Why Everything They're Saying About the Amazon Is Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/08/26/why-everything-they-say-about-the-amazon-including-that-its-the-lungs-of-the-world-is-wrong/#306c758d5bde <comment> temp-dude-87844 These kinds of outrage episodes spread in part because their message seems plausible, and they tap into the anxieties of the young and the guilt of the elites and the middle-aged. They originate from viral posts that stir up emotions while questioning the lack of media coverage in mainstream media --- long a popular tactic used by the right, but in recent years adopted by loud voices on seemingly the far left.

Without digging into every case, it's hard to nail down whether these are organic, authentic attempts by would-be influencers or true believers to bring attention to an issue, or whether they're planted stories designed to simply stoke pre-existing anxieties further. Someone should try to track this down. Nonetheless, media outlets will eventually cover the issue and the resulting social media outrage, and occasionally perpetuate false or misleading information, or highly biased viewpoints noting that bias in the process. A few publications debunking this after the fact is unlikely to reverse the spread of misinformation.

</comment><comment><USER2> I know it's easy to crap on people believing whatever is shared on social media and then laugh about how everyone got it wrong..

But I just don't like this article. I don't see how a 7% increase in forest fires in the Amazon is nothing to care about and something about the tone of the article doesn't sit well with me.

It's somehow trying to convince me that deforestation is going down, this is an overreaction and it's hurting farmers.

I don't know about that... i'll just side with I want to remain living on this planet and I want my children to as well, more power to environmental viral hits, even if they got the facts.. a bit wrong.

<comment><USER3> I agree. The whole breakdown of this article is this:

\- Celebrities used wrong pictures in combination with amazon forest fires \- Amazon is not the lungs of the earth because Dan Nepstad (who is he?) says so (even tho you would find it hard to find any biologist that thinks trees DON'T produce oxygen.) \- There were forest fires in the amazon in the past \- And there is only a small puny 7% increase anyway (is this small? is this big? ) (how many 7% increase-years can we have before the whole forest is gone?) \- Soy plantations and (cow) pastures ALSO produce oxygen so it doesn't even matter anyway (although in light of global warming its ofc more about carbon storage and production, but the writer conveniently forgets about this part) \- Coutinho makes the argument that since there has been next to no outrage in previous years, there is no reason for outrage now (or it's unfair towards bolsonaro? I don't know what point Coutinho is trying to make here )

The writer of the article molds all these claims into a conclusion that doesn't follow logically from the actual statements. At best this writer is clueless, at worst he is personally benefited by spreading this falsehood.

It's a whole lot of fingerpointing and whataboutism. EVEN IF both sides were evenly wrong, there is one side that's trying to save the rainforest without personal gain, while the other side doesnt give a shit and happens to make money of it. Just based on this, who'd you think be more inclined to lie?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Environment protection tips from Forbes and WSJ. Great. Same goes for their "tech" coverage that's pushed here on a regular basis for some reason.

<comment><USER5> This is a pretty conceited view. The article makes some decent points and cites at least one expert. I was particularly interested in how the author argued that criticisms against Brazilian government from Europe ring of neocolonialism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The reaction from foreign media, global celebrities, and NGOs in Brazil stems from a romantic anti-capitalism common among urban elites."

No, it stems from looking at the sky and seeing it's black at 3pm because of smoke coming from 2000 miles way. There is nothing romantic to it. People, especially newer generations, have come to realize that capitalism _as is_ is unsustainable. It doesn't matter if the increase in deforestation is 25, 15 or only 7%. This number shouldn't be increasing at all.

There is a vast number of species (plants and animals) whose population is severely endangered, and we cannot foresee what the impact will be should we continue to destroy them. We too care about the economy, but we don't see why large state agribusiness profits have to be prioritized in detriment of the environment. There's a multitude of ways to improve soy production without land expansion - it just so happens that burning wood is much cheaper and until recently nobody was watching.

<comment><USER7> Rest of the post aside, in case anyone is wondering the "blackened skies two thousand miles away" bit is literal truth. We literally saw darker skies in a way that is impossible to take for regular city pollution.

I recall ash falling from the sky due to a small volcanic eruption from really, really far away when I was a child. Seeing the sky gray and feeling the air "stickier" reminded me of that, I had completely forgotten</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Windows alternative to the Mac app store? - <AUTHOR>

I operate a micro ISV and sell Windows and Mac versions of the same software application. The Windows version can be purchased from my own website ( http://hartcw.com ) using paypal/fastspring, but the Mac version is also available on the Apple Mac app store.
Sales from the Mac app store make up the large majority, as its so easy for a mac user to browse and search for apps directly from their desktop. Especially now with Lion, because the Mac app store is installed on every machine sold! This makes me think I must be missing a large market of PC users, who just do not get exposed to such software catalogues and hence never see the app.
What are the alternatives for listing/marketing Windows applications? <comment><USER2> There's Intel appup but I don't know how popular it is. <http://www.appup.com/applications/index></comment>


Truth and the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.isoc.org/internet/conduct/truth.shtml

<comment><AUTHOR> Whenever someone suggests an Internet filter to protect the children as David Cameron is right now I am reminded of this short and very powerful piece of writing by Vint Cerf.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you struggling with procrastination? I'll coach you, for free - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
I'm Ali, founder @ criminull.com .
I'm offering a completely free, 1 hour audio phone call to help developers overcome procrastination.
Are you having trouble getting started? Feeling burnt out / demotivated? Spending time on social media instead of working? I'll talk to you in detail about your project, how it can be broken down into tiny steps which are more achievable, and other strategies to make you more productive.
I'm working on an AI tool to help w/ programmer procrastination. These calls will help me understand the issues that devs other than myself go through.
Feel free to pick a spot on my calendly:
https://calendly.com/aliakhtar/60min
Or email me: email@example.com
Or DM me on twitter: https://twitter.com/AliAkhtar_
Everything we talk about will be 100% confidential from my end.
Thanks for reading! <comment><USER2> This is very cool. I think I could be very good cobaya.

\- Too much projects at the same time \- Starting but not finishing \- Getting bored after project is built and not pursuing sales enough \- checking twitter too often..

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> New link: [https://calendly.com/aliakhtar/dev- call](https://calendly.com/aliakhtar/dev-call)</comment>


Source of the famous "Now you have two problems" quote - <AUTHOR> http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247

<comment><USER2> But he doesn't track down the source of the quote, only of a famous usage of it by JWZ. If you read to the end of the post, it's clear that no one knows who originated it, but it was in .sig files already in 1988.

Edit: simple googling reveals that David Tilbrook took credit for a variant of the line in 1989 (<http://grosskurth.ca/bib/1989/tilbrook.pdf>, search for "awk"). Since that's long before anyone would have had reason to misappropriate it, I'd say that's pretty convincing.

Friedl, as the author of a (the) book on regexes, is only interested in the regex version of the quote. But that one is obviously just a derivative.

Edit 2: I attempted to email Tilbrook to see if he wants to comment on the joke. If I get a reply I'll post it here. Silly, perhaps, but this kind of folklore is fun.

Edit 3: The email bounced. Is there an HNer with a premium LinkedIn account who wants to message him for us? I found his profile but it won't let me do that without paying (no way in hell). If so, email me (address in profile) and I'll send over what I wrote.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what you're claiming to have discovered via simple googling, but the Friedl article explicitly discusses Tilbrook and the awk quotation. Tilbrook is exactly who is credited in the 1988 sig that Friedl mentions.

<comment><USER2> Did I really make my point that badly? What you're saying is obvious; that's where I started.

The point is that the end of Friedl's post shows that the quote antedates JWZ, but he's not really interested in tracking it down any further, presumably because it was JWZ who applied it to regexes, which is Friedl's area of interest. Personally, I'd rather know the origin of the quote itself. I like knowing the sources of things.

As for what I was "claiming to have discovered" (though I hope not nearly so pompously as that), I would have thought that was obvious too: additional evidence that the line was Tilbrook's. I noticed later that a commenter to the OP cited the same link I did, so it's pretty findable.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if you made your point badly or not, but your tone surpised/confused me. You begin by saying, "But he doesn't track down the source of the quote, only of a famous usage of it by JWZ." Later you add that Friedl as the author of such and such "is _only_ interested..." in so and so (my emphasis). In both cases, I read that as criticism - as if Friedl failed to do the important thing that you were now doing. In this post again you you say that Friedl is "not really interested" in the source.

But, in fact, Friedl _did_ track down the source of the original quotation - to a reasonable degree of certainty. It's the same source you found. So I guess I don't see what Friedl didn't track down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting to me that JWZ likes Java the language and dislikes the JVM. Of course, most of his anti-JVM posts are at least ten years old, and the JVM was quite a bit worse then, but it seems odd to me that the Java language would look good to someone with a background in Lisp and C.

The sentiment I see from most hackers I know these days is exactly the opposite: the Java language is not well-liked, but the JVM is.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure it's fair to say he likes the language and dislikes the JVM. More that he thought it unwise and uneccesary that they (along with the class library and the security model) were all being bundled together:

From _Java sucks_ (2000) <http://www.jwz.org/doc/java.html>

" _The fact is that there are four completely different things that go by the name ``Java'':

A language;

An enormous class library;

A virtual machine;

A security model.

Sun would like you to believe that these are all the same thing, and that the name ``Java'' implies all of them, but this is marketing fiction. Worse than that, the fact that Sun has tried so hard to push this idea has done grievous damage to the acceptance of Java.

