Feds Mistakenly Shut Down Popular Blog For Over A Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/08225217010/breaking-news-feds-falsely-censor-popular-blog-over-year-deny-all-due-process-hide-all-details.shtml <comment><USER2> If you're not familiar with hip-hop music blogs like the one cited in the article, please visit <http://nahright.com> or <http://missinfo.tv> to get a better idea of what they look like (since dajaz1.com doesn't seem to be back up yet, understandably).

Almost every track posted to sites like these are released by the artists themselves (or by their labels). Many hip-hop blogs (including the two I linked) will not post songs if they weren't legitimately authorized by the artists (e.g. if a track was stolen and leaked on the web).

Something you won't ever see are full albums. These sites aren't designed to replace album sales, they actually encourage them. They will only link to individual songs or freely released mixtapes.

(Also, you'll note that a lot of the music posted is from unsigned artists. A lot of newer rappers actually rose to prominence _after_ having their music posted on these sites.)

There are many, many sites that willingly infringe on copyright and the government has good reason for shutting down. This was not one of them.

PS. For more information on how music gets released to these blogs, read this excellent piece, also by Techdirt:

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101222/02112912376/more-b...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101222/02112912376/more- bigger-mistakes-discovered-homeland-securitys-domain-seizures.shtml)

<comment><USER3> _Almost every track posted to sites like these are released by the artists themselves (or by their labels)._

How would an outside copyright enforcer know that? In a world where companies send takedowns to YouTube over videos _that they uploaded_ , it seems like it's not enough to be legal — sites need a way to _prove_ that they're posing authorized content.

<comment><USER4> _How would an outside copyright enforcer know that?_

Well, for one, there is no such thing as "an outside copyright enforcer." The only people allowed to complain at all about a song's presence on a website are the people who own the copyright. That's it.

<comment><USER5> Apparently the seizure was facilitated by a complaint and affidavit from the RIAA, even though the website kept scrupulous records of permission to post songs directly from the labels.

<comment><USER4> Which tells us that processes and remedies that were effectively written _entirely by the industry_ will still be abused by that industry.

<comment><USER6> What makes you think this isn't entirely intentional? I mean if an industry writes processes and remedies, isn't it reasonable to assume that to any reasonable outside, they will abuse them?

<comment><USER4> For whatever reason, it's good to know for the future. That is, it's probably a good thing to remember when future legislation (like today's new SOPA) comes up. I totally agree that the whole industry-written legislation Thing is lame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Weird, the way the government said they had a secret court extension, but couldn't even give a redacted copy. It almost sounds like they _didn't_ have a court extension, and were lying that they did, and eventually had to hand the domain back out of sheer embarrassment.

<comment><USER8> Sure. Usually if you give embarrassing people the runaround, they eventually go away.

It was, admittedly, _way_ too optimistic for the government to assume _every_ seized domain would work this way. But for them to assume this one specific one would work that way is actually depressingly likely.

Governments illegally seize stuff all the time, especially when investigating anything drug-related. They can seize and auction off your stuff basically even on suspicion of it being bought with drug money.

What happens if it wasn't? Well, they owe you money back if your lawyer is good enough to make that happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It always amazes me how quickly abuses of power seem to occur once such power is enabled. I always expect that at first the recipients of the power will be very cautious, bound by the social norms and expectations set by the previous situation, and it will take many years or even decades for the abuses we complain about to actually happen. However it doesn't seem to work like that. Abuses seem to happen almost immediately the minute it is possible for them to occur.

It's almost comforting in a way - at least truly terrible laws don't just slip in unnoticed and get established without us noticing. Their bad effects get manifested almost straight away.

<comment><USER10> The system is so very large, and it only takes one person to make one decision - in this case, a single federal prosecutor or his boss who decided he wanted to charge this case - to decide to utilize their power. You don't hear about the thousands of other prosecutors who use appropriate discretion, and don't file inappropriate charges/motions.

<comment><USER11> If the system were constructed such that it took two persons to make the decision to commit an abuse of power, perhaps it wouldn't be such an abusive system.

<comment><USER12> You are very cute and innocent, like a child.

<comment><USER11> Heh. It wouldn't be perfect. But if the system of N people has C < N people who will make or approve corrupt decisions, and each person had to have 1 randomly chosen person sign off on each possibly corrupt decision, you go from C/N chance of a randomly chosen decision being a corrupt one to a (C/N)^2 chance. If the system has a relatively low percentage of corrupt people, that could be a big win.

If C is too large, you could improve the scheme by adding another sign-off to increase it to (C/N)^3, as well as by punishing the original requester and anybody who approves along the way when a corrupt decision is caught.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What I don't understand is why a meeting with the government lawyer was the final action and why what they say matters? What prevents the blog owner from filing a suit to get the property returned? The government failed to provide proof that they were legally in possession of the property. File a suit to get the property back and then they have to produce the legal order allowing them to keep it. I know money might be a major factor in this but the article's author acts like there was nothing else that could have been done.

<comment><USER14> It seems like lawsuits work on about a ~1 year latency scale too, so I don't see how that would improve the situation. The site owner had counsel, and they chose the best mechanism they could see to get the result they wanted. And ultimately they did. The courts don't work quickly, sadly.

<comment><USER15> There's also a good chance that after the lawyer was first stonewalled, he saw a bigger lawsuit opportunity down the road if it persisted. And it did. I still expect civil action against the government to be on the way.

<comment><USER6> I doubt the government can be sued, but maybe the attorney involved?

<comment><USER16> Of course you can sue the government, the question is for what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Serious question. This article seems to be about censorship and the First Amendment. The opening paragraph equates this to a magazine being shut down and the printing presses seized. But I don't think this hip-hop blog was saying something the government wanted to stop. I don't get why the prevalent "bad thing" the government did is being called censorship.

Isn't the real story the government put a company out of business for no reason? They took a "top 10" website in a category and shut it down for a year, allowing their competitors an unfair advantage. No due process, no communication, not even a case number. They picked a random company and put it out of business.

I guess that's not protected by the constitution.

<comment><USER18> _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 shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor _be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law_ ; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

U.S. Constitution, 5th Amendment

<comment><USER19> We abandoned the plain meaning of the constitution a long, long time ago.

Sadly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This happened in a different way to me. They didn't take my domain; they threatened my ISP and they deleted everything on my domain, include six other sites that lived there - the music blog was a subdomain.

The thing I couldn't believe was that I'd never posted a track I hadn't gotten approved by the artist; I'd estimate 70% was sent to me by promoters, artists, or the label themselves. If it wasn't, it was likely found on another blog and I only let readers download content that was available for free from the artist themselves.

Totally ridiculous. Trying to get a response for their grounds was impossible, and I eventually had to switch ISPs and rebuild all my sites.

<comment><USER21> That's awful. What kind of response did you get when trying to prove them wrong? Did you talk only to your ISP or someone from the government?

<comment><USER20> Yeah, it was a pretty huge pain in the ass. I hammered the CEO of the ISP and he gave me some boiler plate response. Honestly, I'm running a startup and the music blog is a fun side project so I didn't pursue it. I sent word to some of the other bloggers that I know have high traffic like I did and that I know share downloadable content. I wanted to know if I was behaving differently than they were, and I wasn't. They were all pretty nervous about the whole thing.

Music blogger in general are huge proponents of driving money to artists; either by putting them on the map or literally driving sales. If you're lucky enough to collect attention on the aggregators you can be pretty sure that your posts will get traffic, so finding a young band with little exposure is hugely gratifying.

Then the record label gorilla lawyers get in the way. Really sad state of affairs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's obvious to me that as time goes by, governments are going to want to shut down more and more internet services for whatever reason.

It seems to me that the thing that is needed most is an even-more distributed internet system, so that things like DNS and ISPs cannot be controlled by governments.

A peer-to-peer DNS system and someway of easily setting yourself up as an ISP would mean that this type of intervention would be impossible.

<comment><USER23> P2P DNS exists. One implementation is Namecoin. I've heard of ideas of making a large mesh network with people's Wi-Fi routers, but there are many technical hurdles to overcome there, though it should be workable, if excruciatingly slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Mistakenly implies that it wasn't a direct result of policy and an inherently malicious protocol of operations. This, in my opinion, was not a mistake, but rather the result of systemic incompetence and technical illiteracy on the part of the US government. The ladder climbers that pulled this off are headed straight to a nice private job just as soon as they get done making a name for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER25> I am really shocked and disturbed by this article. From reading it I believe that this is a total violation of the trust towards the Government and the whole legal system.

The lack of due process is what is most disturbing. Someone (the Government in this case) can accuse one of a crime, but they have to prove it. Hijacking a domain and not producing evidence on why it was hijacked and not following the proper procedure which is outlined by the law and finally hiding behind the Government blanket of 'no' is simply wrong and must not be allowed to happen again.

To me this read as abuse of power by certain employees of the Government. Not allowing due process is illegal and I hope that Dajaz1's lawyers will get to the bottom of this.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is outrageous. If you aren't doing something about it, you are tacitly approving of it.

