Ask HN: Are Tesla accidents now off-topic? - <AUTHOR> I posted[1] an article a few hours ago about a Tesla going 60MPH rear-ending a vehicle that was stopped at a red light[2]. I check back a few hours later and the post is marked "[flagged]".<p>I'm confused, what about this article led to it being flagged? It seems pretty similar to other recent submissions[3,4,5,6], none of which were flagged.<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17056262<p>[2] https://www.ksl.com/?sid=46319215&nid=148&title=police-tesla-slams-into-truck-stopped-at-red-light<p>[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17036436<p>[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17045302<p>[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17030875<p>[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16894353 <comment><USER2> A few similar post were flagged. I guess it was flagged because it's not clear at all that the autopilot was enabled, so it still can be an usual traffic accident that is not interesting. For speculation, the Tesla autopilot has problems with static objects and they hit a fire truck a few months ago, so some problem with the autopilot is possible here ...

Continuing with the guessing, most of the other posts you references were about an accident where the Tesla car burn. Apparently it is confirmed that the autopilot was not enabled, but people has an irrational fear of battery fires in spite gas cars can burn more easily. So I guess the irrational fear made them more interesting and the post were not flagged.

Don't read too much in the flagging. Sometimes a post is unnecessary flagged and sometimes a clear bad post survives. If you see some very bad case and the flag/vouch button is not enough you can send an email to the mods: firstname.lastname@example.com , they usually reply soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was actually just going to submit this story and found this post via search, so I guess I won't post it.

I think it's a relevant story because it's the second 'firetruck' incident involving Tesla this year.

Does the autopilot software have issues with firetrucks? We don't know if autopilot was involved in this case yet. If it was though, shouldn't that have been a relatively straightforward software fix? Did Tesla do anything to bolster the ability to recognize firetrucks?

I'm rooting for Tesla, but I think these discussions are interesting and belong here.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Commenting on my own post: this same story was submitted twice since my submission [1] [2], one with the identical title. Neither have been flagged.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17057638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17057638)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17059870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17059870)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's possible people got this Utah case confused with the Florida case of a couple of days ago.

</comment><comment><USER5> you might need to ask more directly if there is any commonality the "mods" see, in the IP ranges and identities behind the flagging...</comment>


UK to fine companies up to £17M for cybersecurity lapses - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/29/uk-fine-cybersecurity-operators-essential-services/ <comment><AUTHOR> Further info from NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre):

[https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/introduction-nis- directive](https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/introduction-nis-directive)

Detailed response to public consultation - [PDF]

[https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/677065/NIS_Consultation_Response_- _Government_Policy_Response.pdf)</comment>


A LSP client maintainer's view of the LSP protocol - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/b3yzq4/a_lsp_client_maintainers_view_of_the_lsp_protocol/ <comment><AUTHOR> LSP refers to Language Server Protocol[1], a protocol created by microsoft to help text editors provide smartness (autocompletion, go to definition, etc.) for programming languages.

[1] [https://langserver.org/](https://langserver.org/)</comment>


Ask HN: Open Source project changed license: Apache2 to AGPL, forked it before - <AUTHOR> Is my fork, which I developed further, affected from the license change? Can I keep the original license? <comment><USER2> IANAL, but the typical open source licenses are written so that once source code has been released under the license, it can't be retroactively revoked. The copyright owner can adopt a new license for new changes, effectively forking his own work under a more limited license.

This has happened to many open source projects. Some examples off the top of my head:

\- AntiGrain Geometry, a high-quality rasterizer library, switched from LGPL to plain GPL at version 2.5. The previous version has been developed further by other parties than the original author.

\- Symbian, a smartphone OS that used to be the #1 in marketshare a surprisingly short time ago, was released by Nokia under an Apache license. Once the company gave up on the idea of having the OS developed in the open, they relicensed the code under a far more limiting custom license.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your assessment. This is also how I see it. I found a similar opinion on stackoverflow: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1077668/can-i- change-my-o...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1077668/can-i-change-my- open-source-license-from-licensea-to-licenseb)</comment></comment>


Microsoft's Plot to Kill Google - <AUTHOR> http://clusterstock.alleyinsider.com/2009/2/microsofts-other-strategy-rise-rivals-costs

<comment><USER2> Better with the original headline: Microsoft's Other Strategy: Raise Google's Costs

Not much substance to this article, just one small snippet of information about how MS inflicted damage to themselves in order to hurt Google.</comment>


Is the FDA Too Conservative or Too Aggressive? Analysis of Clinical Trial Design - <AUTHOR> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2641547 <comment><USER3> A case study on FDA from my father, a cardiologist: A recent advancement in replacement heart valves reduces mortality rates from 10% in high risk patients (old and very unhealthy) to 0.9%, from 5% in medium risk patients to 0.4%. This studies were confirmed through clinical trials run by very well respected doctors. Nevertheless, the FDA still required their own set of trials to confirm the safety of the procedure. This was 5 years ago. The FDA first ran a set of trials, not on standard patients but only those that were deemed "inoperable". They spent a few years working that out and found that the device succeeded, but the approval was only given for patients that were inoperable. Then the FDA covered patients that were high risk, spent a few years and found again that the device was hugely beneficial in mortality rates and the device was approved for high risk patients. We are currently in the waiting for the FDA to approve the device for medium risk patients. In the mean time, my father had a medium risk patient who needed a valve replacement. He could not use the new device, so he sent the man to surgery for a standard valve replacement with 5% mortality risk. The man died on the table, becoming part of the 5%, and my father insists that he would have survived if they had been able to use the new procedure. In Germany there are less regulations, and so they have been using the new technique for 5 years with great success. Because of things like this, you'll commonly see medical procedures in Europe that are 5 years ahead of their counterparts in America, all because the FDA insists on using such plodding methods to verify safety.

<comment><USER4> I know an M.D. who travelled to Germany to get a medical implant (for himself) that's not yet approved in the U.S., even though it meant paying $90K out of pocket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My experience with the FDA:

I'm "congenitally limb deficient" below the elbow. Grew up in the 90s using horrible myo electric prosthetic limbs that had 2 hour battery life and were in all practicality a glorified claw machine. I ditched that as soon as I realized they were actually a hindrance.

In 2006, there was a TED talk with Dean Kamen about a prosthetic arm developed by DARPA. It blew my mind and got me finally interested in wearing a prosthetic again. So much promise in a field that had been in a coma for the last 20 years.

That arm never happened. Why? Because it took the FDA 7 years to approve it. The project now is dead in water and the group responsible for building it is trying to literally give away their designs. Why did the FDA have to approve a prosthetic limb? Well, because it touches your skin. Yes, the silicon on the back had to be tested because of skin contact.

I'm now the lucky recipient of BeBionic 3 arm, which is great. Worst part about it? It uses radio frequency to control the hand and has a tendency to go haywire. I asked why they didn't just use Bluetooth and he said that would require another 2 years to get FAA approval. Ugh.

Anecdotal, I know.

<comment><USER6> See, this just seems overly investigative. If they were physically fusing the arm to your body, sure, that's a reasonable time for the FDA to investigate. But just because it is related to your body in any way doesn't warrant that sort of careful consideration. Similarily, if the radio was controlling a pacemaker, I wouldn't want it using bluetooth, I'd want something FDA approved. If it's an arm, I probably wouldn't want bluetooth (stupid pairing issues....) but something like the xbee format would be great, not some proprietary and less reliable RF protocol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been on the science side of a number of FDA clinical trials for a few years now.

