Raspberry Pi GPU Driver Turns Out To Be a Shim - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIxNDk

<comment><USER2> Wanted a flying pony. Got a pony.

An open userspace means that I will be able to use the GPU as far into the future as I like. It means that if anything is screwed up on my ARM processor I can see it and fix it (or thank the person that beat me to it.) That's a good thing.

The code blob that is not open is what runs on the GPU. I'd love to have that too so that the OpenGL could possibly be extended beyond what the vendor chooses or it could be ditched as a GPU entirely and used as a big parallel DSP. BroadCom didn't give us that.

Some reasons I can think of:

• GPU litigation – If you don't have a pre-emptive patent arsenal, open sourcing your GPU code and design is like inviting your competitors' lawyers over for tea and depositions.

• Unbuildable – The toolchain to build the GPU code is likely a cobbled together mess of tools, many built to minimally functional in house standards.

• Undocumented – They probably have not spent the hundreds of thousands of dollars to properly document how the GPU works. What documentation exists is possibly not in English.

• Unsafe – It is possible that the GPU has HCF[1] opcodes or sequences, or at the very least hasn't been lightly proven not to. In particular, there could be thermal issues depending how you drive it.

• IP Ownership – Portions of their implementation could be licensed under terms that do not permit release.

EOM

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire>

<comment><USER3> A more apt analogy would be "Was old I was getting a pony but got a small plastic model of a mule".

Pi made a huge song and dance about this yesterday, nobody can fault their media savvy, but in the end they didn't really release much.

<comment><USER2> I'm still happy. It wanders a bit from topic, but I eventually gave away stacks of Broadcom based WRTSL54GS wifi routers because their closed source driver was stuck at linux 2.4 and I needed 2.6 for some attached hardware. That went on for years. Having everything that runs on the host CPU open means things like this can't happen. Much better than a plastic mule.

Even further afield… When my first daughter was 3 or 4 we got her a magic wand for her birthday. A plastic star on the end of a plastic stick. She was thrilled, pointed it at her grandmother and said "I turn you into a bug!". She was crushed when it didn't work. Rather spoiled the whole day for her. She assures us she was going to turn her back.

<comment><USER4> The bit about your daughter keeps cracking me up. That that would be the first thing she would try... Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Describing the driver as crap seems a bit harsh when the problem appears to be that the driver doesn't open-up as much gpu functionality as the author hoped. Perhaps a better title for the article would be "Raspberry Pi GPU Driver Not As Open As I Would Like".

<comment><USER6> It seems that Phoronix is going to new depths here in sensationalizing titles.

They don't mention any reason why it would be crap as a driver. Reasons it'd be 'crap' is if it is much slower than the binary one, or buggy, or lacks features. But that's not the case is it?

Even if it is not as open as people would like, I suppose it does give some information (like the entry points) that can be useful in "full" reverse engineering...

<comment><USER7> I thought the article was pretty clear about this. The open source driver is just pipelining commands and data from the OS to the firmware blob. The open source driver isn't doing any work, it's just proxying to the firmware which is doing all the work. The situation is isomorphic to a closed source driver.

<comment><USER8> Note that the "binary blob" is not executing within the linux kernel or the arm core at all, it's running on the videocore, a mostly undocumented piece of a black box.

At some level this is the case for all hardware. Take a ordinary ethernet nic. Back in the days it was a piece of silicon on a PCB and some glue to get the data onto the CPU and main memory. Such a chip is treated as just hardware, a black box in which we can poke at some registers, get some interrupts a shuffle data back & forth.

Now, inside that black box of a NIC is a whole world in itself. The act of framing and deframing ethernet with all the details around it is actually quite complicated, the spec. even for 100mbit ethernet is orders of magnitude bigger than e.g. the spec of TCP/IP. There's a lot of stuff happening inside that NIC - and there's parts that break. (e.g. as shown in some parts of this rather hilarius piece: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q8EFwKVKdA>).

Now - as NICs got even more complicated, and supported even more stuff, checksum offloading, more buffering, SSL offloading and many other things, parts of many NICs today have a lot of the functionality implemented in FPGAs. Which we some times doen't see, and in other cases have to upload a binary blob to before it can be activated.

The difference is now that the pre-made chip on our NICs can change, with software, after it's been shipped from the factory. This is increasingly common for many types of hardware, in this case for an OpenGL core, though perhaps even a level up from FPGAs. But we can still treat it as a black box, through which we just send commands, poke at registers and so on.

Now - I'm not saying such stuff shouldn't be open source - it would be awesome if it were, it'd allow us to fix and extend them. I'm just saying that what's done with the "shim" for the videocore on the raspberry is a common approach to interfacing with peripherals - the main difference is the black box have to be programmed after it has left the factory.

<comment><USER7> I think it stretches the imagination to argue that OpenGL itself is implemented in FPGAs on the chip. Not that it's impossible, but is it likely, and on a $25 device?

No, the outrage here is not because of this practice, it's because this is being claimed as a victory. The distasteful PR move. Few are surprised or particularly offended by what Broadcom did here.

<comment><USER8> Well, I didn't claim that the videocore was a fpga, it's likely some form of gpu/cpu - It's not implemented on anything running in the kernel or on the arm core though. fpga or something else, the concepts are rather the same seen from the main CPU running an operating system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find this conversation, and the previous one, instructive.

The discussion illustrates the challenge that Linux has accommodating third parties. Two entire classes of software are categorically unable to embrace the 'rules' of open software, the graphics folks and the wireless folks (and to some extent the Printer folks). This has meant that these areas generally had a much poorer to non-existent user experience for Linux users than users of systems with support for IP protection built into them.

I think the 'shim' model is certainly one way to compromise here. I think the Raspberry Pi folks have done a great service to developers by helping this get done.

</comment><comment><USER10> Every time I read an article like this it seems that the implied consensus is that companies with millions of dollars in yearly revenue are unable to hire good talent when it comes to hardware programming and all the "good" ones are open-source people who may or may not have worked for one of these companies in the past.

With all these "this thing is bad" articles it just seems like no hardware company has ever been able to write good drivers and are completely unable to hire the right people to do the job. This is implied in all of the history of electronics.

But they also almost always come across as more opinions than facts. Does the Pi GPU driver suck? I don't know because this article says so but doesn't explain why exactly. As someone else pointed out, this article is pointing out that the company simply did not create certain things the way the community wanted.

I'm not a hardware programmer so I don't much about such things, but what do these people actually expect out of a piece of hardware that costs around $25-50 US? What exactly are the goals these people want that require the type of access they are asking for? What goals are they failing to achieve that makes them decide the hardware and/or drivers suck? That's all I ask when one of these "this thing is bad" type of article.

<comment><USER11> >I don't know because this article says so but doesn't explain why exactly.

I think it's pretty clear. What broadcom released was a binary file and and code to interface with it. It's not that the driver functionality is any different than what's already available it's that all the important functionality is in the binary file that was provided without any source code.

They made a big deal about the first open source ARM gpu driver but, for the most part, it's still a black box and it's not really useful to developers looking to change/improve the gpu performance.

<comment><USER10> I get what you're saying, but that doesn't really say the hardware or its drivers suck. It just tells me that the community doesn't have the access they would like.

Complaining that the GPU isn't open is one thing and I totally understand that, saying it sucks is completely different to me. Saying it sucks implies that there is something wrong with the hardware and/or its drivers. It would be similar to claiming that a Macbook Pro sucks because you can't swap the battery yourself.

Now, if someone can show where the binary file has a flaw in it so that it could be said to be defective in some way, then sure, let the accusations of suckage begin. Especially if the flaw prevents usage of the device as described and it remains closed so the community cannot fix it. But then if they don't fix it themselves nor allow the community access to fix it then the platform will die anyway.

So, back to my comment, I don't understand the point of the article and others like it.

<comment><USER12> If the Macbook Pro was advertised as a laptop you can customise and play with and then you find out you can't swap the battery yourself, then it would not be surprising if some people who bought it for that reason would say it "sucks".

Similarly, the Raspberry Pi was advertised as a computer you can customise and play with. It was built for educational use, and yet part of it is hidden away from study. This is annoying some people who expected more than they reasonably should have.

<comment><USER10> Again, I get that, but the target of the accusation is wrong to me. You can say the people suck at keeping their promises, or the company sucks at marketing things that are not true. But those things have little or nothing to do with the hardware that customers have in hand right now. What I read in that article is that the underlying hardware, to some even the whole concept, sucks because its graphics driver model is not as open as some would like.

There's been no indication that the hardware itself, the chips on the board, nor the driver do not PERFORM as expected.

If the Macbook Pro was advertised in such a way that was not true in the end, yes indeed that "situation" would suck, but the computer itself would still be a good computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's cool that phoronix linked and quoted Dave Airlie. It's too bad they didn't quote or respond to the last line of his blog post: "(and really phoronix, you suck even more than usual at journalism)"

<comment><USER14> For me, the not-one-but-two "tip for a tiny belly" ads gave it away before I even got to Airlie's post. Right or wrong, those types of ads prejudice me against a site before I even get to the content. In this case the content did little to change my judgement.

<comment><USER15> As far as the linux graphics stack goes, its hard to find someone with more experience than arlied. I think you may have misjudged the author.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The nut graph from arlied's post[1] (linked to in phoronix article):

"So really Rasberry Pi and Broadcom - get a big FAIL for even bothering to make a press release for this, if they'd just stuck the code out there and gone on with things it would have been fine, nobody would have been any happier, but some idiot thought this crappy shim layer deserved a press release, pointless. _(and really phoronix, you suck even more than usual at journalism)_."

