Ask HN: Do you think we'll see any Twitter/Facebook real-competitor? - <AUTHOR> Honest question here. Do you think we're going to see any new product that will possible replace Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn in the near future?<p>Which companies should we follow closely? <comment><USER2> When AOL first entered the market, you could only send E-Mail to other AOL users. Eventually, faced with the potential of users leaving their platform for more interoperable (if less full-featured) alternatives, AOL relented and made their email system a proper, standards-based utility.

Now, granted that scenario is not a great example as email existed as a standard long before AOL came into existence, but I do think that as the number of users on Facebook/Twitter reach their inevitable peak, those companies, too, will be faced with the need to open the gates on their walled garden.

It's interesting that, thus far, both companies have delayed such a situation from arising by buying-out the other platforms people have been moving too (Instagram, Vine, etc.) and incorporating them ever-more-tightly with the parent platform. At some point, though, I think (hope?) this strategy will prove untenable and open interoperability will once again rule the web.

Call it crazy speculation, but I could foresee a resurgence of RSS/Atom eventually doing to Facebook/Twitter what SMTP/POP/IMAP did to AOL. If you think about it, the only thing that RSS/Atom was ever missing from becoming what Facebook/Twitter are today is a central aggregation point in the cloud. A smart startup that pulls a user's Facebook/Twitter feeds and mixes in any other RSS/Atom, as well as allowing users to post back to Facebook/Twitter/Atom could potentially spell the death of proprietary timelines.

<comment><USER3> AOL is definitely the best comparison. AOL had a 10 year run of dominance much like Facebook has had.

But we're already in a world where kids today see Facebook as something for their parents. And I know more and more people who (like myself) deleted their Facebook account years ago and don't miss it.

Facebook is headed toward irrelevance. It will probably always hang on like AOL and Yahoo still do. But it won't be the center of the online universe like it has been for so long. We're already on the down side of that hill.

<comment><USER4> > Facebook is headed toward irrelevance.

If you only consider relevant company to be one that is creating a new and disrupt technology as their core product then sure they will have to fight daily not to become irrelevant. However, if you consider relevance to mean something that impacts the daily lives of many people, within the last 30 days they had their first 1B active user day. It's just very hard to displace that many people and so many of them have their lives (and memories) on Facebook in terms of the photos and connections. I am not extremely active on Facebook but having an account just seems like that otherwise missing world directory mixed with a personal life timeline which only increases in value as the years pass.

<comment><USER4> And one other thing -- Maybe less younger people will sign up as time goes on (I don't disagree with the kids not wanting to be where their parents are theory of why FB will fall apart) but FB has shown the right instincts in acquiring (or attempting to acquire) the next social product of the moment or where the "kids are" so to speak. Everyone thought Instagram @ $1B was near insanity at the time and now it looks like the deal of the century in terms of what their estimated private valuation would be today ($37B+ in March [0]).

[0] [http://www.businessinsider.com/instagram- valuation-2015-3](http://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-valuation-2015-3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think you already see that younger generations don't prefer (or simply don't at all) using those social apps. Instead they use several social apps for specific things: snapchat for pics/text, whatsapp for text, vine for video, tinder/grinder for dating, instagram for social and pics, and more that I'm probably just not aware of because I'm 30. I think you're less likely to see a replacement and more likely to see them become places for "old people."

<comment><USER6> I use the book of faces specifically for keeping in touch with family from a distance. I think it will be the same for kids when they grow up. They move away and they will join facebook.

<comment><USER7> Facebook is still used heavily by younger people, especially in their 20's and late teens. I see Twitter falling a lot harder in popularity than Facebook. At the end of the day, "everyone" has a facebook. Most of my friends don't have a twitter and only use it when linked to it from Reddit or some other site.

Twitter does seem to be gaining in the international recognition, probably still residual effect stemming from the media attention gained by the Arab Spring and other social news events that unfolded on Twitter.

<comment><USER8> Twitter is for me unique that it is used a lot by opensource developers and more broadly IT envagelists/figures. It's a goto resource for news related to frameworks, dev conferences,... LinkedIn aspires also in this area, but it's not relevant yet.

<comment><USER9> I find it highly ironic and counterproductive that so many "open source" developers and users live on a proprietary platform like Twitter. Free alternatives exist, but they need the critical mass that a community like that could bring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For a company to replace Facebook (or even scale to a point where they're a legitimate competitor) they would have to turn down offers from Facebook/MSFT/Apple/etc to buy them. If Facebook buys then they just stop being a competitor and become part of Facebook. If anyone else buys then they're unlikely to want to go up against Facebook consider Facebook's marketing power. That alone makes it highly unlikely.

There is one the notable exception though - a startup that got enough traction to worry Facebook and then sold to _Google_ might actually come out on top. Google actively wants to compete with Facebook. The problem for such a startup would be Google's track record in social, so they'd need to resist Google's desire to assimilate them too much. That would (probably) be quite hard.

<comment><USER11> If you're growing like crazy, it's not that hard to turn down offers. Indeed that's what Facebook itself did, so there's your model.

<comment><USER10> Facebook turned down Yahoo's $1bn offer because Mark Zuckerberg realised that Yahoo didn't really understand social, and that they were making an offer because 'social is the hottest thing right now'. It's entirely understandable that a founder wouldn't want to sell their business to someone who wouldn't know what to do with it.

A Facebook competitor faced with an offer from Facebook would not have that problem. It's very likely that the competitor and Facebook would be _very_ well aligned strategically. Selling would mean the competitor would get to where they want to go. Very few founders would say capable of saying no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Replace" is a loaded term in the sense that it implies these are categories dominated by one player. I think the reality of these kinds of services is that they overlap each other to various degrees rather than replace. People can use facebook, twitter, linkedin, HN, etc. etc. simultaneously.

So if you mean will other services in that general fuzzy category become popular, the answer is 100% yes. It's happening all the time. Whatsapp, snapshot, whatnot. These pop up all the time and many get traction.

If you mean will Twitter & Facebook loose popularity, that's harder to answer. But, I think it's reasonably likely. They're basically mediums for online culture and online cult evolves fast. It also depends on your horizon. If the question is "will a large portion of humans check Facebook daily in 100 years?" that seems pretty unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think (hope) that eventually these centralised monoliths will be taken over by distributed versions.

The Internet Of Things IoT will be a precursor to any device being a node in a massive mesh net. That means that I can run my own private, secure personal social node on my cell phone, or even on my toaster.

The front end app will literally just be a front. The backend processing can be done on any number of nano-cloud processing instances run by companies like Amazon or Microsoft.

Storage similarly will be outsourced, but all data will be protected at rest using strong encryption.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really like the idea about our own distributed/private-cloud version but I struggle to see ordinary users using it.

<comment><USER14> Same. I'm very excited about sandstorm.io, though. A lot of very smart people behind it, and the idea of being able to install "SaaS" apps onto your personal server at the click of a button from an app store, but where you own the data and can move from Linode to AWS to a home server, etc, is very cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yes, that is inevitable. Growth is slowing down for FB and the platform has grown to the size where it can't pivot hard. Any new player in the marketplace simply has to reject FBs success and present a wholly different way of interacting, free of the all-inclusive strategy employed by FB.

One thing we are seeing a bit and may see more of is microplatforms. They will focus on specific interactions instead of the generic type FB goes for (thinking bangwithfriends (some would even say Tinder _is_ this type of SN), sector-specific Linkedin, regional social networks).

FB will be around for a long long while thou. It was a twist of genius implementing federated logins, in effect becoming your passport to the internet.

</comment><comment><USER16> I foresee Google being replaced by something else. As a search engine Google has been stagnant for a while.

I still cannot black- or whitelist websites that I want or don't want to show up in my results. Really, I want to control what I see!!!

When another search engine gives me the flexibility to control my results, I'll jump ship. But currently even with annoying results that I don't want to ever see again, google's results are still better than anything else.[1]

[1]- Although yandex is definitely better for search results in Russian.

<comment><USER17> That's what browser extensions are for. Google has had blacklisting for a spell (last year?), and whitelisting, but IMO it failed to pass the 80/20 threshold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think there will be a direct competitor, I think we're going to start seeing the decline of the social network.

People are realizing that the benefits of social media are curses in disguise. Instead of a stream of interesting dialog between friends, they have a raging river polluted with the rantings of every person they ever met or any company they ever liked. It's hard to have meaningful interactions with people when that girl you met one night at a friend's party, your crazy uncle, and Starbucks are all screaming in your face.

Just as people are getting sick of Social Networking, businesses are starting to realize that the promise of the Social Network as a way to connect with customers isn't happening.

