GitHub Classroom and Travis CI Improved Students' Grades - <AUTHOR> https://github.blog/2019-02-12-how-github-classroom-and-travis-ci-improved-students-grades/ <comment><USER2> Wouldn't this be the case for any class that supplies an auto grader or test suite?

<comment><USER3> Yup, but using Travis as the platform for an autograder makes it A LOT easier for teachers/professors with less access to dev time to implement a great iteration platform. At Berkeley our intro classes had world-class infrastructure autograders (release I believe as ok.py [https://okpy.org/](https://okpy.org/)) - but I imagine less staffed courses could benefit from a workflow like this. Plus, it gives students the benefit of familiarity with actual tools that are in use in the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How can they learn anything when there is no one looking at their code !? It would probably be easy to cheat too.

<comment><USER5> > It would probably be easy to cheat too.

When I was in college a few years ago, one professor included this thing[1] in his (shell, spit and duct tape) auto-grading system. It works by generating an AST of the input and comparing it against a bank, e.g. other submissions from the same class or prior years' classes. Apparently, it worked pretty well for flagging potentially problematic portions for manual review.

In a well-designed implementation of an auto-grading pipeline, I doubt that plagiarism is much more of a problem than in a purely manual grading scheme.

\---

[1] [http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/](http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/)

<comment><USER6> Minor correction: moss operates at the lexical/token level, not the syntax tree. It matches fragments like IDENT EQUALS LPAREN NUMBER TIMES IDENT RPAREN DIVIDE NUMBER -- so renaming and changing indents (the most common cheater obfuscations) don't change anything!</comment></comment></comment>


University Students Made a Working Model Hyperloop - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/university-students-made-a-working-model-hyperloop

<comment><USER2> I've not read anyone claiming that the Hyperloop is technologically infeasible. It re-uses a lot of known concepts and will likely work.

Most of the concerns I've read are about construction costs, safety (e.g. escaping a stuck hyperloop train), failure modes (e.g. what if the tunnel suddenly floods with air from e.g. an earthquake), practicality (the Hyperloop trains as envisioned don't support wheelchair access, and don't have toilets), and similar civil engineering challenges.

If a hyperloop were designed to transport cargo/mail then I think that would "solve" most of the perceived problems (except maybe construction cost). But transporting people adds a whole new vector of complexity to the concept.

Again the core concepts of the hyperloop are likely sound. The thing would work if we built it. But it doesn't mean it will ever be built and even if it is, that any passengers will ever be able to utilise it commercially.

<comment><USER3> The trip is short, short flights have the same issue with restrooms as you aren't allowed to use the restroom while taxi-ing or during takeoff/landing, which can easily pass 30-40 minutes, especially if there is a line to use the restroom after a delayed takeoff.

It is a pod, so wheelchair access will involve stowing the wheelchair, just like a car or seated bus.

<comment><USER4> Not all wheelchair users can leave the wheelchair for a normal seat though. They can't use cars, but the ADA won't allow the hyperloop to exclude them.

<comment><USER5> Why does the ADA allow airplanes, then?

<comment><USER4> Looks like I was wrong- people who can't leave the chair in their own will be lifted out on planes. I should have realized that they don't sleep in their chairs so they must be able to leave them :/ This is a pretty slow operation though - it would be a real challenge to do this without ruining the throughput numbers proposed. In my experience they don't leave the chairs for cars or buses (buses have space for chairs or offer paratransit, they use adapted vans and wheel the chair in instead of a normal size car).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No they did not. The defining features of the hyperloop are air bearings and a partially evacuated tube. This has neither.

<comment><USER7> That's exactly what I was thinking. This appears more like a generic maglev system - except in a tube.

<comment><USER8> Pipeline transport has been around for ages at my first job BHRA we had a real small scale test rig I was offered math modelling or working on that department.

I didn't fancy crawling 1/4 a mile down a tube to unstick the pigs (with a one tone load) when they got stuck.

Ps Elon if your reading this I am sure that my old Boss at BHRA can put in touch with the research we did back then

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why spend billions (perhaps trillions) of dollars to get a pod full of people to fly through a tube when we already have technologies to fly pods full of people through the air at the same or higher speeds?

Cheaper and greener air travel will be the solution to this problem in our lifetimes.

<comment><USER10> Because it is safer, faster, cheaper, greener?

But mostly: [http://smbc- comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2088#comic](http://smbc- comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2088#comic)

<comment><USER9> How can we possibly know that it is safer? The damn thing doesn't even exist yet! Also we already have the infrastructure for air travel so there is no way it is cheaper.

<comment><USER10> Well, like commercial submarine it is one of the few forms of public transport yet to suffer a fatality :)

I am sure it will be safer than cars, and unlike a plane it cannot be redirected by hijackers. I'd be willing to bet a substantial amount at say, 2:1 that over the first 10 years of operation it will prove safer than planes in passenger deaths per trip taken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Hyperloop would be a nightmare to inspect in a natural disaster. I know how difficult it is now to check on trains now, can't imagine this being fun.

<comment><USER4> What's involved in checking on trains?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> woohoo University of Illinois

goooooo get it!</comment>


Ask HN: Do you know any reliable and unbiased news site? - <AUTHOR> Fed up with biased and fake news with all the big news channel, big online sites including google. I want to know if there are any news sites/channels that present then as is (and definitely donot want their opinion) <comment><USER2> I think that all sources have biases, whether intentional or otherwise. You mention "big news channel" as an example of "fake news;" alternative news outlets can also be biased, but IMO the opinions can actually be a benefit so that you understand viewpoints not expressed in the establishment. On a related not, you could also read different (mainstream) news outlets from across the aisle and compare the different presentations of information.

That being said, I think that Reuters a lot less biased than a lot of other mainstream media. Although I couldn't find a source when a glimpsed at the Reuters news site, Wikipedia claims that Reuters has a "value-neutral" language policy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters#Policy_of_objective_la...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters#Policy_of_objective_language)</comment>


A picture for users of lesser OSs - <AUTHOR> http://www.dieblinkenlights.com/blog_en/a-picture-for-users-of-lesser-oss

<comment><USER2> I've used Linux for a long time and it used to be crap in this way. It's something that certain _distributions_ took it upon themselves to produce. And it works well - when the software you want is in the repository.

When what you want isn't in a repository or you want a newer version than the repository has is where you hit problems. The Mac and Windows tend to get around this problem by having a decently stable set of libraries that programs work with. With Linux, because everyone is free to have or not have anything, programs can't count on what may or may not be installed or what version it might be. And if one were to upgrade one library, it might cause incompatibilities with certain programs and if one were to install a newer version of a program it might depend on that newer version of that library. Many Linux distros get around this by not upgrading packages in repositories beyond critical fixes for a released version. And that does bug a lot of people. It's one of the reasons new Linux distros are released so frequently - an upgrade of the OS is also an upgrade of the programs you're running on it.

And part of this is that Linux is progressing rapidly. We don't _want_ a stable set of stuff because we couldn't improve as quickly that way.

But it's a little bit brusk to say that Linux is just superior because it has centralized application management. It's both a positive and a negative. And, to an extent, it's a solution to a problem that the Mac and Windows don't have - that programs can't count on what's going to be on a given system or what version.

It's cool. It makes some things easy and nice. It isn't some magically amazing thing that _always_ works in your favor.

<comment><USER3> "When what you want isn't in a repository or you want a newer version than the repository has is where you hit problems."

You have an excellent point there. A recent example is that it took FREAKING forever before Firefox 3.5 was in the Ubuntu repositories, and it's still only in Jaunty. If you're running an older version (like Intrepid or Hardy) then there is no _simple_ way to run 3.5. Seriously???? I need to upgrade my _entire_ OS to upgrade my browser? WTF!

You can of course install from source.. That's easy enough for most of us here on HN, but not _exactly_ end user friendly.

IMHO part of the reason package repositories for Linux distro's don't work as well as something like the iPhone App Store or the Android Market is that they're to fragmented. Even for a major open source project like Mozilla, getting your latest release into every major version of every major distro's repositories is a pretty major undertaking. Not to mention of course that the iPhone App Store and the Android market allow for _both_ open source _and_ commercial software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting. My wife has recently started using linux on a regular basis, and this is what she hates about it. She doesn't "get" it.