Java-the-language is, overall, a very good thing, and works well.

Java-the-class-library is mostly passable.

Java-the-virtual-machine is an interesting research project, a nice proof of concept, and is basically usable for a certain class of problems (those problems where speed isn't all that important: basically, those tasks where you could get away with using Perl instead of C.)

Java-the-security-model is another interesting research project, but it only barely works right now. In a few years, maybe they'll have it figured out or replaced. If Sun hadn't tried so hard to conflate these four completely different things, if they had first shipped native-code Java compilers, then the VM, then the security model, then Java probably would have completely displaced C++ by now._"

and

 _"Today, I program in C.

I think C is a pretty crummy language. I would like to write the same kinds of programs in a better language._"

<comment><USER6> That rant is from 2000 indeed, where you could still like Java the language. Back then (late '90s) Java the language was nothing like what we have today. If your first language was, I don't know, C or Perl, you could read some short-ish Java book (or the Sun tutorials) and learn enough to write a little applet to spiff up your website.

These days learning Java, with all the stuff that has been added to the language (J2EE, beans, annotations, what have you), is mostly pointless. Lots of better alternatives. Unless you know you are going to be working on some big pre-existing codebase, or want to get a job working on one.

<comment><USER4> Java from the late '90s still had the characteristic that most hackers I know dislike in it today; it was intentionally designed not to be as powerful as it could be. Interestingly, Python seems to be well-liked by hackers despite sharing some of that characteristic[0]. It may be that the motivation is different. In Java it seems to be "you can't be trusted with sharp tools" while in Python it's more along the lines of "code written that way isn't beautiful", but I think it's more of a fine line than people realize.

I've managed to get a bit off-topic. Maybe I should write a blog post on this instead.

[0] <http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=98196>

<comment><USER2> That's not overly off-topic, but yes, write a post about it. There's a subtle point in there.

<comment><USER7> I'm not entirely sure I agree with the premise, but I'd also love to read a post exploring it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> another regular expression quote (from <http://code.google.com/p/re2/wiki/Syntax>):

I define UNIX as "30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof." —Don Knuth

</comment><comment><USER9> Shameless self plug: I created nyhtp.com based off of this quote after talking to a fellow dev as a quick learning experience with Sinatra/Mongo. The history was interesting, though.

<comment><USER10> <http://www.nyhtp.com> appears to be behind HTTP/Auth. Is this intentional?

<comment><USER9> It was a configuration error with www/no www. I fixed it, though. Thanks for the heads-up.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for fixing it.

<http://nyhtp.com/hS1>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here is a regular expression for C++-style comments

       (/\*([^*]|[\r\n]|(\*+([^*/]|[\r\n])))*\*+/)|(//.*)

(source: <http://ostermiller.org/findcomment.html> )

I recently wrote a lexicasl analyser for a language that uses C++-style comments. My first attempt used regular expressions, but I later scrapped them for something I could understand. Here is the relevant bit:

          # //... comments
          if ss.isNextSkip("//"):
             ss.skipPast("\n")
             return

          # /*...*/ comments
          if ss.isNextSkip("/*"):
             ss.skipPast("*/")
             return

I will leave it to the reader to decide which is clearer.

</comment><comment><USER12> (2006)

</comment><comment><USER13> What a delight to read those archives...</comment>


Path ways to become a Future Physicist - <AUTHOR> http://www.physicslog.com/be-a-future-physicist/ <comment><USER2> This submitter has submitter this _ten times_ in less than 6 days.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best embedded chat service? - <AUTHOR>

My organization is looking for adding visitors' chat to our website. All the services I could find don't look very modern or professional. Do any of you of anything good? (It can also be SaaS) <comment><USER2> We use Olark ([http://www.olark.com/](http://www.olark.com/)) on hackerjobs.co.uk and even though we use the most basic, free service, I've found it to be fantastic. Plenty of customisable options, even on the free account. I wouldn't hesitate for a minute to recommend it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I wasn't clear on our requirement. We do not need a chat between a customer and a sales/support person, but a chat between visitors...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best YouTube channel to learn C and C++? - <AUTHOR> From beginner's What are the best resources? <comment><USER2> C and C++ are very different beasts. Since you mention them as similar, may I hazard a guess that what you mean by "C and C++" is "the recommended first languages to learn"? In that case, C and C++ have lost that crown decades ago. Today you should learn Python as your first language. Maybe try the google videos if you like video.

You should learn C from the K&R book after you have some experience in a higher-level language, and/or x86 assembly language.

C++... first of all, get ready for a world of pain. And only study it if you have a specific project that can't be done with any other language. I don't know what your first C++ book should be, but your second one should be Effective C++.

<comment><USER3> I think C _can_ be a good introductory language, but it should definitely be coupled with a CS textbook so you understand why C offers the things it does.

I definitely agree that C++ should be picked up later, though. Stroustrup's A Tour of C++ - [https://www.amazon.com/Tour-C- Depth/dp/0321958314](https://www.amazon.com/Tour-C-Depth/dp/0321958314) \- is a good introduction, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The best Youtube playlists I've found for quickly absorbing fundamental concepts in C++ are:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/BoQianTheProgrammer/playlists](https://www.youtube.com/user/BoQianTheProgrammer/playlists)

I can't recommend these highly enough. Before diving into them, you should have a fundamental understanding of OOP, pointers and memory management.

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you tried a... book?

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried some online tutorials. Can you suggest some videos, books?

<comment><USER5> K&R C</comment></comment></comment>


NewRelic announces first on-demand performance management tool for PHP apps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.newrelic.com/2010/12/08/new-relic-rpm-for-php-is-ga/

<comment><USER2> HN is not an appropriate forum for announcing new products for the company you work for. Flagged.</comment>


Azure Security Lab: a new space for Azure research and collaboration - <AUTHOR> https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2019/08/05/azure-security-lab-a-new-space-for-azure-research-and-collaboration <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: Microsoft bumps Azure max bug bounty to $40k, introduces Azure segregated hosts for researchers to test against, and formalizes their Safe Harbor terms [1].

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/bounty-safe- harbor](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/msrc/bounty-safe-harbor)</comment>


Legal Ponzi Scheme Opens in Russia - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-06/is-global-finance-a-ponzi-scheme-ask-a-russian-expert.html

<comment><USER2> Note that he's rebranding it as a lottery. Something of a half lottery & half game of chicken. If you withdraw too early, you earn some, but not much, if you withdraw too late, you risk losing all your investment.</comment>


WorkMonk Steals Rdio's Website Design - <AUTHOR> http://workmonk.com/

<comment><USER2> Usually I am always arguing against people who claim some other site ripped them off when, in fact, they were simply inspired but this is a pretty bad one.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's already been taken down.

<comment><USER4> Anyone have a screenshot?

<comment><USER5> Try the cache:link or you can see it here <http://cl.ly/IGd0>. Good for them for being very quick with clearing up the confusion by taking it down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reference site: <http://styleboost.com/links/1628/></comment>


The Best Free and Open Source Data Mining Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.junauza.com/2010/11/free-data-mining-software.html <comment><USER2> If I may plug the 140kit (<http://140kit.com>) which is an open source Twitter mining and analytics solution that uses the streaming API to make downloading millions of Tweets in easily accessible formats quick and easy for anyone.

(doh, it looks like its down for some reason. Well, when it's back up- its there. I'm sure you could find the github repo and run it yourself since it is open source). Written in Rails.

<comment><USER3> This subdomain is up: <http://hackfest.140kit.com/>

<comment><USER2> Oh thank you! i should have known that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess R is a bit more DIY than these frameworks, but it has a very large collection of tools. I've found libraries for everything from CART (classification and regression trees), to SVM, to HMM learning, to clustering, to EM. R with libraries from CRAN is my go-to tool for statistical learning.

<comment><USER5> I am amazed R didn't make it to the list.

<comment><USER6> Something like SAS or DAP would be better suited for large data sets, as R tends to load everything on the RAM.

From <http://www.gnu.org/software/dap/> : "Because Dap processes files one line at a time, rather than reading entire files into memory, it can be, and has been, used on data sets that have very many lines and/or very many variables."

<comment><USER4> This is definitely a problem with R, although the biggest problem IMO is that a lot of libraries aren't multicore capable. Fixing the memory problem was just a matter of adding lots of ram into our workstation, we can't fix the "can't use more than one core at a time" problem as easily.

<comment><USER7> Yes you can: just run it in many single-core VMs. This what I was recommended by vendor making legacy single-threaded software. They were the best in their field, so they never really tried to port it to multicore ;(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Weka isn't limited to the GUI if you want to mine your data. It's a regular JAR file you can drop in your server-side web application and make calls to it like any other Java library. I've used it in some of my apps for some clustering algorithms (the easy stuff, since it can get complicated).

I've also written a few articles on Weka if you want to read a few nice tutorials on how to use it. I'm not a Data Mining Expert, but I've had a few semesters of it in grad school.

[http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os- weka...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-weka1/)

[https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os- wek...](https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-weka2/)

[https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os- wek...](https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-weka3)

</comment><comment><USER9> How cool is that! I'm studying Computer Science at the University that makes Orange (the first on the list). And the professor who originally came up with it is an advisor for my startup.

