Ask HN: What's a bad programmer? - <AUTHOR>

About 4-5 times a month the number one topic on HN is a post about how to hire the perfect programmer. For reasons outside the scope of this discussion I find them annoying.<p>I'd really like to hear experiences with bad programmers - from people who have actually worked with them instead of just interviewed them. Was it personality - passion - tech debt creation - they destroyed your billion dollar empire? Thanks! <comment><USER2> I have an anecdote that might be useful:

A few years ago I was coding at a small startup. Everybody was pretty solid. Then they brought on a new engineer who was very comfortable with a certain framework...but ONLY that framework. One day, in a product planning meeting, we were discussing a new feature we wanted to build. It fell in the new person's domain, so we asked them to give a rough estimate of how much time it would take. Their response?

"It can't be done in this framework. There's no existing module or extension for that".

We all sat back in silence. Eventually someone said what we were all thinking: "We hired you to write code, not install plugins and extensions. Do you actually know how to write any code?"

The new hire left the company soon after. To me, the glaring problem here wasn't that they had aligned their process with a certain framework... it was that they had then closed their mind to other options. They only thought _within_ the framework, and so had nothing creative to actually contribute to the team.

</comment><comment><USER3> Verde Technologies was an aerial photograph firm that used the Streamed Image Transformation Editor (SITE) to process digital framegrabs on Sun 3/160 workstations. Each cost about $40,000.00.

We required about 90 seconds for each step of our calibration process. There were several steps per image, we shot many images each day and promised our clients 24-hour turnaround.

So Scott Lydiard, the company president spent $5,000.00 on a Floating Point Accellerator card, as Sun promised that it doubled the speed of numeric code. It was a full-size VME bus card with a 68881 in the middle. I'm not real clear why it needed that much circuitry as Macs just had a single socket where you could pop in a 68881, much like the 8087 socket on DOS PCs.

So one night I install our new card. To my dismay the calibration time was reducing only to 85 seconds.

Not wanting to lose my job I discovered just that night what a profiler was. It turned out that SITE used getc() to read each pixel of an image, and putc() to write it. This because the "streamed" part was meant for building UNIX pipelines. You know simple tools that only do one thing.

I patched the code to read all the pixels in one read() system call.

"Hey Mike. Our new FPA is AWESOME! Only five seconds to calibrate an image."

"You made a wise purchase, Scott."

Then a few minutes later...

"Mike, could you explain why calibration now takes ten seconds on the workstation that doesn't have an FPA?"

"That's because it really does double the speed of numerical code."

SITE was written by a computer science graduate student. It is for this and many similar reasons that I don't regard a CS degree as being of much use to computer programmers. Mine is in Physics; among other things, Physicists figure out the way things work.

<comment><USER4> getc should in fact be reading all pixels in a single read() under the hood, and just pulling characters from a buffer. ISO C stdio streams are fully buffered, when not connected to interactive devices. Moreover, getc is often a macro which inlines the code of pulling a character out of the stream's buffer and updating a pointer, triggering the refill as needed. In my experience, using getc is usually not too terrible compared to writing buffering code to do the same thing. (I certainly wouldn't say someone was a bad programmer or academic for writing the code around getc. On the other hand, if they assigned the return value of getc to a char typed variable, I'd have a different opinion! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't mind slow programmers, or programmers who know when a problem is too difficult for them, or programmers who ask too many questions and need constant confirmation and hand-holding. They are a bit annoying, granted, but harmless, and can be a somewhat valuable addition to your team if you give them the right tasks. Often these guys can do grunt work at reasonable quality.

The worst ones are those that know just enough to be dangerous, and who _think_ they know everything. Instead of asking, they make assumptions, and produce code that _almost_ works. Meaning, it will pass most of the obvious test cases, but breaks as soon as it hits production.

Example: One guy had to add a meta tag to a web page, with the page's publish date in ISO format. Instead of using the source data, which had the date as a DateTime object, he parsed the date from the formatted page output. This worked for US pages, and European pages where the day of the month was <= 12 (because of the different order of day and month), but broke as soon as the displayed string was impossible to parse. Ugh. Any half-decent programmer would wonder, "there must a better way to do this?"

</comment><comment><USER6> \- Gets in the way

\- Doesn't admit to being wrong

\- Full of it

\- Blindly follows/enforces patterns, standards, and best practices

\- Constantly tries to draw attention to themselves

\- Political

\- Code is sloppy, poorly thought out, bug-ridden, and often doesn't work

\- Obsessed with time, documentation, meetings, best practices, patterns, testing, and everything else that doesn't matter (not with finishing in a timely manner, writing documentation if necessary, etc, but with constantly using these things as an excuse to get in the way, to excuse their sloppy work, and as a means to insult the ability of other developers and to claim themselves to therefore be the ones that know what they are doing).

<comment><USER7> Sounds more like a bad employee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Note: I will say everything below with the context that you are talking about programmer working for businesses.

Good and Bad are very relative words. To apply these to a programmer, let us analyze.

I would say start with this question: What is the Goal of a programmer ? Is it to write great code OR is it to help a business succeed by creating things of value OR both OR something else ?

If the goal is to just write great code, then do they need to write great code along with others ? Or are they ok to write great code just by themselves ? If the answer is that they need to be able to write great code with others in collaboration, then you have your first point covered which is "personality" or I would say "Attitude". If you cannot work well with others, you are bad programmer.

Now, if the goal is to create value and help a business succeed, then does it matter if the code you write is technically the greatest ? Perhaps not; other than the fact it personally is very fulfilling. Gotta love that feeling when that thing compiles!! But the real question to ask is: can I get the patch the system quickly if the code fails or the system crashes ? If yes, then you are a good programmer.

If the business team comes to you for advice on doing something technically that could help them increase revenue but may not be the best technical solution at this time, you are a good programmer if you can make that happen. You are a bad programmer if you tell them you don't want to do it.

That takes to the other point about "passion". I would say that Passion may be an overused word but it should be more about "Do I like doing what I do even though I am not crazily obsessed with it" ? If yes, then you are a good programmer. Why ? Because if you enjoy what you do, you will do it better (most likely)

The last point "Tech Debt". It is again relative. Tech debt for what ? If my company is not making any money and I need to put food on the table, does tech debt matter ? Or does it matter that I need to get paying clients first and worry about the tech issues later. That is a good programmer who can manage this tech debt depending on the situation of the company. Oh but they don't have any documentation in the code, I hate it. Ok then fix it keeping the business goals in mind. If you have the time to do it and still create positive outcome for the business, then that is a good programmer.

Everyone else is a bad programmer.

</comment><comment><USER9> Someone who writes bad code. I don't like the expression "bad programmer" I prefer to say someone who is programming badly. Because that makes it clear that it is the action that is bad and the badness isn't inherent in the character.

If your next question is "How do you know if someone writes bad code?" then it is fairly simple for an experienced programmer to see if a piece of code is bad, good or somewhere in between.

