Untappd 3.0 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.untappd.com/post/157278795406/untappd-30 <comment><USER2> The new version looks great! Love the expanded tags and details about each beer.

Especially appreciate the "Get there safe - get a ride link." Not sure if that's new, but just noticed it.</comment>


A Social Network with No Members, But a $6 Billion Valuation - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/10/a-social-network-with-no-members-but-a-4-billion-valuation/?mod=LS1

<comment><USER2> A dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8011872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8011872).

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies. Nothing came up when I searched for it!

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that was a hard one. We just remembered it from yesterday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> certainly looks like a classic pump and dump from the outside. Does anybody have any insight on this that the public may be missing?</comment>


Show HN: TruVnc – A Simple VNC Client for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mm.truvnc.lite <comment><USER2> Need to improve Mac screen movement with vertical scroll

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone would like to suggest improvements ?</comment>


Think You Might Like "Jobs"? Think different - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2013/08/jobs_reviewed_the_steve_jobs_biopic_starring_ashton_kutcher_is_the_world.html

<comment><USER2> These are things you need to do on any biopic in order squeeze a human life into a ~2-hour bucket. I would ignore this review and go see it anyway. I think it looks wonderful, despite being a confirmed Apple-hater.</comment>


Mosso Updates Pricing Structure; A Better Model for Cloud Computing? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2008/05/15/mosso-cloud-computing/

<comment><USER2> I had trouble with them too. I wanted to use mod_python, which they have installed, but they have their settings all jacked up where you can't really use it. I've switched the project over to EC2 and was up and running with mod_python (properly configured) in less than an hour.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately they still don't seem to support Java, nor have an ETA on when they plan to.

The pricing change seems to make this even more of a problem, since you're now paying for the extra CPU usage.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some of the best HN comments that you've read? - <AUTHOR> Have you read a comment here that influenced you significantly, had some great ideas in it, was memorable for some reason, or was just fun to read? Share the link here. <comment><USER2> "Did you win the Putnam? If not, then don't be bolder than this guy." "Yes, I did." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079)

A parody of being a startup founder: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4166183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4166183)

<comment><USER3> The Putnam reply is one of the great moments in Internet commenting history IMHO.

<comment><USER4> Oh, so this is why it suddenly popped up again in my twitter feed...

I'll say here what I posted there a moment ago: Seven years after making a fool of myself on Hacker News, I wonder if my epitaph will be "Yes, I won the Putnam".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> bdunn on justifying your costs as a freelancer: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8705179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8705179)

patio11 and the Fair Credit Reporting Act: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7135833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7135833)

spolsky on detecting toxic customers: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1987223](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1987223)

tptacek on naming your company: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4684845](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4684845)

The journey of Flappy Bird: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7207943](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7207943)

Programming is terrible: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6469360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6469360)

On being a consultant: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6443135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6443135)

Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6263458](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6263458)

Are designers crazy? [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002262](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002262)

Why learning to code is so hard: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4933178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4933178)

"I don't understand": [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4930262](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4930262)

death and regrets: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4540459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4540459)

<comment><USER6> A fabulous set of quotes. Do you collect them as you read them?

<comment><USER5> Yup :)

<comment><USER7> Very nice list thanks for posting

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In general, if you read the comments from top HN'ers [1] you will find a lot of perls: that's the reason why they got the karma..

Sometimes you can find also great comments [2] from less visible HN'ers. E.g. I suggest a "niche" comment on _the best way to negociate a claimed domain name_ [3].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders](https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments](https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8603821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8603821)

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's an old one which is still awesome:

"How I crashed HN" [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639976](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639976)

</comment><comment><USER10> Advice by sillysaurus3 on 'recommended reading' for programmers, mainly focusing on C and distributed systems.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7602457](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7602457)

</comment><comment><USER11> I almost wish they'd just add a patio11 and tptacek tab across the top bar. :)

Sometimes it's not just the comment, but the context in which the comment is made.

<comment><USER12> ChuckMcM can always be counted on to have a thoughtful and interesting comment. He is my #1 favorite HN commenter.

<comment><USER13> I'm totally a ChuckMcM fan. Thoughtful, experienced, witty. I always look for his comments in threads I'm interested in and have yet to be disappointed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A bit OT but this is quite funny and a bit related [http://bradconte.com/files/misc/HackerNewsParodyThread/](http://bradconte.com/files/misc/HackerNewsParodyThread/)

</comment><comment><USER15> "You just have to figure out which part of the animal kingdom you're in" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469940)

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord This mini-essay tour of finance, Keynesian economics and other tangents by lionhearted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=843170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=843170)

<comment><USER16> Wow. That was long. It was also very good. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like a lot of tptacek's[1] comments, as long as he's talking technology / security and not politics. On politics we're pretty far apart, but there's no question the guy knows security damn well, and always has something insightful to say.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek)

</comment><comment><USER18> Animats post on "Maximizing shareholder value", which had many responses, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8709880)

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9522459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9522459) on topic "Ask HN: How to talk smart?"

</comment><comment><USER20> The top response to "what's th best way to get 5% on a million dollars" is the best piece of investing advice I have seen on this forum.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7028803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7028803)</comment>


Functional Mixins (in JavaScript) - <AUTHOR> http://raganwald.com/2015/06/17/functional-mixins.html

<comment><USER2> Looks like shortened version of stampit [https://github.com/stampit- org/stampit](https://github.com/stampit-org/stampit) The module is two years old.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great post. A quite similar pattern is common in ES6 React: [https://medium.com/@dan_abramov/mixins-are-dead-long-live- hi...](https://medium.com/@dan_abramov/mixins-are-dead-long-live-higher-order- components-94a0d2f9e750)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure: self-post</comment>


Creating Cultural Change and How Orabrush is Doing it - <AUTHOR> http://www.gettingmoreawesome.com/2011/02/creating-cultural-change-and-how.html

<comment><USER2> I sure hope they don't succeed in making tongue-scraping a requirement. I of course brush my tongue and floss regularly, but I hope it never gets to the point where I have to be ashamed of not having a special device explicitly for _scraping_ my tongue.</comment>


Neo900: Crafting the Private Phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahPFCFooBv0 <comment><AUTHOR> Link to the slides: [http://neo900.org/stuff/ohsw2014/ohsw2014.pdf](http://neo900.org/stuff/ohsw2014/ohsw2014.pdf)</comment>


Why do we turn the music down when parking? - <AUTHOR> http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/question/216077-why-do-we-turn-the-music-down-when-parking <comment><USER2> Attention? Neuroscience? Talk about overthinking a problem. I lost respect for the article when it didn't use the word "noise" even once.

There is a little bone/muscle combination in your ear (??Tensor Timpany??) that acts as a gain control. While you drive, the background road noise causes your ear to reduce its gain. This makes all noises seem less and protects your ear. Then when you stop/park the road noise is gone, the muscles relax, and the music now seems louder. So you turn the volume down because it is uncomfortably loud for you, not due to any sociological or neurological factors.

This is why you need to turn the volume up in a convertible. It is also why people sing louder in the shower because, to them near the white noise of the water, they don't seem as loud.

And this process causes stress onboard planes or other constantly-loud environments. That little muscle in your ear gets tired. Stress around loud noises is partially a physical rather than purely psychological stress.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to hear it if I scrape or bump something. My parking space is really close quarters.

There's probably a lot more going on re: concentration and the distraction of music, but that's one factor.

</comment><comment><USER4> Besides the distraction of music in general, there's a couple other factors going on. One is that parking is a relatively less practiced skill than driving, so it should naturally require more concentration. It is just plain awkward as well. Second, unless your stereo system automatically adjusts the volume level based on speed, the music will seem louder than when you were driving.

</comment><comment><USER5> It has nothing to do with my ability to multi-task and everything to do with preventing me from getting blasted with music when I turn my car on the next time. I like turning on the radio and gradually bringing the sound up to the desired level.

</comment><comment><USER6> One obvious reason is that I want to hear the parking sensors beeping clearly. :)

But in general when starting the car or parking, I want to hear as much of the sounds around me as I can. It's not that music is a big distraction, but it's blocking other sounds. I want to hear the engine of a nearby car, I want to hear kids running on the street, people talking, etc.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, especially those natural parking sensor like the noise of driving over something and slowly scraping a wall with your car!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> To concentrate better at the task at hand? Isn't it obvious?

<comment><USER9>
      Isn't it obvious?

If you ask HN whether it's unprofessional to listen to headphones while working in an open-plan office, I'd expect at least a few posts saying "music doesn't stop me concentrating, in fact it helps me concentrate"

<comment><USER10> I've never understood people who can do that maybe it's a white noise effect not so much the music I can't do that.

Actually I just realized that's not true I can listen to instrumental music specifically classical just not pop or singing if I am trying to do something like study.

I'm middle aged 45 years-old my concentration is getting bad but classical music is OK all other music and any other noise is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What do you mean "we?" I certainly don't do this.

<comment><USER12> I've never seen someone do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> hand-eye co-ordination has a timing element. that timing element is based off of emipirical sampling from the environment. music is also structured in time, but it pollutes the time-sampling process when you do something like parralel park with limited visibility.the brain doesn't have enough bandwidth to process incomplete information sets (parking) and embellished information sets (music) at the same time.

