Will Python 2 ever end ? - <AUTHOR> http://requires-thinking.blogspot.com/2010/07/will-python-2-ever-end.html

<comment><USER2> A big issue for anyone doing web development is that the WSGI spec hasn't been updated for Python 3. With unicode strings as the default (only?) string type in Python 3, the current WSGI spec is ambiguous in lots of places, and solving that isn't straightforward.

Further reading: <http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2010/5/25/wsgi-on-python-3>

</comment><comment><USER3> > Will Python 2 ever end?

It will probably be around for a very long time. Some people are trapped by dependencies third-party libraries and others are trapped by mountains of existing scripts with scant tests.

The real question is when Python 3 will take-off and become dominant. We have at least a little evidence that the transition is happening, slowly but surely. At conferences, most attendees raise their hands saying that they have downloaded and tried Python 3. More and more third-party libraries are being converted. The newer Python books target Python 3. And, the python developer forums are showing a greater focus on working out some of the transition kinks.

IMO, Python 2.7 is wonderful on two fronts. It serves users who are stuck in 2.x land and it brings the two language variants closer together so that a transition becomes a smaller step.

</comment><comment><USER4> This post is a bit of a rant for my taste, but I do agree with him on just one point. Python 3 was not enough of a clean break for me to get me very excited about jumping. There are some new things, but a lot of it feels like change for the sake of change. I believe this is what stifled my adoption of Python 3.0.

However, I disagree strongly with the writer that having a Python 2 and a Python 3 side-by-side is a bad thing. Adoption was expected to be slow all along, and there's nothing wrong with supporting Python 2 for the indefinite future. Python 2 has been a rock for many years. Even in the release notes, it's mentioned that Python 2.7 will most probably be supported beyond the typical two years.

On top of that, I think that most people are waiting on Django, SciPy, Twisted, and others before making the jump.

<comment><USER5> It is a rant; but its to be expected to a certain degree. Python 3 is a big change, and while some may think it's "change for change's sake" (honestly, it really isn't) I expect we're going to hear more rants like this as the days go on.

We're steadily adding features to Python 3 which will make it an even nicer target, and things like NumPy are being ported soonish (there are python 3 builds available for it), so, yeah.

It's unfortunate we can not make the transition a cake walk for everyone, but as you said, Python 2 is a rock, and it would have been grossly irresponsible of us to just walk away from it. At this juncture, python 2.7 simply makes sense - it helps ease the ramp, and fixes bugs / makes other improvements, etc, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Developers care about perfomance and if Python 3 becomes faster than Python 2 then I think people will begin to port their stuff to Python 3.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's the way I feel too. Unicode safety is nice, but that's not enough for the pain right now. I imagine, 5 years down the track, a Python 3.5 or 4.0 including the same syntax and libraries but a way faster CPython.

Edit: sorry I wrote that when I was tired, forgot to add 'in 5 years time, that being the common version of Python'.

<comment><USER5> Unladen swallow's JIT is coming to Python 3 a lot more quickly than 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yep, a complete disregard for compatibility between versions means that there is no such thing as the "Python Language" anymore, just Python 2.2, Python 2.4, and so forth.

Back around 2001, Java apps were the scariest things to install on Linux systems because a good runtime didn't exist.

Eventually Java got it's act together and Python became the main offender. There were about four years that it was difficult to run the official BitTorrent client on Red Hat Linux because Guido decided to change the interface of the http libraries for no good reason.

<comment><USER5> Excuse me? We have an obsessive regard for backwards compatibility and stability through minor/micro releases. Big changes are reserved for Major (2.6->2.7/3.0) releases.

Frankly, I've never worked with people more obsessed about not trashing existing code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The python3 devs claim that 2.7 will be the last.

I'm betting someone will pick up the torch long after the core developers give up support. They want everyone to migrate to 3.1, but it's still highly unfeasible.

So perhaps one day 2.x will eventually pass on, but I don't foresee it happening within the next 3-5 years.

<comment><USER5> No, we - we being Python Core - want a calm, orderly transition to Python 3 over a period of several _years_. Python 2 will be around for some time, and we all know and accept that. Yes, if you have dependencies, using python 3 in production is not feasible. Even those of us who would like to be using Python 3 full time can not due to dependencies.

As for the OP - the transition/migration plan hasn't changed, and I'm personally sorry he feels burned, but Python 2.7 has always been on the roadmap for release. Our goal has been to make the 2.x series evolve into a gentle ramp into Python 3 as humanly possible.

The best way I've heard it put - use Python 3 if you can, Python 2 if you must.

<comment><USER10> For now a better guideline is: use Python 2. Even if you don't have any dependencies that require Python 2 today, at the start of your project, you might wish you could add them tomorrow.

<comment><USER5> And using 3to2 you can easily "downgrade" your code should you desire that. Green field projects should totally feel comfortable with using it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The biggest Python 3 annoyance I have is forcing Unicode strings on everyone. My code is not for widespread/enterprise release, so I do not care _at all_ whether people for whom ASCII is not good enough can use it. Python 3 forces me to distinguish strings from arrays of bytes whether I want to or not.

(Also, 3 / 2 should be 1, not 1.5, dammit!)</comment>


A New Yorker cartoon hatches an oddball idea that just might work - <AUTHOR> http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/I-m-starting-a-startup-that-helps-other-startups-start-up-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i13926715_.htm <comment><USER2> It sounds like the description of Y Combinator, no?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's why I posted it here :)</comment></comment>


POTUS defends Google after record EU fine - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/trump-defends-google-european-union-fine-7885deda-df09-4eee-af1d-319bd206a47d.html <comment><USER2> I don't imagine that Google is encouraged by this development. It will be interesting to see how this affects their appeal politically speaking.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it telling that that article narrated the viewpoint of POTUS, that POTUS only tweeted that because he hated Amazon.

Then stated Obama said the same thing.

<comment><USER4> I don't often talk about my politics on HN, but.... I am a republican, which puts me in line to be a Trump supporter naturally. However, if you watch closely---although Trump espouses Republican goals, his reasons for doing so are usually 'odd'. There's no considered logic behind his decision making.

It is hard to praise him, even when he is on your side, because doing so is tethering your ideology to a crazy fellow and you never know what he might do next, because his reason does not rely on any wider principle.

<comment><USER5> Same can be said about any specific organization, like a political party. It is often impossible for two people to agree all the time. To agree with a politicial party/philosophy all the time would seem similarly crazy.

The reason it is hard to praise him is probably more because people might be afraid that there is actually no reason for his stance and the stance might be completely as random as a flip of a coin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like watching the cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics when Trump does something that American's generally would be behind (if any other president had done it). You start with your conclusion, that Trump is Hitler, and then contort your way back to the facts. I'm not American, so watching it without skin in the game is both hilarious and bizarre. And it keeps getting more so.

<comment><USER7> Very well said.</comment></comment>


On Twitter: "Vitalik, why are blockchains better than spreadsheets?" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/udiWertheimer/status/1263178251201056769 <comment><AUTHOR> In the opening of the new twitter feature, Udi Wertheimer launched a harsh thread and invited Vitalik to participate.</comment>


Global air pollution maps by the European Space Agency - <AUTHOR> http://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2020/06/Global_air_pollution_maps_now_available <comment><USER2> I'm amazed that their main call-to-action on that page is to download a screenshot of [https://maps.s5p-pal.com/](https://maps.s5p-pal.com/), including the baked-in zoom buttons that obviously don't work in a static image.

<comment><USER3> I'm on mobile and spent a good 45 seconds trying to click on the zoom in button before I decided that they just have a really bad mobile site. Ouch

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The map at [https://maps.s5p-pal.com/](https://maps.s5p-pal.com/) allows you to change the date. Comparing the 30-12-2019 - 13-01-2020 data to the latest makes a huge difference in certain areas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Change years for the same month/day to exclude seasonal pollution differences.

<comment><USER5> Especially given that the date range GP mentions is peak winter for the Northern Hemisphere with higher heating requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At first sight I was thinking "Europe looks not bad in comparison with China or Middle East". But scroll back to pre-covid time (aka "winter" \- jan/feb 2020) on [https://maps.s5p-pal.com/](https://maps.s5p-pal.com/):

[https://imgur.com/a/Qkx0FPe](https://imgur.com/a/Qkx0FPe)

All of northern Italy is a one huge brown dot. Does someone have an explanation? I know this is very industrial region, but there are many industrial regions in Europe. What is used for heating houses in there?

<comment><USER7> A lot of industry + a major European airport + Alps keeping clouds stuck there.

For heating nost houses use gas (rom GAZPROM or North Africa as far as I remember), wooden pellets or wood

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Link extracted from this announcement to the interactive website that allows viewing and navigating mapped air pollution history: [https://maps.s5p-pal.com/](https://maps.s5p-pal.com/)

<comment><USER9> Yikes - just compared the latest map with the one in January - what a difference!

<comment><USER8> Worth noting that some of it relates to seasonality - compare October to July in each year, for example.