</comment><comment><USER10> For lots of amusing true stories of bad programers and the havoc they cause, see [http://thedailywtf.com](http://thedailywtf.com)

"Founded in 2004 by Alex Papadimoulis, The Daily WTF is your how-not-to guide for developing software. We recount tales of disastrous development, from project management gone spectacularly bad to inexplicable coding choices."

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone who thinks or acts like they're the most important asset to the organisation.

Applies generally in all walks of life, in most situations. I've seen it in programming, and I've seen the mess that's left when people ignore that problem for too long.

</comment><comment><USER12> The only bad programmers I know are those who over promise and under delivers.

If a programmer week after week on project after project says he will do x, y and z and next week he did G then it ruins the team because nobody knows what to believe and what to count on.

</comment><comment><USER13> We once had a developer that kept clobbering changes of our main git branch. We had meeting after meeting where our manager taught us the correct way to do things, yet it kept happening..for almost 3 months.

I blame management as much as the developer for not getting things figured out asap, but I did get paid for those 3 months for essentially fixing the same bugs over and over.</comment>


Very 'close' Qantas jets came within 800m of each other - <AUTHOR> https://www.airlineratings.com/news/close-qantas-jets-came-within-800m/ <comment><USER2> My first coding job was at an avionics subcontractor. One of the senior engineers there told me once that TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System, equipped on all large planes) is theoretically capable of resolving up to 127 aircraft all converging on the same point. As long as all the pilots follow the directions, there won't be any collisions. I have no idea if that's actually true, and could definitely be remembering it wrong, but it always seemed impressive.

<comment><USER3> Well, TCAS works great in an ideal world.

When you mix civil and military planes, and ATC and pilots who are non-native English speakers, and when your TCAS can be broken, then you get accidents like the German or Brazil collisions.

In the military regime, you must follow orders. In the US civil aviation world, the pilot in command is the final authority and can deviate from any ATC order, with possible paperwork and/or consequences.

Although English is the official language for international flying, local ATC and pilots use their local languages.

There was a scandal in Hawaii when one flight school targeting Japanese students was issuing FAA licenses to pilots who couldn't understand English.

<comment><USER4> TCAS is not ATC though, no? Also I don't know if TCAS is localized, but it's only two words if I'm not mistaken, "Climb!" or "Descend!"

<comment><USER5> And if TCAS says "Climb!" and the ATC says "Descend," what do you do?

Think quickly! Several hundred souls are on the line.

<comment><USER4> Climb - TCAS always takes precedence. This was standardized after this incident: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Japan_Airlines_mid- air_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Japan_Airlines_mid-air_incident)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having been in and out of Sydney a lot, I find this very easy to believe. The airport is straining at the limit for capacity, so they have been quite adventurous in getting planes in and out of there for some time. Particularly with the curfew limiting the hours of operation.*

* Not saying the curfew is a bad thing

<comment><USER7> Tight curfews are a bad thing, I think. There's an airport just down the road from me, Hanscom (KBED) with an 11P-7A curfew. The shenanigans you see at 10:55P with sometimes three simultaneous landings (two aircraft and one helo to the ramp) are no good for safety.

I've been picking people in the morning and I've more than once seen multiple airplanes circling the field jockeying to be the first one down final at 7:00:00 like it's a sailboat race. Now, would the neighbors rather hear airplanes flying multiple low-level patterns at mid-power from 6:45 to 7:05, or would they be better off if airplanes could come in and land directly [typically at a lower power setting and with only one approach]?

<comment><USER8> > multiple airplanes circling the field jockeying to be the first one down > final at 7:00:00 like it's a sailboat race

I don't think it's up to the aircraft who lands first. That's not how airports work.

<comment><USER9> Depends on the airport. There are plenty of uncontrolled fields out there which definitely rely on inbound aircraft to sort themselves out.

<comment><USER7> Agree. By the numbers, there are about 500 airports in the US with control towers (some are part-time). There are over 20,000 airports without control towers in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Aviation Herald report: [http://avherald.com/h?article=4cb85fbe&opt=0](http://avherald.com/h?article=4cb85fbe&opt=0)

<comment><USER11> This should really be the linked article, much more informative. The charts at the bottom are particularly helpful for understanding the sequence of events (and seeing the conflict between standard departure and go around routes).

It will be interesting to see the investigation for this, as a layman I don't know if such conflicting routes are standard, and how ATC is supposed to respond to such a situation (presumably not by leaving it to the pilot to avoid, like in this case, however).

<comment><USER12> It's quite common, because a departure route and the missed approach are both designed around the same terrain/obstacles and often use the same navigation beacons.

The way to solve it is for ATC to provide alternative missed approach instructions. So they would say something like "Quantas 123, go around, turn left heading 250, climb 2000ft" knowing that the departing aircraft is going to make a right turn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The Airbus A330 involved in the August 5, 2019, incident was taking off on > runway 34 Right as a Boeing 737-800 landing on the same runway was > instructed by air traffic control to perform a go-around.

This makes no sense. The seem to be blaming the go around. But what really seems to have happened is they allowed and aircraft on a runway a plane was about to land on. Who authorized this and why? What if the plane didn't go around? Would it just have wiped out the plane on the runway?

And it sounds as if the 330 was both taking off ans flying at the same time.

> The A330 first officer, who was pilot flying, then saw the 737 in close > proximity and, in response, reduced the aircraft's angle of bank to reduce > the turn towards the 737.

I don't get it.

<comment><USER14> I don't think you should read any of that as "blaming the go-around", but as stating facts.

> _And it sounds as if the 330 was both taking off ans flying at the same > time._

Time passed between the two events.

From how I read it: A330 is ready for take-off, 737 is in landing approach. Tower realizes this is too close, tells 737 to abort and _turn right_ to give the A330 space. But the A330 will take off and _also turn right_ because that's where it is supposed to go. And that happens: A330 takes off, goes into a hard right turn, alarms go off because it gets too close to 737 which is still low and in soft right turn, A330 pilot doesn't turn quite as hard to leave more space.

What exactly the mistake was and how grave it is is for the safety boards to figure out (shouldn't have let the 737 get as far as it did? should have stopped the A330 from takeoff? Should have warned both sides they'd get close to each other? It actually was acceptable in the end because the controller had it in sight?)

<comment><USER13> I still don't really understand. Unless the 737 was about to crash land right on top of the 330, it must have turned right well before the airport. If the 330 took off, it would have been a few kilometers beyond the airport before it turned right itself. I just can't visualize this 800m thing. If the 737 was so close it's go round intersected a plane that took off, this story really should read "737 narrowly averts crash landing into an airbus that was mistakenly let onto runway". Smells like a coverup to me.

<comment><USER9> There are standard "missed approach" routes published for each runway. Generally they involve flying more or less directly over the runway before turning to circle around for another attempt.

The 737 flew that route. As they were doing that, the 330 was taking off and turning in the same direction after takeoff (as they were directed), so they both wound up near each other a few km beyond the runway as they were both turning to the right.

<comment><USER13> Now I am just flabbergasted. How on earth could they let the 330 take off in that case? And it still seems to me if the 737 didn't execute a missed approach, there would have been a crash on the runway. That is just as big a deal as the 800m flyby. This story should be a bigger deal than is being made out.

