Angular 2: Built on TypeScript - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/typescript/archive/2015/03/05/angular-2-0-built-on-typescript.aspx <comment><USER2> Angular 2 is having a lot of pushback and challenges, but this may be a positive.

First, there have been hard feelings over breaking backward compatibility. To rub salt in the wound the new syntax doesn't seem to buy you much for many basic scenarios. If you are going to push big breaking changes you need to show big benefits that are easy to understand at a glance.

Secondly, the Ember community started small but has been kicking ass for a while now and making many improvements that are compelling to developers. It's a modern framework, but also easier to understand than some competitors like react.

I see the Typescript move as a positive because it shows they are at least trying to do what's right even when using tech from one of the biggest competitors. How this played internally at Google to overcome executive knee- jerk/bureaucracy/pettiness I don't know, but it's a good sign.

The community has clearly spoken, and the future of Angular is now riding on how well they absorb and react to the feedback and advances from competing teams.

<comment><USER3> The main mistake, in my opinion, that Angular 2.0 is making is removing two- way data binding. The whole cornerstone of my love for Angular was the idea that wherever data was updated (view, model, server, another user's browser, etc.) it was _trivial_ to make that update appear everywhere else. This is even more powerful when you add in a technology like WebRTC data channels or websockets.

I could just bind the data to the view, and if the user changed it, I could react accordingly. Data changing became an actual event that I could subscribe to. It abstracted away the onkeydown, onkeyup, onclick, etc. so that it just became ng-change. _So_ much less mental noise when I'm developing when all I have to do is react to data having changed.

I hope this gets picked up. ES6 and TypeScript have so much to offer, but without a data-centric paradigm, I find I'm just not interested anymore.

<comment><USER4> I had the same "wow" moment with two-way binding awhile back. Now I think that the important part is having a source of record that consumers can observe for changes, and a good way to update that source of record. Two-way binding is just one way to give you that. In my experience it's far more common to read data than write it, so making it more explicit where writes are happening is not burdensome and seems more maintainable and performant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Special shout out to Yehuda Katz, who helped us design the annotation+decorator proposal which helped make this work possible."

How in the world does this man keep up with all these projects? He needs to write a book on motivation.

<comment><USER6> > _How in the world does this man keep up with all these projects? He needs to > write a book on motivation._

By dumping them mid-way and getting to the next shiny one?

Anybody knows how this RoR kickstarter project finally went?

<comment><USER7> Yep. I shipped Tokaido and people use it. It was mentioned on Ruby Weekly last week.

You can get releases at [https://github.com/tokaido/tokaidoapp/releases](https://github.com/tokaido/tokaidoapp/releases). Andres (who now maintains the project) released Tokaido for Ruby 2.1 (with support for Mavericks) recently and we're working on Ruby 2.2 support as we speak.

The org is here: [https://github.com/tokaido/](https://github.com/tokaido/) and there are a number of auxiliary projects (muxr and tokaido-dns are the big ones) that I developed separately along the way.

<comment><USER8> Big ups for the "bigger man" type response :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This isn't really a big jump, as they were using AtScript before which was really just a forked TypeScript: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/11YUzC-1d0V1-Q3V0fQ7KSit9...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11YUzC-1d0V1-Q3V0fQ7KSit97HnZoKVygDxpWzEYW0U/edit)

They must have convinced Microsoft to accept their patches into mainline TypeScript.

<comment><USER10> Nope, AtScript was doing runtime type checking (AtScript is basically traceur with some experimental features) while Typescript DOESNT. To be fair , I don't care, but that's an important precision.

It means that the Angular team is giving up on traceur or maybe traceur and typescript will merge somehow in the future.

<comment><USER11> I don't see why anyone would want runtime type checking the way AtScript does it.

With static typing, the compiler can catch type errors early, at the cost of rejecting some otherwise valid programs.

With dynamic typing, that type checking is delayed until execution time. More programs are valid, but type errors are caught late.

With AtScript-style late type checking, they took the dynamic type system and introduced more type errors. This decreases the amount of valid programs, yet catches no errors at compile time. It does nothing but increase the amount of bugs.

<comment><USER12> You want both. Compile-time checking is necessary but not sufficient. Applications are not monoliths anymore, and web applications especially will interact with multiple other processes and services. For these you really need dynamic type checking. You can either try to do it in an ad hoc way in the application code, or building the check into the language.

<comment><USER13> are you talking about the typing of data received from outside sources?

<comment><USER12> Exactly. And even when you receive data from your "own" services that you have type definitions automatically generated for, maybe there's a version mismatch in a deployment somewhere and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't care what people say Angular totally suffers from the second system effect.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second- system_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect)

<comment><USER14> I have specifically avoided angular because I feel like it's a monster in that you are so tied to learning and understanding it's proprietary system. I too have moved directly to react. Can anyone comment on how the skills learned by learning Angular can be applied any where else?

<comment><USER15> You're 100% right. Once you're in Angular-land you are completely tied to the framework. You don't think about "how can I make X in my domain happen?" you think about "how do I make X in Angular happen". This coupled with the horrific Angular docs make it really tough to justify using from a productivity standpoint.

I've moved to React as well and feel it's a 10x boost in productivity because I'm constantly thinking in my domain and not in a framework.

<comment><USER16> It's not like anything you build in React is going to transfer over to another framework either. In fact, I've been to a lot of React talks and people mostly ask "how do I do X" in react. The last talk I went to they spent 10 mins talking about how you might make a spinner when data is loading.

I think that's the nature of any framework.

<comment><USER15> No, it's different.

React is a rendering engine, it's covers the final piece of your web app (rendering a data structure into DOM). But whatever you do to create the data structure that gets passed to React is up to you. This keeps most of your domain logic outside the context of React, you just use React to render data->DOM. So basically the API you have to learn is just Javascript, which most people know already and is easy to lookup answers to your questions.

With Angular your domain logic exists in the context of the framework. i.e. if you ng-repeat something you can't just filter that collection with Javascript you have to use an ng-filter to do it which is a special Angular construct. So the API you have to learn to manipulate data isn't just Javascript it's Angular. And how does ng-filter work? Well, you're tied to the Angular docs to figure it out. The Angular docs are of particualary poor quality so this coupling turns into a really serious problem if you're trying to be productive.

To me React vs. Angular isn't a matter of preference like Ruby vs. Python -- it's more like git vs. FTP where there is a clear right answer if you're trying to be productive in a team envrionment.

<comment><USER17> Sigh... this is such an annoying comparison. If you want to compare, compare React to Angular Directives since that's a valid argument.

Your entire complaint is that full-stack front-end frameworks are bad and modular systems are good. It's great that you prefer modularity and the ability to mix and match tools.

But stop pretending React vs Angular is a thing. It isn't. git vs FTP... just stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As if we didn't have enough reason to move on from Angular. Now you need to learn Typescript to contribute or grok the source files?

<comment><USER19> This is the main reason why I don't like using languages that transpile into JavaScript. I don't mind the languages themselves but transpiling into JavaScript now means you have to be effective in both languages instead of one to properly debug and you're also subjected to bugs that may or may not be known in the transpile itself.

Everyone seems to hate on JavaScript but it's really not that bad to use.

<comment><USER20> Transpiling may actually be the safest way to use JavaScript, especially given its rate of change. Take, for instance, a number of features trickling down the ECMA2015 pipe: modules, classes, "let", etc. Using these features without a transpiler, such as Babel, is simply not possible. A transpiler allows you to use these features now without any worry.

Not all transpilers may be to your taste, but they have their place.

<comment><USER19> > Transpiling may actually be the safest way to use JavaScript, especially > given its rate of change. [..] A transpiler allows you to use these features > now without any worry.

I disagree and my original statement applies as much to TypeScript as it does to an ECMAScript 6 transpiler. If you want to use the new features and you're transpiling now you need to have a good understanding of the differences between ECMAScript 5 and 6 and you open yourself up to possible bugs in the transpiler.

Instead you could just write ECMAScript 5 until 6 is more widely available. Sure no one likes to wait but it requires the least amount of expertise and lower chance of bugs from a 3rd party interfering with your application.

<comment><USER21> I feel more comfortable writing TypeScript rather than using an ES6 transpiler, really. The compiler is built really well - you can observe the team's development process on github and I have to say the level is quite impressive (extensive code reviews and great discussions on the issue tracker).

<comment><USER19> I'm sure the compiler is well built but stability is my main concern. JavaScript, even with its many flaws, is used by millions of people every day and is one of the most used programming languages in existence. That's a ton of testing through real world use. Since transpilers just compile to JavaScript, they can take advantage of some of the same stability of JavaScript for its output but the act of transpiling is only used by maybe a few thousand users. Sure they'll find bugs and fix them but that's nowhere near the same level as simply writing in native JavaScript (native JavaScript, is that an oxymoron? lol).

Besides all that everything ever created has bugs; why risk introducing bugs from a JavaScript engine and from a transpiler when you can risk a single one?

As an aside my first and last time using CoffeeScript I ran into an issue that, since this was about two years ago, has already been fixed but at the time it cost me hours of debugging time. It really soured my experience with any transpiler.

<comment><USER22> You have a very valid point regarding bugs. Transpiler bugs definitely happen. When I first tried using Babel - still named 6to5 then - instead of Traceur, it immediately broke my code because of an incorrect TCO implementation in Babel. Babel's maintainer (sebmck) is insanely responsive and the bug was fixed almost immediately, but still.

