Phrases that announce 'I'm lying' - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/11/14/i_hate_to_tell_you/?p1=Upbox_links <comment><USER2> Calling these "lying qualifiers" seems a bit excessive.

"To be honest", for example, is extremely common and doesn't all that often precede lies, despite its face value meaning. Sure, sometimes it precedes a lie, but then, so does the word "the". For example, "Look, to be honest, I really don't know why the server crashed yet, but I'll do what I can to find out." This is a sentence that many who run startups will have uttered at one point in their life without any intention of misleading anyone.

Even the "ultimate but-head" that the author presents, "I'm not saying that...", which he implies means "I'm pretending that I'm not saying that...", is not at all such a clear case. "I'm not saying that X" can and often does mean, very simply, that you want to be clear where your next statement stops. For example: "I'm not saying that the deal is off, but we're going to have to really work on clauses 3 and 4 before we can move forward." or even, more melodramatically, "I'm not saying that you murdered her, I really don't think there's enough evidence to make such a case at this point, but the evidence really doesn't look great for you right now."

Seeing as the author is clearly quite knowledgeable about words and their meanings, the question is, then, why is she making such a flimsy case? The answer is, perhaps, to be found in the conclusion:

 _Please don't take this the wrong way — and really, I hate to say it — but the true audience for the but-head may not be our listeners, but ourselves._

<comment><USER3> I agree with your entire post, but...[1]

 _I'm not saying that the deal is off, but we're going to have to really work on clauses 3 and 4 before we can move forward._

I interpret that statement as "unless you come my way on clauses 3 and 4, the deal is off."

For me, it's hard not to read two statements, joined with a 'but', and not interpret the first statement as a 'lie'.

[1] irony intended

<comment><USER4> How about something like: _I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy the movie, but the action scene was a bit over the top_

<comment><USER5> Exactly.

I'd read this as; the person actually did enjoy the movie .. but could have enjoyed it more if it wasn't so OTT. No deception involved.

To read this kind of thing, it's always important to think about what the person's intent is. If someone's behaving in a Machiavellian way, it's _all_ about intent (and possible incentive).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an awful article. The title is linkbait and the opinions offered are given with little contradictory evidence.

Anticipating what somebody's response might be -- "you hurt my feelings!" or "You're lying" -- is part of human communication. Why have three exchanges when I can just anticipate your response and cover the most likely mistakes you might make? Moves the conversation along faster.

They also serve a critical role in the emotional nature of discourse. If I say, "To be honest", I am preparing the listener for something that might be more blunt than they are prepared to hear. "No offense, but" gets the reader ready to hear something they may find offensive. It's not that I am being disingenuous. Far from it. I'm simply trying to apply a little balm before the burn comes.

In life we have to say things to people that they may not want to hear. It is critically important that we learn how to "do the dance" with throwaway words and phrases like this in order that we can give -- and get -- information we may find hard to digest. Yes, you can pull out a broad brush and say it's lying, but you're entirely missing the point of such phrases by doing so.

Written communication to some degree mirrors vocal communication. We will always have a need to help each other emotionally as we talk about important things. Calling each other liars because the literal meanings of phrases don't exactly match up with the intention of the speaker is to confuse the practice of language with the semantic meaning of the words, something any linguist worth his salt should know not to do.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fun 1-month social experiment

Carry around a notepad.

Week 1: Every time you say "but", make a mark. Don't try to change anything, just keep track.

Week 2: try to not say "but", ever.

For weeks 3 and 4, do the same thing, but with commas.

Periods are more powerful than commas.

Weak: "Look, to be honest, I don't know why the server crashed, but I'm doing what I can to find out."

Strong: "I don't know why the server crashed. I'm working on finding out."

Weak: "I'm not saying the deal's off, but unless we can sort out clauses 3 and 4, I don't see how we can move forward."

Strong: "Clauses 3 and 4 are blockers. I would like to figure them out so we can move forward."

Weak: "I'm not saying your brother is fat or lazy, just that he could do with some more exercise and maybe get a job."

Strong: "Your brother is fat and lazy. He should get a job and lose weight."

Weak: "I know it's none of my business, but she could do a lot better."

Strong: "I don't like her boyfriend. Luckily we're grownups and don't have to agree on everything."

For every person who is shocked and offended by this approach, two people will respect and trust you for it. It's a net win.

<comment><USER8> Please don't call someone fat and lazy, even if it is more direct. People respond better to courteousness than rudeness.

<comment><USER9> I often wonder if it is this attitude that has caused the rise in fat and lazy people.

<comment><USER10> I'd sooner blame the "choices" of food we eat.

<comment><USER11> But people often do not care enough to change their "choices", even when the negative results are obvious. There must be a reason for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A few years ago I started almost universally replacing the word "but" with the word "and" in conversations. This word substitution has the added benefit of sometimes just causing me to not say what I was going to say. If something does not sound right with this word substitution that is an indication that what I was going to say was unnecessary.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think this article is making a claim about whether or not these phrases indicate that someone is _about_ to lie to you.

The phrases _themselves_ are often untrue.

For example, if I say "It's not about the money, but...", what follows is not necessarily a lie. What the article claims is that I'm about to make an argument based on money and that I'm trying to preemptively deflect any counter-argument. Therefore, the phrase "It's not about the money, but..." may, strictly speaking, become untrue. But that doesn't necessarily have any bearing on what follows.

<comment><USER14> In that case it's a very badly titled piece.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article overreaches. It's like complaining about greetings. When I ask "How are you?", it doesn't _imply_ that I don't care, even when I don't. I am not lying, I am observing social convention (being polite).

Social convention requires us to use "softeners" that indicate the speaker is aware that the listener has an independent feelings and opinions. It is _not_ required that the speaker sincerely and deeply care.

True lies (nice phrase?) are more manipulative. They are more confident and attempt to limit the range of acceptable responses. Most of the ones cited don't.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not quite related, but fun: sometime ago I figured out that if you say to someone the phrase "I sometimes lie", they _know_ with 100% certainty that you're telling the truth.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just the other day I was in a line at Sears' automotive department. There was a lady in front of me who had brought in a dead battery. She was about to leave it with the Sears guy when the man behind me said to her, "It's none of my business, but there are terminals attached to that battery that you might need when you put the new one back in the car" (or something like that). He was right, and they were grateful to him for pointing it out. I thought it was an interesting politeness, actually, that he prefaced his comment as he did. In his place I would probably have started out with "Excuse me, ...", which I don't think is wrong, but his more elaborate intro perhaps made it clearer that he knew he was butting in, albeit with the clear intent to be helpful.

</comment><comment><USER18> My favourite used by any tech PR - "we don't have anything to announce right now, but..."

</comment><comment><USER19> I believe that for non-naive English speakers like me these "I'm lying" phrases are very annoying. Mainly because we still translate sentences into our own mother language (or some kind of proto-language) and then try understand the meaning.

For example, "Look, to be honest.." - what does it mean? You were not honest before? Or "I'm not saying..." - but you are saying? Why do you need that introduction? What do you want to communicate with that?

I believe that native English speakers swallow and ignore these phrases more easily.

Am I wrong here? Do other non-native English speakers feel the same?

<comment><USER20> True, very true. (Although I would change "naive" into "native" in your first sentence. Or otherwise I completely misunderstood you.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's nice that someone is actually pointing them out, not that most people don't already know that these statements are but-heads to begin with. Everyone knows "I'm not racist, but..." is followed by a racist statement. So the article in and of itself is essentially nothing more than blogspam.

What would be nice is if they provided some counter-interjections to use right after someone uses a statement like this. If someone says "I'm not saying X, but..." it would be nice to know a polite and decisive way to respond with "Oh yes you are".

<comment><USER22> The article does do that. Towards the middle of it.

\---

Once someone has said "It's (really) none of my business, but..." it's entirely permissible (if slightly rude) to reply "You're right, it is none of your business." It's also reasonable to reply "Well, then, don't!" to someone who says "I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable, but..."

\---

That doesn't work as well for others, Imagine "I am not racist but ... " <interrupt> "Oh, but you are racist". So now you accused someone of being a racist. Sure you have stood up and called them on their racism, but you also created an enemy. Sometimes it is worth it, sometimes it isn't. Depending on the situation.

Or for example "To be perfectly honest ... " <interrupt> "Oh but you are not honest". Well now you are the one accusing them of dishonestly simply because they started the phrase with a stupid "but-head".

