Land without Plea Bargaining: How the Germans Do It (1979) - <AUTHOR> http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1532&context=fss_papers <comment><USER2> Though IANAL, some notes about this article:

* Please keep in mind it's from 1979. Some things have changed considerably.

* The Schöffengericht (1 Judge, 2 Laymen) is only the lowest level of courts (Amtsgericht, probably a district court) and the higher levels are composed of professional judges only. Any crime that has an expected punishment of more than 4 years is judged by professional judges only.

* Some trials may skip the first step on the appeal ladder and go directly to the Landgericht.

* We have our own version of the plea bargain since 2009 (Verständigung im Strafverfahren). Arguments for the plea bargain are pretty much the same as in the USA: Some trials tend to get very complicated, especially cases with financial background where laws and regulations are complicated to understand for non-experts. Lately there have been discussions about wether to remove or modify the plea bargain, fueled after a series of appeals against plea bargains [1].

* In some circumstance a confession may be beneficial for the defendant, reducing the fine or prison time. This is especially true when the defendant supports the prosecution of other defendants in the same or a related trial (Kronzeugenregelung). This sometimes leads to pressure to confess a crime the defendant has not committed.

[1] German, sorry: [http://beck-aktuell.beck.de/news/bverfg-uebt-deutliche- kriti...](http://beck-aktuell.beck.de/news/bverfg-uebt-deutliche-kritik-am- deal-in-strafprozessen)

<comment><USER3> While some things have indeed changed since 1979, it is not accurate that any crime for which a punishment of more than four years is expected is handled by professional judges only.

Aside from magistrate judges (Amtsrichter), the only case where a German court sits in a criminal case as a trial court without a lay judge are the OLGs (superior state courts). This happens only if the crime is a war of aggression, treason, or creation of a terrorist organization.

(Not that there's anything wrong with courts that do not have jurors or lay justices -- the Netherlands seem to be doing fine without either.)

Crimes where the expected punishment is more than four years are tried before the penal senates of the regional courts (Landgerichte). They are composed of either one professional judge and two lay judges (Kleine Strafkammer) or three professional judges and two lay judges (Große Strafkammer). The Große Strafkammer can also sit with two professional and two lay judges if the case isn't too complicated.

(Incidentally, the idea of lay judges originated in Sweden. Germany adopted the model in the 1920s as part of the so-called Emminger Reform [1]).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emminger_Reform>

<comment><USER4> The Netherlands might not be doing as well as you might think.

Things like the Chipshol debacle in the Netherlands shows that there is strong evidence of judicial collusion in a series of court cases - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipshol> has a very superficial summary of something that I found quite shocking, involving public accusations of corruption, perjury, where one of the ex-judges involved was forced out as head of the Dutch anti-trust authority when it all blew open.

Judges and lawyers seem to come from the same social circles, have gone to the same universities, members of the same clubs and so on. To access the conveyor-belt of promotions and opportunities, it is not inconceivable that a culture of "scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours" in a part of a small legal and judicial community in a small country could form.

A system in which lay-people are involved may have to work a lot harder to pretend that biased judgements are fair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are three very dangerous tools that US prosecutors have available to them that are uncommon in the rest of the world:

* the plea bargain

* RICO ('conspiracy' charges)

* FISA warrants + probable cause

combined you could almost charge anybody with anything to make them appear guilty and plead down to shorter sentences. Read the indictments of Swartz, FullTiltPoker, Gary McKinnon, Megaupload, Lakhani, etc.

<comment><USER6> The only reason RICO hasn't caused huge public outcry is that most of the victims are "bad people" -- John Gotti, other gangsters, etc. It's a sad fact of law that judges convict bad people on bad laws.

FISA has also mainly been used against "bad people" so far. It's really hard to defend a likely terrorist in the court of public opinion.

I'm not sure how many of these need to be in the toolbox to outmatch any defendant (including the innocent or substantially innocent) -- plea bargains seem adequate on their own in some cases, since as we saw with aaronsw, you can credibly threaten huge punishments even without RICO. But with RICO, you don't even need to go to the plea bargains.

<comment><USER7> RICO also has a substantial civil portion. See the Palantir vs. I2 lawsuit.

<comment><USER6> I'd forgotten about that. Big company vs. big company is rarely going to get public outcry either, though (the Samsung v. Apple patent stuff was about the closest I've ever seen)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While insightful two aspects have to be noted. First, Germany doesn't have a common law system. German and UK / US / Commonwealth legal systems are mostly incompatible. Secondly, nowadays the German system has efficiency problems as well, which however are mostly due to inefficient organization that affects all of German public administration.

There is no such thing as plea bargaining or threatening the defendant with much more severe charges than those he'd actually have to expect when going to trial.

However, frequently bargains are made to expedite legal procedures. The defendant might for example be talked into making a full confession in exchange for a less severe sentence. While this is not as questionable a practice as plea bargaining it certainly leaves some space to bullying or coercing defendants as well.

Maybe, it'd be good to look at how the UK legal system works in that respect. It's mostly compatible with the US system but doesn't sport excessive plea bargaining.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure how much the UK is a good counterexample; the author of this paper seems to treat is as more similar to the United States than to the civil law systems like Germany (he commonly refers to the "Anglo-American" practice of plea-bargaining). Indeed, he holds up the UK's high rates of plea bargaining as proof that the cause of the oddities of the American system is the adversarial trial procedure that characterizes common law systems.

<comment><USER10> Plea bargaining in the UK is very different though, the bargain is around pleading to some charges to get others dropped - with the judge determining the sentence.

And with sentencing guidelines published for all common offences the prosecutor is not able to threaten you with massive sentences because you (or your lawyer) can know what the likely outcome is. For a first time offender the odds of jail for almost any offence is low.

The quality of legal representation provided, especially in trials facing major jail time is significantly better. For a big case you will have a Queens Council barrister defending you who is just as experienced as the prosecutor.

And finally the Crown Prosecution Service is far less interested in the sentence than it is in the successful outcome. In other words their statistics look just as good if you plead to one very minor charge compared to several major ones. So plea bargaining here is much more about reducing their workload than it is in scoring political points.

If you are truly innocent (or believe yourself to be in the case of Aaron) then trusting then plea bargains are not for you in the UK.

<comment><USER11> This is very English-centric, for what it's worth. Plea bargains are an oddity under English law (they don't exist elsewhere in the UK), and the CPS is equally English.

Apart from that about plea bargains, it does mostly hold true in Scotland/NI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Probably the most interesting sentence here to me (not the author's own words, but cited from another source):

"German legal ideology, moreover, is opposed to penalizing people for their own tactical mistakes."

From the news, I get the impression that the American system makes routine practice of increasing or decreasing people's punishment not for the severity of their crimes, but rather for their skill (or their lawyers') in navigating the legal system.

<comment><USER2> I think one of the most important differences is that german penalties are lower[1]. Here, defendants don't face 30 years in prison. The max sentence is life sentence and even that often means 15+ years in practice, except for harsh cases or dangerous criminals.

Another point is that the costs for the defendant are lower. Watching high profile cases in the USA I have a feeling that one common point is that the prosecution does everything to bankrupt the defendant so that he has to agree to a plea bargain. In germany, the defendants costs get paid by the state if the defendant is unable to pay his lawyers. Not all lawyers would take such an engagement, but it's not uncommon that even high-profile lawyers defend people who couldn't afford them at market rate.

[1] one might argue that they're more reasonable.

<comment><USER12> <http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n417/a04.html>

Cites a New York Times article.

> Still, it is the length of sentences that truly distinguishes American > prison policy. Indeed, the mere number of sentences imposed here would not > place the United States at the top of the incarceration lists. If lists were > compiled based on annual admissions to prison per capita, several European > countries would outpace the United States. But American prison stays are > much longer, so the total incarceration rate is higher.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for that link. The article offers another interesting insight:

> Several specialists here and abroad pointed to a surprising explanation for > the high incarceration rate in the United States: democracy.

> Most state court judges and prosecutors in the United States are elected and > are therefore sensitive to a public that is, according to opinion polls, > generally in favor of tough crime policies. In the rest of the world, > criminal justice professionals tend to be civil servants who are insulated > from popular demands for tough sentencing.

German judges and prosecutors are not elected but appointed. They're not as prone to political pressure and thus more likely to end up making unpopular decisions. The Metzler/Gäfgen [1] case is such an example: The convicted child murderer won a trial against the state because he was threatened with torture during the investigation. The decision was hugely unpopular.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_G%C3%A4fgen>

<comment><USER12> We can add another explanation: capitalism.

Company ran prisons are still rare in Germany. If a private company runs a prison (or several) it likes to see it filled...

<comment><USER13> Rare ? To me - they are unheard of.

<comment><USER2> There are at least partially private prisons in germany. [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justizvollzugsanstalt#Privatisi...](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justizvollzugsanstalt#Privatisierung)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Germany does have a law for plea bargaining for a few years now: <http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stpo/__257c.html> (german, obviously)

</comment><comment><USER15> This was fascinating. Thanks very much.

Others, if you haven't had a chance to read many legal journals, they are frequently filled with insightful, closely-researched discussions of interesting topics.

