own source code to the project, so you will see your original source code when viewing exceptions and other events, instead of decompiled Java. Support for prettier stack traces is in the planning. ------ avisk If I understand correctly does the takipi daemon, upload all the debug info. collected from our server to the takipi server via Internet. Then I use app.takipi.com to access the same? ~~~ nivstein Takipi's agent records information which is relevant to the issues which are detected (exceptions, latency problems, custom conditions set by the developer). The data and source code are then encrypted with your secret 256-bit AES key and stored by Takipi. This data is in turn decrypted in your browser and viewed by you at app.takipi.com. ------ sgt I know it works on the JVM level, but we use Glassfish a lot in production and I'm interested in finding out exactly how practical it is to use Takipi with Glassfish? ~~~ nivstein Very practical :) Takipi fully supports Glassfish, as well as all other major web servers and containers. ------ erans It looks like a really interesting approach for live debugging... ------ SanderMak Are you guys planning to offer this as a Heroku add-on? ~~~ nivstein We are currently in the process of adding a Heroku add-on :) ~~~ SanderMak Cooling, looking forward to try it on my Play 2 app running on Heroku! ------ yareally Any plans to support Android in the near future? ~~~ nivstein Takipi is mainly designed for production/staging debugging, and thus targets servers and development environments. ~~~ yareally Sorry, to clarify, I meant support us developers making apps on the PC for Android (not using your tool directly on Android) :) ~~~ nivstein I'm sorry, Android development is currently not supported. ------ blibble I wonder what the overhead is like? ~~~ nivstein Both the RAM and CPU overhead are configurable by you. The default values are max 5% CPU, and max 5% RAM. ------ mokplan Cool one! Good luck guys! ------ buddym What people sometimes fail to realize is that proper testing disciplines can mitigate practically all bugs in production. I haven't seriously used a debugger in 2 years, methinks. So giving developers "X-ray vision" to their servers in production, however innovative, is not a real solution. ~~~ Uchikoma As you are down voted I wonder: I have the same experience here. Very few serious problems (1/year) that come from developer bugs. Others seem to have much more, e.g. when people ask me if the devs here have pager duty (which they haven't). I also wonder if we test too much (ca. 85% path coverage, 15k unit tests (3x rewritten), automatic selenium tests, explorative manual tests, automatic API tests, developer acceptance tests). ~~~ lmm It certainly sounds like you're testing too much. The most efficient use of resources is almost always proportionate allocation between code and other things. So if only a small proportion of your serious problems are code errors then you're either testing too much or not doing enough at other levels of the stack. The real questions of course are whether your defect rate and the rate at which you introduce new features are where you want them to be.

Ask HN: Do YC Startups Lack Spine? - villageidiot By that I mean the kind of business instincts that are needed to really make a killing in the marketplace.<p>There seems to be an abundance of admirable nobility in the aims of YCers but not a lot of ruthlessness.<p>Maybe this is a function of the relative youth and inexperience of most of the groups that apply.<p>Would YC be more profitable if they were more open to older entrepreneurs that are ready to rumble? ====== pg Textually this is a classic troll. But at least it's not an account newly created for the purpose, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and play along. Let's start by clarifying your question. Did Larry & Sergey, when they started, have these business instincts about making a killing in the marketplace that you're referring to? Because if they did they seem to have been well hidden. And if they didn't, these qualities don't seem to be worth much. Also, can you tell me more about the youth and inexperience of the people who apply to YC? No one, as far as we know, sees the applications except us. Your last question I can at least answer with certainty: no. It takes 4-5 years for a startup to achieve liquidity. No YC-funded startup is that old; the median is only about 18 months old. Our profitability now is therefore noise, which means no change in the applicants would have affected it significantly. ~~~ villageidiot I appreciate you treating the question in the good faith in which it was intended. While the topic may be provocative, I felt it was relevant, based on my observations of YC. However, because I can only provide anecdote as evidence of my case, I asked the question to discover whether my observations about YC are shared or whether I am suffering from a delusion. Textually this may seem like trollish behavior but some of the responses to the question seem to belie this suggestion. As for your point about Google, some ideas are so powerful that they fall outside the conventional expectations of business practice. The fact that Google's founders have, until lately anyway, been unassertive in the manner of Microsoft, does not indicate that Bill Gates' approach "is not worth much". Absent some ground-shaking idea like Google's, I would argue the assertive approach of Microsoft is the norm for a successful company and a key ingredient missing in the YC environment. ~~~ mattmaroon How "assertive" was Microsoft at first? It seems like they spent their first decade toiling along at standardizing programming across the many different OEMs and computer types of the day. It was probably another decade until they did anything that anyone would consider "ruthless". They started off trying to build something people want (Basic for the Altair) just like any YC company. I wouldn't say that most YC startups display any less ambition than building a Basic interpreter. ~~~ brandonkm Mircosoft was VERY assertive at first. Without laying out a detailed history, very early on gates had a keen business sense and was quite ruthless. They may have been 'building something people want', but the seeds of what microsoft would later become were without a doubt being planted. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists> ~~~ mattmaroon I don't think asking people to pay for your product is ruthless. ~~~ brandonkm Not ruthless but certainly assertive. ------ tptacek This question doesn't make any sense. YC is open to older entrepreneurs. Who knows whether they're ruthless, or ruthless enough? And why accept your premise that what's needed to win is ruthlessness? ------ mattmaroon This really doesn't make any sense at all. ------ cabalamat What is the optimum amount of ruthlessness for a startup to have? I think this depends entirely on what industry sector a startup is targeting. For example, a startup in the drug dealing, extortion, pimping or organised crime sectors should probably be very ruthless and very "ready to rumble". But for a website -- the sort of business most HN readers are more likely to be in -- ruthlessness is much less likely to be effective. The thing you're most likely to achieve with it is getting people to think you're an arsehole. ------ skmurphy The kind of killing that Hewlett and Packard made in the marketplace was predicated on fair dealing and a commitment to their employees and their community. What entrepreneurs would you like to see HN readers emulate? ------ prospero I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty certain no one's been turned down because they've been too "ready to rumble". ------ cchooper I doubt it pays to be ruthless when you have nothing to back it up. If you can't dominate, you have to cooperate. ~~~ anewaccountname >I doubt it pays to be ruthless when you have nothing to back it up. Did the market cap of Microsoft suddenly drop while I wasn't looking or something? ~~~ cchooper Did Microsoft become an early-stage YC startup when I wasn't looking or something? ~~~ anewaccountname Microsoft was ruthless when they were early stage; that is how they got to where they are. ~~~ cchooper Not when they were two guys writing Altair Basic. They survived off sales to hobbyists. Being ruthless wouldn't have go them very far. ------ SwellJoe Check back in a few years. We're only three years into observing the YC experiment. The average exit in the valley takes seven years. Over the next five years, we'll have pretty solid data about whether the YC model, and its companies, can "really make a killing in the marketplace". ------ noodle i believe the yc startups follow the "if you build it they will come" type of philosophy, as opposed to the "shove it down your throats" or "cut costs to make a bigger margin" vibe i'm getting from the OP. ~~~ madoff Or the "screw your best friend over by stealing an idea he's been working on, implement it behind his back and launch it before he even has a chance to register the domain name he told you about over lunch". Google it. ~~~ olefoo Your googlebait is not effective, can you at least share the domain name with us? ~~~ kirse Might be thinkcomp whining about how Zuckerberg stole Facebook from him... Only guy on here who seems to actively bring up his grudge. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=328235> ~~~ thinkcomp Sorry, but if you're implying that I was impersonating someone else (in this case, the person whose username is madoff, who I don't know) just to revisit this topic, you'd be incorrect. (You'd also be kind of rude.) I bring up what happened with Facebook when it has some contextual relevance. There's a lot people here who could learn from that series of events, and I think I'm entitled to discuss it just like anyone else. As you'll note, however, I didn't even mention it until you did--and I only noticed that due to a traffic spike. And for the record, I agree. By and large, YC startups do lack spines. ~~~ kirse _you'd be incorrect. (You'd also be kind of rude.)_ Sounds like someone needs a spine ;) On that note, though, I apologize for accusing you of something you did not do. ------ rms <http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html> ~~~ booke Can we think for ourselves for once? I don't know if you've noticed but a lot more companies succeed from not listening to pg's advice than vice versa. ~~~ ntoshev _a lot more companies succeed from not listening to pg's advice than vice versa_ Got any hard data to support your claims? ~~~ booke The S&P 500 ------ fallentimes What business instincts are you talking about? Is this from the Brazen Careerist or something? It just seems like you're making generalizations driven by anecdotes. If you're more specific and backup your claims with data (or even concrete examples) I think you'll get better answers. ------ sokoloff In what way(s) do you think YC isn't open to older entrepreneurs? If anything, I suspect older entrepreneurs aren't as open to YC than the other way around. In my own case, if I wanted $20K in expenses for a startup, I'd login to e*trade and transfer it, or I'd write a check for it. Doesn't seem worth giving up 6% for the cash, though if I were intent on striking out on my own, I'd almost certainly talk to YC, to see if a "3% for $1 and advice/contacts" deal could be worked out. ------ siong1987 Where he draws the conclusion from? ------ paul9290 I'd say most here want to build awesome products that people use! Most are not businessman first, but our journey lead us to be such.... Ruthless ... can anyone name a well known inventor who started off ruthless? Tough for me to even write that word as I want to create good in the world and profit from it. Being ruthless... blech! ~~~ booke Bill Gates. ------ tyler This would be a much more interesting question if you were to give specific examples of how specific YC startups are "spineless", and perhaps how they could be less "spineless". Without that, I'd simple respond: "They're not." ------ vaksel What exactly do you mean by ready to rumble? ~~~ villageidiot I'm talking about assertively competitive business practices. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_get_ready_to_rumble>! ~~~ french Sounds like the Bill Gates school of IT. The YC startup community has a different set of social mores which emphasize usefulness of the product, a certain trendiness with respect to what else is happening in the current web 2.0 world. We are not really the budding monopolist types. Yes, there is a certain timidness in the YC community about the dark art of business. But that's mainly because most of us have never worked :) ~~~ sorp Well, I've worked in the business world. But I have no interest in "assertively competitive business practices". Most of the managers I worked for who were comfortable with that type of approach were exactly the reason I wanted to escape into the startup world and never look back at corporate life again. So, if you want to call that 'timid', go ahead. I'd rather do my own thing, make a good product and try avoid "doing evil" as much as I can. This probably sounds cliched or like I'm trying to win some brownie points but it's actually how I think. It's not worth it for me to live in that kind of "assertively competitive" way that I see my father and his colleagues living - or working, I should say. That feels like the old way of doing things. ------ gruseom Evidence?

Responsible Disclosure Can Be Anything But - daeken http://daeken.com/responsible-disclosure-can-be-anything-but ====== sriramk I'm shocked he didn't even try to contact Onity. He's trying ascribe motivations and possible behavior just based on his reading of the lock market - we have no idea whether Onity would have acted in this way. Perhaps they'd have scrambled to contact hotels? Or maybe they'd have disregarded it. We have no way of knowing because he never attempted to do the right thing. ~~~ luu Don't we have a good idea how they would have responded from how they've actually responded? It took four months and a huge public backlash before they acquiesced to demands for replacements.[1] [1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/12/06/lock- fi...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/12/06/lock-firm-onity- starts-to-shell-out-for-security-fixes-to-hotels-hackable-locks/) ~~~ fatbird How they responded after public disclosure says little about how they would have responded to notification with a deadline for public disclosure. I understand the various incentives for Onity, and I think a great incentive for them is, given six months to address the issue, knowing it'll be made public, to take at least some proactive steps such as notifying large customers or being ready upon public disclosure with a mitigation plan. His whole blog entry is a lot of handwaving to cover up the fact that he never even gave them a chance to do something anything like the right thing. ~~~ Firehed He makes an important point though: security researchers have been used by vendors as part of trying to go through the traditional process of responsible disclosure. It could easily come off as blackmail[1]. Simply disclosing to the public avoids that possibility, because the researcher was clearly not trying to personally get something from the vendor. That being said, I think this kind of thing should be covered by whistleblower protection laws (I don't know if it's ever been tested)... although it seems those are only enforced when it's convenient. So while I think he may have reached the right conclusion, I don't think it was for the right reasons. If sufficient protections for disclosers are in place, this should be a relative non-issue (though it makes sense to adjust the disclosure window based on the ease and risk of the vulnerability in order to apply pressure for an expedited fix) [1] Given there's no payout for the researcher other than having the vulnerability fixed, it is conceivably not too hard to defend against. That doesn't change the fact that they can be sued, which is expensive, time- consuming, and stressful. ~~~ fatbird The best protection for the discloser is simply to do so anonymously, which shouldn't be difficult for someone like this. Alternately, do so 'legal anonymously', perhaps by the EFF approaching the company and saying "we have in our possession information on a security vulnerability in your product. We want to give you information on it. In six months this information will be made public. We ask for and want no compensation or consideration at all." That's it. There exist methods to do this safely; Daeken could have done it, and didn't. ~~~ lawnchair_larry No, the EFF doesn't offer this service, and given the volume of vulnerabilities disclosed, it would be a huge waste of their resources. I'm not paying a lawyer because you have broken software that I had nothing to do with making. ------ paupino_masano If you haven't seen his original paper regarding this it can be found here: <http://demoseen.com/bhpaper.html> Also, slides for his talk at Blackhat: <http://demoseen.com/bhtalk2.pdf> ~~~ purplelobster Wow, it's so easy. I can't really sympathize with Onity in any way. ------ tzs He missed an option: disclose privately to Onity's major customers, and give them some time to assess the situation and deal with Onity. ~~~ daeken Yeah, didn't consider that angle. However, that (much like Onity's original approach to the problems) leaves the independent hotels in the cold. Definitely a decent option, though. ------ paulgb Where does US law stand on full disclosure? I'm aware of MBTA v. Anderson, but are there still some grey areas? ------ gojomo While fixing all the locks will be costly and time-consuming, perhaps a far smaller number of specialized 'tripwire' fix boards can be sent to affected hotels, boards which track (and perhaps report instantly by radio) attempts to use the hack. For example, one such device could be added per floor. Even if crooks only very occasionally trip the specialized replacements, they would alert hotels to active exploitation, allowing either immediate apprehension or timely review of security footage. Shifting the risk/reward for criminals could buy time for a more complete but gradual fix. ~~~ daeken Once you've already spent the time and money to pull the locks off the doors and replace/add a circuit board, you may as well just drop in the fixed board. That prevents the main vulnerability from functioning, though there's no fix at all for the encryption flaw (but no one has exploited that, nor will they in the near future, if I had to guess). ~~~ knowaveragejoe Not only that, but seeing as the locks don't communicate in any way besides the maintenance port, there's no way to know if they've been tripped without reading them at some regular interval. ~~~ gojomo The replacement board, in the hypothesized special 'tripwire' assembly, would have added radio-reporting. You only need a few of these super-locks, randomly added to the population of vulnerable locks, to catch any exploitation at scale. That'd both curtail the losses and deter future copycats. ("While you're rifling through the guest's belongings looking for valuables, security is already on its way.") ------ kevingadd Even if the risk for independent discovery was high, announcing it to the public without contacting the vendor and giving them the opportunity to at least prepare a response plan (even if you think the plan is inadequate) ensured a thoroughly dramatic media response that made certain that anyone with the slightest desire to break into hotel rooms now knew how. EDIT: Yep, you're right. I don't know how I missed that given that I skimmed the article twice. Sorry. ~~~ daeken > The fact that 'contact Onity, then disclose publicly after a reasonable > period of time' is nowhere on his list just blows my mind. That's the very first thing on the list. Quote: "The standard 'Responsible Disclosure' approach would be to notify Onity and give them X months to deal with the issue before taking it public."

Practicing Programming (2005) - luu https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/practicing-programming ====== ntoshev I think practicing programming should be about: 1\. trying many new things 2\. in a very tight feedback loop So, code little ideas, but make sure you start from the essence of the problem - not the registration/login process, not the new API - start directly from the part that's new and challenging and risky. In this way, when the idea fails, you wouldn't have wasted time building support infrastructure for it. Also, pick light and flexible tools for exploratory programming - dynamic languages, REPL, etc. ------ vega So, fair point. Keep up to date with technology, don’t become obsolete. Sure. But I don't know about the metaphor. I mean, programmers do practice daily. If you’re coding at work you’re practicing. More to the point: if the author played in the NFL he’d want the cornerback to do exceptionally well at game time, to practice daily, of course, AND to go home at night and keep practicing to become a quarterback AND a coach because, you know, got to keep up. My guess is that’s not what happens in the NFL. ~~~ cicatriz Coding at work is certainly not optimized for practice. NFL players do an exceptional amount of highly optimized training in addition to their "work" of playing the game: [http://www.si.com/nfl/2014/12/10/tom- brady-new-england-patri...](http://www.si.com/nfl/2014/12/10/tom-brady-new- england-patriots-age-fitness) No, you shouldn't _have_ to work a 40+ hour week and then go home and practice to make a living as a software engineer. But if we want highly performant programmers, we should figure out the best ways to practice (and probably spend less--but more effective--time on production code to balance it all out). ~~~ JeremyMorgan >No, you shouldn't have to work a 40+ hour week and then go home and practice to make a living as a software engineer. But if we want highly performant programmers, we should figure out the best ways to practice (and probably spend less--but more effective--time on production code to balance it all out). You're coming very close to identifying a major problem with our industry that isn't likely to go away. Yes you absolutely do have to "go home and study" to keep up as a software engineer/programmer. This is due to two reasons: 1\. Advancements in technology outpace us 2\. We're generally overloaded by management that doesn't understand what we do. As for #1 there isn't much we can do to change that, and who would want to? But for #2 it's a major problem. In many cases our 40+ hours have to be filled with coding because of the unrealistic deadlines that are posed on us from managers who don't understand the work. Most of us