It makes it a little tricky to draw direct conclusions without more analysis, but it's still an impressive visualization to have available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If anyone is wondering what happens in Australia in Winter (particularly NSW)[1], it looks like Eraring and Liddell power station are to blame [2].

Thankfully, the emissions from Eraring disappear from mid-Feb to May, which seems to indicate that renewable production (e.g. solar) really does shut down coal production, if it's sufficient to meet demand.

[1] 18th May to 1st June 2020 [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraring_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraring_Power_Station) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liddell_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liddell_Power_Station)

<comment><USER11> It's a pity that Australia doesn't get much sun and has to rely on coal ;-)

The sarcasm was good natured but tempered by the fact that the US (my country) has waged a war on solar energy and continues to promote fossil fuels for the benefit of the patron class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was confused for a bit since the zoom didn't work but the actual map is at [https://maps.s5p-pal.com/](https://maps.s5p-pal.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why doesn't India have the same kinds of deep red as China?

The only thing I can come up with is their infrastructure is lacking, less roads and highways?

<comment><USER14> The map only shows NO2, not all pollutants.

<comment><USER15> How concerning should NO2 be?

I was surprised to see that on this map Tokyo seems worse off than Bangkok. On AQI measures it's typically the other way around.

<comment><USER16> The evidence so far is that on top of the expected lung disease in children and adults (due to lung tissue irritation) it more critically seems to reduce human lifespan. [0]

The challenge is to fully separate if this effect is due to NO2 exposure or a combination of other pollutants found in diesel fuel exhaust.

The key takeaway is that Diesel engines release a very high amount of NO2 and that NO2 is in all likelihood killing us slowly.

We need to decomission diesel engines from roads, and more urgently, remove diesel engines from city centres ASAP (Due to traffic jams, iddling diesel engines create very high concentrations of NO2 in the vicinity of pedestrians and cyclists).

[0] Nitrogen dioxide: health effects of exposure, Guidance from the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP), 2015

[https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nitrogen- dioxide-...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nitrogen-dioxide- health-effects-of-exposure)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is great to have another authoritative and trustworthy source of this data.

WHO used to have a really nice map I would often use, but it's been down ever since China complained that it shows them in bad light. [https://maps.who.int/airpollution/](https://maps.who.int/airpollution/)

It would consistently show China pollution levels as high which didn't match the maps distributed by the Chinese government showing lower levels of pollution in the mainland.

<comment><USER18> You can thank the European Union (EU) for that, as these are images from EU- owned satellites.

While the European Space Agency is not officially part of the EU, the EU provides the vast majority of funding (93.0%).

One may not live as luxurious of a life in Europe, either by pay or after-tax amounts, but you do get a sense of solidarity and even stability (most of the time--although we have our issues). In the US, the sense of the future is gone, which is toxic.

The EU also has a recovery plan, which is very future-orientated: [https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel- eu/health/coronav...](https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel- eu/health/coronavirus-response/recovery-plan-europe_en)

<comment><USER19> The EU funds the Copernicus program, among others, which is managed by the ESA. But it's not the case that the EU provides 93% of ESA's total funding, it provides on the order of 20%[1].

You seem to be quoting the 93% number from the table on Wikpedia[2]. That's not 93% from the EU, it's an aggregate 93% from countries that also happen to be members of the EU.

1\. [https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corporate_news/ESA_and_the_EU](https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corporate_news/ESA_and_the_EU)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Agency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Agency)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why is Johannesburg so bad?

<comment><USER21> Was going to ask the same question. There also is a spot in Poland that's not in a large city - was curious about that one as well. Some sort of NO2-generating production? Also between DRC and Angola.

<comment><USER22> The emitter in Poland seems to be the brown coal (lignite) power plant Bełchatów.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%C5%82chat%C3%B3w_Power_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%C5%82chat%C3%B3w_Power_Station)

[https://www.bing.com/maps?v=2&cp=51.266111~19.330278&style=h...](https://www.bing.com/maps?v=2&cp=51.266111~19.330278&style=h&lvl=15&sp=Point.51.266111_19.330278_Kraftwerk%20Be%C5%82chat%C3%B3w___)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What the hell is happening in Congo? There's no major cities around there like Johannesburg but seems to be a big ass blip on the map?

<comment><USER24> Possibly related to all the rare earth mines? Maybe they're burning diesel for power due to lack of infrastructure?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A nicer version of this map is embeded here [1] where you can compare two similar periods on the same map. It's more interesting to see the difference between the same period a year earlier than to compare winter to summer. Also have to factor in how cold the winter was in the area since that is a big impact where houses needs heating.

The comparison can be found in the right map window, click the button on the left of the date to compare two images by sliding a line left/right on the map.

[1] [https://race.esa.int/?poi=World-N1](https://race.esa.int/?poi=World-N1)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm surprised by the amount of NO2 present in the Atlanic off the west coast of Ireland. Given the prevailing winds, that must all be coming from the US. Or maybe it's pollution from airplanes?

<comment><USER27> I'd suspect ships (though I'm not sure what you mean when I look at the map). Tropospheric NO2 is usually not transported that far, although we do measure transported US pollution in Europe.

<comment><USER26> 99.9% of the time the wind in Ireland comes from the south west. I'd have that area would have been as 'clean' as the air around Iceland.

There is a flight path over that area though[0], or as you suggested, it's possibly more likely to be shipping[1]. (That might explain the haze around the English channel too)

[0] [https://www.flightradar24.com/40.32,-36.32/4](https://www.flightradar24.com/40.32,-36.32/4) [1] [https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-12.0/cent...](https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-12.0/centery:25.0/zoom:4)

<comment><USER16> You can see the same pattern as in the English Channel, in the Antwerp and Rotterdam areas.

My guess is higher traffic of ships probably running at lower speeds (higher concentration of gases in the same volume).

Ships are also meant to change from crude bunker fuel (which spews really high concentrations of SO2) to finner diesel fuel (which spews high concentrations of NO2) when they get closer to ports.

It's a case of choose your poison with shipping, SO2 kills you now, NO2 kills you in the long run (it reduces human lifespan)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like this site to visualise that kind of data

[https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/l...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=102.65,29.30,403)

<comment><USER27> [https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/](https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/) is also good for direct satellite data and derivatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is there an accepted threshold for tropospheric NO2 concentrations above which it is considered harmful?

<comment><USER30> There are [1] but the bigger issue is that where NO2 is high, other toxins are also often high. You just can't measure them from space. Benzine is just one example of a carcinogen that _can_ be higher in these areas. The data would need to be overlaid with ground sample data in the red zones.

[1] - [https://www.airnow.gov/sites/default/files/2018-06/no2.pdf](https://www.airnow.gov/sites/default/files/2018-06/no2.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I compared this to my mental map of population density and one region really stood out, the Indo-Gangetic plain. It has higher than normal pollution but nothing compared to what would be expected from the population density.

</comment><comment><USER32> Scrolling back to December of 2019 shows a stark contrast.

<comment><USER33> But what if you scroll back to June of 2019? Not as much difference. Pollution is very seasonal.

<comment><USER34> Seems pretty different for Los Angeles. [https://twitter.com/Jeffinatorator/status/127118987583268044...](https://twitter.com/Jeffinatorator/status/1271189875832680449)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This kind of information should be in weather forecasts.

</comment><comment><USER36> What's going on in Belgium?

<comment><USER37> Habours (=many ships) and heavy industry of Antwerp and Rotterdam. You can also see the route the ships take on the west of Belguim, in the North Sea.</comment></comment>


I.B.M's Bid to Woo Software Startups - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/i-b-ms-bid-to-woo-software-startups/

<comment><USER2> I'd say one of the worst things a start-up (or any company for that matter) could do is tie their core business to a proprietary hosted technology -- free or not. The nice thing about most cloud hosting is incremental scaling for open and free technologies. So, it's not a complete nightmare to move elsewhere. What is someone to do when they realize that WebShere isn't a perfect match, or costs too much?

<comment><USER3> I think it's just IBM technology in general. So if you need DB/2 or MQSeries or whatever. No reason not to use commercial technology if it does what you need for less than you would need to cobble it together from MySQL and DBus...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know anyone in their right mind who would start building a new system around WebSphere in the first place, free or not. Is it even running on Java 1.5 yet?

<comment><USER5> It is, but it took them a couple years to get there after Sun's first GA release. Of course, it likely requires an IBM JVM, at least if you want support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first hit is free, kid.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. Since no start-up in its right mind would pay $20K/CPU or whatever for Websphere, there's no opportunity loss for IBM to give it away. And, the successful companies will face a switching cost three years from now if they don't want to pay hundreds of thousands to IBM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> nit-pick: shouldn't it be "I.B.M.'s Bid..." ?

Also, who on earth still writes I.B.M. ?? The company itself certainly doesn't.

<comment><USER8> The _New York Times_ has an idiosyncratic style guide; they follow each letter with a period when the letters are pronounced individually. So, "I.B.M", "C.I.A.", but "NATO".