You could, quite literally, have your domain taken away tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER27> The techdirt article repeatedly makes reference to seizure laws as they apply to confiscated PROPERTY. Is there legal precedence for the blog to immediately assume that such laws apply to digital domains, where nothing physical was confiscated?

<comment><USER28> Digital media is not physical property, but i can still download a song and be accused of stealing somebody's property.

<comment><USER29> Legally speaking, no, you can't. If you download a song illegally, you might be accused of copyright infringement, which ironically carries stiffer penalties than just stealing the record would in many cases, but you will not be charged with theft unless they also suspect you stole something physical.

<comment><USER30> Downloading songs usually isn't charged that way. Usually the uploaders are charged with violating copyright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is there a complete lack of quotes on the record in that article? I see the lawyer's name for dajaz1.com but no quotes from him, no owner is named, no quotes from him... Just sayin'.

Everything is not right here. This is pretty basic stuff though, an accused man deserves to face his accusers, who is accused? The whole story is just better when there is an actual victim of the government tyranny. I expect it has something to do with payola but .... the feds will never defend themselves and who knows how much traffic this site is going to get now.

</comment><comment><USER32> The right to innocence until proven given guilty is quite fundamental to our legal system, and laws like SOPA and Protect IP go against that very ideal. Right now these laws that take away these fundamental freedoms are only in the copyright domain, but if these laws stand, I'm assuming they could be used as a precedent and used to justify other laws that take away the presumption of innocence. I'm not a lawyer, but this is what these laws seem to be heading towards.

</comment><comment><USER33> IANAL, but this sounds like they didn't have a very good lawyer.

<comment><USER26> Not the case. Andrew Bridges was at the Stanford Law Center's SOPA talk last night. He knows his law inside and out and was all over this. The government messed up here and tried to bury it. Because he didn't go away that this is coming out.

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure if I'm happy to hear he is indeed good. That is even more troubling.

I would expect lawyers to have some kind of recourse if things obviously are not going the way the law intended them to, instead of simply getting "no" for an answer. But IANAL.

<comment><USER26> It just takes time, unfortunately. This story is still developing. The domain owner needed to get his domain back first, and foremost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> And people wonder why we have no faith in The System..

</comment><comment><USER35> I'd like to see a peer-2-peer DNS system take over. Now go and shut this down.

</comment><comment><USER36> "Mistakenly"?

</comment><comment><USER37> Someday, perhaps populists and socialists will realize that the very structure of American government combined with our culture leads to complete incompetence in government. We are better off with every power we take away from them.

<comment><USER38> Or could it be that it's exactly this sort of reflexive government-bashing that makes it easy for the general public to elect fools and charlatans? After all, if government is the problem, why would people bother electing representatives who take governing seriously? Heck of a job, Brownie.

Regardless, I think your thesis is false. A lot of the powers we've taken away from government lately (regulation of financial services, regulation of financial markets, regulation of campaign contributions) have made us worse off, and specifically have made it easier for RIAA to buy legislation like this.

<comment><USER39> _regulation of financial services, regulation of financial markets_

This isn't going to be rehashing the Glass-Steagall myth, is it? See, e.g., [1]

 _regulation of campaign contributions_

Isn't this in itself a repudiation of democracy? We're not talking here about Blagojevich-style corruption in the election process. If you're worrying about campaign contributions, that boils down to how much advertising a campaign can buy. If you're worried about a candidate advertising a lot, that's pretty much a vote of no-confidence in your fellow Americans' ability to weigh options and vote rationally.

Also, if you're one of those people horrified that corporations can now contribute to campaigns, can you tell me where the line _should_ be drawn? I'm sure you don't object to my right to contribute to a campaign, nor my right to pool money with a friend to do so. If two of us can do so, why not, say, my whole club (e.g., my hypothetical flying club wants to have elected the guy who promises to grant a permit to expand the airport in town)? As this scales up, at some point we need a formal structure to organize things, which is legally recognized by a corporation; why can't my _incorporated_ flying club make a contribution?

[1] <http://blog.heritage.org/2008/09/22/the-glass-steagall-myth/>

<comment><USER4> Heritage Foundation...really?

<comment><USER40> Attack their argument, not the source.

<comment><USER41> Ok, corporate donations are not linked to what everyone inside a corporation decides but rather a small set of people whose interest don't necessarily align with the shareholders or the workers at large. Handing disproportionate power to middlemen breeds corruption without the counterbalance of risking large personal fortunes or publicity.

This same argument also disproves the idea of giving personal tax breaks on large incomes as apposed to corporate tax breaks for small businesses. AKA middle management don't create jobs so tax breaks targeting 'job creators' that include them are misnamed.

Edit: The above is a position piece just like those people at the Heritage Foundation are paid to create. There is nothing wrong with suggesting you find credible sources that are not simply spouting propaganda.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> And remember, there is a document advising you might be a terrorist if you have more than seven days of food onhand.

Oh that guideline would never be abused, would it?

<comment><USER43> [citation needed]

Brief searching online only turns up people talking about this document, but I can't seem to find it. Are you sure it exists?

<comment><USER44> That's one of the less obvious reasons that secret proceedings, secret rules, and the like are bad. They make it harder to discredit conspiracy theorists. "Well, if they kept the seizure proceedings secret for a year, maybe the seven days of food rule is secret too".</comment></comment></comment>


Topological modeling for the space of features vs. the set of rows - <AUTHOR> https://www.ayasdi.com/blog/machine-intelligence/machine-intelligence-statistical-inference-human-interpretation-data/ <comment><USER2> I agree with the blog posting: "One of the criticisms of machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches to the study of data is that both are "black box" technologies, which can provide useful automated answers but which do not provide human interpretable output, and for which it is often not possible to understand how they are doing what they are doing."

Ayasdi may have cracked that problem!</comment>


Fancy coffee becomes a must-have office perk - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/c4bb494e-cef6-11e9-99a4-b5ded7a7fe3f <comment><AUTHOR> Non-paywalled: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190919022813/https://www.ft.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190919022813/https://www.ft.com/content/c4bb494e-cef6-11e9-99a4-b5ded7a7fe3f)</comment>


I Just Took the World's First 20-Hour Flight. Here's What It Did to Me - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-19/i-just-took-the-world-s-first-20-hour-flight-here-s-what-it-did-to-me <comment><USER2> *in business class on a controlled flight only for human testers and media members.

This just reads like an ad to me.

<comment><USER3> No question that this idea would be pure hell on a cramped plane in cattle- class. There's even mention in the article that, yes, the plane can manage the flight, but even with a full fuel load they can't spare the weight of more passengers and cargo. It seems completely disconnected from the real world, which, okay, it's mostly science at this stage and looking at severe jet lag from such a long flight. The implication is that it's nowhere near ready for the masses and is a curiosity at best.

The most I've managed on a plane is a 12-hour flight from London to Hong Kong, and that's enough. Nobody will be able to afford beds on such a flight except the ultra-rich, and that's assuming you can sleep on planes at all (I can't). In an era where fossil fuel emissions are dangerously damaging the planet, this is also a strange time to unveil such a concept as we need to fly less. On the other hand, versus a a stopover flight, if you're flying this distance, doing it in one go is much more fuel-efficient as the plane spends far longer in the upper atmosphere reducing drag, and only burns take-off fuel once. But this isn't something that needs to be offered to the masses if there genuinely is a market for it.

Even if a 20-hour-long flight was completely harmless to both physical health and the environment, I cannot think of anything I would rather do less than sit in a tin can at 40,000 feet for that duration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps it would be imperative to tag paywalled or registration-walled links' titles?

<comment><USER5> Agree, very insulting</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your entertainment setup? - <AUTHOR>

Designing & maintaining systems, building interfaces, implementing algorithms or just writing code for no particular reason are lots of fun - we all know that. But every now and then it feels great to just relax on the couch while watching a good movie or catching up on your favourite TV show.<p>Some of the best hardware/software people read this forum, so I was wondering - what is your entertainment setup like? HD streamers, TV + Audio gear, costs/benefits, recommendations, tips and anything else you can think of. <comment><USER2> My setup is relatively simple but I'm happy with it. All my content is stored on a Synology DiskStation DS213 NAS with 2x3TB RAID 0 configured drives. This is hands down the best NAS I've ever used. It's super easy to set up and the interface is awesome (all linux-based). I've set it up with Dynamic DNS/Port Forwarding so it's accessible from anywhere. The DS213 supports torrenting via the "Download Station" and I use various RSS feeds to automatically download the shows I like right on the NAS itself.

I stream content from the NAS to a little Pivos XIOS DS device running XBMC on the local network. This little streamer handles HD content easily and it's also officially supported by the XBMC team. I spray-painted it black so it looks very similar to an AppleTV2. The Pivos is connected to my Samsung TV and I use an MX-500 Universal Remote to control both the Pivos and my TV. It's a great remote with amazing IR range, you don't even need to aim it. Pretty regularly I will start a download on the NAS from work(or my phone) so it's done and waiting to be watched when I get home.