The FDA is too conservative with many metrics, and too aggressive with others. The clinical trial pipeline is tortuously slow for everyone involved-- the EU equivalent agency has done a lot to accelerate the process fruitfully. Eclipsing these FDA malregulations is the problem of transparency; if the FDA forced clinical trials to publish 100% of their data rather than only the positive results, we'd have a better medicine producing industry.

<comment><USER8> Is there any realistic possibility Americans could use drugs approved in Europe ?

<comment><USER9> Any American MD can ask the FDA for "expanded access" to use a medication not approved by the FDA. 99% of the time the FDA grants expanded-access requests.

However, a recent review in NEJM explained how it is time consuming and expensive to apply for expanded-access and often the pharmaceutical companies refuse to distribute the drugs even after the FDA grants expanded-access.

[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMhle1409465](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMhle1409465)

"Compassionate use" is a separate, but related concept with different rules than "expanded access". And in the EU expanded access is often called "named- patient".

<comment><USER8> Thanks. You really know this stuff.

Why is there dependence on drug companies ? distributing drugs bought in Europe or elsewhere is pretty easy.And as for drug companies being protected from american litigation - if they don't sell it on u.s. soil, they are not responsible in u.s. courts, right?

As for the process being complex and expensive, is there work being done to solving this, with regards to EMA approved drugs ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A family member of mine has tried to participate in a clinical trial. The trial also forces him to forgo any existing medication, basically making his illness intolerable. There is no indication in the trial if he is being served with real medication or a placebo, but his life has been extremely affected just by participation. Naturally he quit the trial. How would this statistical analysis address these common behaviors where ill people would just not participate in trials when certain illnesses are involved?

<comment><USER11> There's a whole statistical literature on survival bias. The basic equations all require "independent and identically distributed" data loss. As soon as that's not the case (e.g., more placebo patients drop out than treatment patients), you have to compensate for that.

That being said, I suspect this analysis is operating at a higher level where survivor bias isn't as relevant, because it's looking across many studies at once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A good summary and commentary here

[http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08...](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08/is- the-fda-too-conservative-or-too-aggressive.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> TriCorder X-Prize? FDA has done nothing but hobbled it's development. DNA screening for the masses? FDA shut down 23andMe. Terminally ill and willing to try an experimental drug? FDA says, "too bad" (and the Supreme Court agrees).

<comment><USER14> They didn't "shut down" 23andMe. They stopped them from marketing unproven health diagnoses derived from the DNA tests.

<comment><USER15> I think it went beyond a marketing ban, unless 'marketing' extends to selling and displaying health related information.

<comment><USER16> You can still use 23 and Me to get your results, but you have to go elsewhere (like to your doctor) to interpret the results. They were basically giving patients a diagnosis without going through the proper legal work to be able to give diagnoses. It would be no different than some random person giving you a medical diagnosis without being an actual licensed doctor.

This was not a case of over regulation. It was pretty simple, and the FDA tried repeatedly to work with 23 and Me to bring them into compliance, but the company basically ignored the FDA's requests for meetings and information. They have nobody to blame but themselves, and what happened was good for consumers.

<comment><USER15> This does highlight the effort to maintain the historic paradigm of health professionals as gatekeepers in the face of wider and easier access to health information.

Fortunately sources like snpedia.com still exist for those wanting to use their 23andme data to do their own exploring without an intermediary, should they choose.

<comment><USER14> Nobody is gatekeeping access to health information. You can go online and try and correlate your test results with the information that's out there.

What the FDA prevented was a company _profiting from selling a diagnostic service_ that wasn't proven.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So the FDA is too conservative for life-threatening conditions, and not conservative enough for relatively mild conditions. That probably fits pretty well with most people's intuitive sense of things; it's interesting to see the math works out that way.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's another example:

There's oragenics, which developed a vaccine against dental carries - <USER2> disease that affects 5 billion people. Something that i'm sure everybody would really like to have.

And this is why we don't have it ? In their own words:

" Regulatory Status:

We initiated our first Phase 1 clinical trial in April 2005, but we found it difficult to find subjects who fit the trial's highly cautious inclusion and exclusion criteria, particularly with respect to the subjects' lack of dentition. We concluded this trial early after enrolling only two of the 15 planned subjects. The FDA then recommended that we revise the protocol for the evaluation of ten healthy male subjects, ranging from 18 to 30 years old and with normal dentition, in an institutionalized setting. After we submitted additional information, the FDA issued a clinical hold letter in June 2007 for the proposed trial with the attenuated strain, citing the need for a plan with respect to serious adverse effects; a plan for the eradication of the attenuated strain in trial subjects' offspring; and a required pregnancy test for female partners of subjects. We submitted additional protocols in response to the FDA's concerns. In August 2007, the FDA issued a clinical hold letter with required revisions to the protocol for offspring of subjects. We submitted a response to the clinical hold letter in September 2007, and the FDA removed the clinical hold for our Phase 1 trial in the attenuated strain in October 2007.

While we commenced a Phase 1b clinical trial for SMaRT Replacement Therapy during the first quarter of 2011, the very restrictive study enrollment criteria required by the FDA made the enrollment of candidates meeting the restrictive criteria difficult. Due to the enrollment difficulty we encountered with our initial our Phase 1a clinical trial and now with our phase 1b clinical trial, we determined to discontinue pursuit of our Phase 1b clinical trial."

Such a shame.

[http://www.oragenics.com/?q=cavity- prevention](http://www.oragenics.com/?q=cavity-prevention)

</comment><comment><USER17> Also: [http://fdareview.org/](http://fdareview.org/)

"Medical drugs and devices cannot be marketed in the United States unless the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) grants specific approval. We argue that FDA control over drugs and devices has large and often overlooked costs that almost certainly exceed the benefits. We believe that FDA regulation of the medical industry has suppressed and delayed new drugs and devices, and has increased costs, with a net result of more morbidity and mortality. A large body of academic research has investigated the FDA and with unusual consensus has reached the same conclusion. Drawing on this body of research, we evaluate the costs and benefits of FDA policy. We also present a detailed history of the FDA, a review of the major plans for FDA reform, a glossary of terms, a collection of quotes from economists who have studied the FDA, and a reference section with many webbed links. A more detailed table of contents follows. We are happy to receive comments and criticisms."

<comment><USER18> I'm wary of relying on economists to assess the utility of the FDA. The alternative to the FDA they mention is basically self-policing. Except we already have a drug-like industry that relies entirely on self-policing: the "health supplements" industry, which the FDA is explicitly banned by legislation from regulating. And the precedent of the health supplements industry is extremely disconcerting--companies are basically legally lying through their teeth (it's not illegal if someone else, e.g., Dr. Oz, says it, cause _they_ aren't advertising, they're exercising free speech), and they sometimes don't even bother to stuff their products with what they say the active ingredient is.

The problem with drugs is the placebo effect. Evidencing efficacy beyond the placebo effect requires large, controlled trials (the infamous Phase III clinical trial) that end up being correspondingly expensive; nothing less is sufficiently powerful. Because of placebos, you can sell expensive nothings, and it will appear to work sufficiently well that reputation wouldn't suffer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My small sample size of experience with the FDA: they seem to be very receptive to novel therapies for terminal illness and it's surprisingly straight-forward to get a Phase I trial approved.

There's no static rule uniformly enforcing the initiation of trials, rather your IND (investigational new drug) application is reviewed by experts in the relevant field to determine whether (1) is there a plausible reason to believe your new therapy helps and (2) is it unlikely to kill or severely injure patients.