<comment><USER10> What is your professor advising you on, specifically? I'm curious because the computer science profs I know would not have the first clue about running a startup. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

<comment><USER9> Actually a lot of my startup is based on the idea that we can create the machine-learning/data-mining algorithms. He's the lead of the faculty department that deals primarily with data mining.

So essentially, he's advising on algorithm stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mahout should clearly be on this list!

</comment><comment><USER3> Good list, but I would add NLTK.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is precisely why I posted this to HN. While it's a nice list, I can't help but think that HN can fill in the missing pieces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> from my bookmarks:

<http://gate.ac.uk/>

<http://mallet.cs.umass.edu/download.php>

<http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/index.html>

<http://incubator.apache.org/uima/>

<http://elefant.developer.nicta.com.au/>

<comment><USER13> I don't think lingpipe is open source

<comment><USER14> The Royalty Free version is open source, however it appears to be a highly restricted version of the GPL v1 license, where any application that uses lingpipe, by API calls or even by separately using the output of lingpipe, must comply with an Open Source Initiative license.

Somewhat interesting clause that may restrict "freedom", but none-the-less still enables it to be open-source.

<http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/licenses/lingpipe-license-1.txt>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've seen some great stuff done with Rapid Miner. Really cool package -- plus I've heard it supports all the Weka components.

</comment><comment><USER16> Chart.io (YCS10) is building something like these as a service. If you're interested in getting on the private beta email me at email@example.com.

<http://chart.io>

</comment><comment><USER17> google bought a company within the last couple years that had made a really smart open source data app that ran in the browser or something. Anybody know what it was called?

<comment><USER18> Did it become Google Refine? Its a downloadable app that creates a local webserver to run in a browser.

<http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/>

<comment><USER17> Yeah that's it. It was Freebase before.</comment></comment></comment>


Insider trading case cracked through LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://m.smh.com.au/business/alleged-insider-trading-case-cracked-through-linkedin-20140511-zr9mw.html

<comment><USER2> Non-mobile link: [http://www.smh.com.au/business/alleged-insider-trading- case-...](http://www.smh.com.au/business/alleged-insider-trading-case-cracked- through-linkedin-20140511-zr9mw.html)

There are some odd vague statements in there about the AFP (Australian Federal Police) making "covert enquiries" to Facebook.</comment>


Chomsky, Wolfe and me - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/why-language-is-not-everything-that-noam-chomsky-said-it-is <comment><USER2> _> Most recently, the disagreements in the field have pulled the American author Tom Wolfe into the fray, with a new book... This has changed the debate a bit, engaging many more people than ever before, but now it's centred around Wolfe, Noam Chomsky – and me._

What a self-aggrandizing distortion. A non-specialist author writes a research-free book thumbing his nose at Chomsky (also, Darwin), gets some press coverage "engaging many more people than even before" \-- except for, you know, linguists -- and now the "debate" is "centred" around this guy who was mentioned in the book.

Give me a break. Here's one of many takedowns of Wolfe, this one by _Scientific American_.[1] And here's a takedown of Everett, who basically is the only expert on the sole, inaccessible language he claims pokes holes in Universal Grammar, so may be fabricating results.[2]

[1] [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/tom- wolfe-...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/tom-wolfe- challenges-chomsky-s-theory-scientific-american-does-it-better/)

[2] [http://www.chronicle.com/article/angry- words/131260](http://www.chronicle.com/article/angry-words/131260)

<comment><USER3> Your [2] summarizes the whole situation evenhandedly. Far from being a take down of Everett, it ultimately comes down slightly on his side of the controversy.

<comment><USER2> It literally ends with Everett's MIT collaborator surprising him by saying the data "falsified" his theory and another researcher noting that there was some embedding, contrary to Everett's theory.

<comment><USER3> This is a silly thing to argue about, but the article ends with a 5 paragraphs on how "Everett is far from the only current Chomsky challenger." And Everett has his own explanation of why his ideas still stand. It is a good article and people who are casually interested in the topic should read it.

<comment><USER2> I agree it's worth reading. But you're conflating Everett, whose theory does not hold up well to peer scrutiny, with everyone else who thinks there are problems with Generative Grammar, which is teased but not actually examined by the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worth mentioning this refutation to Daniel Everett's argument by linguist at the University of Toronto published on Medium: [https://email@example.com/dont-believe-the-rumours- univ...](https://email@example.com/dont-believe-the-rumours-universal- grammar-is-alive-and-well-58c1fbc5608b#.9c1iiaudx)

>Which brings us to the mistaken view of the actual theory of UG that article such as the SA piece present. Daniel Everett, a field linguist and former evangelical missionary, gained prominence in 2005 when he claimed that Pirahã, a language spoken by a remote Amazonian tribe showed properties that categorically refuted the UG hypothesis. Central to UG theory, in Everett's estimation, is embedding, the ability of a language to place, for example, a clause inside another clause (as in "I heard that Maura laughed"). Pirahã, it seemed, was unable to embed.

>On the surface, this does seem like a knockout punch to UG, but there's just one problem with it: Everett is mistaken about what UG is.

<comment><USER5> The author of that article follows with "The source of [Everett's] confusion seems to be the term recursion, which is the central concept of modern Generative linguistics... Any expression larger than two words, then, requires recursion, regardless of whether there is embedding in that expression." This seems to make UG look like trivial feature of language - something like "we find it to be universally true that human languages _use statements of more than one word_ "?

I'm not knocking generative linguistics, but I get the impression that this author has done it a disservice in his eagerness to put down Everett.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 2005 was dark times. Iraq had become the first war of the 21st century, and had already descended into medieval decapitations.

There were intellectuals that stood as symbols against the abomination of it all. Chomsky was one such personality.

So polarizing were these times, that one had to question whether an academic criticism was based in legitimate intellect, or simply represented a contrived effort to discredit and ruin a politically relevant individual.

With Fox News on the prowl, Chomsky's co-authorship of the book, Manufacturing Consent, made him a valid target for character assassination, and simultaneously a defensible individual to those Fox News would so polarize.

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

Maybe this other scholar's criticisms are academically valid within the context of linguistics, but without considering the cultural relevance and stature Chomsky held during that period to those that despised the premise of Iraq, he had doomed himself to the cold shoulder of many. His writings, after all, would not be published in a vacuum.

This is the context under which the author of this article should come to understand his situation. It was bad timing. Tone deaf to debacles unfolding elsewhere.

<comment><USER7> Would it be OK to publish criticism of Chomsky's work in linguistics 3 years later when Chomsky shook hands with the leader of Hezbollah, which targets civilians and children in its offensive operations? Or would Chomsky's standing as an intellectual have gone up at that moment because Hezbollah targets the right kind of civilians and children? Which political views should shield a scientist from criticism in their own field? If you can tell, I'm sure many will rush to adopt those views, and great benefits to science will follow.

<comment><USER8> Evidence that Hezbollah targets civilians and children?

<comment><USER7> Here you go (there's tons more but it's not my job to answer questions like "Evidence that Hitler was a Nazi?" in detail):

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

My favorite section is "Treatment in prison":

During his imprisonment, Kuntar married Kifah Kayyal (born in 1963), an Israeli Arab woman who is an activist on behalf of militant prisoners. They later divorced. While they were married, she received a monthly stipend from the Israeli government, an entitlement due to her status as a wife of a prisoner.[25] Kayyal is an Israeli citizen of Palestinian origin from Acre, now residing in Ramallah, who was then serving a life sentence for her activities in the Palestine Liberation Front.[30] Kuntar was allowed conjugal visits with his wife while in prison.[31] They had no children. In addition, while in prison Kuntar participated in a program under which Palestinian security prisoners took online courses from University in Israel, and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Social and Political Science.[32]

<comment><USER8> That was a really interesting read. Thank you.

That being said. Hitler is to the Nazi's as attacking children is to Hezbollah isn't really equivalent. I get it. You are pro-Israeli. There's no need for that BS.

<comment><USER7> I meant that it's equivalent in that it's common knowledge; I could and maybe should have used "evidence that ducks quack" as my analogy. If it's not common knowledge where you live, I apologize for assuming that you were demanding evidence of an obvious fact, though the ones who should really apologize is the media in your part of the world that cared to tell you about Hezbollah but did not bother to tell you what they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The author seems to make a very valid point. In social sciences, validation by peers and reputation seems to be at least as important as factual correctness.

Chomsky's 'theories' do sound vague and pompous. It is never nice to see counterexamples to your conjectures, but he should deal with like a grown-up. I do understand that this is very hard when you are praised the way he was and is.

<comment><USER10> >Chomsky's 'theories' do sound vague and pompous.

Have you read any of Chomsky's work on syntax?

<comment><USER11> From the OP:

> But Chomsky is no Einstein. And linguistics is not physics. Unlike Einstein, > for example, Chomsky has been forced to retract at one time or another just > about every major proposal he has made up to his current research, which he > calls 'Minimalism'. Concepts that helped make him famous, such as 'deep > structure' and 'surface structure', were thrown out years ago. And unlike > physics, there is no significant mathematics or clear way to disprove > Chomsky's broader claims – part of the reason for the current controversy.

> Over time, universal grammar has been reduced from a rich set of supposedly > innate principles to whatever it is about human biology that makes human > language possible (by which definition, as I have said numerous times, the > physical brain itself is all there is to 'universal grammar'). And once he > got down to the narrow faculty of language, supposedly the one thing that > makes human language possible and unavailable to other creatures, Chomsky > claimed it was nothing more nor less than recursion – the ability to put one > thing inside another of the same type. Then Pirahã came along.