<comment><USER15> You don't get the throughput major airports require without vectoring planes to land before other planes have taken off from the same runway. If the plane taking off takes too long you tell the landing plane to go around. This happens daily - I've had planes I'm a passenger on do it twice. It wouldn't have been a big deal at all except for them both having been directed to turn right in conflicting ways.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - <AUTHOR> http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/01/the-power-of-introverts/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a very interesting topic, I think, especially for many folks who work in IT :-)</comment>


Erlang.org traffic no longer exponential - <AUTHOR> http://ulf.wiger.net/weblog/2010/04/05/erlang-org-traffic-no-longer-exponential/

<comment><USER2> It never was exponential.

The correct name of a growth curve with limited resources is a Sigmoid.

</comment><comment><USER3> That doesn't look exponential either before or after the bump-up.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.erlang.org> for your click convenience.</comment>


Journalling Revisited: XFS vs. EXT4 - <AUTHOR> http://epickrram.blogspot.com/2015/12/journalling-revisited.html <comment><USER2> I love articles like this! They took the extra step o find the reason for the behavior they saw rather than just saying "yup ...that's how it is".

I've also had multi-millisecond pauses on ext4. In my case, the buffer fills up and we wait for sync_dirty_buffers to do it's job. We tried adjusting the various settings to tune it, but at the end, it's always there. We ended up buffering our own writes in the application so we could get the behavior we wanted.

<comment><USER3> Have you considered putting the journal on a separate physical device? There have been a lot of reports through the years of some pretty substantial boosts in performance because the drives don't need to bounce back and forth between journaling and writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _Here it 's clear that xfs gives better results, with the average write > beating all ext4 modes by a few hundred microseconds._

Am I wrong that the graph above that statement does not show that? While it shows xfs having better latency than ext4, the axis is labelled as "write latency nanoseconds", and the difference between ext4 and xfs is ~400ns, or .4µs; not "a few hundred microseconds."

<comment><USER5> Oops. Thanks for pointing out that typo - corrected!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I saw the same thing a couple of months ago with a key/value datastore that synchronously writes each update to disk. Switching from ext4 to xfs fixed periodic 100ms+ latency spikes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Be aware that XFS will lose more data on a kernel panic than ext4; for example, all vim buffers saved in the last few seconds before the crash will be of size zero on reboot. With ext4 and reiserfs I find that I'm more likely to have either the old or new data in the files.

<comment><USER8> How often does your kernel panic? The tone of your post comes off pretty as though it's a common annoyance.

<comment><USER7> In this case I was using vim to edit source files that was interfacing with a slightly buggy kernel API, so it would panic several times per day.</comment></comment></comment>


The Role of Personality, Authoritarianism and Cognition in Brexit - <AUTHOR> https://www.onlineprivacyfoundation.org/opf-research/psychological-biases/personality-authoritarianism-and-cognition-in-brexit/ <comment><USER2> I believe the real distinction is susceptibility to different types of persuasion. It's easily observable that the vast majority of people don't have their own opinion on any subject that receives significant media attention, because their opinion is exactly that espoused by said media (this includes entertainment as well as news).

Since the remain faction had almost complete media support, we must conclude that brexit voters were persuaded by other factors.

I believe this approach of looking at biddability rather than whatever the arbitry set of opinions being pushed at present will lead to better models.

<comment><USER3> > Since the remain faction had almost complete media support

Leave was (still is!) supported by the Sun, Mail, Express, Telegraph, some of the Times columnists, and arguably whoever in the BBC was responsible for UKIP being on BBCQT far beyond their electoral success would merit.

<comment><USER4> No, that doesn't count. That's why we need a separate term for evil lying propaganda media: MSM. The "conservative" media is just a small light of sanity in a sea of MSM darkness.

<comment><USER5> Unsupported hyperbolic opinions add nothing to rational discourse. Please dispense with them here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Considering that this is a politically charged topic and psychological studies in general seem to have low reproducibility rates, this is the kind of research that, without any disrespect to scientific research in general, is worth taking with a large grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER7> This really does need to be broken down by demographic because given the tilts in age, immigration status, social status, urban/rural among voters, all of this just might be a measure of one group vs another.

'Londoners more neurotic, Villagers more conscientious and authoritarian'

Also - I don't like the term 'authoritarian' in this context as it's ill defined.

<comment><USER3> "RWA authoritarian" is pretty well defined as "someone who scores highly on this test": [http://www.panojohnson.com/automatons/rwa- scale.xhtml](http://www.panojohnson.com/automatons/rwa-scale.xhtml)

If you scroll down a bit in the original article there's a breakdown of subject RWA scores by age and gender. It even has error bars.

<comment><USER8> > It is always better to trust the judgment of the proper authorities in > government and religion than to listen to the noisy rabble-rousers in our > society who are trying to create doubt in people's minds.

I have no idea what this is supposed to measure, but it sounds like garbage to me. It's literally a test of how people identify themselves (either as establishment or as a "rabble rouser"). Then arbitrarily labeling the earablishment supporters as "autboritarian."

To see why thia question is ridiculous: Imagine asking this question to people in Tehran during the Shah. In that case, the "proper authorities" were the western-aligned Shah government, while the "rabble rousers" would be the Islamists. But it was the rabble rousers' view that was authoritarian.

<comment><USER9> _> I have no idea what this is supposed to measure_

On its own, it's not supposed to measure anything. There's more than 1 question in the survey for a reason. And incidentally, the questions that people are most likely to criticize -- the first two -- _aren 't even used in the assessment_; they're throw-aways.

 _> To see why thia question is ridiculous: Imagine asking this question to people in Tehran during the Shah. In that case, the "proper authorities" were the western-aligned Shah government, while the "rabble rousers" would be the Islamists. But it was the rabble rousers' view that was authoritarian._

From chapter 1 of the book in which this scale was introduced: _the test, which was designed to measure right-wing authoritarianism in North America, will probably fall apart in markedly different cultures._

That same chapter goes on to directly address almost all of the criticisms I'm seeing in this thread.

I think it's wrong to construe one measure of "right-wing" (explicitly _not_ "conservative") authoritarianism with "authoritarianism" generally, as the title of this piece does. But there's nothing wrong with designing assessments that are intended to work only in one particular culture.

<comment><USER8> The question I quoted was not one of the two throw-aways. Even with the caveats you mentioned, this survey does not actually measure authoritarianism in any meaningful way. Take three of the things addressed in the questioning: animal rights, abortion, and LGBT rights. You can frame any of these things to make both sides seem "authoritarian" or anti-authoritarian. For example, public accomodation laws can be viewed as an impingement on the right to freedom of association, or a vindication of the right to participate in the economy free of discrimination. Abortion restrictions can be viewed as vindiction of the fetus's right to life, or an impingement on the mother's bodily autonomy. The article simply picks a framing for each issue, and labels the conservative point of view "authoritarian."

