GitHub Outage Currently Ongoing – Issues, PRs, Notifications - <AUTHOR> https://www.githubstatus.com/?date=22082019 <comment> yjftsjthsd-h Alright, cue the usual:

Monoculture bad

Microsoft bad

Git is distributed but all the things around it that we really need aren't

You can set up git to push to multiple remotes automatically

Nobody is actually using git in distributed mode

Did I forget anything?

<comment><USER2> > Git is distributed but all the things around it that we really need aren't

Can anyone recommend an issue tracker that is distributed with the repo?

<comment><USER3> @TODO comments strewn around in your repo.

<comment><USER2> I was thinking of something that wouldn't be affected by the git history. There's no point in having branches for issue comments.

Something like:

      $ git issue add "foo doesn't work"
      Created issue ece5591: foo doesn't work
      $ git issue comment ece5591 "the problem might be with bar"
      Created comment 0191fa1 on issue #10.
      $ git issue comment --reply 0191fa1 "or with baz"
      Created comment f98e783 on issue #10.
      $ git issue show ece5591
      foo doesn't work -- ece5591 Your Name <your@email>
        the problem might be with bar -- 0191fa1 Your Name <your@email>
          or with baz -- f98e783 Your Name <your@email>
      $ git issue push
      Pushed issues ece5591.
      $ git issue pull
      Pulled issues 3ebdc7e, 24cdb90.

EDIT: I just gave myself a clue:

[https://github.com/dspinellis/git-issue](https://github.com/dspinellis/git- issue)

<comment><USER4> The nice idea to having issues in your history/branches is that it easily inverts the "flow" of branch state information: most issue trackers do a lot of work to figure which changes affect which issues, and which branches those changes are in. This often requires a lot of explicit manual work like making commit notes always include issue numbers for instance and "magic" commands like "Resolves #10" to auto-close issues.

If the issues are just another source artifact alongside the code in the same git history a lot of that information flows the other direction. Instead of a magic command in a commit note to close an issue, an issue closing shows up in a diff in the commit. Figuring out which issues are still open in a given branch (what isn't in our release branch yet?) is a simple command in a branch. Figuring out which issues changed between branches (what's finished in this feature branch that hasn't been merged to release yet?) is a typical diff operation.

In terms of documenting the state and progress of an individual branch in a complex project there can be a lot of magic in having issues tracked directly inside code branches. It's a fascinating ideal for code documentation to have issue comments, changes, and workflows side-by-side the code that changed with it.

That said, issue trackers are sadly not ideal code artifacts for a lot of reasons, including that it is easy to forget that issues aren't just for coders, but also stakeholders/product owners/PMs/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I kind of wish HN wouldn't show these outages unless they're going on for multiple hours or at least hide them after they're back up. Usually by the time I see them and then check myself the site is already back up. Maybe I just need to read HN more often.

<comment><USER6> Yea, there are a lot of outage posts. It does kinda illustrate how many people depend on these core services though; and how little distributeiness or elasticity is built into the system.

Linux repos and ISO download sites have TONS of mirrors, sometimes contributed by companies, but also a lot of universities, government and public institutions.

Why is one of the largest core open source repositories centralized and private? Why are we so dependent on AWS, Google and others for large chunks of Internet services to be accessible?

There is a deeper question here than just the outages; but rather why they affect so many people.

<comment><USER7> I have a theory:

Centralized infrastructure tends to be less complex and therefore cheaper. Economies of scale drive people into using a centralized monolith and then network effects do the rest.

If you want a decentralized system to sustainably compete with a centralized one, the decentralized system must provide tangible and obvious surplus value in comparison to the centralized one or otherwise it is not economical.

In reality that's often not the case. Usability is often worse or infrastructure is in favor of centralization (e.g. asymmetric broadband internet connections).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Events like this make me realize how much I rely on my CI/CD pipeline for working on new features, deploying etc. I am often too lazy to run E2E tests on my machine if I know that on CI it will take only a few minutes to be done.

<comment><USER9> I feel guilty because I've never installed GitLab's CI process locally and have only run it for the past few years through git commits. I keep expecting someone to complain, but so far, so good.

I expect similar poor behavior testing GitHub's actions because it's so convenient to only run through the service.

It is important though that it's possible to run without CI/cd. If it wasn't available I would complain because of the risk of lock-in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A peer-to-peer (IPFS) stack for code collaboration.

[https://radicle.xyz/](https://radicle.xyz/)

A Radicle project contains a git repository, plus the associated issues and proposals.

^ Neat project

</comment><comment><USER11> Funny thing, I didn't even notice. In fact, being heavily reliant on Git and Github, I encountered maybe one or two issues a year when I couldn't push to Github because it was unavailable. In those cases, the progress can still be made locally, my workflow was barely affected. Of course, the deployment was impossible, but the downtime was never significant enough to worry or do anything about.

</comment><comment><USER12> Git is designed as distributed VCS, so an outage of a centralized server should not matter too much. So far, the theory. Using Github excessively is the way back to centralization, nowadays handing control over to Microsoft. Everybody who is concerned (probably not too much) should have a look into alternatives.

<comment><USER13> Yea because the alternative (hosting git yourself on your own servers) will have better availability and few issues (UX just came to mind!)

<comment><USER14> [https://about.gitlab.com/install/](https://about.gitlab.com/install/)

So the UX point is moot. From there, it is just a matter of how much do you want to pay for availability (multizone replication, etc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We're self hosting Gogs on a Hetzner VM and it's been a great experience. Of course it has less features. But it's simple and fast and I do about 10 minutes sys admin per quarter.

</comment><comment><USER16> Resolved, all systems operational, that was quick.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you don't the the "community" features of GitHub, we have had very good results with Amazon Code Commit. I've never experienced an outage, it's easy to manage, and very inexpensive.

[https://aws.amazon.com/codecommit/](https://aws.amazon.com/codecommit/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I see posts like this make the front page of hacker news every so often, but I don't recall seeing posts about things like making list outages for something like the LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing List) or an IRC network like Freenode.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps because Freenode has about 0.25% the number of users of Github - ~100,000 vs 40 million?

<comment><USER20> No, it's just the US tech bubble. When my whole country and some was suddenly denied all google services for several hours, including CDNs, DNS, all cloud, gmail, android app store, gdocs, all everything, it didn't make any news here either, despite being much more disruptive, affecting 10+ million people, and being a much more intersting reminder of how much techies make other people and themselves dependent on this megacorp.

All kinds of stuff broke, including "the entire internet" for people who were made to use 126.96.36.199 by their ISPs. E-shops that load jQuery from google stopped working, for no real reason whatsoever, people getting lost because they couldn't navigate anymore in the real world, etc.

Since then I try to flag all this repetitive nonsense about slack/github going down for a few minutes, to no avail. It keeps comming back to the first page of HN. :D

<comment><USER21> People care about what impacts or relates to them. That's human nature. Even your example was "my country" which is something that relates to you.

<comment><USER20> That being said, being dependent on Google is not unique to my country, and almost everyone should relate to that, at this point in history. And the scale of dependence only shows when it's truly completely shut down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Justyna yesterday I was complaining about GitHub monoculture in the context of Atlassian sunsetting Mercurial. Outages like this are normal, but the problem is lack of good competitors.

<comment><USER23> The problem is bad design and/or integration of components. VMS clusters over leased lines went years without outages. Record was 17 years at a rail yard. They also did rolling upgrades across both different OS versions and _CPU architectures_. The methods are public if any competitors want to match or exceed them:

[https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na...](https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c04622808)

These modern cloud services using Linux ecosystem are doing rolling outages instead. I'm amazed people keep making them dependencies. Maybe their local systems using similar technology went down more often. Maybe this is an improvement. I'd still put mine on an OpenBSD or OpenVMS cluster if it was business-critical with lots of money on the line. I want it staying up, up, up. :)

<comment><USER24> Modern apps are designed to deal with part of them being down - it is the core upgrade strategy.

VMS clusters were (and modern equivalents are) awesome, but they have a different speed of innovation / development.

It is a trade off - perfect uptime, but that new feature could take a year, or 99.9% uptime, but it can be written and deployed tomorrow.

<comment><USER23> Their development velocity might have been due to their management or internal culture. You can get most of those results faster and on a budget. The best evidence was the startup behind FoundationDB continually improving their product in highly-competitive space while doing QA like this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fFDFbi3toc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fFDFbi3toc)

Generally, on top of code reviews, one can get high return with minimal labor and hardware with a combo of Design-by-Contract, contract/spec/property-based testing, low-F.P. static analysis, and fuzzing with contracts in as runtime checks. That's my default recommendation.

In Github's case, they also might have access to both closed and open tools that Microsoft Research makes. MSR is awesome if you've never checked them out. Two examples applicable to system reliability and security:

[https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/ironclad/](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/ironclad/)

[https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/p-safe-...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/p-safe-asynchronous-event-driven-programming/)

Plus some of their other tools in various states of usability:

[https://rise4fun.com/](https://rise4fun.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been having trouble getting GitHub to send me a verification email (after adding a new email address) for over a week. Anybody else having this problem? I wonder if it's connected.

</comment><comment><USER26> Also still ongoing: They don't have IPv6.

</comment><comment><USER27> it's time to switch to SourceForge.

