Show HN: Ansible Crash Course - <AUTHOR> Hi Everyone.
My name is Mike. I've created a free Ansible Crash Course. It's a course aimed at people who are new to Ansible and want to get up and running quickly. It goes into a fair amount of detail on most topics, but should something be missing just let me know and I'll add it in.
Any and all help would be greatly appreciated! Just note an email address is required to register for the course - this is a limitation of the platform I'm using to host the course. Sorry about that!
The course can be found over here: https://www.thecloud.coach/ansible-crash-course
Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!
Thanks a bunch,
Mike. <comment><USER3> This won't be really helpful to you since you've already built it, but I'm the kind of person who doesn't like videos. I AM interested in Ansible, but I don't want to sit through videos about it; I want to read and follow the examples as I do.

Actually, I wonder what the split is between people who prefer videos vs people who prefer reading?

<comment><USER4> If it's a video, I'm very likely to just hit the back button. I skim read far faster than a video is capable of giving me the information and I can't copy and edit example code from a video. I get that some people like videos, but unless there's a transcript, I'm not going to be using it. Now, if it's a general talk on a subject, a video is great as the speaker can entertain as the talk. But if it's tutorials, please write the article's to go with it.

<comment><USER5> I think you've hit on a good compromise: videos with a transcript (including code examples).

That way, people who want a video have a video (with the bonus of something to read-along to), and people who want text have text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really wish there was a configuration management tool out there with a statically typed API. I've spent countless hours debugging Ansible's YAML which gets really unwieldy with hundreds or thousands of tasks.

<comment><USER7> Pulumi comes the closest that I've seen — [https://www.pulumi.com/](https://www.pulumi.com/)

<comment><USER8> This seems to work only with cloud providers, not with dedi boxes / VPSs?

<comment><USER9> "Cloud?" It can work with anything with an API. If there's a Terraform provider that they or the community hasn't projected into TypeScript (or whatever) you can do that yourself with minimal effort. Not sure what else you'd want.

<comment><USER10> How about plain old SSH? like all those low-end-boxes, you know ;).

<comment><USER9> I could write a provider to do so in a couple hours if one doesn't already exist.

But frankly, if you're using those boxes you've already decided that your time is worth less than your money and spending time on automation is probably lower ROI than moving to something, anything, with an API.

Anything that isn't IBM, anyway.

<comment><USER10> Cool, if your provider will have a tested way to install packages, copy/template files and setup services beyond docker. Basically Ansible/Saltstack/Puppet/Chef _are_ the API for plain UNIX.

As for the great "time worth less than money"-argument - I host my own nextcloud (for me and my family) on such a VPS for ~USD9. I get some 100GB of storage, ample RAM and CPU; sure that's probably oversubscribed, but after setup I can leave it running for years without worrying to check my bandwidth/storage quota in addition to it being cheaper than any big cloud- provider. Initial setup works with cloudinit and managing the VMs itself has an API. And I suppose for everyone not running a customer-facing business, the ROI of such solutions is basically unparalleled ;).

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the lecture; I didn't spend three years teaching Chef at a Fortune 100, I promise.

You get that one can just write a thing to kick off instance-level CM if it doesn't exist, yeah? Like I don't know if it does for Pulumi because Pulumi doesn't seem to care much about trailing-edge systems--for now at least, it seems, they have a big enough market without having to stretch backwards--but it's not complicated; Terraform already has provisioners to do exactly that, so the pattern exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks really interesting. My jobs is talking about implementing Ansible, so I'll definately be taking this and providing feedback!

Thanks for the knowledge donation.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome, friend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One suggestion: Once one video ends, it would be nice if we would be re- directed or if the following video would load automatically. Presently, I have to manually navigate from the current topic to the next and then activate the video to begin playing... This is of course very minor, but it would still be a nice update.

[edit: fix spelling fail]

</comment><comment><USER13> What will me email address be used for?

<comment><USER14> Not op but it is mentioned in the Show HN blurb above:

> Just note an email address is required to register for the course - this is > a limitation of the platform I'm using to host the course. Sorry about that!

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h That doesn't quite seem like an answer. Can I put in a fake address? If I put in a real address, will the platform decide to spam me?

<comment><USER13> Like, can I use [https://temp-mail.org/en/](https://temp-mail.org/en/) or will I need the email to access the material at a future date?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is very nice and effective. I just wish you had spent time in using the real world examples related to the server configs, instead of using the examples of hello-world, list of a, b, c, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's coming, for sure :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> very few people understand the basics and you hit right on the point it is a state management with configuration as code and others can contribute to your work and approve the changes you are going to make rather than just you go make them, you can test the configurations on test machines before throwing into real world so you are adding extra set of eyes to prevent catastrophe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's exactly it!

If we move into a future where everything is configured as code, I think that'll be of great benefit. Secondly, I think people will - by default - <USER2> become programmers. That can only be a good thing, I reckon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> well constructed course! Comprehensive. Thanks for the effort, I bet you spent lots of time into it.

<comment><AUTHOR> About a week of work :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm more inclined towards watching videos rather than reading books or articles. It's quick and introduces to various best practices. I started ansible with playbooks. I didn't know about the adhoc commands until now. Nice content! Keep going.

<comment><USER19> I agree, you have done a very good job keeping the videos short and focused. We use Ansible my job, and it's always been a bit of a dark art to me. Very much appreciate these videos.</comment></comment>


A Chip in My Hand Unlocks My House. Why Does That Scare People? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/opinion/chip-technology-implant.html <comment><USER2> i found that reactions seem to vary, here in the UK the general (uninformed) response is "ooh i dont know about that, seems a bit 1984" or something along those lines however when i was showing people in japan their response was generally "thats so cool! i want one!"

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see myself being tagged like cattle to go about my business.</comment>


For More Pianos, Last Note Is Thud in the Dump - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/arts/music/for-more-pianos-last-note-is-thud-in-the-dump.html?_r=2&ref=arts

<comment><USER3> A piano that has not been regularly tuned will lose its ability to stay tuned, turning it into a very large and heavy place to display sheet music, just like a car that never gets an oil change will eventually become an immobile scrap metal sculpture.

Shortly after we got married, my wife and I took possession of a 1918 upright piano that had not been tuned in a long time. We didn't know enough about pianos to know better, so we spent considerable time and effort to transport it 40 miles and up a short flight of stairs into our new home... only to dismantle it by hand less than a year later and slowly throw it away. It couldn't be tuned, and it took up too much room to keep if it wasn't going to be played. I think we sold the cast iron soundboard as scrap for a few dollars, and I did save some of the larger pieces of wood, which I used to build a bed for my two-year old son a few years later.

As a side note, if you've never taken apart a piano, I highly recommend it. You get a specific understanding of its inner workings, even if you think you already know how it functions.

Pictures of the piano disassembly:

With the keyboard removed: [http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2193/2299985304_d0b38313f6_b.j...](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2193/2299985304_d0b38313f6_b.jpg)

The keys that I saved for a long time but never found a use for: [http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2091/2299984652_a024f4a05e_b.j...](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2091/2299984652_a024f4a05e_b.jpg) (They're like teeth that have been knocked out: much much longer than you'd expect.)

The soundboard exposed, and the huge screwdriver I had to buy (see the top of the photo) to remove the screws attaching it to the wooden back: [http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3105/2300002756_92e8503676_b.j...](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3105/2300002756_92e8503676_b.jpg)

The soundboard removed: [http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2217/2300002188_68c614d900_b.j...](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2217/2300002188_68c614d900_b.jpg)

Just a portion of the screws and other hardware holding it together: [http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2095/2299206761_ae640697d9_b.j...](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2095/2299206761_ae640697d9_b.jpg)

<comment><USER4> Can you explain what causes a piano that hasn't been tuned to lose the ability to stay tuned? It sounds interesting, and I can't quite figure out how that would work.

<comment><USER5> The tuning pegs might become stuck to the side of the pegboard holes they are in. Also, if the strings are not kept at the correct tension, there is a real possibility of the iron frame becoming warped or even breaking.

<comment><USER6> Same thing happens with a guitar if you leave it without strings or heavily detuned. The neck can begin to warp and become very easy to break.

<comment><USER7> That's also why you have a truss rod, to prevent/correct neck warping. I've never seen a neck that was easy to break though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Larry Fine's _Piano Book_ is an interesting read. The take-home lesson is that pianos are far more fragile than they look. They are continuously falling apart. Poor humidity and temperature control takes its toll on them, the soundboard wears out, the tuning pegs wear out, all of that felt most definitely ages and wears out and stiffens, they're full of moving parts, and even letting them get too far out of tune will damage them long-term.

Most of those eighty-year-old instruments really _aren't_ worth keeping, and if you want your instrument to live to be eighty in good condition you need to budget for ongoing maintenance, and then eventually get the thing torn down and rebuilt. It's like owning a car.

It's hard, though, because I remember playing with my late grandmother's piano when I was around five years old, and now it's probably in a landfill somewhere. On the other hand, I still have my grandfather's slide rule, which he took to meteorology school at MIT during World War II. The secret is to choose _highly portable_ mementoes of a bygone technological era. ;)

<comment><USER9> This is very true. Honestly, even the best-kept instrument degrades significantly over time. When's the last time you saw anything but a brand new instrument in a big concert? There's a reason you never see pros playing treasured vintage instruments the way a violinist would.

Aside from their historical or ornamental value as furniture, old pianos are pretty useless.

