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US Apple iPad to be released in April - computinggeek
http://thecomputinggeek.com/us-apple-ipad-to-be-released-in-april/
======
ktf
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1169343>
Or:
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/03/05ipad.html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: the link to the article ``what makes a good teacher'' - plmday
Hi, I still remember that I read a blog article submitted by someone of you talking about ``what makes a good teacher'' alike, but I can not find the article now. I googled the title, but all the results are not the one I read before. Anyone remember the link to the article? Thanks.
======
whatusername
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=391576> searchyc.com is your friend
~~~
plmday
whatusername, I did search in searchyc.com before I post this question, but no
result. But I swear that I read it here ... Anyway, thanks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What SaaS Startups Need to Look for in an Online Payments Solution - kpgrio
https://blog.paymill.com/saas-startups-online-payments/
======
kerro700
Cool input!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
N.K. Jemisin’s master class in world building (2018) [video] - rrampage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6xyFQhbsjQ
======
Dahoon
A video with only audio? This is like those pictures of text on Reddit and
Twitter. Ugh.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: I built a free forms service for static websites - yupitszac
https://www.formking.io
======
nkron
This looks really nice but I was burned by another free form service
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16466147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16466147))
that just disappeared without any notice.
I ended up switching to using a Google script which I've been happy with so
far: [https://github.com/dwyl/learn-to-send-email-via-google-
scrip...](https://github.com/dwyl/learn-to-send-email-via-google-script-html-
no-server)
~~~
135792468
Ditto. [https://www.palabra.io/forms/](https://www.palabra.io/forms/) was
around here a few weeks ago and I just started using it when it went
missing/broken.
I’ll try your google solution, thanks
------
aioprisan
Would you be willing to open source this? That way it can stay free forever
(at least basic functionality) and you'll likely increase the adoption by
other folks.
------
agustif
I've been recently looking for form solutions
Free [https://www.staticforms.xyz/](https://www.staticforms.xyz/)
[https://formsubmit.co/](https://formsubmit.co/)
Paid [https://formbucket.com/](https://formbucket.com/)
[https://formspree.io/](https://formspree.io/)
You can also check out Netlify Forms
~~~
notwhereyouare
I'm currently using formsubmit and I'm pretty happy so far. As far as I know,
I haven't had any issues getting responses
~~~
agustif
I had to switch from it last minute, because one of my forms wouldn't
activate, actually, I did get the Form Activated to appear, and some emails
passed, but then It was still deactivated, and found myself in an endless
loop. Idk, but I had to go with a paid option so my boss would be reassured it
would work on monday.
Anyway a few more I found when I had to switch last time, I went with
usebasin.
[https://liveformhq.com/](https://liveformhq.com/)
[https://www.formbackend.com/](https://www.formbackend.com/)
[https://www.netlify.com/products/forms/](https://www.netlify.com/products/forms/)
[https://formbucket.com/](https://formbucket.com/)
[https://www.formking.io/](https://www.formking.io/)
[https://formspree.io/](https://formspree.io/)
[https://www.staticforms.xyz/](https://www.staticforms.xyz/)
[https://formcarry.com/](https://formcarry.com/)
[https://formkeep.com/](https://formkeep.com/)
------
Zaheer
PSA: You can do the same thing with Google Forms + Sheets.
Here's how to post to a Google Form:
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18073971/http-post-
to-a-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18073971/http-post-to-a-google-
form)
~~~
yupitszac
Yea absolutely! You can also just build a form backend to handle your data
collection. Or even just use another forms service (there are a ton).
This was just a personal project that I made available in case anyone else had
a need for it :)
------
ibdf
Nothing free lasts forever, but that's how a lot of people gage interest
anyway. Having said that... this is a good solution for small site's contact
form which you wouldn't care much about privacy or if it went away in a couple
of years.
------
st-isidore
Nice job offering something for free. I'm not as skeptical as some here; looks
like you just wanted to build something useful for people and it's not going
to cost too much to provide it. At the very least, it's a great project to
have under your belt, with real customers, etc. Could help landing jobs, for
sure!
I had to figure out how to handle my contact form on my static blog recently,
and I decided to simply write a form handler with Go and deploy it on Google's
Cloud Functions. It's free for now (and probably always will be considering
the fact that I'll probably never receive more than ~10 form submissions per
month anyways). The function takes awhile to spin up cold, but it doesn't
matter too much. I like it because the code is simple and I "own" the service.
Curious to hear what other static site admins have decided to use for their
forms.
~~~
yupitszac
Thanks for the thoughts! It's still a young service, and honestly there are a
ton more users than I expected so early
GO is super interesting, and I like that you wanted total control over your
process. I've never used Google Cloud Functions but that's similar to Azure
Functions or AWS Lambda, yea?
------
kurzawa7
The forceful over emphasizing of "Free. no bullshit" throughout the website is
off putting
~~~
kevincox
Yeah, I'm wondering why it is going to stay in service? Maybe they should
emphasize that they are donation supported (if that is the plan).
------
bgdam
I might be in the market for a forms service, and have been researching them a
bit over the past few weeks. As a potential customer, here is the single
biggest thing that made me instantly say no: free. Even worse it's unlimited
free, not even freemium.
That means either the service will sell my information, or the information of
my customers (if not now, eventually), or that it's going to die shortly. And
I don't want to put in the effort of migrating my sites to your service in
either of those cases.
So my advice to you is to start charging.
~~~
radmin
Yes, please start charging. Aside from the effect it has on perceived
trustworthiness, longevity, etc., giving away your work for free undermines
others' ability to make a living selling theirs.
~~~
Hamuko
> _giving away your work for free undermines others ' ability to make a living
> selling theirs._
That's not his problem.
~~~
digitaltrees
But it is. It’s called a race to the bottom. While it’s a normal price setting
function of free markets that doesn’t mean its rational.
~~~
CM30
So people shouldn't have a blog, since people read that content instead of
paid books, magazines or newspaper articles? Or post videos on YouTube,
because TV and films aren't free? Or work on open source software, since that
might save people the need to buy software from companies that are selling?
Truth of the matter is, an awful lot of things that were previously
commercially viable simply aren't any more because people are happy giving
them away for free or releasing them with ad support. Few people will buy a
web browser or CMS or programming language compiler/interpeter/envrionment,
because free competition has made commercial ones obsolete.
Either way, it's just life. Things that were once expensive services only
available to wealthy became commoditised and affordable for pennies, and new
types of business became viable in their place.
So if you're running a company selling a form service and free competition is
outcompeting you, then you'll have to adapt or die like anyone else. Or find
some value proposition people are willing to pay for in that area (support,
customisations, lots of new features, a glossy design, etc).
------
ixxivvix
I kind of hate the profanity being part of the branding, or anywhere else that
I’m going to use professionally. It’s pretty useless since it’s not actually
describing the service (what exactly does “no bullshit” mean for forms?), and
just detracts it and the team or developer who made it.
~~~
oftenwrong
What if they billed it as "formking awesome"?
~~~
sbruchmann
It doesn't have the same ring to it as "our prices are sofa king low"
------
redis_mlc
Looks like a good MVP, but the .io domain is a non-starter because of the past
registrar/mgmt. problems (ie. entire registrar and DNS being pwned.)
If anybody knows if .io mgmt. is professionally managed now, let me know.
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/10/io_hijacking_in_tra...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/10/io_hijacking_in_transition_cockup/)
~~~
specialist
Thank you for this. I wouldn't have known to even look. Now I wonder if there
are TLD and registrar auditing and rating surveys.
~~~
redis_mlc
FYI:
\- stick with .com
\- avoid .tv, or any islands/small kingdoms
\- .id is underfunded (lifetime domains, so no renewal fees)
\- research anything else
~~~
MildlySerious
Equally, something seems to be up with .af currently. Both Gandi and Namecheap
can't register those currently (only places I checked) and haven't been able
to for at least a week. No idea how long this has been going on.
------
TomGullen
You’re presumably storing a lot of personal data - perhaps inadvertently. How
are you handling the minefield of data protection?
~~~
hadtodoit
I don't think anyone is using his service, including himself. This page on his
personal website uses a google form.
[https://www.yupitszac.com/life-of-a-
contractor/](https://www.yupitszac.com/life-of-a-contractor/)
~~~
yupitszac
Of the hundreds of forms out there across the static properties that are mine,
and that I work on, it'll take time to convert them all.
As for user counts, one of the benefits of it being a personal project is that
I don't have to share or defend that. It's a service that's there, if you want
it feel free to use it. If not, that's completely okay too
I'll add that form to my list for conversion though, so at least thanks for
that :)
------
staticvar
Cool stuff. If you are interested in doing multipage forms and need something
that already has a form editor UI, check out the open source <tangy-form> and
<tangy-form-editor> web components. Disclaimer, I'm a contributor to those
projects.
~~~
swiley
Or just don’t do multi page forms because those are _very_ unpleasant.
~~~
karagenit
They definitely have their place. For example, if the answer to one question
affects which other questions are relevant it's nice not having to put down
"not applicable" in a bunch of answer boxes.
------
harrisreynolds
A bit more feedback after looking at your site.
First... put a live form on the home page.
Second... include a screenshot of the a live form, not just the backend of
form submissions.
Third, for extra credit... create a simple video of using the tool end to end.
Best of luck!
~~~
yupitszac
Thanks for the feedback! It's still a super young service that I built and
work on in my spare time. I was already working on some blog posts, but the
video idea is perfect!
A live form, of course. People want to see how it works and play with it. I'll
get these put together and up soon! Thanks again for taking a look :)
~~~
apotropaic
Another idea along those lines... I like to play with the form builders before
creating an account. Shows what field types are available and how it works.
Maybe a demo site?
------
AussieCoder
Shameless plug - StaticForms
([https://staticforms.co](https://staticforms.co)).
It's not free because I want it to be sustainable, but also because it does
more than just capture form data and send you an email. You might not need
more than that, but if you do then it's probably even more important that it's
a sustainable business.
------
filvdg
We are running [https://formlets.com](https://formlets.com), wishing them the
best, i can tell one thing from experience, we have a free offering too, 100%
free is not sustainable,you will need payed accounts to get a sustainable
business, within weeks to months (depending on the popularity) the phishing
people will find your service and you will need a full time person to track
them and remove the forms or your reputation will be toast. Its a brutal
market to be in.
------
harrisreynolds
Looks good Zac! I love that you came straight out of the gate with "No BS".
Classic!
I've built a similar service but it also includes a website builder if anyone
here is interested. Check it out at
[https://www.webase.com](https://www.webase.com)
------
padseeker
I think one of the challenging parts of selling a form builder is trying to
figure out where you draw the line of free to paid. Do you limit the number of
submissions? Per month or forever? The number of forms? The number of inputs
per form? Access to the API? Integration?
------
jlelse
I built a self-hosted tool (for myself) that sends form submissions via email:
[https://git.jlel.se/jlelse/MailyGo](https://git.jlel.se/jlelse/MailyGo)
------
agentultra
> Form King is free, but ti doesn't have to be ugly
Spelling mistake there.
Nice looking site!
~~~
yupitszac
Thanks for the heads up :) I've pushed a correction
------
snake117
Thanks for sharing! Do you mind me asking what admin template you used for the
app? I'm searching for a decent admin template right now with a similar color
scheme.
------
victoriasun
This is great and super useful! The admin panels are shockingly well designed
for something that is free. Thank you!
------
eitland
One interesting thing: the landing seems to load pretty much instantly in both
safari mobile and ff mobile :-)
------
rmnclmnt
I'm sorry but no privacy policy and not an open-source/free-software? I find
it hard to believe it is "free" as in free beer...
Shameless plug: if you want a self-hosted AGPL-3 alternative with optional PGP
support, checkout "mailer":
[https://github.com/rclement/mailer](https://github.com/rclement/mailer)
------
martinald
I love how we are back to the world of cgi-bin formmail style services, after
about 20 years.
~~~
simlan
Yep exactly my thoughts.
------
sdan
You can do this with Netlify
~~~
lucasverra
paying after something like 100 submits..the value here is "free"
~~~
nvr219
100 free submits/month. I use this for my tiny side projects. Anything that
needs more I would want to pay for anyway (like everyone else said here)
------
time0ut
Is there a privacy policy? I couldn't find one, but maybe I didn't look in the
right place.
How do you intend to monetize? It is important to make sure your business plan
aligns with my potential use cases.
Small typo: it is misspelled as ti on the landing page.
It looks cool and I'll give it a try, but I need to know more than is
obviously apparent from your site before I can use it for real.
~~~
yupitszac
Thanks for the feedback :)
Privacy policy, yea. I gotta get one of those up. Incredibly important things
like that and terms of use should be sorted right away. This is one of the
things I forget about in my personal projects (like FormKing) that I really
should stop forgetting :)
As for monetization, that's not my goal. One thing I don't think I
communicated well is that this isn't a business. It's a personal project that
I intend to open source shortly. The cost for the service (hosting, domains,
etc) is super low so for right now I'm not looking to monetize.
Form King was literally just something I built for use with my websites that I
had a lot of fun working on. So I made it public
------
CoreSet
As someone who recently added a "fremium" / "free for solo developers" tiers
to their form service this is fascinating.
We give you unlimited forms but gate on submissions, offering more features /
submissions in higher tiers etc.
Reading the blog it doesn't look like there is anything malicious about
selling user data or some "you are the product"-type bait and switch, but with
one dev and no financial incentive I don't see how he keeps this going (No
knock to him, asking unlimited free work is a lot).
Forms seem like sort of a small thing, but you really want them to _work_.
Having a whiff on even a contact form can miss a lead and looks bad. And if
the service breaks, all of a sudden you have to change a bunch of source code
pointing to a defunct service, and hope they have an export function.
(shameless plug for the curious, since some people are suggesting services:
[https://formcake.com](https://formcake.com)
~~~
aroch
Shouldn't your tag line be "The Form Backend Built For Developers", with
"built" not "build". And a little more unsolicited feedback: the
rendering/display of code example under /How It Works/ looks kind of sloppy --
I think it might actually look better when JS is disabled. Similarly, not a
big big fan of the fullwidth Codepen embed.
~~~
CoreSet
Thank you for the feedback!
------
satvikpendem
Reminds me of StaticKit ([https://statickit.com](https://statickit.com)) by
Derrick Reimer who built Drip and co-hosts the Art of Product podcast. There
might be some interesting lessons if you listen to their podcast, many of
Reimer's insights on static site forms are made public through it.
~~~
CoreSet
The funny part about this too if you listen to the podcast is that Derrik
Reimer is ending statickit because he is having trouble monetizing it /
finding product-market fit with static sites.
~~~
satvikpendem
Interesting, I haven't listened to the latest episodes. Netlify already has
forms, as do other vendors, so I don't see too much of a use for StaticKit,
unless you host your site on your own servers rather than a CDN.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Robot That Climbs Walls - toni
http://www.unews.utah.edu/p/?r=080310-1
======
brianbreslin
they should put a video of it, and if there is a video, make it easier to
find.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IPFS: The Permanent Web - adefa
http://ipfs.io/
======
greenyoda
Extensive discussion of IPFS from yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8069836](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8069836)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Do We Need to Sleep? - nature24
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/the-mystery-of-sleep-pressure/549473/?single_page=true
======
krausejj
[https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-
Dreams/dp/1501...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-
Dreams/dp/1501144316) is a fantastic new book on the subject, if you're
interested in going deeper
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Motorola's Montage Javascript app framework - farski
https://github.com/Motorola-Mobility/montage
======
hinathan
Is this a downstream result of work done by the 280 North team? Meanwhile,
Github "Issue count" = 280, heh.
~~~
Zelphyr
I thought the same but I asked one of the core dev's and he wasn't even
familiar with Atlas. So, no.
------
stu_k
Hi HN, others and I have been working on this inside Motorola and can answer
any questions you have. You can also join us on
irc://irc.freenode.net:6667/#montage :)
~~~
chrisrhoden
Two questions:
1) Another full stack JS Framework? What makes this special?
2) What interest does Motorola have in JS Frameworks?
~~~
stu_k
A few of the things we think makes Montage special are
* very fast, realtime, two way, object to object bindings (non DOM based)
* reusable components built using regular HTML, where markup and behavior are completely separated (see the .reel directories under ui/)
* based on CommonJS, with complete script dependency loading
Edit:samples now up at <http://tetsubo.org/docs/montage/samples/>
We are also developing an HTML5 and Montage authoring tool, built using
Montage: <https://github.com/Motorola-Mobility/ninja>
~~~
jonaldomo
The kitchen sink example required authorization. How does one get credentials?
~~~
stu_k
Thanks, we're looking into it and it should be fixed soon
edit: now working <http://tetsubo.org/mot/montage/examples/sink/>
------
PetrolMan
Is it wrong that when I see the term data binding I have bad flashbacks of
Silverlight/WPF development?
~~~
de90
What is wrong with data binding? I only know the basics of it but I find it
pretty useful. Is there something I am missing?
~~~
untog
There are purists that would insist that data binding is always less efficient
than writing your own bare metal approach.
Largely, they are right. But the time invested in doing so could often be
spent elsewhere, while your data-bound forms work "just fine".
------
aklofas
Is it just me or are all the examples slow as balls. I thought there was a js
rendering error or something, but no, the kitchen sink took 30 seconds to
load!?!
~~~
yawgmoth
It loaded quickly for me, despite the poor network here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unison: A Content-Addressable Programming Language - sillysaurusx
https://www.unisonweb.org/docs/tour/
======
scribu
Discussed recently:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22009912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22009912)
------
macawfish
I'm hardly half way through this talk:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvENPX0MAZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvENPX0MAZ4)
But I'm already completely convinced that _every_ language should have these
features! Especially languages used for the web.
------
d--b
I don't really understand the benefits of this.
I can think of: avoid binary code duplication - cause everytime you see a hash
you've already come across, the compiler can jump to the already defined code.
But that sounds like a lot of jumping around.
The website says "it eliminates builds and most dependency conflicts, allows
for easy dynamic deployment of code, typed durable storage, and lots more."
but I don't understand this.
If your code says "I depend on that hash", then the runtime needs to locate
where the binary code that corresponds to that hash is located. And that's a
dependency problem to resolve.
If someone fixes a bug in a dependency, your program may not be able to locate
the hash anymore. You have to "re-build" your hashes everytime a dependency
changes.
Can someone write the benefits more clearly?
~~~
gridlockd
> If your code says "I depend on that hash", then the runtime needs to locate
> where the binary code that corresponds to that hash is located. And that's a
> dependency problem to resolve.
It's not a dependency _conflict_ though.
> If someone fixes a bug in a dependency, your program may not be able to
> locate the hash anymore. You have to "re-build" your hashes everytime a
> dependency changes.
Again, that's not a conflict. A conflict goes like this: Dependency A has a
breaking change, but Dependency B transitively depends Dependency A as well,
so you cannot update your own code until Dependency B also updates. Even if A
and B are updated, you are prevented from adding any dependency that hasn't
updated yet. You can't mix and match to use the old code in one place when you
need it.
This wouldn't be such a problem if programmers didn't break interfaces for
dumb reasons all the time, but they do, so lots of people just run older
versions of the software.
------
pcr910303
A TLDR from the past discussion[0] for the tour[1] based on my understanding
(please fix me if I’m wrong):
Unison is a functional language that treats a codebase as an content
addressable database[2] where every ‘content’ is an definition. In Unison, the
‘codebase’ is a somewhat abstract concept (unlike other languages where a
codebase is a set of files) where you can inject definitions, somewhat similar
to a Lisp image.
One can think of a program as a graph where every node is a definition and a
definition’s content can refer to other definitions. Unison content-addresses
each node and aliases the address to a human-readable name.
This means you can replace a name with another definition, and since Unison
knows the node a human-readable name is aliased to, you can exactly find every
name’s use and replace them to another node. In practice I think this means
very easy refactoring unlike today’s programming languages where it’s hard to
find every use of an identifier.
I’m not sure how this can benefit in practical ways, but the concept itself is
pretty interesting to see. I would like to see a better way to share a Unison
codebase though, as it currently is only shareable in a format that resembles
a .git folder (as git also is another CAS).
[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22010510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22010510)
[1]:
[https://www.unisonweb.org/docs/tour](https://www.unisonweb.org/docs/tour)
[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-
addressable_storage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-
addressable_storage)
------
choeger
Very interesting approach. One thing comes to mind though: in a large
codebase, patching a fundamental definition (say, map or foldl) will take a
long time, right?
~~~
0xCMP
It'd actually be faster because it only updates the _references_ to the old
code wherever they are. All the code simply uses its existing references.
[https://www.unisonweb.org/docs/tour/#names-are-stored-
separa...](https://www.unisonweb.org/docs/tour/#names-are-stored-separately-
from-definitions-so-renaming-is-fast-and-100-accurate)
~~~
gryfft
Processing the implications of that was the point while reading this that I
got _really_ excited to try this out. I wasn't expecting to see so many
curiosity-piquing features.
------
fnord77
> the technology for creating software should be thoughtfully crafted in all
> aspects.
lost me right here. fetishizing software "craftsmanship" isn't going to make
the software run better. It might make it more maintainable. But even then
it's better to have a well-designed, efficient system with poorly crafted
components than artisanal for-loops
~~~
madsbuch
Yesterday's artisanal for loops is today's functional combinators widely
supported in mainstream programming languages.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Website Builder Webflow (YC S13) to Exceed $200M Valuation in New Funding - ballmers_peak
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/website-builder-webflow-to-exceed-200-million-valuation-in-new-funding?pu=hackernewsqf889u&utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=unlock
======
vlokshin
Congrats. They deserve it.
Even though my company focuses on front-end dev, we still use webflow for our
marketing website because it's _that_ easy.
They're by far the closest to achieving what Dreamweaver once set out to.
Works best when used for marketing websites and when mixed with a basic
respect for CSS.
(1) Idea > (2) Make page in something that feels like figma/sketch > (3)
Publish ... is such a pleasant workflow.
~~~
basch
Webflow seems like a perfect acquisition for Microsoft to take on Adobe. I
agree, it is the modern Dreamweaver.
Microsoft could, in one week, acquire Serif (Affinity), Black Magic (Davinci
Resolve), Webflow, photopea.com, squarespace and have a day 1 full feature
competitor to Adobe Creative Cloud. Microsoft Creator 365.
Im kind of shocked they have moved into the marketing cloud sector against
Adobe, Salesforce and Oracle, but ignored creative tools while allowing
companies like Serif to reinvent themselves overnight.
------
meemoo
FYI: the information in this article is inaccurate. See the August 7th Forbes
article for the correct information:
* [https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2019/08/07/webflow-w...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2019/08/07/webflow-went-from-near-bankruptcy-to-72-million-series-a/)
* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20636476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20636476)
------
StanAngeloff
We tried and used Webflow extensively in our company for about 2 years. It was
great for most tasks and we could get up and running fairly quickly. Sadly our
UI dev team never fell in love with it and slowly but surely Webflow faded to
the background. I noticed our subscription had run out a couple of months ago
and nobody had since complained. Brilliant piece of software, however if you
are someone who operates on the code level, never quite good enough.
------
humanbeinc
Webflow was definitely a gamechanger in terms of All-in-one CMS. It lacks a
thousand features, but the core value of the product is just too good:
Creating new pages in a few minutes (with reusing lots of components), hand it
over to the content team, you're done...
------
fillskills
Congrats! Used webflow for 2 yrs to launch my last startup. That was 4 years
ago. And now using it again for the next one. The CMS is new and what a
wonderful thing it is. Love the thought they put into releasing very polished
product. Great work!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Concurrency in Go - chaitanyav
http://chaitanyav.github.io/2014/08/22/concurrency-with-go/
======
monoid
[http://talks.golang.org/2013/bestpractices.slide#25](http://talks.golang.org/2013/bestpractices.slide#25)
=)
~~~
chaitanyav
Thank you, Added the link to the post.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Python 3.8.0a1 is now available for testing - edmorley
https://pythoninsider.blogspot.com/2019/02/python-380a1-is-now-available-for.html
======
luhn
Notably new is the assignment expressions [1]. This was quite controversial
and the battle around it caused Guido to step down as BDFL [2].
I personally think it's quite a nifty feature. I often end up writing
something along the lines of:
result = do_something()
if result:
do_more(result)
Now that can be expressed as:
if result := do_something():
do_more(result)
It definitely has the potential to be abused and reduce readability, but
applied well I think it can increase readability.
[1] [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0572/#relative-
precedenc...](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0572/#relative-precedence-
of) [2] [https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-
committers/2018-Jul...](https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-
committers/2018-July/005664.html)
~~~
muhbags
It is definitely useful, but it severely reduces readability in my opinion.
Your example is also a great example for this. The first version in way more
readable than the second version with the walrus operator.
~~~
gonational
I agree with you.
It's very exciting to remove these sorts of redundant lines, but I cannot
train my brain to intuitively view that line as it will be interpreted.
There is one case where the benefit, IMHO, far outweighs the negatives, and
that can be seen in slides 30-31 of Dustin Ingram's slideshow[1].
PEP 572... the day Python jumped the walrus.
1\. [https://speakerdeck.com/di_codes/pep-572-the-walrus-
operator...](https://speakerdeck.com/di_codes/pep-572-the-walrus-
operator?slide=30)
~~~
legostormtroopr
I can't take a programming talk seriously if it declares in giant font "Less
lines are better" (slide 38).
Any C program can be written as a single line, with no linebreaks - that
doesn't make it "better" by any metric.
Python is built around its readability, and slide 44:
> group = match.group(1) if (match := re.match(data)) else None
is anything but. 'match' is assigned _after_ its first use, and it took me far
to long to mentally parse what it was doing.
~~~
maceurt
C is different than python though. Python already forces readability things
like forcing indent and newline. In most scenarios making a python program in
as few lines as possble will make the program more readible.