(Naturally, how IBM itself spells its name is of no interest.)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recommendations for a Photo Management Tool? - <AUTHOR> Like probably most of us, I have accumulated gigabytes of digital photos over the last 20-odd years. Over the years I have occasionally tried to organise them into folders, either by subject matter, or by timestamps, or both -- but each time I have given up, and now I have a mess of folders, some photos being duplicated and scattered without any real order.
Can someone recommend a good software tool to automate the task of photo management? Ideally it would be able to dig through multiple levels of nested directories, recognise photographs and identify duplicates, and then automatically group them at the very list based on years/months, and possibly on geolocation (assuming it is stored in the metadata). A next level would be the ability to somehow label and/or group the photos by recognising certain items in them, although that would just be a nice extra.
A nice UI is a welcome bonus, but by no means a requirement. I would be happy if it worked on Linux, but Windows would also be fine, as long as the end result is a directory structure containing photos.
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> I'm in exactly your situation (possibly worse), so I quit my office job to build PhotoStructure. [https://photostructure.com/about/introducing- photostructure/](https://photostructure.com/about/introducing-photostructure/)

I've been letting people use PhotoStructure for free during the beta in exchange for their feedback. Know that this next release will be the last beta release before general availability. There will be free and paid subscription tiers (with discounts given for feedback, and when your friends and family also become subscribers). If you sign up for the beta, I'll be sending out installation instructions when I release the next version, which I expect to be within the next week. Here's what's coming soon: [https://photostructure.com/about/release- notes/](https://photostructure.com/about/release-notes/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I've seen and tried it, but it is not very user-friendly. The first time I installed it (on MacOS) I have told it to import all media, but this is not what I wanted; however I can't find a way to reset the preferences and define the import directories again. Each time it just informs me that it will update the libraries and gives me an option to quit but not to change. It's very frustrating for a piece of software that is supposed to be "simple to use".

<comment><USER2> Please send me an email if you've got any issues: email@example.com (this sort of feedback is exactly what I'm looking for from my beta users!)

The system settings on Mac are here: [https://photostructure.com/getting- started/advanced-settings...](https://photostructure.com/getting- started/advanced-settings/#system-settings)

Shut down PhotoStructure, delete that directory, and if you want to reset your library, delete the `.photostructure` directory in your library (everything in there is reproduced during the import), and restart PhotoStructure to start from scratch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I figured it out now.

I still think it would be useful to have an option to open the app without completing the indexing, or maybe having the indexing running in the background, or at the very least resetting the preferences at startup.

<comment><USER2> Indexing and version migrations happen in the background already, and progress is shown on the home page. You can pause indexing via the system tray menu, and there's an advanced system setting to prevent sync runs from starting at launch. Please email me if you have any other issues or feedback!

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do, thank you!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Launch Page  - <AUTHOR>

This might be a very naive question, but I was wondering if there are any neat-looking launch page templates that you guys use or know of to gather users' email addresses while your product is in development, so that you can later notify them when your product is ready for launch.<p>Any pointers? <comment><USER2> Yes, try <http://pagedo.com> \- there is a 'coming soon' template that has form etc to capture personal details</comment>


Federal Prosecutors Conducting Criminal Probe of Juul - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-prosecutors-conducting-criminal-probe-of-juul-11569268759 <comment><USER2> True story:

I have two very close younger friends who are practically my little brothers. They come from an established family in Hollywood, and have a very famous actor-dad. The younger brother is about 20 now, and is friends with half of the teen "influencers" on Instagram/YouTube; the older brother is about 22, and hangs with a group of LA kids who are obsessed with the movie American Psycho and dress/look the part — ironic given that their lives are a 2010s version of that book's author's other classic, Less Than Zero.

About two years ago, I'm at a club in Hollywood when these two hand me a thick pile of paper, which looks like a legal document. I'm really confused — is someone getting sued? Is this a screenplay? Am I being asked to sign an NDA?

The older brother, in his American Psycho-inspired suit, takes a puff of his vape and then whispers in my ear, "this is the funding prospectus for Juul. Our friends have been invited to invest."

I looked at the thing. It was crazy. The valuation was well over $1 billion. The growth rate was off the charts. And, looking around at that club in Hollywood, filled with kids vaping in the outdoor area, I realized the numbers made sense. But the fact that a 19 year old Hollywood kid was handing me the funding documents for this company and telling me that his friends had been invited to invest told me that there was something very, very wrong about how Juul got into the hands of all of these young people — it clearly wasn't an accident.

<comment><USER3> Maybe you should relay this story to the FTC and the federal prosecutors so they can investigate this and bring Juul to justice.

<comment><USER4> Having a 19-year old investor/employee at a tobacco company isn't illegal. Not really sure what the prosecutors could glean from this in terms of hard evidence of a crime.

<comment><USER5> > Not really sure what the prosecutors could glean from this in terms of hard > evidence of a crime.

That's why it's called an investigation, you follow leads not knowing whether they will pay off.

<comment><USER6> 19 year old kids are still of age, there would be nothing really to investigate.

<comment><USER7> The question at hand is whether Juul intentionally marketed nicotine to people below 18.

There's pretty strong circumstantial evidence that they did. Building relationships w teenage social media influencers is part of that.

The unfortunate fact is that Juul achieved explosive popularity among high schoolers. It spearheaded a U turn in youth nicotine use rates, which had been declining for a long time and are now way up.

The investigation is here to determine to what extent this was the result of a deliberate strategy.

<comment><USER6> That they marketed the investment to a 19 year old kid says nothing about whether they marketed anything to those under 18. It isn't a lead that they FTC could use in any kind of reasonable investigation.

High schoolers during my day smoked a lot, and did a lot of pot. They didn't need to be marketed to, they will find the bad stuff on their own. Marketing to them directly would actually have the opposite effect (eg nothing promoted drug use more effectively than DARE). I feel like we've all become old fogeys that remember nothing about what it was like to be teenagers.

<comment><USER8> Actually, it's a comment on an Internet forum, which could be a faithfully retold anecdote or a pure fabrication. In fact, if the book were current, I would be more inclined to take that post as an advertisement for the novel 'Less Than Zero', which I may check out later.

You make a good point though, that we somehow expect that kids exist in a vacuum when they are actually full and active participants in society. It is ludicrous to think that Juul's advertising to make their product seem desirable to adults would not also affect young people. It's similarly unrealistic to think that kids wouldn't vape in the absence of any advertising whatsoever.

I wonder what kind of evidence might be uncovered that would prove Juul did something that is clearly illegal. Joe Camel was held to be a cartoon character and therefore an appeal directly to children. In the case of Juul hiring influencers though, perhaps they could analyze the influencers' analytics data and see if they disproportionately reach under-18s, but pure numerics might be hard to sell to a jury without a smoking gun like an email that says "sign Jim Fortnite because he's big with the 14-16 year olds this week".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One thing that gets lost in Juul and vaping supporters is just how bad nicotine addiction is for your personal life. I recently quit nicotine a few months ago and it made a big difference for me.

Nicotine withdrawal kicks in very quick which is why smokers take constant breaks. The anxiety, the grumpiness, irritability and anger you feel as a smoker when you are without nicotine will piss off your partner, make you seem difficult to friends and colleagues and generally just color your world in a dark way.

Juul pods helped me stop smoking for a short period of time but I became an order of magnitude more hooked on nicotine. I work from home and couldn't go more than 15 minutes without sucking on that stupid device.

I quit smoking cold turkey 90 days and it's made a dramatic difference to my mood. I no longer worry about being socially outcast or being judged for blowing vape clouds.

<comment><USER10> I think the key with vaping (not necessarily with Juul though due to market availability) is that it's very easy to decrease the dosage of nicotine without reducing the fixation amount. For traditional cigarette smoking you want a high amount of nicotine to fill that void (and also to get through the other side of other addictive substances in tobacco beyond nicotine) and to effectively "get hooked" on vaping instead, to the point that normal cigarettes are completely unattractive to you.. Afterwards, decreasing dosage with a vape is super easy, especially if done in a blind way, ie, buying two identical flavors at different dosages (your "normal" and the lower dose) and put them into two carts. Pick a random one each day to use. I've heard of people doing this all the way down to 3mg to get over the lowest dosage hump even. One has no nicotine, the other only has 3mg. Eventually the non-social fixation (ie, at your house alone) stops, and the social fixation (ie, outside of a bar, etc) is controllable with no nicotine... Then that's not even getting into the different ohm ratings etc that further control dosage without affecting the fixation of using the vape.

edit: note I say "easy", but its not a short process.. If you try to go immediately from 48mg to 3mg you won't have a good time. It takes months for each step down

<comment><USER11> Nicotine's method of action for addiction isn't commonly understood very well. It's extremely specific - nicotine works to make the things you do around the exposure more habitual. If it's slapping on a nicotine patch and going on a run, you're more likely to get into a habit of slapping on a patch and going on a run. If it's taking a break outside and puffing from a vaporizer, then it's simply taking a break and puffing from a vaporizer.

