Seattle Man Hovers Drone Over a Family's House for 'Research' - <AUTHOR> http://betabeat.com/2013/05/seattle-man-hovers-drone-over-a-familys-house-for-research/

<comment><USER2> Police can legally do this without a warrant.

In Florida v. Riley, from the US Supreme court, it was ruled that police did not need a warrant to hover over someone's house with a helicopter to peer into the roof of a greenhouse to check for marijuana.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Riley>

<comment><USER3> The police can do a lot of things without a warrant that you and I shouldn't and often can't do. For instance: they can pull your car over and then shine a flashlight through the windows to inspect what's visible in plain sight in the passenger compartment.

<comment><USER4> They can pull your car over with cause, yes. This is something we cannot do. However, it's not illegal for you or I to view the contents of someone's car, even with a flashlight. If it's in plain sight, it's perfectly legal.

There's a lot that maybe we shouldn't do but is completely legal anyway.

<comment><USER5> Does it matter that they may go to jail when you've had your ass kicked or worse[1] (personal friend). Crazy is everywhere and you don't really know when it's going to pop up.

[1] <http://brandonhydrick.com/brandons-death/>

<comment><USER4> While your friend's death is tragic, like you said crazy is everywhere and you don't really know when it's going to pop up. From the sounds of it, your friend did nothing to purposefully agitate his attacker and had no way of predicting the possible outcome. From that point of view, you may as well argue that you shouldn't merge lanes on the highway if someone is in sight of you, because that could set them off.

Yeah, it's possible to predict a poor outcome from something like this. It's possible to predict a poor outcome from anything. It all depends on how much fear you want to live with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm very happy to see the Capitol Hill Seattle blog[1] get a nod in this article. Justin, the creator, has been doing a fantastic job of reporting on news that's relevant to Capitol Hill for several years, now, and he's also proving that 'hyperlocal' news _can_ actually work under certain circumstances.

Justin's reporting lacks the hyperbolic nature of TV news, and keeps me on top of things that are actually relevant to me. Plus, he's just a stand-up guy.

edit: crap, CHS is down. I wonder if that's my fault, or the Atlantic and BetaBeat articles. Here's a cached version from yesterday: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:P3SuMBN...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:P3SuMBN6H0cJ:www.capitolhillseattle.com/+capitolhillseattle&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

[1] <http://www.capitolhillseattle.com>

<comment><USER7> Great blog, good guy. Community is involved too. He's pretty dedicated, though, not sure you could get the same effect with a nationwide network of stringers.

I'm on the lookout for this drone guy, btw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would argue this at least creates a cause of action (civil law claim/lawsuit) for Nuisance, for disrupting one's right of private enjoyment of their property. Such a argument might lose and I am not aware of any criminal charge on point, in which case the defacto remedy...flying drones over this guys house 24/7 until he agrees (in writing) to no longer fly his drones over/near private properties.

</comment><comment><USER9> _> The man told him that he was doing "research" and the camera was transmitting the images to his glasses._

Sounds like some pretty irresponsible "research".

Even if the _intent_ is utterly benign, it's pretty easy to see how this could end badly. I'd say drone-man lucked out if this is how it all went down.

<comment><USER10> Unless of course his intent was to draw attention to the fact that this is going to become a major problem, and soon, due to the absence of regulation around drone airspace, in which case, success!

<comment><USER11> Success? Sounds like a good way to get in trouble in more ways than one. I don't think I would have been as gracious as "ok I'm going to go call the police".

Even if he was trying to bring the issue to light... there has got to be better ways then potentially getting your ass kicked by strangers.

<comment><USER4> And if flying the drone is legal, you would have been taken to jail for assault, thereby turning the man into a martyr. You can't kick someone's ass out of the blue for doing something that's perfectly legal to do.

<comment><USER12> You could always compromise the drone via a hose or some such, without any physical confrontation with the owner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have one of those drones -- and I also live in Seattle. I mostly just fly it in public parks where most people think it's pretty cool. I can completely understand why people think it's creepy though, and definitely foresee municipal law challenging airspace rights.

People in the area are pretty sensitive to the concept especially considering the local police department's recent effort to use patrol drones (the program was recently cancelled).

<comment><USER14> How much does it cost? What's the battery life?

<comment><USER13> They run about 300 bucks -- the stock battery will last about 15-20 minutes of fly time, but you can upgrade that pretty easily

<comment><USER14> Thanks. I guess I should have also asked where to buy one?

<comment><USER13> got mine off Amazon - [http://www.amazon.com/Parrot-AR-Drone-Quadricopter- Controlle...](http://www.amazon.com/Parrot-AR-Drone-Quadricopter-Controlled- Android/dp/B007HZLLOK/)

Here's a picture of my coworkers inside the office that I flew up to scope out -- <http://i.imgur.com/sSpxQAL.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I imagine a full-on garden hose would bring the thing down or interfere with it. Of course you have to see it first, but if it's there over your property you'd have an educational court adventure in your near future.

<comment><USER16> I can see it now: automated water cannons on top of every house as anti- aircraft/drone! Safe for wildlife (birds) but not for electronics. Then, waterproofed drones. Followed by silly-string cannons to gum up any rotors. Where will it end?

<comment><USER17> It's not the water that's the problem, it's the force of the impact. Quad- copters are very lightweight, they'd easily be thrown wildly off balance by a good burst of water.

<comment><USER18> You underestimate quadcopter AI's ability to correct for experienced forces!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyGJBV1xnJI>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sounds sort of like the Creepy Cameraman[1], also from Seattle. I wonder if they are related. Both instances seem like they could have the aim of making a point/raising an issue.

[1] [http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2012/10/31/who-is- seatt...](http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2012/10/31/who-is-seattles- creepy-cameraman/)

</comment><comment><USER20> "Air is a public highway" Supreme Court ruled in 1946. Maybe it is time to consider a minimum altitude, which must be obeyed outside public areas? Something like 300 or 1000 feet depending on local conditions (building height, terrain etc). Would that make sense?

</comment><comment><USER21> This stranger seems to have achieved his objective of demonstrating a capability and pushing the conversation about drones along.

The home owner could have dones his part by destroying the drone (I'd prefer a shotgun but if it really was that close simply shooting a net at it would have worked) such that the "researcher" would suffer a property loss which could then give him action to sue.

Then we could have the whole thing walk through the court system and draw out the folks who are pushing behind the scenes because they would not want case law on the books that made done use over private property ruled illegal or property owners destroying drones over their property ruled legal.

</comment><comment><USER22> So, if the couple had shot down the drone (by a gun with a legal permit, or some other means, e.g. slingshot or a counter drone) would the creepy man be able to press charges?

<comment><USER23> Better yet, hack the drone's controls and send it after its owner :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> _The man told him that he was doing "research" and the camera was transmitting the images to his glasses._

I find myself unsurprised that this guy was probably wearing Google Glasses...

<comment><USER25> FPV[1] flight controls have been around a lot longer than Google Glass.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Person_View>

</comment></comment><comment> matt-attack So is "drone" the new word for RC plane/helicopter?

<comment><USER26> Look, I build these things as a hobby. I am not a hysterical nay sayer. But..........

Firstly, planes and helicopters are a lot harder to fly. So there is a skill barrier that puts most people off.

Secondly, these drones are very stable. Couple that with now cheap HD corrected cameras, and any one can literally spy right in to your daughter's bed room.

And this is the real shit of life right now. Almost everything fun and cool is also threat to privacy and freedom, as much as it protects privacy and freedom.

The game has changed. Even a year ago my drones were "cool". People loved to see them and we fascinated by them. Today, they fear them, they are suspicious of them, and now my motives get questioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This immediately brought to mind the story by Heinlein in which an argument is made that several world countries "own" the moon, since land rights should be extended from Earth ground level into the heavens: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Sold_the_Moon>

> _Harriman seeks to avoid government ownership of the Moon. As it passes > directly overhead only in a narrow band north and south of the equator, he > uses a legal principle that states that property rights extend to infinity > above a land parcel. On that basis, Mexico, Central and parts of South > America, and other countries in those latitudes around the world, have a > claim on the Moon. The United States also has a claim due to Florida and > Texas. By arranging for many countries to assert their rights Harriman > persuades the United Nations to, as a compromise, assign management of the > Moon to his company._

<comment><USER28> You mean those moon plots that have been sold on radio and late-night TV for decades on TV weren't real?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/opinion/the-man-who- sells-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/opinion/the-man-who-sells-the- moon.html?_r=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> How is this particular incident a legal grey area? It should be covered under peeping Tom laws. Does WA state not have these?

ETA: Did some more research and found a claim that only nine states have peeping Tom laws. Am surprised.

</comment><comment><USER11> My paintball gun would have been put to good use in this instance.

<comment><USER4> Destruction of personal property?

<comment><USER19> Who says he would be shooting at the drone? :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My once fun hobby is now creepy :(

</comment><comment><USER30> Completely copy and paste blog spam. Original story: [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/so- thi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/so-this-is-how- it-begins-guy-refuses-to-stop-drone-spying-on-seattle-woman/275769/)

EDIT: Yes, downvote me to oblivion because I pointed out this post is in blatant violation of HN rules:

 _Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter._

The content is _exactly_ the same as _The Atlantic_ article. The Atlantic is not where the incident was first reported, but it is the source of all the legal analysis and commentary on the issue.