Ignoring Everett's own work and the Pirahã, is this in fact true?

<comment><USER10> No, not really. It's true that Chomsky has modified his ideas in response to new evidence/arguments. Exactly the same thing happens in physics and any other scientific discipline.

The claim that FLN is nothing more than recursion is from one rather speculative paper Chomsky co-authored in 2002. If you look at his actual theoretical proposals, or more importantly, those of everyone else working in generative syntax, there's lots more to it than just "recursion".

<comment><USER5> The perception that UG is just about recursion does not come only from Chomsky's critics. This article, which is a criticism of Everett by a linguist, makes a big deal of recursion and seems to be implying that UG takes a form that is practically un-falsifiable (it may just be a poor defense of the concept.) [https://firstname.lastname@example.com/dont-believe-the-rumours- univ...](https://email@example.com/dont-believe-the-rumours-universal- grammar-is-alive-and-well-58c1fbc5608b#.9c1iiaudx)

<comment><USER10> That's a blog post by a PhD student. I'm talking about ~50 years of literature with concrete theoretical proposals that involve much more than just the general concept of recursion. Check one of Chomsky's recent syntax papers and see if you find that recursion is the only component of the theory.

Also, the blog post does not say that UG is just about recursion. It just says that it's a central concept within generative linguistics, which is true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So much vitriol - this is the sort of argument that could probably be represented in a relatively simple argument graph that highlights which contentions are in dispute, and which rebuttals are unaddressed. Instead it sounds like a lot of energy is being invested in irrelevant strawmen, probably on both sides.

</comment><comment><USER13> > _John spoke. Mary thinks. John is wrong. John believes. The moon is green > cheese._

Seems forth-like, requiring a stack to be understood.

If a language requires recursion to process it, is that language "recursive" despite not possessing explicit recursive syntax?

<comment><USER14> No this in not forth-like (i.e. referring to the programming language Forth, see also reverse polish notation [1-2]), as in Forth operands precede operations:

"the moon green cheese is john believes john wrong is mary thinks."

Note that this almost exactly corresponds to japanese grammar (which really feels very forth-like)

tsukisama ha midori no chi-zu da to john ga shinjite, machigatte to mary ga omotte to john ga itta.

An interesting resulting property of japanese grammar is that attributive phrases are grammatically equivalent to recursive sentences. I.e. "aoi sora" meaning "blue sky" is gramatically the same as "the sky, which is blue". (as "aoi" = "blue" is a fully valid single-word sentence in japanese grammar)

What you refer to is Lisp-like grammar. But in Lisp you have parentheses that help with making the grouping explicit. Maybe Lisp without parentheses is more difficult to understand than reverse polish notation because the "stack" needed to parse the sentence needs to be build by reading the sentence in reverse.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_\(programming_language\))

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The story of the failure of elites in all circles and their intransigence or out right opposition to the TRUTH has been the overarching story of my lifetime.

It makes me cautious, though. The monetization of acrimony actively seeks ways to tell that story over and over again. If the author's paper is good science, its idea's will persist.

Not every scrappy upstart will overturn the empire and not every Goliath is evil.

<comment><USER15> [Nose rubbing intensifies]

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Chomsky's claim is that humans, unlike other animals, have the capacity to use recursion not that all humans use that structure. So the Piraha objection is irrelevant unless you can demonstrate the Pirahas cannot understand recursive language.

<comment><USER5> My understanding is that Everett claims that Chomsky claims that not only do humans have the capacity to use recursion but that it is an essential feature of all our languages and for us to have languages (whether this is an accurate representation of Chomsky's views, I do not know; Pinker has stated that Chomsky is hard to pin down.) Everett further states that only Piraha children who have learned a recursive language as their first language are able to speak it recursively; adults, it seems, may learn another vocabulary, but will not use it recursively. Therefore, according to Everett, we have a human population (those who have not learned another language in childhood) with a functioning language, who display no capacity for recursion, even when exposed to it.

This seems to me to leave a sliver of hope for what is alleged to be Chomsky's theory, but I would prefer to see more data than more argument over the current data.

<comment><USER10> It is not an accurate representation of Chomsky's views. GP is correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Chomsky was simply ahead of the curve wrt achieving truth through repetition, slipperiness, and ad-hominem attacks on the credentials of your critics.</comment>


Top 10 Fatal URL Design Mistakes - <AUTHOR> http://seo2.0.onreact.com/top-10-fatal-url-design-mistakes

<comment><USER2> I totally agree, except the date one. I feel like many people don't take the time to make their URLs look good.

I do like when I can go to /2008/06 and see all the posts from June.

Here's some more interesting reading on URL design: <http://shiflett.org/blog/2008/mar/urls-can-be-beautiful>

<comment><USER3> That's not the only reason. It is suggested that URLs be dated like that to ensure their uniqueness and to generate a URL that is more permanent.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A sound-effect chatroom for meeting engagement - <AUTHOR> https://soundroom.azurewebsites.net/#hn <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN. I was playing around with SignalR and built this webapp that lets you create and join chatrooms and send sound effects to each other. I've used this in mid-large meetings where you don't want people coming off mute all the time just to laugh or answer questions, etc. Hope you find it useful.

Source code available[1], and I wrote a blog post[2] which steps through the process of building a simplified version of it if you want to build and run your own.

[1]: [https://github.com/CurtisLusmore/soundroom](https://github.com/CurtisLusmore/soundroom)

[2]: [https://lusmo.re/posts/meeting- companion](https://lusmo.re/posts/meeting-companion)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everybody for checking this out. I gotta say it's pretty wild sitting in the room all day and hearing people come in and out, communicating with you only via a handful of sound effects. Not quite what the app was built for but even this is pretty fun.

EDIT: Aaaand we exceeded my free tier! I've bumped it up to the next tier for now.

EDIT: Thanks to whoever sent hundreds of party horn noises non-stop for 5 minutes, you've made me consider putting throttling in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Lots of fun!

Could be interesting to let 'rooms' upload their own new sounds, for a dynamically expanding, community-specific audio reactions.

Also, to make each button have alternate 'just for me' or 'for everyone' options – so you can learn what an icon does, without triggering it for everyone. (The button motions/activations that accompany each activation could also be different, in animation or coloring, based on whether they've been triggered remotely or by the current user.)

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. :) Custom sounds is definitely on my list, but at the moment this is surprisingly simple and all running on free-tier Azure stuff. I'm still thinking about the simplest way to allow not only hosting of uploaded sound effects but storing custom layouts.

In the meantime, feel free to clone the repo or build your own from scratch by following the blog post I linked in my other comment. As I said it's surprisingly simple and you can run it for free.

The "For Me Only" mode would definitely help not only first-timers, but everybody listening to first-timers mashing the buttons. I guess you can always just open a different room and try it out but a dedicated mode would be handy too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just wanted to let you know there's no sound in Safari as the user has never given permission to play audio. So every time you run `audio.current.play();` it gets rejected with a `NotAllowedError`.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks for letting me know. I've raised an issue in GitHub and I'll take a look.

Edit: I just pushed a change which hopefully addresses this, which unfortunately temporarily boots everybody from the room. Still a problem with the 2 emoji which don't display on MacOS or iOS (yawn and deaf 🧏).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is fun!

At work we moved from zoom to [https://team.video](https://team.video), which has emoji reactions with sound effects that are ... a little bit more "grown up", if I can say it that way.

We actually really use them all the time. What's great is that especially in bigger groups, it's so much easier to read the room when you can see everyone's reactions. Without this, when people are quiet, you never know whether it's because they're not engaged or they're being polite, or they don't want to find the exact moment to unmute and interject verbally.

I can't imagine going back to zoom/hangouts now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh awesome, I'll have to take a look at this. Thanks for sharing. I certainly have noticed when you lose all in-person meetings you start to notice the quiet in meetings more, people are reluctant to unmute just so you can hear them laugh or make reassuring noises like yes and uh-huh. I think sound effects can make a big difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I need this one for design review meetings... "what does everyone think about using ___ here?"

[https://youtu.be/YP5-lgFaCBg?t=19](https://youtu.be/YP5-lgFaCBg?t=19)

And one of my favorite radio calls of all time, "he's got blockers!"

[https://youtu.be/Sm6eZ9V9RbM?t=124](https://youtu.be/Sm6eZ9V9RbM?t=124)

</comment><comment><USER6> I hoped for a "wha-pssshhhh" noise (like a super fake slap). I was disappointed. I would also settle for "TROLOLO!" or "START THE GAME ALREADY!"

I am curious to see this actually used. If I were a presenter I would not use something like this (distracting, potentially irritating). As a viewer, I'm ok with a Discord/other chatroom running separate from the meeting. Questions from the separate room tend to percolate up to the main meeting room if no one knows the answer.