Emphasis mine.

[1] <http://airlied.livejournal.com/76383.html></comment>


Show HN: Oh, hi Mark – Chrome extension aiming to end the bookmark nightmare - <AUTHOR> http://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oh-hi-mark/fcmdkgabkdkmdnbppfliniacpgadhcpo <comment><USER2> Does this supports my existing bookmarks?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, I choose not to prioritise it. It could be the next feature if that's something people want though. I can propose you to create a topic and vote for it on [https://productpains.com/product/oh-hi- mark](https://productpains.com/product/oh-hi-mark). This is where I keep track of the next features.</comment></comment>


Argon2 for node - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ranisalt/node-argon2 <comment><USER2> I love how the author exposed every 'hash' function as 'encrypt'. Clueless

<comment><USER3> Author here. I based on a lib that used the word "encrypt" at C++ level mistakenly, but I should have fixed it. I do know the meanings but I needed to implement it fast to use on a personal project.

I'd appreciate if you opened an issue instead of commenting like that, but I did the fix anwyay: [https://git.io/vznTU](https://git.io/vznTU)

Thanks! You can use the new API in v0.5.0 if you want.

<comment><USER2> Sorry about my kinda harsh comment, good to see you fixed it!</comment></comment></comment>


Carrot and Stick: that doesn't work on Programmers - <AUTHOR> https://myprogrammingexperiments.wordpress.com/2017/01/07/carrot-stick-that-doesnt-work-on-programmers/ <comment><USER2> I manage a team of Data Scientists, and I've come to think of motivation more in terms of avoiding mistakes than doing things well. A lot of people are naturally motivated, but conditions at work can drain that interest. Some examples:

–Feeling like no one is scrutinizing your work to notice whether you're doing a good job or not

–Feeling like even if you do a good job, you won't be rewarded

–Having to spend a lot of time on uninteresting bureaucracy rather than the work you enjoy

–Being told what to do in extreme detail, without opportunities to think much for yourself

–The opposite problem of having too little detail, so you don't really know what problem you're trying to solve

–The office being too cold, noisy, etc.

–Constantly working by yourself, when you want to work w/others more

–Constantly working with others, when you want to work by yourself more

And so on. IMO the most important thing a manager can do in terms of motivating employees is just to listen to what they want, find the things that are blocking them, and solve them one at a time.

<comment><USER3> I think the biggest challenge to your statement is "listen to what they want." Much of our modern psychology suggests people don't always know what they want, or don't want what they think they want. This is not meant as an insult, as it applies to all humans, whether they're a developer or not.

That means that listening is a huge part, but it's not enough to simply implement exactly what you hear they want.

All that said, I still totally agree with your examples.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, you're totally right. Just literally listening is not enough–you have to ask questions, trace symptoms down to a root cause, and then come up with a good solution for that problem.

For example, one person requested that we make standups earlier, because they wanted to get them out of the way before getting into the zone. Another suggested making standups later, because they preferred to start work later in the day. Obviously these solutions as suggested were incompatible. So I tried to figure out what value we were getting from standups, and figured that it was worth experimenting with making them asynchronous using Slack. That worked really well, and is what we do now most of the time. (Occasionally, the team likes having in-person standups when in the middle of a tough series of bugfixes.)

<comment><USER4> > So I tried to figure out what value we were getting from standups, and > figured that it was worth experimenting with making them asynchronous using > Slack.

Could you please elaborate on what you are doing? We are facing similar problems so I would love to know more...

<comment><USER2> I found that I was getting two things from standups: knowing what people were working on, and having a natural time to ask for/offer help. So (for now) we use Geekbot, and configured it to ask everyone on the team four questions each day:

–What did you accomplish yesterday?

–What is your top priority today?

–Where can you use help/what's blocking you?

–Which of these best describes your current level of challenge: bored, relaxed, excited, frustrated?

Everyone on the team is expected to read each other's standup reports (we have 7 people.)

<comment><USER5> Isn't it too much to have this every day?

I've found that asking people every day incentivized them to write about anything and invent stuff just to fill up the question.

<comment><USER2> All the questions are optional. It's a little more than my team would like, and a little less than I would like to ask each day, so I think it's a fair compromise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Good programmers just don't work for money

I disagree with this view.

I'd probably reword it as "Programmers as a group are generally not as motivated by money as other employees may be".

Saying they dont work for the money is misleading I think, and runs the risk of bosses thinking they can cut programmers' salaray because, hey, programmers dont work for money and don't care about paying bills or feeding & clothing their family or anything.

I think the underlying truth here might be that programmers who are enjoying their work are probably also good at their work and are well paid for it. In which case, it may be that many are not motivated by more money because they have enough already that it stops becoming a priority or an every-day thought/concern. This thought is echoed by the StackOverflow survey linked in the article - there is a strong correlation between high salary and high job satisfaction: [http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer- survey-2016#mone...](http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer- survey-2016#money-buys-happiness)

<comment><USER7> I don't need money to motivate me to write code, I need money to motivate me to write code _for you_.

<comment><USER8> I didn't see your message until after I finished posting mine but I was trying to get at the same point. Money may not motivate me to code but that doesn't mean it's not a motivation to get me to code what the company wants me to. I can choose what projects I want to work on. There are no shortages of team that will take good software engineers.

<comment><USER7> That's exactly it. If my own projects were paying the bills I'd be working on them full time. As they don't (yet!) I'll trade a bunch of my time for some guaranteed income working on something not as interesting.

That's not to say I'm _only_ there for the cash - I legitimately do like my job - but the salary offered is the sole reason I started working there over anywhere else. Raises and bonuses are what'll keep my eyes from wandering over other job ads in the long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I _want_ to like this article, but it just doesn't make much sense.

You can't solve problems 9-5? Why not?

 _This approach never fits inside their brains, because they carry a brain that has far more weight than that little shiny paycheck._

What??

I think a good article on this theme could be written, but it isn't this one.

</comment><comment><USER10> Carrot and stick does work. Dan's talk has more to do with extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation, but you can quite easily create a carrot and stick motivation by creating circumstances that allow someone to accomplish or chase after goals they're intrinsically motivated by.

If you're working at a company where the incentives are just cash bonuses based on awful metrics, then yeah that's an anti-pattern. But the basics of human instinct are the same across the broader set. Suggesting developers are unicorns is a little off-base.

<comment><USER11> Yeah. 100%. I love programming, but carrot and stick works big time on me. I'm staying at my current company despite being underpaid because:

\- I work remotely \- I get 1 workday per week to work on my hobby projects \- I get 8 weeks paternity \- I get 5 weeks paid vacation \- I have great insurance through them \- I have amazing coworkers, including every owner/boss/manager \- It's a lifestyle company from top to bottom

I have friends making 1.5x my current salary, but I'm not switching to work for their companies because the carrots at my current gig outweigh a hefty outlay of $$$.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Good programmers are probably less likely to be randomly looking for work. > They analyze company culture and career opportunities first before joining > any organization.

Depends. Not all good programmers know how important this is, so you can find pearls hidden deep in the mud. For some time at least.

<comment><USER12> >you can find pearls hidden deep in the mud. For some time at least.

They won't necessarily stay for long though.

<comment><USER4> True. But I know of couple of examples where they found enough incentive to stay for years - be it good pay (even programmers are humans), pet projects, sense of loyalty, fear of change or any combination of those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The age ol' "How Software Companies Die"[1] has much on this point.

 _The environment that nurtures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa...._

[1] [http://www.call-with-current-continuation.org/rants/how- comp...](http://www.call-with-current-continuation.org/rants/how-companies- die.txt)

<comment><USER14> Great post but still nurtures the idea that programmers are somehow a special form of human. That idea is part of the problem.

<comment><USER15> Programmer type personalities are in every industry (animators/graphic designers/techs..) in general the suits don't care about these people.

It's just there are so many suits trying to extract money using programmers that causes all these discussions, and there are to few good programmers. I don't know if there was any other time in human history that there was a skill so in demand and with such a limited talent pool.

<comment><USER13> I think it is about creative and production modes, they are different to any human in those states.

Being rushed or designate time to be creative is hard, there has to be a balance of on/off to allow creativity to happen from anyone.

John Cleese probably put this most eloquently with "closed" and "open" states to allow creativity to happen in the human mind in this talk on how to be Creative [1][2]

 _Now here 's the negative thing: Creativity is not a talent. It is not a talent, it is a way of operating._

 _MacKinnon showed that the most creative had simply acquired a facility for getting themselves into a particular mood -- "a way of operating" \-- which allowed their natural creativity to function.

In fact, MacKinnon described this particular facility as an ability to play._[2]

Entertainment companies like Pixar, Valve, HBO, Netflix, independent standouts, etc, know how to create systems that help people get into the "open" state to create. Good software companies/game companies do as well from design to development and onward.

[1] [https://vimeo.com/89936101](https://vimeo.com/89936101) or [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EMj_CFPHYc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EMj_CFPHYc)

[2] genius: [http://genius.com/John-cleese-lecture-on-creativity- annotate...](http://genius.com/John-cleese-lecture-on-creativity-annotated)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You're making the mistake of thinking that all programmers respond to the same forms of leadership.