<comment><USER10> > There's a reason you never see pros playing treasured vintage instruments > the way a violinist would.

I don't understand. Violins are instruments too. Did you just mean pianos, or others too?

<comment><USER11> Pianos don't improve with age.

A decently constructed instrument in the violin family will, as will (to a lesser extent) brass instruments.

I don't have a particular set of citations, it's just musician lore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am not a piano player, or even an official player of any musical instrument. I don't know how to read music.

A year ago, we were offered an upright Kimball built in 1970 by my newly acquired in-laws. My father in law is a portly fellow and insisted we move it ourselves, but I instead paid exactly 300 dollars to have it moved the 14 miles from Exeter to Lee.

We let it adjust to the humidity in our house for a half a year, and then we paid exactly 175 dollars to have it tuned. As subjective as this is, the man who tuned it said "it was a D and now it is a B". He said that the Kimballs are a very cheap piano with a cheap sound, and tried to sell me a grand piano for 5000 dollars used. It would have required I vacate my home office to the basement.

He had other pianos for sale, and some were as affordable (but as cheap) as the 300 dollars I paid for a free piano.

It's immensely pleasurable having a piano next to where I program. I don't know what I am doing, but I suspect this is a lot of the allure - I sit there and poke, and figure out my programming challenge of the day while my fingers are occupied. We all know full well how the frontal lobe needs to be engaged for the "coprocessor" to have a chance at resolving our issues for us.

The piano is about 4 feet wide and barely 2 feet from the wall. Since the bench sits underneath, this is frankly not a huge investment in space. I recommend a piano highly to the non-player due to its affordability and its distraction properties, my own version of prayer beads I use while debugging in my head.

<comment><USER13> > It's immensely pleasurable having a piano next to where I program. I don't > know what I am doing, but I suspect this is a lot of the allure - I sit > there and poke, and figure out my programming challenge of the day while my > fingers are occupied. We all know full well how the frontal lobe needs to be > engaged for the "coprocessor" to have a chance at resolving our issues for > us.

While not directly related, this is exactly the same reason I have a beater guitar hanging directly next to my workstation - if I get into a bit of tough code, I just take a break, strum a few chords, and then get back down to business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The better pianos (Steinway, Mason & Hamlin) from the 1920s are actually still very valuable and in demand. A well kept or restored grand piano from that era costs > $20,000 and can be one of the best deals out there for a good instrument. But any low end piano — even one that's only 15-20 years old — is destined for the dumpster before long.

There are two problems that cause this:

1\. Lack of craftsmanship in the original instrument.

2\. The expense and lack of skilled labor to restore and regulate pianos.

It's just too expensive and time consuming to have a skilled technician work on a low-quality piano, and because they are not made well in the first place, they just won't stay well-regulated for long.

Because of this, even a relatively new and good looking piano doesn't make a great instrument once it gets past a certain point.

This is a common problem in music schools. Most of the pianos are in poor condition and the technicians can't keep up with keeping them in good shape, and the good pianos are generally locked up and only the piano majors have access to them.

Only high end pianos are worth putting any time and money into, and because of that they actually make a good investment, while the value of low end pianos just drops off a cliff and they end up in a dumpster because they aren't even worth moving and repairing.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very sad to me. Digital pianos are a great innovation in many respects but are sort of analogous to microwave ovens in cooking. Work well enough to be widely adopted, but are unlikely ever to be the means of producing a masterpiece.

The relative lack of (touch) sensitivity and the more limited variation in timbre are immediately noticeable. One of the other qualities of a traditional piano that I instantly miss in even the best digital simulations is sympathetic vibration. Holding the sustain pedal down will not simply allow the notes to play longer. Other strings that freed up begin to vibrate as well. It produces an effect that - the last I checked - is not well emulated in a digital environment.

Reflective of the values of our age I guess. Small, relatively portable, low maintenance wins out in many other arenas. Why not music...

<comment><USER16> You're talking about keyboards, not digital pianos.

I currently use a Yamaha P155. The keys are weighted and touch-sensitive just like a real piano. Each key has its own recording, with its own timbre, at different volume levels. I can even use a damper pedal which responds to have far down I've pushed it.

It's not _exactly_ the same as a real piano, but as someone who played a real piano for 10 years, it's damned close. It's not like moving from a gas stove to a microwave, it's like moving from a gas stove to an electric stove. Not quite the same, but for nearly all practical purposes, it's good enough -- and wearing headphones in your apartment so your neighbors don't hate you, it just wins.

<comment><USER17> I have something similar, and I agree -- a quality digital piano is almost as good as the real thing. In some ways better: it never needs tuned, and the gentler touch is easy on the fingers.

I will admit, though, when I want thunder, there's no substitute for real strings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I once bought a beater piano for $200 so I could practice tuning it. We didn't have room in our apartment, so a friend let us set it up in his and I'd come over once in a while and bang on it (thanks, Eric!).

Most of the weight of a piano comes from the cast iron frame inside that holds the >20 tons of tension from the strings. And this piano was no exception - <USER2> was an "upright grand" meaning it was as tall as a baby grand is long. It took six of us to cajole it up my friend's stairs.

So when moving time came for him and his wife we had to decide what to do with the piano. None of us wanted to move the damn thing again, and since I really didn't have an emotional attachment to it whatsoever, we came up with the next best idea - cut it to pieces with a sawzall. And like another commenter said, if you ever have the opportunity to do this, do it. It was pretty fun. There's nothing quite like the sound of taking wire cutters to a fully tense piano string.

<comment><USER18> _There's nothing quite like the sound of taking wire cutters to a fully tense piano string._

... as long as you're careful about it. I know musicians who have been injured by being in the wrong place when a string snapped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> From the classifieds and Craigslist listings around here I'd say the value of upright pianos is actually negative. They are offered as free as long as you agree to move them.

We bought our kids an old used full-sized keyboard (Technics P-30). It is an older model but it sounds nice and most importantly, the kids can practice with headphones on, saving the sanity of others in the house.

<comment><USER20> > _"I'd say the value of upright pianos is actually negative."_

We just got rid of my parents' old upright piano, which had been abused by all of us kids for decades, but was still almost perfectly in tune.

It was definitely negative value. It was heavy and taking up valuable space. It cost almost $200 to get piano movers to take it to salvage / the dump. So if someone had taken it for free, we would have been ecstatic.

(Also, our Technics SX-PX552 does the job just fine.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Something about throwing out musical instruments bothers me... the same way as it does with books.

<comment><USER22> I know exactly what you mean. Then I worked at Barnes and Noble where we tore the covers off of mass markets that couldn't sell to send back to the publisher and discarded the rest of the book. Every now and then a decent book would go into this pile (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, once) but the vast majority of time it was harlequins and similar stuff that was churned out for indiscriminate tastes. Imagine whole garbage cans of this stuff. Stuff that would be replaced the following day and then thrown out the following month.

Sometimes books simply aren't worth the shelf space.

I eventually felt the same about a $50 guitar that I bought out of musiciansfriend catalogue when I was 16. Tuning pegs that wouldn't sit still, poorly aligned frets… the rosette was printed onto a piece of paper. It's hard to believe that something as beautiful as a musical instrument could be built so poorly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I expect this is largely due to the prevalence of decent-enough quality digital pianos. A school or church no longer needs to deal with a second-hand honky-tonk that needs maintenance and tuning (not to mention several people to move) - they can get a passable digital for a few hundred bucks.

The only market for real pianos these days is with serious professionals, concert venues, and people who use them as furniture.

<comment><USER23> The problem with digital pianos is that they can't fill a room with sound like a physical piano unless you have excellent quality speakers. Most of the digital pianos with built in speakers are pretty weak and it while they are excellent for practice with headphones they won't replace the real thing if you're playing for others to listen.

<comment><USER5> Also, if you're at least semi-serious about becoming good at piano, you'll want a real one because of the action (and if you're really serious about it, you'll want a grand). Digital pianos, while having improved over previous models, are still not close enough to the feel of a real piano to give you good tactile feedback and therefore good technique.

<comment><USER24> I'll be building a special room for a grand in my new house, and I'm terrified of the things. I grew up playing upright and when concerts came around that involved a hall and a grand I simply didn't know how to manage the sheer force of sound that comes out. Quite majestic but I agree, if you want to be an accomplished pianist of any level it's the investment you need to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _> Instead of spending hundreds or thousands to repair an old piano, you can buy a new one made in China that's just as good_

Has happened to a number of instruments. <http://amzn.com/B003UHLH0C>

There should be an opportunity here for leasing non-digital pianos, given some technical solution that solves the transportation problem. (Perhaps something like a PODS transporter? Composite frame?) The size of the disposal problem is a big pain point.

Carbon fiber composite pianos might represent a significant advance. Such composites are stiff enough to avoid much of the "settling" of a metal and wood structure under such immense compression and cantilever loads. (Carbon fiber composites are so stiff, they caused Boeing some problems with their newest plane. Instead of tolerances resulting in the gradual bending and settling of metal parts into place, the slightly mismatched carbon fiber parts maintained their stresses.) This property would significantly reduce the labor costs of tuning.

<comment><USER26> There exist pianos with carbon fiber sound boards. They advertise increased tuning stability and reduced sensitivity to environmental conditions. I don't know how they sound. The advertisements say that they have "increased sustain", "a brighter harmonic spectrum", and a "much wider dynamic range", but to me, all of these sound like downsides.