<comment><USER28> I've migrated all of our repos to codeplex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What's a, "PR". (I'm being serious)

<comment><USER30> [https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-pull- requests](https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-pull-requests)

<comment><USER29> Thank you, of course - I was wondering if PR was the same PR as in Agile.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Find developer jobs based on company benefits/perks - <AUTHOR> https://www.yolo-jobs.com <comment><USER2> Search doesn't work.</comment>


Ask HN: Product Design for glove - <AUTHOR>

My friend and I have developed a wearable glove that works as a mouse. The glove is functionally sound and I would now like to focus on the aesthetic part of it.<p>Does anyone have any advice on how we could move ahead? I have been planning to approach design firms and attend meetups (a quick search did not bring any interesting ones in Toronto). Any one been through this experience? <comment><USER2> Hi, I mentored wearable keyboardless keyboard startup AirType last semester, and I've worn an Essential Reality P5 Glove.

Fashion, textile, and industrial design happen offline, to the degree that people only learn about trunk shows from visiting the hosting boutique in advance. No Facebook event listings, no meetup groups.

You want to talk to fashion accessory designers, textile designers, and industrial designers, to even get an idea of the kind of possibilities there are. If you get serious about you'll want all of them in the room at once.

You'll probably have a hard time finding someone with experience working directly in the materials you need, especially if you're trying to make your device more like a glove and less like a gauntlet, but there are people out there.

This person, for example: [http://creativemornings.com/talks/kate- hartman](http://creativemornings.com/talks/kate-hartman)

Or this person: [http://research.ocadu.ca/socialbody/blog/toronto- wearables-m...](http://research.ocadu.ca/socialbody/blog/toronto-wearables- meetup-11-marisa-ranalli)

Or this person: [http://www.erinlewis.ca/Home.html](http://www.erinlewis.ca/Home.html)

Design firms aren't likely to take you seriously unless you have five figures as an opening spend on what you could get out a few hours of conversations and a lot of playing around, but you will eventually need actual expertise. When searching online, "soft electronics," "fashionable technology," "wearable electronics," and the like are better terms for the integration expertise, but you'll need to go offline for the rest of it. Sewing classes, your local fashion institute, etc.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> For what it's worth, someone's developed the mouse for your finger already: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mycestro/mycestrotm- the...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mycestro/mycestrotm-the-next- generation-3d-mouse)

</comment><comment><USER4> Id first do a little bit of research for yourself, so you can get some starting ideas of what you want... look at gloves and see what you like - search for glove in google images, tumblr and pintrest - those are good places to start.</comment>


Ask HN: Open Source projects an intermediate python programmer can contribute to? - <AUTHOR> I have been writing python (more specifically Django) for a year or so. I want to start working on some Open source projects where my contributions can be of some significance. <comment><USER2> Small Tools of MetricsGrimoire: * Analyzing VCS: [https://github.com/MetricsGrimoire/CVSAnalY](https://github.com/MetricsGrimoire/CVSAnalY) * Analyzing Mailinglists: [https://github.com/MetricsGrimoire/MailingListStats](https://github.com/MetricsGrimoire/MailingListStats) * Analyzing issue tracker: [https://github.com/MetricsGrimoire/Bicho](https://github.com/MetricsGrimoire/Bicho)

If you need help, ping me. I will try to Support you and merge things fast

</comment><comment><USER3> Anything! Contribution is just about process and coordination.

The most important factor limiting most open source project maintainers is time; anything you can do to minimize the time taken to pull your changes will greatly increase the chance of them being accepted.

Make sure you write unit tests for any changes; this is essential to verify that your changes have been tested to work and under what conditions, and helps cut down time for maintainers to review your code.

I'd suggest searching GitHub for Python projects, find one that sparks your interest, then have a look at any outstanding issues (defects or missing features) and see if there's any low-hanging fruit.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://openhatch.org](https://openhatch.org)

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you run into pain points or places where modules you use don't do the right thing? That's where you should contribute to open source. Take your domain expertise and use it to enhance the project.

</comment><comment><USER6> I need help on Python/Prolog integration. Please check PySictus Python class on GitHub .

@giodegas</comment>


Mozilla inserts LookingGlass addon into Firefox without user's permission. - <AUTHOR> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/lookingglass <comment><USER2> > No changes will be made to Firefox unless you have opted in to this > Alternate Reality Game.

</comment><comment><USER3> > No changes will be made to Firefox unless you have opted in to this > Alternate Reality Game.

Except installing an addon.

> One of the 10 guiding principles of Mozilla's mission is that individuals' > security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated > as optional.

Another one is: Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability and trust. Silently installing a browser addon that maybe 95% of your userbase will never use nor find cause to use, without notification? That's not Transparent in the slightest.

</comment><comment> a0-prw And it's not easy to remove, at least on Android. I can only 'disable'</comment>


Reactron – Desktop Applications with React and Electron - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alexvcasillas/reactron <comment><AUTHOR> Hey #dev folks! I've been working on something to build desktop applications with @electronjs and @reactjs. I've open sourced it and I would love to hear some feedback from you! It's called Reactron! All the #reactjs bundling it's done with @parceljs!

[https://github.com/alexvcasillas/reactron](https://github.com/alexvcasillas/reactron)</comment>


Show HN: I Built Hacker News TV - <AUTHOR> https://www.crowdform.co.uk/hntv/ <comment><USER2> Really nice idea, you should add [https://www.reddit.com/r/mealtimevideos/](https://www.reddit.com/r/mealtimevideos/) to the list of videos too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion! That's an awesome link!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I'm David the creator! I love Hacker News but sometimes I feel like just watching TV instead of reading articles. Turns out Hacker News is full of amazing videos! So I built HNTV!

I tried to keep it as light as possible with a tiny bundle size. It uses preact on the frontend, firebase for cloud functions and database and algolia's API for the backend.

Here all day to answer questions, suggestions and bugs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great stuff, thanks! How do you pull stuff from HN? Do you run a periodic job or receive notifications when new articles/comments are posted?

</comment><comment><USER4> Brilliant idea! Looks awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much!</comment></comment>


"Why do women try to get ahead by pulling men down?" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/ladybits-on-medium/a1345b36b91b <comment><USER2> This is a really great set of analogies that pokes holes in a lot of arguments you often see. There is another one I'd like to add that's very relevant for tech: women come into the lobby of the engineering school building, see the pack of men on the up escalator, see the room full of men who have already made it, and head straight back out the door and over to the med school or law school building, where they don't have to deal with the headwinds that come from being a minority. A lot of the women who see the situation and leave are the most talented and ambitious, because lets face it: if you're gunning for the top, isn't it rational to give yourself the best possible shot by choosing a field where you won't have the challenge of fitting into a male-dominated culture in addition to all the challenges you'll already have?

<comment><USER3> _" if you're gunning for the top, isn't it rational to give yourself the best possible shot by choosing a field where you won't have the challenge of fitting into a male-dominated culture in addition to all the challenges you'll already have?"_

But you won't end up in the top, right? You'll end up somewhat high in a different spot--which is fine, but then you can't complain about not getting the top spot having voluntarily given up the chance to pursue it.

<comment><USER2> I think a lot of ambitious people would rather get the top spot in medicine than hit a glass ceiling in engineering.

<comment><USER3> Which is a shame, because effort spent in medicine doesn't scale.

<comment><USER2> True, but the risk weighted return is quite good, at least for now. You won't make a billion dollars as a doctor, but your odds of pulling in $350k/year for 40 years is probably better than your odds of a $3-5m exit (two outcomes with similar present values), at least if you have the personality of a typical doctor.

<comment><USER4> Very similar patterns of problems exist in every career. Grass always looks greener on the other end.

I'm sure a forum where your ordinary physicians socialize, its pretty common to regret their choice to not get into engineering.

Your everyday physician is probably stuck in a quick sand just 5 years into his career.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting metaphor, but the author could've substituted "women" with "blacks", "hispanics", or any non-white male demographic and the article would've had the same effect.

Look, as a black male startup founder I recognize I face a steeper uphill battle than my white counterparts. I get that. But I also understand that anytime anyone tries to break into an industry dominated by people unlike them, they're going to face resistance.

For example, white rappers have a far more difficult time breaking into hip hop. Its almost a requirement that their talent surpasses that of black rappers by leaps and bounds. They diligently practice their craft, writing witty punchlines and metaphors, using complex wordplay, (i.e. running up the 'down' elevator) while many black rappers lazily write nursery rhymes about the same tired subjects, (i.e. standing still on the 'up' elevator). I'm certain there are many white guys who get to the lobby, and upon seeing a sea of blacks riding the 'up' elevator, simply say, "Forget this, I'm gonna go learn some Python"

The fact is when you're a minority of any kind, (and I don't mean in terms of race, I mean in terms of any characteristic that makes you outside the majority) you should be prepared to fight for every inch.

Besides, when faced with the choice, I usually choose to take the stairs anyway. :-)

<comment><USER2> > Interesting metaphor, but the author could've substituted "women" with > "blacks", "hispanics", or any non-white male demographic and the article > would've had the same effect.

There is an important distinction between women and blacks and hispanics, which is that the various challenges facing the latter groups are deeper and more varied. If you pick a random black man in the U.S., statistically his parents will be poorer and less educated than if you pick a random white man. So equality for those groups is deeply tied up with persistent economic disparities.