You're also making the mistake of assuming that programmers are inherently different to other humans.

<comment><USER14> To summarize: the point is not that carrot and stick doesn't work for programmers.

The point is that no single approach can work for all people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some weird sentence structure in this article

" Whatever the StackOverflow developer survey tells us, when I say 'Good' programmers, they are just 20% of all and those don't work for the only salary."

eh?

Also I reckon this idea can apply to any field of endeavour. Just programmers right now have a premium on basic human dignity as we are in such high demand.

</comment><comment><USER17> Because we are not donkeys?

Let's hire some smart people, but then we'll trick them into a,b and c. They'll never suspect it.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Good programmers just don't work for money

This is incorrect.

Correction: Good programmers don't work _only_ for the money.

> It's hard to find good programmers

Define good?

I've been at startup hiring 1 new decent programmer every week. Stopped calling that hard since.

> Programming is not a 9-5 'duty'

Programming as a 9 to 5 job is fine and recommended.

Web startups may overwork and exploit naive young programmers into working more, doesn't mean their job can't be done as 9 to 5.

<comment><USER18> > Define good?

I would say "good" programmers are ones that are motivated to make themselves better. People who take pride in their work, and identify with their skill and abilities. This is true for anything really.

> I've been at startup hiring 1 new decent programmer every week. Stopped > calling that hard since.

People who care about improving themselves will not typically want to work at the IT department at a conservative insurance company. "Good" programmers will be attracted to places that provide upward-moving career opportunities, which startups tend to have more of. Perhaps you work at one of those?

<comment><USER5> I've worked at companies from 30 people to 300 000 people with a brief period at 5 people consulting agencies.

Startups (past 10 people) are good for hungry young programmers. Easy to get into with limited experience. Lots of exposure to lot of stuff. Opportunities to grow experiences quickly and execute at an incredible pace.

Then leave it. It's only leverage to get a better job. One that does provide sane hours, decent pay, healthcare, parental leave, pension...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The carrot is a salary and the stick is getting fired. I'd say it's exactly what works for most programmers.

<comment><USER15> wow, please can I come and work for you

<comment><USER19> I'm not perscribing a way to treat devs just pointing out the obvious situation that most devs accept as a given.

<comment><USER20> Most employees everywhere accept it as a given, as it's the definition of being an employee. You get paid for working for the employer, and that relationship could end arbitrarily. It's not complicated or really subject to debate.

Even when you're your own boss, the same dynamic is there, only the carrot is profit and the stick is failure.

What programmers have if anything, is the luxury of relative indifference to the ending of an employment relationship, since a new one is relatively easy to find. So maybe the "stick" is less potent. (But that doesn't mean the carrot is.)

<comment><USER15> Yes, but most programmers leave money on the table as the negotiators say. Good programmers have a lot of leverage and to be scared of losing your job is unnecessary. Bad managers encourage the programmers to be scared because it works and it makes their life easier and they won't negotiate because it opens up the gates (in their mind) and maybe they don't know how (my experience). Like good programmers, good managers are in short supply, really good any skill is in short supply.

In my experience ultimatums are a sign of a bad negotiator, and work or we'll sack you is an ultimatum, unfortunately it is the status quo. so my recommendation to programmers instead of reading books on frameworks read a few negotiating books and start trying it. It's quite enjoyable once you start, playing poker is a good way to start I found, you learn how to bluff. Of course if you really can't afford to lose your job then probably best to leave things alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The most successful software companies are among the highest paying, but maybe that's not what the author mean by Carrot and Stick. They never give a concrete example, so I find it hard to figure out what point they are making exactly.

</comment><comment><USER22> As a web developer, nothing keeps me more motivated than well-written specifications and user stories from the product team.</comment>


Containership: A simple, distributed container management platform - <AUTHOR> https://containership.io/ <comment><USER2> This webpage has a weird bug where the boxes listing the features are laid out oddly. I'm on firefox 39.0 w/linux.

[https://i.imgur.com/3Jo3E7g.png](https://i.imgur.com/3Jo3E7g.png)

<comment><USER3> Thanks; we will certainly get this fixed up!

<comment><USER4> Your feature images are not consistent aspect ratio (particularly the heights) causing the floats to drop.

Aside: Why are your images 2600 wide anyway? Killing our mobile quotas with your fancy 4k monitors, yo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting business model. It's like Segment.io for containers!

<comment><USER6> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How are you guys different from Mesosphere please?

You have an advantage over them Mesosphere now to as [https://digitalocean.mesosphere.com/](https://digitalocean.mesosphere.com/) has been deprecated. Shame as both companies had partnership & put out lots of press releases about it. Silly as DO just had $83m funding.

<comment><USER3> ContainerShip, the open source software, is different in a few ways.

* Automatic clustering of nodes. Follower nodes should automatically find and cluster with existing nodes.

* Out-of-the-box load balancing via on a port generated when an application is created.

* Built-in service discovery which easily allows you to communicate with other applications running on your cluster.

* Easy extensibility provided through a plugin system. For instance, the open-source web-ui where users can interact with their cluster is simply a plugin on top of the core ContainerShip software.

ContainerShip Cloud offers more compelling differences such as:

* Automatic installation on your favorite cloud provider with a few clicks (constantly adding new providers). As well as the ability to scale your cluster (leader & follower nodes) directly from ContainerShip cloud when additional capacity is needed.

* Point-in-time backups of the entire state of your cluster, including all applications and any persistent data being written to a volume.

* Restoration of backups to the same cluster, or an entirely different ContainerShip cluster you are running on any cloud (or on-prem).

Even more features are currently in the works. I hope this helps.

<comment><USER7> Helpful. Thanks for the feedback :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What do the base hardware requirements look like for this? I ask because we originally were going to use Deis for container deployment automation but then found out that they want a minimum of 8GB of ram just to run it (that's before even running any containers).

<comment><USER6> containership has two modes it can run in: leader & follower

You'll need at least one leader host for the cluster to function, and a minimum of 3 for true high availability.

Follower hosts are where your containers will actually be placed and will run. The specs on these servers should be great enough to fit all of the containers/applications you plan to run.

For a small test deployment with under 10 followers, you can get away with running your leaders on the smallest DigitalOcean droplets without any problems. Once you get up into larger number of follower hosts the hardware requirements of the leaders will change, but not significantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this just another way of lock-in? Now instead of using an open source solution or some some other open source management platform, you are now dependent on this company to manage your docker instances. Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER10> It seems like their technology is open source, or at least some of it: [https://github.com/containership](https://github.com/containership)

<comment><USER11> there's not exactly a lot of code going on in either [http://github.com/containership/containership](http://github.com/containership/containership) or [http://github.com/containership/containership.core](http://github.com/containership/containership.core)

Kinda confusing as to whether or not this exists/works..

<comment><USER6> I can assure you that this actually exists and works! :)

"containership" is made up of a handful of other repos.

More details here: [https://docs.containership.io/docs/architectural- overview](https://docs.containership.io/docs/architectural-overview)

If you're looking for some meat, check out the repos linked from the above docs page, including: [https://github.com/containership/legiond](https://github.com/containership/legiond) [https://github.com/containership/praetor](https://github.com/containership/praetor)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For some reason I thought this would be a shipping container management platform.

Having said that, I like it. I'll take a look and see if this could solve some of our problems.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is interesting. As someone who doesn't have a whole lot of experience with most of these container solutions how similar is this to how kubernetes works?

<comment><USER6> There are core ContainerShip features that function similarly to how Kubernetes does. Both provide a cluster scheduler that places and manages containers across a group of servers. They ensures jobs are restarted if they fail, let you scale the number of containers for an app up or down, and make it so you can stop thinking about individual servers.

That feature set alone is awesome but it won't take you to the finish line, you'll end up needing to tack other projects on to get a fully working system when you use something like Kubernetes (and some other popular choices).

With ContainerShip we wanted to make it easy for people to get up and running without having to learn and glue together many different projects. We are trying to provide everything needed to run and scale your infrastructure anywhere in one package.

ContainerShip Cloud makes it easy to stand clusters up on various providers, backup your data, and easily migrate somewhere else.

<comment><USER13> Thanks! I've been meaning to do some testing with kubernetes so I'll make sure to add this to the list so I can understand it better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Co-Founder present if anyone has questions!

<comment><USER7> Few questions please:

1) What OS is installed on the master/slave hosts? 2) When creating new cluster application, where is the image pulldown powered from? Tried molinto/nginx but could not select in dropdown. 3) How can we selected private docker repositories from DockerHub? 4) I have a 'containership/engine' in the application listings, is this required for things to run?

Thanks

<comment><USER3> When launching a cluster from ContainerShip Cloud, ubuntu is installed. You can install ContainerShip, the open source software by hand on any linux distro; we will be supporting more distros from the Cloud interface in the future.

The pulldown is powered from dockerhub search.

Private docker repositories with authentication are currently in the works.

containership/engine is the default image if one was not provided. It sounds like there may have been a bug when passing "molinto/nginx". Even if it does not autocomplete (it doesn't seem to find it using dockerhub search for me) passing that string in the Create modal should still set it correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it fair to compare this to a self-hosted PAAS (ex. Dokku, Openshift Origin, etc)?

(just asking for my own understanding)

<comment><USER6> Comparing to a self-hosted PaaS is fair for the open source containership project.