Case in point, I was shopping online the other day for an office chair and was prompted to take a survey (I'm a sucker for surveys). The survey went something like this...

Will you be sharing anything on our site with social media? No. Have you ever shared anything on our site with social media? No. Have you ever shared anything on any of our competitor's sites with social media? No. Have you ever shared anything from an online store on social media? No. Do you find any value in social media buttons on online stores? No. When you are shopping online, do you utilize social media? No.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wouldn't a open standard for social networks be preferable to simply yet another centralized system - an SMTP for social networks?

<comment><USER15> You would need a big player with long-term vision to enable such a system. Google really can't do it, they have lost credibility in the space. We could see a surprising backbone for it like a massive cloud hoster (Thinking Cloudflare, Amazon, Rackspace).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Twitter yes, Facebook no.

Mark is smart enough to buy his competition before it bites.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think the consensus is that Twitterr is already dying, fast. They lack direction and a way to engage with new users. Facebook won't go down as long as Zuckerberg cares. Beating their core product is pretty impossible, and he's made smart acquisitions of products that young people are favoring over the core product. Now they're taking over in video ...

LinkedIn is clearly the worst of these three. Please let an ethical competitor kill them ...

<comment><USER22> Whats the issue with Linkedin?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Everything ends. Given how fast these companies rise up, I expect they'll be replaced just as quickly. For instance: myspace.

</comment><comment><USER24> I would doubt that we see one in the near future. The one that had the biggest potential, Instagram, was quickly bought out by Facebook. A competitor not only has to overcome the huge userbase, thereby convincing everyone _and_ their mothers to switch, a competitor also has to resist the urge to cash in and risk not making it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I can't imagine what it would be, but less than 10 years ago a colleague was lamenting that Microsoft was invincible and would never have any competition. Google looks that way now. But no company maintains their lead forever.

</comment><comment><USER26> The next wave of social networks will most likely be decentralized. At the moment the concept is not yet clear, so no company to follow yet.

<comment><USER27> I mentioned in another comment the idea of a blockchain based system.

<comment><USER26> At the moment the Bitcoin blockchain is 40+ GB, meaning everyone involved in the network should have it locally. This is not possible for mobile devices.

Relying on blockchain technology is needed only when everyone should trust on something, but once you have the peer to peer connection this is no longer needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Already there: WhatsApp, Instagram, Tumblr to name the biggest ones. For example Instagram has more active users than Twitter!

<comment><AUTHOR> Well Instagram and WhatsApp are owned by Facebook :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not before we get a chip inside. Then it will connect us to "the matrix".

</comment><comment><USER30> There won't be a direct replacement, rather some other network will grow while one of them gets 'legacy' status (and will be eventually shut down)

FB (the company) is hedging their bets by acquiring Instagram and Whatsapp and not relying only on Facebook (the platform)

</comment><comment><USER31> Reddit is making a lot of policy changes to bring in more users.

<comment><USER32> They might end up with more users, but I've noticed that the content on Reddit is consistently declining in quality. Kind of worrying to me. Smaller subreddits might be enough to save the site though.

<comment><USER33> I'm very annoyed that anytime I see an insightful, top-level comment on Reddit, there is just a string of meaningless puns starting a comment or two below it. So essentially I just browse, read the top-level comment, read the child comments until I see the first pun, then move immediately to the next top-level comment down. It really just became a race to the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> With no doubt: wechat

</comment><comment><USER35> Twitter at least helps people from different countries follow global current events, but do we even _want_ a competitor for Facebook?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true! Twitter is used a lot in the news industry. Hmm, good question I use it to share news with my family and friend since I live abroad.</comment></comment>


Towards Scala 3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2018/04/19/scala-3.html <comment><USER4> It's amazing how many people in this thread justify their own language choices by making negative, sweeping statements about another language (Scala in this case) that is successfully used by people other than themselves.

Yes, some people who previously used Scala, now use Kotlin. And some people who would've used Scala if Kotlin didn't exist, use Kotlin. Same probably goes for Rust.

But there is a big enough market for people that like the intricate and expressive type system that Scala gives you, in combination with the JVM ecosystem. People that think Kotlin is nice, but not expressive enough, for example. People who don't want to deal with Rust's memory management and/or don't have a use for that. People who think Go's simplicity is sometimes more of a burden.

Why are people so intent to bash sombody else's language choices?! Go, Rust, Kotlin, Scala are all great languages in different ways. They all cater to different needs, sometimes radically different (Go vs Scala), sometimes subtly different (Kotlin vs Scala). I think there is a market for all of them, and more. And the introduction of a new language (Kotlin for example) does not necessarily spell doom for another (Scala).

Let's all enjoy our own tastes and needs, and respect those of others.

<comment><USER5> The reality is that a language lives or dies by its ecosystem - <USER2> when it comes to a language like Scala that's in a tightly symbiotic relationship with its IDEs (the next time someone tries to sell you a "visual programming language", look at Scala for a language that makes really effective use of the GUI for programming without compromising the things that make textual programming languages good - see e.g. [https://blog.jetbrains.com/scala/2018/03/27/intellij- scala-p...](https://blog.jetbrains.com/scala/2018/03/27/intellij-scala- plugin-2018-1-inline-hints-better-structure-view-improved-refactoring-and- greater-usability/) ). Only a few big players can afford the kind of investment it takes to make something like that. So much as I wish it were otherwise, I can't just sit on my island and use Scala because I think it's the best - if the language is to live, I have to convince other people it's the best. I don't begrudge other people feeling the same way about the languages they do like (provided that doesn't fall into dishonesty, as some of the claims from Kotlin advocates about e.g. null and Scala have).

<comment><USER6> > if the language is to live, I have to convince other people it's the best

Aren't JVM languages interoperable - because they use the same classfile/byte code format?

What does it matter if the jar is written in java or scala, as long as it is possible to use the external interface from any of these languages?

<comment><USER7> Yes and no.

JVM languages can usually use other JVM libraries, but they often aren't idiomatic to that language. Scala can use JVM libraries, but it often feels wrong or cumbersome, e.g. Java is full of mutable builder classes, which I've never once encountered in "native" Scala.

The other way around, in Scala you have to be careful if you want your library to be usable from other JVM languages. There's certain Scala features you just cannot use.

This is a problem that Kotlin actively markets itself with, they promise 100% Java compatibility all the time, going as far as encouriging to mix Kotlin and Java code in a single project.

<comment><USER8> What Scala features can't you use?

<comment><USER9> Real example from my experience: you use a Scala Map and pass it to something like FreeMarker, expecting that it will work like Java Map there. It will not and depending on your test coverage and SQA capabilities, you may notice it very quickly or very late (you'll get no compile error, since template engines usually accept generic objects and then analyze their type via reflection).

<comment><USER10> Why would you expect this to work? In fact given that API a map from another java library(say guava) would have crashed you just as well

<comment><USER9> Well, I wouldn't even try to have a source code written in two different languages in the same component. But I've seen this problem in someone else's real code, which was probably caused by a not really well-thought migration of Java code to Scala. Basically, a developer replaced one Map with another, fixed all the places where API was different on source code level and a number of tests. However, interoperability issues like this one may be hard to catch in general (even with good test coverage and regular code reviews) and they show the complexity of the problem, that requires certain level of development skills and discipline to do it right.

<comment><USER10> You are right, this particular example is more of case against reflection rather than anything else. Having said that, Scala maps actually are tricky to use from java. In general scala does a better job in compatibility when it comes to reuse of java code from scala, but not the other way around

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So many cool things already done and even more to come. Some parts that excite me as a Scala nerd:

* One can now use implicit function types to basically build your own table language syntax that is type-safe. [1]

* Multiversal Equality: you get to decide whether it makes any sense to compare an Apple and an Orange using "==" or "!=", as opposed to Java's forced requirement of allowing you to compare anything with anything. [2]

* Null safety checks! Quoting from [3], "Adding a null value to every type has been called a "Billion Dollar Mistake" by its inventor, Tony Hoare. With the introduction of union types, we can now do better. A type like String will not carry the null value. To express that a value can be null, one will use the union type String | Null instead."

* First-class enums, finally. [4]

* Erased parameters: you can declare variables specifically for type-safety that _don't exist_ during run-time, improving efficiency. [5]

[1] [http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/implicit-function- types....](http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/implicit-function-types.html)

[2] [http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/multiversal- equality.htm...](http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/multiversal- equality.html)

[3] [http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/overview.html](http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/overview.html)

[4] [http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/enums/enums.html](http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/enums/enums.html)

[5] [http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/erased- terms.html](http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/erased-terms.html)

<comment><USER5> > * Multiversal Equality: you get to decide whether it makes any sense to > compare an Apple and an Orange using "==" or "!=", as opposed to Java's > forced requirement of allowing you to compare anything with anything. [2]

Unfortunately it's being introduced in a fail-unsafe way that as far as I can see makes it virtually useless. If I see "x == y" in code, I have no way to be confident that this isn't an old-fashioned universal comparison without going into the details of x and y, so I'm no better off than I was without this feature.

