A look back: Bram Cohen vs Linus Torvalds (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wincent.com/a/about/wincent/weblog/archives/2007/07/a_look_back_bra.php <comment><USER2> > But after closely studying Git I'm a little bit awestruck; Torvalds is a > frickin' genius, a true visionary, and somehow managed to just "get it" and > instantly, in a flash of insight, come up with "the solution" for version > control.

Wait, what? Git was the response from Torvalds to BitKeeper being proprietary and the author being upset with some kernel developers. It's basically taking what was then state of the art for DCVS and reimplementing it, not coming up with some new paradigm. It's a good program, and to my knowledge it was engineered well, but let's not rewrite history so Torvalds is the father of DVCS.

<comment><USER3> Linus was moving off of BitKeeper, which obviously was some of the inspiration for git - but the underlying model is nothing alike. Git's data model is much simpler than CVS, RCS, Subversion, BitKeeper and basically anything else that existed at the time, and it was also much faster. The command line interface doesn't reflect this properly, but it's the underlying model that counts.

Git is nothing like a reimplementation of BitKeeper - the closest inspiration and model is actaually Monotone, which had the same basic concepts but was slow and clunky. IIRC, Torvalds credited monotone/Hoare for using merkle trees (and other things)

<comment><USER4> > The command line interface doesn't reflect this properly, but it's the > underlying model that counts.

Could you explain why, for a tool meant to be used by humans, the underlying model (which I agree is very elegant) counts more than the user interface?

<comment><USER5> _the underlying model (which I agree is very elegant) counts more than the user interface?_

It does not. But git exposes this all the time, so committed git users feel that's a good thing, because understanding it makes helps them to make sense of some of the worst parts of the UX.

<comment><USER6> Git is the reference implementation of a protocol, and much like HTTP, you must learn it the hard way if you intend to be a professional in the domain.

The mistake is to believe there is a U<I|X> in the first place.

It does not, however, stop you from using one of the many graphical tools, that are fine for simple usage and will all eventually fall short.

You could use a GUI to make complex HTTP routes, through proxies and DNS records via drag&drop, and then one day you'll have some weird DNSSEC error that the maintainer does not care about, and you will have to explain that to whoever is losing money.

Acknowledging a problem is not as trivial as it was first thought is critical in our line of work in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> _Git is the reference implementation of a protocol_

In reality this "reference implementation" is the sole interface 99% of the users use, so the lack of UX _is_ an issue.

There are other tools that do it better and right, so insisting that there's any redeeming qualities to git here is being blind to the obvious. There's actual academic research describing git's problems here, for crying out loud.

<comment><USER7> > There's actual academic research describing git's problems here, for crying > out loud.

And interestingly, all the academic research talks about is the high level UI. Not the underlying data model.

> In reality this "reference implementation" is the sole interface 99% of the > users use

/That/ is the mystery to me. I don't see a reason why a better UX around the same underlying data model, talking to the same server (and thus interacting natively with e.g. github) hasn't picked up.

Heck, one could implement mercurial's UX on top of the git data model. In fact, that even has been prototyped. I can't find the repository anymore, but iirc it was somewhere on bitbucket.

<comment><USER3> There are at least five such front ends (easygit comes to mind) and extensions (like legit from Kenneth Reitz). But none is popular, and I suspect the reason is that, despite all the complaining, Git's default UI is not actually that bad in day to day use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Were a lot of programmers really hung up on this idea of having increasingly smart merge algorithms back then? What Linus says seems self-evident to me: if there's even a whiff of a conflict, I want it to be shown to me so I can make a human decision about it. A merge algorithm smart enough to resolve every case is easily proven to be impossible by the fact that it's possible for branches to merge cleanly with no conflict, _and yet still have a logical conflict_ due to some implicit contract that was broken. These are the nastiest regressions to find, and one reason I insist on rebasing before merging topic branches, because then at least git-bisect will tell you where the implicit contract was broken precisely on the second-rebased-and-merged branch. Smarter merge algorithms would just paper over more problems and so you quickly hit diminishing and then negative returns by trying to be too clever.

<comment><USER5> You can still verify the result of an automatic merge. It's simpler to mark a suggestion "y" than to resolve conflicts that could be solved automatically by hand.

So I don't think this reasoning holds any ground whatsoever.

<comment><USER9> You're not actually contradicting GP. Marking a suggestion "y" is still making a human decision, just with really good auto-complete.

<comment><USER5> Look into the actual posts, it was used as an argument to dismiss smarter merge algorithms which is of course the smarter auto-complete part.

<comment><USER9> What they're actually objecting to of the idea of not having a human in the loop. I suspect if you pitched these smart merge algorithms from the "click to accept auto merge" angle, they wouldn't have much of a problem. Instead they seem to be pushed as a way of avoiding interaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If Linus had insight into issues around merging it's because that's what he does for a living. Every change to the Linux Kernel is ultimately approved/merged by him. Think about that. More than any person on earth, Linus knew what the issues involved with DVCS were and he chose a solution that fit all the use cases he saw on a daily basis.

<comment><USER11> He's not even a top 20 approver. Greg KH takes those honors, Andrew Morton is number 3, and I forget the rest. The list comes out annually from the Linux Foundation. (Sorry, no link.) The foundation requires an email address and credentials before providing access to the pdf.

During the merge window, Linus takes in most of changes for the next kernel release. All of which have been approved by someone else. With each RC release, the lieutenants still approve most of the new changes. It's a matter of when a crucial fix is needed for Linus's mainline kernel, then he'll accept a commit directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The merge algorithm [http://wiki.monotone.ca/MarkMerge/](http://wiki.monotone.ca/MarkMerge/) used by Monotone has a well defined user model for conflicts, with similarity to Codeville's merge algorithm iirc. I'm not sure if any later VCS used it, looks like perhaps not.

<comment><USER13> Mark-merge is specifically for standalone scalar values. We used it for tree structure (file name, and patent directory), for file attributes, and as a first pass on file content to see if we needed to bother doing a 3-way message.

Tree structure is overrated. The way git handles it works better in practice. Files are an implementation detail, rather than something fundamental about code structure.

Using it as a first pass at content merging was mostly a performance optimization, and also only works if you track individual files as objects.

It _might_ be a useful building block for a system that tracks refactorings as fundamental operations and knows how to do merges on your AST instead of on the serialized text form of your choice. But as far as I know no such system exists yet, and merging complex data structures is far more complex than simply merging their individual building blocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looking at the exchange a bit and reviewing the context in which it occurred: it's a great example of someone clearly deciding what problem they want to fix, followed by defining their priorities and sticking to them. As Linux has pointed out (IIRC), doing this pointed the way toward the underlying data structures, and the algorithms to manipulate this data followed from there.

Cohen, as remarkable as always, comes across in this instance as trying to "sell" his product (codeville) and taking it a little personally when Linus isn't swayed. Linus clearly defines the problem he was trying to solve, and believes that git solves it better than codeville. He would have backed codeville if he thought it met kernel dev needs better than git. After all, he had jumped on Bitkeeper before, against other people's wishes.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there any information on when exactly / and for what exact reasons was codeville development abandoned?

</comment><comment><USER16> The link to the relevant response of Linus Torvalds about his design:

[http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/archives/git/0504/2178.html](http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/archives/git/0504/2178.html)

<comment><USER17> I like this nugget from the post:

"It's sometimes better to know that you don't know the answer, than it is to _think_ that you know the answer."

\- Linus Torvalds

<comment><USER16> If you'd try to find the roots of that idea, it would certainly be at least hundreds of years old, reflecting the difference between the scientific and the religious approaches to the world.

<comment><USER18> At least as old as Plato:

"I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."

Plato: Apology, ~ 400BC

<comment><USER19> Which is actually romantic nonsense, just like those people who say in the modern world that "we know nothing about how things work". We know plenty. We just don't know it all.

A man who says he knows _something_ is also being less of a wanker than a man who says he knows _nothing_ , especially if the latter then uses that comment as leverage to claim wisdom over the former.

<comment><USER16> Read more from the original, taking just a small quote out of it doesn't do it justice. Also see my other comment for the context. The context matters.

It's about the claims based on faith versus the acknowledging the scope of what we actually know so that we can actually find out, which produces the absurdities in the religions for which they have to shame themselves today, as these simply don't match what we know today for sure.

Socrates was sentenced to death for impiety, that's the part of his own, obviously unsuccessful, defense.

<comment><USER19> I indeed haven't read the original. In context, it may make sense, but certainly pulled out of context like this, it's romantic twaddle.

Whenever I hear a person say that 'we really know nothing', it always reminds me of Insane Clown Posse being angry that science has an explanation for how magnets work... as in, finding comfort in expressing ignorance :)

<comment><USER16> Well, what's true is that these particular sentences were often not only used out of the context but even particularly modified to the significantly different "I know that I know nothing."

