Choosing a License for Mailpile 1.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.mailpile.is/blog/2015-05-08_Choosing_a_License.html

<comment><USER2> Please choose the AGPL3+! A strong copyleft is important for ensuring that the users of a Mailpile instance actually receive the freedoms that you intended for them to have.

<comment><USER3> If they do copyright assignment, it also opens the possibility of selling exceptions, which may become a revenue stream. Reputable software like Qt and FFTW has gone this route.

I'm gonna go donate so I can record my vote for AGPLv3.

<comment><AUTHOR> We already set fire to that bridge, most deliberately. It burns as we speak. :-)

We've accepted various patches from people, all of which were under both the AGPLv3 and Apache licenses. We now have the choice of _dropping_ one of the two licenses, by making all new code only available under one of them.

But we can't apply new licenses or change the terms without reaching out to a growing number of folks and asking their permission...

<comment><USER3> Oh well. I still prefer AGPLv3. I wonder why did you refuse to allow selling exceptions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Deliberately relinquishing power means we can't be corrupted. :-)

If the backer community wants closed source versions to exist, we feel it should be on even footing based on a permissive license, not based on the whims of the founding team.

Also, copyright assignments are a burden which makes people less likely to contribute in the first place. We don't want any such burdens, getting folks to take part is hard enough as it is.

<comment><USER3> Copyright assignments haven't really slowed down Emacs contributions, which has _hundreds_ of contributors over the years. And for those who don't or can't do the assignment, well, there's a huge group of people who are doing Emacs packages outside of core. Emacs's extensibility helps here.

As to corruption of power, you can include in the copyright assignment contract that you will only ever use the copyright to give specific individuals the same rights as they would have under some permissive software, except for the right to give it without copyleft to someone else. Allowing people to create non-free derivative works via a license exception is no worse than allowing people to create them via lack of copyleft.

Not that it matters, like you say, but I feel very strongly about selling exceptions. It's no worse than free software without copyleft, and it opens up a revenue stream most projects decide to simply relinquish.

<comment><USER4> There's a big difference between a 501(c)(3) non-profit like the FSF asking for copyright assignment, and a for-profit corporation doing the same.

The latter creates an uneven playing field, and _other_ corporations are generally loath to assign their "IP" to a competitor, which tends to prevent the mutually beneficial collaboration that is the biggest advantage of successful open source projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd argue Apache license here. Making mailpile AGPL will limit your contributors, limit the distribution of your product, and limit the people willing to commit to it. Because of the restrictions the AGPL places on software, I wouldn't use it for personal projects, and definitely wouldn't use it for any commercial projects. Putting mailpile as AGPL would just make me look at other webmail clients like horde; the compliance costs are just too high for a webmail client.

</comment><comment><USER6> There seems to be an issue with different companies interpreting the AGPL differently. This question on StackOverflow and the discussion that follows explore the issue with regard to MongoDB and Neo4j: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6500925/agpl-license- ques...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6500925/agpl-license-question-re- neo4j). If Mailpile goes with the AGPL I would urge them to offer a clarification as to which interpretation they have in mind. MongoDB's one seems more reasonable to me but I am not a lawyer and one's "reasonable" is not the same as "would stand up in court".

<comment><USER7> The intent is stated as:[0]

 _The GNU Affero General Public License is a modified version of the ordinary GNU GPL version 3. It has one added requirement: if you run the program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the program that it 's running. If what's running there is your modified version of the program, the server's users must get the source code as you modified it._

I'm assuming MongoDB's interpretation comes from Section 13:

 _Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software._

Which is pretty clear: this only applies to modified works. Further, under Section 2:

 _You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains in force._

where "convey" is defined in Section 0 as:

 _To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying._

So there is an inconsistency between the stated intent of the AGPL, and what the license actually states. I'll ask FSF/RMS for clarification.

[0]: [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero- gpl.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html)

<comment><USER6> >I'll ask FSF/RMS for clarification.

Thanks. Could you post the clarification here once you get it?

<comment><USER7> Will do. It might be a day or two.

<comment><USER7> I'm pleased to say that this matter has been resolved unambiguously. Recall above that the ambiguity I pointed out was between the description of the license[0] and Section 13 of the license itself[1]. RMS has updated the former (see my above quote for the original) to read:

 _> The GNU Affero General Public License is a modified version of the ordinary GNU GPL version 3. It has one added requirement: if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the modified version running there._[0]

Here is the applicable part of RMS' reply to me:

      > Section 13 in the AGPL states the real conditions.  The
      > why-affero-gpl.html has an error.
      >
      > It is a general principle that, if the license words  are clear, they
      > override explanation elsewhere.
      >
      > As regards the philosophical question, I don't remember any more
      > why we decided 8 years ago to apply section 13 only to modified
      > versions.  I don't see any strong reason in favor of either choice.
      >
      > I corrected the page why-affero-gpl.html.  Thanks for reporting the
      > error.

Hope that helps.

[0]: [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero- gpl.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html)

[1]: [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> AGPL3 maximizes options down the road. You can start AGPL3 and loosen it up over time. Lots of security projects have tried to go the other way, and the result has always been a mess: all the permissively licensed open source I've seen try to vector back towards GPL has created viable, hostile forks.

<comment><USER9> Is it possible you haven't seen the same result the other way because it's pretty rare for that to happen in the first place? I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.

Also, it seems like getting contributor agreement to license under a more permissive license than they contributed under might be rather more difficult. To use an extreme example, if you accept a patch from RMS it seems extraordinarily unlikely he'll ever agree to let you relicense his contribution as BSD.

I guess if you have a really solid CLA...

<comment><USER8> Everything else aside: you fundamentally can't make code released under Apache more restrictive down the road, but you _can_ make code released AGPL3 less restrictive. Permissive licensing is forever, restrictive licensing isn't.

<comment><USER3> You have it exactly backwards. Without relicensing, you can't ever revoke the conditions of the GPL and allow proprietary things. You can always make non- copylefted code more restrictive, e.g. you can make it proprietary.

<comment><USER8> I am referring to relicensing, which is meaningful for AGPL3 but not Apache.

<comment><USER3> I guess I don't know what you mean by "relicensing". I meant that the original copyright authors decide to change the license. The original copyright authors are always free to change the license to whatever they damn well please, in any direction they want, more restrictive or less restrictive.

What do you mean by "relicensing"?

What the Mailpile contributors are doing isn't exactly relicensing. They're just agreeing that from now on their future contributions will be under only one of the two licenses that were a choice in the past. If they choose the Apache license for all new contributions, they can still in the future decide that they want all contributions from that future on to be AGPlv3. If they choose AGPLv3, they can never again without relicensing decide that contributions are no longer copylefted.

I am thus still unable to interpret things as you explain them.

<comment><USER10> My understanding is thus:

The work is published with a particular license, and that cannot be changed. However, the creators may republish the work with a new license. If this happens third parties can choose which work they want to use, the original published work or the second published (identical) version. By saying that license can only get less restrictive, we mean that people can always choose to use the least restrictive license a work has been published under.

If I have some egregious misunderstanding please correct me.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I see. You mean forking the older version.

Sort of, I suppose. A recent example I've been monitoring where this hasn't worked very well is Rhodecode. It was originally GPL'ed and then got locked up into proprietary software (through lies and subterfuge, I must add). The Mercurial folks took the last clearly GPL'ed version and forked it into Kallithea. But Kallithea is not Rhodecode, and Rhodecode has in the meantime added a bunch of development and features that are as restrictive as possible.

I wouldn't take this to mean that Rhodecode is still available under the least restrictive license. The authors have really taken Rhodecode away from us, and we can scamper about with a fork, but there has definitely been some damage done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do you/significant Mailpile developers plan to actively enforce if you go with AGPLv3? If so, please state that publicly, ideally with a plan to do so (perhaps consult with an organization that does enforcement), and go for it. If not, may as well use Apache 2.

<comment><AUTHOR> Uh, I'm certainly not going to go on record telling people they're welcome to ignore our license, no matter what that ends up being.

But we're also not going to waste time drafting some sort of legal assault strategy at this point, we've got a long list of more productive things to do first!

We'll deal with it if or when it comes up. Probably initially by asking nicely, following up with public shaming, and finally by seeking assistance from whatever orgs are available...</comment></comment>


Is Java Dying? - <AUTHOR> http://gafter.blogspot.com/2008/01/is-java-dying.html

<comment><USER2> Sure it is. It has been tremendously popular for the last ten years, and that seems to have been the lifespan of popular languages like COBOL and C++. That it is dying has little to do with the language itself, but rather it's a product of the fact that no current programming language can create architecture that truly scales and maintains exceptions to its abstraction mechanisms without breaking.

Alan Kay said it best, "Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves."

So what happens when you build a dog house out of cardboard and tape? Nothing. It works great. But build a house of that and it will be constantly falling apart.

What's happening now is that, after ten years, these systems have become so complex that they're not maintainable. People are noticing that their houses are falling apart. So they switch materials and start from the ground up and everything looks great at first, and the cycle starts again.

</comment><comment><USER3> Java isn't dying, just evolving.</comment>


Coders of the world unite: can workers curb the power of Big Tech? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/31/coders-of-the-world-unite-can-silicon-valley-workers-curb-the-power-of-big-tech <comment><USER3> Seems like the premise of this article is that the highly paid tech workers in SV will unite to undermine the growing prosperity of the companies that employ them by driving them to be overtly political. To impose specific ideological constraints on existing open platforms. To pick sides and stand firm even at the cost of growth and profit.

