Defective C++ - <AUTHOR> http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html <comment><USER2> "revised 17 October 2009"

<comment><USER3> Developments in C++ have been dramatic since then, but they haven't changed the core issues. For instance the lack of reflection, unstable interfaces, etc.

I remember in the 1980s in Byte magazine and Dr Dobbs Journal seeing the statement that software components were a pipe dream and that is definitely true if there is no reflection or stable binary interfaces.

The article grumbles about commercial influences but the original sin of C++ comes from academic influences, C++ is somebody's science project written as a preprocessor for the C language; much of the stupidity is not a conscious choice of language design but an accident of implementation.

The worst thing about the C++ mafia is that they think that dealing with an incomprehensible language proves they are smart and that anyone who complains is intellectually feeble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most of the facts are/were true but shown as big troll. There is nom attempt to understand why things are the way they are.

Moreover several points are outdated by C++11/14/17</comment>


A small unconventional fitness pamphlet which I hope will convince the unhealthy - <AUTHOR>

http://loseweig.ht/
There's nothing groundbreaking in here (I haven't gone out and performed novel controlled research), but I think I've nailed the science of fat loss down to a good core set of effective and synergistic techniques. (I've personally dropped from 210 to 160 pounds in the past 3 months.)
I made a post earlier (which I pulled this morning for editing) and got some pretty good feedback (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mM9Mt2HSz82prkmIZSrO9VLYKb5gPTf6qTotrpTbZc8/pub). (Mods, please let me know if I'm asking for a hellban by deleting and reposting this.)
Does anyone else have any suggestions, and is this the sort of material you'd share with friends and family? <comment><USER2> The only thing I immediately disagree with is your recommendation of avoiding beans. While they have starch, they are a great source of fiber (for that feeling of fullness and digestive regularity) and slow-burning carbs (for energy).

It's pretty hard to maintain energy throughout the day just with your "good" list and maintain some sort of digestive regularity.

If you get sick of beans, drown them in some Safeway brand salsa or a dap of lowfat sour cream plus some Sriracha sauce.

Anyway, great project, even if it only inspires one other person. That should be reward enough.

Source: I've been a little overweight, a weight lifter, mountaineer, and ultramarathon runner, so I have food science down for _my_ body.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing wrong with beans in a low-to-moderate-carb diet; I just wouldn't recommend them to someone on a ketogenic diet. Personally, I get most of my fibre from my bread (there are other similar products out there, but the one I linked basically replaces digestible starch with fibre and resistant starch).

As far as energy levels, I personally feel great, but YMMV I suppose.

Thanks a lot for the positive feedback! This document is actually a slightly expanded version of some notes I emailed a friend a few weeks ago (which got him on LCHF, so it's already made a difference in at least one person's life).

(You'd be shocked at the vitriol I received when I tried to share this on reddit, simply for (god forbid) including my affiliate tag in the Amazon links on the off chance that it would help recoup some of the cost of that expensive .ht domain; granted, I already knew it was taboo there so I won't pretend that wasn't a faux pas on my part.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No mention of canola (rape) oil? Basically lower saturated fat than olive oil and with a pretty high smoke point. I use it for general cooking and use olive oil as flavour enhance for e.g. salads.

There's rising evidence that supplements are bunk and/or unnecessary. It's almost as bad as the anti-oxidant nonsense. Recently it was discovered that fish oil is likely to be bullshit too, based on poor research and a tiny, biased subject pool. Meta analysis has implied that vitamin supplements don't do anything for people.

[http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/17/vitamin-...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/17/vitamin- supplements-waste-money-scientists)

The nutrient that folks are (usually) most deficient in is calcium, it's quite hard to find in food. The only place you can get it easily in significant quantities is milk and bones. People on poor diets are typically lacking in staples like Vit B, Vit C, etc but that's usually because they don't eat enough vegetables. Just increase your intake of 'super' greens like Brocolli, Spinach and Kale and you'll smash your RDA easily.

People fail at dieting because they cheat or they're not willing to give up sugar in lieu of sweeteners. Ever look at a pack of biscuits? Each one nullifies about 20 minutes of exercise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Canola oil does have a decent smoke point, but I'd never recommend it over ghee on LCHF, because ghee has a higher smoke point, better taste, fairly interesting nutritional properties, and more saturated fat.

Agreed on the supplements; I've been taking the ones I've been taking to hedge my bets, but I wouldn't advise anyone else to take any without a specific purpose (unless they really wanted to of their own accord).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some strange encoding issues on Windows Chrome Version 35.0.1916.114 m

      Required: Carbohydrate restriction (specifically, low-carb/high-fat)

LCHF is "a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet" most often done for weight loss, but with many advantages over the standard Western HCLF diet, such as lower "risk for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, stroke, and much more".

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, that must be Google Docs messing up my normal ascii quotes (I had a similar issue with some characters on my Android phone earlier). Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any thoughts on vegetarians following this plan? Is there a preferred meat alternative in the diet?

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like /r/vegetarianketo recommends TVP: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textured_vegetable_protein](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textured_vegetable_protein) (I had some non-keto veggie lasagna made with TVP a few months ago, and I thought it was delicious).

Also, allegedly oysters are okay to eat?

> Oysters are generally considered to be fair play on most vegetarian and > vegan lists of acceptable foods. They lack a central nervous system, can't > feel pain, are renewably farmable, and are a delicious seafood that is > bursting with all sorts of nutrients.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2010/04/consider_the...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2010/04/consider_the_oyster.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would not share this with my friends or family. Primarily because telling someone how to lose weight, is akin to telling them they are fat. If they asked for it, I might share this link.

On another note this is basically 1 page guide to the 4 hour body. Even some of your word choices are the same (force multiplier). Might want to cite that.

<comment><USER2> This looks to be quite different than 4HB. What leads you to it being similar, other than the wording?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, for the record, I've never heard of 4 Hour Body.</comment></comment></comment>


The next generation bends over (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1927-the-next-generation-bends-over/

<comment><USER2> "This was the founder," our source adds. "The VCs absolutely did not encourage or force a sale here."

[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-09-18/tech/30013788...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-09-18/tech/30013788_1_vcs- big-job-intuit)</comment>


Huge hacker event in Italy to refactor the public sector - <AUTHOR> https://hack.developers.italia.it/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hack.Developers, promoted by the Digital Transformation Team together with Codemotion, is going to be the biggest code sprint ever done in Italy!

On Oct 7th and 8th all the Italian tech communities and developers can join a programming marathon running in parallel in 25 Italian cities (plus San Francisco!) The aim is to make public services easier for the citizens, simpler, more effective.

Software developers, IT experts, students, can contribute with their talents and skills, helping the public administration to digitally transform the country

All the participants will develop open source code to enhance the projects hosted in the developers.Italia.it platform, launched the last March.

Join us on October 7th and 8th!</comment>


Whew, what a year - <AUTHOR> https://krita.org/en/item/whew-what-a-year/ <comment><USER2> OT: Krita and others are doing great things for content creators who want to use FOSS.

BUT most of their work is lost to us due to the way distros handle external software. If you install Krita, gimp, darktable in debian you will get really ancient versions (unless you use a PPA from a mostly unknown source, but even then you can get quite old versions).

<comment><USER3> While Pino is busy packaging Krita 3.1.1 for Debian, you can easily run the latest Krita by getting the official appimages that I prepare myself. (Being the Krita maintainer and project lead.)

<comment> irq-1 Thanks for Krita!

Chrome has its own deb repository -- maybe more active projects need this too. (Maybe there's a service to be had hosting and configuring repos?)

I'm on Xubuntu 16.4 and I have 2.9.7 installed. I missed the entire year of developments. 16.10 has 2.9.11 released Feb 4th. 17.4 has 3.1.1 but won't be released for ~4 months. Maybe we should blame Ubuntu for 6 month release cycles, or me for not upgrading, but regardless of the cause, Krita users don't have the new version.

<comment><USER4> > we should blame Ubuntu for 6 month release cycles

16.04 and onward can now have apps decoupled from the OS release for apps that provide snaps, like Krita does. `snap install krita` will get you 3.1.1.

<comment> irq-1 Thanks! I noticed the /snap directory, but didn't know snap was installed and usable.

Worked on 16.10 and I'll use this on 16.4 too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is krita better than gimp now? Though gimp is good enough for me it appears to have stagnated since 2.8 arrived many years ago.

<comment><USER6> They're not the same.

Krita is more of a painting application akin to Illustrator, whereas GIMP is more of a Photoshop-like editor.

Also, work on GIMP 3.0[1] continues, but there's not enough people working on it, so it takes a while.

1 - [https://www.gimp.org/news/2016/07/13/gimp-2-9-4-released](https://www.gimp.org/news/2016/07/13/gimp-2-9-4-released)

<comment><USER7> While I'd agree that GIMP and Krita are not same, I think Krita is still closer to GIMP than Illustrator, Ai being a vector editor.