------
xtreak29
There were notable performance improvments with several positional argument
only functions made 1.3-1.7x faster in stdlib
[https://bugs.python.org/issue35582](https://bugs.python.org/issue35582).
namedtuple attr access is also now 1.7x faster
[https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/10495](https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/10495)
Other performance improvments :
[https://github.com/python/cpython/pulls?q=is%3Apr+sort%3Aupd...](https://github.com/python/cpython/pulls?q=is%3Apr+sort%3Aupdated-
desc+label%3Atype-performance+is%3Aclosed)
------
nine_k
The key changes seem to be [PEP-572], a bunch of small backward-compatible
syntax changes, a bunch of AST (internal) changes, and bugfixes (of course).
# You can now write
if (match := pattern.search(data)) is not None:
# Do something with match
# or even
[y for x in data if (y := f(x)) is not None]
This is what I personally very much anticipated.
Also nice:
# This is now supported.
x: Tuple[int, int] = 1, 2 # No parens.
yield 1, 2, 3, *rest # No parens again.
[PEP-572]:
[https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0572/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0572/)
~~~
mikepurvis
That list comprehension is the most compelling case I've seen for this
functionality; far more so than the basic assignment + if.
~~~
nine_k
Yes, sometimes, writing a comprehension, I was dearly missing the `let` /
`where`, as seen in e.g. Haskell, or lisps.
------
Jeff_Brown
Are assignment expressions the only linguistic change?
For years,I've been holding my breath in Python for sum types, totality
checking, and an enforced, complete type system -- one where you can say "this
should be a list of lists of integers" and it won't let you put any other kind
of thing there.
(Yes, there are external typing solutions like PyPy, but last I checked they
did not offer complete type systems (you could specify that something is a
list, but not that it's a list of ints), nor did they permit totality checking
(so if type X is a sum type with two constructors X1 and X2, and f is a
function that takes an X as input, and you forgot to define what happens if f
is given an X2, it would not know to complain that you hadn't covered all
possibilities).
~~~
netheril96
> but not that it’s a list of ints
Python type annotations do support such use case: List[int].
~~~
Jeff_Brown
Just tried it. What's the point of type signatures if the compiler won't hold
you to the promises you've made? This is in Python 3.6.4:
>>> def f (x:int) -> int: return x+1
...
>>> def g (x:str) -> str: return f(x)
...
>>> g(1)
2
I expected a complaint after the second definition: I specified that g takes
and returns a string, and then defined it to take and return an int. Not only
did Python not catch the error at compile time (defining g), it didn't even
catch it at runtime (calling g).
~~~
detaro
Type annotations are just that: annotations. They currently have no meaning to
the CPython interpreter and are purely consumed by external tooling (IDEs,
there's a static typechecker called mypy, ...) or code that chooses to use
them (e.g. there's web frameworks that convert and validate parameter types
according to the signature of the handler function)
------
ian-g
I wonder if anybody has seen anything happening about PEP 582 for a local
packages directory. It's definitely something I'd like to see implemented
------
just_myles
I have done a lot of work in Postgres pgsql writing functions and procedures
and the walrus operator is an assignment operator. Welcome all :D .
~~~
mixmastamyk
It is also assignment in Pascal, though doesn't return the value.
------
mistrial9
I am a proponent of LTS for Python 2.7x and existing libraries. This walrus
operator is a fine new feature, for those that want it in Python 3.8x and
beyond. Sorry, not sorry !
~~~
ma2rten
I can't wait for 2020.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Shall we fork Debian? - walterbell
http://debianfork.org
======
almost
> only few of us have the time and patience to interact with Debian on a
> voluntary basis.
This might present a problem if they actually do try and fork it. I imagine it
would take more time a patience to run a competing fork than to interact with
current Debian.
Not that a fork is necessarily the wrong thing to do if your ideas of what
Debian should be differ enough from where it's going. It's just that it sounds
like it would be a fair amount of work :)
------
dz0ny
Duplicate
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8477659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8477659)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is there any one book or resource on search engine development & theory? - rneufeld
I'm working on a search engine for a web application I am developing and realized I really didn't know that much about making search engines. I've taken a bit of AI & Expert Systems in school but never really run into any books specifically on developing search engines. Do any such books exist? If so, recommendations?
======
rmobin
Gred Linden likes Introduction to Information Retrieval: [http://www-
csli.stanford.edu/~hinrich/information-retrieval-...](http://www-
csli.stanford.edu/~hinrich/information-retrieval-book.html) (free online).
------
xinsight
This article gives a wonderful overview of the challenges:
"Why Writing Your Own Search Engine Is Hard"
<http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=988407>
(site is down currently.) google cache:
[http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:13tlOSQwtjAJ:queue.acm.o...](http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:13tlOSQwtjAJ:queue.acm.org/detail.cfm%3Fid%3D988407+writing+a+search+engine+is+hard&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=safari)
------
michael_dorfman
There are some ACM/IEEE journals that have relevant papers, but you have to
ask yourself: is reinventing the wheel what you really want to be doing? Given
that there are lots of available COTS solutions, shouldn't you be focusing on
things that are unique to your app?
(Needless to say, if the search engine needs _are_ unique to your app, and a
COTS solution isn't viable, you might want to bring in someone with relevant
expertise.)
~~~
gtani
spot on. OP: Are you asking how basic tf-idf works, or is there something you
can't get lucene / SOLR / sphinx / tsearch to do easily?
nevertheless, here are some good background materials (search amazon on "data
mining"
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1584504609>
[http://www.amazon.com/Data-Mining-Practical-Techniques-
Manag...](http://www.amazon.com/Data-Mining-Practical-Techniques-
Management/dp/0120884070/ref=pd_sim_b_8)
Also the Collective intelligence by Satnam alag is quite good (a lot of java
code to wade through tho
~~~
rneufeld
To be honest I hadn't even heard of tf-idf before you mentioned it. It is
definitely not the case I am stepping beyond the bounds of something like
sphinx.
I basically want to lay a bit of foundation before I start mucking around with
something I have no idea about.
I have a couple e-books on Data Mining but I didn't think it was applicable.
Are Data Mining and Search two things closely intertwined?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SenderDefender open beta, client side encrypted big file transfer - mbranton
https://www.senderdefender.com/
======
mbranton
Hi guys,
Looking for testing and feedback, let me know what you think.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bing sees things differently - koops
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3604/3585051300_d23a37a32e_o.png
======
RiderOfGiraffes
I saw this 8 hours ago via this link:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=635819>
It took me ages to see what the point was, but when I did I was unsurprised.
Perhaps that's a comment on my expectations and world-view, rather than on the
actual content.
I wonder how they get these different results. Do they deliberately massage
the results? Do they hand pick the searching? Or is it something else.
Answers on a postcard ... (now _there's_ a web-app waiting to happen)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Less Lag, More Frag - Eset Tee Shirt - help me get one please - teksquisite
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150202013805908&set=a.10150158319155908.331653.56844830907&theater
======
teksquisite
They are saying that it is NOT for sale. They "might" have a contest because I
have twittered and FB'd about wanting it. I have to have it. Hacker News
please help me get one!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MMO 2D Competitive Space Action Clone of Cosmic Rift - esuen
I've created a clone of 'Cosmic Rift' called 'Astral Rift'. It is played in the browser and made with Javascript, NodeJS and JoyJS.<p>The codebase and the gameplay instructions are here https://github.com/esuen/AstralRift.<p>The game is playable here http://www.astralrift.com.<p>Please try it out and give me feedback.
======
JesseAldridge
Some notes:
Add stars to the background for orientation.
Make the ships a lot easier to control.
I escaped the arena by moving to the bottom-left corner and holding down.
Make the bullets move faster.
Add instructions; just "shift = mine; z = shoot; etc."
I didn't understand the life system. I guess getting hit makes you lose
energy, but so does shooting? I shot a guy a bunch of times but nothing seemed
to happen. Maybe add more feedback when you hit somebody?
Right now it's not very fun.
~~~
esuen
I'll be adding stars in the background soon.
Could you elaborate more on why the current controls are difficult? What could
make it easier?
Yes, there is a couple bugs with escaping the arena. I may make the bullets
faster.
Yeah, good point on adding instructions.
The life system is this: you're energy is both depleted when you are hit or
use a weapon.
More special weapons and features added later will add to the enjoyment of
this game.
~~~
JesseAldridge
I think more friction would make the controls easier. Right now it feels like
you're sliding on ice.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ten Dropbox Engineers Build Lossless 'Pied Piper' Compression Algorithm - boyd
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/08/28/2014238/ten-dropbox-engineers-build-bsd-licensed-lossless-pied-piper-compression-algorithm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29
======
CraftThatBlock
Look at the Github.. I laughed. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don't Create Objects That End with -ER - yegor256a
http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/09/objects-end-with-er.html?2015-10
======
dalke
You posted this 5 months ago, at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9174193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9174193)
, with 10 comments.
In that thread I gave what I consider to be substantive comments, and felt
that your responses were incomplete.
In addition to my concrete example of something useful named a "-reader",
other objects that end with an "-er"/"-or" include "generator",
"ParseTreeListener", "JavaLexer", "JavaParser", and "ParseTreeWalker". What
are your proposed better names or better design for those?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Atlantic: A Waking Nightmare for Covid Patients: PTSD - nixtaken
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_AKe07J7tE
======
nixtaken
Holy hell. This epidemic is going to teach everyone a thing or two about
anesthesia. Part of you does remember what happened to your body while you
were under. I had two operations as a teen and feel like they changed me
forever.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lambda Architecture - r4um
http://lambda-architecture.net/
======
lfl1001
Good, bookmarked
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Up with Downfly - bootload
http://gigaom.com/2007/07/11/downfly/
======
cmars232
Unfortunate name!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sprint Nextel Lost 1.3 Million Customers in Quarter - josefresco
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/technology/08nextel.html?ref=technology
======
iigs
The only thing keeping me with sprint is that I have a soft spot for the
underdog.
The device situation on CDMA is bleak, and Sprint aggravates it by not
allowing devices they didn't sell (ESN filtering) onto their network. Being
able to buy a GSM phone and drop your SIM in is rad.
------
josefresco
Buying Nextel for roughly $41 billion? Not such a great idea.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows - alphonsegaston
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/26/a-majority-of-millennials-now-reject-capitalism-poll-shows/?postshare=6201488310112857&tid=ss_tw
======
tabeth
In my experience, people who criticize this article are probably benefiting
from "capitalism" (the majority of people on here, I reckon, do), meanwhile
those struggling from inequality, not being here, will fail to have their
voice heard. And so the echo chamber ensues.
That being said, capitalism and having things like free healthcare and
education are hardly mutually exclusive. So I think the article's conclusion,
"In an apparent rejection of the basic principles of the U.S. economy...",
(more the poll) are a bit misleading.
Here's the actual poll, by the way:
[http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/28/little-change-in-
publ...](http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/28/little-change-in-publics-
response-to-capitalism-socialism/)
Thanks to twblalock for including the recent poll:
[http://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/harvard-iop-
spring-2016-po...](http://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/harvard-iop-
spring-2016-po..).
~~~
dnautics
alright. I'll bite. I have made almost no money in the past year, and my bank
account is nearly zero. I had a relatively middle class upbringing (but for
reasons I'd rather not go into) my family is currently bankrupt.
Capitalism (in the free markets sense) is great. The problem is that gobs of
money are stolen from poor people like me by the government through various
processes, the biggest of which is inflation. This money is largely
redistributed to cronies - the easiest of which to see are the big
contractors. Less obvious are the banks and directly profit off of low-
interest loans by flipping them to higher-interest borrowers, and even less
obvious is wall street (whose coffers are filled by middle class people pushed
into protecting their assets from inflation).
This is Capital-ism (in the marxian sense) -- the philosophy deciding that the
pursuit of capital is a good unto itself. Unfortunately, the state has decided
to attempt to 'harness' capitalism for its own idea of 'social good' which of
course basically taints the non-zero-sum nature of free exchange with the
zero-sum game of political hierarchy. The more this happens, the greater there
will be inequality. It's a direct consequence of the first principles, and is
unavoidable.
~~~
oconnore
If you have a bank account of almost zero, inflation can't possibly be
stealing money from you (unless you also have gobs of cash under a mattress
somewhere).
~~~
rocky1138
Except that the prices of everything rise every year.
~~~
dakrootie
Everything?
True, some prices have risen. But, if I may, here are some fun equations to
ponder.
1996 (Florida)
Minimum wage $4.25 Gallon of milk $2.73 Gallon of gas $1.26 Dozen eggs $1.31
2017 Minimum wage $8.10 Gallon of milk $3.31 Gallon of gas $2.41(was almost
$4.00, if I remember correctly a few years ago?) Dozen eggs $1.59
1996
Electronics (to do work, using one's natural talents, for example) Expensive.
2017 Electronics: Much cheaper. Adjusting for inflation: much, much cheaper.
Of course, with electronics, there are too many intricacies to list, but
here's a specific one. I bought a 512MB compact flash card in 2001, which set
me back $249. I think the last one I bought was 2 years ago, or so. It was $60
for 16 GB. I make my living taking pictures. What would 16 GB worth of
pictures have cost me in 2001?
I'm happy with these numbers. Simply put, let's think very carefully before
using absolutes.
~~~
dnautics
Since you've cherry picked your data to support an observation of no
inflation, do you also support not increasing the minimum wage?
~~~
dakrootie
There is acknowledgement of inflation in every one of my examples, save
certain electronics. I have no idea how to answer this question as I didn't
deny prices increased.
------
dsacco
This article is a lot of fluff. It opens with a survey that finds a majority
of millenials do not agree with capitalism.
Then it tempers that with the acknowledgement that "capitalism means different
things to different people" and that it's unclear if respondents favor another
system more, or just don't support anything.
Finally, it sort of meanders around with different people weighing in on what
this might mean or what the cause could be.
Nothing really...happened here. It would be nice to see an article (or survey)
that does a few things better than this:
1\. Engages with both the material and millenials in an intellectually
satisfying and nuanced way. Millenials are spoken about here not as members of
the conversation, but as specimens. Furthermore, there's frankly not a lot of
rigor in figuring out why millenials might not approve of capitalism other
than the garden variety "first-pass" analyses you can read elsewhere.
2\. Establishes greater rigor in both terminology and discovery. Maybe
"capitalism" should have been defined more rigorously in the study. Maybe
questions should have been less leading and asked about alternatives if
capitalism is not satisfactory to the respondents.
3\. Attempts to develop real conclusions instead of polarizing ones. Maybe the
survey shouldn't have asked about "capitalism" at all, but instead asked about
specific policies in a bipartisan manner. Avoiding the difficulties that make
mistakes in my #2 point would be a significant improvement.
In fact, at this point I'm not sure if the goal was to honestly engage with
the material or millenials at all at this point, or if there is an agenda for
pushing out articles that paint huge demographics with such a broad brush. I
don't _like_ feeling that way or questioning this, but it doesn't feel like a
real attempt was made here. I honestly left this piece without being able to
make any real conclusions. I'm a millenial myself, so take that for what it's
worth.
------
Gustomaximus
The cold war branding of anything communism/socialism as evil is being seen
through as rhetoric, and more people are seeing merit of using blends of
governance than pure free market. People 50 years ago had to support one
system of face real consequences.
We can now debate the merit of concepts like "privatise luxury, socialise
necessity" without being a 'commie bastard'. With the irony being socialist
policy was far more in place and accepted 60 years ago when people were so
anti-Russia and communism/socialism.
I really hope nations leaders can hear this because if they keep pushing
people down with income disparity, access to a reasonable living and
opportunity the pressure will build up for a bigger push-back, and potentially
something dangerous if driven by anger/desperation rather than a common will
to succeed.
I feel this is one of many strengths of democracy where it should allow
pressure values to pop safely and society realign much earlier and easily than
other government styles.
~~~
edblarney
"The cold war branding of anything communism/socialism as evil is being seen
through as rhetoric"
I can hardly believe that anyone who was alive during the 'cold war' would
ever say that.
I grew up in an immigrant community in Canada, and most of my friends fled
those disastrous, oppressive and totalitarian 'communist paradises' all over
E. Europe, China, Vietnam, Cuba - and also - Sweden, by the way. Nordic
countries were extremely socialist during the 1950's to mid 1980's.
If you were to try to say this in front of my friend's parents, they'd
'trigger', and kick you right out of the house in anger.
My uncle escaped Communist Hungary as a boy, literally, at night, running
through the forest with soldiers chasing he and his mother.
I also remember the very real threat of a nuclear holocaust, in the 1970's to
late 1980's it was a very, very real and tangible things.
You can try to 'debate', that's all fine, but communist utopian (read:
dystopian) ideals seemed pushed by young naive people in every generation.
It's almost as though they don't grasp the lessons of history.
There'll always be need for 'constant vigilance' against oppression by
capital, fleeced consumers etc. - but socialism and especially communism are
unmitigated disasters.
Communists are definitely 'dirty'. They represent, in reality - the world's
greatest movement of mass murder and oppression. The paradox of the constant
attraction to communism lies in their apparent goodwill: hey, who wouldn't
want 'equality' and 'food for everyone' , yada, yada? Sounds great! Reality is
a little harder and sometimes takes time to grasp.
"privatise luxury, socialise necessity". Defining 'luxury and necessity' is
the root of that statement.
In Poland, just before the fall of communism, they had only Vanilla, Chocolate
and 'Pink' ice-cream, because anything else was bourgeois (i.e. a luxury), and
banned. In Bulgaria, there was no ice-cream. :)
Food is definitely on some level a 'necessity' and we definitely have not
socialized that. Maybe we can make sure everyone gets healthcare without
socializing too hard as well.
~~~
Clubber
The problem with the theory of communism economics is we've only seen it
implemented a few times, and they've all been terrible.
Communism, I believe, was to be implemented in a post industrial country. When
Russia implemented it, they were pre-industrial, and during a massive war.
As an aside, Germany actually shipped, by train, an exiled Lenin to Russia to
destabilize it during WWI.
~~~
Retra
The problem with communism is the same problem with unregulated capitalism:
when you give extraordinary power to a small minority, everyone else suffers.
There's also the problem that violent revolutions are extremely risky, and are
unlikely to result in anything but a dictatorship, exacerbating the previous
point.
Most failed communist communist governments have these problems, as do most
failed capitalist governments. Until you have a peaceful transition into a
communist system properly hardened against corruption, you'll have little real
reason to believe it is any more flawed than capitalist economies.
~~~
Clubber
I don't think you can reasonably compare the suffering of any capitalist
society with the suffering of Soviet Russia, especially in the 1930s.
~~~
RugnirViking
You can try
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company#Confl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company#Conflicts_and_wars_involving_the_VOC)
------
jstewartmobile
I think the rub is that the public debate confuses the triumph of the old
British system of aristocracy and privilege with "capitalism". Just as they
had the "corn laws" in the early 19th century, we have pharmaceutical import
bans, region coding, the "dutch sandwich" and many many other _privileges_ to
keep the winners winning with a minimum of effort.
If that's what passes for capitalism, who wouldn't reject it?
People spend too much time debating economic systems when the fundamental
problem is a public neglect of equal justice under the law.
~~~
smokestack
Equal opportunity, not "equal justice under law". Capitalism favors those who
are lucky. It's nothing to do with law.
Edit: who wouldn't reject these things if they weren't benefiting from them
(vast majority of people)?
~~~
jstewartmobile
It has everything to do with the law.
If a small bank got into the insurance business prior to financial services
dereg of 1999, it would have been _crucified_ by the feds. Citibank and
Travelers did exactly that, but since our justice and regulatory structures
are pay-for-play, and their market capitalizations were high enough, they were
able to proceed without controversy.
On an individual level, our prison population is disproportionately black, and
disproportionately locked up on minor charges with an inadequate defense. A
prison stay has far-reaching consequences on wealth, employment, and social
status.
As a small business person, if I were to copy an idea from Apple (like, say
rounded corners), they would sue me into the ground (I think their suit with
Samsung is already over $1B). If they were to steal my idea, I would go broke
on attorneys fees long before I ever got to a courtroom.
Equal opportunity isn't worth much without equal justice under the law. You'd
have a good run, only to have the house take back all the winnings in the end.
------
mindcrash
Yes, because a society based on Marxism will be _so much better_. Because that
is the big idea right? Marxism?
But these millenials who seem to think they are all smarter than everybody
else forget one thing: of all the things we tried capitalism and democracy are
the _least destructive_ forms of governing society.
Or as Jordan Peterson, a tenured psychologist, has stated several times
already: "Those who claim 'With us this time it (Marxism) will become so much
better' have no idea what they are talking about"
------
mc32
So, what they really mean is that they want less globalization... rather then
less capitalism... and we know many older voters also voted for less
globalization... so it's like both young and old, stung by globalization and
financial crises want to retrench?
~~~
nostrademons
That doesn't follow from the article. What it said, explicitly, was they want
less _crony capitalism_.
Globalization itself isn't bad. Globalization where the playing field is
rigged so that you need to be a billion-dollar corporation to participate in
the spoils is.
~~~
mc32
On the one hand globalization is good --despite cries of "imperialism"
globalization has done more to deliver people from abject poverty than
anything else --I'd argue much better than if native socialism had taken place
and disallowed "imperialistic" global companies from setting foot. Even the
Doles and Chiquitas, much maligned for making banana republics out of
countries, had a positive impact on those countries... See the alternatives,
Bolivia, Paraguay, Myanmar, Nepal, etc. countries where these imperialistic
global companies did not set foot and "exploit" the locals.
On the other hand, it does take away from the poor people in developed
countries like the US, Japan, the UK, Australia, South Korea, etc. when their
economies seek out cheaper labor to make their economies work. If we didn't
have imported labor for farm workers for example, we might pay more for
grocery goods, etc but we'd have people who are currently out of a job making
some money working on farms --working on farms _isn't that much worse_ than
working at a McD or Walmart. It's be kind of like grocery goods are in Japan
--good quality, but expensive picked by their own farm workers -with the aid
of automation.
In addition to that, Globalization has not only enabled seeking cheap labor
but also seeking "cheap" regulation and government through globalization. And
these kids of things either enable or exacerbate things like the financial
crises.
------
twblalock
This is like those surveys that show a majority of Americans oppose Obamacare,
but a majority favor almost all of the individual policies that comprise
Obamacare when the word "Obamacare" does not appear in the survey.
What I would like to see is a survey that asks people their opinions on
certain characteristics of capitalism, without mentioning the word
"capitalism." I think the results would be very different.
~~~
waisbrot
But it's interesting to see that "capitalism" is becoming a dirty word, when
in the cold-war era it was the opposite of "communism" which was a synonym for
"evil".
~~~
twblalock
Yet "socialism" is an even dirtier word according to the survey results. What
we really have here are young people who are fed up with the low level of
economic opportunity available to them, relative to the level of opportunity
they expected to have.
~~~
mindcrash
You are not looking for the word "socialism". The word you are looking for has
the highest approval rating in this poll. Then everything makes sense.
------
eli_gottlieb
_Arise ye prisoners of starvation! Arise ye wretched of the Earth. For justice
thunders condemnation, a better world in birth._
I mean, sure, most Millenials probably equate capitalism with neoliberalism
and socialism with social-democracy, but hey, given that interpretation, yeah,
neoliberalism has ruined quite a lot of our lives.
------
friedman23
Most people do not even understand what capitalism is thanks to the term
becoming conflated with greed. And as the poll shows, not supporting
capitalism doesn't mean supporting socialism.
~~~
nickthemagicman
Keynesian demand side capitalism has proved to be great.
Unregulated supply side economics appears to lead to massive exploitation and
monopolies.
That being said socialism and capitalism work together everyday in America.
See highways, education, plumbing, etc.
It has been argued that Socialism/government regulation is needed for
Capitalism to work optimally.
~~~
friedman23
If we are going to call every government with a highway system and a free
healthcare system socialist the word becomes meaningless.
------
schoen
(2016)
I'm curious what the results would be for "free enterprise", "free markets",
or "private property".
------
raleighm
Issues it would be helpful to unbundle when talking about capitalism:
Contract law. "Capitalism" here usually means private voluntary agreements are
very sacred or absolutely sacred.
Property law. "Capitalism" here usually means a rule of first possession.
Tax law. "Capitalism" here usually means a presumption against taxation,
especially if redistributive in purpose.
Limited liability. "Capitalism" here usually means possibility of absentee
investors.
Fiduciary duties. "Capitalism" here usually means duty to maximize
shareholders' economic value.
Antitrust law. "Capitalism" here, as term is used by self-perceived opponents,
usually refers to corporate bigness.
Etc.
Was Thomas Jefferson capitalist? He hated bigness in all forms.
Was Thomas Paine capitalist? He thought rule of first possession was useful
because easy to administer but proposed something akin to universal basic
income.
Important to be clear, as many others have noted in the comments.
------
otempomores
The problem with whishing for socialism in a divided democracy is that the
owners will align with any dictator available to keep what they gained. So
higher taxation and redistribution within legal boundaries is discussable.
Disowning is destroying the democracy and a sure way to start a civill war.
------
oliwarner
I don't think this is anything particularly new. There's a pretty old saying
(that is constantly mis-attributed[1]):
> If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a
> conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
Within a capitalist society, young people on the whole have less, but have to
work for everything. After a decade or two working to earn stuff, you feel
like other people should do that too. You can chase the reasons why down a
million psychological rabbit holes.
That said, there's no reason why this would not be _more true_ now than it
ever has been before. Adjusting for inflation, we're paid the same as our
parents but houses and rent is 10× what it was for them. (At least in the UK)
the post-war decade-long housing boom flooded the market with cheap but good
stock. Councils used to build for their own social care, and these eventually
went on the market too. Now we only get mega-developers holding land until
they get approval for high-density crappy houses.
That's a very distinct shift from socialised building projects to capitalist
building. And it's skewed our entire economy, and really hobbles anybody on a
lower income without a house to inherit.
[1]: [http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-
head/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/)
------
squarefoot
Capitalism per se isn't wrong, but becomes extremely dangerous if left
uncontrolled as it is today. What is _very_ wrong and dangerous with
capitalism is the lack of a line dictating when an entity should stop amassing
power and wealth, especially when limited resources are involved. You can
print infinite money but you can't create infinite land as the planet surface
isn't infinite, which one day will lead us to the point when a few extremely
rich people will own the entire Earth surface.