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

"Evidence that Socrates does not actually claim to know nothing can be found at Apology 29b-c, where he claims twice to know something. See also Apology 29d, where Socrates indicates that he is so confident in his claim to knowledge at 29b-c that he is willing to die for it."

So he was what we'd today call "a scientist" being ready to admit the changing but the finite limits of the knowledge while acquiring the new knowledge, not "an ignorant."

But it's also not surprising that not everybody even understood what was that about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yet another description of "Linus and his fireworks", and when you actually read the thread, there's a little bit of crankiness, yes, but mostly a lot of discussion. It's milder than what goes on in a lot of HN threads.

Damn people love this trope.

</comment><comment><USER20> To anyone else wondering: "Codeville was a distributed revision control system" \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codeville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codeville)

<comment><USER21> Also, Bram Cohen's diff algorithm made it into Canonical's Bazaar VCS. I think some of the Cohens' other VCS ideas may have made it into Bazaar, but I'm not sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This reminds me of that old discussion between Linus and ESR where the ESR tries really hard and has a lot of really good arguments but Linux doesn't care because he is right.

The thread was on HN last year, I think the title was something about Linus being to smart for his own good or something similar.

edit: "The curse of the gifted programmer (2000)", [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11077799](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11077799)

</comment><comment><USER23> Git is popular (nowadays), it's a decent DVCS that requires craftmanship and tons of trials and errors before you can consider yourself "pro user" and it's funny that the go to solution for all git problems it's still "just hard reset your repo".

</comment><comment><USER24> Since this 404s for me (or, more evilly, says "200 OK" in HTTP and "Not Found" on the page), have a cache link: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7Qj5RC...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7Qj5RCqa56YJ:www.wincent.com/a/about/wincent/weblog/archives/2007/07/a_look_back_bra.php+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

Bonus: the two times this link showed up on HN before and got more than a couple of comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8118817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8118817)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=505876](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=505876)

<comment><USER25> You probably have HTTPS Everywhere installed.

<comment><USER24> You would be correct. I suppose the SSL vhost is just tragically broken, then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Article from 2007.

</comment><comment><USER27> Not Found. Were there any interesting points mentioned?

<comment><USER5> No, it's pure fanboying. The rename behavior in particular is still not a settled issue.</comment></comment>


The statisticians at Fox News use classic and novel graphical techniques - <AUTHOR> http://simplystatistics.org/2012/11/26/the-statisticians-at-fox-news-use-classic-and-novel-graphical-techniques-to-lead-with-data/

<comment><USER2> Some of these seems to be outright lies (like implicitly labeling X axis for different data points) but other techniques are just well crafted data illusions and covered well in books such as How to Lie with Statistics [http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell- Huff/dp/039...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell- Huff/dp/0393310728)

</comment><comment><USER3> The section labelled _Changing the magnitude of units at different x-values_ seems to indicate an actual error rather than any true 'technique' as only the last value doesn't match up with the axis labels. Though, it seems unlikely that it was an accidental error.

</comment><comment><USER4> And is anyone surprised?</comment>


GITHUB LinkBank for GETTING STARTED WITH All Programming Language/ API's Etc. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/theharshbhatia/Getting-Started-With

<comment><AUTHOR> please contribute and spread the word !</comment>


Digia bought Qt licensing business from Nokia - <AUTHOR> http://www.digia.com/C2256FEF0043E9C1/0/405002251 <comment><AUTHOR> Reminds me of this post: <http://www.ecyrd.com/ButtUgly/wiki/Main_blogentry_130211_1>

_I think the way to figure out which way Nokia is going to go can be seen on how they treat Qt. If they choose to keep it, Meego is going to be the future. If they choose to let it wither and die (or sell it off), Meego will become just a curiosity. Qt is the key for Meego developer adoption, and the only way it could become a feasible smartphone platform. In my opinion there's no point to develop Meego just for the tablet market; it would be really hard when you couldn't leverage the same development effort as on the phone side._

<comment><USER2> Don't know what to make of it. On one hand they're transitioning just the commercial license, which makes some sense. On the other hand, my spidey sense is tingling a bit.

<comment><USER3> It does sound a little bit like the sale of UNIX rights by Novell to SCO, which may account for the tingling feeling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In blog postings after the Microsoft announcement Nokia Qt technical leaders stated that Qt desktop development had pretty much reached the end. They would concentrate new work on the mobile releases of the framework.

This sale is an attempt to extract value from the desktop part of the framework. The alternative was to be left with a worthless asset after a few years of withering on the vine.

If I was a commercial Qt developer I would consider the desktop portion of the framework in permanent maintenance (fee) mode. Yes they said development would continue but that is what is always said in this type of situation. There is I suppose a chance that this company means it but that would not be the typical situation.

<comment><USER5> If that is the case, that it would seem it is time to activate the agreement they have with KDE (ie, release Qt with an even more open license).

If Nokia has mandated an end to Qt Desktop development and we can reasonably expect an end to Qt Mobile development given Nokia's priorities, well then we can expect an end. (that's a period after end)

If Nokia had actually sold all of Qt to an actual software house, it would have been good. This looks much more like a "fragment to destroy" strategy instead.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is also a blog post from the Qt side of things: [http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/03/07/nokia-and-digia- working-...](http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/03/07/nokia-and-digia-working- together/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I like the paradox in the press release:

 _Through the proposed acquisition, around 3500 desktop and embedded customer companies from various industries are targeted to be transferred to Digia._

and

 _Nokia will continue to invest in future development of Qt for the benefit of all users, both Commercial and LGPL._

Why do they sell it in the first place? If Nokia will continue to invest in future development, it will be a direct benefit of Digia not really Nokia...

<comment><USER7> _Why did they sell?_

Because the licensing/support business is way outside of their area of expertise, and they were almost guaranteed to screw it up.

 _Why would they continue to invest?_

For the same reason anybody invests in open source. Even with the big Windows shift, QT is still a part of their success moving forward. Without investing in QT, that part of their success would be controlled by a third party (or even worse, nobody).

Do I necessarily buy the above 2 statements? Not necessarily. Actions speak louder than words, but this action might not say much. How many QT developers they lay off is the action that means something. Currently, they're still hiring, so...

<comment><USER8> Not sure if I understand your second statement. I had thought Nokia had stated at some point that QT wasn't being ported to WP7.

<comment><USER7> Yes, but they're still selling Symbian phones, and still developing Meego for "research purposes".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What does this mean for Qt, in you opinion?

<comment><AUTHOR> Via talk.maemo.org ([http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=962346&postcount=28...](http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=962346&postcount=282)):

 _They bought the Consulting side basically - where it was possible to buy commercial licenses (didn't buy the core developers). Qt's moving towards open governance and Nokia (as stated) has developers contributing to Qt._

 _This makes sense, really, to avoid commercial Qt users from despairing about Nokia's plans._

<comment><USER10> Unless I'm missing something big, this means that the only part of Qt making money is now divorced from Qt development. So the development staff inside Nokia is not profitable and no longer strategic. In a large company, this is when you start looking for a new job.

<comment><USER11> Good point, except that Qt licensing has never bought in very big money to Nokia or Trolltech before it, especially after they changed the license from GPL to LGPL. I think Qt's being strategic lies in their being part of Nokia platforms.

On the other hand, Digia has been doing a lot of Qt work for Nokia, so it's good news for their developers.

<comment><USER10> How did trolltech ever make money, except for Qt licensing? They had Qtopia and what not, but I don't think Nokia is continuing that.

<comment><USER9> Consider how Digia used to make money (taken from Qt's blog on this news item)

 _Employing hundreds of Qt experts, Digia has 7 years experience in providing top-class Qt competence, and is dedicated to continue and grow Qt Commercial relationships as well as to contribute innovation to the overall Qt LGPL and commercial community._

<comment><USER12> I'd take that "hundreds" and divide it by 4 to arrive at the upper bound of the number of actual Qt developers Digia have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doesn't seem to be that big a deal from a business perspective. Digia (DIG) is +0,46%, compared to +0,75% for OMXH as a whole.

We will have to see how good a home Digia will be for Qt. They did come out with a profit warning just a couple of days ago, due to problems in the Mobile Solutions segment.</comment>


Keyspace 1.1 released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scalien.com/2009/09/09/keyspace-1.1-release/

<comment><USER2> Good thing they tell you what Keyspace is or a link to find out. The only links are ones to the corporate website.

How are you to know that you are downloading a video game about finding the key to unlocking space travel?

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken. Added some explanation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Paxos and consistent hashing on top of BerkeleyDB? This is getting old. 3-way replication levels at 12MB/s? Have they heard of replication pipelining?</comment>


WAMI lets you add speech recognition to any web page - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/wami-lets-you-add-speech-recognition-to-any-web-page

<comment><AUTHOR> Would have been much better if it was built on flash.</comment>


Project Ideas - <AUTHOR> Any cool ideas for python applications! <comment><USER2> An application that generates ideas for Python applications.