I think the point of the article is that some such phrases should raise red flags. They are not 100% proofs of lying or deceit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are many things we say in our daily language that are either pointless or contradictory. This article talks about "but-head" sentence prefixes. Another example would be disingenuous greetings, such as asking "how's life?", "how's your day been?", etc, even though we don't really care. Proof that we don't care: The way people get uncomfortable when someone actually honestly answers "actually my day's been terrible because of A, B, C ...".

This article raises some interesting points that I've thought of myself sometimes. Before reading this article, I had made the assumption that it was just protocol. I assumed that there was something ... missing in the English language: Often times, when we use such set expressions, we're actually trying to convey some sort of emotion rather than the actual message of the words. "Hey how's it going" is actually suppose to mean "I am acknowledging your presense, and may or may not wish to engage in conversation with you unless your mood complements mine...".

After reading this article, I can't help but find myself agreeing with the author. A lot of these are nothing but self-serving converstation fillers. Unfortunately, I can't think of any alternatives besides downright bluntness ...

</comment><comment><USER24> They didn't cover this one, which I think is pretty common as well:

"You're probably going to [exaggerate other person's negative reaction], but..."

This will usually dampen the other person's negative reaction. You've presumed the person will react unfavorably to whatever it is you're about to say. You, in a way, have suggested the person will have a bias to be negative, before you've even stated anything.

No one likes to hear that about themselves, so people will tend to overcompensate by being even more dispassionate than they normally are. Before anything is ever said.

"You're probably going to hate me for saying this, but..."

"You're going to think this is silly, but..."

"You're going to think I'm a jerk, but..."

I think in each case, you'll find the listener consciously or subconsciously suppress their reactions so as to not to come off as hating the other person, or thinking they are silly or a jerk.

</comment><comment><USER25> That these qualifiers are always bad is a pretty aggressive conclusion. A linguistic signal that you are about to disagree with someone is often useful as it takes the edge off a statement that would otherwise seem overly combative. However, this is probably highly cultural thing. I am British and I work in London. My German friend found it hard here at first because he would be too direct and people would perceive it as rude. He used to find it difficult to get people to do things for him and had to adjust the way he used the language. Having said that, it's true British people can take too long to get to the point :-)

</comment><comment><USER26> This reminds me of "Sorry-buts"...

When someone almost always says "I'm sorry, but..." they are never usually that sorry. I've noticed these phrases often used by those who have a hard time taking responsibility for their actions or failures.

<comment><USER27> I'm sorry, but I just don't agree...

<comment><USER26> But I don't believe that you're really sorry. You just found a convenient way to use the phrase in an attempt to refute my point.

<comment><USER27> Oh but I wasn't really sorry, and I do agree with your comment. "Sorry - buts" are almost always a way of being able to say "ohh but I didn't mean to get on your nerves", and of course, that's what I meant to do! :) Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a common mistake to make when you don't really understand how language works. The dictionary definitions (or 'meanings') of words are mostly irrelevant. The only purpose of words is to link a signifier to a mental construct. All the phrases listed in the article are not used as phrases (related signifiers), but as whole signifiers. The dictionary meanings of the individual words in the phrases, along with what those related meanings would imply for the phrase as a whole, are irrelevant to the rest of the sentence, and only serve to provide historical context.

</comment><comment><USER29> What he classifies as "lying qualifiers" seem to me often just used to soften what follows the "but", and has become the standard: we are so much used to this that the impression it would make without these "softeners" would be of a rude remark.

Although the message we want to convey, plainly and in all honesty, is "I think X", the standard approach is that we want to avoid giving this impression and say "I don't want to be rude, but I think X", whose effect on the other person is "I think X".

</comment><comment><USER30> These statements aren't really lies. They are ways to indicate that you aren't trying to start a fight with the bad news you have. Try not using them for a week, without being a passive aggressive non-confrontationalist.

With winning phrases like "Your feet smell", "You aren't up to it", and "I don't like those black kids who are picking on my kid at school" you might re- consider the value of these statements.

</comment><comment><USER31> Or generally, only add meaningful words. A "to be honest" or "in fact" can be removed without changing the sentence. Brevity is nice.

<comment><USER32> Yes, although, I do find that those words do help make certain statements more convincing to those that read them -- without need for evidence.

<comment><USER31> And my problem with society is that people are so easily convinced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In my experience they vary considerably across languages and cultures. I suspect they are important language constructs in cultures that aren't inherently blunt. For example, as a British English speaker expressions like "I'm sorry to make a fuss, but..." are there not to enable lying but to express humility.

Sometimes. There's always exceptions of course.

</comment><comment><USER34> And nothing says "this is a desperate grab for page views" like unnecessarily splitting your article into 3 pages.

</comment><comment><USER35> Love this. Perhaps the best response should be to respond with the exact phraseology just used, e.g. to "Don't take this the wrong way, but ..." _followed by some negative personal criticism_ you could reply with "Don't take this the wrong way, but now I really want to punch you."

</comment><comment><USER36> "We'd like to pay you for this but ..."

</comment><comment><USER5> 'With all due respect', does usually come with the caveat that no respect is deserved.

</comment><comment><USER37> I was hoping this would cover "Are you calling me a liar?" which seems to be a euphemism for "I dare you to explicitly accuse me of lying so I can change the subject" used by people who are lying.

</comment><comment><USER38> "I'm not a racist, but..."

<comment><USER39> If they forgot to include that disclaimer beforehand:

"...but I've got (insert ethnic group) friends, you see."

<comment><USER40> "...when I was in 3rd grade."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Really, if there were a point to the essay, she might have included "I'm not prejudiced, but..." after which some feel free to let go with remarks to give Ben Tillman pause.

</comment><comment><USER40> Anecdotely, I have attempted this with my girlfriend on several occasions, using the phrase, "Don't be offended, but..."

I can confirm it does not work.

</comment><comment><USER42> So a phrase including a "but" will be contrary. Got it.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm going to start using some of this "inappropriately" and see what happens.

I'm not racist but it's cold in here.

lol, if you tried you could find racism in lots of innocent sentences prefixed with that.

<comment><USER44> I think for that you want "but it's a bit nippy in here".

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> These are very passive agressive and emotionally manipulative. I'm glad that they're being called out in this article.</comment>


What happened when I taught Harvard undergrads about inequality and poverty - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1173057/what-happened-when-i-tried-to-teach-harvard-undergrads-about-inequality-and-poverty/ <comment><AUTHOR> " _I ran the numbers through the Census data. The lowest median household income of all the cities represented by my students was $120,000 per year. The poverty rate in the city with the lowest rate in our class was 0%. Nobody in that student's hometown lived in poverty._ "

<comment><USER2> It is probably unusual to have a course section with a minimum median income of $120,000 even at Harvard.

The median household income in Cambridge, MA (the city where most of Harvard's campus is) is $83,122 [0] and 8.4% of families and 14% of people live in poverty.

The source [1] the author links to regarding student family income at Harvard shows that 15.1% of students come from the top 1% (which I guess means top 1% in terms of national income). It's a good read by the way.

[0] [https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/cf/1.0/en/place/Cambridge...](https://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/cf/1.0/en/place/Cambridge%20city,%20Massachusetts/INCOME/MEDIAN_HH_INCOME)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some- colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the- bottom-60.html?_r=1)</comment></comment>


Pentagon contractor leaves social media spy archive wide open on Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/vast-archive-from-pentagon-intel-gathering-operation-left-open-on-amazon/ <comment><AUTHOR> AWS misconfiguration, apparently. The Ars article links to the original source, which provides additional details: [https://www.upguard.com/breaches/cloud-leak- centcom](https://www.upguard.com/breaches/cloud-leak-centcom)</comment>


Facebook's UX failure: preferences - <AUTHOR>

AssertTrue's summary of 37 Signals' Getting Real: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1327598 lists a number of takeaways from the book.
This one crystallizes my objections to Facebook's privacy and other settings:
"Avoid preferences. Preferences are a way to avoid making tough decisions. Instead of using your expertise to choose the best path, you're leaving it in the hands of customers. It may seem like you're doing them a favor but you're just making busy work for them (and it's likely they're busy enough). For customers, preference screens with an endless amount of options are a headache, not a blessing. Customers shouldn't have to think about every nitty gritty detail — don't put that burden on them when it should be your responsibility."
Preferences are a way to avoid making tough decisions.
That's why I dislike Facebook's settings interface. The settings section is huge, convoluted and not immediately understandable. You essentially have to reverse engineer their settings design to understand what you're doing.
They don't merely "make me think," they make me work for them. I become a Facebook engineer every time I open the settings section. It's a classic/stereotypical "UI designed by programmers," and it likely just mirrors the structure of the code.
They need to boil it down, explain exactly what it does (their current attempt fails at that), and make people trust it. It can't be trusted if you can't understand it. And it can't be trusted if it's constantly changing. The UX is not just how you experience something today, it's also whether what you see today is the same as yesterday. More change means more work.
Facebook, take down your internal dashboard and give me a simple, trustable settings page (one page, whose individual settings don't lead me off to other pages) in it's place. <comment><USER2> Trust me, if Facebook believed in such things as preferences and user options, this whole openGraph debacle would be non existent.</comment>


Is Media Temple Nitro worth the price?  - <AUTHOR>

750 dollars a month for 15,000 RPM hard drives, Quad Core Xeon 2.33 Ghz, 4 GB RAM, 2 TB Monthly transfer.<p>Is it worth it? I think it's expensive, but the availability of stacking multiple Nitros for load balancing is attractive. <comment><USER2> Seems highly overpriced to me. I'm on MT's Grid, and I haven't been impressed with that either.