TLDR: music is distracting (in this context)

</comment><comment><USER14> Because I don't want to draw more attention to myself as I reach a destination. And to avoid the harsh feeling of a sudden cutoff of the sound. Distraction too but that's maybe 10% of the reason.

</comment><comment><USER15> The sidebar picture seems like the 21st century version of Julia's outfit from 1984.</comment>


List of open source iOS apps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dkhamsing/open-source-ios-apps <comment><USER2> Does anyone know if any of these is a particularly good example of good iOS coding/testing practices? (Not denigrating any of them! Just want to know which would be the best examples to learn from.)

<comment><USER3> Check out the firefox-iOS project [https://github.com/mozilla/firefox- ios](https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios)

We have lots of tests. Many of them in different styles. Both UI tests and unit tests.

I'm in the process of writing tests using the new XCUI testing framework. You can see a PR I have open here. [https://github.com/mozilla/firefox- ios/pull/1998](https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios/pull/1998)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like this idea, but it probably could use better filtering and admission guidelines to be more useful.

I also am not a big fan of editing a massive JSON file manually to add new projects! I wanted to add my HealthKit app that does nothing but allow manual tracking of periods, but I gave up: [https://github.com/jc4p/abby- healthkit](https://github.com/jc4p/abby-healthkit)

</comment><comment><USER5> This was really helpful for finding a libre password manager that works with KeePass files. The App store results were very unhelpful in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's always hard to find FOSS on a more walled platform. One of the ones I wish it was easier to find, was open source UWP apps. They're out there, but a lot of Microsoft types aren't super used to open sourcing, so they're harder to find. I'd love to see a list of those.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is cool. I'm in the middle of learning Swift, but I couldn't figure out an app I really cared to make. Maybe I can contribute to one of these projects instead to develop of my Swift knowledge. Will browse thoroughly.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to see similar lists for other platforms like Android

<comment><USER9> There is an Android app repo for FOSS apps. [https://f-droid.org/](https://f-droid.org/)

Probably not as easy to go over, but there are so many to begin with.

<comment><USER10> I wish f-droid had ratings or download popularity or anything really.

<comment><USER11> Screenshots of the app activities would be nice too.

<comment><USER9> Issue regarding that topic: [https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/issues/15](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/issues/15)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> See also shmup: [https://github.com/fabiensanglard/Shmup](https://github.com/fabiensanglard/Shmup)

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice list. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't the whole idea of "Open Source iOS apps" an oxymoron?

<comment><USER15> Not really? Apple has opened up sideloading source based applications, and you still benefit from having the source available to you if you installed one of these apps from the store. What you can't have is GPL'd apps in the app store.

<comment><USER5> You can (and do) have GPL apps in the app store, it's just a violation of the license.

<comment><USER16> It's OK for a copyright holder to dual-license and release their own GPLed code as an app in the App Store. Otherwise, you're correct.

[http://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store- compliance](http://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance)

<comment><USER17> If you put the entire source code inside the .ipa, would that be acceptable for app store distribution if you are not the original copyright holder? The user gets the full source code and can rebuild the app themselves?

<comment><USER16> No, the problem is that the TOS that App Store users must agree to before downloading the app conflicts with the GPL.

See [http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app- store-...](http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl- enforcement) for more detail.

<comment><USER17> How is that different from running GPL programs on Windows? You need to accept the EULA to run windows, which limits how you can use the application as well. Every GPL program must link to kernel32.dll, which has usage restrictions covered by the EULA? And to even install/download/copy the software, you will need to interact with built-in Windows software like IE or exporer.exe or cmd.exe or a third party program that also links kernel32.dll.

It feels wrong to deny users access to GPL software because of terms of service applying to the underlying OS. As long as the software itself is available in source form under the GPL (either packaged inside the .ipa, and/or with a link to a page where you can download the source under GPL with no EULA attached) should afford the user all the freedoms of the GPL.

But I guess smarter people than me have decided this is unacceptable, so users can't be allowed the convenience of pre-compiled iOS GPL software?

<comment><USER18> If iOS appstore license only covered Apple software, then we would not be in this situation. The problem is that appstore license cover all software it distribute, and thus goes beyond that of some system library like kernel32.dll.

 _Both versions of the GPL have an exception to their copyleft, commonly called the system library exception. If the GPL-incompatible libraries you want to use meet the criteria for a system library, then you don 't have to do anything special to use them; the requirement to distribute source code for the whole program does not include those libraries, even if you distribute a linked executable containing them._

\- [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.html#SystemLibraryExcep...](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.html#SystemLibraryException)

<comment><USER17> It's a shame the app store isn't considered a system library :-/

<comment><USER18> If appstore was part of every app and the appstore license only covered the appstore part and not the whole app, then that would be an improvement.

But I think it would be easier just to not have apps covered under the appstore license, and only add such license to their own DRM. How effective the legal DRM would be in that case could be discussed, but it would likely identical to consoles and tivo which are both gplv2 compatible. It seems unnecessary when looking at other products with DRM to have a license that cover every program running on them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A real estate company's simple way to offer the homeless a house and a job - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90238675/this-real-estate-company-figured-out-a-simple-way-to-offer-the-homeless-a-house-and-a-job <comment><USER3> This is a cool program for a small number of people but the missing word in the article is "zoning." [https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing- explained/exclu...](https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing- explained/exclusionary-zoning-what-is-it-and-why-does-it-matter). Growing homelessness problems come from many cities and suburbs making it illegal to build housing. As the supply of something is restricted in the face of demand, prices rise, causing many people on the financial edge to be pushed over it and into homelessness. If you want to comprehensively fight homelessness, building more housing is the first step.

I've worked on many homeless-service programs, and it's disheartening to see cities allocate vast sums for them: [http://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs- hole-slowly-economics-f...](http://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly- economics-fills-back-proposition-hhh-facilities-program/) while simultaneously using zoning laws to make sure they won't be very effective.

<comment><USER4> Do you feel their actions are from accidental incompetence, or from deliberate action?

I've noticed that most cities strike some kind of middleground tone, where they say "homelessness is a big problem affecting us, but surely we can't live in a world without zoning regulations (because we want to keep property taxes and assessments high)."

These programs for the homeless are mostly just lipservice to the actual problems you pointed out.

I would know-- I was employed and homeless for 4 months until I found a girlfriend to split a very distant apartment with!

<comment><USER5> > Do you feel their actions are from accidental incompetence, or from > deliberate action?

Deliberate action. Back in the day, there was a lot of transient housing. Shared rooms, boarding arrangements, and the like for people whose economic condition didn't allow entering into a long term lease. Property owners found these people undesirable, and zoned those living situations out of existence. This was a deliberate and malicious effort.

<comment><USER6> It's not just short-term housing; it's not even just residential zoning. It appears to be _all zoning_ in places with engaged residents. In my sister's Jeff Park neighborhood in Chicago, there's a bitter fight over whether to allow dense multi-family developments; in Oak Park, where I live, people litigate repurposing vacant lots(!) for fear of the clientele benign businesses will attract. It's not like liquor licenses or banquet halls, it's just basic services, and the subtext is always "keep new low income black and latinx families out".

It makes me worry that as neighborhoods get more connected (as mine has, with Facebook, and others are with Nextdoor), this problem is going to get much worse before it gets better.

<comment><USER7> It's trite to imply everything is some secret racial motive. There's a _extremely_ strong connection between low income and crime. That already is a major deterrent to low income housing. But it has effects aside from that. The crime and other consequences tend to make it less safe to simply live in areas, and also simultaneously destroy home values - which destroys the wealth that people in an area have paid for already. Nobody wants this.

There are also longterm effects. Low income families tend to be net negative on taxes. This means that a city has less money to fund the basic necessities. Pair a higher strain on those same necessities and a declining tax base and it's not hard to see what happens. And even within the US low income families tend to have a far greater fertility rate than higher income families. Those earning < $10,000 per year currently have about 50% more children than those earning $200k+ per year. [1] This again compounds all the other already existing effects.

I think focusing on race prevents people from actually having any sort of conversation since it's just a straw man. How do you deal with the above while also having the desire to enable more people to achieve a better life? It's not an easy question, but one that has to be answered. Good intentions mean nothing if the actions effected do more harm than good.

[1] - [https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by- fam...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family- income-in-the-us/)

<comment><USER8> It's not a secret racial motive, it's an overt one: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining)

I'm not saying race is the only factor - this is a multifaceted problem for sure. But race is definitely one of the facets. If you trace the history of a poor urban area back just a few decades, the relevance of race becomes increasingly apparent.

I do agree that it's unproductive to simplify the issue down to just one of the many factors.

<comment><USER7> I have a task for you. I'm going to send you data on US real estate areas completely scrubbed of any racial or location indicator. All you'll have is important impartial data like crime rates, income rates, development rates, foreclosure rates, etc. Your job is now to take this information and rank areas in grade A-D in terms of investment security and desirability. Now, unless you intentionally hamstring your measurements, some guy is going to be able to run around declaring you're a "redlining" racist. Race is not a facet here. Most people, and absolutely most companies let alone banks, could not care less about race but they do care deeply about other things. And those other things are not equally distributed. Focusing on race is, at best, going to be divisive and counter productive.