But in reality, these disputes aren't about authoritariansm versus non- authoritariansim. Both sides believe that the government may restrict the natural freedom people would have in the state of nature to protect certain things that society recognizes as "rights." These disputes are about what rights society is willing to recognize and enforce, and what to do when those rights conflict.

<comment><USER9> _> The survey falsely portrays these disputes as being about "authoritarianism" versus (presumably), "non-authoritarianism."_

You seem to feel that this survey is a _definition_ about _individuals_? That's not how the survey is intended to be used, and the fist chapter of the book that introduces it is _full_ of caveats that the survey is _not_ intended to be treated as a definition about individuals.

The author of the survey is very explicitly NOT providing a definition of authoritarianism or a litmus test for individuals. He is providing a _survey_ whose scores _correlate_ with right-wing authoritarianism in North America in the late 20th century.

The survey is a tool, the author of the tool is very explicit about what that tool is and is not for. I, for one, don't get angry when my hammers don't work as screw drivers. And also don't get angry at the inventor of the hammer when some random third party messes up my stuff by using a hammer on my screws...

 _> Take three of the things addressed in the questioning: animal rights, abortion, and LGBT rights_

The survey is designed to measure RIGHT-WING Authoritarianism. That is, the _conjunct_ of being _both_ authoritarian _and also_ right-wing in that authoritarianism.

If we asked 20 questions about authoritarianism but never mentioned anything about being right-wing, we might have a good test for authoritarianism but not a good test for RIGHT-WING authoritarianism...

<comment><USER8> I'm not assuming this survey is a definition about individuals. The survey takes the beliefs of a group (conservative christians) and simply labels them "authoritarian."

As to your point about right-wing versus left-wing authoritarianism: you're missing the point. Imagine a counter-part to this test that labeled support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as "left-wing authoritarianism." Technically, yes, that law restricts the freedom of individuals to conduct their business and associate with people according to their own choices. But labeling that "authoritarianism" would (I think rightly) be perceived as biased by most liberals. The article makes exactly the same mistake. It takes a lot of views and unfairly labels them "authoritarian."

<comment><USER9> _> The article makes exactly the same mistake. It takes a lot of views and unfairly labels them "authoritarian."_

And as I said in my original post:

"I think it's wrong to construe one measure of "right-wing" (explicitly not "conservative") authoritarianism with "authoritarianism" generally, as the title of this piece does. But there's nothing wrong with designing assessments that are intended to work only in one particular culture."

 _> The survey takes the beliefs of a group (conservative Christians) and simply labels them "authoritarian."_

No, it doesn't, and I think that's an unfair characterization of conservative Christians.

1\. I only count 11 items that say anything at all about conservative Christian beliefs. The other 9 are totally orthogonal. Even if we score those items -4 (which most conservative Christians wouldn't; see item 2) and the other items +4, we end up in the low 100s. And more realistic answers typical of non-authoritarian conservative Christians in the midwest end up with scores in the 90s (again, see item 2).

2\. of those 11 items that make reference to "Christian/family/traditional values", many would not elicit a "strong" score from all or even most conservative Christians following the survey's instructions.

Example 1: _" Everyone should have their own lifestyle, religious beliefs, and sexual preferences, even if it makes them different from everyone else."_

Most conservative Christians will strong-disagree with "sexual preferences".

But what about "lifestyle" and "religious beliefs"? Many conservative Christians support different lifestyles; e.g., homeschooling. And a STRONG majority support religious freedom.

According to the survey's instructions, which tell use to average the -4 re: homosexuality with +N for the other two items, this question would elicit a weak disagree or maybe even a weak agree from many conservative Christians.

Example 2: _" God's laws about abortion, pornography and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late, and those who break them must be strongly punished."_

Many conservative Christians believe that divorce should be legal and pornography, though damaging, should not be outlawed. So using the survey's averaging rule, this might even end up as a "weak disagree".

And there are many questions that ask for moral comparisons between "traditional" and "non-traditional" people, but the bible is very clear on exactly this question: we are not justified by our acts.

It is true that there is a certain brand of conservative Christian who believe we should have a "strong leader" who uses the state to forcibly impose their personal conservative values on the rest of society. Those people would score highly on this test. But that set of people is definitely not the same as the set of "conservative Christians", because many "conservative Christians" have non-authoritarian values (and many right-wing authoritarians are not Christian.)

 _> As to your point about right-wing versus left-wing authoritarianism: you're missing the point. Imagine a counter-part to this test that labeled support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as "left-wing authoritarianism."_

Exactly zero questions in this survey mention a piece of legislation, and not a single question on this test automatically labels RWA for agreeing with a given piece of legislation. There are multiple types of questions for a reason.

There exist left-wing authoritarian tests. And yes, they do ask questions about typical left-wing issues. And yes, they should. Because measuring LEFT- WING authoritarianism without even bothering to ask if someone's beliefs are consistently left-wing would be silly and would miss the point...

Maybe DeMorgan can help. A low (L or R)WA score just means:

NOT (LR-wing AND authoritarian) == NOT LR-wing OR NOT authoritarian.

A below-average score could mean (LR-wing AND NOT authoritarian).

A below-average score could mean (NOT LR-wing AND authoritarian).

A below-average score could mean (NOT LR-wing AND NOT authoritarian).

A low LR-WA score does not imply "not authoritarian". It implies "not authoritarian in this particular way". A very high score indicates "authoritarian in this particular way". Borderline scores could mean "authoritarian but not in this way" or "this way but not authoritarian".

Survey design is difficult, and interpreting survey results is also difficult. A survey designed to measure the intersection of two properties will give higher scores to people who have one of those properties than people who have zero of those properties. That does not mean the survey is flawed; it means that the results have to be used with this effect in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dan-robertson As I read it, this article (or rather, its abstract) seems to work as:

1\. The population is divided into leave voters and remain voters (and undecided)

2\. Some statistics will be different between these sets

3\. Looking at the election campaign and these characteristics can tell us about how to target an election campaign according to these statistics [of the people who will eventually/currently plan on voting for your side]

An alternative way to look at this is:

1\. There are several qualities of people that change slowly with time; some people are inclined to vote leave and some remain and some in between

2\. Some electoral material was produced trying to change how much leave/remain people are inclined to vote

3\. Here is some statistics about the qualities of the people who were inclined a certain way.

I think the article seems to have confused these two offerings slightly.

For example suppose you see that leave voters are more RWA. Do you interpret this as:

(a) leave voters are RWA so to encourage leave voters one should produce material targeted at RWA people or encouraging RWA ideas

(b) the appeal of election materials for vote leave correlated to how RWA people were so RWA people voted leave so the style of material for vote leave is a lesson in appealing to vote leave personalities.

</comment><comment><USER10> Their authoritarian scale is the RWA, or _Right Wing Authoritarianism_. They did no test for general authoritarianism, meaning that their summary is suspect. It's no surprise to anyone that the mostly left-wing remain voters scored low in _right wing_ authoritarianism.

Edit: thanks for the brigaded downvotes with no rebuttal, proving that you just don't like your cognitive biases challenged with facts.