------
Jotra7
So much no true Scotsman about capitalism in here it's not funny.
------
carsongross
“The Reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong
about what is right.”
― G.K. Chesterton
------
tmoot
It seems like publishing standards have really sank.
~~~
ssalazar
Capitalism at work!
------
Tokkemon
My grandfather had to live under communist rule. Capitalism is fantastic
compared.
------
salesguy222
Any political/economic system will have individual actors that destroy the
lives and wellbeings of others.
if your system can prevent these people from wielding such power, i'd like to
hear how!
~~~
gremlinsinc
Part 1: Caps on Exec pay - 25x avg salary for first x # of employees, as you
add more employees over your baseline that multiplier goes up for example
every 1000 employees = 1x so hire 10k and now you're able to earn 35x median
wage -- i.e. more employees = more money for execs, as wages increase that
also = more money for execs. That handles the corporate side of the
corruption.
Part 2: Enact the Anti-corruption act in every governmental capacity from
mayorships to congress to ban all money in politics.
Part 3: Members of congress can earn no more than the average salary of an
American Citizen, and their healthcare plan is--the same as the average
American w/ no perks above what American's get.
Part 4: Term limits for congress, not life-time bans, but you can only server
in congress non-congruent terms, meaning you can't serve back to back, someone
else has to take your place for a term. More lifeblood bled into congress
can't be a bad thing.
~~~
dustinblake
There's a major problem with term limits. Let's say we fix the House of
Representatives so that instead of constantly having to run for (re)election
with two year terms, we change them to 4 year terms but limit them to 2.
Ignoring the major changes that the committee chair/assignment system would
require, no longer having a wide range of seniority, the entire body would
suffer because the most experienced any legislator could be would be those
elected to their second term, i.e. years 5-8 of their House career.
Why is this not good? Who also resides in Washington DC and interacts with
legislators, with virtually no limits on their length of involvement in this
game? Lobbyists. You set up a system where the Legislators are effectively
perpetual newbies with an extremely broad scope of issues they must interact
with and influence for the best. Lobbyists with just a decade of experience
will know far more than any legislator. There's already a lot of legislation
is introduced that's provided verbatim from lobbyists... expect that to get
worse, not better, with an even more inexperienced elected officials.
We already have a system of term limits, it's called electing someone else.
Don't make it impossible to keep an excellent legislator who has the broad
support of their constituents; make it easier to elect someone new to replace
a bad one. With the insane costs of campaigning and getting elected, we'd all
be better served by simply reducing that barrier to a minimum. Publicly funded
campaigns also remove the influence of financial contributions.
------
EJTH
Sure they reject capitalism when they are asked, but will gladly buy an iPhone
or other consumer electronics designed to fail within a few years of normal
usage.
They will gladly post all their private information to Facebook for that warm
fuzzy feeling of people liking their updates, while they are being datamined
and their profiling sold to advertisers.
But when asked, then sure everyone is against capitalism.
------
mrschwabe
Reject taxation and monopolization, not capitalism.
~~~
astrange
Personally, I'm okay with two of those.
------
pizza
Maybe the way to read this is "willingness to embrace innovative alternatives
to the stagnation of current financial systems"
------
jitix
This article seems to be based on a small sample size. As an anecdotal
evidence, most millenials that I've met (I'm 29) are very pro-capitalism but
are liberals. In 2017 you should not mix the two - you can have a capitalist
economy that provides universal healthcare and education, and eventually even
UBI.
~~~
zurn
The article is paraphrasing a poll that was done by Harvard Institute of
Politics, that had 771 18-29 year old responders. I think that is a reasonable
sample size for this kind of poll.
------
known
Millennials are thinking Capitalism is a hindrance to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)
------
known
Millennials are confused; Unlike capitalism, globalization is zero-sum;
------
gydfi
Like most arguments about "isms" that do not have a single, rigorous
definition accepted by everybody, debates about "capitalism" are pretty
useless.
Karl Marx means one thing by the word, Ayn Rand means another, most other
people in between have other ideas (or vague fuzzy feelings) about it, and yet
everybody talks as if their own idea matches someone else's.
------
Grue3
A majority of millennials are idiots. News at 11.
~~~
dang
Would you please not post uncivil and unsubstantive comments to HN?
------
perseusprime11
Did we not learn that Capitalism failed a long time ago? Why else will we have
an Insurance system that is deeply incentivized to not cover your conditions?
Why else will we have an Education system that is deeply incentivized to
profit off your education and put you in debt for your life?
~~~
twblalock
You may not like capitalism, but it is an indisputable fact that capitalist
societies have higher standards of living, including for the poor, than
societies that use any other economic system. By that standard, it's more
successful than any other system, and hardly a failure, despite what other
problems is has.
By the way, the problems you describe about insurance (I assume you mean
health insurance) and the high cost of education are not characteristics of
most capitalist economies. The United States is an outlier in those areas.
Plenty of other capitalist countries have universal health care and free
education. Plenty of others have universal health care and non-free education.
Only the US has the double-whammy of expensive health care and expensive
education.
~~~
perseusprime11
How does Universal Health care and Free education play into the principles of
capitalism?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A cheaper, already available brydge competitor. (iPad = MacBook Pro) - nico_h
http://www.thefancy.com/sales/2273/ipad-notebookcase
======
SpenceAiello
No speakers on this one?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazing WebGL demo: A 4-dimensional rendering of a Klein Bottle. - sjwalter
http://tenfour.ag/n22d?ref=hn
======
sjwalter
Source for the renderer and the rest available on github.
<https://github.com/adrianbg/n22d>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
File sharing = theft is a "category mistake" - laika4000
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0813/1224276715223.html
======
wcarss
"throw someone off the internet? - is that some surreal metaphysical joke by
the Irish, British and French governments"
Good read - this would make for some excellent comedy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New Startup Offers Free Live Negotiation Course from MIT - negotiateup
https://negotiateup.com/courses/curhan
======
axiosgunnar
Is it only for people in the US?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Pirate Bay Will Stop Serving Torrents - llambda
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-will-stop-serving-torrents-120112/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
======
gojomo
Hey! I invented the magnet link, almost 10 years ago.
Great to see it still evolving and spreading, based simply on its loosey-
goosey merits.
~~~
nestlequ1k
It's weird, I've been seeing it for years but I never understood what it is. I
still don't really.
But when I click on the magnets things seem to download immediately. So looks
like you built something pretty amazing. Congrats!
~~~
zcid
It's basically a URI that contains the torrent hash enabling a client to find
peers through a decentralized network such as DHT instead of requiring a
tracker. I believe you can append trackers and other info to the URI as well,
but I'm not sure about that.
~~~
pyre
Note: DHT = Distributed Hash Table
------
chimeracoder
> Perhaps even better, without the torrent files everyone can soon host a full
> copy of The Pirate Bay on a USB thumb drive, which may come in handy in the
> future.
I've been saying this for _years_ : governments playing an arms race with
hackers is like playing Whack-a-mole or cutting of heads of hydras. Every time
you block one means of communication (starting in this case with Napster), a
new, more decentralized, harder-to-combat protocol is going to emerge. Even if
you're the MPAA and don't like copyright violations, you have to face that
fact. That doesn't mean you (necessarily) have to throw in the towel and
abandon the idea of copyright infringement altogether, but it does mean you
need to start being creative instead of engaging in a direct legal-
technological battle - an arms race.
I wonder how long it will take before the big players realize this and try to
figure out a way to use this new playing field (the Internet) to their
advantage, instead of trying to squelch any technological development so that
they can cling to old models of payment and distribution. It was nice while it
happened, but let's face it - we're past the point of no return. Even if they
everyone hosted their own copies of TPB on their thumb drives and then they
found some way to shut that down, I'm certain there'd be some hacker smart
enough (like gojomo above) to come up with something that just makes things
even less centralized, more difficult to track, and more difficult to shut
down.
~~~
Helianthus
The big players are defeated by the new playing field. There is no "their
advantage," there's just a major change in how we produce content.
It's away from exploitation of artists and the control of artistic message.
~~~
beedogs
The production, the marketing the, distribution... EVERYTHING has changed for
the music industry in about 15 years. They have no future unless the Internet
is tightly controlled (which it cannot be.)
~~~
cookiecaper
The RIAA and other major music industry players may have no future, but there
is definitely a profitable future for a "music industry" populated by entities
that are willing to adjust to the modification in distribution channels and
consumption habits.
As it stands, the old-fashioned fogies are simply in denial and doing their
best to prevent the marketplace from changing because they don't know how to
use the new technology and they don't know how to succeed in the new
marketplace. That doesn't mean that there's no future for the industry as a
whole, it's simply the way entrenched players eventually die.
~~~
GHFigs
_they don't know how to succeed in the new marketplace_
Who does, in your opinion?
~~~
chrisdroukas
I'm with you on this one. It's less that the RIAA and major labels 'don't know
how to use the new technology and...succeed in the new marketplace' so much as
we're currently (still) in an in-between stage of market control.
Take for example Radiohead or Louis CK. Their previous successes allowed them
to produce, release and distribute independently of big entertainment — but I
don't think we're at the point where a small independent artist can
effectively take their own music to market in a manner comparable to using a
label. I don't have data to back this opinion, but high profile successes in
independent distribution have been biased toward artists who were well-known
and previously successful.
~~~
dfxm12
I don't think it is fair to compare Radiohead or Louis CK to that of a lesser
known artist in this regard, because the bias is all in the media coverage.
Bands have been self releasing (outside of "big entertainment") since well
before digital distribution, because signing to a label isn't always feasible
(financially or creatively). Digital distribution makes just makes this even
easier.
You only know about Louis CK & Radiohead because that is that the media
covering. Digital distribution & artists self releasing material is happening
and has been for a while, but no one knows because unless they are already
into these lesser known bands & record labels. You have to think of it like
this: "Lesser known artists can be more successful by releasing their own
material digitally than they would by signing with a label." Or "This
independent record label can lower their overhead and make things easier for
their bands by embracing digital distribution."
------
Corrado
This site ([http://www.ghacks.net/2010/06/05/what-is-a-magnet-link-
and-h...](http://www.ghacks.net/2010/06/05/what-is-a-magnet-link-and-how-does-
it-differ-from-torrents/)) explains what Magnet links are and how trackers
have traditionally worked in the past.
~~~
ajtaylor
The original article had a link to this ([http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrents-
future-dht-pex-and-magne...](http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrents-future-dht-
pex-and-magnet-links-explained-091120/)) which I found a bit more helpful
explaining the concepts.
------
stfu
It is still fascinating how resilient not only Piratebay but also others such
as Demonoid have become. A few years ago it looked like they were close to
getting shut down. It is impressive how they are now able to withstand all the
"forces" and Governments had to shift their focus towards the ISPs.
------
ars
One drawback to magnet links is that you can not in advance see what files are
there.
So if you only want to download some of them, you first have to wait for the
magnet to download the torrent, then go back to it and pick the files you
want.
A magnet link also makes it hard to check if the link you are looking at is a
duplicate of what you have already.
With a torrent you can check the file size and compare to others.
~~~
ben0x539
There isn't really a reason the piratebay web interface couldn't display that
info for you anyway.
~~~
sp332
If users only upload the magnet file, the TPB wouldn't even know how big the
file is, unless their servers queried the DHT for the .torrent file and
extracted the data.
~~~
tdoggette
Right, that's what they'd have to do.
------
atlbeer
Can someone fill me in on the first step a client (BT) would take to find its
first peers? That part is a bit magic to me right now. What would be the first
IP it would query and how would it know?
~~~
bdonlan
There are three main methods (in order of preference):
1\. Use a cached list from a previous run. This is ideal in terms of load
balancing, and also helps with bootstrap time if your IP hasn't changed, so
all major torrent clients have such a cache.
2\. Ask peers you're connected to via a traditional tracker and .torrent file.
This is the next best thing, but can only be used if the first torrent you
download is via a traditional tracker.
3\. Use some bootstrap peers hardcoded into the torrent client. Has a single
point of failure, but it works.
Each torrent client can use a different set of bootstrap peers, note - they're
nothing special, just a DHT peer that has the bandwidth and CPU power to deal
with bootstrap requests (which isn't a very high hurdle - you only get hit
once, on the initial install, or if the client's been shut down for so long it
no longer has any valid peers). Or the user might even supply their own, if
need be.
~~~
kissickas
Thanks for the information, this part was always a mystery to me as well.
To clarify, if someone has never downloaded a torrent before and starts with a
rarely downloaded file, would the use of only magnet links mean they will
probably not be able to find another peer? It sounds like unless you already
have torrents downloaded, your list of possible peers to check for the file is
very short.
~~~
ianlevesque
If your client connects to just one peer you essentially gain access to the
entire bittorrent DHT network. As a dramatic simplification, your request for
the rare torrent would propagate until it found the peers seeding or
downloading it.
~~~
drewblaisdell
But what if the users sharing the file are also connecting for the first time?
It seems like if my friend wants to seed a file and I want to download it, it
only works if we knows peers (who know peers who know peers who...) know peers
of me. Is this correct?
~~~
gnoupi
In theory (assuming that there are links to everyone, and no way to have
separate networks) (it's of course a theory only, but seems very likely that
there are "massive users", who have files of "every kind", connecting the
different groups), as long as you both connect to one who is connected, it
will work.
Although this is quite the extreme case, and not really the purpose for
Bittorrent to begin with, I guess. The main interest is load balancing of
popular downloads, not finding the one person with the one file for you.
~~~
cookiecaper
I've actually found torrents to be a great way to share large files with a
friend. There's no invasive upload dialog or locking, no practical filesize
limitations other than the free space on my friend's computer, you don't have
to upload to a public-facing server before your associate can start
downloading, port forwarding is handled transparently by UPnP, client software
is user-friendly, easily available, and often already running anyway, and it's
easy to scale if another friend wants a copy at some point in the future.
Of course, TPB switching to magnets doesn't really affect this. Torrent files
are still used to provide information on the download, they're just
distributed from within the P2P network instead of TPB itself. If you have a
torrent file to share with an individual or small group instead of the whole
world, there's no reason to stop using torrent files directly.
------
tomkin
For a brief moment, the title sounded like TPB was going to blackout for "stop
SOPA day". Wouldn't that be funny.
~~~
bdonlan
If the TPB were to actively oppose SOPA, it would just give the SOPA
proponents more to work with - "Look, TPB is against it, so it must be a good
thing!".
~~~
nestlequ1k
Brilliant point. Pirate Bay's best approach is to laugh at SOPA and make clear
it will do nothing to stop them.
~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
Actually, one day the placed a video instead of their logo created by multiple
users with messages against SOPA, it was this one:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w6GtwOvnWM>
------
icebraining
So, what if you don't run the client on the same machine you're browsing TPB
with, like people who have torrent enabled routers or VPS/seedboxes? I suppose
you can copy-paste the link to your client, but clients which had automatic
pick-up of .torrent files (like rtorrent) were nice because you could just
drop them on a remote directory and have them be downloaded.
I wonder if I could write a small application just to download the torrent
file from the magnet link/DHT to copy it to the remote server afterwards.
~~~
botker
See the shell script in the top comment here:
<http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/ticket/2100>
I tested it, and it works as advertised.
For firefox integration, in about:config create a new boolean as:
network.protocol-handler.expose.magnet := false
For chromium integration, you need to use Xdg-open.
------
iamandrus
They announced that they were planning on doing this right when magnet links
came out. I haven't used .torrent files since I discovered magnet links and I
actually find they more convenient than downloading a torrent file.
------
Zirro
I've been using mostly magnet links for the past year and haven't experienced
any issues. If people understand that they work just like a normal
link/torrent file, this won't make the process any more complicated. Hopefully
this is another win in the long run, as links are harder to stop than files.
~~~
forgotusername
Only slightly as I understand it, since from a legal perspective the _intent_
of someone providing providing links instead of files doesn't change, and
that's what counts.
From a technical perspective, and as someone who doesn't understand how magnet
works under the hood, I'm slightly concerned that DHTs might be easier to
attack in an underhanded manner than an HTTP server would have been.
~~~
Zirro
"Only slightly as I understand it, since from a legal perspective the intent
of someone providing providing links instead of files doesn't change, and
that's what counts."
Indeed, but a link can be posted anywhere a user can post text. Here, have
Pioneer One:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3a4be1d48c31dfa62bf52958f3fdca3d5ce91cf1&dn=Pioneer%20One%20SEASON1.720p%20x264-VODO
I can see this leading to a block on many sites on all links starting with the
"magnet"-protocol, if it's not in place already. It also highlights the issue
with SOPA further. Had that series not been allowed to be shared, Hacker News
would be in big trouble for hosting the link.
~~~
Joakal
That would be a restriction of freedom of speech and Internet Freedom for
blacklisting magnet urls.
Linux Distro excuse comes to mind.
A cynical person might say that the intent would also further kill free
content creators, restricting the supply of content; consumers then see only
paid content.
~~~
Zirro
Sadly, that hasn't prevented censorship of "neutral" keywords before. See:
<https://torrentfreak.com/googles-anti-piracy-filter-110712>
~~~
Joakal
Wow, I didn't see this before. I can understand filtering certain terms for
court requests, but voluntarily? It looks like Google is attacking
distribution methods of content with such broad filtering. Probably to make
compromises with the anti-Internet activists. Now judges can interpret it to
mean that Google can happily censor any results for certain words as it has
been done in other anti-Internet regimes. What scumbags all round.
~~~
lambda
Note that this isn't filtering the terms for search, just filtering them for
auto-complete. As in, if I type "lord of the rings" it won't suggest "lord of
the rings torrent" even if that is the most common or one of the most common
searches beginning with "lord of the rings."
If you actually type "lord of the rings torrent" and hit return, Google will
still do that search and return relevant results.
They are doing this because for many pieces of popular media, the torrent
search was fairly high in the list of most popular searches, and they don't
want to be seen as suggesting that you download the torrent. Likewise, they
won't autocomplete obscene or porn related terms, but will still do searches
for them.
There is a difference between banning a term entirely from their search
engine, and deciding that it's not something that you want to suggest to
people who haven't requested it, to avoid suggesting illegal acts, avoid legal
trouble, avoid offending people, or the like.
~~~
Joakal
My concern was mostly due to this statement:
"This is something we looked at and thought we could make some narrow and
relatively easy changes to our Autocomplete algorithm that could make a
positive difference, Cano added."
They believe in filtering broad innocent terms in them as a solution to
copyright infringement rather than saying "No no, we can't filter broad terms,
especially innocent uses of it. Not only does the language evolve, but the
infringers can adopt innocent names like congress:<link to song>. We need to
intelligently handle copyright infringement without hurting access to
legitimate websites."
It looks like part of doing SEO now is to be aware of avoiding broad innocent
terms. I hope the unaware people don't get caught in Google's broad
autocomplete filter.
------
GBiT
Talking about magnet links I remembered KAD with ed2k and eMule. Its almost
same. Bittorrent with magnet links just have different chunk size possibility
to make faster download with smaller piece size.
~~~
Hemospectrum
According to Wikipedia, magnet links are in fact based on ed2k and Freenet
URIs.
------
jmtame
From what I understand, DHT has a big trade-off vs BitTorrent: DHTs are
crawlable[1] and copyright holders can more easily track who holds copies of
what yet it's easier to duplicate search engines like TPB within hours for the
same reason.
So the effect seems to be that the RIAA, MPAA, etc. will likely not be able to
take down trackers; they'll have to revert back to suing their "customers" (or
lobbying to pass absurd legislation for that matter).
[1] [http://z.cs.utexas.edu/users/osa/unvanish/papers/vanish-
brok...](http://z.cs.utexas.edu/users/osa/unvanish/papers/vanish-broken.pdf)
------
Fester
It seems that TBP just taken another step to push judge and jury's confusion
during next trials even further. "Y'know, we're trying to shut down pirates'
secret base that... doesn't serve a single file!"
------
sjmulder
What I’m wondering is whether it’s not yet possible to have a distributed,
decentralised torrent database.
You could already put up a copy of the database as a torrent and distribute
the magnet link, but you’d need some method for efficiently keeping it up to
date.
~~~
jxcole
DHTs/Torrents are great for static data (like a movie) but bad for dynamic
data, like a website with a list of movies, their ratings, user comments, etc.
There are, however, other systems that are designed to combat this, like
freenet. They tend to be overwhelmingly slow, because you need to pass lots of
data around to make it consistent.
Then again, magnet links, titles, and a little html are probably not a lot of
information, so it probably could be done. I just haven't heard of any
attempts yet. It's tempting to go and write one. Could you make a
decentralized, P2P version of reddit with distributed trust? I think it's
possible but hasn't been tried.
~~~
icebraining
I think the easiest way is to not make it really "dynamic" but an append-only
structure of static content. For example a Reddit thread might be
representable as a static list of actions (add reply, upvote, downvote, etc),
which the client would process to get the current state.
That way, you could immediately download an earlier version of a resource and
then get the updates as they spread through the network.
~~~
ComputerGuru
a la bitcoin.
They have a big problem in their design where currently it works exactly as
you described, and at "some unknown point in the future" when the database of
all transactions EVER in the history of bitcoin gets too big for each person
to have to have a copy of in order to add another transaction, they'll "figure
out a way" to make it unnecessary.
~~~
Natsu
Can't they somehow publish the current state of things, let anyone who wants
to verify it from the public record building a web of trust, then go from
there forward?
Or is there some subtle flaw in that idea?
------
pornel
I hope that before .torrent files are gone, they (or some scraper) will
publish them all as a torrent.
Somebody did that last time PB was in trouble, e.g. one of the pieces:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:4232363a47fe29acdf2c77874365a5e3368854b4&
That's a pretty interesting dataset to mine.
~~~
chimeracoder
Why? What would the point of the .torrent files be if the magnet links are
still there?
------
ward
> _This is topical, since this week courts in both Finland and the Netherlands
> ordered local Internet providers to block the torrent site._
Is there a list of countries where this has been ordered by courts? I know
it's already the case in my country (Belgium) as well[1].
[1]: [http://torrentfreak.com/belgium-starts-blocking-the-
pirate-b...](http://torrentfreak.com/belgium-starts-blocking-the-pirate-
bay-111020/)
------
nextparadigms
Since they are doing this big change, is there a way to make it more secure on
the user side, too? Like encrypt the traffic and make it impossible for RIAA
to track IP's?
Also since they say that it's like every user would have the TPB site on their
computer, does it mean blocking the site would be completely useless? And
since they are just links, and links are pretty much speech, I figure it would
be impossible to turn it into law as well, to specifically target magnet based
sites like TPB.
~~~
teraflop
The entire design of Bittorrent is predicated on clients advertising to each
other which torrents they're seeding and which pieces are available. You can
encrypt your traffic to get it past your ISP's deep packet inspection, but the
peer at the other end has to be able to decrypt it. And you have no way of
knowing what nefarious organization controls that peer.
------
afhof
Don't the torrent files contain all the hashes for each piece? Doesn't that
mean if a single piece is bad, the entire torrent can't be verified? Torrent
files contain a lot of useful data that isn't found in a magnet URI. Is this
just being ignored?
~~~
skymt
The hash in a magnet URI is of the info dictionary in the .torrent file. It's
used to query the BitTorrent DHT for peers running the same torrent. Once
another peer is found, your client will download the full metadata file from
it, and from there it works just like any other BitTorrent download.
<http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0005.html>
<http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0009.html>
------
sp0rus
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Not saying this is a good
step to increase piracy, but there really is no need for trackers when we have
magnets, and this will lead to a healthier bittorent community.
------
joejohnson
How does this change the process for uploading a new torrent to TPB?
~~~
Refringe
For the time being, nothing. However, once TPB goes full magnet you'll just
submit a link instead of a file. It should make the process easier.
------
instakill
Can anyone say what the gist of this article is? Blocked from torrent sites at
work.
~~~
keypusher
Piratebay will now serve magnet links by default instead of .torrent files.
For the average user, not much will change. For some particular use cases,
there may have to be adjustments.
------
jdefarge
Pirate Bay is the BEST torrent site ever created. It's a pity they are
switching to Magnet. :( It would be so cool if they provided both (Magnet and
Torrent)...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: weekend project – Quant finance academic paper aggregator - dia80
http://quantpapers.com
======
dia80
Hi all, thanks for taking the time to look would be interested your thoughts!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Climber Dean Potter Killed in Yosemite BASE Jump - eplanit
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/18/us/yosemite-base-jumpers-dean-potter-graham-hunt-deaths/index.html
======
huac
Rest in peace Dean Potter. This CNN article doesn't do his life justice at all
- the NYT did a bit better: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/sports/dean-
potter-extreme...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/sports/dean-potter-
extreme-climber-dies-in-jumping-accident-at-yosemite.html?smid=fb-
nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: asyncblock - Node.js async flow control built on fibers - scriby
https://github.com/scriby/asyncblock
======
keyston
Impressive work.. Next time I work with node I'll keep this in mind. One thing
that would be nice is the ability to chain blocks. I can't think of a example
at the moment but didn't see any examples that showed if this is possible
already or is that the purpose of .defer()?
~~~
scriby
Chaining blocks works, for instance something like:
var queryResult = getDatabase().sync(). getCollection().sync(). fetch({ query
}).sync();
Assuming all those are asynchronous operations.
Chaining wouldn't work with .defer() right now. It only supports syntax like
"var x = something().defer()".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Canadian robot melds brain surgery, rocket science (2007) - neurotech1
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-surgery-robotics-idUSN1742478220070417
======
neurotech1
The recent news of Simone Giertz[0] (Queen of _something_ robots) diagnosed
with a brain tumor[1] made me wonder about neurosurgical robots.
neuroArm[2] is litterally a scaled down Canadarm[3] used on the space shuttle
and now ISS.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Giertz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Giertz)
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16959754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16959754)
[2]
[https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/benefits...](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/benefits/neuro_Arm.html)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeuroArm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeuroArm)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why your desk job is slowly killing you (2010) - zufallsheld
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39523298/ns/health-mens_health/
======
ColinWright
There is an extensive, instructive, interesting, and useful discussion from a
previous submission:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1834671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1834671)
Comments there are closed, of course, so if you have anything to add it will
need to be here.