<comment><USER8> Race and socioeconomics are inextricably linked in this country. A lot of white families in the past did not want to live next to black people. The banks knew that and factored that into their "desirability" metrics. This, along with countless other challenges, results in perpetuating the feedback loop of poverty and racism: Keeping people disadvantaged confines them to crime and poverty, which results in stereotypes and biases (including unconscious ones) against them, which results in more biased decisions that keep them disadvantaged. Keep running that cycle and you've strengthened the link between race and income and crime. Keep running that cycle more and you end up maintaining the racist results of yesterday without having to be racist oneself.

This country was built on racism, which has naturally codified itself into the system. This means that racial biases have become an emergent property of the system when applied to this society. If you give this system to a mindless computer to run and optimize for economic output, you'll end up with very similar results compared to if you gave it to a racist person to run. Our legal and economic neural network was trained on biased data and it's no surprise that it produces biased output. We're trying to solve an optimization problem without having social inequality as one of the dimensions. It's easy to get good results with the function we have if we don't care about that metric.

I agree that race is definitely not the only angle from which to approach these problems. But if we ignore it completely, the ugly ghosts of our past will continue to haunt our society.

<comment><USER7> I mostly agree with you, but the one area we sharply differ is in the reason for the ongoing inequities. I, like many people, grew up in poverty and managed to get out without all that much trouble. I did well in school in spite of lovely things like semi-regular drive by shootings and a mostly absent parent. Doing well in school meant I was able to get into college and, for better or for worse, the current predatory system of loans means there are practically no limits to the extent of 'free money' available to ensure that money was never an issue. I got a degree in a STEM major knowing I needed to make money to live a decent life, and suddenly the world was my oyster.

Nothing I did was particularly remarkable. And many of my peers had literally the exact same opportunities laid before them. Yet many of them failed to take advantage of them. One guy I was good friends with in school I ended up bumping into at a restaurant where he was waiting tables having ended up getting into drugs and also getting a girl pregnant. He was a smart kid and had a decent and supportive family. He was certainly more than able to know about the consequences of the lifestyle choices he was making. Yet he made them. What can you do?

There are definitely some cases where people fail to achieve because of things completely outside of their control, but in the vast majority of cases it's going to come down to these bad decisions. So why are people making these bad decisions? It doesn't even make sense to attribute it to race since the exact same problem expands outside of race. It even expands outside of class. Look a the Waltons for some of the biggest wastes of air on this planet, in spite of having more opportunities available to them than nearly every single living person today.

Or even look at other issues. Consider obesity. Everybody knows obesity is horrible for your health and isn't exactly going to do great things for your sex life. Yet people, of all classes, are eating and drinking themselves into obesity at rates like never before. And then lying to themselves. By contrast, I noticed myself getting a bit porky, significantly cut down my calorie intake, increased my physical activity, and now I'm in better shape than ever. Again something hardly unique, but why does it seem like so few people are doing these things? You see a problem - you formulate a solution - <USER2> execute. You fail, reformulate, and repeat until success.

The point of this all is that I do not think being disadvantaged is a significant cause of anything in and of itself. We live in a world that is not only more color blind than ever, but also has more opportunities than ever before. This is why I think that thinking based on working from the result backwards is going to lead to fundamentally broken solutions.

<comment><USER8> I think your point is reconcilable with mine. At an individual level, I totally agree that the ultimate responsibility to guide our lives is ours alone. Even if others are holding us back, we have the duty to do our best given our circumstances.

But on a societal level, we see real patterns that result from the workings of our system. Is obesity rising because people are getting lazier? Or has stagnant wages, decreased access to fresh food, poorer education, increased marketing of junk food, and a relentless optimization of food profitablity had a hand in it? I believe that, for any particular person, it's their own duty to keep themselves healthy, no matter what obstacles are in their way - no one else will do it for them. They could justifiably blame society, but in the end, their health is their own responsibility. At the same time, I think there is a lot that society can do to reduce the obstacles, and make it so that, on average, more people succeed in keeping themselves healthy.

When making public policies, I think there is a balance to strike between the individual and society. We can't just keep rewarding success and call it another opportunity; opportunity is making it easier to succeed by taking down barriers.

If we ask some people to work twice as hard as others for the same reward, we can't be surprised that those people, on average, are going to fall behind. There will always be survivors, but we shouldn't be using survival of the fittest as our guide. I don't mind if some lazy people can thrive, but I do mind if hard working people can't advance, which still is far too common of an occurrence.

<comment><USER7> I'd also like to think optimistically of society. And so if something is wrong there it's natural to want to assume an extrinsic cause. And certainly you can always find something. I certainly agree with your comments about food, yet at the same time I'm not sure we can assume that society itself is not the problem. For instance if people simply stopped drinking soda that alone would send obesity rates down significantly. And soda is far more expensive than tap water and a filter, or tossing tea leaves or bags in a $10 coffee machine. Yet people choose to pay more for a liquid that's detrimental to their health. And it's not a secret that soda is bad for you.

So should we tax soda to death or even consider banning it? That's where I would not agree. I value freedom over anything else in a society. Since if you have freedom, you can make the decisions that you see personally most likely to produce positive results for you. And as the recent GDPR vs EU Copyright Act emphasized, in a strikingly brief period of time, the same powers that can be used to do things we perceive to be beneficial for society can, _and will_ , then be used to turn against society to the benefit of entrenched interests.

I also think it's important to consider what 'same reward for same effort' would imply. Should I choose to write books, ought I expect the same reward as Stephen King choosing to write his next book? If I choose to get into basketball should I expect the same reward as an individual who's hyper athletic and 6'11"? Of course not. Equality of reward is an idea that sounds like something you ought desire but underneath the surface it is a dystopia that requires complete and indistinguishable sameness in absolutely every way. As without this sameness, the same effort will invariably yield different results. The game of life is all about finding what your maximizing function is there and pushing it.

<comment><USER8> I'm not pushing for equality of reward, but rather equality of opportunity. So not that your writing should be valued the same as Stephen King's, but that if you want to write, you should have access to quality education and publishing resources.

I'm not one to deny true market values, but we can level the playing field a bit. And when I say that, I don't mean taking others down a notch to make things even, I mean raising up the floor so that everyone is at least at a reasonable baseline level where they can make there fair effort to get further. (I guess "leveling the playing field" is a bad analogy, since it sounds like trimming down the peaks. I wonder if there's a better one that implies raising up the bottom?)

And I agree that banning soda doesn't make sense, but I could see an argument for taxing it, the same way we do with alcohol. A lot of products have external costs that aren't factored in and are instead borne by the public. Increased sugar consumption results in greater costs to public health. Regardless of who's fault it is, it affects all of us. Taxing it would be a roughly fairer way of distributing the burden. It's definitely not a perfect solution, but would probably give better results than what we have now, if looking at the big picture. I do think personal freedom of choice is extremely important, and we shouldn't have the government exert too much influence on those choices. But I think there is a healthy balance to strike where we can shape better outcomes for society as a whole, while keeping things fair at an individual level. A small tax would only be a disincentive, a suggestion, not a prohibition.

<comment><USER7> I'd again generally agree, but with some variations on similar ideas. Here for instance instead of trying to tax sugary beverages, I think positive motivators tend to work much better. Imagine a sliding incentive scale on caloric content for non-water drinks that do not contain artificial sweeteners. Anything with fewer than perhaps 100 calories liter of liquid would receive a 40% tax deduction. Anything with less than 50 calories per liter of liquid would receive a 60% tax deduction, and anything with fewer than 5 calories per liter would receive an 80% tax deduction. This would not only encourage more competition from new companies, but even incentivize current companies to diversify (and advertise!) their healthier options.

By contrast a small tax is mostly just going to be passed onto consumers (and then some, as is often the case) who are already making financially and 'healthfully' dubious decisions. This is also analogous to the situation with the EU trying to force Netflix to have 30% of their catalog in each region come from region-sourced material. Instead of this, which is going to result in the bare minimum adherence, imagine if they instead granted Netflix a sliding tax reduction dependent on what percent of their revenue was generated from local region-sourced material. Now they suddenly have a major incentive for that material to succeed. Make people _want_ to do good, and they will.

I'm not so hot on external cost calculations. There are two reasons for this. The first is that if you're going to factor in external costs to something, should you not also factor in external benefits to something? Pollutants have a substantial external cost associated with them. At the same time those very pollutants are arguably the single biggest factor in why we are today a 'modern' society. How much ongoing revenue and productivity can be directly attributed to these very pollutants? The second is because it's difficult to objectively measure external costs. Imagine all of the things that you can show some paper or another (and at times the consensus) attributing directly to video games. The cost could almost certainly be shown to be in the trillions of dollars.

I completely agree about trying to increase equality of opportunity, but at the same time I think we're already much closer to that plateau of sharply diminishing returns than our current state of inequality would suggest. I mean in all reality you can go from poverty to not-poverty with little more than doing well in school and choosing a productive major. Bill Clinton became one of the most powerful men in politics and came from what could only be described as white trash beginnings. Obama, a half black middle class man with a Kenyan father who lived in Hawaii, would do the same. I used to always think that a true sign of equality of opportunity would be most of everybody doing well. Spending a while in the workforce destroyed that idealism. On top of making completely illogical decisions, many people just don't seem to have have any ambition or direction whatsoever, and I do not think can be attributed as an effect of the system of work itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am happy to read about programs like this. I have struggled financially for the better part of a decade due to a variety of issues ('08 crash wiped out pretty much every job that paid a living wage in the city I lived in, sickness/cancer in my family, people that I relied on for work dying, my personal issue with PTSD, etc.)

