M: Show HN: Australia Quiz (Sound) - gaving
https://terraaustralis.herokuapp.com/

R: gaving
Weekend(ish) project to play with React.

[https://github.com/gaving/terra](https://github.com/gaving/terra)

Related:-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178358)

R: simonblack
Faulty quiz - needs work.


M: Twitter Picks Berlin For German Headquarters - platzhirsch
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-25/twitter-picks-berlin-for-german-headquarters-focus-says.html

R: untog
I'm surprised more companies _haven't_ chosen Berlin. Big startup scene,
desirable location, great transit links... seems to be obvious to me. I must
be missing something.

R: blumentopf
I can certainly think of German cities with advantages over Berlin.

Karlsruhe for instance has an extremely awesome scientific community, its
university is in fact home to the oldest computer science faculty in Germany
and coincidentally was the first place in Germany to have leased-line Internet
connectivity (in 1989). There's an abundance of excellent engineers coming out
of the university which is definitely a plus when you're staffing a startup.
Also, much nicer weather compared to Berlin and a much more affluent region
with better infrastructure and more companies.

Frankfurt/Main also comes to mind, the secret Internet capital of Europe and
home to the largest Internet exchange in the world (DE-CIX).

I guess it's just that these cities aren't as sexy and hyped as Berlin.

R: untog
_I guess it's just that these cities aren't as sexy and hyped as Berlin._

I know it sounds like that shouldn't matter, but it does. People want to live
in desirable places with other amenities than just good jobs.

I would agree that Frankfurt/Main would be a good destination too, though.

R: sneak
This is great news for the Berlin technology scene, if for the halo effect
alone (big brands attract big talent). Berlin is indeed a great place to live,
and I think a lot of companies will follow suit in the next few years.

Accordingly, rents will continue to rise sharply and all of the qualities that
initially made Berlin an above-average-attractiveness choice for employees and
employers alike will eventually evaporate - but that will take ten years, and
lots of people and companies will build lots of awesome stuff in the interim,
all while saving tons on rent and other living expenses.

Give it a whirl! 'tis a fantastic place. Ping me when y'all arrive.

R: tferris
Great news. Hamburg is usually very good in attracting strong online brands
(Airbnb Germany, Facebook Germany) but this time they weren't and it seems
that Hamburg as a online/tech destination is slowly questioned.

Hamburg and the people there are quite nice but Berlin it's a completely
different ball game. Everyday, VCs shotgun boatloads of money to Berlin based
startups, the largest European VC are moving to Berlin and really EVERYBODY is
in Berlin right now.

R: excuse-me
Although presumably, like Google and Facebook, it will still claim that it has
no substantial presence in Germany and all it's Eu revenue is generated in
Eire and so pay no tax.

R: herge
The real name is Ireland, or the Republic of Ireland if you need to
disambiguate.

R: justincormack
The "real name" depends on what language you speak. It has two official
languages, and in one is Éire.

Edit: see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Irish_state> not sure why
getting downvoted for factually correct information.

R: herge
The real name is what people who live there actually use. You only sound like
a twat when using Eire, or calling Irish "Gaelic".

R: disgruntledphd2
Well, yes and no. I agree that I have never heard anyone call the country Eire
(except for me when posting letters from the UK), it still remains that the
canonical interpretation of our constitution is in Irish, as as such , the
name Eire takes legal preference above the Republic of Ireland.

R: excuse-me
Ireland is ambiguous and likely to annoy half the inhabitants, Republic of
Ireland sounds like legal small print and "the south" is a euphamism if you
don't know who you are talking to in a bar in Belfast.

So Eire is safest ;-0

R: urgeio
Great news for Berlin, the place to be right now. I am using this thread for a
shameless plug: if you are interested to come to Berlin and to work here
please check out opportunities at our brand new startup:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3653322>

R: suking
Why does twitter need so many employees? I could see like 50... Nothing has
changed in years there, they have 1 product which is posting 140 characters.
Everything else is pretty basic, just big scale. I don't get the need for
thousands of employees.

R: magnusgraviti
I think they need not so many programmers but staff for call-centers,
marketing, R&D etc.

R: suking
What - call centers??? R&D? What are they researching - how store 140
characters?

R: magnusgraviti
They have millions of companies posting twitter messages and they provide
analytics and other tools for businesses. I think they need a lot of people at
call centers, support department etc.

All we see as users is 140 characters + apps <https://twitter.com/#!/download>
as there is nothing to ask about :)

Look at <http://business.twitter.com/> they have more than just 140
characters.

R: platzhirsch
Kind of a game changer given that Google and Facebook chose Hamburg and Munich
for Germany.

R: sneak
Munich is stuffy and expensive, Berlin is comparatively poor and open verrrry
very late. The game hasn't changed - it's just a totally different
environment, for vastly different hiring objectives.


M: Best VC firms database - thankuz
http://venture-capital-firms.findthebest.com/

R: zzleeper
What are their sources? Is it <http://www.nvca.org/> ?


M: Reddit Offline in EU 9am-5pm in Support of Don't Wreck the Net - OJFord
https://dontwreckthe.net/

R: OJFord
GDPR has already 'challenged' the open internet, by causing many American
websites to decide it's simply not worth it, and just block European access,
as discussed previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17714152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17714152)

R: ToFab123
Good. Gives room for competition and creation of alternatives to the American
sites we are pested with right now.


M: Starting sometime today, Safari on Yosemite cannot play HTML5 YouTube videos - gittes
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/youtube/safari/mlfwY4s-1Lg

R: gittes
Seems youtube.com did some update that is making HTML5 video playback stop
working with a loud squeak and no play, or dropping to Flash. I'm experiencing
it myself.

Submitted link to YouTube Google Product Forums.

From initial post: About an hour ago, all HTML5 playback just stopped. I was
running OS X 10.10.1 (now 10.10.2) and Safari 8.0.

Videos would either switch to the Flash Player, throw an error, make a loud
"squeak" noise and throw an error, or just crash the Safari page outright and
forcing a Force Reload.

I know this is unrelated to the recent Yosemite update, as this issue was
happening before I installed the update. In the meanwhile, Chrome does work.

R: gittes
Is it "sometime today" or "some time today"?


M: At what point should an intelligent machine be considered a person? - spacey2
http://robohub.org/at-what-point-should-an-intelligent-machine-be-considered-a-person/

R: basicplus2
When it has self awareness

R: CuriouslyC
Young babies don't display any signs of self awareness.


M: Warren Buffett Flags a Successor - grellas
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303467004575574630162624198.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

R: jeffmiller
"He is extremely well-trained, reads 500 pages a week and does his own deep-
dive research." Sounds like a Buffett guy.

Generating returns on a fund of Berkshire's scale is no joke, though. Good
luck to him.


M: Brief History of JIT in MoarVM for Perl 6 - Ultimatt
http://brrt-to-the-future.blogspot.com/2018/07/perl-6-on-moarvm-has-had-jit-for-few.html

R: 3rdAccount
I'm always impressed with the size of the problem that the Perl6 core team is
trying to solve relative to the number of volunteers and funding.

It is a really nice language based off of all the tutorials and presentations
I've watched. It just needs some better performance before I'll really start
using it and I think there are many in the community that are in the same
boat. It's a pity, because it's a chicken or the egg kind of problem. I would
try to help, but when it comes to computer science I am a consumer and not a
producer (I have my own large projects in my domain :)).

R: tyil
> It is a really nice language based off of all the tutorials and
> presentations I've watched. It just needs some better performance before
> I'll really start using it

I'm also very impressed in how the language is turning out. It's a pleasure to
write and read. I know most people really don't like Unicode operators, but I
find them to be very useful. They're short and concise, and allow those
writing mathematical equations to stick to their regular symbols. And for
those that don't know how to do Unicode on their OS/editor, there's ASCII
equivalents.

Performance-wise, it seems to be fast enough for all my personal projects, and
it's getting faster every release. Is there a certain piece of code that you
want to have running within a certain amount of time? That would allow you
(and Perl 6 devs) to have a goal to look at, and work towards.

R: 3rdAccount
Running grammars past very large datasets. You hear enough people talk about
the performance and you decide to stay away a bit until things improve. I also
have some numeric code and that is generally probably not a great P6 fit (more
of a Python + Numpy thing).

As a general scripting language, P6 looks nice as a lot of features such as
concurrency that are aren't super straightforward (Ex: python) seem to be dead
simple in P6.

R: b2gills
Perl 6 was designed in part to allow PDL (Perl Data Language) type features to
be added easily.

In fact some things that you would do in PDL have already been added, they
just currently aren't as fast as they could be.

        (1,2,3; 4,5,6; 7,8,9) "**" 2
        (1,4,9; 16,25,36; 49,64,81)

The above is specifically allowed to do all of the operations in parallel, but
doesn't currently. (Perhaps even on a GPU)

R: aidenn0
Why did I think the Perl 6 VM was called parrot?

R: Ultimatt
There is an intermediate language the Rakudo compiler is implemented in called
NQP. That split from the Parrot project to support several VMs as the stuff
emitted as the "compiled" code. For a while Parrot and JVM were supported
simultaneously. With the addition of MoarVM the project moved away from
supporting Parrot. There are other targets in development including JavaScript
and most recently Truffle/GraalVM
[https://github.com/perl6/nqp/commits/truffle](https://github.com/perl6/nqp/commits/truffle)
Essentially a _lot_ happens within the Perl 6 project at a pace that's kind of
surprising if you keep an eye on it.

R: aidenn0
Thanks for the summary!

R: totalperspectiv
I appreciate the time taken to fill in the history!

R: sunseb
Is Perl 6 fast now?

R: jdoege
It really depends. The question really should be, "Is Perl 6 fast enough?" For
my purposes, the answer is almost always yes. I can imagine some applications
where the answer would be no, but then I would probably be looking at C/C++
for a solution, anyway. Language bench-racing has really begun to look
counter-productive to me.

R: b2gills
Someone once posted code that they had written in both Perl 6 and C/C++. The
Perl 6 code was shorter, arguably easier to understand, and they said it was
also faster for their data.

My guess would be that the strings had to be copied more often in the C/C++
code.