If I used Babel or any other transpiler for critical production code, I would only enable a whitelist of features that I thoroughly understand: for example, how a fat arrow is translated into a regular function. This vetting would be time-consuming, but that's a price I'd be willing to pay because I enjoy writing ES6 much more than ES5. That's highly subjective though, so I completely understand how some other people would rather just stick to ES5 and get stuff done with the lowest possible risk of weird things happening.

<comment><USER23> Babel is a completely different transpirer than all the others. It's goal is readable, understandable transpiled code and Sebastian (sebmck) is a genius robot wunderkind. I check the repo everyday and see new updates, bug fixes, etc. It is heartening to see someone give a project so much dedication.

I have an affinity for Babel unlike any other JS project (except React). They team works really hard to keep it interesting.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, Babel and the Babel team is great. I got very suspicious of the project after my first experience with it broke perfectly valid code, but after reporting the issue and then another and having them fix it almost immediately they won my confidence back. :)

For production code I'd still stick to a whitelist of features that have been released for at least a month though. Babel is aggressively pursuing ES6 coverage and new features might not have all edge cases covered when they're released. Give them one month though and with their responsiveness it's 90% likely it's going to be fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is javascript really so bad?

Edit: Why did this question get down voted? It was an honest question...

<comment><USER25> Not unless you try to make it look like Java.

<comment><USER26> It can be a challenge for sizable codebases, especially ones with many contributors and that undergoes steady refactoring.

That feeling you get when you see code with lots of type checking... A lot of engineering effort could be recovered with static typing.

<comment><USER25> Oh, I have no problems with strong typing. In fact I think it's a good thing to add to angular. Angular, (And I say this as once upon a time contributor to Protractor) however, is kind of a step in the wrong direction, and I concluded this before they started flapping about with all these giant course corrections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yay! I have tested TypeScript in hobby projects with a very positive experience. I have actually used typescript together with angular once. I was very disappointed when angular announced that they were going to make some kind of fork, for the runtime annotations they needed, instead of working together.

<comment><USER28> Until they tret null values as a separate type, I'm with Facebook Flow.

<comment><USER27> Although I haven't tried Flow, I have taken a glance at it's Maybe Types. I don't think that it is possible to work around libraries and browser APIs returning nulls, and undefined seems to be completely ignored. I think if you want to get rid of null/undefined then you have to use a complete different language, something like Elm, but I would welcome being proven wrong.

<comment><USER28> What do you mean it's not possible to work around libraries and APIs returning nulls? That's exactly the point I made, Flow solved it.

Yes, they had to write interface for all browser APIs (and it's incomplete, PRs welcome), and in places where API might return null it states that it may return it. And your code has to deal with null and non-null cases explicitly (or at least put an if).

You are right though that this type-system is much weaker than other languages like Elm or Haskell, and for me, being from a Haskell world, writing JS with Flow was still a disappointment. It's just that currently there's no better alternative I know in terms of interop with JS and good level of error- reporting.

<comment><USER27> > What do you mean it's not possible to work around libraries and APIs > returning nulls? That's exactly the point I made, Flow solved it.

Sorry, I had the really stupid misconception that Maybe Types could not be applied to libraries and browser APIs.

So it seems like a good start, but it doesn't seem really useful if they aren't even in the basic API's descriptions: [https://github.com/facebook/flow/blob/master/lib/dom.js#L198](https://github.com/facebook/flow/blob/master/lib/dom.js#L198)

<comment><USER28> If something might return null -- feel free to make a PR with making it a Maybe type, like here:

[https://github.com/facebook/flow/blob/master/lib/dom.js#L359](https://github.com/facebook/flow/blob/master/lib/dom.js#L359)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So Angular has gone from being written in plain JS, to Dart, to Atscript, and now Typescript? Why so much jumping around? Isn't that creating a lot of technical debt issues?

<comment><USER30> Constantly trying out the "new hotness" seems to be the norm in front end dev.

<comment><USER25> Ditching angular has been the new hotness for a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wow! That's pretty big news!

Very much looking forward to seeing what insights come out of rebuilding something like angular with types.

 _edit_ actually on second reading, I'm not sure what's been rewritten in what?

</comment><comment><USER32> Are there any organized efforts to fork the 1.x branch to sustain existing applications?

<comment><USER33> Not so much to fork, but Angular 1.x is continuing to be developed and Pete Bacon Darwin has taken over as the technical lead: [https://plus.google.com/+IgorMinar/posts/2Uo6yh4AV7L](https://plus.google.com/+IgorMinar/posts/2Uo6yh4AV7L)

Angular 1.4 is well underway and there's a lot of good stuff coming out of it, for example the reworked router module.

<comment><USER34> FYI the new router module ([https://github.com/angular/router](https://github.com/angular/router)) is going to be a separate project, with semver'ed releases. It'll expose bindings for both Angular 1.x and Angular 2, but it isn't bound to the Angular release cycle.

Here's a presentation from ng-conf today about the new router: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vecg70fPDFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vecg70fPDFw)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Looking at the example source code & having experience of AngularJs & TS, I would say this is a huge development in term of enterprise adoption.

Statically typed, annotations, built-in dependency injection, comprehensive test support (easy to write testable code), declarative UIs, 100s of already available libraries & above all support from Google and Microsoft. I can say this with confidence that even with a complete rewrite & not backward compatible, AngularJS 2 with TS is going to be a huge success for everyone.

And sooner or later, all other frameworks will adopt ECMA Script 6 because of standardisation of so many things (modules, classes etc.)

I would also like to add that this is a very exciting time for JavaScript developers because there are so many things happening & companies of all sizes will keep investing good amount of money moderating their JS code bases.

<comment><USER36> Yea, I'm super excited that the Angular team has given us ES6!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If Google is promoting TypeScript, can they still promote Dart? How many alt- javascript's can one company promote?

<comment><USER38> They use it internally, but seriously as a platform for other people to use?

Not really, no.

...then again, the 'dart community' has diminished to basically nothing, so I doubt many will care particularly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Anyone successfully using typescript with react/flux? I found it a bit cumbersome to use with most of the flux implementations

<comment><USER40> Have you tried Flow? I would (naively, perhaps) assume it was meant to work well with the rest of the FB stack.

<comment><USER39> Babel + Flow is the next combination I'm going to try

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> My brain just broke. I can't even imagine Google and Microsoft working together on anything as big as Angular. The Universe just took a 90 degree turn.

</comment><comment><USER42> Does that mean they have finally given up on AtScript?

<comment><USER43> AtScript is now TypeScript is what they said in the opening remarks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Angular.ts ...

</comment><comment><USER45> "Special shout out to Yehuda Katz, who helped us design the annotation+decorator proposal which helped make this work possible."

The feverish Yehuda Katz is everywhere! But most importantly he is here on Hacker News and has close to 6000 [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=wycats](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=wycats)

</comment><comment><USER46> There's clearly a corporate agenda with 2.0 but who cares. The most important question is "Is this the best thing for my scenario?" Probably not but it has a name.

There's too much talk about "typescript" and not enought about what problems Angular 2 solves compared to "not" having a ready made framework or how many problems it adds.

</comment><comment><USER47> Here is a nice introduction video to TypeScript from ng-conf 2015 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7NYTKgkZgo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7NYTKgkZgo)

</comment><comment><USER48> Why not Dart?

<comment><USER49> Yeah. Seriously, why not dart. Any clue, anybody?

<comment><USER50> Dart requires loading a dart runtime js file on to the page, as far as I know. And I think they would claim Typescript is javascript + some extra stuff on top, whereas dart is a whole new language to learn.

<comment><USER51> No Dart compiles to JS. Obviously there is some overhead with transpiling languages, but it's actually pretty small. They have done a good job with it.

<comment><USER52> Dart can be run in both modes. Chrome (dunno if enabled by default and/or in stable) contains a Dart VM, so you "only" need to transpile into JS for non- Chrome.

The main problem I had with Dart was [a year ago] that using existing JS libraries like jQuery wasn't as seemless as I would liked. So that would be a reason against Dart, if Angular wants to make that aspect easier.

Haven't looked at TypeScript's interop with JS. I got frightened by the name Microsoft and the fact that they only had a huge language spec PDF and not a single tutorial or something easier to digest.

<comment><USER53> > Dart can be run in both modes.

In production, it's only ever transpiled to JavaScript.

> Chrome (dunno if enabled by default and/or in stable) contains a Dart VM, so > you "only" need to transpile into JS for non-Chrome.

Not the real Chrome. A version of Chromium that you can use to make the development cycle smoother. When you deploy, you still transpile to JavaScript for _all_ browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Remember Angular Dart?

<comment><USER55> Angular 2 is heavily inspired by AngularDart. Angular 2 has a single codebase for JS and Dart.

<comment><USER56> Sounds like they are trying to move people from Angular to Dart

<comment><USER38> The other way around.

(oh! You meant as, in, externally, not internally. I see...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> One of the reasons, people preferred Angular was its learning curve...now, its more or less equal to Ember or Knock out...

</comment><comment><USER58> Can anyone clarify if TypeScript usage is in place of Dart or in addition to Angular Dart?