For one thing, the package manager has _horrible_ descriptions for the stuff being installed. "core libraries and binaries for all KDE applications" might make sense to us, but she doesn't know what that means at all.

For another, she's used to going somewhere to get an application to install it. Forget apt-get, forget launching a package manager, why can't she just go to the website (ie: google earth), download the executable, and run it? Why does linux have to make things so different and hard?

Lastly, there are more updates coming from the Ubuntu package manager than I ever saw in windows, again with those horrible descriptions for a standard user.

Having said all this, I do like it, it's a huge advancement from where linux was when I started using it, but for those people that haven't used linux before, it's sometimes more confusing than helpful. Possibly because software updates in Windows or OS X are software updates for Windows or OS X, not software updates for "samba-common - samba common files used by both the server and the client"

<comment><USER3> I think part of the reason for the horrible descriptions I think is that Linux package managers try to shoehorn one mechanism into working for both system updates (libraries, kernels, daemons, etc) as well as end-user software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whenever I read "like by magic", I mentally have to add "when it works".

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the last time APT borked a system I used unexpectedly was in 2003 and I was running Debian testing with parts of Sid thrown in: I _expected_ it to fail from time to time. The fact it did only a handful of times was remarkable by itself.

The other time I remember was a couple months back when I added a bleeding edge Intel GMA driver to solve a bug I was trying to help to fix and it completely fubar'ed my X. It was easier to dump a package list to a separate partition and reinstall from the CD.

I never saw APT misbehaving unless provoked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Repositories are a wonderful sexy and brilliant thing with lots going for them. But I always like to counter effusive praise like that with some caveats. Like that they do have flaws; often dependencies aren't worked out correctly, many of the interfaces are a little confusing/inaccessible for a noob, the ratio of signal/noise in terms of quality software is sometimes annoyingly low, I've yet to see a _really_ good GUI search interface for one, often you get an older version of the software.

And so forth.

<comment><USER7> Or you get a hacked up version that does not behave as you'd expect it to. E.g.: if you install gems using apt on ubuntu or debian, you'll get a modified version that tries to install rubygems from one of their own repositories. Also, it wasn't correctly symlinking gems after i'd install them either.

Apart from that though, yeah, repositories are pretty sexy indeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am always weary of installing gems (actually, I use mostly Python, so I install eggs). It seems wrong to go against APT.

<comment><USER7> I can understand that, but it's easy enough to specify the apt repository as a parameter to the gems command. If you really want it as the default, it's trivial to alias that. There's something to be said for just letting your packages have the default behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is basically my favorite thing about Linux. I can install almost anything I could possibly want by typing one command.

And for users of lesser interfaces (GUIs):

sudo apt-get install lighttpd

A lot easier than navigating a list.

<comment><USER9> And a lot easier than going to a website, download, unzip copy manually to a folder, also the GUIs for apt are very good.

<comment><AUTHOR> And looks a lot safer than downloading an executable and trusting your computer to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has anybody switched from a Linux distro to OpenSolaris as their main OS? Experiences? I'm contemplating it...

<comment><AUTHOR> My worst complaint was it uses an outdated version of Gnome. OpenSolaris could have a tiered repository structure analog to Debian's stable/testing/experimental/unstable.

If you want a life without surprises, you run "OpenSolaris boring". If you are a little more brave, you go with "OS risky" and if you like a life of adventures (and of fixing your computer) you could go with "OS adventurous".

You can also have a final version, "OpenSolaris bleeding" with all software rebuilt from the newest sources every other day with no assurances beyond "it compiles".

BTW, I used to call Debian testing "works, mostly" and unstable "should compile".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is news?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really, but 3rd party software centralized update is starting to appear on non-Linux platforms like the iPhone. It's becoming an important feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey! Look at me! I spend so much time working with computers that I prefer a highly technical solution to something with an easily comprehensible interface! Then, because I also has Asperger's syndrome and overeat, I spend my time dissing people that use other operating systems because obviously there's no reason people would use something that I don't use oh god im so lonely

One of my favorite things about my current university is that it made Macs mandatory. It utterly killed the OS debate among students. People who like Linux/Windows Boot Camp it, and everybody's happy, and I never have to listen to the smug superiority of the Windows/Linux people. (Last year, the smug was everywhere. Screw people my age.)</comment>


Handling page faults in user space (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/615086/ <comment> vezzy-fnord Linux is the new Mach.

This got merged recently. It's better than the old hack of using solutions like libsigsegv to overload SIGSEGV handlers. That it took nearly 25 years to get it should tell you a thing or two about monolithic kernels, though.

<comment><USER2> Would you have a link to the merge itself? I was following the various iterations of this work, but missed it landing, and am now wondering what it ended up looking like.

<comment> vezzy-fnord The central commit: [https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=86039bd3b4e6a1129318cbfed4e0a6e001656635)</comment></comment></comment>


What is Privacy? And the Privacy Paradox red herring - <AUTHOR> https://www.privicy.com/privicypal-blog-post/what-is-privacy <comment><USER2> >There are brands you love [...]

No, there aren't. Who the hell _loves_ brands?

<comment><AUTHOR> Go to a football game.</comment></comment>


A small primer on xargs - <AUTHOR> http://bitops.io/blog/1336893229/xargs <comment><USER2> "In particular, the presence of \0 in your data will throw xargs for a loop (no pun intended). In this case, it is necessary to use the -0 option. This is particularly relevant if you are using the find command and supplying the -print0 option."

This glosses over the fact that those two things are _intended_ to be used together. Delimiting filenames with a \0 is superior to delimiting them with spaces or newlines, as filenames cannot usually contain ASCII NUL; xargs and find can therefore be used to remove heterogeneous lists of files.

Additionally, the example given may better be worded as "find . -name '* junk* -exec rm '{}' \;" or even "find . -name '* junk* | xargs rm". (as given it strikes me as a useless use of grep and is additionally fragile if ls is aliased to "ls --color=always", spewing ANSI into

EDIT: Please excuse the additional spaces in the find command arguments, they are a formatting avoidance feature.

<comment><USER3> If you still want to use xargs and ls perhaps avoiding \0's (perhaps so you can easily grep on the data) you can use "ls -Q | xargs rm". The advantage of that is you can still easily use grep on the data as it is still newline delimited but you won't have problems with spaces.

Also ls is never aliased to "ls --color=always" unless you've done that more likely is its aliased to "ls --color=auto" or similar which will work normally.

<comment><USER4> > more likely is its aliased to "ls --color=auto" or similar which will work > normally.

My ls (which I haven't much reconfigured) behaves very differently depending on whether it's outputting to a shell or a pipe or redirect. Not just colours, but columning and filetype indicators as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"What xargs is doing is taking each line of input and applying the supplied argument or command to the line of input"_

Actually it does not run _command_ once for each line of input. This confused me for some time until I read the man page:

 _"The command line for command is built up until it reaches a system-defined limit (unless the -n and -L options are used). The specified command will be invoked as many times as necessary to use up the list of input items. In general, there will be many fewer invocations of command than there were items in the input. This will normally have significant performance benefits. Some commands can usefully be executed in parallel too; see the -P option"_

Think you're looking for "-n 1" if you want that behavior..

<comment><USER6> I was going to respond on this very point myself. This blog entry is just plain wrong wrt the way that xargs works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> xargs is so 20th-century. parallel[0] is way more awesome (especially with all the multi-core systems everybody has now). Cool bonus: all the things you learn for xargs work in parallel too!

[0]: <http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/>

<comment><USER8> I Was wondering what the difference with running parallel jobs using xargs -P was, but that's covered in their man-page: [http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/man.html#differences_be...](http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/man.html#differences_between_xargs_and_gnu_parallel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I try to use perl instead of sed, awk, bash each time the needs are beyond basic usage. This applies also sometimes for xargs for example with the following command. find . -name junk\\* | perl -nle unlink

My favorite usage of xargs if for parallel operations: cat hostlist | xargs -P 0 -n 1 -I host rsh host gzip -9 log/*.log

</comment><comment><USER10> ls | grep junk | xargs rm # is dangerous due to The separator problem <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xargs#The_separator_problem>.

<comment><USER11> ls | grep junk | xargs trash-put

<https://github.com/andreafrancia/trash-cli/#readme>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here - thanks all for the comments - so yes, it looks like I don't know xargs as well as I thought I did. I'll update the post to be more accurate.