I can't think of a better way for things to work for late-stage cancer or other untreatable terminal illnesses.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is not an easy problem. If the FDA is too conservative, people will die who could have lived. If the FDA is too aggressive, a different group of people will die who could have lived. And no matter where the FDA is on the spectrum (insane extremes excluded), there are people in both groups who die. And there are people who cared for those in both groups, who scream about how the FDA is doing it all wrong, and who have diametrically opposed views on how the FDA should change.

Maybe the test should be whether the screaming is equally loud from both sides...

<comment><USER21> Maybe if the FDA were only making recommendations then people could decide for themselves whether to go with the doctor who advising an FDA-approved treatment vs going with some other doctor who is advising something else?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's so much conflict within the FDA that their opinion should carry no real weight.</comment>


Ask HN: Career advice - <AUTHOR>

Hey - I eventually want to do a startup.
I'm a little older with a background as an architect/team lead, IT data center / enterprise software. On the delivery side.  15 yrs exp.  Wanting to get more on the sales side of things.  That's the only part of the biz I don't know enough about.
Like many devs (I suspect), unfortunately I don't have much of a network.
Any ideas/advice?  thanks, <comment><USER2> Do you work somewhere that has a bunch of salespeople? How about taking them out to lunch (or just eating with them if you have a cafe)? Maybe even offer to build some tools for them in exchange for picking their brain on sales techniques?

Once you have a relationship with some of the sales folks, you may even be able to transition to a sales career without leaving your current company.

<comment><USER3> Great advice. Other than that, what about going to meetups? Go to Ruby (or other language specific) meetups and say that you freelance. Try and sell your services whilst making connections.</comment></comment>


Almost all the jobs created since 2005 are temporary - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created-since-2005-are-temporary/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here is how the US Department of Labor define jobs:

"People are considered employed if they did any work at all for pay or profit during the survey reference week. This includes all part-time and temporary work, as well as regular full-time, year-round employment. Individuals also are counted as employed if they have a job at which they did not work during the survey week, whether they were paid or not, because they were:"

[http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm](http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm)

Hopefully we will soon be able to discuss the reality of our situation and start looking at what to do about it instead of keep insisting that jobs are just jobs and that outsourcing and automation have no effect.

</comment><comment><USER2> Also, "having a job" does not mean "can live". You might still need a 2nd job, and you might depend on other family members having jobs too.

We need to stop defining _employment_ as the measurement of goodness and start finding ways to define _decent quality of life_. How many people have a _decent quality of life_ regardless of their "jobs"?</comment>


Augmented Reality with Unreal Engine 4 - <AUTHOR> http://www.unreal4ar.com/demo-videos/ <comment><USER2> Very cool. Not necessarily new, but it seems like an individual hacker which is always impressive. Companies like Blippar ([https://blippar.com/en/](https://blippar.com/en/)) have recently been acquiring any company or team that is doing this type of work.</comment>


Silicon Valley Myths Aside, Time Is on the Side of Aging Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> https://www-wsj-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/BL-CIOB-14372?responsive=y <comment><USER2> Non-AMP URL:

[https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2018/08/31/silicon-valley-myths- as...](https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2018/08/31/silicon-valley-myths-aside-time- is-on-the-side-of-aging-entrepreneurs/)</comment>


Abstractions and the role of a framework - <AUTHOR> http://solnic.eu/2016/05/30/abstractions-and-the-role-of-a-framework.html <comment><USER2> His original article received so much attention because anti-Rails sentiment has reached an all time high and people are looking for confirmation of their feelings against it. But in so doing the same people are misattributing the actual source of their modern application building woes.

It isn't Rails. Its that REST is a terrible and clunky foundation upon which to build your client-server architecture for a complex and changing UI. It might be great for an API, but as we are all apparently rediscovering your UI is a tree extracted from the graph which is the entirety of your data. If your UI components can tell you what data it needs you can build up to root a graph-like query.

I would venture to say Rails suffers because its phenomenal popularity means people reach for it out of familiarity to solve their problems, get decently far and then hit diminishing returns when they find they have to write their app twice, in JS and in Ruby.

Rails provides no way, out of the box, to share a model between client and server. It provides no way for your views to describe their data dependencies and the mutations they allow. Because of this, there is no way to parse an actually expressive query (i.e not query params) and direct that, after security/authentication toward whatever datastore you choose.

It was phenomenally productive 5 years ago when the problems being solved were simpler. At this point I can really only imagine using it to build APIs and that for me is only because I know it so well.

<comment><USER3> I subscribe to this perspective. REST thinks of the web as discrete resources, for which it provides a sufficiently good model. But that model makes it hard to build complex GUIs that deal with a lot of hierarchical data. Such applications can't afford to treat every node as an independent resource sitting across the network. Yet we use the old ways of thinking to build complex new beasts and that unsurprisingly turns out to be a kludge.

Also, if the anti-Rails sentiment has reached an all time high (has it?), it would be because Rails adoption itself has reached an all time high. We do need a web framework that lets us build applications by seamlessly weaving both the front-end and back-end, and unfortunately nothing like that exists. In the absence of such an alternative, Rails remains the web development framework out there with the most bang for the buck. For front-end heavy apps, the easiest approach right now is a `rails new` with Devise and jsroutes, throw in a complex rails-react setup with server-side rendering, write almost all the views in Javascript, and many hundred API endpoints, and after thousands of tests to just validate the inevitable connascence, we have something that works. Something that took us months, which could've been done in VB6 or FoxPro in a week.

GraphQL and Relay promises to fix this, and even if they themselves don't, the conversation has started, and something great will emerge in time.

<comment><USER4> >Also, if the anti-Rails sentiment has reached an all time high (has it?), it would be because Rails adoption itself has reached an all time high.

I really doubt that:

[https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ruby%20on%20rails](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ruby%20on%20rails)

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure whether we can draw conclusions about _adoption_ from this chart. A simplistic model could assume that

        adoption = integral of popularity over time

The peak adoption is where popularity is zero. This model doesn't include software that's been decommissioned or migrated to another platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rails without an active record ORM model isn't really Rails, if that's what you want then you're probably not doing CRUD and you really should just pick another framework.

I'm all for lots of frameworks. But please please please don't take away my Rails by forcing it to be ORM-agnostic. Please don't turn my cruiser into a crotch-rocket.

<comment><USER7> Not every CRUD app uses a local database. For example, I'm working on a web frontend for a collection of microservices right now. The web app is just CRUD for the largest part, but the model is a custom implementation that translates .find_by, .save etc. into REST calls. Took us quite some effort to make this look like ActiveRecord enough to play nice with the rest of Rails.

<comment><USER6> You should absolutely release your work, a translation layer for REST APIs -> ActiveModel would be awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Using Rails as your application is not creativity. Using as a tool to implement your thought is. If Rails is not enough or not what you want, build another foundation. Never blame our tool, it has its use for its existence. Learn from it.</comment>


A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://A.Practical.Guide.to.Distributed.Scrum.pdf <comment><USER2> Heh, novel URL: [http://a.practical.guide.to.distributed.scrum.pdf/](http://a.practical.guide.to.distributed.scrum.pdf/)

Warning: OT

1) Is there information on how many gTLD registrars (right word?) have (or will) spin a profit on their gTLD? There are so many gTLDs out now that I can't imagine all of .photo, .photos, and .photography will get enough domains registered to pay for the initial $180k application cost.