<comment><USER13> Well if we're playing that game; a local Seattle blog reported it first: [http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2013/05/chs-x-files- capito...](http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2013/05/chs-x-files-capitol-hill- drone-pilot-spotted-glowing-orbs-phone-thief-on-wheels/)</comment></comment>


What CEOs Do - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-ceos-do-3add9d41397d <comment><USER2> If the CEO is primarily focusing on one of these domains (product, operations, PR) who is the individual responsible for debugging the flawed human systems everywhere else in the company?

In my opinion, every level of leadership is accountable for every action of every individual under them (because they either hired the person, or hired someone who did), and thus the CEO is the only role uniquely qualified to fix everything. However I get the impression most hole themselves up in their office with some charts, talking to the board, and meeting with other C-level people (but rarely going to the front-lines).

It's my experience that an implicit class system is formed (based on resumes) where titles only associate with like titles, even when many of the most brilliant individuals are not even in management at all.</comment>


Modern C++ gamedev: thoughts and misconceptions - <AUTHOR> https://vittorioromeo.info/index/blog/gamedev_modern_cpp_thoughts.html <comment><USER3> After years of experience writing code for games, I find that the dumbest code is the best code. It doesn't matter if it's C# or C++, whenever I've used something like reactive extensions or template metaprogramming, it has been a terrible mistake every single time. Make your code simple, dumb and verbose all the time. Avoid using any complex abstractions or any overcomplicated syntactic sugar and you'll have a codebase that anyone can jump into and quickly be able to add features without introducing bugs (at least less likely). This matters more than anything else.

<comment><USER4> Matches my experience as well in the hobby gamedev realm. I can give an anecdote, I'm involved in a "private server" dev community for an old niche MMO from 2003. There exists 3 codebases: first the original code written in a windows-style C++ with heavy use of inheritance, custom collections, Hungarian notation, etc. The second is a collaborative open source version that is written in a naive/basic C++ style (e.g. c w/ classes) and the third is a from-scratch reimplementation in modern C++ with all the bells and whistles, cmake, heavy use of templates, etc.

Despite the modern c++ version being the highest quality and the original windows-style version being the most fully featured, the vast majority of people use and prefer the rinky-dink basic c++ version. Simply for the reason that you don't need to be a senior level dev to contribute meaningfully to the code.

<comment><USER5> So, naive code attracts naive programmers? I'm not sure this is the ringing endorsement you take it to be.

I should also add that Hungarian notation is the prototypical example of dumb, verbose code, that wants to make individual lines easier to understand by dragging type information into every single variable name.

<comment><USER6> > I should also add that Hungarian notation is the prototypical example of > dumb, verbose code

If used wrongly. Joel Spolsky wrote a whole post on it[0], but the TL;DR is that you should use the notation to differentiate between variables of the same type. For example, you might have world coordinates and object coordinates in a game script. Correctly used Hungarian notation would denote them, for example, with `wPosX` and `pPosX`. Even though they're both int (or float), you can easily see that you shouldn't assign one to the other.

Using them to notate types, however, as in `iPosX`, is completely useless. I fully agree with that.

[0] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/05/11/making-wrong- code-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/05/11/making-wrong-code-look- wrong/)

<comment><USER7> For dynamic languages sure. For strongly typed languages it's better to just use the type system to prevent those kind of things. C++ doesn't have great support here (lots of boilerplate needed) & usually people reach for Boost Units or Boost strong types but it's not that hard ([https://www.fluentcpp.com/2016/12/08/strong-types-for- strong...](https://www.fluentcpp.com/2016/12/08/strong-types-for-strong- interfaces/)). Mozilla is also exploring this specifically for coordinate spaces & whatnot too ([https://research.mozilla.org/2014/06/23/static- checking-of-u...](https://research.mozilla.org/2014/06/23/static-checking-of- units-in-servo/)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reading the twitter thread he mentioned in the introduction gave me a very bad impression of the author. He started a nonconstructive flamewar, called all constructive criticism misguided, and thereby shit on half a dozen video game development VETERANS. The arguments by Omar in particular are worth reading much more than this article.

Also, all his code examples are bad. No one would build a texture atlas the way he did for example, and in any practical algorithm one wouldn't be able to use folds like he did. So suddenly one would have to use something entirely else like a for loop or std::accumulate().

<comment><USER9> Bloomberg has a higher hiring bar than most, if not, all game studios. I like how you fallback on seniority while the video game industry isn't exactly known for top tier talent.

<comment><USER10> It takes a special kind of arrogance to assume that you know better than the people who've been successful in a completely unrelated field.

It reminds me of the arrogance displayed in the Twitter thread, which is a shame. I think like someone said, experience is valued only by those who have it.

I've been there too though, I was that arrogant young programmer once thinking all these old-timers weren't a match for my technical skills. It usually passes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I do agree with various points in the article, it is kind of funny that the author works in the financial sector and has, apparently, no experience in working on big games devloped in long stretches by hundreds of people at the same time: for example, this article about "C++ and gamedev" shows examples from his own Quake VR codebase, an insanely cool but clearly one-man project started and brought forward by he himself alone...

<comment><USER12> Does the author have no experience developing C++ on large teams or are you asserting that large team game dev is unique compared to other industries?

<comment><USER11> > or are you asserting that large team game dev is unique compared to other > industries?

Well, that would be a good question to ask to the author, since he titled the article "modern C++ gamedev" and not simply "modern C++" although to me what is discussed seems to be general enough, and "gamedev" here happens to be just the type of project the code comes from... To me, it does not look like he makes any significant contribution on how "modern C++ could serve specifically games development". IMHO he has detected that people in games react strongly to content about C++ and he benefits from the additional exposure he gets by putting "gamedev" in his C++ articles/tweets/anything (which is something I am not judging btw).

Personally, I do think that when your code is simulating a whole parallel universe using a not-super-high-level language, you might end up with challenges regarding readability and flexibility of the raw code that other softwares might not encounter. Not being really part of that industry I feel I can't know for sure, and therefore I have applied the same reasoning to him since he is also not part of that industry, it seems.

<comment><USER12> I have experience with large scale high performance C++, albeit not in games specifically. The recommendations in my experience are very sane, conservative even. I think at this point the onus is on critics to substantially respond to the points given.

I don't think questioning credentials is particularly elucidating here. I don't see any reason the entire thesis of the article is flawed.

As to the throwaway reference to gamedev, the article is in response to shade thrown by gamedevs, attempting to concede specific concerns and propose solutions.

<comment><USER8> That's the thing though. Gamedevs aren't throwing shade, it's a strawman. Look at the twitter threas mentioned in the introduction and you'll see a bunch of civil gamedev industry veterans offering constructive criticism, only to be shut down with "that's misguided" and no counter argument. It gets old fast and it's been like this for dozens of years. I'm not surprised that they stop caring.

<comment><USER12> If you are making the point that Twitter arguments are counterproductive, I agree. I will concede all objections about tone because my life is too short to get dragged into Twitter tone policing.

I do find the recommendations interesting and would like to keep the conversation about them. I would especially like to avoid gatekeeping and No True Scotsman arguments in a thread about code.

<comment><USER8> No, I did not make the point that Twitter arguments are counterproductive at all o the contrary this one looks very productive EXCEPT for the author.

So now you're straw manning me as well, then say I'm gatekeeping and no true- scotsmanning. I don't appreciate that all and am therefore out.

<comment><USER12> \- winterismute questioned qualifications to have a position on writing C++ for game dev. That is gatekeeping and No True Scotsman.

\- At least someone on Twitter called some tweets "retarded", etc., so OP thought to continue the conversation by ignoring nonsense and restating concerns in a healthier tone. This post _is_ his attempt to be productive, apparently.

\- Any perceived slight against you, you have inferred. No offense intended.

\- Perhaps HN discussions are only marginally better than Twitter if people can't avoid making discussions about fold operators personally.

<comment><USER11> > winterismute questioned qualifications to have a position on writing C++ for > game dev. That is gatekeeping and No True Scotsman

Well, not really. Some of the people on twitter (and the author himself) basically pointed out that "one of the main reason we do not use that coding style is that, despite the advantages, when you need to work on a codebase that requires both performant simulation of the planet and rapid experimentation of mechanics at the same time by hundreds of de-localized devs, you end up seeing many of its limitations". If you want to handle this argument, you need to have a clear idea of what are the priorities in such a scenario, which I doubt the author has. Even more interestingly, the article does not raise the point "this is how I write modern C++, I think it will benefit all the industries" but specifically seems to want to argue that this style helps gamedev particularly despite showing basically no domain-specific observations, nor anything that convinces me he knows what are the critical problems in the "triple A game" scenario... I don't think I can call this gatekeeping if I am not convinced - even by reading only the article - <USER2> the author has a good grasp of the fundamental problems involved in the development of big games, or not?

<comment><USER12> The piece makes the point that the features presented have negligible to no downsides in the context of gamedev (and other contexts as well), and your argument doesn't refute that other than by assertion. It instead tries to disqualify the relevant points based on the credentials of the author.

While making big assumptions about the author's experience in the process. It's plausible he has experience in complex, performance-sensitive, highly collaborative C++ as well. The whole argument hinges on partial information and disbelief, really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There was a good comparison about those floating around:

[https://imgur.com/a/u1N4Fpy](https://imgur.com/a/u1N4Fpy)

For me the code on the right is far more readable and easier to understand.

<comment><USER14> The code on the right feels in _mildly_ bad faith to me.