<comment><USER12> It looks like you can force strict equality everywhere with the flag '-language:strictEquality'. See the dotty documentation for more details: [http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/multiversal- equality.htm...](http://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/multiversal- equality.html)

EDIT just realized you are m50d on reddit and probably saw the exact same comment I got that from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ...ships in 2020?

I'm impressed with what they're doing (and love the language), and it's hard work, and their speed is faster than, say, Java's dead-pace evolution in the 2000s.

But, poking around at TypeScript, I've been blown away with the MS/TS speed of development. ~2-3 month release cycles, with non-trivial changes to the language (mapped types, conditional types, etc.), that are themselves unique/novel type system features, not like Java finally getting around to copying the obvious/best-practice approach to case/data classes.

Granted, I'm sure the MS/TypeScript budget is huge comparatively...

Seems like that's the "best" (realistic) way for dev tooling to evolve lately: come from, or attach yourself to, a ~top-5 tech company that makes their money somewhere else and can bankroll developer tools/languages (e.g. MS with TS, FB with React/Flow, Google with a myriad of things e.g. Dart & AdWords, Go).

Bringing it back to Scala, seems like they were close to this (flirted with adoption/sponsorship from a few startups like FourSquare, etc.) but, thinking about it now, "software development in the large" is a huge concern for those companies (e.g. anyone with enough extra money to actually pay for language/tooling improvements), and that's never really been Scala's strong suit (compile times, painless compiler upgrades).

<comment><USER14> For what it's worth, this isn't just an evolution of the language, but a complete rewrite of the compiler. I appreciate that they're taking the time to do it right. They probably could've pushed new, non-trivial features out faster if they weren't doing a total rewrite.

<comment><USER15> This does nothing to change my opinion that total rewrites are almost always a horrible idea.

<comment><USER16> The Scala compiler has to be cleaned up. Maybe rewritten, maybe not. Dotty started as a fork of Scala, and now Odersky decided/announced that it'll be merged back eventually. (And it should conform to whatever the Scala language is/will be after the SIP processes for 3.0.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There are a lot of comments pointing out pros and cons of Scala, comparing it to other languages using superficial proxies.

I'd like to share a different perspective based on my own work with OOP- centric and FP-centric languages.

If you take OOP to its logical conclusion, OOP is a slippery slope that eventually leads to Gang-Of-Four centric designs.

If you take FP to its logical conclusion, FP is a slippery slope that eventually leads to Monad-Transformer centric designs.

Both are equally valid ways to design complex applications, so it all comes down to individual taste.

Personally I have a taste for mathematical abstractions, so Scala is better suited for my way of thinking.

It's obvious that Scala was specifically designed to be a solid foundation on which one can implement the concepts of a little known branch of mathematics called the category theory, and almost every design choice in the language flows from there.

If we use this as the basis for comparison to other languages, it's very easy to understand that Scala has carved out a very powerful niche for itself and is here to stay.

<comment><USER18> > If you take FP to its logical conclusion, FP is a slippery slope that > eventually leads to Monad-Transformer centric designs.

I don't understand what you mean by this, and I write production haskell for a living. We don't have teetering towers of transformers, and the best advice I've seen is often "put away the shiny tools and just use functions", [https://lukepalmer.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/haskell- antipatt...](https://lukepalmer.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/haskell-antipattern- existential-typeclass/) . Similarly in [http://www.parsonsmatt.org/2018/03/22/three_layer_haskell_ca...](http://www.parsonsmatt.org/2018/03/22/three_layer_haskell_cake.html) , which is like one real transformer layer and a way of claiming only the capabilities you need in your impure code. His "invert your mocks" article talks about this, too.

Ed Kmett's comments on Scala make me worry that the "solid foundation" isn't as solid as it could be: [https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1pjjy5/odersky_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1pjjy5/odersky_the_trouble_with_types_strange_loop_2013/cd3bgcu/) . How much of this is true in more recent Scala versions?

<comment><USER19> It's been a while since I lurked Haskell forums/haunts (was into it way back when), but at that time Lens was a big deal...if that's not a highfalutin library made for the most entrenched monad geeks (and for the purpose of making setters and getters, no less), I don't know what is. I guess I'm really shocked to hear that Haskell is all pragmatic and simple now with slim abstractions...but I'd love to be corrected.

<comment><USER20> I'd suggest that you're giving Lens a pretty short shrift. It's not "just" getters and setters as it works on immutable data. It also has a composition story that's better than normal getters and setters and _much_ better than other immutable data update stories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Disclaimer : I'm nobody important, but I do have an opinion

If scala team were to disavow sbt, that'd be the single best thing they could possibly do for the ecosystem.

I used to write a lot of scala, and working with sbt was enough to eventually get under my skin.

I really like some of the OOP aspects of scala, the left-to-right style of thinking matches how my brain works. Scala having a lot to offer can distract new learners, especially with just how overwhelming all the different features can seem for someone not coming from both sides. I had ocaml and ruby under my belt when I found scala, so it was an easier curve, but lots of guys struggle with it. I don't mind showing them, and of course I learn a lot from guys with different experiences and different backgrounds, but that's sometimes a complain I hear, also.

It's a language that doesn't compare very well. What is scala like? We don't know, there's only one language like it, it's a departure from many different paradigms.

I'm back to writing ocaml, all said and done. I enjoyed my time with scala, and interacting with my guys on the other side of the office still doing scala is always enjoyable. Smart guys! I'm not academic enough to grasp some of the new DOT stuff, but they are excited about it.

Anyways, I gave up hope a while back on scala getting rid of sbt. There are other build tools that exist, cbt, mill, maybe more, but without the blessing from lightbend or whatever they call themselves this week, it's not feasible, or responsible to deliver a solution to a client with an unofficial build setup. Of course, after five years of doing sbt I decided it's not ok to deliver sbt either.

Someday! Maybe?!

<comment><USER22> > If scala team were to disavow sbt, that'd be the single best thing they > could possibly do for the ecosystem.

Seconded. Between [http://www.lihaoyi.com/mill/](http://www.lihaoyi.com/mill/) and [https://bazel.build/](https://bazel.build/), there are plenty of alternatives.

<comment><USER23> Scala enthusiast Jon Pretty just announced `fury` as well!

<comment><USER24> Do you have a link to that? I can't seem to find it.

<comment><USER23> [https://twitter.com/jaguarul/status/986146251379965953](https://twitter.com/jaguarul/status/986146251379965953)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Scala 3 code can use Scala 2 artifacts because the Scala 3 compiler > understands the classfile format for sources compiled with Scala 2.12 and > upwards.

I feel like this isn't getting much attention but it is a huge deal. A big part of the reason that Python 3 went the way it did was users didn't want to upgrade until their libraries did and libraries didn't want to upgrade until their users did. With Scala 3, users can upgrade pretty rapidly, freeing libraries to upgrade without fear of leaving their users behind.

</comment><comment><USER26> Just curious, what companies (or kinds of companies) are betting on Scala nowadays? It seems that the people wanting "better Java" all decided they like Kotlin, and the functional programming people now gravitate more towards either F# (for .NET ecosystem) or OCaml/Reason (for the more unixy world). And the academic/research/learning crowd seems to like Haskell more.

Who's still in Scala boat? Are Google or Fb or other big cos known to give back to open-source growing any Scala codebases now?

<comment><USER27> F# only has access to a subset of .NET deployment scenarios, where Scala can be used pretty much everywhere there is a JVM.

So most companies actually are more keen to bet on Scala than F#.

OCaml/Reason world lacks the wealth of Java libraries, which are an import away on Scala.

Regarding Kotlin, so far its killer use case is targeting Android, where one is stuck with an ageing Java subset. Outside of Android, it remains to be seen how it will keep up with the Java improvements coming up every 6 months now.

<comment><USER28> I don't think many companies are betting on Scala anymore. F# is just as irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Let's face it, Kotlin hurts Scala adoption.

<comment><USER29> Kotlin and Java 8. I started using Scala in Java 7 era and loved it. When Java was stagnating it seemed like an alternate language that targeted the JVM was the best option. Progress with the language has really picked up a lot. There is a lot that Scala has that Java doesn't, but now its not enough to make it worth it. Java is so much easier to work with on a large team.