<comment><USER59> They write their core in AtScript/TS, and cross-compile it to Dart and JS (ES5).

<comment><USER60> AtScript and Typescript have merged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> My main feeling about this is not so much about typeScript (which, meh, some syntax sugar I don't care about, and tooltips for an IDE I don't use) -- more it's that just the mere whiff of Microsoft's involvement will be enough to snuff out remaining developer interest in Angular 2.

<comment><USER62> There are not so many devs who hate MS just for being MS. Mostly kids.

<comment><USER60> Even less in these days of open source glory.

I remember being a MS hater as a kid. Now I hate all the big software companies. Just some more than others. And MS is heading in the right direction these days, so I'm optimistic. Hopefully it'll stick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> At this point, should a newcomer learn Angular 2 or stick to 1.*?

</comment><comment><USER64> Dude you don't even virtual-dom

</comment><comment><USER65> Is TypeScript the new CoffeeScript?

<comment><USER66> No, Coffeescript has always been crap. Typescript is getting better and better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> wtf

</comment><comment><USER68> Oh no!

</comment><comment><USER69> Embrace, extend, extinguish.

<comment><USER70> To extinguish, you introduce incompatibilities to make the life of people outside your inner ecosystem (compared to the greater, standard-compliant ecosystem) harder. But since TypeScript compiles to JavaScript and interfaces with plain JavaScript wells, there is really no "extinguish" part here.

Also, the EEE accusation doesn't really apply to open source projects. EEE is bad since after the proprietary product supersedes ("extinguishes") an open product, the community loses control forever. However when an open product supersedes another, the community always have the choice of forking the project to take back control.

<comment><USER10> to be fair typescript isnt compatible with es6 right now.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's automatic alt-text for images - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10102762457220381/ <comment><USER2> Accurate, automatic descriptions of snapshots of peoples lives?? This is surely sending shock waves down the data mining community. Additionally Facebook are saying this was built as an aid for blind people, but this is surely just a cover for being able to take targeted ads to the next level.

<comment><USER3> _This is surely sending shock waves down the data mining community._

Not really. From a technical point of view there is nothing impressive about this, except that they spend the time and money to collect all the training data. Also that it says "this image may contain:" tells you something about how accurate this actually is.

<comment><USER4> Tensorflow + Inception is about this accurate. For high level categories and popular items it's pretty good, but if you want to dig deeper (e.g. identify the type of animal in a picture) it'll need more training.

Google Photos is a lot smarter in that it can identify what a set of photos contains. As an example I noticed all pictures of my graduation (which had no metadata saying it was that) have been grouped into a 'Graduation' album. It's also kind of scary...

<comment><USER5> Did you have EXIF data on your pictures? Similar location + even a single picture with an academic cap could easily provide enough information for categorization...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always find Facebook's example feed to be funny since it's a completely unrealistic depiction of what their site actually is for most users.

Just quickly looking at the top few posts in my feed, I see someone celebrating their two year friendship with someone I don't know, one person sharing a link to a new airplane, four people sharing videos, one person liking a sponsored video, and finally one person updating their profile picture.

I wish I could see actual updates from people instead of being kept abreast as to what piece of third party content they've liked at some point in time, what third party content they're sharing, etc.

<comment><USER7> How is this unrealistic? This is exactly the kind of stuff my feed shows. The people you follow probably aren't posting any updates (that you like to see)... and sharing content _is_ an update, that's what that person decided to post.

Your feed is what you make it.

<comment><USER8> Everytime I see someone complain that their feed is full of memes, junk, and chain posts, I think 'Maybe you should just remove that person from your Facebook?'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Last July, I lead a project in support of a federal agency to analyze current business processes and identify weaknesses in the agency Section 508 office. My work focused primarily on externally accessible internet sites and one of the most common 508 violations that we encountered was the lack of ALT-text on images. This agency utilized a number of automated scanning tools and processes, but lacked any ability to efficiently remediate these errors. While we never talked more than from a conceptual standpoint, a coworker and I discussed something along the lines of what Facebook has accomplished here through the use of Google's Neural Networks. Very cool to see this advancement come to life.

<comment><USER10> This kind of systems/algorithims also allows to asign a certain semantic component to images (with a grain of salt, of course), which might enable further developments that weren't considered posible yet.

Sadly, it also brings another complete set of cases to the oh-so-anoying "but Facebook/Google/Twitter/Amazon does it!" clichés that we'll now have to deal with...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm waiting for the day this is just a library you pass an image to and it returns an array. No, not a SaaS. Then on my own pump.io, diaspora, redMatrix etc. it just works. My data, my images, my network. I'm not against the tech at all though. Neat

<comment><USER3> There are already pre-trained networks out there. TensorFlow comes with an example command line tool that you can pass any image and it will tell you what is in the image.

The classes that it can detect are from ImageNet, so that might be limiting.

<comment><USER10> If you were to train your own net, ImageNet is one of the biggest and most complete datasets and you'd surely use it for training. The alternative is to make your own training set, which will cost you money and/or time. For a proof of concept or initial prototype (until your business can pay for it), those classes should be enough.

<comment><USER3> ImageNet is not going to have something like "smile" in it's dataset like they showed in the video. It has all kinds of possible dog breads instead.

Maybe someone should create a website that lets volunteers label images for this purpose.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, in "Person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, soul" there's the deeper category "smiler" which contains the categories "smirker" and "simperer". Some of the images are (note: my idea was to link to the images directly, but it isn't loading, so I had to take a screenshot and upload to imgur):

* [http://i.imgur.com/Wex6pSR.png](http://i.imgur.com/Wex6pSR.png)

Which I say is pretty much what you'd need to train a net to detect people smiling (amongst other things). Of course, there are some refinements you can make to improve accuracy and presentation of the results. My point was: you should begin with datasets that are readily available, and then improve on need (and if resources are available to justify the investment).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is more information on what Facebook is doing on the research site.

[https://research.facebook.com/blog/how-blind-people- interact...](https://research.facebook.com/blog/how-blind-people-interact- with-visual-content-on-social-networking-sites/)

Including a link to the publication that was written on the technology here.

[https://research.facebook.com/publications/how-blind- people-...](https://research.facebook.com/publications/how-blind-people- interact-with-visual-content-on-social-networking-services/)

I think its exciting and an honest attempt to make peoples lives better.

</comment><comment><USER13> With all due respect to conspiracies, this is a cool feature.

</comment><comment><USER14> Warning, that page has an auto-play video with sound.

</comment><comment><USER15> This might be asking for too much, but why not use more of the image meta-data than these computer vision techniques?

If I were blind, I really wouldn't care that this is an image of "two people, smiling". Facebook has facial recognition, tagging, and locations. It would be much more valuable to me to say "Peter and Laura smiling at Channel Islands State Park."

<comment><USER16> They are just tagging, but there are ML solutions for describing in natural language.

Demo: [http://googleresearch.blogspot.ro/2014/11/a-picture-is- worth...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.ro/2014/11/a-picture-is-worth- thousand-coherent.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd like to compare Facebook's image tagging with Google Cloud Vision API [https://cloud.google.com/vision/](https://cloud.google.com/vision/) I think it would be interesting to see which one is more accurate or verbose.

</comment><comment><USER18> I suppose it'll be like YouTube's automatic subtitles for audio. It'll do a bad, but passable, job: at least the blind and visually impaired have _some_ idea of what the image contains.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Cat. Cats. Cat. Baby. Dog. Baby. Cat. Baby with dog."

<comment><USER16> Bag. Duck face. Nails. Duck face.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Glad to see Mark explaining what a screen readers is to millions of people :-D

</comment><comment><USER21> This is really what I wanted to use the Google Image API to do.

But it's _way_ too expensive.

All I wanted was keywords for alt-text, dimensions for placeholder, and the dominant colour for placeholder background.

[https://cloud.google.com/vision/](https://cloud.google.com/vision/)

The price for that would be $7.50 per 1,000 images for the first million images.

I have some 60,000 images on the site I run and don't happen to have $450 in loose change laying around (the whole site costs less than that to run each month).

I guess I don't care about alt tags that much.

<comment><USER22> Re-upload them to facebook then scrape the generated descriptions ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is this tool open source? would be a great contribution to the accessibility community.

</comment><comment><USER24> Very cool.

Obvious next step: build this into the OS/browser/screen reader.

</comment><comment><USER25> I do wonder when somebody uses this technology to troll.

<comment><USER26> The techniques already exist[0] for some sophisticated trolling, though it may be hard to achieve in practice without direct access to the classifier being used.

[0] [http://karpathy.github.io/2015/03/30/breaking- convnets/](http://karpathy.github.io/2015/03/30/breaking-convnets/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> that's honestly very creepy

</comment><comment><USER28> Ah, the Twitter app for Android (beta version) recently added a feature that allows you to add a description to pictures you upload for impaired people.

</comment><comment><USER29> Obligatory: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wXHR- lad-Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wXHR-lad-Q)

It's impressive that people don't really connect the dots and see that as a huge threat to their freedom.</comment>


Apple's iOS tops Linux to become third largest browsing platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/09/03/apples_ios_tops_linux_to_become_third_largest_browsing_platform.html <comment><USER2> Interesting trend from this world-wide data compared to a post from TechCrunch earlier about U.S iOS vs. Android usage:

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/03/quantcast-mobile-web- browsi...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/03/quantcast-mobile-web-browsing/)</comment>


Videos from Startup School NY are now online - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/videos-from-startup-school-ny-are-now-online

<comment><USER2> Can the videos be captioned? Or at least, turn on YouTube automatic captioning please? Many of your audience are Deaf!