<comment><USER8> Meanwhile, though probably known to most of the HN crowd it's also worth mentioning Inkscape which is a FOSS alternative to Illustrator of good quality.

<comment><USER9> I agree with that. Some things are a bit different, like PS -> GIMP, but once I had the basic equivalents down, I found it a great tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Still waiting for the day I can install krita without pulling 200 packages of KDE bloat

I really don't need upowerd when I want to draw pictures, thank you.

<comment><USER3> That day arrived May 31st 2016: [https://krita.org/en/item/krita-3-0-released/](https://krita.org/en/item/krita-3-0-released/). Get the appimage, make it executable, execute it, done. No need to whine about how Ubuntu drags in the weirdest set of dependencies anymore.</comment></comment>


Google and Adobe team up to improve fonts on iOS and Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/google-and-adobe-team-up-to-improve-ios-linux-fonts-7000014803/ <comment><USER2> The article's font sample image is pretty shoddy. They've resized it and so lost all the features of the renderer! To my eyes, the top example seems clearer and sharper than the bottom one.

The original image is found at [http://google- opensource.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/got-cff.htm...](http://google- opensource.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/got-cff.html) and is much better.

<comment><USER3> Adobe's post [http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2013/05/adobe- contribute...](http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2013/05/adobe-contributes- cff-rasterizer-to-freetype.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seriously? Ubuntu has the best font rendering of any operating system that I've used.

Mac OS X is perfectly good, but it doesn't tend to feel as nice as Ubuntu. Especially when you get to things like Indic scripts.

Windows' font rendering (I can only speak for up to Windows 7) is still quite nasty, especially at larger font sizes. The lack of vertical antialiasing ruins it for these cases.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I made this in the past:

<http://i.imgur.com/4dGbR.png> (Ubuntu)

<http://i.imgur.com/mfyjw.png> (OS X)

<http://i.imgur.com/BqOdg.png> (Windows 7)

<comment><USER6> Interesting: in terms of visual quality, I would rank those in order of decreasing preference as OS X, Windows 7, Ubuntu.

<comment><USER7> Is Windows even using the same font? I think Windows prioritizes making the text look sharp over getting all the character strokes in the right place. OS X and Ubuntu look very similar except for the line spacing, and the lowercase 'a', which looks kind of strange/vertically compressed on Ubuntu.

<comment><USER5> They should all be using Verdana, as per HN's CSS. I have the font installed in each OS so it should be a fair fight unless I screwed something different up.

<comment><USER8> The font in the Ubuntu image is not Verdana.

Ubuntu does not install Microsoft fonts by default. It will fallback to Ubuntu's default font.

<comment><USER5> I _always_ have msttcorefonts installed which includes Verdana. It's part of the script that is the first thing I run on a new install...

(Like, a half hour ago, I checked that Verdana was installed and then recreated the screenshot from the original post and it's identical as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER9> The fonts are similar, but you can see the numeral "3" is different. They're not the same font.

Right-click the text and choose "Inspect element". In the right-hand column, make sure "Computed" is selected at the top, then look to see what font-family is being rendered. (If you click "Rules" at the top, you can see which rules are active.)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it says Verdana: <http://i.imgur.com/50Sx6c3.png>

The '3' doesn't look any more different than other chars due to rendering difference, to me.

And KDE's font manager's take on Verdana: <http://i.imgur.com/4c5cSe3.png>

And Firefox on my system, just as a reference: <http://i.imgur.com/a2yZ7UQ.png>

<comment><USER9> Thanks for double-checking. The 'a' looks very different on the Windows 7 sample!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's been my experience that Ubuntu's default font rendering is good--but this seems to be because Ubuntu is using fonts which have been explicitly designed to render well in the Linux font stack. I find that using mainstream TTF and OTF fonts, with their custom hinting and ligatures, works less well.

Soon this will be a non-issue, though. Font engines differ only in how they hint and subpixel render at low resolutions. Once every display is "retina," there will be very little difference, except perhaps in gamma correction, advanced kerning and layout algorithms, where I've found OS X has always produced superior results.

<comment><USER11> I really don't know much about font rendering, but I thought that was the case too so I installed the Ubuntu fonts on my Arch Linux system, and they looked terrible. According to the Arch wiki, Ubuntu applies their own patches and "extra configurations" for freetype2, cairo, etc. I was able to achieve a similar, but not quite as pleasing result by installing freetype2-infinality on Arch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now that font rendering technology on displays has reached that of print thanks to "retina" class displays, how can we improve readability even further? We're no longer constrained by the limitations of the printing press.

What if every vowel in a word were rendered in light grey, and every consonant in black? Or every letter were mapped to one of n subtle (near black) color hues? Or both? Such crazy schemes might further improve word recognition and reduce load on the visual cortex. Perhaps the Kindle, Readability, or iBooks could implement something like this as an experiment. I'd definitely try it.

</comment><comment><USER12> You can support the development and maintenance of this project by donating here: <http://pledgie.com/campaigns/18808>.

</comment><comment><USER13> The rendering of curved lines appears much better, but vertical and horizontal lines are very poorly rendered. You can see this clearly in the Chinese character "中" - the first character inside the parentheses on the first line.

</comment><comment><USER2> Is it true that iOS uses a different font renderer than Mac OS? I thought that the fonts on an iPhone looked pretty good actually. Perhaps they are referring to apps that decide to use the FreeType renderer?

<comment><USER14> > Is it true that iOS uses a different font renderer than Mac OS?

Yes, iOS uses (parts of) FreeType. Imagine the shitstorm if they shipped their fuzzy, washed-out default rendering! The issue is that most people buying smartphones are not die-hard Apple fans like the buyers of their other offerings, so the font rentering would be pretty hard to sell.

> I thought that the fonts on an iPhone looked pretty good actually.

That's because FreeType (with the right patches and settings) is already pretty much the best font renderer (with a few exceptions).

<comment><USER15> But finding the right patches and settings is hard.

<comment><USER16> Doesn't Ubuntu and other out-of-the-box desktop friendly distros come with good font settings from the get go?

I use Arch Linux but even here it's not much of a hassle given that there is a very informative wiki page not to mention packages with good configuration presets (infinality).

<comment><USER14> > Doesn't Ubuntu and other out-of-the-box desktop friendly distros come with > good font settings from the get go?

Yes, exactly!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A good start would be to replace fontconfig and its ridiculous XML files.

</comment><comment><USER18> I hope this brings more consistency to font rendering across OS environments. That would be a great accomplishment and wonderful for web designers!

</comment><comment><USER19> Is it just me who finds _all_ of them horrible?

</comment><comment><USER20> I would love to try this out and even went to the distance of downloading the tarball for the beta of '.12. However, it's not clear _where_ the property needs to be set, as there are a few places in the library where FT_Init... is called. On top of that, I am not sure from re-reading this that it helps at all for TT fonts, which is most of what I end up using.

</comment><comment><USER21> So, does this mean that text on web-pages is going to have inconsistent rasterisation depending on whether the font happens to represent its glyphs with TrueType, PostScript, or CFF outlines?

<comment><USER22> This is not any different than today (in terms of this problem) as far as I can tell. One part of creating the whole system is creating a unified font catalog in _one_ font format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How about Google spend some time fixing font rendering in Chrome on Windows? Firefox has nailed it but Chrome hasn't. Some web fonts are unreadable.

</comment><comment><USER24> so, does it mean freetype and fontconfig will render fonts pretty well without patching them with infinality for example?

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone want to host a PPA for Raring with the patched freetype?</comment>


Pentagon Turns to Silicon Valley for Edge in Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/technology/artificial-intelligence-as-the-pentagons-latest-weapon.html <comment><USER2> I would just like to remind everyone of our (computer scientists/engineers) failure to check the expansion of the surveillance state we helped build.

I am all for the cooperation of the public and private sectors, and I believe it is the only way that we are going to solve the toughest problems we face.

However, I also believe that the US Military and State department cannot be trusted with advanced AI's. Military AI is at best a secession of accountability for those giving orders, and at worst the most powerful tool for oppression ever created.</comment>


An empirical study of goto in C code - <AUTHOR> https://peerj.com/preprints/826v1/ <comment><USER2> This study is ridiculous. Dijkstra's paper was written before C was. There's no reason to believe that he was referring to the style used commonly in C code.

Edit: I just mean the tone the study writer takes is ridiculous. It is good to know that goto is used thoughtfully.

<comment><USER3> We can go stronger than that. The real point of Dijkstra's paper was to argue in favor of structured programming. C is a structured programming language. Dijkstra won so thoroughly that we've collectively forgotten what he was arguing about.

To replicate the goto that Dijkstra was complaining about in C, you would have to put the entire program in the main function, use no for loops or switch statements, and use if statements with bodies that only jump to labels and contain nothing else in their bodies. Nobody programs like that for their entire program. Dijkstra won.

(On occasion, people structure a function as a state machine rather than a stack, but generally only in special circumstances. C-style error handling is also simply using the language tools to implement exceptions, not unstructured programming.)

