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Goldman Sachs trade secret thief claims codes were 'open source' - sweetdreams http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a1wLXjWnp_5E ====== rrival What, they're running this? <http://www.marketcetera.com/site/> ------ michaelawill His first mistake was leaving Goldman to begin with. In my opinion Goldman is one of the more evil corporations out there. And there's no better place to avoid their bubble building and bursting than to work for them, depending on how you feel about that ethically. ------ astrodust What the heck are codes?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
27 Killed in Connecticut Shooting, Including 18 Children - kankana http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/nyregion/shooting-reported-at-connecticut-elementary-school.html?smid=fb-nytimes&_r=0 ====== kankana Greatly disappointed about the event. Shameful for peopling behave like the most underdeveloped hillbillies in the most developed country in the world. ~~~ stephengillie Our country boasts the _most_ underdeveloped hillbillies as part of having the _best_ of everything.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Outrageous - IE IQ Story is a hoax - dsdirect http://www.webjives.org/outrageous-ie-iq-story-is-a-hoax ====== ColinWright Same story, much discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840626> Documenting the re-submissions: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840900>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
An Algorithm That Unscrambles Fractured Images - sgy http://www.technologyreview.com/view/534146/the-algorithm-that-unscrambles-fractured-images/ ====== evanb This reminds me of dual photography: [http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/dual_photography/](http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/dual_photography/) in the sense that I imagine unscrambling the glittered image will be significantly easier if you can plug in known sources to the transfer matrix. Edit: the video there didn't work for me any more, here's the youtube link [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5_tpq5ejFQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5_tpq5ejFQ) ------ dsfsdfd It has occurred to me a number of times that it might be possible to reverse this process and create a light field display.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ballmer says Microsoft intends to become industry leader in cloud computing - eplanit http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/12/AR2010071205166.html?wprss=rss_technology ====== marssaxman Ballmer says a lot of things. It has been years since Microsoft has successfully followed through on its intent to become a leader of some new industry. Even the Xbox, after ten years of investment, barely shows up on Microsoft's balance sheet, and I can't think of anything they've launched since that has had comparable success.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Avenger (2015) - Thevet https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/28/the-avenger ====== dang Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10251586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10251586)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Surveillance Capitalism - bottle2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism ====== dang For a topic as well-covered as this ([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=comments%3E0%20Surveillance%20Capitalism&sort=byDate&type=story&storyText=none)) it would be better to submit something more specific than a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia submissions are good for extremely obscure things. ------ Hakashiro My issue with the term is that governments are, and will ever be more invasive with our private data than private companies. This makes sense: the government will never be held accountable for data hoarding, and in fact kinda needs to hoard data to prosecute tax fraud and ensure law enforcement, but private businesses want to make sure people still use them, even if their users are privacy conscious. Moreover, a bunch of fully for-profit companies are living off of exclusively selling privacy. Their only reason to exist is protecting their customer's information. Think ProtonMail, Tutanota, TunnelBear, privacy.com, the Mozilla Foundation (to a certain extent), Qwant, DuckDuckGo, and so on and so forth. I very much preferred the previous term: "Government Surveillance". As some other comments on this page also pointed out, this loss of privacy comes with the benefit of productivity and reduced friction, while government surveillance rarely ever has a positive side to it (except catching criminals, and even so at the expense of non-criminals' privacy). ~~~ encom Key difference: You elect your government, and if you aren't happy with how they're doing things, you can vote them out. I never voted for Zuckerberg, Bezos, Cook or whoever runs Google. ~~~ fbonetti If you aren't happy with Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, etc, you can choose not to be a customer of them. You can't opt out of paying taxes. ~~~ encom I'm not a customer of Google nor Facebook, but they're still tracking me all over the internet. ------ usr1106 Capitalism isn't seen as anything bad in most countries after the cold war. I would prefer the term privacy prostitution or data prostitution. You sell your privacy in exchange for getting "free" search, "free" news, "free" maps, "free" email. Of course such services cannot be free of cost. Traditionally Germany had a law that you are not allowed to give "gifts" when selling something. So when offering a car they were not allowed to give a "free" grill or something like that. The goal was to protect consumers from intrasparent pricing and unfair business practices. Some market-liberalist politicians abandoned the law many years ago, because consumers are "mature enough" to make their own decisions. So how many consumers decide to pay for the internet services they use instead of being tracked? ~~~ surround > Capitalism isn't seen as anything bad in most countries after the cold war. It’s called “surveillance capitalism” because companies are _capitalizing_ on selling people’s data. It differentiates it from _government_ surveillance. ~~~ Fnoord In a corrupt (nation) state, you could for example buy some information about a person, via the government. Corruptcy is not a black-white definition. There are a lot of shades, wheels in a machine, etc. So a state is not merely corrupt, yes or no. ------ 0x8BADF00D I’d rather have surveillance capitalism than government surveillance/authoritarianism. The worst thing these guys can do is try to sell me a porn subscription I don’t need. Government surveillance is much worse. ~~~ pirocks I can imagine a number of worse things that surveillance capitalists could do, like sell services to the aforementioned governments, or sell your porn subscription to someone else. ~~~ bcaa7f3a8bbc And practically, all the data collected by private corporations can be obtained by governments via a subpoena. Until it could be changed, all corporate surveillance is ultimately government surveillance. And there's strong evidence suggests that it occurs at a routine basis. Although some companies like Lavabit showed respectable efforts to be independent and privacy-respecting, on the other hand, some companies actively cooperating with the government, or even oppressive regimes without regards of ethics. So yes, government surveillance is worse than corporate surveillance, but the latter can be seriously harmful in many cases as well. ------ netcan The term "capitalism" is a mind-trap, vaguely encompassing everything.. carrying in political baggage but adda almost no actual information. ~~~ mr_spothawk well... in modern parlance perhaps. but the word has a specific and precise definition despite peoples' ignorance of it. ------ Barrin92 I listened to the Econtalk episode with Zuboff and Roberts a while ago and I wasn't really sold on her arguments despite actually being personally quite to the left on economic issues usually. The problem I had with the critique is that the answer to surveillance capitalism always seems to be a return to privacy. Big Business is to big, we need to claim data autonomy,be democratic, and so on. I think the reason why surveillance capitalism is so successful is because people actually like the automation and transparency. There's always this "wake up sheeple" element to the critique that in my opinion just doesn't address the fact that people simply value the utility they gain out of these tools higher than privacy. I think the better way forward is to align the interests of end consumers and business rather than attempting to retreat back into private spaces. ~~~ Fnoord > I think the reason why surveillance capitalism is so successful is because > people actually like the automation and transparency. (I still have to read her book.) They pay with their privacy, but the payment is not at all transparent. In a way, it already happened: if you upgraded to Windows 10 for free back in the days (before GDPR), you paid with your privacy. If you use Android instead of iOS, you have a cheaper device, but you pay with your privacy. The Apple tax is high in a lot of countries. Too high for the masses. In essence, an iOS device is a status symbol that you paid with money instead of your privacy. ~~~ Barrin92 >but you pay with your privacy And I think that's a perfectly okay choice to make. I don't know why I shouldn't pay with my information, given that I'm aware of it. I'm fine with having an android phone and using the few hundred bucks I save on something else. My information has some value, and by trading that information to a company that provides me with a service I get something out of it. If I keep data private that I don't mind sharing and instead would say, pay with cash, I'd lose out on getting some value out of my data. Now I think there is an interesting discussion to be had if users could organise to leverage the value they get out of their data, people have talked about a sort of 'data union' to collectively bargain for a higher return, but in principle I don't mind using my data as a currency.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Reline – reformatting text width of files and piped text - CodeHustler https://github.com/JaredMHall/reline ====== pwg How does this differ from the 'fmt' utility included in the GNU textutils set? ~~~ CodeHustler I thought that fmt only separated text by columns not by characters or words? ~~~ pwg You are thinking of 'col'. 'fmt' reflows paragraphs: NAME fmt - simple optimal text formatter SYNOPSIS fmt [-WIDTH] [OPTION]... [FILE]... DESCRIPTION Reformat each paragraph in the FILE(s), writing to standard output. The option -WIDTH is an abbreviated form of --width=DIGITS. Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too. -c, --crown-margin preserve indentation of first two lines -p, --prefix=STRING reformat only lines beginning with STRING, reattaching the prefix to reformatted lines -s, --split-only split long lines, but do not refill -t, --tagged-paragraph indentation of first line different from second -u, --uniform-spacing one space between words, two after sentences -w, --width=WIDTH maximum line width (default of 75 columns) -g, --goal=WIDTH goal width (default of 93% of width) --help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input. ~~~ CodeHustler Oh ok. I still can't figure out how to achieve the same functionality with fmt though. Am I doing something wrong, or does `fmt` just not provide the same functionality as `reline`?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
TSMC and OIP Deliver Industry’s First Complete Design Infrastructure 5nm Process - ytch https://www.tsmc.com/tsmcdotcom/PRListingNewsAction.do?action=detail&newsid=THPGWQTHTH&language=E ====== doe88 As an outsider I would never had anticipated Intel being leapfroged like that in such a short window of time. As side effect it probably largely contributed to the resurrection of AMD (coupled with the fact they probably produced with Ryzen a good design at the right time). I would like to know if Intel just fumbled or if TSMC stepped-up their game, or more likely a little bit of both? ~~~ ksec A little bit of both. Intel's 10nm is now officially 2 years late. If they had 7nm now they would still be in the lead given its ( original ) 7nm plan were roughly equivalent to TSMC 5nm. TSMC also gained lots of momentum from the Smartphone Revolution. All of a sudden you have a 1.3B Smartphone Market, from SoC, Wireless BaseBand, and all sort of other component Fabbed with TSMC, compared to Intel's 250M PC Market. Now of course Intel make many times higher margin, but considered TSMC has a diverse group of clients utilising its current and old Fab compared to Intel doing it all by themselves, TSMC now has similar resources to Intel and innovate. And compared to Intel which has big leaps across generation, TSMC's approach were to iterate, so you get 16nm, 16mn+, 10nm, 7nm, 7nm EUV, 5nm EUV, all of them were iteration of previous generation. ------ phkahler >> Compared with TSMC’s 7nm process, its innovative scaling features deliver 1.8X logic density and 15% speed gain on an ARM® Cortex®-A72 core, along with superior SRAM and analog area reduction enabled by the process architecture. Since process names have largely lost any meaning I just wanted to see if they compared density to their own previous node. I was not disappointed, though they don't mention the actual SRAM density change. ------ mjevans Wow, that's really small, and also really close to the theoretical limits (I recalled and thus looked for confirmation of that memory). It seems like moving past 5nm is going to be... a lot differnet. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowire) (edit to add) Nanowire is mentioned as the next likely node after 5nm on that article, but it doesn't link back: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nanometer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nanometer) ~~~ thechao Don’t conflate “effective feature size” (the 5nm used in this article) with “real” feature size (or, more importantly, pitch), with transistor size. Transistors are still _huge_ compared to atoms—think hundreds of thousands, or millions. The issues at this scale are all electrical. (Bullshit terms like “quantum tunneling” are bandied about; the scientific use isn’t wrong, but any journalist using the term probably is.) There’s a _lot_ of room down there, below the extended Moore’s law, just not always so CMOS-ey. ~~~ bogomipz Could you elaborate, what does “effective feature size” mean in the context of process technology? ~~~ thechao It's my personal way of politely saying "marketing bullshit". The real importance of 5nm vs. 7nm is the density of the transistors. A large portion of the recent gains in transistor density have been from reducing the pitch (the space between) transistors, rather than shrinking the size of the transistor. ~~~ bogomipz Ah ok, that's quite funny. Does pitch reduction result in performance gains indirectly though - more transistors per chip? ~~~ thechao That's an ultra-qualified "yes". Hardware isn't magic. Once you've got a Turing-complete device, software can cover the rest. However, HW implementations of functionality are 'better' than software in the sense of being _either_ faster _or_ more power-efficient. (Or some trade-off.) Our chips are _better_ because we can throw more customized hardware to side-step (slow; power-hungry) software implementations. We have access to more customized HW because we have more transistors. If you're asking long-run questions in terms of HW/SW stack performance, I strongly suspect we've got another 3-10 doublings with "just more HW". If any of the post-patterning mechanisms pan out we could, theoretically, get another 15-20 doublings by going all the way down to atoms. After that ... I dunno; sort of the realm of scifi at that point. ~~~ bogomipz Thanks that all makes good sense. I was curious about "post-pattering mechanisms"? Is this a new area in fab process technology? Might you have some links? Another 15-20 doublings from where we are today is pretty awesome. ~~~ dfrage Patterning is the use of multiple masks to get fine features smaller than the wavelength of light you're using where in previous larger feature nodes one mask sufficed: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_patterning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_patterning) It's very expensive in terms of tooling, since you need a lot more more masks, and production time spend in lithography steps. See this comment in this discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19570724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19570724) for a bit more. ------ wmf I guess the Apple A14 and maybe AMD Zen 4 will use this process. ------ olliej Can anyone with more understanding of these things given a run down on how this 5nm compares to 5/7/10nm from other companies? ~~~ mappu Layman POV: \- TSMC are the only company currently shipping real products at 7nm, and 5nm is a full generation ahead beyond that - nobody else is anywhere close to 5nm. \- Samsung will have a 7nm later this year that is broadly equivalent to TSMC's current 7nm (data point: the Galaxy S10 ships with either the Exynos 9820 on Samsung's "8nm" (enhanced/rebranded 10nm) process, or the broadly- similar-performance-with-better-power-efficiency Snapdragon 855 on TSMC 7nm) \- Intel will have a 10nm later this year that is broadly equivalent to TSMC's current 7nm. They are still shipping 14nm as their leading node. \- Global Foundries have stopped further investment beyond 14nm. ~~~ ksec >\- Intel will have a 10nm later this year that is broadly equivalent to TSMC's _current_ 7nm. They are still shipping 14nm as their leading node. Just to add, by that time TSMC will have an improved 7nm based on EUV. I wonder what happens after TSMC 3nm, that is roughly 2022 / 2023\. I am pretty sure we can do 2nm, but without another market expansion to further spread the cost of unit, I wonder who will be able to afford these leading nodes. With every generation being much more expensive than previous gen. Smartphone unit shipment are not growing, in fact leading node Mobile SoC are likely shrinking on a YoY basis due to slower replacement cycle. We surely haven't reach the technical limit of SemiConductors, but it looks to me we reach the Market / Economical Limit. ~~~ baybal2 Equipment sales were actually going down for close to 3 years now. We are up for long winter in the industry. 