M: Code bullies - ShannonRohn
In response to the harassment conversation.. I read the entire article a few moments ago. Interesting... Don't we want this young girl to be able to stand up for herself one day? Instead of looking at it as harassment in the adult world, shouldn't we be teaching her to 'code like a girl?' That should not only entail one thing individually, at her age we should be transforming her thought of inability into ability. What she learns now will shape her every being, as an adult. Teach young ladies that the opinions of others can be far off of your own intentions.. not to be bothered by it. Stand up to the code bullies, fight against it. The opinions of others don't matter, don't let it overcome you. With the teenage suicide epidemic in this country, we cannot afford to be defeated by words or thoughts of others that may shape us to who we become as a person. No, harassment is not okay, but not teaching this young girl how to really, and intellectually code like a GIRL, is not okay either. (Stand on the only floor in front of you) it's the only thing holding you up. Instead of running to her defense, making it a bigger deal than it is, will scare her too. I've been teaching youth cheerleading for 17 years. So I know all about teenage girl emotion. However, let's teach our children how to be strong without us. Lead the way now, so they can show us how to get there next time.

R: jamesmp98
I'm confused?


M: Ask HN: How do you host your personal domain email accounts? - clappski
I'm looking at getting an email service provider account to associate my own personal domains email address with. Who offers the best service/price? How much effort is it to host it myself?

R: mattkrea
Fastmail.com

They are reliable and I like to know that it'll just work™. I've been a
customer for over 3 years or so now.

R: Artemix
My old workplace uses that for their entire staff, and I use the personal
5€/month plan, with no complaint.

R: sadris
Epik.com seems to be the cheapest. Most providers are at least $10/mo but for
only one address I'm paying $3/mo at epik

R: rapnie
With ProtonMail you get 1 custom domain and 5 addresses for $5/mo.

R: feistypharit
Migadu. Pay by number of mails sent. Not by number of domains.

R: tumdum_
Zoho.com (it's free).


M: Bending Over Backwards - freerobby
http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/bending_over_backwards

R: Kylekramer
So I guess Gruber is just giving up on even trying to be a bit objective
anymore? This read more like a hurt comic book fan forum post about a bad
review of his favorite superhero's movie than anything else. Worse battery
life, a non improved screen, weak cameras and lack of 4G/flash are drawbacks,
no matter how you slice it.

The funny thing is Mossberg's review is overwhelmingly positive.

R: spicyj
The point is, the iPad's real competitors don't beat it in any of those
categories except for camera. (Also, Gruber said in his own review that he got
identical battery life to the previous model.) The Xoom is the only tablet
that promises 4G and Flash and got mediocre reviews even without those
components, which will probably make it run worse.

R: greatDismay
I have a Xoom and I don't know why people are giving it such a bad rap. It
does everything I want it to do and it does it really fast.

R: jarek
I'm now going to be That Guy: one person disputing another person's statements
about a mainstream consumer electronics device? Hacker News?

R: ZeroGravitas
He missed the criticism of the iPad covers:

 _"Unfortunately, I found the cover's magnetic latch came open in my
briefcase, turning the screen on and wasting the battery. Also, the light gray
color I had picked up smudges."_

R: fod
Great, a review of a review.


M: Dynamic Pricing and Major League Baseball - jamessun
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is_dynamic_pricing_a_hit

R: jamessun
Link to the referenced paper,
[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2796407](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2796407)


M: Ask HN: What product most improved your quality of life? - miguelrochefort

R: marapuru
A good bed. There is no bed like my own. I have a good night's rest so I can
fully take the next day again.

I was doubting to write the next one. Since it's obviously not a "product",
but want to mention anyway.

My wife. She really completed me in such a way that it significantly improved
my quality of life. She holds the mirror in front of me at the right times and
works in an entirely different field, making her a great sparring partner.

R: drakonka
It's hard to pick just one.

* Laser eye surgery in 2009 - I know it isn't really a "product", but it is one of the best purchasing decisions I've made.

* Kindle - it is so much more convenient than reading or collecting physical books, and with the e-ink screen doesn't detract from that "book feel" for me

* Tretinoin - this might be a weird one, but as someone who is very into skincare this single product makes me feel confident that I am effectively taking care of my skin for the long term. I don't have to worry about if I'm "doing it right", or bother with gimmicky expensive "texture-enhancing" or "anti-ageing" or whatever-the-next-buzzword-is products. Tretinoin has a very large body of research behind it. We know it works. A single tube of tretinoin (coupled with sunscreen!) saves me a lot of wondering and money. This is not to say I use nothing else at all, it's more like this one product and the knowledge base we have on it keeps me from spending money on otherwise expensive skincare that I don't need, which is _marketed_ to do the same thing as tretinoin but isn't actually shown to work like tretinoin is.

R: ak39
How old were you when you did LASIK - and what did it fix? (I am in early
stages of flirting with the idea - had 2020 vision till about 3 years ago. I
am 47 now.)

R: drakonka
I was 21 at the time; I hear that this is a bit young to get that kind of
procedure as my eyes may still change rapidly, but I went to a reputable
doctor who ran various tests before concluding that I was a candidate, and
luckily my eyesight is still going strong almost 11 years later.

I can't remember exactly what my deficiencies were at the time to be honest,
other than I could not see well far away. I was told I needed glasses but
never bothered wearing them or paying attention to my sight other than knowing
it sucked. When doing an eye test for my driver's permit I was one line away
from not being able to legally drive without glasses, if that gives you any
idea.

Now there are apparently other options than LASIK which might work better for
some. For example, a few years ago a coworker of mine got a procedure that he
described as them basically inserting a lens into his eye instead of
resurfacing part of the eye itself. Apparently it means if his eyesight
changes sufficiently over the years he can just go back and get a new lens
inserted!

R: muzani
Nice glasses. There are a lot of bad ones out there that I've been wearing for
over 10 years.

The bad ones DoS my brain with pointless information, greatly harmed my focus
and ability to think, as well as gaming abilities. It's also made driving,
especially in heavy rain, difficult and hazardous.

The good one made life seem really high resolution. It reduces eye strain a
lot, which is wonderful when you work with computers a lot and live in a sunny
area.

R: polyterative
Peak Design messenger - solved all things bags in my life. Proud of having it
on me all the time, beautiful and functional.

Sennheiser PXC-550 - One of the best wireless headphones out there. I can keep
them on 8 hours a day without any stress.

Keychron K2, just a well-thought wireless/wired mechianical keyboard. Less
fatigue and more confort, I can type 4x more text now.

I've been using these every single day for years now.

R: aynyc
MacBook - Spent years developing software on windows/xterms, my company
finally approved Mac for work.

Safari Online - Getting learning material has never been so easy. Actually
learning all of them is different :)

AWS - I can get hardware resource without lengthy PO and approval.

Wireless Headphone - Apple Airpod.

A fully stocked and well equiped kitchen in the apartment

R: tmm84
* My exercise bike - I have no reason not to get in some physical activity (rain, time, etc.).

* My desk whiteboard - It helps so much when confirming/working out a solution.

* My wireless mouse and keyboard - They fit my hands and I can put them away when the whiteboard is what I need.

R: kleer001
A membership in the car sharing company Car2Go. It was amazing being able to
be my own taxi driver and then drop off the car. Too bad it'll be leaving my
home area soon.

R: catacombs
Wireless headphones. Bar none. The fact I can walk around my apartment and
listen to a {book,podcast,song}, without worrying about cables or carrying my
phone, has been amazing.


M: Ruby 1.9.1 released - vaksel
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-talk-google/browse_thread/thread/35e963933f9d0b1a?pli=1

R: rockbilly
This is a duplicate of: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458357>


M: Ask HN: What projects have you made with boards like Raspberry Pi, Arduino? - akudha

R: stevekemp
When I was getting ready to take paternity leave I figured I'd either a)
explore "hardware", or b) take a stab at learning mobile development.

In the end I started playing with Arduinos. After a very short while I got a
little addicted, but switched to using ESP8266 devices - because having
onboard wifi made the hardware so much more useful.

I've built, experimented with, and torn down a hell of a lot of projects in
the three years since. But my absolute favourite project is nothing more than
an LCD screen which shows me the next tram-departures from the local stop:

[https://steve.fi/hardware/helsinki-tram-
times/](https://steve.fi/hardware/helsinki-tram-times/)

That project was hacked up in an hour or two, but later made much more
"producty" \- being configurable with a web-browser, and being installed in a
3d-printed case I paid somebody to make for me.

Over time I've added little hacks, so now it alternates between showing "$HOUR
$DATE" and "$HOUR $TEMPERATURE" in the top-line. Because my wife would often
ask me "Is it cold outside?"

I've done more impressive things; such buying a random radio-based
temperature/humidity sensor, then having to sniff for the packets, decode the
bitstream, and inject the temp/humidity into an MQ queue. But for sheer
practicality, and sheer usefulness, the always-on clock and tram display has
been worth it.

R: devenblake
My Pi 3B is a media server right now. I have it hooked up through HDMI,
converted to composite, and run to my Commodore 1702 so I can watch cartoons.
It has probably around 80GB of movies and another 80GB of music, 10GB of
books, and a couple gigs of pictures on a partition of a hard drive that's
hooked up via a SATA bay. Over the years it's been an IRC server, a Tor
webserver, an emulation station, and a backup computer to watch South Park
after my old one died.

R: user_agent
Nothing very fancy:

1) A home server for hosting a couple small websites for free, instead of
wasting cash on $5/mo VPS. 2) A cluster of PIs for training with distributed
computing (Docker, K8s). 3) An EMP proof remote backup case with a Pi and a
large, encrypted HDD -- mounted in a metal military case intended for storing
ammunition. I keep it in my pal's place.

R: aosaigh
I'm currently working on a controller for my standing desk. The built-in
switch was just a plain old up/down one.

I'm using a relay switch, home bridge and an infrared height sensor to
automatically raise and lower the desk to certain presets.

Another project I have is to use the pi camera and a small display to detect
movement and show a fact/quote/lyric on the screen.

R: akudha
wow, that standing desk idea is nice. Do you have a blog?


M: Use standard deviation (not mad about MAD - vasili111
http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2014/01/use-standard-deviation-not-mad-about-mad/

R: vasili111
Also look here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11737743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11737743)


M: It's easy to make something incredible. - dhotson
http://unalone.tumblr.com/post/88825593/its-easy-to-make-something-incredible-all-you-do

R: pkaler
This reminds me of a passage from "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance"
that I love to quote:

 _You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Just make
yourself perfect and then paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do
it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from
the rest of your existence. If you're a sloppy thinker the six days of the
week you aren't working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks,
can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together.