I'm skeptical even if the bull market continues. I think once the next recession hits and tech workers get laid off in droves it'll go right back to California Ideology.

<comment><USER4> There's rumblings of dissatisfaction already. Anti-ageism, anti-sexism, anti- sexual harassment, anti-terrible working conditions (see Amazon scandals, video game industry), all the way to stuff like anti-open office and anti- whiteboarding complaints. Also that despite relatively high pay compared to other industry, tech workers are not being paid commensurate to the profit they bring their companies. Badly structured equity deals. Golden handcuffs.

Could tech workers actually unite and do something about it? Uncertain. But there's causes for it.

<comment><USER3> All your anti-X examples are valid issues, and most of these large companies are very actively (and publicly) trying to improve those metrics. Google, Facebook, and other unicorns are going to great lengths to improve equality in hiring, compensation, and working environment. I see no reason to believe that won't continue, due in part to increased internal pressure.

However, none of those efforts are going to substantially increase their costs or reduce their market share. Their tech worker demographics may shift, but overall income inequality will remain.

"tech workers are not being paid commensurate to the profit they bring their companies" Isn't this true of every company that's not a cooperative of some type?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the article:

In an interview with Logic magazine in June, Maciej Ceglowski of Pinboard laid out all the reasons why the usual methods that the public has used to exert pressure on large companies will not work in the case of platforms like Google or Facebook.

First, boycotts are unlikely to be effective. Many big tech companies are near-monopolies. Facebook is fun because everyone you know is on Facebook. The Google algorithm works well because everyone uses it to Google things. If Amazon has put all your local stores out of business, it is not so easy to take your business elsewhere. A growing number of gig-economy jobs rely on apps built on top of these platforms. Social media networks are used for background checks on everything from job applications to renting a place to stay. They have become part of the infrastructure of everyday life – like electricity or running water.

\---

Traditionally, boycotting works because you refuse to do business with whoever you are boycotting in that there is was direct link customer relationship between the boycott-ee and boycott-er. In the case of Google and Facebook, the people searching or posting aren't the customers, the ad buyers are, so you can boycott them instead. And in the case of Facebook, boycott-ers can really make it painful by using the same platform to organize. Yes, it's more indirect, so it definitely more likely to be ineffective, but I think it is still possible. If boycott-ers really wanted to turn up the heat, they could escalate by refusing to do business with vendors and major investors, or refuse provide services to C-level executives, board members, vendors, and investors. Now of course, boycotting activity should remain peaceful, and not endanger life (either through causing harm, or preventing access to life- saving medical care or necessary nutrition). However, it is totally possible to be both peaceful and to be a very painful thorn at the side of the boycott- ee. If you have a security mindset/background, it is basically "think like an attacker", but with a different set of criteria, constraints, and allowable tools.

</comment><comment><USER6> Techies are famously apolitical. Nose-down in the code is where most of them like it, and as long as they can make the big bucks or work on interesting stuff at the likes of Facebook, Apple or Google, they'll avoid thinking too hard about the ethics of what they're enabling.

<comment><USER7> that's simply not true. at the very least, you need to separate politics from policy in your quip.

many techies i've met are keenly interested in policy discussions (how to design better systems). fewer seem to be interested in politics (the jockeying of individuals for power).

but even then, i'm not sure the mean and deviation around those two poles warrant generalizations like yours.

<comment><USER8> I think a lot of this perception really just stems from how many programmers aren't conveniently aligned along the American political axis.

There's a strong tendency to say that anyone who doesn't have an easily- legible stance "isn't political", but that elides the difference between "doesn't care" and "isn't compatible with the existing political options". Even on "politics versus policy", I meet some programmers who limit themselves to policy based on lack of political interest, and some who limit themselves based on lack of political options.

If you're something like left-libertarian or a privacy-supporting technocrat, modern US parties have roughly nothing to offer you. Those views aren't just outside the mainstream, but perpendicular to it. You can't just try to pull the Democrats left or the Republicans right to reach your views, you have to hope for some complex multi-directional change.

Many of the most political programmers I know have one of those positions. So they lobby against SOPA, or push for pollution taxes over caps, but they don't see much value in advocating for any of the existing players.

(Of course, programmers are also just normal people; all of these generalizations are best understood not as actually common but as how programmers diverge from the mainstream when they do diverge.)

<comment><USER7> yah, no one is really aligned with conventional political parties, because we're trying to squeeze 230 million voting-age citizens (in the US) into (effectively) 2 increasingly disconnected boxes.

political parties seem to have detached themselves from the common citizen as they chase moneyed donors (who themselves have concentrated in the past few decades). power is consolidating along many dimensions, and that's both disconcerting and isolating to us ordinary citizens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Point:

> Big Tech is broken. Suddenly, a wide range of journalists and politicians > agree on this.

Counterpoint:

> According to Morning Consult, Wired reports, 88 percent of respondents view > Google favorably, with slightly lower numbers for Amazon (72 percent) and > Facebook (60 percent).

([https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/14/anti-tech-propaganda- based-o...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/14/anti-tech-propaganda-based-on- false-premises-commentary.html), hat tip to Slate Star Codex for the link)

This reads to me like manufactured outrage, and it detracts from the valid points that might be buried behind provocative and misleading ledes like the one in the OP.

</comment><comment><USER10> This does not make much sense. If they cared about these issues they won't be working for these companies in the first place.

Infact the posturing about liberty and freedom by the early software community and the whole 'hacker' mythology contrasted with what's happening on the ground now looks like attention seeking behavior.

These systems are not being designed by non technical people. Engineers have sold out the rest of society to create more and more invasive spyware and are happy to hand wave it away.

</comment><comment><USER11> Its incredibly sad how little attention work like this gets here, and while it may be a waste now, a day later to post this, I'll leave this link in the hopes that some one sees this later. The author is one of the members of this magazine, and they do serious, rigorous work, from the left, on technology.

[https://logicmag.io/](https://logicmag.io/)

Check it out, it'll be worth your time.

</comment><comment><USER12> I agree with some parts of the article, others seem fairly silly.

Agree: Tech workers could, in theory, form powerful unions. Tech workers are horrified by xenophobia, Trump and right-wing propaganda, and really horrified by their own mostly totally unwitting role in supporting it. I am glad the author recognizes the flaws in and rejects coming up with some betrayal theory.

Disagree: Tech workers are flocking to the far left, anti-capitalism and/or some form of socialism. Tech workers want to and/or seriously think about unionizing, which should be done to achieve far leftish goals. Tech workers want to help unionize and unionize with blue collar workers that they have little in common with. The author notes that existing organized unions and left-wingish groups sometimes seem to already rather openly resent tech workers, but does not seem to consider whether that would be a practical problem. Tech worker and blue collar unions would of course agree with each other. A union-controlled silicon valley will of course naturally always do the "right thing" which will always be completely obvious and everyone will agree upon.

On the one hand I sometimes wish tech was more democratic. I wish there were stronger moral warrants that could be collectively stated. But I think some people see organized labor with stars in their eyes, it's still another group of humans that might collectively do short-sighted, self-interested things, and might end up disagreeing on what seem like fundamental ground truths with someone like the author of this article or any other particular person.

And the single biggest gripe every tech worker has is the real estate crisis, which is caused by a perfect storm of short-sightedness, self-interest and bad ideas of local left-wingish politics...

</comment><comment><USER13> These articles are utter nonsense.

Large tech companies are beloved by the vast majority of consumers and workers. The only groups of people dissatisfied with them are: (a) members of the government, who don't like to see anyone becoming more powerful or influential than them without being subjected to numerous regulations and restrictions and (b) the media, who need articles to print to get people to click on ads and who often have ties to the groups who fall under (a). Finally there is (c) companies who have to compete with large tech co's.

Most people reading what I just wrote will assume I am some kind of troll - <USER2> assure you I am not. Aside from perhaps Amazon, many people would kill to work at these companies and most of the workers at these companies would not quit if given the option. It certainly isn't the average tech worker that is unhappy!

For consumers: Go outside on the street right now and ask the first person you see how they feel about: Android, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Uber, Netflix. Chances are, you are going to meet someone that rabidly consumes services from all of these companies on a daily basis and couldn't be more satisfied.

The idea that Facebook and others are "beleaguered" is fairly baseless. They are doing better than ever! If anything, these companies are likely to get tax cuts and incentives under Trump so they can keep doing better. The idea that there is going to be any regulatory restriction or anti-trust claims against these companies anytime soon (especially under Trump) seems far-fetched. We are talking about 3 - 8 years before anything is really done to them by government regulatory agencies.

For this reason: It is really strange to see these articles being written when they are so far away from reality.

Keep in mind, Trump's goal is to support the US economy. Why would he attempt to start dismantling key corporations that compete with many, many Chinese and overseas competitors on his watch? It will never happen.

As for Facebook's "Fake News" problem:

Allegations that Russia used Facebook to "disseminate fake news" are a thinly disguised power grab by the government, nothing more. The evidence that the small ad purchases threw the election is completely baseless, despite what you have read in the media. The entire "Fake News" angle is the covert that is being used to attempt to implement Chinese-style censorship in the United States. Anyone who really believes in "Fake News" is just begging for censorship of all Internet content.