are managed by people who have no idea what we do. They want "more more more" in terms of features and gizmos but haven't the slightest understanding of what goes into it. Add in scope creep and wasted time with meetings (that make them look busy) and that adds up to a long work week for a developer. And when you ask for time to study or learn something new, the response is "sure, when things aren't so busy". This just reinforces my belief that you need passion to do this. You have to love development so much you're willing to put up this stuff, work your ass off and still want to go home and learn more. ~~~ kyllo Yes and it's also because the projects you'll typically work on in a corporate environment are like maintaining and adding features to boring CRUD apps and your skills will atrophy if you don't actively seek interesting, challenging work on your own time. ~~~ JeremyMorgan I agree 100%. ------ nkangoh I would be interested to hear the opinions (or more accurately, experiences) of developers regarding "practice." I'm beginning my career as a software engineer this summer and I would like to become an "excellent" engineer. Employable, of course, but also the go-to for knowledge in a subset of computer science (let's say natural language processing, for example). Given I have a very long life (hopefully) ahead of me, what would you say is the best way to do this? Yes, coding is good, but is it the best way? I spend a large amount of time doing side projects, but eventually I'll have a family and other obligations, so I would need higher impact, less time consuming practicing options. An example of this I guess is how many expert violinists actually "practice" for a surprisingly small amount of time because the practice is so deliberate. What's the equivalent for us? ~~~ joe_the_user I do martial arts and I program. Nearly everything I do in martial arts is practice for the relatively few times I might spar with someone. I don't do any skills practice for programming. I've never met anyone who did something equivalent to honing basic movement, practicing balance and similar things. Reading about the latest programming methods is a good thing and can increase your repertoire but I don't think it's comparable to skills-practice in martial arts or music or something similar. In practices like this, there are fundamental skills that need to be in good shape to allow a person to anything creative in the discipline (I have no idea why expert violinists wouldn't spend significant periods practicing but I know little about that. I know that most music requires significant practice of basic skills to achieve mastery). My suspicious is that programming is an activity that is strongly connected to the brain's language centers and so mastery of it on the skills-level is simple and the problems with it appear on the judgment and understanding level - which doesn't make it easy, rather gives it that extraordinarily hard quality that we programmers are familiar with. Also, most skills-practice disciplines are performance arts rather than production processes. Machinist and auto-mechanics also have high skill levels but like programmers they are obligated to show some significant accomplishment for their entire time at work. We can contrast this with a musician or other artist, who if they give an amazingly beautiful performance once a month and have it recorded is considered remarkably successful. In contrast, a programmer gets few accolades if she can just "be a great programmer" for an hour a month - what is instead considered with programmers is their entire output, which puts an entirely different series of pressures and constraints on the programmer. ~~~ kyllo Cool, what martial arts do you do? Brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu here. I love coding for some of the same reasons I love training and sparring. It's endlessly complex, so you never run out of new challenges. ------ throwaway1890 This is good advice, but it's a bit hard to act on. How does one know when to leverage their existing skills to build something vs spending time learning something new and using it to build something (which might not pan out due to lack of experience with that technology, and which will certainly take longer than using what is familiar)? For me, the biggest investment is that of time... and while he provides ideas for small things to do, in the end one really needs to use a technology to grasp it (which he does say). I'm a beginning programmer working on a small team. We won't be hiring anytime soon so many of the things he suggests aren't options. I'm lucky in that I've been able to learn a lot of things across the stack. However, our main language is Perl, which isn't the most marketable language anymore. I have an idea for a useful little site -- something that will look good on a resume, but not something that I can imagine becoming a big money maker of any sort. Do I use my main strengths, my familiar technologies (such as Perl and SQL), to write the site? Or do I choose something that might be an up-and- coming technology (like Node.js or Clojure) even if I can't really find any jobs in my area for them? I do love learning. I spend downtime at work learning new things, but my time outside of work to actually build stuff is limited. I'm getting a bit burnt out on learning new languages and frameworks... I've wandered between Perl, Elixir, Haskell, Clojure, Racket, Javascript/Node, and any number of frameworks for them. I just want to make something solid, but I'm worried that using my Perl skillset will be more of a short term than a long term gain. I know there's probably no easy answer to this question. But it seems to me that it's