Projects for Internet Access as an Inalienable Right - <AUTHOR> http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/6-projects-for-net-access-as-an-inalienable-right

<comment><USER2> While I am sympathetic to the anti-censorship goal, I am not so sure about making "internet access" an inalienable right.

I guess I am just not a big fan of positive right.

<comment><USER3> Do you believe that we have a right to a public education?

Because i think that internet access plugs into that pretty well.

Many of the people who seem to be down on positive rights don't really discuss the fact that positive and negative rights are matters of degree and flow into each other pretty fluidly.

Okay, so right to a fair trial is a negative right... but right to council is a positive right? How are you going to get a fair trial w/o competent representation?

<comment><USER2> _Do you believe that we have a right to a public education?_

No.

 _Okay, so right to a fair trial is a negative right... but right to council is a positive right? How are you going to get a fair trial w/o competent representation?_

I'll concede that point.

<comment><USER4> I'm going to contest the 2nd point. The government is trying to take your freedom, hence it provides certain protections. Just as you are guaranteed food while in jail, council must be provided. They are not positive rights, in fact they a stipulations required to enable the negative right. If they cannot be met, then you are free to go.

In short, you have no claim on anyone else; however, if others want to imprison you then they must act in a certain way - providing council, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article's title is incredibly inaccurate - it should be something like 'six projects for preventing internet access from being shut off by a governmental body'.

As the title currently reads, it's just setting us up for the same old tiresome political debate.

</comment><comment><USER6> How can there be a right to something that someone else has to provide?

With speech you can talk, no one has to listen. But with food, housing, internet access, _someone_ has to provide it.

<comment><USER7> > But with food, housing ... _someone_ has to provide it.

No they don't. You can provide it for yourself, you might not get the latter to meet local standards easily, but then here in Canada you can build a shack out in the country so long as you vacate if loggers roll in.

You might end up sharing it with a bear, but that's why you buy a gun and then you're providing your own defence too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is food an inalienable right? Housing? Health care?

<comment><USER9> That depends on where you live. For a US-based audience, the answer to all of these will probably be, "No."

<comment><USER7> For everywhere else the answer to all but the latter is no.

Why should there be a right to food. I understand if there were legal restrictions on all forms of hunting, fishing and home-farming, but there isn't.

I can build my own house. Most countries have provisions that allow you to do all your own electrical, plumbing and everything on your own property with only minimal restriction. However, there is no restriction on fulfilling the basic need of shelter. Here in Canada you can set up a shack anywhere in like 80% of the land so long as you move if loggers (or presumably miners, etc.) buy the land off the government.

I think most countries are a yes for healthcare mostly because they won't let you practice medicine without a license. However, no one can stop me doing my own stitches or providing my own first-aid, it's generally only second-aid (hospital care) that is restricted solely to trained staff.</comment></comment></comment>


Broken Warnings Theory - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/broken-warnings-theory/ <comment><USER2> GCC has had at least some of this for a while -- see references to "-isystem" at [https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Directory- Options.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Directory-Options.html)</comment>


Retro game engine based on old id tech - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/klaussilveira/qengine <comment><USER2> This is interesting.

I have thought about looking through the source of old id tech engines but felt it was too complicated. Thankfully there's the Game Engine Black Book that has already gone through tjem and have distilled the concepts into easily understandable chapters. [http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/](http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/)

This project has reduced the codebase to the essentials so this may mean that it'll be relatively simpler tp understand its inner workings.

I hope to dive into this project's source in the future.</comment>


Firefox 3 Overflow Bug - <AUTHOR>

Overflow hidden/auto is not handled correctly in FF 3. Check it out:

  this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text this is a long text
 <comment><USER2> Umm, exactly how is this not being handled properly? I've just tested this locally and it works exactly like its supposed to.

<comment><AUTHOR> FF3 expands the page horizontally. FF2 cuts it, so it fits on the page.</comment></comment>


VP9 encoding/decoding performance vs. HEVC/H.264 - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.gnome.org/rbultje/2015/09/28/vp9-encodingdecoding-performance-vs-hevch-264/ <comment><USER2> Wow, my VP9 vs H.264 takeaways are:

\- for encoding: libvpx always matches or surpasses the quality of x264 (at a given bitrate or at a given CPU budget), because the red line (libvpx) is always on or above the blue line (x264) here: [https://blogs.gnome.org/rbultje/files/2015/09/vp9-x264-x265-...](https://blogs.gnome.org/rbultje/files/2015/09/vp9-x264-x265-encoding- speed-1024x752.png) (Except there is no libvpx data for CPU budget under ~0.2 SPF —which is a bit annoying, I know for one I do most of my encodings spending around 0.05-0.15 seconds per frame.)

\- for single-threaded decoding: ffvp9 is faster than ffh264

\- for multi-threaded decoding: ffvp9 is a bit slower than ffh264

On top of that, the VP9 implementations are bound to become faster (whereas not much more improvement can be made to already-mature H.264 implementations), so VP9 is bound to become even more preferable over H.264 over time.

I think the author's first concluding bullet point ("next-gen codecs provide 50% bitrate improvements over x264, but are 10-20x as slow") is poorly worded. Sure, you can make the next-gen codecs ultra slow by using the highest quality settings, but for libvpx you should choose less agressive settings, and you will still beat the quality of x264 at the same CPU cost.

Edit: in addition, these benchmarks show that as of today out of all these implementations, VP9 even matches or beats HEVC on all aspects (encoding at a given bitrate, encoding at a given CPU budget, single- and multi-threaded decoding). But I expect this to change as HEVC implementations are all quite still immature.

<comment><USER3> VP9 implementations probably won't become all that much faster over time purely because the current development focus is the next-nextgen video codec that is under development via NetVC ([https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/netvc/charter/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/netvc/charter/)) and the Alliance for Open Media ([http://aomedia.org/](http://aomedia.org/)). The codec will be built from the best features of Daala ([http://xiph.org/daala/](http://xiph.org/daala/)), Thor ([https://github.com/cisco/thor](https://github.com/cisco/thor)) and VP10. Their rough release date is for early 2017.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The worrying part is "x265 is still too slow to be useful in most practical scenarios" and "if your CPU usage target for x264 is anything faster than veryslow, you basically want to keep using x264, since at that same CPU usage target, x265 will give worse quality for the same bitrate than x264."

That can mean that there's a real danger that we'll get a lot of worse content in the future, as those who encode may go to use a bigger-number codec because it's assumed to be better (hey, it's newer!) Most of people never encode with different codecs every material just to compare the actual quality.

<comment><USER5> 99% of video is encode-one decode-lots. In that case encoding speed doesn't matter much.

It's only for streaming (videocalls, screen mirroring, VNC) that you really need fast encoding.

<comment><USER6> > In that case encoding speed doesn't matter much

When occasionally encoding: yes. When your daily business is encoding larger batches: not necessarily.

edit: Just to clarify: we've got an encoding farm which will have to be siginficantly expanded if a substantial amount of content will have to be transcoded in H.265.

<comment><USER7> And if you need to have a h.264 fallback anyway, then any alternative codec starts at a disadvantage, as it can only have marginal gains in return for the extra encoding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another HEVC encoder comparison (which also includes x264 and VP9) is due to be released in a couple of days:

[http://compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/call_for_codecs...](http://compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/call_for_codecs_15.html)

One of the results that's already leaked shows VP9 ahead of all the HEVC encoders except for x265, which it trails by a couple of percentage points.

</comment><comment><USER8> Encoding speed is a real concern for some applications.

Think about Chromoting (Chrome Remote Desktop). They send VP9 video. If they cannot encode it at 60Hz (15ms per frame), it will look choppy.

(I quickly looked into it yesterday: [https://twitter.com/espadrine/status/648158704420941825](https://twitter.com/espadrine/status/648158704420941825))

<comment><USER9> I 110% understand the appeal of 60+fps encoding, and the requirement to do so for certain applications.

However, I'm reminded of all of the very useful work I and my colleagues were able to do while using Remote Desktop or VNC over a 56kbit/s or 128kbit/s connection. Choppy remoting is _far_ from a dealbreaker for folks who need to get things done. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think things are about to get a _lot_ more interesting between these two since Microsoft announced support for VP9.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's good to see that libvpx and x265 are moving forward.

However, not mentioned is that a higher bitrate doesn't necessarily correlate with higher perceptual quality.

Additionally, part of H.264's appeal is its widespread hardware support, which enables features like smartphones with 4K video recording.

<comment><USER12> Nowadays, smartphone SoCs support both VP9 decoding and encoding in hardware. They have been supporting the same for VP8 for a while.