      - consts are dropped
      - variable definitions are merged onto multiple lines
      - usefully named constants like `nPixels`, `nBytes` are elided
      - the `idx` lambda is inlined

The net effect, for an initial skim, is that the code on the right looks terser and simpler. But in reality many of the "short cuts" hurt the long term quality of the code.

<comment><USER15> I love C++17 fold expression, but...

Local consts are not particularly useful, especially for things like ints. Compilers know it's const, and a reader doesn't need to worry about it in a local scope.

width, height usually come in pairs, so putting them on the same line is usual.

nPixels and nBytes are not used more than once so they are not useful abstractions, and the pattern of `width * height * bytes_per_pixel` is so common that there is no ambiguity about what it does.

The idx lambda is probably a distracting abstraction which requires the reader to think of it in a different context than the immediate what pixel goes to where. Again, the pixel moving pattern in the right is so common it's familiar to most people working in similar areas, and in terms of error-prone both are not better than the other.

<comment><USER16> When I read that it's const I can in my mind "drop it". It's there, I know where the value was set and don't have to skim any longer for updates. It isn't for the compiler, its for me, the next guy who has to read your code.

Same thing with doing two separate things in the loop. Not only can it stop the the compiler from optimisations from time to time (the c++ compiler is very clever... but many times it gives up), I've had speed increases in breaking it up into several loops, but I also have to search and in my mind break things up. Very easy to do when I'm writing the code (and I'd probably do the same because of laziness), but quite annoying when I read someone else's code that does it.

<comment><USER15> If you as a reader need const to make sure a local variable is not changed this is usually a symptom of this function being too long to see at a glance. And quite often as code changes I do need to make some local variable non- const, and it quickly becomes annoying to fiddle back and forth enforcing const-ness of every local variable.

The argument about optimization is almost certainly premature optimization. Most of the time how you write a loop doesn't matter. You only find out what matters via profiling and refactor accordingly.

<comment><USER17> Most people hate const at first (myself included) but once you get used to it, it really does reduces mental load. Not having to glance around is precisely the point, its not a big thing but it does help.

<comment><USER15> I stopped using it for locals after it increased my mental load. The maintenance cost of const for all local variables is huge during refactor like you're fighting it just to get things done. And in most cases where the type of a variable matters I do have to glance around like when I need to remove a variable or change its type or refactor its dependent variables so const doesn't really for those cases.

<comment><USER17> If you have to assign to a const variable during a small refactor, then maybe it shouldn't have been const in the first place? I'm struggling to imagine examples where this is a real problem

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I agree with the author on many things - parameter packs however.. I've looked at them several times. Even if you get a grasp on their syntax, I've almost never been in a situation where they could be used. As he correctly observes it's a compile time thing.

> In my particular scenario, all the texture file paths are hardcoded

That feels like a very unique case. Usually data is given in a vector or something and then you're out of luck anyways. Plus the syntax is very unintuitive (think about your colleagues), debuggability is zero.

Also the argument about constness feels a bit contrived. Sure with this you can write const and feel good, but the other version is hardly a bad nonconst. You can wrap things in functions or whatnot. The function seems to be a bit long anyways.

<comment><USER19> Variadic templates are essential for simple, argument forwarding template functions. std::vector::emplace_back is a very simple example, this kind of use comes up now and then during work.

[1] [https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/vector/emplace_b...](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/vector/emplace_back)

edit: This also shows that you don't have to be able to write variadic templates to reap the benefits of it. You can enjoy the benefits while using a library that uses it.

<comment><USER20> The key to understanding techniques based on templates is to realize that C++ templates are _just another programming language_ that (a) is functional, (b) is interpreted at compile time, and (c) where values are C++ types.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find the twitter thread to be specially sad, since I see a lot of people genuinely try to explain that compile times/familiar syntax are more important to them, but the author seems adamant that they just don't know what modern tech is and they should learn the "right" approach.

</comment><comment><USER19> I feel that most of the problems with debuggability is tooling (still). No, I do not want to debug the standard library most of the time, please let me optimize that, while I keep my part unoptimized.

Hopefully modules will allow mixed optimization levels for template headers.

Metaprogramming also lacks a good debugging story, but I would be happy to be proven wrong.

In my opinion these are not language problems, but tooling problems.

<comment><USER22> There are designs and usage choices that make the tooling problem orders of magnitude harder. You still have to use the tools you have, today, while the tools of tomorrow arrive. The debate is about what and why (some of) those choices are taken or rejected by different people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> His personal blog post has eight obtrusive ads plus a Donate button (to an engineer in finance in London.)

I get the sense the author's deliberately stirring controversy.

<comment><USER24> His Twitter profile pic isn't helping either.

<comment><USER25> Maybe he changed it, but.. what is wrong with his twitter profile pic? It looks pretty ordinary to me. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER24> Sorry, meant the banner pic on his profile page, at top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm often disappointed by how disrespectful people can be in programming discussions. It's one thing to discuss tradeoffs but ridiculing peoples' choices or speaking in absolutes is not helpful. There's no One True Way to program.

<comment><USER8> I always wondered whether it's programming in particular that attracts a lot of people that think in only black and white, or whether it's the same in other industries as well.

<comment><USER27> I know this kind of turns things up to 11, but about 5 years ago there was a book published called, "Engineers of Jihad." A bunch of news articles were written when it was published. I have zero idea how reputable it is, or if its been later debunked (I never read the book itself or heard any followup). My recollection is that one assertion offered was that many engineers are predisposed because engineering has logical, straightforward order and hierarchy while most of life is a lot more messy.

Separately, I think programming itself is solitary and predisposed to people who don't focus on building social skills (myself included). I think online (pseudonymous) communication can introduce all sorts of problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The author of this article has made the Dive into C++11/14 series, which is about using modern C++ for Game development.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTEcWGdSiQenl4YRPvSqW...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTEcWGdSiQenl4YRPvSqW7UPC6SiGNN7e)

</comment><comment><USER29> Really the "problem" here is that C++'s functional constructs will never allocate memory, giving them somewhat strange signatures that don't really conduce themselves well to typical functional concepts. At compile time there is no such goal and as such some of these constructs can only be found there.

<comment><USER30> According to [https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/algorithm/stable_sort](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/algorithm/stable_sort):

> This function attempts to allocate a temporary buffer equal in size to the > sequence to be sorted. If the allocation fails, the less efficient algorithm > is chosen.

Or is this not what you consider a "functional construct"?

<comment><USER31> It's more of an issue with things like std::transform or std::copy_if. Ergonomically, it's nice if these kinds of functions either allocate and return a new container, or return an iterator that yields the elements of the result.

But the C++ versions of these take the result location as an argument. It makes chaining them together a hassle because you have to create all the intermediate containers explicitly.

I think there are good reasons for the STL to work this way, but it can make programming in a functional style pretty inconvenient compared to a lot of other languages.

<comment><USER19> Ranges will help with some of the composability issues of standard library algorithms.

[1] [https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/ranges](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/ranges)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> That site is awful on mobile and filled with ads. Makes it impossible to read.

</comment><comment><USER33> He got upset when ppl with 15+ years of experience, working at dice or directors of tech at Activision pointed out that modern c++ is over complicated and they've been in that phase of liking abstractions but moved on. Funny he blanked the names of those dudes and some other milder replies.

Then he wrote a blog post on it.

</comment><comment><USER34> I would personally use for loop without size_t. It is short and simple and works as intended, anyone can understand it.

<comment><USER35> Do you mean with decltype(std::declval<const Image&>().width) as the article suggests? Or with an ad-hoc typedef, e.g. Image::size_type? Or with a fixed type that _should_ work correctly? This use of auto is particularly valuable.

<comment><USER34> Honestly I would just use auto. I favor heavy use of auto actually, if you got a modern IDE auto is a really great feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I stopped reading at "I would like this to happen at runtime".

I got burnt so many times by runtime craziness already that the only thing I want happening at runtime is trivial code running from top to bottom.

But if you enjoy runtime hacks, more power to you! You must be a much better developer than me.

</comment><comment><USER37> The mentioned cppcon presentation by Dan Saks is awesome. Highly recommend watching even if you are not interested in C or C++ : [https://youtu.be/D7Sd8A6_fYU](https://youtu.be/D7Sd8A6_fYU)

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't think this really covers the whole topic, but yeah the Twitter thread is toxic in the exact way most threads are tbh...

I've been using C++ for about 15 years now, and also tbh, and dislike just about everything beyond 11-14. The cognitive load reading code has just skyrocketed. The simple basis of the issue was when the meaning of existing syntax elements being "overloaded". &, &&, [] in my mind. It is not complicated or profound reasoning - simple as now you need to decipher more context to understand what is being expressed. I've been materially disappointed to spend 5-10 minutes reading a small bit of unfamiliar code only to learn that what it ultimately expressed was truly trivial. It just makes you feel like c++ has become like the toxic parts of academics/math where everything is expressed in the most complex way possible to establish superiority over others.

The comments about debug ability are true. STL sources/template stacks are absolutely terrible to work with. Luckily with the STL though, what 99%+ of the time, the bug is in your usage, so it doesn't matter much. To be fair though that is a trade off - I feel like I'm on vacation debugging c# or Python, but that is (almost) an intrinsic benefit of interpreted languages, with the well-known associated costs. Just templates... the cognitive load of having to understand (simply read) and debug code from an abstract definition introduces significant pain in terms of debug ability and general usability.