All in all I really like this setup - virtually no maintenance and it works perfectly for what I want. I went the whole custom LAMP + NAS Server route a few years back. It worked ok but eventually proved to be too difficult to use and maintain.</comment>


Confessions of a Disk Cracker: The Secrets of 4am - <AUTHOR> https://paleotronic.com/2018/06/15/confessions-of-a-disk-cracker-the-secrets-of-4am/ <comment><USER2> "I've had several authors find their own software and thank me for preserving it. One author even apologized for the copy protection. He understood it was a "necessary evil" at the time, but he was so glad that someone had finally bothered to cut through it. He said it was so exciting to be able to experience his own work again, for the first time in decades."

That's cool.

<comment><USER3> >> He understood it was a "necessary evil" at the time

Looking back at those days, I'm not sure it was a necessary evil. None of my friends, including myself, owned any originals, and incurred real expenses (buying tons of floppies, double side punchers, long distance fees for BBSes) to get the stuff. I could have at least forgone buying a few boxes of discs and bought a game or two in its place.

It's not like today where the Internet is a fixed cost for most home users (in the West at least) and storage costs nearly nothing. There's definitely some residual guilt for those activities from the 80s, especially now that I work in the tech industry.

These days, I don't have reason to copy much at all. In general, software is reasonably priced or free/oss, tv/music/movie streaming is reasonably priced, and for games, I have Steam (and mainly buy when stuff is heavily discounted).

<comment><USER4> Game developers seemed to be swapping just as many floppies as everyone else. With the added advantage they often had stuff you weren't otherwise going to come across.

Later when I was buying everything the first thing I'd do was find the No CD hack online.

<comment><USER5> To my understanding, that was one of the easiest ways to get a virus. Those Crack programs always triggered AV. I'm not entirely sure game companies didn't somehow get cracks included as viruses, but since you're already circumventing legal requirements to use the crack and getting it through back channels, it seems a very useful and likely infection channel for virus authors.

<comment><USER6> While some cracks definitely shipped malware, and more commonly someone would release a crack and then a distributor would _add_ the malware, the reason those things triggered antivirus was because they were doing their jobs: writing to memory addresses within a separate process space. This is how the cracks worked, but it's also extremely common infection tactics from malware authors.

<comment><USER7> They were using pack programs that unpacked the crack program over itself to save space. This was what triggered the antivirus. The actual crack was often just there to rewrite the launcher code to skip the copy protection.

<comment><USER8> That is the eternal problem of automated security stuff, the action may be legitimate or not based on context. And code is notoriously blind to context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think one need to view everything that happens with a time lens.

Locally at the time the content is produced it be seen as evil by corporations to copy it and distribute the titles for free. For one thing income from selling the software funds the next releases from the software company. So if there is no funding due to piracy there will not be a next release.

From a long term perspective and that of preservation. Pirates and crackers have done a very good deed. If no one could copy the content from an old disk system to a new system how would it be preserved? How will DRM protected content be copied and preserved for the future? How will content from online platforms like Netflix, HBO, Steam be preserved? Maybe it will be preserved by crackers and pirates? Is that a bad thing?

How will the content of online software as a service companies be preserved for the future?

<comment><USER10> It's too bad that societies haven't done a better job of exploring codified (and in turn universal) solutions to this. For example, having the law only allow technological copy control measures for a period of 14 years from release, and requiring that in order to use them a clean copy of the software had to be submitted to the Library of Congress (or similar) encrypted with an LoC key. When the software technological control period expired it would still be under copyright, but the public would be assured that even if it was abandoned (as is likely) legitimate owners would not be prevented from running it by a decaying DRM system.

For that matter I think encrypted source/asset escrow should also be a requirement for copyright period, so that when it becomes public domain someday (currently effectively forever, but a simple act of Congress could shrink copyright times back down to something sane) the source and assets will be part of that and can be modified and improved, just as copyright was always supposed to be and was a given for books. I can recognize the trust issues this would create, but I still think the public interest (the whole purpose of even allowing IP in the first place) should have strong weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _In the modern era, there is some specialized hardware that can digitize a > floppy disk at the level of magnetic flux changes. For a variety of reasons, > the hardware developers focused on non-Apple II platforms, and a few > unresolved technical differences prevented a community of Apple II-specific > preservationists from reusing it. There is some new development on this > front, and I'm optimistic that collectors will soon be able to create flux- > level digital copies of Apple II floppy disks, and users will be able to > boot original software in emulators._

Nice timing! Applesauce is that product, mentioned here last week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17256709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17256709)

I think 4am views it as another tool in his toolbox: [https://twitter.com/a2_4am/status/993247470414127104](https://twitter.com/a2_4am/status/993247470414127104)

</comment><comment><USER12> I remember hanging out on #3dwarez with the creators/artists from ILM and other major studios. They would trade cracked software because they couldn't reasonably afford a 30k license for a new version but wanted to keep up to date or tinker with something new. Which is understandable. Hell I downloaded and uploaded millions of dollars of software and models from there.

But to be fair I do give credit to 3ds studio Max for adding a countermeasure that slowly degraded models if it detected it was cracked. A few months the support forums were flooded with complaints and the company knew who was pirating. That was a genuinely hilarious countermeasure.

<comment><USER13> I don't really know how to respond to your last statements.

I totally understand the creators blight of not being paid for someone using their work. Like others have said in this thread, especially now that I work in the field.

I find an issue with the work output of the stolen tool being tampered with. Was it permanent? Could you restore full quality by purchasing or some other arrangement?

To block access, or degrade functionality I find okay. To purposefully destroy someone else's hard work (even if made with stolen tools) just seems... wrong to me.

Most of us here have done it. Think about opening up an old project's source code that you happened to write with a pirated copy of VS or Blender or what have you when you were young and couldn't afford things but still wanted to learn.

To find it destroyed would crush me.

<comment><USER12> As you developed something it would degrade over time, if you just had it saved somewhere nothing would happen to the file. The more you used the pirates copy the more your file would get worse. No you could not restore access to the original, it degraded the polygon count on models.

I don't agree with this approach but it was pretty damn clever.

<comment><USER14> What's sad is all the waste: count up all the engineering time spent on all these more and more clever and elaborate copy prevention schemes, and count up all the time spent defeating them. The world will never get back the collective productivity wasted on this arms race.

<comment><USER12> While the final implementation of the copy protection and code that cracked it are not particularly useful in the general sense I would assume those developers on both sides learned a lot in the process. It was a stupid waste of time outside of a valuable coding exercise. If I was on either side of that battle it would be on my resume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When I was younger I too was trading games. Being in middle school my ability to crack games was not great.. It really interesting how clever people get trying to prevent copies and how those counter measures get discovered.

A friend's father got this card that went in the apple // card slot and had a button. If you pressed the button you could dump whatever was in memory at that time to a copyable disk. It was called the "Wild card". This was fascinating to me.. It took some digging but there are a few ads for it on the internet..

I wonder if some of the lack of title sequences and extras were because people were using these cards, adding a "cracked splash" screen and calling it a day.

Ad: "Avoid the IRS (Iandvertently Ruined Software)" [https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20P...](https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Interface%20Cards/Debugging/CPS%20Wildcard%20II/Photos/Wildcard%202%20-%20Ad%202.jpg)

Ad2:

"Wildcards are copy cards that stack the deck in your favor, rather than copying protected disks track by track like the old nibble copiers, Wildcards ignore the disk and any copy protection on it. Instrad wildcards take a snapsot of your Apple's memory. This creates an accurate copy of the original program"

[https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20P...](https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Interface%20Cards/Debugging/CPS%20Wildcard%20Plus/Photos/Wildcard%20Plus%20-%20Ad.jpg)

<comment><USER16> I built a memory dump system of my own for the TRS-80. The reset button on the machine launched an RST operation on the Z80 CPU, which was the only non- maskable interrupt (in other words, software writers couldn't disable or prevent it).

Unfortunately due to the memory mapping of the TRS-80, this set the CPU to an address in ROM, meaning I couldn't get at it to do anything useful. I put together a small veroboard circuit with a 2716 EPROM and a nand gate or two. This was hacked into the memory decoding circuit on the TRS-80 so that in normal operation the original ROM would be called, but if the address range was in the first 2k (the smallest block I could map), it would take instructions from the EPROM.

A friend then hand copied the entire first 2k of memory from the ROM (in hex) and cooked it into the EPROM (funnily enough using an Apple). However, we modified the code around the RST instruction to leap to RAM, where the memory dump program could reside and then be executed.

As the machine couldn't reboot properly until our dump software was loaded, we added a toggle switch to enable/disable the memory mapping hack and return the machine to normal.

Presumably like the "Wild Card" did it, we dumped the memory and register contents so they could reloaded later. Fun times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love that they wrote a tool to automate cracking. I'd be curious to know more about it, like specifically what kinds of protection it could break. IIRC a lot of copy protection on the Apple ][ was pretty straightforward, they'd just change the marker bytes for where sectors began to something nonstandard. I imagine that's pretty easy to automatically reverse. But a disc with something weird like spiral tracking or software with a deeply obfuscated "look up a word in the manual" system must be harder to crack.

<comment><USER18> It's here [https://github.com/a2-4am/passport](https://github.com/a2-4am/passport) Also he has a "best of" list if you don't want to dig through all of the logs he keeps to find the interesting stuff. [https://twitter.com/a2_4am/status/993129396520341504](https://twitter.com/a2_4am/status/993129396520341504)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, 1673 cracked software, all with expired copyright. This is an amazing preservation achievement. Love the automation part and am a bit curious to how hard this would be to port to another 6502 machine (yes, c64)?