Seriously, you could have it scrape a website for people complaining about problems they have and then build an application to fill that space or be better than existing ones.</comment>


Freeseer Open source tech conference recording software - <AUTHOR> http://freeseer.github.io/about/index.html

<comment><USER2> Hi! I'm one of the contributors to Freeseer. Another contributor mentioned on IRC (#freeseer) that this was on HN.

Most of my contributions focus on the documentation (which is still incomplete, sorry) and on mentoring students who contribute to the project through programs such as UCOSP [1] and GSoC [2].

If you'd like to see some presentations that have been recorded with Freeseer, check out [http://www.fosslc.org](http://www.fosslc.org). In case anyone's wondering, Freeseer supports Picture-in-Picture (PIP) - it was added by a student recently!

[1] [http://ucosp.ca](http://ucosp.ca)

[2] [https://developers.google.com/open- source/soc/](https://developers.google.com/open-source/soc/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It would be awesome if ascii.io could be integrated with this</comment>


Numerical analysis in Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://numericjs.com/numeric/index.php

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not the author, but I don't think this amazing little library has gotten the attention it deserves. I saw that the author Sébastien Loisel submitted it to HN about a year ago when he first made it, but it wasn't picked up. So I'm re-submitting. Any detailed questions about the implementation will need to be directed to the author.

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool stuff. JavaScript wouldn't be my first (or second, or third, or even fifth) choice for numeric work, but I'm sure this will come in handy one day in a project that already exists and just needs a little numerical help.</comment>


How A.I. Helped Improve Crowd Counting in Hong Kong Protests - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/07/03/world/asia/hong-kong-protest-crowd-ai.html <comment><USER2> The article's demonstration of a counting model is horribly inaccurate to the point where I'm not sure why it was included. Most people see "AI" as being either good at something or not. There's little nuance such as some models being better than others. This kind of demonstration just weakens the reader's confidence in more fully developed results or different approaches. I'm not sure this brief statement offsets the prominent visuals:

> On the day of the protest, Mr. Yip and the A.I. team used technology that is > much more advanced. They spent weeks training their program to improve its > accuracy in analyzing crowd imagery.

Setting aside the presentation, from the photos the researchers appear to be using object detection rather than density estimation. This choice is problematic given the quantities involved and the need for temporal consistency.

I'm also skeptical of using human volunteers and surveys to calibrate the model. Humans are terrible at counting large numbers of people in real-time. That's a central point of the article with different groups of people providing wildly different counts.

<comment><USER3> You can count from a still picture or a video segment and use that to test or calibrate. So it may just be inaccurate reporting to give the impression that the calibration depends on humans surveying live action, which is exactly what they are working to replace. If the researchers publish their results the exact methodology used will tell but I assume they are competent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do not need to count in the first place? whilst scale of protests important, who has counted the crowd. And given the authority ignored it why bother? The counting is silly the walk is not.

Anyway walk the three walk and given I do not pass the bridge, my legs hut until 3 days later. I have not been counted but I know I have walked.

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh for __* 's sake. Companies and institutions are desperate to justify their AI investment any way they can.

They would have gotten a perfectly good estimate by taking some photos of the crowd at different density areas over the day and doing some good old- fashioned sampling and extrapolation. Something that could be done by primary school students (and is done, remember counting cars or sampling insects on field days?).

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems the NYT labelling for the bottom chart is broken/offset.

</comment><comment><USER7> The problem is they cannot back test the final result.

<comment><USER8> Or back test the previous protests that has always been highly divergent results.

Even if you take this AI approach at face value, it is evident that the police's count is not _that_ far off, compared to the organizer's estimates.

But hey, the po-po is always bad, no?

<comment><USER9> Po-po _definitely not_ always bad, but there is damning evidence of their false-flag interference in this particular protest.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  How do companies weed out perfectionist programmers in job interviews? - <AUTHOR>

Do companies like Google and Facebook do anything specifically to weed out perfectionists in the interview process? <comment><USER2> what do you mean by 'perfectionist programmers'? i want all my programmers to be strive for perfection while recognizing that is an unattainable goal and in the end, the software exists to serve business needs and sometimes technical debt needs to be accumulated ( but closely monitored so it can be taken care of later. ) if you don't have a desire to strive towards perfection, you aren't the type of programmer i want working for me. i think what you mean by perfectionist programmer and my idea are probably different, rather interested in what it means to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> A perfectionist programmer is never happy with the code and will never want to release a product with bugs -- no matter how minor those bugs are and no matter how urgent the deadline is.

<comment><USER2> I've never met anyone like that. I don't know any programmers who think that code perfection is the end goal of what they do. Code quality? Yes, but not perfection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Having just gone through the Google process: no. And IMO that's probably a good thing. Finding a balance between perfection and time pressure is something that should happen at a team level, not an individual level. I wouldn't consider it a mark against a programmer that he's a perfectionist, but I might seek to guide him toward being more pragmatic when the situation requires it.

<comment><AUTHOR> But isn't perfectionism a sign of something more serious such as OCD?

<comment><USER4> Even if it were (it's not), it is impermissible to "weed-out" people with OCD or a host of other problems in the US; it is an ADA violation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Speaking from a recent interview: ask them if they'd be happy to maintain a highly visible deployment app for all the code in an investment bank using bash exclusively.

The role paid GBP 650+ a day. That's a thousand US dollars a day. Although the spec asked for python the guys doing the interviewing really didn't actually want anyone using anything the other members of the team didn't already know.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, they should "weed them out" or at least understand them well enough to understand what positions to put them in and how to 'manage' them if that is possible.

'Obsession' is having thoughts involuntarily that don't even want to have. 'Compulsion' is doing things that don't intend to do and really don't want to do. Commonly these two go together and, when appropriately serious, are called 'obsessive-compulsive disorder' (OCD). Am I a psychiatrist? Thankfully, no. Do I know some things about this subject? Unfortunately, yes. Some of what I have had to come to believe can be important up to crucial to know but is not yet widely available.

Yes, 'perfectionism' can be a less serious description than OCD but be describing much the same thing. Still, OCD has a fairly wide range of symptoms, and 'perfectionism' is not always involved. So, OCD doesn't much imply perfectionism, but a lot of perfectionism can suggest OCD.

OCD, and likely most 'perfectionism', are regarded as 'anxiety' diseases, that is, caused by some vulnerability to anxiety. Causes can be both 'nature' and 'nurture', but it is accepted that the 'nature' cause is more fundamental (yes, among the animals, at least dogs are vulnerable).

The 'nurture' cause? The 'nature' part implies genetics and inheritance, so parents with anxiety disease can have behavior that constitutes a 'nurture' cause thus reinforcing the 'nature' cause in children. Sure, this point should be tested by, say, a separated twins study.

Related, anxiety diseases include one being too ready to conclude others are plotting against them (the old term 'paranoia' -- false alarm rate set too high), overreacting emotionally (the old term 'hysteria' -- 'gain' set too high), and a kind of 'passivity' ('feedback' set too low to avoid confrontation), and more.

So, what's to be 'afraid' of? One common case is 'criticism', especially from important, powerful, influential people, especially ones who pass out a lot of criticism.

Yes, one symptom can be fear to submit work. Instead, keep working on the work, keep dotting i's and crossing t's. So, yes, the sense of 'perfect' being pursued can be a bit silly and oblivious to the larger situation of 'reality'. E.g., the work is not 'perfect' when it's a year late. Yes, with enough anxiety, it can be tough to face reality.

Here I am omitting references and details; so what I am saying is vague. Still, encounter a real case of OCD 'perfectionism', and some of the symptoms will not be vague.

For a company like Google that prides itself on hiring 'brilliant, super- experts' (in itself a poor understanding of capabilities and not very 'brilliant', really more arrogant than brilliant) the chances of hiring 'perfectionists' and/or OCD cases is unusually high. And in hiring, the threat is beyond Google. E.g., the PBK, Woodrow Wilson, the NSF, and graduate school admissions committees leap to make this mistake. Thus this thread should be taken seriously.

It is accepted that OCD and intelligence are not related. Still, OCD and academics are close: An unusually high fraction of people making the best grades in academics are OCD cases. A good place to find OCD cases is in the list of PBK members (not me; not a chance!). And one Mensa member (again, not me!), for a time high in Mensa, finally concluded and confessed that nearly everyone in Mensa has some serious problems facing reality.

The connection between really high grades and some of the unfortunate behavior from OCD is so strong that, OCD or not, it has long been suspected in hiring that people who do really well in academics can be separated a bit too far from reality. Indeed, when I was graduating from college, as a last 'lecture' the college said that student permission was needed to report grades, class standing, etc. since many employers regarded really high grades as a disqualification. Of course they confessed this on the last day of college, not the first!