better to have made something and launched it (even if it doesn't use the sexiest tech) than to have something half-finished stagnate because I don't have the time to learn the ins and outs of the quirks behind some new tech. Does anyone have any insight into handling this? Thanks. ~~~ sleazebreeze I've had the same quandary as you. Mainly work with Java and Javascript at work, so I wanted to add a purely functional language. I flirted with Haskell, Scala, Node, Scheme and Clojure and eventually settled on focusing on gaining a better understanding of functional programming with Clojure because it has a familiar platform (JVM), syntax I can understand (sorry Haskell and Scala) and it seems like it's going places. Last year, I maintained a focus on Java and JS because I'm still intermediate level with those and didn't want to distract myself with other languages and paradigms. That was a good choice. For this year, I've made a commitment that any side projects I do, I do in Clojure. I cheated and started in 2014, but I am liking this way of focusing on a language for a year and doing everything in that. Maybe once I have more familiarity with more languages, I will feel more comfortable using the appropriate language to solve a particular problem. However, isn't that part of learning? Using a hammer on nails, screws and bolts and figuring out what the hammer is good at and what it isn't? ------ JeremyMorgan Great article. This is something I've said pertaining to interviews for years. There has to be advancement in the skills. Doing something every day is not an indicator of improvement. In fact, sometimes it can be worse. When someone says "Call this person now! he/she has been writing C# for 10 years!". That's great and all but have they been improving their craft over that 10 years, or getting enough work to not get fired? There's an enormous difference. And many times I would run into folks who sunk into a rut and did the same thing for 10 years basically "coasting". They make small incremental changes in what they do every day, but weren't out seeking ways to drastically improve. Programming is different than many other fields simply because it requires passion to survive. If you look at learning new things like "Ugh, I have to learn ___", eventually you'll start slipping and end up hacking PHP Wordpress installs somewhere for subpar wages if you're employed at all. If you seek out new things to push yourself because it's enjoyable keeping up is intuitive and easy. Even stuff you may never use for your job can teach you new ways of thinking. Now if you'll excuse me I need to go back to playing with RUST. ~~~ guelo With the speed of technology changes I think it's pretty hard for programmers to get stuck in the exact same rut for 10 years. Using your example of C#, there has been huge changes in the last 10 years to the point that it's barely the same language. Even if you imagine the most staid company that refuses to upgrade their tech stack, the last 10 years has seen so many changes in the web and mobile that it's hard to imagine that there hasn't been some pressure on even the most unmotivated programmer to learn new skills. ~~~ JeremyMorgan That's why I mentioned iterative changes, such as the changes to C# over the last 10 years. Just because they started using generics at some point doesn't mean they've been learning anything to drastically improve their code. It's very easy to sit at a company building calendar apps for ten years and fall behind the rest of the world. I see it every day. ------ peterwwillis This is a _very_ long way of saying: you should learn new skills, and practice the skills that you think will be valuable by the time you need to get a new job. Practice isn't rocket science... heck, just practice different kinds of programming. You'll naturally improve at everything because it all relates to each other. To borrow from his football and music examples, even practicing dance will make you a better football player, and so will playing the drums for a cellist. ------ yellowapple Yet another reminder about how remarkably similar programming and musicianship are in mentality and artistry. It's no wonder that I enjoy both :) ------ antichaos (2005) ~~~ sctb Updated, thanks.

Ask HN: Best C Package Manager? - archivist1 Want to develop a cross-platform (win&#x2F;posix) project in C&#x2F;C++ for small binary size (and learning) and want to be as efficient and productive as I am in Node&#x2F;JS with npm.<p>I&#x27;m thinking a package manager can help me learn and avoid writing a lot of boilerplate. ====== catacombs What packages could you possibly need? Much the C standard library is already installed on your machine and can be used to build just about anything.

Ipad security app - btechster3 So I just got an Ipad and thought to myself, I just spent $600 on this thing! What if someone steals it from me. Anyone interested in creating a security app for the ipad which sends you an alert if your ipad has been stolen and tracks it down for you? ====== gmac <http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/iphone/>?

Will the increase in HB-1 visas mean lower wages for IT folks? - brohoolio Will the increase in HB-1 visas mean lower wages for IT folks? ====== bdfh42 As an external observer I have to say that this is what they would appear to be for. There does not seem to be a shortage of skilled developers in the USA - least of all around such companies as IBM (who are large "users" of such visas).

Russians buy Yahoo! - darkduck http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-03/silver-lake-discussing-yahoo-with-alibaba-digital-sky.html ====== pavel_lishin Headline is patently false in at least two ways.