~~~
zufallsheld
Thanks, I tried searching if it was submitted before, but couldn't find
anything.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Beautiful PHP - ooooak
http://devpy.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/beautiful-php/
======
bradwestness
Not exactly sure what the "tips" are in these, most of them just look like
cruddy PHP code.
In the 2nd part of Example 2, using "else if" instead of several "if"
statements to check the same value would result in fewer comparisons having to
be done since the way it's written now the second comparison will always run
even if the first one was true. It would be even better to use a switch
statement if you're comparing the same variable in each case.
~~~
masklinn
> most of them just look like cruddy PHP code.
Complete with extra syntax and forgetting your own tips from one example to
the next:
> return ($string === "");
parens unnecessary:
return $string === "";
> $ret = false; > if( time() > $end_time ){ > $ret = true; > } > return $ret;
aka
return time() > $end_time;
> function ($string = null){ > if ($string == '' || null) return 'massage';
pretty sure he meant to say
if ($string == '' || $string == null)
because there's not point to if (cond || null) since null is falsy, it's the
exact same thing as if (cond)
> $data = include 'school_data.php';
Oh god, no…
> $data_update = $data + array( 'name' => 'surname', 'size' => 40 );
That's not an array _update_ , since it doesn't _update_ the first array.
> if(!is_array( $options )) $options = (array)$options;
That's absolutely horrible, you've got to know that contrary to what you might
expect PHP doesn't convert a sequence of characters (a string) into an array
of characters, but essentially does `array($options)` (create a 1-element
array with the string). So write that.
------
leeoniya
posts like this make me wonder how the frontpage curating process works at HN
(or doesnt). i've posted things that had more value and upvotes than whatever
this is supposed to be and never made it to the front page. (also php-related,
mind you)
my guess is that someone wants to show how dumb php programmers are by
selectively promoting stuff like this. just sad.
------
jdiez17
Hm, yeah, if a poorly written article with this "beautiful PHP" is what's
needed to make it to the frontpage of "Hacker News" I think something has gone
awfully wrong.
Not to mention most of the code is absolutely horrible and should not be used
for anything.
------
sentiental
This seems representative of the PHP community in general. The only thing you
need to qualify PHP as being "beautiful" is to apply a few tips on how to
iterate over your array.
There are many other ways to make PHP beautiful. In fact, you can make object
models that are almost as flexible, DRY and elegant as they would be in any
other language.
------
SlyShy
Challenge to PHP programmers here: can you point me to some actual coding best
practices for PHP (besides PHP the Right Way)?
~~~
captn3m0
<http://www.codular.com/> has some good examples. Further, anything from the
symphony framework and the composer stuff is quite good.
See <https://github.com/php-fig/fig-standards> for some of the good work that
is happening.
------
sparkygoblue
Ugh. Articles like this make me want to join the PHP sucks crowd, and I really
hate the PHP sucks crowd.
------
Gigablah
if ($string == '' || null) return 'massage';
Heh, beginner mistake.
~~~
jacquesm
Two of them, actually.
~~~
edwinjm
Only two?
1) if ($string == '' || null) can be improved as if (!$string)
2) $string is a poor variable name
3) if and statement on the same line is bad practice (the return can easily be
overlooked when browsing through the code
4) Not using { and } is bad practice.
5) 'massage' should probably be 'message'
The code improved should be something like:
if (!$name) {
return 'No name given';
}
~~~
1SaltwaterC
Due to the "PHP beauty", ! $string isn't equivalent for $string == ''. In this
case it is better due to the logical evaluation clusterfuck that PHP does.
Example: passing an empty array() as $string bypasses the if, while ! $string
is sane enough, but the bang operator fails with "0" which is a valid string
that "happens" to evaluate to false. I know these are edge cases, but can lead
to funny bugs. Not so funny for those who debug that.
------
benjubb
supposed to be ironic right?
~~~
chattamatt
I was wondering the same!
~~~
Gigablah
Looking at the other articles on the site, I think the poor guy is actually
earnest.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Musician and synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla has died - tokai
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/arts/music/don-buchla-dead.html?_r=0
======
justincormack
Previous thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12523042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12523042)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Drafting your first investment round. - andreasklinger
http://klinger.io/post/49773016181/drafting-your-first-investment-round
======
andreasklinger
OP here.
I would love to try something here. The goal is to have a good source for
early stage founders. And my advice - in the end - is also just one opinion. I
would love to hear yours.
If you got your own insights to add (or spot errors) I would recommend you to
submit your changes via draft[1]. I will add them step by step.
[1]:
[https://draftin.com/documents/57927?token=tGIgh5zd28S0cGt0Yy...](https://draftin.com/documents/57927?token=tGIgh5zd28S0cGt0Yy4frppsMmFYH5ymUQVkbPGU3Ko)
------
staurimas
Right. Every founder should look for A-level co-founders as well as A-level
investors. The only thing I would make more clear here is how long does it
take to find those A-level people and close investment round. Founders have to
multiply by two whatever number they have in their head :) Closing round alone
takes about 4 months in average. The worst thing that can happen is to get
short on money while looking for investment. This not only makes things
complicated for startup, but also scares away investors. So it is very
important to save/earn enough money in order to get more (smart) money.
Good poker players have at least 100 stakes (the amount they can loose in one
game) in their bankroll. This way they can avoid short term harmful decisions.
If this comparison makes sense...
Post is great like many other recent presentations/posts by Andreas and def
deserves retweet :)
Cheers @staurimas
~~~
andreasklinger
thx for the kind words.
agree on your point about the fact that it just might take to long to close a
round if you reach for a-level.
it's more about a more strategic approach to drafting the round if you reach a
or b or c in the end is a different topic. but at least you reach the right
direction in each area
------
missy
What I like is that its an honest hands on approach from a founders view with
the thus resulting experiences. I work as a VC and I could not explain these
observations in the same way and give the feeling of being with you in a bar
in a founder to founder relationship.
Look forward to reading more :)
------
sgs1370
Great article. For something even more in-depth, see Venture Deals: Be Smarter
Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld
<http://amzn.com/0470929820> (I just finished reading it, and found it
extremely informative.)
------
ldn_tech_exec1
I love the quote from @msuster
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dropquest - bjonathan
http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=659
======
nameless_noob
If you haven't finished it before, here's the old thread about it:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2107523>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Co - MatthewPhillips
https://github.com/visionmedia/co?foo
======
MatthewPhillips
As always TJ pulls off something brilliantly simple.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IOS Nib helper for 3.5 and 4 inches - kirualex
https://github.com/kirualex/KANibHelper
======
fnayr
Nice. You should change the naming convention to match with the iPad default
nib naming convention (~ipad nib names will auto load on iPads).
What I do is:
iPhone 3.5 = nibName~iphone3_5
iPhone 4 inch = nibName~iphone4
iPad = nibName~ipad
Then, when I'm editing my nib files in Xcode, it's much quicker to figure out
which one to click on based upon the name.
~~~
kirualex
good idea, I'm gonna build upon that !
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cat purr generator - kleer001
http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/catPurrNoiseGenerator.php
======
audiosampling
Dev here. So surprised to hear my cat purring a lot this morning, and then
realised it was featured on HN today! :) To celebrate this, the Cat Purr IAP
on myNoise's iOS App has been set to Tier 0, so you can all enjoy the same
sound on your iOS device for free as well!
([https://itunes.apple.com/be/app/mynoise/id813099896?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/be/app/mynoise/id813099896?mt=8))
~~~
nailer
Hi there! Just wanted to say this would be amazing if you added in-time
vibration.
~~~
ddingus
Seconded
------
znpy
I opened this tab and forgot about it.
Didn't realize it was a car purring, began doing smartctl tests on my hard
disk.
Lol.
------
simias
I've been using this website for a while, even donated some money. There are
endless possibilities of sound combinations, you should have a look at the
other generators on the site:
[http://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php](http://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php)
I enjoy "Spring Walk":
[http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/springWalkSoundscapeGenerat...](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/springWalkSoundscapeGenerator.php)
and "Jungle Life":
[http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/jungleNoiseGenerator.php](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/jungleNoiseGenerator.php)
------
xirdstl
This is great! I was hoping to get a reaction from my cats, but they were
pretty indifferent, giving me a look that said "So what? I'm still hungry."
I am addicted to having the sound of a fan when I sleep. I can trace that back
to the college dorm days where we would use this really old box fan at night
to generate noise to drown out whatever else was going on in the halls. And by
old, I mean it was made when it was still okay to make a fan with a grill you
could reach your hand through.
That fan having long since disappeared, I now rely on a mobile app to meet
that need.
~~~
audiosampling
Small :
[http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/fanNoiseGenerator.php](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/fanNoiseGenerator.php)
Big :
[http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/dataCenterNoiseGenerator.ph...](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/dataCenterNoiseGenerator.php)
;-)
~~~
newman314
Data center noise??? Argh. All I have to do is close my eyes and I can hear
the hum.
My worst nightmare would be not being able to turn this sound off.
------
MattBearman
Love this. Even though it doesn't sound 100% real, it's still just such a
relaxing sound, it may well become be go to work music.
~~~
audiosampling
I agree with you, it doesn't sound as real as I wished it to be. Cat Purr was
a request of many early myNoise users. At beginning, I kept explaining all the
reasons why the myNoise sound player was not designed for playing a cat purr
(it was initially designed to play random-phase and flat spectrum noises such
as white noise and rain) and why I wouldn't implement a cat purr. Then, I gave
up and programmed it, just to stop people asking :D It is not the myNoise
sound I am the most proud of, but it seems that people like it (or the
concept).
~~~
Genmutant
Which one are you the most proud of?
~~~
audiosampling
To serve as a noise blocking white noise machine (that is the main use of the
site) but only with natural sounds, this one is my favourite (try with the
Animate feature) :
[http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/windSeaRainNoiseGenerator.p...](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/windSeaRainNoiseGenerator.php)
In general, all the latest ones have my preference, as I am perfecting my
skills, day by day. I am quite happy with the last one added two weeks ago:
[http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/circularBreathSoundscapeGen...](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/circularBreathSoundscapeGenerator.php)
Check this one if you like sung voices:
[http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/himalayanVoicesSongGenerato...](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/himalayanVoicesSongGenerator.php)
~~~
nemof
our office has been listening to jungle life and absolute rain all week at
work. we love your site. if/when an android app comes out i'll definitely buy
it.
------
erispoe
A perfect complement for coffitivity[1], the cafe noise generator. Now I can
get to work.
[1] [https://coffitivity.com/](https://coffitivity.com/)
~~~
cpeterso
I also like [http://www.rainymood.com/](http://www.rainymood.com/)
------
zapt02
There are many excellent generators on that page, but Anamnesis is my
favourite - a noir, sci-fi world awaits:
[http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/anamnesisSoundscapeGenerato...](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/anamnesisSoundscapeGenerator.php)
~~~
e40
Blade Runner-ish. I like it, too.
------
eridius
This is pretty cute. But you're missing a golden opportunity to call it
"Purrlin Noise".
------
jvehent
We don't need noise cancelling headphones. We need cat purr generating
headphones!
------
ddingus
My cat noticed this. Normally, she is around, or sitting close. She
investigated the Mac, gave me the "da fuck?" look and curled right up near the
machine and joined in the purring.
I used this for a while today. Nice. I was relaxed.
------
rhaps0dy
My laptop is even vibrating to the touch from the sound.
I'm typing on a cat!
------
unoti
Even though I know this isn't a real kitty purring in my ear, I can sense
myself feeling relaxed and soothed by this as if it were a drug. I've heard
that petting a cat or dog lowers a person's blood pressure. I bet hearing cat
purrs does, too. I recently read the book Influence which describes a myriad
of ways people and animals have automatic responses to various stimuli; I
wonder if this is that kind of thing.
------
codq
While it's certainly no replacement for a purring cat pressing down upon your
lap, the "sleeping" preset is SPOT-ON. Great work :)
------
snake117
I like these kinds of concepts; simple and can really improve productivity
when being played in the background. There is another app for coffee shops:
[https://coffitivity.com/](https://coffitivity.com/)
Although you can't modulate SFX, its still nice to run in the background.
------
edem
You can choose from a lot of other sounds on the website as well just take a
look around. I really like the "Healing Water" one. Another site which was
featured lately: [http://rain.today/](http://rain.today/)?
------
hokkos
I have a better generator at home :
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_bsCxOzsxqxOVhyWVdtUU4zUWM...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_bsCxOzsxqxOVhyWVdtUU4zUWM/view)
------
mahouse
I don't know, this sound makes me very very angry.
------
claystu
My cat immediately reacted! Must be pretty good...
------
_mikz
Suprisingly soothing :)
------
wingerlang
Found this very unsettling for some reason.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A mathematical trick allows people to scatter their computer files - eru
http://www.economist.com/science/tm/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=12081445
======
jlouis
Reed-Solomon coding is an old fella. Whenever you have a link which is
unreliable and you can't afford to retransmit packets on the link when errors
are introduced, RS is your friend. Mobile phones are among the prime users of
this.
If I remember correctly, the PAR/PAR2 formats used on usenet is using RS-
encoding as well.
An alternative would be to plot the file in N-dimensional space and define a
set of vectors to pinpoint it. When you have enough vectors you have the
precise pinpoint. Additional vectors gives the error-correction capability.
Some microsoft guys played with this idea for Bittorrent-like networks a while
back. But there is a disadvantage in the time it takes to decode the data, and
it probably doesn't help the swarm that much :/
Another interesting viewpoint: We might need RS-encoding on the _local_
harddisks soon (implemented in hardware or software), as it would circument
the bit-error rate problem with those disks.
~~~
newt0311
What I am wondering about is how much faster TCP could be with RS for recovery
instead of the current resend-packet technique.
~~~
jws
I would guess it would be slower and you would break the internet. You would
have to introduce enough redundancy to cope with the worst tolerable loss rate
which would increase the number of bits to transmit. Worse, it is the noticing
of dropped packets that tells TCP to slow down and decongest a link. If enough
senders fail to decongest then packet loss on the congested links skyrockets
wasting bandwidth elsewhere and doing silly things like favoring the sender
with the biggest pipe.
~~~
wmf
Obviously you can't just eliminate congestion control, and the coding rate
should be adaptive to reduce overhead.
At least one startup has gone broke on this idea already, but maybe it's
possible to do it right.
------
Herring
The economist doing error correction codes?? Are you guys _sure_ the LHC
didn't do anything to the universe?
~~~
fgimenez
I'm not sure whether I'm excited that this was in the economist, or pissed off
that they reduced error correction codes to "a mathematical trick"
------
secorp
We have an open source project <http://allmydata.org> that has been doing this
for quite awhile. I'm also involved in the commercial side which does online
storage and we've been running a business on a P2P backend (nice low costs)
with non-peer clients. We tried a business model with a full peer grid and
users were extremely uncomfortable storing "data" from other people on their
computers. Possibly the market is better educated now and/or more used to this
idea, but it may be a hard sell.
------
zandorg
We learned about a Hamming distance at University. But I could never figure
out when what or why it should be used. It was either predicting the future,
or just sending more bits to compensate for error.
But what if you get errors in the new bits? It's daft.
~~~
pmjordan
Beyond a certain error rate, you will definitely end up with bad data. The
point is, with error detecting or correcting codes, you're introducing
redundancy by encoding the information into more bits than minimally required
to represent that information.
The simplest form is adding a parity bit, which allows you to detect (not
correct) up to one bad bit. (so, say 1/8 bits or 12.5% if you store a byte of
information in 9 bits)
Using R-S codes you can crank up the number of bits used for encoding, which
also drives up your error tolerance. Plus, in addition to detecting errors,
you can even correct them. So it doesn't matter if some bits come up bad (or
missing) - the redundancy is spread equally across _all_ of the
transmitted/stored bits, so it's irrelevant which bits suffer from the
failure. There aren't any "old" or "new" bits.
------
louislouis
Erm.. I see tons of comments about the 'maths trick' behind the tech.. but
have any of you tried out the app cos it's really amazing! A great idea, great
execution. If this gets the news coverage it deserves then this could be huge
I think.
------
PStamatiou
Even if this is all worked out to be amazingly effective.. how are you going
to convince regular users to put their data on other peoples' computers?
Yes, I realize that it's all put into chunks so people won't be able to snoop
on them, but just try getting that concept past my mom.
It's neat but I'd rather my data on my encrypted and fast S3 account.
~~~
orib
Why is S3 different? "My data is on other people's machines" is still the case
there. Encrypt it before you send out the blocks, and you're exactly where S3
is.
------
eru
The anonymous p2p-project Freenet does similar forward error correction ---
and did it for ages.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bloomberg Anchor Quickly Robbed Of Bitcoin After Displaying It On TV - eplanit
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/12/24/bloomberg_anchor_robbed_of_bitcoin_after_displaying_it_live_on_air.html
======
ColinWright
Previous reports:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6955861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6955861)
(gizmodo.com) (3 comments)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6957735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6957735)
(marketwatch.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6958705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6958705)
(bloomberg.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6959403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6959403)
(businessinsider.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6961294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6961294)
(rawstory.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6962090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6962090)
(rt.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6962782](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6962782)
(reddit.com)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Top Five Supercomputers, Illustrated - joubee
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/the-top-five-supercomputers-illustrated/
======
mrb
This article is from last year. It misses pictures of the new #2
supercomputer, Nebulae. They are very hard to find, but I did find some:
<http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=18>
------
kragen
The Top500 list is progressively less relevant, as none of the large
warehouse-scale computers are on it, because their size is secret.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cursor:none abuse (trick users into clicking Facebook 'like') - jackshepherd
http://jack-shepherd.co.uk/experiments/Fake-Mouse-Cursor/
======
duopixel
A much more straightforward abuse would be pointer-events: none. Just position
an element over the 'like' button and let clicks pass through it:
<http://jsfiddle.net/rVxTn/>
~~~
jackshepherd
Wow - that is quite amazing. I wonder if that's in use in the wild yet.
Edit: It seems like this is a largely solved problem for Facebook:
[http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?id=93201&...](http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?id=93201&p=1)
Could definitely still be a problem for other social/ad/affiliate networks
though.
~~~
elisee
A similar click-jacking trick is used a lot for spreading videos like worms on
Facebook, at least in French. Videos with baiting titles like "How could she
do that?", "I can't believe she did this in front of everyone" and such.
Most people will click just to see what it might be and not miss out. Then the
video player says you have to click on some letters to prove you're not a
robot (clever trick, people don't think much of it because it reminds them of
CAPTCHAs)
The letters actually have Facebook Like button iframes on them with opacity
set to 0. I edited the opacity on one of them with the Chrome Dev tools:
<http://polyprograms.free.fr/tmp/FacebookLikeClickJacking.jpg>
Unknowningly liking the video will create a story in your friends' feeds, who
will in turn click to see and spread it to their friends. No real harm is done
except for the spam and all the ad views generated.
------
Zirro
It should be noted that the NoScript add-on for Firefox prevents this from
working through it's Clickjacking-protection (and possibly a couple of more,
cursor-specific tricks). People need to know that it does more than block
JavaScript.
~~~
joelhaasnoot
What website is useable these days though without Javascript?
~~~
Zirro
Few of the popular ones, but there may be some misconception here. NoScript
isn't meant to be blocking JavaScript for all sites. If you trust a site,
which doesn't function without JavaScript, adding it to the whitelist is one
click away. You get used to it quickly.
And, even in the mode where JavaScript is allowed by default on new sites, the
other protections (Clickjacking, XSS, ABE, etc) still apply.
~~~
moe
It's a little bit like the cookie-situation back when the internets were still
young.
Many people (including myself) would swear by leaving the cookie notification
on and confirming every. single. one. of. them.
That has long stopped being feasible and I assume it will be the same with
NoScript in a few years.
~~~
timmy-turner
Isn't this the fault of a bad UI mixed with bad defaults? I'm using the
Cookieculler FF addon (<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/cookieculler/>) to manage them. Instead of torturing me with
a modal popup for every new site I visit, it keeps a list of hosts and cookies
and trust status in the background. Using that list to protect important but
delete/block all other cookies is quite convenient.
------
epochwolf
Interesting. Chrome's "Under the Hood > Content Settings > Mouse Cursor"
setting doesn't affect this. I would have thought it would prevent this.
Also, stuff like this is why we can't have nice things in browsers. You can't
trust the internet.
~~~
ben0x539
Given what we've been seeing with attack sites, whether shock sites trying to
just DoS the browser or silly tricks like making the browser POST to an irc
server's irc port to spread the malicious URL, or just terrible ads and
tracking that actively slow down the browser and ruin the surfing experience,
I'm amazed that not more people see javascript as a built-in remote code
execution vulnerability that only gains more and more features over time,
sandbox or not. :)
Javascript makes a lot of cool stuff possible, but outside of some heavy-
weight web applications that I have to trust anyway like my webmail interface
or online storage manager, or games where the interactive components are the
only reason why I'm visiting the site to begin with, I'm starting to wonder
whether trusting the internet is not inviting more trouble than it's worth.
Maybe I'm "old-fashioned" but I'd love to go back to all the sites I visit
functioning with just static web content, no clientside scripting at all, and
letting me consume videos and stuff in a trusted media player plugin.
~~~
cs702
By default I have JavaScript blocked on all sites, allowing it only as needed,
case by case, because JavaScript _is_ a remote-code-execution vulnerability of
modern browsers.
More and more of the applications we use and our private data live in the
cloud. We now access our personal files, manage our bank and investment
accounts, and make retail purchases on our web browser.
Browsing the web with JavaScript enabled by default allows code written by
complete strangers to run on your browser!
~~~
driverdan
This shows a general lack of knowledge about how JS and websites work. I can't
just run JS on my site that will steal your bank info. Browsers have cross
domain security policies to prevent this.
There have been various vulnerabilities (especially in IE) but just like any
other software they get fixed.
~~~
cs702
driverdan -- by your logic, it would be OK to give perfect strangers remote-
shell access to one's computer, so long as one takes all the precautions
necessary to protect sensitive files and prevent them from gaining root
access.
Leave aside the various vulnerabilities (including cross-site-scripting ones!)
that get discovered with disturbing frequency, and please consider the subject
of this thread: it's possible to make someone click a "Like" button without
their realizing it! How many other similar tricks can JavaScript be used for
by people with nefarious intentions?
No matter how "safe" any runtime environment is, allowing strangers to execute
arbitrary code on your computer is never a great idea.
This is why I allow JavaScript code to run on my browser only when it comes
from sources I trust.
------
chc
For everyone talking about JavaScript: As far as I can tell, this is
fundamentally a CSS vulnerability. Something quite similar ought to be
possible without JavaScript — it would just be a bit less elegant. For
example, you could just make a pixel grid of divs to simulate mousemove events
and position the fake cursor with CSS hover styles.
~~~
jonny_eh
Sounds plausible (and I'd love to see an example!), but would hardly be worth
the effort if JS would catch 99% of the victims.
------
RandallBrown
I love it. It seems to work fine in Firefox, although the real cursor starts
flashing when it's above the Like button.
~~~
jackshepherd
That's because there's a transparant DIV above the Facebook iFrame, cycling
on/off every few milliseconds. This is required to maintain the fake cursor's
position (without it when the real cursor was over the iFrame the 'fake'
cursor would stop moving).
------
pnewhook
This is brilliant, but now it's only a matter of time until it's in actual
use. Sort of like how evercookie was a clever hack meant to call attention to
privacy concerns, then was put into actual production sites.
~~~
Zirro
Do you have any examples of sites/companies that put the techniques into use
as a direct result of Evercookie exposing them?
EDIT: Why am I being downvoted for this question? I am seriously interested,
so that I can avoid contact with them.
~~~
jackshepherd
I'm not sure if you can say that it's a direct result of Evercookie, but a
number of high profile sites use this kind of tech - for example
KissMetrics.com is used by a number of big companies, and they use ETAG
cookies, Flash cookies - the lot.
~~~
hornbaker
And KissMetrics and their customers caught heat from it:
[http://www.extremetech.com/internet/91966-aol-spotify-
gigaom...](http://www.extremetech.com/internet/91966-aol-spotify-gigaom-etsy-
kissmetrics-sued-over-undeletable-tracking-cookies)
------
superchink
Odd effect. I see two mouse cursors (Mac OS X 10.7.3 + Chrome Dev Channel).
~~~
rplnt
Same in Opera. I'd say it's not supported as it is quite malicious. Another
example that comes to mind is changing the content of clipboard when users
copies something. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOM_events#Microsoft-
specific_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOM_events#Microsoft-
specific_events)
------
EmmanuelOga
Speaking about prevention (for the specific case of the like button), I have
privoxy (1) setup to disable fb plugins with rules like these:
{+block{Facebook "like" and similar tracking URLs.}}
www.facebook.com/(extern|plugins)/(login_status|like(box)?|activity|fan)\\.php
{+block{Stupid facebook xd_proxy.php.}}
<http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect/xd_proxy.php.*>
The second one also removes an annoyance I see from time to time when I bypass
the proxy which makes the page request again and again that xd_proxy.php file.
If I really want to like something, I disable the proxy and reload the page. I
use Proxy SwitchySharp (2) for chrome to do the setup for me in pages I visit
often.
1: <http://www.privoxy.org/> 2:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dpplabbmogkhghncfb...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dpplabbmogkhghncfbfdeeokoefdjegm)
------
mkopinsky
I tried clicking "Fork me on github" but couldn't because I couldn't position
the real mouse pointer in the right place.
------
jusob
I guess I should use this as an opportunity to remind people of the "Zscaler
Likejacking Prevention" plugin for Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Opera (check the
corresponding add-on stores). I use the setting "Request confirmation for all
Facebook widgets" so that it asked me for confirmation before sending the Like
request.
------
ck2
Good luck faking my inverted extra large windows cursor.