</comment><comment><USER3> Without knowing your needs, it's hard to tell. However, you can get similar specs from SoftLayer or The Planet for $500/month.</comment>


Why technology must be the solution to child abuse material online - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/31/internet-child-protection

<comment><USER2> Every time I hear article like that I begin to see red ...

"Epidemic and unpolicable" ... really? And the info given to back this claim is none.

If you want to limit the liberties of the population at least give some data - how big is the market, how many children are victims, how many British viewers there are.</comment>


The Recreated Sinclair ZX Spectrum - <AUTHOR> http://sinclairzxspectrum.elite-systems.co.uk/index.php <comment><USER2> By the sounds of things this isn't a recreation. I mean, they've painstakingly recreated the outside. But the innards are complete different.

<comment><USER3> true, but you can run Sinclair BASIC on the iOS app. so you could easily find old programmes (sic) online and run them.

of course we already have emulators for that.

I still can't believe my mum lost my zx81.

<comment><USER4> I've still got mine. Occurred to me today that I should be buried with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most 8-bit coders are very sceptical of Elite Systems. Like many others I was approached to port Spectrum games to an iPhone-emulatable format at effectively piecework rates. Like many others I refused. It's good to see the Spectrum recreated, but I would be anxious anout backing this.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can use it as a Bluetooth keyboard for your real computer. Man that sure is some nostalgia masochism right there.

<comment><USER7> Yes. Horrible keyboard. As in really bad.

Having used my cousin's ZX, I was glad I was brought up on Acorn kit..

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it was better than the Atari 400 I learned to program on. I dearly wish I could have bought a replacement keyboard like the Sinclair folks could.

<comment><USER8> It didn't think it was all that bad, and you could easily wipe it down. Given the ease of cartridge loading games, it was a great machine for toddlers..... ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish I could claim to be a toddler when it came out. :(

<comment><USER8> Me too, but my son was born in 1985 ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks beautiful. I learned BASIC and assembler programming on the Spectrum and it occupies a special place in my heart.

My mother told me recently that I used to ask her to read out the code from magazines while I would type them in to the spectrum.

I have a vivid memory of typing in long strings of hex from magazines to create graphics programs - kind of proto-photoshop things. The programmer had split them into strings of 256 characters each and when you first ran the program it would tell you which string was incorrect - which made it a hell of a lot easier to correct!

I remember creating a picture of Madonna from a poster on my wall that I thought was really great!

Ah, the 1980's :)

</comment><comment><USER10> One of the joys of emulation is not having to use the lousy keyboards some machines came with. Might as well just use the real thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> What is it? Is it a fancy keyboard? Does it have a 6502 except with additional fanciness for I/O?

<comment><USER12> The Spectrum had a Z80, not a 6502, and it's got neither of those. It's just a bluetooth keyboard.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, its a bluetooth keyboard with some apps. I was a bit concerned someone would buy one thinking they had a new computer and not a very odd keyboard choice.

<comment><USER13> Their website doesn't exactly go out of its way to be clear about what it is, that's for sure.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Internet Explorer IQ story was bogus - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14389430

<comment><USER2> Same story, much discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840626>

Documenting the re-submissions: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840900></comment>


SideProjectors: Buy and sell side projects - <AUTHOR> https://www.sideprojectors.com <comment><USER2> A lot of the value I get working on side projects is using them to grow as a developer. Its my chance to try out new tools or languages, and most importantly it allows me to connect with people with different specialties and learn from their expertise. So with that in mind the idea of a side-project marketplace a bit off putting- it seems to contradict my ideals of a side project. If there is something to be learned from the projects internals, we could all benefit with OSS. And if there's monetary value for the project that's great too. Its always nice to have server costs covered. To sell it seems to cross the line into 'business territory', especially if that was the intent for the project from the start. With a monetary reward in mind, people might feel more pressured to 'make something work' rather than take the time to steep themselves in the project.

If you're selling of a project that people love and use, perhaps it's worth the effort to try and reach out to the community first, asking if anyone with technical knowledge there wants to take over. They'd appreciate the chance to make sure the service they've come to depend on doesn't just get pulled out from under them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely useful. I posted my project a few weeks back and am currently in discussions with four potential buyers.

[https://www.sideprojectors.com/project/project/652/storage-b...](https://www.sideprojectors.com/project/project/652/storage- bucket-never-visit-a-storage-unit-again)

</comment><comment><USER4> I have successfully sold two of my side projects on this site. I couldn't recommend it more!

<comment><USER5> Which ones are they? I always enjoy people talking about their projects on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very cool... maybe the best of the various "marketplace for side projects" type sites I've seen yet. I actually see somebody's side project on there right now that I'm tempted to seriously explore buying.

Good stuff!

</comment><comment><USER7> Amazing, kudos, yes, gogogogo. More. This is everything and then some. Great job.

You have no idea what you have:

This thing is like two weekends and a hefty legal consulting fee away from being a tech incubator.

</comment><comment><USER8> how is it different than Flippa?

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I can tell the main difference is that it's free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> good concept.

</comment><comment><USER10> Where's the "Invite Steven Chow to sell me warfish.net" button?</comment>


Practical Haskell: Scripting With Types - <AUTHOR> http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/practical-haskell/

<comment><USER2> This is the original dons' blog post (easier to read on the web than slides) :

[http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2007/03/10/practical-haskell- sh...](http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2007/03/10/practical-haskell-shell- scripting-with-error-handling-and-privilege-separation/)

An interesting read !

</comment><comment><USER3> 404ing right now.</comment>


Hewlett-Packard Agrees to Buy Palm - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/technology/29palm.html <comment><USER2> This was a shocker to me, including the sale price...I had no idea Palm would go for that much!</comment>


Google co-founder Larry Page: We won't leave china - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/12/brin.google.china/index.html

<comment><USER2> I would say that's a good idea. If your are not involved in the "problem" you probable won't be able to be part of the solution and surly won't be able to direct or have a say in the solution.</comment>


JSweet: A transpiler from Java to TypeScript/JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.jsweet.org <comment><USER2> The GWT team has been working on a next-gen compiler that transpiles directly to readable, JsDoc typed ES6, designed for high levels of optimization by the Closure Compiler. Because of the new JsInterop system was designed for GWT 2.8, that is shared by both GWT and this new compiler, low impedance interop between Java and JS will be possible, as well as a tool that reads WebIDL and typescript libraries, and generates Java types.

As an example if the level of low impedance between the languages, consider the @JsFunction annotation,

@JsType(isNative = true)

interface EventTarget {

      void addEventListener(String event, EventListener listener);

}

@JsFunction

interface EventListener {

      void onEvent(Event event);

}

Using Java8, you can write code like:

document.createElement("button").addEventListener("click", x -> Console.log("Hello World"));

The difference between GWT running this, and the new compiler, is that the output of the new compiler is a standard ES6 module.