Watching the media printing and re-printing this storyline is very similar to the "Trump campaign melting down from within" stories that came up every week during the presidential campaign. Not only where these stories not true, they were politically motivated.

</comment><comment><USER14> The Guardian really has it out for Silicon Valley these days. Every day there's a new article. Pretty astounding.

<comment><USER15> > " _In response to concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 election, > politicians are threatening to take action against companies they have long > left alone. By late September this year, when the Senate intelligence > committee demanded that Facebook, Google and Twitter conduct internal > investigations – and those companies admitted that, yes, foreign actors had > used their platforms to communicate misinformation that was viewed millions > of times by voters in hotly contested swing states – it seemed fair to ask > whether democracy could survive them._ "

I think the above quote is telling. A not-so-insignificant portion of the media class is grasping at the " _Russia 'hacked' the election!_" story, with the same fervor as a Birther grasping for President Obama's birth certificate.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Spending my free time in video games. It's eating me. Suggestions? - <AUTHOR> I work 9-5, have a 1.5 hour commute each way, everyday. I hangout with my S.O 2 to 3 times a week and weekends. I'm finishing my MSc on CS, but it's something that doesn't really interest me, it's not challenging and it's very boring (but getting the degree is important, I guess).
During my free times (which is usually on the weekends) I work 4 to 5 hours on my thesis and then I don't know what to do so I just mindlessly play video games and then I feel about it.
I do okay on my job, I do what's required of me everyday, I don't slack, I make good money and I plan to move out next year (I'm 22). All seems ok, but there's just this void inside me. I can't find anything else to fill it.
I used to be really into personal development (journaling, writing, follow daily planners, etc) but every since I got into this job it's like I'm mentally exausted to do all that. Don't get me wrong, I love the job (it's my first job in the field, ever, fresh out of college), but it has killed all my motivation and interest on personal development. I can't follow daily planners, I can't find motivation or entusiasm to follow through a plan. My bet is that my daily commute is destroying me at the end of the week.
And everytime I play video games I feel bad and I just want to unninstal them after the game is done. This is a long repeating cycle and I hate it. I want to get back into developing myself, but I don't know where to (re)start it. I'm just afraid of being "a guy who plays video games on his free time". I know that it is OK to play video games every once in a while, but couldn't I spend time doing more interesting and challenging things? I feel like I portrate a very boring type of person when all I do is that.
So, what do you guys do/did to fight this, if you experienced anything like this? <comment><USER3> Some really good points and advice here. I just want to add: you're 22. What you are experiencing is totally normal. Everyone goes through this struggle at some point in their lives - not necessarily with video games, it can be with other things. The guilt is a perfectly normal reaction to the situation, so no need to beat yourself up about it. What you are feeling are two opposing needs that need to be met - both are perfectly valid. The need to feel productive, and the need to feel relaxed. You need to acknowledge both.

Also, I am guessing that that need to feel productive may come from an expectation to achieve and possibly appear successful. If it is, it would be beneficial to really deeply question the motivation behind it. A lot of people at that age (including me, when I was) believe that you have to 'be' somebody. That is an external expectation that you would need to see through and let go of.

<comment><AUTHOR> I always have trouble finding the real motivation and reasons behind things. I just don't what is the real questions I should be asking myself. For me, finding the why in things is sometimes really difficult. For instance, about exercising: I know that I should exercise so I'm healthier and live longer, but that reason alone sometimes isn't enough for me to get up in the morning and go for the jog. I guess I have a hard time acknowledging the fact that I need to relax sometimes, it's just that I don't really know any other form of relaxation but video games, and that makes me sad.

<comment><USER3> That's OK. Sometimes it takes time to find the real motivation behind something. Sometimes it doesn't make sense either, and that's OK, because it doesn't have to make sense, despite your mind thinking that it should. It takes an honesty with yourself to acknowledge those motivations as well. The key is to not beat yourself up about it too much. The more you do that, the more resistance you will feel about it.

"What you resist, persists"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That commute is killing you. So is the perception that you aren't doing anything if you aren't doing something all of the time. Give yourself a break. Everyone needs to have an outlet and video games happen to be on the lower end of the scale in terms of harmful outlets. Now you just need to forgive yourself for being human.

If you are intent on removing video games from your life, please replace it with something that allows you to free your mind. Join or start a meetup for something fun and attend it during your usual video game time. Go to your local pool and take a swim. Do anything that will take your mind off of your crappy commute, job, and MSc.

And go talk to someone if you feel you might be depressed. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't feel depressed but I think you nailed it with " So is the perception that you aren't doing anything if you aren't doing something all of the time".

Every time since I started reading stuff about self improvement (2 years ago) that, everytime I touch on video games I feel bad about it and that I should be focusing on something else. It's a constant inner struggle that it's hard to win.

<comment><USER5> Have you tried listening to podcasts during the commute? I've found that doing so helps me fit in some extra "learning" time that would otherwise just be me sitting in traffic.

I can give some recommendations of the ones I listen to if you're interested! Mostly front end development / shop talk type stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> I listen to some podcasts, but would love to hear your recommendations!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reading your post it's a bit unclear why you don't want to play video games. You obviously enjoy doing it a lot, and in particular you enjoy it more than the other things you listed (journaling, etc).

The strongest reasons seem to be external, like the embarrassment of being known as someone who plays lots of video games. That's a valid reason, but I mention it because maybe it's not in itself enough of a motivation for you to actually change.

So my humble guess is that you should take a while and think about your motivations and what it is that you'd really like to do instead, and how to get started with that.

I think momentum is a big thing in life, and it's always easier to go along the same old path, especially if you're tired and don't have lots of time for reflection.

I have some of these boring time sink behaviors too. Let's just come up with something to aim for...

Okay, here's my thing for this week. I like to bake simple bread, and I like to make websites, so I've been thinking about making a website about simple bread baking—a nice little guide, like a recipe but with inline big videos that I'd shoot with my DSLR, and very clear and nice instructions. So I'd like to get started on that, at least shoot most of the videos.

Which reminds me, bread baking is a nice thing to do! While it's rising and baking you have time to do other stuff, even play some game, but you're not just wasting time, you're baking! And then there's the smell of fresh bread and everyone's happy.

</comment><comment><USER7> I had similar struggles. I was heavy in to CS:GO & dota2 and all I got out of this was going to bed angry.

My solution was pretty extreme - I sold my gaming PC. Here's my steam profile now: [https://i.imgur.com/4sSc0O7.png](https://i.imgur.com/4sSc0O7.png)

That said, I didn't stop gaming all together, a time later I bought a PS4 and some single player games. This holds my attention for an hour or so when I'm completely wiped from work towards the later part of the week.

I now use my time after to work for yoga (2x a week), meetups (~3 a month), doing some freelance WordPress work, and programming my hobby projects.

I also took up cycling to improve my fitness and now I am in bed by 9.30-10pm and get up at about 4:45 / 5AM to ride. On rest days, I still get up early and have a coffee, read the "news", and work on hobby projects before work.

I don't have specific advice to you, and the above is all my own experiences, but what I will say is that my mood, and outlook on life has improved. To that end, I will say there is hope and you are the only one who can impart positive change on your life. Just be willing to try and keep trying and I'm sure you will.

Happy to chat via email if you want someone impartial to talk to. pgord1 at gmail dot com

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. CS:GO here. I sometimes wonder why I still play that game. It's really digital crack. I really want to get into personal projects but sometimes I just would like to get out of the house and explore stuff. Thing is I can't do that, not where I live. At least until I move out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You don't have to be productive all the time. It is important to have some time to relax and have fun. There are far worse things you could be doing than playing too many video games. You can try replacing video games with a more productive activity, but make sure it is something you enjoy doing and don't feel the need to quit gaming entirely.

<comment><AUTHOR> I sometimes think of quiting cold turkey and find something else. This, however, scares the crap out of me, because I don't see myself replacing a 2 hour gaming session with a 2h book reading, for instance.

I guess I could start working on personal projects

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _During my free times (which is usually on the weekends) I work 4 to 5 hours on my thesis_

Finish your thesis and then revisit this issue. There is nothing wrong with you. This is totally normal for someone working on something like this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Time enjoyed is never time wasted. If you like playing games, don't feel bad about it. As long as you're not neglecting other aspects of your life to play them, there shouldn't be any problem.

It doesn't sound like you are though, you have a decent job, you spend time studying and you have a relationship. Stop beating yourself up.

I spend a lot oftime playing games too, They're fun and it's how I relax. I still make time to learn new things at home though. I would feel guilty if I didn't.

I would recommend not playing MMOs or MOBAs though, they seem to be the games that people play compulsively.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really, really, have a hard time not beating myself up. I always want to be or feel better, but when I start thinking about the things I should be doing in order to improve, the friction is so high that I fall back to my default mode, which is to play a video game for an hour or two. In this case, it's CS GO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >> I'm just afraid of being "a guy who plays video games on his free time"

You are the 22 years old guy who works full time and works on his thesis. The students I know are all lazy bastards compared to you...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes I pride myself in it, but I really have a hard time not beating myself up over it, and the inner struggle is constantly there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's the framework that I've found useful for thinking about this in my own life. There's three ways to spend your time: work, rest, and leisure.