As for the points about a bad example, I am fully aware that it is extremely contrived. The point was to not confuse anyone with commands they don't already know. I'm wary of posting examples that necessitate people learning 4-5 new commands when their focus is learning just one.</comment>


Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator) - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rasmus_Lerdorf <comment><USER2> Rasmus Lerdorf created the most popular language for building web apps. Websites that changed the world were built with this language, and most newcomers seem to choose it as well. It managed to get a substantial share of a market that companies like Microsoft or Sun put huge resources into.

On top of all that, he actually remains a pretty cool and down to earth guy, as far as I can tell from reading his online stuff and hearing him speak a few times, which makes the snarky comments here seem even more juvenile.

<comment><USER3> But it's not intrinsically good; every one of PHP's advantages is offered by other languages, without all the downsides. PHP's poor design and implementation has probably cost the world millions of lost man-hours; loss that could have been avoided by choosing a better-designed solution.

It's certainly an accomplishment to create popular software, but this popular software is not necessarily something that should be used. The popularity is a function of choices made by uneducated users.

(IE 6 is very popular, after all, but it's definitely not the best web browser around.)

<comment><USER4> >PHP's poor design and implementation has probably cost the world millions of lost man-hours; loss that could have been avoided by choosing a better- designed solution.

Could you give some examples of this?

I'm not a huge fan of PHP, but it generally works, as folks like FaceBook have proven.

<comment><USER5> It greatly depends on what you compare PHP to, but to highlight a handful of disadvantages,

* PHP is considered extremely weak performance-wise

* There is poor to no support of multithreading

* There is no eventing system

* As a web framework, it sins in mixing code & design (opposed to e.g. Django-Python or Ruby on Rails)

(If the term "framework" seems unfit, think of "web-targeted toolkits")

<comment><USER6> > PHP is considered extremely weak performance-wise

I don't know, it seems a lot of the very high trafficked sites (Facebook, Yahoo) run PHP. Yes benchmarks do show PHP doing poorly, but when was the last time anyone used PHP to crunch numbers? It's apparently fast at what it needs to be fast for.

> There is poor to no support of multithreading

That is not a flaw. PHP is a share nothing architecture; each request is completely independent. This is a good match for the stateless nature of HTTP. Multithreading isn't at all appropriate for PHP and I can't think of a scenario where it would be needed.

> There is no eventing system

PHP is a programming language not a framework. I'd make more of a comment about the various PHP frameworks but "eventing system" seems kind of vague. Maybe you can clarify this a bit and then I'll comment.

> As a web framework, it sins in mixing code & design (opposed to e.g. Django- > Python or Ruby on Rails)

Nobody mixes in code & design in PHP anymore -- you won't find it terribly common among the various PHP frameworks. I do use it from time to time as a debugging aid and my compiling template engine uses it as the compilation target.

<comment><USER3> _Multithreading isn't at all appropriate for PHP and I can't think of a scenario where it would be needed._

Not blocking the entire PHP process while waiting for database results, waiting for a file to download, waiting for memcached to respond, etc.

I would (and do) use an event loop for this sort of things, but lightweight threads are technically a better abstraction. Web apps would use a lot less memory (and hardware) if people were not so afraid of threads.

(This happens a lot; a bad implementation of something taints the whole category. pthreads, Java threads, Perl ithreads, etc., are broken, so all threading is bad. C++'s object model is bad, so all object oriented programming is bad. It's sad.)

BTW: some good thread implementations include Haskell's and Perl's Coro.

<comment><USER6> > Not blocking the entire PHP process while waiting for database results, > waiting for a file to download, waiting for memcached to respond, etc.

The thing is, I need those database results -- I can't do anything else until I have them. I received a single request from the user and I'm spitting out a single HTML response back. That's what PHP is all about. And mulithreading as optimization itself wouldn't improve performance because I'd be taking away CPU from other requests that are running concurrently.

> Web apps would use a lot less memory (and hardware) if people were not so > afraid of threads.

Fundamentally I don't disagree; there's a lot of cool work going with event- based web servers. However, I think those designs are great for very specific tasks like chat servers and but require too much fiddling when doing traditional stateless web work. However, it may indeed be the future.

<comment><USER3> _The thing is, I need those database results -- I can't do anything else until I have them._

You could start requesting the database results for a user that is now waiting in the tcp connect queue, cutting latency significantly.

Most people handle this with load balancing between processes, but your blocked-for-DB-results-process is sitting idle using system resources, like memory.

If you only have one user using your site at a time, then this isn't a concern. But for everyone else, blocked processes are wasteful.

 _but require too much fiddling when doing traditional stateless web work_

Well, yeah, because you don't have threads. When you do, everything is handled by libraries for you; you can think you're blocking, but actually not block the process.

<comment><USER6> > You could start requesting the database results for a user that is now > waiting in the tcp connect queue, cutting latency significantly.

That's already how it works. If one process is blocked waiting for results, another process will get it's turn. Apache is one process per HTTP connection (when not running threaded).

> but your blocked-for-DB-results-process is sitting idle using system > resources, like memory.

Either way it will need to use system resources. I can't throw away the resources of the user waiting for results, I need that once the results come in! Processes really don't take up that much memory and typically you're reusing a small number of them over and over anyway.

> If you only have one user using your site at a time, then this isn't a > concern.

If somebody is blocked then someone else's request gets a turn at the CPU. Blocking a single process is completely inconsequential to multi-process web server serving multiple users.

<comment><USER3> _Processes really don't take up that much memory and typically you're reusing a small number of them over and over anyway._

They take up several orders of magnitude more memory than lightweight threads. I did some benchmarks a few months ago showing this; check searchyc if you care. Edit: here you are: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=794409>

Anyway, when you start thinking about "web applications" instead of "web pages", lightweight threads make a lot more sense. And, you'll find that treating a web application like it's just a bunch of web pages leads to many problems down the road. (Performance is the least of your worries.)

Finally, "I definitely don't need to know about this abstraction because my favorite language doesn't have it" is dangerous thinking.

<comment><USER6> > They take up several orders of magnitude more memory than lightweight > threads.

Premature optimization; when a 1st grader can count to the number of processes you need for large scale web application optimizing it any more is a waste of time and effort.

> You'll find that treating a web application like it's just a bunch of web > pages leads to many problems down the road.

Really? I find it refreshingly helpful. Instead of your large application being a large application, it actually just a series of very small applications. If a page crashes, it's pretty much no harm at all. If your whole application crashes, you're screwed. You want to add some functionality, just add it on.

> Finally, "I definitely don't need to know about this abstraction because my > favorite language doesn't have it" is dangerous thinking.

"Oooh shiny" is also dangerous thinking. Is it really better to waste your time using up as many threads as possible or actually solving real problems for a few hundred processes?

Sidebar: Why is always you, Jonathan Rockway? Just how many posts do you make on Hacker news in a day? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He's always been pretty open about his "just get the job done" approach. That's exactly what PHP is too. Not beautiful, well designed etc., but gets the job done in most cases.

This is a mail he showed at a talk - <http://lerdorf.com/fanmail.txt>

I'm sure he enjoys it when people get worked up about PHP :)

<comment><USER8> That email is confusing. "From: damien taylor" in 2003 yet signed "Walter Bagdasarian", which unusual-seeming name belongs to a guy who was convicted in 2009 of threatening Obama. Odd.

<comment><USER9> It fits, he got arrested for posting an idiot comment about Obama on the Yahoo message boards.

<comment><USER10> Used to be you had to do something before you got charged.

Threatening seems so much like thoughtcrime.

<comment><USER11> Making threats has been a "something" that's considered a crime for... well, a long time. Typically the law requires that the threat be at least somewhat believable in order to be successfully prosecuted, but there are certain types of threats which are criminal regardless of ability to be carried out (e.g., threatening to plant a bomb in a public square is a crime, even if you have no way of building or planting the bomb).

<comment><USER10> A message on a yahoo board seems to be a bit of a stretch though.

<comment><USER11> Threats made against the President are handled rather specially, by people who aren't inclined to view online message boards as trivial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> To be fair, some ("I still am really bad at writing parsers.") seem to be more signs of humility than confessions of incompetence.

<comment><USER3> Read PHP's parser.

<comment><USER13> The parser in PHP 3 and up was written by Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP>

<comment><USER14> The original parser was written by Lerdorf (source: your wikipedia link).