<comment><USER11> Authoritarianism is inherently right-wing, if you use the original definition of right and left.

According to original definitions (from French revolution), the left objects to power inequality between people and consider citizens should be equals; while the right doesn't have problem with power inequality in society and accepts things like hereditary nobility.

And the fact is, despite propaganda that sometimes equates leftists and bolsheviks, large majority of leftists still identifies with this definition.

<comment><USER12> And how does the left get to that state of affairs in a world of power inequality?

A large majority of the right may identify with Christian ideas of charity but look at how that usually turns out.

<comment><USER11> I don't understand what you're asking about - what state of affairs?

In many countries today, we have democracy, which is according to the above definition leftist (and also very anti-authoritarian!) idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> See previous work by the late Chris Lightfoot (2005): [http://www.ex- parrot.com/~chris/wwwitter/20050415-my_country...](http://www.ex- parrot.com/~chris/wwwitter/20050415-my_country_right_or_left.html)

Main finding of principal components analysis:

"Slightly facetiously we refer to this as the `Axis of UKIP': the extremal positive views are those of people who are Eurosceptic, believe in capital punishment and harsh prison régimes, and oppose immigration. At the other end of the axis people believe in further European integration, the primacy of international law, the benefits of immigration, and so forth.

This axis is identifiably left/right -- people at large positive positions are definitely `right wing' \-- but it is not the traditional left/right axis of economics and class division."

</comment><comment><USER13> _In a situation where "In general, political campaign material in the UK is not regulated, and it is a matter for voters to decide on the basis of such material whether they consider it accurate or not" (The Electoral Commission, 2018) the research also raises the question of whether existing regulatory controls need to be amended. Not only do many voters lack the skills to critically evaluate the information which is being presented, their inherent beliefs and biases clearly influence the way in which they process this information._

Yeah, how about outlawing voting against those who are currently in power? We little people cannot judge the issues anyways. Why not abolish democracy completely since we're all so stupid?

<comment><USER14> Not sure why people are down-voting you. That's a very important and dangerous quotation from the article.

This whole situation sheds a dim light on UK politics: is voting in the UK nothing more than a ritual to legitimize decisions already blessed by the powers that be?

<comment><USER15> I see more and more stirrings of similar sentiments here in America every day, too.</comment></comment></comment>


How to be jQuery-free? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelstech.cn/article/1368463977_How_to_be_jQuery-free_

<comment><USER2> This is "wrong" on a few things...

Firstly, since 1.8 it's possible to remove bits of jQuery that you don't use, so it doesn't have to be as big as even the minified and gzipped production version (~32kb). [http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/how-to- bui...](http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/how-to-build-your- own-custom-jquery/) is a decent tutorial on that.

Secondly, worrying about the size ignores the advantages of using a CDN. With about 90% of dynamic sites using it, using, for example, the Google CDN version means a single round trip to Google and 0kb to download as it'll already be in the user's cache. That's better than rolling your own functions if you're really worried about code size.

Lastly, why care about the size of a library anyway? For 99% of users it's a trivial download and it'll be there within the first 0.5s of their experience on the site so it's not impacting very much at all. The additional dev+testing time to roll your own functions for things jQuery gives you for free is more important than a few extra kb saved on page size. You'd save more bandwidth optimising a single image properly on the majority of websites rather than removing jQuery.

However...

The article isn't wrong in the sense that it's always good to know how to code things without library support if necessary. Many (most?) front-end JS developers _can't_ work without jQuery, and that's a very bad thing. There might be a time when you need to code something that jQuery can't do.

<comment><USER3> I think there is a risk using CDN. If somehow the CDN server is down, then our app will have issues.

<comment><USER4> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1014203/best-way-to- use-g...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1014203/best-way-to-use-googles- hosted-jquery-but-fall-back-to-my-hosted-library-on-go)

It's really easy to fallback to a local copy if the CDN server is down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The pop up window of your site is quite annoying

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment. The "Do not show again" checkbox is not working? We think you can check that one if you don't it to pop up again.</comment></comment>


HN, I need your advice, really badly - <AUTHOR> 5 years ago, fresh out of college, I co-founded a company with someone I had hardly known. Dumb and naive, I know. In those 5 years, it has been one crisis after another, in large part due to my co-founder's (CEO) poor management, unethical behavior, and irresponsible spending. Time and time again she has manipulated and exploited her relationships (including ours) to her advantage. She has wantonly spent large sums of company funds on personal activities. The culture she's created is more than toxic. Question anything she says, and she'll punish you until you're gone. She's surrounded herself with sycophants.
All this time I've put up with it, for the "sake of the business" and to "protect my reputation" amongst the board and investor community. I feel an intense obligation to stay as a co-founder. But I am burnt out, depressed, filled with anxiety, and have become at times suicidal. There's not a day that goes by where I don't feel as if my co-founder is calculating yet another way to exploit our relationship, or just push me out. I've seen some of the smartest, kindest, and most driven people come through here and ultimately leave, by choice or force, due to their desire to work in an honest and open environment.
My biggest fears with leaving: 1) that my co-founder tarnish my reputation with board/investors as she has done with past employees, 2) that since founding the company, I have not developed meaningfully given all of the chaos, stress, and crises, resulting in a stunted and unmarketable skillset, and 3) that I have no network to rely on as I moved to SF for this opportunity and have spent the past 5 years here giving my all to this company.
I feel stuck, miserable, unmarketable, and it's eating at me every day.
Any advice you may have would be hugely appreciated. Thank you. <comment><USER2> Unfotunately, this kind of situations are not all that uncommon. IMHO, there is a subset of people with those qualities that are drawn to startups. Take a "vision" or a "business" person with good social instincts and loosen their ethics and values and you will get yourself a little Machiavelli.

As I see it, you have a few moves: 1) Very gently distance yourself from that person until your relationship is strictly professional. Make sure they know as little possible about your personal life or work plans, projects, intentions, etc

2) Become more social and political yourself. It sounds like she's been running the company and you just work there - you'd need to get your voice back. Cultivate your own direct 1:1 relationships with key employees, board members, and investors.

3) Try forming a subgroup within the company that is under your control and that can deliver some kind of independent and visible result. Do good work and make sure that more people know about it. But be very cautious about how you advertise those results

4) Figure out if anyone else is noticing her toxic behaviour. Your board and investors should be very interested in keeping the company culture healthy

5) Maybe there is a way to _gently_ prompt a financial review by the board or investors?

If you do some of this for some time you should find yourself in a better position whether you decide to stay or leave

</comment><comment><USER3> _Dumb and naive, I know._

No - it's a learning experience. An experience many people are too afraid to even consider allowing themselves to make.

 _But I am burnt out, depressed, filled with anxiety, and have become at times suicidal._

My quick advice - please quit now. As in -- give yourself a few days to sleep on it -- but basically, you need to turn the page on this dead-end situation as soon as feasibly possible.

Not only do none of the side factors you're worrying about (which seem to boil down to basically: what a bunch of strangers think about you) have any significance, in the scheme of things, that would justify threats to your self-esteem and well-being -- they just don't have _any significance at all_.