Yes, gender plays a role: Anxiety disease is about four times more common in human females than human males. In particular, and more important for females, the fear of criticism can be close to 'social phobia', that is, unreasonable fears and high stress under the view of other people.

Then, in practice, especially for a married women, a 'solution' can be to avoid being under the view of other people, stay at home as much as possible, work very hard to please her husband, get rivers of praise from her husband, and, net, get some security against the anxieties from a kind of 'emotional dependency'. Related solutions involve working closely under her husband's supervision in a family run business. Fear of criticism? Not from her husband, who showers praise (he BETTER -- learn it here if not elsewhere). From others? She sees her husband as the target of any such criticism, not herself. This situation can work. My conclusion is that such situations, actually, are FAR more common, and more important and effective as responses to female anxiety, than it is now 'politically correct' to accept.

Indeed, at present, a huge fraction of the counselors anxiety-ridden women will see are radical feminists who just insist that the only acceptable path for such a patient is to have the patient throw off any hint of dependency, hopefully throw off her husband and marriage (the counselors have contempt for marriage, laugh at marriage vows, and refuse to see marriage is part of the solution), and charge forth in 'men's' world as independent, autonomous, self- sufficient, 'assertive', and 'equal', crashing through glass ceilings. Of course, the good news is that in a few more generations, Darwin will solve this problem as such counselors and their patients will be weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree. Ugly but effective.

Generally dealing with the anxiety causes stress, and too much stress causes depression including clinical depression and suicide. For the depression, some drugs are prescribed that increase the risk of suicide. Semi-brilliant.

Such anxiety in women is so common that it has likely had 'reproductive advantage' but is a double edged sword: On the one hand, it can push her to get married and be a very 'dutiful' wife, stay in a home behind a white picket fence, and more likely be a devoted mother; on the other hand, without such a home, it can kill her. There is some question about the effects on being a good mother from none, some, or a lot of OCD.

OCD in women can be difficult to diagnose: She can look fine in high school. College can begin to cause problems. Age 22-25 can make the symptoms strong. She can be very good at hiding any problems and deny anything is wrong for some years.

Me? No, not a chance. Still, I'm NOT guessing here.

There is a connection with academics and computing: Consider a student going for a Ph.D. Well, it is broadly accepted that the main requirement and challenge of a Ph.D. is the original work of the dissertation supposed to be "new, correct, and significant". Then for such graduate study in D. Knuth's 'The TeXBook' we can see:

"The traditional way is to put off all creative aspects until the last part of graduate school. For seventeen or more years, a student is taught examsmanship, then suddenly after passing enough exams in graduate school he's told to do something original."

So, a PBK student can get fellowships to graduate school. If their PBK was heavily from 'perfectionism', then for the original work (1) it is no longer clear just what is to be done or how good it has to be and (2) there is no simple, short deadline as was nearly universal in college. So, the work can go on for years, with the student being afraid to submit it, with both stress and depression rising. Universities need to be sensitive to this situation, especially for women.

To be clear, a student, tormented by anxieties, social phobia, etc. and afraid to submit work, can STILL be brilliant but, in front of others, STILL be nearly paralyzed. The emotions can overwhelm both brilliance and rationalism.

What is better for the dissertation or any such advanced, creative work, is for the person to take the attitude:

"That old stuff, it's from not so good down to junk. What I want to do is to pick a good problem, figure out a good solution, finally understand the area more generally, and 'clean it up'. Currently the area is a mess, and I'm driven heavily by my own curiosity to clean it up.

"Criticism from others? If they really understood, then they would have solved this problem and cleaned up this area long ago. So, they won't understand my work before I have the area cleaned up. So, I can't take their criticism too seriously. Besides, in any good research university, graduate students have a LOT of freedom.

"For the Ph.D., I'm fairly sure my solution will be publishable, and that's enough to keep the list check box clickers off my back for now.

"Criticism from others? It likely won't be very serious. Praise from others? That will be like looking for hens' teeth until I have all the work in print. In the meanwhile, I'm working based on my own understanding, where I can see my way clear, to the goal I actually CAN see on the horizon, and for my own curiosity."

Yes, this attitude can be good for Ph.D. research and more but can cause problems in college and 'high quality' high schools where the anxiety-ridden, perfectionistic students, too afraid to try anything new, tend to win, especially in front of teachers who don't understand research and can't see past the textbook.

Uh, the main reason the problem is not solved yet is that only a small fraction of the population can solve it so that necessarily anyone who actually can do such work will likely have to be heavily 'self-motivated' and able to work largely alone, be able to see their way clear to solutions, and STILL know the difference between good work and the rest. This involves, mostly just between one's own ears, knowing the destination, seeing how to get there, and getting there, fairly independently of what anyone else thinks. For someone with an anxiety disease, the uncertainty here, and chances of criticism and lack of praise along the way, can throttle the work.</comment>


Sublime Text 2 (Build 2111) gets vi key bindings, indent guides - <AUTHOR> http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-2-build-2111 <comment><USER2> Jon (jskinner) has been doing a great job of continuous releases with a mix of new features and bug fixes. It is easily the best $60 I've ever spent on an editor or IDE.

If you haven't tried Sublime Text 2 before, I recommend taking it for a whirl. Most developers I've shown it to really like it. Here are some reasons it won me over:

Multiple selections. Select a variable and then press Ctrl+d/Cmd+d a few times. Now type a new variable name. Or, select a few lines and press Ctrl+Shift+l/Cmd+Shift+l. You can now make batch edits to all lines

Goto Anything (Ctrl+p or Cmd+p). Start typing a filename. Type an @ and then start typing a function or method name. Hit escape instead of enter to return to where you were.

It also has a very nice Python API that makes writing plugins fun. <http://www.sublimetext.com/docs/2/api_reference.html>

There are so many other little things done right that you find once you start digging in.

<comment><USER3> Couple of features I wish ST2 had:

1) Ability to rename files and tell that to git/any revision control while it does it.

2) Bundler integration to automatically add all bundles to the project so they can be searched on.

<comment><USER4> I wish it had code folding, and I wish I could do a block cursor instead of the | (easier to see) but I don't think those are hugely popular requests.

<comment><USER5> Last I've seen, code folding has been requested from day 1. And I see requests / lamentations / mentions of it _every_ time discussions about it crop up, without exception.

Personally, as shiny as the scroll-preview is, the fact that it doesn't show the structure of the entire document makes it almost worthless to me. As much as I hate visual studio, MetalScroll[1] was fantastic. You can see functions by shape, visually navigate the entire file at a glance (though I have good visual memory, so that may be easier for me), and it shows folds, breakpoints, changed lines, and selections. ST2 shows... about a screen in either direction.

[1] <http://code.google.com/p/metalscroll/>

<comment><USER6> I would like to second this sentiment. That feature has become a vital part of how I navigate code, especially for projects that I am looking at for the first time.

It's the only thing preventing me from using SublimeText 2.

<comment><USER7> SublimeText's minimap is not as feature rich as metal scroll, but its pretty useful in general as a nav tool. I often find myself wishing Chrome had a scrollable minimap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What I love about ST2 is that although it's very data-driven in configuration (several hierarchies of plain text configuration files + a simple python API), it somehow doesn't seem overwhelming, or that I'm missing all the cool tricks. I hope the author continues to comment all the configuration files and will document 100% of the API.

The editor itself has a great fluid feel. Looks-wise, the default theme is nice, and "Soda Dark", which seems to be a community favourite, is gorgeous.

</comment><comment><USER9> Have they sorted out the rubbish file manager yet? When I open a directory I don't need an animation of the contents sliding in from the right. This slows me down. I want to switch to ST2 but there's just too many little things holding me back.

<comment><USER9> Okay maybe rubbish was a bit of an exaggeration but it's lacking in a lot of areas:

\- No icons. Makes it hard to differentiate between files and directories at a glance. \- No drag and drop, you cant quickly copy and move files. \- Renaming files is clunky (on OS X at least). \- Right clicking a file doesn't give you many useful options. \- Doesn't match the host OS's file manager very well. It's some sort of weird middle ground; on Windows it should act like Explorer, on OS X it should use the same conventions as Finder.

Compare the file manager to the ones in Coda and Espresso and it's fairly poor. I know the ctrl/cmd + p shortcut is pretty amazing but sometimes you don't know exactly what you're looking for and have to fall back to browsing through a codebase to find what you're after.

This post sounds a bit hateful, but I really like the rest of ST2. It's just the file manager which gives me grief.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now that I finally found out about remember_open_files, Sublime might grow into a viable TextMate alternative.