But I don't think any of them have anything to be proud of: <http://www.steike.com/code/php-must-die/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Those quotes aren't surprising. Someone with the attitude shown in those quotes would create a language exactly like PHP. And that language would be hated by most of the people who actually enjoy coding.

</comment><comment><USER16> Most of them aren't that surprising if you've used PHP. ;-)

</comment><comment> Asa-Nisse This makes me love PHP more. If that was possible.

He just gets it. If you want to spend your days drawing UML, writing documentation and unit tests. That is dandy, but you're in PHPLand now. This is our land, and we dont care about no freakin' memory leaks.

<comment><USER17> Do you have any concept of just how much time and money hacked-together PHP has cost?

Do you know how many aggregate human lifetimes are wasted on the simple act of regularly upgrading PHPBB, WordPress, MediaWiki, et al?

It's mindboggling. It's sad. It's penny wise, pound foolish.

<comment><USER18> Yet Wordpress is still the most widely used blog software ever. PHPBB and it's ilk still run the forum game. Wikipedia has yet be unseated.

If it's cost > it's profit, why is it still used so widely?

I recently replaced a C#/.NET app with a PHP version and saved a company close to a million a year in licensing, servers, staffing and development costs. Not to mention it took my team a third of the time to develop as the original application, yet performed better and had more functionality. There was a significant gap in LoC as well.

<comment><USER17> _Yet Wordpress is still the most widely used blog software ever. PHPBB and it's ilk still run the forum game. Wikipedia has yet be unseated.

If it's cost > it's profit, why is it still used so widely?_

Network effects, data lock-in, asynchronous information exchange in markets. Just because something is rationally better doesn't mean that the market actors are rational.

That said, companies like EA, Apple, and Amazon license Jive Forums (which is _not cheap_ ), Confluence, et al for a reason.

 _I recently replaced a C#/.NET app with a PHP version and saved a company close to a million a year in licensing, servers, staffing and development costs. Not to mention it took my team a third of the time to develop as the original application, yet performed better and had more functionality. There was a significant gap in LoC as well._

Your anecdote is a personal anecdote, coming from the person most likely to have a particularly jaded view of both the short and long-term costs involved.

<comment><USER18> _We dropped PHPBB and moved to Jive Forums several years ago, as the costs of weekly updates and surprisingly regular break-ins easily outweighed the cost of licensing Jive's software. However, moving away from the forum required data migration, which was difficult and time consuming._

And that's not a personal anecdote? You aren't particularly jaded? I don't understand why I would have a jaded view of the short and long term costs involved. You'll have to explain. I'm not a PHP developer, btw. I consult across a wide variety of technologies and have done so for the last 15+ years. I would have certainly been better paid for that particular gig had I stuck with C#.

It would make sense that Apple and Amazon use Jive since all of their web properties are largely Java based, why step outside of a core competency?

<comment><USER18> And just to be clear, I would never recommend any PHP forum software (just ask the exasperated folks @ Massify), mostly because I think they are functionally retarded and security is a joke. But that has little to do with PHP than it does with the way they are written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> At least he's not trying to kid anyone.

</comment><comment><USER20> To add to the noise here: all people bashing here, please remember webdev landscape around the time PHP got started (or around the time it got to version 3, which looked somewhat a real language).

I started using PHP as a switch over from Perl (which had some powerul but cumbersome templating engines, and boiled down to much more boilerplate than PHP for the same task) or C-based CGI ( _that_ was not fun).

So, I see PHP as an enabler to webdev to the masses. It was really hard to do "dynamic web pages", as these were called back in the days, in anything else, and it was a breeze in PHP. I believe this is why many people started doing it, which in turn resulted in developing better frameworks for better languages (like Rails, Django, etc.).

Comparison with IE6 has been drawn. IE6 was the best browser in its day. The trouble is, it stayed dominant for far too long. The same could be said for PHP. If it was massively replaced by other alternatives by, say, the time PHP5 came out (which IMHO looks as the first PHP version that considered itself as a serious language; php<3 were gross hacks, php3 was nice, php4 was service pack to php3), then many woes now attributed to it would never have existed.

I personally use Django nowadays for any new projects I do, having done stuff in PHP before. I have a hate/hate relationship with PHP, I consider it a very bad language as languages go, but it's still invaluable for quick hacks, in which boilerplate for other system takes more to generate than writing the 10 or so lines of PHP.

</comment><comment><USER21> If we write for our peers, and you are a highly qualified academic, then your market is small. But if you just want to get the job done, you have many peers, and your market is enormous. And, at times, every one of us just wants to get the job done; and at times, each of us is so distracted or tired that our effective intelligence drops.

For _market_ success, the ideal place to be is _just_ smart enough to be able to understand the ivory tower issues that the solution needs; but dumb enough to relate to the everyman and agree with him ( _"Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch"_ ). Or perhaps it's idealistic vs. pragmatic - regardless, you need both.

</comment><comment><USER22> He also reportedly said,"Humans can't write thread-safe code. It's simply beyond us". (Can't find the source). I have heard him say at a conference that, PHP is for week-end warriors.

<comment><USER23> I've heard Joel Spolsky say that. <https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W29083>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't like PHP as a language and so it's not surprising that he admits to a shoddy, poor effort.

But I, too, dislike programming; languages are kludgey. (Ok, LISP and its derivatives aren't, but that's not solving the problem as much as reducing the problem set to one that can be solved.)

I like building things, and if to do that, I have to program, so be it. But I constantly feel like I'm building a house with Scotch tape.

</comment><comment><USER21> recent reddit submission & discussion on Rasmus: [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/anmgx/i_hope_no...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/anmgx/i_hope_no_one_ever_does_this_to_you_because_it/)

and the HN thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1043400>

</comment><comment><USER25> Let PHP be a lesson in what happens when you don't think before you code.

</comment><comment><USER26> Not surprising at all.

</comment><comment><USER27> When you're in the audience and he's keynoting, it doesn't feel like "Hee hee, lazy programmers are good programmers." It feels like "This is stupid and by extension, so are you, and why am I even talking to you about this?"

I don't think he's a happy person, either.</comment>


A defense of the 99% - <AUTHOR> http://teenskepchick.org/2011/10/09/a-defense-of-the-99/

<comment><USER2> "These are people who are homeless or on the verge of losing their homes. These are people living paycheck to paycheck, despite having what we think of as stable or decent paying jobs. These are people struggling to put food on their tables. These are people with illnesses that have destroyed their lives. I don't understand how anyone can look at a group of people who are desperate, whose lives are falling apart, and say that those people are selfish and whiny when they demand a change."

All of these things were around before wall street and they will be around after wall street. I'm not sure how protesting is going to give these people any more money, unless it means taking it from the people that are working.

"This is a SYSTEMATIC FAILURE for those people who are struggling to make ends meet and to help this country grow and flourish"

Minimum wage already exists and you can get by on it (although it's not easy, I've done it myself).

"The government has given tax breaks to the highest 1% and has given nothing to the rest of us"

50% of the population doesn't pay federal income taxes. How is this not a tax break?

"And everyone in this country has realized that health care is not functioning the way it should, which means that many of these people who have done everything they were "supposed" to are struggling because their health got in the way of their jobs or sapped their money."

This happens, but not to as many people as you would like us to believe. The last stats I saw showed > 70% had some form of health care.

"I don't know if I would go so far as to say we're the 1% seeing as there are MANY countries that take care of the majority of their citizens better than America does (see: all countries that do not have a paranoid terror of anything remotely socialist, e.g. Norway, Sweden, etc.)"

You do realize that it's almost impossible to start a business in those countries due to regulations and taxes, Right? You also pay 60-70% in taxes (income+VAT+other).

There is a reason people don't like socialism: It gives the government control over you. Instead of being able to choose where your money goes, it's taken right off the top and spent by the government in any way they see fit. It's a monopoly that you are forced to pay.

The government is an important thing to have, but it needs to have limits.

"Simply because a person has a cell phone does not mean they're wealthy. It means they chose to spend their money on one of the most useful inventions of the last century."

A cell phone costs how much? Usually $60-$70 per-month (sometimes more) depending on the plan. You don't need a cell phone. You can get a high- deductible individual health-care plan for that much. If you don't have insurance through your employer, it won't break your bank account if you get into an accident.