That's largely why e-cigs are the most successful way to quit smoking tobacco products - it's the most similar habit to smoking cigarettes, so it slots into the existing highly-reinforced habits that smokers have. You drop a bunch of the random other chemicals that are present in cigarettes, and wind up reinforcing the replacement habit before dropping dosages and having a regular habit that's as easy to quit as, say, biting your fingernails.

<comment><USER12> Thing is, the fact that you _can_ reduce the nicotine dosage does not necessarily mean that people _will_ ; unlike cigarettes, it's trivial to also _increase_ the nicotine dosage many times.

<comment><USER13> I don't think a significant amount of people do that. Coming from someone with a lot of experience vaping (actually helped me quit smoking), it's somewhat difficult to find ejuices with pleasant flavors (anything that's not a stereotypical cigarette flavor like menthol) above 6mg, and around 9mg or higher, the nicotine flavor becomes quite pronounced and overpowering, and your flavor options are severely limited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > 28% of high school students this year said they had used an e-cigarette at > least once in the past 30 days

Holy smokes! If you look at data from a few years ago [1] that's more than double what you'd see for cigarette smoking (eyeballing the numbers here, the data is more granular).

Is it easier for kids to get e-cigs than cigarettes? Or do they just want them more?

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK294302/table/ch13.t3/?...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK294302/table/ch13.t3/?report=objectonly)

<comment><USER15> 1\. They taste better

2\. Yes, they are easier to get, for a couple reasons: once you have a juul you only need juul pods, and additionally you don't need to purchase a lighter (which you need to be over eighteen a lot of places to purchase).

edit 3. They are far more discreet (you can vape in a classroom if you are in the back and it is dark) and deliver more nicotine.

<comment><USER14> Why is it easier to buy juul pods than a pack of cigarettes?

And I'm not aware of any place in the states you need to be over 18 to buy a lighter - and as a former dumbass teenager, I don't think kids have difficulty in figuring out how to light things on fire.

Discretion makes sense, but I feel like rationalizing an irrational decision here. Wouldn't it be more discrete not to vape?

<comment><USER16> > Why is it easier to buy juul pods than a pack of cigarettes?

There are non-nicotine pods. And they have all of the social addictiveness even if they don't have actual nicotine in them.

<comment> t-writescode if there's no nicotine, then who cares? Magic the Gathering cards and pogs were addicting back in the day, but kids could still buy them.

<comment><USER17> If they _have_ nicotine, then who cares either? Nicotine is addictive when combined with other substances in regular cigarettes. Not as a stand-alone chemical.

(Of course avoiding getting any kind of particulate in your lungs is better than getting it.)

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure why I see this popping up throughout the comments. Nicotine BY ITSELF is extremely addictive.

<comment><USER19> Nicotine by itself doesn't seem categorically different than caffeine (coffee, tea, yerba mate, guarana, ...) or other stimulants (khat, coca leaves, ginseng, cinnamon, ...). Yes these are generally addictive, but not necessarily life ruining. Dosage, frequency of use, etc. matters a lot.

Frequent long-term use of any stimulant is probably not great for you; e.g. my mother has a pretty severe coffee addiction (she typically drinks 4–8 cups per day), and gets headaches and shakes if she goes a couple days without. But compared to other kinds of drugs, it doesn't seem like such a huge public health threat that we should freak out about it.

<comment><USER18> I think you're partly right. However comparing nicotine to caffeine is like comparing apples to oranges. They are similar, but nicotine affects the brain in a much more different (and arguably more addictive) way than caffeine does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A tainted, unregulated THC product killed people.

That is bad. That does not mean we should immediately ban all vaping devices. There should be long term studies done on devices and juices in order to determine health effects, and there should be audits on vape juice manufacturers to make sure they aren't putting really bad stuff in them.

I don't understand the moral panic. Marketing nicotine products to kids may be reprehensible, but marketing in general is largely reprehensible. It's a matter of degree. Why do we decide marketing devices that have not killed people, but have just been vessels for unregulated product that have done the damage, is worse than marketing soda and sugary foods, which kill thousands, or addictive apps and social media, which damages mental health significantly, or overpriced unnecessary college educations, which cause people to go into debt for decades, or cars, which both increase debt and are a leading cause of teenage death? Most of those things are unnecessary for the majority of the population. Healthy foods, real life interactions, apprenticeships/job training programs, and public transportation are all generally better than the alternatives for the safety and financial future of young people.

The moral panic happening RE vaping is how the war on drugs started. People saw something that affected the youth and tried to smash it with a big stick rather than attack it with sophistication and respect for the free decisions of the population. It didn't work.

If vaping is bad, let's find out why/what specifically is bad, and let's ban the stuff that killed the people that just died. Banning all of it is draconian. There is no good reason to drive well tested products that people enjoy out of the market, even if they aren't 100% healthy. I don't want to live in the Demolition Man future. Plus people who want to vape if products become very expensive and hard to get due to taxes, bans and overregulation will be tempted to buy the crap that isn't tested that will actually kill them.

<comment><USER21> Non THC vapes have at the very least put people in intensive care, if not killed people.

It's far premature to try and claim the lack of any health effects from any type of vapes, they just haven't existed long enough.

[https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/vaping- london-1.5292161](https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/vaping-london-1.5292161)

<comment><USER20> It's also far to premature to claim any specific health effects from vaping as a whole.

The article said the teen using a nicotine based product, but that's not enough information. We don't where the nicotine juice he was using came from/whether he bought it off the street or from a reputable seller. We also don't know if that was based on blood tests or self reports, although I think it's likely the report is accurate/the issue just happens to affect THC users much more.

This spike in illness is very recent and seems to be fairly acute. Vaping has existed for a number of years without similar cases, and they all just happened to appear all at once.

It seems fairly obvious to me that it has something to do with a particular kind of juice that was recently introduced and is more common in illicit THC products. I suspect one or several shadier manufacturers started using something bad fairly recently, and that it has affected mostly THC products, but is not related to the THC itself.

The current reaction is like jumping to ban all toys because of that issue a few years back where some Chinese manufacturers were forced to recall toys with lead paint.

<comment><USER20> EDIT: looks like I missed my editing window. Apologies for the typos and grammatical issues, wrote out the above pretty quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > The San Francisco company has said it never marketed to teens

Says a company that:

• Recruited social media "influencers" to post about Juul

• Sponsored programs at schools and summer camps

• Ran "youth education" and "holistic health education" programs where they told teenagers about the dangers of nicotine and (reportedly) that using their product was safe

<comment><USER23> Is this for real?

Do you have sources for the last 2 statements?

<comment><USER22> There are tons of sources for this.

From the house oversight committee - [https://oversight.house.gov/news/press- releases/economic-and...](https://oversight.house.gov/news/press- releases/economic-and-consumer-policy-subcommittee-held-part-i-of-hearings-on- juul-s-role)

NYTimes - [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens- vaping....](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens-vaping.html)

Others - [https://nypost.com/2019/07/26/juul-targeted-teens-by- spendin...](https://nypost.com/2019/07/26/juul-targeted-teens-by-spending- over-200k-on-influencers/)

The FTC has already been investigating them for a while now as well - [https://www.wsj.com/articles/juuls-marketing-practices- under...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/juuls-marketing-practices-under- investigation-by-ftc-11567096073)

<comment><USER24> Who decided to let Juul give a presentation at the schools? It sounds like all of those people need to be fired, too. I mean, obviously Juul is not innocent, but at the least on the schools' part, this is negligence to a point you need to fire someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why so many comments about a ban? There isn't any mention of a ban... even if prosecuted for marketing to minors and found guilty, does not mean the product will be banned...

Should Juul be found guilty they will be punished via fines, just like a tobacoo company.

Of course Juul knew this and decided it was worth it because if their device went viral, which it did, they would be locked in as a market leader, which they are.

All they have to do now is lawyer up and try to survive the next year or so and they are locked in.

If they are fined so hard as to go out of business, the product is still not banned and you would have the next in line take the market leader position.

The product is here to stay, banning the devices will be more difficult than banning marijuana (which is a loosing battle).

Will Juul be a brand in the United States in 5 years? Maybe?

Will we still have e-cigarettes in the United States in 5 years, definitely.

If prohibition really occurs of course we will have 3d printed vapes and an even strong black market vape.

I think regulation will likely occur, likely making it require a prescription, but that is still not an outright ban.

<comment><USER26> > Why so many comments about a ban?

New York State banned flavored e-cigarettes recently, on the grounds that they encourage kids to take up vaping; that ban wasn't specifically targeted at Juul (who saw the writing on the wall and stopped selling flavors last year) but that's the brand name everyone knows, so that's why they're catching the investigative heat now.

<comment><USER27> > Juul (who saw the writing on the wall and stopped selling flavors last year)

What? Juul still sells flavors, even if you select that you live in NY or MI (also banning flavors) on the popup when you enter the site: [https://www.juul.com/shop/pods](https://www.juul.com/shop/pods)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Meanwhile, The stock prospects for the traditional big tobacco companies are going up.