The scope of the law is very broad, and you can learn a lot about topics outside the law by reading legal journals.

The quality of the discussion and scholarship, as well as the level of debate, often puts mainstream journalism to shame.

</comment><comment><USER16> So considering that West Germany (old article, huh) has a system without plea bargains, how can this be applied to modern America?

<comment><USER9> Langbein (the author) seems to think the answer lies in streamlining the American trial system. However, the root causes Langbein identifies (no requirement for juries to provide justification for their decisions, evidence presented by prosecution and defense rather than by the court) are so deeply rooted in the common law that they would require serious political will to change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article is 34 years old.

<comment><USER18> And if anything, it's probably more relevant today.

<comment><USER19> it is not. Germany does have plea bargaining nowadays.

<comment><USER18> It is quite different though: [http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2009/07/german- bu...](http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2009/07/german-bundestag- passes-plea-bargaining-law.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Somebody's taking con law...</comment>


MoviePass' Response to Service Outage - <AUTHOR> https://moviepass.com/service_updates_20180727/ <comment><USER2> I just want them to survive ha

Don't do us dirty Mitch.</comment>


Don't Gamify Team Work - <AUTHOR> https://amols.blog/engineering/dont-gamify-team-work <comment><USER2> better for a person to compete with themselves and collaborate with their team mates and be selfless, rather than team members competing with each other.

scale up to the entire company by applying same principle to teams and VP orgs.</comment>


Supercomputers: All Linux, all the time - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/supercomputers-all-linux-all-the-time/ <comment><USER2> I'm very ignorant of supercomputers but I can't really see how/why linux is a better choice than library oses / unikernels for this.</comment>


Cloning the UI of iOS 7 with HTML, CSS and JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://c2prods.com/web/2013/cloning-the-ui-of-ios-7-with-html-css-and-javascript/

<comment><USER2> This makes a nice demo and highlights that in some ways, iOS 7 is easier to reproduce using web technology than iOS 6 was.

> There's been a lot of controversy recently on whether Javascript could > compete with native or not, both in terms of performance and of look'n'feel.

On the other hand, the controversially difficult to reproduce parts of iOS 7 aren't part of this demo. The real-time blur, the zooming "z-axis" navigation, the 3D animations, and the 60fps scrubbable gestures for going back in the navigation stack aren't here.

While those are all "bonus effects," they're also a lot of what makes iOS 7 delightful to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I don't think JS can really compete with native, that's not the point I'm trying to make in this article. Nonetheless, webapps can be an acceptable tradeoff for small apps, that are not too resource-intensive. In such cases, I think HTML, CSS and JS can give good enough results.

<comment><USER3> Since iOS6 and iOS7 have different looks and feels, it is apparent that rigidly adhering to the one true native look and feel isn't mandatory. I'll bet HTML5 can get closer to either iOS version than they are to each other and so close that I, an iPhone user, wouldn't notice the difference for the kind of app that doesn't require native hardware access. I'll bet that someone will produce an HTML5 mobile UI that I'll like more than I'll like iOS7. I'll bet that this won't be the last iOS UI overhaul, and that some future Apple TV will have yet another "native look and feel" and that iPhone owners will use their TVs and Kindles and smart refrigerators and countless Web apps and eventually lose track of what "the native look and feel of an iPhone" looks and feels like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why don't they use proper HTML5 instead of this tag soup?

[https://gist.github.com/jeena/f62232da7d6ac964d403](https://gist.github.com/jeena/f62232da7d6ac964d403)

The rest is a matter of CSS.

[Edit:] moved the code to a gist

<comment><AUTHOR> You're entirely right. I'm just used to the old way, but I guess I'm a bit of an eccentric. I'll try to update the repo asap. (Anyway, I think the HTML architecture could be streamlined, my point was more to demonstrate the css possibilities)

<comment><USER4> And you did a really great job with the CSS. But I know that many young people who are starting with HTML/CSS will be hugely impressed by your examples and will try to copy them. And because they see the div-soup in your examples they will assume that this is how you're supposed to write modern HTML. In the end they see the most modern look in the examples, so I wouldn't even blame them for thinking like that.

It would be sad if they learned to write non-semantic HTML and I think we all who write examples on the net should try to write great examples :)

And in fact we should do it with all the HTML which is online because we all learned HTML and CSS from right click "View Page Source" :D

<comment><USER5> Note that opinions differ on this. Personally I think semantic HTML is nothing but meeting-bait. If you try to be diligent about it you end up in discussions and meetings around whether a certain element should be a figcaption tag should be used or aside etc... And at the end of these types of discussions, regardless of the outcome, nothing that has any actual effect has been changed. It will make zero practical difference whether you use semantic HTML or not. The only thing seemingly affected are imaginary mobile devices that render <nav> differently than <div> or imaginary screen readers that can't read text unless it's in a <figcaption> tag.

<comment><USER4> It kind of sounds like saying: "Why should I learn math, I will never use it anyway." It might be true, but that is not a good excuse for not learning it. And it is not like using semantic HTML is in any way more work or something, it at least has the benefit of being easier to read and thus maintain.

<comment><USER5> That's very different. Because there are circumstances where not knowing or applying math is a barrier to accomplishing something. Saying "Why should I learn math, I will never use it anyway." means you're banking on the odds that you will never run into those circumstances.

However when it comes to semantic HTML there is no circumstance where you are unable to move forward because you used <div> instead of <figcaption>.

In fact thanks to the sometimes ambiguous descriptions of which semantic tag is appropriate you may find you used the wrong semantic tag which is arguably worse than not using a semantic tag at all.

And at the end of the day after carefully cross referencing and/or memorizing which semantic tag to use throughout your markup zero real world, practical effect has been gained. Only theoretical gains and memorization for memorization's sake.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like to be save one should only use <div> and <span> tags, style them with CSS and forget about semantics?

It is obvious to me that this is the wrong approach. And I have never said he should use <figcaption> I said he should use appropriate HTML5 tags. If something is obviously a header, use <header> if not, don't. But building everything out of <div>s like it was in his first example code is just making it more difficult to read, there is no gain in just using <div> for everything.

<comment><USER5> "It sounds like to be save one should only use <div> and <span> tags, style them with CSS and forget about semantics?"

Yeah exactly.

"It is obvious to me that this is the wrong approach."

Semantic HTML essentially boils down to "You should because you should."

"I said he should use appropriate HTML5 tags."

To what practical benefit aside from personal aesthetic preference?

"there is no gain in just using <div> for everything"

The gain is not having to memorize or reference which semantic tag goes where, nor having to go back and refactor or maintain semantic tags.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://beta.icloud.com](https://beta.icloud.com) uses new "iOS7" layout, too. Some styles could be taken from there ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a lot of interesting things indeed! They achieve a nice blur effect, even though I suppose it would be way too heave for mobile.

<comment><USER7> If you inspect the page It appears they are generating a blurred version of the png on the fly in js. The source of the blurred version of the image is equal to "data:image/png;base64,iVBOR…7WkYklgQdZAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==" while the none blurred version is [https://beta.icloud.com/system/cloudos/1SBeta.102619/en- us/s...](https://beta.icloud.com/system/cloudos/1SBeta.102619/en- us/source/resources/images/mail_icon.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Check out [http://www.appgyver.com/steroids](http://www.appgyver.com/steroids) It's still in it's early stages but looks very promising. It gives you native navigation and transitions, amongst other many other goodies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting indeed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice attention to detail in this. By the way, it seems like the new view's shadow in the original actually loses opacity as that view leaves the screen. Did you look around for the blur effect at all? You mentioned it but any luck beyond that? I've seen some attempts but nothing useful.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, the iOS 7 'frosted glass translucency is impossible to achieve with CSS. Everyone points to filter: blur(), but that only blurs the element, and not items behind it.

The only thing I could come up with was using something like HTML2Canvas[1] to render a portion of the DOM in a canvas/image, position that exactly on top, and then blur that. But all that seems quite convoluted and heavy, so decided not to invest any energy into it.

[1]: [https://github.com/niklasvh/html2canvas](https://github.com/niklasvh/html2canvas)

<comment><USER11> You can blur everything, you just need to point the elements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fantastic post, thanks for sharing! I'm invested pretty heavily in HTML5 on mobile and your demo just reassures me this is the future (it feels great!). I hope you don't mind me using some of this stuff for a new project I'm working on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! No problem, you can use it for other projects, the code is on github.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a very good job. I plan to iOS7-ify my HackerWeb app once iOS7 is released next month, so your article would be helpful to me :)

<comment><USER14> As someone using that app, I would love the option to keep the old interface.

Having web-apps trying to mimick a platform I don't use just feels wrong. In much the same way as those fake Windows-UI images ("Scan complete. 3 viruses found!") used all over the internet trying to trick noobs into installing malware.

<comment><USER13> The old interface will stay for older versions of iOS. In fact, I'm already doing that for iOS 6 and iOS 5, which both looks slightly different.