Really - 80 percent of the startup world is based on mindgames and bullshit and pure and simple rank amateurism of exactly the sort you're describing. And at the end of the day, almost none of the things they elevate so highly (like being written up in glowing terms in the technical press or blogosphere... mostly by people who have very little direct knowledge of what they're talking about) has any significance at all.

What matters is (1) your health (mental and physical) (2) your friendship and familial relations, and (3) some _minimal_ financial safety net (which, since you haven't mentioned it as a factor... I'm assuming you have). The rest -- accolades, wealth, thrills -- I'm not saying they're completely worthless - but they just don't mean all that much, compared to (1)-(3) above. And at your age there will be an endless stream of opportunities to pursue them -- and you can be entirely certain, under much better conditions than what you're facing now.

Finally: for heaven's sake, don't worry about your reputation going down as a consequence of quitting. _People quit all the time_ and in most cases end up looking all the better for it. What you don't want to happen is that you get fired (especially as a reword for putting up with a no-win situation like this).

Trust me - you'll feel way much better about yourself after all this is over. And you're traveling in South America, or reconnecting with your friends and family... or doing whatever it is you've always been wanting to do these past 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER4> Grow some balls my friend. If your work (money) is affecting you on this deep of a level then you need to step back and take charge of things once again.

This was painful to read, perhaps so because the only thing standing in the way of a solution is ignorance.

<comment><AUTHOR> If there are any glaring areas of ignorance you can shed light on, I'd be very grateful.

In terms of growing balls and taking charge: I know this needs to happen but I'm worried about acting out emotionally against my interest.</comment></comment>


The viral initiative aiming to plant 20M trees by 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://teamtrees.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Elon Musk recently donated 1 million to the initiative.

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/29/20939016/elon-musk- mrbea...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/29/20939016/elon-musk-mrbeast-tree- donation-1-million-spacex-tesla-testifying-no-cash)</comment>


I am co founder of Biplug - <AUTHOR> www.biplug.co.kr <comment><USER2> This is an English speaking forum and posts in other languages are usually ignored or flagged. Do you have a blog post about your app in English?

I used autotranslation, but the site has a lot of dynamic content that doesn't appear in the autotranslation.

I guess that the with the site the user can create an app and later distribute it to his/her clients so they can follow the post of the user. Is this correct??? Can you provide a more accurate description?

Why is this better than twitter? How do you solve the bandwidth problem? Do you have many technical problems with the Korean characters in the libraries? Which technology stack are you using?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please come to feel our creativity

<comment><USER3> I came. I saw. I sighed. The site is entirely in Korean, with no link to an English page or site...</comment></comment>


Campaigns Mine Personal Lives to Get Out Vote - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/us/politics/campaigns-mine-personal-lives-to-get-out-vote.html?hp

<comment><USER2> This has been happening in other industries for a long time.

Did you know its legal for pharmacies to sell your medication usage data?

[http://www.fiercepracticemanagement.com/story/what-docs- shou...](http://www.fiercepracticemanagement.com/story/what-docs-should-know- about-prescription-data-mining/2011-06-29)

<comment><USER3> That is more physician's medication perception data, but still troubling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not any more of a concern than what credit card companies and other businesses track on-line..at least the ampaigns shut down (for the most part) after November.</comment>