But with women that problem doesn't exist. An equal number of boys and girls are born into rich, well-connected families. Which eliminates a whole class of issues that could cause disparities between males and females, and makes the problem of gender representation in a way "easier" to solve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was hoping that they would complete the analogy. I was unable to make these connections: (please fill in!)

1\. What is the reason the women's escalator goes down?

2\. What is the reason only men can ride the up escalator?

3\. What is the elevator?

4\. Why not just make everyone take the elevator? Why have a restricted running arrangement at all? Why not just have organized one-at-a-time races on a 100m track with a photo finish setup?

<comment><USER7> The other thing I'm confused about- the article seems to imply men who do nothing will be rewarded with things simply by virtue of being men. Does this happen? I've never seen anyone say, "Oh, you're a man! Here, let me give you things!"

<comment><USER8> Are you denying men have ever benefited from privilege?

\- Owning possessions

\- Owning land

\- Owning people

\- Running a business

\- Being owned by family

\- Being owned by spouse

\- Being actively selected against

\- Being discriminated against, in general

\- Going to school

\- Going to university

\- Housekeeping

\- Working

\- Raising children

\- Being pregnant / giving birth / after

\- Voting

I'm sure others could think of more.

<comment><USER7> You're trying to put words in my mouth. My point is, nobody _gave_ men possessions, or land, or people, or a business for virtue of them being men. Maybe it was easier for a man to own land or run a business, but he still had to work for them. Whereas our metaphorical escalator gives good things to its riders, whether they do anything or not.

So, mostly point being, I think the escalator is a flawed analogy.

<comment><USER9> I frequently get good things because I'm a man. For example, I find it much easier to get people to listen to me than do equally competent female colleagues.

If you'd like to see more examples, Google "male privilege checklist". E.g.: <http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/>

But if you'd prefer a different analogy, try this one from sci-fi writer John Scalzi: "Straight White Male: The Lowest difficulty Setting": [http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male- th...](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest- difficulty-setting-there-is/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _A lot of men (and sometimes women) ... [say] "So you're saying that in order for women to get ahead, they have to pull men down?! That's not fair!"_

I have never heard anyone say anything like this quote. Maybe I'm in an unusual workplaces, or I haven't been listening closely enough. Does this resemble a real statement in the gender inequality dialog?

<comment><USER11> This is indeed a thing people say. Most of the time I hear this in someone saying outright that feminists are man haters or wish to see men suffer. More subtly, someone will usually complain that we have to treat men and woman equally while completely ignoring any kind of ongoing injustice that women may be dealing with (this goes for a wide variety of discussions).

<comment><USER10> I'd agree that the claim "feminists wish to see men suffer" is equivalent to the above quote. I'm surprised to hear that this is a common sentiment in serious conversation.

The claim "women and men should be treated equally", even with an ignorance of any ongoing injustices towards women, does not seem equivalent to the above quote.

For example, the quote in question implies a zero-sum game, whereby advancing capable women inherently hurts men. This assumption is absent from "men and women should be treated equally."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is perhaps a tangential issue, but I don't think the author addressed the question she posed.

I was looking forward to seeing the author thoroughly dissect the ignorance inherent in the title, so I followed along with the methaphor as it lengthened. I also didn't object to the metaphor presuming the conclusions she set out to make, since metaphors are expository instruments intended to clarify and shed light on a complex underlying issue. But when I skimmed to the end and saw that she never moved on from the metaphor to an actual argument, I lost interest. A metaphor _is not_ an argument. It can be a great way to introduce or conclude one, but it should never be the main course at an idea buffet.

<comment><USER13> > A metaphor is not an argument. It can be a great way to introduce or > conclude one, but it should never be the main course at an idea buffet.

I liked how you illustrated this by making an argument and then concluding with a metaphor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> First let me start by saying that I believe my wife can do absolutely anything she sets her mind to accomplishing. She has her masters degree while I do not even have a bachelors.

However, these articles ignore the obvious difference between men and women. I (a guy) am interested in cars, computer games(FPS), working out, running, playing sports etc. My wife on the other hand is absolutely interested in all of those at a different level than I an interested in other things that I do not particularly enjoy like horseback riding. When I say she's interested in cars, she's interested in having a nice corvette, while I'm interested in working on a nice corvette. She likes working out, to be fit - I like working out to get stronger and more 'manly'. She loves to play sports because they're fun - I like to crush the other team.

I bring these things up because there are inherent differences between men and women that people seem to forget. It's not just nurture, but it's nature too. We are physically, mentally and emotionally different (not in all cases, but many).

I would love to see more women in the tech industry (I'm trying to get my wife involved). However, there will always be a difference in our mentalities because of our gender and these cannot be ignored so easily.

<comment><USER15> I'm with you until you get to nature vs. nurture. Societal norms are so ingrained in early childhood education that it's extremely difficult to discern one from the other.

So, while we currently have different interests between the genders (speaking broadly), there's a good chance it's mostly nurture, which means that different attitudes early on could change that in the future.

<comment><USER16> However, there do exist a number of built-in, biological differences between male and female brains - see, e.g. [pdf] [http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toanatj/articles/V002/37T...](http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toanatj/articles/V002/37TOANATJ.pdf)

While this isn't the whole story, it's important to understand what may be attributed to innate differences and what may be attributed to cultural forces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I mostly like the article, but the author and I have a different perspective on a basic assumption that is taken as axiomatic in the third paragraph: _Let's say that all the jobs in tech are in a room on the second floor of a building. There are a limited number of people that can fit in that room._

I don't personally believe there are a fixed number of spots. I believe that when you find a way to cram more people into the second floor, it expands.

A company may seem like it is only hiring five engineers today, but companies that hire good people, grow. Companies operating in an environment where more people are working, can sell more of their products and services.

Overall, more people being more productive expands the number of "spots on the second floor" for everyone.

Thus, I do not consider this an issue of choosing which people make it up the escalator, but rather a problem in trying to grow the size of the building. When looked at it in terms of growing the size of the building, we arrive at a completely different view of how we should handle escalators and the purpose of getting people to the second floor.

<comment><USER18> That seems orthogonal to me. Say I have a list and I'm taking some number of items off one end. I want to maximize the value of that chunk. A larger chunk is better, of course, but sorting the list so that bigger items are on one also helps.

That's what the author is arguing: we're incorrectly ranking people because of a gender bias. Having a larger pool of poorly ranked people won't solve that.

<comment><USER17> I don't follow what you're saying about a list, but if you're saying that either or both help, the key thing to remember is that it isn't a dichotomy. In the context of HN, what startup isn't trying to hire all the smart and capable people it can?

If it comes down to two people, and there is a perception that A is better than B but both A and B are excellent candidates, a great company hires both.

<comment><USER18> Right, but by saying "comes down to two people" that implies you've already done some filtering: you've ordered the set of all possible people and then taken the first two.

My point is that if the ordering relation is wrong (which is what the article suggests) then it doesn't matter what subset you take: you're still not getting the best possible set of people. You have to get the _right_ people. If your ordering is off, being more inclusive lets in as many more _bad_ candidates as it does _good_ ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a horrible analogy. It sounds really pretty at first glance, but the question is never addressed as to why that's the situation to begin with. In real life, everybody can equally use an escalator. Does the up escalator have a sign saying "Men only?" No. Are men pushing women down? No. What is preventing women from using the up escalator?

Maybe the real question is why her analogous women are looking for elevators and going up the wrong escalator instead of just doing it the way everyone else is?

<comment><USER11> > Does the up escalator have a sign saying "Men only?" No. Are men pushing > women down? No.

In terms of the analogy, yes men are pushing women down and the escalator is men only, whether explicitly stated or implicitly understood. This analogy is overstretched though, a lot of the discrimination people face is institutional in nature.

<comment><USER19> From what I've seen, men who actually push women down get thrown off the escalator, so to speak. I don't think men are actually pushing women down. Crowding them out, maybe, but not pushing them down. Of course I'm not in SV, so who know what brogrammer stuff goes on there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have an anecdote to share - the university in which I was supposed to study CS before coming to my senses and realizing I know more than the tutors had strict 50/50 gender admission policy. The acceptance was based purely on exam results (only math). So that friend of mine (a girl) is ranked among the top - no surprises there. After she is accepted she decides she prefers to study electronics and according to rules the first girl that was left out gets the place. The problem is there are 18 with one and the same score - so they accept them all.

What was curious was that the average acceptance score of the admitted girls was higher than for the boys. So the gender policy actually ended discriminating the girls - fewer were admitted than would have been if gender quotas were lifted. That was across the board in all engineering specialties and a few years in a row.

</comment><comment><USER21> "It's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy." - Elon Musk.

the author should have stated the first principles that are fundamentally true and then state her hypothesis of the employment market and justify them. she makes far too much assumptions without justifying them.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is one of the worst analogies I have even been exposed too. It is a straightforward issue, we don't need an analogy to grasp it, it was almost explicitly designed to muddy the waters.

It did a good job of hiding circle reasoning, logical fallacies and other failures of critical thinking.

EDIT: I do believe there is a real issue around gender in both the technology and nursing industries. This article just adds nothing to the conversation.