<comment><USER15> Could you make it possible to use the "wrong" interface? I'd love to try the iOS look on my Android phone

<comment><USER13> You can opt-in to other themes here [http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/options.html](http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/options.html) :)

<comment><USER15> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Pretty cool. I know this is more of a demonstration of simulating the iOS 7 UI, but I'm assuming to use this for something you'd want the URLs to update as you move through an app?

I may have missed references to this limitation, again, if it even matters for the purpose of the post.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've actually designed it with a Phonegap integration in mind, to be honest. I think it's possible but you'd probably have to add a great deal of complexity to the code. I'm not familiar with Backbone.js, but may be you can use it to implement routing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Uhmmm, your live demo just selfdestructed when I clicked on it. Any chance it doesn't work in firefox?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't tested it on FF... I really developed it with only iOS in mind, so many CSS properties are prefixed and there might be other bugs...

<comment><USER17> Whenever I click on anything it layers the new elements behind the other ones and the whole interface becomes unresponsive. It works for others though, and it's pretty and iOSey, so props on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great writeup. I just spent a significant amount of time trying to perfect a CSS UINavigationBar, and still not happy with it

</comment><comment><USER18> please properly indent the code snippents

<comment><AUTHOR> Ooops, I don't know why it went so wrong, I corrected it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> IOS comes with an (new) UI -> HTML folks clone it -> "Look its cool bro".</comment>


Fexl standard context now defined in terms of elegant combinators - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chkoreff/Fexl/commit/ced168cae71644ff9a9cb37ba918260b1b5a9490

<comment><AUTHOR> The Fexl standard context is now defined very elegantly, in a way which scales very nicely even to thousands of built-in symbols.

In particular here's the definition of "enhance", which is used to enhance the standard context with a potentially enormous set of extra definitions, spread across multiple files:

[https://github.com/chkoreff/Fexl/blob/ced168cae71644ff9a9cb3...](https://github.com/chkoreff/Fexl/blob/ced168cae71644ff9a9cb37ba918260b1b5a9490/share/fexl/main.fxl#L193)</comment>


iPhone 6 Store Checker using Node.js + React.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.iphonestorechecker.com/

<comment><USER2> A simple example of how to turn a problem into a long lasting solution, love the creativity.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> ReactJS Application that monitors all Apple Stores and help you reserve and pick up an iPhone6(+) on the same day!

</comment><comment><USER3> I could have used this a week ago.

In fact I almost wrote something like this myself.</comment>


Why Circa failed - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/24/8842009/why-circa-failed <comment><USER2> > _Circa was cold and rational at a time when journalism was becoming more > entertaining and emotional_

Too bad, the reason I liked Circa was _exactly_ the cold, rational, to-the- point approach, wrapped in a nice and usable app.

<comment><USER3> Crap, when i just thought the world needs better journalism that are rational, less entertaining and more to the point, while reporting from neutral perspective.....

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I actually liked Circa. I think there is a need for a just the facts articles.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the point from the article "Circa was cold and rational at a time when journalism was becoming more entertaining and emotional." This isn't journalism, its become punditry. I would also love a just the facts news source.

<comment><USER6> Mind you, The Verge is a publication that has loudly and aggressively defended its biases, saying that biased journalism is better than unbiased journalism.

As far as I'm concerned, The Verge isn't a real journalistic outlet and shouldn't be seriously. They're half an Apple shill blog and half a left-wing political publication. That's not journalism.

<comment><USER7> What left-wing political journalism is coming from The Verge? Support for net neutrality and being anti-gamergate?

<comment><USER8> You're joking right? Identity politics is (in my opinion extreme) left-wing stance on problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I liked Circa, especially its "breaking news" feature. The only reason I didn't use it that much was that it was very US-centric (I live in Europe). In particular, it would give me "breaking news" about some US sports celebrities I'd never heard of. Other that that, I really liked the way it structured stories that unfolded over time.

</comment><comment><USER10> Circa failed because it used expensive journalists to create what should have been cheap aggregated content. The content itself had little added value compared with thousands of other daily news sites. Aggregators need to keep costs low and volume high -- Circa had this backwards.

<comment><USER11> I haven't tried every other news service/app, but other than summarising news, being able to track the development of specific news items was also great. The content quality definitely beats many other aggregators.

I hope they make it through this.

<comment><USER12> > I hope they make it through this.

Unless I'm misinterpreting something in the article or your comment, I thought it was pretty clear that they didn't and are shutting down for good?

[https://medium.com/circa/farewell-to-circa- news-7d002150f74b](https://medium.com/circa/farewell-to-circa- news-7d002150f74b)

<comment><USER11> > Note: In the interest of continued negotiations around Circa, we will not be > speaking to the press about ceased production.

Also reading a couple of tweets or reports that they are still looking for funding.

Sounds like unless there's a miracle, they will be shutting down for good though since many (most?) of the team has left. One could only hope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tried circa when it first came out. I failed to find a reason to prefer it over subscribing to the pertinent subs on Reddit for the news I wanted.

The beauty of Reddit and HN is that you can glance at the comments first and usually know instantly whether the article is worth your time. Of course this only works on the smaller communities on reddit. The front page stuff is just drowned in jokes and quips.

Additionally, many experts and thought leaders are active in both communities and actively comment. This helps immensely to cut through rhetoric and falsities in the content.

</comment><comment><USER14> "We're trying to make it so that people educate themselves for 5 minutes as opposed to play Angry Birds," Galligan said.

Yup, that'd do it.. if you predicate your success on changing human nature, you're gonna have a hard time.

Circa had some very good elements - following the stories, and the clean no- nonsense layout. I was very excited about it when it first came out (and mad at them, because I thought they'd built something I was trying to make). After a while I noticed I used the app less and less - partially because it was a bit buggy on iOS, partially because I could not share stories outside of the app (they eventually fixed that).

</comment><comment><USER7> Although they don't have summaries for every article, the NYTNow app is probably my favorite implementation of these snack-sized newsreader apps.

They have daily and nightly briefings that contain ~10-15 short paragraph summaries that link to a longform article if you want to dive deep. They also link to their favorite NYTimes articles from today and their favorite articles from other publications. I've pretty much stopped using the main NYTimes app on my phone now.

They also made recently made it free. Sorry if this sounds like an advert, but I really can't say how much I enjoy using it.

<comment><USER15> Is there a Circa or NYT Now alternative for Android? Circa was great and NYT Now apparently has no plans to make an Android version any time soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> From _Free Spending by Startups Stir Memories of Dot-Com Era Excesses_ published in the Wall Street Journal on October 5, 2014:

> Matt Galligan, co-founder and chief executive of Circa 1605 Inc., which runs > a mobile application for news, says rent on his 3,000-square-foot office in > SoMa has roughly doubled since the company moved in two years ago. But the > rent and renovations to expose the brick walls weren't "unnecessary burn," > he says. His 12 employees "are spending nearly a third of their life there," > he says. "It helps for it to be a positive experience."

I guess exposed brick walls do come in handy when you need something to bang your head against.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/startups-spend-with-abandon- flus...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/startups-spend-with-abandon-flush-with- capital-1412549853)

</comment><comment><USER17> Circa was great. It was exactly what I wanted.

I suspect it failed because, as is snuck into a middle paragraph, "... Circa never turned itself into a business." All of the other complaints in this article were positives (or at least "don't care"s) for me.

</comment><comment><USER18> I tried Circa because I have interest in this category of app/site but it didn't stick and I can't remember when I last looked at it. I'm surprised there haven't been more solid plays at the abbreviated news area, even despite the content component itself being challenging.

If you have expertise in this field, I've got a concept I'd be keen to collaborate on. It'd need iOS/Android development and someone handling content. My usual app guy is wrapped up in other projects. Email in my profile. It'd work as a skunkworks thing within a media company or a second project by a news startup even.

</comment><comment><USER19> Circa failed because I've seen several articles about it failing and had never even heard about it while it was operating. They got their PR backwards.

</comment><comment><USER20> ...or maybe it just had a higher burn rate than income... and failed to generate enough hype to attract venture capital</comment>


Pentagon Paying China To Carry Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/04/china-pentagon-satellite/

<comment><USER3> So it's not an issue to use Chinese manufactured electronic devices like mobile phones, laptops and TV's in your day-to-day lives, but all of a sudden the US needs to use a Chinese satellite and the foil hat wearers come out of the basement in fear? Think of the use of a Chinese satellite like the US using a Chinese made laptop or mobile phone, not really a big deal. We're talking about the US government here, the data would be heavily encrypted but if things were to ever sour the Chinese wouldn't need to try and decrypt the traffic to cause problems, they'd merely have to disable access to the satellite and boom! US loses a massive amount of needed bandwidth which would be far more damaging than decrypting the information I'd assume.

Considering just how much money is spent on defence yearly in the US I am surprised something as trivial as satellite bandwidth capacity is an issue. More money is spent on the military than anything else in the budget and yet after all of those hundreds of billions, still need to borrow capacity from a Chinese satellite. Makes you wonder where the priorities actually are doesn't it?

This is not really a big deal as far as privacy is concerned, it does however show just how reliant the US amongst other countries have become on countries like China for innovating and help keeping up with this heavily connected and forever-evolving world. Hopefully the in-sourcing boom trend continues and perhaps the US starts innovating and relying on itself again instead of others.

