Hacker News Reader

comrade1on Ask HN: Has anyone here programmed in Kotlin? What do you think about it?

Where's Kotlin?

comrade1on California Street: Learning to surf in the sixties

To me surfing feels like running - you spend most of your time in that meditative state you reach when running, sitting on your board going up and down on the waves, watching the ocean and waiting for a good one.

The difference of course from running is that there's no feeling like when you see a good wave coming and you start prepping, lay on your board, start paddling, and then catch the wave. It's almost more like hunting.

I used to live in Ventura and surfed almost every day but now I live in a landlocked country - Switzerland. I run almost every day and get that meditative feeling, but I only get that excitement here of catching a wave that I had in Ventura during the winter when I ski off-piste.

comrade1on The Singular Mind of Terry Tao

Finally, a child prodigy that actually continues with their talents into adulthood, and also is socially adept, based on his education skills.

comrade1on NASA announces discovery of Earth-like planet with earth similarity index 0.98

Only on HN would a discussion about the discovery of an earth-like planet devolve into a discussion on the proper use of time zones...

comrade1on How two bored 1970s housewives helped create the PC industry

I think it reads more as a story of what happens when there are factors outside of your control while running your company. They could do nothing about the IBM PC and they even knew that IBM was mimicing their business strategy, and yet there was nothing they could do. IBM couldn't work with them because they couldn't handle the volume.

They knew their end was coming and they all exited the company when they saw what was coming. I think they showed themselves to be much more savvy then you give them credit for.

Today, it would be like you finding out that Google is about to come to compete with you.

They did great, I think. They did an IPO, cashed out, stuck the investors with the shitty stock, gave all of their employees significant stock grants, and went on to live nice lives. That's everyone's HN dream.

comrade1on DNA uncovers mystery migration to the Americas

There was a significant population bottleneck after the europeans reached north/south america. Nearly all native americans died, and then their population rebounded again (but not fully).

A lot of research like this makes an assumption that the genetics of modern native americans are close to pre-columbus genetics but that is almost certainly not the case.

When I was in graduate school I got a smithsonian fellowship to study the feasibility of amplifying dna from pre-columbus incan bones (they left their dead above ground on a plateau and so no contamination from tannins from the soil). I showed the dna could successfully be amplified.

I then left science and I'm not sure where the research went after that.

comrade1on A Man Who Flies Around the World for Free

Spoken like a true HN devoté...

In terms that you can understand: legal != right

comrade1on A Man Who Flies Around the World for Free

Guy find ways to exploit the system - some of it is reasonable, for example taking advantage of airlines overbooking flights, but some of it is just being an ass, for example demanding a voucher if his headset is broken rather than a new headset. Plus, lots of boring multi-leg flights with no real destination just to rack up miles.

Guy should use his brains for something more useful, like solving the traveling salesman problem.

comrade1on A Man Who Flies Around the World for Free

This is a bad customer. I'm surprised the airlines just don't ban him.

comrade1on Show HN: ZomboDB – Postgres extension for indexes backed by Elasticsearch

Can you do anything with zombo? Anything at all? Is the only limit yourself?

comrade1on Airless Tires Roll Towards Consumer Vehicles

These have been around a long tme, especially for armored cars (I saw them on an Audi W12). I was told the ride is rougher than pneumatic tires but have the advantage that they can't be punctured by gunfire, or whatever.

comrade1on Ask HN: Just curious, how prevalent is the use of nootropics‎ among HN members?

If you're a programmer and need to take this sh*t just to do your job, maybe you should think about changing professions. (Programmer here that only drinks coffee and drinks alcohol to get the balmer peak)

comrade1on IMF attacks EU over bailout terms

I read this and a couple of other articles and it seems more like part of the process. The EU makes a deal, Germany is pouty, the imf says debt relief must happen, Germany relents.

comrade1on I Waited 19 Months for the Magic Coin Card and It Was a Big Disappointment

How many cards do people have? I've got an amex and a visa. What more would I need?

comrade1on The boring front-end developer

I always tell my guys that I don't want them to think outside of the box. We should be firmly inside the box. (This is our inside joke, but there's also truth to it).

comrade1on Soloshot: Automatically film outdoor activities without a camera operator

Ed powers is going to love this.

comrade1on Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

Frankly I'm surprised she picked uber as a target as uber has a very strong, large, and sophisticated political lobbying organization. Granted, they focus on local politics more than national, so maybe this is a sign of Hillary being out of touch with the local level.