The JSweet claims about GWT are out of date. First of all, in-browser Java debugging has been available for years. GWT was in fact, the very first transpiler to leverage Chrome source maps. I demoed this three years ago ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xJl22Kvgjg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xJl22Kvgjg))

Secondly, GWT has a "reversible and compatible" JsInterop system that provides full two way low-impedance bidirectional interop, you can even do things like subclass JS objects from Java, or define "fields" via @JsProperty which invoke methods ala Object.defineProperty()

Third, the JSweet stuff looks like it doesn't obey standard JLS semantics. Does it even compile the JRE or Guava? This is absolutely vital for code sharing between platforms (e.g. server, Android, j2objc). If you can't run standard JLS semantics, there's little point to writing the code in Java in the first place.

<comment><USER3> _If you can 't run standard JLS semantics, there's little point to writing the code in Java in the first place._

I'm an old user of GWT and hopeful for its revival, but I strongly disagree with this statement. There are two ways of going about this - one is to hew closer to Java semantics (the GWT approach), the other is to hew closer to Javascript semantics. Strict JLS semantics is great for bulk compiling huge projects, but sucks for interop. In the new GWT, does Long become a javascript number? In the old GWT it was an opaque object, which was a constant irritant when interacting with JS.

There is room for both approaches, but as a web developer, I need to interop with JS frameworks more than I need to compile Quake.

<comment><USER4> Emulation is a matter of degree. There are certainly many places where GWT takes a shortcut or doesn't support a feature compared to a real Java VM. But the idea is to get it right for most of the code a Java developer is likely to write, so you have a chance of writing portable code and getting it to work everywhere without a wholesale rewrite.

In particular, mapping Java longs to doubles doesn't make sense. If it's your own code, why are you using long instead of int (or double) which perform much better and interoperate well with JavaScript? If it's someone else's code, how do you know it doesn't need the full 64-bit range?

<comment><USER3> It makes a ton of sense when working with identifiers, which is so common that it's almost the standard usage of java.util.Long. In most practical applications you can safely assume that identifiers are not going to use the full 64 bit range. And being able to pass them to javascript frameworks is incredibly useful - which is to say, the inability to use them in JS was incredibly frustrating with GWT.

<comment><USER2> GWT 2.8 already does this. Long are passed as doubles unless they exceed 2^32. Also, Double and Boolean are now unboxed native values. And Object[] can be transparently passed to JS and back. Moreover, varargs work between JS and Java, maintaining the semantics of both sides to work correctly.

If you want to build true hybrid apps that combine Java and JS programs, there's a lot more considerations that have to be made, we learned some hard lessons the last 3 years on Inbox, which is why JsInterop was redesigned 3 times to get the semantics sound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <soapbox>I really dislike the term 'transpile'. It's just a compiler. There's nothing really different in theory or implementation of a "source"->"source" vs a "source"->"binary" compiler. If I were to write a CPU in HDL that natively executed JavaScript, would this change from a 'transpiler' to a 'compiler'. The distinction made is simply what the end user is going to do with the result.</soapbox>

<comment><USER2> I like the distinction in the sense that transpilers generally don't do optimization. GWT, Dart2JS, and Closure Compiler aren't transpilers in this sense. They are full blown optimizing compilers.

Putting GWT or Closure in the same category as JSweet, TypeScript, or CoffeeScript obfuscates what these tools do.

<comment><USER5> So if I run gcc with -O0, it's a transpiler? Remember that gcc outputs a human readable language that another program (the assembler) converts into machine code.

<comment><USER2> In one sense yes, but GCC the utility is an optimizing compiler.

Would you call a sed script which converted Java to ES6 via regexes a compiler, even though not an ounce of compiler theory was used?

I would define transpilers as a subset of compilers that are are only interested in high level language conversion.

It's the difference between say, translating books between foreign languages, and being an editor who rewrites a book to be better.

<comment><USER5> I mean... sed is Turing complete. Yeah, it's in the Turing tarpit, but if you were able to successfully translate Java to ES6 in a sed script, yes I would call that a compiler. In a lot of ways, much of compiler theory is concerned with the best way to write a compiler (for many different optimization functions of "best"), not the only ways to do so. Just being a crappy compiler doesn't make it any less of a compiler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't get why this library is better than GWT.

<comment><USER7> The essential argument seems to be 2 things:

1\. It can generate node.js compatible JavaScript so you can run Java code in node. I'm not sure how many people have felt the need to do that, but it's not something GWT can do.

2\. It understands TypeScript, so it can make use of the work people have done to (essentially) create type annotations over various JavaScript libraries, and automatically (? or at least painlessly) build Java wrappers for them.

<comment><USER6> Why anybody wants to run node.js instead of Java. Java is much better suitable for the server side than node.

<comment><USER8> Nobody has commented yet. I can only guess this is because all agree: it goes without saying that this sweeping generalisation is patently untrue.

Still, allow me to humor you and give just one (of the many) reason(s) why: async I/O.

Yes, it's possible in Java. Yes, Java has futures that make it not just possible, but also a reality in this universe.

Unfortunately, Java has made the inconvenient decision to retain backwards compatibility and keep all its synchronous I/O operations available. Perhaps not a complete folly. For all of the good that decision has brought, there is one downside: any code (any lib) can still lock up an entire OS thread. Result: all libs actually do this. No matter how Future-istic your codebase; use _any_ lib and you're back to sync I/O.[1] This is absolutely killing for high concurrency, I/O bound servers, who now lock up not just an FD or two per conn, but also an entire OS thread.

Javascript's threading model, on the other hand, is so shit that it came out the other side. By being inherently single threaded, all blocking I/O must be done through callbacks. Result: _you can 't block an OS level thread in javascript!_ So all libraries are inherently async (from the OS level).

There are, of course, many more reasons why Java is not "much better suitable for the server side than node", but this is just one of them (libraries, existing knowledge in your org, community, ...). In reality, both have their uses. Node has proven itself by now.

Disclaimer: I actually hate Javascript. And Java. Including Java 8 (for all the shit it, wisely, keeps around).

[1] E.g. Amazon's official AWS SDK, which is sync IO. Want async IO for S3 (or anything there)? Write it yourself. Which you won't. Because there's already a lib. "But it's not async!" // TODO.

<comment><USER9> I hope we can agree that, whether Netty or Node can accept 100M connections per millisecond or not -- is irrelevant if the rest of your stack cannot keep up.

In most applications, eventually you need to hit the database to process the request... and the database does not care if your original http request was asynchronous or not... it will still take its sweet time in milliseconds (or seconds for complex queries) to respond.

And the best way to prevent that is caching.

And that is where Node is at disadvantage.

In Java (and C, and C#, and a bunch of others), if your server has 16 cores, you will be running a single process on 16 cores and probably 32 concurrent threads, and they can all access some shared data (notably, database cache) with low intra-process latency, using some simple sharing primitives.

Now, Node... if a Node process is single-threaded, then one would need to spawn 16(32) Node processes to fully utilize the server, and they will be using inter-process communication to talk to each other -- much slower than Java's intra-process.

<comment><USER10> In Java (and C, and C#, and a bunch of others), if your server has 16 cores, you will be running a single process on 16 cores and probably 32 concurrent threads, and they can all access some shared data (notably, database cache) with low intra-process latency, using some simple sharing primitives.

You're right but there are downsides to this approach.

First, you're creating a single point of failure. If any part of the application crashes for whatever reason it brings everything down with it.

If you intend to have fault tolerance, maintain uptime during updates and/or provide A/B testing capabilities, you'll still require at least a redundant server and a load balancer to funnel incoming requests between the two.

Second, sharing memory across cores comes at a cost.

A simple mutex/lock strategy will work but will be inefficient as it blocks on both reads and writes to shared data.

You could choose to use a CAS (Compare and Swap) strategy to avoid locks altogether. As long as you can ensure your models as well as all of the internal data structures they use are immutable and thread safe. Considering the nested nature of OOP inheritance as well as language level access restrictions on classes/methods/members, it can be difficult/impossible to ensure immutability without hand-rolling your own data structures.

Third, sharing state across contexts comes with hidden costs that need to be taken into consideration. For instance, if the shared state for all threads is updated (ie a cached value is added/updated) it will invalidate the L1, L2, and L3 caches on the processor. The overhead of cache invalidation increases in proportion to the number of cores/processors involved.

Source: [http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/sharing-is- th...](http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/sharing-is-the-root-of- all-contention/214100002?pgno=1)

I assume you have experience with multi-threaded programming. I won't touch on the transient nature and inherent difficulty in replicating bugs introduced in multi-threaded programming. Other than to say, I've done enough of it in the past to develop a very healthy fear.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

What about Node...