"C++ is not the STL" - true but c'mon - whatever is built-in mostly defines the stuff that you can be sure is portable, and rely on as a standard practice/resource in large projects. Very few sane people want 5 different implementations of a vector or string from god knows where with god knows what bugs. In the industry for c++, there is serious need for the _option_ to "reinvent the wheel" of standard libs, but it shouldn't be that this is necessary to achieve baseline performance or usability in common use cases.

I am of the same opinion as at least one other below - simplicity of implementation and readability of language are king in the "real" world. What's better than the beauty of a meta-programmed, absolute masterpiece of modern C++ and zero-cost abstractions? A program that I can understand in 10 minutes two years after it was written, or better yet that can be understood and debugged by 90% of skill levels instead of 10%.

This conversation could, and does, go on without end. My net-net conclusion so far is that modern C++ has done more harm to itself than good because it is trying to be too much. When the creator of the language can't even keep up with it enough to call himself an expert, it's a pretty obvious red flag that things have gone off the rails.

<comment><USER39> Kind of agree, and the root cause may be backwards compatibility so _another_ construct is invented which is slightly different.

The other day I explored std::promise and std::future, only to realise that all it is under the hood is a semaphore (which starts with count of zero) and a pointer. The promise.set() updates the pointed memory and releases the semaphore, while future.get() waits for the semaphore and reads the memory. My workaround was just as many lines of code with abstractions that are no more complex. So whats the point of promise/futures? Async adds spawning a thread to the mix, yet another unneeded abstraction. Coroutine adds more. Just be done with this and add proper Actor model and call it a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't understand why does he show loop-based version using 2 for loops instead of using just one. I usually work in higher-level programming languages, but can't believe that cache hits or something else makes it faster than finding sum and maximum both while going through all images only once.

And having just one loop makes it simpler too.

<comment><USER41> Choosing C++ over C means his programming abilities aren't very good.

<comment><USER25> The fact that you seem to think C is blanket superior to C++ means that your programming abilities aren't very good. There are many reasons to choose C++ over C, especially if those two are your only options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The author mentions that you shouldn't use std::, but offers offers no alternative other than "write your own version that is shorter and better".</comment>


Report from the Linux kernel documentation maintainer - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/704613/ <comment><USER2> Could we get all of these LWN posts spread out more? They all get dumped at the same time which causes a lot of good articles to get overlooked.</comment>


Russia, after protests, tells Google not to advertise "illegal" events - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-politics-protests-google/russia-after-protests-tells-google-not-to-advertise-illegal-events-idUSKCN1V10BY <comment><USER2> I find it interesting on HN how inevitably the commenters reach for "Google should disobey the law here" in stories like these. As if megacorps weren't terrifying enough, now we expect them to extrajudiciously decide which laws they think are "just" enough to obey or not? And then simultaneously when it comes to privacy laws (GPDR etc.) we also clutch our pearls about how these companies aren't doing enough!

Don't get me wrong: clearly unjust laws exist and there exist situations where resistance is the moral thing to do. I just find it terrifying how _quickly_ people jump to saying it'd be appropriate for obscenely powerful companies like Google to make up their own legal system and pick and choose which laws apply to them.

(Disclaimer: Google employee / American citizen, find both orgs frightening)

<comment><USER3> It only looks like that when you view it one-dimensionally.

In truth, there is a kind of Grand Unified Law, of which we are still working out the details, which we (whether we realize it or not) want companies to follow. It is law based on ethics and morality, and no legal infrastructure in any country today is entirely accommodating of this law.

The fact is that we live in a world full of corrupt politics, and most of the time when companies have to "play ball" with requests such as censorship, it's a bad thing. We are working on the GUL but we _do_ know that it includes freedom of speech.

This is very separate from things like regulations and safety measures, which are obviously in place for a reason and which would also exist in this hypothetical GUL.

You simply cannot break it down as "sometimes you want them to follow the law and sometimes you don't", because the law is imperfect and does not currently reflect the best case scenario. I would resist censorship in another country and I expect Google, et al. to do the same on the basis of putting ethics before money.

<comment><USER2> I think what you're saying is that morality exists outside of the rule of law, which I agree with.

But then you're saying that you think that companies like Google are morally equipped to be able to determine this law better than states would, which I think is where you lose me. Legal systems are also imperfect but at least there is oversight and (at least symbolic) input from citizens.

<comment><USER4> Morality can exist outside of the law but the law is not about morality. The law is/should be the "stable" version of morality because the latter is a lot more flexible than the former. And in a functioning systems the law should be adapted to the morals of society every once in a while.

Edit: Just imagine how some of your moral concepts conflict with those of your grandparents, and how many of them would conflict with those of your grandchildren. What would the law use as a compass at any time? The general consensus of the time or a possible random evolution from the future?

And wouldn't laws in a democracy explicitly reflect the views of that majority since they are created by the representatives of that majority?

<comment><USER5> To be fair, there is no such thing as the morals of society. Morality is individual to everyone and is developed throughout everyone's whole lives. So the law cannot possibly be a stable version of morality.

For example, in my morals it is not acceptable to imprison people for non- violent crimes, but most people are somehow convinced that it's ok. We can never agree on a stable version of morality on this.

<comment><USER4> > there is no such thing as the morals of society

Isn't it like saying "there's no image, only individual photons or pixels"?

> For example, in my morals

But if you take a few steps back you notice individual morals blending into something that could be called society morals. Society overall considers something (un)acceptable or (im)moral regardless of whether you disagree.

Look at interracial or same sex marriages. Decades ago society saw them as immoral even if some individuals disagreed. Today society sees them as moral even if some individuals disagreed

<comment><USER5> Some people at the top of the hierarchy push it and promote it, doesn't mean other people agree with any of it, they are just powerless against it. Why do you take it as society agrees I don't know, but I can understand why those at the top of the hierarchy would like you to think there's the morals of society.

<comment><USER4> Ok, this seems like a different argument from the one you made above, that morality is purely individual.

If the overall morals of society (as represented by the majority) don't get transposed into law then we go back to my original comment:

> in a functioning systems the law should be adapted to the morals of society

In a democracy the top of the hierarchy is chosen to represent the views of individuals that elected them.

Edit: Whether the morals of society are dictated by the few (rulers) or by the many (people) it doesn't change the conclusion. At some point the balance regarding society's view on the morality of certain things tips. And as an individual you are still very much the product of society. Can we agree that there are things now where there is a societal consensus regarding their morality?

There are actually very few things where societies over time consistently agreed on their morality (like theft).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google can use Russian Constitution:

31\. Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons, hold rallies, meetings and demonstrations, marches and pickets.

Article 29

1\. Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of ideas and speech.

2\. The propaganda or agitation instigating social, racial, national or religious hatred and strife shall not be allowed. The propaganda of social, racial, national, religious or linguistic supremacy shall be banned.

3\. No one may be forced to express his views and convictions or to reject them.

4\. Everyone shall have the right to freely look for, receive, transmit, produce and distribute information by any legal way. The list of data comprising state secrets shall be determined by a federal law.

5\. The freedom of mass communication shall be guaranteed. Censorship shall be banned.

PS. Im Russian and live here.

<comment><USER7> There is also federal act number 54-FZ, which says that the local authorities should be notified of the planned event (Article 5, section 4); and if the respective authority does not approve the event then it shall not be held (Article 5, section 5) [1]. This latter norm is criticized for being not entirely constitutional [2]; but it is a part of the present Russian legal framework. Should Google in any way be bound by this federal act?

1- [In Russian] [http://www.consultant.ru/cons/cgi/online.cgi?rnd=91E57842AD2...](http://www.consultant.ru/cons/cgi/online.cgi?rnd=91E57842AD234D3FF22F8620D46D9ADF&req=doc&base=LAW&n=308824&REFFIELD=134&REFDST=1000000008&REFDOC=107815&REFBASE=LAW&stat=refcode%3D17416%3Bindex%3D11#2ggsw78lw72)

2- [https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?p...](https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL- AD\(2012\)007-e)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's state communications watchdog said on Sunday it > had asked Google (GOOGL.O) to stop advertising "illegal mass events" on its > YouTube video platform.

> Tens of thousands of Russians staged what observers called the country's > biggest political protest for eight years on Saturday, defying a crackdown > to demand free elections to Moscow's city legislature.

> The watchdog, Roscomnadzor, said Russia would consider it interference in > its sovereign affairs and a hostile influence should Google fails to respond > to the request.

If Google still follows "Don't be evil", it will respond with the equivalent of a middle finger. I hope someone there still thinks Enlightenment values are more important than kowtowing to a repressive government.

<comment><USER9> Firstly Google has ditched that slogan, so no use in trying to arbitrarily hold them to it. And secondly, Google has to operate within the law regardless of country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's just too good - We have blamed Russia for using our platforms to elect someone. Now Russia is telling our platforms to block certain content otherwise they will consider it interference. The Cold War never ended did it?

<comment><USER11> Isn't it pretty common policy for the US et al to promote pro democracy protests and politicians in other countries? If it did come from state backed information sources I could see some legitimacy to the claim but I doubt that's the only thing they mean.

As always there will be tons of misdirection to hide the sources and overstating of the impact of foreign boogiemen for political points and justification of new information controls. It's a tactic as old as politics.

<comment><USER12> > _Isn't it pretty common policy for the US et al to promote pro democracy > protests and politicians in other countries?_

No, the US have supported and promoted dozens of coups and dictators. The phrase you're looking for is not "pro democracy", it's "aligned with the US interests".

<comment><USER13> These kinds of criticisms can ring rather shallow and generic without examples. So here's an example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat)

<comment><USER14> It's still pretty shallow and generic if the cited example occurred when my parents were still small children.