</comment><comment><USER20> I never cracked disk protections, but I did sometimes reverse engineer games to figure cheat codes, etc. One EA game I looked at was the Will Harvey's Zany Golf for the Amiga. I had read somewhere that there was a secret level (the mad scientist? Or maybe that was the last public level). I got reasonably good at it, but not good enough to unlock the level.

I disassembled it, etc. It did not make any sense to me. With other games it was easier to find where in memory they kept game state. I ran out of tricks. I was young and not too experienced. Eventually I figured that it was not really written in 68k code. It was using some kind of interpreter. I hadn't read many books or studied CS at the time, so I didn't know that I was looking at a VM. Register A2 or A3 pointed to the current opcode. There was a jump table and each opcode handler ended with a jump to the dispatcher. I don't believe the opcodes were 6502 instructions or I would have recognised them. It would have been a reasonable candidate, since the original was written for the Apple //gs.

I still never got to the secret level. I either gave up or damaged the disk.

<comment><USER21> Nice story! I just had to look it up:

> On the last level (Energy), you will see a mouse hole where eyes appear > sometimes. When the eyes turn red, putt the ball into the hole. You will be > teleported to the secret course 'Mystery'.

From [https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/amiga/931157-will-harveys- zany...](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/amiga/931157-will-harveys-zany- golf/cheats)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Damn, I hate articles like this, they take me back to the good old days and suddenly it's HOURS later.

<comment><USER23> Hear hear

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> _> "We still can't make perfect digital representations of Apple II floppy disks."_

Apparently this is no longer true, thanks to AppleSauce:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17256709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17256709)

<comment><USER18> The preservation is still not perfect though, partly due to limitations in the format used to store the recovered data. [https://twitter.com/yesterbits/status/993342787444670464](https://twitter.com/yesterbits/status/993342787444670464)

<comment><USER25> That sounds like a problem with the processor running the code, not the disk image format.

<comment><USER18> Check out the other tweets in the thread though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Delightful.

> After 8 cracks, I wrote a tool to automate step 1, capturing the RWTS. After > 152 cracks, I wrote a tool to automate step 3, patching up the unprotected > copy.

> After 688 cracks, I wrote Passport.

</comment><comment><USER23> Fascinating read! Anyone have examples on more articles on the good ol' days of software cracking and distribution?

</comment><comment><USER27> At that time computer were awfully expensive (my dad had to be helped by my grand father to buy one). Magazine's (at least in my country) were expensive too. And games, that was just out of question. So piracy had _some_ legitimacy when you were a teenager. Nowadays, everything is much more affordable and piracy is much harder (on consoles at least). Those were the days...

<comment><USER28> > Nowadays, everything is much more affordable

AAA titles are still 50-60€ upon release, so nothing new there... the real difference that has cropped up over the last 3,4 years is that free-to-play crap model. A 0.50€ powerup is cheap, but one a day... 15€ a month. Don't get me started on loot boxes. 5 years ago the only way to get poor due to gaming was gambling, now? Have a little kid and make the mistake of attaching a credit card to the app store account.

It seems affordable but it's a total rip off.

<comment><USER29> You are forgetting "game pass", incomplete/bugged games at release date, DLCs, "special" version games tied to a seller (usually special equipment), timed exclusives...

I'm surprised the industry hasn't collapsed as it did once in the eighties.

<comment><USER28> > I'm surprised the industry hasn't collapsed as it did once in the eighties.

These days you have a massive inertial mass of 16 year old kids dragging their parents to Gamestop or to their credit cards and begging them to get them their latest CoD or whatever fix. Parents don't care and the kids don't as long as they can get their fix (and streaming to Twitch isn't broken).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> That's three good stories from Paleotronic in just a few days. They seem to be doing well.

</comment><comment><USER31> > I enjoy technical writing

Just goes to show you that there are a lot of different types of people in the world.

<comment><USER32> And an infinite way for them to find their outlet :)</comment></comment>


Chrome Market Share Growth Slows In August - <AUTHOR> http://www.conceivablytech.com/9211/business/chrome-market-share-growth-slows-in-august

<comment><USER2> Surely this is just bad maths. Anything that's growing at a constant rate is going to have its percentage growth fall as the growth becomes smaller relative to the existing base.

1 percentage point growth in a month seems to be totally average for Chrome (and I assume that the market as a whole is also growing).</comment>


Swarovski, Maker of All Things Bejeweled, Tries on a Hoodie - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/technology/swarovski-maker-of-all-things-bejeweled-tries-on-a-hoodie.html <comment><AUTHOR> > In a village in the Austrian Alps, Swarovski, which has been making crystals > for more than a century, is refashioning itself as a tech company.

It's somewhat unclear to me what all of this means, but it also wouldn't be the first time that high fashion and tech collided. For example, Apple hiring the CEO of Burberry to run its stores a few years ago.</comment>


Ask HN: Which AR SDK to use? - <AUTHOR> If I want to build a crossplatform AR app (iOS and Android) which AR SDK should I use? I know Apple just demo-ed ARKit at WWDC and it's very impressive but it's not cross-platform, though I might eventually develop two apps (iOS on top of ARKit and Android on top of something else. I've cursorily examined Vuforia and EasyAR but I'm not really sure.<p>Edit: Unity support would be nice :) <comment><USER2> The right question to ask here is: "What platform should I use that will get me in front of the most consumers/customers as possible and allow me to create a polished mobile experience?"

The answer to that right now is iOS and ARKit. The reason this is true is because there are _hundreds of millions_ of iOS devices out in the wild _right now_ that have the hardware capabilities to use ARKit and sufficiently power AR experiences.

There is no other comparable platform out there that even comes close to that kind of consumer scale in AR or VR.

This is one of the ways Apple's integrated walled-garden approach has inherent value. They can release something like ARKit and be ensured that hundreds of millions of devices can leverage it on day 1.

<comment><USER3> If money is not a big issue, why not consider cross platform solutions such as Wikitude?</comment></comment>


Niantic to settle Pokémon GO Fest lawsuit for over $1.5M - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/30/niantic-to-settle-pokemon-go-fest-lawsuit-for-over-1-5m/ <comment><USER2> If you want to be sure people don't try to organize things like this in the future, this is how you do it.

a) They already refunded all the money the received.

b) And now it's costing them even more money...

c) And a big portion of the problem was "Widespread cellular connectivity," which, yes, a sophisticated organizer can mitigate... But really, it's not their fault. Users "BYOB" (Bring Your Own Bandwidth.)

So, it was supposed to be fun, and it turned into a liability instead. This precedent makes it way less likely for people to ever want to do something similar again.

They're paying $75 per person, because the people didn't get to play a game when they got there.

Thanks, lawyers.

This is why we can't have nice things.

<comment><USER3> Niantic were 100% responsible of making sure the connections would work. They are a large organisation and 100% should have hired technicians to test the networks before organizing the event. That's basic due diligence.

That's like organizing an event on the roof of a building, but the roof wasn't made to support so many people and it caves in during the event. Sure they didn't build the building, but they still should've checked it could handle their needs.

<comment><USER4> So where do we draw the line? If Niantic says "hang out on a boat and we'll give you rare water pokémon" and players charter a boat and the boat sinks, is it Niantic's fault? What if there's inclement weather that makes it impossible to play in the area that some players are in? To what end should Niantic be responsible for things that are prerequisite to using their service?

Let's say I held a picnic potluck that required you to bring some potato salad to get in. The local Trader Joe's is out of potato salad, so lots of people can't get in (despite there being other ways of procuring potato salad). Is it my fault that I didn't coordinate with grocery stores to make sure there would be enough?

<comment><USER3> Your first example isn't representative, unless Niantic organised the event in a place where there was only one boat people could possibly rent for practical reasons in the area. I would argue this makes it really stupid planning by Niantic.

In your second example, if Trader Joe is the only potato shop remotely close, then it was indeed also really stupid planning by Niantic

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It was poor planning and I assume dishonesty on the local organizers part. I attend school a couple blocks from where Fest was held. Even by myself, I almost always lose signal in the exact area where Fest was held. Its usually not much of a big deal because I can walk for another block and get signal back, but if you're having an event in that exact spot that require cell signal, you're going to have a bad time.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why does everyone have to sue everyone else in the states? People mess up, get over it. It wasn't wise to spend money on travelling in the first place imo.

<comment><USER7> If you don't actively defend your copyright, you can lose it. That might be part of it.

<comment><USER8> How does copyright have anything to do with this class action lawsuit?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The app was in such terrible shape at that point, both on the client side with crashes and etc, and random login issues on the server side ... I can't imagine how they thought they were going to pull that off.

<comment><USER10> They told the technical team in no unclear words that the event is happening on these dates, and if the bugs are not fixed by then, heads are going to roll.

<comment><USER11> Sticking _their_ (management) heads on pikes comes to mind ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does something like this event happen? Pokémon Go was huge, and I'd just expect that Niantic would have hired competent organizers. 20,000 pissed off people has a huge negative word-of-mouth potential, and it's not like they had to have this thing in the first place.