Work is all the things you need to do to live your life. This includes your job, errands, housework, etc. Things that you can't give up because they're a necessary part of your life.

Rest is all the things you need to do to be able to do your work. Sleep, food, exercise, and yes, TV & video games for relaxing can fit in here too.

Leisure is everything else - what you do with the time you've got left after working and resting.

The real question for you is: are you playing video games to rest, or for leisure? If they're restful for you, then I don't see the problem. You've got a busy job, a thesis, and n SO that you're all keeping up with. Everyone needs some downtime, so if you're feeling rested and relaxed afterwards, then great. Keep them as a part of your downtime routine. The one thing you may want to think about here is if video games are the best way to rest for you. If you're playing shooters and getting frustrated and angry, that's probably not as effective at relaxing as, say, building a castle with redstone circuitry in Minecraft. Or even cooking a tasty meal or going for a walk.

If you're filling your leisure time with them, then I'd think about it a little harder. Is there anything else you'd prefer to be doing with that leisure time? Leisure time is what you get to use to change yourself - <USER2> learn things, to exercise, to make yourself into who you want. So spend it wisely.

And seriously, cut out the commute. I suspect part of the problem may be that you really need all that rest time with video games but resent that you need it. Work from home, change your work hours so you're not commuting during rush hour, find a different job, whatever.

</comment><comment><USER13> What I've done is change the games I play so it's easier to reframe them as being part of my personal development, hence not feel as guilty about playing them a lot. For me this meant removing games that were too grind-ey (major time sinks with little return on investment) or had toxic communities (very bad influences).

Instead I started playing short, single-player games with strong narratives and interesting gameplay that I could learn from on a mental or spiritual level. Now I treat playing games like I would treat reading books: they have to be a good fit for what I'm looking for and I need to come out of the experience having learned something useful or interesting; there needs to be more than just entertainment value. IMHO this way of thinking about games is a lot more effective than just uninstalling Steam and hoping you never fall for gaben's siren song again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I need to start doing this. Ima start buying quality games. Already uninstalled CSGO. Screw that game. Thanks for that point of view.

<comment><USER13> CSGO and the previous games were also my crack and those of my friends. But it's clear now that it's morphed into something that I would rather not be a part of. The betting website shenangians from the past month were a symptom of deeper problem with that game and its community.

You'll definitely find something that would make better use of that time you had filled with CSGO, whether it's a game or not.

<comment><USER14> Not sure that its so much a symptom of a deeper problem as much as the fact that E-sports in general are a new industry and growing considerably. The amount of people involved in the counter-strike scene is at least 3-4 _magnitudes_ larger than it was 7-8 years ago.

<comment><USER13> CSGO has a lot of players but compared to other popular games with their own economies - with exception to perhaps EVE Online - they don't have as many problems with shady item selling/trading markets as CSGO has. Look at DOTA2 for example.

<comment><USER14> DOTA2 items crashed in value. Before Valve made major changes, the trading market was huge. Same thing happened in TF2. It was just early on in virtual item trading websites. It took awhile, even in CSGO, for jackpot and lottery sites to come about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you are having trouble with recognizing delayed gratification, place play into the bin of work.

Start numbering and comparing everything you do (work and play).

You will start comparing playing video games to working out, and see that over your entire lifetime, the latter makes you happier.

Another timeless advice is sleep well, exercise, and read. But you probably know that.

<comment><USER15> Apparently couldn't edit? Wanted to add some personal details.

I was addicted to Dota 2, SSBM, and Hearthstone for a while; I have around 1.5 k hours logged on Dota 2, and that's not counting reddit time. Probably much longer on the latter two games. Untracked time.

But now even with gorgeous gaming setup (I just gamed on a mac before), I don't game for too long. I play Witcher 3 for around 2 hours and then stop. Why? How?

The biggest motivation was getting hospitalized and having a sensible schedule. I started sleeping earlier, eating at the right times, etc. What kept me going after the hospital was something else, though.

I made a priority list for everything (work & play). I now know that they (work & play) all contribute to my overall satisfaction in my life (former is usually delayed and latter is usually instant), and I live to optimize that satisfaction over time.

I plan to write a blog post sequence for this, but uggh... So I propose an available alternative.

The best place to start for "living well" would be the beginning part of "Rationality: From AI to Zombies" by Eliezer Yudkowsky[1]. This book helps you with instrumental rationality, which is the art of living. Highly recommended, even for a few chapters. The book is free as well.

Prioritize prioritization. Good luck, I feel you on how hard it must feel like to get out of that. Trust me, once you get out, it's even harder to fall back into the gaming mode.

[1]: [https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the book suggestion. Downloaded. Make sure to link me the blog post!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That commute is a huge time sink, and it's costing you a huge amount of money as well. If you found a way to cut it down, you'd have more time for other things. You could cook yourself nice meals (or at any rate you can practice cooking nice meals, it actually takes some skill), or spend more time with other people, or both at the same time.

Even if you still feel that playing games is shameful (and it's no more shameful than any other type of entertainment), you'll be a lot better off.

Approaching it from the other side, perhaps your choice of games could be improved. You don't really say what games you play, but you can always find a less mindless thing to play. I recommend Factorio, it's amazing ([http://www.factorio.com/](http://www.factorio.com/)).

</comment><comment><USER17> When I can, I try to just not have a computer at home for this reason. I have an e reader and a shitty cellphone that can is hard enough to use that I don't waste much time with it.

The trick is trying to find things that you can only use productively.

Terrible WiFi can also work if you can set it up. Something with 300ms lag is enough to stop me playing games. If you live with other people making sure your workstation is in the living room and not your bedroom also helps.

</comment><comment><USER18> Get them out of the house. It's the same quitting unhealthy food. Take away easy access, and you'll do something else.

</comment><comment><USER19> How are you spending your commute? Are you driving? Or taking a train? If you aren't driving, perhaps you can use that 15 hours a week to read, learn a new skill. Then when you are burned out from work and play video games you won't beat yourself up about it.

Also, count the video games as stress relief. We all need that.

<comment><AUTHOR> My commute is public transportations (Bus + Train + Subway). I usually try to listen podcasts, but other times I'll just be on reddit, which sucks, I know

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been on the uninstall/install cycle. I used to be very much into League, and plenty of games before that. I stopped on January 1st 2015 as part of my new year's resolution.

I knew I had to stop because it wasn't giving me time to achieve my goals. Specifically, to become a proficient programmer. I think this contributed greatly because the sensation of achieving little wins while playing games was immediately replaced by the same feeling when fixing bugs or having code behave just like you want it to. See: 'The Power of Habit'.

<comment><AUTHOR> What did you replace games with?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you work and have a normal social life. I don't see the problem of playing video games. You should have some resting/down time. Don't treat it as wasting of time, it is actually a quality time that ppl needs. If you want to focus on more time to do something else, find a buddy to do it together or find a motivation may help.

<comment><USER15> Self-hatred is the problem.

You know you don't enjoy playing video games in the long run, but you end up doing it. Not a simple case of "Don't worry," because OP doesn't want to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It is essential to balance work with play. So you should not feel bad to play video games from time to time.

But if you're always doing things that involve a lot of thinking (work, study) it may be good to balance that with exercise or creating things with your hands.

If your work is not very exciting and it's unlikely to change then you may need to consider changing jobs.

</comment><comment><USER23> Do you think physical activity would help? Building in a bit of exercise would probably have some benefit.

Would you be able to keep to a timetable of allowable game time? 30 minutes and no more? Because if so you cold use it as a reward for starting some thing else. "I'll do an hour of learning this other thing, then 30 minutes of games".

</comment><comment><USER24> Limit yourself to casual games that don't soak up your life. Don't even look at an MMORPG or MOBA. It's digital crack. Focus more time on people.

</comment><comment><USER25> All you need is Hyperdimension Neptunia!

</comment><comment><USER26> What is wrong with you? You are living the dream. That sounds like the perfect life. I wish I had that when I was 22. Heck I wish I had that now.</comment>


Semiconductor bio-sensors-one in Apple Watch,can read much more than heart rate - <AUTHOR> http://eengenious.com/apple-watch-2-better-living-through-semiconductors/ <comment><USER2> This source, referenced in the above article describes the potential of semiconductor based biosensors (see [https://goo.gl/RBtE1o](https://goo.gl/RBtE1o))

</comment><comment><USER3> surprising there is lot that these minute devices could do. Preventive Health Care & Fitness industry may be up for more disruption.

</comment><comment><USER4> How will it differ from Fitbit?

<comment><USER2> Fitbit can use the same kind of semiconductor device (in this case, a device that uses light to sense blood flow) and provide the same functions. I don't think Apple's designed a new kind of transducer that it has protected with a patent. But I could be wrong...</comment></comment>


Show HN: Yardage Tracker for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=travis.hemmingson.yardagetracker

<comment><USER2> Sounds really nice! Coincidentally, I just posted my site here on Show HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9773383](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9773383)

Feel free to signup and post over there too!