<comment><USER3> How, exactly? One day your children could say the same of political atrocities committed in your youth. Governments outlast people.

The infrastructure and incentives which drive it have not changed. America was founded and bred on colonialism and foreign dictatorships which enable cheap cost of living at the expense of hellish working conditions in other countries.

<comment><USER14> If you're going to claim that something is common practice, you should be able to do better than a 65-year-old example. There are certainly many more recent examples of American foreign policy screwups - some of which were vastly more destructive than Iran - but I'm not aware of any during my lifetime that involved overthrowing a democratically elected government.

<comment><USER3> By this logic, governments would never be held accountable for their actions if they simply waited to address them 65 years after the fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This highlights one of the undermentioned issues of both international businesses of clashing sets of laws. It is surprising really that this is still done ad-hocly even after many years of international trade and shifting relationships between countries. It is flat out impossible to follow all sets of laws at once.

Even in a 'federate it out to one per country that follows its laws' would become rapidly problematic if linkage to the 'main' company. Google couldn't just set up say a Google-Iran following Iranian laws without violating sanctions.

I'm not sure if there either a 'good' universal answer or one which is widely liked. The easiest and most controlling would be a radical 'ban international business' \- it would make the domains clearer but would be a bad idea. Extraterritorality would be a 'technical' solution but would also come with so many problems it isn't funny makes the previous bad idea look good in comparison.

<comment><USER16> Very good point, but surely this problem is not without precedent? Disputes in international waters come to mind. Maybe there is a need for some kind on international convention governing these matters.

<comment><USER15> Yeah but they weren't exactly "stable" \- they were kinds of incidents which lead to / were used as pretexts for wars.

Internet and enforcibility complicate matters further - even if they formalized say a "free to host to everywhere but not to monetize".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How can a protest video be considered illegal in a country that claims to be an open and free democracy?

There was a time when I would expect Google to stick to its principles and say no. Nowadays, I'm not so sure.

<comment> dan-robertson Is this a serious question?

Even if one ignores the obvious Russia-specific answer, there are plenty of reasons for a protest to be illegal in more western states. Normally it would be illegal to assemble on private land without permission, for example. And there are often laws requiring protests to eg seek permission for a planned route and stick to it (though these may not necessarily be enforced).

<comment><USER18> A protest itself may or may not be illegal, depending on the country. The video of it, on the other hand...

<comment><USER19> A video encouraging people to participate in an illegal gathering could in some jurisdictions be considered a form of incitement.

<comment><USER20> Whose responsibility is it to filter content? It seems the Russian Federation wants Google to interpret the law instead of courts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Oh the irony. Do as I say, not as I do.

</comment><comment><USER22> Any one can provide a sample link to ""illegal mass events" on its YouTube video platform* ?

<comment><USER5> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIlgTCVInOE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIlgTCVInOE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why should Google listen to what they say? Pull the company from dictatorship regimes, and then ignore their commands.

</comment><comment><USER24> > The watchdog, Roscomnadzor, said Russia would consider it interference in > its sovereign affairs and a hostile influence should Google fails to respond > to the request.

Given how the Russians are obviously meddling in elections around the world using hacking and disinformation campaigns, I don't think they really have any leg to stand on here. Their acceptance of flagrantly violating laws in other countries means that really the US, through Google, should be trying to meddle inside Russia to advocate for opposition parties and Democratic/civil society institutions. If the West could effectively organize mass anti-Putin protests and scare him, it seems beneficial in a world where his meddling has gone relatively unanswered except for sanctions.

Especially if our answer was "we" will focus on disseminating accurate information and supporting free speech, countering both authoritarianism and disinformation campaigns, it would become a brighter line of differing world philosophies and give some moral foundation in its connection to Western liberalism. It would be meddling through its support of individual rights, free expression, freedom to assemble, supporting free elections. It's similar to giving political asylum to persecuted opposition leaders who stand for liberalism and democracy and then amplifying their message from exile.

We should enshrine this support of such rights into some NGOs and international treaties (many of which we already have) that Democratic societies could sign and then multinational corporations would have a standard of international law to follow. Then instead of corporations having to choose which laws to follow, they would have more clarity through following international law.

And obviously there is a massive slippery slope in everything I just proposed.

It's like how the Bretton Woods Conference after WWII established the World Bank and the IMF to push a western global paradigm for how we think economic development, which entrenched a markets based system over a communist system. I think developing some new organizations / treaties that then help align how all these multinationals and Western governments work together in an era of the internet to push for certain rights, would be a net positive, while fraught proposition.

Right now massive amounts of power are being consolidated into a handful of internet companies, and that power is being manipulated to sow discord and disinformation to the benefit mostly of authoritarian regimes. We could way more effectively use this power to fight those regimes and begin to play offense instead of only defense.</comment>


Why the nerve agent that poisoned the ex-Russian spy is so mysterious - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/14/17120696/russian-novichok-skripal-nerve-agent-chemical-weapon-poisoning-england <comment><USER2> What's rarely mentioned in the news: Porton Down ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porton_Down](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porton_Down)), UKs own chemical weapons lab is located near Salisbury as well.</comment>


How I name my apps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zachwaugh.com/post/9666969587/how-i-name-my-apps <comment><USER2> I like to name my apps like classical pieces:

 _App No. 1 in Erlang_

 _App No. 2 in Haskell_

 _Variations on a theme by Hasbro_

<comment><USER3> Knew a guy in college who named every physics assignment.

"A brief treatise in radioactive decay, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the α particle."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do remember to check uspto.gov > trademarks > (2) Search Marks to ensure something cool you've picked isn't an active/current registered trademark by another for computer / software / online use.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like to use <http://impossibility.org> for naming apps. It ensures you can get an _available_ domain that won't be too hard to type/say.

</comment><comment><USER6>
      $ aspell dump master |sed -n $(echo $(($RANDOM % `aspell dump master|wc -l`)))p

<comment><USER7> Is aspell a spellchecker? And does this command randomly select one word from its dictionary?

(Note: I'm mostly a Windows user nowadays and I have never personally used aspell, sed, or wc)

What does the p at the end of the line do? Is that a mistake or is it there on purpose?

<comment><USER8> The p prints the randomly chosen line -- wc -l is the number of lines in the file, (random % lines-in-file) picks a random one, 'sed -n 30p' prints the 30th line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I always like to hit up "Ten Thousand Statistically Grammar-Average Fake Band Names": <http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~bwhitman/10000.html>

I'll find words I like and fit them together myself, like Rocketboom, or Humanwire, e.g.

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be fun (and probably exists) a fake word generator that created words that were easy to spell and pronounce, but were basically meaningless.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty much exactly what Wordoid does with the bonus of telling you if the domain is available - <http://wordoid.com/>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just number them. e.g. "4 thousand billion". _Little Billy Sands_ we call him.

But seriously, I have given them descriptive names - inspired by the supplier of meat to MacDonalds in Australia called "The 100% Australian Beef Company". I figured it was good for googling, and informative. Also reminded me of Humpty Dumpty ( _my name means the shape I am_ ). And it worked.

Though I note most people go for clever and/or zany names, with creative spellings (so they be trademarked). An amusing "story" to explain a clever name can operate as a vector for word of mouth: by passing on the story for entertainment value, you also pass on the name. It's kind of like product placement, where the story is the movie. An example is _GNU_. It can also operate as an in-joke, creating an artificial elite.

</comment><comment><USER12> I learned of this technique as clustering in a creative writing course: <http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/cluster.html> And this was the textbook: [http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Natural-Gabriele-Lusser- Rico/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Natural-Gabriele-Lusser- Rico/dp/0874771862/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0)

</comment><comment><USER13> We used a similar method to get to our name: Bindle. I agree with you on a short, single word names. To add to that, I would suggest attempting to use real words, that have simple spelling.

A short naming blogpost can be found here: <http://blog.bindle.me/post/9048657705/name>

</comment><comment><USER14> I find this technique works too. Come up with general ideas that describe your product, expand into metaphors. Try synonyms for the metaphors. Combine words.

In the end, the name doesn't have to be descriptive, but it does have to be unique and pronouncable.

</comment><comment><USER15> And if you really get stuck, try removing vowels and repeating some letters

<comment><USER16> Just curious... why would you want to do that even if you're stuck? This is more of a quick brainstorm method, I don't think he's even looked to see if the domain name is available at this point.

Also, I'd rather have something like "getflint.com" or "flintapp.com" than "flnnt.com" or something. When you start getting into cutesy abstractions like that it becomes hard to remember.

<comment><USER17> Whoosh.

<comment><USER16> Touché. I wasn't sure if this was a joke or not though. The fact that people actually do this when naming something made it pretty hard to figure out if he was serious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm working to rename my comedy troupe in a similar fashion. My spidergrams (what I call this type of brainstorming) are very similar.

</comment><comment><USER19> <http://www.visualthesaurus.com/> is useful for doing this

</comment><comment><USER20> I have never liked this naming scheme because it makes names that are existing words. This makes it hard to Google.

<comment><USER21> Just tack on "ly". In this case he would name the app "Flintly"

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> You missed a winner with "Spork".