<comment><USER30> The two languages though also have preferred libraries / frameworks. I code in Java again and the main thing that bugs me is being always in the Spring ecosystem. There is a mindset in javaland that every technology needs to be wrapped by Spring. Scala gave me the freedom to choose alternative libraries.

<comment><USER29> Oft. I agree with you there. I never enjoyed spring. I don't get the appeal. With scala I loved play framework. I know it has java support but I never tried it. It used so many scala idioms and features I'm not sure how well it would translate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How have people faired with Scala integration with Java libraries? When Scala first came out, I liked the idea. If I wanted to use X library, great, I can. As I pondered it more, this seemed terrible. Say I hug the functional side of Scala. I know what I'm doing. Then I hire a Jr Dev. She comes from the world of Java/Python where functional is no as big of thing (keeping in mind that while Python does support, to a degree, functional, many use it as a procedural/OO language in school). Suddenly I have to worry about the Jr Dev doing silly things like introducing mutable Java objects into functional code. Side effects could start to show at odd times, which makes debugging terrible in a production environment.

All that said, how have others dealt with this issue? Did you just not work directly with Java libraries? Did you use the OO side as a Better Java?

<comment><USER32> Code reviews. Let developers peer-review each other's code changes and share knowledge about the functional programming practices used in the codebase. This is not a technical problem and has nothing to do with Scala.

<comment><USER33> Language design can discourage those bad practices and lessen the workload of code reviews.

Catching bad practices and anti-patterns in code review sounds fine on paper, but I'm sure we've all been in the situation where there simply isn't enough time in the day to do intensive code reviews while still maintaining the pace needed for delivery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> My big question (not answered in the FAQ) is will it be faster or slower than Scala 2.12? Having worked on a big Scala codebase, the slow compiler speed is one of the biggest downsides to the language.

<comment><USER35> It's currently about as fast as Scala 2.12, which means it compiles at roughly 3000 lines/sec. However, it supports more aggressive incremental compilation than Scala 2 so at least in my projects, which are typically 50K to 100K lines, most compiles are under a second, and I rarely see compile times over 5 seconds.

There's ongoing performance work to make both Scala 2 and Scala 3 faster than they are now. A lot of what people perceive as slow compile times are actually other factors (such as inefficient macros or slow build tools).

<comment><USER36> > However, it supports more aggressive incremental compilation than Scala 2

I'm not sure what you mean here... but Scala 2 and Dotty have the same incremental compiler, and their independent bridges feature overall the same quality (which is high and heavily battle tested, for those interested).

<comment><USER35> It has to do with what kind of dependencies the incremental compiler wrapper (e.g. zinc) can extract from the baseline compiler (e.g nsc or dotc). The Scala 3 compiler dotc handles that itself, which has the potential to achieve better accuracy. But I am not sure how much it matters in practice. We'll find out.

<comment><USER36> > which has the potential to achieve better accuracy

The quality of the used names extraction affects accuracy, but not compile speed. I must say, Dotty and Scala are extracting about the same amount of dependencies, with some corner cases being covered better in Dotty (for example, changes in constant values).

I don't see a way Dotty can become a faster incremental compiler that doesn't involve adding the incrementality in the compiler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I saw a presentation recently on Mill[1] which looks extremely promising and looks poised to remove the giant Scala development headache of working with SBT.

[1] [https://github.com/lihaoyi/mill](https://github.com/lihaoyi/mill)

<comment><USER13> sbt is terrible, and I have a lot of respect for Li as "the scala.js guy", but I'm slightly baffled that YABT (yet another build tool) was really necessary vs. just making the existing (say) gradle experience super-polished.

Granted, it's probably more fun to start from scratch :-), just seems more realistic for long-term adoption/maintainability to leverage existing tools.

<comment><USER38> The models of SBT/Gradle/Maven are broken, or at least, that's the premise for writing these build tools.

The model of Mill, Bazel, Buck, Pants are fundamentally different in very important ways which allow e.g. using a shared build cache across _all the developers in a team_ (or even all the developers in a whole company if one takes the monorepo approach for absolutely everything). This is not something that can be retrofitted into, say, SBT or Gradle.

<comment><USER13> Gradle does have a build cache, which can be local or remote:

[https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/build_cache.html](https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/build_cache.html)

It is a newer feature, so that might be why you're unaware of it.

Also, I get that the models of Bazel/Buck/Pants are fundamentally different, because they are inherently cross-language / "sit on top of other compilers" systems. And are best for mono repos.

But Mill doesn't fit in that camp AFAICT.

<comment><USER38> Ah, right I wasn't aware of that. Still, AFAICT Gradle isn't nearly as 'ambitious' in tackling the hard problem of hermetic/reproducible builds as e.g. Bazel, so who knows how reliable that build cache actually is.

You may well be right about Mill, but it's probably too early to tell exactly where it'll land in the design space.

(Btw, I think it's entirely right to be wary of yet-another-build-system, especially when it doesn't seem to do anything that other systems don't already do.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This major breaking change to the language reminds me a lot of the Py2-Py3 fiasco. I wonder how Scala's community will handle the transition given the previous issues with cross compilation in the 2.x series. Given the multitude of language alternatives in a similar space to Scala, I'm worried. Fingers crossed they can work through this.

<comment><USER40> Static typing makes this kind of large-scale refactoring a LOT less scary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great news! Kind of confused about scala2 and 3 sharing the same standard library. I thought that was being redesigned.

<comment><USER35> The shared library we are talking about is the upcoming 2.13 library, which has the new collections design. We currently link against the 2.12 library but will switch to 2.13 once that comes out.

<comment><USER41> Just wanted to say- thanks for your great work in making Scala possible. And wanted to add that going through your Scala Functional Programming MOOC was one of the most rewarding experiences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Last time I tried Scala I had to give up because I couldn't understand what a "trampoline" was, or how to use it to get multi-function tail recursion to work. Probably not Scala's fault.

<comment><USER23> What level of Scala were you trying? The things you're referring to don't sound pedestrian at all. You shouldn't let them turn you off from ALL of Scala.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is there any plans to include async/await on the language level?

<comment><USER40> async/await is a special case of monads (expressible with a for- comprehension); it comes out to:

      def asyncFunction(): Future[Blah] = for {
        foo <- someAsynchronousOperation
        bar <- anotherAsynchronousOperation
      } yield bar.baz

<comment><USER44> I find async/await to be much better for conditional execution, especially with lots of branches. For example, I had a scenario where I tried one async call and if it didn't have the information I needed, I had to make two subsequent async calls to get the information I needed before proceeding with the final call. Monadic composition was a nightmare where async/await was perfectly suited to the task.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Its fascinating process where if you're a hot new language you attract a lot of people that like shiny new things. When the next hot new language comes along and those people move on - have you attracted enough of the secondary wave to keep alive? Its going to be interesting to watch Scala adoption in the next few years.

<comment><USER46> Don't think it has a bright future since Rust and Kotlin share much of what brings people to Scala and are better in many ways, including and perhaps most importantly the fact they are improving faster than Scala.

<comment><USER5> Neither of those has or intends to have HKT, and they'll never be an acceptable replacement for Scala without it. They're "improving faster" but only in that they're starting from further behind.

<comment><USER47> The reason why Kotlin is gaining marketshare is specifically because they aren't chasing after things like HKTs. Kotlin is squarely going after the better Java market and not the advanced FP one.

<comment><USER5> I think Kotlin's design - adding lots of ad-hoc support for specific use cases but without the underlying general constructs that make them coherent - <USER3> come to bite them as and when the language needs to evolve over time. (Indeed to a certain extent it already has, as Java 8+ adopts Options which don't play nice with Kotlin's ?. etc.) I guess we'll see how things look in a few years.

<comment><USER47> ? actually should play nicely with explicit Option types, they do in C# anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> "Scala has pioneered the fusion of object-oriented and functional programming in a typed setting."

What about Ocaml (1996, well before scala) and F# (2005, not too long after scala)?

<comment><USER5> OCaml users tend to avoid its object system, so while it attempted to fuse object-oriented and functional I don't think we can say it succeeded. F# is, as you say, later.

<comment><USER49> OCamlers tend to avoid OOP mostly because we can get away with modules, functors, polymorphic variants to model subtyping, and now also GADTs and open variant types to precisely model and add cases.

When we do need to use it, it is actually pretty elegant and well-designed. It's just that since we've tasted the power of the more functional abstraction techniques, OOP loses its allure.

<comment><USER38> Indeed. I think that what OCaml proved is that the "O" isn't actually necessary. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Well it won't solve the biggest problems with interop [https://github.com/scala/collection- strawman/issues/283](https://github.com/scala/collection-strawman/issues/283) (sadly).