<comment><USER4> > We conclude that developers limit themselves to using goto appropriately in > most cases, and not in an _unrestricted manner like Dijkstra feared_

So this is pretty much the control flow equivalent of someone complaining about memory errors in languages like C (dangling pointers/memory leaks), and then much later some academics look through some code written in a managed GC'ed language like Java or C# and decide that the original complainer really didn't have anything to worry about.

<comment><USER3> Yup, that's it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fun paper. I conclude that the warning worked: goto is used carefully and with restraint.

I suspect you could generalize this to many similar language construct and tool warnings/anti-patterns.

Except csh. It's always harmful.

</comment><comment><USER6> I subscribe to the theory that the average use of goto in the sample set is not toxic because of Dijkstra's warning.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't forget that `Dijkstra` let you GOTO anywhere you wanted, something impossible in modern implementations.</comment>


Let's Encrypt AUTHZ Reuse and Eternal Account Key - <AUTHOR> https://dan.enigmabridge.com/lets-encrypts-vulnerability-as-a-feature-authz-reuse-and-eternal-account-key/ <comment><USER3> I think it's also important to note... you don't need the account key at all if you can re-do the domain verification every time.

In most cases I delete the account key right after verifying the domain and getting a cert, and let certbot generate a new one every time.

We route the '/.well-known/acme-challenge' request to the standalone server (we use haproxy ACLs 'path_beg' to route it to a dedicated port on localhost) so it hasn't been a problem running the validation every time for every new cert.

And per TFA, the timeout for validation on their side (what they call Authz or authorization token) is about the same as the timeout for renewal, so you can't really depend on not needing to validate the domain even _with_ the account key. I'd much rather have the code path be identical every time, rather than different for new cert vs renewal cert, and then also different every other time you renew due to authz expiry.

<comment><USER4> > In most cases I delete the account key right after verifying the domain and > getting a cert, and let certbot generate a new one every time.

An alternative would be deactivating the authorizations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In general, you'll automate lets-encrypt. That means you'll have some file or group of files (a cronjob, systemd timer, or what have you) that's capable of producing new keys.

If an attacker can read files on the filesystem as root, then they can simply read whatever automation scripts you have and issue new certs as well.

This isn't always true (e.g. if it depends on an IAM role, they'll have to get data from the instance metadata service as well), but the point is generally true.

If an attacker has root filesystem access on a box which can issue certs, it makes miniscule difference whether they need to grab an account key or bash script; either way you've probably lost.

You could also, however, have more locked-down boxes which issue certs, encrypt them for their intended hosts, and transport them over, at which point all of your host boxes no longer have account keys to worry about.

You could also encrypt-and-ship the account key from the box to elsewhere, and then remove it.

Frankly, you're making a lot of fuss about absolutely nothing.

<comment><USER3> If you have to authenticate the domain every time, there's a good chance you capture that specific HTTP request traffic and log it to another server which isn't compromised. You now have an audit trail of the cert being issued and you have a chance of catching it.

If the account_key "walks away" and within 90 days they can get a cert without anything hitting your server, you have no audit log of the certificate being issued and are less likely to know your TLS is owned.

So if I understand correctly, the account_key is an unnecessary risk with very little return. (see my other post). I just immediately delete it every time, I don't see the point of keeping it.

Even key revocation does not require the account key, just the certificate private key. So really, what is the point? Unless there's something you actually need the account_key for... I feel like this was a failure to KISS.

EDIT: Mentioned downthread, there are also Certificate Transparency logs which can help you catch an unauthorized issuance, but that's not going to let you wire up an instant SMS through Twilio on every domain validation.

<comment><USER6> > Even key revocation does not require the account key, just the certificate > private key. So really, what is the point? Unless there's something you > actually need the account_key for... I feel like this was a failure to KISS.

Can you revoke with either one? If someone steals my account key, and creates a new certificate private key do I have no way of revoking that since I don't have the new certificate private key?

<comment><USER7> Yes, both keys can be used to revoke, so as long as you still have either the account key or all certificate private keys, you're good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The surprising aspect is that Authz has a validity of 300 days (which is > likely to be increased)

This is not true. Authorization lifetimes are only going to get shorter and shorter [1], and have already been reduced to 90 days.

[1] [https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/upcoming-api- changes/179...](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/upcoming-api- changes/17947)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've updated the blog post. I don't think, though, it has any material impact on the rest of the text.

<comment><USER9> > I've updated the blog post

You still state in your updated post that: "The surprising aspect is that Authz has a validity of 300 days ( _which is likely to be increased_ )" [emphasis mine]. This would appear to be incorrect based on the source cited above , where it is stated at "Eventually, we'd like to make authorization objects much shorter than certificate lifetimes, probably 7 days."

Perhaps it's worth updating the post again in light of this?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is an interesting one - here is the original source (and there were many more mentioning 300 days).

[https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dns-authorization- lifeti...](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dns-authorization-lifetime-on- le-servers/17007/2)

It is from 14 June 2016 (a few months back), @pfg states "The CA/B Forum is currently developing new rules for domain validation and is probably going to settle on a validation period that is significantly longer than the 300 days currently in use ..."

Is there an authority to say which way it will go?

<comment><USER7> I think it's 36 months right now, but that's a Baseline Requirements thing, Let's Encrypt can (and does) use shorter periods. 36 months is the upper limit for all CAs. Let's Encrypt currently uses 90 days, and will go to something like 7 days in the near-future[1].

[1]: [https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/upcoming-api- changes/179...](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/upcoming-api- changes/17947)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > I did expect that each request includes a fresh verification of the domain > control. And I also expect that substantial majority of people out there > believe in this process / data flow as that's how certificates have always > been verified – for each new certificate, you either have to send an email > from a given domain or put a file to a web server's folder.

This is not correct. Certificate Authorities are allowed to reuse authorizations for (I believe) up to 36 months, so Let's Encrypt is already significantly below that (with 90 days right now, and probably closer to something like ~7 days soon). Many CAs I've used in the past worked like this.

<comment><USER10> This is interesting in the context of buying and selling domain names. Let's say you pay big $$$ for a fancy .com because you're launching a new product with that name or whatever. The seller could actually possess certificates (or authorizations) that allow them to MITM your fancy expensive domain for up to, what, 3 years. Never really thought of that.

CT logs could prove on the date of purchase that your new domain no longer has any valid certificates in the hands of third parties, but if the third party still holds an authorization, they could sneakily obtain new certificates long after the sale? Or - are authorizations also logged somehow to CT-like logs?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's definitely something I'm hoping the CA/B Forum will address at some point. Something like a month seems like a sweet spot between not being annoying for new customers when they're in the process of getting multiple certs and not being a huge deal when domains are transferred.

I'm not aware of any kind of "Authorization Transparency" effort. Let's Encrypt were thinking about a way to share logs at some point (IIRC), so it might get included in those, but that's a maybe for the future and not a general solution for all CAs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >And I also expect that substantial majority of people out there believe in this process / data flow as that's how certificates have always been verified – for each new certificate, you either have to send an email from a given domain or put a file to a web server's folder.

Err... what? I don't think any CA validation process has ever involved _sending_ e. mail, and I'd be very concerned if it did, since the origin of an e. mail is not in general authenticated. Unless it's in response to a CA e. mail which includes a token, of course.

'Obtain reusable authorization' followed by 'issue certificate' is hardly unprecedented, and it's a sensible way to structure things if you don't have a commercial interest in applying the friction of a financial transaction to the act of issuance. Startcom, for example, used this model (there are many issues with them, this wasn't one of them). I think CAcert may also use this model, unrecognised though they may be.

The ACME protocol is also a standard. It's right there, I'm surprised people aren't reading it, especially when they're rigging up custom solutions. [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-acme- acme-02](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-acme-acme-02)

</comment><comment><USER12> If you're upset about the expected operation of a service based on open-source software (github.com/letsencrypt/boulder), then I'd strongly recommend reading the code before use. Additionally:

"I also expect that our Enigma Bridge Cloud HSM service (check our PKI product with hardware key security) can securely control storage and use of the account key to prevent thefts of the keys and their subsequent misuse."

Using this as a way to promote your product and _not_ reading the code first is a serious failure of tradecraft on your part.

</comment><comment> chad-autry Or just destroy the auth key once a certificate is issued. No need to keep it around. Can go through the expected validation process for a new one when renewing.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely not. You need it for revocation. Destroying it is thus dangerous and reduces your security.

Edit: I'm wrong, see pfg's comment below. See my top-level comment for why I don't think it matters still.

<comment><USER7> Revocation is also possible using the certificate's private key, but I agree that the risk of keeping the account key is not worth the hassle of deleting it straight away. As it stands, authorizations are valid as long as certificates, so the worst case is you're compromised on the 89th day of validity and get another certificate valid for the next 90 days. Soon, that'll be ~7 days, so even less of a concern.

<comment><AUTHOR> So do you imply that the account key is created from scratch for every new certificate?