You're right to assume that Node instances will run as a cluster. Ideally one instance per core, to reduce context switching and prevent cache invalidations between the foreground and background workers internal to a Node instance.

As for a cache layer between the DB and Node instances. Since communication between Node instances will happen at the OS level via IPC, there's no benefit to implementing a global cache internal to the Node application. Instead, it would be better to offload the responsibility to a separate service that is specialized for caching (ex redis). This reduces the complexity of the application, surface area for bugs, and development time.

Load balancing will be required anyway, so it makes sense to use Nginx. Nginx is much more fault tolerant, providing sane limits for incoming requests, as well as the ability to define routes that short-circuit requests to static files.

What's interesting about deploying a Node cluster is its 'redundant by default' nature including auto-respawning of cluster instances [https://www.npmjs.com/package/express- cluster](https://www.npmjs.com/package/express-cluster).

If you desire a more granular control over cluster management you could use [https://github.com/Unitech/pm2](https://github.com/Unitech/pm2).

To make this work the servers themselves will need to be stateless. Which means, handling session management requires additional work-arounds.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Java is likely 'faster' when deployed in a strictly vertically scaled setup. Node.js is more geared to horizontal scaling by default. Just like Java now includes good support for async request handling, I have no doubt the community will design tools that also favor scaling out.

Either way, I don't think raw performance is going to be the deciding factor. Choice of platform is a business decision that depends on the resources and skills and/or preference of the team responsible for development.

</comment><comment><USER11> A few weeks back I was looking though some java code and I was hopeful I'd be able to transpile it in order to run it in the browser. I'm very experienced with JS and its ecosystem, and I figured that java was so popular that it should be straightforward to achieve this. But unfortunately, after 2 days of screwing around, I didn't have any luck.

I'm not sure if it's due to my unfamiliarity with the java ecosystem or if the tooling or documentation were just poor.

In any case, this tool looks friendlier than GWT, so perhaps I'll give it another try at some point.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would rather make TS to JVM & CLR Bytecode, to have a unified ecosystem from the opposite side.

</comment><comment><USER13> What are the good options to convert from Javascript to Java or to other high level languages?

<comment><AUTHOR> Transpiling from an untyped language to a typed one would give you horrid results in most cases. The practical way would be to use TypeScript to compile your program (JavaScript programs compile fine with TypeScript) and start to manually transform your JavaScript code to add objects and types.

That said, that would be a really cool tool to have...

<comment><USER13> Has anybody tried Mozilla Rhino [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/Rh...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/Rhino/JavaScript_Compiler)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why ES5 instead of ES6/2015?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not sure to what your question is referring to, but FYI, JSweet follows the same pace as TypeScript in terms of JavaScript generation. So it already supports most of ES6 AFAIK.

<comment><USER14> None of the sample code exposes a) es6 module format b) amd module format c) commonjs module format....

It's all closure-based jquery plugin module format.......

If you're gonna compile to "javascript" either target a version of node that's been released in the past year or target webassembly.

Otherwise you're just another coffeescript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> possibly related: can some news hacker please create an internet crawling worm that untranspiles all the javascripts that it crawls and turns them into wars for everyone who wants to go the other way? I guess we also need mozilla developer network to create a browser plugin to run the war files for a given site, perhaps npm would host the wars, so we can use node to get the wars from npm for the plugin. thanks</comment>


Inside Silicon Valley's Secretive, Orgiastic Dark Side - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/948200087968083970 <comment><AUTHOR> It's curious -- I was not able to submit a direct link to this article, getting an "Unknown or expired link" error.

<comment><USER2> This has already been posted at least a couple of times and there's at least one existing thread with numerous comments already. Unless that thread has been killed/flagged to death, just use it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Normally submitting a dupe would bring up that thread, which didn't happen either.

<comment><USER2> Maybe it's been killed by the mods then? Not sure. Search might turn up the other thread...

Edit:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16051603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16051603)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A massive misallocation of online advertising dollars  - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.org/2010/02/19/a-massive-misallocation-of-online-advertising-dollars/ <comment><USER2> Another counter argument: When you target earlier in the funnel, you're less sure of winning that user.

Example: you buy a banner ad promoting a digital camera. The user sees it, and decides it's time to buy one. Now he does research, and ends up buying a competitor. While you were successful in creating demand, you ended up sending a customer to a competitor.

That is why display ads are worth less - you aren't guaranteed to extract the value they create.

<comment><USER3> I thought the same. However some content would be better for you and some content would be better for your competitors, and the advertising budgets should be allocated according to the generated sales.

Suppose the content in question is an article on high speed photography, and some cameras are better at this than others. Surely an efficient market would reward the article with proportionally more advertising dollars from high speed camera sellers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is why Amazon is great. When people from the internetz click through to Amazon, they get all the reviews/research they need. They are also presented with other great items they didn't even intend to buy. So that means profit for content creators. But I think the biggest winners are deal sites like slickdeals.

<comment><USER5> _But I think the biggest winners are deal sites like slickdeals._

The biggest winner by FAR in "last click wins" is Google. Brand queries outconvert just about everything else, because they frequently happen late in the sales cycle after the customer has picked out what they want to buy and now just need navigation to the merchant. All those little yellow boxes -- the ones many Google searchers think mark the extra quality results (no joke!) -- mean Google gets paid money to parasite off the brand query. Unsophisticated stats monkeys might look at that and say "Dang, Google CPC ads for the win _again_!"

<comment><USER3> _All those little yellow boxes -- the ones many Google searchers think mark the extra quality results (no joke!)_

Citation needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very interesting. I have always viewed content sites (especially blogs) as a sort of parasite. Here's the manufacturer/seller that is trying to sell me something that I want and in the way there are numerous blogs that take away the seller's money onto advertising, therefore raising my cost. This of course only applies to the sites I don't read. There are legitimate ones, ones that do the research, publish their results, etc. Edmunds.com falls under this category.

On the other hand, there is a metric ton of travel sites and it's just a huge waste of my time. Every time I want to travel I have to check 5-6 sites to see if I'm getting a good deal or not. Why can't I go to the source and get data directly from the airlines?

</comment><comment><USER2> If brand advertising on content sites is under valued, isn't that a big opportunity for brands to buy valuable ad space on the cheap? The author doesn't explain why the market is wrong (I'm of course skeptical, because markets aren't wrong very often).

<comment><USER7> The issue is availability of information. The further from the point of purchase you get, the more difficult it is to properly credit parts of the funnel with driving purchase intent. Most analytics tools don't do a good job of crediting multiple parts of the funnel for the purchase attempt. Google Analytics, for example, can only credit one campaign per conversion event, which by default is the most recent one (it can be configured to the first one, within a time window). Engagements earlier in the funnel that drive purchase intent aren't properly credited, so they look like a less efficient place to allocate funds than the really are. The result is that resources are being allocated correctly based on the information, but the information is wrong, so as a whole the market is inefficient. Ad allocation tends to be relentlessly data-driven in optimizing, but also rather heads-down: people trust the data too much, without necessarily recognizing the flaws of the tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My counter argument:

Since the beggining of time consumers have undergone the same process when making a buying decision.

In the past you might drive to the convenient local Circuit City to check out a TV you read in consumer reports was quality, and then order the thing from Sears catalog because you were discount shopping.

I agree that it's a shame we can't all split a few pennies of advertising dollars on the research side, but I look at the REAL opportunity here as helping people create BETTER websites & CRM to shorten the sales cycle and capture those dollars for themselves.

<comment><USER9> I'd agree with this and add that merchants/affiliate networks should further encourage better publisher sites by measuring and paying out on metrics around the lifetime value of a customer. A better customer experience on an affiliate site will drive repeat purchases and ultimately the lifetime value of the customer will be greater than the margins on the initial sale. It would be great if quality publishers could be compensated for "better" customers, because it would reward valuable affilates and cut down on a lot of the thin landing pages that currently plague Google on long-tail keyword searches.