<comment><USER3> Is there a way to enable automatic captions? Alternately, is anyone aware of a good transcription service?

I'd like to make this happen.

<comment><USER4> All of my podcasts and talks get transcribed at castingwords.com. They've got mechanical Turk on the backend, so occasionally you get a very bad paragraph or two in the middle, but their turnaround is quick, they're relatively inexpensive, and it beats the heck out of "no transcript."

<comment><USER5> You should try looking into MobileWorks. Recently they've focused more on human generated lead gen, but they might still/used to do transcription as well. Their crowd is generally much more reliable than MTurk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Definitely worth checking out Apoorva Mehtas (Instacart CEO) talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkmR7TYUt_c&index=7&list=PLQ...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkmR7TYUt_c&index=7&list=PLQ- uHSnFig5NCQkhJfkn8ogXFwzrP4SIf)

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks a lot. I've applied for startup school in London. It's great to see YC initiatives in Europe!

</comment><comment><USER8> Great, I've been waiting for this. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for sharing. This is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER10> Thank you for posting this!

</comment><comment><USER11> That was fast! Thank you

</comment><comment><USER12> Any chance we could get audio only podcast version?

<comment> be-u Try a tool called youtube-dl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why do i feel so proud for being one of the first 1000's of people to watch these videos online?

Thanks for sharing this, i couldn't watch live since timezones kinda suck.</comment>


Micron releases half-terabyte laptop SSDs - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/156849/2011/01/micron.html

<comment><USER2> _On average, the price of NAND flash memory drops 40 percent per year._

This is good news for databases. Flash drives have much better random access performance than magnetic drives. With the price of these flash drives dropping, it will soon be cost-effective to replace an entire database with flash for the IOPS increase. Right now people are using flash for extra cache, but soon we'll be able to fit the whole database in flash for a reasonable $/IOPS.

It will extend the life of single-instance databases significantly, and mean everyone can wait that much longer before distributing the database.

<comment><USER3> I recently replaced the SAS drives in all of my database servers with SSDs. Watching IO wait on my usage graphs drop while db latency fell to near-0ms was such an incredibly gratifying feeling. Worth every penny.

If you've got heavy random IO on your dataset (90% active, OLTP here) and/or deal with any sort of significant contention or deadlocking across your disks, I would strongly encourage upgrading to SSDs. Of course, if you can fit your dataset into RAM, go that route. But if you're well past that point, might be time to consider SSDs.[1]

[1] [http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2010/04/08/fast-ssd- or-m...](http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2010/04/08/fast-ssd-or-more- memory/)

<comment><USER4> I wonder if Amazon's EBS will support SSD anytime soon. That would rock.

<comment><USER5> It's quite impractical for them to "support" SSD. The way (I assume) their infrastructure works would basically mean that the speedup you get from SSD would be nullified by the rest of the IO needs imposed by their stack. That is, if they were to simply move one service (in this case, EBS) to SSD.

The only way I see this happening is if they start adding servers with SSD, where all services running on those servers support SSD too. This would basically mean a separate cluster, fully based on SSD. I don't see this happening soon.

<comment><USER6> They don't have to move to support EBS with SSD and mix and match. They could have RDS instances with SSD only option and EBS based on SSD. They can charge significant amount for those options, some might even pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Half-terabyte": because "512 gigabyte" just doesn't sound as impressive.

Really, though, what I'm interested in is getting _enough_ SSD space at a reasonable price. That might not make quite so eye-catching a headline, though.

<comment><USER8> Actually, according to HD manufacturers, 0.5 TiB is roughly equal to 465.66 GB. That's a difference of almost 50GB.

<comment><USER9> I could be wrong but I think SSDs tend to come in actual powers of two, or genuine 500GB

<comment><USER10> SSDs have their own ways to shrink the physical capacity.

For example the new SandForce chipsets needed 20%(!) of the flash-capacity for their scratch space when they were initially released. I think they have that down to around 6% now.

However, regardless of the figures, the harddrive vendors have a user-base that was trained for decades that harddrives are supposed to be smaller than advertised. I doubt they will stop taking advantage of that.

<comment><USER11> It's not just scratch. It's also spare capacity and stuff to deal with level wearing. They also advertise the actual usable space as opposed to the 'max' space. A SSD might actually have 256GB of space, but it'll be advertised as 240GB. They're actually fairly honest.

Remember, most of the major SSD manufacturers -aren't- harddrive manufacturers. They're chip and memory manufacturers (which makes sense).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's very cool that ssd's are getting the sizes to be able to replace my hard drive rather than just be used in laptops or be used as a boot disk. Hopefully the controller will be as fast as they claim and be competitive with intel and OCZ. The only problem, is that as the manufacturicing process has shrunk (from 50nm, to 30nm, to now 25nm I think), the number of writes before the NAND would no longer hold a charge has significantly decreased from 10000 to 5000 and downward. While these are still large enough for heavy use to last a few years, hopefully these new drives will still be able to last a few years with sustained use. Or at least, this is my current understanding of SSD tech.

<comment><USER13> I believe the high end Crucial drives use Sandforce controllers, which are currently the top of the heap, and OCZ uses them in their best drives. Current Sandforce controllers beat out the Intel G2, but I don't know how it's supposed to stack up against the G3.

<comment><USER14> Crucial SSDs use a Marvell/Micron controller which does very well in many benchmarks. [http://www.anandtech.com/show/3812/the-ssd-diaries- crucials-...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/3812/the-ssd-diaries-crucials- realssd-c300)

<comment><USER13> Ahh thanks, that was the article I was trying to find last night but didn't manage to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Almost certainly a response to the 600 gigabyte Intel SSDs that should be on sale any day now.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/3965/intels-3rd- generation-x25...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/3965/intels-3rd- generation-x25m-ssd-specs-revealed)

<comment><USER16> It was supposed to be announced for 2010 Q4. Some think it might get delayed until 2011 Q2. Best to wait to see if it gets announced at CES in a few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love watching a new technology go exponential. By this time next year we'll be talking about 1TB laptop SSDs, and from there it won't be too long until their capacities outpace platter tech.

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone got any recommendations for SSDs for a MBP? Should I wait a few months for one of the new ones?

I've got a 80GB SSD in my MBP, but it's feeling a little small.

The whole TRIM / garbage collection stuff got me feeling confused.

<comment><USER18> C300 by Crucial. I upgraded my 13" MBP with it a few months back (6? 8?) and it's unbelievable. They say OS X doesn't _need_ TRIM, but I don't really believe that.

Another option if you don't use your optical drive is to install a normal 2.5" HD instead over there for not-oft-used data.

<comment><USER19> Be careful - the shock protection for disks works only in the normal HDD bay - put your SSD in optibay, not your HDD.

<comment><USER20> I've read that putting your OS disk in the optibay can cause major problems with resuming from sleep - has this been fixed, or do you just set it to "shut down when lid is closed"?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Returning to our true Love. « The Mekentosj Newsroom - <AUTHOR> http://mekentosj.com/news/2011/02/returning-to-our-true-love/ <comment><USER2> Well, this is a timely announcement. I've been evaluating several applications in this space over the last week or so and while Papers is the one I wanted to "win", I was worried about what seemed like a lack of progress on the development front. I'm looking forward to tracking their countdown of the new features.</comment>


Show HN: Find PCB Footprints and Schematic Symbols Within EAGLE - <AUTHOR> http://blog.snapeda.com/2016/03/03/announcing-the-snapeda-plugin-for-eagle-alpha/ <comment><USER2> I've been thinking about as a small side project designing a simple 8-bit CPU. I've been looking at PCB software and nothing really seems streamlined and simple to use. Look at the images in this photo, this seems like what I'm looking for.

Any advice for what software to use or where to find it?

<comment><AUTHOR> The images in the post are CadSoft EAGLE ([http://www.cadsoftusa.com/download- eagle/](http://www.cadsoftusa.com/download-eagle/)), but it's mainly showing the plugin made by SnapEDA. EAGLE has been around for ages and has its quirks, but it is used by lots of engineers (from big companies to makers), has a freeware version available, and is supported on Mac & Windows, so it's a good place to start.

Here are other free/low-cost tools (considering it's a side project) that might be helpful: \- KiCad ([http://kicad-pcb.org/download/](http://kicad- pcb.org/download/)) is a free tool made by CERN that is gaining adoption quickly (Mac & Windows). \- CircuitMaker ([http://www.circuitmaker.com](http://www.circuitmaker.com)) is a new free tool from Altium (Windows only). A lot of people like Altium's user interface, so might be worth trying this if you're ok with your designs being public. \- Quadcept ([http://www.quadcept.com](http://www.quadcept.com)) - haven't tried it but have heard good things; it's a pretty new free web-based PCB design tool out of Japan

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great product. Looking forward to trying it soon. What other PCB design tools do you offer plugins for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. No other plugins, but the website supports export to Altium, KiCad, OrCad/Allegro (Beta), PADS (Beta), & Pulsonix.</comment></comment>


Telegram cracked by FSB, according to Trump allegations memo - <AUTHOR> https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html#document/p6 <comment><USER2> It's not clear whether the report is real yet, but if it is, Telegram being compromised is pretty big news. Presumably this means private chats are insecure, not just normal chats.