Anyone with experience in this world, how does a big company miss the boat so hard?

<comment><USER13> Niantic is a Google spinout and basically suffers all the arrogance and inertia that Google suffers from with none of the upside of being gigantic.

This is topped off with a technical staff that doesn't really have any greybeards to hit people with a cluebat when necessary.

Finally, Niantic is privately held, so it's executive staff are not subject to being fired after having repeatedly screwed up (Pokemon Go basically suffered from all the same problems that Ingress suffered from only even moreso).

Put all that together and you have a perfect storm to create multiple, high- visibility fuckups.

For a long time with Pokemon Go, I assumed that the problem was that Nintendo put so many shackles on Niantic that Niantic really couldn't do anything. The more I hear about Niantic, the less I believe that to be true, and the more I believe that Niantic management are just idiots.

<comment><USER14> Hmm. I know at least one of the Niantic technical staff, and is a very competent, experienced software engineer.

Poor event planning, I can believe. Marketing promotions getting ahead of infrastructure, I've been there.

But I know that a great gaming experience is very, very important to this team...

I wish I could write this without sounding like astro-turfing. The Fest was a horrible failure, burned the goodwill of exactly the fans that Niantic treasured most.

Developers, marketing, executive staff should _all_ be required to use the shitty bandwidth that everyone else has to live with.

<comment><USER15> But its not the job of the software developers to research and plan the wireless coverage of the location, its the job of the team planning the event.

Here in germany for big festivals every carrier places a truck with mounted wireless antenas nearby the event location to ensure a good wireless coverage. I dont know how it is in chicago, but for such an event the planners should have asked the big providers if they can do something to not have wireless outages. But maybe this would have costed them some money they wanted to spare.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Five Paragraph Essays - <AUTHOR> http://blog.42floors.com/five-paragraph-essays/ <comment><USER2> A nice post whose essential point is that you should eschew formulaic methods of writing that force you to fit your thoughts into a rigid format and thus hamper your ability to express them in a way that best suits the subject.

Writing style most definitely ought to be customized for its subject and context.

Some say to write simply. This can be good. You engage your reader. You use active voice. You limit adverbs. You keep sentences short. Nothing wrong at all with this. It works well for many purposes.

Personally, I like to vary the short, direct, and active approach with occasional long, flowing sentences that can add flow to your writing, that can mix polysyllabic words with plain ones, that can use the passive voice as freely as the active when it is appropriate for the task at hand, that can build a succession of thoughts one upon the other in ways that flow naturally for a reader, that can interpose an arresting pause or two to emphasize a particular point - for example, by using hyphens to isolate an illustrative example - and that can bring in parallel elements to help dramatize a point, whether as a matter of form, or of substance, or of any combination of the two.

Whatever your style, the structure of your piece ought to be customized to its content. If it is a simple subject, it can have a simple format (nothing inherently wrong with the 5-paragraph format if it is not used in a formulaic way). If it is complex, then it needs to develop its themes with whatever level of nuance and subtlety may be needed to say something intelligent about the subject.

You need to be yourself in how you express your thoughts. Ever read a standard old-fashioned press release. It almost always begins something like this: "Company X, the world's leading producer of xxx and other market-leading products . . ." Apparently, whoever writes these things has been taught to puff the company right up front to give the release maximum impact. For me, this sort of style has the opposite effect. I read the canned language and I immediately click off and think, "this piece is going to be of very limited value to me, if any." And, just as this is true of such press releases, it is true of any other _artificial_ way that people express themselves in writing. The artificiality may give you a fill-in-the-blanks way of completing your writing task but it works against you with the reader. Readers _want_ to be stimulated in their thinking and, by using custom forms of expression - whether it be by an apt metaphor, a vivid illustration, an engaging story, or whatever - you do them a tremendous service by making what you say interesting. For this purpose, you should put yourself in their shoes and think, "how would I want to have this explained to me to make it interesting."

But being yourself is more than just ranting about a subject. Good writing takes hard work and by that I mean far more than putting time into a particular piece. I mean instead that good writing is the result of a cumulative effort, often spread over a lifetime, by which you read widely about many things, learn how to think, write frequently to develop your skills, gain depth of language skills through significant formal study if you can, and do any of a number of other things that prepare you to meet your reader as a craftsman and not as a hack (used in its non-HN meaning, of course). Yes, this is _very_ hard work. But you will see that it is well worth the effort. You have a lot to say about interesting things. Well, learn to say it well.

Other opinions may vary. This is mine. In general, it also seems to be that of the author of this piece, who put his thoughts well. It is a post worth reading. For anyone interested, I have put together a few additional thoughts on what makes for good legal writing (my particular vocation), which is set forth here: [http://www.grellas.com/articles.html](http://www.grellas.com/articles.html).

<comment><USER3> Thoughtful comment, but I want to point out that your basis is misleading. His essential point goes beyond eschewing formula, to specifically recommending people use a spoken voice style.

The rationale that I infer is that when people sit down to "write", they enter "writing mode". Writing mode is laden with dogmatic baggage. But the ultimate goal is to communicate, not perform ritual. And since people communicate successfully all the time through speech, it makes sense to suggest that when people write, they don't enter writing mode. Instead, enter "speaking mode" and simply transcribe their speech.

<comment><USER4> _And since people communicate successfully all the time through speech ..._

Yes, but. Much speech is filled with hedge words, convoluted phrases, and I'm-still-not-sure-what-point-I-am-making discourse. That stuff needs to go.

There's a fair amount of writing that comes across as if it were literally transcribed from an off-the-cuff spoken exposition, and it is distracting.

In casual speaking it's OK to say, "At this point in time", or, "Let me explain", or, "due to the fact", but if you're taking the time to write you can take the time cut the filler as well.

I much prefer a conversational tone in writing but it works best with some careful editing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So here's something I just learned recently: be polarizing.

By that, I don't mean be controversial for controversies sake (that's cheap). I mean that good writing has a point, and if you have a strong point people will be polarized by it, and that's actually a good thing. The worst writing I read (especially from myself) is writing that tries to hedge so it doesn't offend people. People SHOULD be offended. That's why you wrote the damn thing. If everyone already agrees, then you're not saying something worthwhile.

<comment><USER6> > If everyone already agrees, then you're not saying something worthwhile.

Plenty of proverbs would disagree.

Oh darnit, you got me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Provocative! I write for a living, and I've got two teenage sons learning all the standard high-school writing rules. I tell them that the rules are like using glue or nails to make furniture.

It's possible to defy the rules and produce something awesome. But often you just need to produce something that's reliable, sturdy, useful and quick. Learn the rules first. Use them most of the time. Break them when you've got a rare, wonderful reason to do so.

Blogging is the most conversational form of writing out there. The best bloggers conjure up structures that are so subtle and sophisticated that everything seems totally free-form. Getting that right consistently is a gift. Switching into conversation mode 100% of the time and hoping for great results is like pressing together some notched pieces of wood and hoping for the best.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's liberating and exciting when you learn there are tons of established structural patterns more interesting than five paragraph and you're expected to use and modify them.

Then you have to relearn the five paragraph essay for the GRE, and it's worse than the first time.

<comment><USER9> the GRE doesn't look for a 5 paragraph essay format, I never use one and I repeatably score above the 95th percentile.

<comment><USER10> I used the 5 paragraph essay format for both the GRE and GMAT and never got anything other than perfect scores on them :/

You don't need that structure, but for what they are looking for, it does often make your life easier.

Then again the essay part is the most pointless part for those pointless tests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently discovered the "speak, don't write" rule while finishing my thesis and I it has done wonders for me. I had written all the technical parts of the thesis but had writers' block writing the introduction. How could you possibly summarize 200pp of formulas and equations in a few paragraphs? I kept writing attempts-at-paragraphs then editing each sentence until the paragraph was a lifeless, unconnected jumble of ideas and facts.

At some point I was so tired that I went for a walk and recorder myself explaining the intro and, lo and behold, it came out good. After that I acted as my own secretary and transcribed it and I was done!

For those who want to try this, I recommend you have a little plan before yous start writing so you can have a high level structure in mind about what you want to say:

        point-form plan  --->  speak it ---> transcribe --> final edits

</comment><comment><USER12> _> To become a better writer you have to stop writing and start speaking._

I loved it right up until that point.

The problem with the 5 paragraph essay, is that it's a rule-of-thumb. It's a good guide, but isn't necessarily appropriate.

People seem like they always want to prescribe 'the rule to follow to do x'. Their 'rule' ends up being a rule-of-thumb, and then smart people dissect its inadequacies. I think that's what you did, is you nicely dissected a stupid rule-of-thumb, but then prescribed an equally stupid one.

There are a lot of flaws in the structure of thought, and that definitely isn't an _optimal_ way to write an essay. Personally, I like to diagram my argument out first (how the sub-arguments relate to each other, like a dependency tree).

<comment><USER13> "The problem with the 5 paragraph essay, is that it's a rule-of-thumb. It's a good guide, but isn't necessarily appropriate."