Why we were surprised (and we don't say the implementation is necessarily wrong!) is that I can use the account key anywhere. If the genuine user keeps refreshing authz's, it will keep the stolen account key operational as well.

That's my understanding. I may be wrong, but if so, I don't quite yet understand the logic behind authz.

<comment><USER3> If you are creating a new account key with a new authz, but the old account key still gives you access to renewal certs, that IMO is absolutely a bug.

The authz should be tied to the { domain, account_key } tuple, not just the { domain }.

Can anyone confirm?

<comment><USER5> That's not a bug.

I have multiple servers that serve { domain } in dns round-robin. Each of them has a unique account key, but they also each issue certs for the same domain.

This is a totally normal and valid use-case, and allowing only a single account key for a domain at a time would ruin it.

<comment><USER3> This is contrary to their documentation at [1].

      I'm sure this is what was meant, but just to confirm and spell it out, the authorization
      has to belong to the subscriber account that's making the request right?

      @tialaramex Apologies that it wasn't clear - you are absolutely correct. Authorizations
      are only reused within a subscriber account.

      tialaramex: If account A asks to create an authz for example.com, succeeds in validating
      it, and then account B comes along and wants an authz for example.com too, that should
      result in a fresh authz regardless of this setting.

      Correct. Account B's request would result in a fresh authz in pending state.

It's fine for multiple different servers with different account_keys to be able to each independently validate a domain and get their own unique authz tokens, but one server with account_key A must not be able to piggyback off of another server's authz done under account_key B.

Since, remember, it is trivial for anyone to get a new account_key, there is absolutely no validation that occurs to setup a new account key for a given domain. This is why I don't understand the purpose behind the account_key in the first place.

[1] - [https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/upcoming-change-valid- au...](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/upcoming-change-valid-authz- reuse/16982/2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My recommendation is to use the DNS challenge implementation with an appropriate DNS provider (I use Route 53): you can do all your certificate generation on a single locked-down machine and then just distribute the certs out to your machines. No need to deal with path_beg or check which host in the fleet is responding to the acme-challenge request.

</comment><comment><USER14> "This is not true any more with re-usable AUTHZ tokens"

I must re-iterate my own 10+ year experiences with Token auth - <USER2> authorized, end that token, period, or you're asking for problems.

<comment><USER14> Feel free to downvote - I retired because I was right and proved it AND GOT PAID FOR IT. Come retire at 28 years of age, guys, if you bother to listen.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where do you read the news? - <AUTHOR> Where do you go regularly to read news/current affairs/politics? I generally head to the Guardian for this kind of stuff but am increasingly feeling inclined to look elsewhere. <comment><USER2> I have a list of news sites bookmarked that I open in tabs each morning that include:

       AP
       Reuters
       HN
       Science Bulletin
       The Conversation
       Ordinary Times
       The Intercept

Sometimes I still sometimes hit news.google.com but I removed them from my bookmarks list late last year.

<comment><USER3> Why not news.google.com? Too much personal filtering?

<comment><USER2> Yes.

Anything that I'm learning from is "News" to me so an algorithm that tries to "match my interests" based on what I've looked at previously just doesn't work for me and Google News just got boring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> News.google.com has long been my standard, but I feel like it is building a bit of a news bubble trying to recommend stories it thinks will interest me. And its recent move to show less detail per article on the page is also a step backward from what I prefer.

<comment><USER5> until the change that occured this year I loved google news, since the new change I feel like it is just a headline generator with more space and less information.

lately I have received two summaries a week from Signal [0] which keeps me generally aware of what is going on but I know I am becoming less and less informed as a result of google news becoming a source of disinformation (my opinion). I think the focus on headlines and decrease in information density makes people focus on headlines more and choose not to read articles...

[0] [https://www.eurasiagroup.net/](https://www.eurasiagroup.net/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Economist. I like to keep tabs on what the Rothschilds are thinking. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist))

</comment><comment><USER7> BBC & Guardian. spiegel.de has a lot of English content and is good for the German perspective. Also news.google.com

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://virwire.com](https://virwire.com)

Because I made it :)

<comment><USER9> Cool. Is there any Android app?

<comment><USER8> Thanks! its basically a web app, works on any mobile browser - to add app icon to your screen try this: [http://updato.com/how-to/add-website-to-android- home-screen-...](http://updato.com/how-to/add-website-to-android-home-screen- chrome)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Guardian is the best.

</comment><comment><USER11> HN Bloomberg Nytimes Local News sites

</comment><comment><USER12> Twitter and NYtimes</comment>


Apple to hold iPhone 4 press conference on Friday - <AUTHOR> http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/07/14/apple-to-hold-special-iphone-4-press-conference-on-friday/

<comment><USER2> As long as Apple holds it the right way, the press conference will work correctly.

<comment><USER3> I know I'm not supposed to say this because my account is less than a year old but this thread is definitely like being on Reddit. I actually like Reddit, I'm just not used to seeing these types of comments being upvoted so high on Hacker News.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, but the use of the verb "to hold" in connection to the iPhone4 made it too difficult to resist. I know snarky comments are not always well received here and generally agree they should never be the core of a discussion, but not many of us watch soap operas and companies like Apple and Microsoft, along with their Steves and Bills provides us with the missing drama.

A world without Apple would be a lot less interesting. In fact, I am convinced one of us would have no alternative but to invent it.

<comment><USER3> I was not disappointed at the quality of your post; In fact it made me chuckle. My comment was really on the chain that followed it. I replied to you only because you we're the leader of what resulted in a Redditesque joke thread. I think it's important that we can not come off as completely uptight around here and can enjoy the occasional quip but I definitely wouldn't enjoy long thread's where people are trying to be more clever than the next all for "the lulz."

<comment><USER2> If they succeed in being more clever than the previous, I can live with that. It's the failed attempts that kill the fun ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another interesting theory from Dan Rubin:

 _$10 says Friday's Apple press conference is the announcement about Verizon, to — in the words of Don Draper — change the conversation._

<http://twitter.com/danrubin/status/18565906020>

While probably not too likely, it would be an interesting move on Apple's part none the less.

<comment><USER5> I think that would be _bad_ timing for a Verizon announcement. Wouldn't that just piss off anyone who signed with AT&T for the iPhone 4 just because they couldn't get it on Verizon?

Besides, if they're going to announce a Verizon phone then they're effectively announcing a new model; the GSM iPhone 4 obviously isn't compatible with Verizon's network. In my opinion this is the kind of thing you'd do at the launch of a new iPhone generation, not just a few weeks afterward.

<comment><USER6> _In my opinion this is the kind of thing you'd do at the launch of a new iPhone generation, not just a few weeks afterward._

Absolutely not. If a deal with Verizon were announced at the launch, it would have completely overshadowed all of the engineering effort put into the phone. It would be known as the "Verizon iPhone". This way, out of the spotlight, it leaves the iPhone brand unharmed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What did Steve Jobs know, and when did he know it?

<comment><USER8> And how many reception bars could he chuck, if he could chuck bars?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Free bumpers seems unlikely to me: wouldn't it make iPhone 4 owners a laughing stock? Here you are with a super-sleek 800$ device, and then you are forced to deface it with an ugly rubber case. I think that solution would contradict Apple's supposed dedication to perfection.

<comment><USER10> It'll be a free strip of non-conductive yellow packing tape to put on the phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Placing my bet: Free bumpers

<comment><USER12> I have to agree... I hate to cross post, but I posted this in the other Apple thread:

 _I equate Apple's problems to the Nintendo lawsuit over their wrist straps. Not everyone was throwing their controllers through their TV screens, but the select few who did caused an uproar. It also didn't stop Wii consoles from selling like hotcakes either. It took a class-action lawsuit to get Nintendo to take action. The solution was very simple -- give everyone free wrist straps for each of their controllers.

I think Apple needs to take a similar step to alleviate the problem._

... and free bumpers would be it!

<comment><USER13> Clear high-tech custom insulating stickers might do as well.

<comment><USER14> And not spoilt the look of the phone, which is one of the reasons people buy it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I misread the title as "Apple to hold how to hold the iPhone 4 press conference...". Telling.

In all honesty, this has been blown out of proportion; though hell if it's a great problem to have.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow. This is unprecedented. What are they going to do? 60 day return period with no restocking fee? Free bumpers for everyone?

<comment><USER17> They'll announce the iGlove, which will fix your faulty left hand.

<comment><USER18> I love the iGlove. It's so bad.

<comment><USER19> Haven't watched that movie in awhile!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The question is: in case the stock price drops because of the announcement, would it be a a good occasion to buy?

<comment><USER2> Yes.

<comment><USER20> Isn't AAPL a bit overvalued in comparison to other tech stocks at the moment?

<comment><USER2> Probably. Still, the question was whether it would be worth to buy in case it crashes after the press conference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think this thing is ridiculous. My iPhone 4 so far has better reception of all the previous models for me (I owned all of them)

<comment><USER22> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My prediction:

\- free bumpers or exchange for today's customers

\- Minor redesign within a few months (ie, by the holidays) - something like a thin insulating coating over the steel antenna, such that it solves the issue, but doesn't change the appearance.