</comment><comment><USER3> cf. paragraph 1 on page 6:

> _In terms of other technical IT platforms, an FSB cyber operative flagged up > the "Telegram" enciphered commercial system as having been of especial > concern and therefore heavily targeted by the FSB, not least because it was > used frequently by Russian internal political activists and oppositionists. > His/her understanding was that the FSB now successfully had cracked this > communications software and therefore it was no longer secure to use._</comment>


Converting Merchant Ships to Missile Ships - <AUTHOR> https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2019-01/converting-merchant-ships-missile-ships-win <comment><USER2> Acronym explanation:

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

In general, this is not a super new idea, but it's interesting to see it getting a bit more traction.

Here's another pair of articles on the same general topic.

[https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/6/22/supporting-the- fight-...](https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/6/22/supporting-the-fight-ashore- when-the-marines-ask-for-someone-to-bring-the-rain-the-us-navy-is-in-a- drought)

[https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/7/nsfspar2](https://thenavalist.com/home/2017/7/nsfspar2)

</comment><comment><USER3> Naval ships are typically built to a much higher standard then civilian ships. Thicker plating, more fire resistance, heavier bearings etc. This makes them cost more. The navy has at times tried to relax these requirements, but so far it has not worked out. Designating a ship as civilian level hardness from the git-go may be a way around this.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/idUKN2017353120100121](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUKN2017353120100121)

<comment><USER4> This is why HMS Ocean had such a short service life, to "save money" she was built to commercial not military standards.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ocean_(L12)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ocean_\(L12\))

<comment><USER5> Seems like you're being a bit disingenuous, or you need to explain a bit more.

According to the very Wikipedia article you link to, firstly she's been sold to Brazil for £80 million and so is still in service, and she also cost 2/3rds what it would have cost to make it to military standards. That doesn't sound bad? (For context the article claims her cost is the equivalent of £288 million in 2016, so roughly sold for 30% of her original price).

 _VSEL 's bid was £139.5 million compared to Swan Hunter's £210.6 million... The Financial Times described the different philosophies adopted by the two bidders; while Swan Hunter viewed the ships as entirely military, "VSEL thought the design was basically a merchant ship with military hardware bolted on." VSEL's decision to sub-contract the build phase took advantage of lower overheads at a civilian yard as well as efficiency drives by its parent, Kværne_

I don't know anything about the expected service times, etc., so I'd be interested to hear if it's turned out as bad as you made it seem?

<comment><USER4> How the Brazilian government allocates it's defence budget is it's own concern of course but consider that a comparable-role ship HMS Hermes was laid down in 1944, sold to India in 1985 and served until 2017. Ocean will never manage that. HMS Ark Royal served for 30 years too.

São Paulo, the ship Brazil is replacing, a former French vessel was intended to have a total service life of 80 years!

—————————-

Reply here as I am "posting too fast" apparently

 _The idea that in 20 years, let alone 40 years time, we 'll still rely on human piloted planes is pure stupidity._

They said that 50 years ago when the first guided missiles were coming into service. They will probably still be saying it in 50 years!

The truth is that military tech just doesn't change that fast. The B52. The 1911 pistol - that's the year. Warship hulls are supposed to last 50+ years and you occasionally upgrade the radar. That sort of thing.

<comment><USER5> Does that make sense in this day and age? Tech is advancing fast.

The ship that replaced her cost £3.1 billion, over 10x the cost, even when you inflation adjust.

Seems like Ocean was a bargain to me.

Edit: The more I think of this, the more insane it is. The idea that in 20 years, let alone 40 years time, we'll still rely on human piloted planes is pure stupidity. What a colossal boondoggle we've bought, and not one, but two of them!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's an interesting idea. It seems like many of the most useful and longest- lived weapons platforms are general purpose and easily adaptable, like the B-52. If the Navy adopts something like it, it could really save a lot of money and enable more incremental innovation.

As far as survivability, I wonder if something like this could scale out fast in wartime by redistributing the containers among more ships? Maybe the containers could even be watertight, so they could be fished out of the sea and reused if the ship that was carrying them is sunk.

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems to me that the super-giant container ships these days would not be optimal in the role.

Presuming the VLS containers are standardized, I'd expect it would be better to have more smaller ships. If that's the case, the Navy could pick up some of the older container vessels relatively inexpensively, because they aren't as economical to operate as the Maersk Triple-E class ships.

<comment><USER8> I think those smaller ships are the types they're talking about. The Maersk Triple-E are way more expensive than the 25-50 million quoted as the per ship cost in the article. Maybe they fall a a lot on the used market because new Triple-Es are $190m.

> In heavily trafficked areas, a missile merchant without sensor masts would > be hard to discern from other merchant ships at range. Electronic emissions > that could be correlated to U.S. Navy assets pose risks that must be > mitigated as much as possible. Automated ship reporting systems should be > used judiciously.

This seems dangerous to me, it seems like it will inevitably get a regular cargo ship sunk. Especially considering this second line where they also suppose that these missile merchants could draw fire from more traditional ships because of their threat.

> Drawing enemy fire could become an important function, perhaps protecting > higher value, more-densely manned combatants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Containerized weapon systems are pretty interesting because they leverage the intermodal infrastructure of the global shipping industry, and potentially provide the flexibility of "mission modules", that typically haven't provided. Being somewhat self contained, they also provide a cross functionality across sea and land based assets.

Patria's 120 mm NEMO gun [http://www.thedrive.com/the-war- zone/6440/this-120mm-gun-bui...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war- zone/6440/this-120mm-gun-built-into-a-shipping-container-is-pretty-damn- genius)

Northrup Grumman's containerized AGM-88E system [http://www.thedrive.com/the- war-zone/24111/northrop-grumman-...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war- zone/24111/northrop-grumman-shows-off-shipping-container-launched-anti- radiation-missile-concept)

IAI's LORA ballistic missile system [http://www.thedrive.com/the-war- zone/11723/israel-just-launc...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war- zone/11723/israel-just-launched-a-containerized-ballistic-missile-from-the- deck-of-a-ship)

</comment><comment><USER10> > the air wing will only have a range of around 700 nm—about half that of many > antiship cruise missiles.

Which basically means that unless the US has very very effective anti ship missiles systems, their entire navy strategy(and thus Nato's) is broken.

The whole point of an aircraft carrier is that it provides a dome of protection. It pushes ships capable of launching anti ship missiles out of range. This means that the rest of the navy is free to do other things.

Without that cover, the navy can't move about without being destroyed.

So you either need loads of little ships (which are much more expensive to eliminate, cheaper to produce, but have smaller weapons, or have a system to effectively intercept missiles, or the missile launcher.

</comment><comment><USER11> > To get to 355, the Navy's 2019 ship-building plan proposes an eventual > composition of 12 aircraft carriers, 12 ballistic-missile submarines, 66 > attack submarines, 104 large surface combatants, 52 small surface > combatants, 38 amphibious warfare ships, and 71 combat logistics and support > ships.

Wow. For comparison[0], China has 129 ships and Russia has 79. I guess the US Navy believes in overprovisioning.

[0] [https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-most- powerful-...](https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-most-powerful- navies-the-planet-10610)

<comment><USER12> _Wow. For comparison[0], China has 129 ships and Russia has 79. I guess the US Navy believes in overprovisioning._

The long standing US policy has been to maintain enough force to fight a major conflict in both the Atlantic and Pacific at the same time. It's basically what the British Navy was designed to do, when Britannia ruled the waves and had a globe spanning empire. The Brits basically went broke doing this and mortgaged their position as world hegemon to the US to pay for WWI and WWII. So now, the US has to maintain enough force to patrol the world's navies.

(Between WWI and WWII, there was serious talk about the US and British navy duking it out over the issue of the British war debt to the US. There were even naval war plans drafted.)

<comment><USER13> Including a detailed plan for the invasion and annexation of Canada: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting ideas, good no-filler writing.

<comment><USER15> The USNI blog is very good overall, if you're interested in seapower issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Advances in high-performance computing, software virtualization [...] enable [...] cruise missiles to fit into [...] shipping containers."

Wut

<comment><USER17> The point there is that virtualization permits operation of necessary computing services that previously relied on dedicated hardware. Dedicated hardware that has uses a lot of power - more than a civilian ship is capable of providing - and is tough to cool.

Commodity hardware is massively more powerful, uses less power, and is easy to cool compared to the dedicated stuff that sits in warships. So, the thinking goes, virtualize the warship software stack and run it on off-the-shelf PCs on a merchant ship and you're now able to operate your containerized VLS missiles from a civilian vessel.

<comment><USER16> Oh I see, so the whole weapon system including the computer systems etc.

The way the quote literally reads is that software virtualization and HPC somehow solved a physical geometry problem.</comment></comment></comment>


The (Next) most dangerous game. A discussion of ethical hunting - <AUTHOR> http://blog.blastodox.com/2015/07/the-next-most-dangerous-game-pt-1.html

<comment><USER2> I don't believe the majority of people take issue with hunting solely because the animal is "beautiful". Not many people seem to have a problem with hunting deer for meat or to regulate their populations. Those I've discussed it with seem to almost unanimously agree that the wasteful aspect of "trophy hunting" exotic animals is what makes it particularly despicable.