I mean I can understand all the reasons not to, however It's just a pita that there is no sane way to do it, besides reimplementing either two api's or come up with your own collections.

<comment><USER7> Is this really such a big problem? You can either work directly with the Java collections if the code is performance sensitive, or have a `.toScala` call at your Java -> Scala boundary and a `.toJava` call at your Scala -> Java boundary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> As a heavy Scala user I'm excited by this. But really I don't think it will improve Scala adoption because the blockers there are all around developer experience (tooling is terrible - sbt, and feedback cycles are very slow).

Personally, for a lot of my current use cases (APIs) I'm veering towards Go more and more as I find it a lot more productive.

<comment><USER36> At the Scala Center we're working on addressing these problems. We now have working groups devoted to ease coding in Scala and make it easier for any dev to use any build tool.

<comment><USER51> That's great news! Thanks for the reply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> > Simplify where possible

> eliminate inconsistencies and surprising behavior

Oh dear god please.

<comment><USER53> I know on HN people like Scala but it's by far one of the language I hated the most when I worked with it. It's the complete opposite of Go, every time the Go team said no to a random feature, the Scala team said yes to that random feature. Scala feels to me like a kind of functional Perl.

<comment><USER54> Scala is not for development, it's a research project.

<comment><USER55> I don't know is this is a good troll because I'm replying or a bad troll because it's so obvious.

There are Many people who work at many companies doing real development with Scala that goes all the way to production, handling real user traffic.

<comment><USER54> Yes we use Scala in production for >6 years.

But I wonder how many companies would make the same decision again after their experience with Scala.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I was really hoping they implement python-ish syntax [https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/issues/2491](https://github.com/lampepfl/dotty/issues/2491)

But no, "Implicit Function Types" instead. Ok.

<comment><USER57> So your biggest complaint is "Scala doesn't look like Python"? I mean, I love Python, but indentation-based syntax isn't _that_ great. I think Scala is fine as it is.

<comment><USER58> Being brutally honest, compared to Haskell, ML and to a lesser extent Python, Scala's syntax is rather ugly and unnecessarily verbose. I'm almost certain its creators chose the syntax in order to tempt curly-bracket programmers, not because they liked it personally. I really hope that future high-level languages will use better syntax and move on from the C/C++ influence.

<comment><USER57> > compared to Haskell, ML and to a lesser extent Python, Scala's syntax is > rather ugly and unnecessarily verbose

I have never worked extensively with Haskell or ML, but what I can say is that Scala's syntax is better than that of most other mainstream languages.

Three of Scala's syntax niceties are:

1) No semicolons

2) No braces required for one-line functions

3) No constructor required: instance arguments passed in class declaration

<comment><USER59> To add onto this, its not one line functions but rather functions whose body is a single expression.

You can do a big for comprehension, or a if/else, or a big chain of function calls, etc. without having to add brackets.

In practice you often end up not really using braces that often when writing FP style Scala.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> > become more opinionated by promoting programming idioms we found to work > well

Which idioms exactly?</comment>


The Art of Unix Programming (2003) - <AUTHOR> https://arp242.net/the-art-of-unix-programming/ <comment><USER2> What is special about the linked website with an opinionated reformat of this classical book? Imho a link to author 's site would be more appropriate.

<comment><USER3> What I see posted here is light-years more readable and more pleasing than what I see at the author's site[0].

[0]: [http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/](http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I noticed these criticisms of the Unix philosophy.

Postel's law of accepting liberally and emitting conservatively is getting blamed for leading to bloated programs that need to parse bad input. [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-thomson-postel-was- wrong-0...](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-thomson-postel-was-wrong-00)

Text formats like JSON and XML are easy to write by hand now with better editors and Python scripts for parsing them are easy to write. Idiosyncratic file formats may not be escaped correctly. An regex scan for "Inactive" can give false positives and negatives. A program that checks JSON will fail rather than giving a false answer.

"The internet is running in debug mode" : [http://java-is-the- new-c.blogspot.com/2014/10/why-protocols-...](http://java-is-the- new-c.blogspot.com/2014/10/why-protocols-are-messy-concept.html)

File formats can give way to programs using Sqlite. [https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html](https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> The title reminded me of The Art of Prolog. Also pretty awesome book.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am in the middle of this right now and enjoying it immensely.</comment>


Introducing the Ability to Follow Thought Leaders on LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/10/02/follow-people/

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4601705>

But you knew that, because it was you who submitted the same story three times in under 10 minutes.</comment>


The QAnon Conspiracy Theory: A Security Threat in the Making? - <AUTHOR> https://ctc.usma.edu/the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-a-security-threat-in-the-making/ <comment><USER2> One has to believe there's a deliberate intelligence effort signal boosting this a fair bit, meshed within the various layers of accounts/platforms propagating it.

Similar example of practices: [https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat- research/2020/07/ghostwr...](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat- research/2020/07/ghostwriter-influence-campaign.html)

The above relies on a fair bit of identity building as well, so Q's source/breeding in more anon platforms helps all the better. Intense stuff.

<comment><USER3> I am convinced that Q, if not started, was quickly taken over and turned into a Russian psyop. I expected the Mueller report to validate this (gross online astroturfing campaigns by state actors), but unless it is in the redacted parts, it is not there. But even casually investigating banned Twitter accounts used for Russian propaganda, you see a lot of clear connections with the "totally organic" Christian MAGA Qanon soccer mom accounts.

Leaves me mere speculation: I believe Q was initially conceived in case Trump had lost the election. It was to be a group of useful idiots/unwitting agents protesting about the "rigged" election, maybe even riled up to the point of taking up arms. Then when Trump won it was repurposed to sow disinformation about child sacrifice and child porn rings by the elite democrats. 9/11 saw the same thing: Massive efforts by Russia and Middle Eastern countries to seed inside job conspiracy theories. With the result that many Americans now believe 9/11 was an inside job, and can't really trust their government anymore (social cohesion damaged).

I believe some of these unwitting agents are so impressionable and gullible, that they can be made to act as "manchurian candidates", doing the bidding of foreign intelligence agencies (spreading propaganda, muddying the waters with disinformation and conspiracy, picking up a gun and going out to free children from a basement of a pizza parlor). I believe these intel agencies are able to infiltrate grassroots movements and subvert their ideals to be hostile to their host countries. I believe these agencies are able to create fake online realities, where unwitting agents are made to be believe they are part of something big, and everyone agrees with them, while they are psychologically manipulated.

<comment><USER4> > I believe Q was initially conceived in case Trump had lost the election

When would've that been? The first "drop" by Q happened on October 28, 2017.

<comment><USER3> Before the elections, when Putin thought that Trump would lose, and influence campaigns were designed to promote him as a detractor and divider, calling out the rigged elections and the deep state swamp. With Roger Stone laundering Russian "opposition research", like he did with Wikileaks, at that time a front for Russian intelligence.

4Chan has been very involved with these intelligence ARGs since after Project Chanology. Pedowood morphed into Pizzagate. "Seth Rich murder" was pushed hard on 4Chan, to detract from the fact that the Russians hacked the democrats. And it works: Instead of being insulted and angry that a foreign nation state so polutes the brains of your country and riles up the population to the level of riots and extreme polarization, some like to think that Hillary had Seth Rich assassinated for leaking. With so much smoke, who knows _what_ to think? All the while you see artificial KONY2012-style meme campaigns accusing Mueller of being a deep state fixer, synced on Twitter, Facebook, and 4chan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems like the media is talking about this more than anyone else at this point. There have literally been over 2000 articles written to debunk this. The content has been banned from reddit, twitter and other platforms.

Why is everyone so vigilant to call it "dangerous"? Why not flat earth and chem trails? Why all the attention for this one thing?

<comment><USER6> Media are endlessly debunking QAnon and PizzaGate, yet no media is investigating things like Epstein network (Mr Clinton traveled like 30 times in the famous island - he must really liked the beach).

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure I've heard plenty about the Epstein network from the mainstream media over the past couple of years. Are you _really_ sure there's no media investigating it?

<comment><USER8> The media barely looks into the Epstein story details and actively omits large chunks of evidence, such as his and Maxwell's ties to Les Wexner or their ties to domestic/foreign intelligence. As Alexa Acosta said: "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone." There's so much evidence that he was linked to the CIA/Mossad and Epstein was even known to brag about it.

We now know that Harvey Weinstein, who is just a media exec, was able to kill stories for years about him sexual abusing actresses. Is is crazy to think that a intelligence agencies could kill stories about one of their honeypots?

<comment><USER7> > Is is crazy to think that a intelligence agencies could kill stories about > one of their honeypots?