<comment><USER11> On the desktop: Nvidia added full hardware acceleration support for HEVC and VP9 in their GM206 GPU only this year. Intel has partial hardware acceleration for both codecs since this year as well, as does AMD. But: Only for decoding.

On mobile, there are some SoCs that can do HEVC and VP9 decoding in 4K in hardware (like Nvidia's Tegra X1), but the large majority of smartphones does not yet have this capability. Encoding is a different story altogether. And iPhones will only do H.264 anyway for the foreseeable future.

I'm a strong proponent of open standards and I'm really looking forward to VP9 and HEVC, but it will be a while before they'll have good hardware acceleration on all platforms.

<comment><USER13> HEVC is not an open standard. It has, arguably, even worse/strict license model.

<comment><USER14> "open standard" just means is that there's a spec which you could use to produce a compatible encoder or decoder. It doesn't mean that no country in the world has issued a patent which could conceivably affect your ability to sell a product.

The other thing to remember is that most companies find the presence of a licensing model reassuring because you know the costs up front, as opposed to finding out when someone sues after you've shipped millions of units. That's one of the reasons why VP8 never posed a threat to H.264 – it was almost certain to get bogged down in lawsuits if it became popular – and why HEVC Advance is arguably the biggest threat to H.265 since it removes that comfort zone.

<comment><USER15> _The other thing to remember is that most companies find the presence of a licensing model reassuring because you know the costs up front, as opposed to finding out when someone sues after you 've shipped millions of units._

This argument doesn't seem very strong. Even if you've paid one group to license their rights, that's no guarantee that someone else won't also assert rights to what you're using as well.

I suggest that the real problem here is having a legal rights framework where such great uncertainties can exist in terms of both the rights involved and the potential costs incurred or actions required as a result.

Many problems in the tech industry would be solved if no-one could interfere with the free exchange of information just by applying laws intended for very different purposes to lock down things like file formats and communication protocols. When these IP laws were first conceived, I don't think legally preventing anyone from offering a DVD player that could skip the ads was what they had in mind.

<comment><USER14> > I suggest that the real problem here is having a legal rights framework > where such great uncertainties can exist in terms of both the rights > involved and the potential costs incurred or actions required as a result.

Complete agreement: IP reform would be enormously valuable simply for making it possible for less than massive companies to treat this as anything more survivable than a nuclear hand-grenade duel. Eventually winning a case doesn't help if the litigation bankrupts you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacker News Offline Reader for the iPhone / iPod touch - <AUTHOR> http://www.eightloops.com/iphone/hn-offline-reader <comment><USER2> I think this is the third HN app so far. Is this because people who read this site and want to try writing an iPhone app immediately think about writing an HN reader? I know I did. :-)

We need a comparative review of all the HN iPhone readers!

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the flash presentation on the site, I'm doing an iPhone app right now and am wondering what's the best way to put together a similar flash video of a screen capture of a iPhone app along with the touch indicator?

Anyone have any suggestions?

<comment><AUTHOR> We used ScreenFlow for the screen cast along with SimFinger for the touch indicator. For site integration we used flowplayer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does this app download the hacker news comments as well? I should hope it does, as that's where a good 50% of the value from HN comes from, the community.

<comment><USER5> Seconded. The comments are a very big part of why I enjoy HN so much, and I wouldn't consider buying the app without support for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Based on the Flash presentation alone - well done.

I wish however that this was HN's native web interface for the iPhone. I personally have no need for an offline reading nor do I want to use a separate app for that.

</comment><comment><USER7> Would you mind sharing the strategy you took to storing the sites offline?

I assume you grepped through the HTML source for external references (stylesheet, image, etc), downloaded each one of those, and then re-wrote the link before saving to disk?

<comment><USER8> I think there are several tools and libraries available for this job. E.g.:

      wget --mirror -p --convert-links http://www.example.com

<comment><USER9> That will mirror the whole site. If you are going to mirror a single page, a more sane command would be:

      wget -r -l 1 -Ppath/to/folder --convert-links http://www.example.com/

<comment><USER10> "wget" is not installed on a iPhone. You would use something like NSURLRequest/NSURLConnection.

<comment><USER11> It's installed on my iPhone ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> how often are people's iphones offline?

<comment><USER13> a) This lets you batch your downloads, so you get it all done, and later reading is more pleasurable.

b) If you want something to read on the plane, you could load it all up at the gate and then enjoy it later.

Looks great - just bought it. :)

<comment><USER14> Please let me know what you think of it. I may buy it as well. I just have a touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looking forward to this. Will be using this on my commute for sure. This will also be very helpful for Wifi Only iPad users.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can I just have Instapaper support in an HN app? Please...Pretty please.

<comment><USER17> How about this? <http://www.icombinator.net/>

<comment><USER16> no account support (login, replies, etc.); hit targets for important links are insanely small; when I last used it (maybe 12 months ago), it would routinely bomb out on me with bizarro server-side error messages.

<comment><USER18> I want Instapaper support in the HN app from Michael Grinich <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news/id339408916?mt=8>

<comment><USER16> I asked him about that a couple days ago. I doubt he'd mind if I reposted his response. He said: "I'm indeed working on those features, although not as feverishly as my other projects. This app was mostly an experimental side project."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't leave instapaper</comment>


Engineering Shortage is Real: Fmr Digg Engineer Gets 7 Offers, Takes 1 for $150k - <AUTHOR> http://www.pehub.com/89732/engineering-shortage-is-real-former-digg-engineer-gets-7-offers-takes-one-for-150k/

<comment><USER2> If that is a really good engineer, that has been the going rate for a while in some markets like Seattle at a middle aged startup where there is less ownership.

Even not so great senior engineers at the safer companies are at the $120K range.

<comment><USER3> Even for more mid level developers like me (English major turned OO PHP developer) the pay is great these days...I'm making 45% more now than I was at the beginning of 2008.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should startups invest in business cards? - <AUTHOR>

Obviously, there is a practical tension to keep costs to a minimum, especially when teams are small and frugality is important.<p>But there is also a strong need to evangelize one's product during physical meetings or chance encounters. Without getting too geeky (like emailing one's contact info to another, etc.) what do HN'ers typically do? <comment><USER2> Yes, 100%

A startup can't generate revenue or even continue, without the spread of word of mouth, which is a BIG way to get new customers.

I've been there when you don't have a business card and it does 2 things:

        - You look really unprofessional

        - That's one person that will never remember you again.

I would advise vistaprint.com, they give 250 free business cards, you just have to pay shipping. Here's the link: vistaprint.com/thankspandora

<comment><USER3> I agree with the sentiment about business cards 100%. You need them, so get them.

Do NOT get VistaPrint. The free cards they have stick their logo on the back side. Go to OvernightPrints.com and you can get a better set for very little money. I have tested out every single online printer in depth over the years and they have the best business card offer for the money.

@YoungEnt - where did you get that affiliate link? ;)</comment></comment>


Google eBooks: E-Reading Takes To The Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/06/google-ebooks-e-reading-takes-to-the-cloud/ <comment><USER2> Hasn't Google been producing some very Microsoft-esque news as of late--they join some product space late, with a product that doesn't really differentiate itself except by having Google scale from the beginning? I'm just seeing this as a increasingly frequent thing: Checkout, the Android Market, Buzz, Google TV, HotPot, and now this... can't wait for Google Me or "the Facebook retort" to come out and be completely underwhelming.

It seems at a certain point a large company cannot help but be more reactionary than revolutionary, despite the culture and mantras and everything else.

<comment><USER3> I'm really pleased to see this particular product from Google though. Not offering ebooks is weird for a company whose mission is organising the world's information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The first book I see (Cross Fire by James Patterson) is $14.99 vs. $12.99 on the Kindle.

</comment><comment><USER5> "E-Reading Takes To The Cloud"

Sorry, what?

How is this any more cloud-y than a Kindle, or whatever also-ran B&N has, or the iTunes books thing? Not to say that it isn't cool (personally, I'm surprised it uses Adobe's eBook DRM format instead of something simpler and more open), but the cloudiness of this is far less notable than the weird fact that Google's getting into this industry.

</comment><comment><USER6> So.... downside: books are more expensive, no support for the Kindle, "yet another eReader"(TM) for all my devices, minimal support for common formats, blah blah

upside: it syncs where you are between all your devices!

am I missing something here?

</comment><comment><USER7> The attractiveness here is not the store, IMO, but the eReader access to their deep back catalog of books they've scanned. Amazon and B&N keep their catalogs full of paid content. Google's seems like it will have a great depth of their own proprietary scanned material, which is appealing.