~~~
chrisacky
And I browse without JavaScript, so the CSS style that hid the cursor actually
meant I didn't see any cursor whatsoever.
~~~
SquareWheel
Out of curiosity, aren't 90% of websites broken for you?
~~~
chrisacky
Yes and no. While I browse with JavaScript disabled, I have whitelist. Chrome
v8 has a feature which allows you to prevent execution of scripts from a
particular domain.
I've blacklisted all ad networks from executing and JavaScript but I maintain
a strict whitelist which means that sites such as Facebook, Google, and any
site which I browse and immediately see is broken is added to my whitelist.
When I browse a page, I can have conditional execution of the JS code, meaning
that JS from 3 domains will run, but the 9 tracking JS code from all the ad
networks won't run.
It's like the best of all worlds. Adnetworks can't fingerprint me, and they
have to rely on cookies, plus my browsing is a hell of a lot faster because I
don't have all the unneccessary JS downloading and running.
~~~
SquareWheel
I see, thanks for the great explanation.
I admit the thought that some users aren't using JS concerns me because, while
I try and always build sites with a fallback, it generally results in a lesser
experience. Often fallbacks just aren't possible so I need to remove the
feature altogether.
I bet there's a lot of sites that still work for you, but not quite as well as
if JS were enabled.
~~~
chrisacky
Don't worry about users like me.
Make your content load, but anything above that, users are on their own if
they decide not to enable JavaScript.
In this age, with all of the rich user applications, JS is practically a
requirement.
For my startup, the frontend gracefully fallbacks to a working version for
users.
For the backend, they get a blackscreen saying JS is required. If users are
going to use my application, they should expect to have JS enabled for the
best possible user experience.
Don't worry about it is the upshot!
------
TheMiddleMan
I forked this to use a different exploit which takes advantage of pointer-
events: none.
<https://github.com/Rob-ot/Fake-Mouse-Cursor>
------
smackfu
Cursor:none makes it cleaner, but it's not necessary. You could use a lighter
cursor like cursor:crosshair or cursor:text along with the fake cursor, and I
bet most people will still click using the fake one.
In fact, even if you can't change the cursor at all, you could easily create a
swarm of fake cursors that would frustrate the hell out of the user.
------
justindocanto
I have some input on your todo list:
If you give an id (or class) to your p tag that contains the links you said
you wanted to make easier to click, then you could use css and easily add a
:hover state. Then on the hover state just make the cursor normal so it's
easier to click those links. Upon mouseout the cursor will go back to
'normal'. =)
~~~
jackshepherd
Thanks for that :) I was thinking of perhaps creating an invisible target for
them with the same offset as the FB like/button, so that they could be clicked
with the 'fake' cursor to enhance the effect!
------
cocoflunchy
I don't think I'm getting the desired result... my cursor disappears, and I
all I see is a static one in the top left corner above a cropped "Like" button
(in french though, that may be the problem). See here :
<http://imageshack.us/f/836/28545472.jpg/>
------
natmaster
In Firefox, the cursor flashes above the like button. Still easy to miss, but
certainly not bad as it seems Chrome is.
~~~
sikmajnd
and not to mention the lag when going over "clicky" button in ff
------
drucken
I have NoScript 2.3.1 in Firefox with the default settings, including
Clearclick protection. I have no Facebook account and no scripting is enabled
for this site, including JQuery.
The site is still able to disable my mouse over most of the screen.
Am I the only one?
------
Maro
I use Ghostery to wipe out Facebook showing up elsewhere on the Internet.
<http://www.ghostery.com>
~~~
dybber
Alternative using Adblock: <http://adversity.uk.to/>
------
downandout
Is this news? Likejacking has been around for well over a year. Google it.
------
AznHisoka
Nice, can I use this to trick people into clicking an affiliate link instead?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hacker Dosed with LSD While Restoring Historical Synth (2019) - wglb
https://hackaday.com/2019/05/28/hacker-dosed-with-lsd-while-restoring-historical-synth/
======
Stratoscope
Related discussion, including a story of how I met Art Garfunkel on the way to
visit Don Buchla:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19992038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19992038)
~~~
dang
That's a great thread! Far better than this one. Everybody go there.
------
sigstoat
the forensic toxicologist and biochemist sitting next to me, who also has at
least as much experience with LSD as any of you lot, sees nothing at all
improbable about the events described.
~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I am struck dumb with awe in the presence of such eminent authority as your
friend :P
I have a serious question for someone with your friend's expertise, though. I
always thought that LSD "blotters" have a use-by date after which they lose
their potency. Word was that they evaporate or some such.
Is that true, or is it just an urban legend? I don't reckon any of the people
I've had this kind of conversation with would have kept any LSD blotters
around for long enough to really find out.
Obviously, having heard this rumour I was surprised by the article. Friends I
read it to also thought the LSD should have expired by then.
~~~
capableweb
With the right conditions, you can store LSD indefinitely (well, until the end
of the world or similar). I've certainly managed to keep my own LSD still
potent after ~2 years of first getting it, by storing it in a cold, dark and
dry place. Some older friends have described to me finding ~5 year old LSD
that still worked, but not sure I trust that.
------
thought_alarm
Let me tell you about the time I got chalked up on blow, dusting out the pots
of an old Yamaha DX7.
~~~
emptybits
70s, check. 80s, check. Who has a 90s synth dosing experience?
~~~
oofabz
Presumably involving MDMA in an MC-303
~~~
fit2rule
2000's: caught a virus from a Virus.
------
qntmfred
> We’ve learned this lesson ourselves cracking open broken laptops. You might
> find anything from coffee to soda, to pet urine or worse.
or black beans [https://youtu.be/4HhPK8XC75A](https://youtu.be/4HhPK8XC75A)
~~~
peterkos
I thought it was going to be that baked beans meme but no, they literally
brought some random repair guy over to "fix" a computer Full of Beans
~~~
mercer
Love how the repair guy didn't respond to the guy's confusion over it being
Windows 7 and him only having like five windows open at a time.
After years of helping people with 'computery' stuff, I've just stopped
explaining things (when I can) if I notice there's no way they'll get it.
------
dleslie
LSD ought to be legal.
~~~
ashtonkem
I suspect that LSD and other psychedelics will be the next area in the drug
legalization war, now that weed is basically down to rearguard actions.
~~~
centimeter
It’s already easy enough to acquire relative to the low frequency with which
people want to use it. As an entirely non-habit-forming drug, you’re unlikely
to find a population of people motivated to get easy access to it.
~~~
ashtonkem
Weed is relatively low habit forming, significantly less than a lot of other
legal drugs, especially nicotine.
I’m not sure if the difference between weed and psychedelics in the habit area
is enough to affect the formation of a reform movement.
~~~
ajzinsbwbs
It’s a controversial statement to describe weed as addictive or habit-forming,
but in any case, many people use it daily. The same isn’t true of LSD.
Anecdotally, I saw a lot of friends get cranky when their weed supply was
briefly interrupted by covid-19. The public reaction was strong enough that
dispensaries got to reopen almost immediately.
~~~
quickthrowman
Agreed, weed isn’t addictive like alcohol or opiates/stims, but there are
plenty of daily users (including myself). LSD is my favorite drug but I could
never use it daily, at least recreational doses.
I pretty much always have some lsd around, but the urge to use it frequently
is not there. I usually go months without tripping, not days.
------
palijer
Seeing how fond the Dead were about dosing people without their knowledge
(which is horrible and despite being a deadhead, I find abhorrent), I'm sure
Bear would be glad he got someone tripping from beyond the grave.
~~~
ashtonkem
While extremely unethical, there is something to this as a social strategy. We
know that exposure to psychedelic drugs alters one of the “Big Five”
personality traits, openness to new experience, permanently.
A large group of people doses by LSD without their knowledge would actually
emerge from the experience markedly different than they went in. Also,
probably more than a little freaked out or pissed off.
~~~
deathgrips
Some of the OG psychologists working with LSD wanted to mail samples to world
leaders so they would achieve world peace.
~~~
ashtonkem
Mailing unmarked drugs to world leaders seems like a good way to get a
ballistic response.
------
rendall
I'm glad the hacker is ok. Getting dosed is no joke, especially with no
previous experience. It can cause long-lasting psychological effects. Context
is key. Fortunately, the hacker recognized what was happening.
------
zapzupnz
The article isn't interesting for the content so much as the comment section.
Check that out immediately after reading the article, it's much more
entertaining and informative.
------
artursapek
Imagine accidentally taking the same acid that Jerry Garcia might have taken
60 years ago. That's wild.
------
kotutku
This story is almost too good to be true.
I can confirm from my own experience, that it's pretty easy to accidentally
absorb LSD by skin contact.
------
girvo
Thats... unlikely. LSD is not particularly active transdermally (despite it
being "well known" that it is), so unless he tasted the crystals... It's also
a remarkably unstable molecule for a well-known drug.
And anecdotally, I can say that administering a number of drops from a vial of
dissolved LSD did not give me anything remotely approaching a trip.
~~~
craigmcnamara
You can absolutely trip from a transdermal dose. The kind of prying and
jimmying required to disassemble a vintage synth unit could easily spread any
film or sludge all over a significant part of a person's hands without gloves.
Then all it takes is a bit of sweat or touching your face and you'll be
unintentionally tripping.
~~~
warent
The hardest part for me to believe isn't the transdermal application. I've
definitely known of people who who handled LSD and learned to wear gloves the
hard way. What is difficult to understand is how a molecule that unstable was
able to survive for... over half a century?
~~~
esperent
What makes you think it's unstable? UV light, heat, chlorine, (and perhaps
some other things) degrade the molecule. In the absence of those it should be
stable for a long time, in salt form (as it's usually made).
~~~
LilBytes
I've had tabs of acid sitting in a fridge which is naturally light and heat
controlled, in a sealed container (within the fridge) be absolutely benign
when consumed after being left for over a few months. The only way I've
managed to keep LSD protected/improve shelf life is to keep it in it's liquid
form and store it in a dropper.
I don't doubt that LSD could survive for some period of time on a natural
surface but to provide a big "trip" after it was on a surface like a Synth
seems a stretch.
I'd love to find out the half life of LSD in an open atmosphere like a Synth,
I imagine it wouldn't be very long at all.
~~~
01100011
and I've had tabs of acid wrapped in tinfoil inside a small ziploc inside a
filing cabinet with questionable temperature stability work just fine after
several years. Some of that acid, if I remember right, was taken into a rave,
lived in my pocket for a few hours inside... foil or a ziploc, I forget, and
then came home to rest in that filing cabinet.
~~~
LilBytes
Fair enough! Maybe the LSD I'm referring to was always shit/weak. :)
------
jdkee
“Turn on, tune in, drop out.”
~~~
bredren
“Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
------
bashinator
> Hacker Dosed with Historical LSD While Restoring Historical Synth
Sounds like the acid had been in there since the get-go.
------
staticautomatic
I would just like to say how pleased I am that Hacker News is the kind of
place where you can have a conversation about drugs and not a single person
refers to themselves as SWIM.
~~~
SenHeng
I'm not sure I want to google what SWIM stands for.
~~~
nefitty
SWIM is "Someone Who Isn't Me". People use it instead of "I" as in "I
committed the crime" becomes "SWIM committed the crime."
Presumably people really believe that this is some sort of legitimate infosec
behavior. I like that it makes infosec important, but it might trick people
into thinking infosec is as easy as just using an acronym.
~~~
baby
A lot of people did it for fun.
------
mastrsushi
Woah so cool he was on drugs while he did it??? That amplifies everything, so
meaningful.
------
monadic2
LSD is volatile; there's a reason you store it away from moisture and light. I
find this narrative unlikely. Even the moisture in the air will reduce the
potency very rapidly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apps to Build in a Bad Economy - Readmore
http://embought.com/blog/show/17?t=Apps-to-Build-in-a-Bad-Economy
======
timcederman
Frugality apps are cringeworthy. Thankfully the article finished with "Maybe
we should all start working on the "next big thing" that's going to change the
world and usher in the new new era of the Web." Absolutely.
~~~
lunaru
Couldn't agree more. That said, there's plenty of room for modest plays that
aren't the grand slam.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How long until Apple is bigger than Microsoft? - nickb
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2850
======
satyajit
Actually, I would hate to see Apple in MS position. Let it remain small(er),
yet churn out innovative, compelling products as they have been doing in past
few years, and remain profitable!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Controversial cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo - notsony
http://www.foxnews.com/world/slideshow/2015/01/07/controversial-cartoons-published-by-charlie-hebdo/?intcmp=trending#/slide/controversial-cartoons-1
======
notsony
Note: A lot of people don't like Fox News but they are one of only a few
mainstream media outlets showing these cartoons right now. Apparently CNN had
them online but just pulled them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Simple Docker App Management for OS X - bill_bkr
https://github.com/kitematic/kitematic
======
hackerboos
Previous discussion from 4 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246240)
~~~
pearknob
Isn't there a policy against repeat posts? (although I get the url's are diff)
------
Gedrovits
I am and early adopter of this, because, well, I like the UI.
It have some probable flaws now, but with proper support it can up the plank
for Docker users out there.
------
dqmdm2
This is great. Virtual Box like interface for docker.
------
bhavinsw
thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ML turns video of a 360° turn into 3D model of a person - mikeyanderson
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/watch-artificial-intelligence-create-3d-model-person-just-few-seconds-video
======
symisc_devel
Link to the paper:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04758](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04758)
~~~
neonate
And to the video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPOawky2eNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPOawky2eNk)
------
llao
Oh how I hate marketing speech.
First of all, the title should include "video of a predefined 360° turn".
And then they say something along the lines of "average accuracy of about 5mm"
for joining the constructed modeled joints to their model, while you see the
body wobbling around happily.
This is an impressive demo, but gah!
~~~
dang
Ok, we'll give it a 360° turn above.
------
nitrogen
Structure from motion is an existing technique. What is the contribution of ML
in this case (it seems like joint positioning maybe?)?
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_from_motion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_from_motion)
~~~
ansgri
99%¹ of computer vision problems are 80% solved. The problem is, you need 95+%
solution to be practically useful.
Binocular stereo vision has just approached general applicability, and SfM is
mostly used in very constrained environments (traffic analysis) or with large
computational resources with manual correction (offline 3D mapping from aerial
data).
¹ Numbers are metaphoric only, based on experience in scientific and
industrial CV.
------
raghavkhanna
How is this ML? They use a CNN for foreground segmentation, a minor step in
their pipeline. But the major contribution seems to be putting the silhouettes
in a common reference frame. I sincerely hope sciencemag isn’t putting ML in
the title purely to jump on the bandwagon.
~~~
utkarshsinha
It's someone standing in front of a green screen. You don't need ML to find a
person's silhouette.
~~~
seandougall
To be fair, they do have examples that aren’t chroma keyed; they just lead
with one that is.
Which is not to say that ML is necessary for this sort of computer vision
task, but I wonder if it yields better or sharper results than other
techniques?
~~~
extralego
Same. As someone who has spent an embarrassing amount of time keying and
tracking video footage over the years, I’m surprised ML isn’t being used for
this more often in studios by now.
------
egypturnash
As an artist, my first thought is _I wonder what happens if you try giving
this a series of drawings_.
~~~
make3
you'd probably need a lot of drawings, I wonder what's the sampling rate the
thing uses
it's a cool idea though :)
~~~
seandougall
They say “standard” video is the source, so it would likely be on the order of
30 or 60 fps. Seems to be around a couple hundred frames, give or take, though
I suspect it could get _something_ out of fewer frames, and more would just
incrementally improve the model.
I would expect minor textural differences in a hand-drawn or painted source
would make it a lot harder to correlate points between frames, but it’s an
interesting idea to think about!
------
mtgx
This is what should give you pause before using face authentication technology
for anything.
~~~
haZard_OS
Can you elaborate?
~~~
toomuchtodo
Makes forging facial biometrics easier.
~~~
seandougall
In the case of Face ID, at least, you’d still have to transfer the
measurements into the physical world, in a way that fools a system that has
ostensibly been designed not to be fooled by masks.
~~~
toomuchtodo
Like a 3D printed model?
~~~
URSpider94
Doesn’t work for high quality face reco systems like iPhone X. You’d also need
to get the IR reflectance, as well as a sign of life from the eyes.
------
make3
I wonder if will see a future soon where a director can fully edit the
positions and physical actions of the actors at post production.
basically, the whole scenes will be transferred to believable 3d models
seemlessly, and you can reanimate parts of everything. I feel like that's
doing to happen for sure, for big Hollywood productions at least (like the
Marvel stuff)
~~~
leohutson
This already happens a lot, most VFX heavy productions will have digital
doubles of the main cast, and they can be used for as simple a reason as
reframing a shot.
~~~
extralego
Your comment could give the impression this is drastically more simple to do
than it is in reality. This is considered as something like the last frontier
of VFX, and there still remains a lot of work to be done.
While you’re essentially correct, it is currently an overwhelmingly manual
process. The amount of work and time necessary is substantial (some would say
outrageous), and exponentially higher for certain types of shots. Many shots
remain impossible or cost-defeating.
------
interfixus
It seems determined to put visible toes on everybody, no matter that they're
wearing socks.
Is this a bug or a feature?
~~~
RodgerTheGreat
I'm going to guess they start with a generic human model that includes all
limbs and extremities and then the "machine learning" process attempts to fit
that model to the silhouettes extracted from the video.
~~~
stochastic_monk
Which implies that the technique uses domain knowledge of people to make
assumptions about their morphology.
------
codetrotter
This is awesome. I wish someone will implement this as a piece of open source
software. Imagine the potential!
~~~
raghavkhanna
Source code seems to be available :)
[https://graphics.tu-bs.de/people-snapshot](https://graphics.tu-bs.de/people-
snapshot)
~~~
bahmboo
From site: "We will provide access to the code and dataset soon."
------
meric
Could be used for VR phone calls between long distance couples.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jacob E. Goldman, Founder of Xerox Lab, Dies at 90 - ukdm
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/business/jacob-e-goldman-founder-of-xerox-lab-dies-at-90.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
======
DaniFong
It's really interesting to read this. I had no idea it was John Bardeen who
was instrumental in setting this up. Who knows how the world would have
changed with Zerox pulled the trigger on commercializing PCs.
------
Slimy
This is bigger news than anyone else's death in quite a while, at least in my
mind.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Use GitHub as your Blog - sant0sk1
http://github.com/blog/164-use-github-as-your-blog
======
mrtron
Just a warning because I always fall into this trap:
When you hold a large hammer, everything looks like a nail.
------
there
is there a contest going on to see who can have the biggest rss icon on their
site?
~~~
axod
probability user will accidentally sign up to rss feed = size of icon / total
screen size
~~~
yan
That would be accurate if your visitors were bots whose job it was to hit a
truly random point on the page.
------
thomasmallen
I'm sure most of the readers would prefer that the blog be on WordPress.
------
raganwald
_It's fun using technology in a manner which it is not intended._
A sentiment I can applaud. Bravo!
------
ashu
Funky, but bizarre and not sure it is very reader-friendly. (or even author-
friendly, for that matter since most authors spend a lot more time reading and
searching the stuff they write.)
------
atog
Nifty! Good thinking, I like it :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Free to Play [video] - bowmanb
http://store.steampowered.com/app/245550/
======
markus-rogue
yea yea yea
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Computational science: ...Error - solipsist
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/467775a.html?ref=nf
======
b_emery
Lots of good advice for scientists in there. The only new info for the typical
CS grad is the utter lack of _any_ programming training in most scientific
disciplines.
This is pretty classic:
> "To all scientists out there, ask yourselves what you would do if, tomorrow,
> some Republican senator trains the spotlight on you and decides to turn you
> into a political football. Could your code stand up to attack?"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Genghis Khan's success was in due to his ability and willingness to innovate - delancey
http://delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=2905
======
bediger4000
But did he respect intellectual property when innovating? I'm told this is
Very Important. Also, did he have a process? I'm told that's Super Important.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
RAM instead HDD/SSD. - Sloven
http://www.hyperossystems.co.uk
I don't pursue any promotional purposes, but never heard about such drive before.
======
phamilton
Aside from the seek times, this guy gets destroyed by the latest crucial SSD
drive.
[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148349)
If you want high speed ram-based drives, FusionIO is the way to go
<http://www.fusionio.com/products/iodrive/>
------
iwwr
This may work if your server's RAM is already capped out. You can already use
RAM as virtual disk space, so this looks more like a way to add more RAM to a
system through the SATA bus (perhaps with some extra interface sugar).
Although, the main memory throughput can easily overwhelm a SATA bus.
It's an intriguing piece of hardware, I am waiting for some reviews.
------
orijing
I was following until I got here:
_It also offers 100% secure file deletion (disconnect both the external and
the internal power!). Flash drives can't offer this. Hard disks suffer from
magnetic remnance and so retain their data even after they have been
overwritten several times! But the HyperDrive5 is forensically wiped every
time the power is fully disconnected_
Wait a minute, if the drive gets accessed quickly or if it's really cold, RAM
actually retains its contents. You can't expect the charges to suddenly revert
to randomness!
Plus, this presents a major issue if someone wanted to sabotage you... If it's
really that easy to clear the contents, someone may just come and clear it for
you while you aren't looking.
------
binarray2000
SATA2 interface and DDR2 RAM... A major OUCH! That's like putting Bugatti
Veyron Super Sport on a narrow and curvaceous country road: A pinhole that's
just stopping it from literally flying (well, speed-wise, not altitude-wise).
On the top of my list as a consumer grade drive (thou, we're considering to
put it into the Win2008/SQLServer server on our LAN ) is OCZ Revodrive X2 PCI-
Express SSD ([http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodrive-x2-pci-express-
ss...](http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodrive-x2-pci-express-ssd.html)).
------
Sloven
I'm looking for new config for my home pc. Before this article I thought to
build RAID-0 with 4 sata drives, but now i would better buy this device.
------
astrodust
This is an interesting product, and there have been others like it before, but
what a shady looking company to be selling it.
------
lukev
Very nice. But what happens when the power fails? RAM can't preserve state
without power...
~~~
zdw
Most of these units have an internal battery and CF card or other flash
storage - when the power goes out, the battery lets them write the contents of
their RAM to the permanent storage.
There are also other options than the one linked:
<http://www.ddrdrive.com/> \- pcie card, favored by many people running ZFS
[http://us.test.giga-
byte.com/Products/Storage/Products_Overv...](http://us.test.giga-
byte.com/Products/Storage/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2678) \- Gigabyte's
i-RAM, very similar to what's linked.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is Data Visualization Art? - co_pl_te
http://blog.visual.ly/is-data-visualization-art/
======
kordless
Yes, because it can bring joy!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scaling your application on AWS - roshanpaiva
https://medium.com/@roshanpaiva/scaling-your-application-on-aws-3f210ef18693#.44ac3mcej
======
eugeneionesco
Spam, here's the talk this was taken from.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg5onp8TU6Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg5onp8TU6Q)
~~~
chrisnorman
The link is already shared in the article. Good notes and good read.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Making the case for that payrise the hacker way - mdisraeli
http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/
======
mdisraeli
While reading <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1591225> about asking for a
payrise, there was lots of talk of finding your market worth before asking.
This is the tool I use for that (Not mine, obviously). It gets source data
from job adverts, so I assume that the upper bound might be inflated, and
personal experience says that the lower bounds are typically shown as being
higher than in practice. But the figures feel about right, and there is a lot
of other nice bits of information too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Java.next() - Clojure: The Return of the Lispers - bozhidar
http://batsov.com/Clojure/Java/2011/05/12/jvm-langs-clojure.html
The third chapter of Java.next() series. A glance at the Clojure programming language, a modern Lisp-1 dialect for the JVM and .Net.
======
efsavage
I'd love to be sold on a new language, but using it by showing me ridiculous
examples of a language I know reduces the credibility of the seller. It's an
otherwise good looking article but when I see this:
public boolean hasUpperCase(String word) {
if (word == null) {
return false;
}
int len = word.length();
for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
if (Character.isUpperCase(word.charAt(i))) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
Where it should be this:
public boolean hasUpperCase(String word) {
return word != null && word.matches(".*[A-Z]+.*");
}
It casts doubt on the other examples. I'm not saying Java isn't a verbose
language that can get tedious, but let's use some decent examples.
~~~
swannodette
It's doesn't cast doubt on the examples at all, your code is less generic:
(defn has-uppercase? [string]
(some #(Character/isUpperCase %) string))
This code can deal with _any_ sequence of characters: String, Array,
PersistentList, PersistentVector, Cons, LazySequence, etc. Your example only
deals with String.
~~~
efsavage
Fair enough, but mine was not an alternate to his Clojure code, but to his
Java code (which only checks String). Perhaps he should have focused on the
functional efficiency like you did, rather than just bloated lines of code.
~~~
seabee
It's still not an alternate to the Java, since there are more upper-case
characters than the 26 your regex matches. But I'm sure there is an
appropriate Unicorn character class you could use instead.
------
dotcomsmarties
I've been coding Java/Python for 10+ years (C/C++ before that), and recently
started on Clojure a few months ago. I'm having trouble grokking Clojure since
I'm not a Lisp guy, but after stumbling around like a blind rat I find that
Clojure's syntax is quite extraordinary. I hope Clojure will become more
mainstream as more people use them, and creates more tutorials for a layman
like me.
------
d0m
I feel like when people are comparing languages, they are exaggerating.. For
instance:
public boolean hasUpperCase(String word) {
if (word == null) {
return false;
}
int len = word.length();
for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
if (Character.isUpperCase(word.charAt(i))) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
or
public boolean hasUpperCase(String word) {
if (null != word)
return any(charactersOf(word), new Predicate() {
public boolean apply(Character c) {
return isUpperCase(c);
}
})
else
return false;
}
~~~
swannodette
Small inconveniences add up fast. For example
[https://github.com/clojure/core.logic/blob/master/src/main/c...](https://github.com/clojure/core.logic/blob/master/src/main/clojure/clojure/core/logic/minikanren.clj).
It's a 1000 lines of Clojure, I strongly doubt that this could be implemented
in anything less than 5000 lines of Java split across 10 files.