</comment><comment><USER23> I just go with food. Burger, Salsa, Arrabiata, etc.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get rid of a bad gut feeling / co-founder? - <AUTHOR>

One year ago i had an idea and decided to found a startup. But i made a big mistake. A got a co-founder on board while having a bad gut feeling.
He is a business guy and we already worked a few years together as agency (he) and freelancer (me, designer). He still runs his agency full-time while i am working on it 30h/week (while studying and working). I have 2/3 of the shares. He has round about 1/3. But we wrote nothing down and the company is not founded yet. He is round about 10 years older than me (i am 21).
There are a few things which makes me nervous: i have had a bad gut feeling from the beginning, i do not trust him and it blocks and demotivates me to have him in the team. He is lazy (regarding our startup) and it feels like having a shark on board.
First i tried to get rid of him six month ago. It didn't work out. I told him by phone that i can not do this with him. That i have a really bad feeling and do not want to do this with him. That i like to work with him but that we have two different views on entrepreneurship and how to build a startup. He threatened with a lawyer and said that he promise to "destroy" me when i would do this.
He added two persons to the team, tried to create a partnership and wrote round about 20 lines of the business plan. Nothing more, in one year.
Now, six months later i begin to struggle again with the fact to have him in the team. It blocks me mentally. It demotivates. It feels bad. We are two months away from our launch and i really need some advices how to handle this. Should i contact a lawyer? Should i just say "Goodbye" and hang up the phone?
What do you think? The best thing would have been to listen to my gut and havn't let him on board, i know. <comment><USER2> You are weak and you know it. You should never have continued this far. You know what the right thing to do is (quit), so just do it. Of course it's complicated, now that you poured so much effort into the whole thing, it's even more painful to quit. But it won't get any better.

It's time to review all the emails and papers you signed and figure out what your bargaining position is. You seem to have a weird situation where "share ownership" has been agreed (2/3 vs. 1/3), but nothing was written down. That doesn't sound right.

Your options are, from worse to best:

. quit the "partnership" and give up on the idea . quit, keep the IP you developed, and continue the project on your own . take control of the project, fire your co-founder and keep everything

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, you are right. thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It sound like YOU might need to talk to a lawyer before making any decisions. Hacker news is probably not an appropriate place to get information regarding this situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps some experiences

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If there's nothing written down just start another company without him. Tell him you're out and are taking all your IP with you.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would have to definitely recommend discussing this with a lawyer and BEFORE the launch.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would you discuss all this with the team?</comment>


Meditation can alter brain structure - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3554215.ece <comment><USER2> I started meditation, along with yoga, just over a year ago and it has had a profound impact on my work and general well-being. I'm more productive, more focused and generally look on things with a 'happier' (if that sounds right) outlook. I didn't tell my male friends I was doing yoga at first just because of the amount of laughter it would generate, but now I've become a bit of a yoga/meditation evangelist. erm, can you tell?

<comment><USER3> Any tips to someone who just got interested enough to give it a try?

<comment><USER2> Sure. Read up a bit on the different types of yoga firstly (if you want to do this too - I'd strongly suggest it). I went for Hatha yoga which is very gentle and feels just like stretching and breathing first. The instructor started us off with basic breathing exercises first and then took us more into meditation. I now have an instructor who comes to my house and the 1-on-1 makes a big difference. It took some time to really "get it" (about 6 months) but once I did and I could see and feel the benefits it made me more passionate. Whatever you do, don't start yoga without an instructor - ie DVDs. They are a good tool but only (in my opinion) in conjunction with an instructor until you are more advanced. For meditation, I think you could start this without an instructor, though it would help to accelerate the learning. Finally, remember that there's no competition - you are doing it for you and as long as you improve thats the main thing. Feel free to contact me outside of here if you wish

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't have anything against meditation. I practice it with some regularity, but... This title is somewhat misleading. According to the article, a causal relationship between meditation and changed brain structure has been established, and I would love to see the study that established a correlation between persistent meditation and a thicker cortex in areas linked to perception.

It seems like more poorly researched science reporting from the Times.

<comment><USER5> There has been previous work in this area; see for example:

"Scans of Monks' Brains Show Meditation Alters Structure, Functioning", WSJ, 2004-11-05

[http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/News/Meditation_Alters_Brai...](http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/News/Meditation_Alters_Brain_WSJ_11-04.htm)

On the other hand, there is also some link between meditation and seizures:

"Bad Vibes- Warning: Meditating may be hazardous to your health" SFWeekly, 2002-08-28

<http://www.sfweekly.com/content/printVersion/313883>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Among the other things I'm doing right now, I actually have a book deal to write a book on yoga, that includes information on meditation and breath control along with the standard postures. It's going to be directed toward people who spend too much time in front of computers. My plan is to give them quick and easy ways to relax and reduce stress and hopefully open more people up to the benefits of yoga and meditation.

<comment><USER2> Sounds great! Would love to help out if you need anything. My contact info is in my profile</comment></comment>


Microsoft Appoints Kevin Scott as CTO - <AUTHOR> http://news.microsoft.com/2017/01/24/microsoft-appoints-kevin-scott-as-chief-technology-officer/#sm.0000kotnlds95ejwph729vdp4mmhf#Smvs70bGj6r6ms74.97 <comment><USER2> From his "executive bio":

"Scott holds an M.S. in computer science from Wake Forest University, a B.S. in computer science from Lynchburg College, and is an all-but-dissertation drop out from the computer science Ph.D. program at the University of Virginia." [1]

Props for not trying to paper-over that last part.

[1] [http://news.microsoft.com/exec/kevin- scott/](http://news.microsoft.com/exec/kevin-scott/)

<comment><USER3> No, if you didn't graduate then you didn't graduate. Bragging about your drop- out status reminds me of Elizabeth Holmes.

<comment><USER4> It's not bragging, it's explaining where those years went. And doing publishable work _does_ carry merit, thesis or no thesis.

<comment><USER3> When you say "drop-out from Hogwarts University" you are appropriating the Hogwarts brand to yourself. When you say "ABD PhD" you are misleading people into thinking that you're some kind of a PhD. This is doing unjustice to the people who actually did the work to get a PhD from said university. If you don't have a PhD, don't put the words PhD in your bio.

<comment><USER5> Come on. It literally says "drop out" \- no reasonable person could possibly believe the guy has a PhD, and being ABD is a hell of lot more than 99% of the population. Not to mention the fact that UVA is a good school generally so I can't imagine it's a cakewalk to even get admitted to their doctoral programs.

If he didn't mention an _n_ -year gap in his background you'd say he was trying to hide the fact he was a drop out. You're just looking for something to complain about.

I finished my Bachelor's many years after I left school. I still had to list the school and the timeframe because otherwise I'd get questions about. I wasn't able to just say "I went to school but didn't graduate, but I don't want to appropriate the brand of my former university!" That's idiotic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kind of interesting because I assume Microsoft has deep technical talent in operating system kernel and user space design.

But they chose someone who I assume must be a distributed computing ("web/cloud") guy instead. I guess that's where they see the bulk of their business being in the future.

<comment><USER7> I would think his role as CTO is less specifically about one field like distributed computing and more about creating a coherent vision over the whole of Microsoft which has been lacking for a long time .

<comment><USER8> Microsoft has a vision, it just had problems executing on it. Those who paid attention knew of what was coming these years because of their infamous 10 year vision and interim video releases they had. Terrible at execution and I hope this guy can help that.

<comment><USER9> I think Bill Gates achieved his vision which was put a computer on every persons desk running his OS. Its still a highly profitable company with pretty much a monopoly on desktops.

<comment><USER10> While that's nice, that's not saying Microsoft succeeded since the early 90s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Was linkedin really known for their engineering? Honest question I don't recall ever hearing anything good or bad.

<comment><USER12> Yes, for starters they wrote things like Kafka and Samza there @ LinkedIn. I consider this post required reading for anyone wanting to build serious business distributed data pipelines, and guess where it came from? :)

[https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log- wha...](https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every- software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying)

<comment><USER13> Microsoft's technology portfolio & research /far outstrips/ anything LinkedIn did or would encounter.

I'd guess that this appointment is Cloud/Azure related.

<comment><USER12> Sure, and it is also likely 100x the size. That wasn't the original question, the question was what has LinkedIn done engineering wise. I'd say Kafka was a pretty smashing success having met all of Neha, Jun, and Jay Kreps and talked Kafka with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it should be noted that LinkedIn was recently acquired by Microsoft just last month. [https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/08/microsoft-officially- close...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/08/microsoft-officially-closes- its-26-2b-acquisition-of-linkedin/)

edit: link

<comment><USER15> The acquisition was ~6 months ago (June 2016). Last month was the close of the acquisition - post domestic and international regulatory approval.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Empowering people" is Satya's favorite word. Looks like every Microsoft executive is using this now lol.

<comment><USER17> It's actually the company motto

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The PR mentions he'll continue to serve on the LinkedIn executive team, so does that mean he'll continue to be based in MV? That'll be quite a change! (and challenge for him, I assume).

</comment><comment><USER19> Who is he replacing?

<comment><USER20> That's the best part of the news. I don't think people really recall the ex- CTO of MS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What does a CTO in Microsoft do ?

</comment><comment><USER22> This is insanely tough job to have, but honestly, fantastic place to influence technology.

I wish someone is crazy enough and give me such job :).

<comment><USER23> We wish that you are crazy enough to ask for such jobs and work on any barriers towards them :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is why I leave HN for a few weeks every once in awhile. People in this thread shitting all over the guy, meanwhile back in their own lives, they still have to argue with project managers over the "right" way to get code done.

The crabs are reaching out of the bucket hard today.

<comment><USER25> There has always been an attitude of cynicism that tries to masquerade as wisdom around these parts.