I expect they'll get major kudos from fans and critics alike.

<comment><USER24> I predict they'll provide an even cheaper solution. A small transparent electrostatic piece of plastic to cover the antenna (i.e., scotch tape without the glue).

I don't expect them to issue much of a mea culpa over this though.

<comment><USER25> * A small transparent electrostatic piece of plastic to cover the antenna (i.e., scotch tape without the glue).*

Would this even work? Capacitive coupling?

<comment><USER24> On second thought, let's add the glue back to the piece of plastic. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My prediction for the record:

* No free bumpers.

* Thirty day, no questions asked, money back guarantee.

</comment><comment><USER27> I have an iPhone 4, and I've had a bumper on it since I bought it. I also put an invisishield on the front and back (basically, my whole phone is protected). I have not had any reception issues, and my phone has worked perfectly. Surely there are others out there in similar situations. I wonder why the negativity clouds the internet sometimes.

<comment><USER5> It's common knowledge that Apple's rubber bumpers are a workaround for the antenna problem. But you shouldn't have to buy a $30 case for your $200 phone just for the privilege of making calls reliably.

<comment><USER28> You don't. On day one, my wife spent a couple minutes covering the gap with a piece of scotch tape. It's almost impossible to see and it worked flawlessly. Anyone who drops $30 just to solve the antenna issue is either lazy or a fool or a foolish lazy person or a loolish fazy person.

<comment><USER29> Or someone who doesn't like mucky Scotch tape on their brand-new high-tech device? I don't care, but I know plenty of people who buy the iPhone as a design statement & I can see how that tiny imperfection could infuriate these types of people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Did Apple ever give something for free to fix a problem? What did they do?

<comment><USER31> When they dropped the price of the original iphone from $599 to $399 (WITH 2 year contract) just two months after it was introduced they gave everyone who bought at the higher price a $100 gift certificate

<comment><USER6> A gift certificate isn't the same as giving something away for free. The latter devaluates the product in the eye of the consumer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm guessing admit full fault and a return/exchange of iPhone4.

Oh, and one more thing -- new MacPro and iMacs!

Making the iPhone recall a non-event, in terms of news and stock price :-)

<comment><USER20> An iPhone recall would never be a non-event, especially in stock price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just _hold_ it differently this time.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the inspiration: <http://www.dieblinkenlights.com/blog_en/hold- different/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Product exchange program. First 1,000 people to return their iPhone 4 get a free BlackBerry and $1,000 but can never use an iPhone again.</comment>


PETSCII Revealed - <AUTHOR> https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/2020/petscii <comment><USER2> Surprised to see the author suggest that the C64 keyboard did not include the graphics glyphs on the keys.

Both the VIC-20 and the C64 both had them, albeit printed on the front vertical face instead of the horizontal face like the PET.

Moreover, the VIC-20 and the C64 keys include the box glyphs as well so you could see what character you'd get via CTRL and the 'C=' ("Commodore") key.

The Wikipedia page* states PETSCII includes 192 characters, but the author seems to suggest it's at most a 7-bit charset. I was a little surprised to find that out after reading the article.

Fun walk down memory lane.

* [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETSCII](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETSCII)

<comment><USER3> The location is dependent on the model: the C64C had the symbols on the top of the keys, the breadbin on the side.

<comment><USER4> FYI: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:C64C.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:C64C.jpg)

Lots and lots of revs, apparently.

<comment><USER5> Yup. Early revisions of the 64C had the glyphs on the fronts of the keys, but this was later cost-reduced to having them on the tops.

This is also one of the differences between the "Aldi C64" (breadbin case, but beige keys with front glyphs) and the C64G (beige breadbin case, but beige keys with top glyphs). Commodore loved to mix and match components, too. Some C64Gs have the brown keys of the earlier breadbin C64.

<comment><USER3> Do you know if Commodore manufactured any two styles of these in parallel intentionally, or if this was a matter of making use of existing housing/keyboard assembly/motherboards?

The corresponding article on C64 Wiki says that side symbol keyboards were used during the first year of production, and also includes a picture of the top glyph version: [https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/C64C](https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/C64C)

<comment><USER5> My understanding is that the "main line" was breadbin, 64C with front glyphs, then 64C with top glyphs. The Aldi 64 was concurrent with the breadbin, but mysteriously used the keys from the early 64C. The 64G was concurrent with the late 64C. The Aldi and 64G were only available in a relatively small area (mostly Germany), rather than internationally.

Commodore was notorious for mixing and matching parts, though. Even the very early breadbin 64s would sometimes ship with VIC-20 function keys (orange instead of dark gray) and vice-versa. I don't know if this was due to poor quality control, or an intentionally sloppy supply chain management. Perhaps a combination of both.

The 64G especially looks like they were scrambling to meet demand any way they could, as the key colors and even the LED colors vary. I'm guessing the beige breadbin was used to increase production speed by taking the old breadbin injection molds out of retirement. They aren't old cases that they had in inventory, because breadbins weren't that color previously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Andromeda running on a PET: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElLt7Dm8F9M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElLt7Dm8F9M)

Seems kind of silly today, but I remember being absolutely enchanted by it as a kid.

<comment><USER7> And soon we'll be able to run that on a modern terminal, thanks to Unicode 13's addition of PETSCII. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fond memories of PETSCII from my very first computer experiences.

Interesting to note that the Unicode 13 update will include 214 home computer graphic characters from the 70's and 80's [1]- I'm hopeful PETSCII will be included.

[1] [https://unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/#Summary](https://unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/#Summary)

Edited: 80s/90s corrected to 70s/80s.

<comment><USER7> PETSCII, ATASCII, TRS-80, Apple's MouseText... All included. :-)</comment></comment>


Isaac Newton's Recipe for Magical 'Philosopher's Stone' Rediscovered - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/54162-newton-recipe-for-philosophers-stone-rediscovered.html <comment><USER2> The titles of the papers back then are... notable:

'A smart Scourge for a silly, sawcy Fool, an answer to letter at the end of a pamphlet of Lionell Lockyer (1664). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Starkey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Starkey)

</comment><comment><USER3> So, are we going to become immortal or not?

<comment><USER4> No, not if you're going to be messing around with mercury and lead.

<comment><USER5> But what if he dilutes it down with water, then dilutes it some more, etc until it merely leaves the imprint of mercury on the water. /s

<comment><USER6> Then he'll get mercury poisoning from drinking pure water, and we'll find out homeopathy is just as good at killing people as it is at healing them.

<comment><USER7> This: [https://xkcd.com/765/](https://xkcd.com/765/)

or this: [http://xkcd.com/971/](http://xkcd.com/971/)

and this: [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2267](http://www.smbc- comics.com/index.php?id=2267)

<comment><USER8> You miscreant you lie.

Everyday, I used to filter my water on tap (except for minerals) and I drunk it.

Then I got totally stoned with the highly diluted cocain, heroin, cannabis, alcohol, ketamine, LSD there is in it. The lesser the dilution, the stronger the effect.

Then I decided to get back with more normal way to get my life back from addiction. Drugs are bad.

Every day now since then, my routine includes diluting a mix of drugs in my water to avoid the effects of it. I am feeling much better.

I also noticed a problem with air. So I now constantly smoke weed, crack, heroin.

It is costly, but me at least, I am not insane.

How can you miss the pink elephant talking to the green martians that are infecting the lizard man in the government that are all around us?

Take back your sanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> time for a homeopathic joke...

                              .

<comment><USER9> or better still..

homeopathic accident and emergency..

[http://youtu.be/HMGIbOGu8q0](http://youtu.be/HMGIbOGu8q0)</comment></comment>


Common JavaScript Gotchas - <AUTHOR> http://www.jblotus.com/2013/01/13/common-javascript-gotchas/ PHP was my first programming language, and my initial exposure to JavaScript was through libraries like jQuery. There were things about JavaScript that always seemed to trip me up in the beginning due to how they worked differently than PHP. Heck there are still some things today that are confusing. I want to share some of the things that I struggled when I started working with JavaScript. I am going to cover the global namespace, this, knowing the difference between ECMAScript 3 and ECMAScript 5, asynchronous operations, prototypes, and simple JavaScript inheritance. <comment><USER2> The most common gotcha I encounter in Javascript has to do with callbacks. I see this problem all the time in my own code and that of my colleagues: callbacks that have been registered either more or less times than the author of the code expected. Usually more times.

This can manifest itself in many ways. Usually in the form of a UI element being displayed more than once, but often more subtly such as a HTTP request being sent more than once. Often the bugs only manifest themselves after a certain sequence of actions, for example: click this UI element, check this radio box, then hit submit and watch the net tab.

It's so often the root cause of Javascript bugs that if I or somebody else on my team has a Javascript problem, I often start by asking myself if it looks like it could be this. Lately I have begun to wonder if there isn't some slight truth to that inflammatory "Callbacks are the new goto" story that was on here a couple of months ago [1].