Housing has always been the most influential factor in whether I was able to achieve even temporary stability. For the periods of time that I wasn't homeless, my place to stay was wither explicitly temporary (often for arbitrary, unknown periods of time) or cost nearly 100% of the income I was able to scrape together.

Just three months ago, after nearly ten years, I was offered the opportunity to live in, maintain and fix up a small investment property in the middle of nowhere. As it stands, this arrangement should last a year, after which I can opt to stay and pay rent at market price (which in the middle of nowhere is very low).

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I am stable enough to apply for school (starting in October, fingers crossed!), and try to really focus on doing some freelance website work for small businesses on the side. I wake up every morning and actually eat breakfast, which doesn't seem that significant, but for me that has been historically difficult or impossible because of my severe, sometimes crushing existential anxiety.

I still have problems, but they are considerably smaller and more manageable. In these three months I have spent most of te money I've earned on either food or supplies for the house. As of right now, my most pressing problem is getting $40 to get a copy of my high school proficiency certificate, and beyond that it would be nice to get a beer at the only bar in town to meet some folks, but I'll take that set of problems over worrying about being cold, or hungry, or getting arrested for sleeping outside any day.

So yay! These arrangements can be an absolute godsend for people that otherwise would have difficulty digging themselves out of a hole.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the vivid, eloquent depiction of what success in a program like the one from the article looks like. :)

<comment><USER9> Thanks for reading! 90% of what I read about on here is stuff I don't fully understand that I read juat for self improvement, so it's nice to be able to contribute to a thread occasionally :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if this makes it more difficult for the live-in caretaker to eventually find another place (if that's what they wanted) because they're effectively earning less? I.e. I wonder if the rent is usually R dollars if their salary (S2) is actually S2 = S1 - R where S1 is what they would be paid if they weren't receiving the housing, or if it something more like S2 = S1 - R*T where the amount deducted from their salary is more than the actual rent cost.

Not quite the same, but I've done many "work trade" situations where I've lived on a property with some kind of house/structure and other furnishings/utilities provided in exchange for doing farm work or other labor. It never worked out economically well because the amount of time I had to put into where I lived made it difficult to also work elsewhere for money.

</comment><comment><USER10> That the quality of these homeless job candidates is _surprising_ reflects the inaccurate prejudices of the homeless-hating U.S. population.

In the U.S, with its comparatively poor social safety net, many good people fall through the cracks. But a large segment of the U.S. desperately wants to see those who end up homeless as moral failures who have brought disaster on themselves. Thus, the cognitive dissonance between the quality of the work these people do and the need to see them as dissolute scum.

<comment><USER12> The experience most people have with the homeless is being harassed by the chronically homeless as they go on about their regular lives, especially downtown. I worked a block from a homeless shelter for a few years, and there was an overdose or knife fight a couple times per day, not to mention people shooting up drugs or shitting on sidewalks.

It's great to hold a moral high ground, but at some point we need to connect with reality. There are people who are chronically homeless and certainly not moral guiding stars, and there are many more situationally homeless people who need help and are perfectly fine folks.

<comment><USER13> Have you not looked at wall street and seen people shooting up drugs or people in our government who have been accused of sexual misconduct myriad times? How about that those same people who are responsible for making many of those people homeless in the first place skating and allowed to bring us on the verge of financial collapse again? Where is the moral high ground for these people?

<comment><USER14> Ok, and if I were to walk in downtown NYC, next to the the stock exchange, would these wall street traders start harassing me when I am just trying to get where I am going?

No, that doesn't happen. Do you see the difference?

<comment><USER15> Those financial workers whined and threw fits to receive federal bailouts while everyone else's futures and livelihoods were on fire with no chance of the same white-glove treatment. The banal dichotomy you're trying to illustrate here is just a rationalization for sorting humanity by their wealth.

<comment><USER14> All I am saying is that they never accosted me on the street for a bailout. They may have "threw fits" metaphorically, but they did not do so to me in the streets, literally.

<comment><USER15> No, literally threw fits on public television in plain view of people who had lost their jobs without severance or unemployment assistance. But keep insisting that shitting your pants when a homeless person asks you for change is a normal and human reaction.

<comment><USER14> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. The interaction you are describing, of me being accosted by a suited wall street trader, has never happened to me. And I'd bet that it has never happened to basically every other people out there.

Now, getting assaulted by a homeless person on the other hand.... That's probably happened to at least 50% of people.

> asks you for change

No. I'm talking about assault and violence, actually.

<comment><USER15> >That's probably happened to at least 50% of people

This and every other word in your reply is in complete bad faith. Have fun posting here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems to me that one big problem with US zoning is the unwillingness to mix industrial, residential, and commercial properties in the same area. In many places in Europe it is possible to live without a car simply because one can walk to work and to the supermarket.

<comment><USER17> The minimum price of owning and operating a car is substantially cheaper in the US than in Europe so it's not as big of a hurdle here. A sub $1k car powered by $2.50/gal gas will get you to work reliably enough that you can get a ride from a friend or figure out something else out on the several days a year it may not be derivable. Vehicle repair is a service that it's common for poorer people in the US to trade as a favor among each other. A much larger fraction of low income people self-teach vehicle repair out of necessity so it's much easier for low income people to find a friend to change brakes for cost+$50 them than it is for the HN crowd.

<comment><USER18> What you're missing here is insurance; Which while state required is often ignored, putting the owner and other drivers at risk and risk of financial ruin.

Insurance prices drop with credit and higher deductibles;

So, while a car $1k car may itself be cheap to insure; if you're driving in a city with Teslas driving around, and you purchase insurance, you're likely under insured.

<comment><USER17> People just pay a $100ish 1-month premium one month every other year when they need to renew their registration. The letter of the law is irrelevant when you can't possibly afford to comply.

I didn't include it in my comment because I know that that reality is not popular around here and the specifics of how one evades paying for insurance varies from state to state.

Driving uninsured or under-insured really doesn't matter when you have no assets and are living on the edge of poverty. The idea that someone who's only reasonable way to get to work is driving would not drive just because they're not insured is laughable. You're not going to get insurance by not going to work. It's not really a big additional risk compared to all the other things in day to day life that could push you over the edge.

Regardless, insurance is still the same or cheaper in the US.

<comment><USER18> But in the context of the parent; that refusing to zone residential and commercial together makes for a requirement to drive; we shouldn't ignore that, by having uninsured drivers that won't be able to pay, the other 85% are paying for it.

tldr; Our zoning is horrible, and it's not just because owning a car is cheaper, it's more because the people with car insurance subsidize those without. Also, police and criminalizing the poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a problem with this. It's called "squatter's rights", and it makes it very dangerous to give people a chance.

<comment><USER20> Squatters are defined as people who occupy building or land _without permission_. As soon as you give them permission to occupy, i.e. with a caretaker's employment contract, they are no longer a squatter, by definition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So does that mean their apartment is now tied to their job? E.g. what happens to their right to the apartment if they want to switch to a job outside the program or quit for whatever other reason?

</comment><comment><USER22> Good idea, but something in the article irked me.

>The turnover rate for entry-level employees in the industry is around 50%. For the formerly homeless people hired through Shelters to Shutters–who may feel more loyalty to the job because of their circumstances–the retention rate is more than 87%.

>–who may feel more loyalty to the job because of their circumstances–

That's a blatant lie. Their home is directly tied to their job. That's the best explanation for retention.

edit: this is not a critique of the good idea of employing homeless.

<comment><USER23> But are they being employed? Are they paid money or just reduced rent? Housing is great, but people need cash in hand.

And dont talk to the IRS about whether you have to pay taxes on that rent reduction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> They hired some homeless people, it worked well, so they started a charity? I don't understand the point of the charity, I can't find their financial records on the IRS website or their own.

<comment><USER25> Took a half second on google to find their annual report: [http://shelterstoshutters.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/06/18-...](http://shelterstoshutters.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/06/18-S2SH-103-AnnualReport-R10-Pages.pdf)

<comment><USER24> That's nice, but I was looking for their 990 form. That seems to have the relevant information on it, and I believe they're only required to give me an actual copy if I contact them, but it's still odd to me that it's not in the IRS database.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Homeless converted to live-in slaves. Sounds nice! Company towns are coming back, and probably going to be worse than ever, with big brother FB planning on doing similar.

<comment><USER27> These people are free to leave whenever they like. They're not enslaved physically, financially, or otherwise. Don't just throw around words like slavery casually. There is a huge difference between slavery and a job.

<comment><USER28> Free to go live under the bridge again. Complete freedom.