It has built in high availability, automatic clustering of nodes, loadbalancing, service discovery, persistent data management, internal DNS, and support for easily extending the core of the system with plugins (plus more).

Of your examples I would say it is most like Openshift Origin. Dokku being mainly aimed at people running a single standalone server.

ContainerShip Cloud ([https://cloud.containership.io](https://cloud.containership.io)) is a hosted service that lets you launch and scale ContainerShip clusters with a click across multiple providers. You can backup clusters, share them, and move them between clouds.

I wrote a getting started post that shows step by step how to use ContainerShip on DigitalOcean that may be of interest: [https://medium.com/containership-articles/getting-started- gu...](https://medium.com/containership-articles/getting-started- guide-b8f1ceb44741)

<comment><USER15> How would you compare to Cloud Foundry? Sounds like a lot of overlap there too.

<comment><USER16> Is anyone even using CF anymore especially in production? The spring/tomcat jee based setup seems a bit antiquated when there are so many lighter weight alternatives available.

<comment><USER15> Cloud Foundry is mostly written in Ruby and Go.

New components are generally written in Go and several Ruby parts are being progressively replaced by Go parts (especially Diego).

Pivotal (my employers) sold $40 million of PCF in the first year of sales. So it's got a bit of traction here and there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That's the first "Pricing" page I've seen that doesn't contain prices.

<comment><USER18> If the menu doesn't have prices, you probably can't afford it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does containership has any difference with last.backend?

<comment><USER6> I haven't checked out last backend in a while. From a quick look at their site I can say the following:

\- ContainerShip is open source / Last Backend is not. The "brains" of the Last Backend system are managed by Last Backend and run on their servers. With ContainerShip all the critical components run on your own servers so if the centralized ContainerShip Cloud management system goes down, your systems keep working.. Not sure the same can be said for LB.

\- ContainerShip already has a fully functional REST API & Command Line Interface for deploying/scaling/managing apps.

\- ContainerShip Cloud allows you to do point in time snapshots of an entire cluster which you can then move between clouds/clone/etc.

There is probably more but I would need to dig further into their documentation.</comment></comment>


The Surprising Truth About Why We Sleep and How Much We Need - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170220-the-surprising-truth-about-why-we-sleep-and-how-much-we-need <comment><USER2> > "increas[ing] the efficiency of behavior by regulating its timing and by > reducing energy use when activity is not beneficial."

I assume this is why animals like cats sleep a lot (if you're in a safe place and don't move around you're likely not to be found and eaten).</comment>


Assange in Court - <AUTHOR> https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/assange-in-court/ <comment><USER2> "Extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense."

If an American journalist in UK is publishing Chinese military secrets, he will not be extradited to China.

If an Australian journalist in UK is publishing American military secrets, will he be extradited to America?

This is the question now...

<comment><USER3> Many would argue that Assange isn't a journalist.

And so that also is a factor.

<comment><USER4> What is he if not a journalist? He is not accused of leaking documents himself, but of facilitating their dissemination. Sounds more or less like the textbook definition of journalism to me.

<comment><USER3> So the issue with Assange was that he never showed any "limitation of harm" when he chose not to redact any of the content. It's a pretty core tenant of journalism ethics.

Those sort of subtleties are important when you're going to be arguing in front of a judge.

<comment><USER5> But the sort of pond scum that work for the British tabloids also never show any restraint, and yet no-one questions that they are journalists.

No, it's the "just a blogger" thing - if you only publish on the internet and not in print then your journalistic credentials will always be slightly suspect.

(source: I ran a newspaper, and while 90% of our readers read our stories on our website or FB page, according to our market research the fact that we printed actual paper gave us way more credibility with our audience than competitors who just published on the internet)

<comment><USER3> Tabloids toe the line more so than other publications.

They would never publish classified material without clearing it first with the UK government. And at minimum carefully redacting information that would put people in harm's way.

<comment><USER6> There seems to be a hypothesis nestled in there that the tabloids are run by responsible, clear thinking individuals who are pretending to be uncivilised boors but will drop the facade when confronted with an important issue.

What odds might be put on them actual being uncivilised boors who'll publish anything that gets eyeballs?

More likely they wouldn't publish raw classified information because it is dry and boring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a double standard. I doubt that the wife of the US diplomat will ever be extradited to the UK after killing a UK citizens. [1]

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-usa-crash- parents...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-usa-crash-parents/do- the-right-thing-family-of-uk-teen-killed-in-crash-tells-u-s-diplomats-wife- idUSKBN1WT26R)

<comment><USER8> Well is not the first time a US citizen kills an european one in an accident and gets away with it. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teo_Peter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teo_Peter)

<comment><USER9> Non-mobile: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teo_Peter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teo_Peter)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The charge against Julian is very specific; conspiring with Chelsea Manning to publish the Iraq War logs, the Afghanistan war logs and the State Department cables. The charges are nothing to do with Sweden, nothing to do with sex, and nothing to do with the 2016 US election"

I'd like to call out the popular and prolific users of hacker news who previously were all about Sweden, sex and election interference and who are very silent now.

<comment><USER11> The Swedish case was a separate issue; he hid in the embassy until the clock ran out on that. It's difficult to say how differently things would have gone if he'd simply gone to Sweden, but I would have expected them to be less likely to re-extradite than the UK.

It's perfectly possible for the US to be overreaching in its "national security" prosecutions _and also_ for Assange to have sexually assaulted someone in Sweden.

<comment><USER12> This is a lie.

"The clock ran out" only on some of the crimes he was accused of. Sweden simply dropped the case (i.e. decided not to proceed with extradition request) after he got out of the embassy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Swedish_sexual_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Swedish_sexual_assault_allegations)

 _> the questioning pertained only to the open investigation of "lesser degree rape", whose statute of limitations is due to expire in 2020_

 _> Following Assange's 2019 arrest, the case was reopened under prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson. In September 2019, she revealed that she had interviewed seven witnesses, two of whom had not been previously heard, but had yet to determine how to proceed in the case._

<comment><USER13> It might be less inflammatory to say "this is incorrect" rather than "this is a lie".

Or do you have reason to think that pjc50 is deliberately lying?

<comment><USER12> So many untruths ("lies") in this thread, I expect it to be full of shills. At some point it gets really hard to attribute to incompetence, not malice...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In 50 years, people will look in disgust and utter disbelief at our treatment of Assange.

Or maybe this is too optimistic. Maybe our grandsons will indeed understand us. They will understand us too well, and be ashamed of us.

<comment><USER15> He will be forgotten in ten years. And for a good reason.

<comment><USER16> He absolutely will not be forgotten. He is a hero. Even now he has a wikipedia article, multiple movies about him, tons of support from the people supporting the freedom of information and those who are sick of the secretive bullshit going on behind the curtains.

<comment><USER15> one man's hero is another man's villain.

<comment><USER14> And in either case, when they are relevant enough, they are not forgotten.

<comment><USER15> But do you honestly believe he will be relevant enough in 10 years? No doubt some will remember him, but I say way more people will know Snowden than Assange in ten years.

<comment><USER14> He was well known 10 years ago and he is well known today. By extrapolation, it is natural to assume that he'll be also in 10 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Funny to read through the comments going back and forth on definitions of journalism and the details of extradition treaties.

Did you not read the article? The convoluted legal language and system are used to explain away the reality that there are no rules really.

If you mess with powerful interests you are in trouble. No legislation or rights or specifics make the slightest difference at all. It's uncomfortable, but that's reality.

<comment><USER18> The difference might be life in prison and being able to see your kids in visits vs being killed on the spot in less civilized countries.

<comment><USER19> Did you not read the article? He is effectively being killed on the spot, just a bit more slowly than less civilized countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >Baraitser then capped it all by saying the February hearing will be held, not at the comparatively open and accessible Westminster Magistrates Court where we were, but at Belmarsh Magistrates Court, the grim high security facility used for preliminary legal processing of terrorists, attached to the maximum security prison where Assange is being held. There are only six seats for the public in even the largest court at Belmarsh, and the object is plainly to evade public scrutiny and make sure that Baraitser is not exposed in pulic again again to a genuine account of her proceedings, like this one you are reading. I will probably be unable to get in to the substantive hearing at Belmarsh.

Its perverse

</comment><comment><USER20> Following the WikiLeaks story from its early days until today leave me incredibly demoralized and to be frank, angry. If I where to list the amount of injustices WikiLeaks and those who have associated with them have suffered, I would sit here all night, and I strongly suspect that is by intelligent design.

This story, if the end of it is as it seems, it will mark a shift in the perceived ideals of the "free world".

<comment><USER21> It further erodes any case 'the West' has to argue against the behaviour of China.

And that is a sad indictment on the path the 'victors' of WWII have followed.

(Edited to add: if the account given in the article is relatively accurate)

<comment><USER22> The US having a corrupt and unaccountable elite class of politicians is not equivalent to China having a single dictator whose whims are law

<comment><USER23> It is not equivalent, it is worse, because in the west people have a false sense of security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If even a quarter of this went down as described in the article this is seriously fucked up beyond measure.

<comment><USER13> I have no information about whether it went down that way or not. All I know is that this article set of my "extremely biased source" warnings quite strongly.

Is there any coverage of this in the mainstream press? Any verification of any of the content of this article? Anything?

Or are we getting all riled up because one person wrote an article with the intent of riling people up?