No, though it's misguided to presume that this factually occurred merely because one is capable of imagining such a scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When people lose faith in the people who are supposed to be telling the truth, they look for other things to fill the gap. The media is unreliable to say the least, government is compromised and corrupt, the academy is both self-serving and "woke." Why wouldn't alternative explanations for things seem appealing at this point?

<comment><USER10> Especially when those alternative explanations are exciting (Spies everywhere!) and simple ("Oh, so that's why!") instead of boring, vague, complex, and nuanced.

I believe there's also a fair bit of package-deals. If you believe in one thing, you trust people more who also believe in that thing ("they see the world as it really is"). If they also believe in something else, that's a strong vote for that other thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Is it just me, or is there a fair bit of down-voting occurring on pretty rational takes on this thread.

...and the post got flagged!

<comment><USER11> It is a controversial issue regarding identity and perception. You can't agree to disagree. One side believes pedophelia is being enabled, the other side believes brainwashing is deploying as a political weapon.

The topic abhors rationality. It's a wedge in political discourse, because it is seemingly immoral to take the middle ground.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Compare "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (1964)

[https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in- am...](https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american- politics/)

with examples from 1797 onward.

<comment><USER13> Interesting. From the article:

"In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among [redacted], who have now demonstrated in the [redacted] movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For discussion, I advance a hypothesis that's occurred to me: at least some of the same people are behind both QAnon and c19study.com. I don't have hard evidence of this, but in looking at the social graphs around the c19study Twitter accounts, I see significant QAnon representation (the account @LynnFynn3 shows prominently in the intersection of the two).

Like QAnon, the people behind c19study are very careful to hide their true identities. I find it plausible that they're marketing the same basic stuff to different audiences, c19 to people who fall for stuff that sounds like science that isn't.

Of course, there's another explanation for the overlap, that people who are susceptible to conspiracy theories promoted by anonymous instigators are likely to buy into both. This hypothesis is consistent with them being completely separate, just using similar tactics.

I have a pretty good idea who the coder is behind the c19 site. If you're a reporter who would find this useful, or somebody who is better than me at tracking this stuff down, feel free to get in touch. (Note: other people, including Brian Krebs, have had a crack at this)

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this an online version of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, in which a charismatic (though here anonymous) leader knows how to push the psychological buttons of a lot of disaffected people?

</comment><comment><USER16> To be clear I think the allegations of wrongdoing are FAR more likely to be correct than the theory that someone in the government is actually doing something to stop it.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's also notable though that some themes that Q covers, such as Trump being spied on, are showing progression with a significant milestone today with the guilty plea of Kevin Clinesmith.

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/kevin-clinesmith-former-fbi- la...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/kevin-clinesmith-former-fbi-lawyer-plans- to-plead-guilty-to-falsifying-documents-in-russia-probe-per-report)

Q first mentioned Clinesmith in August 2018.

So it raises a question of why the huge pushback and dedication of resources from the media, when, they could just be reporting on it instead of trying to discredit it. Sounds like whatever is going to happen is going to happen regardless so we'll all just wait and see.

</comment><comment><USER17> "in the making"? No, in the _now_. It doesn't matter if half the people pushing all this are just bored teenagers in it for the lulz. Even if that's the case, they're feeding into the genuine delusional and often dangerous behavior of a few who seriously believe in it. They're also feeding enough garbage into public discussions that real content is obscured, much like jamming a radio signal with noise. Especially with an election coming up, QAnon is already a security threat.

</comment><comment><USER18> As someone with a family member who is falling into this non-sense, I will tell you it is extremely dangerous.

We essentially have some teenager on 4chan trolling an entire audience of probably hundreds of thousands of individuals. They now believe Trump is our savior and the deep state wants to take him down. There are violent undertones to the entire conspiracy and I do worry they are going to turn into terrorists.

<comment><USER19> It's funny, I remember seeing the original thread on 4chan for QAnon, not sure if I was actually on the site or just saw a screencap.

Anyways I thought it was kind of dumb and tolling, got a laugh and went on with my day. I think 2-3 days later I see QAnon being talked about on Fox News and CNN. My exact thought was "some guy in his basement must be thrilled that his shitpost on 4Chan landed on national TV".

It's crazy how people have fallen for it. Because if you read the actual conspiracy theory of QAnon it's batshit insane. The world order is being taken over by the Obama's and Democrats and the only guy that can save us is that dude that used to be on The Apprentice.

Like how do people not read that and think that the story is just too perfect to be true. Like seriously: Obamas are bad, Democrats and Hillary wants to take over the world. But WAIT WAIT!!! DONALD J TRUMP of all people is going to save you from the evil Democrats!

<comment><USER18> There are also members who believe Hillary and Biden are clones, controlled by the deep state.

How????? When did we get to CLONES?

<comment><USER20> One of the effects of mass media psychosis is feeling that what you're seeing is a simulation. Biden on TV _looks like_ Biden, but isn't actually physical Biden himself - therefore clones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is the result of under funding education, and allowing the boundary between church and state to blur. Those with a religious fairy tale cause and effect understanding of reality, QAnon makes perfect sense. While anyone with a firm foundation in reality sees pure nonsense.

<comment><USER11> It's important to note that QAnon first appeared on 4chan, not a religious forum. I don't think religiosity is a good explanation for QAnon belief. Religiosity like church attendance is declining in America for instance.

Instead, think of the stereotypical 4chan user. Lonely, asocial, engaged in a meme subculture separate from the mainstream. It's this psychological social distance and lack of identification with the mainstream that is key. This personality type exists throughout American society. My claim is that these people take pure nonsense to heart because they have no firm foundation in reality. They are too plugged in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Also recommended, a deep dive into QAnon from the Atlantic: [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-n...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon- nothing-can-stop-what-is-coming/610567/)

<comment><USER22> It's also worth examining the material itself:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtjTRYrF8X4&list=PL18vrD9EPj...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtjTRYrF8X4&list=PL18vrD9EPjAC7cQGB9fIzJcziJg4xwZkT)

and

[https://qanon.pub/](https://qanon.pub/)

are popular stops.

The media is often presenting a less-crazy image of QAnon than it actually is. It is growing in influence:

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/11/qanon- facebo...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/11/qanon-facebook- groups-growing-conspiracy-theory)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What if we thought of QAnon as a political party?

<comment><USER23> It's not so dissimilar to the Tea Party movement in its early days. That was a fringe tax-revolt movement that relied heavily on misconceptions and ignorance about how progressive taxation works and who benefits from social spending; and it really took off when it gained assistance from private capital and public figures.

<comment><USER16> I think that whole misconception and ignorance of how it works thing was more of the astro turfing rebuttals to delegitimize the movement. In reality you didn't need any understanding of the tax system to see that the taxes are too high and entitlements are out of control, many of them insolvent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> America is bat-shit crazy.

<comment><USER25> Unfair to bats.

<comment><USER12> Unfair to guano.

<tinfoil> ... which is largely KNO3. In the latest development in a conspiracy which has been running since the days of the Emperor Tiberius, it's been proven by five eyes that the crew of the MV Rhosus ordered a lot of takeout from Comet Ping Pong. </tinfoil>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A good listen about QAnon: [https://youtu.be/lf3xlx9K0DI](https://youtu.be/lf3xlx9K0DI)

Big issue with QAnon is that unlike normal standalone conspiracy theories, this one engulfs all other ones into a single plot.

<comment><USER23> That's really not so different than many previous popular conspiracy theories.

Replace QAnon's pedophile elite with one of:

\- The Catholic Church

\- Free Masons

\- Rosicrutians

\- Illuminati

\- Jewish Bankers

\- Satanist Elites

\- Lizard People

\- The CIA

\- UN Globalists w/ Agenda 21

\- And so on...

What makes a conspiracy theory really _stick_ is when it confounds a _kernel of truth_. The more convincing and defensible that kernel of truth is, the easier it is to build conjecture upon.

Ie, the CIA probably isn't directing world affairs, but they do certainly engage in political actions to disrupt the course of nations, and so many extrapolate their influence to extents we don't have evidence for.

QAnon's kernel of truth is the incredibly alluring and defensible idea that politicians cannot be trusted and many are not working in our best interest. From there... The sky's the limit.

<comment><USER26> I agree, but as mentioned here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24159257](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24159257) QAnon has morphed into a master conspiracy to unite all of these crazy groups.

The same people that push Qanon are also pushing anti mask, anti vaccine and etc conspiracies.

<comment><USER23> I saw that, but I'm not convinced that the breadth of scope is what's interesting. The other targets of interest I mentioned are also often "big tent" or "broad umbrella" conspiracies that pull in many others.