7nm is here to stay. 5nm is possible it is just an optimisation of 7nm SAQP and can be done without radical increase of maskset costs. After that, we are going down the rabbit hole of EUV litho. A poorly held secret in the industry is that fabs want to use EUV to not to make <7nm, but to make economical <40nm litho with single exposure. The biggest increase in cost after 40nm were due to increased numbers of exposures and more non-device and metal layers. Cheap 20nm, single exposure planar litho will be a very commercially attractive process for a lot of things. ~~~ ksec >Equipment sales were actually going down for close to 3 years now. We are up for long winter in the industry. I heard some say this, Would it really be "Winter" though? I guess from equipment manufacture perspective that is yes. From the industry as whole I guess it is just longer cycle, more cost reduction from technology stand points. >A poorly held secret in the industry is that fabs want to use EUV to not to make <7nm, but to make economical <40nm litho with single exposure. I guess that is still many years out? Considering all the ASML EUV unit are fully booked till 2021, and with increasing use of EUV from Intel I guess that is likely to continue till 2023 / 2024. It would be quite some time before we can make super cheap 20nm components. ~~~ baybal2 > I heard some say this, Would it really be "Winter" though? Yes, serious economists hired by fab companies almost all think so. See, fab ecosystem can't create demand by itself, it relies on clients selling new fancy things, and there are no new fancy things on the horizon, and even "megaclients" are scaling down new orders. The one overt ways fabs can stimulate consumption is by inventing ground breaking new concepts, and then giving them away... As was with chip cameras (smartphones, optical mouses) RF integration (think of every SoC with wireless today,) MEMS, power on silicon... Even on that from, there is little new things coming. > I guess that is still many years out? Considering all the ASML EUV unit are > fully booked till 2021, and with increasing use of EUV from Intel I guess > that is likely to continue till 2023 / 2024. 1 single exposure on planar EUV process can replace 10+ multiple patterning exposures. So, even with a dramatically lower throughput, it can slash process times, and shoot up yields. ------ mensetmanusman Interesting that the CEO of Intel saying ‘no’ to Steve Jobs results in this happening 15 years later. ------ no1youknowz What does this mean for Apple? Could we see a 5nm Arm MBPr from them in 2021? I would really love to see this and a macbook which finally does not throttle under load and is really quiet. ------ thesz 5nm is 150 atoms wide. "Several tens of atoms" is a definition of nanoscale, from what I remember. ------ ww520 Cooler Nvdia chips? More pixels cranked through the video cards? 8K or 16K videos coming? ~~~ CoolGuySteve Unless NVidia skips 7nm altogether, AMD is more likely to take advantage since AMD is already releasing Navi on 7nm later this year. It also remains to be seen what the yields are for 5nm. It might be the case that only small area chips like cell phone SoCs and laptop CPUs can be manufactured for a long time, as was the case with 12nm and 7nm. GPUs typically need as much area as they can get to fit more compute cores. ------ azinman2 So it seems Intel has fully last it’s manufacturing lead now? ~~~ nardi Intel lost its lead a long time ago. Now they are falling further behind.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Lawsuit Filed To Prove Happy Birthday Is In The Public Domain - davidbarker https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/11165823451/filmmaker-finally-aims-to-get-court-to-admit-that-happy-birthday-is-public-domain.shtml ====== dang A dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8092864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8092864). ------ j4kp07 Relevant: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2PCWYAZQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2PCWYAZQc)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The $1,632 Copy Of Microsoft Vista - nreece http://consumerist.com/tag/windows/?i=5010868&t=microsoft-and-the-1632-copy-of-vista ====== sriramk Its probably a bad thing to reveal which company I work for here :). The right people at MSFT are on the case (on a Sunday morning during Memorial Day weekend no less) and are trying to sort things out. I left a comment on the Consumerist post asking Bill to send me an email so that we can speed things along. ------ LogicHoleFlaw There's no excuse for billing mistakes like this. But everyone needs to be aware that using a debit card for purchases like these (any large dollar amount) can cause problems like this. If the gentleman in question had used a credit card a solution would be one chargeback away. Debit cards are convenient but their great weakness is that if there is a mistake with your account you are locked away from your money until it is resolved. With credit it is the card issuer's money which is under contention. Protect yourself. Use a credit card for purchases, then pay off the balance. It's safer than giving a merchant direct access to your bank account.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Wisee uses wi-fi signals to recognise body gestures - jamesbritt http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22780640 ====== Eduardo3rd Even though the article does not go into a large amount of detail about it, the actual paper [0] does a fairly good job addressing the issue of interference with the signal. I'm still skeptical about the potential for something like this, but it would be a very cool solution to ubiquitous control systems if they can iron out the kinks. [0] <http://wisee.cs.washington.edu/wisee_paper.pdf> ------ ColinWright Discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5824286> Currently #9 on the front page.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
JointJS 0.8 Released - filters, gradients and ports - durman http://jointjs.com/blog/jointjs-0-8-released.html ====== flipchart How does this library compare to d3?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
iOS Backdoor Services Proof of Concept - taylorhalliday http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5ymf0UsEuw ====== owenwil I'm tired of the misinformation around this - the requirements to do this mean the user needs to know exactly what they're doing: 1) Unlock the phone 2) Trust the connected PC on the prompt Isn't it inherently compromised after that's done? Essentially giving admin access to the connected PC. ~~~ mynameisvlad If they've already gotten to the trust screen, they don't need the backdoor to get your data. Your phone is unlocked and the data is available by just using the apps themselves.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Inssist – Instagram Assistant - inssist https://inssist.com ====== inssist A free Chrome extension for Instagram that offers post scheduling, videos & photos uploads from desktop, insights, account analytics, DMs and more.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I was turned down for a job at a tech startup because I’m male - vs2 https://medium.com/@stigmapseudonym/i-was-turned-down-for-a-job-at-a-tech-startup-because-im-male-c1ea6dc87733 ====== andy_felsil This article has already been submitted 1 hour earlier: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8172047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8172047) .	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: PHP Tricks and Best Practices? - jmtame Hi everyone,<p>I have scoured the YC forum for a post on great PHP tricks and best practices, but found nothing. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but I would appreciate it if anyone knows of great sites or tutorials. I use CodeIgniter (excellent classes, typical MVC setup) and jQuery (uses a lot of method chaining, huge fan of this). But I still find myself writing a lot of native PHP for my app.<p>For example, I wasn't aware of the list() function until someone was helping me write a method to convert times. I've noticed when working with another programmer on a project that he's using sprintf() instead, and it surprisingly makes the code a lot cleaner. I'm finding myself doing more algorithm-style methods, dealing a lot with arrays and a bunch of if's/conditionals (tertiary if's are great!).<p>Just using these as examples, I feel like there should be a cheatsheet of best practices and ways to minimize the amount of native code written somewhere but I'm not seeing it =]<p>Edit: I'm going to open up CI's class files and look at how they wrote everything. Perhaps a good way of doing this is to look at other frameworks? Any suggestions there? ====== agotterer You should learn how SPL (standard PHP library) works. Most PHP developers don't even know it exists! In my opinion its one of the most powerful parts of PHP if you can learn to use it correctly. <http://us.php.net/spl> <http://www.php.net/~helly/php/ext/spl/> The documentation on php.net is pretty lacking. Heres are some tutorials and examples: <http://www.phpro.org/tutorials/Introduction-to-SPL.html> [http://devzone.zend.com/article/2565-The-Standard-PHP- Librar...](http://devzone.zend.com/article/2565-The-Standard-PHP-Library-SPL) ~~~ neovive For some more SPL examples, read through the source of the KohanaPHP framework (<http://www.kohanaphp.com>). The framework was originally a fork of CodeIgniter, but has evolved into a completely new and powerful framework -- completely written in PHP5. The framework source is very well written and has some excellent examples of using SPL and OOP along with some nice helpers and libraries. ------ ericwaller Something that took me a number of projects and maintenance type work to realize is to use "helper" functions wherever possible. For example, a profile link: <a href="/user/profile/<?=$user->id?>"><?=$user->name?></a> Write a simple function: function user_profile_link ($user) { return '<a href="/user/profile/$user->profile">$user->name</a>'; } And use it: <?=user_profile_link($user)?> I used to think the extra code upfront wasn't worth it, but after dealing with a bunch of 300+ line templates for a while, I can tell you that it definitely is. Also, you can see a use of string interpolation (a common use case for sprintf), ie "count is: $count" ~~~ pwoods So is anyone using Smarty anymore? Or is this short form php now all the rage? Just curious because I'd update if it was. ~~~ bprater I could never understand the advantage of using a templating system inside another templating system. Smarty has loops. PHP has loops. Did I miss the train? ~~~ kwamenum86 Smarty produces slightly cleaner code but is worthless otherwise IMHO. ------ rshao This is a bit of a specific one, but the array_shift function is really slow on large arrays. The workaround I found is to use array_slice and unset the array index afterward. Overall though, I find out about a lot of cool things just from the comments on the php.net site. For example, I learned how to use pcntl_fork from the socket_accept page, and then I found out about socket_create_listen from one of the process control pages. My approach is basically just to figure out what I want to do on a higher level, and look for sample code on all the individual parts. Then who knows, I might discover something amazing. ------ texec If you want to review very clean code you should better look at the Zend Framework. It's very good object orientated PHP 5 Code. ------ auston Have you looked through this: <http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/> ? It has a lot of a lot, so you don't have to write so much native PHP. Even Rasmus recommends it as his "framework" of choice (although he does not "like" frameworks). ------ gearslips Some of the stuff you've mentioned is really good old-school stuff, like list and sprintf, that's fallen out of vogue. With regard to suggestions to check out Zend Framework, my advice is: Don't. ~~~ RossM I'd say check it out - to read - but don't use it. They've got some interesting things in there, like OpenID implementation that's worth a read. ------ shaunxcode fluent expressions (when uses appropriately) can be great for constructing DSLs. Also any time you see boiler plate code take the time to refactor to eliminate it - often times figuring out how to do that will make new abstractions apparent. As a matter of practice search for the coolest things you can do in python (list comprehensions etc.), lisp and ruby and figure out how to do things in a similar way (if possible) in php. Such as: //python version: noprimes = [j for i in range(2, 8) for j in range(i2, 50, i)] primes = [x for x in range(2, 50) if x not in noprimes] //phparrayplus version: $noprimes = xR(2,8)->for_each('xR($x2,50,$x)->out()')->flatten(); $primes = xR(2,50)->diff($noprimes); //common lisp: (loop for x from 0 to 100 if (> ( x x) 3) collect (* 2 x)) //phparrayplus version: $C = xR(100)->if_only('($x$x) > 3')->for_each('2$x'); //factorial in phparrayplus, nothing else to compare this too - just cool: function fac($n){ return xR(1,$n)->reduce('$x*$y'); } ~~~ apgwoz Is "phparrayplus" a library you wrote. If so, where can it be had? ~~~ shaunxcode yes, it should be available next week on <http://code.google.com/p/phparrayplus> ------ DanHulton I've had trouble for a while now with chained ifs, as in: [CHUNK A] if (chunk a succeeds) { [CHUNK B] if (chunk b succeeds) { [CHUNK C] if (chunk c succeeds) { echo 'yay!' } else { echo 'boo!'; } } else { echo 'boo!'; } } else { echo 'boo!'; } This gets messy if there's anything interesting in those chunks. Instead, take advantage of short-circuiting and put those chunks in functions. Then you can rewrite the above as: $success = do_chunk_a(); $success = $success && do_chunk_b(); $success = $success && do_chunk_c(); echo $success ? 'yay!' : 'boo!'; Also, use the ternary operator EVERYWHERE YOU CAN - you'll clean up so much code with it. ~~~ nuclear_eclipse even better is: $success = do_chunk_a() && do_chunk_b() && do_chunk_c(); ... ------ pwoods Don't look at other frameworks. I did that and found it a complete waste of time. The best I found was to loosely follow the Ideals of a framework you like. I say loosely because frameworks always have the best intentions but they can't be built for everyone. So sometime I've had to cheat. I've seen code where somebody has made a work around instead of cheating and it's a mess. Other than that my personal preference is to use jquery for form submits and manipulation, smarty for templating and everything is tied together following MVC ideals. Class inheritance is where it's at too. Simple one is that your Page class inherits the functions in your DB access class which inherits your config class. Silly I know but it works great for me. Which in the end is the point. ~~~ pwoods Oh and also sometime I stop writing features and review the code base thus far. This allows me to bring everything up to snuff with the the latest Ideas I may have had. I've rewritten my own code about 20 times and it's now the way I like it. ------ grotesk If PHP is your choice and not the result of prior mismanagement, then I would immediately schedule a two-week vacation. Rent a suite at a hotel with no internet service. Bring your laptop. Pick a language: Scheme, Groovy, Python, Ruby, Clojure, scala, Haskell... and implement something fun for twelve days. Do nothing but immerse yourself in the language. Take a couple days of rest. Then return to work freed of the huge mistake that is PHP. ------ senthil_rajasek More a trick than a best practice, heredoc [http://us.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#langua...](http://us.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.syntax.heredoc) You should recognize this immediately if you have done any unix shell scripting. I use it to spit out large pieces of HTML. ------ kwamenum86 Write your own collection of object oriented php classes or use someone else's. This will speed up your projects a ton. I tend to stay away from frameworks unless it is commissioned work that involves a lot of boiler plate code (forum, blog, etc.). ------ haasted I think it would be a better idea to look at an application than a framework. It will likely match your future work better. MediaWiki has in my experience a very well-written codebase, so I would designate it a good candidate for code-reading. ------ sunkencity if speed of execution is relevant, just use echo (which takes any number of arguments), and single quoted strings (concatenating, or parsing double quoted strings is slower): function user_profile_link ($user) { echo '<a href="/user/', $user->profile, '">', $user->name, '</a>'; } ------ thwarted list() isn't a function, it just looks like one, just like array() looks like a function but isn't. There apparently wasn't enough syntax to spend on making things like this less ambiguous, but now we do have \ as a namespace separator. ------ andreyf Cool PHP trick: write a compiler from a better language to PHP and write your code in that ;)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Really clever augmented reality advertising - adriand http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9JT0Fs3JXM ====== Dellort Really impractical with current technology for augmented reality. Maybe with an overlay on glasses or something, but this is stupid.