This article hasn't changed my mind about the protests.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand some of your arguments.

"50% of the population doesn't pay federal income taxes. How is this not a tax break?"

The last time I paid no income taxes, it was because I made so very little money. My understanding is that because I make so little it is understood that it is better for me to keep that money than to shuffle it around in government assistance.

Now, with a 50%, that would imply that half the population lives on a small amount of money, and thus be an argument that something is not at all balanced.

Or, if you think the 50% makes perfectly good amounts of money thus they could afford taxes, and the people making small amounts are paying too much taxes, then again, I think you are only bolstering the arguments of those you are arguing against.

Your other comments don't seem logical to me either (people start businesses in european countries all the time, cell phones can be cheap on a prepaid plan, it is arguable that you do need a phone to live in today's society, etc). Saying 30% of people do not have health care is shocking to anyone who thinks health care fundamental for life (you take care of your car, but not your body?).

Of course I have made a lot of assumptions in what I've written, but without understanding your assumptions and what you are trying to say, I could only use this as arguments to why I should support the protestors.

<comment><USER2> "The last time I paid no income taxes, it was because I made so very little money. My understanding is that because I make so little it is understood that it is better for me to keep that money than to shuffle it around in government assistance."

I thought everyone needed to pay their fair share? Or is it only for the people working? If more people were taxed, they might not be fighting so hard to have money taken out of the pockets of other people. It's easy to support laws that give you all of the benefits.

"Now, with a 50%, that would imply that half the population lives on a small amount of money, and thus be an argument that something is not at all balanced."

no, it just means that the other 50% are paying the taxes for everyone else. I seriously doubt 50% of the population are making so little money that they can't pay federal income taxes.

"Saying 30% of people do not have health care is shocking to anyone who thinks health care fundamental for life (you take care of your car, but not your body?)"

Right, if you can afford to take care of your car, you should be using that money towards your body (IE: healthcare) instead.

There is a problem with health care in the US, but government-run care isn't the answer.

"Your other comments don't seem logical to me either (people start businesses in european countries all the time, cell phones can be cheap on a prepaid plan, it is arguable that you do need a phone to live in today's society, etc)"

You could easily get by without a cell phone. Most libraries have free Internet access.

"people start businesses in european countries all the time"

As it is, starting a business is tough. I can't imagine how the difficulty of it with the government taking out 60%+. I would also be interested to see the percentage of small businesses compared to huge businesses opening up a European branch.

"I could only use this as arguments to why I should support the protestors."

I feel like everyone supporting the protesters are making it into something it's not. You're supporting them for all of these reasons that probably have nothing to do with the actual reason people are protesting.</comment></comment></comment>


New analysis shows over 99 percent of the women on Ashley Madison were fake - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/internet/213019-new-analysis-shows-over-99-percent-of-the-women-on-ashley-madison-were-fake

<comment><USER2> I'm curious what percentage of Tinder profiles are fake as well. Furthermore, I'm curious if anyone has done any studies about how all these fake profiles impact the male psyche. Does cause men to greatly over-estimate the quantity of attractive and available women? If so, what impact does it have for those women that are generally attractive, but may not seem so relative to the glut of fake very attractive women? Does the presence of fake profiles actually increase "dating liquidity" in real life or does it merely increase service engagement, improving numbers to sell to investors? After all, dating sites are one of those products where success means churn (unless a trend towards polyamory and open relationships continue to increase)?</comment>


A Weapon for Readers (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/12/03/weapon-for-readers/ <comment><USER2> When I've done this, reading tends to morph toward writing. Whether good or ill, it feels more like speaking than listening.</comment>


Metallica Concerts, 1982-2012 [Infographics] - <AUTHOR> http://cilekagaci.com/2011/11/30/metallica-on-stage/ "This is an examination of Metallica's concert history from 1982 to 2012 with a focus on the numbers of songs played live and the albums that they belong to. We took the raw data from Setlist.fm (plus Last.fm in the last part), groomed it and visualized it with our own tools." <comment><USER2> Cool idea, but I'm going to quibble a bit on the Audience vs. Band Chart. Suppose for simplicity that a band has four songs A, B, C, and D that respectively 40% 20% 20% and 20% of people would prefer to hear at a concert. Now suppose the band can only play one song.

Which song should they play?

I don't think the answer to that question is a random mix of the songs with 40% song A, I think the answer is 100% song A. If you play any of the other songs, you make 20% of the audience happy, if you play A you make 40% happy, it strictly dominates. In other words, I don't think playing the songs at a concert in proportion to their last.fm statistics makes sense since at home listeners have as much time as they want but concert time is a limited resource that should be used on the best songs.

So I would be interested in the rank order of listening stats vs. rank order of concert songs and look for anomalies. Unforgiven (I, II, III?) are probably going to make that list since I've actually heard of that one and I am definitely not a Metallica fan.

<comment><USER3> The graphic brought up these same kind of questions for me. If you're a band with a new album out, how much from that album should you play? Would you rather boost demand for it, or keep long-time fans happy so they come back to the show next year?

The answer may vary by band. My favorite band, Reel Big Fish, recently did a tour with lots of "deep cuts" and few A-side hits. I loved it, and I think lots of long-time fans did too. But was it economically optimal?

<comment><USER4> Makes me wonder if artists with some history couldn't double up on gigs in a given city, playing classics in one show and favouring newer material in the other. Of course, hardcore fans would attend both.

<comment><USER5> Steely Dan does a similar thing. Last time they were in Boston they did some along the lines of two shows that were specific albums from start to finish, plus a random collection of songs to finish up the show. Then there was a third show that offered an online-vote for the entire setlist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty cool.

A few interesting observations:

1\. Metallica seems to have realized themselves that St Anger wasn't something they wanted to play after that tour. The Load album seems to have been similarly dropped pretty hard.

2\. It appears they never even tried playing the majority of Reload live. This is interesting to me as a musician, because I'd have thought that Metallica would be the type of band to try a lot of their songs live before recording them, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

3\. Very shocked that they never played Unforgiven II live, since it was a single and everything.

4\. I really liked the Audience vs Band chart.

<comment><USER7> Am I only the person ever to like Load? I know it's not their best, but I still enjoyed it.

<comment><USER4> I didn't mind it, despite a couple of weaker tracks. Don't think I bought Reload though and barely listened to St Anger.

At some point, I reckon Hetfield lost the magic and was forcing things from that point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great, but the low contrast between the text and the background makes it very hard to read.

With no evidence I feel that this is something of a trend at the moment; I've recently battled our designers when they have sacrificed readability.

I'm 29 and have excellent vision, I can't imagine how hard this could be to read for people who don't.

<comment><USER9> My eyes are still bugging out from the 55 seconds I spent on jwz's site. Arg!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am happy that is _actually_ an infographic: original analysis presented graphically. Too often, an "infographic" is just a list that someone did in Illustrator.

</comment><comment><USER11> I gave up on Metallica years ago after they went on their tirade against Napster. Band that becomes famous because of people sharing garage-band tapes with each other bitches about people for sharing their music after they become famous; it's the ultimate hypocrisy.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am so glad that some people have a lot of time on their hands. This is awesome.

<comment><USER13> I know! Now, imagine if those same people also had good taste in music... That would be so cool!

<comment><USER12> Clearly they do, because they were smart enough to know that Load and everything from there until Death Magnetic should be looked at separately, since it sucked. But yes, I need to see a Tool version of this immediately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's actually surprising how much time has passed since Metallica used to be good. Looking at the infographic, they've now spend nearly 2/3 of their career in the "play the songs from this album on its release tour, then never again" phase.

I still distinctly recall the day in 2003 when I first uttered the previously unthinkable phrase "more crappy Metallica" on hearing their new release.

I actually downloaded their latest album when it so publicly got leaked on the internet. Then, with dashed hopes, deleted it an hour later.

Shame.

<comment><USER15> I don't think this is unique to Metallica. I'm a big McCartney fan, and he too will play a few from the new album, a couple from mid career, but mostly "oldies" hits. There's little he can do to please everyone, so the hardcore fans realize there's just no way he's likely ever to do "Girls School" or "Morse Moose" live. :/

I think Metallica is in a similar place with the amount of history they have, and yet I'm not sure anyone would ever slap the label "oldies" on their work. :)

<comment><USER16> Is that such a bad thing, though?