My experience with medium/large presentations is all college lecture, so take the above with a grain of salt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I definitely know what you mean. I've found this works well for meetings with your team or people you work really closely with, especially once the initial novelty of just mashing all the sound effects wears off. There's a cut-down version with just 6 core sounds (clap, yes, no, can't see, can't hear, check the chat) that might be more palatable: [https://meeting- companion.azurewebsites.net/](https://meeting-companion.azurewebsites.net/)</comment></comment>


Programming fonts comparison - <AUTHOR> http://www.s9w.io/font_compare/ <comment><USER2> I use secureCRT, consolas 12pt. The font looks good and my default editor is Vim(mostly C).</comment>


How to Create an Interactive WebGL Network Graph Using R - <AUTHOR> http://minimaxir.com/2016/12/interactive-network/ <comment><USER2> For visually investigating 10K-1M things on the IPython/Jupyter side of the world, folks have been enjoying our GPU library: github.com/graphistry/pygraphistry . Feel free to contact for an API key.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a nice looking graph drawer, does it work with NetworkX from python ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. [https://plot.ly/ipython-notebooks/network- graphs/](https://plot.ly/ipython-notebooks/network-graphs/)</comment></comment>


The Worst Thing That Could Happen to Facebook Is Already Happening - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/facebook-sharing-crisis.html?cid=cp01002fastco <comment><USER2> I'm an ex-Facebook user, so obviously I'm not unbiased in my feelings (general disdain) towards the product... but over and over again it seems there are distinct classes of users, those who view it as a useful utility for maintaining "low-intimacy" (casual) relationships, and those who view it as an intrusive/unwanted/psychologically harmful distraction.

I've certainly lost touch with many casual connections by de-Facebooking, but I feel like my overall mental state is better... the old "your everyday versus everyone else's highlight reel" is no longer thrust to the foreground of my consciousness multiple times a day. Worthy tradeoff to me, but is it for most other people? Maybe I'm just too sensitive or insecure to be a "good Facebooker".

It will be interesting to see if the "I get enough out of this to make up for the bad stuff" crowd grows or shrinks over time for FB.

<comment><USER3> I agree. I stopped checking Facebook in December. I'm happier and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. All my real friends know how to get in touch with me and do. Everyone else was never really a friend anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That was expected, right? These social sites have at most a decade or so in them, then they become stale and people leave for a new shiny thing. It happened to so many others, it will happen to Facebook.</comment>


Ask HN: Non-tech guy looking for unstructured data startup advice - <AUTHOR> I have an investment background but am interested in creating a new finance product for internal use. My idea is to take all historical filings that public companies submit to the SEC (as well as a live feed of new filings) and basically create a Bloomberg for mostly qualitative information that the big financial software companies do not analyze.
For example, I would like to take a given company's entire document history (almost 20 years of text files) and create an application that can determine whether the company has ever received a material weakness in its internal controls notice, the dates received/outstanding, the reasons provided, and when/if it was finally resolved or not. There are about 50-80 other conditions like this I would like to discover through an application, but what's tricky is that companies can use different language to describe these things.
I have absolutely no idea where to start with a project like this, but am excited to learn some new tricks. Am wondering about how to best extract unstructured data I want, best ways to populate and organize a DB (presumably NoSQL), etc. I realize this might sound comically general and naive, but figured there might be some folks out there with good experience working with unstructured data and document-oriented databases. Any thoughts are GREATLY appreciated! Thanks. <comment><USER2> You could do it step by step. First step is to get a decent amount of material together. Without that you will have nothing to analyse.

If the data is available as a bulk download, you're all set to move to the next step. If not, next best is if they offer an API. In that case, learn how to use Python or something to pull each document using that API, and storing it somewhere (either the filesystem, or in a database). If not, get the book 'Web Scraping with Python' and use that.

Once you have the stuff together, Udacity has a gentle introduction on cleaning document-ish data (using JSON/Python and Mongodb): [https://www.udacity.com/course/data-wrangling-with- mongodb--...](https://www.udacity.com/course/data-wrangling-with-mongodb-- ud032)

Then the analysis starts. If it were me, I might start by splitting documents into chunks (paragraphs?), and classifying them somehow. Maybe use NLTK: [http://www.nltk.org/book/ch06.html](http://www.nltk.org/book/ch06.html)

Let us know how you get on :)

<comment><USER3> The first couple of steps are actually the easiest. The last paragraph -- which is also your shortest -- is the hardest part, by far.

OP, you want to basically extract entities from documents without necessarily knowing them a priori ("companies can use different language to describe these things"). This might be even tougher if companies aren't required to report material weaknesses (are they? I'm unsure). If they don't report, then you'd also likely need to manually code training data for companies for which you have filings.

If companies are required to report material weaknesses, then you can likely rely on NLP for this job. Start by building a classifier using material weakness data as your labels and tf-idf vectorized documents as your features (check out parent's link, and pick up a general NLP book while you're at it).

For each of the 50-80 things you mention in your post, OP, you'll need to repeat this: (1) obtain labels and (2) figure out a way to train a machine learning algorithm to handle that task for you. The alternative is to rely on heuristics (eg. "I know from past experience that companies using such-and- such word in filings experienced X, so I'll encode that in business rules"), which is an ugly way to build something but likely faster than learning about machine learning or NLP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a cool project! I'm not sure it's necessary for you to use a No- SQL db - in fact I'd avoid it until you have a good reason to use it. Postgres is great but you might already be familiar with it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting problem. I would start looking at things like natural language processing, machine learning, and maybe even solr / elastic search.

also, I would look into various saas offerings out there (monkeylearn, and others)</comment>


In-browser RAW Processing: How We Did It - Come-rad http://blog.pics.io/sneak-peeks/in-browser-raw-processing-how-we-did-it

<comment><AUTHOR> If I were to need RAW processing in the browser I'd probably have compiled libraw using emscripten.

It's pretty easy ( [http://blog.bitops.com/blog/2013/06/04/webraw- asmjs/](http://blog.bitops.com/blog/2013/06/04/webraw-asmjs/) ) and provides a proven set of demosiacing algorithms that work well, in addition to support for a _lot_ more cameras (Sony springs to mind).

At any rate this looks like it was a quite fun exercise, and the blog post is well written.

<comment><USER2> It would be interesting how big the libraw asm.js file is. One downside is usually that it gets quite big.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the demo blog post I linked, it looks like libraw is around 3MB, but that the blogger who wrote that post didn't pay much attention to eliminating cruft and the script is additionally not minified. Minified and compressed it's under 450k.

[http://dev.tag.is/rawson.js/](http://dev.tag.is/rawson.js/) seems to be an emscripten-to-JS compiled dcraw.c, and while less functional than libraw it's under 500kb.

<comment><USER3> Just tried [http://dev.tag.is/rawson.js/](http://dev.tag.is/rawson.js/) and it doesn't work (it just says "Reading file", the green bar is full, but nothing's happening).

The OP site is quite slow but does work: it produces a JPEG in the end (using Canon 6D original CR2 files).

"LightRoom in the browser" would be the greatest thing ever.

<comment><USER4> What Lightroom features is the most meaningful for you? What do you think?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any idea why they didn't go with an emscripten compile of libraw or rawspeed? These formats are well understood by now. libraw (dcraw based) can convert practically any format in existence.

<comment> Come-rad Hi, I'm part of the team. In that case we would get a "black box". We need full control over the process.

<comment><USER4> Come-rad is right — emscriptened code is not very maintainable, so we cant rely on it. More than that we use alot of JS-specific performance optimisations that allows us to run faster than any of those autogenerated libs.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. If you're worried about correctness I'd just do integration testing. Get a bunch of raw files from different manufacturers and test them with rawspeed on the desktop and on the browser, comparing output. If it's performance though it seems strange when there are 3D engines being ported to asm.js that something like rawspeed wouldn't optimize well.

The alternative seems a little crazy to me. Reimplementing a full raw library in JS is a huge task. I've just spent a total of 6-7 hours getting the basics of MRW support in rawspeed and those formats are just insane, and change continuously between models of the same manufacturer. And even within a single model you'll get crazy variations depending on camera settings.

Best of luck.

<comment><USER4> AFAIK these 3D-engines was specially prepared to be ported to JS. We have abit another specific than just moving 3D objects, creating scenes and blend textures. Sure, its very similar, but our "textures" is bigger and we should know about more than one pixel per time to do correct demosaic process. Its not the same to create cool WebGL 3D effect and do JPG decompression for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would be interesting to hear what their demosaic algorithms look like. Being gflops-limited means that a lot of the image signal processing algorithms need to be dramatically simplified in some regards, but having large memory buffers that they can work in gives them a wide berth to implement more complex algorithms in other ways.

The libraw / dcraw-based demosaic algorithms are, I am told, very good; it'd be interesting to compare the image quality that they get (if they reinvented the wheel) vs. libraw, vs. the camera's on-board ISP.

Either way, having an in-browser RAW experimentation platform could be a very interesting tool; even if for nothing else, using it for education could be very neat. Good work!

<comment><USER4> Before start, we investigated and learned tons of theory and alot of libs. Rawspeed is my personal best and we compared our results with it. Now in raw.pics.io we implement simple bicubic interpolation algorithm which optimal in speed/quality. Sure, we think about AHD, gradient and other algos, but we should deal with performance first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any plan to support Sony ARW?

Am I understanding this right, the conversion is done in the browser, so rather than using something like dcraw that's quick and featureful and exist, you've reimplemented the whole thing in js? (I do get that it's a trade-off concerning what you want to enable). Do you see this as viable for use on tablets and such? Today's tablets, or are you targeting the tablets of, say, 2015+?

<comment> Come-rad Sony holds a good share, so, yes, we'll take it into work. But for now our priority is speeding up. We just started optimising and already reduced processing time by 50%. But that isn't enough, obviously.