2) dang, is it feasible to display more than just TLD and 2nd level domain in the preview? Some sites like this benefit because of a novel URL, but other sites like Knuth's homepage almost deserve to be identified as unique from "stanford.edu"[0].

[0] From earlier today: "Programs to Read (stanford.edu)" \--> [http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/programs.html](http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/programs.html)</comment>


Rule to Require Employers to Disclose Use of Anti-Union Consultants - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/business/economy/union-labor-regulation-consultant-relationships.html?ref=business&_r=0 <comment><USER2> The article says this is repairing a loophole:

> The 1959 law on which the regulations are based already required employers > to disclose the hiring of such consultants. But the Labor Department argued > that previous administrations had allowed an enormous loophole that > effectively exempted consultants who coached supervisors on how to influence > employees so long as the consultants didn't interact with the employees > directly.

But won't they just hire the same people as "workforce relationship consultants who are TOTALLY not anti-union"? Isn't there an infinite supply of loopholes here?

<comment><USER3> An infinite supply indeed. For example:

> [...] lawyers would only have to make the relevant disclosures if they > provide advice about how to discourage the formation of a union or > collective bargaining. He said that advice on pure legal matters would > remain uncovered by the rule.

Quite subjective.

<comment><USER4> How is that subjective? Not being a smartass here, I just see that there's a pretty clear distinction between "advice on pure legal matters" and advice on "how to discourage" union formation.

It's like the difference between a political campaign's counsel and it's campaign consultants. Or the difference between a corporations general counsel and its PR department.

Now of course, people will try to get around this, but that's true of any law. Just because we outlaw murder doesn't mean there are no murderers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yay! Unions are great! Just look at IL's fiscal situation!

<comment><USER6> Unions are terrible. Awful, in fact. At least on average.

But not having unions seems even worse, so until we invent something better...

<comment><USER7> That sounds like what Churchill(?) said about democracy: A terrible form of government, but better than all the alternatives. It's the nature of human institutions - name one that's better.

The way I think of it is that other people with power are act in corrupt, self-interested ways, why should working people be denied power for doing those things? They shouldn't be held to a higher standard.

Unions are about power; it gives the working class a seat at the table with all the other power-hungry corrupt people who run our society. Note that since unions started weakening in the 1980s, wages have stagnated for those people who have lost power and they have increased dramatically for the wealthy people who have retained it. That's simplistic, but I don't think those outcomes are unrelated.

I'd like an end to corruption, as well as universal peace and love; but I'm not going to wait for it to happen before I support unions.

<comment><USER8> Corruption comes from incentives, and it's all about (counter)balancing incentives.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Frictionless Data: Lightweight standards and tooling for data sharing - <AUTHOR> http://frictionlessdata.io/ <comment><USER2> Happy to see this on the frontpage. I work for the Open Knowledge International, which develops the Frictionless Data standard. Feel free to ask me anything, and I'll make sure myself or someone else from the team answers it.

</comment><comment><USER3> The frictionlessdata landing page has very generalized verbiage so here's my technical summary of it...

The main idea for "container" or "package" hinges on a file called _" datapackage.json"_[1].

An analogy would be the "sfv" files like _" checksums.sfv"_ for verifying the integrity of files. Since so many people use "sfv" as a defacto standard, many programs exist to scan it and verify the associated files. Another analogy would be _DTD_ for XML files.

Similarly, if everybody could converge on the file _" datapackage.json"_ as a metadata & schema description standard, a useful ecosystem of utilities and libraries for processing data would take advantage of it.

One example library would be: [https://github.com/frictionlessdata/datapackage- py](https://github.com/frictionlessdata/datapackage-py)

(In the Python source code for "package.py"[2], Ctrl+F search for _" datapackage.json"_ to see how it looks for that particular file.)

With a data wrangling API like that, one could then do joins on csv files directly[3] and write the results to another csv file _with the associated "datapackage.json"_.

Instead of passing "dumb" csv or raw json files around, add a little "intelligence" to the dataset by way of _" datapackage.json"_ so tools can parse the schema and process csv/json at a higher abstraction level. That leads to more "effortless" and "frictionless" data interoperability.

What I can't tell so far is if _" datapackage.json"_ already has momentum of adoption across many communities such as Julia, Tensorflow, Hadoop, etc. and we need to get on the bandwagon -- or -- adoption is still in its infancy and there are _other competing data "container/package" specifications_ to look at.

[1] [http://frictionlessdata.io/guides/data- package/](http://frictionlessdata.io/guides/data-package/)

[2] [https://github.com/frictionlessdata/datapackage- py/blob/mast...](https://github.com/frictionlessdata/datapackage- py/blob/master/datapackage/package.py)

[3] [http://frictionlessdata.io/guides/joining-tabular-data-in- py...](http://frictionlessdata.io/guides/joining-tabular-data-in-python/)

<comment><USER4> Hi,

(I work on the Frictionless Data specifications and tooling at Open Knowledge International.)

Thanks. We are working on the website at present [1], and we are trying to manage a balance of targeting technical and non-technical users, which is hard to get right.

About momentum - I can address that. We have seen significant momentum in the last 2 years, around open data / government transparency / civic tech ( our natural environment - see [https://okfn.org](https://okfn.org) for details ), around scientific / academic research via our work enabled by a grant from Sloan [2]( see [http://frictionlessdata.io/case- studies/](http://frictionlessdata.io/case-studies/) for a small selection, more reports coming ), and in general around data wrangling and data science efforts (including integration of Table Schema [3] with Pandas [4]).

In terms of _big_ data / machine learning - we have not actively worked in that space to present.

In terms of Julia, and other languages, we have a Julia library in development via our Tool Fund [5], and this will add to implementations [6] in PHP, Java, R, Clojure which are already underway via the Tool Fund, and accompany the Python, Javascript and Ruby implementations that we maintain directly at Open Knowledge International.

[1]: [https://github.com/frictionlessdata/frictionlessdata.io/issu...](https://github.com/frictionlessdata/frictionlessdata.io/issues/129) [2]: [https://sloan.org](https://sloan.org) [3]: [http://specs.frictionlessdata.io/table- schema/](http://specs.frictionlessdata.io/table-schema/) [4]: [https://pandas- docs.github.io/pandas-docs-travis/generated/p...](https://pandas- docs.github.io/pandas-docs- travis/generated/pandas.io.json.build_table_schema.html) [5]: [http://toolfund.frictionlessdata.io](http://toolfund.frictionlessdata.io) [6]: [https://github.com/frictionlessdata](https://github.com/frictionlessdata)

<comment><USER5> Do you support yaml for people who dislike json?

<comment><USER4> Hi. One could read the YAML first with the library of choice, and then load into Data Package or Table Schema libraries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an overly complicated data container format for not much advantage. To be honest, everything you can do with this can be done at the same level or better with SQLite, an actual database system. Having to implement 4 different parers and validation functions spanning a mix of csv, xml and json just to access what is essentially a csv file is not feasible.

<comment><USER7> I agree that SQLite is amazing, and the problem that I had with some of the datapackage implementations (CSVLint) is that they stored validation errors in-memory (this is a deal breaker for data sets larger than a few hundred MB) and didn't work well when cross-validating data between multiple files. That's why I created ETLyte ([https://github.com/sorrell/etlyte](https://github.com/sorrell/etlyte)) which reads data into a SQLite DB, writes errors to the DB, and streams output to file/stdout.

I disagree that there is "not much advantage" in the format though. I use much of the "resources" area of the data container format and find it tremendously helpful for validating the expected datatypes (remember, SQLite has no true datatypes for columns), defining expected values, and defining some of the "ETL" functionality in ETLyte, like derived columns.