<comment><USER10> If you have high-quality traffic which generates a lot of sales, you actually can negotiate better rates with affiliate networks. Their published payouts are just a starting point for the negotiation.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Shell-Based Research Workflow? - <AUTHOR> Yesterday I was trying to figure out how to scrape odds from a betting website. This sort of thing involves a combination of trial and error, and a lot of intermediate files which are easy to lose track of. Also sometimes you will overwrite a result produced with other command parameters which you later need again. You will also lose track of the command and parameters you used to produce a file.
I am wondering how to organise this sort of job better.
Here is what my job involved:
1. Use Python and Selenium to give me the source of a page after it finishes loading. 2. Put the source through xmllint, look at it in an editor, find a script tag where the odds lie in some very obfuscated JS. 3. Extract the text of the script tag with xmllint. 4. Put the output of that through a JS parser, and extract the desired odds after trial and error to find the right combination of parameters. 5. Use another tool to format the odds as a TSV, 6. etc., etc., etc.,
As an example, Mathematica has notebooks which allow you to organise your job and go back to previous results. Normally everything is ordered by time, but you can also rearrange things. Mathematica notebooks actually allow you to construct a tree out of your results.
You could also view my job above as a tree. Each call of a command takes some input files and gives an output file, which maybe is used by another command. Maybe I make multiple invocations of a command before realising that I want to go back to a previous result and use that as input for further research.
How do you organise your shell-based research jobs? Does it involve some sort of file-naming convention? Is there a GUI for this? Do you have some sort of shell-based tool which shows a nice tree relating your commands, their parameters and their result files? Maybe there is an Emacs package written for this? Do you put things in separate directories?
I'm interested to learn about your methods. <comment><USER2> I usually put the process PID in the names of my temporary files, in order to avoid overwriting stuff. (If you're liable to do multiple runs with the same process, you can generate a random number at the beginning of the task -- or get the date, if you really want to keep the results in order -- and use it as a unique token.)

I first prototype operations as single command lines, then refactor those command lines as I migrate components of them to shell functions (often taking whatever unique token I want to use to distinguish runs). Eventually, when I'm satisfied with the behavior, I'll write the shell functions to a script with typeset -f, and then source the script later.

While it's not research-related (a lot of what I do at work is statistical analysis on server logs, but anything I develop at work I technically don't own & so can't post), a good example of this style is in my music synthesizer project: [https://github.com/enkiv2/clisynth/blob/master/clisynth.sh](https://github.com/enkiv2/clisynth/blob/master/clisynth.sh) ; all of the code in this file was prototyped at the command line.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never considered defining functions as I go. That is a good idea. Previously I've just relied on readline. typeset is a new find.

It might be good to have a function, which when called by another function, generates a file name associated with the calling function's name, using mktemp. It could even add the calling function's name plus its arguments to a log file.</comment></comment>


The caffeine curse: why coffee shops have always signalled urban change - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/08/coffee-shops-gentrification-urban-change <comment><USER2> Commenting on this post while I'm at a coffee shop myself.

If I had to pick one city for having the best coffee shops, it would probably be Tel Aviv. The coffee is great, all coffee shops are laptop friendly (and gladly provide you with the wifi password), and people are very open to social interaction with strangers. At any given moment you'll find a designer working on a logo, an architecture student reading a post blasting gentrification, entrepreneurs discussing their new startup, or freelancers looking for a break from working at home. Tel Aviv coffee shops are also very dog friendly, and that's always a great conversation starter.

I often find that "could you watch my laptop while i go to the bathroom?" followed by "hey, what are you working on?" is usually the best way to get to know new people.

I even find that I'm a lot more productive when I work at a coffee shop instead of an office. A coffee shop provides with just enough distraction and people watching when you need to take a break, but not enough that you completely lose concentration and focus.

<comment><USER3> Laptops are the opposite of what I want to see in cafes, actually I prefer that they have an outright ban

<comment><USER4> Laptops are a fantastic way for more introverted people to meet each other. Why do you think it's all the rage to paper your Macbook like a NASCAR driver's jacket? Sure, part of it is just the pure hustle of startups, and the low cost of logo stickers as marketing.

To a potential startup founders a few years out of college, the coffee shop full of laptops is going to feel just like the library during study week. (Maybe someone a lot younger than I am would say the college libraries just feel like coffee shops these days. Get off my lawn.)

Have you ever sipped a latte with your headphones on and caught someone's eye as they concentrated as intensely as you're trying to? Then did you notice the GitHub sticker and smile to yourself? Then did you notice the <STARTUP NAME HERE> sticker and know you would _really_ have something to say to them? (Assuming you work up the courage, dang, they're gorgeous.)

If you don't want to spend time alone with strangers in quiet reflection, get your frappucino to go, and find a different social club, eh?

<comment><USER5> I have no problem with laptop cafes, I bring mine to cafes to work all the time. I really enjoy it. But I also see merit in cafes that establish a no cell, no laptop rule (sometimes just for certain hours of the day). That would be a draw for me (honestly, the no cell phone policy tends to be more of a draw than a no laptop policy).

To me, this is very much a one size doesn't fit all situation. It makes no sense to get into a huff when people are on their laptops in a cafe that permits this. That said, remarkably, some people get strangely enraged when one cafe or bar out of twenty (or hundred) establishes a no cell phone policy. Like, they aren't satisfied that they can have their way in 95% of coffee shops and bars, it has to be _this specific one, right now_ (these folks, interestingly, often think the matter can be cleared up by simply reminding everyone which country we live in).

<comment><USER6> I've dreamed many times about starting a cafe with a no-cell no-laptop policy, but just assumed I was a cranky bastard and the idea was insane. Your post suggests that maybe it's a thing, though - would you mind saying where you've found such cafes?

<comment><USER5> Wish I could, this is just something I read or hear about on the news, radio, and so forth every now and then, usually because someone got angry when they couldn't use their cell and was asked to leave and got angry about it and it becomes a "local interest kind of news story.

Bourbon and branch in SF bans cell phones, but that's a bar, not a cafe. I read about another one (a cafe) that bans cell phones and laptops for a certain section of the day, but I'd have to google around for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > I love looking in through the outside window and seeing everyone on > MacBooks, it's busy, it's exciting and yet you'll get someone walking passed > saying 'Oh my god, look in there, everyone is on a laptop! What's wrong with > them! Why don't they talk to each other!?'

This is funny, because it perfectly describes the difference in attitude between me and my father. He gets annoyed when he walks into a coffee shop and sees everyone on their phones and laptops. On the other hand, I think the atmosphere is quite cozy, and love taking my own stuff to work on to that kind of cheerful environment. I almost never start a conversation, but I do enjoy being around other people.

<comment><USER8> > I think the atmosphere is quite cozy, and love taking my own stuff to work > on

I can remember a time (1980's and earlier) when the modern version of the coffee shop didn't exist.

The nearest equivalent was a bar: Dimly lit, filled with smoke, loud annoying music, aggressive people, and a waiter coming around every 10 minutes to ask/demand if you want another drink. If you dared bring in some papers or a book to read, you'd get dirty looks, rude comments, or worse.

Thank god for the modern coffee shop and the shift in attitude.

<comment><USER9> Might be geographical? Many of Vienna's most popular cafés were established in the 1800s.

<comment><USER10> Yes, as far as I know the very first cafés in Europe opened in the 17th century in Vienna, Paris and London and then spread to Italy and the rest of the Austro-Hungarian empire over the following two centuries.

<comment><USER11> Yep, there were revolutions in Europe that started out in coffee shops.

<comment><USER12> And yet the guy with "a PhD in coffee shops" in the original article says he thinks they contributed to political _stability_ in 18th Century England because they give people a place to rant and feel better afterwards...

(I never was convinced that you feel better after a rant, though. Rather, you have just worked out your "angry muscles".)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "what everyone hates about urban change and gentrification – first come the creatives and their coffee shops, then the young professionals, then the luxury high-rises and corporate chains that push out original residents"

I personally have no problem with it. And if we're talking about crappy and dangerous neighborhoods that are becoming upscale - I love it.

If anything I think it's the sort of process that benefits majority of population while extracting a cost on a minority. If we look at total effect, it's certainly net positive.

<comment><USER14> I can't help interpreting your opinion as, "it's ok to kick the poor people out, as long as the upper classes, government and businesses prosper." People aren't numbers to throw into a mean function. That "net positive" argument is what has been used to excuse globalization's "there have to be some losers" philosophy, which disproportionately affects those already in poverty.

A sense of community is one of the few things poor neighborhoods can offer their inhabitants. When those impoverished people are elbowed out and away from each other to make way for another coffee shop, it becomes hard to sympathize with the moneyed class's desire for late-night gourmet poke.

Edit: Taking a look at TulliusCicero's WaPo link is making me reconsider my position.