</comment><comment><USER8> The first book I searched for (Guns, Germs and Steel) shows up in the auto suggest, but not in the search results. Disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Direct link to the ebooks - <http://books.google.com/ebooks>

</comment><comment><USER10> Google taking 48 cents on the dollar unless you're a major publisher... ouch!

</comment><comment><USER11> Differently from kindle and other ebook apps, such as adilko, google goes great lenghts, at least in this version, to hide the free content besides the 3 samples that it adds to your lib when starting

<comment><USER11> let me correct myselft on this one. in the website they have a category for "top free books". but otherwise, still a pain

how about some project guttenberg in the app search results? c'mon, you guys are an overgrow search engine :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Every google app is above 1.5mb. That's really above the fold for most categories of apps</comment>


Dear Mark Zuckerberg, Here's How You Double Facebook's Share Price - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/10/31/dear-mark-zuckerberg-heres-how-you-double-facebooks-share-price/

<comment><USER2> "Everyone has Facebook open in one of the tabs in their browser. Say you have Facebook open in one tab and Kogan.com open in another. Facebook could tell us if you are male or female. We could then customize our site with..."

How would this happen though, technically? Would the sites need to share cookies? Or would kogan users need to explicitly indicate/link their FB id to kogan, or even login with their FB id.

Later, he states... "Neither Facebook nor any of its advertising partners are interested in your personal data."

This is disingenuous - for the ads, he wants to know what model phone you use. Once you buy something, he then knows your address, phone number, email, c/c, and what model phone you use. He would then likely be keeping this additional factoid (your phone model) stored somewhere along with your personal data and purchase history.

It sounds to me like Ruslan is looking to do something that's a bit dodgy on the privacy front.

<comment><USER3> FB's answer should be "Move you store onto FB and all these great things can happen" vs side by side tabs theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bloooow hard. I went to visit their site. Got hit with a pop up that I had no way to get rid of. Wanted me to enter my information to get on a mailing list. Left the site.

You could get rid of the first 10 paragraphs where the author comes to the well documented conclusion that a Google and FB user are in two different mindsets.</comment>


Ping pong with Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://adblockplus.org/blog/ping-pong-with-facebook <comment><USER2> Since this is inevitably going to turn into the usual back and forth about adblocking, I'll just throw this out there: I would definitely use an adblocker that only applied to video.

Video ads are a unique brand of terrible. Lose the connection, player gets funky, have to reload? Boom, another 30 seconds of preroll ad. Ad stutters, plays a second then stops for four to buffer another second? Guess what, the ad is still at 0:29 left, because the ad doesn't end when thirty seconds pass, it ends when their shitty server plays thirty seconds of video. And the ambush ads: fifteen minutes of leaving a tab in the background and it starts autoplaying a new video.

I keep turning Adblock Plus off out of a sense of obligation and then end up turning it on again because it is such a frustrating experience to try to watch a video with it off.

</comment><comment><USER3> Adblock Plus is doing a marketing stunt: Claiming to have "the community" on their side and making hand-wavy arguments on FTC regulations that are based on nothing at all. While their only goal still is to make Facebook pay them just like Google does, because the minute Facebook pays up they will start unblocking their ads.

So can we please just decide for once and for all that Adblock Plus is a commercial, mafia like, practice extorting publishers and quit the grassroots bullshit?

</comment><comment><USER4> AdBlock doesn't block Microsoft, Amazon & Google ads because they get paid from them. I don't believe in this David vs Goliath narrative.

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/80a8ce54-a61d-11e4-9bd3-00144feab7...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/80a8ce54-a61d-11e4-9bd3-00144feab7de.html)

<comment><USER5> Came here to say just that. AdBlock relies heavily on SEO to grow it's install base. If you search "ad blocking" they rank highest, because of their name alone. This story will probably win them a huge boost and am hoping uBlock or similar take the lead on this one.

At a publisher conference, I recently saw PageFair take stage and sell their solution as an anti-ad-blocking ad-serving network. Turns out they pay AdBlock to get unblocked and their entire budget seems to be spent on SEO and trade fairs. I found this on their FAQ very amusing:

> Q: I tested my installation by activating the uBlock Chrome extension and > the PageFair script did not load

> A: The adblock community maintains a number of different "block lists" of > domains and resources that should be blocked from loading. One particular > list (Easylist) is used by the most popular extensions AdblockPlus and > Adblock. This list does not block PageFair's analytics from loading. There > is an additional list called EasyPrivacy which is not used by default in > AdblockPlus or Adblock, but is used by default in uBlock. Our analytics (as > well as most other analytics tools like Google Analytics) are blocked by the > EasyPrivacy list.

> You should be able to try out a different extension to verify this.

[https://support.pagefair.com/support/solutions/articles/5000...](https://support.pagefair.com/support/solutions/articles/5000614219-i-tested- my-installation-by-activating-the-ublock-chrome-extension-and-the-pagefair- script-did-not-lo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The argument that Facebook is somehow flouting FTC regulations is disingenuous - all of Facebook's organic ad posts are marked as 'Sponsored' in feed.

What AdBlock want is for Facebook to put a marker in the DOM so they can block the ad, but I'm guessing this is not where most people go looking to find out if a post is sponsored.

Anyway, the argument is academic as long as Facebook usage continues to shift to mobile apps. Adblocking will continue to do what it's always done - depriving revenue from small publishers while having no impact on larger players who have the mindshare to serve content through their own native apps, or simply pay to have their ads seen.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't think this is a problem that generalized ad blockers should be attempting to solve, as it's a completely different breed of advertisement. Maybe there could be a separate project for tackling disguised ads on big sites, but otherwise trying to solve a very nuanced problem using a broad approach is going to be an endless headache and perhaps futile.

I have no reservations about blocking disguised ads. Advertisers have abused their position for far too long, and it's pretty clear that disguised ads are only going to make the web more of a mess of infotainment or advertainment.

I ended up writing my own Chrome extension to remove Facebook's suggested posts, as it actually isn't that complicated if you simply crawl the DOM on element inserts. There's probably a performance hit, but not enough for me to really notice.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/suggest-me- not/cel...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/suggest-me- not/celncnbpemidpjiclomdcioffkfkpkec)

</comment><comment><USER8> This opinion might be unpopular here, but I don't really empathize with adblock plus's arguments with why they have to be able to block ads (journalistic integrity?). This is how facebook and others need to fund their product costs. If you can't be bothered to sell your attention to them for the ads, then put up money instead; but we all know how unlikely people are to pay for content online once it was "free".

Nothing is free online. If you aren't paying for a product, you are the product. (said someone way smarter than me years ago)

<comment><USER9> And I think the standard rebuttal is that, if ads were unobtrusive that would be one thing, but many times leaving ads unblocked leads to malware and extreme system slowdowns. I personally would not mind keeping adblocker off if ads were just minor ads in the text of documents, but from what I've seen on the rare occasions where I've been on a computer without adblock, the non- adblocked internet is pretty disgusting.

<comment><USER10> That argument doesn't apply to Facebook who don't serve ads from third-party servers or with third-party code. You're just as likely to find a security flaw in Facebook's ads as in Facebook's organic posts.

<comment><USER11> except that facebook can make ad for malware independently of flaw in facebook code

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish Facebook would offer an option to pay to remove ads / reduce tracking. I understand that they have to operate a business, and if I don't want to pay they should be able to show me ads. If I do want to pay it would be nice to be able to remove the tracking/ads. It looks like facebook only pulls in about $10 per user[1], I'd happily pay a few dollars a month for an ad free service

1\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-average-revenue- per-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-average-revenue-per-user-is- up-sharply-2015-11)

<comment><USER13> An argument against that I have seen in other threads and I find particularly interesting is that by providing an option to pay to block ads, you'd be greatly diminishing the strength of the ad network since the people that would see ads are not the ones that are willing to pay for their stuff.

<comment><USER12> That makes a ton of sense, I was being blinded by the average revenue not thinking about that fact that their revenue probably has an 80/20 distribution. I wonder if you assumed that there was a pareto distribution of their users what you'd need to do to compute how much the top 10/20% are spending per year (I'm kind of stumped on that one).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I work in adtech. We all use adblockers, and the rise in their use is a good thing. Digital ads (especially video) are out of control and blocking is necessary to combat the terrible user experience and security risks.

However, ads also sustain all the services and content we consume for free and there are clearly common sense standards we can agree to: fast, non-intrusive, secure, static, etc. Any ad vendor that meets these guidelines should be let through (after a transparent vetting process and routine checkups).

Blocking everything just because it's an ad takes away any moral high ground from adblockers and doesn't do anything but hurt the entire ecosystem. A more nuanced approach would let good vendors through which would in turn start to encourage those behaviors by publishers and advertisers, creating progress all through the industry while letting companies stay in business.