Is there plans for an apple app as well?</comment>


Craig Breedlove holds 3 land speed records and at 81 he's going to try again - <AUTHOR> https://www.caranddriver.com/features/what-id-do-differently-craig-breedlove-interview <comment><USER2> Breedlove's approach has always been engineering with meaningful budgets. In the days of _Spirit of America_ the most significant competition was Art Alfons who was more of a hot rodder and mechanic: he chained his first military surplus jet engine to a tree when firing it up in initial testing. _Speed Duel_ is a good read on mid century history of the land speed record: [https://www.fireflybooks.com/index.php/catalogue/adult- books...](https://www.fireflybooks.com/index.php/catalogue/adult- books/transportation/cars/product/10614-speed-duel-the-inside-story-of-the- land-speed-record-in-the-sixties)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What I love about this is everyone designing this car is over eighty! Gerard Elverum one of the Apollo rocket designers is still working for SpaceX at ninety. These gentlemen are an inspiration for me that you never have to retire if you don't want to do so.</comment>


Alex Crichton: "Scaling Back My Involvement in Rust" - <AUTHOR> https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/scaling-back-my-involvement-in-rust/11754 <comment><AUTHOR> Alex's work is truly prolific in the Rust world. His stepping away is rightly earned, and it seems he may be moving more into WASM side of things, which shows good promise. I'm happy to see he may be involved in other projects in the community.

From his post:

> In the past 7 years I've:

> * Made 3546 commits over 2443 PRs to rust-lang/rust.

> I've added 700k lines of code and deleted 747k (yay negative!).

> * Made 1374 commits over 1010 PRs to rust-lang/cargo.

> I've added 188k lines of code and deleted 119k (boo positive).

> * Been in the top 10 list of contributors for every single Rust release > since 0.7.0, excluding today's 1.41.0. According to thanks.rust-lang.org 127 > I'm the top contributor in terms of commits (well, human contributor)

> * Published 243 crates to crates.io 41

> * Made 41k comments/prs/commits/etc ("contributions" according to GitHub's > metrics)

<comment><USER2> 13546 commits, he has forgotten a digit ^^

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I really wonder if this is a consequence of mozilla layoffs (probably not)

</comment><comment><USER3> The URL here should be [https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/scaling-back-my- involvemen...](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/scaling-back-my-involvement- in-rust/11754) . The current one jumps to the first reply, rather than to Alex's post.

<comment><USER4> Changed now from [https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/scaling-back-my- involvemen...](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/scaling-back-my-involvement- in-rust/11754/2). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You will be missed.</comment>


Show HN: Unmiss – Ruby's method_missing in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ramadis/unmiss <comment><USER2> This isn't the best solution for whatever is happening to you.

If you don't know what method is going to be called on your class, there's something wrong with your code. I'm assuming this either happens when A) your input isn't validated/sanitized (generic routing allows _any_ method on your class to be called) or B) you're coding sloppily.

In the case of A, you need to validate your routing. If a user calls a route that doesn't exist, they should get a 404. This can become a security issue if you don't do it.

In the case of B, JS already tells you that the method isn't defined. Or, if you're using a good IDE, JSLint, TypeScript, or Flow, you should see a warning before you run your code.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not intended in any way to be used in a production environment. It is just a cool experiment to show javascript versatility :). Your points are entirely valid!

<comment><USER2> I don't really believe that. The documentation doesn't mention that it's not meant to be used. It talks about it being used multiple times, and you posted it multiple times.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I'm moving on from freelancing and getting a job. - <AUTHOR> http://bliti.tumblr.com/post/60622611589/moving-on-from-freelancing

<comment><USER2> Some valid points, I do freelancing in parallel to my regular job for the past 10 years and I can see that a lot of what he says are true.

But regarding: "You start wondering if your skills are deteriorating." I think he got that wrong. You can't imagine how much your skill-set deteriorates when you work at a company which has a specific set of tools you are allowed to use and everything is micromanaged by usually less than competent project management. If it wasn't for my freelancing projects I'd be stuck for the past 10 years with no new knowledge. What's worse is that sometimes you know that you can offer the client something better but for the good of the company its best that you don't - it makes you feel so bad in the end when a project finishes and you realize you didn't do the best you could because that choice was taken away from you.

<comment><USER3> I agree - freelancing is way better for learning.

After 9 years of jobs at large corporates, I shifted to freelance consulting for startups and small companies.

Working freelance keeps me on my toes.. Learning new technology and working with smart people who need to get things done under challenging deadlines. I usually end up learning a lot, and pushing myself to new limits.

In the unlikely event that I didn't enjoy working with the client (I am fairly selective), I can always walk away at the end of the assignment and don't have to feel trapped.

Between assignments, I usually end up taking short breaks to work on personal projects, learn and play with new technology or attend the occasional hackathon...

After several years of this lifestyle now, I have had no reason to ever look back...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been working for myself for almost a decade, so I feel this guy's pain. I have a few thoughts.

Marketing has to be treated like a software project: make it scalable. Drip campaigns, blog posts, and books all help with this. I once overheard a client say "People do business with people." These materials are to help you build trust with potential clients without investing in one-on-one time until you're fairly sure you'll have a sale.

One of the most effective things I've done in this area is to put a copywriter on retainer who "gets" our agency's voice. I can drink 3 coffees and bang out 4 paragraphs of technical jargon and she reworks it into pleasant, friendly copy, for a fraction of what my time as a founder/tech lead bills out for.

This isn't my idea by any means, Brennan Dunn covers it much more effectively in his book. [1]

NDAs suck. Agreed. I've never had a meeting that started with an NDA turn into work. Ever.

Guts are huge. I sometimes feel like Malcolm Reynolds in the pilot episode where he's double-crossed in the middle of the desert:

"I do the job. And then I get paid."

One trick I stole from Million Dollar Consulting is offer a 10% discount for up-front payment. Maybe not the whole project, but, say, for each week or each month. I'm not saying 10% is chump change, but we're small enough that I'd rather have $9,000 today than $10,000.... 60 days from now (or never.) It eliminates a lot of risk.

On that note, retainers are awesome. I simply refuse to complete hourly maintenance without a pre-paid retainer anymore. No more "oh hey we need this 9 hours of work done by Monday" when I'm already scheduled for a full work week anymore. (Many thanks to patio11 for opening my eyes to this.)

"You do not get to grow with a team." This is the single biggest downside to working on my own, and one of the reasons I'm disinclined to leave Austin. I'm always the smartest technical guy in the room, and that is not a good thing (although it's certainly great for my ego.) To balance this, I try to be heavily involved in the Austin on Rails community. We meet up every Tuesday night and hack on stuff, and when I'm not sure about something, there are a lot of really, really smart guys who have been in software a really long time to talk through ideas with me. It's fantastic.

The other way I try to continually improve is teaching others. In between code reviews with my team or occasionally volunteering with MakerSquare [2] I'm forced to dive a lot deeper into the "whys" behind code. Having to explain concepts forces you to understand them really well.

Freelancing is definitely not all fun and games, but for whatever crazy reasons, I love it. The flexibility of scheduling and the ability to work directly with so many clients who are all doing great—and different!—things outweighs all the downsides.

[1] [http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com/](http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com/) [2] [http://themakersquare.com](http://themakersquare.com)</comment>


Show HN: A simple distributable object-storage system in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/skx/sos <comment><USER2> I recently came across minio[1] and was blown away. It is feature complete and comes with a beautiful web interface, though you can't delete files via the web interface yet[2].

[1] [https://github.com/minio/minio](https://github.com/minio/minio) [2] [https://github.com/minio/miniobrowser/issues/154](https://github.com/minio/miniobrowser/issues/154)

<comment><AUTHOR> I spent a few months sporadically testing various object-stores (camlistore, seaweedfs, etc) and didn't ever come across that.

A fully self-hosted storage system that presents the Amazon S3 API? That's awesome.</comment></comment>


80,000 Hours (YC S15) Helps Top Graduates Choose Careers That Matter - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/04/80000-hours/

<comment><USER2> Url changed from [http://blog.ycombinator.com/80-000-hours-yc-s15-helps-top- gr...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/80-000-hours-yc-s15-helps-top-graduates- choose-careers-that-matter), which points to this.</comment>


Tell HN: I'm launching 2MinsADay.com - Learn new concepts in 2 minutes a day. - <AUTHOR> http://www.2MinsADay.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> 2MinsADay is the side project I've been working on for some time. There's still a lot of work to do, but I've decided to stop waiting for it to be more complete, as it was already some kind of mental evasion.

The concept of the site is to help its members learn something new each day, a single simple concept of their interest, readable in less than 2 minutes at an average speed. Past ratings will be used to guess an item of interest for each user each day, and mail it to him or her.

Members are encouraged to submit their articles too.

I would really like to hear your criticisms and answer any question you could have.

Thanks for your attention.

</comment><comment><USER2> Have you considered making the index the "Top Articles" page, or is that not the emphasis of the site?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an idea I haven't thought about.

My opinion is that the index page goal, when not logged in, is to maximize sign ups.

I'll think about it and probably do a test.

Thanks!</comment></comment>


CUDA over Remote Desktop now available for Tesla GPUs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.accelereyes.com/blog/2011/02/10/cuda_remote_desktop_for_tesla_gpus/ <comment><USER2> Jacket is a nice addition to Matlab, which like any interpreted language is inherently slow. I've seen a 40x slow down for the same application versus a Fortran implementation.

In my view Matlab is great for testing your ideas, but for an industrial application you will translate your code to C/C++ or Fortran.

I'm curious to check how much speed you can achieve using Jacket versus a native C+CUDA code. I doubt Matlab+Jacket can run at the same speed as C+CUDA, but I will give it a try.