Take the recent case of Cecil the lion. He was shot initially with a bow and suffered for nearly two days before finally being finished off, at which point he was skinned and his carcass dumped to make some douchebag dentist a lame taxidermy piece. His meat wasn't donated. He wasn't terrorizing some defenseless local village. There isn't a surplus of lions causing some of them to starve.

How can anyone justify taking a life (especially with such a disgusting length of suffering involved) for such frivolous reasons as making a rug and taking some photos?

</comment><comment><USER3> Up next, a discussion of ethical slavery.</comment>


Human Rights Implications of IBM Watson's 'Personality Insights' Tool - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/taraaz/https-medium-com-taraaz-human-rights-implications-of-ibm-watsons-personality-insights-942413e81117 <comment><USER2> " _Also, note that these results — both original and modified text from my blogs — are very different from the results based on my Twitter feed (which are shown at the beginning of this post)._ "

Congratulations! These are the results telling you your system is a failure.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the Watson Personality Insights tool is _his_ system..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reads like marketing material shoehorned into a soft-peddled criticism about human rights in order to generate buzz. What stretched my suspension of disbelief more than anything is that the author seems to think that people use this product in production, which AFAICT, no one really does.

<comment><USER5> That was not my intention; I added a disclaimer showing that I'm not affiliated. I raised some real human rights concerns; IBM or any third party companies using the tool should take them seriously. The issue is that companies do use these tools, mostly in HR departments; recruiters can attest. Another interesting paper on hiring and algorithmic decision making that you might be interested: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3408010](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3408010)

<comment><USER6> Good writing! Have you seen this video of Michal Kosinski about the end of privacy? He talks about making inferences about intimate psycho-demographic information from photos.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUwBcTgzbtU&t=2468s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUwBcTgzbtU&t=2468s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ah Personality Insights. In playing with it when it came out I noticed that when it printed out something that someone agreed with they thought it rocked, and when someone felt it characterized them incorrectly it was junk. This and "Sentiment Analysis" get too much hype and not enough close inspection.

One of the more interesting discussions around this was that actual personality tests have pretty carefully crafted questions that they then look at the response to in a measurable way. But you can't really crawl a forum and reliably match up "stimulus" and "response" so the results have so much noise in them as to be unreliable.

</comment><comment><USER8> I tried plugging the Keeper's Diary from Resident Evil:

      At night, we played poker with Scott the guard, Alias and Steve the researcher.

      Steve was very lucky, but I think he was cheating. What a scumbag.

      Today, a high ranking researcher asked me to take care of a new monster. It looks like a gorilla without any skin. They told me to feed them live food. When I threw in a pig, they were playing with it... tearing off the pig's legs and pulling out the guts before they actually ate it.

      Around 5 o'clock this morning, Scott came in and woke me up suddenly. He was wearing a protective suit that looks like a space suit. He told me to put one on as well. I heard there was an accident in the basement lab. It's no wonder, those researchers never rest, even at night.

      I've been wearing this annoying space suit since yesterday, my skin grows musty and feels very itchy. By way of revenge, I didn't feed those dogs today. Now I feel better.

      I went to the medical room because my back is all swollen and feels itchy. They put a big bandage on my back and the doctor told me I did not need to wear the space suit any more. I guess I can sleep well tonight.

      When I woke up this morning, I found another blister on my foot. It was annoying and I ended up dragging my foot as I went to the dog's pen. They have been quiet since morning, which is very unusual. I found that some of them had escaped. I'll be in real trouble if the higher-ups find out.

      Even though I didn't feel well, I decided to go see Nancy. It's my first day off in a long time but I was stopped by the guard on the way out. They say the company has ordered that no one leave the grounds. I can't even make a phone call. What kind of joke is this?!

      I heard a researcher who tried to escape from this mansion was shot last night. My entire body feels burning and itchy at night. When I was scratching the swelling on my arms, a lump of rotten flesh dropped off. What the hell is happening to me?

      Fever gone but itchy. Hungry and eat doggy food. Itchy itchy Scott came. Ugly face so killed him. Tasty.

      Itchy.

      Tasty.

Watson told me:

"You are skeptical, somewhat inconsiderate and can be perceived as compulsive."

"You are reserved: you are a private person and don't let many people in. You are hedonistic: you feel your desires strongly and are easily tempted by them. And you are independent: you have a strong desire to have time to yourself."

"You are motivated to seek out experiences that provide a strong feeling of organization."

"You are relatively unconcerned with both achieving success and independence. You make decisions with little regard for how they show off your talents. And you welcome when others direct your activities for you."

Interesting, to say the least...

<comment><USER9> keepersdiary: this is great :) It gives me a way to build a dataset (the sayings of great characters in literature) that can be used to persuade the lunatic fringe of my HR department to not contemplate this nonsense!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good thing watson doesn't work very well, or else this would be a big problem

<comment> xkcd-sucks The risk here is your congressman / boss / etc who doesn't even write their own emails becomes convinced that it's meaningful</comment></comment>


An Asynchronous Life for the Happy Hacker - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/08/asynchronous-life-for-happy-hacker.html

<comment><USER2> That's a pretty cool app; upvoted and purchased!</comment>


Ask HN: What technical topic were you dogmatic about, but changed your mind? - <AUTHOR> As per the title: what technical or programming topic were you very committed to, which subsequently changed.<p>And of course, please include the reason for the change, and how you realized you needed to update your world view. <comment><USER2> Vertical farming. I thought it'd be really sweet to have climate controlled, optimised growth cycles free from parasites in the centre of your city - removing the requirements of seasonal variation, transportation and large swaths of land.

Turns out that the energy requirements for growing even the simplest produce in this way dwarfs the requirements for the legacy dirt based alternatives - even factoring in transportation costs etc.

I still think research in this area is needed - the ability to grow crops in this manner is helpful for a number of reasons (e.g. Antarctic winter research stays, Mars/moon colonies, possible near future environmental catastrophes), but I'm no longer dogmatic about getting everyone on board with the idea.

<comment><USER3> Yeah traditional farming is quite cheap and productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Never testing in production. I used to think it was _never_ a good idea.

Now, I'm convinced it's the _ONLY_ good idea.

[https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/2017/09/testing-in- production/](https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/2017/09/testing-in-production/) (for one opinion about it)</comment>


Ask HN: What's the safest programming language at the moment? - <AUTHOR> I've looked at Rust and it loks pretty good, I'm getting type safety and compile time help with memory management.<p>Is there another language that I'm not aware of that has even more safety features? <comment><USER2> what are your criteria to be a "safe programming language"?

\- type safety \- memory management \- compile time help

Here are some options: \- [http://tobyho.com/2008/03/30/how-safe-is-your- programming/](http://tobyho.com/2008/03/30/how-safe-is-your-programming/) \- [http://vita.mil-embedded.com/articles/when-programming- langu...](http://vita.mil-embedded.com/articles/when-programming-language- technology-safety/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ada?</comment>


SETL programming language - <AUTHOR> https://setl.org/setl/ <comment><USER2> Oh my god! It's SETL.

After getting my Masters degree in the early 80s, I went to NYU for my Ph.D. with the intent purpose of working on SETL with Jack Schwartz. Unfortunately, by that time, Jack had moved on from SETL and onto the world of Robotics. Robert Dewar was too busy building Realia COBOL and was not taking on any additional Ph.D. students. So I floundered around NYU for a year before deciding to do my own commercial software, which was probably the best decision I ever made. Especially after seeing a lot of Ph.D. students at NYU who had been there for 10 years.

<comment><USER3> > before deciding to do my own commercial software, which was probably the > best decision I ever made.

Just curious: what did you build, with your commercial venture/startup?

<comment><USER2> I wrote one of the first word processors for Unix, and showed it at the first UnixExpo in the Javits Center in 1984. When the company that was marketing it went out of business, I ported the word processor to the IBM PC, and it became a very popular shareware word processor (New York Word). The income from New York Word was sufficient enough that I quit my day job and formed a software company devoted to making various productivity tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> SETL has an interesting lineage and part to play in the history of computing:

The original SETL was implemented in a language known as LITTLE, Dave Shields noted in an email: "SETL was implemented in LITTLE, a language based on FORTRAN that had fixed=length bitfields as a fundamental data type."

Early SETL was used by Robert Dewar's team to implement the first validated Ada implementation, known as NYU Ada/Ed. This implementation worked as an interpreter.

We have a printed copy of the original SETL based NYU Ada/Ed but we are still to find the original SETL implementation. Maybe somewhere in the Courant Institute or their alumni there is someone with an original magnetic tape from the DEC VAX machine that ran these implementations.

<comment><USER5> > We have a printed copy of the original SETL based NYU Ada/Ed but we are > still to find the original SETL implementation

This got me interested. I may not have found what you're looking for, but I found something.

The current git repo's first commit is "based upon SSoS2I 1.0.1" [0].