<comment><USER27> Free to find another job...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Ultimate Dogfooding Story - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001217.html

<comment><USER2> This guy is my personal hero, but -- alas -- this is also a story about _worse is better_ :

[http://www.taunton.com/finehomebuilding/how- to/articles/saws...](http://www.taunton.com/finehomebuilding/how- to/articles/sawstop-revisited.aspx)

 _"Having heard all of the various reasons put forth by the manufacturers for not doing anything, I firmly believe it simply comes down to money," says Gass. "They cannot figure out how to make more money by adding SawStop. They are not paying for the injuries that occur now, so why should they spend money to change their product to eliminate a cost they aren't bearing?"_

So, although this guy has offered his safety technology to all tool manufacturers, SawStop is only available on SawStop-branded saws, which cost a bit more money, which causes people to bitch and moan, because who wants to spend money on a feature that merely prevents injuries?

The appropriate software-platform analogy is left as an exercise for the reader. ;)

<comment><USER3> According to SawStop PR, SawStop has prevented about 150 injuries.

It appears that Stephen Gass is attempting to extort revenues.

> Here in the States the argument over licensing the SawStop technology has > been hot, heavy, and plenty of it. Mr. Gass wants 8% for a license, which > will add about $80USD to the cost of the typical table saw, plus the cost of > the mechanism and the labour to install it. Delta, et al. balked at the > price.

[http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=60686&pag...](http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=60686&page=3)

Woodworkers are pretty smart and safety conscious. I've taken a couple wood working classes at my local community college. As our teacher, a master woodworker, told us - "woodworking is about problem solving. it doesn't matter how you do it - there is no right or wrong - only smarter, faster, and safer. it doesn't matter how you do it, as long as it looks nice"

<comment><USER2> _It appears that Stephen Gass is attempting to extort revenues._

Don't you think you should... _rephrase_ that? I believe the term is "negotiate a price", not "extort revenues".

I'm no fan of software patents or obvious patents, but if ever an invention deserved a patent, this is it.

I'm not suggesting that this is a story of greedy companies, or of greedy inventors. I believe the companies when they say that most people aren't willing to pay an additional 8% (for a tool that will probably last a lifetime) to hedge against amputation injuries. I just don't understand that, is all. Check out this abstract from some epidemiologists:

[http://www.joem.org/pt/re/joem/abstract.00043764-199610000-0...](http://www.joem.org/pt/re/joem/abstract.00043764-199610000-00014.htm;jsessionid=JQFLj8wtHx028CNSrxnkybFn3GFnvybCCLTBvtHWqTGxf1CycfNn!136317464!181195628!8091!-1)

They sampled 283 amateur and pro woodworkers in New Mexico and report that "5% of all respondents suffered partial amputations." _That is a really big fraction._ Obviously, I'm unlikely to saw as much wood in my life as a professional carpenter, but it still seems like my odds of losing a finger as an amateur woodworker are probably far higher than one in 100,000. They might even be on the order of 1%. Which, to me, makes SawStop a no-brainer at $80. I want the miter saw and band saw versions, too.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps 8% is a reasonable number to not lose your digits. Unfortunately, the customer isn't going to be able to decide (unless they buy SawStop's own) until Delta et al. license. and/or significant public pressure is brought (e.g. someone famous losing their fingers woodworking)

Another reason why companies like Delta et al. are resistant to the innovation is the imminent threat of tens of millions of damages in retroactive lawsuits (e.g. by licensing this technology now - it is tantamount to admission that they were negligent in not providing it earlier [at least in the years since SawStop was announced to the industry].

720k * 40% * (2009 - 2003) is a lot of potential class-action litigants. 2003 is the year when Stephen Gass stepped up his negotiations by approaching the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission about a federal mandate.

"Woodworking equipment produces approximately 720,000 injuries per year often causing severe psychologic and functional impairment. Responses from 1000 injured woodworkers to a demographic survey revealed that 60.5% of injuries occurred to amateur woodworkers; 42% of injuries were caused by the table saw and 37% of respondents reported amputation of one or more digits. The most significant causal factor reported was failure to use properly installed guards, but personal factors, such as fatigue and postprandial somnolence were also implicated. Twenty-seven percent of respondents required hospitalization for an average of 3.7 days, and 22.8% were treated by hand surgeons."

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3498745>

<comment><USER4> I don't know anything about retroactive lawsuits. But if people can sue these companies after they license the technology, why can't they sue them for not licensing and providing safety? It would sounds so ironic.

Am I missing something here or the laws are really in such a way ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lest you think he started with the finger - it was hot dogs first...

"Ultimately, it seemed like the most reliable technique would have to involve contact detection, Gass recalls. And because your body has an electrical capacitance, it offers the potential for that. I figured that if you put a voltage into the saw blade, your body could absorb some of that signal. Then the voltage in the saw blade would drop.

Within a week, Gass formulated most of the idea's details in his mind. Thirty days later, he completed his first working prototype. Initially, he tested the prototype by touching the side of the saw blade with a finger. And while that proved the saw could stop in a fraction of a second, he still didn't know if it was quick enough to prevent serious injury. Gass wondered how deep a 4,000-rpm saw blade would cut into human flesh during the microseconds that it took to stop the blade. To answer that, he needed to touch the blade teeth.

"I came up with the idea of using hot dogs, and it worked pretty well," Gass says. "It's cheap, readily available, and you don't get any protesters coming to your door."

From a Design News article - he was chosen as DN's Engineer of The Year 2007 (aside: DN is one of the _best_ pure applied engineering publications that I actually read - apply for a subscription)

[http://www.designnews.com/article/print/5897-Man_on_a_Missio...](http://www.designnews.com/article/print/5897-Man_on_a_Mission.php)

</comment><comment><USER5> That's not what "eating your own dog food" means. It means using your product to do your own work. As in: if Gass were a woodworker and used the saw on his own projects, he'd get better ideas about saw design.

I like the saw story too, but its applicability to software projects is...? Here's the moral of the story offered by Atwood:

 _Nothing exudes confidence like software developers who are willing to stick their own extremities into the spinning blades of software they've written._

That's inane even by his standards.

</comment><comment><USER6> The original video of Steve Gass sticking his own finger into the table-saw: [http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/325071/6bb3c29d/time_warp_ci...](http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/325071/6bb3c29d/time_warp_cirkelzaag.html)

(the one on CH is of a hotdog... this one is of a real, live human digit!!!)

</comment><comment><USER7> It is a good story. I don't know if you can call the risk of a finger "ultimate," though; when Nikola Tesla bet his life on the skin effect of very high frequency alternating current as a PR counter Edison's animal electrocution demonstrations.

<comment><USER8> You can always nitpick, but compared to what 99.9% of engineers put at stake when selling a product, putting your finger in the blade is quite the vote of confidence.

<comment><USER9> If by "engineers" you mean "programmers" then yes; but I think that among actual engineers, you'll find a lot of people who ride in cars they designed, walk across bridges they designed, cut with tools they designed, drive on roads they designed, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've heard of the Sawstop technology before and what I heard was very depressing if true.

Basically none of the table saw manufacturers want to deal with this guy because they are afraid or lawsuits.

The logic goes like this, right now everybody knows a table saw will maim you, there's no expectation that it won't.

But if they implement that technology, and it then fails, _then_ there will be a BIG lawsuit.

Meanwhile everybody who uses a table saw and sees Sawstop, wants it.

But the guy is having a very difficult time setting a major manufacturing operation to ship Sawstop table saws himself.

Again, I don't know if this is true, but it's very sad if it is.

\-- EDIT:

I missed this:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=453822>

</comment><comment><USER11> A lot of medical researchers apparently also experimented on themselves.

<comment><USER12> I work at a place where we develop microscopes (fairly powerful, laser-based microscopes). It's complicated to get the autorizations to bring biological tissues (that's our official, grant-application name for supermarket meat) into the uni lab, so most researchers just trust the calculations and image their own fingers.

My research director always uses the same finger, although it's a bit of a superstition...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would argue that this was a horrible decision, even if everything turned out in the end. It reminds me of when a kid makes a really stupid decision that by chance turns out well, and the parents (correctly) yell at him despite the result.

If it had turned out that there was a minor flaw/"bug" in his implementation, he'd lose his finger for no reason.

What would be much better is to make lots of test saws with his technology and give them to carpenters for free. The worst thing that could happen is that someone who would have lost their finger anyway would lose their finger. The best would be free publicity.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is what Jeff Atwood doing even legal?!?! You can't just "quote" 80% of someone's work and then publish it as your own! In the article I counted only 6 sentences that Jess Atwood wrote himself. Can I just, say, "quote" a best seller, add a few words of commentary and then publish it? I think not.

</comment><comment><USER15> I seem to remember the founder of American Body Armor performing demonstrations on himself by firing a .38 revolver at himself while wearing armor ... or something. heavily paraphrased.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here is the video of the creator testing it with his own finger: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3mzhvMgrLE>

</comment><comment><USER17> This may be the first application for table saws, but this has been around for awhile. It's basically the kind of saw that doctors use to remove casts.

</comment><comment><USER18> A guy I once worked with aptly referred to the "dog-fooding" as "feel the pain" approach.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't like the principle behind the dog food. It means that you create a product good for dogs but not humans. Something not made for you. Then, when you start eating it, you improve it to a level being acceptable to you, a human.

I like to think that I create human food, a product that I need and care about if it's good or not at the start.

<comment><USER20> > It means that you create a product good for dogs but not humans.