------
th0ma5
I've been playing a lot with Kawa (Scheme) for Java, it's rather nice.
~~~
rikthevik
What are the cool things we should know about Kawa?
~~~
cjenkins
One cool thing is that the Google Android App Inventor is built out of Kawa.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_App_Inventor>)
I believe Kawa is also currently a bit friendlier on Android as Clojure has
some overhead. (More at
<http://dev.clojure.org/display/design/Android+Support>)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Skype 5 for Mac, but without the whitespace - roder
http://pongsocket.com/experiments/skype5mini
======
jamesaguilar
A "before" image would be helpful.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
YouTube Launches Site Specifically for Teachers - tilt
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/09/youtube-launches-site-specifically-for-teachers/
======
JonnieCache
The video at the bottom of that article is amazing. There's several rap covers
about biology on their channel, obviously made originally for the purposes of
their own revision.
This one, about natural selection, is particularly superb:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hUNBhRiKCI>
The original track (From 93 Till Infinity by Souls Of Mischief), so you can
see how good a version it is: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mt3vZHDiM8>
------
tokenadult
The power of branding is illustrated by my mind reading that as "Khan Academy
launches site specifically for teachers," and not noticing that YouTube was
mentioned (and NOT Khan Academy) until I followed the KQED link submitted here
to YouTube Teachers and then registered on that site. It will be interesting
to see what this new degree of teacher-friendliness prompts by way of changes
to Khan Academy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Cliplingo – turns YouTube into spaced repetition language learning - Ondrej72
https://www.cliplingo.com
======
Ondrej72
What was originally a simple tool for my own learning and memorising, turned
into a real project for everyone.
Youtube is full of great content for learning videos. But there hasn’t been a
way to organise them with spaced repetition. I love to learn the grammar or
collocations from YT videos but then I fail to remember what I’ve just
learned.
Cliplingo automatically prompts the video from the lesson that need to be
revised, by the rules of spaced repetition. Each repetition will play a
different video with the given topic, so you will not see the same video over
and over again.
~~~
BukhariH
Currently working on my French - was super interested to use this but it's not
working.
Looks like the request to:
[https://www.cliplingo.com/lesson/start?id=18](https://www.cliplingo.com/lesson/start?id=18)
Returns an empty video id:
[https://pastebin.com/8JemA2T3](https://pastebin.com/8JemA2T3)
Hopefully you can fix it soon - super excited to use it!
~~~
Ondrej72
Thanks for heads up! It is fixed now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Strange Russian Spacecraft Shadowing U.S. Spy Satellite - davedx
https://time.com/5779315/russian-spacecraft-spy-satellite-space-force/
======
ColinWright
Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207683)
Other sources for the story:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204838](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204838)
: thedailybeast.com
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200881)
: Extended Twitter discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22229130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22229130)
: interstellarspecies.blogspot.com
Other submissions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209705)
: theverge.com
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22196710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22196710)
: twitter.com
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22287833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22287833)
: technologyreview.com
------
simonblack
_at times creeping within 100 miles of it._
OMG! Within 100 miles! Oh the humanity!
Wake me up when it gets to within ONE mile.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
On being a woman linux kernel developer - tathagatadg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dro2v44wvs0
Linux developer Sarah Sharp shares her story about how she became a Linux kernel developer, as well as what it means to be a woman today in the open source software community.
======
eknuth
Cool, I saw her garden automation talk at osbridge!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Reverse Engineering the MOS 6502 CPU - wglb
http://www.pagetable.com/?p=512
======
Luc
Well, this is going to be an awesome talk (on the 28th in Berlin), but other
than the title and a pretty picture, there's nothing in the link...
~~~
alanthonyc
Click the picture and you get this:
[http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4159.en.h...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4159.en.html)
~~~
ygd
But that's it. I hope they post the slides/video/text to the talk once it's
done.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Dilemma of Anti-Semitic Speech Online - Pharmakon
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/internet-you-can-scream-fire-all-you-want-unless-something-burns/574243/?single_page=true
======
xkcd-sucks
Apparently China's figured this one out
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best Lego Mindstorms alternative for fun programming projects? - crypto-jeronimo
What are the best Best LEGO Mindstorms alternatives out there?
No upper age limit.
======
MarcScott
I wrote these resources you might like.
[https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/?interests[]=ro...](https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/?interests\[\]=robotics)
There's even an Ali Express shopping list for you. You can probably build a
buggy for about _$20.
Resources are also on GitHub and issues and pull requests are always
appreciated.
[https://github.com/raspberrypilearning/build-a-
buggy](https://github.com/raspberrypilearning/build-a-buggy)
Disclosure - I work for the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
_(Edit - $20 not including the price of a Pi)
------
whiskers
I'd recommend you look into the Raspberry Pi, Arduino, or micro:bit - each
offer a great introduction to physical computing with huge libraries of online
content to dive into.
[https://www.raspberrypi.org/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/) <\-- Basically a
pocket sized computer which can run a full Linux stack and exposes a heap of
useful IO options.
[https://www.arduino.cc/](https://www.arduino.cc/) <\-- More akin to embedded
systems - traditionally very low powered micro-controllers programmed in C.
[https://microbit.org/](https://microbit.org/) <\-- Designed specifically for
education and provides a number of high level abstractions for development
including visual programming languages and MicroPython.
As well as these there is a huge range of other options targeting different
niches such as Javascript, Internet of Things, ultra low-power systems, etc.
It really depends what you're interested in getting into. All of the platforms
have starter kits, add-ons, and tutorials to get you going. Feel free to
message me (e-mail in profile) if you want to discuss further!
[https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/raspberry-
pi](https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/raspberry-pi)
[https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/arduino-
microcontrolle...](https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/arduino-
microcontrollers)
[https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/micro-bit-
uk](https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/micro-bit-uk)
(Disclaimer - co-founder of Pimoroni)
~~~
mkesper
Calliope mini plays also in this category:
[https://calliope.cc/en](https://calliope.cc/en)
~~~
whiskers
Yes! Calliope is a spin on the micro:bit that has been developed in Germany.
They are a great team too!
------
TaylorAlexander
Depending on the users experience, a 3D printer and Arduino or a Raspberry pi
plus some servos, lights, and other motors may be all you need.
I recommend a quality printer like the Prusa i3 MK3:
[https://shop.prusa3d.com/en/3d-printers/180-original-
prusa-i...](https://shop.prusa3d.com/en/3d-printers/180-original-
prusa-i3-mk3-kit.html)
You can build things like this with it:
[https://youtu.be/f5JPLIyKOfE](https://youtu.be/f5JPLIyKOfE)
~~~
crypto-jeronimo
Thanks for your response! This is absolutely wonderful! Could you provide some
further links to example projects (eg, interesting open-source designs and/or
source code)?
~~~
TaylorAlexander
Hey thanks!
I’ve been pushing hard on new developments and need to spend more time
documenting my projects. But I have some info on another robot here:
[https://hackaday.io/project/158458-rover-v2-four-wheel-
drive...](https://hackaday.io/project/158458-rover-v2-four-wheel-drive-
robot#menu-description)
There’s lots of cool robots on hackaday:
[https://hackaday.io/list/158174-thp-2018-semifinalists-
open-...](https://hackaday.io/list/158174-thp-2018-semifinalists-open-
hardware-design)
I also recommend browsing
[http://reddit.com/r/3dprinting](http://reddit.com/r/3dprinting) as there is a
lot posted there. And check out
[http://reddit.com/r/RobotBuilding](http://reddit.com/r/RobotBuilding)
I also run a website to discuss projects that have a social impact. That’s at
[http://reboot.love](http://reboot.love)
There’s a lot of good stuff online!
~~~
crypto-jeronimo
I have to admit I wasn't aware of any of these fascinating and useful
resources. Thanks a million once again!
------
bunderbunder
I'm a fan of the BBC micro:bit. The basic board is very inexpensive but comes
with a lot of possibility already soldered in. You can choose among several
well-supported programming languages, from Scratch on up to C++, so it can
grow with you for quite a while.
There's not really an official robotics kit that I know of, but there are
several 3rd-party options on the market.
~~~
jaustin
(full disclosure - I work for micro:bit)
If you're looking _specifically_ at Lego, then the sbrick-plus
[https://www.sbrick.com/](https://www.sbrick.com/) can talk directly to a BBC
micro:bit [https://github.com/vengit/pxt-
sbrick](https://github.com/vengit/pxt-sbrick) so you can use the micro:bit and
Lego together. There are also a huge range of micro:bit accessories from third
parties that do robotics, sensing, lights, etc.
------
sdenton4
How about... Mindstorms? What constraint makes you seek out an alternative?
~~~
kart23
It is obscenely overpriced.
~~~
patja
I used to think so too, but you get a lot of value for the price, especially
when you consider the variety of projects you can build, the relatively
beginner-friendly programming toolset, and the number of videos, books, and
other supporting resources available.
~~~
bunderbunder
Overpriced is maybe a strong word (I get that Legos are expensive because
they're a higher build quality than other interlocking blocks), but Mindstorms
is a very expensive option, all the same. At that price point, even though I
could afford a set, I don't really consider it an option for trying to get a
kid interested in programming or robotics, because I'd feel pretty chapped
about hundreds of dollars down the drain if they didn't end up taking to it.
~~~
SteveNuts
FWIW, I had the first generation Mindstorms and I definitely consider it the
most important factor in getting me interested in engineering and software.
Resale on LEGO is good, so if it works out and gets the kids interested, it's
a small price to pay to introduce them to logic and mechanical concepts (make
sure you don't lose any pieces). If it doesn't work out, sell them and take a
small hit - it's really a win-win in my book.
~~~
fenwick67
I had basically the same experience.
It would be really hard to beat the LEGO Mindstorms experience for ease-of-use
and learning through experimentation.
------
tostitos1979
I got a Cozmo ... has vision and a Python API, which seems like a good idea.
Haven't had a chance to really use it. It was also a bit expensive.
I have made my own robots in the past. Frankly, my flakey hw killed my sw
enthusiasm. That's why, I am happy to pay a bit for functioning robot hw.
Next, I want to get into robot arms. Something with the DoF of a kuka arm but
doesn't need to perform as well and on a low budget. My current prospect is
the Dobot Magician but I am still on the fence.
------
salgernon
If hardware isn't a requirement, I'd point you at processing.org and the
various related projects (openprocessing.org for a javascript front end.). It
hits that logo sweet spot for me when introducing kids to actual programming.
Then, add a pen plotter to the mix for that "look what I made" kick.
------
bernardv
Surely [https://littlebits.com/](https://littlebits.com/) It's a fantastic
educational tool
------
andyjohnson0
We got our eldest child a SparkFun Inventor's Kit last year. He seemed to find
it fun to play around with. One of the projects is a robot.
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14265](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14265)
------
blacksmith_tb
I haven't picked one up (yet), but the Edison[1] looks like a pretty decent
Lego-compatible platform.
1: [https://meetedison.com/](https://meetedison.com/)
------
gmiller123456
Depends on how many prebuild (proprietary and expensive) components you want.
I think the absolute best platform for robotics is Arduino. Pretty much
anything you can think of has been done, and there's likely a step by step
tutorial out there somewhere with component lists. Arduino UNO clones can be
had for as little as $3-$4. And the components like LEDs, motors, servos, etc
can be had for a tiny fraction of what a lot of the proprietary systems cost.
The downside comes when you want to do things like attach a motor to a lead
screw, or attach something to a servo. You'll probably end up needing a drill
press or an improvised lathe. But, I think compared to the cost of the
proprietary systems, you can still come out ahead. And you don't have to worry
about breaking something or dedicating a motor or controller to a project
because they can be replaced cheaply.
------
jacquesm
Plywood, jigsaw, pololu, some servos and your regular computer or laptop or a
rasberry pi. Add sensors to taste, stir.
~~~
decafb
And don't forget regular cardboard. One can do surprisingly much with that.
------
52-6F-62
I’m not sure if this is very helpful, but I know here in Toronto you can use
3D printers and borrow Arduinos and other parts for free from certain
locations of the Toronto Public Library (or virtually free? Haven’t done it
yet).
Maybe something like that exists where you are and you can create your own?
There are a lot of projects online with schematics and even step by step
instructions. Not an exact alternative or anything, but might fulfill similar
requirements in learning.
~~~
hugs
Arduino and 3D printers to make Lego Mindstorms/Technic-compatible parts is
what I do. (I call my parts "Bitbeam".)
I used to use Lego to prototype the robots and machines I make. Now I design
my own "Lego" with OpenSCAD and program the bots with AVR microcontrollers.
Have been doing this for 7-ish years. However, Lego Mindstorms is still a
great (although expensive) system for learning.
~~~
dunham
Can consumer 3D printers pull off decent lego compatible parts? I'm fascinated
by the idea of 3D printers, but I don't really have a good use-case to justify
getting one. (And I've been waiting for them to come down in price.)
I ended up getting my five year old the Lego "Boost" set - I wanted some
motors &c that were accessible to him. He's had fun putting together the
projects, and playing with the scratch programming.
It is tied to their app, but I see that someone has python libraries to talk
to it, so I have options if the app goes away.
~~~
hugs
Nothing can truly match Lego's perfectly tuned injection molding process,
however 3D printing can be good enough for many things.
------
rb808
Not sure if its an alternative, but Lego Boost is awesome and not well known
yet. [https://shop.lego.com/en-US/LEGO-Boost](https://shop.lego.com/en-
US/LEGO-Boost). I'm not sure if its supposed to replace Mindstorms or is an
alternative track for ipad driven robots.
------
clan
I have found the Makeblock mBots both at a reasonable price and a lot of fun.
Not quite as versatile as Lego but in the same ballpark.
[https://www.makeblock.com/steam-kits/mbot](https://www.makeblock.com/steam-
kits/mbot)
~~~
ianbicking
I've gotten (and extended) the ranger kit this summer:
[https://www.makeblock.com/steam-kits/mbot-
ranger](https://www.makeblock.com/steam-kits/mbot-ranger)
I've been generally happy with the price and hardware, but I've grown to
really hate Arduino. Makeblock publishes a bunch of code, but it's highly
redundant and poorly organized, and I find myself constantly using the
slightly wrong version of different pieces of code. But IF I ever figure this
stuff out, I'm slightly hopeful about controlling the Makeblock hardware from
RaspberryPi.
The basic approach is to have the RPI connected to the Arduino board via a
serial connection (this has also difficult to setup, but sometimes I can do
serial over the USB), and then there's just a very simple protocol that runs.
Once this is actually working properly, there's a fairly small Python library
to do the talking, and you get the benefit of the RPI environment (logins,
wifi, camera access, etc), but with the hardware of the Makeblock unit (on-
board sensors, no direct GPIO handling or contention, and pluggable sensors
and motors). But getting there... ugh, it's been really challenging and I only
got hints of it really working so far.
------
ForHackernews
[http://www.finchrobot.com/](http://www.finchrobot.com/) is a fun little
programmable bot for kids.
------
raphman
If you are happy with Arduino or MicroPython, the M5Stack [1] blocks and
ecosystem are pretty nice (and Lego-compatible). It is basically an ESP32
microcontroller with a display, speaker, sensors, and connectors in a 5x5x2 cm
case. Documentation and build quality are not yet perfect but good enough for
most applications.
[1] [http://www.m5stack.com/](http://www.m5stack.com/)
------
delineator
We're playing with a Raspberry Pi 3 b+ together with the CamJam EduKit 3 –
Robotics: [https://camjam.me/?page_id=1035](https://camjam.me/?page_id=1035)
Bought a small bluetooth speaker so our robot can make some noise, possibly
with Sonic Pi as the sound engine: [http://sonic-pi.net](http://sonic-pi.net)
------
glup
1) Buy a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino 2) Pick a project: telepresence robot,
autonomous robot, sous vide machine, thermal camera trigger, etc. 3) Buy
minimal pieces for that project: AdaFruit, SparkFun, or various OEM pieces
from Amazon, Ali Express, etc. (higher cost = more documentation and fewer
lemons) 4) Goto 2)
------
linkpuff
A good alternative for FUN programming projects would be
[http://www.meccano.com/meccanoid-
programming](http://www.meccano.com/meccanoid-programming) It is drag and
drop. It may be not as good as raspberry pi or arduino but it is at least
easier
~~~
Secded
In fact I worked with this before. Its simple but enough to learn alot.
------
beefman
Jimu is very nicely done. Only product I know of in this segment that ships
with servo motors
[https://ubtrobot.com/collections/jimu-
robots](https://ubtrobot.com/collections/jimu-robots)
------
DC-3
Potentially look into VEX? It's not cheap, but it's good fun.
~~~
baylessj
VEX has announced a new micro and accompanying electronics - which should
hopefully mean that their current Cortex system will become cheaper
secondhand. Lots of benefits to the new micro but for hobby use their Cortex
is sufficient.
Also a lot of good programming options available with this system - the same
ROBOTC for C-like programming/graphical as is used with LEGO Mindstorms, but
also Python ([https://www.robotmesh.com/studio-
editions](https://www.robotmesh.com/studio-editions)) and actual C
([https://pros.cs.purdue.edu/](https://pros.cs.purdue.edu/))
~~~
tostitos1979
Last I looked at Vex, I seem to recall being surprised that the software was
not free. Was a non-starter for me as a hobbyist.
~~~
baylessj
The RobotMesh python software listed above is free for individual use, and the
PROS C/C++ option is completely free and open-source.
------
bromagosa
microblocks.fun is still in Alpha, but check it out nevertheless! It works on
lots of 32 bit microcontrollers.
It's been tested on the micro:bit, circuit playground express, calliope and
several Arduinos.
------
emptysea
If you are looking to explore programming, there is a great python library for
interacting with the LEGO Mindstorm.
Possibly a stepping stone into more programming intensive projects.
------
DonHopkins
One of the coolest ways to learn programming I've ever seen is the Snap!
visual programming language, which is written in JavaScript and runs in the
browser.
[https://snap.berkeley.edu](https://snap.berkeley.edu)
It's the culmination of years of work by Brian Harvey and Jens Mönig and other
Smalltalk and education experts. It benefits from their experience and expert
understanding about constructionist education, Smalltalk, Scratch, E-Toys,
Lisp, Logo, Star Logo, and many other excellent systems.
Snap! takes the best ideas, then freshly and coherently synthesizes them into
a visual programming language that kids can use, but is also satisfying to
professional programmers, with all the power of Scheme (lexical closures,
special forms, macros, continuations, user defined functions and control
structures), but deeply integrating and leveraging the web browser and the
internet (JavaScript primitives, everything is a first class object,
dynamically loaded extensions, etc).
Y Combinator demo:
[https://i.imgur.com/cOq8tvR.png](https://i.imgur.com/cOq8tvR.png)
[https://snap.berkeley.edu/snapsource/snap.html#present:Usern...](https://snap.berkeley.edu/snapsource/snap.html#present:Username=jens&ProjectName=y%20combinator)
Here's an excellent mind-blowing example by Ken Kahn of what's possible:
teaching kids AI programming by integrating Snap! with existing JavaScript
libraries and cloud services like AI, machine learning, speech synthesis and
recognition, Arduino programming, etc:
AI extensions of Snap! for the eCraft2Learn project
[https://ecraft2learn.github.io/ai/](https://ecraft2learn.github.io/ai/)
>The eCraft2Learn project is developing a set of extensions to the Snap!
programming language to enable children (and non-expert programmers) to build
AI programs. You can use all the AI blocks after importing this file into
Snap! or Snap4Arduino. Or you can see examples of using these blocks inside
this Snap! project.
[https://github.com/ecraft2learn/ai](https://github.com/ecraft2learn/ai)
[http://lntrg.education.ox.ac.uk/presentation-of-ai-cloud-
ser...](http://lntrg.education.ox.ac.uk/presentation-of-ai-cloud-services-
integrated-with-snap-at-the-connective-ubiquitous-technology-for-embodiments-
center-of-the-national-university-of-singapore-and-keio-university-
on-16-march-2017-by-k/)
Use devices with Snap!:
Orbotix Sphero guide by Connor Hudson and Dan Garcia:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/11wR53OTnofRtTtxZCmxnCUjI...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11wR53OTnofRtTtxZCmxnCUjIlFQjnGewM21A0vmjtFw/edit?usp=sharing)
Lego NXT package by Connor Hudson:
[https://github.com/technoboy10/snap-nxt](https://github.com/technoboy10/snap-
nxt)
Nintendo Wiimote package by Connor Hudson:
[https://github.com/technoboy10/wiisnap](https://github.com/technoboy10/wiisnap)
Finch and Hummingbird robots package by Tom Lauwers:
[https://www.hummingbirdkit.com/learning/snap-
programming/](https://www.hummingbirdkit.com/learning/snap-programming/)
Parallax S2 robot package by Connor Hudson:
[https://github.com/blockext/s2](https://github.com/blockext/s2)
LEAP Motion by Connor Hudson:
[https://github.com/technoboy10/snapmotion](https://github.com/technoboy10/snapmotion)
Speech synthesis by Connor Hudson:
[https://github.com/technoboy10/snap2speech](https://github.com/technoboy10/snap2speech)
Arduino package by Alan Yorinks:
[https://github.com/MrYsLab/s2a_fm](https://github.com/MrYsLab/s2a_fm)
Arduino package by Bernat Romagosa/Citilab:
[http://snap4arduino.rocks/](http://snap4arduino.rocks/)
Fischertechnik ROBOTICS TXT Controller by Richard Kunze:
[https://github.com/rkunze/ft-robo-snap](https://github.com/rkunze/ft-robo-
snap)
Snap! for Raspberry Pi by rasplay.org:
[http://downloads.rasplay.org/pisnap/](http://downloads.rasplay.org/pisnap/)
More Snap! extensions for CS education:
snap-apps.org provides Edgy for graphs, Cellular for multi-agent simulation,
and more.
[http://snap-apps.org/](http://snap-apps.org/)
[http://www.snap-apps.org/edgy.html](http://www.snap-apps.org/edgy.html)
[http://www.flipt.org/#cellular](http://www.flipt.org/#cellular)
Netsblox for multiplayer networking.
[https://netsblox.org/](https://netsblox.org/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Use a Wii Balance Board with Linux - kqr2
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/linux-wii-balanceboard/
======
icefox
This would be a neat way to input a password
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wine 5.0 - ashitlerferad
https://www.winehq.org/news/2020012101
======
frereubu
Previous discussion (with 110 comments):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108890](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108890)
------
classified
To the attention of Mac users: _Wine won 't work on macOS Catalina 10.15_
Apple is doing us no favors here, so be aware.
~~~
mrpippy
This is not accurate. This version of Wine can’t run 32-bit Windows apps on
10.15, but 64-bit apps do run. Also, CodeWeavers CrossOver can run 32 and
64-bit apps on 10.15.
~~~
mschuster91
Most old games however are 32-bit. Don't have time at the moment to test but I
bet I lost UT2004 when I upgraded my Mac to 10.15...
~~~
dkonofalski
You definitely did. It's a 16-year old game so it definitely was 32-bit unless
someone created a port or an updated .exe using a newer Unreal version.
------
ziotom78
Let's hope that «multi-monitor support» will help this bug [1] go away! I have
found that most of the Windows apps I used to rely on have good counterparts
working on Linux, but sadly nothing matches Powerpoint (no, LibreOffice does
not count).
[1]
[https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7416](https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7416)
~~~
swiley
What exactly makes PowerPoint so good? I’ve never really used either, I’ve
mostly relied on pamdoc’s Beamer generator and google slides.
~~~
xioxox
Libreoffice Present is pretty buggy. For example, sometimes clicks don't do
the right thing. Also, I've had slide elements become uneditable. These bugs
are really noticeable when making presentations with complex slides.
Libreoffice also produced really poor kerning, poor antialising and figure
quality after resizing (though perhaps this has improved since my last try).
Beamer and google slides are fine when you want bullet points or a figure. My
scientific work produces lots of pictures and graphs - figure placement and
labelling is really important. Animations are also sometimes necessary.
Beamer, google slides and libreoffice just don't work well there.
~~~
anticensor
> Libreoffice Present
It is called LibreOffice Impress.
------
Dayshine
Does Wine still require the complicated, hard to manage, and poorly documented
use of various combinations of WINEPREFIX, Winetricks and WINEARCH?
It always seemed to me the easiest thing was to spin up a new VM for every
application I wanted to run in Wine.
I feel like that isn't the intention, but without any built-in profile
management you're always one typo away from wrecking your entire Wine setup.
~~~
Yetanfou
I surely hope so, given that these make it possible to do things with Wine
which are difficult if not impossible with a real Windows installation without
having to do silly things with VMs or containers. As an example I use Wine to
run Sketchup (2016, off-line) on Linux. After 30 days the thing times out and
wants me to buy a license which is no longer available given that Sketchup has
gone with the times and now does cloudy things. Since I just want to run the
thing off-line without any external interference I prefer the 2016 version
over newer incarnations. On Windows I'd have to try to eradicate every last
trace of Sketchup from the registry and any other location used to determine
whether this is the first time the program has been installed. On Linux the
solution is simple, just wipe $WINEPREFIX and re-install (an automated
process) to the same location. A simple script does the job, _sketchup -r_ and
I'm set.
By the way, $WINEPREFIX can also be used to make sure you _don 't_ wreck your
entire Wine setup with a single typo. Just make sure all your serious use of
Wine is done with a specific, non-default prefix and you're set.
~~~
jeroenhd
There's applications to do this on Windows too. Using Sandboxie you can create
a sandbox on the file system to isolate files (for sketchup for example) in
the same way you can use a Wine prefix to isolate a single application.
Of course this doesn't cover all uses, but in my experience Windows tools
exist to provide most features you can use Wine for. The difference is having
to download 20 apps for 20 things and writing 20 scripts to automate
everything versus downloading wine and just writing 20 scripts.
~~~
technofiend
It bears mention that sandboxie is now free and transitioning to open source.
So hopefully the original poster doesn't also have to uninstall and reinstall
it due to cloudy things.