Guess what it does to their value after getting an entire generation hooked on vaping nicotine for a decade, then for a brief time remove all flavors but the ones you can find in traditional cigarettes, then once people switch to tobacco and menthol only, remove e-cigarettes entirely. The only option is traditional cigarettes or not smoking at that point. If it was easy to quit, we would've never had a need to create e-cigarettes to begin with.

It's completely evil any way you look at it.

</comment><comment><USER29> I used one for a month and some change during a long road trip. It helped me avoid smoking around the campfire, something my friend and I would do for 'old time's sake'.

I'm glad I didn't use it for a long time. I had a feeling this was just as bad as smoking. I tried to tell some kids I know who are always vaping but they laughed at me with a statement like 'science bitch!'. Well, here you go.

</comment><comment><USER30> Could the recent smear campaign on vaping have anything to do with the upcoming release of IQOS in the US market?

</comment><comment><USER31> Forgive me, but I just can't believe we are doing the cigarette thing all over again. I can't believe it. The vendors have just read Big Tobacco's marketing manual. The interaction of Juul with social media, what a match made in heaven of modern society's best elements. The users are saying the same things all nicotine addicts say "I make friends! It helps me think! It's my money!". Imagine if you will, hearing these same arguments in the cancer clinic where I work. Symptoms of total brain failure, and paying for the privilege.

Nicotine products cause only harm to society. That's enough. Any other argument for individual freedom or benefit is moot. We should ban commercial enterprises based on nicotine. There is one moment when this is possible, which is now. Anyone who thinks that vaping reduces harm from cigarettes is dreaming. Why on earth do we want to spend the next 50 years studying vaping and understanding the risks and benefits of life long vaporised nicotine use, so that Juul's founders can make a lot of money? If you enjoy moderate and sensible recreational use of nicotine - sorry.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's about time.

<comment><USER33> Tell me more about your perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The world is burning to the ground but at least these damn kids won't have Mango flavored e-cigs anymore. What a lovely use of our resources.

<comment><USER35> I completely disagree, investigating vaping companies for targeting kids is absolutely worthwhile.

Big tobacco was prohibited from advertising is various media for creating characters like Joe Camel, only to circumvent the spirit of the law via the internet.

Vaping is killing kids, how is this not a valid use of resources?

<comment><USER36> It really isn't killing kids, and I would challenge that they are 'targeting them'. As an adult vape user, I love the fruit flavors. They are for my (adult) use only. I would never let someone under 21 get access to this. Why should I be penalized because lots of kids are breaking the law?

The recent (adult) deaths from Vaping are due to black market THC cartridges filled with vitamin e acetate. It is very likely the kids are obtaining (safe) retail product, which is a failure in retail process, not the manufacturer. While it is a bad thing that school aged children are illegal acquiring Juul -- how is this different (or even worse) than Alcohol? We should investigate alcohol vendors for making tasty beverages too. Can't have flavors that adults might like...

There is a combination of events occurring simultaneously that is making it hard for folks to objectively understand the problem, and if there is actually a problem at all.

<comment><USER37> If you don't think fruity flavors target kids as at least collateral damage, will you tell me this is classical marketing aimed at your (adult) age group? [https://s3-prod.adage.com/s3fs- public/styles/width_1024/publ...](https://s3-prod.adage.com/s3fs- public/styles/width_1024/public/20190828_Juul_3x2.jpg)

Also, no nicotine product is (safe). There is no safe amount. In my opinion, we should just work towards a smoke-free future.

The analog to alcohol is a bit of a whataboutism. Just because alcohol is bad, doesn't justify smoking.

<comment><USER38> What is the mechanism by which pure nicotine is harmful, other than a massive overdose (which can easily kill you). As far as I'm aware nicotine itself is no worse than caffeine. If you mean the other chemicals produced by the medium and the combustion process, you should be specific so it doesn't sound like fear mongering. Otherwise I'd be interested in hearing any objective evidence that the nicotine itself is harmful. I have to say though, when people talk about banning things because they believe it's for the greater good, my morality police spidey sense starts tingling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> enahs-sf Given all the problems in this country, somehow this seems like not the highest priority issue.

<comment><USER22> Public health and youth health is always a high priority issue.

<comment><USER39> If that were true, we'd be talking exclusively about cars, opioid drugs, suicide, and gang violence. All other causes of death are rounding errors for this age group.

<comment><USER40> The thing about this age group is they grow up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why can't we ban nicotine?

<comment><USER42> Yeah, because prohibition always works so well.

<comment><USER43> It does - drunk driving accidents and violence caused by alcohol plummeted during prohibition.

<comment><USER44> That was not the only outcome of prohibition...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Honest question: how much of the recent pushback could be attributed to incumbents feeling threatened by Juul et al.?

<comment><USER46> Maybe a better question is who would benefit from Juul failing?

I'm not sure who. I don't think it's big tobacco. They need vaping to addict the next generation. Maybe vaping spend is taking away from another vice.

<comment><USER47> > Maybe a better question is who would benefit from Juul failing?

Public health?

<comment><USER48> It has been proven over and over again that when you ban an addictive substance, the black market and similar-but-still-legal options will rush in to fill the void.

Pushing for transparency, research and more data so adults can make better informed decisions about what to do with their own bodies is the answer. Treating adults like children who aren't mature enough to make their own decisions is not.

<comment><USER47> The massive, decades-long decline in tobacco usage, particularly amongst young people, serves as a strong and _highly_ relevant counterpoint.

Restrictions on advertising, access, and efforts to increase the cost etc. have been quite effective there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Vaping under 18, I get it, you're young and dumb and succumbed to peer pressure. It happened to the best of us. But vaping after 30? It's like they're saying: Hey I want you to take me seriously while I am willfully destroying my body in front of you.

If you don't care about yourself, you can't be trusted to care about anything.

<comment><USER50> Okay. But there's a double standard when it comes to food. Why do fat people get a pass? Why is it legal to eat cheeseburgers and drink soda? The health risks from obesity are statistically just as bad as smoking. It's the leading cause of preventable death in the US. 1/3 of America is obese. It's a larger problem than smoking, statistically.

I don't smoke or vape. But it's a glaring double standard. McDonalds can market to kids, lure them with toys, and people who are 300+ lbs are allowed to eat whatever they want, as much as they want.

Why is it legal for parents to feed a 12 year old Cheetos and Pepsi? It's just as damaging health wise. In my city's public school there are teenagers who have _gout_. Yet nobody cares.

<comment><USER51> Because you have to eat, and eating a Big Mac isn't unhealthy. Eating a Big Mac several times a week is.

You don't have to intake nicotine, at all.

<comment><USER50> > Big Mac isn't unhealthy

Neither is nicotine, necessarily. Neither is smoking if it isn't done long term and on a regular basis. But of course people who eat Big Macs tend to do it more than occasionally.

People don't have to intake sugar. They don't have to intake meat either.

You think I'm being facetious, but I'm dead serious. I've lost one family member to obesity and another suffers from type 2 diabetes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> E-cigs should be banned. Same as cigarettes of any kind. In fact, any airborne addictive substance should be blanked banned.

I used to rent an apartment that had a shared ventilation system. It was a no- smoking building. My neighbors decided to ignore this. The smell would get so bad it would make your head spin. The building management did nothing, because it was hard to prove which neighbor was the culprit. I ultimately had to break the lease & move out.

I don't care if you drink yourself under the table, snort meth on the regular, or whatever other self-destructive habit you choose for yourself. It's your right to be an idiot. But your rights stop the moment they infringe on my right to not part take in your self-destructive habits.

No, we don't need smoking rooms. No, it's not sufficient to ban smoking in public places. None of that has prevented me from coming in contact with nicotine or weed. Just ban it outright. It's really that simple.

Nicotine patches, weed cookies, etc. on the other hand? Those are fine. Go nuts. As long as you leave me out of it.

<comment><USER53> >In fact, any airborne addictive substance should be blanked banned.

So long to baking cookies.

<comment><USER52> Sure, if they emit an addictive airborne substance. Thanks for clarifying.

<comment><USER54> Scent of fresh baked cookies is definitely an addictive airborne substance.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


We are a small app team and we want to build an app for a random entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> https://www.tepia.co/contest/

<comment><AUTHOR> We are a small web and app development team in Orange County, CA. We have launched a few apps and we want to team up with a super entrepreneur and build out their tech business. We are holding a contest and we will choose the most exciting app idea and entrepreneur. Can you guys help share this around the web? Thanks!</comment>


Bruce Schneier's Skein hashing function is now in FreeBSD - <AUTHOR> https://reviews.freebsd.org/D6166 <comment><USER2> Bruce Schneier has done so much for security, including by his ability to explain issues so clearly to the IT community and to the public.

If someone in the community of professional cryptographers and crypto-based security is reading this, what is his position in that community? Is he as prominent? A leader? A leading engineer?