I've seen Radiohead live a few times and I'm always very sad that I never saw them in The Bends/OK Computer era- they barely ever play songs that far back any more. It's a huge deal when they play Creep, too.

I'm not saying that every band should just play crowd-pleasers, of course, but it's nice to hear the stuff that made the band every now and then.

<comment><USER15> No, it's not bad. It just "is".

As someone else mentioned, some gigs where artists did the deep cuts, and others where they focused on "big hits" would be ideal.

Macca's plumbed the depths of his Beatles stuff - only a handful of 'his' that I think he's never done live. There's loads of Wings stuff he could do live, and loads of 80s stuff that he never touches. A couple of "deep cuts" shows would be great. "Hey Jude" is great and all, but give me "Magneto and Titatnium Man" one more time :)

I saw the Beach Boys (well, most of them) in 1993(?), and they were doing some 'deep cut' stuff - Vegetables(!), Wind Chimes (IIRC), etc. A couple people booed - WTF! I was the only one in the upper deck singing along with this stuff, so maybe that was an issue - there's just not enough people at a 30k seat arena who want to hear the deep tracks to make it worthwhile to do there. Smaller venues would be great though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pretty well reflects the quality of the Albums. Thank god for Death Magnetic.

<comment><USER18> Yes a good reflection. Looks like Lulu has never been played.

<comment><USER19> They'd need to drag Lou Reed out for that, right?

<http://www.theworldsbestever.com/2011/11/29/makes-sense-2/>

<comment><USER20> No one would go. At least their post-Black Album albums have _some_ fans, no one likes Lulu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> About Audience vs Band Chart

When I am home listening to Metallica I might prefer the lighter songs like Unforgiven II. Whereas a concert is not just 'music', it is a whole performance! An energetic song definitely makes a difference. Thus, the chart is partly right saying that the songs from the extreme left would make people more happy, but how would playing those set the mood for the concert which determines the overall experience?

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd like to see an infographic on how badly Lars' ability to maintain tempo live has degraded over time. I love their pre-Black studio work and LSB&P, but live it's just tough to listen to them bludgeon their songs to death at 110-200BPM.

<comment><USER23> I don't know when you last saw them live, but I've seen them last year in Zagreb and I thought they ware great (admittedly that was my first Metallica concert so I really can't compare).

<comment><USER22> They still put on a good show, no doubt. You don't walk out disappointed in their ability to entertain.

What I'm saying is that from a musicianship perspective they're a disaster in a live setting. Lars can't maintain a steady tempo and is constantly pushing and pulling the beat...I'm sure he refuses to use a click track, but he should as he's just not talented enough to stay on tempo. I don't know how Rob stays with him other than the fact that he's just really a great bassist.

They blast right through the breaks in their songs without taking a breath. For example, watch Harvester of Sorrow in Seattle from Live Sh!t, recorded in the 1992. They take a break after one of the mesaures and walk around for a few seconds and then come in _hard_ with "All have said their prayers...". It was an amazing effect and man, we'd go nuts in the pits, freezing during the break and then just smashing sh!t up when they came back in. It was, to use a word that has sadly lost its meaning, epic.

These days they don't even pause between songs, much less breaking at the end of a measure for effect. They just bleed one song right into the other. For a guy who's been going to shows for over 20 years it's been tough to watch them stop caring about how they play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I can't believe they never played "Don't Tread on Me"

<comment><USER23> and Escape. That is one epic song.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Metallica before the black album is the Metallica I like, anything since then I can't simply listen to it.

</comment><comment><USER26> For the love of god where is the PNG?

</comment><comment><USER27> The Black album wins. Obviously.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is this what happens when a Metallica fanatic takes Adderall?</comment>


Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/widely-used-election-systems-are-vulnerable-to-attack-report-finds-1538020802 <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/g1sAr](http://archive.is/g1sAr)

</comment><comment> return-value I work for the municipality of Skanderborg, Denmark. We have what we call digital elections, but what's digitized is the registration process. Basically every adult gets a voting card with their information + a barcode, we scan those barcodes when they turn up to receive their ballot(is that the right word for voting list?), and then they are registered.

The actual voting takes place on paper, and while it takes time to prepare the ballots and count the votes, the process of voting doesn't take very longer than a few minutes for the individual citizen. From they enter the voting place till they are done.

I think that's the way to digitize elections, you make them speedy for the citizens, but safe for democracy.

I can't for the life of me understand why you would ever do a digital vote. It's just so risky. I guess you save money by adding effectiveness to the process surrounding an election, preparing ballots and counting votes, but those parts of the process are owned by the public sector and I don't think the government should ever value the safety of our democracy as less important than money. We count votes by enlisting employees of the municipality, members of political parties and paid help from local NGOs, and everything is monitored and counted a few times. It's a little taxing, but everyone involved enjoy the process, and financially it's not that expensive compared to paying a license for voting machines.

<comment><USER3> > It's a little taxing, but everyone involved enjoy the process

This is part of the problem in the United States. Voting is a chore, and you're often going to lose money (unpaid time off) to do it. If elections were national holidays and voting was treated as a privilege instead of a chore, we would be much better off.

<comment><USER4> I live in Colorado.

A couple of weeks before the midterms I'm going to get a packet in the mail containing my ballot, instructions for filling it out, a pamphlet where every candidate on the ballot gets a paragraph or two to make their case, and a prepaid return envelope. I fill out my ballot at my leisure, stuff it in the envelope, sign the envelope underneath the flap, and drop it in a mailbox. There's a receipt with an anonymous serial number in the packet that I can go online and use to verify my ballot has been received. If I'm worried about missing the deadline there are also dropboxes in most government buildings I can drop my ballot in up through the day of the election, along with a few traditional polling places open on election day.

Voter turnout here is about twelve points above the national average.

<comment><USER5> And in some states, like Florida, if you vote by mail it is 10x less likely to be counted.[1]

Our democracy is broken, and the people capable of fixing it are actively incentivized to keep it broken.

[1] [https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics- government/state-p...](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics- government/state-politics/article218654810.html)

<comment><USER6> > And in some states, like Florida, if you vote by mail it is 10x less likely > to be counted

The headline of that article is "If you vote by mail in Florida, it's 10 times more likely that ballot won't count". That's not equivalent to what you said.

If there's a 99% chance your vote will count and 1% chance it won't, a 10 times more likely to not count changes that to a 90% will count/10% won't count chance. Using your wording, it would change it to a 9% will count/91% won't count chance. Those are _vastly_ different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> HBO 2006 documentary 'Hacking Democracy' on Youtube [https://youtu.be/iZLWPleeCHE](https://youtu.be/iZLWPleeCHE)

'The film investigates the flawed integrity of electronic voting machines, particularly those made by Diebold Election Systems, exposing previously unknown backdoors in the Diebold trade secret computer software. The film culminates dramatically in the on-camera hacking of the in-use / working Diebold election system in Leon County, Florida - the same computer voting system which has been used in actual American elections across thirty-three states, and which still counts tens of millions of America's votes today.' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy)

Same company in 2018, same issues

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand these headlines. "After More Than A Decade of Vulnerable Voting Machines, US Still Uses Those Same Voting Machines" would be more accurate.

</comment><comment><USER9> This story comes out every fall for every major-ish November election period. The resolution is always the same: WONTFIX.

</comment><comment><USER10> We should routinely red-team elections. It would literally be amazing if I were kidding.

</comment><comment><USER11> With all of this discussion in Washington about Russian hacking and Russian voter influencing, why are these demonstrably vulnerable voting machines hardly mentioned? It would seem to me this should be a number one priority to prevent outside interference.

<comment><USER12> The short unhappy answer seems to be that the parties are happy with a corruptible voting system.

<comment><USER13> That does seem like a logical conclusion. Conveniently, the GOP has made disenfranchisement part of their platform, which of course the Democrats then oppose by supporting zero-id elections, and we end up with a silly stalemate, hackable voting systemc, etc.

Staff up the FEC and then make it their job to seek out and provide ID to every single eligible voter in the country. Kinda like the census, be proactive and don't make disenfranchisement a thing. And then make it so polling places are open for days, maybe a week, including a full weekend, so everyone gets a chance to vote.