That's not the original meaning of dogfooding. Compare: "Lorne Greene would tout the benefits of the dog food, and then would say it's so good that he feeds it to his own dogs."</comment></comment>


Old Days 2 - <AUTHOR> https://xkcd.com/2324/ <comment><USER2> The 4th and 5th vignettes are one better than the other.

He's a genius. Love his work.</comment>


How I Achieved a 95.9% Open Rate - <AUTHOR> http://noahbuscher.com/engagement/

<comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to ask anything!</comment>


PostOrder Traversal (Not Using Recersive) - <AUTHOR> http://www.soasme.com/2014/05/15/post-order-traversal/

<comment><USER2> Suppose I have a binary tree, created by Combinatory Logic S, K and I primitives. The S-primitive doesn't actually duplicate anything, it just increases a reference count. So my binary tree is actually a Directed Acylic Graph of a sort. See [http://stratigery.com/cl/#INTERPRETER](http://stratigery.com/cl/#INTERPRETER)

I'll be examining these algorithms closely, but does an algorithm exist to traverse the DAG so created as if it were a binary tree? I want to be able to count the leaf nodes of the tree, without the traversal getting hung up in the situation where an interior node's children are both the same node instance, with a reference count of 2.</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't I upvote(and save) a story?  - <AUTHOR>

I am a new user in HN news. I know that if we upvote a story then the story should go into our profile's saved stories.
But this doesn't work for me. I have tried upvoted a story,the "up arrow" will disappear as expected but then when I refresh the page, the "up arrow" will appear again like I have not upvoted before. Repeat that process and still the same.
I have even tried created new account but still no luck. I am very frustrated now , does anybody know why? Is it because my Kama(1 Kama) too low? <comment><USER2> I've been having the same issue for months now, although I just got around to googling it to find this post. I'm seeing if creating a post solves the issue... lets see!

Edit: Nope, creating a reply to this post did not fix the problem

<comment><AUTHOR> Try submit a post :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I experienced that behavior when I created my account, then it started working later. So it's not you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it's working now after made this post. So as clins suggested we need to make a post or a comment before we could upvote and save.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe you need to post or comment. Does it work now, after making this post?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it's working now. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Gene-Hacking Mosquitoes to Be Infertile Backfired Spectacularly - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/the-byte/gene-hack-mosquitoes-backfiring <comment><USER2> This is very unfortunate, I will admit when I read about this project it seemed like a good idea. Now with 20/20 hindsight it is almost the exact same premise that Jurasic Park had...LIFE WILL ALWAYS FIND A WAY!!!

</comment><comment><USER3> How did they not see that coming?

edit: Here are details on how they tried to avoid it [https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/controlling- mosquito...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/controlling-mosquitos- with-a-gene-drive-that-makes-females-infertile/)</comment>


Please review my Startup, AppUseful. Submit and rate your favorite apps. - <AUTHOR> http://appuseful.com

<comment><USER2> Decent concept and it looks good.

Here is my main concern:

How do you draw the line between _Web App_ and _Website_?

For example, I consider Weebly and Evernote to be web apps. I do not consider Digg or Wolfram Alpha to be ... furthermore, some of your listings only partly qualify as _Web [Anything]_. Dropbox and RescueTime both have desktop components and Skype is truly not a web app/site in my opinion.

I'm not sure how to define it or where to draw the line–I just think you might have more success by focusing your site on _true_ web apps (i.e. browser-based apps or SaaS that replace/compete with desktop apps and solve a personal/business pain point). It will solve minalecs's point of having too many sites to filter through.

As the site is now, I probably wouldn't use it. But if it was truly an app directory where I could say "Hey, I need to do X ... I wonder if there's a web app" then go and find such an app ... then, yes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya I agree is hard to define a webapp. If the site is useful and have functionality other than just displaying images and content, we would consider it.

Our goal is to make AppUseful straightforward enough to market to the mainstream users. There are already a lot of resources that target the geek community. About half of my friends still don't know about popular sites such as Yelp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good idea overall. Get rid of the black application names. The are, and will always be, a poor and often incorrect duplicate of the logo itself.

Given your content, clearly separate your ads, or use text ads only. The change-background-on-hover effect is annoying. Use a white background since many logos are not transparent, and white. Remove that thin gray border, it makes the dark-background logos look messy. Your headings are not sufficiently distinct from your website titles (just remove the site titles, which will also keep the site from looking ugly when you have long titles). Put the little (3) vote counter to the left of the stars. Get rid of the dropdowns for sorting, and the buttons for pages.

When I click the logo, I expect to go to the site. I don't really care about your detailed info - that's what (more) is for. I don't want the company's often useless and spammy tagline, enforce a brief and useful description of the site. I don't want to dig around in subpages for information, and I don't want to see a screenshot of the site when I could have been looking at the site itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> We will get rid of the background hover effect. It was something we were just playing with. Will consider getting the getting rid of website title suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A site I use and love is <http://iusethis.com>. They have versions for Mac, Windows and iPhone. Looks like your site is for web apps. You might be a good fit into their product line...

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm currently running a review-driven startup, so a couple questions related to things we deal with:

1) Are you planning on making money with this? How? Ads probably aren't the answer. 2) How do you keep users coming back? Once someone finds the app they're looking for, are they likely to visit your site with any regularity? 3) What percentage of users write reviews? If you're like other review sites, the number will be shockingly small. How can you incentivize users to review?

<comment><AUTHOR> sure i can help with these question. Whoever interested can msg me on <http://twitter.com/rebelvc>.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The HN community is very important to us. We would love to hear your feedback. If you are a web entrepreneur, feel free to submit and write a review promote your web app. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like it, but my biggest recommendation would be to have columns (rows, boxes, whichever) dedicated to specific categories of apps on the front page. Right now it's a random assortment of apps and it's impossible to tell what they do just by glancing at them--you're forced to do some hard parsing as the app logo/name alone typically doesn't tell you anything. If you represent categories by column, users instantly know that a whole set of apps share something in common, and will have an easier time comparing. First-time visitors will also get a more concrete sense of what's available on your site.

Consider Google News' front page: they divide stories into sections (World, Business, Health, etc.) which gives users a high level overview of the content at a glance, a domain context for headlines in a given section, and allows them to easily ignore whole sets of stories they might not be interested in. The iTunes App Store is the same way.

I'm also not sure how useful the Recently Added section is going to be in the long run. The date at which an app was added to the database is less important for users than the date at which an app launched, went out of private beta, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> First impression, the site has a spammy feel. I think it's the light-blue color, especially of that tag cloud on top, or perhaps it's that your logo seems to yield too easily to the content. (See perhaps movil .be/?s=delicious.p and www.mobi .tv/tag/m/m for comparison.) Short of messing with it, it's hard to identify what gives this impression, but when I scroll all the way to the bottom the contrast seems to fix things...

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the concept (unsurprising, since I write for a similar site), but I think the site needs to be redesigned to make it more user-friendly-as other commenters mentioned, it would be nice to be able to tell at a glance what the app in question does.Also, the "join" button is not working on my computer (not sure if that's intentional or not). I would also consider redefining some of your categories and adding a little bit of written content to the main page so that your visitors can immediately understand the benefit of visiting your site.

Also, grammar nerd alert from the "About Us" page: "User can submit, rate, and write reviews for web applications that they like." User should be "users."

</comment><comment><USER8> You shouldn't include www. in the submission form. A person who is submitting a web application probably knows what a URL should look like, and it's possible (likely) that the app doesn't start with www. (see the URL you're currently visiting)

</comment><comment><USER9> Kinda neat. Name/star ratings overlap logo box border in FF 3.0.1. App category link is well placed but maybe too small, ditto under the toolbar; my first impression was 'bunch of random apps, how do I sort these?'

Too many featured/recent/popular; how about only 4 in each, and rotate/fade them in and out, let me then go to the relevant page to see all recent or whatever.

Logo/tag cloud section is a bit too big IMHO. It takes up 1/3 of the window on my work monitor.

<comment><AUTHOR> we will ajax the featured/recent/popular so users can scroll from left to right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Get rid of the ads - you'll make the majority of your money from affiliate fees when your site visitors sign-up for the apps you review, so why clutter the site with ads too?

</comment><comment><USER11> overall, good idea, and good execution. I can see myself coming back to use this. My only concern would be right now the list is small, but as it grows in size it will get harder to filter through the sites. example would be go2web20 . They have a lot of good sites, just difficult to go through them all and find good ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is definitely something we would spend a lot of time on. We are starting to see some categories that don't fit. The tag approach of go2web20 is confusing for the average users, we will add subcategories in the future. Our rating system will display the higher quality apps to the users first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I see a few sites like threadless that, to me at least, don't even come close to fitting any sort of definition of "app".

Is this meant to be an open index of web apps/services? While useful now, like minalecs pointed out, I see it quickly devolving into an index of the internet in general if it gains traction.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like it. Reminds me a little bit of go2web20.net and usefultools.com but it's different enough. I've been looking for sites like this so I can add a listing for my company when we officially launch.

</comment><comment><USER14> Neat.