The dynamic range of some pianos is already too large, increased sustain beyond current levels makes everything sound muddy, and "brighter" could mean "harsher". For the same reasons, people are reluctant to replace wooden parts of other instruments with newer materials. I'd be willing to buy one, but I'd definitely have to play it first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Having moved several pianos, I definitely get the enjoyment of being able to destroy one. Ususally about 80% of the way through the move "accidentally" dropping it seems like a good idea...

</comment><comment><USER28> I guess the golden lining of the story is that it's not that people have stopped playing, they just switched to electronic keyboards for ease and expense reduction.

Always sad to see old technology go away. (ie anyone read a hard copy of a book lately?)

</comment><comment><USER29> Looks like plenty of opportunities for more installation pieces like this: <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/us/28piano.html>

</comment><comment><USER30> Acoustic pianos are dying and losing to digital pianos. It's a trend just like film camera lost to digital camera. No tuning required.

<comment><USER31> Nothing could be further from the truth. Your metaphor is specious.

(Sorry if that sounds harsh, it is intended more to be just a firm statement).

The complexity of the piano sound is very, very difficult to duplicate, although we've been trying for decades.

There is no question that electric pianos are more practical for certain situations (country houses in climates with high humidity, for example).

But those are exceptions where practical concerns outweigh aesthetics (like watching a DVD on your laptop on the train).

A fine, hand-made acoustic piano has no serious contenders at the moment, from the viewpoint of both the musician, and the sophisticated listener.

One could argue that fine, hand-made instruments are becoming more rare because they are more expensive to produce and the market has shrunk, but that is a different argument.

<comment><USER30> That's OK. You can have your opinion.

 _A fine film camera has no serious contenders at the moment, from the viewpoint of both the photographers, and the sophisticated viewer_

Some professional photographers said basically the same thing on film vs digital cameras a decade ago. See what do we have now. I can even predict that in ten years Steinway will bankrupt like what Kodak did.

 _The complexity of the piano sound is very, very difficult to duplicate, although we've been trying for decades._

As a programmer, I especially disagree with this point. The challenges digital pianos face right now is the key-touching not the sound itself.

<comment><USER32> > I can even predict that in ten years Steinway will bankrupt like what Kodak > did.

I'll take the other side of that bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> At least Top Gear will have a ample supply of pianos to drop on cars :).</comment>


Help Get JetBrains IDE's on iPad OS - <AUTHOR> https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEABKL-7283 <comment><AUTHOR> I stumbled onto this post a bit ago and occasionally get email updates of people upvoting it. Maybe if it gets enough attention / traction JetBrains will listen and build out an ARM capable version of their IDE's for future iPad OS Support? At the very least I think it's worth a shot. There's already a variety of functional programming apps on the iPad for platforms such as python, CLI, Lua, Js, C/C++, etc.

Maybe if JetBrains spear heads this mobile development initiative, we'll see improved support from apple's side too.

</comment><comment><USER2> The JetBrains IDEs are implemented using Java. Is there Java available for iOS?</comment>


Tug: Use Docker for development - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nitrous-io/tug

<comment><USER2> Vagrant already does this nicely, and works with more than just Docker. For those targeting production outside of Docker my company has made these images available: [https://github.com/BashtonLtd/docker-vagrant- images](https://github.com/BashtonLtd/docker-vagrant-images)

<comment><USER3> Nice :) I believe Vagrant also now has built-in support for Docker which is very useful for starting up ancillary services that your app needs: [https://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/provisioning/docker.html](https://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/provisioning/docker.html)

I quite like Vagrant myself but my primary complaint is that I seem to spend a lot of time waiting for VMs to start up and run a lot of bootstrap code.

<comment><USER4> Nice to talk to you again David!

You're linking to the wrong thing. This is the proper comparison to Tug: [https://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/docker/index.html](https://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/docker/index.html)

Re your complaint: with the Docker provider, Vagrant only spins up _one_ VM (if you're not on Linux). After that, `vagrant up` just executes `docker` directly so there is no waiting around for bootstrapping. It even detects if you have Docker installed locally or not to decide whether it needs to run in the VM or not. And, if you're on Linux, it doesn't use a VM at all, unless you're on a kernel that doesn't support Docker, in which case it automatically/transparently starts the VM.

EDIT: Responding to David's comment below since it would go to deep: Vagrant is basically the same here. It doesn't require Dockerfiles, you can just spin up images.

<comment><USER3> Awesome :) I think then that the primary difference with Tug is that it can work in a "hybrid" virtualized/local mode if you haven't yet written a Dockerfile/Vagrantfile/other for your app. Tug can start by simply spawning dependencies like Postgres and Redis and let you incrementally move towards a Dockerfile for your app.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the kind words and the clarifications Mitchell :)

Tug is a simple tool that I wrote to scratch a personal itch around working with dockerized applications and trying to optimize for startup speed and writing as absolutely little configuration as possible.

I'm hoping to get a few other people to try it out and let me know if it works for them and if it's useful, especially given the existence of so many other tools of this nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hello everyone! We created tug as a tool to help people dockerize applications and run them during development.

Please keep in mind that this is a very alpha project still under heavy development. If you try it I'd love to hear how it goes and whether or not it's useful for you (you can reach me at email@example.com or find me on Freenode as ddollar).

<comment><USER5> I don't understand the Tugfile format. How does it know that the first line is the local app, and the second a docker image?

<comment><USER3> Sorry about that! I'm trying to get the docs into shape as fast as possible.

If a line starts with "docker/" the rest is assumed to be a docker image tag.

<comment><USER5> thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like there's a new wave of projects like these lately. Fig and Crane ([https://github.com/michaelsauter/crane](https://github.com/michaelsauter/crane)) are the most popular ones but still I see other small things out there.

<comment><USER7> And Docker bought Fig, so it is likely it will continue to be supported and eventually even do multi-host container orchestration.

<comment><USER3> I'm really excited about the idea of groups that may be coming to Docker. It seems like a great primitive around which to build tools like fig and tug and perhaps other tools to orchestrate production.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuSq6bXHnOI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuSq6bXHnOI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How is it different from [http://www.fig.sh](http://www.fig.sh) ?

<comment><USER3> Tug primarily differs from fig in two ways:

* Less verbose configuration, tries to assume sensible defaults

* Works with apps that do not yet themselves have a Dockerfile

<comment><USER9> One of the features I heavily use from fig is controlling the runtime docker parameters in fig.yml, i.e the VOLUME, ENTRYPOINT, EXPOSE, WORKDIR sort of stuff. I see you guys made the decision to maintain the runtime commands in your Dockerfile, requiring a rebuild to change it. Everything except Environment.

I guess my question is, why did you guys choose to do that?

<comment><USER3> I have not found myself needing to change those things very often once I have created the initial Dockerfile.

If you've got the time I'd love to hear more about your workflow at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem I see with using docker for development is, you still need different rails environments(development, test, etc.), the dockerfiles I've been making are for production, and I'm not sure if they would work in the other environments. Also you have to use tons of commands (rake, rspec, migrate, etc) which at this point requires entering the container, which you really shouldn't have to do unless there is a problem with the container itself.

<comment><USER11> One thing to note is that you can have multiple fig.yml files. So, you could set slightly different configuration parameters (perhaps use `environment` etc.) for different places you are using fig using the `-f` option to specify a different fig.yml.

I don't think entering a container is bad for development, in fact it's a frequent pattern (to run things like you describe rake etc.). With the release of docker exec this becomes easier too. I think of it kind of like bind- mounting a directory in the container to do code editing without having to rebuild- as long as you are using ADD for every stage afterwards that should be fully automated (QA, test, production) then you are in the clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does it know that web is the one to built with linking from other commands? Also if there is no Dockerfile the web in the README is not running in docker, how is the env being filled by the linking process? Is it hardcoded?</comment>


It's Time for a Social Network Neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://www.jakelevine.me/blog/2011/07/its-time-for-a-social-network-neutrality/

<comment><USER2> So, I'm admittedly a pretty big Google fanboy, so take the following with a grain of salt.

 _Playing the white knight (or social underdog), Google has tended to act in the interest of data portability, but Google's policy of "we'll let you import our contacts if you let us import your contacts," reeks of data protectionism, and should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism, given Google's own checkered past._

It seems to me that, because it makes its money from search, Google has a special symbiotic relationship with the web. (more on that here: [http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/7590977101/googles- existentia...](http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/7590977101/googles-existential- crisis)) Google benefits from an open web. And I think they demonstrated those incentives (or at least attempted to) with Buzz and Wave.

Google's policy of reciprocation struck me more as a way to open up the existing silos than as a data protectionism measure.

While I'm slightly concerned with how closed Google+ appears to be, I have hope that that's a temporary situation that will change as soon as they think they can execute well on the promise of open, interoperable social networks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quoting the quote: "At the heart of common carriage is the idea that certain businesses are either so intimately connected, even essential, to the public good, or so inherently powerful—imagine the water or electric utilities—that they must be compelled to conduct their affairs in a nondiscriminatory way." Since the author apparently supports the above view, the proper questions are: what is the public good, and does it justify the use of force ("must be compelled") against any individual or business who produces something deemed to be of public importance. A person who "compels" non-criminals to do anything they do not choose to do cannot claim to be an honest protector of the public good.

<comment><AUTHOR> The public good is the opportunity to speak and compete. Those who control the channels of distribution on the web control both.