It's not advertising we hate, it's the ad experience. Improving that experience is the ultimate goal, not engaging in endless war.

<comment><USER15> I don't think we can agree to this.

Ads do not sustain the free services I use; I object to advertising, full stop.

You are welcome to think your free services are essential, I will disagree with you in most of the cases that are ad supported.

<comment><USER14> What free services are you using that aren't ad supported? You don't use Facebook or visit any major site (without a subscription)?

And value isn't determined by whether you think it's essential or not but your actions in using it. If you're consuming content/services, then you're getting value.

<comment><USER15> I loathe facebook with a flaming passion. That it has captured identity on the internet, and chained it to advertising, is a disgrace. I feel similarly about Google, fortunately there are alternative search engines.

<comment><USER16> Which alternative search engine do you use that doesn't have ads and/or pull results from Google?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just to counterbalance all the posts trying to make equivalences or complain about ad-blockers, some of them even portraying it as "poor little guy":

I am fully in support of any and all ad-blocking initiatives. Thank you very much to everyone working against Facebook on this!

</comment><comment><USER18> When you sign up to use Facebook and click 'I agree' you are making a promise not to block their ads. It seems to me that to break that promise because the ads are annoying is morally wrong, but many people don't see it that way.

I sell software as a service. If a customer doesn't like some aspect of my software I expect him to cancel his subscription. If he continues to use my software without paying for it he is breaking his promise to me, and most people would see it as wrong.

What's the difference?

</comment><comment><USER19> Do we hate the ad's or the ad experience?

The other day I was walking down the street.

Few people approached me offering stuff, magazines, religion leaflets, food coupons and whatever. While I appreciate that those people are trying to feed themselves, I find it way too intrusive for them trying to approach me and me having to say no to every single thing.

On the other hand I saw a small free magazine stand. I checked it myself and I liked it so I took it.

The kind of advertising we have on the web is the first one I mentioned, the one that they are trying to force the ad on you.

Why can't we have ad's that are like those small corner free magazine stands that you'll pick the item when you really want to.

My point is while I don't use adblockplus, facebook should stop playing around and find a way to serve better ad's.

Also noone mentioned the fact that a lot of facebook ad's are not filtered e.g fake products all over the place.

</comment><comment><USER20> As a human on this planet with fundamental rights I get to control what goes into my brain. I'm #sorrynotsorry if that is inconvenient for your business model.

<comment><USER12> Couldn't the argument be made that if you don't want their ads to go into your brain that you shouldn't visit their site? It's sort of a case of "their house their rules" right? I tend to agree that it'd be nice to be able to avoid the ads, but they have to earn operating revenue somehow.

<comment><USER20> I don't think so - again if we're agreed I have full sovereignty of my body and therefore have the right to control which photons reach my brain. This ought to apply - like all fundamental rights - in all circumstances and contexts.

<comment><USER12> If we follow that argument out wouldn't that mean that you would have the right to control what anyone said or wore in public? If I'm wearing a purple shirt in the park and you go to the park you don't have the right to stop me from wearing my purple shirt just because it annoys you.

Btw, since comment sections make it hard for the reader to discern tone I'm simply trying to explore this argument, please don't take offense to the continued questioning.

<comment><USER20> Right - these rights don't let me stop you from wearing a particular shirt, but I think they reasonably let me control what I am able to see or hear(given a mechanism available to do that). For example I think a reasonable interpretation is that I ought to be entitled to wear headphones that filter out words I might find offensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I haven't gone recently but how does uBlock Origin fair in all of this?

<comment><USER22> It uses EasyList as well, the shared block list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wait for when Facebook will make the "sponsored content" indication a canvas, present in every content but only filled-in on those sponsored content. Facebook control the DOM, they can use every technique to make the detection harder to the end where we will need AI classifier.

<comment><USER7> Their problem is they'd have to contradict their own UI despite doing things like that. Let's say that they removed the "Suggested Post" indicator from their ads entirely, and the ads essentially appear identical to something you are already following; unless you had followed the page before, it should display a Like button like any other post and it would not say something like "You liked/followed this page" at the top of the post in the feed, so it would be a safe assumption to clear out anything that wasn't specifically liked by you or a friend. But, if they were to not display a Like button or elements telling you whether or not you have followed the post before, that's yet another indication that it's not a genuine post. I wouldn't mind never seeing anything that's "suggested" and would rather find content through friends(you know, that whole social networking thing). I don't see how they can ever get around ad blocking in the long term without making their site unpleasant to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Personally, I hate ads in general, but I can't help noticing the double standard with folks who use Adblock. Most of the same folks watch TV, listen to the radio, buy newspapers/magazines, or walk/drive in public. Ads are even more pervasive in all these avenues. Where is the outcry on user choice there? In many of those cases, you're paying to use those services (unlike FB for example), and yet you still see/hear ads. Why the Internet and not there too?

I think one major difference on the Internet is ad tracking. I firmly believe you should have the right to not be tracked. I think the blocking apps should focus on preventing you from being tracked, not from the ad displaying. If the site uses intrusive ads that consume the page, do as I do and not go back! There's almost always another source for that information!

<comment><USER25> "Most" is kind of a meaningless word. Most people I know use Netflix / HBO Go, Spotify / Youtube / Soundcloud, do not buy newspapers / magazines (they still make these?) and are on their phones the whole time they're walking / driving in public.

If a company wants to force people to see ads, they can do what Forbes does. It's inconsistent to allow people to see content and complain that they don't see the ads. It's like a Halloween candy bowl with a "please take one" sign. If you don't enforce your ideals you cannot represent yourself as holding them strongly. Facebook _allows_ people to use adblockers, and they don't have to. They choose to because they know that not seeing ads is more valuable to users than the service Facebook provides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> since when adblock plus is open source ?

<comment><USER26> As far as I'm aware, it always has been. They link to their source code from the footer of their homepage, licensed as GPLv3: [https://adblockplus.org/en/source](https://adblockplus.org/en/source)

<comment><USER11> I was confused with their acceptable ad policy. You looks right, adblock plus seemps open source since ever

<comment><USER27> They're also open about what they allow. Follow this link to find the filters etc: [https://adblockplus.org/acceptable- ads#list](https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads#list)

<comment><USER14> Except that their paid whitelisting is anything but open... it's all backdoor deals that are just a profiteering scheme, not about consumer rights or encouraging change.

Plenty of good adtech vendors meet their "standards" but are only allowed through if they pay up. It's all about the money.

<comment><USER27> They explain when advertisers must pay here: [https://adblockplus.org/about#monetization](https://adblockplus.org/about#monetization)

Is that inaccurate?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Boswell's Life of Dissipation - <AUTHOR> http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/5327/full <comment><USER2> Extracts of a drinking diary of an 18th century alcoholic is highly unrelated to modern tech startups, but entertaining nonetheless.

I salute HN for bringing it to the frontpage.</comment>


"Doctors gave me 30 days to live": his last post… - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&prev=_dd&u=http%3A%2F%2Funcondamne.tumblr.com%2F

<comment><AUTHOR> As a follow-up of this news that was posted here a month ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5831848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5831848)

The author does not say that he is dead for sure. He says that if we read this most recent post, it probably means he is.

What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER2> I followed this from the original HN post. I must say that when I read today's update I felt saddened. I don't think this was a publicity stunt of any kind, and that the author really was afflicted with a disease that ultimately took his life. Well worth reading through to see how looming death affects the human psyche.</comment>


Jack gives 1% of equity to Twitter employees - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jack/status/657351519461707776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw <comment><USER2> 0.666% of something is better than 1% of nothing he figures</comment>


OCamlers' critiques of Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/ocaml/comments/3ifwe9/what_are_ocamlers_critiques_of_haskell/ <comment><USER2> From the top comment:

> _Yoneda-crazy: I know Haskell, I know some category theory, but I am highly > sceptical that teaching the Yoneda Lemma to C++ programmers is actually > useful in any way._

This is infuriatingly true. Everything you do in Haskell you can understand in terms of what code gets executed where and how. This is just as true of Haskell as it is of any other high-level language.

Indeed, you can take an arbitrary Haskell program, and rewrite it in C with the same semantics, and all you'll learn is how GHC's runtime is implemented and how it executes your program. For a small concise program, this actually makes for a nice exercise. I don't know why, but people sometimes seem to think the runtime is "magic".