Also on the horizon is a fuzzing tool I'm creating to help exercise the boundaries and variations of data that an ETL process can expect, and this wouldn't be possible without a data container format. So again, I think there are very good use cases for it that we haven't even tapped into yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> CSV as serialization format? Ouch. Could we do better? My experience with CSV has been nothing but pain in the past. Ambiguous formats, quoting issues, incompatible libraries between languages and popular GUI tools like Excel or data vis apps.

I wonder if there's anything better.

<comment><USER9> I hate csv so much. Simply opening a csv in Excel and saving it breaks the format so much that most parsers cannot understand it anymore. Plus there is no way to know which encoding the csv came in - Notepad++ might say one thing and PowerShell will say another. Have fun figuring out why cyrrilic characters or umlauts cause issues in your scripts...

<comment><USER10> Problem is not CSV, it's Excel. It's hard to blame format, when application is insane enough to use locale settings to determine file parsing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> it is relevant to point out yesterday's article by Wes McKinney on Apache Arrow and the future of high performance data formats - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15335462](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15335462)</comment>


Merry Christmas the NSA's gift is a list of all the times it w. spied on you - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/25/7449251/nsa-incompetent-spying-christmas-newsdump

<comment><USER2> I worry that we're gradually moving towards a society that sees privacy as neither a right nor something desirable to an innocent individual.</comment>


How Tokyo built its way to abundant housing - <AUTHOR> https://jamesjgleeson.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/how-tokyo-built-its-way-to-abundant-housing/ <comment><USER2> The true essence of the article:

> Japan has a relatively simple and unambiguous zoning code, one which the > national government has repeatedly adjusted in order to allow for more > housing growth in Tokyo. That has been done in the face of opposition at > neighbourhood and even city level, opposition that in countries which have > devolved land use decisions to a local level would be enough to stop > densification or at least divert it to poorer areas.

We need more of this in the western world.

<comment><USER3> > We need more of this in the western world.

AFAIK EU zonings are not significantly (if at all) more complex than Japanese zoning, the US are the stand-out there with a constellation of byzantine exclusive zonings. I do know for certain that both french and german zoning are national/federal policy and (quite necessarily) mixed-use.

So it would probably be a good thing to unfuck US zoning (good luck with that though), but it can not be the "true essence" of the article.

My reading is not that the meat is "simple zoning" but:

1\. Japanese people don't have "mandatory fantasies" of single-occupancy dwellings, and people are fine with living in good multi-family dwellings (apartments), note that the average Tokyoite dwelling is 64 sq m (690 sq ft)

2\. Japanese people don't value buildings[0], only land

3\. Which means tearing down buildings and replacing them is normal and expected

4\. Which (combined with residential zoning concepts) means it's easy and common to redevelop low-density dwellings (single-occupancy and low-density 1~2 storeys apartment buildings) into higher-density ones, the graphs in the middle of the article could hardly be clearer there with single-occupancy dwellings having remained roughly flat but 3~5 and 6+ storey buildings having skyrocketed (alongside the number of homes having increased much faster than residential land acreage)

Simplifying zoning codes is not going to make Europe — let alone the US — adopt these mentalities.

[0] personal ones, family/clan homes & temples are a different case

<comment><USER4> Both London and Copenhagen, the cities I have a bit of first hand experience with, may not have ridiculous zoning rules, but heritage listings are ubiquitous and seems to be very broadly applied. One place I worked, a low- level listed building, in central Copenhagen, we couldn't place an air conditioning unit for a server room on the exterior wall of an interior courtyard (the company occupied the entirety of the courtyard, so it's not an issue of the neighbours). Anecdotally, many other listing restrictions made it nearly infeasible to make the space suitable for a modern office. The block of flats I lived in was mildly architecturally remarkable (for being the first instance of a style that since was very popular, so not rare), and so listed. Getting permission to develop the attic space into flats took years and cost a fortune in legal costs (and meant that we hit the 2008 crash and had to abandon the project). The reason for listing was the particular plan of the blocks in a parallel north/south layout to maximise light in the flat, it has absolutely nothing to do with the exterior visual style of the blocks, but that was what the listing board took a very detailed interest in.

In London, views to St. Paul's Cathedral from a number of points around the city are listed, which apparently has made it nearly impossible (it's unlikely that it's the only reason, though) to build tall buildings where they would have mattered the most. London, of course, also has the green belt zoning restriction which also doesn't do house prices any favours, but doesn't explain why density in the more central parts of the city is so low.

Listings certainly serve a purpose in retaining some living history and culture, but in places it feels like the pendulum has swung all the way to making parts of the city into museum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's worth occasionally thinking of the "economy" in simple terms, especially for the wider middle class. There are relatively few broad categories that make up most of our economic lives.

For most people the "economy" mostly consists of (0) their job/income (1) food/consumable (2) stuff/durables (3) transport (4) vital services: health, education, etc. (5) housing.

1 & 2 are well served by free markets, and industrial capitalism^. We're "rich" in these. 3 & 4 are not, and are generally managed by governments. The long term trend is decent-ish though. Medicine, education and such have grown over the decades and people get more of this.

Housing is in many places (mostly successful cities) the economic disaster. Fully exposed to financialization, business cycles, inflation prone. Rather than signalling to supply, prices adjust to whatever the median person can afford to pay. Meanwhile, the whole market acts a mechanism transferring wealth up the generations & economic classes.

Especially in europe, the whole thing is stagnant too. Modern planning doesn't seem much better than old planning. Modern building is not much better/cheaper than old building. It seems that we have less ability to deliver on larger & more ambitious projects than they did 100 years ago.

Interestingly, this generational stagnation seems to hold for both the liberal and ex-communist parts of europe. No one wants to go back to soviet supermarkets, cars or electronics. Soviet housing system...? opinions vary.

Housing is the biggest problem in our economic lives.

^excepting mattresses :)

<comment><USER6> >Housing is in many places (mostly successful cities) the economic disaster. Fully exposed to financialization, business cycles, inflation prone. Rather than signalling to supply, prices adjust to whatever the median person can afford to pay

Why should housing not be to governed by market forces? Housing shortages are due to regulations, from limiting new development outright, to limiting high density buildings, to heavy rent control (disincentivizing investment and maintenance), to regulations that just make housing investment expensive. Reasonable regulations should be the guideline, but they aren't. The most aggregious local example is San Francisco.

Soviet housing never worked. More to the point the wait lists for apartments was measured in years (ripe for corruption). The buildings were shoddy and depressing (hope you like grey). Urban planning was haphazard and may or not may have corresponded to where people actually wanted to live.

<comment><USER7> >Soviet housing never worked. More to the point the wait lists for apartments was measured in years (ripe for corruption). The buildings were shoddy and depressing (hope you like grey). Urban planning was haphazard and may or not may have corresponded to where people actually wanted to live.

And yet there was no homelessness in the USSR.

If that's a system that doesn't work, sign me up for two.

<comment><USER8> You'd be surprised at how humans "make a plan" when it comes to those things, as long as family/community is not broken. Either way, there probably was _some_ homelessness, but we'd have to look at actual records/stats on it.