[0] [https://github.com/herrmanntom/setlX/commit/ae1e8a16fb1c15d8...](https://github.com/herrmanntom/setlX/commit/ae1e8a16fb1c15d89456ba749b32e8bf310460dc)

<comment><USER4> interesting, someone has refined SETL2 into SetlX; I had not noticed that the SETL wikipedia entry has an entry for SetlX:

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

In my other reply in this thread I highlighted the lineage of SETL, I neglected to also mention that SETL was an influence on ABC that influenced Python.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I parallelized the SetL runtime for shared memory multiprocessors, with dynamic load balancing, parallel GC, and added explicit parallel constructs, at Urbana-Champaign, from fall 1988 over the next couple years. It's weird, to me, that the global interpreter lock persists in Python, 3 decades later.

<comment><USER7> > I parallelized the SetL runtime for shared memory multiprocessors, with > dynamic load balancing, parallel GC, and added explicit parallel constructs, > at Urbana-Champaign, from fall 1988 over the next couple years. It's weird, > to me, that the global interpreter lock persists in Python, 3 decades later.

I don't think anyone thinks GvR is _incapable_ of removing the GIL. Given the comparatively tiny base of installed SETL software, surely it's a lot easier to check that any backwards-incompatible changes to SETL won't break any important installed software based on it than it is to do the same for Python?

(And, as a follow-up, I think it's fair to say that there is no such thing as a fully backwards compatible change. My background is with Perl more than Python, where the problem is especially acute; but I imagine with Python too, it is very hard to make a change where one can be totally sure that the behaviour being 'fixed' isn't behaviour that some piece of software somewhere out there relies on being broken in exactly the historically right way.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's even a book published in 1986: [https://www.amazon.com/Programming- Sets-Introduction-Monogra...](https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Sets- Introduction-Monographs-Computer/dp/0387963995)

<comment><USER9> GNU SETL documentation links to a book from 1979.

Any older?

[https://cs.nyu.edu/~bacon/setl/doc- legacy/setlprog.pdf](https://cs.nyu.edu/~bacon/setl/doc-legacy/setlprog.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it dead and if not, is it GNU now? Some links on the page don't work.

Anyone here ever tried it out?

<comment><USER5> It's not dead! [0]

The license is a bit of a mix [1], but sort of mainly BSD, but partly LGPL.

[0] [https://github.com/herrmanntom/setlX](https://github.com/herrmanntom/setlX)

[1] [https://github.com/herrmanntom/setlX/blob/master/license.txt](https://github.com/herrmanntom/setlX/blob/master/license.txt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I did my MSc thesis with setl and mathematica I, in 1989..

Some elements of setl eventually got their way into python ~15 years ago, namely: sets and list comprehension.

Archeology of programming...

</comment><comment><USER12> Where can I find an example of a meaningful program written in SETL?

<comment><USER13> Not sure if they are that meningful, but I have a collection of SETL programs here: [http://www.hakank.org/setl/](http://www.hakank.org/setl/) (My SETL page).

The page also includes some SetlX programs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> 'As rms has kindly pointed out, the designation "GNU SETL" is incorrect until the sources have been released. I hope to correct this by making that release soon'

Undated. From the Documentation page.

<comment><USER15> And according to these searches there are no references to SETL the language at GNU's website:

[https://www.gnu.org/cgi- bin/estseek.cgi?phrase=setl&perpage=...](https://www.gnu.org/cgi- bin/estseek.cgi?phrase=setl&perpage=10&attr=&order=&clip=-1&navi=0)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agnu.org+%22setl%22](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agnu.org+%22setl%22)</comment></comment>


Police Use Department Wish List When Deciding Which Assets to Seize - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/us/police-use-department-wish-list-when-deciding-which-assets-to-seize.html <comment><USER2> > "If you want the car, and you really want to put it in your fleet, let me > know — I'll fight for it," Mr. McMurtry said, addressing law enforcement > officials on the video. "If you don't let me know that, I'll try and resolve > it real quick through a settlement and get cash for the car, get the tow fee > paid off, get some money for it."

> In an interview, Mr. McMurtry acknowledged that he exercises a great deal of > discretion. "The first offense, if it's not anything too serious, we'll come > up with a dollar amount, depending on the value of the car and the > seriousness of the offense," he said. "I try to come up with a dollar amount > that's not so high that they can't afford it, but not so low that it doesn't > have an impact. If it's a second offense, they don't get it back."

What a fucking asshole. That guy is a thug stealing from the public, and he doesn't even try to hide it. He even admits that he's using the practice to impose fines without due process, in direct violation of the constitution.

He's a criminal, and should be treated as such.

> Prosecutors estimated that between 50 to 80 percent of the cars seized were > driven by someone other than the owner, which sometimes means a parent or > grandparent loses their car.

They're even aware that they're stealing from innocent people, and that they'd likely never get any sort of seizure upheld through having to actually file charges.

Criminals, all of them.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't this completely go against the trias politica principle? The police effectively playing judge and determining the penalty, without due process and even worse, for their own benefit?

Frankly I'm at a loss for words here. It's wrong on every imaginable level. The most worrying to me is, that there seem to be so many people who do NOT see anything wrong with it.

Do so many people miss a basic grasp of right and wrong, of the building blocks of our society? And what are they doing in the police force?

<comment><USER2> I'm very disturbed by the callousness with which he brags about violating the constitution to get extra-legal justice.

I'm also confused why people always (largely rhetorically) wonder why Americans don't trust officials and are withdrawing from the political process when there are ample examples of officials bragging about their illegal activities without any consequence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> U.S. Bill of rights, article 7: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;[...], nor be deprived of life, liberty, or _property_ , without due process of law;"

I am not a lawyer, but I do have to wonder, how is 'civil forfeiture' as a whole compatible with the U.S. constitution (or for that matter, that of any country with both rule of law and capitalist property rights)?

<comment><USER5> So who's going to prosecute them for it? If the government, police and judiciary are all in on it, who can stop them?

There's only 2 political parties in the US and they're both in on this, you can't even vote for a party to reform this...

<comment><USER6> No. In America, you can do a "write in" vote whereby you can vote for anyone you want. So the problem is with the voters. If you voted for Obama, then you're partly responsible for this. The problem is people who will only vote for parties that are expensively advertised.

<comment><USER7> While it is true that you can "write in" anyone you want, the reality of all voting means that the winner is (Generally) going to be the person who is most well known - and like it or not that means campaigning aka advertising.

So in practice, this doesn't get you anywhere.

What we need is a nationwide NOTA (None of the above) vote option, wherein if the NOTA vote gets a plurality, the race must re-occur with different candidates. Like in Brewsers Millions.

<comment><USER8> I think instant-runoff voting is a better idea

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant- runoff_voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting)

<comment><USER9> Or approval voting. It's much easier to understand, and not really gameable.

<comment><USER10> The thing I don't get about approval voting is when do you stop voting for your second choice? It seems like every vote with approval voting is a strategic vote, whereas with IRV you just always vote for your preferred candidates in order.

Yes, favorite betrayal is possible, but it requires a very specific set of circumstances, and the only gaming of the system is people throwing their top vote to the opponent, which is very risky and requires a freakish amount of insight into the race to know if the conditions of a spoiler are even possible.

To me, strategic voting seems much more likely with approval voting than it does with IRV, and it's that strategic voting that is maintaining the two party system. I think the possibility of a possible spoiler effect under IRV is small, and that its chances of actually allowing 3rd party victories are much higher, and thus worth the risk, especially because, to me, approval voting doesn't really remove the spoiler effect, but just delays it.

I like approval voting, but IRV seems like a better solution, overall.

Also, I disagree that approval voting is much easier to understand. IRV isn't significantly more complicated than approval voting, and neither are significantly more complicated the current plurality/FPTP system.

TL;DR - In my opinion, IRV's rewards outweigh its risks and IRV > approval voting > FPTP.

<comment><USER9> It's strategic voting under first past the post that maintaining the two-party system, not strategic voting in general.

In approval voting you are always best off voting your preference. The only thing you have to decide is your cutoff for how many people you want to approve. From what I've read, people are pretty good at that intuitively.

<comment><USER11> www.electology.org/threshold

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Police abuses of civil asset forfeiture have been around longer than many HN readers have been alive. Here's an example of civil asset forfeiture abuse in 1991 (the practice extends back to at least 1985), which was the subject of congressional testimony in 1996: [https://www.aclu.org/technology-and- liberty/statement-rep-he...](https://www.aclu.org/technology-and- liberty/statement-rep-henry-hyde-forfeiture-reform-now-or-never)

I remember going to DC policy seminars on the topic that groups like the ACLU and the Cato Institute held 10-15 years ago, and Cato published a lengthy paper about these abuses in 2006: [http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/balko_whit...](http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/balko_whitepaper_2006.pdf)

There's even an organization devoted to ending civil asset forfeiture abuses: [http://fear.org/](http://fear.org/)

But after roughly three decades of this practice, and over two decades of well-documented abuses, nothing has changed. Why this remains the case, even though every politician and judge is aware or should be aware of these abuses, is left as an exercise for the reader.

<comment><USER13> This is a bigger issue than just civil asset forfeiture. This kind of conflict of interest encompasses ticket "quotas" (technically disallowed but tacitly followed) or when someone with an out-of-state license plate is targeted on the assumption that they're less likely to fight the ticket. I've heard of cops bragging about the tickets they write and how they're putting money in the city's coffer.

But I'm at a loss what to do about it. Is there a way to disassociate enforcement from penalizing?

<comment><USER14> > Is there a way to disassociate enforcement from penalizing?