Or vote-by-mail. We've established it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The HN consensus seems to be that digital voting is very difficult to do right. I trust the consensus opinion, but this also makes me sad. The bigger picture that I think we're missing here is the opportunity for huge-scale direct democracy. I know the usual debates against DD, but I think there's ways to safeguard against those problems. E.g. you can't vote on an issue without hearing both sides of it and passing a test that demonstrates that you understand the pros and cons of each side. Idealistic, I know, but I'm a firm believer that most people act more responsibly when you give them more responsibility.

<comment><USER15> Or alternatively, encourage people to delegate their votes to whoever they trust in their local network to understand the problem best, who in-turn can delegate to their favored expert. Basically recursive representative democracy. It can't be worse than picking your representative from a group of 2-5 per region, that you only know about through biased media sources. And in aggregate it weighs expertise and trust much higher.

[https://markorodriguez.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/master- th...](https://markorodriguez.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/master-thesis.pdf)

<comment><USER14> Interesting idea that I have never heard of. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's asinine that we are still debating this. There really isn't much to debate at this point.

</comment><comment><USER17> Voting machine manufacturers have vast funds and lobbyists.

Even when congress did manage to in a act bipartisan manner, lobbyists persuaded the white house to kill it.[0]

You'll find plenty of incredibly destructive practices (nearing national suicide actually) caused by money in politics and worsened catastrophically by Citizens United.

[0]Secure Elections Act.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the- cyb...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the- cybersecurity-202/2018/08/31/the-cybersecurity-202-why-the-latest-election- security-bill-is-stalled-in- congress/5b8829fb1b326b3f31919eaa/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.706defb93737)

</comment><comment><USER18> We need to run elections through something like the finance system, digital, data always present and researchable, always able to be looked up that your vote was counted and correct, and fraud day one can be reversed as well as anomalies.

Finance systems expect fraud, and systems in place to detect and revert it. Voting has none of those protections.

The problem is so many voting systems, so many ways to fix the vote, recounts are impossible to trust.

People trust their money in their accounts and they trust that the financial system and software can track that. We need to move to something like that pronto with receipts, digital voting, ability to check your vote, data tracking, ability for researchers to get access to it, fraud protection and more.

</comment><comment><USER19> Also vulnerable to attacks: Automobiles, Air gapped computer, many routers, cell phones, ATMs, Gouvernment infrastructure...

[https://www.wired.com/story/car-hack-shut-down-safety- featur...](https://www.wired.com/story/car-hack-shut-down-safety-features/)

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

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2018/05/hacke...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2018/05/hackers-infect-500000-consumer-routers-all-over-the-world- with-malware/)

[https://koolspan.com/hack-a-cell-phone/](https://koolspan.com/hack-a-cell- phone/) [https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/24/world/europe/uk-phone- hacking...](https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/24/world/europe/uk-phone-hacking- scandal-fast-facts/index.html)

Is anyone shocked yet?

</comment><comment><USER20> As much as electronic voting has its issues, it allows for quick counting and would allow for more fairer ways of voting, like priority lists (I mean, you could do that using paper, but it is a PITA and very subject to mistakes)

Ideally printed/machine readable votes (one that the voter doesn't take with them) sounds like could be an answer

</comment><comment><USER21> Of course it is. If you vote by machine you are ruled by the best hackers.

"Hackocracy"

</comment><comment><USER22> Sounds like a feature, not a bug (sadly)

</comment><comment><USER23> _sigh_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI)

<comment><USER24> Lot of generalizations and stupid assumptions in that video, like where he argues that of course the ballots will be uploaded over the internet without any authentication/checksum.

I don't see why a digital counting machine which is kept completely offline and is transported physically cannot be used, specially if we can verify it's counting functions by randomly verifying a few of those machines (also keep paper ballots, just use the machine to count ballots), or statistics, and use an external randomization/derandomization module.

<comment><USER25> Hang on. You want to use a counting machine, and then _physically transport it around_ to avoid security issues instead of just using proven human counters and _physically transported ballots_ because....???? Why? Just why? What problem is this solving? Does getting your results a few hours sooner make a single bit of difference to merit this madness?

<comment><USER26> Perhaps because counting tens of thousands of near-identical pieces of paper is exactly the sort of repetitive, robotic task we've entrusted machines to perform more accurately than humans since at least the 1940s.

<comment><USER27> You realize that the article in question is about hacks against vote tabulating machines right?

<comment><USER26> I do.

But a non-hacked vote tabulating machine will still do the job better than non-hacked humans.

Add a high enough percentage of random hand audits of the machine but counts to ensure they're functioning correctly, and you should get a reasonably high confidence that you have the most accurate count.

<comment><USER23> > Add a high enough percentage of random hand audits of the machine but counts > to ensure they're functioning correctly, and you should get a reasonably > high confidence that you have the most accurate count.

Defies the purpose of electronic machines completely. Why use machines + lots of auditors, when just more counters (worth less than auditors) could do the same job, with a much higher cost to corrupt?...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Voting is necessarily a proof of work algorithm, and when you represent the result, you only simulate its effect.

Sure, people don't care if it's simulated when they win, but when they lose, they care a lot.

Feel like I'm a lone voice in the wilderness on this one but I really feel like I need to shout from the rooftops that electronic voting courts violence, and it is culpable hubris to state otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER29> > Voting Machine Used in Half of U.S. Is Vulnerable to Attack, Report Finds

Too much attention seeking in this headline. We knew from day one that there would be vulns. It doesn't matter how many people use them. Good that some have been found now. Let's support them by public reporting in seriously investigating the flaws they know about.</comment>


A Precursor Piece to DNA Was Found in Star Material - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/a-precursor-piece-to-dna-was-found-in-star-material <comment><USER2> Note that a it is not the first organic molecule found in similar locations. This has 7 atoms, there are other 10 molecules of 7 atoms that were found before [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_interstellar_and_circu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_interstellar_and_circumstellar_molecules#Seven_atoms_\(11\))</comment>


Fidelity allows clients to see digital currencies on its website - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-fidelity-investments-bitcoin-idUSKBN1AP0AO?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social <comment><USER2> "Citizen please let us know how we can tax you more"</comment>


Odrive - <AUTHOR> http://www.odrive.com/

<comment><USER2> What is this? It appears down.

<comment><USER3> Sorry folks but it's back up now. But on a more exciting note - thanks for whoever that shared us here on HN. odrive is a new app that is currently in beta - it gives you a folder to sync all your apps and cloud storage in one place. Right now it connects to Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive, Facebook and Instagram. Our team is working on more integrations and would love to get as much feedback as possible! Check us out :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: ApplyHN finalist Utiliz has launched - <AUTHOR> https://www.utiliz.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN--remember us? We were one of the finalists in the ApplyHN runoff back in April, a couple weeks after we first came up with the idea for Utiliz. Now we're live (launched last week) and have been busy signing up our first wave of customers. The consumer-facing site you see is backed by our internal admin site, a workflow/mechanical turk/queue management system that help us manage our suppliers, plans, customers and enrollments. We're in a boring industry but using exciting tech: the sites are written in Go and backed by RethinkDB. We use the amazing Caddy server for automatic TLS & reverse proxy, Chargebee & Stripe for subscription management, LiveAgent for chat/help desk and its integration with Twilio for our call center. Our architecture is the opposite of microservices, an approach I like to call BAB ("big ass binary") - everything including code for both sites, all css, js, images etc are all bundled into our Go binary, making deployments and rollbacks a breeze. Everything runs on Vultr. We're currently saving our customers between 15-30% on their electricity generation depending on their location and usage. Are you an HNer in Connecticut or New York who pays more than $100/mo for electricity? We can save you money. Use code HACKERNEWS to save 15% on your first year subscription through 9/30.</comment>


Ask HN: Tool to Hire Without Prejudice? - <AUTHOR> If there was a paid recruiting tool that let you conduct entire interviews with a process that ensures there's no bias (other than may be the trade skills level), would you pay for it? If you were a hiring manager and this tool wasn't really imposed from upper management, would you use it? <comment><USER2> Why did you create a throaway account to post this? Are you just trolling?

There are already lots of tools that allow for blind screening and mostly blind interviews. These are options baked into existing tooling like Greenhouse and Pinpoint.

That said, you can't conduct hiring without bias. It sounds like you want tech to magically wave away bias, but it is not capable of that. Instead, you must recognize bias and acknowledge and then work hard to overcome it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't say that before you know what I have in mind. That would count as bias against future ;) In seriousness though, I do think it's possible to help people overcome their bias by helping them focus on what matters till the very end before they see the person. What are some of the tools you have seen that attempt this?