</comment><comment><USER4> In all honesty, I would be more concerned about availability than someone breaking the encrypted data. Especially so if this satellite provides mission- critical support for the warfighter.

</comment><comment><USER5> The title is incredibly political and biased.

US keep seeing themselves as the superpower - a superpower that is paying a rival (and developing) country instead of fighting against it. Why can't we move past that and think of win-win scenarios for both countries.

Taking this logic, the media in China should state: China is buying US debt - Yes, US. China is a significant holder in US debt and bought a lot when the economy turned sour in 2008. (Terrible investment since the US would just turn around and force the RMB to appreciate against the dollar). This in turn supported the US economy and the world's economy.

As I read the article, I see this as a win-win scenario. US gets bandwidth and China gets money. Cross border cooperation should be encouraged - <USER2> discouraged.

<comment><USER6> They didn't have much choice but to buy US debt. They get zillions of US dollars through the trade imbalance, that props up their economic growth and factories as Americans go into debt to buy things from China that they don't really need.

There's nothing else to do with a literal trillion dollars. You couldn't buy enough gold or oil without sending commodity prices parabolic and shooting yourself in the foot (since commodities are priced in dollars that's one use).

If they just held the dollars, they would do nothing but depreciate, even though the treasuries yield is low it's better than zero.

If they tried to dump the dollars, they'd find a market that couldn't absorb that scale and it would send the dollar plunging, which would in turn hurt the ability of Americans to buy Chinese goods, while boosting American export competitiveness.

And on the plus side, holding a trillion worth of US paper, is an ok leverage point (not great, because the Fed could wipe that out with a swipe of its hand).

There's no good scenario once you are accumulating hundreds of billions of dollars via a trade imbalance. Treasuries are the only market large enough to absorb it all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Chinese already manufacture a large volume of our hardware as well (with some of it skewed toward Taiwan). They have plenty of opportunities to install monitoring devices surreptitiously on land-based stuff, if they've already haven't, so unless the U.S. is planning on developing all hardware for the base stations as well (chips and all) in-house, this isn't doing much more to deliver that precious satellite data to them on a silver platter.

That said, Huawei has such a big lead in the rest of the world in comm tech, they probably already are monitoring. A wise opponent lets his adversary volunteer information first, before prodding for it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't this exactly the sort of problem public-key cryptography was designed to solve?

<comment><USER9> Signals intelligence is not just about reading enemy communications. Traffic analysis[0] would give the Chinese valuable insight into US military communication patterns. Changes in data patterns could alert them to changes on the ground.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_analysis>

<comment><USER10> What stops the US from sending a whole bunch of constant dummy traffic to disguise this? I realize bandwidth capacity and cost could be a reason, but if there were enough capacity and budget? OK, maybe that question is a non- starter.

I'm reminded of a funny time when I was in an internship. My team and another team was fighting over disk space in the database servers. So we created a whole bunch of dummy tables. Whenever one of us needed to do something, we'd request for one of the dummy tables to be dropped so that we could do our thing. The other team could never do anything. It was weird.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would hope that Wired, at least, would be above these terrible linkbait headlines.

</comment><comment><USER12> The states won't let a Chinese phone carrier do business here because of the chance for espionage, but turn around and do this? What irony....

<comment><USER13> It's all about raising barriers to keep foreign business out in the guise of national security.

<comment><USER6> And specifically it's about shielding the domestic telecom monopoly system. Verizon and AT&T wave their magic wand and Congressmen dance. A Chinese carrier would very likely come in and compete on price. Softbank is likely going to do just that as well, and I'm sure the last thing VZ and AT&T want is another competitor on price.</comment></comment></comment>


Visa and Covid-Restrictions API - <AUTHOR> Would an API that could surface visa and covid requirements for a given country be useful to anyone?<p>One obvious case is to display such information if you have a travel product. <comment><USER2> There already is a VISA/Warning api product for this by the IATA. Pretty pricey though. [https://www.iata.org/en/publications/timatic/timaticweb- trav...](https://www.iata.org/en/publications/timatic/timaticweb-travel- requirements/)

Such an API might be useful to every organisation, which is in internatinoal travel or sells international travel products.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep! I went ahead and spoke to IATA. It's crazy expensive - starting price is $26,000.

Their customer is airline so small amount but for most hackers, probably a no- go at that price i guess.</comment></comment>


Rare 19th-century images show China at the dawn of photography - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/style/article/china-photos-19th-century-loewentheil-collection/index.html <comment><USER2> It's a shame that all 15,000 photos aren't digitized and available online to be viewed by all. It would be such a humanizing view of China's past.</comment>


We Made the Message Loud and Clear: Stop the Rule 41 Updates - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/06/we-made-message-loud-and-clear-stop-rule-41-updates <comment><USER2> I'm surprised how little attention this got on HN today (or maybe I missed it?).</comment>


Show HN: Where the Zika Virus is in the USA - <AUTHOR> https://zikawatch.co <comment><USER2> Looks great. I learned some years ago that mosquitoes can't fly in more than 2.5mph wind so I just put a box fan outside on low and it works!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't find a decent map of where the Zika Virus was in the US from the CDC so I made one.</comment>


The Great French Mustache Strike of 1907 - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/french-mustache-strike <comment><USER2> The tremendous _Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds_ has a section on "Influence of Politics and Religion on the Hair and Beard", detailing the various times it's been banned/compulsory/taxed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusion...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds)

<comment><USER3> It's also public domain and available at Project Gutenberg:

[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Many military, police and service jobs in the US ban facial hair for men, which has a discriminatory effect: [https://www.vox.com/the- goods/2018/9/28/17916056/workplace-b...](https://www.vox.com/the- goods/2018/9/28/17916056/workplace-beards-facial-hair-black-men-sikhs-publix- chick-fil-a)

<comment><USER5> The military beard ban is about sealing a gas mask, it does have a real purpose. Having said that, they do let SF grow beards.

<comment><USER6> Can confirm. Same when I did service in Sweden. Reasonable mustaches were OK, beards were not.

<comment><USER7> What about trimming to a stubble, was that ok? Or does it have to be razor blade shaven?

<comment><USER8> A gas mask seal will not be great with significant stubble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an interesting article and all, but I have to say that the picture of a waiter with a tray and a bottle of wine in mid-fall was even more interesting. Probably staged, but still an arresting shot.

<comment><USER10> Looks like it was a race. The other waiters seem to be mid-run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hemingway talks about similar mustache-relates social strife occurring in the 1920s, in _A Movable Feast_, his memoirs of his life as a young man in Paris.

The conversation is set at the Cafe Lilas (which is still open today, though mostly as a tourist trap), with Evan Shipman, a fellow American writer and journalist.

      "He's in trouble already," Evan said.

      "How?"

      "They're changing the management," Evan said. "The new
       owners want to have a different clientele that will spend
      some money and they are going to put in an American bar.
      The waiters are going to be in white jackets, Hem, and
      they have been ordered to be ready to shave off their
      mustaches."

      "They can't do that to André and Jean."

      "They shouldn't be able to, but they will."

      "Jean has had a mustache all his life. That's a dragoon's
      mustache. He served in a cavalry regiment."

      "He's going to have to cut it off."

      I drank the last of the whisky.

      "Another whisky, Monsieur?" Jean asked. "A whisky,
     Monsieur Shipman?" His heavy drooping mustache was a part
      of his thin, kind face, and the bald top of his head
      glistened under the strands of hair that were slicked
      across it.

      "Don't do it, Jean," I said. "Don't take a chance."

      "There is no chance," he said, softly to us. "There is
      much confusion. Many are leaving. Entendu, Messieurs," he
      said aloud. He went into the café and came out carrying
      the bottle of whisky, two large glasses, two ten-franc
      gold-rimmed saucers and a seltzer bottle.

      "No, Jean," I said.

      He put the glasses down on the saucers and filled them
      almost to the brim with whisky and took the remains of the
      bottle back into the café. Evan and I squirted a little
      seltzer into the glasses.

      "It was a good thing Dostoyevsky didn't know Jean," Evan
      said. "He might have died of drink."

      "What are we going to do with these?"

      "Drink them," Evan said. "It's a protest. It's direct action."

      On the following Monday when I went to the Lilas to work
      in the morning, André served me a bovril, which is a cup
      of beef extract and water. He was short and blond and
      where his stubby mustache had been, his lip was as bare as
      a priest's. He was wearing a white American barman's coat.

</comment><comment><USER12> Back when people could be organized for a protest...

<comment><USER6> It's still in the blood of the French. You don't have to be in Paris for long to encounter mass protests.

<comment><USER13> Having had the pleasure of being served by many waiters in Paris, I assumed that the 1907 strike hadn't ended yet.</comment></comment></comment>


A realist takes on quantum mechanics - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01101-0 <comment><USER2> > _Smolin concludes with the implications of all this for our understanding of > space and time. He suggests that time is irreversible and fundamental, in > the sense that the processes by which future events are produced from > present ones are truly basic: they do not need to be explained in terms of > more basic ideas. Space, however, is different. He argues that it emerges > from something deeper._

In Special Relativity space and time can be mixed (almost interchangeable), like the x, y and z usual coordinates.