<comment><USER3> This comment by tptacek pretty much answers your question:

"Schneier's career has an interesting arc that is not too dissimilar from that of Eric Raymond, involving early modest-but-significant contributions to the field (cryptologic literature for Schneier, open source software for Raymond), then a marked phase of popularization and evangelism, followed by a full- throttle transition into punditry."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5474372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5474372)

I'm not from the crypto community, but putting Skein into FreeBSD seems a very strange choice, especially because it looks to be motivated by the "Schneier" brand. Apart from SHA-3 (which is already there), BLAKE2 would have been a better alternative.

<comment><USER4> I feel very bad about comparing Schneier to Raymond. It's not a valid comparison. I was less clear on who Raymond was when I made it.

<comment><USER3> :-) Yeah

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why?

<comment><USER5> For ZFS: [https://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2013-Octo...](https://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2013-October/005614.html)

<comment><USER5> Why did a straightforward factual answer, with citation, get downvoted? Y'all confuse me.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: bbox.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jdowner/bbox.js

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, This is a small library I wrote this weekend to scratch an itch. Primarily it allows you to calculate a bounding box for an SVG path but it can also be used to determine the inflection points, so it can be useful for aligning SVG paths (something that is useful to me at the moment).

I decided to put it out on HN because I hope that some of you may find it useful, but I would also love to receive feedback on it (whether you think it is actually _is_ useful and how it can be improved).

Thanks for taking a look!</comment>


Top Books Every .NET Developer Should Own - <AUTHOR> http://www.danylkoweb.com/Blog/top-10-books-every-net-developer-should-own-QG

<comment><USER2> Maybe I'm getting jaded, but if you post a top books list and each book has an amazon referral code it makes me think you posted this to get money and not because it provides any value to people.

I guess the easiest test is to judge the list itself, and in my opinion money grab aside, the list fails on its own merits.

If you think about C# it has 3 good stories, its concurrency, Linq and the .net framework. This list doesn't even try to hit these areas. Instead it goes after tiered cliches like re-factoring and design patterns.

Has anyone read a re-factoring or design patterns book and got anything out of it? I've tried, heck I own a few of the books listed here and I wouldn't recommend it.

Its missing something on concurrency [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920030171.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920030171.do)

Jon Skeet's excellent book on C# [http://www.amazon.ca/C-Depth-Jon- Skeet/dp/161729134X](http://www.amazon.ca/C-Depth-Jon-Skeet/dp/161729134X)

The CLR via C# [http://www.amazon.ca/CLR-via-C-4th- Edition/dp/0735667454](http://www.amazon.ca/CLR-via-C-4th- Edition/dp/0735667454)

Linq in action [http://www.amazon.com/LINQ-Action-Fabrice- Marguerie/dp/19339...](http://www.amazon.com/LINQ-Action-Fabrice- Marguerie/dp/1933988169)

<comment><USER3> You can get a huge amount just from reading the specification which is usually installed with the framework at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC#\Specifications\1033

<comment><USER4> I never knew the spec was there. Isn't the spec documentation outdated ? If I look online, ECMA-334 is at it's 4th edition (June 2006).

<comment><USER5> That's the last time MS submitted C#'s spec to ECMA.

The latest spec is always available online via:

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms228593.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms228593.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know if the intended for the list to be an audience of _experienced_ .NET programmers who _already_ write quality code.

However, he didn't qualify his "top 10" books which one could interpret as the 10 most important for _any_ audience. If that's the interpretation, I propose a much different list which I think is more universal and applicable for a top-10:

Effective C# (Covers C# 4.0): 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#, 2nd Edition, By Bill Wagner

[http://www.informit.com/title/0321658701](http://www.informit.com/title/0321658701)

More Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#, By Bill Wagner

[http://www.informit.com/title/0321485890](http://www.informit.com/title/0321485890)

Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries, 2e, By Krzysztof Cwalina, Brad Abrams

[http://www.informit.com/title/0321545613](http://www.informit.com/title/0321545613)

C# 5.0 in a Nutshell, 5e, The Definitive Reference, By Joseph Albahari, Ben Albahari

[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023951.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023951.do)

Debugging Applications for Microsoft® .NET and Microsoft Windows®, John Robbins (This book is old but one can get more up-to-date info from the free .NET debugging tutorials on channel9.msdn.com)

[http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/5822.aspx](http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/5822.aspx)

[http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/-NET-Debugging-Stater-Kit- fo...](http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/-NET-Debugging-Stater-Kit-for-the- Production-Environment)

Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability

[http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=1171...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=11711)

CLR via C#, 4e, By Jeffrey Richter (If a person on the team is writing low- level foundation components, the knowledge in this book is a must. Otherwise, most C# developers writing line-of-business code can skip it.)

[https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/clr-via-c- sharp-97...](https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/clr-via-c- sharp-9780735667457)

[In other words, I would substitute 7 of the article's suggested top-10 books with the ones above. If education time is limited, I'd rather a developer read the 2 Bill Wagner "Effective C#" books as priority over the Martin Fowler "Patterns" books.]

</comment><comment><USER7> So, I get the idea behind this list and there are great things to cover in the books included and most of the topics are not just for .net devs, they are pretty generally applicable.

I am not in the camp that you need to own books to understand topics. Read blog posts, write sample programs, cruise through stack overflow for common nuggets of wisdom. Piece things together yourself. This has mirrored my day to day practice more closely, rather than cranking through a tome in hardcopy.

There are some books that are genuinely interesting reads; Code Complete, SICP etc. But not a lot of the professional development books you see (or are on this list) are worth the money.

Also, not included on this list and was genuinely a book I referred to a lot when I was learning (though I now realize most of the information is available directly from microsoft) was CLR via C# by Richter.

</comment><comment><USER8> Since the topic was ".Net" and not "enterprisey web stuff" \- my list of top ten .Net books would include "Expert F#" by Don Syme et. all. and Sestoft's "Programming language concepts for developers"([http://books.google.fi/books/about/Programming_Language_Conc...](http://books.google.fi/books/about/Programming_Language_Concepts.html?id=YeJL2kechd8C&redir_esc=y)). To me, these are .Net's K&R and SICP.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very web/enterprise-focused, and heavy on "design patterns", most of which are usually OO-patterns, that is, are patterns used to ease the pain of OO, and as such only apply to C#/VB devs. At least the GoF book wasn't listed.

Periodic reminder that not all developers work on web things.

<comment><USER4> I don't think design patterns only apply to C#/VB devs ... A lot of C# patterns are easily usable in Java.

<comment><USER9> Correct, I only referred to .NET so listed the (major).NET OO langs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ok, this list is bull, doesn't apply to .Net, one could read books about Java and end-up with the same knowledge in the end.

CLR through C# is really more important for my field.

<comment><USER11> I think the author is implying that there's a lot of .NET devs out there that don't have sound computer science backgrounds, or formally trained in OO, or work on projects with minimal patterns knowledge, etc.

I think this is half-true: it probably depends on the company, the verticle, how much the company has a tech focus, etc...

EDIT: And he also mentions his thoughts on "a language is a language is a language" futher implying that the language is easy. Writing good maintainable code is hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One book that was quite helpful for me was "ASYNC IN C# 5" by Alex Davies. It is quite concise.</comment>


Socialize: Unleash the Community Hidden In Your App (sneak peek) - <AUTHOR> http://www.GetSocialize.com

<comment><USER2> Interesting, looks pretty neat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - would love comments & feedback. We'll be launching with hundreds of AppMakr-made apps running Socialize soon.</comment></comment>


Is Java to Blame for Sun Layoffs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Is-Java-to-Blame-for-Sun-Layoffs/

<comment><USER2> Yes. Not so much particular qualities of Java, but that for several critical years in the 90s they focused on Java as if it was going to save them (to the point of changing their stock symbol) and ignored glaring fundamental flaws in their business model.

<comment><USER3> Well they can't call themselves SUNW anymore as right now they only sell _one_ Sun Workstation, the Ultra 24, and despite the name it isn't even SPARC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> After the recent high-profile scandals Sun ought to be flogging SunRays to the UK govt. like hotcakes. That alone could save them, and I'll take Sun over EDS any day of the week for my taxes thankyou very much.</comment>


Ask HN: Recruiter says that I've interviewed but I haven't. What do I do? - <AUTHOR> Recently, I applied for a position at Scribd through Hacker News thread.
Recruiter: Thanks for applying to Scribd, we appreciate the time and effort it takes to apply. We have received your application and will review it right away. We do our best to respond within 1 business day but you will get a response either way.
~ After few days ~
Me: Any updates?
Recruiter: Hi, you applied and interviewed last month so we considered your application a duplicate and I don't generally send rejection emails to duplicates.
Me: There's a high probability that you confused me with some other person. Because I have never interviewed with your company.
Recruiter: You have. I have your application and my notes from our phone call. Our ATS tracks by email, you have 100% applied.
Me: Can you please share the notes or the emails?
~ Haven't heard back from her yet ~
I am 100% sure that I haven't interviewed with them. Has anything like this happened to you ever? <comment><USER2> I would bypass the recruiter and email or call the engineering team.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking of doing the same.