<comment><USER3> Only the government can stop you from speaking (and competing), as the government is the only entity that has the right to initiate force. A company cannot censor you; it can deny you access to its property, which is the proper right of its owners. A company cannot force you not to speak if you so choose using your own means or the means of any other company that would like to work with you. It has no obligation to support you and give you the tools you need, just because you need them. Do not confuse economic power with political power.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wholeheartedly disagree. Force doesn't always look like the point of a gun. More often than not it looks like court time and lawyers' fees.

See Hays Code censoring film from 1930-1968. See RCA tying up the FM radio patent for years in court and NBC blocking the emergence of Television. See consolidation in the radio industry limiting the number of participants in broadcasting.

Wu puts it nicely:

"If making yourself heard cannot be practically accomplished in an actual public square but rather depends upon some medium, and upon that medium is built an industry restricting access to it, there is no free market for speech.

We sometimes treat the information industries as if they were like any other enterprise, but they are not, for their structure determines who gets heard.

But barriers in an information industry, trafficking as it does in expressive content, can represent more than a restraint on commercial aspirations; they can, depending on how crucially the information medium figures in a society's communications, also restrain free speech."

Wu, Tim (2010). The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. Knopf. Kindle Edition.

<comment><USER3> Force is at the point of a gun, and only in that case you (or, rather, the government as your agent) should point a gun at it (or in a case of demonstrable fraud). A business which does not defraud you or physically force you to do anything can only have economic power. If you propose to point a gun at economic power (possibly because you think that the business in question is a monopoly), then the issue is much deeper. You would have to think about what justifies "compulsion", about the source of monopolies, and, fundamentally, about the rights of the businessmen who own and operate the businesses you have mind (as well as your own rights, which are the same). This is a serious thinking process, but one has to go through it to understand why Wu is wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your issue is with the government's right to enforce antitrust law, for which there is a long history showing why they should. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law>

<comment><USER3> I do disagree with the anti-trust laws. I have taken a long hard look at anti- trust, both academically and professionally, and I think these laws are among the worst.

The whole issue is not economic, it is philosophical, about ethics - i.e. what is moral and what rights people have.

Mr. Wu, with whom you agree, goes well beyond anti-trust. For him, as long as a business is considered essential to the public good, that alone is enough to justify "compulsion" (see your first quote). Do you agree with that? Or would you try to prove (as hard as that can be) that Facebook and Google are monopolies first?

You say "we should vote with our attention", and I fully agree. This is a proper way to make a change. Another would be to write articles like the one you've just written, using your own means. Compulsion should be reserved for criminals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really enjoyed your article. Thanks, Jake.

Janell

</comment><comment><USER5> Very collective message, great read

</comment><comment><USER6> Really solid breakdown, nice work.</comment>


Reflecting on Haskell in 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/haskell_2018.html <comment><USER2> I want to see the list of applications written in haskell that are useful and not used for programming a computer.

This list has seemed shorter than one might expect in the past given the interest among programmers in the haskell language (this includes my own interest fwiw). A list of applications written in haskell that are used for something that isn't programming a is a useful datapoint that tells us something about the strengths and weaknesses of the language - we can argue about the subtleties of the meaning of that data point but it is useful data.

I've got

      pandoc,
      xmonad (window manager),
      git annexe

to get things started. Let's get them down.

<comment><USER3> Not trolling here: what do you mean by "not used for programming a computer"? I'm genuinely confused because I would think that all uses of a programming language qualify as programming a computer. Do you mean applications of Haskell to domains that are messier than compilers and other classic computer science problems?

<comment><USER4> OP means applications that aren't used by developers for development related tasks. I.e. someone who doesn't know how to program could use it.

<comment><USER3> This is a strange distinction to make when evaluating a programming language. I can understand an evaluation that begins like "I need a language that is useful for solving x problem" or even "problem of x type". But if you're trying to evaluate Haskell in general terms, a list of the Haskell apps targeted at a non-technical audience is a dubious heuristic.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure what OP is considering is that Haskell is well known for its usage in theory heavy works (where the domain is mostly well-specified, and possibly even _beautifully_ so), but not well known for applications where you have to make unspecified, awkward, temporary and sometimes nonsensical updates (anything that so much as breathes near a _layman_ ). And given haskell's background as a research language, it makes sense for it to be biased towards the former. So the question is, by how much?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For people that have gotten into Haskell, but struggle to get over the intermediate level, I would warmly recommend checking out [https://www.fpcomplete.com/haskell- syllabus](https://www.fpcomplete.com/haskell-syllabus). As for good tips, I've come to like the ReaderT "design pattern"[0].

For newcomers, I would recommend the Haskell Book[1], which covers everything quite extensively.

[0] [https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2017/06/readert-design- patte...](https://www.fpcomplete.com/blog/2017/06/readert-design-pattern)

[1] [http://haskellbook.com](http://haskellbook.com)

</comment><comment><USER7> > Writing Haskell is almost trivial in practice. You just start with the magic > fifty line {-# LANGUAGE ... #-} incantation to fast-forward to 2017, [...]

This was my biggest frustration with Haskell the last time I used it, I find it sad that it doesn't seem like they're trying to fix it.

<comment><USER8> You can set all the flags in your cabal file. How is this not a fix? This is like specifying your compiler version.

We have a fairly hefty haskell code base at work, and we never use LANGUAGE pragmas anywhere.

<comment><USER7> As a Java programmer, I don't have to have the equivalent of 75 LANGUAGE pragmas to be able to use the features in Java 8 instead of what Java 1.1 shipped with.

It's nice there's a way not to put them at the top of every single file but they still exist.

There must be some reasonable subset that basically everyone uses and should just be included in the language.

<comment><USER9> Getting everyone to come to a consensus on what should or shouldn't be included would be very difficult. Then there's also the issue of backwards compatibility. At the end of the day they're opt in so you can just simply not use them.

<comment><USER10> Optimizing individually for every individual has a tendency to de-optimize the community as a whole.

This is one of those things that seriously limits Haskell's growth. It's something for new users to bounce off of, and that contributes to Haskell's reputation as a write-only language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a semi-recent initiate to Haskell, it's really helpful to see such an accessible compilation of important Haskell developments. Although it's easy to find Haskell material to read, it's not as obvious to highlight what's important.

Cheers!

<comment><USER12> For me the main value is getting the interestin publications. This is subjective of course, but way better than a random selection :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Haskell is definately one to watch for Blockchain. IOHK have released a currency with their codebase largely in Haskell. Both IOHK and Digital Asset have smart contract / modelling languages based on Haskell.

<comment><USER14> The author also mentions his company's release Uplink ([https://github.com/adjoint-io/uplink](https://github.com/adjoint- io/uplink)), plus there's the Pact smart contract language ([https://github.com/kadena-io/pact](https://github.com/kadena-io/pact))

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As usual Stephen does a great job. Well worth a thorough read for any Haskell practitioner.

</comment><comment><USER16> The back-end of www.chordify.net has been completely written in Haskell, using cloud-haskell to keep the service scalable.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder, what happened with Luna[1] language project? Seems dead, no updates, no emails on the mailing list I subscribed.

[1] [https://luna-lang.org](https://luna-lang.org)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm particularly excited about the prospect of linear types; not so much for helping with space/GC efficiency (which is good of course) but for modeling state transitions and ensuring that, for instance, some intermediate state must get consumed once and only once. It's one of the bugs I often run into when writing Haskell code.

<comment><USER19> The linear type hype is a bit overblown. As one skeptical GHC developer has said, there's not a single concrete example of how linear types would help real-life code. Haskell already has great facilities to handle state transition; linear types isn't needed to ensure "some intermediate state must get consumed once and only once."

<comment><USER20> "linear types isn't needed to ensure "some intermediate state must get consumed once and only once.""

If you don't use linear types to ensure this, then you're probably not ensuring it, and it just comes down to "hopefully the programmer eyeballed it correctly and read the docs."

<comment><USER19> More than 20 years ago people solved the token-that-must-be-consumed-once problem with the IO monad. Just a secret token that gets threaded everywhere. The monadic bind is just great syntactic sugar.

Also more than 20 years ago people figured out a way to keep separate tokens completely independent and forbid them from interacting with each other. That's the phantom `s` type variable in ST.

Nowadays we have so many more complicated solutions (not all of them worthwhile!) giving you choice how you want to make sure an intermediate state is consumed once. Why not implement a state machine at the type variable using DataKinds, TypeFamilies et al?

Or you know, for the case of ensuring file handles/database connections get closed correctly, use monadic regions: [http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/resource-aware- prog/region-...](http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/resource-aware-prog/region- io.pdf) (disclaimer: I haven't read this paper or used this approach myself but I heard it's a good technique)

But more importantly, even if introducing linear types can make what's currently barely doable in Haskell easily doable, maybe even replacing five language extensions with one, does it have a good power-to-weight ratio? I'm not convinced. Is the kind of mistakes prevented by this language extension often made by typical Haskell programmers? My answer is no.

<comment><USER21> > Is the kind of mistakes prevented by this language extension often made by > typical Haskell programmers? My answer is no.

The kind of mistakes often made by Haskell programmers interacting with objects not well managed by the Haskell garbage collector? Yes, absolutely. Whether there's enough Haskell programmers in that situation, I am unsure; quite possibly not, but it includes me and my colleagues, as well as those currently doing the work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> He writes: "Most large Haskell projects (GHC, Stack, Agda, Cabal, Idris, etc) no longer use Haddock for documentation."