The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that
appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to "in here" are not two
separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together._

R: jamongkad
That was a great quote. I guess no matter how much you know about the latest
and greatest paradigms involved in the art of software. You can never truly
become "perfect" if it does not become a part of yourself. And to extend that
you can never truly become "perfect" if your description of software is not
art, but work. When I think about it, it only shows how far I have to go to
reach that kind of Zen like state.

R: paulhart
This brings to mind an old saying:

      You can't polish a turd

The underlying assumption to the post is that somewhere deep within the turd
being polished there is a nugget of gold.

Not every turd is hiding a nugget of gold. And not every polisher of turds has
the capacity or understanding to find the nugget.

The other saying that comes to mind is:

      There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying.
      The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the
      ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker's
      Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it.

R: unalone
_The underlying assumption to the post is that somewhere deep within the turd
being polished there is a nugget of gold._

It's not that so much as that in the process of polishing the turd, it's
possible for you to realize you're working on a turd and start over again.
That's part of the revision process.

One case that stands out to me was that in the writing of my novel, I had a
70-page part that I thought was great and slaved away on, then realized in one
blinding moment that it was awful. I threw it away, rewrote the entire section
over a day, and now it's the best part of the book. (I'll say in advance that
the book wasn't exactly a nugget of gold, but at least I was aware of that
when I published it. If I'd spent more time in it it could have become much
better.)

R: melvinram
I don't doubt that making something awesome is about removing the unawesome
parts. But what most people are missing is the sense of what is unawesome and
what is awesome. This trait of having excellent taste is what most are
missing... at least from my experience of interacting with others.

The people who are really good at something have an evolved sense of what they
are willing to accept. For example, I knew of a guy named Rod Weckworth who
was/is really good with relationships. And I think he was really successful
because he had a sense of what level of a connection he was willing to accept
with people. He wasn't okay with having an okay relationship with people. He
makes sure to write thank you notes, call on birthdays, etc.

So more than just not letting shit stay, you have to have a nose for detecting
shit.

R: unalone
Yeah! On IRC somebody read this and disagreed with me: something to the effect
of "I've seen amateurs revise and they still churn out shit."

But you can't just sit down and revise something. You've got to develop the
ability to be self-critical, and that means learning what to be self-critical
_of._ So in my case of an amateur writing a symphony, he'd have to be willing
to learn just what makes symphonies suck, and if he's not willing to do that,
chances are he won't be so successful after all.

R: harpastum
"In the same way I fancied that those nations which, starting from a semi-
barbarous state and advancing to civilization by slow degrees, have had their
laws successively determined, and, as it were, forced upon them simply by
experience of the hurtfulness of particular crimes and disputes, would by this
process come to be possessed of less perfect institutions"

\- Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method

I think that Descartes' thrust here is that building anything up slowly will
introduce artifacts that have nothing to do with the optimal solution.

Sometimes the only way to truly succeed is to come up with a truly amazing
starting point. If you try to build off a bad idea, you will often get
nowhere.

From the article: "It baffles me that people think making...worldshocking
pieces of work is a particular challenge. It's mainly a battle of endurance."

I don't disagree with you here, but I think you are vastly underestimating the
backbreaking effort in that single word: _endurance_. Try telling a marathoner
that just hit the wall at mile 22 that all they need is a little more
endurance.

"Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."

\- Thomas Edison

R: robotrout
I was struck, on reading your post, the similarities between your premise and
the premise of "Intelligent Design" advocates. To paraphrase both you and
they, "How can something so perfect have occurred iteratively?"

Not judging, just noting the similarity.

R: harpastum
I admit there is some similarity there, and it might be because I didn't fully
explain myself, but I would argue that it's neither a perfect conception nor
iterative development that creates true greatness, but repetitive rebirth.
When you simply build on the past, you aren't considering its true intentions.
How many laws are there in the US that are simply reactions to British rule
(i.e. safety from the quartering of troops)? Should those laws be held in as
high esteem as those laws that are truly based on human rights? Descartes
continues in _Discourse on Method_ :

        As for the opinions which up to that time I had embraced, I thought that I could not do better than
        resolve at once to sweep them wholly away, that I might afterwards be in a position to admit either other
        more correct, or even perhaps the same when they had undergone the scrutiny of reason. I firmly believed
        that in this way I should much better succeed in the conduct of my life, than if I built only upon old
        foundations, and leaned upon principles which, in my youth, I had taken upon trust.

The entirety of _Discourse on Method_ is a very interesting read. You can read
the whole document at project Gutenberg (<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/59>).
Wikipedia also has a decent write-up
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_method>).

R: brc
"The longer you try and deshit something, the less shit it is."

Not true for the 20%, but true for the 80%. Software is a good example : all
1.0 versions are crap. The trick is to get to the next n revisions and still
be interested in the project. You may end up with none of the original code,
but it's the act of revision and correction that makes it better.

All those who say you can't polish a turd, I say look at Windows. From version
1 to version 7, there's a gloss in the side of that nugget that you would not
have believed possible 20 years ago.

R: staunch
Someone said it best, I can't remember who it was: _"It's like knowing a
fabulous sculpture is hidden inside a block of marble, and all you have to do
is remove the marble that isn't part of it. It's an encouraging thought,
because it reminds you there is an answer, but it's not much use in practice
because the search space is too big."_

R: echair
If it's easy to make something incredible, this post should be, and it's not.
It's ok, but it's not incredible.

(Except in the original, literal sense, because of the fact that it's not in
the colloquial sense.)

R: unalone
I'll explain something about this blog, because it's not something that I
wrote specifically on the page and so it's not seen by a lot of the people
that haven't been reading this daily.

I don't use this blog like other people use blogs. I essentially write down
every thought that comes to me, without planning it out or revising it. So
there's a ramble about Valve on the front page right now, and not a
particularly interesting one, and I'm aware of the fact that it's not
interesting. I'm fine with that, because my blog isn't a marketing tool. It's
simply a place where I store my thoughts.

So this post was conceived of pretty much instantaneously, written in 5
minutes, and posted without a double check. I didn't even bother to go back
and look at the spelling.

It's all about intent. My blog is not a masterpiece in any sense other than
the fact that I attempt not to filter myself in any way. But at the same time,
this post was interesting enough to provoke a nice little discussion, and it
was interesting enough for somebody to think it merited posting.


M: Java: All about 64-bit programming - AndreyKarpov
http://vanillajava.blogspot.com/2011/07/java-all-about-64-bit-programming.html

R: Khaki
_As of mid 2011, for £1K you can buy a PC with 24 GB of memory and for £21K
you can buy a server with 512 GB of memory._

I'm not sure where he gets his computers from but those prices seem to be at
least a few years away.

R: Roritharr
[http://www.alternate.de/html/product/GeIL/DIMM_24_GB_DDR3-10...](http://www.alternate.de/html/product/GeIL/DIMM_24_GB_DDR3-1066_Hex-
Kit/663956/)? <\- 180€ for 24gb of memory... i think his prices are pretty
accurate.

R: obtino
You also have to remember that to run 64-bit applications, you must specify
the -d64 flag. Otherwise your app will run in 32-bit mode!

R: peter_lawrey
AFAIK -d32 was the default on some versions of Solaris, but -d64 is the
default now. Windows doesn't support these options. Linux does support -d32
but it has to be installed seperately, otherwise -d64 is the default for a
64-bit JVM.

R: abdulhaq
A big win for 64bit java over 32bit is that the kernel can provide more memory
to the 64 bit process. This is because the java heap has to be 'contiguous'
memory, and this is difficult to offer when in 32 bit mode due to memory
fragmentation. In 64 bit mode the kernel can cobble together disparate blocks
of memory and make it appear contiguous to the process.


M: 12,000 year old pre-agricultural temple findings - Gobekli Tepe - jackchristopher
http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/449/gobekli_tepe_paradise_regained.html

R: tokenadult
Wikipedia article on the temple:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe>

Is anyone else troubled by the submitted article coming from Fortean Times?
That's not usually considered a reliable source, as it doesn't fact-check the
way many other publications would.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortean_Times>

R: davi
I was troubled, but read the article. It was a little breathless, but seemed
okay.

Though I didn't like clicking through a link on HN and seeing, essentially,
"Garden of Eden located!" I was suspicious enough that I googled Gobekli Tepe
and found this Smithsonian article:

[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-
te...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html)

So at least I knew the subject was valid before reading further on the
submitted link. Definitely seems like a weird source though.

R: jackchristopher
I read all the links from Wikipedia entry and searched for more articles
before submitting, but I liked this one.

But all articles I found beside the Wikipedia one, had something I didn't
like; they were boring, less information, or had needless speculation. But the
submitted one despite the speculation had extra detail.

I never heard of Fortean Time. I didn't know of their reputation.

R: idm
These time scales do cause one to consider: what is the lifetime of SGML,
HTML, XML, RDF, ... How have those Gutenberg typefaces held up? I was in a
British church last year, and the floors were made of carved granite, which
were completely illegible.... People walking on the floors for centuries
caused gradual wear.

Chiseled granite!! What names or words were written? I don't know, but 12,000
years is a long time to propagate a certain signal... This causes one to
consider...

R: rjurney
This is a must-read.


M: Ask HN: What would be a safe and secure VPN to use when I visit China - ForFreedom
I will be visiting China in 2 days and found that most of the apps social network apps that we use in the US are blocked.
I would like to know a safe and secure VPN.
Thanks in Advance

R: TravelTechGuy
I've been successfully using proXPN on my laptops and tablets for a couple of
years now. Used it all over the world, though not in China. They have several
exit points, in different countries, to choose from.

R: ForFreedom
From what I heard the problem in China is that they would block VPN servers
too.

R: Zombieball
I used PIA while in China with no issues.

R: ForFreedom
privateinternetaccess.com ?


M: After five years, "dancing baby" YouTube takedown lawsuit nears a climax - 001sky
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/after-five-years-dancing-baby-youtube-takedown-lawsuit-nears-a-climax/

R: jstclair
The article summary of Universal Music's defense seems to say that since
Universal had no procedures in place to determine if something was fair use,
they can't be liable for the portion of the DMCA that punishes take-down
attempts that are, in fact, fair use. Kafka-esque barely begins to describe
this situation. I imagine that the defense will also introduce pictures of
Universal compliance officers with their fingers in their ears as well.

R: sageikosa
We cannot be held liable for abuses we committed, because we didn't spend the
effort to think before we acted.

That about wraps it up...

R: 001sky
If this in fact is how it plays out in court, it would says alot about how USA
laws are made (and form whom). Not a pretty picture for the great democracy.
Public servants => providing carte-blanche to abuse the public interest.