The problem with the 5 paragraph essay is that it _isn 't_ a rule of thumb, it _isn 't_ a good guide, and it is _never_ appropriate. Except _maybe_ as a brief skeleton to build a student's understanding of longer-form writing on, to be discarded in the next assignment or two, but to be grading _outgoing seniors_ from high school on it (and so _rigidly!_ ) is an atrocity.

Try to find one in the wild, one that was never a school assignment (so no published student homework or anything). Go on. Try it. Find one on HN comment page. (A different page. I'm sure someone will at some point float a 5P essay here as a response to be funny... the thought crossed my mind to try to do this exact criticism in this style, but _ye gods_ is it a worthless style to communicate in and I didn't feel like sacrificing my point for the meager humor that would be produced.) Find one in a newspaper or magazine. Find one in a blog post. Find one in a well-regarded historical work on philosophy. And remember, it's not just a mere "it has five paragraphs", but a very proscribed schema that is _at least_ :

        1. Thesis paragraph, 5 sentences
        2. Support point #1, 5 sentences
        3. Support point #2, 5 sentences
        4. Support point #3, 5 sentences
        5. Restatement of thesis, 5 sentences

and in the worst case, every paragraph must _also_ follow that exact form (topic, supports 1, 2, and 3, restatement of topic).

I won't guarantee you can't. I _will_ guarantee that you will be looking for a long time.

There is a reason for this.

<comment><USER14> I agree that it's a terrible format but why exactly is it a bad format to be graded on? If you are able to construct a good 5 paragraph essay then you certainly have demonstrated the ability to make a point, come up with arguments to support that point, coherently link them together, and finally to write them down using the language of your choice.

You're right - the format doesn't show up outside of school. And if we were being bombarded by 5 paragraph essays in the "real world" then we'd certainly have a lot of justification to this entire thread. But we don't. You just proved it. So what's the issue here?

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately, while in theory you are correct, in practice it seems to be a demonstrable fact that many people who can write the 5-paragraph essay and score very well on such standardized tests can still in fact be incapable of coherently expressing themselves in any other context. I'm not sure I can entirely explain it, but the observation is pretty clear. I'd theorize that it's the same basic story as any other excessively-structured thing we teach our children; we think they're learning X, when in fact they're just learning the structure we poured X into.

(See also our math curriculum's ability to convince people that "=" is not symmetric by the repeated hammering of "1 + 4 = ___"; we think we're teaching them math and using "equals", they're _learning_ that the "=" symbol means something more like "simplify and reduce" and that it has a direction. Grab three random people with the "usual" math education (i.e., not programmers), and see if they will agree that "1 + 3 = 2 + 2" (you may need to put an underline under the 2 + 2); I think you'll find a lot of them insist that is "wrong" and the right hand side "should/must be 4". And that's just one example.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The best thing you can do to become a better writer is learn to edit. Once you've written something, anything, go back through and make it better. Pick apart the parts that seem clumsy and figure out ways to say the same thing. Don't be afraid to completely drop something you've said that you thought was particularly clever if it doesn't fit. Also don't be afraid to just completely rewrite a big chunk of stuff, use what you've written as notes and start rewriting. A good way to start is by trying to make things simpler and more direct. Think of it like refactoring for writing.

<comment><USER16> I really like this advice. It reminds me of sculpting. Should you start with a block and remove what isn't needed? Or is it better to start with nothing, and slowly build up?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the author misunderstood the lesson his professor was teaching him. He was told to abandon the structure he knew in favor of content, but that doesn't mean that structure is inherently valueless or indeed that the 5 paragraph structure is without value.

The structure of writing is not really about ranks or levels. A Pulitzer prize winner can choose to write a 5 paragraph essay without lowering himself to a 'high school level' of writing. You don't level up in college, you learn a variety of structures and skills. This doesn't mean that the skills you developed in high school are lessened. It just means that you have more tools to choose from, and are probably better at deciding between them.

</comment><comment><USER18> The five-paragraph essay isn't structured the way it is because that's a good structure, but because it's easy to write and grade quickly. The AP graders don't have time to read thousands of 5+ page essays with myriad layouts and structures.

<comment><USER19> Agreed.

Even more so, essays, like the serial novels, are antiquated formats from the time of letter-writing and paper publishing.

At least the Victorian novels gave way to their readership's desires and moved to a more concise format. The essays, annoyingly, remain overly wordy as the academic standards retain their obsoleteness in demanding a set word counts.

Already, the short novels are becoming dominant in the on-line publishing sites. With any lack, the current tide against the printed humanist\scientific publishing houses will bare fruit soon and in a decade or two we will be reading the thesis, facts and analysis rather then the dribble we've become accustomed to.

Present me your thesis in a sentence and a few bullet points: List the facts; Lay the arguments; Tie it all up in a paragraph. I don't want long prosaic discussions or fine poetics.

<comment><USER17> I totally disagree as regards length; perhaps it's because I read quickly, but I don't prefer a novella to a novel. Most essays I'm familiar with actually set a limit on word count, not a floor.

Further, I think it's important for a scientist or philosopher to fully and completely elucidate his or her point so that any debate over the subject is based on a complete understanding.

Would you prefer that a study not outline its methodology and full application of said methodology, and instead simplify by just giving you results? How would you reproduce it? Would you just blindly start trusting everything printed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Writing is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Once the length of what I need to write exceeds around a hundred words, it's almost as if my brain stops working. I'm graduating from college this summer and looking back on it, I'd go so far as to argue papers were harder than thermodynamics midterms.

What I have going for me is that I'm a pretty good public speaker. The moment I picture myself behind a podium in front of an audience, ideas organize themselves into coherent patterns. It's a skill that's been honed over many weekends of debate practice.

My writing process now looks like this:

1\. Identify thesis 2\. Give a speech 3\. Take bulleted notes 4\. Give the speech again 5\. Revise bulleted notes 6\. If satisfied with structure begin expanding bullets into sentences and paragraphs.

<comment><USER21> It sounds like you've got a solid form -- for the writing part, it's just annoying/tedious/takes time to start recording your thoughts as they go. Writing is a form of thinking, literally, and if you can train yourself to document your thoughts as you are saying or thinking them, it won't hurt as much, I promise! Your first draft should always be shit, and then you revise and rebuild, like you were already doing...

<comment><USER22> I have the same problem as the person you're responding to, and writing is _not_ a form of thinking (for me, at least) - generating anything to put onto the page feels like an insurmountable task. I like the GP's suggestion of making a speech, I'm likewise much better at vocalizing than writing.

I'm pretty sure there is some underlying difference and it would be good to know what it is - I was diagnosed with dyslexia when I was 14, which never really felt like a satisfying answer, though I do have some dyslexic-ish symptoms (I tend to spell phonetically when I'm very tired and often type word-correct anagrams - like "never really left like a satisfying answer", above).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's absolutely liberating to break free from the (very American) 5 paragraph essay; that's more of a learning tool, really. And you don't need to write a five paragraph essay on the GRE; I've consistently gotten 97% with my own versions, and I stopped writing in 5 paragraphs long ago. It's all about content, synthesis... The 5 paragraph is a start, but we should be taught to shed it when we're ready!

<comment><USER23> It is taught for a reason though. Having some kind of introduction and thesis is important. Overly formulaic, etc it is, but understanding what it's supposed to be teaching is pretty important.

<comment><USER21> Totally. I wish that was just the start of the pedagogy, though... It my beginning comp classes (if I ever have enough time to start teaching again) I want to teach the five paragraph essay for two weeks, (simple) programming or technical writing as composition for another two weeks, and other forms of essay writing (ie. not getting to the final point until the end after a long, winding description, or a lyrical essay format).

As a side note, poets make great technical writers because they can be so economic with language. There is something to engage here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24>
      [1] Reification      vs Abstraction;
      [2] E-prime          vs Evaluation;
      [3] Active Voice     vs Passive Voice;
      [4] Germanic         vs Latin;
      [5] Specific Diction vs Concatenated Adverbs;

Here's a list of the writing ideas (in no particular order) which I've found most helpful. Eveything has its time and place. But as a heuristic, left-side items are better than right-side items. A few explanatory links off the top of my head:

[1] [http://lesswrong.com/lw/k7/original_seeing/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/k7/original_seeing/)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime)

[3] [http://www.towson.edu/ows/activepass.htm](http://www.towson.edu/ows/activepass.htm)

[4] [https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)

[5] "Adverb are weak. They modify modifiers. Instead, use more specific verbs." \- my English teacher

<comment><USER25> What do you mean by Germanic vs. Latin?

<comment><USER24> [http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html) :

> _use simple, germanic words_

[https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm) :

> _The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words > falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up > all the details._

pg's essay "Writing, Briefly" mentions it in passing. So I assume that most HNer's are sorta familiar. The idea is that English words of Germanic etymology are usually simple, everyday words. E.g. "event, a lot, boring". English words of Latin etymology are usually flowery, pretentious words. E.g. "phenomenon, cornucopia, quotidian".

Latin words very abstract and hard to read. They often obscure meaning. Sometimes, they don't actually have any meaning. Sometimes, they're used as euphemisms. Germanic words are easier on the eyes and often evoke imagery of tangible objects.