As I said, I don't know. I would welcome other sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This exposes the sham that is western "democracy". Everything is allowed to persecute those who oppose the status quo. The so called freedom they claim for themselves when they attack Russia, China or Venezuela in the corporate media is a right reserved for those who have money and who submit to the ruling class.

<comment><USER26> > This exposes the sham that is western "democracy".

Comparing western democracy to Venezuela is facetious at best, but I agree it's a sham. Just for entirely different reasons. If people really cared about this issue, then western democracy still has checks and balances for the people to make change.

The problem is Assange has long become a boring item in the news cycle, and we as a people in that democracy just don't care enough anymore.

The narrative of him being a rapist, and letting it simmer for enough years, was very effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> An injustice commited to one is a threat made to all. This is deffinitely a stain and an open bleeding wound on western powers history and supposed values/principles, this wound will only tend to grow. Sadly it's one those events with a dimension so large that it can go unnoticed because of how big it is, it is an Omen. Julian Assange is the first nonviolent, information activist made a political enemy targeted and persecuted in global scale. He's already being imprisioned and tortured for years without a fair trial and with his human rights denied. God bless him!

</comment><comment><USER28> I think it is important to look at this with the lens of objectivity:

Accusations that Assange is actively being not just harassed but outright tortured to the point where he "might not survive the proceedings" in jail...

... to claims that "members of the US Government" were there and "controlling procedures"

and claims that the judge had been instructed what to say:

> possibly she had not properly memorised what Lewis had been instructing her > to agree with

Apropos of anything else:

> Baraitser took her cue from Lewis and stated categorically that the date for > the extradition hearing, 25 February, could not be changed.

> Lewis received his American instructions and agreed that the defence might > have two months to prepare their evidence (they had said they needed an > absolute minimum of three) but the February hearing date may not be moved.

As far as I can tell the hearing date is over four months away.

These are all very large claims and should be considered within the spectrum of someone who is as equally friendly towards Assange as he claims the state is against him.

<comment><USER29> >objectivity

+

>considered within the spectrum

What is your purpose here? To defend the actions of the UK court, which is clearly being corrupted by following direction from US agents?

Or to open the door for the, very definite Assange-haters, to have a way around the argument that Assange is not getting a fair trial, that this case is a _total farce_ , and that anyone who stands up to the military-industrial- pharmaceutical complex is 'an enemy of the West'?

<comment><USER28> One example:

Very article linked in the original post talks about concerns for Assange's health, saying he has been in the medical ward in jail.

Yet apparently it's not at all possible that he is on medications to help with his mental state (which would explain - though in this case note that I would entirely agree that the use of such medication would interfere with his "ability to understand" \- his demeanor as being 'flat' and 'slow' and 'confused'), and instead apparently a foregone conclusion to assume that he is being physically and mentally subjected to "extreme torture".

> anyone who stands up to the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex is > 'an enemy of the West'?

Please. You'd be very much mistaken to think I have -any- sympathy for the "military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex", as even a cursory reading of my comments on issues of health insurance in the US, or military interventions would show.

Believe it or not, it is possible to think that Assange has committed multiple crimes for less than noble reasons in amongst the good he has done, without being an agent for the state, deep or otherwise.

<comment><USER29> Innocent until proven guilty.

But in the meantime: medicated into oblivion so he can't adequately defend himself.

"Concern for his mental health" is just an excuse for "medically lobotomized".

<comment><USER30> > Innocent until proven guilty

And for that to hold, you have to let him be tried. Justice isn't automatic.

But people (maybe not you) seem far too quick to start muddying up the due process. It seems that if he is found guilty, nobody will accept that.

From here, it seems perfectly plausible that he _actively helped_ Manning leak. If the US have evidence to that end, they have a case. Can we just let that case be heard and stop assuming that every actor here is a Bond villain?

<comment><USER6> > It seems that if he is found guilty, nobody will accept that.

It depends what they find him guilty of and what the sentence is. It is unacceptable to have someone on trial for openly telling the truth about what a foreign country is doing.

He went into the Ecuadorian embassy saying that the Swedish case against him was basically trumped up and that he was going to be extradited to the United States. His justification for staying in the embassy on the basis that he would be extradited to the US if he walked out. His excuses were dismissed by critics as unconvincing. He is now out of the embassy and, surprisingly, appears to be going through an extradition process to the US.

The US is reaching out and nabbing him on the flimsiest of pretexts; more a process crime than doing anything material. Australians in Europe cannot be reasonably held subject to US laws related to classified documents. And how materially he helped Manning is a very open question. Maybe the US government is going to have something convincing but the odds are great it is some word game that they are going to try and nail him with.

> Can we just let that case be heard and stop assuming that every actor here > is a Bond villain?

If the US government is going to treat Assange the way they treat other non- US-citizens they don't like then by the time the case is heard it will be too late.

<comment><USER28> > The US is reaching out and nabbing him on the flimsiest of pretexts; more a > process crime than doing anything material.

Allegedly actively assisting a US military member to a) crack other military passwords, and b) work with them on covering said attempts is a mere "flimsy pretext, [not] material"?

<comment><USER6> Maybe you feel that is worth thousands to millions of dollars spent hunting down a man for 10 years. I doubt Assange would have been aware of that sort of technicality and it is highly likely that something else would have been fabricated if they didn't have that as an excuse.

From memory he didn't even succeed on the password front. The 'crime' here is an incidental non-issue compared to why the US has been hounding him.

<comment><USER28> > I doubt Assange would have been aware of that sort of technicality

Wait, elsewhere, and repeatedly, it's been noted just how intelligent Assange is, and (hence) how out of character the disheveled, slow person who appeared in court is. And I have zero doubt - he has repeatedly showed in interviews that for whatever potential personality flaws he may have, or personal opinion of him, he is, indeed, very well educated, intelligent, and smart.

So this? Fails the smell test. Fails the reasonable person test.

Someone as intelligent that - you believe it is "doubt[ful]" that he would be aware that aiding an active US military personnel in cracking passwords for accounts on classified systems, and encouraging them to use/try other credentials for covering tracks on the access of classified documents and their removal from external systems... it's doubtful that he would realize that that was possibly going to be viewed as a serious crime by the US?

I don't buy _that_ for a moment - throughout those chat logs there is multiple references to covering tracks, to covering bases on how to act, react, what to say or do when questioned, etc. - that is not someone who is blissfully unaware of the crime which they are (allegedly) committing, or aiding and abetting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How is it possible there is not yet a huge mob gathering near the court and threatening to burn everything. Because, this is literally revolting. How many people support that? And how many people are disgusted by that? Would nobody regret doing nothing?

<comment><USER32> I doubt most people care.

Outside of a few friends, I doubt most people I know know that this is 1) going on and 2) who Assange even is.

<comment><USER33> It's ten years since he was arrested (just weeks after the Cablegate release - but they'll have you believe that was a complete coincidence).

Kids who were 8 years old at the time can vote now.

It makes you wonder what the world would have looked like, had Wikileaks not been shattered.

It's not just Assange. Arjen Kamphuis disappeared without a trace on a trip in Norway. Ola Bini is jail in Ecuador. Aaron Swartz and James Dolan, who worked on SecureDrop and probably on Wikileaks' own submission system, both committed suicide.

State propaganda ops from all sides rushed in to fill the void after Wikileaks was crippled.

<comment><USER22> Chelsea Manning is in jail yet again because they're forcing her to testify again and she's refusing

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Bear in mind that with Lauri Love, while the case was lost in 2016 and a judge ruled that he could be extradited, it then went to the high court and was overturned two years later.

<comment><USER35> Lauri Love is a British national while Assange is a Australian national. Would the nationality of the defendant have an impact on the Westminster Magistrates' Court's decision?

<comment><USER36> In theory, no. Everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. The nationality of the subject isn't a factor that would have a particular bearing either way. The courts are supposed to look at where it makes sense to try the crime, rather than the nationality of the offender.

In this case, most of the evidence is presumably in the United States so it doesn't make sense for the trial to happen in the United Kingdom, assuming the United Kingdom has the relevant offence too (I haven't looked it up, but I presume it would be breaching the Official Secrets Act or something along those lines).

Obviously, it is more persuasive to have a British national tried at home (especially with comparative legal systems, e.g. the offence exists in both countries) rather than a foreign judicial system. The same cannot be said for a foreign national, especially if the foreign prosecuting authority will have a much stronger case built up than a domestic prosecuting authority could achieve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This doesn't bode well for any inkling Snowden may have of returning to the US in a timeframe that doesn't include some kind of revolutionary change of government.

</comment><comment><USER37> Can someone explain to me why there is apparently no footage of this? Aren't court hearings supposed to be public or was filming simply not allowed?

<comment><USER36> It is illegal to record proceedings in a court within the UK under S41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925 (no photography or drawings) and S9 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 (no sound recordings or public playing of recordings).

Courts may choose to televise their own proceedings (for example, the Supreme Court in the UK televises its hearings) but they are not obliged to. This happens under S32 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013.

The hearing was public (most court hearings are public): you could go and sit in the public gallery if you so wished (space permitting), but you are not allowed to film or record the proceedings without the permission of the court.

<comment> ur-whale Wow. I didn't know that. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

I thought England self-styled itself a "democracy", but it looks like putting together kangaroo courts is ridiculously easy over there.

<comment><USER36> Respectfully, I disagree. This case was heard by a magistrate, the "Tier 1" of the judicial system. There are multiple levels of appeal available after the initial hearing is concluded.