R: jgiancarlo
<http://xkcd.com/343/> Panel 2 specifically. Fighting in a broken system does
nothing.

R: parfe
Copyright has taken too much from society to benefit IP holders. Corporations
have the power to erase context from your life. It reminds me of Soviets
erasing people from history.

Universal doesn't approve of your dancing baby? Sorry, but that event is no
longer something you can freely distribute.

R: Sumaso
Worse yet, it appears that the best way to avoid this is to flat out ignore
the law, rather than go along with it.

Your video gets taken down? Just put it back up again and hope it wont get
found a second time.

R: 89a
Or just upload it to a non-Google service seen as Google are happy to bend
over and let the music industry/hollywood do whatever they want.


M: Ask HN: Why a big org like Amazon release a mediocer windows primevideo app? - anongoesprivate
i have been using the Amazon PrimeVideo for Windows recently,mostly for downloading in hi-res and view on Weekend with out buffering issues.
the app seems to be lacking even Basic Q/A in lot of things, for example a simple download feature they have is not downloading anything and if we minimize it the download restarts , it works very unpredictably.
so my question is how a Big org like amazon that produce stable platforms like AWS, but at the same time produce a mediocre products like this
what structure they have in terms of engineering, that's making this differences?

R: thesuperbigfrog
It was probably written by an intern and maintained by an overworked team.

I would recommend giving feedback using a bug reporting or feedback dialogue
if it exists in the app. (I have no idea I don't use Windows at home and have
never used the app.)

If you downloaded the app from the Windows App Store, you could leave a review
there and might get developer contact info for feedback there too.

R: anongoesprivate
yeah, i have given feedback via the help chat in the app already, I'm just
curios how these simple things got missed, considering how huge the
organizations is and it have most talented people in it, like what kind of
process will lead to this, in a structured org like amazon

R: speedgoose
Different teams, different budgets. The app may also be made by another
company.

R: anongoesprivate
between the copyright they will be paying for movies and shows, the
development cost will be very minimal i think, their web app and android app
is pretty good, as for last point , prime video seems like a major product ,
will amazon outsource it?


M: Post your Friendfeed ID here - rms

http://friendfeed.com/kfischer is mine, feel free to follow me<p>I'd also like some more people to follow, so post here.

R: utnick
I made a little app to to help people find people to follow

<http://livebloglist.com/>

Here is a list of other people interested in new.yc:

[http://livebloglist.com/list/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombina...](http://livebloglist.com/list/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com)

R: engtech
Pretty cool, but there's lots of dupes in the result.

Would be great if I could put in my FF username and it would filter out the
people I'm already friends with.

R: engtech
<http://friendfeed.com/engtech>

<http://friendfeed.com/ruby>

Here's a tool I wrote for importing your Twitter contacts into friendfeed:
[http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/21/import-twitter-to-
fri...](http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/21/import-twitter-to-friendfeed/)

Here's a ton of greasemonkey scripts I've written for Friend Feed:

<http://internetducttape.com/tools/#friendfeed>

R: mhartl
<http://friendfeed.com/mhartl>

The only service aggregated by FriendFeed that I currently use regularly is
Twitter, so you might as well go to

<http://twitter.com/michaelhartl>

R: mhartl
Update: now it's <http://twitter.com/mhartl>

R: mpfefferle
This post has singlehandedly killed my productivity for the entire day.

R: rms
I do what I can.

R: immad
<http://friendfeed.com/immad>

R: paul
<http://friendfeed.com/paul>

R: rms
Feature request: news.yc support!

R: paul
I would like that too. We just need per-user feeds from news.yc. Patrick has
actually written the code, but I think that perhaps PG is concerned about the
extra load.

R: randomuttering
<http://friendfeed.com/randomutterings>

R: glenstansberry
<http://friendfeed.com/glenstansberry>

R: gourneau
<http://friendfeed.com/joshuagourneau>

R: philcrissman
<http://friendfeed.com/philcrissman>

R: jaredhanson
<http://friendfeed.com/jaredhanson>

R: codesurgeon
<http://friendfeed.com/codesurgeon>

R: cryptovenom
<http://friendfeed.com/cryptovenom>

R: truebosko
<http://friendfeed.com/truebosko>

R: msnoulten
<http://friendfeed.com/msnoulten>

R: mwmanning
<http://friendfeed.com/mwmanning>

R: nilobject
<http://friendfeed.com/nilobject>

R: maheshcr
<http://friendfeed.com/maheshcr>

R: rantfoil
<http://friendfeed.com/garrytan>

R: jrockway
<http://friendfeed.com/jrockway>

R: STHayden
<http://friendfeed.com/sthayden>

R: justindz
<http://friendfeed.com/justindz>

R: rksprst
<http://friendfeed.com/rksprst>

R: mariorz
<http://friendfeed.com/mariorz>

R: mdemare
<http://friendfeed.com/mdemare>

R: pierrebombay
<http://friendfeed.com/pierrel>

R: brlewis
<http://friendfeed.com/brlewis>

R: jraines
<http://friendfeed.com/jraines>

R: adityakothadiya
<http://friendfeed.com/aditya>

R: gaborcselle
<http://friendfeed.com/gabor>

R: mk
<http://friendfeed.com/emkay>

R: jasoncartwright
<http://friendfeed.com/jason>

R: mpfefferle
<http://friendfeed.com/pfeff>

R: TrevorJ
<http://friendfeed.com/trev>

R: icey
<http://friendfeed.com/icey>

R: abstractbill
<http://friendfeed.com/bill>

R: rjb
<http://friendfeed.com/rjb>

R: adk
<http://friendfeed.com/adk>

R: talkeinan
Great idea! <http://friendfeed.com/talkeinan> Feel free to follow me as
well...

R: mosburger
<http://friendfeed.com/mikedesjardins>

R: abstractwater
<http://friendfeed.com/ettorepasquini>

R: dustineichler
<http://friendfeed.com/dustineichler>

R: entelarust
<http://friendfeed.com/entelarust>

R: calvin
<http://friendfeed.com/anwamehtar>

R: sdpurtill
<http://friendfeed.com/sdpurtill>

R: kschrader
<http://friendfeed.com/kschrader>

R: madsimian
<http://friendfeed.com/madsimian>

R: juzmcmuz
<http://friendfeed.com/juzmcmuz>

R: hooande
<http://friendfeed.com/hooande>

R: lyime
<http://friendfeed.com/dodeja>

R: epi0Bauqu
<https://friendfeed.com/yegg>

R: nadim
<http://friendfeed.com/nadim>

R: awt
<http://friendfeed.com/awt>

R: ca98am79
<http://friendfeed.com/uglychart>

R: nikpay
<http://friendfeed.com/nikpay>

R: theproductguy
<http://friendfeed.com/theproductguy>


M: Microsoft sues TiVo over patent  - wglb
http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2010/01/18/daily50.html

R: wglb
By way of Groklaw: <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2010012014205446>


M: Sustainable bricks made from sewage - pseudolus
http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2019/01/sustainable-bricks-made-from-sewage/

R: leed25d
You too can live in a shit-brick house.


M: NoSQL Smackdown with Werner Vogels and MongoDB, CouchDB and Cassandra devs - stuhood
http://thechangelog.com/post/457259567/episode-0-1-8-nosql-smackdown

R: codexon
Is there a transcript for this?

R: oldgregg
I can summarize. Mostly just people making snarky comments about opposing
products. The guy from CouchDB is particularly annoying. Apparently he feels
like he has to raise his voice and cut people off to defend his product.

R: basugasubaku
One the other hand, the discussion is punctuated with the audience yelling
"Louder!" and "We can't hear you!" on top of a lot of background noise
(including various interruptions from the audience). I got the sense you
almost had to be loud and aggressive to be heard. It got kind of stressful to
listen to.

R: brandnewlow
Listening to this, I'm struck by how wimpy and tame all the journalism/media
panels were by comparison. We need to raise our game!

R: brandnewlow
The guys on this podcast mapped it out at the SXSW table I was sitting at over
lunch. It seemed pretty clear to me there was going to be some spirited
arguing when they got down to it.

R: bradleyjoyce
this was really great to see/hear these guys duking it out. props to @pengwynn
for holding it down for mongodb against the big boys.

R: janl
Agreed, @pengwynn did a great job!

R: jchrisa
If it doesn't have a theme song, it ain't NoSQL!

R: ncb000gt
I hear you have to have a dance too?


M: Show HN: Nudj - One Touch iPhone Messaging App - 04rob
http://nudjapp.com

R: 04rob
My friends and I created a new iPhone messaging app focused on speed and
simplicity. You can send or respond to a request for a picture, location,
yes/no, or quantity in as little as one touch. We'd love the community's
feedback on the landing page or app itself. BTW, this app was also an
experiment for serverless architecture, and utilizes AWS Lambda for the entire
backend.


M: Google Announces Adsense For Mobile - luccastera
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/18/google-announces-adsense-for-mobile/

R: ivankirigin
The elephant in the room with Google is locality. Where are the brick & mortar
ads and coupons in g-maps? Will they incorporate GPS location to aid mobile
Adsense?

One problem with locality is that your average store front operator knows
nothing about the internet. There are probably huge franchise opportunities
here.

R: jsjenkins168
Yes, based on a recent patent application and whats been hinted at, they have
plans of incorporating location and time into mobile search results:

<http://www.redherring.com/Home/22459>

Mobile ads already have higher click through rates than most traditional sites
(like > 5% in some cases), so the prospect of incorporating location and time
sensitive ads could be huge.

R: gustaf
Lots of people have high hopes in location based advertising. For no reason, i
think. at least not right now.

[http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/my-thoughts-on-
consumer-l...](http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/my-thoughts-on-consumer-lbs)

R: nreece
I wonder when they'll officially launch Adsense for RSS (currently in private
beta)?


M: Simlish, the language that defined The Sims - tintinnabula
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/7/21126705/the-sims-simlish-language-history-20th-anniversary-game

R: stock_toaster
The article reminded me of Pingu[1], which also used an invented Grammelot[2]
named "Penguinese".

Fond memories of watching Pingu with my kid. I'm not sure which of us enjoyed
it more! Noot noot!

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingu)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammelot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammelot)

R: alisonatwork
There is a bit more of an in-depth take of the history of Simlish and the
people who created it in this article:
[https://www.techradar.com/news/simlish-how-an-improv-game-
tu...](https://www.techradar.com/news/simlish-how-an-improv-game-turned-into-
the-most-recognisable-language-in-gaming)

R: snthd
The timing of the articles (both in the same week) makes it appear to be a PR
push.