<comment><USER15> I don't know a whole lot about the general outcomes of those slowly and progressively displaced by gentrification but in sufficiently small catastrophies (i.e. not Syria) the displaced lower classes often do better economically. For example, Katrina refugees who stayed away are reported to have more income and live in safer and less impoverished areas with better schools (e.g. [1]). The city is more diverse and affluent as well (look for Citylab article on this, I can't look up atm) so it might not be a selection bias thing.

However complaints all around are that social networks and cultures were destroyed. It seems that when it's time to move, people move towards economic opportunity rather than for culture, etc. Hopefully with time those social networks can develop into the next rich permutation.

[1]: [http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston- texas/houston/a...](http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston- texas/houston/article/Ten-years-later-Katrina-evacuees-now-part- of-6458412.php)

<comment><USER16> Your link is subscriber only - does it address selection bias, eg perhaps those who relocated had an existing advantage?

<comment><USER17> Not really. The relocated people generally arrived in Houston with nothing because they were evacuated to Houston and had nothing to return to in NOLA. Houston took in some of the poorest of the poor. I lived in Houston during Katrina (and actually was a catastrophe insurance adjuster,) so I saw it first hand. Many of those people got healthy FEMA money and were able to restart in Houston. However to be fair, the crime rate in Houston did spike due to some of the influx and the problems it brought (such as NOLA gang members getting into disputes with local gang members.) Overall though, it seemed to be a positive for most involved. (It did result in a much elevated Cajun/Creole cuisine due to the NOLA cooks that relocated!)

<comment><USER18> Confirm. Born and raised in Houston but now in Austin.

Texas is not "the deep south", we opened our arms and our hearts to everyone who was displaced by the hurricane. Nearly every major city in Texas participated. Moreover, we've experienced enough hurricanes to know the depth and severity of damage that can occur – and will continue to occur.

Neighbors help each other in times of crisis. Who knows, in the future maybe Louisiana will have to return the favor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why is the author so quick to assume that everyone sees gentrification as something bad? There's been vocal opposition to it, but it doesn't mean that everybody feels that way.

<comment><USER20> When they don't have it people want it, and when they get it, they don't want it. Run down cities, rust belt cities wish for gentrification, people who live in places going down hill wish for it too, it brings safer neighborhoods, better stores, more jobs, on the other hand people decry rising rents and "changing the character" of the neighborhood, as if unemployment and the transients didn't also"change the character" of the neighborhood.

Basically people want it both ways. Have their cakes and eat them too.

<comment><USER21> Or maybe people want a middle-ground (in outcome or in rate-of-change) which for whatever reason doesn't seem to be in the cards.

<comment><USER20> You're either ascending, or you're declining as a city. Things don't remain frozen in time. People age, buildings age, new people are born, commerce brings people in, those are the dynamics.

<comment><USER22> Theoretically you could, but I don't want to be the one designing a PID controller for that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I recommend the included YouTube clip. It's from a series of short documentaries called _Look at Life_ [1], produced between 1959 and 1969 in the UK.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_at_Life_%28film_series%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_at_Life_%28film_series%29)

</comment><comment><USER24> I love myself some fine light roasted filter coffee as much as the next person. My biggest concern with these places, however is IT security. Anyone who hasn't played around with their laptops once receiving the wifi password, running their chosen network analysis tools/penetration suite and messing with people whose screen you might even see from two tables away, hands up in the air.

I will not be first in line, mind you. Thus, I advise people to use their own connection or ssh to their home network when using even protected wifi in coffee shops. The burglar already has the keys to the house, and you are a willing guest to the table. Who will take responsibility for your safety if not you?

<comment><USER25> >Anyone who hasn't played around with their laptops once receiving the wifi password, running their chosen network analysis tools/penetration suite and messing with people whose screen you might even see from two tables away, hands up in the air.

That's not ethical, and depending on exactly what you're doing, possibly not legal either. There's very clearly an implicit assumption that coffee shop wifi is for your own personal (and relatively light use). If you want to do anything else, you should get the permission of the owners.

<comment><USER24> As much as I agree with you, it is really naive to expect everyone to behave ethically. We wouldn't need security if the world was as such.

<comment><USER25> I wasn't suggesting that everyone would behave ethically, just pointing out that it's not ok to poke around on a cafe's network like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Because they are not essential (like a bodega or gas station would be), and most are tied to a more laid-back, more bohemian lifestyle -- which means enough non-poor people are coming in the neighborhood to make them viable.

Of course talking about "coffee shops" proper -- the poor just make do with Dunkin Doughnuts and the like...

<comment><USER27> What's a "bodega"? I'm surprised to see this word in English, also considered as a basic service (not a wine cellar then?). In Spanish it's one of the two evolutions of Greek "apotheke", the other one being "botica" (farmacy).

<comment><USER26> I know it with these meanings, but used it in the third form (here's from Wiktionary):

(1) A storehouse for maturing wine, a winery.

(2) A store specializing in Hispanic groceries.

(3) (slang, New York) Any convenience store.

<comment><USER27> OK, "el chino" then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "What's the WiFi password?"

Interesting; tomorrow I'm going to ask five people this exact question just to see what happens.

EDIT: Obviously if you've read the article, it states this is like asking "do you know what time it is?" \- that is it's an known excuse to start a conversation. Personally, I don't believe this, hence my experiment.

<comment><USER29> penny-get-your-own-wifi

<comment><USER28> Penny: Hey, Sheldon, did you change your wifi password again?

Sheldon: Yes, it's "Penny, get your own wifi." No spaces.

___

TV-Show: The Big Bang Theory

Source: [http://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/hey-sheldon-did-you- change-y...](http://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/hey-sheldon-did-you-change-your- wi-fi-password-again-yes-i/)

<comment><USER30> Can someone please explain (or point out a link to the rules in question) why is this post getting downvoted? I understand the parent comment is not very informative, but this one I found quite helpful as I had forgotten the quote in question and it is relevant to the "wi-fi password discussion" the grandparent has started.

Additionally I would simply love a bot like that going around explaining popular media quotes. I frequent the SpaceX subreddit and they have one explaining space related acronyms whenever any are found in the discussion. Makes reading it a lot more pleasant.

<comment><USER31> I think there's a HN cultural preference to avoid stream-of-consciousness tangents, so even clever or informative -- but off-topic -- replies to such tangents tend to suffer.

IMO this is the source of some people's impression that humour isn't welcome here. My experience is the opposite - on-topic (and funny) comments do well even if only a joke or quip, but off-topic humour sinks, even if clever and civil.

I'm quite lowbrow and really enjoy the more clever comment chains on Reddit, but I also appreciate the HN alternative, where attempts at pun chains, etc. sink to the bottom and on-topic thoughts rise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I find it interesting that Coffee shops have such a long standing history in London given that tea is basically the national drink.

<comment><USER33> London is practically a country unto itself as far as customs and behaviours go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is very similar to PG's most recent essay about making Pittsburgh a startup hub: [http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html](http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html)

</comment><comment><USER35> Well the insurance industry was somewhat born on the back of coffee with the formation of reinsurance for ships by a group of people who used to meet in a coffee shop that went on to form Llyods of London, and the World of reinsurance and insurance grew from there.

One indeed wonders, how much business is done in a coffee shop's today in relation to the past compared to todays times.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think there was post while ago which tried to predict property price raise based on number of new coffee shops.

<comment><USER37> It's probably not a bad idea - I mean, why not piggy-back and/or trust Starbucks research and experience in where to locate stores!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm not sure why urban progress can be considered a 'curse'.

</comment><comment><USER39> ...and the founding of Lloyds of London and the New York Stock Exchange were both associated with coffee shops.</comment>


The Economist: Attempts to ban online gaming are doomed to fail. - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/16539402?story_id=16539402

<comment><USER2> Here's a contrary viewpoint:

Online gaming/gambling right now exists in an almost-perfect state of _deregulation_. This deregulation allows low-rake, low-vig games to flourish, and is IMO only reason why it's possible for consenting adults to play these games (online poker being the classic example) with positive expectation.

Regulation of online gambling will likely create games with 20%, 30%, and 40% vigs, as this is what a politician means when he says "regulate and tax". Most state lotteries currently extract around a 30-40% vig, meaning only 60-70% of the money going into the system is paid out as winnings. Other state-mandated games extract similarly huge percentages. Nobody complains because the money gets funneled into "education" or "public works", but state-mandated forms of gambling are far and away some of the most pernicious gambling instruments ever foisted on the public.

