News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

inconclusive

That the first thing to build is trust. The disease that plagues companies is not communicating out of fear you'll get in trouble if something is broken or didn't get done. Build trust to counteract fear.
Re:BitTorrent vs. HTTP on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @06:53AM (#13470619)
Why we still use HTTP is beyond me. And I don't mean about the speed issues. Why have a protocol that's so complicated when most of the things we need to build with it are either simpler or reimplement parts of the protocol.
Re:Western Union admits to aiding wire fraud, to pay $586M on Monday January 23, 2017 @06:43PM (#13467377)
This is a pretty compelling point!
The idea of write-behind logging is slick.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/papers/p337-arulraj.pdf

Re:How We’re Building a Business to Last on Thursday January 19, 2017 @09:36PM (#13441379)
> So what doesn’t a startup need to succeed, but an established company would consider an important requirement.

> The first is a fully-distributed, incremental capability for quickly and consistently backing up and restoring large databases using configurable storage sinks (e.g. S3 or GCS). The same functionality, but non-distributed, will be available for free to all users.

I appreciate that you're trying to write a good database and build a business, but what do you mean by "startup"?

If a database can't guarantee it can make backups, why would a startup attempt to use it in the first place?

Re:My Go Resolutions for 2017 on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:40PM (#13440828)
Can I just use macros? Passing the type as a parameter to a macro can let the compiler match types, no?
Re:My Go Resolutions for 2017 on Thursday January 19, 2017 @06:41AM (#13434990)
Why do I have to use OO? Why can't I just call the functions I need?
Re:My Go Resolutions for 2017 on Wednesday January 18, 2017 @08:37PM (#13432220)
Tangent: Is it a good thing for programming that I have to wrap my mind around this new term called contravariant?
Re:Ask HN: Submit Questions for Office Hours with Daniel Gross on Wednesday January 18, 2017 @07:15PM (#13431786)
Why would it be unsafe to reach out to them?
Re:RethinkDB Postmortem on Wednesday January 18, 2017 @05:22AM (#13425331)
On reasons why RethinkDB failed, add: not having SQL support.
Re:Pixie – A small, fast, native Lisp on Tuesday January 17, 2017 @07:34PM (#13422966)
How is the cost of copying close to zero or not apparent?
> more advanced, static type systems

Are static type systems more advanced than dynamic type systems? This sounds surprising, given how much more one can do with a dynamic type system.

Re:The Line of Death on Saturday January 14, 2017 @09:48PM (#13402032)
What's a chromeless browser?
Re:The Line of Death on Saturday January 14, 2017 @09:47PM (#13402030)
Why is there a line of death to begin with?

The picture-in-picture attacks seem serious enough to warrant a new kind of browser.

Re:Getting beaten up in the acquisition – need your help on Friday January 13, 2017 @10:25PM (#13396657)
From: https://justinkan.com/the-founders-guide-to-selling-your-com...

"When a sufficiently high-up decision maker decides he/she wants to buy your startup, he/she will attempt to meet with you constantly and put time pressure on you, so as to prevent you from shopping the deal and getting a better offer. The absence of this behavior indicates the other company is not serious about acquiring your business."

"Letting a potential acquirer interview your team is extremely distracting for them, and signals to the acquirer that you are willing to bend over."

Re:There is no WhatsApp 'backdoor' on Friday January 13, 2017 @09:43PM (#13396544)
> the majority of users will probably not verify keys. That is our reality

The server having knowledge of who it can MITM without getting caught is irrelevant if nearly 100% of users verify keys.

I want a better reality.