OpenID please.</comment>


Aaron Swartz Was Targeted by Feds Over His Activism - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/02/25/aaron-swartz-targeted-for-activism/ <comment><USER2> This is bullshit. Establishing intent is not "targeting" someone. Of all the things to get upset about in this case, this has got to be the least worthy. It is the wrongest of wrong trees to be barking up.

He was caught doing 'A'. He had previously written a manifesto that describes it as a moral imperative[1] to do 'A then B'. The prosecution believed that this established his intent[2] to do 'B'.

 _This is not an unreasonable conclusion._ You don't have to respect or agree with any part of the prosecution to understand this. You don't have to believe that it was his actual intent to understand that it's not out of line to draw that conclusion from those facts.

Please, if you care about this case, don't waste energy on linkbait and bent truth.

[1] [http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamju...](http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt) [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_(criminal_law)> (I link to this because some people seem to be unaware that intent has a legal meaning.)

<comment><USER3> _He was caught doing 'A'. He had previously written a manifesto that describes it as a moral imperative[1] to do 'A then B'. The prosecution believed that this established his intent[2] to do 'B'._

The exact word being tossed around here isn't "established," but "proved." The claim is that a document Swartz didn't even write on his own "proved" his intentions in a questionably related situation years after he wrote it.

 _This is not an unreasonable conclusion._

Have you been on the internet long? Have you ever written anything on the internet that a stranger could misinterpret or that could similarly "prove" you had bad intentions in some unrelated situation years from now? No? Are you sure? How could you even know?

Since when are we prosecuting relatively minor civil offenses like copyright infringement based on _intentions_ rather than actions anyway? Will we start prosecuting people who _plan_ to jaywalk?

Bear in mind the prosecution's goal was apparently to put Swartz in prison, to label him a felon for life, for an act even the prosecutors admit that he hadn't actually yet committed, without a trail. And your "not unreasonable conclusion" is essentially their entire argument for justifying this.

If this is different from prosecuting a thought crime, I'd sure like to know how.

<comment><USER2> _The exact word being tossed around here isn't "established," but "proved."_

There are degrees of proof. The standard of proof required to press charges is lower than that to actually convict someone in a trial. This is high-school civics class material.

 _Have you ever written anything on the internet [...]_

Conceivably, yes. I'm not in the habit of publishing manifestos, but as somebody that is routinely misinterpreted by people that don't share his views, the possibility has crossed my mind.

But there are reasonable and unreasonable conclusions that one could draw based on any pairing of a person's actions and their prior writings. I'm only saying that this one is not outlandish or evidence of unreasonable "targeting". They did not (for example) accuse him of intending to blow up an MIT building. That would be totally unreasonable in a way that this is not.

 _Since when are we prosecuting relatively minor civil offenses like copyright infringement based on intentions rather than actions anyway?_

That's not what happened here. Swartz was not charged with copyright infringement. Look at the actual charges and the actual law they're based on. The actions he was observed doing are as much a part of the charge as the intent that was alleged.

 _And your "not unreasonable conclusion" is essentially their entire argument for justifying this._

I said the inference is reasonable, not the prosecution's zeal. That's why I say this particular part of the story is the wrong thing to be focusing on. (And yet, here we are.)

 _If this is different from prosecuting a thought crime, I'd sure like to know how._

If it were a thought crime, he would have been charged in 2008, when he had the thought 'We should all do A then B'. But he wasn't. He was charged when he was caught doing 'A' _and_ somebody inferred that his intention was to do 'B' as well.

<comment><USER3> _The standard of proof required to press charges is lower than that to actually convict someone in a trial._

Fine. The prosecutor's stated intent was to avoid a trial and imprison Swartz using only this laughably low degree of proof. "Reasonable?" "Not targeted?"

Here's the thing: you're saying the prosecution's assumption would be reasonable in the context of pressing charges and going to trial. Maybe. But the prosecutor wasn't operating in that context. Shouldn't a higher standard of evidence be used before sending a person to prison? Of course, you've supplied the answer yourself, by pointing out that higher standards are expected at trials. But trials aren't the only way people end up in prison anymore.

 _Swartz was not charged with copyright infringement._

Yes, I know. I think it's clear that issues of copyright and control over the making of copies are really the motive behind the prosecutor's behavior, don't you? I mean, that's actually what the prosecutor's saying now, right? "Swartz had this manifesto against copyright, therefore we charged him with the far more serious crime of _fraud_. Perfectly reasonable. Totally not targeting anyone."

 _The actions he was observed doing are as much a part of the charge as the intent that was alleged._

I really don't see how. He was legally entitled to make the copies that he made; the alleged intent is the sole basis for even supposing any crime existed.

 _If it were a thought crime, he would have been charged in 2008..._

The scenario you describe also strikes me as prosecution for a thought crime. I don't see how that imaginary scenario exempts this real one from being prosecution for a thought crime, though.

<comment><USER2> _Of course, you've supplied the answer yourself, by pointing out that higher standards are expected at trials. But trials aren't the only way people end up in prison anymore._

I'm not sure if I understand what you're getting at. Aaron didn't accept a plea deal, and he didn't have to if he didn't want to.

 _He was legally entitled to make the copies that he made; the alleged intent is the sole basis for even supposing any crime existed._

This is false. Look at the charge sheet and look at the law cited. Many people seem to have this misconception, but the law doesn't say "it's a crime to intend to do this", it says "it is a crime to do this thing with the intent to do this other thing". Both the things he did and the intent that was alleged are part of the accusation, and both would have have to been proven to the standards of "beyond a reasonable doubt" if it had gone to trial. If the prosecution could not meet that standard for his actions (i.e. if they could not show that he was not legally entitled to do the downloading the way he did), he would have been found not guilty as well.

The point being: the alleged intent is _not_ the sole basis for the charge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Similar things happen here in Sweden. Peter Sunde, the public face of TPB was a activist fighting for less fucked up copyright laws etc. He got blacklisted as a Neo-nazi by Sweden's feds SÄPO.

Very sad, but not very suprising.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. The absurdity of that was explained by Peter Sunde himself in the documentary AFK (available for viewing here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8> \-- which I highly recommend as worth watching ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One sentence in one Huffington Post article. An endless stream of wild extrapolations by publications trying to gin up rageviews.

</comment><comment><USER7> While I have enormous sympathy for Taren, Aaron's family, and all who knew him, there isn't very hard evidence for this particular assertion. I do recall that his lawyer didn't feel that it was a politically motivated prosecution.

An agressive prosecution will naturally research what the target has done in the past as a way of establishing intent.

Not that I don't feel that the prosecution Aaron wasn't egregious.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how his crime would have been reported/perceived in the US if he were a citizen prosecuted by his government in China or Russia... I image it would've involve a little swap of s/ro/er/

</comment><comment><USER9> >they offerred Swartz a plea deal that would have sent him to jail for three months

Why didn't he take that?

<comment><USER10> He wasn't guilty. Why would a prosecutor give someone an option between 30 years and 3 months - unless they _know_ they have nothing to hold him on, but think they may get lucky and just accept the 3 months period and "admit he was guilty"?

Either he's a dangerous criminal who deserves 30 years in jail, or it's nothing, and the only reason they ask him to accept 3 months is because they would look foolish asking him to accept anything less than that (like say weeks or days).

<comment><USER11> What wasn't he guilty of?

<comment><USER12> Can you enlist some of those things you _think_ he was guilty of? Leaving aside the fact that he was actually trying to forcefully give people (you and I) back what they already owned.

<comment><USER13> This presupposes that one can own information in the first place.

<comment><USER12> Well research papers that were funded by people's money - sure why not?

<comment><USER14> you should research the background of this case more. the jstor documents in question were already in the public domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _This is bullshit. Establishing intent is not "targeting" someone._

Legally speaking maybe. In right life, fuck no.

And it's not just for the trial. What were the FBI files for Aaron like even before that?

</comment><comment><USER16> Mashable links in HN, what has the world come to!

<comment><USER17> It's HN's favorite topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If true everyone involved should be out on their ass, this is banana republic shit, it should not be tolerated.

<comment><USER19> Really? I would have said it's more Soviet or something (going after someone for ideology) and would save the 'banana republic' designator for when the NLRB "respectfully" declines to pay attention to the district court because they disagree. :P

But I digress.

<comment><USER20> Soviet-style would indicate social control through the designation of locally delegated secret police (political officers).

The mode of operation here is less secret and more open, more akin to totalitarianism, with a Federal twist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What is surprising here? Folks who publicly flout the rules are asking to be censured, and it happened.

<comment><USER14> wow. thats an astonishing thing to say. you sure have a high regard for "rules". some rules don't deserve to be respected. they're not automatically right just because they are codified. there's also a difference between a censure (a formal reprimand) and criminal prosecution. you ought to think more about the implications of what you've said.

<comment><USER21> I'm just weary of all the gesticulating. The conversation isn't even about the right thing. This guy presumably had friends - where were they? They failed him. But all the talk is about projecting it onto someone else.

Why do they do this? Because after years of cheering on this manic-depressive guy, laughing at his antics and ignoring his crashes, his cohort hopefully feel shame at their part in egging him on to ultimately irresponsible acts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The spirit of the United States Constitution and subordinate laws has been wholesale abandoned and legalism has been adopted. The law has been usurped by corporate interests, both for-profit and unprofit, to consolidate power in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals.