Ethereum Constantinople protocol upgrade postponed until further notice - davidiach https://twitter.com/5chdn/status/1085275971660509184 ====== lostctown Here's the EIP (Ethereum improvement proposal) causing problems. [https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-1283.m...](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-1283.md)

EC2 High Memory Cluster Eight Extra Large Instance (244 GiB RAM) - jeffbarr http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/01/ec2-for-in-memory-computing-the-high-memory-cluster-eight-extra-large.html ====== michaelt Almost all the big EC2 outages have been due to EBS, and you have to pay extra for it as well. Netflix steers clear of it [1]. Does anyone know why Cluster Compute and Cluster GPU Instances [2] (including this new one) make using EBS mandatory? [1] [http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/04/lessons-netflix- learned-...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/04/lessons-netflix-learned-from- aws-outage.html) [2] [http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#Does_use_of_Cluster_Compute_...](http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#Does_use_of_Cluster_Compute_Instances_differ_from_other_Amazon_EC2_instance_types) ~~~ crb Two reasons come to mind: * the failure rate of an EBS volume (assuming a bug-free EBS software stack!) _should_ be less than any one spinning disk * these machines don't have disk space set aside for copying the root volumes to them from S3 to boot. (There's a 10GB limit, and to allow for this to be somewhere, you'd have to have another SSD, or partition the existing ones.) There's a good blog post about it on Rightscale: [http://blog.rightscale.com/2012/11/02/new-ec2-instance- types...](http://blog.rightscale.com/2012/11/02/new-ec2-instance-types-and- coordinated-failures-in-the-cloud/) esh's "You Should Use EBS Boot Instances" also lays out a number of good reasons to use EBS for boot: <http://alestic.com/2012/01/ec2-ebs-boot- recommended> You at least have two 120GB ephemeral SSDs to play with when you're running - a luxury you don't have on the new M3 classes. ~~~ Dylan16807 It's not really the rate that's the issue here, it's correlation between failures. The chance of losing a third or more of your machines at once is enormously higher with EBS. Partitioning a disk should take seconds; I don't see why it would be an impediment. As it is, someone can do it themselves but now it'll be a custom job and less reliable. ------ mariuz One way to scale Firebird Database is to put it on memory virtual disk or ramfs On linux i can mount a partition in memory (Install ubuntu/debian) sudo mkdir /mnt/ram sudo mount -t ramfs -o size=200G ramfs /mnt/ram mount to show you the partitions mounted and then move your database into the ram partition cp -rp /var/lib/firebird/2.5/data /mnt/ram That large instance could help you with the Firebird cache settings also the extra SSD could do wonders Inspired by the stack overflow big fat server architecture [http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/8/5/stack-overflow- arch...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/8/5/stack-overflow- architecture.html) ~~~ jacques_chester Well, two things with that. Three really. First, does AWS allow ramdisks? It's been a few years since I tried to mount a ram disk on Xen, but it was not possible at the time. Second, most databases are smart enough to shuffle stuff into RAM for you, starting with indexes and commonly-accessed tables. Third, the "D" in ACID stands for "Durable". If you want an in-memory store, use an in-memory store. RDBMSes do sorta kinda rely on the assumption that stuff written to disk is _actually written to a disk_. ~~~ mariuz Yes it AWS allows ramdisks , here is the output from a machine root@ip-amazon-ip:/home/ubuntu# mkdir /mnt/ram mount -t ramfs -o size=2G ramfs /mnt/ram mount ramfs on /mnt/ram type ramfs (rw,size=2G) There are the cache and memory settings Fore Firebird but is better to put the main full database on the fastest storage and that is RAM for the moment In Firebird we have a nifty feature called Shadow that creates a life snapshots of the active database (Think of it as Replication in real time) so you can activate it and keep a safe database on the SSD/HDD <http://ibexpert.net/ibe/index.php?n=Doc.DatabaseShadow> ------ politician Recently, antirez pointed out that redis was essentially memtest86; consequently, he has had to spend a lot of time chasing down phantom bugs due to memory modules with stuck/flipped bits. At that time, I think HN was left wondering whether Amazon uses ECC memory in its EC2 machines. Do we know whether that's the case now? ~~~ wmf All Xeons and Opterons (in other words, all EC2) use ECC. ------ profquail Colin Percival (cperciva) already has FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE running on these! <http://pastebin.com/SCMUJNDt> ------ pieter This instance was announced at RE:invent 2 months ago, and is now available. You can try one out for $0.34 / hour with spot instances. ~~~ tiernano It does not seem to be possible to launch a spot instance of one of these... the web interface wont allow it, anyway... Still, about $3 per hour to play with a machine of that size should be interesting... ~~~ res0nat0r You might have to use the ec2-api-tools cli package to launch spot requests for this instance type right now. The AWS Console doesn't always seem to be updated at exactly the same time as new instance releases. ------ zippie RAM isn't a cure all for big data applications and presents its own set of challenges. The largest issue is with traversal and data access latencies simply because of the virtual memory management overhead that is required. I've run into this problem with our btree search indexes on bare metal (~96GB), some more reading: <https://github.com/johnj/llds> ------ StefanKarpinski Some time ago (mid 2011), I was trying to use an AWS 64 GB machine for some largish work and discovered that I couldn't actually allocate anywhere near all of the 64 GB of RAM I was supposed to have access to. As I recall, writing a simple C program to do binary search to pinpoint exactly what the max amount of memory I could malloc was, it failed somewhere around 34 GB – so just over half of the memory I was supposed to have access to. Makes me wonder how much of this 244 GiB you can actually use when you spin up one of these machines. ------ jahewson I'd like to see a machine with an SSD from Amazon that wasn't so big and expensive. ~~~ devopstom I don't think that's possible. Big|Fast|Cheap, Choose two. (or one, under some circumstances). ~~~ Dylan16807 I think you misread the parent. jahewson asked for a machine that is Fast and Cheap and Not Big. More specifically they want to upgrade a weaker machine with an SSD instead of getting a high end machine with an SSD.