<comment><USER9> Protip: "I don't like this article" is not the same thing as "Nobody in the entire universe could benefit from this article." If you don't find it useful, fine. But lay off the drama.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is how the stereotype of men not getting metaphors gets started.

</comment><comment><USER24> > mostly white

stopped reading there

<comment><USER25> Tech is VERY white. Take a look around during the next conference you visit.

If you want something more objective, this US-centric chart seems to be a good example: <http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm>

<comment><USER16> Also: Asian. Lots of Indian and Oriental men in tech too.

But you're right that the 20something hipster demo in tech definitely skews to the white.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I went looking for some examples of male privilege. These might be helpful in understanding why the escalators are going the directions they are: <http://sap.mit.edu/content/pdf/male_privilege.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER27> That was a really tortured metaphor.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think the premise is absurd. In two decades programming I've never personally seen evidence of women being held back in CS -- usually it's just the opposite in fact. I'd like for there to be more women in CS, but being honest I haven't seen anything holding them back except for themselves.

For instance even way back in my CS program for one of the women they actually made an exception to the rule that you need a 2.0 GPA to graduate in CS. This after years of official department women-only support groups and special instruction. What happened to the guys with less than 2.0? They didn't graduate CS. This same woman had six job offers after graduation.

</comment><comment><USER13> > 2\. What is the reason only men can ride the up escalator?

I never got past this. I would imagine that in a two-story building full of analytical people, someone would have questioned this immediately.

</comment><comment><USER29> Breadwinner in 40% of U.S. Families Is a Woman, Study Finds[1]

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/business/economy/women- as-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/business/economy/women-as-family- breadwinner-on-the-rise-study-says.html?hp)

<comment><USER11> From the very article you provided:

"Such marriages are still relatively rare, though, even if their share is growing. Of all married couples, 24 percent include a wife who earns more, versus 6.2 percent in 1960."

"Demographically and socioeconomically, single mothers and married mothers are different from each others. The median family income for single mothers — who are disproportionately younger, black or Hispanic, and less educated — is $23,000. The median household income for married women who earn more than their husbands — more often white, slightly older and college-educated — is $80,000."

I'm not really sure what point you were trying to make, but it sounds like sexism along with classism and racism still have an impact on women's lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> In OP's analogy, a new male applicant has no edge over a new female applicant. He's still faced with an overcrowded escalator. In the real world, things can be quite different of course, and the analogy doesn't reflect that very well.

</comment><comment><USER31> 49 minutes old, and no longer on the front page.

I can't find it in the first 200 submissions, even.

<comment><USER17> Ho hum... <https://twitter.com/raganwald/status/339816065297174528>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> all I got from article is implication that somehow women are less skilled (slower in article) otherwise they would be on up escalator as well? I certainly don't agree with that implication.

<comment><USER20> If you are a white male you have built in nitro in your car while driving the streets of life. The women are as skilled but you just got the edge. You won't be dismissed after and interview with "girls cannot use oscilloscope". It will be more like my first interview "Self thought C programmer at age 16 - you are hired, don't know what EEPROM is - no worries kid - we will teach you"

<comment><USER32> I understand that lots of people discriminates by gender,age,you name it and I don't agree with that. Where I am coming from population was (at time of my childhood) 98% white so no advantage being white :-) My high school year had 6 girls and over 200 boy because it was technical school and girls didn't choose to attend , other high schools (medical for example) would have reverse ratio and some would actually be close to 50:50 split. That would later translate in similar ratios at university. I wouldn't dare to say that technical aptitude is ingrained in male population but sure sometimes seems like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> _If more men learned to put away their privilege_

Stopped me cold. Maybe that mindset worked in the 1960s but this is the twenty-teens and that "privilege" left long ago.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think the idea's good but the analogy presented is ridiculous.

As far as I could see, there isn't an escalator reserved for only men and one that is reserved for only women. The article touches on women having to use the one that is usually going down, and I kind of understand that to mean they are presented with extra difficulties, but in the given situation if someone wants a job more than the others and tries to climb the harder escalator, I believe that deserves a round of applause whether it's a man or a woman.

Another problem is that being most skilled is equated to being the fastest in the analogy. Here's where things go hard to explain without offending anyone but I'll try to take my chances. Just keep in mind that I'm not against females in any industry. If the real world is like the analogy and females can't get a tech job because they aren't as fast as men, then it is a good thing. Being a women is nothing special. For every woman who can't get a job because they aren't skilled enough, I bet there are 2 or more men who also can't get a job because they aren't skilled enough compared to others. I don't see men complaining in this situation. And to be perfectly honest I myself have lived through something like this recently. I am a very new comer to the programming world and I was turned down on my application to GSoC. I didn't think of trying to find nonexistent reasons, I knew it was because I was good enough (yet). From what I've been reading about female take on these situations, I'm led to believe that about half of them (or perhaps even more) would think that they were turned down because they are not male.

What I mean to say is that the article inherently implies that there are so many fast men that women can't get a job. I believe that is warping the truth to make people feel sorry into women. I'll most likely be crucified for saying this, but I would be glad if an unskilled woman can't get a job because there are more skilled men, I say that's a good thing. (I have long learned that the internet community and extreme feminists like to cherry pick on what you say while missing your point just to make a case against you, so I'll say that I would also be happy if the reverse is true, that is a man gets turned down because he isn't skilled enough).

And the last thing. The article mentions women who see that the escalator is overflowing with men largely turn around and not even try. This is a very female-centric approach. Men don't see something entirely else magically, they also see the escalator flowing with men. If anyone, male or female, turns around because the escalator is overflowing, then s/he does not want the job enough, s/he wants an easy ride.

This part of the analogy both degrades women and shows something entirely unlikable about the author's view. It implies that most women give up in the face of difficulty (the difficulty being that there are too many men). If that is the case this is not a case that can be argued against male domination in any industry. If women want to be represented more, then they should try more. Keep in mind this is assuming that what the author is implying.

And the author's silent implication (which is very offensive to me) that women should have a women only escalator that will overflow with women in time.

Go ahead, crucify me because this apparently is against what most people defend but it is important to keep everything fair while defending women's positions.</comment>


What motivates people to work on opensource development? - <AUTHOR> http://email@example.com/msg14077.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Some background on this post.

It is a discussion on the AGI (artificial general intelligence) or OpenCog mail list regarding the use of virtual credits. One of the late comers to the project (Yan King Yin) feels that given the effort that needs to be put in for AGI development, some sort of compensation beyond bragging rights, would motivate him better. He proposes the adoption of virtual credits, and the OpenCog project leader, Ben Goertzel gives his reasons why it might be a bad idea.

For anyone who has wondered what motivates people working on opensource software development, this discussion provides some interesting insights.</comment>


Ionic Creator – Fast Visual Ionic Prototyping - <AUTHOR> http://creator.ionic.io/

<comment><USER2> It would be really nice if this website showed what it does before just saying "Sign up". Why should I give them my email address? I clicked the little logo at the bottom which brought me to another page which doesn't say much either about what it is.

<comment><USER3> I thought the same. Here's a video I found [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvCUIiAupJ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvCUIiAupJ8)

<comment><USER4> Just a disclaimer: that video is community created content and we (Ionic team) have no connection to it nor do we endorse it. That demo copy is just plain not cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those of you who have never used ionic ([http://ionicframework.com/](http://ionicframework.com/)) before I definitely recommend checking it out. It's an incredible framework for building mobile applications on top of Cordova. I've been using it for three mobile applications now it has decreased my dev time by probably 50%. The annoyances with testing, submitting to the app store, provisioning profiles, etc. are still there, but the actual development process is really enjoyable.

<comment><USER6> It also decreases your user satisfaction from my experience. Writing a full native app, versus an cordova based app is still a world of difference.

So for business apps, data input apps etc, cordova is fine, but dont try writing your next killer app with it..

But opinions might differ, i know.

<comment><USER5> Yeah that's a fair point. The real downside of using Cordova in my experience is performance, but I do believe that is, and will continue to change. Mobile devices are getting faster and if you compare a typical Cordova app on a two year old phone vs. a new phone it's a world of difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> (Creator creator here) - Cool seeing this on HN this morning. This tool is meant for Ionic Framework ([http://ionicframework.com/](http://ionicframework.com/)) developers to rapidly build UI for their apps. It's still early beta and there are definitely bugs, so any feedback or bug reports would be greatly appreciated!

<comment><USER7> Yay! I'm excited to try this out. But please don't make people sign up to try your tool. Just have a "try it" link and throw them into an anonymous session. If they want to save their work, _then_ ask them for their info. You'll capture a lot more curious-but-not-strongly-motivated users that way.

<comment><USER4> Good call, we have plans to embed this and also have a demo mode. That being said, signups are doing really well today!

<comment><USER7> I'm sure the numbers are good, but in your shoes I'd be looking at the bounce rate rather than total signups to prioritize a demo mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The only hint to what it actually does on its page is "A simpler approach to live prototyping". Further information requires signing up. I usually don't complain about this kind of stuff and happily watch a video to learn more about a product but having to sign up to see what it does? That's too much, sorry.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice first version.

I'm not sure what's the status of this project , but it took me 2 minutes to find a first obvious bug : i created a first page with a single button linking to a second page. First time i clicked the button, the transition worked, then i clicked back, then the button's link didn't work. (i only used "test mode" on Chrome,so i'm not sure the export has a different behavior).