So, what do they use? How do I get (I mean, build in stack) my useful documentation? (Actually I appreciate any tips how to build documentation for off-line use.)

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure what that statement was based on. The stack project certainly still uses haddock to document its code.

At least some of the projects he cites also use readthedocs for user guides etc.

> How do I get (I mean, build in stack) my useful documentation?

Try

        stack haddock --open <packagename>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Talking about recent stuff, it looks like Cardano rely on Haskell for their PoS protocol implementation : [https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano- sl](https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-sl)

</comment><comment><USER25> A quick few:

The backend, [https://github.com/kirel/detexify-hs- backend](https://github.com/kirel/detexify-hs-backend), for Detexify, [http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html](http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html).

Parts of BazQux Reader, a commercial feedreader, [https://bazqux.com](https://bazqux.com)

Nikki and the Robots, a platformer, [https://github.com/nikki-and-the- robots/nikki](https://github.com/nikki-and-the-robots/nikki)

</comment><comment><USER26> Facebook Duckling [https://github.com/facebook/duckling](https://github.com/facebook/duckling)

rewritten from clojure, used to power smart products at facebook

</comment><comment><USER27> Habito [0], a mortgage broker based in London, has its back end written in Haskell.

[0] [https://www.habito.com/](https://www.habito.com/)

</comment><comment><USER28> > Not so surprisingly most people have migrated to Stack

Justice prevailed despite the futile attempts by the Haskell Committee to prevent Stack becoming popular!

</comment><comment><USER29> My impression of Haskell is that the main issue is that laziness is simply wrong, since it causes space leaks that are hard to reason about, and seems generally less efficient than eagerness; furthermore, it seems rarely beneficial, so it seems more appropriate to explicitly request laziness rather than the opposite.

The next problem is that complete immutability is also wrong, because controlled mutable aliasing with linear types (like the system available in Rust) is what you really want since it's more general, efficient and expressive (allows mutable data structures), and complete immutability is just a special case of controlled mutable aliasing.

The third problem of Haskell is the weird syntax, that doesn't follow the common C/Java/JS or Python syntaxes for no good reason, making it hard to read and learn the language.

And if one were to change these things in Haskell, the result would essentially be Rust (or more precisely, a future version of Rust once all the missing abstractions like HKT, specialization, etc. are added), so I think that's what one should use instead.

<comment><USER30> > laziness is simply wrong

No it's not. It's not a particularly sensible default (which you allude to) but it's not wrong. Modelling delayed resolution is very handy. For example, you'd not get far in Rust without Result<>, Option<> or Future<> which are all make use of delayed resolution for their value. And the more we move to parallel models, the more important it will be.

> because controlled mutable aliasing with linear types ... is what you really > want

Again, no. It's less restrictive than pure immutability, and Rust has shown that statically managing some mutability is viable, which is great, but it's not _what you really want_.

What you really want is a static checker that only prevents shared, simultaneous mutability but admits everything else. The Rust borrow checker is an important step in that direction but it's not it.

> The third problem of Haskell is the weird syntax

I'm not one of life's Lisp apologists. Syntax is important, though not as important as semantics. But just because you find it difficult to read doesn't make it objectively difficult.

And if you're implying that Rust is easy to read, for a beginner, because it uses curly braces, I'm not entirely sure what to say.

I think Rust is an excellent language. I hope and believe it will be an influential language as it's a fantastic combination of innovation and pragmatism.

I'm also enormously grateful that a lot of the decisions are made in the open, I've learnt a lot and continue so to do. But it's a good language because the designers clearly have an appreciation of what has gone before. That's a good way to be.

<comment><USER31> > And if you're implying that Rust is easy to read, for a beginner, because it > uses curly braces, I'm not entirely sure what to say.

Rust is easier to read because the visually natural distinction between words and punctuation has the same kind of meaning in Rust that it does in prose. Reading Haskell feels like reading a paragraph without any punctuation; there's no structure to grab onto. A lot of the time you can't tell whether something is a type parameter or a value.

Also $ is utterly alien compared to any other remotely mainstream language, . means something very different from what it usually does and what it usually means is rarely used ("subject verb object" is very rare in Haskell code), the :: type syntax is obscure, the mandatory split/duplication between function declaration and definition feels weird...

<comment><USER32> > A lot of the time you can't tell whether something is a type parameter or a > value.

> […] the mandatory split/duplication between function declaration and > definition feels weird...

I believe you just answered your own critique: you can always tell whether something is a type parameter or a value, because type and implementation are kept separate.

<comment><USER31> They're in separate clauses but they look the same on their own. You have to look out to a few lines of context to see which is which. At a glance it's not even obvious which lines are function declarations and which are implementations.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


2013 ICFP Contest Problem - <AUTHOR> http://icfpc2013.cloudapp.net/ <comment><USER2> tl;dr

Interesting problem this year: build a REST/JSON client bot to solve numeric expression riddles, based on answers. It's Jeopardy for numeric bots!</comment>


Throttler: a Clojure library for rate limiting - <AUTHOR> http://brunov.org/clojure/2014/05/14/throttler/ <comment><USER2> Looks very well put together. I am not familiar with throttlers. What is throttling normally used for?

<comment><USER3> Keeping users from making an insane amount of requests to your site/api per some unit of time.

<comment><USER4> It looks more like it's for limiting your own outbound API calls, or resources usage, etc.

<comment><USER5> Hi, author here. That was exactly my motivation for writing it. There's all sort of middleware and plugins out there for throttling from the server side, but I found nothing that would let me control my own outbound API calls to a an external service in Clojure. I also wanted support for burstiness, and that was even harder to find.

I bet you could come up with other uses for it though. Someone told me over email they're planning on using it in traffic simulation for a game, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can it be used from ClojureScript?

<comment><USER5> Hi, author here. I haven't tested it on ClojureScript yet, but since core.async is supported by CLJS I don't see the reason why it wouldn't work there as well.

If it doesn't, let me know on Github and I'll look into it! I don't have any experience with CLJS, but I'm interested in learning so it'd be a good excuse.

<comment><USER7> I submitted a pull request which sets up the project to use cljx to work in both Clojure and ClojureScript.

ETA: Just realized that <!! and >!! aren't available in ClojureScript, so it needs some more work to be complete, but the pull request should help you get set up to develop for both.</comment></comment></comment>


Making Open Data Work for Open Source Software - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sentimentron/making-open-data-work-for-open-source-software-b5151dd03f3f#.mkfjqg4va <comment><USER2> It's telling that big companies like google, facebook, microsoft are now open sourcing their machine learning frameworks - these things represent considerable investments in money and brain-power, so why make it available to potential competitors for free? Answer: because these frameworks are worthless without data to work from, and that's where the companies now hold their advantage and value.

I would love to see some open data foundation to work on this kind of thing, and maybe some kind of github-for-data too. Come to think of it, starting with some kind of git-for-data would be good start.

</comment><comment><USER3> Smart people think that being smart is the most important character trait (frankly it's not in the top 5) and coders think code is the most important thing. Meanwhile artists, musicians, photographers and writers continue to be marginalized and mined by technologists and tech/media companies for big ad dollars but little cultural benefit.

I always felt torn between the various open source sects, but Creative Commons always felt right, more inclusive and opt-in, and somehow more important. Perhaps that's my artistic bias. Or maybe I just saw the future while everyone was worried about open source PDF viewers and reverse-engineering the latest half-broken audio/video codec.

It's the music, the photos, the papers, the art that matters. I abhor the word "content" but by all means lump in "data" if that helps move things forward.

[https://creativecommons.org/about/history/](https://creativecommons.org/about/history/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Block chains are one solution to this problem. They are open source data repositories. Currently, most block chain data is transactional in nature, covering transfers of currency from one account to another. As more distributed applications emerge that depend on block chain technology this may give rise to additional data sets.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you want that to happen you ought to take some of the money you make programming operating systems and put it to work.</comment>


Blue Origin plans to charge at least $200K for space rides - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-blueorigin-exclusive/jeff-bezos-plans-to-charge-at-least-200000-for-space-rides-sources-idUSKBN1K301R <comment><USER2> I'd be happy to take out a mortgage if this ride includes going around the Earth at least once. If it's just a go up, be up very briefly then I'd be less enthusiastic.

In other words, I am not Besos-rich but hell yes, I am going to _space_!

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I share the same sentiment. 200k+ for a few minutes in zero-g just isn't enough for me, but if it we're a few hours in zero-g as we go around the globe once? That'd be awesome and I'd easily justify that price.

<comment><USER4> Parabolic flight is about $5k and gets you a few minutes of zero-g in several 30-second chunks.

<comment><USER2> Ooooooo this sounds amazing, thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't see how having a loss leader for viewing space is going to work out for them financially. What are you going to upsell?

Although I do recognize this doesn't really appear to be a purely commercial venture, yet.

<comment><USER6> Costs per passenger for a reusable vehicle like this are largely a function of launch rate. Launch a few per year, it'll lose millions. Launch a hundred, and they'll make plenty of money.

Additionally, you should highly doubt this kind of outside estimate of cost per New Shepard launch. It sounds like they used the same costs as you would expect for a fully expendable rocket like Falcon 1e class (same first stage thrust, for instance), even though New Shepard is fully reusable.

And lastly, these _suborbital_ New Shepard launches are also a big advertisement for _orbital_ New Glenn launches which are orders of magnitude longer in duration. New Glenn could also take people around the Moon or, with the (eventually) reusable "Blue Moon" lander that Blue Origin is also developing, to the Moon's surface and back. So there's actually a lot of upsell, and I believe they've been explicit about using New Shepard to upsell for eventual orbital flights.