<comment><USER3> Personally I find category theory to be a red herring when it comes to Haskell and really programming. I feel that people learn a bit of CT, then quote it endlessly as a sort of elevation of programming from lowly code-slinging to a high mathematical pursuit. Except CT doesn't really provide all that much insight. At least not unless you're knee-deep in advanced type theory. But who has _really_ read Benjamin Pierce's books (as beautiful as they are), or the original Hindley texts?

A side comment, this one's more about CT itself, is that the standard texts don't seem to really have many results. Not compared to, say, any undergrad book on algebra or number theory, where cool theorems come at you every few pages to twist up your brain. Category Theory always felt almost _mechanical_ to me. Lots of definitions and rules for assembling diagrams and such, but then what. Just the Yoneda Lemma and that's it? If anyone can point me to the fun CT theorems, I'd love to hear about them.

<comment><USER4> >CT itself, is that the standard texts don't seem to really have many results.

Oh man. If you like math, CT gives nice mathematical definitions for stuff. I would love to use my algebra skills to do general programming like I can use my linear algebra knowledge in numerical programming.

I'm making bold claim that I hope someone can debunk with awesome counterexamples:

"CT HAS ZERO APPLICABILITY IN PROGRAMMING"

Using CT to Linear algebra analogy: CT in programming is like learning definitions of vector spaces, subspaces, span, and basis and stopping there. No CT equivalent for solving linear systems, linear transformations, least- squares or eigenvalues. Just because you have rooted programming in cool algebraic notation does not mean anything in itself.

<comment><USER5> This is a kind of marketing trick Haskell has pulled, which some people fall for (regardless of the merits of the language), namely that Haskell is somehow more "mathematical" than other languages. The truth is that Haskell -- like all programming language -- has made a _design choice_ , which was to bake in correctness proofs _based on the Curry-Howard correspondence_ into the language. This means that instead of bringing the math to your program like other verification methods do[1], it takes you to the math, requiring your participation. Haskell just _feels_ more mathy because C-H puts the math in your face.

Another trick Haskell uses is preferring abstractions that are based on concepts from CT[2], and validating the utility of those abstractions on their "rigorous mathematical foundations". This is again just another case of taking you to the math rather than the other way around. Programming languages are first and foremost human languages, meant to be written and read by humans. As such, their power is drawn from a single source: their interaction with human cognition. Whether an abstraction is "mathematical" (whatever that means) has absolutely no relevance to its power, which comes from cognition (and psychology in general) rather than math. All this "in your face" math does is make the machine's job of verifying your software easier.

A Haskeller tried convincing me that such a language is a good fit for human programmers, too, because all it is is a subset of more traditional, impure languages. But the notion of subset => simpler is a mathematical notion with no relevance to cognition. If humans operated in this way, natural languages would have been much more mathematically simpler, too.

[1]: See KeY: [http://www.key-project.org/](http://www.key-project.org/)

[2]: To be fair, I'm not sure that Haskell, given its original design philosophy, has much choice in the matter.

<comment><USER6> > validating the utility of those abstractions on their "rigorous mathematical > foundations"

Some Haskell users may think this, but I think the usefulness of the foundations is not derived from rigor. Instead, it is derived from the wealth of knowledge we have about mathematical structures which makes them easier to reason about. So by linking the programming structures you are using (e.g. monads) with associated mathematical structures (also called monads[1]), all of the mathematical knowledge surrounding that structure suddenly becomes available. This is rather like how doing numerical calculations with matrices benefits from the wealth of knowledge about linear algebra.

Another "mathy" aspect that Haskell and similar languages have is that they like to start with a few fundamental constructs and build everything else within that system. This is more a design philosophy than anything, but I think it does have its advantages in that it results in better composablility, since everything "comes from the same place".

As far as the relationship to cognition, I think Haskell will be better in this regard if you are mathematically minded, because you will understand programming constructs from their mathematical roots. For example, I had an easy time picking up monads because I knew the category theory version. It could be argued that once a person learns these concepts they are given a better means of reasoning about programs than other languages, but I suspect that largely depends on one's intellectual leanings.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(category_theory)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_\(category_theory\))

<comment><USER5> > which makes them easier to reason about

Easier to reason about by whom? Most programming models have their own calculi which are exploited by their respective verification tools. They don't, however, expose that to the developer.

> I think Haskell will be better in this regard if you are mathematically > minded

I think that Haskell is better if you are mathematically minded _and_ interested in thinking (a lot!) about abstractions. I like to keep my abstractions cognitively simple (primitive, even), and my algorithms sophisticated and powerful. I'd rather the people writing the verifier put their mathematical leanings to use on the relevant calculus, while I use mine on the algorithmic domain I'm working in.

Just like I don't require the developer using my database to be familiar with data structures and concurrency, I don't want those interested in formal verification requiring me to change my programming style to make their job easier. In fact, their job is quite the opposite: provide verification tools that are useful for the programming languages that make for a good cognitive fit, rather than design languages that make verification easier with the (possibly misplaced) hope that by some unexplained coincidence, a language designed to make a machine's reasoning easier would also do the same for a human.

Software verification is a fascinating algorithmic topic. Language design is a fascinating UI endeavour tasked -- like all UI -- with coming up with great cognitive abstractions. The two should, of course, cross-pollinate one another, but shouldn't become the same. Language designers should spend their time thinking how humans think about computation and how they interact with computers, not how to make programming models fit certain branches of math.

<comment><USER7> >I like to keep my abstractions cognitively simple (primitive, even), and my algorithms sophisticated and powerful.

This is extremely poor programming practice. Let me guess, you're a solo developer and/or working on a tiny team.

<comment><USER5> At the moment I have a small team, but before that I was CTO of a large team working on real time (soft and hard) defense systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am an unashamed OCaml fan, but I think my previously stated analogy is suitable:

"FP communities: like debating which brand of natural spring water to give millions of thirsty people in the desert"

[https://twitter.com/jordwalke/status/566719390272335872](https://twitter.com/jordwalke/status/566719390272335872)

Note that I do genuinely appreciate the discussion, while finding the overall scene humorous.

<comment><USER9> That's a really magical analogy right there. Though I'd take it a step further and say nowadays even stumping for an FP language smacks of the same sort of thing.

Case in point: I've probably done more to evangelize functional programming by just demonstrating to colleagues that they too can write their own higher- order functions - just like LINQ! - in C# than an army of Haskellers could accomplish in a lifetime of hurling jargon from category theory. My thought is, if FP is really so great then I should be able to _show_ people by writing some functional code and then having someone else come along later and go, "Hey, that's great!" When I find I can't do that then that's a signal that it's time to double-check the ingredients of my fruit-flavored beverage.

Yeah, that does mean I have to accept that Racket will forever be a hobby language for me. My boring sellout Herman Miller-cradled enterprise developer butt is comfortable with that.

<comment><USER10> > _My thought is, if FP is really so great then I should be able to show > people by writing some functional code and then having someone else come > along later and go, "Hey, that's great!" When I find I can't do that then > that's a signal that it's time to double-check the ingredients of my fruit- > flavored beverage._

I don't know about that. Sometimes people must make the effort to move beyond their comfort zones in order to find tools that are (potentially) more useful. You cannot expect every improvement to be self-evident with minimal effort. There are significant rewards in "making the jump", so to speak.

<comment><USER9> I'd submit that if I can't find a spot where my favorite trick solves a problem in a way that I can easily demonstrate is better than the existing alternatives, then my favorite trick is a solution in search of a problem.

<comment><USER10> I agree with everything you say except for the "easily" part. Sometimes you have to make a cognitive effort; said effort is by definition harder than not making the effort. But the payoff may be worthwhile!

I don't subscribe to the notion that for something to be worthwhile, it must be readily apparent and "easy" to understand. Especially in the context of FP, where most programmers -- but this is changing, thankfully! -- are traditionally trained in imperative languages, which means for them learning the FP "purist" mindset implies a significant effort.

My grandmother (R.I.P.) could never learn how to use an ATM. For her, using one was daunting and too much of an effort. It terrified her that she might make a mistake and push the wrong button. Back when she was young, ATMs didn't exist and she didn't need them. Her solution in modern days was to ask a helpful relative to use the ATM for her. Does this mean these hellish machines are "a solution in search of a problem"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One technical reason that makes me prefer OCaml to Haskell is Haskell's weak module system. I think there should be a good way to parameterize one module over another module (interface) and to use different instantiations of the module in the same program. I think people do such things using type classes and typing constraints. But I found this being awkward, because the compiler needs to be able to resolve the constraints automatically and there are issues with overlapping instances and the like.

To quote Bob Harper: _As a consequence, using type classes is, in Greg Morrisett's term, like steering the Queen Mary: you have to get this hulking mass pointed in the right direction so that the inference mechanism resolves things the way you want it to._ [[https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/modules- mat...](https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/modules-matter-most)] (I think this applies most of all if one is using type classes to emulate a module system. For other purposes, type classes are quite nice.)