<comment><USER3> You can use libjacket to get c/c++ access to a lot of what's in Matlab jacket. It's still incubating but has enough to pull pieces for apps: <http://wiki.accelereyes.com/wiki/index.php/LIBJACKET></comment></comment>


Can your type checking system do this? - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/07/can-your-type-checking-system-do-this.html?repost

<comment><USER2> Sometimes I get the feel that dynamic languages (namely the scripting crowd, like Python or Ruby) don't have much semantic checking not because they can't, but because they can use their reputation as dynamic languages to give them an excuse not to. "Since we're dynamic, it's too hard to have semantic checks!"

Which may be true, I don't know. But sometimes I find myself thinking, what if Python analyzed its code like this... then it could detect so and so prior to runtime!

Same thing with speed - CL seems to prove that you can have good speed in a dynamic language.</comment>


What would you do if you were Apple? - <AUTHOR> http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/277830536/slightly-longer-version-of-a-tweet-from-this

<comment><USER2> I'd make sure Mobile Safari were up to snuff. Palm w/ WebOS has already made the bet that in the long term, the web is the OS. People will always buy iPhones, with all the money I've poured into the industrial design, so no worries there, and while we've hit also 20% market penetration world wide, it has surprised even me, and I realize that smart phones were around before me, and that I've roused more than one sleeping giant. I think, initially, web apps was my long term plan. In the original announcement, that /was/ the goal. The 'app' should be just a special webpage and the browser is just the engine.

It's unavoidable, actually. How many apps are in the app store? Now, how many web pages are there? One of those is numbers is much, much bigger. As the media-rich, javascript-heavy web becomes more and more of what users do on a full computer, Mobile Safari is, at least, going to have to play catch-up with the rest of the internet.

So while, in today's market, your usage of your phone, your facebook, your rememberthemilk, your twitter each has their own iPhone app(s) in the app store, the web page probably has more features because it is a larger market.

I would take the app store and remove the distinction between a web app and a native app, turning web apps into first class citizens, allowing people to buy a web app for $.99 for Facebook-ing. I would slacken the app store approval process for web apps to encourage development on that platform, and I'd make sure that licensing were such that developers could sell an iPhone web app while having the same javascript on their full website.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I don't think Apple would start making decisions like crippling WebKit just to sell more apps in the short term. It's just not their style. Sure they use lawyers, secrecy and all manner of proprietary strategies to maintain market control, but they would never sell out the quality of their user experience clutching greedy fingers at a market slipping away—that's more like what Microsoft does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What would I do? I'd continue to make money by selling hardware, which is exactly what Apple does now. Sure, ITMS, App Store provide nice revenue too, but the bulk still comes from hardware.

<comment><USER5> I thought the bulk of apple's sales came from Itunes sales (which includes the app store, music, movie, etc)

<comment><USER6> According to their latest 10K:

      Mac net sales = 13.7B
      iTunes store net sales* = 4B

      *Consists of iTunes Store sales, iPod services, and Apple-branded and third-party iPod accessories

<comment><USER7> 4B is still nothing to throw out of your bed though, I imagine that the iTunes sales of apps is a much smaller portion of that 4B. I think the lions share would be going to the music and iPod accessories.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I recall that the actual apps sales cut for Apple is relatively small. Combine that withtheir seeming reluctance to create an app store in the first place (remember in the first year it was all about web apps), I'd say that the app store isn't _that_ high on their priority list. But then again their business model has shifted (marketing iTouch as a game device) so things are probably a bit different

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was thinking about this precise issue this morning, because I was pondering that PastryKit post that was posted here recently and wondering if it would be in Apple's best interest to release that framework.

I think a lot of it comes down to competitors in the hardware space. If Android really takes off, and it starts supporting web apps that work really nicely - the way we are talking about, in ways that are similar to apps built in Obj-C or Java that are running natively on the phones - then if I were Apple, I'd ensure that web apps were just as slick on the iPhone as they are on any competitor's hardware.

Otherwise, for purely evil and competitive reasons, I'd probably ensure that web apps always had limitations compared to the native apps, unless I found a way to monetize the web apps too (for example, by creating an easy payment mechanism for use by web apps that ties in with iTunes, where I take a cut).

However, I think that Google is going to pile on the pressure to make web apps super slick (they are already doing so).

</comment><comment><USER10> The IPhone is the first decent, easy-to-use, handheld computer. I've found prior interfaces to be really annoying by comparison, e.g. Blackberry. Unlike in the desktop arena, Apple are poised to be the dominant player in the next platform. It's theirs to lose.

</comment><comment><USER11> If I were Apple, I would make Javascript APIs to iTunes payment system.</comment>


I have problems keeping a mental model of algorithms, loops and calculations - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN, longtime lurker.
I have been programming for about 2 years, but not any really advanced stuff, and I have never really gotten into algorithms, its been mostly "webview" related, display stuff from a database with java, php, etc.
Lately however I have been getting more into algorithms, and I notice that it's really quite hard to me to keep a "mental" or "visual" model of what I am doing or what I am looking at for things like quicksort, <insert other algorithm here>, etc.
I wish to get better at this stuff, math is not really my problem, my problem seems to be that it's just difficult for me to keep track of the whole thing in my mind while I am doing it, is this normal or do people just write their loops with multidimensional arrays with objects and condition checking and calculations with their eyes closed?
A lot of the material on algorithms I find hard to grasp as well, is there any introduction to algorithms, complex loops and datastructures for people that have trouble with this? I don't wish to give up, it's so damn exciting and im curious about this but I don't know how to keep on like this, it's hard for me, help me ;-) - perhaps there is some easier material to start with where they really visually explain this stuff or how to think about this stuff?
Thanks in advance everyone. <comment><USER2> Quicksort is a wonderful example of an algorithm that's really simple, but that gets mired up in implementation details to the point of being unrecognizable. The fundamental insight of quick sort is that you partition the list into items smalller than a given value and items larger than that value. Then you just sort the subitems.

Most algorithms are similar; there's a core idea and then a bunch of implementation around it. My advice for dealing with that is to build up a library of routines that you know the complexities of, and then use those to build more complex algorithms.

Unfortunately, I'm not in a good environment to write code right now, but I'll give an example of how that might work when I get home.

In terms of reference material, check out CLRS

</comment><comment><USER3> Sort visualizers: <http://www.sorting-algorithms.com/> <http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~morin/misc/sortalg/> <http://math.hws.edu/TMCM/java/xSortLab/></comment>


How to value your company for sale (pt 2) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/how-value-company-2.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder if so many people struggle with basic economics because of how hard it is to price things as a seller?

I've seen people go anywhere from 'Well, I have a standard x% markup' to 'that should be worth (outrageous number)!'

In reality, as the article shows, there are many, many factors to determining a price for something you are selling.

I've also had people try to buy things from me as a person (as opposed to a business) and tell me I'm asking an unreasonable amount for it. ... Yeah, because it's worth just slightly less than that to me. That's the point where I tip and decide I'd rather have the money than the thing.</comment>


http://to/ World's Shortest URL Shortener - <AUTHOR> http://to./ <comment><USER2> It's so short that hacker news doesn't even show the domain in the heading :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> The fascination with url shorteners is really worrying and useless. Can we get past this fad?

<comment><USER4> Indeed. They're a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

<comment><USER5> I disagree with that statement. Even before the rise of microblogging, URL shorteners were helpful in certain situations.

Which URL would you rather paste in an email for readability's sake:

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Oak...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Oak+Green+Way,+Tampa,+Hillsborough,+Florida+33611&daddr=Smith+Pl,+Cheyenne,+WY+82009&hl=en&geocode=FZJtqQEdxTEV- ympXLQz69zCiDHqS10ETBtlnA%3BFZ89dAIdGE7B-SkH3oAMlztvhzEnHIxvn-l- zg&mra=pe&mrcr=0&sll=34.526616,-93.626595&sspn=19.931717,39.331055&ie=UTF8&ll=34.560859,-93.427734&spn=19.923224,39.331055&t=h&z=5)

or

<http://tr.im/Gw8B>

In context, the recipient should have no problem anticipating the URL's end point (i.e., you probably just wrote something like, "here are some directions to my house:"), but using the shortened URL makes the email much more readable and prevents any potential screwy scrolling issues that might be caused by an ultra unwieldy URL borking their email software.

That's just one non-microblogging use case for one site that spits out very long dynamic URLs -- there are many use cases for many sites.

TinyURL, et. al. certainly did (and continue to) solve a problem, imho. And they've become even more useful for microblogging sites like Twitter, on which character limit constraints (which essentially defines that type of service) require that URLs be shortened.

[EDIT: I know HN auto truncated that Google Maps URL, but it is a 355 characters long -- and most email software (my use case) wouldn't auto truncate the URL in the same way. So readability would be negatively affected for the recipient by using the long URL instead of the short one.]

<comment><USER6> The former. Even though it's 355 characters, at least it tells me it's a Google maps link. Which the shortened version doesn't.

There are _some_ situations where URL shortening is arguably useful. But there's absolutely no reason why "microblogging" should be one of them.

<comment><USER7> Spoken like a person without a Twitter account.

<comment> bjelkeman-again Twitter should solve this problem, they should stick links separately to the 140 characters. Like they don't force you to encode the picture of the person in the 140 characters.