<comment><USER4> Thanks for letting us know. It's "early beta" for sure. Will take a look at that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks cool! Clean design and simple drag / drop workflow. For non technical people, definitely worth a try!

First missing thing for me would be responsive images though. I can add an image, but unless it has the perfect size for the screen, it looks bad because the width does not adjust.

</comment><comment><USER11> Total n00b here.I took a look at Creator and it looks straight-forward with its drag and drop approach, but do I need to know more (e.g. a language or the Ionic framework) before I can do anything useful with it?

<comment><USER12> Ionic relies on CSS and AngularJS. Additionally, it is intended to be used with Apache Cordova, though it is not mandatory

<comment><USER11> I see. So I still can't quite jump right in and start making a basic app. No worries!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tried developing a hybrid app in Ionic about 6 months ago, about 8 hours in I had seen so many bugs and inconsistencies in the docs that I ragequit.

Looks like it still hasn't changed to something usable.

</comment><comment><USER14> I miss VB6

</comment><comment><USER15> Posted this yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629809)</comment>


CEO of DataCamp made 'uninvited physical contact' with an employee - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.in/The-CEO-of-a-data-science-learning-startup-worth-184-million-made-uninvited-physical-contact-with-an-employee-while-dancing-at-a-bar-sources-say/articleshow/68998946.cms <comment><USER2> Oh no! Someone touched someone on a dance floor! Crimes against humanity! Prepare the guillotine, heads most roll!</comment>


15 Chrome extensions for developers - <AUTHOR> https://usersnap.com/blog/chrome-extensions-for-developers/ <comment><USER2> Great share! Thanks. I'll be sharing this with my developer friends.</comment>


Infinite chess -– bishop cannon gun battery fires out bishop cannonballs - <AUTHOR> http://jdh.hamkins.org/a-position-in-infinite-chess-with-game-value-omega-to-the-4/ <comment><AUTHOR> There are insane positions in infinite chess, a kind of chess warfare, involving a bishop gun battery, where black can fire arbitrarily large bishop guns; each bishop moving out is a kind of bullet, and white must answer at every step. But white ultimately wins, even though black, "doomed", has these various harassment possibilities.</comment>


Kubernetes 1.5: Supporting Production Workloads - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kubernetes.io/2016/12/kubernetes-1.5-supporting-production-workloads.html?m=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Tons of cool new features \- forgiveness, taints/tolerations, disruption budget for fleet wide upgrades \- kubefed simplified federation tool \- helm 2.0 for package management \- and lots lots more.

Congrats to everyone!

Disclosure: I work at Google on Kubernetes.

<comment><USER2> Helm is getting better very quickly, they've just released v2.1.0 which allows you to define your own Helm plugins!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> DotNETes (Windows container and Hyper-v container) support is here!

Disclosure: I worked on DotNETes</comment>


Guardian backpedals on Whisper - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/03/11/guardian-backpedals-on-whisper-app-privacy-violations/

<comment><USER2> This seems like an awful long time to wait to backpedal on an issue that they strenuously claimed was true. Or maybe the headline is misleading.

<comment><USER3> We don't know how long their investigation took and they are doing a lot more to correct the issue than most online news sources do/have. Most hide it away in the footer, here they put it at the very top where you couldn't miss it and even pulled down the opinion piece. Unless it comes out they sat on this information for a long period of time I think the the Guardian handled this very well (Obviously the best outcome would have been not to write the articles in the first place but we all make mistakes, correcting them is what matters and they did that).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Smells of a Whisper legal department gone on overdrive in the litigious UK courts. At the end of the day, it doesn't really change much of the major findings that The Guardian reported on.</comment>


Ask HN: As senator at Congress FB hearing, what would you ask? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Most fundamental imho would be to have technically competent staff who can see through weasel words and tease out real answers, not lies couched in half- truths. As is generally the case in hearings of this sort.

Also I'd like senators to realize that you don't have to click or go anywhere near a like button, for it to track the fact that you visited a site. And all this tracking data is stored somewhere, forever as far as we know.

Also I'd like senators to understand that when a user opts in to share some data, they are often being enabled, by the platform, to share data of other users who never did opt in for that particular sharing. (I admit the users' FB friends did opt in to use Facebook, yes... they just didn't opt in with any knowledge of the specific sharing that their friend just did for them).

If they understand these things, they can ask better questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd ask Mark to solve a Captcha.

All jokes aside though, I feel like the senators should have been briefed by technology experts on the current industry practices and the capabilities and risks of current internet technology. The questions are pointless if they don't understand the responses and cannot come up with follow-up questions. It's generally really easy to side skirt a question with the first answer. Follow-up questions are where you get to into the meat.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would have asked about GDPR and why they're only applying policies to fulfill their legal requirements for it to EU citizens. Then some follow up on how they plan on identifying EU citizens from Americans, what if one is living in one place and one in another?

Isn't your fundamental business model always going to be in tension with your user's privacy?

Finally, given the way the site is structured specifically to broadcast at such a broad level with little control over the granularity people have over their ability to communicate, won't the psychology of the site always favor those most comfortable expressing their thoughts and opinions to large groups of people, specifically folks that are either socially awkward or have overt agendas? Doesn't this lend to a false sense of how one's peers perceive the world?

I could go on and on. Facebook is a steaming pile of shit, and humanity would be better off without it.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's clear that without legislation, GDPR-like for USA - this all is just a talk.

</comment><comment><USER6> Discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16805470](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16805470)</comment>


HotPlug allows hot seizure and removal of computers from the field - <AUTHOR> http://www.wiebetech.com/products/HotPlug.php <comment><USER2> I feel kind of obligated to mention that you can also solve the same problem if the machine is sitting around fully unlocked (not idle and thus cluing the disk encryption in) with a cold-boot attack -- <http://citp.princeton.edu/memory/> .

The short version: the contents of RAM are preserved pretty well during power loss if you cool the RAM chips, e.g. by dunking in liquid nitrogen or even just spraying with an inverted air duster, and the encryption key is stored in RAM so that the intended user can access the disk, so you can later recover the key from the frozen RAM.

</comment><comment><USER3> This would probably cause a lot of trouble for evidence being admissible if it was required for court. Using it would almost certainly cause lots of head scratching and WTF moments.

To be perfectly honest WDE is not a wide spread as people think - and probably 80% of the time it does crop up keys are usually willingly given up.

In a corporate scenario situations where you need to find the WDE key usually occur after someone shut the machine down anyway... ;)

(also: Health and Safety would have a fit: you'd almost certainly need to be a qualified electrician for them to let you do it..)

All in all: waste of time and money

</comment><comment><USER4> This technology has been around for quite a while. I was able to attend a High Technology Crime Investigation Association meeting because I was helping with the computer forensics coursework at a local college (featuring a police academy and administration of justice program) and I got to use this very device.

They've made it about as safe as can be. You just can't be a complete moron. As long as the data has been handled properly, yes it's still valid as evidence. Hooking a computer up to a UPS in-situ, then plugging in the equivalent of a USB mouse will not invalidate the evidence.

</comment><comment><USER5> Solutions:

1) Accelerometer (as someone already mentioned)

2) Trigger encryption upon disconnect from your particular network

3) GPS

4) Very simple one: re-route AC power inside the machine chassis through a SPST momentary switch glued to the underside. When the machine is lifted, power is cut.

5) More, that I won't list here, because they will end up in the swines' handbooks. Use your imagination.

</comment><comment><USER6> this is some evil shit.

<comment><USER6> Apparently authoritarianism is popular here. still evil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know its for use by trained professionals and all but _good lord_ , there's hot wires just hanging out all over the place. In the "advanced methods" they actually advocate disassembling the wall plug and cutting hot leads while the building wiring is _still live_.

If I were the forensics guy, I'd want hazard pay to use this thing. Is the "evidence" gathered by this method even valid after you've stuck thumb drives in it and driven it around in your van while its still running in read/write mode?

Edit: I've just thought of a wonderful addition to truecrypt involving the accelerometer... Anyone involved in the TrueCrypt Foundation here? Icanhazplz?

<comment><USER8> _Edit: I've just thought of a wonderful addition to truecrypt involving the accelerometer... Anyone involved in the TrueCrypt Foundation here? Icanhazplz?_

4 years ago when openbsd got a driver for the thinkpad accelerometers, i wrote a little utility that would watch the values and if it detected a sudden movement, it would run a script to lock the screen, remove ssh key passphrases from memory, etc.

i had an irrational fear of someone running into my office and stealing my laptop but i'd always forget it was running and would get up with the laptop and end up locking everything.

it would be useful in a server or desktop system since they should never move (and thus it could do something more drastic like a fast shutdown and power off) but since they never move they probably don't have accelerometers built in anyway.

<comment><USER9> But you could put an accelerometer hooked into the usb header on most motherboards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems pretty straightforward, conceptually. Sense the presence of AC voltage, and when the AC voltage goes below a certain threshold (e.g., it goes away), close some switches to connect an alternate AC supply in less time than it takes for the computer's power supply caps to completely discharge.

At least that's my guess on how it works.