If your coordinates and x and t, in a moving system the coordinates x' and t' are

      x' = something1 * x + something2 * t

      t' = something3 * x + something4 * t

The coordinates in the other system are just linar combinations of your coordinates. So how can be time and space have a different nature?

<comment><USER3> Your equations are for Galilean space, in which your objection is correct; there _is_ no way of distinguishing time from space, making the distinction arbitrary. This was not noticed for a long time. It was hard to tell until we had Einsteinian relativity to compare to. (Galilean space is actually broken in a lot of ways.)

In relativity, those are not the correct equations; the correct equations observe the Minkowski [1] invariant -t^2 + x^2 + y^2 + z^2 staying invariant under all Lorentz transformations, and it's that negative sign before the t^2 that separates time in relativity. Time and space can be mixed in relativity, but they do still retain a distinctiveness; even when they get turned entirely "on their side" as inside a blackhole, time and space are still distinct, just very very twisted relative to the rest of the universe.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski_space#Four- dimension...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski_space#Four- dimensional_Euclidean_spacetime)

<comment><USER4> Another interesting thing to note: because of the negative sign, Minkowski space obeys an _inverse_ triangle law: a straight line is the _longest_ route between two points (in terms of the relativistic interval) rather than the shortest. That is the reason for "time dilation". Clocks don't actually measure "time", they measure the relativistic interval, which just happens to be what we call "time" in our own reference frame.

This insight makes it easier to understand the "twin paradox". If a clock takes any non-inertial trajectory between two events, its path through Minkowski space is _shorter_ than it would be on an inertial (straight-line) trajectory, so the reading on the clock is lower than a clock that travelled on an inertial trajectory (straight line) between the same two events.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like when people say 'realist' in this context, they mean someone who believes that ordinary intuitions about the way the world works are how the world must work at all levels. And there is no reason to believe that our minds were evolved to understand reality at anything but the macro level.

I've long thought that the study of physics at the extremes is as much a study of the human mind and what we're capable of comprehending as it is a probe of fundamental reality. Which is to say that experiments are essentially a chain of processes by which we translate information from whatever we're studying into a form capable of being understood by our mind — often translating it into something visual so our visual cortex can process it and store it.

But I wonder how much is out there that is simply impossible to transform in such a way.

<comment><USER6> > I feel like when people say 'realist' in this context, they mean someone who > believes that ordinary intuitions about the way the world works are how the > world must work at all levels.

From the article:

> Like Einstein, Smolin is a philosophical 'realist' — someone who thinks that > the real world exists independently of our minds and can be described by > deterministic laws.

So no, they don't.

Also, realism is consistent with quantum experiment — non-realism is merely an interpretation that's had more developers work on it, not somehow a proven component of reality. (Commonly called Copenhagen interpretation; MWI and Bohmian are other interpretations; arguably loop quantum gravity too.)

I agree with Smolin: non-realism is an extraneous assumption meant to preserve locality, but reality is empirically non-local.

Ironically, it's actually the non-realists who are guilty of what you say — they can't let go of their Euclidean intuitions, and so come up with nonsense like denying realism. Their entire model is fundamentally predicated on things looking like a smooth Euclidean space at all scales below some threshold — that is, that reality _all the way down_ looks like what we see when we look around.

Non-realists insist on a Euclidean world despite contrary experimental evidence.

If you view energy as distributed across the topology of your space, which often is radically non-Euclidean, you immediately have realism back — the world just is nothing like what's in front of your eyes. (Enter loop quantum gravity.)

<comment><USER7> > non-realism is an extraneous assumption

Realism is as much an assumption as non-realism. It doesn't feel that way, because realism fits the common sense of some evolved monkeys. Common sense sometimes is correct, sometimes is not. It doesn't really mean anything when we deal with these matters.

In fact, I would argue that Occam's Razor advises us to prefer non-realism. With non-realism, we are restricted to something we know to exist, by virtue of our human experience: our first-person perception of things. The independent reality, or third-person perspective, is undoubtedly a useful model, but we have no empirical data to suggest it is real. In fact, I would argue that quantum mechanic does raise some serious issues w.r.t. the this model.

Btw, this debate is almost as old as human culture. It was already present in Aristotle (materalism) vs. Plato (idealism). You can also find many traces of it in Eastern thought, e.g. the idea of Maya, or the question of: how can you really know if you are dreaming right now?

> not somehow a proven component of reality

There are no proven components of reality. Proof is something possible in the domain of mathematics, if one accepts certain axioms. Science is not in the business of proving things, it is an empirical endeavor. It gives us theories that resist falsification (until seen) + eternal doubt. Once you abandon doubt, you abandon science.

<comment><USER8> > In fact, I would argue that Occam's Razor advises us to prefer non-realism.

Can you list these arguments, please? IMHO, Occam's Razor is at side of realism: our Universe has no bounds in space, in time, and in scale. So, we can predict future of any particle if we will have enough information about it, but we cannot do that with 100% confidence, because Universe is endlessly deep. We can only collect information about particles at our "layer" of Universe only (or "dimension" in terms of String theory). The deeper we will go, the more uncertainty we will have, because particles will be influenced by "layer(s)" ("dimensions") below our.

<comment><USER7> > Can you list these arguments, please?

I can give you mine... Realism argues that we (as minds, let's say) exist within a reality that keeps existing when we are not looking, i.e. that is independent of our own existence. These are two types of entities, mind-body beings such as you and me + the external, persistent material world. If there's just entities like you and me (whatever we are) sharing a collective dream, that is one less type of entity. Occam's Razor advises against the unnecessary propagation of entities in explanatory endeavors.

This of course does not falsify realism, but it demands that it is there only if to explain something that could not be explained otherwise.

> our Universe has no bounds in space, in time, and in scale

Perhaps I don't understand what you mean. I would say that our universe (forgetting MWI stuff) is bounded in time (Big Bang was 13.7 billion years ago), in space (expanding but finite) and in scale (there is such a thing as the fundamental building blocks of matter, maybe they have internal structure, but they seem to be below the level where the concept of "structure" even makes sense -- they are phenomena more than "things").

> So, we can predict future of any particle if we will have enough information > about it,

Not really. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_indeterminacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_indeterminacy)

> but we cannot do that with 100% confidence, because Universe is endlessly > deep.

You are alluding to chaos theory, but quantum indeterminacy is more fundamental than that. Also, nobody knows if the Universe is "endlessly deep", and current empirical evidence points to "it's not".

<comment><USER6> The very notion of "you and me" is an appeal to realism: without an external world, there is only me — "you" become a figment of my imagination.

Realism explains why my paper a) arrives while I'm asleep and b) sometimes surprises me with the content or by not arriving.

I've yet to see a non-realist explanation of my paper that doesn't seem deeply more convoluted than "someone like me, but not me dropped it off independent of my awareness".

I'm not saying you can't make a model out of that, but you quickly arrive at the equivalent of epicycles to explain even basic things like my newspaper arriving (or not).

Also, "quantum indeterminacy" is an assumption, not a proven fact supported by evidence. That's the exact thing under discussion now: it's justification as an interpretative assumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the article:

> The book is, however, upbeat and, finally, optimistic. Unapologetically > drawing on historical tradition and even modern philosophy, Smolin proposes > a new set of principles that applies to both quantum mechanics and space- > time. He then explores how these principles might be realized as part of a > fundamental theory of nature, although he stops short of supplying details > of the implementation.

That's nice. Too bad QM doesn't care about tradition, philosophy, or your feelings.

> Smolin concludes with the implications of all this for our understanding of > space and time. He suggests that time is irreversible and fundamental, in > the sense that the processes by which future events are produced from > present ones are truly basic: they do not need to be explained in terms of > more basic ideas. Space, however, is different. He argues that it emerges > from something deeper.

Smolin routinely bullshits, and does not back up much with rigorous theory. He attempts to make a name for himself in a publish-or-perish field by getting his ridiculously unsupported and contrarian ideas traction in the press.

In short, he's all talk, with no substance to back it up.

<comment><USER10> Having read Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, I think there's a lot of substance there. It's a book made to even include high schoolers, so you have to give it some benefit of the doubt.

As per the philosophy question, neither classical mechanics, relativity, or even death cares about what we think. What matters here is how we perceive and understand a concept.</comment></comment>


If You Don't Think You Need It, You Haven't Seen Greatness - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/24/you-havent-seen-greatness/ <comment><USER2> As a professional of the tech field for the better of the last 7 years, I've had the opportunity to work with countless of these marketing, pr, bd people and to be frank, that "Greatness", I've only heard of, never actually witnessed it.

I am aware that the services are needed and can bring some tremendous results when well executed, but at this point I've settled to learn some of this stuff on my own, rather than investing too much time in finding someone to trust with the responsibilities.

Don't get me wrong, it would be absolutely awesome to find the rare pearl that the article mentions. But it's choosing between either continuously peruse for some Master of her domain, or rather investing all that energy into learning to do things myself.