Maybe Backpack will solve these issues. [[http://plv.mpi- sws.org/backpack/](http://plv.mpi-sws.org/backpack/)]

</comment><comment><USER12> The OP on reddit lists several earlier "What are Haskellers' critiques of <X functionalish language>" threads.

Here's another recent one going in the opposite direction, like this one, but asking Clojure fans about Haskell: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/3h4qdk/what_are_cl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/3h4qdk/what_are_clojurians_critiques_of_haskell/)

A lot of the Clojure programmers seemed to focus on things, like records, that often bug Haskellers, too.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've toyed with Haskell before (enjoy toying with languages in my spare time). Its a nice language, that has a good community. But for some reason I could not see myself using it as one of my main goto (no pun intended) languages. Not due to any technical reason. Mostly because there is no easy introduction into it. No small projects to undertake showing what practical uses it might have. No twitter clone using SQLite (laugh all you want, this type of tutorial project helps understand how the language should be used and showcases libraries). Its just seems purely about doing math with it. But Im probably wrong. Last time I looked into it was about a year ago. I'll gladly look again if anyone can comment about it.

<comment><USER14> Have you checked out Real World Haskell by Bryan Sullivan? It's different than most Haskell resources I've found in that it introduces you to monads & IO fairly quickly, so you're not trapped with toy math problems. That was an issue I had with Learn You a Haskell for Great Good - finding the sum of all odd squares that are smaller than 10,000 is good and all, but not exactly a programming problem I have often...

<comment><USER15> Note that the book is a bit dated, though most chapters are still "valid". See this question from Stackoverflow [1] - Which parts of Real World Haskell are now obsolete or considered bad practice?

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23727768/which-parts- of-r...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23727768/which-parts-of-real- world-haskell-are-now-obsolete-or-considered-bad-practice?rq=1)

<comment><USER13> Any alternatives available?

<comment><USER15> This looks good but I have not personally tried the courses mentioned at the top of the article - [https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell](https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Although this isn't OCAML, one thing I ended up missing when writing Haskell was F#'s Active Patterns.

<comment><USER17> These exist in Haskell as "Pattern Synonyms". Here's a partial translation of some of the F# examples on MSDN to Haskell;

      {-# LANGUAGE PatternSynonyms, ViewPatterns #-}

      pattern Even <- ((`mod` 2) -> 0)
      pattern Odd <- ((`mod` 2) -> 1)

      testNumber x = show x ++
          case x of
              Even -> " is even"
              Odd -> " is odd"

      data Color = Color { r :: Int, g :: Int, b :: Int }

      pattern RGB r g b = Color r g b
      -- NB: this is bidirectional automatically

      printRGB :: Color -> IO ()
      printRGB (RGB r g b) = print $ "Red: " ++ show r ++ " Green: " ++ show g ++ " Blue: " ++ show b

      -- pretend we have functions to and from RGB and HSV representation

      toHSV :: Color -> (Int, Int, Int)
      toHSV = undefined -- implement this yourself!

      fromHSV :: Int -> Int -> Int -> Color
      fromHSV = undefined

      pattern HSV h' s' v' <- (toHSV -> (h', s', v'))
          -- here we explicitly provide an inversion
          where HSV = fromHSV

      printHSV :: Color -> IO ()
      printHSV (HSV h s v) = print $ "Hue: " ++ show h ++ " Saturation: " ++ show s ++ " Value: " ++ show v

      -- demonstrating being able to use pattern
      -- to construct a value
      addHue :: Int -> Color -> Color
      addHue n (HSV h s v) = HSV (h + n) s v

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > When I met a Haskeller at the pub after a mini-conference and I mentioned > that I didn't like Haskell he began frothing at the mouth and punching the > table. When we got up to leave he refused to shake my hand.

This is just gold!

All the Haskellers I have met seem to be quite normal, helpful. Maybe this guy rubs them up the wrong way.

<comment><USER19> That's not my experience. Most Haskellers are indeed good people, but quite a few "vocal" ones are extremely arrogant and intellectually dishonest. Let me give some examples that I've met recently:

\- A Haskeller once said Haskell is just as easy as Go to learn. I mean, yeah, many moderately complex languages might be as complex as Haskell, but seriously, Go? It is designed to be as simple as possible. Hell, it even doesn't have generics, which is considered pretty essential in nowadays' statically typed languages. And this claim isn't an outcome of ignorance. He is the author of a very popular Haskell learning material.

\- Another said: "Steep learning curve is an interesting expression, because what it actually means is that one is learning quickly." Ok, that's not my interpretation of "steep learning curve" of Haskell.

\- "The average Java programmers are worse than the average Haskell programmers" thing. This sentiment even existed in one of the "how to spread Haskell to the industry" presentation. I'm pretty sure if Haskell does be accepted by the industry, it will have the exactly same dumb programmers using it. So, what's the point?

You must be lucky if you haven't met any of them in the Haskell community. Actually, their reputation outside of the community is quite terrible. This must be resolved if Haskell wants to succeed. (And yeah, please stop saying "avoid success at all cost". I know it can be interpreted as "avoid $ success at all cost", just stop it.)

<comment><USER20> > You must be lucky if you haven't met any of them in the Haskell community. > Actually, their reputation outside of the community is quite terrible.

I think this is quite relevant.

[https://gist.github.com/quchen/5280339](https://gist.github.com/quchen/5280339)

All communities of significant size will have good and bad apples. The Haskell community is no exception. But in my experience most of the community are fantastically patient and helpful people.

<comment><USER9> This may indeed be true, but Haskell has nonetheless developed a reputation, and it's not a reputation that it shares with just any other community. The only comparison I can think of is Lisp in the '90s and early 2000's.

My suspicion is this: There are lots of ways to make people feel inferior, or at least make them feel like you think they're superior. Most of them are ones that people probably don't do on purpose. But when you do it, the person you do it to is going to think you're a smug jerk nonetheless. There are also a lot of people who are supremely self-confident and therefore largely immune to being made to feel inferior. Many of them have been like this all their lives, and are therefore oblivious to this social subtlety.

One easy social gaffe that doesn't get discussed much is having no sense of humility about your language's obtuse syntax. Yes, I know, it's a familiarity issue, all languages have obtuse syntax, etc. etc. Doesn't matter. What matters is, if your language's syntax is different enough from Java's or Pascal's then it's going to be widely perceived as being obtuse. And responding to that with anything along the lines of, "Huh, makes perfect sense to me," risks coming across as a smug jerk.

Using the M-word is another famously risky behavior. Ironically, at least in my experience using it is also actively harmful to any attempts to explain the underlying concept, because at this point that word is @$#@ _loaded_. You can take someone who is already implicitly comfortable with the concept and uses them all the time in practice, and reduce them to a confused heap just by mentioning the M-word. And at that point, any attempt to pursue your goals will also risk coming across as a smug jerk. No, trying to address this issue head-on by writing blog posts with titles like "You already understand. . ." does not help. It just makes you come across as a _condescending_ smug jerk.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jeff Bezos's Net Worth Just Broke $100B - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-24/jeff-bezos-fortune-hits-100-billion-on-black-friday-stock-surge <comment><USER2> AMZN, the stock, is trading at a P.E. Ratio of nearly 300. [http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAMZN](http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAMZN)

Serious question: Considering that it nearly doubled over the past year, is it already too late to buy Amazon stock? Or not? What's the upside?

<comment><USER3> Asking whether it's too late to buy I think makes no sense... if it were, immediately market forces would drive up the price. If it were too soon, immediately market forces would sell.

You can ask anyone, any individual, of course and they'll have a particular answer which will differ. But I wouldn't be quick to trust a particular answer over the answer of the market (which IS the stock price), unless the particular answer is from a particular person, like a buffett, a domain expert or an alien from the future or someone with insider knowledge.

At least, that's the theory haha. I know it's a shitty answer.

<comment><USER4> The stock price at any point in time is set by about an equal number of investors thinking it'll go up as those that think it'll go down.

<comment><USER5> its not an equal number of investors, its an equal number of buy and sell orders at a certain price.

an individual with a billion shares has more of an impact on a share price than an individual with one share.

<comment><USER4> Yes, you're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bezos is an advocate for basic income, but I question his motives. Is it because he is genuinely concerned for others and society, or does he want to avoid the pitchforks at his doorstep when Amazon gets blamed for mass unemployment? Coupled with the fact that he's the richest man on earth, it's very apparent he will have a target on his back if he doesn't already.