You could just not give the government the revenue. If you get a traffic ticket the fine is paid to your choice of any 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

In theory you could still have police issuing tickets because they want to increase donations to the Red Cross or something, but the cops have no control over which organization gets the money, and they certainly don't get to ride around in toys the money bought.

<comment><USER6> Why not destroy the money? That way it increases the value of all the other dollars and benefits everyone.

<comment><USER14> The federal reserve would then have to create new money to replace what was destroyed or it would cause deflation (which is very bad), so what you're suggesting is equivalent to giving the money to the federal reserve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> John Oliver's show had a segment on this very topic not that long ago [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks)

<comment><USER16> Comedy is not a substitute for public discourse.

<comment><USER15> I didn't say it was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It says 'the value of assets seized has ballooned to $4.3 billion in the 2012 fiscal year' which means that, spread across every American, is an extra $1400 tax which is off the books. For perspective, on the highest minimum wage of $9.32 per hour, that's around 150 hours of work. THAT'S AN EFFECTIVE MONTH OF 40 HOUR WORK WEEKS TO AN ILLEGITIMATE, OFF THE BOOKS, EFFECTIVELY UNREGULATED, AND FOR PROFIT TAX.

Disgusted should not even begin to describe the mood of the American people.

EDIT: My math is bad and I feel bad. Its ~$14 a year which is still an hour but oh my, that was an order of a magnitude error!

<comment><USER18> $4.3 / .31 ~= $14.00

I think you mean $14.00, not $1400.

<comment><USER17> Oh no, this is what happens when I take 5 minutes to HN and don't check my math.

I put an edit in the bottom as a testament to my eternal shame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> IANAL, but in Commonwealth countries this seems to be mitigated by the use of consolidated revenue funds[0].

It's explicit in s81[1] and 83[2] of the Australian Constitution that all revenues must be deposited into the CRF and you then need a law to appropriate the revenue elsewhere. Similarly, state law seems to point to revenue from civil seizure is paid into treasury.[3]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Fund](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Fund) [1] [http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s...](http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s81.html) [2] [http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s...](http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s83.html) [3] [http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/cara199027...](http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/cara1990272/s27.html)

<comment><USER20> Yes, this is the ultimate solution. Fines and forfeitures should never go to the local government responsible for crafting them, or worse, directly to the police department enforcing them.

Remove that incentive, and suddenly the darker motive goes away. The officials can no longer emotionally rationalize excessive fines, misplaced priorities on seizure rather than crime prevention, or even outright theft. The only thing that remains is a desire to actually do the job of protecting the public.

<comment><USER21> People seem to greatly undervalue the importance of aligning incentives with desired outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is John Oliver's commentary on this issue. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks)

note: Not sure if we can post youtube videos here, but the commentary on the video very relevant to the topic

</comment><comment><USER23> I am not a lawyer, but I have heard that cases literally suing property (as opposed to the property owner):

* United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency[1]

* United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins[2]

* United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola[3]

\---

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U.S._Currency)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Approximately_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Approximately_64,695_Pounds_of_Shark_Fins)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Forty_Barrels_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Forty_Barrels_and_Twenty_Kegs_of_Coca- Cola)

</comment><comment><USER24> We should stop saying seize. It's "steal". It is outright theft.

Even if by some chance the people they were taking it from were doing something wrong, it is still theft because it is done as them being judge, jury and executioner.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's great the media at least has woken up to this. So they crank out an article every month or so, basically saying the same thing over again. But even the media isn't willing to fully recognize how much the system has turned, how stacked the deck, how all-seeing, and highly discriminatory, lady justice has now become. "The practice of civil forfeiture has come under fire in recent months..." just comes off as a meek response to the truth on the ground.

Is the system so overrun by spineless pricks there's literally no one left to inject some sanity? No prosecutor who can't understand the irony of sizing up citizens like a thug on a smash-and-grab (go for the flat screens!) Not a soul left in the justice department with enough common decency to make a career out of killing this?

The legislators aren't willing to kill the goose which lays the golden eggs. Is it up to referendums? Who is organizing the offense, and what is the game plan? Where is the coordinated counter-attack? Because without one it's not going to curtail this. I don't think you can simply shame these departments (police and prosecutor) into taking the handcuffs off their belts and slapping them on their own wrists where they apparently belong.

<comment><USER26> If the media hasn't fully recognized the problem, how did you become aware of it fully?

<comment><USER25> Fair enough, I should have wrote "mainstream media".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Unbelievable.

What kind of training get the police men? Is it police training or training how to be a crook?

There is one saying in the bible -- I don't want to preach, but some wisdom can be even found in old books -- "A man reaps what he sows".

It seems, this state sows crooks.

</comment><comment><USER28> Combine this sort of behavior with the fact that they now have unchecked surveillance powers and what do you get?

<comment><USER29> Rapidly expanding increases in quasi-legalized crime by the State.

A $17 trillion economy, with $200 trillion in assets, and all private citizens are now guilty until proven innocent. It's Christmas day for the gangsters in government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Harry Connelly, the one discussing "little goodies" to be seized can be contacted at email@example.com

I've sent him an email expressing my displeasure at his use of Civil Asset Forfeiture.

I'd like to send a similar email to Sean McMurtry, but came up empty trying to find his email address.

<comment><USER31> Be careful he doesn't have the laptop you emailed him from seized.

More seriously, although your anger is laudable, complaining to criminals is rarely productive. In this case complaining to whoever can put a stop to this practice is what's really needed. I'm not a lawyer, but stopping it seems unlikely to happen unless it's brought to the attention of the Supreme Court. Pressure in that direction would likely be more fruitful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What is the likely outcome if a victim of civil forfeiture were to file a lawsuit against the law enforcement body for restitution, on constitutional grounds? Is that legally possible, or is there a precedent for this?

Seems like the ACLU would be all over funding such a suit and taking it as far as necessary.

<comment><USER25> The likely outcome is that it costs you more than the property which is at stake. It's not that you won't win, it's that it's too expensive to even try!

TFA mentions seizing entire houses? I assume those cases do get filed and won since there's enough at stake. But there's a reason the cops "go for the flat screens" it's a calculated cost/benefit designed to make it just expensive enough to not be worth fighting.

This is why we need large punitive damages awards, but my guess is the law is written specifically to preclude that.

<comment><USER32> But surely that's built into the structure of the legal system? People I do business with don't routinely defraud me of amounts too small to sue over: why can't the same legal reasoning apply to these cases?

<comment><USER33> One reason people (and particularly businesses) tend to not defraud you over amounts too small to sue over is that the value of continued business and/or word of mouth is larger than the one-time payout of defrauding you. This effect is obviously diminished when dealing with the state, since the difference in physical power between the two parties in the transaction is immense, and the idea of you ceasing to do business with the state is mostly nonsensical.

<comment><USER9> > [...] and the idea of you ceasing to do business with the state is mostly > nonsensical.

Why? You can move away. (Or, more likely, a bad reputations will deter people and businesses considering moving in.)

<comment><USER33> All I mean is that the cost of moving to the jurisdiction of another government is generally massive compared to the cost of switching business partners in most situations.

<comment><USER34> And when all the state you can move to are like this to some degree or other? Moving countries is not simple and certainly out of reach of the majority of the people these laws impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Reading this article made me sick to my stomach. I'm truly ashamed of my country.

</comment><comment><USER35> The challenge here is that people fighting this have to be convinced to pay higher taxes rather than "Stick it to the criminals." When you ask people to pay for higher principles, sometimes they balk. Of course we know about the road to hell, and today it's a drug dealer's car, and tomorrow it's the opposition party's mayoral candidate.

</comment><comment><USER36> The Bill of Rights, Constitution, Constitutional Ammendments haven't been enforced for over 10 years!!

</comment><comment><USER37> Why are there no specialized Law firms that take the case for a cut of the assets?

</comment><comment><USER38> Can civilians thieves use civil forfeiture, in small claim court, for example?

</comment><comment><USER39> anyone what the "last night with john oliver" special on this ?- he got some great video clips of police employees saying some outrageous stuff.

</comment><comment><USER40> Always wanted to live in a police state.....</comment>


Ask HN: How to estimate a candidate for the position of sales manager? - <AUTHOR> I'm a founder of a startup that makes AI solution for B2B. I've been searching for a sales rep. I have some candidates but I really don't know how to estimate them in the right way. All of them have similar experience and a good self-presentation. Maybe there are some assessment test tasks for sales rep's? <comment><USER2> What are you exactly looking for? a) Someone to scale your current business by building a sales team? b) a hunter that will hunt and close deals? c) an account manager that will expand your business with your excisting clients? d) all of the above? In any case the best way to test a sales rep 1) is to check his or her direct and indirect references. 2)Check his or her understanding of complex sales cycles and multilevel selling. 3)Discuss the deals they have won and lost. 4) Check how they have won back deals. 5) Ask what the most difficult deal was they have worked on and what they have done to bring the deal in the companys favor. 6) Let him or her create a presentation as a sales rep for your company and present it back to you. Final toughts: If you want the best you have to pay the bes. If you can't afford the best offer maximum freedom (with prerequisites and KPI's)

</comment><comment><USER3> Completely random thought: make an offer to all of them with the biggest part of their compensation being variable, tied to sales as commissions.

Whoever accepts it, believes a lot on what they do and how much they can sell.</comment>