<comment><USER3> Then just do it. Recruiter will have absolutely no say if engineering will decide to hire you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Use a different email.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if someone saved interview notes with another candidate under your name.</comment>


The Open Syllabus Project - <AUTHOR> http://opensyllabusproject.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> I don't think there's an API and the explorer function is rather limited (so as not to expose "private" sullabi).

Here's an example question this project can help answering: Do non elite schools incorporate new, or non-mainstream, material quicker than elite schools?

</comment><comment><USER2> Does anyone else see a wonderful watchdog project for formally/publicly identifying inept instructors and professors coming out of this?Or is that just foolish optimism on my part?

<comment><USER3> Why would it be more effective than peer and student review? I'm not saying that those are effective systems on their own (the bigger argument is whether academia is interested in "watchdog" regulation of instructional quality, which I would argue, "No")...but I don't think too many people are going to be enthusiastic about "ineptness" being quantified by what's found on a syllabus.

It'd be like writing a tool that evaluated developers based on what languages or libraries they used, as found on their Github repos.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Question data can help answer: Are similar courses taught in two (or more) disciplines?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Find items that begin life in the syllabi of one discipline and migrate to a different discipline.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.producthunt.com/tech/the-open-syllabus- project](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/the-open-syllabus-project)</comment>


A collaborative step-by-step guide to build habits - <AUTHOR> https://myelin.io/build-habits <comment><AUTHOR> I've been playing around with a new format to create step-by-step guides. It's a way to optimize how we approach something we want to learn, know where to start, and the best resources to use. I'd love your support in trying it out. This is how you can help: 1) If you think there is a better way to break down 'how we build habits', you can create a new learning list. If you like learning steps in other learning list you can drag and drop them to your list. 2) If you think the structure is good, but certain learning steps suck, then you can click on 'alternatives to this learning step', and submit your own take on it.</comment>


Listen to the crazy sound of Tesla Semi electric truck prototype accelerating - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2018/09/22/tesla-semi-electric-truck-prototype-crazy-sound-accelerating/ <comment><USER2> That's going to turn heads everywhere if it stays sounding like that. Sort of like a turbo charged sports car take off.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like an variable frequency drive in combination with tire noise. Youtube has some good videos on how VFDs sound like.

Are there any detailed specs on how Tesla controls the electric motor(s) in the truck? AC, DC, controller types,etc..?

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it me or it's a pretty standard sound of a pretty mundane electric train engine vagon accelerating?</comment>


Istanbul Airport: Everything Is Ready at Istanbul Airport for a Safe Travel - sahin-boydas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huIEcYZntwg&feature=youtu.be <comment><AUTHOR> Lol, I wonder what the throughput will be with all this extra spacing. Maybe the "take off your shoes" gang will have to let up a bit to maintain the proper distancing.

Here's a conundrum for air travelers: are you all more scared of the terrists or the ChinaFlu?</comment>


The House That Carving Built - <AUTHOR> https://bittersoutherner.com/2020/the-house-that-carving-built-brasstown-carvers-john-c-campbell-folk-school <comment><USER2> I have a new addiction to stone carvings from trips to Africa and India. Expensive shipping, but not something I find in the mall. The depth of skill in carving is is quite spectacular. It is one thing to make an animal, but I am impressed by the skill of an artist to create a lifelike pose, facial expression, claws, teeth and muscles. Even more so as they express ideas and emotions through abstract sculpture.

<comment><USER3> I got into stone carving for a while when I was working at a granite shop. Any time we got some soap stone or onyx I'd grab a chunk and make pipes, jewelry and animals and stuff.

I was never able to do things like this

>to create a lifelike pose, facial expression, claws, teeth and muscles

But it's a really fun relaxing hobby. The feeling of shaping a piece of stone with some tools is really like nothing else.

It makes you feel connected with the earliest days of humanity. You can picture thousands of years ago, someone doing something not so very different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't recommend Bitter Southerner enough. To anyone who cares about or is just interested in the American South, check out the rest of their content and podcast.

[https://bittersoutherner.com/we-are-bitter](https://bittersoutherner.com/we- are-bitter)

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for posting this. It's made me wonder just how many amazing resources like this might be tucked away and unnoticed around the country. Other than word of mouth, just how do people find out about things like carving classes?

<comment><USER6> I'm just getting into the hobby of woodcarving myself. There are some online classes but most of them charge a small subscription fee. If I were looking for an in-person class these are probably good places to look and/or ask, they appear to be the biggest communities:

old.reddit.com/r/woodcarving forum.woodcarvingillustrated.com

There are also a ton of free tutorials on Youtube that are pretty good.

<comment><USER5> The part of the article that was really appealing was the discussion of the classes. It sounds like wood carving was the reason for the class, but socializing was a big part of why people came back.

<comment><USER6> Yea it sounded like a really good program. If I were able to I'd like to abandon everything for 5 weeks to go there like the author.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If this interests you, I strongly recommend visiting the Warther Museum[0] in Ohio.

[0] - [https://thewarthermuseum.com/collection](https://thewarthermuseum.com/collection)

<comment><USER8> They make quite good kitchen knives, as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Folk schools in the US are great and they seem to be little known outside a small circle of enthusiasts. I encourage anyone interested in music, crafts and home economics (in the Wendell Berry sense of the phrase) to seek them out!

<comment><USER6> I had never even heard of them. Glad someone posted this article its very interesting. I wonder if there are any around me in WV.

<comment><USER10> Penland School of Craft is in the hills outside Ashland, NC. I went as a plus one on my sister who was instructing in the metals studio. It was a wonderful experience.

I'm also aware of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, but that's up in Maine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Erzgebirge in the then-East Germany had a strong export market for wood carvings.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_pyramid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_pyramid)</comment>


Ask HN: What car do you drive? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> 2005 legacy. I wanted the AWD for going to the snow, and I got it really cheap because the check engine light was on and it had error codes that looked scary but I knew i could fix. Working on a car is therapeutic after coding I find. Does everything I want, and is essentially not worth insuring. When i was younger and stupider I bought nice cars, if i'm honest it was probably so people knew how much money I made. The thing about expensive cars though, is once you're in it, it doesn't really matter how much it cost. They all do the same thing. And how often do any of us rev our engine above 4k RPM? So how powerful it is doesn't matter either. Installed a DVD head unit in the legacy so I could use Bluetooth music from my phone on long drives, and a reversing camera because I don't want to reverse over somebodies child.

It's funny because my wife hates it compared to the new cars we used to own, not because they were expensive, just because they never needed me to fix them, I think she finds the idea of having to pull stuff apart to ensure they keep running a bit scary. I love it compared to the new cars though, I like how much work I have done to it, everything from replacing O2 sensors to re soldering circuit boards. I think if you work in software, you need a hands on hobby to stop yourself going insane.

</comment><comment><USER3> Right now the answer is "I don't" since both of my cars are b0rked. But I own a Ford Expedition that I originally bought mainly so I could put a bike rack on it and haul my mountain bike, cooler, toolbox, etc. around for mountain biking. My other car is a Mazda RX-8, but when it needed work, I parked it and started driving the Expedition full-time until I blew the engine in it. When that happened, I decided to just go car-less for a while, and walk/bike/Uber/Lyft/bus everywhere for a while. "A while" has turned into over a year now.

All of that said, I plan to order a pre-rebuilt long-block engine and have swapped into the truck, since not having it to haul my bike around is annoying. I'll probably fix the RX-8 at some point as well, but there's no real timetable on it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use Uber for the most part: I'm outsourcing dealing with LA traffic to my driver and I get more time to work on my business (laptop and mobile phone hotspot).

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't drive. I have no need for a car.

</comment><comment><USER6> 2009 Saab 9-3 BioPower (etanol). Why do you ask? :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> 2015 Toyota Highlander XLE

</comment><comment><USER8> 2007 Infiniti G35x

</comment><comment><USER9> 2008 BMW X5</comment>


How Steady Can Wind Power Blow? - <AUTHOR> http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/30/how-steady-can-the-wind-blow/ <comment><AUTHOR> Regarding how they look: am I the only one that thinks wind turbines can be beautiful? I would consider this a beautiful landscape: [http://c1cleantechnicacom.wpengine.netdna- cdn.com/files/2011...](http://c1cleantechnicacom.wpengine.netdna- cdn.com/files/2011/10/SiemensWindTurbines.jpg)

<comment><USER2> Perhaps from far away; up close all I see is deep cuts to run asphalt and dirt shoulders that are going to churn up mud every time it rains.