------
mister_hn
Tested playing windows games on Linux, it works amazingly stable and we'll,
even at high resolutions (4K)
------
KaoruAoiShiho
How does Wine compare to Parallels in perf for mac? Parallels doesn't support
DX11 which is really painful.
~~~
galad87
Parallels Desktop 15 support DX11 on macOS 10.14.4 and later.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Windows 8 on a laptop: first look - revorad
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/09/15/windows-8-on-a-laptop-first-look/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
======
dustinupdyke
First comment on this story is "'press the Windows key and start typing the
name' Who on earth does that? I don’t want to TYPE anything. I want to point
and click as much as possible! Even on a PC"
Which I think precisely differentiates the user model here on HN and the
general public.
~~~
Qz
I remain a mouse user except where I absolutely have to type things. I do
recognize that this differentiates me from many if not most HN users :P.
~~~
mattmanser
I get the impression he's talking from a power user perspective.
------
Pewpewarrows
Having used Windows 8 for the past day or so, I'm definitely warming up to the
Start menu being replaced by the Start Metro screen. It feels very similar to
Ubuntu's Unity launcher. That said, for the times that I know I'm only going
to be quickly launching an app by typing the first few letters of its name, I
wish they had an optional "mini" panel for it, possibly with its own keybind.
Dock it onto the left side of the screen, or make it a front-and-center popup
like Alfred/Gnome-Do/Quicksilver/Launchy.
~~~
sandGorgon
can I add Synapse (for Ubuntu) to the list ? Written in Vala, faster than
Gnome-do and primarily developed for the ElementaryOS project.
------
fuzzylizard
If MS continues with their ideas for Windows 8, then Windows 7 will be the
last OS I own from them. I really do not understand the rational for wanting
to make desktop PCs look and act like tablets. I really don't want full screen
apps on my 24" monitor. And that start screen looks like it was written for 5
year olds.
~~~
_debug_
> And that start screen looks like it was written for 5 year olds.
That's how the average user IS. That's what Apple has shown us with the
phenomenal success of their iPhone, iPad products. It's the "Don't make me
think" philosophy taken to an extreme.
I'm guessing that you are probably like me, a command line aficionado. They
call it "simplification" of the user interface, but we feel that there's an
element of idioticization there, too! :-) I mean, how do they get things done
when there's no place to TYPE?! It's scary to have no place to type. :-)
------
JohnTHaller
This first Windows 8 development release is really to get people working on
Metro apps. It's tablet-centric and desktop and laptop use (without a touch
screen) is a very clear afterthought. There will be major changes to the way
this all works over the coming months. There have to be for Windows 8 to be a
viable desktop OS.
------
steverb
That review jives with my own experience. I sincerely hope that they make the
metro "Start" optional before the final build.
Also, you can move past the lock screen by hitting enter or by hitting control
(in case you habitually use ctrl-alt-del).
~~~
fname
Here's a Registry hack to get it back: [http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-
pick/how-to-get-a-windows-...](http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/how-to-
get-a-windows-7-start-menu-in-windows-8-20110914)
------
Ryan_IRL
UI looks inconsistent, but I see a lot there to be excited about. If they are
taking cues from the phone OS, then that's a very good thing IMO. I've always
felt that was one of the nicer mobile UI's.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The simplest autocomplete function in JavaScript - scriptproof
http://www.scriptol.com/javascript/autocomplete.php
======
tantalor
Impossible to delete a character after matching (Chrome 34).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Closure: How not to write JavaScript - rams
http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2009/11/12/google-closure-how-not-to-write-javascript/
======
gruseom
The article says:
Although it is necessary in Java, it is entirely pointless to
specify the length of an array ahead of time in JavaScript. [...]
Rather, you can just set up an empty array and allow it to grow as
you fill it in. Not only is the code shorter, but it runs faster too.
Faster? That ought to raise suspicion. JS's dynamic hash-arrays are neat, but
now they're supposed to be immune from the laws that govern memory allocation
in any other language?
As it happens, I had occasion to test this a few months ago.
function preallocate(len) {
var arr = new Array(len);
for (var n = 0; n < len; n += 1) {
arr[n] = n;
};
return arr;
}
function noPreallocate(len) {
var arr = [];
for (var n = 0; n < len; n += 1) {
arr[n] = n;
};
return arr;
}
On my machine, noPreallocate is 4% faster in FF, but it's 15% slower in IE8
and a whopping 70% slower in Chrome.
~~~
axod
<http://axod.net/arraytest.html>
After 20 iterations:
Browser Pre-alloc No pre-alloc
Firefox 3.6.13 OSX 824ms 829ms
Safari 5.0.3 OSX 812ms 948ms
Chrome 9.0.597.16 OSX 1317ms 992ms
I'm pretty sure that in modern browsers new Array(length) doesn't allocate
anything, it just sets the length property. The results I'm seeing would agree
with Google really.
Perhaps you were seeing GC events slowing down the test?
The other thing about for(var i=0;i<arr.length;i++) is it can end up as an
infinite loop if you're modifying the length inside the for loop:
for (var i=0;i<arr.length;i++) {
arr[10 + i*2] = "foo";
}
// Infinite loop.
~~~
gruseom
_Perhaps you were seeing GC events slowing down the test?_
Perhaps. Or perhaps it varies by array size?
------
jrockway
My feeling is that even the compilers written in CS101 will optimize this. I'm
guessing that Google tested their code with V8, performance was fine, and they
thought nothing of it.
I just did a benchmark with node.js. I made a 50000000 element array, and
timed how long each way took.
Trial one:
for( var i = 0; i < array.length; i++ ) { array[i]++ }
That took, on average, 0.93001866 seconds.
Trial two:
for( var i = 0; i < len; i++ ) { array[i]++ }
That took, on average, 0.809920 seconds.
A lot of stressing-out over what ends up being a rounding error.
~~~
kwamenum86
For js running in a browser this does not matter but on a server this will
make a huge difference.
~~~
jrockway
How many 50 million element arrays do you have?
My guess is that this makes no difference in real life. Should you write clean
code that performs well? Yes. But should you be fixated on a tiny bug in
Google's library? Nope. Send patch, get .0000000001 seconds per element back,
and move on.
~~~
kwamenum86
It's not about a single 50mil element array. It's about sub-optimal code
running in a bunch of places and it adds up. But in any case this probably
won't be the bottleneck.
Still I am a fan of running the most optimal code possible on the server.
Absolutely no reason not to.
Client-side js is different. Often times algorithmic optimizations have no
impact (unless we are talking about animation.)
I would not trust people who do not respect optimizations like these to run
code on my server.
------
aboodman
Time in web applications is not used looking up array lengths - it's used in
IO, layout, and DOM manipulation. If iterating through arrays was found to
ever be a noticeable issue in practice, the Closure compiler could just be
modified to emit more efficient code. That's one of the advantages of having
the compiler - you don't have to make a convenience/readability trade.
Closure was not thrown together by novices new to the language. It was started
by Erik Arvidsson and Dan Pupius, two JS hackers that have been doing this
kind of work longer than just about anyone else. Its differences from other
libraries aren't the result of ignorance, they're mostly the result of
conscious tradeoffs to make compilation more effective.
_Edit:_ Oh, and the string thing... If you ever do
new String("foo")
in JavaScript, you're doing it wrong.
~~~
aboodman
Here is an example of a real-world performance bottleneck that was discovered
by the closure team:
<http://pupius.co.uk/blog/2007/03/garbage-collection-in-ie6/>
------
axod
> "...was that people would switch from truly excellent JavaScript libraries
> like jQuery to Closure on the strength of the Google name."
This is ridiculous. Does not the mere fact that jquery keep announcing 4000%
speedups with every new release not tell you something about the efficiency of
jquery?
Unbelievably biased. If you looked at the jquery code you'd find the same sort
of things, and some far worse.
From jquery release notes:
... coming in almost 30x faster than our previous solution
... coming in about 49% faster than our previous engine
... much, much faster (about 6x faster overall)
... Seeing an almost 3x jump in performance
... improved the performance of jQuery about 2x compared
to jQuery 1.4.1 and about 3x compared to jQuery 1.3.2
... Event Handling is 103% Faster
... jQuery.map() method is now 866% faster
... .css() is 25% faster
Maybe it's just me, but when someone says they've speeded up their code so it
runs 30 times as fast, you have to really wonder just how badly it was written
to start with, and how badly it's still written.
~~~
brunoc
These improvements have occurred over time, as browsers gain new features and
new techniques are discovered. They (the jQuery contributors) focus on the
features and optimize what can be optimized when there is a need.
The optimized solution is often much uglier than the simple but less efficient
one.
------
ivank
Previously <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=937175>
If you're building a large JavaScript application, Closure might be your best
option given that Closure Compiler (in ADVANCED mode) produces small
obfuscated output files that contain only the functions your program uses.
ADVANCED mode restricts how you write your JavaScript (but not onerously), but
that's where Closure Library comes in: a 1 million LOC "standard library"
already annotated for Compiler.
I've found working with Closure Library/Compiler enjoyable, typically more
than Python, because the Compiler's type system finds plenty of bugs as I
work. It has even caught bugs in my Python code (after I ported it to
JavaScript, of course).
There's also good book out there for Closure:
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1449381871/>
------
julius
Closure is one of the most intuitive libraries I have used, ever.
I use Closure for everything, which is too big for jQuery. Compared to its
next best competitor YUI, it's a joy (eg. first really good cross-browser
richtext editor).
I have not found many features, not already included in the library.
Code can be easily scaled, and is fast enough. Especially on the production
system, where you, thanks to the Closure compiler, can have a compiled version
(I also prefer the compiler over YUI's).
Have I told you about the excellent testing framework...
Have I told you about the excellent documentation...
Have I told you about its very readable code...
When it was released, and I had read some of its code, I knew I wanted to use
this at my work as soon as possible. But exactly this Blogpost had a super
high google rank for the query "Google Closure".
If you, too, run into the problem of your co-workers reading that post, just
link to the HN-Comments. Worked for me. Here is the older HN-Link:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=937175>
~~~
nswanberg
At what point do you decide something is too big for jQuery? Lines of code?
Number of developers? Certain features needed?
Does it make sense to begin with jQuery and switch at a certain time?
~~~
RyanDScott
Reasons you might consider using Closure instead of something like jQuery,
plain-old-js:
1\. Your javascript file is getting huge and you want to break things out into
manageable pieces.
2\. You find yourself needing namespaces that are easy to implement.
3\. You want to learn how to build structured javascript (Closure is great at
encouraging well documented, "object-oriented" coding)
4\. You've got too many js files (2+) and you want to only have one in
production for faster page loading (use closure compiler)
5\. You're building an application with a team of developers; closure helps
create modular, well documented code
6\. You want to build a snappy, client-side heavy application
Before I ever used Closure, I used javascript more like frosting on a cake.
Javascript can be frosting, but it can also do some amazing things. My biggest
complaint with javascript in the past has been it's unwieldy nature in medium
to large projects. I stuck to using javascript/jQuery to decorate html pages
and had the page generation, business logic, templating, etc., on the server
side (Python). Then I wrote a medium sized application in closure, and it
worked, and it's maintainable, and it didn't require a lot of server side
code, and it was fast.
I couldn't be happier.
My only complaint is it seems Closure development doesn't have the velocity
that other projects like GWT have. Google, it seems, is putting it's money
more on GWT than something like closure; or so it seems based on the amount of
announcements for GWT, the quality of the tools and libraries being produced,
the number of updates to closure compared to GWT. While GWT is a powerful
tool, it's more complex (thanks to Java), harder to setup, harder to get
started. In some ways I wish they would take the tools and frameworks they
have for GWT and build them for Closure.
------
jws
Example 1: Slow Loop
The author claims writing:
for (var i = fromIndex; i < arr.length; i++) {
…is slow and can be much faster as…
for (var i = fromIndex, ii = arr.length; i < ii; i++) {
Speed aside, this introduces a bug if the length of the array changes in the
body of the loop, but ignoring this booby trap I ran benchmarks on the
original clear version and the slightly more complicated fragile version.
clear fragile
empty loop body 5ms 1ms
single number add 7ms 6ms
single DOM lookup 82ms 81ms
That is for an array of a _million_ elements on an iMac running Safari.
(Apparently Safari is particularly good at doing _nothing_ , but otherwise
this "optimization" is lost in the loop body's time.)
Edit: I checked Chrome on Linux as well. It was also unimpressive.
------
kls
You know while raw speed is an important piece of a library, it is not the
only thing, there are other factors that carry just as much weight when it
comes to importance. 3rd party library ecosystem, community support,
integration with other technologies, ease of use and a host of other are all
just as important factors when I evaluate a library.
As well, IIRC Closure was an internal project that was built to build apps
like Gmail, if that is the case then it, is reasonable to think that it has
some cruft in their given that the state of the art in Javascript libraries
came after Gmail, Oulook on the web, and other Browser based apps showed what
was possible.
It was programmer transitioning from other languages to JavaScript that built
these first toolkits and they brought over a good deal of their language
constructs that they where familiar with as time went on other programmer from
other disciplines joined in and some of the frameworks started to morph.
I remember when Dojo threw away their entire toolkit because of this and I
commend them for doing so. They came to realize that their was a better way
than just reimplementing Java or C# in the browser.
Closure on the other hand remained an internal project outside those learning.
That being said, I do think their are much better frameworks available than
Closure, Dojo and jQuery being two prime examples, but I do cut them some
slack based on the fact that they would possible qualify as one of the oldest
frameworks and that they did not benefit from the learning the communities
went through as the state of the art evolved.
~~~
pinchyfingers
There is a TechTalk about Closure where the speaker makes a big deal out of
the whole project being done by many different developers in their twenty
percent time, so yeah, they might get cut some slack and hopefully they'll be
good about accepting patches to get some of these things fixed.
Gmail works pretty well, so the library can't be too horrible. I'm glad I read
this, I was thinking of doing a project using the Closure library, but I guess
I'll stick with jQuery.
~~~
nickik
Can you post the link to that TechTalk? I cant find it.
~~~
amattie
[http://closuretools.blogspot.com/2010/06/closure-library-
tec...](http://closuretools.blogspot.com/2010/06/closure-library-tech-talk-at-
google-io.html)
------
oomkiller
Note, this was written over a year ago, so stuff may have changed since then.
It would probably be worth taking a look to see how things have improved.
------
mfukar
Why are we (and by we, I mean the article author) getting worked up about what
should be a single, or maybe more, bug reports?
It'd be a lot more interesting if you could use those conclusions to find out
who wrote those parts of the code.
------
_ques
This article is over a year old.
~~~
araneae
True, but as someone who has a java background and is working on js, it's nice
to know that switches suck in js :)
~~~
gruseom
I would be very careful (i.e. run my own tests, in multiple browsers) before
believing that.
~~~
rbanffy
Or, like my college teachers told me, "measure, don't guess".
I am a bit ashamed to confess I do a lot of guessing in my work...
------
abraham
I wish the code snippets were linked to the loc.
[http://code.google.com/p/closure-
library/source/browse/trunk...](http://code.google.com/p/closure-
library/source/browse/trunk/closure/goog/array/array.js?r=2#63)
------
kwamenum86
"I’m not sure what this pattern is called in Java, but in JavaScript it’s
called a ‘memory leak’."
The comment is in regards to goog.memoize but is terribly backwards. The
complaint about goog.memoize is that it will grow uncontrollably because it
does not cap the size of the caching object. A memory leak is the inability of
a program to free memory it has allocated.
Since js is garbage collected causing a memory leak involves creating a
circular reference fooling the garbage collector into thinking that an object
is still in use.
~~~
ivank
> A memory leak is the inability of a program to free memory it has allocated.
Unexpected memoization/caching also counts as a memory leak. There are
(unfortunately) a few places in Closure Library where unexpected memoization
might cause a memory leak.
> Since js is garbage collected causing a memory leak involves creating a
> circular reference fooling the garbage collector into thinking that an
> object is still in use.
Browser environments are expected to handle circular references. They don't
fool garbage collectors, except in old versions of IE when a circular
reference crosses the JScript/DOM boundary.
~~~
kwamenum86
Are you saying that the memory allocated by the memoizer is not recoverable
e.g. won't be released until the browser is killed? If not then it is not a
memory leak.
~~~
ivank
It's potentially recoverable, but stuck in some "private" object your
JavaScript application will never bother to look at. It's still a memory leak.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Metalsmith – A pluggable static site generator - ianstormtaylor
http://www.metalsmith.io/
======
sneak
I like that static site generators are basically the Cups And Balls of our
craft.
It's so well understood and constrained of a problem domain that we can now
ignore the practical considerations and go all-out with the art itself. I feel
like this design and api is a great example of that, much like Penn and
Teller's Cups and Balls with clear cups[1] - wonderfully creative innovation
within a completely and totally solved problem domain.
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_n3Zb3bW3g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_n3Zb3bW3g)
------
Touche
One problem I see. On the one hand you say:
> All of the logic in Metalsmith is handled by plugins.
But on the other hand, you say this:
> Each plugin is invoked with the contents of the source directory, with every
> file parsed for optional YAML front-matter, like so…
The YAML parsing should be a plugin as well, some of us have existing JSON
front-matter files.
~~~
icebraining
A JSON file is a YAML file, so what's the problem?
~~~
asb
I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted (well, maybe the tone), it's true
that YAML is a superset of JSON
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML#JSON](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML#JSON)
~~~
ianstormtaylor
That's really cool actually.
------
8ig8
Thanks. Looking forward to trying it out this weekend. My current generator,
which I'm generally happy with, is DocPad.
[http://docpad.org](http://docpad.org)
------
cristianpascu
One thing I don't like about jekyll (unless I'm missing something), is that on
site generation, the last modified time stamp of the files gets updated too
even if the file content hasn't changed. This way a FTP program like Transmit
will not be able to synchronize only the modified files.
~~~
sneak
Just about everything that supports ftp supports ssh+rsync. I'm not
apologizing for the bug, but rsync+ssh is a sane default for synchronizing
everything everywhere these days and sidesteps the problem almost entirely.
------
xianshou
If this really works, I would love to see it replace the hellish jumble of
team-editable documentation. I've seen Confluence, PBWiki, Google Sites, and a
smattering of others used to no good ends...can we please switch to this now?
~~~
ianstormtaylor
I'm actually in the process of converting our Segment.io docs to use it right
now :) makes it way nicer for everyone* folks to just be able to edit
Markdown, but still have the power to do lots of custom things to make the
experience better.
* I was going to say for "less-technical" folks but then I realized that even technical people shouldn't have to be subjected to our current tangle of Jade files!
------
dangoor
Could be compared to assemble.io and stylistically reminds me of Gulp.
~~~
justarandomanon
Gulp was the first thing I though of when looking through the examples.
Edit: In fact, could this whole thing just be a gulp plugin?
~~~
andyfleming
I don't see why not. My thought was "why even have this when you could just
build the plugins for gulp?".
~~~
ianstormtaylor
The problem with Gulp is just that it just adds too much extra cruft into the
mix that isn't really necessary, mostly around running tasks from the CLI. Our
general thought for build tasks is that all of that should be in a Makefile
which will nicely handle mtime checks and everything for you, and is available
on pretty much every setup out there.
The simplicity is nice because you can read through Metalsmith's source and
really understand everything that it's doing very quickly:
[https://github.com/segmentio/metalsmith/blob/master/lib/inde...](https://github.com/segmentio/metalsmith/blob/master/lib/index.js)
------
mercurial
It appears to be indeed both extremely simple, and extremely composable. How
well does it handle large collections of files?
~~~
ianstormtaylor
I haven't tried it on _crazy_ amounts of files, but it's just using node's
basic async I/O under the covers, and reading once. If you notice any
sluggishness let me know!
It's also greatly impacted by what plugins choose to do. I had an extra clone
call (literally cloning the buffers for each file) in the templating plugin at
one point that like 50x'd the build time :) Everything I've done so far though
has sub-second build times—quick enough that I've been building on every
request[1] in development which makes things super simple.
[1]:
[https://github.com/segmentio/metalsmith.io/blob/master/serve...](https://github.com/segmentio/metalsmith.io/blob/master/server.js#L15-L18)
------
shortformblog
This is really intriguing. I also recommend HarpJS
([https://www.harp.io/](https://www.harp.io/)) as well, which has some
impressive pre-compile features.
------
sgdesign
This looks very cool. I like the focus on plugins, it would be pretty awesome
to have a flexible static site generator with an active plugin ecosystem.
------
andrewflnr
I like this design. It kind of goes in the same direction as my
github.com/andrewf/filtdir while being significantly more refined. This seems
to make the whole directory structure available to plugins, while my tool only
works one file at a time. It might even convince me to switch.
------
jon49
A functional type approach. It will be interesting to look more into it. It
would be nice to have a .map, .filter functions (if they don't already exist).
So, if you don't want to rebuild everything you could do a .filter(htmlDate <
mdDate) type workflow.
------
ricardobeat
Not just a nice tool, but a great implementation. Simple, lean code, no
promises or anything fancy.
~~~
tobobo
The overall structure of the thing looks pretty promise-y to me.
------
Kiro
How do I get this working on Windows? I've installed it with npm install
metalsmith. Now what?
~~~
roryokane
You’re right, the “Install It” section should make that clearer. Anyway, there
is an explanation of basic usage if you follow the link to “CLI”
([https://github.com/segmentio/metalsmith#cli](https://github.com/segmentio/metalsmith#cli))
in that section. It says you can create a `metalsmith.json` file that lists
source, destination, and plugins in the described format, and then run
`metalsmith` from the command line to build your pages according to the
configuration file. And I think you will probably also have to install any
plugins you use beforehand. Plugin installation instructions are all in the
plugin READMEs – they are basically all just `npm install <some-package-
name>`.
But it’s harder to figure out how to create my own local plugins and make sure
Metalsmith is able to see them. And the documentation should make it clearer
how to _use_ the JavaScript API, in the context of a static file generator,
where most people are not thinking about writing a program. It took me a bit
of thinking to realize that you would have to create a `whatever.js` file
inside the directory containing JavaScript code with
`Metalsmith(".")….build()`, and then just run it with `node whatever.js`.
~~~
ianstormtaylor
Sorry about that! Just updated the Readme and website to hopefully make that
clearer. And I've added Readme's to all of the examples[1] now too, some of
which use the Javascript API and some the CLI.
[1]:
[https://github.com/segmentio/metalsmith/tree/master/examples](https://github.com/segmentio/metalsmith/tree/master/examples)
------
esquivias
Somewhat relevant plug:
I have a similar weekend project that is aimed towards generating static
markup. The syntax looks a bit like haml with simple to use mixins, includes,
and variables.
[http://rubygems.org/gems/aml](http://rubygems.org/gems/aml)
~~~
roryokane
You should have linked to its home page
[https://abstractmarkup.com/](https://abstractmarkup.com/). The RubyGems page
does nothing to sell me on why I should bother installing your gem.
------
aram
Did anyone else manage to install it? I'm getting a "shasum check failed"
error.
The project scaffold generator part sounds pretty interesting because I needed
it pretty often and eventually had to build that for myself.
~~~
ianstormtaylor
Just republished! Can you let me know if you still see it? Sorry about that :$
~~~
BrandonSmith
Got the checksum error, too. Successful after the republish.
------
rainburg
Couldn't choose between Jekyll and Middleman, but now I think I'm going with
Metalsmith. No ruby, understandable plugin structure… I'm sold!
------
rayshan
With sooooo many static site generators (all very well done too), would be
awesome to have a side-by-side by-feature comparison table.
~~~
rayshan
Apparently there are many aggregation efforts, but no by-feature comparison.
[https://github.com/jaspervdj/static-site-generator-
compariso...](https://github.com/jaspervdj/static-site-generator-
comparison/issues/13)
------
caiob
I fail to see the big advantage of this over its competitors.
~~~
ianstormtaylor
Yeah it depends on what your use case is to begin with. If it's just the
simplest blog with a running series of Markdown files, then really any of the
static site generators will do. But once you get into trying to implement some
more advanced features then you run up against the limitations of most (if not
all) of them because they assume way too much up front. A couple real-world
examples from us at Segment.io are:
Documentation - for our docs[1] we want to be able to use the same simple
static site generator without having all of the blogging logic. Basically the
nesting of the files should result in the nesting of the URLs. But we also
want to be able to tie in metadata that we have in our database about all of
our integrations. And we'd also like to be able to write custom handlebars
helpers that turn a simple JSON object into a widget that renders API calls in
any of our supported languages.
Academy - for our academy[2] I really want to get to the point where we can
generate PDFs for each of our articles and being to re-distribute them that
was as eBooks (or potentially for a collection of articles) because that kind
of thing appeals to enterprises who are looking for guidance. And we could
even end up doing the same thing with our docs pages. And then we also want to
have custom handlebars helpers for
Blog - for our blog[3] we want just the most basic implementation, although
maybe with some niceties about author metadata to load in avatars and such.
Whenever you try and get into additional features that weren't considered by
the original "static site" (or worse "static blog") generators, you usually
end up building really cludgey code, if it's even possible.
So with Metalsmith we avoid all of that, because the plugins can do whatever
they want, and it's super trivial to add local plugins to the mix if you're
cooking up something which you know is unique to just you.
And the last thing was that we were sick of having a Ruby dependency (with all
of the associated slowness) just to build our blog with Jekyll. Basically was
increasing build times by an order of magnitude.
[1]: [https://segment.io/docs](https://segment.io/docs) [2]:
[https://segment.io/academy](https://segment.io/academy) [3]:
[https://segment.io/blog](https://segment.io/blog)
------
Touche
This is a nit, but non-constructors should be lowercase.
~~~
ianstormtaylor
It actually is a constructor, just lets you omit the `new` keyword if you
choose since I think it's nice not to have to do that sometimes.
------
sdegutis
So simple, yet so powerful.
------
borplk
Very nice. Well done.