[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

R: erk__
The reason for the timing is likely that The Sims was released on february 4th
in 2000 so it is the 20 years anniversary.

R: jeanvaljean2463
The Sims is where I learned the appropriate way to interact with others based
on what provided higher relationship status. I grew up in a very rigid,
structured family without a lot of external interaction so this was my primer
to "succeeding" later in life. I still experience crippling anxiety from
social interactions, but at least the The Sims provided an appropriate
socialization path to allow for quasi normal relationships with coworkers.

R: James_Henry
I played quite a few of the Maxis games and I thought that the Simlish of the
Sims was the natural progression from the Sim noises of SimCopter which can be
heard here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKDsoasXgQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKDsoasXgQU)

R: TwoBit
Sim Copter was indeed the first appearance of the Sims. The Sim character tree
editor was first used for Sim Copter, which was in development concurrently
with Sims. They were "project X" and "project Y" respectively.

R: emilfihlman
Heh, based on the title I first thought it was a novel domain specific
programming language, not a human language!


M: Want a project? Buy BluWiki.  All proceeds go to charity. - Sam_Odio
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160421557085#ht_884wt_1167

R: Sam_Odio
You might remember BluWiki from an Apple censorship lawsuit a few months back.
More info: <http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/07/apple-backs-down-blu>

Of my web projects, BluWiki is Divvyshot's ugly sister. The site has always
been much larger but has received a fraction of the attention. This would be a
great move if you're looking for an instant source of traffic.

R: ErrantX
The auction isn't all that clear in some aspects...

1) What's being sold? The domain and content or the whole server/setup?

2) What's the current monthly costs like?

R: Sam_Odio
Everything you need to achieve massive wiki success (domain, similar domains,
wiki, slicehost account, etc) is included.

Another note: I was just told that our pagerank fell from 5/10 to 0. Probably
happened a few months ago from wiki spam that we've been strugling with. If
you implement a captcha you can might convince google to restore the PR.

R: timdorr
It's funny. I used to help out with the PackRat (Alamofire's Facebook game
that came before Gowalla) Bluwiki site: <http://packrat.bluwiki.com/> But due
to some heavy-handed community leadership I ended up creating my own:
<http://packratwiki.com/> I'm not really involved with the operations of
either (and don't play the game anymore), but I think I emailed you at some
point or talked to you via your Talk page.

I might end up snatching this up out of nostalgia. Could definitely be more
monetized (look at Wikia for an extreme example), but I'd be more interested
in the community-building aspects of it. Is Nathan Richards going to stay
involved after the sale? That wasn't clear.


M: San Francisco residents can now switch to 100% wind power - vipulved
http://CleanPowerSF.com

R: masonic
It's only accounting theater. The electrons still come from the same sources.

R: ZguideZ
That's super cool, but doesn't change the whole problem of exploiting
planetary resources for personal gain

R: vipulved
Not sure which problem you are referring to and would like to hear more. It's
cool that you can go to a website, spend 5 mins to fill out a form and start
getting emission free power. A good step in the right direction.


M: Doom as a System Administration tool (1999) - ColinWright
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/

R: ColinWright
Also relevant:

Doom as an Interface for Process Management:
[http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html](http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html)

Doom SysAdmin Tool:
[http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_SysAdmin_Tool](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_SysAdmin_Tool)

More:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=doom+system+administration](https://www.google.com/search?q=doom+system+administration)


M: Google's Microsoft Moment - blasdel
http://dashes.com/anil/2009/07/googles-microsoft-moment.html

R: ZeroGravitas
Am I wrong or is this just not true:

 _"Google's recent development work on applications for mobile devices has
often been delivered exclusively as applications for their own Android
platform instead of as iPhone applications"_

I don't own an Android phone so maybe there's lots going on I'm not aware of
but there seems to be plenty of stuff developed for a) any browser, b) any
decent browser, c) iPhones specifically, d) java smartphones, e) Windows, f)
Mac, g) Linux.

He state's this is what Microsoft was like 5 or 10 years ago, and yet I think
this is still true of Microsoft today. Certainly Microsoft sales folk I've
recently come into contact with seem to be actively denying the existance of
other browsers in relation to Sharepoint stuff.

R: nostrademons
Yeah, I was gonna point that out. I've got some friends & family members with
iPhones, and they use Maps & GMail all the time. I've met someone on the
Mobile-Maps team, and he's always carrying around at least 3 different phones
because he has to develop for them all. I work on the search UI, and a rough
ordering of the amount of time I spend on each browser goes something like
Firefox > IE7 > IE8 > IE6 > Chrome > Safari > Opera > Konqueror. The only
browser that _really_ gets screwed is Konqueror, and to a lesser extent Opera
(sorry guys). There've been features that we launched for Firefox+IE but cut
for Chrome due to time restrictions - yeah, it's embarrassing to not support
our own browser, but it's less painful than cutting off 20% of the market.

R: iamelgringo
I've had this nagging feeling/paranoia the past year, that I'm really not
comfortable with the massive amounts of data that google obtains on me. If
someone came along and gave me a better email experience with a calendaring
system that I could pay for and be reasonably ensured that my payment was
keeping my data private. Id jump off the Google platform relatively quickly.

R: jsz0
Safe from what?

Safe from misuse by Google? I think that's a risk you take with any third
party provider. Being one of many millions of users does provide some security
through obscurity in that respect. Chances are most of us are just not special
enough to be legitimate targets.

Safe from misuse by bad guys outside of Google via security problems? I'm
pretty confident Google has some of the best engineers out there. You also
have a strength in numbers thing going for you with Google. Lots of people are
looking at it. Google is very high profile -- if they did have a leak you'd at
least know about it. I can't say the same about some random provider. They
could have half wit engineers who cover up data leaks. You might never know.
Even bad providers can have sterling record if they choose not to report
problems or simply have a run of good luck until someone copy & pastes the
wrong command and every bit gets leaked.

Safe from being an anonymous fraction of a statistic when Google aggregates
its data? I'd be more worried about my ISP spying on me.

Overall I think it's good to be aware of the risks but realistically there
isn't a whole lot you can do about it no matter which provider you're using.
If you were to separate all your different accounts to different providers you
might at least spread the risk out. If you choose to run your own server(s)
you quickly become the weakest link in the security chain. Even if you're a
pro it probably won't be your full time job to administrate your servers so
that already puts you at a disadvantage.

R: tome
What worries me about Google is not that it has my data, but that it has a
_massive_ cross section of my data:

       * search records
       * e-mail
       * calendaring
       * documents
       * which youtube videos I've watched

etc. I'm sure it's _much_ more than proportionally easier to abuse this
information the wider the spread of it they have.

R: jodrellblank
You wish that's all they have on you - they also own doubleclick, and Google
ads, two of the largest web advert providers in the world tracking you as you
go to www.unrelated.example.org, and Google Analytics, one of the most popular
web tracking extensions also tracking you as you go to
www.anysite.example.org. Also any site that pulls graphs in from Google's
public graphing API, or a sidebar from blogger or picasa.

The bought DejaNews, so anything you post(ed) to Usenet is in their grasp, and
they spider the entire web so if they can pull a probable forum name from your
existing data then they can try linking them together.

If you've ever used Google Maps to find directions, then the most likely place
to find directions is from/to your home and from/to your workplace, so they
can get highly probable locations for you. (Used it from an iPhone with GPS?).

Shop with Google Checkout? Browse with Google Toolbar? Use any of
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products> ?

R: dflock
Ok, serious question: what's the worst that could happen?

Some internet entity (could be Google, could be someone else) knows everything
about me - all my personal details, everything I've ever done on the internet
that wasn't encrypted. What's the worst case scenario for me, realistically?

R: jodrellblank
WARNING: I'm not as paranoid as this post. Quite. ;)

I follow the arguments that computer processing power is cheap and getting
rapidly cheaper at a surprising rate. Because of this, I don't want to
constrain ideas of "the worst" thing that could happen to be limited to things
I can imagine now. I doubt it would end up killing you, but information is
power and giving out information about you is giving away power over you in
exactly the way that some people feared photographs were capturing their soul.

(That is, within a small number of years, "the worst" thing could be very much
worse, and in unpredictable ways).

However, let's see:

1) "Government does bad things, made worse by Google's position and power"
scenario --> Governments use phone companies to track "terrorists" by who
calls who and what is said (or is rumoured to - see Echelon). It's not too far
fetched that they could forge links with Google for Google to flag up
suspicious persons by net activity (See recent story about German legislation
mandating that ISPs block a list of pornographic websites. They could mandate
Google.de to be included), and the list of triggers could be secret. So far so
good, but ... a change in public opinion, a terrible government gets in power
and starts adding more triggers based on the kneejerk fears of the day. Are
picked up by it because you were reading an unusual amount about medical
fraud? Because you were in the vicinity of a known communist's house thrice in
a week (picked up by your GPS mobile phone)? Because of your religion, gender,
sexual orientation, political leanings?

2) Techno-illiterate courts legislate that Google's information hoard is in
the public interest and must be made publicly available. Anyone can now search
all that stuff about you, all your emails, their contents. Have you ever
wanted a stalker? Have any jealous friends? Is there nothing you would like to
forget? Think employer-employee profiling, discrimination and bullying can't
get much worse?

3) Nobody emerges as a Google sized competitor. Google becomes the de-facto
choice for advanced image, video, audio processing. Google announces Google
CCTV - desirable for companies because of the unlimited storage, web
accessibility and tremendous analysis capability. Voices are transcribed,
people are tracked, identified by sight, motion, limb length, gait... Soon all
companies use GCCTV. Soon local councils do. Soon dflock can be tracked across
systems. Google acquires eyes all over the country. Google starts population-
scale experiments in secret. Can they predict where you will be? Can they, by
dint of showing you different adverts, search results, articles with different
slants _influnece_ where you will be? Which stores you shop in? Who you phone?
Which way you vote?

3.1) Voice control hasn't really got much further. Microsoft, Dragon Dictate,
Apple, they're all roughly as good as they were. Google has been quietly
training on youtube videos, GrandCentral phonecalls, GTalk calls, google
mobile search. Theirs is much better. Any device from your satnav or car
stereo to your TV or Kindle has Google Voice tie-in. Everyone loves it because
you can talk in whole sentences and say things like "remind me to watch XYZ on
channel 123 on Sunday" and it does. Google offer this for free because now
they know what you're doing when you're not on the net - and what you're
talking about when not directly addressing your devices. Goto (1) and (3).