You are correct about our approach (I'm referring to dcraw here).

>Do you see this as viable for use on tablets and such?

It's a question of hardware, most of the things we build can run in browsers on tablets (in theory). We actually don't see much benefit in editing on a tablet. But iPad can be a good device for photo management and sharing.

<comment><USER7> Hm, if I can't edit where I happen to be (I need my laptop/workstation) -- what's the benefit of editing in the browser vs just using an application and some form of cloud sync (actually, as editing is local in the browser, there is no "sync" needed for feature parity, as one could just "automagically" download on demand and/or upload on save/use davfs...?)?

<comment> Come-rad >just using an application and some form of cloud sync

Setups like this usually suck. These workflows are hard to maintain, especially by not so tech-clever photographers.

>what's the benefit of editing in the browser

You mean from a user perspective? Then "no installation", freedom choosing platform, collaborative editing, etc. If we talk in a greater perspective... Web version of software for RAW processing can be easily integrated into any web service: Google+, Dropbox...

<comment><USER7> >just using an application and some form of cloud sync

>> Setups like this usually suck. These workflows are hard to maintain, especially by not so tech-clever photographers.

Maybe. Then again, I don't really see the need for syncing going away in the near future -- it's still hard to "just upload" the result of a single photo session/trip/whatever? Even if you're great at deleting obviously bad shots, it's pretty hard to keep the number of photos below the low hundreds (ie: 2+ GB of raws)?

I suppose some will prefer to synch up once, then have "the cloud" maintain the working set of images (as bad ones are deleted, cropped/edited/black'n'white copies are created). Does sound like a lot of data going up and down though.

>> what's the benefit of editing in the browser

> You mean from a user perspective?

> Then "no installation", freedom choosing platform,

Fair enough -- I see how this can be a benefit -- it also highlights how much more comfortable my life has become after I gave up on dualbooting and just stuck with Debian as my main desktop/workstation setup. But that might not be for everyone.

>> collaborative editing, etc.

Do you plan on supporting some form of non-destructive editing, where changes can be easily propagated?

>> If we talk in a greater perspective... Web version of software for RAW processing can be easily integrated into any web service: Google+, Dropbox...

I'd like to see that :-) I still think there's a bandwidth problem though -- I have problems managing my RAWs locally, I can't imagine it will work (yet) with the actual image data only in the cloud -- and I'm not sure if caching gigabytes of data on the client is an acceptable solution (mostly because of poor uis for controlling the cache, purging parts etc).

I'd be happy to be proved wrong, however :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2>
      raw.pics.io doesn't support your browser

IE 11 supports WebGL (and is a pretty decent HTML5 browser)

<comment><USER4> The problem is not only with WebGL. Unfortunately we don't support it yet, but working hard on it.

</comment></comment><comment> Come-rad Hey, hackers. Here's the first picture from the post in higher resolution – [http://blog.pics.io/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/8bd2a4633b08b...](http://blog.pics.io/wp- content/uploads/2014/05/8bd2a4633b08bd45b80f68f4882592e9.jpg)

In case some of you want to put it as a desktop wallpaper :)

<comment><USER4> Images like this are created due to bug in our JPG decompression algorithm — I like this one and put it as a post title photo. =))

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really interesting that you put so much emphasis on the proprietary formats.

As a Pentax (K-5, K-5II, K-3) and Nokia (Lumia 1020) user, I use nothing but DNG. Sure I could squeeze a few more bytes from a memory card with PEF, but I prefer my records to be in a standardised format.

<comment><USER4> We love DNG and I personally always recommend it. Unfortunately there are lot of manufacturers doesn't support DNG, thats why we support CR2/NEF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is their site seriously broken or what? I keep getting no images loading and scrolling to the bottom I get a ton of links to handbags and purses, shoes and fake oakleys

<comment> Come-rad Loads for me. Don't see spam links. Can send you over the post in Pocket. What's your email?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> think this is really cool. Do you support compressed DNG? I used that a lot when moving raw files across the internet, comes out a lot smaller while still retaining 12bit raw

The next part - processing the debayered pic on the browser. I like ACR a lot, the highlight recovery is the best I've seen.. plans?

<comment><USER4> If you talking about lossless DNG compression — yes we support it. If you talking about lossy DNG compression — no.

We already added Exposure Compensation to [http://raw.pics.io](http://raw.pics.io), and we think about upcoming features. What features are the most useful for you?</comment></comment>


Ahoy, Geeky Google to transport workers by private ferry in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2014/ahoy-geeky-google-transport-workers-private-catamaran-san-francisco/

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is Google experimenting with ferry route to get employees from San Francisco to its headquarters in Mountain View? Does this has to do something with San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee who has just proposed to charge $100,000 a year per tech companies whose commuter shuttles stop at public MUNI bus stops? This is a very interesting move. Read Mayor Ed Lee's Tech Crunch article at: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/06/charging-tech-shuttles- for-...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/06/charging-tech-shuttles-for-muni-bus- stops/)</comment>


Startup Quote: Evan Williams, co-founder, Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/3583183987

<comment><AUTHOR> Change the world. Build a business. Have fun.

\- Evan Williams (@ev)

<http://startupquote.com/post/3583183987>

<comment><USER2> (not neccessarily in that order)</comment></comment>


Cognitive Ability and Vulnerability to Fake News - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cognitive-ability-and-vulnerability-to-fake-news/ <comment><USER2> Right wing authoritarianism? That came out of left field. I'd like to see the statistical techniques used to correct for that...</comment>


95 years after disappearance, the USS Conestoga is found - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/us/uss-conestoga-shipwreck-found-95-years-later/index.html <comment><USER2> After a long night, bleary eyes read:

"95 years after disappearance, the US Congress is found"

You know those nights ...

<comment><USER3> Sometimes a misread contains more truth than one would like :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's crazy that they only made it 20 miles from California before hitting weather serious enough to sink the ship. I'm surprised they wouldn't have literally seen it coming before departing.

<comment><USER5> What also surprised me is that from 1858 to 1907 there were 5 wrecks in that area. I wonder what the reasoning is?

<comment><USER6> The Farallons are a pretty intense little outcropping just off the coast. Doesn't make it any more appealing that it's a mecca for Great Whites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if we'll still be looking for MH370 after 95 years.

<comment><USER8> Some MH370 debris has appaently washed up in Mozambique: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-24/debris- fou...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-24/debris-found-in- mozambique-likely-from-mh370-australia-says)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Believing [1], the wreck has already been found in 2009 and identified to be the USS Conestoga in October 2015. Only the official announcement was made now.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Conestoga_%28AT-54%29#Redi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Conestoga_%28AT-54%29#Rediscovery)

<comment><USER10> Did they publish the exact location of the wreck? Where's the original NOAA reports from the 2009 survey or 2014 dive?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Was there no radio or telegraph on board, or did they not have time to signal their position??

<comment><USER12> I have no idea why they didn't send a distress message, but how accurately would they know their position in a storm in 1921?

<comment><USER13> The officer of the watch would be expected to plot the position on the chart every 15-20 mins so even a DR position would probably have been accurate to within ~10 miles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > The Navy seagoing tugboat and its 56 officers and crew went missing so long > ago that the famous bridge that spans the Golden Gate did not yet exist.

Hang on - 1921 is "so long ago"? Sorry CNN, but over on the other side of the Big Pond that is recent history...

<comment><USER14> Yes yes, congratulations on having an old country.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Non-technical employees don't get along with engineer - <AUTHOR> I'm the CTO of a small startup with 9 full time employees. We have 2.5 engineers - Me, a senior SDE hired a year ago, and a new UX designer who doubles up as a part time FrontEnd Dev. 4 non-technical employees have logged complaints that my full-stack developer is curt/cold/condescending although the designer and I get along with him just fine. I've drawn a pretty hard line in defending him thus far, but have been taking more and more fire from the CEO. I've tried many process tweaks, 1:1 feedback, etc.  Do you guys have any ideas to de-escalate or help the team get along better with each other? <comment><USER2> Perhaps unpopular opinion: it sounds like the senior SDE isn't working out. Being non-condescending to other team members is a core part of the job. It shouldn't be persisting after you tell them that it's a problem that's causing serious conflict within the team.

There's a lot of previous discussion you could look up about whether to tolerate "brilliant jerks" on your team. My take is we usually overestimate how brilliant they are and underestimate how toxic it is to have a jerk around.

<comment><USER3> Yes, agreed.

I apologise in advance for this non-PC and possible offensive remark, but I see nice people in our company dealing with these types and it's starting to bum me out.

The obnoxious types me and colleagues have dealt with are, in _my personal opinion_, pretty obviously suffering from some type of Asperger and/or general social maladaptive malady and while they should be treated with dignity, it is not up to the rest of the company to adjust to _their_ problems.

<comment><USER4> If it is caused by a disability (e.g. Asperger) the ADA does require reasonable accommodation - which in fact does make it up to the rest of the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What are the roles of the four non-technical employees who have complained? You mentioned elsewhere that they are submitting requests directly to this engineer--what sorts of requests?

When I've encountered and had to help solve for this sort of thing in the past, there was usually something deeper at the root of it. In one case it was the fact that people on the marketing team were not able to formulate their engineering asks to a sufficiently technical degree, or understand the ideal workflow of an engineer. So what would happen is engineers would get frustrated fielding these requests because they lacked most of the necessary information needed to build anything, and were constantly asked to support multiple significant scope changes throughout the process.