------
fredsters_s
Awesome.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are your must-have packages for vim? - gjvc
======
entelechy
package manager:
[https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim](https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim)
surround: [https://github.com/tpope/vim-
surround](https://github.com/tpope/vim-surround)
repeat:
[http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2136](http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2136)
git: [https://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive](https://github.com/tpope/vim-
fugitive) (tim pope plugin)
undo: [https://github.com/sjl/gundo.vim](https://github.com/sjl/gundo.vim)
for repls: [https://github.com/jpalardy/vim-
slime](https://github.com/jpalardy/vim-slime)
for html: [http://emmet.io/](http://emmet.io/)
------
a3n
I used to install vim packages years ago. Now I just get by on what comes with
vim, including colorschemes (elflord). It looks like I have four packages
installed, and I don't remember what they're for.
EDIT: it looks like I use nerdtree at work.
------
galistoca
Ctrl+P, NERDTree, ag.vim. Especially ag.vim. I don't know how I would have
navigated around complex repositories without it.
------
mihaipocorschi
NERDtree Ctrl+P vim-plug
------
drakmail
vim-rails vim-rspec
:-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Plenary – A privacy focused RSS feed and offline reader app for Android - spians
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spians.plenary
======
spians
Hey HN,
We've created an RSS feed and offline reader app for android that doesn't show
ads/track your activity. The app is a combination of a feature rich RSS reader
and an offline article downloader (similar to read it later apps). The app has
novel ways to add RSS feeds and has an offline first strategy.
Enjoy the app and let us know if you have any questions or what you'd like to
see in coming versions!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How I fixed Node.js - davidvgalbraith
http://davidvgalbraith.com/how-i-fixed-node-js/
======
lightlyused
Nicely written.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Formula for love: X^2+(y-sqrt(x^2))^2=1 - carusen
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=x^2%2B%28y-sqrt%28x^2%29%29^2%3D1
======
ck2
Since the human heart looks nothing like the "heart shape" we all know and
use, I wonder where that originated...
Dang, wikipedia knows it all:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_%28symbol%29>
_The seed of the silphium plant, used in ancient times as an herbal
contraceptive, has been suggested as the source of the heart symbol._
Oh, also
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28x^2%2By^2-1%29^3-x^2...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28x^2%2By^2-1%29^3-x^2y^3%3D0)
~~~
Jach
I always liked the "Aphrodite's butt" interpretation; it makes me smile
whenever I see heart-shaped boxes of brown chocolate. :)
Also, here's mine:
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281-%28|x|-1%29^2%29^0...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281-%28|x|-1%29^2%29^0.5%3D-3%281-%28|x|%2F2%29^0.5%29^0.5)
~~~
Retric
Not bad. I like polar(x + sin(y) = 1) due to the simplicity, but polar(x = y)
seems the most poetic (y from -1.5pi to 1.5pi) or (y from -1.5pi to 1.5pi).
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=polar%28x+%3D+%28y%29%2...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=polar%28x+%3D+%28y%29%29+%28y+from+-1.5pi+to+1.5pi%29)
------
iwwr
Another formula for love:
(NSFW)
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=pi%5Epi%2A%28exp%28-x%5...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=pi%5Epi%2A%28exp%28-x%5E100%29%2Acos%28x%29%2Babs%280.3%2Asin%28x%29%29%29+from+-3+to+3)
~~~
bajsejohannes
A graph of a penis with 9 upvotes. I hope this isn't where HN is going.
~~~
catshirt
what precisely differentiates this graph from the original post? i feel like
they're equally [relevant/irrelevant].
~~~
bajsejohannes
The original is relevant because 1) it is valentine's day and 2) most people
here appreciate a good math formula.
On it's own the original post was perhaps not too original, but it spurred
some interesting discussion, like where the heart shape originated.
The penis graph on the other hand, only comes of as childish. Sure, it would
have been really funny when I was 15. And to be sure, there are plenty of
clever penis jokes out there ("The hammer is my penis" comes to mind), but
this is not one of them.
~~~
sfphotoarts
Well, I can't agree, I thought it was clever and witty and I'm hanging on to
the 15 year old inside me that still thinks this is pretty funny.
------
philh
3d version: (x^2+(9/4)y^2+z^2-1)^3 - x^2 _z^3-(9/80)y^2_ z^3 = 0
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ContourPlot3D[%28x^2%2B...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ContourPlot3D\[%28x^2%2B%289%2F4%29y^2%2Bz^2-1%29^3+-+x^2*z^3-%289%2F80%29y^2*z^3%3D%3D0%2C+{x%2C+-1.2%2C+1.2}%2C+{y%2C+-1.2%2C+1.2}%2C+{z%2C+-1.2%2C+1.3})]
~~~
ot
It's Taubin's heart surface (<http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HeartSurface.html>)
From <http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathtrek_02_11_02.html> :
> The algorithms that Taubin developed worked well even in the vicinity of
> cusps and other singularities. "I discovered the equation of the heart while
> trying to construct surfaces with complex singularities," Taubin says.
Isn't that romantic?
------
jacobolus
Mathworld has some better ones: <http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HeartCurve.html>
~~~
scott_s
But the URL gives away the punchline.
~~~
cristoperb
The equation in the submitted link gave away the punchline too.
~~~
scott_s
The text for the URL on HN gives it away, but the URL itself does not. Which
is why I was able to pleasantly surprise a friend of mine with it.
------
ehsanul
With bezier curves (it's prettier) in Canvas/Coffeescript (assuming an
existing global canvas context 'ctx'):
heart = (scale,x,y)->
ctx.beginPath()
ctx.moveTo(x,y)
p1 = [x-75*scale,y+20*scale]
ctx.bezierCurveTo(x-20*scale,y-55*scale,p1[0]-50*scale,p1[1]-55*scale,p1...)
p2 = [x,p1[1]+60*scale]
ctx.bezierCurveTo(p1[0]+25*scale,p1[1]+22.5*scale,p2[0]-35*scale,p2[1]-40*scale,p2...)
ctx.moveTo(x,y)
p1 = [x+75*scale,y+20*scale]
ctx.bezierCurveTo(x+20*scale,y-55*scale,p1[0]+50*scale,p1[1]-55*scale,p1...)
p2 = [x,p1[1]+60*scale]
ctx.bezierCurveTo(p1[0]-25*scale,p1[1]+22.5*scale,p2[0]+35*scale,p2[1]-40*scale,p2...)
ctx.strokeStyle = 'rgba(255,40,20,0.7)'
ctx.stroke()
heart(1.0, 450, 250)
------
_corbett
<http://individual.utoronto.ca/sck/vday.html> one of my favorites
"Roses are red. Violets are approximately blue. A paracompact manifold with a
Lorentzian metric, can be a spacetime, if it has dimension greater than or
equal to two."
------
jawee
This one was fun at school today:
<http://i.imgur.com/7aofj.jpg>
------
nailer
Isn't the square root of x squared just x?
~~~
judofyr
Not for negative numbers. You could also just use the absolute value:
<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=x^2%2B(y-|x|)^2%3D1>
EDIT: Woah. You got your answer at least.
~~~
pohl
Exactly. It all comes down to abs.
------
zerd
In my opinion, this one looks a bit better:
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=x^2%2B%28y-sqrt%28abs%2...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=x^2%2B%28y-sqrt%28abs%28x%29%29%29^2%3D3)
------
porterhaney
Circles rolling around circles <http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Cardioid.html>
~~~
rosstafarian
kinky.
------
hoag
This whole thread is way too cool, loved it!
------
scorpion032
Also possible in Polynomial function alone.
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(x2%2By2-1)^3+-x2y3+%3D...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=\(x2%2By2-1\)^3+-x2y3+%3D+0)
------
ashitvora
One more
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(x^2+%2B+y^2+-+1)^3+-+x...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=\(x^2+%2B+y^2+-+1\)^3+-+x^2+*+y^3)
------
maddalab
Who does sqrt(x^2) for abs(x) ? Speak about accidental complexity in love
------
GanjaHacker
1 * (x^2+(y-sqrt(x^2))^2=1) would be a Bob Marley song.
------
zinssmeister
so awesome. that's all.
~~~
websockr
indeed it is
------
tintin
And ofcourse: 1 + 1 = 1 ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is Go better off with or without generics? - philonoist
======
coldtea
Well, it's 2017 already.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Sound of Code [video] - BobbyVsTheDevil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEI0wBkgf1w
======
dsyko
This reminds me a lot of the sound of sorting algorithms
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPRA0W1kECg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPRA0W1kECg)
~~~
DonaldFisk
Fascinating.
Some early computers, such as the Elliott 803, had a built-in loudspeaker
which received a pulse every time a jump instruction was executed. This meant
you could tell which part of the program was executing, or whether it was in
an infinite loop, just by listening. See, and indeed listen to,
[http://www.survo.fi/demos/#ex88](http://www.survo.fi/demos/#ex88)
------
homecoded
Here is a thing I built a while back: An 'HTML to 8-Bit-music' converter. This
transforms a URL to a Bytebeat formula and uses the HTML of the page behind
the URL as input.
[http://lazerbahn.com/soundof.html?url=https://news.ycombinat...](http://lazerbahn.com/soundof.html?url=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182635)
~~~
ArekDymalski
This is absolutely amazing. Are you planning to release it as open source?
Does pull down menu for style mean that you are planning other styles?
[imagine me jumping in excitement] :)
~~~
homecoded
Thanks!! Yes, I have planned a couple more. The code is not obfuscated, so you
can have a look that them. It's heavily based on my audio-experiments which
are open sourced here [https://github.com/homecoded/js-
synth](https://github.com/homecoded/js-synth).
I'll add the "sound of html" there, now that you mentioned it!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Ham sandwich theorem - weaksauce
What are your favorite famous/ridiculous theorems out there? I just stumbled upon this gem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich_theorem
======
RiderOfGiraffes
Was this submission inspired by the earlier one here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=982247>
??
And why is the Ham Sandwich Theorem "ridiculous"? It says that any N sets in N
dimensional space can simultaneously be bisected by an N-1 dimensional
(hyper-)plane. Giving it a visually evocative name doesn't make it ridiculous.
What about Hall's Marriage Theorem? Is that "ridiculous" enough?
~~~
weaksauce
No... I was looking at the post on mathoverflow:fundamental examples:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=984512> and then I went off on wikipedia
for a while and came across this.
It's only ridiculous in the sense of the name and the fact that they used it
as an example in the proof. Otherwise it is a fine result.
------
weaksauce
Clickable link:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_sandwich_theorem>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
2018 Google Scholar Top 100 Publication Venues - wei_jok
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues
======
wei_jok
Information about how the metrics described in this blog post released today:
2018 Scholar Metrics Released:
[https://scholar.googleblog.com/2018/08/scholar-metrics-
provi...](https://scholar.googleblog.com/2018/08/scholar-metrics-provide-easy-
way-for.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
US Jobless Rate Fell in May as Hiring Rebounded - sjb_Live
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/us-jobless-rate-unexpectedly-fell-in-may-as-hiring-rebounded/ar-BB154ATi
======
rodiger
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23428340](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23428340)
Dupe
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
1972 Solar Storm Detonated U.S. Mines in Vietnam - samfriedman
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018SW002024
======
masonic
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18412594](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18412594)
70+ points
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Im Lainon. AMA - lainon
pg/dang/stcb are you here?
======
gen_greyface
Who are you?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Most(ly Dead) Influential Programming Languages - weinzierl
https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/influential-dead-languages/
======
merricksb
Active discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22690229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22690229)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Redshift CI/CD – How we did it and why you should do it too - dvainrub
https://medium.com/big-data-engineering/redshift-cicd-how-we-did-it-and-why-you-should-do-it-to-e46ecf734eab
======
masonic
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=dvainrub](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=dvainrub)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Death of Hype: What's Next for Scala - epelesis
http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/TheDeathofHypeWhatsNextforScala.html
======
melling
"compiler itself is massively sped up, with code compiling literally twice as
fast as it did just three years ago"
Scala always looked like a nice language. The slow compilation was a huge
turnoff for me.
It's been on my shortlist of weekend projects, but I was going to hold out for
Scala 3
------
AheadOfTime295
Duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22830779](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22830779)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
YC Fall 2015 College Tour - katm
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-fall-2015-college-tour
======
BinaryIdiot
It would be really cool if YC came by UMD (University of Maryland). There is a
start-up shell where a whole bunch of companies work out of, some of which has
raised money and some not quite yet but it's a cool spot for start-ups
nonetheless.
~~~
wtvanhest
Alumni of UMD founded Google, Oculus, Under Armour and many other companies.
~~~
dylanjermiah
Squarespace also IIRC.
------
wj
Clicking through to one of them
([http://illinois.edu/calendar/detail/4922?eventId=32998738&ca...](http://illinois.edu/calendar/detail/4922?eventId=32998738&calMin=201509&cal=20150914&skinId=11049))
says:
"In July 2015, Y Combinator introduced YC Fellowship Program to make an
investment of $12,000 into 1000 startups every year. The first batch of YC
Fellowship includes 32 companies, which received an equity-free grant instead
of an investment."
Does that mean there will be 968 more fellowships given over the next ten
months?
~~~
manuelflara
I think that 1000 figure comes from a statement they made along the lines of
"one day we could be funding 1000 companies through this Fellowship program".
I don't think they had a figure in mind for this batch.
~~~
wj
I was thinking it might be through scaling up the next batch.
~~~
katm
Thanks for catching. I asked UIUC to make an edit on that. The first batch of
YCF is starting up this week -- and we're not making decisions about the
future of the program till we see how this pilot goes.
------
Jun8
Awesome, wish I was back in college!
Note to YC: Why don't you set up an official YC Startup University? You're
effectively doing it now with all the talks, tours, etc.
------
athyuttamre
Excited for Startup@Brown!
[http://startupatbrown.org](http://startupatbrown.org)
------
dabent
I'd love to see this at Georgia Tech in the future.
~~~
katm
We're planning to visit Georgia Tech this winter.
~~~
ryanSrich
Any plans to visit NY? RIT or RPI would be good candidates.
~~~
bernardom
Or Cornell!
------
spike021
Any chance that you'll be coming to San Jose State University? We're not so
far away from you.
~~~
sama
I'll come, who can we coordinate with?
~~~
spike021
Honestly I'm not too sure. There is an Entrepreneurial club, but I wouldn't
say any particular organization is out there for this kind of thing. Do you
have an email I can reach you at? Maybe I can connect you with someone from
the Computer Science club at the very least.
------
yefim
A bit disappointed that YC isn't visiting Penn seeing as 3 of the startups
from the most recent summer batch were by Penn students.
~~~
dubin
Also agree that YC should consider a trip to Philly / Penn. There are a lot of
students in the area that would flock to any talks or office hours
------
esfandia
How about a stop in Ottawa, Canada? Two big universities (Carleton and Ottawa
U), and a pretty big tech community here.
~~~
cbhl
Waterloo is well within train commute distance of Ottawa -- consider applying
to Hack the North next year!
------
vertoc
Would love for you guys to come to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. We're only a 3
hour drive away and we have a huge entrepreneurship mindset on campus - we
have an on campus incubator as well as a whole Center for Innovation and
Entrepreneurship, plus a pretty good CS program :)
------
dvt
Can YC set anything up at UCLA? We're really starting to have a very vibrant
start-up community. Travis Kalanick (Uber CEO) is actually paying us a visit
and is sitting down with students and alumni in a couple of weeks!
I'd be more than willing to help out or volunteer.
~~~
katm
Shoot me a note at kat at ycombinator. We'll be visiting more schools later
this fall and this winter. We went to UCLA last year with Alexis Ohanian's bus
tour and we'd be happy to visit again.
~~~
dvt
Sent!
------
ff_
Hi! As a student I am really happy you'll be touring universities to inspire
hackers about making great things :)
Unfortunately I'm too far away from any of them to personally enjoy this
opportunity.
Do you plan any visit to European Universities in the near future?
------
pyromine
I would really love YC to come to Utah. We're building a dorm specifically
made as a 24/7 living / co-working space providing all the resources for
students to start businesses.
------
adenadel
It seems like the west coast isn't getting much love. I understand staying out
of the Bay Area, but UW, UCSD etc. seem like they would be good places to
visit.
------
xigency
Why not make a stop at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology? It's not far from
Urbana-Champaign if the Y Combinator folks have a presenter to send.
------
techwizrd
Would y'all consider coming to George Mason University? We're actively trying
to build a entrepreneurial start-up culture here.
------
snake117
Anyone else heading to the Ann Arbor event?
------
HorizonXP
Hey katm, are you still planning to do Startup School this fall too? Or does
this replace that?
~~~
katm
We are not doing Startup School this fall. This doesn't replace Startup School
- but we decided to focus on things like this, YCF, and open office hours this
fall. Startup School will be back next year.
------
fhjskakaan
Any plans for Cal Poly?
------
baristaGeek
Are you planning something like a college world tour soon?
------
adenta
huge startup community at Indiana University:Bloomington that would love this
opportunity.
------
hacker_kid
No stanford?
------
mspecter
No MIT?
~~~
katm
We visited MIT this past spring and plan to visit again soon -- just not this
fall. We are doing office hours in Boston, which you're welcome to sign up
for: [https://ycombinatorevents.wufoo.com/forms/y-combinator-
offic...](https://ycombinatorevents.wufoo.com/forms/y-combinator-office-hours-
in-boston-928929/)
------
philippnagel
Too bad I'm located in Germany.
------
hacker_kid
No Stanford?
------
pmalynin
And Western Canada gets shafted again, nice.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
While we're on the subject of Rails security, should this be of concern? - rubypay
https://github.com/search?q=Application.config.secret_token&repo=&langOverride=&start_value=1&type=Code&language=Ruby
======
skimbrel
I presume this is not strictly a Rails problem.
You can check in things that shouldn't be checked in with any
language/framework.
If you _have_ done this, here's how to fix it: <http://help.github.com/remove-
sensitive-data/>
~~~
kevinpet
Better is to change your security token and expire all sessions. Removing
sensitive data should be seen as just a suggestion. Google never forgets.
------
antics
Before we all grab our pitchforks, I have just gone through the entire first
page of results and a huge majority of them were explicitly noted as test
applications. Sometimes you can see this in the names:
test / rails_app_v3 /
test_app / config
In many other instances, things are not as the seem. For example, some of
these results come from commits where the author is moving the token to an
environment variable. For example:
[https://github.com/cimm/blathy/blob/2d3a9550d3a0be55db8e26a2...](https://github.com/cimm/blathy/blob/2d3a9550d3a0be55db8e26a25f959a891dee1bcf/config/initializers/secret_token.rb)
I certainly agree that we should all be security conscious, but I'm also a fan
of keeping perspective. Things are bad, but let's keep the truth in mind too.
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Also, for the ones that were not test apps, they may be the
testing/development secret keys which are different from the production secret
keys. I do this myself, where the hash salt and API keys for my local
development server are different from those I use on my production server.
------
5h
Not just rails, same for django
([https://github.com/search?q=SECRET_KEY&repo=&langOve...](https://github.com/search?q=SECRET_KEY&repo=&langOverride=&start_value=1&type=Code&language=Python))
and I imagine any framework with this sort of thing in their default project
skeleton
------
justindocanto
This is not a language/framework based issue. This is an issue with careless
and/or uneducated developers.
This is like people storing plain text passwords in publicly readable txt
files on a server. It's not a problem with FTP, HTML, Apache (pick anything
you'd like) it's a problem with people making poor decisions.
------
bradleyland
Flagged. This is just ridiculous. I actually support Egor, but this borders on
absurd. The question is stated incorrectly. The actual question is:
"Is storing your _private_ key in a public repository a security concern?"
It's a parody of a security question. This is a needless distraction in an
important discussion.
------
oscardelben
Could this help? <https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/5286>
------
manojlds
Soon, there will be articles on how insecure Git is because, well, it allows
people to check-in sensitive stuff.
------
yuvadam
Not really. At least not in the way you are insinuating.
------
zbuc
Facebook as well...
[https://github.com/search?q=FB_SECRET&repo=&langOver...](https://github.com/search?q=FB_SECRET&repo=&langOverride=&start_value=1&type=Code&language=)
Not really a "vulnerability" because you can't keep stupid people from giving
out their secret key.
------
AznHisoka
The solution is simple. Don't use a secret token :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unsealed docs will detail how Facebook made money off children - daveed
https://mashable.com/article/unsealed-docs-facebook-money-children/#bJPU_Uc5nmqd
======
renholder
I feel like we _just_ talked about this and that's because we did - only but a
day ago[0].
[0] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18937640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18937640)
------
darkpuma
> _" When an initial payment is made by the parent, or child using their
> parent's credit card, Facebook stores the payment information. The card is
> then repeatedly charged as the game is played without it being made clear
> new transactions are occurring. As far as the child was concerned, they were
> just using up the virtual credit purchased with the initial transaction.
> This led to surprise credit card bills where hundreds or even thousands of
> dollars had been racked up playing games on Facebook."_
That facebook allowed this is abhorrent, and that people actually created
games willing to sell people hundreds to thousands of dollars worth of crap is
abhorrent. I know why they did it, they want to rake in the profit from those
juicy 'whales', even if some of those whales were children.
Well whaling is immoral when it's done by marine "research" vessels, and it's
immoral when it's done by game developers. It's my understanding that such
whaling is currently an industry standard practice, but that is no excuse.
------
hirundo
It's hard to feel sorry for these greedy grasping children and their families
when Mark Zuckerberg is worth only $55,000,000,000, while Jeff Bezos is worth
around $136,000,000,000. Bezos can lose half in his divorce and still shame
Zuckerberg with his bank balance.
Give Zuck a break, a man has to earn a living.
~~~
conmarap
He's earned many peoples' living. He can live 100 lives with that money
comfortably. I'm not going to feel sorry for him. This type of thing needs to
end.
~~~
nicoburns
I don't think the parent was being serious (at least I hope not!)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Solar Industry Learns Lessons in Spanish Sun - d4ft
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/business/energy-environment/09solar.html
======
ars
Money = resources.
If you need extra money to run your solar plant, that means you are consuming
more resources than a comparable plant.
Which means you are not "green". And often means it actually can take more
energy to make solar power than it returns.
The only reason to do this is to spur research into solar energy that might
eventually reduce the resources required. But this isn't really the best way
to do that.
~~~
Retric
That’s an odd argument, a waste water treatment plant costs a lot more than
just dumping raw sewage into the closest body of water, but they are also
generally called "green". Subsidies on solar plants are based on the time
value of money if they produced all their energy in the first day they would
cost far less than coal.
~~~
ars
A sewage plant is not intended for producing energy (or resources). Its goal
is reducing pollution, and people are willing to trade energy and other
resource usage (and their pollution) for that.
> Subsidies on solar plants are based on the time value of money if they
> produced all their energy in the first day they would cost far less than
> coal.
If that were true, you would not need subsidies, investors would be happy to
fund it.
~~~
DaniFong
Cost does not equate with energy.
Back in the 1950's, Freeman Dyson did a study on the cost of electricity.
Electricity costs much more to use than to generate. If electricity were free
there would be only about a 5 percent drop in the GNP.
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.02/dyson_pr.html>
As for not needing subsidies, there's a significant cost of capital beyond
inflation, and there's also some risk due to its being a new technology. These
dissuade investors.
| {
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A Freebase implementation of the Facebook Graph API - scott_meyer
http://blog.freebase.com/2010/04/29/a-freebase-implementation-of-the-facebook-graph-api/
That didn't take long...
======
hamstersoup
(disclaimer, I worked on this)
Facebook has focused on the social graph, Freebase connects people and more.
We liked the lightweight approach of the Graph API, so here's our version:
<http://graph.freebaseapps.com/the_simpsons/seasons?html=1>
You can even use Facebook usernames (if we have them)
<http://graph.freebaseapps.com/facebook.jackie/movies?html=1>
One neat feature is the ?html=1 mode, which makes the JSON api browsable. I'd
love to see other apis implement this.
What do you think?
------
narphorium
Great idea and implementation. This should make it really easy for devs to
target the Freebase/Facebook graphs using a single API.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Are We GUI Yet? - gtirloni
https://areweguiyet.com/
======
rckoepke
I have this dream where I'd be able to write an application once in Rust (be
it simple game, CRUD, chat, whatever) , target WASM and have users be able to
run it (via browser) on desktop, android, or iOS and not have to write the
program 4-6 times for different OS's.
However - seeing some people diving into the WASM details makes me wonder
whether it will be the way the browser implement WebAssembly that stops us
from doing something like this, not rust's lack of a GUI framework.
So far the best I've seen/read on this topic is this session from a Rust
meetup where Azriel Hoh walked an audience through what was involved with
porting an existing Rust game to webassembly:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YQGwb4_AvA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YQGwb4_AvA)
~~~
dagmx
Iced supports the desktop and the web. No mobile support but I don’t see why
it couldn’t. [https://github.com/hecrj/iced](https://github.com/hecrj/iced)
Technically, Qt has bindings and supports them too.
So I don’t think your dream is too far off. Though the quality of that level
of cross platform might be an issue
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Reposting test - eru
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17816
======
eru
I just wanted to see, if you can link to a post on here.
(If you haven't read the article - it's worthwhile to.)
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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There's No There’s No "I" in a Great System Administration Team - linuxmag
http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7455
======
mattfrye
Awesome!!!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Great Courses on Amazon Video - dsnuh
https://www.amazon.com/Instant-Video/b?benefitId=thegreatcourses&node=2858778011
======
dsnuh
Maybe this is common knowledge, but I recently stumbled across "The Great
Courses" on Amazon Video. There is a free 7 day trial, and the content I have
viewed so far is pretty top notch. I'm not an Amazon shill, and subscriptions
are available via
[https://www.thegreatcourses.com](https://www.thegreatcourses.com), I just
figured this would be the fastest option for many.
So far I have been watching Arthurian Myth and Legend and the other history
classes, and they are excellent. Let me know if you have any recommendations!
------
Kingkungytor
Nice! I love the economic history since the 1400s
~~~
dsnuh
I will have to check that one out! I just finished the first lecture in "Our
Night Sky" for my stepdaughter's science report. Very good content. I really
like that all of these people sound like they lead the local chapter of Toast
Masters.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Subsets and Splits