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Falling in Love with the Dark - dnetesn http://nautil.us/issue/11/light/falling-in-love-with-the-dark?utm_source=tss&utm_medium=desktop&utm_campaign=linkfrom ====== chrissnell Once a year, some buddies from all over the country and I get together to spend a week in the deserts of Southern Utah and the Colorado Plateau. It's a driving adventure (we all drive old Land Rovers) but nights are spent in improvised campsites, as far as we can get from paved roads and civilizations. The rocks and the trees are beautiful but the night sky...the night sky is indescribable. We sit on our chairs around the campfire and watch the satellites and cross-country flights pass overhead. The Milky Way so bright that it almost lights the land like a moon. Some evenings, I set up my camera and tripod and do my best attempt at night photography. Here are few of my favorites: Cedar Mesa, Utah: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5551249303/in/set-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5551249303/in/set-72157626204989387/lightbox/) La Sal Mountains, Utah: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5114443927/in/set-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5114443927/in/set-72157625240335210) Comb Ridge, Utah: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/6305032340/in/set-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/6305032340/in/set-72157627908526209/lightbox/) Moonrise over Canyonlands National Park: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/6940180396/in/set-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/6940180396/in/set-72157629835662677/lightbox/) Elk Ridge campsite, Abajo Mountains, Utah: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/8762668240/in/set-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/8762668240/in/set-72157633554934498/lightbox/) La Sal Mountains, Utah: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5114444819/in/set-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5114444819/in/set-72157625240335210/lightbox/) ~~~ cesarbs How can I learn to prepare for something like this? How can I find out where the good spots are? My wife and I would love to go on such an adventure, but we fear for things like bears and other predatory animals. ~~~ chrissnell [http://expeditionportal.com](http://expeditionportal.com) [http://overlandjournal.com](http://overlandjournal.com) ------ georgemcbay Living in San Diego, I love having the option of driving out to Anza Borrego to see the stars. If you haven't seen them in a true "dark sky" setting, I highly recommend it. You'll be shocked how many of them you see and how there are just layers and layers of them everywhere and being able to see the milky way with the naked eye is incredible. I doubt it comes close the so-called "Overview effect" Astronauts talk about when they see the Earth from... not the Earth, but it is still quite powerful and humbling when you're used to looking up and seeing half a dozen stars on a good night. ~~~ endgame Going out to sea and looking up was an experience I'll never forget. ~~~ _mgr This. Even with the lights on the decks of the cruise ship I was still able to see layers and an expanse of stars I haven't seen since I tramped around the the Nelson Lakes area of New Zealand when I was younger. ------ kourt The worst part is that we're failing even on simple things that could reduce light pollution, such as using outdoor fixtures that direct the light only downward. The International Dark Sky Association exists, but I don't know how successful they have been. [http://www.darksky.org/lighting-codes/simple-guidelines- to-l...](http://www.darksky.org/lighting-codes/simple-guidelines-to-lighting- regulations) ------ cellover Hubert Reeves sums it up really well: "The first effect, and I would say the most dramatic, is that it steals the sky. People no longer see the sky. There are many people out there who have never seen the Milky Way, who have never seen zodiacal light. Sometimes I ask people, "Do you know what zodiacal light is?" Three-quarters of them do not know, they have never even heard the word. It's part of something that held great significance in the past. It's contact with the sky. It's that feeling you get when you go outside on a beautiful starry night, Milky Way and all. That contact was present throughout humanity until only a few decades ago." We greatly underestimate the fundamental and mystical implications of these changes on the inhabitants of this planet. ------ wyager I've spent the last few years in big cities; Austin, LA, NYC. A few weeks ago I took a brief trip to a small town in Idaho with negligible light pollution. I had completely forgotten the look of a clear night sky. It was absolutely breathtaking. I felt as though I was going to fall away from the earth. I truly hope that in the long term, humanity can build infrastructure that doesn't destroy access to the night sky. ------ jacquesm Super nice article. I miss the Canadian Northern rural nightskies very much so I was pleasantly surprised last weekend when the sky was completely clear while camping somewhere in the mountains in Romania. I never realized that being in a valley the mountains are even more effective at blocking out any light pollution than mere distance will do and the view was absolutely spectacular. Living out of a very tiny RV for a couple of days is an exercise in compromise but the rewards are definitely worth it. ------ jakeogh In Tucson AZ we have few streetlights. It's nice. You can take a walk and see better because your night vision is not constantly being reset. A 45min drive up any of our local mountains and the Milky Way is bright and center, satellites whizzing by. The International Dark Sky Association (unsuprisingly based here) has resources for people interested in reclaiming their night sky: [http://www.darksky.org/](http://www.darksky.org/) ~~~ frossie Factoid: At Kitt Peak National Observatory, a working astronomical site, you get more light pollution from the Homeland Security / Border Patrol checkpoints that you do from the nearby city of Tucson. 1,000W bulbs: Just Say No. ~~~ jakeogh I was in the Santa Ritas last weekend and noticed the same thing. The local interrogation point outshined the city. Our tax dollars at work. ------ bradly I was hiking Mount Whitney a few weeks ago and by far the most spectacular site was the sky at night. Better than highest peak or the purest mountain lake, the sky was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Definitely worthy of planning a vacation around. ------ Gracana I didn't realize how important it was for me to see the night sky until I moved to a densely populated area. It's weird to look up and see nothing but a glowing haze. ~~~ Pyrodogg It's kind of terrifying to visit my parents place in the countryside. I actually _need_ my headlights. While it's not going to be safe for everyone, I could very well drive across my brightly-lit metro area with no driving lights, in the dead of night, with little issue. On the other hand, out under the clear sky, I'd be off the road in under a mile without lights. It's Dark out there. ------ asaddhamani This is a problem I feel very deeply about. When I was a kid, I would look up in the sky and see stars. Now, all I see is an orangish hue. Spotting even a single star at night these days is a difficult task. I sincerely hope we can solve this problem of lights spoiling the night sky for everyone. Especially street lights, those are the worst. I hate having to go to a forest to be able to see the sky I could once see from the roof of my house. ------ kamjam I spent a few weeks trekking trekking around the northern part of India a few years ago, around the foothills of the Himalaya mountain range. Miles from anything, only access is by foot and the only power was available by a generator that ran from 6am-10am and 6pm-10pm. It's amazing what is out there. What amazed me the most was the number of shooting stars I saw, what I thought was a rare occurrence but if it is dark enough even the smallest particle of dust throws out an amazing glow as it enters our atmosphere. For those of you in the Southern UK, I highly recommend a camping trip to Durdle Door. The camp site is a few hundred metres from the cliff edge and miles from any light pollution. Amazing views of the nigh sky from there too: [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=durdle+door+night+sky&tbm=...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=durdle+door+night+sky&tbm=isch) ------ quarterwave Thanks for posting this link, I now begin to understand what Shakespeare meant by 'spangled starlight sheen' [A Midsummer Night's Dream]. ------ kgmpers The City Dark is a pleasant documentary about the loss of our night skies and what it means for us and other animals. Great soundtrack. [http://www.thecitydark.com/](http://www.thecitydark.com/) Trailer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1fTkF8PIu0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1fTkF8PIu0) ------ cellover Here are good resources to find dark areas: darksitefinder.com/maps.html (world coverage but not really detailed) [http://avex-asso.org/dossiers/pl/france/zoom/cdf-normale.htm...](http://avex- asso.org/dossiers/pl/france/zoom/cdf-normale.html) (France only, very detailed) ~~~ mast Attilla Danko has some really useful information on his website [http://cleardarksky.com/csk/](http://cleardarksky.com/csk/) He can generate clear sky charts for most of Canada and the U.S. You can see light pollution maps and there are links to this Google Maps light pollution overlay: [http://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2006/overlay/dark.html](http://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2006/overlay/dark.html) ~~~ mkaziz This is great, thanks. ------ bmurali I remember my first time watching the sky in pitch darkness! It was in death valley and the picture is so vivid in my memory. I was amazed, shocked and delighted all at the same time to see so many stars in the sky! It's a view I miss to this day. ------ cesarbs Anyone knows what is a good place around the Seattle area to watch the sky at night? I know I'll probably have to drive quite a bit out of the city, but I'm looking for an option where I don't have to leave the state just for that :) ~~~ mikestew Note that I've done none of this, but if you're looking for "closest possible" I'd travel out to the Snoqualmie Pass area and head up something like NF-54 to Stampede Pass. Probably still too much light, but it's an hour one-way. Don't try it in the winter, and a Subaru Outback-ish vehicle would be preferred (though I saw a late-model Mustang come off Stampede Pass this past week). One of these days I'll take my R1200GS motorcycle up there in the middle of the night. If you're looking for more dark, but more travel time, just about anything between Snoqualmie Pass and Spokane and off I-90 a ways should offer a good bit of darkness. Think US-97 toward the Canadian border: open high desert, not a lot of civilization. ------ UrMomReadsHN Does anyone know of a site that lists good stargazing spots? Whenever I try to look I get some "top 10 places in the world." Well, that doesn't help me since I'm looking somewhere that is close enough to drive to. ~~~ MiguelVieira [http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/](http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/) ~~~ UrMomReadsHN Great! Thanks! ------ moron4hire This was one of the things that bothered me the most about moving to a city as an adult. I didn't miss the people I grew up with (heeeeell no), but I noticed the lack of a night sky actually started to wear on me. ------ neilunadkat12 I remember being out in the isle of Skye for a couple of nights during the summer and thats honestly when I thought, man there a lot of stars in the sky.. Somethings you can't notice in a city.. ------ CaRDiaK Great article. Recently subscribed to the quarterly prints from Nautil.us, they are incredibly well put together and look fantastic. ------ nilsimsa I used to get a pretty clear view of the milky way in Flag Staff, AZ a decade back. I wonder if that is still possible now. ------ nether Even I, an ancient wizard, am boggled by this. Why have we squandered our night skies?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Blackstone Plans Orbitz IPO - rbc http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070510/orbitz_ipo.html?.v=1 ====== rbc I'm curious how ITA Software will be affected by this.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A very creative 404 - zuu http://www.nosh.me/404 ====== ColinWright Discussion on an earlier submission: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2835820>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
UFO: A Drone/UAV Programming Library for Rust - formalsystem https://github.com/ajmwagar/ufo ====== bri3d Is anyone working on flight controllers in Rust? Now that the STM targets are maturing it seems like a perfect target. I can only find stub projects and blog posts right now. ~~~ blt A low level flight controller needs only statically allocated memory, so one of the main benefits of Rust is irrelevant. The syntax is still nice though. ~~~ bluejekyll > so one of the main benefits of Rust is irrelevant Not sure what you mean with this comment. Even in a context like this, Rust has a lot of safety benefits, but yes you don't have access to the stdlib, and are restricted to core. ~~~ perennate I think parent meant "one of the main benefits" = safety not as useful because anyway no dynamic allocations are needed to implement a basic flight control algorithm. ~~~ bluejekyll It also helps with other references, shared mutability, UB, etc. Allocation and deallocation focuses on small sliver of safety, but yes, That’s not a concern in that context. ------ impostir Seems cool, especially since I know nothing about programming drones. I was glancing through the code, and ibwas wondering if there was particular reason you split flight commands into UDP and camera controls into TCP. As I said I know nothing about drone programming, sorry if it is obvious. ~~~ saidinesh5 Hi, Not the maintainer of the above library, but this seems similar to a reverse engineered library for a couple of other chinese wifi quads. Someone created a chrome app for their specific model a couple of years ago, and their notes are available here [1]: > The commands are simple 8 byte packets sent continuously over UDP. > The drone creates an unprotected wireless network and streams live video to > an android or ios app named 'RC-Leading' (there are dozens of near-identical > apps from the manufacturer) > The drone's IP is always 172.16.10.1 > I've captured the communications between the drone and app and there seems > to be several rounds of back and forth of ~100 bytes worth of non- > intelligible data over the TCP 8888 port before the video streaming begins > (I assume this is some kind of app level handshaking) > It streams unencrypted video over TCP port 8888 (I can view video frame info > using ffprobe on captured packets) There was a similar hackaday project for this [2] and some of their notes are at [3]: 1) [https://www.reddit.com/r/HowToHack/comments/4512il/how_to_ha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HowToHack/comments/4512il/how_to_hack_ip_camera_in_toy_drone/) 2) [https://hackaday.io/project/56102-reverse-engineering-a- dron...](https://hackaday.io/project/56102-reverse-engineering-a-drone) 3) [https://steemit.com/drone/@highonapples/reverse- engineering-...](https://steemit.com/drone/@highonapples/reverse-engineering- a-drone-from-amazon-to-make-it-programmable) (edited for formatting) ------ ada1981 This is awesome! If anyone is interested in the software side of things, we have a fabrication team and facility in the Pittsburgh area (proximity to CMU) right near an airport. Early stage exploration of building personal transport drones. Looking into a cooperative / holocracy type model. We could use some strong engineers in our group! ------ leafario2 What hardware is required for this? ~~~ bri3d As the README indicates, this is a networking client library to control JJRC H61 drones over their built-in network control protocol, with the goal apparently being to abstract over the control protocol for a variety of drones. ------ erdleerdle would love to talk to anyone that is big into drones and video. live streams of builds, etc. ~~~ copterust here is our old video of maiden flight [https://twitter.com/copterust/status/1024724881680867328](https://twitter.com/copterust/status/1024724881680867328) ------ ingenieroariel Does it work with the 3dr solo? ~~~ kam No, but [https://github.com/3drobotics/rust- mavlink](https://github.com/3drobotics/rust-mavlink) would. The enterprise version of Solo actually ships with a Rust app running on the onboard computer for camera control, which uses rust-mavlink to talk to the autopilot. ~~~ ingenieroariel thanks!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hunch Hasn't a Clue About My Intentions - cyunker http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=556&doc_id=189349 ====== bhattisatish To me hunch is not a recommendation system. To me it seems to be more of a data collector. I have a strong feeling they are just collecting the data generated by us and re-selling it, but pretending at the same time to 'recommend' something. A con job is all I can think. ------ angelbob On the one hand, he has a good point buried in there: Hunch doesn't collect enough useful information, and it doesn't do a great job with it. Fair enough. However, his basic hostility to the idea of recommendations coming from a machine seems misplaced. Presumably he's not out there railing against Amazon and NetFlix recommending books and movies to all of us... And they actually do a pretty good job. Overall, a very poorly written article. Yes, yes, you'd like several semi- elite celebrities of Silicon Valley to do a better job with $12 million. And I'd like a pony. ~~~ rdl Fundamentally bayesian antispam, netflix, and amazon all win because they generate recommendations as a side effect of user actions (ideally "what they buy/watch", but even just marking things with stars or tags). Hunch is a failure because it tries to get users to explicitly generate recommendations. Humans are unreliable self-reporters. ------ pclark it's amusing how he calls Hunch the "la crème de la creme of Silicon Valley" despite them being in New York. Heh :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Ruby rocks - Skoofoo http://skofo.github.io/blog/why-ruby-rocks/ ====== nopal I'm sure it does, but I can write the same class in C# just as easily: class Person { public int Sanity { get; set; } public Person() { Sanity = 50; } } And to call it: var programmer = new Person(); programmer.Sanity += 1000000; Console.WriteLine(programmer.Sanity); I don't see much difference between Person.new and new Person();. What are the real ways in which it will knock my socks off? I'm honestly asking. Even though I program C# at work, I'm very interested in the advantages of other languages. ~~~ effbott Ruby really is a great language. The author just posted a poor example that is frankly NOT idiomatic Ruby. The proper way to create a getter and setter method on an instance variable is like so: class Person attr_accessor :sanity def initialize @sanity = 50 end end ~~~ jfarmer All the attr_* class methods do is define precisely the instance methods the author wrote by hand. Indeed, if attr_reader, attr_writer, and attr_accessor weren't part of Ruby's Module class you could write them yourself, like so: [https://gist.github.com/jfarmer/6b4deeb8bcfbe030f876](https://gist.github.com/jfarmer/6b4deeb8bcfbe030f876) If using an "eval" method seems smelly to you, you can achieve the same result in pure Ruby using define_method, instance_exec, and instance_variable_get. There are good practical reasons to use module_eval, though. Regardless, I think the author's point was more that there's nothing "special" about getters and setters in Ruby. They're just plain ol' methods. As a class of methods we write them often enough that we've also defined a higher-order