Maybe his motives don't matter. Maybe we just need to focus on getting basic income as jobs are wiped away by Big N.

<comment><USER7> What is big N?

<comment><USER8> Big 4, Big 5, or however many big tech co's you want to include. Google/Amazon/Facebook/Apple/Microsoft

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Bill Gates was last person to attain 12-figure fortune in 1999

$100B nearly 20 years ago, just before the federal antitrust case decision against Microsoft. Makes me wonder how much concentration of wealth would occur if regulation was not in place.

<comment><USER10> Bill Gates has also given a lot to charity, from the article - 'Gates, 62, who has a net worth of $86.8 billion according to the Bloomberg index, would be worth more than $150 billion if he hadn't given away almost 700 million Microsoft Corp. shares and $2.9 billion of cash and other assets to charity, according to an analysis of his publicly disclosed giving since 1996.'

<comment><USER11> Charity is problematic too, though. It's subject to the whims of the wealthy, and worse it's damaging to the dignity of recipients - it denies them agency in their own well-being. I say this having been the beneficiary of charity myself: needing to be grateful to someone else is a kind of psychological servitude.

We'd be better off with an economic system that values agency and lives worth living a little more than efficiency and profit, that ends up bio-hacking people to buy more food and mind-hacking people to control their attention.

I don't know how to help make that happen, but I'm pretty sure basic income isn't the right answer either.

<comment><USER12> The charities that Gates tends to invest in don't just distribute goods to needy people. His charities try to tackle core societal problems like fighting malaria in Africa:

[https://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global- Health/Mal...](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global- Health/Malaria)

[https://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global- Health/Dis...](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global- Health/Discovery-and-Translational-Sciences)

> Working closely with other global programs at the Bill & Melinda Gates > Foundation, the Discovery & Translational Sciences program aims to create > and improve preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic interventions for > infectious diseases as well as other conditions that affect mothers, > infants, and children. We do this by identifying and filling gaps in > scientific knowledge, creating or implementing new technology platforms that > can accelerate research in support of our goals, and investing in > potentially transformative ideas.

> All of our investments advance the goal of creating solutions that can be > deployed, accepted, and sustained in the developing world. To speed the > translation of scientific discovery into implementable solutions, we seek > better ways to evaluate and refine potential interventions—such as vaccine > candidates—before they enter costly and time-consuming late-stage clinical > trials.

There's nothing about fighting malaria that denies people agency in their well-being as far as I'm concerned.

<comment><USER11> The problems are not just agency, but also whimsy.

Charity is basically a combination of guilt assuaging, ego food and social proofing. I think we'd be better off with democratically controlled funding, or economically allocated funding, from a self-sufficient demos, for things like the battle against malaria.

Charities like Gates's typically turn into long-lived foundations which acquire politics and agency of their own, not entirely benign. They need to be connected to their benefactors by some structure of control, like democracy or economics. A big pile of cash and investments isn't that; it's independence from control.

Yes, democracy also has problems, it would be great to figure out something better. But democracy is still better than oligopoly, even if they're benign today.

<comment><USER13> I think you're wrong. Democracy is also subject to whims, but with the government, you basically have one player. With charity, at least you have "competition".

E.g. look at groups helping promote minority rights (civil rights movement, LGBTQ movement, etc). These were political no-goes, but small groups cared a _lot_ about these issues, so they helped push them through, via charity and other means. If you were _only_ OK with charity being done democratically, i.e. via majority rule, then these movements couldn't exist.

<comment><USER11> The government is the people. It's a particular disease of the American public to believe otherwise.

Yes, bureaucracy isn't efficient. But ultimately its decisions reflects the demos. If the people don't believe in positive government, it will be poor, like the US. But it isn't always that way (but it is usually still inefficient).

Lobby groups for minority interests are orthogonal to charity, or should be, otherwise money will buy more political influence than the demos warrants. That is, minority influence should be proportional to people involved, not money spent.

<comment><USER13> "The government is the people. It's a particular disease of the American public to believe otherwise."

1\. I'm not sure it's a great move to decide that people who disagree with you are wrong, or "diseased". (Obviously you're using the word disease metaphorically. Still, I think it's a bad attitude).

2\. I'm not American.

As for the rest of your comment, I didn't say anything about the efficiency of bureaucracy. I'm not sure anything you said refutes anything I said.

"That is, minority influence should be proportional to people involved, not money spent."

I'm not sure that's a great measure. Minorities are by definition smaller groups of people than the majority. If the minority wants something the majority disagrees with (e.g. civil rights movement), then if we're weighting simply by the size of groups, then the civil rights movement probably wouldn't work. We should be _also_ weighting by how much each group "cares", and money is, to some extent, a measure of that. Not that it's a perfect system, but is there a better one?

Btw, this is why democracy isn't just about majority rule - it's considered fundamental to democracy to also have minority protection and similar. Otherwise minorities would always lose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Who cares? I don't understand why the media wastes their time with stories like this or how much movies earned over the weekend.

<comment><USER15> It has some relevance as to the future. If Bezos was bleeding money, he might change Amazon's direction. If summer blockbusters started tanking, there might be fewer in the future. It's feedback, it's not necessarily the most useful information but it's not useless.

Now, endless discussion on a topic when there's hardly any new information (as 24h news stations do), _that 's_ useless...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So his net worth is now more than the GDP of my country. Scary.

<comment><USER17> GDP is a flow, net worth is a stock. Not sure how this became a standard comparison.

<comment><USER18> Because there are very few things to reference, that most people have even a modest comprehension of, that have the scale of $100 or more billion.

Despite the comically predictable replies such posts (GDP vs wealth) always get in threads like this, it's a perfectly valid way to relate size.

The parent didn't say they were the same (in my observation in seeing this same line play out dozens of times over the years, the parent comment almost never says they're the same). The replies are jumping to that assumption as a very low bar way to make themselves look smart.

It's no different than articles that routinely point out the size of a plane's wingspan or the height of a rocket, compared to a building or a football field. The point is to provide the reader with something to stand it next to mentally.

<comment><USER19> No, it's not a valid way to relate size, because we're talking about different units (dollars vs. dollars per year).

That's like saying it would make sense to compare a plane's wingspan to the speed of a bullet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not spending nearly enough on rockets.

<comment><USER21> I too am disappointed about this. Elon Musk is a scrappy bootstrapper by comparison. Blue Origin could be reaching so much further than they currently are...

<comment><USER8> Just because Musk can run both Tesla and SpaceX doesn't mean Bezos can run Blue Origin and frickin Amazon at the same time. That's overseeing 500k employees. I think that it's a safe bet we'll see a lot more from Blue Origin when Bezos steps down from Amazon.

<comment><USER21> Probably. I'm more complaining about ambition though. Blue Origin isn't trying to change the game fundamentally in he way SpaceX is. Regardless o whether they are hitting deliverables, the deliverables aren't interesting.

<comment><USER22> Blue Origin has just as ambitious goals as SpaceX. Millions working in space, industrialization of space to the extent that it actually starts reducing industrialization of Earth, etc. They even have a rocket on the drawing board somewhere, New Armstrong, that will likely be a 1-for-1 competitor with BFR, if not larger, and with full reuse (like BFR).

But as far as actual execution, yeah. SpaceX is way ahead and Blue Origin has been incredibly slow. Um, I mean "gradatim."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting talk from Bernie Sanders about wealth inequality and the state of the economy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao7iC9b5Mk0&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao7iC9b5Mk0&feature=youtu.be)

I know it's "political" but so is an individual having a net worth of $100 billion. It is well worth the watch unless, of course, you're a billionaire snowflake and don't like the reality that there are 500,000 homeless people and 45 million people living under the poverty line in America.

<comment><USER24> Jeff Bezos having $100bn is no more political than me having $20. Where you draw the line is completely arbitrary. Bezos didn't acquire his fortune by stealing from people. He made it by providing goods at a lower cost than his competitors. Which means everyone that helped make Bezos wealthy are wealthier as a result of that interaction.

<comment><USER23> I do not know how reliable this is but it looks legit. If it is true, Amazon spending almost $10 million on lobbying and is the 15th highest spender when it comes to spending. Top issue? Taxes. How is Bezos so f'ing rich? Amazon doesn't pay any real taxes, prob less than 1%.

I'm sorry but your $20 is not the same as his $100 billion

[http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000023883](http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000023883)

<comment><USER13> While you may be completely right about Amazon and tax lobbying, this is only a _part_ of the story of how he's so rich. Parent comment was right in the way that matters, IMO: Jeff Bezos being rich is _mostly_ not at the expense of anyone else, quite the opposite - it's as a result of the value he's created. Even if he's paid less in taxes than he "should have", those taxes would've been 0 if he hadn't created the value and therefore wealth that he's created.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> That man has done so much for humanity, I believe he really deserves that $100B.