I don't think we'll have autonomous cars in 2 years.

comrade1on Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber’s Contractor Economy

I know my opinion won't be popular on HN, but looking at uber, especially, and similar companies from the outside (American living in Europe the last 6 years), the u.s. appears to be in a race to the bottom, with people competing to lower their own wages.

I like uber but I think they f*cked themselves over and deserve every bit of scrutiny they are getting. There are markets where they don't screw over the drivers, for example where I live in Zurich uber is the same price as a cab but it's more convenient because of the app.

If uber was truly beneficial to their drivers in the u.s. They wouldn't be under this scrutiny. They deserve whatever pain they receive and hopefully someone more responsible will take over the market.

Good luck fighting the political class. Uber will lose this fight.

comrade1on Letter of Recommendation: Hangovers

I run 5 days a week. Getting black out drunk is different. It's probably more like electroshock therapy. Think of it as running is de fragging your drive and getting blackout drunk is rebooting.

comrade1on Letter of Recommendation: Hangovers

Weird, was this removed?

comrade1on Letter of Recommendation: Hangovers

There's been a few times in my life where I reset myself by going on a bender. I've only done it a few times but beforehand I was in a rut - stuck motivationally, mentally exhausted, and after the bender feeling like my mind has been reset.

Sure the hangover sucked, but even with the hangover I could feel my brain being back to its normal energetic self including gaining the perspective of an outside observor that he mention in the article, making my problems less important.

I think some people do this through meditation, some through legal pharmaceuticals, and some of us by getting completely blotto on alcohol.

comrade1on We Took Apart Some Beats Headphones

I wouldn't be surprised if the counterfeit headphones sounded better. That's how bad beats is.

comrade1on Office of Personnel Management Says Hackers Got Data of Millions of Individuals

Humor is not allowed on HN. It's for our own protection - most of the people here are so autistic a simple ironic statement could lead to the end of the internet as the HN readers spaz out all at once.

comrade1on Office of Personnel Management Says Hackers Got Data of Millions of Individuals

https://www.nsa.gov/ia/index.shtml

Information assurance. Products and services for government and businesses.

comrade1on Office of Personnel Management Says Hackers Got Data of Millions of Individuals

It's part of their information assurance program. https://www.nsa.gov/ia/index.shtml

comrade1on Office of Personnel Management Says Hackers Got Data of Millions of Individuals

Yes, that's the worse part of this.

comrade1on Office of Personnel Management Says Hackers Got Data of Millions of Individuals

There's quite a bit of u.s. government on amazon cloud. Using a cloud service doesn't magically give you better security.

This is more an indication of the NSA focusing too strongly on offensive/monitoring operations and not on information security, which is their job as well.

comrade1on Petition: Step down as CEO of Reddit Inc

What a tempest in a tea cup. Reddit users have a far too high opinion of themselves. We're all getting tired of their angsty drama leaching over into real life.

comrade1on How Cotap Is Building a HIPAA-Compliant Messaging Service on AWS

Sorry. Meant vps.

comrade1on How Cotap Is Building a HIPAA-Compliant Messaging Service on AWS

They have to use Amazon's VPC service - AWS has a 'secure' vpc service where you don't share the server with other customers which is a requirement for HIPAA compliance. That service gets really pricey.

I run a similar service but for SMS messaging that is 21cfr11 compliant. We rent a 1/4 rack with our own door/lock and throw in pretty much disposable servers as needed. It's much cheaper than doing the equivalent on AWS, and it's not that difficult to set up your own secure servers once you have a few recipes to follow.

We started it about 9 years ago before a secure service with amazon existed. Every year or two I price alternative solutions like AWS's secure service, VPCs, etc and it's always cheaper even taking account my labor to stick with our 1/4 closet. In fact, it seems they base their costs on the going rate for rack space, plus a premium for using the convenience of using their servers.

Oh, and it's funny - we have almost the same number of users and we're processing more messages per month than them, all on a old-fashioned webserver-appserver-dataserver arrangement - three servers (with fallover redunandancy not counted) and it's barely breaking a sweat.