<comment><USER11> There is no need for that. You just supply the same voltage at the same phase and frequency as the outlet. Then disconnect the outlet.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdRBWNkyaP4>

P.S. Prior art by G. Costanza

<comment><USER10> Funny clip :-)

If they were powering it from a DC source, like a battery, that would be the way to go. However, it looks like they are powering the device with a separate AC supply. Connecting one AC supply to another -- synchronizing voltage, frequency, and phase -- turns out to be difficult.

The most practical method of doing so is by first converting to DC before converting back to AC. In fact, the interconnects that link the regional power grids in the US are high-voltage DC, because, among other reasons, that allows the grids to be unsynchronized.

The advantage of the simple sensor-and-switch approach is that one need not worry about synchronizing the replacement AC source with the original AC source. The downside is that the window for the switchover is pretty small.

<comment><USER7> Synchronizing phase, and/or hitting that switchover window is trivial for even the cheapest microcontroller. One cycle at 60Hz seems fast but its an eternity for a 20Mhz uC.

I'm going to guess "detects the drop and hits the window" simply because this is how cheap UPS units work and I'd bet a month of lattes that its made of cheap UPS guts.

<comment><USER12> can you explain how synchronizing phase is trivial? the previous post made sense to me. it _is_ hard to shift phase.

i agree that you could not try, and instead "hit the gap" (in which case synchronizing phase isn't important), but if you don't do that, and instead want to connect two supplies at once, how does a microcontroller make that easy?

<comment><USER11> Firstly, you don't need to phase shift here, because you'll need to generate AC from DC (battery), so you may as well generate it in phase with the signal from the outlet.

Secondly, if you need a phase shifting device (for something else), depending on the requirements, there are a number of options starting with something as simple as an RC unit.

Thirdly, generating "AC" [periodically changing signal] of a given voltage and an (approximate) frequency in sync with some other signal is what CRT TVs did (for the CRT).

> it is hard to shift phase.

Not to the engineers building these kinds of devices

(I'm explaining high school to freshman Physics here)

<comment><USER12> maybe instead of explaining the obvious you should read the original comments. the comment i was defending was about converting ac to ac. _their_ conclusion was that it would need to go through dc (which no-one, including me, has disagreed with).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Nobody Speak": The Gawker vs. Hulk Hogan trial will change how you see the case - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/sundance-nobody-speak-gawker-hulk-hogan-peter-thiel-movie-2017-1 <comment><AUTHOR> I just saw this show up on Netflix even though it has been out since the beginning of the year, but now it's giving me all sorts of doubts.

Part of me thinks this is clearly being peddled by the Gawker folks to give them a better image and look like they were the victims. And given the previous discussions ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12203821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12203821)) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12203821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12203821)) on here, that seems like a plausible explanation.

The other thought has to do with the discussion on our mixed feelings after Peter Thiel funded the case ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12293870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12293870)). And this filmmaker, Knappenberger, has done documentaries about HN darlings such as Aaron Swartz. So on the other side, we have someone who is creating a film who has a level of credibility who is taking an interesting stance on seemingly empathizing with Gawker, and raising more questions about the precarious nature of the 1st Amendment.

I'm genuinely curious to hear what people think on here, particularly because when all of this was happening in real time, the sentiment seemed to be heavily anti-Gawker and then neutral-to-negative when Thiel was involved. It's making it very hard for me to discern what is going on in our media landscape and who is really to blame.

<comment><USER2> Gawker published a video of someone having sex, that was recorded without their consent. They then refused to take it down when ordered by a Federal judge. That's almost as scummy as it gets.

They deserved to loose the court case, and made it much worse by ignoring the judge. The only surprise was the amount of the damages awarded.</comment></comment>


The bizarre story of a man who tried to murder a 600-year-old tree - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/30/us/treaty-oak-gbs-great-big-story-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> What a very sad story. It's 600 YEARS OLD TREE! The bizzare lies in the man's reason to kill the tree.</comment>


Getting Started with Angular 2 and TypeScript - <AUTHOR> http://angular.lishman.io/angular/getting-started#/article/getting-started <comment><USER2> Great to load everything over System JS so that somebody needs to wait 6 seconds to render everything!

The weakest point of Angular 2, Tooling. This is as bad as inlining Templates.

<comment><USER3> The weakest point of all modern web development is tooling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awful. Since when do pages need a loading indicator? It's basically an example of why NOT to use bloated JS frameworks.</comment>


A confirmed security vulnerability in 30 web sites - <AUTHOR> http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2013/Mar/135

<comment><USER2> I am getting "Sorry, this page is temporarily unavailable while we perform necessary server maintenance." Good move.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure if you're saying you are getting that error from the link I shared or one of the sublinks or even trying the proof of concept but in any event here is a mirror of the main link just in case: <http://pastebin.com/Yyrt2qtp>

<comment><USER3> It's the URLs in the script on the susceptible sites that are showing that error if you access them yourself.

E.g. [http://assetform.itbusinessedge.com/acl/accountController.js...](http://assetform.itbusinessedge.com/acl/accountController.jsp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Vendor stores database IDs in cookies which are easily spoofed (USERID_COOKIE), allowing all user information to be accessed.

If this means what I think it means, why did it take until 2013 for this to be discovered?

<comment><USER5> You mean reported publicly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So as i understand it , if you put the user id in a cookie it allows anyone to "spoof" the server and login as any user but sending just a fake cookie ?</comment>


Scaling Feedback in a Useful Way - <AUTHOR> http://blog.supportive.io/scaling-feedback/

<comment><USER2> nice piece

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!</comment></comment>


CreepedIn – Calling out the creepiest assholes on LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://creeped.in/ <comment><USER2> More public shaming of people. Does this behavior simply come from misunderstanding of etiquette across sites ? Facebook etiquette is different than Linked etiquette, and those are different than twitter etiquette ? How does one truly figure out this network out ? I opt out because I'm afraid of being shamed. ex. Twitter it's rude to dot reply to someone ? I was shamed for that once before.

<comment><USER3> You're right that this type of public shaming is a bad idea.

Anonymous shaming gets the point across - this unwanted attention is relentless and inappropriate, but without the risks of public shaming.

> How does one truly figure out this network out?

When you meet a woman in a business context talk to her about her business. Don't talk to her about her eyes or smile or hairstyle. It's not rocket science.

<comment><USER2> It's not rocket science but it's not instinct either. What/who defines the appropriate behavior in a business context. I say this because I've read books on appropriate business behavior in the context american vs chinese businesses, and its different.

People have different interpretations of what appropriate behavior is in different contexts. Example: in some southern cities in the us, its weird or rude not to say hello to strangers on the street. In New york, its weird and rude to say hello to strangers on the street.

How do people actually learn whats appropriate in business context ?

Personally I read books like Corporate Confidential, How to make friends and influence people to learn it, but I found it far from easy.

edit: anecdote: I've had women business managers compliment my hair style, I didn't feel it was inappropriate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, these guys are creeps.

But calling someone a creep doesn't make them any less of a creep, nor does it prevent them from being a creep in the future. If anything, it is likely to make them defensive and make it harder for someone else to fix the problem.

Nobody hands you a rulebook when you start dating about how to do it. Particularly as a guy, if you do something inappropriate, you'll likely never find out about it--you'll just get rejected and never know why. It's only by luck that I've happened upon a set of behaviors that makes women feel safe around me. From this side of the fence I frequently hear women talking about how creepy someone is, but never telling that person. A lot of guys are creeps, not because they intend to cause any harm, but because nobody ever gave them any feedback about how they can do better.

Now, I realize it's not women's responsibility to educate men on how to pursue dating appropriately. But at least don't make the problem worse. If you don't want to tell the person their behavior is inappropriate, that's fine. But if you have a problem with someone you should address it with that person, not go around talking about them behind their backs. Going around calling people creeps isn't appropriate behavior either.

For my part, I try to explain to guys what they're doing wrong when I see it. But that's pretty difficult to do because calling people creeps has created a culture where it's nearly impossible to have a candid conversation about how men can learn to date appropriately.

<comment><USER5> I can understand that logic when it comes to social networks that aren't geared towards professional connections like LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, I'd expect these guys to be old enough to know better in general, and even if not, old enough to know that doing this on a professional networking site is creepy. We aren't talking about high school boys who are doing what they see work in movies/tv here.

<comment><USER4> > On LinkedIn, I'd expect these guys to be old enough to know better in > general, and even if not, old enough to know that doing this on a > professional networking site is creepy.

How would they know this? Just because they're older doesn't mean someone has explained this to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Socially awkward, unattractive men daring to talk to... women?!? How dare they?

 __begins weekly purge of LinkedIn messages from duckfaced, attractive female recruiters__

<comment><USER7> Imagine walking into an interview or phone screening and being hit on by the person who gets to decide if you are hired. After being dismissed for rejecting the creep's advances you will probably want to stop by HR on your way out. Actually HR might have been the appropriate move instead of a shame site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand the point of this site. Whilst Linkedin is obviously the wrong platform, these people aren't using vulgar or offensive language, they're simply using Linkedin's vast data and profiling information to their advantage - for a community that supports entrepenerialism and innovation I'm surprised to see a site like this on the homepage. labelling them as 'creeps' and calling them out on the internet/Hacker News seems a little harsh. I don't condone using Linkedin as a dating service (even though it does, arguably, hold very relevant data), but you do have to admire the spirit!