I added links to my original post, because I realized that a single HN comment isn't enough to clearly explain my list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Dictating the text is an extraordinary advice! I (still) didn't manage to build a decent blog, but I do write a lot. When I started to think about the text as if I were simply going through what I wanted to speak with someone, it was liberating.

On the other hand, though, I do understand the need to use the five paragraph structure (or, here in Brazil, the "three sections structure"). I, just as you, was usually pretty annoyed with these formulaic approaches to text, until I've had to re-learn all this essay writing stuff for my masters. In my college, professors and students are pretty close and debate is (really) stimulated, so I decided to throw my ramblings onto the writing professor (a very good writer, indeed). I used José Saramago (a portuguese Nobel prize winner that uses commas as periods, writes giant paragraphs, all the weird stuff) as my "strong" example, thinking it would shed the formalized structure argument to pieces and I would rise triumphantly from the talk with a Portuguese PhD specialized in text analysis. It didn't take me so long to realize why she had her PhD, and that her point of view was pretty convincing and, of course, well structured.

Kaboom! And I was illuminated. She agreed with each of my complaints. But then she proceeded to show me some texts from the beginning of the semester, comparing them with texts from the end of the semester. They were, in general, much clearer, concise, straight to the point - in one word, better. She argued that a course like that was intended to make people that do not write start to write something intelligible, comprehensible. It was not a course on creative writing. Therefore, the need for simplified rules and structures.

I do understand that this was the OP's whole point: upon reading his colleague's text, he judged it based on the rules he had learned. Then, when he talked to the other teacher, he realized that the main point of a text is to communicate something, irrespective of the number of paragraphs it has or the position of the goddamn thesis.

This rambling of mine is just to point to the other side: rules are important in some specific moments of the development of a proto-writer :)

That happens with all kinds of expressive, communicative actions we humans perform (in my opinion): photography, painting, music, poetry... All of them have some (or plenty of)rules. But these rules are not meant to be used as a "ruler" to judge if a work is good or bad, they are just a compass to guide the noobs :)

<comment><USER27> "three sections structure"

Intro, development and conclusion? Será?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The tip about speaking first may be a good one, but it shouldn't be portrayed as universal. I tend to express myself better through writing, and to be awkward when speaking. IMO the trick is to drop your inhibitions about writing crap so you can just get a draft down somehow.

</comment><comment><USER29> While I totally agree that the 5 paragraph essay format can be restrictive and is not suited for every situation, I think a good thesis statement in the first paragraph or two is frequently a good idea. Too often while reading posts online I often find that I'm most of the way through the post before I find out what point the author is trying to make. There are cases where keeping the actual point of the post or story is done as a way of adding suspense or gaining the reader's interest, it seems like most of the time the writers of posts like this are rambling or front-loading the piece to such a degree that it is off-putting and distracts from their message.

<comment><USER30> _While I totally agree that the 5 paragraph essay format can be restrictive and is not suited for every situation, I think a good thesis statement in the first paragraph or two is frequently a good idea_

In many circumstances it is. I wrote an essay that describes the thesis statement issue: "Paul Graham and not being as right as he could be in 'The Age of the Essay'" ([https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/paul-graham- and-no...](https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/paul-graham-and-not- being-as-right-as-he-could-be-in-the-age-of-the-essay/)).

I've also discovered from teaching college freshmen that having a thesis statement usually improves the quality of their work product. But experienced writers working in some genres don't need thesis statements and indeed would be constrained by them (that's one of pg's points in "The Age of the Essay:" [http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html)), and inexperienced writers probably need thesis statements to avoid a document filled with random thoughts. In this respect thesis statements are like training wheels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I find speaking aloud does result in a better flowing essay.

But I wonder which effects are due to the speaking; and which to how speaking reminds you that you are trying to communicate to someone, and give them something of value?

Consider the problem-solving technique of explaining the problem to someone - which also works well when explaining it to a duck. Would writing a letter to a duck work as well as telling it? Is the helpfulness inextricably tied to verbalizing?

<comment><USER11> I agree that keeping the audience in mind is an important aspect of writing, but for me the relative speed of speaking is the more important aspect.

When I write, I tend to think too much and follow too many of my associations so the writing process becomes and endless start-and-stop of new ideas with a "branching factor" of 4-5. I often have to backtrack when I get too off topic. Think wikipedia browsing binge....

When I speak, I don't have the time to have so associations so the thoughts become more linear and follow logically one from the other.

Interestingly, I find handwriting (like real pen and paper) can also be good: in this case the pace is slower than typing, but I have enough time to make good sentences because my mind has the time to process things in the background as I'm writing out the words. Think look-ahead optimization...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If the 5-paragraph essay sounds bad, you should take a look at the French essay-writing style taught in schools and universities. In the first year or two of elite universities, the structure of the essay is often more important than the content.

[http://bettizpod.over-blog.com/article-17353773.html](http://bettizpod.over- blog.com/article-17353773.html)

<comment><USER33> "The opinion" needs to have a multitude of expressions. Philosophical papers should be able to re-capitulate the point. _If_ the opinion is expressed _once_ and _only_ in the introduction, that is a problem — it looks like a stroke of luck.

Look at Kant's _Groundwork_ or Sidgwick's _Method_ : you have an almost desperate attempt at finding just the right way and right context in which to normatively ground a proposition.

Look at Heideggar, look at Nietzsche. Even look at Orwell. The "opinion" is the "point", and the point has to be teased, flipped, tossed, rejected, restored, restated. A paper that makes its opinion in one statement is like a kid in class who accidentally blurts out the right answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I would argue that structured writing with clear organization and simple diction is the most effective for informing people.

Books like Language Intelligence or manuals of technical writing delve into the topic fairly well. Watch championship extemporaneous speakers to see how to create an extended metaphor and build a structured progression of sources and analysis in a speech.

<comment><USER33> But a paper about King Lear is not in the business of "informing people". It's not _informational_ , it's _dialectical_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I like the idea of dictating while on a walk. I use Naturally Speaking to dictate in the office, but you have to be tied to the computer to do it. As any freelancer can tell you, getting out of the house really helps the ideas flow and from a different perspective too

</comment><comment><USER25> > I then email the audio file to have it transcribed by a virtual assistant > and Booyah!

Do you think he's using "virtual assistant" here as an application, or a human service? Can anyone recommend one or two examples of each? (Does a software version exist?)

</comment><comment><USER36> As a copywriter, I know that the better you are at fine writing, the more of a disadvantage you are in.

When you write to sell, you want the focus to be on the product - not your smooth talking voice.

Imagine a salesperson using poetry to sell you something. Although it would be entertaining, it would not help sell the product.

Don't write to entertain. Don't write to make YOU sound better. Write for THEM.

The problem with academia is it is built around bolstering YOUR ego. In the real world, having a big ego is counterproductive to working your way up the ladder. It's like having a broken leg in a marathon.

Don't believe me? Just look at how much trouble people with degrees are having. They can't find jobs. They don't have social skills. They have big egos, but can't make money.

And yes, I have a degree. I have a piece of paper that I can tell people I have. My clients are only mildly interested in the fact that I have one.

<comment><USER37> Correct - write for them!

The amount of people that can write at the standard people on HN use for a well thought out comment is low. Very low. This also includes people with degrees. The vast majority of the population are as articulate with written language as your average YouTube poster.

Clearly most people can read a higher standard of writing than they can write themselves, particularly if it is a subject that interests them. If you are expecting a response on a one to one basis, e.g. an email, then writing at the top of your craft really might not be the best thing to do. Your well written feature length English and all of those big words might come across as intimidating. This factor means you may not get a response. Writing something simpler, i.e. to not show off one's mastery of the language might get a better result.

Far too often in academia you have people using big words without really knowing what they mean, as if they are using the thesaurus a little too often. Or they use buzzwords and acronyms when simple English will do. It is as if some people have a false idea of what it is to write properly. They try to impress but fail. They then enter the world of business and try to write the same way, caught up in trying to use big words rather than focusing on a simple message.

So yes, write for THEM. At times, to a wider audience this might mean writing at a level found in a tabloid newspaper, which is okay if done properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> " I then email the audio file to have it transcribed by a virtual assistant and Booyah! I have my first draft."

Q: is there software to transcribe instead of sending it to a virtual assistant (e.g. on the mac?)

<comment><USER39> There definitely is, though how good it is I have no idea. The last one I used was probably a decade or more ago, I didn't really have a use for it then but playing with it showed potential (since they learn to adapt to your voice it's hard to say how good they are without longer use). And I would assume they've improved considerably since then.

Dragon Dictate is what I tried, and seems to be the biggest name brand in the area now from what I can see (and has a Mac version) - [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nuance-Communications- Inc-S601X-W00-...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nuance-Communications- Inc-S601X-W00-3-0-Dictate/dp/B0095BR602/)

Whether it works well enough to be useful, or if there are better alternatives than Dragon Dictate, I've no idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Uh. There's

the aphoristic style,

the "5-paragraph" style,

the dialogue,

the trialogue,

the research paper, etc.