4) Google starts accepting "bribes" by another name. CrummyLabs Sound Cards by
some ad-words and they appear at the top of search results for Sound Cards.
Not happy with this, they backhand a few more quid and their competitors
results fall lower. Then vanish. Competitors drivers are nowhere to be seen.
Forums discussing their competitors wind up on page 50. Reviews vanish. The
only products you see, hear about, can easily purchase and get support for are
those with ties to Google. Not just IT products though - why did you _really_
buy that cooker? Google hires Derren Brown. You start to bank with Google Bank
because "it's the best free bank" (well, that's why you think you bank with
them).

5) It's 2025 and Google translate is as good as a human translator. All
international business phonecalls go through Google Translate. All
international _political_ phonecalls go through Google Translate. Tranlsate
isn't always completely honest and unbiased in its translations.

Information is power, Google's net is wide and growing wider. The more
information flows through them, the more scope there is for them to do bad
things, and the more incentive for legislative bodies, malicious employees,
hackers, spies, to try to get their hands involved too. The worst thing that
can happen is probably along the lines of you (us) being more and more a pawn
in someone's business and political games, or being caught up in some witch
hunt or having our lives ground up and spat out ruined by a juggernaut that
doesn't even notice us.

We are buffetted by massive tidal forces now. Google is paving the way for
those to be controllable, all the media forces synchronised and coherently
pushing in the same ways. A laser not a light bulb.

(And if a sentient computer appears, which company do you think will spawn it?
Which company has masses of computing power, masses of data, masses of smart
people, masses of money, a corporate culture of machine learning and megascale
processing? Such an AI would be constructed with implicit knowledge of you.
Have you read "I have no mouth but I must scream"?

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html)
;) )

R: jsz0
You forgot the obvious one: Google's secret robot army is unleashed and
enslaves humanity. I find this possibility to be as valid as some of the ones
you list. It could happen, sure, but Google ultimately cannot risk alienating
their customers so they wouldn't do it. Even at Microsoft's peak the doomsday
scenarios never came to fruition for the same reason. The first time Google
does anything unsavory with the data they collect is the moment when they open
the flood gates for their competitors to rush in.

I do think there's some value in keeping information offline and people should
consider that as a valid alternative. You don't really need to account for
every second of your life in Google Calendar. You don't need to upload every
single photograph you've ever taken. You don't need to geotag the photos you
do choose to upload. You may not want to use Google Docs to store your bank
account information. Part of this whole situation is consumers protecting
themselves.

R: rjurney
The problem here is that in combination with Wave, Google is setting the
platform that we are supposed to develop for a year or more before it exists.
That IRRITATES the hell out of me. It is the same kind of egotistical
douschebaggery Microsoft used to pull: pre-launching products to gain control
before contributing anything.

Watching the Wave introduction video... when I see that semi-euro, T-shirt
wearing trim-bearded fuck up there on that stage with his falsely elegant
peppy smart talk planning a 'boating trip', and the scripted passing back and
forth with 'the best project manager in the world,' I see one thing and one
thing only in my mind: Ballmer's sweaty bitch tits bouncing up and down, round
and round, as he stomps and screams, vibrating to the tune of "Developers,
Developers, Developers, Developers!"

At least Ballmer had the good sense to be ugly, which gave him an odd kind of
dignity.

I think I prefer this stagecraft <http://bit.ly/pwGXs> to this stagecraft
<http://bit.ly/15aSar> because Google's culture of arrogance is starting to
disgust me.

R: freetard
> It is the same kind of egotistical douschebaggery Microsoft used to pull:
> pre-launching products to gain control before contributing anything.

Well no, Google Wave will be open source and they already published the whole
protocol and API so people can build clones of it before it's even released.
Microsoft releases proprietary API ran on secret protocol no once can clone
unless they get sued or do crazy reverse engineering in a country where they
can't be sued. Not quite the same thing.

R: rjurney
Granted - FOSS is good. But the traffic will still be running through google
for almost all of this. And that, combined with their sole invention of
this... I don't like it. I'm tired of them. They are too big. The worship
bothers me. They've turned a corner.

R: stilist
Interesting theory. There have certainly been occasional questions about
exactly how trustworthy the company is, but no lasting negativity that I've
seen. I suppose it has been long enough - and Google is big and broad
enough - that a real backlash could begin to appear.

R: anigbrowl
Agree. Extra points for the cartoon, which I hadn't seen before.

R: dustice
I've seen many articles recently that suggest Microsoft's bundling of Browser
to OS is analagous to Google's bundling of OS to Browser. They miss the key
distiction that Google's offerings are /free/ and open-source. You don't like
the OS? No problem, you can run Chrome (or Chromium) on whichever OS you want.
No lock-ins, no harm to the user.

R: trezor
Chrome != Chromium. Anyone who has tried Chromium in Linux will instantly
notice they are using a much less polished product.

Chromium may be open source, but Chrome is not.

R: ljlolel
If I may ask, how is it less polished? I'm posting with Chrome for Linux right
now (and I used Chromium before, which is identical) and it looks beautiful.

Excepting of course external plugin type issues (printing and Flash don't work
yet), the browser runs super-fast, never crashes, and looks great. Some of the
configuration options aren't complete, but those are minor issues (oh and I
see they have added many of them).

R: trezor
It has gotten better recently, but it is lagging quite a lot compared to plain
Chrome.

Text rendering used to be horrible but it has gotten better. But if I can't
even configure proxy settings without hacky gconf editing, that tells you that
you are definitely using a browser in catch-up mode.

R: tybris
I thought we were past the short-sighted Microsoft is evil childishness. In
general, if you think a large group of people is evil or stupid (especially if
these people are known to be very, very smart), you are wrong and should be
wondering why.

If a company is growing its business is to be on the offense, challenging the
competitors products. When it becomes too big to adapt to the changing needs
of the customer quickly it needs to go on defense to protect its business. Has
nothing to do with stupid or evil, just business.

R: rdrimmie
The post isn't about evilness (and in fact Dash has frequently defended
Microsoft, as he states). The post is about a corporate entity growing past
the point where the internal concept of 'self' that its staff has differs
largely from the external concept of its identity that the public has.


M: Over a Million Are Denied Bank Accounts for Past Errors - GabrielF00
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/over-a-million-are-denied-bank-accounts-for-past-errors/?hp

R: DamnYuppie
So if a person has an over draft, they repay the fees and interest, yet it is
still a reason to disqualify them? That seems a bit to harsh to me. Yet being
the NY Times is also likely that they left out other details of those they
profiled, such as bad credit history or other things that would preclude them
from getting a checking account.

It seems that businesses, and our society in general, are moving to a state
where all sins are held against you into perpetuity.


M: Ask HN: What new skills have you learned since shelter-in-place started? - johndavid9991
We don't know yet when could COVID-19 pandemic ends, so picking up a new skill or learning a new programming language/technology could be worth the use of your time. What new skills have you learned or started learning so far? If you are a developer, what learning resources do you recommend?

R: pmdulaney
I've had the time to start writing a book in earnest. I've used LaTeX
extensively in the past -- albeit not in the past 5 years or so.

* Refreshed my knowledge of LaTeX using the lualatex engine

* Learned how to use the Memoir class

* Learned how to use the subfiles package (highly recommended!)

* Learned how to version control my chapters using Mercurial / MacHg

* Learned how to use the Zettelkasten tool The Archive

* Switched from Terminal to iTerm2

* Switched (mostly) from regular vim to MacVim (love it)

* Discovered and am using vifm, the vi-oriented file manager (the type of classic nerdy Unix tool I love!)

* Started using Typinator to ease work with The Archive

* Started using aspell - a great spell checker

R: johndavid9991
Wow, that's a lot!

Thanks for sharing, especially iTerm2 and MacVim.

R: pmdulaney
A couple of tips for iTerm2:

1\. iTerm2 looks in .bash_profile at start-up, not in .bashrc.

I imagine your system is the same, but I found the following advice in a forum
which was pretty clever, I thought. If you have both a .bash_profile and a
.bashrc and you're wondering which one iTerm2 is sourcing, type

export BASH_CONF="bash_profile"

somewhere in .bash_profile and

export BASH_CONF="bashrc"

in .bashrc. Then open up a new iTerm2 window and type

echo $BASH_CONF

on the command line to see which one got set.

2\. Being able to select something with the mouse and then paste it with a
right-mouse click is great. Here's the right way of setting it up:

a. Open iTerm's Preferences

b. General> Selection> Check "Copy to pasteboard on selection" (for me this
was the default)

c. Pointer> Bindings> Double-click on "Right button single click"; Select
"Paste from Clipboard"

The _wrong_ way to do it would have been to just set up the right button click
to paste from selection. That would be bad because you would lose the ability
to paste something that you had copied, say, using Cmd-C in a Word document.

R: krupan
I think I'm getting a better handle on my anxiety issues. Also, I played with
Legos for the first time in a long time.

R: johndavid9991
Good for you. This is the part that I struggle the most, I quarantined for
more almost a month and depression and anxiety kicks in the most when you are
alone.

R: DanBC
Baking bread using a sourdough starter instead of yeast; noodling about with
NodeMCU (really fun and dirt cheap) and BBC Micro:Bit (really fun, not as
cheap as NodeMCU but still pretty cheap, and really easy for younger people to
get started with); and I've just started pencil sketching. I'm an absolute
total beginner, but it's enjoyable.

R: pmdulaney
A nice sourdough bread recipe with hi-res photos:

[https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-
code/blob/master/bas...](https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-
code/blob/master/basics/sourdough.md)


M: The Cookie Cutter Guide to Charting in the App Store - jsatok
http://www.taptaptap.com/blog/the-cookie-cutter-guide-to-charting-in-the-app-store/

R: wallflower
Aside from the preachy tone, practical advice on iPhone marketing - send out a
sexy rich HTML email the morning after your app is released to your targeted
mailing list that tastefully showcases your brand new iPhone app with the all-
important 'Available on the iPhone App Store' badge.

Not explicitly mentioned in the linked article is that the more gorgeous and
_non cookie-cutter_ your app's UI is, the better a chance it has of breaking
through into the top charts. How else to differentiate your app from the
standard UITableView/UITabBar drones out there? The best looking iPhone apps
combine good looks with focused functionality.