Obviously, some things are more sensitive than others and I still gladly defer to the experts (I won't touch the legal stuff without consult). For others however, I've noted that there have been times when I sat with someone who was supposed to advise me on marketing or BD, and they ended up learning more about these than I did by the end of our meeting.

The whole thing reminds me of this post [http://thinkvitamin.com/user- science/user-experience/ux-prof...](http://thinkvitamin.com/user-science/user- experience/ux-professional-isnt-a-real-job/) where the author claimed that "UX Professional" isn't a job title. Ensues a torrent of comments with basically the same arguments that the present article emphasizes _it's because you haven't seen a great one yet_.

I guess the question is then, _how to find greatness?_

<comment><USER3> 1) The 'great' marketing, pr, bd people make way way more money than 'great' tech people. It's unlikely that a startup can afford a killer marketing guy at $300k. They're probably hiring marketing people at $50k.

2) It appears you don't value those positions much. If you are the one doing the recruiting, I would say that explains it.

3) Marketing, PR, and BD make a lot more sense in industries where tech isn't the dominant factor. Just look at consumer packaged goods, movies, etc. Almost no tech worth talking about in CPG, but some amazing marketing and biz dev people. Those industries (and others) attract the best business people because they have a lot of impact on the success or failure of the product. In startups, if the developers suck there really is nothing the marketing guy can do about it.

<comment><USER4> _3) Marketing, PR, and BD make a lot more sense in industries where tech isn't the dominant factor._

I won't disagree, but I'd be wary of overstating the importance of that point. Marketing definitely matters for technology (esp. when you take a broad, holistic view of what 'marketing' is). There are more than a few stories in the annals of the tech industry where a nominally superior tech lost out to an inferior product that had better marketing around it.

On that note, the book _In Search of Stupidity_ [1] catalogs a pile of tech marketing disasters from over the years. I'd recommend it to anyone who thinks "marketing isn't that important" or anything along those lines.

[1]: <http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pseudo repost, just because I think it is worth saying:

Our company started as one engineer. Second employee was a "business guy" - who stuck his foot in the door and kind of hired himself. Two years later, we are roughly twenty employees large (half contractors) and seven digits of revenue, largely thanks to employee #2. :) Engineers can sometimes be quick to dismiss the value of other roles (I know I have), but without the aforementioned employee, we would have no where near our current revenue (he locks down the contracts and ensures good revenue from them, two things no one else in our company is good at).

<comment><USER6> "Second employee was a "business guy" - who stuck his foot in the door and kind of hired himself."

Can you expand on this? How does a business person hire himself when he finds an engineer with a good idea?

<comment><USER7> One case I'm familiar with: The "business guy" went out and sold a pretty sizable contract for the startup...before he actually worked for them.

<comment><USER8> This sounds like a great story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had my lightbulb moment about business development when working as a developer advocate at Google. Some companies we partnered with had excellent bizdevs - though not programmers, they were technically savvy, creative about finding ways to work together, and willing to take on feedback - and their companies gained as a result. At the other end of the spectrum, a disturbingly high number of companies had zero mechanisms in place to even get in touch about matters of business development (or even related items such as sales). Not even a simple contact form or email address.

The comments about bizdev also remind me of an interview with Jason Cohen a little while ago, where he was explaining the research he undertook before launching WP Engine. The main point was how methodical and quantitative it all was, and that this is the kind of thing a Business Guy should be doing in a startup, not just randomly filing trademark applications and making sure everything's in order.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a huge mistake to think that talent in any field is anything but normally distributed. So while it's fantastic to experience greatness, holding out for the 1% solution is often totally counterproductive. Given my druthers, _of course_ I'd only hire the best of the best. But that's not how the universe works.

<comment><USER11> I think yours is a solid criticism to the article, it's completely true.

The article isn't written for the salty veterans who've learned life's lessons on the mean highways and byways, however, it is for the thousands upon thousands of cynical young people who clog the internet forums.

I know because I'm about 2 years older than myself at the very point when despite anything I might claim to the contrary, in my heart of hearts I believed "Sales and marketing departments chiefly lie to people".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can only imagine that the corrollary to this is "if you haven't seen greatness, you don't need it". If you have the opportunity to hire a great marketer you should take it, but your startup doesn't need a mediocre marketer. Don't hire roles, hire people.

</comment><comment> DanI-S > _the exercise of 'writing the ideal press release' first, before you even > write a line of code_

That's an interesting idea - Press Driven Development. Has anyone here tried it?

<comment><USER13> Quite a few, actually. There was (is?) a rash of people who create a simple teaser web site that collects contact information from interested parties as their "MVP" to "validate" their idea. No code. No product.

<comment><USER14> I know it predates him, but Tim Ferriss recommended something like this in the Four Hour Work Week, which everyone seems to have read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A few corollaries:

Don't hire someone for one of these rolls just because "everyone has an X" hire someone because they are great at it.

The majority of people in these roles aren't great, otherwise they wouldn't be as widely despised

</comment><comment><USER16> I have to admit, I'd always sort of dismissed "bizdev" and the like, but this summer I'm working for a small, three-person startup that's one developer and two sales/bizdev and it's completely changed my mind - they're absolutely fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER17> As a younger person, I'm already aware that I should be careful not to write such positions off. This was a great post to help reinforce the right thinking.

My question is: if you're about to write those roles off, what can you do to make sure you find said 'greatness' and not get saddled with mediocrity?

</comment><comment><USER18> These are the people that make you say: "It would have been hard or impossible to do <thing> without <person>"

It turns out to be a decent test too. If you can't say that at least once about someone it's a bad sign.

</comment><comment><USER19> I thought that this was going to be about products, and was all geared up to tear it apart.

It's actually about organizational roles, and it makes a decent argument.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very interesting topic and I completely agree with the article...

I've been working in IT for many years now, and out of the hundreds of people I've met in many different areas of many different companies, constantly having to work with and under mediocrity, and I've only met a single person who was the real deal.

Lots of people can talk the talk, but lets be serious now? How many people can actually progress beyond that to achieve real tangible results that show a clear display of excellence as opposed to mediocrity? The numbers are quite small in comparison to the human population I'm sure.

When the majority of people in any given profession are mediocre, finding excellence is more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack, unfortunately this is a problem in every profession.

</comment><comment><USER21> What does BD stand for?

<comment><USER22> Business development: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_development>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Greatness in this sense means you're able to provide value beyond the bounds of your job description. Some people, especially engineers, tend to be heads- down and focused on the specific tasks and responsibilities assigned to them, and everything else is "not my job" ... in other words "good followers"

But the people who end up leading the team are the ones who not only do what was assigned to them, but can also bring forward completely new ideas, volunteer to lead that effort, and reach out to other teams to provide guidance on how this new thing involves them ... other words "good leaders"

</comment><comment><USER24> He's not wrong, but this is a self-sealing argument. If the guy you hired just isn't really rocking the boat, well... it must be because he's not a TRULY GREAT <insert role>.

To give a tired example: lawyers, wherein yes, lawyers as a profession is needed and useful and meaningful, but it's _also_ true that they obfuscate unnecessarily and generate make work and so on and so forth. And it's entirely possible that this can come from the same person.

You can make the same argument about virtually every single role ever.

</comment><comment><USER25> I would alter the headline to say if you think you _won't_ need it, ...... There legitimately are times when you don't need a given subset of skilled positions that are vital to a larger company. I would never file the paperwork to start a company and immanently hire A PR guy, A HR guy, A Lawyer, A Office Manager ,and A Sales Guy. There is something to prioritizing your hiring to what is important given your existing strengths and weaknesses

</comment><comment><USER26> Maybe someone can list the great companies that have been started by "writing the ideal press release first".

<comment><USER27> Two examples worth thinking of:

IBM may not have been started with a press release, but Paul Rand's branding and their advertising made them stand out from their competition.

Apple may not have been started with a press release, but Regis McKenna really helped put them on the map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Translation: you need someone who thinks like an engineer but applies it to these other tasks/positions

<comment><USER29> Actually, hiring a marketing or BD guy who thinks like an engineer is a pretty good way to hire a terrible person for that role. Implicit in the post is respecting the heterogeneity of thought models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Perhaps I'm missing the point here, but I started studying minimalism and the art of less last year, and there's almost no product I look at and think that I need immediately.

If you're interested in that same mindset, this site is a fantastic read: <http://mnmlist.com/>

<comment><USER31> Commenting before RTFA: the minimalist Hacker News reader. ;)</comment></comment>


Steps Toward The Reinvention of Programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/vacuum?url=http://vpri.org/pdf/steps_TR-2007-008.pdf <comment><USER2> hey, friend, how about a warning that your linking to a PDF!

I didn't buy my laptop this year. Or the year before. Or the year before.

It works perfectly fine, until I click on a PDF link.

And because Adobe has to justify their existence, there are a seemingly infinite number of api's that it tells me it's loading. About 1 every couple seconds. It's all I have to look at while it takes over my machine and ticks by.

My old computer will thank you. And all the other owners of small companies with no budgets for zippy new computers will too.