A paper should be as simple as necessary, but no simpler. Depending on your topic, you could have 20 paragraphs, 10 paragraphs. And if what you're writing is arguably good, length shouldn't matter. At some point in your paper you should say, "I'm doing a damn fine job here, and my professor should love to read this."

If you cannot say that, _that_ is a good indication that you should dump the paper. Not some rigid, lifeless arbitrary numeral. _Numbers are not out to get you_.

Our education system in the West has done a serious disservice to us by installing this idea that we should feel bad about making others read what we write.

It's bloody awful.

<comment><USER33> There's also the anecdotal/analogical style, the narrative style — of course you can use any voice you wish to sew multiple styles together.

You should use your topic as a basis for experimenting with different styles, not as a means to prove your mastery of the language.

 _Papers are not proofs_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Pardon anyone who thinks I'm taking this off the rails to discuss VC instead of writing-- you read that right; I don't need a pardon-- but the easy-to- grade, 5-paragraph stencil essay is a _perfect_ metaphor for the venture- funded startup: creatively immature, built to impress and fill a templateable need (funding pitch, acq-hire) rather than to purpose, formulaic and easy to crank out even on a deadline.

Ok, I won the thread and I'm taking it home with me.</comment>


Long-Awaited Check of CryEngine V - <AUTHOR> In May 2016, German game-development company Crytek made a decision to upload the source code of their game engine CryEngine V to Github (https://github.com/crytek-cryengine/cryengine). The engine is written in C++ and has immediately attracted attention of both the open-source developer community and the team of developers of PVS-Studio static analyzer who regularly scan the code of open-source projects to estimate its quality. A lot of great games were created by a number of video-game development studios using various versions of CryEngine, and now the engine has become available to even more developers. This article (http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0417/) gives an overview of errors found in the project by PVS-Studio static analyzer. <comment><AUTHOR> Link: [http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0417/](http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0417/)</comment>


Ren & Stimpy animator John K. sends fan illustrated how-to letter - <AUTHOR> http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/01/your-pal-john-k.html

<comment><USER2> I know folks around here sometimes like to rag on Joel Spolsky (the popularity of the jumping the shark article comes immediately to mind), but when I was a junior in high school, I had a very similar experience to the one mentioned here.

The computer science culture in central Ohio is kind of less than amazing (especially for a varsity athlete type), and I didn't really have any idea of what the good computer science schools were. When I googled around for it, I came across the Perils of Java Schools ([http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchool...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html)).

At that point, it struck me that Joel knew a lot more than I did, so I decided to send him an email asking what schools were best. Not only did he answer, but there was actually some correspondence that led to a good short list for me. After being accepted to Carnegie Mellon, MORE correspondence helped me avoid Information Systems (an easier track that the football coach at CMU was trying to get me to pursue). For lack of a better description, Joel Spolsky was the best college guidance counselor I had.

I think it's important to keep in mind that, when I asked him for help, I was a slightly above average public high school student in Hilliard, Ohio, so he was just being a really nice guy.

</comment><comment><USER3> John K. is a genius but he's not as "nice" as this article paints him. He has a blog:

<http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com>

He's basically a cynical old bastard who hates just about everything about the way cartoons are produced today. (Arrogance in cartooning is measured in nanokricfalusis.) He's also right about most of it: if you've ever seen the garbage produced today like _Fairly OddParents_ or _Total Drama Island_ you'll know what I mean.

More likely than not, his outreach toward Amir Avni was more about intervention than fan-friendliness: he wanted to get to a young, promising cartoonist before the Evil Network Execs filled his head with bad ideas.

<comment><USER4> Regardless of his motivations, I appreciate it when someone famous responds to one of their fans with a thoughtful response. I like it when someone is famous _and_ approachable. For instance, I've always appreciated that pg will almost always reply to my emails even if it is just a couple of sentences.

<comment><USER5> Couldn't agree more. I admire people who have succeeded in the goals they set themselves, but nowhere near as much as I admire people who do that _and_ then work just as hard to help other people do the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just FYI, it looks like John K is doing an IAMA on reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/aocjg/iamajohnk_ren_an...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/aocjg/iamajohnk_ren_and_stimpy_creator/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I have to credit John K. and his blog for giving me good ideas about drawing. My experiences seem to correlate with his opinion; the bulk of the learning is in making good use of measurement - measurement and references. If I don't do those things, I will get distorted construction, every time. (But I have also no doubt that practice eventually embeds the necessary information in your soul so that you can be "fast/sloppy" and still do OK.)

</comment><comment><USER8> the newish cartoon The Mighty B draws heavily on the John K style. Not as continuously rich as R&S, but decently-drawn.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm wondering if we have any other illustration / animation types lurking here at HN and whether they have other suggestions about what to read, watch, etc., if we may want to get a little better at illustration. Any suggestions, guys?

<comment><USER10> #1 on my list would be getting yourself a sketchbook and drawing in it ALL THE TIME.

Draw everything you can. Figure out what, of all the things you'd like to be able to draw, you're worst at drawing, and draw lots and lots of those until you're not as bad at it as you were. Then move on to the new "worst thing".

Also, I would differ with the Ren & Stimpy guy in advising you not to trace stuff. Copying master art is good practice, but do it with your own eye rather than by tracing. You'll learn a lot more that way.

When drawing, look a lot more than you draw.. look really carefully and try to make each stroke as accurate as possible.

Experiment with lots of different media, tools, and materials.

Meet up with and hang out with other art students and artists. Doing so can provide a lot of inspiration and motivation.

Staying motivated and fighting past self-criticism are probably the hardest parts of being a serious artist. Which reminds me of this story, told by Lawrence Block:

A young man once cornered a world-famous violinist and begged to be allowed to play for him. If the master offered him encouragement, he would devote his life to music. But if his talent was not equal to his calling, he wanted to know ahead of time so he could avoid wasting his life. He played, and the great violinist shook his head. "You lack the fire," he said.

Decades later the two met again, and the would-be violinist, now a prosperous businessman, recalled their previous meeting. "You changed my entire life," he explained. "It was a bitter disappointment, giving up music, but I forced myself to accept your judgement. Thus, instead of becoming a fourth-rate musician, I've had a good life in the world of commerce. But tell me, how could you tell so readily that I lacked the fire?"

"Oh, I hardly listened when you played," the old master said. "That's what I tell everyone who plays for me -- that they lack the fire."

"But that's unforgivable!" the businessman cried. "How could you do that? You altered the entire course of my life. Perhaps I could have been another Kreisler, another Heifetz--"

The old man shook his head again. "You don't understand," he said. "If you had had the fire, you would have paid no attention to me."

<comment><USER11> _Also, I would differ with the Ren & Stimpy guy in advising you not to trace stuff. Copying master art is good practice, but do it with your own eye rather than by tracing._

Unless it was mentioned twice, he said to _draw_ your copy by eye on tracing paper, then if you compare it by laying over the original you should mark the differences (eg eyes too large, whatever) then redraw and check again.

<comment><USER10> Oh, I must have misinterpreted what he said, then. My mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow !. Just wonderful Reply.</comment>


Things to Check in PHP - <AUTHOR> http://php.dzone.com/articles/5-things-you-should-check-now

<comment><USER2> NO. If you are having performance problems then the first thing you need to do is to run a profiler against your code. If you're optimizing things because you _think_ they might be slow, you're doing it wrong.

Not to mention how dense these suggestions are. Caching speeds things up? Really? Thank you for enlightening all of us.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it must be aimed at beginners in some of these points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A bonus tip: do not merge arrays if you're not absolutely positively sure they are truly associative. Consider:

        array_merge(array(CONST_1 => 'val1'), array(CONST_2 => 'val2'));

You'd expect the result to be

        array(CONST_1 => 'val1', CONST_2 => 'val2')

And you'd be wrong most of the time. If we have something like this:

        define('CONST_1', '1024');
        define('CONST_2', '65536');

The result of the above array_merge is:

        array(0 => 'val1', 1 => 'val2');

And that's because PHP doesn't care about the keys if they are numerical (note that I didn't say numbers; these were strings.)

Coming from PHP background first I didn't understand why I would need separate types for lists and dicts in Python. Now I think they are a godsend.

If I had the time I'd write 999 Things You Should Check in Your PHP Right Now. If this is the only language in your belt, please for your software's sake learn something else, widen your perspective.

<comment><USER4> _If this is the only language in your belt, please for your software's sake learn something else, widen your perspective._

Would help if you spent some time learning PHP in the first place :/ .. to preserve keys simply '+' the arrays together:

      php > define('CONST_1', '1024');
      php > define('CONST_2', '65536');
      php > print_r((array(CONST_1 => 'val1') + array(CONST_2 => 'val2')));
      Array
      (
          [1024] => val1
          [65536] => val2
      )

Also, constants have nothing to do with the problem you had, it's just the way array_merge works.

Edit: wow, just wow. The parent is voted up with miss information and I'm voted down for correcting him.

<comment><USER3> Just so you know, my comment is not upvoted, and yours is downvoted because of the tone.

"It's just the way array_merge works" is true, so true even that it applies to the whole language. Why would merging an array yield a different result than adding them together, anyway?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Title makes it sound like security issues. But really it's just a list of 'improvements' you can make. Fun.</comment>