But the USSR was just one system of social housing. Have a look at what's happening _right now_ in South Africa with what they call RDP housing:

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

Sounds good on paper. However it has so many problems:

[https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2017-03-16-gover...](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2017-03-16-government- needs-to-live-up-to-its-housing-promises-break-the-legacy-of-apartheid-and- restore-the-dignity-of-millions/)

[http://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/cracks-exposed-in-rdp- hous...](http://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/cracks-exposed-in-rdp-housing- system/)

[http://www.cplo.org.za/wp- content/uploads/2017/02/BP-432-RDP...](http://www.cplo.org.za/wp- content/uploads/2017/02/BP-432-RDP-Housing-May-2017.pdf)

<comment><USER9> > Either way, there probably was some homelessness, but we'd have to look at > actual records/stats on it.

Since it was a subject of official denial, records and stats would likely be hard to find.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The reason housing is such an issue in the richest parts of the world is because zoning policy is set at the local level. The interests of prospective buyers and market incumbents are at polar opposites.

Byers want cheap housing, but existing owners want their property value to rise. Since those living in the area get to vote the natural outcome is stagnation.

Japan is somewhat getting around this for two reasons. National zoning laws as noted in that article, and expanded upon by e.g. [1], and a zoning law that doesn't lock areas into certain developments, which avoids American-style developments where certain parts of town are only residential, or only office space etc.

1\. [http://urbankchoze.blogspot.nl/2014/04/japanese- zoning.html](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.nl/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html)

<comment><USER3> > The reason housing is such an issue in the richest parts of the world is > because zoning policy is set at the local level.

Don't assume US insanity has sway everywhere else. Continental EU zoning models are similar to Japan's, Germany and France zoning are national/federal policies and non-exclusive zoning.

<comment><USER10> Something gets lost in translation when we only talk about whether zoning laws are national or not, but no, this insanity is very much the case in the EU as well, and it's even worse in some cases.

Here's an article about how Paris only recently lifted height restrictions (and then in only some areas of the city): [http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2010/11/17/feu-vert- po...](http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2010/11/17/feu-vert-pour-les- grandes-tours-dans-paris_1441561_3244.html)

Does that mean Paris has different zoning laws? I don't know, but for the purpose of this discussion it clearly amounts to the same thing. The local government is allowed to set policies which inflate the worth of existing properties by restricting the ability to build up.

I live in Amsterdam, and the zoning is extremely restrictive here, down to the level that only certain streets are allowed to have businesses of any sort, height & appearance restrictions etc.

<comment><USER11> On the other hand Paris proper (where those height restrictions apply) is already one of the densest cities in the world, along with some of its suburban cities [0].

I think around these parts there are two separate problems:

\- foreign/1%er investors buying up property and leaving it empty. Across central Paris ~20-30% (depending on districts) of homes are empty [1].

\- The city is geographically too small, being locked inside the area of its mid-19th century fortifications, replaced in the 70s by an urban highway. This makes most of the land (and homes) outside of this circular highway much less desirable and therefore a lot less dense. If the suburbs were built as densely as Paris proper, most of the people living in the metro area would be able to live in a space a tenth of the size, avoiding so much commute misery.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_population_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_population_density)

[1] [https://www.terraeco.net/A-Paris-toujours-plus-de- logements,...](https://www.terraeco.net/A-Paris-toujours-plus-de- logements,50237.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > For obvious reasons there aren't many dwellings in Tokyo dating from earlier > than 1950

For those unfamiliar with this bit of history, a significant quantity of Tokyo housing stock was burnt by a US Air Force incendiary bombing operation on March 10th, 1945. It was the single most destructive air attack of WWII, though it is likely that more individuals died in the Atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

<comment><USER13> I didn't know about that attack. Thanks.

Probably a good time for this reminder: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb)

>>> _Bat bombs were an experimental World War II weapon developed by the United States. The bomb consisted of a bomb-shaped casing with over a thousand compartments, each containing a hibernating Mexican free-tailed bat with a small, timed incendiary bomb attached. Dropped from a bomber at dawn, the casings would deploy a parachute in mid-flight and open to release the bats, which would then roost in eaves and attics in a 20–40 mile radius. The incendiaries would start fires in inaccessible places in the largely wood and paper constructions of the Japanese cities that were the weapon 's intended target._

<comment><USER14> >>>In one incident, the Carlsbad Army Airfield Auxiliary Air Base (32°15′39″N 104°13′45″W) near Carlsbad, New Mexico, was set on fire on May 15, 1943, when armed bats were accidentally released. The bats roosted under a fuel tank and incinerated the test range.

I got such a delicious feeling of Schadenfreude from this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting note about floor space, NYC has a 400ft minimum which has been had demo projects under that limit, there are some current buildings going to 490 on average so its not like Westerners cannot live in smaller spaces, many do and for similar reasons as Tokyo, the rise in single living.

this 2016 article covers the NYC scene pretty well [https://ny.curbed.com/2016/9/19/12970542/micro-housing- nyc-f...](https://ny.curbed.com/2016/9/19/12970542/micro-housing-nyc-future- studio-apartments)

<comment><USER16> Note: 400 square feet is ~37 square Meters.

I happen to write this from a 24 square meter (~260 square foot) apartment, I am very happy with.

<comment><USER17> I presume you have no one else living with you. That's a very small space to raise a family.

<comment><USER16> Indeed, and a large part of loving it comes from the low rent. For a student in the city though, it is great to not have roommates and still be able to afford rent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How is densification of any good at all? Why not just develop nearby regions and move more housing and businesses there instead?

</comment><comment><USER19> It was only 20 years ago that Tokyo was famous for having the most expensive, unaffordable housing in the world. Since then it has had a 20 year economic depression. Maybe Tokyo's population has risen (I'm a bit surprised at that) but it also has near-zero foreign immigration. I'm a bit surprised those things aren't mentioned in the article, but it really doesn't prove Tokyo is a great way to run things.

<comment><USER20> Also, Tokyo _sprawls_. The city isn't one giant cluster of skyscrapers called Shinjuku, sorry. Most of the people on this thread would be shocked to see pictures of actual Tokyo housing, which mostly consists of low-rise, detached buildings.

Japan is magic, you see. They must be doing something different there. It can't possibly be something boring like _"the city is built in an enormous, flat river delta."_</comment></comment>


Ask HN: When did Vim become "the cool editor"? - <AUTHOR> Remember back in the day, all of about 4 years ago, when men were men and all the cool kids were using Emacs? Seems like over the last few years Vim has climbed to the top of the Ruby-writing, Web 2.0-using pile, and I don't know exactly why. Admittedly, it does have syntax modes for many languages (just like Emacs), it loads fast, and you can run it on most any system (like Emacs). Why has the sysadmin's backup become the hep thing with the Github crowd?<p>Can anybody enlighten me? Was there a concerted digg-based PR effort for Vim or something? Just wondering how it got from "oh, that other editor" to "Vim! (what the hell is 'vi'?)". I generally use Acme myself so I'm a bit out of the loop. <comment><USER2> Switching to a vi editor is a one-way trip. Once you have the muscle memory for vi's "normal mode", you become incapable of using any other editor. I started using vim back in 1997 because it shipped with BeOS, and my ability to use regular editors has been crippled ever since. :)

I don't think vim's ascendance is as recent as you think. Different communities might have been infected at different times. When I started working at Amazon almost five years ago, every engineer on my team was already a veteran vim user (as was I). And of course, vi has been a popular choice for Unix hackers for over 30 years. Maybe what's happening is that Unix tools in general are enjoying an uptick thanks to steadily growing use of Linux and Mac OS X.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, 4 years ago, there was not many users in the GNU/Linux escene like now, and all the people that was starting with tutorials and such, may find the recomendation of using the VIM editor, like always figure in this tutorials, i think this could be a valid hypothesis, to the new "wave/generation" of users.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not commenting on the relative quality of the two products (emacs v. vi), but I second the feeling that I should be using vi. Had a quick start on my desk for the whole year now! Wonder where I've picked up that attitude -- I've been a good little emacs user for years now.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't think there's any particular switch one way or the other. At GitHub, some of use use Textmate, others use vim or emacs, and I think Scott's been using gedit recently. Use whatever the hell makes you happy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Never mind Github, this is one of the greatest rivalries of all time - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor_war>

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought TextMate was the cool editor nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER8> My guess is that its due to VIM being easier to learn than emacs? But thats just a guess I've never tried emacs.