That would understandably frustrate many people. But once we identified that as one of the big issues, we were able to develop process to help address it. Things like documenting commonly asked technical specifics up front, or setting milestones and making sure everyone understood the impact of changing things helped streamline things.

Another big piece of that was having someone who could bridge that gap from a communication standpoint. That ended up being me for a lot of it, which was fun since while I am a marketer, I'm fairly technical and usually get on very well with engineers. If two people can't speak a common language, sometimes the easiest solution is to work through a third person who can translate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Customer support and marketing. Requests were more fluid but have since been formalized, e.g. different bug templates to help clear out some of the back and forth.

Thanks for this - sounds like we're trying to do some things right.

<comment><USER5> Yep, I'm guessing there may be similar issues. Hard to say without more context or hearing examples of some of the offending remarks. For example, if an engineer is explaining something technical in a condescending manner to someone non-technical who may struggle to grasp it, that's on the engineer and their communication skills.

However if they are being curt and coming across cold and frustrated because they keep asking for the same things every time and don't get them, that's a process issue and an easily solved one at that.

Sounds like you may benefit from digging deeper into people's issues on this to identify how much is really communication style and skills vs. symptoms of process issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Question - are the non-technical employees requesting work done by the senior developer directly to him?

Some developers are often just that - hard headed coders, if they haven't come from a role or a background that has required them to "Customer Facing" then you need to re-evaluate the reporting chain or if it is crucial that they be "customer facing" then you need to broach the subject with him that he needs to understand how to talk to them.

As CTO of a small company you should head up the engineering team, if required you will need to act as the go between to get the requirements distilled into a format your senior dev can then action with the rest of the team.

If you cant absorb this responsibility then you need to get a project manager of some sort in to manage it :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We're so small that it used to be a direct request. Since, I've tried to be more of a buffer / create better processes - but you're right. I can probably try to do more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is the engineer aware of what it is about their communication style that's making others uncomfortable? Even the person most motivated to change won't improve if they don't know what constitutes "better" or "worse".

There are different communication cultures even within a country or a region. For instance, engineering culture (in many communities or companies) accepts bluntness and directness in ways that the general culture often does not. Or people who grew up on the US coasts are often uncultured to more blunt, direct, fast-paced communication styles than those who grew up in the Midwest or South. Some families treat (friendly) confrontation and debate as a game, whereas others interpret it as conflict or rudeness or even power struggle.

If you grow up communicating in one style, you may not be aware that other people use other styles. And even if you are, you may not be aware of how that causes them to interpret your own style.

So don't just tell your engineer "change". Give him training in the communication style you expect him to use in the workplace.

If you haven't already, I suggest you get some concrete examples from the employees who submitted the complaints. Then spend half an hour to an hour once a week role-playing similar conversations with your engineer. During these sessions, give clear feedback on what comes across as blunt or rude or condescending (and why), and suggest different phrasing or approaches that might be more diplomatic. Keep doing this until you no longer have to suggest significant changes.

</comment><comment><USER8> > curt/cold/condescending

This is a rather broad and not very actionable criticism. Can you get more specific feedback? For example, something of the form "In situation X, you did/said Y, and that led me to think Z" is more actionable. Also, it is useful to pay attention to the classification problems that your engineer faces. There is a sometimes a balance between being condescending by giving someone info they already know and not providing enough context for an explanation.

The book "Thanks for the Feedback" [1] is a good read and Erika Carlson's talk[2] from Lead Developer UK is a good watch.

[1] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thanks-Feedback-Science- Receiving-W...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thanks-Feedback-Science-Receiving- Well/dp/1611762510)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsfNS9HSWQs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsfNS9HSWQs)

</comment><comment> cupcake-unicorn I'm going to throw out a possibly unpopular opinion, because I have a feeling this is exactly what was going on at my old workplace.

What is the gender of the 4 employees who have a problem with the senior SDE?

At my workplace I was the only female employee and when I ever had complaints against someone for being condescending/etc the response was similar to yours, "But I never had that experience with him. He's a nice guy."

Understand that you only see one side of your senior dev. You don't get to see how he interacts with women or other minorities.

An example I like to give is that even Senator Obama experienced people being fearful and locking their cars when he went out to the parking lot late at night. That's an experience that white people just don't have, and imagine being the only one to experience that or report that in a group of other people who have never ever been the target of such behavior. "But I never noticed it!"

If this does turn out to be the case I'd suggest you have a serious chat about diversity in your company. I ended up leaving tech due to my similar experience in my last company. Saying, "We're pretty diverse for a group of white dudes" isn't enough. Listen to the minorities at your company and their experiences and don't invalidate them or dismiss them because you haven't experienced it. You could learn a lot and save some people from leaving the industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand your pain - I'm a female CTO.

Gender of the 4 is mixed and we have a pretty even gender ratio overall.

<comment><USER9> Let me respectfully suggest that part of the problem may be _your_ gender. Men and women both expect women to do emotional labor on behalf of others, often to an unreasonable degree.

If that is a factor, there's no easy solution. But if it is a factor, it may help to be aware of the issue. If you aren't familiar, _emotional labor_ is kind of a hot catch phrase and there are articles and discussions out there.

I tend to be good at the emotional labor thing and it has a history of getting me imposed upon to an unreasonable degree. People often expect me to deeply respect them and kiss their boo-boos and make them feel okay about everything. This often occurs while I am being treated very disrespectfully and can't get my needs met.

If you are the CTO, why is peacemaking your job? That isn't usually one of the official duties of a CTO, is it?

If that is the issue, you will need to learn to alter your behavior so people feel less free to impose in this manner. You will also need to think through just how much you need to be interceding in the relationships of employees.

You can work on doing ice breaker exercises and team building exercises etc. But if the real problem is that you are being viewed as the team mom and people want you to fix everything and expect perfection, that may not fully resolve the issue.

<comment><USER10> Doreen,

I've read your comments here for quite some time and they are generally insightful and I usually agree with you, but this time I think that as the CTO, peacemaking _is_ her job. At least, it would be in such a small environment.

It's really less about peacemaking and more about making sure that her team integrates well with the rest of the company. I agree with the poster who said to at least make sure he understands what he's doing that is causing a problem. I've been in his position and had absolutely no idea what people were complaining (behind my back!) about.

As a team lead, it falls on my shoulders to deal with similar personnel issues. I sometimes have to point out to my devs that their behavior is being perceived as rude or uncaring to people outside the team. In our little company without an HR dept, it's up to me to figure out how that can be resolved.

As my wife likes to say "you can't talk to everyone else like they're all engineers." :-)

<comment><USER9> _it falls on my shoulders to deal with similar personnel issues._

Sure, but you aren't right this minute finding it so impossible to deal with that you need to get advice from internet strangers on how to handle it. And perhaps one factor is gender.

People often set different expectations for women than for men. Those expectations can be unreasonable.

When my oldest son was a little boy, he came to me every single day, multiple times a day to ask if he could use the bathroom. I was all sweetness and light and reassured him that of course he could. That's what it was there for.

This was an aggravating and enormous imposition. Both my kids have special needs. I have health problems. I was chronically short of sleep. No amount of reassuring him that he could use the bathroom any time he wanted ever put a stop to him nagging me for warm fuzzy reassurance.

After two years of this, I began replying "No, you cannot use the bathroom. Tie a knot in it. In fact, I plan to have both bathrooms removed."

He would look at me with gears turning behind his eyes, then walk off to the bathroom. After a week or two, the questions stopped. He just began using the toilet without first imposing on me for reassurance that it was okay.

My son had never done the same thing to his dad or anyone else. He only imposed on me -- endlessly -- for completely unnecessary feel good reassurance about ten times a day every single day until I stopped feeling obligated to provide that for bathroom trips.

Women are often expected to be bottomless dispensers of positive emotional experiences to a degree and in a manner that is not typically expected of men. Her peacemaking duties may not be what you are experiencing. And it is worth considering the possibility that employees are imposing excessively upon her.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is an expectation on me to be a mediator, and gender (in addition to my personality type) could play a role. I'd like to think that's a strength, but I will be more cognizant of accidentally creating too many emotional dependencies. :)

Thanks for your perspective - I really appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good chance that all involved share the same common goal (startup success) and they should use that as a base to respect each other and colaborate.

From your experience with him I guess this employee does not intend to be curt/cold/condescending to other people, but might appear "cold" discussing some technical subjects. Others might expect a "warm" conversation instead.

Lets call this conversation VS discussion. There's a place for both. Sometimes even in the same meeting. But i tend to think when there is clarity beforehand, its best for both parties. Even warm feedback can land as a cold discussion if not handled with consideration.

</comment><comment><USER12> Okay, I will try to elaborate on my earlier comment.

Given the fact that it's a small company I will take it (from own experience), that the process or agility around on how you produce software is blurred and probably not totally in place.

The missing "boundaries" for some developers can be stressful and if a process is missing that can lead to frustration.

When I lead teams I also try to "cut of" or act as a buffer to the business side of the team, and have them focus and hold them accountable for what they are good at (and that's often sales, marketing, budgets etc.). And let me and the team do what we're good at.

The communication around these things most be done a proper professional fashion. Down the line no company can function with a CEO that believes he/she has a say in how a developer should act outside his own temple.