Ie, Lizard people come from the Hollow Earth and are conspiring with Planned Parenhood and UN Agenda 21 to depopulate the planet; this is a believed conspiracy you can find on conspiracy boards.

What makes QAnon different is that it's a movement that exists largely as a result of the sophistication of modern social networks and the ability of small groups of people to wield enormous platforms on them.

The Anti-Vax, Birther and Sandy Hook conspiracies were sort of the early progenitors of this medium: they took the conversations off the aged PHPbb boards and various sub-reddits and on to the social networks. QAnon is often _the same people_ simply continuing to talk with each other.

They've just been learning how to use the tools at their disposal, and have become proficient at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > retaining the central belief that a cabal of powerful elites control the > world, using their power to covertly abuse children

They're going to need to be more precise about the Pizzagate conspiracy, because the above wording very closely describes the Jeffrey Epstein case, which has been proven to be true.

<comment><USER28> I don't understand - why is it misleading to describe Pizzagate that way because a powerful elite abused children?

<comment><USER27> The article is worded such that it implies that the given scenario is a false conspiracy theory, while in fact the scenario did happen. Conflating the two scenarios both implicitly discredits the Epstein case and also makes no compelling argument that Pizzagate is false.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> All misinformation is a risk and threat. But Qanon seems minor when compared to others that are perpetuated by major news organization and undermine democracy: Russia collusion conspiracy theory, fine people on both sides hoax (the belief that the President called neo-nazis fine people).

These have much more public and institutional support than QAnon.

<comment><USER30> I'm sure Trump's love of neo-nazi imagery, slogans, ideas, policies, and people is just a coincidence, like the video he tweets of his supporters yelling 'white power'. I'm sure it's all a hoax, like his support of the very fine neo-nazis that killed heather heyer or the trump tower meeting with veselnitskya.

<comment><USER31> The ad with the downwards red triangles had me spooked, personally.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/18/trump- cam...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/18/trump-campaign- runs-ads-with-marking-once-used-by-nazis-designate-political-prisoners/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Looks like the site is down -- it's a conspiracy! /s

</comment><comment><USER33> Okay, but why is this theory so different? There are lots and lots of conspiracy theories from every corner of the political sphere. Why is this one a real security threat?

<comment><USER34> This already happened because of QAnon.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/us/pizzagate-attack- sente...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/us/pizzagate-attack- sentence.html)

These people see a powerful satanic child raping cabal of power that run things from the shadows. Their champion is Donald Trump, if he were to lose this election it's not a reach to see an uptick in these sorts of attacks. Because, honestly, if this conspiracy were true, the only moral thing to do would be to oppose it.

<comment><USER35> Urban legends about a "powerful satanic child raping cabal of power that run things from the shadows" date back to the 1980s at least. Some of the underlying tropes are centuries old or even more - for instance, there's plenty of historical, blatantly biased propaganda about Roman emperors portraying them as vicious, crazy sex predators. So what's new about Pizza and Q exactly?

<comment><USER28> What's new is the sociopolitical climate and the modern web.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Schneier: Scanning Cargo for Nuclear Material and Conventional Explosives - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/scanning_cargo.html <comment><USER2> Original article linked here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1080459></comment>


A minimal, distraction-free chat application - <AUTHOR> https://hack.chat/ <comment><USER2> lol, guess I have to rename my WIP minimalist chat application</comment>


Atom Shell – Write Cross-platform Desktop Apps in HTML and JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/atom/atom-shell/tree/master/docs

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see tutorials for submitting to app stores.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know of any future support for OSX Lion (10.7)?</comment>


Ask HN: Is college for everyone? - <AUTHOR>

College definitely isn't for everyone in my opinion. I know for a fact it isn't for me, however my parents tend to disagree. My co-founder and I just applied for the summer session of Y-Combinator last week after beginning development on our mobile app and website. However, attending college while trying to form a company tends to be rather difficult. All I want to do when I wake up is work on our company, read techcrunch articles, and fix designs. Sitting in a lecture hall learning about macroeconomics is the last thing I want to do. My parents on the other hand see college as a "sense of security" -which is understandable. But I know that if I dropped out of college and worked day and night on our company, along with my co-founder, we can really make it big. My parents don't seem to buy that and think that it's just a little project on the side that we do when we have time. However, what they don't know is the one-hour of sleep we get every night and the minimal amount of effort we put into school, while putting 110% into our company. After negotiating with them for several weeks, they agreed that if our team is accepted to Y-Combinator, they will let me drop out of college and let me pursue my dream. I'm really hoping this works out, knowing internally I just can't return to college next semester at NYU and do this all over again! I just really want to work on the company we are creating 24-7. I find pleasure in knowing that one day everyone with a smartphone and cash will be using our app (teaser). So here are a few questions for you:<p>What do you think about dropping out? What if you had kids? Would you let them? Cheers! <comment><USER2> If you listen to your parents and waste four or five years at college you will be financially worse off and regret it. Your parents care about you and think they are giving you good advice but they are not.

The world is changing too fast to wait four years to start your life. You will have a four year head start over your peers that went to school if you stop now.

22 or 23 is too late to start life in the 21st century. College will waste your time. You are thirsty for knowledge and there is more to learn online than you can learn in the classroom.

I would recommend getting some consulting work and make your own money as soon as possible so your parents have less power over you.

In a couple years they will see the wisdom of your decision.

Edit:

> What do you think about dropping out? What if you had kids? Would you let > them? Cheers!

I say drop out. My plan for my kids (if they are above average intelligence) is for them to get a GED at 16 and start their real adult life at that point. High school and college are relics in my opinion. Our current conception of school is very recent, and I believe we delay adulthood far too long.

Edit 2:

Learn macro economics on your own. Read, all the time. You can learn much faster than your peers in classrooms if you are a dedicated autodidact.

<comment><USER3> Dude, at least be reasonable with your response.

True, college is not for everyone. But this kid is posting a question that could potentially impact the rest of his life. Is this really the level-headed advice he should hear:

"If you listen to your parents and waste four or five years at college you will be financially worse off and regret it. Your parents care about you and think they are giving you good advice but they are not."

To be honest, that's shit. It's ignorant, and no better than calling everyone without degrees a bum.

What should be said is pretty much what his parents are hinting at. Go to college for security, unless you have something really special lined up. Trust me, it is very very hard to get a good job without a degree (and still hard to get a good job with one). You can still have plenty of time to work on side projects while in school. You can always go to school later, but it never gets any easier.

Edit: man, there is just so much to be said after re-reading all this. And each time I disagree with you more. The fact you are so absolute, that fact that you are so wrong...

Look 23 is not too late for anything. The world moves fast now, but evolution in a person occurs much longer than ever before. You change for a long time. It's not capped by 28.

Do whatever you want for your kids, but I suggest keep a close-minded idea like that to yourself. You don't have to embrace college as the end all, but do realize the world we are living in.

<comment><USER2> Everyone is going to tell ronakgp94 to go to college -- society, parents, family, everybody. I am offering an alternate view point based on my own experience. College has entrenched itself so firmly in our consciousness that I am not a real threat to it's sway.

Please, don't make me drink the hemlock.

There is a reason that ronakgp94 is even asking this question. Things have changed, times have changed. There are options for self education that did not exist even ten years ago. The field that he is going into is one where getting a good job without a college degree is almost trivial.

Listen to the words that he is saying. He doesn't like school, he doesn't want to be there, he wants to work on his product.

olso4052, I'm being earnest relaying a seldom heard view point. I have a tale to tell of the darker side of academia. Hear me out, and keep an open mind. I spoke in absolutes because of the strength of my conviction on this topic. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, I know most don't.

College is hell if you don't want to be there. It creates an environment of chronic low level stress. Low level stress leads to depression. Scientists need depressed rats in order to test the efficacy of an anti-depressant. They get depressed rats by exposing them to chronic low level stress. It works every time.

There is a reason suicide rates are high among college students. Academia often creates high pressure pointless busy work and unrealistic deadlines.

Many campuses have a culture of binge drinking. Chronic stress and binge drinking lead to anxiety, depression and lower intelligence.

Alcohol is a potent neurotoxin, and it's swilled with abandon as a rite of passage. Student that embrace this culture leave college with more knowledge, but diminished mental faculties and perhaps the start of a problem with alcohol.

The financial security of a college degree is not what it used to be. I believe that the tipping point has been reached where those that pressure young people to go to college are now giving poor financial advice unless they are entering certain majors.

One of my oldest friends went to NYU for four years. She racked up a lot of student debt, spent six post college years working low end jobs and eventually had to move out of nyc because she couldn't even afford to share a one bedroom apartment in a bad part of town.

NYU tuition is at least $20,000 x 4 = $80,000, unless it is subsidized by others.