Weightbot

<http://tapbots.com/weightbot/>

Note: I've bought the MacHeist bundle before and I did recall getting the
Voices launch email blast (and GMail search confirms) so I assume it was sent
to Tap Tap Tap's (600k strong?!) mailing list only.

R: jsatok
The TapTapTap email was sent out to MacHeist's email list. When purchasing a
bundle, you can specify if you don't want to be part of the list, but by
default, you are: <http://grab.by/1n8R>.

I've worked on some MacHeist developer relations projects before, and one of
the benefits is the massive email list. Dan Grover, the developer of ShoveBox,
participated in one of the bundles recently, and sums up his feelings in this
comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=945891>.


M: Asynchronous Multi-Threaded Parallel World of Swift - leogdion
https://learningswift.brightdigit.com/asynchronous-multi-threaded-parallel-world-of-swift

R: alfanick
7x "How can I deliver a better user experience with asynchronous operations?"
sign-up form, impressive!


M: Ask HN: Stemmers in ruby, any good? or should I just go ahead and write my own? - arindam_

The most popular option seems to be https://github.com/aurelian/ruby-stemmer. But its kinda outdated and gives poor-ish results.
"why" becomes "whi", "people" becomes "peopl" and a lot lot many incorrect ones.
Something like Solr's reduction to stems is what I was hoping for to be able to use it in my project.
Thinking of going for a full port of Porter's stemming. Thoughts?

R: danso
Thanks for asking this, I'd also be interested in knowing...

Did you try the uea-stemmer? Also pretty old: [https://github.com/ealdent/uea-
stemmer](https://github.com/ealdent/uea-stemmer)

Also, there's the treat gem, which is an all-in-one package...it uses both the
stemmer you mentioned and the uea one...so maybe that's it for Rubyists.

[https://github.com/louismullie/treat](https://github.com/louismullie/treat)

R: boyter
[https://github.com/raypereda/stemmify](https://github.com/raypereda/stemmify)

Not a Ruby guy so no idea if its any good, but it is the implementation linked
from here
[http://tartarus.org/~martin/PorterStemmer/](http://tartarus.org/~martin/PorterStemmer/)


M: Algorithms and Bias: Q. And A. With Cynthia Dwork - v4n4d1s
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/upshot/algorithms-and-bias-q-and-a-with-cynthia-dwork.html

R: Trombone12
"Q: Whose responsibility is it to ensure that algorithms or software are not
discriminatory?

A: This is better answered by an ethicist. I'm interested in how theoretical
computer science and other disciplines can contribute to an understanding of
what might be viable options."

Weird response considering the (mild) advocacy for regulation later since
regulation presumes target to be regulated... Hard to shake the feeling the
response is influenced by her employer.


M: A Start-Up Says It Can Predict Others' Fate  - jmorin007
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/technology/18vc.html?em&ex=1203483600&en=e905b7a83fc460e5&ei=5087%0A

R: jdueck
I'm skeptical. At best, they'll have 20/20 hindsight. At worst, these are two
kids who haven't yet enrolled in the School of Hard Knocks.


M: Being Overweight in the Workplace an Advantage for Men, Not Women - atlasunshrugged
https://www.syracuse.com/news/2020/02/cornell-study-being-overweight-in-workplace-an-advantage-for-men-but-not-women.html

R: quotemstr
> A new study at Cornell University found overweight men in the workplace are
> perceived as more persuasive than their thinner male co-workers, according
> to the Huffington Post.

This study fails the common sense gut check. This study will not reproduce: it
smacks of the same p-hacked, publication-bias social psychology nonsense
that's plagued us for a decade.

It's plausible that men experience a smaller penalty for being overweight than
women do, but to imagine that there's an _advantage_ in being portly? That
flies in the face of prior work (and much better-established work, though
still shaky) on halo effects, but more importantly, it defies common sense and
daily experience.

When will we stop believing that studies like this actually tell us anything?

R: downerending
Indeed, it's very hard to believe that being fat works as some sort of
advantage.

(Source: am fat.)


M: Features Of SQL Server 2012 - KarenLopez
http://mcpmag.com/articles/2012/03/14/top-12-features-of-sql-server-2012.aspx

R: stevear
SQL Server has been one of my favorite software products of all time. As an
admin it has been rock solid and not produced any headaches that weren't our
own fault.

With that said, to really get the most out of SQL Server (and most likely most
other SQL implementations) you really have to do your homework and put in the
time to go through the features. Perhaps more than anything this is why NoSQL
has taken off-- it's very simple to get going. At user groups I hear a lot of
people saying they selected MongoDB because "They had millions of rows and SQL
just couldn't keep up" and to me it just sounded like no one in their
organization had any solid SQL experience.

It's too bad MS didn't build a 'SQL Admin' into their product that sent an
email on occasion to say things like "You have a query that is called
frequently and could be sped up if you simply included this column in this
index. Here are some details!"

R: einhverfr
_SQL Server has been one of my favorite software products of all time._

I feel the same way about PostgreSQL, along with the bit about learning all
the features. I suspect that most decent RDBMS's are this way.

 _At user groups I hear a lot of people saying they selected MongoDB because
"They had millions of rows and SQL just couldn't keep up" and to me it just
sounded like no one in their organization had any solid SQL experience._

hahahaha. I have customers with db's with 10's of millions of rows (And I
expect hundreds of millions or rows in the foreseeable future) and I can't
imagine MongoDB keeping up in terms of reporting......

R: nwatson
Purported new feature: "Columnstore Indexes -- This a cool new feature that is
completely unique to SQL Server. They are special type of read-only index
designed to be use with Data Warehouse queries. Basically, data is grouped and
stored in a flat, compressed column index, greatly reducing I/O and memory
utilization on large queries."

Many DB engines such as Vertica, SenSage, Sybase IQ, all use column-oriented
storage. Perhaps the only novel-but-obvious thing here is that these "read-
only" indexes are implied to live alongside the regular DB table data, though
I'm not sure how these "read-only" indexes would mesh with the need to support
deletion on regular tables.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column_oriented_database>

R: mgkimsal
Perhaps the engine will update the "read only indexes" when the corresponding
data in regular tables are deleted, but not in realtime, but only on demand or
on a predetermined schedule?

R: orcadk
The columnstore indexes are purely read-only; they will not be updated without
requiring a rebuild.

However, you can create columnstore indexes on specific partitions, and thus,
by partitioning your source data, you can continue to add new data in new
partitions. As most DW/"big data" solutions use partitioning anyways, this is
a usable solution, giving you the benefits of the readonly performance as well
as the maintainability aspects, while still allowing you to feed in new data.

Columnstore indexes are not meant for OLTP type solutions, so there's no need
for realtime regular data deletion; it simply doesn't happen on this kind of
historical data. You might switch out a partition of your data, or you might
switch in a partition of new data, but you won't change the actual data
itself.

Comparing SQL Servers columnstore index implementation with other columnstore
based databases doesn't make sense. I won't laud columnstore indexes as a
revolutionary new feature, but the way it's implemented is new, AFAIK.
Comparing it to "normal" columnstore based databases will make SQL Server look
bad - but the thing is, it's not meant to compete with those. Use it where it
makes sense.

R: gizzlon
A little OT, but this was very surprising:

 _"MS is making a push back to the command line for server products). Core is
the GUI-less version of Windows that uses DOS and PowerShell for user
interaction. It has a much lower footprint (50% less memory and disk space
utilization), requires fewer patches, and is more secure than the full
install. Starting with SQL 2012, it is supported for SQL Server."_

R: KarenLopez
What is surprising about it? Server core is for specific situations.

R: NDizzle
I'd be happy with simple syntax for things like OFFSET/LIMIT and GROUP_CONCAT
at this point.

R: mgkimsal
if they gave you that, it'd be too easy to port a lot of basic stuff away from
sql server.

I worked someplace that was primarily a SQL Server shop, although was still
largely Java and some PHP at the time. I was tasked with building something to
paginate through records. There were several hundred thousand to paginate
through, and I had to resort to getting the DBA to build some weird sproc with
cursors and junk in it.

"I just need _some_ of the rows"

"Why would you need that?" (honest to goodness question from the DBA)

"Well, because I only need to show 30 items on the screen, not 400,000.
Showing 400,000 might take a while."

"Just use TOP. SQL Server lets you do SELECT TOP(30) already!"

"Umm... but I might need to see the second 30, or the 99th 30."

"Why? No one does that!"

Insane. They experimented with some monstrosity of nested TOP() queries. They
refused to allow MySQL to be used ("it's just a toy"), when it was perfectly
capable for the requirement, and had developer-useful stuff like LIMIT in it.
I got some overly engineered sproc that had to be updated whenever I needed a
change, and I ended up leaving a few months later. Not specifically because of
that, but that culture was one I couldn't fit in to. I've heard it's gotten
better, but I don't really believe it's better so much as the people who've
stayed there have adapted and worked around the cognitive dissonance it
triggered.

R: saryant
I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I've implemented pagination in SQL
Server and it wasn't as complicated as that. Maybe I produced the world's
worst pagination technique but I don't think I ever resorted to TOP. The
ROW_NUMBER() function takes care of this.

R: steverb
Yes.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/548475/efficient-way-
to-i...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/548475/efficient-way-to-implement-
paging)

R: Smrchy
Now if only MS would sit down and create a useable NodeJS client for MS-SQL.

The lack of a good clients outside the Windows world is what makes me move
away from this otherwise great product.

R: locusm
There is some great features there but Reporting Services is a turd that
should have been flushed, not polished.

R: reagan83
I disagree. Reporting Services in 2008 (especially with R2 and Report Builder
3.0) is great. It serves as a great alternative to Crystal and it comes
included with the SQL Server license.

IMHO SSRS in SQL Server 2012 has matured more than I expected and offers a lot
of the same functionality that comes with others in the Enterprise Reporting
space. It's worth giving it another shot.

R: cosha
Microsoft is so last year


M: Donald Glover Is an Innovator and Advocates for Coding - thefifthprint
https://festivalpeak.com/donald-glover-jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-most-of-them-c3595f297e38#.24ve4q6it

R: thefifthprint
He also has a line about coding in his freestyle here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKB66pjw-
JA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKB66pjw-JA)

Around time 2:50 in the video


M: Arsenic life does not exist after all... - t3rcio
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328493.300-arsenic-life-does-not-exist-after-all.html

R: tokenadult
The claim that living things could use the usual molecules, just with arsenic
switched for phosphorus in their DNA, was an extraordinary claim, and such a
claim requires extraordinary evidence.