<comment><USER7> >Additionally, you should highly doubt this kind of outside estimate of cost per New Shepard launch. It sounds like they used the same costs as you would expect for a fully expendable rocket like Falcon 1e class (same first stage thrust, for instance), even though New Shepard is fully reusable.

The article discusses intended _price_ , not cost. And $1.2 million/flight is significantly less than Falcon 1.

>So there's actually a lot of upsell, and I believe they've been explicit about using New Shepard to upsell for eventual orbital flights.

Definitely. It's also important to note that New Shepard and New Glenn have significant technology overlap - NS development costs won't have to be amortized by passenger flights alone.

<comment><USER8> From the article:

> While Blue Origin has not disclosed its per-flight operating costs, Teal > Group aerospace analyst Marco Caceres estimated each flight could cost the > firm about $10 million. With six passengers per trip, that would mean losing > millions of dollars per launch, at least initially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly,I would be more willing to pay for a ride into the Mariana trench or other extremely deep ocean expeditions. I get it's about the experience but imagine seeing creatures few people (if anyone) has ever seen. I read something the other day on the lines of "10+ people have been to the moon but only 3 have been to the Mariana trench".

I always dreamed of going to places here on earth hardly anyone has been to,space is great but I feel like it wouldn't be very exciting unless I get to explore and interact with the environment,maybe a lunar expedition will be available before I get too old.

(Drop me a reply if you know of any jobs in remote places nobody wants to go to)

<comment><USER10> Not quite Marianas Trench levels of remote, but the first place that springs to mind is Antarctica; I'm not familiar with the organization of the various research stations, but there is presumably some number of support staff needed on-site to keep everything running.

<comment><USER11> The US contractor is Raytheon and they have job postings on their company website. Here is the wiki for their operations: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Polar_Services_Compan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Polar_Services_Company)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is Blue Origin's business model exclusively space tourism? If so, I think that's unlikely to sustain them.

SpaceX is busy building the intercontinental railroad to space; if Blue Origin is not building toward a similarly ambitious and lucrative goal it looks like they're going to get left behind.

<comment><USER13> Their model is not exclusively space tourism. I imagine this is either PR or fundraising (or a mix of the two).

<comment><USER10> Mainly PR - at $200k/person, you'll be losing millions on every flight.

<comment><USER14> Non-orbital flight takes ludicrously less power and rocket than getting to orbit. Flying six people per flight would easily be profitable on a per flight basis, ignoring development costs.

And the development stuff is already a paid cost, and a part of reaching the real goal of AWS, but for space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't see where they come up with the estimate of $10 million per flight? Given the full reusability of the rocket, the cost per flight will be far, far below that?</comment>


126.96.36.199: Faster Internet on the App Store - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1-1-1-1-faster-internet/id1423538627?mt=8 <comment><USER2> Also available for Android here: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/1-thing-you-can- do-to-make-your-...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/1-thing-you-can-do-to-make- your-internet-safer-and-faster/)

What's the difference between this and setting your Android phone to using 1dot1dot1dot1.cloudflare-dns.com in the Private DNS section?

<comment><USER3> It alerts you of changes by your ISP or such. Cloudflare engineer was in this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18427516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18427516)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Darn it, I missed that thread.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacking Flask: A Success Story - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sendhub.com/post/48832423565/hacking-flask-a-success-story

<comment><USER2> This "transparency" of Flask is exactly what made it my go-to web framework. I can do common things easily, and when it's time to do uncommon things I can figure out what Flask is doing at every level of abstraction.

It also seems designed from the ground up to be tinkered with and modified so I'm not worried about having to monkeypatch things weirdly or that my mods will break plugins.

It's one of the few software projects I rave about!

<comment><USER3> You're right: it is meant to be tinkered with! Reading this [0] was one of the most encouraging pieces of documentation I've read in a long time:

"Read the source. Flask's code is written to be read; it's documentation published so you can use its internal APIs. [...] The API docs are full of available overrides, hook points, and Signals. [...] The Flask class has many methods designed for subclassing [...] You can introduce WSGI middleware to wrap your Flask instances and introduce fixes and changes at the layer between your Flask application and your HTTP server [...] If none of the above options work, fork Flask."

Even from just a software architecture perspective, I'm incredibly impressed with what Armin Ronacher has done with this project.

[0] <http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/becomingbig/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great post, thanks! I've also been working with Flask and have found it extremely flexible.

Does SendHub use Flask in any sort of production environment? It's always been touted as a great small framework, but rarely (if ever) do we hear about sites using it in some sort of large-scale effort.

<comment><AUTHOR> At present, SendHub's public-facing API is pretty much all Django, but we've already ported several vital backend services off to their own Flask applications.

With regard to large-scale projects, the usage at SendHub is substantial. I am also aware of flask-restful[1], which looks like it could be useful for building out a more complex API service.

To be completely honest with you, I would gladly take Flask over Django/TastyPie or any of the other numerous Python frameworks I've worked with. For me it brings back the pleasure to coding in Python -- even if this is a case of redefining methods because Flask and Werkzeug are such thin layers that there is simply no configuration! There is certainly nothing comparable to the awesome power of Jetty on the JVM in Python.

[1] <https://github.com/twilio/flask-restful>

<comment><USER5> _I would gladly take Flask over Django/TastyPie_

Could you explain the benefits or difference for you?

Personally, I enjoyed using Tastypie, and when things weren't clear, its code was a pleasure to read and made things easier to understand or work out how to solve. Perhaps similar to your experience with the Flask code.

I imagine a thinner framework is cleaner in many ways, but then with a more robust framework you get stuff out of the box. In this particular case, getting the request time (+ if you want, sql time etc) is relatively easy and there are a few middleware options to do it in Django.

I've seen an interesting talk[1] by Yehuda Katz: "why rails is hard". One of the key points, if I can somehow paraphrase, is that with a bigger framework like rails, you get a lot more out of the box for the 'price' of it being heavier... He's comparing rails to node and sinatra, but the same might apply to the comparison between django/tastypie and flask I suppose.

Finally, I don't know about flask, but another important point in Yehuda's talk was that some of those things implemented for you, you might not even _know_ that you need. This is true particularly for security, where you probably don't have to think about whether XSS/CSRF protection is implemented etc, you just want things to be secure by default and it's not a feature you even think about...

I am not saying flask doesn't have those (I don't know), just that in general that's usually the trade-off between heavier and lighter frameworks. (I think) I know the downsides, I'm curious to know about the upsides too.

[1]<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ex8EEv-WPs>

<comment><USER6> A form handling library Flask-WTF had CSRF handling enabled by default.

<http://pythonhosted.org/Flask-WTF/>

This page outlines some further security considerations:

<http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/security/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, how do you inject your own request_handler if you are running behind something like uwsgi/nginx where you only specify the wsgi container and don't ever call run yourself? It appears the request_handler is only passed on through to werkzeug via run( __kwargs).

<comment><USER8> You don't, he just hacked the development server Flask uses, you shouldn't use it in production anyway.

The better and more general approach would be using a WSGI middleware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shouldn't the super call be:

        super(MyFancyRequestHandler, self).send_response(code, message=message)

instead of:

        super(MyFancyRequestHandler, self).send_response(code, message=None)

(or even better, with args and kwargs)? Otherwise it seems that the message is discarded and None is always passed. This is one of the places where python's syntax is awful IMHO. Setting a default value shouldn't be the same as passing a parameter.

<comment><USER10> Spot the python3 syntax:

        super(ClassYouObviouslyMean, self).send_response(*a, **kw)
        super().send_response(*a, **kw)

Spot the python3 syntax:

        def f(x=default_value, y=None): pass
        def f(x:arbitrary_object=default_value,
              y:this_doesnt_equal_None_y_does=None) -> more_wtf: ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The one thing that has me worried about using Flask is python 3 support; the last I heard, Armin had moved on and it wasn't looking like he would be putting much work into Flask. Does anyone know if there is ongoing work to bring Flask to python 3?

I've been playing around with Bottle, largely because I want a python 3 web framework, but I would much rather build with Flask.

<comment><USER11> sort of answering my own question from deeper in the comments,

<https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/323177177367601152>

looks like Armin is gearing up to take care of business!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even if Flask was crap... it would be so well documented, I could use it.

I'm trying learn Tornado and every time I'm caught thinking: If only their docs were like pocoo..

<comment><USER13> I got started because in the Flask docs section, they had a .mobi file to download and read on my Kindle. (They also have PDF, ePub, zipped-html). I wish more projects had such excellent documentation, including a lot of the Flask extensions that I find on github.

<comment><USER14> FYI Tornado now has PDF and epub downloads available: <https://readthedocs.org/projects/tornado/downloads/>

Many python projects have PDF docs produced automatically by readthedocs, although they're often not easily discoverable.

<comment><USER13> Cool thanks for the heads up. Might have to check that out, since I'm still searching for how I'm going to manage my websocket connections to a server....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At the risk of starting a flamewar :), what are some advantages of Flask over Bottle and vice versa? [I started on bottle and never switched]

<comment><USER7> Straight from the horses mouth:

 _The big difference is that Flask is based on other technologies such as Werkzeug and Jinja2 that exist for a longer time and it does not try to reinvent things. Bottle on the other hand tries to stick to the one-file approach. I want to merge them but the Bottle developer does not seem to be very happy about the idea of stepping away from the "one file" requirement.