So many teams allow too much interference from the outside. They shouldn't be allowed. Focus on what you and you're team is good at and have the rest of the company focus on what they are good at.

<comment><AUTHOR> The missing "boundaries" and blurred processes definitely play a major role. When I led teams at a larger tech company, the thicker processes were part of the buffer/liaison. In contrast, the lack of/lean amount of processes here for the sake of agility makes this less of a white and black issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's going to kill morale if you keep that guy around. If they're talking to you that much about him, there's probably a lot more they're talking about that you never hear.

Fit goes further than skill, in my opinion. If you want to keep your non-tech folks around, let that guy go, and hire for fit.

You'd be doing yourself massive favors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> In my experience, its best not to get involved in behavioral aspects of team being engineering lead. You need to get work done and such things change the context of your conversation.

But if this is visibly affecting delivery quality or timeline then it makes sense to get involved.

If it comes to that, I would defend my team member until proven guilty. Ask for specific scenarios and then if they seem serious then just pass a word to team member that there is heat around this issue. And he / she could have said this or handled this way.

Sometimes people are what they are. It doesn't occur to them that they are offending others.

You also can't expect them to change without patience n guidance. Keep sharing scenarios and what he could have done better.

If this is behavioral problem then he would take time to come out of it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Out of interest, where does the chain of command lie?

I've worked with people in the past that respect the chain o' command to such a degree that they will follow everything a more senior member of staff will say, but will both ignore and undermine what people on their level or below say. I've also noticed a trend where they will respect the "workers" of the office, but have little respect for Project Managers or anyone they don't perceive to be battling on the front lines.

In the past, a good way to get around this was to ensure that everything that needed doing was in writing. This way, everyone knew what was expected of them, and it was much harder for someone to be confrontational or condescending if any of this was in writing.

<comment><AUTHOR> More explicit expectations makes sense. I'm his manager so others would have to use indirect influence to get his help outside of sprint work items.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> 1\. Some people cannot accept it when somebody else ends a conversation first, but that's their problem. If that's the case, ignore it. 2\. After that, the big gun is, "If you know somebody better, let me know." That ends the ankle- biting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll use that as a last resort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Get rid of the problem employee, toxicity will extend and it will hamper communication and trust. If you're having these problems with such a small group that should still be in the "all for one one for all" stage it's going to continue and be much more painful to deal with down the line if you have success.

Also if you're starting to catch fire from your CEO (founder/cofounder) about it that's a good indication that it's already leading to those problems and is effecting your standing/trust with the rest of the company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point - thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This if kinda of funny, because I was the used to be the jerk full-stack developer. My reasons where the following:

1\. Job was to easy for me.

2\. The non technical people where not very bright. (seriously they where just winging it.)

3\. I didn't care.

4\. Wasn't challenged.

5\. Non technical people treated me as a code monkey, when I first got there.

6\. I had the power. Even if the fired me, it would take them weeks to get back up and running.

7\. As of right now, Developers have the power.

Oddly, enough I am not a jerk, but I didn't like being taken advantage of in this particular situation.

</comment><comment><USER19> _" although the designer and I get along with him just fine"_

It is very common that arrogant developers are condescending to non-tech people and not to tech people, considering themselves a special breed of human beings.

 _" I've drawn a pretty hard line in defending him thus far"_

Why? Do you have evidence that the SDE is right? 4 different complains on a 9 employees company seems to indicate that's not the case.

<comment><AUTHOR> The minimal 'evidence' collected so far, I feel like can be interpreted as miscommunication or a difference in style. I will try to gather more.

I agree though, 4/9 is concerning.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Honestly, I think you should fire him, or the other 4 employees. At your stage, you can't be distracted by this kind of issues.

You should also review your hiring process and see how you can avoid this in the future, I can guess that you interviewed the technical people, and your CEO the non-technical ones, and you (together) didn't catch this as a potential issue.

</comment><comment><USER12> What does your SDE say to these allegations? Does he agree at all? Whats his feedback?

<comment><AUTHOR> He's very concise, a bit rough around the edges and got a dry sense of humor. He told me he means well and has tried to be more verbose (slack is 1/2 of all our communication). He's also tried to tone down the dry. He really enjoys working with 2/4 folks who complained about him and wants to make it better.

<comment><USER21> Just throwing this out here, with pure speculation. I don't mean to offend anyone or cause unnecessary friction.

I suffer from aspergers in some form or another(diagnosed by Dr.). While im usually "normally" functioning, I happen to have wierd sense of humor, lack some social skills and being too concise at times. These things crop up usually when around extrovert people(like non-tech people stereotypically are) and it can cause them to feel that I'm intentionally hostile towards them, where as it's more about me(unconsiusly) feeling outside their social wavelength. I don't want to be hostile towards others, but my capabilities for social interaction often cause friction unintentionally, and some people are more sensitive to take offense becouse of it. How people react to my actions are also really varied, biggest factor(be my speculations) being their social backgrounds(groups like family/friends/prev. workplace/school/generation/culture).

Maybe what I'm trying to say that it might not be entirely fault on the sSDE. Maybe the non-tech people haven't had experience working with someone who is less extrovert than their social group before. Too many times i have seen that introvert and socially "handicapped" people are left behind just becouse they are different.

Not every anti-social behavior is malicous or intentional. People react to different interractions differently. People can learn to accept peoples differences and live with them. Working on their work relations is a good start, since sSDE has said that he wants to make it better.

\--Sorry about my (personal) ramblings and bad writing(non-english speaker)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your perspective - I appreciate it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > the designer and I get along with him just fine

> 4 non-technical employees have logged complaints that my full-stack > developer is curt/cold/condescending

This is really bad news actually. Find a replacement for this guy and fire him.

<comment><USER23> You're joking. It would have to be really awful behaviour to fire him.

<comment><USER22> No I'm not joking at all.

That the guy kisses up and craps down is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with by termination.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter Announces @Anywhere - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twitter.com/2010/03/anywhere.html

<comment><USER2> can someone explain this without the useless buzzwords?

<comment><USER3> They appear to have made a javascript widget that lets you put twitter on a page.

<comment><USER4> Specifically, I think it uses the visitor's current Twitter session, assuming they're already logged in. This is opposed to sending them to twitter.com with an icon link. Should get people tweeting about sites faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> They are already looking to hire a Javascript "guru" for this framework. Looks interesting but is it "too much"?

<http://twitter.com/JoinTheFlock/status/10531561796></comment>


The Meme as Meme – Why do things go viral, and should we care? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/the-meme-as-meme-rp

<comment><USER2> That article had many words but didn't really say much on the topic, nevermind the questions it posed.

Why do things go viral? I don't know, it appears to be somewhat random or luck based though. Why one cat's face can become a "hit" and apparently make its owner almost $100m[0] versus the "funny" faces of many other cats certainly eludes me.

Why one good looking guy at a marathon can be catapulted overnight to widespread recognition over other equally good looking people at marathons also eludes me.

Should we care? Well, it's clear there's money to be made off it, and quite a lot of money at that, so the phenomenon certainly warrants at least some attention.

If it's seemingly so easy to catapult something to recognition and "fame" then figuring out what's behind it could also very easily be used for propaganda. If people are working on it for that reason then we certainly should care.

[0][http://www.aol.com/article/2014/12/08/grumpy-cat-might- look-...](http://www.aol.com/article/2014/12/08/grumpy-cat-might-look- miserable-but-is-she-rich/21004463/)

</comment><comment><USER3> They seem to be creating two classifications, one sort of "correct, pristine" meme that somehow mutates randomly and is somehow more natural; another which is apparently a bad thing, which is a meme that is manipulated to intentionally spread.

But this is a poor distinction. All memes as we think of them are artificial. There's nothing more natural about the changing shape of pottery than there is about cropping a photo and applying text to it.

A meme is a idea, an element of culture. When they spread they persist. The idea of making an image macro is a meme, the idea to share it online is too, the subject is too. They are more or less effective depending on how likely they will be shared. If I were to make an image macro that wasn't interesting and nobody else repeated it, it's still a meme, but it's impotent and it dies out.

The difference between image macros and pottery is more to do with how we communicate and how we handle new ideas. The Internet makes exposure to these things so much wider. But similarly we pass them on because of the simple feedback that we get, the e-pats on the back, the LOLs, the well playeds, the trolling. This is also promoted by the wide exposure. If you post an impressive image macro to the internet, you might get a response from 1% of the people who see it. You might get someone to copy it 0.1% of the time. In a place like reddit that might mean you have it copied 10 times for one post. If you were in ancient Assyria and you developed some equally impressive pottery technique, you'd be lucky if one person you show it to appreciates it and incredibly lucky for someone to want to copy it.

The Internet is kind of like a rainforest or coral reef for memes. Food is abundant, so all sorts of small but curious diversity pops up. They're not the most effective ideas, just the flashiest, and in some ways this might detract from the strongest ideas because they're not as flashy.

But that has nothing to do with how we define memes, but rather how easy it is to share information on the Internet. I don't think you can say it's a good thing or a bad thing. There's a lot of diversity in ideas with something as abundant in meme food as the Internet, it leads to a bit more chaos and people, genetically, are adapted to a much slower rate of information and change.

</comment><comment><USER4> To use a meme, the answer to any headline ending in a ? is no.</comment>