<comment><USER2> Yes, tools to try to help overcome bias is a better approach.

Greenhouse.io has a couple features they talk about: [https://support.greenhouse.io/hc/en- us/articles/360004923452...](https://support.greenhouse.io/hc/en- us/articles/360004923452-Bias-Reducing-Behaviors)

But Pinpointhq.com is more full-featured in this regard: [https://www.pinpointhq.com/insights/blind-hiring-how- to/](https://www.pinpointhq.com/insights/blind-hiring-how-to/)

If you really want the best bang for your buck, I think your best be finding a way to incentivize HR manager at large companies to help switch them to blind interviewing.</comment></comment></comment>


250K beta testers later, MightyText launches best texting app for Android, ever - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/19/mighty-text-imessage-for-android/

<comment><USER2> Great for them, but seriously: FUCK SMS. Use IP. The solution to messaging is to use the internet. Continual use of SMS is not an effective solution.</comment>


What Is a Nation? (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://notesonliberty.com/2015/03/30/what-is-a-nation/ <comment><USER2> When I taught first year International Relations one of the early lectures covered the difference between state, country, and nation. Although used interchangeably by politicians, in IR the state is a political structure of which there are only about 200 in the world, mostly recognized by other states as being such, and with the legitimate recourse to the use of force (plus a couple of other factors). A country was a geographic reference - think Wales or the Basque Country, or Switzerland because a country and a state can share the same geography (and often do). A nation was not about political organisation or geography but a shared identity - sometimes ethnic, sometimes religious, sometimes nationalist - between a group of people.

Hence the US could be a single state and country, while being inhabited by many nations (American, Sioux, Apache etc). The UK could be a single state made up of multiple countries and inhabited by people identifying as members of many nations.

And occasionally you'll have a case where you have a distinct nation that has a well defined country (say Tibet) but is not recognized as a state.

<comment><USER3> So you'd say West Virginia is a country but not a state, and every Chinatown is a nation? I don't think your definitions match the accepted reality in the American English language.

<comment><USER4> The definitions given are well-established:

Country:

 _A tract of land; a region; the territory of an independent nation; (as distinguished from any other region, and with a personal pronoun) the region of one 's birth, permanent residence, or citizenship._

[http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=cou...](http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=country)

State:

 _A political body, or body politic; the whole body of people who are united under one government, whatever may be the form of the government; a nation._

[http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=sta...](http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=state)

Nation:

 _A part, or division, of the people of the earth, distinguished from the rest by common descent, language, or institutions; a race; a stock._

[http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=nat...](http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=nation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A long text that comes to a trivial conclusion:

 _What is a nation? I argue that it is a group label that is invented and sustained in so far as it serves to further the goals of elites. Within an individual's lifetime they appear unchanging, but from a historical perspective they are fluid and are frequently created, killed, or reborn as needed. When conversing about geopolitics we cannot ignore national identity, but we must keep in mind that in the long run nationality can be, and is, molded to suit political goals._

Nations are a political entity. What else would you expect. The same thing can be said about laws or morals or religion or ...

<comment><USER6> The argument is that states are a political entity, nations are a cultural entity. I'm more attached to the English language than I am to any particular state.

Edit: Apart from language, I can't think of any other cultural attribute which is strong enough to define a nation.

<comment><USER7> Yet you have nations with members speaking different languages (Switzerland, Belgium) as well as people speaking a common language split into multiple nation state (Germany/Austria, Romania/Moldova).

<comment><USER6> Switzerland and Belgium are both states. I don't think it would be much of a stretch to consider the Flemish and Walloons to be different nations, although then I'd wonder if they'd merge with the Dutch and French instead.

If you'd consider the Dutch and Flemish to have enough difference to define nations, then what about other regions of the Netherlands, or the different counties of the UK?

<comment><USER8> Uhm, I read tasogare's response as an argument contradicting your original summary how language is a good criteria to define nations.

You now seem to be diving into their examples to, in essence, agree with them: language itself is not a good common property to define a nation.

Coming from Serbia and speaking Serbian (but not Croatian or Bosnian, though we'd understand each other as if we are speaking the same language ;)), even language is a term used for political purposes, but what you make of it in relation to defining a "nation" is up to you.

<comment><USER6> I think basically, we know what states are, and often use "nation" as a synonym for state. But some people try to use "nation" to mean something else, such as Wikipedia would have it: "A nation is a stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, history, ethnicity, or psychological make-up manifested in a common culture."

Although, personally, I'd find language to be the only thing there that I'd care about

<comment><USER9> I don't think that's right. I think, for the most part, we're familiar with nation states, so we've changed the meaning of nation to mean "the people of a nation state". But in other parts of the world, for instance in Eastern Europe, you have people who are clearly Russians but citizens of other post Soviet states. There, you have a question about a nation and a state that do not correspond.

States speak of administration; nations speak of common bonds. States seek to turn their diverse populations into a common nation because it will create stability. But when some of the people who are subject to your administration feel a common bond with hundreds of millions of people on the other side of a somewhat arbitrary line, this may be an impossible or undesireable task.

<comment><USER6> Yes, we also have situations where a group of people have decided that they are a nation and really want an independent state: such as in Scotland, Catalonia, the Kurds, or Tibet: supporters of the existing state may even accuse them of wanting to "split the nation".

The idea of nationalism, that states and nations should coincide, was only partly implemented. There are numerous groups, including indigenous peoples of the Americas and Pacific or the numerous groups of India which never obtained their own states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is an interesting article depending, among others, on how your (personal? "national"?) language defines nations and states. I find it hard to map my concepts into English words "ethnicity", which seems related to race, and "nationality", which seems related to states, while nations are ultimately neither.

If your nation used to make you a second-class citizen in foreign states, which is somewhat typical in Eastern Europe, you do have a sharp distinction between nations and states. I.e. nations can live under yoke of different states. In this states, your nation can/could make you an "invader" (funny how it's hard in English to find a word emotional enough to call someone who formerly conquered you!) or a "traitor" (Poles in Russian Empire), or a primitive "barbarian" unworthy of fully participating in our, you know, higher civilization (Poles in German Empire).

Intuitively, your nation is defined partly by your name (see Lithuanian actions to lithuanize Slavic names of citizens) and received language and culture. Funny how the OP seriously considers a "blood and race" understanding of nation, which I think in Europe is a fast road to Godwin law. Aside from being nonsensical, it just feels morally repulsive.

For the record, I do think that the European concept of nation does more harm not good, and in an ideal world we should replace it with civic identification with your free republic. But it does serve as an instrument to organize people for political action. This can be sometimes legitimately good.

Especially I find the OP's critique of American Revolution trite. For a long time now it's fashionable ot thrash both American and French Revolutions, while without them there would be no strong examples for people throughout the world to question power. (They were themselves based on ancient examples, but for them you need classical education.) Our world would be much more horrible without that.

</comment><comment><USER11> And let's remember that nations are based on our ability to willingly forget our dark past

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_a_Nation%3F](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_a_Nation%3F)

</comment><comment><USER12> > What is a nation? I argue that it is a group label that is invented and > sustained in so far as it serves to further the goals of elites.

I'm pretty tired of hearing thoughts on nations and nationalism from a generation of westerners who are privileged enough not to remember why we have nations and nationalism. Ask the Uyghurs or Tibetans or Kurds what is a nation. Ask Israelis or Bangladeshis. You'll get a sensible answer.

<comment><USER13> Kurds aren't a nation, they're different tribes. Have different views, speak different languages/dialects

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > What Is a Nation?

"A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture."

[https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913...](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03a.htm)</comment>


Configr.io: now with bi-hourly backups and simple online editing - <AUTHOR> https://configr.io

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out my ramblings on the changes/progress on the project:

[http://www.vadosware.com/category/projects/configr- io/](http://www.vadosware.com/category/projects/configr-io/)

Think it's awesome? Think it's stupid, and never want to see it on HN again? Let me know! I <3 feedback, even the bad kind

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey Everyone -- sorry but some changes I made a while back (believe it or not to fix a feature) ended up taking the service down and making demo unusable as well as the whole front page demo stuff.

I've since fixed it, so I'd appreciate it if any of you that found it wasn't working retried!</comment>