Wall Street's Bailout Hustle - chaostheory http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/32255149/wall_streets_bailout_hustle/ ====== btilly The sad thing about the banker's bonuses is that if they honestly tried to mark to market all of the bad debt that is still on their books they actually _lost_ money last year. The only way they can justify the whole profit/bonus story is because they are lying to themselves about their real financial situation. And unfortunately their lies will impact the rest of us as that bad debt turns out to be the garbage that it is. ------ rrhyne If Matt Taibbi wrote an article on a stick of poo and mailed it to me, I'd still read every word. ~~~ cynicalkane I find the idea of Matt Taibbi writing articles made of poo to be metaphorically appropriate. It depresses me that these screeds find a place on this website. It should be obvious, by the tone, polemical nature, and carefully arranged blindness of the above article, that no valuable or contextually useful information could be got out of it. It further puzzles me that it has become trendy to attack the financial market's most successful and profitable large institution. This proto-Marxist sentiment has no place in a free society. The only people forced to trade with Goldman were taxpayers financing the bailouts, and you know what happened to them? They got all their money back _plus twenty-three percent interest_. ~~~ Snark7 Actually Matt Taibbi is, apparently, one of the very few members of the press to have the intelligence, motivation, and opportunity to attack Goldman repeatedly. Everyone else is on a 24-hour news cycle, and as far as I can tell, Blankfein taking the $9 million bonus effectively defused the situation, especially after it was leaked that his bonus could be $100 million. Setting this up and getting the press to report the relatively low bonus was a brilliant PR coup, and it appears to have worked. That being said, I don't have any issue with his efforts at muckraking - I believe in freedom of the press after all. ~~~ cynicalkane That makes him a fanatic, but it doesn't say anything about his correctness. The other thing is that, though I'm sure Goldman's decision was partially PR- motivated, it's what they should be doing anyway. ~~~ rrhyne Pulling back on Loyd's bonus was a substance-less ploy. They received over tens of billion in bailouts, plus loans at 0% on MY dime, plus 100% in payouts on 5.9b on a bankrupt company. Because if this, they posted 13b in profits and paid out 16 billion in bonuses. Do the math and they should be out of business. Instead our corporate socialist state (fascism) paid those bonuses with my taxes.

How I got featured on TechCrunch (and many more) - sahillavingia http://sahillavingia.com/blog/2010/10/18/how-i-got-featured-on-techcrunch-and-many-more/ ====== lubos I think that email wasn't that good at all. tell me who cares your software was rewritten from the ground up. also most of those bullet points (searching/filtering) are pretty lame and after reading the whole email I still have no idea what your app is actually to be used for. I would attribute your success to something else, I find it hard to believe that email was the main factor. ~~~ sahillavingia As I say in the last paragraph, the product matters most. And this is all anecdotal, I really have no idea if the email helped. Though I'd like to think so. :) ~~~ lubos How many tech blogs did you send this particular email to? Apparently the only blog who wrote about your app was "TUAW" (never heard of them). Why Techcrunch didn't write about Dayta 2.0 as suggested in the title of your submission? Don't get me wrong, I think you are an awesome designer. I'm looking at your portfolio and I'm totally blown away by your design skills but I'm just not impressed by your copywriting skills. that's all. :) ~~~ lachyg TUAW is a huge Apple blog. ------ zebseven I've emailed you a pitch I have so far. Please take a look at it! ~~~ sahillavingia Oh God I sense an influx of these! Aha, awesome, I'll take a look and get back to you soon. ------ acconrad Granted, I praised someone yesterday for providing an example of the email they sent on TechCrunch, but not only was this email poorly worded and verbose, but I feel like this blog post was prompted because of the one on Hacker News yesterday. Perhaps you could provide an example of something more original, such as a sample press release or how you handle customer service. It's no use repeating the same topic the next day. ~~~ sahillavingia Actually, I wrote the blog post three days ago. Just a strange coincidence. ------ jgrahamc <http://blog.jgc.org/2010/10/how-to-hack-media.html>