I had real trouble finally finding a reference of the configuration settings. The official documentation on version 2 on sublimetext.com is still in its very beginnings and it wasn't clear to me that sublimetext.info is actually valid documentation for version 2.

As a hint: Maybe add a comment to the global configuration file poiting to <http://sublimetext.info/docs/en/reference/settings.html> for a list of possible settings plus a note to add the settings to the user configuration file.

On a related note, the reason I want to turn off remember_open_files is because for me Sublime is not the editor I'm doing most of my project work in (I'm using IDEA with Rails and PHP plugins), so Sublime (or currently TextMate) is just something I use for quickly opening a few specific files on the command line or from finder.

Seeing all the old files open alongside the current one is just distracting, so I really need it to forget about previous incarnations.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sublime Text is a great editor. As a sometime vi guy, this makes me super happy.

</comment><comment><USER12> ST2 is brilliant. If you're used to TextMate, I encourage you to give it a whirl. I think the trial version is an "unlimited" trial. It only nags you with a dialog box once in a while.

<comment><USER13> You should still buy it though. The authors made a great product and deserve to be compensated well for their work.

<comment><USER14> I second that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you're a Vim user and like the idea of indent guides, check out <https://github.com/nathanaelkane/vim-indent-guides>

<comment><USER16> Interesting. A similar feature built into Vim is `cursorcolumn`, which will highlight the background of whatever column the cursor is in. If you set `cursorline` as well, you get a kind of cross-hairs around the cursor. See e.g. <http://briancarper.net/vim/cursorcol.png>

I find that feature useful enough that I've never needed indent guides. If you jump the cursor to the beginning of a line, you can easily see which other lines are indented equally with that line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been using sublime text 2 for a month or so now and I am starting to become a big fan. I think that I'll purchase it soon. My requests...

1) Add all of the menu commands to the list of commands that show up when you press cmd-shift-p. It is very weird that some of the named commands (like convert to spaces) are available via cmd-shift-p, but others (like switch to 1 column view) are not.

2) I prefer the way textmate does multiple selection, where you can press a single key to toggle between regular selection mode and block selection mode.

Using cmd-shift-up/down in sublime text is very unpredictable. It works fine in the case you have several consecutive lines with no extra newlines in- between, but that is about it.

Though cmd-d to multi-select the next same word is pretty awesome.

3) Easier navigation between tabs in differnt split columns. I never remember the keys to switch between columns and I feel the existing normal tab management keys could do the job with a couple of tweaks.

For example, cmd-t is awesome, but I wish it was smart enough to automatically switch to an existing tab instead of opening a new tab with the same file in it.

Also, make cmd-shift-{ and cmd-shift-} move across all tabs and not just the tabs inside the currently selected column.

4) And lastly, the find in project results desperately need syntax coloring. It is so hard to scan a giant blob of plain white text.

Ackmate style file types would be nice too, but that isn't to big of a deal.

Again, awesome stuff. I can't wait to try out the vim bindings and I hope he keeps up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER18> So looks like I need to give Sublime Text another shot.

I switched from ST1 to vim after almost a year of using ST2 exclusively for work. I very, _very_ highly recommend you try Sublime Text out - I've used many editors, and Sublime Text is still, for me, almost the perfect mix of must-have features and ease of use. Alas, vim's amazing power was a little too much of a draw.

And if you try out Sublime Text, don't forget to check out it's killer feature (which _doesn't_ have): Multiple Selections. They're the single most powerful non-obvious editor feature I've ever seen, and I greatly hope they make their way to _every_ editor when people start to understand that.

In the meantime, this new vim mode might just might bring me back to ST2 full- time. Here's hoping!

</comment><comment><USER19> Thanks for adding indent guides; that's one of the must-have features of Komodo Edit for me.

<comment><USER20> Please do buy it after you'll be convinced that this is the best editor you have ever used :)

<comment><USER20> Woops, only realized this now ... this should be under some other comment, don't know how this happened :\

<comment><USER21> Been there, done that, own the downvote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> ST looks really promising and I am excited to see where it will go.

I still use Code Browser (<http://code-browser.sf.net>) which is oriented around folding. One feature from it that I really miss in other editors is the "Clone Window" function that creates a new tab of the same file, scroll and cursor position. IMO, this beats using bookmarks because you simply close the new tab to go back to where you were.

<comment><USER23> Code Browser has a really interesting approach to organising your code. Does anyone know of any text editors/IDEs that implement code folding in a similar fashion for Mac OS X?

<comment><USER22> The source did actually compile on OS X once but he hasn't been keeping it up to date and now I get a segfault. I am considering throwing some hours at it because I really want it on my mac..

<comment><USER23> If you do decide to try and get it compiling then I would really appreciate it if you could let me know how you get on!

My email is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would of checked out ST before, but I was thinking it was an Apple product based on the screenshot the article uses (I went back to the beta announcement and it shows the Apple interface as well). I see on the home page you use Windows screenshots now, but I didn't even think about visiting that page last time.

Maybe add some Apple/Linux/Window icons or text on the top somewhere so they show on all your pages? Looking forward to trying it out!

<comment><USER25> ST1 was Windows-only. I'm taking a guess that jskinner switched to a Mac before starting/releasing ST2; going by the OSX screenshots and he's listing Apple keybindings (Cmd vs Ctrl) first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love Sublime.

If you're like me and prefers TextMate's simple cycling autocompletion (usually bound to the escape key) to Sublime's weird snippets-and-best-match tab completion, I made a Sublime Text plugin that gives you just that: [https://github.com/alexstaubo/sublime_text_alternative_autoc...](https://github.com/alexstaubo/sublime_text_alternative_autocompletion)

</comment><comment><USER27> I really wish that there was an auto-update. I've been using the beta for some time now, Jon's amazing constant updates actually becomes frustrating because you have download an installer every update. I would buy a license in an instant if this could be implemented.

<comment><USER28> Wait, which OS are you running? On the Mac, just opening the editor gives me this handy dialog (note the "Automatically download and install updates in the future" checkbox): <http://cl.ly/0e2S0h0O011S0U3p2w0I>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Anyone able to get Zen Coding running on ST2? I'm following the instructions at: [http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=580...](http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=580&p=10654#p10654)

<comment><USER2> Myself and a number of my coworkers have installed it. You basically just need to clone it into a folder called ZenCoding inside of your Packages folder. You can find the Packages folder by going to the Preferences > Browse Packages… menu entry.

The alternative is using the package manager I wrote <http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control>. This also gives you the benefit of automatic updates and a whole bunch of other packages at your fingertips.

<comment><USER26> Package Control is very cool, thanks for creating it. As an author of a Sublime plugin ([https://github.com/alexstaubo/sublime_text_alternative_autoc...](https://github.com/alexstaubo/sublime_text_alternative_autocompletion)), how do I submit that package to the list fetched with "Discover Packages"? Do I add the binary package file to my Github repo, and then ask you to add it to the official package repository?

<comment><USER2> You can fork the package_control_channel on GitHub (<https://github.com/wbond/package_control_channel>) or BitBucket (<https://bitbucket.org/wbond/package_control_channel>) and send a pull request. That or you can email me.

You don't need to create a binary package file as Package Control can work directly with GitHub and BitBucket. Simply add the regular https URL to your repository.

<comment><USER26> Ah, excellent. I went for the pull request method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Currently stuck on an ancient WinXP box due to my MBP frying itself, so I decided to see how ST2 runs on it. Absolutely wonderful experience @ 1.3Ghz/256RAM, and the vintage mode finally makes it a viable option for all my programming.

</comment><comment><USER7> For the past couple months, I've been trying to move from ST to vim, but couldn't get over my love for goto-anything; the usefulness of the minimap; and all the little details that made ST a great editor. This is great to hear.

</comment><comment><USER31> Very well done. The last few revisions has basically turned v2 into my full- time editor for most code. I still found myself reaching for vim so it's nice to have some more key parity between the two now.

</comment><comment><USER32> I love the UI, but can't seem to figure out how to open a directory without starting a new project. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER2> You can drag a folder onto the sidebar, or use the command line interface to open a folder. If you are on OS X you need to create a symlink for the subl executable <http://www.sublimetext.com/docs/2/osx_command_line.html>.

<comment><USER32> Thanks for the suggestion. That's definitely an improvement.

Though from what I can tell, it just adds the folder to the current project, which feels a bit odd. And having to open up Windows Explorer instead of just doing a File > Open Directory is clunky.

<comment><USER26> The newest build has "Open Folder…" in the File menu.

<comment><USER32> Thanks. I just saw that. Not sure why, but I didn't see it until after I restarted the program twice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Could not download update yet, but I still have a problem with the black tabs. If the tabs matched the project drawer... :)

<comment><USER2> One cool thing about ST2 is that is it fully theme-able. There is an alternate theme called Soda that has both a light and dark variant. You can grab it with git from <https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme> or use the package manager I wrote <http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control>.