Magistrates in this scenario (dealing with extradition matters) sit alone so yes, it is theoretically possible to have a "kangaroo court" at first instance, however if the judge was unreasonable or erred in law or fact, it would be swiftly corrected by the High Court (Queen's Bench Division - Criminal) or the Supreme Court by way of appeal.

These two courts sit as a panel. The High Court typically has three judges on the bench, while the Supreme Court has 11. It is theoretically easy to influence a single judge; it is much harder to inappropriately influence three or 11 to get a majority verdict in your favour.

There are no suggestions that the judge here was improperly influenced and if they were, they would be subject to disciplinary proceedings by the Office for Judicial Conduct. It goes without saying that the case would also be ruled a mistrial and another judge would handle it all over again.

As a future British lawyer, I don't see what filming the proceedings would bring to the judicial system in terms of legitimacy.

Court transcripts are publicly available, anyone can come to the hearings (unless it's a closed session which is rare) and report on the events. Justice is seen to be done, and filming appears largely inappropriate for the vast majority of cases proceeding through the judicial system in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Empire nailing Assange to the cross. Take your seats, enjoy the show...

</comment><comment><USER39> No good action goes unpunished.

Public reading group of the wikileaks documents, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER40> [deleted]

<comment><USER41> > "When that happens your remand status changes from a serving prisoner to a > person facing extradition.

> "Therefore I have given your lawyer an opportunity to make an application > for bail on your behalf and she has declined to do so. Perhaps not > surprisingly in light of your history of absconding in these proceedings.

Edit: In response to your edit, he is being held for trial, and is a huge flight risk. 𝚈̶𝚘̶𝚞̶ ̶𝚠̶𝚘̶𝚞̶𝚕̶𝚍̶ ̶𝚗̶𝚎̶𝚎̶𝚍̶ ̶𝚝̶𝚘̶ ̶𝚌̶𝚑̶𝚎̶𝚌̶𝚔̶ ̶𝚒̶𝚏̶ ̶𝚝̶𝚑̶𝚎̶𝚛̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚑̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚒̶𝚜̶ ̶𝚌̶𝚘̶𝚟̶𝚎̶𝚛̶𝚎̶𝚍̶ ̶𝚋̶𝚢̶ ̶𝚊̶ ̶𝚋̶𝚊̶𝚒̶𝚕̶ ̶𝚜̶𝚌̶𝚑̶𝚎̶𝚍̶𝚞̶𝚕̶𝚎̶,̶ ̶𝚘̶𝚝̶𝚑̶𝚎̶𝚛̶𝚠̶𝚒̶𝚜̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚝̶𝚑̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚄̶𝚂̶ ̶𝙲̶𝚘̶𝚗̶𝚜̶𝚝̶𝚒̶𝚝̶𝚞̶𝚝̶𝚒̶𝚘̶𝚗̶ ̶𝚜̶𝚊̶𝚢̶𝚜̶ ̶"̶𝙴̶𝚡̶𝚌̶𝚎̶𝚜̶𝚜̶𝚒̶𝚟̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚋̶𝚊̶𝚒̶𝚕̶ ̶𝚜̶𝚑̶𝚊̶𝚕̶𝚕̶ ̶𝚗̶𝚘̶𝚝̶ ̶𝚋̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚛̶𝚎̶𝚚̶𝚞̶𝚒̶𝚛̶𝚎̶𝚍̶"̶.̶

> I would be greatly ashamed if we imprison someone for more than a couple of > days without any sentence/verdict/ruling/etc.

How long do you think trials last?

<comment><USER11> > he is being held for trial, and is a huge flight risk. You would need to > check if there he is covered by a bail schedule, otherwise the US > Constitution says "Excessive bail shall not be required".

Point of information: he is being held in the UK and therefore what the US constitution says is irrelevant. He will be covered by the Bail Act. [https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/63](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/63)

<comment><USER41> Ah of course, I wasn't thinking straight

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I know no one wants to hear this but Assange wouldn't be in the mess if he had conducted his operation more intelligently. Others have done similar actions and faced no repercussion. This is the fault of Assange's hubris and lack of attention. I used to be a huge Assange and Wikileaks supporter but I haven't been for quite some time. He/they made serious but entirely avoidable mistakes.

Edit: Fwiw I support whistleblowers and government transparency and the end to rampant unconstitutional surveillance overreach but I simply couldn't support Assange after finding that he crossed a known ethical line with the inducement and material support. And Chelsea Manning should've never went to jail. Shes the true whistleblower in all of this. And Adrian Lamo and Assange are the ones that made serious yet avoidable mistakes. He simply should've acted as a carrier/news organization but he/they didn't do that. That and the support from Russia and eagerness to influence the election at all costs while maintaining impartiality is laughable. Maybe Assange could've been a force for good if he hadn't taken sides.

</comment><comment><USER31> But is it possible that actually the judge is prepared to deny the extradition, and cannot say anything just yet because of the secret duty? If she thinks all of that is torture for Assange, maybe she is right to want it to end as soon as possible, especially if she already has taken her decision.

<comment><USER43> That isn't the case. This ruling was made by a magistrate, who only deals with lower cases and administration for bigger cases. The actual extradition case will be heard by a different person.

<comment><USER44> Magistrates actually handle all extradition cases at first instance. Because it's such a specialist area of law, they're all handled by a single magistrates court (Westminster) with a set of specially experienced magistrates.

Appeals go to the Administrative Court list of the High Court, though, which is potentially a panel of very senior judges indeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I know of Craig Murray through local politics. He is a conspiracy theorist and a mentalist. Can't believe I'm seeing his blog on HN

</comment><comment><USER29> This is an atrocious, heinous crime being committed in front of all of us, and we _should_ be rioting in the streets. This can happen to _any of us now_ \- nobody is safe from torture by the state.

This is the end of civilized society in the West, people.

Where Julian Assange goes, so go we.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately, life will go on, just like after Epstein "suicided" himself and all the media just silently dropped his case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> It's possible Assange hasn't been sleeping enough for _years_ due to the stress of his situation. The effects of that might resemble those of torture and debilitating drugs.

Just something to consider...

<comment> maze-le Consider this: Sleep deprivation is torture. Anyone being held in a condition like this and not getting serious medical attention -- psychological and physiological -- is also torture. The fact that after several months outside the confines of the embassy-cell, he is still in a condition that resembles torture victims is evidence enough of that. It's also very convenient that it looks like this is self-inflicted and "no one can do anything huh?". Any person other than him would be hospitalized immediately.

<comment><USER46> I'm inclined to agree with you.

But that's not the first thing which came to my mind in reading TFA when the author referenced torture and drugs.

Reading the description of Assange's incoherent ramblings reminded me of a relative who suffered from extreme sleep apnea for over a decade, where he basically would never sleep for more than a few minutes before choking himself awake. He became pretty incoherent and insane, and his machismo pride prevented him from seeking treatment for it.

I don't think I'd be sleeping well in Assange's shoes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Holy crap, HN mods you should edit this title and make it more sensational, like the most posts on HN. I feel this post is not receiving the attention it deserves</comment>


Ask HN: I am trying to map efforts to model Covid-19 spread online. Got tips? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> The repo, where I'm adding them is here:

[https://github.com/vejmelkam/covid19-models](https://github.com/vejmelkam/covid19-models)

I appreciate any additions on top of the (little) that's there. Especially anything not in English, which is harder to find.</comment>


Why My Handwriting Sucks: A Typographical Analysis - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@manibatra23/why-my-handwriting-sucks-a-typographical-analysis-9e0fc4756b71 <comment><USER2> I recently started working on fixing my handwriting, which was often so bad that I couldn't even read my own notes. I found an excellent free resource, Handwriting Repair: The Italic Approach [http://briem.net/8/2/205.html](http://briem.net/8/2/205.html) After going through the beginning worksheets a few times, I've already made a tremendous improvement.

The overwrite with zigzag and trace zigzag approach actually works quite well, even though it seems repetitive at first. But you're learning to change the easy-to-mess-up circular movements that most handwriting uses into oval movements, which can be executed more quickly despite looking more consistently nice.

Something else helpful for me was getting an inexpensive Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen. With this pen I don't need to exert any pressure at all; the use of pressure is something that messes up your handwriting, and of course also leads to hand cramps.

When you first begin to correct your handwriting, you will need to write more slowly. But as your proficiency increases, so will your speed.

<comment><USER3> Instead of imrpoving my existing (sloppy but fast) handwriting I learned a secondary way to write that is much slower but very clear and easy to read. It was fun and I'm glad I did it. I only did about 20 minutes of practice everyday for a week or so.

I chose architect style handwriting and it looks really cool. I only use it for filling out forms or other similar things where other people really need to see every letter.

[https://www.quora.com/Why-do-architects-tend-to-write-in- sim...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-architects-tend-to-write-in-similar- lettering-handwriting-Is-it-a-stylistic-thing-or-is-there-a-practical-reason)

<comment><USER4> At least in Western Europe architects have to follow an industry standard that governs fonts and stroke width (afaik 2 different widths, depending on context). 40 years ago, learning to write in this style was even part of the curriculum in the GDR.

<comment><USER5> Note that handwriting styles are not called _fonts_ , but _hands_. A font is basically a set of prefabricated letters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Weird, random bolding and italicizing? Spaces on both side of every parenthesis? A space before punctuation... sometimes?

This guy's typing sucks too.