Regarding flexibility: there are no reasons you shouldn't be able to use flask with other template engines if that's what you're after. In fact, things like Flask-Genshi exist: Flask-Genshi and it's incredible easy to use mako with it, even without extension if you want to.

Bias warning: I am the developer of Flask, Werkzeug and Jinja2._

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4941145/python-flask- vs-b...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4941145/python-flask-vs-bottle)

In my own experience, both are great, and similar. For a simple REST API bottle has an added advantage of being a single file which is nice to just include with all of your other code rather than having to install anything. Flask, however, is my go-to framework. I used it extensively at a previous job and still do today with my current employer (and the app is pretty substantial). Flask also has a lot of extension support now. A pip freeze | grep Flask yields the following for one project.

      Flask==0.9
      Flask-Admin==1.0.5
      Flask-Assets==0.8
      Flask-Babel==0.8
      Flask-Cache==0.10.1
      Flask-Classy==0.5.2
      Flask-DebugToolbar==0.7.1
      Flask-Gravatar==0.3.0
      Flask-Login==0.1.3
      Flask-Principal==0.3.4
      Flask-SQLAlchemy==0.16
      Flask-WTF==0.8.2

<comment><USER16> > _The big difference is that Flask is based on other technologies such as > Werkzeug and Jinja2 that exist for a longer time and it does not try to > reinvent things. Bottle on the other hand tries to stick to the one-file > approach. I want to merge them but the Bottle developer does not seem to be > very happy about the idea of stepping away from the "one file" requirement._

And seeing that Flask still does not support Python 3, while Bottle does, I'm happy with the decision of the Bottle developer.

Not to mention that the "one file" makes deployment very easy.

Plus: Bottle is quite faster than Flask, even if you count the overhead of a DB query:

[http://blog.curiasolutions.com/the-great-web-framework- shoot...](http://blog.curiasolutions.com/the-great-web-framework-shootout/)

<comment><USER17> > Plus: Bottle is quite faster than Flask, even if you count the overhead of a > DB query:

If you see bottle being faster than Flask in a real-world benchmark and the difference the problem there are still knobs to turn if you need to. Flask does not optimize at all for Benchmarks and you pay for some overhead out of the box for a better development experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So the baserequesthandler serves the same purpose as wsgi middleware but more verbose and front page worthy?

</comment><comment><USER19> Am I the only person who read the title and thought there was a 0-day exploit on the framework?

<comment><USER6> The media coopted the term hacking to mean cracking or breaching the security of software or a system.

The good news is that the original meaning of the term hacking/hacker/to hack seems to have regained popularity in recent years.

You probably weren't the only person to think what you did but by reclaiming what is truly ours we can win. Note also that you are reading a site called 'hacker' news.

Personally I make it a rule never to use the term 'hacker' in the media coopted sense.

<comment><USER19> I understand this 100%, but 'hacking' versus 'hacking something' still feels different to me.</comment></comment></comment>


Accelerationism - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism <comment><USER2> Accelerationism is just nihilism masquerading as a social good. It gives you a false moral authority to say "fuck it" and try to break things, because, after all, humans will fix everything "the right way" after it's all broken, so you're really doing everyone a favor.

</comment><comment><USER3> Keep in mind that "accelerationism" has been used in many different ways throughout history. Currently the most widespread usage is the Landian one but this wikipedia page is very superficial in describing it.

And yes, from the original work of Nick Land many different political movements and categories are born, starting from the same analysis and the same philosophical toolbox but arriving at very different conclusion. L/acc, R/acc, U/acc, NRX and so on have almost nothing in common to the neophyte and framing them as sides of a single movement is quite pointless and confusing.

As a xenoaccelerationist active in some L/acc circles, feel free to ask me questions or pointers for good readings.

<comment> chao- My first ask would be just some help cutting through the jargon. I can guess from the wikipedia article, and general political context, that the "L/" and "R/" stands for "Left" and "Right", not "Liberal", "Reform", "Restrained", or similar.

But then what is "U/"? Utopian? Utilitarian? Unrestrained? Similar with "NRX", which I cannot even begin to guess at.

<comment><USER4> From the linked Nick Land article, NRx seems to be neoreactionary.

Seems many movements fall in love with their own jargon and spend time attempting to distinguish themselves from other movements but only end up sounding even more obfuscatory.

<comment><USER5> Obfuscation serves as a surprisingly effective spam filter though....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most "accelerationists" these days are right-accelerationists, because it turns out it only seems like a good idea if you don't actually care about human suffering.

<comment><USER7> That is very true. I know and follow many Communists and Socialist, and none of them support Accelerationism in any form.

<comment><USER8> I'm a Marxist and I support accelerationism. From a Marxist framework it makes more sense than activism or other sort of "modern" ways of protesting capitalism. I understand that capitalism is a necessary step for human development and there are no short cuts. Modern Marxism (mostly Marxism- Leninism) is sheer insanity especially those flavors with Third-worldism [1]. If you actually read Marx and later Marxists/sociologists and understood the basic, it's pretty easy to see that you cannot go to an underdeveloped society and bring "socialism". Socialism will naturally occur in an advanced capitalistic society, such as US, not in a third world country like Vietnam.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third- Worldism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-Worldism)

<comment><USER9> Does it really not work? It seems to have done okay in various contexts - Maoism in China and Ba'athism in the Arab world stand out to me. Maoism evolved and became very successful. Ba'athism mostly fell apart with the Arab Spring revolutions (the Syrian civil war is the last stand), but it lasted a long time and brought a lot of improvements to some really weak countries.

Heck, consider Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh's revolution survived years of the most powerful nation on Earth dropping more firepower on the tiny nation than was dropped in all of WWII. They won, America left, and Vietnam is a modern communist state.

Then again, I don't completely believe this... I'm kind of under the spell of Tolstoy right now, and tend to think that history just sort of happens, and we attribute the ebb and flow of it to the success or failure of individual leaders and their decisions, ignoring the broader forces. A lot of what led to success in these countries was going to happen regardless.

preemptive edit: Yes, I know these were murderous dictatorships. No need to mansplain how wrong I am, guys.

<comment><USER10> What about history not just 'sort of happening' but instead, changes in the means of production lead social change. e.g. Industrial Revolution, Factorization of production.

This is how a marxist views histories progression and I feel it is more applicable and holds up under backtesting than 'history just sort of happens'

Mao was a man of the people, who led his country to greatness, no backpedaling necessary.

<comment><USER9> Oh, I agree on changes to the means of production themselves (more broadly, technological changes) leading to massive changes in politics and society. But those are in the "sort of happens" category, as opposed to the Great Man theory, where social change is enacted by the decisions (good or bad) of powerful and important individuals.

Read Marx, but read Tolstoy too. Tolstoy argued that we all have 20/20 hindsight, and we like to argue how well our individual ideas or pet theories explain stuff that, well, just happened.

edit: I'm suddenly thinking of Bruce Sterling's novel _Zeitgeist_ , a sort of magical-realism SF set around Y2K. When asked who would win the culture war between Islamic fundamentalism and Western secularism, the central character said "The side with the most televisions".

<comment><USER11> See also Cliodynamics [http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamics/](http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamics/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here is a -great- introduction straight from the source (Nick Land): [https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty- introdu...](https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction- to-accelerationism/)

The Wikipedia entry is informative and concise but the grand scope and (some would say) madness of Land's vision only begins to emerge when one immerses oneself in Land's writings, starting from "Meltdown" [1]. One doesn't need to be versed in Philosophy, Qabalah, Mysticism, Lovecraft and several different branches of the Occult - although it certainly helps - to grasp what Land is talking about. Just having read and understood Neuromancer is enough. For a more conventional, historical, perspective see [2] and [3].

If you're wondering "is there any value in this" consider the timing. Land may have been a burned-out drug-fueled academic, but some would say he revitalized Philosophy with his willingness to go outside the norm and commune with what lies beyond the human. Reaching the apex in the mid 90s, well before the impact of the Internet was obvious to the mainstream, people laughed at him then, but it turns out, he saw it all coming.

"The definite probability that the allotment of time to decision-making is undergoing systematic compression remains a neglected consideration, even among those paying explicit and exceptional attention to the increasing rapidity of change."

[1] [https://genius.com/Nick-land-meltdown-annotated](https://genius.com/Nick- land-meltdown-annotated)

[2] [https://energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2009/11/rene...](https://energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2009/11/renegade- academia-cybernetic-culture.html)

[3] [http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein- experiment-i...](http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-experiment- im-inhumanismus)

<comment><USER13> Thanks a lot for these sources. I was really puzzled as to why Alt-Righters would claim following a Marxist ideology, but them having diverged with (Left-)Accelerationists as far back as 1968' Deleuze & Guattari makes it way clearer...

Also, now I understand what Charles Stross (and dot-commers) were likely "smoking" when he wrote Accelerando in the late 90's... (and maybe his claim of "being the first qualified cyberpunk author just when cyberpunk died" might have been a bit premature ?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a scary far-right NRX guy, and the accelerationist idea has obviously been raised in the circles I frequent.

But it generally leaves me cold. This keeps coming to mind:

"Wo unto the world because of offences! For offenses must come, but wo to him by whom the offence cometh!"

You have to be _pretty damn sure_ you can build a better new world before you burn down the old one.