[1] <http://elm-lang.org/learn/Escape-from-Callback-Hell.elm>

<comment><USER3> _I see this problem all the time in my own code and that of my colleagues: callbacks that have been registered either more or less times than the author of the code expected. Usually more times._

I've yet to run into this problem before, and I'm an even split between JS / Ruby these days. Are you building on top of any particular libraries or frameworks? Could you give some examples of where you've encountered this?

<comment><USER4> I've encountered it once with a form, although it was a while ago and if I saw the code again I might be able to identify what was wrong. In that case it was probably a poor choice of element to attach to that caused the callback to be fired independently multiple times on one click, and stopping the bubbling had no effect.

The other time was in a Rails app, where a script was added to a partial for a layout, and then added again later on (by a different developer) to the layout itself. That caused a particularly nasty bug since it used 'toggle', and thus the second callback negated the first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would also add that variables can be re-declared. Many beginners probably think that writing this code would produce an error:

        var i = 0;
        var i = [];

No runtime error will be produced, and the script will continue normal execution.

</comment><comment><USER6> _a basic explanation is that by preceding a variable declaration with var creates a property on the nearest containing function_

This is not true, the var hoist the variable and scopes it to the function, but does not create it as a property of the function. A function is defined in its outer function scope, an it's properties will persist across calls.

      function foo() {
        var bar = 1;
        foo.baz = 2;
      }

      foo();

      foo.bar; // is undefined
      foo.baz; // is 2

Adding properties to functions is useful for memoization, but is different than what the var statement does.

Your summary of that section is a better explanation:

 _all variables are scoped to a function (which is itself an object), and where you declare those variables with var determines the function they are scoped to._

You might add, if you never declare the variable with var it is implicitly declared global.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the help

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing you didn't mention is strict mode. I think this rule is awesome for preventing issues like in your "bonus gotcha".

<comment><USER8> yeah it should be your default JS environment

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Using closures to encapsulate private variables is a good idea, but the way this article recommends doing it doesn't demonstrate any of the benefit as it doesn't really close over anything. I don't know if it's an example of good JS code, but something like the basic closure definition of a counter might have better demonstrated the ability to hide state:

        var counter = (function () {
            var i = 0;

            return function () {
                i += 1;
                return i;
            }
        }());

Where the internal variable, i, is inaccessible to anything but the counter function itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> author here, it wasn't about hiding private variables. i was demonstrating using closures to avoid global namespace collisions which i think is generally a big problem for beginners.

<comment><USER10> i believe you mean using functions, not closures. your post doesn't seem to have the same misnomer, and simply explains lexical function scope. it doesn't seem to touch on the closure, while your parent comment does.

<comment><AUTHOR> well, functions close over scope no matter what you call them.

<comment><USER10> not exactly. closures close over scope. functions alone simply create a new scope. these concepts are not synonymous.

if your function doesn't return another function, the references from that function are deallocated once the function has executed.

when your function returns a function (a "closure"), the inner function closes over the variables of the outer function, maintaining references to it's context as long as you maintain a reference to the closure.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok i see your point. i conflated the terms function and closure in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's why developers should always lint their code. www.jslint.com

<comment><USER3> Or <http://www.jshint.com/> if they feel jslint is too harsh or arbitrary about some things.

<comment><USER12> jshint seems to be more actively developed, more receptive to changes, and more flexible in terms of instructions (like ignoring certain patterns)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If I only had a dime for the number of blog posts explaining what "this" means in Javascript...

</comment><comment><USER14> Great article, I will recommend it to every js beginner.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for reading

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I thought php was also function scope, not block scope as the author claims...?

<comment><AUTHOR> author here.

<?php $a = 1; /* global scope */

function test() { echo $a }

test();

in javascript, $a would be 1 but in PHP it is undefined and won't produce output,

<comment><AUTHOR> after thinking about it for a while, I was misrepresenting what block scope actually was and removed those references in the post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article should be titled : fixing javascript flaws yourself.</comment>


Ask: Any good Jquery Live edit that worth looking? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I need to "live edit" some content instead of using an edit form. There are some Jquery scripts that you know that worth looking?
Best Regards, <comment><USER2> Do you mean something like this? <http://sharejs.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, just like that but using Jquery.

<comment><USER2> If you want editing with multiple users on the same document, there is (as I mentioned above) ShareJS and Etherpad Lite. But you will need some server- sided components for that.

The 'standard' for code editing in the browser is ace: <http://ace.ajax.org/>

Judging from your statement that it has to be jQuery, you'll want something like that: <http://imperavi.com/redactor></comment></comment></comment>


Full Circle: The complicated history of why there are 360 degrees in a circle - <AUTHOR> https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/full-circle <comment><USER2> One circle unit that strikes me as strange is the "mils" used for military targeting: there are 6400 mils in a circle. The benefit of this is that 1 meter wide at a distance of 1 kilometer corresponds to 1 mil. So if your tank misses the target by 5 meters and the target is 1 km away, you adjust the angle by 5 mils, nice and easy to compute.

A bit of math shows that this unit is a milliradian (since sin 1/1000 ≈ 1/1000). The strange part is that there should be 6283.18... mils in a circle but that's too inconvenient, so they round it to 6400. In other words, they are using milliradians with the value of 3.2 for π.

<comment><USER3> And that is just the NATO convention. There are several others in use across the globe - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milliradian#Definitions_for_ma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milliradian#Definitions_for_maps_and_artillery)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always thought this was somehow motivated by great divisibility, since prime factors of 360 are 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5. This means you can work with integers most of the time when dividing a circle, since all but four numbers in 1-15 are divisors.

<comment><USER5> That large number of divisors was the reason for the Babylonians to use base-60, I've always been thaught. I always assumed the the 360 degree circle was a consequence of that, but this article contradicts that.

Actually I don't think the article does a great job proving its thesis ("In school we learn there are 360 degrees in a circle, but where did the 360 come from? When it is pointed out that the Babylonians counted to base-60, rather than base-10 as we do, people often ask if there is a connection. The short answer is no.").

The article's conclusion is "So, although angles come from the Greeks, the 360 degrees comes from Babylonian astronomy". And it explains, more-or-less, how the Babylonians came to use 360 degrees for astronomy: because they had a habit of dividing things into 12 part, subdivided in 30. But that doesn't preclude they choose 12 and 30 (instead of, say, 13 and 28) because both are divisors of their base number 60.

Wikipedia points in that direction (but admits no-one really knows):

"Some ancient calendars, such as the Persian calendar, used 360 days for a year.[citation needed] The use of a calendar with 360 days may be related to the use of sexagesimal numbers."

"Another theory is that the Babylonians subdivided the circle using the angle of an equilateral triangle as the basic unit and further subdivided the latter into 60 parts following their sexagesimal numeric system.[7][8] The earliest trigonometry, used by the Babylonian astronomers and their Greek successors, was based on chords of a circle. A chord of length equal to the radius made a natural base quantity. One sixtieth of this, using their standard sexagesimal divisions, was a degree."

Another Wikipedia-quote agrees with your point of view:

"Another motivation for choosing the number 360 may have been that it is readily divisible: 360 has 24 divisors,[note 1] making it one of only 7 numbers such that no number less than twice as much has more divisors" "

<comment><USER6> An arc-minute is a 60th of a degree. And an arc-second is a 60th of an arc- minute. This strongly points to a base-60 origin imo.

<comment><USER7> The minute ("small part") and second ("even smaller part") come from the era of clockmaking as they were pointless when your timekeeping resolution was crude.* We are quite lucky that hours and then minutes were divided into 60 sections rather than 10, 12, or 100. This may have come from the system you describe (arc minutes, seconds, thirds, etc) which is much older.

* or not just crude but completely different; e.g. Babylonian and Roman hours varied in length each day as the time from sunrise to sunset was divided into twelve equal sections and sunset to sunrise implicitly the same. IIRC the constant-duration hour goes back only to marine navigation a few hundred years ago

<comment><USER8> > We are quite lucky that hours and then minutes were divided into 60 sections > rather than 10, 12, or 100.

So let's say there's 20 hours a day, since presumably we'd still want to have two daily clock rotations. Those hours could then be divided into 100 "minutes" with 100 "seconds" each.

If I'm doing my math right, this would mean:

• 1 alternate-universe hour = 1.2 current-universe hours

• 1 alternate-universe minute = 0.72 current-universe minutes

• 1 alternate-universe second = 0.432 current-universe seconds

I could very much deal with this. Current-universe seconds are a bit too long for the level of precision I want with that unit, and I don't think the < 30% change in the length of a minute or hour would matter much once I adapted. And, as a consequence, unit conversions would become so much easier!

I don't think we're lucky at all. :(

<comment><USER7> Going to base 10 is a step _backwards_ because 10 has so few factors. The meter would have been massively easier to use had it been base 12 or 60.