</comment><comment><USER9> ... vim was cool before you were born my son ;)

</comment><comment><USER10> i use emacs but this really strikes me as an odd question that seems to suppose that emacs is 'better' than vim.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I kind of put it like that because there's surely no reason to switch from emacs to vim on the basis of features/portability. I've switched to vi lately for my quick little editing tasks, in part because it's ideologically a better Unix editor.

I also put it like that because I like to be a dick.</comment></comment>


GPL Violations Related to Combining ZFS and Linux (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ <comment><USER2> Here's the other side of the argument:

[https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/02/18/zfs-licensing-and- lin...](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/02/18/zfs-licensing-and-linux/)

"""The CDDL cannot apply to the Linux kernel because zfs.ko is a self- contained file system module — the kernel itself is quite obviously not a derivative work of this new file system.

And zfs.ko, as a self-contained file system module, is clearly not a derivative work of the Linux kernel but rather quite obviously a derivative work of OpenZFS and OpenSolaris."""

This has been shipped in Ubuntu for a year now and nothing bad has happened, so it must be OK. Maybe.

<comment><USER3> What "other side" of the argument.

If you read the GPL, it is clearly designed to prevent EXACTLY this thing. I'm sure as it was being written, Microsoft was envisioned as the evil entity that would steal free software and mix it with closed proprietary code. The license is clearly and deliberately designed to prevent this.

The "other side" may not see it this way. But the "other side" must abide by all involved licenses, including the GPL. Their own license, and the GPL license. The GPL is clear that if you cannot abide by all licenses, then don't do this.

<comment><USER4> [http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/gpl_modules.html](http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/gpl_modules.html)

\----8<\----

But one gray area in particular is something like a driver that was originally written for another operating system (ie clearly not a derived work of Linux in origin). At exactly what point does it become a derived work of the kernel (and thus fall under the GPL)?

THAT is a gray area, and _that_ is the area where I personally believe that some modules may be considered to not be derived works simply because they weren't designed for Linux and don't depend on any special Linux behaviour.

Basically:

\- anything that was written with Linux in mind (whether it then _also_ works on other operating systems or not) is clearly partially a derived work.

\- anything that has knowledge of and plays with fundamental internal Linux behaviour is clearly a derived work. If you need to muck around with core code, you're derived, no question about it.

Historically, there's been things like the original Andrew filesystem module: a standard filesystem that really wasn't written for Linux in the first place, and just implements a UNIX filesystem. Is that derived just because it got ported to Linux that had a reasonably similar VFS interface to what other UNIXes did? Personally, I didn't feel that I could make that judgment call. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but it clearly is a gray area.

Personally, I think that case wasn't a derived work, and I was willing to tell the AFS guys so.

Does that mean that any kernel module is automatically not a derived work? HELL NO! It has nothing to do with modules per se, except that non-modules clearly are derived works (if they are so central to the kernel that you can't load them as a module, they are clearly derived works just by virtue of being very intimate - and because the GPL expressly mentions linking).

So being a module is not a sign of not being a derived work. It's just one sign that _maybe_ it might have other arguments for why it isn't derived.

    		Linus

\----8<\----

The real issue is if anyone who can claim copyright to Linux kernel will sue Canonical. I don't think so.

<comment><USER3> A Linux kernel module is a derived work of the kernel and under GPL. While ZFS may not be a derived work of Linux, you have to glue it to GPL code. And the GPL license is viral.

Is it possible to glue a kernel module shim to something else under License A, glued to another shim under License B, etc until you have license compatibility with ZFS?

At the very least, this would seem to violate the very spirit of what the GPL intends.

<comment><USER5> Stupid question: can the glue code not be licensed under both GPL and CCDL?

Clearly ZFS is not a derivative work of Linux and Linux is not a derivative work of ZFS. Only the glue code is in violation (because it derives from both).

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure this is true. It's certainly possible to construct an API/ABI such that one could build the glue, or even dispense with it, without having to use any part of ZFS or the kernel to build the other or the glue. I'm not saying that's been done. But it could be done. Indeed, that's what FUSE is, for example, and that's what NDIS does, for another.

To determine whether there is glue here that violates the GPL would require looking at the particulars. Said glue might be licensed under the GPL, and might export the sorts of interfaces that Illumos does, thus allowing the ZFS module to link without reference to either the glue or the kernel! Then how could such glue be said to violate the GPL? It couldn't! Nor could ZFS be said to be violating the GPL in that case.

I don't think you can avoid an escape hatch for the GPL in the kernel without disallowing dynamic loading or modifying the GPL to have harsher terms. But recall that the GPL, and/or much software distributed under the GPL, is designed to have escape hatches: so you can run proprietary software using standard interfaces, for example (i.e., user-land code is not required to be GPLed just because it runs on a GPLed kernel, though a kernel could require it, it's just that _Linux_ doesn't).

It seems here you can't have your cake and eat it too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please add 2016 to the title. I thought this was going to be a new standpoint on this topic, with a new release yesterday.. I thought something had changed.

The release yesterday has some great new features: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14864145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14864145)

</comment><comment><USER8> Previous discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11176107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11176107)

</comment><comment><USER9> > As such, we again ask Oracle to respect community norms against license > proliferation and simply relicense its copyrights in ZFS under a > GPLv2-compatible license.

Why in the world would they do that, though? Oracle pretty clearly does not value community goodwill, nor do they gain anything by trying to go through the process of re-licensing ZFS.

<comment><USER10> Kind of a strange request, too. CDDL predates GPLv3 by a few years. If they care so much about license proliferation, they should argue against GPLv3 too.

<comment><USER11> The kernel isn't licensed under GPLv3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is not a new argument or discussion. The Conservancy, and GNU (especially Eben Moglen, who tends to get deferred to on interpretations of the GPL, for a variety of good reasons) believe the distribution of the drivers inside a binary memory image like initrd constitute a violation of the license(s). The only way to determine definitely if they are correct (I happen to think they are, but that's irrelevant) is if a copyright holder with standing decides to issue a desist and the thing carries on into court. My (also irrelevant) opinion is that if that were to occur Canonical would probably revert to Debian's solution of shipping ZFS as source-only rather than litigate it. As it currently stands, none of this seems likely to happen, so further conversation about it isn't really relevant or particularly useful.

<comment><USER12> Addendum: there is one relevant thing. If Canonical actually agree that they're violating the license(s) and are just doing it anyway, then there's probably some warranted discussion. But even that is more an issue for the community than one for IP law (unless Canonical is doing it precisely to force a definitive license interpretation. I see no evidence of this). If it's just a case that one set of people think it's a violation and Canonical disagreeing, then it's doesn't become an issue until someone with standing decides to make it one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tried to find where Torvalds stands on this matter. Only dug up some mailing list post from 2007: [https://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/12/232](https://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/12/232)

I do know he's very never-get-lawyers about compliancy

Also found this old comment from awhile back: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11176937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11176937)

</comment><comment><USER14> What is Oracle's strategy for ZFS and Solaris other than continuing support for existing products ? There were quite a few stories about the imminent death of Solaris earlier this year. Wouldn't Oracle stand to benefit from an official ZoL product that they can sell with their linux product ?