Would-be revolutionists would do better to focus their energies on things that:

\- even the "evil other side" could never convince themselves to call a war crime

\- are resilient to and helpful after whatever collapse is foreseen

\- will have some benefit if the collapse does _not_ occur

\- don't make things worse.

It is, in fact, possible to find these things.

The worst-case scenario is that there's a collapse and it brings neither a worker's paradise nor the return of kings, but pointless gang wars. You can build that worker's paradise, or aristocratic character, _before_ the collapse, and if you're right that the system is unsustainable, you'll "start" the collapse in a much better position. Sure, there are likely entrenched obstacles in your way, but making an omelette does not justify killing a few people.

Get to know your neighbors!

<comment><USER12> You and almost everybody else in this thread are missing the core of the idea, which stems from Land, and tries to hammer in the fact that humanity has no agency. Rather than being a philosophy of our continued evolution - things we do - , it speaks about our imminent transformation/extinction - things being done to us -.

Under that light, accelerationism is nothing else but our collective acceptance we're as powerless against the technocapital positive feedback loop as against the movement of tectonic plates. It's this separation from and casting out of the "human security system", that allows one to look at the phenomenon with objectivity, and it's this separation that most critics and readers that look at accelerationism from the prism of conventional human- centered philosophy are missing.

<comment><USER5> I don't think I have missed the point. I think you're more versed in Land's thinking than I am, but I _have_ been reading his blog for years, and I've had a good deal of mental anguish over the humanity-has-no-agency problem.

I get it, capitalism is an alien AI and we're just the hardware, and if not capitalism substitute in something like sexual selection instead. And our coordination problems are such that we cut any tall reeds that try to stand against this. Moloch! Nightmare in Moloch! So, OK, "humanity" has no agency.

But I think individuals do. At the very least, they can not make things _worse._ They can become the kind of people who, if dropped into a perfect society, wouldn't drag it down. And then they can (a harder task, in computation as well as effort!) become the kind that soften the blows of the elder gods, even while paying them proper respect.

I tend to hold with Nyan, as quoted in _Meditations on Moloch_ ([http://web.archive.org/web/20140801022058/http://slatestarco...](http://web.archive.org/web/20140801022058/http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations- on-moloch/)):

 _And then there's us. Man has his own telos, when he is allowed the security to act and the clarity to reason out the consequences of his actions. When unafflicted by coordination problems and unthreatened by superior forces, able to act as a gardener rather than just another subject of the law of the jungle, he tends to build and guide a wonderful world for himself. He tends to favor good things and avoid bad, to create secure civilizations with polished sidewalks, beautiful art, happy families, and glorious adventures...The project of civilization being for man to graduate from the metaphorical savage, subject to the law of the jungle, to the civilized gardener who, while theoretically still subject to the law of the jungle, is so dominant as to limit the usefulness of that model._

<comment><USER12> Individuals may or may not have agency, but it doesn't amount to much. Climate change is but the tiniest and most benign of the forces Land is evoking. We're dealing with an emergent runaway overseer: globe-spanning positive feedback in all its doom and glory. Look at the multiplicity of hairless apes around you and subsequently the apes-in-charge of this shrewdness. Do we stand a chance? It is a joke even to joke.

<comment><USER5> You're not wrong, but I place a lot of hope in "[not] much." One thing individuals can do is act so that groups _do_ have agency.

But I know what you're seeing. I wish I could shake your hand. Best wishes.

I upvoted you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is like when Keanu Reeves accelerates the train in order to derail it at the end of Speed.

Though I'm bearish on applying movie logic to social change.

</comment><comment><USER15> This theory always brings to mind when I worked at a grocery store. I had just gone vegetarian for environmental reasons and a lady came to the cash register with ~20 or so of the 1lb ground beef packets. I asked her what they were for and she said "my dog". Even at my peak I would eat maybe 2-3lbs or ground beef a week, her dog eats 20X that.

This was maybe 8 years ago, global warming was well known, the horrors of the meat industry were well known. My main gripe with this theory is that it acts like we have a choice about whatever fate our nature is driving us towards.

<comment><USER16> a prominent adherent to the theory recently noted (paraphrasing): Acceleration has little need for -ism and even less for -ists

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this article has a distinct bias and isn't considering how most people discuss the issue today.

I think that colloquially this word is used both by the left and the right to suggest the political tactic based on the sensibility that the political system is near collapse and attempts to "repair" the system from within are futile. Accelerationists are frustrated with the current system's perceived corruption, injustice, and immovability, thinking that acting in good faith will never attain the progress they aim for. They suggest that it is more valuable to push society and the political system to the point of collapse in attempts to incite a revolution, expecting that rebuilding the system from scratch, or at least in a society in chaos, will allow them to achieve their political goals in the new order.

Accelerationism seems to be the motive for a bunch of terrorism. For example, the Christchurch shooter cited as part of his motives wanting to spur debates on gun control, especially in the US, recognizing that these debates are increasingly dividing the country and pushing the country towards a civil war. Dylan Roof wanted to incite a race war. A lot of Islamic terror is trying to incite a pan-Islamic revolution. Antifa riots, destroys property, and often directly engages with police and right-wing groups in an attempt to weaken the "capitalist" social order.

<comment><USER18> You had me until Antifa riots. Source?

<comment><USER5> Is Antifa accelerationist? I think if you asked them they'd say they were "confronting rising threats," not spurring them on. Am I mistaken?

<comment><USER19> no you're right. Antifa is not accelerationist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light was a fascinating novel about accelerationist ideas.

<comment><USER21> "Accelerationism" in _Lord of Light_ meant making technology, especially life- extension technology, available to the masses instead of restricting it to the elites (who had used Sufficiently Advanced Technology to gain superpowers and set themselves up as Hindu gods, controlling the masses by restricting reincarnation to those who toed the line). It had little to do with the philosophy of the same name described here.

<comment><USER20> Depends on your viewpoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Some say that the founder of Buzzfeed Jonah Peretti is an accelerationist.

Peretti's academic writings offer one clue.

In brief, the paper argues that, going forward, capitalism will need to be constantly producing identities for people to adopt at an ever-increasing rate. And now Peretti's at the helm of a firm that's doing exactly that.

Coincidence?

[http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_perett...](http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_peretti.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> Wow... what did I just stumble into?

</comment><comment><USER24> Accelerationism does not necessarily have to be specific to capitalism. There are those on the right who see the rise of identity politics and socialist thought; to them, the idea of accelerationism is to let socialism spread so that it too can be exposed as flawed.

Accelerationism can apply to any ideology taken to an extreme.

</comment><comment><USER25> don't mean to be 'dumb' here, but how is 'left accelerationism' not some flavor of socialism and 'right accelerationism' not some flavor of facism, other than using different words and sounding more 'current'

<comment><USER26> They're not just socialism and fascism (or something else right-wing), they're _revolutionary_ socialism and fascism. The intent is to destroy the existing system and replace it with their vision of what would be "better".

The difference is in technique. Old-school revolutionaries tried to destroy the current system by fighting it. Accelerationists try to destroy the system by trying to make it more what it is.

If you think of the system (current US democracy plus capitalism, say) in the center of a frame, a leftist would view it as being too far to the right, and a rightist would view it as being too far to the left. An old-school leftist would try to shove the whole country to the left. A left accelerationist would try to shove it to the right, thinking that the further right it gets, the closer it is to destroying itself.

Of course, their perspective is a bit off. The left (or right) accelerationist sees the current system as already being pretty far right (or left), not center. They therefore mis-estimate how much further they would have to move it to bring about destruction. If they fail to move it that far, all they've done is strengthen the side they're trying to fight.

<comment><USER27> Why isn't usury put front and center?

<comment><USER26> Because nobody thinks that usury is _the_ problem - the one most worthy of being front and center.

Why do you ask? Why do you think this is a relevant reply to my post?

<comment><USER27> i wanted to ask everyone. looking for any mention. and yeah it should be. it's been the biggest evil in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> World's most boring ideology.

</comment><comment><USER29> Infinite growth in terms of capitalism is not sustainable into the future and as decades go on it will only do more harm than good. I see this weird behavior in our world where growth is equated with progress when infact in a late-capitalism world, growth is actually the opposite of progress.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anyone working on AI or robotics is supporting accelerationism, whether they are ideologically for it or not. The singularity will remove the need for white collar labor, and while there is not such a clear turning point for robotics, robotics will eventually replace the need for blue collar labor. When human labor has no value, then only products have value, and the world is divided into those who have the products and those who do not, with no chance for mobility between the two. Class mobility, or the assumption that labor can turn one from a have not to a have, is the only thing that makes capitalism palatable, so I can't imagine that the complete removal of that possibility will go unnoticed.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sometimes the only way for people to learn a lesson is to suffer .

As capitalism accelerates, inequality grows, poverty spreads, and pain/suffering become more widespread, people's eyes will open to con's as well as the pro's of capitalism.

Instead of walking by the homeless person and saying 'sucks to be them' people actually experience it.

I think alot of people view capitalism as the reason America is so great instead of being the surviving superpower from WW2 and coasting on that for half a century.

Capitalism was pretty oppressive in the early 1900s. We'll see what happens on the future.

So overall accelerrationism is more than just nihilism, it's instructive. Unfortunately, with suffering on a generational timeframe.

It's also, how government has progressed historically via people suffering. Now we're shifting from governmental tyrrany to economic tyrrany. The next few decades will be extremely interesting.</comment>