Perhaps you can get the Mars colonists to adopt a different system. The martian day is _just_ close enough to the terrestrial day to make adapting the terrestrial system for it quite annoying.

<comment><USER5> > Going to base 10 is a step backwards because 10 has so few factors. The > meter would have been massively easier to use had it been base 12 or 60.

Only when you also use that same base for everything else too. The decimal system works so well because it uses the same base as the number system we use (almost) everywhere.

And actually I don't really think the lack of divisors is really a problem in base 10. It may be different if you're used to imperial units, but when using the decimal system you don't think in fractions all that much. You either use more places after the decimal point, or move to a smaller unit.

<comment><USER7> Well at the time the meter was designed, base 12 was quite common for money and measurement.

I have lived in an Imperial system country, the modified version used in the USA, and multiple metric countries as well as using a mixture of cgs (SI) and mks depending on what work or study I was doing and still, for customary activity, find a dozen the most convenient. When doing science it doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Theories abound:

 _Babylonian math has roots in the numeric system started by the Sumerians, a culture that began about 4000 BCE in Mesopotamia, or southern Iraq, according to USA Today.

"The most commonly accepted theory holds that two earlier peoples merged and formed the Sumerians," USA Today reported. "Supposedly, one group based their number system on 5 and the other on 12. When the two groups traded together, they evolved a system based on 60 so both could understand it."_

[https://www.thoughtco.com/why-we-still-use-babylonian- mathem...](https://www.thoughtco.com/why-we-still-use-babylonian- mathematics-116679)

</comment><comment><USER10> Ah, measures of angle. One of my favourite is the Warsaw Pact Millirad, of which there are 6000 in a full circle, a full 6.25% less than the 6400 NATO mils.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm confused by their description of the ecliptic..

" For them, Venus was a single object and they observed its changing position, along with the other planets and the moon. These positions all lie on the same great circle, called the ecliptic, defined by the apparent motion of the sun as seen from the earth during the course of a year. "

Isnt the ecliptic basically a line (or very very skinny ellipse) from Earths perspective as we are on that great disc ourselves?

Also "For them, Venus was a single object" so for us its not??

<comment> T-hawk Venus: some ancient cultures recognized its "evening star" and "morning star" appearances as the same object; some thought they were two different phenomena.

The ecliptic, physically, is the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun. It is so named because that is where eclipses happen, when the Moon crosses that plane. (Or other planets; we call that event a transit, but that's the same as a very annular eclipse.)

The projection of that plane as viewed on the sky from Earth is a great circle (or slightly offset, because the observer is on Earth's surface not at its center.) If the Earth were transparent, you could see the entire circle. In reality, you see a segment of it from horizon to horizon, as a line.

All the planets and the moon seem to stay near the ecliptic in the sky, because their orbits are within a few degrees of coplanar with Earth's.

<comment><USER11> I'm realising I look at this differently to the article writer + u. I would say, the ecliptic is a great disc. But when your _on_ a disc, from _your_ perspective that disc looks like a straight line, not a circle...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's amazing that Babylonians did this without any modern equipments. Recently I learned that 2500 years ago Persians (the Persian New Year was last week) predicted the Spring Equinox with a certainty of 5 minutes. This is crazy. Very impressive. Sad how the Middle East lost its technological and scientific edge over the centuries.

</comment><comment><USER13> My Dad was once gifted a Silva compass which he gave to me to take on a Boy Scout expedition, everyone was baffled by the fact it had 400 "degrees" marked on it.

Maybe we need to go metric with our circles too: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradian)

<comment><USER14> Surveyors seems to use Gradian/gon often.

There is still another circle measurement, the mil which is 6400 for one turn. But I just learned by reading the wikipedia page, that there is not only the 6400 NATO mils I knew, but also 6000 Warsaw Pact mils or 6300 Swedish "streck"

<comment><USER15> Swedish "streck" = (short) line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> But why are there 2*pi radians in a circle, instead of defining it as pi?

EDIT: I meant redefining pi instead of the radian.

<comment> Ono-Sendai You mean pi should have been defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the radius, instead of to the diameter? Probably, yeah :)

Better yet, I think the unit of angle we should use is the 'full rotation' ('rot'?)

So instead of 360 degrees, or 2pi radians, we say 1 rot.

The many factors of 2pi in common equations imply we got this wrong.

<comment><USER16> I like this idea of "rot" more than "tau", except "rot" is already a stand-in for "∇⨯" in mathematics.

<comment> Ono-Sendai Maybe calling it a 'turn' instead.

<comment><USER17> That has been a proposal, and is part of the nice aspects of using τ instead of π.

> The second reason is that τ corresponds to one turn of a circle, and you may > have noticed that "τ" and "turn" both start with a "t" sound.

[https://tauday.com/tau-manifesto#sec-one_turn](https://tauday.com/tau- manifesto#sec-one_turn)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This was awesome. Thanks for sharing it. Amazing how much has come from the Fertile Crescent.

</comment><comment><USER18> So time is a flat circle then?

<comment><USER19> More of a Jeremy Bearimy sort of shape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I also note that History Today, as an English company, is no longer GDPR compliant. "Take this tracking or get out. Honey badger don't care"</comment>


Where flat UI fails - <AUTHOR> http://elliotnash.me/where-flat-ui-fails

<comment><USER2> I'd add "rounded profile picture" to that list of design trends.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes most definitely - but thats a stylistic trend, and not being mis-used in most cases, even if dated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> btw never rebase!

<comment><AUTHOR> Unless you absolutely must</comment></comment>


Search Engine Optimisation Basics Guide - <AUTHOR> http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo/ <comment><USER2> great starters guide for anyone wanting to learn SEO</comment>


How do I get over my low tolerance for stupid people? (One answer) - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-get-over-my-low-tolerance-for-stupid-people#ans1598266

<comment><USER2> The example you gave is one in which a woman must learn to get along with someone with whom she really has nothing in common. But that's not the usual case, where you simply choose people to associate with, absent special circumstances.

As to the basic question "How do I get over my low tolerance for stupid people?", I have to ask, why do you want to get over it? What do such people offer you that represents an improvement over an empty room and few well- chosen books?</comment>


Do Scientists Really Need Ph.D.s? - barry-cotter http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7285/full/464007a.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Freeman Dyson on the topic:

[http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/freeman-dyson-on-invention- an...](http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/freeman-dyson-on-invention-and-phds/)

Brand: One of the things I got from Infinite in All Directions – it was a delight to me, and I've been quoting it ever since – is that you honor inventors as much as scientists.

Dyson: It's as great a part of the human adventure to invent things as to understand them. John Randall wasn't a great scientist, but he was a great inventor. There's been lots more like him, and it's a shame they don't get Nobel Prizes.

Brand: Is it the scientists who are putting them down?

Dyson: Yes. There is this snobbism among scientists, especially the academic types.

Brand: Are there other kinds?

Dyson: There are scientists in industry who are a bit more broad minded. The academics look down on them, too.

Brand: Is that a weird British hangover?

Dyson: It's even worse in Germany. Intellectual snobbery is a worldwide disease. It certainly was very bad in China and probably held back development there by 2,000 years.

Brand: How would you stop this intellectual snobbery?

Dyson: I would abolish the PhD system. The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and inventors generally don't have PhDs.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm handing in my PhD thesis tomorrow so this is a well timed question :-)

I have learnt a lot from my studies and feel that I have gained important skills in attacking problems and evaluating my solutions to them that will be useful inside and outside of academia. I couldn't have picked up these skills in the 15 years I spent in industry.

There may be many examples of people who can do great science without a PhD but for me the experiences of the last 4 years would be essential if I were to get a job in academia. As it is, I will be going back to programming -- I feel the academic job market is overly competitive for somebody my age.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, they need knowledge, creativity, and courage to ask "why?" and "why not?" A PhD is a firm credential for a job in academia that may or may not indicate that you have these qualities. It is neither necessary nor sufficient to becoming a scientist.

<comment><USER4> The question isn't "Do people need the degree?" They're using PhD as a metonymy for the Western process of training researchers. What they're asking is "Is our current process of training researchers necessary?"

The current process involves some breadth requirement (exposure to most of your field), and doing a starter-project (the dissertation).

<comment><USER3> Those two questions have the same answer. I have a PhD and my experience is that the process is broken because it's geared towards the wrong goals of (1) writing papers, (2) getting grants, and (3) the game of getting a tenure-track position and then tenure. If you happen to make a great discovery, that's nice, too. Most people I know get a PhD for career advancement, not to engage in the scientific and discovery process.

My experience was that the process was more "cargo cult science" and less science.

<comment><USER5> I think you just had the wrong expectations about what a PhD is. The idea isn't _just_ to work on interesting problems for 5 years. You're also meant to learn how to function as an academic, which necessarily means learning how to write papers and (maybe) get grants. There's nothing "cargo cult" about that. After all, cynicism aside, one of the best ways to get a paper published is to _actually have a good idea_.

>Most people I know get a PhD for career advancement, not to engage in the scientific and discovery process.