Equalitarianism has over-taken liberalism. Democracy, as H.L. Mencken projected, has been leveraged to undermine the Republican government.

The noble lie of the nation state is fighting to preserve its perceived legitimacy. Regardless of the specifics, Swartz has gone down as a martyr in the court of public opinion and "the people" are becoming increasingly untrusting of their governors and government. Once trust is lost, it isn't easily restored.

The elephant of tyranny remains until generations to come forget again.

RIP Swartz

nwzpaper.com/articleView?articleId=133 nwzpaper.com/articleView?articleId=141 nwzpaper.com/socialContract</comment>


The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1939) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1939/03/18/390318fi_fiction_thurber?currentPage=all <comment><USER2> I had to read this in high school. It was boring and kinda dumb.

It would have been much better story if the main character was a genius with a bunch of alternate identities and he had to solve crises while keeping people from finding out who he was...

Just a story about some random guy's random daydreams is really pointless.

<comment><USER3> Part of the point is the emasculated nature of the modern American man. That said - I agree - anyone looking to read Thurber should skip his fiction and go right to "My Life and Hard Times" his absolutely hilarious autobiography about life growing up in Ohio around the turn of the century:

[http://www.sanjuan.edu/webpages/rvolzer/files/My%20Life%20an...](http://www.sanjuan.edu/webpages/rvolzer/files/My%20Life%20and%20Hard%20Times.pdf)

The stories in it are much better than anything he wrote as fiction. University Days is wonderful. All of them are wonderful!</comment></comment>


Finally an open source license I can get behind - <AUTHOR> https://i.imgur.com/9PFnsMU.png <comment><USER2> How much of the money should share with you? (The lawyers in the company will never approve something like this. They even hate the "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" just in case.)

There is no warranty disclaimer, that makes me nervous.</comment>


U.K. Government Thought Destroying Guardian Hard Drives Would Stop Stories - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/19/u-k-government-thought-destroying-guardian-hard-drives-would-stop-snowden-stories/

<comment><USER2> I don't think there's any indication that they actually thought destroying the hard drives would stop anything; seems more likely that:

1) They didn't want anyone else to get access to the material that the Guardian had but would not end up publishing;

2) The rules said that that's what they had to do, so they did it;

3) That's all they could do on "their patch", so CYA;

4) A little intimidation would never go amiss, surely...

<comment><USER3> Also, there was always a possibility that the guys in the guardian slipped somewhere. Didn't have a copy of all the files, some password/key was stored only on that drive, note/edited information that's easy to forget was only on that drive, etc.

Backups are hard - if there was even a slight chance that they destroyed the only copy of something, why not go ahead with it? They're not that stupid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's the original story at the Guardian, which is definitely worth a read.

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david-m...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david- miranda-schedule7-danger-reporters)

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds quite similar to me.

"As Gestapo chief of operations and later (after 1939) its chief, Müller played a leading role in the detection and suppression of all forms of resistance to the Nazi regime.[12] Under his leadership, the Gestapo succeeded in infiltrating and to a large extent destroying the underground networks of the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party by the end of 1935."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_M%C3%BCller_%28Gestapo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_M%C3%BCller_%28Gestapo%29)

<comment><USER6> oh yes absolutely. just like the Gestapo. and the NKWD. i mean this is like a photocopy. sending people to concentration camps/gulags, murdering families. it is so 1:1 it is downright scary. you're so brave. so brave.

<comment><USER7> boi_v2 noted a _similarity_ between _specific_ actions. No reasonably intelligent adult could read his comment and come to the conclusion that he thinks they are gassing Jews; the exaggeration is your own. Take your "bravery" bullshit back to reddit.

<comment><USER6> bullshit. you don't bring up the specific example of the gestapo for comparison on how they filed their reports. his intent was to align the current actions of the UK/US intelligence services with the Gestapo, conjuring a very specific image.

which is laughable in the very redditesque way you just brought up.

<comment><USER7> "Bullshit" yourself.

> _" sending people to concentration camps/gulags, murdering families."_

Those are things _you_ said, not him. _You_ uncharitably read an absurd statement of equivalence where he merely made a comparison.

The refusal to see parallels or accept comparisons to dark periods in recent history unless they are 100% equivalent is a disease that threatens our ability to learn lessons from the past. If we only accept comparisons to the Gestapo when they begin gassing people en-masse, then it is _too late_.

<comment><USER6> so if someone mentions the Gestapo they explicitely do _not_ mean to bring up the overall context of the third reich, gotcha.

i am an austrian of polish decent. for me bringing up the fucking nazis in this context is completely laughable.

the securitate? maybe. the stasi? same. but only internet nerd rage immediately brings up nazis, fascism, etc. the whole discussion here at HN is an exercise in hyperbolic bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why bother to read to 1984 or Animal Farm anymore. We see in every bloody story these days. This story is perfectly 1984 in a nutshell.

<comment><USER9> It seems to me that some people read those books and didn't understand them to be cautionary.

<comment><USER8> Yeah they think the are a roadmap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So private property is down too. Do these guys keep a todo-list?

</comment><comment><USER11> These people are dinosaurs. That is the most scary aspect. Imagine if Dinosaurs still existed but new how to search internet databases to find their targets!

<comment><USER12> > These _legislators_ and _business leaders_ are dinosaurs.

This would more accurately portray the threat that they pose -- they're people in charge of running the world, and their backwards notions of how the world _should_ operate will lead us down a very dark hole of no return. They need to be stopped quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What goods or services could be boycotted, to protest these actions by the British Gestapo?

Largest UK companies (that seemed recognizable): HSBC, Shell, BP, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, Vodafone, Anglo American (thought the name was funny for a huge British company), Prudential, Coldplay

Edit: Added services

Edit 2: Added list of largest UK companies

Edit 3: Added Coldplay

<comment><USER14> Does the UK actually make anything anymore? I thought they were like the US and had become a "service-based" economy. I guess you could boycott visiting.

<comment><USER15> A shiite ton of military equipment - Britain is a big arms exporter.

Here is a story about exports to repressive regimes, this bit alone is troubling, and a believe it's just a fraction of exports. [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blood-money- uk...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blood-money-uks-123bn- arms-sales-to-repressive-states-8711794.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Small Keyboard that work for programming? - <AUTHOR> I'm attempting to build a portable setup for programming. By which I mean smaller than a laptop, but larger than a cell phone. While monitors are no problem (if it can fit 80 chars across  somewhere between ~12 and ~18pt monospace, I'm good), but the keyboard remains an issue. As I'm shooting for minimal form factor, smaller is better, and while you can get accuracy on a cell-size keyboard, they all-to often omit control and alt (Emacs user), and the ergonomics can be awful: If it's awkward and slow for 5 minutes, it becomes intolerable for an hour. Price is a factor as well.<p>So, does anybody have any suggestions for a small (8in, preferably less), keyboard for a reasonable (<$50, no mechanical switches) price? <comment><USER2> The keyboard provided with the Nintendo DS game 'Learn with Pokémon: Typing Adventure' is in fact a Bluetooth keyboard that works fine with non-Nintendo kit.

It's got a good feel, is well built, and has no obvious branding. It's got ctrl and alt - and has cursor keys.

I was lucky and got mine in a sale for about £7, but you can pick one up on Amazon currently for £13.

Awesome piece of hardware for the money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you get me a link? I can't find it for some reason. Maybe because I'm in the US?

<comment><USER2> Apologies for not seeing your reply sooner.

There's a few on Ebay[0] though you'll likely want to pick a seller in the UK for a really good price, there's currently one for under $20 from a UK seller with free worldwide shipping (like I said: in the past it's been ridiculously discounted here in the UK)

And here's an Amazon link [1] with it for only $30 or so (a decent-ish price, though you should find it lots cheaper elsewhere... if you have good google- fu!)

Note that the game has different names in different countries, Wikipedia should help you there.

[0] [http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m5...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xnintendo+pokemon+keyboard.TRS0&_nkw=nintendo+pokemon+keyboard&_sacat=0)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Pokémon-Typing-Adventure-DS- Nin...](https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Pokémon-Typing-Adventure-DS- Nintendo/dp/B0096763KY/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471310276&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=nds+pokemon+typing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lots of these are on the market

[https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Bluetooth-Ultra-Slim- Keyboard-D...](https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Bluetooth-Ultra-Slim-Keyboard- Devices/dp/B005ONMDYE/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat. Do you know if anything smaller works?

<comment><USER3> Keyboards of this general sort are cheap enough that I wouldn't mind trying a few different ones to find one that works for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> okay.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Date Raped by Rails? (A startup recipe) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.icouch.me/the-icouch-recipe

<comment><USER2> Don't describe some technology issue as rape; it's insensitive and completely unnecessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. Completely insensitive. Way out of line. We must all strive to sterilize the discourse to a level that is sensitive to every possible iteration of sensitivity. Mustn't ever joke about anything so sensitive. Perhaps laws ought to be proposed.

<comment><USER2> _Perhaps laws ought to be proposed._

Or perhaps you should become a better writer. Invoking rape here wasn't particularly clever or interesting ... just gratuitous.

<comment><USER3> 2nd order derivative reflexive-properism is gratuitous</comment></comment></comment></comment>