For SMS, well if the link goes beyond 140, send it in a separate SMS? Should SMS messaging compatibility for Twitter break the whole paradigm of transparency of addressing on the web?

Time to move on and create solutions looking forward, not backward.

<comment><USER8> FriendFeed FTW. You can attach photos [separately], and each FriendFeed post can have a comment thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have they just broken every single url regex out there?

<comment><USER10> URL regexes which were already broken from the beginning...

<comment><USER11> Indeed. DNS names without dots have been used for decades in intranets.

<comment><USER12> However what it resolves to depends on you search domain. If I shared <http://www> on twitter everyone would most likely see a different site. People should really be using <http://to>. to avoid conflicts with internal servers called 'to'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The entire point of having a domain "name" is to have a human-readable representation of an address. Take the human readable part out of the URL and you're left with useless.

<comment><USER14> Because:

      http://milkandcookies.net/2008/07/12/?lang=en_US&cntry=US&source=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3D123%26lang%3Den-US&geoloc=-45.001,-53.175

is pretty readable and useful!

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure if you're trying to make a point here but yes, that is pretty readable and useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone give me a quick introduction on how this was done?

<comment><USER17> 1- Periods (.) don't do anything after a domain (ie www.weebly.com.), but they are useful for preventing the browsers from redirecting to <http://www.to.com/>

2- The real domain we're looking at: "to" -- no "suffix" attached (TLD: top- level _domain_ )

3- The .to registry added an A-record for the "to" domain, which resolves correctly.

[Edit: Looks like .cm does this too:

;; ANSWER SECTION:

cm. 86400 IN A 184.108.40.206]

<comment><USER18> .cm is owned by a spammer. Nearly anything .cm redirects to agoga.net.

<comment><USER19> Kevin Ham: [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050989/index.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I can't believe no one here seems to be using <http://urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com/>

<comment><USER21> lol wow, amazing landing page text.

'THINK ABOUT IT: If your grandmother sees this link: <http://bit.ly/zPWG6> she'll think, "Hmm, does someone want me to fly to Lithuania to get my teeth fixed?"'

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wrote a program to find the shortest URL. Enjoy!

        #!/usr/bin/perl
        #

        use WWW::Mechanize;

        die "usage: $0 <url>" unless @ARGV;

        $name = 'a';
        $m = WWW::Mechanize->new;
        while (1) {
            print "Trying http://to./$name\n";
            $m->post('http://to./', {
                url => $ARGV[0],
                name => $name,
                'Witz that URL!' => 'Witz that URL!'
            });
            unless ($m->content =~ /sorry/) {
                print "You got http://to./$name\n";
                exit(0);
            }
            $name++;
        }

<comment><USER23> It's polite to add a short sleep between requests. Although, in perl it would be a short select!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Maybe it's something with my corporate routing/firewall/who knows, but I just get an error saying my browser can't find it (no matter the browser). For that reason I _really_ hope this doesn't catch on.

<comment><USER25> I think my corporate proxy is blocking this as well, or perhaps our DNS servers or something. In any case, I assume there will be a large swath of people for whom this redirection will not work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This was my idea originally. I talk to the guy that runs the registrar occasionally (I got burri.to 12 years ago...)

<comment><USER27> Thank you for this. I now have another example to use when I bitchslap people who don't read domain name RFCs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sweet, I got <http://to./m/r>

</comment><comment><USER28> Tried to register <http://to./index.php>

Succeeded, but sadly <http://to./> rewrote it to <http://index.php> instead.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm aware that restructuring the Domain Name System is not practical at this point but here's my idea: Domains should work hierarchically and be privately operated. Google Search would be "<http://Google/Search/Web> ". A company would buy "<http://Org> " and run a forwarding service so that "<http://Org/RedCross> " forwarded to the respective site. This would allow "<http://a/> " to be a forwarder and, best of all, for the web to be fully recursive. Seems like the possibilities for such a system are limitless. For example, an internet-archive would be the normal site with "archive/" injected. There are of course many complex details and inefficiencies, but it would greatly improve human-readablity, making things more easily-explainable.

This could partially be based on all file-extensions being in the file-data rather than in the name and all folders having an "index" file that represented them (which could, then, be any type of file). I'd like to have an explanation for down-votes, please.

</comment><comment><USER30> Chrome doesn't really like the URLs, and Twitter doesn't see them either. Awesome, though.

<comment><USER31> Funny, it's working under my current configuration with Firefox but not with Opera and Chrome translates it in a Google search.

Not the world's best URL shortener...

<comment><USER30> Yeah, Chrome does the same for me. I can click through the links just fine, but pasting into the URL bar (which you're probably going to have to do until the world updates its URL regexes) only gives me the option of a search, unless the URL's in the history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> bit.ly isn't winning because of the length, but because of the reliability, commitment to persistence, anti-spam, and analytics.

This is blindingly obvious. A few characters shorter just doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER33> My problem with shorteners really boils down to the conceivable scenario where one of them gets hacked and sends everyone to a malicious site.

I also like to know where people are sending me, but that is a secondary concern.

</comment><comment><USER34> seems they have problems if the same url is used more than once.. the subsequent additions all break .. you can get around it by adding a query string on to the domain your shortening like ?like=this

</comment><comment><USER35> Oddly when I try to "shorten" their url <http://www.to/> it gets mapped into: <http://www.to/jNUqgaaD8k>

:)

</comment><comment><USER36> Seems to require a dot in the URL:

This: <http://to./z0ba1>

Not this: <http://to/z0ba1>

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends on your DNS. Works for some without.

<comment><USER37> The dns works. But the browser doesn't. Without the trailing dot the browser looks up the .com address.

With the dot it works, but then the browser fixes up the url, and removes the dot - so all subsequent requests don't work.

(This is for me, using firefox on linux.)

<comment><USER34> seems safari users are struggling without the . as well .. probably a webkit issue then

edited for spelling mistake

<comment><USER38> Works fine here with Google Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Somehow uses IDN TLD to eschew the TLD altogether. Let the landgrab begin!

<comment><USER39> No, it _is_ the TLD (for Tonga). Somehow they hawked out their TLD A-record.

(edit: turns out it's actually run by the ISP who operates the .to TLD)

<comment><USER34> yeah, got root level on the tld .. how did they manage that..

<comment><USER40> When it comes to national TLDs and how a company can have this level of access... I don't want to know...

<comment><USER39> Countries can, and frequently do, sell the rights to their ccTLDs to third parties. For example, Verisign leases the rights to the .tv domain off the Tuvalu government for $50m/year.

<comment><USER18> Not exactly. Its $50MM over 12 years, so more like $4MM/year.

I remember when that deal was announced, during the first bubble. Everyone thought it was foolish, now it seems genius.

<comment><USER41> For which side?

<comment><USER18> Getting access to sell all .tvs for $4MM/year is a steal, IMHO.

Not to mention the manner in which they sold them is unique. With most TLDs, all domains cost the same price, and its first come, first served. With .tv, the domains were priced according to their value, with many costing $25,000 or more per year. So for instance I have no idea what mlb.tv cost Major League Baseball, but it was a lot more than $49/year.

Now that .tv seems to have hit its tipping point, $50 million over 12 years is a bargain.

<comment><USER39> It was a pretty shrewd move for Tuvalu too - $4m/year is about 30% of their GDP.

<comment><USER18> That's a really good point. And the government of Tuvalu hasa 20% stake in the company which actually owns the contract (Verisign owns the rest).

Very well structured deal for both sides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Hmm... <http://to./> was translated as <http://to./mt8hm> ! That's longer than the original...

</comment><comment><USER43> <http://to./loop0>

</comment><comment><USER44> Someday one of these guys is going to switch back to using ftp://. Sure, they'd have to proxy or cache everything (no redirect responses), but hey, it's shorter.

</comment><comment><USER45> Holy cow, this makes bit.ly look like long-domain-name-i-spent-10-dollars-on- just-to-put-one-snarky-word-in-96-point-helvetica.com

<comment><USER46> Wondering how many people tried going to long-domain-name-i-spent-10-dollars- on-just-to-put-one-snarky-word-in-96-point-helvetica.com

like me...

</comment></comment><comment> 0-0 Looks like they put up a secret password now.

<comment><USER47> Anyone brute forced it yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> thats old news. Dot TK had that for ages. go to <http://tweak.tk/> and read the technical part.

They do it better though <http://tk./abcde> is <http://abcde.tk> which is even on character shorter ;)

<comment><USER48> btw: <http://tk./> works as well ;)

<comment><USER49> can you please tell me the actual domain name ? I am dieing for last 24 hrs.

<comment><USER48> um.. <http://tk./> ? or <http://dot.tk/> ?

<comment><USER49> I want to know the real complete domain name of <http://to./> and <http://tk./> I read all conversation. but didnt get. any help will be greatly appreciated,

<comment><USER48> <http://tk./> is the full domain name. Its just an A record on the TLD. <http://tk./> is also available through <http://dot.tk/>.

I hope this helps you :)

<comment><USER49> ok, Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I think users of Squid get sent to <http://www.to/> ...

</comment><comment><USER51> Darn. <http://to/life> was taken. Oh well. L'chai-im!