It's not necessarily that turbines are ugly, to me it's the infrastructure necessary to support the turbines that is ugly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great but it does conspicuously leave out one major point of contention with wind power which is their visual impact. Sometimes noise too. Offshore projects have been fought and canceled over this issue. And it looks like the key focus of this article, the 60% capacity, is only achievable if the turbines get even bigger:

 _> The average new wind turbine in the US is 80 meters tall at its hub. NREL looks at what capacity factors could be reached with 110 meter tall and 140 meter tall wind turbines._

Additionally it looks to on-shore sites primarily in the Midwest where it's really flat and so these monster turbines could be seen for miles. I would certainly hope people are cool with it considering how green a power source it is, but I thought it was a bit odd that such an in-depth piece left out one of the biggest obstacles to wind power growth.

<comment><USER4> > Additionally it looks to on-shore sites primarily in the Midwest where it's > really flat and so these monster turbines could be seen for miles. I would > certainly hope people are cool with it considering how green a power source > it is, but I thought it was a bit odd that such an in-depth piece left out > one of the biggest obstacles to wind power growth.

Farmers I've spoken to absolutely love turbines; they receive a lease payment annually for each one on their property.

Now, if we're going to complain about "eyesores" through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Oklahoma, perhaps we could address the _actual deaths_ that coal causes first.

<comment><USER3> So, I'm not saying it's good that people object to them. But they do. And just stating that they _shouldn 't_ mind large on-shore wind farms isn't going to fix that. Nor is stating that people _who are paid_ to host them like them. Nor is stating that they're less of an eyesore than coal mines when these people can't see the coal mines in the first place.

An in-depth exploration of the expansion of wind power really should address this obstacle too, because it's just as big as the technical aspects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Makani Power ([https://www.google.com/makani/](https://www.google.com/makani/)) positions itself as obtaining more power at 250-350m but perhaps a more important metric is obtaining higher "capacity factors" (i.e. more reliable).

</comment><comment><USER6> Wind is not a practical power generation source. It also has the added drawback of ruining the most scenic and untouched parts of our environment.

Accept that only nuclear and solar meet the needs of consumers and move forward.

<comment><USER7> Texas currently has 14 GW of wind generation and another 11 GW coming online over the next 2 years. Seems practical enough.

<comment><USER4> I'm honestly surprised states hit by the fracking slowdown (North Dakota and Texas) aren't retraining oil workers to install wind farms. Its safer for them, the work is going to be there for at least a decade, its just the financing we need to get together (y u no DOE energy loan!?)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does a start-up team find off-site contracting work (web or mobile?) - <AUTHOR>

Inquiring minds want to know... <comment><USER2> It's easy to find contracting work that's more single contractor focused on the job boards. I'm not sure which boards, if any, are more geared explicitly toward contracts more friendly to teams.</comment>


China Sees the World and How We Should See China - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/mcmaster-china-strategy/609088/ <comment><USER2> Great article! Really summarized the "why" behind China's actions.

This part certainly got my attention:

 _In 2014 and then again in 2017, the party declared that all Chinese companies must collaborate in gathering intelligence. "Any organization or citizen," reads Article 7 of China's National Intelligence Law, "shall support, assist with, and collaborate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law, and keep the secrets of the national intelligence work known to the public."_

<comment><USER3> Now go read the USA Cloud Act.

<comment><USER2> What about it?

 _Primarily the CLOUD Act amends the Stored Communications Act (SCA) of 1986 to allow federal law enforcement to compel U.S.-based technology companies via warrant or subpoena to provide requested data stored on servers regardless of whether the data are stored in the U.S. or on foreign soil._

The key distinction here is "via warrant or subpoena".

Being able to challenge the legality of a warrant or subpoena means the government does not have a free hand.

Big distinction.

<comment><USER3> You need to include in your evaluation of the state of the rule of law that in 2013, a top-secret order issued by the FISA court, which was later leaked to the media from documents culled by Edward Snowden, required a subsidiary of Verizon to provide a daily, on-going feed of all call detail records—including those for domestic calls—to the NSA.

Now they can just do it worldwide.

Small distinction

<comment><USER2> The US requires all warrants and subpoenas to go in front of an independent judge.

China just says "give me the data".

Big distinction.

<comment><USER3> What is an independent judge? The government selects the judge and all proceedings are in camera and you cannot event tell anyone that you ever got the NSL.

There is a lot of theatre to look like judicial independence, but at the end the US government also just says "give me the data".

You, presumable a citizen or resident, have absolutely no idea what data has been asked for and given by the FISA court.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What cryptocurrencies are worthwhile to invest into in 2018? - <AUTHOR> I do realize it's hard to tell for these type of things. But let's say you got 1000$ to invest on cryptocurrencies, which ones would you choose? Would you use everything up, on one currency or divide it up onto many? <comment><USER2> I would think best to split up amongst a few at least, I like to aim for coins with a definite real world use, and avoid POW coins as I think their days are numbered.

Hard not to like Stellar Lumens with the IBM connection, working tech and real world use already happening.

Universa issues today, it seems they aim to take on Mastercard and Visa, if true worth a punt in my opinion.

TEL aims to internationalise the MPesa branchless banking system which works via mobile phone - there are 1.5B bank accounts and 5B phones in the world, the gap is the potential.

Disclaimer: I have been wrong many times before.

</comment><comment><USER3> if you are going to invest $1000 then diversify across a bunch of coins in which you understand (or can pretend to understand) the technology and potential use cases. Then after purchasing and storing them securely forget about them and set yourself a reminder to check them in November.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you want to make a "mutual fund" so to speak I would suggest looking at the top 25 by market cap and investing some in each one. Keep in mind the top 25 by cap will change every so often so I would check back every month and re- allocate.</comment>


Programming an Android app – 17 months in 5 blog posts - <AUTHOR> http://www.vartmp.com/dev/wallpapers.html <comment><USER2> Side note, but wondering if you still hold the same view on bitcoin as you did in 2013? What about blockchain and other cryptos? Thanks!</comment>


Show HN: Windows XP screensaver replica built with Three.js and React - <AUTHOR> https://www.mixfont.com/screensaver <comment><USER2> Works great on mobile devices too! Thanks for sharing!</comment>


Duct tape saved Apollo 17 moonbuggy, while on the moon - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/21/duct-tape-saved-apol.html <comment><USER2> They should have told the real reason they brought duct tape aboard Apollo 17 - in case there was a screaming baby in the row behind them.</comment>


Aurous offers to give up the fight, but the RIAA fights on - <AUTHOR> http://www.completemusicupdate.com/article/aurous-offers-to-give-up-the-fight-but-the-riaa-fights-on/ <comment><AUTHOR> > _Though, despite all this tough talk, Sampson's lawyers apparently added: > "Our clients are willing to transfer control of the Aurous domain and > anything else you may require, including closing the site and all operations > (which may have been done already), provide access to their Github and > social media accounts as early as tomorrow" if the RIAA would agree to > settle and call off the litigation._

Sorry, but once you poke the very litigous RIAA with a stick (and "accidentally" open source the code on GitHub), I'm pretty sure they will do everything possible to set an example for others. I'm not saying it's right to be vindictive, but I can kind of see their line of reasoning. Sampson somehow, to me, was being a more unsympathetic character than the RIAA, and that takes some hubris.</comment>


Always In Startup Mode - <AUTHOR> http://arcware.net/always-in-startup-mode/

<comment><USER2> A few thoughts:

1) Prioritization: since there's never is enough time for one or one's team to do it all, figuring out what you can get the most bang for the buck (in your interpretation of ROI) is critical.

2) Keeping ideas alive: because of prioritization, sometimes one can't put much effort behind and idea or project that has promise, but is lower on the priority list. Keep feeding that idea/project, even if it means having another person or team carry it. Some great results have come from some things I couldn't commit to myself, but others were able to.

3) Balance: the startup mindset can lead to a lot of creativity and productivity. But try to keep a good balance with your personal life (whatever a good balance means for you: 80-20, 50-50, etc).

4) Itch persists: it's so true, after one's created something, and that something has reached an operational stage, being a creative person, the itch to create something else will become stronger with time until you can't resist it. Being unable to act on the creative urge is highly frustrating.</comment>


TCP/IP networking stack in pure OCaml - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mirage/mirage-tcpip <comment><USER2> OCaml is king.</comment>


Ask HN: How to prove I'm right? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
Here is the situation, I'm a grad student of 2011, and even before the graduation I didn't liked the idea of working for someone, I want to work for myself even if I get smaller salary. But everyone around me (family and friends) think I'm either stupid or crazy (maybe you too), and they do everything possible to prove it, I stopped applying for jobs months ago, but they started applying in my place, till now no problem, but if I get a job interview, problems will rain.
I applied for YC S12, I know that YC is one step forward, but for me it's a giant boost, as it can show them that I'm in the right path, and if I'm not accepted in this cycle, I won't give up because it's not me, but I'm afraid they could get into my head with their consistency (there is many of them and one of me).
So now, I don't want to prove they are wrong, but I want to prove I'm right, how can I do it?
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Everybody who wants to run their own business runs into this. It's against the normal path of going to college and getting a good job.

They will only stop when you are making as much or more than you would make at a regular job.

</comment><comment><USER3> Show them results.

That's probably the only way they'll be convinced</comment>