method that takes an instance variable name as input and dynamically defines those getters and setters on the underlying object. We wouldn't "lose" anything by not having attr_reader and friends, though. Our code would just be slightly more verbose. ~~~ effbott >Regardless, I think the author's point was more that there's nothing "special" about getters and setters in Ruby. They're just plain ol' methods. Ah, that's a good point. That seems to be a more accurate interpretation of what the author was trying to express. ------ CoffeeDregs Not needing getters/setters makes Ruby rock? Lots of languages allow this, but Ruby's allowing you to elide parentheses means you can't assume that a property is a property or a function. In other languages, the property versus accessor distinction is more limited and less confusing. _method_missing_ , which is a bit of a hack and is at least a double edged sword, makes Ruby rock? Sure, it's handy magic, but it's a pretty dangerous form of magic. I'm not sure I could think of less significant attributes for a language. Note: I work on a large Ruby codebase... ~~~ jamesbritt _you can 't assume that a property is a property or a function. In other languages, the property versus accessor distinction is more limited and less confusing._ Ruby does not have "properties." All data is private and you interact with objects using messages. As a user of an object's interface all you need to know is how something behaves when sent various messages. Whether "foo = 12" is really setting an instance variable named "@foo" or something else entirely should be irrelevant. It's an implementation detail. I realize this sounds possibly condescending and pedantic, but I've seen too many Ruby tutorials that try to present the language in terms of behavior found in other languages where the result is a broken mental model of how Ruby actually works. Hence, confusion. Unfortunately the conflation of methods that happen to get or set instance variables with the notion of properties (AKA "attributes") has become ingrained. _method_missing, which is a bit of a hack and is at least a double edged sword, makes Ruby rock? Sure, it 's handy magic, but it's a pretty dangerous form of magic._ Thinking in terms of messages sent to a receiver, "method_missing" is far less magical. It's more something you'd expect in a message-handling system. ------ akoumjian It is my impression that Python does exactly the things listed here, but more explicitly. With the python approach, instance variables are public by default (as attributes). There is never any confusion between when you are calling a method, or referencing an attribute. If you are doing something something more complicated than getting or setting an attribute, you must either call a method (this is so you and other developers actually know what is going on), or alternatively you use a property decorator. You could do something similar to Ruby's missing_method, by setting the class's __getattr__, but you'd really have to ask yourself why. What kind of creation are you building that you are expecting to not know which methods are available while running your program? These are the kinds of things that drive me batty with Ruby. Perhaps if I spent about double or triple the hours on Ruby that I have, I might have an "aha" moment. However, from what I've seen I can't help but feel that what it's really trying to accomplish is much more comfortable in functional form (say Lisp?). ~~~ dpritchett Try listening to Sandi Metz on the Ruby Rogues podcast. It's a longish episode but she'll give you an appreciation for message-passing OO and how it makes an application design more pliable. In a pinch the (free?) "Barewords" episode of Ruby Tapas will get you close in five minutes. ~~~ akoumjian Awesome, will do. ------ laureny I started programming in Ruby in early 2000 and I really liked it back then, but when I look at it today, the language feels very old. I don't know if it's the lack of types, the fact that you see streams of "end end end" like Pascal used to do, the abysmal performance of the default VM or just the heavy reliance on monkey patching, but Ruby is not aging very well. ~~~ area51org _I don 't know if it's the lack of types_ Ruby is a dynamic language, so no, there are no types as such. There are ways to create types, but if you're doing that a lot, you're probably doing Ruby wrong. It's not meant to have types. Different way of thinking. _the abysmal performance of the default VM_ That's a myth, a pervasive one. I'll point you to one source that debunks this, but there are many. [http://www.unlimitednovelty.com/2012/06/ruby-is- faster-than-...](http://www.unlimitednovelty.com/2012/06/ruby-is-faster-than- python-php-and-perl.html) _the heavy reliance on monkey patching_ Monkey patching is generally considered an anti-pattern. I'm not sure what in particular has "heavy reliance" on it, but it's not Ruby's libraries themselves, and it's not Rails. (Metaprogramming is not the same thing as monkey patching.) _Ruby is not aging very well._ IMHO Ruby is just now coming fully into its own, and is, for a young language, just reaching maturity. ~~~ namidark I would hardly say the performance of the default VM is a _myth_... just look at performance characteristics under multi-threading and GC pressure. ~~~ bhauer Speaking of Ruby performance, we haven't received a whole lot of pull requests improving the performance of the Ruby implementations on our benchmarks project [1]. If you feel Ruby isn't getting a fair shake on performance measurements, we'd love to see some pull request love. [1] [http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/) ~~~ laureny That's quite a weird angle. Surely I can express unhappiness about a product's performance without being asked to fix it or to shut up? ~~~ bhauer I think we're on the same side here. We've measured the performance of the fundamentals of web applications on two Ruby implementations (MRI, JRuby) and both perform poorly, as compared to the rest of the field. area51org says that Ruby's reputation of slowness is undeserved. I feel our data confirms the reputation. In fact, I don't think there's much room for improvement by tweaking our tests, but I figured I'd make the solicitation anyway to keep an open mind about it. I'm not asking you to fix it or shut up, especially since I feel your point of view is corroborated by the data. I am asking, however, for those who say Ruby's reputation is undeserved to consider providing some evidence for that point of view. And one conceivable way to do that would be to improve our Ruby tests. ------ xmodem def sanity @sanity end def sanity=(val) @sanity = val end how are those six lines not boilerplate? ~~~ dpritchett I believe it'd be idiomatic to use attr_accessor :sanity def initialize @sanity = 0 end On that note I like Go's default values for primitive types. An int sanity would be zero by default. Edit: seeing five simultaneous posts saying the same thing makes me feel trolled a bit :) ~~~ rmrfrmrf Nah, Rails devs are just _really_ excited to finally have their chance to shine in the HN comments ;) ------ swang Ruby is a pleasure to program in, however... 1\. The drama that surrounds Rails makes a lot of people just throw their hands up and quit. 2\. There are very few Ruby shops that aren't just Rails shops. ~~~ Schwolop I agree. I tried web development professionally; loved Ruby, thought Rails was pretty decent, but hated web development (and ultimately wasn't at all inspired by the product we were building). Now every Ruby meetup I attend, 99% of the presentations are from web devs about rails and associated infrastructure. ~~~ jamesbritt _Now every Ruby meetup I attend, 99% of the presentations are from web devs about rails and associated infrastructure._ That's pretty much why I lost interest in not just local groups but most online activity. I use Ruby and JRuby all the time, but for Web dev I'll start with some simple Rack stuff and evolve to a Ramaze app if needed. Listening to someone discuss installation and assorted config params for a gem that only works with a specific framework is not terribly interesting. There are some bright spots online, Greg Brown's Practicing Ruby site being a solid example. [https://practicingruby.com](https://practicingruby.com) ------ wittekm Showing people boilerplate instead of attr_accessor isn't really a way to convince people that Ruby's great. ------ andyl What I like about Ruby: Bundler, Gems, Enumerable, concise syntax, Ruby2, Rspec, RubyMine, Scripting, rbenv/rvm What I would like to have: better support for concurrency, less memory consumption in production ------ grey-area I'm not sure this really sells what's best about Ruby. Python and many other languages offer very similar tools, and the example given is nowhere near idiomatic Ruby anyway - it should be using attr_accessor as others have pointed out. I can't see that this is markedly different from many other languages which now have shortcuts for accessors. method_missing is interesting because it has been criticised in projects like Rails, precisely because it leaves you with an API which isn't documented explicitly in the code. As Rails matures they've moved away from dynamic finders, and more towards defined methods which take options, so instead of Post.find_all_by_xxx or Post.find_by_xxx People often use: Post.where(xxx) I've never been tempted to use it explicitly myself, in quite a few years of using Ruby, it just feels too hacky somehow and too akin to monkey-patching, another early Ruby practice which Rails has moved away from. In contrast I do love the automatic accessors (not as shown in this post) in Ruby and the philosophy that everything should be as simple and predictable as possible, just having to edit header files is so jarring when going back to something like Obj-C. Ruby feels comfortable to me mostly because of the attitude of the language and the standard library which is pretty surprise free and covers most of the bases, but it's not markedly superior or different IMHO from other languages like Python, and choosing between them is really a matter of taste. ------ ionforce I admit I'm being myopic here but that's exactly why I ask. In what scenario is a genuine message passing/arbitrary methods useful? I tend to look through everything in an OOP/type safe way, so the idea of having an unlimited, highly dynamic vocabulary for method calling is very... Foreign to me. When does this pattern outshine static interfaces? ~~~ acjohnson55 One spot when it's very useful is in making objects that are proxies for external resources (file data, executable utlities, etc.). Particularly when those resources can be inspected, it can be much better from a DRY perspective to let the interface of your proxy object automatically adapt even as the underlying resource changes. ------ jasonm23 How is this even on the front page? ------ jamesli Ruby has many awesome features, like metaprogramming. But methods without parenthesis, method definitions with operators, etc.? [edit] I am NOT a native English speaker. Is OP's blog supposed to be a joke and I don't get it? ------ smoyer Seems like a pretty weak set of arguments - I'm not for or against Ruby but is that really a good "five paragraph" description of why I should learn it and love it? ------ brandonbloom Setters are an anti-feature. They give the illusion that they can be set in any order, but most meaningful classes have invariants that are ambiguous to preserve with single-value setters. Object Oriented designs jump through some serious hoops to preserve the pretty `object.property = value` syntax. Besides, there are considerable advantages to immutability even in the absence of concurrency. `new_object = frob(object, value)` is generally preferable in the long run. ------ bluedino Every time I start learning Python, after a few hours I remember "I already know Ruby", and that's the end of that. I already know it, so it rocks. Python is fun but I already have Ruby. It's just a language and there's nothing I can really do in Python that I can't do it Ruby, and vice-versa (at my level, anyway). I guess I'm just lucky I have the option of using either instead of say, ______. ------ area51org While I do appreciate the OP's enthusiasm, there is a lot more to love about Ruby than its simplicity. Spend some time learning about metaprogramming, and you may really be impressed. ------ tobias382 Let's talk about Ruby... [http://destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat](http://destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat) ------ ntaylor So the takeaway here is that Ruby is great because it has core OOP concepts built into it? Color me unimpressed. ------ laureny What year is this, 2005? ------ billsix On front page? Really? ~~~ billsix OK, I'll be more constructive. >There are various interwoven reasons for this, but the biggest thing that makes Ruby shine in my eyes is its objects Learn Smalltalk-80. Its been around a long time, and has a rich history.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How much are we worth? - savoy11 We are a small startup with two founders and no employees. Bootstrapped, no external financing whatsoever. We are selling software and making approximately $200K per year in sales, but we are also growing rapidly, at about 5% each month. We have $0 marketing budget - meaning we just split the revenue. We do not have any expenses other than our hosting ($10 per month).<p>I know that many variables are missing here, but very roughly speaking, how much are we worth at this point? There is interest by our competitors and they want to buy us, however I have no idea how much to ask for. ====== davidwparker If you want a corporate finance answer... Assuming you can go on forever, you are a perpetuity with annual growth g = 79.58% = ~80% (1.05^12 - 1), coupon c = $200,000, and some value of discount rate r, which you could otherwise get with your money. For our example, we'll suppose you can invest somewhere and get a 10% return. The formula for a growing perpetuity = PV = c/(r - g), where PV is the present value. This formula only works if the growth rate is less than the discount rate... following this rule, we have to use a higher discount rate, so we'll assume you can get 100% somewhere else (let me know if you have a place where you can do this.) If you take the series of system payments, then you would have: PV = c/(1 + r) + c(1 + g)/((1 + r)^2) + ... + c((1 + g)^n)/((1 + r)^n) which ultimately equals PV = c/(r - g) PV = 200,000 / (1.00 - .80) = $1,000,000 So $1,000,000 is the amount someone would be willing to pay for all the present values of all future earnings on the perpetuity, assuming you have an r = 100%. If g > r, then the growing perpetuity would (theoretically) have an infinite value. edit: added value = $1,000,000 assuming r = 100% ------ staunch With your revenue anything less than $1M is probably too low. The upper limit is almost boundless. If the buyer would have to spend a year, $1M in ads, and 15 employees to get to where you are then it might be worth $5M or more to them. Avoid pricing it based on revenue alone. Think about how you're going to feel after you've sold. At what price will you not regret it? At what price will you be really happy? ------ toast76 5% growth monthly (if you can manage to continue that growth) means you're just about doubling the value of your company annually. ($16k sales this month will be $32k in 15mths). If you keep the company growing at this rate for another 3 years you'll have an annual income of over a $1M. So how many years are you planning to run the business for? What is the likely sustainable growth? Do some maths on that. ------ curt Take EBITDA (Earning before income tax, depreciation, and amortization) and multiply that number by between 5-18. You get a higher multiple through higher growth, long term consumers, sustainability (your consumers won't leave), competition, size, etc. For what you said you likely are around 10, so if the company doesn't need someone to sustain growth it would be worth around 2M. If it's a talent acquisition or IP does change the calculation somewhat. Now a year from now I would raise that multiple to around 12-14 if you maintain your growth rate. ~~~ jumby ya right 12-14. maybe in 1999. ~~~ curt At 5% per month, after the first year the EBITDA multiple would go from 12 to 8. After 2nd year, 5 and so on. So the company would pay off the purchase during the 4th year. A good deal for any purchase. ------ zbruhnke generally speaking you are worth 5 times your annual revenue ($1M) however with the growth rates you are experiencing I think you would not be out of line asking for $1.5-2M maybe even more if ou can prove the growth trend over sevral months with hard numbers ~~~ petervandijck 3 to 5 times annual revenue is indeed typical. From there on it's all handwaving about "exponential growth" and "strategic value" to get more than that. You are "worth" what they are willing to pay, it's that simple. In terms of money, you're worth about a million dollars. But it wouldn't be that weird to get much more, depending on how good you are at handwaving about "strategic value" and "exponential growth", and playing the negotiation game. ------ MaysonL How much time are you 2 putting into the business? How much employee time would a buyer have to put into the business? If a buyer has to pay a fulltime developer to replace you guys, then your business wouldn't make them very much, unless it keeps growing for a few years without cost increases. ~~~ savoy11 Almost full-time. Product is also very support intensive (a lot of email/forum support that is highly technical). The product can fit well into competitors portfolio of products and can make them much more than what we do (they are established, big, have sales channels, etc) ~~~ jaden If they want you guys to join the company for some period of time, make sure to account for that in the price. For example, if you commit to stay on some number of years and an exciting opportunity presents itself during that time, you want the compensation to be enough that you can pass on the opportunity without too much heartache. ------ coryl You'd have to factor in the industry you're in as well. Some markets are volatile, and don't last long. ------ noonespecial The general rule for brick and mortars is: Assets - liabilities + 5 X last years profit. This is a starting point. Then you add in all of the confounding factors. Web businesses are nothing but confounding factors! If I were you, I'd take a hard conservative look at my 5 year growth potential based on the growth thats already happened and use that as an average for your 5 X profit. If your buyers are serious this will open negotiations, if they were just pulling the