If you're in your 20s you'd have to be a bit crazy to take 5 years out without thinking about your future career. If PhD programs didn't cater at all to people's career needs you'd have an even heavier bias towards wealthy students in grad school. That wouldn't be good for research.

<comment><USER3> It would appear so, but I did not. I have no regrets and enjoyed my time as student and professor. I self-funded my PhD through fellowships and work, which gave me freedom to work on any problem I wanted. That taught me self- reliance and the power of creativity, not just technical skill and process. That is something I don't think my counterparts who were supported by grants grasped very well. During my time as a professor, I tried to give my own PhD students the same freedom.

I agree that having good discoveries and novel algorithms should be a good way to get a paper published. I respectfully disagree that the process isn't "cargo cult", though. In practice, it tends to be more often than not. The research culture rewards quantity over quality, and most papers are rubbish. You will hear "Dr A has B publications" 100+ times more often than "Dr C has a few papers that have been cited hundreds of times." That's an indicator that our research culture is broken.

<comment><USER5> I guess it depends a lot on the field. I'm funded mostly by my department and there aren't any restrictions on what I can work on. I don't find the standard of published papers to be particularly awful, and my colleagues seem to be getting on fine.

I agree that the emphasis on publication volume is a pain, but it's not so easy to find good alternatives. In principle, it's all very well to say that one good publication should count for more than ten mediocre publications, but it gets a little tricky to make decisions that way in practice. It could well have the opposite of the desired effect by making the process even more cliquey that it currently is.

In general, I'm a bit bemused that people seem to hold academia to such absurdly high standards. Some people seem to go in expecting it to be a bullshit-free paradise of open and free enquiry. Well, it isn't -- academics are human too. But it's really not as bad as all that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The prerequisite seems to only be about a century old in western academia. Michael Faraday, James Maxwell, Betrand Russel, et al didn't have PhDs. Faraday actually had no university at all.

Edit: Ah, apparently doctorates weren't even broadly granted in the sciences until about a century ago:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Philosophy#History>

</comment><comment><USER7> To make this clear, you may as well ask if surgeons need to go to med school. It's required by regulation and tradition. Same with lawyers. It's more an indication of the maturity of the field than the ability of the person, although it hopefully represents a relevant hurdle.

So if you can devise a quantum computer without a PhD then the lack of one won't hold you back.

<comment><USER8> Medics, lawyers, accountants etc. are _professionally_ qualified, a PhD is an academic qualification. They need to be licensed to do their job and if they aren't they can't do it.

Not the same thing at all.

<comment><USER5> It's pretty similar in practice, though. A PhD is effectively a "license" to hold an academic position.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps we need a professional degree for research science. A JD is different from a Law Ph.D. and an MD is different from a Ph.D in Medicine--so it stands to reason that we could have a professional degree as a professional rather than academic qualification.

<comment><USER5> I don't really see any need for that distinction. The curriculum would presumably be about the same for both degrees.

<comment><USER9> If you don't want to be an academic the curriculum might not be different, but the dissertation requirement could probably be done away with. Some universities have changed their Ph.D. programs such that you can graduate with 3 published articles in a peer reviewed journal. That seems like a reasonable standard for a professional degree, as opposed to a full dissertation for an academic degree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not exactly.

Look at computer scientists like Chuck Thacker, Robin Milner, Simon Peyton Jones never had a PhD and they did first class work.

</comment><comment><USER11> It really isn't a question of which system is better. It is about supply and demand. If there is a huge demand for scientists (as there appears to be at BGI today) then the requrements for getting a good job will be reduced. With the scarcity of decent jobs in US Academia today the prolonged PhD/Postdoc cycle is just a symptom of the underlying lack of demand.

<comment><USER12> It's not just a lack of demand for PI's, it's a strong demand for lab monkeys aka grad students, like yours truly. So long as (1) most research labs require many grad-student-level-trained hands for every professor-level-trained supervisor and (2) grad students continue to be deluded about their chance of securing a tenured position in the future, the situation will continue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I worked as an applied physicist / engineer at a smallish engineering company directly out of college, where about 50% of the employees had PhD's. When I decided to quit to get my PhD, the VP in charge of my boss gave me a 30 minute lecture about how a PhD would stifle my creativity and that some of the best people they had didn't have grad degrees. I was a little skeptical of that claim, as the only technical person I could think of without a graduate degree was that VP. He was very impressive, being both extremely intelligent and clearly someone who just absorbed technical material (he had two bookshelves full of grad-level math texts and seemed to know something useful on almost every topic).

Looking back, I feel that I would be much more useful to that company after a few years of grad school, receiving a more thorough mathematical and physics background and experience leading my own research projects. Of course you could attribute some of that to just "experience", which I might have gotten just the same at that job.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm listening to David Gilmour's "On An Island" right now. He didn't concern himself with pursuing a Ph.D in music before starting his career. But his body of work is extraordinary nevertheless and society has benefited tremendously.

Asking questions and following the scientific method doesn't need anyone's permission either.

</comment><comment><USER15> My favorite example is Mark Daly (of GWAS fame). He basically got a PhD for signaling purposes. He was already doing his excellent work beforehand, and got the PhD for the benefit of the institution (MIT/Broad). Or, at least, so goes the lore.

</comment><comment><USER16> The mathematician Stieltjes never completed a PhD, but was first rate. He was given an honorary doctorate so that he could apply for a chair at Groningen university.

<comment><USER17> Bob Floyd never even tried to get a PhD. (He did collect letters addressed to "Dr. Floyd".)

Stanford made him a full professor even though he didn't spend "enough" time on the tenure track.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> credentials are for grant oriented signaling.

<comment><USER19> This comment has a bit of truth in it. Institutions look at grant money obtained before anything else when evaluating faculty. And without credentials, the NSF et al have little else to go on for a new researcher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The entire system of academia is horribly twisted mess of politics and inefficiency that creates competition at wrong the level (individual in their 20/30s rather than teams of people at whatever age).

Who got human genome mapped in three months - a team from private industry (it took academia 15 years and boatloads of cash)

Who got a car to autonomously drive through the desert - s team people motivated by a competition (academia hadn't managed to get it done before then)

The current academic system of well connected 'star' PI's who are 'geniuses' directing around masses of lesser 'grads/postdocs' is a scale of snobbery not seen anywhere but show business and politics. It should be feel disgusting to anyone who sincerely values science and human progress.

<comment><USER5> I don't really get the point of your examples. No doubt one could also point to cases where academic researchers discovered something that industry didn't. And businesses also tend to have a hierarchical organization.

<comment><USER20> Businessman live or die by their skill at picking talent. Bureacrats who fund science live and die by their skill at picked themselves. I'd trust the businessmen to get the job done.

Monetary competitions like the X prize would get you scientific discoveries faster and cheaper than the current system, simply because you would have a businessman driving progress rather than studious scientist-cum-team leader (PI).

<comment><USER5> Academics aren't particularly beuracratic in my experience -- most of them hate doing paperwork. In any case, your views on this are obviously based on considering what "ought" to happen given your stereotypes, rather than looking at the facts. A _vast_ amount of research gets done in academia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It depends on the field. As far as I can tell, some undergraduate degrees are traditionally so watered down that most graduates simply haven't had the opportunity to become fit for research. (Chemistry, I'm looking at you.) Other programs do better. (Physics. EE. CS at the more hardcore schools.)

<comment><USER12> I was a physics undergrad at a very hardcore school, and I can tell you that I wasn't even remotely close to being able to do physics research upon graduation. Even after taking two years of full-time grad classes, I considered myself (and my fellow student) somewhat unprepared to choose a research field, much less do independent research.

Part of this stems from the fact that US undergrad degrees are much broader than in Europe. My understanding is that European undergrads specialize in a topic day one, whereas US undergrads take at most half of their college classes in their major.

<comment><USER20> It's more that there is too much hand holding and babying of american students. European students (at the good universities) are expected to thoroughly and independently study for exams that will come two or more years later. American students are driven by weekly assignments and all sorts of midterms and quizzes. When it comes time to do independent research, the american student is thoroughly unprepared compared to the european.

<comment><USER12> In my experience (physics graduate student), American students and European students do not differ significantly based on work ethic, planning, or organization. Certainly, the variance within each group in those categories is _much_ larger than the difference between those groups.

The significant difference was that Europeans had completed more math and physics course before they had to choose an advisor and commit to a research topic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NRA Shuts Down Facebook, No Tweets Since School Shooting - <AUTHOR> http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/12/17/nra-shuts-down-facebook-no-tweets-since-school-shooting/

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, nobody talks about this?</comment>


LG's Nexus 4 Finally Returns To The U.S. Google Play Store - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/29/lgs-nexus-4-finally-returns-to-the-u-s-google-play-store/

<comment><USER2> (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻. <http://cl.ly/image/1e143q1g1H3S>

I got a technical error on checkout, but when I re-submitted it went through. Go figure.

</comment><comment><USER3> At long last... A month late is better than two or three I suppose.</comment>