<comment><USER3> <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/636>

<http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OK reading a single paper on a large project is likely to lead to one arriving at false conclusions. So with that Caveat:

I think this team has like so many before them got the idea that solving Brook's accidental complexity in selected domains leads towards solving the problem of essential complexity.

Anyone who did not live through the era of "fourth level languages" will not have been inoculated against this error. It seems to me that you can always simplify the programming task in specific domains (often with a DSL) but I have yet to have even got a hint of a solution to the problems of applying such approaches to a wider business process.

</comment><comment><USER5> This document has some interesting ideas! I especially liked the grammar which defines the accessors for a TCP IP header by feeding in an ascii art image of the header.

<comment><USER6> what would it make it _much_ cooler would be some way to tie in protocol- state-transitions with packet-structure to have machine generated protocol- parsers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish them luck. In my humble opinion, they're making many mistakes. Their core principles aren't abstract enough. "Golden Box" is a technology not a principle -- and it isn't necessary to get where they want to go. As long as they focus on "small and self-describing", they won't go anywhere. Lisp is beautiful in this way, but that's irrelevant. I heard they even pinned-up some code that Ian wrote. Bad move -- no Golden Calves. You have to be able to throw it all out every few months. There are some other things I could say but won't. I respect Alan Kay more than anyone in this industry. So, again, good luck.

<comment><USER8> Is there any idea more closely identified with Alan Kay than "small and self- describing"?

<comment><USER7> I would more identify that with John McCarthy, but I know what you mean. The problem is that it's making him bark up the wrong tree.

<comment><USER8> Heh. A grammatical glitch. What I meant was, _Is there any idea Alan Kay is more closely identified with than "small and self-describing"?_

More importantly, I'd like to hear why you think it's the wrong tree. The point of a small and self-describing design is that it provides extensibility and (logical) scalability that other approaches can't match (or even dream of). Why would that have been a good idea in the Smalltalk days but a bad idea now?

<comment><USER7> I know it makes perfect sense but it's just not going to get them where they want to go. It's not fair to say that and not back it up, but it would take too long to explain. Suffice it to say that 'small' is right, but not in terms of code, and 'self-describing' doesn't even play a role.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


February 1 Is Change Your Password Day - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5879669/february-1-is-change-your-password-day-ive-decided <comment><AUTHOR> src: [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Am-1-Februar-ist- Aend...](http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Am-1-Februar-ist-Aendere-dein- Passwort-Tag-3088184.html)</comment>


Show HN: Organize your bookmarks and collaborate with others - <AUTHOR> https://yourbuttons.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone!

This is my first web-application that I created together with my brother.

It all began during a discussion about how disorganized my bookmarks are and how great it would be if there was a better way to save and organize our favorite websites. The discussion turned into a project and evolved into Buttons.

We know there are a few bookmarking apps out there, but none have a simple, uncluttered design, and most of them focus on social bookmarking or have too many ads. I also believe in the purity of code, minimal page load, and user performance. I built this application from scratch using no libraries, nor frameworks.

Your feedback about the design and our features is highly appreciated!

Cheers,

Owen

</comment><comment><USER2> I really like the design and how easy it was to import all my bookmarks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Appreciate your feedback and for going premium :)

Let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions for improvements</comment></comment>


Move Over, Snapchat: Meet Zocal, the App Winning Gen Z with Local Moments - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zocal-local-moments/id1070165630?mt=8 <comment><USER2> I'd recommend changing the screenshots to show places besides SoCal to avoid distracting folks.

I thought at first that the app's name was a play on words with Gen Z and "local," but all of the photos seem to be from Socal, so I spent a few minutes wondering if it a combination of those two instead, which I'm now 95% sure it's not, but still not truly certain.</comment>


'Go Back to California': Wave of Newcomers Fuels Backlash in Boise - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-11-10/go-back-to-california-wave-of-newcomers-fuels-backlash-in-boise <comment><USER2> I grew up in a rural PNW town where hatred of Californians was a way of life. I ultimately ended up in California for the start of my career which gave me the kind of upward mobility I'd never have had an opportunity to achieve.

Call it survivorship bias or whatever you want but without a stint in California I would have likely never known it was possible to get a job other than working at the lumber mill or driving a log truck.

I've since left the Bay Area due to rising costs and landed in a Boise-like city. Costs in Redwood City at the time I left we're $1-1.3MM for a starter three bed, two bath home at 2k sq ft.

My home was purchased brand new, 25% larger than the Bay Area starters, 40% cheaper, on the best street in the best neighborhood. Why would I not live here?

Quality of life is through the roof, commutes are 10-15 mins at most and everyone is happy and eager to chat about the fun things they do outdoors.

It's obvious why non-natives want to live here. What's infuriating is to see how much the town has grown in great ways that are completely ignore by _locals_.

Yes, rent and housing costs are way up. But so is infrastructure, tourism, amenities, etc but it's easier to flip off the dude in CA plates instead(which happened to me shortly after moving here)

<comment><USER3> > Yes, rent and housing costs are _way up._ But so is infrastructure, tourism, > amenities, etc but it's easier to flip off the dude in CA plates > instead(which happened to me shortly after moving here)

The way you describe this definitely makes me sympathize with the locals. What good are "amenities" if you're priced out?

<comment><USER4> This. These are all amenities for the rich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel their pain. We here in Colorado are also seeing a big influx from California and their stereotypical culture and politics is unwelcome to many here. The "pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps", "live-and-let-live" cowboy attitude most Colorado-born folks here have clashes in no small way with what most California's bring.

And why the heck can't they drive like normal people?! <grin>

Great thing about America, you don't like where you're at, you can move to someplace else. That goes for Californias and for Coloradans.

<comment><USER6> The ironic thing is not that Californians are leaving the state. Why wouldn't you want to leave a state with dysfunctional politics and questionable policies?

The irony is they take their politics and want to impose the same policies and politics in the new states --which if successful would create the same issues they are running away from!

<comment><USER7> The cause for the dysfunction in California politics is highly debatable. Is it just too liberal? Or is it too conservative? Has it been coopted by corporate interests, landowners and landlords? Or is it too sympathetic to the homeless?

The list of purported reasons could and does go on and on, and everyone on each portion of the political spectrum has their own take on it.

Where on the political spectrum these California expats fall and what (if anything) they think makes Californian politics dysfunctional is anyone's guess, but it's unlikely that they'll deliberately want to recreate any kind of dysfunction. If anything, they'll want to fix what what was broken about the way their state went about things.

<comment><USER8> Uhh, "is California too conservative?" is a rhetorical question I thought I'd never hear. Democrats have supermajorities in state politics and all the major cities are dominated by Democrats.

I think a problem will always develop at some point when a state becomes "too conservative" or "too liberal". Truly, the tug of war of ideas between the two is essential for good compromises to be worked out and to avoid the excesses of either ideology.

That's an unpopular opinion these days but I think it's the reason for the United States success.

<comment><USER7> _" Uhh, "is California too conservative?" is a rhetorical question I thought I'd never hear. Democrats have supermajorities in state politics and all the major cities are dominated by Democrats."_

It might come as a surprise to you, but there are conservative Democrats.

There are Green party and Peace and Freedom party (which seems to be a more organized version of the Green party here in California) candidates in California, but they virtually never get in to office. The last time I looked Republicans won something like 40% to 50% of the votes in California (though they didn't win quite as much this last mid-term election, probably due to anti-Trump backlash).

So Democrats might hold the reigns of power for the moment, but Republicans are in second place and had Trump not so soiled his party's image in all but the most conservative strongholds in the nation, they'd be close at the Democrats' heels.

In fact, even in the 2018 election, with Trump at his loudest and most obnoxious, and with nearly the entire Republican party backing him, many Republicans in California still got 40% or more of the votes in California, and some of them even won.[1]

But, whatever the balance of power, the really really progressive or left-wing parties have no share of it in California.

Now let's look at one of the prominent Democrats who got in to office recently: Governor Newsom.

I just searched DDG for "newsom vetoed", and some of the top hits showed that he vetoed:

1 - legislation that would have given Santa Cruz access to $16 million in affordable housing bond funds

2 - two child support reform bills that anti-poverty advocates had hoped would give a boost to low-income families

3 - a bill to give California one of the toughest recycling mandates for plastic bottles in the nation

4 - a bill that would have given teachers six weeks paid leave after giving birth

5 - a bill that would have let state workers bring their babies to work

6 - a bill aimed at stopping the Trump administration from rolling back federal environmental regulations in the state

To me, all of these vetoes (which are anti-worker, pro-corporate, and anti- environment) clearly show that he's, at least arguably, too conservative.

Or take a look at Senator Dianne Feinstein, who voted for the PATRIOT Act and has been one of its most stalwart defenders, and also supported the Iraq war. It's hard to argue that these positions are not "too conservative", at least for California's left-wing reputation.

Not to mention that California has a gigantic prison industry and one of the biggest prison populations in the world, is incredibly pro-corporate and pro- capitalist (else the Bay Area would not be so loved by some of the richest, biggest, and most powerful corporations on the planet). Many of California's corporations, incidentally, support the military, which is not a left-wing position, as the left-wing in the US tends to be anti-war and against the military-industrial complex. So, once again, California scores "too conservative" on this point.