This kid could probably go out today and get a job making $80,000 a year. The math could go a lot of ways but after four years you could either be looking at many tens of thousands of debt or a savings account with six figures in it and a lot of on the job experience, and a lot lower stress.

No matter how you slice it college is over priced, even if other people pay for you. The internet has driven the cost of information down to almost zero, and there is no reason to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to learn.

Fear not, college is being disrupted. College administrators got fat on their student loan bubble, and scrappy start ups backed by Bill Gates and others are coming to knock them off their perch.

Of one thing I am sure. The cost of college is unsustainable and getting the public to subsidize it further will be tough with out large budget deficits and debt.

To paraphrase Elon Musk, a college professor is like a Vaudeville actor, and the coming online education will be like a Hollywood movie. Why be taught by average minds when the greatest minds can record their lessons once and scale to infinity?

I had fun in college, yes, and I learned some things in class. I would have had much more fun, gotten my life started earlier and made a lot more money if I lived on my own in a place like NYC from 18-22. I really wish I could get that $80 grand on tuition back, I would so much rather have bought a house than gone to college classes.

\-- Just one man's opinion, take it with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER3> And that's cool. Your story is a good one and you bring up a lot of good points. The area where I firmly disagree is how absolute you are.

Are you being overly narcissistic? Probably, but that's fine - it's an opinion and he should hear it. But saying so concretely that it's always bad and will always do X and ruin X is really a poor way to convey information, especially to a younger fellow looking for answers.

However, the main thing it sounds like we disagree on is the future of education. You are correct that there are lots of problems with the college system, but all I can see is it growing. College just brings you to the table, like a high school degree did 40 years ago. Now it's grad school that sets you apart, education wise. I can only see that continuing to evolve into the future. Hopefully what is taught becomes more practical, but higher-learning is not leaving.

You're main point about getting knowledge elsewhere is true. However. 1) it's very difficult to convey to the outside world that you have that info without a degree, and 2) very few people are motivated enough to actually do that. Bill Gates is a rare example, we can all agree on that. I'm sure this kid will be able to read a dozen econ and marketing books and come out ahead, and so your advice could make sense to him. However, very few people are going to have the initiative, and so college will continue to thrive.

If you are selling all your college stock, I'm buying it, and feeling pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another point you need to consider is if you ever want to live or work overseas. Most countries require an undergraduate university degree for you to get a work visa.

This might not be the case in the future but it is a reality in the present.

Of course if you are successful in your company and have large sums of money at your disposal investment of $1 million or so in your destination country should get you a work visa, degree or no degree.

</comment><comment><USER5> My thoughts, in somewhat rambling order:

1) Parents don't know everything, however they love you and are looking after your welfare. They think your best bet is college. I have taken choices other than what my parents thought best, and worked out. Maybe you will too.

2) As others said, your startup has a likelihood to fail, or at least you'll encounter some major hurdles on the way. You have to keep that in mind. You might be extremely excited, but do you have user validation?

3) College has a lot of benefits outside just the boring education part, and not all of your courses are macroeconomics! (which I did take, and found interesting, but YMMV). Many courses help with basics you might need in the future. Doing things in practise is a great way to learn, only there are some theoretical things you won't come across unless you do some kind of structured course (can be college, Coursera or whatever). In my case, I tend to procrastinate, so college imposed some rules and forced me to study, which I otherwise wouldn't have done on my own. It also opens your mind.

4) You'll meet like-minded people and broaden your horizons. Especially if you get into a college you want.

That said, I don't know about how it works in the U.S., but you could do a "year off", see where your startup leads, and, if it doesn't, get into college a year later. It won't be the end of the world.

Something I believe you must do is try to "fail fast". Show your startup to the world. Heck, show it here - unless you believe it's a one trick pony we can easily copy, or some other competitive advantage - in that case show it to people you trust, but show your stuff to SOMEONE that will give you feedback. Especially people in your target, and people that don't know you / won't sugar coat it.

I'm sure you know about Steve Blank's philosophy, Lean Startups, Pre-totyping, etc. It sounds like it fits to what you're doing.

Edit: this is not legal advice :) , I'm 32, never did a startup (yet), work for a boring BigCo, did college and just finished a master's (loved the masters), still have friends from college.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well a bit tricky to answer generically... everyone is different, lots of conditionals and unknowns to give a truly good answer.

The good news is that it sounds like your parents are not stupid and neither are you. That being said while you may have lots of good energy and exuberance towards your startup, it will (extremely likely) fail. To be a realist first attempts at startups are usually the first step in a long learning curve (although there are very rare exceptions). So instead of thinking about this specific company you should rather think of it as embarking on the path of being an entrepreneur - most people who take this path fail a lot, have a handful of wins, embrace volatility, and never grace the pages to Techcrunch. In short it is the high risk/reward path - almost like playing basketball with hopes of making the NBA (although typically with better outcomes for those who never make the big leagues).

The college path, assuming you are smart about it, dont take out crippling debt, and major in something half way useful, has benefits as well. Its typically an interesting experience intellectually, socially, and culturally. Despite what you may hear education is still very strongly correlated to earnings so in that regard it can typically open up opportunities to good paying jobs. It is also can allow for future educational opportunities (MBA, MS, etc) as well as more seamless industry changes if the bottom falls out of tech. In that regard it is the lower risk option that can give a jump start to ones career if done correctly.

The good thing is that neither option precludes the other. Start a startup, then go to college... Go to college, start a startup while your there... etc. Either option sounds interesting - my personal vote would be college in that Im more risk averse and it has been well studied that education correlates with entrepreneurial success.

</comment><comment><USER7> "they agreed that if our team is accepted to Y-Combinator, they will let me drop out of college and let me pursue my dream"

Sounds like a good deal to me. I would only like to add that you should at least "consider" the other side of the equation and be prepared in case. What if you don't get accepted to YC ? What will be your back-up plan then ? You seem like a smart person who knows his priorities which is always a good thing. Just make sure you are not putting all your eggs in one basket.

</comment><comment><USER8> College is what you make of it. I found it to be a great experience and would recommend it to anyone. There are many personal and educational benefits in going.

If however your company is a serious affair I'd go for that. You can always go back to college in the future. And by serious affair I mean you can easily move out of your home in the next 9 months and support yourself.

</comment><comment><USER9> College or where I am from university is definitely not for everyone. Mostly everyone I work with went to university and presumably have HECS debts (student loans) they need to pay off now they're working. I, on the other hand finished high school and taught myself a few programming languages, learned how to talk myself up and went and got a job.

If I had kids and they wanted to drop out and teach themselves something, I would be all for it. Although we are moving to a different place, companies seem to have a growing fascination with degrees thinking they're relevant or important when the reality is you probably use 5% of the degree you just got $75,000 into debt for, if you're lucky.

Dropping out isn't for everyone. Some people only learn when they're being taught and people like you and I teach ourselves and can get by on street smarts.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like your parents are supporting you, so let's put this in TechCrunch terms. They're your majority equity holders, and they're calling the shots. The easiest way to get 100% equity in your life is to finish college and be able to support yourself. It's truly liberating to be financially independent, and you'll never have these arguments again (and if you do it's purely to humor them).

To me it sounds like you can do college but you care about other things more. Maybe you should compromise and try to get a freelancing career off the ground. In that sense, you're an independent business owner, you have freedom, you can support yourself, and you can easily work part time and do side projects. But getting going as a freelancer is a lot of work. If you must, ask your parents' support for this for a few years until you're self-supporting.

</comment><comment><USER11> The knowledge you acquire strictly from your course work can be duplicated else where at a much cheaper price. If you don't need someone looking over your shoulder you should have no trouble picking up this knowledge on your own, and for that matter more relevant knowledge.

However, the social knowledge you pick up and the relationships you develop at college (especially if you spend all 4 years at the same university) are what I most value from my college experience. There are other avenues to develop these social skills and build a network, but college offers a great opportunity to do so.

</comment><comment><USER12> College does not have a monopoly on knowledge. If college helps you learn skills and develop good working habits, then do it. If your instinct tells you your time is better spent working on projects and learning things that way, then do that instead or both in combination. Just don't make the mistake and assume any specific project will succeed, ever. Instead spend your time investing in yourself, developing skills and building a portfolio that will impress people more than a degree will.

</comment><comment><USER13> College is waste of time - real work gives the true value.

If you ask me - quit and follow your dreams (i did so). Even if you make mistakes you will learn faster from them than the college.

College is for people that don't know what to do and are looking for orientation. Also if you don't have a degree, some people say it will be harder to get a job, which is one more reason to get your company of the ground.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to all who replied! Great advice that will definitely be taken into consideration.</comment>