<comment><USER34> +100000. Wow. Package control and Soda is awesome. Where have I been? I never really liked the dark tabs personally and this fixes it! This should be on ST's main page lol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can it convert files to different encoding? (I noticed "open with encoding", but nothing like "save with encoding")

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there any way to have it enter command mode instead of insert mode automatically after opening a file?

<comment><USER36> Excellent, I found the setting:

[http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=290...](http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2907)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sublime is (excluding vim) by far the best text editor i've ever used. I just wish i could afford it.

<comment><USER7> You can download it for free. As far as I can tell, the only difference in the unregistered version is that it frequently pops a box asking if you want to register.

<comment><USER33> This (not time limiting) is really useful for folks that want to keep testing it from time to time until some feature is available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Needs C-[ to double for Esc.

<comment><USER39> Agreed - I'll make sure this gets in for the next version

<comment><USER20> Hey, sorry to trouble you here, but I had this problem: [http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=287...](http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2877) and I can't find a solution anywhere, maybe you have an idea of what I'm doing wrong?

<comment><USER39> I've posted a follow up on the forum - in general, feel free to email email@example.com if something is overlooked on the forum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Would be cool if folks that bought ST2 could suggest and vote for features.

<comment> T-R <http://sublimetext.userecho.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> yep, HN killed the host.

</comment><comment><USER41> I like how, in the screenshot, line 1337 is presently active. That just can't have been an coincidence.</comment>


Ask HN: Startups, are you choosing to apply via "Apply HN"? - <AUTHOR> And if not, why not? <comment><USER2> I applied. Got some great questions that I need to be prepared to answer anyway.

For a solo-founder startup it might be the best chance to get in as the criteria is upvotes and quality of discussion neither of which should be affected by number of founders.</comment>


Why phone software sucks and how to fix it - <AUTHOR> http://antirez.com/post/why-phone-software-sucks-and-how-to-fix-it.html

<comment><USER4> According to the article the problem is that the harware vendor and the software vendor is the same, and since these are big companies with no particular incentives for creating great software it ends up being mediocre. That is true.

The solution offered is splitting hardware vendors and software vendors. Unfortunately I think that if you call Nokia and tell them that they won't return your calls.

It is a classical monopoly situation, and while I agree that it would be a great soultion it is totally pie in the sky wishful thinking.

<comment><USER5> I think the problem has to be something else. Look at the PC industry - <USER2> work with minimal hassle precisely because the h/w and s/w manufacturer are one and the same.

And these companies do have an incentive for creating great software - <USER3> people will buy their phones!

The problem is probably that these large companies don't have a strong leader who cares about product design...

<comment><USER4> I think you said it in the last line of your comment:

Apple is the exception because of Jobs' amazing reality distortion field and his style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something that is likely to change the situation to some degree is always-on connections. If you can do mobile phone web apps, that changes things around significantly. Ok, you don't get to actually access the phone, but there are still tons of 'good enough' apps to be made if people aren't worried about paying for connection time. And of course we all know about the deployment advantages of web apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Opera mini, probably the best j2me application ever written, is actually what I run in my N70 when I need to get a bit of fresh air :) Here in Italy there is an option to have mostly flat connection (some gigabyte of data for month, it's very hard to reach the limit just using web apps) that costs 8 euro for month so I'm already experimenting how cool it is the always on in mobile phone.

Now of course this does not fix the main problem of the actual phone primary functions handled by poorly designed software.</comment></comment>


HP 3000 Series 33: 16-bits of Sapphire - <AUTHOR> http://www.cpushack.com/2016/11/26/hp-3000-series-33-16-bits-of-sapphire/ <comment><USER2> These machines bring back a lot of nostalgia for me. I first learned Unix on a HP 9000 550. I played around a bit with an HP 300 and envied the HP 3000 series. Later I went even further back in time and purchased an HP 1000E. It was a lot of fun getting it working but RTE-A was not a very exciting OS. These machines were already quite old when I got a hold of them back in the early 90s.

[http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=581](http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=581)

[http://www.hpmuseum.net/exhibit.php?class=3&cat=33](http://www.hpmuseum.net/exhibit.php?class=3&cat=33)

<comment> mark-r I first learned programming on an HP 3000 time-sharing system. Back in the 70's, Basic only. I was quite surprised to see that the line had not stagnated at that point, since that was both my first and last exposure to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How long until we can buy germanium or gallium arsenide chips with switching rates/clock speeds in the hundreds of gigahertz or low terahertz? My (probably wrong) understanding is that this is feasible now but researchers are still developing efficient and scalable manufacturing processes.

<comment><USER4> This isn't really feasible due to the limited propagation speed of em-waves (ie. electronic signals). I mean, sure, it's probably possible to get to, say, 50 or 100 GHz with very deep pipelines (ie. only limited propagation of signals in each cycle), but we've already seen 15 years ago that deep pipelines basically don't work for general purpose computing.

Additionally the frequency-dependent losses are unlikely to fundamentally change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> SoS is typically used in hardware that's exposed to ionizing radiation. I suppose it has other favorable characteristics (heat, performance, etc) but I'm no expert...

<comment><USER6> in the article :

"Sapphire is an excellent insulator which wels reduce leakage currents, as well as spurious currents from such things as radiation. Radiation tolerance is perhaps what SoS became known for most, but its low power performance was what HP was after in the 1970's."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _SoS is a form of Silicon on Insulator, a manufacturing method that is very common in today's IC's (using Silicon Dioxide)_

Really? As far as I know SoI is still somewhat specialised and although there may be huge quantities of some ICs produced using it, the majority of designs are still bulk silicon.

<comment><USER8> AMD used SoI for their CPUs from 130nm through 32nm. IBM has also done a lot of SoI chips, and GlobalFoundries is still marketing FD-SOI for things like RF applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there an emulator só se can get a feel of MPE?

<comment><USER10> > Even today the HP 3000 is supported by a third party (Stromasys) who makes > an emulator allowing native MPE programs to run on a modern Intel processor.

Seems the article answered that question and gives a starting point for your search. Good luck and write up your experience if you feel inclined! :)

<comment><USER9> I read the article. I was expecting something more like MESS. Also, an image from where the OS can run or be installed is needed. Not sure what's the license status. The latest I can run on my Hercules is MVS 3.8j.</comment></comment></comment>


Lenovo UEFI Only Wants To Boot Windows, RHEL - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIyOTg

<comment><USER2> That's unfortunate, but judging from Lenovos tweet[0], it could be a mistake, and they're looking into it.

[0]: <https://twitter.com/lenovo/status/268962425917816832></comment>


Max Levchin Awards 2nd Annual Prize for Advancements in Real-World Cryptography - <AUTHOR> http://press-release.levchinprize.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The prizes went to Joan Daemen, for AES and SHA-3 (on stage, Levchin pointed out that his interest in cryptography had been piqued by a xeroxed copy of DES when he was in school, and that it was an honor to present an award to one of the people who replaced the DES), and --- more notably, I think --- to Moxie Marlinspike and Trevor Perrin for their work on Signal.

Last year's winners were Phil Rogaway (a cryptographer of repute comparable to that of Daemen) and the miTLS team (of Triple Handshake, SMACK, FREAK, Logjam, and SLOTH fame).</comment>


Show HN: Climate Finder: set climate conditions and find places that match - <AUTHOR> https://nomadlist.com/climate-finder <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

I made a quick mini hack today because I wanted to find out what places would have specific temperatures in certain parts of the year to figure out a place to live throughout the year in the future.

This collects the daily highs throughout the month and calculates the median value. It also shows the humidity. And you can filter on both, for example 16'C to 25'C in January and below 30'C in June with 70% max humidity all year round.

It's a mini hack that exposes a subset of nomadlist.com's giant data set.

It's a self contained PHP/HTML/JS file with jQuery. Let me know what you think!

<comment><USER2> This is great! Thank you for sharing!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ethics of selling using HTML prototypes? - <AUTHOR>

I work at a small startup with some angel funding. We have a launched product and are working on new products that will probably be built and launch in 6 months if the founder closes a funding round he says is almost finalized. We don't have the money to start building them until the funding comes in.
In the meantime we built some HTML prototypes (not functional) for the new products and the founder is showing these to potential customers on sales calls. I am involved in bizdev so I am on these sales calls but I feel really uncomfortable that the prototypes are not explicitly presented as "prototypes" to the potential customers. They are basically presented as being real and most of the customers respond like they are real. It's really difficult for me to answer customer questions about what our products can do when I know the products don't even exist yet. I also worry about what will happen if somebody wants to buy the product before we build it, which seems very possible since it it will take at least 6 months to build. Even if I don't have to come up with the excuse/delay I don't like the thought of it.
A few of my friends say that I'm worrying for nothing. This is how startups work they say. But I still feel that if you're showing a product that is only a HTML mockup and you haven't even started building the real thing you should be honest about what they are looking at.
Am I wrong and not cut out for early startups? Or is what our founder doing unethical?
Any opinions and experiences would really help me make a decision about what I should do next (get over it, tell the founder my concerns, resign). <comment><USER2> I think the headline sums up the confusion. Selling (as in taking cash in exchange for the product) a prototype or mockup as-if it were the real thing would be fraud. Demoing a prototype or demoing features which are not fully fleshed out is not.