The endgame: if online gambling is ever widely regulated, the tax burdens and regulatory requirements imposed will be passed along to customers (who are mostly clueless about things like "rake" and "vig" anyway) and this will create a world in which the only available forms of real-money gaming on the net will be ones in which adults stare drooling at the screen, pressing pretty colored buttons in the futile hope that they can somehow "beat" a game which is now mathematically unbeatable.

I support the call for regulation. But anybody who thinks politicians like Barney Frank are going to protect _low-rake_ , _low-vig_ online gambling of any sort are likely going to be disappointed. Preserving a low rake _isn't even on the menu_.

<comment><USER3> Also, the author of that article only considers two options:

1\. Banning the activity.

2\. Controlling the activity.

I prefer the third option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Headline would be less confusing if it said "gambling". I thought: "Who the hell is trying to ban online gaming?"

<comment><USER5> I agree fully. I find the fact that gambling is referred to as gaming. But, for better or worse, that is a common term for it and it has been since before video games or the internet existed.

[edit: spelling]

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting opinion. I wish I could believe that on-line gambling would be legalized in the US, but when you see what has happened with seat-belt and helmet laws (neither of which has any contributory effect to the harm of others), you have to believe that there is an accepted viewpoint within the US body politic that the state should act to protect individuals from the consequences of their own actions (current interest in forced mortgage adjustments is another example). Couple that with a powerful industry lobby, and I don't have much hope of any change in the legal status of on-line gaming in the near future.

<comment><USER7> > neither of which has any contributory effect to the harm of others

Unless you count the insurance company or taxpayer that has to support the trauma victim

<comment><USER8> The insurance company can demand that you use helmets and seatbelt, and try to recoup their expenses from you if you don't. I'm not saying that's a perfect solution, but rationalizing limitations on freedom in terms of avoiding a public expense is a very slippery slope towards totalitarianism.

In particular, privacy comes to mind. Respecting privacy denies law enforcement access to tools that might aid in the quick investigating of crimes. Why should your need for privacy be allowed to harm the taxpayer that has to support expensive investigations?

<comment><USER7> Well, the insurance company hopefully doesn't demand that you use a helmet but rather asks whether you want coverage that applies when you're not wearing a helmet, and it costs more.

And freedom is a slippery slope to anarchy. Slippery slopes are best addressed with some reasonable theory that explains where the line is - where cost exceeds benefit. Ideally government would attempt to decide what our core values are - how we weigh privacy vs. freedom vs. equality vs. security vs. fairness - and then try to evaluate policies based on how they fare in these dimensions.

<comment><USER8> > but rather asks whether you want coverage that applies when you're not > wearing a helmet, and it costs more.

That's the same. If they ask you, you can say no, in which case they'll demand you ride with a helmet, lest be uncovered.

> with some reasonable theory that explains where the line is

I'm arguing that the _particular_ argument of "you can't do that, it might cost the taxpayers money" is over the line. I'm for stuff like consumer protection, standards in advertising, anti-trust and a slew of other statist, communist oppressing regiments. I'm not in favour of spending the polices resources on giving you a ticket if you decide to ride your bike along the beach on a beautiful summers evening and want to feel the wind in your hair.

<comment><USER6> I think it's fair to question burdening taxpayers with the consequences of one's risk-taking behaviour, but I think there are ways to deal with that. For example, search-and-rescue efforts are often expensive, and taxpayers bear much of the cost. Some jurisdictions require backpackers and others who might end up needing those services to pay for permits, some of the cost of which goes to support search-and-rescue services. One can argue that that means careful backpackers end up picking up the tab for imprudent backpackers, but I think that's preferable to asking _all_ taxpayers to pay the cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can always tell when someone is being paid by some gambling interest or another because they use the word "gaming" instead of "gambling."

<comment><USER10> I thought people call it gaming because some people try to argue poker and other games of chance which have a skill component aren't gambling.

<comment><USER11> Poker is a game of skill which has a chance component.

<comment><USER2> In the long run, the amount of luck in poker approaches zero.

<comment><USER10> Not really in the modern poker universe with a house rake or seat fee.

There is tons of luck involved in poker games, including what types of bad and mediocre opponents sit down, what the comp policies are, and what your health is like (stamina is a huge part of poker, partially because it pays so god damned poorly).

These uncertainties do not go away in human lifespans.

<comment><USER2> Ah, but you're talking about short-term luck ("I sat down at a table full of sharks", "I sat down and was too tired to play my best"). On any given day, you can win or lose, and the best player in the world can't guarantee a win _across a short period of time_. That's the strong gravity of short-term luck in poker.

But sit down and play 5 or 10 million hands online (that's under a decade of regular play, well within a human lifespan), or even considerably less than that, and luck becomes a rounding error. Mathematically. Incontrovertibly. Your long-term results in poker will reflect your skill level _closely_. And of course the rake plays a part as well, by turning poker into a negative-sum game instead of a zero-sum game, and dragging everybody's results slightly south of where they would have been otherwise.

But rake or no rake, there's very little "luck" in poker at depths of millions of hands, as you get in today's online games.

And even in the live game, where hand throughput is lower, luck is a small enough factor over the years that the same skilled players win consistently, and you can only win consistently by learning those skills.

<comment><USER10> >Mathematically. Incontrovertibly.

Incorrect. In a game with no house, this may be true, but in a a game raking, it depends a lot on what sort of players sit down against you.

So if you want to put 'table selection' under skill, yes, I'll grant your point, but without judicious picking and choosing in that, poker can very much be a losing game just like most other casino games.

Look at the O8 games in Tunica for instance. Dead dead and deader because no one except people on oxygen tanks ever plays them.

It takes a _lot_ of confluence of factors to beat the house drain on games (I'm talking in person games, not online games; online games are "merely" illegal, but otherwise you'll likely be fine in the longterm).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those of you who wish to support online poker, or would like to get the latest information on how federal and state law affects your playing poker online, <http://theppa.org/> is a great resource.

</comment><comment><USER13> With the government bleeding red it would be a good way to raise some tax revenue. I listened to a hearing with Annie Duke in front of congress. They all agreed the current laws didn't make sense. Somebody has to take charge and get them changed. The basic idea was now the states can decide if gambling is legal but online gambling is a federal issue essentially overriding the states. Unless they can find a way to block all gambling traffic from state x.

<comment><USER14> I've never understood why there are so many legal restrictions on gambling in the US. Where I come from (Ireland/UK) there are lots of betting shops - mostly catering to sports betting, but you can walk in and ask for odds on anything, such as the outcome of a forthcoming election or whatever. Casinos are no big deal (though they cater mainly to the better-off) and most pubs or other social spots have a slot machine or two.

Of course, some people are compulsive gamblers and experience problems as a result. On the other hand my local 7-11 (24 hour convenience store) attracts gambling addicts too, one guy shows up there once a month and hangs out all night playing a quick lottery and smoking two packs of cigarettes. For a while I thought prohibition policy existed because the state wants a monopoly on lottery revenue, but state lotteries seem to be just as profitable in Europe as they are here despite the much lower payouts. The rates of gambling addiction don't seem much different.

I have virtually no interest in the pursuit other than buying a lottery ticket on a whim maybe once a year, but it's similar enough to video gaming that I can see how people get hooked on it - probably something akin to a dopamine deficiency. Prohibition seems pointless and wasteful; better to deal with reality and divert a percentage of the revenue to mitigation services.

<comment><USER10> European lotteries actually tend to have much higher percentages of money paid, but much lower payouts. They're "less of a bad deal" from an odds perspective than American lotteries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know, from what I've heard (from people who play online), the new banking regulations make it significantly harder to pay poker sites money to play.

<comment><USER15> Only by credit/debit card. The regulations exclude checks, so most sites have an 'echeck' option.

<comment><USER10> I believe there were quite recent new regulations which stop all bank payments from US banks...my bank sent me a letter (although I'd never paid one of the sites) about this, at which point I asked the player.

Am I mistaken about what happened?

<comment><USER15> If your bank is aware that a payment is going to an illegal gambling site, they are required to block it. However, the regulations don't require them to scrutinize checks since it's just not practical.

Merchants who accept credit/debit cards must code the transaction for whatever their industry is, so those in the gambling industry are easy to block and banks are required to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are the odds on failure?</comment>


If You Create the Process, It's Your Fault If People Don't Follow It - <AUTHOR> https://staysaasy.com/process/2020/04/06/Creating-Good-Process.html <comment><USER2> This guy lives in fantasy land.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate.</comment></comment>