<comment><USER7> I was about to write the same comment. Since you beat me to it, I'll just point out that this guy really should put on a proper shirt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _I am sure the last time I wrote I did it as a novelty. I did it because I > was penning down something that held a certain value to me or maybe I just > thought that actually writing it down will make me feel more connected to > it. Even as I type down the word "writing" the first thought that comes to > my mind is actually typing on a keyboard. Whenever I have to write something > down I use a KEYBOARD._

This honestly sounds like a humblebrag to me.

Typing on a keyboard is not a drop-in replacement for the act of writing by hand. It has very different effects on the brain and how it engages with what is being written.

If I'm working out difficult problems, in the early stages I much prefer a combination of doodling and handwriting over typing stuff on the computer. It actively engages the mind in a way the keyboard does not. Typing really only works best when the problem solution is already present semi-finished thoughts in my head and just needs to be fixated in external symbols, with a little bit of restructuring along the way.

Basically: I prefer handwriting for thinking, and typing for transcription.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure why it sounds like a humblebrag to you. I believe _many_ people, especially those of us on our computers all day, go days at a time without writing with a pen once, except maybe to scrawl their names on receipts.

I used to keep a pad next to my desk to work out difficult programming concepts. I probably used it once a month at most.

I write more now because I try to keep handwritten notes of to-dos, but even then I had to force myself to use a pen, and not one of the million digital note-taking apps.

It's not a question of whether one is better than the other, it's just that keyboards and phones are under the fingers of a large segment of the population for the majority of the day, so people don't even think to use pens.

<comment><USER10> Agreed that it isn't a humblebrag. The humblebrag, to me, was that the person's handwriting wasn't that bad. :)

<comment><USER11> Haha you are kind. I assure it looks much more prettier enlarged on a screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My god, programmer typography! It's like the author only just discovered font weigths. The only possible defence for using bold allcaps five times in a paragraph is if it is a name that is being typeset that way. here there is no such defence and the author deploys a further five instances of bold italics in the very first paragraph, the one small mercy being not deploying any bold all caps underline or making itrain typefaces.

I honesty felttired just looking at that text.

<comment><USER13> I know this is meta, and generally frowned upon, but can we please discuss content rather than presentation? Ranting about presentation does not change anything or meaningfully add to the discussion.

As an aside: I love how you're criticizing, but in your post made (at least) one spelling error ("weigths"), missed a space between two words ("felttired"), missed capitalizing the first word of a sentence ("here"), and spelled/spaced two words differently ("allcaps" and "all caps"). (Also I'm not sure if "itrain" is a word; Google didn't help in deciphering that one.) Pot/kettle/black.

<comment><USER14> tbf the topic is "Typographical Analysis"

If the author displays a weakness in a Typographical practice/understanding, it's difficult to continue believing his "analysis" has real value; it would obviously be limited to at the very least those shown weaknesses, as well as the set of weaknesses we haven't yet seen.

And when the shown fault is at the basics of typographical best practice, then it is likely not worth reading any of the analysis; any statement used is likely a misunderstanding of the real properties of it. And given that this is targeted at people _not_ well-versed in typography, then it is probably a case of a novice teaching a novice, and thus any presented understanding is likely, at best, a poor understanding of the subject, and at worst, incorrect.

When discussing typography, I think its pretty fair to judge the presentation as well as the content, since its a metric of their authority on the subject matter.

Not fair, however, is that the grandparent's subject is typography, and afaik, your criticism is not related to typography. Particularly in that in the article is very distinctly _edited_ to use typographical "features", and fails to use them well (imo), a result of misunderstanding the properties of the features; whereas the grandparent is very distinctly _not edited_ , and clearly a result of typing too fast. The grandparent is _not_ thinking about typography in his presentation; The article is. So the article can be judged (it tried and failed), whereas the grandparent can really only be criticized for a lack of caring in the first place.

<comment><USER13> The author isn't really discussing typography as the main focus, though. He is talking about handwriting, and how it could possibly _relate_ to typography. I'm not trying to be picky or pedantic here; I think the distinction is actually important. He need not be an expert in typography (or even display good sense in presentation around typographic elements) to take a look at his handwriting and find inconsistencies between it and some common metrics used in typography.

One need not even agree with his conclusion/belief that you can make your handwriting better by post-processing it to make it have consistent letter spacing, line heights, etc. I think just the idea of doing those comparisons is interesting, and one is free to draw their own conclusions. Just the idea of making those comparisons made it a worthwhile read to me, because I wouldn't have thought of it on my own. Sure, you can disagree that it was a worthwhile read for you, but that doesn't make it somehow ok to trash the guy's article like the great-grandparent did.

I think what I'm getting at boiled down, is this: be nice. The original author had an idea about something, looked into it, and wrote up some of his findings and opinions. You can disagree with those opinions, or even the methodology around the findings, and it's fine to express that disagreement, but the great-grandparent did so in a fundamentally rude way, which I think is well beneath HN's standards for quality, respectful discourse. It amounted to little more than an ad hominem attack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have notepads where I wrote that sentence. I didn't make the mistake of forgetting that the second animal is a dog. I did forgot to include an "s" in my sentence, though. Somewhat embarrassing when I realized I was writing a sentence to include all letters, but didn't include all letters.

I am still a fan of writing. More, drawing some diagrams, which I am terrible at. It really takes an intuitive sense of understanding space as you are drawing. All too often, I have drawn the boxes, without the space for names inside of them. It is frustrating.

<comment><USER11> I wrote it over two days and didn't notice the missing animal. Color me embarrassed. Honestly I was not a fan of writing, typing being much faster. But a chance reading of the book "Thinking with type" and a big discussion with a friend about how handwriting is unique to a person made think of my handwriting as a type. Thanks for reading!!

<comment><USER10> As I said, I went quite a few days writing before I realized I had my fox "jumped" instead of "jumps". It was only one day when it occurred to me I did not have any practice writing an S that I stopped to think why. :)

And thanks for doing the post. Fun read!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The irony of this is that the only problem he really fixed was making his handwriting more regular. While it does help, the real problem is his malformed glyphs. His lowercase 'q' has such a large tail that it adds an extra space between the word, and his 'o' is written slightly different every time he writes it. The base of his problems seems to be that he writes with a mixture of different scripts, and if he taught himself to write with just one of them, he would be much better off.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the constructive criticism. Coming to think of it I did modify my writing style completely 7-8 years ago. Went from cursive to not so much. Some of it clearly lingered. So I will take a note of that. Like an another comment pointed out learning about glyphs will go a long way and that's next on my to do list.

</comment></comment><comment> robinson-wall The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy... fox?

<comment><USER16> I am ashamed to admit that it took a long time before I learned that sentence (with dog) is used because it has every letter of the alphabet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy _dog_.

That was bugging the heck out of me.

<comment><USER11> Author here. And to think of it that I wrote it over two days. Two days. Made a couple of my friends read it. I am embarrassed and will fix it by tonight.

<comment><USER17> No worries!!

Also, don't let all the very tough feedback on here get you down. Tough crowd on here!

<comment><USER11> I will not . I am just truly grateful that some people took the time out to read something I wrote. Amazing !!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So leaving aside the fact that tools for converting your handwriting into a font already exist. The way the Latin alphabet is typeset is really inimical to this. Arabic is a much better match, because the font shaping engines understand that letters have different forms in different parts of a word, and that the strokes need to align. Maybe you could do this with learning pairs and glyph substitutions, but I doubt many people are going to have the patience

<comment><USER11> Author here. I agree the tools do exist. Learning about typography ( the technical details ) is very much outside of my comfort zone. Plus I am learning a lot while deploying this as an app. Is there is any book/resource you could point me towards to further my understand? Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> CORRECTION: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.</comment>


Spain's new piracy penalty: Six years in jail - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/spains-new-piracy-penalty-six-years-in-jail-7000020973/ <comment><USER2> 6 years is way too much for a non violent crime. There are rapists and murders and drug dealers who get by with less at times. It's amazing what the right kind of lobbying can do in this world.

On the other hand, I personally see this as part of a policy of appeasement and am now waiting for some huge 'donations/low interest loans' to come out to Spain from the USA/MPAA/RIAA/etc.

I'm not Spanish but I have seen the culture of copying and sharing and using pirated software that exists in Spain. A penalty like this may shut down a file locker or two, or may even take down a few torrent sites, but it will do nothing to deter file sharing in general - what's more ridiculous is that the proposal clearly states that it's in line with the people's culture to generally share software/music/movies/games/etc.

Given that it's such a half assed effort it could only be a response to pressure from the US, a response tuned to not raise too many eyebrows in Spain but at the same time unlock some bonuses/favors from the US govt.

Ultimately I think this has come as subsequent pressure and a fallout from the whole Rojadirecta debacle a few years ago.[1] (those guys basically sued the US government for seizing their domain... AND WON[2]!)

1 - [http://torrentfreak.com/tag/rojadirecta/](http://torrentfreak.com/tag/rojadirecta/)

2 - [http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-returns-seized-domains-to- stream...](http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-returns-seized-domains-to-streaming- links-site-after-18-months-120830/)

<comment><USER3> Any jail time AT ALL is too much for non-violent crime. If a citizen is no threat to others, it is not necessary to take away his freedom (and along it, his job, and contact with his family). This is a monetary crime at best (usually, without profit for the pirate) and a monetary compensation is in order, nothing more. A hefty fine can hurt a lot and is a deterrent, but not taking away the ability to support oneself.