[http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2008/01/extraordinary-c.h...](http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2008/01/extraordinary-c.html)

But the first report about "arsenic-based life" was no more than a preliminary
research finding announced in a press event by the study sponsor, and such an
announcement is not enough to establish a new body of scientific fact.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

The specific preliminary finding was criticized right away for sloppiness of
technique and a rush to reach an unwarranted conclusion,

[http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arseni...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arsenic-
based_life.php)

[http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2011/08/first-
evidence-...](http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2011/08/first-evidence-
refuting-wolfe-simon-et.html)

so the journal slated to publish the preliminary finding had to invite in
critiques of the finding to save its own reputation.

[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/science-
publishes-...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/science-publishes-
arsenic-is-life-responses-game-on/)

Science is all about reproducible results, so much so that there is a humor
magazine for scientists called the Journal of Irreproducible Results.

<http://www.jir.com/>

The headline in New Scientist, a British popular magazine about science
(something like Scientific American in the United States), which has been
published since before I was born, is correct. There isn't any reliable
evidence of arsenic-based life living anywhere within reach of scientists on
earth. Not now, and not last year. The best summary of the current evidence,
after the efforts of many more careful researchers, is "arsenic life does not
exist after all," period (as an American would say), full stop (as a Briton
might say).

R: robinhouston
I don't think the scientific community really bought it in the first place.
The original experiment wasn't especially rigorous; e.g. see Rosie Redfield's
review [http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2010/12/arsenic-
associa...](http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-
bacteria-nasas.html)

And then the authors declined to respond in detail to any of the specific
criticisms that had been made by other scientists, which is very rarely a good
sign.

R: biasedstudy
Serious biologists were very skeptical from the start :
[http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-and-new-
micro...](http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-and-new-
microbes.html)

Soon, there were lots of questions :
[http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/06/01/return_of_th...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/06/01/return_of_the_arsenic_bacterium.php)

I'm thinking NASA is good at space exploration, not so good at biology.

R: rylz
The title is a bit misleading. One other lab's failure to reproduce the
results does not prove invalidity of the original publication. It certainly
raises some eyebrows, but it makes sense to wait and see what comes of Wolfe-
Simon's further analysis before we declare that arsenic life definitely does
not exist.

R: Tim-Boss
Agreed; a sensationalist title adds nothing to an otherwise accurate article!

R: nwatson
Even if the organisms were shown to swap out phosphorus for arsenic in some
instances in their DNA, would that be surprising? Arsenic comes from the same
column in the periodic table as phosphorus, and exhibits many of the same
macro chemical properties as phosphorus.

It would be like a software engineer swapping out their optimized, say, C++
string library, for one that was less optimal but perhaps took less space or
ran better in a constrained embedded environment. Arsenic might not be optimal
but it's what's available, what can be used.

In the software case you'd probably be OK but run more slowly than otherwise,
or else maybe you'd stumble when for some strange reason the sub-optimal
string library didn't guarantee thread-safe read operations. The arsenic could
similarly trip up the organism in some cases.

R: synparb
I think your analogy is not quite right. Although seemingly similar, inserting
Arsenic into DNA would be like taking a very large and complicated piece of
software that was fundamentally dependent on the precise API of a component,
and then changing that API to make it largely incompatible, thus requiring a
large piece of your software to be re-written. It is not just like swapping in
a suboptimal component that has no downstream effects.

R: veyron
I've never heard of new scientist. Is it a real science journal or
sensationalist? (based on this article I'd guess the latter)

R: corin_
It's an English magazine that's somewhere inbetween your two options.
Generally their reporting is pretty good and they avoid headlines for the sake
of headlines, however they do put a lot of focus on making their content
understandable to non-scientists - it's aimed at smart, curious people, not
scientists.

An example of this is their "last word" feature, where they take a question
from a reader and let anyone write in with answers - these are usually random
questions like "Why is the sky blue?" or "If it's raining, will I get less wet
if I run than if I walk?" They've also released two or three Last Word
compilation books.

R: coob
If anyone is interested in the sound of this there is something similar over
on this subreddit:

<http://reddit.com/r/askscience>

R: SilasX
More direct, permanent link:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/oxz9b/arsenic_life_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/oxz9b/arsenic_life_does_not_exist_after_all/)

R: coob
I wasn't talking about the article, but the 'ask for a scientific answer' type
service.

R: geuis
Summary: Scientist B failed to replicate the results of Scientist A. Scientist
A stands by her continuing research. Research continues and is not definitive
yet. New Scientist has a slow news days and publishes said results, mucking up
an extra controversy for the day and getting a few more clicks through to
their website.


M: EFF Applauds Amazon for Pushing Back on Request for Echo Data - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/eff-applauds-amazon-pushing-back-request-echo-data

R: M_Grey
The EFF must feel totally hopeless at this point. People are _buying_
microphones with internet connections and sticking them in their homes.
They're making the _choice_ to buy "smart" IoT shit that spies on them.
They're at a point of defending a major company selling that stuff, because
they didn't instantly roll over when approached by law enforcement.

It's like... PETA complimenting a butcher on a clean kill. I don't blame them
though... who knew the great battle over privacy would be lost before it even
started, because people want their toaster to go online?

R: kardos
> who knew the great battle over privacy would be lost before it even started,
> because people want their toaster to go online?

I really despise this sentiment, it's quite defeatist and comes across as the
"resistance is futile" talking point from the "privacy is dead" camp

What we need is some kind of spousal privilege [1] or secrecy of
correspondence [2] for the internet age, ie, for IoT things. Surreptitious
recordings from phones, messaging apps, "amazon echo"s, xbone cameras, etc,
should be impermissible in court (or some variation on this theme). We struck
a balance in the past, we can do it again.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spousal_privilege](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spousal_privilege)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence)

R: M_Grey
It's easy to accuse people of "defeatism", or "alarmism", when really you just
don't like the simple truth. Your idea is nice, but unless you're capable of
producing a workable roadmap and seeing it enacted, who really cares? Everyone
has "good ideas" and many people have good intentions, but if you can't
produce results that differ from the next guy it just doesn't matter.

Unless you're Churchill rallying a nation to fight, you're in no position to
accuse anyone of defeatism for pointing out the reality we live in.

R: kardos
My point was more along the lines of "lets stop repeating the 'give up'
mantra" and move forward to "lets explore how we might rectify the situation".
But alas you are also right, I did not present a shovel ready legal pathway to
success.

R: M_Grey
I'm not suggesting that anyone give up, I was suggesting that the EFF must
feel despair in the context of their efforts. I would argue that there is more
need than ever to fight, but that fight hasn't _really_ materialized yet.
Outside of places like HN, so few people appreciate that there even is a
fight, and fewer care.

That may change, but until it does, the best you can do is educate people.

R: gkoberger
While I'm glad Amazon pushed back, it did set some precedents and isn't
exactly a victory.

They eventually handed over the data (at the owner's consent), which does two
things: 1) confirms they do have data and the ability to turn it over 2) makes
anyone who doesn't hand over the data seems guilty (hey, if you have nothing
to hide...)

Privacy is eroded one step at a time.

R: Xorlev
> 1) confirms they do have data and the ability to turn it over

Not necessarily. We don't know what they handed over. For all we know right
now, it literally could be a single request to start a timer or check the
weather.

The use of the data seems dubious assuming that Alexa has to hear the trigger
word before sending data to Amazon. Judging by the traffic on my network, I'd
say that's the case. I don't see a persistent stream coming from my Alexa
device beyond periodic pings.

R: M_Grey
Keep in mind that a key piece of evidence in the murder case in question is a
single datapoint from his smart water-meter.

"Why did you use 140 gallons of water around 2AM? Long shower bud?"

R: icebraining
How is it not relevant whether someone used a lot of water after the homeowner
was dead?

R: M_Grey
_According to police records, a city utility billing and collections manager
told detectives that, on the night of Collins 's death, 140 gallons of water
were used at Bates's home between 1 and 3 a.m., an amount of water usage that
exceeded all other periods there since October 2013.

"In comparison, while all four [men] were together earlier that evening, they
never used more than 10 gallons of water in an hour," police reports said.
"The amount of water used between 0100-0300 hours was consistent with spraying
down the back patio area, which may have resulted in the wet concrete patterns
observed on the morning of November 22nd."

The utility department's source? Each home in Bentonville was on a smart
meter, police were told, to measure and record the exact consumption of
electricity and water every hour._ -Washington Post

The homeowner wasn't the one who died.

R: codedokode
Would not it be better if Amazon didn't keep those data at all and maybe even
made sound recognition on a client?

R: tannhaeuser
I absolutely support EFF, but it must be said that privacy and
decentralization can be in conflict with Free software. Namely, by flooding
the world with GPL and liberally-licensed web software, it becomes a commodity
item, making "the cloud" possible in the first place, and enslaving people.

R: kardos
Ehh, not really, the cloud is similarly possible without free software. Indeed
much of the big name cloud provider's backend software would be in-house
anyway. Windows VMs exist too.

I guess your point is closer to 'free software makes the cloud cheaper', which
in turn makes it easier to ensnare people..


M: Egyptian Cryptocurrency Exchange Coming This Month - MasterTokens
http://www.cryptocoinstockexchange.com/egyptian-cryptocurrency-exchange-coming-this-month/

R: MasterTokens
Last month, the Central Bank of Egypt has shot down rumours that suggested it
would allow banks to handle cryptocurrencies.


M: Show HN: A Go implementation of TensorFlow's streaming quantiles estimator - seiflotfy
https://github.com/axiomhq/quantiles

R: tsenart
How does it compare to
[https://github.com/tdunning/t-digest](https://github.com/tdunning/t-digest)?

R: vvern
Aren't the goals of t-digest a little bit different?

T-digest seeks to have a bounded size and an error proportional to q*(1-q),
hence it gives up quantile accuracy in the middle of the distribution when
under load. This algorithm seems to provide total bounded error without small
but unbounded size.

R: tsenart
Could you elaborate on the differences a bit deeper? I'm really interested in
understanding.

R: seiflotfy
[http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~weiwang/paper/SSDBM07_2.pdf](http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~weiwang/paper/SSDBM07_2.pdf)
is the paper its mostly based on Figure 1. Actually describes how big the
datastructure can get. It keeps getting bigger the more data you feed it.

R: gonyere
TensorFlow's implementation is looking great - RAM usage is fantastic!!