<comment><USER15> > There were quite a few stories about the imminent death of Solaris earlier > this year.

Those stories were unsubstianted FUD. Solaris is alive and kicking. I would know, because I am working on a particular component that will be part of the next version of Solaris.

<comment><USER16> Not to stir the pot, but what do you think of illumos (especially since most of the original Solaris talent left Oracle after the OpenSolaris fiasco in 2010 and went to work on illumos).

<comment><USER15> > what do you think of illumos

It's great. I love it. I wish Solaris was still open sourced and the open source aspect of it better managed than it used to be in OpenSolaris days so that there wouldn't be any need of a fork but I like it.

> especially since most of the original Solaris talent left Oracle after the > OpenSolaris fiasco in 2010 and went to work on illumos

A lot of people left indeed. But most people? Hmm...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's all free software but due to license proliferation, we have this mess. Hope somebody relicenses and everybody becomes happy. After all from what I hear ZFS is a great file system for recovering backups and better than ext4. And the BSD guys are using it all the time.

</comment><comment><USER18> This post basically discusses Ubuntu's shipping of ZoL kernel modules, stock, inside of their initrd image, from what I can tell.

Which, in short, is a violation of the GPL and/or the CDDL. Now, if you go and build your own modules and not distribute them (such as using DKMS to build from source via Debian's zfs-dkms and spl-dkms, which Ubuntu decided not to do as well), then it's fine. No violation here, and the linked article basically says this inside of a bunch of wiggle room just in case they ever need to say they didn't say that.

As a ZoL user on Debian, Ubuntu usage of ZFS is a bit irritating. ZFS is hands down the best file system out there, and Ubuntu fouling up things with their style of politics isn't okay.

<comment><USER19> I really don't get it. Why (is it) (that you feel) Ubuntu is fouling up anything by including ZFS into their os shipment?

<comment><USER20> The SFC article doesn't seem to me to be very clear on this point, but I wonder it has to do with shipping a memory image.

Many years ago there was a disussion between a member of the Squeak Smalltalk community (an IP lawyer by day) and the FSF's Eben Moglen. Moglen's position was roughly along the lines that libraries that are not considered to be deeply linked while out on disk in separate files, _become_ deeply linked when loaded into RAM (or maybe into the same process's virtual address space, or something), such that taking a memory image of such a combination of modules, and using it as a means of distribution would be sufficient to trigger the "viral" aspect of the GPL.

(Since Smalltalk systems tend to rely heavily upon memory images, this is why GPL code became distinctly unwelcome in most Smalltalk communities, presumably except for GNU Smalltalk.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't get it. If the ZFS module was built without GPL components, it being referenced as a compiled binary is still permitted by the GPL, right?

</comment><comment><USER22> OMG this is ridiculous. If you want to be a zealot, go ahead, but nobody will like you.

I like ZFS. I like Linux. I love the two together. I don't care about the niggling legal interpretations that they themselves agree have never even been tested by the courts.

If they really want to push this, bring it to the courts. Put up or shut up.

<comment><USER23> none of this is relevant to the discussion.

anybody can download the two software packages and link them together. As long as you don't _redistribute_ them, then you are completely compliant with both licenses.

as a result, the only discussion here is for distributors of the programs (such as canonical, debian, etc).

<comment><USER21> And even then all Canonical needs to do is include a utility to allow you to pull down the ZFS binaries. They did something similar for the old AMD Radeon drivers years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If ZFS was licensed under a license that was identical, except the name was OPL, would this be an issue?

I guess I am asking if the GPL is compatible with itself under a different name? Because if it isn't that seems like an unfortunate feature.

</comment><comment><USER25> So the root of the incompatibility is essentially that even though both the GPL and Oracle open source licenses offer similar protections, they both are not allowed to be combined with other licenses.

Obviously you'd hope that if Oracle licensed it under a permissive license, the whole point of doing so was to enable third party usage and thus they won't be taking legal action against this kind of minor and technical infringement (if it actually is). However counting on Oracle the company to act in good faith might not be smart.

<comment><USER26> You can combine GPL-licensed code with code licensed under many other similar licenses without any trouble. This pairing is not viable because the terms of the two licenses are not mutually compatible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What a load of FUD.</comment>


Ultimate Nmap Scan - <AUTHOR> http://richrines.com/post/10886870567/ultimate-nmap-scan <comment><USER2> Wow really, spoofed Macs, fragmented packets...for what? Stealth? LOL no way not with all those flags enabled.

nmap -sS -F -P0 188.8.131.52 is all you need for a scan, maybe sometimes a -sV and -O thrown in. Change the rtt settings if things are taking forever (i.e. heavily firewalled hosts).

Just cause nmap has a million options doesn't mean you should use them all. Don't worry after a couple hundred scans in the wild you'll figure this out yourself.

tptacek- Yeah sorry bro, we don't go and make our own tools every time something isn't just quite perfect, I don't have the time...got a real life.

<comment><USER3> A good way to make sure you never have to make your own tools on projects is to make fun of the very idea that you might every once in awhile make your own tools. I agree: you should probably just keep using nmap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> ... or, "why I can't stand nmap, and more often than not end up writing a trivial port scanner with EventMachine every time I need to do this."

<comment><USER4> … or, "I'll just build my own hammer instead of using this toolbox filled to the brim with all kinds of tools."

I could spend a minute (or two because I don't know EventMachine well) coding that port scanner like you did in [0], or I could just type "nmap -p 1-65535 host". I think you are suffering from not invented here syndrome.

0: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2317547>

<comment><USER3> Come on. If that just worked, you don't think I'd do it? I've got as much NIH in me as the next nerd, but did you read anything I wrote in that thread, or even this article?

Run that all-ports nmap against a firewalled (read: any) corporate network sometime and time it against the one-minute EventMachine script.

I'm sure there's some combination of nmap flags that slaughters EventMachine, but I can't be bothered to figure them out, because if I just use the script I can also pump my output to the exact output format I need.

I get it, by the way. You like nmap. Everyone likes nmap. Mostly. I know I'm not the only professional security person who gets frustrated with it, and I think it's interesting how not-hard it is to substitute for it if you can code even a little bit.

<comment><USER4> Your script sequentially scans ports 1 to 65535 of a given host. My nmap command line does the same. Fair comparison in my opinion. Of course nmap has more complicated command lines, but then again, your script would be a lot longer too if you wanted more complicated features.

Yes, you are a security professional and you don't like nmap, and you have met others who feel the same way. The reason nmap is so popular is because there are security professionals who do not share your opinion. And judging by the popularity of nmap, there are a lot of them.

<comment><USER3> My script will in many circumstances outperform "yours", because nmap's default settings suck against networks that have firewalls.

That's why I brought it up.

I am not on a mission against nmap. I've met Fyodor a couple times. He's a smart guy. In fact: I even like nmap; I just think it has outgrown its role as a port scanner.

I do think it confirms a commonly held suspicion about "security" people when they recoil in horror over ~40 lines of code "reinventing the wheel" on one of the industry's hairiest tools. "Oh my god! Code!"

What I should have done is come up with a new acronym for it and then charged $30,000 for a pilot deployment to use it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>