<comment><USER4> You think Bernie Madoff should have walked?

<comment><USER5> I do. You can't have a broad policy of "non-violent crimes = no jail time" if you do a case-by-case of "who we like" and "who we don't like." Because that's why Weev and other hackers are getting jail time.

<comment><USER6> So the worst penalty for a financial crime is to lose all your money? Low odds of being caught, very high reward, and assuming you didn't have money to begin with a zero penalty for being caught. Seems like a financial criminal's dream.

<comment><USER5> If you have no money to begin with, you're probably in no position to commit a real financial crime. "Poor people financial crimes" are still crimes involving some level of physical violence (breaking into a house, picking someone's pocket, etc).

If you do have money to begin with, taking it all away and imposing fines/wage garnishment as penalties are a major deterrent.

<comment><USER7> "Rich people financial crimes" involve an aspect of violence too, or at least can have the same impact as violence. When Bernie Madoff screws someone out of their savings, and that person then can't pay their insurance/medical bills, I would say that fits under a broad definition of violence.

For someone with Madoff's connections, it wouldn't be hard to acquire a false identity and resume some kind of low-level fraud. Putting him in prison is the best way to protect the public IMO.

I personally think that prison sentences are just as valid for non-violent crime as violent crime anyway. It's a disincentive, it's aptly punitive in cases such as Madoff's, and it makes it harder for the offender to re-offend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps this is not the best example given that Spain isn't from a common law tradition but I find the encroachment of criminal penalties for what are essentially civil matters very disturbing.

Criminal law exists to sanction actions that threaten society enough that the state is justified punish offenders ie murder or physical theft. Civil law by contrast exists to right wrongs between private parties ie suing for compensation.

Copyright violations strike me as a clear case for tort. It's a commercial, not a penal matter, but thanks to effective lobbying, the state has now become the MPAA's commercial lawyer.

<comment><USER9> _Civil law by contrast exists to right wrongs between private parties ie suing for compensation._

I'd be the first to agree that draconian penalties for copyright infringement are inappropriate, but I don't think the above is a strong argument, partly because it assumes that whoever is being sued for copyright infringement actually has sufficient funds to make good on any harm they've done, and partly because it assumes that harm can be quantified to a standard a court will accept. Neither of those things is necessarily true, though substantial harm may come to the copyright holder who has been wronged all the same.

<comment><USER10> Okay, then you can jail people if and only if you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the downloaders they enabled were going to buy that music otherwise. Criminal court? Criminal court standards.

Six years is still pretty fucking ridiculous. And I somehow doubt the newspapers will see any management go to jail for grabbing people's photos from Flickr.

<comment><USER11> > _Okay, then you can jail people if and only if you prove beyond a reasonable > doubt that the downloaders they enabled were going to buy that music > otherwise._

Providing pirated content is against the law whether the downloaders were going to buy the music otherwise or not.

So I don't see how your requirement applies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This should not come as a surprise to anyone. Spain has been trying to crack down on piracy since the 16th century.

<comment><USER13> If I wanted "witty" puns I'd read reddit comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Spanish here (living outside).

I've work for the government and their lawyers, in companies based on pirated software (from MS, from Adobe, etc).

Can we please start fighting piracy there ?

Then we should follow fighting piracy in the power positions.

We have a lot of that, and trust me, even on public evidence of the crime, they don't go a single year to jail.

Maybe when all that is clean, we should think on how we can waste our jails better...

<comment><USER15> Can you revise your comment? I can't understand it.

<comment><USER16> I think what this person means is that he's worked for both government, their lawyers and private corporations where there is evidence of large amounts of illegal software in use.

Also they are saying "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." i.e. they make sure their own house is in order before passing judgment on anyone else. Get rid of all their own illegal software and only then are they in a position to charge others with the same crime after all, nobody is above the law.

... except those with enough money or information to bribe, blackmail or topple governments and assassinate other world figures with impunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Spain, a country with high unemployment, takes a step towards crushing its IT infrastructure.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure about the IT infrastructure, but it's quite fantastic what's going on!

<comment><USER19> The high unemployment is fantastic? Or the response in the face of it is?

<comment><USER20> perhaps he meant "fantastic" as in "Imaginative or fanciful; remote from reality". As in, whoever thought of that law must be having the best dealer connections.

<comment><USER19> The whole situation in Europe is just a collective descent into madness, led by those in high offices. The only surprising part is that they're about 20 years past due.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> a) it's a proposal

b) it's for the people operating/owning "link" sites that exist purely to profit from and facilitate piracy. These people gamble the income from millions or billions of monthly ad impressions are worth it, they don't deserve a free pass.

c) users of such sites are not being targeted, except by the site owners peddling mountains of spyware and affiliate scamware all over their sites

<comment> k-mcgrady If this is all true I honestly don't see much wrong with this law. 6 years might seem like a lot for a non-violent crime like this but with the amount of money those sites can make anything less probably wouldn't be much of a deterrent.

<comment><USER22> "6 years might seem like a lot for a non-violent crime like this but ...". 6 years is a lot for a non-violent crime. Full-stop. It doesn't matter if you like the practice or not.

What happens if you have a legitimate publication and link to a source that happens to also have illegal material ? This opens a can of worms.

<comment><USER21> Nobody cares about incidental linking to infringing material. What they care about are streaming sites and file locker sites. SurfTheChannel is a good example, it was an index of links to pretty much any tv show or movie hosted on sites like the former Mega network etc:

"At the site's peak in mid-2009 it generated up to £50,000 ($78,500) per month in advertising revenue, and was more popular than Facebook"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfthechannel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfthechannel)

<comment><USER23> So the site was more popular then Facebook, and therefore, we must take it down to protect the business interests of the RIAA and MPAA? Where are all those "vote with your dollar" people now? It sounds to me like people voted.

<comment><USER24> The people with the most dollars voted with them -- for a government that protect _their_ interests over the people with smaller numbers of dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "after pressure from the US over its piracy record".

<comment><USER26> As seen on the first group of leaks from wikileaks, Joe Biden pressured and threatened spanish government till they made a law then called Biden-Sinde or Sinde , as it was not enough for RIAA/MPAA lobbies, now we are going to have the new one and they have removed the right to remove DRM for backup personal copies also (which existed before) , when the corporation masters order the US politicians obey when the US politicians order the lame spanish politicians crawl and obey to their masters. Edited to add that the piracy numbers they usually use for Spain are all lies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > However, users of these link-sharing sites will not be targeted under the > new law and search engines and peer-to-peer users will also be exempt.

Most of these sites are actually warez search engines. This makes this law pretty toothless.

</comment><comment><USER16> Er, am I missing something... doesn't this violate section 20 of their constitution which guarantees a right to freedom of expression?

<comment><USER28> You're missing something. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of this particular situation, it's self-evident that a right to freedom on expression is not _carte blanche_ to publish anything – you're still rightly subject to controls.

<comment><USER29> OK, there could be an argument that _knowingly_ linking to infringing files is outside of freedom of expresssion. But the article says nothing about a knowledge criterion.

It says "owners of sites found to be making money [directly or indirectly!] from linking to pirated material will face prison sentences of up to six years and the closure of their site. ... users of these link-sharing sites will not be targeted under the new law"

This is even worse. _Users_ who knowingly post links to infinging files would be a more appropriate target than the site owners. Under the new law, anyone who allows user posts will have to pre-moderate everything or prohibit users posting links?

The obvious problem with the law is much more basic: how can the site owner know whether there is or is not infringement at the other end of a link? Are site owners expected to somehow have a list of all copyrightable works _and_ know the terms on which each of them is licensed to each recipient?

Placing the burden on the operator of the linking site creates a situation where no one will dare to make a link, because if it turns out to go to something infringing the linker will be subject to prosecution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Use Ubuntu, employ programmers without work in Spain to replace proprietary software with opensource government systems. Save a lot in the long run on license costs. Proprietary software companies will become desperate and offer huge software rebates.

<comment><USER31> This has been done already for years. Regions like Andalucia, Galicia or Extremadura have been enforcing the use of free software, even creating their own Ubuntu based distros. It's not software piracy what is being targeted here, but movies and music. The software industry can't (or doesn't want to) lobby as hard as the entertainment industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This isn't even about Spain. Once the precedent is set internationally, they will argue they need to bring the US laws in line with international law.

</comment><comment><USER33> Jeez, if I was Spanish I would probably get the chair.

</comment><comment><USER34> This makes as much sense as life in prison without the possibility of parole for littering.

</comment><comment><USER35> US can't impose trade sanctions on a EU members without incurring the wrath of the EU so very unlikely.

<comment><USER18> Really? Cause it looks to me like USA is doing exactly whatever the fuck it wants.

In the end a lot of this is done behind the scenes, EU spirit may be OK, but the signing is done by people and people can be threatened, bribed etc.

<comment><USER36> Pretending the Spanish government has no responsibility for its actions makes it so much easier for the US to get its way, but I guess it makes people feel better.

<comment><USER37> The Spanish government has the primary responsibility of protecting its own citizen's interests, chiefly basic freedoms.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why programmers work at night - <AUTHOR> http://swizec.com/blog/why-programmers-work-at-night/swizec/3198

<comment><USER2> The most in-depth explanation (of programming productivity + physiology) is at The Programmer's Stone - warning, it's quite long. <http://the-programmers- stone.com/about/></comment>