<comment><USER26> if you're being sarcastic, I am sure he doesn't care. "Humanity" is complicated...maybe he'll make up for all with one invention on his space venture.

He did save people a lot of money, but then he did also cause many stores to go kaput. So, how do you judge?

<comment><USER25> The sarcasm was not directed at him, but at us, and our lack of ability to come up with an economic system that can properly evaluate what somebody is worth.

E.g. We have a legal system that decides when somebody is right or wrong, and it mostly matches with what people feel is right or wrong. Why can't we have a similar system that decides what somebody is worth?

<comment><USER4> Isn't that what a free market system does? Bezos' net worth is decided by what people freely decide his stock is worth.

<comment><USER25> No, because it doesn't align with what people feel is right.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure you're right. Clearly _you_ don't feel it's right, but it doesn't seem like you're necessarily in the majority here, at least not in a way that is actionable. People may complain, but it doesn't seem most people are actually doing something about this. (Or at least, looking e.g. at the last elections in the US, there isn't necessarily a majority that agrees with you.)

BTW, as to the broader point, I mostly disagree - I think our current systems is pretty good at figuring out how much value each person has created, and letting them capture a portion of it. (That's what the system does, not "decide how much someone is worth")

<comment><USER25> > I think our current systems is pretty good at figuring out how much value > each person has created, and letting them capture a portion of it.

You are basically saying that Jeff Bezos has created more than 100x the value of, say, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Guido van Rossum, and Donald Knuth combined?

I think you forget how achieving near monopoly status is like gambling, and how much it depends on being first to market, and about convincing investors (for years Amazon has run on a loss, not sure how they do now).

<comment><USER13> "You are basically saying that Jeff Bezos has created more than 100x the value of, say, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Guido van Rossum, and Donald Knuth combined?"

An interesting point. I think most of the above people have created a lot of value as well. It's hard to quantify, so I think it's _possible_ that Amazon has created more value.

However, I think it's far more likely that, while they created lots of value, they haven't captured most of it back. Arguably, that's because they didn't try to, which is a totally reasonable decision for them to have made.

<comment><USER25> > However, I think it's far more likely that, while they created lots of > value, they haven't captured most of it back. Arguably, that's because they > didn't try to, which is a totally reasonable decision for them to have made.

Yes, because going for money takes effort. This means that people who have hoarded a lot of money and wealth have spent time on capturing money and less time on producing value. Now we can ask, do we want to reward that kind of behavior by giving these people money and thus power, and wouldn't we get (i.e., select) better leaders if we assigned rewards based on true value?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just think: Someone with 1M bitcoin (which is conceivable if they got in early enough, hello Satoshi!) could overtake Bezos with just one more of those 20x increase in the price of bitcoin.</comment>


Are McMansions Making People Any Happier? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/06/big-houses-american-happy/591433/ <comment><USER2> Many people don't want to maintain a big house, clean it, take care of the yard, etc...

On the other hand, in many areas that is all they build so that is the price of moving in.</comment>


Flutter Studio Web App v2 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@pmutisya/flutter-studio-version-2-41cce10fcf3d <comment><AUTHOR> Pretty neat consequence of Flutter using Dart is that one can write an App studio and use it in the browser!</comment>


The universe is a quantum computer?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/03/the-universe-is-a-quantum-computer.php

<comment><USER2> I'd like to know how this book ties into this:

>>>There is a growing sense that the properties of the universe are best described not by the laws that govern matter but by the laws that govern information.

<http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24759/>

Which also makes me wonder how Shannon's Information Theories tie into all of it.</comment>


An Introduction to Nitra - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2013/11/12/an-introduction-to-nitra/

<comment><USER2> This gets us ever closer to the goals of the elusive (and presumably abandoned?) Grok project [1].

I'd love to see syntax highlighters (like Pygments), editors and IDEs, autocompletion providers, debuggers, and all other language-related tooling consume a standardized canonical "language description format". Making a new language? Bam! It's automatically supported by Visual Studio, Eclipse, Emacs, vim, Sublime Text, gdb, Pygments, the list goes on.

The extension capabilities are also awesome. Let's say I have a huge project and, at a certain level of abstraction, users aren't allowed to use fprintf(stderr, ...), they need to use LOG(...). It would be great to have a file in your project that can tell your environment to give you the "red squigglies" and autofix information for such situations.

[http://bsumm.net/2012/08/11/steve-yegge-and- grok.html](http://bsumm.net/2012/08/11/steve-yegge-and-grok.html)

<comment><USER3> Steve spoke about Grok earlier this year: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRO3dNJx5Dw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRO3dNJx5Dw) (sadly the video is only worth listening to), and at the end of the talk guesses there would be more public information 1.5 years from then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks very similar to OMeta ([http://tinlizzie.org/ometa/](http://tinlizzie.org/ometa/))

<comment><USER5> Does OMeta allow extending existing languages or provide tooling around it such as analysis, refactoring, navigation?

<comment><USER4> It's object-oriented and especially designed to be extensible. The slides on the pages contain many examples. It's fairly stand-alone and isn't integrated into an IDE. However, it's small, which allows for easy implementation (see original OMeta in Smalltalk, Ometa/JS, Ometa#, etc.) and could be used as a base for implementing these IDE features.

I'd love to see a cleanup of OMeta/JS and combining it with CodeMirror.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope some of the work they've done filters back into Nemerle. A lot of people were very excited when JetBrains picked up the Nemerle team but it's not clear that they have any intention of supporting the project - they just wanted the team...

<comment><USER5> The Nemerle team is still active and the project is very much alive. In addition, Nitra uses Nemerle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been waiting for this for a year; the idea of having a language-within-a- language is extremely powerful.

Take our product: we have javascript, typescript, XML and SQL stored in strings in our C# codebase. As you can expect, these are really hard to maintain, and just has hard to move to separate templates.

Oh, did I mention that we also have our own templates, our own DSL, handlbar templates, jQuery templates and templates used in various libraries.

Nitra can support that all in one tool.

</comment><comment><USER8> Am I being too simplistic when I think the following holds?

Easier to make a DSL => Wider adoption of new languages => Better grounds for experimentations => Much more creative stuff => More accessible technology

<comment><USER5> Don't see why not...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is so awesome! I hope the resulting assemblies will be PCL though.</comment>


Hacker News Compose – Starter HN Client Written in Jetpack Compose - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/robotsquidward/hn-compose <comment><AUTHOR> Used as a code-along repo to introduce the topics of Jetpack Compose, Hacker News Compose is a simple Hacker News client that demonstrates the basic concepts of Jetpack Compose while also making real calls to the Hacker News API to display Top Stories.</comment>


Ask HN: Feeling stuck and insecure. How do I grow as a software engineer? - <AUTHOR> I'm a 32 year old software engineer. Been coding/hacking since I was about 14 and I still love doing it. Been mostly working on web-related projects/jobs. Worked in the industry for ~7 years now. No CS degree.
My current job is a web-based SaaS tool, mildly successful. Been with the company for ~4 years, an early employee.
With the success of the company, we have grown, and the pace has become much faster and I feel I am not keeping up.
My day to day is very hectic, before I can blink the day is over without much work done. Part of my responsibilities (except my core of coding) are interviewing candidates, being a go-to guy in the team and code reviews.
Lately (~4-5 months) I've started feeling very incapable. I've had several tasks and small-medium projects that I keep getting "stuck" at, and they drag on and on. I also feel that as a senior developer, others look at me as an example and I feel like I'm setting a very bad one.
I've noticed that I feel more and more insecure, a fear that I won't be able to deliver on my projects, that I always require another team member's assistance to complete my work. Everything has become difficult, and I mainly feel that I have no "quiet" space (mentally) to be able to think and break down my tasks, and even when I try I hit a mental wall and more feelings of inability to handle the tasks.
Also, I feel my mental capacity has shrunk. I can hardly handle more than one thing in parallel, and even just one thing, as I said, has become hard.
I feel that I haven't grown as a developer as my peers have, some of which are newer and less experienced.
The challenges are interesting and hard, and I feel I need some guidance on steps I can actively take to improve myself and get out of this long rut. <comment><USER2> It may be you simply don't have time to do all your work. If you're continuously interrupted for code reviews and interviews and so on, you won't get uninterrupted time for coding.

So you can choose to say "I don't have time for coding, _this_ is more important", or whatever method of prioritization you can come up. And/or get your company to hire someone to take some of the load off of you.

Or: you need a (very long) vacation.</comment>