The entire Lean startup movement and concept of the MVP is to test your product idea in the market, in front of real customers, before investing too much time trying to build something no one wants.

I thinks its OK to focus the discussion on features, benefits, etc if you can get in front of potential customers. It should not be long before they ask about pricing and availability. That's when you simply say you think it will be ready by date X.

Take for example the email assistant AI startup X.ai. They say in their FAQ that "Amy" is human assisted. For all we _know_ Amy is 100% humans booking your appointments and the algorithm is total vapor. It's not unethical to do this, as long as customers are not expecting some _guarantee_ of no human intervention (e.g I sell you an instance of Amy I claim lives on your desktop, but requests are actually sent over the network for humans to do the work)

If you have a black box in your demo where data goes in and magic comes out, and you say "This is actually taking the input and generating the output in realtime right now" you are sticking your neck out and it's likely to get chopped. Building a new customer relationship on a lie like that would be a mistake. But depending on the specifics it's a calculated risk; if the black box is completely do-able but just not yet quite done, then I think hard coding results in a mockup is time-honored, wide spread and perfectly ethical. But when they ask about availability you've A) confirmed market interest, and B) you state not all of the features are ready but you are expecting to ship on Date X.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment.

A problem I have with what you wrote is it's all well and good to answer the availability question honestly if it comes up but that doesn't (for me) address the issue that I don't feel my founder is being 100% transparent when the customer convos begin. We are demoing something to customers and they aren't being told that it's just a prototype up front.

Is there a reason he can't say it's a prototype? I get somebody might not be interested in a prototype but isn't the customer going to lose interest when we say that it's going to be 6 months before the products are available anyway?

Another reason I feel uneasy is that we can't even start to build what we prototyped without the funding. If that falls through we are screwed so how can our founder honestly give a Date X with any certainty without the money in the bank?

Edit: also having been in sales/bizdev for years I think "selling" is the process of offering something for sale. It's not just the moment where you accept the money and provide the product/service. Maybe this is where the problem is. I just can't seem to get comfortable asking somebody to consider buying a product that doesn't exist without telling them up front that it doesn't exist yet. That's bait and switch to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Honesty in business:

My experience tells me that in the long-term nothing beats honesty in business. My fathers' small business showed me that. By the other hand, in the short-term things are less clear. I've worked in a startup where "loosen ethics" really speeded up things. Without it probably this startup wouldn't have survived. The main problem is that "loosen ethics" normally mirror the CEO's character and this will not be just a temporary behaviour.

</comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like my company. I work at a startup as well and the founder would often times shows items where the HTML was still wet and not really explain that in order to get this to work, many man hours would be required. I think there is a balance between salesmanship and technical mis-representation. We have moved past this as we matured our development process, but I found it to be dishonest. This type of behaviour continues when we report numbers of users, $, etc. Not good.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you cope with your discomfort? Have you expressed your concerns? Have you thought about quitting?

<comment><USER4> We have bigger issues, but yes. We eventually cut him out of the loop and would not let him show stuff that was not ready. Working on quitting not from issues like these, but they are not too far off. If you are will to stretch the truth, then basically you are not trustworthy, whether when dealing with end-users, investors or employees. Next it will be 'mis- communications'regarding raises, options, titles, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Fort McMurray, a Canadian Oil Boom Town, Is Left in Ashes - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/09/world/americas/fort-mcmurray-fire-canada-oil-boom.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I live in Edmonton, which is the closest big city to Fort McMurray, about a 5 hour drive south. While it's true that the devastation has been extensive and that this is the most expensive disaster in Alberta's history, the extent as we know it so far is that approximately 15-20% of the city has been destroyed. Most of the news articles I've read have left that fact out and have tried to allude that the entire city has been destroyed, which is far from true. The majority of residents have a home to return to and the city will recover.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Google Analytics compliante with the new regulation in Europe? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
As the new regulation will get effective shortly, I have a few questions:
- Will you still use Google Analytics on your website? - Is it legal to use it without requesting the user's approvale? - What are you planning to implement to continue using it?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Are you talking about the ICO Cookie Rule[1]? My bet is that no one will give it much attention until they actually start enforcing it -- which they might not. But then again, I'm in the US so it doesn't apply to me. I'd love to hear the opinions from those managing sites in the EU.

[1] [http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/current_topics/new_pecr_rules.asp...](http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/current_topics/new_pecr_rules.aspx)

Edit: Here is a better description of the rule: <http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-12668552>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. It is a real nightmare if you have AdSense or Analytics. But oddly nobody speak about it in Europe. Seems like nobody care...</comment></comment>


AI Is the Future Cyber Weapon of Internet Criminals - <AUTHOR> https://edgylabs.com/artificial-intelligence-future-cyber-weapon/ <comment><USER2> Quickly, let's ban "AI"!</comment>


GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians' communications at G20 summits - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/16/gchq-intercepted-communications-g20-summits <comment><USER2> This is precisely what the likes of GCHQ and the NSA are for.

I would imagine that any G20 host and it allies would use the opportunity to gather intelligence. I would also assume that where ever it is hosted, many intelligence agencies would be active.

If not, then what are these agencies for? They were never designed for crime fighting or mass surveillance of populations. There were and still are for spying on nations. G20 summits are a prime and legit target.

IMHO, this is a proper use of such agencies.

<comment><USER3> So is it okay to do this? Even diplomacy has laws, you know.

These actions are in breach of Articles 27 and 30 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (of which the US and UK are signatories):

Article 27: 1.The receiving State shall permit and protect free communication on the part of the mission for all official purposes.

Article 30: 1.The private residence of a diplomatic agent shall enjoy the same inviolability and protection as the premises of the mission. 2.His papers, correspondence and his property, shall likewise enjoy inviolability.

<comment><USER4> You'd have to be naive to think that every nation actually follows such laws. If they did, most jobs that intelligence agencies are supposed to conduct would be impossible.

<comment><USER5> Why aren't such laws being followed and enforced though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a software engineer and fan of Tom Clancy novels, I find this fascinating. As an American who would like to be able to do business with people outside the country, I find this worrisome. This type of thing will increase the distrust of Americans (while this occurred in the UK, it was done in conjunction with the NSA). It paints us as diabolical geniuses running around spying on everyone and everything. Many international companies may decide that buying technology or related services from American companies simply isn't worth the risk that there will be some kind of monitoring going on.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not to excuse the interception, but did a "top 20" nation's diplomats _really_ use an Internet cafe to check and send email? Fake cafe or not, that seems like an awfully irresponsible act for what should be sensitive diplomatic traffic. Note that Russia was not nearly so inept; Medvedev's phone calls were encrypted, though NSA tried to decrypt (it's unspecified whether they did).

I wonder what Snowden is thinking by leaking the real cloak-and-dagger stuff though. Diplomacy has been at least somewhat adversarial since the world's "second oldest profession" came about, and the flipside to advancing your own citizens' negotiating position by spying is to allow the other nations to _conspire against you_ behind your back.

Diplomacy is a dangerous, dangerous game to insert yourself into, Mr. Snowden, and will never have clear friends _or_ enemies.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of Clare Short's statement about the British government spying on Kofi Annan[1] in the run up to the Iraq war.

[1] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3488548.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3488548.stm)

</comment><comment><USER9> There's a companion story about the NSA targetting Russian President Medvedev at the G20 summit: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/16/nsa-dmitry- medve...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/16/nsa-dmitry- medvedev-g20-summit)

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how many more G* meetings will be hosted in the UK or US.

On a more serious note, perhaps this will spur further investment in open, reliable encryption technologies around the world. After all, governments can put vast amounts of money into this, that individuals and most companies cannot.

And on a further note, I hope that these revelations keep coming, keep the outrage up, and force politicians to realise that they're in the crosshairs too.

<comment><USER7> In my view it's kind of embarrassing that any nations got caught by this at all, even in 2009 you had VPNs which could be used to setup a secure network over a dumb and unencrypted pipe. If the keyboards are smartcard-capable you could even have possibly used S/MIME.

In the worst case, use the telephone in your hotel room to setup a SLIP or PPP connection back home using a known-good and known-clean laptop brought from home. But an Internet cafe? Really?

<comment><USER11> It's embarrassing, but it's not surprising. Clearly some of the participating countries were more focused on an economic discussion than a game of cloak and dagger.