</comment><comment><USER52> Registrar: <http://www.tonic.to/>

</comment><comment><USER53> Check <http://w.ai>

</comment><comment><USER54> Just what the world needs, YAUS

<comment><USER55> I smell irony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> aww.. they've now added password protection. existing ones still work though

</comment><comment><USER49> can you please tell me the actual domain name ? I am dieing for last 24 hrs.

</comment><comment><USER56> It doesn't work with https.

</comment><comment><USER49> can someone tell me the real domain name of <http://to./> ?</comment>


I was all for bootstrapping until I raised 500k - <AUTHOR> https://nubela.co/blog/i-was-all-for-bootstrapping-until-i-raised-500k/ <comment><USER2> Looking forward to hearing about your journey. Good luck!</comment>


Coronavirus: Why Belgium also counts suspected deaths - <AUTHOR> https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/belgium-all-news/106454/coronavirus-why-belgium-also-counts-suspected-deaths/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you ever wondered why Belgium is doing "bad", please be aware that we count the cases very differently than other countries.

Divide the numbers ( on average) by 2 to get the confirmed cases in Belgium, instead of the suspected cases.

:)</comment>


Google Adwords seems to have broken CSS for a couple of hours already - <AUTHOR> https://adwords.google.com/intl/en_nl/home/ <comment><AUTHOR> It looks like this right now: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14185619/adwords.png](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14185619/adwords.png) (checked on 3 different IPs and the image is generated by [https://screenshotmachine.com/](https://screenshotmachine.com/) )

Makes me wonder how this can effectively be monitored when also doing A/B experiments.

</comment><comment><USER2> Probably because they are doing A/B experiments with their new layout for adwords: [http://imgur.com/a/gopki](http://imgur.com/a/gopki)</comment>


Erlang: Efficiency Guide - <AUTHOR> http://erlang.org/doc/efficiency_guide/part_frame.html

<comment><USER2> Very clean and high-level functional optimization techniques and hints. Erlang doesn't seem to have a way to circumvent the compiler for people who REALLY know what they're doing.

We Lispers have high-level optimization guidelines too, sure, but we also have the sort of "feel the bits between your toes stuff", like:

<http://common-lisp.net/project/cmucl/doc/cmu-user/>

The canonical example is in psuedo C: f(x,y) = (x|y)&(x^y)

See the x86 disassembly output of that in

<http://www.cons.org/cmucl/doc/reading-disassembly.html>

[Edit: HN doesn't do code snippets, shell output or anything even remotely hackish. I tried the three-spaces-before-a-line trick and it doesn't work. oh well]

<comment><AUTHOR> Two spaces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Much of it seems dated - before R7B. Just program as usual and measure in order to optimize. That works as a general formula for all languages. For more fun, look at the Haskell optimization guide! <http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Performance>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It says a lot about the participants of the "Erlang rush" that neither of these virtually canonical resources were submitted.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=569750>

<comment><USER4> The canonical sources are dense and difficult to understand unless you already grasp the language, IMO.

I can understand why people wanting to jump in and get things done prefer the more, er, apocryphal sources.

<comment><USER5> "are dense and difficult to understand"

Wasn't that the point of the rush, to scare off people not l33t enough to be on HN?</comment></comment></comment>


The Telekommunist Manifesto: a useful but faulty map - <AUTHOR> http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/modulus/2013/01/17/telekommunist-manifesto-a-useful-but-faulty-map

<comment><USER2> I'm curious about the economic justification behind this statement:

> _Without market inefficiencies, capital would be unable to capture any more > than its own reproduction cost in any branch of industry. The elimination of > competition is central to the logic of capitalism. Without unfair > advantages, a capitalist class of owners could not accumulate wealth and > there could be no capitalism._

I'm well aware that market inefficiencies are real and inevitable, but why is all net value increase attributable to them? In the most obvious case, I can certainly buy a shovel and recover way more value by digging and finding gold. Net wealth can and does increase over time, due both to the harvesting of natural resources and the cumulative advantages of human knowledge and technology.

Perhaps the whole statement hinges on the definitions of " _unfair_ advantages." If the speaker considers exclusive ownership of capital to be unfair, then the claim is a tautology.

<comment><USER3> A world without market inefficiencies is a world where there are no excess profits--everything converges to the natural rate of profit. Any place money could be that offers an economic profit would immediately receive many competitors who would drag it down to the natural rate.

What I gather he's saying is that the natural rate of profit is itself zero: given that and no economic profit, capitalism could not reproduce itself. It's probably true that, in a world with complete and perfect knowledge, the natural rate is zero: that world, however, is so radically different from our own or any conceivable socialist one that I've got to reject that part of his point.

<comment><USER2> It would require more than just perfect knowledge, wouldn't it? Market inefficiency has other sources, too, like transaction costs, non-excludability and non-rivalry (e.g. public goods), etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related:

I'm a right libertarian who didn't really understand what "left libertarian" even meant.

This essay seems to explain it well:

[http://www.popehat.com/2012/12/28/wherein-a-right- libertaria...](http://www.popehat.com/2012/12/28/wherein-a-right-libertarian- sticks-a-toe-in-left-libertarianism-and-finds-that-the-water-is-fine/)

<comment><USER3> As a left libertarian, I'd say one other big difference between right and left libertarians is how rigorous people are in opposing the State. Most right libertarians (except those of certain strains of anarcho-capitalism) wholeheartedly embrace State recognition and enforcement of property rights, while left libertarians take a more laissez faire approach toward them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It'd be nice to have more time to properly deconstruct this. Did anyone else feel that the author and the author of the linked page about decentralization don't really grasp the decentralization ideas elaborated within cypherpunk culture?

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess I spend so much time on reddit, I tend to think the internet community in general is much more liberal and Democrat-leaning. Certainly, there is a strong Libertarian thread, but most of the online communities that I interact with are definitely socialist-leaning.

Net neutrality, for example, is decidedly an anti-capitalist stance. On the other hand, copyleft certainly seems compatible with certain anarcho- capitalist ideals. So, I don't know.

<comment><USER2> > Net neutrality, for example, is decidedly an anti-capitalist stance.

I don't see how. If customers of ISPs value neutrality, then there is profit motive for ISPs to offer it. Obviously, it's a balance between how many potential customers care about neutrality and how much they're willing to pay for it. Net neutrality _legislation_ , along with any regulations or subsidies on privately-owned infrastructure, is definitely anti-capitalist, just like legislation that says McDonald's must always offer the McRib.

<comment><USER7> Without network neutrality legislation, an incumbent can simply pay for the privilege of having no viable competitors. Is there a strain of capitalism that doesn't hold it critically important that new entrants should have unfettered access to the market?

<comment><USER2> > an incumbent can simply pay for the privilege of having no viable > competitors.

Pay who exactly? They could pay the government, of course, and that's usually how things go, but that's what I am opposed to.

> Is there a strain of capitalism that doesn't hold it critically important > that new entrants should have unfettered access to the market?

It depends on your definition of "unfettered access." Most capitalists, for example, are fine with the failure of a competitor who has no idea how to run a business, even though his incompetence certainly fetters him. Pro- capitalists are generally strong advocates of private property, so the only types of fettering they would oppose would be violations of property rights (like theft, assault, or threats thereof). Simply using capital to one's advantage and to the disadvantage of one's competitors is, as the name suggests, not generally considered a bad thing in capitalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone tell me if this is crypto-satire? I really can't tell. Maybe something along the lines of the Sokal hoax, maybe not.

<comment><USER9> I can tell you that it isn't, as I've written it (thought I should show up here when I saw the traffic spike). I suppose though, that if people come to this conclusion on reading it, I've failed to make it clear and accessible enough. The original manifesto I'm reviewing/criticising is written in the same language register, which I would admit is perhaps too academic.

There's also a certain tendency to using this register in Marxist circles, which certainly doesn't help us put our message across. I could also plead second-language privilege. Sorry about that.

<comment><USER7> Thank you. I have to admit when I reached

      By this I mean that the category of rent is deployed to explain
      the hegemonic power of the bourgeoisie vis-a-vis the working
      class.

I found myself wondering whether it was a conscious imitation of "The Architect", but I'll give it another chance when I have more time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has the author considered it's because hackers value liberty? There is no place for liberty, individual sovereignty, or natural rights in a communist state.

In a communist society, you don't get to hack. You only get to do the things provided for and prescribed to you by the ruling party.

<comment><USER9> Definitely, the author has considered this. I think that liberty and capitalism don't go well together though. Capitalism gives people abstract rights: if they have property, they can use it how they want; if they have money, they can spend it how they want; and so on. But this doesn't preclude the absence of concrete choices when one has none of those things.

I'm obviously opposed to a state which tyranizes over people, but I think it's interesting to consider how much the hacker community sprung out of academic institutions, which aren't exactly private. The control by bosses, supervisors, and company owners can be just as stringent in determining people's day-to-day choices and potential to hack.

<comment><USER10> > I think that liberty and capitalism don't go well together though.

Property rights _are_ liberty. If I don't own my property then necessarily someone else does. Capitalism is a natural consequence of property rights. Money is property.

> The control by bosses, supervisors, and company owners can be just as > stringent in determining people's day-to-day choices and potential to hack.

The difference is you're trading voluntarily with your boss, supervisor, or company owner. You entered into an agreement to trade labor for something. In communism, the boss is chosen for you by someone you've never met.</comment></comment></comment>