<comment><USER26> An absolute goldmine for [http://reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/](http://reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/) material.

<comment><USER27> There's a reason /r/ProgrammingCirclejerk is basically /r/HackerNews

<comment><USER28> That sub is kind of a heat check against the hype of pretty much everything these days.

<comment><USER5> They could change the name to /r/ShitHNSays

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> He will be out in 2 years or less. The problem with Microsoft is it has a massive old boys network. Once Ye Olde Microsoft mafia moves in, people who haven't been with the company for 15-20 years tend to move out, irrespective of their position. This is also why all Microsoft acquisitions where old boys network was allowed to intrude (basically all but Skype) have been promptly run into the ground within 2-3 years after acquisition.</comment>


Ask HN: How often do you restart your personal machine? - <AUTHOR> I only restart when there is some update which requires a restart else I'll put it to sleep or in standby when not using it. <comment><USER2> Maybe 5 or 6 times a year for my primary laptop.

So it's an old MacBook Pro, and it gets security patches that require a reboot sometimes. I'll usually defer them for a few weeks until I'm in a state where I'm ok to shut everything down.

Other machines, mostly Linux stuff, gets rebooted mostly by accident (ie. power outage). If there's a security patch that requires a reboot, I'm get around to that after a few months. I'd guess most things get rebooted about once a year.

Everything is set to go into sleep / low power mode as much as possible. But I don't like software which isn't capable of running indefinitely.

</comment><comment><USER3> That depends. My Windows machine gets rebooted about once a week, by Microsoft, not by me. Microsoft doesn't value my work.

My Linux machine has been up and running since April 2014.

</comment><comment><USER4> When I stop using it, I turn it off. And I need to use it, I turn it on. It's a desktop computer and since it boots in ~1 minute, there is no need for it to be on unless I have something explicit to do on it.

<comment><USER5> I hibernate my desktop, unless there's a kernel update. It doesn't boot up any faster (I have 32 GB of RAM and swap is on a hard drive), but everything is where I left off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Probably once a week on average. Mostly just because I still believe it's good for the machine, not really sure about the science behind that though. 2015 MacBook Pro if it matters.

</comment><comment><USER7> MacBook Pro 15". Probably once every three weeks.</comment>


Show HN: Mindscope – the multi-level magnet board for your brain - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mindscope/id901513028?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><USER2> The video looks awesome. Sadly I do not own any Apple products. Would love a web app to play with in browser. Also syncing, backup, exporting are very important for me in a product I am to entrust with my thoughts.</comment>


Ask HN: How should a software engineer go about making a website? - <AUTHOR> I have been a professional software developer for four years now and must confess, I have never made a website. Mostly I have done systems engineering (Deployment, security, database infrastructure) but also some QA work and Java app development.
I wrote a fiction book in my spare time and would like to create a site to promote it and possibly develop the IP into other products. I already have a domain. The thing is, there are so many ways to create websites. I want a framework that is easy to use but also not too cookie-cutter. I've heard good things about Squarespace.
My best languages are Python, Java, and Ruby. Pretty solid with Unix (I've written hundreds of BASH scripts) and I wouldn't mind writing HTML and CSS if necessary. I know Javascript a bit too.
Anyway what do you folks recommend? <comment><USER2> Wordpress? (Kidding...). I like Python Flask or Python Bottle.

For a small site I would just write the HTML. I realize this isn't a popular opinion nowadays, but sometimes it beats monkeying with frameworks in my opinion. Especially when you don't need to. And easier to set up hosting on shared hosting services. Check the purecss.io post from earlier this morning. They have some nice layouts.

<comment><USER3> Exactly! You will probably enjoy learning a few things by building a simple site from scratch and you will have a better feel for selecting any frameworks after. I would recommend getting this beautiful book by Jon Duckett that covers both the design and development basics for a website: [http://www.amazon.com/HTML-CSS-Design-Build- Websites/dp/1118...](http://www.amazon.com/HTML-CSS-Design-Build- Websites/dp/1118008189/ref=sr_1_1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hello,

Ruby should be your language of choice for anything 'web', among the ones you know. Might be helpful in the future for other projects as well.

As most people said, Sinatra (+HAML or LESS), is an excellent framework to build up a simple website really fast.

However, I'd say go a step 'up' and use octopress[1]. It's a Jekyll-based blogging platform. You can set it up on Github, to avoid hosting. If you're not expecting extremely high traffic Github is fine for static content and JS. It's flexible enough to do whatever you really wanna do and there's plenty of documentation online.

You can find many of themes and howto's on how to use 'Liquid' in order to roll your own or modify one of the current themes. It shouldn't take more than 2 days to have something acceptable, a little longer if you plan to design a theme from ground-up.

Good luck :-)

[1] [http://octopress.org/](http://octopress.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> FORM OVER FUNCTION.

You have a fiction book. People will want to know what genre it is; what the reviews say; what it looks like; a sample chapter; where to buy it; publisher and ISBN and etc. If you're lucky they'll want to discuss it with other readers or to ask you questions.

If I'm in a bookshop and I see a book, and I websearch it there are a few things that happen.

1) I get a great website. I am more likely to buy the book.

2) I get a terrible website. I am less likely to buy the book.

A terrible website is one that does a bunch of stuff before I get to the information I need.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well it seems to me that you are very happy to write scripts so wouldn't be alergic to writing a little bit of code.

I'd suggest you pick out of your best languages the one you prefer. And go with that.

Write a few pages of text in something like Markdown or RST (python). Use a microframework like Bottle (python), that resolves a route (example.com/about/) to a function. In that function convert your micro-markup to html, that you then wrap further in a template.

You can find some free html templates available on-line.

Before that, plan the site, define what it is and jot down your expectations of what it will do. Look at similar sites. Note the ones you like.

Draw up how the pages will be connected. For what you describe, it sounds like you only need a few pages. With the homepage listing news/updates. When you add something to the site (news) syndicate elsewhere, with links back (i.e. Twitter, Facebook).

If I was a fan, I'd probably want to join a community. Perhaps a newsletter and/or fan forum would be a good addition. You may want to manage a mailing list and/or a web forum.

If you have a web forum, you might want to stick that on another domain (or subdomain). You should be able to find an off the shelf solution for that. It doesn't need to be in the same language as your main site. Or hosted in the same place.

Getting different web components (forums, etc) to match cohesively theme-wise is a bit of a challenge. But it's not necessarily needed in my opinion. Personally as a fan I'm more interesting in content. You could however pay someone to theme the site after you have it working. That's easier if you restrict yourself to a minimal amount of templates.

There are millions of frameworks out there to choose from. Start with something very simple like bottle, it will introduce concepts and if you want to take it further later on you can.

If you haven't written a web page at all before, then basic html is a good place to start (elements: html, head, body, head, h1, h2, p, a, ul) page is a good place to start. Compose two html pages, link them back and forth to each other and try and add an image and text to both. You don't need a fancy web server to do that, you can just open a text file and start writing, and test in your web browser.

<comment><USER6> I wrote a quick shell one liner that aggregates text files and simple templates into resulting html files.

      find ./txt/ -type f -name '*.txt' -print0 | xargs -0 -I£ sh -c 'newname=$(basename £ .txt).html; cat templates/header.html £ templates/footer.html > html/$newname'

Each new page (html file) is a sandwich. The filling could be transformed markdown rather than plain text. A little find and replace for titles, and such like would make for quite an easy static site generator.

I even found a bash markdown transformer:

[https://github.com/chadbraunduin/markdown.bash](https://github.com/chadbraunduin/markdown.bash)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, for what you are trying to do, I would go bootstrap or foundation framework, HTML5 and CSS3. Not even JavaScript. That's it.

Skip the SASS, LESS, Python, WordPress, Flask or other stuff everyone here is talking about. You don't need it.

Some plain static webpages. Period.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ruby is a terrible choice. Use a Node.js based static site generator. You could even host on Amazon S3 (super low cost but globally distributed and redundant)! Look at Whitesmith/Blacksmith/etc.

<comment><USER9> Pray tell, why is ruby a terrible choice? You can get a basic website up and running with Rails in less than 10 mins.

<comment><USER10> Because you're running a webserver which can crash or otherwise fall over to serve static content when you could be running a literally zero-maintenance alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You might start with Github Pages: [https://pages.github.com/](https://pages.github.com/). It's all Ruby and pretty easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is what Tails is doing:

[https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/replace_truecrypt/](https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/replace_truecrypt/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Ruby + Sinatra</comment>


Startup idea MyNeighborIsADrugDealer dot org  - <AUTHOR>

There are a lot of people that are trying to do their best to raise a family.  Having a neighbor that is a drug dealer is really frustrating when you just spent 200k+ on your new condo or house.
I think having a website that easily allows people to report drug dealing activity and browse would provide a significant amount of traffic.
Of course this would also allow drug users to find new dealers, but I think it would do more good than harm.  Besides, if people want drugs, they are not hard to get if you ask around. It would make sense to design the site to emphasize recent reports, not 3 year old reports.
I know a lot of people use greatschools.org to help decide where to buy a home.  MyNeighborIsADrugDealer.org would be helpful in the same way.
The reason I thought of this is my carpool buddy just caught one of her drug dealing neighbors (girl) urinating on her condo door mat.  They must think my carpool buddy is reporting them.  A site like this would put pressure on the police and elected officials to do something about her neighbor. <comment><USER2> A site like this would also be an enormous legal headache with libelous claims and counter-claims flying around like gnats on a summer day.