handle, hoping for a jackpot, they'll leave in a huff, trying to make you feel as though you'd demanded an unreasonable sum. ------ LabSlice I believe that established businesses sell for 3-5 times their annual revenue. Your situation sounds different. With practically no costs, steady growth, and the claim that you don't advertise --- well, that can make you quite a premium company to acquire. And the fact that you are being courted allows you to try pitch for even higher $$$. ------ jaden I run a site that pulls in a decent amount from Google Ads. I was contacted by a potential buyer and after going back and forth quite a bit, we arrived at around 5x annual revenue. I realize Google Ads != selling software but at least it's a data point. ~~~ savoy11 btw - somewhat related - how much money can be made of Google Ads out of a site with 1 million page views per month? Content is technical - developer oriented. We are currently running a niche ad network and making approximately $1000 per month off ads, but I believe this is low. ~~~ jaden From what I've heard (my site isn't technical so I can't say definitively) technical sites have low click through rates because many developers use adblockers and may not be as attracted to advertising. But it's hard to estimate because it can vary wildly depending on how many folks are advertising in your space. Run a month trial and see how it does. ------ jumby 6.5 multiple seems reasonable for SaaS. 5 is a bit low for software with 0 expenses and no one is going to do >8 in these uncertain times. ------ brudgers How big is the market segment you serve in terms of total dollars? What percentage of it are you currently servicing? ~~~ savoy11 Very competitive, established and growing segment. Also, kind of big. Developer tools, basically. There are are at least 5 very big companies (revenues of $10mil+) and hundreds of employees each, and like 100 small companies in this segment. It's a very hard and competitive field. ~~~ brudgers The big question is, "do you want to sell right now or hold out for FU money or have a lifestyle business?" Unless the answer is "We want to sell right now" then this exercise is a distraction...and a potential source of stress if you have 50:50 equity split. If you want to sell now, then what is your ideal outcome when the value to the purchaser: is your IP? your staff? elimination of competition? And more importantly, what is your partner's ideal outcome in each of these scenarios? Keep in mind that if your suitor's goal is to eliminate competition, just floating the idea of purchase can create enough chaos to cause a divorce. My best advice is to discuss what your company is worth to each of you first. As far as value goes, you're producing revenue of $100,000 per full-time employee. That doesn't leave much cash for a new owner so a valuation based on current revenue would not be favorable to you. From a revenue standpoint, you're basically a small business. If the compeitor sees the potential value is in the IP, the real question becomes, how much would it cost them to deliver competing functionality? That number may be a lot less than you would want to sell for. If the motivation is to bring you and/or your partner onboard, then you're back to do you really want to sell + do you really want to go work for those people? So the price is relative to the value you place on the company. Sorry there's no numbers. My best advice is to determine quickly if both of you even want to sell and get back to building your business until there's actually an offer to consider. Good luck. ~~~ savoy11 Yes, thanks, I'll upvote that since it is spot on. You pretty much nailed all the issues we have. At this point we have chosen to just keep on. If we manage to sustain this type of progress for the next 2-3 years, things cannot go worse. All that potential buying thing puts an extra layer of problems, heavy discussions, waste of time, lawyers, etc. As far as out assets go - we might be very valuable since we bring a very successful open source project (site has 1.2M page view per month) + commercial products built on top of it. Just the name and open source site pointing to our competitors may bring them a lot of value alone. Our usage base (for the open source products) is also huge. The goodwill and IP are I believe quite expensive at this point. But we will just move on and keep going. Thanks a lot. ------ crasshopper Just do the PV. $200*12 = 2400 k If you can convince them the growth will accelerate, so much the better.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Avalonia UI Framework - evo_9 http://avaloniaui.net/ ====== richardjam73 What is the difference between Avalonia and Xamarin?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Large – Get anything for your team or office via slackbot - barisser http://hirelarge.com?hn=true ====== werber How much of the functionality is a person at a computer and how much is software? It looks like a really cool project ~~~ bitsweet It is powered by a distributed network of people but they're bolstered by a lot of software. This gives a very personalized experience while gaining the efficiency of software behind the scenes.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Monitor websites for changes and send scraped data to a webhook - omneity https://monitoro.xyz/?ref=hn ====== omneity Hello HN, Monitoro is a service I built to watch websites for changes, scrape data, and whenever the data changes, send it to a webhook of your choice. 2 months ago, I shared this project on Hacker news and got a very warm reception. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398524) Since then, I have learned a lot in this space and from usage patterns from our several hundred users, as well as extended research and insights from veterans in the industry. I refined the concept (including much requested premium plans), added Chrome rendering and included a programmable layer in Javascript, and would love to hear your feedback on it! For an overview of the changes, take a look here: [https://monitoro.xyz/whatsnew](https://monitoro.xyz/whatsnew) ------ onesmalluser There seems to be a lot of competition of other people doing this. What is special about yours? ~~~ omneity Could you please refer which competition you have in mind exactly? We're laser focused on extracting data, transforming it and sending it to webhooks. No other service to our knowledge achieves a similar result with the same (low) effort required by Monitoro. Beyond that, our focus really is to be a trigger to your automations, and in that regard expect more specific functionality targeted at this space, beyond what we are providing already. ~~~ egfx [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21781869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21781869) recently posted... ~~~ omneity We’re barely out of the MVP stage, but I already see at least two major differences: \- Javascript based custom transformations \- Specific focus on Webhooks (we’re compatible out of the box with Slack, Google Chat, Discord and really whatever else has a webhook API) Not everything that says “Change tracking” is the same product.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What differentiates a “senior” programmer from a “regular” programmer? - acidfreaks https://www.quora.com/What-differentiates-a-senior-programmer-from-a-regular-programmer?share=1 ====== hoodoof It is arbitrary, up to the people involved.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The metamorphosis of Escher - rbanffy https://escher.ntr.nl/en/ ====== NKosmatos One of my all time favorite or favourite(sic) artists ever. Here are some links to keep you busy/entertained Make your own Metamorphosis: [https://escher.ntr.nl/en/mmm](https://escher.ntr.nl/en/mmm) Create your own tessellations: [http://www.tessellations.org/](http://www.tessellations.org/) High quality scans from Boston public library: [https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search?f%5Bcollection_na...](https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search?f%5Bcollection_name_ssim%5D%5B%5D=M.+C.+Escher+%281898-1972%29.+Prints+and+Drawings&f%5Binstitution_name_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Boston+Public+Library&per_page=100) ~~~ FavouriteColour Why '(sic)' after favourite? ~~~ NKosmatos Favorite=US Favourite=UK :-) ~~~ invalidusernam3 That's not really a use case for [sic]. As per wikipedia: erroneous or archaic spelling, surprising assertion, faulty reasoning, or other matter that might otherwise be taken as an error of transcription. ~~~ Hoasi One or both of these use > archaic spelling > other matter that might otherwise be taken as an error of transcription fit the description though the case for _archaic spelling_ is arguable. ~~~ invalidusernam3 Both the US English and British English spellings are used extensively, nobody would think it's a spelling mistake. And calling British English archaic is quite insulting, it would be like calling US English "dumbed down". ------ evanb If you're ever in The Hague, the Escher museum is a must-see. Seeing Metamorphosis II displayed in the round was just fantastic. ------ amai One of my favorite transformations by Escher: [http://www.josleys.com/article_show.php?id=82](http://www.josleys.com/article_show.php?id=82) ~~~ irickt As linked in that article, here the Print Gallery has been un-transformed and animated: [http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/](http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/) ------ WillKirkby I really wish it didn't do the forced scroll across the whole artwork on first page load. Makes me feel seasick. ------ agumonkey I can't stop thinking about E.Coli when I read the man's name.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
USB Typewriter - autumntraveler http://www.usbtypewriter.com/ ====== delish I'm glad that device convergence and device divergence are happening at the same time. I've said this here before, but I cannot recommend highly enough Alphasmart's Neo. 700 hour battery life, sunlight readable display (!), made in America, no moving parts 'cept for the keyboard (i.e. durable), plug-and-play USB, thirty US bucks on eBay[0]. Check out the Dana for a bigger screen and Palm apps (!). [0] ebay search for alphasmart: [http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m5...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xalphasmart.TRS0&_nkw=alphasmart&ghostText=&_sacat=0) ~~~ julian_t I've got an old Psion Series 5 that someone gave me... fantastic for taking notes, and one of the best keyboards I have ever encountered on a pocket-size device. ~~~ joakinen I regularly use one of those Psion 5mx machines for taking notes. You can even exchange documents with MS Office and print through your PC. Sadly the PC component (PsiWin) barely works on 64-bit Windows so I have a Windows XP machine for this. Also you must replace the flexi ribbon cable on your Psion 5 after some years of use, but if you do, you have an almost indestructible pocket computer. ------ derekp7 I had an idea once to hook up a solenoid with a weight attached to it to the inside of an old Model M keyboard, and have it activate on each keystroke. That way I can turn my all-to-quiet Model M into something that sounds like a good old fashioned Selectric typewriter. ~~~ kevin_thibedeau Still would need a margin bell which, incidentally, the IBM Displaywriter provided along with more typewriter-like keys. ------ endgame I emailed a typewriter-collecting friend who expressed concerns about the platen getting dirty or damaged with conversions like these. Is there a way to avoid that? ------ arh68 Darn, I was hoping this would be nearly the opposite invention. Is there a USB teletype out there? I'm trying to imagine something that converts keystrokes over USB to ink-on-paper. Not a full-blown printer w/ PostScript, just inking one letter at a time, manual carriage return, etc. ~~~ sitkack I had an idea for something like this, it would be like a daisywheel typewriter from the early 90s. [http://www.typewritersupply.com/brother_printwheel.JPG](http://www.typewritersupply.com/brother_printwheel.JPG) But it might just be easier to use a parallel linkage, two small steppers and a 500 mw laser diode. Although not faster. Not sure how much power a mems mirror could take, but it might speedup writing fancy glyphs. ~~~ arh68 Interesting! I hadn't seen a daisy wheel before. Nice to see they could print proportional fonts [1]. Pretty good for printing one character at a time. [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFC5PyJdVIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFC5PyJdVIg) ~~~ sitkack I am trying to figure out how to get rid of the ink ribbon. Ink sponge? Silk dam? Both would require a small pump to soak the medium with ink. Or make it gravity/capillary fed. Now that we are on the subject of inappropriate low technologies, why not a reusable screen printing method? stainless steel screen, uv cured resist (use an xy laser to create pattern). Resist should disolve in hot water. Or maybe use aluminum foil and laser to drill holes in the screen? I like this. ------ andrewfelix I had a similar idea, but utilizing a microphone instead that listened for the subtle tonal differences in each key strike. To the naysayers: Typewriters have all sorts of appeal beyond visual aesthetics. Just because it doesn't appeal to you personally, does not make it a silly thing. ~~~ crimsonalucard What kind of appeal does it have other then aesthetics? ~~~ 6stringmerc 1 - It doesn't need batteries to work 2 - The written product does not need batteries to be read 3 - By writing in a "permanent" form of communication, the typewriter encourages more active engagement with crafting words and sentences 4 - Some of the greatest written works of non-fiction and fiction were products of typewriters 5 - A good used manual typewriter can be found and purchased for approximately 50 times less than a new Apple Laptop (I purchased a West German Olympia portable for $25) ~~~ epochwolf Why use a typewriter instead of hand writing then? ~~~ 6stringmerc I do both, but have you ever written 3-4 pages by hand in one sitting? I've got exceptionally strong and flexible hand and finger muscles, but even I have to take breaks and shake out the lactic acid build up. Alcohol only helps so much. A manual typewriter can take its own toll, but it's different. Pen and paper are very portable. Manual typewriters are portable and efficient. My IBM Selectric III is not portable but that monster can bash out words so fast and with audacity that I'm glad it's an option. Granted, I bought two Selectrics before (a I and II) and both died due to being worn out and gross, but for $50 and in mint condition, I've enjoyed it immensely. ------ AbraKdabra Taking the mechanical keyboards concept to a whole new level. ------ RankingMember Can you imagine how muscular your fingers would get from using this as your primary work keyboard? Or how quickly any coworkers within earshot would want to kill you? ~~~ zyxley Coworkers? Don't be silly. What you do is take it to a coffeeshop for typing on your iPad. ~~~ avn2109 In Williamsburg or Bushwick this would be the ultimate social status indicator and it would probably get your band signed to an indy label immediately. ~~~ mhink Pssh, it's already passé. I've seen four in Seattle already: three in Capitol Hill and one in Fremont. The Stranger's already speculating about the possible opening of a coffee shop/bar down in Georgetown with teletypes available for rent by the hour. If you're not carrying printouts of your Node.js microservice written using 'ed', you might as well be using _Windows_. ------ teddyh Reminds me of this old thing: “ _The Guy I Almost Was_ ” by Patrick Farley: [http://electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/](http://electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/) ------ spc476 Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029144) ------ rootbear I've thought in the past of how I might turn my grandmother's Underwood No. 5 into a terminal. Now I can just get this! As for all of the hipster references, I'm don't know much about that subculture but I can say that an Underwood No. 5 computer terminal is Steampunk heaven. Just the thing for my Analytical Engine! ------ stox We used to have devices to convert typewriters into output devices. I never thought about going in the other direction. ~~~ Luyt I remember having a daisy-wheel printer at the office. It gave nice, crisp, typewritten and kerned output. Much better than the matrix printers. (This was before laser printers became commonplace). ------ johntaitorg I went to the site, looked at its many impressive pages, went to Youtube and left a joke, came back to site, came to HN comments and finally clocked it wasn't all a sophisticated joke. Big shout out to all the other Alphasmart people here though! ------ TeMPOraL Damn it, someone already commercialized what was my idea for a personal gift... I even have a typewriter waiting for me to get around modding it... But anyways. Cool execution of the conversion kit. I like that. ------ yoanizer I don't understand how people would want to invest in this. But that's just me. ~~~ dspillett Its a gimmick. A toy. A silly play thing. A nostalgia trip. Some or all the above. People spend more money on less useful things all the time! _> But that's just me._ Exactly. I'd not buy one or invest the tie into making one either, but I don't assume that because I don't like it nobody else will/should. ------ wbsun Ohhh, the good old days :) ------ iuguy For the hipster who thinks hemingwrite.com is too mainstream, perhaps? ~~~ DanBC Some people just like typewriters. I can find my typewriter, load an envelope, and type a name and address much faster than I can open the word processor and then print that name and address to a sticky label (or an envelope if I'm brave enough to risk a jammed printer). I've been working on my hand-writing so it's not as important now as it used to be. ~~~ stevewillows I really made a conscious effort to improve my penmanship last year. I started tracing at first [1] to build up the muscle memory, but it didn't take long before the movements became natural. [1] [http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/flash/cursive/index.htm](http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/flash/cursive/index.htm) ~~~ roel_v Are you really saying you can't write? Or just that you're trying to write more beautifully? ~~~ DanBC Some people can write, but illegibly. So they want to improve their writing so that other people can read their writing, or so they're not embarresed by it. Pen and paper is a powerful tool and there's not much in software that matches it. ------ ofcapl_ with this gadget my hipster level will reach over 9000! ------ datsun This is every hipster's dream	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hacking behavior: use the stairs instead of the escalator - wgj http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpUoA5slRX4 ====== RiderOfGiraffes Previously submitted ... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=873059> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=872759> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=871721> ~~~ wgj Really I should have known. ------ frossie What did they do a week after when the novelty wore off? Certainly giving people a stimulus can reward good behaviour. I recall reading that drivers of (normal engined) cars with a fuel consumption live readout get higher mileage than people driving the same cars without the display.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Virgin Galactic pilot defied the odds to survive crash - danso http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-virgin-survivor-20141105-story.html ====== hangonhn If you're interested in the extraordinary characteristics that are needed to be a test pilot or an astronaut or the early history of the space program, check out Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" ( [http://www.amazon.com/Right-Stuff- Tom-Wolfe-ebook/dp/B00139X...](http://www.amazon.com/Right-Stuff-Tom-Wolfe- ebook/dp/B00139XSBA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1415484020&sr=8-2&keywords=the+right+stuff) ) It also puts the Virgin and other private space travel experiments into context. This stuff is really hard and dangerous. It takes a special breed of people to sign up for it and then figure out how to survive when things go wrong or when things are less than ideal. It's not just guts but also a lot of intelligence and the ability to stay calm when you are less than a minute from oblivion. Chuck Yeager had a number of close calls. ~~~ nisa > This stuff is really hard and dangerous. I really don't know why they don't control these prototypes remotely. It's 2014 and while I see that a human is the better choice for space travel because machines can't yet understand every situation it's kind of strange to endanger the test pilots for early test flights. Especially in light of recent fuel changes and aerodynamic problems. That being said. My uttermost respect for everyone involved in these endeavours. In the digital age it's more and more looking like a miracle that humans where on the moon in 1969. ~~~ teleclimber It's really hard to control these things remotely. If you use remote control you have to worry about latency, which can make recovering from bad situations impossible. And if you rely on auto-pilot you are testing both a vehicle and its autopilot at the same time. For a highly experimental vehicle this is extremely risky. The reason you need to test the vehicle is because you don't know 100% for sure what it's going to do. And if you don't know, how can you design an autopilot that brings it back every time. Consider what happened with SS1 when it started rolling uncontrollably: [http://gfycat.com/GargantuanRecentJackrabbit](http://gfycat.com/GargantuanRecentJackrabbit) can you imagine an autopilot that would properly handle this situation? Good thing they had Mike Melvill in there. ~~~ kenrikm Which is worse losing a test vehicle or losing pilots? Latency should be a non issue at the distances they are dealing with. ~~~ teleclimber Well you don't want to lose either obviously. You don't go in there thinking you might lose the vehicle. We're not the 1950s anymore. ------ comrade1 Part of me can understand why test pilots in the 50s, 60s, 70s, etc did what they did. American test pilots and early astronauts did it for country first (in the context of the cold war), humanity second. I have a hard time understanding why a test pilot would risk their life so that Jerry Seinfeld can fly to the edge of the atmosphere and back. ~~~ pavlov Acrobats risk their lives while entertaining casino guests: [http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/cirque-du-soleil- da...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/cirque-du-soleil-dancer- plummets-death-las-vegas-article-1.1386709) I suspect that the test pilot who gets to fly a new kind of spaceplane finds it more gratifying than the acrobat who does the same show every night for a decade. ~~~ groby_b As a stage performer, you're grateful for every performance you get to do. It might get a bit old, but it beats _not_ being on stage. (Also: You don't last for a decade at any given show. You keep moving on to other things.) And for many, being on stage is every bit as exciting as flying a space ship. The emotional energy from a good performance is amazing. (It's certainly not the pay that keeps them) ~~~ sitkack Someone should write a book on how to exploit people who do things for a love that transcends money. ------ rev_bird The beginnings of what I'm sure is a fascinating story, but there are some real weird turns of phrase in this story: >It was a real world case of survival in the face of disaster, _like the movie "Gravity_." >In October 1947, he ejected out of one of the first combat jets, the Republic F-84, and hit the tail at 500 mph, breaking both legs and _busting his face_. ------ teleclimber This article doesn't say how he got out. I think it's possible the pressurized cabin stayed in one piece long enough that he might have stayed in it for part of the descent before bailing out. I really look forward to hearing his story.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New Recurly website launched this morning - what do you think? - danburkhart http://www.recurly.com ====== ameyamk Seems like new design comes with major hike in pricing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Towards practicing differential privacy - Cynddl http://blog.mrtz.org/2015/03/13/practicing-differential-privacy.html ====== noisydonut Nice tl;dr written by Nobel prize winner Al Roth: [http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2015/03/reflections-on- pr...](http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2015/03/reflections-on-practical- market-design.html) ------ Cynddl See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9184479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9184479) from two days ago for more context.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Donald Trump meets with tech leaders - Jarred https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/donald-trump-meets-with-tech-leaders/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook ====== delegate Strangely how this is not top news on HN - however you put it , I guess everyone understands that this is a turning point in our industry. ------ silasi The emoji issue with Twitter...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Text particle android - mosh_java http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twkDyQby1eI ====== mosh_java i made a code for android similar to previous web text particle was submitted here, what should i do next ?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is YC bold enough? (warning: possible linkbait) - Sam_Odio http://www.honorico.com/wordpress/?p=104 ====== ubudesign I don't think that YC is claiming to be a VC. Unless I am missing something? everybody knows that 10-20k is not worth much. People apply for something else. ~~~ hank777 Yes, but the question is whether any YC companies have the capacity to be the next google. I think it is a good question because it really is saying "if you can't find the gems why expect VCs to be able to". Its a people in glass houses throwing stones argument. There may be good counter arguments but it is a very legit question. ------ SwellJoe Definite linkbait.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Knuth's 2018 Christmas Lecture: Dancing Links - janvdberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9OcDYfHqOk ====== johnsonjo In Fall of 2017 I was still in school and had to write a sudoku solver in one of my CS classes. I ended up using dancing links to solve my sudoku problems. My implementation was in JavaScript and it could find solutions for sudoku problems very quickly. The paper I read on dancing links ended up being my favorite academic paper I read in 2017 (honestly probably one of the only ones I read that year.) I wrote about that in this thread [1]. [1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16036588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16036588)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Latest version of Chrome can't copy and paste urls to Outlook - DerekH https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/Sqv4fPmgztU/wpWF0HXXDQAJ ====== tssva This issue is only with pasting copied urls into Outlook. The title should be changed. ~~~ DerekH Thanks for pointing that out. I've been reading through the bug reports and some people have been mentioning other apps in addition to Outlook: Notes.app and Mail.app. I haven't noticed any others yet. Source: [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=618771](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=618771)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Localization platform Phraseapp now offers Gengo powered translation - holdupadam http://blog.gengo.com/phraseapp-partnership/ ====== WolframHH Very cool!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Yarnee for iOS - pow-tac https://itunes.apple.com/app/yarnee/id878999441?mt=8 ====== pow-tac This is an App we worked on for many months, it was released to the public yesterday. I was the technical project manager, what do you think about it? BTW: You can give me simple feedback by shaking your iPhone very hard - then a screen shot will be captured and you can add a comment for me :-) ------ devOp Looks very well designed. Unfortunately i don't have an iphone, but i like the idea of the "yarn". ~~~ pow-tac Thank you for the Feedback!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple delays FaceTime bug fix until next week - harshulpandav https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18206721/facetime-bug-fix-delayed-apple-ios-group-chat-eavesdrop ====== united893 Brilliant strategy on Apple's part -- picking a fight with Facebook and Google (banning them for a few hours) to generate global headlines while leaving dozens of other companies off the hook for sideloading their to their non- employees (e.g: Square) [1] [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19051609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19051609)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Chomsky, Valiant and the algorithmic mirror - petar http://www.maymounkov.org/chomsky-valiant-algorithmic-mirror ====== mrng Google Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.maymounkov.org/chomsky- valiant-algorithmic-mirror) for those of you getting the "Over Quota" error. ~~~ petar Sorry folks. Should be back up soon. In the meantime, there is a mirror article here: [http://petar.svbtle.com/](http://petar.svbtle.com/) ------ petar While the blog is "Over Quota", use this alternative link to the article: http://petar.svbtle.com/ ------ malgorithms some quick info: Petar Maymounkov, the author, is the same guy who invented kademlia, the distributed hash table that many p2p networks use ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia)). ------ petar And the article is back up on the original link. ------ 6ren tinkling? ~~~ petar faintly entlightening ~~~ 6ren Do you have a reference for that, or are you Humpty Dumptying? ~~~ petar Reference for which? The meaning of "tinkling" or the claim made in the sentence that contains it? ~~~ 6ren For the meaning of tinkling. _EDIT_ ah, you probably meant "inkling".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Welcome to Powder Mountain – a utopian club for the millennial elite - Southworth https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/powder-mountain-ski-resort-summit-elite-club-rich-millennials?CMP=share_btn_tw ====== masonic [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=powder%20utopian&sort=byDate&p...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=powder%20utopian&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story) ------ yazr DUP [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16602878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16602878) (my own submission 30 minutes before yours. Wonder why it was not marked as dup)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google Adds Voice And Video Chat to Gmail - dawie http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/11/google-adds-voice-and-video-chat-to-gmail/ ====== lowkey Okay, installed. Now need someone to video chat with. Requirements: Intel Mac, Gmail account, Video Chat add-on, a personality. ------ shadytrees This is a duplicate: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360952>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Spacemacs: The best editor is neither Emacs nor Vim, it's Emacs and Vim - Garbage http://spacemacs.org/ ====== lorenzhs This comes up fairly frequently on HN (mostly in comments, but also submissions) - most notably perhaps [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9394144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9394144) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10837833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10837833) It seems that there's quite some interest in Spacemacs and lots of people hear about it for the first time every time it's being talked about, maybe these old discussions can be interesting as well.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Creating Read-Only References to Objects in JavaScript - bolshchikov http://blog.bolshchikov.net/post/70680524646/creating-read-only-reference-to-object-in-javascript ====== TazeTSchnitzel ES6 will add proxies, another approach. ~~~ bolshchikov Yes, that would be great. However, the approximate arrival time of ES6 will be exactly the year from now. ~~~ GeneralMayhem You can use them now on Node with the experimental --harmony-proxies flag. ------ CountHackulus What if you just did var x = { ...}; var y = Object.create(x); Object.freeze(y); Object.preventExtension(y); Wouldn't that achieve the same effect? ~~~ bolshchikov No, you can still mutate the array and it will influence the original model. [http://jsbin.com/IvIXUZO/1/edit](http://jsbin.com/IvIXUZO/1/edit) ~~~ krebby so just deep-clone your object before freezing / sealing, right? ~~~ Sharlin No need to freeze/seal if you deep-clone; it's not your business what the recipient does with its own copy. The point is, copying can be expensive. In C++, you can pass by copy, by reference, or by const reference. The idea is that a const reference means that the object is not modifiable _through that reference_ , no matter whether it's itself const or not. ------ GowGuy47 This seems like a cool idea. What was your need for this solution if you don't mind me asking? Developing a library? ~~~ teleclimber I am not the developer but it is quite useful if you have Javascript objects that handle your app's data (the "M" in MVC), and the Views request data objects from these models. If you just pass a reference then the View could accidentally alter the data object which would corrupt all other view's data objects and the Model's copy as well. Yikes. My current solution is to create a deep-clone of the data object and pass that back to each view that asks for it. That way if a View changes the data object, it doesn't affect the other copies of the data. The solution presented here also prevents the View from modifying its own copy (which should help reduce bugs within the View), and it keeps copies of the object up to date, which is a neat trick. ------ jayferd function makeRef(x) { return function() { return x; }; } ~~~ effbott This doesn't make the target object read-only - it just returns a reference to it. data = {one: "one"} ref = makeRef(data) ref().two = "two" data => Object {one: "one", two: "two"}	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why do chocolate chip cookies have 37% (1/e) chocolate in them? - msvan http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/651823/is-there-a-mathematical-reason-why-chocolate-chip-cookies-have-37-1-e-chocola ====== pyduan This feels like pure numerology to me, with the entire argument being based on some vague numeric coincidence. I have no experience in food manufacturing, but I'm willing to bet there are much easier ways to mix dough at any desired proportion than the one described here. Here's another, potentially simpler explanation: I am no pastry chef, but it seems these recipes often use a 2:1 mix of different types of chocolate (e.g. dark and milk) [1]. Now if the recipe contains 1/4 of one type and half of this of another type, that's 25% + 12.5% = 37.5%, which is about as close to 37% than 1/e. Ta-da! And this is just one explanation I just made up on the spot; I'm sure one can find many others by playing around with the numbers. I don't know for sure what the real answer is or if there even is one (it could just be that marketing thought 37% sounded more elaborate than a round number like 40% while also costing less to produce and tasting the same), but one shouldn't forget to apply Occam's razor here. [1] a quick Google search gives me this: [http://www.talkfood.com/forum/showthread.php/3230-37-Chocola...](http://www.talkfood.com/forum/showthread.php/3230-37-Chocolate- chips-cookies) ------ 001sky This is incredibly confusing: 37% of what? By mass or by volume? The answer about even distribution pre-supposes physical dispersion characteristics, but does not mention which measure of proportion is relevant (it would seem volume); nor any means of reliable testing. As another commenter has aluded, the "100% chocolate%" concept (even for the chocolate) is also at best inaccurate. So, this looks to be more of a coincidental alignemnet of numbers, and a game of causation/correlation. To wit: A cookie with 37% by volume of 72% chocolate is in no way the same cookie as one with 37% by mass of 40% milk chocolate. Either by taste, consistency, or chemistry. So, i would think any proper answer for this question would need to be robust the these particulars. ~~~ tpurves I read the hypothesis as relating the appearance of the cookie. That is the proportionate ratio of visible chocolate to dough on the surface of the cookie as it relates to the maximizing the visual appeal of the cookie on product packaging. So we are talking about "perceived" cookie quality based on visible surface area of chocolate. Now in this case, what I think is happening here is that we are observing a simple case of the golden ratio. Humans, consistently and subconsciously see distributions of ~38% to be harmonious (sometimes crudely approximated as the rule of thirds). Therefore it stands to reason that this "golden mean" ratio of visible chocolate creates the most visibly appealing image. With the cooperation of a chocolate chip packaging manufacturer or online retailer we could test this. Simply conduct some extensive A/B testing of chip packaging that varies only by ratio of visible chocolate. And see if the golden mean comes out best. However, I suspect this testing has already been done. As for the best _tasting_ ratios of all ingredients (including chocolate) in a chocolate chip cookie, fortunately, significant research in this area has recently been published. You may have seen this link from the food lab: [http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2013/12/the-food-lab-the- best-...](http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2013/12/the-food-lab-the-best- chocolate-chip-cookies.html) ~~~ 001sky > great article. ------ OldSchool Reminds me of the movie "Pi." "Max... You will find that thing everywhere... As soon as you discard scientific rigor, you're no longer a mathematician, you're a numerologist." [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1IzNKIHhp0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1IzNKIHhp0) ~~~ mjn My favorite recent example of that: [http://www.2014equals420.com/about.html](http://www.2014equals420.com/about.html) It starts with the curious observation that 2014, spoken aloud as "twenty fourteen", becomes "teen 420" in reverse. Perhaps just a coincidence. But then it further notes that April 20, or 4/20, is the date of Easter in 2014. Two coincidences! Now the numerologist starts getting suspicious... ~~~ wtetzner I don't get it. What does "Teen 420" mean? How can it be equal to 2014 if it's the reverse of saying 2014? ~~~ mjn The number has somehow become significant in marijuana subculture: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_$cannabis_culture$) ------ drakaal All that and nobody figured out that the cookie isn't 63% things that are not chocolate chips. The Chips are milk instead of semi-sweet and so they are 37% Chocolate. Just like these are not 28% not Chocolate bar. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004BR1C46?tag=itemsid-20](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004BR1C46?tag=itemsid-20) ~~~ biot Nice affiliate link. You should print that as a QR code onto a t-shirt and send it to Archive.org. ~~~ drakaal I would, but the commission on chocolate is so low that I don't think I would get a good ROI. But I did sell 3 Chocolate bars with that link so it might work out better than I thought. I'll promise in a week to do a follow up with stats from the link and Post it on HN "How I made 84 cents on a single Hacker News Post And So Can You" ------ liebfraumilch I think the answer given by dfc is the correct interpretation: the chips are 37% chocolate, not that the cookies are 37% chocolate chips. ------ jrockway I doubt it has anything to do with 1/e. Someone in marketing probably liked the number 37% and manufacturing said, "yeah, that won't cost us much extra". Nothing to do with infinite sums or the distribution of chocolate chips in dough. Just marketing. For the same reason, why is Ivory 99.44% pure? Because 99.44% sounded catchier than 99%. ------ DanBC Clifford Stoll has a great chocolate chip cookie recipe in his book "cuckoos egg" \- about his experience tracking crackers through international networks. (With cameo appearance from RTM and the worm). I'd put it here but the experience of cutting / pasting on iPhone is painful. (Hints and tips gratefully received). ~~~ sp332 "Two eggs, 1 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup regular sugar, 2 sticks softened butter. Fold in 2 1/4 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and a couple tablespoons of vanilla. For an extra chocolate jag, toss in 3 tablespoons of cocoa. Oh, don't forget 2 cups of chocolate chips. Bake 'em at 375 degrees for 10 minutes." This is very similar to the Toll House cookie recipe, but with even more vanilla which I think is an excellent idea. And that extra cocoa powder looks good too! Edit: For metric measures, 250 ml white sugar, 250 ml soft butter, 530 ml flour, 2.5 ml salt, 5 ml baking soda, 30 ml vanilla, (optional 45 ml cocoa), 250 ml chocolate chips. I wonder if someone could do this in by-weight measures? Flour is too compressible to measure accurately by volume. ~~~ sp332 Whoops, plus 125 ml white sugar for the metric. ------ aaronsnoswell "Someone once briefly explained to me why it is that chocolate chip cookies have 37% chocolate in them." -Someone once pulled your leg mate. ------ bluedino They shouldn't. The best cookies are going to have ~ 60% cacao chips. ------ auctiontheory I like my cookies to contain πr² chocolate chips. ------ unfunco I would like a cookie with 62% chocolate chips. ~~~ PeterWhittaker Years ago I embarked upon a quest to maximize the amount of chips I could put into a cookie and still have it meet a rough operational definition of cookie: It had to look like a cookie and I had to be able to pick it up and eat without getting chocolate on my fingers. In other words, a blob of chocolate wouldn't qualify, but a blob of chocolate with pastry handles might. But that seemed like a lot of work and not very Occam-y. I found that by playing with the butter-flour-chip ratio, I could get a very thin very crisp cookie, almost more of a wafer, that I could grasp by the edges and lift to my mouth with clean fingers; there was enough chocolate that the shock of biting in didn't travel through the cookie and cause it to break, but enough dough to prevent anything beyond reasonable crumbs from falling away. I cannot remember the recipe and don't know if I ever wrote it down, but I'm pretty sure the order by quantity was chips, butter, flour, and maybe an egg or two. 62%? Yeah, well past that, if memory serves.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
BrowserLab - Cross-Browser Testing - nreece https://browserlab.adobe.com ====== mahmud discussion here <http://browserlab.adobe.com/> flagged.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Senate Passes Major Portman-Murphy Counter-Propaganda Bill as Part of NDAA - aburan28 http://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=3765A225-B773-4F57-B21A-A265F4B5692C ====== aburan28 I give this story 5 minutes until it is buried via the no "politics" policy	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Many Spreadsheets Does It Take to Run a Fortune 500 Company? - nikunjk http://www.wired.com/2014/03/many-spreadsheets-take-run-fortune-500-company ====== greenyoda Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7994086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7994086)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Case for C++ - johnmurray_io https://itnext.io/the-case-for-c-4122a5b47130?source=friends_link&sk=ca95e477c339e9504a00791d4d8ef477 ====== mikece If one learns the latest version of Modern C++ how likely is it for one to then get to work only with modern C++?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
ISS Virtual Tour - kapranoff http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/virtual-tour-iss/ ====== sandyarmstrong This is awesome. If you'd like a live video tour, I recently sat down with my 5 year old to watch a wonderful video from NASA [0]. They talk about some of the facilities in a way that kids can understand, and there's something wondrous about seeing how they move around, regularly changing their orientations, etc. [0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doN4t5NKW-k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doN4t5NKW-k) ~~~ jsingleton The coolest video I found on the ESA tour is this time-lapse one from the Cupola. Absolutely stunning. [http://wsn.spaceflight.esa.int/php/download.php?fn=/videos/F...](http://wsn.spaceflight.esa.int/php/download.php?fn=/videos/F_2014/F_Blue_Dot/1417170856_Timelapses_Long_HD/hires.mp4&newfn=Timelapses_Long_HD_HR.mp4) ------ torgoguys Very cool! Wow, I never realized how cluttered the ISS was. Stuff all over! Lots of Thinkpads as already mentioned, but lots of lots of things: cameras, lens, etc. I surprised at the amount of duplication. (I do realize that redundancy is key when you can't just run to the store to replace something, but still...) ~~~ arrrg If you zoom in on the images you can see why they have so many cameras: loads of dead pixels everywhere. They don’t last forever up there because of the increased radiation. I would assume they don’t really fly stuff like still functioning cameras with loads of dead pixels back. (Even some old iPad seems to get good use as a wall clock next to the dining table.) Also, if I remember correctly (from some interview with some ESA guy, I think) people on the ground would prefer it if the station were kept tidier – but the people up there are busy people with more important things to do than to keep everything always super-tidy. But inventory management is apparently a big topic and they do have a system for it. (I think even including a barcode scanner to catalogue items.) I mean, even still, looking at those images, I do have to say everything does seem … tidier than usual. I think they cleaned up before they took them. Those more improvised tours of the station from astronauts you can find on YouTube show a station that is substantially more cluttered. Or at least seem that way. Looking at those pictures and being familiar with others and videos of the station my first thought was not how cluttered everything is but how tidy. Compared to the usual state of things, at least. ------ arethuza I'm going to put the audio-book version of _Seveneves_ on (just started listening to it for the second time this morning) and have a good browse around this. ~~~ d_theorist Made me think of Seveneves as well. I bet Stephenson would have found this thing really useful for writing the book. ------ aurelian15 This entire tour is interesting and enjoyable! Just spent an entire evening -- almost three hours -- looking around and watching the videos. Many kudos to Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti for her very concise explanations and demonstrations. The panoramas are of very high quality (except for the inevitable dead pixels). It is nice to see all the Ethernet cables, electrical outlets, stopwatches, valves, tools or just the video projector connected via VGA to a notebook in Node 1, just before you fly into the Russian module. And yes, there is a striking contrast between the Russian and the US/European/Japanese modules. I especially recommend watching the time-lapse video shot by Alexander Gerst: [http://wsn.spaceflight.esa.int/videos/F_2014/F_Blue_Dot/1417...](http://wsn.spaceflight.esa.int/videos/F_2014/F_Blue_Dot/1417170856_Timelapses_Long_HD/hires.mp4) _Edit:_ Btw. executing the following code in the JS console "{" + pano.getCurrentNode() + "}\",\"" + pano.getPan() + "/" + pano.getTilt() + "/" + pano.getFov() gives you a string encoding the current position. You can restore that position by copy and pasting it into the "pano.openURL()" method. Examples: pano.openUrl("{node5}","216.49016925709486/38.116922404005344/47.440801242792304") // The IMAX... pano.openUrl("{node5}","288.6799234893748/17.169120787478608/17.33030268127927") // ...and its CF cards ------ jefurii After a bit of digging, I foudn that the wall behind the cluster of Thinkpads in the Columbus module is made up of European Drawer Rack modules[0] which are basically 19in racks. NASA has its own International Standard Payload Rack (ISPR) module system[1]. It would be interesting to see some articles on the power and data infrastructure of the station. [0] [http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Columbus...](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Columbus/European_Drawer_Rack) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Payload...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Payload_Rack) ------ gii2 Did you noticed that there are only ThinkPads there? It is the only laptop certified to work on ISS. ~~~ Kiro What are the requirements? ~~~ rtkwe There's a lot that goes into space worthiness rating even beyond the technical spec requirements. There's probably a bid request available for when they were first considered too. No idea where to start hunting that down though. There was a really good article[0] (plus a video talk I can't find) on a team that modified an Android phone to go to space to interface with the SPHERES mini satellite experiments. A short list of the things they had to do includes: \- No Lithium Ion battery, it takes 2+ years to get a LIon battery certified for the ISS \- Had to put a screen protector on, broken glass screen becomes an inhalation hazard in zero G, BUT many materials are considered flammable in the high oxygen environment on station. \- Had to lobotomize the Wifi and cellular chips to ensure they'd never turn on. Just removing the software that would control and allow them to turn on wasn't enough. In addition to everything in the article they have to worry about off gassing from all the various materials that make up anything sent to space. [0] [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/how-nasa-got-an- andro...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/how-nasa-got-an-android- handset-ready-to-go-into-space/) ------ robryk It's interesting to see some differences between the US-and-everyone-else and Russian part. One that was most striking to me is cabling and piping between modules: on the Russian side, the pipes go through the hatches, which complicates closing the hatches but makes the cables and pipes easier to access/repair and makes it easier to install new ones. On the other side, there are no pipes or cables going through hatches. There's also a hatch in the deck of Unity that seems to have nothing on the other side (the one labelled Hab). Is it a place where a module will be added? ~~~ sudhirj Probably stands for Habitat. I could see bunks anywhere else. I doubt the astronauts want to show living quarters. Not much privacy as it is. ~~~ robryk I mean the hatch in the middle of Unity's floor. It appears to have space on the other side and is closed. They do show living quarters in Node 2 -- there is even a video of the interior. ------ ourmandave If you're an early riser this site will tell you when you can watch ISS fly over. [http://iss.astroviewer.net/observation.php](http://iss.astroviewer.net/observation.php) ~~~ jsingleton Nice. I remember using that to see the ISS over London on Christmas last year. Great sight. [http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2014/12/16/space-station- to-...](http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2014/12/16/space-station-to-fly-over- london-over-christmas/) ------ drzaiusapelord I love the disconnect between science fiction and reality. There's no beautiful Kubrick-esque set design here. The whole thing just looks like someone's garage, full of nick-nacks, tools, and little projects. It just a giant mancave, really. This is why I'm a little bored with LEO space exploration. I can't wait for the SLS to go live and try something that isn't this. That said, I would love to see a ISS-like structure on the moon, perhaps also serving as a dark-side radio telescope. ~~~ arrrg The mundanity is what makes it real and also very cool to me. I don’t think manned space exploration will look any different in the future … until maybe it starts looking mundane in other ways (think mundanity of commercial air travel). Even if we do go to Mars or other places. LEO has little to do with that … and SLS will look just the same on the inside. ~~~ drzaiusapelord Good point. I guess what I was trying to express that just floating in LEO is fairly boring. My example of a moon base would be much more thrilling, especially if it could serve as a dark-side radio telescope or even as a space-port for deep launches. A lot of little experiments an LEO ferrying back and forth is something we've been able to do since at least the 60's. I would love to see some next-gen stuff and with the SLS I will. I think NASA is very committed to a manned asteroid mission and a return to the moon. ------ throw7 Had to laugh about the tools on board... both a set of metric and english. :D And apparently the english set are used more often (not sure what to take away from that... heh) ------ return0 Are the EXIT signs real or a cruel joke? ~~~ arrrg There are Soyuz constantly docked to the ISS with enough seats for everyone on board. Those are where you would exit the station in case of emergency. The signs show the way. I assume that’s the case, since that is the only explanation that does make sense given the design – with the red stripes – and the consistent placement of the signs. The station has two other obvious exits – the two air locks – but those wouldn’t be used in case of an emergency and don’t need signage throughout the station showing you the way there. There is an exit sign right next to the US airlock, but that could also just be there to tell you to turn left when you exit the airlock to get to the docked Soyuz: [http://imgur.com/8UJP11Y](http://imgur.com/8UJP11Y) If you look around you can see that the red stripe design is used throughout the station to show you where things are you would need in an emergency, like “Portable Breathing Apparatus”, “Fire Extinguisher” and “Fire Port” (all for use during fires). There are also some signs with red stripes that have different directional arrows and pictograms on them. Oh, I just zoomed in on those and look what I found: [http://imgur.com/3Qyl3bE](http://imgur.com/3Qyl3bE) That’s your definite answer! The pictograms are an elaboration on the Exit signs, showing you the directions in which you can find the Shuttle and Soyuz. Obviously, that Shuttle pictogram – it was always docked at the other end of the station – is kinda outdated by now. They can hopefully put some nice Dragon/CST-100 stickers on there soon. It seems they use red/white stripes to indicate emergency routes and equipment and yellow/black stripes for warnings and caution signs. Blue signs to show you where up and own, backward and forward, left and right is. As the station is always in free fall that’s obviously arbitrary, but consistently defining those directions in some way obviously also helps with orientation (and, I would assume, communication between everyone working up there and those on the ground communicating with the station). Look for the OVHD, FWD, AFT, DECK and so on signs around the hatches. Also, look at the hatch where you enter the Russian sector (directly beyond that and down are the Soyuz). You