<comment><USER3> > these people aren't using vulgar or offensive language,

Yes they are. It is offensive to ignore the reason why women use that site (to make professional connections) and then hit on them.

That's not networking. There's no useful business going on when you tell someone that they have pretty eyes, while ignoring their business information.

<comment><USER8> I guess we disagree on that point then. I did say I don't condone it but calling these people out online as 'creeps' is harsh imo. Also you're assuming that all these 'creepy assholes' are men.

<comment><USER9> Nitpick: The previous poster is assuming that all the people being hit on are women. That doesn't equal an assumption that all creeps are men.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have to admit, there are some pretty hot recruiters on LinkedIn constantly coming to my profile wanting to connect.

But yeah, it's a professional network with your name attached. Bad form to say "nah, but how about a date instead?"

<comment><USER11> They are honeypotting young guys. It's good idea to use attractive female to recruit (especially young) males, as well as attractive male to recruit females.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's not a "Report" function next to each message?

</comment><comment><USER13> AAHH, someone called someone pretty online.. bring out the tar and feathers

</comment><comment><USER14> Found nothing wrong with Steward's message. Your "app" is a waste of cycles.

<comment><USER11> It's creepy because linkedin social network is environment where everyone is polite to each other and it is not the norm to make sexual advances in that environment. The same message from the same person would not be creepy if it would be on the dating site.

It's the same situation where a coworker saying a compliment in the office is creepy, but random guy grabbing ass in the club is not.

Creepiness is about deviation from social norm combined with the difference of attractiveness between individuals, not about absolute level of advance.

Most people can feel it naturally, others lack such skill. If you lack it, read what I wrote and you can usually assess pretty accurately if an action can be considered creepy or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Read through a few. Most are just very normal people saying hi to strangers. When did that get creepy? Everyone is a stranger the first time they meet. I've met more than one girlfriend online without knowing anything about them, and our first contact was pretty much exactly like those messages. If it's unwelcome, then just don't respond, or say "no thanks". Don't be an asshole and publicly humiliate people for reaching out and asking for a date.

Shame on whoever created that bullshit site.

<comment><USER3> The current first page on that site are men making comments about the physical attractiveness of women. Those women are not on the site to have people talking about their looks. They're there to meet other business people.

Do you really think it's acceptable to walk up to a stranger in some business context and tell them that they are very pretty, with a heart-melting smile, and then ask for a date?

<comment><USER13> I didn't go outside today to have people begging me for money, but they did. I did not go to the office to have that boring annoying guy talk to me, but he did. I did not go to the cafe to have the cute barista girl smile at me, but she did.. Stuff happens, so what? How far do do you have to have a stick up your ass to be so offended by this it makes you start a blog? FFS..

<comment><USER16> Through the lens of modern social justice zealotry, you have a right--and others have an obligation--to never offend or impose upon your secret, unspoken list of hang-ups and triggers. Anyone who does is fair game for public shaming.

<comment><USER3> That's a shameful misrepresentation of what's happening here.

<comment><USER15> You want to talk about shameful misrepresentation in the same post you're trying to defend this website? Really?

If anything's as shameful misrepresentation it's calling these people out as creeps and pervent, shaming them on a public website, now syndicated to the hundreds of thousands of readers of Hacker News, for simply hitting on a girl (in a not-so-creepy way, if I might add). Wrong venue, sure. But does it call for this?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Hilbert Hotel - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/the-hilbert-hotel

<comment><USER2> I am amused that only one interpretation of the facts is considered, and not its bizarre consequences.

At the end it is mentioned that the real numbers from 0 to 1 are not enumerable. Therefore there exist real numbers that are not in any particular enumerable set. Now consider the set of all potential finite definitions of a number using a finite set of symbols. This set turns out to be perfectly enumerable. Not all definitions in it will turn out to be well-formed, numbers have multiple definitions (for instance 5/10 is the same as 1/2) and many that are defined are not in the interval (0, 1). But this is no barrier. According to the classical view of mathematics, the set of definable numbers in (0, 1) is an enumerable set. Therefore almost all real numbers in that interval do not have any possible definition.

In what sense, I ask you, does a number with no possible definition actually exist?

Is there another way to look at this problem? It turns out that there is. If you take the constructivist view of things, things only exist if you can lay your hand on a concrete construction. "Constructions" that classical mathematics does not blink an eye at may not qualify. In particular this "enumeration" over possible definitions, and being able to sort through to figure out which definitions are valid, and which are equivalent, and which fall in the interval, is an example of something that is beyond the pale. Why? Well many of the possible definitions are computer programs. Figuring out which of them actually define numbers means doing things like solving the Halting problem. Which we can't actually do.

From the point of view of constructivism, "uncountable" does not mean "really big infinite set". It means "really convoluted set structure".

Yes, I know that constructivism lost. Nobody wants to consider these odd questions. But if somewhere in the middle of a proof you ask what it all means, you may find that classical mathematics doesn't necessarily make that much sense.

<comment><USER3> Do you mean: for each finite symbol set S, the set of all finite definitions using S is enumerable? That's clearly true. But then you're not really saying that there are numbers with no possible definition, just that there is no particular finite symbol set S that can define them all.

Or do you mean: the set of all finite definitions in _any_ finite symbol set is enumerable? That's not clear. Are there countably many such symbol sets?

<comment><USER2> What I mean is this.

Given a finite symbol set, the set of all finite definitions is enumerable. And the enumeration is simple. We enumerate all possible definitions of length 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. We order them first by length, and then by alphabetical order. We strike out all definitions that are not definitions, or define a number already defined. This leaves us with an enumeration of all numbers definable with that set of symbols. (Note, a constructivist will insist strenuously that this is not actually an enumeration.)

Given that there are uncountably many real numbers, uncountably many of them are not in that enumerable set, and therefore almost all real numbers cannot be defined using that finite set of symbols.

The possibility of uncountably many possible symbol sets with a similar plethora of possible associated definitions is irrelevant, because any potential symbol set that cannot ultimately be described in the finite alphabet that we use with the language English is irrelevant to us.

<comment><USER4> As a programmer I find constructivism is my default position if I think of math intuitively; perhaps that's why I butted heads so much with many of my math teachers. But, your argument actually makes me less sure of my agreement with it: it seems clear that at bottom constructivism must lead to the rejection of the concept of continuously variable quantities. It is the horns of a dilemma: if you reject Cantor you reject the existence of "analog" as even an admissible _concept_ , on the other hand if you accept continuous variability then you must also accept the shocking conclusion that the overwhelming majority of the set you assert you believe exists (the reals) cannot even be described or calculated.

<comment><USER2> But constructivism does not give up continuity. All of the traditional definitions carry over.

What you do have to give up, though, are discontinuous functions on continuous sets. They are not well defined for numbers that are the result of an infinite sequence converging near the border of the discontinuity. You can still give them a formal treatment, of course, but they aren't really functions.

However if you're attached to your step functions, never fear. It would not be the first function-like thing that isn't a function. For another example consider the well-known derivative of the step function, the Dirac delta. Not actually a function in classical mathematics, though it is certainly useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On a tangentially related topic, the human genome is essentially a Hilbert curve in real life. It's behind a paywall, but in the very bottom thumbnail you can kind of get the idea: <https://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5950/289.figures-only></comment>


Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity? - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/inventing-god <comment><USER2> My understanding, after reading the memoir of Bernal diaz Del Castillo[0] (who was an eye witness of the conquest of Mexico), is that it was Montezuma II who purposefully spread rumors saying that the conquistador were returning gods so that people would stop fighting them and start trading with them.

It was not superstitious belief from ignorant savages, it was a political move.

[0]: which I highly recommend, they are available on project Gutenberg for free: [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm)

<comment><USER3> > My understanding, after reading the memoir of Bernal diaz Del Castillo[0] > (who was an eye witness of the conquest of Mexico)

Diaz's account was written 50 years after it had happened and is generally considered by modern scholars to be of dubious accuracy and primarily intended as a self-serving defense of his own wealth later in life.

As Adorno writes, "At issue were not the wars long since won or lost but rather the rights to the rewards of conquest. Should royal grants to conquistadores endure in perpetuity? Was it legitimate to enslave Indians when they had not been captured as enemies in war? Did the natives of the Antilles owe further royal or personal service to the Spaniards or should they be allowed relief in order to rebuild their dwindling populations?"

The linked article has the benefit of 400 years of additional scholarship beyond Diaz's account.

<comment><USER4> > The linked article has the benefit of 400 years of additional scholarship > beyond Diaz's account.

Scholarship on what documents? If you don't have new evidence, all you have is every generation's new academic fads applied to the same old text. This isn't Physics. Progress is unlikely.

<comment><USER3> The linked article discusses the additional documents beyond Diaz's account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> European technology was just that much more advanced. It's like joining a game of Civ around turn 60 when your opponents have already researched, traded, and discovered a bunch of tech. When your civilizations meet you will just not have a chance. The whole mediterranean was a meeting grounds for dozens of civilizations, if not more, where for millenia people traded goods and technologies. It was really a matter of luck that the ancestors of the Aztecs picked a far away land that was tough to farm and little animals to domesticate, and no one else around to share information with.