Advances in Financial Machine Learning Package (Python) - <AUTHOR> The latest version of mlfinlab (Github) has been released.
A package based on the book: Advances in Financial Machine Learning by Marcos Lopez de Prado.
```pip install mlfinlab```
This new release is our biggest to date and includes code for:
1. Sequentially Bootstrapped Ensembles (Regression & Classification)
2. Purged Cross-Validation 3. Feature Importance 4. Bet Sizing (+ EF3M) 5. ML Asset Allocation (HRP, CLA, IVP)
Documentation can be found on Read-the-Docs.
https://github.com/hudson-and-thames/mlfinlab <comment><USER2> Wow, thanks so much for sharing this! I've spent a lot of time reading this textbook, and wasn't always able to recreate the functions myself.

Do you accept contributions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Natalya,

We certainly welcome contributions. Please do reach out to us on email@example.com

Looking forward!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cogito offers a complete data collection and processing service for training data as a services for AI and Machine learning based services. It is providing wide range of services like Visual Search, Image Annotation, Machine Learning, Sentiment Analysis, Data Collection, Data Classification, Search Relevance, healthcare training data, contact center services, Content Moderation, Audio Transcription, Video Transcription and OCR Transcription services with high quality and accuracy. Visit: [https://www.cogitotech.com/](https://www.cogitotech.com/)</comment>


PHP7 Officially released! - <AUTHOR> http://php.net/archive/2015.php <comment><USER2> Hm, I've been waiting for the official release for quite some time now and I am surprised that this news was virtually missed by HN comunity.

Is PHP7 so not-sexy and not worthwhile looking at?</comment>


Latest jQuery and jQuery UI Theme links on Google CDN - <AUTHOR> http://www.devcurry.com/2010/05/latest-jquery-and-jquery-ui-theme-links.html

<comment><USER2> In my neverending quest to optimize everything I see, here is how I would handle urls:

      http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.js

to

      http://api.google.com/jquery142.js

and

      http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.1/jquery-ui.min.js

to

      http://api.google.com/jqueryui181m.js

Less prone to errors, easier to remember.

</comment><comment><USER3> The full list, for reference, is here: <http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I didn't know they also hosted the themes, awesome!</comment>


HOW TO: Space Out Your Tweets Without Being Online All Day - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/08/24/space-out-your-tweets/

<comment><USER2> If you want _smart_ scheduling.. check out <http://queued.at> ... if you want to integrate smart scheduling into your app check out <http://developers.smartshareapi.com/></comment>


BIC and CUBIC - <AUTHOR> http://research.csc.ncsu.edu/netsrv/?q=content/bic-and-cubic <comment><AUTHOR> See also: "TCPTuner: Congestion Control Your Way"

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

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1605.01987](http://arxiv.org/abs/1605.01987)

[https://github.com/Gasparila/TCPTuner](https://github.com/Gasparila/TCPTuner)</comment>


MoD's 'quantum compass' offers potential to replace GPS - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4cac5a24-db68-11e3-94ad-00144feabdc0.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, FT article seems paywalled. Here's a take from The Telegraph: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10833087/MoD- crea...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10833087/MoD-creates- coldest-object-in-the-universe-to-trump-GPS.html)</comment>


What it really means to be a startup CTO - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottporad.com/2010/11/12/what-it-really-means-to-be-a-cto

<comment><USER2> This sounds more like "what it means to be a startup Director of Engineering". CTO, for what it's worth, is a bit of a vanity title. Also, CTO : Architect :: Dir/E : Developer. Most "smart, gets things done" types don't want the A-word in their title anymore.

</comment><comment><USER3> A story within a story, summarised as "don't try and re-write the entire codebase", which Joel proclaimed to be "the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make" 10 years ago:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>

i.e. nothing new</comment>


New 'Server-Grade' iMac with Next-Gen Xeon Processor Coming End of 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/18/new-imacs-server-grade-coming-end-2017/ <comment><USER2> This strikes me as a bit of a contradiction. I get why one might chose a more expensive Xeon processor and I suppose I can sorta understand needing a display for a server. But surely the iMac, so far at least, is all those things where desktops differ from servers (and for that matter Workstations).

It's almost as if Apple figures that seeing as they already have the mechanical design for iMacs down pat, they might as well wedge a Xeon in one. That doesn't really seem like Apple's usual MO to me.

I suppose a more accurate description might be a "workstation grade iMac".

<comment><USER3> If they can ship it by the end of 2017, that would still be well ahead of whatever makeover the Mac Pro will be getting, so it could be a stop-gap. And there are quite a few mobile-workstation laptops on the market now shipping with Xeons (the iMac is sort of like an immobile laptop).</comment></comment>


With tech, there are hidden taxes everywhere. (Time for a new metaphor.) - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2011/05/05/with-tech-there-are-hidden-taxes-everywhere/

<comment><USER2> Shouldn't we just note the use of "X tax" as another indicator of what bias the author of a given article (anti-X) has? I mean, look at the example screenshots. Note who says "Mac Tax" and draw your own conclusions.</comment>


STARKs, Part I: Proofs with Polynomials - <AUTHOR> http://vitalik.ca/general/2017/11/09/starks_part_1.html <comment><USER2> It seems a special (already very useful) case of ZKP as explained in the article is when f is independent of x, giving you the concept of certificates, a concept well-known in interactive theorem proving, for example: [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-21046-4_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-21046-4_3)

</comment><comment><USER3> Introductory videos from the inventor of STARKS that may be useful (similar content in both)

* Eli Ben Sasson at SV Ethereum meetup [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ9K_o-RRSY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ9K_o-RRSY)

* Eli Ben Sasson at SF Bitcoin Devs [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYmnXxs9kUM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYmnXxs9kUM)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm glad Vitalik acknowledged the implicit assumption that the P(x) provided by the prover was really <= 1000000 in degree, because that caught me up when I reached that point.

But I'm a bit lost on how one would apply STARKs in practice. I can't tell if this scheme is intended to provide a proof of existence or a proof of knowledge, for example. Both examples are trivial enough that one can assume their _existence_ (of course there's some P(x) for which 0 <= P(x) <= 9 for all x in [0, 1000000)). But they're also trivial enough that it's reasonable to assume that anyone can _know_ the millionth Fibonacci number. So what good is using this as a proof of knowledge?

<comment> Ar-Curunir STARKs are proofs of knowledge (it's in the name: Succinct Transparent ARguments of Knowledge). Sure, the fibonacci example is a bit useless, because anyone can compute that easily. But the proof process holds for proving knowledge of a preimage of a hash, or the opening to a commitment, or any NP statement in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a little confused by

Let C(x) be a constraint checking polynomial; C(x) = 0 if 0 <= x <= 9 and is nonzero otherwise. There's a simple way to construct C(x): x * (x-1) * (x-2) * ... * (x-9)

This is only true if x is an integer in that range, right? But the polynomial he's transforming by applying C to it doesn't have a discrete range

<comment><USER6> I think the polynomial is supposed to have only integer coefficients, which means that it will only take integer values at integer coordinates. Since real-valued coefficients need some rational approximation anyway, and rational coefficients can be rescaled, that assumption is easy to justify. (Alternatively, the coefficients might be in some finite field, but then the range is discrete as well.)

<comment><USER5> Makes sense - thanks! I was confused by the continuous plot.</comment></comment></comment>


Late night hacker? Tell us why you're up - <AUTHOR> http://www.whyiamup.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I made this more as an exercise in rails (started learning last week), but people seem to like it, so here's to pulling all nighters and building things!

(This isn't my startup however, also working on that...)</comment>


Show HN: WorkshopX web base easy meeting for work remote - <AUTHOR> https://workshopx.app <comment><AUTHOR> We're not trying to replace others, just make something easy my life, btw the team integration on the road.

Any feedback is appreciated.</comment>


Alibaba Says Its AI Copywriting Tool Passed the Turing Test - <AUTHOR> https://www.adweek.com/digital/alibaba-says-its-ai-copywriting-tool-passed-the-turing-test/ <comment><USER2> Get out with premium content articles</comment>


New model describes decision making as the collapse of a quantum superstate - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-08-cognitive-decision-collapse-quantum-superstate.html <comment><USER2> > _An international group of psychological researchers..._

This is psychology news that's trying to use physics to describe decision making. This isn't physics news.

(There's nothing wrong with psychology news, but from the topic I was expecting something related to the Double-Slit experiment.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Two earlier papers on the topic:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677606/pdf/rspb...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677606/pdf/rspb20090121.pdf)

and

[http://www.indiana.edu/~psymodel/papers/BusWanTow06.pdf](http://www.indiana.edu/~psymodel/papers/BusWanTow06.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: Broadband ISP friendly to self-hosting? - <AUTHOR> We have some web services that need to be self-hosted.
Most will be low traffic (hundreds of hits a day), but some (transient) services might see occasional bursts of up to a few hundred requests per minute.
Of course this will be kept totally separate from our main network. We were planning to purchase an LTE Modem which restricts our carrier options somewhat, but we're really open to exploring any carrier.