can see many round glow-in-dark patches around the hatch, obviously also used to show you the way to a Soyuz ship, especially if, say, power and lights are out. By the way, look what I found: [http://imgur.com/Elwl8Rf](http://imgur.com/Elwl8Rf) It seems someone moved the equipment for some reason and patched over the emergency sign, adding a handwritten note with the place the equipment was moved to. I know that they _do_ have a printer on board but, eh, I guess a handwritten note will do. (I love looking at all of those all over the station.) (Cosmonauts in the Russian part of the station apparently have an innate sense of direction in space and as such do not need signs, or at least not as many. And definitely none with such gaudy designs!) ------ deneca I would love to see a version of this for Google Cardboard ~~~ soylentcola Later this evening when I get home I'm gonna fire it up fullscreen in VR Desktop (Rift rather than Cardboard). It's not 3D but 360-panoramic can still be cool to look at. ------ harywilke Duct Tape spotted! Zarya module. look up! three hose fittings? covered in tape. I think i'd live in constant fear of bumping the wrong knob/pipe/lever while floating from one module to the next. ------ jefurii I wish there was a way to link to things in this by "room", angle, and zoom level. I'm really curious what some of this stuff is, like that green box in the middle of that cluster of Thinkpads on the Columbus module, the blue box and other stuff "beneath" the oven. Power distribution modules? Computers in hardened cases? ~~~ jefurii aurelian15 answered my question in another thread. Thanks aurelian15! ------ Kiro Aren't there any windows? ~~~ plg i think they use linux ~~~ gadrfgaesgysd They also get apples occasionally. ------ shpx Any chance someone has the raw pictures? They serve them as small images and stitch them together in the browser. ------ nomercy400 This is so good. A more than decent explanation of what's going on in such a restricted environment. ------ chmullig Seems like their poor server is struggling with load. ------ ekianjo The space station is full of Thinkpads :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Guess my word - ColinWright http://simbase.org/gmw/gmw.html?HN_20150905 ====== bonobo3000 This is great! Inspired me to make a little script in spark-shell: > val words = oxforddict. filter{case s => s.exists(_.isLetter) && s.forall(Character.isUpperCase(_))}. distinct. map((_.toLowerCase,1)) > def lcp(a:String,b:String) = { a.zip(b).takeWhile(Function.tupled(_ == _)).map(_._1).mkString } > implicit val wordOrdering = new Ordering[String] { > override def compare(a:String, b:String) = { val lcpIdx = lcp(a,b).length; a.substring(lcpIdx).compareTo(b.substring(lcpIdx)) } > } > def nextGuess(lower:String,upper:String,g:Int) = { val candidates = words.filterByRange(lower,upper).map(_._1).collect.sorted(wordOrdering).toList; val mid = candidates.length / 2; candidates.slice(mid-g/2,mid+g/2+1) } nextGuess: (lower: String, upper: String, g: Int) > nextGuess("prejudice","promise",1) res42: List[String] = List(primeness) > nextGuess("prime","promise",10) res47: List[String] = List(procris, procrustean, procrusteanize, procrustes, procrustesian, proctitis, proctocele, proctodaeum, proctor, proctorage, proctorial) > nextGuess("proctor","promise",10) res48: List[String] = List(profulgent, profundity, profuse, profusely, profuseness, profusion, profusive, prog, progenerate, progeneration, progenitor) > nextGuess("profuse","promise",12) ding ding!! I love HN, and I love scala :D Thanks for posting OP. HN needs more great technical content like this and less opinion & news, in my opinion. ~~~ normac This raises an interesting problem--could we find the word even faster by using something other than a standard binary search? The first thing that comes to mind is skipping past letters that don't appear very often at that point in a word with the current prefix--or to be more granular, you could change your counter (here g) to a float and somehow weight each letter by how rarely it occurs after the letters you've established so far. So if you've currently established that the first four letters are "pro," and "z" almost never occurs after those letters, "z" might be given a weight above 1 so the counter skips right past it. ------ kaoD I wanted _more_ :) So here's my blatant clone sourcing words from the internet: [https://jsfiddle.net/fsc5v4v0/9/embedded/result/](https://jsfiddle.net/fsc5v4v0/9/embedded/result/) And here's the code: [https://jsfiddle.net/fsc5v4v0/89/](https://jsfiddle.net/fsc5v4v0/89/) I hope it's bug free. jQuery is really a pain to reason about, so much implicit state all over the place. I thought React might've been a bit too much, but halfway through it I started reconsidering my choice :P ~~~ hlmencken This is cool but when i gave up it said congratulations and didn't show me the word. ~~~ kaoD Sorry, completely failed linking the URL. See sibling comment for the real ones :) ------ louhike Maybe you should not make answers.json public. ~~~ totony Doesn't matter, the checking is made in Javascript, so you can console.log( answer ) if you want to cheat anyway ------ jjuhl Isn't this simply a game about how to do a binary search of a dictionary? How is that exciting? ~~~ furyofantares I think it's more about how difficult it can be to do a binary search of the dictionary in your head. I don't want to spoil today's word, and I've tried not to below, although there are minor spoilers. Once I started to narrow it down it became difficult to find words between my constraints. In one case I was making assumptions about what letters can come after other ones while trying to generate a new word (and being aware of this isn't enough to stop it.) And then, in the last case, when I had it narrowed between <xyz> and <xyz>ed (think jump and jumped, for example), my brain only wanted to search for words that were conceptually related to xyz. This was a mistake, the goal word started with xyz but was not related to it conceptually, but again, an awareness that my brain was favoring a search of the concept space rather than searching the dictionary alphabetically was not enough to remedy it. ~~~ organsnyder I had the same experience. I locked in to the first letter within a few guesses, but then struggled to find words that began with the second letter I wanted to guess. Eventually, I realized that, since I was on my phone, I could take advantage of predictive text to help me out (okay... "cheat" is probably more accurate). I doubt that I would have figured it out on my own (due to the word being totally unrelated to the word that makes up the first few letters). ------ dahart Fun, I quite like it. Sad that everyone has made the leaderboard unusable, but I'm sure the majority of the problem could be fixed in one or two lines of code. Looks like it only became a problem today... hacker news is living up to its name? ------ ColinWright What a shame - a cute toy, and people just break it. This is why we can't have nice things - remind me never to show HN anything that's just a bit of fun. Some people really will set the world on fire just to see if they can, and then just to watch it burn. It's not what hacking used to be about. It used to be about making cool stuff, and people sharing and appreciating it. Now even the simplest of toys need to be bullet-proof and hardened. I miss the old days. ------ DiabloD3 I love HN. I got up early in the morning, made a nice breakfast (today? roasted turkey legs seasoned with my own personal italian blend, with a carrot and rutabaga mash, and a glass of whatever white wine was open and in my fridge, wasn't bad for a $7 bottle), had a cup of coffee (fresh ground, brewed using the inverted Aeropress method), cleaned the catbox, fed the cat (even though he probably ate as much as I did off the turkey legs, fat bastard he is), did my morning strength training routine, and was just waiting for it to warm up more outside so I could go for my morning walk (September in Maine means it dips into the 40s at night and doesn't warm up into the 60s until 9am), and was otherwise doing work (just because its Saturday doesn't mean I'm off the clock)... ... and then I check HN and find this at the top. Now I know what I'm going to be doing for the next few hours. ~~~ petercooper Getting past the idea of having wine with breakfast(!) what's in your personal Italian blend? ~~~ mangamadaiyan It could be that the wine was used to cook, not drink. Just guessing :) ~~~ dr_zoidberg He said he had a glass, so there's the drinking. Although unusual, it's not the first time I hear of someone drinking a glass of wine at breakfast. It's common in some cultures. ~~~ DiabloD3 Its something I'm trying out. My culture doesn't really drink wine at all (I'm half German, half Irish, 100% American), but since I eat one good meal a day, I had a glass with it. ------ chippy Note: I believe that the word stays the same each day, so there may be limited replayability. There are two words by "joon" and "mike" to find everyday. (I got the first in 24 tries and the second in 22 with the help of a dictionary!) ~~~ wjoe You can also play words from previous days by going to the leaderboard, selecting another day at the top, then clicking "play this word" ------ reinhardt1053 Helped myself with some python, I guessed it in 16 tries. lines = tuple(open('english_words.txt', 'r')) min = 0; max = len(lines) while True : index = min + (max-min)//2 print lines[index]; before = raw_input("Before? y/n") if before == "y" : max = index-1 elif before == "n" : min = index+1 else : break english_words.txt can be downloaded here: [http://www.mieliestronk.com/corncob_lowercase.txt](http://www.mieliestronk.com/corncob_lowercase.txt) ------ troels "I couldn't find modificatory in my dictionary. Remember, you're only allowed to guess words." Hey - That's straight from /usr/share/dict/words ------ Gracana Neat game, but it gave me an incorrect hint about the target word. I had narrowed it down to somewhere in the Vs, then accidentally clicked "I give up" and it told me the word started with a letter that comes way before v (I'm being vague here because it looks like the word is the same for everyone and I don't want to spoil it too badly). ------ impostervt Could use this [https://www.wordsapi.com](https://www.wordsapi.com) ~~~ amelius This seems silly. Why not download the whole dictionary in one single GET. Much faster, much less prone to failure. ------ LVB Good stuff! I started playing it zoomed way in on my phone and had no idea the previous guesses and bracketing words were shown. Remembering recent words while thinking of new ones made for a nice "n-back" sort of challenge. ------ arxpoetica It's possible to cheat on the leaderboard. Go through the game once, figure out the word, play it again, guess the same word, first guess. Oops. ;) ~~~ drake01 Its mentioned already on Leaderboard: Select to reveal answer word: 3rd visible line on links: [http://simbase.org/gmw/guess.cgi?by=joon&result=leaderboard](http://simbase.org/gmw/guess.cgi?by=joon&result=leaderboard) [http://simbase.org/simbase/leagues/simbasev3/gmw/guess.cgi?b...](http://simbase.org/simbase/leagues/simbasev3/gmw/guess.cgi?by=mike&date=&sort=num&result=leaderboard) ------ minaguib It would be nice if, while you're you're guessing, the words in your own history have an indicator of whether each was too high or too low. ~~~ tedd4u It does. The blue word is the closest guess before and the red word is the closest guess after. ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel Would be nice if it indicated it in some way beyond colour-coding, for the benefit of the colour-blind and those who don't catch on. ~~~ monochromatic Blue-red colorblindness? ~~~ ant6n blue-black colorblindness at night: [https://justgetflux.com/](https://justgetflux.com/) ------ Cyph0n I was at 14 tries, with 3 letter accuracy. I just couldn't come up with today's word, even though I know it well.. ------ kazimuth Apparently there's an exploit, given all of the answers with INT_MIN guesses on the leaderboard. ------ robgibbons Bonus round: Guess how to hack the leaderboard ------ berbc "My word is after noon." ------ SCAQTony That was awesome: Got it in 16 guesses and I believe this would be great for primary schools. I am going to forward it around. ------ hoke_t console.log(answer) ------ jm0codes when you type in words in alphabetic order, like "Ape, Best, Claim, Dumb", you get to "Rate, Start" and it says after Rate, and before Start. So it must start with R or S. ~~~ Hasu That isn't a very efficient way to do it. Try doing a binary search. Start with a word that starts with 'M', then if it's before, try one that starts with 'F' or 'G', if it's after, try one that starts with 'S' or 'T'. You eliminate roughly half the possible words with each guess that way, and you'll get to your answer much more quickly than guessing in alphabetical order. You could improve this method by finding out where the exact midpoint is in the list of words by alphabetical order, as I'm not certain it's actually halfway through the alphabet. And I'd bet that some people here on HN could come up with even cleverer ways to cut down on guesses. ------ MrBra It's 2015, make it responsive, please. ~~~ cpeterso Why bother? ~~~ MrBra Because being a non native English speaker I had to read instructions and had to swipe left and right at least ten times on my phone (and for what? For a game which IMO is nothing new...). Also being the page just a half dozen of divs making it responsive would have been totally trivial, so why _not_ bother?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Auction your time – startup - hirebid http://HireBid.com ====== hirebid We just launched. All feedback welcome.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The vanishing began at night, frightened families packed after hearing the news - babakian http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/us/after-ruling-hispanics-flee-an-alabama-town.html?hp=&pagewanted=all ====== rick888 I feel bad for these families, but nothing really has changed. The officers are just enforcing existing immigration laws. There are legal ways of getting into the US and more immigrants should use this route in the future or suffer the consequences of getting booted out of the country. In most other countries in the world, the same thing will happen. ~~~ sixtofour I wonder why those legal ways are not more used?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple, Cisco, and Dow 15000 - ajaymehta http://blog.adamnash.com/2012/02/13/apple-cisco-dow-15000/ ====== rdl The big point to know about the Dow is that it's basically arbitrary and not rigorous, but has a long history, so enh. I personally watch NASDAQ Composite, S&P 500, and Vanguard VTI (<http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSEARCA%3AVTI>) a lot more. If you _just_ want to track large caps, Vanguard MGC. The Vanguard funds track MSCI indices and have super low expense ratios.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Spreading the gospel of entrepreneurship in the developing world - cawel http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11848444 ====== cawel Interesting (as well as recurrent) property of the developing world, notably different from the developed world: “If Endeavor had been an investor, rather than an independent, objective, non- profit enabler, it would not have been trusted by the business elite, or the entrepreneurs,” she insists. “Trust is everything.”	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What is the Answer to 99 of 100 Questions? - startupdaze http://startupdaze.com/post/804402 ====== youngnh F=ma	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
High-Speed Rail – Japanese Shinkansen vs. TGV – Is One Better Than the Other? - Osiris30 https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=p3zrqotjw7A ====== mikixa Over the Shinkansen's 50-plus year history, carrying over 5.3 billion passengers, there has been not a single passenger fatality or injury due to train accidents.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
(Not so) Scary terms in offer letters. - wheels http://venturehacks.com/articles/not-so-scary-terms-in-offer-letters ====== timcederman Fine when I checked. ------ motoko 404? flagged for broken! ~~~ nivi Fixed. =)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + ... = -1/12 - anigbrowl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww ====== ivan_ah Oy mate! Don't you have a pint of cider to drink in a cozy pub somewhere instead of producing videos of such bollocks? The series $\sum_{n=1}^\infty n$ is divergent, so you can't say anything about its sum. For more info on the 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 +1 ... see: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Grandi's_series](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Grandi's_series) This quote from the page is telling: G. H. Hardy dismisses both of these as "little more than nonsense." ~~~ mathnoob It is not totally nonsense but the use of the benign sign = associating the analytic continuation of a series where it converges to a place where it does not without huge warning is not very rigorous. ------ abc_lisper Properties of numbers change at infinity. It is not conceivable to me, we can use normal arithmetic operations on quantities tending to infinity. For example, consider this... 9999999999........... infinity -9999999999........... infinity ------------------------- 00000000000............ infinity ------------------------- Now, subtracting infinite numbers from infinite numbers should give a infinite result. All we have is infinite zeros here, which cannot be inifinity. ~~~ kazagistar You cannot understand "infinite numbers" without understanding how equality is defined (bijection). ~~~ abc_lisper Ok.. My post was a bait :).. Please tell me more or can you suggest me some books i can read?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hitler Quote Controversy in the BSD Community - animeseinfeld https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/11/21/1750218/hitler-quote-controversy-in-the-bsd-community ====== rurban Slashdot cannot even summarize the issue properly. FreeBSD just removed some tasteless and offensive Hitler quotes from the fortune database. It did not remove fortune as stated. [https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/usr.bin/fortune/datfile...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/usr.bin/fortune/datfiles/fortunes?r1=325095&r2=325781&pathrev=325781) I haven't checked yet who inserted that quotes. Personally I would flag that person for intensive study.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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