</comment><comment><USER6> That was a pretty good read. There may be lessons there for today - the power of shared stories on social media and advertisement. Flood a communication channel with a message that reinforces your political objectives and they become seemingly almost inevitable.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised not to find any mention to the diseases brought by the conquistadores.

Quick glance at literature seems to indicate a consensus on the outsized importance of diseases in demographic changes in the Americas. Just over 100 years before the arrival of Cortés, Europe was going through similar epidemic disaster with the Black Plague also brought through intercontinental contact between people's. Then, the plague was also seen by many as divine intervention.

While it does seem self serving to propagate the message that Europeans were seen as gods it does not seem unusual for people to turn to religious explanations when faced with existential threats.

edit: misspellings

<comment><USER8> The diseases do not appear to have been a particularly major factor in the defeat of the Aztec Triple Alliance, mostly occurring after the polity had already collapsed.

<comment><USER9> Disease was indeed a huge factor, but like all imperial conquests, the technology advantage (steel weapons / armor in this case) likely made the biggest difference.

<comment><USER8> No, the biggest advantage was uniting all the disaffected neighbors to do the dirty work of fighting the war. There were at least 80,000 native allies of Cortes fighting the Aztecs, without whom the Spanish would have been slaughtered.

Most imperial expansion in the New World tended to rely on "ally with my neighbors' neighbors to defeat my neighbors, and now that my neighbors' neighbors are now my neighbors, turn against them using _their_ neighbors" as the primary strategy for expansion. The technological advantage is often grossly overstated, especially since natives were eager buyers of European military arms, and Europeans were eager sellers of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> According to [1], slaved population by Aztec was sacrificed by the thousands, so I could see the slaved people treating the newcomers as gods, or more likely liberators and joining them in the war against Aztec Empire.

[1] [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/feeding-gods- hundred...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/feeding-gods-hundreds- skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital)

</comment><comment><USER11> I feel like if I were an Aztec and came across a mysterious figure covered from head to foot in silver plates and on top of a massive beast, I'd be highly intimidated albeit curious as to what he was. If I saw him off the creature and possibly out of the silver plates, then I'm not so sure that I'd see him as a deity.

</comment><comment><USER12> Malcolm Gladwell also talked about it in the book "Talking to Strangers." It revolved around a breakdown on communication between the two and assumptions that they each had for the other.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wait, how come "teotl" shares a similar radix and meaning as "theos"?

<comment><USER14> For the same reason the Aborigine word for "dog" is "dog" \-- it's just a coincidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For the same reason why children who have a near-death experience sometimes report the "white light" as "meeting Santa Claus."

An encounter occurred between people with vastly different levels of technology and ability, and it was contextualized in the most comprehensible way.

</comment><comment><USER16> Because it makes the Conquistadors' conquests of the New World seem more appetising? Because it downplays the indiscriminate conquering of the Americas?

Spain commemorates the day Columbus discovered America as its national day, as it ushered in a golden age for Spain, which is true enough. But with the atrocities inflicted by Spain (along with the other European powers) on the natives in the New World, it may have become harder to feel that such a moment should be celebrated.

And tales that the Aztecs simply handed their lands to the Spanish, rather than the Spanish conquering it, may help people feel a little less weary about the celebration.

But I am merely speculation. Plenty of retelling of history tends to decorate it as best possible (or omit the bad parts) for our side. In much the same fashion, I'd imagine Austrian history classes simply stops in 1866.

<comment><USER17> Spaniard here. I don't think I've ever read or heard a sugarcoated version of the conquest. In fact it's usually the opposite.

October 12 is indeed the day Columbus set foot on the New World and also our national holiday, but I fail to see how it's different from other holidays such as Thanksgiving.

<comment> saiya-jin I would be _really_ surprised if you actually got raw version of history as it happened at school. Very few countries actually admit properly their past mistakes (Germany and WWII might be rather an exception).

Raw version would be somewhere along the lines of "our ancestors were among the most horrible arrogant ignorant humans that ever lived if measured by the amount of evil done unto the others, and we are deeply ashamed to be their descendants". The fact that you actually celebrate Columbus' discovery as national day strongly indicates against that.

I mean, go to places like Potosi in Bolivia to see all the horror and misery caused by spanish slavers. 8 freaking million human beings were basically butchered by spanish just in this one single spot to mine silver to make spain richer. Not that it helped them in long run considering current state of spanish economy.

<comment><USER10> Do you have any sources of that? Claiming 8 million people were slaved is a bit of stretch, don't you think?

<comment> saiya-jin Literally the first thing that comes from google search of this. Plus they claim this number when you are actually there in their museum dedicated specifically to this horrible part of their history. Visited last year, some 'jobs' around smelting had survivability in mere weeks because of all the toxicity.

Plus took a trip quite deep into the mines themselves. Imagine mountain that is almost 4800m high, drilled through like a proper swiss emmental cheese (they claim around 500 different entrances to tunnel system).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Are Your Rights If Border Agents Want to Search Your Phone? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/business/border-enforcement-airport-phones.html <comment><USER2> The US civil discourse sometimes strikes me..

For example if the biggest (?) US newspaper advises you to travel with as little data as possible because the gov. border controls are percieved as morally outrageous and there's just no practical way to deal with this issue other than hiding.

<comment><USER3> That part was also very striking to me. What sort of forensics do they run on the phone? Is there anything stopping someone from having multiple Roms on their phone? I have a feeling they're just looking at the application layer.

Anyway.... it's land of the free! If you need a lawyer you must be guilty. If you resist you must really have something to hide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know TSA looks for communications with extremists over Facebook or something. But why would they think they could identify suspicious activity in such a short time? They aren't professional or competent enough to join real law enforcement, why do they pretend to be intelligence officers?

If someone wants to join a terrorist organization or something, and the FBI didn't identify them by the time they get to the airport, TSA ain't stopping them. So just let us pass in peace

<comment><USER5> Maybe this is the answer:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been traveling internationally for years, and am scheduled to go in a few months to the Dominican Republic. The only part of the trip that is giving me anxiety is returning to customs. I'm not sure what my best course of action is at this point. Go and hope for the best? Leave my phone at home and deal with the inconvenience?

<comment><USER7> The Dominican Republic isn't a Muslim country. I doubt you will be searched.

<comment><USER6> The NASA employee that is referenced in this article was traveling from Chile, which is also not a Muslim country. It seems as though they are broadening these searches.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A new way of blogging about Prolog - <AUTHOR> https://blog.klipse.tech/prolog/2019/01/01/blog-prolog.html?show <comment><USER2> This is nice and useful to me. I'm trying to build a blog platform like that, but I tend to use web assembly to support different languages

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here: Let's join our forces</comment></comment>


Two-Thirds of Adults Get News from Social Media - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulfletcher/2016/05/28/two-thirds-of-adults-get-news-from-social-media/?linkId=25050488 <comment><USER2> Deceptive headline. Second sentence of the article:

> _Two in 10, or 18%, report getting news that way often._

So it sounds like the headline statistic includes anyone who has read even a single news story they found on social media. That's totally different than what's implied.

</comment><comment><USER3> So do many journalists. In some fields, news stories seem to be almost exclusively based on Tweets, forum posts, Reddit posts and Youtube videos.

I personally still check some news sites from time to time, but yes, the majority of my news comes from social media sites and internet communities now.

</comment><comment><USER4> I exclusively get my news from social media - most notably HN and Reddit, also facebook and Twitter. Occasionally a BBC breaking news thing will happen on my phone which would be the only times I don't get my news from social media.

</comment><comment><USER5> With tradition news sources you often know the bias of the source in advance. When reading some seemingly informed comment on Facebook/Reddit you don't know who the entity behind that comment really is.</comment>


The Case for case sensitivity - <AUTHOR> http://blog.micropledge.com/2007/07/the-case-for-case-sensitivity/

<comment><USER2> User('ben') -- what does that even mean? Find 'ben' in a database? Create 'ben'? Get the 'ben' singleton? Maybe I've spent too much time in the land of lisp, but I'd like the code I read to actually tell me what it's trying to do.

I'm a fan of case insensitivity for pedagogic and typographical reasons. If you watch the H-P SICP videos, you'll see Sussman and Abelson writing code in upper case, lower case, whatever case. `Lambda' and `cond' and `if' are words, not hieroglyphs, and I want to be able to write them, and write about them, without having to do typographically stupid things like starting sentences with lowercase letters.

That said, there are times when you may want case sensitivity, but I'd rather create a "I need case sensitive tokens" kludge than deal all case sensitive tokens, all the time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd take this a step further and say that syntactically-significant case, a la Haskell, is a good idea. You already use case to disambiguate to human readers, so why should the compiler be oblivious to the distinction?</comment>


Justine Bateman (Family Ties) is a freshman at UCLA, intends to get CS degree. - <AUTHOR> http://lacurrents.com/articles/justine-bateman-class-of-twothousandsixteen/ It's mentioned in the article, but her Tumblr is http://getacollegelife.tumblr.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's mentioned in the article, but she's blogging her progress at <http://getacollegelife.tumblr.com/>

It looks like she wasn't able to get into the CS program just yet, but her letter requesting a change of major is pretty interesting, too: [http://getacollegelife.tumblr.com/post/43498821312/change- of...](http://getacollegelife.tumblr.com/post/43498821312/change-of-major- essay-letter)</comment>