But there's a lot more to this than countries not taking proper security measures. It's not easy if your "adversary" has a 0-day exploit for your Blackberry that came straight from the company that made it (which may be the case).

Seeing secure, totally open hardware come out of this would be great.

<comment><USER12> I wonder if this will cause countries to abandon OSX & Windows in favor of open source software.

The bigest takeaway from all of this is that you can't trust closed software that was developed by foreign corporations.

<comment><USER7> Firefox logs in to GMail and Facebook just as well as Internet Explorer does, and the open protocols that would be used by OSS are just as susceptible to interception on the wire as the closed protocols used by Skype.

I do agree (and have for years) that people with Important Data should rely exclusively on open-source software if it is important that the data is handled properly, but OSS is not a panacea to this by any means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's impossible for business to continue as usual as more of this apparatus is revealed. Both legal changes and more secure technologies are imminent. Let's get working on easy, ubiquitous encryption and secure logon.

</comment><comment><USER13> I love the timing on this. Just exactly when Putin is visiting the UK. So totally deliberate. The Guardian is having fun, but I imagine there are spies out there who are having no fun at all tonight.

</comment><comment><USER14> "The September meeting of finance ministers was also the subject of a new technique to provide a live report on any telephone call made by delegates and to display all of the activity on a graphic which was projected on to the 15-sq-metre video wall of GCHQ's operations centre as well as on to the screens of 45 specialist analysts who were monitoring the delegates.

"For the first time, analysts had a live picture of who was talking to who that updated constantly and automatically," according to an internal review."

</comment><comment><USER15> The fact that they talk about how this is nearly routine now would make me expect that the UK might not be a premier destination for international diplomatic conferences for much longer.

</comment><comment><USER16> What kind of Powerpoint slides are these? Are the spying agencies trying to "sell" their skills for larger budgets, or what?

<comment><USER17> They even have a cheesy corporate template.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you want to go exploring the rabbit hole regarding spying on diplomatic communications, read about Crypto AG: [http://rense.com/politics2/crypto.htm](http://rense.com/politics2/crypto.htm)

That drunk Swiss guy that Snowden knew about may be some distant echo of this exploit.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd love to hear more information on what they mean by "penetrated Blackberry's security". Given BlackBerry's current troubles, and their certifications for Government use, this could cause them quite a bit of brand damage.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if it's related to back doors RIM was forced to include, or security vulnerabilities that RIM shared with these agencies before fixing them.

I'm very interested to see where the argument for forcing manufacturers to include back doors goes once events like this are part of the public consciousness.

<comment><USER20> If the debacle between RIM, India and I think it was Saudi Arabia a year or two ago is anything to go by[1], then it's not a back door as much as giving out the private key to the servers located in a country. India and Saudi got those keys on the threat of disallowing Blackberries in their respective countries. I remember thinking at the time that surely the US would have the keys to US servers.

[1] Whenever there's doubt, there is no doubt.

<comment><USER19> My understanding is that if the phone is linked with a self-hosted Enterprise Server (BES, not hosted by RIM) then RIM don't actually have the keys to hand over.

I would have assumed that a government would have enough cash (and sense) to purchase and run its own BES software, keeping the keys out of RIMs hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pointed observation from the article:

 _The disclosure raises new questions about the boundaries of surveillance by GCHQ and its American sister organisation, the National Security Agency, whose access to phone records and internet data has been defended as necessary in the fight against terrorism and serious crime._

So, are the diplomatic and political representatives of allied powers suspected criminals or suspected terrorists then?

I'm not sure how they can possibly wriggle out of this one without much egg on face, and possibly some significant consequences for diplomatic standing too, with the G8 summit taking place this week.

<comment><USER22> There's really no diplomatic issue here. There's some egg on face for it becoming public, but spying pre-dates terrorism. Governments spy on other governments. It's what's done.

I disagree with the article here. PRISM absolutely raises serious questions about the boundaries of intelligence agencies. But spying on other governments - which is the _whole reason_ for GCHQ existing - that's exactly what these agencies exist to do.

It's like all those Russian sleeper agents in the US back in 2010. It was highly embarrassing for Russia, but there was virtually no change to diplomatic or political relations...because it's what spying is about. And exactly the same thing happened a few months ago when Russia threw out a US 'diplomat' (or, as it turned out, CIA agent) for totally botching a recruitment job. Embarrassing for the US, but no diplomatic consequences of any noticeable kind.

<comment><USER21> I agree that spies spying on people is hardly news. As far as any possible diplomatic consequences, it was more idly wondering whether anyone would try to turn the fact that this time it got out to their advantage during the G8.

But it doesn't reflect well on all the politicians rushing to defend mass surveillance/dragnet operations on the grounds that these capabilities are only used in serious crime/terrorism/whatever other specific cases they admitted to.

It's also rather surprising that some of these tactics were used or worked at all, not because there was any real doubt that these kinds of organisations could use them if they were willing to commit enough resources, but more because anyone attending a high profile event like that actually fell for the tactics and made it worthwhile to bother trying them in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is this legal? I mean they aren't uk nationals so they aren't protected by the normal laws. I'd like to know what, if any, laws were broken or whether this is simply an ethical issue.

<comment><USER24> There is very little international law that governs interactions between nations. Those governments trusted their host. They were betrayed.

<comment><USER22> It's embarrassing that it's public, but I highly doubt the countries involved trusted their hosts. Do you really think Russia trusts the UK and the US?

<comment><USER25> Russia clearly didn't, given the encrypted satellite phone link for Medvedev, but it appears some others did. And now they know better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why are spies making powerpoints to brag about their achievements? Aren't these things supposed to be secret?

<comment><USER27> Hence the classification "TOP SECRET STRAP 1" at the bottom of the slide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've always found it odd as hell that G20 summits aren't done by teleconferencing with one time pads. It's not like it'd be difficult, given the resources they have, to securely exchange a few TB of stuff for when you wanted really secure chats.

</comment><comment><USER4> This shouldn't be a concern to countries because if they are in any way competent, they'd be securing their channels of communication regardless.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is down voting disabled on some submissions? - <AUTHOR>

As title says, down voting is disabled on some submissions. For example the recent SpaceX Thread [1].<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8071070 <comment><USER2> If the comment is over 1 day old, you can't downvote it anymore. See, you can still downvote this comment on that thread because it's only 18 hours old. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8081863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8081863)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh thank you, this makes perfect sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can downvote? Does it come with higher karma?

<comment><USER4> There are downvotes and flags. People with at least 750(?) karma can downvote comments, so long as they are less than 24 hours old. No one can down vote submissions.

If a submission does not belong on HN you can flag it. Be cautious with flagging because you can (apparently) lose flagging privlidges. (I think I flag too many submissions and I have cut back on that. I think I flag comments carefully).

You can flag individual comments by clicking the [link] link which should then provide an option to flag.

There have been some discussions and guidance about the difference between downvoting and flagging but I can't find them at the moment. (But if you do get downvoted it's nice to remember that some people use it to express disagreement).

<comment><USER5> I can confirm personally that you can lose flagging privileges :)

My advice is not to flag off-topic posts and just stick to flagging spam or obscene content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A better title would be "Why is down voting _on comments_ disabled on some submissions?"

<comment><AUTHOR> I said submissions because it seemed to apply to the whole post. Another comment has indicated it is because of the posts age, which makes sense for my example.</comment></comment>


Ban on trans fat takes effect in US, but global eradication could be tough - <AUTHOR> https://asunow.asu.edu/20180615-global-engagement-ban-trans-fat-takes-effect-us-global-eradication-could-be-tough <comment><USER2>
      all food in the United States must be made without trans fat

Sloppy reporting. There are naturally-occurring transfats (in butter, for one example). Not all transfat is PHO.</comment>


Torrents Are The New Black - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130917/torrenting-is-the-new-black/

<comment><USER2> Is there an actual article here? I'm seeing only this pull quote and nothing else:

> With the purchase of a series, we look at what does well on piracy sites.

– Kelly Merryman, VP of content acquisition at Netflix

</comment><comment><USER3> This shouldn't really be that much of a surprise. To me, Netflix has always seemed to be halfway between purchasing a series and pirating it. It'd be interesting to see someone crunch the numbers and see if releasing a series on Netflix decreases the rate of piracy for that particular property. I have a hunch that it does, and if it does the same is probably true for other digital distribution networks, i.e. Hulu, Steam and Amazon Prime.

But what do I know? :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Analyzing illegal activity is not illegal. I can't understand what all that fuss is about.

<comment><USER5> I imagine those who are charged with suppressing piracy are creating a fuss. If they do their jobs right they'll be devaluing the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is basically a non-statement. Are they more or less likely to purchase if it does well on a piracy site?

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems like a very sensible thing to be doing.</comment>