If you are building it to sell to police, then I can see the value. However if this is just a community board, then you are going to have trouble I think. Do you have any idea how you would handle this?

<comment><AUTHOR> One way is to make it clear that the site is not responsible for the user submitted content, and allow users to request to have a post removed. If posts are removed within 2 business days, that should be fair.

Also, the site does not need to be owned or operated within the USA.

<comment><USER2> That is true but I am presuming you have some ties to Utah (being Ute fan and all) thus I presumed that you live in the US which doesn't remove the fact that you could still flirting with some big consequences.

The other problem is that saying you aren't responsible for user submitted content doesn't mean you won't be targeted or be held liable in court.

<comment><AUTHOR> From Utah, but live in 20879 now.

I appreciate your feedback. I could make the site similar to <http://maps.huge.info/zip.htm> (submit a zip to see what I mean).

But break down reports by the US postal zip + 4. The user would see that a "plus 4" area has several reports in the last 2 months, but would not see report details, address, etc.

A link would invite police or public officials to see the details of the reports. I won't bore you with the how to of verifying if someone is police or not.

I think knowing that a certain zip + 4 area has a ton of reports is enough to inform people that the area has problems.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Whale - <AUTHOR> https://500ish.com/the-whale-38c3cfa2cc3e <comment><USER2> I do agree Amazon is amazing and frightening all at once. However, I really hate all of this analysis based on market cap instead of revenue/profit/etc. It's just like so much fantasy.

<comment><USER3> You've seen their numbers though right?

Revenue 2012 - $61B

Revenue 2016 - $136B

Income 2012 - $15B

Income 2016 - $48B

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good essay but I don't like it when people use market cap in these kinds of comparisons.

Don't forget that Amazon has 2x the market cap of Wal-Mart–but only slightly above 1/4 of their the annual revenue.

<comment><USER5> Both parts of that statement are (about equally) interesting.

What they should really do is not rely on a single indicator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm intrigued by the coming future of the megacorp. Philip K Dick wrote many stories where the giant corporation is the tribal, protect-our-own protagonist against the faceless, authoritarian government. Paycheck being the most memorable example. It's going to be interesting when companies don't even have to pretend to be subservient to the government anymore.

<comment><USER7> > _It 's going to be interesting when companies don't even have to pretend to > be subservient to the government anymore._

There are many places where that has been happening for over a century...

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The current stock price (and thus market cap) already assumes future growth. The market cap would increase further only if growth exceeds the current expectations of investors. (Or due to other factors unrelated to growth).

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious on how Amazon will take the world. I can read and understand how the America buys a lot of stuff from it, how good the delivery is, etc., but in some countries they are barely beginning. And some local companies tried to do the same model and couldn't. They haven't bankrupted, but simply don't have the same size, same relevance as Amazon has in the US.

Will that model still be applied worldwide?

</comment><comment><USER10> It's weird to see all the people here complaining about how the article is about the market cap, when _that 's not only what the article is about_.

Sure, the market cap is interesting, but this is an interesting article because it makes a compelling case that a $400B company is _cheap_ even when Walmart outsells it and FedEx out delivers.

It was only a few years ago people complained about how Amazon didn't make any profits because they would reinvest them all in growth, and how that was impossible to sustain that.

They were right, but not in the way they thought. It does seem to be impossible to keep investing _all_ the profits in growth - they are just making too much!

So, it's the combination of this growth AND the market cap that is unprecedented. No one can tell if it is overvalued, but complaining about talking about the Cap is missing a pretty amazing story.

</comment><comment><USER11> In my experience, the quality of Amazon is average at best. The only reason why they are winning is because they are cheap. The Walmart model basically: Cheap wins over quality.

<comment><USER12> i don't think they are necessarily cheap. i buy from them because they are convenient and have everything. I only want one online shopping identity and even if toothpaste is more expensive there, i go ahead and get it over heading to the store many times.

<comment><USER13> On everything that isn't backed by a highly optimized logistics chain (e.g. groceries or appliances), they're always cheaper on any random item I've compared to a physical store.

Which makes sense, because the price difference is essentially the ammortized cost of a physical store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author regularly conflates Amazon's price and Amazon's value. I understand articles like this getting traction on pump and dump finance forums, but I'm a little disappointed to see it on the front page here.

<comment><USER7> > _The author regularly conflates Amazon 's price and Amazon's value._

That's because the price is also important, it's not some 1850's world, where value is everything.

People can sell on the price and make billions.

<comment><USER14> Hence my use of the word 'conflates'. Price isn't irrelevant. Price is extraordinarily important, but it's not the same thing as value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just my opinion, but Amazon, FB, Apple, and all these companies that these thought leaders like MG Siegler, Stratchery, and Gruber write about aren't interesting.

They won at the same game by outcompeting others at selling commodity junk. Great. How? Same way. They had leaders whose business won the lottery and simultaneously didn't care about other humans to the same infinitesimally small way necessary to win that big (one can lose big with that give-no-f*cks mindset too, hence the lottery).

Selling crap isn't interesting. Show me somebody that makes a similar-sized dent in human health, the environment, or world peace then I think the fawning Medium articles will be worth it.

<comment><USER7> > _Just my opinion, but Amazon, FB, Apple, and all these companies that these > thought leaders like MG Siegler, Stratchery, and Gruber write about aren 't > interesting. They won at the same game by outcompeting others at selling > commodity junk._

First of all, all 3 companies have very different business models.

Second, Apple never sold "commodity junk". The company sold (and sells) on the high end of the market, they take a different approach to design than competitors, use more expensive materials, machining, etc., design lots of their own internals (from logic board part to processors, even their own OS and programming languages, and create their products end to end (hardware to software), and come to market with lots of firsts (e.g. from small stuff like magsafe or the best trackpad in PC-land, to hi-dpi etc). And of course have won all kinds of design, quality awards.

Third, Facebook doesn't sell anything (except ads). What's the "commodity junk" they sell? Their service is junk? Compared to what? MySpace and similar competitors, whose websites were crap even at the time? What's the better social network people aren't on?

Fourth, Amazon? Has a first tier store, a first tier web service business. What's the commodity junk they sell? If you mean actual products on their store, then they sell everything, from expensive high end stuff to mass market cheap products. And of course, for ages, they started with books -- where there's nothing "commodity crap" about them, books are books, whether a high end bookstore sells them or Amazon does.

> _Same way. They had leaders whose business won the lottery_

If your explanation of 3 of the biggest companies on earth is "won the lottery" then you're missing a lot. Might a well invoke God.

> _Selling crap isn 't interesting. Show me somebody that makes a similar- > sized dent in human health, the environment, or world peace then I think the > fawning Medium articles will be worth it._

You conflate businesses with NGOs or revolutionary parties.

Which is a valid comparison for some aspects, but not one that can conclude that "businesses are not interesting" when speaking about business.

<comment><USER15> Think less literal please. High-end stuff is still junk on an absolute scale.

The marketcap and "I want it all"-scale don't make businesses interesting. What's interesting are things that can't be quantified well and therefore can't be competed on by hard work and assholery.

<comment><USER7> > _Think less literal please. High-end stuff is still junk on an absolute > scale._

If you think "less literal" everything is "junk" compared to personal health and/or love.

> _The marketcap and "I want it all"-scale don't make businesses interesting. > What's interesting are things that can't be quantified well and therefore > can't be competed on by hard work and assholery._

For your own definition of "interesting".

But Amazon, FP, Apple (and tons of other subjects) are still interesting if we use the common, agreed upon, dictionary, traditional definition of the term interesting: "arousing curiosity or interest; holding or catching the attention.".

And there's few things about Apple, FB, and Amazon's success stories that can be "quantified well", as their story and success goes beyond their financial status. How about why and how they succeeded?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Except that suddenly there are lots of people _NOT_ buying at Amazon anymore.

In fact, most of my purchases go into 3 buckets:

1) Standard but I don't want crap--probably I'm going to a retailer website and picking it up (Target, Frys, etc. -- NewEgg is my exception to actually having brick and mortar). If I can pick it up, it's probably at least a notch or two above crap.

2) Total crap--probably ordering from Alibaba--not Amazon.

3) Something I need to go to a store for

To me, Amazon is being used decreasingly by everybody around me.

<comment><USER17> I'm not American so I was wondering: do Target and Frys sell higher quality products than Amazon? Where I live (Australia) those large stores sell absolute crap, and I have to rely on online sources for quality items (example: it's almost impossible to find a good mechanical keyboard at a physical, big-chain store).

<comment><USER6> It really depends on the industry.

* Just a few months ago, I was able to buy something at Best Buy for only 10% more (~$30) than it would have cost to order from Amazon.

* On the other hand, I purchased a part for my clothes drier at 400% markup because I needed the part right away.

* I bought a personal hygiene item on Overstock because it was 260% of the cost at Macy's.

* We just started buying shampoo from Amazon because it's far cheaper (33%) than from Walgreens.

* My wife buys all of our socks, underwear, and most of my children's clothes online for ~50% of the in-store price.

<comment><USER7> > _Just a few months ago, I was able to buy something at Best Buy for only 10% > more (~$30) than it would have cost to order from Amazon._

Being "able" to buy 10% MORE doesn't sound like any kind of a deal. In fact, it sounds like the opposite...

<comment><USER6> Paying a 10% surcharge to get something today vs in two days isn't terrible. I wouldn't have been shocked if Best Buy was 2x the cost.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>