We're based in the US Southwest.
Has anyone had any positive experiences with an ISP on this front? <comment><USER2> I've self hosted my own in-house server since 2005. Running apache with several (low traffic) vhost domains. Some for local non-profits, some of them are my personal business and blog pages. I also host my own DNS and email servers. Done this on several ISPs (both with residential and business accounts), Time warner, AT&T, comcast, Grandecom, and a few local only wisps.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try business cable; it's usually not crazy expensive and can be installed quickly if you already have cable. Hosting anything on LTE sounds bad.</comment>


Theranos and David Boies Cut Legal Ties - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-and-david-boies-cut-legal-ties-1479514351 <comment><USER2> Lawyers are typically among the last to jump ship from corporate disasters, since they stand to gain the most from them. Usually they only do so when they don't think they will be paid, they have been asked by the company to do something unethical, or when they believe that their actions during the company's downfall may expose their own firm to liability. In this case it may be a combination of the three, but whatever happened, Theranos is toast and I suspect Elizabeth Holmes will be very lucky if she does not spend some time in prison over this.

<comment><USER3> > Theranos is toast and I suspect Elizabeth Holmes will be very lucky if she > does not spend some time in prison over this.

An elite, highly politically connected, young, blonde, Caucasian woman will not spend time in prison for a dubious charge of white collar crime. There is little to no hope of that in today's society, regardless of how damaging her actions are.

Edit: I'd love to be proven wrong on this comment, but I don't have much faith that this will ever come to happen. It is laughable to think that the American justice system is actually neutral across races or socioeconomic lines. Also, I agree that Theranos is toast. I just think it will try to become toast somewhat quietly.

<comment><USER2> It's called fraud, and she defrauded and embarrassed many of the people she is "connected" to. Despite your assertion to the contrary, many white people have gone to jail for fraud. I also don't think there is much behind-the-scenes lobbying happening on her behalf (in fact there may be some lobbying _against_ her).

<comment><USER4> Yes, many white people have gone to prison, but it has taken enormous and egregious cases for that to happen. Usually, a brown or other disliked minority fall-person will go to jail and to quell public outrage.

Consider the 2008 crisis, yes some white Americans went to jail, but the major (only?) prosecution at Goldman Sachs for example was [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Tourre](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Tourre) Were his emails damning? Yes, but lets not pretend he was anything but the most low-level fall guy, conveniently with a heavy french accent -- Americans love to hate him. Also, Rajat Gupta and Raj Rajaratnam were certainly dirty, but their prosecution was the highest profile one post-2008 and it was more an insider trading case, not actually going after CDO fraud. No one at AIG-FP or Goldman Sachs got prosecuted, almost none got prosecuted anywhere.

Flash Crash -- lets find a young Indian guy and blame it on him. [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-flash- cr...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-flash-crash-trader- who-made-40m-from-his-bedroom-will-be-extradited-a7361706.html) Nevermind that spoofing is a widespread industry practice in America...

Prosecutors will go after easy cases AND those that quell public calls for blood. Holmes does not "look" criminal to the typical American, so I bet she walks away -- your average voter/citizen would not be happy if she goes to prison. My bet is a lower-level Chinese/Indian/Mexican(!) or some other minority goes to jail for this. They may well be guilty so I wont argue it is cooked-up or anything, but likely wont be the actual [white] person at the top.

<comment><USER5> "Consider the 2008 crisis, yes some white Americans went to jail, but the major (only?) "

The 2008 crises was not built on outright fraud by most of the banks.

They didn't commit any crimes for the most part.

Individuals lied on their applications, bank managers overlooked it, VP of Mortgage Sales for banks didn't want to hear about underperforming loans, ratings agencies didn't want to due proper due dilligence, German and Japanese banks buying the crap were too lazy to do any due diligence ... and it came down.

There was 'systematic, greed, stupidity and irresponsibility' across the board - home buyers included.

It was not caused by some cabal of bankers specifically doing something illegal.

<comment><USER6> > The 2008 crises was not built on outright fraud by most of the banks. ... It > was not caused by some cabal of bankers specifically doing something > illegal.

That is not true.

 _Why Only One Top Banker Went to Jail for the Financial Crisis_

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/magazine/only-one-top- bank...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/magazine/only-one-top-banker-jail- financial-crisis.html)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for posing this article. Kareem Serageldin was certainly guilty but actually goes to strengthen my original argument -- it is rare to find Arab financiers on Wall St, it is telling that the one prosecution on the 2008 CDO disaster _is an Arab guy!_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you haven't read it, the previous article in the WSJ Theranos series, on the original whistleblower, is a riveting read[0]. I can't wait to see how this is portrayed on the big screen[1].

0: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-whistleblower-shook- the...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-whistleblower-shook-the- companyand-his-family-1479335963)

1: [http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/06/jennifer- lawrenc...](http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/06/jennifer-lawrence- theranos-elizabeth-holmes)

<comment><USER8> A particularly relevant note from that: Shultz emailed Holmes directly, blowing her plausible deniability right out the window, probably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Classic conflict of interest: Boies was not only the company's counsel, he was a director and his firm was a shareholder, his partner was Theranos' general counsel. The interests of the firm were to keep Theranos operating as a going concern, keep the contract with Walgreens, stop the federal investigation (Madoff and the SEC anyone?) and keep the money flowing. His partners' ambushing a suspected whistleblower was thuggery. Theranos was a Madoff-type operation because everyone thought that a former head of NASDAQ with a blackbox split/strike conversion strategy couldn't possibly be a fraudster. Theranos had a contract with Walgreens, was approved by Medicare, was a billion dollar company--how could it possibly be a snake oil vendor? But he was and they were. Boies tried to keep the game running as long as he could and who knows, maybe he drank the Theranos Kool-Aid as well, but now it is obvious that there's no there there and Theranos is doomed.

</comment><comment><USER10> Google link to read the full article: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi4k6e_3MLQAhUr04MKHSAtA7MQFgggMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Ftheranos- and-david-boies-cut-legal- ties-1479514351&usg=AFQjCNEMvPo1d3t1sfzJcPyAoC2Yk0FSDw&sig2=C0IfzcuiU8Zjd1yy- st7Lw)

<comment><USER11> tip: the "web" link underneath the title does this automatically

<comment><USER12> observation: the "web" link underneath the title appears intended to do this automatically

performance report: the "web" links usually fail (as in this case) completely when needed most no matter how much time you waste trying, but sidi's link works ideally instantly. Using a Tor browser.

<comment><USER13> I t didn't work on CHrome as well but opening it in an incognito window made it work for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If David Boies -- Mr. SCO v. IBM -- cuts ties with you, that's a serious mic drop against your credibility as a company.

</comment><comment><USER15> it's unfortunate theranos didn't pan out. seems like a technology capable of what was claimed would be incredibly beneficial for diabetics.

<comment><USER16> Don't diabetics already have testing tech that works off tiny pinpricks? IIRC the holy grail for diabetics is testing without drawing blood.

<comment><USER17> Correct. Diabetics are only checking for a very narrow metric (glucose levels IIUIC), which is not very sensitive to interference from surface skin cells. That doesn't hold for most of the other things that Theranos was trying to make a test for.</comment></comment></comment>


Do online courses spell the end for the traditional university? - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/nov/11/online-free-learning-end-of-university

<comment><USER2> Yes.

Undergraduate programs will become more project/research oriented. Instead of coming to class to listen to someone talk to you for an hour, you'll watch lectures as "homework" and then spend class time working together in small teams and presenting your work to your peers.

Universities will be a place where smart people gather together (in person) to work on cool stuff. I imagine there will also be online-only universities where people can gather together (virtually) and also work on cool stuff.</comment>


Quantum Mechanics Shows That Our Universe Has Purpose - <AUTHOR> https://mindmatters.ai/2020/01/quantum-mechanics-shows-that-our-universe-has-purpose/ <comment><USER2> The main error is that the article assumes that the observer must be a human. It was a bad idea to use the words "observation" / "observer" because they are misleading. I prefer "measurement".

One easy example is the Stern–Gerlach experiment [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern–Gerlach_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern–Gerlach_experiment)

In this case the "observer" is just a brick in one of the paths. There is a very nice chapter in the Feynman's book about the Stern–Gerlach experiment and how it is related to most quantum experiments and measurements.

</comment><comment><USER3> _If the physical world consists only of efficient causality, how can we create computational intelligence (that is, thinking computers or hard AI) that exhibits final causality from physical processes?_

At some point the various efforts similar to DeepMind are going to hit this wall. Getting over it is going to require that either we use biological material (neurons, glia, etc) to bridge the gap or reproduce their extra- dimensional quantum features in hardware.</comment>