If California was really as left-wing as Fox News and right-wing talk radio paints it out to be, you'd have thought that it would have nationalized all corporations or made them worker-owned and outlawed private property. But nothing could be further from the truth. California is in many ways a capitalist paradise, not a Marxist utopia. It's just that, yes, it likes to keep its air and water clean, and has some worker protections, but (as Governor Newsom's vetoes show) not nearly as much as it could have, had it had a more left-leaning Governor, for example.

[1] - [https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2018-general/sov/2018-c...](https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2018-general/sov/2018-complete- sov.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone else find this sort of thing super depressing?

When I lived in New York and happened to travel outside the state, I'd regularly get people I ran across telling me how surprised they were to hear that I was from New York, because I was so nice and their impression (despite usually never having set foot in New York) was that New Yorkers were assholes.

I told them that virtually everyone I ran across in New York was nice, but that it was a gigantic city and there were all sorts of people there, and because of that it's really not fair to paint all New Yorkers with such a broad brush.

I'd get similar reactions when I traveled abroad and revealed to people that I was from America. One person even told me that they thought every American carried a gun. I had to tell them that, no, actually no one I knew owned a gun, the majority of Americans nation-wide did not own a gun, and it was a country of 300 million people of all sorts, many from other countries and of many different cultures, different politics, different views of the world. It's really not fair to paint all Americans with one broad brush.

So now I hear that in Idaho simply being from California (a state with a population of 40 million people) could get you painted with a broad brush in Idaho. It just seems so petty, insular, xenophobic, and close minded. Wouldn't the world be better if we welcomed those who are different from us, at least as long as they also wanted to live with us in peace?

Maybe mine's considered a stereotypically Californian attitude that would get me pounded down in Idaho. If so, that's just really sad.

<comment><USER9> There's nothing wrong with having effective tools to protect life. If people know you have an irrational fear of some object, they just wont tell you. I live in Tucson, we have _plenty_ of guns, but in general, we carry them conceiled. There's no pemission slip. Weapons are the ultimate form of equality, they prevent the strong from ruling the weak. Places where only the criminals are armed are totally different.

<comment><USER10> > Weapons are the ultimate form of equality

...only if everyone is willing to carry? The lack of understanding here is astounding. The claim of lax gun laws promotes safety has been debunked hundreds of times. The average person does not have to have to carry a firearm in order to be safe, believe it or not.

It's sad, really, how people think owning guns makes them safer or more tough. Statistically the former is 100% not true. Maybe people have this fiction in their heads that they will "save the day" from the bad guy (or government?) Seems childish.

<comment><USER9> Tell that to a single mother. It's not your choice. It's a false argument that everyone needs to carry. Hence police get phone calls... to bring guns.

Are you going to politely ask the murderer to wait 5 minutes?

Nice "stats" you have there. [http://v6y.net/gun_stats.jpg](http://v6y.net/gun_stats.jpg)

<comment><USER10> What % of single mothers are willing to own a gun? The vast majority of them do not want that in their homes. This whole "wild west" mentality of gun ownership is both frightening and sad. Violent crime is at historic lows.

And what's the end game here? Once everyone gets guns, the criminals start using nerve gas? Would you suggest a single mother start keeping nerve gas in her home?

<comment><USER9> TIL gas is a defensive weapon?

Roughly 50% of US households have a firearm. If someone can break that out to single mothers that would be great, but as I said, it's not your choice to make.

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/oyez.case- media.ogg/case_data/2007/...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/oyez.case- media.ogg/case_data/2007/07-290/20080626o_07-290.ogg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Only sort of related, but... I really wish there could be a social network like Nextdoor that wasn't essentially flooded with NIMBYs. A local social network seems like a good idea, but in practice Nextdoor is the absolute worst social network I've ever encountered in two different locations that I've tried it. (And one of those locations was Michigan, so this isn't just California social issues causing this.)

<comment><USER6> What's funny about NextDoor is they constantly complain about homelessness, property crime, assault, etc., but continue to vote in the same kind of progressive supervisors who solve nothing. I see a few finally having it and saying they will look to more centrist candidates --but it's not going to change overnight.

<comment><USER12> Because (to be 100% Frank) nobody wants to pay to fix it, they just want the problem away from them and out of sight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Something about this reminded me of Hunter S. Thompson's campaign for Sheriff of Aspen, CO: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Aspen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Aspen)

<comment><USER7> There's also a great book called _Cows Are Freaky When They Look at You_ [1], which is about California hippie pot farmers who picked up and moved do rural Kansas in the 60's to grow their crop, and the boggle-eyed reactions they got from the locals.

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/Cows-Freaky-When-They- Look/dp/0922820...](https://www.amazon.com/Cows-Freaky-When-They- Look/dp/0922820139/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I find it interesting that Californian are disliked so much. California is made up of ALL walks of life. Every nationality comes to California and many leave after they see just how expensive it is to live . What I don't understand with the way the Boisians mindset is, the locals don't like that the prices are going up. Who is selling their homes at premium prices? Locals cashing in on the supply and demand. Yes, your neighbors and friends. The question really should go to your government, what are you doing to help with this supply and demand that is driving the prices up? Why aren't wages going up as there should be an abundance of construction jobs building new homes to help with demand. Not all Californian are rich, just middle class people who have been taken out of the housing market in California by those coming into California. We don't all agree with the way Californian is being run so we want a better way of life, just like those in Boise. Again your anger should be directed at your government officials. What are the doing to help with the cost of living there

</comment><comment><USER15> I moved to ID back in 1999, and it was a great place - hardly any traffic, people were friendly, everyone accepting of each other, etc. Within the last 5 years, I have seen an influx of people from AZ and CA moving in that is changing all that. They are bringing in the big city "snottiness" and behaviors that come with it. Also, they are bringing in their liberal attitudes to a state that is historically conservative and Republican. I left recently out of disgust, as it's not the place I moved to and loved. A lot of the people from CA seem to be standoffish to anyone not born and raised in the western states, and it shows in their cliquish attitudes. I won't be back to the Boise area in the future unless it changes.

</comment><comment><USER16> > One salvo in Richey's battle against newcomers was his property tax > proposal, which he called Proposition Zero One Two Three. His basic tenet: > The longer you live here, the less you pay. Sixty-year residents would pay > no property taxes, while newcomers would shoulder the burden.

That's just going to make the Californians feel right at home.

<comment><USER17> That brings to mind the concept of a stronf interpretation of the 14th ammendment protecting against bad laws and promoting justice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We are all more connected than we realize. Issues in California are issues for everyone, this protectionist attitude gets us nowhere in today's world where it's easier than ever to live anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER19> Marina Hinojosa of PBS did an episode of "America by the Numbers" hunting racism in Idaho:

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=R2TDc1lgZrQ](https://youtube.com/watch?v=R2TDc1lgZrQ)

</comment><comment><USER20> Exaggerated clickbait.

</comment><comment><USER21> Please don't come to Austin.</comment>


Data Structures from Scratch: Arrays, HashMaps, Lists and More - <AUTHOR> http://adrianmejia.com/blog/2018/04/28/Data-Structures-Time-Complexity-for-Beginners-Arrays-HashMaps-Linked-Lists-Stacks-Queues-tutorial/#.WwgCzw0caFw.hackernews <comment><AUTHOR> In this post, you will learn how HashMaps work internally, implement (simple) hash functions and how different DS implementations affect the runtime.</comment>


Validity, Trust, and the Design of Interfaces - <AUTHOR> http://www.anishathalye.com/2016/08/21/validity-trust-and-the-design-of-interfaces/ <comment><USER2> This is the system used by p≡p:

 _The full set of Privacy Status' are:_

• _Gray /Unknown/Unsecure/Unreliable Security_

 _Unknown is commonly for outgoing messages where no contact or address has yet been added to the To, Cc or Bcc fields of an email or message._

 _Unsecure or Unsecure for Some means that p≡p cannot find a way of sending or receiving the communication with any form of encryption (to all recipients if Unsecure for Some). This represents the default situation today which, in the case of email, usually must be considered as "secure" as sending a physical post card._

 _Unreliable means that p≡p cannot find a way of sending or receiving the communication reliably. So, for example, the communication could have been sent using S /MIME. With S/MIME it's known that if one public Certificate Authority (CA) is subverted then the security of the entire system is lost — potentially subverting all the entities that trust the compromised CA._

• _Yellow /Secure:_

 _The communication is encrypted using state-of-the-art technology. However, your communication partner still needs to be trusted by completing a handshake._

• _Green /Secure & Trusted:_

 _The communication is encrypted using state-of-the-art technology and your communication partner is trusted. Trust is confirmed with a handshake where, using a side-channel (e. g. by phone call), communication partners verify they are each who they say they are and the communication can be fully trusted by all reasonable means expected from a regular user._

• _Red /Mistrusted, Under Attack:_

 _Mistrusted means that you have previously failed a handshake. You cannot trust that your communication partner is who they say they are._

 _Under Attack means that either a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack has to be assumed or another (serious) cryptographic error occurred. The communication channel must be considered unsecure and any exchanged information not private._</comment>